In this volume, Santayana explores several philosophical issues through imagined dialogues with the “shades” of several ancient philosophers. It’s a neat device (obviously copied from older philosophical traditions), and one often gets the sense that Santayana knows his shades quite well. The bickering and back-and-forths between Democritus, Alcibiades, et. al., demonstrate a tight understanding of each of the philosophical traditions and viewpoints.
Of course, Santayana is present himself in the guise of a spirit of “a stranger still living on Earth,” and he is the one who winds up bringing in the most challenging questions.
Frankly, most of it blew right past me, but I did get a sense of something useful in the dialogues around “Autologos,” a kind of avatar for the man who believes that he is the author of his own destiny, a concept that most of the ancient shades disagree with, preferring to see the hand of “the gods,” or at least the unknown, in the ultimate and proximate motive forces within us.
Democritus. You, silent Stranger, do not follow the others on their festive errand, and have not to-day opened your lips. Perhaps you are offended at our enlightened religion.
The Stranger. Not offended, but helpless and envious, like a boy admiring from afar the feats of an athlete or the gleaming armour of soldiers on the march. It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
Democritus. Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things. In invoking the aid of the gods and in attributing all things to their providence and power, each of us shatters his greatest illusion and heals his most radical madness. What madness, you will ask, and what illusion? This: that his thoughts produce one another or produce his actions: the very illusion of Autologos. These young fops, dancing away to their mock mysteries, are ingenious sophists and pleasant companions, but they are utterly without religion; and if your heart held you back as if from sacrilege from following in their train, it did not deceive you. Autologos is the one perfect atheist: he is persuaded that he rules and creates himself. What madness! And yet how irresistible is the voice of sensation, and will, and thought, at every moment of animate existence! The open-mouthed rabble shouting in the agora suppose that nothing controls them but their pert feelings and imaginations, by miracle unanimous; and even the demagogue who is pulling the strings of their ignorance and cupidity facies that he is freely ruling the world, and forgets the cupidity and ignorance of his own soul which have put those empty catch-words into his bawling mouth. Miserable puppets! The most visionary of mystics is wise in comparison. He knows how invisibly fly the shafts of Apollo: let but the lightest of them cut the knot of the heart, and suddenly there is an end of eloquence and policy and mighty determination. He knows that it suffices for the wind to change and all the fleets of thought will forget their errand and sail for another haven. Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace. Admonished by religion, he gives thanks, acknowledging his utter dependence on the unseen, in the past and in the present; and he prays, acknowledging his utter dependence on the unseen for the future. He sees that the issue of nothing is in his hands, seeing that he knows not whether at the next moment he will still be alive; nor what ambushed powers will traverse his path, or subtly undo the strength and the loves in his own bosom. But looking up at the broad heaven, at returning day and the revolving year, he humbly trusts the mute promises of the gods, and because of the favour they may have shown him, he may trust even himself. For what is the truth of the matter? That the atoms in their fatal courses bring all things about by necessity, and that men’s thoughts and efforts and tears are but signs and omens of the march of fate, prophetic here, and there deceptive, but always vain and impotent in themselves, never therefore wise save in confessing their own weakness, and in little things as in great, in their own motions as in those of heaven, saluting and honouring the gods.
The Stranger. But can the atoms be called gods?
Democritus. As the sun is called Phoebus and the sea Poseidon, and the heart’s warmth Love, and as this bundle of atoms is called Democritus. The name is a name, and the image imaginary, yet the truth of it is true.
The Stranger’s question is a sneaky one -- driving right at the heart of Democritus’s argument -- and he as much as admits the sophistry in his response. Autologos is wrong not because it is the gods that drive him. He is wrong because he does not know what drives him -- the gods, the atoms, or even, dare I say, himself, since everything seems to be only a name that is placed on the hidden and unknown truth.
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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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