given to the woman, who is to be instructed
by her husband in all things divine,* and
to be commanded by him "not as a slave
by a master, but as the body by the
spirit." + Plutarch is the first to protest
against that theory which in allotting the
woman a lower standard than the man
gave her the position of a slave, though
he did not of course see the full scope of
his protest.
"Virtue differs in man and

another always seems implied by the praise of ourselves. It is well therefore to avoid speaking of ourselves, except for some large object, either for ourselves or another person." The modern world breathes in that atmosphere. Modesty is no more than the mere symbol of humility-often its empty symbol. But till the thing was desired, men were not careful for the appearance. Plutarch's value for the reality is what most makes us feel woman,” he says,‡ “just as it differs in him a representative of unconscious Chris- man and man, and in no other way. It is tianity. We do not believe it would be not one thing in woman, and another in possible to set before the reader in non-man. There is but one virtue for all ecclesiastical Greek so much expressed human beings." The claim for one half admiration of meekness (πpaórns) from any the race to participate in the duties of other writer whatever. His authorities another implies a much nobler kind of are sometimes odd enough; the Bible was equality than does any claim to participate never cited more inappropriately, we in equal rights. We cannot here wholly should say (though the assertion be a bold pass over another claim in which Plutarch one), than the Greek poets are by their stands alone,§ not only in his age, but in earnest student in this case. From them, the sixteen centuries which followed it. he assures us we may derive equanimity in Not a single voice before him, or for all disaster, and meekness under opprobrium, that period after him, was ever raised for so that scoffs, jeers, and insults may be those who could not plead for themselves. met by us without perturbation." † We He considered not only the rights of the are afraid the promise would turn out as weaker half of humanity, but the rights of little capable of fulfilment as that of teach the beings weaker than humanity. Noth ing us a graceful method of self-eulo- ing gives us a stronger sense of his moral gium! But the thing that Plutarch means, originality. Think of all the thousands of the mysterious sense of a Nemesis for all years during which good men and Chrispresumptuous arrogance, is actually pres- tians watched the sufferings of animals ent at least in the Greek drama, and it with absolute indifference, and remember seems to us very characteristic of the new that he was the solitary advocate in the spirit which Plutarch represents, that he world of Greek civilization for those who exaggerates the remote connection in could make no appeal for themselves. which this feeling stands to a true humility. He must have had a very strong sense of the value of humility to feel that the Greek temperance was valuable mainly as far as it is related to a quality which a true Greek would have despised.

If Plutarch's conjugal idea is disappointing, his views as to the bond of kindred have never, we will venture to say, been surpassed for a lofty standard of mutual claim, and subtle discernment of common difficulties. Friendship indeed, was to him but "the shadow of kindred," a description illustrated by his own happy experience the possession of a loving friend in his brother Timon, commemowould pre-rated in his essay on "Fraternal Love," exhibiting the disasters of brotherhood against the background of memories, from which his warnings borrow nothing. We will venture on a somewhat lengthy set of extracts from an essay so interesting, at all events, as a chapter of biography, though here as elsewhere we have aimed at large condensation. Let Timon of Cheronea be remembered by the side of *Conjugalia Precepta, 48. + Ibid. 33:

Plutarch's sense of the blessings of friendship, and the dangers by which they are beset, especially when taken in connection with what has been said as to his relation to a modern ideal, pare us to find in him an equal appreciation of the deepest and closest of human bonds, and the expectation would be strengthened by the beautiful letter to his wife on the death of their child, which proves him to have known that relation under its most endearing aspect. We must confess, however, that the "conjugal precepts" show more of the low standard of an age than the high standard of an individual. Yet the new ideal of life shows itself even here in the position

De se Ipsum, c. 22.
↑ De Audiendis Poetis, 13.

De Mulierum Virtutibus.

$ This sympathy is expressed decidedly, though not always logically, in his essay on the " Eating of Flesh," but there are manifest indications of it in many other parts of his writings.

Themistocles! The unknown Greek has | tion) and restore a brother to his place.* been sketched for us by the same hand to Towards his brother, however, his dewhich we owe the portraiture of so many meanor should be different, the earnest illustrious Greeks, and what the sketch defence in absence justifies the zealous relacks in detail is more than made up for monstrance to the face of the offender." + by the lovingness of touch which suggests "The time will come when a common it. Surely the warnings which follow, if sorrow will afford a close bond for the they had less interest of their own, might brothers, but let them beware of the day be perused with interest as commemorat- of inheritance which must follow the day ing the brother of Plutarch.* "He who of bereavement. It may be a birthday deserts a brother is as one who cuts off of hatred, it may be a new birthday of a hand or foot." "Our relations to the love. Let the favored brother, in such a passing and the coming generation alike day, remember the noble deed of Athenoare poisoned by any intermixture of en- dorus, who not only divided his inheritmity here, how shall we reverence our ance afresh with a brother whose propparents if we love not their offspring? erty had been justly confiscated, but bore How shall we win reverence from our with a cheerful meekness the injustice and children if we exhibit that which of all ingratitude with which his magnanimity else we wish them to avoid? Our care to was met." "Let him recall, then and avoid all discord here should as far ex- always, the fame of the Socratic Euclid ceed our care to avoid discord with a who answered his brother's clamorous friend as our carefulness for the living or- oath that he would be avenged on him, ganism exceeds that over a mechanical And may I perish if I do not overcome work. This may indeed be repaired if it your hatred, and force you to love me be injured, and the breach be as if it had again as at first.""§ "Let brothers find not been" (though elsewhere Plutarch their joy, in all occasions of strife, in givfully recognizes a difficulty which can ing rather than receiving the victory; let seem small only in comparison with the not the sun go down upon their wrath, but greatest); "but that once subject to in- let them imitate the Pythagoreans, who jury if it be again made whole so far as is would never fail to join hands at the close possible, yet bears forever afterwards a of a day of discord." || "And let us besad memorial in the imperfect juncture, ware that discord, if it must come, shall and the visible scar! And if the loss be spring from without. Let us root out final, it is irreparable. The lost brother every seed of bitterness within; if strife can no more be replaced than the lost is to spring up, at least give it no foothold hand or eye." t "But suppose we are in any feeling of the mind, and beware unfortunate in this reflection, what, an ob- that your grievance be not the pretext jector may ask, is to be done? Much may rather than the cause of your division be remembered that shall keep the rela- from one whom you have ceased to love." ¶ tion from shipwreck even where it is no unmixed source of blessing. The imperfection that adheres to all human relation may surely be borne most easily when it is exhibited in one whom we have not chosen. The affection that is founded on preference may be cast down by distaste, but that which merit did not attract demerit need not repel. Can we not overlook those faults for which perhaps our own parents are responsible?" "And let us be always on the watch to spare our parents the sight of evil in their children. A true brother will even accept his father's anger in the place of the erring one; he will exert himself to put his brother's conduct in the best light, and find that excuse which will at once gladden the heart of a father (to whom nothing is sweeter than defeat in such an accusa

Does it not light up the page of history to know that at its darkest hour (and the above may possibly have been written under Domitian) it was possible to aspire after such an ideal as is here set forth? Amid the weariness and the horror of a decaying world there was, we see — and, if then, surely always - place for the meek pieties of domestic affection, and the placid happiness of mutual and warm regard. We would have that essay bound up with the sixth satire of Juvenal, as painting the two aspects discernible in the same era, according to the eyes that saw it.

-

We have sufficient proof in the foregoing-extracts that human relation was not

* De Fraterno Amore, c. 9 10.
+ Ibid., c. 10.
Ibid., c. II.
§ Ibid., c. 18.
Ibid., c. 17.
T Ibid., c. 16.

His

more precious to any human being that | fellow-sufferers, 'The ship has no pilot, ever lived, than to Plutarch. But it was the Dioscuri do nothing against the vionot alone enough to explain life to him. lence of the waves, but this is a matter At its best, it was to him but an imperfect which need trouble no one, for the ship reflection of that deepest relation in which will soon be engulfed or shattered, and alone the spirit could find entire repose. there will be an end of all emotion and all This relation is the keynote of his sensation.' Your consolation to the thought. His was not an original or phil-storm-tossed mariner is, that shipwreck is osophic mind, and in gathering up the close at hand!" Does Plutarch here anvarious expressions of devout trust in this swer the Epicureans or writers familiar to unseen companion, we must not expect our own time? The passage we have more than gleams of a pure but not quoted is not the only one which suggests steady radiance. They are continually the question. We feel the atmosphere obscured by his tendency to diffuseness, yet more modern when we come upon his on no subject is it more fatal not to know assertion of man's immortality. where to stop than on this, and his words sense of divine justice is supported by always overflow. Perhaps, therefore, his the conviction of the fragmentary charthoughts appear to more advantage in acter of all that we see of human fate in detached extracts than in their original this world, his hope for a development of context a sure condemnation as far as all that we achieve or suffer here which literary value is concerned. Yet a repre- shall make it explicable. "Does it folsentative of the unconscious Christianity low from the fact of God's attention to which may have proved often a prepara- every human being that the soul survives tion for conscious Christianity, and some- the body?" asks one of the interlocutors times, perhaps, its substitute, may claim in the dialogue on divine justice. "God," an interest that is independent of literary he is answered, "is a pursuer of trifles if value. We find scattered up and down in he makes so much of creatures in whom these miscellaneous essays all that we there is nothing permanent and steadfast, should associate with the idea of Chris- nothing which resembles himself, but who tianity which is not directly historical. Of are, as Homer says, the withering foliage the events which the word recalls, Plu- of the day. For him to spend his care tarch, to judge from his writings, was on creatures such as these would be to entirely ignorant, but all the principles imitate those who make gardens in oyster which it suggests-all in it that is inde- shells." * The image seems to us a fine pendent of time is set forth in these and original one. Goethe has used one writings, not, indeed, in any coherent closely allied to it in his criticism of Hamscheme, but in broken outbursts of heart- let. A mighty purpose in the human soul, felt utterance, as it is elsewhere (so it he says, is like an oak planted in a china seems to us) only by the great masters of vase, the vessel must be shattered by the Christian thought. The ideas of man's expansion of the seed within. We feel corruption, of a Saviour, of "the light that our prosaic writer here the truer poet of lighteth every man that cometh into the the two. No image, it seems to us, could world," explaining man to himself and better gather up all that is suggested revealing to him his own true self, hidden when we limit man's existence to the nar. beneath the surface of appearances this row period between the cradle and the idea is suggested by some words of Plu- grave than this picture of a growing germ tarch's, as by hardly any others out of the doomed to wither undeveloped as soon as New Testament. And in some ways his the brittle and narrow enclosure is broken thoughts in this direction appear to us es- or filled. Plutarch believed in an immorpecially fitted for our time. Listen, for tality of great names and great deeds, he instance, to his protest against a school is one of those who will ever be assoof his day, whose teaching is made famil- ciated with the "great invisible choir iar to us by its record in the most striking whose music he has helped us to hear. verse that ever was made the vehicle of To this immortality in the memory of philosophy: "Those who think nothing those who treasure up all recollection of comes to us from the gods deprive pros- the illustrious dead he has in his bestperity of its joy, and adversity of its sol-known works rendered emphatic testiace, they attempt to console us as one who in a storm at sea should assure his

Disputatio ne suaviter, etc., c. 23. It might be read throughout as an answer to Lucretius.

mony, he at least will not be charged with any tendency to underrate that self-survival in which from the narrow bounds of

* De sero Numine, ecc.

three or four score years streams a light | eternal object. No heathen, it seems to that traverses undimmed the space of a us, ever came nearer to the apprehension hundred generations. But for him this of all that is involved in the mystery of immortality was but a poor mockery, if it a Son of God. was the only immortality. The creator of Lycurgus and Pericles was a trifler, if all that remained of his work, in the age of Plutarch, was the memories that Plutarch had done so much to perpetuate. It was much, if it was a small part, of their immortality. It shrank to nothing if it was the whole.

"If

And the human side of this faith, the trust in a being so close to each of us, that to every man he reveals the true self, while delivering him from the crowd of passing desires that obscure it - this also is expressed by him, almost in the very words of St. John: "As each quits the control of parents or teachers he is If Plutarch grasped, with no uncertain called on to exchange an earthly for a apprehension, that idea of a participation divine guide," receiving as a ruler that in the divine nature which is an implicit Divine Word in obedience to whom conbelief in man's immortality, he discerned sists true freedom. "For those only live with no less clearness the dark shadow as they desire, whose mind is thus enby which man's immortality is blurred lightened as to what they should desire; and chequered. He saw the life through in all beside, will is a poor and ignoble death, but he felt the death in life. Man thing, and the herald of much repentonly learned what true existence meant ance.' ."* Apart from this divine emanci(so he reasoned) as he approached God. pation man is not only incomplete and From all other things, ourselves included, feeble, but entangled in the meshes of we gain an apprehension only of the per- evil. But the very magnitude of our disishable fugitive element, the change, the ease conceals it from ourselves. death which as it were dilutes all being, thou wouldst look within, oh man, thou except that which is divine. "We fleet- wouldst find a treasury of varied ill, not ing and uncertain beings, whose life is imported from without, but innate and mingled with death, whose joys and loves indigenous. But it is not with the disare subject to continual vicissitudes, so eases of the soul, as with those of the that not even our best self has any ele- body, which he who endures recognizes; ment of permanence we, various as we the peculiar misfortune of these is that are in our complex tangle of attributes, they are born unconsciously; reason beare to find repose and stability in turning ing sound, perceives the ills of the body, our thoughts towards one whom alone we but has no insight where itself is the part can address 'Thou art.' Birth and afflicted." † Thus we are incompetent to death make up our being: he inhabits be physicians to each other, and must that unchanged eternity in which past look for healing from elsewhere. Bound and present lose their meaning, filling it in the chains of evil, man cannot deliver with an everlasting now, and with that his brother from them, cannot rise to that oneness which is the test of true exist-vision of hope without which the effort to ence." * The last words bring to the deliver is impossible. But to one who is reader's ear dim echoes of Platonic and apart from all pollution of evil, no evil is Pythagorean teaching, but if the thought incurable. "Human punishment can have be not original to Plutarch, there is a but little remedial character. God, when profound apprehension of the deepest he takes in hand a human soul, sees the problem of philosophy in his conviction inchoate virtue that is invisible to every that we learn the very meaning of one-human eye, and the ignorance or weakness from our knowledge of God. We would join that assertion to one which, apparently its opposite, seems to us to give its full meaning. 'God," he says elsewhere, "cannot exercise justice or love towards himself, there must therefore be other divine beings, who are the object of his justice and his love." † A mere creature, he felt, could not suffice to explain the character of an eternal being an eternal love must need an

66

De Ei apud Delphos, c. 18, 19, 17. ↑ Ibid., c. 20.

ness that to human eyes has taken the aspect of vice, - sees, even in that which looks to human eyes a mere evidence of a mind inclined to evil, the signs of a latent vigor in things excellent. For while one unskilled in husbandry would not rejoice in finding many weeds on a spot he desired to bring into cultivation, the true husbandman would rejoice in recognizing a vigorous soil." This sense of an un

De Recta Ratione, etc., c. 1.

† Animi ne an Corporis Affectiones sint pejores? a + Ibid., c. 6.

2-4.