THREE:I was not allowed to return by bicycle, and left it at a caf at the crossing of the roads to Tongres and Riemst. A couple of days later the Germans had already abstracted the tyres.We have now concluded our survey of the first great mental antithesis, that between reason on the one hand, and sense and opinion on the other. The next antithesis, that between reason and passion, will occupy us a much shorter time. With it we pass from theory to practice, from metaphysics and logic to moral philosophy. But, as we saw in the preceding chapter, Aristotle is not a practical genius; for him the supreme interest of life is still the acquisition of knowledge. Theorising activity corresponds to the celestial world, in which there can be neither opposition nor excess; while passion corresponds to the sublunary sphere, where order is only preserved by the balancing of antithetical forces; and the moderating influence of reason, to the control exercised by the higher over the lower system.
THREE:If, in the philosophy of Epicttus, physics and morality become entirely identified with religion, religion, on the other hand, remains entirely natural and moral. It is an offering245 not of prayer but of praise, a service less of ceremonies and sacrifices than of virtuous deeds, a study of conscience rather than of prophecy, a faith not so much in supernatural portents as in providential law.380 But in arriving at Marcus Aurelius, we have overstepped the line which divides rational religion from superstition. Instances of the good emperors astonishing credulity have already been given and need not be repeated. They are enough to show that his lavish expenditure on public worship was dictated by something more than a regard for established customs. We know, indeed, that the hecatombs with which his victories were celebrated gave occasion to profane merriment even in the society of that period. On one occasion, a petition was passed from hand to hand, purporting to be addressed to the emperor by the white oxen, and deprecating his success on the ground that if he won they were lost.381 Yet the same Marcus Aurelius, in speaking of his predecessor Antoninus, expressly specifies piety without superstition as one of the traits in his character which were most deserving of imitation.382 And, undoubtedly, the mental condition of those who were continually in an agony of fear lest they should incur the divine displeasure by some purely arbitrary act or omission, or who supposed that the gods might be bribed into furthering their iniquitous enterprises, was beyond all comparison further removed from true wisdom than the condition of those who believed themselves to be favoured by particular manifestations of the divine beneficence, perhaps as a recompense for their earnest attempts to lead a just and holy life. We may conclude, then, that philosophy, while injuriously affected by the supernaturalist movement, still protected its disciples against the more virulent forms of superstition, and by entering into combination with the popular belief, raised it to a higher level of feeling and of thought. It was not, however, by Stoicism that the final reconciliation of ancient religion with philosophy could be246 accomplished, but by certain older forms of speculation which we now proceed to study.
THREE:"It is a debt I can never repay," she said. "Will you stay after the others have gone and tell me how you learnt my early history?"At many monasteries I heard painful details of the treatment suffered by priests. The majority were made prisoners, and many were tied to trees during a whole night and afterwards released. Several were killed. I heard, for example, at the133 convent of the Jesuits that a student of theology, Eugne Dupiereux, had been murdered, simply because he was found to have kept a diary of the war in which he had expressed a rather unfavourable opinion about the Germans. In the same manner two Josephite brothers were murdered, who later on were found to be Germans; of other priests who had been killed, the names were not yet known.
TWO:"What do you think of that?" Prout asked.