Grammatical Foundation

[§. 12.]^a

A22 general description of the symbolic teaching of the ancients is contained in the passages of Pausanias and of Clement of Alexandria already quoted. With these one may join the principal passage on the Egyptians, which adds a further noteworthy feature: that this manner of expression is to be regarded as an imitation of nature itself, which works through emblems²⁵.

Another writer separates the two main domains of that whole circle somewhat more definitely, when he remarks that some of the ancient teachers chose the mythic veil for setting forth their thoughts, and others the symbolic²⁶. Here we see the products of ancient religion and philosophy fall into two great masses, the symbolic and 23 the mythic. These continued to occupy by far the greatest extent, and they will therefore form the abiding foundation of our whole investigation. To know them fully in their nature, however, we must weigh both their chief opposite and one or two subordinate kinds. We start from the following principal passage of a Greek philosopher:

§. 13.

“Those who speak of divine things by indication through signs (that is, intuitively) speak either symbolically and mythically, or through images. Those, however, who express their thoughts unveiled set them forth either in scientific reasoning or by means of divine inspiration. A mode of teaching that seeks to express the divine through symbols is Orphic, and belongs in general to the authors of theomythies; teaching through images is Pythagorean.”²⁷

24 Proclus here takes the endeictic (intuitive) first of all in its first and most proper meaning, in which it signifies pointing with the finger. Polybius also uses it in this sense²⁸. That speaking unveiled (ἀπαρακαλύπτως) should form the opposite need not surprise us. The idea of the veil is already contained in speaking through signs (in ἔνδειξις), because what by its nature lies outside the circle of forms is indicated through forms, for the sake of making knowledge vivid²⁹.

25 Accordingly, the endeictic is here entirely synonymous with what another writer calls veiling teaching³⁰. And just as the unveiled (ἀπαρακάλυπτον) is here opposed to it, so in other passages it is set against the discursive manner of teaching. This is the case above all in the following principal passage:

“So too the sages of the Egyptians, whether consummate wisdom moved them to it or an instinct of nature, were in my judgment unwilling to entrust what they wished to impart of their wisdom to the written characters of letters, which produce inferences and judgments in discursive separateness, and imitate the sound and articulated wording of spoken lessons. Instead, by drawing images into their sacred books, and stamping out a separate image for each idea, they brought forth the totality of discursive thought at a single stroke.”³¹

In this description of the Egyptian manner of teaching, discursive teaching (διεξοδεύειν) stands in sharp contrast to the whole indicative manner (τὸ ἐνδεικτικόν). In keeping with this meaning, Clement too uses διέξοδος for a chain of reasoning that leads 26 to conviction³². This use of διέξοδος flows from the idea of διεξιέναι and διεξελθεῖν [“to go through, to go through in detail”], which denote every kind of connected speech and narrative³³. Originally it means, in a spatial sense, a straight passage out. Afterwards it means the direction and goal of thoughts and plans³⁴. Later still its meaning passes over into the logical domain, and it denotes discursive teaching in concepts.

In this way sensuous expressions must serve to name a teaching that is not sensuous. Indeed, even a myth was needed to make sensible to the Greek people, accustomed to the language of images, the origin of discursive speech and of the alphabetic writing connected with it. Hermes was the symbol of both inventions. A sacred heap of stones was the image of speech composed out of concepts, and of the alphabetic writing composed 27 little by little out of elements³⁵.

We return to our discussion. Each of the two main kinds of all teaching noted above has its subdivisions. Our purpose here requires a closer look at only one of these domains, the endeictic. Proclus uses ἔνδειξις as the general term for the whole sphere of intuitive teaching. In the same way, another writer gathers all the subdivisions of this same circle under the term συνθήματα [“tokens, agreed signs”]³⁶.

§. 14.

28 That general division of intuitive teaching, that ἔνδειξις which uses συνθήματα, visible signs or perceptible designations, for its expression, falls according to Proclus into only two subdivisions properly speaking. These are the symbolic and mythic, and the one that speaks through images (δι’ εἰκόνων).

That this writer, here at least, does not oppose the symbolic to the mythic follows from two things. One is the conjunction καί with which he joins these two kinds. The other is that he ascribes symbolic expression to the Orphics and to all who have composed theomythies (myths of the gods). By the latter we must evidently understand the Orphic theogony and cosmogony, which were set forth poetically in symbolic myths³⁷. Just as the mythic-symbolic is called Orphic, then, so teaching through images (δι’ εἰκόνων) is called Pythagorean.

The sense of this last proposition appears at once from what follows. What is meant is the mathematical figures 29 by which Pythagoras constructed concepts in space. These figures (σχήματα) and the numbers (ἀριθμοί), so the passage continues, Pythagoras referred to the gods; they had to serve him as images for signifying the divine.

This also dissolves an apparent contradiction among the different reporters on the same matter. According to Iamblichus³⁸, Pythagoras held the symbolic mode of teaching to be very necessary. But Iamblichus is speaking there not of the mathematical mode of teaching of the Pythagoreans, but of their symbolic sayings, and of similar expressions that depart from common speech. We learn of the latter more definitely from Porphyry³⁹:

“Some things,” he relates, “Pythagoras said in a hidden way, symbolically, and Aristotle has recorded most of these expressions. Thus, for example, he called the sea the tear;^b the Bears (at the polar circle), the hands of Rhea; the Pleiad, the lyre of the Muses; and the planets, finally, the hounds of Persephone.”

These writers, then, are speaking of different modes of teaching within one and the same Pythagorean school, which knew a symbolic manner of teaching 30 just as well as the Orphic school did. By the symbolic, all the reporters cited mean the ancient figurative speech. That emblems for the eye, represented in painting, sculpture, and the like, were also called σύμβολα in ancient Greek usage needs no proof, and will appear of itself from what follows.

From what has been said, the following short overview results:

31 The doctrine of the divine is set forth:

A. Either veiled (ἐν παραπετάσμασιν):
the Intuitive Mode of Teaching (Ἔνδειξις). This is

• either symbolic (τὸ συμβολικόν) or mythic (τὸ μυθικόν). And it addresses
  • either the eye, through the image, or the ear, through speech.
  • It is
    • either Orphic, and in general found in the theomythies (ἐν ταῖς θεομυθίαις),
    • or Pythagorean, in so far as the Pythagoreans speak in sayings (συμβόλοις).
• or iconic (mathematical) (τὸ εἰκονικόν): the mode of teaching of the Pythagoreans, in so far as they teach through mathematical figures (σχήματα) or through numbers (ἀριθμοί).

B. Or unveiled (ἀπαρακαλύπτως):
the Discursive Mode of Teaching (Διέξοδος). This arises

• either scientifically (κατ’ ἐπιστήμην)
• or from inspiration (κατ’ ἐπίπνοιαν).

§. 15.

32 The subject of our inquiry requires only that we know the chief difference that separates the symbolic from the mythic, and that we look more closely at each of these larger genera. More specialized distinctions and classifications, some of them from a very late age⁴⁰, would only lead us away from the simpler sense of antiquity. The distinction between symbol and myth, by contrast, is no tenet of later theory. It is grounded in the very nature of antiquity.

Symbol, to begin with, and symbolic are, as is well known, used by the moderns largely in a sense that ancient usage does not permit. The confusion of concepts that inevitably results makes it now more necessary than ever to return to the school of the Greeks, and to learn first from their usage how these thoroughly ancient ideas arose and developed.

§. 16.

33 Three principal meanings of the verbs συμβάλλειν and συμβάλλεσθαι are, so to speak, the roots of a whole wealth of concepts that the Greek joined to his σύμβολον:

1. First, συμβάλλειν: to unite, to bind together, to bring together what is separated.
2. Next, συμβάλλεσθαι and συμβάλλειν with the dative of the person: to meet with someone (in every sense), to negotiate something with him, to enter into a bond⁴¹.
3. Finally, to compare one’s own judgment with the case at hand, to conjecture (conjicere), to infer, and especially to try to guess something riddling. Hence it is used above all of interpreting the language of the gods and prophecies⁴².

The simplest concept of σύμβολον, springing directly from the first meaning of the 34 verb, is therefore the one Plato uses⁴³: one thing composed of two. On this simplest usage also rests the oldest use of symbolic tokens of assurance themselves.

To break a small tablet and keep the separated halves as pledge and token of a guest-friendship concluded was an ancient custom, held sacred in Greece as well⁴⁴. The fragment of the broken tablet (tessera) was then itself called a symbol (σύμβολον), or tessera hospitalis. The word did not stop at that kind of compact. It came to embrace all bonds that were confirmed by a visible sign. Moreover, everything that a more refined custom gradually put in the place of that first rude token was designated by this same word.

The concept symbol, σύμβολον, 35 thus came to include:

• the law of a league of states, the federal act;
• in particular a commercial league between states⁴⁵, and a legal agreement within such public commercial treaties⁴⁶;
• further, every pledge in any kind of purchase or contract;
• the ring given as a pledge, in place of an actual contribution, to the person who arranged a shared meal⁴⁷;
• a pledge in exchange transactions;
• 36 the tablet bearing the watchword in the army (tessera militaris), the watchword (parole) itself, and any sign agreed on in war (usually called συνθήματα and παρασυνθήματα);
• every token, a theatre token and the like;
• likewise every token given at a betrothal or marriage, especially the wedding ring⁴⁸.

And because the image engraved on the signet ring was the mark and token of assurance of the person who bore it, there developed from this the general meaning signet ring, and ring in general⁴⁹.

§. 17.

Since σύμβολον signifies a sign of all these relations and bonds, it 37 is quite natural that it should come to coincide with the general concept sign (σημεῖον) itself⁵⁰. Hence the sign as opposed to the essence, the mere indication as opposed to the truth indicated, is also called σύμβολον⁵¹. Several definite meanings likewise proceed from this fundamental concept. First, the word, as the sign of the thing, is called σύμβολον⁵². It follows that the emblem, as the outward sign of an action or a disposition, is too⁵³.

38 All the meanings noted so far can be derived without difficulty from the first use of συμβάλλειν, to join together what is separated, and from the simplest concept of σύμβολον that goes with it (something composed). This simplest concept of the word keeps its validity in what follows.

For the higher sense of σύμβολον, however, we must also recall the two other meanings of the verb. The first is to meet, to encounter, and especially to encounter unexpectedly. The second is to guess from dark indications. This matters all the more because neglect of these higher relations has, as we shall see below, led to fundamentally false views of cultic symbolism.

§. 18.

With this remark the circle of religious interpretation and divination, as the Greeks conceived it, opens before us. This divination (μαντεία) concerns the senses of hearing and of sight.

To the divine that reached the ear, according to Greek popular belief, belongs χρησμός, the oracular utterance. So do φήμη and κληδών⁵⁴, 39 significant sounds, especially the cries of birds: omina ex voce [“omens from a voice”].

Indications for the eye have the following particular names:

• φάσμα, a sight, an apparition;
• then ὀμφή, which by the double meaning of this word is likewise an apparition (visio);
• τέρας, a phenomenon departing from the ordinary course of things and from the laws of nature (monstrum);
• and finally σύμβολον. This is first, as noted, any sign from which something is inferred. But it is then a sign that strikes the eye, chiefly with the added idea of the accidental, the unlooked-for, and in particular the chance, ominous encounter with a person⁵⁵.

Signs in the high air are also called σύμβολα: lightning, for example, and similar μετέωρα [“things aloft”]⁵⁶. So above all is the significant flight of birds, and every augury drawn from 40 the appearance and meeting of birds held sacred⁵⁷.

§. 19.

In this new series of ideas, certain fundamental concepts now come forward quite unmistakably. They need discussion all the more because the Greek grammarians themselves gave them so little proper attention. There is, first, the idea of the natural, the original, but also of the accidental, of what is dark in its origin, and therefore, according to the belief of antiquity, divine.

A Greek lexicographer⁵⁸ says that image and likeness (εἰκὼν καὶ ὁμοίωμα) is the name for what is what it is by nature (φύσει) and for 41 all people alike, like the image of a lion, and so on. By contrast, σύμβολον and σημεῖον, symbol and sign, is the name for what is what it is only by convention (θέσει): for example, the sign for war or peace, which was agreed on one way among the Romans and Persians and another way among other nations, and so forth.

In saying this he has indeed said something true about the contrast that holds between the kyriological image^c and the emblem. But how low is the level on which the symbolic appeared to him! Or rather, in relating it merely to the emblematic, how little has he touched the essence of the properly symbolic! There is no need, then, to linger over this. The usage of the classical writers of Greece demonstrated just above, of an Aeschylus, an Aristophanes, a Xenophon, and others, brings the symbol into the circle of religion. It shows quite clearly that the symbol designated the relations between gods and men that admit of no explanation, but do admit of interpretation.

Whatever addressed man unexpectedly, out of the hidden depths of nature and through the eye, as a portent or warning, and laid claim on him as something extraordinary: that was a σύμβολον. It was a chance sign that had come to him. And when he sought to obtain such signs at important junctures of life, he did so with preparations by which he acknowledged his dependence on the dark 42 power of higher beings of nature.

The idea of the original in the symbol, however, developed early out of the belief noted above, that the whole world of bodies is ensouled and gives man speaking signs. The fundamental powers, personified as gods, presided over these signs, and as the inventors of the mantic art they were themselves its first interpreters. The connection of such signs with what they signify is therefore original and divine. The whole worship of the gods is a continuation of the help the gods themselves first gave to men. In the same way, all the symbolism through which the priesthood mirrors its higher knowledge rests not on an arbitrary, humanly devised designation, but on that primordial connection itself. This is what set the symbol high above every other kind of figurative expression.

On these ideas, later philosophers who sought out the grounds of the national religion built a graded series of the figurative representations of religious truth, in which the symbolic appears in the dignity just described. Thus Iamblichus says that certain cultic representations have been dedicated as symbols from eternity to the higher beings⁵⁹. He refers here to 43 the symbolic language of nature itself. From these he distinguishes the image (εἰκών), the assimilation (ἀφομοίωσις) of the human to the divine, and the striving to appropriate the divine (οἰκείωσις).

This yields a relation between image and symbol directly opposite to the one set out above. There, the kyriological image appeared necessarily connected with its object, and the emblem only accidentally.

§. 20.

The Stoic doctrine of symbolic answers also sheds light on a fundamental concept of this word. The lexicographer Ammonius⁶⁰ examines the difference between a question (ἐρώτησις) and an inquiry (πεῦσις). He reports that, in the philosophers’ view, a question is an expression that calls for a symbolic answer, such as Yes, No, Certainly, 44 Uncertain. The sentence Is it day?, for example, is a question that is answered symbolically. The πεῦσις (πύσμα), by contrast, is an inquiry that is not satisfied by a symbolic answer, as when someone asks, “Where does Ariston live?”, to which a definite statement of where he lives must follow.

So much for the grammarian. The further course of this extremely simple discussion does not concern us; the concept of the symbolic answer is enough. It was an answer given by a nod or a gesture, a short bodily sign. And because Yes and No and the like are nothing other than a nod or gesture put into words, they were called symbolic answers. They stood in for a bodily language of signs, whose nature it is to be brief and to abbreviate.

This Yes or No, like that nod or gesture, appears to the sense all at once, in the one case to the eye, in the other to the ear. Whoever receives such a nod sees with it, all at once and at a single glance⁶¹, the whole.

From all this a new fundamental concept of σύμβολον emerges, which we sum up 45 in the words momentary vividness.^d

§. 21.

Every sign and word that confirms the truth of a statement or doctrine and gives full conviction at a single stroke is now also called σύμβολον. The best writers use it in this sense. That memorable word of living remembrance which Periander received through the oracle of the dead from Melissa, and which put into his hand at a stroke the belief that the utterance was true, is called by exactly this name⁶².^e It was an infallible sign, this word that reminded through an image. And to it we attach a new series of ideas contained in this word.

Just as σύμβολον belongs to the popular cult, and designated certain parts of the worship of the gods, so it also relates to the secret doctrine and to the worship in the Mysteries. From here the oldest Christian church afterwards borrowed this 46 usage.

First, as to paganism. That the higher emblems selected for its secret worship were called σύμβολα needs no lengthy proof. This name was borne, for example, by the fawn-skins in which the initiates wrapped themselves⁶³, the cicadas they wore in their hair, the purple carpets on which they trod, and all such figurative signs by which hidden truths were meant to be indicated.

Second, the definite formulas and watchwords by which the initiates recognized one another, and by which they were enabled to exclude the uninitiated, were also called σύμβολα. In every passage where the ancients cite such formulas, they name them by this word or by a synonymous one⁶⁴.

§. 22.

47 All these meanings now passed over into Christianity. First, as is well known, the church likewise called its chief doctrines, as laid down in fixed formulas (that is, its confessions of faith), σύμβολα. It used the same word no less for all the passwords and marks by which the Christian set himself apart from the non-Christian. To prove in general that this usage obtained among Christians would be superfluous. Some particular remarks will be in place later.

Second, just as in the pagan Mysteries chosen signs and symbolic actions indicated secret truths, so in Christianity the visible signs and pledges of invisible salvation were now also called σύμβολα. This is said first of the sacraments in general, especially with glorifying epithets added⁶⁵. Hence the theology concerned with the sacraments was 48 sometimes called symbolic (συμβολική), and to that extent was set against demonstrative theology (ἀποδεικτική)⁶⁶.

In particular, individual sacraments are also called σύμβολα, and again often with closer qualifications added to express their dignity. So it is with baptism⁶⁷, and likewise with the Holy Supper⁶⁸. Hence Christ, as founder of the sacraments, is called ὁ τῶν συμβόλων δημιουργός [“the craftsman of the symbols”], a title borrowed from the Greek philosophers⁶⁹. Conversely, pagan philosophical writers sometimes use, of their own religion, expressions that Christian doctrine had appropriated for the sacraments⁷⁰.

§. 23.

49 That the fundamental meaning of sign, and especially of the visible sign, which runs through this whole family of words, also held in Christian usage follows partly from what has been said. Partly, too, Christian writers state it expressly. A Greek expositor of the Symbolum fidei who has only recently become known⁷¹, for example, says in very popular terms: “It was called σύμβολον as a sign of the faith present in the soul. For the invisible convictions of the invisible and incorporeal soul stand in need of an outward confession, so that through it the faith that lies in the soul may become visible, and not remain doubtful in the dark.”

On the more particular question of the origin of the name σύμβολον, in the sense of a Christian formula of faith or of a sacrament, the older and more recent teachers of the church showed a great diversity of opinion. Some 50 thought of the συμβολή [“contribution”], and derived this usage from the Symbolum Apostolicum, to which each apostle was supposed to have given his spiritual contribution, his symbola⁷². Others represented the church as a military state. Through that formula the believer bound himself in duty to its ruler, Christ, as the soldier binds himself to his general by oath⁷³.

The only true ground of this usage, however, is to be sought in paganism alone. The more cultivated adherents of Greek polytheism found no satisfaction in the public cult of their religion. They therefore joined together in separate societies, in which a purer doctrine and the fruit of a more spiritual thinking were imparted to them. This gain of uncommon knowledge they laid down in signs and formulas, by which they recognized one another and set themselves apart from the uninitiated.

The religion of the Christians regarded itself as standing in a like relation to paganism as a whole. It was convinced how necessary 51 union within itself and separation from the non-Christian were for it too. So it also treated the sacraments and the words of confession as the distinguishing signs of its adherents.

How much from the pagan Mysteries was taken up into Christian liturgy has already been remarked by great authorities on the older history of the church⁷⁴. This holds especially of the use of symbols. As we saw, the popular religion and the secret doctrine of the Greeks had already put into this word meanings of their own, reserved for worship. This exclusiveness of higher meaning in the word σύμβολον therefore passed from paganism into Christianity together with the custom of stamping certain actions and words as signs of higher consecration. Here as there, the concepts of significance and emphatic brevity remain decidedly predominant.

§. 24.

The concept of the mythic, too, requires its grammatical elucidation. Here, however, we can be briefer.

52 First we note the origin and the fundamental concept of μῦθος, and of the words connected with it: λόγος, ἔπος, and ῥῆμα. Then we discuss the relation in which these concepts stand to one another in usage.

Μῦθος. It may be derived directly from μύω, claudo [“I close”]; or from μυέω, arcanis initio [“I initiate into secrets”], which comes from it; or finally from the word of the same origin μύθω, or μύζω, musso, clauso ore sonum aliquem per nares edo [“I mutter; I make a sound through the nose with the mouth closed”]. In every case it keeps the fundamental meaning: the thought not yet spoken out, but shut up within the mind. To this the concept speech, as the expression of thought, early attached itself.

That original meaning is attested not only by the naive Homeric expression⁷⁵, “he spoke to his heart” (Gemüth), but even by the kinship of this last word with the Greek μῦθος⁷⁶.^f

Λόγος, from 53 λέγω, I lay down, I lay out the particulars in numbers and then in words, has for that very reason the fundamental concept of counting, adding to, and reckoning⁷⁷. From there it means setting-forth speech, and so the reckoning understanding, the understanding in general, and reason.

Ἔπος is originally the word linked and joined on, speech in its sequence. It comes from ἔπω, which is related to ἅπτω and to the Old Latin apio, “I tie” (hence aptus, “bound, fitted”). ἔπω is one word with the obsolete ἕπω, only the breathing having changed. In cultivated usage ἕπεσθαι kept the meaning of attaching oneself and of following immediately. This last meaning was kept by the Roman sequor, which is the same word with a sibilant prefixed⁷⁸. The old Romans used their sequo and insequo54, true to that fundamental concept, for “I say, I speak”; and Livius Andronicus had rendered ἔννεπε [“tell”] in the first line of the Odyssey by insece⁷⁹.

Ῥῆμα, finally, from ῥέω, fluo [“I flow”], properly designates the word that flows from the mouth. Homer, that painter of nature, knows how to mark this relation so happily in his description of Nestor’s speech,

“From whose tongue a voice flowed sweeter than honey,”

as well as in other passages⁸⁰.

§. 25.

55 In usage the following relations now took shape.

In the ancient manner of speaking, μῦθος designated any utterance, whether informing or commanding, reminding or warning. Homer, accordingly, and the poets who imitate his language, the tragedians especially, use the word quite generally for speech, report, command, reminder, commission, and in similar senses⁸¹. Here, then, no separation yet appears between the truth or untruth of the content. In the same general way, Homer and every poet who speaks like Homer use the verb μυθεῖσθαι for to speak and to narrate in general.

That the word was also common in older 56 Ionic prose is shown by a fragment of the old logographer Hecataeus of Miletus⁸². In general the Ionians used μῦθος in many meanings, all flowing from its original concept of thought and speech. They took it for deliberation, and a public deliberation they called μῦθος δημόσιος. From this developed directly the meaning, likewise attested in Ionic writers, of faction, a party that announces itself through public speaking⁸³. In the same way, among them the speaker and the head of a faction was himself called μυθιήτης⁸⁴.

The generality of that usage still shimmers through in Attic 57 writers. Plato, for example, still uses the verb μυθολογεῖν, quite in the ancient way, for to speak, to narrate in general⁸⁵.

The distinction between λόγος and μῦθος had nevertheless arisen before Attic prose was fully formed. At first λόγος designated the story simply, without regard to the truth or untruth of its content⁸⁶. But soon a more definite distinction was made: λόγος designated the true story, μῦθος the invented one. Pindar and Herodotus already use the word in this sense. In Thucydides, in Plato⁸⁷, and in the Platonizing writers, as thenceforth in prevailing usage, this latter meaning holds chiefly, indeed almost alone.

In keeping with this usage, Aristotle already calls the poetic invention of a plot in tragedy the μῦθος, and to that extent counts it 58 among the principal components of every tragedy⁸⁸.

On the one hand, in some deference to the oldest usage, a more defining epithet was sometimes added to the word μῦθος to mark what was invented⁸⁹. On the other hand, once usage was settled, the two words were set in sharp contrast. The truth wrapped in a story of poetic invention (μῦθος) was called the λόγος ἐν μύθῳ [“the logos in the myth”]⁹⁰. And because a myth often became the veil of a truth and a doctrine, it was also defined in this way: “it is a fiction in which the truth is mirrored”⁹¹.

That the Latin fabula, both in its origin from fari, “to speak,” and 59 in its first⁹² and later meanings, corresponds in many ways to the Greek μῦθος needs no fuller discussion.

[End of Chapter Two.]