Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 15:60 (Oct 1858)
Article: Homeric Ideas Of The Soul And A Future Life
Author: John Proudfit

BSac 15:60 (Oct 1858) p. 753

Homeric Ideas Of The Soul And A Future Life1

John Proudfit

Homer once more! 2 Such was the title which Goethe prefixed to a short lucubration on the great poet, implying

BSac 15:60 (Oct 1858) p. 754

an apology for troubling the world any further on so old a topic. But the world has not done with Homer yet. Like his old hero-rambler, he is πολύτροπος, and will turn up in new aspects, so long as past and future are common factors in the problem of history and humanity. Or, to use a little of his own freedom in changing figures, that ocean which washes the shores of “all human knowledges;” out of which were exhaled and into it flowed again, as the old critics affirmed, all the fountains, streams, and rivers of Greek song, eloquence, and art,3 has depths not yet explored, in which slumber undiscovered pearls, which men will be still diving after, so long as intellectual pearls hold a price in the world’s market. Homer was the fontal genius of Greece; and the more her later literature is studied, the more earnestly will Homer be explored in search of the prima materies of her language and her marvellously rich and varied intellectual manifestations. He has a profound moral and philosophic interest, too, for those who delight in studying the development of ideas and opinions. This tendency grows stronger daily. Everything is now studied comparatively; — the human mind thus revealing the force of that inward law which impels it to complete, to harmonize, and reduce to unity the multifarious products of its activity. And what would the comparative study of antiquity be without Homer? His myths are the staple of its poets; his ideas, the germs of its philosophical systems;’ his verses, the metrical norms of its prosodians; his phrases, the ground-work of its syntax; his stories, the starting-point of its history; his beauties, the never-failing theme of its critics. We have not had the last of him yet, therefore. So long as the admirable splendor and variety of his poetry shall stimulate criticism, and the wide range of his genius and knowledge furnish new material for antiquarian and philosophic research and comparison, so long we shall continue to have Homer once more. The latest German philosophy has given a fresh stimulus to Homeric speculation. And here is an entirely new phase

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of the long-waged “controversy.” Sceptical criticism has grown tired of debating the personality of Homer, and has now gone to work to blot from his immortal ...