Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley

Hazel Barnes

Philosophy and Literature, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1976, pp. 3-24(Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/phl.1976.0002

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Hazel Barnes

APOTHEOSIS AND DEIFICATIONIN PLATO, NIETZSCHE AND HUXLEY

The Myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic, Nietzsche's The Birthof Tragedy, and Aldous Huxley's Time Must Have a Stop are all

philosophical myths; that is, they are myths which have been deliberatelyinvented by a single person. They are closer to genuine myth thanto either allegory or philosophical exposition in that they draw upona recognizable body of mythical material and present it in concreteimagery. The source is Orphism for Plato, Eastern religion for Huxley.Nietzsche has borrowed Apollo and Dionysus; the gods retain theirGreek associations even though Nietzsche sets them in a new mythologicalframework based on Schopenhauer's distinction between the dreamworld of phenomena and the underlying reality of the Will.All three authors employ myth for the purpose of explaining and

persuading us to the truth of a philosophical world outlook. In thework of Plato and Huxley the imagistic is accompanied by conceptual,analytic explanation. In Nietzsche's essay they are inseparable. Followingthe "Myth of Er," Plato closes with a brief paragraph insuring thatthe point of the myth has not been lost on us. Huxley provides along section from Sebastian's journal of philosophical reflections. Thestories by Plato and Huxley belong to established literary genres—amoral parable and a novel. Nietzsche, of course, has not written anarrative. On the surface, at least, he is writing literary criticism; heis trying to isolate and to analyze the two basic artistic impulses whichproduced Greek tragedy and which could usher in a new Tragic Age.Each of the three works is concerned with the relation of time andeternity, with the individual's role in the cosmos. In each the questionof how man should live is primary. They all deal with material which,whether correctly or not, has been associated with the East and withDionysus. Yet in each one of them the author's attitude toward thismaterial is ambivalent. In no case are we to take the myth literally,and one may wonder whether every one of these works is not just

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a bit atypical of its author's attitude when the myth is put into relationwith the rest of his writing.I should like to consider the three myths—separately and compara-

tively—in the terms which I have just suggested. In addition, I thinkthat it would be particularly revealing and significant to examine themin the light of a distinction which Huxley makes in Time Must Havea Stop. Defining near synonyms as they are suited to his particularintention, not as the dictionary would define them, Huxley distinguishesbetween "apotheosis" and "deification." Interestingly, he first presentsthe distinction in relation to art—just as for Nietzsche the discussionof Apollo and Dionysus is introduced in the context of artistic andliterary origins.

"Michelangelo and Fra Angélico—apotheosis and deification." Apotheo-sis—the personality exalted and intensified to the point where the personceases to be mere man or woman and becomes god-like, one of theOlympians, like that passionately pensive warrior, like those great titanessesbrooding, naked, above the sarcophagi. And over against apotheosis,deification—personality annihilated in charity, in union, so that at lastthe man or woman can say, "Not I, but God in me".1

Huxley may or may not have been influenced here by Nietzsche.In one of Nietzsche's later books, The Gay Science, he speaks of an"art of apotheoses." As in The Birth of Tragedy, such art is associatedwith Apollo. It is, Nietzsche says, "dithyrambic like Rubens, or blissfullyjesting with Hafiz, or bright and gracious like Goethe, spreading aHomeric light and glory over all things."2 In The Birth of TragedyNietzsche connects apotheosis specifically with the Olympian world ofHomer. But my concern is not to demonstrate either conscious orunconscious influence upon Huxley.3 Rather, I see the opposed idealsof apotheosis and deification as representing a particular aspect ofthe tension between the temporal and the eternal which is central toall three of these myths and thus offering a significant point ofcomparison.In spite of obvious differences between the two, the "Myth of Er"

and Time Must Have a Stop are more easily comparable than eitheris with The Birth of Tragedy. Plato's tale is short, direct; it occasionallymakes use of overt allegory and personification. For all practical purposesit is without geographical or historical setting. Er is said to be to genosPamphylou, which means that he was of Pamphylian ancestry. But whilewe may identify Pamphylia as a real district in Asia Minor, it is probablethat Plato was exploiting the etymological connotation of the word—"ofevery tribe." Huxley's fairly long novel has a realistic setting in England

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and in Italy just before and during the early part of the Second WorldWar, a large cast of clearly defined characters, and a complex plotwith a double theme. But both works are concerned with immortalityand, specifically, with reincarnation. The stories are designed to showimaginatively what happens between lives and how the choices madein a previous existence determine the still-free choice of a future life.Let us begin with Plato, and in order not to belabor the overfamiliar,I will simply comment on essentials and a few details relevant to mypurpose.Er, a Platonic-Orphic-Dante, is granted a vision in the form of a

journey to the dead and with the about-to-be-born in order that hemay bring back to the living a report of what awaits them after deathand may awaken them to the need for preparation. Plato borrowsdetails from the eschatalogical teachings of the Orphies, modifying atwill to suit his own philosophical intentions and addingwhimsical touchesfor literary effect, which incidentally aid in preventing us from takingthe story too literally. While he borrows names (e.g., "Lethe") fromOrphic sources, Plato has totally ignored the ritualistic aspect which isso essential a part of the inscriptions on the Orphic gold plates foundin tombs in Crete and Italy. We may note that although he seeks todescribe the eternal aspect of human life, the narrative itself stays strictlywithin temporal limits. Only the statement that the soul, in choosingits next life, could see something of what it contained introduces asense of timelessness; but this is a bare suggestion. Er's experiencesin the other world are divided into units of time which correspondexactly to the twelve days during which his body lay, supposedly lifelessthough not putrescent, first on the battlefield and then on the funeralpyre. Even punishments for the dead are calculated mathematically;retribution for each evil deed is to be paid tenfold, or once everyhundred years during the thousand year period which separates twolifetimes. Of course Plato here is describing the situation of those whoare still in a transitional state, not the existence of the souls whichhave permanently left this "weary wheel of being." Nevertheless, eternityseems simply to equal infinite duration, which is painfully emphasizedin the anguish of the incurables who know that their suffering willbe without end.There are three stages in Plato's narrative. First, Er goes to a place

of judgment, a spot where the Judges sit suspended between the doubleentrances and exits which open respectively into Heaven and the innerearth below. The souls, according to the judgment pronounced, ascendinto heaven on the right or descend into the underworld on the left.Plato tells us that the appropriate "labels" are fastened on to them.The Greek word is semeia, which reminds us of the tokens by which

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in Greek New Comedy lost children establish their true identity. Onethinks also of the "mark of the Beast" in the book of Revelation.Despite the reference to punishments—including the rather horribledescription of how "demons" (literally, "savage, fiery men") scourgedthe most wicked souls and dragged them along the roadside, "cardingthem on the thorns like wool")—the general atmosphere of this eternalcourtroom is pleasantly cheerful. The souls which have come fromtheir sojourns above or below greet each other joyfully and exchangestories about their journeys. "They camped in the meadow as if ata festival," says Plato, and the mood is indeed that of a picnic onthe grass.The second stage of the narrative tells how the souls travel to the

place at which they are to choose their new lives. First, they are granteda vision and audition of the harmoniously moving spheres. Plato providesa Pythagorean description of a universe of interlocking spheres, fittedtogether like whorls on a spindle. The whole is held together by avast band of light—like the rainbow but brighter and purer. Friedländerhas pointed out that the Fates which join with the Sirens to producethe music of the spheres and aid Necessity in controlling their revolutionsare the same ones which regulate the choosing of lives and ratify thechoices made. We see a picture in which the eternal cosmos and thetemporal succession of human events are harmoniously disposed andrelated. "The symmetry between individual soul and cosmos is perfectlyclear."4Plato takes great pains to show that in the soul's choice of its new

life, freedom and necessity are blended. The soul must choose; it choosesfreely on the basis of the character which it has developed in thepreceding lifetime. The souls are told, "Your destiny [daimon] willnot be allotted to you, but you will choose your destiny." It is clearthat what the soul selects is, so to speak, the external circumstancesinto which it will be born. It will be up to the newly born personto determine the inner quality of that destiny, his own character. Someof the whimsical details stress both the freedom of the choice andits dependence on previous experiences. Odysseus, for example, isrepresented as having drawn the lot which puts him last in line. Buthe declared that he would have made the same choice if he had beenfirst: tired of the sufferings which go with being an epic hero, hefinds the obscure life of a private man lying around neglected, andhe selects that.The final stage is the journey back to rebirth. The allegory here

is plain. The souls undergo their last test; they demonstrate now anddetermine for later their susceptibility to material circumstances. Theywalk over the dry, scorching plain of Lethe (Forgetfulness) and find

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themselves at the stream of Amelita (Carelessness). Although all wereobliged to drink a little, those were not accustomed to discipline drankdeeply beyond what was necessary. Obviously, Plato is explainingmetaphorically his theory that all knowledge is reminiscence and thatby nature some persons are more inclined than others to struggle torecall forgotten truth.In the "Myth of Er" Plato does not describe the ultimate state of

those who have finally reached the level where they do not need toreturn to earthly existence. Yet by implication it seems that there shouldbe a counterbalance to the incurables. We find it in the myths of otherdialogues, particularly in the Phaedrus. On this point Plato distinguisheshimself sharply from the Orphies. For them the goal appears to havebeen absorption into a fiery aither, probably thought of as a higherOne-consciousness, something which finds its logical conclusion in theOne of Plotinus and which is roughly equivalent to the Indian absorptionin Brahman. Plato is not a monist but essentially a pluralist. The soulat its eternal destiny is not personal in the sense that it would retainits differentiating psychological qualities, but it is individual. Plato saysthat the soul is nourished (trephetai) by true reality—that is, by theideas. He uses the plural, true beings (ta onto), not the singular (toon).5In the brief paragraph which follows the myth and concludes the

Republic, Plato makes it clear that we should not simply consider themyth as an appeal to otherworldliness. If we learn from Er's story,Socrates says, we shall always keep to the upward path, living withjustice and careful thought; in this way we may fare well, both herein this life and at the time of the thousand year journey when, likethe prizewinners in the contests, we reap our reward. Seen in thecontext of the long discussion which has preceded, the relevance ofthe "Myth of Er" to the here and now is specific and pointed.

In the Phaedo after his imaginative description of "the other world,"Socrates says that while no sensible man would claim that what happensto the soul after death is exactly as he has described, neverthelesssomething of the sort may be taken as true since the soul is immortal.These words might well have been spoken by Huxley apropos of hisnovel.

On the back cover of Time Must Have a Stop Huxley is quoted assaying, "It is the novel in which I have been most successful in fusingidea with story." I think the appraisal is a just one. The long sectionfrom Sebastian's Journal perhaps smacks a bit too much of professorial

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commentary on the narrative, but the book as a whole is remarkablyeffective, both as high-level entertainment and as a philosophical parableof what Huxley has called the "Perennial Philosophy." It is a trulyamazing work. Huxley has set himself a challenging task: not onlyto present attractively the possibilities of a particular way of life, butalso to explain and somehow to render reasonable the theory ofreincarnation, showing how it works, in terms acceptable to the sophisti-cated and scientifically oriented world of the twentieth century.The novel moves on two levels, set respectively in Time and Eternity;

it traces the destiny of two members of the Barnack family—youngSebastian and his uncle, Eustace. First meeting his nephew in London,Eustace invites Sebastian to visit him in his villa in Florence. On theevening of Sebastian's arrival, Eustace dies of a heart attack broughton by overindulgence against the doctor's warning. If the book hadgone on to pursue only the career of Sebastian, we might find it anotherBildungsroman. In one sense it is that even now. The seventeen-year-old Sebastian had been deeply impressed by his easily generous uncle'sway of life—its luxury, Eustace's scandalous irreverence and irrespon-sibility, his sophistication and open, self-centered enjoyment of la dolcevita, both aesthetically and sensually. During the days after Eustace'sdeath, Sebastian is initiated into more intense exploration of the sensesby the widowed Veronica Thwale, one of the most fascinating, depraved,and thoroughly slimy of all literary seductresses. Sebastian imbibesheavily of the waters of the stream of Amelita.Eustace and Mrs. Thwale are balanced by Bruno, who appears to

be both an idealized portrait of one aspect of Huxley himself anda walking, decidedly talking exemplification of the Perennial Philosophy.Bruno was with Eustace when Sebastian arrived at the train station;even then Eustace sensed or imagined that the two of them were rivalsfor influence over Sebastian, and he proceeded to joke at Bruno'sexpense. At the end of the book, after a lapse of fifteen years, wehave a brief glimpse of the adult Sebastian. He has achieved recognitionas a dramatist; his unsuccessful struggles against the continued fascina-tion of Veronica had resulted in the death of his wife and other unsavorymemories. Yet Bruno has finally won; Sebastian is well on the roadto becoming like him. The significance of Bruno's influence must begrasped in the light of the second narrative—the account of Eustace'sexperiences after death.Huxley, unlike Plato, attempts to differentiate sharply between

temporal and eternal experience, not only in objective content butin narrative form. In describing the reactions of the person whomwe have known as Eustace Barnack, Huxley no longer calls him byname. Instead, he describes anunembodied awareness which remembers

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with special intimacy the experiences of the recent Eustace but whichis no longer wholly identified with him. The narrative of experiencein Eternity is broken up, interwoven with passages depicting the normalprocess of events occurring among the surviving relatives. Althoughthere is a spiritual development in "Eustace," Huxley provides nojourney, nothing which can in any way be related to an earthly calendar.The only exception is the scene at the séance when the two worldsmomentarily intersect, or, to put it more accurately, when "Eustace"briefly reenters time. Otherwise, his experiences have no temporaldimension. Duration seems to be infinite or, alternatively, fleeting. Scenesfrom the past and future mingle and overlap as if in a kaleidoscope.There is no fixed order. Scenes appear as they do in our selectivememories except that here the future is involved as well as the pastand with a validity not found in our daydreams or anticipations. "Eustace"is a focus of awareness, a self-consciousness but hardly a personal one.What we might call the spiritual qualities of Eustace Barnack, wealthyEnglishman residing in Florence, remain; but he contemplates variousscenes from his recent life as if they represent possibilities for his presentjudgment and grounds for future choices.Huxley offers a striking image to represent "Eustace's" comprehension

of his true state of being. "Eustace" perceives his individual existenceas an opaque clot obstructing a pervading light. We note the lightsymbolism again. But whereas Plato's rainbow was the support of thecosmos (like the undergirdings of "triremes"), Huxley's uncoloredbrightness is the eternal and divine immaterial.

The whole of existence was brightness—everything except this one smallclot of untransparent absence, except these dispersed atoms of a noth-ingness that, by direct awareness, knew itself as opaque and separate,and at the same time, by an excruciating participation in the light knewitself as the most hideous and shameful of privations (pp. 127-128).

"Eustace" senses the presence of the Light as an intolerable appeal.Gradually he realizes that there are two possible responses. He canpainfully break through the stubborn resistance of the shameful clotof individual existence, allowing self to dissolve and to become onewith the pure, serene light. Or he can shut out the humiliating knowledgeof his condition.

Suddenly there was a new contingent knowledge, a conditional awarenessthat, if there were no participation in the brightness, half the agonywould disappear. There would be no perception of the ugliness of thisclotted or disintegrated privation. There would only be an untransparentseparateness, self-known as other than the invading light.

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"For an immense duration the two awarenesses hung as though bal-anced."

The final choice is made after "Eustace" has had the opportunityof seeing over and over again significant scenes from past and future,always accompanied by the realization that he can, if he really wishesit, end his own series of reincarnations by taking refuge in the Light.Recollections of the life he has just lived are particularly persuasiveone way or the other. Remembered sensory delights still retain theirsharp appeal. There are a few memories of a different sort, thosewhich had suggested possibilities of another kind of existence. Therewas a half-mystic experience in his adolescence. He remembers, too,the sudden feeling of exaltation and insight which came to him oneevening when, after listening to a performance of Mozart's Ave VerumCorpus, he found himself in a scene of rare natural beauty, facinga somehow revelatory sunset. He observes on how on both occasionsthese spiritual openings were almost immediately blocked by buffoonery,by hysterical, deliberately blasphemous reveling in lust and greed. Afterthe Mozart and the sunset, Eustace's mistress had a phenomenal streakof luck at the gaming table. In their room Eustace covered her nudeflesh with the bank notes, mockingly echoing the Ave Verum Corpus—"Hail the true body!"When at the séance "Eustace" enters into the body of the middle-aged

woman who serves as medium, he senses with pleasure the familiarheaviness of bodily pressures, embraces eagerly its dull aches and pains.Then after still more glimpses of the series of lives which either hehas already lived or which—if he chooses to reenter time—he hasstill before him, he finally consents to rebirth."Eustace" was allowed to foresee several scenes of the horrors of

the imminent war. In one of them he observed a small boy whosedestiny, he realized, was in some way bound up with his own. Thechild is with his parents. Gabriel Weyl, the art dealer whom Eustacehad patronized in Florence, and his wife are refugees fleeing alonga road harrassed by the enemy. Mme Weyl is killed by a passing truck.Gabriel Weyl weeps, grieving even more for his ruined art treasuresthan for his wife. The little child cries hopelessly. In full awarenessof what he is doing, "Eustace" chooses to become that small boy, whooffers him a refuge from self-dissolution. For a moment he feels thehorror of meaninglessly slipping from one life to another. But then

What blessedness it was to feel the waves of blood beating and beatingwithin the ears! He remembered the warm delicious sense of being fullof food and drink, and the feel of flesh, the aromatic smell of cigarsmoke. . . . But here was the light again, the shining of the silence.

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None of that, none of that. Firmly and with decision, he averted hisattention (p. 237).

Huxley, like Plato, stresses that this choice is both free and yet thenatural outcome of the character developed in the life preceding it.Unlike Plato, Huxley (never, of course, meaning us to take "Eustace's"experiences as a literal portrait of what happens after death) doesattempt, whether seriously or whimsically, to make sense out of reincar-nation, even on a scientific level. It is as if he sought to answer theobvious question which might be asked by the literal minded, somethingcomparable to "How did all those animals find room in Noah's ark?"The question hanging in the background here might be phrased, "Howdoes it happen that reincarnated souls so obviously resemble theirparents?" The future child will be genetically recognizable as theoffspring of the Weyls—both physically and psychologically. He is equallythe spiritual and psychological descendant of Eustace. The living Eustaceshared Weyl's aesthetic sensibility though Eustace was more genuineand less commercial in his appreciation of art. He recognized as ina kindred soul a sensual voluptuousness in Mme Weyl. But while Eustacemight ridicule Bruno, he would never have denounced him to theFascist police as Gabriel Weyl finally did. A repeated motif in TimeMust Have a Stop is the idea that he who does not advance must inevitablyretrogress. During the séance "Eustace" had chanted derisively, "Down-wards and Backwards, Christian Soldiers." In becoming the son ofGabriel and Mme Weyl, he is indeed going downwards and backwards.Huxley makes another interesting point apropos of the séance.

"Eustace's" intended remarks came out considerably distorted. Forexample, "Downwards and Backwards, Christian Soldiers" was renderedby the medium as "He says, we're all Christian soldiers." Bruno,explaining it all to Sebastian, points out that X (the unknown, non-bodypart of Eustace) plus the medium's body produced only a "pseudo-Eus-tace." Huxley's intention here is partly to explain why contact withthe departed can be both valid and unsatisfying. More generally thewhole episode is strongly reminiscent of the Orphic-Platonic notionthat the body is the prison of the soul.In Time Must Have a Stop the ultimate goal is the loss of self by

absorption into higher Being. The book is permeated with an other-worldliness far beyond anything found in the "Myth of Er." Deificationall but eliminates apotheosis as a valid ideal. Any idea that the humanrace might improve itself by political and social reform is dismissedwith a sneer. Socrates' recommendation "to tend the soul" has becomethe only pathway to that Light which dissolves the importance of allother human endeavor. In this respect the novel is not altogether typical

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of Huxley's attitude. Before taking up this question, however, let usturn to the work of Nietzsche.

The Birth of Tragedy is myth in a far different sense from the mythsof Plato and Huxley. Nietzsche offers us no story, only the presenceof two gods. His Apollo and Dionysus are doubly mythical. Not onlydo they step forth from the pages of Greek mythology; the artisticimpulses which they represent result in myths enabling man to live.Nietzsche says that "the truly serious task of art" is "to save the eyefrom gazing into the horrors of night."6 That is, art makes it possiblefor man to live in spite of his existential condition.Nietzsche's use of the terms "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" has caught

on all too well. Popularly and erroneously, Apollo stands for intellectand a somewhat constipated rationality, Dionysus for feeling andcommunity—orgiastic or gemütlich. This, of course, is nonsensical, buteven the best of Nietzsche scholars seem to me not quite accuratein their interpretations of what Nietzsche was expressing by the twogods.It is relatively easy to see what Apollo symbolizes in The Birth of

Tragedy. He represents illusion and dream. Nietzsche speaks of dream,first of all, in the sense that Schopenhauer intended in the openingsentence of The World as Will and Idea; that is: "The world is mydream." Apollo is the principium individuationis. Nietzsche's startingpoint is scarcely distinguishable from Schopenhauer's—a half-Easternmonism which metaphysically is cousin to the background of Huxley'sthought even though the conclusions and spiritual implications drawnfrom it are altogether different. For Schopenhauer the principle ofindividualization is dream and illusion. The world of science, all logicalconcepts, even the whole of human perceptions constitute but a fragilenetwork superimposed upon one underlying reality, the pointlesslystriving, eternal, and immaterial Will. Nietzsche retains the notion thathuman forms and achievements are only transient structures erectedover against the chaotic flux of the eternally existing, but—at leastin The Birth of Tragedy—his interest is less metaphysical than aesthetic.He is concerned with the formal limits of our human knowledge andlogic and is interested primarily in human aspirations.Furthermore, Apollo is always connected with the artistic vision. He

stands for form, precision, lucidity. "This apotheosis of individuationknows but one law—the individual, i.e., the delimiting of the boundariesof the individual, measure in the Hellenic sense" (p. 46). Nietzsche speaks

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of Apollo as holding up the Gorgon's head to still the unleashed forcesof sensuality and cruelty which, in non-Greek countries, were the resultof the "grotesquely uncouth Dionysian power" left uncontrolled. Theimage suggests the eternalizing, petrifying power of art. IndeedNietzsche goes on to say, "It is in Doric art that this majestically rejectingattitude of Apollo is immortalized" (p. 39). One thinks immediatelyof the pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia: Apollo stands inthe center, sublimely calm between opposing forces, his right armextended in commanding control. Nietzsche's insight is intuitive, notallusive; the Olympian pediment was not known to the modern worlduntil almost ten years after the passage was written.Alongwith the overtones of Schopenhauerian idealism and Nietzsche's

new artistic implications, Apollo symbolizes the apotheosis of theindividual in Huxley's sense. This idea is expressed especially clearlyin Nietzsche's discussion of Homer, the first and purest of Apollonianartists. Paradoxically, we may see the apotheosis of the individual mortalin the imaginative creation of the Olympian gods—those deities whojustify human life by living it themselves. "Existence under the brightsunshine of such gods is regarded as desirable in itself, and the realpain of Homeric men is caused by parting from it" (p. 43). The "godlike"Homeric heroes testify even more strongly to the apotheosis of theindividual.We may more easily understand Nietzschean apotheosis and measure

the degree to which his Apollo has departed from Schopenhauer'sprincipium individuationis if we compare briefly an episode from Homer'sIliad with a comparable scene in the Bhagavad-Gita. In Book Five ofthe Iliad the goddess Athena removes the mortal veil from the eyesof Diomedes so that he may see as the gods would see. What he beholdsis a battlefield on which the Olympians are fighting alongside the Greeksand Trojans. Diomedes actually succeeds in wounding two of the deities.The mortal hero has been lifted momentarily to the level of theimmortals. What is even more important, the eye of eternity findshuman affairs worthy of its own participation. In the Indian epic, whenthe god Krishna removes the mortal veil from the eyes of Arjuna,the resulting vision is of a monistic universe in which all human conflictsare dissolved. Arjuna is comforted by the realization that since thevictor and the slain are but one, there is no reason to grieve overthe dead. But this is to cancel out the individual. It is Huxleyandeification, not apotheosis.7 In the Homeric world the individual seemsto have an ultimate significance in the cosmos, at least to us who readthe epics. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche says several times thatthe world and existence can be justified only aesthetically. Part of what

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he means is that such glorification of the human as we find in Apollonianart and literature palliates our sober realization of our insignificantplace in a cosmos without a God.Nietzsche's Dionysus is even further removed from Schopenhauer's

blind, struggling Will than Apollo is from the principium individuationis.Yet he retains more of Schopenhauer's concept than most contemporaryscholars are willing to admit. It is difficult to pin down everythingwhich Dionysus meant for Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, but afew things are certain. Dionysus is more closely connected with theformless and the irrational than with intellect; he is nearer to exuberanceand to excess than to self-discipline and restraint. Whereas Apollosymbolizes a force within the human being, Dionysus stands for universalnature and a life force which is outside the individual and, in partat least, even outside the human species.Two important questions are not easy to answer. First, does Dionysus

represent or even allow for a pantheistic, mystic oneness in which aperson is healed of his solitary individuality and may find a meaningfulplace in the whole of things? To put it another way, if Apollo representsapotheosis, does Dionysus stand for deification? Second, is Dionysusproperly to be associated with optimism and joy or with pessimism?Or if this question is meaningless, why is it so? The two problemsare barely extricable.Nietzsche's first introduction of Dionysus seems to assert both the

joyousness and the mystic union. Nietzsche calls upon us to translateBeethoven's "Hymn to Joy" into a painting celebrating the triumphantarrival of Dionysus as Savior. The earth proffers her gifts, wild animalsare happily submissive. Human beings experience a refreshing self-for-getfulness.Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between manand man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile,or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigalson, man. . . . Each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, andfused with his neighbor, but as one with him, as if the veil of mäyähad been torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters beforethe mysterious primordial unity (p. 37).

All this is definite enough, but it is significant that Nietzsche has calledupon us to conceive of this blissful state of affairs in our imagination.He says, "as if the veil of mäyä had been torn aside." Furthermore,the passage has been introduced in the context of an imaginary paintinginspired by the music of Beethoven's symphony, in turn based onSchiller's ode to joy, "An die Freude." All three arts are essential tothe picture of Dionysus the Savior.

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Similarly, the context of two other passages which seem to promisemystic union shows that it is imagination and feeling, the "as if," whichlead us to self-forgetfulness by means of the Dionysian. In one ofthem Nietzsche suggests that to witness the ancient satyr chorus musthave resulted in erasing the gulf between man and man; it must haveevoked "an overwhelming feeling of unity leading back to the veryheart of nature" (p. 59). In the second passage, Nietzsche says thatis Dionysian art which "wishes to convince us of the eternal joy ofexistence" so that for a brief moment "we are really primordial beingitself" (p. 104).In a somewhat puzzling section, Nietzsche suggests that we are not

ourselves the creators of art.

The entire comedy of art is neither performed for our betterment oreducation nor are we the true authors of this art world. On the contrary,we may assume that we are merely images and artistic projections forthe true author, and that we have our highest dignity in our significanceas works of art—for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existenceand the world are eternally justified. . . . Thus all our knowledge ofart is basically quite illusory, because as knowing beings we are not oneand identical with that being which, as the sole author and spectatorof this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual entertainment for itself. Onlyinsofar as the genius in the act of artistic creation coalesces with thisprimordial artist of the world, does he know anything of the eternalessence of art (p. 52).

Obviously Nietzsche is not referring to a personal Creator-God. If wemust pin him down to something specific, the "true author" is stillthe Schopenhauerian Will. He is the meaningless play of changingexistence, which is not designed for us and has no meaning for us.Yet if it could be viewed impersonally, it would have aesthetic value.The artist who achieves something of this impersonal vision expressesin his work a Dionysian reality even if, in the endeavor to give itconcrete and specific form, he subjects it to the Apollonian.The point which I am trying to make is that in its own way Dionysian

joy is as much an illusion as the exaltation offered by Apollo. Nietzsche,of course, speaks of Apollo as illusion, Dionysus as intoxication. Thepresence of either one can justify the world and existence only aestheti-cally. It is art which saves man, not a god and not a cosmic consciousness.Apollonian apotheosis is not balanced by Dionysian deification. To lookinto Dionysian reality without the veil of art is to see a vision of horror:the destructiveness of world history, the cruelty of nature, the sorrowfulend of all that comes into being, "the terrors of individual existence."Far from enhancing our contentment with life in this world, the vision

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is likely to imbue us with a Buddhistic will to negation. Nietzsche recallsto us Silenus, who told King Midas that the best thing was not tobe born, the second to die as soon as possible. After the Dionysianintoxication, every-day reality shows itself to us unpalliated, and it fillsus with nausea. "Conscious of the truth he has once seen, man nowsees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence; . . . nowhe understands the wisdom of the sylvan god, Silenus: he is nauseated"(p. 60). We have moved from Eastern philosophy to the world ofSartre and Camus.Fifteen years later (1886) in a foreword to a new edition, Nietzsche

writes that The Birth of Tragedy was anti-moral. In Ecce Homo (1889)he says that the only values which the early book offered were aestheticvalues. But he adds that it presented in the symbol of Dionysus, "theultimate limit of affirmation."8 In "Attempt at Self-Criticism," whichprecedes The Birth of Tragedy in the later edition, Nietzsche seemsto be commenting unfavorably on a specific passage in that work. Hehad spoken of "the metaphysical comfort—with which, I am suggestingeven now, every true tragedy leaves us—that life is at the bottom of things,despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful andpleasurable" (p. 59). Obviously, in this instance, the consolation comesfrom Dionysus, not from Apollo. In the foreword of 1886, Nietzschesuggests that we ought to learn to laugh and to "dispatch all metaphysicalcomforts to the devil." "You ought to learn the art of this-worldly comfortfirst" (p. 26). Are we to assume that the Dionysian solace was likewisean illusion and that the later Nietzsche felt himself strong enoughto renounce it? But if that is so, then how can he continue to saythat even in his first book Dionysus symbolized "the ultimate limitof affirmation"?Personally, I believe that the fundamental position presented in The

Birth of Tragedy remained steadfast in Nietzsche's thought even thoughhe used new terms to express it and criticized his early effort as onein which the content was in part betrayed by its expression. WalterKaufmann is right in saying that for Nietzsche, Dionysus graduallybecame a single symbol which included and transcended the opposingforces represented by the pair of deities. But I think that he and R.J. Hollingdale, who closely follows him, are wrong in regarding TheBirth of Tragedy as an immature, almost aberrant work.9 Both overstressthe dualism and accuse Nietzsche of having brought in Apollo withoutever accounting for his origin. Hollingdale, in particular, complainsthat "there can be only one 'reality,' and Apollo, who overcomes it,must be part of it; yet he is set over against it. This is still the worldas will and idea" (p. 102). I agree that Nietzsche has not yet madea decisive break with Schopenhauer (who, for that matter, was certainly

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not a dualist), but this very fact should make it easy for us to seewhere Apollo comes from. He represents the impulse in the individualwhich leads him to turn back against the reality of which he is a partand to affirm particular human values and achievements against thewhole. Whereas in Schopenhauer the revolt against the Will was theultimate in self-denial and a decision against survival, Nietzsche's Apollois a positive affirmation. In Schopenhauer the goal is separation fromall that the Will represents. Nietzsche's purpose is to establish throughart a new relation between the individual and the surrounding realityin which he shares. In so doing he both imposes form upon the formlessand rises to a new evaluation of the endless flux of life outside himself.Nietzsche seeks to unite Apollo and Dionysus.Nietzsche has said as clearly as possible that in Greek tragedy there

is "a fraternal union of the two deities: Dionysus speaks the languageof Apollo; and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus" (p. 130). Letus examine the effect of this duet, first with reference to Nietzsche'sdiscussion of Oedipus, and then more broadly.For Nietzsche the bitter message of the basic myth of Oedipus, its

"Dionysian wisdom," is the contradiction of all our rational morality.It suggests that the secrets of Nature can be wrenched from her onlyby something unnatural.

It is this insight that I find expressed in that horrible triad of Oedipus'destinies: the same man who solves the riddle of nature—that Sphinxof two species—also must break the most sacred natural orders bymurdering his father and marrying his mother. Indeed, the myth seemsto wish to whisper to us that wisdom, and particularly Dionysian wisdom,is an unnatural abomination: that he who by means of his knowledgeplunges nature into the abyss of destruction must also suffer the dissolutionof nature in his own person. "The edge of wisdom turns against thewise: wisdom is a crime against nature": such horrible sentences areproclaimed to us by the myth (p. 69).

In a vivid image, Nietzsche says that Sophocles heals our eyes by aprocess the opposite of what happens when we have looked too longat the sun and see dark spots as afterimages. Sophocles providesluminous, bright images to heal us after the Dionysian darkness. TheSophoclean Oedipus is a noble being who, through his immensesuffering, spreads numinous power and blessing after his death. Thoughhe is doomed to error and misery, his actions cannot be viewed assins. It is through them that a new world is founded on the ruinsof what has been destroyed.It might well seem that Apollo has triumphed, for in two ways the

effect of Sophocles' play rests on illusion. First, instead of portraying

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a universe in which human morality is totally irrelevant, Sophoclessuggests a beneficent, divine teleology. Second, the effect of the tragedyis not to show us the universality of pain and suffering; rather weare caught up in the unique image of Oedipus. His grandeur inendurance seems to testify to the glorification (the apotheosis) of theindividual. Nietzsche writes, "The Apollonian tears us out of theDionysian universality and lets us find delight in individuals; it attachesour pity to them, and by means of them it satisfies our sense of beautywhich longs for great and sublime forms" (p. 128). Yet Nietzsche warnsus that this should not be viewed as the final triumph of Apollo. Thetotal effect of Greek tragedy, he says, is Dionysian. Even though theafterimages have healed our eyes, we cannot wholly escape the remem-brance of that dark sun we have looked upon. "Tragic insight, merelyto be endured, needs art as protection and remedy" (p. 98). This "tragicinsight" is basically the realization that the play of evolving forms inthe universe is not for us. For it, no one of us counts.In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche calls on us to strive, by an act

of imagination, to look upon the nonhuman world as if it were a dramaticspectacle, to admire, to wonder at, and to feel its exuberance, its endlessbuilding and destruction—and to pronounce it joy. It is no wonderthat Nietzsche believed his philosophy to be beyond optimism andpessimism. In his later work he asks us, as it were, to unite Apolloand Dionysus beyond the aesthetic, in life as well as in art. Dionysusis now the single symbol of Nietzsche's life affirmation and "yea-saying."But what Dionysus stands for is an attitude which still retains boththe negative world outlook and the search for the apotheosis of theindividual which dominated The Birth of Tragedy.The concept of the Superman, of course, is the culmination of the

search for apotheosis. Nietzsche remarked that if there were gods,it would be unendurable not to be one.10 In the same section he saysthat while one cannot create a god, one "could well create the Superman."The Superman is godlike; in his own way he is like one of Homer'sOlympians. But he has become so through his own efforts, and heneeds no illusion. He has conquered nihilism, not by disproving itbut by transforming its meaning. In the early Untimely MeditationsNietzsche had said that the goal of history is not the final destructionof humanity but the production of its highest specimens. Against theDarwinians, he claimed that man can raise himself above the beasts,but Nietzsche persisted in feeling that the gulf between humanity'shighest specimens and the average person was greater than that betweenthe human species and the animal. Clearly the Superman is in onesense an Apollonian apotheosis. Yet at the end of Ecce Homo, whenNietzsche wants to proclaim his life-affirmation against what he felt

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tobe the life-denying quality of Christianity, he cried, "Dionysus againstthe Crucified."We can best see how the Superman has combined both Apollo and

Dionysus if we view him in the light of Nietzsche's concept of time.In The Birth of Tragedy the unlimited duration of nonhuman existencecould be called eternity in the sense that it was without beginningor end. It endures forever; its time is unlimited. Nietzsche does not,as Huxley does, hold that to take the point of view of eternity is todo away with time. Later, of course, Nietzsche sees time as cyclical;he replaces the concept of eternity with that of eternal recurrence.As several critics have pointed out, the concept of the Superman andthe notion of eternal recurrence are interdependent; together theyinvite the truly strong individual to find joy and personal meaningin the indifferent, pointless flux of nature.One of the first presentations of the idea of eternal recurrence occurs

in the context of an ethical or value choice. Nietzsche asks,

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into yourloneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it andhave lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable timesmore; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and everyjoy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small orgreat in your life will have to return to you, all in the same successionand sequence. . . ." Would you not throw yourself down and gnashyour teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you onceexperienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him:"You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."11

Only the Superman could respond positively to such a challenge. He,or anyone of us who has the courage to search for something positivein the fact (or theory) of eternal recurrence, must be able to do twothings. First, he is called upon to will so strongly and so genuinelywhatever he chooses at a particular moment that he may simultaneouslywill its infinite repetition. Second, because Nietzsche recognizes thatin the intricate chain of cause and effect, everything depends uponeverything else, the Superman must will all that has been or will be.Nietzsche says, "Nothing in existence may be subtracted, nothing isindispensable." This sentence appears in Ecce Homo, in the section inwhich Nietzsche appraises The Birth of Tragedy. Although he deploresthe book's over-dependence on Schopenhauer and denies now thatWagner was the one to usher in the new Tragic Age of Dionysus,Nietzsche retracts nothing of its substance. I should say that theSuperman, who both affirms the value of his own life and joyfully

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embraces the meaningless cycle of repeated time, is still the apotheosisof the individual amidst the primoridal chaos. He is Apollo in Dionysus.

Conclusion

Several interesting points of comparison and certain ironies emergeif we look at the three myths side by side.Considering the three writers in terms of their view of the cosmos,

and in particular the relation between the physical and the spiritualworlds, we find Huxley and Nietzsche representing two extremes whilePlato proposes a certain harmony. For Huxley, life in this world isnot quite mäyä but very close to it. Ultimate reality is radically Other.Huxley keeps calling upon us to open the sluices.12 Otherwise we liveas if imprisoned in the illusion of embodied, separate selves. All truemeaning lies outside what most of us call normal human experience.For Nietzsche, the life of nature is without meaning. It is indifferentto man; there is no teleology. Nor is there any higher divine realityto support or contrast with our human experience. Plato seeks aharmonious relation between the structure of the universe and thelife of man.If we compare the ideas of these authors concerning time and eternity,

we find that all three write against a background of cyclical time.Although Huxley makes no specific reference to the theory, the ideaof kalpas is an intrinsic part of the Eastern philosophy which hasinfluenced him; that is, the belief that in periods called kalpas, theOne-Brahman alternately manifests itself in multiplicity and retracts,concentrated in absolute oneness. Plato (at least in the Statesman) speaksof successive periods in which the god at the helm is closer to orfarther withdrawn from our world. In general the idea of cyclical timewas prevalent among the Greeks; Nietzsche, directly or indirectly, hasmade use of it in his doctrine of eternal recurrence. More specifically,we note that Huxley insists that time must have a stop. In a certainsense time for him is unreal. Plato, although he continually contraststhe eternal ideas with the transient reality of this world, never deniesthe reality of time. He seeks a balance between the temporal and theeternal. "Time," he tells us in the Timaeus, "is the moving image ofeternity." Time reflects eternity. Nietzsche in one place comes closeto that "timeless moment" of which Huxley has made so much. Thisis the point at which the Superman gains insight into the reality ofeternal recurrence. Nietzsche here could almost be said to introducethe notion of an eternal present. But so far from claiming that timemust stop, Nietzsche embraces it. Time is as real as eternity. Timeis eternal recurrence. The Superman must develop in time even if

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Nietzsche has renounced any belief in history as progress.Consideration of the degree of otherworldliness in the three myths

shows Plato once more offering a mean between the other two, buta fundamental contradiction in Nietzsche's attitude leaves things notquite so clearcut. Huxley never left Eastern philosophy with its tendencyto world denial as decisively as Nietzsche broke with Schopenhauer.In fairness to Huxley, one must acknowledge that in other works,especially in his novel Island, Huxley has attempted to relate his spiritualcommitments more specifically to social problems and to show thepossibilities for a healthier and better society. But in Time Must Havea Stop he scoffs at all this-worldly efforts at reform and humanimprovement. His portrait of Sebastian's father as a liberal politician,petty, self-centered, and finally disillusioned, is accompanied by remarksto the effect that all such endeavors are doomed to failure. Platomaintained enough of otherworldly idealism^ so that Nietzsche finallylinked Platonism with Christianity as life-denying and nihilistic. Seenin other contexts, Plato's emphases on philosophical contemplation andthe pursuit of eternal Truths, as well as his claim in the Phaedo thatthe philosopher's aim is the separation of soul and body, seem decidedlyto leave him open to the charge of otherworldliness. Yet as comparedwith Time Must Have a Stop, the "Myth of Er" is still firmly rootedin the concern for life on this earth. Its moral message is that weshould learn to live better here and now as well as to seek our rewardin Heaven. The Republic and even the embittered Laws are sufficienttestimony to Plato's active interest in improving the societies andgovernments of earthly existence. The Republic, of course, insists thatphilosophical understanding of eternal realities is the only guaranteeof justice and a good life on earth. This is essentially Huxley's positionin Island. In fact Island seems to me to be a book which may be comparedwith The Republic much more fruitfully than Huxley's negative Utopia,Brave New World. Nietzsche presents us with a startling paradox. Closerto strict empiricism than either of the others, he is interested solelyin this world. There is no other. Yet Nietzsche shows absolutely noconcern (though considerable contempt) for specific efforts at politicaland social reform. His aim is to lead strong and courageous personsto build lives guided by their own genuine and creative spontaneity.Still the charge that one cannot change society effectively except byconverting individuals to a better spiritual state is as applicable toNietzsche as it is to the author of Time Must Have a Stop. To gazetoo long at eternal recurrence may be as blinding as to look too intenselyat eternity.What of apotheosis and deification? For Huxley deification is all;

the less of Self, the more of the eternal, divine Ground. For Nietzsche

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apotheosis is all. God is dead. The universe is not personal. Nietzsche—even in The Birth of Tragedy—rejects the Buddhist or Indian illusionas firmly as the Alexandrian (or Socratic) trust that human rationalitycan explain the world. Plato once more seeks a mean. The living individualcan attain truth and justice by means of his reason. Even when ithas been released from the body, the individual soul is nourished bythe eternal verities, ta onta, and these are intellectual.Finally, we may look briefly at these writers' attitudes toward their

own use of myth and literature. Huxley makes no reference to godsor mythical heroes; he borrows no specific names or locations fromestablished mythology. But he seems to want us to take his mythicalpicture of the unembodied soul as possessing a high degree of truth.Disregarding the specific story of Eustace, I think that we are meantto take the description at least as literally as that which Dante givesus. Paradoxically, Huxley's philosophical attitude toward his own me-dium, literature, is somewhat deprecating. In Time Must Have a StopBruno regards Sebastian's talent as both a great gift and a spiritualtrap. Apropos of Dante he says that it would be worthwhile to learnItalian just to be able to read three chosen lines of the poet, but headds, "And yet how little they did for the man who actually wrotethem" (p. 223). The man of genius, Bruno goes on to explain, "inheritsan unusual capacity to see into ultimate reality and to express whathe sees" (p. 224). But if he pours all of his energies into his writing,he will fail to increase the knowledge necessary to perfect his owninner being. Like Eustace, he will "know progressively less instead ofmore." In Island Huxley presents the reverse paradox: full commitmentto the spiritual well-being of oneself and others results in the deterio-ration of art. On the Utopian island poets have become hymnsters.There is a tragicomic scene (tragicomic for those who value literature)in which Sophocles' Oedipus the King is presented as a puppet show.The action is accompanied by a commentator who points out howOedipus might have avoided his fate if he had been given the propertraining and taught appropriate mental hygiene. Good philosophybreeds bad art.The "Myth of Er," even with its obvious allegory, is much closer

to traditional myth. Perhaps for that very reason, Plato clearly intendsus to take it much less literally than Huxley. Like Huxley, Plato believedin the power of myth and story to persuade as well as to convey thekernel of a truth which reaches beyond our empirical or purelyconceptual knowledge. In the Republic, of course, Plato decides thatphilosophy and the poetic imagination are incompatible; he banishesthe poets.Of the three, Nietzsche alone saw no conflict between philosophy

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and literature; he sought in myth something more than a techniqueto convey the nonconceptual. In the search for truth and genuine,spontaneous experience, rationality and feeling are equally necessary.Nietzsche recognized the limits and spheres of each, but he did notfeel it necessary to renounce either. He insisted that we need myths,and he used myth more profoundly than either Plato or Huxley. Wecould say of Apollo and Dionysus, and especially of Dionysus, whatEuripides' Nurse (in Hippolytus) says of Aphrodite: "He is a god andsomething greater than a god." Nietzsche attempts to support thedoctrine of eternal recurrence with logical proofs,13 just as Huxleyseeks to provide scientific evidence for life after death and the limitedvalidity of spiritualism, and as Plato offers an empirical demonstrationin the Mino to prove that knowledge is the recollection of what weknew in an earlier existence. Yet finally the belief in eternal recurrenceis rooted in myth as firmly as theories of reincarnation are.I have tried to show that in this limited context Plato appears to

offer a kind of Golden Mean. I do not thereby intend to say thatthe ultimate message to be derived from the study of these threephilosophical myths is that Plato's position is therefore the correct one.The solution, if there be one, might just as well lie at either extreme.What all say most forcefully is this: that it is important for us to decidewhat our position is in relation to the total scheme of things and tolive a life that we find meaningful and in harmony with that choice.

University of Colorado

1.Time Must Have a Stop (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 225. The book wasoriginally published in 1944. All subsequent references are to the 1965 edition.2.The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974),section 370. In a commentary on this passage Kaufmann notes that a parentheticalexpression, "in this case I speak of Apollonian art," did not appear in the 1887 editionpublished by Nietzsche but was a marginal notation by Nietzsche in his own copy ofthe book and was printed as part of the text in later collected editions. In this paperI have used Kaufman's translations for all passages from Nietzsche except that I havepreferred "Apollonian" rather than "Apollinian" and "Superman" rather than "Overman."3.In response to my inquiry as to the extent of Huxley's interest in Nietzsche, SybilleBedford, Huxley's biographer, said that Huxley's "interest in or admiration for Nietzschewas minimal." She added that if he had read The Birth of Tragedy, it was "almost certainlynot in German." Nietzsche, in any case, makes no verbal distinction comparable to thatof Huxley. In the passage quoted he uses "Apotheosenkunst" for "art of apotheoses."In The Birth of Tragedy he uses the word "Vergöttlichung."4.Paul Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction, translated by Hans Meyerhoff (PrincetonUniversity Press, 1969), pp. 187-189.

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5.Phaedrus, 247D-248A.6.The Birth of Tragedy Or: Hellenism and Pessimism. New Edition with An Attempt atSelf-Criticism, contained in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann(New York: Modern Library, 1968). p. 118. The work was first published in 1872.All subsequent references are to Kaufmann's edition.7.I have developed this point more fully in my book, The Meddling Gods: Four Essayson Classical Themes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974).8.Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 727.9.Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York: MeridianBooks, 1956). R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1965). Kaufmann is much fairer in his appraisal. Hollingdale discussesthe book very briefly and concludes with the incredible judgment that "so far as theadvancement of Greek studies is concerned that work might as well not have beenwritten" (p. 104). Wilamovitz could hardly have improved on that.10."But let me reveal my heart to you entirely, my friends: if there were gods, howcould I endure not to be a god! Hence there are no gods. Though I drew this conclusion,now it draws me." Thus Spake Zarathustra, contained in The Portable Nietzsche, translatedby Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954), p. 198.1 1 . The Gay Science, section 34 1 .

12.The phrase is used especially in The Doors of Perception.13.It is interesting to note that Nietzsche's arguments for the fact of eternal recurrenceclosely resemble those given by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura.