CHAPTER VI—­THE CELTIC PRIESTHOOD

No name in connection with Celtic religion is more familiar to the average reader than that of the Druids, yet there is no section of the history of Celtic religion that has given rise to greater discussion than that relating to this order.  Even the association of the name with the Indo-European root dru-, which we find in the Greek word drus, an oak, has been questioned by such a competent Celtic scholar as M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, but on this point it cannot be said that his criticism is conclusive.  The writers of the ancient world who refer to the Druids, do not always make it sufficiently clear in what districts the rites, ceremonies, and functions which they were describing prevailed.  Nor was it so much the priestly character of the Druids that produced the deepest impression on the ancients.  To some philosophical and theological writers of antiquity their doctrines and their apparent affinities with Pythagoreanism were of much greater interest than their ceremonial or other functions.  One thing at any rate is clear, that the Druids and their doctrines, or supposed doctrines, had made a deep impression on the writers of the ancient world.  There is a reference to them in a fragment of Aristotle (which may not, however, be genuine) that is of interest as assigning them a place in express terms both among the Celts and the Galatae.  The prominent feature of their teaching which had attracted the attention of other writers, such as the historian Diodorus Siculus and the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, was the resemblance of their doctrine concerning the immortality and transmigration of the soul to the views of Pythagoras.  Ancient writers, however, did not always remember that a religious or philosophical doctrine must not be treated as a thing apart, but must be interpreted in its whole context in relation to its development in history and in the social life of the community in which it has flourished.  To some of the ancients the superficial resemblance between the Druidic doctrine of the soul’s future and the teaching attributed to Pythagoras was the essential point, and this was enough to give the Druids a reputation for philosophy, so that a writer like Clement of Alexandria goes so far as to regard the Druids of the ‘Galatae’ along with the prophets of the Egyptians, the ‘Chaldaeans’ of the Assyrians, the ’philosophers of the Celts,’ and the Magi of the Persians as the pioneers of philosophy among the barbarians before it spread to the Greeks.  The reason for the distinction drawn in this passage between the ‘Druids of the Galatae’ and ‘the philosophers of the Celts’ is not clear.  Diodorus Siculus calls attention to the Druidic doctrine that the souls of men were immortal, and that after the lapse of an appointed number of years they came to life again, the soul then entering into another body.  He says that there were certain