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Title: A Short History of Greek Philosophy
Author: John Marshall
Release Date: February 1, 2007 [EBook #20500]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREEK PHILOSOPHY ***
Produced by Al Haines
A SHORT HISTORY
OF
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
BY
JOHN MARSHALL
M.A. OXON., LL.D. EDIN.
RECTOR OF THE ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL, EDINBURGH
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY
IN THE YORKSHIRE COLLEGE, LEEDS
LONDON
PERCIVAL AND CO.
1891
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
The main purpose which I have had in view in writing this book has been
to present an account of Greek philosophy which, within strict limits
of brevity, shall be at once authentic and interesting--_authentic_, as
being based on the original works themselves, and not on any secondary
sources; _interesting_, as presenting to the ordinary English reader,
in language freed as far as possible from technicality and
abstruseness, the great thoughts of the greatest men of antiquity on
questions of permanent significance and value. There has been no
attempt to shirk the really philosophic problems which these men tried
in their day to solve; but I have endeavoured to show, by a sympathetic
treatment of them, that these problems were no mere wars of words, but
that in fact the philosophers of twenty-four centuries ago were dealing
with exactly similar difficulties as to the bases of belief and of
right action as, under different forms, beset thoughtful men and women
to-day.
In the general treatment of the subject, I have followed in the main
the order, and drawn chiefly on the selection of passages, in Ritter
and Preller's _Historia Philosophiae Graecae_. It is hoped that in
this way the little book may be found useful at the universities, as a
running commentary on that excellent work; and the better to aid
students in the use of it for that purpose, the corresponding sections
in Ritter and Preller are indicated by the figures in the margin.
In the sections on Plato, and occasionally elsewhere, I have drawn to
some extent, by the kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon
Press and his own, on Professor Jowett's great commentary and
translation.
JOHN MARSHALL.
Transcriber's notes:
The passage numbers in the Ritter-Preller book mentioned in the second
paragraph above are indicated in this book with square brackets, e.g.
"[10]". In the original book they were formatted as sidenotes. In
this e-book they are embedded in the text approximately where they
appear in the original book, unless they are at the start of a
paragraph, in which case they appear immediately before that paragraph.
Page numbers are indicated with curly brackets, e.g. "{5}". They are
embedded into the text where page breaks occurred in the original book.
In the original book, pages had headings that varied with the material
being discussed on that pair of pages. In this e-book, those headings
have been collected into an "introductory" paragraph at the beginning
of each chapter.
The original book uses several Greek words. These words, the chapters
they are used in, and their transliterations are as follows:
Chapter I (pages 3, 4, 12) - "arche" - alpha (with the soft-breathing
mark), rho, chi, eta; "phloios" - phi, lambda, omicron, iota, omicron,
final sigma.
Chapter III (page 28) - "soma" - sigma, omega, mu, alpha; "sema" -
sigma, eta, mu, alpha.
Chapter IV (page 33, 34 - "doxa" - delta, omicron, xi, alpha; "Peri" -
PI, epsilon, rho, iota; "Phueos" - PHI, upsilon, sigma, epsilon, omega,
final sigma.
Chapter V (page 48) - "logos" - lambda, omicron, gamma, omicron, final
sigma; "hule" - upsilon with rough breathing mark, lambda, eta.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I.--THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS--
I. Thales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. Anaximander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
II.--THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS (_concluded_)--
III. Anaximenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
IV. Heraclitus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
III.--PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS . . . . . . . . . 22
IV.--THE ELEATICS--
I. Xenophanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
II. Parmenides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
V.--THE ELEATICS (_concluded_)--
III. Zeno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
IV. Melissus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
VI.--THE ATOMISTS--
I. Anaxagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
VII.--THE ATOMISTS (_continued_)--
II. Empedocles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
VIII.--THE ATOMISTS (_concluded_)--
III. Leucippus and Democritus . . . . . . . . . . 74
IX.--THE SOPHISTS--
I. Protagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
X.--THE SOPHISTS (_concluded_)--
II. Gorgias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
XI.--SOCRATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
XII.--SOCRATES (concluded) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
XIII.--THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS--
I. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics . . . . . . . . 124
II. Antisthenes and the Cynics . . . . . . . . . 128
III. Euclides and the Megarics . . . . . . . . . . 132
XIV.--PLATO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
XV.--PLATO (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
XVI.--PLATO (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
XVII.--PLATO (_concluded_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
XVIII.--ARISTOTLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
XIX.--ARISTOTLE (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
XX.--ARISTOTLE (_concluded_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
XXI.--THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
XXII.--THE STOICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
{1}
CHAPTER I
THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS
_The question of Thales--Water the beginning of things--Soul in all
things--Mystery in science--Abstraction and reality--Theory of
development_
I. THALES.--For several centuries prior to the great Persian invasions
of Greece, perhaps the very greatest and wealthiest city of the Greek
world was Miletus. Situate about the centre of the Ionian coasts of
Asia Minor, with four magnificent harbours and a strongly defensible
position, it gathered to itself much of the great overland trade, which
has flowed for thousands of years eastward and westward between India
and the Mediterranean; while by its great fleets it created a new world
of its own along the Black Sea coast. Its colonies there were so
numerous that Miletus was named 'Mother of Eighty Cities.' From Abydus
on the Bosphorus, past Sinope, and so onward to the Crimea and the Don,
and thence round to Thrace, a busy community of colonies, mining,
manufacturing, ship-building, corn-raising, owned Miletus for their
mother-city. Its {2} marts must therefore have been crowded with
merchants of every country from India to Spain, from Arabia to Russia;
the riches and the wonders of every clime must have become familiar to
its inhabitants. And fitly enough, therefore, in this city was born
the first notable Greek geographer, the first constructor of a map, the
first observer of natural and other curiosities, the first recorder of
varieties of custom among various communities, the first speculator on
the causes of strange phenomena,--Hecataeus. His work is in great part
lost, but we know a good deal about it from the frequent references to
him and it in the work of his rival and follower, Herodotus.
The city naturally held a leading place politically as well as
commercially. Empire in our sense was alien to the instincts of the
Greek race; but Miletus was for centuries recognised as the foremost
member of a great commercial and political league, the political
character of the league becoming more defined, as first the Lydian and
then the Persian monarchy became an aggressive neighbour on its borders.
[8]
It was in this active, prosperous, enterprising state, and at the
period of its highest activity, that Thales, statesman, practical
engineer, mathematician, philosopher, flourished. Without attempting
to fix his date too closely, we may take it that he was a leading man
in Miletus for the greater part of the {3} first half of the sixth
century before Christ. We hear of an eclipse predicted by him, of the
course of a river usefully changed, of shrewd and profitable handling
of the market, of wise advice in the general councils of the league.
He seems to have been at once a student of mathematics and an observer
of nature, and withal something having analogy with both, an inquirer
or speculator into the _origin_ of things. To us nowadays this
suggests a student of geology, or physiography, or some such branch of
physical science; to Thales it probably rather suggested a theoretical
inquiry into the simplest _thinkable_ aspect of things as existing.
"Under what form known to us," he would seem to have asked, "may we
assume an identity in all known things, so as best to cover or render
explicable the things as we know them?" The 'beginning' of things (for
it was thus he described this assumed identity) was not conceived by
him as something which was long ages before, and which had ceased to
be; rather it meant the reality of things now. Thales then was the
putter of a question, which had not been asked expressly before, but
which has never ceased to be asked since. He was also the formulator
of a new meaning for a word; the word 'beginning' ((Greek) _arche_) got
the meaning of 'underlying reality' and so of 'ending' as well. In
short, he so dealt with a word, on the surface of it implying {4} time,
as to eliminate the idea of time, and suggest a method of looking at
the world, more profound and far-reaching than had been before
imagined.[1]
It is interesting to find that the man who was thus the first
philosopher, the first observer who took a metaphysical, non-temporal,
analytical view of the world, and so became the predecessor of all
those votaries of 'other-world' ways of thinking,--whether as academic
idealist, or 'budge doctor of the Stoic fur,' or Christian ascetic or
what not, whose ways are such a puzzle to the 'hard-headed practical
man,'--was himself one of the shrewdest men of his day, so shrewd that
by common consent he was placed foremost in antiquity among the Seven
Sages, or seven shrewd men, whose practical wisdom became a world's
tradition, enshrined in anecdote and crystallised in proverb.
[9]
The chief record that we possess of the philosophic teaching of Thales
is contained in an interesting notice of earlier philosophies by
Aristotle, the main part of which as regards Thales runs as follows:
"The early philosophers as a rule formulated the originative principle
((Greek) _arche_) of all things under some material expression. By the
originative principle or element of things they meant that of which all
{5} existing things are composed, that which determines their coming
into being, and into which they pass on ceasing to be. Where these
philosophers differed from each other was simply in the answer which
they gave to the question what was the nature of this principle, the
differences of view among them applying both to the number, and to the
character, of the supposed element or elements.
"Thales, the pioneer of this philosophy, maintained that _Water_ was
the originative principle of all things. It was doubtless in this
sense that he said that the earth rested on water. What suggested the
conception to him may have been such facts of observation, as that all
forms of substance which promote life are moist, that heat itself seems
to be conditioned by moisture, that the life-producing seed in all
creatures is moist, and so on."
Other characteristics of water, it is elsewhere suggested, may have
been in Thales' mind, such as its readiness to take various shapes, its
convertibility from water into vapour or ice, its ready mixture with
other substances, and so forth. What we have chiefly to note is, that
the more unscientific this theory about the universe may strike us as
being, the more completely out of accord with facts now familiar to
everybody, the more striking is it as marking a new mood of mind, in
which _unity_, though only very partially suggested or discoverable by
the senses, is {6} preferred to that infinite and indefinite _variety_
and _difference_ which the senses give us at every moment. There is
here the germ of a new aspiration, of a determination not to rest in
the merely momentary and different, but at least to try, even against
the apparent evidence of the senses, for something more permanently
intelligible. As a first suggestion of what this permanent underlying
reality may be, _Water_ might very well pass. It is probable that even
to Thales himself it was only a symbol, like the figure in a
mathematical proposition, representing by the first passable physical
phenomenon which came to hand, that ideal reality underlying all
change, which is at once the beginning, the middle, and the end of all.
That he did not mean Water, in the ordinary prosaic sense, to be
identical with this, is suggested by some [10] other sayings of his.
"Thales," says Aristotle elsewhere, "thought the whole universe was
full of gods." "All things," he is recorded as saying, "have a _soul_
in them, in virtue of which they move other things, and are themselves
moved, even as the magnet, by virtue of its life or soul, moves the
iron." Without pushing these fragmentary utterances too far, we may
well conclude that whether Thales spoke of the soul of the universe and
its divine indwelling powers, or gods, or of water as the origin of
things, he was only vaguely symbolising in different ways an idea as
yet formless and void, like the primeval chaos, but nevertheless, {7}
like it, containing within it a promise and a potency of greater life
hereafter.
II. ANAXIMANDER.--Our information with respect to thinkers so remote as
these men is too scanty and too fragmentary, to enable us to say in
what manner or degree they influenced each other. We cannot say for
certain that any one of them was pupil or antagonist of another. They
appear each of them, one might say for a moment only, from amidst the
darkness of antiquity; a few sayings of theirs we catch vaguely across
the void, and then they disappear. There is not, consequently, any
very distinct progression or continuity observable among them, and so
far therefore one has to confess that the title 'School of Miletus' is
a misnomer. We have already quoted the words of Aristotle in which he
classes the Ionic philosophers together, as all of them giving a
_material_ aspect of some kind to the originative principle of the
universe (see above, P. 4). But while this is a characteristic
observable in some of them, it is not so obviously discoverable in the
second of their number, Anaximander.
This philosopher is said to have been younger by [11] one generation
than Thales, but to have been intimate with him. He, like Thales, was
a native of Miletus, and while we do not hear of him as a person, like
Thales, of political eminence and activity, he was certainly the equal,
if not the superior, of Thales in {8} mathematical and scientific
ability. He is said to have either invented or at least made known to
Greece the construction of the sun-dial. He was associated with
Hecataeus in the construction of the earliest geographical charts or
maps; he devoted himself with some success to the science of astronomy.
His familiarity with the abstractions of mathematics perhaps accounts
for the more abstract form, in which he expressed his idea of the
principle of all things.
[21]
To Anaximander this principle was, as he expressed it, the _infinite_;
not water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a different
thing from any of them, something hardly namable, out of whose
formlessness the heavens and all the worlds in them came to be. And by
necessity into that same infinite or indefinite existence, out of which
they originally emerged, did every created thing return. Thus, as he
poetically expressed it, "Time brought its revenges, and for the
wrong-doing of existence all things paid the penalty of death."
The momentary resting-place of Thales on the confines of the familiar
world of things, in his formulation of Water as the principle of
existence, is thus immediately removed. We get, as it were, to the
earliest conception of things as we find it in Genesis; before the
heavens were, or earth, or the waters under the earth, or light, or
sun, or moon, or grass, or the beast of the field, when the "earth was
without form, and void, and darkness was upon the {9} face of the
deep." Only, be it observed, that while in the primitive Biblical idea
this formless void precedes in _time_ an ordered universe, in
Anaximander's conception this formless infinitude is always here, is in
fact the only reality which ever is here, something without beginning
or ending, underlying all, enwrapping all, governing all.
To modern criticism this may seem to be little better than verbiage,
having, perhaps, some possibilities of poetic treatment, but certainly
very unsatisfactory if regarded as science. But to this we have to
reply that one is not called upon to regard it as science. Behind
science, as much to-day when our knowledge of the details of phenomena
is so enormously increased, as in the times when science had hardly
begun, there lies a world of mystery which we cannot pierce, and yet
which we are compelled to assume. No scientific treatise can begin
without assuming Matter and Force as data, and however much we may have
learned about the relations of _forces_ and the affinities of _things_,
Matter and Force as such remain very much the same dim infinities, that
the originative 'Infinite' was to Anaximander.
It is to be noted, however, that while modern science assumes
necessarily _two_ correlative data or originative principles,--Force,
namely, as well as Matter,--Anaximander seems to have been content {10}
with the formulation of but one; and perhaps it is just here that a
kinship still remains between him and Thales and other philosophers of
the school. He, no more than they, seems to have definitely raised the
question, How are we to account for, or formulate, the principle of
_difference_ or change? What is it that causes things to come into
being out of, or recalls them back from being into, the infinite void?
It is to be confessed, however, that our accounts on this point are
somewhat conflicting. One authority actually says that he formulated
motion as eternal also. So far as he attempted to grasp the idea of
difference in relation to that of unity, he seems to have regarded the
principle of change or difference as inhering in [13] the infinite
itself. Aristotle in this connection contrasts his doctrine with that
of Anaxagoras, who formulated _two_ principles of existence--Matter and
Mind (see below, p. 54). Anaximander, he points out, found all he
wanted in the one.
As a mathematician Anaximander must have been familiar in various
aspects with the functions of the Infinite or Indefinable in the
organisation of thought. To the student of Euclid, for example, the
impossibility of adequately defining any of the fundamental elements of
the science of geometry--the point, the line, the surface--is a
familiar fact. In so far as a science of geometry is possible at all,
the exactness, which is its essential characteristic, is only {11}
attainable by starting from data which are in themselves impossible, as
of a point which has no magnitude, of a line which has no breadth, of a
surface which has no thickness. So in the science of abstract number
the fundamental assumptions, as that 1=1, _x=x_, etc., are contradicted
by every fact of experience, for in the world as we know it, absolute
equality is simply impossible to discover; and yet these fundamental
conceptions are in their development most powerful instruments for the
extension of man's command over his own experiences. Their
completeness of abstraction from the accidents of experience, from the
differences, qualifications, variations which contribute so largely to
the personal interests of life, this it is which makes the abstract
sciences demonstrative, exact, and universally applicable. In so far,
therefore, as we are permitted to grasp the conception of a perfectly
abstract existence prior to, and underlying, and enclosing, all
separate existences, so far also do we get to a conception which is
demonstrative, exact, and universally applicable throughout the whole
world of knowable objects.
Such a conception, however, by its absolute emptiness of content, does
not afford any means in itself of progression; somehow and somewhere a
principle of movement, of development, of concrete reality, must be
found or assumed, to link this ultimate abstraction of existence to the
multifarious phenomena {12} of existence as known. And it was,
perhaps, because Anaximander failed to work out this aspect of the
question, that in the subsequent leaders of the school _movement_,
rather than mere existence, was the principle chiefly insisted upon.
Before passing, however, to these successors of Anaximander, some
opinions of his which we have not perhaps the means of satisfactorily
correlating with his general conception, but which are not without
their individual interest, may here be noted. [14] The word _husk_ or
_bark_ ((Greek) _phloios_) seems to have been a favourite one with him,
as implying and depicting a conception of interior and necessary
development in things. Thus he seems to have postulated an inherent
tendency or law in the infinite, which compelled it to develop contrary
characters, as hot and cold, dry and moist. In consequence of this
fundamental tendency an envelope of fire, he says, came into being,
encircling another envelope of air, which latter in turn enveloped the
sphere of earth, each being like the 'husk' of the other, or like the
bark which encloses the tree. This concentric system he conceives as
having in some way been parted up into various systems, represented by
the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth. The last he figured as
hanging in space, and deriving its stability from the inherent and
perfect balance or relation of its parts.
{13}
[16]
Then, again, as to the origin of man, he seems to have in like manner
taught a theory of development from lower forms of life. In his view
the first living creatures must have come into being in moisture (thus
recalling the theory of Thales). As time went on, and these forms of
life reached their fuller possibilities, they came to be transferred to
the dry land, casting off their old nature like a husk or bark. More
particularly he insists that man must have developed out of other and
lower forms of life, because of his exceptional need, under present
conditions, of care and nursing in his earlier years. Had he come into
being at once as a human creature he could never have survived.
The analogies of these theories with modern speculations are obvious
and interesting. But without enlarging on these, one has only to say
in conclusion that, suggestive and interesting as many of these poor
fragments, these _disjecti membra poetae_, are individually, they leave
us more and more impressed with a sense of incompleteness in our
knowledge of Anaximander's theory as a whole. It may be that as a
consistent and perfected system the theory never was worked out; it may
be that it never was properly understood.
[1] By some authorities it is stated that Anaximander, the second
philosopher of this school, was the first to use the word _arche_ in
the philosophic sense. Whether this be so or not, Thales certainly had
the idea.
{14}
CHAPTER II
THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS (_concluded_)
_Air the beginning of things--All things pass--The eternal and the
temporary--The weeping philosopher_
[17]
III. ANAXIMENES.--This philosopher was also a native of Miletus, and is
said to have been a hearer or pupil of Anaximander. As we have said,
the [19] tendency of the later members of the school was towards
emphasising the _motive_ side of the supposed underlying principle of
nature, and accordingly Anaximenes chose Air as the element which best
[18] represented or symbolised that principle. Its fluidity, readiness
of movement, wide extension, and absolute neutrality of character as
regards colour, taste, smell, form, etc., were obvious suggestions.
The breath also, whose very name to the ancients implied an identity
with the life or soul, was nothing but air; and the identification of
Air with Life supplied just that principle of productiveness and
movement, which was felt [20] to be necessary in the primal element of
being. The process of existence, then, he conceived as consisting in a
certain concentration of this diffused life-giving element into more or
less solidified forms, and the {15} ultimate separation and expansion
of these back into the formless air again. The contrary forces
previously used by Anaximander--heat and cold, drought and
moisture--are with Anaximenes also the agencies which institute these
changes.
This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes. So far as the
few known facts reveal him, we can hardly say that except as supplying
a step towards the completer development of the _motive_ [22] idea in
being, he greatly adds to the chain of progressive thought.
IV. HERACLITUS.--Although not a native of Miletus, but of Ephesus,
Heraclitus, both by his nationality as an Ionian and by his position in
the development of philosophic conceptions, falls naturally to be
classed with the philosophers of Miletus. His period may be given
approximately as from about 560 to 500 B.C., though others place him a
generation later. Few authentic particulars have been preserved of
him. We hear of extensive travels, of his return to his native city
only to refuse a share in its activities, of his retirement to a
hermit's life. He seems to have formed a contrast to the preceding
philosophers in his greater detachment from the ordinary interests of
civic existence; and much in his teaching suggests the ascetic if not
the misanthrope. He received the nickname of 'The Obscure,' from the
studied mystery in which he was supposed to involve his {16} [23]
teaching. He wrote not for the vulgar, but for the gifted few. 'Much
learning makes not wise' was the motto of his work; the man of gift, of
insight, that man is better than ten thousand. He was savage in his
criticism of other writers, even the greatest. Homer, he said, and
Archilochus too, deserved to be hooted from the platform and thrashed.
Even the main purport of his writings was differently interpreted.
Some named his work 'The Muses,' as though it were chiefly a poetic
vision; others named it 'The sure Steersman to the Goal of Life';
others, more prosaically, 'A Treatise of Nature.'
[26]
The fundamental principle or fact of being Heraclitus formulated in the
famous dictum, 'All things pass.' In the eternal flux or flow of being
consisted its reality; even as in a river the water is ever changing,
and the river exists as a river only in virtue of this continual
change; or as in a living body, wherein while there is life there is no
stability or fixedness; stability and fixedness are the attributes of
the unreal image of life, not of life itself. Thus, as will be
observed, from the _material_ basis of being as conceived by Thales,
with only a very vague conception of the counter-principle of movement,
philosophy has wheeled round in Heraclitus to the other extreme; he
finds his permanent element in the negation of permanence; being or
reality consists in never 'being' but always 'becoming,' not in
stability but in change.
{17}
[27]
This eternal movement he pictures elsewhere as an eternal strife of
opposites, whose differences nevertheless consummate themselves in
finest harmony. Thus oneness emerges out of multiplicity, multiplicity
out of oneness; and the harmony of the universe is of contraries, as of
the lyre and the bow. _War_ is the father and king and lord of all
things. Neither god nor man presided at the creation of anything that
is; that which was, is that which is, and that which ever shall be;
even an ever-living Fire, ever kindling and ever being extinguished.
[28]
Thus in _Fire_, as an image or symbol of the underlying reality of
existence, Heraclitus advanced to the furthest limit attainable on
physical lines, for the expression of its essentially _motive_
character. That this Fire was no more than a symbol, suggested by the
special characteristics of fire in nature,--its subtlety, its mobility,
its power of penetrating all things and devouring all things, its
powers for beneficence in the warmth of living bodies and the
life-giving power of the sun,--is seen in the fact that he readily
varies his expression for this principle, calling it at times the
Thunderbolt, at others the eternal Reason, [29] or Law, or Fate. To
his mental view creation was a process eternally in action, the fiery
element descending by the law of its being into the cruder [30] forms
of water and earth, only to be resolved again by upward process into
fire; even as one sees the {18} vapour from the sea ascending and
melting into the [32] aether. As a kindred vapour or exhalation he
recognised the Soul or Breath for a manifestation of the essential
element. It is formless, ever changing with every breath we take, yet
it is the constructive and unifying force which keeps the body
together, and conditions its life and growth. At this point [33]
Heraclitus comes into touch with Anaximenes. In the act of breathing
we draw into our own being a portion of the all-pervading vital element
of all being; in this universal being we thereby live and move and have
our consciousness; the eternal and omnipresent wisdom becomes, through
the channels of our senses, and especially through the eyes, in
fragments at least our wisdom. In sleep we are not indeed cut off
wholly from this wisdom; through our breathing we hold as it were to
its root; but of its flower we are then deprived. On awaking again we
begin once more to partake according to our full measure of the living
thought; even as coals when brought near the fire are themselves made
partakers of it, but when taken away again become quenched.
[34]
Hence, in so far as man is wise, it is because his spirit is kindled by
union with the universal spirit; but there is a baser, or, as
Heraclitus termed it, a moister element also in him, which is the
element of unreason, as in a drunken man. And thus the trustworthiness
or otherwise of the senses, as the {19} channels of communication with
the divine, depends on the _dryness_ or _moistness_,--or, as we should
express it, using, after all, only another metaphor,--on the
_elevation_ or _baseness_ of the spirit that is within. To those whose
souls are base and barbarous, the eternal movement, the living fire, is
invisible; and thus what they do see is nothing but death. Immersed in
the mere appearances of things and their supposed stability, they,
whether sleeping or waking, behold only dead forms; their spirits are
dead.
[35]
For the guidance of life there is no law but the common sense, which is
the union of those fragmentary perceptions of eternal law, which
individual men [37] attain, in so far as their spirits are dry and
pure. Of absolute knowledge human nature is not capable, but only the
Divine. To the Eternal, therefore, alone all things are good and
beautiful and just, because to Him alone do things appear in their
totality. To the human partial reason some things are unjust and
others just. Hence life, by reason of the limitations [38] involved in
it, he sometimes spoke of as the death of the soul, and death as the
renewal of its life. And so, [39] in the great events of man's life
and in the small, as in the mighty circle of the heavens, good and
evil, life and death, growth and decay, are but the systole and
diastole, the outward and inward pulsation, of an eternal good, an
eternal harmony. Day and {20} night, winter and summer, war and peace,
satiety and hunger--each conditions the other, all are part of God. It
is sickness that makes health good and sweet, hunger that gives its
pleasure to feeding, weariness that makes sleep a good.
[39]
This vision of existence in its eternal flux and interchange, seems to
have inspired Heraclitus with a contemplative melancholy. In the
traditions of later times he was known as the _weeping_ philosopher.
Lucian represents him as saying, "To me it is a sorrow that there is
nothing fixed or secure, and that all things are thrown confusedly
together, so that pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, the great
and the small, are the same, ever circling round and passing one into
the other in the sport of time." "Time," he says elsewhere, "is like a
child that plays with the dice." The highest good, therefore, for
mortals is that clarity of perception in respect of oneself and all
that is, whereby we shall learn to apprehend somewhat of the eternal
unity and harmony, that underlies the good and evil of time, the shock
and stress of circumstance and place. The highest virtue for man is a
placid and a quiet constancy, whatever the changes and chances of life
may bring. It is the pantheistic apathy.
The sadder note of humanity, the note of Euripides and at times of
Sophocles, the note of Dante and of the _Tempest_ of Shakespeare, of
Shelley and Arnold {21} and Carlyle,--this note we hear thus early and
thus clear, in the dim and distant utterances of Heraclitus. The
mystery of existence, the unreality of what seems most real, the
intangibility and evanescence of all things earthly,--these thoughts
obscurely echoing to us across the ages from Heraclitus, have remained,
and always will remain, among the deepest and most insistent of the
world's thoughts, in its sincerest moments and in its greatest thinkers.
{22}
CHAPTER III
PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS
_The Pythagorean Brotherhood--Number the master--God the soul of the
world--Music and morals_
[41]
The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called the
Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that
island, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] of
Polycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels of
Pythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Others
tell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete,
and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain is
that at some date towards the end of the sixth century B.C. he removed
to Southern Italy, which was then extensively colonised by Greeks, and
that there he became a great philosophic teacher, and ultimately even a
predominating political influence.
[46]
He instituted a school in the strictest sense, with its various grades
of learners, subject for years to a vow of silence, holding all things
in common, and admitted, according to their approved fitness, to {23}
[47] successive revelations of the true doctrine of the Master. Those
in the lower grades were called Listeners; those in the higher,
Mathematicians or Students; those in the most advanced stage,
Physicists or Philosophers. With the political relations of the school
we need not here concern ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greek
cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who,
having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had
learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for
some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and
Pythagoreanism as a political power was violently rooted out.
Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras, in its relation to the
general development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, that
it is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory of
Pythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others.
The teaching was largely oral, and was developed by successive leaders
of the school. The doctrine, therefore, is generally spoken of as
that, not of Pythagoras, but of the Pythagoreans. Nor can we fix for
certain on one fundamental conception, upon which the whole structure
of their doctrine was built.
[52]
One dictum we may start with because of its analogies with what has
been said of the earlier {24} philosophies. The universe, said the
Pythagoreans, was constituted of _indefinites_ and _definers_, _i.e._
of that which has no character, but has infinite capacities of taking a
character; and secondly, of things or forces which impose a character
upon this. Out of the combination of these two elements or principles
all knowable [53] existences come into being. "All things," they said,
"as known have _Number_; and this number has two natures, the Odd and
the Even; the known thing is the Odd-Even or union of the two."
[66]
By a curious and somewhat fanciful development of this conception the
Pythagoreans drew up two parallel columns of antithetical principles in
nature, ten in each, thus:--
Definite Indefinite
Odd Even
One Many
Right Left
Male Female
Steadfast Moving
Straight Bent
Light Dark
Good Evil
Four Square Irregular
Looking down these two lists we shall see that the first covers various
aspects of what is conceived as the ordering, defining, formative
principle in nature; and that the second in like manner comprises
various {25} aspects of the unordered, neutral, passive, or
disorganised element or principle; the first, to adopt a later method
of expression, is _Form_, the second _Matter_. How this antithesis was
worked out by Plato and Aristotle we shall see later on.
[54]
While, in a sense, then, even the indefinite has number, inasmuch as it
is capable of having number or order imposed upon it (and only in so
far as it has this imposed upon it, does it become knowable or
intelligible), yet, as a positive factor, Number belongs only to the
first class; as such it is the source of all knowledge and of all good.
In reality the Pythagoreans had not got any further by this
representation of nature than was reached, for example, by Anaximander,
and still more definitely by Heraclitus, when they posited an
Indefinite or Infinite principle in nature which by the clash of innate
antagonisms developed into a knowable universe (see above, pp. 12, 16).
But one can easily imagine that once the idea of Number became
associated with that of the knowable in things, a wide field of
detailed development and experiment, so to speak, in the arcana of
nature, seemed to be opened. Every arithmetical or geometrical theorem
became in this view another window giving light into the secret heart
of things. Number became a kind of god, a revealer; and the philosophy
of number a kind of religion or mystery. And this is why the {26}
second grade of disciples were called Mathematicians; mathematics was
the essential preparation for and initiation into philosophy.
Whether that which truly exists was actually identical with Number or
Numbers, or whether it was something different from Number, but had a
certain relation to Number; whether if there were such a relation, this
was merely a relation of analogy or of conformability, or whether
Number were something actually embodied in that which truly
exists--these were speculative questions which were variously answered
by various teachers, and which probably interested the later more than
the earlier leaders of the school.
[56]
A further question arose: Assuming that ultimately the elements of
knowable existence are but two, the One or Definite, and the Manifold
or Indefinite, it was argued by some that there must be some third or
higher principle governing the relations of these; there must be some
law or harmony which shall render their intelligible union [57]
possible. This principle of union was God, ever-living, ever One,
eternal, immovable, self-identical. [58] This was the supreme reality,
the Odd-Even or Many in One, One in Many, in whom was gathered up, as
in an eternal harmony, all the contrarieties of lower [61] existence.
Through the interchange and intergrowth of these contrarieties God
realises Himself; the {27} universe in its evolution is the
self-picturing of God. [62] God is diffused as the seminal principle
throughout [68] the universe; He is the Soul of the world, and the
world itself is God in process. The world, therefore, is in a sense a
living creature. At its heart and circumference are purest fire;
between these circle the sun, the moon, and the five planets, whose
ordered movements, as of seven chords, produce an eternal music, the
'Music of the Spheres.' Earth, too, like the planets, is a celestial
body, moving like them around the central fire.
[71]
By analogy with this conception of the universe as the realisation of
God, so also the body, whether [72] of man or of any creature, is the
realisation for the time being of a soul. Without the body and the
life of the body, that soul were a blind and fleeting ghost. Of such
unrealised souls there are many in various degrees and states; the
whole air indeed is full of spirits, who are the causes of dreams and
omens.
[73]
Thus the change and flux that are visible in all else are visible also
in the relations of soul and body. Multitudes of fleeting ghosts or
spirits are continually seeking realisation through union with bodies,
passing at birth into this one and that, and at death issuing forth
again into the void. Like wax which takes now one impression now
another, yet remains in itself ever the same, so souls vary in the
outward {28} [74] form that envelops and realises them. In this bodily
life, the Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying, we are as it
were in bonds or in a prison, whence we may not justly go forth till
the Lord calls us. This idea Cicero mistranslated with a truly Roman
fitness: according to him they taught that in this life we are as
sentinels at our post, who may not quit it till our Commander orders.
On the one hand, therefore, the union of soul with body was necessary
for the realisation of the former ((Greek) _soma, body_, being as it
were (Greek) _sema, expression_), even as the reality of God was not in
the Odd or Eternal Unity, but in the Odd-Even, the Unity in
Multiplicity. On the other hand this union implied a certain loss or
degradation. In other words, in so far as the soul became realised it
also became corporealised, subject to the influence of passion and [75]
change. In a sense therefore the soul as realised was double; in
itself it partook of the eternal reason, as associated with body it
belonged to the realm of unreason.
This disruption of the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturally
developed in time into a threefold division, _pure thought_,
_perception_, and _desire_; or even more nearly approaching the
Platonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into _reason_,
_passion_, and _desire_. But the later developments were largely
influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be further
followed here.
{29} [78] Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for its
soothing and refining effects, but for the intellectual interest of its
numerical relations. Reference has already been made (see above, p.
27) to their quaint doctrine of the music of the spheres; and the same
idea of rhythmic harmony pervaded the whole system. The life of the
soul was a harmony; the virtues were perfect numbers; and the influence
of music on the soul was only one instance among many of the harmonious
relations of things throughout the universe. Thus we have Pythagoras
described as soothing mental afflictions, and bodily ones also, by
rhythmic measure and by song. With the morning's dawn he would be
astir, harmonising his own spirit to his lyre, and chanting ancient
hymns of the Cretan Thales, of Homer, and of Hesiod, till all the
tremors of his soul were calmed and still.
Night and morning also he prescribed for himself and his followers an
examination, as it were a _tuning_ and testing of oneself. At these
times especially was it meet for us to take account of our soul and its
doings; in the evening to ask, "Wherein have I transgressed? What
done? What failed to do?" In the morning, "What must I do? Wherein
repair past days' forgetfulness?"
But the first duty of all was truth,--truth to one's own highest, truth
to the highest beyond us. Through truth alone could the soul approach
the divine. {30} Falsehood was of the earth; the real life of the soul
must be in harmony with the heavenly and eternal verities.
Pythagoreanism remained a power for centuries throughout the Greek
world and beyond. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it
in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them
it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet
more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence.
{31}
CHAPTER IV
THE ELEATICS
_God and nature--Knowledge and opinion--Being and evolution--Love the
creator--The modern egotism_
[79]
I. XENOPHANES.--Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, one of the Ionian
cities of Asia Minor, but having been forced at the age of twenty-five
to leave his native city owing to some political revolution, he
wandered to various cities of Greece, and ultimately to Zancle and
Catana, Ionian colonies in Sicily, and thence to Elea or Velia, a Greek
city on the coast of Italy. This city had, like Miletus, reached a
high pitch of commercial prosperity, and like it also became a centre
of philosophic teaching. For there Xenophanes remained and founded a
school, so that he and his successors received the name of Eleatics.
His date is uncertain; but he seems to have been contemporary with
Anaximander [80] and Pythagoras, and to have had some knowledge of the
doctrine of both. He wrote in various poetic measures, using against
the poets, and especially against Homer and Hesiod, their own weapons,
to [83] denounce their anthropomorphic theology. If oxen {32} or lions
had hands, he said, they would have fashioned gods after their likeness
which would have been as [85] authentic as Homer's. As against these
poets, and the popular mythology, he insisted that God must be one,
eternal, incorporeal, without beginning or ending. [87] As Aristotle
strikingly expresses it, "He looked forth over the whole heavens and
said that God is one, [88] that that which is one is God." The
favourite antitheses of his time, the definite and the indefinite,
movable and immovable, change-producing and by change produced--these
and such as these, he maintained, were inapplicable to the eternally
and [86] essentially existent. In this there was no partition of
organs or faculties, no variation or shadow of turning; the Eternal
Being was like a sphere, everywhere equal; everywhere self-identical.
[84]
His proof of this was a logical one; the absolutely self-existent could
not be thought in conjunction with attributes which either admitted any
external influencing Him, or any external influenced by Him. The
prevailing dualism he considered to be, as an ultimate theory of the
universe, unthinkable and therefore false. Outside the Self-existent
there could be no second self-existent, otherwise each would be
conditioned by the existence of the other, and the Self-existent would
be gone. Anything different from the Self-existent must be of the
non-existent, _i.e._ must be nothing.
{33}
One can easily see in these discussions some adumbration of many
theological or metaphysical difficulties of later times, as of the
origin of evil, of freewill in man, of the relation of the created
world to its Creator. If these problems cannot be said to be solved
yet, we need not be surprised that Xenophanes did not solve them. He
was content to emphasise that which seemed to him to be necessary and
true, that God was God, and not either a partner with, or a function
of, matter.
[89]
At the same time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as he
expressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) _doxa_). As to
the origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow
[90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water are
the sources from which we spring; and he imagined a time when there was
neither sea nor land, but an all-pervading slough and slime; nay, many
such periods of inundation and emergence had been, hence the sea-shells
on the tops of mountains and the fossils in the rocks. Air and fire
also as agencies of change are sometimes referred to by him;
anticipations in fact are visible of the fourfold classification of the
elements which was formally made by some of his successors.
[91]
II. PARMENIDES.--The pupil and successor of Xenophanes was PARMENIDES,
a native of Elea. In a celebrated dialogue of Plato bearing the name
of {34} this philosopher he is described as visiting Socrates when the
latter was very young. "He was then already advanced in years, very
hoary, yet noble to look upon, in years some sixty and five." Socrates
was born about 479 B.C. The birth of Parmenides might therefore, if
this indication be authentic, be about 520. He was of a wealthy and
noble family, and able therefore to devote himself to a learned
leisure. Like his master he expounded his views in verse, and
fragments of his poem of considerable length and importance have been
preserved. The title of the work was _Peri Phueos_--_Of Nature_.
[93]
The exordium of the poem is one of some grandeur. The poet describes
himself as soaring aloft to the sanctuary of wisdom where it is set in
highest aether, the daughters of the Sun being his guides; under whose
leading having traversed the path of perpetual day and at length
attained the temple of the goddess, he from her lips received
instruction in the eternal verities, and had shown to him the deceptive
guesses of mortals. "'Tis for thee," she says, "to hear of both,--to
have disclosed to thee on the one hand the sure heart of convincing
verity, on the other hand the guesses of mortals wherein is no
ascertainment. Nevertheless thou shalt learn of these also, that
having gone through them all thou may'st see by what unsureness of path
must he go who goeth the way of opinion. From such a way of searching
{35} restrain thou thy thought, and let not the much-experimenting
habit force thee along the path wherein thou must use thine eye, yet
being sightless, and the ear with its clamorous buzzings, and the
chattering tongue. 'Tis by Reason that thou must in lengthened trial
judge what I shall say to thee."
[94]
Thus, like Xenophanes, Parmenides draws a deep division between the
world of reason and the world of sensation, between probative argument
and the guess-work of sense-impressions. The former is the world of
Being, the world of that which truly is, self-existent, uncreated,
unending, unmoved, unchanging, ever self-poised and self-sufficient,
like a sphere. [98] Knowledge is of this, and of this only, and as
such, knowledge is identical with its object; for outside this known
reality there is nothing. In other words, Knowledge can only be of
that which is, and that which is alone can know. All things which
mortals have imagined to be realities are but words; as of the birth
and death of things, of things which were and have ceased to be, of
here and there, of now and then.
It is obvious enough that in all this, and in much more to the same
effect reiterated throughout the poem, we have no more than a
statement, in various forms of negation, of the inconceivability by
human reason of that passage from _being_ as such, to that world of
phenomena which is now, but was not before, {36} and will cease to
be,--from _being_ to _becoming_, from eternity to time, from the
infinite to the finite (or, as Parmenides preferred to call it, from
the perfect to the imperfect, the definite to the indefinite). In all
this Parmenides was not contradicting such observed facts as
generation, or motion, or life, or death; he was talking of a world
which has nothing to do with observation; he was endeavouring to grasp
what was assumed or necessarily implied as a prior condition of
observation, or of a world to observe.
What he and his school seem to have felt was that there was a danger in
all this talk of water or air or other material symbol, or even of the
_indefinite_ or _characterless_ as the original of all,--the danger,
namely, that one should lose sight of the idea of law, of rationality,
of eternal self-centred force, and so be carried away by some vision of
a gradual process of evolution from mere emptiness to fulness of being.
Such a position would be not dissimilar to that of many would-be
metaphysicians among evolutionists, who, not content with the doctrine
of evolution as a theory in science, an ordered and organising view of
observed facts, will try to elevate it into a vision of what is, and
alone is, behind the observed facts. They fail to see that the more
blind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiation
may be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives the
wheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the most
commonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must a
law be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature which
gathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell which
the imagination of evolutionists places at the beginning of time as the
starting-point of this mighty process is not merely this or that, has
not merely this or that quality or possibility, it _is_; and in the
power of that little word is enclosed a whole world of thought, which
is there at the first, remains there all through the evolutions of the
protoplasm, will be there when these are done, is in fact independent
of time and space, has nothing to do with such distinctions, expresses
rather their ultimate unreality. So far then as Parmenides and his
school kept a firm grip on this other-world aspect of nature as implied
even in the simple word _is_, or _be_, so far they did good service in
the process of the world's thought. On the other hand, he and they
were naturally enough disinclined, as we all are disinclined, to remain
in the merely or mainly negative or defensive. He would not lose his
grip of heaven and eternity, but he would fain know the secrets of
earth and time as well. And hence was fashioned the second part of his
poem, in which he expounds his theory of the world of opinion, or
guess-work, or observation.
[99]
In this world he found two originative principles {38} at work, one
pertaining to light and heat, the other to darkness and cold. From the
union of these two principles all observable things in creation come,
and over this union a God-given power presides, whose name is Love. Of
these two principles, the bright one being analogous to _Fire_, the
dark one to _Earth_, he considered the former to be the male or
formative element, the latter the female or passive element; the former
therefore had analogies to Being as such, the latter to Non-being. The
heavenly existences, the sun, the moon, the stars, are of pure Fire,
have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on the
extremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at the
centre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmoved, is the cause of
all motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive and
procreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called by
Parmenides Necessity, Bearer of the Keys, Justice, Ruler, etc.
But while in so far as there was union in the production of man or any
other creature, the [102] presiding genius might be symbolised as
_Love_; on the other hand, since this union was a union of opposites
(Light and Dark), _Discord_ or _Strife_ also had her say in the union.
Thus the nature and character in every creature was the resultant of
two antagonistic forces, and depended for its particular excellence or
defect on the proportions in which these two elements--the {39} light
and the dark, the fiery and the earthy--had been commingled.
No character in Greek antiquity, at least in the succession of
philosophic teachers, held a more honoured position than Parmenides.
He was looked on with almost superstitious reverence by his
fellow-countrymen. Plato speaks of him as his "Father Parmenides,"
whom he "revered and honoured more than all the other philosophers
together." To quote Professor Jowett in his introduction to Plato's
dialogue _Parmenides_, he was "the founder of idealism and also of
dialectic, or in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and of logic." Of
the logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fuller
exemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, by
way of summing up what has been already said, it may be remarked that
its substantial excellence consists in the perfect clearness and
precision with which Parmenides enunciated as fundamental in any theory
of the knowable universe the priority of Existence itself, not in time
merely or chiefly, but as a condition of having any problem to inquire
into. He practically admits that he does not see how to bridge over
the partition between Existence in itself and the changeful, temporary,
existing things which the senses give us notions of. But whatever the
connection may be, if there is a connection, he is convinced that
nothing would be more absurd than {40} to make the data of sense in any
way or degree the measure of the reality of existence, or the source
from which existence itself comes into being.
On this serenely impersonal position he took his stand; we find little
or nothing of the querulous personal note so characteristic of much
modern philosophy. We never find him asking, "What is to become of
_me_ in all this?" "What is _my_ position with regard to this
eternally-existing reality?"
Of course this is not exclusively a characteristic of Parmenides, but
of the time. The idea of personal relation to an eternal Rewarder was
only vaguely held in historical times in Greece. The conception of
personal immortality was a mere pious opinion, a doctrine whispered
here and there in secret mystery; it was not an influential force on
men's motives or actions. Thought was still occupied with the wider
universe, the heavens and their starry wonders, and the strange
phenomena of law in nature. In the succession of the seasons, the
rising and setting, the fixities and aberrations, of the heavenly
bodies, in the mysteries of coming into being and passing out of it, in
these and other similar marvels, and in the thoughts which they evoked,
a whole and ample world seemed open for inquiry. Men and their fate
were interesting enough to men, but as yet the egotism of man had not
attempted to isolate his destiny from the general problem of nature.
{41} To the _crux_ of philosophy as it appeared to Parmenides in the
relation of being as such to things which seem to be, modernism has
appended a sort of corollary, in the relation of being as such to _my_
being. Till the second question was raised its answer, of course,
could not be attempted. But all those who in modern times have said
with Tennyson--
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just,
may recognise in Parmenides a pioneer for them. Without knowing it, he
was fighting the battle of personality in man, as well as that of
reality in nature.
{42}
CHAPTER V
THE ELEATICS (_concluded_)
_Zeno's dialectic--Achilles and the tortoise--The dilemma of being--The
all a sphere--The dilemmas of experience_
[106]
III. ZENO.--The third head of the Eleatic school was ZENO. He is
described by Plato in the _Parmenides_ as accompanying his master to
Athens on the visit already referred to (see above, p. 34), and as
being then "nearly forty years of age, of a noble figure and fair
aspect." In personal character he was a worthy pupil of his master,
being, like him, a devoted patriot. He is even said to have fallen a
victim to his patriotism, and to have suffered bravely the extremest
tortures at the hands of a tyrant Nearchus rather than betray his
country.
His philosophic position was a very simple one. He had nothing to add
to or to vary in the doctrine of Parmenides. His function was
primarily that of an expositor and defender of that doctrine, and his
particular pre-eminence consists in the ingenuity of his dialectic
resources of defence. He is in fact pronounced by Aristotle to have
been the inventor of dialectic or systematic logic. The relation of
{43} the two is humorously expressed thus by Plato (Jowett, _Plato_,
vol. iv. p. 128); "I see, Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno is your
second self in his writings too; he puts what you say in another way,
and would fain deceive us into believing that he is telling us what is
new. For you, in your poems, say, All is one, and of this you adduce
excellent proofs; and he, on the other hand, says, There is no many;
and on behalf of this he offers overwhelming evidence." To this Zeno
replies, admitting the fact, and adds: "These writings of mine were
meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who scoff at
him, and show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they
suppose to follow from the affirmation of the One. My answer is an
address to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with
interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of
many if carried out appears in a still more ridiculous light than the
hypothesis of the being of one."
The arguments of Zeno may therefore be regarded as strictly arguments
_in kind_; quibbles if you please, but in answer to quibbles. The
secret of his method was what Aristotle calls Dichotomy--that is, he
put side by side two contradictory propositions with respect to any
particular supposed real thing in experience, and then proceeded to
show that both these contradictories alike imply what is {44} [105]
inconceivable. Thus "a thing must consist either of a finite number of
parts or an infinite number." Assume the number of parts to be finite.
Between them there must either be something or nothing. If there is
something between them, then the whole consists of more parts than it
consists of. If there is nothing between them, then they are not
separated, therefore they are not parts; therefore the whole has no
parts at all; therefore it is nothing. If, on the other hand, the
number of parts is infinite, then, the same kind of argument being
applied, the magnitude of the whole is by infinite successive positing
of intervening parts shown to be infinite; therefore this one thing,
being infinitely large, is everything.
[107]
Take, again, any supposed fact, as that an arrow moves. An arrow
cannot move except in space. It cannot move in space without being in
space. At any moment of its supposed motion it must be in a particular
space. Being in that space, it must at the time during which it is in
it be at rest. But the total time of its supposed motion is made up of
the moments composing that time, and to each of these moments the same
argument applies; therefore either the arrow never was anywhere, or it
always was at rest.
Or, again, take objects moving at unequal rates, as Achilles and a
tortoise. Let the tortoise have a start of any given length, then
Achilles, however {45} much he excel in speed, will never overtake the
tortoise. For, while Achilles has passed over the originally
intervening space, the tortoise will have passed over a certain space,
and when Achilles has passed over this second space the tortoise will
have again passed over some space, and so on _ad infinitum_; therefore
in an infinite time there must always be a space, though infinitely
diminishing, between the tortoise and Achilles, _i.e._ the tortoise
must always be at least a little in front.
These will be sufficient to show the kind of arguments employed by
Zeno. In themselves they are of no utility, and Zeno never pretended
that they had any. But as against those who denied that existence as
such was a datum independent of experience, something different from a
mere sum of isolated things, his arguments were not only effective, but
substantial. The whole modern sensational or experiential school, who
derive our 'abstract ideas,' as they are called, from 'phenomena' or
'sensation,' manifest the same impatience of any analysis of what they
mean by phenomena or sensation, as no doubt Zeno's opponents manifested
of his analyses. As in criticising the one, modern critics are ready
with their answer that Zeno's quibbles are simply "a play of words on
the well-known properties of infinities," so they are quick to tell us
that sensation is an "affection of the sentient organism"; ignoring in
{46} the first case the prior question where the idea of infinity came
from, and in the second, where the idea of a sentient organism came
from.
Indirectly, as we shall see, Zeno had a great effect on subsequent
philosophies by the development of a process of ingenious verbal
distinction, which in the hands of so-called sophists and others became
a weapon of considerable, if temporary, power.
[109]
IV. MELISSUS.--The fourth and last of the Eleatic philosophers was
Melissus, a native of Samos. His date may be fixed as about 440 B.C.
He took an active part in the politics of his native country, and on
one occasion was commander of the Samian fleet in a victorious
engagement with the Athenians, when Samos was being besieged by
Pericles. He belongs to the Eleatic school in respect of doctrine and
method, but we have no evidence of his ever having resided at Elea, nor
any reference to his connection with the philosophers there, except the
statement that he was a pupil of Parmenides. He developed very fully
what is technically called in the science of Logic [110] the _Dilemma_.
Thus, for example, he begins his treatise _On Existence_ or _On Nature_
thus: "If nothing exists, then there is nothing for us to talk about.
But if there is such a thing as existence it must either come into
being or be ever-existing. If it come into being, it must come from
the existing or the non-existing. Now that anything which exists, {47}
above all, that which is absolutely existent, should come from what is
not, is impossible. Nor can it come from that which is. For then it
would be already, and would not come into being. That which exists,
therefore, comes not into being; it must therefore be ever-existing."
[111]
By similar treatment of other conceivable alternatives he proceeds to
show that as the existent had no beginning so it can have no ending in
time. From this, by a curious transition which Aristotle quotes as an
example of loose reasoning, he concludes that the existent can have no
limit in space [112] either. As being thus unlimited it must be one,
therefore immovable (there being nothing else into which it can move or
change), and therefore always self-identical in extent and character.
It cannot, therefore, have any body, for body has parts and is not
therefore one.
[113]
Being incapable of change one might perhaps conclude that the
absolutely existing being is incapable of any mental activity or
consciousness. We have no authority for assuming that Melissus came to
this conclusion; but there is a curious remark of Aristotle's
respecting this and previous philosophers of the school which certain
critics have [114] made to bear some such interpretation. He says:
"Parmenides seems to hold by a Unity in thought, Melissus by a Material
unity. Hence the first {48} defined the One as limited, the second
declared it to be unlimited. Xenophanes made no clear statement on
this question; he simply, gazing up to the arch of heaven, declared,
The One is God."
But the difference between Melissus and his master can hardly be said
to be a difference of doctrine; point for point, they are identical.
The difference is a difference of vision or mental picture as to this
mighty All which is One. Melissus, so to speak, places himself at the
centre of this Universal being, and sees it stretching out infinitely,
unendingly, in space and in time. Its oneness comes to him as the
_sum_ of these infinities. Parmenides, on the other hand, sees all
these endless immensities as related to a centre; he, so to speak,
enfolds them all in the grasp of his unifying thought, and as thus
equally and necessarily related to a central unity he pronounces the
All a sphere, and therefore limited. The two doctrines, antithetical
in terms, are identical in fact. The absolutely unlimited and the
absolutely self-limited are only two ways of saying the same thing.
This difference of view or vision Aristotle in the passage quoted
expresses as a difference between _thought_ ((Greek) _logos_) and
_matter_ ((Greek) _hule_). This is just a form of his own radical
distinction between Essence and Difference, Form and Matter, of which
much will be said later on. It is like the difference {49} between
Deduction and Induction; in the first you start from the universal and
see within it the particulars; in the second you start from the
particulars and gather them into completeness and reality in a
universal. The substance remains the same, only the point of view is
different. To put the matter in modern mathematical form, one might
say, The universe is to be conceived as a _sphere_ (Parmenides) of
_infinite radius_ (Melissus). Aristotle is not blaming Melissus or
praising Parmenides. As for Xenophanes, Aristotle after his manner
finds in him the potentiality of both. He is prior both to the process
of thought from universal to particular, and to that from particular to
universal. He does not argue at all; his function is Intuition. "He
looks out on the mighty sky, and says, The One is God."
Melissus applied the results of his analysis in an interesting way to
the question already raised by his predecessors, of the trustworthiness
of sensation. His argument is as follows: "If there were many real
existences, to each of them the same reasonings must apply as I have
already used with reference to the one existence. That is to say, if
earth really exists, and water and air and iron and gold and fire and
things living and things dead; and black and white, and all the various
things whose reality men ordinarily assume,--if all these really exist,
and our sight and our hearing give us _facts_, then each of these as
{50} really existing must be what we concluded the one existence must
be; among other things, each must be unchangeable, and can never become
other than it really is. But assuming that sight and hearing and
apprehension are true, we find the cold becoming hot and the hot
becoming cold; the hard changes to soft, the soft to hard; the living
thing dies; and from that which is not living, a living thing comes
into being; in short, everything changes, and what now is in no way
resembles what was. It follows therefore that we neither see nor
apprehend realities.
"In fact we cannot pay the slightest regard to experience without being
landed in self-contradictions. We assume that there are all sorts of
really existing things, having a permanence both of form and power, and
yet we imagine these very things altering and changing according to
what we from time to time see about them. If they were realities as we
first perceived them, our sight must now be wrong. For if they were
real, they could not change. Nothing can be stronger than reality.
Whereas to suppose it changed, we must affirm that the real has ceased
to be, and that that which was not has displaced it."
To Melissus therefore, as to his predecessors, the world of sense was a
world of illusion; the very first principles or assumptions of which,
as of the truthfulness of the senses and the reality of the various
objects which we see, are unthinkable and absurd.
{51}
The weakness as well as the strength of the Eleatic position consisted
in its purely negative and critical attitude. The assumptions of
ordinary life and experience could not stand for a moment when assailed
in detail by their subtle analysis. So-called facts were like a world
of ghosts, which the sword of truth passed through without resistance.
But somehow the sword might pierce them through and through, and show
by all manner of arguments their unsubstantiality, but there they were
still thronging about the philosopher and refusing to be gone. The
world of sense might be only illusion, but there the illusion was. You
could not lay it or exorcise it by calling it illusion or opinion.
What was this opinion? What was the nature of its subject matter? How
did it operate? And if its results were not true or real, what was
their nature? These were questions which still remained when the
analysis of the idea of absolute existence had been pushed to its
completion. These were the questions which the next school of
philosophy attempted to answer. After the Idealists, the Realists;
after the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of matter.
{52}
CHAPTER VI
THE ATOMISTS
_Anaxagoras and the cosmos--Mind in nature--The seeds of existence_
[129]
I. ANAXAGORAS.--Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae, a city of Ionia,
about the year 500 B.C. At the age of twenty he removed to Athens, of
which city Clazomenae was for some time a dependency. This step on his
part may have been connected with the circumstances attending the great
invasion of Greece by Xerxes in the year 480. For Xerxes drew a large
contingent of his army from the Ionian cities which he had subdued, and
many who were unwilling to serve against their mother-country may have
taken refuge about that time in Athens. At Athens he resided for
nearly fifty years, and during that period became the friend and
teacher of many eminent men, among the rest of Pericles, the great
Athenian [118] statesman, and of Euripides, the dramatist. Like most
of the Ionian philosophers he had a taste for mathematics and
astronomy, as well as for certain practical applications of
mathematics. Among other books he is said to have written a treatise
on the art {53} of scene-designing for the stage, possibly to oblige
his friend and pupil Euripides. In his case, as in that of his
predecessors, only fragments of his philosophic writings have been
preserved, and the connection of certain portions of his teaching as
they have come down to us remains somewhat uncertain.
[119]
With respect to the constitution of the universe we have the following:
"Origination and destruction are phrases which are generally
misunderstood among the Greeks. Nothing really is originated or
destroyed; the only processes which actually take place are combination
and separation of elements already existing. [120] These elements we
are to conceive as having been in a state of chaos at first, infinite
in number and infinitely small, forming in their immobility a confused
and characterless unity. About this chaos was spread the air and
aether, infinite also in the multitude of their particles, and
infinitely extended. Before separation commenced there was no clear
colour or appearance in anything, whether of moist or dry, of hot or
cold, of bright or dark, but only an infinite number of the seeds of
things, having concealed in them all manner of forms and colours and
savours."
There is a curious resemblance in this to the opening verses of
Genesis, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep." Nor is the next step in his philosophy without
its resemblance to that in the Biblical record. [122] As summarised by
Diogenes Laertius it takes this form, "All things were as one: then
cometh Mind, and by division brought all things into order." [121]
"Conceiving," as Aristotle puts it, "that the original elements of
things had no power to generate or develop out of themselves things as
they exist, philosophers were forced by the facts themselves to seek
the immediate cause of this development. They were unable to believe
that fire, or earth, or any such principle was adequate to account for
the order and beauty visible in the frame of things; nor did they think
it possible to attribute these to mere innate necessity or chance.
_One_ (Anaxagoras) observing how in living creatures Mind is the
ordering force, declared that in nature also this must be the cause of
order and beauty, and in so declaring he seemed, when compared with
those before him, as one sober amidst a crowd of babblers."
[122]
Elsewhere, however, Aristotle modifies this commendation.
"Anaxagoras," he says, "uses Mind only as a kind of last resort,
dragging it in when he fails otherwise to account for a phenomenon, but
never thinking of it else." And in the _Phaedo_ Plato makes Socrates
speak of the high hopes with which he had taken to the works of
Anaxagoras, and how grievously he had been disappointed. "As I
proceeded," he says, "I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Mind
or any other principle of order, and having {55} recourse to air, and
aether, and water, and other eccentricities."
Anaxagoras, then, at least on this side of his teaching, must be
considered rather as the author of a phrase than as the founder of a
philosophy. The phrase remained, and had a profound influence on
subsequent philosophies, but in his own hands it was little more than a
dead letter. His immediate interest was rather in the variety of
phenomena than in their conceived principle of unity; he is
theoretically, perhaps, 'on the side of the angels,' in practice he is
a materialist.
[12]
Mind he conceived as something apart, sitting throned like Zeus upon
the heights, giving doubtless the first impulse to the movement of
things, but leaving them for the rest to their own inherent tendencies.
As distinguished from them it was, he conceived, the one thing which
was absolutely pure and unmixed. All things else had intermixture with
every other, the mixtures increasing in complexity towards the centre
of things. On the outmost verge were distributed the finest and least
complex forms of things--the sun, the moon, the stars; the more dense
gathering together, to form as it were in the centre of the vortex, the
earth and its manifold existences. By the intermixture of air and
earth and water, containing in themselves the infinitely varied seeds
of things, plants and animals were {56} developed. The seeds
themselves are too minute to be apprehended by the senses, but we can
divine their character by the various characters of the visible things
themselves, each of these having a necessary correspondence with the
nature of the seeds from which they respectively were formed.
[128]
Thus for a true apprehension of things sensation and reason are both
necessary--sensation to certify to the apparent characters of objects,
reason to pass from these to the nature of the invisible seeds or atoms
which cause those characters. Taken by themselves our sensations are
false, inasmuch as they give us only combined impressions, yet they are
a necessary stage towards the truth, as providing the materials which
reason must separate into their real elements.
From this brief summary we may gather that Mind was conceived, so to
speak, as placed at the _beginning_ of existence, inasmuch as it is the
first originator of the vortex motions of the atoms or seeds of things;
it was conceived also at the _end_ of existence as the power which by
analysis of the data of sensation goes back through the complexity of
actual being to the original unmingled or undeveloped nature of things.
But the whole process of nature itself between these limits Anaxagoras
conceived as a purely mechanical or at least physical development, the
uncertainty of his view as between these two alternative ways of
considering it being {57} typified in his use of the two expressions
_atoms_ and _seeds_. The analogies of this view with those of modern
materialism, which finds in the ultimate molecules of matter "the
promise and the potency of all life and all existence," need not be
here enlarged upon.
After nearly half a century's teaching at Athens Anaxagoras was
indicted on a charge of inculcating doctrines subversive of religion.
It is obvious enough that his theories left no room for the popular
mythology, but the Athenians were not usually very sensitive as to the
bearing of mere theories upon their public institutions. It seems
probable that the accusation was merely a cloak for political
hostility. Anaxagoras was the friend and intimate of Pericles, leader
of the democratic party in the state, and the attack upon Anaxagoras
was really a political move intended to damage Pericles. As such
Pericles himself accepted it, and the trial became a contest of
strength, which resulted in a partial success and a partial defeat for
both sides. Pericles succeeded in saving his friend's life, but the
opposite party obtained a sentence of fine and banishment against him.
Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont, and there,
after some five years, he died.
{58}
CHAPTER VII
THE ATOMISTS (_continued_)
_Empedocles at Etna--Brief life and scanty vision--The four
elements--The philosophy of contradiction--Philosophy a form of
poesy--The philosopher a prophet--Sensation through kinship--The whole
creation groaneth_
[129]
II. EMPEDOCLES.--Empedocles was a native of Agrigentum, a Greek colony
in Sicily. At the time when he flourished in his native city (circa
440 B.C.) it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful communities in
that wealthy and powerful island. It had, however, been infested, like
its neighbours, by the designs of tyrants and the dissensions of rival
factions. Empedocles was a man of high family, and he exercised the
influence which his position and his abilities secured him in promoting
and maintaining the liberty of his fellow-countrymen. Partly on this
account, partly from a reputation which with or without his own will he
acquired for an almost miraculous skill in healing and necromantic
arts, Empedocles attained to a position of singular personal power over
his contemporaries, and was indeed regarded as semi-divine. His death
was hedged about with mystery. According to one story he gave a great
feast to his friends and offered a {59} sacrifice; then when his
friends went to rest he disappeared, and was no more seen. According
to a story less dignified and better known--
Deus immortalis haberi
Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Aetnam
Insiluit. HOR. _Ad Pisones_, 464 _sqq_.
"Eager to be deemed a god, Empedocles coldly threw himself in burning
Etna." The fraud, it was said, was detected by one of his shoes being
cast up from the crater. Whatever the manner of his end, the Etna
story may probably be taken as an ill-natured joke of some sceptic wit;
and it is certain that no such story was believed by his
fellow-citizens, who rendered in after years divine honours to his name.
Like Xenophanes, Parmenides, and other Graeco-Italian philosophers, he
expounded his views in verse; but he reached a poetic excellence
unattained by any predecessor. Aristotle characterises his gift as
Homeric, and himself as a master of style, employing freely metaphors
and other poetic forms. Lucretius also speaks of him in terms of high
admiration (_De Nat. Rer. i. 716 sqq._): "Foremost among them is
Empedocles of Agrigentum, child of the island with the triple capes, a
land wondrous deemed in many wise, and worthy to be viewed of all men.
Rich it is in all manner of good things, and strong {60} in the might
of its men, yet naught within its borders men deem more divine or more
wondrous or more dear than her illustrious son. Nay, the songs which
issued from his godlike breast are eloquent yet, and expound his
findings wondrous well, so that hardly is he thought to have been of
mortal clay."
[180]
Like the Eleatics he denies that the senses are an absolute test of
truth. "For straitened are the powers that have been shed upon our
frames, and many the frets that cross us and defeat our care, and short
the span of unsatisfying existence wherein 'tis given us to see.
Shortlived as a wreath of smoke men rise and fleet away, persuaded but
of that alone which each has chanced to light upon, driven hither and
thither, and vainly do they pray to find _the whole_. For this men may
not see or hear or grasp with the hand of thought." Yet that there is
a kind or degree of knowledge possible for man his next words suggest
when he continues: "Thou therefore since hither thou hast been borne,
hear, and thou shalt learn so much as 'tis given to mortal thought to
reach." Then follows an invocation in true Epic style to the
"much-wooed white-armed virgin Muse," wherein he prays that "folly and
impurity may be far from the lips of him the teacher, and that sending
forth her swift-reined chariot from the shrine of Piety, the Muse may
grant him to hear so much as is given to mortal hearing."
{61}
Then follows a warning uttered by the Muse to her would-be disciple:
"Thee the flowers of mortal distinctions shall not seduce to utter in
daring of heart more than thou mayest, that thereby thou mightest soar
to the highest heights of wisdom. And now behold and see, availing
thyself of every device whereby the truth may in each matter be
revealed, trusting not more to sight for thy learning than to hearing,
nor to hearing with its loud echoings more than to the revelations of
the tongue, nor to any one of the many ways whereby there is a path to
knowledge. Keep a check on the revelation of the hands also, and
apprehend each matter in the way whereby it is made plain to thee."
The correction of the one sense by the others, and of all by reason,
this Empedocles deemed the surest road to knowledge. He thus
endeavoured to hold a middle place between the purely abstract
reasoning of the Eleatic philosophy and the unreasoned first guesses of
ordinary observation suggested by this or that sense, and chiefly by
the eyes. The senses might supply the raw materials of knowledge,
unordered, unrelated, nay even chaotic and mutually destructive; but in
their contradictions of each other he hoped to find a starting-point
for order amidst the seeming chaos; reason should weigh, reason should
reject, but reason also should find a residuum of truth.
{62}
[181]
In our next fragment we have his enunciation in symbolical language of
the _four_ elements, by him first formulated: "Hear first of all what
are the root principles of all things, being four in number,--Zeus the
bright shiner (_i.e._ fire), and Hera (air), and life-bearing Aidoneus
(earth), and Nestis (water), who with her teardrops waters the fountain
of mortality. Hear also this other that I will tell thee. Nothing of
all that perisheth ever is created, nothing ever really findeth an end
in death. There is naught but a mingling, and a parting again of that
which was mingled, and this is what men call a coming into being.
Foolish they, for in them is no far-reaching thought, that they should
dream that what was not before can be, or that aught which is can
utterly perish and die." Thus again Empedocles shows himself an
Eclectic; in denying that aught can come into being, he holds with the
Eleatics (see above, p. 47); in identifying all seeming creation, and
ceasing to be with certain mixtures and separations of matter eternally
existing, he links himself rather to the doctrine of Anaxagoras (see
above, p. 53).
[132]
These four elements constitute the total _corpus_ of the universe,
eternal, as a whole unmoved and immovable, perfect like a sphere. But
within this sphere-like self-centred All there are eternally proceeding
separations and new unions of the elements of things; and every one of
these is at once a birth {63} and an infinity of dyings, a dying and an
infinity of births. Towards this perpetual life in death, and death in
life, two forces work inherent in the universe. One of these he names
Love, Friendship, Harmony, Aphrodite goddess of Love, Passion, Joy; the
other he calls Hate, Discord, Ares god of War, Envy, Strife. Neither
of the one nor of the other may man have apprehension by the senses;
they are spiritually discerned; yet of the first men have some
adumbration in the creative force within their own members, which they
name by the names of Love and Nuptial Joy.
Somewhat prosaically summing up the teaching of Empedocles, Aristotle
says that he thus posited _six_ first principles in nature--four
material, two motive or efficient. And he goes on to remark that in
the working out of his theory of nature Empedocles, though using his
originative principles more consistently than Anaxagoras used his
principle of _Nous_ or Thought, not infrequently, nevertheless, resorts
to some natural force in the elements themselves, or even to chance or
necessity. "Nor," he continues, "has he clearly marked off the
functions of his two efficient forces, nay, he has so confounded them
that at times it is Discord that through separation leads to new
unions, and Love that through union causes diremption of that which was
before." At times, too, Empedocles seems to have had a vision of these
two forces, not as the counteracting yet {64} co-operative
_pulsations_, so to speak, of the universal life, but as rival forces
having had in time their periods of alternate supremacy and defeat.
While all things were in union under the influence of Love, then was
there neither Earth nor Water nor Air nor Fire, much less any of the
individual things that in eternal interchange are formed of them; but
all was in perfect sphere-like balance, enwrapped in the serenity of an
eternal silence. Then came the reign of Discord, whereby war arose in
heaven as of the fabled giants, and endless change,--endless birth, and
endless death.
These inconsistencies of doctrine, which Aristotle notes as faults in
Empedocles, are perhaps rather proofs of the philosophic value of his
conceptions. Just as Hegel in modern philosophy could only adequately
formulate his conceptions through logical contradictions, so also,
perhaps, under the veil of antagonisms of utterance, Empedocles sought
to give a fuller vision,--Discord, in his own doctrine, not less than
in his conception of nature, being thus the co-worker with Love. The
ordinary mind for the ordinary purposes of science seeks exactness of
distinction in things, and language, being the creation of ordinary
experience, lends itself to such a purpose; the philosophic mind,
finding ready to its hand no forms of expression adapted to its
conceptions, which have for their final end Union and not Distinction,
{65} can only attain its purpose by variety, or even contradictoriness,
of representation. Thus to ordinary conception cause must precede
effect; to the philosophic mind, dealing as it does with the idea of an
organic whole, everything is at once cause and effect, is at once
therefore prior to and subsequent to every other, is at once the ruling
and the ruled, the conditioning and that which is conditioned.
So, to Empedocles there are four elements, yet in the eternal
perfection, the silent reign of Love, there are none of them. There
are two forces working upon these and against each other, yet each is
like the other either a unifying or a separating force, as one pleases
to regard them; and in the eternal silence, the ideal perfectness,
there is no warfare at all. There is joy in Love which creates, and in
creating destroys; there is joy in the eternal Stillness, nay, this is
itself the ultimate joy. There are two forces working, Love and Hate,
yet is there but one force, and that force is Necessity. And for final
contradiction, the universe is self-balanced, self-conditioned, a
perfect sphere; therefore this Necessity is perfect self-realisation,
and consequently perfect freedom.
The men who have had the profoundest vision of things--Heraclitus,
Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, ay, and Aristotle himself when he was the
thinker and not the critic; not to speak of the great moderns, whether
preachers or philosophers--have none of {66} them been greatly
concerned for consistency of expression, for a mere logical
self-identity of doctrine. Life in every form, nay, existence in any
form, is a union of contradictories, a complex of antagonisms; and the
highest and deepest minds are those that are most adequate to have the
vision of these antagonisms in their contrariety, and also in their
unity; to see and hear as Empedocles did the eternal war and clamour,
but to discern also, as he did in it and through it and behind it and
about it, the eternal peace and the eternal silence.
Philosophy, in fact, is a form of poesy; it is, if one pleases so to
call it, 'fiction founded upon fact.' It is not for that reason the
less noble a form of human thought, rather is it the more noble, in the
same way as poetry is nobler than mere narrative, and art than
representation, and imagination than perception. Philosophy is indeed
one of the noblest forms of poetry, because the facts which are its
basis are the profoundest, the most eternally interesting, the most
universally significant. And not only has it nobility in respect of
the greatness of its subject matter, it has also possibilities of an
essential truth deeper and more far-reaching and more fruitful than any
demonstrative system of fact can have. A great poem or work of art of
any kind is an adumbration of truths which transcend any actual fact,
and as such it brings us nearer to the underlying fundamentals of {67}
reality which all actual occurrences only by accumulation _tend_ to
realise. Philosophy, then, in so far as it is great, is, like other
great art, prophetic in both interpretations of the word, both as
expounding the inner truth that is anterior to actuality, and also as
anticipating that final realisation of all things for which 'the whole
creation groaneth.' It is thus at the basis of religion, of art, of
morals; it is the accumulated sense of the highest in man with respect
to what is greatest and most mysterious in and about him.
The facts, indeed, with which philosophy attempts to deal are so vital
and so vast that even the greatest intellects may well stagger
occasionally under the burden of their own conceptions of them. To
rise to the height of such an argument demands a more than Miltonic
imagination; and criticisms directed only at this or that fragment of
the whole are as irrelevant, if not as inept, as the criticism of the
mathematician directed against _Paradise Lost_, that it 'proved
nothing.' The mystery of being and of life, the true purport and
reality of this world of which we seem to be a part, and yet of which
we seem to have some apprehension as though we were other than a part;
the strange problems of creation and change and birth and death, of
love and sin and purification; of a heaven dreamt of or believed in, or
somehow actually apprehended; of life here, and of an immortality
yearned after and hoped for--these {68} problems, these mysteries, no
philosophy ever did or ever can empty of their strangeness, or bring
down to the level of the commonplace 'certainties' of daily life or of
science, which are no more than shadows after all, that seem
certainties because of the background of mystery on which they are cast.
But just as an individual is a higher being, a fuller, more truly human
creature, when he has got so far removed from the merely animal
existence as to realise that there are such problems and mysteries, so
also the humanisation of the race, the development of its noblest
peoples and its noblest literatures, have been conditioned by the
successive visions of these mysteries in more and more complex
organisation by the great philosophers and poets and preachers. The
systems of such men may die, but such deaths mean, as Empedocles said
of the ordinary deaths of things, only an infinity of new births.
Being dead, their systems yet speak in the inherited language and ideas
and aspirations and beliefs that form the never-ending, still-renewing
material for new philosophies and new faiths. In Thales, Heraclitus,
Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles we have been touching hands with an
apostolic succession of great men and great thinkers and great
poets--men of noble life and lofty thoughts, true prophets and
revealers. And the apostolic succession even within the Greek world
does not fail for centuries yet.
{69}
Passing from the general conceptions of Empedocles to those more
particular rationalisations of particular problems which very largely
provided the motive of early philosophies, while scientific methods
were in an undeveloped and uncritical condition, we may notice such
interesting statements as the following: [135] "The earth, which is at
the centre of the sphere of the universe, remains firm, because the
spin of the universe as a whole keeps it in its place like the water in
a spinning cup." He has the same conception of the early condition of
the earth as in other cosmogonies. At first it was a chaos of watery
slough, which slowly, under the influence of sky and sun, parted off
into earth and sea. The sea was the 'sweat' of the earth, and by
analogy with the sweat it was salt. The heavens, on the other hand,
were formed of air and fire, and the sun was, as it were, a speculum at
which the effulgence and the heat of the whole heavens concentrated.
But that the aether and the fire had not been fully separated from
earth and water he held to be proved by the hot fountains and fiery
phenomena which must have been so familiar to a native of Sicily.
Curiously enough he imagined fire to possess a solidifying power, and
therefore attributed to it the solidity of the earth and the hardness
of the rocks. No doubt he had observed some effects of fire in
'metamorphic' formations in his own vicinity.
{70}
[137]
He had also a conception of the gradual development on the earth of
higher and higher forms of life, the first being rude and imperfect,
and a 'struggle for existence' ensuing in which the monstrous and the
deficient gradually were eliminated--the "two-faced, the
double-breasted, the oxen-shaped with human prows, or human-shaped with
head of ox, or hemaphrodite," and so forth. Love and Strife worked out
their ends upon these varied forms; some procreated and reproduced
after their image, others were incapable of reproduction from mere
monstrosity or [138] weakness, and disappeared. Something other than
mere chance thus governed the development of things; there was a law, a
reason, a _Logos_ governing the process. This law or reason he perhaps
fancifully illustrated by attributing the different characters of flesh
and sinew and bone to the different numerical proportions, in which
they severally contain the different elements.
On this Aristotle, keen-scented critic as he was, has a question, or
series of questions, to ask as to the relation between this Logos, or
principle of orderly combination, and Love as the ruling force in all
unions of things. "Is Love," he asks, "a cause of mixtures of any
sort, or only of such sorts as Logos dictates? And whether then is
Love identical with this Logos, or are they separate and distinct; and
if so, what settles their separate functions?" Questions {71} which
Empedocles did not answer, and perhaps would not have tried to answer
had he heard them.
[139]
The soul or life-principle in man Empedocles regarded as an ordered
composite of all the elements or principles of the life in nature, and
in this kinship of the elements in man and the elements in nature he
found a rationale of our powers of perception. "By the earth," said
he, "we have perception of earth; by water we have perception of water;
of the divine aether, by aether; of destructive fire, by fire; of love,
by love; of strife, by strife." He therefore, as Aristotle observes,
drew no radical distinction between sense-apprehension and thought. He
located the faculty of apprehension more specifically in the blood,
conceiving that in it the combination of the elements was most
complete. And the variety of apprehensive gift in different persons he
attributed to the greater or lesser perfectness of this blood mixture
in them individually. Those that were dull and stupid had a relative
deficiency of the lighter and more invisible elements; those that were
quick and impulsive had a relatively larger proportion of these.
Again, specific faculties depended on local perfection of mixture in
certain organs; orators having this perfectness in their tongues,
cunning craftsmen possessing it in their hands, and so on. And the
degrees of capacity of sensation, which he found in various animals, or
even plants, he explained in similar fashion.
{72} The process of sensation he conceived to be conditioned by an
actual emission from the bodies perceived of elements or images of
themselves which found access to our apprehension through channels
[140] congruous to their nature. But ordering, criticising, organising
these various apprehensions was the Mind or _Nous_, which he conceived
to be of divine nature, to be indeed an expression or emanation of the
Divine. And here has been preserved a strangely interesting passage,
in which he incorporates and develops in characteristic fashion the
doctrine of transmigration [141] of souls: "There is a decree of
Necessity, a law given of old from the gods, eternal, sealed with
mighty oaths, that when any heavenly creature (daemon) of those that
are endowed with length of days, shall in waywardness of heart defile
his hands with sin of deed or speech, he shall wander for thrice ten
thousand seasons far from the dwellings of the blest, taking upon him
in length of time all manner of mortal forms, traversing in turn the
many toilsome paths of existence. Him the aetherial wrath hurries
onward to the deep, and the deep spews him forth on to the threshold of
earth, and unworn earth casts him up to the fires of the sun, and again
the aether hurls him into the eddies. One receives him, and then
another, but detested is he of them all. Of such am I also one, an
exile and a wanderer from God, a slave to strife and its madness."
{73}
Thus to his mighty conception the life of all creation, and not of man
only, was a great expiation, an eternal round of punishment for sin;
and in the unending flux of life each creature rose or fell in the
scale of existence according to the deeds of good or ill done in each
successive life; rising sometimes to the state of men, or among men to
the high functions of physicians and prophets and kings, or among
beasts to the dignity of the lion, or among trees to the beauty of the
laurel; or, on the contrary, sinking through sin to lowest forms of
bestial or vegetable life. Till at the last they who through obedience
and right-doing have expiated their wrong, are endowed by the blessed
gods with endless honour, to dwell for ever with them and share their
banquets, untouched any more with human care and sorrow and pain.
[143]
The slaying of any living creature, therefore, Empedocles, like
Pythagoras, abhorred, for all were kin. All foul acts were forms of
worse than suicide; life should be a long act of worship, of expiation,
of purification. And in the dim past he pictured a vision of a golden
age, in which men worshipped not many gods, but Love only, and not with
sacrifices of blood, but with pious images, and cunningly odorous
incense, and offerings of fragrant myrrh. With abstinence also, and
above all with that noblest abstinence, the abstinence from vice and
wrong.
{74}
CHAPTER VIII
THE ATOMISTS (_concluded_)
_The laughing philosopher--Atoms and void--No god and no truth_
[143]
III. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.--Leucippus is variously called a native
of Elea, of Abdera, of Melos, of Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno the
Eleatic. [144] Democritus was a native of Abdera. They seem to have
been almost contemporary with Socrates. The two are associated as
thorough-going teachers of the 'Atomic Philosophy,' but Democritus,
'the laughing philosopher,' as he was popularly called in later times,
in distinction from Heraclitus, 'the weeping philosopher,' was much the
more famous. [145] He lived to a great age. He himself refers to his
travels and studies thus: "Above all the men of my time I travelled
farthest, and extended my inquiries to places the most distant. I
visited the most varied climates and countries, heard the largest
number of learned men, nor has any one surpassed me in the gathering
together of writings and their interpretation, no, not even the most
learned of the Egyptians, with whom I spent five years." We {75} are
also informed that, through desire of learning, he visited Babylon and
Chaldaea, to visit the astrologers and the priests.
[146]
Democritus was not less prolific as a writer than he was voracious as a
student, and in him first the division of philosophy into certain great
sections, such as physical, mathematical, ethical, was clearly [147]
drawn. We are, however, mainly concerned with his teaching in its more
strictly philosophical aspects. His main doctrine was professedly
antithetical to that of the Eleatics, who, it will be remembered,
worked out on abstract lines a theory of one indivisible, eternal,
immovable Being. Democritus, on the contrary, declared for two
co-equal elements, the Full and the Empty, or Being and Nonentity. The
latter, he maintained, was as real as the former. As we should put it,
Body is unthinkable except by reference to space which that body does
not occupy, as well as to space which it does occupy; and conversely
Space is unthinkable except by reference to body actually or
potentially filling or defining it.
What Democritus hoped to get by this double or correlative system was a
means of accounting for or conceiving of _change_ in nature. The
difficulty with the Eleatics was, as we have seen, how to understand
whence or why the transition from that which absolutely is, to this
strange, at least apparent, system of eternal flux and transformation.
Democritus {76} hoped to get over this difficulty by starting as fully
with that which _is not_, in other words, with that which _wants_
change in order to have any recognisable being at all, as with that
which _is_, and which therefore might be conceived as seeking and
requiring only to be what it is.
[148]
Having got his principle of stability and his principle of change on an
equal footing, Democritus next laid it down that all the differences
visible in things were differences either of shape, of arrangement, or
of position; practically, that is, he considered that what seem, to us
to be qualitative differences in things, _e.g._ hot or cold, sweet or
sour, green or yellow, are only resulting impressions from different
shapes, or different arrangements, or different modes of presentation,
among the atoms of which things are composed.
Coming now to that which _is_, Democritus, as against the Eleatics,
maintained that this was not a unity, some one immovable, unchangeable
existence, but an innumerable number of atoms, invisible by reason of
their smallness, which career through empty space (that which _is
not_), and by their union bring objects into being, by their separation
bring these to destruction. The action of these atoms on each other
depended on the manner in which they were brought into contact; but in
any case the unity of any object was only an apparent unity, it being
really constituted of a multitude of interlaced and mutually related
{77} particles, and all growth or increase of the object being
conditioned by the introduction into the structure of additional atoms
from without.
[149]
For the motions of the atoms he had no anterior cause to offer, other
than necessity or fate. They existed, and necessarily and always had
existed, in a state of whirl; and for that which always had been he
maintained that no preceding cause could legitimately or reasonably be
demanded.
[150]
Nothing, then, could come out of nothing; all the visible structure of
the universe had its origin in the movements of the atoms that
constituted it, and conditioned its infinite changes. The atoms, by a
useful but perhaps too convenient metaphor, he called the _seeds_ of
all things. They were infinite in number, though not infinite in the
number, of their shapes. Many atoms were similar to each other, and
this similarity formed a basis of union among them, a warp, so to
speak, or solid foundation across which the woof of dissimilar atoms
played to constitute the differences of things.
[151]
Out of this idea of an eternal eddy or whirl Democritus developed a
cosmogony. The lighter atoms he imagined flew to the outmost rim of
the eddy, there constituting the heavenly fires and the heavenly
aether. The heavier atoms gathered at the centre, forming successively
air and water and the solid earth. Not that there was only one such
{78} system or world, but rather multitudes of them, all varying one
from the other; some without sun or moon, others with greater
luminaries than those of our system, others with a greater number.
All, however, had necessarily a centre; all as systems were necessarily
spherical.
[152]
As regards the atoms he conceived that when they differed in weight
this must be in respect of a difference in their essential size. In
this he was no doubt combating the notion that the atoms say of lead or
gold were in their substance, taking equal quantities, of greater
weight than atoms of water or air. The difference of weight in objects
depended on the proportion which the atoms in them bore to the amount
of empty space which was interlaced with them. On the other hand, a
piece of iron was lighter yet harder than a piece of lead of equal
size, because of the special way in which the atoms in it were linked
together. There were fewer atoms in it, but they were, in consequence
of their structure and arrangement, more tightly strung.
[153]
In all this Democritus was with great resolution working out what we
may call a strictly mechanical theory of the universe. Even the soul
or life-principle in living creatures was simply a structure of the
finest and roundest (and therefore most nimble) atoms, with which he
compared the extremely attenuated dust particles visible in their
never-ending {79} dance in a beam of light passed into a darkened room.
This structure of exceeding tenuity and nimbleness was the source of
the motion characteristic of living creatures, and provided that
elastic counteracting force to the inward-pressing nimble air, whereby
were produced the phenomena of respiration. Every object, in fact,
whether living or not, kept its form and distinctive existence by its
possession in degree of a kind of soul or spirit of resistance in its
structure, adequate to counteract the pressure of external forces upon
its particles.
[155]
Sensation and perception were forms in which these external forces
acted upon the more nimble and lively existences, more particularly on
living creatures. For every body was continually sending forth
emanations or images resembling itself sufficiently in form and
structure to affect perceptive bodies with an apprehension of that form
and structure. These images travelled by a process of successive
transmission, similar to that by which wave-motions are propagated in
water. They were, in other words, not movements of the _particles_ of
the objects, which latter must otherwise in time grow less and fade
away, but a modification in the arrangement of the particles
immediately next the object, which modification reproduced itself in
the next following, and so on right through the medium to the
perceptive body.
{80}
[156]
These images tended by extension in all directions to reach vast
dimensions at times, and to influence the minds of men in sleep and on
other occasions in strange ways. Hence men imagined gods, and
attributed those mighty phenomena of nature--earthquakes, tempests,
lightning and thunder, and dire eclipses of sun and moon, to the
vaguely visible powers which they imagined they saw. There was indeed
a soul or spirit of the universe, as there was a soul or spirit of
every individual thing that constituted it. But this was only a finer
system of atoms after all. All else is convention or dream; the only
realities are Atoms and Emptiness, Matter and Space.
[157]
Of absolute verity through the senses we know nothing; our perceptions
are only conventional interpretations of we know not what. For to
other living creatures these same sensations have other meanings than
they have to us, and even the same person is not always affected alike
by the same thing; which then is the true of two differing perceptions
we cannot say. And therefore either there is no such thing as truth,
or, at all events, we know through the senses nothing of it. The only
genuine knowledge is that which transcends appearances, and reasons out
what is, irrespective of appearances,--in other words, the only genuine
knowledge is that of the (atomic) philosopher. And his knowledge is
{81} the result of the happy mixture of his atoms whereby all is in
equal balance, neither too hot nor too cold. Such a man seeing in the
mind's eye the whole universe a tissue of whirling and interlacing
atoms, with no real mystery or terror before or after, will live a life
of cheerful fearlessness, undisturbed by terrors of a world to come or
of powers unseen. His happiness is not in feastings or in gold, but in
a mind at peace. And three human perfections he will seek to attain:
to reason rightly, to speak graciously, to do his duty.
{82}
CHAPTER IX
THE SOPHISTS
_Anarchic philosophy--Success not truth--Man the measure--All opinions
true--Reductio ad absurdum_
A certain analogy may perhaps be discerned between the progression of
philosophic thought in Greece as we have traced it, and the political
development which had its course in almost every Greek state during the
same period. The Ionic philosophy may be regarded as corresponding
with the _kingly_ era in Greek politics. Philosophy sits upon the
heights and utters its authoritative dicta for the resolution of the
seeming contradictions of things. One principle is master, but the
testimony of the senses is not denied; a harmony of thought and
sensation is sought in the interpretation of appearances by the light
of a ruling idea. In Pythagoras and his order we have an
_aristocratic_ organisation of philosophy. Its truths are for the few,
the best men are the teachers, equal as initiated partakers in the
mysteries, supreme over all outside their society. A reasoned and
reasonable order and method are {83} symbolised by their theory of
Number; their philosophy is political, their politics oligarchic. In
the Eleatic school we have a succession of personal attempts to
construct a _domination_ in the theory of Nature; some ideal conception
is attempted to be so elevated above the data of sensation as to
override them altogether, and the general result we are now to see
throughout the philosophic world, as it was seen also throughout the
world of politics, in a total collapse of the principle of forced
authority, and a development, of successively nearer approaches to
anarchic individualism and doubt. The notion of an ultimately true and
real, whatever form it might assume in various theorists' hands, being
in its essence apart from and even antagonistic to the perceptions of
sense, was at last definitely cast aside as a delusion; what remained
were the individual perceptions, admittedly separate, unreasoned,
unrelated; Reason was dethroned, Chaos was king. In other words, what
_seemed_ to any individual sentient being at any moment to be, that for
him was, and nothing else was. The distinction between the real and
the apparent was definitely attempted to be abolished, not as hitherto
by rejecting the sensually apparent in favour of the rationally
conceived real, but by the denial of any such real altogether.
The individualistic revolution in philosophy not {84} only, however,
had analogies with the similar revolution contemporaneously going on in
Greek politics, it was greatly facilitated by it. Each, in short,
acted and reacted on the other. Just as the sceptical philosophy of
the Encyclopaedists in France promoted the Revolution, and the
Revolution in its turn developed and confirmed the philosophic
scepticism, so also the collapse of contending philosophies in Greece
promoted the collapse of contending systems of political authority, and
the collapse of political authority facilitated the growth of that
individualism in thought with which the name of the Sophists is
associated.
[178]
Cicero (_Brut_. 12) definitely connects the rise of these teachers with
the expulsion of the tyrants and the establishment of democratic
republics in Sicily. From 466 to 406 B.C. Syracuse was democratically
governed, and a 'free career to talents,' as in revolutionary France,
so also in revolutionary Greece, began to be promoted by the
elaboration of a system of persuasive argument. Devices of method
called 'commonplaces' were constructed, whereby, irrespective of the
truth or falsehood of the subject-matter, a favourable vote in the
public assemblies, a successful verdict in the public courts, might
more readily be procured. Thus by skill of verbal rhetoric, the worse
might be made to appear the better reason; and philosophy, so far as it
continued its functions, {85} became a search, not for the real amidst
the confusions of the seeming and unreal, but a search for the seeming
and the plausible, to the detriment, or at least to the ignoring, of
any reality at all.
The end of philosophy then was no longer universal truth, but
individual success; and consistently enough, the philosopher himself
professed the individualism of his own point of view, by teaching only
those who were prepared to pay him for his teaching. All over Greece,
with the growth of democracy, this philosophy of persuasion became
popular; but it was to Athens, under Pericles at this time the centre
of all that was most vivid and splendid in Greek life and thought, that
the chief teachers of the new philosophy flocked from every part of the
Greek world.
[177]
The first great leader of the Sophists was _Protagoras_. He, it is
said, was the first to teach for pay; he also was the first to adopt
the name of Sophist. In the word Sophist there was indeed latent the
idea which subsequently attached to it, but as first used it seems to
have implied this only, that _skill_ was the object of the teaching
rather than _truth_; the new teachers professed themselves 'practical
men,' not mere theorists.
The Greek word, in short, meant an able cultivated man in any branch of
the arts; and the development of practical capacity was doubtless what
Protagoras {86} intended to indicate as the purpose of his teaching,
when he called himself a Sophist. But the ability he really undertook
to cultivate was ability to _persuade_, for Greece at this time was
nothing if not political; and persuasive oratory was the one road to
political success. And as Athens was the great centre of Greek
politics, as well as of Greek intellect, to Athens Protagoras came as a
teacher.
He was born at Abdera, in Thrace (birthplace also of Democritus), in
480 B.C., began to teach at Athens about 451 B.C., and soon acquired
great influence with Pericles, the distinguished leader of the Athenian
democracy at this time. It is even alleged that when in 445 the
Athenians were preparing to establish a colony at Thurii in Italy,
Protagoras was requested to draw up a code of laws for the new state,
and personally to superintend its execution.
After spending some time in Italy he returned to Athens, and taught
there with great success for a number of years. Afterwards he taught
for some time in Sicily, and died at the age of seventy, after [178]
about forty years of professional activity. He does not seem to have
contented himself with the merely practical task of teaching rhetoric,
but in a work which he, perhaps ironically, entitled _Truth_, he
enunciated the principles on which he based his teaching. Those
principles were summed up in the sentence, "Man (by which he meant
_each_ man) is {87} the measure of all things, whether of their
existence when they do exist, or of their non-existence when [179] they
do not." In the development of this doctrine Protagoras starts from a
somewhat similar analysis of things to that of Heraclitus and others.
Everything is in continual flux, and the apparently real objects in
nature are the mere temporary and illusory result of the in themselves
invisible movements and minglings of the elements of which they are
composed; and not only is it a delusion to attempt to give a factitious
reality to the things which appear, it is equally a delusion to attempt
to separate the (supposed) thing perceived from the perception itself.
A thing is only as and when it is perceived. And a third delusion is
to attempt to separate a supposed perceiving mind from the perception;
all three exist only in and through the momentary perception; the
supposed reality behind this, whether external in the object or
internal in the mind, is a mere imagination. Thus the Heraclitean flux
in Nature was extended to Mind also; only the sensation exists, and
that only at the moment of its occurrence; this alone is truth, this
alone is reality; all else is delusion.
[180]
It followed from this that as a man felt a thing to be, so for him it
veritably was. Thus abstract truth or falsity could not be; the same
statements could be indifferently true or false--to different {88}
individuals at the same time, to the same individual at different
times. It followed that all appearances were equally true: what seemed
to be to any man, that was alone the true for him. The relation of
such a doctrine as this to politics and to morals is not far to seek.
Every man's opinion was as good as another's; if by persuasion you
succeeded in altering a man's opinion, you had not deceived the man,
his new opinion was as true (to him) as the old one. Persuasiveness,
therefore, was the only wisdom. Thus if a man is ill what he eats and
drinks seems bitter to him, and it is so; when he is well it seems the
opposite, and is so. He is not a wiser man in the second state than in
the first, but the second state is pleasanter. If then you can
persuade him that what he thinks bitter is really sweet, you have done
him good. This is what the physician tries to do by his drugs; this is
what the Sophist tries to do by his words. Virtue then is teachable in
so far as it is possible to persuade a boy or a man by rhetoric that
that course of conduct which pleases others is a pleasant course for
him. But if any one happens not to be persuaded of this, and continues
to prefer his own particular course of conduct, this _is_ for him the
good course. You cannot blame him; you cannot say he is wrong. If you
punish him you simply endeavour to supply the dose of unpleasantness
which may {89} be needed to put the balance in his case on the same
side as it already occupies in the case of other people.
It may be worth while to anticipate a little, and insert here in
summary the refutation of this position put into the mouth of Socrates
by Plato in the _Theaetetus_: "But I ought not to conceal from you that
there is a serious objection which may be urged against this doctrine
of Protagoras. For there are states, such as madness and dreaming, in
which perception is false; and half our life is spent in dreaming; and
who can say that at this instant we are not dreaming? Even the fancies
of madmen are real at the time. But if knowledge is perception, how
can we distinguish between the true and the false in such cases? . . .
Shall I tell you what amazes me in your friend Protagoras? 'What may
that be?' I like his doctrine that what appears is; but I wonder that
he did not begin his great work on truth with a declaration that a pig,
or a dog-faced baboon, or any other monster which has sensation, is a
measure of all things; then while we were reverencing him as a god he
might have produced a magnificent effect by expounding to us that he
was no wiser than a tadpole. For if truth is only sensation, and one
man's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his own
judge, and everything that he judges is right and true, then {90} what
need of Protagoras to be our instructor at a high figure; and why
should we be less knowing than he is, or have to go to him, if every
man is the measure of all things?" . . . Socrates now resumes the
argument. As he is very desirous of doing justice to Protagoras, he
insists on citing his own words: 'What appears to each man is to him.'
"And how," asks Socrates, "are these words reconcilable with the fact
that all mankind are agreed in thinking themselves wiser than others in
some respects, and inferior to them in others? In the hour of danger
they are ready to fall down and worship any one who is their superior
in wisdom as if he were a god. And the world is full of men who are
asking to be taught and willing to be ruled, and of other men who are
willing to rule and teach them. All which implies that men do judge of
one another's impressions, and think some wise and others foolish. How
will Protagoras answer this argument? For he cannot say that no one
deems another ignorant or mistaken. If you form a judgment, thousands
and tens of thousands are ready to maintain the opposite. The
multitude may not and do not agree in Protagoras' own thesis, 'that man
is the measure of all things,' and then who is to decide? Upon hip own
showing must not his 'truth' depend on the number of suffrages, and be
more or less true in proportion as he has more or fewer of them? And
{91} [the majority being against him] he will be bound to acknowledge
that they speak truly who deny him to speak truly, which is a famous
jest. And if he admits that they speak truly who deny him to speak
truly, he must admit that he himself does not speak truly. But his
opponents will refuse to admit this as regards themselves, and he must
admit that they are right in their refusal. The conclusion is, that
all mankind, including Protagoras himself, will deny that he speaks
truly; and his truth will be true neither to himself nor to anybody
else" (Jowett, _Plato_, iv. pp. 239 _sqq._)
The refutation seems tolerably complete, but a good deal had to happen
before Greece was ready to accept or Plato to offer such a refutation.
{92}
CHAPTER X
THE SOPHISTS (_concluded_)
_Nothing knowable--The solitude of scepticism--The lawlessness of
scepticism--The good in scepticism_
[183]
Gorgias was perhaps even more eminent a Sophist than Protagoras. He
was a native of Leontini in Sicily, and came to Athens in the year 427
B.C. on a public embassy from his native city. The splendid reputation
for political and rhetorical ability, which preceded him to Athens, he
fully justified both by his public appearances before the Athenian
assembly, and by the success of his private instructions to the crowds
of wealthy young men who resorted to him. He dressed in magnificent
style, and affected a lofty and poetical manner of speech, which
offended the more critical, but which pleased the crowd.
[181]
He also, like Protagoras, published a treatise in which he expounded
his fundamental principles, and like Protagoras, he preceded it with a
striking if somewhat ironical title, and an apophthegm in which he
summarised his doctrine. The title of his work was _Of the
Non-Existent_, that is, _Of Nature_, and {93} his dictum, "Nothing
exists, or if anything exists, it cannot be apprehended by man, and
even if it could be apprehended, the man who apprehended it could not
expound or explain it to his neighbour." In support of this strange
doctrine, Gorgias adopted the quibbling method of argument which had
been applied with some success to dialectical purposes by Zeno,
Melissus, and others (see above, pp. 44 _sqq._)
[185]
His chief argument to prove the first position laid down by him
depended on a double and ambiguous use of the word _is_; "That which is
not, _is_ the non-existent: the word _is_ must, therefore, be
applicable to it as truly as when we say That which is, _is_;
therefore, being is predicable of that which is not." So conversely he
proved not-being to be predicable of that which is. And in like manner
he made away with any possible assertions as to the finite or infinite,
the eternal or created, nature of that which is. Logic could supply
him with alternative arguments from whatever point he started, such as
would seem to land the question in absurdity. Hence his first position
was (he claimed) established, that 'Nothing is.'
To prove the second, that even if anything is, it cannot be known to
man, he argued thus: "If what a man thinks is not identical with what
is, plainly what is cannot be thought. And that what a man thinks is
not identical with what is can be {94} shown from the fact that
thinking does not affect the facts. You may imagine a man flying, or a
chariot coursing over the deep, but you do not find these things to
occur because you imagine them. Again, if we assume that what we think
is identical with what is, then it must be impossible to think of what
is not. But this is absurd; for we can think of such admittedly
imaginary beings as Scylla and Chimaera, and multitudes of others.
There is therefore no necessary relation between our thoughts and any
realities; we may believe, but we cannot prove, which (if any) of our
conceptions have relation to an external fact and which have not."
[187]
Nor thirdly, supposing any man had obtained an apprehension of what is
real, could he possibly communicate it to any one else. If a man saw
anything, he could not possibly by verbal description make clear what
it is he sees to a man who has never seen. And so if a man has not
himself the apprehension of reality, mere words from another cannot
possibly give him any idea of it. He may imagine he has the same idea
as the speaker, but where is he going to get the common test by which
to establish the identity?
Without attempting to follow Gorgias further, we can see plainly enough
the object and purport of the whole doctrine. Its main result is to
_isolate_. It isolates each man from his fellows; he cannot tell {95}
what they know or think, they cannot reach any common ground with him.
It isolates him from nature; he cannot tell what nature is, he cannot
tell whether he knows anything of nature or reality at all. It
isolates him from himself; he cannot tell for certain what relation
exists (if any) between what he imagines he perceives at any moment and
any remembered or imagined previous experiences; he cannot be sure that
there ever were any such experiences, or what that self was (if
anything) which had them, or whether there was or is any self
perceiving anything.
Let us imagine the moral effect on the minds of the ablest youth of
Greece of such an absolute collapse of belief. The philosophic
scepticism did not deprive them of their appetites or passions; it did
not in the least alter their estimate of the prizes of success, or the
desirability of wealth and power. All it did was to shatter the
invisible social bonds of reverence and honour and truth and justice,
which in greater or less degree act as a restraining force upon the
purely selfish appetites of men. Not only belief in divine government
disappeared, but belief in any government external or internal; justice
became a cheating device to deprive a man of what was ready to his
grasp; good-faith was stupidity when it was not a more subtle form of
deceit; morality was at best a mere convention which a man might cancel
if {96} he pleased; the one reality was the appetite of the moment, the
one thing needful its gratification; society, therefore, was universal
war, only with subtler weapons.
Of course Protagoras and Gorgias were only notable types of a whole
horde of able men who in various ways, and with probably less clear
notions than these men of the drift or philosophic significance of
their activity, helped all over Greece in the promulgation of this new
gospel of self-interest. Many Sophists no doubt troubled themselves
very little with philosophical questions; they were 'agnostics,'
know-nothings; all they professed to do was to teach some practical
skill of a verbal or rhetorical character. They had nothing to do with
the nature or value of ideals; they did not profess to say whether any
end or aim was in itself good or bad, but given an end or aim, they
were prepared to help those who hired them to acquire a skill which
would be useful towards attaining it.
But whether a philosophy or ultimate theory of life be expressly stated
or realised by a nation or an individual, or be simply ignored by them,
there always is some such philosophy or theory underlying their action,
and that philosophy or theory tends to work itself out to its logical
issue in action, whether men openly profess it or no. And the theory
of negation of law in nature or in man which underlay {97} the
sophistic practice had its logical and necessary effect on the social
structure throughout Greece, in a loosening of the bonds of religion,
of family reverence and affection, of patriotism, of law, of honour.
Thucydides in a well-known passage (iii. 82) thus describes the
prevalent condition of thought in his own time, which was distinctively
that of the sophistic teaching: "The common meaning of words was turned
about at men's pleasure; the most reckless bravo was deemed the most
desirable friend; a man of prudence and moderation was styled a coward;
a man who listened to reason was a good-for-nothing simpleton. People
were trusted exactly in proportion to their violence and
unscrupulousness, and no one was so popular as the successful
conspirator, except perhaps one who had been clever enough to outwit
him at his own trade, but any one who honestly attempted to remove the
causes of such treacheries was considered a traitor to his party. As
for oaths, no one imagined they were to be kept a moment longer than
occasion required; it was, in fact, an added pleasure to destroy your
enemy if you had managed to catch him through his trusting to your
word."
These are the words not of Plato, who is supposed often enough to allow
his imagination to carry him beyond his facts about the Sophists as
about others, nor are they the words of a satiric poet such as {98}
Aristophanes. They are the words of the most sober and philosophic of
Greek historians, and they illustrate very strikingly the tendency,
nay, the absolute necessity, whereby the theories of philosophers in
the closet extend themselves into the market-place and the home, and
find an ultimate realisation of themselves for good or for evil in the
'business and bosoms' of the common crowd.
It is not to be said that the individualistic and iconoclastic movement
which the Sophists represented was wholly bad, or wholly unnecessary,
any more (to again quote a modern instance) than that the French
Revolution was. There was much, no doubt, in the traditional religion
and morality of Greece at that time which represented obsolete and
antiquated conditions, when every city lived apart from its neighbours
with its own narrow interests and local cults and ceremonials. Greece
was ceasing to be an unconnected crowd of little separate communities;
unconsciously it was preparing itself for a larger destiny, that of
conqueror and civiliser of East and West. This scepticism, utterly
untenable and unworkable on the lines extravagantly laid down by its
leading teachers, represented the birth of new conditions of thought
and action adapted to the new conditions of things. On the surface,
and accepted literally, it seemed to deny the possibility of knowledge;
it threatened to destroy humanity and {99} civilisation. But its
strength lay latent in an implied denial only of what was merely
traditional; it denied the finality of purely Greek preconceptions; it
was laying the foundations of a broader humanity. It represented the
claim of a new generation to have no dogma or assumption thrust on it
by mere force, physical or moral. "_I_ too am a man," it said; "_I_
have rights; _my_ reason must be convinced." This is the fundamental
thought at the root of most revolutions and reformations and revivals,
and the thought is therefore a necessary and a just one.
Unfortunately it seems to be an inevitable condition of human affairs
that nothing new, however necessary or good can come into being out of
the old, without much sorrow and many a birth-pang. The extravagant,
the impetuous, the narrow-minded on both sides seize on their points of
difference, raise them into battle-cries, and make what might be a
peaceful regeneration a horrid battlefield of contending hates. The
Christ when He comes brings not peace into the world, but a sword. And
men of evil passions and selfish ambitions are quick on both sides to
make the struggle of old and new ideals a handle for their own
indulgence or their own advancement; the Pharisees and the Judases
between them make the Advent in some of its aspects a sorry spectacle.
A reconciler was wanted who should wed what {100} was true in the new
doctrine of individualism with what was valuable in the old doctrine of
universal and necessary truth; who should be able to say, "Yes, I
acknowledge that your individual view of things must be reckoned with,
and mine, and everybody else's; and for that very reason do I argue for
a universal and necessary truth, because the very truth for you as an
individual is just this universal." The union and identification of
the Individual and Universal,--this paradox of philosophy is the
doctrine of Socrates.
{101}
CHAPTER XI
SOCRATES
_The crisis of philosophy--Philosophic midwifery--The wisest of
men--The gadfly of Athens--Justice, beauty, utility--Virtue is
knowledge_
The sophistic teaching having forced philosophy to descend into the
practical interests and personal affairs of men, it followed that any
further step in philosophy, any reaction against the Sophists, could
only begin from the moral point of view. Philosophy, as an analysis of
the data of perception or of nature, had issued in a social and moral
chaos. Only by brooding on the moral chaos could the spirit of truth
evoke a new order; only out of the moral darkness could a new
intellectual light be made to shine. The social and personal anarchy
seemed to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the philosophy of nature; if
ever the philosophy of nature was to be recovered it must be through a
revision of the theory of morals. If it could be proved that the
doctrine of individualism, of isolation, which the analysis of a
Protagoras or a Gorgias had reached, was not only _unlivable_ but
unthinkable,--carried the seeds of its own destruction, theoretical as
well as practical, within {102} itself,--then the analysis of
_perception_, from which this moral individualism issued, might itself
be called to submit to revision, and a stable point of support in the
moral world might thus become a centre of stability for the
intellectual and the physical also.
By a perfectly logical process, therefore, the crisis of philosophy
produced in Greece through the moral and social chaos of the sophistic
teaching had two issues, or perhaps we may call it one issue, carried
out on the one side with a less, on the other side with a greater
completeness. The less complete reaction from sophistic teaching
attempted only such reconstruction of the moral point of view as should
recover a law or principle of general and universally cogent character,
whereon might be built anew a _moral_ order without attempting to
extend the inquiry as to a universal principle into the regions of
abstract truth or into physics. The more complete and logical
reaction, starting, indeed, from a universal principle in morals,
undertook a logical reconstruction on the recovered universal basis all
along the line of what was knowable.
To Socrates it was given to recover the lost point of stability in the
world of morals, and by a system of attack, invented by himself, to
deal in such a manner with the anarchists about him as to prepare the
way for his successors, when the time was ripe for a more extended
exposition of the new point of {103} view. Those who in succession to
him worked out a more limited theory of law, mainly or exclusively in
the world of morals, only were called the _Incomplete Socratics_.
Those who undertook to work it out through the whole field of the
knowable, the _Complete Socratics_, were the two giants of philosophy,
Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophy then marks with the life of Socrates a parting of the
ways in two senses: _first_, inasmuch as with him came the reaction
from a physical or theoretical philosophy, having its issue in a moral
chaos; and _second_, inasmuch as from him the two great streams of
later philosophy issued--the one a philosophy of law or universals in
_action_, the other a philosophy of law or universals in _thought_ and
_nature_ as well.
Socrates, son of Sophroniscus a sculptor and Phaenarete a midwife, was
born at Athens in or about the year 469 B.C. His parents were probably
poor, for Socrates is represented as having been too poor to pay the
fees required for instruction by the Sophists of his time. But in
whatever way acquired or assimilated, it is certain that there was
little of the prevalent culture in cultivated Athens with which
Socrates had not ultimately a working acquaintance.
Among a people distinguished generally for their handsome features and
noble proportions, Socrates was a notable exception. His face was
squat and {104} round, his eyes protruding, his lips thick; he was
clumsy and uncouth in appearance, careless of dress, a thorough
'Bohemian,' as we should call him. He was, however, gifted with an
uncommon bodily vigour, was indifferent to heat and cold, by
temperament moderate in food and drink, yet capable on occasion of
drinking most people 'under the table.' He was of an imperturbable
humour, not to be excited either by danger or by ridicule. His vein of
sarcasm was keen and trenchant, his natural shrewdness astonishing, all
the more astonishing because crossed with a strange vein of mysticism
and a curious self-forgetfulness. As he grew up he felt the visitation
of a mysterious internal voice, to which or to his own internal
communings he would sometimes be observed to listen in abstracted
stillness for hours. The voice within him was felt as a restraining
force, limiting his action in various ways, but leaving him free to
wander about among his fellows, to watch their doings and interpret
their thoughts, to question unweariedly his fellows of every class,
high and low, rich and poor, concerning righteousness and justice and
goodness and purity and truth. He did not enter on his philosophic
work with some grand general principle ready-made, to which he was
prepared to fit the facts by hook or by crook. Rather he compared
himself to his mother, the midwife; he sought to help others to {105}
express themselves; he had nothing to tell them, he wanted them to tell
him. This was the irony of Socrates, the eternal _questioning_, which
in time came to mean in people's minds what the word does now. For it
was hard, and grew every year harder, to convince people that so subtle
a questioner was as ignorant as he professed to be; or that the man who
could touch so keenly the weak point of all other men's answers, had no
answer to the problems of life himself.
In striking contrast, then, to the method of all previous philosophies,
Socrates busied himself to begin with, not with some general
intellectual _principle_, but with a multitude of different _people_,
with their notions especially on moral ideas, with the meaning or
no-meaning which they attached to particular words,--in short, with the
individual, the particular, the concrete, the every-day. He did not at
all deny that he had a purpose in all this. On the contrary, he openly
professed that he was in search of the lost universal, the lost _law_
of men's thoughts and actions. He was convinced that life was not the
chaos that the Sophists made out; that nobody really believed it to be
a chaos; that, on the contrary, everybody had a meaning and purport in
his every word and act, which could be made intelligible to himself and
others, if you could only get people to think out clearly what they
really meant. Philosophy {106} had met her destruction in the busy
haunts of men; there where had been the bane, Socrates' firm faith
sought ever and everywhere the antidote.
This simple enough yet profound and far-reaching practice of Socrates
was theorised in later times as a logical method, known to us as
_Induction_, or the discovery of universal laws or principles out [195]
of an accumulation of particular facts. And thus Aristotle, with his
technical and systematising intellect, attributes two main innovations
in philosophy to Socrates; the _Inductive_ process of reasoning, and
the establishing of _General Ideas_ or Definitions upon or through this
process. This, true enough as indicating what was latent in the
Socratic method, and what was subsequently actually developed out of it
by Aristotle himself, is nevertheless probably an anachronism if one
seeks to represent it as consciously present in Socrates' mind.
Socrates adopted the method unconsciously, just because he wanted to
get at the people about him, and through them at what they thought. He
was the pioneer of Induction rather than its inventor; he created, so
to speak, the raw material for a theory of induction and definition; he
knew and cared nothing about such theories himself.
A story which may or may not be true in fact is put in Socrates' mouth
by Plato, as to the cause which first started him on his "search for
definitions." {107} One of his friends, he tells us, named Chaerephon,
went to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and asked whether there was
anybody wiser than Socrates. The answer was given that there was none
wiser. This answer was reported to Socrates, who was much astonished,
his own impression being that he had no wisdom or knowledge at all. So
with a view to prove the oracle wrong he went in succession to various
people of eminence and reputation in the various walks of
life,--statesmen and poets and handicraftsmen and others,--in the
expectation that they would show, on being questioned, such a knowledge
of the principles on which their work was based as would prove their
superior wisdom. But to his astonishment he found one after another of
these men wanting in any apprehension of principles at all. They
seemed to work by a kind of haphazard or 'rule of thumb,' and indeed
felt annoyed that anything more should be expected of them. From which
at the last Socrates came to the conclusion that perhaps the oracle was
right in this sense at least, that, if he himself knew nothing more
than his fellows, he was at least conscious of his own ignorance,
whereas they were not.
Whether this tale may not itself be a specimen of Socrates' irony we
cannot tell, but at all events it illustrates from another point of
view the real meaning of Socrates' life. He, at least, was not content
{108} to rest in haphazard and rule of thumb; he was determined to go
on till he found out what was the law or principle of men's acts and
words. The ignorance of others as to any such law or principle in
their own case did not convince him that there was no such law or
principle; only it was there (he thought) working unconsciously, and
therefore in a way defencelessly. And so he compares himself at times
to a gadfly, whose function it is to sting and irritate people out of
their easy indifference, and force them to ask themselves what they
were really driving at. Or again, he compares himself to the
torpedo-fish, because he tried to give people a shock whenever they
attempted to satisfy him with shallow and unreal explanations of their
thoughts and actions.
The disinterested self-sacrificing nobility of Socrates' life, thus
devoted to awakening them that sleep out of their moral torpor; the
enmities that his keen and trenchant questionings of quacks and
pretenders of every kind induced; the devotion of some of his friends,
the unhappy falling away of others; the calumnies of interested
enemies, the satires of poets; and lastly, the story of the final
attack by an ungrateful people on their one great teacher, of his
unjust condemnation and heroic death--all this we must pass over here.
The story is in outline, at least, a familiar one, and it is one of the
noblest in history. What is more to {109} the purpose for us is to
ascertain how far his search for definitions was successful; how far he
was able to
Take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them;
how far, in short, he was able to evolve a law, a universal principle,
out of the confused babel of common life and thought and speech, strong
enough and wide enough on which to build a new order for this world, a
new hope for the world beyond.
We have said that Socrates made the individual and the concrete the
field of his search. And not only did he look to individuals for
light, he looked to each individual specifically in that aspect of his
character and faculty which was most particular to himself. That is to
say, if he met a carpenter, it was on his carpentering that he
questioned him; if a sculptor, on his practice as a sculptor; if a
statesman, on his statesmanship. In short, he did not want general
vague theories on subjects of which his interlocutors could not be
supposed to have any special experience or knowledge; he interrogated
each on the subject which he knew best.
And what struck him, in contrast to the confusion and uncertainty and
isolation of the sophistic teaching 'in the air,' was that when you get
a man to talk on his own trade, which he _knows_, as is proved by the
actual work he produces, you find invariably two {110} things--_first_,
that the skill is the man's _individual_ possession no doubt, the
result of inborn capacity and continuous training and practice; but
_second_, that just in proportion to that individual skill is the man's
conviction that his skill has reference to a _law_ higher than himself,
outside himself. If the man whom Socrates interviewed was a skilful
statesman, he would tell you he sought to produce obedience to _law_ or
right among the citizens; if he was a skilful sculptor, he produced
_beautiful_ things; if he was a skilful handicraftsman, he produced
_useful_ things. Justice, beauty, utility; these three words in
different ways illustrated the existence of something always realising
itself no doubt in individuals and their works, but nevertheless
exercising a governing influence upon these to such a degree that this
ideal something might be conceived as _prior_ to the individual or his
work; or secondly, as _inherent_ in them and giving value to them; or
thirdly, as coming in at the end as the _perfection_ or completion of
them. This law or ideal then had a threefold aspect in its own nature,
being conceivable as Justice, as Beauty, as Utility; it had a threefold
aspect in relation to the works produced in accordance with it, as the
cause _producing_, the cause _inhering_, the cause completing or
_perfecting_.
We may therefore conceive Socrates as arguing thus: "You clever
Sophists, when we let you take {111} us into the region of abstract
talk, have a knack of so playing with words that in the end we don't
seem to know anything for certain, especially on such subjects as we
have hitherto thought the most important, such as God and right and
truth and justice and purity. We seem to be perfectly defenceless
against you; and what is more, any smart youth, whose opinion on any
practical matter no one would think of taking, can very soon pick up
the trick from you, and bewilder plain people really far wiser than
himself by his clever argumentation; all going to prove that there is
nothing certain, nothing real, nothing binding; nothing but opinions
and conventions and conscious or unconscious humbug in the universe.
"But when I go and have a quiet talk with any man who really is a known
master of some craft or skill, about that craft or skill, I find no
doubt whatever existing in his mind about there being a law, a
something absolutely real and beautiful and true in connection with it.
He, on the contrary, lives with no other purpose or hope or desire but
as far as he can to realise in what he works at something of this real
and beautiful and true, which was before him, will be after him, is the
only valuable thing in him, but yet which honours him with the function
of, in his day and generation, expressing it before the eyes of men."
{112} "Have we not here a key to the great secret? If each man, in
respect of that which he knows best because he lives by it and for it,
knows with intimate knowledge and certainty that there at least there
is a Law working, not himself, but higher and greater than he,--have we
not here a hint of the truth for the universe as a whole; that there
also and in all its operations, great as well as small, there must be a
Law, a great Idea or Ideal working, which was before all things, works
in and gives value to all things, will be the consummation of all
things? Is not this what we mean by the Divine?"
Thus Socrates, despising not the meaner things of life, but bending
from the airy speculations of the proud to the realities which true
labour showed him, laid his ear, so to speak, close to the breast of
nature, and caught there the sound of her very heart-beats.
"Virtue is knowledge," thus he formulated his new vision of things.
Knowledge, yes; but _real_ knowledge; not mere head-knowledge or
lip-knowledge, but the knowledge of the skilled man, the man who by
obedience and teachableness and self-restraint has come to a knowledge
evidencing itself in _works_ expressive of the law that is in him, as
he is in it. _Virtue is knowledge_; on the one hand, therefore, not
something in the air, unreal, intangible; but something in me, in you,
in each man, something which you cannot handle except as individual and
{113} in individuals; on the other hand, something more than individual
or capricious or uncertain,--something which is absolute, over-ruling,
eternal.
_Virtue is knowledge_. And so if a man is virtuous, he is realising
what is best and truest in himself, he is fulfilling also what is best
and truest without himself. He is free, for only the truth makes free;
he is obedient to law, but it is at once a law eternally valid, and a
law which he dictates to himself. And therefore virtue is teachable,
inasmuch as the law in the teacher, perfected in him, is also the law
in the taught, latent in him, by both individually possessed, but
possessed by both in virtue of its being greater than both, of its
being something more than individual.
_Virtue is knowledge_. And therefore the law of virtuous growth is
expressed in the maxim engraved on the Delphic temple, 'Know thyself.'
Know thyself, that is, realise thyself; by obedience and self-control
come to your full stature; be in fact what you are in possibility;
satisfy yourself, in the only way in which true self-satisfaction is
possible, by realising in yourself the law which constitutes your real
being.
_Virtue is knowledge_. And therefore all the manifold relations of
life,--the home, the market, the city, the state; all the multiform
activities of life,--labour and speech and art and literature and {114}
law; all the sentiments of life,--friendship and love and reverence and
courage and hope,--all these are parts of a knowable whole; they are
expressions of law; they are Reason realising itself through
individuals, and in the same process realising them.
{115}
CHAPTER XII
SOCRATES (_concluded_)
_The dialectic method--Instruction through humiliation--Justice and
utility--Righteousness transcending rule_
It must not be imagined that anywhere in the recorded conversations of
Socrates can we find thus in so many words expounded his fundamental
doctrine. Socrates was not an expositor but a questioner; he
disclaimed the position of a teacher, he refused to admit that any were
his pupils or disciples. But his questioning had two sides, each in
its way leading people on to an apprehension of the ideal in existence.
The first side may be called the negative or destructive, the second,
the positive or constructive. In the first, whose object was to break
down all formalism, all mere regard for rules or traditions or
unreasoned maxims, his method had considerable resemblance to that of
the Sophists; like them he descended not infrequently to what looked
very like quibbling and word-play. As Aristotle observes, the
dialectic method differed from that of the Sophists not so much in its
form, as in the purpose for which it was employed. The end of the
{116} Sophists was to confuse, the end of Socrates was through
confusion to reach a more real, because a more reasoned certainty; the
Sophists sought to leave the impression that there was no such thing as
truth; he wished to lead people to the conviction that there was a far
deeper truth than they were as yet possessed of.
A specimen of his manner of conversation preserved for us by Xenophon
(_Memor_. IV. ii.) will make the difference clearer. Euthydemus was a
young man who had shown great industry in forming a collection of wise
sayings from poets and others, and who prided himself on his superior
wisdom because of his knowledge of these. Socrates skilfully manages
to get the ear of this young man by commending him for his collection,
and asks him what he expects his learning to help him to become? A
physician? No, Euthydemus answers. An architect? No. And so in like
manner with other practical skills,--the geometrician's, astronomer's,
professional reciter's. None of these he discovers is what Euthydemus
aims at. He hopes to become a great politician and statesman. Then of
course he hopes to be a just man himself? Euthydemus flatters himself
he is that already. "But," says Socrates, "there must be certain acts
which are the proper products of justice, as of other functions or
skills?"--"No doubt."--"Then of course you can tell us what {117} those
acts or products are?"--"Of course I can, and the products of injustice
as well."--"Very good; then suppose we write down in two opposite
columns what acts are products of justice and what of injustice."--"I
agree," says Euthydemus.--"Well now, what of falsehood? In which
column shall we put it?"--"Why, of course in the unjust column."--"And
cheating?"--"In the same column."--"And stealing?"--"In it too."--"And
enslaving?"--"Yes."--"Not one of these can go to the just
column?"--"Why, that would be an unheard-of thing."
"Well but," says Socrates, "suppose a general has to deal with some
enemy of his country that has done it great wrong; if he conquer and
enslave this enemy, is that wrong?"--"Certainly not."--"If he carries
off the enemy's goods or cheats him in his strategy, what about these
acts?"--"Oh, of course they are quite right. But I thought you were
talking about deceiving or ill-treating friends."--"Then in some cases
we shall have to put these very same acts in both columns?"--"I suppose
so."
"Well, now, suppose we confine ourselves to friends. Imagine a general
with an army under him discouraged and disorganised. Suppose he tells
them that reserves are coming up, and by cheating them into this belief
he saves them from their discouragement, and enables them to win a
victory. What about this cheating of one's friends?"--"Why, I {118}
suppose we shall have to put this too on the just side."--"Or suppose a
lad needs medicine, but refuses to take it, and his father cheats him
into the belief that it is something nice, and getting him to take it,
saves his life; what about that cheat?"--"That will have to go to the
just side too."--"Or suppose you find a friend in a desperate frenzy,
and steal his sword from him, for fear he should kill himself; what do
you say to that theft?"--"That will have to go there too."--"But I
thought you said there must be no cheating of friends?"--"Well, I must
take it all back, if you please."--"Very good. But now there is
another point I should like to ask you. Whether do you think the man
more unjust who is a voluntary violator of justice, or he who is an
involuntary violator of it?"--"Upon my word, Socrates, I no longer have
any confidence in my answers. For the whole thing has turned out to be
exactly the contrary of what I previously imagined. However, suppose I
say that the voluntary deceiver is the more unjust."--"Do you consider
that justice is a matter of knowledge just as much (say) as
writing?"--"Yes, I do."--"Well now, which do you consider the better
skilled as a writer, the man who makes a mistake in writing or in
reading what is written, because he chooses to do so, or the man who
does so because he can't help it?"--"Oh, the first; because he can put
it right whenever he likes."--"Very {119} well, if a man in the same
way breaks the rule of right, knowing what he is doing, while another
breaks the same rule because he can't help it, which by analogy must be
the better versed in justice?"--"The first, I suppose."--"And the man
who is better versed in justice must be the juster man?"--"Apparently
so; but really, Socrates, I don't know where I am. I have been
flattering myself that I was in possession of a philosophy which could
make a good and able man of me. But how great, think you, must now be
my disappointment, when I find myself unable to answer the simplest
question on the subject?"
Many other questions are put to him, tending to probe his
self-knowledge, and in the end he is brought to the conclusion that
perhaps he had better hold his tongue, for it seems he knows nothing at
all. And so he went away deeply despondent, despising himself as an
absolute dolt. "Now many," adds Xenophon, "when brought into this
condition by Socrates, never came near him again. But Euthydemus
concluded that his only hope of ever being worth anything was in seeing
as much of Socrates as he could, and so he never quitted his side as
long as he had a chance, but tried to follow his mode of living. And
Socrates, when he perceived this to be his temper, no longer tormented
him, but sought with all simplicity and clearness to {120} show him
what he deemed it best for him to do and think."
Was this cross-examination mere 'tormenting' with a purpose, or can we
discover underlying it any hint of what Socrates deemed to be the truth
about justice?
Let us note that throughout he is in search of a _definition_, but that
as soon as any attempt is made to define or classify any particular
type of action as just or unjust, _special circumstances_ are suggested
which overturn the classification. Let us note further that while the
immediate result is apparently only to confuse, the remoter but more
permanent result is to raise a suspicion of any hard and fast
definitions, and to suggest that there is something deeper in life than
language is adequate to express, a 'law in the members,' a living
principle for good, which transcends forms and maxims, and which alone
gives real value to acts. Note further the suggestion that this living
principle has a character analogous to the knowledge or skill of an
accomplished artificer; it has relation on the one hand to law, as a
principle binding on the individual, it has relation on the other hand
to _utility_, as expressing itself, not in words, but in acts
beneficial to those concerned. Hence the Socratic formula, Justice is
equivalent to the _Lawful_ on the one hand, to the _Useful_ on the
other.
{121}
Socrates had thus solved by anticipation the apparently never-ending
controversy about morality. Is it a matter imposed by God upon the
heart and conscience of each individual? Is it dictated by the general
sense of the community? Is it the product of Utility? The Socratic
answer would be that it is all three, and that all three mean
ultimately the same thing. What God prescribes is what man when he is
truly man desires; and what God prescribes and man desires is that
which is good and useful for man. It is not a matter for verbal
definition but for vital realisation; the true morality is that which
_works_; the ideally desirable, is ultimately the only possible, course
of action, for all violations of it are ultimately suicidal.
Note finally the suggestion that the man who _knows_ (in Socrates'
sense of knowledge) what is right, shows only more fully his
righteousness when he voluntarily sins; it is the 'unwilling sinner'
who is the wrongdoer. When we consider this strange doctrine in
relation to the instances given,--the general with his army, the father
with his son, the prudent friend with his friend in desperate
straits,--we see that what is meant is that 'sin' in the real sense is
not to be measured or defined by conformity or otherwise to some formal
standard, at least in the case of those who _know_, that is, in the
case of men who have realised goodness in its true nature in {122}
their characters and lives. As St. Paul expressed it (Rom. xiii. 10),
"Love is the fulfilling of the law." Or again (Gal. v. 23), after
enumerating the 'fruits of the spirit'--love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance--he
adds, "Against such there is no law."
In the domain of life, not less than in that of the arts, the highest
activity does not always or necessarily take the form of conformity to
rule. There are critical moments when rules fail, when, in fact,
obedience to rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of which
rules and formulae are at best only an adumbration. The originality of
the great musician or painter consists in just such transcendence of
accepted formulae; this is why he invariably encounters opposition and
obloquy from the learned conventional pedants of his time. And in the
domain of morals the martyrs, reformers, prophets are in like manner
'willing sinners.' They are denounced, persecuted, crucified; for are
they not disturbers of society; do they not unsettle young men; do they
not come, as Christ came, not to bring peace into the world, but a
sword? And thus it is that the willing sinners of one generation are
the martyrs and heroes of the next. Through their life and death a
richer meaning has been given to the law of beauty or of rectitude,
only, alas! in its turn to be translated into new conventions, new
{123} formulae, which shall in due time require new martyrs to
transcend them. And thus, on the other hand, the perfectly honest
sticklers for the old and common-place, unwilling sinners all
unconscious of their sin, are fated to bear in history the brand of men
who have persecuted the righteous without cause. To each, according to
the strange sad law of life, time brings its revenges.
{124}
CHAPTER XIII
THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS
_A philosopher at ease--The sensual sty--Citizens of the world--The tub
of Diogenes--A philosophy of abstracts_
[204]
I. ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS.--Aristippus was a native of Cyrene, a
Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to
Athens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices of
him which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been from
the first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially from
the poverty and self-denial of the master's mode of life. [205] He in
course of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic from
his own place of birth, and from the fact that many subsequent leaders
of the school also belonged to Cyrene. Among his notable disciples
were his daughter Arete, her son named Aristippus after his
grandfather, Ptolemaeus the Aethiopian, Antipater of Cyrene, and a long
succession of others.
Aristippus was a man of considerable subtlety of mind, a ready speaker,
clever in adapting himself to persons and circumstances. On one
occasion, being {125} asked what benefit he considered philosophy had
conferred upon him, he answered, "The capacity of associating with
every one without embarrassment." Philosophy, in fact, was to
Aristippus a method of social culture, a means of making the best of
life as he found it. As Horace observes of him (_Epp_. i. 17. 23)--
Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res
Tentantem majora, fere praesentibus aequum.
"Every aspect and manner of life and fortune fitted Aristippus; he
aimed at what was greater, yet kept an even, mind whatever his present
condition."
[206]
As we have already said, this school was _incompletely_ Socratic,
inasmuch as philosophy was not an end in itself, knowledge whether of
oneself or of other matters had no intrinsic interest for them;
philosophy was only a means towards pleasurable living, enabling them
so to analyse and classify the several experiences of life as to render
a theory of satisfactory [207] existence possible. With them first
came into prominence a phrase which held a large place in all
subsequent Greek philosophy, the _End_ of existence, by which was meant
that which summed up the good in existence, that which made life worth
living, that which was good and desirable in and for itself, and not
merely as a means to something else. What then according to the
Cyrenaics was the End of life? {126} Their answer was that life had at
each moment its own End, in the pleasure of that moment. The past was
gone, the future not yet with us; remembrance of the one, fear or hope
of the other, might contribute to affect the purity of the present
pleasure, but such as it was the present pleasure was a thing apart,
complete in and for itself. Nor was its perfection qualified by any
question of the means by which it was procured; the moment's pleasure
was pleasurable, whatever men might say as to the manner of its [208]
procuring. This pleasure was a tranquil activity of the being, like
the gently heaving sea, midway between violent motion which was pain,
and absolute calm which was insensibility. As a state of activity it
was something positive, not a mere release from [209] pain, not a
simple filling up of a vacuum. Nothing was in its essential nature
either just or noble or base; custom and convention pronounced them one
or other. The wise man made the best he could of his conditions;
valuing mental activity and friendship and wealth and bodily exercise,
and avoiding envy and excessive indulgence of passion and superstition,
not because the first were in themselves good or the second evil, but
because they were respectively helpers or hinderers of pleasure. He is
the master and possessor of pleasure not who abstains from it, but who
uses it and keeps his self-command in the using. Moderate
indulgence--this is wisdom.
{127}
[210]
The one criterion, whether of good or of truth, is the feeling of the
moment for the man who feels it; all question of causes of feelings is
delusive. We can say with truth and certainty, I have the sensation of
white or the sensation of sweet. But that there is a white or a sweet
thing which is the cause of the sensation, that we cannot say for
certain. A man may very well have the sensation white or sweet from
something which has no such quality, as men in delusion or madness have
impressions that are true and real inasmuch as they have them, although
other people do not admit their reality. There is, therefore, no
criterion of truth as between man and man; we may employ the same
words, but each has his own impressions and his own individual
experiences.
One can easily understand this as the doctrine of such a man as
Aristippus, the easy-going man of the world, the courtier and the wit,
the favourite of the tyrant Dionysius; it fits in well enough with a
life of genial self-indulgence; it always reappears whenever a man has
reconciled himself 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' But life
is not always, nor for most persons at any time, a thing of ease and
soft enchantments, and the Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for the
general work-a-day world a stale exotic. 'Every man for himself and
the devil take the hindmost,' is a maxim which comes as a rule {128}
only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they think themselves
strong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of selfishness neither
works nor lasts; every man at some time becomes 'the hindmost,' if not
before, at least in the hour of death for him or his; at that hour he
is hardly disposed, for himself or those he loves, to repeat his maxim.
II. ANTISTHENES AND THE CYNICS.--Aristippus, in his praises of pleasure
as the one good for man (see above, p. 126), remarks that there were
some who [209] refused pleasure "from perversity of mind," taking
pleasure, so to speak, in the denial of pleasure. The school of the
Cynics made this perverse mood, as Aristippus deemed it, the maxim of
their philosophy. As the Cyrenaic school was the school of the rich,
the courtly, the self-indulgent, so the Cynic was the school of the
poor, the exiles, the ascetics. Each was an extreme expression of a
phase of Greek life and thought, though there was this point of union
[215] between them, that _liberty_ of a kind was sought by both. The
Cyrenaics claimed liberty to please themselves in the choice of their
enjoyments; the Cynics sought liberty through denial of enjoyments.
[219] Both, moreover, were cosmopolitan; they mark the decay of the
Greek patriotism, which was essentially civic, and the rise of the
wider but less intense conception of humanity. Aristippus, in a
conversation with Socrates (Xenoph. _Memor_. II. i.) on the {129}
qualifications of those who are fitted to be magistrates, disclaims all
desire to hold such a position himself. "There is," he says, "to my
thinking, a middle way, neither of rule nor of slavery, but of freedom,
which leads most surely to true happiness. So to avoid all the evils
of partisanship and faction I nowhere take upon me the position of a
citizen, but in every city remain a sojourner and a stranger." And in
like manner Antisthenes the Cynic, being asked how a man should
approach politics, answered, "He will approach it as he will fire, not
too near, lest he be burnt; not too far away, lest he starve of cold."
And Diogenes, being asked of what city he was, answered, "I am a
citizen of the world." The Cynic ideal, in fact, was summed up in
these four words--wisdom, independence, free speech, liberty.
[214]
Antisthenes, founder of the school, was a native of Athens, but being
of mixed blood (his mother was a Thracian) he was not recognised as an
Athenian citizen. He was a student first under Gorgias, and acquired
from him a considerable elegance of literary style; subsequently he
became a devoted hearer of Socrates, and became prominent among his
followers for an asceticism surpassing his master's. One day, we are
told, he showed a great rent in the thread-bare cloak which was his
only garment, whereupon Socrates slily remarked, "I can see through
your cloak your love of glory." He carried a leathern {130} scrip and
a staff, and the 'scrip and staff' became distinctive marks of his
school. The name Cynic, derived from the Greek word for a dog, is
variously accounted for, some attributing it to the 'doglike' habits of
the school, others to their love of 'barking' criticism, others to the
fact that a certain gymnasium in the outskirts of Athens, called
Cynosarges, sacred to Hercules the patron-divinity of men in the
political position of Antisthenes, was a favourite resort of his. He
was a voluminous, some thought a too voluminous, [216] expounder of his
tenets. Like the other Incomplete Socratics, his teaching was mainly
on ethical questions.
[215]
His chief pupil and successor was the famous Diogenes, a native of
Sinope, a Greek colony on the Euxine Sea. He even bettered the
instructions of his master in the matter of extreme frugality of
living, claiming that he was a true follower of Hercules in preferring
independence to every other good. The tale of his living in a cask or
tub is well known. His theory was that the peculiar privilege of the
gods consisted in their need of nothing; men approached nearest the
life of the gods in needing as little as possible.
[217]
Many other sayings of one or other teacher are quoted, all tending to
the same conclusion. For example, "I had rather be mad than enjoying
myself!" "Follow the pleasures that come after pains, not those which
bring pains in their train." "There {131} are pains that are useless,
there are pains that are natural: the wise choose the latter, and thus
find happiness even through pain. For the very contempt of pleasure
comes with practice to be the highest pleasure." "When I wish a
treat," says Antisthenes, "I do not go and buy it at great cost in the
marketplace; I find my storehouse of pleasures in the soul."
[218]
The life of the wise man, therefore, was a training of mind and body to
despise pleasure and attain independence. In this way virtue was
teachable, and could be so acquired as to become an inseparable
possession. The man who had thus attained to wisdom, not of words, but
of deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that could
neither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And so
Antisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning,
answered, "To unlearn what is evil." That is to say, to the Cynic
conception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love of
pleasure; the path of wisdom was a weaning of soul and body by practice
from the allurements of pleasure, until both were so perfectly
accustomed to its denial as to find an unalloyed pleasure in the very
act of [219] refusing it. In this way virtue became absolutely
sufficient for happiness, and so far was it from being necessary to
have wealth or the admiration of men in addition, that the true kingly
life was "to do well, {132} and be ill spoken of." All else but virtue
was a matter of indifference.
The cosmopolitan temper of these men led them to hold of small account
the forms and prejudices of ordinary society: they despised the rites
of marriage; they thought no flesh unclean. They believed in no
multifarious theology; there was but one divinity--the power that ruled
all nature, the one absolutely self-centred independent being, whose
manner of [221] existence they sought to imitate. Nor had they any
sympathy with the subtleties of verbal distinction cultivated by some
of the Socratics, as by other philosophers or Sophists of their time.
Definitions and abstractions and classifications led to no good. A man
was a man; what was good was good; to say that a man was good did not
establish the existence of some abstract class of goods. As
Antisthenes once said to Plato, "A horse I see, but 'horseness' I do
not see." What the exact point of this criticism was we may reserve
for the present.
[222]
III. EUCLIDES THE MEGARIC.--Euclides, a native of Megara on the
Corinthian isthmus, was a devoted hearer of Socrates, making his way to
hear him, sometimes even at the 'risk of his life, in defiance of a
decree of his native city forbidding intercourse with Athens. When
Plato and other Athenian followers of Socrates thought well to quit
Athens for {133} a time after Socrates' execution, they were kindly
entertained by Euclides at Megara.
The exact character of the development which the Socratic teaching
received from Euclides and his school is a matter of considerable
doubt. The allusions to the tenets of the school in Plato and [223]
others are only fragmentary. We gather, however, from them that
Euclides was wholly antithetical to the personal turn given to
philosophy, both by the Cyrenaics and the Cynics. He revived and
developed with much dialectical subtlety the metaphysical system of
Parmenides and the Eleatics, maintaining that there is but one absolute
existence, and that sense and sense-perceptions as against this [224]
are nothing. This one absolute existence was alone absolutely good,
and the good for man could only be found in such an absorption of
himself in this one absolute good through reason and contemplation, as
would bring his spirit into perfectness of union with it. Such
absorption raised a man above the troubles and pains of life, and thus,
in insensibility to these through reason, man attained his highest good.
The school is perhaps interesting only in so far as it marks the
continued survival of the abstract dialectic method of earlier
philosophy. As such it had a very definite influence, sometimes
through agreement, sometimes by controversy, on the systems of Plato
and Aristotle now to be dealt with.
{134}
CHAPTER XIV
PLATO
_Student and wanderer--The Dialogues--Immortal longings--Art is
love--Knowledge through remembrance--Platonic love_
[239]
This great master, the Shakespeare of Greek philosophy, as one may call
him, for his fertility, his variety, his humour, his imagination, his
poetic grace, was born at Athens in the year 429 B.C. He was of noble
family, numbering among his ancestors no less a man than the great
lawgiver Solon, and tracing back his descent even further to the [240]
legendary Codrus, last king of Athens. At a very early age he seems to
have begun to study the philosophers, Heraclitus more particularly, and
before he was twenty he had written a tragedy. About that time,
however, he met Socrates; and at once giving up all thought of poetic
fame he burnt his poem, and devoted himself to the hearing of Socrates.
For ten years he was his constant companion. When Socrates met his
death in 399, Plato and other followers of the master fled at first to
Megara, as already mentioned (above, p. 132); he then entered on a
period of extended travel, first to Cyrene and {135} Egypt, thence to
Italy and Sicily. In Italy he devoted himself specially to a study of
the doctrine of Pythagoras. It is said that at Syracuse he offended
the tyrant Dionysius the elder by his freedom of speech, and was
delivered up to the Spartans, who were then at war with Athens. [241]
Ultimately he was ransomed, and found his way back to Athens, but he is
said to have paid a second visit to Sicily when the younger Dionysius
became tyrant. He seems to have entertained the hope that he might so
influence this young man as to be able to realise through him the dream
of his life, a government in accordance with the dictates of [242]
philosophy. His dream, however, was disappointed of fruition, and he
returned to Athens, there in the 'groves of Academus' a mythic hero of
Athens, to spend the rest of his days in converse with his followers,
and there at the ripe age of eighty-one he died. From the scene of his
labours his philosophy has ever since been known as the Academic [243]
philosophy. Unlike Socrates, he was not content to leave only a memory
of himself and his conversations. He was unwearied in the redaction
and correction of his written dialogues, altering them here and there
both in expression and in structure. It is impossible, therefore, to
be absolutely certain as to the historical order of composition or
publication among his numerous {136} dialogues, but a certain
approximate order may be fixed.
We may take first a certain number of comparatively short dialogues,
which are strongly Socratic in the following respects: _first_, they
each seek a definition of some particular virtue or quality; _second_,
each suggests some relation between it and knowledge; _third_, each
leaves the answer somewhat open, treating the matter suggestively
rather than dogmatically. These dialogues are _Charmides_, which
treats of Temperance (_mens sana in corpore sano_); _Lysis_, which
treats of Friendship; _Laches_, Of Courage; _Ion_, Of Poetic
Inspiration; _Meno_, Of the teachableness of Virtue; _Euthyphro_, Of
Piety.
The last of these may be regarded as marking a transition to a second
series, which are concerned with the trial and death of Socrates. The
_Euthyphro_ opens with an allusion by Socrates to his approaching
trial, and in the _Apology_ we have a Platonic version of Socrates'
speech in his own defence; in _Crito_ we have the story of his noble
self-abnegation and civic obedience after his condemnation; in _Phaedo_
we have his last conversation with his friends on the subject of
Immortality, and the story of his death.
Another series of the dialogues may be formed of those, more or less
satirical, in which the ideas and methods of the Sophists are
criticised: _Protagoras_, {137} in which Socrates suggests that all
virtues are essentially one; _Euthydemus_, in which the assumption and
'airs' of some of the Sophists are made fun of; _Cratylus_, Of the
sophistic use of words; _Gorgias_, Of the True and the False, the truly
Good and the truly Evil; _Hippias_, Of Voluntary and Involuntary Sin;
_Alcibiades_, Of Self-Knowledge; _Menexenus_, a (possibly ironical) set
oration after the manner of the Sophists, in praise of Athens.
The whole of this third series are characterised by humour, dramatic
interest, variety of personal type among the speakers, keenness rather
than depth of philosophic insight. There are many suggestions of
profounder thoughts, afterwards worked out more fully; but on the whole
these dialogues rather stimulate thought than satisfy it; the great
poet-thinker is still playing with his tools.
A higher stage is reached in the _Symposium_, which deals at once
humorously and profoundly with the subject of Love, human and divine,
and its relations to Art and Philosophy, the whole consummated in a
speech related by Socrates as having been spoken to him by Diotima, a
wise woman of Mantineia. From this speech an extract as translated by
Professor Jowett may be quoted here. It marks the transition point
from the merely playful and critical to the relatively serious and
dogmatic stage in the mind of Plato:--
{138} "Marvel not," she said, "if you believe that love is of the
immortal, as we have already several times acknowledged; for here
again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as
far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to
be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a
new existence in the place of the old. Nay even in the life of the
same individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a man is
called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between
youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and
identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and
reparation--hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always
changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul,
whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears,
never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming and
going; and equally true of knowledge, which is still more
surprising--for not only do the sciences in general come and go, so
that in respect of them we are never the same; but each of them
individually experiences a like change. For what is implied in the
word 'recollection,' but the departure of knowledge, which is ever
being forgotten and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and
appears to be the same although in reality new, according to that law
of succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely
the same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving
another new and similar existence behind--unlike the divine, which is
always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal
body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality; but the immortal in
another way. Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their
offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of
immortality."
I was astonished at her words, and said: "Is this really true, O thou
wise Diotima?" And she answered with all the authority of a sophist:
"Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the ambition of
men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you
consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame.
They are ready to run risks greater far than they would have run for
their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of {139} toil,
and even to die for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall
be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save
Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order
to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the
memory of their virtues, which is still retained among us, would be
immortal? Nay," she said, "I am persuaded that all men do all things,
and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious
fame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.
"They whose bodies only are creative, betake themselves to women and
beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring,
as they hope, will preserve their memory and give them the blessedness
and immortality which they desire in the future. But creative
souls--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls
than in their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul to
conceive or retain. And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and virtue
in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are
deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of
wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states
and families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who
in youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself
inspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. He
wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring--for in
deformity he will beget nothing--and naturally embraces the beautiful
rather than the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair and noble
and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to such
an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits of
a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of the
beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he
brings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company
with him tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by a
far nearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal
children, for the children who are their common offspring are fairer
and more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other
great poets, {140} would not rather have their children than ordinary
human ones? Who would not emulate them in the creation of children
such as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given them
everlasting glory? Or who would not have such children as Lycurgus
left behind him to be the saviours, not only of Lacedaemon, but of
Hellas, as one may say? There is Solon, too, who is the revered father
of Athenian laws; and many others there are in many other places, both
among Hellenes and barbarians. All of them have given to the world
many noble works, and have been the parents of virtue of every kind,
and many temples have been raised in their honour for the sake of their
children; which were never raised in honour of any one, for the sake of
his mortal children.
"These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates,
may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of
these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will
lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my
utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For he who would
proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful
forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one
such form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he
will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the
beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his
pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognise that the beauty in
every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will
abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a
small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the
next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more
honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous
soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend
him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may
improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the
beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of
them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and
after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may
see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of
one youth or man or {141} institution, himself a slave mean and
narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of
beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in
boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes
strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science,
which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed;
please to give me your very best attention.
"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has
learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes
toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and
this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)--a nature
which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or
waxing and waning, in the next place not fair in one point of view and
foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place
fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul,
as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or
hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech
or knowledge, or existing in any other being; as for example, in an
animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place, but beauty
only, absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without
diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the
ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who under
the influence of true love rising upward from these begins to see that
beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going or being
led by another to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth
as steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake of that other
beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from
fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions,
until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty,
and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear
Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia, "is that life above all
others which a man should live, in the contemplation of beauty
absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to be
after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths,
whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one would be
content to live seeing only and conversing with them without meat or
drink, {142} if that were possible--you only want to be with them and
to look at them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty--the
divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with
the pollutions of mortality, and all the colours and vanities of human
life--thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty divine
and simple? Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding
beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not
images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of
a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the
friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an
ignoble life?" (Jowett, _Plato_, vol. ii. p. 58).
Closely connected in subject with the _Symposium_ is the _Phaedrus_.
As Professor Jowett observes: "The two dialogues together contain the
whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in _The
Republic_ and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced
playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the _Phaedrus_ and
_Symposium_ love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the
other. The spiritual and emotional is elevated into the ideal, to
which in the _Symposium_ mankind are described as looking forward, and
which in the _Phaedrus_, as well as in the _Phaedo_, they are seeking
to recover from a former state of existence."
We are here introduced to one of the most famous conceptions of Plato,
that of _Reminiscence_, or Recollection, based upon a theory of the
prior existence of the soul. In the _Meno_, already alluded to,
Socrates is representing as eliciting from one of Meno's slaves {143}
correct answers to questions involving a knowledge or apprehension of
certain axioms of the science of mathematics, which, as Socrates
learns, the slave had never been taught. Socrates argues that since he
was never taught these axioms, and yet actually knows them, he must
have known them before his birth, and concludes from this to the
immortality of the soul. In the _Phaedo_ this same argument is worked
out more fully. As we grow up we discover in the exercise of our
senses that things are equal in certain respects, unequal in many
others; or again, we appropriate to things or acts the qualities, for
example, of beauty, goodness, justice, holiness. At the same time we
recognise that these are _ideals_, to which in actual experience we
never find more than an approximation, for we never discover in any
really existing thing or act _absolute_ equality, or justice, or
goodness. In other words, any act of judgment on our part of actual
experiences consists in a measuring of these experiences by standards
which we give or apply to them, and which no number of experiences can
give to us because they do not possess or exemplify them. We did not
consciously possess these notions, or ideals, or _ideas_, as he prefers
to call them, at birth; they come into consciousness in connection with
or in consequence of the action of the senses; but since the senses
could not give these ideas, the process of {144} knowledge must be a
process of _Recollection_. Socrates carries the argument a step
further. "Then may we not say," he continues, "that if, as we are
always repeating, there is an absolute beauty and goodness and other
similar ideas or essences, and to this standard, which is now
discovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all our
sensations, and with this compare them--assuming these ideas to have a
prior existence, then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if
not, not? There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed
before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and
if not the ideas, then not the souls."
In the _Phaedrus_ this conception of a former existence is embodied in
one of the _Myths_ in which Plato's imaginative powers are seen at
their highest. In it the soul is compared to a charioteer driving two
winged steeds, one mortal, the other immortal; the one ever tending
towards the earth, the other seeking ever to soar into the sky, where
it may behold those blessed visions of loveliness and wisdom and
goodness, which are the true nurture of the soul. When the chariots of
the gods go forth in mighty and glorious procession, the soul would
fain ride forth in their train; but alas! the mortal steed is ever
hampering the immortal, and dragging it down.
If the soul yields to this influence and descends to earth, there she
takes human form, but in higher {145} or lower degree, according to the
measure of her vision of the truth. She may become a philosopher, a
king, a trader, an athlete, a prophet, a poet, a husbandman, a sophist,
a tyrant. But whatever her lot, according to her manner of life in it,
may she rise, or sink still further, even to a beast or plant.
Only those souls take the form of humanity that have had _some_ vision
of eternal truth. And this vision they retain in a measure, even when
clogged in mortal clay. And so the soul of man is ever striving and
fluttering after something beyond; and specially is she stirred to
aspiration by the sight of bodily loveliness. Then above all comes the
test of good and evil in the soul. The nature that has been corrupted
would fain rush to brutal joys; but the purer nature looks with
reverence and wonder at this beauty, for it is an adumbration of the
celestial joys which he still remembers vaguely from the heavenly
vision. And thus pure and holy love becomes an opening back to heaven;
it is a source of happiness unalloyed on earth; it guides the lovers on
upward wings back to the heaven whence they came.
{146}
CHAPTER XV
PLATO (_continued_)
_The Republic--Denizens of the cave--The Timaeus--A dream of creation_
And now we pass to the central and crowning work of Plato, _The
Republic_, or _Of Justice_--the longest with one exception, and
certainly the greatest of all his works. It combines the humour and
irony, the vivid characterisation and lively dialogue of his earlier
works, with the larger and more serious view, the more constructive and
statesmanlike aims of his later life. The dialogue opens very
beautifully. There has been a festal procession at the Piraeus, the
harbour of Athens, and Socrates with a companion is wending his way
homeward, when he is recalled by other companions, who induce him to
visit the house of an aged friend of his, Cephalus, whom he does not
visit too often. Him he finds seated in his court, crowned, as the
custom was, for the celebration of a family sacrifice, and beholds
beaming on his face the peace of a life well spent and reconciled.
They talk of the happiness that comes in old age to those who have done
good and not evil, and who are not too severely {147} tried in the
matter of worldly cares. Life to this good old man seems a very simple
matter; duty to God, duty to one's neighbours, each according to what
is prescribed and orderly; this is all, and this is sufficient.
Then comes in the questioning Socrates, with his doubts and
difficulties as to what is one's duty in special circumstances; and the
discussion is taken up, not by the good old man, "who goes away to the
sacrifice," but by his son, who can quote the authorities; and by
Thrasymachus, the Sophist, who will have nothing to do with authority,
but maintains that _interest_ is the only real meaning of justice, and
that Might is Right. Socrates, by analogy of the arts, shows that
Might absolutely without tincture of justice is mere weakness, and that
there is honour even among thieves. Yet the exhibition of the 'law
working in the members' seems to have its weak side so long as we look
to individual men, in whom there are many conflicting influences, and
many personal chances and difficulties, which obscure the relation
between just action and happiness.
Socrates therefore will have justice 'writ large' in the community as a
whole, first pictured in its simpler, and then in its more complex and
luxurious forms. The relation of the individual to the community is
represented chiefly as one of education and training; and many strange
theories--as of the equal {148} training of men and women, and the
community of wives, ideas partially drawn from Sparta--are woven into
the ideal structure. Then the dialogue rises to a larger view of
education, as a preparation of the soul of man, not for a community on
earth, but for that heavenly life which was suggested above (p. 144) in
the myth of the steeds.
The purely earthly unideal life is represented as a life of men tied
neck and heels from birth in a cave, having their backs to the light,
and their eyes fixed only on the shadows which are cast upon the wall.
These they take for the only realities, and they may acquire much skill
in interpreting the shadows. Turn these men suddenly to the true
light, and they will be dazzled and blinded. They will feel as though
they had lost the realities, and been plunged into dreams. And in pain
and sorrow they will be tempted to grope back again to the familiar
darkness.
Yet if they hold on in patience, and struggle up the steep till the sun
himself breaks on their vision, what pain and dazzling once more, yet
at the last what glorious revelation! True, if they revisit their old
dwelling-place, they will not see as well as their fellows who are
still living contentedly there, knowing nothing other than the shadows.
They may even seem to these as dreamers who have lost their senses; and
should they try to enlighten these denizens of the cave, they may be
persecuted or {149} even put to death. Such are the men who have had a
sight of the heavenly verities, when compared with the children of
earth and darkness.
Yet the world will never be right till those who have had this vision
come back to the things of earth and order them according to the
eternal verities; the philosopher must be king if ever the perfect life
is to be lived on earth, either by individual or community. As it
would be expressed in Scriptural language, "The kingdoms of this world
must become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ."
For the training of these ideal rulers an ideal education is required,
which Plato calls dialectic; something of its nature is described later
on (p. 170), and we need not linger over it here.
The argument then seems to fall to a lower level. There are various
approximations in actual experience to the ideal community, each more
or less perfect according to the degree in which the good of the
individual is also made the good of all, and the interests of governors
and governed are alike. Parallel with each lower form of state is a
lower individual nature, the worst of all being that of the tyrant,
whose will is his only law, and his own self-indulgence his only
motive. In him indeed Might is Right; but his life is the very
antithesis of happiness. Nay, pleasure of any kind can give no law to
reason; reason can judge of pleasure, but not _vice versâ_. There is
no profit to a {150} man though he gain the whole world, if _himself_
be lost; if he become worse; if the better part of him be silenced and
grow weaker. And after this 'fitful fever' is over, may there not be a
greater bliss beyond? There have been stories told us, visions of
another world, where each man is rewarded according to his works. And
the book closes with a magnificent Vision of Judgment. It is the story
of Er, son of Armenius, who being wounded in battle, after twelve days'
trance comes back to life, and tells of the judgment seat, of heavenly
bliss and hellish punishments, and of the renewal of life and the new
choice given to souls not yet purified wholly of sin. "God is
blameless; Man's Soul is immortal; Justice and Truth are the only
things eternally good." Such is the final revelation.
The _Timaeus_ is an attempt by Plato, under the guise of a Pythagorean
philosopher, to image forth as in a vision or dream the actual framing
of the universe, conceived as a realisation of the Eternal Thought or
Idea. It will be remembered that in the analysis already given (p.
143) of the process of knowledge in individual men, Plato found that
prior to the suggestions of the senses, though not coming into
consciousness except in connection with sensation, men had _ideas_ that
gave them a power of rendering their sensations intelligible. In the
_Timaeus_ Plato attempts a vision of the universe as though he saw
{151} it working itself into actuality on the lines of those ideas.
The vision is briefly as follows: There is the Eternal Creator, who
desired to make the world because He was good and free from jealousy,
and therefore willed that all things should be like Himself; that is,
that the formless, chaotic, unrealised void might receive form and
order, and become, in short, real as He was. Thus creation is the
process by which the Eternal Creator works out His own image, His own
ideas, in and through that which is formless, that which has no name,
which is nothing but possibility,--dead earth, namely, or _Matter_.
And first the world-soul, image of the divine, is formed, on which as
on a "diamond network" the manifold structure of things is
fashioned--the stars, the seven planets with their sphere-music, the
four elements, and all the various creatures, aetherial or fiery,
aerial, aqueous, and earthy, with the consummation of them all in
microcosm, in the animal world, and specially in man.
One can easily see that this is an attempt by Plato to carry out the
reverse process in thought to that which first comes to thinking man.
Man has sensations, that is, he comes first upon that which is
conceivably last in creation, on the immediate and temporary things or
momentary occurrences of earth. In these sensations, as they
accumulate into a kind of habitual or unreasoned knowledge or opinion,
he discovers elements which have been active to {152} correlate the
sensations, which have from the first exercised a governing influence
upon the sensations, without which, indeed, no two sensations could be
brought together to form anything one could name. These regulative,
underlying, permanent elements are Ideas, _i.e._ General Forms or
Notions, which, although they may come second as regards time into
consciousness, are by reason known to have been there before, because
through them alone can the sensations become intelligibly possible, or
thinkable, or namable. Thus Plato is led to the conception of an order
the reverse of our individual experience, the order of creation, the
order of God's thought, which is equivalent to the order of God's
working; for God's thought and God's working are inseparable.
Of course Plato, in working out his dream of creation absolutely
without any scientific knowledge, the further he travels the more
obviously falls into confusion and absurdity; where he touches on some
ideas having a certain resemblance to modern scientific discoveries, as
the law of gravitation, the circulation of the blood, the quantitative
basis of differences of quality, etc., these happy guesses are apt to
lead more frequently wrong than right, because they are not kept in
check by any experimental tests. But taken as a 'myth,' which is
perhaps all that Plato intended, the work offers much that is
profoundly interesting.
{153}
With the _Timaeus_ is associated another dialogue called the _Critias_,
which remains only as a fragment. In it is contained a description of
the celebrated visionary kingdom of Atlantis, lying far beyond the
pillars of Hercules, a land of splendour and luxury and power, a land
also of gentle manners and wise orderliness. "The fiction has
exercised a great influence over the imagination of later ages. As
many attempts have been made to find the great island as to discover
the country of the lost tribes. Without regard to the description of
Plato, and without a suspicion that the whole narrative is a
fabrication, interpreters have looked for the spot in every part of the
globe--America, Palestine, Arabia Felix, Ceylon, Sardinia, Sweden. The
story had also an effect on the early navigators of the sixteenth
century" (Jowett, _Plato_, vol. iii. p. 679).
{154}
CHAPTER XVI
PLATO (_continued_)
_Metaphysics and psychology--Reason and pleasure--Criticism of the
ideas--Last ideals_
We now come to a series of highly important dialogues, marked as a
whole by a certain diminution in the purely artistic attraction, having
less of vivid characterisation, less humour, less dramatic interest,
less perfect construction in every way, but, on the other hand,
peculiarly interesting as presenting a kind of after-criticism of his
own philosophy. In them Plato brings his philosophic conceptions into
striking relation with earlier or rival theories such as the Eleatic,
the Megarian, the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic, and touches in these
connections on many problems of deep and permanent import.
The most remarkable feature in these later dialogues is the
disappearance, or even in some cases the apparently hostile criticism,
of the doctrine of Ideas, and consequently of Reminiscence as the
source of knowledge, and even, apparently, of Personal {155}
Immortality, so far as the doctrine of Reminiscence was imagined to
guarantee it. This, however, is perhaps to push the change of view too
far. We may say that Plato in these dialogues is rather the
psychologist than the metaphysician; he is attempting a revised
analysis of mental processes. From this point of view it was quite
intelligible that he should discover difficulties in his former theory
of our mental relation to the external reality, without therefore
seeing reason to doubt the existence of that reality. The position is
somewhat similar to that of a modern philosopher who attempts to think
out the psychological problem of Human Will in relation to Almighty and
Over-ruling Providence. One may very clearly see the psychological
difficulties, without ceasing to believe either in the one or the other
as facts.
Throughout Plato's philosophy, amidst every variation of expression, we
may take these three as practically fixed points of belief or of faith,
or at least of hope; _first_, that Mind is eternally master of the
universe; _second_, that Man in realising what is most truly himself is
working in harmony with the Eternal Mind, and is in this way a master
of nature, reason governing experience and not being a product of
experience; and _thirdly_ (as Socrates said before his judges), that at
death we go to powers who are wise and good, and to men departed who in
their day shared in the divine wisdom and goodness,--that, in short,
there is something remaining for the dead, and better for those that
have done good than for those that have done evil.
The first of the 'psychological dialogues,' as we have called them, is
the _Philebus_. The question here is of the _summum bonum_ or chief
good. What is it? Is it pleasure? Is it wisdom? Or is it both? In
the process of answering these questions Plato lays down rules for true
definition, and establishes classifications which had an immense
influence on his successor Aristotle, but which need not be further
referred to here.
The general gist of the argument is as follows. Pleasure could not be
regarded as a sufficient or perfect good if it was entirely emptied of
the purely intellectual elements of anticipation and consciousness and
memory. This would be no better than the pleasure of an oyster. On
the other hand, a purely intellectual existence can hardly be regarded
as perfect and sufficient either. The perfect life must be a union of
both.
But this union must be an orderly and rational union; in other words,
it must be one in which Mind is master and Pleasure servant; the
finite, the regular, the universal must govern the indefinite,
variable, particular. Thus in the perfect life there are four
elements; in the body, earth, water, air, fire; in the soul, the
finite, the indefinite, the union of the {157} two, and the cause of
that union. If this be so, he argues, may we not by analogy argue for
a like four-fold order in the universe? There also we find regulative
elements, and indefinite elements, and the union of the two. Must
there not also be the Great Cause, even Divine Wisdom, ordering and
governing all things?
The second of the psychological series is the _Parmenides_, in which
the great Eleatic philosopher, in company with his disciple Zeno, is
imagined instructing the youthful Socrates when the two were on a visit
to Athens, which may or may not be historical (see above, p. 34). The
most striking portion of this dialogue is the criticism already alluded
to of Plato's own theory of Ideas, put into the mouth of Parmenides.
Parmenides ascertains from Socrates that he is quite clear about there
being Ideas of Justice, Beauty, Goodness, eternally existing, but how
about Ideas of such common things as hair, mud, filth, etc.? Socrates
is not so sure; to which Parmenides rejoins that as he grows older
philosophy will take a surer hold of him, and that he will recognise
the same law in small things and in great.
But now as to the nature of these Ideas. What, Parmenides asks, is the
relation of these, as eternally existing in the mind of God, to the
same ideas as possessed by individual men? Does each individual
actually _partake_ in the thought of God through {158} the ideas, or
are his ideas only _resemblances_ of the eternal? If he partakes, then
the eternal ideas are not one but many, as many as the persons who
possess them. If his ideas only resemble, then there must be some
basis of reference by which the resemblance is established, a _tertium
quid_ or third existence resembling both, and so _ad infinitum_.
Socrates is puzzled by this, and suggests that perhaps the Ideas are
only notions in our minds. But to this it is replied that there is an
end in that case of any reality in our ideas. Unless in some way they
have a true and causal relation with something beyond our minds, there
is an end of mind altogether, and with mind gone everything goes.
This, as Professor Jowett remarks, "remains a difficulty for us as well
as for the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, and is the
stumbling-block of Kant's _Critic_, and of the Hamiltonian adaptation
of Kant as well as of the Platonic ideas. It has been said that 'you
cannot criticise Revelation.' 'Then how do you know what is
Revelation, or that there is one at all?' is the immediate rejoinder.
'You know nothing of things in themselves.'--'Then how do you know that
there are things in themselves?' In some respects the difficulty
pressed harder upon the Greek than upon ourselves. For conceiving of
God more under the attribute of knowledge than we do, he was more under
the necessity of {159} separating the divine from the human, as two
spheres which had no communication with one another."
Next follows an extraordinary analysis of the ideas of 'Being' and
'Unity,' remarkable not only for its subtlety, but for the relation
which it historically bears to the modern philosophic system of Hegel.
"Every affirmation is _ipso facto_ a negation;" "the negation of a
negation is an affirmation;" these are the psychological (if not
metaphysical) facts, on which the analysis of Parmenides and the
philosophy of Hegel are both founded.
We may pass more rapidly by the succeeding dialogues of the series: the
_Theaetetus_ (already quoted from above, p. 89), which is a close and
powerful investigation of the nature of knowledge on familiar Platonic
lines; the _Sophist_, which is an analysis of fallacious reasoning; and
the _Statesman_, which, under the guise of a dialectical search for the
true ruler of men, represents once more Plato's ideal of government,
and contrasts this with the ignorance and charlatanism of actual
politics.
In relation to subsequent psychology, and more particularly to the
logical system of Aristotle, these dialogues are extremely important.
We may indeed say that the systematic logic of Aristotle, as contained
in the _Organon_, is little more than an abstract {160} or digest of
the logical theses of these dialogues. Definition and division, the
nature and principle of classification, the theory of predication, the
processes of induction and deduction, the classification and criticism
of fallacies,--all these are to be found in them. The only addition
really made by Aristotle was the systematic theory of the syllogism.
The _Laws_, the longest of Plato's works, seems to have been composed
by him in the latest years of his long life, and was probably not
published till after his death. It bears traces of its later origin in
the less artful juncture of its parts, in the absence of humour, in the
greater overloading of details, in the less graphic and appropriate
characterisation of the speakers. These speakers are three--an
Athenian, a Cretan, and a Spartan. A new colony is to be led forth
from Crete, and the Cretan takes advice of the others as to the
ordering of the new commonwealth. We are no longer, as in _The
Republic_, in an ideal world, a city coming down from, or set in, the
heavens. There is no longer a perfect community; nor are philosophers
to be its kings. Laws more or less similar to those of Sparta fill
about half the book. But the old spirit of obedience and
self-sacrifice and community is not forgotten; and on all men and
women, noble and humble alike, the duty is cast, to bear in common the
common burden of life.
{161}
Thus, somewhat in sadness and decay, yet with a dignity and moral
grandeur not unworthy of his life's high argument, the great procession
of the Ideal Philosopher's dialogues closes.
{162}
CHAPTER XVII
PLATO (_concluded_)
_Search for universals--The thoughts of God--God cause and
consummation--Dying to earth--The Platonic education_
If we attempt now, by way of appendix to this very inadequate summary
of the dialogues, to give in brief review some account of the main
doctrines of Plato, as they may be gathered from a general view of
them, we are at once met by difficulties many and serious. In the case
of a genius such as Plato's, at once ironical, dramatic, and
allegorical, we cannot be absolutely certain that in any given passage
Plato is expressing, at all events adequately and completely, his own
personal views, even at the particular stage of his own mental
development then represented. And when we add to this that in a long
life of unceasing intellectual development, Plato inevitably grew out
of much that once satisfied him, and attained not infrequently to new
points of view even of doctrines or conceptions which remained
essentially unchanged, a Platonic dogma in the strict sense must
clearly not be expected. One may, however, attempt in rough outline to
summarise the main {163} _tendencies_ of his thought, without
professing to represent its settled and authenticated results.
[251]
We may begin by an important summary of Plato's philosophy given by
Aristotle (_Met_. A. 6): "In immediate succession to the Pythagorean
and Eleatic philosophies came the work of Plato. In many respects his
views coincided with these; in some respects, however, he is
independent of the Italians. For in early youth he became a student of
Cratylus and of the school of Heraclitus, and accepted from them the
view that the objects of sense are in eternal flux, and that of these,
therefore, there can be no absolute knowledge. Then came Socrates, who
busied himself only with questions of morals, and not at all with the
world of physics. But in his ethical inquiries his search was ever for
universals, and he was the first to set his mind to the discovery of
definitions. Plato following him in this, came to the conclusion that
these universals could not belong to the things of sense, which were
ever changing, but to some other kind of existences. Thus he came to
conceive of universals as forms or _ideas_ of real existences, by
reference to which, and in consequence of analogies to which, the
things of sense in every case received their names, and became
thinkable objects."
From this it followed to Plato that in so far as the senses took an
illusive appearance of themselves giving {164} the knowledge which
really was supplied by reason as the organ of ideas, in the same degree
the body which is the instrument of sense can only be a source of
illusion and a hindrance to knowledge. The wise man, therefore, will
seek to free himself from the bonds of the body, and die while he lives
by philosophic contemplation, free as far as possible from the
disturbing influence of the senses. This process of _rational_
realisation Plato called Dialectic. The objects contemplated by the
reason, brought into consciousness on the occurrence of sensible
perception, but never caused by these, were not mere notions in the
mind of the individual thinker, nor were they mere properties of
individual things; this would be to make an end of science on the one
hand, of reality on the other. Nor had they existence in any mere
place, not even beyond the heavens. Their home was Mind, not this mind
or that, but Mind Universal, which is God.
In these 'thoughts of God' was the root or essence which gave reality
to the things of sense; they were the Unity which realised itself in
multiplicity. It is because things partake of the Idea that we give
them a name. The thing as such is seen, not known; the idea as such is
known, not seen.
[252]
The whole conception of Plato in this connection is based on the
assumption that there is such a thing as knowledge. If all things are
ever in change, then knowledge is impossible; but conversely, if there
is {165} such a thing as knowledge, then there must be a continuing
object of knowledge; and beauty, goodness, [253] reality are then no
dreams. The process of apprehension of these 'thoughts of God,' these
eternal objects of knowledge, whether occasioned by sensation or not,
is essentially a process of self-inquiry, or, as he in one stage called
it, of Reminiscence. The process is the same in essence, whether going
on in thought or expressed in speech; it is a process of _naming_. Not
that names ever resemble realities fully; they are only approximations,
limited by the conditions [254] of human error and human convention.
There is nevertheless an inter-communion between ideas and things. We
must neither go entirely with those who affirm the one (the Eleatics),
nor with those who affirm the many (the Heracliteans), but accept both.
There is a union in all that exists both of That Which _Is_, and of
that concerning which all we can say is that it is _Other_ than what
is. This 'Other,' through union with what is, attains to being of a
kind; while on the other hand, What Is by union with the 'Other'
attains to variety, and thus more fully realises itself.
[258]
That which Plato here calls 'What Is' he elsewhere calls 'The Limiting
or Defining'; the 'Other' he calls 'The Unlimited or Undefined.' Each
has a function in the divine process. The thoughts of God attain
realisation in the world of things which change and pass, through the
infusion {166} of themselves in, or the superimposing of themselves
upon, that which is Nothing apart from them,--the mere negation of what
is, and yet necessary as the 'Other' or correlative of what is. Thus
we get, in fact, _four_ forms of existence: there is the Idea or
Limiting (apart); there is the Negative or Unlimited (apart), there is
the Union of the two (represented in language by subject and
predicate), which as a whole is this frame of things as we know it; and
fourthly, there is the _Cause_ of the Union, which is God. And God is
cause not only as the beginning of all things, but also as the measure
and law of their perfection, and the end towards which they go. He is
the Good, and the cause of Good, and the consummation and realisation
of Good.
This absolute Being, this perfect Good, we cannot see, blinded as we
are, like men that have been dwelling in a cave, by excess of light.
We must, therefore, look on Him indirectly, as on an image of Him, in
our own souls and in the world, in so far as in either we discern, by
reason, that which is rational and good.
[269]
Thus God is not only the cause and the end of all good, He is also the
cause and the end of all knowledge. Even as the sun is not only the
most glorious of all visible objects, but is also the cause of the life
and beauty of all other things, and the provider of the light whereby
we see them, so also {167} is it for the eye of the soul. God is its
light, God is the most glorious object of its contemplation, God we
behold imaged forth in all the objects which the soul by reason
contemplates.
[260]
The ideas whereof the 'Other' (or, as he again calls it, the 'Great and
Small' or 'More and Less,' meaning that which is unnamable, or wholly
neutral in character, and which may therefore be represented equally by
contradictory attributes) by participation becomes a resemblance, Plato
compared to the 'Numbers' of the Pythagoreans (cf. above, p. 25).
Hence, Aristotle remarks (_Met_. A. 6), Plato found in the ideas the
originative or formative Cause of things, that which made them what
they were or could be called,--their _Essence_; in the 'Great and
Small' he found the opposite principle or _Matter_ (Raw Material) of
things.
In this way the antithesis of Mind and Matter, whether on the great
scale in creation or on the small in rational perception, is not an
antithesis of unrelated opposition. Each is correlative of the other,
so to speak as the male and the female; the one is generative,
formative, active, positive; the other is capable of being impregnated,
receptive, passive, negative; but neither can realise itself apart from
the other.
[262]
This relation of 'Being' with that which is 'Other than Being' is
Creation, wherein we can {168} conceive of the world as coming to be,
yet not in [261] Time. And in the same way Plato speaks of a third
form, besides the Idea and that which receives it, namely, 'Formless
Space, the mother of all things.' As Kant might have formulated it,
Time and Space are not prior to creation, they are forms under which
creation becomes thinkable.
[271]
The 'Other' or Negative element, Plato more or less vaguely connected
with the evil that is in the world. This evil we can never expect to
perish utterly from the world; it must ever be here as the antithesis
of the good. But with the gods it dwells not; here in this mortal
nature, and in this region of mingling, it must of necessity still be
found. The wise man will therefore seek to die to the evil, and while
yet in this world of mortality, to think immortal things, and so as far
as may be flee from the evil. Thereby shall he liken himself to the
divine. For it is a likening to the divine to be just and holy and
true.
[273]
This, then, is the _summum bonum_, the end of life. For as the
excellence or end of any organ or instrument consists in that
perfection of its parts, whereby each separately and the whole together
work well towards the fulfilling of that which it is designed to
accomplish, so the excellence of man must consist in a perfect ordering
of all his parts to the perfect working of his whole organism as a
{169} [276] rational being. The faculties of man are three: the Desire
of the body, the Passion of the heart, the Thought of the soul; the
perfect working of all three, Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, and
consequently the perfect working of the whole man, is Righteousness.
From this springs that ordered tranquillity which is at once true
happiness and perfect virtue.
[277]
Yet since individual men are not self-sufficient, but have separate
capacities, and a need of union for mutual help and comfort, the
perfect realisation of this virtue can only be in a perfect civic [278]
community. And corresponding with the three parts of the man there
will be three orders in the community: the Workers and Traders, the
Soldiers, and the Ruling or Guardian class. When all these perform
their proper functions in perfect harmony, then is the perfection of
the whole realised, in Civic Excellence or Justice.
[281]
To this end a careful civic education is necessary, _first_, because to
_know_ what is for the general good is difficult, for we have to learn
not only in general but in detail that even the individual good can be
secured only through the general; and _second_, because few, if any,
are capable of seeking the general good, even if they know it, without
the guidance of discipline and the restraints of law. Thus, with a
view to its own perfection, and the good of all {170} its members,
Education is the chief work of the State.
It will be remembered (see foregoing page) that in Plato's division of
the soul of man there are three faculties, Desire, Passion, Reason; in
the division of the soul's perfection three corresponding virtues,
Temperance, Courage, Wisdom; and in the division of the state three
corresponding orders, Traders, Soldiers, Guardians. So in Education
there are three stages. First, _Music_ (including all manner of
artistic and refining influences), whose function it is so to attemper
the desires of the heart that all animalism and sensualism may be
eliminated, and only the love and longing for that which is lovely and
of good report may remain. Second, _Gymnastic_, whose function it is
through ordered labour and suffering so to subdue and rationalise the
passionate part of the soul, that it may become the willing and
obedient servant of that which is just and true. And third,
_Mathematics_, by which the rational element of the soul may be trained
to realise itself, being weaned, by the ordered apprehension of the
'diamond net' of laws which underlie all the phenomena of nature, away
from the mere surface appearances of things, the accidental,
individual, momentary,--to the deep-seated realities, which are
necessary, universal, eternal.
And just as there was a perfectness of the soul {171} transcending all
particular virtues, whether of Temperance or Courage or Wisdom, namely,
that absolute Rightness or Righteousness which gathered them all into
itself, so at the end of these three stages of education there is a
higher mood of thought, wherein the soul, purified, chastened,
enlightened, in communing with itself through _Dialectic_ (the Socratic
art of questioning transfigured) communes also with the Divine, and in
thinking out its own deepest thoughts, thinks out the thoughts of the
great Creator Himself, becomes one with Him, finds its final
realisation through absorption into Him, and in His light sees light.
{172}
CHAPTER XVIII
ARISTOTLE
_An unruly pupil--The philosopher's library--The predominance of
Aristotle--Relation to Plato--The highest philosophy--Ideas and
things--The true realism_
Plato before his death bequeathed his Academy to his nephew Speusippus,
who continued its president for eight years; and on his death the
office passed to Xenocrates, who held it for twenty-five years. From
him it passed in succession to Polemo, Crates, Crantor, and others.
Plato was thus the founder of a school or sect of teachers who busied
themselves with commenting, expanding, modifying here and there the
doctrines of the master. Little of their works beyond the names has
been preserved, and indeed we can hardly regret the loss. These men no
doubt did much to popularise the thoughts of their master, and in this
way largely influenced the later development of philosophy; but they
had nothing substantial to add, and so the stern pruning-hook of time
has cut them off from remembrance.
[297]
Aristotle was the son of a Greek physician, member of the colony of
Stagira in Thrace. His father, Nicomachus by name, was a man of such
{173} eminence in his profession as to hold the post of physician to
Amyntas, king of Macedonia, father of Philip the subverter of Greek
freedom. Not only was his father an expert physician, he was also a
student of natural history, and wrote several works on the subject. We
shall find that the fresh element which Aristotle brought to the
Academic philosophy was in a very great measure just that minute
attention to details and keen apprehension of vital phenomena which we
may consider he inherited from his father. He was born 384 B.C., and
on the death of his father, in his eighteenth year, he came to Athens,
and became a student of philosophy under Plato, whose pupil he
continued to be for twenty years,--indeed till the death of the master.
That he, undoubtedly a far greater man than Speusippus or Xenocrates,
should not have been nominated to the succession has been variously
explained; he is said to have been lacking in respect and gratitude to
the master; Plato is said to have remarked of him that he needed the
curb as much as Xenocrates needed the spur. The facts really need no
explanation. The original genius is never sufficiently subordinate and
amenable to discipline. He is apt to be critical, to startle his
easy-going companions with new and seemingly heterodox views, he is the
'ugly duckling' whom all the virtuous and commonplace brood must cackle
{174} at. The Academy, when its great master died, was no place for
Aristotle. He retired to Atarneus, a city of Mysia opposite to Lesbos,
where a friend named Hermias was tyrant, and there he married Hermias'
niece. After staying at Atarneus some three years he was invited by
Philip, now king of Macedon, to undertake the instruction of his son
Alexander, the future conqueror, who was then thirteen years old. He
remained with Alexander for eight years, though of course he could
hardly be regarded as Alexander's tutor during all that time, since
Alexander at a very early age was called to take a part in public
affairs. However a strong friendship was formed between the
philosopher and the young prince, and in after years Alexander loaded
his former master with benefits. Even while on his march of conquest
through Asia he did not forget him, but sent him from every country
through which he passed specimens which might help him in his projected
History of Animals, as well as an enormous sum of money to aid him in
his investigations.
After the death of Philip, Aristotle returned to Athens, and opened a
school of philosophy on his own account in the Lyceum. Here some
authorities tell us he lectured to his pupils while he paced up and
down before them; hence the epithet applied to the school, the
_Peripatetics_. Probably, however, the name is derived from the
'Peripati' or covered {175} walks in the neighbourhood of that temple
in which he taught. He devoted his mornings to lectures of a more
philosophical and technical character; to these only the abler and more
advanced students were admitted. In the afternoons he lectured on
subjects of a more popular kind--rhetoric, the art of politics,
etc.--to larger audiences. Corresponding with this division, he also
was in the habit of classifying his writings as Acroatic or technical,
and Exoteric or popular. He accumulated a large library and museum, to
which he contributed an astonishing number of works of his own, on
every conceivable branch of knowledge.
The after history of Aristotle's library, including the MSS. of his own
works, is interesting and even romantic. Aristotle's successor in the
school was Theophrastus, who added to the library bequeathed him by
Aristotle many works of his own, and others purchased by him.
Theophrastus bequeathed the entire library to Neleus, his friend and
pupil, who, on leaving Athens to reside at Scepsis in the Troad, took
the library with him. There it remained for nearly two hundred years
in possession of the Neleus family, who kept the collection hidden in a
cellar for fear it should be seized to increase the royal library of
Pergamus. In such a situation the works suffered much harm from worms
and damp, till at last (_circa_ 100 B.C.) they were brought out {176}
and sold to one Apellicon, a rich gentleman resident in Athens, himself
a member of the Peripatetic school. In 86 B.C. Sulla, the Roman
dictator, besieged and captured Athens, and among other prizes conveyed
the library of Apellicon to Rome, and thus many of the most important
works of Aristotle for the first time were made known to the Roman and
Alexandrian schools. It is a curious circumstance that the philosopher
whose influence was destined to be paramount for more than a thousand
years in the Christian era, was thus deprived by accident of his
legitimate importance in the centuries immediately following his own.
But his temporary and accidental eclipse was amply compensated in the
effect upon the civilised world which he subsequently exercised. So
all-embracing, so systematic, so absolutely complete did his philosophy
appear, that he seemed to after generations to have left nothing more
to discover. He at once attained a supremacy which lasted for some two
thousand years, not only over the Greek-speaking world, but over every
form of the civilisation of that long period, Greek, Roman, Syrian,
Arabic, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from Africa to Britain.
His authority was accepted equally by the learned doctors of Moorish
Cordova and the Fathers of the Church; to know Aristotle was to have
all {177} knowledge; not to know him was to be a boor; to deny him was
to be a heretic.
His style has nothing of the grace of Plato; he illuminates his works
with no myths or allegories; his manner is dry, sententious, familiar,
without the slightest attempt at ornament. There are occasional
touches of caustic humour, but nothing of emotion, still less of
rhapsody. His strength lies in the vast architectonic genius by which
he correlates every domain of the knowable in a single scheme, and in
the extraordinary faculty for illustrative detail with which he fills
the scheme in every part. He knows, and can shrewdly criticise every
thinker and writer who has preceded him; he classifies them as he
classifies the mental faculties, the parts of logical speech, the parts
of sophistry, the parts of rhetoric, the parts of animals, the parts of
the soul, the parts of the state; he defines, distinguishes, combines,
classifies, with the same sureness and minuteness of method in them
all. He can start from a general conception, expand it into its parts,
separate these again by distinguishing details till he brings the
matter down to its lowest possible terms, or _infimae species_. Or he
can start from these, find analogies among them constituting more
general species, and so in ascending scale travel surely up to a
general conception, or _summum genus_.
In his general conception of philosophy he was {178} to a large extent
in agreement with Plato; but he endeavoured to attain to a more
technical precision; he sought to systematise into greater
completeness; he pared off everything which he considered merely
metaphorical or fanciful, and therefore non-essential. The operations
of nature, the phenomena of life, were used in a much fuller and more
definite way to illustrate or even formulate the theory; but in its
main ideas Aristotle's philosophy is Plato's philosophy. The one
clothed it in poetry, the other in formulae; the one had a more
entrancing vision, the other a clearer and more exact apprehension; but
there is no essential divergence.
Aristotle's account of the origin or foundation of [300] philosophy is
as follows (_Met_. A. 2): "Wonder is and always has been the first
incentive to philosophy. At first men wondered at what puzzled them
near at hand, then by gradual advance they came to notice and wonder at
things still greater, as at the phases of the moon, the eclipses of sun
and moon, the wonders of the stars, and the origin of the universe.
Now he who is puzzled and in a maze regards himself as a know-nothing;
wherefore the philosopher is apt to be fond of wondrous tales or myths.
And inasmuch as it was a consciousness of ignorance that drove men to
philosophy, it is for the correction of this ignorance, and not for any
material utility, that the pursuit of knowledge exists. Indeed it is,
{179} as a rule, only when all other wants are well supplied that, by
way of ease and recreation, men turn to this inquiry. And thus, since
no satisfaction beyond itself is sought by philosophy, we speak of it
as we speak of the freeman. We call that man free whose existence is
for himself and not for another; so also philosophy is of all the
sciences the only one that is free, for it alone exists for itself.
"Moreover, this philosophy, which is the investigation of the first
causes of things, is the most truly educative among the sciences. For
instructors are persons who show us the causes of things. And
knowledge for the sake of knowledge belongs most properly to that
inquiry which deals with what is most truly a matter of knowledge. For
he who is seeking knowledge for its own sake will choose to have that
knowledge which most truly deserves the name, the knowledge, namely, of
what most truly appertains to knowledge. Now the things that most
truly appertain to knowledge are the first causes; for in virtue of
one's possession of these, and by deduction from these, all else comes
to be known; we do not come to know them through what is inferior to
them and underlying them. . . . The wise man ought therefore to know
not only those things which are the outcome and product of first
causes, he must be possessed of the truth as to the first causes
themselves. And wisdom indeed is just this {180} thoughtful science, a
science of what is highest, not truncated of its head."
[301]
"To the man, therefore, who has in fullest measure this knowledge of
universals, all knowledge must lie to hand; for in a way he knows all
that underlies them. Yet in a sense these universals are what men find
hardest to apprehend, because they stand at the furthest extremity from
the perceptions of sense."
[302]
"Yet if anything exist which is eternal, immovable, freed from gross
matter, the contemplative science alone can apprehend this. Physical
science certainly cannot, for physics is of that which is ever in flux;
nor can mathematical science apprehend it; we must look to a mode of
science prior to and higher than both. The objects of physics are
neither unchangeable nor free from matter; the objects of mathematics
are indeed unchangeable, but we can hardly say they are free from
matter; they have certainly relations with matter. But the first and
highest science has to do with that which is unmoved and apart from
matter; its function is with the eternal first causes of things. There
are therefore three modes of theoretical inquiry: the science of
physics, the science of mathematics, the science of God. For it is
clear that if the divine is anywhere, it must be in that form of
existence I have spoken of (_i.e._ in first causes). . . . If,
therefore, there be {181} any form of existence immovable, this we must
regard as prior, and the philosophy of this we must consider the first
philosophy, universal for the same reason that it is first. It deals
with existence as such, inquiring what it is and what are its
attributes as pure existence."
This is somewhat more technical than the language of Plato, but if we
compare it with what was said above (p. 142) we shall find an essential
identity. Yet Aristotle frequently impugns Plato's doctrine of ideas,
sometimes on the lines already [322] taken by Plato himself (above, p.
158), sometimes in other ways. Thus (_Met_. Z. 15, 16) he says: "That
which is _one_ cannot be in many places at one time, but that which is
common or general is in many places at one time. Hence it follows that
no universal exists apart from the individual things. But those who
hold the doctrine of ideas, on one side are right, viz. in maintaining
their separate existence, if they are to be substances or existences at
all. On the other side they are wrong, because by the idea or form
which they maintain to be separate they mean the one attribute
predicable of many things. The reason why they do this is because they
cannot indicate what these supposed imperishable essences are, apart
from the individual substances which are the objects of perception.
The result is that they simply represent them under the same forms as
{182} those of the perishable objects of sensation which are familiar
to our senses, with the addition of a phrase--_i.e._ they say 'man as
such,' 'horse as such,' or 'the absolute man,' 'the absolute horse.'"
Aristotle here makes a point against Plato and his school, inasmuch as,
starting from the assumption that of the world of sense there could be
no knowledge, no apprehension fixed or certain, and setting over
against this a world of general forms which were fixed and certain,
they had nothing with which to fill this second supposed world except
the data of sense as found in individuals. Plato's mistake was in
confusing the mere 'this,' which is the conceived starting-point of any
sensation, but which, like a mathematical point, has nothing which can
be said about it, with individual objects as they exist and are known
in all the manifold and, in fact, infinite relations of reality. The
bare subject 'this' presents at the one extreme the same emptiness, the
same mere possibility of knowledge, which is presented at the other by
the bare predicate 'is.' But Plato, having an objection to the former,
as representing to him the merely physical and therefore the passing
and unreal, clothes it for the nonce in the various attributes which
are ordinarily associated with it when we say, 'this man,' 'this
horse,' only to strip them off successively as data of sensation, and
so at last get, by an illusory process of {183} abstraction and
generalisation, to the ultimate generality of being, which is the mere
'is' of bare predication converted into a supposed eternal substance.
Aristotle was as convinced as Plato that there must be some fixed and
immovable object or reality corresponding to true and certain
knowledge, but with his scientific instincts he was not content to have
it left in a condition of emptiness, attractive enough to the more
emotional and imaginative Plato. And hence we have elsewhere quite as
strong and definite statements as those quoted above about universals
[316] (p. 180), to the effect that existence is in the fullest and most
real sense to be predicated of _individual_ things, and that only in a
secondary sense can existence be predicated of universals, in virtue of
their being found in individual things. Moreover, among universals the
_species_, he maintains, has more of existence in it than the genus,
because it is nearer to the individual or primary existence. For if
you predicate of an individual thing of what species it is, you supply
a statement more full of information and more closely connected with
the thing than if you predicate to what genus it belongs; for example,
if asked, "What is this?" and you answer, "A man," you give more
information than if you say, "A living creature."
How did Aristotle reconcile these two points of {184} view, the one, in
which he conceives thought as starting from first causes, the most
universal objects of knowledge, and descending to particulars; the
other, in which thought starts from the individual objects, and
predicates of them by apprehension of their properties? The antithesis
is no accidental one; on the contrary, it is the governing idea of his
Logic, with its ascending process or Induction, and its descending
process or Syllogism. Was thought a mere process in an unmeaning
circle, the 'upward and downward way' of Plato?
As to this we may answer first that while formally Aristotle displays
much the same 'dualism' or unreconciled separation of the 'thing' and
the 'idea' as Plato, his practical sense and his scientific instincts
led him to occupy himself largely not with either the empty 'thing' or
the equally empty 'idea,' but with the true _individuals_, which are at
the same time the true universals, namely, real objects as known,
having, so far as they are known, certain forms or categories under
which you can class them, having, so far as they are not yet fully
known, a certain raw material for further inquiry through observation.
In this way Thought and Matter, instead of being in eternal and
irreconcilable antagonism as the Real and the Unreal, become parts of
the same reality, the first summing up the knowledge of things already
attained, the second symbolising the infinite {185} [317] possibilities
of further ascertainment. And thus the word 'Matter' is applied by
Aristotle to the highest genus, as the relatively indefinite compared
with the more fully defined species included under it; it is also
applied by him to the individual object, in so far as that object
contains qualities not yet fully brought into predication.
[319]
And second, we observe that Aristotle introduced a new conception which
to his view established a _vital relation_ between the universal and
the individual. This conception he formulated in the correlatives,
_Potentiality_ and _Actuality_. With these he closely connected the
idea of _Final Cause_. The three to Aristotle constituted a single
reality; they are organically correlative. In a living creature we
find a number of members or organs all closely interdependent and
mutually conditioning each other. Each has its separate function, yet
none of them can perform its particular function well unless all the
others are performing theirs well, and the effect of the right
performance of function by each is to enable the others also to perform
theirs. The total result of all these mutually related functions is
_Life_; this is their End or Final Cause, which does not exist apart
from them, but is constituted at every moment by them. This Life is at
the same time the condition on which alone each and every one of the
functions constituting it can be performed. Thus {186} life in an
organism is at once the end and the middle and the beginning; it is the
cause final, the cause formal, the cause efficient. Life then is an
_Entelechy_, as Aristotle calls it, by which he means the realisation
in unity of the total activities exhibited in the members of the living
organism.
In such an existence every part is at once a potentiality and an
actuality, and so also is the whole. We can begin anywhere and travel
out from that point to the whole; we can take the whole and find in it
all the parts.
{187}
CHAPTER XIX
ARISTOTLE (_continued_)
_Realisation and reminiscence--The crux of philosophy--Reason in
education--The chief good--Origin of communities_
If we look closely at this conception of Aristotle's we shall see that
it has a nearer relation to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and even to
the doctrine of Reminiscence, than perhaps even Aristotle himself
realised. The fundamental conception of Plato, it will be remembered,
is that of an eternally existing 'thought of God,' in manifold forms or
'ideas,' which come into the consciousness of men in connection with or
on occasion of sensations, which are therefore in our experience later
than the sensations, but which we nevertheless by reason recognise as
necessarily prior to the sensations, inasmuch as it is through these
ideas alone that the sensations are knowable or namable at all. Thus
the final end for man is by contemplation and 'daily dying to the world
of sense,' to come at last into the full inheritance in conscious
knowledge of that 'thought of God' which was latent from the first in
his soul, and of which in its fulness God Himself is eternally and
necessarily possessed.
{188}
[311]
This is really Aristotle's idea, only Plato expresses it rather under a
psychological, Aristotle under a vital, formula. God, Aristotle says,
is eternally and necessarily Entelechy, absolute realisation. _To us_,
that which is first _in time_ (the individual perception) is not first
in _essence_, or absolutely. What is first in essence or absolutely,
is the universal, that is, the form or idea, the datum of reason. And
this distinction between time and the absolute, between our individual
experience and the essential or ultimate reality, runs all through the
philosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the
'Reminiscence' of Plato.
This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms of
life, to education, to morals, to politics.
_Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every process
conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with
sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations
to that which is infinitely real,--the object, the real thing before
us,--which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the
other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind,
this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations to
another existence infinitely real,--the subject that thinks,--which
relations religion and morality and sentiment and love will never
exhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, if
we, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulated
information, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between the
two extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall find
both processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. That
is to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objects
known, by the operation of true thought and observation in the
discovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall be
increasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, by
the discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them.
Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutually
conditioning factors of the same organic function.
[316]
This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of
Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure,
and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than
Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually
contrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and the
organically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_.
But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards an
apprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favour
of mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind and
matter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical.
{190}
The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no
longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a crux
still. What is the meaning of this 'Ultimately'? Or, putting it in
Aristotle's formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality?
Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is no
unreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or in
germ _there_? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why this
groaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal 'By and by'
wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all the
clashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled and
satisfied? An illustration of Aristotle's attempt to answer this
question will be given later on (p. 201). That the answer is a failure
need not surprise us. If we even now 'see only as in a glass darkly'
on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing
'face to face.'
[326]
_Life_ is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown (above,
p. 186), but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. We
pass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants and
animals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we rise
still higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiar
function of man. Each is a _potentiality_ to that which is immediately
above it; in {191} other words, each contains in germ the possibilities
which are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there a
touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose running
through all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation for
something higher.
[339]
_Education_ is in like manner an entelechy. For what is the
_differentia_, the distinguishing character of the life of man?
Aristotle answers, the possession of reason. It is the action of
reason upon the desires that raises the life of man above the brutes.
This, observe, is not the restraining action of something wholly alien
to the desires, which is too often how Plato represents the matter.
This would be to lose the dynamic idea. The desires, as Aristotle
generally conceives them, are there in the animal life, prepared, so to
speak, to receive the organic perfection which reason alone can give
them. Intellect, on the other hand, is equally in need of the desires,
for thought without desire cannot supply motive. If intellect is
_logos_ or reason, desire is that which is fitted to be obedient to
reason.
It will be remembered that the question to which Plato addressed
himself in one of his earlier dialogues, already frequently referred
to, the _Meno_, was the teachableness of Virtue; in that dialogue he
comes to the conclusion that Virtue is teachable, but that there are
none capable of teaching it; for the {192} wise men of the time are
guided not by knowledge but by right opinion, or by a divine instinct
which is incommunicable. Plato is thus led to seek a machinery of
education, and it is with a view to this that he constructs his ideal
_Republic_. Aristotle took up this view of the state as educative of
the individual citizens, and brought it under the dynamic formula. In
the child reason is not actual; there is no rational law governing his
acts, these are the immediate result of the strongest impulse. Yet
only when a succession of virtuous acts has formed the virtuous habit
can a man be said to be truly good. How is this process to begin? The
answer is that the reason which is only latent or dynamic in the child
is actual or realised in the parent or teacher, or generally in the
community which educates the child. The law at first then is imposed
on the child from without, it has an appearance of unnaturalness, but
only an appearance. For the law is there in the child, prepared, as he
goes on in obedience, gradually to answer from within to the summons
from without, till along with the virtuous habit there emerges also
into the consciousness of the child, no longer a child but a man, the
apprehension of the law as his own truest nature.
These remarks on education are sufficient to show that in Morals also,
as conceived by Aristotle, there is a law of vital development. It may
be {193} sufficient by way of illustration to quote the introductory
sentences of Aristotle's _Ethics_, in which the question of the nature
of the chief good is, in his usual tentative manner, discussed: "If
there be any end of what we do which we desire for itself, while all
other ends are desired for it, that is, if we do not in every case have
some ulterior end (for if that were so we should go on to infinity, and
our efforts would be vain and useless), this ultimate end desired for
itself will clearly be the chief good and the ultimate best. Now since
every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is
for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims
at,--what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with
conduct? So far as the name goes all are pretty well agreed as to the
answer; gentle and simple alike declare it to be happiness, involving,
however, in their minds on the one hand well-living, on the other hand,
well-doing. When you ask them, however, to define this happiness more
exactly, you find that opinions are divided, and the many and the
philosophers have different answers.
"But if you ask a musician or a sculptor or any man of skill, any
person, in fact, who has some special work and activity, what the chief
good is for him, he will tell you that the chief good is in the work
well done. If then man has any special work or function, we may assume
that the chief good for man {194} will be in the well-doing of that
function. What now is man's special function? It cannot be mere
living, for that he has in common with plants, and we are seeking what
is peculiar to him. The mere life of nurture and growth must therefore
be put on one side. We come next to life as sensitive to pleasure and
pain. But this man shares with the horse, the ox, and other animals.
What remains is the life of action of a reasonable being. Now of
reason as it is in man there are two parts, one obeying, one possessing
and considering. And there are also two aspects in which the active or
moral life may be taken, one potential, one actual. Clearly for our
definition of the chief good we must take the moral life in its full
actual realisation, since this is superior to the other.
"If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good for
man consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of man
as man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to that
life, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then in
accordance with that excellence which is the best and the most rounded
or complete. We must add, however, the qualification, 'in a rounded
life.' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day. And
so one day or some brief period of attainment is not sufficient to make
a man happy and blest."
{195}
The close relation of this to the teaching of Socrates and Plato need
hardly be insisted on, or the way in which he correlates their ideas
with his own conception of an actualised perfection.
[340]
Aristotle then proceeds to a definition of the 'specific excellence' or
virtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how far
he has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. To
this end he distinguishes in man's nature three modes of existence:
first, _feelings_ such as joy, pain, anger; second, _potentialities_ or
capacities for such feelings; third, _habits_ which are built upon
these potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberation
superadded. He has no difficulty in establishing that the virtue of
man must be a habit. And the test of the excellence of that habit, as
of every other developed capacity, will be twofold; it will make the
worker good, it will cause him to produce good work.
So far Aristotle's analysis of virtue is quite on the lines of his
general philosophy. Here, however, he diverges into what seems at
first a curiously mechanical conception. Pointing out that in
everything quantitative there are two extremes conceivable, and a
_mean_ or average between them, he proceeds to define virtue as a mean
between two extremes, a mean, however, having relation to no mere
numerical standard, but having reference _to us_. In this last {196}
qualification he perhaps saves his definition from its mechanical turn,
while he leaves himself scope for much curious and ingenious
observation on the several virtues regarded as means between two
extremes. He further endeavours to save it by adding, that it is
"defined by reason, and as the wise man would define it."
Reason then, as the impersonal ruler,--the wise man, as the
personification of reason,--this is the standard of virtue, and
therefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externality
in our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comes
only when the law without is also recognised and accepted as the law
within? The answer of Aristotle, as of his predecessors, is that this
will be brought about by wise training and virtuous surroundings, in
short, by the civic community being itself good and happy. Thus we get
another dynamic relation; for regarded as a member of the body politic
each individual becomes a potentiality along with all the other
members, conditioned by the state of which he and they are members,
brought gradually into harmony with the reason which is in the state,
and in the process realising not his own possibilities only, but those
of the community also, which exists only in and through its members.
Thus each and all, in so far as they realise their own well-being by
the perfect development of the virtuous {197} habit in their lives,
contribute _ipso facto_ to the supreme end of the state, which is the
perfect realisation of the whole possibilities of the total organism,
and consequently of every member of it.
[342]
The _State_ therefore is also an entelechy. For man is not made to
dwell alone. "There is first the fact of sex; then the fact of
children; third, the fact of variety of capacity, implying variety of
position, some having greater powers of wisdom and forethought, and
being therefore naturally the rulers; others having bodily powers
suitable for carrying out the rulers' designs, and being therefore
naturally subjects. Thus we have as a first or simplest community the
family, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which,
seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, rises
from mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. This higher
existence is as natural and necessary as any simpler form, being, in
fact, the end or final and necessary perfection of all such lower forms
of existence. Man therefore is by the natural necessity of his being a
'political animal,' and he who is not a citizen,--that is, by reason of
something peculiar in his nature and not by a mere accident,--must
either be deficient or something superhuman. And while man is the
noblest of animals when thus fully perfected in an ordered community,
on the other hand when deprived of law and justice he is the very
worst. {198} For there is nothing so dreadful as lawlessness armed.
And man is born with the arms of thought and special capacities or
excellences, which it is quite possible for him to use for other and
contrary purposes. And therefore man is the most wicked and cruel
animal living when he is vicious, the most lustful and the most
gluttonous. The justice which restrains all this is a civic quality;
and law is the orderly arrangement of the civic community" (Arist.
_Pol_. i. p. 2).
{199}
CHAPTER XX
ARISTOTLE (_concluded_)
_God and necessity--The vital principle--Soul as realisation--Function
and capacity--His method_
Throughout Aristotle's physical philosophy the [334] same conception
runs: "All animals in their fully developed state require two members
above all--one whereby to take in nourishment, the other whereby to get
rid of what is superfluous. For no animal can exist or grow without
nourishment. And there is a third member in them all half-way between
these, in which resides the principle of their life. This is the
heart, which all blood-possessing animals have. From it comes the
arterial system which Nature has made hollow to contain the liquid
blood. The situation of the heart is a commanding one, being near the
middle and rather above than below, and rather towards the front than
the back. For Nature ever establishes that which is most honourable in
the most honourable places, unless some supreme necessity overrules.
We see this most clearly in the case of man; but the same tendency for
the heart to occupy the centre is seen also in {200} other animals,
when we regard only that portion of their body which is essential, and
the limit of this is at the place where superfluities are removed. The
limbs are arranged differently in different animals, and are not among
the parts essential to life; consequently animals may live even if
these are removed. . . . Anaxagoras says that man is the wisest of
animals because he possesses hands. It would be more reasonable to say
that he possesses hands because he is the wisest. For the hands are an
instrument; and Nature always assigns an instrument to the one fitted
to use it, just as a sensible man would. For it is more reasonable to
give a flute to a flute-player than to confer on a man who has some
flutes the art of playing them. To that which is the greater and
higher she adds what is less important, and not _vice versâ_.
Therefore to the creature fitted to acquire the largest number of
skills Nature assigned the hand, the instrument useful for the largest
number of purposes" (Arist. _De Part. An._ iv. p. 10).
[332]
And in the macrocosm, the visible and invisible world about us, the
same conception holds: "The existence of God is an eternally perfect
entelechy, a life everlasting. In that, therefore, which belongs to
the divine there must be an eternally perfect movement. Therefore the
heavens, which are as it were the body of the Divine, are in form a
sphere, of {201} necessity ever in circular motion. Why then is not
this true of every portion of the universe? Because there must of
necessity be a point of rest of the circling body at the centre. Yet
the circling body cannot rest either as a whole or as regards any part
of it, otherwise its motion could not be eternal, which by nature it
is. Now that which is a violation of nature cannot be eternal, but the
violation is posterior to that which is in accordance with nature, and
thus the unnatural is a kind of displacement or degeneracy from the
natural, taking the form of a coming into being.
"Necessity then requires earth, as the element standing still at the
centre. Now if there must be earth, there must be fire. For if one of
two opposites is natural or necessary, the other must be necessary too,
each, in fact, implying the necessity of the other. For the two have
the same substantial basis, only the positive form is naturally prior
to the negative; for instance, warm is prior to cold. And in the same
way motionlessness and heaviness are predicated in virtue of the
absence of motion and lightness, _i.e._ the latter are essentially
prior.
"Further, if there are fire and earth, there must also be the elements
which lie between these, each having an antithetic relation to each.
From this it follows that there must be a process of coming into being,
because none of these elements can be eternal, {202} but each affects,
and is affected by each, and they are mutually destructive. Now it is
not to be argued that anything which can be moved can be eternal,
except in the case of that which by its own nature has eternal motion.
And if coming into being must be predicated of these, then other forms
of change can also be predicated" (Arist. _De Coelo_, ii. p. 3).
This passage is worth quoting as illustrating, not only Aristotle's
conception of the divine entelechy, but also the ingenuity with which
he gave that appearance of logical completeness to the vague and
ill-digested scientific imaginations of the time, which remained so
evil an inheritance for thousands of years. It is to be observed, in
order to complete Aristotle's theory on this subject, that the four
elements, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, are all equally in a world which is
"contrary to nature," that is, the world of change, of coming into
being, and going out of being. Apart from these there is the element
of the Eternal Cosmos, which is "in accordance with nature," having its
own natural and eternal motion ever the same. This is the fifth or
divine element, the aetherial, by the schoolmen translated _Quinta
Essentia_, whence by a curious degradation we have our modern word
Quintessence, of that which is the finest and subtlest extract.
Still more clearly is the organic conception carried {203} out in
Aristotle's discussion of the Vital principle or Soul in the various
grades of living creatures and in man. It will be sufficient to quote
at length a chapter of Aristotle's treatise on the subject (_De Anima_,
ii. p. 1) in which this fundamental conception of Aristotle's
philosophy is very completely illustrated:--
"Now as to Substance we remark that this is one particular category
among existences, having three different aspects. First there is, so
to say, the raw material or Matter, having in it no definite character
or quality; next the Form or Specific character, in virtue of which the
thing becomes namable; and third, there is the Thing or Substance which
these two together constitute. The Matter is, in other words, the
_potentiality_ of the thing, the Form is the _realisation_ of that
potentiality. We may further have this realisation in two ways,
corresponding in character to the distinction between _knowledge_
(which we have but are not necessarily using) and actual
_contemplation_ or mental perception.
"Among substances as above defined those are most truly such which we
call _bodily objects_, and among these most especially objects which
are the products of nature, inasmuch as all other bodies must be
derived from them. Now among such natural objects some are possessed
of life, some are not; by _life_ I mean a process of spontaneous
nourishment, growth, and decay. Every natural {204} object having life
is a substance compounded, so to say, of several qualities. It is, in
fact, a bodily substance defined in virtue of its having life. Between
the living body thus defined and the Soul or Vital principle, a marked
distinction must be drawn. The body cannot be said to 'subsist in'
something else; rather must we say that it is the matter or substratum
in which something else subsists. And what we mean by the soul is just
this substance in the sense of the _form_ or specific character that
subsists in the natural body which is _potentially_ living. In other
words, the Soul is substance as _realisation_, only, however, of such a
body as has just been defined. Recalling now the distinction between
realisation as possessed knowledge and as actual contemplation, we
shall see that in its essential nature the Soul or Vital principle
corresponds rather with the first than with the second. For both sleep
and waking depend on the Soul or Life being there, but of these waking
only can be said to correspond with the active form of knowledge; sleep
is rather to be compared with the state of having without being
immediately conscious that we have. Now if we compare these two states
in respect of their priority of development in a particular person, we
shall see that the state of latent possession comes first. We may
therefore define the Soul or Vital principle as _The earliest {205}
realisation (entelechy) of a natural body having in it the potentiality
of life_.
"To every form of organic structure this definition applies, for even
the parts of plants are organs, although very simple ones; thus the
outer leaf is a protection to the pericarp, and the pericarp to the
fruit. Or, again, the roots are organs bearing an analogy to the mouth
in animals, both serving to take in food. Putting our definition,
then, into a form applicable to every stage of the Vital principle, we
shall say that _The Soul is the earliest realisation of a natural body
having organisation_.
"In this way we are relieved from the necessity of asking whether Soul
and body are one. We might as well ask whether the wax and the
impression are one, or, in short, whether the _matter_ of any object
and that whereof it is the matter or substratum are one. As has been
pointed out, unity and substantiality may have several significations,
but the truest sense of both is found in _realisation_.
"The general definition of the Soul or Vital principle above given may
be further explained as follows. The Soul is the _rational_ substance
(or function), that is to say, it is that which gives essential meaning
and reality to a body as knowable. Thus if an axe were a _natural_
instrument or organ, its rational substance would be found in its
realisation of what an axe means; this would be its _soul_. Apart
{206} from such realisation it would not be an axe at all, except in
name. Being, however, such as it is, the axe remains an axe
independently of any such realisation. For the statement that the Soul
is the _reason_ of a thing, that which gives it essential meaning and
reality, does not apply to such objects as an axe, but only to natural
bodies having power of spontaneous motion (including growth) and rest.
"Or we may illustrate what has been said by reference to the bodily
members. If the eye be a living creature, _sight_ will be its soul,
for this is the _rational_ substance (or function) of the eye. On the
other hand, the eye itself is the _material_ substance in which this
function subsists, which function being gone, the eye would no longer
be an eye, except in name, just as we can speak of the eye of a statue
or of a painted form. Now apply this illustration from a part of the
body to the whole. For as any one sense stands related to its organ,
so does the vital sense in general to the whole sensitive organism as
such, always remembering that we do not mean a dead body, but one which
really has in it potential life, as the seed or fruit has. Of course
there is a form of realisation to which the name applies in a specially
full sense, as when the axe is actually cutting, the eye actually
seeing, the man fully awake. But the Soul or Vital principle
corresponds rather with the _function_ of sight, or the _capacity_ for
cutting which {207} the axe has, the body, on the other hand, standing
in a relation of _potentiality_ to it. Now just as the eye may mean
both the actual organ or pupil, and also the function of sight, so also
the living creature means both the body and the soul. We cannot,
therefore, think of body apart from soul, or soul apart from body. If,
however, we regard the soul as composed of parts, we can see that the
realisation to which we give the name of soul is in some cases
essentially a realisation of certain parts of the body. We may,
however, conceive the soul as in other aspects separable, in so far as
the realisation cannot be connected with any bodily parts. Nay, we
cannot be certain whether the soul may not be the realisation or
perfection of the body as the sailor is of his boat."
Observe that at the last Aristotle, though very tentatively, leaves an
opening for immortality, where, as in the case of man, there are
functions of the soul, such as philosophic contemplation, which cannot
be related to bodily conditions. He really was convinced that in man
there was a portion of that diviner aether which dwelt eternally in the
heavens, and was the ever-moving cause of all things. If there was in
man a _passive_ mind, which became all things, as all things through
sensation affected it, there was also, Aristotle argued, a _creative_
mind in man, which is above, and unmixed with, that which it
apprehends, {208} gives laws to this, is essentially prior to all
particular knowledge, is therefore eternal, not subject to the
conditions of time and space, consequently indestructible.
Finally, as a note on Aristotle's method, one may observe in this
passage, _first_, Aristotle's use of 'defining examples,' the wax, the
leaf and fruit, the axe, the eye, etc.; _second_, his practice of
developing his distinctions gradually, Form and Matter in the abstract,
then in substances of every kind, then in natural bodies, then in
organic bodies of various grades, in separate organs, in the body as a
whole, and in the Soul as separable in man; and _thirdly_, his method
of approaching completeness in thought, by apparent contradictions or
qualifications, which aim at meeting the complexity of nature by an
equally organised complexity of analysis. To this let us simply add,
by way of final characterisation, that in the preceding pages we have
given but the merest fragment here and there of Aristotle's vast
accomplishment. So wide is the range of his ken, so minute his
observation, so subtle and complicated and allusive his illustrations,
that it is doubtful if any student of his, through all the centuries in
which he has influenced the world, ever found life long enough to
fairly and fully grasp him. Meanwhile he retains his grasp upon us.
Form and matter, final and efficient causes, potential and actual
existences, {209} substance, accident, difference, genus, species,
predication, syllogism, deduction, induction, analogy, and multitudes
of other joints in the machinery of thought for all time, were forged
for us in the workshop of Aristotle.
{210}
CHAPTER XXI
THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS
_Greek decay--The praises of Lucretius--Canonics--Physics--The proofs
of Lucretius--The atomic soul--Mental pleasures--Natural
pleasures--Lower philosophy and higher_
Philosophy, equally complete, equally perfect in all its parts, had its
final word in Plato and Aristotle; on the great lines of universal
knowledge no further really original structures were destined to be
raised by Greek hands. We have seen a parallelism between Greek
philosophy and Greek politics in their earlier phases (see above, p.
82); the same parallelism continues to the end. Greece broke the bonds
of her intense but narrow civic life and civic thought, and spread
herself out over the world in a universal monarchy and a cosmopolitan
philosophy; but with this widening of the area of her influence
reaction came and disruption and decay; an immense stimulus was given
on the one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thought
and knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was
'living Greece no more,' her politics sank to the level of a dreary
farce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, to
an Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust of
death,' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow and
stern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy,
faded as the life of Greece decayed.
[356]
The first phase of the change, _Scepticism_, or Pyrrhonism, as it was
named from its first teacher, need not detain us long. Pyrrho was
priest of Elis; in earlier life he accompanied Alexander the Great as
far as India, and is said to have become acquainted with certain of the
philosophic sects in that country. In his sceptical doctrine he had,
like his predecessors, a school with its succession of teachers; but
the [358] world has remembered little more of him or them than two
phrases 'suspense of judgment'--this for the intellectual side of
philosophy; 'impassibility'--this for the moral. The doctrine is a
negation of doctrine, the idle dream of idle men; even Pyrrho once,
when surprised in some sudden access of fear, confessed that it was
hard for him 'to get rid of the man in himself.' Vigorous men and
growing nations are never agnostic. They decline to rest in mere
suspense; they are extremely the opposite of impassive; they believe
earnestly, they feel strongly.
[365]
A more interesting, because more positive and constructive, personality
was that of Epicurus. This philosopher was born at Samos, in the year
341 B.C., of Athenian parents. He came to Athens in his eighteenth
year. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle at
the Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one nor the other. After
some wanderings he returned to Athens and set up on his [366] own
account as a teacher of philosophy. He made it a matter of boasting
that he was a self-taught philosopher; and Cicero (_De Nat. Deor._ i.
26) sarcastically remarks that one could have guessed as much, even if
Epicurus had not stated it himself; as one might of the proprietor of
an ugly house, who should boast that he had employed no architect. The
style of Epicurus was, in fact, plain and unadorned, but he seems all
the same to have been able to say what he meant; and few if any writers
ancient or modern have ever had so splendid a literary tribute, as
Epicurus had from the great Roman poet Lucretius, his follower and
expositor.
"Glory of the Greek race," he says, "who first hadst power to raise
high so bright a light in the midst of darkness so profound, shedding a
beam on all the interests of life, thee do I follow, and in the
markings of thy track do I set my footsteps now. Not that I desire to
rival thee, but rather for love of thee would fain call myself thy
disciple. For how shall the swallow rival the swan, or what speed may
the kid with its tottering limbs attain, compared with the brave might
of the scampering steed? Thou; O father, art the discoverer of nature,
thou suppliest to us a father's teachings, and from thy pages, {213}
illustrious one, even as bees sip all manner of sweets along the
flowery glades, we in like manner devour all thy golden words, golden
and right worthy to live for ever. For soon as thy philosophy, birth
of thy godlike mind, hath begun to declare the origin of things,
straightway the terrors of the soul are scattered, earth's walls are
broken apart, and through all the void I see nature in the working. I
behold the gods in manifestation of their power, I discern their
blissful seats, which never winds assail nor rain-clouds sprinkle with
their showers, nor snow falling white with hoary frost doth buffet, but
cloudless aether ever wraps them round, beaming in broad diffusion of
glorious light. For nature supplies their every want nor aught impairs
their peace of soul. But nowhere do I see any regions of hellish
darkness, nor does the earth impose a barrier to our sight of what is
done in the void beneath our feet. Wherefore a holy ecstasy and thrill
of awe possess me, while thus by thy power the secrets of nature are
disclosed to view" (Lucret. _De Nat. Rer._ iii, 1-30).
[367]
This devotion to the memory of Epicurus on the part of Lucretius was
paralleled by the love felt for him by his contemporaries; he had
crowds of followers who loved him and who were proud to learn his words
by heart. He seems indeed to have been a man of exceptional kindness
and amiability, and the 'garden of Epicurus' became proverbial as {214}
a place of temperate pleasures and wise delights. Personally we may
take it that Epicurus was a man of simple tastes and moderate desires;
and indeed throughout its history Epicureanism as a rule of conduct has
generally been associated with the finer forms of enjoyment, rather
than the more sensual. The 'sensual sty' is a nickname, not a
description.
[369]
Philosophy Epicurus defined as a process of thought and reasoning
tending to the realisation of happiness. Arts or sciences which had no
such practical end he contemned; and, as will be observed in Lucretius'
praises of him above, even physics had but one purpose or interest, to
free the soul from [370] terrors of the unseen. Thus philosophy was
mainly concerned with conduct, _i.e._ with Ethics, but secondarily and
negatively with Physics, to which was appended what Epicurus called
Canonics, or the science of testing, that is, a kind of logic.
[371]
Beginning with _Canonics_, as the first part of philosophy in order of
time, from the point of view of human knowledge, Epicurus laid it down
that the only source of knowledge was the senses, which gave us an
immediate and true perception of that which actually came into contact
with them. Even the visions of madmen or of dreamers he considered
were in themselves true, being produced by a physical cause of some
kind, of which these visions were the direct and immediate report.
Falsity came in with {215} people's interpretations or imaginations
with respect to these sensations.
Sensations leave a trace in the memory, and out of similarities or
analogies among sensations there are developed in the mind general
notions or types, such as 'man,' 'house,' which are also true, because
[373] they are reproductions of sensations. Thirdly, when a sensation
occurs, it is brought into relation in the mind with one or more of
these types or notions; this is _predication_, true also in so far as
its elements are true, but capable of falsehood, as subsequent or
independent sensation may prove. If supported or not contradicted by
sensation, it is or may be true; if contradicted or not supported by
sensation, it is or may be false. The importance of this statement of
the canon of truth or falsehood will be understood when we come to the
physics of Epicurus, at the basis of which is his theory of Atoms,
which by their very nature can never be directly testified to by
sensation.
[374]
This and no more was what Epicurus had to teach on the subject of
logic. He had no theory of definition, or division, or ratiocination,
or refutation, or explication; on all these matters Epicurus was, as
Cicero said, 'naked and unarmed.' Like most self-taught or ill-taught
teachers, Epicurus trusted to his dogmas; he knew nothing and cared
nothing for logical defence.
{216}
[375]
In his _Physics_ Epicurus did little more than reproduce the doctrine
of Democritus. He starts from the fundamental proposition that
'nothing can be produced from nothing, nothing can really perish.' The
veritable existences in nature are the Atoms, which are too minute to
be discernible by the senses, but which nevertheless have a definite
size, and cannot further be divided. They have also a definite weight
and form, but no qualities other than these. There is an infinity of
empty space; this Epicurus proves on abstract grounds, practically
because a limit to space is unthinkable. It follows that there must be
an infinite number of the atoms, otherwise they would disperse
throughout the infinite void and disappear. There is a limit, however,
to the number of varieties among the atoms in respect of form, size,
and weight. The existence of the void space is proved by the fact that
motion takes place, to which he adds the argument that it necessarily
exists also to separate the atoms one from another. So far Epicurus
and Democritus are agreed.
To the Democritean doctrine, however, Epicurus made a curious addition,
to which he himself is said to have attached much importance. The
natural course (he said) for all bodies having weight is downwards in a
straight line. It struck Epicurus that this being so, the atoms would
all travel for ever in parallel lines, and those 'clashings and
interminglings' of {217} atoms out of which he conceived all visible
forms to be produced, could never occur. He therefore laid it down
that the atoms _deviated_ the least little bit from the straight, thus
making a world possible. And Epicurus considered that this supposed
deviation of the atoms not only made a world possible, but human
freedom also. In the deviation, without apparent cause, of the
descending atoms, the law of necessity was broken, and there was room
on the one hand for man's free will, on the other, for prayer to the
gods, and for hope of their interference on our behalf.
It may be worth while summarising the proofs which Lucretius in his
great poem, professedly following in the footsteps of Epicurus, adduces
for these various doctrines.
Epicurus' first dogma is, 'Nothing proceeds from nothing,' that is,
every material object has some matter previously existing exactly equal
in quantity to it, out of which it was made. To prove this Lucretius
appeals to the _order of nature_ as seen in the seasons, in the
phenomena of growth, in the fixed relations which exist between life
and its environment as regards what is helpful or harmful, in the
limitation of size and of faculties in the several species and the
fixity of the characteristics generally in each, in the possibilities
of cultivation and improvement of species within certain limits and
under certain conditions.
{218}
To prove his second position, 'Nothing passes into nothing,' Lucretius
points out to begin with that there is a law even in destruction;
_force_ is required to dissolve or dismember anything; were it
otherwise the world would have disappeared long ago. Moreover, he
points out that it is from the elements set free by decay and death
that new things are built up; there is no waste, no visible lessening
of the resources of nature, whether in the generations of living
things, in the flow of streams and the fulness of ocean, or in the
eternal stars. Were it not so, infinite time past would have exhausted
all the matter in the universe, but Nature is clearly immortal.
Moreover, there is a correspondence between the structure of bodies and
the forces necessary to their destruction. Finally, apparent
violations of the law, when carefully examined, only tend to confirm
it. The rains no doubt disappear, but it is that their particles may
reappear in the juices of the crops and the trees and the beasts which
feed on them.
Nor need we be surprised at the doctrine that the atoms, so
all-powerful in the formation of things, are themselves invisible. The
same is true of the forest-rending blasts, the 'viewless winds' which
lash the waves and overwhelm great fleets. There are odours also that
float unseen upon the air; there are heat, and cold, and voices. There
is the process of evaporation, whereby we know that the water has gone,
{219} yet cannot see its vapour departing. There is the gradual
invisible detrition of rings upon the finger, of stones hollowed out by
dripping water, of the ploughshare in the field, and the flags upon the
streets, and the brazen statues of the gods whose fingers men kiss as
they pass the gates, and the rocks that the salt sea-brine eats into
along the shore.
That there is Empty Space or Void he proves by all the varied motions
on land and sea which we behold; by the porosity even of hardest
things, as we see in dripping caves. There is the food also which
disperses itself throughout the body, in trees and cattle. Voices pass
through closed doors, frost can pierce even to the bones. Things equal
in size vary in weight; a lump of wool has more of void in it than a
lump of lead. So much for Lucretius.
For abstract theories on physics, except as an adjunct and support to
his moral conceptions, Epicurus seems to have had very little
inclination. He thus speaks of the visible universe or Cosmos. [373]
The Cosmos is a sort of skyey enclosure, which holds within it the
stars, the earth, and all visible things. It is cut off from the
infinite by a wall of division which may be either rare or dense, in
motion or at rest, round or three-cornered or any other form. That
there is such a wall of division is quite admissible, for no object of
which we have observation is without its limit. Were this wall of
division to {220} break, everything contained within it would tumble
out. We may conceive that there are an infinite number of such Cosmic
systems, with inter-cosmic intervals throughout the infinity of space.
He is very disinclined to assume that similar phenomena, _e.g._
eclipses of the sun or moon, always have the same cause. The various
accidental implications and interminglings of the atoms may produce the
same effect in various ways. In fact Epicurus has the same impatience
of theoretical physics as of theoretical philosophy. He is a
'practical man.'
[378]
He is getting nearer his object when he comes to the nature of the
soul. The soul, like everything else, is composed of atoms, extremely
delicate and fine. It very much resembles the breath, with a mixture
of heat thrown in, sometimes coming nearer in nature to the first,
sometimes to the second. Owing to the delicacy of its composition it
is extremely subject to variation, as we see in its passions and
liability to emotion, its phases of thought and the varied experiences
without which we cannot live. It is, moreover, the chief cause of
sensation being possible for us. Not that it could of itself have had
sensation, without the enwrapping support of the rest of the structure.
The rest of the structure, in fact, having prepared this chief cause,
gets from it a share of what comes to it, but not a share of all which
the soul has.
The soul being of material composition equally {221} with the other
portions of the bodily structure, dies of course with it, that is, its
particles like the rest are dispersed, to form new bodies. There is
nothing dreadful therefore about death, for there is nothing left to
know or feel anything about it.
As regards the process of sensation, Epicurus, like Democritus,
conceived bodies as having a power of emitting from their surface
extremely delicate images of themselves. These are composed of very
fine atoms, but, in spite of their tenuity, they are able to maintain
for a considerable time their relative form and order, though liable
after a time to distortion. They fly with great celerity through the
void, and find their way through the windows of the senses to the soul,
which by its delicacy of nature is in sympathy with them, and
apprehends their form.
[379]
The gods are indestructible, being composed of the very finest and
subtlest atoms, so as to have not a body, but _as it were_ a body.
Their life is one of perfect blessedness and peace. They are in number
countless; but the conceptions of the vulgar are erroneous respecting
them. They are not subject to the passions of humanity. Anger and joy
are alike alien to their nature; for all such feelings imply a lack of
strength. They dwell apart in the inter-cosmic spaces. As Cicero
jestingly remarks: "Epicurus by way of a joke introduced his gods so
pure that you could see through them, {222} so delicate that the wind
could blow through them, having their dwelling-place outside between
two worlds, for fear of breakage."
[380]
Coming finally to Epicurus' theory of Ethics, we find a general
resemblance to the doctrine of Democritus and Aristippus. The end of
life is pleasure or the absence of pain. He differs, however, from the
Cyrenaics in maintaining that not the pleasure of the moment is the
end, but pleasure throughout the whole of life, and that therefore we
ought in our conduct to have regard to the future. Further he denies
that pleasure exists only in activity, it exists equally in rest and
quiet; in short, he places more emphasis in his definition on the
absence of pain or disturbance, than on the presence of positive
pleasure. And thirdly, while the Cyrenaics maintained that bodily
pleasures and pains were the keenest, Epicurus claimed these
characteristics for the pleasures of the mind, which intensified the
present feeling by anticipations of the future and recollections of the
past. And thus the wise man might be happy, even on the rack. Better
indeed was it to be unlucky and wise, than lucky and foolish. In a
similar temper Epicurus on his death-bed wrote thus to a friend: "In
the enjoyment of blessedness and peace, on this the last day of my life
I write this letter to you. Strangury has supervened, and the
extremest agony of internal {223} pains, yet resisting these has been
my joy of soul, as I recalled the thoughts which I have had in the
past."
[381]
We must note, however, that while mental pleasures counted for much
with the Epicureans, these mental pleasures consisted not in thought
for thought's sake in any form; they had nothing to do with
contemplation. They were essentially connected with bodily
experiences; they were the memory of past, the anticipation of future,
bodily pleasures. For it is to be remembered that thoughts were with
Epicurus only converted sensations, and sensations were bodily
processes. Thus every joy of the mind was conditioned by a bodily
experience preceding it. Or as Metrodorus, Epicurus' disciple, defined
the matter: "A man is happy when his body is in good case, and he has
good hope that it will continue so." Directly or indirectly,
therefore, every happiness came back, in the rough phrase of Epicurus,
to one's belly at last.
[382]
This theory did not, however, reduce morality to bestial
self-indulgence. If profligate pleasures could be had free from mental
apprehensions of another world and of death and pain and disease in
this, and if they brought with them guidance as to their own proper
restriction, there would be no reason whatever to blame a man for
filling himself to the full of pleasures, which brought no pain or
sorrow, that is, {224} no evil, in their train. But (Epicurus argues)
this is far from being the case. Moreover there are many pleasures
keen enough at the time, which are by no means pleasant in the
remembering. And even when we have them they bring no enjoyment to the
highest parts of our nature. What those 'highest parts' are, and by
what standard their relative importance is determined, Epicurus does
not say. He probably meant those parts of our nature which had the
widest range in space and time, our faculties, namely, of memory and
hope, of conception, of sight and hearing.
Moreover there are distinctions among desires; some are both natural
and compulsory, such as thirst; some are natural but not compulsory, as
the desire for dainties; some are neither natural nor compulsory, such
as the desire for crowns or statues. The last of these the wise man
will contemn, the second he will admit, but so as to retain his
freedom. For independence of such things is desirable, not necessarily
that we may reduce our wants to a minimum, but in order that if we
cannot enjoy many things, we may be content with few. "For I am
convinced," Epicurus continues, "that they have the greatest enjoyment
of wealth, who are least dependent upon it for enjoyment."
Thus if Epicurus did not absolutely teach simplicity of living, he
taught his disciples the necessity of being capable of such simplicity,
which they could {225} hardly be without practice. So that in reality
the doctrine of Epicurus came very near that of his opponents. As
Seneca the Stoic observed, "Pleasure with him comes to be something
very thin and pale. In fact that law which we declare for virtue, the
same law he lays down for pleasure."
One of the chief and highest pleasures of life Epicurus found in the
possession of friends, who provided for each other not only help and
protection, but a lifelong joy. For the 'larger friendship' of the
civic community, Epicurus seems to have had only a very neutral regard.
Justice, he says, is a convention of interests, with a view of neither
hurting or being hurt. The wise man will have nothing to do with
politics, if he can help it.
In spite of much that may offend in the doctrines of Epicurus, there is
much at least in the man which is sympathetic and attractive. What one
observes, however, when we compare such a philosophy with that of Plato
or Aristotle, is first, a total loss of constructive imagination. The
parts of the 'philosophy,' if we are so to call it, of Epicurus hang
badly together, and neither the Canonics nor the Physics show any real
faculty of serious thinking at all. The Ethics has a wider scope and a
more real relation to experience if not to reason. But it can never
satisfy the deeper apprehension of mankind.
The truest and most permanently valid revelations {226} of life come
not to the many but to the one or the few, who communicate the truth to
the many, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, always at the cost
of antagonism and ridicule. A philosophy therefore which only
represents in theoretical form the average practice of the average man,
comes into the world still-born. It has nothing to say; its hearers
know it all, and the exact value of it all, already. And in their
heart of hearts, many even of those who have stooped to a lower ideal,
and sold their birthright of hopes beyond the passing hour, for a mess
of pottage in the form of material success and easy enjoyment, have a
lurking contempt for the preachers of what they practise; as many a
slaveholder in America probably had for the clerical defenders of the
'divine institution.'
There is a wasting sense of inadequacy in this 'hand-to-mouth' theory
of living, which compels most of those who follow it to tread softly
and speak moderately. They are generally a little weary if not
cynical; they don't think much of themselves or of their success; but
they prefer to hold on as they have begun, rather than launch out into
new courses, which they feel they have not the moral force to continue.
"May I die," said the Cynic, "rather than lead a life of pleasure."
"May I die," says the Epicurean, "rather than make a fool of myself."
The Idealist is to them, if not {227} a hypocrite, at least a
visionary,--if not a Tartuffe, at least a Don Quixote tilting at
windmills. Yet even for poor Don Quixote, with all his blindness and
his follies, the world retains a sneaking admiration. It can spare a
few or a good many of its worldly-wisdoms, rather than lose altogether
its enthusiasms and its dreams. And the one thing which saves
Epicureanism from utter extinction as a theory, is invariably the
idealism which like a 'purple patch' adorns it here and there. No man
and no theory is wholly self-centred. Pleasure is supplanted by
Utility, and Utility becomes the greatest Happiness of the greatest
Number, and so, as Horace says (_Ep._ I. x. 24)--
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,
Nature (like Love) thrust out of the door, will come back by the
window; and the Idealism which is not allowed to make pain a pleasure,
is required at last to translate pleasure into pains.
{228}
CHAPTER XXII
THE STOICS
_Semitic admixture--Closed fist and open hand--'Tabula rasa'--Necessity
of evil--Hymn of Cleanthes--Things indifferent--Ideal and
real--Philosophy and humanity_
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy (born _circa_ 340
B.C.), was a native of Citium in Cyprus. The city was Greek, but with
a large Phoenician admixture. And it is curious that in this last and
sternest phase of Greek thought, not the founder only, but a large
proportion of the successive leaders of the school, came from this and
other places having Semitic elements in them. Among these places
notable as nurseries of Stoicism was Tarsus in Cilicia, the birthplace
of St. Paul. The times of preparation were drawing to a close; and
through these men, with their Eastern intensity and capacities of
self-searching and self-abasement, the philosophy of Greece was linking
itself on to the wisdom of the Hebrews.
Zeno came to Athens to study philosophy, and for twenty years he was a
pupil first of Crates the Cynic, and then of other teachers. At length
he set up a school of his own in the celebrated _Stoa {229} Poecile_
(Painted Colonnade), so named because it was adorned with frescoes by
Polygnotus. There he taught for nearly sixty years, and voluntarily
ended his life when close on a century old. His life, as Antigonus,
King of Macedon, recorded on his tomb, was consistent with his
doctrine--abstemious, [386] frugal, laborious, dutiful. He was
succeeded by Cleanthes, a native of Assos in Asia [387] Minor. But the
great constructor of the Stoic doctrine, without whom, as his
contemporaries said, there had been no Stoic school at all, was
Chrysippus, a native of Soli or of Tarsus in Cilicia. He wrote at
enormous length, supporting his teachings by an immense erudition, and
culling liberally from the poets to illustrate and enforce his views.
Learned and pedantic, his works had no inherent attraction, and nothing
of them but fragments has been preserved. We know the Stoic doctrine
mainly from the testimony and criticisms of later times.
[389]
Like the Epicureans, Zeno and his successors made philosophy primarily
a search for the chief good, a doctrine of practice and morals. But
like them they were impelled to admit a logic and a physics, at least
by way of preliminary basis to their [390] ethics. The relations of
the three they illustrated by various images. Philosophy was like an
animal; logic was its bones and sinews, ethics its flesh, physics its
life or soul. Or again, philosophy was {230} an egg; logic was the
shell, ethics the white, physics, the yolk. Or again, it was a
fruitful field; logic was the hedge, ethics the crop, physics the soil.
Or it was a city, well ordered and strongly fortified, and so on. The
images seem somewhat confused, but the general idea is clear enough.
Morality was the essential, the living body, of philosophy; physics
supplied its raw material, or the conditions under which a moral life
could be lived; logic secured that we should use that material rightly
and wisely for the end desired.
[391]
Logic the Stoics divided into two parts--Rhetoric, the 'science of the
open hand,' and Dialectic, the 'science of the closed fist,' as Zeno
called them. They indulged in elaborate divisions and subdivisions of
each, with which we need not meddle. The only points of interest to us
are contained in their analysis [392] of the processes of perception
and thought. A sensation, Zeno taught, was the result of an external
_impulse_, which when combined with an internal _assent_, produced a
mental state that revealed at the same time itself and the external
object producing it. The perception thus produced he compared to the
grip which the hand took of a solid object; and real perceptions,
those, that is, which were caused by a real external object, and not by
some illusion, always testified to the reality of their cause by this
sensation of 'grip.'
{231}
The internal assent of the mind was voluntary, and at the same time
necessary; for the mind could not do otherwise than will the acceptance
of that which it was fitted to receive. The peculiarity of their
physics, which we shall have to refer to later on, namely, the denial
of the existence of anything not material, implied that in some way
there was a material action of the external object on the structure of
the perceiving mind (itself also material). What exactly the nature of
this action was the Stoics themselves were not quite agreed. The idea
of an 'impression' such as a seal makes upon wax was a tempting one,
but they had difficulty in comprehending how there could be a multitude
of different impressions on the same spot without effacing each other.
Some therefore preferred the vaguer and safer expression,
'modification'; had they possessed our modern science, they might have
illustrated their meaning by reference to the phenomena of magnetism or
electricity.
An interesting passage may be quoted from [393] Plutarch on the Stoic
doctrine of knowledge: "The Stoics maintain," he says, "that when a
human being is born, he has the governing part of his soul like a sheet
of paper ready prepared for the reception of writing, and on this the
soul inscribes in succession its various ideas. The first form of the
writing is produced through the senses. When we perceive, for example,
{232} a white object, the recollection remains when the object is gone.
And when many similar recollections have accumulated, we have what is
called _experience_. Besides the ideas which we get in this natural
and quite undesigned way, there are other ideas which we get through
teaching and information. In the strict sense only these latter ought
to be called ideas; the former should rather be called perceptions.
Now the rational faculty, in virtue of which we are called reasoning
beings, is developed out of, or over and beyond, the mass of
perceptions, in the second seven years' period of life. In fact a
thought may be defined as a kind of mental image, such as a rational
animal alone is capable of having."
Thus there are various gradations of mental apprehensions; first, those
of sensible qualities obtained through the action of the objects and
the assent of the perceiving subject, as already described; then by
experience, by comparison, by analogy, by the combinations of the
reasoning faculty, further and more general notions are arrived at, and
conclusions formed, as, for example, that the gods exist and exercise a
providential care over the world. By this faculty also the wise man
ascends to the apprehension of the good and true.
The physics of the Stoics started from the fundamental [398]
proposition that in the universe of things there were two elements--the
active and the passive. {233} The latter was Matter or unqualified
existence; the former was the reason or qualifying element in Matter,
that is, God, who being eternal, is the fashioner of every individual
thing throughout the universe of matter. God is One; He is Reason, and
Fate, and Zeus. In fact all the gods are only various representations
of His faculties and powers. He being from the beginning of things by
Himself, turneth all existence through air to water. And even as the
genital seed is enclosed in the semen, so also was the seed of the
world concealed in the water, making its matter apt for the further
birth of things; then first it brought into being the four
elements--fire, water, air, earth. For there was a finer fire or air
which was the moving spirit of things; later and lower than this were
the material elements of fire and air. It follows that the universe of
things is threefold; there is first God Himself, the source of all
character and individuality, who is indestructible and eternal, the
fashioner of all things, who in certain cycles of ages gathers up all
things into Himself, and then out of Himself brings them again to
birth; there is the matter of the universe whereon God works; and
thirdly, there is the union of the two. Thus the world is governed by
reason and forethought, and this reason extends through every part,
even as the soul or life extends to every part of us. The universe
therefore is a living thing, having a {234} soul or reason in it. This
soul or reason one teacher likened to the air, another to the sky,
another to the sun. For the soul of nature is, as it were, a finer air
or fire, having a power of creation in it, and moving in an ordered way
to the production of things.
[399]
The universe is one and of limited extension, being spherical in form,
for this is the form which best adapts itself to movement. Outside
this universe is infinite bodiless space; but within the universe there
is no empty part; all is continuous and united, as is proved by the
harmony of relation which exists between the heavenly bodies and those
upon the earth. The world as such is destructible, for its parts are
subject to change and to decay; yet is this change or destruction only
in respect of the qualities imposed upon it from time to time by the
Reason inherent in it; the mere unqualified Matter remains
indestructible.
[408]
In the universe evil of necessity exists; for evil being the opposite
of good, where no evil is there no good can be. For just as in a
comedy there are absurdities, which are in themselves bad, but yet add
a certain attraction to the poem as a whole, so also one may blame evil
regarded in itself, yet for the whole it is not without its use. So
also God is the cause of death equally with birth; for even as cities
when the inhabitants have multiplied overmuch, {235} remove their
superfluous members by colonisation or by war, so also is God a cause
of destruction. In man in like manner good cannot exist save with
evil; for wisdom being a knowledge of good and evil, remove the evil
and wisdom itself goes. Disease and other natural evils, when looked
at in the light of their effects, are means not of evil but of good;
there is throughout the universe a balance and interrelation of good
and evil. Not that God hath in Himself any evil; the law is not the
cause of lawlessness, nor God Himself responsible for any violation of
right.
[404]
The Stoics indulged in a strange fancy that the world reverted after a
mighty cycle of years in all its parts to the same form and structure
which it possessed at the beginning, so that there would be once more a
Socrates, a Plato, and all the men that had lived, each with the same
friends and fellow-citizens, the same experiences, and the same
endeavours. At the termination of each cycle there was a burning up of
all things, and thereafter a renewal of the great round of life.
[408]
Nothing incorporeal, they maintained, can be affected by or affect that
which is corporeal; body alone can affect body. The soul therefore
must be corporeal. Death is the separation of soul from body, but it
is impossible to separate what is incorporeal from body; therefore,
again, the soul must {236} be corporeal. In the belief of Cleanthes,
the souls of all creatures remained to the next period of cyclic
conflagration; Chrysippus believed that only the souls of the wise and
good remained.
[413]
Coming finally to the Ethics of the Stoic philosophy, we find for the
chief end of life this definition, 'A life consistent with itself,' or,
as it was otherwise expressed, 'A life consistent with Nature.' The
two definitions are really identical; for the law of nature is the law
of our nature, and the reason in our being the reason which also is in
God, the supreme Ruler of the universe. This is substantially in
accordance with the celebrated law of right action laid down by Kant,
"Act so that the maxim of thine action be capable of being made a law
of universal action." Whether a man act thus or no, by evil if not by
good the eternal law will satisfy itself; the question is of import
only for the man's own happiness. Let his will accord with the
universal will, then the law will be fulfilled, and the man will be
happy. Let his will resist the universal will, then the law will be
fulfilled, but the man will bear the penalty. This was expressed by
Cleanthes in a hymn which ran somewhat thus--
Lead me, O Zeus most great,
And thou, Eternal Fate:
What way soe'er thy will doth bid me travel
That way I'll follow without fret or cavil.
{237}
Or if I evil be
And spurn thy high decree,
Even so I still shall follow, soon or late.
Thus in the will alone consists the difference of good or ill for us;
in either case Nature's great law fulfils itself infallibly. To their
view on this point we may apply the words of Hamlet: "If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not
now, yet it will come; the _readiness_ is all."
This universal law expresses itself in us in various successive
manifestations. From the moment of birth it implants in us a supreme
self-affection, whereby of infallible instinct we seek our own
self-preservation, rejoice in that which is suitable to our existence,
shrink from that which is unsuitable. As we grow older, further and
higher principles manifest themselves--reason and reflection, a more
and more careful and complete apprehension of that which is honourable
and advantageous, a capacity of choice among goods. Till finally the
surpassing glory of that which is just and honourable shines out so
clear upon us, that any pain or loss is esteemed of no account, if only
we may attain to that. Thus at last, by the very law of our being, we
come to know that nothing is truly and absolutely good but goodness,
nothing absolutely bad but sin. Other things, inasmuch as they have no
character of moral good {238} or moral evil, cannot be deemed really
good or bad; in comparison with the absolutely good, they are things
indifferent, though in comparison with each other they may be
relatively preferable or relatively undesirable. Even pleasure and
pain, so far as concerns the absolute end or happiness of our being,
are things indifferent; we cannot call them either good or evil. Yet
have they a relation to the higher law, for the consciousness of them
was so implanted in us at the first that our souls by natural impulse
are drawn to pleasure, while they shrink from pain as from a deadly
enemy. Wherefore reason neither can nor ought to seek wholly to
eradicate these primitive and deep-seated affections of our nature; but
so to exercise a resisting and ordering influence upon them, as to
render them obedient and subservient to herself.
[415]
That which is absolutely good--wisdom, righteousness, courage,
temperance--does good only and never ill to us. All other
things,--life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, reputation,
birth,--and their opposites,--death, disease, pain, deformity,
weakness, poverty, contempt, humility of station,--these are in
themselves neither a benefit nor a curse. They may do us good, they
may do us harm. We may use them for good, we may use them for evil.
[417]
Thus the Stoics worked out on ideal and absolute lines the thought of
righteousness as the chief and {239} only good. Across this ideal
picture were continually being drawn by opponents without or inquirers
within, clouds of difficulty drawn from real experience. 'What,' it
was asked, 'of _progress_ in goodness? Is this a middle state between
good and evil; or if a middle state between good and evil be a
contradiction, in terms, how may we characterise it?' Here the wiser
teachers had to be content to answer that it _tended_ towards good, was
good in possibility, would be absolutely good when the full attainment
came, and the straining after right had been swallowed up in the
perfect calm of settled virtue.
'How also of the wise man tormented by pain, or in hunger and poverty
and rags, is his perfectness of wisdom and goodness really sufficient
to make him happy?' Here, again, the answer had to be hesitating and
provisional, through no fault of the Stoics. In this world, while we
are still under the strange dominion of time and circumstance, the
ideal can never wholly fit the real. There must still be difficulty
and incompleteness here, only to be solved and perfected 'when iniquity
shall have an end.' Our eyes may fail with looking upward, yet the
upward look is well; and the jibes upon the Stoic 'king in rags' that
Horace and others were so fond of, do not affect the question. It may
have been, and probably often was, the case that Stoic teachers {240}
were apt to transfer to themselves personally the ideal attributes,
which they justly assigned to the ideal man in whom wisdom was
perfected. The doctrine gave much scope for cant and mental pride and
hypocrisy, as every ideal doctrine does, including the Christian. But
the existence of these vices in individuals no more affected the
doctrine of an ideal goodness in its Stoic form, than it does now in
its Christian one. That only the good man is truly wise or free or
happy; that vice, however lavishly it surround itself with luxury and
ease and power, is inherently wretched and foolish and slavish;--these
are things which are worth saying and worth believing, things, indeed,
which the world dare not and cannot permanently disbelieve, however
difficult or even impossible it may be to mark men off into two
classes, the good and the bad, however strange the irony of
circumstance which so often shows the wicked who 'are not troubled as
other men, neither are they plagued like other men; they have more than
their heart could wish,' while good men battle with adversity, often in
vain. Still will the permanent, fruitful, progressive faith of man
'look to the end'; still will the ideal be powerful to plead for the
painful right, and spoil, even in the tasting, the pleasant wrong.
The doctrine, of course, like every doctrine worth anything, was pushed
to extravagant lengths, and {241} thrust into inappropriate quarters,
by foolish doctrinaires. As that the wise man is the only orator,
critic, poet, physician, nay, cobbler if you please; that the wise man
knows all that is to be known, and can do everything that is worth
doing, and so on. The school was often too academic, too abstract, too
fond of hearing itself talk. This, alas! is what most schools are, and
most schoolmasters.
Yet the Stoics were not altogether alien to the ordinary interests and
duties of life. They admitted a duty of co-operating in politics, at
least in such states as showed some desire for, or approach to, virtue.
They approved of the wise man taking part in education, of his marrying
and bringing up children, both for his own sake and his country's. He
will be ready even to 'withdraw himself from life on behalf of his
country or his friends. This 'withdrawal,' which was their word for
suicide, came unhappily to be much in the mouths of later, and
especially of the Roman, Stoics, who, in the sadness and restraint of
prevailing despotism, came to thank God that no one was compelled to
remain in life; he might 'withdraw' when the burden of life, the
hopelessness of useful activity, became too great.
With this sad, stern, yet not undignified note, the philosophy of
Greece speaks its last word. The later scepticism of the New Academy,
directed mainly to a negative criticism of the crude enough logic of
the {242} Stoics, or of the extravagances of their ethical doctrine,
contributed no substantial element to thought or morals. As an
eclectic system it had much vogue, side by side with Stoicism and
Epicureanism, among the Romans, having as its chief exponent Cicero, as
Epicureanism had Lucretius, and Stoicism, Seneca.
The common characteristic of all these systems in their later
developments, is their _cosmopolitanism_. _Homo sum, nil humani a me
alienum puto_, 'I am a man; nothing appertaining to humanity do I deem
alien from myself,' this was the true keynote of whatever was vital in
any of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. We have seen
already (p. 82) how the chaos of sophistic doctrine was largely
conditioned, if not produced, by the breakdown of the old civic life of
Greece. The process hardly suffered delay from all the efforts of
Socrates and Plato. Cosmopolitanism was already a point of union
between the Cynics and Cyrenaics (see p. 128). And the march of
politics was always tending in the same direction. First through great
leagues, such as the Spartan or Athenian or Theban, each with a
predominant or tyrannical city at the head; then later through the
conquest of Greece by Alexander, and the leaguing of all Greek-speaking
peoples in the great invasion of Asia; then through the spread of Greek
letters all over the Eastern {243} world, and the influx upon Greek
centres such as Athens and Alexandria, of all manner of foreign
intelligences; and finally, through the conquest of all this teeming
world of culture by the discipline and practical ability of Rome, and
its incorporation in a universal empire of law, all the barriers which
had divided city from city and tribe from tribe and race from race
disappeared, and only a common humanity remained.
The only effective philosophies for such a community were those which
regarded man as an _individual_, with a world politically omnipotent
hedging him about, and driving him in upon himself. Thus the New
Academy enlarged on the doubtfulness of all beyond the individual
consciousness; Stoicism insisted on individual dutifulness,
Epicureanism on individual self-satisfaction. The first sought to make
life worth living through culture, the second through indifference, the
third through a moderate enjoyment. But all alike felt themselves very
helpless in face of the growing sadness of life, in face of the
deepening mystery of the world beyond. All alike were controversial,
and quick enough to ridicule their rivals; none was hopefully
constructive, or (unless in the poetic enthusiasm of a Lucretius) very
confident of the adequacy of its own conceptions. They all rather
quickened the sense of emptiness in human existence, than satisfied it;
{244} at the best they enabled men to "absent themselves a little while
from the felicity of death."
Thus all over the wide area of Greek and Roman civilisation, the
activity of the later schools was effectual to familiarise humanity
with the language of philosophy, and to convince humanity of the
inadequacy of its results. Both of these things the Greeks taught to
Saul of Tarsus; at a higher Source he found the satisfying of his soul;
but from the Greek philosophies he learned the language through which
the new Revelation was to be taught in the great world of Roman rule
and Grecian culture. And thus through the Pauline theology, Greek
philosophy had its part in the moral regeneration of the world; as it
has had, in later times, in every emancipation and renascence of its
thought.
{245}
INDEX
Abdera, birthplace of Democritus, 74; of Protagoras, 86
Absolute knowledge, unattainable by man, 19; absorption in, 133; no
separate existence, 182
Abstract ideas not derivable from experience, 45; abstract truth
impossible, 87; of no value, 132; revival of, 133
Academus, grove of, 135
Achilles and tortoise, 44; death of, 139
Acroatic, kind of lectures, 175
Actuality, see _Realisation_.
Agrigentum, birthplace of Empedocles, 59
Air, beginning of things, 14
Alcestis, referred to, 139
Alcibiades, dialogue, 137
Alexander, relations with Aristotle, 174; influence of conquests of, 242
Anarchy, in politics and in philosophy, 83; reaction against, by
Socrates, 102
Anaxagoras, 52; relation of Empedocles to, 62; quoted by Aristotle, 200
Anaximander, 7
Anaximenes, 14
Anthropomorphism, criticised, 32
Antigonus, friend of Zeno, 229
Antisthenes, 128
Apology, dialogue, 136
Appetite, the only reality, 96
Archilochus, criticised by Heraclitus, 16
Aristippus, 124
Aristocracy, in politics and in philosophy, 82
Aristotle, on Thales, 4; on Xenophanes, 32; on Zeno, 42; on Melissus,
47; on Anaxagoras, 54; on Empedocles, 59, 63, 70; a complete Socratic,
103; on Socrates, 106; on Sophists, 115; debt to Plato, 159; on Plato,
163; chapters on, 172 _sqq._; his fresh contributions to Academic
philosophy, 173; two classes of lectures, 175; library, _ib._;
predominance of, 176; style, 177; differences from Plato, 178
Art, a greater revealer than science, 66; relation of Love to, 137; a
mode of creation, 139
Asceticism, of Cynics, 128; of Plato, 168; of Epicurus, 225
Atarneus, residence of Aristotle, 174
Athens, visited by Parmenides and Zeno, 34, 42, 157; residence of
Anaxagoras, 52; centre of sophistry, 85; birthplace of Socrates, 103;
visited by Aristippus, 124; birthplace of Antisthenes, 129; and of
Plato, 134; dialogue in praise of, 137; residence of Aristotle, 173; of
Epicurus, 211
Atlantis, kingdom of, 153
Atomists, 52; revived theory of, 215
Atoms, constituents of nature, 76, 216; deviation of, 216
Beauty, one aspect of ideal, 110; relation to creative instinct, 139;
science of universal beauty, 141
Becoming, the fundamental principle, 16; passage from Being to, 36, 39
Beginning (_arche_), of Thales, 3; Aristotle's definition, 4;
difficulties of material theories of, 36l
Being, eternal being like a sphere, 32; passage from, to Becoming, 36,
39; a co-equal element with Nonentity, 75; analysis of, 159; and the
Other, 165
Body, realisation of soul, 27; a prison, 28; unthinkable except with
reference to space, 75; source of illusion, 164
Canonics, form of logic, 215
Cause, three causes, 110; equals essence, 167; first causes subject of
philosophy, 179; relation of, to potentiality, 185
Cave, of this life, 148, 166
Chaldaea, visited by Pythagoras, 22; by Democritus, 74
Change, how account for, 10, 35, 39, 75
Chaos, of the Atomists, 53; of Empedocles, 69; king in philosophy, 83;
life not a chaos, 105
Charmides, dialogue, 136
Christ, brings sword, 99; kingdom of, 149
Chrysippus, successor of Cleanthes, 229
Cicero, mistranslates Pythagoras, 28; criticises Epicurus, 212, 221;
exponent of New Academy, 242
Citium, birthplace of Zeno, 228
Clazomenae, birthplace of Anaxagoras, 52
Cleanthes, successor of Zeno, 229; hymn of, 236
Codrus, Plato descended from, 134; sacrifice of, 139
Colophon, birthplace of Xenophanes, 31
Commonplaces, function of, in sophistry, 84
Community of wives, 148; ideal community, 149 (and see _State_)
Contradiction, philosophy of, 65
Cosmogony, of Democritus, 77; of Plato, 150; of Aristotle, 200; of
Epicurus, 219; of the Stoics, 231
Cosmopolitanism, of Cyrenaics and Cynics, 128; of later systems, 242
Courage, treated of in _Laches_, 136
Cratylus, dialogue, 137
Creation, a great expiation, 73; in the soul, 139; working out of God's
image, 151; union of Essence and Matter, 167
Criterion, feeling the only, 127
Critias, dialogue, 153
Crito, dialogue, 136
Crux, in philosophy, 190
Cynic, origin of name, 130; influence of school on Plato, 154; _v._
Epicurean, 226
Cyrene, seat of Cyrenaic school, 124; visited by Plato, 134; influence
of school on Plato, 154
Death, birth of the soul, 19
Deduction, _v._ Induction, 48; function of, in Aristotle, 184
Definitions, search for, by Socrates, 106; of no value, 132; rules for,
laid down by Plato, 156
Democritus, 74; relation of Epicurus to, 216
Demonstrative science, based on abstraction, 11
Desire, part of soul, 28, 169; thought without, gives no motive, 191;
distinctions among, 224
Destruction, meaning of, 53
Dialectic, Parmenides founder of, 39; Zeno inventor of, 42; Platonic
theory of, 164, 171
Dichotomy, invented by Zeno, 43
Difference (see _Essence_), all difference quantitative, 76;
conditioned by dissimilarity in atoms, 77
Dilemma, Melissus' use of, 46
Diogenes, pupil of Antisthenes, 130
Dionysius, elder and younger, connection of Plato with, 135
Diotima, conversation of, with Socrates, 137
Dry light, 19
Dualism, unthinkable, 32; in nature, 38; of Plato and Aristotle, 184
Dynamic, see _Potentiality_
Earth, principle in nature, 38
Education, preparation for heaven, 148; ideal, 149; true function of,
169; three stages, 170; an entelechy, 191
Egypt, visited by Pythagoras, 22; Democritus, 74; Plato, 135
Elea, seat of Eleatic school, 30; birthplace of Parmenides, 33
Eleatics, relation of Empedocles to, 62; of Democritus, 75; of Plato,
154, 165
Elements, the four, 62; in creation, 151; in body and in soul, 156
Empedocles, 58
Ends of Life, indifference as to, 96; importance in later Greek
philosophy, 125; Plato's view of, 168; Aristotle's, 193; Epicurean, 222
Entelechy, Life, 186, 190; God, 188; Thought, _ib._; Education, 191;
Morality, 193; State, 197; physical world, 199; Soul, 203
Ephesus, birthplace of Heraclitus, 15
Epicurus, 211; praises of, by Lucretius, 212; garden of, 213; relation
to Democritus, 216
Essence _v._ Difference, 48; equals Cause, 167
Euclides, 132
Euripides, friend of Anaxagoras, 52
Euthydemus, conversation with Socrates, 116; dialogue, 137
Euthyphro, dialogue, 136
Even, _v._ Odd, 24
Evil, origin of, 33; necessary on earth, 168; God cause of evil, but
hath none, 234
Evolution, Anaximander's conception of, 12; Xenophanes' theory of, 33;
relation of, to fundamental conception of Being, _ib._; view of
Empedocles, 70
Existence, an idea prior to Time and Space, 37; not given by
Experience, 45; four forms of, 166; philosophy treats of existence as
such, 181
Exoteric kind of lectures, 175
Female, see _Male_
Fire, original of things, 17; one of two principles, 38
Flux, of all things, 16; of life, 27, 73; sophistic theory of, 87
Form _v._ Matter, 25, 48; Aristotle's theory of, 203
Formulae, never adequate, 122
Freewill, problem of, 33; relation to law, 113; and overruling
providence, 155
Friendship, treated of in _Lysis_, 136
Genus, has less of existence than species, 183
God, soul of the world, 27; the Odd-Even, 26; the universe His
self-picturing, 26; God is one, 32; not a function of matter, 33;
atomic origin of idea of, 80; the law or ideal in the universe, 112;
Man the friend of God, 142; works out His image in creation, 151; God's
thought and God's working, 152; is Mind universal, 164; cause of union
in creation, 166; His visible images in Man and Nature, _ib._; cause
both of good and of knowledge, 166; thoughts of, eternally existing,
187; an entelechy, 188; Epicurean theory of, 221; Stoic theory of, 233
Golden age, 73
Gorgias, 92; Antisthenes pupil of, 129; dialogue, 137
Greek _v._ Modern difficulties, 158
Gymnastic, function of, 170
Habit, Aristotle's definition of, 195
Happiness, chief good, 193; reason standard of, 196
Harmony, the eternal, 19; soul a harmony, 29
Hecataeus, referred to by Herodotus, 2
Hegel, philosophic system of, 159
Heraclitus, 15; _v._ Democritus, 74; Plato student of, 134; relation of
Plato to, 163
Hercules, patron-god of Cynics, 130
Herodotus, notices Hecataeus, 2
Hesiod, praised, 139
Hippias, dialogue, 137
Homer, criticised by Heraclitus, 16; anthropomorphism of, 31; praised,
139
Horace, quoted, 125
Humanitarianism, began in scepticism, 99
Humanity, granted only to possessors of eternal truth, 145
Husk, symbol of evolution, 12
Idea, exists prior to sensation, 143; eternal in universe, 150;
rational element in sensation, 152; Platonic criticism of, 157;
universals are ideas of real existences, 163; things partake of, 164;
relation of, to Pythagorean 'Numbers,' 167; Aristotelian criticism of,
181; necessarily prior to sensation, 187
Ideal, struggle of old and new, 99; in the arts, 110; has three
aspects, Justice, Beauty, Utility, _ib._; great ideal in the universe,
112; can never wholly fit the real, 239
Idealism, _v._ Practicality, 4, 96; Parmenides founder of, 39; _v._
Realism, 51; _v._ Epicureanism, 216
Immortality, aspect of, to Greeks, 40; Parmenides pioneer for, 41;
_Phaedo_ dialogue on, 136; Love and immortality, 138; of soul, 150;
relation of doctrine to Platonic recollection, 154; faith as to, 155;
Man must put on, 168; Aristotle's view of, 207
Inconsistency, not forbidden in philosophy, 64
Individual, _v._ Universal, 99; relation of, to community, 147, 196;
reality of, 184; importance of, in later systems, 243
Individualism, in philosophy, 83, 85; not wholly bad, 98; required
reconciling with universalism, 100
Induction (see Deduction); Socrates inventor of, 106; Plato's
contributions to, 160; function of, in Aristotle, 184
Infinite or indefinite, origin of things, 8; function of, in
mathematics, 10; relation to definite, 24, 26, 165
Infinity, origin of idea of, 46
Intellect, division of soul, 28, 169
Ion, dialogue, 136
Irony, of Socrates, 105
Jowett, Prof., quoted, 39, 43, 89, 138, 142, 153, 158
Judgment, vision of, 150
Justice, a cheating device, 95; one form of ideal or universal, 110;
related to law and to utility, 120; the fairest wisdom, 139; dialogue
on, 146; only interest of stronger, 147; writ large in state, 147;
perfection of whole man, and of state, 169; a civic quality
restraining, 198; Epicurean theory of, 225
Kant, his _Critic_ referred to, 158; maxim of, 236
Knowledge, _v._ Opinion, 33, 35, 51; impossible, 93; really exists,
164; first causes pertain to, 179; must have real object, 183;
potential and actual, 203
'Know thyself,' 113; dialogue on, 137
Laches, dialogue, 136
Lampsacus, place of death of Anaxagoras, 57
Laughing philosopher, 74
Law, in universe, 112; relation to Freewill, 113; relation to Justice,
120; fulfilled through Love, 122; Laws, dialogue, 160; potential and
actual, 192
Leontini, birthplace of Gorgias, 92
Leucippus, 74
Life, death of the soul, 19; a prison, 28; a sentinel-post, _ib._; a
union of contradictories, 66; a dwelling in cave, 148; organic idea of,
185; an entelechy, 190; different kinds of, 194; Aristotle's
definition, 203
Listeners, in Pythagorean system, 23
Logic, Parmenides founder of, 39; Zeno inventor of, 42; contributions
of Plato and Aristotle to, 159; governing idea of Aristotle's, 184; of
Epicurus, 215; Stoic divisions of, 230
Love, motive force in Nature, 38; one of two principles, 38, 63;
fulfilling of the law, 122; dialogues on, 137, 144; pure and impure, 145
Lucretius, praises Empedocles, 59; Epicurus, 212; proofs by, of
Epicurus' theory, 217; exponent of Roman Epicureanism, 242
Lyceum, school of Aristotle, 174
Lycurgus, praised, 140
Lysis, dialogue, 136
Magnet, soul of, 6
Male and Female, Pythagorean view of, 24; principles in Nature, 38;
equality of, 148; correlative, 167; basis of State, 197
Man, measure of truth, 87; working with Eternal Mind, 155; Does Man
partake in God's ideas? 158; differentia of, possession of reason, 191;
function of, 193; a political animal, 197; wisest of animals, why? 200
Materialism, ancient and modern, 57; of Epicureans, 220; of Stoics, 233
Mathematicians, in system of Pythagoras, 23
Mathematics, based on indefinables, 10; function of, in Pythagorean
philosophy, 25; and in Platonic, 170
Matter (see _Mind_), _v._ Thought, 48; another name for the formless,
151, 167; correlative of Mind, 167; what it symbolises, 184; relation
to Form, 203
Mechanical theory, of universe, 56, 78; of virtue, 195
Megara, birthplace of Euclides, 132; influence of school on Plato, 154
Melissus, 46
Menexenus, dialogue, 137
Meno, dialogue, 136; relation to Aristotle's doctrine, 191
Midwifery of Socrates, 104
Might, without Right is weak, 147; is Right in tyrant, 149
Miletus, birthplace of Thales, 1; of Anaximander, 7; of Anaximenes, 14
Mind, _v._ Matter, 51, 167; function of, in the universe, 54; God's
mind working on matter, 151; ruler of universe, 155; must rule
pleasure, 156; home of ideas, 164; correlative of matter, 167; passive
and creative, 207
Moist or base element, 18
Monarchy, in politics and in philosophy, 82
Morality, a convention, 95, 126; traditional morality of Greece
required remodelling, 98; question as to origin solved by Socrates,
121; can never exhaust Subject, 188; an entelechy, 192; potential and
actual, 194
Motion, animal, how accounted for, 79
Multiplicity, see _Unity_
Music, of the spheres, 27; of seven planets, 151; function of, in
education, 29, 170
Myth, of Steeds, 144; of Judgment, 150; of Creation, 152; philosophers
fond of, 178
Names, approximations to reality, 165
Nature, treatises on, 16, 34, 46, 217; a reason in, 37; male and female
principles in, 38; Love motive force in, _ib._; the non-existent, 92;
'touch of nature,' 191; Aristotle's conception of, 199; violations of,
201; order of, 217; clearly immortal, 218; a life consistent with, 236
Necessity, creative power, 38, 63; how used by Democritus, 78;
Aristotle's conception of, 201
Neleus, family (owners of Aristotle's library), 175
Nicomachus, father of Aristotle, 172
Notions, Epicurus' view of, 215
Number, original of things, 24; relation of ideas to, 167
Obedience, through disobedience, 122
Obscure, epithet of Heraclitus, 15
Odd, _v._ Even, 24
Opinion, _v._ Knowledge, 33, 35
Oracle, answer of, respecting Socrates, 107; maxim engraved on, 113
Organism, idea of, in Aristotle, 185, 205
Organon, of Aristotle, 159
Origination, meaning of, 53, 62
Other, the 'Other' of Plato, 165
Pains, classification of, 131; converted into pleasures, 131, 227;
moral function of, 238
Pantheistic apathy, 20
Parmenides, 33; relation of Zeno to, 42; visited Athens, 157; dialogue,
_ib._
Particular, see _Universal_
Passion, part of soul, 28, 169
Paul, St., influence of Stoicism on, 228; relation of, to Greek
philosophy, 244
Pericles, friend of Anaxagoras, 52; and of Protagoras, 86
Peripatetics, origin of name, 174
Personality, absence of, in Greek thought, 40
Persuasion, only true wisdom, 88
Phaedo, quoted from, 54; dialogue, 136
Phaedrus, dialogue, 142
Phenomena, not source of abstract ideas, 15
Philebus, dialogue, 156
Philosophy, different from science, 9; does not forbid inconsistency,
64; a form of poesy or fiction, 66; at the basis of religion, art, and
morals, 67; great philosophies never die, 68; first systematically
divided by Democritus, 75; relation to politics, 82, 97; paradox of,
100; crisis of, _ib._; of nature and of moral, 101; a means of social
culture, 125; relation of Love to, 137; must rule on earth, 149; only
makes happy guesses in science, 152; origin of, 178; investigates first
causes, 179; crux in, 190; Epicurus' definition of, 214; a search for
chief good, 229
Plato, criticism of Protagoras, 89; a _complete_ Socratic, 103: took
refuge with Euclides, 132, 134; compared to Shakespeare, 134; as
psychologist, 155; central doctrines of, 155; dogma impossible, 162;
Aristotle on, 163; relation to Heraclitus, _ib._; and to the Eleatics,
165; relation of Aristotle to, 178, 181; his mistake as to universals,
182
Pleasure, end of life, 126; contempt of, 131; reason gives law to, 149;
is it chief good? 156; Epicurean theory of, 222; moral function of, 238
Politics, relation to philosophy, 82, 97; influence of sophistry upon,
88
Politicus, see _Statesman_
Potentiality (Dynamic idea), how used by Aristotle, 185; of feeling,
195; equals matter, 203
Practicality, _v._ Idealism, 4
Predication, Epicurus' view of, 215
Propositions, _v._ Things, 189
Protagoras, 85; Plato's criticism of, 89; dialogue, 136
Protoplasm, explains nothing, 37
Punishment, Sophistic theory of, 88
Pyrrho, founder of Scepticism, 211
Pythagoras, 23
Quinta Essentia, origin of, 202
Quixote, the world admires, 227
Realisation (Actuality), correlative of potentiality, 185; relation to
Plato's Recollection, 188; chief good, 194
Reality, standard of, 40, 51; distinction between, and appearance,
abolished, 83, 87; no necessary relation between thought and reality,
94; the only reality appetite, 96; thoughts of God the only reality,
164; approximations to, 165; ideal can never wholly fit, 239
Reason, function of, 37, 56; corrector of the senses, 61; governs
evolution, 70; worse made to appear better, 84; realises itself through
individuals, 114; gives law to pleasure, 149, 156; man possesses, 191;
actual and latent, 192; partly obedient, partly contemplative, 194; an
element in Habit, 195; an impersonal ruler, 196
Recollection (or Reminiscence), departure and renewal of knowledge,
138; doctrine of, in Plato, 142; Platonic criticism of, 154; nature of,
165; relation of Aristotle's theory to, 188
Reminiscence, see _Recollection_
Republic, dialogue, 146; relation of, to Aristotle's doctrine, 192
Revelation, how criticise? 158
Right, Might without, is weak, 147
Samos, birthplace of Pythagoras, 23; of Melissus, 46; of Epicurus, 211
Scepticism, its isolating influence, 94; destroys not appetite, but
moral restraint, 95; represented birth of new conditions, 98; phase of
decay in distinctively Greek life, 211
Science, philosophy different from, 9; happy guesses in, 152;
different kinds of, 180; can never exhaust object, 188
Scrip and staff, emblems of Cynics, 130
Semitic elements in later Greek philosophy, 228
Seneca, on Epicurus, 225; exponent of Roman Stoicism, 242
Senses (or Sensation), channel for the eternal wisdom, 18; data of, no
measure of reality, 40; not source of ideas, 45; untrustworthy, 49;
necessary to truth, 56; no test of truth, 60; relation to reason, 61;
based on composite character of body, 71; atomic theory of, 79; give no
absolute truth, 80; no distinction between, and thing or mind, 87;
reaction of moral theory on theory of sensation, 102; invalid as
against reason, 133; has rational elements conditioning, 151; universal
cannot belong to, 163; universals furthest removed from, 180; only
source of knowledge, 214; Epicurean theory of emission, 221; Stoic
theory, 230
Shakespeare, Plato compared to, 134
Sicily, birthplace of Empedocles, 58; connection with rise of
Sophistry, 84, 86, 92; connection of Plato with, 135
Sin, willing and unwilling, 121
Sinope, birthplace of Diogenes, 130
Sleep, cuts us off from eternal wisdom, 18
Socrates, 101; relation to Anaxagoras, 54; his doctrine in general,
100; marks a parting of ways, 103; warning 'voice' or 'daemon' of, 104;
philosophic midwifery, _ib._; irony, 105; not an expositor, 115;
relation to Sophists, _ib._; Aristippus student of, 124; criticises
Antisthenes, 129; Plato pupil of, 134; dialogue concerning, 136;
conversation of Diotima with, 137; in _Republic_, 146
Socratics, complete and incomplete, 103; incomplete, 125, 128
Solon, Plato descended from, 134; praised, 140
Sophists, 82; name first used by Protagoras, 85; influence of, on
politics, 88, 97; refuted by the arts, 111; relation to Socrates, 115;
Platonic dialogues on, 136; dialogue so named, 159
Soul of all things, 6; a fiery exhalation, 18; God soul of the world,
27; soul realised in body, _ib._; soul double, 28; triple, 28, 169;
life of soul a harmony, 29; composed of finest atoms, 78; even that of
universe, 80; loss of one's soul, 150; world-soul the first creation,
151; divisions of, 169; an entelechy, 203; definition of, 204; _v._
body, 205; Epicurean theory of, 220
Space, existence prior to, 37, 167; unthinkable except with reference
to body, 75
Sparta, ideas from, in _Republic_, 148; influence on Plato's Laws, 160
Species, has more of existence than genus, 183
Speusippus, successor of Plato, 172
Stagira, birthplace of Aristotle, 172
State, Justice writ large in, 147; classes in, 169; an entelechy, 196
Statesman (or Politicus), dialogue, 159
Stoicism, Semitic element in, 228; origin of name, 229
Strife, original of things, 17; one of two principles, 38, 63
Substance defined, 203
Sulla, brought Aristotle's library to Rome, 176
Summum bonum, what? 156; relation of man's perfection, 168; philosophy
search for, 229
Symposium, dialogue, 137
Tabula rasa, Stoic theory of, 231
Tarsus, birthplace of St. Paul and (possibly) of Chrysippus, 229
Temperance, treated of in _Charmides_, 136; fairest sort of wisdom, 139
Thales, 2
Theaetetus, quoted from, 89; dialogue, 159
Theophrastus, successor of Aristotle, 175
Things, in themselves, how known? 158; partake in the idea, 164; _v._
Propositions, 189
Thought, of God, 150; ideal elements in, 152; of God, source of
reality, 164; relation to matter, 184; of God, eternally existing in
ideas, 187; an entelechy, 188; without desire, no motive, 191; arms
of, 198; only converted sensation, 223
Thucydides, quoted, 97
Thurii, code for, drawn up by Protagoras, 86
Timaeus, dialogue, 150
Time, brings its revenges, 8; plays with the dice, 20; existence prior
to, 37, 168
Tortoise, see _Achilles_
Transmigration of souls, 27, 73
Truth, first duty of man, 29 senses give no absolute, 80; title of work
by Protagoras, 86; man measure of, 87; abstract truth impossible,
_ib._; dialogue concerning, 137
Tyranny, in politics and in philosophy, 83
Ultimately, significance of word, 190
Unity, _v._ Multiplicity, 28; of objects only apparent, 76; no absolute
unity either of body or soul, 138; analysis of, 159; in thoughts of
God, 164
Universal, _v._ Particular, 48; _v._ Individual, 99; search after lost,
105, 163; three forms, Justice, Beauty, Utility, 110; cannot belong to
sense, 163; knowledge of, function of philosophy, 180; does not exist
apart from particulars, 181; has less of existence than particulars,
183; they are not antithetical, 189
Universe, the self-picturing of God, 27; mechanical theory of, 56;
ideal working in, 112; origin of, 151, 165, 200, 216, 232
Utility, relation to Justice, 120; philosophy does not seek, 178
Virtue, teachable through persuasion, 88; is knowledge, 112, 118;
teachable through training, 131; sufficient for happiness, _ib._;
teachableness of, 136, 191; immortal product of soul, 139; a habit,
195; a mean, _ib._; Reason standard of, 196; alone absolutely good, 238
Void, existence of, 75; proofs of, 219
Water, beginning of things, 4
Weeping philosopher, 20; _v._ laughing philosopher, 74
Wisdom, persuasion only true, 88; moderate indulgence, 126; a weaning
of soul from pleasure, 131; temperance and justice the fairest, 139;
heavenly and earthly, 148; Is it chief good? 156; Divine wisdom
governor, 157; Aristotle's definition of, 180
Wise man, personification of reason, 196
Withdrawal, Stoic name for suicide, 241
World, a living creature, 27; why did God make? 190
Xenocrates, academic philosopher, 172
Xenophanes, 31, 48
Xenophon, quoted, 116
Xerxes, invasion of, 52
Zeno, the Eleatic, 42; the Stoic, 238
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