Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
from the human mind.
This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
fashion and of political power.
These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
_paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of
immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.
The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise
men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
Philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom.
Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he
attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res
angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
divinity of his nature. "I have heard Pericles," said the most
dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, "and other excellent orators,
but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
grow old in listening to his talk."
Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge,
and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed
with Thales. Cicero said of him, "Socrates brought down philosophy from
the heavens to the earth." He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
relationships.
These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to
precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
absolutely ridiculous.
Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_
speculations, and Socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. He
never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
usefulness had passed away.
The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
Tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _Negative_, inasmuch as
he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
capable and what is not of being accurately known. _Positive_, inasmuch
as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
understanding, and of which man is the centre."
Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
Phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good."
It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
"Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--
"Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
dialectics."
Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.
Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_;
and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence
of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. Love, then, is the bond which
unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--
"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.
The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--
These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
himself.'...
Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
in the world.
The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so important that his
royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--
"Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
their separation and commencement."
He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--
"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
its own energy."
There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
perfect life.
With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
of scepticism.
Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but
he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they
can be known only by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
knowledge. Plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
made _experience_ that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.
Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile for
purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
_particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
collection of facts and materials.
Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
comprehend them.
The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--
"To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
or tender virtues can exist."
The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
_Stoa_, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "The
Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then
they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
scepticism of Hume.
Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_
and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a
knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a
conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_,
or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
_perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
"success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
to reach.
Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
influential party.
With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the
fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.
The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
consists in the knowledge of the good.
Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
and goodness.
Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.
The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
despair of truth.
But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
governor, but subject to necessity.
Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.
* * * * *
The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.
Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the
doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
imitation of the divine.
Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.
If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
previously known.
The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part. |
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