CRATES; MENIPPUS; ARISTIPPUS.--Crates of Thebes is also mentioned,
less insolent and better-mannered, yet also a despiser of the goods of this
world; and Menippus, the maker of satires, whom Lucian, much later, made
the most diverting interlocutor of his amusing dialogues. In an opposite
direction, at the same epoch, Aristippus, a pupil of Socrates, like
Antisthenes, founded the school of pleasure, and maintained that the sole
search worthy of man was that of happiness, and that it was his duty to
make himself happy; that in consequence, it having been sufficiently proved
and being even self-evident, that happiness cannot come to us from without,
but must be sought within ourselves, it is necessary to study to know
ourselves thoroughly (and this was from Socrates) in order to decide what
are the states of the mind which give us a durable, substantial, and, if
possible, a permanent happiness. Now the seeker and the finder of
substantial happiness is wisdom, or rather, there is no other wisdom than
the art of distinguishing between pleasure and choosing, with a very
refined discrimination, those which are genuine. Wisdom further consists in
dominating misfortunes by the mastery of self so as not to be affected by
them, and in dominating also pleasures even whilst enjoying them, so that
they may not obtain dominion over us; "possessing without being possessed"
was one of his mottoes which Horace thus translated: "I strive to subject
things to myself, not myself to things." This eminently practical wisdom,
which is only a highly-developed egoism, is that of Horace and Montaigne,
and was expressed by Voltaire in verses that were sometimes felicitous.
THE SCHOOL OF CYRENE.--Aristippus had for successor in the direction
of his school, first his daughter Arete, then his grandson. The
Aristippists, or Cyrenaics (the school being established in Cyrene),
frankly despised the gods, regarding them as inventions to frighten women
and little children. One of them, Euhemerus, invented the theory, which in
part is false and in part accurate, that the gods are simply heroes, kings,
great men deified after their death by the gratitude or terror of the
populace. As often happens, philosophic theories being essentially plastic
and taking the form of the temperament which receives them, a certain
Cyrenaic (Hegesias) enunciated the doctrine that the supreme happiness of
man was suicide. In fact, if the object of man is happiness, since life
affords far fewer joys than sorrows, the philosophy of happiness is to get
rid of life, and the sole wisdom lies in suicide. It does not appear that
Hegesias gave the only proof of sincere belief in this doctrine which can
be given by anyone professing it.
CHAPTER VII
EPICUREANISM
Epicureanism Believes that the Duty of Man is to Seek
Happiness, and that Happiness Consists in Wisdom.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY.--Continuing to feel the strong impulse which it
had received from Socrates, philosophy was now for a long while to be
almost exclusively moral philosophy. Only it divided very sharply in two
directions. Antisthenes and Aristippus were both pupils of Socrates. From
Antisthenes came the Cynics; from Aristippus the philosophers of
pleasure. The Cynics gave birth to the Stoics, the philosophers of pleasure
to the Epicureans, and these two great schools practically divided all
antiquity between them. We will take the Epicureans first because,
chronologically, they slightly preceded the Stoics.
EPICURUS.--Epicurus, born at Athens a little after the death of
Plato, brought up at Samos by his parents who had been forced to expatriate
themselves owing to reverses of fortune, returned to Athens about 305 B.C.,
and there founded a school. Personally he was a true wise man, sober,
scrupulous, a despiser of pleasure, severe to himself, _in practice_ a
Stoic. As his general view of the universe, he taught approximately the
doctrine of Democritus: the world is composed of a multitude of atoms,
endowed with certain movements, which attach themselves to one another and
combine together, and there is nothing else in the world. Is there not a
first cause, a being who set all these atoms in motion--in short, a God?
Epicurus did not think so. Are there gods, as the vulgar believe? Epicurus
believed so; but he considered that the gods are brilliant, superior, happy
creatures, who do not trouble about this world, do not interfere with it,
and are even less occupied, were it possible, with mankind. Also they did
not create the world, for why should they have created it? From goodness,
said Plato; but there is so much evil in the world that if they created it
from goodness, they were mistaken and must be fools; and if they willingly
permitted evil, they are wicked; and therefore it is charitable towards
them to believe that they did not create it.
EPICUREAN MORALITY.--From the ethical point of view, Epicurus
certainly attaches himself to Aristippus; but with the difference that lies
between pleasure and happiness. Aristippus taught that the aim of life was
intelligent pleasure, Epicurus declared that the aim of life was
happiness. Now, does happiness consist in pleasures, or does it exclude
them? Epicurus was quite convinced that it excluded them. Like Lord
Beaconsfield, he would say, "Life would be almost bearable, were it not for
its pleasures." Happiness for Epicurus lay in "phlegm," as Philinte would
put it; it lay in the calm of the mind that has rendered itself
inaccessible to every emotion of passion, which is never irritated, never
moved, never annoyed, never desires, and never fears. Why, for instance,
should we dread death? So long as we fear it, it is not here; when it
arrives, we shall no longer fear it; then, why is it an evil?--But, during
life itself, how about sufferings?--We greatly increase our sufferings by
complaints and by self-commiseration. If we acted in the reverse way, if
when we were tortured by them we recalled past pleasures and thought of
pleasures to come, they would be infinitely mitigated.--But, of what
pleasures can a man speak who makes happiness consist in the exclusion of
pleasures? The pleasures of the wise man are the satisfaction he feels in
assuring himself of his own happiness. He finds pleasure when he controls a
passion in order to revert to calmness; he feels pleasure when he converses
with his friends about the nature of true happiness; he feels pleasure when
he has diverted a youth from passionate follies or from despair, and
brought him back to peace of mind, etc.--But what about sufferings after
death? They do not exist. There is no hell because there is no immortality
of the soul. The soul is as material as the body, and dies with it.
You will say, perhaps, that this very severe and austere morality more
nearly approaches to Stoicism than to the teaching of Aristippus. This is
so true that when Horace confessed with a smile that he returned to the
morality of pleasure, he did not say, as we should, "I feel that I am
becoming an Epicurean," he said, "I fall back on the precepts of
Aristippus;" and Seneca, a professed Stoic, cites Epicurus almost as often
as Zeno in his lessons. It may not be quite accurate to state, but there
would not be much exaggeration in affirming, that Epicureanism is a smiling
Stoicism and Stoicism a gloomy Epicureanism. In the current use of the word
we have changed the meaning of Epicurean to make it mean "addicted to
pleasure." The warning must be given that there is no more grievous error.
THE VOGUE OF EPICUREANISM.--Epicureanism had an immense vogue in
antiquity. The principal professors of it at Athens were Metrodorus,
Hermarchus, Polystratus, and Apollodorus. Penetrating to Italy Epicureanism
found its most brilliant representative in Lucretius, who of the system
made a poem--the admirable _De Natura Rerum_; there were also
Atticus, Horace, Pliny the younger, and many more. It even became a
political opinion: the Caesarians were Epicureans, the Republicans
Stoics. On the appearance of Christianity Epicureanism came into direct
opposition with it, and so did Stoicism also; but in a far less degree. In
modern times, as will be seen, Epicureanism has enjoyed a revival.
CHAPTER VIII
STOICISM
The Passions are Diseases which can and must be Extirpated.
THE LOGIC OF STOICISM.--Stoicism existed as a germ in the Cynic
philosophy (and also in Socrates) as did Epicureanism in Aristippus. Zeno
was the pupil of Crates. In extreme youth he opened a school at Athens in
the Poecile. The Poecile was a portico; portico in Greek is _stoa_,
hence the name of Stoic. Zeno taught for about thirty years; then, on the
approach of age, he died by his own hand. Zeno thought, as did Epicurus and
Socrates, that philosophy should only be the science of life and that the
science of life lay in wisdom. Wisdom consists in thinking justly and
acting rightly; but to think justly only in order to act rightly--which is
quite in the spirit of Socrates, and eliminates all the science of
research, all consideration of the constitution of the world as well as the
total and even the details of matter. Therein is Stoicism more narrow than
Epicureanism.
In consequence, man needs clear, precise, and severe "logic" (the Stoics
were the first to use this word). Armed with this weapon, and only
employing it for self-knowledge and self-control, man makes himself
wise. The "wise man" of the Stoic is a kind of saint--a superman, as it has
since been called--very analogous to his God. All his efforts are
concentrated on safeguarding, conquering, and suppressing his passions,
which are nothing save "diseases of the soul." In the external world he
disregards all the "things of chance"--everything, that is, that does not
depend on human will--and considers them as non-existent: the ailments of
the body, pangs, sufferings, misfortunes, and humiliations are not evils,
they are things indifferent. On the contrary, crimes and errors are such
evils that they are _equally_ execrable, and the wise man should
reproach himself as severely for the slightest fault as for the greatest
crime--a paradoxical doctrine which has aroused the warmth of even
respectful opponents of Stoicism, notably Cicero.
MAXIMS OF THE STOICS.--Their most frequently repeated maxim is
"abstain and endure"; abstain from all evil, suffer all aggression and
so-called misfortune without rebelling or complaining. Another precept
widely propagated among them and by them, "Live according to nature,"
remarkably resembles an Epicurean maxim. This must be made clear. This
precept as they interpreted it meant: adhere freely and respectfully to the
laws of the universe. The world is a God who lives according to the laws He
Himself made, and of which we are not judges. These laws surround us and
compel us; sometimes they wound us. We must respect and obey them, have a
sort of pious desire that they should operate even against ourselves, and
live in reverent conformity with them. Thus understood, the "life in
conformity with nature" is nothing else than an aspect of the maxim,
"Endure."
PRINCIPAL STOICS.--The principal adepts and masters of Stoicism with
and after Zeno were Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Aristo, and Herillus in Greece;
at Rome, Cato, Brutus, Cicero to a certain degree, Thrasea, Epictetus
(withal a Greek, who wrote in Greek), Seneca, and finally the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism rapidly developed into a religion, having its
rites, obediences, ascetic practices, directors of conscience, examination
of conscience, and its adepts with a traditional dress, long cloak, and
long beard. It exerted considerable influence, comparable (comparable
only) to Christianity, but it penetrated only the upper and middle classes
of society in antiquity without descending, or barely descending, to the
masses. Like Epicureanism, Stoicism had a renaissance in modern times in
opposition to Christianity; this will be dealt with later.
CHAPTER IX
ECLECTICS AND SCEPTICS
Philosophers who Wished to Belong to No School
Philosophers who Decried All Schools and All Doctrines.
THE TWO TENDENCIES.--As might be expected to happen, and as always
happens, the multiplicity of sects brought about two tendencies, one
consisting in selecting somewhat arbitrarily from each sect what one found
best in it, which is called "eclecticism," the other in thinking that no
school grasped the truth, that the truth is not to be grasped, which is
called "scepticism."
THE ECLECTICS: PLUTARCH.--The Eclectics, who did not form a school,
which would have been difficult in the spirit in which they acted, had only
this in common, that they venerated the great thinkers of ancient Greece,
and that they felt or endeavoured to feel respect and toleration for all
religions. They venerated Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno,
Moses, Jesus, St. Paul, and loved to imagine that they were each a partial
revelation of the great divine thought, and they endeavoured to reconcile
these divergent revelations by proceeding on broad lines and general
considerations. Among them were Moderatus, Nicomachus, Nemesius, etc. The
most illustrious, without being the most profound--though his literary
talent has always kept him prominent--was Plutarch. His chief effort, since
then often renewed, was to reconcile reason and faith (I am writing of the
polytheistic faith). Perceiving in mythology ingenious allegories, he
showed that under the name of allegories covering and containing profound
ideas, all polytheism could be accepted by the reason of a Platonist, an
Aristotelian, or a Stoic. The Eclectics had not much influence, and only
pleased two sorts of minds: those who preferred knowledge rather than
conviction, and found in Eclecticism an agreeable variety of points of
view; and those who liked to believe a little in everything, and possessing
receptive but not steadfast minds were not far from sceptics and who might
be called affirmative sceptics in opposition to the negative sceptics:
sceptics who say, "Heavens, yes," as opposed to sceptics who always say,
"Presumably, no."
THE SCEPTICS: PYRRHO.--The Sceptics proper were chronologically more
ancient. The first famous Sceptic was a contemporary of Aristotle; he
followed Alexander on his great expedition into Asia. This was Pyrrho. He
taught, as it appears, somewhat obscurely at Athens, and for successor had
Timon. These philosophers, like so many others, sought happiness and
affirmed that it lay in abstention from decision, in the mind remaining in
abeyance, in _aphasia_. Pyrrho being accustomed to say that he was
indifferent whether he was alive or dead, on being asked, "Then why do you
live?" answered: "Just because it is indifferent whether one lives or is
dead." As may be imagined, their favourite sport was to draw the various
schools into mutual opposition, to rout some by the rest, to show that all
were strong in what they negatived, but weak in what they affirmed, and so
to dismiss them in different directions.
THE NEW ACADEMY.--Scepticism, albeit attenuated, softened, and less
aggressive, reappeared in a school calling itself the New Academy. It
claimed to adhere to Socrates--not without some show of reason, since
Socrates had declared that the only thing he knew was that he knew
nothing--and the essential tenet of this school was to affirm nothing. Only
the Academicians believed that certain things were probable, more probable
than others, and they are the founders of probabilism, which is nothing
more than conviction accompanied with modesty. They were more or less
moderate, according to personal temperament. Arcesilaus was emphatically
moderate, and limited himself to the development of the critical faculties
of his pupil. Carneades was more negative, and arrived at or reverted to
scepticism and sophistry pure and simple. Cicero, with a certain foundation
of Stoicism, was a pupil, and one of the most moderate, of the New Academy.
AENESIDEMUS; AGRIPPA; EMPIRICUS.--Others built on experience itself,
on the incertitude of our sensations and observations, on everything that
can cheat us and cause us illusion in order to display how _relative_
and how miserably partial is human knowledge. Such was Aenesidemus, whom
it might be thought Pascal had read, so much does the latter give the
reasons of the former when he is not absorbed in faith, and when he assumes
the position of a sceptic precisely in order to prove the necessity of
taking refuge in faith. Such was Agrippa; such, too, was Sextus Empiricus,
so often critical of science, who demonstrates (as to a slight extent M.
Henri Poincare does in our own day) that all sciences, even those which,
like mathematics and geometry, are proudest of their certainty, rest upon
conventions and intellectual "conveniences."
CHAPTER X
NEOPLATONISM
Reversion to Metaphysics.
Imaginative Metaphysicians after the Manner of Plato, but in Excess.
ALEXANDRINISM.--Amid all this, metaphysics--namely, the effort to
comprehend the universe--appears somewhat at a discount. It enjoyed a
renaissance in the third century of our era among some teachers from
Alexandria (hence the name of the Alexandrine school) who came to lecture
at Rome with great success. Alexandrinism is a "Neoplatonism"--that is, a
renewed Platonism and, as considered by its authors, an augmented one.
PLOTINUS.--Plotinus taught this: God and matter exist. God is one,
matter is multiple and divisible. God in Himself is incomprehensible, and
is only to be apprehended in his manifestations. Man rises not to
comprehension of Him but to the perception of Him by a series of degrees
which are, as it were, the progressive purification of faith, and which
lead us to a kind of union with Him resembling that of one being with
another whom he could never see, but of whose presence he could have no
doubt. Matter, that is, the universe, is an emanation from God, as perfume
comes from a flower. All is not God, and only God can be God, but all is
divine and all participates in God, just as each of our thoughts
participates of our soul. Now, if all emanates from God, all also tends to
return to Him, as bodies born of earth, nourished by earth, invigorated by
the forces proceeding from the earth, tend to return to the earth. This is
what makes the harmony of the world. The law of laws is, that every
fragment of the universe derived from God returns to Him and desires to
return to Him. The universe is an emanation from the perfect, and an
effort towards perfection. The universe is a God in exile who has
nostalgia for himself. The universe is a progressive descent from God with
a tendency towards reintegration with Him.
How does this emanation from God becoming matter take place? That is a
mystery; but it may be supposed to take place by successive stages. From
God emanates spirit, impersonal spirit which is not spirit of this or that,
but universal spirit spread through the whole world and animating it. From
spirit emanates the soul, which can unite itself to a body and form an
individual. The soul is less divine than spirit, which in turn is less
divine than God, but yet retains divinity. From the soul emanates the body
to which it unites itself. The body is less divine than the soul, which was
less divine than spirit, which was less divine than God; but it still
possesses divinity for it has a form, a figure, a design marked and
impressed with divine spirit. Finally, matter without form is the most
distant of the emanations from God, and the lowest of the descending stages
of God. God _is_ in Himself; He thinks in pure thought in spirit; He
thinks in mixed and confused thought in the soul; He feels in the body; He
sleeps in unformed matter. The object of unformed matter is to acquire
form, that is a body; and the object of a body is to have a soul; and the
aim of a soul is to be united in spirit, and the aim of spirit is to be
absorbed into God.
Souls not united to bodies contemplate spirit and enjoy absolute
happiness. Other souls not united to bodies, but solicited by a certain
instinct to unite themselves to bodies, are of ambiguous but still very
exalted nature. Souls united to bodies (our own) have descended far, but
can raise themselves and be purified by contemplation of the eternal
intelligence, and by relative union with it. This contemplation has
several degrees, so to speak, of intensity, degrees which Plotinus termed
hypostases. By perception we obtain a glimpse of ideas, by dialectics we
penetrate them; by a final hypostasis, which is ecstasy, we can sometimes
unite ourselves directly to God and live in Him.
THE PUPILS OF PLOTINUS.--Plotinus had as pupils and successors,
amongst others, Porphyry and Iamblichus. Porphyry achieves little except
the exposition of the doctrine of his master, and shows originality only as
a logician. Iamblichus and his school made a most interesting effort to
revive exhausted and expiring paganism and to constitute a philosophic
paganism. The philosophers of the school of Iamblichus are, by the way,
magicians, charlatans, miracle-mongers, men as antipositivist as
possible. Iamblichus himself sought to reconcile polytheism with
Neoplatonism by putting in the centre of all a supreme deity, an essential
deity from whom he made a crowd of secondary, tertiary, and quaternary
deities to emanate, ranging from those purely immaterial to those inherent
in matter. The subtle wanderings of Neoplatonism were continued obscurely
in the school of Athens until it was closed for ever in 529 by the Emperor
Justinian as being hostile to the religion of the Empire, which at that
epoch was Christianity.
CHAPTER XI
CHRISTIANITY
Philosophic Ideas which Christianity Welcomed, Adopted, or Created
How it must Give a Fresh Aspect to All Philosophy,
even that Foreign to Itself.
CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND MORALITY.--Christianity spread through the
Empire by the propaganda of the Apostles, and more especially St. Paul,
from about the year 40. Its success was extremely rapid, especially among
the populace, and little by little it won over the upper classes. As a
general philosophy, primitive Christianity did not absolutely bring more
than the Hebrew dogmas: the unity of God, a providential Deity, that is,
one directly interfering in human affairs; immortality of the soul with
rewards and penalties beyond the grave (a recent theory among the Jews, yet
one anterior to Christianity). As a moral system, Christianity brought
something so novel and so beautiful that it is not very probable that
humanity will ever surpass it, which may be imperfectly and incompletely
summed up thus: love of God; He must not only be feared as He was by the
pagans and the ancient Jews; He must be loved passionately as a son loves
his father, and all things must be done for this love and in consideration
of this love; all men are brethren as sons of God, and they should love one
another as brothers; love your neighbour as yourself, love him who does not
love you; love your enemies; be not greedy for the goods of this world, nor
ambitious, nor proud; for God loves the lowly, the humble, the suffering,
and the miserable, and He will exalt the lowly and put down the mighty from
their seats.
Nothing like this had been said in all antiquity, and it needs
extraordinary ingenuity (of a highly interesting character, by the way), to
find in ancient wisdom even a few traces of this doctrine.
Finally, into politics, so to speak, Christianity brought this novelty:
there are two empires, the empire of God and the empire of man; you do not
owe everything to the earthly empire; you are bound to give it faithfully
only what is needed for it to be strong and to preserve society; apart from
that, and that done, you are the subject of God and have only to answer to
God for your thoughts, your belief, your conscience; and over that portion
of yourself the State has neither right nor authority unless it be usurped
and tyrannical. And therein lay the charter of individual liberty like the
charter of the rights of man.
As appeal to the feelings, Christianity brought the story of a young God,
infinitely good and gentle, who had never cursed, who had been infinitely
loved, who had been persecuted and betrayed, who had forgiven his
executioners, and who died in great sufferings and who was to be imitated
(whence came the thirst for martyrdom). This story in itself is not more
affecting than that of Socrates, but it is that of a young martyr and not
of an old one, and therein lies a marked difference for the imagination and
emotions of the multitude.
THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The prodigious rapidity of the success
of Christianity is easily explicable. Polytheism had no longer a great hold
on the masses, and no philosophic doctrine had found or had even sought the
path to the crowd; Christianity, essentially democratic, loved the weak and
humble, had a tendency to prefer them to the great ones of this world, and
to regard them as being more the children of God, and was therefore
received by the masses as the only doctrine which could replace the
worm-eaten polytheism. And in Christianity they saw the religion for which
they were waiting, and in the heads of Christianity their own protectors
and defenders.
ITS EVOLUTION.--The evolution of Christianity was very rapid, and
from a great moral doctrine with a minimum of rudimentary metaphysics it
became, perchance mistakenly, a philosophy giving account, or desirous of
giving account of everything; it so to speak incorporated a metaphysic,
borrowed in great part from Greek philosophy, in great part from the Hebrew
traditions. It possessed ideas on the origin of matter, and whilst
maintaining that God was eternal, denied that matter was, and asserted that
God created it out of nothing. It had theories on the essence of God, and
saw Him in three Persons, or hypostases, one aspect of God as power,
another as love, and the other as intelligence. It presented theories on
the incarnation and humanisation of God, God being made man in Jesus Christ
without ceasing to be God. It conceived new relationships of man to God,
man having in himself powers of purgation and perfection, but always
needing divine help for self-perfection (theory of grace). And this he
must believe; if not he would feel insolent pride in his freedom. It had
ideas about the existence of evil, declaring in "justification of God" for
having permitted evil on earth, that the world was a place of trial, and
that evil was only a way of putting man to the test and discovering what
were his merits. It had its notions on the rewards and penalties beyond the
grave, hell for the wicked and heaven for the good, as had been known to
antiquity, but added purgatory, a place for both punishment and
purification by punishment, an entirely Platonic theory, which Plato may
have inspired but did not himself entertain. Finally, it was a complete
philosophy answering, and that in a manner often admirable, all the
questions that mankind put or could ever put.
And, as so often happens, that has proved a weakness and a strength to it:
a weakness because embarrassed with subtle, complicated, insoluble
questions wherein mankind will always be involved, it was forced to engage
in endless discussions wherein the bad or feeble reasons advanced by this
or that votary compromised the whole work; a strength because whoever
brings a rule of life is practically compelled to support it by general
ideas bearing on the relations of things and to give it a place in a
general survey of the world; otherwise he appears impotent, weak,
disqualified to give that very rule of life, incapable of replying to the
interrogations raised by that rule of life; and finally, lacking in
authority.
SCHISMS AND HERESIES.--Right or wrong, and it is difficult and
highly hazardous to decide the question, Christianity was a complete
philosophy, which was why it had its schisms and heresies, a certain number
of sincere Christians not resolving the metaphysical questions in the way
of the majority. Heresies were innumerable; only the two shall be cited
which are deeply interesting in the history of philosophy. Manes, an Arab
(and Arabia was then a Persian province), revived the old Zoroastrian
doctrine of two principles of good and evil, and saw in the world two
contending gods, the God of perfection and the god of sin, and laid upon
man the duty of assisting the God of goodness so that His kingdom should
come and cause the destruction of evil in the world. From him proceeded the
Manicheans, who exerted great influence and were condemned by many Councils
until their sect died out, only to reappear or seem to reappear fairly
often in the Middle Ages and in modern times.
Arius denied the Trinity, believing only in one God, not only unique, but
in one Person, and in consequence denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. He
was perpetually involved in controversies and polemics, supported by some
Bishops, opposed by the majority. After his death his doctrine spread
strangely. It was stifled in the East by Theodosius, but was widely
adopted by the "barbarians" of the West (Goths, Vandals, Burgundians,
Lombards). It was revived, more or less exactly, after the Reformation,
among the Socinians.
ROME AND CHRISTIANITY.--The relations of Christianity with the Roman
government were in the highest degree tragic, as is common knowledge. There
were ten sanguinary persecutions, some being atrocious. It has often been
asked what was the cause of this animosity against the Christians on the
part of a government which tolerated all religions and all
philosophies. Persecutions were natural at Athens where a democracy,
obstinately attached to the local deities, treated as enemies of the
country those who did not take these gods into consideration; persecutions
were natural on the part of a Calvin or a Louis XIV who combined in
themselves the two authorities and would not admit that anyone in the State
had the right to think differently from its head; but it has been argued
that they were incomprehensible on the part of a government which admitted
all cults and all doctrines. The explanation perhaps primarily lies in the
fact that Christianity was essentially popular, and that the government saw
in it not only plebeianism, which was disquieting, but an organisation of
plebeianism, which was still more so. The administration of religion had
always been in the hands of the aristocracy; the Roman pontiffs were
patricians, the Emperor was the sovereign pontiff; to yield obedience, even
were it only spiritually, to private men as priests was to be disobedient
to the Roman aristocracy, to the Emperor himself, and was properly speaking
a revolt.
A further explanation, perhaps, is that each new religion that was
introduced at Rome did not oppose and did not contradict polytheism, the
principle of polytheism being precisely that there are many gods; whereas
Christianity denying all those gods and affirming that there is only one,
and that all others must be despised as non-existent, inveighed against,
denied, and ruined or threatened to destroy the very essence of
polytheism. It was not a variation, it was a heresy; it was more than
heretical, it was anarchical; it did not only condemn this or that
religion, but even the very tolerance with which the Roman government
accepted all religions. Hence it is natural enough that it should have been
combated to the utmost by practically all the Emperors, from the most
execrable, such as Nero, to the best, such as Marcus Aurelius.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PHILOSOPHERS.--The relations of Christianity
with philosophy were confused. The immense majority of philosophers
rejected it, considering their own views superior to it, and moreover,
feeling it to be formidable, made use against it of all that could be found
beautiful, specious, or expedient in ancient philosophy; and the ardour of
Neoplatonism, which we have considered, in part arose from precisely this
instinct of rivalry and of struggle. At that epoch there was a throng of
men like Ernest Havet presenting Hellenism in opposition to Christianity,
and Ernest Havet is only a Neoplatonist of the nineteenth century.
A certain number of philosophers, nevertheless, either on the
Jewish-Christian side or on the Hellenic, tried some reconciliation either
as Jews making advances to Hellenism or as Greeks admitting there was
something acceptable on the part of Sion. Aristobulus, a Jew (prior to
Jesus Christ), seems to have endeavoured to bring Moses into agreement with
Plato; Philo (a Jew contemporary with and surviving Jesus Christ and a
non-Christian), about whom there is more information, throughout his life
pursued the plan of demonstrating all the resemblances he could discover
between Plato and the Old Testament, much in the same way as in our time
some have striven to point out the surprising agreement of the Darwinian
theory with Genesis. He was called the Jewish Plato, and at Alexandria it
was said: "Philo imitates Plato or Plato imitates Philo."
On their side, later on, certain eclectic Greeks already cited, Moderatus,
Nicomachus, Nemesius, extended goodwill so far as to take into account, if
not Jesus, at least Moses, and to admit Israelitish thought into the
history of philosophy and of human wisdom. But, in general it was by the
schools of philosophy and by the ever dwindling section of society priding
itself upon its philosophy that Christianity was most decisively repulsed,
thrust on one side and misunderstood.
CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS.--Without dealing with many others who belong
more especially to the history of the Church rather than to that of
philosophy, the Christians did not lack two very illustrious philosophers
who must receive attention--Origen and St. Augustine.
ORIGEN.--Origen was a native of Alexandria at the close of the
second century, and a pupil of St. Clement of Alexandria. A Christian and a
Platonist, in order to give himself permission and excuse for reconciling
the two doctrines, he alleged that the Apostles had given only so much of
the Christian teaching as the multitude could comprehend, and that the
learned could interpret it in a manner more subtle, more profound, and more
complete. Having observed this precaution, he revealed his system, which
was this: God is a pure spirit. He already has descended one step in
_spirits_ which are emanations from Him. These spirits are capable of
good and evil. When addicted to evil, they clothe themselves with matter
and become souls in bodies;--which is what we are. There are others lower
than ourselves. There are impure spirits which have clothed themselves
with unclean bodies; these are demons. Now, as the fallen brethren of
angels, we are free, less free than they, but still free. Through this
freedom we can in our present existence either raise or lower
ourselves. But this freedom does not suffice us; a little help is
essential. This help comes to us from the spirits which have remained
pure. The help they afford us is opposed by the efforts of the utterly
fallen spirits who are lower in the scale than ourselves. To combat these
fallen spirits, to help the pure spirits who help us, and to help them to
help us, such is our duty in this life, which is a medicine, the medicine
of Plato, namely a punishment; sterile when it is not accepted by us,
salutary when gratefully accepted by us, it then becomes expiation and in
consequence purification. The part of the Redeemer in all this is the same
as that of the spirits, but on a grander and more decisive plane. King of
spirits, Spirit of spirits, by revelation He illumines our confused
intelligence and fortifies our weak will against temptation.
ST. AUGUSTINE.--St. Augustine of Tagaste (in Africa), long a pagan
exercising the profession of professor of rhetoric, became a Christian and
was Bishop of Hippo. It is he who "fixed" the Christian doctrine in the way
most suitable to and most acceptable to Western intelligence. Instead of
confusing it, more or less intentionally, more or less inadvertently, with
philosophy, he exerted all his great talents to make the most precise
distinction from it. Philosophers (he says) have always regarded the world
as an emanation from God. Then all is God. Such is not the way to
reason. There is no emanation, but creation; God created the world and has
remained distinct from it. He lives in it in such a way that we live in
Him; in Him we live and move and have our being; He dwells throughout the
world, but He is not the world; He is everywhere but He is not all. God
created the world. Then, can it be said that before the world was created
God remained doing nothing during an immense space of time? Certainly not,
because time only began at the creation of the world. God is outside
time. The eternal is the absence of time. God, therefore, was not an
instant before He created the world. Or, if it be preferred, there was an
eternity before the birth of the world. But it is the same thing; for
eternity is the non-existence of time.
Some understand God in three Persons as three Gods. This polytheism, this
paganism must be rejected. But how to understand? How? You feel in
yourself several souls? No. And yet there are several faculties of the
soul. The three Persons of God are the three divine faculties. Man has body
and soul. No one ought to have doubts about the soul, for to have doubts
presupposes thought, and to think is to be; above all things we are
thinking beings. But what is the soul? Something immaterial, assuredly,
since it can conceive immaterial things, such as a line, a point, surface,
space. It is as necessary for the soul to be immaterial in order to be able
to grasp the immaterial, as it is necessary for the hand to be material in
order that it can grasp a stone.
Whence comes the soul? From the souls of ancestors by transmission? This is
not probable, for this would be to regard it as material. From God by
emanation? This is inadmissible; it is the same error as believing that the
world emanates from God. Here, too, there is no emanation, but creation.
God creates the souls in destination for bodies themselves born from
heredity. Once the body is destroyed, what becomes of the soul? It cannot
perish; for thought not being dependent upon the senses, there is no reason
for its disappearance on the disappearance of the senses.
Human liberty is an assured fact; we are free to do good or evil. But then
God has not been able to know in advance what I shall do to-day, and in
consequence God, at least in His knowledge, has limitations, is not
omnipotent. St. Augustine replies confusedly (for the question is
undoubtedly insoluble) that we have an illusion of liberty, an illusion
that we are free, which suffices for us to acquire merit if we do right and
demerit if we do wrong, and that this illusion of liberty is a relative
liberty, which leaves the prescience of God, and therefore His omnipotence,
absolute. Man is also extremely weak, debilitated, and incapable of good on
account of original sin, the sin of our first parents, which is transmitted
to us through heredity and paralyses us. But God helps us, and this is what
is termed grace. He helps us gratuitously, as is indicated by the word
"grace"--if He wishes and when He wishes and in the measure that He wishes.
From this arises the doctrine of "predestination," by which it is
preordained whether a man is to be saved or lost.
PART II
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
CHAPTER I
FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE THIRTEENTH
Philosophy is only an Interpreter of Dogma.
When it is Declared Contrary to Dogma by the Authority of Religion,
it is a Heresy.
Orthodox and Heterodox Interpretations.
Some Independent Philosophers.
DOGMA.--After the invasion of the barbarians, philosophy, like
literature, sought refuge in monasteries and in the schools which prelates
instituted and maintained near them. But the Church does not permit the
free search for truth. The truth has been established by the Fathers of the
Church and fixed by the Councils. Thenceforth the philosophic life, so to
speak, which had never been interrupted, assumed a fresh character. Within
the Church it sheltered--I will not say disguised--itself under the
interpretation of dogma; it became a sort of respectful auxiliary of
theology, and was accordingly called the "handmaid of theology," _ancilla
theologiae_. When emancipated, when departing from dogma, it is a
"heresy," and all the great heresies are nothing else than schools of
philosophy, which is why heresies must come into a history of
philosophy. And at last, but only towards the close of the Middle Ages, lay
thought without disturbing itself about dogma and no longer thinking about
its interpretation, created philosophic doctrines exactly as the
philosophers of antiquity invented them apart from religion, to which they
were either hostile or indifferent.
SCHOLASTICISM: SCOTUS ERIGENA.--The orthodox philosophy of the
Middle Ages was the scholastic. Scholasticism consisted in amassing and in
making known scientific facts and matters of knowledge of which it was
useful for a well-bred man not to be ignorant and for this purpose
encyclopaedias were constructed; on the other hand, it consisted not
precisely in the reconciliation of faith with reason, not precisely and far
less in the submission of faith to the criticism of reason, but in making
faith sensible to reason, as had been the office of the Fathers of the
Church, more especially St. Augustine.
Scotus Erigena, a Scotsman attached to the Palatine Academy of Charles the
Bald, lived in the eleventh century. He was extremely learned. His
philosophy was Platonic, or rather the bent of his mind was Platonic. God
is the absolute Being; He is unnamable, since any name is a delimitation of
the being; He _is_ absolutely and infinitely. As the creator of all
and uncreated, He is the cause _per se_; as the goal to which all
things tend, He is the supreme end. The human soul is of impenetrable
essence like God Himself; accordingly, it is God in us. We have fallen
through the body and, whilst in the flesh, we can, by virtue and more
especially by the virtue of penitence, raise ourselves to the height of the
angels. The world is the continuous creation of God. It must not be said
that God created the world, but that He creates it; for if He ceased from
sustaining it, the world would no longer exist. God is perpetual creation
and perpetual attraction. He draws all beings to Himself, and in the end He
will have them all in Himself. There is predestination to perfection in
everything.
These theories, some of which, as has been seen, go beyond dogma and form
at least the beginning of heresy, are all impregnated with Platonism,
especially with Neoplatonism, and lead to the supposition that Scotus
Erigena possessed very wide Greek learning.
ARABIAN SCIENCE.--A great literary and philosophical fact in the
eighth century was the invasion of the Arabs. Mahometans successively
invaded Syria, Persia, Africa, and Spain, forming a crescent, the two
points of which touched the two extremities of Europe. Inquisitive and
sagacious pupils of the Greeks in Africa and Asia, they founded everywhere
brilliant universities which rapidly acquired renown (Bagdad, Bassorah,
Cordova, Granada, Seville, Murcia) and brought to Europe a new quota of
science; for instance, all the works of Aristotle, of which Western Europe
possessed practically nothing. Students greedy for knowledge came to learn
from them in Spain; for instance, Gerbert, who developed into a man of
great learning, who taught at Rheims and became Pope. Individually the
Arabs were often great philosophers, and at least the names must be
mentioned of Avicenna (a Neoplatonist of the tenth century) and Averroes
(an Aristotelian of the twelfth century who betrayed tendencies towards
admitting the eternity of nature, and its evolution through its own
initiative during the course of time). Their doctrines were propagated,
and the ancient books which they made known became widely diffused. From
them dates the sway of Aristotle throughout the middle ages.
ST. ANSELM.--St. Anselm, in the eleventh century, a Savoyard, who
was long Abbot of Bec in Normandy and died Archbishop of Canterbury, is one
of the most illustrious doctors of philosophy in the service of theology
that ever lived. "A new St. Augustine" (as he has been called), he starts
from faith to arrive at faith after it has been rendered sensible to
reason. Like St. Augustine he says: "I believe in order to understand"
(well persuaded that if I never believed I should never understand), and he
adds what had been in the thought of St. Augustine: "I understand in order
to believe." St. Anselm proved the existence of God by the most abstract
arguments. For example, "It is necessary to have a cause, one or multiple;
one is God; multiple, it can be derived from one single cause, and that one
cause is God; it can be a particular cause in each thing caused; but then
it is necessary to suppose a personal force which must itself have a cause
and thus we work back to a common cause, that is to say to a single one."
He proved God again by the proof which has remained famous under the name
of the argument of St. Anselm: To conceive God is to prove that He is; the
conception of God is proof of His existence; for every idea has its object;
above all, an idea which has infinity for object takes for granted the
existence of infinity; for all being finite here below, what would give the
idea of infinity to the human mind? Therefore, if the human brain has the
idea of infinity it is because of the existence of infinity. The argument
is perhaps open to difference of opinion, but as proof of a singular vigour
of mind on the part of its author, it is indisputable.
Highly intellectual also is his explanation of the necessity of
redemption. _Cur Deus Homo?_ (the title of one of his works) asked
St. Anselm. Because sin in relation to an infinite God is an infinite
crime. Man, finite and limited in capacity, could therefore never expiate
it. Then what could God do to avenge His honour and to have satisfaction
rendered to Him? He could only make Himself man without ceasing to be God,
in order that as man He should offer to God a reparation to which as God He
would give the character of infinitude. It was therefore absolutely
necessary that at a given moment man should become God, which could only be
done upon the condition that God made Himself man.
REALISTS; NOMINALISTS; CONCEPTUALISTS.--It was in the time of
St. Anselm that there arose the celebrated philosophic quarrel between the
"realists, nominalists, and conceptualists." It is here essential to employ
these technical terms or else not to allude to the dispute at all, because
the strife is above all a war of words. The realists (of whom St. Anselm
was one), said: "The ideas (idea of virtue, idea of sin, idea of greatness,
idea of littleness) are realities; they exist, in a spiritual manner of
course, but they really exist; they are: there is a virtue, a sin, a
greatness, a littleness, a reason, etc. (and this was an exact reminiscence
of the ideas of Plato). It is indeed only the idea, the general, the
universal, which is real, and the particular has only the appearance of
reality. Men do not exist, the individual man does not exist; what exists
is 'man' in general, and individual men are only the appearance of--the
coloured reflections of--the universal man." The nominalists (Roscelin the
Canon of Compiegne, for instance) answered: "No; the general ideas, the
universals as you say, are only names, are only words, emissions of the
voice, labels, if you like, which we place on such and such categories of
facts observed by us; there is no greatness; there are a certain number of
great things, and when we think of them we inscribe this word 'greatness'
on the general idea which we conceive. 'Man' does not exist; there are men
and the word humanity is only a word which to us represents a collective idea." |
|
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기