A SHORT HISTORY

OF

GREEK PHILOSOPHY

BY

JOHN MARSHALL

M. A. OXON. , LL. D. EDIN. 

RECTOR OF THE ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL, EDINBURGH

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

IN THE YORKSHIRE COLLEGE, LEEDS

LONDON

PERCIVAL AND CO. 

1891

_All rights reserved_

PREFACE

The main purpose which I have had in view in writing this book has beento present an account of Greek philosophy which, within strict limitsof brevity, shall be at once authentic and interesting--_authentic_, asbeing based on the original works themselves, and not on any secondarysources; _interesting_, as presenting to the ordinary English reader, in language freed as far as possible from technicality andabstruseness, the great thoughts of the greatest men of antiquity onquestions of permanent significance and value. There has been noattempt to shirk the really philosophic problems which these men triedin their day to solve; but I have endeavoured to show, by a sympathetictreatment of them, that these problems were no mere wars of words, butthat in fact the philosophers of twenty-four centuries ago were dealingwith exactly similar difficulties as to the bases of belief and ofright action as, under different forms, beset thoughtful men and womento-day. 

In the general treatment of the subject, I have followed in the mainthe order, and drawn chiefly on the selection of passages, in Ritterand Preller's _Historia Philosophiae Graecae_. It is hoped that inthis way the little book may be found useful at the universities, as arunning commentary on that excellent work; and the better to aidstudents in the use of it for that purpose, the corresponding sectionsin Ritter and Preller are indicated by the figures in the margin. 

In the sections on Plato, and occasionally elsewhere, I have drawn tosome extent, by the kind permission of the Delegates of the ClarendonPress and his own, on Professor Jowett's great commentary andtranslation. 

JOHN MARSHALL. 

Transcriber's notes:

The passage numbers in the Ritter-Preller book mentioned in the secondparagraph above are indicated in this book with square brackets, e. G. "[10]". In the original book they were formatted as sidenotes. Inthis e-book they are embedded in the text approximately where theyappear in the original book, unless they are at the start of aparagraph, in which case they appear immediately before that paragraph. 

Page numbers are indicated with curly brackets, e. G. "{5}". They areembedded into the text where page breaks occurred in the original book. 

In the original book, pages had headings that varied with the materialbeing discussed on that pair of pages. In this e-book, those headingshave been collected into an "introductory" paragraph at the beginningof each chapter. 

The original book uses several Greek words. These words, the chaptersthey are used in, and their transliterations are as follows:

Chapter I (pages 3, 4, 12) - "arche" - alpha (with the soft-breathingmark), rho, chi, eta; "phloios" - phi, lambda, omicron, iota, omicron, final sigma. 

Chapter III (page 28) - "soma" - sigma, omega, mu, alpha; "sema" -sigma, eta, mu, alpha. 

Chapter IV (page 33, 34 - "doxa" - delta, omicron, xi, alpha; "Peri" -PI, epsilon, rho, iota; "Phueos" - PHI, upsilon, sigma, epsilon, omega, final sigma. 

Chapter V (page 48) - "logos" - lambda, omicron, gamma, omicron, finalsigma; "hule" - upsilon with rough breathing mark, lambda, eta. 

CONTENTS

CHAP. 

 I. --THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS-- I. Thales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. Anaximander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

 II. --THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS (_concluded_)-- III. Anaximenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 IV. Heraclitus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

 III. --PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS . . . . . . . . . 22

 IV. --THE ELEATICS-- I. Xenophanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 II. Parmenides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

 V. --THE ELEATICS (_concluded_)-- III. Zeno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 IV. Melissus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

 VI. --THE ATOMISTS-- I. Anaxagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

 VII. --THE ATOMISTS (_continued_)-- II. Empedocles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

 VIII. --THE ATOMISTS (_concluded_)-- III. Leucippus and Democritus . . . . . . . . . . 74

 IX. --THE SOPHISTS-- I. Protagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

 X. --THE SOPHISTS (_concluded_)-- II. Gorgias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

 XI. --SOCRATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

 XII. --SOCRATES (concluded) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

 XIII. --THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS-- I. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics . . . . . . . . 124 II. Antisthenes and the Cynics . . . . . . . . . 128 III. Euclides and the Megarics . . . . . . . . . . 132

 XIV. --PLATO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

 XV. --PLATO (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

 XVI. --PLATO (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

 XVII. --PLATO (_concluded_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

 XVIII. --ARISTOTLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

 XIX. --ARISTOTLE (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

 XX. --ARISTOTLE (_concluded_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

 XXI. --THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

 XXII. --THE STOICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

{1}

CHAPTER I

THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS

_The question of Thales--Water the beginning of things--Soul in allthings--Mystery in science--Abstraction and reality--Theory ofdevelopment_

I. THALES. --For several centuries prior to the great Persian invasionsof Greece, perhaps the very greatest and wealthiest city of the Greekworld was Miletus. Situate about the centre of the Ionian coasts ofAsia Minor, with four magnificent harbours and a strongly defensibleposition, it gathered to itself much of the great overland trade, whichhas flowed for thousands of years eastward and westward between Indiaand the Mediterranean; while by its great fleets it created a new worldof its own along the Black Sea coast. Its colonies there were sonumerous that Miletus was named 'Mother of Eighty Cities. ' From Abyduson the Bosphorus, past Sinope, and so onward to the Crimea and the Don, and thence round to Thrace, a busy community of colonies, mining, manufacturing, ship-building, corn-raising, owned Miletus for theirmother-city. Its {2} marts must therefore have been crowded withmerchants of every country from India to Spain, from Arabia to Russia;the riches and the wonders of every clime must have become familiar toits inhabitants. And fitly enough, therefore, in this city was bornthe first notable Greek geographer, the first constructor of a map, thefirst observer of natural and other curiosities, the first recorder ofvarieties of custom among various communities, the first speculator onthe causes of strange phenomena, --Hecataeus. His work is in great partlost, but we know a good deal about it from the frequent references tohim and it in the work of his rival and follower, Herodotus. 

The city naturally held a leading place politically as well ascommercially. Empire in our sense was alien to the instincts of theGreek race; but Miletus was for centuries recognised as the foremostmember of a great commercial and political league, the politicalcharacter of the league becoming more defined, as first the Lydian andthen the Persian monarchy became an aggressive neighbour on its borders. 

[8]

It was in this active, prosperous, enterprising state, and at theperiod of its highest activity, that Thales, statesman, practicalengineer, mathematician, philosopher, flourished. Without attemptingto fix his date too closely, we may take it that he was a leading manin Miletus for the greater part of the {3} first half of the sixthcentury before Christ. We hear of an eclipse predicted by him, of thecourse of a river usefully changed, of shrewd and profitable handlingof the market, of wise advice in the general councils of the league. He seems to have been at once a student of mathematics and an observerof nature, and withal something having analogy with both, an inquireror speculator into the _origin_ of things. To us nowadays thissuggests a student of geology, or physiography, or some such branch ofphysical science; to Thales it probably rather suggested a theoreticalinquiry into the simplest _thinkable_ aspect of things as existing. "Under what form known to us, " he would seem to have asked, "may weassume an identity in all known things, so as best to cover or renderexplicable the things as we know them?" The 'beginning' of things (forit was thus he described this assumed identity) was not conceived byhim as something which was long ages before, and which had ceased tobe; rather it meant the reality of things now. Thales then was theputter of a question, which had not been asked expressly before, butwhich has never ceased to be asked since. He was also the formulatorof a new meaning for a word; the word 'beginning' ((Greek) _arche_) gotthe meaning of 'underlying reality' and so of 'ending' as well. Inshort, he so dealt with a word, on the surface of it implying {4} time, as to eliminate the idea of time, and suggest a method of looking atthe world, more profound and far-reaching than had been beforeimagined. [1]

It is interesting to find that the man who was thus the firstphilosopher, the first observer who took a metaphysical, non-temporal, analytical view of the world, and so became the predecessor of allthose votaries of 'other-world' ways of thinking, --whether as academicidealist, or 'budge doctor of the Stoic fur, ' or Christian ascetic orwhat not, whose ways are such a puzzle to the 'hard-headed practicalman, '--was himself one of the shrewdest men of his day, so shrewd thatby common consent he was placed foremost in antiquity among the SevenSages, or seven shrewd men, whose practical wisdom became a world'stradition, enshrined in anecdote and crystallised in proverb. 

[9]

The chief record that we possess of the philosophic teaching of Thalesis contained in an interesting notice of earlier philosophies byAristotle, the main part of which as regards Thales runs as follows:

"The early philosophers as a rule formulated the originative principle((Greek) _arche_) of all things under some material expression. By theoriginative principle or element of things they meant that of which all{5} existing things are composed, that which determines their cominginto being, and into which they pass on ceasing to be. Where thesephilosophers differed from each other was simply in the answer whichthey gave to the question what was the nature of this principle, thedifferences of view among them applying both to the number, and to thecharacter, of the supposed element or elements. 

"Thales, the pioneer of this philosophy, maintained that _Water_ wasthe originative principle of all things. It was doubtless in thissense that he said that the earth rested on water. What suggested theconception to him may have been such facts of observation, as that allforms of substance which promote life are moist, that heat itself seemsto be conditioned by moisture, that the life-producing seed in allcreatures is moist, and so on. "

Other characteristics of water, it is elsewhere suggested, may havebeen in Thales' mind, such as its readiness to take various shapes, itsconvertibility from water into vapour or ice, its ready mixture withother substances, and so forth. What we have chiefly to note is, thatthe more unscientific this theory about the universe may strike us asbeing, the more completely out of accord with facts now familiar toeverybody, the more striking is it as marking a new mood of mind, inwhich _unity_, though only very partially suggested or discoverable bythe senses, is {6} preferred to that infinite and indefinite _variety_and _difference_ which the senses give us at every moment. There ishere the germ of a new aspiration, of a determination not to rest inthe merely momentary and different, but at least to try, even againstthe apparent evidence of the senses, for something more permanentlyintelligible. As a first suggestion of what this permanent underlyingreality may be, _Water_ might very well pass. It is probable that evento Thales himself it was only a symbol, like the figure in amathematical proposition, representing by the first passable physicalphenomenon which came to hand, that ideal reality underlying allchange, which is at once the beginning, the middle, and the end of all. That he did not mean Water, in the ordinary prosaic sense, to beidentical with this, is suggested by some [10] other sayings of his. "Thales, " says Aristotle elsewhere, "thought the whole universe wasfull of gods. " "All things, " he is recorded as saying, "have a _soul_in them, in virtue of which they move other things, and are themselvesmoved, even as the magnet, by virtue of its life or soul, moves theiron. " Without pushing these fragmentary utterances too far, we maywell conclude that whether Thales spoke of the soul of the universe andits divine indwelling powers, or gods, or of water as the origin ofthings, he was only vaguely symbolising in different ways an idea asyet formless and void, like the primeval chaos, but nevertheless, {7}like it, containing within it a promise and a potency of greater lifehereafter. 

II. ANAXIMANDER. --Our information with respect to thinkers so remote asthese men is too scanty and too fragmentary, to enable us to say inwhat manner or degree they influenced each other. We cannot say forcertain that any one of them was pupil or antagonist of another. Theyappear each of them, one might say for a moment only, from amidst thedarkness of antiquity; a few sayings of theirs we catch vaguely acrossthe void, and then they disappear. There is not, consequently, anyvery distinct progression or continuity observable among them, and sofar therefore one has to confess that the title 'School of Miletus' isa misnomer. We have already quoted the words of Aristotle in which heclasses the Ionic philosophers together, as all of them giving a_material_ aspect of some kind to the originative principle of theuniverse (see above, P. 4). But while this is a characteristicobservable in some of them, it is not so obviously discoverable in thesecond of their number, Anaximander. 

This philosopher is said to have been younger by [11] one generationthan Thales, but to have been intimate with him. He, like Thales, wasa native of Miletus, and while we do not hear of him as a person, likeThales, of political eminence and activity, he was certainly the equal, if not the superior, of Thales in {8} mathematical and scientificability. He is said to have either invented or at least made known toGreece the construction of the sun-dial. He was associated withHecataeus in the construction of the earliest geographical charts ormaps; he devoted himself with some success to the science of astronomy. His familiarity with the abstractions of mathematics perhaps accountsfor the more abstract form, in which he expressed his idea of theprinciple of all things. 

[21]

To Anaximander this principle was, as he expressed it, the _infinite_;not water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a differentthing from any of them, something hardly namable, out of whoseformlessness the heavens and all the worlds in them came to be. And bynecessity into that same infinite or indefinite existence, out of whichthey originally emerged, did every created thing return. Thus, as hepoetically expressed it, "Time brought its revenges, and for thewrong-doing of existence all things paid the penalty of death. "

The momentary resting-place of Thales on the confines of the familiarworld of things, in his formulation of Water as the principle ofexistence, is thus immediately removed. We get, as it were, to theearliest conception of things as we find it in Genesis; before theheavens were, or earth, or the waters under the earth, or light, orsun, or moon, or grass, or the beast of the field, when the "earth waswithout form, and void, and darkness was upon the {9} face of thedeep. " Only, be it observed, that while in the primitive Biblical ideathis formless void precedes in _time_ an ordered universe, inAnaximander's conception this formless infinitude is always here, is infact the only reality which ever is here, something without beginningor ending, underlying all, enwrapping all, governing all. 

To modern criticism this may seem to be little better than verbiage, having, perhaps, some possibilities of poetic treatment, but certainlyvery unsatisfactory if regarded as science. But to this we have toreply that one is not called upon to regard it as science. Behindscience, as much to-day when our knowledge of the details of phenomenais so enormously increased, as in the times when science had hardlybegun, there lies a world of mystery which we cannot pierce, and yetwhich we are compelled to assume. No scientific treatise can beginwithout assuming Matter and Force as data, and however much we may havelearned about the relations of _forces_ and the affinities of _things_, Matter and Force as such remain very much the same dim infinities, thatthe originative 'Infinite' was to Anaximander. 

It is to be noted, however, that while modern science assumesnecessarily _two_ correlative data or originative principles, --Force, namely, as well as Matter, --Anaximander seems to have been content {10}with the formulation of but one; and perhaps it is just here that akinship still remains between him and Thales and other philosophers ofthe school. He, no more than they, seems to have definitely raised thequestion, How are we to account for, or formulate, the principle of_difference_ or change? What is it that causes things to come intobeing out of, or recalls them back from being into, the infinite void?It is to be confessed, however, that our accounts on this point aresomewhat conflicting. One authority actually says that he formulatedmotion as eternal also. So far as he attempted to grasp the idea ofdifference in relation to that of unity, he seems to have regarded theprinciple of change or difference as inhering in [13] the infiniteitself. Aristotle in this connection contrasts his doctrine with thatof Anaxagoras, who formulated _two_ principles of existence--Matter andMind (see below, p. 54). Anaximander, he points out, found all hewanted in the one. 

As a mathematician Anaximander must have been familiar in variousaspects with the functions of the Infinite or Indefinable in theorganisation of thought. To the student of Euclid, for example, theimpossibility of adequately defining any of the fundamental elements ofthe science of geometry--the point, the line, the surface--is afamiliar fact. In so far as a science of geometry is possible at all, the exactness, which is its essential characteristic, is only {11}attainable by starting from data which are in themselves impossible, asof a point which has no magnitude, of a line which has no breadth, of asurface which has no thickness. So in the science of abstract numberthe fundamental assumptions, as that 1=1, _x=x_, etc. , are contradictedby every fact of experience, for in the world as we know it, absoluteequality is simply impossible to discover; and yet these fundamentalconceptions are in their development most powerful instruments for theextension of man's command over his own experiences. Theircompleteness of abstraction from the accidents of experience, from thedifferences, qualifications, variations which contribute so largely tothe personal interests of life, this it is which makes the abstractsciences demonstrative, exact, and universally applicable. In so far, therefore, as we are permitted to grasp the conception of a perfectlyabstract existence prior to, and underlying, and enclosing, allseparate existences, so far also do we get to a conception which isdemonstrative, exact, and universally applicable throughout the wholeworld of knowable objects. 

Such a conception, however, by its absolute emptiness of content, doesnot afford any means in itself of progression; somehow and somewhere aprinciple of movement, of development, of concrete reality, must befound or assumed, to link this ultimate abstraction of existence to themultifarious phenomena {12} of existence as known. And it was, perhaps, because Anaximander failed to work out this aspect of thequestion, that in the subsequent leaders of the school _movement_, rather than mere existence, was the principle chiefly insisted upon. 

Before passing, however, to these successors of Anaximander, someopinions of his which we have not perhaps the means of satisfactorilycorrelating with his general conception, but which are not withouttheir individual interest, may here be noted. [14] The word _husk_ or_bark_ ((Greek) _phloios_) seems to have been a favourite one with him, as implying and depicting a conception of interior and necessarydevelopment in things. Thus he seems to have postulated an inherenttendency or law in the infinite, which compelled it to develop contrarycharacters, as hot and cold, dry and moist. In consequence of thisfundamental tendency an envelope of fire, he says, came into being, encircling another envelope of air, which latter in turn enveloped thesphere of earth, each being like the 'husk' of the other, or like thebark which encloses the tree. This concentric system he conceives ashaving in some way been parted up into various systems, represented bythe sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth. The last he figured ashanging in space, and deriving its stability from the inherent andperfect balance or relation of its parts. 

{13}

[16]

Then, again, as to the origin of man, he seems to have in like mannertaught a theory of development from lower forms of life. In his viewthe first living creatures must have come into being in moisture (thusrecalling the theory of Thales). As time went on, and these forms oflife reached their fuller possibilities, they came to be transferred tothe dry land, casting off their old nature like a husk or bark. Moreparticularly he insists that man must have developed out of other andlower forms of life, because of his exceptional need, under presentconditions, of care and nursing in his earlier years. Had he come intobeing at once as a human creature he could never have survived. 

The analogies of these theories with modern speculations are obviousand interesting. But without enlarging on these, one has only to sayin conclusion that, suggestive and interesting as many of these poorfragments, these _disjecti membra poetae_, are individually, they leaveus more and more impressed with a sense of incompleteness in ourknowledge of Anaximander's theory as a whole. It may be that as aconsistent and perfected system the theory never was worked out; it maybe that it never was properly understood. 

[1] By some authorities it is stated that Anaximander, the secondphilosopher of this school, was the first to use the word _arche_ inthe philosophic sense. Whether this be so or not, Thales certainly hadthe idea. 

{14}

CHAPTER II

THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS (_concluded_)

_Air the beginning of things--All things pass--The eternal and thetemporary--The weeping philosopher_

[17]

III. ANAXIMENES. --This philosopher was also a native of Miletus, and issaid to have been a hearer or pupil of Anaximander. As we have said, the [19] tendency of the later members of the school was towardsemphasising the _motive_ side of the supposed underlying principle ofnature, and accordingly Anaximenes chose Air as the element which best[18] represented or symbolised that principle. Its fluidity, readinessof movement, wide extension, and absolute neutrality of character asregards colour, taste, smell, form, etc. , were obvious suggestions. The breath also, whose very name to the ancients implied an identitywith the life or soul, was nothing but air; and the identification ofAir with Life supplied just that principle of productiveness andmovement, which was felt [20] to be necessary in the primal element ofbeing. The process of existence, then, he conceived as consisting in acertain concentration of this diffused life-giving element into more orless solidified forms, and the {15} ultimate separation and expansionof these back into the formless air again. The contrary forcespreviously used by Anaximander--heat and cold, drought andmoisture--are with Anaximenes also the agencies which institute thesechanges. 

This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes. So far as thefew known facts reveal him, we can hardly say that except as supplyinga step towards the completer development of the _motive_ [22] idea inbeing, he greatly adds to the chain of progressive thought. 

IV. HERACLITUS. --Although not a native of Miletus, but of Ephesus, Heraclitus, both by his nationality as an Ionian and by his position inthe development of philosophic conceptions, falls naturally to beclassed with the philosophers of Miletus. His period may be givenapproximately as from about 560 to 500 B. C. , though others place him ageneration later. Few authentic particulars have been preserved ofhim. We hear of extensive travels, of his return to his native cityonly to refuse a share in its activities, of his retirement to ahermit's life. He seems to have formed a contrast to the precedingphilosophers in his greater detachment from the ordinary interests ofcivic existence; and much in his teaching suggests the ascetic if notthe misanthrope. He received the nickname of 'The Obscure, ' from thestudied mystery in which he was supposed to involve his {16} [23]teaching. He wrote not for the vulgar, but for the gifted few. 'Muchlearning makes not wise' was the motto of his work; the man of gift, ofinsight, that man is better than ten thousand. He was savage in hiscriticism of other writers, even the greatest. Homer, he said, andArchilochus too, deserved to be hooted from the platform and thrashed. Even the main purport of his writings was differently interpreted. Some named his work 'The Muses, ' as though it were chiefly a poeticvision; others named it 'The sure Steersman to the Goal of Life';others, more prosaically, 'A Treatise of Nature. '

[26]

The fundamental principle or fact of being Heraclitus formulated in thefamous dictum, 'All things pass. ' In the eternal flux or flow of beingconsisted its reality; even as in a river the water is ever changing, and the river exists as a river only in virtue of this continualchange; or as in a living body, wherein while there is life there is nostability or fixedness; stability and fixedness are the attributes ofthe unreal image of life, not of life itself. Thus, as will beobserved, from the _material_ basis of being as conceived by Thales, with only a very vague conception of the counter-principle of movement, philosophy has wheeled round in Heraclitus to the other extreme; hefinds his permanent element in the negation of permanence; being orreality consists in never 'being' but always 'becoming, ' not instability but in change. 

{17}

[27]

This eternal movement he pictures elsewhere as an eternal strife ofopposites, whose differences nevertheless consummate themselves infinest harmony. Thus oneness emerges out of multiplicity, multiplicityout of oneness; and the harmony of the universe is of contraries, as ofthe lyre and the bow. _War_ is the father and king and lord of allthings. Neither god nor man presided at the creation of anything thatis; that which was, is that which is, and that which ever shall be;even an ever-living Fire, ever kindling and ever being extinguished. 

[28]

Thus in _Fire_, as an image or symbol of the underlying reality ofexistence, Heraclitus advanced to the furthest limit attainable onphysical lines, for the expression of its essentially _motive_character. That this Fire was no more than a symbol, suggested by thespecial characteristics of fire in nature, --its subtlety, its mobility, its power of penetrating all things and devouring all things, itspowers for beneficence in the warmth of living bodies and thelife-giving power of the sun, --is seen in the fact that he readilyvaries his expression for this principle, calling it at times theThunderbolt, at others the eternal Reason, [29] or Law, or Fate. Tohis mental view creation was a process eternally in action, the fieryelement descending by the law of its being into the cruder [30] formsof water and earth, only to be resolved again by upward process intofire; even as one sees the {18} vapour from the sea ascending andmelting into the [32] aether. As a kindred vapour or exhalation herecognised the Soul or Breath for a manifestation of the essentialelement. It is formless, ever changing with every breath we take, yetit is the constructive and unifying force which keeps the bodytogether, and conditions its life and growth. At this point [33]Heraclitus comes into touch with Anaximenes. In the act of breathingwe draw into our own being a portion of the all-pervading vital elementof all being; in this universal being we thereby live and move and haveour consciousness; the eternal and omnipresent wisdom becomes, throughthe channels of our senses, and especially through the eyes, infragments at least our wisdom. In sleep we are not indeed cut offwholly from this wisdom; through our breathing we hold as it were toits root; but of its flower we are then deprived. On awaking again webegin once more to partake according to our full measure of the livingthought; even as coals when brought near the fire are themselves madepartakers of it, but when taken away again become quenched. 

[34]

Hence, in so far as man is wise, it is because his spirit is kindled byunion with the universal spirit; but there is a baser, or, asHeraclitus termed it, a moister element also in him, which is theelement of unreason, as in a drunken man. And thus the trustworthinessor otherwise of the senses, as the {19} channels of communication withthe divine, depends on the _dryness_ or _moistness_, --or, as we shouldexpress it, using, after all, only another metaphor, --on the_elevation_ or _baseness_ of the spirit that is within. To those whosesouls are base and barbarous, the eternal movement, the living fire, isinvisible; and thus what they do see is nothing but death. Immersed inthe mere appearances of things and their supposed stability, they, whether sleeping or waking, behold only dead forms; their spirits aredead. 

[35]

For the guidance of life there is no law but the common sense, which isthe union of those fragmentary perceptions of eternal law, whichindividual men [37] attain, in so far as their spirits are dry andpure. Of absolute knowledge human nature is not capable, but only theDivine. To the Eternal, therefore, alone all things are good andbeautiful and just, because to Him alone do things appear in theirtotality. To the human partial reason some things are unjust andothers just. Hence life, by reason of the limitations [38] involved init, he sometimes spoke of as the death of the soul, and death as therenewal of its life. And so, [39] in the great events of man's lifeand in the small, as in the mighty circle of the heavens, good andevil, life and death, growth and decay, are but the systole anddiastole, the outward and inward pulsation, of an eternal good, aneternal harmony. Day and {20} night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger--each conditions the other, all are part of God. Itis sickness that makes health good and sweet, hunger that gives itspleasure to feeding, weariness that makes sleep a good. 

[39]

This vision of existence in its eternal flux and interchange, seems tohave inspired Heraclitus with a contemplative melancholy. In thetraditions of later times he was known as the _weeping_ philosopher. Lucian represents him as saying, "To me it is a sorrow that there isnothing fixed or secure, and that all things are thrown confusedlytogether, so that pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, the greatand the small, are the same, ever circling round and passing one intothe other in the sport of time. " "Time, " he says elsewhere, "is like achild that plays with the dice. " The highest good, therefore, formortals is that clarity of perception in respect of oneself and allthat is, whereby we shall learn to apprehend somewhat of the eternalunity and harmony, that underlies the good and evil of time, the shockand stress of circumstance and place. The highest virtue for man is aplacid and a quiet constancy, whatever the changes and chances of lifemay bring. It is the pantheistic apathy. 

The sadder note of humanity, the note of Euripides and at times ofSophocles, the note of Dante and of the _Tempest_ of Shakespeare, ofShelley and Arnold {21} and Carlyle, --this note we hear thus early andthus clear, in the dim and distant utterances of Heraclitus. Themystery of existence, the unreality of what seems most real, theintangibility and evanescence of all things earthly, --these thoughtsobscurely echoing to us across the ages from Heraclitus, have remained, and always will remain, among the deepest and most insistent of theworld's thoughts, in its sincerest moments and in its greatest thinkers. 

{22}

CHAPTER III

PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS

_The Pythagorean Brotherhood--Number the master--God the soul of theworld--Music and morals_

[41]

The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called theSamian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in thatisland, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] ofPolycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels ofPythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Otherstell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete, and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain isthat at some date towards the end of the sixth century B. C. He removedto Southern Italy, which was then extensively colonised by Greeks, andthat there he became a great philosophic teacher, and ultimately even apredominating political influence. 

[46]

He instituted a school in the strictest sense, with its various gradesof learners, subject for years to a vow of silence, holding all thingsin common, and admitted, according to their approved fitness, to {23}[47] successive revelations of the true doctrine of the Master. Thosein the lower grades were called Listeners; those in the higher, Mathematicians or Students; those in the most advanced stage, Physicists or Philosophers. With the political relations of the schoolwe need not here concern ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greekcities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who, having learned obedience under their master, applied what they hadlearned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted forsome thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, andPythagoreanism as a political power was violently rooted out. 

Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras, in its relation to thegeneral development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, thatit is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory ofPythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others. The teaching was largely oral, and was developed by successive leadersof the school. The doctrine, therefore, is generally spoken of asthat, not of Pythagoras, but of the Pythagoreans. Nor can we fix forcertain on one fundamental conception, upon which the whole structureof their doctrine was built. 

[52]

One dictum we may start with because of its analogies with what hasbeen said of the earlier {24} philosophies. The universe, said thePythagoreans, was constituted of _indefinites_ and _definers_, _i. E. _of that which has no character, but has infinite capacities of taking acharacter; and secondly, of things or forces which impose a characterupon this. Out of the combination of these two elements or principlesall knowable [53] existences come into being. "All things, " they said, "as known have _Number_; and this number has two natures, the Odd andthe Even; the known thing is the Odd-Even or union of the two. "

[66]

By a curious and somewhat fanciful development of this conception thePythagoreans drew up two parallel columns of antithetical principles innature, ten in each, thus:--

 Definite Indefinite Odd Even One Many Right Left Male Female Steadfast Moving Straight Bent Light Dark Good Evil Four Square Irregular

Looking down these two lists we shall see that the first covers variousaspects of what is conceived as the ordering, defining, formativeprinciple in nature; and that the second in like manner comprisesvarious {25} aspects of the unordered, neutral, passive, ordisorganised element or principle; the first, to adopt a later methodof expression, is _Form_, the second _Matter_. How this antithesis wasworked out by Plato and Aristotle we shall see later on. 

[54]

While, in a sense, then, even the indefinite has number, inasmuch as itis capable of having number or order imposed upon it (and only in sofar as it has this imposed upon it, does it become knowable orintelligible), yet, as a positive factor, Number belongs only to thefirst class; as such it is the source of all knowledge and of all good. In reality the Pythagoreans had not got any further by thisrepresentation of nature than was reached, for example, by Anaximander, and still more definitely by Heraclitus, when they posited anIndefinite or Infinite principle in nature which by the clash of innateantagonisms developed into a knowable universe (see above, pp. 12, 16). But one can easily imagine that once the idea of Number becameassociated with that of the knowable in things, a wide field ofdetailed development and experiment, so to speak, in the arcana ofnature, seemed to be opened. Every arithmetical or geometrical theorembecame in this view another window giving light into the secret heartof things. Number became a kind of god, a revealer; and the philosophyof number a kind of religion or mystery. And this is why the {26}second grade of disciples were called Mathematicians; mathematics wasthe essential preparation for and initiation into philosophy. 

Whether that which truly exists was actually identical with Number orNumbers, or whether it was something different from Number, but had acertain relation to Number; whether if there were such a relation, thiswas merely a relation of analogy or of conformability, or whetherNumber were something actually embodied in that which trulyexists--these were speculative questions which were variously answeredby various teachers, and which probably interested the later more thanthe earlier leaders of the school. 

[56]

A further question arose: Assuming that ultimately the elements ofknowable existence are but two, the One or Definite, and the Manifoldor Indefinite, it was argued by some that there must be some third orhigher principle governing the relations of these; there must be somelaw or harmony which shall render their intelligible union [57]possible. This principle of union was God, ever-living, ever One, eternal, immovable, self-identical. [58] This was the supreme reality, the Odd-Even or Many in One, One in Many, in whom was gathered up, asin an eternal harmony, all the contrarieties of lower [61] existence. Through the interchange and intergrowth of these contrarieties Godrealises Himself; the {27} universe in its evolution is theself-picturing of God. [62] God is diffused as the seminal principlethroughout [68] the universe; He is the Soul of the world, and theworld itself is God in process. The world, therefore, is in a sense aliving creature. At its heart and circumference are purest fire;between these circle the sun, the moon, and the five planets, whoseordered movements, as of seven chords, produce an eternal music, the'Music of the Spheres. ' Earth, too, like the planets, is a celestialbody, moving like them around the central fire. 

[71]

By analogy with this conception of the universe as the realisation ofGod, so also the body, whether [72] of man or of any creature, is therealisation for the time being of a soul. Without the body and thelife of the body, that soul were a blind and fleeting ghost. Of suchunrealised souls there are many in various degrees and states; thewhole air indeed is full of spirits, who are the causes of dreams andomens. 

[73]

Thus the change and flux that are visible in all else are visible alsoin the relations of soul and body. Multitudes of fleeting ghosts orspirits are continually seeking realisation through union with bodies, passing at birth into this one and that, and at death issuing forthagain into the void. Like wax which takes now one impression nowanother, yet remains in itself ever the same, so souls vary in theoutward {28} [74] form that envelops and realises them. In this bodilylife, the Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying, we are as itwere in bonds or in a prison, whence we may not justly go forth tillthe Lord calls us. This idea Cicero mistranslated with a truly Romanfitness: according to him they taught that in this life we are assentinels at our post, who may not quit it till our Commander orders. 

On the one hand, therefore, the union of soul with body was necessaryfor the realisation of the former ((Greek) _soma, body_, being as itwere (Greek) _sema, expression_), even as the reality of God was not inthe Odd or Eternal Unity, but in the Odd-Even, the Unity inMultiplicity. On the other hand this union implied a certain loss ordegradation. In other words, in so far as the soul became realised italso became corporealised, subject to the influence of passion and [75]change. In a sense therefore the soul as realised was double; initself it partook of the eternal reason, as associated with body itbelonged to the realm of unreason. 

This disruption of the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturallydeveloped in time into a threefold division, _pure thought_, _perception_, and _desire_; or even more nearly approaching thePlatonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into _reason_, _passion_, and _desire_. But the later developments were largelyinfluenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be furtherfollowed here. 

{29} [78] Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for itssoothing and refining effects, but for the intellectual interest of itsnumerical relations. Reference has already been made (see above, p. 27) to their quaint doctrine of the music of the spheres; and the sameidea of rhythmic harmony pervaded the whole system. The life of thesoul was a harmony; the virtues were perfect numbers; and the influenceof music on the soul was only one instance among many of the harmoniousrelations of things throughout the universe. Thus we have Pythagorasdescribed as soothing mental afflictions, and bodily ones also, byrhythmic measure and by song. With the morning's dawn he would beastir, harmonising his own spirit to his lyre, and chanting ancienthymns of the Cretan Thales, of Homer, and of Hesiod, till all thetremors of his soul were calmed and still. 

Night and morning also he prescribed for himself and his followers anexamination, as it were a _tuning_ and testing of oneself. At thesetimes especially was it meet for us to take account of our soul and itsdoings; in the evening to ask, "Wherein have I transgressed? Whatdone? What failed to do?" In the morning, "What must I do? Whereinrepair past days' forgetfulness?"

But the first duty of all was truth, --truth to one's own highest, truthto the highest beyond us. Through truth alone could the soul approachthe divine. {30} Falsehood was of the earth; the real life of the soulmust be in harmony with the heavenly and eternal verities. 

Pythagoreanism remained a power for centuries throughout the Greekworld and beyond. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as itin its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with themit formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yetmore authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence. 

{31}

CHAPTER IV

THE ELEATICS

_God and nature--Knowledge and opinion--Being and evolution--Love thecreator--The modern egotism_

[79]

I. XENOPHANES. --Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, one of the Ioniancities of Asia Minor, but having been forced at the age of twenty-fiveto leave his native city owing to some political revolution, hewandered to various cities of Greece, and ultimately to Zancle andCatana, Ionian colonies in Sicily, and thence to Elea or Velia, a Greekcity on the coast of Italy. This city had, like Miletus, reached ahigh pitch of commercial prosperity, and like it also became a centreof philosophic teaching. For there Xenophanes remained and founded aschool, so that he and his successors received the name of Eleatics. His date is uncertain; but he seems to have been contemporary withAnaximander [80] and Pythagoras, and to have had some knowledge of thedoctrine of both. He wrote in various poetic measures, using againstthe poets, and especially against Homer and Hesiod, their own weapons, to [83] denounce their anthropomorphic theology. If oxen {32} or lionshad hands, he said, they would have fashioned gods after their likenesswhich would have been as [85] authentic as Homer's. As against thesepoets, and the popular mythology, he insisted that God must be one, eternal, incorporeal, without beginning or ending. [87] As Aristotlestrikingly expresses it, "He looked forth over the whole heavens andsaid that God is one, [88] that that which is one is God. " Thefavourite antitheses of his time, the definite and the indefinite, movable and immovable, change-producing and by change produced--theseand such as these, he maintained, were inapplicable to the eternallyand [86] essentially existent. In this there was no partition oforgans or faculties, no variation or shadow of turning; the EternalBeing was like a sphere, everywhere equal; everywhere self-identical. 

[84]

His proof of this was a logical one; the absolutely self-existent couldnot be thought in conjunction with attributes which either admitted anyexternal influencing Him, or any external influenced by Him. Theprevailing dualism he considered to be, as an ultimate theory of theuniverse, unthinkable and therefore false. Outside the Self-existentthere could be no second self-existent, otherwise each would beconditioned by the existence of the other, and the Self-existent wouldbe gone. Anything different from the Self-existent must be of thenon-existent, _i. E. _ must be nothing. 

{33}

One can easily see in these discussions some adumbration of manytheological or metaphysical difficulties of later times, as of theorigin of evil, of freewill in man, of the relation of the createdworld to its Creator. If these problems cannot be said to be solvedyet, we need not be surprised that Xenophanes did not solve them. Hewas content to emphasise that which seemed to him to be necessary andtrue, that God was God, and not either a partner with, or a functionof, matter. 

[89]

At the same time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as heexpressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) _doxa_). As tothe origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow[90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water arethe sources from which we spring; and he imagined a time when there wasneither sea nor land, but an all-pervading slough and slime; nay, manysuch periods of inundation and emergence had been, hence the sea-shellson the tops of mountains and the fossils in the rocks. Air and firealso as agencies of change are sometimes referred to by him;anticipations in fact are visible of the fourfold classification of theelements which was formally made by some of his successors. 

[91]

II. PARMENIDES. --The pupil and successor of Xenophanes was PARMENIDES, a native of Elea. In a celebrated dialogue of Plato bearing the nameof {34} this philosopher he is described as visiting Socrates when thelatter was very young. "He was then already advanced in years, veryhoary, yet noble to look upon, in years some sixty and five. " Socrateswas born about 479 B. C. The birth of Parmenides might therefore, ifthis indication be authentic, be about 520. He was of a wealthy andnoble family, and able therefore to devote himself to a learnedleisure. Like his master he expounded his views in verse, andfragments of his poem of considerable length and importance have beenpreserved. The title of the work was _Peri Phueos_--_Of Nature_. 

[93]

The exordium of the poem is one of some grandeur. The poet describeshimself as soaring aloft to the sanctuary of wisdom where it is set inhighest aether, the daughters of the Sun being his guides; under whoseleading having traversed the path of perpetual day and at lengthattained the temple of the goddess, he from her lips receivedinstruction in the eternal verities, and had shown to him the deceptiveguesses of mortals. "'Tis for thee, " she says, "to hear of both, --tohave disclosed to thee on the one hand the sure heart of convincingverity, on the other hand the guesses of mortals wherein is noascertainment. Nevertheless thou shalt learn of these also, thathaving gone through them all thou may'st see by what unsureness of pathmust he go who goeth the way of opinion. From such a way of searching{35} restrain thou thy thought, and let not the much-experimentinghabit force thee along the path wherein thou must use thine eye, yetbeing sightless, and the ear with its clamorous buzzings, and thechattering tongue. 'Tis by Reason that thou must in lengthened trialjudge what I shall say to thee. "

[94]

Thus, like Xenophanes, Parmenides draws a deep division between theworld of reason and the world of sensation, between probative argumentand the guess-work of sense-impressions. The former is the world ofBeing, the world of that which truly is, self-existent, uncreated, unending, unmoved, unchanging, ever self-poised and self-sufficient, like a sphere. [98] Knowledge is of this, and of this only, and assuch, knowledge is identical with its object; for outside this knownreality there is nothing. In other words, Knowledge can only be ofthat which is, and that which is alone can know. All things whichmortals have imagined to be realities are but words; as of the birthand death of things, of things which were and have ceased to be, ofhere and there, of now and then. 

It is obvious enough that in all this, and in much more to the sameeffect reiterated throughout the poem, we have no more than astatement, in various forms of negation, of the inconceivability byhuman reason of that passage from _being_ as such, to that world ofphenomena which is now, but was not before, {36} and will cease tobe, --from _being_ to _becoming_, from eternity to time, from theinfinite to the finite (or, as Parmenides preferred to call it, fromthe perfect to the imperfect, the definite to the indefinite). In allthis Parmenides was not contradicting such observed facts asgeneration, or motion, or life, or death; he was talking of a worldwhich has nothing to do with observation; he was endeavouring to graspwhat was assumed or necessarily implied as a prior condition ofobservation, or of a world to observe. 

What he and his school seem to have felt was that there was a danger inall this talk of water or air or other material symbol, or even of the_indefinite_ or _characterless_ as the original of all, --the danger, namely, that one should lose sight of the idea of law, of rationality, of eternal self-centred force, and so be carried away by some vision ofa gradual process of evolution from mere emptiness to fulness of being. Such a position would be not dissimilar to that of many would-bemetaphysicians among evolutionists, who, not content with the doctrineof evolution as a theory in science, an ordered and organising view ofobserved facts, will try to elevate it into a vision of what is, andalone is, behind the observed facts. They fail to see that the moreblind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiationmay be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives thewheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the mostcommonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must alaw be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature whichgathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell whichthe imagination of evolutionists places at the beginning of time as thestarting-point of this mighty process is not merely this or that, hasnot merely this or that quality or possibility, it _is_; and in thepower of that little word is enclosed a whole world of thought, whichis there at the first, remains there all through the evolutions of theprotoplasm, will be there when these are done, is in fact independentof time and space, has nothing to do with such distinctions, expressesrather their ultimate unreality. So far then as Parmenides and hisschool kept a firm grip on this other-world aspect of nature as impliedeven in the simple word _is_, or _be_, so far they did good service inthe process of the world's thought. On the other hand, he and theywere naturally enough disinclined, as we all are disinclined, to remainin the merely or mainly negative or defensive. He would not lose hisgrip of heaven and eternity, but he would fain know the secrets ofearth and time as well. And hence was fashioned the second part of hispoem, in which he expounds his theory of the world of opinion, orguess-work, or observation. 

[99]

In this world he found two originative principles {38} at work, onepertaining to light and heat, the other to darkness and cold. From theunion of these two principles all observable things in creation come, and over this union a God-given power presides, whose name is Love. Ofthese two principles, the bright one being analogous to _Fire_, thedark one to _Earth_, he considered the former to be the male orformative element, the latter the female or passive element; the formertherefore had analogies to Being as such, the latter to Non-being. Theheavenly existences, the sun, the moon, the stars, are of pure Fire, have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on theextremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at thecentre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmoved, is the cause ofall motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive andprocreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called byParmenides Necessity, Bearer of the Keys, Justice, Ruler, etc. 

But while in so far as there was union in the production of man or anyother creature, the [102] presiding genius might be symbolised as_Love_; on the other hand, since this union was a union of opposites(Light and Dark), _Discord_ or _Strife_ also had her say in the union. Thus the nature and character in every creature was the resultant oftwo antagonistic forces, and depended for its particular excellence ordefect on the proportions in which these two elements--the {39} lightand the dark, the fiery and the earthy--had been commingled. 

No character in Greek antiquity, at least in the succession ofphilosophic teachers, held a more honoured position than Parmenides. He was looked on with almost superstitious reverence by hisfellow-countrymen. Plato speaks of him as his "Father Parmenides, "whom he "revered and honoured more than all the other philosopherstogether. " To quote Professor Jowett in his introduction to Plato'sdialogue _Parmenides_, he was "the founder of idealism and also ofdialectic, or in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and of logic. " Ofthe logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fullerexemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, byway of summing up what has been already said, it may be remarked thatits substantial excellence consists in the perfect clearness andprecision with which Parmenides enunciated as fundamental in any theoryof the knowable universe the priority of Existence itself, not in timemerely or chiefly, but as a condition of having any problem to inquireinto. He practically admits that he does not see how to bridge overthe partition between Existence in itself and the changeful, temporary, existing things which the senses give us notions of. But whatever theconnection may be, if there is a connection, he is convinced thatnothing would be more absurd than {40} to make the data of sense in anyway or degree the measure of the reality of existence, or the sourcefrom which existence itself comes into being. 

On this serenely impersonal position he took his stand; we find littleor nothing of the querulous personal note so characteristic of muchmodern philosophy. We never find him asking, "What is to become of_me_ in all this?" "What is _my_ position with regard to thiseternally-existing reality?"

Of course this is not exclusively a characteristic of Parmenides, butof the time. The idea of personal relation to an eternal Rewarder wasonly vaguely held in historical times in Greece. The conception ofpersonal immortality was a mere pious opinion, a doctrine whisperedhere and there in secret mystery; it was not an influential force onmen's motives or actions. Thought was still occupied with the wideruniverse, the heavens and their starry wonders, and the strangephenomena of law in nature. In the succession of the seasons, therising and setting, the fixities and aberrations, of the heavenlybodies, in the mysteries of coming into being and passing out of it, inthese and other similar marvels, and in the thoughts which they evoked, a whole and ample world seemed open for inquiry. Men and their fatewere interesting enough to men, but as yet the egotism of man had notattempted to isolate his destiny from the general problem of nature. {41} To the _crux_ of philosophy as it appeared to Parmenides in therelation of being as such to things which seem to be, modernism hasappended a sort of corollary, in the relation of being as such to _my_being. Till the second question was raised its answer, of course, could not be attempted. But all those who in modern times have saidwith Tennyson--

 Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And Thou hast made him: Thou art just, may recognise in Parmenides a pioneer for them. Without knowing it, hewas fighting the battle of personality in man, as well as that ofreality in nature. 

{42}

CHAPTER V

THE ELEATICS (_concluded_)

_Zeno's dialectic--Achilles and the tortoise--The dilemma of being--Theall a sphere--The dilemmas of experience_

[106]

III. ZENO. --The third head of the Eleatic school was ZENO. He isdescribed by Plato in the _Parmenides_ as accompanying his master toAthens on the visit already referred to (see above, p. 34), and asbeing then "nearly forty years of age, of a noble figure and fairaspect. " In personal character he was a worthy pupil of his master, being, like him, a devoted patriot. He is even said to have fallen avictim to his patriotism, and to have suffered bravely the extremesttortures at the hands of a tyrant Nearchus rather than betray hiscountry. 

His philosophic position was a very simple one. He had nothing to addto or to vary in the doctrine of Parmenides. His function wasprimarily that of an expositor and defender of that doctrine, and hisparticular pre-eminence consists in the ingenuity of his dialecticresources of defence. He is in fact pronounced by Aristotle to havebeen the inventor of dialectic or systematic logic. The relation of{43} the two is humorously expressed thus by Plato (Jowett, _Plato_, vol. Iv. P. 128); "I see, Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno is yoursecond self in his writings too; he puts what you say in another way, and would fain deceive us into believing that he is telling us what isnew. For you, in your poems, say, All is one, and of this you adduceexcellent proofs; and he, on the other hand, says, There is no many;and on behalf of this he offers overwhelming evidence. " To this Zenoreplies, admitting the fact, and adds: "These writings of mine weremeant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who scoff athim, and show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which theysuppose to follow from the affirmation of the One. My answer is anaddress to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return withinterest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being ofmany if carried out appears in a still more ridiculous light than thehypothesis of the being of one. "

The arguments of Zeno may therefore be regarded as strictly arguments_in kind_; quibbles if you please, but in answer to quibbles. Thesecret of his method was what Aristotle calls Dichotomy--that is, heput side by side two contradictory propositions with respect to anyparticular supposed real thing in experience, and then proceeded toshow that both these contradictories alike imply what is {44} [105]inconceivable. Thus "a thing must consist either of a finite number ofparts or an infinite number. " Assume the number of parts to be finite. Between them there must either be something or nothing. If there issomething between them, then the whole consists of more parts than itconsists of. If there is nothing between them, then they are notseparated, therefore they are not parts; therefore the whole has noparts at all; therefore it is nothing. If, on the other hand, thenumber of parts is infinite, then, the same kind of argument beingapplied, the magnitude of the whole is by infinite successive positingof intervening parts shown to be infinite; therefore this one thing, being infinitely large, is everything. 

[107]

Take, again, any supposed fact, as that an arrow moves. An arrowcannot move except in space. It cannot move in space without being inspace. At any moment of its supposed motion it must be in a particularspace. Being in that space, it must at the time during which it is init be at rest. But the total time of its supposed motion is made up ofthe moments composing that time, and to each of these moments the sameargument applies; therefore either the arrow never was anywhere, or italways was at rest. 

Or, again, take objects moving at unequal rates, as Achilles and atortoise. Let the tortoise have a start of any given length, thenAchilles, however {45} much he excel in speed, will never overtake thetortoise. For, while Achilles has passed over the originallyintervening space, the tortoise will have passed over a certain space, and when Achilles has passed over this second space the tortoise willhave again passed over some space, and so on _ad infinitum_; thereforein an infinite time there must always be a space, though infinitelydiminishing, between the tortoise and Achilles, _i. E. _ the tortoisemust always be at least a little in front. 

These will be sufficient to show the kind of arguments employed byZeno. In themselves they are of no utility, and Zeno never pretendedthat they had any. But as against those who denied that existence assuch was a datum independent of experience, something different from amere sum of isolated things, his arguments were not only effective, butsubstantial. The whole modern sensational or experiential school, whoderive our 'abstract ideas, ' as they are called, from 'phenomena' or'sensation, ' manifest the same impatience of any analysis of what theymean by phenomena or sensation, as no doubt Zeno's opponents manifestedof his analyses. As in criticising the one, modern critics are readywith their answer that Zeno's quibbles are simply "a play of words onthe well-known properties of infinities, " so they are quick to tell usthat sensation is an "affection of the sentient organism"; ignoring in{46} the first case the prior question where the idea of infinity camefrom, and in the second, where the idea of a sentient organism camefrom. 

Indirectly, as we shall see, Zeno had a great effect on subsequentphilosophies by the development of a process of ingenious verbaldistinction, which in the hands of so-called sophists and others becamea weapon of considerable, if temporary, power. 

[109]

IV. MELISSUS. --The fourth and last of the Eleatic philosophers wasMelissus, a native of Samos. His date may be fixed as about 440 B. C. He took an active part in the politics of his native country, and onone occasion was commander of the Samian fleet in a victoriousengagement with the Athenians, when Samos was being besieged byPericles. He belongs to the Eleatic school in respect of doctrine andmethod, but we have no evidence of his ever having resided at Elea, norany reference to his connection with the philosophers there, except thestatement that he was a pupil of Parmenides. He developed very fullywhat is technically called in the science of Logic [110] the _Dilemma_. Thus, for example, he begins his treatise _On Existence_ or _On Nature_thus: "If nothing exists, then there is nothing for us to talk about. But if there is such a thing as existence it must either come intobeing or be ever-existing. If it come into being, it must come fromthe existing or the non-existing. Now that anything which exists, {47}above all, that which is absolutely existent, should come from what isnot, is impossible. Nor can it come from that which is. For then itwould be already, and would not come into being. That which exists, therefore, comes not into being; it must therefore be ever-existing. "

[111]

By similar treatment of other conceivable alternatives he proceeds toshow that as the existent had no beginning so it can have no ending intime. From this, by a curious transition which Aristotle quotes as anexample of loose reasoning, he concludes that the existent can have nolimit in space [112] either. As being thus unlimited it must be one, therefore immovable (there being nothing else into which it can move orchange), and therefore always self-identical in extent and character. It cannot, therefore, have any body, for body has parts and is nottherefore one. 

[113]

Being incapable of change one might perhaps conclude that theabsolutely existing being is incapable of any mental activity orconsciousness. We have no authority for assuming that Melissus came tothis conclusion; but there is a curious remark of Aristotle'srespecting this and previous philosophers of the school which certaincritics have [114] made to bear some such interpretation. He says:"Parmenides seems to hold by a Unity in thought, Melissus by a Materialunity. Hence the first {48} defined the One as limited, the seconddeclared it to be unlimited. Xenophanes made no clear statement onthis question; he simply, gazing up to the arch of heaven, declared, The One is God. "

But the difference between Melissus and his master can hardly be saidto be a difference of doctrine; point for point, they are identical. The difference is a difference of vision or mental picture as to thismighty All which is One. Melissus, so to speak, places himself at thecentre of this Universal being, and sees it stretching out infinitely, unendingly, in space and in time. Its oneness comes to him as the_sum_ of these infinities. Parmenides, on the other hand, sees allthese endless immensities as related to a centre; he, so to speak, enfolds them all in the grasp of his unifying thought, and as thusequally and necessarily related to a central unity he pronounces theAll a sphere, and therefore limited. The two doctrines, antitheticalin terms, are identical in fact. The absolutely unlimited and theabsolutely self-limited are only two ways of saying the same thing. 

This difference of view or vision Aristotle in the passage quotedexpresses as a difference between _thought_ ((Greek) _logos_) and_matter_ ((Greek) _hule_). This is just a form of his own radicaldistinction between Essence and Difference, Form and Matter, of whichmuch will be said later on. It is like the difference {49} betweenDeduction and Induction; in the first you start from the universal andsee within it the particulars; in the second you start from theparticulars and gather them into completeness and reality in auniversal. The substance remains the same, only the point of view isdifferent. To put the matter in modern mathematical form, one mightsay, The universe is to be conceived as a _sphere_ (Parmenides) of_infinite radius_ (Melissus). Aristotle is not blaming Melissus orpraising Parmenides. As for Xenophanes, Aristotle after his mannerfinds in him the potentiality of both. He is prior both to the processof thought from universal to particular, and to that from particular touniversal. He does not argue at all; his function is Intuition. "Helooks out on the mighty sky, and says, The One is God. "

Melissus applied the results of his analysis in an interesting way tothe question already raised by his predecessors, of the trustworthinessof sensation. His argument is as follows: "If there were many realexistences, to each of them the same reasonings must apply as I havealready used with reference to the one existence. That is to say, ifearth really exists, and water and air and iron and gold and fire andthings living and things dead; and black and white, and all the variousthings whose reality men ordinarily assume, --if all these really exist, and our sight and our hearing give us _facts_, then each of these as{50} really existing must be what we concluded the one existence mustbe; among other things, each must be unchangeable, and can never becomeother than it really is. But assuming that sight and hearing andapprehension are true, we find the cold becoming hot and the hotbecoming cold; the hard changes to soft, the soft to hard; the livingthing dies; and from that which is not living, a living thing comesinto being; in short, everything changes, and what now is in no wayresembles what was. It follows therefore that we neither see norapprehend realities. 

"In fact we cannot pay the slightest regard to experience without beinglanded in self-contradictions. We assume that there are all sorts ofreally existing things, having a permanence both of form and power, andyet we imagine these very things altering and changing according towhat we from time to time see about them. If they were realities as wefirst perceived them, our sight must now be wrong. For if they werereal, they could not change. Nothing can be stronger than reality. Whereas to suppose it changed, we must affirm that the real has ceasedto be, and that that which was not has displaced it. "

To Melissus therefore, as to his predecessors, the world of sense was aworld of illusion; the very first principles or assumptions of which, as of the truthfulness of the senses and the reality of the variousobjects which we see, are unthinkable and absurd. 

{51}

The weakness as well as the strength of the Eleatic position consistedin its purely negative and critical attitude. The assumptions ofordinary life and experience could not stand for a moment when assailedin detail by their subtle analysis. So-called facts were like a worldof ghosts, which the sword of truth passed through without resistance. But somehow the sword might pierce them through and through, and showby all manner of arguments their unsubstantiality, but there they werestill thronging about the philosopher and refusing to be gone. Theworld of sense might be only illusion, but there the illusion was. Youcould not lay it or exorcise it by calling it illusion or opinion. What was this opinion? What was the nature of its subject matter? Howdid it operate? And if its results were not true or real, what wastheir nature? These were questions which still remained when theanalysis of the idea of absolute existence had been pushed to itscompletion. These were the questions which the next school ofphilosophy attempted to answer. After the Idealists, the Realists;after the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of matter. 

{52}

CHAPTER VI

THE ATOMISTS

_Anaxagoras and the cosmos--Mind in nature--The seeds of existence_

[129]

I. ANAXAGORAS. --Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae, a city of Ionia, about the year 500 B. C. At the age of twenty he removed to Athens, ofwhich city Clazomenae was for some time a dependency. This step on hispart may have been connected with the circumstances attending the greatinvasion of Greece by Xerxes in the year 480. For Xerxes drew a largecontingent of his army from the Ionian cities which he had subdued, andmany who were unwilling to serve against their mother-country may havetaken refuge about that time in Athens. At Athens he resided fornearly fifty years, and during that period became the friend andteacher of many eminent men, among the rest of Pericles, the greatAthenian [118] statesman, and of Euripides, the dramatist. Like mostof the Ionian philosophers he had a taste for mathematics andastronomy, as well as for certain practical applications ofmathematics. Among other books he is said to have written a treatiseon the art {53} of scene-designing for the stage, possibly to obligehis friend and pupil Euripides. In his case, as in that of hispredecessors, only fragments of his philosophic writings have beenpreserved, and the connection of certain portions of his teaching asthey have come down to us remains somewhat uncertain. 

[119]

With respect to the constitution of the universe we have the following:"Origination and destruction are phrases which are generallymisunderstood among the Greeks. Nothing really is originated ordestroyed; the only processes which actually take place are combinationand separation of elements already existing. [120] These elements weare to conceive as having been in a state of chaos at first, infinitein number and infinitely small, forming in their immobility a confusedand characterless unity. About this chaos was spread the air andaether, infinite also in the multitude of their particles, andinfinitely extended. Before separation commenced there was no clearcolour or appearance in anything, whether of moist or dry, of hot orcold, of bright or dark, but only an infinite number of the seeds ofthings, having concealed in them all manner of forms and colours andsavours. "

There is a curious resemblance in this to the opening verses ofGenesis, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was uponthe face of the deep. " Nor is the next step in his philosophy withoutits resemblance to that in the Biblical record. [122] As summarised byDiogenes Laertius it takes this form, "All things were as one: thencometh Mind, and by division brought all things into order. " [121]"Conceiving, " as Aristotle puts it, "that the original elements ofthings had no power to generate or develop out of themselves things asthey exist, philosophers were forced by the facts themselves to seekthe immediate cause of this development. They were unable to believethat fire, or earth, or any such principle was adequate to account forthe order and beauty visible in the frame of things; nor did they thinkit possible to attribute these to mere innate necessity or chance. _One_ (Anaxagoras) observing how in living creatures Mind is theordering force, declared that in nature also this must be the cause oforder and beauty, and in so declaring he seemed, when compared withthose before him, as one sober amidst a crowd of babblers. "

[122]

Elsewhere, however, Aristotle modifies this commendation. "Anaxagoras, " he says, "uses Mind only as a kind of last resort, dragging it in when he fails otherwise to account for a phenomenon, butnever thinking of it else. " And in the _Phaedo_ Plato makes Socratesspeak of the high hopes with which he had taken to the works ofAnaxagoras, and how grievously he had been disappointed. "As Iproceeded, " he says, "I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Mindor any other principle of order, and having {55} recourse to air, andaether, and water, and other eccentricities. "

Anaxagoras, then, at least on this side of his teaching, must beconsidered rather as the author of a phrase than as the founder of aphilosophy. The phrase remained, and had a profound influence onsubsequent philosophies, but in his own hands it was little more than adead letter. His immediate interest was rather in the variety ofphenomena than in their conceived principle of unity; he istheoretically, perhaps, 'on the side of the angels, ' in practice he isa materialist. 

[12]

Mind he conceived as something apart, sitting throned like Zeus uponthe heights, giving doubtless the first impulse to the movement ofthings, but leaving them for the rest to their own inherent tendencies. As distinguished from them it was, he conceived, the one thing whichwas absolutely pure and unmixed. All things else had intermixture withevery other, the mixtures increasing in complexity towards the centreof things. On the outmost verge were distributed the finest and leastcomplex forms of things--the sun, the moon, the stars; the more densegathering together, to form as it were in the centre of the vortex, theearth and its manifold existences. By the intermixture of air andearth and water, containing in themselves the infinitely varied seedsof things, plants and animals were {56} developed. The seedsthemselves are too minute to be apprehended by the senses, but we candivine their character by the various characters of the visible thingsthemselves, each of these having a necessary correspondence with thenature of the seeds from which they respectively were formed. 

[128]

Thus for a true apprehension of things sensation and reason are bothnecessary--sensation to certify to the apparent characters of objects, reason to pass from these to the nature of the invisible seeds or atomswhich cause those characters. Taken by themselves our sensations arefalse, inasmuch as they give us only combined impressions, yet they area necessary stage towards the truth, as providing the materials whichreason must separate into their real elements. 

From this brief summary we may gather that Mind was conceived, so tospeak, as placed at the _beginning_ of existence, inasmuch as it is thefirst originator of the vortex motions of the atoms or seeds of things;it was conceived also at the _end_ of existence as the power which byanalysis of the data of sensation goes back through the complexity ofactual being to the original unmingled or undeveloped nature of things. But the whole process of nature itself between these limits Anaxagorasconceived as a purely mechanical or at least physical development, theuncertainty of his view as between these two alternative ways ofconsidering it being {57} typified in his use of the two expressions_atoms_ and _seeds_. The analogies of this view with those of modernmaterialism, which finds in the ultimate molecules of matter "thepromise and the potency of all life and all existence, " need not behere enlarged upon. 

After nearly half a century's teaching at Athens Anaxagoras wasindicted on a charge of inculcating doctrines subversive of religion. It is obvious enough that his theories left no room for the popularmythology, but the Athenians were not usually very sensitive as to thebearing of mere theories upon their public institutions. It seemsprobable that the accusation was merely a cloak for politicalhostility. Anaxagoras was the friend and intimate of Pericles, leaderof the democratic party in the state, and the attack upon Anaxagoraswas really a political move intended to damage Pericles. As suchPericles himself accepted it, and the trial became a contest ofstrength, which resulted in a partial success and a partial defeat forboth sides. Pericles succeeded in saving his friend's life, but theopposite party obtained a sentence of fine and banishment against him. Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont, and there, after some five years, he died. 

{58}

CHAPTER VII

THE ATOMISTS (_continued_)

_Empedocles at Etna--Brief life and scanty vision--The fourelements--The philosophy of contradiction--Philosophy a form ofpoesy--The philosopher a prophet--Sensation through kinship--The wholecreation groaneth_

[129]

II. EMPEDOCLES. --Empedocles was a native of Agrigentum, a Greek colonyin Sicily. At the time when he flourished in his native city (circa440 B. C. ) it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful communities inthat wealthy and powerful island. It had, however, been infested, likeits neighbours, by the designs of tyrants and the dissensions of rivalfactions. Empedocles was a man of high family, and he exercised theinfluence which his position and his abilities secured him in promotingand maintaining the liberty of his fellow-countrymen. Partly on thisaccount, partly from a reputation which with or without his own will heacquired for an almost miraculous skill in healing and necromanticarts, Empedocles attained to a position of singular personal power overhis contemporaries, and was indeed regarded as semi-divine. His deathwas hedged about with mystery. According to one story he gave a greatfeast to his friends and offered a {59} sacrifice; then when hisfriends went to rest he disappeared, and was no more seen. Accordingto a story less dignified and better known--

 Deus immortalis haberi Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Aetnam Insiluit. HOR. _Ad Pisones_, 464 _sqq_. 

"Eager to be deemed a god, Empedocles coldly threw himself in burningEtna. " The fraud, it was said, was detected by one of his shoes beingcast up from the crater. Whatever the manner of his end, the Etnastory may probably be taken as an ill-natured joke of some sceptic wit;and it is certain that no such story was believed by hisfellow-citizens, who rendered in after years divine honours to his name. 

Like Xenophanes, Parmenides, and other Graeco-Italian philosophers, heexpounded his views in verse; but he reached a poetic excellenceunattained by any predecessor. Aristotle characterises his gift asHomeric, and himself as a master of style, employing freely metaphorsand other poetic forms. Lucretius also speaks of him in terms of highadmiration (_De Nat. Rer. I. 716 sqq. _): "Foremost among them isEmpedocles of Agrigentum, child of the island with the triple capes, aland wondrous deemed in many wise, and worthy to be viewed of all men. Rich it is in all manner of good things, and strong {60} in the mightof its men, yet naught within its borders men deem more divine or morewondrous or more dear than her illustrious son. Nay, the songs whichissued from his godlike breast are eloquent yet, and expound hisfindings wondrous well, so that hardly is he thought to have been ofmortal clay. "

[180]

Like the Eleatics he denies that the senses are an absolute test oftruth. "For straitened are the powers that have been shed upon ourframes, and many the frets that cross us and defeat our care, and shortthe span of unsatisfying existence wherein 'tis given us to see. Shortlived as a wreath of smoke men rise and fleet away, persuaded butof that alone which each has chanced to light upon, driven hither andthither, and vainly do they pray to find _the whole_. For this men maynot see or hear or grasp with the hand of thought. " Yet that there isa kind or degree of knowledge possible for man his next words suggestwhen he continues: "Thou therefore since hither thou hast been borne, hear, and thou shalt learn so much as 'tis given to mortal thought toreach. " Then follows an invocation in true Epic style to the"much-wooed white-armed virgin Muse, " wherein he prays that "folly andimpurity may be far from the lips of him the teacher, and that sendingforth her swift-reined chariot from the shrine of Piety, the Muse maygrant him to hear so much as is given to mortal hearing. "

{61}

Then follows a warning uttered by the Muse to her would-be disciple:"Thee the flowers of mortal distinctions shall not seduce to utter indaring of heart more than thou mayest, that thereby thou mightest soarto the highest heights of wisdom. And now behold and see, availingthyself of every device whereby the truth may in each matter berevealed, trusting not more to sight for thy learning than to hearing, nor to hearing with its loud echoings more than to the revelations ofthe tongue, nor to any one of the many ways whereby there is a path toknowledge. Keep a check on the revelation of the hands also, andapprehend each matter in the way whereby it is made plain to thee. "

The correction of the one sense by the others, and of all by reason, this Empedocles deemed the surest road to knowledge. He thusendeavoured to hold a middle place between the purely abstractreasoning of the Eleatic philosophy and the unreasoned first guesses ofordinary observation suggested by this or that sense, and chiefly bythe eyes. The senses might supply the raw materials of knowledge, unordered, unrelated, nay even chaotic and mutually destructive; but intheir contradictions of each other he hoped to find a starting-pointfor order amidst the seeming chaos; reason should weigh, reason shouldreject, but reason also should find a residuum of truth. 

{62}

[181]

In our next fragment we have his enunciation in symbolical language ofthe _four_ elements, by him first formulated: "Hear first of all whatare the root principles of all things, being four in number, --Zeus thebright shiner (_i. E. _ fire), and Hera (air), and life-bearing Aidoneus(earth), and Nestis (water), who with her teardrops waters the fountainof mortality. Hear also this other that I will tell thee. Nothing ofall that perisheth ever is created, nothing ever really findeth an endin death. There is naught but a mingling, and a parting again of thatwhich was mingled, and this is what men call a coming into being. Foolish they, for in them is no far-reaching thought, that they shoulddream that what was not before can be, or that aught which is canutterly perish and die. " Thus again Empedocles shows himself anEclectic; in denying that aught can come into being, he holds with theEleatics (see above, p. 47); in identifying all seeming creation, andceasing to be with certain mixtures and separations of matter eternallyexisting, he links himself rather to the doctrine of Anaxagoras (seeabove, p. 53). 

[132]

These four elements constitute the total _corpus_ of the universe, eternal, as a whole unmoved and immovable, perfect like a sphere. Butwithin this sphere-like self-centred All there are eternally proceedingseparations and new unions of the elements of things; and every one ofthese is at once a birth {63} and an infinity of dyings, a dying and aninfinity of births. Towards this perpetual life in death, and death inlife, two forces work inherent in the universe. One of these he namesLove, Friendship, Harmony, Aphrodite goddess of Love, Passion, Joy; theother he calls Hate, Discord, Ares god of War, Envy, Strife. Neitherof the one nor of the other may man have apprehension by the senses;they are spiritually discerned; yet of the first men have someadumbration in the creative force within their own members, which theyname by the names of Love and Nuptial Joy. 

Somewhat prosaically summing up the teaching of Empedocles, Aristotlesays that he thus posited _six_ first principles in nature--fourmaterial, two motive or efficient. And he goes on to remark that inthe working out of his theory of nature Empedocles, though using hisoriginative principles more consistently than Anaxagoras used hisprinciple of _Nous_ or Thought, not infrequently, nevertheless, resortsto some natural force in the elements themselves, or even to chance ornecessity. "Nor, " he continues, "has he clearly marked off thefunctions of his two efficient forces, nay, he has so confounded themthat at times it is Discord that through separation leads to newunions, and Love that through union causes diremption of that which wasbefore. " At times, too, Empedocles seems to have had a vision of thesetwo forces, not as the counteracting yet {64} co-operative_pulsations_, so to speak, of the universal life, but as rival forceshaving had in time their periods of alternate supremacy and defeat. While all things were in union under the influence of Love, then wasthere neither Earth nor Water nor Air nor Fire, much less any of theindividual things that in eternal interchange are formed of them; butall was in perfect sphere-like balance, enwrapped in the serenity of aneternal silence. Then came the reign of Discord, whereby war arose inheaven as of the fabled giants, and endless change, --endless birth, andendless death. 

These inconsistencies of doctrine, which Aristotle notes as faults inEmpedocles, are perhaps rather proofs of the philosophic value of hisconceptions. Just as Hegel in modern philosophy could only adequatelyformulate his conceptions through logical contradictions, so also, perhaps, under the veil of antagonisms of utterance, Empedocles soughtto give a fuller vision, --Discord, in his own doctrine, not less thanin his conception of nature, being thus the co-worker with Love. Theordinary mind for the ordinary purposes of science seeks exactness ofdistinction in things, and language, being the creation of ordinaryexperience, lends itself to such a purpose; the philosophic mind, finding ready to its hand no forms of expression adapted to itsconceptions, which have for their final end Union and not Distinction, {65} can only attain its purpose by variety, or even contradictoriness, of representation. Thus to ordinary conception cause must precedeeffect; to the philosophic mind, dealing as it does with the idea of anorganic whole, everything is at once cause and effect, is at oncetherefore prior to and subsequent to every other, is at once the rulingand the ruled, the conditioning and that which is conditioned. 

So, to Empedocles there are four elements, yet in the eternalperfection, the silent reign of Love, there are none of them. Thereare two forces working upon these and against each other, yet each islike the other either a unifying or a separating force, as one pleasesto regard them; and in the eternal silence, the ideal perfectness, there is no warfare at all. There is joy in Love which creates, and increating destroys; there is joy in the eternal Stillness, nay, this isitself the ultimate joy. There are two forces working, Love and Hate, yet is there but one force, and that force is Necessity. And for finalcontradiction, the universe is self-balanced, self-conditioned, aperfect sphere; therefore this Necessity is perfect self-realisation, and consequently perfect freedom. 

The men who have had the profoundest vision of things--Heraclitus, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, ay, and Aristotle himself when he was thethinker and not the critic; not to speak of the great moderns, whetherpreachers or philosophers--have none of {66} them been greatlyconcerned for consistency of expression, for a mere logicalself-identity of doctrine. Life in every form, nay, existence in anyform, is a union of contradictories, a complex of antagonisms; and thehighest and deepest minds are those that are most adequate to have thevision of these antagonisms in their contrariety, and also in theirunity; to see and hear as Empedocles did the eternal war and clamour, but to discern also, as he did in it and through it and behind it andabout it, the eternal peace and the eternal silence. 

Philosophy, in fact, is a form of poesy; it is, if one pleases so tocall it, 'fiction founded upon fact. ' It is not for that reason theless noble a form of human thought, rather is it the more noble, in thesame way as poetry is nobler than mere narrative, and art thanrepresentation, and imagination than perception. Philosophy is indeedone of the noblest forms of poetry, because the facts which are itsbasis are the profoundest, the most eternally interesting, the mostuniversally significant. And not only has it nobility in respect ofthe greatness of its subject matter, it has also possibilities of anessential truth deeper and more far-reaching and more fruitful than anydemonstrative system of fact can have. A great poem or work of art ofany kind is an adumbration of truths which transcend any actual fact, and as such it brings us nearer to the underlying fundamentals of {67}reality which all actual occurrences only by accumulation _tend_ torealise. Philosophy, then, in so far as it is great, is, like othergreat art, prophetic in both interpretations of the word, both asexpounding the inner truth that is anterior to actuality, and also asanticipating that final realisation of all things for which 'the wholecreation groaneth. ' It is thus at the basis of religion, of art, ofmorals; it is the accumulated sense of the highest in man with respectto what is greatest and most mysterious in and about him. 

The facts, indeed, with which philosophy attempts to deal are so vitaland so vast that even the greatest intellects may well staggeroccasionally under the burden of their own conceptions of them. Torise to the height of such an argument demands a more than Miltonicimagination; and criticisms directed only at this or that fragment ofthe whole are as irrelevant, if not as inept, as the criticism of themathematician directed against _Paradise Lost_, that it 'provednothing. ' The mystery of being and of life, the true purport andreality of this world of which we seem to be a part, and yet of whichwe seem to have some apprehension as though we were other than a part;the strange problems of creation and change and birth and death, oflove and sin and purification; of a heaven dreamt of or believed in, orsomehow actually apprehended; of life here, and of an immortalityyearned after and hoped for--these {68} problems, these mysteries, nophilosophy ever did or ever can empty of their strangeness, or bringdown to the level of the commonplace 'certainties' of daily life or ofscience, which are no more than shadows after all, that seemcertainties because of the background of mystery on which they are cast. 

But just as an individual is a higher being, a fuller, more truly humancreature, when he has got so far removed from the merely animalexistence as to realise that there are such problems and mysteries, soalso the humanisation of the race, the development of its noblestpeoples and its noblest literatures, have been conditioned by thesuccessive visions of these mysteries in more and more complexorganisation by the great philosophers and poets and preachers. Thesystems of such men may die, but such deaths mean, as Empedocles saidof the ordinary deaths of things, only an infinity of new births. Being dead, their systems yet speak in the inherited language and ideasand aspirations and beliefs that form the never-ending, still-renewingmaterial for new philosophies and new faiths. In Thales, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles we have been touching hands with anapostolic succession of great men and great thinkers and greatpoets--men of noble life and lofty thoughts, true prophets andrevealers. And the apostolic succession even within the Greek worlddoes not fail for centuries yet. 

{69}

Passing from the general conceptions of Empedocles to those moreparticular rationalisations of particular problems which very largelyprovided the motive of early philosophies, while scientific methodswere in an undeveloped and uncritical condition, we may notice suchinteresting statements as the following: [135] "The earth, which is atthe centre of the sphere of the universe, remains firm, because thespin of the universe as a whole keeps it in its place like the water ina spinning cup. " He has the same conception of the early condition ofthe earth as in other cosmogonies. At first it was a chaos of wateryslough, which slowly, under the influence of sky and sun, parted offinto earth and sea. The sea was the 'sweat' of the earth, and byanalogy with the sweat it was salt. The heavens, on the other hand, were formed of air and fire, and the sun was, as it were, a speculum atwhich the effulgence and the heat of the whole heavens concentrated. But that the aether and the fire had not been fully separated fromearth and water he held to be proved by the hot fountains and fieryphenomena which must have been so familiar to a native of Sicily. Curiously enough he imagined fire to possess a solidifying power, andtherefore attributed to it the solidity of the earth and the hardnessof the rocks. No doubt he had observed some effects of fire in'metamorphic' formations in his own vicinity. 

{70}

[137]

He had also a conception of the gradual development on the earth ofhigher and higher forms of life, the first being rude and imperfect, and a 'struggle for existence' ensuing in which the monstrous and thedeficient gradually were eliminated--the "two-faced, thedouble-breasted, the oxen-shaped with human prows, or human-shaped withhead of ox, or hemaphrodite, " and so forth. Love and Strife worked outtheir ends upon these varied forms; some procreated and reproducedafter their image, others were incapable of reproduction from meremonstrosity or [138] weakness, and disappeared. Something other thanmere chance thus governed the development of things; there was a law, areason, a _Logos_ governing the process. This law or reason he perhapsfancifully illustrated by attributing the different characters of fleshand sinew and bone to the different numerical proportions, in whichthey severally contain the different elements. 

On this Aristotle, keen-scented critic as he was, has a question, orseries of questions, to ask as to the relation between this Logos, orprinciple of orderly combination, and Love as the ruling force in allunions of things. "Is Love, " he asks, "a cause of mixtures of anysort, or only of such sorts as Logos dictates? And whether then isLove identical with this Logos, or are they separate and distinct; andif so, what settles their separate functions?" Questions {71} whichEmpedocles did not answer, and perhaps would not have tried to answerhad he heard them. 

[139]

The soul or life-principle in man Empedocles regarded as an orderedcomposite of all the elements or principles of the life in nature, andin this kinship of the elements in man and the elements in nature hefound a rationale of our powers of perception. "By the earth, " saidhe, "we have perception of earth; by water we have perception of water;of the divine aether, by aether; of destructive fire, by fire; of love, by love; of strife, by strife. " He therefore, as Aristotle observes, drew no radical distinction between sense-apprehension and thought. Helocated the faculty of apprehension more specifically in the blood, conceiving that in it the combination of the elements was mostcomplete. And the variety of apprehensive gift in different persons heattributed to the greater or lesser perfectness of this blood mixturein them individually. Those that were dull and stupid had a relativedeficiency of the lighter and more invisible elements; those that werequick and impulsive had a relatively larger proportion of these. Again, specific faculties depended on local perfection of mixture incertain organs; orators having this perfectness in their tongues, cunning craftsmen possessing it in their hands, and so on. And thedegrees of capacity of sensation, which he found in various animals, oreven plants, he explained in similar fashion. 

{72} The process of sensation he conceived to be conditioned by anactual emission from the bodies perceived of elements or images ofthemselves which found access to our apprehension through channels[140] congruous to their nature. But ordering, criticising, organisingthese various apprehensions was the Mind or _Nous_, which he conceivedto be of divine nature, to be indeed an expression or emanation of theDivine. And here has been preserved a strangely interesting passage, in which he incorporates and develops in characteristic fashion thedoctrine of transmigration [141] of souls: "There is a decree ofNecessity, a law given of old from the gods, eternal, sealed withmighty oaths, that when any heavenly creature (daemon) of those thatare endowed with length of days, shall in waywardness of heart defilehis hands with sin of deed or speech, he shall wander for thrice tenthousand seasons far from the dwellings of the blest, taking upon himin length of time all manner of mortal forms, traversing in turn themany toilsome paths of existence. Him the aetherial wrath hurriesonward to the deep, and the deep spews him forth on to the threshold ofearth, and unworn earth casts him up to the fires of the sun, and againthe aether hurls him into the eddies. One receives him, and thenanother, but detested is he of them all. Of such am I also one, anexile and a wanderer from God, a slave to strife and its madness. "

{73}

Thus to his mighty conception the life of all creation, and not of manonly, was a great expiation, an eternal round of punishment for sin;and in the unending flux of life each creature rose or fell in thescale of existence according to the deeds of good or ill done in eachsuccessive life; rising sometimes to the state of men, or among men tothe high functions of physicians and prophets and kings, or amongbeasts to the dignity of the lion, or among trees to the beauty of thelaurel; or, on the contrary, sinking through sin to lowest forms ofbestial or vegetable life. Till at the last they who through obedienceand right-doing have expiated their wrong, are endowed by the blessedgods with endless honour, to dwell for ever with them and share theirbanquets, untouched any more with human care and sorrow and pain. 

[143]

The slaying of any living creature, therefore, Empedocles, likePythagoras, abhorred, for all were kin. All foul acts were forms ofworse than suicide; life should be a long act of worship, of expiation, of purification. And in the dim past he pictured a vision of a goldenage, in which men worshipped not many gods, but Love only, and not withsacrifices of blood, but with pious images, and cunningly odorousincense, and offerings of fragrant myrrh. With abstinence also, andabove all with that noblest abstinence, the abstinence from vice andwrong. 

{74}

CHAPTER VIII

THE ATOMISTS (_concluded_)

_The laughing philosopher--Atoms and void--No god and no truth_

[143]

III. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS. --Leucippus is variously called a nativeof Elea, of Abdera, of Melos, of Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno theEleatic. [144] Democritus was a native of Abdera. They seem to havebeen almost contemporary with Socrates. The two are associated asthorough-going teachers of the 'Atomic Philosophy, ' but Democritus, 'the laughing philosopher, ' as he was popularly called in later times, in distinction from Heraclitus, 'the weeping philosopher, ' was much themore famous. [145] He lived to a great age. He himself refers to histravels and studies thus: "Above all the men of my time I travelledfarthest, and extended my inquiries to places the most distant. Ivisited the most varied climates and countries, heard the largestnumber of learned men, nor has any one surpassed me in the gatheringtogether of writings and their interpretation, no, not even the mostlearned of the Egyptians, with whom I spent five years. " We {75} arealso informed that, through desire of learning, he visited Babylon andChaldaea, to visit the astrologers and the priests. 

[146]

Democritus was not less prolific as a writer than he was voracious as astudent, and in him first the division of philosophy into certain greatsections, such as physical, mathematical, ethical, was clearly [147]drawn. We are, however, mainly concerned with his teaching in its morestrictly philosophical aspects. His main doctrine was professedlyantithetical to that of the Eleatics, who, it will be remembered, worked out on abstract lines a theory of one indivisible, eternal, immovable Being. Democritus, on the contrary, declared for twoco-equal elements, the Full and the Empty, or Being and Nonentity. Thelatter, he maintained, was as real as the former. As we should put it, Body is unthinkable except by reference to space which that body doesnot occupy, as well as to space which it does occupy; and converselySpace is unthinkable except by reference to body actually orpotentially filling or defining it. 

What Democritus hoped to get by this double or correlative system was ameans of accounting for or conceiving of _change_ in nature. Thedifficulty with the Eleatics was, as we have seen, how to understandwhence or why the transition from that which absolutely is, to thisstrange, at least apparent, system of eternal flux and transformation. Democritus {76} hoped to get over this difficulty by starting as fullywith that which _is not_, in other words, with that which _wants_change in order to have any recognisable being at all, as with thatwhich _is_, and which therefore might be conceived as seeking andrequiring only to be what it is. 

[148]

Having got his principle of stability and his principle of change on anequal footing, Democritus next laid it down that all the differencesvisible in things were differences either of shape, of arrangement, orof position; practically, that is, he considered that what seem, to usto be qualitative differences in things, _e. G. _ hot or cold, sweet orsour, green or yellow, are only resulting impressions from differentshapes, or different arrangements, or different modes of presentation, among the atoms of which things are composed. 

Coming now to that which _is_, Democritus, as against the Eleatics, maintained that this was not a unity, some one immovable, unchangeableexistence, but an innumerable number of atoms, invisible by reason oftheir smallness, which career through empty space (that which _isnot_), and by their union bring objects into being, by their separationbring these to destruction. The action of these atoms on each otherdepended on the manner in which they were brought into contact; but inany case the unity of any object was only an apparent unity, it beingreally constituted of a multitude of interlaced and mutually related{77} particles, and all growth or increase of the object beingconditioned by the introduction into the structure of additional atomsfrom without. 

[149]

For the motions of the atoms he had no anterior cause to offer, otherthan necessity or fate. They existed, and necessarily and always hadexisted, in a state of whirl; and for that which always had been hemaintained that no preceding cause could legitimately or reasonably bedemanded. 

[150]

Nothing, then, could come out of nothing; all the visible structure ofthe universe had its origin in the movements of the atoms thatconstituted it, and conditioned its infinite changes. The atoms, by auseful but perhaps too convenient metaphor, he called the _seeds_ ofall things. They were infinite in number, though not infinite in thenumber, of their shapes. Many atoms were similar to each other, andthis similarity formed a basis of union among them, a warp, so tospeak, or solid foundation across which the woof of dissimilar atomsplayed to constitute the differences of things. 

[151]

Out of this idea of an eternal eddy or whirl Democritus developed acosmogony. The lighter atoms he imagined flew to the outmost rim ofthe eddy, there constituting the heavenly fires and the heavenlyaether. The heavier atoms gathered at the centre, forming successivelyair and water and the solid earth. Not that there was only one such{78} system or world, but rather multitudes of them, all varying onefrom the other; some without sun or moon, others with greaterluminaries than those of our system, others with a greater number. All, however, had necessarily a centre; all as systems were necessarilyspherical. 

[152]

As regards the atoms he conceived that when they differed in weightthis must be in respect of a difference in their essential size. Inthis he was no doubt combating the notion that the atoms say of lead orgold were in their substance, taking equal quantities, of greaterweight than atoms of water or air. The difference of weight in objectsdepended on the proportion which the atoms in them bore to the amountof empty space which was interlaced with them. On the other hand, apiece of iron was lighter yet harder than a piece of lead of equalsize, because of the special way in which the atoms in it were linkedtogether. There were fewer atoms in it, but they were, in consequenceof their structure and arrangement, more tightly strung. 

[153]

In all this Democritus was with great resolution working out what wemay call a strictly mechanical theory of the universe. Even the soulor life-principle in living creatures was simply a structure of thefinest and roundest (and therefore most nimble) atoms, with which hecompared the extremely attenuated dust particles visible in theirnever-ending {79} dance in a beam of light passed into a darkened room. This structure of exceeding tenuity and nimbleness was the source ofthe motion characteristic of living creatures, and provided thatelastic counteracting force to the inward-pressing nimble air, wherebywere produced the phenomena of respiration. Every object, in fact, whether living or not, kept its form and distinctive existence by itspossession in degree of a kind of soul or spirit of resistance in itsstructure, adequate to counteract the pressure of external forces uponits particles. 

[155]

Sensation and perception were forms in which these external forcesacted upon the more nimble and lively existences, more particularly onliving creatures. For every body was continually sending forthemanations or images resembling itself sufficiently in form andstructure to affect perceptive bodies with an apprehension of that formand structure. These images travelled by a process of successivetransmission, similar to that by which wave-motions are propagated inwater. They were, in other words, not movements of the _particles_ ofthe objects, which latter must otherwise in time grow less and fadeaway, but a modification in the arrangement of the particlesimmediately next the object, which modification reproduced itself inthe next following, and so on right through the medium to theperceptive body. 

{80}

[156]

These images tended by extension in all directions to reach vastdimensions at times, and to influence the minds of men in sleep and onother occasions in strange ways. Hence men imagined gods, andattributed those mighty phenomena of nature--earthquakes, tempests, lightning and thunder, and dire eclipses of sun and moon, to thevaguely visible powers which they imagined they saw. There was indeeda soul or spirit of the universe, as there was a soul or spirit ofevery individual thing that constituted it. But this was only a finersystem of atoms after all. All else is convention or dream; the onlyrealities are Atoms and Emptiness, Matter and Space. 

[157]

Of absolute verity through the senses we know nothing; our perceptionsare only conventional interpretations of we know not what. For toother living creatures these same sensations have other meanings thanthey have to us, and even the same person is not always affected alikeby the same thing; which then is the true of two differing perceptionswe cannot say. And therefore either there is no such thing as truth, or, at all events, we know through the senses nothing of it. The onlygenuine knowledge is that which transcends appearances, and reasons outwhat is, irrespective of appearances, --in other words, the only genuineknowledge is that of the (atomic) philosopher. And his knowledge is{81} the result of the happy mixture of his atoms whereby all is inequal balance, neither too hot nor too cold. Such a man seeing in themind's eye the whole universe a tissue of whirling and interlacingatoms, with no real mystery or terror before or after, will live a lifeof cheerful fearlessness, undisturbed by terrors of a world to come orof powers unseen. His happiness is not in feastings or in gold, but ina mind at peace. And three human perfections he will seek to attain:to reason rightly, to speak graciously, to do his duty. 

{82}

CHAPTER IX

THE SOPHISTS

_Anarchic philosophy--Success not truth--Man the measure--All opinionstrue--Reductio ad absurdum_

A certain analogy may perhaps be discerned between the progression ofphilosophic thought in Greece as we have traced it, and the politicaldevelopment which had its course in almost every Greek state during thesame period. The Ionic philosophy may be regarded as correspondingwith the _kingly_ era in Greek politics. Philosophy sits upon theheights and utters its authoritative dicta for the resolution of theseeming contradictions of things. One principle is master, but thetestimony of the senses is not denied; a harmony of thought andsensation is sought in the interpretation of appearances by the lightof a ruling idea. In Pythagoras and his order we have an_aristocratic_ organisation of philosophy. Its truths are for the few, the best men are the teachers, equal as initiated partakers in themysteries, supreme over all outside their society. A reasoned andreasonable order and method are {83} symbolised by their theory ofNumber; their philosophy is political, their politics oligarchic. Inthe Eleatic school we have a succession of personal attempts toconstruct a _domination_ in the theory of Nature; some ideal conceptionis attempted to be so elevated above the data of sensation as tooverride them altogether, and the general result we are now to seethroughout the philosophic world, as it was seen also throughout theworld of politics, in a total collapse of the principle of forcedauthority, and a development, of successively nearer approaches toanarchic individualism and doubt. The notion of an ultimately true andreal, whatever form it might assume in various theorists' hands, beingin its essence apart from and even antagonistic to the perceptions ofsense, was at last definitely cast aside as a delusion; what remainedwere the individual perceptions, admittedly separate, unreasoned, unrelated; Reason was dethroned, Chaos was king. In other words, what_seemed_ to any individual sentient being at any moment to be, that forhim was, and nothing else was. The distinction between the real andthe apparent was definitely attempted to be abolished, not as hithertoby rejecting the sensually apparent in favour of the rationallyconceived real, but by the denial of any such real altogether. 

The individualistic revolution in philosophy not {84} only, however, had analogies with the similar revolution contemporaneously going on inGreek politics, it was greatly facilitated by it. Each, in short, acted and reacted on the other. Just as the sceptical philosophy ofthe Encyclopaedists in France promoted the Revolution, and theRevolution in its turn developed and confirmed the philosophicscepticism, so also the collapse of contending philosophies in Greecepromoted the collapse of contending systems of political authority, andthe collapse of political authority facilitated the growth of thatindividualism in thought with which the name of the Sophists isassociated. 

[178]

Cicero (_Brut_. 12) definitely connects the rise of these teachers withthe expulsion of the tyrants and the establishment of democraticrepublics in Sicily. From 466 to 406 B. C. Syracuse was democraticallygoverned, and a 'free career to talents, ' as in revolutionary France, so also in revolutionary Greece, began to be promoted by theelaboration of a system of persuasive argument. Devices of methodcalled 'commonplaces' were constructed, whereby, irrespective of thetruth or falsehood of the subject-matter, a favourable vote in thepublic assemblies, a successful verdict in the public courts, mightmore readily be procured. Thus by skill of verbal rhetoric, the worsemight be made to appear the better reason; and philosophy, so far as itcontinued its functions, {85} became a search, not for the real amidstthe confusions of the seeming and unreal, but a search for the seemingand the plausible, to the detriment, or at least to the ignoring, ofany reality at all. 

The end of philosophy then was no longer universal truth, butindividual success; and consistently enough, the philosopher himselfprofessed the individualism of his own point of view, by teaching onlythose who were prepared to pay him for his teaching. All over Greece, with the growth of democracy, this philosophy of persuasion becamepopular; but it was to Athens, under Pericles at this time the centreof all that was most vivid and splendid in Greek life and thought, thatthe chief teachers of the new philosophy flocked from every part of theGreek world. 

[177]

The first great leader of the Sophists was _Protagoras_. He, it issaid, was the first to teach for pay; he also was the first to adoptthe name of Sophist. In the word Sophist there was indeed latent theidea which subsequently attached to it, but as first used it seems tohave implied this only, that _skill_ was the object of the teachingrather than _truth_; the new teachers professed themselves 'practicalmen, ' not mere theorists. 

The Greek word, in short, meant an able cultivated man in any branch ofthe arts; and the development of practical capacity was doubtless whatProtagoras {86} intended to indicate as the purpose of his teaching, when he called himself a Sophist. But the ability he really undertookto cultivate was ability to _persuade_, for Greece at this time wasnothing if not political; and persuasive oratory was the one road topolitical success. And as Athens was the great centre of Greekpolitics, as well as of Greek intellect, to Athens Protagoras came as ateacher. 

He was born at Abdera, in Thrace (birthplace also of Democritus), in480 B. C. , began to teach at Athens about 451 B. C. , and soon acquiredgreat influence with Pericles, the distinguished leader of the Atheniandemocracy at this time. It is even alleged that when in 445 theAthenians were preparing to establish a colony at Thurii in Italy, Protagoras was requested to draw up a code of laws for the new state, and personally to superintend its execution. 

After spending some time in Italy he returned to Athens, and taughtthere with great success for a number of years. Afterwards he taughtfor some time in Sicily, and died at the age of seventy, after [178]about forty years of professional activity. He does not seem to havecontented himself with the merely practical task of teaching rhetoric, but in a work which he, perhaps ironically, entitled _Truth_, heenunciated the principles on which he based his teaching. Thoseprinciples were summed up in the sentence, "Man (by which he meant_each_ man) is {87} the measure of all things, whether of theirexistence when they do exist, or of their non-existence when [179] theydo not. " In the development of this doctrine Protagoras starts from asomewhat similar analysis of things to that of Heraclitus and others. Everything is in continual flux, and the apparently real objects innature are the mere temporary and illusory result of the in themselvesinvisible movements and minglings of the elements of which they arecomposed; and not only is it a delusion to attempt to give a factitiousreality to the things which appear, it is equally a delusion to attemptto separate the (supposed) thing perceived from the perception itself. A thing is only as and when it is perceived. And a third delusion isto attempt to separate a supposed perceiving mind from the perception;all three exist only in and through the momentary perception; thesupposed reality behind this, whether external in the object orinternal in the mind, is a mere imagination. Thus the Heraclitean fluxin Nature was extended to Mind also; only the sensation exists, andthat only at the moment of its occurrence; this alone is truth, thisalone is reality; all else is delusion. 

[180]

It followed from this that as a man felt a thing to be, so for him itveritably was. Thus abstract truth or falsity could not be; the samestatements could be indifferently true or false--to different {88}individuals at the same time, to the same individual at differenttimes. It followed that all appearances were equally true: what seemedto be to any man, that was alone the true for him. The relation ofsuch a doctrine as this to politics and to morals is not far to seek. Every man's opinion was as good as another's; if by persuasion yousucceeded in altering a man's opinion, you had not deceived the man, his new opinion was as true (to him) as the old one. Persuasiveness, therefore, was the only wisdom. Thus if a man is ill what he eats anddrinks seems bitter to him, and it is so; when he is well it seems theopposite, and is so. He is not a wiser man in the second state than inthe first, but the second state is pleasanter. If then you canpersuade him that what he thinks bitter is really sweet, you have donehim good. This is what the physician tries to do by his drugs; this iswhat the Sophist tries to do by his words. Virtue then is teachable inso far as it is possible to persuade a boy or a man by rhetoric thatthat course of conduct which pleases others is a pleasant course forhim. But if any one happens not to be persuaded of this, and continuesto prefer his own particular course of conduct, this _is_ for him thegood course. You cannot blame him; you cannot say he is wrong. If youpunish him you simply endeavour to supply the dose of unpleasantnesswhich may {89} be needed to put the balance in his case on the sameside as it already occupies in the case of other people. 

It may be worth while to anticipate a little, and insert here insummary the refutation of this position put into the mouth of Socratesby Plato in the _Theaetetus_: "But I ought not to conceal from you thatthere is a serious objection which may be urged against this doctrineof Protagoras. For there are states, such as madness and dreaming, inwhich perception is false; and half our life is spent in dreaming; andwho can say that at this instant we are not dreaming? Even the fanciesof madmen are real at the time. But if knowledge is perception, howcan we distinguish between the true and the false in such cases? . . . Shall I tell you what amazes me in your friend Protagoras? 'What maythat be?' I like his doctrine that what appears is; but I wonder thathe did not begin his great work on truth with a declaration that a pig, or a dog-faced baboon, or any other monster which has sensation, is ameasure of all things; then while we were reverencing him as a god hemight have produced a magnificent effect by expounding to us that hewas no wiser than a tadpole. For if truth is only sensation, and oneman's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his ownjudge, and everything that he judges is right and true, then {90} whatneed of Protagoras to be our instructor at a high figure; and whyshould we be less knowing than he is, or have to go to him, if everyman is the measure of all things?" . . . Socrates now resumes theargument. As he is very desirous of doing justice to Protagoras, heinsists on citing his own words: 'What appears to each man is to him. '"And how, " asks Socrates, "are these words reconcilable with the factthat all mankind are agreed in thinking themselves wiser than others insome respects, and inferior to them in others? In the hour of dangerthey are ready to fall down and worship any one who is their superiorin wisdom as if he were a god. And the world is full of men who areasking to be taught and willing to be ruled, and of other men who arewilling to rule and teach them. All which implies that men do judge ofone another's impressions, and think some wise and others foolish. Howwill Protagoras answer this argument? For he cannot say that no onedeems another ignorant or mistaken. If you form a judgment, thousandsand tens of thousands are ready to maintain the opposite. Themultitude may not and do not agree in Protagoras' own thesis, 'that manis the measure of all things, ' and then who is to decide? Upon hip ownshowing must not his 'truth' depend on the number of suffrages, and bemore or less true in proportion as he has more or fewer of them? And{91} [the majority being against him] he will be bound to acknowledgethat they speak truly who deny him to speak truly, which is a famousjest. And if he admits that they speak truly who deny him to speaktruly, he must admit that he himself does not speak truly. But hisopponents will refuse to admit this as regards themselves, and he mustadmit that they are right in their refusal. The conclusion is, thatall mankind, including Protagoras himself, will deny that he speakstruly; and his truth will be true neither to himself nor to anybodyelse" (Jowett, _Plato_, iv. Pp. 239 _sqq. _)

The refutation seems tolerably complete, but a good deal had to happenbefore Greece was ready to accept or Plato to offer such a refutation. 

{92}

CHAPTER X

THE SOPHISTS (_concluded_)

_Nothing knowable--The solitude of scepticism--The lawlessness ofscepticism--The good in scepticism_

[183]

Gorgias was perhaps even more eminent a Sophist than Protagoras. Hewas a native of Leontini in Sicily, and came to Athens in the year 427B. C. On a public embassy from his native city. The splendid reputationfor political and rhetorical ability, which preceded him to Athens, hefully justified both by his public appearances before the Athenianassembly, and by the success of his private instructions to the crowdsof wealthy young men who resorted to him. He dressed in magnificentstyle, and affected a lofty and poetical manner of speech, whichoffended the more critical, but which pleased the crowd. 

[181]

He also, like Protagoras, published a treatise in which he expoundedhis fundamental principles, and like Protagoras, he preceded it with astriking if somewhat ironical title, and an apophthegm in which hesummarised his doctrine. The title of his work was _Of theNon-Existent_, that is, _Of Nature_, and {93} his dictum, "Nothingexists, or if anything exists, it cannot be apprehended by man, andeven if it could be apprehended, the man who apprehended it could notexpound or explain it to his neighbour. " In support of this strangedoctrine, Gorgias adopted the quibbling method of argument which hadbeen applied with some success to dialectical purposes by Zeno, Melissus, and others (see above, pp. 44 _sqq. _)

[185]

His chief argument to prove the first position laid down by himdepended on a double and ambiguous use of the word _is_; "That which isnot, _is_ the non-existent: the word _is_ must, therefore, beapplicable to it as truly as when we say That which is, _is_;therefore, being is predicable of that which is not. " So conversely heproved not-being to be predicable of that which is. And in like mannerhe made away with any possible assertions as to the finite or infinite, the eternal or created, nature of that which is. Logic could supplyhim with alternative arguments from whatever point he started, such aswould seem to land the question in absurdity. Hence his first positionwas (he claimed) established, that 'Nothing is. '

To prove the second, that even if anything is, it cannot be known toman, he argued thus: "If what a man thinks is not identical with whatis, plainly what is cannot be thought. And that what a man thinks isnot identical with what is can be {94} shown from the fact thatthinking does not affect the facts. You may imagine a man flying, or achariot coursing over the deep, but you do not find these things tooccur because you imagine them. Again, if we assume that what we thinkis identical with what is, then it must be impossible to think of whatis not. But this is absurd; for we can think of such admittedlyimaginary beings as Scylla and Chimaera, and multitudes of others. There is therefore no necessary relation between our thoughts and anyrealities; we may believe, but we cannot prove, which (if any) of ourconceptions have relation to an external fact and which have not. "

[187]

Nor thirdly, supposing any man had obtained an apprehension of what isreal, could he possibly communicate it to any one else. If a man sawanything, he could not possibly by verbal description make clear whatit is he sees to a man who has never seen. And so if a man has nothimself the apprehension of reality, mere words from another cannotpossibly give him any idea of it. He may imagine he has the same ideaas the speaker, but where is he going to get the common test by whichto establish the identity?

Without attempting to follow Gorgias further, we can see plainly enoughthe object and purport of the whole doctrine. Its main result is to_isolate_. It isolates each man from his fellows; he cannot tell {95}what they know or think, they cannot reach any common ground with him. It isolates him from nature; he cannot tell what nature is, he cannottell whether he knows anything of nature or reality at all. Itisolates him from himself; he cannot tell for certain what relationexists (if any) between what he imagines he perceives at any moment andany remembered or imagined previous experiences; he cannot be sure thatthere ever were any such experiences, or what that self was (ifanything) which had them, or whether there was or is any selfperceiving anything. 

Let us imagine the moral effect on the minds of the ablest youth ofGreece of such an absolute collapse of belief. The philosophicscepticism did not deprive them of their appetites or passions; it didnot in the least alter their estimate of the prizes of success, or thedesirability of wealth and power. All it did was to shatter theinvisible social bonds of reverence and honour and truth and justice, which in greater or less degree act as a restraining force upon thepurely selfish appetites of men. Not only belief in divine governmentdisappeared, but belief in any government external or internal; justicebecame a cheating device to deprive a man of what was ready to hisgrasp; good-faith was stupidity when it was not a more subtle form ofdeceit; morality was at best a mere convention which a man might cancelif {96} he pleased; the one reality was the appetite of the moment, theone thing needful its gratification; society, therefore, was universalwar, only with subtler weapons. 

Of course Protagoras and Gorgias were only notable types of a wholehorde of able men who in various ways, and with probably less clearnotions than these men of the drift or philosophic significance oftheir activity, helped all over Greece in the promulgation of this newgospel of self-interest. Many Sophists no doubt troubled themselvesvery little with philosophical questions; they were 'agnostics, 'know-nothings; all they professed to do was to teach some practicalskill of a verbal or rhetorical character. They had nothing to do withthe nature or value of ideals; they did not profess to say whether anyend or aim was in itself good or bad, but given an end or aim, theywere prepared to help those who hired them to acquire a skill whichwould be useful towards attaining it. 

But whether a philosophy or ultimate theory of life be expressly statedor realised by a nation or an individual, or be simply ignored by them, there always is some such philosophy or theory underlying their action, and that philosophy or theory tends to work itself out to its logicalissue in action, whether men openly profess it or no. And the theoryof negation of law in nature or in man which underlay {97} thesophistic practice had its logical and necessary effect on the socialstructure throughout Greece, in a loosening of the bonds of religion, of family reverence and affection, of patriotism, of law, of honour. Thucydides in a well-known passage (iii. 82) thus describes theprevalent condition of thought in his own time, which was distinctivelythat of the sophistic teaching: "The common meaning of words was turnedabout at men's pleasure; the most reckless bravo was deemed the mostdesirable friend; a man of prudence and moderation was styled a coward;a man who listened to reason was a good-for-nothing simpleton. Peoplewere trusted exactly in proportion to their violence andunscrupulousness, and no one was so popular as the successfulconspirator, except perhaps one who had been clever enough to outwithim at his own trade, but any one who honestly attempted to remove thecauses of such treacheries was considered a traitor to his party. Asfor oaths, no one imagined they were to be kept a moment longer thanoccasion required; it was, in fact, an added pleasure to destroy yourenemy if you had managed to catch him through his trusting to yourword. "

These are the words not of Plato, who is supposed often enough to allowhis imagination to carry him beyond his facts about the Sophists asabout others, nor are they the words of a satiric poet such as {98}Aristophanes. They are the words of the most sober and philosophic ofGreek historians, and they illustrate very strikingly the tendency, nay, the absolute necessity, whereby the theories of philosophers inthe closet extend themselves into the market-place and the home, andfind an ultimate realisation of themselves for good or for evil in the'business and bosoms' of the common crowd. 

It is not to be said that the individualistic and iconoclastic movementwhich the Sophists represented was wholly bad, or wholly unnecessary, any more (to again quote a modern instance) than that the FrenchRevolution was. There was much, no doubt, in the traditional religionand morality of Greece at that time which represented obsolete andantiquated conditions, when every city lived apart from its neighbourswith its own narrow interests and local cults and ceremonials. Greecewas ceasing to be an unconnected crowd of little separate communities;unconsciously it was preparing itself for a larger destiny, that ofconqueror and civiliser of East and West. This scepticism, utterlyuntenable and unworkable on the lines extravagantly laid down by itsleading teachers, represented the birth of new conditions of thoughtand action adapted to the new conditions of things. On the surface, and accepted literally, it seemed to deny the possibility of knowledge;it threatened to destroy humanity and {99} civilisation. But itsstrength lay latent in an implied denial only of what was merelytraditional; it denied the finality of purely Greek preconceptions; itwas laying the foundations of a broader humanity. It represented theclaim of a new generation to have no dogma or assumption thrust on itby mere force, physical or moral. "_I_ too am a man, " it said; "_I_have rights; _my_ reason must be convinced. " This is the fundamentalthought at the root of most revolutions and reformations and revivals, and the thought is therefore a necessary and a just one. 

Unfortunately it seems to be an inevitable condition of human affairsthat nothing new, however necessary or good can come into being out ofthe old, without much sorrow and many a birth-pang. The extravagant, the impetuous, the narrow-minded on both sides seize on their points ofdifference, raise them into battle-cries, and make what might be apeaceful regeneration a horrid battlefield of contending hates. TheChrist when He comes brings not peace into the world, but a sword. Andmen of evil passions and selfish ambitions are quick on both sides tomake the struggle of old and new ideals a handle for their ownindulgence or their own advancement; the Pharisees and the Judasesbetween them make the Advent in some of its aspects a sorry spectacle. 

A reconciler was wanted who should wed what {100} was true in the newdoctrine of individualism with what was valuable in the old doctrine ofuniversal and necessary truth; who should be able to say, "Yes, Iacknowledge that your individual view of things must be reckoned with, and mine, and everybody else's; and for that very reason do I argue fora universal and necessary truth, because the very truth for you as anindividual is just this universal. " The union and identification ofthe Individual and Universal, --this paradox of philosophy is thedoctrine of Socrates. 

{101}

CHAPTER XI

SOCRATES

_The crisis of philosophy--Philosophic midwifery--The wisest ofmen--The gadfly of Athens--Justice, beauty, utility--Virtue isknowledge_

The sophistic teaching having forced philosophy to descend into thepractical interests and personal affairs of men, it followed that anyfurther step in philosophy, any reaction against the Sophists, couldonly begin from the moral point of view. Philosophy, as an analysis ofthe data of perception or of nature, had issued in a social and moralchaos. Only by brooding on the moral chaos could the spirit of truthevoke a new order; only out of the moral darkness could a newintellectual light be made to shine. The social and personal anarchyseemed to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the philosophy of nature; ifever the philosophy of nature was to be recovered it must be through arevision of the theory of morals. If it could be proved that thedoctrine of individualism, of isolation, which the analysis of aProtagoras or a Gorgias had reached, was not only _unlivable_ butunthinkable, --carried the seeds of its own destruction, theoretical aswell as practical, within {102} itself, --then the analysis of_perception_, from which this moral individualism issued, might itselfbe called to submit to revision, and a stable point of support in themoral world might thus become a centre of stability for theintellectual and the physical also. 

By a perfectly logical process, therefore, the crisis of philosophyproduced in Greece through the moral and social chaos of the sophisticteaching had two issues, or perhaps we may call it one issue, carriedout on the one side with a less, on the other side with a greatercompleteness. The less complete reaction from sophistic teachingattempted only such reconstruction of the moral point of view as shouldrecover a law or principle of general and universally cogent character, whereon might be built anew a _moral_ order without attempting toextend the inquiry as to a universal principle into the regions ofabstract truth or into physics. The more complete and logicalreaction, starting, indeed, from a universal principle in morals, undertook a logical reconstruction on the recovered universal basis allalong the line of what was knowable. 

To Socrates it was given to recover the lost point of stability in theworld of morals, and by a system of attack, invented by himself, todeal in such a manner with the anarchists about him as to prepare theway for his successors, when the time was ripe for a more extendedexposition of the new point of {103} view. Those who in succession tohim worked out a more limited theory of law, mainly or exclusively inthe world of morals, only were called the _Incomplete Socratics_. Those who undertook to work it out through the whole field of theknowable, the _Complete Socratics_, were the two giants of philosophy, Plato and Aristotle. 

Greek philosophy then marks with the life of Socrates a parting of theways in two senses: _first_, inasmuch as with him came the reactionfrom a physical or theoretical philosophy, having its issue in a moralchaos; and _second_, inasmuch as from him the two great streams oflater philosophy issued--the one a philosophy of law or universals in_action_, the other a philosophy of law or universals in _thought_ and_nature_ as well. 

Socrates, son of Sophroniscus a sculptor and Phaenarete a midwife, wasborn at Athens in or about the year 469 B. C. His parents were probablypoor, for Socrates is represented as having been too poor to pay thefees required for instruction by the Sophists of his time. But inwhatever way acquired or assimilated, it is certain that there waslittle of the prevalent culture in cultivated Athens with whichSocrates had not ultimately a working acquaintance. 

Among a people distinguished generally for their handsome features andnoble proportions, Socrates was a notable exception. His face wassquat and {104} round, his eyes protruding, his lips thick; he wasclumsy and uncouth in appearance, careless of dress, a thorough'Bohemian, ' as we should call him. He was, however, gifted with anuncommon bodily vigour, was indifferent to heat and cold, bytemperament moderate in food and drink, yet capable on occasion ofdrinking most people 'under the table. ' He was of an imperturbablehumour, not to be excited either by danger or by ridicule. His vein ofsarcasm was keen and trenchant, his natural shrewdness astonishing, allthe more astonishing because crossed with a strange vein of mysticismand a curious self-forgetfulness. As he grew up he felt the visitationof a mysterious internal voice, to which or to his own internalcommunings he would sometimes be observed to listen in abstractedstillness for hours. The voice within him was felt as a restrainingforce, limiting his action in various ways, but leaving him free towander about among his fellows, to watch their doings and interprettheir thoughts, to question unweariedly his fellows of every class, high and low, rich and poor, concerning righteousness and justice andgoodness and purity and truth. He did not enter on his philosophicwork with some grand general principle ready-made, to which he wasprepared to fit the facts by hook or by crook. Rather he comparedhimself to his mother, the midwife; he sought to help others to {105}express themselves; he had nothing to tell them, he wanted them to tellhim. This was the irony of Socrates, the eternal _questioning_, whichin time came to mean in people's minds what the word does now. For itwas hard, and grew every year harder, to convince people that so subtlea questioner was as ignorant as he professed to be; or that the man whocould touch so keenly the weak point of all other men's answers, had noanswer to the problems of life himself. 

In striking contrast, then, to the method of all previous philosophies, Socrates busied himself to begin with, not with some generalintellectual _principle_, but with a multitude of different _people_, with their notions especially on moral ideas, with the meaning orno-meaning which they attached to particular words, --in short, with theindividual, the particular, the concrete, the every-day. He did not atall deny that he had a purpose in all this. On the contrary, he openlyprofessed that he was in search of the lost universal, the lost _law_of men's thoughts and actions. He was convinced that life was not thechaos that the Sophists made out; that nobody really believed it to bea chaos; that, on the contrary, everybody had a meaning and purport inhis every word and act, which could be made intelligible to himself andothers, if you could only get people to think out clearly what theyreally meant. Philosophy {106} had met her destruction in the busyhaunts of men; there where had been the bane, Socrates' firm faithsought ever and everywhere the antidote. 

This simple enough yet profound and far-reaching practice of Socrateswas theorised in later times as a logical method, known to us as_Induction_, or the discovery of universal laws or principles out [195]of an accumulation of particular facts. And thus Aristotle, with histechnical and systematising intellect, attributes two main innovationsin philosophy to Socrates; the _Inductive_ process of reasoning, andthe establishing of _General Ideas_ or Definitions upon or through thisprocess. This, true enough as indicating what was latent in theSocratic method, and what was subsequently actually developed out of itby Aristotle himself, is nevertheless probably an anachronism if oneseeks to represent it as consciously present in Socrates' mind. Socrates adopted the method unconsciously, just because he wanted toget at the people about him, and through them at what they thought. Hewas the pioneer of Induction rather than its inventor; he created, soto speak, the raw material for a theory of induction and definition; heknew and cared nothing about such theories himself. 

A story which may or may not be true in fact is put in Socrates' mouthby Plato, as to the cause which first started him on his "search fordefinitions. " {107} One of his friends, he tells us, named Chaerephon, went to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and asked whether there wasanybody wiser than Socrates. The answer was given that there was nonewiser. This answer was reported to Socrates, who was much astonished, his own impression being that he had no wisdom or knowledge at all. Sowith a view to prove the oracle wrong he went in succession to variouspeople of eminence and reputation in the various walks oflife, --statesmen and poets and handicraftsmen and others, --in theexpectation that they would show, on being questioned, such a knowledgeof the principles on which their work was based as would prove theirsuperior wisdom. But to his astonishment he found one after another ofthese men wanting in any apprehension of principles at all. Theyseemed to work by a kind of haphazard or 'rule of thumb, ' and indeedfelt annoyed that anything more should be expected of them. From whichat the last Socrates came to the conclusion that perhaps the oracle wasright in this sense at least, that, if he himself knew nothing morethan his fellows, he was at least conscious of his own ignorance, whereas they were not. 

Whether this tale may not itself be a specimen of Socrates' irony wecannot tell, but at all events it illustrates from another point ofview the real meaning of Socrates' life. He, at least, was not content{108} to rest in haphazard and rule of thumb; he was determined to goon till he found out what was the law or principle of men's acts andwords. The ignorance of others as to any such law or principle intheir own case did not convince him that there was no such law orprinciple; only it was there (he thought) working unconsciously, andtherefore in a way defencelessly. And so he compares himself at timesto a gadfly, whose function it is to sting and irritate people out oftheir easy indifference, and force them to ask themselves what theywere really driving at. Or again, he compares himself to thetorpedo-fish, because he tried to give people a shock whenever theyattempted to satisfy him with shallow and unreal explanations of theirthoughts and actions. 

The disinterested self-sacrificing nobility of Socrates' life, thusdevoted to awakening them that sleep out of their moral torpor; theenmities that his keen and trenchant questionings of quacks andpretenders of every kind induced; the devotion of some of his friends, the unhappy falling away of others; the calumnies of interestedenemies, the satires of poets; and lastly, the story of the finalattack by an ungrateful people on their one great teacher, of hisunjust condemnation and heroic death--all this we must pass over here. The story is in outline, at least, a familiar one, and it is one of thenoblest in history. What is more to {109} the purpose for us is toascertain how far his search for definitions was successful; how far hewas able to

 Take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them;

how far, in short, he was able to evolve a law, a universal principle, out of the confused babel of common life and thought and speech, strongenough and wide enough on which to build a new order for this world, anew hope for the world beyond. 

We have said that Socrates made the individual and the concrete thefield of his search. And not only did he look to individuals forlight, he looked to each individual specifically in that aspect of hischaracter and faculty which was most particular to himself. That is tosay, if he met a carpenter, it was on his carpentering that hequestioned him; if a sculptor, on his practice as a sculptor; if astatesman, on his statesmanship. In short, he did not want generalvague theories on subjects of which his interlocutors could not besupposed to have any special experience or knowledge; he interrogatedeach on the subject which he knew best. 

And what struck him, in contrast to the confusion and uncertainty andisolation of the sophistic teaching 'in the air, ' was that when you geta man to talk on his own trade, which he _knows_, as is proved by theactual work he produces, you find invariably two {110} things--_first_, that the skill is the man's _individual_ possession no doubt, theresult of inborn capacity and continuous training and practice; but_second_, that just in proportion to that individual skill is the man'sconviction that his skill has reference to a _law_ higher than himself, outside himself. If the man whom Socrates interviewed was a skilfulstatesman, he would tell you he sought to produce obedience to _law_ orright among the citizens; if he was a skilful sculptor, he produced_beautiful_ things; if he was a skilful handicraftsman, he produced_useful_ things. Justice, beauty, utility; these three words indifferent ways illustrated the existence of something always realisingitself no doubt in individuals and their works, but neverthelessexercising a governing influence upon these to such a degree that thisideal something might be conceived as _prior_ to the individual or hiswork; or secondly, as _inherent_ in them and giving value to them; orthirdly, as coming in at the end as the _perfection_ or completion ofthem. This law or ideal then had a threefold aspect in its own nature, being conceivable as Justice, as Beauty, as Utility; it had a threefoldaspect in relation to the works produced in accordance with it, as thecause _producing_, the cause _inhering_, the cause completing or_perfecting_. 

We may therefore conceive Socrates as arguing thus: "You cleverSophists, when we let you take {111} us into the region of abstracttalk, have a knack of so playing with words that in the end we don'tseem to know anything for certain, especially on such subjects as wehave hitherto thought the most important, such as God and right andtruth and justice and purity. We seem to be perfectly defencelessagainst you; and what is more, any smart youth, whose opinion on anypractical matter no one would think of taking, can very soon pick upthe trick from you, and bewilder plain people really far wiser thanhimself by his clever argumentation; all going to prove that there isnothing certain, nothing real, nothing binding; nothing but opinionsand conventions and conscious or unconscious humbug in the universe. 

"But when I go and have a quiet talk with any man who really is a knownmaster of some craft or skill, about that craft or skill, I find nodoubt whatever existing in his mind about there being a law, asomething absolutely real and beautiful and true in connection with it. He, on the contrary, lives with no other purpose or hope or desire butas far as he can to realise in what he works at something of this realand beautiful and true, which was before him, will be after him, is theonly valuable thing in him, but yet which honours him with the functionof, in his day and generation, expressing it before the eyes of men. "

{112} "Have we not here a key to the great secret? If each man, inrespect of that which he knows best because he lives by it and for it, knows with intimate knowledge and certainty that there at least thereis a Law working, not himself, but higher and greater than he, --have wenot here a hint of the truth for the universe as a whole; that therealso and in all its operations, great as well as small, there must be aLaw, a great Idea or Ideal working, which was before all things, worksin and gives value to all things, will be the consummation of allthings? Is not this what we mean by the Divine?"

Thus Socrates, despising not the meaner things of life, but bendingfrom the airy speculations of the proud to the realities which truelabour showed him, laid his ear, so to speak, close to the breast ofnature, and caught there the sound of her very heart-beats. 

"Virtue is knowledge, " thus he formulated his new vision of things. Knowledge, yes; but _real_ knowledge; not mere head-knowledge orlip-knowledge, but the knowledge of the skilled man, the man who byobedience and teachableness and self-restraint has come to a knowledgeevidencing itself in _works_ expressive of the law that is in him, ashe is in it. _Virtue is knowledge_; on the one hand, therefore, notsomething in the air, unreal, intangible; but something in me, in you, in each man, something which you cannot handle except as individual and{113} in individuals; on the other hand, something more than individualor capricious or uncertain, --something which is absolute, over-ruling, eternal. 

_Virtue is knowledge_. And so if a man is virtuous, he is realisingwhat is best and truest in himself, he is fulfilling also what is bestand truest without himself. He is free, for only the truth makes free;he is obedient to law, but it is at once a law eternally valid, and alaw which he dictates to himself. And therefore virtue is teachable, inasmuch as the law in the teacher, perfected in him, is also the lawin the taught, latent in him, by both individually possessed, butpossessed by both in virtue of its being greater than both, of itsbeing something more than individual. 

_Virtue is knowledge_. And therefore the law of virtuous growth isexpressed in the maxim engraved on the Delphic temple, 'Know thyself. 'Know thyself, that is, realise thyself; by obedience and self-controlcome to your full stature; be in fact what you are in possibility;satisfy yourself, in the only way in which true self-satisfaction ispossible, by realising in yourself the law which constitutes your realbeing. 

_Virtue is knowledge_. And therefore all the manifold relations oflife, --the home, the market, the city, the state; all the multiformactivities of life, --labour and speech and art and literature and {114}law; all the sentiments of life, --friendship and love and reverence andcourage and hope, --all these are parts of a knowable whole; they areexpressions of law; they are Reason realising itself throughindividuals, and in the same process realising them. 

{115}

CHAPTER XII

SOCRATES (_concluded_)

_The dialectic method--Instruction through humiliation--Justice andutility--Righteousness transcending rule_

It must not be imagined that anywhere in the recorded conversations ofSocrates can we find thus in so many words expounded his fundamentaldoctrine. Socrates was not an expositor but a questioner; hedisclaimed the position of a teacher, he refused to admit that any werehis pupils or disciples. But his questioning had two sides, each inits way leading people on to an apprehension of the ideal in existence. The first side may be called the negative or destructive, the second, the positive or constructive. In the first, whose object was to breakdown all formalism, all mere regard for rules or traditions orunreasoned maxims, his method had considerable resemblance to that ofthe Sophists; like them he descended not infrequently to what lookedvery like quibbling and word-play. As Aristotle observes, thedialectic method differed from that of the Sophists not so much in itsform, as in the purpose for which it was employed. The end of the{116} Sophists was to confuse, the end of Socrates was throughconfusion to reach a more real, because a more reasoned certainty; theSophists sought to leave the impression that there was no such thing astruth; he wished to lead people to the conviction that there was a fardeeper truth than they were as yet possessed of. 

A specimen of his manner of conversation preserved for us by Xenophon(_Memor_. IV. Ii. ) will make the difference clearer. Euthydemus was ayoung man who had shown great industry in forming a collection of wisesayings from poets and others, and who prided himself on his superiorwisdom because of his knowledge of these. Socrates skilfully managesto get the ear of this young man by commending him for his collection, and asks him what he expects his learning to help him to become? Aphysician? No, Euthydemus answers. An architect? No. And so in likemanner with other practical skills, --the geometrician's, astronomer's, professional reciter's. None of these he discovers is what Euthydemusaims at. He hopes to become a great politician and statesman. Then ofcourse he hopes to be a just man himself? Euthydemus flatters himselfhe is that already. "But, " says Socrates, "there must be certain actswhich are the proper products of justice, as of other functions orskills?"--"No doubt. "--"Then of course you can tell us what {117} thoseacts or products are?"--"Of course I can, and the products of injusticeas well. "--"Very good; then suppose we write down in two oppositecolumns what acts are products of justice and what of injustice. "--"Iagree, " says Euthydemus. --"Well now, what of falsehood? In whichcolumn shall we put it?"--"Why, of course in the unjust column. "--"Andcheating?"--"In the same column. "--"And stealing?"--"In it too. "--"Andenslaving?"--"Yes. "--"Not one of these can go to the justcolumn?"--"Why, that would be an unheard-of thing. "

"Well but, " says Socrates, "suppose a general has to deal with someenemy of his country that has done it great wrong; if he conquer andenslave this enemy, is that wrong?"--"Certainly not. "--"If he carriesoff the enemy's goods or cheats him in his strategy, what about theseacts?"--"Oh, of course they are quite right. But I thought you weretalking about deceiving or ill-treating friends. "--"Then in some caseswe shall have to put these very same acts in both columns?"--"I supposeso. "

"Well, now, suppose we confine ourselves to friends. Imagine a generalwith an army under him discouraged and disorganised. Suppose he tellsthem that reserves are coming up, and by cheating them into this beliefhe saves them from their discouragement, and enables them to win avictory. What about this cheating of one's friends?"--"Why, I {118}suppose we shall have to put this too on the just side. "--"Or suppose alad needs medicine, but refuses to take it, and his father cheats himinto the belief that it is something nice, and getting him to take it, saves his life; what about that cheat?"--"That will have to go to thejust side too. "--"Or suppose you find a friend in a desperate frenzy, and steal his sword from him, for fear he should kill himself; what doyou say to that theft?"--"That will have to go there too. "--"But Ithought you said there must be no cheating of friends?"--"Well, I musttake it all back, if you please. "--"Very good. But now there isanother point I should like to ask you. Whether do you think the manmore unjust who is a voluntary violator of justice, or he who is aninvoluntary violator of it?"--"Upon my word, Socrates, I no longer haveany confidence in my answers. For the whole thing has turned out to beexactly the contrary of what I previously imagined. However, suppose Isay that the voluntary deceiver is the more unjust. "--"Do you considerthat justice is a matter of knowledge just as much (say) aswriting?"--"Yes, I do. "--"Well now, which do you consider the betterskilled as a writer, the man who makes a mistake in writing or inreading what is written, because he chooses to do so, or the man whodoes so because he can't help it?"--"Oh, the first; because he can putit right whenever he likes. "--"Very {119} well, if a man in the sameway breaks the rule of right, knowing what he is doing, while anotherbreaks the same rule because he can't help it, which by analogy must bethe better versed in justice?"--"The first, I suppose. "--"And the manwho is better versed in justice must be the juster man?"--"Apparentlyso; but really, Socrates, I don't know where I am. I have beenflattering myself that I was in possession of a philosophy which couldmake a good and able man of me. But how great, think you, must now bemy disappointment, when I find myself unable to answer the simplestquestion on the subject?"

Many other questions are put to him, tending to probe hisself-knowledge, and in the end he is brought to the conclusion thatperhaps he had better hold his tongue, for it seems he knows nothing atall. And so he went away deeply despondent, despising himself as anabsolute dolt. "Now many, " adds Xenophon, "when brought into thiscondition by Socrates, never came near him again. But Euthydemusconcluded that his only hope of ever being worth anything was in seeingas much of Socrates as he could, and so he never quitted his side aslong as he had a chance, but tried to follow his mode of living. AndSocrates, when he perceived this to be his temper, no longer tormentedhim, but sought with all simplicity and clearness to {120} show himwhat he deemed it best for him to do and think. "

Was this cross-examination mere 'tormenting' with a purpose, or can wediscover underlying it any hint of what Socrates deemed to be the truthabout justice?

Let us note that throughout he is in search of a _definition_, but thatas soon as any attempt is made to define or classify any particulartype of action as just or unjust, _special circumstances_ are suggestedwhich overturn the classification. Let us note further that while theimmediate result is apparently only to confuse, the remoter but morepermanent result is to raise a suspicion of any hard and fastdefinitions, and to suggest that there is something deeper in life thanlanguage is adequate to express, a 'law in the members, ' a livingprinciple for good, which transcends forms and maxims, and which alonegives real value to acts. Note further the suggestion that this livingprinciple has a character analogous to the knowledge or skill of anaccomplished artificer; it has relation on the one hand to law, as aprinciple binding on the individual, it has relation on the other handto _utility_, as expressing itself, not in words, but in actsbeneficial to those concerned. Hence the Socratic formula, Justice isequivalent to the _Lawful_ on the one hand, to the _Useful_ on theother. 

{121}

Socrates had thus solved by anticipation the apparently never-endingcontroversy about morality. Is it a matter imposed by God upon theheart and conscience of each individual? Is it dictated by the generalsense of the community? Is it the product of Utility? The Socraticanswer would be that it is all three, and that all three meanultimately the same thing. What God prescribes is what man when he istruly man desires; and what God prescribes and man desires is thatwhich is good and useful for man. It is not a matter for verbaldefinition but for vital realisation; the true morality is that which_works_; the ideally desirable, is ultimately the only possible, courseof action, for all violations of it are ultimately suicidal. 

Note finally the suggestion that the man who _knows_ (in Socrates'sense of knowledge) what is right, shows only more fully hisrighteousness when he voluntarily sins; it is the 'unwilling sinner'who is the wrongdoer. When we consider this strange doctrine inrelation to the instances given, --the general with his army, the fatherwith his son, the prudent friend with his friend in desperatestraits, --we see that what is meant is that 'sin' in the real sense isnot to be measured or defined by conformity or otherwise to some formalstandard, at least in the case of those who _know_, that is, in thecase of men who have realised goodness in its true nature in {122}their characters and lives. As St. Paul expressed it (Rom. Xiii. 10), "Love is the fulfilling of the law. " Or again (Gal. V. 23), afterenumerating the 'fruits of the spirit'--love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance--headds, "Against such there is no law. "

In the domain of life, not less than in that of the arts, the highestactivity does not always or necessarily take the form of conformity torule. There are critical moments when rules fail, when, in fact, obedience to rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of whichrules and formulae are at best only an adumbration. The originality ofthe great musician or painter consists in just such transcendence ofaccepted formulae; this is why he invariably encounters opposition andobloquy from the learned conventional pedants of his time. And in thedomain of morals the martyrs, reformers, prophets are in like manner'willing sinners. ' They are denounced, persecuted, crucified; for arethey not disturbers of society; do they not unsettle young men; do theynot come, as Christ came, not to bring peace into the world, but asword? And thus it is that the willing sinners of one generation arethe martyrs and heroes of the next. Through their life and death aricher meaning has been given to the law of beauty or of rectitude, only, alas! in its turn to be translated into new conventions, new{123} formulae, which shall in due time require new martyrs totranscend them. And thus, on the other hand, the perfectly honeststicklers for the old and common-place, unwilling sinners allunconscious of their sin, are fated to bear in history the brand of menwho have persecuted the righteous without cause. To each, according tothe strange sad law of life, time brings its revenges. 

{124}

CHAPTER XIII

THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS

_A philosopher at ease--The sensual sty--Citizens of the world--The tubof Diogenes--A philosophy of abstracts_

[204]

I. ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS. --Aristippus was a native of Cyrene, aGreek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come toAthens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices ofhim which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been fromthe first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially fromthe poverty and self-denial of the master's mode of life. [205] He incourse of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic fromhis own place of birth, and from the fact that many subsequent leadersof the school also belonged to Cyrene. Among his notable discipleswere his daughter Arete, her son named Aristippus after hisgrandfather, Ptolemaeus the Aethiopian, Antipater of Cyrene, and a longsuccession of others. 

Aristippus was a man of considerable subtlety of mind, a ready speaker, clever in adapting himself to persons and circumstances. On oneoccasion, being {125} asked what benefit he considered philosophy hadconferred upon him, he answered, "The capacity of associating withevery one without embarrassment. " Philosophy, in fact, was toAristippus a method of social culture, a means of making the best oflife as he found it. As Horace observes of him (_Epp_. I. 17. 23)--

 Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res Tentantem majora, fere praesentibus aequum. 

"Every aspect and manner of life and fortune fitted Aristippus; heaimed at what was greater, yet kept an even, mind whatever his presentcondition. "

[206]

As we have already said, this school was _incompletely_ Socratic, inasmuch as philosophy was not an end in itself, knowledge whether ofoneself or of other matters had no intrinsic interest for them;philosophy was only a means towards pleasurable living, enabling themso to analyse and classify the several experiences of life as to rendera theory of satisfactory [207] existence possible. With them firstcame into prominence a phrase which held a large place in allsubsequent Greek philosophy, the _End_ of existence, by which was meantthat which summed up the good in existence, that which made life worthliving, that which was good and desirable in and for itself, and notmerely as a means to something else. What then according to theCyrenaics was the End of life? {126} Their answer was that life had ateach moment its own End, in the pleasure of that moment. The past wasgone, the future not yet with us; remembrance of the one, fear or hopeof the other, might contribute to affect the purity of the presentpleasure, but such as it was the present pleasure was a thing apart, complete in and for itself. Nor was its perfection qualified by anyquestion of the means by which it was procured; the moment's pleasurewas pleasurable, whatever men might say as to the manner of its [208]procuring. This pleasure was a tranquil activity of the being, likethe gently heaving sea, midway between violent motion which was pain, and absolute calm which was insensibility. As a state of activity itwas something positive, not a mere release from [209] pain, not asimple filling up of a vacuum. Nothing was in its essential natureeither just or noble or base; custom and convention pronounced them oneor other. The wise man made the best he could of his conditions;valuing mental activity and friendship and wealth and bodily exercise, and avoiding envy and excessive indulgence of passion and superstition, not because the first were in themselves good or the second evil, butbecause they were respectively helpers or hinderers of pleasure. He isthe master and possessor of pleasure not who abstains from it, but whouses it and keeps his self-command in the using. Moderateindulgence--this is wisdom. 

{127}

[210]

The one criterion, whether of good or of truth, is the feeling of themoment for the man who feels it; all question of causes of feelings isdelusive. We can say with truth and certainty, I have the sensation ofwhite or the sensation of sweet. But that there is a white or a sweetthing which is the cause of the sensation, that we cannot say forcertain. A man may very well have the sensation white or sweet fromsomething which has no such quality, as men in delusion or madness haveimpressions that are true and real inasmuch as they have them, althoughother people do not admit their reality. There is, therefore, nocriterion of truth as between man and man; we may employ the samewords, but each has his own impressions and his own individualexperiences. 

One can easily understand this as the doctrine of such a man asAristippus, the easy-going man of the world, the courtier and the wit, the favourite of the tyrant Dionysius; it fits in well enough with alife of genial self-indulgence; it always reappears whenever a man hasreconciled himself 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. ' But lifeis not always, nor for most persons at any time, a thing of ease andsoft enchantments, and the Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for thegeneral work-a-day world a stale exotic. 'Every man for himself andthe devil take the hindmost, ' is a maxim which comes as a rule {128}only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they think themselvesstrong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of selfishness neitherworks nor lasts; every man at some time becomes 'the hindmost, ' if notbefore, at least in the hour of death for him or his; at that hour heis hardly disposed, for himself or those he loves, to repeat his maxim. 

II. ANTISTHENES AND THE CYNICS. --Aristippus, in his praises of pleasureas the one good for man (see above, p. 126), remarks that there weresome who [209] refused pleasure "from perversity of mind, " takingpleasure, so to speak, in the denial of pleasure. The school of theCynics made this perverse mood, as Aristippus deemed it, the maxim oftheir philosophy. As the Cyrenaic school was the school of the rich, the courtly, the self-indulgent, so the Cynic was the school of thepoor, the exiles, the ascetics. Each was an extreme expression of aphase of Greek life and thought, though there was this point of union[215] between them, that _liberty_ of a kind was sought by both. TheCyrenaics claimed liberty to please themselves in the choice of theirenjoyments; the Cynics sought liberty through denial of enjoyments. [219] Both, moreover, were cosmopolitan; they mark the decay of theGreek patriotism, which was essentially civic, and the rise of thewider but less intense conception of humanity. Aristippus, in aconversation with Socrates (Xenoph. _Memor_. II. I. ) on the {129}qualifications of those who are fitted to be magistrates, disclaims alldesire to hold such a position himself. "There is, " he says, "to mythinking, a middle way, neither of rule nor of slavery, but of freedom, which leads most surely to true happiness. So to avoid all the evilsof partisanship and faction I nowhere take upon me the position of acitizen, but in every city remain a sojourner and a stranger. " And inlike manner Antisthenes the Cynic, being asked how a man shouldapproach politics, answered, "He will approach it as he will fire, nottoo near, lest he be burnt; not too far away, lest he starve of cold. "And Diogenes, being asked of what city he was, answered, "I am acitizen of the world. " The Cynic ideal, in fact, was summed up inthese four words--wisdom, independence, free speech, liberty. 

[214]

Antisthenes, founder of the school, was a native of Athens, but beingof mixed blood (his mother was a Thracian) he was not recognised as anAthenian citizen. He was a student first under Gorgias, and acquiredfrom him a considerable elegance of literary style; subsequently hebecame a devoted hearer of Socrates, and became prominent among hisfollowers for an asceticism surpassing his master's. One day, we aretold, he showed a great rent in the thread-bare cloak which was hisonly garment, whereupon Socrates slily remarked, "I can see throughyour cloak your love of glory. " He carried a leathern {130} scrip anda staff, and the 'scrip and staff' became distinctive marks of hisschool. The name Cynic, derived from the Greek word for a dog, isvariously accounted for, some attributing it to the 'doglike' habits ofthe school, others to their love of 'barking' criticism, others to thefact that a certain gymnasium in the outskirts of Athens, calledCynosarges, sacred to Hercules the patron-divinity of men in thepolitical position of Antisthenes, was a favourite resort of his. Hewas a voluminous, some thought a too voluminous, [216] expounder of histenets. Like the other Incomplete Socratics, his teaching was mainlyon ethical questions. 

[215]

His chief pupil and successor was the famous Diogenes, a native ofSinope, a Greek colony on the Euxine Sea. He even bettered theinstructions of his master in the matter of extreme frugality ofliving, claiming that he was a true follower of Hercules in preferringindependence to every other good. The tale of his living in a cask ortub is well known. His theory was that the peculiar privilege of thegods consisted in their need of nothing; men approached nearest thelife of the gods in needing as little as possible. 

[217]

Many other sayings of one or other teacher are quoted, all tending tothe same conclusion. For example, "I had rather be mad than enjoyingmyself!" "Follow the pleasures that come after pains, not those whichbring pains in their train. " "There {131} are pains that are useless, there are pains that are natural: the wise choose the latter, and thusfind happiness even through pain. For the very contempt of pleasurecomes with practice to be the highest pleasure. " "When I wish atreat, " says Antisthenes, "I do not go and buy it at great cost in themarketplace; I find my storehouse of pleasures in the soul. "

[218]

The life of the wise man, therefore, was a training of mind and body todespise pleasure and attain independence. In this way virtue wasteachable, and could be so acquired as to become an inseparablepossession. The man who had thus attained to wisdom, not of words, butof deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that couldneither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And soAntisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning, answered, "To unlearn what is evil. " That is to say, to the Cynicconception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love ofpleasure; the path of wisdom was a weaning of soul and body by practicefrom the allurements of pleasure, until both were so perfectlyaccustomed to its denial as to find an unalloyed pleasure in the veryact of [219] refusing it. In this way virtue became absolutelysufficient for happiness, and so far was it from being necessary tohave wealth or the admiration of men in addition, that the true kinglylife was "to do well, {132} and be ill spoken of. " All else but virtuewas a matter of indifference. 

The cosmopolitan temper of these men led them to hold of small accountthe forms and prejudices of ordinary society: they despised the ritesof marriage; they thought no flesh unclean. They believed in nomultifarious theology; there was but one divinity--the power that ruledall nature, the one absolutely self-centred independent being, whosemanner of [221] existence they sought to imitate. Nor had they anysympathy with the subtleties of verbal distinction cultivated by someof the Socratics, as by other philosophers or Sophists of their time. Definitions and abstractions and classifications led to no good. A manwas a man; what was good was good; to say that a man was good did notestablish the existence of some abstract class of goods. AsAntisthenes once said to Plato, "A horse I see, but 'horseness' I donot see. " What the exact point of this criticism was we may reservefor the present. 

[222]

III. EUCLIDES THE MEGARIC. --Euclides, a native of Megara on theCorinthian isthmus, was a devoted hearer of Socrates, making his way tohear him, sometimes even at the 'risk of his life, in defiance of adecree of his native city forbidding intercourse with Athens. WhenPlato and other Athenian followers of Socrates thought well to quitAthens for {133} a time after Socrates' execution, they were kindlyentertained by Euclides at Megara. 

The exact character of the development which the Socratic teachingreceived from Euclides and his school is a matter of considerabledoubt. The allusions to the tenets of the school in Plato and [223]others are only fragmentary. We gather, however, from them thatEuclides was wholly antithetical to the personal turn given tophilosophy, both by the Cyrenaics and the Cynics. He revived anddeveloped with much dialectical subtlety the metaphysical system ofParmenides and the Eleatics, maintaining that there is but one absoluteexistence, and that sense and sense-perceptions as against this [224]are nothing. This one absolute existence was alone absolutely good, and the good for man could only be found in such an absorption ofhimself in this one absolute good through reason and contemplation, aswould bring his spirit into perfectness of union with it. Suchabsorption raised a man above the troubles and pains of life, and thus, in insensibility to these through reason, man attained his highest good. 

The school is perhaps interesting only in so far as it marks thecontinued survival of the abstract dialectic method of earlierphilosophy. As such it had a very definite influence, sometimesthrough agreement, sometimes by controversy, on the systems of Platoand Aristotle now to be dealt with. 

{134}

CHAPTER XIV

PLATO

_Student and wanderer--The Dialogues--Immortal longings--Art islove--Knowledge through remembrance--Platonic love_

[239]

This great master, the Shakespeare of Greek philosophy, as one may callhim, for his fertility, his variety, his humour, his imagination, hispoetic grace, was born at Athens in the year 429 B. C. He was of noblefamily, numbering among his ancestors no less a man than the greatlawgiver Solon, and tracing back his descent even further to the [240]legendary Codrus, last king of Athens. At a very early age he seems tohave begun to study the philosophers, Heraclitus more particularly, andbefore he was twenty he had written a tragedy. About that time, however, he met Socrates; and at once giving up all thought of poeticfame he burnt his poem, and devoted himself to the hearing of Socrates. For ten years he was his constant companion. When Socrates met hisdeath in 399, Plato and other followers of the master fled at first toMegara, as already mentioned (above, p. 132); he then entered on aperiod of extended travel, first to Cyrene and {135} Egypt, thence toItaly and Sicily. In Italy he devoted himself specially to a study ofthe doctrine of Pythagoras. It is said that at Syracuse he offendedthe tyrant Dionysius the elder by his freedom of speech, and wasdelivered up to the Spartans, who were then at war with Athens. [241]Ultimately he was ransomed, and found his way back to Athens, but he issaid to have paid a second visit to Sicily when the younger Dionysiusbecame tyrant. He seems to have entertained the hope that he might soinfluence this young man as to be able to realise through him the dreamof his life, a government in accordance with the dictates of [242]philosophy. His dream, however, was disappointed of fruition, and hereturned to Athens, there in the 'groves of Academus' a mythic hero ofAthens, to spend the rest of his days in converse with his followers, and there at the ripe age of eighty-one he died. From the scene of hislabours his philosophy has ever since been known as the Academic [243]philosophy. Unlike Socrates, he was not content to leave only a memoryof himself and his conversations. He was unwearied in the redactionand correction of his written dialogues, altering them here and thereboth in expression and in structure. It is impossible, therefore, tobe absolutely certain as to the historical order of composition orpublication among his numerous {136} dialogues, but a certainapproximate order may be fixed. 

We may take first a certain number of comparatively short dialogues, which are strongly Socratic in the following respects: _first_, theyeach seek a definition of some particular virtue or quality; _second_, each suggests some relation between it and knowledge; _third_, eachleaves the answer somewhat open, treating the matter suggestivelyrather than dogmatically. These dialogues are _Charmides_, whichtreats of Temperance (_mens sana in corpore sano_); _Lysis_, whichtreats of Friendship; _Laches_, Of Courage; _Ion_, Of PoeticInspiration; _Meno_, Of the teachableness of Virtue; _Euthyphro_, OfPiety. 

The last of these may be regarded as marking a transition to a secondseries, which are concerned with the trial and death of Socrates. The_Euthyphro_ opens with an allusion by Socrates to his approachingtrial, and in the _Apology_ we have a Platonic version of Socrates'speech in his own defence; in _Crito_ we have the story of his nobleself-abnegation and civic obedience after his condemnation; in _Phaedo_we have his last conversation with his friends on the subject ofImmortality, and the story of his death. 

Another series of the dialogues may be formed of those, more or lesssatirical, in which the ideas and methods of the Sophists arecriticised: _Protagoras_, {137} in which Socrates suggests that allvirtues are essentially one; _Euthydemus_, in which the assumption and'airs' of some of the Sophists are made fun of; _Cratylus_, Of thesophistic use of words; _Gorgias_, Of the True and the False, the trulyGood and the truly Evil; _Hippias_, Of Voluntary and Involuntary Sin;_Alcibiades_, Of Self-Knowledge; _Menexenus_, a (possibly ironical) setoration after the manner of the Sophists, in praise of Athens. 

The whole of this third series are characterised by humour, dramaticinterest, variety of personal type among the speakers, keenness ratherthan depth of philosophic insight. There are many suggestions ofprofounder thoughts, afterwards worked out more fully; but on the wholethese dialogues rather stimulate thought than satisfy it; the greatpoet-thinker is still playing with his tools. 

A higher stage is reached in the _Symposium_, which deals at oncehumorously and profoundly with the subject of Love, human and divine, and its relations to Art and Philosophy, the whole consummated in aspeech related by Socrates as having been spoken to him by Diotima, awise woman of Mantineia. From this speech an extract as translated byProfessor Jowett may be quoted here. It marks the transition pointfrom the merely playful and critical to the relatively serious anddogmatic stage in the mind of Plato:--

{138} "Marvel not, " she said, "if you believe that love is of theimmortal, as we have already several times acknowledged; for hereagain, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking asfar as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only tobe attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind anew existence in the place of the old. Nay even in the life of thesame individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a man iscalled the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses betweenyouth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life andidentity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss andreparation--hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are alwayschanging. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming andgoing; and equally true of knowledge, which is still moresurprising--for not only do the sciences in general come and go, sothat in respect of them we are never the same; but each of themindividually experiences a like change. For what is implied in theword 'recollection, ' but the departure of knowledge, which is everbeing forgotten and is renewed and preserved by recollection, andappears to be the same although in reality new, according to that lawof succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutelythe same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leavinganother new and similar existence behind--unlike the divine, which isalways the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortalbody, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality; but the immortal inanother way. Marvel not then at the love which all men have of theiroffspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake ofimmortality. "

I was astonished at her words, and said: "Is this really true, O thouwise Diotima?" And she answered with all the authority of a sophist:"Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the ambition ofmen, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless youconsider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run risks greater far than they would have run fortheir children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of {139} toil, and even to die for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shallbe eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to saveAdmetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in orderto preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that thememory of their virtues, which is still retained among us, would beimmortal? Nay, " she said, "I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of the gloriousfame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal. 

"They whose bodies only are creative, betake themselves to women andbeget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve their memory and give them the blessednessand immortality which they desire in the future. But creativesouls--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their soulsthan in their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul toconceive or retain. And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and virtuein general. And such creators are poets and all artists who aredeserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort ofwisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of statesand families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he whoin youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himselfinspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. Hewanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring--for indeformity he will beget nothing--and naturally embraces the beautifulrather than the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair and nobleand well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to suchan one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits ofa good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of thebeautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, hebrings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in companywith him tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by afar nearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortalchildren, for the children who are their common offspring are fairerand more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and othergreat poets, {140} would not rather have their children than ordinaryhuman ones? Who would not emulate them in the creation of childrensuch as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given themeverlasting glory? Or who would not have such children as Lycurgusleft behind him to be the saviours, not only of Lacedaemon, but ofHellas, as one may say? There is Solon, too, who is the revered fatherof Athenian laws; and many others there are in many other places, bothamong Hellenes and barbarians. All of them have given to the worldmany noble works, and have been the parents of virtue of every kind, and many temples have been raised in their honour for the sake of theirchildren; which were never raised in honour of any one, for the sake ofhis mortal children. 

"These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown ofthese, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they willlead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do myutmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For he who wouldproceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautifulforms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love onesuch form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon hewill of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to thebeauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is hispursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognise that the beauty inevery form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he willabate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem asmall thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in thenext stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is morehonourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuoussoul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tendhim, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which mayimprove the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see thebeauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty ofthem all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; andafter laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he maysee their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty ofone youth or man or {141} institution, himself a slave mean andnarrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea ofbeauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions inboundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxesstrong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed;please to give me your very best attention. 

"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who haslearned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comestoward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (andthis, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)--a naturewhich in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, orwaxing and waning, in the next place not fair in one point of view andfoul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one placefair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face orhands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speechor knowledge, or existing in any other being; as for example, in ananimal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place, but beautyonly, absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which withoutdiminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to theever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who underthe influence of true love rising upward from these begins to see thatbeauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going or beingled by another to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earthas steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake of that otherbeauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and fromfair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dearSocrates, " said the stranger of Mantineia, "is that life above allothers which a man should live, in the contemplation of beautyabsolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to beafter the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one would becontent to live seeing only and conversing with them without meat ordrink, {142} if that were possible--you only want to be with them andto look at them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty--thedivine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged withthe pollutions of mortality, and all the colours and vanities of humanlife--thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty divineand simple? Do you not see that in that communion only, beholdingbeauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, notimages of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but ofa reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become thefriend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be anignoble life?" (Jowett, _Plato_, vol. Ii. P. 58). 

Closely connected in subject with the _Symposium_ is the _Phaedrus_. As Professor Jowett observes: "The two dialogues together contain thewhole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in _TheRepublic_ and in the later writings of Plato is only introducedplayfully or as a figure of speech. But in the _Phaedrus_ and_Symposium_ love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of theother. The spiritual and emotional is elevated into the ideal, towhich in the _Symposium_ mankind are described as looking forward, andwhich in the _Phaedrus_, as well as in the _Phaedo_, they are seekingto recover from a former state of existence. "

We are here introduced to one of the most famous conceptions of Plato, that of _Reminiscence_, or Recollection, based upon a theory of theprior existence of the soul. In the _Meno_, already alluded to, Socrates is representing as eliciting from one of Meno's slaves {143}correct answers to questions involving a knowledge or apprehension ofcertain axioms of the science of mathematics, which, as Socrateslearns, the slave had never been taught. Socrates argues that since hewas never taught these axioms, and yet actually knows them, he musthave known them before his birth, and concludes from this to theimmortality of the soul. In the _Phaedo_ this same argument is workedout more fully. As we grow up we discover in the exercise of oursenses that things are equal in certain respects, unequal in manyothers; or again, we appropriate to things or acts the qualities, forexample, of beauty, goodness, justice, holiness. At the same time werecognise that these are _ideals_, to which in actual experience wenever find more than an approximation, for we never discover in anyreally existing thing or act _absolute_ equality, or justice, orgoodness. In other words, any act of judgment on our part of actualexperiences consists in a measuring of these experiences by standardswhich we give or apply to them, and which no number of experiences cangive to us because they do not possess or exemplify them. We did notconsciously possess these notions, or ideals, or _ideas_, as he prefersto call them, at birth; they come into consciousness in connection withor in consequence of the action of the senses; but since the sensescould not give these ideas, the process of {144} knowledge must be aprocess of _Recollection_. Socrates carries the argument a stepfurther. "Then may we not say, " he continues, "that if, as we arealways repeating, there is an absolute beauty and goodness and othersimilar ideas or essences, and to this standard, which is nowdiscovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all oursensations, and with this compare them--assuming these ideas to have aprior existence, then our souls must have had a prior existence, but ifnot, not? There is the same proof that these ideas must have existedbefore we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; andif not the ideas, then not the souls. "

In the _Phaedrus_ this conception of a former existence is embodied inone of the _Myths_ in which Plato's imaginative powers are seen attheir highest. In it the soul is compared to a charioteer driving twowinged steeds, one mortal, the other immortal; the one ever tendingtowards the earth, the other seeking ever to soar into the sky, whereit may behold those blessed visions of loveliness and wisdom andgoodness, which are the true nurture of the soul. When the chariots ofthe gods go forth in mighty and glorious procession, the soul wouldfain ride forth in their train; but alas! the mortal steed is everhampering the immortal, and dragging it down. 

If the soul yields to this influence and descends to earth, there shetakes human form, but in higher {145} or lower degree, according to themeasure of her vision of the truth. She may become a philosopher, aking, a trader, an athlete, a prophet, a poet, a husbandman, a sophist, a tyrant. But whatever her lot, according to her manner of life in it, may she rise, or sink still further, even to a beast or plant. 

Only those souls take the form of humanity that have had _some_ visionof eternal truth. And this vision they retain in a measure, even whenclogged in mortal clay. And so the soul of man is ever striving andfluttering after something beyond; and specially is she stirred toaspiration by the sight of bodily loveliness. Then above all comes thetest of good and evil in the soul. The nature that has been corruptedwould fain rush to brutal joys; but the purer nature looks withreverence and wonder at this beauty, for it is an adumbration of thecelestial joys which he still remembers vaguely from the heavenlyvision. And thus pure and holy love becomes an opening back to heaven;it is a source of happiness unalloyed on earth; it guides the lovers onupward wings back to the heaven whence they came. 

{146}

CHAPTER XV

PLATO (_continued_)

_The Republic--Denizens of the cave--The Timaeus--A dream of creation_

And now we pass to the central and crowning work of Plato, _TheRepublic_, or _Of Justice_--the longest with one exception, andcertainly the greatest of all his works. It combines the humour andirony, the vivid characterisation and lively dialogue of his earlierworks, with the larger and more serious view, the more constructive andstatesmanlike aims of his later life. The dialogue opens verybeautifully. There has been a festal procession at the Piraeus, theharbour of Athens, and Socrates with a companion is wending his wayhomeward, when he is recalled by other companions, who induce him tovisit the house of an aged friend of his, Cephalus, whom he does notvisit too often. Him he finds seated in his court, crowned, as thecustom was, for the celebration of a family sacrifice, and beholdsbeaming on his face the peace of a life well spent and reconciled. They talk of the happiness that comes in old age to those who have donegood and not evil, and who are not too severely {147} tried in thematter of worldly cares. Life to this good old man seems a very simplematter; duty to God, duty to one's neighbours, each according to whatis prescribed and orderly; this is all, and this is sufficient. 

Then comes in the questioning Socrates, with his doubts anddifficulties as to what is one's duty in special circumstances; and thediscussion is taken up, not by the good old man, "who goes away to thesacrifice, " but by his son, who can quote the authorities; and byThrasymachus, the Sophist, who will have nothing to do with authority, but maintains that _interest_ is the only real meaning of justice, andthat Might is Right. Socrates, by analogy of the arts, shows thatMight absolutely without tincture of justice is mere weakness, and thatthere is honour even among thieves. Yet the exhibition of the 'lawworking in the members' seems to have its weak side so long as we lookto individual men, in whom there are many conflicting influences, andmany personal chances and difficulties, which obscure the relationbetween just action and happiness. 

Socrates therefore will have justice 'writ large' in the community as awhole, first pictured in its simpler, and then in its more complex andluxurious forms. The relation of the individual to the community isrepresented chiefly as one of education and training; and many strangetheories--as of the equal {148} training of men and women, and thecommunity of wives, ideas partially drawn from Sparta--are woven intothe ideal structure. Then the dialogue rises to a larger view ofeducation, as a preparation of the soul of man, not for a community onearth, but for that heavenly life which was suggested above (p. 144) inthe myth of the steeds. 

The purely earthly unideal life is represented as a life of men tiedneck and heels from birth in a cave, having their backs to the light, and their eyes fixed only on the shadows which are cast upon the wall. These they take for the only realities, and they may acquire much skillin interpreting the shadows. Turn these men suddenly to the truelight, and they will be dazzled and blinded. They will feel as thoughthey had lost the realities, and been plunged into dreams. And in painand sorrow they will be tempted to grope back again to the familiardarkness. 

Yet if they hold on in patience, and struggle up the steep till the sunhimself breaks on their vision, what pain and dazzling once more, yetat the last what glorious revelation! True, if they revisit their olddwelling-place, they will not see as well as their fellows who arestill living contentedly there, knowing nothing other than the shadows. They may even seem to these as dreamers who have lost their senses; andshould they try to enlighten these denizens of the cave, they may bepersecuted or {149} even put to death. Such are the men who have had asight of the heavenly verities, when compared with the children ofearth and darkness. 

Yet the world will never be right till those who have had this visioncome back to the things of earth and order them according to theeternal verities; the philosopher must be king if ever the perfect lifeis to be lived on earth, either by individual or community. As itwould be expressed in Scriptural language, "The kingdoms of this worldmust become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. "

For the training of these ideal rulers an ideal education is required, which Plato calls dialectic; something of its nature is described lateron (p. 170), and we need not linger over it here. 

The argument then seems to fall to a lower level. There are variousapproximations in actual experience to the ideal community, each moreor less perfect according to the degree in which the good of theindividual is also made the good of all, and the interests of governorsand governed are alike. Parallel with each lower form of state is alower individual nature, the worst of all being that of the tyrant, whose will is his only law, and his own self-indulgence his onlymotive. In him indeed Might is Right; but his life is the veryantithesis of happiness. Nay, pleasure of any kind can give no law toreason; reason can judge of pleasure, but not _vice versâ_. There isno profit to a {150} man though he gain the whole world, if _himself_be lost; if he become worse; if the better part of him be silenced andgrow weaker. And after this 'fitful fever' is over, may there not be agreater bliss beyond? There have been stories told us, visions ofanother world, where each man is rewarded according to his works. Andthe book closes with a magnificent Vision of Judgment. It is the storyof Er, son of Armenius, who being wounded in battle, after twelve days'trance comes back to life, and tells of the judgment seat, of heavenlybliss and hellish punishments, and of the renewal of life and the newchoice given to souls not yet purified wholly of sin. "God isblameless; Man's Soul is immortal; Justice and Truth are the onlythings eternally good. " Such is the final revelation. 

The _Timaeus_ is an attempt by Plato, under the guise of a Pythagoreanphilosopher, to image forth as in a vision or dream the actual framingof the universe, conceived as a realisation of the Eternal Thought orIdea. It will be remembered that in the analysis already given (p. 143) of the process of knowledge in individual men, Plato found thatprior to the suggestions of the senses, though not coming intoconsciousness except in connection with sensation, men had _ideas_ thatgave them a power of rendering their sensations intelligible. In the_Timaeus_ Plato attempts a vision of the universe as though he saw{151} it working itself into actuality on the lines of those ideas. The vision is briefly as follows: There is the Eternal Creator, whodesired to make the world because He was good and free from jealousy, and therefore willed that all things should be like Himself; that is, that the formless, chaotic, unrealised void might receive form andorder, and become, in short, real as He was. Thus creation is theprocess by which the Eternal Creator works out His own image, His ownideas, in and through that which is formless, that which has no name, which is nothing but possibility, --dead earth, namely, or _Matter_. And first the world-soul, image of the divine, is formed, on which ason a "diamond network" the manifold structure of things isfashioned--the stars, the seven planets with their sphere-music, thefour elements, and all the various creatures, aetherial or fiery, aerial, aqueous, and earthy, with the consummation of them all inmicrocosm, in the animal world, and specially in man. 

One can easily see that this is an attempt by Plato to carry out thereverse process in thought to that which first comes to thinking man. Man has sensations, that is, he comes first upon that which isconceivably last in creation, on the immediate and temporary things ormomentary occurrences of earth. In these sensations, as theyaccumulate into a kind of habitual or unreasoned knowledge or opinion, he discovers elements which have been active to {152} correlate thesensations, which have from the first exercised a governing influenceupon the sensations, without which, indeed, no two sensations could bebrought together to form anything one could name. These regulative, underlying, permanent elements are Ideas, _i. E. _ General Forms orNotions, which, although they may come second as regards time intoconsciousness, are by reason known to have been there before, becausethrough them alone can the sensations become intelligibly possible, orthinkable, or namable. Thus Plato is led to the conception of an orderthe reverse of our individual experience, the order of creation, theorder of God's thought, which is equivalent to the order of God'sworking; for God's thought and God's working are inseparable. 

Of course Plato, in working out his dream of creation absolutelywithout any scientific knowledge, the further he travels the moreobviously falls into confusion and absurdity; where he touches on someideas having a certain resemblance to modern scientific discoveries, asthe law of gravitation, the circulation of the blood, the quantitativebasis of differences of quality, etc. , these happy guesses are apt tolead more frequently wrong than right, because they are not kept incheck by any experimental tests. But taken as a 'myth, ' which isperhaps all that Plato intended, the work offers much that isprofoundly interesting. 

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With the _Timaeus_ is associated another dialogue called the _Critias_, which remains only as a fragment. In it is contained a description ofthe celebrated visionary kingdom of Atlantis, lying far beyond thepillars of Hercules, a land of splendour and luxury and power, a landalso of gentle manners and wise orderliness. "The fiction hasexercised a great influence over the imagination of later ages. Asmany attempts have been made to find the great island as to discoverthe country of the lost tribes. Without regard to the description ofPlato, and without a suspicion that the whole narrative is afabrication, interpreters have looked for the spot in every part of theglobe--America, Palestine, Arabia Felix, Ceylon, Sardinia, Sweden. Thestory had also an effect on the early navigators of the sixteenthcentury" (Jowett, _Plato_, vol. Iii. P. 679). 

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CHAPTER XVI

PLATO (_continued_)

_Metaphysics and psychology--Reason and pleasure--Criticism of theideas--Last ideals_

We now come to a series of highly important dialogues, marked as awhole by a certain diminution in the purely artistic attraction, havingless of vivid characterisation, less humour, less dramatic interest, less perfect construction in every way, but, on the other hand, peculiarly interesting as presenting a kind of after-criticism of hisown philosophy. In them Plato brings his philosophic conceptions intostriking relation with earlier or rival theories such as the Eleatic, the Megarian, the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic, and touches in theseconnections on many problems of deep and permanent import. 

The most remarkable feature in these later dialogues is thedisappearance, or even in some cases the apparently hostile criticism, of the doctrine of Ideas, and consequently of Reminiscence as thesource of knowledge, and even, apparently, of Personal {155}Immortality, so far as the doctrine of Reminiscence was imagined toguarantee it. This, however, is perhaps to push the change of view toofar. We may say that Plato in these dialogues is rather thepsychologist than the metaphysician; he is attempting a revisedanalysis of mental processes. From this point of view it was quiteintelligible that he should discover difficulties in his former theoryof our mental relation to the external reality, without thereforeseeing reason to doubt the existence of that reality. The position issomewhat similar to that of a modern philosopher who attempts to thinkout the psychological problem of Human Will in relation to Almighty andOver-ruling Providence. One may very clearly see the psychologicaldifficulties, without ceasing to believe either in the one or the otheras facts. 

Throughout Plato's philosophy, amidst every variation of expression, wemay take these three as practically fixed points of belief or of faith, or at least of hope; _first_, that Mind is eternally master of theuniverse; _second_, that Man in realising what is most truly himself isworking in harmony with the Eternal Mind, and is in this way a masterof nature, reason governing experience and not being a product ofexperience; and _thirdly_ (as Socrates said before his judges), that atdeath we go to powers who are wise and good, and to men departed who intheir day shared in the divine wisdom and goodness, --that, in short, there is something remaining for the dead, and better for those thathave done good than for those that have done evil. 

The first of the 'psychological dialogues, ' as we have called them, isthe _Philebus_. The question here is of the _summum bonum_ or chiefgood. What is it? Is it pleasure? Is it wisdom? Or is it both? Inthe process of answering these questions Plato lays down rules for truedefinition, and establishes classifications which had an immenseinfluence on his successor Aristotle, but which need not be furtherreferred to here. 

The general gist of the argument is as follows. Pleasure could not beregarded as a sufficient or perfect good if it was entirely emptied ofthe purely intellectual elements of anticipation and consciousness andmemory. This would be no better than the pleasure of an oyster. Onthe other hand, a purely intellectual existence can hardly be regardedas perfect and sufficient either. The perfect life must be a union ofboth. 

But this union must be an orderly and rational union; in other words, it must be one in which Mind is master and Pleasure servant; thefinite, the regular, the universal must govern the indefinite, variable, particular. Thus in the perfect life there are fourelements; in the body, earth, water, air, fire; in the soul, thefinite, the indefinite, the union of the {157} two, and the cause ofthat union. If this be so, he argues, may we not by analogy argue fora like four-fold order in the universe? There also we find regulativeelements, and indefinite elements, and the union of the two. Mustthere not also be the Great Cause, even Divine Wisdom, ordering andgoverning all things?

The second of the psychological series is the _Parmenides_, in whichthe great Eleatic philosopher, in company with his disciple Zeno, isimagined instructing the youthful Socrates when the two were on a visitto Athens, which may or may not be historical (see above, p. 34). Themost striking portion of this dialogue is the criticism already alludedto of Plato's own theory of Ideas, put into the mouth of Parmenides. Parmenides ascertains from Socrates that he is quite clear about therebeing Ideas of Justice, Beauty, Goodness, eternally existing, but howabout Ideas of such common things as hair, mud, filth, etc. ? Socratesis not so sure; to which Parmenides rejoins that as he grows olderphilosophy will take a surer hold of him, and that he will recognisethe same law in small things and in great. 

But now as to the nature of these Ideas. What, Parmenides asks, is therelation of these, as eternally existing in the mind of God, to thesame ideas as possessed by individual men? Does each individualactually _partake_ in the thought of God through {158} the ideas, orare his ideas only _resemblances_ of the eternal? If he partakes, thenthe eternal ideas are not one but many, as many as the persons whopossess them. If his ideas only resemble, then there must be somebasis of reference by which the resemblance is established, a _tertiumquid_ or third existence resembling both, and so _ad infinitum_. Socrates is puzzled by this, and suggests that perhaps the Ideas areonly notions in our minds. But to this it is replied that there is anend in that case of any reality in our ideas. Unless in some way theyhave a true and causal relation with something beyond our minds, thereis an end of mind altogether, and with mind gone everything goes. 

This, as Professor Jowett remarks, "remains a difficulty for us as wellas for the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, and is thestumbling-block of Kant's _Critic_, and of the Hamiltonian adaptationof Kant as well as of the Platonic ideas. It has been said that 'youcannot criticise Revelation. ' 'Then how do you know what isRevelation, or that there is one at all?' is the immediate rejoinder. 'You know nothing of things in themselves. '--'Then how do you know thatthere are things in themselves?' In some respects the difficultypressed harder upon the Greek than upon ourselves. For conceiving ofGod more under the attribute of knowledge than we do, he was more underthe necessity of {159} separating the divine from the human, as twospheres which had no communication with one another. "

Next follows an extraordinary analysis of the ideas of 'Being' and'Unity, ' remarkable not only for its subtlety, but for the relationwhich it historically bears to the modern philosophic system of Hegel. "Every affirmation is _ipso facto_ a negation;" "the negation of anegation is an affirmation;" these are the psychological (if notmetaphysical) facts, on which the analysis of Parmenides and thephilosophy of Hegel are both founded. 

We may pass more rapidly by the succeeding dialogues of the series: the_Theaetetus_ (already quoted from above, p. 89), which is a close andpowerful investigation of the nature of knowledge on familiar Platoniclines; the _Sophist_, which is an analysis of fallacious reasoning; andthe _Statesman_, which, under the guise of a dialectical search for thetrue ruler of men, represents once more Plato's ideal of government, and contrasts this with the ignorance and charlatanism of actualpolitics. 

In relation to subsequent psychology, and more particularly to thelogical system of Aristotle, these dialogues are extremely important. We may indeed say that the systematic logic of Aristotle, as containedin the _Organon_, is little more than an abstract {160} or digest ofthe logical theses of these dialogues. Definition and division, thenature and principle of classification, the theory of predication, theprocesses of induction and deduction, the classification and criticismof fallacies, --all these are to be found in them. The only additionreally made by Aristotle was the systematic theory of the syllogism. 

The _Laws_, the longest of Plato's works, seems to have been composedby him in the latest years of his long life, and was probably notpublished till after his death. It bears traces of its later origin inthe less artful juncture of its parts, in the absence of humour, in thegreater overloading of details, in the less graphic and appropriatecharacterisation of the speakers. These speakers are three--anAthenian, a Cretan, and a Spartan. A new colony is to be led forthfrom Crete, and the Cretan takes advice of the others as to theordering of the new commonwealth. We are no longer, as in _TheRepublic_, in an ideal world, a city coming down from, or set in, theheavens. There is no longer a perfect community; nor are philosophersto be its kings. Laws more or less similar to those of Sparta fillabout half the book. But the old spirit of obedience andself-sacrifice and community is not forgotten; and on all men andwomen, noble and humble alike, the duty is cast, to bear in common thecommon burden of life. 

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Thus, somewhat in sadness and decay, yet with a dignity and moralgrandeur not unworthy of his life's high argument, the great processionof the Ideal Philosopher's dialogues closes. 

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CHAPTER XVII

PLATO (_concluded_)

_Search for universals--The thoughts of God--God cause andconsummation--Dying to earth--The Platonic education_

If we attempt now, by way of appendix to this very inadequate summaryof the dialogues, to give in brief review some account of the maindoctrines of Plato, as they may be gathered from a general view ofthem, we are at once met by difficulties many and serious. In the caseof a genius such as Plato's, at once ironical, dramatic, andallegorical, we cannot be absolutely certain that in any given passagePlato is expressing, at all events adequately and completely, his ownpersonal views, even at the particular stage of his own mentaldevelopment then represented. And when we add to this that in a longlife of unceasing intellectual development, Plato inevitably grew outof much that once satisfied him, and attained not infrequently to newpoints of view even of doctrines or conceptions which remainedessentially unchanged, a Platonic dogma in the strict sense mustclearly not be expected. One may, however, attempt in rough outline tosummarise the main {163} _tendencies_ of his thought, withoutprofessing to represent its settled and authenticated results. 

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We may begin by an important summary of Plato's philosophy given byAristotle (_Met_. A. 6): "In immediate succession to the Pythagoreanand Eleatic philosophies came the work of Plato. In many respects hisviews coincided with these; in some respects, however, he isindependent of the Italians. For in early youth he became a student ofCratylus and of the school of Heraclitus, and accepted from them theview that the objects of sense are in eternal flux, and that of these, therefore, there can be no absolute knowledge. Then came Socrates, whobusied himself only with questions of morals, and not at all with theworld of physics. But in his ethical inquiries his search was ever foruniversals, and he was the first to set his mind to the discovery ofdefinitions. Plato following him in this, came to the conclusion thatthese universals could not belong to the things of sense, which wereever changing, but to some other kind of existences. Thus he came toconceive of universals as forms or _ideas_ of real existences, byreference to which, and in consequence of analogies to which, thethings of sense in every case received their names, and becamethinkable objects. "

From this it followed to Plato that in so far as the senses took anillusive appearance of themselves giving {164} the knowledge whichreally was supplied by reason as the organ of ideas, in the same degreethe body which is the instrument of sense can only be a source ofillusion and a hindrance to knowledge. The wise man, therefore, willseek to free himself from the bonds of the body, and die while he livesby philosophic contemplation, free as far as possible from thedisturbing influence of the senses. This process of _rational_realisation Plato called Dialectic. The objects contemplated by thereason, brought into consciousness on the occurrence of sensibleperception, but never caused by these, were not mere notions in themind of the individual thinker, nor were they mere properties ofindividual things; this would be to make an end of science on the onehand, of reality on the other. Nor had they existence in any mereplace, not even beyond the heavens. Their home was Mind, not this mindor that, but Mind Universal, which is God. 

In these 'thoughts of God' was the root or essence which gave realityto the things of sense; they were the Unity which realised itself inmultiplicity. It is because things partake of the Idea that we givethem a name. The thing as such is seen, not known; the idea as such isknown, not seen. 

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The whole conception of Plato in this connection is based on theassumption that there is such a thing as knowledge. If all things areever in change, then knowledge is impossible; but conversely, if thereis {165} such a thing as knowledge, then there must be a continuingobject of knowledge; and beauty, goodness, [253] reality are then nodreams. The process of apprehension of these 'thoughts of God, ' theseeternal objects of knowledge, whether occasioned by sensation or not, is essentially a process of self-inquiry, or, as he in one stage calledit, of Reminiscence. The process is the same in essence, whether goingon in thought or expressed in speech; it is a process of _naming_. Notthat names ever resemble realities fully; they are only approximations, limited by the conditions [254] of human error and human convention. There is nevertheless an inter-communion between ideas and things. Wemust neither go entirely with those who affirm the one (the Eleatics), nor with those who affirm the many (the Heracliteans), but accept both. There is a union in all that exists both of That Which _Is_, and ofthat concerning which all we can say is that it is _Other_ than whatis. This 'Other, ' through union with what is, attains to being of akind; while on the other hand, What Is by union with the 'Other'attains to variety, and thus more fully realises itself. 

[258]

That which Plato here calls 'What Is' he elsewhere calls 'The Limitingor Defining'; the 'Other' he calls 'The Unlimited or Undefined. ' Eachhas a function in the divine process. The thoughts of God attainrealisation in the world of things which change and pass, through theinfusion {166} of themselves in, or the superimposing of themselvesupon, that which is Nothing apart from them, --the mere negation of whatis, and yet necessary as the 'Other' or correlative of what is. Thuswe get, in fact, _four_ forms of existence: there is the Idea orLimiting (apart); there is the Negative or Unlimited (apart), there isthe Union of the two (represented in language by subject andpredicate), which as a whole is this frame of things as we know it; andfourthly, there is the _Cause_ of the Union, which is God. And God iscause not only as the beginning of all things, but also as the measureand law of their perfection, and the end towards which they go. He isthe Good, and the cause of Good, and the consummation and realisationof Good. 

This absolute Being, this perfect Good, we cannot see, blinded as weare, like men that have been dwelling in a cave, by excess of light. We must, therefore, look on Him indirectly, as on an image of Him, inour own souls and in the world, in so far as in either we discern, byreason, that which is rational and good. 

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Thus God is not only the cause and the end of all good, He is also thecause and the end of all knowledge. Even as the sun is not only themost glorious of all visible objects, but is also the cause of the lifeand beauty of all other things, and the provider of the light wherebywe see them, so also {167} is it for the eye of the soul. God is itslight, God is the most glorious object of its contemplation, God webehold imaged forth in all the objects which the soul by reasoncontemplates. 

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The ideas whereof the 'Other' (or, as he again calls it, the 'Great andSmall' or 'More and Less, ' meaning that which is unnamable, or whollyneutral in character, and which may therefore be represented equally bycontradictory attributes) by participation becomes a resemblance, Platocompared to the 'Numbers' of the Pythagoreans (cf. Above, p. 25). Hence, Aristotle remarks (_Met_. A. 6), Plato found in the ideas theoriginative or formative Cause of things, that which made them whatthey were or could be called, --their _Essence_; in the 'Great andSmall' he found the opposite principle or _Matter_ (Raw Material) ofthings. 

In this way the antithesis of Mind and Matter, whether on the greatscale in creation or on the small in rational perception, is not anantithesis of unrelated opposition. Each is correlative of the other, so to speak as the male and the female; the one is generative, formative, active, positive; the other is capable of being impregnated, receptive, passive, negative; but neither can realise itself apart fromthe other. 

[262]

This relation of 'Being' with that which is 'Other than Being' isCreation, wherein we can {168} conceive of the world as coming to be, yet not in [261] Time. And in the same way Plato speaks of a thirdform, besides the Idea and that which receives it, namely, 'FormlessSpace, the mother of all things. ' As Kant might have formulated it, Time and Space are not prior to creation, they are forms under whichcreation becomes thinkable. 

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The 'Other' or Negative element, Plato more or less vaguely connectedwith the evil that is in the world. This evil we can never expect toperish utterly from the world; it must ever be here as the antithesisof the good. But with the gods it dwells not; here in this mortalnature, and in this region of mingling, it must of necessity still befound. The wise man will therefore seek to die to the evil, and whileyet in this world of mortality, to think immortal things, and so as faras may be flee from the evil. Thereby shall he liken himself to thedivine. For it is a likening to the divine to be just and holy andtrue. 

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This, then, is the _summum bonum_, the end of life. For as theexcellence or end of any organ or instrument consists in thatperfection of its parts, whereby each separately and the whole togetherwork well towards the fulfilling of that which it is designed toaccomplish, so the excellence of man must consist in a perfect orderingof all his parts to the perfect working of his whole organism as a{169} [276] rational being. The faculties of man are three: the Desireof the body, the Passion of the heart, the Thought of the soul; theperfect working of all three, Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, andconsequently the perfect working of the whole man, is Righteousness. From this springs that ordered tranquillity which is at once truehappiness and perfect virtue. 

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Yet since individual men are not self-sufficient, but have separatecapacities, and a need of union for mutual help and comfort, theperfect realisation of this virtue can only be in a perfect civic [278]community. And corresponding with the three parts of the man therewill be three orders in the community: the Workers and Traders, theSoldiers, and the Ruling or Guardian class. When all these performtheir proper functions in perfect harmony, then is the perfection ofthe whole realised, in Civic Excellence or Justice. 

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To this end a careful civic education is necessary, _first_, because to_know_ what is for the general good is difficult, for we have to learnnot only in general but in detail that even the individual good can besecured only through the general; and _second_, because few, if any, are capable of seeking the general good, even if they know it, withoutthe guidance of discipline and the restraints of law. Thus, with aview to its own perfection, and the good of all {170} its members, Education is the chief work of the State. 

It will be remembered (see foregoing page) that in Plato's division ofthe soul of man there are three faculties, Desire, Passion, Reason; inthe division of the soul's perfection three corresponding virtues, Temperance, Courage, Wisdom; and in the division of the state threecorresponding orders, Traders, Soldiers, Guardians. So in Educationthere are three stages. First, _Music_ (including all manner ofartistic and refining influences), whose function it is so to attemperthe desires of the heart that all animalism and sensualism may beeliminated, and only the love and longing for that which is lovely andof good report may remain. Second, _Gymnastic_, whose function it isthrough ordered labour and suffering so to subdue and rationalise thepassionate part of the soul, that it may become the willing andobedient servant of that which is just and true. And third, _Mathematics_, by which the rational element of the soul may be trainedto realise itself, being weaned, by the ordered apprehension of the'diamond net' of laws which underlie all the phenomena of nature, awayfrom the mere surface appearances of things, the accidental, individual, momentary, --to the deep-seated realities, which arenecessary, universal, eternal. 

And just as there was a perfectness of the soul {171} transcending allparticular virtues, whether of Temperance or Courage or Wisdom, namely, that absolute Rightness or Righteousness which gathered them all intoitself, so at the end of these three stages of education there is ahigher mood of thought, wherein the soul, purified, chastened, enlightened, in communing with itself through _Dialectic_ (the Socraticart of questioning transfigured) communes also with the Divine, and inthinking out its own deepest thoughts, thinks out the thoughts of thegreat Creator Himself, becomes one with Him, finds its finalrealisation through absorption into Him, and in His light sees light. 

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CHAPTER XVIII

ARISTOTLE

_An unruly pupil--The philosopher's library--The predominance ofAristotle--Relation to Plato--The highest philosophy--Ideas andthings--The true realism_

Plato before his death bequeathed his Academy to his nephew Speusippus, who continued its president for eight years; and on his death theoffice passed to Xenocrates, who held it for twenty-five years. Fromhim it passed in succession to Polemo, Crates, Crantor, and others. Plato was thus the founder of a school or sect of teachers who busiedthemselves with commenting, expanding, modifying here and there thedoctrines of the master. Little of their works beyond the names hasbeen preserved, and indeed we can hardly regret the loss. These men nodoubt did much to popularise the thoughts of their master, and in thisway largely influenced the later development of philosophy; but theyhad nothing substantial to add, and so the stern pruning-hook of timehas cut them off from remembrance. 

[297]

Aristotle was the son of a Greek physician, member of the colony ofStagira in Thrace. His father, Nicomachus by name, was a man of such{173} eminence in his profession as to hold the post of physician toAmyntas, king of Macedonia, father of Philip the subverter of Greekfreedom. Not only was his father an expert physician, he was also astudent of natural history, and wrote several works on the subject. Weshall find that the fresh element which Aristotle brought to theAcademic philosophy was in a very great measure just that minuteattention to details and keen apprehension of vital phenomena which wemay consider he inherited from his father. He was born 384 B. C. , andon the death of his father, in his eighteenth year, he came to Athens, and became a student of philosophy under Plato, whose pupil hecontinued to be for twenty years, --indeed till the death of the master. That he, undoubtedly a far greater man than Speusippus or Xenocrates, should not have been nominated to the succession has been variouslyexplained; he is said to have been lacking in respect and gratitude tothe master; Plato is said to have remarked of him that he needed thecurb as much as Xenocrates needed the spur. The facts really need noexplanation. The original genius is never sufficiently subordinate andamenable to discipline. He is apt to be critical, to startle hiseasy-going companions with new and seemingly heterodox views, he is the'ugly duckling' whom all the virtuous and commonplace brood must cackle{174} at. The Academy, when its great master died, was no place forAristotle. He retired to Atarneus, a city of Mysia opposite to Lesbos, where a friend named Hermias was tyrant, and there he married Hermias'niece. After staying at Atarneus some three years he was invited byPhilip, now king of Macedon, to undertake the instruction of his sonAlexander, the future conqueror, who was then thirteen years old. Heremained with Alexander for eight years, though of course he couldhardly be regarded as Alexander's tutor during all that time, sinceAlexander at a very early age was called to take a part in publicaffairs. However a strong friendship was formed between thephilosopher and the young prince, and in after years Alexander loadedhis former master with benefits. Even while on his march of conquestthrough Asia he did not forget him, but sent him from every countrythrough which he passed specimens which might help him in his projectedHistory of Animals, as well as an enormous sum of money to aid him inhis investigations. 

After the death of Philip, Aristotle returned to Athens, and opened aschool of philosophy on his own account in the Lyceum. Here someauthorities tell us he lectured to his pupils while he paced up anddown before them; hence the epithet applied to the school, the_Peripatetics_. Probably, however, the name is derived from the'Peripati' or covered {175} walks in the neighbourhood of that templein which he taught. He devoted his mornings to lectures of a morephilosophical and technical character; to these only the abler and moreadvanced students were admitted. In the afternoons he lectured onsubjects of a more popular kind--rhetoric, the art of politics, etc. --to larger audiences. Corresponding with this division, he alsowas in the habit of classifying his writings as Acroatic or technical, and Exoteric or popular. He accumulated a large library and museum, towhich he contributed an astonishing number of works of his own, onevery conceivable branch of knowledge. 

The after history of Aristotle's library, including the MSS. Of his ownworks, is interesting and even romantic. Aristotle's successor in theschool was Theophrastus, who added to the library bequeathed him byAristotle many works of his own, and others purchased by him. Theophrastus bequeathed the entire library to Neleus, his friend andpupil, who, on leaving Athens to reside at Scepsis in the Troad, tookthe library with him. There it remained for nearly two hundred yearsin possession of the Neleus family, who kept the collection hidden in acellar for fear it should be seized to increase the royal library ofPergamus. In such a situation the works suffered much harm from wormsand damp, till at last (_circa_ 100 B. C. ) they were brought out {176}and sold to one Apellicon, a rich gentleman resident in Athens, himselfa member of the Peripatetic school. In 86 B. C. Sulla, the Romandictator, besieged and captured Athens, and among other prizes conveyedthe library of Apellicon to Rome, and thus many of the most importantworks of Aristotle for the first time were made known to the Roman andAlexandrian schools. It is a curious circumstance that the philosopherwhose influence was destined to be paramount for more than a thousandyears in the Christian era, was thus deprived by accident of hislegitimate importance in the centuries immediately following his own. 

But his temporary and accidental eclipse was amply compensated in theeffect upon the civilised world which he subsequently exercised. Soall-embracing, so systematic, so absolutely complete did his philosophyappear, that he seemed to after generations to have left nothing moreto discover. He at once attained a supremacy which lasted for some twothousand years, not only over the Greek-speaking world, but over everyform of the civilisation of that long period, Greek, Roman, Syrian, Arabic, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from Africa to Britain. His authority was accepted equally by the learned doctors of MoorishCordova and the Fathers of the Church; to know Aristotle was to haveall {177} knowledge; not to know him was to be a boor; to deny him wasto be a heretic. 

His style has nothing of the grace of Plato; he illuminates his workswith no myths or allegories; his manner is dry, sententious, familiar, without the slightest attempt at ornament. There are occasionaltouches of caustic humour, but nothing of emotion, still less ofrhapsody. His strength lies in the vast architectonic genius by whichhe correlates every domain of the knowable in a single scheme, and inthe extraordinary faculty for illustrative detail with which he fillsthe scheme in every part. He knows, and can shrewdly criticise everythinker and writer who has preceded him; he classifies them as heclassifies the mental faculties, the parts of logical speech, the partsof sophistry, the parts of rhetoric, the parts of animals, the parts ofthe soul, the parts of the state; he defines, distinguishes, combines, classifies, with the same sureness and minuteness of method in themall. He can start from a general conception, expand it into its parts, separate these again by distinguishing details till he brings thematter down to its lowest possible terms, or _infimae species_. Or hecan start from these, find analogies among them constituting moregeneral species, and so in ascending scale travel surely up to ageneral conception, or _summum genus_. 

In his general conception of philosophy he was {178} to a large extentin agreement with Plato; but he endeavoured to attain to a moretechnical precision; he sought to systematise into greatercompleteness; he pared off everything which he considered merelymetaphorical or fanciful, and therefore non-essential. The operationsof nature, the phenomena of life, were used in a much fuller and moredefinite way to illustrate or even formulate the theory; but in itsmain ideas Aristotle's philosophy is Plato's philosophy. The oneclothed it in poetry, the other in formulae; the one had a moreentrancing vision, the other a clearer and more exact apprehension; butthere is no essential divergence. 

Aristotle's account of the origin or foundation of [300] philosophy isas follows (_Met_. A. 2): "Wonder is and always has been the firstincentive to philosophy. At first men wondered at what puzzled themnear at hand, then by gradual advance they came to notice and wonder atthings still greater, as at the phases of the moon, the eclipses of sunand moon, the wonders of the stars, and the origin of the universe. Now he who is puzzled and in a maze regards himself as a know-nothing;wherefore the philosopher is apt to be fond of wondrous tales or myths. And inasmuch as it was a consciousness of ignorance that drove men tophilosophy, it is for the correction of this ignorance, and not for anymaterial utility, that the pursuit of knowledge exists. Indeed it is, {179} as a rule, only when all other wants are well supplied that, byway of ease and recreation, men turn to this inquiry. And thus, sinceno satisfaction beyond itself is sought by philosophy, we speak of itas we speak of the freeman. We call that man free whose existence isfor himself and not for another; so also philosophy is of all thesciences the only one that is free, for it alone exists for itself. 

"Moreover, this philosophy, which is the investigation of the firstcauses of things, is the most truly educative among the sciences. Forinstructors are persons who show us the causes of things. Andknowledge for the sake of knowledge belongs most properly to thatinquiry which deals with what is most truly a matter of knowledge. Forhe who is seeking knowledge for its own sake will choose to have thatknowledge which most truly deserves the name, the knowledge, namely, ofwhat most truly appertains to knowledge. Now the things that mosttruly appertain to knowledge are the first causes; for in virtue ofone's possession of these, and by deduction from these, all else comesto be known; we do not come to know them through what is inferior tothem and underlying them. . . . The wise man ought therefore to knownot only those things which are the outcome and product of firstcauses, he must be possessed of the truth as to the first causesthemselves. And wisdom indeed is just this {180} thoughtful science, ascience of what is highest, not truncated of its head. "

[301]

"To the man, therefore, who has in fullest measure this knowledge ofuniversals, all knowledge must lie to hand; for in a way he knows allthat underlies them. Yet in a sense these universals are what men findhardest to apprehend, because they stand at the furthest extremity fromthe perceptions of sense. "

[302]

"Yet if anything exist which is eternal, immovable, freed from grossmatter, the contemplative science alone can apprehend this. Physicalscience certainly cannot, for physics is of that which is ever in flux;nor can mathematical science apprehend it; we must look to a mode ofscience prior to and higher than both. The objects of physics areneither unchangeable nor free from matter; the objects of mathematicsare indeed unchangeable, but we can hardly say they are free frommatter; they have certainly relations with matter. But the first andhighest science has to do with that which is unmoved and apart frommatter; its function is with the eternal first causes of things. Thereare therefore three modes of theoretical inquiry: the science ofphysics, the science of mathematics, the science of God. For it isclear that if the divine is anywhere, it must be in that form ofexistence I have spoken of (_i. E. _ in first causes). . . . If, therefore, there be {181} any form of existence immovable, this we mustregard as prior, and the philosophy of this we must consider the firstphilosophy, universal for the same reason that it is first. It dealswith existence as such, inquiring what it is and what are itsattributes as pure existence. "

This is somewhat more technical than the language of Plato, but if wecompare it with what was said above (p. 142) we shall find an essentialidentity. Yet Aristotle frequently impugns Plato's doctrine of ideas, sometimes on the lines already [322] taken by Plato himself (above, p. 158), sometimes in other ways. Thus (_Met_. Z. 15, 16) he says: "Thatwhich is _one_ cannot be in many places at one time, but that which iscommon or general is in many places at one time. Hence it follows thatno universal exists apart from the individual things. But those whohold the doctrine of ideas, on one side are right, viz. In maintainingtheir separate existence, if they are to be substances or existences atall. On the other side they are wrong, because by the idea or formwhich they maintain to be separate they mean the one attributepredicable of many things. The reason why they do this is because theycannot indicate what these supposed imperishable essences are, apartfrom the individual substances which are the objects of perception. The result is that they simply represent them under the same forms as{182} those of the perishable objects of sensation which are familiarto our senses, with the addition of a phrase--_i. E. _ they say 'man assuch, ' 'horse as such, ' or 'the absolute man, ' 'the absolute horse. '"

Aristotle here makes a point against Plato and his school, inasmuch as, starting from the assumption that of the world of sense there could beno knowledge, no apprehension fixed or certain, and setting overagainst this a world of general forms which were fixed and certain, they had nothing with which to fill this second supposed world exceptthe data of sense as found in individuals. Plato's mistake was inconfusing the mere 'this, ' which is the conceived starting-point of anysensation, but which, like a mathematical point, has nothing which canbe said about it, with individual objects as they exist and are knownin all the manifold and, in fact, infinite relations of reality. Thebare subject 'this' presents at the one extreme the same emptiness, thesame mere possibility of knowledge, which is presented at the other bythe bare predicate 'is. ' But Plato, having an objection to the former, as representing to him the merely physical and therefore the passingand unreal, clothes it for the nonce in the various attributes whichare ordinarily associated with it when we say, 'this man, ' 'thishorse, ' only to strip them off successively as data of sensation, andso at last get, by an illusory process of {183} abstraction andgeneralisation, to the ultimate generality of being, which is the mere'is' of bare predication converted into a supposed eternal substance. 

Aristotle was as convinced as Plato that there must be some fixed andimmovable object or reality corresponding to true and certainknowledge, but with his scientific instincts he was not content to haveit left in a condition of emptiness, attractive enough to the moreemotional and imaginative Plato. And hence we have elsewhere quite asstrong and definite statements as those quoted above about universals[316] (p. 180), to the effect that existence is in the fullest and mostreal sense to be predicated of _individual_ things, and that only in asecondary sense can existence be predicated of universals, in virtue oftheir being found in individual things. Moreover, among universals the_species_, he maintains, has more of existence in it than the genus, because it is nearer to the individual or primary existence. For ifyou predicate of an individual thing of what species it is, you supplya statement more full of information and more closely connected withthe thing than if you predicate to what genus it belongs; for example, if asked, "What is this?" and you answer, "A man, " you give moreinformation than if you say, "A living creature. "

How did Aristotle reconcile these two points of {184} view, the one, inwhich he conceives thought as starting from first causes, the mostuniversal objects of knowledge, and descending to particulars; theother, in which thought starts from the individual objects, andpredicates of them by apprehension of their properties? The antithesisis no accidental one; on the contrary, it is the governing idea of hisLogic, with its ascending process or Induction, and its descendingprocess or Syllogism. Was thought a mere process in an unmeaningcircle, the 'upward and downward way' of Plato?

As to this we may answer first that while formally Aristotle displaysmuch the same 'dualism' or unreconciled separation of the 'thing' andthe 'idea' as Plato, his practical sense and his scientific instinctsled him to occupy himself largely not with either the empty 'thing' orthe equally empty 'idea, ' but with the true _individuals_, which are atthe same time the true universals, namely, real objects as known, having, so far as they are known, certain forms or categories underwhich you can class them, having, so far as they are not yet fullyknown, a certain raw material for further inquiry through observation. In this way Thought and Matter, instead of being in eternal andirreconcilable antagonism as the Real and the Unreal, become parts ofthe same reality, the first summing up the knowledge of things alreadyattained, the second symbolising the infinite {185} [317] possibilitiesof further ascertainment. And thus the word 'Matter' is applied byAristotle to the highest genus, as the relatively indefinite comparedwith the more fully defined species included under it; it is alsoapplied by him to the individual object, in so far as that objectcontains qualities not yet fully brought into predication. 

[319]

And second, we observe that Aristotle introduced a new conception whichto his view established a _vital relation_ between the universal andthe individual. This conception he formulated in the correlatives, _Potentiality_ and _Actuality_. With these he closely connected theidea of _Final Cause_. The three to Aristotle constituted a singlereality; they are organically correlative. In a living creature wefind a number of members or organs all closely interdependent andmutually conditioning each other. Each has its separate function, yetnone of them can perform its particular function well unless all theothers are performing theirs well, and the effect of the rightperformance of function by each is to enable the others also to performtheirs. The total result of all these mutually related functions is_Life_; this is their End or Final Cause, which does not exist apartfrom them, but is constituted at every moment by them. This Life is atthe same time the condition on which alone each and every one of thefunctions constituting it can be performed. Thus {186} life in anorganism is at once the end and the middle and the beginning; it is thecause final, the cause formal, the cause efficient. Life then is an_Entelechy_, as Aristotle calls it, by which he means the realisationin unity of the total activities exhibited in the members of the livingorganism. 

In such an existence every part is at once a potentiality and anactuality, and so also is the whole. We can begin anywhere and travelout from that point to the whole; we can take the whole and find in itall the parts. 

{187}

CHAPTER XIX

ARISTOTLE (_continued_)

_Realisation and reminiscence--The crux of philosophy--Reason ineducation--The chief good--Origin of communities_

If we look closely at this conception of Aristotle's we shall see thatit has a nearer relation to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and even tothe doctrine of Reminiscence, than perhaps even Aristotle himselfrealised. The fundamental conception of Plato, it will be remembered, is that of an eternally existing 'thought of God, ' in manifold forms or'ideas, ' which come into the consciousness of men in connection with oron occasion of sensations, which are therefore in our experience laterthan the sensations, but which we nevertheless by reason recognise asnecessarily prior to the sensations, inasmuch as it is through theseideas alone that the sensations are knowable or namable at all. Thusthe final end for man is by contemplation and 'daily dying to the worldof sense, ' to come at last into the full inheritance in consciousknowledge of that 'thought of God' which was latent from the first inhis soul, and of which in its fulness God Himself is eternally andnecessarily possessed. 

{188}

[311]

This is really Aristotle's idea, only Plato expresses it rather under apsychological, Aristotle under a vital, formula. God, Aristotle says, is eternally and necessarily Entelechy, absolute realisation. _To us_, that which is first _in time_ (the individual perception) is not firstin _essence_, or absolutely. What is first in essence or absolutely, is the universal, that is, the form or idea, the datum of reason. Andthis distinction between time and the absolute, between our individualexperience and the essential or ultimate reality, runs all through thephilosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the'Reminiscence' of Plato. 

This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms oflife, to education, to morals, to politics. 

_Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every processconditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin withsensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relationsto that which is infinitely real, --the object, the real thing beforeus, --which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from theother end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind, this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations toanother existence infinitely real, --the subject that thinks, --whichrelations religion and morality and sentiment and love will neverexhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, ifwe, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulatedinformation, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between thetwo extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall findboth processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. Thatis to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objectsknown, by the operation of true thought and observation in thediscovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall beincreasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, bythe discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them. Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutuallyconditioning factors of the same organic function. 

[316]

This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase ofAristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure, and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more thanPlato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutuallycontrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and theorganically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_. But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards anapprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favourof mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind andmatter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical. 

{190}

The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is nolonger in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a cruxstill. What is the meaning of this 'Ultimately'? Or, putting it inAristotle's formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality?Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is nounreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or ingerm _there_? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why thisgroaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal 'By and by'wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all theclashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled andsatisfied? An illustration of Aristotle's attempt to answer thisquestion will be given later on (p. 201). That the answer is a failureneed not surprise us. If we even now 'see only as in a glass darkly'on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing'face to face. '

[326]

_Life_ is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown (above, p. 186), but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. Wepass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants andanimals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we risestill higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiarfunction of man. Each is a _potentiality_ to that which is immediatelyabove it; in {191} other words, each contains in germ the possibilitieswhich are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there atouch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose runningthrough all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation forsomething higher. 

[339]

_Education_ is in like manner an entelechy. For what is the_differentia_, the distinguishing character of the life of man?Aristotle answers, the possession of reason. It is the action ofreason upon the desires that raises the life of man above the brutes. This, observe, is not the restraining action of something wholly aliento the desires, which is too often how Plato represents the matter. This would be to lose the dynamic idea. The desires, as Aristotlegenerally conceives them, are there in the animal life, prepared, so tospeak, to receive the organic perfection which reason alone can givethem. Intellect, on the other hand, is equally in need of the desires, for thought without desire cannot supply motive. If intellect is_logos_ or reason, desire is that which is fitted to be obedient toreason. 

It will be remembered that the question to which Plato addressedhimself in one of his earlier dialogues, already frequently referredto, the _Meno_, was the teachableness of Virtue; in that dialogue hecomes to the conclusion that Virtue is teachable, but that there arenone capable of teaching it; for the {192} wise men of the time areguided not by knowledge but by right opinion, or by a divine instinctwhich is incommunicable. Plato is thus led to seek a machinery ofeducation, and it is with a view to this that he constructs his ideal_Republic_. Aristotle took up this view of the state as educative ofthe individual citizens, and brought it under the dynamic formula. Inthe child reason is not actual; there is no rational law governing hisacts, these are the immediate result of the strongest impulse. Yetonly when a succession of virtuous acts has formed the virtuous habitcan a man be said to be truly good. How is this process to begin? Theanswer is that the reason which is only latent or dynamic in the childis actual or realised in the parent or teacher, or generally in thecommunity which educates the child. The law at first then is imposedon the child from without, it has an appearance of unnaturalness, butonly an appearance. For the law is there in the child, prepared, as hegoes on in obedience, gradually to answer from within to the summonsfrom without, till along with the virtuous habit there emerges alsointo the consciousness of the child, no longer a child but a man, theapprehension of the law as his own truest nature. 

These remarks on education are sufficient to show that in Morals also, as conceived by Aristotle, there is a law of vital development. It maybe {193} sufficient by way of illustration to quote the introductorysentences of Aristotle's _Ethics_, in which the question of the natureof the chief good is, in his usual tentative manner, discussed: "Ifthere be any end of what we do which we desire for itself, while allother ends are desired for it, that is, if we do not in every case havesome ulterior end (for if that were so we should go on to infinity, andour efforts would be vain and useless), this ultimate end desired foritself will clearly be the chief good and the ultimate best. Now sinceevery activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it isfor us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aimsat, --what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected withconduct? So far as the name goes all are pretty well agreed as to theanswer; gentle and simple alike declare it to be happiness, involving, however, in their minds on the one hand well-living, on the other hand, well-doing. When you ask them, however, to define this happiness moreexactly, you find that opinions are divided, and the many and thephilosophers have different answers. 

"But if you ask a musician or a sculptor or any man of skill, anyperson, in fact, who has some special work and activity, what the chiefgood is for him, he will tell you that the chief good is in the workwell done. If then man has any special work or function, we may assumethat the chief good for man {194} will be in the well-doing of thatfunction. What now is man's special function? It cannot be mereliving, for that he has in common with plants, and we are seeking whatis peculiar to him. The mere life of nurture and growth must thereforebe put on one side. We come next to life as sensitive to pleasure andpain. But this man shares with the horse, the ox, and other animals. What remains is the life of action of a reasonable being. Now ofreason as it is in man there are two parts, one obeying, one possessingand considering. And there are also two aspects in which the active ormoral life may be taken, one potential, one actual. Clearly for ourdefinition of the chief good we must take the moral life in its fullactual realisation, since this is superior to the other. 

"If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good forman consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of manas man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to thatlife, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then inaccordance with that excellence which is the best and the most roundedor complete. We must add, however, the qualification, 'in a roundedlife. ' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day. Andso one day or some brief period of attainment is not sufficient to makea man happy and blest. "

{195}

The close relation of this to the teaching of Socrates and Plato needhardly be insisted on, or the way in which he correlates their ideaswith his own conception of an actualised perfection. 

[340]

Aristotle then proceeds to a definition of the 'specific excellence' orvirtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how farhe has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. Tothis end he distinguishes in man's nature three modes of existence:first, _feelings_ such as joy, pain, anger; second, _potentialities_ orcapacities for such feelings; third, _habits_ which are built uponthese potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberationsuperadded. He has no difficulty in establishing that the virtue ofman must be a habit. And the test of the excellence of that habit, asof every other developed capacity, will be twofold; it will make theworker good, it will cause him to produce good work. 

So far Aristotle's analysis of virtue is quite on the lines of hisgeneral philosophy. Here, however, he diverges into what seems atfirst a curiously mechanical conception. Pointing out that ineverything quantitative there are two extremes conceivable, and a_mean_ or average between them, he proceeds to define virtue as a meanbetween two extremes, a mean, however, having relation to no merenumerical standard, but having reference _to us_. In this last {196}qualification he perhaps saves his definition from its mechanical turn, while he leaves himself scope for much curious and ingeniousobservation on the several virtues regarded as means between twoextremes. He further endeavours to save it by adding, that it is"defined by reason, and as the wise man would define it. "

Reason then, as the impersonal ruler, --the wise man, as thepersonification of reason, --this is the standard of virtue, andtherefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externalityin our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comesonly when the law without is also recognised and accepted as the lawwithin? The answer of Aristotle, as of his predecessors, is that thiswill be brought about by wise training and virtuous surroundings, inshort, by the civic community being itself good and happy. Thus we getanother dynamic relation; for regarded as a member of the body politiceach individual becomes a potentiality along with all the othermembers, conditioned by the state of which he and they are members, brought gradually into harmony with the reason which is in the state, and in the process realising not his own possibilities only, but thoseof the community also, which exists only in and through its members. Thus each and all, in so far as they realise their own well-being bythe perfect development of the virtuous {197} habit in their lives, contribute _ipso facto_ to the supreme end of the state, which is theperfect realisation of the whole possibilities of the total organism, and consequently of every member of it. 

[342]

The _State_ therefore is also an entelechy. For man is not made todwell alone. "There is first the fact of sex; then the fact ofchildren; third, the fact of variety of capacity, implying variety ofposition, some having greater powers of wisdom and forethought, andbeing therefore naturally the rulers; others having bodily powerssuitable for carrying out the rulers' designs, and being thereforenaturally subjects. Thus we have as a first or simplest community thefamily, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which, seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, risesfrom mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. This higherexistence is as natural and necessary as any simpler form, being, infact, the end or final and necessary perfection of all such lower formsof existence. Man therefore is by the natural necessity of his being a'political animal, ' and he who is not a citizen, --that is, by reason ofsomething peculiar in his nature and not by a mere accident, --musteither be deficient or something superhuman. And while man is thenoblest of animals when thus fully perfected in an ordered community, on the other hand when deprived of law and justice he is the veryworst. {198} For there is nothing so dreadful as lawlessness armed. And man is born with the arms of thought and special capacities orexcellences, which it is quite possible for him to use for other andcontrary purposes. And therefore man is the most wicked and cruelanimal living when he is vicious, the most lustful and the mostgluttonous. The justice which restrains all this is a civic quality;and law is the orderly arrangement of the civic community" (Arist. _Pol_. I. P. 2). 

{199}

CHAPTER XX

ARISTOTLE (_concluded_)

_God and necessity--The vital principle--Soul as realisation--Functionand capacity--His method_

Throughout Aristotle's physical philosophy the [334] same conceptionruns: "All animals in their fully developed state require two membersabove all--one whereby to take in nourishment, the other whereby to getrid of what is superfluous. For no animal can exist or grow withoutnourishment. And there is a third member in them all half-way betweenthese, in which resides the principle of their life. This is theheart, which all blood-possessing animals have. From it comes thearterial system which Nature has made hollow to contain the liquidblood. The situation of the heart is a commanding one, being near themiddle and rather above than below, and rather towards the front thanthe back. For Nature ever establishes that which is most honourable inthe most honourable places, unless some supreme necessity overrules. We see this most clearly in the case of man; but the same tendency forthe heart to occupy the centre is seen also in {200} other animals, when we regard only that portion of their body which is essential, andthe limit of this is at the place where superfluities are removed. Thelimbs are arranged differently in different animals, and are not amongthe parts essential to life; consequently animals may live even ifthese are removed. . . . Anaxagoras says that man is the wisest ofanimals because he possesses hands. It would be more reasonable to saythat he possesses hands because he is the wisest. For the hands are aninstrument; and Nature always assigns an instrument to the one fittedto use it, just as a sensible man would. For it is more reasonable togive a flute to a flute-player than to confer on a man who has someflutes the art of playing them. To that which is the greater andhigher she adds what is less important, and not _vice versâ_. Therefore to the creature fitted to acquire the largest number ofskills Nature assigned the hand, the instrument useful for the largestnumber of purposes" (Arist. _De Part. An. _ iv. P. 10). 

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And in the macrocosm, the visible and invisible world about us, thesame conception holds: "The existence of God is an eternally perfectentelechy, a life everlasting. In that, therefore, which belongs tothe divine there must be an eternally perfect movement. Therefore theheavens, which are as it were the body of the Divine, are in form asphere, of {201} necessity ever in circular motion. Why then is notthis true of every portion of the universe? Because there must ofnecessity be a point of rest of the circling body at the centre. Yetthe circling body cannot rest either as a whole or as regards any partof it, otherwise its motion could not be eternal, which by nature itis. Now that which is a violation of nature cannot be eternal, but theviolation is posterior to that which is in accordance with nature, andthus the unnatural is a kind of displacement or degeneracy from thenatural, taking the form of a coming into being. 

"Necessity then requires earth, as the element standing still at thecentre. Now if there must be earth, there must be fire. For if one oftwo opposites is natural or necessary, the other must be necessary too, each, in fact, implying the necessity of the other. For the two havethe same substantial basis, only the positive form is naturally priorto the negative; for instance, warm is prior to cold. And in the sameway motionlessness and heaviness are predicated in virtue of theabsence of motion and lightness, _i. E. _ the latter are essentiallyprior. 

"Further, if there are fire and earth, there must also be the elementswhich lie between these, each having an antithetic relation to each. From this it follows that there must be a process of coming into being, because none of these elements can be eternal, {202} but each affects, and is affected by each, and they are mutually destructive. Now it isnot to be argued that anything which can be moved can be eternal, except in the case of that which by its own nature has eternal motion. And if coming into being must be predicated of these, then other formsof change can also be predicated" (Arist. _De Coelo_, ii. P. 3). 

This passage is worth quoting as illustrating, not only Aristotle'sconception of the divine entelechy, but also the ingenuity with whichhe gave that appearance of logical completeness to the vague andill-digested scientific imaginations of the time, which remained soevil an inheritance for thousands of years. It is to be observed, inorder to complete Aristotle's theory on this subject, that the fourelements, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, are all equally in a world which is"contrary to nature, " that is, the world of change, of coming intobeing, and going out of being. Apart from these there is the elementof the Eternal Cosmos, which is "in accordance with nature, " having itsown natural and eternal motion ever the same. This is the fifth ordivine element, the aetherial, by the schoolmen translated _QuintaEssentia_, whence by a curious degradation we have our modern wordQuintessence, of that which is the finest and subtlest extract. 

Still more clearly is the organic conception carried {203} out inAristotle's discussion of the Vital principle or Soul in the variousgrades of living creatures and in man. It will be sufficient to quoteat length a chapter of Aristotle's treatise on the subject (_De Anima_, ii. P. 1) in which this fundamental conception of Aristotle'sphilosophy is very completely illustrated:--

"Now as to Substance we remark that this is one particular categoryamong existences, having three different aspects. First there is, soto say, the raw material or Matter, having in it no definite characteror quality; next the Form or Specific character, in virtue of which thething becomes namable; and third, there is the Thing or Substance whichthese two together constitute. The Matter is, in other words, the_potentiality_ of the thing, the Form is the _realisation_ of thatpotentiality. We may further have this realisation in two ways, corresponding in character to the distinction between _knowledge_(which we have but are not necessarily using) and actual_contemplation_ or mental perception. 

"Among substances as above defined those are most truly such which wecall _bodily objects_, and among these most especially objects whichare the products of nature, inasmuch as all other bodies must bederived from them. Now among such natural objects some are possessedof life, some are not; by _life_ I mean a process of spontaneousnourishment, growth, and decay. Every natural {204} object having lifeis a substance compounded, so to say, of several qualities. It is, infact, a bodily substance defined in virtue of its having life. Betweenthe living body thus defined and the Soul or Vital principle, a markeddistinction must be drawn. The body cannot be said to 'subsist in'something else; rather must we say that it is the matter or substratumin which something else subsists. And what we mean by the soul is justthis substance in the sense of the _form_ or specific character thatsubsists in the natural body which is _potentially_ living. In otherwords, the Soul is substance as _realisation_, only, however, of such abody as has just been defined. Recalling now the distinction betweenrealisation as possessed knowledge and as actual contemplation, weshall see that in its essential nature the Soul or Vital principlecorresponds rather with the first than with the second. For both sleepand waking depend on the Soul or Life being there, but of these wakingonly can be said to correspond with the active form of knowledge; sleepis rather to be compared with the state of having without beingimmediately conscious that we have. Now if we compare these two statesin respect of their priority of development in a particular person, weshall see that the state of latent possession comes first. We maytherefore define the Soul or Vital principle as _The earliest {205}realisation (entelechy) of a natural body having in it the potentialityof life_. 

"To every form of organic structure this definition applies, for eventhe parts of plants are organs, although very simple ones; thus theouter leaf is a protection to the pericarp, and the pericarp to thefruit. Or, again, the roots are organs bearing an analogy to the mouthin animals, both serving to take in food. Putting our definition, then, into a form applicable to every stage of the Vital principle, weshall say that _The Soul is the earliest realisation of a natural bodyhaving organisation_. 

"In this way we are relieved from the necessity of asking whether Souland body are one. We might as well ask whether the wax and theimpression are one, or, in short, whether the _matter_ of any objectand that whereof it is the matter or substratum are one. As has beenpointed out, unity and substantiality may have several significations, but the truest sense of both is found in _realisation_. 

"The general definition of the Soul or Vital principle above given maybe further explained as follows. The Soul is the _rational_ substance(or function), that is to say, it is that which gives essential meaningand reality to a body as knowable. Thus if an axe were a _natural_instrument or organ, its rational substance would be found in itsrealisation of what an axe means; this would be its _soul_. Apart{206} from such realisation it would not be an axe at all, except inname. Being, however, such as it is, the axe remains an axeindependently of any such realisation. For the statement that the Soulis the _reason_ of a thing, that which gives it essential meaning andreality, does not apply to such objects as an axe, but only to naturalbodies having power of spontaneous motion (including growth) and rest. 

"Or we may illustrate what has been said by reference to the bodilymembers. If the eye be a living creature, _sight_ will be its soul, for this is the _rational_ substance (or function) of the eye. On theother hand, the eye itself is the _material_ substance in which thisfunction subsists, which function being gone, the eye would no longerbe an eye, except in name, just as we can speak of the eye of a statueor of a painted form. Now apply this illustration from a part of thebody to the whole. For as any one sense stands related to its organ, so does the vital sense in general to the whole sensitive organism assuch, always remembering that we do not mean a dead body, but one whichreally has in it potential life, as the seed or fruit has. Of coursethere is a form of realisation to which the name applies in a speciallyfull sense, as when the axe is actually cutting, the eye actuallyseeing, the man fully awake. But the Soul or Vital principlecorresponds rather with the _function_ of sight, or the _capacity_ forcutting which {207} the axe has, the body, on the other hand, standingin a relation of _potentiality_ to it. Now just as the eye may meanboth the actual organ or pupil, and also the function of sight, so alsothe living creature means both the body and the soul. We cannot, therefore, think of body apart from soul, or soul apart from body. If, however, we regard the soul as composed of parts, we can see that therealisation to which we give the name of soul is in some casesessentially a realisation of certain parts of the body. We may, however, conceive the soul as in other aspects separable, in so far asthe realisation cannot be connected with any bodily parts. Nay, wecannot be certain whether the soul may not be the realisation orperfection of the body as the sailor is of his boat. "

Observe that at the last Aristotle, though very tentatively, leaves anopening for immortality, where, as in the case of man, there arefunctions of the soul, such as philosophic contemplation, which cannotbe related to bodily conditions. He really was convinced that in manthere was a portion of that diviner aether which dwelt eternally in theheavens, and was the ever-moving cause of all things. If there was inman a _passive_ mind, which became all things, as all things throughsensation affected it, there was also, Aristotle argued, a _creative_mind in man, which is above, and unmixed with, that which itapprehends, {208} gives laws to this, is essentially prior to allparticular knowledge, is therefore eternal, not subject to theconditions of time and space, consequently indestructible. 

Finally, as a note on Aristotle's method, one may observe in thispassage, _first_, Aristotle's use of 'defining examples, ' the wax, theleaf and fruit, the axe, the eye, etc. ; _second_, his practice ofdeveloping his distinctions gradually, Form and Matter in the abstract, then in substances of every kind, then in natural bodies, then inorganic bodies of various grades, in separate organs, in the body as awhole, and in the Soul as separable in man; and _thirdly_, his methodof approaching completeness in thought, by apparent contradictions orqualifications, which aim at meeting the complexity of nature by anequally organised complexity of analysis. To this let us simply add, by way of final characterisation, that in the preceding pages we havegiven but the merest fragment here and there of Aristotle's vastaccomplishment. So wide is the range of his ken, so minute hisobservation, so subtle and complicated and allusive his illustrations, that it is doubtful if any student of his, through all the centuries inwhich he has influenced the world, ever found life long enough tofairly and fully grasp him. Meanwhile he retains his grasp upon us. Form and matter, final and efficient causes, potential and actualexistences, {209} substance, accident, difference, genus, species, predication, syllogism, deduction, induction, analogy, and multitudesof other joints in the machinery of thought for all time, were forgedfor us in the workshop of Aristotle. 

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CHAPTER XXI

THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS

_Greek decay--The praises of Lucretius--Canonics--Physics--The proofsof Lucretius--The atomic soul--Mental pleasures--Naturalpleasures--Lower philosophy and higher_

Philosophy, equally complete, equally perfect in all its parts, had itsfinal word in Plato and Aristotle; on the great lines of universalknowledge no further really original structures were destined to beraised by Greek hands. We have seen a parallelism between Greekphilosophy and Greek politics in their earlier phases (see above, p. 82); the same parallelism continues to the end. Greece broke the bondsof her intense but narrow civic life and civic thought, and spreadherself out over the world in a universal monarchy and a cosmopolitanphilosophy; but with this widening of the area of her influencereaction came and disruption and decay; an immense stimulus was givenon the one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thoughtand knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was'living Greece no more, ' her politics sank to the level of a drearyfarce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, toan Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust ofdeath, ' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow andstern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy, faded as the life of Greece decayed. 

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The first phase of the change, _Scepticism_, or Pyrrhonism, as it wasnamed from its first teacher, need not detain us long. Pyrrho waspriest of Elis; in earlier life he accompanied Alexander the Great asfar as India, and is said to have become acquainted with certain of thephilosophic sects in that country. In his sceptical doctrine he had, like his predecessors, a school with its succession of teachers; butthe [358] world has remembered little more of him or them than twophrases 'suspense of judgment'--this for the intellectual side ofphilosophy; 'impassibility'--this for the moral. The doctrine is anegation of doctrine, the idle dream of idle men; even Pyrrho once, when surprised in some sudden access of fear, confessed that it washard for him 'to get rid of the man in himself. ' Vigorous men andgrowing nations are never agnostic. They decline to rest in meresuspense; they are extremely the opposite of impassive; they believeearnestly, they feel strongly. 

[365]

A more interesting, because more positive and constructive, personalitywas that of Epicurus. This philosopher was born at Samos, in the year341 B. C. , of Athenian parents. He came to Athens in his eighteenthyear. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle atthe Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one nor the other. Aftersome wanderings he returned to Athens and set up on his [366] ownaccount as a teacher of philosophy. He made it a matter of boastingthat he was a self-taught philosopher; and Cicero (_De Nat. Deor. _ i. 26) sarcastically remarks that one could have guessed as much, even ifEpicurus had not stated it himself; as one might of the proprietor ofan ugly house, who should boast that he had employed no architect. Thestyle of Epicurus was, in fact, plain and unadorned, but he seems allthe same to have been able to say what he meant; and few if any writersancient or modern have ever had so splendid a literary tribute, asEpicurus had from the great Roman poet Lucretius, his follower andexpositor. 

"Glory of the Greek race, " he says, "who first hadst power to raisehigh so bright a light in the midst of darkness so profound, shedding abeam on all the interests of life, thee do I follow, and in themarkings of thy track do I set my footsteps now. Not that I desire torival thee, but rather for love of thee would fain call myself thydisciple. For how shall the swallow rival the swan, or what speed maythe kid with its tottering limbs attain, compared with the brave mightof the scampering steed? Thou; O father, art the discoverer of nature, thou suppliest to us a father's teachings, and from thy pages, {213}illustrious one, even as bees sip all manner of sweets along theflowery glades, we in like manner devour all thy golden words, goldenand right worthy to live for ever. For soon as thy philosophy, birthof thy godlike mind, hath begun to declare the origin of things, straightway the terrors of the soul are scattered, earth's walls arebroken apart, and through all the void I see nature in the working. Ibehold the gods in manifestation of their power, I discern theirblissful seats, which never winds assail nor rain-clouds sprinkle withtheir showers, nor snow falling white with hoary frost doth buffet, butcloudless aether ever wraps them round, beaming in broad diffusion ofglorious light. For nature supplies their every want nor aught impairstheir peace of soul. But nowhere do I see any regions of hellishdarkness, nor does the earth impose a barrier to our sight of what isdone in the void beneath our feet. Wherefore a holy ecstasy and thrillof awe possess me, while thus by thy power the secrets of nature aredisclosed to view" (Lucret. _De Nat. Rer. _ iii, 1-30). 

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This devotion to the memory of Epicurus on the part of Lucretius wasparalleled by the love felt for him by his contemporaries; he hadcrowds of followers who loved him and who were proud to learn his wordsby heart. He seems indeed to have been a man of exceptional kindnessand amiability, and the 'garden of Epicurus' became proverbial as {214}a place of temperate pleasures and wise delights. Personally we maytake it that Epicurus was a man of simple tastes and moderate desires;and indeed throughout its history Epicureanism as a rule of conduct hasgenerally been associated with the finer forms of enjoyment, ratherthan the more sensual. The 'sensual sty' is a nickname, not adescription. 

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Philosophy Epicurus defined as a process of thought and reasoningtending to the realisation of happiness. Arts or sciences which had nosuch practical end he contemned; and, as will be observed in Lucretius'praises of him above, even physics had but one purpose or interest, tofree the soul from [370] terrors of the unseen. Thus philosophy wasmainly concerned with conduct, _i. E. _ with Ethics, but secondarily andnegatively with Physics, to which was appended what Epicurus calledCanonics, or the science of testing, that is, a kind of logic. 

[371]

Beginning with _Canonics_, as the first part of philosophy in order oftime, from the point of view of human knowledge, Epicurus laid it downthat the only source of knowledge was the senses, which gave us animmediate and true perception of that which actually came into contactwith them. Even the visions of madmen or of dreamers he consideredwere in themselves true, being produced by a physical cause of somekind, of which these visions were the direct and immediate report. Falsity came in with {215} people's interpretations or imaginationswith respect to these sensations. 

Sensations leave a trace in the memory, and out of similarities oranalogies among sensations there are developed in the mind generalnotions or types, such as 'man, ' 'house, ' which are also true, because[373] they are reproductions of sensations. Thirdly, when a sensationoccurs, it is brought into relation in the mind with one or more ofthese types or notions; this is _predication_, true also in so far asits elements are true, but capable of falsehood, as subsequent orindependent sensation may prove. If supported or not contradicted bysensation, it is or may be true; if contradicted or not supported bysensation, it is or may be false. The importance of this statement ofthe canon of truth or falsehood will be understood when we come to thephysics of Epicurus, at the basis of which is his theory of Atoms, which by their very nature can never be directly testified to bysensation. 

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This and no more was what Epicurus had to teach on the subject oflogic. He had no theory of definition, or division, or ratiocination, or refutation, or explication; on all these matters Epicurus was, asCicero said, 'naked and unarmed. ' Like most self-taught or ill-taughtteachers, Epicurus trusted to his dogmas; he knew nothing and carednothing for logical defence. 

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In his _Physics_ Epicurus did little more than reproduce the doctrineof Democritus. He starts from the fundamental proposition that'nothing can be produced from nothing, nothing can really perish. ' Theveritable existences in nature are the Atoms, which are too minute tobe discernible by the senses, but which nevertheless have a definitesize, and cannot further be divided. They have also a definite weightand form, but no qualities other than these. There is an infinity ofempty space; this Epicurus proves on abstract grounds, practicallybecause a limit to space is unthinkable. It follows that there must bean infinite number of the atoms, otherwise they would dispersethroughout the infinite void and disappear. There is a limit, however, to the number of varieties among the atoms in respect of form, size, and weight. The existence of the void space is proved by the fact thatmotion takes place, to which he adds the argument that it necessarilyexists also to separate the atoms one from another. So far Epicurusand Democritus are agreed. 

To the Democritean doctrine, however, Epicurus made a curious addition, to which he himself is said to have attached much importance. Thenatural course (he said) for all bodies having weight is downwards in astraight line. It struck Epicurus that this being so, the atoms wouldall travel for ever in parallel lines, and those 'clashings andinterminglings' of {217} atoms out of which he conceived all visibleforms to be produced, could never occur. He therefore laid it downthat the atoms _deviated_ the least little bit from the straight, thusmaking a world possible. And Epicurus considered that this supposeddeviation of the atoms not only made a world possible, but humanfreedom also. In the deviation, without apparent cause, of thedescending atoms, the law of necessity was broken, and there was roomon the one hand for man's free will, on the other, for prayer to thegods, and for hope of their interference on our behalf. 

It may be worth while summarising the proofs which Lucretius in hisgreat poem, professedly following in the footsteps of Epicurus, adducesfor these various doctrines. 

Epicurus' first dogma is, 'Nothing proceeds from nothing, ' that is, every material object has some matter previously existing exactly equalin quantity to it, out of which it was made. To prove this Lucretiusappeals to the _order of nature_ as seen in the seasons, in thephenomena of growth, in the fixed relations which exist between lifeand its environment as regards what is helpful or harmful, in thelimitation of size and of faculties in the several species and thefixity of the characteristics generally in each, in the possibilitiesof cultivation and improvement of species within certain limits andunder certain conditions. 

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To prove his second position, 'Nothing passes into nothing, ' Lucretiuspoints out to begin with that there is a law even in destruction;_force_ is required to dissolve or dismember anything; were itotherwise the world would have disappeared long ago. Moreover, hepoints out that it is from the elements set free by decay and deaththat new things are built up; there is no waste, no visible lesseningof the resources of nature, whether in the generations of livingthings, in the flow of streams and the fulness of ocean, or in theeternal stars. Were it not so, infinite time past would have exhaustedall the matter in the universe, but Nature is clearly immortal. Moreover, there is a correspondence between the structure of bodies andthe forces necessary to their destruction. Finally, apparentviolations of the law, when carefully examined, only tend to confirmit. The rains no doubt disappear, but it is that their particles mayreappear in the juices of the crops and the trees and the beasts whichfeed on them. 

Nor need we be surprised at the doctrine that the atoms, soall-powerful in the formation of things, are themselves invisible. Thesame is true of the forest-rending blasts, the 'viewless winds' whichlash the waves and overwhelm great fleets. There are odours also thatfloat unseen upon the air; there are heat, and cold, and voices. Thereis the process of evaporation, whereby we know that the water has gone, {219} yet cannot see its vapour departing. There is the gradualinvisible detrition of rings upon the finger, of stones hollowed out bydripping water, of the ploughshare in the field, and the flags upon thestreets, and the brazen statues of the gods whose fingers men kiss asthey pass the gates, and the rocks that the salt sea-brine eats intoalong the shore. 

That there is Empty Space or Void he proves by all the varied motionson land and sea which we behold; by the porosity even of hardestthings, as we see in dripping caves. There is the food also whichdisperses itself throughout the body, in trees and cattle. Voices passthrough closed doors, frost can pierce even to the bones. Things equalin size vary in weight; a lump of wool has more of void in it than alump of lead. So much for Lucretius. 

For abstract theories on physics, except as an adjunct and support tohis moral conceptions, Epicurus seems to have had very littleinclination. He thus speaks of the visible universe or Cosmos. [373]The Cosmos is a sort of skyey enclosure, which holds within it thestars, the earth, and all visible things. It is cut off from theinfinite by a wall of division which may be either rare or dense, inmotion or at rest, round or three-cornered or any other form. Thatthere is such a wall of division is quite admissible, for no object ofwhich we have observation is without its limit. Were this wall ofdivision to {220} break, everything contained within it would tumbleout. We may conceive that there are an infinite number of such Cosmicsystems, with inter-cosmic intervals throughout the infinity of space. 

He is very disinclined to assume that similar phenomena, _e. G. _eclipses of the sun or moon, always have the same cause. The variousaccidental implications and interminglings of the atoms may produce thesame effect in various ways. In fact Epicurus has the same impatienceof theoretical physics as of theoretical philosophy. He is a'practical man. '

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He is getting nearer his object when he comes to the nature of thesoul. The soul, like everything else, is composed of atoms, extremelydelicate and fine. It very much resembles the breath, with a mixtureof heat thrown in, sometimes coming nearer in nature to the first, sometimes to the second. Owing to the delicacy of its composition itis extremely subject to variation, as we see in its passions andliability to emotion, its phases of thought and the varied experienceswithout which we cannot live. It is, moreover, the chief cause ofsensation being possible for us. Not that it could of itself have hadsensation, without the enwrapping support of the rest of the structure. The rest of the structure, in fact, having prepared this chief cause, gets from it a share of what comes to it, but not a share of all whichthe soul has. 

The soul being of material composition equally {221} with the otherportions of the bodily structure, dies of course with it, that is, itsparticles like the rest are dispersed, to form new bodies. There isnothing dreadful therefore about death, for there is nothing left toknow or feel anything about it. 

As regards the process of sensation, Epicurus, like Democritus, conceived bodies as having a power of emitting from their surfaceextremely delicate images of themselves. These are composed of veryfine atoms, but, in spite of their tenuity, they are able to maintainfor a considerable time their relative form and order, though liableafter a time to distortion. They fly with great celerity through thevoid, and find their way through the windows of the senses to the soul, which by its delicacy of nature is in sympathy with them, andapprehends their form. 

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The gods are indestructible, being composed of the very finest andsubtlest atoms, so as to have not a body, but _as it were_ a body. Their life is one of perfect blessedness and peace. They are in numbercountless; but the conceptions of the vulgar are erroneous respectingthem. They are not subject to the passions of humanity. Anger and joyare alike alien to their nature; for all such feelings imply a lack ofstrength. They dwell apart in the inter-cosmic spaces. As Cicerojestingly remarks: "Epicurus by way of a joke introduced his gods sopure that you could see through them, {222} so delicate that the windcould blow through them, having their dwelling-place outside betweentwo worlds, for fear of breakage. "

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Coming finally to Epicurus' theory of Ethics, we find a generalresemblance to the doctrine of Democritus and Aristippus. The end oflife is pleasure or the absence of pain. He differs, however, from theCyrenaics in maintaining that not the pleasure of the moment is theend, but pleasure throughout the whole of life, and that therefore weought in our conduct to have regard to the future. Further he deniesthat pleasure exists only in activity, it exists equally in rest andquiet; in short, he places more emphasis in his definition on theabsence of pain or disturbance, than on the presence of positivepleasure. And thirdly, while the Cyrenaics maintained that bodilypleasures and pains were the keenest, Epicurus claimed thesecharacteristics for the pleasures of the mind, which intensified thepresent feeling by anticipations of the future and recollections of thepast. And thus the wise man might be happy, even on the rack. Betterindeed was it to be unlucky and wise, than lucky and foolish. In asimilar temper Epicurus on his death-bed wrote thus to a friend: "Inthe enjoyment of blessedness and peace, on this the last day of my lifeI write this letter to you. Strangury has supervened, and theextremest agony of internal {223} pains, yet resisting these has beenmy joy of soul, as I recalled the thoughts which I have had in thepast. "

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We must note, however, that while mental pleasures counted for muchwith the Epicureans, these mental pleasures consisted not in thoughtfor thought's sake in any form; they had nothing to do withcontemplation. They were essentially connected with bodilyexperiences; they were the memory of past, the anticipation of future, bodily pleasures. For it is to be remembered that thoughts were withEpicurus only converted sensations, and sensations were bodilyprocesses. Thus every joy of the mind was conditioned by a bodilyexperience preceding it. Or as Metrodorus, Epicurus' disciple, definedthe matter: "A man is happy when his body is in good case, and he hasgood hope that it will continue so. " Directly or indirectly, therefore, every happiness came back, in the rough phrase of Epicurus, to one's belly at last. 

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This theory did not, however, reduce morality to bestialself-indulgence. If profligate pleasures could be had free from mentalapprehensions of another world and of death and pain and disease inthis, and if they brought with them guidance as to their own properrestriction, there would be no reason whatever to blame a man forfilling himself to the full of pleasures, which brought no pain orsorrow, that is, {224} no evil, in their train. But (Epicurus argues)this is far from being the case. Moreover there are many pleasureskeen enough at the time, which are by no means pleasant in theremembering. And even when we have them they bring no enjoyment to thehighest parts of our nature. What those 'highest parts' are, and bywhat standard their relative importance is determined, Epicurus doesnot say. He probably meant those parts of our nature which had thewidest range in space and time, our faculties, namely, of memory andhope, of conception, of sight and hearing. 

Moreover there are distinctions among desires; some are both naturaland compulsory, such as thirst; some are natural but not compulsory, asthe desire for dainties; some are neither natural nor compulsory, suchas the desire for crowns or statues. The last of these the wise manwill contemn, the second he will admit, but so as to retain hisfreedom. For independence of such things is desirable, not necessarilythat we may reduce our wants to a minimum, but in order that if wecannot enjoy many things, we may be content with few. "For I amconvinced, " Epicurus continues, "that they have the greatest enjoymentof wealth, who are least dependent upon it for enjoyment. "

Thus if Epicurus did not absolutely teach simplicity of living, hetaught his disciples the necessity of being capable of such simplicity, which they could {225} hardly be without practice. So that in realitythe doctrine of Epicurus came very near that of his opponents. AsSeneca the Stoic observed, "Pleasure with him comes to be somethingvery thin and pale. In fact that law which we declare for virtue, thesame law he lays down for pleasure. "

One of the chief and highest pleasures of life Epicurus found in thepossession of friends, who provided for each other not only help andprotection, but a lifelong joy. For the 'larger friendship' of thecivic community, Epicurus seems to have had only a very neutral regard. Justice, he says, is a convention of interests, with a view of neitherhurting or being hurt. The wise man will have nothing to do withpolitics, if he can help it. 

In spite of much that may offend in the doctrines of Epicurus, there ismuch at least in the man which is sympathetic and attractive. What oneobserves, however, when we compare such a philosophy with that of Platoor Aristotle, is first, a total loss of constructive imagination. Theparts of the 'philosophy, ' if we are so to call it, of Epicurus hangbadly together, and neither the Canonics nor the Physics show any realfaculty of serious thinking at all. The Ethics has a wider scope and amore real relation to experience if not to reason. But it can neversatisfy the deeper apprehension of mankind. 

The truest and most permanently valid revelations {226} of life comenot to the many but to the one or the few, who communicate the truth tothe many, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, always at the costof antagonism and ridicule. A philosophy therefore which onlyrepresents in theoretical form the average practice of the average man, comes into the world still-born. It has nothing to say; its hearersknow it all, and the exact value of it all, already. And in theirheart of hearts, many even of those who have stooped to a lower ideal, and sold their birthright of hopes beyond the passing hour, for a messof pottage in the form of material success and easy enjoyment, have alurking contempt for the preachers of what they practise; as many aslaveholder in America probably had for the clerical defenders of the'divine institution. '

There is a wasting sense of inadequacy in this 'hand-to-mouth' theoryof living, which compels most of those who follow it to tread softlyand speak moderately. They are generally a little weary if notcynical; they don't think much of themselves or of their success; butthey prefer to hold on as they have begun, rather than launch out intonew courses, which they feel they have not the moral force to continue. "May I die, " said the Cynic, "rather than lead a life of pleasure. ""May I die, " says the Epicurean, "rather than make a fool of myself. "The Idealist is to them, if not {227} a hypocrite, at least avisionary, --if not a Tartuffe, at least a Don Quixote tilting atwindmills. Yet even for poor Don Quixote, with all his blindness andhis follies, the world retains a sneaking admiration. It can spare afew or a good many of its worldly-wisdoms, rather than lose altogetherits enthusiasms and its dreams. And the one thing which savesEpicureanism from utter extinction as a theory, is invariably theidealism which like a 'purple patch' adorns it here and there. No manand no theory is wholly self-centred. Pleasure is supplanted byUtility, and Utility becomes the greatest Happiness of the greatestNumber, and so, as Horace says (_Ep. _ I. X. 24)--

 Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, Nature (like Love) thrust out of the door, will come back by thewindow; and the Idealism which is not allowed to make pain a pleasure, is required at last to translate pleasure into pains. 

{228}

CHAPTER XXII

THE STOICS

_Semitic admixture--Closed fist and open hand--'Tabula rasa'--Necessityof evil--Hymn of Cleanthes--Things indifferent--Ideal andreal--Philosophy and humanity_

Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy (born _circa_ 340B. C. ), was a native of Citium in Cyprus. The city was Greek, but witha large Phoenician admixture. And it is curious that in this last andsternest phase of Greek thought, not the founder only, but a largeproportion of the successive leaders of the school, came from this andother places having Semitic elements in them. Among these placesnotable as nurseries of Stoicism was Tarsus in Cilicia, the birthplaceof St. Paul. The times of preparation were drawing to a close; andthrough these men, with their Eastern intensity and capacities ofself-searching and self-abasement, the philosophy of Greece was linkingitself on to the wisdom of the Hebrews. 

Zeno came to Athens to study philosophy, and for twenty years he was apupil first of Crates the Cynic, and then of other teachers. At lengthhe set up a school of his own in the celebrated _Stoa {229} Poecile_(Painted Colonnade), so named because it was adorned with frescoes byPolygnotus. There he taught for nearly sixty years, and voluntarilyended his life when close on a century old. His life, as Antigonus, King of Macedon, recorded on his tomb, was consistent with hisdoctrine--abstemious, [386] frugal, laborious, dutiful. He wassucceeded by Cleanthes, a native of Assos in Asia [387] Minor. But thegreat constructor of the Stoic doctrine, without whom, as hiscontemporaries said, there had been no Stoic school at all, wasChrysippus, a native of Soli or of Tarsus in Cilicia. He wrote atenormous length, supporting his teachings by an immense erudition, andculling liberally from the poets to illustrate and enforce his views. Learned and pedantic, his works had no inherent attraction, and nothingof them but fragments has been preserved. We know the Stoic doctrinemainly from the testimony and criticisms of later times. 

[389]

Like the Epicureans, Zeno and his successors made philosophy primarilya search for the chief good, a doctrine of practice and morals. Butlike them they were impelled to admit a logic and a physics, at leastby way of preliminary basis to their [390] ethics. The relations ofthe three they illustrated by various images. Philosophy was like ananimal; logic was its bones and sinews, ethics its flesh, physics itslife or soul. Or again, philosophy was {230} an egg; logic was theshell, ethics the white, physics, the yolk. Or again, it was afruitful field; logic was the hedge, ethics the crop, physics the soil. Or it was a city, well ordered and strongly fortified, and so on. Theimages seem somewhat confused, but the general idea is clear enough. Morality was the essential, the living body, of philosophy; physicssupplied its raw material, or the conditions under which a moral lifecould be lived; logic secured that we should use that material rightlyand wisely for the end desired. 

[391]

Logic the Stoics divided into two parts--Rhetoric, the 'science of theopen hand, ' and Dialectic, the 'science of the closed fist, ' as Zenocalled them. They indulged in elaborate divisions and subdivisions ofeach, with which we need not meddle. The only points of interest to usare contained in their analysis [392] of the processes of perceptionand thought. A sensation, Zeno taught, was the result of an external_impulse_, which when combined with an internal _assent_, produced amental state that revealed at the same time itself and the externalobject producing it. The perception thus produced he compared to thegrip which the hand took of a solid object; and real perceptions, those, that is, which were caused by a real external object, and not bysome illusion, always testified to the reality of their cause by thissensation of 'grip. '

{231}

The internal assent of the mind was voluntary, and at the same timenecessary; for the mind could not do otherwise than will the acceptanceof that which it was fitted to receive. The peculiarity of theirphysics, which we shall have to refer to later on, namely, the denialof the existence of anything not material, implied that in some waythere was a material action of the external object on the structure ofthe perceiving mind (itself also material). What exactly the nature ofthis action was the Stoics themselves were not quite agreed. The ideaof an 'impression' such as a seal makes upon wax was a tempting one, but they had difficulty in comprehending how there could be a multitudeof different impressions on the same spot without effacing each other. Some therefore preferred the vaguer and safer expression, 'modification'; had they possessed our modern science, they might haveillustrated their meaning by reference to the phenomena of magnetism orelectricity. 

An interesting passage may be quoted from [393] Plutarch on the Stoicdoctrine of knowledge: "The Stoics maintain, " he says, "that when ahuman being is born, he has the governing part of his soul like a sheetof paper ready prepared for the reception of writing, and on this thesoul inscribes in succession its various ideas. The first form of thewriting is produced through the senses. When we perceive, for example, {232} a white object, the recollection remains when the object is gone. And when many similar recollections have accumulated, we have what iscalled _experience_. Besides the ideas which we get in this naturaland quite undesigned way, there are other ideas which we get throughteaching and information. In the strict sense only these latter oughtto be called ideas; the former should rather be called perceptions. Now the rational faculty, in virtue of which we are called reasoningbeings, is developed out of, or over and beyond, the mass ofperceptions, in the second seven years' period of life. In fact athought may be defined as a kind of mental image, such as a rationalanimal alone is capable of having. "

Thus there are various gradations of mental apprehensions; first, thoseof sensible qualities obtained through the action of the objects andthe assent of the perceiving subject, as already described; then byexperience, by comparison, by analogy, by the combinations of thereasoning faculty, further and more general notions are arrived at, andconclusions formed, as, for example, that the gods exist and exercise aprovidential care over the world. By this faculty also the wise manascends to the apprehension of the good and true. 

The physics of the Stoics started from the fundamental [398]proposition that in the universe of things there were two elements--theactive and the passive. {233} The latter was Matter or unqualifiedexistence; the former was the reason or qualifying element in Matter, that is, God, who being eternal, is the fashioner of every individualthing throughout the universe of matter. God is One; He is Reason, andFate, and Zeus. In fact all the gods are only various representationsof His faculties and powers. He being from the beginning of things byHimself, turneth all existence through air to water. And even as thegenital seed is enclosed in the semen, so also was the seed of theworld concealed in the water, making its matter apt for the furtherbirth of things; then first it brought into being the fourelements--fire, water, air, earth. For there was a finer fire or airwhich was the moving spirit of things; later and lower than this werethe material elements of fire and air. It follows that the universe ofthings is threefold; there is first God Himself, the source of allcharacter and individuality, who is indestructible and eternal, thefashioner of all things, who in certain cycles of ages gathers up allthings into Himself, and then out of Himself brings them again tobirth; there is the matter of the universe whereon God works; andthirdly, there is the union of the two. Thus the world is governed byreason and forethought, and this reason extends through every part, even as the soul or life extends to every part of us. The universetherefore is a living thing, having a {234} soul or reason in it. Thissoul or reason one teacher likened to the air, another to the sky, another to the sun. For the soul of nature is, as it were, a finer airor fire, having a power of creation in it, and moving in an ordered wayto the production of things. 

[399]

The universe is one and of limited extension, being spherical in form, for this is the form which best adapts itself to movement. Outsidethis universe is infinite bodiless space; but within the universe thereis no empty part; all is continuous and united, as is proved by theharmony of relation which exists between the heavenly bodies and thoseupon the earth. The world as such is destructible, for its parts aresubject to change and to decay; yet is this change or destruction onlyin respect of the qualities imposed upon it from time to time by theReason inherent in it; the mere unqualified Matter remainsindestructible. 

[408]

In the universe evil of necessity exists; for evil being the oppositeof good, where no evil is there no good can be. For just as in acomedy there are absurdities, which are in themselves bad, but yet adda certain attraction to the poem as a whole, so also one may blame evilregarded in itself, yet for the whole it is not without its use. Soalso God is the cause of death equally with birth; for even as citieswhen the inhabitants have multiplied overmuch, {235} remove theirsuperfluous members by colonisation or by war, so also is God a causeof destruction. In man in like manner good cannot exist save withevil; for wisdom being a knowledge of good and evil, remove the eviland wisdom itself goes. Disease and other natural evils, when lookedat in the light of their effects, are means not of evil but of good;there is throughout the universe a balance and interrelation of goodand evil. Not that God hath in Himself any evil; the law is not thecause of lawlessness, nor God Himself responsible for any violation ofright. 

[404]

The Stoics indulged in a strange fancy that the world reverted after amighty cycle of years in all its parts to the same form and structurewhich it possessed at the beginning, so that there would be once more aSocrates, a Plato, and all the men that had lived, each with the samefriends and fellow-citizens, the same experiences, and the sameendeavours. At the termination of each cycle there was a burning up ofall things, and thereafter a renewal of the great round of life. 

[408]

Nothing incorporeal, they maintained, can be affected by or affect thatwhich is corporeal; body alone can affect body. The soul thereforemust be corporeal. Death is the separation of soul from body, but itis impossible to separate what is incorporeal from body; therefore, again, the soul must {236} be corporeal. In the belief of Cleanthes, the souls of all creatures remained to the next period of cyclicconflagration; Chrysippus believed that only the souls of the wise andgood remained. 

[413]

Coming finally to the Ethics of the Stoic philosophy, we find for thechief end of life this definition, 'A life consistent with itself, ' or, as it was otherwise expressed, 'A life consistent with Nature. ' Thetwo definitions are really identical; for the law of nature is the lawof our nature, and the reason in our being the reason which also is inGod, the supreme Ruler of the universe. This is substantially inaccordance with the celebrated law of right action laid down by Kant, "Act so that the maxim of thine action be capable of being made a lawof universal action. " Whether a man act thus or no, by evil if not bygood the eternal law will satisfy itself; the question is of importonly for the man's own happiness. Let his will accord with theuniversal will, then the law will be fulfilled, and the man will behappy. Let his will resist the universal will, then the law will befulfilled, but the man will bear the penalty. This was expressed byCleanthes in a hymn which ran somewhat thus--

 Lead me, O Zeus most great, And thou, Eternal Fate: What way soe'er thy will doth bid me travel That way I'll follow without fret or cavil. {237} Or if I evil be And spurn thy high decree, Even so I still shall follow, soon or late. 

Thus in the will alone consists the difference of good or ill for us;in either case Nature's great law fulfils itself infallibly. To theirview on this point we may apply the words of Hamlet: "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be notnow, yet it will come; the _readiness_ is all. "

This universal law expresses itself in us in various successivemanifestations. From the moment of birth it implants in us a supremeself-affection, whereby of infallible instinct we seek our ownself-preservation, rejoice in that which is suitable to our existence, shrink from that which is unsuitable. As we grow older, further andhigher principles manifest themselves--reason and reflection, a moreand more careful and complete apprehension of that which is honourableand advantageous, a capacity of choice among goods. Till finally thesurpassing glory of that which is just and honourable shines out soclear upon us, that any pain or loss is esteemed of no account, if onlywe may attain to that. Thus at last, by the very law of our being, wecome to know that nothing is truly and absolutely good but goodness, nothing absolutely bad but sin. Other things, inasmuch as they have nocharacter of moral good {238} or moral evil, cannot be deemed reallygood or bad; in comparison with the absolutely good, they are thingsindifferent, though in comparison with each other they may berelatively preferable or relatively undesirable. Even pleasure andpain, so far as concerns the absolute end or happiness of our being, are things indifferent; we cannot call them either good or evil. Yethave they a relation to the higher law, for the consciousness of themwas so implanted in us at the first that our souls by natural impulseare drawn to pleasure, while they shrink from pain as from a deadlyenemy. Wherefore reason neither can nor ought to seek wholly toeradicate these primitive and deep-seated affections of our nature; butso to exercise a resisting and ordering influence upon them, as torender them obedient and subservient to herself. 

[415]

That which is absolutely good--wisdom, righteousness, courage, temperance--does good only and never ill to us. All otherthings, --life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, reputation, birth, --and their opposites, --death, disease, pain, deformity, weakness, poverty, contempt, humility of station, --these are inthemselves neither a benefit nor a curse. They may do us good, theymay do us harm. We may use them for good, we may use them for evil. 

[417]

Thus the Stoics worked out on ideal and absolute lines the thought ofrighteousness as the chief and {239} only good. Across this idealpicture were continually being drawn by opponents without or inquirerswithin, clouds of difficulty drawn from real experience. 'What, ' itwas asked, 'of _progress_ in goodness? Is this a middle state betweengood and evil; or if a middle state between good and evil be acontradiction, in terms, how may we characterise it?' Here the wiserteachers had to be content to answer that it _tended_ towards good, wasgood in possibility, would be absolutely good when the full attainmentcame, and the straining after right had been swallowed up in theperfect calm of settled virtue. 

'How also of the wise man tormented by pain, or in hunger and povertyand rags, is his perfectness of wisdom and goodness really sufficientto make him happy?' Here, again, the answer had to be hesitating andprovisional, through no fault of the Stoics. In this world, while weare still under the strange dominion of time and circumstance, theideal can never wholly fit the real. There must still be difficultyand incompleteness here, only to be solved and perfected 'when iniquityshall have an end. ' Our eyes may fail with looking upward, yet theupward look is well; and the jibes upon the Stoic 'king in rags' thatHorace and others were so fond of, do not affect the question. It mayhave been, and probably often was, the case that Stoic teachers {240}were apt to transfer to themselves personally the ideal attributes, which they justly assigned to the ideal man in whom wisdom wasperfected. The doctrine gave much scope for cant and mental pride andhypocrisy, as every ideal doctrine does, including the Christian. Butthe existence of these vices in individuals no more affected thedoctrine of an ideal goodness in its Stoic form, than it does now inits Christian one. That only the good man is truly wise or free orhappy; that vice, however lavishly it surround itself with luxury andease and power, is inherently wretched and foolish and slavish;--theseare things which are worth saying and worth believing, things, indeed, which the world dare not and cannot permanently disbelieve, howeverdifficult or even impossible it may be to mark men off into twoclasses, the good and the bad, however strange the irony ofcircumstance which so often shows the wicked who 'are not troubled asother men, neither are they plagued like other men; they have more thantheir heart could wish, ' while good men battle with adversity, often invain. Still will the permanent, fruitful, progressive faith of man'look to the end'; still will the ideal be powerful to plead for thepainful right, and spoil, even in the tasting, the pleasant wrong. 

The doctrine, of course, like every doctrine worth anything, was pushedto extravagant lengths, and {241} thrust into inappropriate quarters, by foolish doctrinaires. As that the wise man is the only orator, critic, poet, physician, nay, cobbler if you please; that the wise manknows all that is to be known, and can do everything that is worthdoing, and so on. The school was often too academic, too abstract, toofond of hearing itself talk. This, alas! is what most schools are, andmost schoolmasters. 

Yet the Stoics were not altogether alien to the ordinary interests andduties of life. They admitted a duty of co-operating in politics, atleast in such states as showed some desire for, or approach to, virtue. They approved of the wise man taking part in education, of his marryingand bringing up children, both for his own sake and his country's. Hewill be ready even to 'withdraw himself from life on behalf of hiscountry or his friends. This 'withdrawal, ' which was their word forsuicide, came unhappily to be much in the mouths of later, andespecially of the Roman, Stoics, who, in the sadness and restraint ofprevailing despotism, came to thank God that no one was compelled toremain in life; he might 'withdraw' when the burden of life, thehopelessness of useful activity, became too great. 

With this sad, stern, yet not undignified note, the philosophy ofGreece speaks its last word. The later scepticism of the New Academy, directed mainly to a negative criticism of the crude enough logic ofthe {242} Stoics, or of the extravagances of their ethical doctrine, contributed no substantial element to thought or morals. As aneclectic system it had much vogue, side by side with Stoicism andEpicureanism, among the Romans, having as its chief exponent Cicero, asEpicureanism had Lucretius, and Stoicism, Seneca. 

The common characteristic of all these systems in their laterdevelopments, is their _cosmopolitanism_. _Homo sum, nil humani a mealienum puto_, 'I am a man; nothing appertaining to humanity do I deemalien from myself, ' this was the true keynote of whatever was vital inany of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. We have seenalready (p. 82) how the chaos of sophistic doctrine was largelyconditioned, if not produced, by the breakdown of the old civic life ofGreece. The process hardly suffered delay from all the efforts ofSocrates and Plato. Cosmopolitanism was already a point of unionbetween the Cynics and Cyrenaics (see p. 128). And the march ofpolitics was always tending in the same direction. First through greatleagues, such as the Spartan or Athenian or Theban, each with apredominant or tyrannical city at the head; then later through theconquest of Greece by Alexander, and the leaguing of all Greek-speakingpeoples in the great invasion of Asia; then through the spread of Greekletters all over the Eastern {243} world, and the influx upon Greekcentres such as Athens and Alexandria, of all manner of foreignintelligences; and finally, through the conquest of all this teemingworld of culture by the discipline and practical ability of Rome, andits incorporation in a universal empire of law, all the barriers whichhad divided city from city and tribe from tribe and race from racedisappeared, and only a common humanity remained. 

The only effective philosophies for such a community were those whichregarded man as an _individual_, with a world politically omnipotenthedging him about, and driving him in upon himself. Thus the NewAcademy enlarged on the doubtfulness of all beyond the individualconsciousness; Stoicism insisted on individual dutifulness, Epicureanism on individual self-satisfaction. The first sought to makelife worth living through culture, the second through indifference, thethird through a moderate enjoyment. But all alike felt themselves veryhelpless in face of the growing sadness of life, in face of thedeepening mystery of the world beyond. All alike were controversial, and quick enough to ridicule their rivals; none was hopefullyconstructive, or (unless in the poetic enthusiasm of a Lucretius) veryconfident of the adequacy of its own conceptions. They all ratherquickened the sense of emptiness in human existence, than satisfied it;{244} at the best they enabled men to "absent themselves a little whilefrom the felicity of death. "

Thus all over the wide area of Greek and Roman civilisation, theactivity of the later schools was effectual to familiarise humanitywith the language of philosophy, and to convince humanity of theinadequacy of its results. Both of these things the Greeks taught toSaul of Tarsus; at a higher Source he found the satisfying of his soul;but from the Greek philosophies he learned the language through whichthe new Revelation was to be taught in the great world of Roman ruleand Grecian culture. And thus through the Pauline theology, Greekphilosophy had its part in the moral regeneration of the world; as ithas had, in later times, in every emancipation and renascence of itsthought. 

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INDEX

Abdera, birthplace of Democritus, 74; of Protagoras, 86

Absolute knowledge, unattainable by man, 19; absorption in, 133; noseparate existence, 182

Abstract ideas not derivable from experience, 45; abstract truthimpossible, 87; of no value, 132; revival of, 133

Academus, grove of, 135

Achilles and tortoise, 44; death of, 139

Acroatic, kind of lectures, 175

Actuality, see _Realisation_. 

Agrigentum, birthplace of Empedocles, 59

Air, beginning of things, 14

Alcestis, referred to, 139

Alcibiades, dialogue, 137

Alexander, relations with Aristotle, 174; influence of conquests of, 242

Anarchy, in politics and in philosophy, 83; reaction against, bySocrates, 102

Anaxagoras, 52; relation of Empedocles to, 62; quoted by Aristotle, 200

Anaximander, 7

Anaximenes, 14

Anthropomorphism, criticised, 32

Antigonus, friend of Zeno, 229

Antisthenes, 128

Apology, dialogue, 136

Appetite, the only reality, 96

Archilochus, criticised by Heraclitus, 16

Aristippus, 124

Aristocracy, in politics and in philosophy, 82

Aristotle, on Thales, 4; on Xenophanes, 32; on Zeno, 42; on Melissus, 47; on Anaxagoras, 54; on Empedocles, 59, 63, 70; a complete Socratic, 103; on Socrates, 106; on Sophists, 115; debt to Plato, 159; on Plato, 163; chapters on, 172 _sqq. _; his fresh contributions to Academicphilosophy, 173; two classes of lectures, 175; library, _ib. _;predominance of, 176; style, 177; differences from Plato, 178

Art, a greater revealer than science, 66; relation of Love to, 137; amode of creation, 139

Asceticism, of Cynics, 128; of Plato, 168; of Epicurus, 225

Atarneus, residence of Aristotle, 174

Athens, visited by Parmenides and Zeno, 34, 42, 157; residence ofAnaxagoras, 52; centre of sophistry, 85; birthplace of Socrates, 103;visited by Aristippus, 124; birthplace of Antisthenes, 129; and ofPlato, 134; dialogue in praise of, 137; residence of Aristotle, 173; ofEpicurus, 211

Atlantis, kingdom of, 153

Atomists, 52; revived theory of, 215

Atoms, constituents of nature, 76, 216; deviation of, 216

Beauty, one aspect of ideal, 110; relation to creative instinct, 139;science of universal beauty, 141

Becoming, the fundamental principle, 16; passage from Being to, 36, 39

Beginning (_arche_), of Thales, 3; Aristotle's definition, 4;difficulties of material theories of, 36l

Being, eternal being like a sphere, 32; passage from, to Becoming, 36, 39; a co-equal element with Nonentity, 75; analysis of, 159; and theOther, 165

Body, realisation of soul, 27; a prison, 28; unthinkable except withreference to space, 75; source of illusion, 164

Canonics, form of logic, 215

Cause, three causes, 110; equals essence, 167; first causes subject ofphilosophy, 179; relation of, to potentiality, 185

Cave, of this life, 148, 166

Chaldaea, visited by Pythagoras, 22; by Democritus, 74

Change, how account for, 10, 35, 39, 75

Chaos, of the Atomists, 53; of Empedocles, 69; king in philosophy, 83;life not a chaos, 105

Charmides, dialogue, 136

Christ, brings sword, 99; kingdom of, 149

Chrysippus, successor of Cleanthes, 229

Cicero, mistranslates Pythagoras, 28; criticises Epicurus, 212, 221;exponent of New Academy, 242

Citium, birthplace of Zeno, 228

Clazomenae, birthplace of Anaxagoras, 52

Cleanthes, successor of Zeno, 229; hymn of, 236

Codrus, Plato descended from, 134; sacrifice of, 139

Colophon, birthplace of Xenophanes, 31

Commonplaces, function of, in sophistry, 84

Community of wives, 148; ideal community, 149 (and see _State_)

Contradiction, philosophy of, 65

Cosmogony, of Democritus, 77; of Plato, 150; of Aristotle, 200; ofEpicurus, 219; of the Stoics, 231

Cosmopolitanism, of Cyrenaics and Cynics, 128; of later systems, 242

Courage, treated of in _Laches_, 136

Cratylus, dialogue, 137

Creation, a great expiation, 73; in the soul, 139; working out of God'simage, 151; union of Essence and Matter, 167

Criterion, feeling the only, 127

Critias, dialogue, 153

Crito, dialogue, 136

Crux, in philosophy, 190

Cynic, origin of name, 130; influence of school on Plato, 154; _v. _Epicurean, 226

Cyrene, seat of Cyrenaic school, 124; visited by Plato, 134; influenceof school on Plato, 154

Death, birth of the soul, 19

Deduction, _v. _ Induction, 48; function of, in Aristotle, 184

Definitions, search for, by Socrates, 106; of no value, 132; rules for, laid down by Plato, 156

Democritus, 74; relation of Epicurus to, 216

Demonstrative science, based on abstraction, 11

Desire, part of soul, 28, 169; thought without, gives no motive, 191;distinctions among, 224

Destruction, meaning of, 53

Dialectic, Parmenides founder of, 39; Zeno inventor of, 42; Platonictheory of, 164, 171

Dichotomy, invented by Zeno, 43

Difference (see _Essence_), all difference quantitative, 76;conditioned by dissimilarity in atoms, 77

Dilemma, Melissus' use of, 46

Diogenes, pupil of Antisthenes, 130

Dionysius, elder and younger, connection of Plato with, 135

Diotima, conversation of, with Socrates, 137

Dry light, 19

Dualism, unthinkable, 32; in nature, 38; of Plato and Aristotle, 184

Dynamic, see _Potentiality_

Earth, principle in nature, 38

Education, preparation for heaven, 148; ideal, 149; true function of, 169; three stages, 170; an entelechy, 191

Egypt, visited by Pythagoras, 22; Democritus, 74; Plato, 135

Elea, seat of Eleatic school, 30; birthplace of Parmenides, 33

Eleatics, relation of Empedocles to, 62; of Democritus, 75; of Plato, 154, 165

Elements, the four, 62; in creation, 151; in body and in soul, 156

Empedocles, 58

Ends of Life, indifference as to, 96; importance in later Greekphilosophy, 125; Plato's view of, 168; Aristotle's, 193; Epicurean, 222

Entelechy, Life, 186, 190; God, 188; Thought, _ib. _; Education, 191;Morality, 193; State, 197; physical world, 199; Soul, 203

Ephesus, birthplace of Heraclitus, 15

Epicurus, 211; praises of, by Lucretius, 212; garden of, 213; relationto Democritus, 216

Essence _v. _ Difference, 48; equals Cause, 167

Euclides, 132

Euripides, friend of Anaxagoras, 52

Euthydemus, conversation with Socrates, 116; dialogue, 137

Euthyphro, dialogue, 136

Even, _v. _ Odd, 24

Evil, origin of, 33; necessary on earth, 168; God cause of evil, buthath none, 234

Evolution, Anaximander's conception of, 12; Xenophanes' theory of, 33;relation of, to fundamental conception of Being, _ib. _; view ofEmpedocles, 70

Existence, an idea prior to Time and Space, 37; not given byExperience, 45; four forms of, 166; philosophy treats of existence assuch, 181

Exoteric kind of lectures, 175

Female, see _Male_

Fire, original of things, 17; one of two principles, 38

Flux, of all things, 16; of life, 27, 73; sophistic theory of, 87

Form _v. _ Matter, 25, 48; Aristotle's theory of, 203

Formulae, never adequate, 122

Freewill, problem of, 33; relation to law, 113; and overrulingprovidence, 155

Friendship, treated of in _Lysis_, 136

Genus, has less of existence than species, 183

God, soul of the world, 27; the Odd-Even, 26; the universe Hisself-picturing, 26; God is one, 32; not a function of matter, 33;atomic origin of idea of, 80; the law or ideal in the universe, 112;Man the friend of God, 142; works out His image in creation, 151; God'sthought and God's working, 152; is Mind universal, 164; cause of unionin creation, 166; His visible images in Man and Nature, _ib. _; causeboth of good and of knowledge, 166; thoughts of, eternally existing, 187; an entelechy, 188; Epicurean theory of, 221; Stoic theory of, 233

Golden age, 73

Gorgias, 92; Antisthenes pupil of, 129; dialogue, 137

Greek _v. _ Modern difficulties, 158

Gymnastic, function of, 170

Habit, Aristotle's definition of, 195

Happiness, chief good, 193; reason standard of, 196

Harmony, the eternal, 19; soul a harmony, 29

Hecataeus, referred to by Herodotus, 2

Hegel, philosophic system of, 159

Heraclitus, 15; _v. _ Democritus, 74; Plato student of, 134; relation ofPlato to, 163

Hercules, patron-god of Cynics, 130

Herodotus, notices Hecataeus, 2

Hesiod, praised, 139

Hippias, dialogue, 137

Homer, criticised by Heraclitus, 16; anthropomorphism of, 31; praised, 139

Horace, quoted, 125

Humanitarianism, began in scepticism, 99

Humanity, granted only to possessors of eternal truth, 145

Husk, symbol of evolution, 12

Idea, exists prior to sensation, 143; eternal in universe, 150;rational element in sensation, 152; Platonic criticism of, 157;universals are ideas of real existences, 163; things partake of, 164;relation of, to Pythagorean 'Numbers, ' 167; Aristotelian criticism of, 181; necessarily prior to sensation, 187

Ideal, struggle of old and new, 99; in the arts, 110; has threeaspects, Justice, Beauty, Utility, _ib. _; great ideal in the universe, 112; can never wholly fit the real, 239

Idealism, _v. _ Practicality, 4, 96; Parmenides founder of, 39; _v. _Realism, 51; _v. _ Epicureanism, 216

Immortality, aspect of, to Greeks, 40; Parmenides pioneer for, 41;_Phaedo_ dialogue on, 136; Love and immortality, 138; of soul, 150;relation of doctrine to Platonic recollection, 154; faith as to, 155;Man must put on, 168; Aristotle's view of, 207

Inconsistency, not forbidden in philosophy, 64

Individual, _v. _ Universal, 99; relation of, to community, 147, 196;reality of, 184; importance of, in later systems, 243

Individualism, in philosophy, 83, 85; not wholly bad, 98; requiredreconciling with universalism, 100

Induction (see Deduction); Socrates inventor of, 106; Plato'scontributions to, 160; function of, in Aristotle, 184

Infinite or indefinite, origin of things, 8; function of, inmathematics, 10; relation to definite, 24, 26, 165

Infinity, origin of idea of, 46

Intellect, division of soul, 28, 169

Ion, dialogue, 136

Irony, of Socrates, 105

Jowett, Prof. , quoted, 39, 43, 89, 138, 142, 153, 158

Judgment, vision of, 150

Justice, a cheating device, 95; one form of ideal or universal, 110;related to law and to utility, 120; the fairest wisdom, 139; dialogueon, 146; only interest of stronger, 147; writ large in state, 147;perfection of whole man, and of state, 169; a civic qualityrestraining, 198; Epicurean theory of, 225

Kant, his _Critic_ referred to, 158; maxim of, 236

Knowledge, _v. _ Opinion, 33, 35, 51; impossible, 93; really exists, 164; first causes pertain to, 179; must have real object, 183;potential and actual, 203

'Know thyself, ' 113; dialogue on, 137

Laches, dialogue, 136

Lampsacus, place of death of Anaxagoras, 57

Laughing philosopher, 74

Law, in universe, 112; relation to Freewill, 113; relation to Justice, 120; fulfilled through Love, 122; Laws, dialogue, 160; potential andactual, 192

Leontini, birthplace of Gorgias, 92

Leucippus, 74

Life, death of the soul, 19; a prison, 28; a sentinel-post, _ib. _; aunion of contradictories, 66; a dwelling in cave, 148; organic idea of, 185; an entelechy, 190; different kinds of, 194; Aristotle'sdefinition, 203

Listeners, in Pythagorean system, 23

Logic, Parmenides founder of, 39; Zeno inventor of, 42; contributionsof Plato and Aristotle to, 159; governing idea of Aristotle's, 184; ofEpicurus, 215; Stoic divisions of, 230

Love, motive force in Nature, 38; one of two principles, 38, 63;fulfilling of the law, 122; dialogues on, 137, 144; pure and impure, 145

Lucretius, praises Empedocles, 59; Epicurus, 212; proofs by, ofEpicurus' theory, 217; exponent of Roman Epicureanism, 242

Lyceum, school of Aristotle, 174

Lycurgus, praised, 140

Lysis, dialogue, 136

Magnet, soul of, 6

Male and Female, Pythagorean view of, 24; principles in Nature, 38;equality of, 148; correlative, 167; basis of State, 197

Man, measure of truth, 87; working with Eternal Mind, 155; Does Manpartake in God's ideas? 158; differentia of, possession of reason, 191;function of, 193; a political animal, 197; wisest of animals, why? 200

Materialism, ancient and modern, 57; of Epicureans, 220; of Stoics, 233

Mathematicians, in system of Pythagoras, 23

Mathematics, based on indefinables, 10; function of, in Pythagoreanphilosophy, 25; and in Platonic, 170

Matter (see _Mind_), _v. _ Thought, 48; another name for the formless, 151, 167; correlative of Mind, 167; what it symbolises, 184; relationto Form, 203

Mechanical theory, of universe, 56, 78; of virtue, 195

Megara, birthplace of Euclides, 132; influence of school on Plato, 154

Melissus, 46

Menexenus, dialogue, 137

Meno, dialogue, 136; relation to Aristotle's doctrine, 191

Midwifery of Socrates, 104

Might, without Right is weak, 147; is Right in tyrant, 149

Miletus, birthplace of Thales, 1; of Anaximander, 7; of Anaximenes, 14

Mind, _v. _ Matter, 51, 167; function of, in the universe, 54; God'smind working on matter, 151; ruler of universe, 155; must rulepleasure, 156; home of ideas, 164; correlative of matter, 167; passiveand creative, 207

Moist or base element, 18

Monarchy, in politics and in philosophy, 82

Morality, a convention, 95, 126; traditional morality of Greecerequired remodelling, 98; question as to origin solved by Socrates, 121; can never exhaust Subject, 188; an entelechy, 192; potential andactual, 194

Motion, animal, how accounted for, 79

Multiplicity, see _Unity_

Music, of the spheres, 27; of seven planets, 151; function of, ineducation, 29, 170

Myth, of Steeds, 144; of Judgment, 150; of Creation, 152; philosophersfond of, 178

Names, approximations to reality, 165

Nature, treatises on, 16, 34, 46, 217; a reason in, 37; male and femaleprinciples in, 38; Love motive force in, _ib. _; the non-existent, 92;'touch of nature, ' 191; Aristotle's conception of, 199; violations of, 201; order of, 217; clearly immortal, 218; a life consistent with, 236

Necessity, creative power, 38, 63; how used by Democritus, 78;Aristotle's conception of, 201

Neleus, family (owners of Aristotle's library), 175

Nicomachus, father of Aristotle, 172

Notions, Epicurus' view of, 215

Number, original of things, 24; relation of ideas to, 167

Obedience, through disobedience, 122

Obscure, epithet of Heraclitus, 15

Odd, _v. _ Even, 24

Opinion, _v. _ Knowledge, 33, 35

Oracle, answer of, respecting Socrates, 107; maxim engraved on, 113

Organism, idea of, in Aristotle, 185, 205

Organon, of Aristotle, 159

Origination, meaning of, 53, 62

Other, the 'Other' of Plato, 165

Pains, classification of, 131; converted into pleasures, 131, 227;moral function of, 238

Pantheistic apathy, 20

Parmenides, 33; relation of Zeno to, 42; visited Athens, 157; dialogue, _ib. _

Particular, see _Universal_

Passion, part of soul, 28, 169

Paul, St. , influence of Stoicism on, 228; relation of, to Greekphilosophy, 244

Pericles, friend of Anaxagoras, 52; and of Protagoras, 86

Peripatetics, origin of name, 174

Personality, absence of, in Greek thought, 40

Persuasion, only true wisdom, 88

Phaedo, quoted from, 54; dialogue, 136

Phaedrus, dialogue, 142

Phenomena, not source of abstract ideas, 15

Philebus, dialogue, 156

Philosophy, different from science, 9; does not forbid inconsistency, 64; a form of poesy or fiction, 66; at the basis of religion, art, andmorals, 67; great philosophies never die, 68; first systematicallydivided by Democritus, 75; relation to politics, 82, 97; paradox of, 100; crisis of, _ib. _; of nature and of moral, 101; a means of socialculture, 125; relation of Love to, 137; must rule on earth, 149; onlymakes happy guesses in science, 152; origin of, 178; investigates firstcauses, 179; crux in, 190; Epicurus' definition of, 214; a search forchief good, 229

Plato, criticism of Protagoras, 89; a _complete_ Socratic, 103: tookrefuge with Euclides, 132, 134; compared to Shakespeare, 134; aspsychologist, 155; central doctrines of, 155; dogma impossible, 162;Aristotle on, 163; relation to Heraclitus, _ib. _; and to the Eleatics, 165; relation of Aristotle to, 178, 181; his mistake as to universals, 182

Pleasure, end of life, 126; contempt of, 131; reason gives law to, 149;is it chief good? 156; Epicurean theory of, 222; moral function of, 238

Politics, relation to philosophy, 82, 97; influence of sophistry upon, 88

Politicus, see _Statesman_

Potentiality (Dynamic idea), how used by Aristotle, 185; of feeling, 195; equals matter, 203

Practicality, _v. _ Idealism, 4

Predication, Epicurus' view of, 215

Propositions, _v. _ Things, 189

Protagoras, 85; Plato's criticism of, 89; dialogue, 136

Protoplasm, explains nothing, 37

Punishment, Sophistic theory of, 88

Pyrrho, founder of Scepticism, 211

Pythagoras, 23

Quinta Essentia, origin of, 202

Quixote, the world admires, 227

Realisation (Actuality), correlative of potentiality, 185; relation toPlato's Recollection, 188; chief good, 194

Reality, standard of, 40, 51; distinction between, and appearance, abolished, 83, 87; no necessary relation between thought and reality, 94; the only reality appetite, 96; thoughts of God the only reality, 164; approximations to, 165; ideal can never wholly fit, 239

Reason, function of, 37, 56; corrector of the senses, 61; governsevolution, 70; worse made to appear better, 84; realises itself throughindividuals, 114; gives law to pleasure, 149, 156; man possesses, 191;actual and latent, 192; partly obedient, partly contemplative, 194; anelement in Habit, 195; an impersonal ruler, 196

Recollection (or Reminiscence), departure and renewal of knowledge, 138; doctrine of, in Plato, 142; Platonic criticism of, 154; nature of, 165; relation of Aristotle's theory to, 188

Reminiscence, see _Recollection_

Republic, dialogue, 146; relation of, to Aristotle's doctrine, 192

Revelation, how criticise? 158

Right, Might without, is weak, 147

Samos, birthplace of Pythagoras, 23; of Melissus, 46; of Epicurus, 211

Scepticism, its isolating influence, 94; destroys not appetite, butmoral restraint, 95; represented birth of new conditions, 98; phase ofdecay in distinctively Greek life, 211

Science, philosophy different from, 9; happy guesses in, 152;different kinds of, 180; can never exhaust object, 188

Scrip and staff, emblems of Cynics, 130

Semitic elements in later Greek philosophy, 228

Seneca, on Epicurus, 225; exponent of Roman Stoicism, 242

Senses (or Sensation), channel for the eternal wisdom, 18; data of, nomeasure of reality, 40; not source of ideas, 45; untrustworthy, 49;necessary to truth, 56; no test of truth, 60; relation to reason, 61;based on composite character of body, 71; atomic theory of, 79; give noabsolute truth, 80; no distinction between, and thing or mind, 87;reaction of moral theory on theory of sensation, 102; invalid asagainst reason, 133; has rational elements conditioning, 151; universalcannot belong to, 163; universals furthest removed from, 180; onlysource of knowledge, 214; Epicurean theory of emission, 221; Stoictheory, 230

Shakespeare, Plato compared to, 134

Sicily, birthplace of Empedocles, 58; connection with rise ofSophistry, 84, 86, 92; connection of Plato with, 135

Sin, willing and unwilling, 121

Sinope, birthplace of Diogenes, 130

Sleep, cuts us off from eternal wisdom, 18

Socrates, 101; relation to Anaxagoras, 54; his doctrine in general, 100; marks a parting of ways, 103; warning 'voice' or 'daemon' of, 104;philosophic midwifery, _ib. _; irony, 105; not an expositor, 115;relation to Sophists, _ib. _; Aristippus student of, 124; criticisesAntisthenes, 129; Plato pupil of, 134; dialogue concerning, 136;conversation of Diotima with, 137; in _Republic_, 146

Socratics, complete and incomplete, 103; incomplete, 125, 128

Solon, Plato descended from, 134; praised, 140

Sophists, 82; name first used by Protagoras, 85; influence of, onpolitics, 88, 97; refuted by the arts, 111; relation to Socrates, 115;Platonic dialogues on, 136; dialogue so named, 159

Soul of all things, 6; a fiery exhalation, 18; God soul of the world, 27; soul realised in body, _ib. _; soul double, 28; triple, 28, 169;life of soul a harmony, 29; composed of finest atoms, 78; even that ofuniverse, 80; loss of one's soul, 150; world-soul the first creation, 151; divisions of, 169; an entelechy, 203; definition of, 204; _v. _body, 205; Epicurean theory of, 220

Space, existence prior to, 37, 167; unthinkable except with referenceto body, 75

Sparta, ideas from, in _Republic_, 148; influence on Plato's Laws, 160

Species, has more of existence than genus, 183

Speusippus, successor of Plato, 172

Stagira, birthplace of Aristotle, 172

State, Justice writ large in, 147; classes in, 169; an entelechy, 196

Statesman (or Politicus), dialogue, 159

Stoicism, Semitic element in, 228; origin of name, 229

Strife, original of things, 17; one of two principles, 38, 63

Substance defined, 203

Sulla, brought Aristotle's library to Rome, 176

Summum bonum, what? 156; relation of man's perfection, 168; philosophysearch for, 229

Symposium, dialogue, 137

Tabula rasa, Stoic theory of, 231

Tarsus, birthplace of St. Paul and (possibly) of Chrysippus, 229

Temperance, treated of in _Charmides_, 136; fairest sort of wisdom, 139

Thales, 2

Theaetetus, quoted from, 89; dialogue, 159

Theophrastus, successor of Aristotle, 175

Things, in themselves, how known? 158; partake in the idea, 164; _v. _Propositions, 189

Thought, of God, 150; ideal elements in, 152; of God, source ofreality, 164; relation to matter, 184; of God, eternally existing inideas, 187; an entelechy, 188; without desire, no motive, 191; armsof, 198; only converted sensation, 223

Thucydides, quoted, 97

Thurii, code for, drawn up by Protagoras, 86

Timaeus, dialogue, 150

Time, brings its revenges, 8; plays with the dice, 20; existence priorto, 37, 168

Tortoise, see _Achilles_

Transmigration of souls, 27, 73

Truth, first duty of man, 29 senses give no absolute, 80; title of workby Protagoras, 86; man measure of, 87; abstract truth impossible, _ib. _; dialogue concerning, 137

Tyranny, in politics and in philosophy, 83

Ultimately, significance of word, 190

Unity, _v. _ Multiplicity, 28; of objects only apparent, 76; no absoluteunity either of body or soul, 138; analysis of, 159; in thoughts ofGod, 164

Universal, _v. _ Particular, 48; _v. _ Individual, 99; search after lost, 105, 163; three forms, Justice, Beauty, Utility, 110; cannot belong tosense, 163; knowledge of, function of philosophy, 180; does not existapart from particulars, 181; has less of existence than particulars, 183; they are not antithetical, 189

Universe, the self-picturing of God, 27; mechanical theory of, 56;ideal working in, 112; origin of, 151, 165, 200, 216, 232

Utility, relation to Justice, 120; philosophy does not seek, 178

Virtue, teachable through persuasion, 88; is knowledge, 112, 118;teachable through training, 131; sufficient for happiness, _ib. _;teachableness of, 136, 191; immortal product of soul, 139; a habit, 195; a mean, _ib. _; Reason standard of, 196; alone absolutely good, 238

Void, existence of, 75; proofs of, 219

Water, beginning of things, 4

Weeping philosopher, 20; _v. _ laughing philosopher, 74

Wisdom, persuasion only true, 88; moderate indulgence, 126; a weaningof soul from pleasure, 131; temperance and justice the fairest, 139;heavenly and earthly, 148; Is it chief good? 156; Divine wisdomgovernor, 157; Aristotle's definition of, 180

Wise man, personification of reason, 196

Withdrawal, Stoic name for suicide, 241

World, a living creature, 27; why did God make? 190

Xenocrates, academic philosopher, 172

Xenophanes, 31, 48

Xenophon, quoted, 116

Xerxes, invasion of, 52

Zeno, the Eleatic, 42; the Stoic, 238