A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediaeval Philosophy, Herbert Ernest Cushman
A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
SOCRATES
A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
HERBERT ERNEST CUSHMAN, LL.D., Ph.D.
Sometime Professor of Philosophy in Tufts College
Lecturer of Philosophy in Harvard College
Lecturer of Philosophy in Dartmouth College
VOL. I
ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL PHILOSOPHY
Revised Edition
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1910 AND 1918, BY HERBERT ERNEST CUSHMAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER, Litt.D., LL.D.
ALFORD PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
WHO HAS INTERPRETED LIFE TO
MANY YOUNG MEN BY MAKING
PHILOSOPHY A LIVING
SUBJECT TO THEM
PREFACE
This book is intended as a text-book for sketch-courses in the history of philosophy. It is written for the student rather than for the teacher. It is a history of philosophy upon the background of geography and of literary and political history.
As a text-book for sketch-courses it employs summaries, tables, and other generalizations as helps to the memory. The philosophical teaching is presented as simply as possible, so as to bring into prominence only the leading doctrines. My own personal criticism and interpretation on the one hand, and explanations in technical language on the other, have been avoided as far as possible. Sometimes I have had to choose between interpretation and technicality, in which case the limitations of space have determined my choice. Since the book is intended for the student rather than for the teacher, it makes the teacher all the more necessary; for it puts into the hands of the student an outline and into the hands of the teacher the class-room time for inspiring the student with his own interpretations. In making use of geographical maps, contemporary literature, and political history, this book is merely utilizing for pedagogical reasons the stock of information with which the college student is furnished when he begins the history of philosophy.
A good many years of experience in teaching the history of philosophy to beginners have convinced me that students come to the subject with four classes of ideas, with which they can correlate philosophic doctrines: good geographical knowledge, some historical and some literary knowledge, and many undefined personal philosophical opinions. Of course, their personal philosophical opinions form the most important group, but more as something to be clarified by the civilizing influence of the subject than as an approach to the subject itself. The only “memory-hooks” upon which the teacher may expect to hang philosophic doctrines are the student’s ideas of history, literature, and geography. If the history of philosophy is treated only as a series of doctrines, the student beginning the subject feels not only that the land is strange, but that he is a stranger in it. Besides, to isolate the historical philosophical doctrines is to give the student a wrong historical perspective, since philosophic thought and contemporary events are two inseparable aspects of history. Each interprets the other, and neither can be correctly understood without the other. If the history of philosophy is to have any significance for the beginner, it must be shown to give a meaning to history.
So far as the materials that form any history of philosophy are concerned, I have merely tried to arrange and organize them with reference to the student and with reference to the history of which they form an integral part. I am therefore overwhelmingly indebted to every good authority to whom I have had access, but in the main I have followed the inspiring direction of the great Windelband. Many willing friends have read parts of the manuscript and offered suggestions and criticisms. I am particularly indebted to Professors C. P. Parker, Ephraim Emerton, A. O. Norton, and J. H. Ropes, and Dr. B. A. G. Fuller of Harvard University; to Professor Mary W. Calkins of Wellesley College; to Professors C. S. Wade and D. L. Maulsby of Tufts College; and to my wife, Abby B. Cushman. However, for all the faults of the book, which has been many years in preparation, I am alone responsible.
Instead of lists of books for collateral reading, placed at the end of chapters or of the book, the student will find references in the footnotes to the exact pages of many helpful books. I should like to call the student’s attention to an appendix to the discussion of Plato. This is a complete selection of passages from Plato made by the late Professor Jowett for English readers. This selection Professor Jowett was accustomed to distribute to his Oxford class, of which I was once fortunate to be a member.
Philosophical terms have been defined either in the text or in the footnotes. Such definitions must necessarily have as their aim their usefulness to the student, rather than their completeness.
Tufts College, June, 1910.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
The only change which the reader will find in the revision of this volume is in the form of presentation of the philosophies of the earlier cosmologists (Chapter II).
HERBERT E. CUSHMAN.
West Newton, February, 1918.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION—The Three General Periods of the History of Philosophy, 1
The Comparative Lengths of the Three General Periods, 1
The Real Differences of the Three General Periods, 1
Table of the Subdivisions of the Three General Periods, 4
BOOK I. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
(625 B. C.–476 A. D.)
CHAPTER I. The Early Greek in Ancient Philosophy, 5
The Divisions of Ancient Philosophy, 5
The Literary Sources of Ancient Philosophy, 6
The Environment of the Early Greek, 7
1. His Geographical Environment 7
2. His Political Environment 7
The Native Tendencies of the Early Greek, as seen (1) In the Development of his Religion, (2) in his Reflections upon Physical Events, and (3) in his Interest in Human Conduct, 9–11
The Three Periods of Greek Philosophy, 12
CHAPTER II. The Cosmological Period: The Philosophy of Nature, 15
The Peril in the Greek Political Situation: Persia and Carthage, 15
The Peril in the New Religion: The Mysteries and Pythagoras, 16
Characteristics of the Cosmologists, 18
Table of Cosmologists, 20
How the Philosophical Question arose, 20
Map showing the Cities where the Cosmologists lived, 21
Summary Comparison of the Monistic Philosophies, 22
1. The Milesian School, 24
The Milesian Philosophy, 25
2. Xenophanes, the Religious Philosopher, 26
The Philosophy of Xenophanes, 27
3. Heracleitus, “the Misanthropist” and “the Obscure,” 28
a. Heracleitus’ Doctrine of Absolute and Universal Change, 28
b. Fire is the Cosmic Substance, 29
c. The Definite Changes of Fire, 30
d. The Practical Philosophy of Heracleitus, 31
4. The Eleatic School, 32
a. Parmenides, 32
(1) The Cosmic Substance is Being, 33
(2) Other Things than the Cosmic Substance (Being) have no Real Existence, 34
b. Zeno, 35
The Philosophy of Zeno, 36
The Results of the Conflict between Heracleitus and Parmenides, 37
CHAPTER III. Pluralism, 39
Efforts toward Reconciliation, 39
The New Conception of Change of the Pluralists, 40
The New Conception of the Unchanging of the Pluralists—The Element, 40
The Introduction of the Conception of the Efficient Cause, 41
Summary of Similarities and Differences IN the Theories of the Reconcilers, 41
The Pluralistic Philosophers: Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and the Later Pythagoreans, 42
The Philosophy of Empedocles, 44
The Philosophy of Anaxagoras, 45
The Philosophy of the Atomists—Leucippus and the School at Abdera, 47
The Later Pythagoreans, 48
1. The Pythagorean Conception of Being, 49
2. The Pythagorean Dualistic World, 51
3. Pythagorean Astronomy, 52
Historical Retrospect, 53
CHAPTER IV. The Anthropological Period: The Philosophy of Man, 55
An Historical Summary of the Anthropological Period, 55
The Persian Wars and the Rise of Athens, 56
The Greek Enlightenment, 58
1. The Impulse for Learning, 58
2. The Practical Need of Knowledge, 59
3. The Critical Attitude of Mind, 61
The Significance of the Sophists, 64
The Prominent Sophists, 67
The Philosophy of the Sophists, 68
1. The Relativism of Protagoras, 69
2. The Nihilism of Gorgias, 70
The Ethics of the Sophists.—The Application of their Critical Theory to Political Life, 71
Summary, 73
CHAPTER V. Socrates, 74
Socrates and Aristophanes, 74
The Personality and Life of Socrates, 75
Socrates and the Sophists, 80
The Unsystematic Character of the Socratic Philosophy, 82
The Ideal of Socrates, 83
What the Socratic Ideal Involves, 85
The Two Steps of the Method of Socrates, 88
Socrates and Athens, 91
The Logical Expedients of Socrates, 92
Socrates and the Lesser Socratics, 93
The Cynic School, 95
The Cyrenaic School, 96
CHAPTER VI. The Systematic Period, 98
The Waning of the Greek National Spirit, 98
The Place of the Three Systematic Philosophers in Greek History, 98
The Fundamental Principle of the Systematic Period, 100
A Summary of Greek Philosophy, 102
Greek Philosophy (objective), 103
Democritus and Plato—Their Similarities and Differences, 104
The Life of Democritus, 106
The Comprehensiveness of the Aim of Democritus, 108
The Enriched Physics of Democritus—Hylozoism becomes Materialism, 109
The Materialistic Psychology of Democritus, 111
Democritus’ Theory of Knowledge—The World of Twofold Reality, 114
The Ethical Theory of Democritus, 116
CHAPTER VII. Plato, 119
Abdera and Athens, 119
The Difficulties in Understanding the Teaching of Plato, 120
The Life and Writings of Plato, 121
1. Plato’s Student Life, 121
2. Plato as Traveler, 122
3. Plato as Teacher of the Academy, 124
Concerning the Dialogues of Plato, 126
The Factors in the Construction of Plato’s Doctrine, 128
1. His Inherited Tendencies, 128
2. His Philosophical Sources, 130
The Divisions of Plato’s Philosophy, 131
Summary of Plato’s Doctrine, 132
The Formation of Plato’s Metaphysics, 132
The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics—The Development of Plato’s Ideas in the Two Drafts, 136
Brief Comparison of the Two Drafts of the Ideas, 137
Comparison of the Two Drafts of Ideas in More Detail, 137
1. The Number of Ideas in the Earlier and Later Drafts compared, 137
2. The Relation of the Ideas and the World of Nature in the Two Drafts compared, 138
3. The Relation among the Ideas in the Two Drafts compared, 140
Plato’s Conception of God, 141
Plato’s Conception of Physical Nature, 142
Plato’s Conception of Man, 144
Plato’s Doctrine of Immortality, 146
1. The Immortality of Pre-Existence, 146
2. The Immortality of Post-Existence, 149
The Two Tendencies in Plato, 150
Platonic Love, 151
Plato’s Theory of Ethics, 153
1. Development of Plato’s Theory of the Good, 153
2. The Four Cardinal Virtues, 154
3. Plato’s Theory of Political Society, 155
Appendix—Jowett’s Selection of Passages from Plato for English Readers, 158
CHAPTER VIII. Aristotle, 166
Aristotle in the Academy and Lyceum, 166
Biography of Aristotle, 168
Brief Chronological Sketch of Aristotle’s Life, 168
Aristotle’s Biography in Detail, 169
1. First Period—Early Influences, 169
2. Second Period—Traveler and Collector, 171
3. Third Period—Administrator of the Lyceum, 172
The Writings of Aristotle, 173
1. The Popular Writings, published by Aristotle himself, 174
2. The Compilations, 175
3. The Didactic Writings, 175
Aristotle’s Starting-Point, 176
The Fundamental Principle in Aristotle’s Philosophy, 177
Aristotle’s Logic, 180
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 185
1. Development is Purposeful, 185
2. Aristotle’s Two Different Conceptions of Purpose, 187
3. Aristotle’s Conception of God, 190
4. Aristotle’s Conception of Matter, 191
5. Aristotle’s Conception of Nature, 192
The Mechanical Series,—Aristotle’s Theory of Physics, 194
The Teleological Series: The Qualitative Changes of Phenomena, 196
1. The Psychology of Aristotle, 196
2. The Ethics of Aristotle, 199
(a) The Practical Virtues, 200
(b) The Dianoetic Virtues, 201
The Political Philosophy of Aristotle, 202
CHAPTER IX. The Hellenic-Roman Period, 204
Its Time Length, 204
The Fall of the Greek Nation and the Persistence of its Civilization, 204
Map of the Empire of Alexander, showing the Extension of Hellenism, 205
The Two Parts of the Hellenic-Roman Period, 208
1. The Ethical Period, 208
2. The Religious Period, 208
The Undercurrent of Skepticism in the Hellenic-Roman Period, 209
The Fundamental Problem of the Hellenic-Roman Period, 211
The Centres of Hellenism, 213
1. Athens, 213
2. Alexandria, 215
General Characteristics of the Ethical Period, 215
1. The Abandonment of Metaphysical Speculation, 216
2. The Growth of Science, 216
3. Ethics became the Central Interest, 217
The Schools, 218
Map of Athens, showing the Location of the Four Schools, 219
The Old Schools—The Academy and the Lyceum, 220
1. The Academy, 220
2. The Lyceum, 221
The New Schools—The Epicureans and the Stoics, 222
A Summary of the Agreements and Differences of the Stoics and Epicureans, 225
CHAPTER X. Epicureanism, 227
The Life of Epicurus, 227
The Epicureans, 228
Some Types of Hedonism,—Aristippus, Epicurus, and Rousseau, 228
The Epicurean Ideal, 230
The Place of Virtue in Epicureanism, 233
The Epicurean Wise Man, 234
The Epicurean Wise Man in Society, 235
The Great Obstacles to Happiness, 236
Epicurus’ Conception of the Physical World.—Qualified Atomism, 238
CHAPTER XI. Stoicism, 241
The Position of Stoicism in Antiquity, 241
The Three Periods of Stoicism, 242
1. Period of Formulation of the Doctrine, 242
2. Period of Modified Stoicism, 242
3. Period of Roman Stoicism, 243
The Stoic Leaders, 243
The Stoic Writings, 246
The Stoics and Cynics, 246
The Two Prominent Stoic Conceptions, 247
The Conception of Personality, 248
1. The Stoic Psychology, 248
2. The Highest Good, 250
The Conception of Nature, 251
1. Nature is an All-pervading World-Being, 253
2. Nature is an All-compelling Law, 253
3. Nature is Matter, 254
The Conceptions of Nature and Personality supplement Each Other, 256
The Stoic and Society, 257
Duty and Responsibility, 259
The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Freedom, 260
The Modifications of the Stoic Doctrine after the First Period, 261
CHAPTER XII. Skepticism and Eclecticism, 264
The Appearances of Philosophic Skepticism, 264
The Three Phases of Philosophic Skepticism, 265
1. The First Phase of Philosophic Skepticism is called Pyrrhonism, 265
2. The Second Period of Philosophic Skepticism—The Skepticism of the Academy, 266
3. The Third Period of Philosophic Skepticism—Sensationalistic Skepticism, 268
The Last Century and a Half of the Ethical Period, Eclecticism, 269
CHAPTER XIII. The Religious Period, 273
The Two Causes of the Rise of Religious Feeling, 273
The Need of Spiritual Authority, 275
The Rise of the Conception of Spirituality, 277
The Revival of Platonism, 279
The Divisions of the Religious Period, 280
The Hellenic Religious Philosophies, 282
The Introductory Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy. The Turning to the Past for Spiritual Authority, 282
1. The Greek-Jewish Philosophy of Philo, 282
2. Neo-Pythagoreanism, 285
The Development Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy. The Turning to the Present for Spiritual Authority. Platonism and Neo-Platonism, 287
Neo-Platonism and the Two Introductory Philosophies, 288
Neo-Platonism and Christianity, 288
The Periods of Neo-Platonism, 290
The Alexandrian School. The Scientific Theory of Neo-Platonism. The Life and Writings of Plotinus, 290
The General Character of the Teaching of Plotinus, 291
The Mystic God, 292
1. The Supra-Consciousness of God, 292
2. The Conception of Dynamic Pantheism, 293
The Two Problems of Plotinus, 293
The World of Emanations.—The Metaphysical Problem of Plotinus, 294
The Spirit, 294
The Soul, 295
Matter, 295
The Return of the Soul to God.—The Ethical Problem of Plotinus, 297
The Syrian School.—The Systematizing of Polytheisms.—Jamblichus, 298
The Athenian School.—Recapitulation.—Proclus, 299
CHAPTER XIV. Patristics.—The Hellenizing of the Gospel, 302
The Early Situation of Christianity, 302
The Philosophies influencing Christian Thought, 305
The Periods of Early Christianity, 306
The Apologists, 307
The Gnostics, 310
The Reaction against Gnosticism.—The Old Catholic Theologians, 312
Origen and the School of Catechists, 314
BOOK II. THE MIDDLE AGES
(476–1453)
CHAPTER XV. Characteristics and Conditions of the Middle Ages, 319
Comparison of the Hellenic-Roman Period and the Middle Ages, 319
The Mediæval Man, 320
How the Universe appeared to the Mediæval Man, 322
Maps of the Ptolemaic Cosmography, 323, 325
The Mediæval Man at School, 325
A Mediæval Library, 326
1. Books most commonly read, 327
2. Books that the scholars might use, 327
3. The Books most influential philosophically upon the time, 328
The Three Periods of the Middle Ages, 328
Summary of the Political and Educational Worlds of the Mediæval Man, 330
CHAPTER XVI. The Early Period of the Middle Ages, 334
The General Character of the Early Period, 334
An Early Mediæval Geographical Map, 335
The Historical Position of Augustine, 335
The Secular Science, 339
The Life of Augustine, 339
The Two Elements in Augustine’s Teaching, 340
The Neo-Platonic Element: the Inner Certainties of Consciousness, 341
The Authority of the Church according to Augustine, 345
The Dark Ages, 347
The Revival of Charlemagne, 349
John Scotus Erigena: Life and Teaching, 350
The Greek Principle which Erigena formulated for the Middle Ages, 352
The Last Century of the Early Period, 353
CHAPTER XVII. The Transitional Period, 354
The General Character of the Transitional Period, 354
What is Scholasticism? 355
Anselm: Life and Position in Mediæval Philosophy, 359
Anselm’s Arguments for the Existence of God, 361
Roscellinus: Life and Teaching, 361
Storm and Stress, 362
The Life of Abelard, 363
Abelard’s Conceptualism. Universals exist in the Particulars, 364
Abelard’s Rationalism.—The Relation between Reason and Dogma, 365
CHAPTER XVIII. The Period of Classic Scholasticism, 368
The General Character of this Last Period, 368
The Two Civilizations, 369
Map showing the Growth of Mohammedan Civilization in the Middle Ages, 370
The First Contact of the Two Civilizations, 372
The Conflict between the Two Civilizations.—The Crusades, 374
The Revival of Learning, 375
Diagram of Dante’s Poetic Conception of the Universe, 376
The Strength and Burden of Aristotle to the Church, 378
1. The Strength of Aristotle to the Church, 378
2. The Burden of Aristotle to the Church, 379
The Predecessors of Aquinas, 379
The Life of Thomas Aquinas.—The Founder of the Dominican Tradition, 380
The Central Principle of Thomas’s Doctrine—The Twofold Truth, 381
The Problem of Individuality—The Relation of Particulars and Universals, 383
The Primacy of the Will or the Intellect, 385
Duns Scotus, The Founder of the Franciscan Tradition—Life and Philosophical Position, 386
Duns Scotus’s Conception of the Twofold Truth.—The Separation of Science and Religion, 387
The Inscrutable Will of God, 388
The Problem of Individuality, 389
After Duns Scotus, 390
William of Ockam: Life and Teaching, 391
After Ockam, 393
INDEX, 395
ILLUSTRATIONS
Socrates, Frontispiece
Map showing where the Cosmologists lived, 21
The Empire of Alexander, 205
Map of Athens showing the Location of the Four Schools, 219
Ptolemaic Cosmography showing the Division of the Universe into Spheres, 323
Ptolemaic Cosmography showing the Epicyclic Movements of the Planets, 325
Mediæval Geography. The Cosmas Map, A. D. 547, 335
Growth of Mohammedanism during the Middle Ages, showing its Contact with Christian Civilization, 370
Diagram of Dante’s Poetic Conception of the Universe, 376
A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
THE THREE GENERAL PERIODS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
The Comparative Lengths of the Three General Periods:
Ancient Philosophy, 625 B. C.–476 A. D.
Mediæval Philosophy, 476 A. D.–1453 A. D.
Modern Philosophy, 1453 A. D.–the present time.
These are the three general periods into which the history of philosophy naturally falls. The two dates that form the dividing lines between these three periods are 476, the fall of old Rome, and 1453, the fall of new Rome (Constantinople). From this it will be seen that 1000 years of mediæval life lie between antiquity on the one side and 450 years of modern times on the other. Whatever value may be put upon the respective intellectual products of these three periods, it is important to note the great difference in their time-lengths. It is 2500 years since philosophical reflection began in Europe. Only 450 of these years belong to modern times. In other words, after the European man grew to reflective manhood, two fifths of his life belong to what is known as ancient civilization, two fifths to mediæval, and only one fifth to modern civilization.
The Real Differences of the Three General Periods. The differences between these three periods of the reflective life of the European have been very real. They are not to be explained by merely political shiftings or economic changes; nor are they fully expressed as differences in literary or artistic productions. Their differences lie deeper, for they are differences of mental attitude. The history of philosophy is more profound, more difficult, and more human than any other history, because it is the record of human points of view. A good deal of sympathetic appreciation is demanded if the student takes on the attitude of mind of ancient and mediæval times. One cannot expect to be possessed of such appreciation until one has traversed the history of thought through its entire length.
The history of philosophy is an organic development from an objective to a subjective view of life, with a traditional middle period in which subjective and objective mingle. Ancient thought is properly called objective, the mediæval traditional, the modern subjective. Can we briefly suggest what these abstract terms mean? By the objectivity of ancient thought is meant that the ancient, in making his reflections upon life, starts from the universe as a whole. From this outer point of view he tries to see the interconnections between things. Nature is reality; men and gods are a part of nature. Man’s mental processes even are a part of the totality of things. Even ethically man is not an independent individual, but the member of a state. When the ancient came to make distinctions between mind and matter, he did not think of man as the knower in antithesis to matter as the object known, but he thought of mind and matter as parts of one cosmos. The antithesis in ancient thought is rather between appearances and essence, between non-realities and realities with differing emphasis. The ancient attempts speculatively to reconstruct his world, but it is always from the point of view of the world.
By the traditionalism of mediæval thought is meant that men are controlled in their thinking by a set of authoritative doctrines from the past. In the Middle Ages, as the mediæval period is called, the independent thinking of antiquity had ceased. Men reflected and reflected deeply, but they were constrained by a set of religious traditions. Authority was placed above them and censored their thinking. The objective Christian church and its authority took the place of the objective Greek cosmos. That church had certain infallible dogma, and thinking was allowed only in so far as it clarified dogma.
On the other hand, when we say that modern thought is subjective, we refer to an entire change in the centre of intellectual gravity. The starting-point is not the world, but the individual. The universe is set over against mind (dualism), or is the creation of mind (idealism). In any case the modern man looks upon the universe as his servant, the standard of truth to be found in himself and not in something external. The subject as knower is now placed in antithesis to the object as known, and the object is not independent of the human thinking process. Reality is man rather than the cosmos. The political state is justifiable so long as it enforces the rights of the individual; religious authority is the expression of the individual conscience; physical nature is a human interpretation.1
Plato, Dante, and Goethe are good representatives of these three different historical periods of the human mind. How can they be understood without a philosophical appreciation of the periods in which they lived?
| 1. Ancient 625 B. C.–476 A. D. |  |
Greek, 625–322 B. C. (to death of Aristotle). | |
Cosmological, 625–480 (to Persian Wars). |
| Anthropological, 480–399 (to death of Socrates). | ||||
| Systematic, 399–322 (to death of Aristotle). | ||||
| Hellenic-Roman 322 B. C.–476 A. D. (from death of Aristotle to fall of old Rome). | |
Ethical, 322 B. C.–1 A. D. (to beginning of Christian era). | ||
| Religious, 100 B. C.–476 A. D. | ||||
| 2. Mediæval 476–1453 | |
Early Mediæval, 476–1000 (from the fall of old Rome to the beginnings of modern Europe). | ||
| Transitional Mediæval (1000–1200), (from beginnings of modern Europe to Crusades). | ||||
| Classic Mediæval, 1200–1453 (from the Crusades to the fall of new Rome or Constantinople). | ||||
| 3. Modern 1453–modern times | |
Renaissance, 1453–1690 (to Locke’s Essay and the English Revolution). | |
Humanistic, 1453–1600. |
| Natural Science, 1600–1690. | ||||
| Enlightenment, 1690–1781 (from Locke’s Essay to Kant’s Critique). | ||||
| German Idealism, 1781–1831 (from Kant’s Critique to the death of Hegel). | ||||
| Evolution, 1820 to the present time. | ||||
BOOK I
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (625 B. C.–476 A. D.)
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY GREEK IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
The Divisions of Ancient Philosophy. The history of ancient philosophy falls naturally into two large divisions: pure Greek philosophy and Hellenic-Roman philosophy (or Greek philosophy in the Roman world). The date, 322 B. C., the death of Aristotle, which marks the line between these two periods, is one of the milestones of history. Alexander the Great had died in 323 B. C. The coincidence of the deaths of Aristotle and Alexander not only suggests their intimate relations as teacher and pupil during their lives, but it throws into contrast Greek civilization before and after them. Before Aristotle and Alexander culture was the product entirely of the pure Greek spirit; after them ancient culture was the complex product of many factors—of Greek and Roman civilizations, and many Oriental religions, including Christianity. Before Aristotle and Alexander, ancient culture was characterized by a love of knowledge for its own sake, by freedom from ulterior ends either of service or of use; after these great makers of history, culture became attenuated to work in the special sciences and enslaved to practical questions. Before Aristotle and Alexander, the Greek city-states had arisen to political power; after Aristotle and Alexander, Greece declined politically and was absorbed into the Roman empire.
The Literary Sources of Ancient Philosophy.2 The literary sources of ancient philosophy are three: (1) the primary sources, or original writings; (2) the secondary sources, or reports of the original writers obtained indirectly, or through other writers; (3) the interpretations of reliable modern historians of philosophy. The specialist in philosophy will, of course, go to the first two sources for his information. Other students will find many accurate modern histories of ancient philosophy. The student should have at hand the translations of the histories of Zeller, Windelband, Weber, Eucken, Ueberweg; those of the Englishmen, Burnet and Fairbanks; of the Americans, Rogers and Turner.
“The writings of the early Greek philosophers of the pre-Socratic period exist now only in fragments. The complete works of Plato are still extant; so also are the most important works of Aristotle, and certain others which belong to the Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and neo-Platonic schools. We possess the principal works of most of the philosophers of the Christian period in sufficient completeness.”3 The secondary sources include quotations and comments upon earlier philosophers found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Skeptics, neo-Platonists, and the so-called doxographers. Doxography—the commentating upon and collating of the works of former times—developed enormously in Alexandria, Pergamos, and Rhodes just after Aristotle. The founder of this work was Theophrastus, who was a disciple of Aristotle and his successor in the Lyceum. Among the important doxographers were Plutarch, Stobæus, and Aetios.
The Environment of the Early Greek. The biologist seeks to explain a living creature by its previous environment and inherited instincts. So if we know the environment and inherited instincts of the early Greek, we shall be able to understand better firstly, why European philosophy began with the Greeks and not with some other people; and secondly, why Greek philosophy took certain lines that it did take.
(1). His Geographical Environment. The Greece into which philosophy was born was much larger than the Greece of to-day. Ancient Greece consisted of all the coasts and islands which were washed by the Mediterranean Sea from Asia Minor to Sicily and southern Italy, and from Cyrene to Thrace. The motherland, the peninsula of Greece, at first played an insignificant rôle. The leadership was in the hands of the Ionians, who had colonized the coasts of Asia Minor. In the seventh century B. C., when the first Greek philosophy appears, these Ionians commanded the world’s commerce among the three continents. Over the coasts of the entire Mediterranean they had extended their trade and established their colonies. Miletus became the wealthiest of these colonies and the cradle of Greek science. Its wealth afforded leisure to its people and therefore the opportunity for reflection.
(2). His Political Environment. An understanding of the Greek political world, in which its first philosophy appeared, requires an historical explanation of its rise. It takes us back four centuries to the age of the Epic (1000–750 B. C.). During more than two centuries of the age of the Epic two changes occurred which were to influence future Greek civilization: (1) The oligarchy which had supplanted the ancient patriarchal monarchy became firmly established; and (2) the Epic was formed. The importance of the Epic of Homer lies not so much in the fact that a great poem was constructed, as that it was the formulation of the Greek religion, the Greek æsthetic polytheism. Its writing indicates that the earlier unorganized, primitive, and savage forms of religion had given way, among the ruling classes at least, to an æsthetic polytheism, which in a general way was fixed by the Epic itself.
The period of more than a century, from 750 to 625 B. C., lying between the age of the Epic and Greek philosophy, may be called an age of political disturbances. The oligarchy had become oppressive to the rich and poor alike. There had grown up in Greece, especially in the colonies, a class of citizens who had become wealthy through commerce. The result of the misgovernment by the oligarchy was that (1) migrations took place, and (2) many revolutions occurred. This was particularly true of the colonies where the proletariat was powerful and the cities were full of adventurers. Plutocracy was at war with aristocracy, and this was the opportunity for bold men. These political troubles took form from 650 B. C. on, and the history of the Greek cities consists of the endeavor to establish popular government. About the time of the first Greek philosophers there arose here and there from the ruins of these civil struggles the so-called tyrants, of whom Thrasybulus at Miletus, Pittacus at Lesbos, Periander at Corinth, and Pisistratus at Athens are examples. The courts of these tyrants became centres of intellectual life. They patronized poets, writers, and artists. The universalism of the Epic had vanished, and in its place came the individualism of the lyric and the satire. In many places the aristocrat went into gloomy retirement, and often cultivated poetry, science, and philosophy.
The Native Tendencies of the Early Greek. Why were the Greeks the first philosophers of Europe? Their geographical surroundings of sea and land had something to do with it. The passionate party strife between the old, ruling families of nobles and the newly rich trading-class, which took place during the seventh century B. C., no doubt cultivated an early independence of opinion and strength of personality. But, after all, genius was in the blood of the race, and who can say that the true cause was not in the mixing of the blood of the virile Aryan invaders with that of the aboriginal inhabitants? Whatever may be the answer to that question, the Greek race in the seventh century B. C. had an extraordinary curiosity about the world of nature. It loved the concrete fact as no other race of the time loved it, and it loved to give a clear and articulate expression to the concrete fact that it saw. It had an artistic nature that was hostile to all confusion. Let us point out three ways in which the Greek was even in this early time organizing his experiences, reflecting upon the workings of social and nature forces, and thus preparing the way for consideration of the more ultimate questions of philosophy.
(1) This can be seen first in the development of his religion. The first step in the organization of his religion we have already seen, for the Homeric epic was the expression of a well-defined, poetic, and æsthetic polytheism developed out of a primitive savage naturalism. The Greek’s sense of measure was shown in the way both gods and men were placed as a part of the world of nature. He could accomplish this the more freely because he had no hierarchy of priests and no dogma of belief to cramp his imagination. The Greek priests did not penetrate into the private life nor teach religion. “They were not theologians but sacristans and liturgical functionaries.” In the fifty years before philosophy appeared, this tendency toward scientific religious organizing showed the beginning of another advance. Monistic belief, of which signs may be found even in the earlier Greek writings, came to the surface. This monism4 was expressed or implied by the Gnomic poets, “wise poets,” so called, because they made sententious utterances upon the principles of morality.
(2) The early genius of the Greek is shown in his reflections upon physical events. The Greek had been accumulating for a long time many kinds of information, but, what is more important, he had been reflecting upon this information. The Ionian was a sea-faring man. He had had much practical experience and had made many true observations about the things he had seen. In his travels he had come in contact with the Orientals and the Egyptians, and although his scientific conceptions were probably in the main his own, his knowledge was undoubtedly increased by his travels. In the seventh century B. C., the Greeks had a respectable body of physical science. It was mostly inorganic science, however,—astronomy, geography, and meteorology. The early Greek knowledge of organic phenomena was very meagre, as, for example, medical and physiological knowledge. They also showed little genuine research in the field of mathematics, although they had picked up mathematical information here and there. Many of the first philosophers were scientists.
(3) Not only did the Greek early bring a religious system out of the chaos of his naturalism, not only did he early throw his physical information into scientific form; but also early did he show an especial interest in human conduct. This can be seen first in Homer (800 B. C.), in a more developed form in Hesiod (700 B. C.), and with still deeper reflection in the Gnomic poets. Although the Iliad is a descriptive poem, it abounds in ethical observations. For example, Hector says, “The best omen is to fight for one’s country”; and Nestor in council says, “A wretch without the tie of kin, a lawless man without a home, is he who delights in civil strife.” The poem by Hesiod (Works and Days) is intended to teach morals. It is distinctly a didactic poem. Hesiod stands at the beginning of a long line of Greek ethical teachers. His moral observations are, however, incoherently expressed. They are not wide generalizations, but are only comments upon single experiences. The Gnomic poets appeared at the end of the seventh century B. C., as the moral reformers in the age of political disturbances. This period was called by the Greeks the age of the Seven Wise Men; for among the men who were then exhorting the age to come back to its senses, tradition early selected seven of the most notable.5 The spirit of Gnomic poetry was prominent in their reported sayings. They were fearful because of the common disregard of the conventions of the previous age, and because of the present excesses. Their watchword was “moderation,” and they were ever repeating “nothing too much.” By apothegm, riddle, epigram, and catchwords they tried to reform society. The names of all seven are not certain, and only four of them are known,—Thales, Solon, Pittacus, and Bias. Their ethical reflections are not concerned, as in Hesiod, with the home, the village, and the rules of convention, but with the individual’s general relation to society. Their knowledge of ethical matters is remarkable for their time. Some of their sayings are as follows:—
“No man is happy; all are full of trouble.” “Each thinks to do the right, yet no one knows what will be the result of his doings, and no one can escape his destiny.” “The people by their own injustice destroy the city, which the gods would have protected.” “As opposed to these evils the first necessity is law and order for the state, contentment and moderation for the individual.” “Not wealth, but moderation, is the highest good.” “Superfluity of possessions begets self-exaltation.”
The Three Periods of Greek Philosophy, 625–322 B. C. These are
1. The Cosmological Period, 625–480 B. C.
2. The Anthropological Period, 480–399 B. C.
3. The Systematic Period, 399–322 B. C.
1. The Cosmological Period begins with the birth of Greek philosophical reflection (625 B. C.) and has a nominal ending with the Persian wars (480 B. C.). This does not mean that the interest of the Greeks in cosmology stopped in 480 B. C., but that it was no longer their prominent interest. Cosmology is the study of the reality of the physical universe (the cosmos). The particular cosmological question occupying the minds of the Greeks in this period may be stated thus: What, amid the changes of the physical world, is permanent? This will be seen to be a philosophical question and not the same as a question in natural science. The theatre of philosophical activity was the colonies and not the motherland. Two important aspects of this period must be considered besides the philosophical,—the political situation and the religious mysteries.
2. The Anthropological Period begins in the motherland before the cosmological movement ended in the colonies. It starts with a great social impulse just after the victories of the Persian wars (480 B. C.) and ends with the death of Socrates (399 B. C.). Athens is the centre. This period includes the most productive intellectual epoch of Greece as a whole, although not its greatest philosophers. Socrates is the most striking personality in the period. The period is called anthropological, because its interest is in the study of man and not of the physical universe. The word anthropology means the study of man.
3. The Systematic Period begins with the death of Socrates (399 B. C.) and ends with the death of Aristotle (322 B. C.). Alexander the Great died 323 B. C. The period is called systematic because it contains the three great organizers or systematizers of Greek philosophy. These were Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. The spread of Greek culture beyond its own limits through the conquests of Alexander is of great importance for the history of thought in the Hellenic-Roman Period, which follows this period.
CHAPTER II
THE COSMOLOGICAL PERIOD (625–480 B. C.): THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
When we enter upon the one hundred and fifty years of philosophical beginnings of Greece, which are called the Cosmological Period, we find ourselves confronted with an extremely interesting social situation, which has been brought about partly by the political and geographical environment of the Greek, partly by his inherited genius. On the one hand, during this century and a half, the political troubles of the Greeks became increasingly aggravated by the growth of Persia on the east and of Carthage on the west. On the other hand, we find that the Greek religion took a sudden turn to mysticism, and by its side a slow but increasing interest in philosophical questions. All through this period Greek politics and Greek religion were a constant peril to Greek life. Greek philosophy proved to be its safety.
The Peril in the Greek Political Situation: Persia and Carthage. It must be remembered that the Greek cities never united into a nation. They were always fighting among themselves. We have already pointed out the civil disturbances between the oligarchy and the democracy throughout the land. These internal troubles continued to the end of Greek history. In this period there was added to these internal troubles a critical external situation which threatened the existence of Greece itself. The sixth century was a momentous one for Greece. In both the east and the west there arose mighty empires that threatened to wipe out its civilization. “The expansion of the Persian power (on the one hand) had suspended a stone of Tantalus over Hellas, and it seemed likely that Greek civilization might be submerged in an Oriental monarchy.”6 Cyrus had laid the foundation of Persia by taking Media in 550 B. C., Lydia in 546 B. C., Babylonia in 538 B. C.; Egypt was added by Cambyses in 528 B. C.; and Darius organized the great Persian possessions in his long reign from 528 to 486 B. C. On the west, Carthage was threatening the Greek cities of Sicily, and at the close of this period was acting in conjunction with Persia to obtain possession of the Mediterranean.
The Peril in the New Religion: The Mysteries and Pythagoras. Already in the seventh century B. C. the political society of Greece felt that it was under the wrath of the gods because of some unatoned guilt. “The earth is full of ills, of ills the sea,” sang the poet. Religious depression became universal. Dissatisfied with the old polytheism, especially as expressed in the theogony of Hesiod, the Greek in the sixth century B. C. began to interpret it according to his present need. Among the masses there appeared the craving for immortality and for personal knowledge of the supernatural. The desire to solve the mystery of life by a short road became universal. Men looked to rites to purify them from the guilt of the world and for gaining personal contact with the world of shades. This new religion became pan-Hellenic. It is called the Mysteries or the Orgia. By Mysteries is not meant societies founded on some occult intellectual belief, as the name might suggest. The Mysteries were based on cult (ceremony), and not on dogma. The special ceremonies were those of initiation and purification. They were supposed to purify the participant and put him in a new frame of mind. The soul would then be protected from the malicious spirits to which it was constantly exposed. The ceremonies are reported to have been attended sometimes by more than thirty thousand people. They consisted of processions, songs, dances, and dramatic spectacles. The most important of the Mysteries were the Orphic and the Eleusinian.
The Mysteries were the basis of the society of Pythagoreans. Pythagoras of Samos was a remarkable man, who went to Italy and settled at Crotona. His sect is of double importance to us because in later times it developed a philosophy on its mathematical and astronomical sides. Pythagoras and his immediate following must be distinguished from the later Pythagoreans. Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans were not philosophers, but a sect like the Orphic society of Mysteries, yet the sect of Pythagoreans embraced much more in its scope. It tried to control the public and private life of its members and to evolve a common method of education.7 Pythagoras was an exiled aristocrat, and his sect was an aristocratic religious body in reaction against the democratic excesses. The only doctrine upon which Pythagoras placed any emphasis was that of immortality in the form of metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul from one bodily form into another). The sect was dispersed as a religious body about 450 B. C. The scattered members formed a school of philosophy at Thebes until about 350 B. C. Of these later philosophical Pythagoreans and their number theory, we shall speak in the proper place.
At the time of the dispersion of the Pythagoreans there existed no longer any peril from the new religion. The craze of the new religion was passing away. During the sixth century B. C. it was a great peril to the future intellectual life of Greece. Had it then gained a little more power it would probably have been admitted by the priesthood to the temples. In the exercise of such enormous sacerdotal power, the priests would have enslaved the Greek mind to superstition, and the priesthood in turn would have become an easy tool for tyrants. There would then have been no Socrates, no Plato, and no Aristotle. The Mysteries were a reaction toward asceticism as a religious salvation from the political peril, but they were, however, equally as great a peril to Greece. The medium course along the line of a rational philosophy, which the Greek genius actually took, proved its salvation.
Characteristics of the Cosmologists. There are certain characteristics of this early philosophy that should be noted at the beginning.
(1) All the Cosmologists were physical scientists, and with few exceptions their scientific views were noteworthy. Aristotle calls them physicists in distinction from their predecessors, whom he calls theologians.
(2) They often worked together in schools. Tradition has been common since Bacon that philosophy centres in individuals; but history shows that frequently the Greeks worked in corporate bodies. These philosophical scientists worked in schools; just as the Homeridæ developed the epic; the Dædalidæ, a group of the earliest artists, the secret of art; the Mysteries, religion. Philosophy now is in the cloister, and the intellect of the time speaks from its retreat from public life. While the Milesian school was undisturbed, owing to the long peace that Miletus enjoyed, we shall find that most of the philosophers of the Cosmological period were in retirement on account of political persecution.
We must remember that by “school” is not necessarily meant a group of pupils under the established instruction of a teacher. A school at this early period is a group of learned men at work on the same problems. Later on in history we shall find that one of the group more learned than the others stands in the position of teacher: for example, Plato in the Academy.
(3) All the Cosmologists were hylozoists. The etymological meaning of hylozoism is its true one—matter is alive. This is the fundamental characteristic of these pre-Socratics from Thales down to Anaxagoras, although some authorities contend that those from the time of Empedocles were not hylozoists. The meaning of hylozoism is simple enough, but the conception is a difficult one for the modern mind; for to-day we are accustomed to think of an impersonal nature under mechanical laws. To the Greek of the Cosmological period the substantial constitution of the universe is impersonal living matter; to us it is impersonal dead matter. Both these views are to be contrasted with the religious belief involved in Greek polytheism, in which the cosmos is conceived to be living personal spirits; this Homeric polytheism is again to be contrasted with the animism of the tribal period, in that it had organized into an æsthetic unity the early savage animism. These hylozoistic philosophers did not, however, give up the Homeric gods, but they treated their existence in a poetic way. They usually believed in their existence, but they always subordinated them to the one living world-ground.
(4) In common with all ancient peoples these Greek philosophers did not believe that the universe had unlimited space. On the contrary, they believed that it was limited and in the shape of an egg.
Table of Cosmologists. The Cosmologists are divided into two classes: (1) the earlier were monists—those who believe that the reality of the universe is a simple, undifferentiated unity; (2) the later were pluralists—those who believe that the reality of the universe consists of several elements equally real. They are enumerated as follows:—
The Monists
1. The Milesian school Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes 
at Miletus.
2. Xenophanes at Colophon and Elea.
3. The Eleatic school Parmenides
Zeno at Elea.
4. Heracleitus at Ephesus.
The Pluralists
5. Empedocles at Agrigentum.
6. Anaxagoras at Clazomenæ.
7. The later Pythagoreans mainly at Thebes.
8. Leucippus at Abdera.
How the Philosophical Question Arose. The interests of these philosophical scientists sharply differentiate them from the preceding theogonists, like Hesiod and Epimenides, as well as from the masses who were absorbed in the religion of the Mysteries. They were, moreover, the men of Greece to whom the emotional excitement of a religious revival would not appeal as a refuge from the troubles of the time. Their own experience in the political troubles had made paramount the question as to the permanence of things. Nevertheless, its answer must be found in nature and in an intellectual way. When they turned to the traditional theogonies they found no answer to their question, for there was only a mythical chronicle of a succession of gods beginning with the unknown. The question of the Cosmologists was not, therefore, what was the original form of this changing world, but what is fundamental in the world always. The time factor is no longer important. Not the temporal prius but the real prius is what they seek. The idea of a temporal origin of things gives place to that of eternal being, and the question finally emerges, What is the real substance that constitutes the universe?
MAP SHOWING WHERE THE COSMOLOGISTS LIVED
(None of the Cosmologists, except the later Pythagoreans, lived in the motherland of Greece. Philosophical activity during this period took place in the colonies. The map shows the cities which were the centres of philosophy and the homes of the philosophers as indicated.)
The Greek Monistic Philosophies. Turning back to our classification on page 20, we see that the earliest Greek philosophers emphasized the monistic tendency, which had become so prominent in Greek religion. This group of monists was composed of the Milesians, Xenophanes, the Eleatic School, and Heracleitus. The course of reasoning of these early thinkers is naïvely simple, and like all naïve thought, it contains such contradictions that the modern reader is likely to become impatient with it. The value of the study of the philosophy of these early Greeks is entirely historical. Its historical value, however, is very great, for it is a revelation of the culture of the Greece of that time, it throws light on many of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, and most of all it contains the germs of modern metaphysical problems. These first Greek philosophers raised the question, What is the constitution of the substance of the universe? Their answers are naïve solutions to the historical metaphysical “riddle.”
The Milesians, who form the earliest philosophical school in European history, seem to have assumed two facts as self-evident about the substance of the universe: (1) There is a single cosmic substance identical with itself, which is the basis of all the changes in nature; (2) Moving matter is the same as life. The Milesians were quite unconscious that these two assumptions were contradictory, but the contradiction impressed their successors—Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and the Eleatics; and divided them in their development of philosophy. Matter which keeps identical with itself is the Unchanging8 and is brought into opposition with Life, the Changing, or matter which moves. The question for Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and the Eleatics—and indeed for all future philosophy—was: How can the changing processes of life be explained by an unchanging substance?
Xenophanes, who was more of a religious reformer than a philosopher, was so absorbed in the first of these assumptions that he developed it for his purpose in his practical social reformation to the entire neglect of the second assumption. The Eleatics, however, to whose city Xenophanes had come, could not leave his doctrine in its one-sided and undeveloped form. They accepted his teaching of the divine Unchangingness of the universe, but this compelled these profounder thinkers to offer some explanation of the natural processes of change. Change to them cannot really exist. Heracleitus, on the other hand, was impressed with the aspect of life that is expressed in the second assumption of the Milesians—living matter is moving matter. He therefore maintained in direct opposition to the Eleatics, that the changing, living processes of nature alone are real. The two contradictory assumptions that lay so mutually indifferent in the Milesian doctrine thus became the basis of a sharp metaphysical controversy between Heracleitus and the Eleatics. The substance of the world is permanent, change is an illusion, said the Eleatics. The substance of the world changes, permanence is an illusion, said Heracleitus. Either all things are permanent or all things change. These early philosophers had no wealth of empirical knowledge nor of psychological reflection upon which to draw, and it is not strange that they should take extreme positions and be blind to their practical consequences.
1. The Milesian School. Of all the Greek cities in the sixth century B. C. Miletus was the wealthiest and most prosperous. It was one of the Ionian colonies and was situated on the coast of Asia Minor, and it alone was able to preserve its autonomy as neighbor of the warring eastern empires. Not until the battle of Lade was it captured and destroyed (494 B. C.). From two generations of philosophers history has preserved three names,—Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. The school is called indifferently the Milesian or the Ionic school. The proximity of Miletus to Ephesus, Colophon, and Clazomenæ (as a glance at the map will show) explains the influence of the Milesian school upon the doctrines of Heracleitus, Xenophanes, and Anaxagoras. Undoubtedly the contact of the Milesians with the Orient and Egypt had brought to them knowledge and correct scientific observations of many sorts, especially astronomical.
Thales (b. 640 B. C.) was a member of one of the leading families of Miletus, and lived during the flourishing period of the city under the tyranny of Thrasybulus. He is counted among the seven Wise Men, and belonged to the rich commercial class. He probably engaged in commerce and traveled in Egypt. He was versed in the current learning, predicted an eclipse, and was acute in mathematics and physics. Probably he never committed anything to writing. Aristotle’s comments are the only data about him.
Anaximander (611–545 B. C.?) was an astronomer and geographer; he made an astronomical globe, a sundial, and a geographical map. He was an intimate disciple of Thales and wrote Concerning Nature, which is referred to as the first Greek philosophical treatise. Nothing is known of his life.
Anaximenes (560–500 B. C.?) was the disciple of Anaximander. One sentence is preserved of his writings.9
The Milesian Philosophy. The Milesians lived upon the seacoast, and the changes of the sea and air must have deeply impressed them. They had an intellectual curiosity to find the cosmic matter which remained identical with itself and at the same time moved. (See p. 22.) They were not, therefore, interested to discover the chemical composition of matter, but to find what matter was most moving and therefore most alive. Thales said that it was water; Anaximenes, air; and Anaximander, the Apeiron, or the Unlimited. Their respective choices were determined by what seemed to possess the most mobility and the greatest inner vitality. Thales thought water possessed this quality. Water is always moving. Thales saw it moving. It therefore has life in itself. Anaximander felt that no object in our perceptual experience would fully explain the ceaseless mobility of nature, and he called it the Unlimited or the Indeterminate—the Apeiron. It is a mixture in which all qualities are lost. The changes in nature are endless, and therefore the single cosmic substance, from which they come, must be endless as well, for “from whatever source things come, in that they have their end.” We learn that this is just the reason for Anaximenes choosing the air for the single underlying cosmic substance. The air is the most changeable thing and is Unlimited.9
Both Thales and Anaximenes still held to the traditional polytheism of the Greek Epic. Anaximander rises above them in this respect. This conception of the Unlimited, to which his scientific search led him, is regarded by him as Deity. He calls it “the divine” (τὸ θεῖον); although he speaks of it in the neuter gender it is, nevertheless, the first European philosophical conception of God. It is the first attempt to conceive of God as purely physical and yet without any mythical dress. In Anaximander the Milesian monism has a religious aspect.
2. Xenophanes, the Religious Philosopher (570 B. C.). The scientific monism of Anaximander was after all only expressive of that religious dissatisfaction, first voiced by the Wise Men, against the Hesiod cosmogony and the immorality of the Homeric myths. Now for the first time a positive conflict between religion and philosophy arose through Xenophanes, the rhapsodist of Colophon. Colophon, an Ionian city near Miletus, was noted for its obscene and cruel religious practices, and when his native city capitulated to the Persians, Xenophanes charged its feebleness to its immoral religion. He went to Magna Græcia, and, disguised as a musician, he wandered about for sixty-seven years through its length and breadth declaiming in song against the anthropomorphism, the mystic ecstasies, and the general social practices of the Greeks. He finally settled in Elea, southern Italy (see map), and on this account he is sometimes called the founder of the Eleatic school.
Xenophanes’ influence upon the thought of Greece was threefold: (1) He preached the Milesian philosophical monism to the people of Greece in the form of a religious monism; (2) He carried this doctrine from eastern Greece (Asia Minor) to Western Greece (Magna Græcia); (3) He was the connecting link between the Milesian and the following Eleatic school.
The Philosophy of Xenophanes. Based on one of the Milesian assumptions, viz., a single cosmic substance remains identical with itself in nature, Xenophanes felt that he had a right to set down two principles about nature.
1. The single primordial substance below the changes of nature is God. The reality below nature which Thales conceived to be water, Anaximander to be unlimited substance without a name, Anaximenes to be air, was said by Xenophanes to be God. The important point here is that Xenophanes has not given the Greeks a spiritualistic conception of God; but that he has positively stated that the substance of the universe is an object of religious devotion. He calls the cosmic substance God instead of calling it water, Apeiron, or air. It is a material thing, and yet it is an object of reverence. He ascribes to this God a spherical form, and yet also mental power of omniscience. God is “one and all” ἓν καὶ πᾶν, and yet he is “one god, the greatest among gods and men, neither in form and thought like unto mortals.” The positive conception of God hangs confused in the mind of Xenophanes. He is scarcely a monotheist, nor yet a pantheist. He is a hylozoist, who conceives the underlying cosmic substance to be an object of religious reverence.
2. The single cosmic substance below the changes of nature is unchangeable. To the Milesians the more moving is matter, the more alive is it. Life and activity are the same thing. To Xenophanes this is not the case, but, on the contrary, the opposite is true. He conceives God to be a definite sphere that is unchangeable and homogeneous. The material substance, God, always remains the same. “He has no need of going about, now hither, now thither, in order to carry out his wishes; but he governs all men without toil.” Xenophanes thus becomes the forerunner of the Eleatic school.
3. Heracleitus, “the Misanthropist” and “the Obscure” (about 563–470 B. C.). Heracleitus was a native of Ephesus, belonged to the aristocracy, and suffered at the hands of the democracy. He wrote a treatise that was difficult to understand even by the ancients, some fragments of which are preserved. He was called the “weeping philosopher” because of his misanthropy, and also the “dark philosopher” because of the obscurity of his writings. He was a theorist rather than a physicist, and his doctrines foreshadow our modern physical theories. His name is coupled with that of Parmenides in the deep impression he made upon Greek thought. From his complacent and gloomy retirement he looked forth upon the world around him with profound contempt, as did the Stoics after him.
a. Heracleitus’ Doctrine of Absolute and Universal Change. The wonder which the Ionians felt, that nature phenomena change into one another, found its liveliest expression in Heracleitus. He not only found that mutability was the primal aspect of nature phenomena, but he also pointed out that human experiences also had their rapid and complete transitions. Especially was he fond of citing the changes of opposites into each other. But what shows his development over the early Milesian doctrine was his isolation of the aspect of change from the Milesian conception of the cosmic matter, thereby affirming that abiding permanence is an illusion. It is one thing to affirm that reality is essentially change; it is another to universalize change by affirming that the permanent has no existence. The Milesian doctrine was too naïve to go as far as that. Heracleitus piles up figures of speech to show that there is no permanence whatever. All existing things are only “becoming”-things, passing-away things. Being is always becoming, about-to-be. The only unchanging thing is change. “You cannot step into the same rivers, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.” “God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger.” “All things flow” (πάντα ῥεῖ). What abides and deserves the name of Deity is not thing, but motion—Becoming.
b. Fire is the Cosmic Substance. Here we come to a difficulty in explaining the doctrine of Heracleitus because of the confusion in his own mind. He evidently goes a long way toward conceiving the cosmic substance as an abstraction—as the process of change. But he could not be wholly abstract. He stops and tells us that the cosmic substance is fire, and he probably means by fire just the same sort of thing as Anaximenes meant by air. Fire is the cosmic substance. It is the essence of all material things because it is the most mobile. But, after all, the fire of which Heracleitus is thinking is not a localized thing, like the fire on the hearth. For the hearth fire in a sense is ever identical with itself. The fire which Heracleitus means is ever darting, ever transforming material. To sum up: Heracleitus does not mean by fire an abstraction like the law of change; he does not mean, on the other hand, a material ever remaining like itself: he does mean a material, but a transforming material.
c. The Definite Changes of Fire. Heracleitus makes some acute observations about the characteristics of the changing fire. The Milesians had been content to observe atmospheric changes and to name condensation and rarefaction as the forms of cosmic change. Heracleitus goes farther and emphasizes definite relations of change. The succession of changes always remains the same. Their definite relation is the only permanence in the world, and Heracleitus’ conception foreshadows the modern conception of the uniformity of the law of nature. The changes are (1) fateful, (2) rational, and (3) just. They show that the world is a destiny, a reason, and a justice. This identification of ethical and logical qualities with the physical betrays the undeveloped condition of the thought of Heracleitus.
In general, there are two characteristics to be noted with reference to Heracleitus’ conception of a definite succession of changes: (1) the changes are always a harmony of opposites; (2) and the changes are in a closed circuit. The process of change is not a flow in one direction like a river over its bed, but it is a movement in two opposite directions. By change Heracleitus means not only a passing into something else but a passing into the opposite. Everything is the union of opposites, and everything is the transition point of opposites about to separate. The flux of things is thus poetically conceived as a war of things, and this war is “the father of all things.” This unity of opposites has an equilibrium that illudes us into thinking it is permanent. The universe is an invisible harmony, divided into itself and again united. Investigate life and there are antitheses everywhere. War is life. The second general characteristic of the succession of changes is their closed circuit. Fire changes into all things, and all things are changing back into fire. These two movements are called the “Upward Way” and the “Downward Way.” Downward, fire changes through air and water into earth. Upward, earth changes back to water, air, and fire. With every change, there is counter-change, action is accompanied by a reaction. “Men do not know how that which is drawn in opposite directions harmonizes with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.”
d. The Practical Philosophy of Heracleitus. Heracleitus was more of a metaphysician than a physicist, and his chief concern was in the formation and the practical application of his theory of change. He looked upon man as a bit of cosmic fire struck off and imprisoned in a body of earth, water, and air. After death this fiery soul is released and absorbed in the cosmic fire. In his present state man has a divided existence: the life of the soul, or the fire of the reason; and the life of the senses of the imprisoning body. The reason retires from the illusions of sense, and sees in its aristocratic isolation how illusory the sensations are. For the senses tell us that their objects are permanent, while the reason sees through this deception to the changingness of the world. Thus the beginning is made by Heracleitus in distinguishing the reflections of the reason from sensations. Truth is for the first time systematically set over against opinion. The reasonable Wise Man resigns himself to whatever happens because he knows that it is fateful, wise, and just. The Wise Man recognizes that all is change, and he is happy because he sees providence in the vicissitudes of his own life. Thus in the aristocratic hate, which Heracleitus holds against democracies, he makes conformity to law the only way to happiness. The reason of Wise Men, and not the senses of the multitude, must be the true guide of society.
Heracleitus was a profound observer and theorist. His physical theory foreshadowed the modern theories of natural law and of relativity; his practical theories reappear in the psychology of Protagoras and the ethics of the Stoics.
4. The Eleatic School. The town of Elea to which Xenophanes came in the course of his wanderings had been recently settled by the Ionian refugees from Phocæa, a great maritime city in Asia Minor, which had been conquered by the Persians (543 B. C.). Elea is now Castellamare on the west coast of Italy. It is celebrated as the birthplace of Parmenides and Zeno, who founded the so-called Eleatic school.
a. Parmenides (b. 515 B. C.).
Parmenides wrote about 470 B. C. He is represented as a serious and influential man, with a high moral character. He exercised strong influence upon such philosophers as Plato and Democritus, and was a political power in the city of Elea, of which he was a native. He was not a stranger to the Pythagoreans. The large fragment of his poem is the most ancient monument extant of metaphysical speculation among the Greeks.
Parmenides takes the doctrine of Xenophanes with great seriousness, and what Xenophanes says about the Godhead, Parmenides says about all things. Xenophanes’ religious weapon of an unchanging cosmic substance becomes in the hands of Parmenides an academic doctrine of science and the basis of logical controversy. Parmenides used the conception of Xenophanes in his great didactic poem, The Way of Truth and the Way of Opinion, with the evident purpose of refuting the theory of Heracleitus. The fragment of the poem reveals the driest abstractions dressed in rich poetry. As a thinker Parmenides is the most important in this period. Zeno was the friend and pupil of Parmenides.
(1) The Cosmic Substance is Being. The first assumption in the Milesian doctrine—that there is a single matter that ever remains identical with itself—was so self-evident to Parmenides that he does not attempt to prove it. He assumes it, as if it were cogent to everybody. However, he explains what he means by Being in a negative statement: Not-Being, or what is not, cannot be thought. Being and thought are so correlated that they are the same. Thinking always has Being as its content, and there is no Being that is not thought. Being ＝ Thought. This explanation of Parmenides’ identification of thought and Being may be put in this logical form:—
All thinking refers to something thought, and therefore has Being for its content;
Thinking that refers to nothing, and is therefore contentless, cannot be;
Therefore, not-Being cannot be thought, much less can it be.
These propositions look very abstract, and make us believe that we are to plunge immediately into a kind of German idealism. But Parmenides leaves us in no doubt that he is one of the hylozoists of his time. Being is indeed thought, but Being is also matter. We may therefore amend our equation to Being ＝ Thought ＝ Matter. Being is what fills space, and all Being has this and only this property. All Being is therefore exactly alike, and there is only one, single Being. There are no distinctions in Being. By not-Being Parmenides means empty space or that which is not material. So that Parmenides’ assumption of Being as the cosmic substance means this: all that exists, including thought, fills space; and all that does not exist does not fill space.
Being, the cosmic substance, is one, eternal, imperishable, homogeneous, unchangeable, and material. When men see the world as it really is, when they see its cosmic substance, they see it to be one continuous material block. The world is not made up of parts with intervals of nothing between them, but it is a solid, homogeneous whole. The cosmic Being is a timeless, spaceless Being with no distinctions. The form of Being is spherical. It is cosmic-body and cosmic-thought. This is the assumption of Parmenides, which is so self-evident and so cogent to him that he does not attempt to prove but only to explain it.
(2) Other Things than the Cosmic Substance (Being) have no Real Existence. If Being is space that is filled, not-Being is empty space. However, empty space has no existence. But the existence of a plural number of things depends upon the existence of empty spaces between them. Furthermore, the motion of things and the change of things depend upon the existence of empty spaces in which they can move and change. Since empty space is not-Being and has no existence, the plurality of things and the motion and change of things have also no existence. They are illusions. The nature-world, with its richness of qualities and variety of motions, before the logic of Parmenides “folds up its tents like the Arabs and silently steals away.”
This logical drawing out of one of the aspects of the Milesian conception of the cosmic matter has a curious result. The Milesians and Xenophanes sought to explain by the cosmic substance the many nature changes. But when in the hands of Parmenides the cosmic substance is all of reality, then there is no reality to the changes. Consequently the concept formed for the explanation of change has so developed as to deny the existence of change. The cosmic substance excludes all origination and decay, all space and time differences, all divisibility, diversity, and movement. There is only one real, all else is illusion.
But what can we say of the varied world of nature as it appears to us? Do we see, hear, and touch many things and motions? In Part II of his poem he raises the question, Suppose man takes the world of change as real how must he explain it? He answers by using the explanation of Heracleitus. But these changes of eye and ear belong to the world of sense, and Parmenides is talking, in Part I of his poem, about the real world or that world known to thought. Parmenides insists as strongly as did Heracleitus that the reason and not the sense shall be our guide to what is real. Yet he arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion from Heracleitus as to what the reason sees as real. The senses show us only the many and the changing. The reason shows us nothing of the sort, but only permanence and unchangingness.
b. Zeno (b. 490–430 B. C.).
Zeno was born in Elea. He was contemporary with those who tried to reconcile the two sides of the metaphysical controversy,—Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. He wrote in prose in the form of question and answer. This is the beginning of the dialogue literature, which in the time of the Sophists, Socrates and Plato, was richly developed and became known as dialectic. On the Greek stage during the time of Pericles it came forth in dramatic form through Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The Philosophy of Zeno. Zeno was the active controversialist of the school of Elea, and he was not a constructive philosopher. He offered no contribution to advance the thought of Parmenides. He appeared rather as the master of logical argument in defense of his predecessor, by tearing to pieces the arguments of his opponents. The opponents that Zeno is attacking are the Atomists of Abdera, who were his contemporaries, rather than Heracleitus. His contribution was negative and formal, but it was nevertheless effective and searching. His arguments and paradoxes will, however, lose their cogency unless it be kept in mind that he is trying to show how absurd magnitude, multiplicity, and change would be in discontinuous space such as the Atomists describe. While his paradoxes have been attacked again and again, they still have effectiveness against atomic theories.
His arguments are against magnitude, multiplicity, and motion. There can be no magnitude, because a thing would then be both infinitely small and infinitely great. There can be no multiplicity of things, since they would be both limited and unlimited in number. There can be no motion, because (1) it is impossible to go through a fixed space; (2) it is impossible to go though a space that has movable limits; and (3) because of the relativity of motion. The dilemmas which he proposed of Achilles and the tortoise, the flying arrow at rest, and the bushel of corn are classic.10
The Results of the Conflict between Heracleitus and Parmenides. 1. One important result of this final conflict between the inconsistent motives in the Milesian teaching was that reason was contrasted with sense, reflection with experience. The more fully the philosophers developed their doctrines, the more their doctrines became contrasted with the opinions of unreflecting people. At first the contrast appeared in this naïve form: that what they thought was right, and what others thought must be wrong, if others differed from them. Then the contrast came in this form: that reflection gives the true and sensations the false. Thus reflection came to have such conclusiveness that it gained independence. The philosopher began to feel the supremacy of reason, to assert that he has truth, to call unreasoned belief by the opprobrious name of “opinion.” This is curiously illustrated in the case of Heracleitus and Parmenides. Their opposing conceptions of the cosmic substance are claimed to be the result of reason, while each calls the other’s theory “opinion.”
2. Another result was that in the Greek thought the monistic theory was found to be useless in the study of nature. These early monistic views led up as necessary steps to pluralism, but they were not in themselves serviceable. The imperfection in the Milesian teaching appeared in the impassable gulf between Heracleitus and Parmenides. It now remained for the last Cosmologists to see if, on the basis of pluralism, they could not reconcile the preceding views and at the same time obtain a satisfactory metaphysics of nature.
3. The third result of the controversy between the Eleatics and Heracleitus was that the peril from the Orphic Mysteries was averted,—not immediately, nor in a year’s time, but after many years. Philosophy became established. The Greek reason now had an object of interest, in a sharp scientific issue. Mystery was not crushed, but subdued. The mental life of the future Greek had a topic for its reflection which supplanted, when the time came, its emotional interest in the supernatural.
CHAPTER III
PLURALISM
Efforts toward Reconciliation. The theories of Heracleitus and Parmenides were in part fantastic and in part abstract. They were the two motives of the Milesian school that had been developed so far as to reveal their inherent inconsistencies.
Physical theories now began to spring up which modified the metaphysical theories; and these produced results which while not so logical, were less distant from the facts of life. The Eleatics had so conceived Being as to deny the existence of changing phenomena perceived in the world of nature. On the other hand, Heracleitus had so emphasized the universality of change that there was little reality left in the particular changes. The later Heracleitans were Heracleitus gone mad. “We not only cannot step into the same river twice, but we cannot do it once.” All the preceding philosophers had been monists. The time had therefore come for thinkers to abandon monism if thought were to have any usefulness. Monism, whether in the form of Heracleitus’ doctrine of universal change or of Parmenides’ doctrine of universal permanence, had merely set aside the problem about the Many. Of course, a more satisfactory solution of this problem could come only when human life had become riper and had more experiences upon which to draw. It was natural for the Greek philosopher to look now to pluralism for his solution, when he turned away from monism. At the outset pluralism tried to reconcile the two extremes to which the Milesian motifs had gone. Its later development in the doctrine of Protagoras was as extreme as that of the monists.
The New Conception of Change of the Pluralists. Facing the fact that change has to be explained and cannot be denied, change is conceived by the pluralists to be not a transformation but a transposition. It is an alteration in position of the parts of a mass. Birth, growth, death, are only such changes of transposition. Empedocles, to whom the origin of the doctrine is attributed, says, “There is no coming into Being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in baneful death, but only a mingling and a separation of what has been mingled. Just as when painters are elaborating temple offerings,—they, when they have taken the pigments of many colors in their hands, mix them in a harmony,—so let not the error prevail in thy mind that there is any other source of all the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers.” All origination, then, is a new combination, and every destruction only a separation of the original parts. The Pluralists thus make Heracleitus’ conception useful in the explanation of nature.
The New Conception of the Unchanging of the Pluralists—The Element. But there must be a permanence in order that there be change. This can only be conceived by assuming that there are many original units that in themselves do not change. The mass of the world is ever the same; there is no new creation. Being consists in many elements, and not in a single block. So to Empedocles in particular is accredited the priority of forming the conception of the element, which has occupied an important place in science. The element is conceived by the Pluralists as unoriginated, imperishable, and unchanging. It has all the qualities that Parmenides attributed to his single Being, only the elements may change their place and suffer mechanical division. The Pluralists thus make the Eleatic conception useful in the explanation of nature.
The Introduction of the Conception of the Efficient Cause. The Eleatics had detached the quality of motion from Being. The Pluralists, in reintroducing it, were obliged to make it a separate force in order to get movement into their universe. The elements are changeless. How can they move? They cannot move themselves. They are moved from without. Here in Empedocles is made a differentiation of great importance—the concept of the moving or efficient cause. However, this does not appear in this early time in conceptual but in mythical-poetic and undefined form. With this differentiated efficient cause, can Pluralism be considered to be hylozoism? Authorities differ. Certainly this new concept shows the beginning of the breaking up of hylozoism and the beginning of the formation of a mechanistic conception of the universe. But probably the Pluralists were as much hylozoists as their predecessors, the monists. Their efficient causes are material like the elements, and they are poetically and indefinitely described. They are in every case conceived as the material which has a lively or an originating motion. We must keep in mind that all the Cosmologists except the Eleatics believed movement to be life.
Summary of Similarities and Differences in the Theories of the Reconcilers.
The general common characteristics of the theories of the Reconcilers:—
1. A plurality of the elements.
2. An efficient cause which explains the shifting of the elements in causing the origin, growth, and decay of the world of nature.
The general differences between the theories of the Reconcilers:—
1. In the number and quality of the elements.
2. In the number and quality of the causes.
The Pluralistic Philosophers: Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and the Later Pythagoreans. With the Pluralists we pass completely out of the sixth century B. C. The lives of the hylozoistic Pluralists span the fifth century, and cosmological interest extends later. Even the Eleatic Zeno lived from 490 to 430 B. C. Empedocles lived from 490 to 430 B. C., Anaxagoras from 500 to 425 B. C., and the Pythagoreans and Leucippus later. When the cosmological movement was still virile in the Grecian colonies, and even before it had reached its systematic form in Democritus of Abdera, the anthropological movement had begun in the motherland, in Athens. The Persian Wars are the dividing line between the two periods, but only because they denote the beginning of the new movement in Athens, not the end of the old movement in Asia Minor and Magna Græcia. Contemporaneous with the Pluralists was the brilliant Age of Pericles, when the Sophists were carrying education to the people and Socrates was teaching in the Athenian market-place. By the middle of the fifth century B. C. there was the liveliest interchange of scientific ideas throughout Greek society, and the contemporaneousness of the Pluralists with one another and with the Athenian philosophers shows this in many similarities in their doctrines and in many polemical references. There are four schools of Reconcilers, of which Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and the later Pythagoreans are the representatives.
Empedocles11 (490 to 430 B. C.) was the first Dorian philosopher, a partisan of the democracy, and belonged to a rich family of Agrigentum. He became a distinguished statesman, but he later fell from popular favor. Then, in the garb of a magician, he traveled as physician and priest through Magna Græcia. His political affiliations would prevent his direct connection with the Pythagoreans, but he showed that the Pythagoreans influenced him, and his career is an imitation of that of Pythagoras. He was acquainted with the theory of Heracleitus, and he knew Parmenides personally. He was one of the first rhetoricians, and was probably connected with a large literary circle. He is the first and most imperfect representative of the reconciliation. The story of his suicide by leaping into Mt. Ætna is supposed to be a myth.
Anaxagoras (500–425 B. C.), a man of wealthy antecedents, was much esteemed, was born in Clazomenæ in a circle rich in Ionian culture, but was isolated from practical life. He declared the heaven to be his fatherland and the study of the heavenly bodies to be his life’s task. He went to Athens about 450 B. C., where he formed one of a circle of notable men of culture. He lived in Athens under the patronage of Pericles, but in 434 B. C. he was expelled. In Athens he was intimate with such men as Euripides, Thucydides, and Protagoras. He represents the first appearance of philosophy in Athens.
The life of Leucippus is almost unknown. He was probably born in Miletus, visited Elea, and settled in Abdera.
The Later Pythagoreans. After the Pythagoreans as a religious and political body had been defeated at Crotona, they lost their prestige and were scattered to the four winds. They were beaten in the battle of Crotona (510 B. C.) and dispersed about 450 B. C. Pythagoras died 504 B. C. His scattered followers, these later Pythagoreans, formed a school of philosophy which had its centre at Thebes. Destroyed as a religious body the members lost their superstitions and turned their attention to philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and physics. As mathematicians and as astronomers they are the most notable among the ancients. Philolaus is the probable originator of their philosophy of numbers. This school disappeared about 350 B. C. Pythagoreanism reappeared later under the name of neo-Pythagoreanism.
The Philosophy of Empedocles. Empedocles conceived the number of elements to be four,—earth, air, fire, and water,—an arbitrary enumeration, which nevertheless persisted in the popular imagination throughout the Middle Ages. He chose this number of elements because they included all the elements in his predecessors’ theories. By the transposition and new arrangement of these elements he could account for the variety of the world. The efficient causes that make these different separations and mixtures are Love and Hate, two mythical and sensuous entities. Love is the cause of the union of things, Hate of their separation.
This is the general metaphysical theory that Empedocles uses to explain the physical world and especially physiological phenomena; and he is probably best known as the author of the aphorism, “Like attracts Like.” For example, he conceives the physical world as continuously repeating itself through four cosmic stages, each centuries long. The world moves therefore in cyclical evolution, in which Love is bringing like elements together only to be followed by stages of the separation of the like elements by Hate,—an endless cosmic procession.
But Empedocles’ interest in cosmology was only a part of his dominating interest in the organic world. He held some interesting evolution theories. His special interest in human physiology led him to frame the first theory of perception. Man is composed of the four elements, and he can know the universe around himself because Like in him attracts Like in the external world. The earth forms our solid parts, water the liquid parts, air is the vital breath, and fire is the soul. The blood contains the four elements, and is therefore the real carrier of life. If we perceive anything, it is because we have qualities similar to that thing. The element in us attracts the like element outside. He fancifully explained how parts of each element pressed upon parts of like elements—earth upon earth, air upon air; and how these clung together until sundered by Hate. The senses have only a partial number of elements, while the reason has them all; therefore sense knowledge is partial when compared with rational knowledge.
The Philosophy of Anaxagoras. The pluralistic conception of the nature-substance, that was originated by Empedocles in this crude form, got a more complete character in the hands of Anaxagoras. For Anaxagoras took exception to the arbitrary assumption of Empedocles that the elements were only four in number. How could this world of infinite variety be derived from only four elements? We must postulate as many elements as there are qualities, if by merely shuffling them—by various combinings and separatings of them—their infinite number is to be explained. There are a plural number of elements qualitatively distinct. Every perceptual thing is composed of these heterogeneous parts or qualities or elements. But how do you know an element when you find one? Always by the fact that when you divide it, its parts are homogeneous. The elements are, therefore, those substances that divide into parts that are like one another; while the perceptual objects of nature can be divided into parts that are unlike one another. They are called “seeds” by Anaxagoras, and designated as “homoiomeriai” by Aristotle and later philosophy. This was a time, it must be remembered, when chemical analysis had not developed, and when mechanical division and change of temperature were the only means of investigation. Form, color, and taste were the characteristics that differentiated elements. So Anaxagoras was content to name as elements such things as bones, muscles, flesh, marrow, metals, etc. The countless elements or qualities are present in a finely divided state throughout the universe. Every perceptual object has present in it all elements, even opposite elements. It is, however, known and named by the element that prevails in it at any particular instant. For example, fire contains an element of cold but the fire element prevails. Opposites attract, and the qualitative change in a thing consists in the predominance of some other quality already present in it.
For the efficient cause of the combining and separating of the elements Anaxagoras selected one of the elements. He called it the Nous, the Greek word for mind or reason. Many historians have therefore concluded that Anaxagoras is the author of an idealistic philosophy. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras that he “stood out like a sober man among the random talkers that had preceded him.” But both Plato12 and Aristotle are disappointed with the way in which Anaxagoras handles the conception of Nous and, as a matter of fact, the Nous, as Anaxagoras uses it, is not less hylozoistic than the Love and Hate of Empedocles. In the Nous Anaxagoras threw out a thought that was too big for him. Its introduction, however, marks the breaking up of pre-Socratic hylozoism. Anaxagoras wrote down the word, Nous, from which comes the contrast with matter. He stripped the mythical dress from the efficient cause of Empedocles and substituted Nous, because he wished to emphasize the unity of the cosmic process. The Nous is one of the elements; it is “thought-stuff,” it is a corporeal substance. It differs from all the other elements in that it is the finest, the most mobile, and has the power of self-motion. If among the early schools motion is life, here we find the new conception of self-motion as most alive. Instead of a departure from hylozoism, this is a rehabilitation of hylozoism in more perfect form. The Nous is the cause of the harmony and order of the cosmos.
The Philosophy of the Atomists—Leucippus and the School at Abdera. Only circumstantial evidence is left to testify to the early beginnings of the school of atomists at Abdera. About 450 B. C., owing to the rise of Athens and the great victory of Cimon over the Persians, the Ionian civilization on the coasts of Asia Minor had a new lease of life, and there was a renewal of scientific activity in the cities. The influence of the Milesians appeared and Anaxagoras’ doctrine, which had been widely disseminated, began to have great vigor. Among the philosophers of this section was one about whom we know very little, except that his name was Leucippus and that he was the father of atomism. Miletus was probably his native place, and after visiting Elea he settled in Abdera in Thrace. We know that the polemic of Zeno was directed against contemporary atomism; and we know the theories of the pupils of Leucippus, of Protagoras, and of Democritus, in whom the doctrine of atomism culminated. Probably the theory of Leucippus was that the cosmic substance is composed of an infinite number of elements quantitatively distinct, in opposition to Empedocles’ theory of a fourfold division as well as against Anaxagoras’ theory of an infinite number of qualities. Atomism in this early form represents one of the ways that Greek thought took in reconciling the conflicting claims of Heracleitus and Parmenides. The doctrine of atomism will be presented fully in its greatest representative, Democritus.
The Later Pythagoreans. Had the Pythagorean band remained what Pythagoras had designed it, had it not had its political aspirations crushed at the battle of Crotona and the members scattered far and wide, it would probably have for the historian of to-day only the importance of a local band of political and religious reformers. The adversity at Crotona was, however, a blessing in disguise for the Pythagoreans and for Greece, for it turned the Pythagoreans from religious politics to science and metaphysics. In the first place, they became the authors of an important metaphysical theory. This was the theory of numbers, which influenced Plato, became the foundation of a vigorous school in Alexandria in the Hellenic-Roman Period, flourished during the Middle Ages, and united with the doctrines of the Jews in what is called the Cabala. To-day the magic numbers persist in our superstitions. In the second place, the Pythagoreans turned to science,—especially to mathematics and astronomy,—and in these two branches became very celebrated in ancient times. Their astronomical theory had a most extraordinary history. With modifications it was preserved by Plato and Aristotle, and later became the basis of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. This system was the scientifically accepted system for fifteen hundred years, when it was supplanted by the Newtonian theory. It is a most singular fact that the cosmological background of the Epics of Dante and Milton is the astronomical system of the Pythagoreans as expressed in the Ptolemaic system.
The Pythagoreans, be it remarked, were “Reconcilers,” but they were more. The original ethical motive of Pythagoras influenced them as scientists. They did not attempt to formulate a science of ethics, but the ethical motive was always back of their mathematics and astronomy.
1. The Pythagorean Conception of Being. The Pythagorean conception of reality is the most advanced of any cosmological theory in this period. The Pythagoreans were hylozoists, but they come the nearest to transcending the hylozoism of their time. The influence of the later Pythagoreans, whom Plato met in Italy, upon Plato shows that Pythagorean philosophy forms a link between the cosmology of the colonies and the following comprehensive systems of thought.
The important position in the evolution of Greek thought occupied by the Pythagoreans depends upon their conception of that Being that abides amid all change. Pythagoreanism is usually spoken of as “the number theory.” This is, however, only a suggestion of its import. For numbers are not to the Pythagoreans what the different kinds of cosmic matter were to the early monists, or what the several elements were to the pluralists,—Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists. Neither are they abstractions merely, such as we use in scientific reckoning. The Pythagoreans were pluralists and hylozoists whose plural numbers look beyond hylozoism.
There are two kinds of reality in the Pythagorean teaching: (1) numbers, and (2) unlimited space. The essential nature of things, the Being that abides, consists in the shaping of this unlimited space into mathematical forms. The numbers or the forms are the limited aspect of Being; space is the unlimited aspect of Being. Actual Being consists in the union of the two aspects. Being therefore has two roots, each being necessary to the other. The later Pythagoreans, indeed, called attention to the fact that their numbers were not the same as the different kinds of matter out of which the other Cosmologists conceived the world to be fashioned. Numbers are not the stuff out of which the world of nature-objects have arisen, but rather are forms of nature-objects. Numbers are the patterns or models of things; things are the copies or imitations of numbers. Unlimited space furnishes the material; numbers or mathematical forms furnish the mould; the result is a material thing. Here we find the early basis of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, and the correlation in Aristotle of Form and matter. If we were to draw an analogy between the Pythagorean conception of numbers and any part of the preceding cosmological teaching, we should find the similarity between the numbers and the earlier efficient causes and not between the numbers and the elements. For example, Pythagorean numbers have a function more nearly like Love and Hate than like the four elements in Empedocles’ teaching. On the other hand, Pythagorean unlimited space is analogous to the Empedoclean elements.
2. The Pythagorean Dualistic World.13 The Pythagoreans carried out their conception of this twofold reality both in their mathematical studies and in their conceptions of natural objects. It was from such investigations that they were impressed by the dualism in everything and so reached their principle. They observed in mathematics that the number-series consists of alternate odd and even numbers. The odd numbers are limited and the even unlimited (because they could be divided). They explained the elements as determined by mathematical forms: fire has the form of a tetrahedron; earth, of the cube; air, of the octohedron; water, of the icosahedron; and an additional fifth element, the æther, of the dodecahedron. They carried this dualism further by identifying the limited form with the odd, with the perfect, and with the good; while the unlimited was identified with the even, the imperfect, and the bad. Some of the Pythagoreans even sought to trace out this dualism in the many realms of experience, and they originated a table of ten pairs of opposites: limited and unlimited; odd and even; one and many; right and left; male and female; rest and motion; straight and crooked; light and dark; good and bad; square and oblong.
There is a system in the Pythagorean theory not to be found in the teaching of the other reconcilers. Although all the numbers, and with them all the world, are divided into two opposing classes, these are, nevertheless, united in a harmony. The harmony of a dualism reminds us of Heracleitus’ harmony of antitheses. All series of numbers have their unity and harmony in the odd-even number, One. To the Pythagorean the opposites of life—the good and the bad, the limited and unlimited, the perfect and imperfect, the odd and even—exist in an harmonious whole.
As the Pythagorean school grew in years, the realms to which it applied its theory increased. While we have stated its metaphysical theory first in order to give it prominence, the school came to the formulation of its theory through its investigations in mathematics, music, and astronomy. Then it applied the theory to geometrical structures and to other fields with a procedure that was arbitrary and unmethodical. Yet so universal was the application of the theory that it lived to have superstitious authority for the human mind in the Middle Ages.
3. Pythagorean Astronomy. The formation of the world-all began from the One, or central fire, which attracted and limited the nearest portions of the unlimited. This fire became the centre of the world-all, which had the shape of a hollow globe. Around the central fire the celestial bodies move in globular transparent shells. Their movements are concentric to the fire. This is the beginning of the astronomical theory of the crystalline spheres. The world-all is divided into three concentric portions. The periphery or outer rim is Olympus, where all is perfection and where the gods dwell. Between Olympus and the moon is Cosmos, where all is orderly and all movements are in circles. Between the moon and the central fire is the region called Uranus, where all is disorderly and the movements are up and down. The earth is in this lower section of disorder, and moves in a transparent globular shell like the celestial bodies around the central fire. The number of the heavenly bodies is the perfect number, ten. The world-all is conceived as a heavenly heptachord, with the orbits of the seven planets as the sounding strings. Upon this notion was founded the harmony of the spheres, which harmony is not heard by man because it is constant. In modifying this astronomical theory and then accepting it, the most important change that Aristotle made was to conceive the earth as at the centre of the world-all with the sun revolving about it. This was the form in which the Ptolemaic astronomers received it.
Historical Retrospect. In these many searchings of the Cosmologists for a reality amid the changes of nature, what result can be found significant for the Cosmological Period and valuable as a bequest for the following periods? Are these crude scientific speculations of the early Greeks to be looked upon as out of connection with their own age and the age to come? The Cosmological philosophy had two definite results. In the first place, with reference to its own century and a half, it saved the intellectual world of Greece from the slavery of a mystic religion. When we started with Thales in 625 B. C., we saw Greece confronted with two perils. One was political, and consisted of internecine troubles and of danger from its warlike neighbors. This peril grew still greater, until at the very end of the period it was averted at the battle of Salamis. Greek arms banished this political peril. But the other peril was subjective and therefore more menacing. The mysteries of the Orphic religion would have quenched the Greek genius had not its rational philosophy given the Greek intellectual life new conceptions. In the next place, it bequeathed to the succeeding period a fairly well-drawn contrast between a world of intellectual order and a world of sensuous disorder. The thought of an order in nature in conformity to law was developed into clearness in the Cosmological Period. The order was obtained from the astronomical studies of these scientists. Reasoning from the order that they saw, to an ordering principle, Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans almost, but not quite, gave to that principle a teleological meaning. The principle of permanence that these nature scientists sought was found in the great and simple relations of the stars, whose revolutions are the expression of order and constancy. Impregnated as they were with their elemental hylozoism, the Greek Cosmologists were as yet not quite able to find an orderly permanence in the terrestrial world with its manifold and intersecting motions. Yet Greek thought was looking forward. The Cosmologist had already contrasted the terrestrial as the imperfect with the celestial as the perfect peace and permanence. The step was but a short one from the contrast of the two realms to the effort to bring them into a unity. Thus in this astronomical and concrete form a distinction of value was obtained that had lasting ethical and æsthetical significance, not only upon Plato and Aristotle, but upon modern thought.
CHAPTER IV
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERIOD (490–399 B. C.): THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAN
An Historical Summary of the Anthropological Period. The Anthropological Period begins with the Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C. After the battle of Marathon there sprang up a distinct impulse toward knowledge all over Greece; and detailed investigations were begun in mathematics, astronomy, biology, medicine, history, and physics. Science, which had up to this time been unorganized and undifferentiated, now became sharply divided into the special sciences. But what makes the Persian Wars of particular importance is that they are the starting-point in the motherland of the movement in the study of man and human relations. The battle of Marathon does not therefore mark the end of the Cosmological movement and the waning of the Greeks’ interest in science; but it marks rather the beginning in Athens of the Anthropological movement. The Cosmological and the Anthropological Periods overlap.
The Anthropological Period easily divides itself into three epochs from the point of view of its political affairs:—
1. The Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C.
2. The Age of Pericles, 467–428 B. C.
3. The Peloponnesian Wars, 432–403 B. C.
The first epoch is the birth and the last epoch the decadence of pure Greek civilization, while the thirty-nine years of the supremacy of Pericles cover the ripest period of Greek life. In this connection it is well to mention Hegel’s thought that nations do not ripen intellectually until they begin to decay politically (“The owl of Minerva does not start upon its flight until the evening twilight has begun to fall”). Plato and Aristotle do not come until after this period, when Greek political life had begun to wane.
The following table is a partial list of the notable men of the period, with the date of their birth:—
Æschylus, 525 (dramatist before Pericles).
Sophocles, 495 (dramatist during Age of Pericles).
Phidias, 490.
Euripides, 480 (dramatist of the Sophistic and the new learning).
Herodotus, 475.
Thucydides, 471.
Xenophon, 430?
Aristophanes, 444.
Anaxagoras, 500.
Empedocles, 495.
Protagoras, 480.
Democritus, 470.
Sophists (many), 450–350.
Socrates, 469.
Antisthenes, 440.
Aristippus, 435.
Plato, 427.
The Persian Wars and the Rise of Athens. The blow that had been impending over Greece during the sixth century had been struck, but had been averted in the Persian Wars of 490 B. C. and 480 B. C. The powerful and splendidly organized “barbaric neighbor,” who had threatened the civilization of the Greek cities of Asia Minor for so many years, had swept over the Hellespont into Greece and had been turned back. It has been pointed out14 that the Persian Wars were only one of a series of conflicts between Oriental and Occidental civilizations; and that the strip of Asia Minor along the Mediterranean has always been a disputed borderland between irreconcilable hemispheres. First was the mythical invasion of Troy; then the Persian Wars; then came the arms of Alexander conquering Persia; then the invasion of the Mohammedans to the very walls of Tours; then the Crusades; and to-day we still have the eternal Eastern question with us. While each of these conflicts was momentous for Europe, none was more important in its issues for the world than the Persian Wars. For through those wars did Greece first come to a consciousness of herself. Never before did she realize her united strength,—the greatness of her inherited instincts. The fifth century B. C. was the most clearly conscious moment of Greece, if not of the world. Classic Greece—the Greece whose thought became fundamental to western civilization—was born from the Persian Wars.
The centre of gravity of the Greek world was shifted after the Persian Wars from Miletus to Athens, from the colonies to the motherland. Indeed, the history of classic Greece is almost entirely the history of Athens. Of the large cities of Greece,—Corinth, Ægina, Sparta, and Thebes,—Athens was naturally the locality where Grecian civilization would centre when the commercial and maritime colonies fell. The Ionian race, by whom it had been settled, was a mixed race, and by nature very versatile. Before the Persian Wars it had been under the wise tyranny of Pisistratus, who took the first steps toward the founding of an Athenian empire. In the period between the two wars, Themistocles had built the Athenian fleet and thereby made Athens the great maritime and naval centre of Greece. There was, indeed, every reason why Athens and not some other Grecian city should become the new centre of classic Greece. The Spartans were oligarchical, stern, unintellectual, and offensive to strangers; the people of Thebes were held under a strict aristocratic government, the people of Thessaly were aristocratic, luxurious, and stagnant; but the Athenians were democratic, social to strangers, literary, liberal, frugal, and alert. After the Persian Wars the power of the Delian confederacy became more and more centralized in the city of Athens. Controlling the fleet of the Confederacy for her own defense and using the rich treasury of the Confederacy for her own municipal improvements, Athens under the brilliant rule of Pericles, who summoned scholars and artists from all Greece, was the only city of Greece where the Renaissance of Greece was possible. Athens had become the eye of Greece, and the following description of the Greek Renaissance is especially significant in regard to her.
The Greek Enlightenment. Following the Persian Wars there arose throughout Greece a great national intellectual movement. The years mark the Greek Renaissance, the Age of Pericles, and the time when the Greek masterpieces in literature and plastic art were produced. Perhaps the greatest Greek production was Athens itself, whose cultural influence was personified in the scholar-politician, Pericles.
1. The Impulse for Learning. In the first place there was a general impulse throughout Greece for education. Everybody seemed to want to know what the schools of Cosmologists had had to say about science. The Greeks now had wealth and therefore leisure; they had come into contact with the Oriental peoples and therefore they had their curiosity excited. Learning, which had been confined in the Cosmological Period to a few scholars in the schools, now came forth into the market place. Learning in the fifth century B. C. was drawn from the schools into publicity. The objects of interest had greatly widened and the learning of the scholars began to filter into the general consciousness. Whereas in the sixth century philosophy was a matter between learned men, in the fifth century we find Socrates and the Sophists teaching whosoever would listen.
2. The Practical Need of Knowledge. But mere curiosity will not entirely explain the Greek intellectual movement. There had grown up an imperative practical need for knowledge. In Athens and other Greek cities the democracy of the fifth century B. C. had supplanted the tyranny of the sixth century. Duty and inclination together forced the citizen into active participation in public affairs. In these democratic cities family tradition and character were no longer sufficient for success; but it became generally recognized that the most useful and successful man was the educated man. The complex relations existing between states and between the citizens in the states made education absolutely necessary for the politician. Nowhere was the need of an education more imperative than in Athens; nowhere was the need more easily filled. In a very short time after the Persian Wars the social position of science changed to one of power; and the inner character of science changed from the study of nature to the study of ethical and political problems. Scientists became teachers of eloquence, for the citizen now needed to be an orator and a rhetorician. Statesmen and generals must know how to persuade. Courts of law were public, their proceeding oral, and personal attendance was therefore required. There was no man in Athens who might not be condemned, if he could not personally in court refute falsehoods and disentangle sophistries. Besides, to be beaten in debate was as disgraceful in the eyes of the public as to lose one’s cause.
Two classes of men, with an importance hitherto unknown, appear in Greek history,—the rhetoricians and the dialecticians. Rhetoric was public oratory, necessary for the public defense of one’s rights, or for the maintenance of one’s dignity, or for the gratification of one’s ambition. The dialectic was, on the other hand, argument employed in private between two persons, usually friends, to unravel an obscurity, to reduce an opponent to silence, to exercise one’s self in the mastery of a subject, or to sift evidence. The dialectic, therefore, became a distinct mental pursuit for men who had a natural defect in public speaking or rhetoric. Besides rhetoric and dialectic, there grew up somewhat later what was called the eristic. Eristic was polemical argument consisting of catch-phrases and logical subtleties. It was taught as an art of adroit argument.
The great Greek tragedies occupy a place in the development of the dialectic and the satisfying of the need of knowledge. Science, through the drama, transformed the old religious views and brought its new interpretation to the common people. The development of the fifth-century drama out of the epic of the sixth century was not merely a change in architectonic, but a transformation of its ethical and religious spirit. The germ was in the previous ethics, lyrics, and gnomics, yet it was fully amplified in the drama. Instead of a summary of deeds the tragic poet makes his characters talk, defend, refute, accuse, lament, etc. This gives rise to exigencies that require the dialectic. In the conflicting duties and in the justification of the wrong done by the wrong suffered, dialectical skill is called for in the drama to weigh the ethical motives in a manner that the epic does not demand. Thus the drama of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides was a link between the lyric and gnomic poetry of the sixth century B. C. and the dialogue literature of Plato.15
3. The Critical Attitude of Mind. The most important characteristic of this period is neither the intensified social curiosity nor the increased social needs. It is rather ethical in its character. It is the “critical” or “individualistic” attitude of mind. This began with the “free city feeling”—the consciousness of the free man in a free state—in the first half of the fifth century B. C., and developed rapidly into individualism and critical skepticism toward the end of that century.
If one were to compare in a single word the history of Greece before the Persian Wars with that after the Persian Wars, he would say that the former was traditional and the latter was critical. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the Cosmological Period Greek traditional customs were being weakened by attacks upon them. Religious ideas were threatened by the Cosmologists. The subordination of the gods to the cosmic substance was an attack upon the established polytheism of the Epic, and the attack became direct in the hands of Xenophanes. It was “the divestiture of Nature of its gods by science.” The Mysteries were a part of this departure from the traditional religion. But the new and more critical scientific attitude toward traditional religion was only incidental to the growing criticism of law. In the days of the oligarchy there were two self-evident political assumptions: (1) that law has validity because it is law; (2) that obedience to law is for one’s advantage. When, however, the political disturbances began, a self-conscious individualism developed among the Greeks. The Gnomic Poets had been the first to appeal to the individual consciousness of the people. All through the sixth century B. C. Greece had stern experiences, and the individual found himself questioning the sanctity of tradition and of time-honored laws. There was no longer a tacit acquiescence in established order, and the claims of authority were no longer, as formerly, unchallenged. Confidence in political assumptions began to waver, and a critical attitude was taken toward laws which changed from year to year. The appearance everywhere of the tyrant, the vigorous personality who could set up his will against the will of a traditional aristocracy, impressed the age with the power of individual egoism. The seat of authority was shifted from tradition to the individual reason, and all institutions were brought under individual criticism.
The Persian Wars mark the point of transition from the traditional attitude to the critical attitude of the Greek mind. In themselves the Persian Wars were a great moral uplift, and were a return for a time to the traditional institutions. The changes long since begun were suspended for a time in the united effort of the Greek nation. But the tendencies became more insistent when the danger was past. The Persian Wars had cleared the atmosphere of its pessimism and had given freedom to the intellectual movement. Then later, in the heat of that intellectual movement, individualism and criticism came to fullest fruitage. Doubt grew into positive skepticism.
In the last part of the fifth century B. C., critical skepticism became universal. In religion the anthropomorphism of the Epic passes under ridicule. Critias declares that the gods are the invention of shrewd statecraft. In literature the Epic, in which the gods interfere in all human details, yields to the naturalistic descriptions of Herodotus and Thucydides, and to the personal note of lyric and satirical poetry. More important than all was the change of attitude toward the laws. Instead of the law having a divine authority, the individual placed himself above it and sat in judgment upon it. The tribal conception of guilt, that when a member of a tribe sinned the whole tribe would suffer at the hands of the gods, had given way at the time of the Persian Wars to that of personal responsibility and retribution. It was noted that laws change in the same state, that they differ in different states, and that moral customs have a great variety. All laws seem therefore to be made by man, and the question then arose, Is there any law which has universal validity? Is there any real prius or “Nature” of laws? In the Anthropological Period, the important question was about the real prius or “Nature” of human institutions, just as in the Cosmological Period the question was about the real prius or “Nature” of the world of physical phenomena. Yet the question of the Anthropologists was a part of the Cosmological problem. The Cosmologists had called the real prius or “Nature” (φύσις), that which ever remains like itself, and it is now asked if “Nature” in itself contains any unchanging and eternal politico-moral law. The contrast is thus drawn for all time between natural law and statute law, and the distinction dominates this period. Human legal institutions were regarded as only makeshifts, and often even as contradicting the divine law. The conflict between natural or divine law and human law appears worked out in the Antigone of Sophocles.
The same interest in the foundations of morality and moral relations opened up the whole subject of the power of human consciousness to discern such relations. It was a logical necessity that turned thought from a review of man’s relations with his fellows to a criticism of his own constitution. What is man? What are his faculties? Has he any that give him the truth and the reality? Or do they all deceive him so that he cannot detect the real from the sham of life? What are the mental faculties used in disputation, and how are they to be trained so that man may rise to an eminence of culture among his fellows? The Greek thus turned to a criticism of his knowing faculties, and the positive social and moral demands made such a criticism necessary to his well-being. Greek science took a strong anthropological direction, and logic, ethics, psychology, rhetoric, etc., took the place of natural science subjects. The Greek in the fifth century B. C. was interested in man—in his inner activities, his ideations and volitions. Of this critical and individualistic attitude Euripides is the literary exponent; Pericles is the political personification; Socrates and the Sophists are its philosophical expression.
The Significance of the Sophists. The Sophists were the direct means of bringing this intellectual change into Greek life. They were the bearers of this Greek Enlightenment, and they were the missionaries that spread its influence far and wide. This significance of the Sophists to the culture of Greece was never understood by the historian until Hegel set them in their true light. The dark side of their character has been painted in blackest colors, so that the word “Sophist” has carried an opprobrium with it. They were, however, the exponents of the Greek illumination, and not the cause of it. They therefore share all its weaknesses and its excellencies; and any judgment upon them is a judgment upon the time itself. The most accurate description of them is that they were the exponents of Greek culture in the age of Pericles; the worst that can be said of them is that they stimulated the Greek spirit in directions in which it should have been controlled. Their true work was to carry the gospel of Greek individualism everywhere; their fault lay in the fact that too frequently they confused individualism with hypocrisy, and led their hearers to believe that appearance knowledge is the same as true knowledge.
The word “Sophist” had a development among the Greeks. It first meant a wise man (the Cosmologists, from Thales to Anaxagoras, were Sophists); then a teacher of wisdom; then a paid teacher of wisdom. Moreover, among the Sophists there is a difference between the early Sophists, who were inspired by a distinct desire to spread culture, and the later Sophists, who were mercenary teachers, and had on that account degenerated into mere quibblers. In general, the ground of the contemporary hostility to the Sophists was the hatred of the conservative and reactionary party, to which belonged Aristophanes the satirist, Æschylus “the father of tragedy,” and the exponent of institutional morals, and Xenophon, who stood for a complete return to a patriarchal state. This party was very bitter against the exponents of the new and radical spirit springing up in Greece. All the philosophers of the new learning, including Socrates, suffered at the hands of those who would conserve the old traditions. In particular, the accusations against the Sophists of this period were: they were cavilers; they taught for pay; they represented the universalizing of education against the old aristocracy; they menaced institutions.
The Sophists were then primarily and, on the whole, the transmitters to the people of the culture of the time. They were the teachers of the humanities to that age. They were not technically philosophers, but were interested in philosophical questions. Protagoras was the only Sophist who was the author of any fruitful philosophical conceptions. Gorgias made occasional essays into philosophy. But besides Protagoras and Gorgias no other Sophists can be classed as philosophers, except possibly Hippias and Prodicus.
The Sophists introduced a profusion of knowledge among the people. They made investigations in language, logic, and the theory of cognition. They taught literature, history, grammar, the principles of the dialectic, the eristic, and rhetoric—all subjects concerned with the art of human expression. They studied and taught the special subjects concerned with human relations, like ethics, the theory of knowledge, psychology, and politics. Anything that had a place in Greek culture was systematically and skillfully presented by such men as Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus, who were men of encyclopædic erudition. The Sophist took the education of the Greek child at the age of sixteen, after he had received his elementary training, first at home and then at the hands of the teacher at school. The Greek boy’s education was naturally divided into two parts: gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. Under music was included geometry, performance on the lyre, pronunciation, the chorus and poetry, astronomy, physics, and geography. At the age of sixteen he got his instruction by meeting public men, such as the Sophists, in the street, in the Agora, and other public places. It was at this period of his life that the Sophist took his education into those higher branches which were necessary for his success in politics, society, and law. Thus the instruction of the Sophist was usually for a specific purpose, and thus rhetoric, dialectic, and the mental sciences were in great demand.
The Prominent Sophists. The list of Sophists is a long one. The first to call himself a Sophist and a teacher of public virtue was, according to Plato, Protagoras of Abdera. He was also probably the most eminent of the number. He was born about 480 B. C. Polus and Thrasymachus were the last; and Aristotle mentions the Sophists as in the past. So that we may conclude that as a band they existed only one hundred years (450–350 B. C.). Already at the beginning of the fourth century (400 B. C.) their importance had greatly diminished. In this hundred years we find some fourteen or fifteen prominent Sophists. There is, first, Protagoras, whose theory of knowledge is not only in itself a contribution to thought, but also of importance as a factor in forming the materialist atomistic doctrine of the school of Abdera,—the school of Leucippus and Democritus; Gorgias of Leontini, the head of an embassy to Athens, a man of eloquence, whose style was imitated by Thucydides and whom we might have studied in connection with the Eleatic school, for he carried out still further the doctrines of Zeno; Prodicus, the pupil of Protagoras and Gorgias, a brilliant man and a traveler, whose method of instruction was used by Socrates; Hippias, contemporary of Prodicus, remarkable for his mathematical, physical, and historical erudition, and a man full of vanity; the brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysiodorus, teachers of eristic; the rhetorician Thrasymachus and the rhetoricians of the school of Gorgias, viz., Polus, Lycophron, Protarchus, and Alcidamus; Evenus, rhetorician, moralist, and poet; Critias, the leader of the thirty; Callicles and Hippodamus.
Many of these men were reformers. Some (as Alcidamus) were opposed to the institution of slavery in Greece; some to marriage; some (as Lycophron) to the nobility; some to the inequality of property; while Hippodamus was the first to propose an ideal state.
The method of argumentation employed by the Sophists was first to perplex and confuse their opponents as to what had been taken in the past as valid. Then they made their opponents ridiculous by drawing out consequences from their statements. Their conclusions were often verbal and their witticisms vulgar.16
The Philosophy of the Sophists. The philosophy of the Sophists was only the logical following out of the general attitude of the time toward all traditions. The more the old physical theories fell into disrepute, the more the changes of the world of politics seemed to indicate instability everywhere, the more opinions differed on the same subject,—so much the more did the possibility present itself to the Sophists of taking two contradictories as equally true, and so much the faster did the whole Greek world lose faith in any valid truth and in any certain knowledge. The dogmatism of the Cosmological Period is thus naturally followed by the skepticism of the Anthropological. Beginning with the cautious and enlightened relativism of Protagoras, there grew up a volume of criticism, until the later Sophists applied destructive doctrines to everything. The best representatives of the philosophical aspect of the Sophistic movement were Protagoras and Gorgias.
1. The Relativism of Protagoras. Although theoretically skepticism is the centre and logical result of the Sophistic movement, the teaching of the greatest Sophist, Protagoras, cannot be strictly called skepticism. Philosophically, skepticism is not the denial of this or that particular belief as true, but the denial of the existence of any truth whatever. Protagoras refused to make any positive statements—either in denial or affirmation—about ultimate truth, because, as he said, we have no insight whatever into the nature of absolute truth. Our knowledge is confined to motions and the phenomena of motion. His teaching would be called in modern times relativism or phenomenalism. The fundamental principle beneath such a doctrine is that knowledge is human—never absolute, but always relative.
The relativism of Protagoras was based on two principles: the first is that of universal change, which he borrowed from Heracleitus; the second is, so far as we know, original with Protagoras,—that sense-perception is the only source and only kind of knowledge. In Heracleitus’ doctrine change is universal, each term of a series of changes passing into another. The senses are a part of this flux, and since they are, according to Protagoras, the only source of knowledge, knowledge is ephemeral and unreal. Reason is extended and continued sensation. A movement external to the organism stimulates an organ of the body and is met by a reacting movement of the organ. The result is perception. Perception being itself a process, each present moment of perception is the only knowledge. We cannot know things as they are in themselves; there is no insight into the Being of things over and above our perceptions. On the contrary, reality is not only what it perceptually appears for each individual, but also what it appears at each individual momentary perception.
What is the result of such a theory of knowledge? Protagoras expresses it well in his famous words, “Man is the measure of all things.” It is absolute sensationalism. There is no truth except that of the present moment. Each man sees the truth for himself at the moment of his perception. It does not matter if another has a different perception. It does not matter if at the next moment his perception differs. Each perception exists at the moment, is true, and at that moment is the only perception. There are as many truths as there are individuals, as many as there are moments in an individual’s life. Each individual is the measure of the true, the beautiful, and the good; for a thing that is good or true to one man may be harmful or false to another. Metaphysical discussions are vain, for the only reality to prove is the content of the present moment. All causes and ultimate criteria are impossible to be known.
2. The Nihilism of Gorgias. As the philosophy of Protagoras teaches that everything is equally true, that of Gorgias teaches that everything is equally false. Gorgias declared that Being, knowledge, and the communication of knowledge are impossible. Starting from the dialectic of the Eleatic, Zeno (as Protagoras started from that of Heracleitus), Gorgias maintained: (1) Nothing is; (2) If anything is, it cannot be thought; (3) Even if it can be thought, it cannot be communicated. The knowledge of the thing is different from the thing; the expression of the thought in words is different from the thought itself.
The Ethics of the Sophists.—The Application of their Critical Theory to Political Life. The ethical-political life was of paramount importance to the Greek. When the later Sophists began to scrutinize it from the point of view of the individual, their skepticism became a direct menace to Greek political institutions. The individual became a law unto himself, and the citizen set himself up as superior to society. Since the time of the Gnomic poets the content of both moral and political laws had become more and more a subject of reflection; and at the time of the Sophists the whole foundation of law was called in question. When the individual man is declared to be the measure of all things, all legal and moral institutions hang in the balance. All rules of conduct and all laws become then artificial and merely conventional products; and just as there is no standard of truth or error in knowledge, so there is no standard of good citizenship or morality. The good man is the prudent man; the good citizen is the successful and powerful man. Might is right.
Thus the Sophists came to teach such doctrines as these: Laws are made by the strongest, represent their will, and must be obeyed if they cannot be disobeyed; it takes a strong man to make a law, but a stronger to break it; the laws are only conventions invented either by the many to restrain the powerful few, or by the few to enslave the many. Even religions are devices of the crafty to enchain the people. Obedience to law is therefore a matter of personal interest. Happiness is the most important consideration of the individual. Sometimes personal interest conflicts with law and law does not then bring happiness, for criminals are often the most happy. It is not obedience to law that brings happiness but (Polus) a shrewd calculation of ends with no regard to right or law. The Sophists made no attempt to put their theories into execution. They expressed the sentiments of the Greek people, and Greek public opinion then pointed to segregation and individualism. Plato said that, after all, the Greek public was the great Sophist.
It was thus that the distinction arose between positive law and natural law. Reflecting upon the differences among the constitutions of the Greek states and upon the constant alterations in these constitutions, the Sophist concluded that the greater part of them were of human invention. They were positive laws and were to be contrasted with natural law, which was such law as is binding on all men equally. Natural law is therefore of greater worth than positive law, and is set in antithesis to it. Sir Henry Maine says in his Ancient Law that the Greeks did not found any system of jurisprudence, because natural law was always referred to by them in arguing any question. The only way to find natural law is to strip it of the mass of conventional laws. The word “nature” has been in its history one of the most ambiguous of words; and Protagoras’ teaching that “nature” consists of primary ethical feelings is hardly a complete and satisfactory definition. The more the theory of the Sophists limited “nature” to human nature, and to human nature in its capricious and individual aspects, so much the more did statute laws appear antagonistic to natural law and seem to be detrimental to it.
Summary.
1. Although a skepticism and a criticism, Sophistry was a relative advance over the traditionalism and dogmatism of the Cosmologists.
2. Sophistry turned the attention to man and his interests as the principal object of inquiry.
3. The Sophists stood for freedom of thought by pointing to individual consciousness as the final court of appeal.
4. Although the Sophists differed very much in their teaching, they had a mutual dependence and common presuppositions.
5. The Sophists disregarded the likenesses and emphasized the differences among men.
6. The Sophists built up their doctrines upon the basis of a sensationalist psychology.
CHAPTER V
SOCRATES (469–399 B. C.).
Socrates and Aristophanes. There were two ways in which the other elements in Greek society tried to meet the Sophists. One was led by Aristophanes, the other by Socrates. Aristophanes was a rich nobleman who looked back with pride upon the good old times. He would have a government of the best rather than of the many. He would destroy the Sophistic movement, and he wrote many satires upon Greek life with that end in view. His satire, The Clouds, is of especial interest in this connection. Socrates represents the other way in which the Sophistic movement was met. He accepted the Sophistic movement, but he read more deeply into it than the Sophists themselves, and he tried to find its truth.
The extraordinary personality of Socrates is the central figure in this age of critical inquiry. For the first time do we find philosophy centred in a great personality, and there is no more picturesque figure in history. The exposition of his doctrines is essentially a biography. He wrote nothing himself, and the literary sources of his life and teaching are found in Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Symposium, in the writings of Plato, and in those of Aristotle. They throw different lights upon his character, and together give a fairly complete picture. Xenophon records the sober, practical, and popular side of Socrates, caught in casual conversation. Plato idealizes Socrates, especially in his later writings, and he reveals Socrates’ character on its imaginative and spiritual sides. Aristotle is more discriminating and less sympathetic, but always reliable because he is a generation removed.17
The Personality and Life of Socrates. Alcibiades described Socrates as like the little cases sold upon the streets of Athens, which were made in the shape of Silenus and contained a carved image. The description was apt, for Socrates had a fine spiritual nature within an astonishing shell. He was short, stout, and thick-set, with his head set upon his shoulders. His eyes were bulging, his nose flat with upturned nostrils, his mouth big and grinning, and his beard disordered. His protruding belly was set upon slender legs, and his dress was slovenly. Nevertheless his geniality, his fine humor, the unselfishness which he manifested unstintedly toward his friends, exercised an irresistible charm upon all the remarkable personalities of his time. Over the Athenian youth his influence was very great, and he surrounded himself with a large circle of admirers, to the neglect of his home cares and his wife Xantippe. While the habit of the Sophists was to talk in private and for pay, Socrates was distinguished from all his contemporaries by the fact that he would talk in the public places with any one, rich or poor, and without remuneration.
His life had its ascetic side. He was frugal in his needs. He went barefoot, summer and winter, and his clothing was the scantiest. He was abstemious in food and drink. While on occasion at the feast he would drink more wine than any one else, yet he never was seen intoxicated. The ascetic side of his nature is seen in his refusal to cultivate gymnastics, because such training required much food. He tried to limit his wants. He was a model of hardiness, self-denial, and self-mastery, as many an anecdote will show. “No one ever saw or heard anything wicked in Socrates,” said Xenophon. “So pious was he that he never did anything without first consulting the Gods, so master of himself as never to prefer pleasure to goodness, so sensible as never to err in the choice between the better and the worse. In a word, he was the best and the most happy of men.”
At times Socrates seems intellectually stiff and prosaic. This may have been incidental to his asceticism, or the result of it. He was indifferent to the sensuous, and he explained the beautiful in terms of the useful. He refused to walk out because trees and flowers could teach him nothing. Art offered no suggestions to him, for it is useless even if it is inspired. His unpoetic and prosy nature was perhaps not due so much to his lack of taste as to his original mind overflowing with ideas. He was not perceptive, but reflective. He said that astronomy is a mystery, geometry is land measuring, which any man can do, arithmetic is merely permissible, and physics something to be neglected. “Ye may judge how unprofitable these studies are by seeing how men differ among themselves.” He was once found dancing at home by himself when he was expected to be at a dance with others, and his practical nature is also revealed in the fact that at the feast he was reminded of its utility.
The influence of Socrates’ dæmon or divine voice upon him is very interesting. He felt himself divinely called by his dæmon (Apology, 29, 33 f.) to unremitting labor in the moral perfecting of society through an examination of himself and his fellows. Socrates was moved by a deep religious feeling in all that he undertook. This divine leading is what he designates as his dæmon. He speaks of it as “the God” or “the gods” which speaks to other men through the oracles. This divine voice was ever with him, but as to specific actions it only warned him against the injudicious action, never incited him to the correct action. Specifically it did not tell him what to do so much as what not to do. When he was about to prepare a defense beforehand that he should make to the judges, his dæmon interposed, and so he relied upon the inspiration of the moment. On one of his campaigns he was observed to stand in communion with the dæmon the whole day, unmindful of the weather.
As to the education and intellectual training of Socrates, one must say that it formed a factor of less importance in his life. The uniqueness of Socrates’ character is only in small measure to be accounted for by his environment. He was one of those men who would have been great in any time. He got but little from his father, who was a sculptor, or from his mother, who was a midwife. He was not strictly an educated man, although he had the early education of an Athenian youth, and of course no one could grow up a citizen of Athens in the time of Pericles without absorbing its culture. His formal education probably consisted of music and gymnastics, and he was certainly familiar with the preceding schools of philosophy. Socrates lived a long life of contented poverty, and he dedicated his life to the public. Two inherited instincts were strong within him, which alone will account for his career: (1) his strong religious persuasion that he was acting under a mission from the gods; (2) his great intellectual originality, as shown in his teaching and in his power over others.
There are few striking events in Socrates’ career, except his death. He was born in Athens in 469 B. C. He began his divinely appointed work of redeeming Athens from the dangerous tendencies of the Sophists at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War. He served in three campaigns as a soldier. He also acted, when called upon, as prytanis, or lawgiver, although he stood aloof from political activity. At the advanced age of seventy he was accused of corrupting the youth and denying the gods. His life thus far would have seemed to be one of unimpeachable moral and brilliant intellectual monotony. But his death illuminates his life and makes it heroic, because his death shows what in reality his life was,—the tragic epitome of the Athenian social situation. His death was not due to himself, although he could have escaped, nor to his judges, although they could have acquitted him. It represents the inevitable conflict between the Greek ideal of universalism and Greek individualism. Its value is therefore historic. His particular accusers were actuated by personal animosity. Behind them were many others whom his efforts at reform and his bitter irony had made hostile. Behind all was the voice of Athenian conservatism against the Athenian culture movement. The charges against Socrates were in part true, and besides as a moral reformer he had been a public nuisance. Yet his death was a judicial murder. He was found guilty by his judges. To the sentence of death proposed by Meletus, one of his accusers, Socrates had the right to propose an alternative sentence, and the judges must choose between the two. Had Socrates proposed a small fine, it would probably have been accepted by the judges. He proposed, however, that Athens provide for him at the public expense, arrogant as he was in his complacent sense of virtue. The judges then could do nothing else than pronounce the sentence of death. This was delayed thirty days on account of the sacrifice at Delos. Even then Socrates could have easily escaped from jail. But he refused to do the law a wrong, and drank the hemlock in May, 399 B. C.
Professor G. H. Palmer points out the irony that characterizes the life and death of Socrates. He stands for the harmony of opposite qualities. He devoted himself to the good of Athens, and yet Athens put him to death. In the service of the eternal was he sacrificed. His own personality is an exemplification of this irony. In appearance his un-Greek physical ugliness is in contrast with his beautiful Greek soul; he was the most austere and yet the most sensitive of men; he was always a serious moralist and yet always a jester; he was scarcely out of Athens and yet he was a world’s man; he was the world’s philosopher and yet he had no system of thought and left no writings.
Socrates and the Sophists. In his point of departure Socrates is in entire agreement with the Sophists. He is a critical philosopher. Criticism is the starting-point of his philosophy as a whole, and he begins each particular argument afresh with a critical examination of its grounds. This means that he, like the Sophists, turns to the individual reason as the final court of appeal. Like them he refused to accept any traditional dogma unexamined, and he commenced a critical inquiry into all kinds of conceptions. Socrates and the Sophists are one in the spirit of the Greek illumination in their critical attack upon intellectual problems. Socrates’ famous saying that “virtue is knowledge” could equally well be put into the mouth of Protagoras; and the doctrine of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things” could be ascribed to Socrates without inconsistency.
In his conclusions in one respect Socrates arrives at the same point as the Sophists,—but in only one respect. He agrees with them as to the worthlessness of the results of natural science. Natural science cannot be worth while, because it does not lead to moral excellence. The meagre results of the Cosmologists show the worthlessness of natural science to man. In this one respect Socrates’ criticism leads him to skepticism like the Sophists,—to a skepticism of natural science.
But in his conclusions as to the value of human nature, Socrates set himself entirely against the outcome of the reflections of the Sophists, and indeed of his time. In the absorbing anthropological topics of his time, he laid the foundations of a constructive philosophy against the skeptical conclusions of the Sophists. In human matters he maintained that there is a validity to truth and a possibility of absolute knowledge. He admitted with the Sophists that there are obscurities in human thought, and that obviously the standard of truth does not belong to any one man. But while the Sophists emphasized these contradictions and reasoned therefore that no valid truth existed, Socrates cut his way through such contradictions and obscurities, emphasized the identity in men, and maintained that the truth is in all men together,—in humanity. It exists as an ideal to be striven for by men together. When Protagoras says that “man is the measure of all things,” he means by “man” the individual man; while Socrates, if he had used that expression, would have meant “humanity.” And Socrates means by his principle “virtue is knowledge” that the knowledge of that same humanity (i. e. insight, reason) is virtue; while Protagoras, agreeing as he did formally with the maxim that “virtue is knowledge,” would always define “knowledge” as the individual feelings. “The individual man is the measure of all things,” Protagoras would say; “Humanity is the measure of all things,” Socrates would reply. “Virtue is knowledge gained by the feelings,” Protagoras would say; “Virtue is knowledge gained by the reason,” Socrates would reply. Beneath the changing capricious individual, beneath the variety of men, Socrates believed that there was a common humanity, one unchanging man, who contained the ultimate truth. There are many opinions, ideas, and feelings, but only one knowledge. This knowledge is rational; and human nature is a unity in the possession of this knowledge.
This is the principle that distinguishes Socrates from the other leaders of the Greek Illumination. While he was imbued with the motives of the Greek culture of his time,—curious about its results, feeling its usefulness, and critical of all tradition,—he nevertheless withheld himself from its skeptical conclusions. Any culture illumination runs the danger of defeating itself and becoming skeptical of its own powers. This is what actually happened in the Sophistic philosophy. But when Socrates set himself against this superficial and self-destructive outcome of his age, he became in his constructive philosophy the clearest and most comprehensive expression of that age. Because he grasped the principle of the Greek Enlightenment deeply and formulated it constructively, his intellectual reign became historically established. The fundamental principle of the philosophy of Socrates was therefore the real principle of classic Greek civilization, and by saving that principle he saved Greek civilization for modern Europe.
The Unsystematic Character of the Socratic Philosophy. The casual reader is often troubled to know for what precisely Socrates is searching. The vagueness of the Socratic quest is partly due to the fact that he had no system. Indeed, he had no groundwork for a system of thought. His psychology or theory of the human mind was undefined. He speaks of sensations and perceptions, but they, with the feelings and the will, are considered by him to be unimportant factors in the conscious life. On the whole, the mind was thought by him to be an aggregation of conceptions or ideas. The feelings cloud the activity of these conceptions, and the only feeling to which Socrates attached any importance was his dæmon or divine voice. This grew to be his mentor as he grew older. Socrates never made a scientific psychological analysis. He began rather with three assumptions which amounted to convictions. They were these: that only by acquiring conceptions is true knowledge to be found; that virtue consists in acting according to conceptions; that the world has been designed according to conceptions. Conceptions were, so to speak, an obsession with Socrates.18 They were his postulates, his instruments, and his goal. The other factors of the mind were neglected by him.
The Ideal of Socrates. The goal of the quest of Socrates is an ideal, and in the nature of things had the vagueness of any ideal. The content of an ideal has to remain undefined until it has been gained by experience, and then of course it is no longer an ideal. Any ideal, however, can be stated formally, and the formal and deductive side of knowledge has had an important place both in practical conduct and in the history of science. Socrates could state his ideal formally and to some extent he could give it content; but it always remained for him an object to be sought. He believed that the ideal lay in conceptions and could be found if he got the truth of any one conception. So he undertook to define such conceptions as friendship, courage, prudence, etc., but his search was never satisfied. Nevertheless, the search itself was scarcely less important to him than its accomplishment.
The ideal of Socrates was Knowledge or Wisdom, and his formal statement of the ideal was Knowledge is Virtue. The primal end to be striven for is wisdom, that is, in conceptions and by conceptions. But where are these conceptions to be found but in one’s own mind? Therefore the region of the quest of Socrates was his own mind, and his motto was, “Know thyself.” And what is this Virtue of which knowledge or wisdom is the equivalent? It does not mean virtue in the narrow modern meaning of the term, nor yet in the narrow original meaning, of warlike prowess or valor. The Greek word which Socrates used was ἀρετή, and is best translated excellence or ability. In the history of the word it had a variety of meanings, like the Latin word virtus, whose equivalent it is. It is derived from the same root as the word Ἄρης, Ares (or Mars), the name of the god of war. While therefore originally it meant military valor, it came to mean any kind of excellence. In modern times there appeared a book called The Greatest Thing in the World, which had as its aim to show that Christian love is the “greatest thing in the world.” To Socrates not “Love” but “Wisdom” is the “greatest thing in the world,” and Greek civilization is thus contrasted with that of Christianity.
But now the question comes, What kind of knowledge or wisdom does Socrates mean as the greatest excellence? In contrast to the Sophists, who relied upon the sensations and impulses as wisdom, Socrates turned to that element which had been the decisive factor of the culture of the time. This was insight. The greatest excellence is insight. He who acts according to his feelings is not sure of his knowledge, but he who acts according to insight has the greatest excellence in the world. But Socrates restricts the meaning of knowledge still further. Not only is knowledge to Socrates insight, but it is moral insight. For the problems in which he was interested were the problems of human life and principally the problem of self-examination. Thus we can translate the conventional formal statement of Socrates, viz., Knowledge is virtue, into this rather longer sentence, Moral insight is the most excellent thing in the world. For the first time in the history of thought philosophy is founded upon a moral postulate.
What the Socratic Ideal involves. We have now examined the meaning of the formal statement of the Socratic ideal. A further question along this same line concerns what that ideal involves.
1. In the first place, to possess knowledge is to act righteously. Knowledge ＝ righteous conduct. Socrates does not mean that knowledge is merely the condition of right conduct; he means that knowledge actually constitutes moral conduct. The development of the reason is actually the same as the development of the will. Knowledge is virtue and virtue is knowledge. Vice is ignorance and ignorance is vice. To have an insight into the truth is the principle of living. Not only is deficient insight the cause of evil, but it is itself the greatest evil. Not only does a man act wrongly because he does not know the good, but not to know the good is the greatest wrong that can happen to him.
2. Not only is moral insight the same as virtuous activity, but this insight is always accompanied by happiness. The will follows the recognition of the good, and the appropriate action makes man happy. Happiness is the necessary result of moral excellence. The Wise Man knows what is good for him and does it; thus in his performance he becomes happy. Socrates would subscribe to the proverb “Be good and you will be happy.” Such teaching on the part of Socrates implies that he believed two things: (1) that man by unremitting earnest examination of himself and others could gain such perfect happiness; and (2) that the world is under providential guidance. Socrates never expressly denied the existence of the Homeric gods and never expressly declared himself a monotheist. He is, however, always referring to one over-ruling wisdom. He had a personal conviction of immortality, but he never attempted its proof. Although Socrates had little confidence in human knowledge about the world of physical nature, he was animated by a belief that amounted to a conviction in the providential arrangement of the world. In such a divinely ordered world the good must be happy. Only a perfect wisdom can, however, be certain that always the results of his actions will gain happiness in the environment in which he lives; but still man can be sure that happiness increases proportionately with knowledge. Greek philosophy did go beyond this point in ethics, and this is called, in technical language, eudæmonism. Eudæmonism and hedonism are pleasure theories that are similar. Eudæmonism is the theory that active well-being is the highest good in life and that that good is always accompanied by pleasure. In hedonism pleasure is the good to be aimed at. In history eudæmonism has easily degenerated into hedonism.
3. Socrates makes moral insight the same as virtuous activity, and he says that its inevitable accompaniment is happiness. Does he also make moral insight the same as utility? According to Xenophon, Socrates regards moral excellence as that which is most useful. Indeed, in some of the Platonic dialogues Socrates seems to define insight as the art of measuring or prudence, and it is pointed out that Socrates developed no virtue so fully as self-control. In the exigencies of the argument Socrates also often resorted to the useful to define the good. The question, What is the good? often resolves itself into the other question, What is the thing good for? Indeed, the form of the argument often assumes the vicious circle: Why is the act just? Because it is useful? Why is it useful? Because it is just. For the purposes of disputation, in which Socrates was always shrewd and not always scrupulous, he so frequently refers the good to what is suitable to men’s happiness and profit that his philosophy does not seem to rise above the relativism of the Sophists. But it is certain that Socrates strove to transcend this relativism, although not with full success and although his formulated teaching does not always go beyond it. However, that he believed in an absolute rather than a relative good appears in many ways: in his doctrine that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it; in his strict conformity to law rather than to save himself from death by breaking the law; in his constant interpretation of life as right-doing, ethical improvement, and participation in the good. The utility that is always in the background of his thought is the usefulness for the soul. We may conclude, therefore, that it was only superficially for the purposes of argumentation that Socrates made the useful an equivalent of moral insight.
The purpose of Socrates was, after all, not to teach men to think correctly nor to become cultured but to become happy and useful Athenians. Moral excellence is the Socratic goal; and knowledge, happiness, and usefulness are only aspects of that goal. Knowledge is the essential means, happiness the essential result, and usefulness the essential sign of moral excellence. It follows as a corollary from Socrates’ philosophical ideal that he should also teach: (1) that virtue is teachable, and (2) that the virtues are one. Virtue is obviously teachable if it is knowledge. It follows also, although not so obviously, that all the virtues are fundamentally the same, and that a man cannot be virtuous in one thing without being virtuous in all. The really temperate man is also courageous, wise, and just.
The Two Steps of the Method of Socrates. The external form of the method of Socrates was conversation. Thinking was to him an inner conversation. The result of a conversation, external or internal, was evolvement,—the implicit in thought made explicit. This was quite opposed to the method of the Sophists, which was the supplying of knowledge. Socrates did not propose to start from any kind of knowledge except the ideal to be striven for. Starting with the presupposition that man contained knowledge, the end which Socrates attempted to reach by his method was a practical one. With so much in summary, let us examine the two steps of the method of Socrates.
The first step that Socrates deems necessary for man in attaining this ideal of moral excellence is negative. Indeed, it is more,—it is complete abnegation on the part of the seeker for truth. One must confess that he himself knows nothing, and come to a realization that his untested individual opinions are not the truth. He must approach the subject as a seeker and not as a teacher. This attitude of mind is the beginning of wisdom. Plato relates how the Delphic oracle amazed Socrates by announcing that he was the wisest of the Greeks. In reflecting upon the statement of the oracle he came to agree with the oracle because, as he said, he was ignorant and he knew it, while the other Greeks were ignorant and did not know it. Before Socrates began to examine any conception, he professed or assumed to profess absolute ignorance of it. He is the modest inquirer. He is always described in the rôle of the questioner who is seeking information and light.
He laid the same requirement upon others that he did upon himself. The dialectic conversation could not be successfully carried on unless his interlocutors had the same recognition of self-ignorance,—the same measure of self-knowledge. The Sophists with whom he often carried on his discussions laid claim to knowledge on every known subject under the Greek sun and were ready to teach anything to the Greek youth. To Socrates’ mind nothing could more impede his undertakings than such an affectation of wisdom; to the Sophists nothing could be more repugnant than such a confession which Socrates always obliged them to make. Although professing to be only a seeker for knowledge, he tried first by his questions to scrutinize and to break down with his exasperating logic the half-formed conceptions of the egotist. This clear-cut analysis for purely destructive purposes, which he used in preparation for his later constructive conversation, is called the Socratic irony. As he proved himself superior to any of his companions in the use of the dialectic, he could begin his conversations in the most destructive fashion. His method was destructive of all prejudice and preconceived opinion that would in any way stand athwart perfectly free inquiry into the truth. His wish was to begin de novo with every one, so that all traditional beliefs having been given up and the investigators having confessed their ignorance, constructive study of the concept in hand could be begun.
The second step in Socrates’ method of dialectical inquiry follows upon the initial destructive criticism. It is in this part of the conversation that we find his own constructive theory. The dialogue is, of course, its necessary condition; for the truth is not in me nor in thee, but in us all. It is latent in the mind and not on the surface of any opinion. Let us rub our minds together. Let us sift our varied concepts, unfold our real selves, and bring the unborn truth to the light. Our ideas supplement one another and have a common ground. Intellectual intercourse is an intellectual and a personal need, for it reveals common sympathies and a oneness of life. Common love of knowledge makes friends, and this mutual intellectual helpfulness he calls by the mythical term Eros. Inquiry is indefinite in duration; the quest of truth is endless; and Socrates acknowledges by his fresh beginnings again and again his failure to reach the ideal. Thus the theoretical self-abnegation of Socrates had a twofold significance in his constructive philosophy. On the one hand, it was an invitation to his countrymen to help him in his search for the universal truth; on the other, it was an acknowledgment that he had failed to attain that universal truth.
Socrates and Athens. Socrates had a religious reverence for his own mission in the Athenian community. He was the “gad-fly of the Athenian public”; he was the educator of the time; he was divinely appointed to the Athenian people. He felt himself so necessary to the Athenian State that at his trial he proudly suggested that instead of punishing him the State keep him at the public expense in the Prytaneum. But the educator creates nothing; he only awakens and develops the germs of knowledge that lie latent. The human Athenian nature is big with truth; Socrates was divinely appointed to bring it forth. He called his method, after the profession of midwifery of his mother, the maieutic method. It was intellectual midwifery, and he was the intellectual midwife of Athens. Although he failed to find any concrete form of ultimate truth, he never had any doubt about the correctness of his method and of undertaking the problem afresh. He believed that his failure was due to the inherent weakness of human discernment; and so far as man’s discernment or insight is clear, so far will he know the true significance of things.
Socrates believed in man, and he believed that in man were contained all those elements that make up a firm, rational, and moral society. Since he failed to justify this belief in a theoretical way, his belief became largely a matter of faith. Humanity is something to be won, something to be developed. He was personally the embodiment of his faith, and his large influence was due to his unswerving confidence in ethical ideals that did not allow the least paltering.
The Logical Expedients of Socrates. The examination of concepts by Socrates was an attempt to find a logical “Nature,” just as the Cosmologists had searched physical phenomena to find a physical “Nature.” This makes Socrates the first to teach by induction and one of the first to use definition effectively. In contrast to the Sophists, he tried to give words exact meanings; for the Sophists fixed artificial meanings to words with reference to particular objects. In seeking for the exact meaning, Socrates was looking below the changing particulars to the “Nature” of the fact and the universal principle. Thus he was making his hearers conscious of the logical dependence of the particular upon the universal. The universal is that which is common to all particular conceptions or opinions. It lies beneath them and binds them together. Thus, by logical analysis, Socrates is taking steps in the educational process of gaining the universal. Provisional definition would be given by him in some dialogue; this definition would be tried by many facts; thus an advance would be made toward a true definition and a universal principle. This process is that of induction. It leads to generic concepts by comparison of particular views and individual perceptions, by bringing together analogous cases and allied relations. The subordination of the particular under the universal thus became a principle of science. However imperfect and childlike was Socrates’ method of procedure, whatever lack of caution in generalization and in the collection of material, however hasty oftentimes his judgments, he nevertheless made the subordination of the particular to the universal a principle of logical procedure. Xenophon says that Socrates was untiring in his efforts to examine and define goodness and wickedness, justice and injustice, wisdom and folly, courage and cowardice, the state and the citizen.
Socrates and the Lesser Socratics. The death of Socrates proved to be his transfiguration. His influence, widespread and profound, came more from his personality than from his formulated theory. He was a revelator without a revelation. An absolutely true end of life, the Good, he firmly believed to exist; but it was an ideal to be won by each and all. After him, therefore, there was opportunity for various interpretations of his doctrine, and several schools were founded by his disciples. His truest and most discriminating pupil was Plato, who is in a class by himself as developing the philosophy of Socrates to a systematic perfectness. The philosophy of Plato stands with that of Democritus and Aristotle as one of the three systematic philosophies that Greek civilization produced. Besides Plato there were the Lesser Socratics: Euclid (not the mathematician), Phædo, Aristippus, and Antisthenes. Each of these was respectively the founder of a school. These four Lesser-Socratic schools were that at Megara founded by Euclid, the Elean-Eretrian founded by Phædo, the Cynic founded by Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaic founded by Aristippus. The influence of the Megarian and Elean-Eretrian schools was unimportant. It may suffice to dismiss them by saying that Phædo was the favorite pupil of Socrates, and that Plato was a member of the Megarian school for a short time after the death of Socrates. The two other Lesser-Socratic schools had an important influence upon contemporary and later civilization and will be mentioned here. These are the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools. In these two schools two great types of ethical theory that have since existed were formulated. All four of the Lesser Socratics pretended to be the true development of the teaching of Socrates; and these two, as well as the other two, differ in the accentuation that they place on some phase of the master’s doctrine.
Socrates’ own definition of ideal excellence being incomplete, the Cynics and Cyrenaics tried to define it, to give it content and to show a practical way of reaching it. They attempted
(1) to answer affirmatively that there is a universal validity;
(2) to show in what it consists;
(3) to show how man must prepare himself in order to reach it.
Both schools are individualistic and eudæmonistic. They maintained that to affirm that the Good is good for its own sake is to leave the Good contentless; and to affirm that the Good is insight into the Good is to go in a circle. The one unambiguous answer to the question of Socrates, What is ideal excellence or the Good? is this: Goodness is happiness. This gives a content to the otherwise contentless ideal of Socrates. The difference between the two schools consists in the ethical way in which this happiness may be obtained.
It will appear, therefore, that the Lesser Socratics were more Sophistic than Socratic. They were diametrically opposed to Socrates’ theory of the universality of truth. The excellent Good must be sought by each in his own way. This is individualistic virtue, and not that of humanity. Civilization was valued by them only as it satisfied individual needs. The common problem of individualistic happiness limited the efforts of both schools, while the results that they reached in solving it were quite different.
There are two ways of achieving happiness; one is by satisfying the desires, the other is by cutting off the desires. For happiness is the perfect proportion of desire and satisfaction. A living creature is happy if his desires are satisfied, whether those desires be few or many. In the theory of the Cyrenaic school, happiness is gained by increasing the satisfactions; in the theory of the Cynic school, happiness is gained by decreasing the desires.
The Cynic School was founded by Antisthenes, and numbered among its adherents Diogenes, about whom so many curious stories have been told, Crates of Thebes, his wife Hipparchia, and her brother, Metrocles. Virtue in the eudæmonistic sense is the only end, and this school agreed with Socrates that this end is to be attained by knowledge. That is to say, virtue or knowledge is only a means of gaining happiness, and all other possessions the Cynics affected to despise. Virtue as knowledge is therefore to be sought; ignorance is to be shunned; all else is a matter of indifference. Riches, luxury, fame, honor, sense-pleasure and pain, and later with logical consistency all shame, convention, family, and country were objects of contempt. Man must make himself independent by cutting off the desires which he cannot satisfy or the desires that seem superfluous. He should keep alive only such desires as are necessary to existence. In independence of all outward circumstance the Cynic conceives himself to be the Wise Man, in contrast to whom the mass of men are fools. The Cynic is, therefore, the equal of the undesiring gods. He has independent lordship and does not need the artificialities of civilization. Natural law was contrasted by him in a Sophistic way with statutory law, and in the midst of the refinements of society he preached a return to a state of nature.
The Cyrenaic School was founded by Aristippus, who lived in Cyrene, a luxurious city of northern Africa. Aristippus was a man of the world. He was first a Sophist and later a disciple of Socrates. After Socrates’ death he returned to Cyrene. Here he founded his school, which included three generations of his own family. The prominent members of it were Arete, his daughter; Aristippus, his grandson; Theodorus, Hegesias, Anniceris, and Euhemerus, the author of so-called Euhemerism, which taught that the gods were originally only great men. In opposition to the brutal bareness of the Cynic school, the Cyrenaics saw the true end of life in the pleasures of sense. Following Protagoras, Aristippus said that the sensations are always true and can be defined in terms of motion. The school developed an elaborate psychology of sensation which summarizes its doctrine. It is as follows: (1) The intensity and not the duration of a sensation determines its value; (2) Bodily pleasures are of greater value than mental because they are more intense; (3) I can know only my own sensations, and therefore they are of greater value than another’s; (4) Man has a reasonable insight which determines him in the choice of his sensations.
The practical problem of life for this, as it was for the Cynic school, was how to become individually independent of the world. But the Cyrenaic taught independence by enjoyment, in opposition to the Cynic’s independence by renunciation. The Cyrenaic Wise Man knows all the pleasures of life thoroughly, from animal satisfactions to spiritual ecstasies. He uses them all, but never forgets himself. He is lord of his appetites, never wishes the impossible, and has perfect and serene peace.
It is an interesting fact that this pleasure-loving school drew pessimism as the consequence of its theory. If life fails to give enjoyment, it is a failure. That life alone is reprehensible that has more pain than pleasure. It is on this ground that man should submit to law and custom rather than give up his pleasures. Yet some members of the school maintained that man is bound to be unhappy. While he should have pleasure, he is so constituted that he cannot gain it. The body of man is an inevitable sufferer. The highest that we can hope is painlessness.
The Cynic and Cyrenaic schools occupy an important position in the history of philosophy. The Cynic doctrine was the basis of the teaching of the Stoic school, and the Cyrenaic was the legitimate predecessor of the Epicurean school. These great schools were founded in Athens seventy-five years later, and will be discussed under the Hellenic-Roman Period.
CHAPTER VI
THE SYSTEMATIC PERIOD (399 B. C.–322 B. C.)
The Waning of the Greek National Spirit. The Systematic Period extends from the death of Socrates to the death of Aristotle. It is only seventy-seven years long—about the same length as the Anthropological and half as long as the Cosmological Period. It begins with those sorry days after the Peloponnesian War and ends with the supremacy of Macedonian power. The period was filled with ferocious wars among the Grecian cities. First came the supremacy of Sparta, then of Thebes (371–362 B. C.), then the invasion by Philip of Macedon and the battle of Chæronea, 338 B. C. In 334 B. C. Alexander the Great began the conquest of the Orient, which he accomplished in two years. He thought by this that he could reunite the Greeks in a common cause. He failed for two reasons. In the first place, as a Macedonian the Greeks would not take him as a national representative. In the second place, the Greek spirit was waning. The people had lost their glorious ideals. Decay had set in. The worm was at the root of Greek life. Greek art, literature, and statesmanship had passed.
The Place of the Three Systematic Philosophers in Greek History. Nevertheless, when Greek national life was approaching dissolution, science ripened its richest fruits and created its most comprehensive systems of philosophy. These are connected with the names of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. These great systems evidently cannot be accounted for by the social conditions in which they appear. Neither the need nor the demand of the disrupted Greece of these years would be a sufficient cause to explain the appearance of a Plato or an Aristotle. The interests of the Greek people became narrower as the interests of the Greek philosophers became more broadly human. The intellectual tendency of this short period was utilitarian and practical. The problems that now interested the Athenians were the details of mechanics, physiology, rhetoric, and politics. The field of science was now for the first time systematized to logic, ethics, and physics—a classification which, we shall find, will exist for many centuries. Sparta and Macedonia, not Athens and Abdera, represent the spirit of the period.
If then Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle do not reflect the time in which they live, what relation do they bear to Greek civilization? They are not isolated and out of all relation to the life of the Greek people. On the contrary, they are the most comprehensive and the most profound expression of Greek life. One turns to them as the most perfect representation of Greek culture. They are the intimate expression of Greek thought, even if not of contemporaneous Greek thought. They are the final statements of the two preceding periods, projected into a time that had other interests. Democritus brought the Cosmological movement to a close, was its final expression, and gave it systematic form. Plato did the same for the Anthropological Period. In Aristotle the systematic cosmology of Democritus and the systematic ethics of Plato find a new meaning, in a closer union, under a more coördinating principle. Aristotle was the last possible word of Greek philosophy, for he systematized every branch known to the Greeks. He not only evolved a speculative theory of the whole, but he organized the special sciences. It must be further said that no one of these three great Greeks could have produced the results each did produce, if each had not been the leader of a school of many workers. Within each school there must have been vigorous coöperation along lines according to the inclination of the individual members. Thus each school collected a vast amount of material which was worked over according to the method and purpose of the leader.
The Fundamental Principle of the Systematic Period. At the beginning of this book attention was called to the difference between Greek, Mediæval, and Modern thought. Greek thought was characterized as objective. It is important to reiterate this objective significance of Greek thought at this point, when we are about to discuss the teachings of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. Plato’s theory is often called an idealism and Democritus’ theory materialism, but they are not the idealism and materialism of modern times. No terms have fluctuated in their meanings more than such philosophical terms as these, as can be judged from the fact that in the Middle Ages Plato’s doctrine was called realism. The Greeks were not idealists in the sense that Berkeley and Hegel were idealists. In general, it should be remembered that when we speak of Greek art, Greek politics, Greek philosophy as idealistic, they are not idealistic in the modern sense.19
The open-minded Greek sought to picture, to ascertain, to present. He was not dominated by the wish to show how things should be. To know and to understand, to explain by understanding the abiding reason in things, to find out the fundamental principle in things rather than to adjust it to the personal desires—this was the objective attitude of mind of the Greeks. The Greek saw before he reasoned; he visualized his thought in form before he subjected the form to rational analysis. The cosmos was a harmony and an art before which he stood in contemplation rather than in criticism. Human elements were found in it everywhere, but only as parts of that cosmos. “The unity of the spiritual and the natural, which Greek thought demands and presupposes, is the direct unbroken unity of the classic theory of the world.”20
By whatever names the great theories of the Systematic Period are called, we must remember that they did not depart from this objective Greek point of view. At certain times the moorings of Greek thought seem about to be shifted, as when Plato passes beyond the ancient Greek attitude and anticipates Christian morality by flight from the world of sense, and when Aristotle elaborates his doctrine of a transcendent god. But the tie never breaks, and the Systematic philosophers remain Greek and not modern. They have the Greek objective attitude of mind. The inner consciousness does not stand with its attestations over against all other things. The greatest of these philosophers never thought of himself but as “bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh” of the world surrounding him. In art the classic Greek “could obey but not surpass nature”; in religion he worshiped beings that were only superior human beings; in politics he was a member of a social whole. To Æschylus, Pericles, Socrates, Protagoras, Aristophanes, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle alike, human nature is a part of the world and not vice versa. The Greek mind interpreted nature rather than recreated it.
What, then, is the nature of the development of Greek thought, and in what respect does the Greek Systematic philosophy differ from the philosophy of the Greek Cosmologists? Greek philosophy in the Cosmological Period starts with a conception of an objective harmony of nature and spirit which is called hylozoism. Step by step in the Anthropological and Systematic Periods that harmony becomes broken into a dualism of mind and matter. The philosophy of this Systematic Period is a dualism of the parts of one objective world, not a subjective-objective antithesis. The realm of spirit lies side by side with that of nature, and the separation and alienation never reached the complete form that it did in the Middle Ages. The great Greek Systematizers in part represent this dualistic tendency, in part are a scientific effort to overcome it. “In spite of this tendency [to a dualism] the original presupposition [a harmony between nature and spirit] asserts itself in decisive traits; and we shall find that the true cause of its incapacity to reconcile these contradictions satisfactorily lies in its refusal to abandon that presupposition. When that [unity] is canceled, there remains to it no possible way of filling up a chasm which, according to its own standpoint, cannot exist.”21
A Summary of Greek Philosophy. At this point a summary of Greek objective philosophy will be helpful. The philosophical problem that had been working itself out since Thales had been this: How may we think the Being that abides amid the changes of phenomena? The Cosmologists scrutinized physical nature and, without differentiating nature and spirit, conceived abiding Being to be living matter. The Anthropologists (except Socrates) doubted if there is any abiding Being. Among the Systematic Philosophers a dualism for the first time appears. Nature and spirit are differentiated, but both remain entirely objective. Democritus regarded the material universe as abiding Being, but in so large a way as to be able to construct upon it a psychology and an ethics. Plato found abiding Being in the realm of the spirit, in a group of moral and æsthetic entities. Aristotle attempts to overcome the opposition between materialism and Platonism. To him abiding Being is neither physical nature nor the spirit apart from physical nature. Abiding Being to Aristotle is the spirit in nature.
Greek Philosophy (objective).
1. The Cosmologists—Hylozoism.
Abiding Being is living nature—some form of living matter.
2. The Anthropologists—Relativism (except Socrates).
Being is not abiding, but consists of transitory mental states. This is a form of what was called by the schoolmen Nominalism, and summed up by the phrase Universalia post rem.
3. The Systematic Philosophers.
Democritus—Materialism.
Being consists in material atoms, but regarded in so large a way as to furnish a basis for a psychology and an ethics.
Plato—Objective Idealism.
Being consists of permanent moral and æsthetic concepts or types. In mediæval philosophy Platonism was called realism and was summed up by the phrase Universalia ante rem.
Aristotle—Conceptualism.
The abiding Being does not consist of material atoms nor in spiritual types apart from matter, but is an unfolding essence in matter. This was usually called conceptualism by the Schoolmen, and was summed up by the phrase Universalia in re. Aristotle’s conception was as difficult as it was important. He was not always clearly a conceptualist, but sometimes appeared in the rôle of an “objective realist.”
Democritus and Plato—Their Similarities and Differences. The materialism of Democritus and the idealism of Plato were as opposed as was possible within the realm of Greek thought. We must not exaggerate their similarities, but they had at least four common characteristics.
Their Similarities.
1. Both develop an outspoken rationalism,22 which starts as a reaction from the perception theory of Protagoras. They agree with Protagoras that perception cannot yield truth, and so they turn away from perception to the reason to find true knowledge.
2. Both develop a world of twofold reality. Perceptions are not regarded by them as illusions, although perceptions are transitory. Both make a new estimate of perceptions, and give to the world of perceptions a relative value. There are therefore two kinds of reality: the relative reality of the world of perceptions and the absolute reality of the world of reason. The result in both is a broad theory of knowledge.
3. In both, reality consists in a plural number of objective norms. Both reach their conception of these norms in the same way. The changing qualities of things are stripped away and the true reality is discovered beneath. Both designate this true form by the same word, idea (ἰδέα). To both, the forms are objective entities.
4. Both are attempts to overcome scientifically the dualism which had emerged from the former hylozoism of Greek thought.
Their Differences—The Development of the Meaning of Idea. 1. But the forms or ideas are so vitally different in the doctrines of these two philosophers that they have nothing in common save the name. On the one hand, Democritus took the word “idea” just as he found it in popular speech. It is the shape of a visible thing, the geometrical form of physical objects. It gets no new content in his hands, but is merely the physical atom. With Plato, however, the word gets a new meaning. He fills the form or idea with an ethical content. The idea as a quantity becomes now a quality. The idea becomes an Idea. The forms of Plato are logical species and teleological causes, while the forms of Democritus are atom-complexes.23 In both philosophers they are the norms of reality. But while Democritus still keeps his forms as the realities of physical nature, Plato conceives his forms to be true realities of objective human nature.
2. This vital difference between the two philosophers may get some explanation from the difference in the philosophical inheritance of each. To be sure, they were contemporaries, both being born in the Anthropological Period and both doing their most mature work in the Systematic Period. Both, too, were acquainted with the philosophy of the preceding time. But the ethical teaching of Socrates dominated Plato, and through it he became the legitimate perfecter of the Greek enlightenment and the anthropological movement. But what was the influence of Socrates upon Democritus? It seems to have been nothing. Why is Plato absolutely silent about Democritus when he mentions other Greek philosophers? No one has yet been able to say. Democritus stands at Abdera isolated from the ethical movement at Athens. The only influence upon him from that movement came from Protagoras, who was a member of the school at Abdera. Democritus is the finisher of the Cosmological movement.
The Life of Democritus (460–370 B. C.). Democritus was twenty years younger than Protagoras, about ten years younger than Socrates, and a generation older than Plato. He was outlived by Plato; and Aristotle was a young man when Democritus died. He was therefore contemporary with the intellectual movement going on in Greece, with Athens as a centre. While he does not appear to have come under the influence of Socrates, he was well acquainted with the destructive epistemology of the Sophists. Abdera, where he lived, is in Thrace, and seems to have been outside the Anthropological movement at Athens. The school of Leucippus was at Abdera; and Democritus was instructed in the Sophistic doctrine directly from Protagoras, who was a member of the Atomistic school before going to Athens. The three Systematic philosophers were wide travelers, Democritus not less than Plato and Aristotle. He traveled extensively through Greece, Egypt, and the Orient. He then returned to Abdera and began his scientific activity. He remained five years in Egypt, and came to know the greater part of western Asia. He returned to Abdera about 420 B. C., and therefore did not begin his teaching before he was forty years old. The length of time that Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle took for their apprenticeship, and the advanced age before they began their mastership, is remarkable. Democritus was the greatest investigator of nature in antiquity, and Aristotle used much of Democritus’ work for his own scientific writings. The ancients admired the writings of Democritus, and the loss of them in the fourth century after Christ is one of the most lamentable that has happened to the literary documents of antiquity. His works were extraordinary in number, and upon every known subject.
Democritus was the real exponent of the Atomistic school. The founder, Leucippus, belonged to the Cosmological Period; Protagoras, the Sophist, belonged to the Anthropological Period, and had great influence in the development of the school at Abdera; but Democritus, in systematizing the doctrines of Leucippus and in accepting the perception theory of Protagoras, became its most notable representative. He was the great systematizer of the Cosmologists, and yet he differed from all the Cosmologists in embodying in his theory the results of the Sophistic movement.
The Comprehensiveness of the Aim of Democritus. The reconstruction of the philosophy of Democritus has always been difficult for the historian because, from the originally great mass of his writings, only fragments remain. The fragments show, however, many interesting things: that he covered the entire range of experience in his investigations; that he was quite as much interested in psychical as in physical problems; that his contribution to epistemology was even greater than to physics; and that he was interested in the atomic theory because he believed that it was a working hypothesis for the explanation of experience of every kind. This last characteristic shows the systematic nature of his work and his right to stand with Plato and Aristotle. Democritus fully realized that the task of science was to explain experiences through a conception of reality. So he constructed his conception of the atom in order that he might explain phenomena intelligibly. He saw that no conception strange to experience or against experience, like the Eleatic Being, would answer scientific demands. A rational conception of absolute reality will have value only as experience testifies to it and, on the other hand, as it explains experience. Democritus valued his theory of the atoms because it seemed to explain all phenomena. This construction of a single fundamental rational principle for all kinds of phenomena shows how much more of a systematic scientist he was than the Cosmologists.
The Enriched Physics of Democritus—Hylozoism becomes Materialism. There is so great enrichment in elaboration and generalization in the physical doctrine of Democritus over that of Leucippus that it amounts to a change in principle. In all probability Leucippus, like other Cosmologists, was a hylozoist, and did not differentiate matter and life. He is to be grouped with the Reconcilers, or even with the Eleatics, rather than with Democritus. Democritus was a materialist. The period of forty years between himself and Leucippus had been the rich period of the introduction of psychological investigation and of the discrimination of psychical from physical processes. Materialism or spiritualism is not possible in the historical development of the human mind until it passes through just such a period of differentiation as the Sophistic Enlightenment. Before such a period there is animism and hylozoism; after such a period there is materialism and spiritualism of various sorts. Matter must be discriminated from spirit before one of the terms can be reduced to the other. So the hylozoistic pluralism of Leucippus became in the hands of Democritus a realistic materialism, pluralistic as well.
The reduction of all phenomena by Democritus to a mechanics of atoms was theoretically an enrichment of physics, for it anticipated the underlying principle of modern physics. The apparent qualities of things and the qualitative changes of things are conceived by Democritus to be in truth only a quantitative relation of atoms. He set before himself the task of explaining in detail how this or that quality consists of atoms in mechanical motion. The mental life of man must be explained in the same way. So too, wherever he could, he emphasized more sharply than his predecessors the mechanical necessity of the movement of atoms. Impact caused by contact of the atoms was the cause of every occurrence and change. No event is to be explained as the manifestation of some spirit, or referred to some spiritual agency. Mechanical cause is behind every event; mechanical cause is the unifying principle of the doctrine of Democritus; mechanical cause is the reason for the chasm between the philosophy of Plato, of Aristotle, and that of Democritus. It is the reason, too, why the theory of Democritus was obscured until modern times. All teleological conceptions and all hylozoistic and animistic ideas are expelled from the theory of Democritus, on the assumption that spatial form and motion are simpler and more comprehensible terms of explanation. Thus for the first time we have a conscious outspoken materialism, and for the first time the world is conceived to be a universal reign of mechanical law.
The physical theory of Democritus also yielded a rich scientific explanation of the historical evolution of the universe. The universe, according to Democritus,—following the teaching of Leucippus,—consists of two parts: the Plenum or self-moving, qualitatively similar atoms; and the Void or empty space, in which the atoms move. The Plenum, or the atoms, is Being; the Void is not-Being. The atoms differ only in form and size;24 they are infinite in number and therefore are of an infinite number of forms and sizes; they are imperceptibly small. The perceptible qualities do not belong to them, but to their motions. Motion is an irreducible function of atoms, and each atom, lawless in itself, is in flight through space. An aggregation of atoms arises when the atoms meet in their cosmic flight. The shock causes a vortex which draws more atoms into itself. Like atoms are drawn together, and the heavy atoms press the fine fire-atoms to the periphery. Thus innumerable worlds are formed, for any place of the meeting of several atoms can be the beginning of a new world. Sometimes small worlds are drawn into the vortices of large worlds, and sometimes large worlds disintegrate in fatal collisions. The worlds are therefore endless and in endless succession. The whole swings in space like a ball; the rim of the whole consists of compact atoms; the centre is filled with air. To much further length than we can go here Democritus developed a theoretical description of cosmic evolution upon the principle of mechanical necessity—and the description is almost modern.
The Materialistic Psychology of Democritus. It is easy to understand an explanation of the physical universe as atoms in motion; for our modern scientific theories of nature are set in these terms, even if we have transformed the Democritan static atom into a dynamic entity. It is rather more interesting to follow such a materialist as Democritus in his extension of the materialistic principle over upon the realm of the mental life.
In the first place, Democritus conceives man to be part and parcel of the world of atoms. Man is composed of all kinds of atoms. His body consists of earth, water, and air atoms. His mind is made up of fire atoms, which differ from the others in being the finest, smoothest, and most mobile. On this account the fire atoms are the most perfect of all. Psychical activity is the motion of fire atoms. They are scattered throughout the universe, and wherever they are, there is life. They are in plants and animals as well as in man. There is a larger collection of them in man, and this shows his superiority over other living things. In man there is a fire atom between every two other atoms, and the whole is held together by breathing. The different forms of mental activity are simply different forms of atomic motion.
In the next place, our atomic make-up involves the presence of other atomic complexes, if we are to have any psychical activity. External things must stimulate us. But these external things are atoms in action. They can, however, influence us only by coming into contact with our bodies. Only by impact on our bodies can they set in motion the fire atoms which are scattered through our bodies. Every kind of knowledge or mental life involves the participation of the fire atoms in us. Thus mental activity involves two factors; the fire atoms within us and an external group of atoms without us.
How did Democritus explain the varied mental life as the resultant of these two factors? He employed the theory of effluxes, belief in which he shared with his time. This is a purely physiological assumption, originated by such Cosmologists as Empedocles, that somehow external bodies send off emanations from themselves which strike upon our bodies. Most objects in the world influence us at a distance and only through the emission of these effluxes. Democritus conceived these emanations to be little copies or “eidola” of the thing that sends them off. To illustrate Democritus’ meaning: a tree is seen by me because little trees, thrown off by it, hit my eye. This theory retained its position in philosophical circles until after Locke. It persists in the popular mind to-day. It is a general belief that a thought is a copy, photograph, or image of the thing. The words “image” and “imagination” betray their origin. It was believed by Democritus that such copies set in motion the sense organs and through them the fire atoms. The effluxes can, however, affect only those organs of the body that have similar formation and similar atomic motions.
But the effluxes vary very much in the degree of fineness of their atomic structure. There are all sorts, from very fine to very coarse. Since the efflux must correspond to a particular sense if that sense is to be affected by it, the effluxes that can affect the senses vary respectively as to their fineness. Democritus was particularly interested in the sensations of sight and hearing as examples of this. None of the effluxes affecting the senses are as fine as those that stimulate the reason. Unless they were the finest of all the effluxes, they could not affect the fine motions of the fire atoms of the reason. These finest “eidola” or effluxes are the true copies of things, and the reason therefore alone knows things truly. Thought, on the one hand, is precisely the atomic motion of the direct impact of the finest effluxes upon the fine fire-atoms of the soul. Sensation, on the other hand, is atomic motion from the indirect impact of the coarser grades of effluxes upon the fire atoms. The reason knows reality directly. Sensations are aroused in a roundabout way by the coarse effluxes setting in motion the corresponding sense organ, which in turn sets in motion the fire atoms. Thus does Democritus make the distinction between thought and sensation in quantitative terms. Thus does he reduce his psychology to a consistency with his metaphysical principle of materialism.
Democritus’ Theory of Knowledge—The World of Twofold Reality. Democritus would have been only one of the great Cosmologists, and he would not have his place by the side of Plato and Aristotle, if his materialism had illuminated no other subject than physics. Indeed, it is doubtful if his physics would have been so grandly comprehensive and unqualified had it not been strengthened by his discriminating theory of twofold knowledge. He might have extended and systematized his materialism so that it explained to the satisfaction of his time both physical and psychical phenomena, and still have been a hylozoist, like Leucippus, the founder of the Atomistic school. The problem of knowledge—the problem of estimating our mental states—was as incomprehensible to Leucippus as to the Eleatics. Democritus, however, was a rationalist and realist like Plato and Aristotle. He recognized, as did they, that there is a difference in epistemological values. His universalized materialism did not prevent him from evaluating our experiences from the same general point of view as the leader of the Academy and the Stagirite. He felt that a twofold reality is as consistent with materialistic principles as with idealism. So he reduced all qualities to quantities, and then as quantities re-valued and classified them. His chief contribution was to the subject of epistemology and not to physics, and that is why he is treated among the Greek Systematizers and not among the Cosmologists. Probably his chief interest lay where he did his chief work.
The perception theory of Protagoras was the starting-point of both Democritus and Plato. Both adopted it in order to transcend it and make it of real significance. Democritus, upon the basis of his materialistic psychology, admitted that sense-perception is only a transitory process, and its knowledge must be as transitory. But he did not agree with Protagoras that all knowledge is perceptual. Sense-perception does yield only relative knowledge; but there is another kind of knowledge that is not relative but absolute. This is knowledge of the reason. Human beings have reason as well as sense-perception. Thus is Democritus a rationalist, although a materialist.
The contribution of Democritus to the theory of knowledge consists in just this turn which he gave to Protagoras’ doctrine of perception. The relativity of perception becomes in the Democritan theory a different thing from what it was in the doctrine of the great Sophist. To Protagoras perceptual knowledge is relative, and therefore of no value in determining what is real. To Democritus perceptual knowledge is relative, but it has a value,—a relative value. It gets this relative value from the fact that the reason can determine absolute reality. Perception is the contributor to the reason, and also in turn is illuminated by the reason. In the same breath we may say that Protagoras was a contributor to the theory of Democritus, and in turn that the Protagorean relativism was illuminated by the Democritan rationalism. The result was a twofold knowledge—in the language of Democritus, “genuine knowledge” and “obscure insight.”
The objects corresponding to these two kinds of knowledge must be of two kinds. On the one hand, the objects of the reason, or “genuine knowledge,” are the genuine, primary, or real properties of the atoms—for the atoms are reality to Democritus. These are form, size, inertia, density, and hardness.25 A study of these properties of things is, therefore, a study of real objects. On the other hand, the objects of perception or “obscure insight” are the properties of atoms as perceived obscurely by the senses. These are color, sound, taste, smell. They are the qualities or relative properties of things. A study of these is a study of only what is relatively real. When materialism was revived by the Renaissance, the former group of objects were called “primary qualities” and the latter “secondary qualities.” These terms have become classic, and have rendered permanent Democritus’ evaluation of the objects of the two kinds of knowledge. Out of the fragments of the teaching of the Cosmologists and the one-sided epistemology of the Sophists, Democritus constructed contemporaneously with Plato, perhaps antecedently to him, a theory of twofold knowledge.
The Ethical Theory of Democritus. The ethics of Democritus is another example of his general principle of a mechanism of atoms. His attempt to reduce all qualitative to quantitative relations, which gives his theory a unique place in Greek thought, reaches its highest distinction in his ethics. The influence of his ethical doctrine upon the Epicureans, and possibly upon the Cyrenaics, shows its importance in history. Furthermore, its high quality proves that a materialism can offer inspiring ethical doctrines. Some have placed the ethics of Democritus upon a level with the ethics of Socrates because, as it is pointed out, he placed it upon an intellectual basis. The basal ethical principle of Democritus may be stated thus: As true knowledge is the ideal object of the intellect, so true happiness is the ideal object of our conduct. The ethics of Democritus is eudæmonistic, like that of Socrates.
Pleasures have fundamental differences. They are in every case the results of atomic motions; but the atomic motions of the intellect differ from those of the senses, and those of the senses differ from one another. The fire atoms of the intellect are small, and have a gentle, peaceful motion; the atomic motions of the senses are coarse and violent, caused by the coarse effluxes of the objects that excite them. Sense-pleasures are relative, like the perceptions. As perception is obscure insight and gains the appearance and not the true reality, so the pleasures of sense are transitory, uncertain, violent, and deceitful. Intellectual pleasures are, like the intellect, real, true, permanent, gentle, and peaceful. True happiness, the goal of human activity, attends upon that right insight—upon the gentle atomic motions of the intellectual life. On the other hand, the coarse atomic motions of the senses disturb the intellectual calm, and are often violent explosions. Democritus believed that knowledge of the atoms, as the true explanation of the world, will give to the soul a measure and a harmony, will guard it from excitement and make it possessor of a peace which—to use his happy simile—is like the ocean calm. Two ideals seem to stand before Democritus, which he did not try to reconcile. Sometimes before his mind’s eye the ideal happiness is purely intellectual pleasure and points toward asceticism. Sometimes he speaks of happiness as the life of perfect self-control and temperance. He never positively denies all value to sense-pleasure, but he gives to sense-pleasure the relative value that he gives to the senses themselves. In every case the ground of happiness is intellectual refinement, and the ground of unhappiness the lack of it. The majority of men are sensualists and are to be contrasted with the Wise Man, who finds his happiness either in his individual life or in his friendship with other Wise Men.
CHAPTER VII
PLATO (427–347 B. C.)
Abdera and Athens. The materialism of Democritus was the natural consummation of the thought of the Cosmological Period. The influence of the Sophistic psychology only enriched it, widened it, and brought its materialism into a systematic formulation. The Democritan system from the isolated centre of Abdera points only to the past. Upon the death of Democritus the school quickly disappeared. Its materialistic doctrine reappeared from time to time in one form and another,—in the Skeptics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics. It was reintroduced as a system into Europe during the Renaissance. So far as Greece was concerned, the school of Abdera was an early ripening and an early dying branch.
The school of Athenian immaterialism, the principal tendency of Greek thought, arose from the centre of Attic civilization and pointed to the future. It drew its materials from practically the same sources as the philosophy of Abdera, but the materials were polarized about the ethical teaching of Socrates. The life of Plato coincides with the unhappy history of Athens after the death of Pericles (429 B. C.). The Peloponnesian War began in 431 B. C., two years before the death of Pericles and four years before the birth of Plato; and it did not end until 403 B. C. The event most disastrous to the Athenians during this war was the Sicilian expedition in 413 B. C. Athens was captured by the Spartans in 403 B. C., and the great walls of the city were destroyed. The remainder of Plato’s life was contemporaneous with the devastating wars among the Greek cities, for there was no city strong enough to hold the balance of power after it left the hands of the Athenians. In 359 B. C. Macedon began to loom up as a power in the north. The life of Plato, the formulator of Athenian immaterialism, may be easily remembered as covering that period between the rise of Sparta and the rise of Macedon.
The Difficulties in Understanding the Teaching of Plato. The theory of Plato is one of the most involved and one of the most difficult to understand in the whole history of philosophy. This difficulty of interpreting Plato as a philosopher depends upon many factors: upon the artistic literary form of the dialogue in which his philosophy is presented; upon the conflicting tendencies of thought in Plato himself; upon the fact that the composition of his dialogues extended over a period of more than half a century; upon the constant reshaping of the content as well as the form of his thought; and upon the uncertainty of the chronological order of his writings. This chronological order of Plato’s dialogues is an important factor in determining his teaching. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century a vast amount of literature has been published on the subject, and many theories of the dialogue-chronology have been proposed. There are three principal groups of theories: (1) those based upon purely a priori hypotheses, as, for example, that of Hermann, that each dialogue is a stage in the development of Plato’s thought; or that of Schleiermacher, that Plato had a systematic plan from the beginning; (2) those based upon an empirical study of the historical allusions in the dialogues themselves (Zeller, Windelband, et als.); (3) those recent theories based upon the “stylometric test,” i. e. by an examination of the peculiarities of the style of Plato. Lutoslawski is a prominent representative of this method.
The result to the student is bewildering, on account of the differing conclusions. But since some choice must be made, we shall follow the order laid down by Windelband,26 because it is fairly orthodox and conservative. For convenience to the memory, the writings will be grouped in the periods of Plato’s life. Our interpretation will therefore follow Windelband in respect to the character of Plato’s theory itself.
The Life and Writings of Plato. Two important events divide Plato’s long life of eighty years into three periods. These events were the death of his master, Socrates, in 399 B. C., and Plato’s return from Sicily in 387 B. C., after having there come under the influence of the Pythagoreans. His first period may be called his student life, and was twenty-eight years long; the second period was that of the traveler, and was twelve years long; the third period was that of teacher of the Academy, and was forty years long. The first half of his life therefore covers the first two periods, and the second half covers his period as teacher. Probably he was engaged in the composition of the dialogues during all these periods, and Cicero reports him to have died “pen in hand” (scribens est mortuus).
1. Plato’s Student Life (427–399 B. C.). This period closes with the death of Socrates. His acquaintance with Socrates began when he was twenty years old, and therefore lasted eight years.
The dialogues written during this period are presentations of the doctrine of Socrates and do not contain the constructive theory of Plato. They are concerned either with Socratic subjects or with Socrates personally, and were written in part during Socrates’ life, in part directly after his death.
(a) Dialogues written under the influence of Socrates:
Lysis, concerning friendship;
Laches, concerning courage;
Charmides, concerning moderation.
(b) Dialogues written in defense of Socrates:
Crito, concerning Socrates’ fidelity to law;
Apology, a general defense of Socrates;
Euthryphro, concerning Socrates’ true piety.
2. Plato as Traveler (399–387 B. C.). During this period Plato made one short and two long journeys, and after each he returned to Athens. Upon the death of Socrates he went to Megara, where a former pupil of Socrates had a school. Upon this journey he was accompanied by other pupils of Socrates, who, as tradition has it, feared violence to themselves after the death of their master. Plato remained in Megara but a short time, and soon returned to Athens. Immediately upon his return to Athens he went to Cyrene and Egypt, and was away from Athens about four years (until 395 B. C.). The Egyptian journey had little influence upon his thought, but must have stimulated his imagination. He then remained at Athens four years (395–391 B. C.), and during this time he taught a small circle and wrote his polemics against the Sophists.
In 391 B. C. Plato made his first Italian journey—to Sicily and southern Italy. This marks the second critical point in his mental development. For at this time (1) he came under the influence of the Italian Pythagoreans, and (2) he attempted and failed in connection with Dion27 and Dionysius to erect his ideal state in Syracuse. He was sold as a slave by Dionysius, redeemed by a friend, and returned to Athens in 387 B. C., having been away about four years.
It is to be noted that Democritus and Plato were wide travelers, considering the difficulties of locomotion of the time. Both Democritus and Plato went to Egypt, and Democritus spent several years in Asia Minor (see p. 107).
The dialogues written during this period may be divided into (a) the group of polemics against the Sophists, and (b) the Meno.
(a) The polemics against the Sophists (written between his return from Egypt in 395 B. C. and his first Italian journey in 391 B. C.).
They are an attempt to present a solid front against the Sophists, and to show the weakness of the Sophistic doctrines. These polemical dialogues are:
Protagoras, a criticism of the Sophistic assumption that virtue is teachable, because that assumption is incompatible with the Sophistic fundamental principle;
Gorgias, showing how superficial the Sophistic rhetoric is when compared with true culture, which is the foundation of real statecraft;
Euthydemus, an exposition of the fallacies in the Sophistic eristic;
Cratylus, a criticism of the philological attempts of the Sophists;
Theætetus, a criticism of the Sophistic theories of knowledge;
The First Book of the Republic (the “Dialogue concerning Justice”), a criticism of the Sophistic naturalistic theory of the state.
(b) Meno, which contains the first positive statement by Plato of his own constructive theory. It is the first intimation of development beyond the simple Socratic theory of knowledge. Plato states this, however, rather timidly, by suggestions and after the manner of a mathematician.
3. Plato as Teacher of the Academy (387–347 B. C.). These forty years were spent by Plato in Athens as master and teacher of his school, the Academy, with the exception of two journeys to Italy. He undertook these journeys in the hope of realizing in a practical way his political ideals. He made his second Italian journey upon the invitation of Dion, in the hope of influencing the younger Dionysius, and the third Italian journey in order to reconcile Dion and Dionysius. This last journey brought him again into great personal danger.
What was the Academy? It was a public grove or garden in the suburbs of Athens (see map, p. 219) that had been left to the city for gymnastics by a public-spirited man named Academus. It had been surrounded by a wall and had been adorned by olive trees, statues, and temples. Near this inclosure Plato possessed by inheritance a small estate. It was here that he opened his school, and few places could be more favorable for the study of philosophy. Plato bequeathed this estate to the school, which held the property in a corporate capacity for several centuries. The leader of the school was called scholarch, and he appointed his own successor. The school was a kind of religious brotherhood based upon the worship of the Muses.
Note that Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle finished their education at an age much beyond what is supposed to be the limit in modern time. They were, in fact, mature men before they began their life work. Plato was 32 before he began to teach in Athens and 40 before he set himself about his real life task in the founding of the Academy. Democritus was 40 before he returned to Abdera from his travels in Asia Minor. Aristotle was 41 when he undertook to act as tutor of Alexander, and 49 when he began his administration of the Lyceum.
The dialogues of the third period of Plato’s life contain his constructive theory, and are his masterpieces of art. The topics with which they deal show the advance of his thought over the dialogues of his first period. The purely Socratic dialogues were ethical discussions; these are ethical, metaphysical, and physical.
Phædrus, Plato’s delivery of his programme upon his entrance into active teaching in the Academy, in 386 B. C.
Symposium, an exposition of his entire doctrine in “love speeches.” It is the most artistic of his writings, and represents the climax of his intellectual power (385 or 384 B. C.).
Republic (major portion). The composition of the Republic extended over a long period. It is a discussion: (1) concerning justice (written in the second period, see above); (2) concerning the ideal state which shall realize justice; (3) concerning the Idea of the Good and in criticism of the constitutions of states. It is Plato’s masterpiece and his life work.
Parmenides and Sophist, written to express the objections to the theory of Ideas, and to discuss such objections. (Windelband holds these dialogues were not written by Plato, but by some member of his school. This is, however, not the consensus of opinion.)
Politicus, a discussion of the field of knowledge and of action for a statesman.
Phædo, Plato’s final will and testament to the school, written shortly before his third Sicilian journey, in 361 B. C. It is his completed conception of the Idea of the Good and of the relation of other Ideas to it. It contains Anaxagorean and Pythagorean elements.
Philebus, concerning the ingredients of the Idea of the Good.
Timæus, Plato’s conception of physical nature, expressed in mythical form.
Laws, the work of Plato’s old age, his revision of the ideal State.
Concerning the Dialogues28 of Plato. The early philosophers presented their philosophy in metrical form as poems “concerning nature”; Socrates perpetuated his teachings through conversations with men; Plato made his influence permanent by written dialogues; Aristotle’s philosophy, in the works that have been preserved, stands in the form of treatises whose sole purpose is that of exposition. Plato’s dialogues therefore have a twofold place in the history of literature. On the one hand, in the history of literature proper we have already mentioned them as standing after the Greek drama in the development of Greek dialectics; on the other hand, in the development of philosophical instruction they stand between the conversations of Socrates and the scientific expositions of Aristotle.
Plato was the first child of Fortune, and the complete preservation of his works was the most remarkable proof of it. Æschylus was the author of at least 70 writings, of which 7 are preserved; Euripides was the author of 95 writings, of which 18 are preserved; Sophocles had 123 writings, aside from his lyric works, of which 7 are preserved. Shakespeare wrote 36 plays, Plato wrote 35 dialogues that are genuine. All of Plato’s writings have come down to us. Why were the writings of Plato preserved from the destroying hand of time? There are at least three causes of their preservation: (1) they had intrinsic beauty; (2) there was contemporary public interest in them; (3) the chief cause, Plato’s school kept close guard over them.
By the dialogue Plato could employ the Socratic method, give dramatic effect, and idealize Socrates. The Republic is his crowning literary effort, and the most complete statement of his mature political views. Perhaps the Philebus is the best expression of his idea of goodness, and presents his most complete organization of the sciences. All Plato’s dialogues have a transparent beauty and a purity of diction; and they may be taken as a revelation of himself. All are dialogues save the Apology, but the dialogue element grows less and less in his later works. Socrates is usually the spokesman in them, and to him is usually given the deciding word. Only a few have a fixed plan of argument. One thread and then another is followed, and in many no decision whatever is reached; for the dialogues must always be taken as artistic products in which philosophical experiences are idealized. Plato often employs myths or parables to illuminate his arguments. The situations and the literary adornments show the human touch, and the conversation often moves to a dramatic close.
In the Republic Plato sought to formulate theoretically certain political conceptions of the ideal State that were then in the air. It is interesting to note that his conception influenced the political idealism of later time, as, for example, Cicero’s De Republica, Augustine’s City of God, More’s Utopia, Campanella’s State of the Sun, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Macchiavelli’s Il Principe.
The Factors in the Construction of Plato’s Doctrine.
1. His Inherited Tendencies. (a) In the first place Plato was by instinct an aristocrat. His family was one of the most distinguished in Athens, and traced its descent from Solon and Codrus. In making an estimate of his philosophy one must take account of the caste of society in which he was born. His metaphysical theory of Ideas is aristocratic, and in it he turns from all that is of the earth earthy to what is above the life of “opinion.” His four cardinal virtues are possible only to the few. His political attitude was peculiar. He was hostile to the democracy, and yet his political idealism diverged so far from the practical politics of Athenian aristocracy that he completely abstained from public life. With Plato, philosophy once more retires to the school. Here we have the strange juxtaposition of Socrates, the teacher, who had been engaged in a practical reformation, whose father was an artisan and whose mother a midwife, and Plato, his adoring pupil and truest interpreter,—Plato, the idealist, “whose speculation is not like the Philistine, whose life is spent in the market place or the workshop, and whose world is measured by the narrow boundaries of his native town; it is the lord of the manor, who retires to his mansion, after having seen the world, and turns his gaze towards the distant horizon; disdaining the noise of the cross-roads, he mingles only in the best society, where is heard the most elegant, the noblest, and the loftiest language that has ever been spoken in the home of the Muses.”29
(b) In the next place Plato had an instinctive love for the beautiful, and in this he was great, even in his time. Every Periclean Greek was artistic, but Plato was more than this. He is to be ranked among the great creators of the art of his day,—with Phidias and Sophocles. He represented in his person everything ideally Greek. He was a man of great beauty, a human Apollo, a man endowed with every physical and mental talent, and his moral character was almost ideal in its purposes. His real name was Aristocles, and he got his name Plato from his broad frame. The artistic development of the time appealed to him in his youth, and he was early interested in the writing of epic and dramatic poetry. This artistic instinct determined in no small measure not only the form of the presentation of his thought, but also the content of the thought itself. It determined his principle of conceiving the Ideas, the constitution of his State, his theory of pleasure, and his conception of the highest Good. The artistic form of the presentation of his writings was as important to him as the matter presented.
2. His Philosophical Sources. Plato had received a careful education that made him familiar with all the scientific theories of current interest to the Athenians. The elements of the earlier philosophies, that were fundamental to the mechanical atomism of Democritus, were recombined in a different way by Plato under the influence of Socrates’ ethical principle. Even Plato’s political and artistic ideals are subordinate to his entire absorption in the personality and teaching of Socrates. Heracleitus, Protagoras, Parmenides, and, later, Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans, furnished him with his philosophical materials. We may point out three of the preceding philosophies that had an especially powerful influence upon him: those of (1) Socrates; (2) Parmenides; and (3) the Pythagoreans. His revered master, Socrates, furnished Plato throughout with the conceptual principle, by which he worked over all his material into his daring system. The influence of Parmenides upon him was also very great. He speaks of the Eleatic as “Parmenides, my father.” Plato betook himself to the Eleatic school at Megara upon the death of Socrates, and this shows that he must already have been hospitable to the philosophy which taught the conception of an absolute and eternal essence of things known by the human reason. The influence of the Pythagoreans was felt by Plato on his first visit to Italy. This influence grew with him, and seems to dominate the dialogue of his old age, the Laws. The Eleatic Oneness was a single, immutable block. In the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers he found the conceptual divisions of that Oneness, and he also found that such conceptions would give a content to Socrates’ conception of the Good. Indeed, the numbers seemed to be the conceptual models for which Socrates was searching. Mathematical truths are independent of perception. They are innate ideas. They are eternal and immutable Forms. They were the weapons needed against the Protagorean doctrine of perception. While Plato agreed with Heracleitus that the visible world is a changing world, and with Protagoras that our sense-perceptions of that world can yield only relative truth, he developed his philosophy almost entirely on its conceptual side; and this is due to the influence first of Socrates, second of Parmenides, and third of the Pythagoreans. Plato’s completed philosophy was the theory of Ideas, worked over in his mind a half-century or more, and is in itself a history of the development of pure concepts.
The Divisions of Plato’s Philosophy. Plato himself had no clear conception of an exact division of science, and did not confine himself in a single dialogue to a single science. Aristotle, however, distinguished in the philosophy of his master dialectic, ethics, and physics, and these divisions of Plato’s teaching have been traditionally adopted. The dialectic, as commonly used in his time, meant “the dialogue or conversation employed as a means of scientific investigation.” It was transformed by Plato to mean not logical but metaphysical discussion. Plato was concerned with the laws of Being rather than the laws of logic, and, as Being to him consisted of Ideas, his dialectic interest was to reduce experience by division and induction to some unity. Plato’s dialectic was not logical but methodological,—logical operations taken as a whole,—by means of which the Ideas and their relations to one another were to be found. The physics of Plato is of little value. It was an afterthought to satisfy the demands of his school. The world of nature phenomena could never be for Plato the object of true knowledge. Unfortunately, the teleological physics of Plato was regarded by the Hellenistic time and the Middle Ages as Plato’s most important achievement. Plato wrote entirely in the spirit of the Enlightenment, and his works show a great interest in man as a moral being, but little interest in physical nature.
Summary of Plato’s Doctrine. The interpretation of Plato as set forth in what follows may be thus summarized: Plato began with the conceptual form of idealism, suggested by the logical method of Socrates, with the purpose of solving logical and ethical problems. He advanced to a teleological idealism, conditioned by the doctrines of Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans, with the purpose of applying his doctrine to physical problems.
The Formation of Plato’s Metaphysics. In his earliest period Plato made these very clear statements: (1) virtue is knowledge; (2) by knowledge is not meant sense-perceptions. In his final statement of his philosophy, as he bequeathed it to posterity, he only gave a new evaluation of these two early principles, although he expressed them in a highly complex form. “Virtue is knowledge” is the basis of agreement between Socrates and the Sophists; and “by knowledge is not meant sense-perceptions” is the basis of their opposition. During Plato’s early period he was acting as a faithful transcriber of Socrates in the presentation of this first principle: virtue is knowledge, is teachable, is one. During Plato’s second period he was called on to defend the second statement against the Sophists. Plato’s formation of his own theory begins at this point,—at the point where his defense of his master was keenest. From this time, for a full half-century, Plato developed the Socratic principles in a theory that went far beyond Socrates, but that was never untrue to him.
The simplest way of stating Plato’s formation of his own doctrine is this: he accepted the Protagorean doctrine of a perceptual world of relative knowledge; he placed it beside the Socratic theory of conceptual reality; and as a result he conceived the world to be twofold. Both Being and Becoming share in reality. There are, on the one side, the immutable concepts that compose true reality; there are, on the other side, the changing perceptions that come and go. The world of true reality is, but never becomes; the world of relative reality becomes, but never is. These two worlds are by nature separate; one is the object of the reason, the other is the object of the senses; one is incorporeal, the other is corporeal. The first world is the immutable One of the Eleatics presented by Plato as a plural number of Socratic concepts; the other world is the Heracleitan flux presented as perceivable things. There is true knowledge, but Protagoras is right in saying that it cannot be found in the perception of the material world. It is knowledge of an incorporeal world, and that is precisely the world of Socratic concepts which now in Plato’s hands become Ideas.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that Plato’s conception of the world was an artificial eclecticism, obtained by putting two worlds side by side. To be sure, he never was able to bring them into an organic unity, and the dualism between them is often very marked. But they do not lie like two drawers in a desk, each having no vital influence on the character of the other. In the juxtaposition of the two worlds each gets a new meaning, and the value of each becomes greater.
In the first place, perception30 gets a new value. The logic of the Sophistic doctrine of perception was that perceptions are the only form of knowledge, and even perceptions have no share of truthfulness. Protagoras himself did not go so far as this absolute skepticism, but this is the logic of his position. Perceptions can have no value, because each is a standard to itself. Plato incorporates the perception theory into his own, and immediately gives it a new value. Perceptions do not, to be sure, yield true knowledge, but they have a relative value. They have a value for the practical world, although the highest they can give is Right Opinion. When we remember that the world of that day was weary of its own speculations leading to nihilism, it is remarkable that Plato did not turn away entirely from the doctrine of the Sophists. On the contrary, he took up the Sophistic doctrine into his own and gave to it a value which it had not possessed by itself.
In the second place, conception gets a new value. What was conception to Socrates? It was the common content of opinions and perceptions; it was the universal that was developed inductively out of many particulars. Socrates brought many particulars together in order to reveal their common qualities. The abode of conceptions was to Socrates the half-formed individual opinions and experiences in which conception lay, as in an envelope; and the conversation was needed to bring it forth. The concept to Socrates was the logical “nature” of perceptions. But now since Plato admitted the relative reality of all perceptions, he was obliged to look elsewhere to account for conceptions. If the conceptions are true reality, they cannot be the common quality in opinions, nor the logical “nature” of changing perceptions. The true conception cannot be contained in the perception. Accordingly the conception must exist in an incorporeal world and possess an independent reality. The concepts are hypostasized by Plato. They become Ideas. Thus the Socratic concept became the Platonic Idea, and for the first time in European thought, reality is conceived as immaterial. The conceptual world grows under Plato’s hands to be “other than” the perceptual world, and this was his first step beyond Socrates. The conceptual world is the perfect reality that cannot be contained in any material thing nor in the sum of all material things. The immaterial Ideas are the object of thought, as nature phenomena are the objects of perception. Ideas are not the abstractions of perceptions, for the process of thought is not an analysis nor an abstraction, but an intuition of reality presented in single instances. Ideas are the reality of which perceptions are the copies or shadows. Perceptions do not contain the truth. They are only the suggestions or promptings by which the soul bethinks itself of the Ideas. Material things merely hint to the soul of the existence of the Ideas.
It is important in this connection to point out that Plato’s conception of immateriality is not to be taken as what we mean in modern times by the spiritual or psychical; for, according to Plato, our psychical functions belong to the world of Becoming, just as the functions of our body and other perceptual things belong to it. Besides, even the Ideas of sense qualities have reality. Plato does not identify the human mind with the incorporeal world of Ideas, nor does he make the modern dualistic division of the world into mind and matter. The immaterial world is “other than” the world of perception, and bears the relation to the material world of the unchanging to the changing, of the simple to the manifold, of Being to Becoming.
The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics—The Development of Plato’s Ideas in the Two Drafts. The twofold world with its new evaluation of the Socratic conception and of the Protagorean perception was, after all, only Plato’s point of departure for his constructive work. It was his first and undeveloped apprehension of a theory of Ideas. It appeared first in the Meno in his doctrine of recollection and immortality, which was written in his second period just after his series of splendid polemics against the Sophists. From this time for a full half-century Plato developed the conception of a twofold world into a Theory of Ideas. In the course of time he found himself confronted with three problems: (1) How many Ideas are there? (2) What is the relation between Ideas and physical things? (3) What is the relation of the Ideas to one another? Plato’s answers to these three questions compose what is known as his Theory of Ideas. However, he answers these three questions differently when he first considered them than later, when his grasp upon the significance of his problem became more mature. Plato’s Theory of Ideas, therefore, may be said to have had a development in two stages. These two stages are called his “two drafts” (Windelband) of the Ideas. We shall now present, first in summary form and then in more detail, his answers to these three questions in the two drafts, and thereby show how his theory developed to its final formulation.
Brief Comparison of the Two Drafts of the Ideas.
1. The Earlier Draft of Ideas.
(a) The Number of Ideas is infinite.
(b) The Relation of Ideas to Physical Things is similarity. The Ideas on their side are spoken of as having a “presence” in physical things, but never fully appearing in them; the physical phenomena on their side are spoken of as “participating” in the Ideas.
(c) The Ideas are Related to One Another logically, as genera to species, but they are only roughly classified by Plato.
2. The Later Draft of Ideas—Plato’s Final Statement.
(a) The Number of Ideas is limited to those of worth, mathematical relations, and nature-products, but Plato never arrived at any definite selection.
(b) The Relation of Ideas to Physical Things is teleological. The Ideas are the ideal or purposeful ends of physical objects.
(c) The Ideas are Related to One Another teleologically. The Idea of the Good stands at the head, and is the purposeful end of all the other Ideas.
Comparison of the Two Drafts of Ideas in More Detail.
1. The Number of Ideas in the Earlier and Later Drafts compared. When Plato first presented the Theory of Ideas to himself, he conceived their number to be infinite. There are Ideas of everything that is thinkable. There are as many as there are class concepts, as there are qualities of things in the universe, as there are common nouns in the language. But it was pointed out to Plato that he had only reproduced and paralleled in the immaterial world what exists in the material world; that such a theory did not solve, but only doubled our difficulties. Then there were technical difficulties in the conception of the Ideas of everything—of things, qualities, relations,—good, bad, and indifferent. But what probably appealed to him most cogently was the raillery to which he found his theory subjected (see Parmenides), that he as a Greek could think of ugly Ideas, like hair and filth, as real. The result was that in the later drafting of his theory the number of qualities worthy to be called Ideas becomes very much limited. Plato makes the elimination from no avowed principle except that of worth, because as a Greek it was absolutely repellent to him to regard anything as real except worth. Consequently in his later dialogues he speaks of (1) Ideas having an inherent value, like the Good and the Beautiful, (2) Ideas corresponding to nature products, (3) Ideas of mathematical relations. Norms of value thus take the place of class-concepts, and in his selection of Ideas his choice is determined more and more by their moral worth.
2. The Relation of Ideas and the World of Nature in the Two Drafts compared. Plato did not construct his world of Ideas in order to explain the world of physical nature. His original purpose was to find an object for knowledge; and his Ideas were born out of his striving to give a reality to the conceptions of Socrates. In his evaluation of the doctrine of his master he had drawn a distinction between the two worlds, but he had not thought of explaining one by the other. They were related and distinguished, but one threw no light upon the other. In Plato’s first draft of the Ideas he speaks of this relation as imitation. The phenomena are an imitation of reality. The Ideas are the originals and physical objects are copies. To state the relation in modern terms, the laws of the growth of a tree are permanent, while the tree changes. The lower world of Becoming has a similarity to the higher world of Being. As the Pythagoreans had conceived things as imitations of numbers, Plato, strongly influenced by the Pythagoreans, thought that concrete things correspond to their class concepts only in a degree. On the one hand, the individual thing partakes of the universal of the Idea, and this is called “participation” in the Idea. On the other hand, the word “presence” describes the way the Idea exists in the thing, which means that the Idea is present in the thing so long as the thing possesses the quality of the Idea. The Ideas are present and then withdraw, and thus the perception changes.
In the second drafting of the Ideas, Plato has become conscious of the need of explaining physical nature by the Ideas. He did not at first think of explaining the nature of the physical world by his metaphysical reality. It was an afterthought, and arose out of the compulsion of having a systematic theory. His conception of the world of Ideas as the world of true Being ultimately demanded that the world of physical nature should be not merely “other than” but dependent upon the Ideas. The Ideas are unchanging; the phenomena are changing. If the Ideas are the reality of the changing world, in what other sense can they be its reality than as its cause? The Meno, Theætetus, Symposium, and Phædrus do not discuss this problem. The Sophist proposes it, and in the Phædo the thought is first expressed that the Ideas are the causes of physical phenomena appearing as they do appear. But how can the Ideas be causes, when the very conception of them as pure and immaterial realities denies to them all qualities of motion and change? The Platonic theory reached its zenith in its solution of this problem. The Ideas must be conceived as the causes of nature phenomena, and still as not moving nor suffering change. They are teleological causes. They are the realized ends of the phenomenal world. The world of Ideas is the actual goal of perfection for physical nature. The world of Ideas is not only the truth of all knowledge; it is also the perfect teleological cause of all actual change. This thought is developed in the Philebus and the Republic, where the Ideas as a whole, and in particular the Idea of the Good,—to which all the other Ideas are means,—stand as the final cause of all occurrence. The physical phenomena stand therefore in a teleological relation to the Idea of the Good. From the Good all things get their meaning. It permeates and explains all.
3. The Relation among the Ideas in the Two Drafts compared. It was natural that the conception of a pluralism of Ideas should lead Plato to a consideration of the law of their relationship. A systematic theory of a multiplicity of reals involves their orderly relationship. They cannot exist independently in the same world. What is the relationship among the Ideas? In the earlier drafting of his theory Plato was principally attentive to the relations of coördination and subordination among the Ideas; in the possibility of the division of class concepts into genera and species. The relationship that he sought was logical relationship, the relationship that the scientist seeks to find in the classification of plants or rocks. Just what result Plato tried to reach by such a logical classification of his realities, it is difficult to say. He was not successful. His attempt to erect a logically arranged pyramid of conceptions with the most abstract at the apex was not carried out.
In his second drafting of the Ideas, Plato felt the inadequacy of a mere logical relationship among them, and conceived them to be teleologically related. His reduction of the number of Ideas had naturally brought about a new conception of their relationship. There must be some principle for their elimination, for the rejecting of some and the keeping of others. That principle was the principle of their ethical worth. That is to say, the Idea of the Good, which had been the standard for eliminating some concepts from the list of Ideas and for retaining others, now became for him the principle of the relationship of the Ideas among themselves. Plato turned from the logical to the teleological relation among Ideas. The Idea of the Good embraces and realizes all the others. It is therefore the absolute end of all the other Ideas, and they bear the relation to it, not of particulars to a general term, but of means to an end. The principle in their selection becomes the principle of their arrangement.
Plato’s Conception of God. The above sketch of the formation and development of Plato’s theory of Ideas shows how difficult it would be to frame a short definition of them that would at the same time be adequate. As he finally defined them, they are immaterial archetypes or ideals, dominated by a moral purpose. This dominating moral purpose in the Ideas is the highest Idea of all, the Idea of the Good, which stands above all the others and gives to them and to everything else their value and indeed their actuality.
Is this Idea of the Good the same as God? Plato calls the Good “Deity” and the “World Reason,” and ascribes to it the name of Nous. Nevertheless the Idea of the Good is not the same as the Christian God, and Plato is only showing here the influence of Anaxagoras’ conception upon him. (See p. 47.) The Idea of the Good is not a person or a spiritual being. It is merely the absolute ethical end and purpose of the world. Plato did not attempt to give it a content, any more than did his master, Socrates; but Plato presupposed it, because it was in itself the simplest and most comprehensible thing in the world.
Plato’s Conception of Physical Nature. Plato constructed a rough sketch of the philosophy of nature in his later years, in compliance with the needs of his School, and perhaps with the urging of his pupil, Aristotle. In his earlier period, he would have nothing of physics, and was in this respect quite in accord with the spirit of Socrates. To the end of his life he maintained that there can be no true knowledge of the physical world; for it is a world of change, and therefore all scientific conclusions about it could be only probable. In a mythical account in the Timæus he drew a picture of the constitution of the world. He conceived a Demiurge or world-forming God to exist, and he thought that this God made the world out of not-Being or empty space “with regard to the Ideas.” The world thus constructed is conceived by Plato as a huge living thing, composed of a visible body and an invisible soul. The world-soul sets the world-body in a circular motion, which motion was considered by antiquity to be the most perfect of all motions. In sharp opposition to the mechanical theory of the world, Plato conceived the world to be endowed with knowledge, of which the spherical motion in its return upon itself is the symbol. The world is unitary and unique, the most perfect and most beautiful world, and its origin can be traced only to a reason working toward ends. Plato’s physics, of which the above is an abbreviated account, will be seen to be of little importance; but it was unfortunately, as we have said, this side of his doctrine that was emphasized in the Middle Ages.
This mythical account shows, however, the inherent dualism in Plato’s doctrine. The Idea never fully realizes itself in corporeal things, and Plato was called on to explain the cause of the evil and imperfection of the physical world. Moreover, the imperfection of the physical world got new emphasis in the influence upon him of the Pythagorean doctrine, which had set the perfect and imperfect worlds in opposition. What prevents the Idea from fully appearing in phenomena? The more Plato conceived the world of Ideas as ethical Ideals and a kingdom of pure worth, and the more teleological the Ideas became, the less could he regard the Ideas as the cause of imperfection in nature. Ideas are Being, and the essence of perfection. The cause of imperfection must therefore be that which has no being whatsoever. The physical world as “becoming” has participation, not only in that which has Being (Ideas), but in that which has no Being (empty space). The physical world has a composite character. It has sprung from the union of the Ideas and an absolutely negative factor, which Plato calls empty space. This eternal negative is formless and unfashioned, but it is capable of taking on all possible forms. The physical universe is therefore neither Ideas simply, nor matter simply, but a composition of the two. This non-Being is not like the matter, “unformed stuff,” of Aristotle, from which all sensible things are made; but it is that in which Ideas have to appear. The Ideas are plunged into this empty non-Being, which they take on as a veil. And just this is the origin of imperfection; non-Being withholds the Ideas from perfect expression. Non-Being, or empty space, is an indispensable auxiliary to the Ideas, for without it no physical universe would be possible. But at the same time it is the eternal foe and obstruction of the Ideas. Its coöperation with the Ideas is at the same time a resistance to them. It is the perpetual negation of Being, and the primary cause of imperfection, change, and instability. On this account the universe can never be like the Ideas, but it can approximate them. The soul of the world, for example,—which was regarded by Plato in Pythagorean fashion as number subjecting chaotic space to harmony,—is the most perfect reproduction of the Idea of the Good. The existence of matter detracts from the perfection of the world, but it does not detract from the majesty of the Ideas.
Plato’s Conception of Man. Plato needed a psychology of another sort from that developed by the Cosmologists. His analysis of the mental life of man stands or falls with his metaphysical theory of Ideas, but it has this importance: it is the first attempt to understand the psychical life from within.
The dualism of the two worlds appears in sharp outlines in the narrower field of the life of man. The soul of man belongs to both worlds. On the one hand, it belongs to the world of Becoming and partakes of that world through its sense-perceptions, desires, and their pleasures. In this lower world it is the principle of life and motion; it is that which moves itself and other things. On the other hand, it shares in the world of Being through its intuitive reason or knowledge. It shares in the instability and change of psychical phenomena; it also possesses the immutability of reality. Through its perceptions it constructs its “opinions” or inferences of changing phenomena; through its reason it has true knowledge of the eternal Ideas. Therefore the soul must bear in itself traits that correspond to the two worlds. Plato conceives man to have an irrational and a rational nature; and he divides the irrational nature into two parts,—the noble irrational part and the ignoble irrational part. The rational part of man is the reason, the noble irrational part is the will, the ignoble irrational part is the sensuous appetites.
| Man | |
Rational nature ＝ reason | ||
| Irrational nature | |
Noble ＝ will | ||
| Ignoble ＝ sensuous appetites | ||||
This is the celebrated doctrine of the “three parts” of the soul. Are they three parts or three functions of the soul? Plato is not clear as to this point. He sometimes speaks of them as three divisions, and treats them as separable in such a way that only the reason is immortal and the other two parts are mortal. Again, he speaks of the soul as a unity, which carries with it in the next life all three functions. In this latter meaning the three parts are three natures or three different degrees of worth of the unitary soul.
Plato’s Doctrine of Immortality. Beginning with this conception of the dual nature of the human soul, Plato reasons both backward and forward from it: backward to its pre-existence, and forward from its post-existence,—its existence after death. In the Phædo, Plato has put into the mouth of what has become his Platonized Socrates his final thought concerning the relation of this present life to its past and its future. It is plainly the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which he got from the Pythagoreans. The soul has a reality that is imperishable, and the soul is rewarded or punished for its conduct in one existence by the kind of existence into which it is metamorphosed. In prison, on that fatal day when he drank the poison, Socrates explained to those around him why he was so cheerful at the thought of death. Is not our present existence a kind of death? Is not the soul in the present life deterred from true knowledge by the trammels of the bodily desires? The true philosopher is he who turns away from his body’s passions,—dies to them, and tries to live the reality of the world of Ideas. We shall have full knowledge when we pass beyond the grave and then we shall be rewarded, if we have striven truly. But at present our body hampers and misleads us with its perceptions of changing mortality around us, and with its transitory desires. This life itself is the reward or punishment for our conduct in our preceding state.
1. The Immortality of Pre-existence. What proof does Plato offer for our existence before this life? The Ideas, these testimonies of reality, form a part of the human soul. They are eternal, and have not been created by the soul. Knowledge is not the origination of a new truth, but is the recognition of Ideas, whose presence the mind merely records. Greek psychology never got much farther than this. The modern psychological conception of the soul as a dynamic something, which creates its own content, was quite foreign to the Greeks. To Plato, as to all other Greeks, the soul is as passive as the wax that receives the impress of the seal. All Greek psychology was under this general limitation: all ideas must be “given” to the soul. Therefore if the Ideas are not “given” by perception, because perception is of the changing; if nevertheless the soul finds itself in possession of the Ideas on the occasion of perception; if the soul did not create the Ideas, because the soul is by nature passive; the logical and only conclusion is that the soul was already in possession of the Ideas in a pre-existent state. Pre-existence is the only way of accounting for the full-born knowledge of the soul, and it is interesting to note how important was the pre-existent state to the imagination of the ancient world.
Plato therefore advanced the doctrine of reminiscence, or as he called it, Anamnesis, as proof of our pre-existence. Knowledge is recollection. The Ideas have always been present in the mind, and when we recognize them we have knowledge. The Ideas have no past or future, but they always exist. It is the mind that undergoes awakening—an awakening to their existence in itself. When the mind sees the objects of physical nature, it awakens in painful astonishment at the contrast between the sense world and the Ideas of its native world of immateriality. In a mythical representation in the Phædrus, Plato supposes that before the present life our souls have beheld the pure Ideas in their full reality, that the Ideas had been forgotten in our birth into the present life, but that the perception of similar corporeal things calls the soul back to the Ideas themselves. Then the “Eros” is awakened—the native philosophical impulse or inborn love for the Ideas, by which the soul is raised again to the knowledge of that true reality. Only the pure Ideas themselves will satisfy this longing; the embodiment of the Ideas in art or personalities is not adequate. The Eros ties us to the Ideas. God does not have this longing, for He fully knows the Good. The ignorant man does not have this longing, for he does not suspect the existence of the Ideas in himself. The Eros is the homesickness that the lover of the truth feels.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises in us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.31
When, in the Meno, the Sophistic dilemma was proposed to Socrates, “How can inquiry be made into what we know or into what we don’t know?” Socrates pointed out that the only escape from the dilemma was the process of recollecting, and that knowledge is the thing recalled. Socrates then called a slave to him, and by skillfully questioning him found that the slave recognized the mathematical relationship between the square on the hypothenuse of a right triangle and the sums of the squares on the other two sides. “The ignorant slave can only have been recollecting,” says Socrates. Mathematical knowledge is extracted from the sense-perception of the slave only because the slave has through such perception the opportunity of recollecting Ideas present in himself and not hitherto suspected by himself. In Plato’s system, mathematical forms have an important place. They are the links by means of which the Idea shapes space teleologically into the sense world.
2. The Immortality of Post-Existence. Plato’s ground for belief in the existence of soul after death is practically the same as that for its previous existence. Its destiny hereafter depends upon how far it has freed itself in this earthly life from the sensuous appetite. As proofs for future existence Plato mentions the soul’s possession of the Ideas, the simplicity and unity of the soul, the soul as the principle of life, and the goodness of God. However weak Plato’s arguments may be for the existence of future immortality, his absolute belief in it is one of the chief points in his teaching. It is interesting to note that the modern western world seems to have no concern in the previous state of the soul, but through the influence of the Christian religion has focused its attention upon the future life. Oriental religions contain the doctrine of pre-existence and the transmigration of souls, but not in the same sense as Plato. In Plato the soul possesses an identity that persists. It has all the qualities of the Ideas, but is also an entity possessing these qualities. It has non-origination, indestructibility, unity, and changelessness. The doctrine of the immortality of post-existence had appeared in the Greek religion, but this is the first time that we have found it as a part of philosophic teaching. The student will, of course, feel the difficulties in Plato’s conception as he has presented it. For how can the soul preserve its individuality as a unity, when the soul belongs in part to a world which is temporal?
The Two Tendencies in Plato. From the doctrine of the two worlds there are two distinct tendencies running through the entire teaching of Plato. These are (1) the tendency to glorify nature, and (2) the tendency to turn away from nature to ascetic contemplation. On the one hand, Plato felt within himself the light heart-beat of the artist, and the Hellenic love of life was strong within him. He felt that the Idea of the Good was realized even in the world of sense, that there was pleasure in the sensuous imitation of the Idea, in practical artistic skill, and in an intelligent understanding of mathematical orderings. These were at least preparations for the highest Good, which consisted in knowledge of the Ideas. On the other hand, one finds beside this the ascetic tendency to be repelled by nature, a negative ethics that would leave the world of sense and would spiritualize the life. The Theætetus sets up an ideal of retirement for the philosopher, and points out that he should find refuge as soon as possible from the evils of the world in the divine presence. The Phædo pictures the whole life of the philosopher as a dying, a purification of the soul, an existence in prison, from which escape is only by virtue and knowledge. This ascetic tendency seems very anti-Greek; and yet is it foreign to Greek life? In Greek history do we not find, by the side of the Epic and the glorification of nature, the Mysteries and the withdrawal of the individual from the world? Both these historic tendencies appear in Plato, and on the whole the ascetic tendency is stronger. The Ideas are contrasted with the nature world more often than they transfigure it. The dualism of Heaven and earth is emphasized, and the contrast is strongly drawn between the reality of the Ideas and the temporality of sense.
Platonic Love. Described in technical terms, in both Socrates and Plato, Love (Eros) is the philosophic and not a purely intellectual impulse. Its rather more didactic character in Socrates of an attempt to engender knowledge and virtue in others appears in Plato in a larger way as the personal and practical realization of the truth. Reduced to its simplest terms, Platonic Love is the longing of the human being in his imperfectness for perfectness and completeness. It is the innate desire for immortality.
True love, according to Plato, takes its beginning in the astonishment or pain at the presentment of the Ideas through remembrance, and the starting-point of Love in an individual is the principle fundamental in pre-existence. The philosophic impulse for the Ideas takes the form of Love, because visible beauty has a special brightness and makes a strong impression on the mind. Love belongs only to mortal natures; for they, since they do not possess the divine unchangeableness, have to propagate themselves continually. Love may be described therefore as the propagative impulse. On the one side it may be viewed as an inspiration from above, springing from the higher, divinely-related nature in man; on the other hand it may be viewed as an aspiration from below of the sensuous and human in man. On this side it is a yearning and not a possession; and it presupposes a want. Analyzed in this way, Love is the middle term between having and not having. It is the union of the higher and lower natures in man, and throughout the universe there stirs this longing for the eternal and imperishable.
What is the object of this Love,—of this desire of the finite to fill itself with the eternal and to generate something enduring? That object is the possession of the Good, which is happiness. The possession of the Good is immortality. What is the external condition of Love’s existence? The presence of Beauty; for this alone, by its harmonious form, corresponds to our desire and awakens it. Does this Love appear first in its complete realization? No; there are many kinds of beauty, and Love is as various in degree and kind as beautiful objects. Love rises step by step, and is realized in a graduated series of forms. There is Love for beautiful shapes, sexual love; Love for beautiful souls, and this appears in works of art, education, and legislation; Love for beautiful sciences, the seeking of beauty wherever found; and finally Love for the pure, shapeless, eternal, and unchangeable—the Idea, which is immortality. All else is preliminary to the dialectical knowledge of the Ideas. In all this, man is reaching out from his sense of want for satisfaction, from his poverty to the completed riches of life. Love bears him on from height to height until, in religion and Love of the Good, man gains his immortality. In Platonic Love all kinds of Love have place in pointing the soul onward to the divinely perfect. Yet this Love for the divinely perfect is the soul’s aspiration from the beginning, and all the preliminary stages are only the uncertain attempts to seize the Idea in the copies. Love, therefore, is this universal struggle of the finite to inform itself with the Idea; and delight in any one object of beauty is a stage in the development of this impulse.32
Plato’s Theory of Ethics. Plato’s Theory of Ideas is, after all, fundamentally only an outspoken ethical metaphysics, and his Ethics is his most fruitful accomplishment. Plato’s ethical teaching is therefore involved in all that we have said about him up to this point. An understanding of his ethics includes an understanding of the formation and growth of his dialectic, an insight into his physical theory, knowledge of the two tendencies which run through his teaching, and especially an understanding of his doctrine of Love. If some of the previous exposition is repeated, it will be only to bring out more fully his ethical teaching as a special science. We shall speak of three topics under this general subject of his ethics: (1) his development of his theory of the Good; (2) the four cardinal virtues; (3) his theory of political society.
1. Development of Plato’s Theory of the Good. Plato betrays his ascetic tendency in his first drafting of the Ideas and, as we have said, the double-world theory is the cause of this. Only one of the two worlds is real and will appeal to the Wise Man. The soul belongs to the supersensible world, and the knowledge, of which virtue consists, takes man away from the sensible world. Since earthly life is full of evil, the soul should die to it and turn away as soon as possible to the divine presence. This ascetic aspect of morality is set forth in the Phædo and the Theætetus.
In the general development of his metaphysics in the second drafting of his Ideas, Plato’s ethical theory developed also. He not only went beyond the abstract statement of Socrates, but beyond his own original asceticism. When he brought his two worlds into teleological relationship, he was logically compelled to abandon his conception of ascetic morals. The physical world has now a relative reality, and by the same sign sense-life has a relative moral value. It was Plato’s firm conviction that moral conduct makes man truly blessed, in this and another world. He still held, too, that this blessedness, this complete perfection of the soul, this sharing in the divine world of the Ideas, is the Highest Good. Yet he now came to recognize other kinds of happiness as steps toward the ideal Good. There are varieties of Goods, as appeared in his doctrine of Love. Besides the intuition of knowledge and its pleasures, there are physical Goods and their pleasures. Intellectual pleasure may be unmixed with pain, but there are also sensuous pleasures unmixed with pain. Here is indeed Plato, the Greek, speaking; Plato, the Greek artist, impelled by the charm of the Greek world around him. Strongly as he combated the Cyrenaic hedonism, and closely as he was allied to Socrates, his Greek nature gave way before the manifestations of the Idea of the Good in the physical world. The pleasure in nature objects, in educational development, in the practical and plastic arts, in mathematical sciences, and in the orderliness of life—all these became for him preliminary stages in the full participation in the ethical Good. They came to have for him a relative value, as expressed in the Philebus, Republic, and Symposium.
2. The Four Cardinal Virtues. But Plato went farther, and was not content merely to point out the place of human conduct in the twofold world. He developed his theory of ethics systematically. He classified the virtues on the basis of his threefold division of the soul. Naturally enough, in his first draft of his theory, Plato followed Socrates in reducing the single virtues to one, viz., the virtue of knowledge. In his second drafting, however, in the later dialogues, he assumed their distinct independence, and he reflected upon their respective spheres. A virtue corresponds to each part of the soul. Each part has its own perfection, which is its virtue. Moreover, in so far as one or another part of the soul preponderates in different men, so far are they suited to developing the corresponding virtue.
| Soul (Justice) | |
Rational nature—in brain (Wisdom) | ||
| Irrational nature | |
Noble part—in heart (Courage) | ||
| Ignoble part—in liver (Temperance) | ||||
From the above scheme it will be observed that the rational nature has the brain as its organ and reaches its perfection or virtue in Wisdom; that the ignoble irrational nature has the liver as its organ, and reaches its virtue in self-control or Temperance. Finally, since the perfection of the whole soul consists in the orderly relation of its single parts, so subordinated and regulated that the soul can reach its highest perfection, the fourth and highest virtue is Justice. The four cardinal virtues are Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, and Justice.
3. Plato’s Theory of Political Society. The virtue, Justice, has little meaning in individual ethics, and as an ethical perfection can only be attained in society. There is no English word that is quite the equivalent for the Greek term, but Justice is the usual translation. Justice, however, does not contain the moral spirit of the Greek word. Consistent with his conception of the Ideas in his metaphysics, Plato’s ideal of moral perfection is to be found, not in the individual, but in the species. Plato pictures less the perfect man than the perfect society. Perfect happiness is rather that of the social whole than of the individual, and this ideal of happiness can be reached only in the ideal State. That is why the dialogue, the Republic, occupies so important a place in Plato’s writings. It is an attempt to show how the fourth and last virtue, Justice, can be attained. The first book was written in Plato’s early period, and was perhaps called a “dialogue concerning Justice.” Justice is distinctly the social virtue found only in a perfect society, and it will make possible the fulfillment of Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance. The individual man is a vital being whose heart is the central organ, whose characteristic virtue is courage. His courage is indeed a combination of wisdom and temperance. The picture is of the individual man, not amenable to society, but in “a state of warfare.” In such isolation Justice would not exist as a virtue.
The political state is necessary if the Idea of the Good is to be manifested in human life. The state is the true educator in Justice, and at the same time the ideal state will be the realization of Justice. The task of the state everywhere is the same, to wit, to direct the common life of man so that every one may be happy through virtue. The result may be attained only by so ordering the relations of society that Justice may prevail. Plato’s Republic is a carefully worked-out plan of such an ideal society. The author made several attempts at Syracuse with the aid of Dion to get first the elder and then the younger Dionysius to transform the tyranny into an ideal state. These attempts resulted disastrously. In the disappointment of his old age that his ideal scheme had never succeeded, he wrote the Laws, which is a revised version of the Republic with the Pythagorean number theory as a basis.
The Spartan state is his model. The Platonic Republic is aristocratic. There is paternal government in everything, censorship of everything. Each individual’s course is marked out for him. When Greek political life was undergoing dissolution, Plato raised the ideal of political unity as necessary to individual happiness as against the anarchism of segregation. Yet even in this he was reflecting the current distrust of political institutions. The comparison of existing political conditions with his own political ideal reinforced his aristocratic leanings, and made him the more distrustful of the political possibilities of a democracy. He believed that an intelligently worked out scheme of government was practicable, and should be forced upon people, if necessary. In no other way was political salvation possible.
Since the State is the man “writ large,” it has three parts, corresponding to the three parts of the human soul. There is (1) the working or peasant class, which corresponds to the appetitive part of man; the only object of such a class is to furnish food for the State, and the highest virtue of this class is temperance. The peasant can only work, eat, and drink, and the highest praise of him is that he controls his appetites. (2) The warrior class guards the State within and without; and its characteristic virtue is courage. The will must show its highest efficiency in guidance of the emotions. (3) Highest of all is the cultured class of philosophers or rulers, who determine by their insight the laws that should rule the State. The virtue of this class is wisdom, for is this class not the brain of the State? The perfection of the entire State exists when the three classes have their proper distribution of power. Then does justice exist. The duty of the rulers is therefore to have the highest wisdom possible, of the warriors to be unflinching in their devotion to duty, of the peasants to exercise self-control. Thus Plato’s Republic is an aristocracy in the hands of the carefully cultured, which consists of the two upper classes. By means of community of wives, the exposure of deformed infants, and the State’s education of the children of the two upper classes, a continuous selection can be made, the two upper classes can be renewed, and all private ends can be renounced in favor of the State. Thus the sole end of a community is moral education, and Plato arranges his ideal community with reference to that. The two upper classes are a great family, to whom this is intrusted. They have dedicated their lives to the furthering of science and to its administration.
A SELECTION OF PASSAGES FROM PLATO FOR ENGLISH READERS.
By Professor Benjamin Jowett, late Principal of Balliol College, Oxford.
The figures refer to the pages in the margin of Professor Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues; the letters (A, B, C, D, E) to the subdivisions of these pages.
FIRST VOLUME.
Charmides.
Socrates prescribes for Charmides’ headache.
156 D (... ‘Such, Charmides, is the nature of the charm’....)
–157 C (... ‘my dear Charmides.’)
Lysis.
We only trust those who appear to know more than ourselves.
206 D (‘Upon entering’ ...)
–210 B (‘He assented.’)
Laches.
(1) The art of fighting in armour is useless to the soldier.
182 E (‘I should not like to maintain’ ...)
–184 C (... ‘his opinion of the matter.’)
(2) The harmony of words and deeds.
188 C (‘I have but one feeling’ ...)
–189 B (... ‘the difference of our ages.’)
Protagoras.
(1) The Sophists at the house of Callias.
314 B (... ‘And now let us go’ ...)
–316 A (... ‘rendered his words inaudible.’)
(2) Protagoras tells the story of Prometheus and Epimetheus.
320 D (‘Once upon a time’ ...)
–322 D (... ‘a plague of the state.’)
(3) The education of a Greek child.
325 D (‘Education and admonition’ ...)
–326 E (... ‘would be far more surprising.’)
Euthydemus.
The doctrinaire politician and the true philosopher.
304 B (‘Such was the discussion, Crito’ ...)
–to end (... ‘and be of good cheer.’)
Cratylus.
The significations of the various letters.
426 B (‘My first notions’ ...)
–427 C (... ‘and out of them by imitation compounding other signs.’ ...)
Phaedrus.
(1) The philosopher must study the nature of man.
229 A (‘Let us turn aside,’ ...)
–230 A (... ‘a diviner and lowlier destiny?’ ...)
(2) The banks of the Ilissus.
230 B (... ‘But let me ask you, friend,’ ...)
–E (... ‘in which you can read best.’)
(3) The soul in a figure and her transmigrations.
245 C (‘The soul through all her being’ ...)
–257 A (... ‘leave you a fool in the world below.’)
(4) The true orator.
269 E (‘I conceive Pericles’ ...)
–272 C (... ‘and yet the creation of such an art is not easy.’)
(5) The tale of Thamus and Theuth.
274 C (‘I have heard a tradition of the ancients’ ...)
–275 C (... ‘that the Theban is right in his view about letters.’)
(6) Speech better than writing.
275 C (‘I cannot help feeling’ ...)
–277 A (... ‘to the utmost extent of human happiness.’)
(7) The true art of composition.
277 B (‘Until a man knows the truth’ ...)
–278 D (... ‘poet or speech-maker or law-maker.’)
Ion.
The inspiration of the poet.
533 C (‘I perceive, Ion,’ ...)
–536 C (... ‘not by art, but by divine inspiration.’)
Symposium.
The Character of Socrates.
(1) His fit of abstraction in the porch.
174 A (‘He said that he met Socrates’ ...)
–175 C (... ‘Socrates entered.’ ...)
(2) His strange appearance and marvellous power of influencing others.
215 A (‘And now, my boys,’ ...)
–216 G (... ‘so that I am at my wit’s end.’)
(3) His endurance, eccentricity, and bravery.
219 E (... ‘All this happened’ ...)
–222 A (... ‘a good and honourable man.’)
SECOND VOLUME.
Meno.
Learning is only Recollection (ἀνάμνησις): The Immortality of the Soul proved out of Pindar.
81 A (‘I will tell you why’ ...)
–E (... ‘active and inquisitive.’ ...)
Apology, or the Defence of Socrates.
The whole.
Crito, or Socrates in prison.
The whole.
Phaedo, or the last day of Socrates’ life.
(1) Socrates in prison.
57–60 C (... ‘pleasure appears to succeed.’)
(2) Why the philosopher is willing to die, although he will not take his own life.
60 C (‘Upon this Cebes said’ ...)
–69 E (... ‘it will be well.’)
(3) The Description of the Other Life.
107 C (‘But then, O my friends,’ ...)
–115 A (... ‘after I am dead.’)
(4) The Death of Socrates.
115 A (‘When he had done speaking’ ...)
–to end.
Gorgias.
(1) The good man desires, not a long, but a virtuous, life.
511 A (‘You always contrive’ ...)
–513 A (... ‘their own perdition.’ ...)
(2) The Judgment of the Dead.
523 A (‘Listen, then,’ ...)
–527 A (... ‘any sort of insult.’)
(3) The Moral of the Tale.
527 A (‘Perhaps this may appear’ ...)
–to end.
[Appendix.]
I Alcibiades.
Socrates humiliates Alcibiades by shewing him his inferiority to the Kings of Lacedaemon and of Persia.
120 A (‘Why, you surely know’ ...)
–124 B (... ‘ever desired anything.’)
II Alcibiades.
The Gods approve of simple worship.
148 C (‘The Lacedaemonians, too,’ ...)
–150 B (... ‘for me to oppose.’)
Eryxias.
The nature of money.
399 E (‘Then now we have to consider’ ...)
–400 E (... ‘of no use to us ... True.’)
THIRD VOLUME.
Republic.
Book i.
The commencement of the Dialogue: Cephalus on Old Age.
327–331 B (... ‘is, in my opinion, the greatest.’)
Book ii.
(1) The argument of Adeimantus.
362 E (... ‘But let me add something more’ ...)
–367 E (... ‘seen or unseen by Gods and men.’)
(2) The true nature of God.
376 D (‘Come, then, and let us pass’ ...)
–383 A (‘Your thoughts ... my own.’)
Book iii.
(1) Grace and beauty in art and education.
400 D (‘But there is no difficulty’ ...)
–402 A (... ‘made him long familiar.’)
(2) The good physician and the good judge.
408 C (‘All that, Socrates, is excellent,’ ...)
–409 E (‘And in mine also.’)
(3) The true use of music and gymnastic.
409 E (‘This is the sort of medicine’ ...)
–412 A (‘You are quite right, Socrates.’)
Book iv.
Virtue the health, Vice the disease, of the Soul.
443 C (‘Then our dream has been realized’ ...)
–444 E (‘Assuredly.’)
Book v.
(1) The right treatment of enemies.
469 A (‘Next, how shall our soldiers’ ...)
–471 C (... ‘like all our previous enactments, are very good.’)
(2) The last wave:—The Government of Philosophers.
471 C (‘But still I must say, Socrates.’ ...)
–473 E (... ‘is indeed a hard thing.’)
Book vi.
(1) The Parable of the Pilot.
487 A (‘Here Adeimantus interposed’ ...)
–489 D (‘Precisely so, he said.’)
(2) The low estimation in which Philosophy is held by the World.
493 E (‘You recognize the truth of what I have been saying?’ ...)
–497 A (... ‘as well as of himself.’)
Book vii.
The Allegory of the Cave.
514 A–520 E (... ‘present rulers of the State.’)
Book viii.
Democracy and the Democratic Man.
555 B (‘Next comes democracy’ ...)
–562 A ( ... ‘the democratic man.’)
Book ix.
The Many-headed Monster.
The City of which the Pattern is laid up in Heaven.
588 A (‘Well, I said, and now’ ...)
–to the end of the book.
Book x.
The Vision of Er.
614 B (‘Well, I said, I will tell you a tale;’ ...)
–to the end of the book.
Timaeus.
(1) The Tale of Solon.
20 E (‘Then listen, Socrates’ ...)
–26 D ( ... ‘these ancient Athenians.’ ...)
(2) The Balance of Mind and Body.
87 C (‘There is a corresponding enquiry’ ...)
–90 D ( ... ‘the present and the future.’)
Critias, or the Island of Atlantis.
The entire Dialogue.
FOURTH VOLUME.
Parmenides.
The meeting of Socrates and Parmenides at Athens. Criticism of the Ideas.
126 A (‘We had come from our home’ ...)
–136 C ( ... ‘and see the real truth.’)
Theaetetus.
(1) Socrates, a midwife, and the son of a midwife.
148 E (‘These are the pangs of labour’ ...)
–151 E ( ... ‘by the help of God you will be able to tell.’)
(2) The Lawyer and the Philosopher.
172 B ( ... ‘Here arises a new question’ ...)
–177 C ( ... ‘Let us go back to the argument.’)
Sophist.
The Pre-Socratic Philosophers and their puzzles.
241 D (‘Will you then forgive me’ ...)
–246 D ( ... ‘but seekers after truth.’)
Statesman.
The Reign of Cronos.
269 A (‘Again, we have been often told’ ...)
–274 E (... ‘and at another time in another.’ ...)
Philebus.
The first Taste of Logic.
The Art of Dialectic.
15 C (‘Good; and where shall we begin’ ...)
–17 A (... ‘and true dialectic.’)
FIFTH VOLUME.
Laws.
Book i.
(1) The true nature of Education.
643 A (‘You seem to be quite ready to listen’ ...)
–644 B (... ‘of every man while he lives.’)
(2) Man a puppet of the Gods.
644 E (‘Let us look at the matter thus’ ...)
–645 B (... ‘more clearly distinguished by us.’ ...)
Book iii.
The Origin of Government.
676 A (‘Enough of this’ ...)
–679 E (‘Very true.’)
Book iv.
(1) The virtuous Tyrant.
709 C (‘And does not a like principle’ ...)
–712 A (... ‘granting our supposition.’)
(2) The life of Virtue.
715 E (‘And now what is to be the next step?’ ...)
–718 A (... ‘for the most part in good hope.’ ...)
Book v.
(1) The honour of the Soul.
Precepts for a virtuous life.
726 A–732 D (... ‘both in jest and earnest.’)
(2) The best and second-best state.
739 A (‘The next move’ ...)
–741 A (... ‘to fight against necessity.’)
(3) Riches and Godliness.
742 D (... ‘The intention, as we affirm’ ...)
–744 A (... ‘the work of legislation.’)
Book vii.
(1) The good citizen must not lead an inactive life.
806 D (‘What will be the manner of life’ ...)
–808 C (... ‘to the whole state.’)
(2) The education of the young.
808 D (... ‘When the day breaks’ ...)
–809 A (... ‘according to the law.’)
810 A (... ‘A fair time’...)
–812 A (... ‘come to an end.’)
Book viii.
The evils of licentiousness.
835 C (... ‘There is, however, another matter’ ...)
–841 E (... ‘wrongly indulged.’)
Book x.
(1) The three classes of unbelievers.
Advice to the young.
885 B (... ‘For we have already said’ ...)
–888 D (... ‘the truth of these matters.’)
(2) God is not an idle ruler of the Universe; but orders all, even the smallest things, for our good.
899 D (... ‘And now we are to address him’ ...)
–905 D (... ‘any understanding whatsoever’ ...)
(3) God cannot be propitiated by the gifts of the wicked.
905 D (... ‘For I think that we have sufficiently proved’ ...)
–907 D (... ‘will not discredit the lawgiver.’)
Book xi.
(1) The evils of retail trade, and the cure of them.
918 A (‘After the practices of adulteration’ ...)
–919 C (... ‘shamelessness and meanness.’)
(2) The honour of parents.
930 E (‘Neither God, nor a man’ ...)
–932 A (... ‘to what has now been said.’...)
Book xii.
(1) The good state in its intercourse with the world.
949 E (‘Now a state’ ...)
–951 C (... ‘is ill-conducted.’)
(2) The Burial of the Dead.
958 C (‘Thus a man is born’ ...)
–960 A (... ‘a fitting penalty.’...)
CHAPTER VIII
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B. C.)
Aristotle in the Academy and Lyceum. Many notable pupils gathered around Plato during his mastership of more than forty years. Plato’s nephew, Speusippus, succeeded him as leader of the Academy, and for the next three hundred and fifty years the Academy is called by various names. It is the Older Academy under Speusippus and later; then it is known as the Middle Academy; and then, about 120 B. C., it is known as the New Academy. The history of the Academy is, however, a part of the Hellenic-Roman Period. It is sufficient to say here that the leaders succeeding Plato in the Academy added but little to philosophical speculation, although much to empirical research. The important fact is that the sceptre in philosophy passed from the Academy when Plato died and his greatest pupil Aristotle left it. Just as Plato stood among the pupils of Socrates as Socrates’ most discriminating interpreter, so among the pupils of Plato there was one preëminent pupil,—Aristotle. Aristotle was too great a man to be subordinated to the leadership of Speusippus. Upon the death of Plato he left the Academy, and fourteen years later he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, which became under his mastership the most influential Athenian school. The Lyceum was an inclosed space of ground, like the Academy. It was situated just outside the walls of Athens, on the right bank of the Ilissus. It was dedicated to Apollo, decorated with fountains, gardens, and buildings, and contained one of the great gymnasia of Athens. It was frequented by philosophers, and is known to have been the favorite walk of Aristotle and his pupils, whence they got their name of Peripatetics. Theophrastus, the most eminent pupil of Aristotle, bought a property near the grove and bequeathed it to the school. It was a religious foundation, like the Academy. The method of choosing the scholarchs varied at different times. The name Lyceum is from the same root as Lycian, and was given to Aristotle’s school from the fact that the grove was dedicated to the Lycian Apollo.
Here, in the Lyceum, Greek philosophy was brought to its most complete expression. Here all the threads of Greek cosmological and anthropological undertakings were finally woven together. Here an adjustment was accomplished between Aristotle’s two great predecessors, Plato and Democritus; and materialistic and idealistic realism crystallized in a theory of development. The great form of Aristotle rises to speak the final word of pure Greek civilization, at a time when the custody of Greece had passed from the hands of the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans in succession to the Macedonians. He was the most influential thinker that history had seen. In his formative power upon human thought he has scarcely a peer. Dante called him “the master of those who know.” “In my opinion,” said Cicero, “Aristotle stands almost alone in philosophy.” Eusebius said of him, “Aristotle, nature’s private secretary, dipped his pen in thought.” Goethe remarked, “If now in my quiet days I had youthful faculties at my command, I should devote myself to Greek, in spite of all the difficulties I know. Nature and Aristotle should be my sole study. It is beyond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked, observed.”
The portrait that we draw of Aristotle is very different from that of Plato. Instead of the deeply poetic temper, the man who sees all things in an ideal unity of infiniteness and vastness, we have before us now the scientist in search of facts, the accurate man of good sense, whose imagination does not soar above the clouds, but at the same time has extraordinary fertility in historical and scientific theoretical explanations. His was a life filled with the love of truth. His learning took up into itself the entire range of human knowledge in such a way as to include its earlier development. And what is more, he showed an equal interest in all departments. Aristotle was more of a scientist than Plato, for the theoretical rather than the ethical interest was fundamental in his work. He is the personification and completion of pure Greek learning.
Biography of Aristotle, 384–322 B. C.
Brief Chronological Sketch of Aristotle’s Life.
| First Period—Aristotle the Student—37 years. 384–347 B. C. | |
|---|---|
| 384 | Born in Stagira in Macedonia. |
| 367 | Entered the Academy. Remained 19 years. |
| 347 | Left the Academy upon the death of Plato. |
| Second Period—Aristotle the Traveler—12 years. 347–335 B. C. | |
| 347 | Went to the courts at Atarneus and Mytilene in Asia Minor. |
| 343 | Returned to the court of Macedon at Pella, in response to the summons of King Philip, to teach the young prince Alexander. Remained 4 years. |
| 340 | Went from Pella to Stagira to engage in scientific work. Remained 5 years. |
| Third Period—Aristotle the Leader of the Lyceum—13 years. 335–322 B. C. | |
| 335 | Founded the Lyceum in Athens. Taught and administered the school 12 years. |
| 323 | Fled to Chalcis. |
| 322 | Died in Chalcis. |
Aristotle’s Biography in Detail.
1. First Period, 384–347 B. C.—Early Influences. Aristotle was born in Stagira in Macedonia. His father was court physician to King Amyntas, the founder of the Macedonian power and the father of King Philip. He came from a long line of physicians (the caste, Asclepiad) who traced their origin to Asclepius. Little is known about the early years of Aristotle except that his father and mother died, leaving him in the guardianship of Proxenus of Atarneus. (Atarneus is the state in Asia Minor which he later visited.) It can scarcely be doubted that he was destined by his family to be a physician, and that the empirical works of Hippocrates and Democritus were the first elements of his early education. Aristotle grew up in this atmosphere of medicine of Macedonia, which explains his respect for the results of experience and his accuracy in details,—all of which contrasts him with the Attic philosophers.
He was sent by Proxenus to the Academy in 367 B. C., at the age of eighteen, and he remained there for nineteen years, or until he was thirty-seven. He was not merely a pupil in the school, but his brilliancy won for him immediately a prominent position there. He became a teacher, an attractive writer, and champion of the literary spirit of the school. Even while he was a member of the Academy he became a famous man. It is difficult to say just how much influence the Academy had upon the casting of his thought. His scientific inclinations were formed before he went to the Academy; he got his immense scientific erudition in Asia Minor and in Stagira later, after he left the Academy. Probably the spirit of the Platonic school turned his attention to ethical and metaphysical theories, and probably it was due to his stay in the Academy that he became interested in rhetorical and purely cultural studies. At the same time his own influence must have been very great in forming the policy of the Academy, and he was probably responsible for its turning its attention to scientific matters.
The sources from which Aristotle drew the material of his philosophical science were therefore (1) his inherited taste for medicine and empirical science; and (2) the influence of the Academy in ethical, metaphysical, and cultural subjects. Both these factors appear throughout the philosophical development of Aristotle. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that probably Aristotle’s influence upon the Academy was as great as that of the Academy upon him. His own persistence along the line of empirical science shows itself in his period at Atarneus, Mitylene, and on his return to Stagira. Much has been said about an estrangement between Aristotle and his teacher, Plato. This is probably idle gossip. Aristotle held his master in great esteem, as he himself testifies in his Ethics. Aristotle was an independent and original mind, and probably even in the school he would point out defects in Plato’s thought, when his aged teacher would lead his theories upon mistaken lines. Plato said that his pupil Xenocrates needed the spur, while Aristotle needed the bridle. Aristotle was called the brain of the Academy.
2. Second Period, 347–335 B. C.—Traveler and Collector. When Plato died, and his nephew Speusippus became scholarch of the Academy, Aristotle, in company with Xenocrates, went to the court of Hermeias, ruler of Atarneus and Mitylene. Hermeias was another pupil of Plato at the Academy. Here Aristotle married twice, and here he resided for six years. In 343 B. C. he obeyed the summons of King Philip to come to Pella and become the tutor of Alexander. He acted in this capacity for four years, and seems to have been more fortunate than Plato as instructor of a king. His influence upon Alexander was very great. Without losing himself in the impracticable, Aristotle seems to have impressed high philosophical ideals upon the noble spirit of his kingly ward. Alexander says of Aristotle, “To my father I owe my life, to Aristotle the knowledge how to live worthily.” During the tedium of the protracted campaign in Bactria, Alexander sent for the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Æschylus. The Ethics of his teacher was always with him. The ideals of statesmanship, the wide purposes in political control, the greatness of the aims of the young conqueror, as well as his self-control, his aversion to meanness and petty things, and his sublime moderation were due in part to the teachings of Aristotle. Never was there a more fortunate conjunction of two great minds than here.
In 340 B. C., when Alexander entered upon his administrative and military duties, Aristotle became independent of the Macedonian court. He spent the most of these four years (340–335 B. C.) in scientific work at Stagira, in intimate companionship with his young friend Theophrastus, who later succeeded him as scholarch of the Lyceum. “Among the special subjects of study in the school of Mieza and Stagira, natural history formed a part.... Alexander at one time contributed eight hundred talents to forward his former teacher’s investigations in zoölogy, placed at his disposal a thousand men throughout Asia and Greece, with instructions to follow out Aristotle’s directions in collecting and reporting details concerning the life, conditions, and habits of animals, and in every way made his campaigns serve the purpose of scientific investigation.”33 The reports of the ancients concerning the vast sums placed at Aristotle’s disposal for use in scientific investigation are of course exaggerated. That he made large collections during this period, as well as later, is certain. This was possible to him, first, because he was a rich man himself, and second, because of his relations to the courts at Atarneus and Macedonia.
3. Third Period, 335–322 B. C.—Administrator of the Lyceum. When Alexander entered upon his campaigns in Asia, and Aristotle felt himself free from immediate duty to him, he went to Athens and founded the Lyceum. This school very soon arose above the Academy, and became the model of later societies of scholars of antiquity. Its greatness partook of the greatness of Aristotle,—in the universality of its interests, in the orderliness of its administration, and in methodical coöperation. For twelve years he was the executive, teacher, administrator, and inspiration of this school—developing his philosophy, accumulating materials, and instructing his pupils. The enormous product of the school could not have been the work of one pair of hands. Nevertheless the writings, the immense collections, the ethical and political treatises, show a unity that speaks of one master-mind that had them under direction. When the Athenians began to rise against the Macedonian rule, Aristotle’s position in Athens as a friend of Alexander became unsafe. He fled to Chalcis, excusing himself, so the tradition goes, because he wished to spare the Athenians a second crime against philosophy. He died in Chalcis the next year (322 B. C.).
A comparison of these three periods of Aristotle’s life discloses the uniformity of that life, from beginning to end. He was, from the time he entered the Academy to the founding of the Lyceum, a teacher. Even as pupil of Plato his original mind was influencing the Platonic teaching into new channels. During his second period he was a traveler, to be sure; but he was more,—a collector and a king’s tutor. He was always Aristotle, the philosophical teacher. Hence the periods of his life cannot be so sharply marked as Plato’s, and the lines that are drawn point only to phases of a life that had unity, like his doctrine. His life is a regular development from sources in his first period, and with no later deviating influence.
The Writings of Aristotle. On every page of Plato’s dialogues you meet Plato; in Aristotle’s writings the personality of the author is subordinated to his science. The collections of writings transmitted under the name of Aristotle do not give even an approximately complete picture of the immense activity of the man. They form, indeed, a stately memorial, even after the spurious writings have been omitted, but their bulk is small compared with what we know was the product of his literary workshop. Forty treatises have been preserved. A catalogue of the library of Alexandria in 220 B. C. includes a list of one hundred and forty-six others, which have since been lost. Aristotle was writer, lecturer, teacher, and the administrator of the Lyceum. His leadership of that school, his careful direction of his coöperators in research and study, was not only an instruction but an impulsion to independent scientific study for all time. His great collections of scientific data can be explained only by their being the combined efforts of many different forces, guided and schooled by a common master. The world was ready to take an account of stock, and Aristotle was the first encyclopædic philosopher.
1. The Popular Writings, published by Aristotle himself. These were intended for a circle of readers wider than his own school. No one of these works is extant in complete form. They were written by Aristotle during his life in the Academy. They were dialogues in form; in content they were discussions of justice, wealth, wisdom, rhetoric, politics, love, conduct, prayer, generosity, education, government, etc. They were less artistic than Plato’s dialogues, but more original and striking; and they were full of happy inventions and rich thought, expressed in florid diction. The ancients spoke often of Aristotle’s “golden flow of thought,” but this cannot truthfully apply to any save these lost writings.
2. The Compilations. These were excerpts from scientific works, collections of zoölogical, literary, historical, and antiquarian data, which Aristotle and his pupils had gathered together. Only a few fragments of the total remain. There were critical notes upon the Pythagoreans, reports of extracts of Plato’s dialogues, a descriptive basis for zoölogy with illustrations, collections of previous rhetorical theories and models, histories of tragedies and comedies, discussions about Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Euripides, and other poets; there were historical miscellanies and reports concerning one hundred fifty-eight Greek state constitutions.
3. The Didactic Writings. These have in part been preserved, and they make up the collection of what we have of Aristotle’s writings. They have a consistently developed terminology, but they are wanting in grace and beauty of presentation. The plan of the books is generally the same: the problem is precisely stated; then follows a criticism of various attempted solutions; then a discussion of the salient points of the problem; then a marshaling of the facts; and, finally, an attempt to get a conclusive result. The method is modern in its scientific procedure and the contrast with Plato is striking. Yet it must not be inferred that these books of Aristotle are orderly. There are repetitions, haste, unequal development of parts, and unfulfilled promises. These books were nothing else than the written notes which he had made the basis of his lectures and had intended to form into text-books in some future time. Only parts of the Logic seem to have been completed for text-book purposes.
These didactic writings are simply arranged as follows (Wallace):
1. The treatise on Logic called Organon.
2. Speculative Philosophy.
First Philosophy or Theology or Metaphysics.
Mathematics (writings not extant).
Physics (including the history of animals and the psychology).
3. Practical Philosophy.
Ethics.
Economics.
Politics.
4. Poetic Philosophy.
Art.
Poetry.
Rhetoric.
Aristotle’s Starting-Point. The two early influences in Aristotle’s mental development offer an explanation for his philosophical point of view. These influences were his empirical training in medicine and his conceptual training in the moral ideals of the Academy. Plato had convinced him that if there were to be any true science, it must be founded on concepts that are unchanging. His own scientific training, however, reinforced by the influence of Democritus, made him respect the value of empirical facts. While the philosophical problem for Aristotle was the same as that for Plato, the difference between them was in the main a matter of emphasis due to their different starting-points. Plato started with the refutation of the Protagorean theory of perception, and consequently he emphasized the value of the conceptual world; Aristotle, however, felt that Plato had overestimated the conceptual world, and he emphasized the importance of empirical facts. Both when a member of the Academy and later, he strongly contended against Plato’s evaluation of the world of Ideas, because they so transcended the sense world that they neither explained nor illuminated it. Aristotle’s reaction against Plato’s theory furthermore gives us a more correct notion of what Plato really taught. If conceptions are to enter into knowledge, they must not exist in the clouds of abstraction. He maintained that Plato had increased the difficulty of the problem by adding a second world of entities quite distinct from the world of nature. The same problem that Plato confronted still exists unanswered, said Aristotle. It is the problem of the twofold world. If Ideas are apart from things, we could not know that they existed, we should not be able to know anything about them, nor should we be able to explain the world through them. It is true that Plato, in his later draft, had conceived Ideas to be teleologically related to the physical things, but how could this be if they were apart from things? Thus in his reaction from Plato’s theory of Ideas, Aristotle reëstablished the world of perceptual fact. This is the starting-point of Aristotle.
The Fundamental Principle in Aristotle’s Philosophy. The first question then is, How did Aristotle reëstablish the perceptual fact? What means did he employ to give the perceptual fact a reality? The answer to this question will be the statement of Aristotle’s fundamental principle. It will show his advance over Plato by showing his new estimate of the perceptual world. Plato accepted the Protagorean doctrine of perception, but also gave it a new value by placing perceptions beside conceptions in the world of reality; Aristotle developed Plato’s teaching about perceptions by linking them inseparably with conceptions. Aristotle felt that Plato’s difficulties arose from the lack of close relationship between conceptual Being and perceptual fact. What is that linkage? What binds abiding reality and changing phenomena so closely? The linkage is development. Development is the relation between conception and perception. It is the fundamental principle in the philosophy of Aristotle throughout and places a new estimate upon the value of perception. Perceptual facts apart from conceptions have no reality; conceptions apart from perceptions are mere abstractions. In the world of reality conceptual Being resides in the perceptual facts, and the perceptual facts express conceptions. They always exist together in a linkage or relationship that is teleological, purposeful—the linkage of development. An abstract statement of this relationship is, “Aristotle felt the conceptual necessity of the empirically actual.” Perhaps the clearest statement of this fundamental principle can be made in the terms of evolution. It is this: true reality is the essence which unfolds in phenomena. Notice that this sentence has two parts equally freighted: reality is an unfolding essence; reality is in phenomena. The true universal must be thought as realizing itself through its development in particulars; the true concept as realizing itself through its development in percepts; the true abiding Being as realizing itself in its development through change. On the one hand, reality is the essence of things; on the other, reality has existence only in things.
True reality is the individual.
The individual consists of two aspects: (1) conceptual being, and (2) perceptual change.
These two aspects always stand in a relationship.
That relationship is developing purpose.
Here is the key to the teaching of Aristotle that seems to open the doors of its many chambers. In his metaphysics reality is the individual developing from possibility to actuality. In physics individual phenomena get a reality through their development from lower to higher types. In psychology the individual person is real when the particulars, the physiological and psychological states, develop toward the soul, which is their truth. So, too, in the great system of logic in which Aristotle was pioneer, he is simply trying to give the particular judgment a meaning by showing its linkage to the universal judgment. Everywhere the starting-point of Aristotle is the perceptual fact. Everywhere his purpose is to reëstablish it by showing its relation to abiding conception in the individual.
It may be well to remark, however, that Aristotle does not altogether succeed in constructing a consistent theory. In spite of his criticism of Plato’s transcendent Ideas, in many places Aristotle does not overcome Plato’s dualism. Frequently he differs from Plato more in words than in meaning. We shall observe some of his inconsistencies in their place. We shall see that Aristotle as he meant to be was different from Aristotle as he was. Aristotle as he meant to be—Aristotle as the opponent of Plato’s dualism—develops a philosophy from a single fundamental principle. Aristotle as he was, reverts at many critical points to Plato’s dualism.
Aristotle’s principle of development may appear at first blush very much like the modern principle of evolution. As a matter of fact it was very different. In all Greek philosophy after Socrates the study of morals was fundamental. The ideal of Socrates, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, and the later Schools was a moral ideal. Being moral it was fixed, and it fixed all the changes of life to it as a centre. Nature was to the Greek a museum of types oscillating around a perfect form. There was no evolution in the sense of progress. There was development within the individual—the boy becomes a man, the seed becomes a flower; but there was no evolution from genus to genus. Indeed, any variation of the individual from its type was considered a defect.
Aristotle’s Logic. Aristotle felt that there must be a science of the methods of science; and so successful was he in its formulation that it has practically remained as he transmitted it. We are struck by the way in which he divided science into the special sciences, each with its well-defined field. It was perfectly natural that he should also, with his great power of abstract reasoning, discuss the body of rules for legitimate thinking. In science there must be an art of investigation, just as in rhetoric there is an art of persuasion. At an early period these logical writings were collected under the name Organon, because the Lyceum regarded them so intimately connected with scientific procedure as to be the instrument or “organ” of all knowledge. Certain parts of Aristotle’s Organon are of doubtful genuineness. The important sections are the Analytics, a masterly logical groundwork of the conclusion and proof, and the Topics, which treats of the inductive methods of probability. Aristotle therefore made logic a preliminary and separate study, as it should be. It became the preface to his scientific work.
We shall briefly discuss Aristotle’s logic, because it is an exemplification of his general philosophical principle. Among the subjects in the history of philosophy, logic is perhaps the only one that has had no internal history. Aristotle was the pioneer in the subject. He left it so finished that scarcely any changes of consequence could be made in it. The external history of the Aristotelian logic has, however, been notable. A portion of the Categories and De Interpretatione was most influential in the history of the Middle Ages. The Logic had been misunderstood and misapplied by Aristotle’s own School, so that when it came into the hands of the Schoolmen it had acquired the reputation of being only an abstract formal logic. As thus interpreted it was used by the Schoolmen and attacked by the philosophers of the Renaissance. Such a view of Aristotle’s logic is unjust to the author. He had conceived logic in its wholeness to be the true method to be used in investigating practical scientific problems.
The Sophists had proposed rules of practical value in the study of individual cases; Socrates had tried to fix upon some universal principle as the basis of knowledge; Aristotle made a comprehensive study of the regular forms of thought and the rules that govern the arrangement of these forms in right thinking. In true Platonic fashion he conceived physical events in nature to be due to some universal cause. If, therefore, logical procedure be scientific, it must follow the ways of nature: logic must deduce particular perceptions from some universal idea. The necessary thought-relations in which the particular stands will then appear. Deduction of the particular from the universal is the true scientific method, used in the explanation of nature-phenomena; so in proof the same deductive reasoning should be used. In scientific study we are trying to show the conceptual necessity of an empirical fact; in proof we are showing the conceptual necessity of the particular term. Whether we are explaining an event or proving a conclusion, we are employing the same logical process. Aristotle thus regarded his logic as the true scientific method for practical service, not as a merely abstract discipline in verbal hair-splitting.
Socrates and Plato confined themselves to the study of the concept or simple term. Aristotle also studied the concept. Indeed, he tried to find out what concepts are fundamental in our thinking, so fundamental that they are our thought reduced to its lowest terms. He names ten of these fundamental concepts and calls them categories. But Aristotle goes farther than Socrates and Plato, and makes his real point of departure the judgment. A single term does not express truth. For truth we must have two terms connected by the verb “is,” i. e. some relation must be shown between them. This is a judgment. Reasoning is still more complex. It is the putting together or showing the relation between two judgments. This process takes the form of the syllogism. The first task of deduction is to present the laws of the syllogism. These will then be the laws of scientific investigation. According to these, particulars can be derived with certainty from universal propositions, provided such universals are established. The syllogism is in the form of two premises and a derived conclusion. It contains three terms. The problem is to infer, from the relation that one of these terms bears to the two other terms, what the two bear to each other. The principle employed is that of subordination; and the differentiations of the syllogism can be many, depending on the quality and quantity of the premises and the distribution of the middle term. The working of the syllogism in inference has a certainty so great that Aristotle called it apodictic.
But there is another side to the syllogistic besides the deduction of proof or the explanation of empirical fact. This is the establishment of the premises. All deduction presupposes absolute premises. All deduction is grounded on something not deduced; all proof on something not proved; all explanation on something that has not been explained. These presuppositions are universal propositions that can be known only immediately through intuitions. Aristotle is not altogether clear as to what these intuitions are. He names such axioms as the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle, and some special propositions which apply only to particular sciences. Since the premises which we actually use are not open to proof, but only strengthened as to the validity of their application, we must use the method of induction in our search for them. We accumulate data from opinions and varied experiences, and then we ascend to a generalization which we take as a premise. The results of induction cannot therefore be in themselves certain. The results are only probable, and can have the character of knowledge only as they explain phenomena. Aristotle means by induction something different from the present use of the term. Induction in modern times means a kind of proof; Aristotle means a method of discovery of relatively universal terms where the absolutely universal cannot be obtained.
There is an ideal involved in this conception of logic that is interesting. In a perfectly intellectual society there would be a perfect science in which all particular facts could be derived with absolute certainty from premises absolutely known. Life and logic would be identical. We should then be certain not only as to our proof but as to our premises. Logic has sometimes been used very effectively in this way. When the mediæval church conceived its dogmas to be the ultimate premises of truth, it could deduce from them complete rules for living. To the mediæval mind the perfect science was formulated by deducing it from the dogma of the church. The dogmas were the absolute premises. The Renaissance did not doubt the infallibility of the traditional dogmas so much as the logical method, and Aristotle, who had been so long artificially identified with the proof of ecclesiastical dogma, was set aside.
Aristotle, moreover, showed great insight into the present relation of thought and reality. The sequence of facts in our experience, he pointed out, is exactly the reverse of what it is in reality. What is first in reality comes last in our experience, and what is first in our experience is last in reality. To illustrate: the mission of the Athenian State in the eternity of things did not appear until every event in its history had occurred. A perfect being would see the universal ground before the historical particulars derived from it, while we look from the particulars to their universal causes. Logic and metaphysics agree; but they stand in inverted parallelism to historical and psychological processes. Knowledge is a development from the senses into the Ideas, and yet, on the other hand, Aristotle never fails to remind us that this development is the expression of an idea which has been present from the beginning.
Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
1. Development is Purposeful. The conception of relation is, of course, quite as fundamental in Aristotle’s theory of metaphysics as in his logic. In logic knowledge of the particular is possible through its relationship to the universal; in metaphysics the relationship is the relationship of development—the particular has significance and value through the universal essence that unfolds from within it. If Aristotle shows genius for abstract thinking by becoming the “Father of Logic,” he shows equal genius for abstract thinking in his metaphysical conception of development. He believed that metaphysics applies the same conditions to things that logic discovers in thought. But in metaphysics the relationship is not the abstract relationship that Aristotle saw in Plato, but the vital relation of development in the life and change of nature.
We have already stated the fundamental principle in Aristotle’s teaching as an unfolding essence in phenomena. The unfolding is the relationship of development. Reality does not consist in the particular things of nature, nor in something outside nature, but in this essential linkage of the perceptual and conceptual in nature. As the world is spread out before us, it presents objects that are dynamic, however much they may appear to be static. Everywhere matter is in the process of forming. The world is a forming, not a formed nor a formless world. So, also, if you undertook to describe any individual object in the world, you would have to define it as a forming or developing thing. A tree, for example, would not be adequately defined or described by enumerating its parts at any one moment; but you must describe it as a unitary organism developing from a seed. The reality of the world is the development of its meaning in its history; the same is true of the reality of any individual thing in the world. The world and the things therein have an unfolding essence.
The next point to be observed about Aristotle’s conception is that the relationship of development is between two terms. The individual must have two aspects: there must be that out of which the development is passing, and that into which it is passing. Aristotle calls these two aspects of development respectively Matter and Form. Every object of nature consists of Form and Matter, and these two terms have passed into history. To Aristotle everything is Matter becoming Form, or, in other words, Form realizing itself in Matter. The tree has its Matter which is becoming Formed, and its Form into which the Matter is growing. The principle which unites the two is development,—the principle of the individual. Matter, then, is the possibility or potentiality of an individual thing—it is the thing given potentially; Form is its actuality or reality. If you emphasize merely the stages in the development, you are regarding merely the occurrences; if, however, you emphasize the stages of development as aspects of a unity, you see its essence.
The relationship of development between two terms thus becomes under Aristotle’s hands the relation of purpose. Aristotle calls this self-realization of the essence in phenomena by the technical word entelechy, i. e. in opposition to the earlier conceptions of nature Aristotle conceived nature teleologically. Teleology or purpose we found Plato using in his second draft of the Ideas, but more as a postulate than as an efficient means of explanation. Aristotle uses teleology as his positive fundamental principle of nature.
2. Aristotle’s Two Different Conceptions of Purpose. Aristotle illustrated his conception of the purposeful relation in nature from two very different types: (1) the development of organisms; (2) the development that takes place when an artisan moulds plastic material. Manifestly here are two different kinds of teleological activities. In organic growth the Form that realizes itself in Matter is immanent in the organism; the artist, on the other hand, superimposes the Form upon the plastic material. In the case of organisms Matter and Form are separable only by abstraction, and are only two aspects of a development which is identical from the beginning to the end; in the case of artistic construction the Matter is first a possibility existing by itself, and the purpose of the artist is later added unto it. In the case of organisms Aristotle speaks of two causes,—the material and the formal; in the case of artistic construction he employs four causes,—the material, the efficient, the formal, and the final. Aristotle did not expressly formulate these two different conceptions of purpose, but he completely applied them in practice. On the one hand he regarded individual things as self-realizing, and on the other he looked upon them as realized in other things. This seemingly harmless difference is really very fundamental, for it is the difference between Aristotle as he meant to be—Aristotle as the critic of Plato’s dualism—and Aristotle who reverts to Plato’s teaching. We find therefore two Aristotles; one a dynamic monist, the other a transcendent dualist. We cannot say that Aristotle as he meant to be is the true Aristotle, for he is a dualist in very many important doctrines.
Aristotle’s conception of purpose as exemplified by organisms is his original conception, and is what he intended to be the basis of his philosophy. Here the truly real is the individual determined by its own Form. It is the dynamic and not the artistic view of life. Activity is directed to an end not without but within itself. The individual is a complete organic unity at rest within itself. The individual is primarily the essence or substance. Of the ten categories which he enumerates, substance from this point of view is to Aristotle the most important. The nine other categories only describe the states or relations of the substance. The essence of the individual is the substance; and Aristotle conceives the substance as the species or universal in the thing. It is pointed out that even here Aristotle is guilty of a dualism in the double meaning in which he uses substance. But the conception of Aristotle here is of an immanent, dynamic reality. He has in mind the self-contained unity of the individual, whether that be a tree, a man, or the universe.
Aristotle’s conception of purpose as exemplified by artistic products preponderates over his original conception of purpose. When he regards the individual objects in the world, not as self-contained but as relative to one another, he has a different conception of the world. In this case the individuals are not realities but have reference to a reality transcending them. The world is still a developing world, but the essence that unfolds itself is not in phenomena. It is a goal for which phenomena strive. The fulfillment of the purpose is beyond. Individual things are only a scale of values relative to some transcendent standard. To illustrate: the bud, the blossom, the fruit, have not their realization in themselves, but as food; again, the growing tree, the timber lying on the ground, the timber in the house, have their realization in the completed house; again, in the world at large, the original nebulous matter of the universe, the first-formed worlds, the early years of this earth, the succeeding centuries, the 20th century of this world, are only a scale of values for something in the future.
In facing such facts, Aristotle had to depart from his original conceptualistic standard of the world as an organic unity and of individual things having their meaning in themselves. View a thing by itself, and it seems to be a self-contained reality which unfolds for itself alone. View a thing with reference to other things, and its reality is in something else. Here is Aristotle no longer as he meant to be, but as he really was. He is now Plato’s pupil. Each thing now is to be regarded, not as containing in itself the two aspects of Form and Matter, but as the possibility of something and the actuality of something else. The blossom is the possibility or Matter of the fruit and the Form or actuality of the bud. The nineteenth century is the Form of the eighteenth and the Matter of the twentieth. But development has a limit above and below, according to Aristotle: below, in Matter that is without Form; above, in Form that is without Matter. Pure Form is God, who excludes from Himself all Matter or possibility, because He is perfect. Pure Matter is the lower limit, which is entire possibility, and exists only to be formed. Here is a dualism as distinct as Plato’s, which Aristotle not only did not overcome but which he developed. In the same way that Plato contrasted Ideas and empty space, Aristotle contrasted God as pure Form and Matter as pure possibility.
In this final dualistic form in which Aristotle left his teaching, there are three specific doctrines which the student must consider carefully. They are important because they had great influence in later orthodox theology and in theories of nature. These special doctrines are (1) Aristotle’s conception of God; (2) his conception of matter; (3) his conception of nature.
3. Aristotle’s Conception of God. In the Aristotelian system the assumption of an upper final term of pure Form was necessary, because Matter as the possible and potential is not endowed with the power of motion and generation. To Aristotle development is not a process with temporal beginning and ending, but is a kind of closed circuit. Since reality is in itself a developing essence, motion is as eternal as reality. We should not ask, therefore, When did the world begin, and when will it end? but we can legitimately ask, What is the nature of reality that keeps motion alive? When we examine individual things, we find, according to Aristotle’s explanation, that motion is the result of the influence of Form upon Matter. There is inherent in matter an impulse to be formed, and there is inherent in Form an active forming purpose. But we may search individual things in vain for the causal explanation of motion, since every Form is in turn the Matter for a higher Form. The chain would be endless and not intelligible if there did not exist a pure Form, which is unmoved. God as the unmoved mover is the cause of the world-motion, but God must be the cause in a different sense from the physical causes, which are themselves moved. God operates as a cause upon Matter, not as a mechanical cause but as pure Form,—as a final or teleological cause. God is the cause in the sense that God excites in Matter the impulse to be actual, like God.
This prime mover is similar to Plato’s Idea of the Good. As to its form it is eternal, unmovable, unchangeable, wholly independent and incorporeal, and yet the cause of all generation and change. God is the perfect Being in whom all possibility is actuality. As to its content God is pure thought. But in respect to his thought God is not like human thought, which is concerned with external phenomena and changing things. God is thought that has nothing else for its object than itself and its own unchanging content. God is “thought of thought.” God’s contemplation of himself is his own blessed life. Here in Aristotle is a momentous conception formed for the first time in the history of thought. Monotheism is for the first time conceptually framed and scientifically grounded. The monism of Aristotle’s predecessors passes over into a theism. God is not only immaterial in the sense that Plato defined the Ideas, but he is spiritual. In Aristotle’s transcendent God, conceived as pure self-consciousness, we have the ripest fruit of Greek philosophy.
4. Aristotle’s Conception of Matter. The other and lower limit of Aristotle’s dualism is Matter, “first Matter,” as Aristotle called it. In itself it is wholly unformed and mere possibility. But it is unlike pure Form in this respect,—it never exists in itself. God exists apart from Matter, but since Matter is mere possibility, Matter never exists apart from Form. Matter has a double character. On the one hand Matter is that which as an accessory cause makes the world of phenomena possible; on the other hand it is the source of the lawless and purposeless in nature. Through its seeking to be formed it makes the presentation of the Idea possible, and yet it stands as a deterrent principle to the full presentation of the Form. On the one hand it is the sine qua non of physical nature, shows itself in real physical effects, and is the basis of mechanical causation, motion, and impact. On the other hand it stands in the way of the Forms actualizing themselves fully, and it prevents the universe from perfecting itself as God is perfect. While Matter is not an indifferent negative (as in Plato’s teaching), but the necessary substratum of corporeal things, it is however the indeterminate, and the ground of the accidental and purposeless in nature. Matter is the infinite and unlimited, and is the source of unusual phenomena, like monstrosities and abortions. Both fate and accident are due to the retarding influence of Matter, because it obstructs the successful working out of Form. Quite in accord with Greek thought, Aristotle conceived necessity and chance to be fundamentally the same, and the Greek custom of drawing lots shows the universality of the notion.
5. Aristotle’s Conception of Nature. Nature is therefore to Aristotle a far more complex world than Plato had conceived it. Nature has a double character to Aristotle, as his twofold conception of causation shows. Nature is composed of mechanical and teleological causes. Purpose and necessity are the two principles of motion in the world, and in this twofold conception of causation did Aristotle reconcile Plato and Democritus. However much Aristotle concedes to the Democritan idea of mechanical necessity, it is evident that in his conception of nature the principle of teleology predominates over the mechanical. The highest actuality is God, and he is a final or teleological cause; and all results of value in nature come through final causes. Final causes are primary causes; mechanical causes are secondary causes. There would be no motion whatever in the universe but for the highest final cause, God. Yet God is the unmoved mover, and matter cannot move itself. Motion occurs because matter feels the impulse to form itself like God. How different this Aristotelian conception of nature from our modern scientific conception of an impersonal nature under a mechanical causation that is universal! The teleological conception of nature and natural events was very strongly intrenched in the human mind during the Middle Ages, and was not dislodged easily by modern investigation. Nature was a living thing to Aristotle. It was at once intrinsically spontaneous, and self-determined and uniform. Its spontaneity was not that of capricious chance. Its uniformity was that of purpose and end. On the other hand, the Aristotelian conception of nature is not the same as either the Christian doctrine of created nature or Darwin’s theory of evolution. The world of Aristotle had always existed; it is a limited world in space, but not in time. Also the divine reason always existed in it. Yet its evolution is not a progressive climbing sort, like the Darwinian, in which new species evolve. It means only that there is a relationship of rank and value among nature objects. Nature is a unity. Teleological change occurs within it.
Nature is therefore a connected system of living beings in the process of development from Form to Form, approximating the Deity and existing as the potentiality of the Deity. There is a graded scale of things of relative worth. But the double standard of estimating the worth of nature-objects—that of mechanical necessity and that of teleological cause—makes two different series, which find their union only at the end in God. From our foregoing description of the nature of God, it will be seen that he has two essential characteristics: he is Being who ever rests within himself and remains like himself; and he is a pure reason. He therefore combines in himself the two nature series in their most ideal character. Nature-objects in the series of mechanical necessity have as their ideal character just that uniformity, regularity, and order that we find in the abiding Being of God. The greater the uniformity, the more nearly like God. Nature-objects, in the teleological series, have as their ideal characteristic the reason of God. The more nearly rational such a living being is, the more nearly is it like God. In the one line the series of phenomena ascends from the disorder of the terrestrial universe to the absolute uniformity of the stars, which are close to God. In the other line the series ascends in teleological values from the mechanical and vegetative characteristics of organisms to their rational activity. Both series terminate in God. The stars have rational intelligence and the most uniform motions. Aristotle conceived Physics as the science that includes the first series, and the second series he conceived to be included by Psychology, Ethics, and Politics.
The Mechanical Series,—Aristotle’s Theory of Physics. The general astronomical assumptions of the time determined Aristotle’s theory of the physical world. He adopted the old Pythagorean conception of the limited world-all: a hollow sphere made up of concentric crystalline spheres. In opposition to the Pythagoreans, he conceived the earth at the centre. It is spherical and stationary. Around it the crystalline spheres revolve, in which the moon, sun, five planets, and fixed stars are placed. The fixed stars are in the rim of the great sphere, are outside all, and are nearest therefore to God, who animates all. God as it were holds the world-all in the hollow of his hand. He moves the whole, which in turn moves the fifty-five concentric crystal spheres within. The principle of the movement of fixed stars is that of the Deity, while the principle of the other spheres is that of the spirits which reside in them. The movement of the planets have an influence upon terrestrial life. Aristotle made the usual Pythagorean division between the celestial and the terrestrial parts of the world-all, which has had so much influence upon theology. The motion of the world-all is most perfect, being a circle; its form is most perfect, being a sphere. The celestial part of this world-all, which is the region lying near the periphery, is most like God. The motion of this heaven is circular, and it is the place of uniformity, perfectness, and changeableness. The stars do not change nor pass away. They are superhuman beings, who in their regularity are like the blessed gods. The terrestrial part of the world-all below the moon has motions in straight lines. This is the theatre of imperfection and irregularity, of increase and diminution.
There are many interesting discussions by Aristotle upon particular physical matters, such as space, time, the elements. His conception of motion shows how the series of uniform nature-motions lead up to the second series of teleological values. In nature there are three kinds of motion: change of place (mechanical); change in quality (chemical); change in substance (organic). While change of place is the lowest kind of motion, it is necessary to chemical and organic changes. Yet Aristotle refuses to allow that qualitative changes can be reduced to quantitative changes, but maintains that quality is self-subsistent. Organic change, or change in substance, on the contrary, has a higher Form of reality than the lower changes. This stand taken by Aristotle, in refusing to reduce qualitative to quantitative determinations, shows how comprehensive and sane a scientist he was. It introduces us to a psychology and an ethics that are intimately linked to physics, and at the same time have realms of their own. Let us now turn to the series of qualitative nature changes, or to psychology, ethics, and politics.
The Teleological Series: The Qualitative Changes of Phenomena.
1. The Psychology of Aristotle. As the first experimental psychologist, Aristotle intimately connected his studies in psychology with his studies in biology and medicine. Man is a part of the world of nature, and psychology is in part a comparative study. As we pass upward from the mechanical changes, we find chemical changes of quality, and then changes of organic life. Studying the organic realm, we find organisms to consist of souls of relative ranking. There are vegetative souls, sensitive souls, and rational souls. Plants have vegetative souls with the powers of assimilation and propagation; besides vegetative souls animals have sensitive souls, with the powers of appetition and locomotion; man possesses, besides both these souls, the rational soul. Here is a series of teleological relationships, where the purpose of the organism is explained only by the activity of its soul. The soul builds up its body as a system of organs, and as an organology the theory of Aristotle has great significance. Nature strives ever upward, even in the inorganic processes, through an unbroken series of creations to its highest Form in man. Each step in the upward progress is the realization of an entelechy, or purpose, and constitutes for the moment the goal of the impulse to strive. The whole world is striving to realize the perfect Form. The lower ends, the mechanical and vegetable and appetitive Forms, are not lost but are utilized in the process; for they are the Matter upon which the Forms higher than themselves are built. Every member is both Form and Matter in the whole series.
The psychology has therefore two parts: (1) the general theory of animal souls, which possesses rich suggestions; (2) the doctrine of the Nous as the distinctive characteristic of man. These are the empirical and speculative sides to Aristotle’s psychology.
Man is an epitome of all the changes in the universe. He has vegetative, appetitive, and rational souls. Yet there is unity in man, for the lower souls are subservient to the reason and exist for it. The appetitive soul is the Form of the vegetative soul, the Matter of the Rational soul, etc. Accordingly, Aristotle defines the soul as the entelechy of the body, because bodily human activity is enlisted in the service of the reason. Reality in man is an unfolding purpose, just as it is in nature. The real self is this unfolding rational self, whose possibility is the body; whose actuality is pure reason. The mind is actualized body, the body is potential mind.
Aristotle made many contributions to psychology about the origin and value of the several sensations, about the feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires. He shows his remarkable genius in pointing to the necessity of a unity of consciousness, which he calls the “common-sensibility.” His discussion of the Nous, or reason, is of importance for two reasons: first, because it leads to and illuminates his ethical theory; and second, because it is an example of his deviation from his original conceptual position. The reason, according to his first intention, is the unfolding purpose of the body,—it is the immanent essence of the body. As Aristotle finally left his discussion of the Reason, it is as transcendent as his God, or as any Idea of Plato. The Nous, or Reason, is not a Form of the body, but a Form of the soul. It is purely immaterial, simple, unchangeable, and incapable of suffering. It does not originate with the body as a function. It comes from without as a godlike activity, and will remain after the body passes away. Its fundamental activity is thought, and its object is those ultimate principles of Being which are the ultimate premises of logical thinking.
Aristotle’s theory of the Reason is considerably complicated by his division of it into two parts,—the active and the passive Reason. Within itself, the Reason is to be distinguished as Form and Matter. The passive Reason is the Matter for the active Reason, and the active Reason is the Form for the passive Reason. By the passive Reason Aristotle evidently means the individual and developing man. The active Reason can alone persist after death, but whether absorbed in the Deity or not he does not say. Immortality to Aristotle in any case is not a perpetuation of the individuality.
2. The Ethics of Aristotle. We have seen that nature phenomena are of two classes,—those mechanically related, and those related as to their purposes or ends. Physics is concerned with the first class; psychology is concerned with the second class. But in a special way are ethics and politics sciences of the phenomena of the second class—sciences of teleologically related phenomena. Moral life is an unfolding essence having a possibility and an actuality. The Possibility or Matter of the ethical life is our feelings, temperament, disposition, impulses, and perceptions—just those psychological factors that make up the endowment of the human personality. The ultimate Form or actuality of the ethical life is the reason. The reason as the goal of the moral being determines its character. Man is distinctly a rational being. Virtue is the process of the ethical life from its possibilities to its actuality; it is the essence of the ethical life. Virtue is that continuous state of mind that makes rational activity possible. So much for the factors that make the ethical situation; the natural endowments of the mind are its material, the reason is its goal, while the means of developing the natural endowments into rational activity is virtue.
The situation would be simple enough for us as moral beings if, in our striving, each had only himself and his own development to consider. But man lives in a world of men, and his highest good is determined somewhat by his environment,—by riches, bodily comforts, success. These are not essentials but only accessories, and the lack of them is only a limitation. The essential factor is the rational activity. Nevertheless, these modify the definition of what we mean when we define rational activity as the highest Good or Form of the moral life. For the question which Aristotle proposes in his notable treatise of Ethics is, What is the end or supreme good of human action? The highest Good for a man among men is Happiness, or well-being; that includes not only rational activity, but also the pleasures that accrue to such activity. But what is happiness? It is an end in itself, and not the means to anything else; it is the result of functioning, a state of conscious vitality; it accords with the law of excellence of that functioning. Perfect happiness is, therefore, partly the result of one’s own individual effort, partly dependent on circumstance. While virtue is the measure of the worth of different pleasures, yet pleasures do not always attend our acts in our present society. The greatest Good is happiness, but since this depends in part on external goods, the goal to which we should directly attend—the factor within our control—is rational activity.
There are two classes of virtues based on the two kinds of rational life,—the practical virtues and the dianoetic virtues. The practical virtues are those of conduct based upon the rational control of the impulses; the dianoetic virtues are those of intellectual activity based upon the development of the perceptions. The perfect moral development of human nature will consist (1) in the perfect development and true regulation of the feelings and desires in moral excellence; and (2) a perfect development of the intellectual faculties for rational culture.
(a) The Practical Virtues. The essential thing for the individual to regard, therefore, is the training of his will by right rational insight. He should seek to direct his impulses by reason, and not only once but so many times that the impulses will become rational habits. This is what Aristotle means by training in virtue. It is continuity in rational activity; it is a permanent development toward reason; it is the unfolding of the real Self. Aristotle had regard for the facts of life when he differed from Socrates, who said that virtue is knowledge. Aristotle did not conceive the will as psychological power independent of the reason. He doubted if rational insight was more powerful than the impulses, when the test comes. Experience often shows that although we may know what is right, an impulse will often drive us into habits not guided by reason. This presupposes for Aristotle a will that is free to choose among the desires that one which will lead him along the path that reason points out.
It is impossible to formulate a rule for the acquirement of the particular virtues. Each virtue must be treated by itself. The only principle for guidance is that the reason should always seek the mean between two extremes. Thus courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness; temperance between intemperance and insensibility; friendliness between obsequiousness and brusqueness, etc. Moderation is the watchword in the cultivation of the practical virtues.
(b) The Dianoetic Virtues are the means toward the attainment of pure rationality for one’s self. The dianoetic virtues are higher than the practical. They unfold the pure formal activity of the Nous, and give the most noble and perfect pleasure. Man finds through them his possible participation in the divine happiness. These intellectual virtues may be either theoretical or practical insight; in the latter case, Aristotle means knowledge of the right in art, and knowledge of justice. But the purest is Wisdom (θεωρία), which is knowledge for its own sake. It is the knowledge that God has of himself. Man may approximate this.
In Aristotle’s ethical theory there appear three features that are distinctly Greek. (1) The leading question that he asks at the beginning of the Ethics, What is the end or Supreme Good of human action? is Greek. The modern writer asks, What is the nature of duty? (2) The emphasis on the “mean” is Greek. The idea of the “mean” was the fundamental principle in Greek life, and appeared in such literature as Gnomic poetry and Plato. (3) The subordination of individual ethical conduct to the conception of the state is Greek. Aristotle says that politics will have to settle the question of the Supreme Good, for the Good of the state and that of the individual are identical.
The Political Philosophy of Aristotle. In the present real world rational activity rather than happiness is the chief concern of man. Happiness is, however, his highest Good, which he can attain if his environment favors him. The political environment is a moral factor to be considered. The state should be the fulfillment of the morals of the individual, and should also be his ethical trainer. That State is fulfilling its own possibilities most completely which brings to the full its natural endowments. Every Constitution is right that has the weal of the people at heart, so that we find Aristotle holding this extraordinarily liberal position, that the external structure of the State is not so much of consequence as that the State should be the educator of its people and the actualization of its own inherent possibilities. Aristotle did not construct an ideal state, like Plato. He merely pointed out some essentials necessary to the well-being of a state, like education and providence for the future life of the State. Although the State is the offspring of necessity, and arises out of the needs of utility, it is the Form or actuality of the inner self-realization of man from his savagery. Race, blood, soil, and geographical position are all the Matter of the State; the rational perfection of these is the Form; the civic virtue is the permanent means of the social development. The individual in Aristotle’s State is subordinated, but not absorbed, in the State. He can participate in the intellectual virtues. Since his own enjoyment in wisdom approximates God’s, he himself has distinction. Aristotle was a stanch supporter of marriage and the family relations. No philosopher in ancient times so elevated the position of woman. He reluctantly consented to the institution of slavery because it seemed to him a necessity.
CHAPTER IX
THE HELLENIC-ROMAN PERIOD (322 B. C.–476 A. D.)
Its Time Length.
Greek Period, 300 years.
Hellenic-Roman Period, 800 years.
Middle Ages, 1000 years.
Modern Period, 450 years.
We ought to appreciate at the beginning the enormous time length of this period. It seems long since modern thought began, but it was only about 450 years ago. The Hellenic-Roman Period was 800 years long, or nearly twice as long as modern times. It is, furthermore, two and a half times as long as the period which we have just been discussing,—the pure Greek period. Now the Hellenic-Roman Period and the Middle Ages together form the epoch of human history that is relatively uncreative. This is an extent of 1800 years, a long interval when compared with the 750 years of creative history, which represents the combined length of the pure Greek Period and modern times. In European history the periods of productive thought have been less than half as long as those of the unproductive. Yet we must not be misled by such statistics. History is an organic growth. Its seedtime and growth are long; its harvest is short.
The Fall of the Greek Nation and the Persistence of its Civilization. The 800 years after the death of Aristotle are named the Hellenic-Roman Period, because Greek civilization burst its own national boundaries and became a part of Roman civilization. The Greek nation died; its culture remained. It is no longer pure Greek, but Greek in the environment of the Roman world—it becomes Hellenism. With the death of Alexander in 323 B. C. the motherland of Greece became a prey to revolutions for 200 years. It was often the battleground of foreigners and the object of their contentions. Its government and population sank into hopeless decay. It was incorporated into the Roman empire in 146 B. C. and shared in the depressing times of the Civil Wars of the first century B. C. By becoming a part of Rome Greece lost its uniqueness but the world gained its culture as a common heritage. Its autonomy was forever gone, but its people became the teachers of mankind. In political power Greece reached its height with Alexander, in creative thought with Aristotle; then by its own momentum its civilization persisted as a missionary force to the whole world.
THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER
(Showing the spread of Hellenism eastward, beginning 334 B. C. with Alexander’s Campaign)
The overflow of Greek civilization was first eastward, to the nations of Asia. Alexander, with his military and administrative genius, had only made a preliminary conquest of these Oriental peoples. The conquest became permanent through Greek art, learning, and institutions. In the century after Alexander the habits and customs of the East had been Hellenized. Greek schools, theatres, and baths were to be found in almost every city of the East. In the East and Egypt an inexhaustible field was opened for the founding of new centres of culture. In the kingdoms partitioned off from the old Alexandrian domain, the kings were Greek, spoke Greek, adored Greek gods, and preserved Greek fashions. Amid Asiatics they sought to maintain Greek courts, have Greek administrative officers, and be surrounded with Greek scholars. Greek colonists, soldiers, and merchants were attracted to these kingdoms in such numbers that the natives adopted the costumes, religions, manners, and even the language of the Greeks. The Orient ceased to be Asiatic and became Hellenic. The Romans found there in the first century B. C. peoples like the Greeks who spoke Greek.
Greek civilization began to overflow upon the western world when, in the second century, Greece with all the other countries upon the Mediterranean was absorbed by Rome. The conquest of Greece by Rome in 146 B. C. gave currency to Greek art, letters, and morals in Roman life. That Greek civilization was not lost in this great amalgamation shows how deep and fundamental it was. The secondary nations disappeared and none remained to compete with the Greek and Latin. The result was the superimposition of Greek culture upon Roman society. At the time of the conquest of Greece, Greek scholars went to Rome in great numbers and opened schools of eloquence and literature. Later the Roman youths went to Athens to study. Art and science were gradually introduced into Rome. The old Roman house got a Greek addition. Statues and paintings were transported from Greece to Rome. Greek artists were commissioned. By 100 B. C. the great Romans were living in Greek or Oriental style. The coarsest Greeks, too, came into Italy and mingled with the Roman proletariat. Thus, with the complete Latinizing of the peninsula of Italy in the second century, an increasing Hellenism went hand in hand.
But the two civilizations never completely united. Roman adoption of Greek culture was never more than a veneer. Greek art and learning were rarely studied by the Roman except as a parade and luxury. As time went on the Roman resorted less to the classic and more to the frivolous modern products of the Greeks. For it must be remembered that when Greece was conquered by Rome, the Romans were still only peasants, soldiers, and merchants, without science, art, or philosophy. Before 150 B. C. the Roman children were taught nothing higher than reading, writing, etc. But the Roman found a culture in Greece that he liked and imitated. He kept his costume, language, and political laws, but he adopted Greek letters, art, morals, and incorporated many elements of the Greek religion into his own.
Two results came from this superimposition of Greek culture upon Roman society. On the one hand the Greek sought to create a philosophy which would make him a citizen of the world, since it was no longer an honor to be a citizen of a Greek city. On the other hand, to the Roman there came a mixed good. There was a gain to Roman literature and perhaps to jurisprudence, but a fatal loss to Roman faith and morals. On the whole Roman vulgarity was only concealed by Greek culture, except in such spirits as Scipio, Paulus, and the Gracchi, in whom culture was genuine. The Roman felt the need of rich intellectual life, and he sought it in the rich treasures and the filth of later Greek culture. The Greek culture that he found was no longer pure Greek, but Hellenism, sometimes tinged with Orientalism. It acted as a poison on the Roman and often was bitterly opposed.
The Two Parts of the Hellenic-Roman Period. We must not forget that, excepting the first 175 years of this period, Rome is the background upon which all philosophical movements of the time are to be traced. Upon this background two general movements are prominent, which divide the period into two parts: (1) the Ethical Period, and (2) the Religious Period.
1. The Ethical Period, 322 B. C.–1 A. D., had its origin in the Greek culture that was superimposed upon Roman civilization. This epoch is notable for the rise and controversies of the four celebrated philosophical Schools of Athens; the introduction of the teaching of these Schools into Roman society; and the final merging and reconciliation of these Schools in Eclecticism and Skepticism.
2. The Religious Period, 100 B. C.–476 A. D., arose out of the Oriental religions that swept into Rome before the beginning of this era. They were modified by their Roman environment, and intellectualized and systematized by Hellenic culture. Neo-Pythagoreanism, the Alexandrian-Judaic theosophies in the first part, Christianity and neo-Platonism in the second part of this period, are the most important philosophical results.
Note three things. (1) The spiritual life of Rome during these 800 years has its origin in imported foreign movements. The source of the ethical movement is Greek, that of the religious movement is Oriental. (2) The two movements overlap. Indeed, each from its beginning to its end covers about 600 years. More precisely the ethical movement did not disappear until about 200 A. D.; the religious movement began about 200 B. C. Ethical considerations dominate the first and religious impulses the second period. (3) The century and a half from 150 B. C. to 1 A. D. is a period of transition. It is the time when the emphasis changes from ethics to religion. It is a period of unsettled conditions both politically and intellectually. Politically it is the time of the Civil wars and the formation of the empire. Intellectually it is the time of Eclecticism and Skepticism.
The Undercurrent of Skepticism in the Hellenic-Roman Period. If we go beneath the surface of the chronological divisions of this period, which have been given above, we shall find their significance in the undercurrent of Skepticism, which runs from the beginning to the end of the period, and includes both its ethical and religious phases. “Skepticism” is a word with a history of its own, but, as philosophically used, it means the disbelief in the possibility of true knowledge. Skepticism was the fundamental frame of mind that gradually grew to conscious expression in the entire ancient world, although it was entirely at variance with the spirit of the Greek culture that had been superimposed upon that world. As an undercurrent—a widespread feeling—Skepticism pervaded the whole period, while at different times and places it appeared distinctly on the surface. These were 800 years of lack of confidence in the power of the human reason, but the really negative character of the time is often concealed by dogmatic teachings of the philosophical Schools. Dogmatic Skepticism does not appear except with reference to the positive teachings of the Schools, and then it appears conspicuously. The successive stages of Skepticism can have their clear outline, therefore, only after the positive philosophical teachings, contemporary with it and opposed by it, have been understood. This is the reason for treating the Skeptics after and not before the Schools. The reader will, however, lose the whole meaning of the Hellenic-Roman Period if he does not see that it is fundamentally Skeptical; that in the Ethical Division the Schools furnished the occasion of its appearance, and that in the Religious Division religious faith rose because Skepticism had taken possession of the field of knowledge. The ethical Schools stood as the last representatives of the old Greek rationalism of the Systematic Period, but even they yielded to the Skeptical spirit of the time. Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism seek the same end,—the withdrawal of the individual from the world and his exaltation above his environment. All three valued science only so far as it would help ethical conduct. Skepticism alone was avowedly antagonistic to intellectual ideals. The strength of Skepticism appears more evident when we look at its growth during this period. At the end of the Ethical Period the Schools weakened and we find a century and a half (150 B. C.–1 A. D.) of Skepticism and Eclecticism. There then followed at the beginning of this era the Religious Period. Man then turned to religion because he was profoundly skeptical of the trustworthiness of the reason—he felt that it was so untrustworthy as to be unable to furnish him even a true theory of moral conduct.
The Skeptical undercurrent of the Hellenic-Roman Period was the concentration of all the negative results of the Greek Sophists. It therefore had more than one point of departure,—the philosophies of Protagoras, of the Megarian, Cynic, and Cyrenaic Schools. This Sophistic undercurrent fed popular thought during the days of Plato and Aristotle. It took its formal beginning contemporary with the rise of the Stoic and Epicurean Schools; and in Athens, Alexandria, and Rome there rose to the surface the problem of the possibility of human knowledge. Formally it modified its sweeping negations, when it came in contact with the pressing needs of morality and of spiritual retirement, but it was ever present as the significant attitude of the time. While the nature of the Skeptical teaching stood in the way of its formation into a School, the doctrine itself, nevertheless, developed into a system and had its historical growth and culmination. Weber points out that the first appearance of Skepticism marks in Greece the inauguration of the age of reason and its reappearance marks the decline of the age of reason.
The Fundamental Problem of the Hellenic-Roman Period. The fundamental attitude of this period being Skepticism, the fundamental problem presented to it was therefore a practical one. While at heart the age doubted the validity of the human reason, it was consciously engaged in solving a very practical problem. The period had an external side that was positive. No age can be merely skeptical, especially for so long a time as 800 years. To doubt the power of the human reason is usually the occasion of shunting human energies along other lines. The form of the practical problem of this time was, What is the highest wisdom for practical life? This is consonant with the skeptical attitude of the Greek as indicated by these two facts: (1) he had no longer an interest in speculation except as it afforded a basis for practical wisdom, and (2) he had no longer an interest in special sciences except as they yielded practical results. To be sure, it will be found that theories took to themselves airs of great importance during this period and that empirical sciences made rapid advances; but it will also be found that they were always in the service of practical living. The Wise Man of this age is he who has a scientific doctrine of the purposes and ends of human life.
For with his entrance into world-wide relations in the Ethical Period the Athenian found himself confronted with a very different situation from that which had engaged him during the age of Pericles. His national existence had gone and could no longer arouse his devotion, and with it his ideal of a national life had crumbled to pieces. His epic polytheism had become a dim thing of the distant past, and there was no longer any external Greek institution to awaken his slumbering energies. He might, of course, go into retirement and engage in speculative inquiry, except that this was an age of pressing need. He was forced to be awake and to adjust himself as an individual to the many other peoples mixing and mingling in one common civilization. His relations were enlarged, but his interests were circumscribed. His philosophy was focused to one fundamental problem, What, after all, is the object of human life, and what can give happiness to the individual amid the turmoil of the time? Philosophic studies were narrowed to ethics, logic, and physics in their practical bearing. How much narrower, then, the scope of the intellectual life of this time than that of those men of retired leisure, Plato and Aristotle!
Nor is the fundamental problem different when in the second part of this period we enter the great sweep of the religious current. The rise of religious ideals and the shift from ethics to religion was only the presentation of the practical problem of living with a different emphasis. Man was now in the dazzling glory of the empire, but that empire was unable to compensate the individual for the loss of his political importance. Rome had given to its conquered peoples an organized legal unity, but no spiritual ideal. It had none to offer. The individual was the least important factor in the organization. The present life offered little hope to the individual, except in the light of a future life. Practical wisdom thus became that which took account of the rewards and punishments that would come in the life beyond.
The Hellenic-Roman Period is kaleidoscopic and bewildering in its shiftings; but amid them all is this one conscious problem: “Show us the man who is sure of his happiness, whatever the accidents of the world may bring to him.”
The Centres of Hellenism.
1. Athens. With the overflow of Hellenism to the east and west the active history of Athens had ceased, but she became venerated for what she had been. Greece became hallowed and Athens became the shrine of Greece in the imaginations of men. Although the city was brutally ravished, she exercised a charm over the human mind for eight hundred years after Alexander. Athens remained the intellectual centre through the entire period. It became the conservative university town, where philosophy and rhetoric were taught. It is remarkable how many Oriental philosophers came to Athens to teach, how many youths from the whole world came to be taught. The rhetorical schools, such as that of Isocrates, did much toward making Athens the centre of culture, and they offered for many years the highest practical training to Greek, Roman, and Oriental. Besides the rhetorical were the philosophical or dialectical schools, which debated privately questions of speculative metaphysics. These did not offer public training, but groups of students were taught in the grounds attached to gymnasia. Four principal philosophical schools were thus formed,—the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Porch of the Stoics, and the Gardens of Epicurus. In the first two we have had especial interest in the previous period. All four, and especially the Stoic and Epicurean schools, will engage our attention in this period. They are known in history as “the Schools.” (See map for their location in Athens.) There were many minor schools in Athens which later became religious cults. These Schools lost their original interest in speculative inquiry, and in this period devoted themselves to the exposition of the teaching of their respective founders on ethical lines. The University of Athens was built upon the four Schools. Its chairs were endowed by Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century A. D. It grew to have an elaborate organization. It was abolished by Justinian in 529 A. D.
2. Alexandria. There were many other centres of Hellenism and of other learning at this time,—Rhodes, Antioch, Alexandria, Pergamos, Tarsus,—but none of these could be said to rival Athens in the veneration of men. Some were much more active and creative than Athens. Alexandria surpassed Athens and all other cities as the centre of the natural sciences in the Ethical Period and of religions in the Religious Period. Here, too, rather than at Athens, were to be found the real interpreters of Plato and Aristotle. Nothing in ancient times can be compared to the wonders of the museum of Alexandria, which was its university. Scholars of every nation were entertained here at the public expense. A vast botanical garden, a zoölogical collection, an anatomical museum, an astronomical observatory, a library of seven hundred thousand volumes were here. Here Euclid (290 B. C.) wrote his geometry, Eratosthenes pursued his astronomical, geographical, and historical labors, Apollonius wrote his treatise on conic sections; and here were made the observations that led to the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Here Ptolemy and his school formulated the system of astronomy which was authoritative for fifteen hundred years. Here the Christian theologians were educated, and from this city neo-Platonism sprang. Literature and art, history, philology and criticism flourished. The Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. All religions were welcomed. Buddhist, Jew, Greek, and Egyptian mingled, and comparative theology rose to be a science.
General Characteristics of the Ethical Period (322 B. C.–1 A. D.)—On the death of Aristotle the hitherto compact body of Greek thought disintegrated into its several elements. Theoretical and practical knowledge, which had been so successfully fused in the great systems of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, became separated. The whole tendency of the time was toward segregation.
1. The Abandonment of Metaphysical Speculation. The theoretical side of philosophy, which had been so successfully completed by the great Greek masters, now became subordinated and almost completely lost to view. Metaphysical speculation was neglected except as it threw light on the practical sciences—on ethics and the natural sciences. Knowledge was no longer loved for its own sake.
2. The Growth of Science. Since theory was regarded as completed, attention was naturally turned upon the details of erudition and the specializing of science. The natural sciences survived the systems of philosophy because of their usefulness. There was great interest in investigations in mathematics, natural science, grammar, philology, literary history and general history—and all with very rich results. It was the time of commentaries, criticism, collaboration of the work of the past and completion of the special work begun by the past. By far the greater number of the so-called “philosophers” of this time are connected with special science and literature, and not with metaphysics.
It was in the Greek Islands and Egypt (Alexandria) that this advance was made. Nevertheless, it must be said that the advance in science was a good deal restricted. The empirical sciences are dependent on observation and experiment, and these opportunities were wanting at this time. Good progress was, however, made in mathematics and the sciences dependent on reasoning. Reasoning alone is incapable of advancing a science like physics, for physics depends on investigation. But even the prevalent skepticism of the time could not doubt the truths of mathematics.
3. Ethics became the Central Interest. For the first time in the history of European thought ethics was no longer a part of politics. In the time of the autonomous Greek states ethics and politics were two sides of the same question both in theory and practice. Ethics and politics were not disjoined even by the Sophists, who nevertheless paved the way for the divorce of the two. Now for the first time ethical questions have become such that the individual must disregard the iron-bound political situation and answer them entirely with reference to himself. The decadent Greek state was no longer a moral entity in the eyes of the people, nor could the concentration of government in Rome raise the state to moral dignity. Moreover, life had become cosmopolitan. The nations were commingling. Ethics must meet the needs of men as human beings, and not as Athenians, Spartans, or Romans. Vices had become cosmopolitan and virtues must needs be cosmopolitan also. But cosmopolitanism is in the last analysis only individualism. The man who conceives his duty so large that it embraces the whole world is usually cold to any special interests except his own. The Roman dictators and afterwards the emperor were the personification of this cosmopolitan individualism which the subjects imitated so far as they could.
Thus the public life was in danger of being swamped by private interests and mere enjoyment, by gain and the struggle for existence. The old belief in the gods, the vigorous political activity for great ends, the pleasure in free scientific inquiry had disappeared. The only refuge for the reflective mind was within itself and the study of its own moral problems. Yet for this a definite science of ethics was necessary, if the individual was to be systematically independent of external things. Plato and Aristotle had prepared the way for such retirement, and the tendency toward ethical separation from the world of political events was an aspect of the cosmopolitanism of the time. Ethical individuality and cosmopolitanism go together. The development of the inner life belongs to those individuals who dwell together in spiritual community. The same cosmopolitanism was sought by the skeptics of the period through the abandonment of all knowledge.
The Schools. The beginning of the Ethical Period is marked by the rise of the Schools into prominence, the end of that period by the fusion of the Schools with one another through either eclecticism or skepticism. At the beginning of the period each School had its distinctive doctrine and was in open controversy with the others; at the end their doctrines were much alike. The Epicurean School was an exception, for it always remained isolated from the other Schools. While each School had a host of notable representatives, it would be difficult to find a creative thinker among them.
MAP OF ATHENS, SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE FOUR SCHOOLS
(The Academy was three quarters of a mile from the city, the Lyceum just outside the city, while the Porch was a colonnade on the market place (Agora). The location of the Gardens is not precisely known, but it was on the road to the Academy, just inside the walls.)
We have already given the names of the four Schools: the Stoic or the Porch, the Epicurean or the Gardens, the Aristotelian (Peripatetic) or the Lyceum, the Platonic or the Academy. The Stoic and Epicurean are called the New Schools in contrast with the Lyceum and the Academy, which are called the Old Schools. The New Schools were of Asiatic rather than Greek origin, and the Old Schools departed very much from the teaching of their founders; so that we find a very different kind of philosophy taught in all four Schools from that taught by the great Greek Systematizers. All the Schools were Sophistic rather than Socratic, and may be characterized as the revival of Greek Sophistry. Besides these Schools there was the group of Skeptics, which cannot be properly called a School, for from the nature of its doctrine it could not form an organization. In influence upon the period, the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics are the most important. They eclipsed the Academy and Lyceum because with partisan clearness they could formulate the attitude of the age. The Stoic School made the most important contribution to succeeding history. The Epicurean School had the most numerous following. Although the four Schools were not endowed until the Empire, their life was most vigorous before the Empire during the Ethical Period. Succession in leadership of the Schools cannot be completely traced—even that of the Academy shows great gaps. All record of leadership in the Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean Schools stops at the close of this period.
The Old Schools—The Academy and the Lyceum. The Academy and Lyceum have a history which in these respects is the same: (1) both abandoned the ideal of an ethical society and turned to that of individual happiness; (2) both deviated to Skepticism; (3) both afterward had a reaction from Skepticism; (4) both developed the Sophistic teaching rather than that of their founders; (5) both were in common opposition to the New Schools.
1. The Academy. There were three Academies after Plato—called three, because of the difference in their doctrines. Perhaps it is better to say that there were three successive epochs of the Academy.
(a) The Older Academy, lasting about seventy years, from 347 B. C. to 280 B. C. The successive leaders of this were Speusippus, the nephew of Plato (d. 339 B. C.), Heracleides of Pontus, Xenocrates (d. 314 B. C.), Polemo, and Crates. This Academy emphasized at first the tendency begun by Plato in the Laws toward the Pythagorean numbers, and later yielded to the contemporary interest in morals.
(b) The Middle Academy, lasting about one hundred and fifty years, from 280 B. C. to 129 B. C. Of this epoch Arcesilaus and Carneades were the most prominent leaders. This Academy was a form of Skepticism.
(c) The New Academy, lasting three hundred years from 120 B. C. to 200 A. D. Among its leaders were Philo of Larissa, who was at Rome in 87 B. C., and Antiochus of Ascalon, who had Cicero as a pupil in Athens in 79 and 78 B. C. This epoch of the Academy represented a return to the dogmatism of Plato, but it shows the contemporary eclectic tendency by its including elements of Stoic and neo-Platonic teachings.
On the whole, the several epochs of the Academy failed to represent Plato’s theory of the Ideas. The Academy was at first a School of practical ethics, then a Skepticism, then an eclecticism. It was related to Plato as the lesser-Socratic schools were to Socrates. The true developer of Plato was Aristotle and not the Academies.
2. The Lyceum. From the death of Aristotle to 200 A. D. the Lyceum was represented by individuals. The pupils of Aristotle were distinguished from the master himself in being scientific specialists. Theophrastus (370–287 B. C.), who followed Aristotle as leader of the Lyceum, was the most complete representative of Aristotle, and an attempt to drive out the Schools in Athens in 306 B. C. failed solely by reason of the respect in which he was held. His significance lay in natural science, and his two preserved botanical works are of great importance. Eudemus of Rhodes studied history, mathematics, and astronomy. Aristoxenes studied music, ethics, psychology, and history. Dicæarchus showed the first yielding to the contemporary ethical interest by writing history on its practical side. Science was continued by the Aristotelians in Sicily, Alexandria, and the Mediterranean islands. At Athens the School was most interested in logic, dialectics, and eristics.
The history of the Lyceum was similar to that of the Academy. At first it was centred in Theophrastus, the brilliant disciple of the founder,—an administrator who knew how to give an eminent position to the Lyceum in the intellectual life of Athens. This was followed by the naturalism and pantheism of Strato. The following generations of scholarchs were absorbed in empirical investigations. Then, as in the Academy, came the reaction back to the original purpose of the founder of the Lyceum. This occurred under Andronicus (about 70 B. C.), the eleventh head of the School, and under him the original teachings of Aristotle were reproduced and defended. This went on for several centuries, until the School was merged in neo-Platonism.
The New Schools—The Epicureans and the Stoics. The Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics represent the dogmatic side of this period more truly than the Platonists and Aristotelians, for they give a radical expression to its social aspects. The Epicureans had less philosophical originality; but their doctrine had been born mature in their founder, and had in consequence a unity and compactness. Stoicism, on the other hand, was an eclecticism composed of the successive philosophizings of its champions through many centuries. Stoicism was represented by many independent and notable thinkers, while Epicureanism had only one original thinker,—its founder, Epicurus. Stoicism developed by changing its essentials, while Epicureanism could change only in its unessentials. Stoicism may be said to have been the characteristic philosophy of this period, from the fact that it was created and developed in Athens on the principles of Attic philosophy by men who had originated in the mixed races of the East, and by the fact that it was easily accepted and developed by the Romans. Consistent with the spirit of the Hellenic-Roman Period, it was by nature an eclecticism that became more eclectic; and as time went on its teaching approached that of the Academy and Lyceum (second century B. C.). Epicureanism, however, always remained Epicureanism. Both Stoicism and Epicureanism were centred at Athens. Epicurus opened his School in the Gardens in 307 B. C., and Zeno began his lectures in the Porch in 294 B. C. Both schools were introduced into Rome in the middle of the second century B. C., or just before the end of the Ethical Period.
Epicureanism in Rome could easily be perverted into an excuse for the luxurious tendencies of the time, and since it advocated absolute government it voiced the feeling of the new Empire—of the Emperor and the people. As a philosophy it was opportune and popular and at the same time easily misunderstood. It made no demands upon its disciples. On the other hand, Stoicism was a discipline and demanded intellectual acumen. Its insensibility to art and culture was an insuperable obstacle to its progress in Greece, but on this account it found congenial soil in Roman society. It made rapid progress among the noble families, and was especially identified with those patrician reactionaries who stood for the old régime of the Republic.
We are not surprised to find that the Stoics and Epicureans were violently opposed to each other. They were the New Schools and contesting the same ground for favor. They had the same aim and, with so much in common, their differences were naturally accentuated. In an age which Adam Smith has likened to the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, they sought as rivals to offer as an ideal the individual independent of his surroundings. The Stoic presented one means of attaining this ideal and the Epicurean another. Both tried to substitute a philosophic creed for the old religion. And the crowds that still went to the Academy and Lyceum, and were taught the old dogmatism, must have looked askance at these new dogmatic Schools. Those crowds had become second-rate men. The New Schools had at first fewer numbers, but deeper thinkers. The Greek pupils in the New Schools listened to foreigners teaching strange creeds in strange tongues. But these new rivals made their way. Not only at Athens, but at Corinth, Elis, Colophon, and Heraclea in Pontus the elegant Platonic style was being superseded by the crude aphorisms of Epicurus and the clumsy arguments of Zeno.
It will be asked, How far did these doctrines during these eight hundred years permeate the people? Did the New Schools reach the rank and file of the people to the same degree that the Sophistic teachings reached the Greeks? Are we to suppose that Stoicism and Epicureanism were common and popular philosophies? By no means. These philosophies reached the people of the Roman world no farther than Greek culture permeated Roman society. Stoicism was consciously taken up by the large patrician class. The patricians were the cultivated Romans; and Stoicism has so much in it like the Roman gravitas that it formulated for the patricians their attitude in this hopeless time. Epicureanism, on the other hand, in its pure form as Epicurus taught it, or later as Lucretius poetically expressed it, could find less favor in Rome. But Epicureanism was easily perverted, and no doubt the educated voluptuaries of Rome would find in the vitiated doctrine a support and excuse for their excesses.
A Summary of the Agreements and Differences of the Stoics and Epicureans.
Their Agreements.
1. Both subordinated theory to practice.
2. Both had the same purpose in their practical philosophy:
(a) to gain peace of mind for the individual,
(b) to gain independence of the world for the individual.
Their Differences.
| The Stoics. | The Epicureans. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Universal law is supreme. | The individual is supreme. |
| 2. | Man is a thinking being. | Man is a feeling being. |
| 3. | Independence is obtained by suppressing the personal feelings. | Independence is obtained by idealizing the feelings through serenity. |
| 4. | The Stoics were religious, | The Epicureans were anti-religious, |
| yet both schools accepted the popular gods. | ||
| 5. | The world is a moral order. | The world is a mechanical order. |
| 6. | The universal determines the individual. | The universal is the result of the functioning of the individual. |
| 7. | The world is the expression of an immanent reason. | The world is the combination of atoms. |
CHAPTER X
EPICUREANISM
The Life of Epicurus (341–270 B. C.). Epicurus was born in Samos in Asia Minor. He was a school-teacher in Mitylene and Lampsacus, and in 307 B. C. he established in Athens his Philosophical School, in a garden within the walls on the road to the Academy (see map). His School was thereafter called the Gardens. He claimed to have been self-taught, and he probably did not have a thorough education. He did, however, possess great personal charm and, as his doctrine made few demands upon its disciples and expressed the refined and delicate hedonism of the time, it spread very wide. His disciples held him in great reverence, and long after his death the image of his personality was a living influence with them. Indeed, it was the personal work of Epicurus that was the supreme influence with the sect. His formulas passed on from generation to generation and were called “Golden Maxims.”34 He wrote three hundred separate treatises, and in the amount of his writings was exceeded in antiquity only by the Stoic, Chrysippus. His great work, On Nature, consisted of thirty-seven books. The other Schools joined in a bitter attack upon him, and in modern times he has been called Socrate doublé d’un Voltaire. Since neither polytheism nor Christianity had any reason for preserving his writings, they have been almost entirely lost. Some have been found in Herculaneum, and many more are thought to be still in that buried city. The mother of Epicurus was a priestess, and her superstitions probably set him against the superstitions of his age. His later acquaintance with the philosophy of Democritus gave him a scientific basis for his aggression against all religions.
The Epicureans. The Epicurean body was a guild or sect that seemed to have been little affected by the vicissitudes of time. The Epicureans proselyted vigorously, closely organized their society, and extended it throughout Greece. It was a state within a state. With a fixed constitution it was held together by itinerant preaching, correspondence, and material assistance. It had an esprit de corps, and like religious communities it brought together into one organization the individuals that had been scattered by the breaking up of political institutions. The School had special protection from the Roman emperors and existed as late as the fourth century A. D., having outlived all the other systems. It had some famous literary representatives,—Metrodorus, Colotes, Philodemus,—but especially the Roman poet Lucretius, who popularized the doctrine for the Romans. Amafinius introduced Epicureanism into Rome during the middle of the second century B. C., and the teaching was received with great favor. Its numerous disciples in all antiquity changed the doctrine only in its unessentials. The charges of immorality and licentiousness are not true of the teaching or of the practices of the founder or of the early members of the School.
Some Types of Hedonism,—Aristippus, Epicurus, and Rousseau. Epicureanism was not a philosophy of pleasure for people without ideals or who were merely seeking indulgence. The question that Epicurus asked was this: What enduring pleasure is possible to a man in these days of turmoil? He tried to give a rational answer to those of his day who wished to live and enjoy. His aim was to free man from responsibility in his share of the world’s work and to provide for him a life of serenity. The pleasure theory of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, was very different. Aristippus, a voluptuary in a luxurious city, presented a pleasure theory for the few who have fortunes. It is hardly more than a grading of pleasures and the setting up of a criterion of their selection. Epicurus goes deeper than that. His pleasure theory is for the few, not because they are fortunate, but because they are wise; not because they have fortunes to gratify their passions, but because they are independent of all fortune. The Cyrenaic was a man of the world; the Epicurean was in the world, but not of it.
There is a superficial resemblance between the teaching of Epicurus and the message of Rousseau to the French people of the eighteenth century. Both sought an ideal of enduring pleasure. Both would discard the artificialities of society. But Rousseau was a political reformer and attempted to find his ideal in a newly constructed society. Epicurus, on the other hand, was no political reformer, but would find his ideal in society as it existed. Rousseau appealed to the primitive feelings. He felt “the call of the wild.” Epicurus appealed to the refined and derivative feelings. He had no aggressive propaganda. He aimed at no external reform. His ideal was peace, and not the sword.
The Epicurean Ideal. The central principle of Epicurus is that pleasure is a good and pain an evil. In this he was in agreement with Aristippus, and from this position he never receded. He offered no proof of this, but rested his central principle upon the conviction that men pursue pleasure and avoid pain. He was convinced of the biological fact. But he was not unobservant from the beginning that the subject was complex. He saw that the individual has to make a selection of pleasure and often has to choose pain for the sake of a greater pleasure. Pleasure is the only good, but Epicurus asks further, What is pleasure? He finds that he must give a content to pleasure and evaluate the pleasures in the interests of pleasure itself. This was to Epicurus no moral appraisal, but with reference to the pleasantest possible life.
Of the two qualities of pleasure Epicurus valued its duration and showed his advance over the Cyrenaics, who had valued its intensity. It was on this account that the Epicureans disclaimed all relationship with the Cyrenaics, the earlier school. The difference is certainly a radical one between them: to Epicurus true pleasure is that which endures; to Aristippus it is that which is most intense, however fleeting. There is this to be said of the Cyrenaic theory: it could be easily understood. Aristippus could tell exactly what he meant by pleasure. It is this or that gratification of sense. It includes every positive pleasure, and that which is intensest is best. One always knows when he is enjoying, and in flitting from pleasure to pleasure he knows when he is intensely enjoying. But the Cyrenaic presented no ideal. While the Epicurean theory is more difficult to understand, it is more mature and more profound because it presents a well-conceived ideal. Indeed, the farther we follow Epicurus along this line of his pursuit of the ideal of lasting pleasure, the more are we impressed with his contribution to our knowledge of the nature of pleasure.
In this connection Epicurus shows his comprehensive grasp of the subject in determining what are the lasting pleasures. Although he was a materialist he regarded the pleasures of the mind as superior to those of the body. The inner pleasures, the spiritual joys, the control of the mind so that it could enjoy without indulgence—these were to Epicurus the enduring pleasures. The pleasures of sense are primary, for, in the last analysis, the mental life is a combination of sensations, and sensations are only material motions; nevertheless the secondary and derivative pleasures of the mind were superior, according to Epicurus, because they had duration. This estimate of the superiority of the mental pleasures was probably reinforced by two other reasons: such pleasures were possessed by Epicurus; and such a doctrine was in accord with the Greek æsthetic ideal of self-enjoyment of the refined egoist.
The most permanent state of mind is called by Epicurus independence of the world, on the one hand, and emotionlessness, on the other. These are the positive and negative sides of one and the same thing—the Epicurean ideal of pleasure. In ancient times the conception of the “affections,” “passions,” or “emotions” included all states of feeling and will in which man is dependent on the outer world. To be emotionless is to be independent of the world. The Epicurean word is ataraxia, which is variously translated as serenity, peace, repose, imperturbability. Since man has no control over the world without him, he must control its effects within himself. These effects are the feelings and desires which are by nature only mental disturbances. In mastering these he becomes independent of the world.
If one will scrutinize his life, he will find, according to Epicurus, that his experiences form a stream of mental disturbances. These may be divided into two classes,—desires and positive pleasures. Desires are wants and want is pain. Pain is therefore exciting. Positive pleasure presupposes desire and want, and such pleasure is also an excitement,—the excitement that accompanies the removal of want. The positive pleasures are not, therefore, the goal of independence of the outer world. There is another kind of pleasure—the pleasure of repose. Epicurus recognizes therefore both the pleasure of motion and the pleasure of repose, but they do not have the same importance in his system. Repose is the goal of all our experiences. It is a neutral state, a state of freedom from bodily pain and mental excitement. There is nothing higher than such a neutral state. We cannot advance beyond it. If we seek new pleasures by gratifying new desires, we are only returning to the old round of want, desire, and the pleasurable excitement of removing the want. The pleasure of repose is the only escape from this round of experiences. Emotionlessness is the maximum pleasure—it is the repose in independence of the world. Any deviation from it may vary but it will not increase our pleasure.
This ideal of Epicurus looks very much like the Cynic doctrine of absence of wants as constituting virtue and happiness. But Epicurus is far from renouncing pleasure. He is no ascetic. On the contrary, the repose of the Epicurean will be the greater in proportion to the compass of his needs that are satisfied. But he needs insight into any given situation to tell him what positive pleasures should be encouraged. Epicurus thus distinguishes three kinds of wants and their attendant positive pleasures: (1) wants natural and indispensable—without the satisfaction of which we cannot exist; (2) wants artificial and dispensable, which ought always to be disregarded; (3) wants natural and dispensable—the great mass of wants which lie between the two other classes. Insight is necessary to decide about this third class. In case of necessity they can be renounced, but since they give happiness, the Wise Man will seek to satisfy them as far as possible.
There are three steps leading to Epicurean happiness: (1) the desire or the pain of unsatisfied craving; (2) the positive pleasure that removes the pain of unsatisfied desire; (3) ataraxia, the repose of the soul or true happiness.
The Place of Virtue in Epicureanism. Epicurus agreed with the strictest Greek moralists that virtue and happiness go together. His opponents had to testify to the beneficial effects of his teaching upon the character of his disciples. Yet his conception of the place of virtue in life is in direct conflict with Stoicism. He felt that the Stoic conception of virtue for its own sake is an ideal so imaginary that it lacks all incentive to action. Pleasure, on the other hand, seemed to him to be a concrete and real object. It can be given a definite content. Virtue had for Epicurus a value only as a means to happiness. Moreover, virtue by itself is not necessarily accompanied by happiness, but only when it is employed as a condition to happiness. Thus wisdom may be employed to gain the pleasure of liberation from the fear of the gods; self-control may be employed in order to get the maximum of happiness.
The Epicurean Wise Man. To what classes of people could this Epicurean ideal appeal? Is it an ideal possible only to the favorites of fortune, wealth, and rank? As presented by Epicurus it was not conditioned by external circumstances of any sort and its aim was to transcend all conditions. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the theory was restricted to those who had the desire to adopt it. On the whole, the unreflecting common people of that time were not as a matter of fact influenced by the Epicurean philosophy. The proof of this is the ease with which it was degraded into a simple pleasure theory without an ideal. Epicureanism as presented by its author was not an excuse for the voluptuary or the prodigal, although it was easily corrupted into that. It was, however, a philosophy of the individual. The individual must rely upon his own common sense as to what among the particular satisfactions will give him independence of the world. Sometimes repose is attained by the satisfaction of all wants; sometimes the satisfactions needed are few because the wants are few. True pleasure is possible to all reflective souls. “When you come,” says Seneca, “to the gardens where the words are inscribed: Friend, here it will be well for you to abide; here pleasure is the highest good;—there will meet you the keeper of the place, a hospitable kindly man who will set before you a dish of barley porridge and plenty of water and say, Have you not been well entertained? These gardens do not provoke hunger, but quench it; they do not cause a greater thirst by the drinks they afford.... In this pleasure I have grown old.” Man can use much, but he does not need much. Even life itself under extreme circumstances is not necessary. The pleasures to be sought are the permanent and gentle. In one place Epicurus says with a somewhat forced sentiment that the Wise Man on the rack will smile in the midst of torture and say, “How sweet!”
The Wise Man accepts the established order and accommodates himself to it. He is not like the Stoic Wise Man, indifferent to all pleasures, but he is nevertheless independent of them. He is superior to the world, a king and a god. Accidents cannot disturb him, for his virtuous happiness lies within himself. He cannot control the world without, but he can control the world within himself. He can be happy with few or many satisfactions, and he is master over the world if he is master of the effects of the world upon himself. To rest unmoved in one’s inner self—that is the Epicurean ideal of the Wise Man. In contrast to the Cyrenaic happiness, the Epicurean happiness seems passive; in contrast to the Stoic happiness it is satisfaction.
The Epicurean Wise Man in Society. Nevertheless the Wise Man is only a spectator of the world. He does not enter the world’s work nor does he enlist as a soldier to fight its moral battles. His individual independence gives a peculiar character to his social relations. He will have no ties on account of their complications. Moreover, his inner world offers him no compensation for his loss of social relationship, except that the good within is strong and the evil weak. He looks upon political government as a matter of selfish convenience. He is opposed to civic life, and therefore a supporter of absolute government. He refuses the responsibility of marriage, but accepts friendship as the only worthy social relationship, and only because friendship is of mutual advantage. Friendship means intellectual intercourse, compassion, and forgiveness. While there were many famous Epicurean friendships, one must admit that the Epicurean took an unfair advantage of the state. His happiness presupposed a highly developed civilization of refined tastes and noble sentiments. He is a parasite upon the community and appropriates the labor of others. The Epicurean ideal offers much to the individual, but nothing to society as a means of spiritual productivity.
The Great Obstacles to Happiness. To universalize pleasure, however paradoxical it may seem, is to set up an individualism. It is to abandon all the claims of the society of other beings upon us. The logic of any pleasure theory is anarchism. But Epicurus is no anarchist, for anarchism would be too disturbing to repose. Epicurus stopped far short of interfering with political conditions. His teaching did not have as its end a logical theory, but a practical accomplishment. He therefore accommodated his theory to the practical circumstances of his time. He pointed out that in the seething times of the third century B. C. the individual could be happy if he banished from his world two obstacles. These were religion and culture.
To Epicurus the sorrow in man’s heart and the evil in his practices are mainly due to religion. The chief source of the wretchedness of the world is to be found in the crushing fears of religious belief. Epicurus has in mind the exaggerated ceremonies and mystical beliefs of the Orient, where his mother had been a priestess. From this memory he was reacting. Religion pollutes men’s fancies, clouds the future with superstitious fears, and puts repose and happiness beyond our reach. In the first place, religion carries with it the fear of death. In modern times the idea of life after death is an added consolation. In the time of Epicurus death meant the giving up of the present life for a dim, sunless region of flitting shades bordering on the edge of Tartarus. No philosophical mind can be happy, according to Epicurus, if it contains the religious conception of death and the future life. Again, religion conceives the world of nature as created and operated by the gods. It is forever explaining nature-phenomena as miraculous and supernatural. The tranquil mind must believe in a nature world that is separated from miraculous intervention, and freed from oversight. The world must be a dependable world. Lastly, religion conceives of the gods as always busying themselves with the affairs of men. Men must secure their favor and avert their wrath by constant offerings. The religious man wastes his time and consumes his peace in the fear that the gods are not propitiated. The Epicurean seeks to build up the life of the individual. He seeks a tranquillity that is independent of everything. Religious belief with its interfering gods would thwart his ideal. Hence the chief concern of the Epicurean was to banish from life every conception of divine government. The gods exist, but they live quite apart from men. Their dwelling is in inter-stellar space amid the numberless worlds. They have nothing to do with the events of this world, but are only glorified actualizations of the philosophic ideal of soul-satisfying peace. The more the teleological conception of nature became the common ground of the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Porch, the more did the Epicureans isolate themselves by opposing the conception.
The other obstacle to the imperturbability of the soul is culture. The Stoics subordinated theory to practice but Epicurus went so far as to deprecate all culture. It was the philosophical protest of an Oriental against all for which Greece had stood. All knowledge is superfluous which does not promote happiness. Knowledge may indirectly promote happiness, and that is the best you can say of it. Epicurus therefore despised the researches of the grammarians, the lore of history, the science of mathematics, the theory of music, poetry, rhetoric, oratory, logic. Although he set greater store by the intellectual than the physical pleasures, he placed as little value on knowledge for its own sake as upon virtue for its own sake. This teaching of Epicurus in Athens betrays the change that had come over Athenian society. Plato, who had been the impersonation of Athenian culture, had been dead not more than thirty years.
Epicurus’ Conception of the Physical World.—Qualified Atomism. To the cursory reader the science of physics seems to occupy a large place in the philosophy of Epicurus, and its presence appears inconsistent with his polemic against culture. Upon further reading one finds that physics, too, should be merely a servant of the happiness of the individual. We need knowledge of physics because the knowledge of natural causes will free us from the fears attending religion. Physics has no independent importance.
Epicurus undertook to support his doctrine of individualism by the scientific theory of Democritus. The materialistic theory of the great Abderite seems to loom large in the exposition of Epicurus. But Epicurus was not interested in the science of physics—not even in the physics of Democritus. He did not build his theory on the teaching of Democritus, but on the contrary he used the Democritan doctrine to support his theory of moral conduct. Epicurus needed a well-authenticated theory. On account of the influence of Lucretius’ poem, Epicurus has been called in modern times the scientist of antiquity. But his only contribution to science was that, finding the atomism of Democritus ready at hand although unpopular, he made it popular by adjusting it to his own purposes.
The Democritan conception that Being is matter consisting of innumerable uncreated and indestructible atoms furnished Epicurus this support for his moral atomism. He followed Democritus in his analysis of psychological, physiological, and astronomical phenomena—all are atoms in combinations. But he lacked scientific insight and the Democritan doctrine was emasculated in his hands. The central and fundamental principle of Democritus’ theory was the universal reign of law. This the Stoics adopted and this Epicurus neglected. Epicurus was impressed by the changes of the atoms in the Democritan theory; the Stoics by the law of such change.
This appears in the teaching of Epicurus in two ways. The first example is in his explanation of the origin of the cosmos. Democritus had conceived that irregular motion was an inherent quality of the atoms and that the universe was produced by their combinations in a purely mechanical way. Epicurus conceived that the original movement of the atoms was in a straight line from above downwards. This he called the “rain of atoms.” To explain their intermingling he conceived them to be endowed with volition by which they arbitrarily deviated from the direct fall. Secondly, this physical theory of Epicurus would be unimportant except that it afforded him a basis for his theory of the individual as possessing free will. The doctrine of freedom of the will had been since Aristotle a presupposition indispensable to the doctrine of moral accountability among the Greeks. The Stoic doctrine of fate is an exception. But determinism was opposed to Epicurus’ conception of the Wise Man as an independent individual. The human will is self-determined, and Epicurus even said that he preferred the illusions of religion to a belief in our slavery to fate. He classed freedom and chance together as uncaused occurrence, and out of the combination built his conception of freedom. The uncaused functioning of the will in man is the same as the causeless deviation of the atoms. Freedom is the choice between different possibilities and is determined by no cause. The Stoics alone among the philosophers of this time are the forerunners of the study of physics.
Epicurus introduced the conception of volition of the atoms to account for the origin of the cosmos. From that point he conceived the world to develop in a mechanical way. Teleology in the nature world was repugnant to him. By modifying the Democritan physics, he thus succeeded in establishing the independence of the individual in the social world and, on the other hand, removing the gods from interfering in the physical world. This seemed to Epicurus to afford an absolute deliverance from superstition. The important points of the physical theory of Epicurus are these: (1) the freedom of the atoms in motion; (2) and yet their mechanical development; (3) the atomic character of the gods; (4) the scattering of the atoms of the soul at death, which frees us from the fear of Hades.
CHAPTER XI
STOICISM
The Position of Stoicism in Antiquity. The Stoic School had a long history, and for five hundred years it was well-nigh the dominating system of thought. Its importance is shown in the attacks on all sides by which it was honored. It was subjected to a continued critical testing by the Peripatetics, Epicureans, Skeptics, and the Academy. It was without doubt the most comprehensive School of the Hellenic-Roman Period, and numbered as its adherents the most brilliant personalities of the time. In its importance to history its only rival was neo-Platonism, which came after it. Stoicism accomplished much toward solving the problem of life, for it is one of the great inner, spiritual movements of humanity. It was a system of philosophy raised upon the ruins of polytheism—a religion for the educated classes, who tried to harmonize the old religion with the new philosophic needs. In the early Christian centuries it led the moral reform by reviving the classic ideals. It became a retreat into the invisible order, a solace amid unrest. Particularly at that time the Stoic felt the emptiness of human life, for his possession of eternity made earthly existence seem as nothing. Yet it was a movement of subjective reflection and individual motive; but as such it could not prove itself adequate when the structure of Roman society broke down.
But we must not take the Roman Stoics as the representatives of the sect. The Stoics stood for more than moral reflection. The great achievement came from the first three leaders—the achievement of giving a scientific basis to morals. The Stoics made ethics an independent science. Such an elaborate system of morals as that of the Stoics had never before existed. Stoicism was morality with a theoretical foundation, and the foundation was the most imposing part of the edifice. This appeared in Roman jurisprudence, and in later times in Grotius, Descartes, Spinoza, the Calvinists and Puritans, and in Kant and Fichte. The writings of the individual Stoics have become a part of the world’s literature, and the Stoic view of life has maintained itself as a dignified and independent type.
The Three Periods of Stoicism. The five hundred years of the history of the Stoic School are usually divided into three periods. The first is about 90 years long, in which the doctrine was formulated; the second is 200 years long, when the doctrine was modified; the third was 200 years long, when it became a popular moral philosophy. The first two periods were theoretical, the third was practical.
1. Period of Formulation of the Doctrine (294 B. C.–206 B. C.), sometimes called the period of Cynical Stoicism. This period contains the three great leaders: Zeno (340–265 B. C.), Cleanthes, leader of the School from 264 to 232 B. C., and Chrysippus (280–206 B. C.). Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Seleucia, and Antipater of Tarsus were other important representatives.
2. Period of Modified Stoicism (206 B. C.–1 A. D.). This was the period of transition. This period shows a modification of the original severe Cynical character of the doctrine and also the spread of Stoicism to Rome. This modification shows an approach to Plato and Aristotle. The most important representative of this period is Panætius (180–110 B. C.), who introduced the doctrine into Rome through his friendship with Scipio Africanus. Other eminent Stoics of this period were Posidonius and Boëthus of Sidon.
3. Period of Roman Stoicism (1–200 A. D.). During this period Stoicism became a popular moral philosophy. The theoretic teachings of the first two periods were successfully translated by the Roman Stoics in an impressive way into practical observations. Furthermore, Stoicism was being inspired with the rising religious feeling so that it expressed the noblest moral sentiments of antiquity. The chief representatives were Seneca (4–65 A. D.), Epictetus (living 90 A. D.) the philosophic slave, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 A. D.). Other Stoics of this period were L. Annæus Cornutus, M. Annæus Lucanus, Persius, and M. Musonius Rufus.
The Stoic Leaders. One of the striking features of the Stoic School is that its leaders were not pure Greeks. Nearly all the members before the Christian era belong by birth to the mixed races of Asia Minor and the eastern archipelago. Moreover, the later Stoics were mainly Romans, led by the Phrygian, Epictetus. The Stoics who were Greeks were third or fourth rate men. The Stoic School contained so many eminent thinkers that its doctrine was not framed once and for all, like the Epicurean doctrine. During the five hundred years from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, theoretic changes went on within the School, and the changes were rather modifications than development. Fundamentally, Stoicism remained the same, for it was a religious attitude of mind.
Athens was the abiding-place of the Stoic School, but Athens of that day had little to say to it except to receive it. The great Stoic leaders, the first three Stoics, like the three tragic poets, formed a group that is rarely equaled. They were Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus. Zeno and Chrysippus came from Cyprus, and Cleanthes came from Assos, not far from Troy. Cyprus, Lycia, and Pisidia showed a strong inclination for the Stoic teaching. Tarsus, which is in Cilicia, had a strong Stoic School, and its influence on the training of St. Paul is seen in his theology.
The founding of the Stoic School was the result of the experiences of Zeno of Citium. Having lost much of his wealth in commerce, he turned to philosophy at Athens. Impressed with the character of Socrates, he attached himself successively to the Cynic, Megarian, and Platonic Schools, but without much satisfaction. He made himself master of the teachings of these Schools, and then founded a School of his own. It is said that when he asked for admittance to the Academy, Polemo, the leader, replied, “I am no stranger to your Phœnician art, Zeno. I perceive your design is to creep slyly into my garden and steal away my fruit.” In 294 B. C. he began to teach in the Painted Porch (see map, p. 219), a painted colonnade in the Athenian market-place. The School thereafter went by the name of Stoa, or the Porch. His contemporary antagonists were Arcesilaus in the Academy, and Epicurus. Zeno’s reputation throughout Greece was very high and well deserved. He was a parsimonious man, simple and rude spoken. He used a bad dialect, foreign words, and taught a strange doctrine. He suffered a slight wound and, taking it as a hint of destiny, committed suicide, saying, “I am coming, Earth, why do you call me?”
Stoicism did not flourish under Cleanthes (who was leader of the School for thirty-two years), although to-day he is the best known of these three leaders on account of his Hymn to Zeus. He was originally a pugilist, and was so poor that he had to work as a water-carrier by night in order to attend the lectures of Zeno by day. He is said to have had a heavy mind, but it was nevertheless the mind of an inspired prophet and a thoughtful man of science. When Cleanthes received the Stoic doctrines from Zeno, they were still plastic. He made them monistic and pantheistic, and introduced the doctrine of “tension.”
Under Chrysippus (280–206 B. C.) Stoicism was revived and he saved it from extinction. Chrysippus was the systematizer of the School and its literary representative. He wrote five hundred and five separate treatises, three hundred of which were on logical subjects. He is said to have seldom let a day pass without writing five hundred lines. He was the moderating influence of the School, mediating between extremes and removing objections. He restated Zeno’s doctrines, but his discourses abound in curious subtleties rather than argument. He was a much more scholarly man than his predecessors, and passed for the most learned man in antiquity. “Give me doctrines,” he said to Cleanthes, “and I will find arguments for them.” His haughtiness created many adversaries, both in the Academy and among the Epicureans, and he had great contempt for men of rank. He said, “If I thought any philosopher excelled me, I would myself become his pupil.” It was a common saying in those days, “No Chrysippus, no Stoa.” In the hands of Chrysippus the Stoic teaching became a well-rounded system.
The Stoic Writings. Nearly all the writings of the early Stoics have been lost. Only fragments have been preserved from the writings of other men like Cicero, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Diogenes Laertius, and these men do not always distinguish between early and later Stoicism. The principal source of our knowledge of early Stoicism is Diogenes Laertius. The Hymn to Zeus of Cleanthes is the most noteworthy fragment extant of the early period. Of the later Stoics of the Empire many writings have been saved: the ethical treatises and epistles of Seneca, the Diatribes and Encheiridion of Epictetus, and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The later Stoic writings transmit the teaching of the earlier leaders modified by many foreign influences. Such second-hand authorities as Cicero, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus, and the Aristotelian commentators give reports so vitiated that it is doubtful if they report any element belonging to the earlier teaching. The doctrine of the Stoics, since the time of Chrysippus, however, is known beyond peradventure.
The Stoics and Cynics. The Stoics tried to build up the life of the soul after the pattern of the virtuous Wise Man, whose outlines they borrowed from the transfigured and lofty form of Socrates. (Noack.) Their teaching is not merely a refinement and advance over the Cynic School as Epicureanism had been to the Cyrenaic School. Stoicism and Epicureanism used their sources in different ways. The Stoic would give up more than the Epicurean, and the negative side of his teaching is therefore greater; but in recompense he offers more in the shape of a comprehensive metaphysics. The Cyrenaic doctrine of pleasure became the corner stone of Epicureanism. The Cynic sensualistic rigorism became in the Stoic teaching a negative and relatively unimportant doctrine. While the Stoic distinction of virtue was not unproductive, the most influential aspect of Stoicism was its dissemination of humane culture. Thus, in contrast with the Cynics, the Stoics had a deep interest in scientific theory. The Stoic, less than the Cynic, contrasted the individual with the world. The Stoics have a more intelligent, freer, and milder morality. To the Cynics, external things have no value; to the Stoics, they have both a positive and a negative value. Beneath these differences there is the same self-sufficiency in virtue, the same withdrawal within, the same moral strength of will, the same antithesis between good and evil. Stoicism was original, but not enough so to mark the beginning of a new epoch.
The Two Prominent Stoic Conceptions. There are two Stoic conceptions that rise prominently above all the rest of their teaching. One is the conception of personality, the other is the conception of Nature. Epicureanism built up the conception of personality, but it had no need of an objective principle of Nature; and indeed the Epicurean conception of personality seems to be only a clever adjustment and an avoidance of the problems of life, compared to the clear-cut, heroic, and vigorous Stoic conception of personality. Thus in Epicureanism there is one prominent conception, in Stoicism there are two.
These two Stoic principles stand side by side. The Stoic builds them up together, even though he fails to make them entirely compatible. All the essential difficulties and all the excellencies of Stoicism lie in the juxtaposition of the conceptions of personality and Nature. In early Stoicism each conception is stated with great vigor. In later Stoicism their harmony is approximated by the modification of each. The result was an ethical dualism and a metaphysical monism.
The Conception of Personality. Against Epicureanism the Stoic fought for the dignity of the soul. The ideal personality of the Wise Man is the central point in Stoicism. Even more than Aristotle did the Stoic emphasize the unity and independence of the individual soul as contrasted to its particular states. For the first time in European thought does the soul become an independent factor to be reckoned with. The Stoic picture of the ideal personality is of a life completely sundered from outward conditions, free from earthly trammels, but at the same time the organ of universal law. Contemporaries asked the Stoics, How can such an ideal be a person? How can he live among his fellow men? How can he reconcile himself to human want? After setting forth this ideal during the 175 years of their first period, it is not strange that they were finally forced to modify it in response to practical demands. At this point we shall consider the original portrayal of the Wise Man.
1. The Stoic Psychology. The Stoic built his conception of personality upon a deep psychological analysis. The soul in the body is like the pneuma in the world (see p. 255). Not only does the soul transform the excitations of the several sense organs into perceptions, but its distinguishing faculty is its power of transforming the excitations of the feelings into acts of will. This was called by the Stoics the assent of the reason, and is the distinguishing feature of the Stoic conception of personality. It established for the first time in history the independence of the personal soul. The Stoic felt keenly the antagonism between the reason and the senses, and he also felt that by estimating the senses as merely relative in value they would so much the more dignify the reason as the fundamental feature of the personality. While, therefore, all knowledge comes from the senses, the Stoic maintained that no knowledge exists in the senses by themselves. The assent of the reason is necessary to transform the sensations into true knowledge. The reason is not an aggregate of sensations, but an independent function of the personality. It transforms the sensations into perceptions, the perceptions into acts of will. The reason is therefore a kind of generating power of consciousness and is free from everything external. But in contrast to this free rational side is the irrational nature of man; for the reason is liable to suffer failure, when it allows itself to be hurried along to give assent to exciting causes. Then emotions arise, and emotions are failures, mental disturbances, and in chronic cases diseases. Man is not always able to defend himself against the excitations of his environment, but he can refuse to give the excitations his assent. He can refuse to allow the excitations to become emotions and to pour forth his life in passion. Man may be in the world and not of it. He may govern the world by controlling himself. The Wise Man is free from the emotions, and virtue consists in their absence. The virtuous man is self-sufficient in the proud consciousness that he can look upon pleasure as not a good and pain as not an evil.
What guide does the reason have in granting or refusing its assent to its perceptions from without? What is the criterion of the truth? The clearness of the perception—the clearness in the sense that the presentation lays hold of the mind and extorts its assent. The truth is the “irresistible presentation” or the “apprehending presentation.” Who can know the truth? The Wise Man. By what means? By sensation and preconception. By what sign? By the sign of its irresistible power. The Wise Man is perfectly free and perfectly necessitated—he never gives assent except to what constrains assent.
2. The Highest Good. What is then the Highest Good or happiness for such a personality? After such an analysis, what would the Stoic be likely to conceive to be the true ends of life? The very nature of the personality gives the answer. Personality is fundamentally rational activity which seeks to preserve itself and to gratify its own nature. The Highest Good is the law of its own rationality, and virtue consists in being rational. In reaching for the Highest Good man can transcend his particular faculties in his free obedience to his own reason; and the wholeness of his existence depends upon the wholeness of his deed. Thus is the inner activity whole in contrast to the partial outer activities. Inwardness attains complete independence and finds the depth of the soul. We are free and we are happy if the whole being goes out in contemplation of the world reason which is our reason, and if all the feelings that make us dependent on the world are excluded. Since the emotions place a false value on things, happiness demands a whole effort and ceaseless activity. We must not merely theorize, but thought must become conduct. Thought-action yields happiness. It does not matter whether man acts with reference to this or that, for external objects are neither good nor bad. The whole question is whether the reason controls the passions or not. If the reason controls, the end is good; if the passions control, the end is evil; all other ends are indifferent. The reason either does or does not rule, and an act is either good or not. Good is not relative, but absolute; and such relative matters as wealth, honor, and riches are matters of indifference. Even life itself is one of the indifferent things and may be taken when it does not serve the ends of reason. The Highest Good is that inner unity—that disposition—which is governed by a single principle.
The Stoic word for this ideal Good is apathy, just as the Epicurean word was ataraxy or imperturbability. Positively defined, it is virtue. Negatively defined, can we say it was passionlessness? This would not be quite correct. By apathy the Stoic means not absence of all feeling, but absence of control by the feelings. The Stoic was filled with joy, gratitude, serene confidence, and unwavering submission in regard to rational law. Apathy is not dull insensibility, but immovable firmness. It is absence of the emotions that render the man dependent on the world, but it is not absence of the reaching out of the soul for the divine. The Highest Good or Apathy is (1) intellectual resignation to the universe, (2) practical inner harmony, and (3) self-control. In seeking to be rational, man is following an impulse,—the impulse of self-preservation.
The Conception of Nature. In comparison with the Epicurean the position of the Stoic was peculiarly involved. The ideal imperturbability of the Epicurean was simple in so far that it required nothing beyond itself. It was an individual matter and varied with the individual. But the Stoic ideal personality is based upon the reason, that is eternally one and the same. What is this absolute principle that gives to the human reason its absoluteness? What is the extent of the law of the reason that the human reason itself implies? Thus the Stoic needed to supplement his conception of personality and the Epicurean did not. Because his individualism was more rigorous, it needed the more to be supported. The Stoic principle of morality had to have its foundation in the absolute nature of things. This foundation could not be the politico-moral principle of Greek national life, for that existed no longer. It could not be a transcendent, supersensuous, or incorporeal principle, for his Cynic inheritance would forbid his looking beyond experience. The supplementary absolute principle of the Stoics must be an immanent principle, a living power in the world. A pantheistic conception of Nature took its place side by side with the Stoic conception of personality, and this conception of Nature became the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. For this the Stoics adopted the Logos doctrine of Heracleitus, which will be recalled as the doctrine of primal matter as rational, just, and fateful changingness. The Stoics were reinforced in this by Aristotle’s teleological philosophy of nature. Yet they tried to overcome the dualism of matter and Form as it existed in Aristotle’s teaching, and one feels that the Stoic pantheism was a conscious and avowed pantheism. The Stoic conception of Nature is that of a unitary, rational, and living whole, having no parts, but only determinate forms. Yet it cannot be called a hylozoism, like the doctrine of Heracleitus, for there Form and matter had not been distinguished. In the intervening years Form and matter had been separated, and the Stoic sought to put them together again. In comparison with the doctrine of the Old Schools, the Stoic teaching was (1) monistic, as against their dualism, (2) materialistic, as against their idealism, but (3) like them, it was teleological.
1. In the first place, Nature is an all-pervading World-Being. It is God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” It contains in itself all cosmic phenomena, and processes, past, present, and future. It is the World-ground and the World-mind, and yet it is all-in-all. It is the productive and formative power, the vitalizing principle. In general, it is the creative and guiding reason; in particular, it is Providence or divine government. It is the unswerving whole in which the single events of history take place. To the Stoics the cosmic Reason was so apparent in Nature that purpose appeared to them in everything. In their hands the great teleological conception of Aristotle’s immanent purposiveness sank to the petty purposiveness for human beings and for the gods. Yet it is no wonder that this conception of an all-pervasive deity became a religion to the Stoics and raised their moral code to the region of the sublime. The world is Fate so far as the minutest movements are determined. Nature is Providence so far as those determinations are full of purpose. Nature is in every part perfect and without blemish.
2. In the second place, Nature is an all-compelling law. Nature is an inviolable necessity, an inevitable destiny, that holds all phenomena in complete causal connection. Yet this destiny only proves the complete purpose of the whole. The Stoic seized upon the central principle of Democritus,—which the Epicureans had overlooked,—the supremacy of law. “The doctrine of Democritus passed over to the Epicureans only so far as it was atomism and mechanism; with regard to the deeper and more valuable principle of the universal reign of law in Nature, his legacy passed to the Stoics.”35 There is no such thing as chance; everything is caused. In Epicureanism one finds the doctrine of necessity, but the necessity comes from the atoms themselves. In Stoicism the necessity resides in the living activity of the whole. A living activity! Herein the Stoic conception differs from the Democritan teaching. The necessity is a living necessity, the destiny a living destiny.
3. In the third place, Nature is matter. On the theoretical side Stoicism agrees with Epicureanism only at one point,—both were materialistic. The materialism of both these New Schools got a disproportionate prominence because it had to be defended against the attacks of the Academy and the Lyceum. The materialism of the Epicureans was a mere adoption of a theory; the materialism of the Stoics was only one aspect of its supplementary basis. Nevertheless, to the Stoic matter alone is real, because it alone acts and is acted upon. Everything is matter,—nature-objects, God and the soul, and even the qualities, forces, and relations between material bodies. The Stoics regarded the presence and interchange of the qualities of things as the appearance and intermingling of bodies in these things.
There can be no doubt about the materialism of the Stoic teaching, although both material and spiritual attributes are ascribed to God in a way that is startling. The Heracleitan conception of fire as the primary substance is the Stoic conception of God. God is fire, air, ether, and most commonly the atmospheric currents which pervade all things. But God is also the World-soul, the World-mind, the Cosmic-reason, the universal Law, Nature, Destiny, Providence. He is a perfect, happy, and kind Being. In single statements these aspects are often combined and God is described as the Fiery Reason of the world, the Mind in matter, the reasonable Air-currents. The Stoic equation is Nature ＝ Matter ＝ Fire ＝ Reason ＝ Fate ＝ Providence ＝ God.
The Stoics followed Heracleitus also in their conception of the development of the present world from the cosmic fire. “In all points of detail their views on what we call physical science are contemptible. They contained not one iota of scientific thinking.”36 They followed Aristotle, however, in their description of the elements and their teleological arrangements.
The primitive substance changes by its own inner rational law into force and matter. Force is the World-soul, the pneuma or warm breath, which pervades all things. Matter is the World-body, and is water and earth. In cosmic periods the primitive fire is destined to re-absorb the world of variety into itself and then consume it in a universal catastrophe.
The most important feature in the Stoic materialism is the conception of pneuma, or the force into which the original substance is differentiated. This is the World-soul. Nature is thus conceived as dynamical. The Stoic word for the World-soul is translated by various expressions, as “creative reason,” “generative powers,” “formative fire-mind.” It penetrates all things and dominates all as their active principle. Through it the universe is one, not a plurality of parts. The pneuma is the life of the universe. Its motion is spontaneous; its development is teleological. The pneuma is an extraordinarily condensed conception, containing as it does suggestions from Heracleitus’ Logos, Anaxagoras’ Nous, Democritus’ fire-atoms, and Aristotle’s Energeia.
The human being has a constitution analogous to the universe. Man is the microcosm and the universe the macrocosm. The soul of man is the pneuma which holds his body together, and it is an emanation from the divine pneuma. Mental states—thought and emotions—are air currents. Virtue is the tension of the atmospheric substance of the soul. The material, yet divine, pneuma constitutes man’s reason, causes his activities, is seated in his breast. Since the pneuma is a body, it disconnects itself from the human corpse at death, has a limited immortality, and returns to the cosmic pneuma at the conflagration of the world.
The Conceptions of Nature and Personality supplement each other. Thus fundamentally the personality is identical with the cosmos—it is reason. To turn the matter about, by reason or “nature” the Stoic means two things that are essentially one. He means the reason of man, or the reason of the world; to “live according to nature” is to live according to the nature of man or according to the nature of the world. The life of the Wise Man as a harmony with physical nature is a harmony with itself as well. The antithesis to “nature” or “reason” is sensuous nature. What we speak of as the natural impulses were not “natural” at all in the Stoic teaching.
“Nature” as universal is the creative cosmic power acting for ends. Coördination with this constitutes morality. It is a willing obedience to eternal necessity. The “fool” acts according to his sensations and impulses, and therefore against “nature.” But the Wise Man, by withdrawing within himself, is his own independent master because he is acting universally. “Nature” is the life-unity of the human soul with the world reason. True individual morality is therefore universal morality, complete humanity, universal rationality. To obey “nature” is to develop the essential germ in one’s self.
Thus these two points of view were obtained of life-unity: a universe rationally guiding in all its changes; the human individual epitomizing this universe in himself as a rule for his conduct amid his vicissitudes.
The Stoic and Society. Men are divided into two classes,—the entirely wise and virtuous, or the entirely foolish and vicious. There is no middle ground. If a man possesses a sound reason, he has all the virtues; if he lacks this reason, he lacks all. There are only a few Sages; the mass of men are fools. The Stoics were continually lamenting with Pharisaical pessimism the great baseness of men. From their sublime height they looked upon the Wise Man as incapable of sin, upon the fool as incapable of virtue. In thus denying the ordinary distinctions between good and evil, they were dangerous in politics. Their political perspective was not reliable. In general, they did not enter the politics of the democracies where they lived. They were, however, often the advisers of tyrants, and often assisted in removing them (as in the case of Julius Cæsar). The Stoic School of Musonius Rufus made a splendid Puritan protest against Nero and Domitian, and finally his disciples and friends controlled the empire for a century (second century A. D.).37 The Stoic regarded his Wise Man as attaining the same independence that the Epicurean claimed for his Wise Man. He is lord and king. He is inferior to no other rational being, not even to Zeus himself.
The Stoic differs from the Epicurean in his attitude toward the political state. The two Schools agree that the sufficient Wise Man needs the state but little. The Epicurean teaches that society is not natural and not inherent in human nature. The Stoic, however, maintained that society is a divine institution, which gives way only occasionally to man’s individual perfecting. Since man and the cosmic reason are identical, all men are essentially identical. When men therefore lead a life of reason, they lead a social life. This realm of reason includes not Romans alone, but all men, gods, and slaves. But the political government is only secondary, for the Stoic’s ideal is a universal empire. The Stoic’s interest in practical politics was as weak as his ideal of a rational society was transcendent. His teaching of justice and love for man was, however, a forecasting of the coming religious emancipation.
There are two antagonistic tendencies running through Stoicism. The first is to seek society with its virtues,—justice, love of men, sociability or cosmopolitanism. The second dispenses with society to gain an inner freedom. Yet these two tendencies often coincide.
They may be presented as follows:—
| To seek society. | To dispense with society. | |
| 1. | Exaltation of justice and love. | Exaltation of inner freedom and happiness. |
| 2. | World citizenship. | The Wise Man. |
| 3. | Relations and degrees of virtue. | Absolute virtue and absolute vice. |
| 4. | Virtue depends somewhat on conditions. | Knowledge alone is virtue. |
| 5. | Individual should submit to fate. | Individual should make fate. |
Duty and Responsibility. The Stoic’s identity of human and cosmic reason elevated the law of human conduct into a strict, universal law of duty. It embodies, on the one hand, the Cynic’s protest against external law, and on the other the construction of the inner moral law. The backbone of Stoicism is sense of responsibility. The Stoics brought out as never before the contrast between what is and what ought to be. They were the most outspoken doctrinaires of antiquity, and formed a school of character building in stubbornness. As time went on they substituted human nature for cosmic nature, and then accentuated human nature as conscience. The individual could then define the right for himself, and this sort of individualism was developed with so much skill that it admitted great laxity of morals. Duty commands some things and forbids others, but there are left a great mass of activities that are ethically indifferent. These indifferent matters offered opportunity for these men of conscience to perform what in the eyes of others were crimes (for example, Brutus). Baseness is only what is unconditionally forbidden.
Yet it must not be supposed that the Stoics generally employed the indifferent as an excuse for moral license. On the contrary, the concept of life as a struggle originated with the Stoics, and from them it passed into the common consciousness of man. There was before them (1) the struggle with environment dominated by a false evaluation, (2) the struggle with effete civilization, (3) the struggle particularly with one’s self. The Stoic hero of inner courage and greatness of soul rises above his fellows, not because he gains dominion over the world, but because in indifference to it he isolates himself. He exists in premeditation of doing rather than in the actual doing in which his power would be spent. Still, in the absolute contrast between the good and the evil, in making life a disjunctive, an “Either—Or,” duty got a definite and distinct meaning. Duty, according to the Stoics’ conception, had not so much the nature of an imperative as of what is suitable,—an act adapted to nature, a consistent and justifiable act. In a manner unknown to antiquity the ethical nature of conduct was thus universalized in the new conceptions of philanthropy, of the universality of God and man, in the tendency to suppress slavery and care for the poor and sick. Nevertheless, as a moral force Stoicism accepted the world as it found the world, and did not attempt to make it over.
The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Freedom. On the questions of moral freedom and evil, the Stoics suffered severe attacks from the Academy and the Epicureans. Alone among the Schools of antiquity the Stoics preached the doctrine of Fate. The demands of ethical responsibility, however, required that the individual should determine his own conduct. To suit these demands the Stoic did not modify his fundamental conception of Nature, but he tried to justify his position on the ground that the individual expressed the law of nature. His argument may be stated thus: Man is like God; Man is one with God; Man is free. It was also stated on psychological grounds. Man can have one of two attitudes toward the world-law: (1) his performance may be through blind compulsion; (2) his performance may be through an intelligent understanding of the law, in which case he is free. The occurrence of his act is fateful, but it makes great difference to the man whether the occurrence is in spite of him or with his intelligent acquiescence. The occurrence is not an evil in itself; for physical evils are no evils, and things that appear to be moral evils are (1) subservient to the good; (2) merely relative to good; or (3) show that God’s ways are not our ways. My will is mine though necessary; my will is mine though it be law. The soul is free when it fulfills its own destiny. God works through man’s will. Outer circumstances are only accessory causes, but the main cause is the assent of the will. At the same time the Stoics did not shrink from the logic of their own fatalism. Chrysippus said that only on the basis of determinism could correct judgments of the future be made. Only on this ground could the gods foreknow. Only the necessary can be known.
The Modifications of the Stoic Doctrine after the First Period. The inherent difficulties in the Stoic doctrine and the attacks upon it gave rise to later concession that only further complicated it. (1) The moral ideal was lowered to make a set of rules for the mediocre man, and thereby the Stoics became the originators of the dangerous doctrine of a twofold morals.
(2) By admitting any supposition instead of strict scientific deduction into their theory they introduced probabilism. An absolute personality! An absolute Nature! In order to make either practical the Stoics had to modify both. In the course of time, when new leaders represented the School, there came compromises according to practical exigencies. The teaching of the Wise Man was superseded by instruction how to become wise. The moral idealism was not renounced but the idea of progress was introduced.
(3) The doctrine of Goods was modified. From out the Goods, esteemed as indifferent, there appear Goods as desirable. Yet these were never thought to be Goods in themselves, but were only adapted to further the Good in itself. Such were, for example, the physical Good of health, enjoyment of the senses, etc. On the side of its ideals Stoicism thus was brought into touch with practical life.
(4) A distinction was made concerning those who were not Wise Men. It was recognized that all “fools” are not the same distance from virtue. There are then recognized progressive men,—men who are improving. Apathy is thus modified by a state of progress. Even the Wise Man has in common with others the affections of his senses, such as pain. The Stoic ethical aristocracy became more humane. Nevertheless, the Stoic never yielded this point, viz., that there is no gradual growth in virtue. Virtue is not attained through a transition. It is a sudden turning about.
(5) During the empire Stoicism became merely a moral philosophy, but even in this form it was an impressive presentation of the noblest convictions of antiquity. It prepared moral feeling for Christianity. The more Stoicism became mere moralizing, the more the Cynic element in it dominated it. In the first and second centuries Cynicism was revived by wandering, garbed preachers, who went about affecting beggary and teaching morals.
CHAPTER XII
SKEPTICISM AND ECLECTICISM
The Appearances of Philosophic Skepticism. We have now traced the history of the positive and dogmatic aspect of the Hellenic-Roman Period through its Ethical Division and far into the Religious Division of the Period. The influence of the ethical movement did not disappear until at least two centuries after the beginning of this era, and the Schools themselves did not disappear until they were abolished by Justinian in 529 A. D. But the Ethical Period may be said to close at the beginning of this era, and even a century and a half before that—about 150 B. C.—its positive and dogmatic character had been lost. Eclecticism appeared in the Schools, and the last one hundred and fifty years of the Ethical Period was in character transitional and eclectic. This was caused by the growth and power of Skepticism, which we have already pointed out as the undercurrent of the entire period. Skepticism was the fundamental frame of mind of the eight hundred years of this time. It was the negative side of the period in contrast with the Schools. Philosophic Skepticism appeared contemporaneously with the rise of the New Schools at the very beginning of the Period, and the controversy between the Schools and Skepticism reached its height about 150 B. C. What was the result? Did philosophy turn, as in the Age of Pericles, back to greater triumphs in speculation? No; the world was no longer virile and no longer possessed the creative impulse. On account of the attacks of Skepticism upon the Schools, philosophy dissolved itself first into eclecticism, and then later by the introduction of new elements from the East was superseded by religion. In the philosophical sense, religion and eclecticism are both skeptical—both have doubts of the ability of the reason to reach truth. Eclecticism shows its Skepticism by doubting any one dogmatic scheme, and therefore it constructs a compromise of all; religion crowns faith in place of reason.
Philosophic Skepticism in these times did not appear except with reference to the doctrines of the Schools. It arose as merely polemical and antagonistic to the Schools’ teaching. While the Skepticism of antiquity busied itself with the problem of knowledge, it was superficial compared with modern Skepticism. Ancient Skepticism did not doubt that the object of knowledge existed; it did not doubt that the object of knowledge is external and even material. It assumed that things exist which, to the modern Skeptic, is the problem at issue.
We shall look now at the appearances of philosophic Skepticism, and the effect of this Skepticism upon the Schools in their turning to eclecticism.
The Three Phases of Philosophic Skepticism. These are three somewhat loosely connected appearances of Skepticism, and are determined in their character in large measure by the doctrines which they attacked.
1. The First Phase of Philosophic Skepticism is called Pyrrhonism (from about 300 to 230 B. C.). This was a Skepticism directed against the assumptions of the philosophy of Aristotle. From the dates above it will be seen to be contemporary with the founding of the Stoic and Epicurean Schools, at the very beginning of the period. The two representatives were Pyrrho (365–275 B. C.) of Elis and his pupil Timon (320–230 B. C.) of Phlius. When Zeno had begun to teach in the Painted Porch and Epicurus in the Gardens, when Theophrastus had succeeded his master in the Lyceum and Polemo led the Academy, the Skeptic Pyrrho began his personal instruction in the city of Elis. Pyrrho had but little influence. He left no writings, and his doctrine became known to the ancients through his pupil, Timon, who was the literary exponent of this Skepticism. The teaching may be stated in the three following sentences: (1) We can know nothing of the nature of things, but only of the states of feeling into which they put us; (2) The only correct attitude of mind is to withhold all judgment and restrain all action; (3) The result of this suspense of judgment is ataraxia or imperturbability. The Skeptic therefore sought the same internal peace for which Stoic and Epicurean were seeking, but he was skeptical of the Aristotelian metaphysics as an instrument to gain it. The opposite of any conclusion being equally plausible, suspense of judgment is the only peace of mind.
Pyrrhonism reminded the age after Aristotle that the problem of the certitude of knowledge is fundamental and must be settled before any philosophy can be constructed. The School was short lived, and people disposed to be skeptical joined the Academy.
2. The Second Period of Philosophic Skepticism—The Skepticism of the Academy (280–129 B. C.). The Middle Academy and its Skepticism was directed particularly against the Stoic teaching that an “apprehensive presentation” guaranteed its own truth by the conviction of immediate certainty. The two most distinguished representatives of this Skeptical period of the Academy were Arcesilaus (315–241 B. C.) and Carneades (214–129 B. C.). Carneades must be mentioned particularly as a genius and a philosopher of great personal influence. “He was the greatest philosopher of Greece in the four centuries from Chrysippus to Plotinus; indeed, in ability and depth of thought he surpassed Chrysippus.”38 Carneades was the most formidable opponent of the Stoics. He had listened to the Stoic lecturers, had studied their writings, and had refuted them on their own grounds in brilliant lectures of his own.
The Skepticism of the Academy arose somewhat in this way. The rivalry of the Porch and the Older Academy had grown apace and had been a battle between two dogmatic Schools. The Academy was being worsted, its ancient spirit was waning, and it had gradually deserted speculation for ethics. Under Arcesilaus it was provoked to new life by the aggressive dogmatism of the Stoics. Speculation, which it had ignored, it now began to antagonize openly. Arcesilaus, in directing his attack against the doctrine of “apprehensive presentation” of the Stoics, came to conclusions but slightly different from Pyrrho. Carneades laid out for himself a twofold task: (1) to refute all existing dogmas, and (2) to evolve a theory of probability as the basis for practical activity. He applied his Skepticism not only to speculation, like Arcesilaus, but also to ethics and religion.39
The Academy did not fully adopt Skepticism, but used it as a weapon against the Stoics. The Platonic tradition was kept alive within the School, and Skepticism made no advance in the Academy after Carneades. It did not even continue in the path marked out by him. In the next generation the Academy became eclectic.
3. The Third Period of Philosophic Skepticism—Sensationalistic Skepticism (during two centuries or more of the Christian era). The chief representatives were Ænesidemus of Cnossus (first century A. D.), Agrippa (about 200 A. D.), and Sextus Empiricus (about 200 A. D.).
This phase of Skepticism was represented mainly by physicians, with arguments based upon empirical physiological grounds. When the Academy passed from Skepticism to eclecticism, Skepticism became centred in Alexandria. For two centuries before Galen (131–201 A. D.) great discoveries had been made in medicine, but the meaning of the discoveries had not been apprehended. There was a general feeling among physicians of that time that there is no such thing as scientific certainty; and skeptical arguments were constructed; based on the empirical discoveries of the scientific circle of Alexandria. While the arguments of the Academy were mostly formal attacks against the Stoics, this Skeptical School of physicians returned to Pyrrhonism, immensely reinforced with scientific material. It strove in vain to disassociate itself from the Academy, for it used in one way or another the formal arguments of the Skeptics of the Academy. In his eight books on Pyrrhonism, Ænesidemus developed the reasons which induced Pyrrho to call in question the possibility of knowledge. These are known in philosophy as the ten “tropes,” or ten ways of justifying doubt.40 They were badly arranged by Ænesidemus and reduced to five by Agrippa.41
The Last Century and a Half of the Ethical Period. (150 B. C.–1 A. D.). Eclecticism.—About 150 B. C. the Ethical Period became eclectic. After 150 years of passionate controversy the Schools began to compromise their differences and fuse into one another. They no longer emphasized their differences, but began to point to their common ground of unity. This tendency to fusion applies only to the Lyceum, the Academy, and the Porch. The Epicurean School was never a party to this eclecticism and always remained relatively stationary. The fusion occurred only in the teaching of the Schools and not in their organization. Externally the Schools remained separate bodies for six hundred years longer. In the second century Hadrian and the Antonines endowed separate chairs for them in the University of Athens. They were not abolished as Schools until 529 A. D., by Justinian. Internally their independent growth lasted only during the two centuries down to the year 150 B. C. At this time their theoretic mission had been completed. Their internal history from 100 B. C. to 529 A. D. was one of compromise and adjustment. The year 150 B. C. is therefore important. At this time the records of the Schools stop, controversy abates, Stoicism and Epicureanism are introduced into Rome, and fusion of doctrines begins.
The Stoic School was the first to incline to eclecticism. Its own doctrine was a kind of fusion of incoherent parts, and among the Schools it could most easily welcome new doctrines. About 150 B. C., under the lead of Panætius and Posidonius, it adopted many of the Platonic and Aristotelian teachings, tempered its own ethical rigorism, and extended its scientific interests. At the same time the Peripatetics of the Lyceum united the pantheism of the Stoics to their own theism. After the death of Carneades in 129 B. C. the Academy turned from Skepticism back to the Platonic tradition, but it was a meagre Platonism adulterated with many foreign elements. For example, Antiochus of Ascalon taught Cicero from the Academy at Athens in the winter of 79–78 B. C. that Platonism and Aristotelianism were only different aspects of the same doctrine.
There were two factors that prepared an easy way for the rapid spread of eclecticism. One was the growing Skepticism that was so fundamental in Hellenism, and the other was the adoption of Hellenic culture by the Romans. Eclecticism is, after all, only another form of Skepticism. Both exhibit the spirit of undecided conviction. Neither has regard for the bonds of tradition, for both regard the individual superior to every tradition or system. Eclecticism, indeed, attempts to reconcile differing systems; but in doing this it casts a doubt upon the infallibility of them all only to a lesser degree than Skepticism. The spread of eclecticism was therefore only an extension from Greece of the skeptical spirit upon the world, and the Roman world gave a glad welcome to such a spirit. The Roman character was naturally eclectic. After his first aversion the Roman was hospitable to all philosophies and religions. In his practical way, undisturbed by philosophical hair-splittings, he selected from the different systems what was suited to his practical needs. Eclecticism found fertile ground in Roman civilization.
In the Schools after the year 150 B. C. there appear many notable names—notable not because they contributed to the theoretic advance of philosophy, but for some other reason. In the Stoic School were Panætius, Posidonius, and Boëthus; and later Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Among the Academicians are Philo of Larissa and Antiochus; among the Peripatetics of the same century is Andronicus; and among the eclectic Platonists Plutarch is especially to be named; these were all eclectics. The only one in this group of eclectics whom we shall have time for a passing examination of is Cicero.
M. Tullius Cicero (106–43 B. C.) listened to Greek philosophy in all the Schools in Athens and Rhodes. He read a good deal of Greek literature, so that he had much philosophical material at his command. He did not show much discretion in his selection of his material, but he displayed a good deal of tact in using what the Roman people would receive. The Greek mind spoke to the Roman through Cicero’s voice almost as though the Roman were speaking for himself. It must be admitted that Cicero’s acquaintance with Greek philosophy was on the whole superficial, yet he was able to express certain aspects of Greek philosophy with clearness for contemporary Latin readers and for many generations succeeding them. He prided himself in his ability to discuss both sides of a question without himself arriving at a decision—after the manner of the Middle Academy, of which he inscribed himself as a member. His books appeared in rather rapid succession.
Cicero does not therefore owe his prominence as a philosopher so much to his own profound independence of thought as to his skill in translating Greek thought to the Roman people. His metaphysics is an eclecticism that is at bottom a skepticism. In view of the existing philosophical warfare, he despaired of metaphysical or absolutely complete knowledge. Yet upon ethical and religious questions he spoke in no undecided manner, for in these realms he felt that we have more than merely probable evidence. Since he was unable to refute Skepticism in a scientific way, he took refuge in the immediate certainty of consciousness in all matters that pertain to morals and religion. There are certain ideas common to all men. These have not so much been taught to all men by nature as they are inborn in all. They are convictions implanted in us; there is a common human consciousness from which they are derived, and they are confirmed by universal opinion. Ethical and religious consciousness thus rests on immediate certainty. Man has the innate ideas of duty, immortality, and God. Our belief in God’s existence is supported by the teleological argument for Providence and divine government. The high dignity of man rests upon this innate conviction of freedom and immortality. Cicero shows his eclecticism by moderating the Stoic doctrine of virtue: virtue in itself is vita beata, but virtue plus happiness is vita beatissima. Unoriginal and eclectic as Cicero’s philosophical position may be, it is of great importance to the student of Roman history.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD (100 B. C.–476 A. D.)
The Two Causes of the Rise of Religious Feeling. There were two causes for the turn of the time from its interest in individual practical ethics to religion. The first was an inner cause within the nature of the ethical philosophy of the Schools. The rise of the religious and the supernatural was the culmination of the undercurrent of skepticism in the validity of reason, which we found growing rapidly in the Ethical Period. The more the Schools grew alike in their teaching, the less were they able to assure their disciples of any certain insight into virtue and happiness. The Ethical Period ended in eclecticism, and this was the impeachment of the authority of each School. The Schools examined their dogmatic assumptions. The fundamental inner conviction grew stronger that the intellect of man is self-inconsistent: so inconsistent as to be undependable; so inconsistent as not to vouchsafe man the virtue and happiness which the Schools had promised. As Skepticism became more strongly intrenched, the imperturbable self-certainty of the Wise Man became shaken, the Ethical Period disappeared, and the Religious Period was born. Belief in the authority of the supernatural superseded belief in the authority of the reason.
The second cause may be called external, and was the introduction of many eastern religions into the empire. It has been common to exaggerate the vices of the Romans of the first Christian centuries, and to point to the corruption of the times as the cause of the great rise of religions.42 No doubt, in the city of Rome and other large cities the populations were very licentious and corrupt. But this was not the case with the people in the small municipalities and the country. The people were united in peace under one government. There was great commercial prosperity and widespread travel. Education prospered. The religion of the Romans, however, long since decadent, had become an object of derision. All faith in it had been lost, and magicians and romancers had a large patronage. The inner life of man demanded some external spiritual authority to satisfy it, and, finding it could not be satisfied in the realm of sense, turned to the supersensuous. It was an age of universal superstitions, reported miracles, and the multiplying of myths. In the realm of the religious emotions everything was in flux. Even the Greek philosophies—the Stoic, the Platonic, the Cynic, and the neo-Pythagorean—show it in their emphasis upon renunciation in practical life. In place of the Grecian love for earthly existence, a longing for the mysterious was growing into a feverish desire for strange and mysterious cults. A great religious movement possessed the nations of the empire, and into Roman civilization of the first century A. D. there streamed many new religions. From the Orient came the Mithra, Magna Mater, Star Worship, Isis and Osiris, and many others. These mingled with the western religions, and their rivalry was energetic for the possession of men’s spirits. The Roman people were hospitable to all religions, and Rome became a religious battleground. With the interest turned from earthly to heavenly things, salvation from trouble seemed to lie in the supernatural.
The Need of Spiritual Authority. Thus the complacent Ethical Period gave way to the cry for some authority in morals and science. Man was no longer confident that he could attain present happiness or his soul’s salvation by his own strength. He turned for help both to the religious tradition of the past and to the revelation that might come to him in the present. The authority in either was practically the same; for the past was only the crystallization of an ever-present divine spirit. Yet present and past revelations differ in their credentials: the present revelation is an immediate illumination of the spirit; the past is presented in historic records. The Alexandrian school accepted both forms of revelation as the highest source of knowledge.
The demand for supernatural authority found expression in many curious ways. It is notorious that at this time the writings and oral traditions of the past were greatly interpolated. The philosophers of the first century thought that they themselves could get a hearing only by inserting their own doctrines into the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and other heroes of the past. Thus the neo-Pythagoreans invented a halo of wisdom for Pythagoras in order to give their own sect its credentials. The demand for authority culminated in the attempt to trace the entire civilization of the time to some religious source. Philo on the one side, and the Gnostics on the other, found that Greek and Hebrew history have a common religious origin. Greek thought was found in the Oriental writings. The Greek sages were placed by the side of the Old Testament heroes. The canon of the Christians is full of cross-references—the Old Testament giving historical authority to the New Testament, the New Testament giving to the Old Testament the support of immediate revelation. There came into vogue what was called “allegorical interpretation,” according to which an historical document could be given two interpretations (or more)—a literal interpretation and a spiritual interpretation. The documents were supposed to have a body and a soul. The literal interpretation was of the body of the documents and suitable for the people; the spiritual interpretation was the more liberal interpretation of the soul of the document and suitable for philosophers.
At the same time a vast number of writings appeared as historical revelations. It was necessary to separate the true from the false, but this could not be done by the individual without injuring the very principle upon which revelation was supposed to rest. Consequently all knowledge was generally regarded as revelation. For example, Plutarch and the Stoics divided revelation into three classes: poetry, law, and philosophy. Although Plutarch disclaimed open superstitions, he nevertheless accepted as true all sorts of miracles and prophecies. The later neo-Platonists are also examples of the great body of those who made no discrimination as to what revelation is true. The Christian church may be said to have been alone in making a criticism of the records, and in setting up as criteria tradition and historically accredited authority. As a result of its criticism the Christian canon was finally decided upon, and the Old and New Testaments were accepted as alone inspired. The rivals of the church—the Alexandrian philosophies, especially neo-Platonism—had no organization that could decide upon a canon. They were consequently at a disadvantage, but they felt no need of an infallible historical authority or of historical criticism. Revelation to them was any immediate illumination of the individual. The individual man who comes in contact with the Deity has possession of the divine truth. Although only few attain the truth, and these only at rare moments, there is nevertheless no way of determining what is fictitious and what is true. This difference in the conception of inspiration between the neo-Platonists and the Christians is important to note, for it marks an important difference in the two greatest intellectual movements of the next thousand years. The church fixed revelation on the basis of historical authority, and this revelation became the source of the scholasticism of the Middle Ages; neo-Platonism left the individual man free to get revelation from any source through his own personal contact with the divine, and this was the basis of the mysticism of the Middle Ages.
The Rise of the Conception of Spirituality. We have seen that out of the widespread cry for spiritual help came the demand for spiritual authority. There is also another result,—the increased importance in history of the spiritual personality. The men of the past became heroes, the great men sanctified and surrounded with myths. Hero worship, ancestor worship, the worship of the genius of the emperor inaugurated by Augustus, were part of this movement. Disciples began to have unconditional trust in their masters, and in neo-Platonism this worship culminated in veneration for the leaders of the School. This movement appears in the grandest form in history in the impression of the wonderful personality of Jesus Christ.
The next step was to regard personality as the revelation of the divine Logos. Personality is the cosmic reason. Nature and history are kinds of general revelations, but special revelations require great personalities—Moses, the prophets, the Greek scientists, and especially Jesus who was the Messiah, the Son of God. The power that these personalities exhibit must be a revelation, and not the working of the human reason, for the human unaided reason deals only with sensations, and is incapable of gaining divine truth. The reason needs the divine to illuminate it. The great personalities are therefore the repositories of powers that make them different from ordinary men. Their revelations are above, and sometimes opposed to, the conclusions of ordinary reason. Thus personalities themselves are divided by religious dualism, and in them the human and divine are far apart. Moreover, the more great personalities were apotheosized, the more the common run of humanity was depreciated. Then distinction was made between great personalities. At first, when authority was sought everywhere, all great personalities were supposed to have divine revelation; later, when the lines were drawn between the Christian and other beliefs, only the Christian leaders were considered by the Christians to be instruments of the divine.
This spiritualizing of historical personalities laid the emphasis more than ever before upon the dualism in all human beings. All men are ensnared in the world of sense, and they can attain knowledge of the higher world only through the illumination of their higher natures. Aristotle alone among the Greeks had had a clear conception of spirituality, but he had conceived spirituality as applied solely to God. He had not conceived God to be a person. But the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason, and the Platonic antithesis of the supersensuous and the sensuous, had marked off in man the inner personal nature of man as withdrawn into itself and set over against his sensuous nature. The more this ethical dualism became a religious dualism, the more the conception of spiritual personality was extended to all human beings. Its most refined expression was in the Christian conception of the soul.
The Revival of Platonism. The Platonism of the Academy had had little influence in the Ethical Period and its tradition had been barely kept alive. The Middle Academy had been skeptical and the New Academy eclectic. The Religious Period, on the other hand, was thoroughly Platonic, and Plato from this time until the Crusades became the ruling philosophical power. For three hundred years his influence had been nothing; for the next twelve hundred he dominated men’s minds, so far as any philosopher could in religious times. When the Wise Man vanished from philosophy, and the expectation of spiritual blessedness took its place, when Skepticism drove men from ethics, first to eclecticism and then to theology, when philosophy passed to mysticism—then did Platonism, with its antithesis between the sensible and the supersensible, come to its own. Of all the historical philosophies it could best amalgamate all religions. Platonism (1) absorbed Oriental religions, (2) furnished a didactic form for Christianity, (3) recreated itself into the mystic neo-Platonism. The world-longing for the supernatural found its best medium in Platonism. When the Wise Man vanished, the mystic priest appeared.
The Divisions of the Religious Period. Out of the seething religious times at the beginning of this era, there emerged two distinct currents of thought that extended through the entire length of the Religious Period, and carried down into the Middle Ages all the culture that the mediæval possessed. The two movements were (1) the religious philosophies of the still persistent Hellenic civilization, and (2) the new-born Christian religion, which was destined to determine the future of the western people. If we scrutinize these two movements we shall find that each has its introductory and its development stages, and at the point of division in each stands a great leader who was instrumental in bringing about the transition. The great neo-Platonist, Plotinus (204–269), marks the division line in the Hellenic movement; the Christian, Origen (185–254), marks the division line in theological Christianity. While these men were contemporaries, we shall take, for various reasons, the year 200 as the date of division of the Christian movement, and the year 250 as the date of division of the Hellenic movement. The first stage of each movement we shall call its Introductory Period, and the second its Development Period.
During their Introductory Periods the two movements tried to draw together under the influence of the philosophical eclecticism which colors this time. In their Development Periods the two movements draw apart, become closed and mutually repellent. The historical developments of the two movements from beginning to end are very different. The tide of Hellenism floods with Plotinus, its greatest representative, and after him there is a gradual ebb. On the other hand, Christianity shows a continuous growth, both internally and externally, and the mighty Origen only points to the mightier Augustine. Both movements finally merge in Augustine.
| I. Hellenic Religious Philosophy. | II. Christianity. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Introductory Period (100 B. C.–250 A. D.). | Introductory Period (31 A. D.–200 A. D.). | ||
| (1) | Greek-Jewish philosophy of Alexandria. Philo (25 B. C.–50 A. D.). |
(1) | Period of simple faith (until the 2d century A. D.). | |
| (2) | Neo-Pythagoreanism (100 B. C.–150 A. D.). | (2) | Period of Earlier Formulation of Doctrine. Apologists (2d century). Gnostics (2d century). Old Catholic Theologians (2d and 3d centuries). |
|
| 2. | Development Period (250–476). | Development Period (200–476). | ||
| Neo-Platonism. Plotinus (204–269). Jamblichus (d. 330 about). Proclus (410–485). |
(1) | Period of Actual Formulation of Doctrine. The School of Catechists. Origen (185–254). |
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| (2) | The Œcumenical Councils and the establishment of dogma. | |||
The Hellenic Religious Philosophies. Alexandria and not Athens was now the intellectual centre of Hellenism. The position and history of the city, as well as the character of its population, were most favorable for the mingling of religions and philosophies. In the “university” of this great commercial metropolis the treasures of Greek culture were concentrated and scholastic work was vigorously pursued. Here all philosophies met, and all religions and cults were tolerated. Exhausted Greek philosophy here came in contact with those fresh Oriental ideas which previously, at a distance, had excited the imagination of the Greeks as something mysterious. The result was a new phase of philosophy,—theosophy, comparative religion, or eclecticism of philosophy and religion.
In no instance were the authors of these religious philosophies Greeks. The philosophy of Philo was a Hellenism, but the Hellenism of a Jew. Neo-Pythagoreanism seems to have had representatives from every country except the motherland of Greece. The author of neo-Platonism was born in Egypt. Of the two introductory movements, the Greek-Jewish philosophy accorded more with Oriental life, neo-Pythagoreanism with Greek life. Both go back to the principles that were fundamental in the Pythagorean mysteries.
The Introductory Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy (100 B. C.–250 A. D.). The Turning to the Past for Spiritual Authority.
1. The Greek-Jewish Philosophy of Philo. The Jews lived in great numbers in Alexandria, and many of them were wealthy and influential. In Alexandria the Old Testament had been translated into Greek, and through it the Greeks had become acquainted with the religion of the Jews. While the Old Testament contained the philosophy of the Jews, these Alexandrian Jews had learned in Alexandria to admire greatly the philosophy of the Greeks. So great was their admiration that they soon conceived Plato to be in their Law and their Law in Plato. They argued that since the Old Testament was their revelation, all the best Greek philosophy must be in the Old Testament. The Alexandrian Jews used Greek conceptions wherever they found them; and this tendency toward eclecticism appeared as early as 160 B. C. in Aristobulus and Aristeas. At that time these Jews used Greek philosophy in interpreting the Old Testament and employed the “allegorical method of interpretation.” This eclectic tendency was brought to completion by Philo (25 B. C.–50 A. D.), who was the most notable philosopher of this time. Philo was guided in his eclecticism by some such rules as these: (1) Revelation is the highest possible authority and includes the best of Greek thought; (2) Greek philosophy is derived from the fundamental principles of the Old Testament; (3) Jewish revelation is expressed in symbols, while Greek philosophy is expressed in concepts.
Philo’s teaching contains, in unsymmetrical form, both Stoicism and Platonism, and in it can be found the seeds of all that grew up in Christian soil. His philosophy was a bridge from the philosophy of Judaism to Christian theology. It has been called a “buffer” philosophy.
God is the ultimate cause of the world, but He is so transcendent that He can be described only in negative terms. This method of defining God got the name in later times of “negative theology.” It was the common method in these Alexandrian days. God is absolutely inconceivable and inexpressible to man; to Himself He is “I am who am.” The goodness of God impelled Him, and His power enabled Him, to create the world. From this point of view Philo is a monist. But in man reason and sense meet. Man’s soul is from God, but his sense-body is from matter, and from this point of view Philo is a dualist. Matter is outside God. God is so transcendent that He cannot come in contact with matter, and so He created the world and rules the world through mediators or “potencies.” These “potencies” are the same as the Ideas of Plato, the “reasons” of the Stoics, the numbers of the Pythagoreans, the angels of the Old Testament, or the dæmons of popular mythology. The sum-total of God’s activity in the world was called by Philo the Logos. Philo speaks of the Logos in two ways: sometimes as the plural number of teleological forces in the world; sometimes as the unity of these forces, “the first begotten of God,” “the second God,” “the son of God.” The Logos represents the first attempt to overcome the dualism between matter and God. The Logos is the high priest standing between God and the world. It is the everlasting revelation of God’s presence. Philo’s world is made by God and not by others, and is the expression of God’s thought in infinite forms and forces. God is not defiled by coming into contact with matter. God gives orders, the Logos obeys. Philo believed in transmigration of souls, and to him the most important problem is, How the spirit can become like God. The answer is (1) by the acquirement of the Stoic apathy, (2) by possessing the Aristotelian dianoetic virtues, (3) by complete absorption in God.
2. Neo-Pythagoreanism. The history of Pythagoreanism is extremely varied. Its body of doctrine from epoch to epoch was continually changing. The only characteristic common to its entire history was its practical tendency toward asceticism and its affiliation with the Mysteries. Let us review the history of Pythagoreanism down to the time of neo-Pythagoreanism. In 510 B. C., at the battle of Crotona, the early band of Pythagoreans was dispersed, and about 504 B. C. Pythagoras died. His scattered followers formed a school centring at Thebes around the philosophy of numbers, and this school lasted until 350 B. C. In 350 B. C. Pythagoreanism no longer existed as a school, for its members had either joined the Academy or formed one of the Mysteries. In 100 B. C. Pythagoreanism again emerged under the name of neo-Pythagoreanism, and this is the body which we meet in the introductory stage of the Religious Period. Alexandria was its centre, but it drew its disciples from every part of the earth. Among them Apollonius alone rises as a distinct figure. He was widely known, for he traveled everywhere as a religious teacher and wonder-worker. Other neo-Pythagoreans were P. Nigidius Figulus, a friend of Cicero, Sotion, a friend of the Sextians, Moderatus of Gades, and in later times Nicomachus of Gerasa and Numenius of Apamea. Another, and rather numerous group, allied to the neo-Pythagoreans, should be mentioned here. These were the so-called Eclectic Platonists, the representatives of whom were Plutarch (50–125 A. D.), and Celsus (about 200 A. D.), the opponent of Christianity. The only important difference between the neo-Pythagoreans and the Eclectic Platonists was that the former referred to Pythagoras as their religious model, and the latter to Plato. Both were mystical, ascetic, and eclectic.
Neo-Pythagoreanism first became noticeable in the first century B. C., on account of the great number of writings appearing under the names of Pythagoras and Philolaus. About these there arose a large neo-Pythagorean literature,—about ninety treatises by fifty authors. The writings under the name of Pythagoras were, for many centuries, the cause of the misconception of the true teaching of the original Pythagoras. The advent of the neo-Pythagorean literature marks the return at Alexandria to the older systems of thought, and is coincident with the learned literary investigations in the University of Alexandria. The particular revival of Pythagoreanism in the form of neo-Pythagoreanism came at the same time with the renewal of the Homeric form of poetry.
Neo-Pythagoreanism, as its history shows, is the philosophy of a half-religious sect with ascetic tendencies. Its transcendental philosophy was better suited to a people under an autocratic government, and ruled by Oriental traditions, than was the ethical teaching of the four Schools. The system of the ethical Schools arose out of the needs of the individual; but at this time the cry was for an absolute object which transcends both the individual and nature. The demand was for a god who could be served not by sacrifice, but by silent prayer, wisdom, and virtue. There are many points of similarity between the doctrine of Philo and neo-Pythagoreanism. The neo-Pythagoreans were monotheistic, but at the same time they accepted within their monotheism the hierarchy of the gods. They held to the commonly accepted doctrines of their time, viz., the transmigration of the soul, the dualism of the mind and body, the mediation of a graded series of celestial beings between man and God. They interpreted God in a spiritual way, but they conceived the ideas in God’s mind to be the Pythagorean numbers—just as Philo conceived them to be the Old Testament angels.
The Development Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy (250–476 A. D.). The Turning to the Present for Spiritual Authority. Platonism and Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism is the final statement of Hellenic culture, and the question may be asked, In what form did it present Hellenism? The answer is, It sets forth the Hellenic feeling as mysticism. The contribution of Plotinus was the destruction of the classic Greek ideal with its definiteness of form, and was the substitution of a new ideal of soaring spiritual exaltation. One has only to look back to the art, science, and philosophy of the Periclean Age to appreciate how far this last survival of Greek culture had drifted from its original moorings. Nevertheless, neo-Platonism is not so very far distant from that powerful ascetic principle in the Greek mysteries which is one aspect of the doctrine of Plato himself. Neo-Platonism was Platonism exaggerated on this mystic and ascetic side. Plotinus said that he was ashamed that he had a body; that the soul looks on and weeps at the sinfulness of the body; that it is not enough to regulate the body, but that the body must be exterminated. As the voice of Hellenism, neo-Platonism is speaking in an age when consciousness is weighed down with the sense of the enormity of evil and the need of salvation. Neo-Platonism feels that the moral conflict in the human soul is repeated in the universe; that the eternal struggle between matter and spirit goes on in the macrocosm as well as the microcosm. Plotinus held to the ancient Greek conception of the personification of the powers of nature, of the derivation of happiness from activity, of the supremacy of the intellect over the other faculties. But in accepting the ancient Greek doctrine of the subordination of man to the universe, he conceived man to be absorbed by the universe.
Neo-Platonism and the Two Introductory Philosophies. Neo-Platonism, therefore, shares in the mysticism of the philosophies of Philo and the neo-Pythagoreans. All three teach the transcendence of God; all three were metaphysically monistic and ethically dualistic; all three conceive the existence of intermediaries between God and man. The introductory philosophies sought to build eclectic doctrines, while neo-Platonism became eclectic only in its last phases. Plotinus constructed a positive and original philosophy, and among the three systems the teaching of Plotinus is carefully worked out. Indeed, Plotinus is by far the greatest thinker of this religious period. In the philosophy of Plotinus the relations between man and God are given a more æsthetic character, and the doctrine of immediate experience is more carefully discussed and has greater importance than in neo-Pythagoreanism and the teaching of Philo.
Neo-Platonism and Christianity. Neo-Platonism and Christianity have one thing at least in common. They have the same problem,—how to spiritualize the universe. This was the problem that both Plotinus and Origen attempted to work out. With the development of the consciousness of spiritual personality and the need of a revelation, the Divine seemed to both to be correspondingly farther away. God is unknown and incomprehensible, and so pure that He cannot come in contact with earthly existence. What, then, is the bond between the heavenly and the earthly? From the point of view of cosmology and of ethics, neither succeeded in overcoming the dualism. The sensuous was regarded as alien to God, and as a thing from which the spirit must free itself. Metaphysically their efforts to construct a spiritual monism were more successful, but their efforts were along different lines. The Christian conceived the universe of God and matter to be bound together by the principle of love; the neo-Platonist, by a series of countless grades of beings in diminishing perfections from the All-perfect. Then again, to the neo-Platonist the question of the return of man to God was a question of the personal inner experience of the individual; to the Christian theologian it was included in the larger problem of the historical process by which the whole human race is redeemed. Thus the metaphysical solution of each works out differently and with different factors.
Both neo-Platonic and Christian theology tried to prove that their respective religious convictions were the only true source of salvation. Both originated in the Alexandrian School. Christian theology was preceded by the fantastic system of the Gnostics, as Plotinus was preceded by the Pythagoreans and Philo. In their development the differences between the two appear. Christianity was supported by a church organization which had an internal vitality and a regulative power; neo-Platonism was supported and regulated by individuals, without organization, who had assimilated every faith. Christian theology was founded on a faith that had already expanded, while neo-Platonism was at the beginning an erudite religion that tried to develop an extended faith and, incidentally, later to assimilate other cults. Outwardly neo-Platonism, as the final stand of the pagan world to save itself from destruction, was unsuccessful in that it failed to perpetuate itself as an organization. Really it achieved a marked success. Not only did it live a long life of two hundred and fifty years, but it also lived in the development of its antagonist, Christianity. For neo-Platonism, by the irony of fate, was one of the important factors that entered into the building up and strengthening of Christianity. In its lingering death-struggle Hellenism was creating the conceptions that the Christian, Augustine, later employed in shaping Christian theology for the Middle Ages.
The Periods of Neo-Platonism.
(1) The Alexandrian School—about 240.
Neo-Platonism presented as a Scientific Theory.
The leader was Plotinus (204–269).
(2) The Syrian School—about 310.
The Attempt to Systematize all Polytheisms.
The leader was Jamblichus (d. about 330).
(3) The Athenian School—about 450.
The Recapitulation of Greek Philosophy.
The leader was Proclus (410–485).
The Alexandrian School. The Scientific Theory of Neo-Platonism. The Life and Writings of Plotinus (204–269 A. D.). Plotinus was born in Lycopolis in Egypt, and received his education in Alexandria, under Ammonius Saccas, who was Origen’s teacher. He campaigned with the emperor, Gordian, against the Persians, in order to pursue scientific studies in the East. He was especially interested in the Persian religion. In this way Plotinus became acquainted at first hand with the mysticism of the Orient. In 244 he appeared at Rome as a teacher, and was received with great éclat by the people, and in the highest circles he gained the most reverent recognition. His school contained representatives from all nations and from almost every calling,—physicians, rhetoricians, poets, senators, an emperor and empress. Plotinus lived in a country estate in Campania, and he almost succeeded in inducing the emperor to found a city of philosophers in Campania. It was to be called Platonopolis and, with Plato’s Republic as a model, it was to be an Hellenic cloister for religious contemplation. The literary activity of Plotinus occurred in his old age, and he wrote nothing until after he was fifty. His works consisted of fifty-four Corpuscles which his pupil, Porphyry, combined into six Enneads. For the next three hundred years his school became the centre of the Hellenic movement—the centre of science, philosophy, and literature. The literature of neo-Platonism was enormous, on account of the many commentaries on the philosophy of Plato within the neo-Platonic circle.
The General Character of the Teaching of Plotinus. There is a great division of opinion about the value of the teaching of Plotinus, for he drew his philosophy only in the broadest outlines, and he made no attempt to advance from a general view of the world to exact knowledge of it. Intellectually his philosophy is an abstraction; and yet emotionally, in an intimate way, it touched deeply an age weary with culture. Thus one can see how the actual achievement of Plotinus was small, but how at the same time its force and influence was very great. It was a religious teaching which rose to magnificent heights of contemplation from miserable intellectual surroundings. Nevertheless, the philosophy of Plotinus was an extreme form of intellectualism—it was an intellectual ennobling and transforming of religion. The earlier philosophy had supported the happiness of the individual by offers of infinitude; but Plotinus thought of the individual as never isolated from the Infinite, but as always longing for the Infinite. Fellowship with God is knowledge of Him, but it is knowledge of a peculiar kind. It is enthusiasm, intuition, ecstasy. There is a chasm between man and God, which Plotinus would bridge by placing reality so deeply within consciousness as to annihilate all antitheses and contradictions. Thus this deep reality below consciousness is cosmic and not human; and the religion of Plotinus is cosmocentric and not anthropocentric. Plotinus intensifies and summarizes Greek culture in order to consolidate and defend it. But in thus thinking out the Greek conceptions to their logical completeness, those conceptions collapse.
The Mystic God. There are two characteristics that distinguish the mystic God of Plotinus.
1. The first characteristic is the supra-consciousness of God. God is the indefinable, original Being who is above all antitheses. He is supra-everything, even supra-conscious. Nothing can be attributed to Him, not even thought or will, for these imply two elements and God is a unity. Any description of Him must be in negative terms (“negative theology”). If we speak of Him as the One, the First, the Cosmic Cause, Goodness, or as Light, we are only relatively and not really describing Him. God is present in all, yet He is not divided; He is the source of all, and yet He himself is perfectly finished. In his conception of God as compared to the world, Plotinus added the realm of the supra-conscious and the sub-conscious to the conscious.
2. In the second place Plotinus conceived God in His relation to the world in the terms of dynamic pantheism. This is a pantheism of a peculiar type. God does not create the world; the world is not the act of His will; nor is the world the result of a transference of part of His nature. In ordinary pantheism the world is a diffusion of the substance of God and the whole is static. Not so in the teaching of Plotinus! God permeates the world by His activity, and the world is dynamic through and through. But this dynamic activity of God must not be conceived as an historical or time process. The process is timeless. It is a process of essence or worth. The grades in the process are those of significance or value. All are within the all-embracing unity of God and each particular draws its life from Him. This is called the theory of emanations. Plotinus used the figure which mystics have always employed in this connection,—the figure of the sun and its rays of light in the darkness. The rays become less and less intense with the increasing distance from the Godhead, until they end in darkness. The process is an overflowing from the Godhead in which the Godhead remains unchanged.
The Two Problems of Plotinus. Starting with this conception of the Godhead as a dynamic contentless Being, Plotinus is bound to explain the world of sense-phenomena. His problem is twofold: he must explain the sequence of phenomena from the Godhead, which is the metaphysical problem; he must explain how man, living in the world of sense, can rise to communion with the Godhead, which is the ethical problem. Metaphysics and ethics are to Plotinus in inverted parallelism.
The World of Emanations.—The Metaphysical Problem of Plotinus. The aim of Plotinus in this is to construct a metaphysical monism out of the dualistic factors which had so long been present in Greek thought. The two fundamental principles upon which he raised his structure were (1) his dynamic series of emanations, and (2) his conception of matter as entirely negative. The highest Being, God, by an excess of energy or goodness, has the natural impulse to create something similar to himself. This creative impulse exists in each creature in turn and the movement propagates itself. Stage is added to stage in a descending series, until the impulse dies out in non-Being as the limit. The ordinary pantheism of co-existence of phenomena is transformed into a succession of stages of values, and all make up a harmony of more or less distinct copies of God. There are three steps in which the process of emanation proceeds,—spirit, soul, and matter.
The Spirit or Nous is the first emanation from the One in point of significance. It is the image of the One sent forth by its overflow of energy. This image involuntarily turns toward its original, the One, and in beholding it becomes Spirit, Nous, or intellectual consciousness. It turns to the One and recognizes itself as the image of the One. Thus, in the first degree away from God, the duality of thinker as subject, and of the thing thought as object, appears. The unconsciousness of the One is thus contrasted with consciousness, and the dual nature of consciousness is thus brought out; and for the first time an exact formulation of the psychological conception of consciousness is given.
The Nous is a unitary function of the One, like the Logos of Philo. At the same time the Nous contains within itself, as content, the Platonic Ideas or arch-types of individuals. These Ideas are not mere thoughts, but have their own existence. The Nous is their unity, however, just as a unity exists for the theorems of a science. These Ideas are pure intellectual potencies and the final causes of the world of nature.
The Soul is the second degree removed from the One. It stands in the same relation to the Nous as the Nous to the Godhead. The Soul belongs to the world of light, but it stands just on the boundaries of the world of darkness. It is the image of an image and therefore doubly dual,—it consists of a higher or world-soul and the lesser souls. The world-soul is divided into two forces,—the formative power of the world, and the body of the world. Individual souls are divided into the supersensible or intellectual soul (the part that has pre-existence and undergoes metamorphosis), and the sensible part which has built up the body as an instrument of its working power. The soul is present in all parts of its body. The individual souls are called plastic forces.
Matter is the emanation which is most distant from the One. The Nous is the emanation of the One, the world-soul is the emanation from the Nous, individual souls are a kind of intermediate emanation from the world-soul, and matter is the emanation of the individual souls. That is to say, the world-soul, with the forces that are native to it, generates matter and then, by uniting itself through its forces with matter, produces the world of corporeal things. What is the character of matter with which the world-soul forms this union? It is space. Space conditions all earthly existence. It is the same as Plato’s conception of the absolutely negative non-Being and the merely possible. It is absolute sterility, entirely evil and devoid of good. Matter has no dualistic independence of the One. What is the character of the nature world? It has the same character and quality as the formative forces that unite with this negative matter—it is no more and no less eternal. The world of nature to Plotinus is one of magic, and not merely teleological. He says that the heavens are the union of a perfect soul with matter; the stars are the visible gods united with matter; the powers of the air and sky are dæmons, which mediate between the stars and the souls of men, united with matter; the body of man is the human soul united with matter; inorganic nature is the lowest of the plastic forces united with matter. Wherever there is matter (space), there is found imperfection and limitation and evil. Man as an individual is sympathetically and mysteriously bound to all parts of the universe. Scientific investigation of nature is entirely ruled out by this neo-Platonic teaching. It never could be the instrument for penetrating a magical universe. Faith and superstition take the place of science, and prophecy alone undertakes to solve nature’s riddle.
The world of nature is thus broken in two. In one sense it is bad, ugly, and irrational. In another sense it is good, beautiful, and rational, because it is formed by the souls that enter into it. In opposition to the Gnostics Plotinus praised the harmony and beauty of the world, and promulgated his metaphysics of the beautiful as a last farewell of Hellenic civilization. Beauty is not composite, but the simple Idea of worth shining through the world of sense. Beauty is from the inner and for the inner. Art does not imitate nature, but expresses the reason; it supplements the defects of nature and creates something new. Yet the world of nature is beautiful, because down to the lowest deeps it is permeated by the divine.
The Return of the Soul to God.—The Ethical Problem of Plotinus. In his discussion of moral conduct Plotinus started from the point opposite to that of his metaphysics. He looked from the point of view of man up the series which descended from the Godhead. Men immersed in matter have nevertheless a share in the divine life, and their goal is independence of the world. They must free themselves from sense. Man’s ethical task is to separate the two worlds and to turn away from the material, not only in its abnormalities but in every way. The practical virtues have little value in such a sublimation of the soul, for these only bind the soul more closely to the world of matter. The political virtues are only a preparation by which the soul learns how to be free from sense. The intellectual virtues are necessary, but the goal of salvation is not reached by knowledge alone. “The wizard king builds his tower of speculation by the hands of human workmen till he reaches the top story, and then he summons his genii to fashion the battlements of adamant and crown them with starry fire.” Out of the mental condition of contemplation the soul will rise on the wings of ecstasy to the God from whom it came. The call of Plotinus is to the ascetic life. The development required is that of spirituality. Ethically Plotinus’ doctrine is dualistic, because it requires the rejection of matter as evil. The return is not an evolution nor an innovation in which reform of the old world is demanded. There is no individual progress, but a penetration into the foundation of things. But what incentive has man to undertake this return? What arouses him from his sleep? Not sense-perception nor reflection, but his love for the beautiful. The innate impulse of Platonic love turns the soul away from matter to the illuminating Idea. He who has an immediate recognition of the pure Idea is gaining the higher perfection. Only when man is in ecstasy—an ecstasy which transcends every subjective state—does he get complete contact and union with God. In such a moment of consecration he forgets himself and becomes God. This final step never comes unless God himself illuminates the soul by a special light so that it can see God. This final state comes only to few souls, and to those but seldom.
The Syrian School.—The Systematizing of Polytheisms.—Jamblichus. This school existed about a generation after the death of Plotinus. Its founder was Jamblichus (d. about 330), whose teacher was Porphyry, the pupil of Plotinus. Jamblichus was a Syrian, who got his instruction from Porphyry at Rome, and then went back to his native country to set up for himself a school of neo-Platonism. He soon became reverenced as teacher, religious reformer, and worker of miracles. He wrote commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and the theological works of the Orphics, Chaldeans, and the Pythagoreans. Among the crowd of his enthusiastic disciples, one notes the names of the Emperor Julian and Hypatia.43
The neo-Platonism of Jamblichus contained no new point of view. Metaphysically and ethically his teaching was identical with that of Plotinus. He tried to complete the religious movement by coördinating all cults, excepting Christianity, into a unity. This was an eclecticism by which Jamblichus came naturally, for Syria was a land where eclecticism thrived. It was here that Gnosticism had its stronghold. With free eclectic hand Jamblichus filled in all the intermediary grades between the Godhead and man with the multitude of gods of all religions. In his system he placed 10 supra-terrestrial gods, 365 celestial beings, 72 orders of sub-celestial beings, and 42 orders of natural gods. To find places for them all, he had to increase the number of intermediaries; and to systematize this complex polytheism, he employed the Pythagorean numbers. His theory shows how persistent was the Hellenic civilization.
The Athenian School.—Recapitulation.—Proclus. The Syrian school failed to restore the old religions, and we find neo-Platonism, after revivals here and there, again at Athens. The city that had been the original sanctuary of Greek culture was the last stronghold of Hellenism.
The Athenian school made its appearance about 410, and its leading representatives were Plutarch, Syrianus, and Proclus. Proclus (410–485), the pupil of Syrianus, was the most important representative of the Athenian school, and he may be said to have uttered the last word of dying Hellenism. Born at Constantinople, of a Lycian family, he received his education at Alexandria; and when he became leader of the school at Athens, he received the extravagant worship of his pupils. Connected with the Athenian school were the great commentators, Philoponus and Simplicius, whose works on Aristotle became of great value to later times. Their erudite compilations stand out sharply against the imaginative speculations of their age. In connection with this school Boëthius must not be overlooked. He was a neo-Platonist who called himself a Christian, and he was an important figure in the history of education. His translations and expositions of Aristotle’s logic and of the Isagoge of Porphyry were very influential in the Middle Ages.
Proclus was a theologian like Jamblichus, excepting that he tried to put theology upon a philosophical basis. By means of the dialectic he sought to systematize the entire philosophical thought of the Greeks. His insatiable desire for faith was accompanied by wonderful dialectical ability, with the result that his teaching was an intricate formalism united with mythology. He carried out his dialectical plans to the minutest detail. He drew the materials of his system from both barbarians and Greeks, and he himself had been initiated into all the Mysteries. Every superstition of the past and present influenced him, and in framing a universal system he did not feel satisfied until every transmitted doctrine had found a place in that system. He was the systematizer of paganism and its scholastic. He conceived that the fundamental problem was that of the One and the Many, and that the One is related to the Many in three stages,—permanence, going-forth, and return. The Many as a manifold effect is similar to the unity of the original cause and yet different from it. Development is the striving of the effect to return to the original cause, and this strife for a return to God was illustrated by Proclus in every realm of life, and he repeated it again and again in application to every detail. He conceived that the development of the world from the Godhead was continually going through this triad system of change. His philosophy, however, shows no originality other than being an ingenious formal classification in which every polytheism found a place.
CHAPTER XIV
PATRISTICS.—THE HELLENIZING OF THE GOSPEL
The Early Situation of Christianity. The Orient was the source of the Gospel, as of the other religions of this time. The power of Christianity lay in the spontaneous force of its pure religious feeling, with which it entered the lists for the conquest of the world. Christianity was not a philosophy, but a religion. It appealed to a different class than did the Alexandrian schools. The lower class received it first, and so the questions of science and philosophy occupied the early Christians but little. They were neither the friends nor the foes of Hellenism, and they took no interest in political theories. The Christian society was a spiritual cosmopolitanism, which was inspired and united by belief in God, faith in Christ, and in immediate communion with Christ. Conviction of the Second Coming of the Lord determined the conduct of the early Christians. Indeed, that moral reformation and moral conduct were the dominating aims of the Christian communities is proved by the following facts: the documents dealing with Christian life of that time are almost wholly moral; the discipline upon the members was for moral and not doctrinal reasons. Still these early Christians had some simple doctrines, which were seemingly taken for granted; and the danger is, to conceive the early Christians as either (1) too simple or (2) too ignorant. They believed that there is one God, that man has personal relations to God, that history has a dramatic course, that right was God’s command and absolutely different from wrong, that the Last Judgment would surely come.
But about the middle of the second century Christianity was obliged to change its attitude towards both science and the State. Between 150 and 250 a great change took place among the Christians. The documentary records are full of doctrinal struggles, so that little room was left for recording the struggles for moral purity. Morality became subordinated to belief, and the intellectual side of Christianity was emphasized at the expense of the ethical. The Second Coming of our Lord was less emphasized. This doctrine was either pushed into the background or its realization was looked upon as not immediate. Furthermore, the Christian sect had spread over the empire and had come into positive relations both with circles of culture and with political affairs. Various statistics of the numerical growth of the Christians are given; among them is the following statement: in 30 A. D. they numbered 500, in 100 A. D. 500,000, in 311 A. D. 30,000,000. In the second century the self-justification of Christianity could no longer be put upon the basis of the feelings and inner convictions. It must justify itself to the world without, and to its own cultured communicants as well. It was being attacked by philosophy, and, unless its own further growth were to be thwarted, it found that it must use the weapons of philosophy. Its increase of power antagonized both the Roman state and Hellenistic culture, and from 150 to 300 the fight between Christianity and the old world of things was to the death. Christianity eventually conquered Rome and Hellenism; but this would have been impossible if it had maintained its original attitude of indifference to culture. Its success was due to the wisdom that it has since so often shown. It adapted itself to its new situation by taking over and making its own the culture of the old world, and by fighting the old world with that culture. Christianity thereby shaped its own constitution into such strength that it could obtain possession of the state with Constantine in 300. From this impregnable political position, it was able to deal with its rivals on an entirely different footing. When old Rome fell in 476, the church did not fall with it, but on the contrary it came into possession of the city.
But this political success was the result and not the cause of the growth of Christianity. It could never have conquered so intrenched a government as Rome, if it had not first been victorious over the more persistent civilization of Greece. It made itself inherently strong by Hellenizing itself—strong both for polemical and for constructive purposes. But it is obvious that little philosophical originality may be expected during this period. When the church fathers began to employ Hellenistic philosophy, they took it on the whole as they found it. They varied it only to suit their own legitimate purposes. Christianity entered the religious controversies of the time when victory would belong to the sect which could use Greek civilization most effectively in defending itself against the hostility of other religions, and in constantly renewing the confidence of its devotees.
But in the adoption of Hellenistic culture the church created a new danger to itself. It must guard its own conceptions lest they be smothered by this same Hellenism. It must keep its fundamental beliefs in their integrity. Greek philosophy must be a servant so constrained as to bring out only the implicit meaning of the fundamental Christian doctrines. Philosophy must not corrupt these doctrines and transmute them into Hellenism. The simple faith of the first century and its doctrines must be so formulated by Hellenic wisdom that it would be stated for all time. The church needed a dogmatic system, a creed that could forestall any future innovations. The long series of œcumenical councils of the church, beginning with the Council of Nicæa in 325, were united efforts in this direction. After that first council, dogma became more gradually fixed and, from time to time, this and that group of men were separated from the church as heretical.
Patristics is this philosophical secularizing of the Gospel which accompanied the internal and external development of the church body during the two or three centuries after the year 150 A. D.
The Philosophies influencing Christian Thought. The Greek philosophies most influential upon the development of Christian doctrine were Stoicism and neo-Platonism. The philosophy of Philo was also influential, but it was really only a bridge from philosophical Judaism to Christian theology. It contained both Stoicism and Platonism in an unsymmetrical form, and Philo’s writings “contain the seeds of nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil.”44 Greek philosophical influence upon the early Christian world was felt in two ways: in ethical theory and practice; in the construction of theology. During the fourth century Stoic ethics of a Cynic type replaced the early Christian ethics. The basis of Christian society was no longer the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, but rather that of Roman Stoicism. This is shown by the character of that book on morals (De Officiis Ministrorum) by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340–397). In theology the Christian doctrine had no need to borrow from the Greeks the conception of the unity of God or that of the creation of the world by God. But the Greek influence is seen in the doctrines on subjects allied to these: mainly on the questions of the mode of creation and the relation of God to the material world. In the discussion of these questions the influence of the Stoic monism, tending toward dualism, and the influence of Platonic dualism, tending toward a threefold conception of God, Matter, and Form, will appear in the examples which subsequently follow.
The most formidable opponent of Christianity during this time was neo-Platonism, but neo-Platonism and Christianity were not, however, long separated. Although neo-Platonism met its fate at the hands of scholasticism, it influenced in a thousand ways both orthodox and heretical Christianity. The rivalry of these two bodies ended—and with it came the ending of the Hellenic-Roman period of philosophy—in a complete and original theology. This was the theology of St. Augustine, who marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.
The Periods of Early Christianity (30 A. D.–476 A. D.).
1. Introductory Period, 30–200.
(1) Period of Primitive Faith (during the 1st century A. D.). With great simplicity of doctrine and ceremonies the Christians were preparing through faith and the practice of virtue for the Second Coming of our Lord.
(2) Period of the Earlier Formulation and Defense of Christian Doctrine (during the 2d century A. D.).
(a) The Apologists (2d century).
(b) The Gnostics (2d century).
(c) The Old Catholic Theologians (2d and 3d centuries).
2. Development Period (200–476).
(1) The Period of Actual Formulation of Doctrine (200–325). The Catechetical School of Alexandria—Origen (3d century).
(2) The Period of the Establishment of Dogma (325–modern times) as seen in the Council of Nicæa and other œcumenical councils. It was a period in which church dogma was developed on the basis of doctrine already established.
While the origin and development of the Christian church is an interesting story in itself, only one aspect of it is germane to the history of philosophy. That is the influence of Hellenism upon the formation of the theology of the church. The origin and development of the church organization lies beyond our field. Also the periods before the influence of Hellenism—the Period of Primitive Faith during the first century, and the period after dogma had become well established, the time after the Council of Nicæa in 325—will be omitted from our discussion here. Only the period of the Earlier Formulation and that of the Actual Formulation of Doctrine, that is, the one hundred and seventy-five years (150–325), are of interest to us. This time is known in history by the name of the period of Patristics.
The Apologists. Only such Christians as were trained in Greek philosophy could rally to the first defense of the Christian doctrine. The new faith was, on the one hand, on the defensive against the mockery of Greek wisdom, and, on the other hand, it was obliged to take a positive stand to show that it was the fulfillment of the human need of salvation. The Apologists tried to make the Christian teaching as consistent as possible with the results of Greek philosophy and, at the same time, to read into Greek philosophy Christian meanings. They did not at all intend to Hellenize the Gospel, but they wanted to make it seem a rational one to the cultured world. “Christianity is philosophy and revelation. This is the thesis of every Apologist from Aristides to Minucius Felix.”45 Their very act of defense was unintentionally the first step toward the incorporation of Greek philosophy as a part of Christian teaching. The most important Apologists were Justin Martyr (100–166), Athenagoras (d. 180), and among the Romans Minucius Felix (about 200) and Lactantius (d. 320). The life of Justin Martyr is characteristic. He was born in Sichem, Samaria, but was Greek in origin and education. Having investigated several systems of philosophy and religion, he came to the conclusion that the Christian religion was the only true philosophy, and he died in defense of it at Rome.
To prove that Christianity is the only true philosophy, the Apologists asserted that it alone guaranteed correct knowledge and true holiness here and hereafter. They proclaimed its preëminence because it is a perfect revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Since man is imprisoned in the world of the senses and ruled by dæmons, he can never be saved except through a perfect revelation. To be saved is to become rational, and man can become rational only by divine aid. Revelation has not been restricted to Christianity, but God’s inspiration has been at work in all mankind. The truth in Socrates, Plato, and Pythagoras has not been their own, but has sprung from this same divine inspiration, for truth never is the product of man’s unaided reason. Socrates and Plato got their truth in part from God’s direct revelation to them, in part indirectly from reading the works of Moses and the prophets. But revelation outside of Christianity has not been complete nor continuous. The first perfect revelation was in Jesus Christ, for He is the first to reveal the divine Logos completely. He is the first in whom the Logos has become man. He is the Son of God because the complete essence of the inexpressible Deity is unfolded in Him.
The Apologists thus identified reason and revelation. The Logos is the same in revelation, nature, or history. The Stoic conception of the Logos, which Philo had stripped of its materialistic character, was identified with Christ and revelation. Justin could regard as inspired what the Greeks had looked upon as natural in their own doctrines. Christ is the world-reason, in whom the divine has been incarnated, and the Apologists had the enormous advantage over the neo-Platonists of being able to point to Jesus as the definite and historical incarnation of God. The Apologists could summon the prevailing Platonic dualism of God and matter to their aid in showing the need of such a revelation; for matter is altogether without reason and goodness. Thus a summary of their doctrine is as follows: the world is bad and needs a revelation; the Logos of God has always been present in history, but has especially appeared in Jesus Christ, the man, in order to redeem men from their sin and establish the kingdom of God.
The Gnostics. Gnosticism is the name applied to a movement of hostile reconstruction of Old Testament tradition instead of a spiritual interpretation of it. It was a great syncretic movement in the second and third centuries, which sought to form a world religion in which men should be rated on the basis of what they intellectually and morally knew. The Gnostics tried to transform the Christian faith in a large way into knowledge that would still be Christian; and their efforts show how strong the philosophical interest among the Christians was beginning to be. The conditions for the development of such a doctrine as Gnosticism were everywhere present in the empire, yet two principal centres are pointed out: one at Alexandria and the other in Syria. Gnosticism was a most fanciful mixture of Oriental and Occidental cults and mythologies, very much more fantastic than either neo-Pythagoreanism or neo-Platonism. It was a philosophy in which the essential Christian principles were lost under the weight of esoteric knowledge. The Gnostics themselves were steeped in Hellenic culture, and in many localities formed only bands of Mysteries. They finally lost all sympathy with the Christians, and were classed as heretics by the church. The leading Gnostics were Saturninus, Carpocrates (about 130), Basilides, Valentinus (about 160), and Bardesanes (155–225). Only a few fragments of their many writings remain, and about all that we know of their doctrines is what their opponents say of them. Valentinus, the most notable, was born at Rome and died at Cyprus. Bardesanes was born in Mesopotamia. Carpocrates lived at Alexandria and was a contemporary of Basilides, who was a Syrian. The records of their careers are very meagre.
The Gnostics were the first philosophers of history.46 They undertook to make Christianity a world religion by conquering Hellenic culture for Christianity and Christianity for Hellenic culture. The only way they could do this was by dislodging Christianity from its historical anchorage in the Old Testament. The Gnostics were in open hostility to Judaism. They transformed every ethical problem into a cosmological problem, they regarded human history as the continuation of natural history, they viewed the Redemption as the last act in the cosmic drama. This shows how closely related their teaching was to that of Philo and Plotinus and how consistent with the theoretic spirit of the time. Since the salvation of the world by Christ stands as the central point of their philosophy of history, their philosophy of history amounted to a philosophy of Christian history.
The victory of Christianity over paganism and Judaism was conceived allegorically by the Gnostics as the battle of the gods of these religions. The Redeemer was then conceived to appear at the psychological moment and to win the victory; and this appearance of Christ as Redeemer is not only the highest point in the development of the human race, but it is the dénouement in the drama of the universe. Nature was therefore conceived by them to be a battle-ground of the gods and the strife to be waged between the forces of good and evil. The good gets the victory by means of Christ. The battle was conceived in the neo-Pythagorean form of the dualism of matter and spirit, but was expressed in mythical terms. The heathen gods and the god of the Old Testament, who took the form of the Platonic demiurge, were the powers in the world which the highest God had to overcome.
The dualism of good and evil was conceived to be the same as between spirit and matter, and was elaborated in a fashion true to the Alexandrian school. The space between God and matter was conceived to be filled in by a whole race of dæmons and angels, arranged according to the Pythagorean numbers. The lowest was so far from the divine perfectness as to be in touch with matter, and he is the demiurge who formed the world. The battle then was between good and evil, light and darkness, until the Logos, the Nous, Christ, the most perfect of the intermediary beings, came down and by incarnation released from matter the imprisoned spirits of men and even of the fallen angels, like the demiurge. This is, in brief, the Gnostic explanation of history.
This dualism was quite consistent with contemporary Christian ethics, which had then become Stoic. But this dualism was not consistent with monotheism, the fundamental Christian principle. The internal danger in Patristics—of swamping the fundamentals of Christianity through Hellenizing them—appears thus early. The early Christian found at the beginning an antagonism between his fundamental monotheistic metaphysics and Greek dualistic ethics.
The Reaction against Gnosticism.—The Old Catholic Theologians. We have seen that the original position of the Christians was one of indifference to both politics and philosophy; that then came the employment of Hellenism in the defense of the Gospel. This resulted in the extreme attempt of the Gnostics to transform Christianity into a factor in a cosmic theosophy. Gnosticism had tried to capture the new religion by force and make it subserve the interests of Hellenic and Oriental philosophy. This danger was averted only after years of controversy. Gnosticism was the gravest danger that the early church had to meet, and the Gnostics left their mark upon the church, although they were expelled; for the church never returned to its original simplicity of doctrine. Gnosticism, however, produced an extreme reaction, for a time, against the use of philosophy, and was represented by the “Old Catholic Theologians,”—Irenæus (140–200), Tertullian (160–220), and Hippolytus. These theologians stood against turning faith into a science and tried to limit dogma to the articles of the baptismal confession interpreted as a rule of faith. Tatian (170) saw in Hellenism the work of the devil. Irenæus conceived a unity in the process of creation and redemption,—creation as a divine method of bringing humanity up into the church by way of redemption. Tertullian went so far as to affirm that the Gospel is confirmed by its being in a certain sense contradictory to reason. Credo quia absurdum. By this he means, not that faith rests in things absurd, but that faith rests in things so far above reason as to make reason absurd. This reaction was against Gnosticism and not against rationalism, for these men used both philosophy and tradition to support their arguments.
The reaction against a systematic theology failed to establish itself, for the need of Greek philosophy was found to be necessary. The result was that a median position was taken by the help of Greek philosophy in the formulation of the dogma of the church. This was scientifically stated by the Alexandrian School of Catechists, of which Clement and Origen were the leaders.
Origen (185–254) and the School of Catechists. Origen, whose surname was Adamantine, was an early teacher in the School of Catechists, which had been under the direction of Clement. Like Plotinus, Origen had been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas. Origen endured much persecution on account of his teaching, and had to flee from Alexandria to Cæsarea and Tyre, where he spent his old age. He was the most influential theologian of the Eastern church, and he was the father of Christian theological science.
In manner of life Origen was a Christian; in his thought he was a Greek. He was the Christian Philo, although he was a rival to the neo-Platonic philosophers. His Christian theology competed with the philosophical systems of his time. It was founded on both Testaments, and it also united in a peculiar way toward a practical end the theology of both the Apologists and the Gnostics. He was convinced that Christianity could be expressed only as a science, and that any form of Christianity without scientific expression is not clear to itself. Although the church was offended at some of his doctrines, it made his philosophical principle and his theory of development its own. In trying to state Christianity in terms of intellectual knowledge, Origen did not make the mistake of burying its principles under philosophy or mythology, as was the case with the Gnostics. The Gnostics had created a new Christianity; Origen developed Christianity from within itself. He was an orthodox traditionalist, a strong Biblical theologian and idealistic philosopher. He maintained that there were several ways of interpreting the Scriptures (allegorical interpretation). The masses see only the somatic or outward meaning as it has been developed in history. A deeper or moral interpretation gives a psychical meaning to the Gospel truth. More profound still is the spiritual interpretation, which gives to the Gospels a pneumatic or spiritually esoteric meaning. Christianity is superior to all other religions because it is a religion for all classes, even for the common man. Christianity is the only religion which, without being polytheistic, can have its truth in mythical dress.
The aim of Origen was less to show how the world came to be, than to justify the ways of God to men in the world’s creation and history. The central principle in his teaching is spiritual monotheism. God is an unchanging spirit, the author of all things, and He transcends human knowledge. What distinguishes Him most is the absolute causality of His will. He is essentially creative, and this creative activity is co-eternal with Himself. God can have no dealings with changing individuals directly, since although creative He is unchanging. He has direct connection only with the eternal revelation of His own image, the Logos. The Logos is a person, a special hypostasis, the perfect likeness of God with nothing corporeal about him. He is not the God, but still God, yet a second God, with no sharing of divinity.47 The Holy Spirit bears the same relation to the Logos as the Logos to the Father. In his relation to the world the Logos is the Idea of Ideas, the norm according to which things are created.
Origen followed Philo in believing that the original creation consists of a world of beings that are pure intelligences, and that the cause of creation is God’s goodness. He further believed that the Logos or Wisdom of God is God’s Son. Both the creation of the ideal world of intelligences and the existence of the Son is from eternity. The origin of the visible world is to be contrasted with this eternal creation. The visible world had its beginning in time and is only one of a series of worlds. It will finally return to God, and has in God its beginning and end. Thus man lives in a visible world of time with eternities on either side. Creation, viewed as a whole, is everlasting, and consists of an endless number of beings who are destined to become a part of the divine holiness and to participate in the divine blessedness. These beings are endowed with freedom of will, and they fall away from God. The visible world of matter has been created to purify the fallen spirits, and in consequence we find materialized spirits graded into angels, stars, mankind, and evil dæmons.
In his emphasis on the will as the fundamental mental part of man, Origen is distinctly Christian and opposed to Greek intellectualism. The will of God and the will of man form the corner stone in his system. The will of God is the eternal development of His being, but the will of spirits is their temporal free choice. The will of God is reality itself; the will of spirits is phenomenal and changing. Freedom of the will of the spirits is the ground of their sin, and consequently of their materiality. Thus it is by the freedom of the spirits that Origen explains evil and the existence of imperfect matter without impeaching the eternal purity of God. Origen thus reconciled the ethical transcendence of God as creator with his immanence in the material world. God is the creator without being the creator of sin. Through the conception of free-will Origen reconciled the two antithetical principles of Christian metaphysics: faith in divine omnipotence and consciousness of sin.
The function of the church is thus an important one in the divine plan. For the fallen spirits try to rise by their own wills from the matter to which they are condemned for purification. They never lose their divine essence, however low they may fall. They cannot rise alone, nor are they compelled to, but they always have the help of divine grace, which is always active within man and has also been perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ. After the manner of the Apologists, Origen makes use of the Stoic and Platonic conceptions, for the eternal Logos takes form in the divine-human unity of Jesus. Through His physical suffering redemption is made possible to all believers, and through His essence illumination has been brought to those especially inspired. There are different grades of redemption: faith, or a religious understanding of the perceptual world; knowledge of the Logos; final absorption in God. All shall finally be saved through the combined forces of freedom and Grace, and then shall all material existence disappear.
The controversies within the church during the succeeding centuries over the theory of Origen are theological rather than philosophical, and so our account of the relation of Greek philosophy to Christianity in the Hellenic-Roman period closes here. Origen’s undertaking was a private one, approved at first in only limited circles and on the whole disapproved by the church. In his scientific dogmatics the particular changes which he planned pertain especially to the conception of salvation and the place of Christ in the universe. In his teaching about Christ he emphasized more the cosmological than the soteriological aspect, but neither was fully developed. The history of the early church shows that Christianity seized the ideas of ancient philosophy and insisted on revising them with its own religious principle before it used them. We shall find that the next period is introduced by a greater than Origen, in whom again the Christian and the ancient worlds will meet in new and richer combination,—St. Augustine.
BOOK II
THE MIDDLE AGES (476–1453)
CHAPTER XV
CHARACTERISTICS AND CONDITIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Comparison of the Hellenic-Roman Period and the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages can be conveniently remembered as approximately the 1000 years between the fall of old Rome, in 476, and the fall of new Rome (Constantinople) in 1453. Together these two periods make a long and a philosophically unproductive stretch of 1800 years. The intellectual materials which the two periods possessed, differ but little, although during the first half of the Middle Ages such materials were very few. There is, however, a decided difference in the way the two periods look at things. The ancient had started with Aristotle’s interest in knowledge for its own sake; the ancient had passed from that to the need of knowledge in ethical conduct; he had finally made use of knowledge only in formulating religion. On the other hand, the history of thought in the Middle Ages was exactly the reverse. The mediæval man starts satisfied with religion as thus formulated by the preceding period, and seeks to regain pure knowledge. The perspective in the two periods is therefore different. Hellenic thought began in freedom and ended in tradition; mediæval thought begins in tradition and, borne by the youthful German, who brings with him few original ideas, pushes forward toward freedom. No doubt one can discover in mediæval times many fresh transformations of ancient thought and a new Latin terminology, but, on the whole, all the problems of the Middle Ages, as well as their solutions, can be found in antiquity. One may find, too, the germs of modern thought in the Middle Ages, but they come from mediæval pupils and not from mediæval masters. In the Middle Ages humanity is again at school; its problems appear in succession, but they always are expressed in the conceptions of the ancients.
The Mediæval Man. Antiquity had brought together three civilizations,—those of Greece, of Rome, and of Christianity. Greek civilization in the form of an intellectual culture, called Hellenism, had been superimposed upon Roman political society. The result was a society with a twofold stratum, and in such a society the Christian church had grown as an organization of controlling cultural and political influence. It was into this society that the German barbarians, by a series of invasions, entered during the first three centuries of the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages began and antiquity ended when these German tribes finally broke down the barriers of the Roman empire. It was a new period; for a new race had taken upon itself the responsibility of bearing the burden of the future of western Europe. The German was of course unconscious of the magnitude of his self-imposed burden, for the German was young, vigorous, and moved by primitive instincts. He had leaped into the world’s fields as a conqueror; he remained as a laborer.
At the beginning the German seemed likely to destroy the entire product which antiquity had bequeathed. He was quite unprepared to assimilate the rich fruits of that ancient civilization. He had, indeed, less mind for the elaborate forms of Greek philosophy than for the lighter forms of Greek art. In his first contact he could understand neither. Moreover ancient society was so weak that it could not educate him, who was its conqueror, into its culture. Nevertheless, there was one element in that ancient society that did appeal to the German. That was the spiritual power of the Christian church. Alone amid the ruins of antiquity the power of the church had grown so strong that the men of the north bowed before it, and religion accomplished through the emotions of the Germans what art, philosophy, and statecraft failed to achieve. The preaching of the Gospel laid hold of the feelings of these primitive people, for the church in its pretensions, and sometimes in fact, represented the old Roman political unity. Moreover the church was also the repository of what was left of Greek science. The church expressed for the German his own ideal of the personal inner life. The Germans became the supporters of the church, and in this way the protectors of ancient culture. Mediæval history in western Europe is therefore the record of the development of the Germans under the influence of the Christian church. In contrast with the development of the Eastern church, which was the development of a state church, the Western church was the development of an ecclesiastical state. The Western church, and not the later empire, was the true successor of the Roman empire. Thus the early beginnings of the Middle Ages rested with the church, but the later development of the Middle Ages rested with the German people.
How the Universe appeared to the Mediæval Man. The mediæval man had very indistinct ideas about the world around him, since his interest did not lie in the earthly realm, but in the spirit that controlled it. He was content in his sciences with conclusions without their demonstrations. Although it is said that relations of space and number are never indistinct in the mind of the civilized man, the man of the Middle Ages certainly did not possess such conceptions in so vigorous a manner as to enable him to discover new truths. We must, furthermore, make a sharper distinction between mediæval popular opinion and mediæval scientific opinion than we should about popular and scientific opinion of modern times; for the results of science did not reach the people then as now. To the ordinary mediæval man the world in which he lived was what it appeared to be to his eye. The earth was flat; the sky was a material dome, which sustained the waters of the world above it. Through this sky-floor the water sometimes breaks and the earth receives showers of rain. These popular notions sometimes appeared in the verse of the time.
The mediæval scientific opinion was based on the theory of Ptolemy and his school of Alexandrian astronomers, who lived in the second century A. D., some details to the theory having been added by the Arabians. Ptolemy says, “The world is divided into two vast regions; the one ethereal, the other elementary. The ethereal region begins with the first mover, which accomplishes its journey from east to west in twenty-four hours; ten skies participate in this motion, and their totality comprises the double crystalline heaven, the firmament and the seven planets.” (See diagram.) The mediæval man of science thought that, inasmuch as he was upon the earth, he was therefore standing at the centre of things. Directly above him was the cavity of the sky, ruled by the moon; and below the moon were the four elements,—fire, air, water, and earth. This region was the realm of imperfection. But above the moon the scientist saw a series of nine other heavens, each with an orderly revolution of its own; and beyond all is God. The universe was therefore to Ptolemy a great but a limited sphere, consisting of ten spheres one inside another (like the rings of an onion). Each planet moved with the motion of its own heaven (or sphere), which was sometimes called “crystalline” because it was transparent. The movements of the heavenly bodies, each in its own revolving heaven, were contained in the whole sphere, which revolved with a motion of its own. By ascribing other movements to the planets within their respective heavens, the mediæval astronomers were able to predict every conjunction and eclipse to the minute. These separate movements of the planets were called epicycles, the form of which is shown in the diagram on the opposite page.
PTOLEMAIC COSMOGRAPHY
A diagram showing the division of the universe into the ten spheres or heavens
(From the private library of Professor R. W. Willson of Harvard University)
Such a scientific astronomy would easily lend itself to the theological conceptions of the time. The realm of perfection above the moon was supposed to be under the direct supervision of God and to be inhabited by spirits. Thus the conjunction and relation of the heavenly bodies were thought to have influence upon human life, and they furnished the basis of the astrology, necromancy, and spiritism so common in the Middle Ages. The ninth heaven embraced all the others. It swept around them all, without interfering with their own special motions, and completed its revolution in twenty-four hours. The ninth heaven was both the source and the limit of all motion and all change. Beyond it lies the eternal peace of God, which the Christian astronomer regarded as “the abode of the blessed.” This was called the tenth heaven or the Empyrean. This, in Dante’s words, is “the heaven that is pure light; light intellectual full of love, love of the good full of joy, joy that transcends all sweetness.” The tenth heaven is Paradise and is within the life of God. It is important to note that the Ptolemaic conception of the universe is the background upon which Dante constructs his Divine Comedy (see diagram, p. 376),48 and appears in part at least as the cosmological basis of the Paradise Lost of Milton. For thirteen centuries—from 200 to 1500—conviction remained unshaken in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy as an adequate explanation of the universe.
PTOLEMAIC COSMOGRAPHY
(Showing the Epicyclic Movements of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in respect to the Earth)
The Mediæval Man at School. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was a revival in intellectual interests that was deep and broad, and the characteristics of this revival will be discussed subsequently (see Transitional Period, p. 329). Our curiosity, however, is aroused upon our entrance into the Middle Ages, as to what the man of the early Middle Ages studied and how much he learned. We must remind ourselves at the outset of the oft-repeated fact that, on the whole, in western Europe, for the first five hundred years of the Middle Ages, the only people who had any book-learning were the churchmen. Furthermore, with them the learning was very meagre. Their purpose in study will show this, for it was to enable them “to understand and expound the Canonical Scriptures, the Fathers, and other ecclesiastical writings.” The training was as follows:—
1. Theological. Elementary instruction in the Psalms and church music, but no systematic training in theology,—just enough training to enable the priest to understand the Bible and the Church Fathers.
2. Secular training. Knowledge in the “Seven Liberal Arts,” i. e. the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and the more advanced quadrivium,—music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. These names are suggestive of a vast amount of knowledge, while, in truth, very little was known or taught in these subjects. Astronomy and arithmetic were employed to find the time of Easter. Geometry included some propositions of Euclid without demonstrations. Music included plain song and a mystic doctrine of number. More was made of grammar, the study of rhetoric from Latin classics, and dialectics. Dialectics was logic in the Middle Ages, and its mysteries fascinated the mediæval man. But even in logic there were only some remnants of the Aristotelian logic known.
A Mediæval Library. Here again is an interesting question: What did this mediæval churchman read? But we must make a distinction between books most commonly read, books that the scholars might use, and books most influential upon thought.
1. Books most commonly read. These would be the text-books used in instruction. They are as follows:—
The Psalms.
The Grammar of Donatus.
The Christian poets: Prudentius, Psychomachia; Juvencus, Gospels in Verse; Sedulius, Easter Hymn.
Dionysius Cato, Disticha de Moribus, a collection of proverbs (moral maxims) in rhyming couplets.
Virgil, Ovid, and the rhetorical works of Cicero.
Æsop’s Fables (in Latin).
2. Books that the scholars might use. It is difficult to say what any particular scholar actually did read, for the libraries of monasteries differed enormously in the character and number of their books; some monasteries had several hundred books, some none at all. Some libraries were composed almost entirely of works of the Fathers; some possessed a good many works of ancient classical writers. One might expect to find any one or more of the following works in a scholar’s library:—
Aristotle, De Interpretatione and the Categories in Boëthius’ translation.
This explains why the logical problems occupied the almost exclusive attention of the first schoolmen.
Plato, the Timæus.
This was known to the Irish monks perhaps in Greek, but on the continent in a translation by Chalcidius. The only other sources of knowledge of Plato were in the works of Augustine and the neo-Platonists.
Commentaries on Aristotle,—The Isagoge by Porphyry, in a translation into Latin by Boëthius, and some commentaries by Boëthius himself on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione and Categories.
Cicero, the rhetorical and dialectical treatises, such as the Topica, De Officiis.
Seneca, De Beneficiis.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura.
Augustine’s works and some pseudo-Augustinian writings.
The works of the Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Origen.
The Pseudo-Dionysius, translated from the Greek by Erigena.
The encyclopedic collections of some of the last of the scholars of antiquity, like Cassiodorus, Capella, Boëthius, and the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville.
3. The Books most influential philosophically upon the time. These were not necessarily the books most widely read, but the epoch-making books, so to speak. They were as follows:—
Augustine, City of God.
Boëthius, Consolation of Philosophy.
Aristotle, De Interpretatione and the Categories in translation by Boëthius.
Pseudo-Dionysius, translated by Erigena.
Porphyry, Isagoge translated by Boëthius, an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories.
The Three Periods of the Middle Ages.
1. Early Period, 476–1000.
2. Transitional Period, 1000–1200.
3. Period of Classic Scholasticism, 1200–1453.
There is one great natural division line of the Middle Ages, the year 1200. At this time the surging of the western peoples eastward in the Crusades was at its height, and the works of Aristotle were coming into western Europe from the East. These events mark a change in the political and intellectual situation in Europe. But this change did not take place suddenly. There are intervening two centuries that are indeed transitional, but at the same time are animated by a distinct and independent philosophical motive. These two centuries may be set apart as a period, different from the earlier and the later periods. We shall call these three periods the Early Period, the Transitional Period, and the Period of Classic Scholasticism.
The Early Period takes us from the fall of old Rome (476) to the birth of modern political Europe (1000). It is a period of religious faith governed by the theology of Augustine. Mysticism has no independent following, but on the contrary rules within the church. The Christian principle of individual personality and the Greek Platonic conception of universal realities are not fused, but they are held without arousing controversy. This is because the human reason has no standard code, nor does it yet feel the need of one. The only two philosophers, Augustine and Erigena, of the period are animated by neo-Platonism.
The Transitional Period extends from the birth of political Europe (1000) to the arrival of the works of Aristotle (about 1200). This epoch is one of logical controversy, in which the Christian and the Greek motives conflict. This controversy gives rise to the first group of great schoolmen, who discuss the reality of general ideas in their application to dogma. Mysticism still rules the churchman, but now in a modified form. Plato has become the standard of the reason in orthodox circles and Aristotle in those inclined to heresy, but as yet only fragments of the works of either are known.
The Period of Classic Scholasticism extends from 1200 to the end of the Middle Ages (1453). It is a period when a theological metaphysics arises by the side of the logical controversy and predominates over that controversy. The problem now concerns the respective scopes of the reason and faith. The period is Aristotelian, and Aristotle’s philosophy is made the standard code for the churchman for all time. Mysticism has now no place of authority in the church, but has an independence. The period contains the greatest schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
| I. Early Period, 476–1000. | |
|---|---|
| 395 The Roman empire divided into Eastern and Western empires. | (Augustine, 354–430) |
|
476 Fall of the Western empire, the Eastern empire lasting about 1000 years longer. 375–600 Northern barbarians overrun the Western empire in series of invasions. |
476–800 Disappearance of municipal and imperial schools and rise of episcopal and monastic schools. |
| 525 Boëthius died, the last notable Roman scholar who knew Greek. | |
| 529 Closing of philosophical Schools at Athens; founding of monastic school by St. Benedict. | |
| 600 Roman power almost entirely in hands of barbarians. | 476–800 Dark Ages. |
| 622–732 Mohammedans conquer Arabia, Northern Africa, and Spain. | |
| 732 Mohammedans repulsed at the battle of Tours. | |
| 600–800 Fusion took place among German and Roman peoples. | |
| 800 Empire of Charlemagne founded. Civilization higher than the German, lower than the Roman. | 800–1000 Benedictine Age: only period in Western Europe when education is entirely in hands of monks. The Palace school; episcopal, cathedral, and monastery schools. (Erigena, 810–880, the forerunner of Scholasticism.) |
| 900–1000 Empire of Charlemagne broken up. Demoralization. Invasions by Danes and Northmen from the north; Saracens from south by sea; Slavs, Hungarians, Russians, and Poles by land. The church demoralized, Papacy temporarily disappears, feudalism replaces empire. | 900–1000 Dark century with decline of learning. |
| IN THE EARLY PERIOD AND THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD LITTLE OF PLATO WAS KNOWN EXCEPT IN THE FORM OF NEO-PLATONISM AND LITTLE OF ARISTOTLE EXCEPT OF FRAGMENTS OF HIS LOGIC. | |
| II. Transitional Period, 1000–1200. | |
| 1000 France and Germany get their first form as nations just before this year; England just after. Beginning of new birth of Europe, caused by conversions of northern nations, by enlightened rule of the Ottos, by regeneration of Papacy, by development of civic life. Beginning of political order, ecclesiastical discipline, and social tranquillity. Revival of architecture followed by renewal of art. The Romanesque appeared about 1000, the Gothic about 1150. Poetry of Trouvères in north and of Troubadours in south. |
First Scholasticism. (Anselm, 1033–1109) (Roscellinus, d. 1110) (Abelard, 1079–1142) |
| 1000 Passion for inquiry takes the place of the old routine. | |
| 1160–1200 Traces of the origination of the earliest universities. | |
| 1150–1250 Translation into Latin directly from Greek of the works of Aristotle, previously unknown in Western Europe. | |
| III. Period of Classic Scholasticism, 1200–1453. | |
| 1200 Crusades at their height. | 1200 The Mendicant Friars. |
| 1200–1453 Commerce of Europe with Asia begins to grow to large proportions in countries on the Mediterranean. The Third Estate grows in strength, national governments prevail over the feudal system. | Classic Scholasticism. (Thomas Aquinas, 1224–1274.) (Duns Scotus, 1270–1308.) (William of Ockam, 1280–1349.) |
| 1300–1453 The period is well supplied with schools. | |
| 1350–1453 Deterioration of Scholasticism. | |
CHAPTER XVI
THE EARLY PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE AGES (476–1000)
The General Character of the Early Period. It is no accident that these five hundred years of the Middle Ages were spiritualistic. Both the political disturbances and the intellectual inheritance from the Hellenic-Roman period made the period such. The troubles during the long death agony of the Roman empire had deprived the people of their interest in this world. The world of kingdoms and material things presented no ideals; and the age would have been pessimistic had not the Church through Augustine presented a heavenly ideal and the means to win that ideal. Both what the material world had taken away from man and what the spiritual seemed to offer him, made the age an age of faith. The principle of inner spirituality was moved to a central position. All things pointed to the supernatural and the transcendent. Men dwelt upon the nature of God, the number and rank of the angels, the salvation of the soul. In this, as in the Transitional Period following, little was known of Aristotle except some fragments of his logic; and little was known of Plato except in the form of neo-Platonism. But in this period (before the year 1000) the pupil was instructed in both Aristotle and Plato, and held them both together without controversy. Mysticism had little independence of church doctrine, as appears in the case of Erigena, the consequences of whose doctrine were not at first seen. The monastery became the fundamental social organization and the central social force. Organized ascetic life permitted an absorbing contemplation of heaven. Prayer superseded thought; faith prescribed knowledge. The intellectual world was dominated by neo-Platonic idealism, and the all-important topic in men’s minds was that of God’s grace. Augustine stood at the beginning of the period and organized its conception of grace for it. Erigena stood near the end and stated the neo-Platonism of the period in extreme form, presenting the issue for the scholasticism of the many years to come. The presentation of the doctrine of these two men will therefore be the philosophical exemplification of the attitude of the time.
MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY. THE COSMAS MAP, A. D. 547
From J. Keane’s Evolution of Geography
(Cosmas was an Egyptian monk who had once been a merchant and traveler. He did not use the records of his own travels to supplement the Greek and Roman plans, but he laid down as a fact that the earth is flat. Then he piously adduced evidence from the Scriptures to support his view. The maps drawn by Cosmas are the earliest Christian maps that have survived. Their crudeness, compared with the maps of the Romans and Arabs, reveals the low state of knowledge among the Christians.)
The Historical Position of Augustine. The Middle Ages were inaugurated by a mind of the highest order,—Augustine.49 If one were to select the most influential figures in the history of philosophy, Augustine might be chosen to stand with Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant. “In some respects Augustine stands nearer to us than Hegel and Schopenhauer.”50 For the church, but no less for the period, it was a fortunate circumstance that Augustine should have lived just as antiquity was closing and the mediæval period beginning. Through him the various influences of the past were gathered up and presented in a scientific statement for the Middle Ages. “The history of piety and of dogma in the West was so thoroughly dominated by Augustine from the beginning of the fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that we must take this whole time as forming one period.”51
In his relation to antiquity Augustine drew especially upon the fundamental teachings of St. Paul, the neo-Platonists, and the Patristics for the presentation of his own doctrine. He was familiar with a great number of the doctrines of antiquity, and was the medium of their transmission to the Middle Ages. He does not seem to have known the system of Aristotle, but the importance which he attached to the dialectic in the explanation of the Scriptures contributed a good deal to the use of the logic of Aristotle by the scholastics of the Middle Ages. He had some knowledge of the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and the Epicureans through the writings of Cicero. But the most important philosophical influence upon Augustine was the neo-Platonic teaching of Plotinus and Porphyry. Neo-Platonism, the Pauline theology, and the Patristic are the large factors in the doctrine of Augustine.
In his relation to the Middle Ages, what in brief was the position of Augustine? By means of neo-Platonism and a discriminating psychological analysis he transformed the previous belief in God as a judge into a belief in the personal relations between God and man. That is to say, he carried out monotheism spiritually, and in doing this the influence of neo-Platonism is very strong in him. Augustine made one of the centres of his teaching the living relation of the soul to God. He took religion out of the sphere of cosmological science, where it had been placed by Origen and the Gnostics, and made it personal. Furthermore, he offered with this new ideal a plan of salvation; for Augustine made it his task to show (1) what God is, and (2) what the salvation of the soul requires. Whereas before Augustine the only dogmatic scheme had presented the place and function of Christ in salvation, Augustine was interested in the place of man in salvation. Thus he elaborated monotheism into spiritual monotheism and delineated the inward processes of the Christian life, i. e. of sin and grace. This important advance made by Augustine must be attributed to the influence of philosophy—neo-Platonism—upon him.
But it must not be supposed that the total teaching of Augustine and the total influence of his thought is contained in this single change in Christian piety, as we have stated it. The various Pagan and Christian elements, as they lie in his system, have little coherence; and Augustine does not settle the rival claims between them. As the mediæval period advanced, what in his teaching had been a mere incoherence became in the hands of others positive discord. He gave the church impulses of the highest spiritual quality, but he left no well-organized capital. These impulses toward spiritual piety have never been lost, but the profusion of ideas and views in Augustine, unharmonized by himself, were also a permanent bequest to posterity that produced both vital movements and violent controversies. The legal and moral party of the church resisted his teaching at the beginning, and in the sixth century, under the influence of Gregory the Great, toned down Augustine’s teaching in the direction of a conception of the church as a juristic organization.
Augustine was thus the beginner of a new line of development by his incorporation of neo-Platonism into Christian doctrine and by his use of the dialectic to present, defend, and develop the doctrine of the church. Although the years of his life fall in antiquity, although he is the collector of all the threads of the neo-Platonic and Christian religions, he belongs in the Middle Ages as the teacher of the Middle Ages. His doctrine acted as an authoritative spiritual guide for the new German peoples. They took up the problems of antiquity from the new point of view of individual spirituality, and created out of them the philosophy of the future. But philosophically Augustine was far in advance of his age, and in the intellectually torpid times that followed him little philosophical development could be expected. Not until after Charlemagne does philosophical development springing from Augustine appear. Later Luther and the Reformation reverted to him, and our modern philosophy is founded on the principle which he made central in his conception of piety.
The Secular Science. At the same time it must not be supposed that the teaching of Augustine was by any means the only source from which this first period of the Middle Ages drew its materials of knowledge. A glance at the list of books in a mediæval library (see p. 327) will not confirm such a supposition. Augustine does not include in his doctrine—massive as it is—all the factors that finally made up mediæval civilization. Even at the beginning there was a tendency toward secular science derived from Plato and Aristotle. Noticeable as this was at first it became prominent later. Secular science tried at first to modify scholasticism, and then later to gain an independence for itself. The doctrine of Augustine did not contain the germs of science. But at the start the Middle Ages had writings on science in the inadequate compendiums of Capella, Cassiodorus, and Boëthius, and in the fragments of the logic of Aristotle.
The Life of Augustine (354–430). Aurelius Augustine, often called “the Plato of Christianity,” was born in Thagaste, Numidia. His father was a Pagan, his mother a Christian; and it was his mother who contributed chiefly to the formation of his character. He was a boy of brilliant gifts, and was educated in the schools of Madaura and Carthage. At Carthage his life was full of dissipation, which he has described in his Confessions. He took up in succession all the scientific and religious problems of his time. He gave up the teaching of rhetoric, which he had practiced in several towns in Asia Minor and Italy, and began to study theology. He was troubled by his religious doubts and tried to find relief first in Manichæism, then in the skepticism of the Academy, and then in neo-Platonism. He was converted to Christianity through three influences: his study of Plato, the eloquence of St. Ambrose, and the unremitting moral influence of his mother. He became a priest, then a bishop, and was untiring in his activity both in the practical organization of the church and in the theoretical construction of its doctrines. He was especially active in his literary attempts to refute the Pelagian and Manichæan heresies, whose doctrines he had previously professed. His life falls at the time when the barbarian invasions were beginning and when Rome was crumbling. Moved by his Platonic idealism, he wrote his City of God, which, in an elaborate philosophy of history, shows that God’s city is not on earth, but in heaven.
The Two Elements in Augustine’s Teaching. The great masses of thought in Augustine’s mind reveal motion in two directions. On the one hand, he is the theologian who holds on high the conception of the authority of the church. On the other hand, he is the philosopher who speaks for the principle of immediate certainty for the individual. These are two foci about which his thought is in constant flux and often in contradiction. Augustine has, therefore, two criteria for truth: the truth that comes from an authority without, and the truth that comes from consciousness itself. The authority of the church and the authority of the immediate consciousness of the individual—these are the two central thoughts in Augustinianism. Augustine’s conception of the authority of the church acted upon him as a lofty ideal which both inspired and at the same time constrained his speculations. As he grew older he gravitated more and more toward it, and thereby became more conservative. But it was the other central thought—the authority of immediate consciousness—which he made the basis of a philosophy of original power. Through this he transcended his own time and became himself a modern, leading the Middle Ages up to him.
Augustine did not define accurately the spheres of philosophy and theology. He did not show whether reason or revelation had the higher authority. He did not try to decide between the intelligo ut credam and credo ut intelligam, that is, between the respective authorities of reason and faith. That became, in consequence, a central philosophical problem for the schoolmen. Nevertheless, the great inheritance which Augustine left the world was along the philosophical line of intelligo ut credam (of knowledge as the basis of faith instead of faith as the basis of knowledge).
The Neo-Platonic Element: the Inner Certainties of Consciousness. Augustine was not original in making the starting-point of his philosophy the inner certainties of consciousness. That was the point of view of his time, and the starting-point of the ascetic tendency both of Christianity and of neo-Platonism. He was dissatisfied with the world without, and turned away from it to the world within to find reality. But this had been a growing tendency ever since the time of Plato. Augustine’s originality lies in his psychological description of these certainties. He is the master of self-observation and introspection. He can describe inner experiences as well as analyze them. He puts his philosophy upon a solid anthropological basis by developing a psychology of the certainties of consciousness. In doing this he placed the inner experience in the central position of control. Thus he reached a well-defined position of “internality” for which the Stoics, Epicureans, neo-Platonists, and the preceding Christian theologians had been groping; thus he anticipated Descartes and modern philosophy.
Man clings to life in spite of all its evils. This shows that there is a reality for the soul. The material world may pass away, but the reality of soul-life is assured. Man’s inner life is ever present and cannot be imaginary. The fact that there is such a thing as probability implies the existence of certainty. Where shall I look for certainty? In myself. Certainty is there as a fact of inner observation. There are my inner mental states—my sensations, feelings, etc., whose existence cannot be doubted even if the existence of the objects to which they correspond is doubted. I am certain also of my own consciousness at that moment. To doubt my existence is to assert my existence. To doubt also implies that I will remember, live—for doubt rests upon these former ideas. The temporary character of the material world only strengthens the reality of this inner world. The existence of the material world cannot be demonstrated, and so man is driven inward to find a basis for its reality. Thus by a deep insight, although without much logical reasoning, Augustine transcends Aristotle, and anticipates modern thought by finding reality in the unitary personality, whose existence is an inner certainty.
But Augustine is driven farther inward; for the certainty of the existence of God is involved in this inner certainty. My doubt about the character of the world of material things implies that their truth exists and that I have the capacity for measuring it. Such truths are universal. They transcend the individual consciousness, and their mutual agreement unites all rational beings in a common standard. On the other hand, this unity of truths implies the existence of God. Truths are the Ideas (Platonic) in God’s mind.52
Full knowledge of God is denied to man in this life, but, nevertheless, all morality consists in love for God; all science is only an interest in the working of God in nature; all the beauty in the world around us points to the harmonious ordering of God; the history of the world is only the free act of God. Thus, in brief, does Augustine centralize the principle of inner spirituality—of “internality.” Thus does he put into control the certainty of consciousness.
This was Augustine’s great contribution to the world both in the sphere of philosophy and religion. We shall see how important this principle is in our tracing of modern philosophy. Its importance upon the growth of religion was so very great that we cannot pass it by without remark. “Augustine was the reformer of Christian piety.” In the midst of religion he discovered religion. He looked into the human heart and found it to be the lower good; he looked to God and found Him to be the higher good. In love for God, man becomes exalted to another being. This is the “new birth.” By this personal religion nature and grace are separated, but morality and religion are united. Sin is the disposition to be independent by living in a state of unrest in the desires. Sin is a state of lust and fear. All is sin in the heart of the natural man—in the heart apart from God. The pre-Augustinian religion of morality and baptism, animated by hope and fear, was supplanted by him with the conception of the desire to be happy by sharing in the bliss of God. Augustine passed from Christian pessimism to Christian optimism, to a confidence in pardoning grace. By faith and love God calls us back to himself and the soul acquires what God requires. Religion is personal and a thing of the heart. “Love, unfeigned humility, and strength to overcome the world, these are the elements of religion and its blessedness; they spring from the actual possession of the loving God. This message Augustine preached to the Christianity of his time and of all times.”53
But Augustine philosophically breaks with his own Platonism at one point, and finds not in the intellect, but in the will, the primary characteristic of this consciousness of inner certainty. The will is the inmost core of our being. All our mental states are formed under the direction of the purposes of the will. The striking exception to this is the cognition of the higher divine truth, in the presence of which the mind can be only passive. Revelation cannot be the production of the finite activity, but it is an act of grace before which the will is expectant and passive. Knowledge of the divine truths of the reason is the blessedness that results from the will of God and not of man. The will of man is transformed into faith, and yet even then an element of the human will is present, although passive, for the appropriation of the truth is an act of will. Thus, in regard to this difficult subject of the nature of the will, there are two observations to be made: (1) Augustine conceives the will, memory, and intellect as so intimately related as not to be faculties of the personality like the properties of a substance. They rather form an indissoluble unity of the substance of the soul. (2) The will is theoretically free, and Augustine is one of the most forcible defenders of free-will because he is also a defender of ethical responsibility and the justice of God. Theoretically the will is a force existing above sensuous nature and formally possesses the capacity of following or resisting inclination. Actually it is never free to choose, but it has the higher function of being determined by the Good. Only the good will is free.54
The Authority of the Church according to Augustine. With the fall of ancient Rome, the church was hard pressed, for the young peoples who came into the church were Arian and the only German Catholic nation was the Franks. Augustine was a man of vigor, but he seemed to lack the peculiar power of forcing the church to adopt as dogma the truths for which he stood. He always submitted himself absolutely to the tradition of the church, and yet in a general way he accomplished two things for the church at large: (1) He established tradition as the authority and law of the church; (2) He offered the church a scientifically constructed plan of salvation.
There now appears in Augustine’s teaching the second centre around which the masses of his thought group themselves. This is his conception of the church in its authority and law. Here is the principle of universality—and historical universality—and it runs counter to the principle of spiritual individualism which his psychological analysis had built up. Augustine is just as vigorous a champion of the idea of the church as the means to salvation as he is champion of the individual certainty of truth. The two antithetical propositions lie together in his mind. As a pietist, he was an individualist; as a priest, he was a loyal subject to dogma. We have discussed his teaching as it centred about man; now the discussion centres about God as represented by His church. In practical life the will of man is important, but in the eternal life the central influence is the grace of God. Between the will of man and the grace of God there is a chasm. This is felt the more by Augustine, and the necessity of a God-centred doctrine seems the greater, when he beholds the contrast between the perfectness of God and the evil world of men. Evil now appears to him as a great stream flowing through the world. Humanity is by nature void of God. Theoretically man is free, but in the actual world he is chained to his senses and to sin. Adam, the first man, alone could have possessed freedom; but Adam in his freedom sinned, and his sin was that of the whole human race. Sin is therefore original to all men now living, and no man personally deserves salvation, however meritorious his conduct. Moreover, as the result of Adam’s sin, all men would be damned were it not for the grace of God. The God-man by death brought power to replenish empty humanity with divine love. Divine love is the beginning, middle, and end of salvation. Out of this love God has sent His Son and founded His church. Universal man died, and only universal man can save. Belief in Christ is the only means of salvation, yet belief in Christ comes only by God’s grace, and divine grace is not conditioned on human worthiness. Thus it is only by grace even now that man is saved; and no injustice would be done to men were all damned. On the other hand, divine justice demands that some men at least should be excluded from salvation in order that the punishment for Adam’s sin be permanently maintained. The choice of the favored ones depends entirely upon the unsearchable decree of God. These are elected as monuments of His loving grace, while the others are elected to be damned as monuments of His justice. The apparent calamity to the majority of mankind only shows the goodness of God the more. For, in the first place, evil is not positive like the good. It is only negative and primitive—the absence of the good. The condemnation of the wicked is therefore no defect in this theocratic system. In the second place, the wicked only receive justice, for the salvation of only a few is a gratuitous act of love, which testifies to God’s mercy. But, after all, it is the integrity of the whole spiritual imperial government of God that is the important thing to consider. The King is law and goodness, and all His subjects are testimonies of His magnificent power.
The Dark Ages (476–800). The traditional estimate of the Middle Ages as altogether “dark” has been revised by modern scholars. The period now called the Dark Ages has been restricted to the three hundred years between the fall of old Rome (476) and the founding of the empire by Charlemagne (800). Moreover, it is now thought that even in that period the intellectual conditions were better in Italy than north of the Alps. In northern Italy the lay teacher seems always to have existed; and education never to have fallen entirely into the hands of the monastery as it did in northern Europe between 800 and 1000. After 800 the content of education north and south of the Alps seems to have been different. Everywhere, to be sure, education was comprised by the “seven liberal arts,” but the emphasis in the two regions was different. North of the Alps the dialectic was made important, and theology and logic flourished. In Italy the emphasis was upon grammar and rhetoric, and “literary Paganism” was always kept alive. Thus, when the revival came in 1200, it appeared in the form of theological controversy north of the Alps, while in Italy in the form of legal science. The analysis in the summary of the Middle Ages given above (see p. 330) applies more truthfully to the northern countries than to Italy. At the same time it is more pertinent to the history of thought, for in these northern regions, especially at Paris, mediæval philosophy was developed.
Nevertheless, it is easy for the modern scholar to go too far in trying to play fair with the Middle Ages. The first three centuries of this time were a Dark Age everywhere in Europe. Wave after wave of barbarian invasion swept over the land. It is not so much a matter of surprise that four hundred years lie between the first two philosophers,—but the matter of surprise is that there were any philosophical fruits whatever. In this respect the year 529 is significant—significant both in pointing backward to ancient culture and also in pointing forward to the feeble effort to retain some of that culture. In 529 Justinian abolished the philosophical Schools at Athens; in 529 also, St. Benedict founded his monastic school at Monte Cassino (near Naples). These two events stand for the death of antiquity and the birth of mediæval life. In this beginning of the monastic movement by St. Benedict in western Europe was lodged, as it turned out, the hope of education for the mediæval man. During the two hundred years between the year 800 and the year 1000 mediæval education was entirely in the hands of the monks.
The Revival of Charlemagne (800–900). The darkness of the Early Period of the Middle Ages is broken by the somewhat abortive renaissance of Charlemagne. Connected with this revival is the name of John Scotus Erigena (810–880). Note that during these five hundred years there are only two notable philosophers, Augustine and Erigena. Note that a span of four hundred years lies between them. Also note that the first philosopher, Augustine, was a Roman and the second, Erigena, was an Irishman. Thereby hangs a tale. During all those long centuries of the Dark Ages after Augustine and until Charlemagne, the light of science shone scarcely in northwestern Europe. In the whole western hemisphere there were only three places where learning prospered: one was in the far east, among the Arabians; another was at Constantinople; the third was in the far west, in Britain. Thus it was from Britain that Charlemagne had to call his educators, Alcuin and Clement, to promote learning among the Franks; and it was from Britain, too, that his successor, Charles the Bald, called the Irishman, Erigena, for the same purpose. During the renaissance of the great Charles and his successors, Irish scholars could be found in every monastery and cathedral in the empire. The teaching was soon called the “Irish learning.” Still it must be said in qualification that the renaissance at the court of Charlemagne was a rather childish attempt to unite antiquity with theology. Excepting in the case of Scotus Erigena, the revival was very feeble. It consisted of a new effort to understand Augustine, to master the simplest rules of logic, and to think out dogma by means of Hellenism. The period from 800 to 1000 is called the Benedictine Age, because learning was entirely in the hands of the Benedictine monks. From the impulse given by the Irish scholars many celebrated monastic and cathedral schools originated, like those of Tours, Fulda, Rheims, Chartres, and the school at Paris. From the many monastic schools emerge the names of Alcuin of York, Rhabanus Maurus of Fulda, and Gerbert at Rheims. But among these scholars the only one of philosophical importance is John Scotus Erigena.
John Scotus Erigena (810–880): Life and Teaching. When his contemporaries were only lisping at philosophy and his immediate successors were absorbed in disconnected problems, Erigena worked out a connected system. Like Augustine, Erigena stood far in advance of his age. He was not only the one great thinker of the revival of Charlemagne, but he was one of the most remarkable personalities of the Middle Ages. Born in Ireland, he had the benefit of an education in the schools of that centre of learning, which he could not have obtained on the continent of Europe. In 853 he was called by Charles the Bald to carry on the work begun by Alcuin under Charlemagne. Three centuries after his death the church condemned him as a heretic (1209) on account of his writings on predestination and transubstantiation. His learning was so great that he has been called “the Origen of the North.” He read Greek, and this was a rare accomplishment in those days, for even Alcuin scarcely knew the Greek alphabet. His most notable original work is De Divisione Naturae, which was neo-Platonism in Christian dress. His most influential work was his translation of the pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite. It proved, in fact, to be one of the most influential books of this period, and was instrumental on account of its large circulation in propagating neo-Platonism in the Middle Ages.
Erigena was neither a scholastic nor a dialectical theologian. He neither assailed nor defended church doctrine. He calmly pushed neo-Platonism to the borders of pantheism. He was an Irishman with a Greek mind, a neo-Platonist under the veil of a Christian mystic. No churchman ever expressed neo-Platonism so frankly. The writings from which Erigena got his doctrine are called the Pseudo-Dionysius writings because the authorship was falsely attributed to a companion of St. Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. They were, however, probably written in the fifth century, for they are essentially neo-Platonic and border on pantheism. Erigena translated them at the request of Charles the Bald, and their appearance produced great astonishment in Europe (858–860). Erigena’s own work, De Divisione Naturae, is an extreme pantheistic statement of the doctrine in the Pseudo-Dionysius. Briefly stated Erigena’s teaching is as follows. God is an incomprehensible being and can be described only in negative terms (negative theology). (See chapter on Philo.) God is the same as Being or Nature, and He unfolds Himself as a fourfold series. These are: God, the world in God, the world outside God, God after the world has returned to Him. God contains in Himself through the Logos all the primordial types of things formed before creation. Creation is the logical unfolding of particulars from the universal. Immortality consists in the particulars again becoming universal. In the types of things God is creating Himself, and they are graded from God down to concrete objects. But all will finally return to God, and Erigena thought he found analogies of this return everywhere in nature.
The Greek Principle which Erigena formulated for the Middle Ages. These details of the teaching of Erigena are unimportant except as they throw light upon that Greek underlying principle which he formulated for the Middle Ages. The Real is the Universal. The more universal a thing is, the more real and therefore the more perfect it is. If we have an idea of a universal, that universal has existence because it is universal. The idea of God is universal, therefore God exists. The idea of the world is a universal, but not so universal as the idea of God, and therefore not so surely existent. But the idea of the world has more reality than the idea of a tree. Mediæval philosophy becomes from this time on a logical theism. In the case of Erigena it is a logical pantheism. The world is a logical mosaic. Real dependence is logical dependence, and what we in modern times call the causes and effects between natural objects are regarded by the Middle Ages as sufficiently explained if put in logical arrangement. This is the core of mediæval thinking, and the student will fail to understand the civilization of the Middle Ages unless he grasps this central principle.
But this realizing of the logical universal is Greek and betrays the fundamentally Greek character of mediæval civilization. The objective spiritual church has merely taken the place of objective nature. Mediæval history is a conflict between Greek universalism and the Christian conception of the individual. In Erigena the Greek element appeared in overwhelming dominance. Erigena is a smaller Augustine—Augustine uncontrolled by great masses of thought and uninspired by practical ideals of building up the church. Erigena is a “belated Gnostic.” Why was it that his neo-Platonic pantheism did not overcome entirely the individualistic element in Christian dogma? Why, on the contrary, did it bring out far-reaching issues of conflict when a century later the significance of his teaching was understood? Because inherently and fundamentally in the nature of the German peoples, as appearing in their customs and laws, was the conviction of the rights of the individual personality. In the teaching of the Christian fathers the element of the spiritual personality found a deep echo in the German nature. The German could tolerate and did actually live under the later church doctrine of a moderate realism; but the measured calm of the Greek pantheistic conception of Erigena deprived the German of all his inherited ideals. Thus when intellectual activity was aroused a century later, the conflict became hot over the issue in Erigena’s doctrine. Erigena was the forerunner of the scholastics. It was he who tossed the apple of discord among the thinkers of the Middle Ages.
The Last Century of the Early Period (900–1000). The century following Erigena was one of demoralization. All learning declined with the renewed invasions from the north, east, and west. The empire of Charlemagne was broken up and the Papacy temporarily disappeared. There is a persistent tradition that the Christians at this time believed the end of the world to be near. This has been proved to be a legend, but back of it lies the truth that there was a fresh rise of piety which lasted until 1300. With this movement we enter upon the next period of the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER XVII
THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD (1000–1200)
The General Character of the Transitional Period. The first century of the Transitional Period was as different from the last century of the Early Period in its intellectual attitude and emotional tone as can be imagined. It was the century of the new birth of Europe—a century when the beginning of political order was accompanied by a passion for inquiry. The spirit of pietism took possession of all institutions—and in the thirteenth century the mediæval system seemed to have reached its perfect form. The Transitional Period gives meaning to the Crusades. “If ever ideals were carried out in the world and gained dominion over souls, it happened then.”55 “It was as if the world had cast aside its old garment and clothed itself in the white robe of the church.”56 The ardor of the Crusades was the specific expression of this religious revival. All the pent-up energies of the previous mediæval life were passing through a rapid period of growth.
Philosophically this period is the time when neo-Platonic mysticism, as elaborated by Erigena, came into conflict with the Christian conception of the individual. These two motives had been held together without controversy in the Early Period; now they develop into controversy. The philosophical theories evolved by this controversy go by the name of scholasticism. While theoretically secular studies were supposed to be discarded and ancient literature was considered to be the temptation of the devil, yet practically one is surprised to find a trained skill in the use of dialectic, and the employment of many of the materials of antiquity as a means of culture and the refutation of heresies. There was a knowledge of the classics, of dialectic, of neo-Platonism, and of Augustine. The spirit of Platonic realism prevailed among the group of schoolmen of these two centuries. The problem before this group is different from that presented to the schoolmen of the next period. The scholastics or schoolmen of this period whom we shall consider in some detail are,—
Anselm, 1033–1109.
Roscellinus, d. 1100 about.
Abelard, 1079–1142.
What is Scholasticism? In a general sense scholasticism is philosophic thought, but historically the term is usually restricted to the philosophic thinking of the Middle Ages. It has been pointed out that scholastic philosophy does not differ from any other philosophy. It had its prejudices, its dependence on authority, its employment of deduction, its use of observation—like all philosophy. The scholasticism of this time, however, is distinguished by its general reference to church dogma as authority and its imperfect use of experience. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages may therefore be defined as the application of dialectic or logical methods to the discussion of theological problems. It was the attempt to present the doctrine of the church in a scientific system of philosophy. Sometimes such an attempt resulted in heresy when the result was a changing of dogma. Generally, however, the scholastic was not so ambitious, for he usually sought to keep within the authoritative doctrines of the church. He feared the anathema of the church. Scholasticism therefore, in general, had two characteristics: (1) It assumed that church dogma was unquestionable and infallible; (2) It tried to clarify dogma by rational explanation, or to show that dogma was at least not contrary to reason. Dogma may in some cases be explained by the reason. In some cases it may be so far above reason that the only thing the reason can say is, “The doctrine does not contradict me.” In the words of an eminent churchman, “Dogma says, Deus homo (God became man). Scholasticism asks, Cur deus homo? (Why did God become man?)” Revelation is assumed; scholastic philosophy is permitted; independent rational science is denied. The remainder of the history of the Middle Ages shows no conscious attempt to form a new body of doctrine for the church; and only here and there does there appear an effort to modify the existing doctrine. The thinkers are employed in this scholastic clarifying of the doctrine. In this period scholasticism takes the form of the logical problem of the relation of universals and particulars. In the period of Classic Scholasticism this logical problem changes into the metaphysical one of the respective scopes of reason and faith.
The problem of the relation of universal conceptions to particular experiences had become a central one to the Greeks after Socrates. (See summary, p. 103.) It was natural that the same problem should arise with the new mediæval man and should delight him as an enigmatical question. But conditions were less favorable for the mediæval scholastic than for the Greek. The mediæval had scanty literary materials, no opportunity of testing his discussions by empirical observations, and his mind was untrained. In the Early Period scholasticism had the character of a mental game in logic. It consisted, on the whole, in the subtle spinning out of logical questions with the few fragments of Aristotle as a guide. This was dangerous to faith, but the church could not prevent it, for it was the only mental diversion open to monks of the schools of Charlemagne. The arguments often reveal great mental acuteness, although they have the appearance of triviality. The schools of the ninth century were given over to barren formalism, and this threatened to submerge the vigorous movement inaugurated by Erigena. “Can a prostitute become a virgin again through divine omnipotence?” “Does a mouse that eats the sacrament eat the body of God?” “How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?” These are examples of the prevailing verbal gymnastics of that time, and such problems can be found even in the works of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus.
Logically stated the problem is that of the relation of particulars to universals. It is usually called the problem of the reality of general ideas. The question was started by a passage in that universally used text-book of the time—the Isagoge of Porphyry, which was an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories. (See p. 102.) Porphyry divides the problem into three parts: (1) Do genera and species exist in nature, or do they exist as mere products of the intellect? (2) If they are things apart from the mind, are they corporeal or incorporeal things? (3) Do they exist outside the individual things of sense, or are they realized in the latter? Upon the problem involved here the thinkers of the Middle Ages were divided into three schools,—realists, conceptualists, and nominalists.57 The realist maintained that the general idea had reality, while the particular was only a defective imitation of it. The nominalist, on the contrary, held that the universal is only a name (nomen) or an abstraction derived from the real particular thing. The conceptualist tried to mediate between the two by showing that reality exists only in the particular. To use the mediæval phrases, realism is universalia ante rem; nominalism is universalia post rem; conceptualism is universalia in re. (See p. 103 for table of comparison with Protagoras, Plato, and Aristotle.) The question was of great practical importance to the church. Is the universal church real and therefore all its dogma authoritative, or are the particular churches real and authoritative? This was a vital matter to the churchman of that day who was trying to establish the primacy of Rome among the separate churches. Furthermore, to show that humanity was less real than the particular human beings would destroy the church doctrine of sin and redemption, for these dogmas depended on the assumption of the solidarity of the human race. The church universal and its universal dogma were not mere names to the schoolmen, and that is why the orthodox churchmen were nearly always realists. Religious principles were universals, while particulars were secular. Dogma had become fixed, with which traditionally the church had become identified. To emphasize particular experiences would mean the continual correcting of tradition and a substitution of private judgment for church decrees. When nominalism is completely worked out, it will be found to conflict with church dogma at every point. The result is skepticism. Still the churchman later saw that there is great danger also in a thorough-going realism like that of Erigena’s. It became pantheism. Both realism and nominalism were dangerous doctrines for the church if they were driven to their logical conclusions.
Anselm (1033–1109): Life and Position in Mediæval Philosophy. Anselm lived during the monastic revival which had begun in the tenth century. He was in fact the last of the monastic teachers, for during his declining years occurred the first of the Crusades, and the epoch following him witnessed the transference of learning from the monasteries to the universities. He was born of a noble family in Aosta, Lombardy, and entered in early life the monastery of Bec. Here he succeeded Lanfranc as abbot, and again he succeeded Lanfranc in the archbishopric of Canterbury. He was a man of genuine piety, of speculative bent, and of unswerving faith in the dogma of the church. As primate of England he resisted with much sagacity the encroachments of the secular power. His Cur Deus Homo was a treatise on the doctrine of the redemption and atonement, and was one of the most important books of the Middle Ages.
Anselm brought about a great change in theological teaching. Berengar of Tours had but recently made an attack upon the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and was the immediate cause of the “storm and stress” period of scholasticism that followed. Anselm’s teacher and predecessor, Lanfranc, had defended the doctrine. The doctrine had not yet been settled, and each side claimed the basis of authority. Anselm was therefore a witness of the first attempt to apply philosophy to dogma, and he was the first to use dialectics with the serious purpose of defending dogma. From this time on, dialectics was no longer an intellectual diversion. He, the last of the monastic teachers, was the first to employ dialectics with the new purpose of instructing the believer. His entire life was animated by the desire to add knowledge to faith by the means of philosophy.
Anselm’s scholasticism therefore circulates about the Patristic theology as a centre; and his spirit and method is so similar to that of Augustine and the Apologists, that he has been justly called “the second Augustine” and “the last of the Fathers.” Beside the safe and traditionally centralized teaching of Anselm, the imaginative pantheism of Erigena seems like a body that had been loosened from its natural place and was floating away beyond control. Both Erigena and Anselm were inspired by the Platonism that until the year 1200 dominated the Middle Ages. That is, both were realists. The realism of Erigena, however, expressed in full the mystic element of Platonism. It destroyed all grades of reality below God, and made unnecessary the church and its offices. Erigena was an extreme realist; Anselm was consistent with the attitude of the church in being a moderate realist. The credo ut intelligam (faith as the basis of intellectual belief) was the anchor which saved him and became the safeguard of all future orthodox scholastics. The world to Anselm is a hierarchy of universal reals, such as the sacraments, the church, and the Trinity. To such dogmas of the church he applied philosophy, not because they needed support, but in order to make them clear by analysis. Philosophy shall only clarify dogma.
Anselm’s Arguments for the Existence of God. The so-called “Anselmic Arguments for the Existence of God” are the best known parts of Anselm’s teaching, and in the eyes of the churchman place his theodicy in the “status of a finished science.” To get their cogency we must remember the underlying thought of mediæval realism; the more universal a thing is, the more real it is—the more it exists and the more perfect it is. (See p. 352.) In his Monologium he developed the so-called cosmological argument: A single perfect and universal being must be assumed as the cause of all lesser beings. God’s essence must involve his existence. Every other being can be thought as coming into existence from some external cause, while God alone exists from the necessity of his own nature. In his Proslogium he elaborated his more famous ontological argument: Man has the idea of a perfect being; Perfection involves among other qualities that of existence, otherwise we could think of a more perfect being or one who did possess existence; Therefore God exists.
Roscellinus (d. 1100 about): Life and Teaching. Roscellinus, a canon of Compiègne, was the first scholastic to attempt to modify dogma by the dialectic,—not that there had not occurred throughout the history of the church many theological controversies. Before this time such controversies had on the whole arisen over doctrines that had not yet become dogma. The particular object of the attack of Roscellinus was the dogma of the Trinity, and the base of his attack was none other than philosophy. Roscellinus completely failed in getting the church to modify this particular doctrine, but he succeeded in a larger way than he could have imagined. He brought out into distinctness the issue between reason and revelation. The fundamental question thereafter was as to the rights of the human reason and the rights of divine revelation. Roscellinus supplied a powerful shock to faith and awakened the schools to the consequences of questions which had seemed before to be merely logical problems.
Roscellinus was a nominalist, and it was from the point of view of nominalism that he attempted to change the dogma of the Trinity. He made a life-long defense of the doctrine that the Godhead was three different substances, agreeing only in certain qualities. This is tritheism and not a Trinity. But this was only the most striking example of his application of the general principle of nominalism. In general, universals are only names and have an existence only in the human mind. Universalia post rem. Individuals alone exist. The groups formed out of many individuals by addition, or the parts of an individual formed by division, are mental affairs and have no reality. Roscellinus was opposed by Anselm, condemned by the church, and obliged to recant. He fled to England, returned to France, and again preached his doctrine.
Storm and Stress. After the issue was brought to a head by the nominalism of Roscellinus, the twelfth century was torn in battle over the reality of general ideas. The realists, on the one hand, tried to grade universals and to show how universals are related to particulars—all of which Anselm had left to faith. How do universals, such as the persons in the Trinity, the church, the sacraments, exist in one universal God? Grotesque explanations were offered, like the imaginative work of Bernard of Chartres and the symbolic number theory of his brother, Theodoric. William of Champeaux, a teacher of Abelard, almost reduced realism to a pantheism. Nothing exists but the universal; all individuals are accidental modifications of the universal. Pantheism was so inherent in the blood of realism that it was always appearing here and there.
Such pantheistic deductions by the realists brought out nominalism in opposition, in spite of the repression of nominalism by the authorities of the church. The nominalists sought protection and authority under the name of Aristotle, for his conceptualist doctrine was not known at this time. The few writings of Aristotle then known were very imperfectly interpreted. One of the most ironical situations in the history of the Middle Ages is that, up to the Period of Classic Scholasticism, Plato was the authority of the orthodox and Aristotle of the heterodox.
The Life of Abelard (1079–1142). Abelard had both Roscellinus and William of Champeaux as teachers. He quarreled with them both and set up a rival school of his own. He taught in various places and was, with some interruptions, in Paris from 1108 to 1136. The university did not exist until a generation after him, but he was its true founder, for he inaugurated the movement out of which the early universities sprang. His method was transferred from philosophy to theology and thence to all studies. It was a didactic method of drawing conclusions after an empirical enumeration of the pros and cons. Abelard was acquainted with no Greek writings except in Latin translations. His great talent as a teacher and his keen French intellect, that was impatient of all restraint, made him, however, the most brilliant of the schoolmen. Two synods condemned his teaching. Probably his modern popular reputation rests upon his unfortunate love-relations with Heloise.
Abelard’s Conceptualism. Universals exist in the Particulars. Abelard formed the storm-centre of the strife over the technical relations between particulars and universals. His position has been misunderstood because he, the pupil and opponent both of Roscellinus and of William of Champeaux, fought each with the weapons of the other. He was repelled from pantheism, which appears to him to be the logic of realism, and he recoiled equally from the sensualistic outcome of nominalism. Universals are the indispensable forms of knowledge, and they must therefore have some existence in the nature of the things which we know. This existence consists of the similarity of the essential characteristic of things. This likeness is not a numerical identity, but a unity which makes our knowledge of the particular things possible. This likeness or similarity between things is the same as the types created by God. Thus the universal has no independent objective existence, and on the other hand it is not a mere word out of all relation to things. The universals exist in three ways: (1) they exist before the things only as Ideas in the mind of God; (2) they coexist with the things as the essential likenesses of things; (3) they exist after the things in the human mind, when it has knowledge of things. Abelard developed his theory only polemically and never worked it out systematically. On the technical side of this question the preceding lines of thought come into an unsystematic unity. His theory was accepted by the Arabian philosophers and is practically that of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. With Abelard the problem was not solved indeed, but it came to a preliminary stop in this statement—universals have an equal significance, ante rem in the mind of God, in re in nature, post rem in human knowledge.
Abelard’s Rationalism.—The Relation between Reason and Dogma. The proud, self-reliant, self-conscious Abelard could be nothing else than a rationalist. He was the type of the controversial metaphysician. He was the fighting dialectician,—intolerant of restraint, devoid of respect for authority, seeking the prize of victory at any cost. Erigena, as a mystic, harmonized reason and dogma because they are equal; Anselm, as an orthodox scholastic, harmonized them because reason is subordinate to dogma and conforms to it; Abelard, as a rationalist, harmonized reason and dogma because dogma is subordinate to reason and conforms to reason. To Anselm reason merely clarifies dogma; to Abelard “dogma is only a provisional substitute for reason.” Anselm never questions dogma, while Abelard calls dogma before the bar of the reason and then acts as dogma’s advocate. We must try all dogma in court, and, contrary to modern legal practice, we must doubt it until it proves its innocence. For “it is through doubt we come to investigation, and through investigation to the truth.” A good example of Abelard’s attitude appears in his Sic et Non, a treatise in which he sets the views of the Fathers over against one another so that the reason may decide upon the truth. Another example of his method appears in his examination of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the third book of Christian Theology he cites twenty-three objections and in the fourth book answers them. This rationalizing spirit led him to advocate the doctrine of free-will, to place the responsibility of moral conduct and theoretical belief upon the individual, to regard Christianity as the consummation of all religions and not as the presentation of anything new.
If in these discussions he was more brilliant than profound, if he wrote upon many questions without solving any, if the weight of his personality could not prevail in his controversies, it was because the science of the twelfth century offered him little empirical support against the actual power of the church and the mighty inward strength of faith of the people. What means had Abelard to support his position that rational science should determine faith? Nothing but the hollow methods of scholastic logic and the traditions of the church—the very things against which he was rebelling. Abelard set for himself a problem, but he lacked the means of its solution. It was, however, a problem that has never vanished from the memory of the European peoples.
The unrest in Abelard’s teaching is representative of the last century of this period, which he brought to a close. There was growing a general revolt from the unfruitful methods of the scholastic dialectic, coupled with feverish desire for knowledge. There was, on the one hand, a great reaction toward mysticism with the Victorines, Bernard of Clairvaux and Bernard of Tours, and toward eclecticism with John of Salisbury and Peter the Lombard. On the other hand, there was an interesting growth in empirical science. But these theoretical interests were but eddies in the great current of events. For Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the memorials in earthly form of all the ideals sacred to the mediæval mind, had fallen into the hands of the infidel! The western world was preparing for the rescue, and the Crusades were the last and the frenzied expression of the Platonic idealism of the Middle Ages. They bring the first two periods to a spectacular climax. Is it a mere coincidence that Abelard brings to a close the dominance of idealism on the theoretic side at the time when earthly symbols of that idealism were being destroyed?
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PERIOD OF CLASSIC SCHOLASTICISM (1200–1453)
The General Character of this Last Period. The first one hundred and fifty years of this period was the golden age of scholasticism; the remaining one hundred years was a period of decline. The period of Classic Scholasticism was a natural growth from the Transitional Period. At the end of the Transitional Period the church, in spite of Mohammedans, Jews, heretics, and the classics, outshone all else, and its life and dogma were the most worth while. In this period appeared a theology, adequate to its life and dogma,—a theology which was floated by the wave of piety of the Mendicant Orders. Acquaintance with the true Aristotle was the needed stimulus. The favorable conditions for that stimulus were (1) the triumph of the church and papacy, (2) the intense piety of the Mendicants, (3) the general culture derived from an inner development of the church and from contact with the East in Constantinople, Palestine, and Spain. Aristotle and the Mendicants were the new forces, and they achieved their position against the hostility of the old Orders, the universities, and the teachers. The triumph was possible because the new forces contributed nothing really new, but merely completed the old scheme of things. The new Aristotle, as it was understood, taught metaphysics, epistemology, and politics in a way to vindicate dogma as against the opposition of William of Champeaux and Roscellinus. The Mendicants on their part vindicated all dogma by blending it with faith on the one hand, and with reason on the other.
The scholasticism of the Transitional Period was predominantly controversial, while the character of this period, which we are now entering, is synthetic and constructive. The infusion of fresh blood into culture, from not only the logical but the physical works of Aristotle, resulted in the renewal of interest in the dialectic and in the construction of systems of metaphysics and psychology. The central problem now concerns the respective scopes of reason and faith, and to its solution logic and psychology are applied. A complete solution seemed to be made by Thomas Aquinas, which had its literary expression in Dante. Without the introduction of any new philosophical principle the world of nature, as interpreted by Aristotle, was apparently brought by Thomas into theoretical harmony with the Augustinian conception of the world of grace. But no sooner did Thomas seem to have formulated scholastic philosophy for all time, than controversy broke out afresh. For pantheistic mysticism gained its independence through one of Thomas’s own brother Dominicans, Eckhart; then Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, drew up a metaphysical programme based upon the Augustinian theory of the will, and gave a new direction to philosophy; and furthermore nominalism grew great upon Aristotle’s logic and the new empirical psychology. For the churchman, philosophy reached its completeness in Thomas Aquinas. The later tendencies are regarded by the churchman as deteriorations, and even modern philosophy is looked upon as but temporizing with the classic system of Thomas.
GROWTH OF MOHAMMEDANISM DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, SHOWING ITS CONTACT WITH CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION
The Conquests of the Mohammedans during the different epochs are shown by the different shading and the dates placed on the map.
The Two Civilizations. This is one of the periods of thought resulting from the shiftings of distinct civilizations. We have already noted the influence of the struggles of the Orient and the Occident in the Persian wars and in the campaigns of Alexander; and we have lately seen an entirely new epoch ushered in by the invasions of the northern tribes into Rome. With the new epoch before us, we find ourselves confronted with another new ethnic situation. The civilization of the Mohammedan had grown in mighty strength in the East, had possessed itself of Asia Minor, northern Africa, and Spain, and was now facing Europe from the east, west, and south. All through the First Period of the Middle Ages the Christian and Mohammedan civilizations had been contestants for supremacy. Only as late as 732 the Mohammedan claim upon Europe had been defeated at the battle of Tours. Mohammed (570–632) converted the whole of Arabia to Islam during the ten years between his Hegira (622) and his death. His successors took Palestine (637), Syria (638), Egypt (647), Persia (710), all north Africa (by 707), invaded Spain (711), and were repulsed at Tours (732). All this occurred within a century, and for the next two hundred years (800–1000) the Mohammedans harassed Rome and the islands of the Mediterranean. With the two civilizations facing each other on the Mediterranean, only mutual religious fanaticism could stand in the way of their mutual cultural influence. In point of fact, because of fanaticism the cultures of the two civilizations during the first centuries of the Middle Ages touched each other but little. In those first centuries of the Middle Ages, when western Europe was shrouded in darkness, the schools of the Arabs at Bagdad, Basra, Kufa, and other cities were enjoying a splendid intellectual life. From 850 to 1100 the centre of learning of the world was in the Arabian cities of the East.58 In 1100 the fanatical faction of the Arabians crushed this intellectual movement in the East, the scholars fled to Spain, and for a century longer Saracen learning flourished in Spain, especially in Cordova. In 1200 the Arabian orthodoxy made itself felt in Spain, and the Arabian scholars there had to find refuge among the Jews or Christians.
The First Contact of the Two Civilizations. From the beginning of the Middle Ages the point of contact between the two civilizations was either war or commerce. The Jew was the globe-trotter of that day, and was constantly bringing into Europe reports of Arabian civilization. He was a philosopher, a monotheist, a Semite, like the Arab, and he had an interest in more than commercial matters. About the end of the Early Period of the Middle Ages he found it profitable to make first Hebrew and then Latin translations of Arabian learning, and to sell them in Europe. In this form, between 1000 and 1100, medical and astronomical knowledge entered Europe. Greek philosophical writings came next in translations from the Arabic, which had previously been translated from the Syriac. Thus for the two hundred years, between 1000 and 1200, the Christian schools were beginning to read portions of Greek philosophy in Latin, which had previously passed through Syriac and Arabian (and sometimes Hebrew) translations. Before 1200, there were none but these Arabic versions. A pertinent example of these was the works of Aristotle. Before 1200 all of Aristotle’s writings, except the Organon, appeared in Europe in this form, and the Organon as a whole was not known until 1150. In 1125 some of Aristotle’s physics was known by the school of Chartres; in 1200 all the physics, metaphysics, and ethics were known in translations from the Latin and Hebrew. These were accompanied by Arabian commentaries, which interpreted Aristotle as if he were a neo-Platonic pantheist. There were many churchmen interested in the work of translation, as, for example, Gerbert, and Raymond of Toledo. Roger II of Sicily (d. 1154) and Frederick II (d. 1250) had their courts filled with Arabian philosophers. Frederick had many translations made and presented to the Universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.
Thus the influence of the Arabian upon the Christian culture before the Classic Period of the Middle Ages was not inconsiderable. But this must be said of Arabian culture—it was mainly borrowed. Arabia59 acted merely as a transmitter of the materials of knowledge from the Greeks and Hindoos; and so far as philosophy was concerned, the Arab was returning to Europe, in a perverted form, the Aristotle which had been deposited with him centuries before. The Mohammedans were the world’s carriers of a considerable body of science and of many new agricultural products; and of the amount which they introduced into Europe only a small portion was their own. At the end of the twelfth century the Christian at Rome and York was richer in the principles of discovery, but poorer in the amount of traditional learning and of scientific wealth, than the Mohammedan at Bagdad and Cordova.
The Conflict between the Two Civilizations.—The Crusades.60 The rivalry between the two civilizations became intensified into an open conflict about the year 1100. Up to the year 1000 the Mohammedan leaders were Arabians, but in the eleventh century these Arabians were conquered by tribes of Turks or Mongolians from the north of Asia. These became converted to Mohammedanism, but they had no love for culture nor reverence for the places in Palestine, which were sacred alike to the Christian and the Arab. From the fourth to the twelfth century the pilgrimages of the Christians, individually or in multitudes, largely increased, but in the eleventh century the new race of Mohammedan Turks made the access to Jerusalem more difficult. They began to subject the pilgrims to cruelties, so that the Christian was beginning to find the door of his Holy Land closed to him. Then did Platonic Christianity rush to the rescue of those sacred places that symbolized its ideals. This onslaught upon the Mohammedans came in a series of surges, traditionally spoken of as the eight Crusades.61 The Crusades resulted quite contrary to the expectations of the church, for the Crusaders failed in permanently recapturing Jerusalem. But the Crusades accomplished the unexpected thing—they awakened Europe. The effect of the Crusades upon Europe was far greater than upon the Orient. The results may be enumerated as follows:—
1. The dormant European intellect was shaken up by contact with the heathen, whom the Europeans had previously despised, but whom they found to be their superiors.
2. A new national rivalry was aroused among the Christian soldiers. This national spirit was helped negatively by the losses among the feudal lords.
3. Commercial activity was given an immense impulse. A new social class was formed, which allied itself with the kings against the feudal lords. Trade was opened with the East, revealing new luxuries and new needs. Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, and in a secondary way also the German, French, and English towns, became prosperous commercial centres.
4. The power of the Latin church was extended.
5. The works of Aristotle were introduced in translations direct from the original Greek. In the fourth Crusade Constantinople was captured by the Crusaders (1204), and in this way the treasures of the Greeks were opened to the western scholars. The complete works of Aristotle were introduced into western Europe at a time when Aristotle was being interpreted as a pantheist by the Arabian commentators.
The Revival of Learning. The need of learning, that had been felt in the twelfth century, was now being satisfied. The entire logic of Aristotle and his entire natural science gave the new materials for knowledge. These came into Europe within the century between 1150 and 1250, (1) through translations from the Arabic, and then (2) directly through translations from the Greek. Aristotle’s logic revived scholasticism and his science became the foundation of metaphysics. Mediæval thought was ready for this and there was a complete readjustment without the introduction of a new philosophical principle. The side of Augustine’s teaching that emphasized the intellect rather than the will, gained by being confirmed by the systematic intellectualism of Aristotle. The founder of this was Albert of Bollstaedt; the organizer and literary codifier was Thomas Aquinas; the poetic expression was Dante. The new centres of learning were Paris and Constantinople. The centres of teaching were transferred from the monasteries to the new Universities (1100–1300). Salerno had its beginnings in the latter part of the eleventh century. Bologna in law, Oxford in general culture and theology, Paris in the same studies, show traces of general organization between 1160 and 1200. There were established seventy-nine of these universities between 1150 and 1500. They were not “founded,” but grew up as part of this movement.62
DIAGRAM OF DANTE’S POETIC CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE
From Rossetti’s Shadow of Dante
(Showing its divisions of Hell (at centre of the earth), Purgatory, and the nine heavens. The evident plan beneath this is the Ptolemaic cosmography.)
Nevertheless, the struggle was a full century long before official recognition of Aristotle came. The name of Aristotle had been associated with pantheism for many years, on account of the Arabian versions of his teaching. The neo-Platonic doctrine of emanations, with its pantheism in the Arabian versions, was a tendency of which the church had been shy since the days of Erigena. Until the theistic character of Aristotle’s teaching became assured by the direct Latin translations from the Greek, there was a powerful reaction against the whole of the new learning. The church had condemned the Physics in 1209 and the Metaphysics in 1215. But in 1254 Aristotle was officially recognized, and fifty years later he became the guide of the church, whom no one could contradict without being accused of heresy.
The Catholic church never showed its ability to greater advantage than in its dealings with the new problems of this period. The people of a purely religious epoch now came into possession of Aristotelianism. For centuries the intellect had been starving on formal logic. An intellectual revolution was imminent. Here in Aristotle was presented a rich theory of nature that the church had never considered. Yet it is doubtful if Aristotle would have been accepted, had the Mendicant Friars—the Dominicans and Franciscans—not succeeded in establishing chairs in the University of Paris. These monks did not love philosophy in itself. They saw, however, that philosophy must be able to defend itself against infidel philosophy by the weapons of philosophy. But curiously enough, Aristotelianism, which was the spring of this renaissance, became, by its incorporation into the church, the great obstacle to the real Renaissance two hundred and fifty years later.
The Strength and Burden of Aristotle to the Church.
1. The Strength of Aristotle to the Church: (1) Aristotle elaborated for the church, with great clearness, the conception of a transcendent God. This was a weapon for the church against neo-Platonism and mysticism. (2) Aristotle gave to the church a theory of nature that supplemented its theory of grace. (3) Aristotle established a philosophical standard for the truth of things. This proved of great value to the church because it was under the control of the church. In the first two periods of the Middle Ages philosophical thought had a relative independence because it was without a recognized standard; now philosophy could be controlled by the standard of Aristotle. For example, with the coming of Aristotle there came certain standard definitions of substance, person, nature, accident, mode, potency, and act.
2. The Burden of Aristotle to the Church: (1) Aristotle encouraged a taste for science and analysis. At first the Aristotelian influence in this direction was very small, but its growth was only a question of time. (2) Aristotle became for the church a second standard. The problem for the churchman now became a double one: (a) Is my teaching consistent with church dogma? (b) Is my teaching consistent with Aristotle? “My son,” was the reply to a youth who thought he had discovered spots on the sun, “I have read Aristotle many times and I assure you there is nothing of the kind in him.” Dogma, not now the only standard, is not infallible. The reason need not follow dogma, but its own standard. Revelation became a realm of mystery which the reason could not reach, but to which it pointed. A doctrine thus might be of such a nature that it might be philosophically true, but theologically not true.
The Predecessors of Aquinas. Many distinguished names stand at the close of the Transitional Period and the beginning of the Classic Period. These express the transitional character of the thought of the threshold of this time. They show, like Abelard, the tendency toward rationalism. Alexander of Hales (d. 1264), William of Aubergne (d. 1249), Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1246), Albert of Bollstaedt, called Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), show the influence of the new Aristotelian science. Albert was the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. The attempt of Thomas to form a theological system for the church was anticipated by the so-called Sums of the twelfth century, of which the work of Peter the Lombard was the model. The four books of Sums of Peter were collections of opinions of the Fathers on questions of dogma. They show the influence of Aristotle and the method of Abelard. The Sums of Peter became for several centuries the text-book of the schools and the subject of innumerable commentaries. It was the core of Classic scholastic literature, and around it grew up the problems of metaphysics and psychology.
The Life of Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274).—The Founder of the Dominican Tradition. Thomas belonged to a noble house which was related to the royal family. He studied in the University of Naples, but at the age of nineteen, upon resolving to enter the Dominican order, he was captured and kept a prisoner by his brothers. After two years he made his escape, and, his family having consented to his taking orders, he went to Cologne under the instruction of Albert. He was then sent to Paris, where he obtained his degree in 1257. He was a successful lecturer at Paris until 1261, when he was called by the Pope to teach philosophy in Rome, Bologna, and Pisa. During this period he composed his greatest work, Summa Theologiae. He declined preferment and finally resided at Naples. He always enjoyed the highest consideration of the church authorities.
Thomas, the founder of the “Dominican tradition,” was the first to formulate Christian Aristotelianism and to draw for the church the line between the realms of reason and faith. He did not so much create doctrine as he transformed and assimilated it. The sources from which he drew were many: the Scriptures, the Fathers, Greek philosophy, and the teaching of contemporary Arabians and Jews. If, as some historians maintain, he was not a thinker of the first rank, he at least relieved the church from a delicate situation by means of a conciliating theology. Certainly his predecessors and contemporaries stand eclipsed by him. He satisfied the mediæval demand for order and he prevented deterioration in the church doctrine. He did not rise above his age, although he stood at the head of its intellectual movement. He was, on the contrary, the most perfect expression of scholasticism, and he was affectionately regarded as doctor angelicus and again as doctor universalis.
The Central Principle of Thomas’s Doctrine—The Twofold Truth. The life-purpose of Thomas was to bring Christianity into closer relation with civilization and science. He sought to give all departments of knowledge their rights and at the same time to protect the ascendency of religion. This was to him the same as bringing Christianity and Aristotle together, for Aristotle meant to him the entire product of ancient civilization. To the mediæval world of grace he added a world of nature, and, fully dominated by the mediæval love of order, he unfolded so comprehensive a view of life that he included all its problems. He felt that the natural and the revealed must not become a contradiction.
To accomplish this Thomas found in Aristotle his own ideal estimate of things. Looking at Aristotle through his own neo-Platonism, he naturally found in Aristotle more of the inner and religious estimate of nature than the facts will allow. Yet it was evident to Thomas that there was in Aristotle a great interest in nature and a great reserve on ultimate questions. Nature was, according to Aristotle, an essence unfolding in a system of grades. This became the central principle of Aquinas in this form: Nature is a sketch in outline of the world of grace. Before the eye of the religious mind these two truths should appear: (1) the world of faith and the world of nature are two properly distinct worlds; (2) the world of faith is a continuation of the world of nature. The world of grace and the world of nature are two grades of the whole of existence. Nature is the lower stage of development, and the point of contact between it and the world of grace is the soul of man. Religion and philosophy thus have different spheres, but they are not contradictory. Grace does not destroy, but it perfects nature. Nature is subordinate to grace as man is subordinate to the Christian, the state to the church, the Emperor to the Pope.63
The difference between philosophy and theology is not that theology treats of God and divine truths, and philosophy does not. Philosophy discusses divine truths. But the difference lies here, that theology views truths in the light of revelation, while philosophy views them in the light of reason. Yet there are truths that belong to philosophy, truths that belong to theology, and truths that belong to both. The problems of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the relation of the world to God are theological problems, yet they can also be demonstrated by the reason of philosophy; but the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the temporal creation are beyond the scope of the reason and belong to theology. Philosophy and theology are distinct, yet they are in harmony. Theology supplements philosophy with faith; philosophy supplements theology by (1) establishing preliminary motives, (2) supplying analogies, (3) answering objections. Thomas accepts both propositions which had divided his predecessors: credo ut intelligam and intelligo ut credam.
Above historical revelation there is something even higher, which could be called another realm, were it not more of a hope than a possession of man. Its appearance in the doctrine of Thomas shows the influence of Plato upon him. It is the immediate union of the individual with God in mystic ecstasy.64 It is the dome of the religious temple that Thomas has built. But Thomas was careful to insist that this heavenly glory could not be gained except through the offices of the church. The individual cannot reach God through his own unaided efforts, but the sacraments of the church form the mysterious background of the religious life.
The Problem of Individuality—The Relation of Particulars and Universals. The all-absorbing question of the Transitional Period, of the relation of particulars and universals, became for Thomas and his successors the problem of individuality. For the schoolman was obliged to define the individual and fix his place in his Aristotelian world, if he was to be successful against the pantheism of the Arabian Aristotelianism. What is the nature and standing of the individual? What constitutes the difference between individuals? The whole theological edifice of Thomas would collapse in mystic unity, the immortality of the soul would be lost and the offices of the church would be nullified, unless Thomas showed the positive nature of the individual. In this connection we must remember that on the whole the Middle Ages had accepted Abelard’s analysis of the problem of the relation of universals and particulars: the universals exist in three ways, ante rem or in God’s mind; post rem or in man’s mind; in re or in nature. To Thomas the universals as abstractions (universalia post rem) in the human mind cannot be individuals, for they have no real existence. To have real existence the universal must exist in re, in the many, as the essence of things; not as abstraction beside the many.
The question of individuality therefore to Thomas concerns properly only objects in re, or objects in the corporeal world.65 These are objects of Form and Matter. The question is, whether the Form or the matter of corporeal things is the principle of its individuality. Thomas says that matter is this principle,—not indeterminate matter, but matter with quantitative determinations. The difference between earthly individuals is numerical—a difference of time and space relations. The Forms of nature objects change continually according to their material conditions, but these conditions do not change. Nevertheless the quantitative determinations of individuals are not the cause, but the condition, of their existence.
But the question about the status of beings in the spiritual world, “separate Forms,” is a more difficult one for Thomas. This is the problem about God, the angels, and the souls of men. They are evidently not individualized by matter. What is the principle that distinguishes them from one another? They are Forms without matter and they are individualized through themselves, since they have no need of material determinations. Thus God is distinguished from everything else as pure Form or pure actuality. He is the unique individual in whom all differences merge. But so also are the angels actualized through themselves. What is the difference between God and the angels? God is an absolute genus; the angel is a relative genus, i. e. it is the only one of its kind. But what is the condition of the souls of men? Are they all alike or do they have a principle of distinction? Yes, they are distinguishable, for each soul upon separation from its body carries with it a love for its former body, and that distinguishes it from other souls.
The Primacy of the Will or the Intellect. Up to this time there had been no psychological dispute as to which of the faculties was fundamental. Now the question appears in full force. Much of the literature of this period is upon the question of the primacy of the will or the intellect, and it appears to be almost the leading motive of the time. Augustine had placed the will in the foreground of his teaching. His successors had never disputed the subject, but had been engaged in discussing what products of the intellect are real—the particulars or the universals. With the introduction of the intellectualism of Aristotle, there almost immediately arose defenders of Augustine. To them Aristotelianism was too rationalistic. Thomas follows Aristotle unconditionally, and with him stand the German mystics. Intellectualism becomes the central principle of what is known as the “Dominican tradition.” Duns Scotus was a Franciscan monk. He took up arms for the primacy of the will, and this became the central principle of the “Franciscan tradition.” On this point the nominalists were his allies.
The problem of the will arose first with reference to the human will. Thomas contended against Duns Scotus that man is free so far as he follows his knowledge of the good. The intellect is therefore primal, for it determines the will by showing the will what the good is.
The question next arose as to the priority of the faculties in God. Does God’s will dominate His intellect or His intellect dominate His will? This was a vital point in the Augustinian theodicy. Does God will the good to be good, or does His will act according to what He knows to be good? Here lies the point at issue between the Dominican Thomas and the Franciscan Scotus. Thomas maintained that the intellect of God determines His will. The intellect is determined by the truth so long as the intellect is true to itself. Why should not the will be determined by the truth in the same way? With God this freedom for the truth is God himself. The world is the best possible world, for God has willed it out of himself.
The world is determined by goodness and man’s will is determined by the same goodness. When the sense conquers the morally determined will, there is sin. The senses, and not the will, are the cause of sin.
Duns Scotus (1270–1308), the Founder of the Franciscan Tradition—Life and Philosophical Position. Thus the Middle Ages did not come to a standstill with Thomas. A greater movement existed after him than is often thought. The leading minds who succeeded Thomas refused to follow the middle course which he had mapped out. New attempts were made to relate the world of grace and the world of nature. One was mysticism, represented by Eckhart (d. 1372). The other was the reaction of the Augustinians against the intellectualism of the new Aristotelianism as represented by Thomas. The leader in this was Duns Scotus. The seat of this movement was Oxford.66
Duns Scotus was born in Ireland and at an early age he joined the Franciscan order. He graduated from Oxford, which at that time was anti-Thomistic. He then taught theology and philosophy at Oxford for ten years. His lectures were largely attended and his fame spread over Europe. He went to Paris in 1304, where he taught for four years. He was then transferred to Cologne, where he died.
Scotus was the Kant of scholasticism. The time of construction of scholasticism had passed, and the time of criticism and analysis had come. Scotus was the intellectual knight-errant who refused to accept any theory without subjecting it to criticism. He was the acutest mind of the Middle Ages and was called the doctor subtilis.
Duns Scotus’s Conception of the Twofold Truth.—The Separation of Science and Religion. The distinction between revelation, theology, and philosophy, that appears in this period of Classic Scholasticism, was sharply drawn by Scotus. In Thomas’s conception of a graded world of development the distinction between theology and philosophy was not emphasized. Philosophy now in the hands of Scotus becomes science, having the marks of exactness that compel belief, but is, however, restricted to its own realm. By philosophy Scotus means logic. In matters of faith logic has nothing whatever to say, for at that extreme stands revelation possessing the absolute truth that compels faith. Between revelation and philosophy Scotus squeezes theology—the science that his predecessors had used to clarify revelation. With Scotus it becomes a domain that is poor indeed. Its objects are the highest, but it can never reach them. It has not the divine assurance of revelation nor the exactness of logical science. Its highest conclusions are only probable, and it can help revelation only in a negative way. It cannot prove the doctrine of the Trinity, incarnation, creation, immortality, and even its proofs for the existence of God have no cogency. Philosophy and revelation both profit at the expense of scholastic theology. After Scotus scientific heresy frequently shielded itself on the ground that its conclusions apply only to the realm of science, while the opposite may be true in revelation.
The Inscrutable Will of God. Revelation is thus placed beyond the reach of the human reason because it rests on the inscrutable will of God. Revelation is God’s free act. God must be free. If Thomas’s conception of God’s will as determined by his intellect were true, God would not be free. The intellect in man or God must be the servant of the will, if the will be free. In man consciousness produces at first a number of indistinct and imperfect ideas. Those ideas become distinct upon which the will fixes its attention, while the others cease to exist because they are unsupported by the will.
God’s will is more fundamental than the good. God makes the good to be good. Both Thomas and Scotus say that the moral law is the command of God. Thomas conceives it to be God’s command because it is in accord with the good; Scotus, for no other reason than that it is God’s command. The good might be different if God so created it. In opposition to Thomas, Scotus maintained that God does not have to create what He does create, and that this is not the best possible world. God creates what He wills; He can, therefore, grant dispensation, and so can the church. If God’s will were determined by His intellect, He would have no independence, He would not even exist, He would be only nature or one of its causes, there could be no evil nor accident. He can supersede the moral law by a new law, just as He superseded the Mosaic law by the Gospel. Individuality, revelation, salvation, and all objects of faith have their existence only in the groundless and inscrutable will of God. For this reason there can be no rational theology.
This founder of the “Franciscan tradition” of practical piety and meritorious action could not have other than the freedom of the will as his central principle. An Augustinian he refused, however, to follow Augustine in centralizing freedom in God. The object of faith is the will of God, the subject of faith is the will of man. Human freedom consists in coöperation with divine grace. Man can help in the work of God. His freedom is partly formal: he can will or not will. It is partly material: he can will A or B. There is no ulterior ground to determine the human will, and this undetermined freedom is the ground for merit, provided the human will coincides with the divine.
The Problem of Individuality. The problem of individuation was a favorite one with Scotus. While Scotus agrees with Thomas as to the threefold existence of the universal, the individual and not the universal is the ultimate fact. The individual cannot be deduced from the universal, nor can it be constituted by the quantitative determinations of matter. It is already individualized and substantialized. Form, not matter, individualizes. The definite individual form, the “thisness” (hæcceitas), is the ultimate fact. The individual can only be verified as actual fact. The individual is irreducible, and no further explanation can be made than to say that it is an individual. Thus the inquiry into the Principium individuationis has no meaning.
After Duns Scotus. The church failed to canonize Scotus; for though he claimed to be its most faithful son, he taught the dangerous doctrine of freedom of the individual will. His doctrine also marks the beginning of empirical investigation of nature and the decadence of formal logic. Although a most faithful follower of the church, he brought scholasticism to the point where it no longer served the church. The result was ultrarationalism—not what Scotus intended. But when revelation no longer rests upon rational ground, and when there exists by its side a philosophical science whose basis is rational, it is only a question of time when revelation shall lose its authority for men. When philosophy passed from Scotus to Ockam, Ockam’s conception of the individual as the ultimately real and of the unrationality of revelation gave him the old name of nominalist. This is a misnomer, for the doctrine of Ockam is quite different from the nominalism of Roscellinus. The temper of the time was different from those days when Roscellinus followed upon Anselm, for the superior minds were now turning away from orthodoxy. Disciples of both Thomas and Scotus were becoming nominalists. It was an epoch when scholasticism was being discredited by the universities, when theology was less a study in the curricula, when religion was being superseded by magic, when there were rival claimants for the Pope’s chair, when there was strife between the church and the state. The spirit of the age was toward nominalism in every form. The command, in 1339, to the University of Paris not to use Ockam’s works shows how powerful had become his following during his lifetime. Dominicans and Augustinians went over in crowds to nominalism. This beginning of nominalism betrays the growth of European national life, modern languages, art, and the sciences. It shows the beginning of Protestantism in all departments. The church attempted to crush it in the way that it had crushed Roscellinus. But this nominalism had too deep root.
William of Ockam (1280–1349): Life and Teaching. Ockam was called Doctor Invincibilis. He was born in Ockam, England, and studied at Oxford, where he probably had Scotus as a teacher. After teaching in Paris (1320–1325), he left Paris and joined the opponents of the temporal power of the Pope. He was imprisoned at Avignon, but escaped to the court of Louis of Bavaria, where he died. To Louis he made his celebrated promise, “If you will defend me with your sword, I will defend you with my pen.” He has been called “the first Protestant.”
The nominalism of Ockam was more complex than that of Roscellinus, and yet it was essentially a tendency to simplification by discarding all metaphysics and psychology as useless. “Ockam’s razor” was the nickname of his philosophy. He regarded concepts as subjective signs or “terms” of actual facts. Hence his philosophy was also called terminism. There was also in it a naturalistic tendency which was the result of the scientific studies of the Aristotelian Arabians. With these logical and naturalistic motives were united the Augustinian doctrine of the will. These were the three factors of a nominalism that felt the conviction of the importance of the inner life as well as the need of an extended investigation of nature.
It is, moreover, no accident that Ockam was conservative, for he belonged to the Franciscans, the most conservative of the monastic bodies. This nominalism was a reaction against scholasticism, in order to strengthen the supernatural character of dogma. Ockam felt that scholasticism had waxed too great—that under the guise of serving religion it had virtually subordinated religion. The reactionary Franciscans proclaimed the entire separation of religion and philosophy in order to make room for faith. Faith could be purified only by renouncing scholasticism. The temporal power must be given up by the church, the state and the church must be separated. No new knowledge about faith can be obtained. The dogma must be left impregnable, even though scientifically men become skeptics.
Consistent, therefore, was it for this movement to disjoin entirely the parts of the twofold truth. Scotus had almost crowded out natural theology; Ockam completed the work of Scotus. Scholasticism or natural theology is a rubbish-heap of hypotheses. The church should abandon speculation and emphasize faith. It should return to the simplicity and holiness of the Apostolic church. Ockam was devoted to the true upbuilding of the church and was a follower of St. Francis. It was his love for the church that made him take sides against her pretensions to temporal power.
Ockam was the natural precursor of his fellow countryman John Locke, and the English empirical school. Individual things have the reality of original Forms, for they come to us intuitively. Our ideas are only signs of them. This is a relation of the “first intention.” As individual ideas are related to individual things, so general ideas are related to individual ideas. This is the relation of the “second intention.” The general idea referring thus indirectly to an individual thing is therefore arbitrary and capricious. Real science deals with things intuitively observed; rational science only with the relations between ideas. Nevertheless real science deals only with an inner world, even if its material is intuitively known. Intuitions are only representatives of the real world. How much less real must the world of rational science then be, since it presupposes these inner intuitions of real science. The universal, therefore, has no reality. It is a name, a sign of many things, a term. Only the individual is real.
After Ockam. William of Ockam was the last schoolman. When his doctrine of terminism was united with Augustine’s powerful doctrine of the will,—forming an extreme individualism,—the glimmering of the dawn of modern times appears. The movement was made still stronger by the study of the history of development psychologically, and it became a kind of idealism of the inner life. Already, too, there were beginning investigations in natural science, based upon empirical study. Modern subjectivism was at hand; scholasticism had run its course. The representatives of the scholastic philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries forgot the principle of the Classic Schoolmen and became mere commentators of the leaders of the tradition to which they belonged. Their verbal subtleties were too refined to be understood. The efforts of Nicolas Cusanus to bring secular science under a system of scholastic mysticism only promoted the modern movement. Cusanus therefore belongs to the next period, and of him we shall subsequently hear.
INDEX
- Abdera
- 107, 119.
- See Atomists.
- Abelard
- life of, 363;
- his conceptualism, 364;
- his rationalism, 365–367.
- Academy, the
- what it was, 124;
- after the death of Plato, 166;
- and Aristotle, 169–171;
- Older, Middle, and New, 220, 221;
- the skepticism of, 266–268;
- eclecticism in, 270.
- Adams, G. B.
- Civilization during the Middle Ages, 374 n.
- Adamson, Robert
- The Development of Greek Philosophy quoted, 255.
- Ænesidemus
- Skeptic, 268.
- Agrippa
- Skeptic, 268, 269.
- Albertus Magnus
- See Bollstaedt.
- Alcidamus
- Sophist, 68.
- Alcuin
- 349, 350.
- Alexander of Hales
- 379.
- Alexandria
- a centre of Hellenism, 215;
- in the Middle Ages, 282.
- Alexandrian School of neo-Platonism
- 290–298.
- Ammonius Saccas
- 290, 314.
- Anamnesis
- 147–149.
- Anaxagoras
- his life, 43;
- his philosophy, 45–47.
- Anaximander
- 24, 25.
- Anaximenes
- 25.
- Ancient Philosophy
- length of, 1;
- underlying character of, 2;
- divisions of, 4, 5;
- literary sources of, 6.
- Animism
- 19.
- Anselm
- life and position in mediæval philosophy, 359–361;
- his arguments for the existence of God, 361;
- on reason and dogma, 365.
- Anthropological period of Greek philosophy
- 12, 13;
- discussion of, 55–97;
- historical summary of, 55.
- Anthropologists
- 103.
- Anthropology
- defined, 13.
- Antiochus of Ascalon
- 270, 271.
- Antisthenes
- founder of the Cynic school, 93, 95.
- Apathy
- Stoic, 251.
- Apollonius
- neo-Pythagorean, 285.
- Apologists, the
- 307–309.
- Aquinas, Thomas
- on the problem of reason and faith, 369, 377;
- the predecessors of, 379, 380;
- life of (founder of the Dominican tradition), 380, 381;
- the central principle of his doctrine, 381–383;
- the problem of individuality according to, 383–385;
- on the will and the intellect, 385, 386.
- Arabian
- schools, 371, 372;
- translations of Greek works, 372, 373.
- Arcesilaus
- 267.
- ἀρετή
- meaning of, 84.
- Aristippus
- founder of the Cyrenaic school, 93, 96;
- and Epicurus, 229, 230.
- Aristophanes
- opposed the Sophists, 74.
- Aristotle
- his place in Greek history, 98–100, 103;
- conceptualist, 104;
- advanced age at which he finished his education, 125;
- in the Academy and Lyceum, 166–168;
- chronological sketch of his life, 168, 169;
- his biography in detail, 169–173;
- the writings of, 173–176;
- his starting-point, 176, 177;
- the fundamental principle in his philosophy, 177–180;
- his logic, 180–185;
- his metaphysics, 185–194;
- development is purposeful, 185–187;
- his two different conceptions of purpose, 187–190;
- his conception of God, 190, 191;
- his conception of matter, 191, 192;
- his conception of nature, 192–194;
- his theory of physics, 194–196;
- his psychology, 196–199;
- his ethics, 199–202;
- his political philosophy, 202, 203;
- in the Middle Ages, 332, 363, 368, 369;
- Arabic versions of his works, 372, 373;
- works of, introduced into Western Europe, 375–378;
- the strength and burden of, to the church, 378, 379;
- and Thomas Aquinas, 380, 381.
- Arnold, Matthew
- 43 n.
- Astronomy
- of the Pythagoreans, 49–52, 53;
- Ptolemaic, 322–325.
- Ataraxia
- of Epicurus, 231, 233;
- of the Skeptics, 266.
- Athenian school of neo-Platonism
- 290, 299–301.
- Athens
- rise of, 57, 58;
- and Socrates, 91;
- and Abdera, 119;
- a centre of Hellenism, 213–215.
- Atomism of Epicurus, the
- 238–240.
- Atomistic school, the
- 107.
- Atomists, the
- philosophy of, 47, 48.
- Atoms of Democritus, the
- 109–114, 116, 117.
- Augustine
- the historical position of, 306, 318, 335–338;
- the life of, 339, 340;
- the two elements in his teaching, 340, 341;
- the neo-Platonic element: the inner certainties of consciousness, 341–345;
- the authority of the church according to, 345–347.
- Aurelius, Marcus
- 243, 246.
- Bacon, Francis
- Essay on Love, 153 n.
- Bacon, Roger
- 387 n.
- Bardesanes
- Gnostic, 310.
- Basilides
- Gnostic, 310.
- Becoming
- word how used, 22;
- in Heracleitus’s doctrine, 29;
- according to Plato, 133, 136, 139.
- Being
- word how used, 22;
- in Parmenides’ doctrine, 33–35;
- Pythagorean conception of, 49–51;
- aspects under which it was conceived of, in Greek philosophy, 103, 104;
- according to Plato, 133, 136, 139.
- Benedictine Age, the
- 350.
- Berengar of Tours
- 359.
- Boëthius
- 300.
- Bollstaedt, Albert
- 377, 379.
- Bologna
- University of, 377.
- Burnet, John
- Early Greek Philosophers cited, 17 n.
- Bury, J. B.
- History of Greece cited, 12 n.;
- quoted, 16.
- Carneades
- 267.
- Carpocrates
- Gnostic, 310.
- Carthage
- 15, 16.
- Catechists
- the School of, 314–318.
- Catholic theologians
- the old, 312–314.
- Cause
- teleological, final, mechanical, and efficient, 105 n.
- See Final cause, Efficient cause.
- Causes
- Aristotle’s, 187.
- Change
- Heracleitus’s doctrine of, 28, 29;
- has no existence in Parmenides’ philosophy, 34, 35;
- as conceived by the Pluralists, 40.
- Charlemagne
- the revival of, 349, 350.
- Christianity
- and neo-Platonism, difference in their conception of inspiration, 276, 277;
- rise of, 279, 280;
- summary of its history, 281;
- and neo-Platonism, 288–290;
- the Hellenizing of, 302–318;
- the early situation of, 302–305;
- the philosophies influencing, 305, 306;
- early, the periods of, 306, 307;
- the Apologists, 307–309;
- the Gnostics, 310–312;
- the reaction against Gnosticism (the old Catholic theologians), 312–314;
- Origen and the School of Catechists, 314–318;
- and Mohammedanism, 371–375.
- Chrysippus
- 242, 244, 245.
- Church
- authority of, according to Augustine, 345–347;
- strength and burden of Aristotle to, 378, 379;
- and state, Aquinas’s and Dante’s views of, 382.
- Cicero
- on Aristotle, 167;
- his work, 271, 272.
- Civilizations
- Christian and Mohammedan, 369–372;
- the first contact of, 372, 373;
- the conflict between, 374, 375.
- Classic Scholasticism
- period of, 333, 368–394.
- Cleanthes
- 242, 244–246.
- Clement
- 314.
- Conception
- and perception, 83 n.;
- importance of, to Socrates, 83;
- according to Plato, 134, 135;
- in Aristotle, 177–179.
- Conceptualism
- of Aristotle, 104;
- in the Middle Ages, 358, 364, 365.
- Consciousness
- formulation of the psychological conception of, 294;
- the inner certainties of, according to Augustine, 341–345.
- Constantinople
- an intellectual centre, 372 n.
- Cosmas map, the
- 335.
- Cosmological period of Greek philosophy
- 12, 13;
- treated, 15–54.
- Cosmologist
- characteristics of the, 18–20;
- table of, 20;
- their philosophical question, 20, 21;
- where they lived, 21;
- results of their philosophy, 53, 54.
- Cosmology
- defined, 13.
- Crates of Thebes
- 95.
- Critical attitude of mind
- among the Greeks, 61–64;
- of Socrates, 80.
- Crusades, the
- 374, 375.
- Cusanus, Nicolas
- 394.
- Cynic school, the
- 93–97.
- Cynics and Stoics
- 246, 247.
- Cyrenaic school, the
- 93–97.
- Cyrenaics
- their teaching, and Epicureanism, 229, 230.
- Dante
- on Aristotle, 167;
- used Ptolemaic conception of the universe, 324, 325;
- diagram of his poetic conception of the universe, 376;
- his view of the state and the church, 382 n.;
- placed the intellectual virtues above the practical, 383 n.
- Dark Ages, the
- 347–349.
- Deduction
- 182.
- Definition
- Socrates one of the first to use it correctly, 92.
- Democritus
- his place in Greek history, 98–100, 103;
- and Plato, their similarities and differences, 104–106;
- life of, 106–108;
- comprehensiveness of his aim, 108;
- the enriched physics of, 109–111;
- the materialistic psychology of, 111–114;
- his theory of knowledge, 114–116;
- the ethical theory of, 116–118;
- a wide traveler, 123;
- advanced age at which he finished his education, 125.
- Development
- according to Aristotle, 178, 179, 185–187.
- De Wulf
- History of Mediæval Philosophy, 336 n., 384.
- Dialectic
- defined, 60, 131.
- Dill, Samuel
- Roman Society cited, 274 n.
- Diogenes
- 95.
- Dionysiodorus
- 68.
- Dogma
- See Reason.
- Dominican tradition
- Thomas Aquinas the founder of, 380, 381;
- intellectualism the central principle in, 385.
- Doxography
- 6.
- Drama
- the Greek, 60, 61.
- Dualism
- defined, 51 n.;
- the Pythagorean, 51, 52;
- of the Systematic period of Greek philosophy, 102, 103.
- Dynamic pantheism of Plotinus
- 293.
- Eckhart
- 369, 386.
- Eclectic Platonists, the
- 285.
- Eclecticism
- 264, 265, 269–272.
- Efficient cause
- introduction of conception of, by the Pluralists, 41;
- defined, 105 n.;
- Aristotle’s conception of, 187.
- Elean-Eretrian school, the
- 93.
- Eleatic school
- and Milesian school, Xenophanes the connecting link between, 26;
- lives of Parmenides and Zeno, 32, 35;
- teaching of, compared with that of the Milesians and Heracleitus, 22 f.;
- the philosophy of, 33–37;
- and Heracleitus, results of the conflict between, 37, 38.
- Element, the
- as conceived by the Pluralists, 40, 41.
- Eleusinian
- See Mysteries.
- Emanations
- the world of, according to Plotinus, 294–297.
- Emerson, R. W.
- Essay on Love, 153 n.;
- Initial, Dæmonic, and Celestial Love, 153 n.
- Emerton, Ephraim
- Mediæval Europe, 374 n.
- Empedocles
- his conception of change, 40;
- his conception of the element, 40;
- his doctrine of the efficient cause, 41;
- his life, 43;
- the philosophy of, 44, 45.
- Empiricism
- 104 n.
- End
- defined, 105 n.
- Entelechy
- 186.
- Epic, Greek
- importance of the, 8–10.
- Epictetus
- 243, 246.
- Epicureanism
- one of the New Schools, 222–225;
- and Stoicism, summary of agreements and differences, 225, 226;
- and the teaching of Aristippus, 229;
- ideal of, 230–233;
- the place of virtue in, 233;
- the Wise Man of, 234–236.
- See Epicurus.
- Epicureans, the
- 228.
- Epicurus
- life of, 227, 228;
- and Aristippus, 229;
- his ideal, 230–233;
- his conception of the physical world, 238–240.
- See Epicureanism.
- Epistemology
- Democritus’ contribution to, 114–116.
- Erigena, John Scotus
- 349, 350;
- life and teaching of, 350–352;
- the Greek principle which he formulated for the Middle Ages, 352, 353.
- Eristic
- defined, 60.
- Ethical period of the Hellenic-Roman period
- 208;
- general characteristics of, 215–218.
- Ethics
- tendency toward, among early Greeks, 11, 12;
- of the Sophists, 71–73;
- of Democritus, 116–118;
- Plato’s theory of, 153–158;
- of Aristotle, 199–202;
- of Plotinus, 297, 298.
- Eucken, Rudolf
- Problem of Human Life, 336 n.
- Euclid
- founder of the school at Megara, 93.
- Eudæmonism
- 87.
- Euhemerism
- 96.
- Eusebius
- on Aristotle, 167.
- Euthydemus
- 68.
- Evil
- the problem of, according to Stoicism, 260, 261.
- Fairbanks, Arthur
- First Philosophers of Greece, 6 n.
- Falckenberg, Richard
- History of Modern Philosophy, 3 n.
- Final cause
- defined, 105 n.;
- according to Aristotle, 187.
- Fire
- Heracleitus’s doctrine of, 30–32.
- Form and Matter
- in Aristotle, 186–192, 197–199;
- in Thomas Aquinas, 384.
- Formal cause
- 187.
- Franciscan tradition, the
- 385–387.
- Freedom
- the problem of, according to Epicurus, 240;
- according to Stoicism, 260, 261;
- according to Origen, 316, 317;
- according to Augustine, 345;
- according to Duns Scotus, 389.
- Gerbert
- 350.
- Glaber
- quoted, 354.
- Gnomic poets
- Greek, 10–12.
- Gnosticism
- 310–312;
- the reaction against, 312–314.
- God
- Plato’s conception of, 141, 142;
- Aristotle’s conception of, 190, 191;
- His will and His intellect, 386, 388, 389.
- Goethe
- quoted, 129, 167.
- Good
- Plato’s Idea of the, 140–142, 144;
- Plato’s theory of the, development of, 153, 154;
- the, of the Stoics, 250, 251.
- Gorgias
- 66, 67;
- the nihilism of, 70, 71.
- Gospel
- the Hellenizing of, 302–318.
- See Christianity.
- Greece
- after the Persian Wars, 57–64.
- Greek Enlightenment, the
- 58–64, 82.
- Greek-Jewish philosophy of Philo
- 281–284;
- and neo-Platonism, 288.
- Greek nation
- the fall of, and the persistence of its civilization, 204–208.
- Greek national spirit
- waning of, 98.
- Greek philosophy
- three periods of, 12–14;
- summary of, 102, 103.
- Greek thought
- was objective, 2, 100, 101.
- Greeks, early
- geographical environment of, 7;
- political environment of, 8, 9, 15, 16;
- native tendencies of, 9–12;
- perils to, in the new religion, 16–18;
- monistic philosophies, 22 f.
- Grote, George
- History of Greece, 61 n.;
- Plato, 267 n.
- Happiness
- according to Socrates, 86;
- according to the Cynics and the Cyrenaics, 94–97;
- according to Democritus, 117, 118;
- according to Aristotle, 200;
- according to Epicurus, 233–238.
- Harnack, Adolf
- Outlines of the History of Dogma quoted, 308, 336, 344, 354;
- cited, 315 n., 345 n.
- Hatch, Edwin
- Hibbert Lectures quoted, 305.
- Hedonism
- and eudæmonism, 87;
- some types of, 228, 229.
- Hellenic-Roman period
- 204–318;
- its time length, 204;
- the fall of the Greek nation and the persistence of its civilization, 204–208;
- the two parts of, 208, 209;
- the undercurrent of skepticism in, 209–211;
- the fundamental problem of, 211–213.
- Hellenism
- 205–208;
- the centres of, 213–215.
- Hellenizing of the Gospel
- 302–318.
- Heracleitus
- life, 28;
- his teaching compared with that of the Milesians and Eleatics, 22, 23;
- his philosophy, 28–31;
- and Parmenides, results of the conflict between, 37, 38;
- practical philosophy of, 31.
- Hesiod
- 11.
- Hicks, R. D.
- Stoic and Epicurean, 227 n.;
- cited, 267 n.
- Hipparchia
- 95.
- Hippias
- 66, 68.
- Hippodamus
- 68.
- Hippolytus
- 313.
- Homoiomeriai
- 46.
- Human nature
- value set upon, by Socrates, 81.
- Hylozoism
- defined, 19;
- and Pluralism, 41;
- the breaking up of pre-Socratic, 47;
- becomes materialism with Democritus, 109–111.
- Hylozoists
- the Cosmologists were, 19.
- Hypatia
- 298.
- Idea
- development of the meaning of (Democritus and Plato), 105.
- Ideal of Socrates, the
- 83–85;
- what it involves, 85–88.
- Idealism
- of the Greeks, 100;
- objective, 104.
- Ideas
- of Plato, 133, 135;
- the development of, in the two drafts, 136, 137;
- brief comparison of the two drafts of 137;
- fuller comparison of the two drafts of, 137–141;
- in the doctrine of anamnesis, 147, 148.
- Immortality
- Plato’s doctrine of, 146–150.
- Individuality
- the problem of, according to Thomas Aquinas, 383–385;
- the problem of, in Duns Scotus, 389, 390.
- Induction
- 92, 183.
- Intellect or will
- the question of the primacy of, 385, 386, 388, 389.
- Ionic School
- See Milesian school.
- Irenæus
- 313.
- Irish learning, the
- 349.
- Irony
- Socratic, 90.
- Jackson, H.
- article “Sophists,” in Encyclopædia Britannica, 68 n.
- Jamblichus
- 298, 299.
- Jewish (Greek-) philosophy of Philo
- 281–284;
- and neo-Platonism, 288.
- Julian, Emperor
- 298.
- Justin Martyr
- 308.
- Kingsley, Charles
- Hypatia, 298 n.
- Knight, William A.
- Life and Teaching of Hume, 3 n.
- Knowledge
- in Socrates’ ideal, 83–86, 88;
- according to the Cynics, 95;
- Democritus’ theory of, 114–116.
- Lanfranc
- 359.
- Law
- positive and natural, 72.
- Learning
- the impulse for, among the Greeks, 58, 59;
- the Revival of, 375–378.
- Leucippus
- his life, 43, 44;
- his philosophy, 47, 48, 109, 110;
- founder of the Atomistic school, 107.
- Logic
- Aristotle’s, 180–185.
- Love
- Platonic, 151–153.
- Love and Hate
- Empedocles’ doctrine of, 44.
- Lucretius
- 228.
- Lyceum, the
- Aristotle in, 166, 167, 172, 173;
- after Aristotle, 220–222;
- eclecticism in, 270.
- Lycophron
- 68.
- Maine, Sir Henry
- cited, 72.
- Man
- the philosophy of, 13, 55–97;
- Plato’s conception of, 144–146.
- Material cause
- 187.
- Materialism
- hylozoism becomes, with Democritus, 103, 109–111;
- Stoic, 254, 255.
- Materialistic psychology of Democritus
- 111–114.
- Matter
- and Form, in Aristotle, 186–192, 197–199, 384;
- of Plotinus, 295, 296.
- Mean, the
- Aristotle’s doctrine of, 201, 202.
- Mechanical series of Aristotle
- 194–196.
- Mediæval geography
- 335.
- Mediæval library, a
- 326–328.
- Mediæval Man, the
- 320, 321;
- how the universe appeared to, 322–325;
- at school, 325, 326;
- summary of the political and educational worlds of, 330–333.
- Mediæval philosophy
- length of, 1;
- underlying character of, 3;
- divisions of, 4;
- treated, 319–394.
- Megarian school
- 93.
- Mendicants, the
- 368.
- Metaphysical problem, the
- early formulation of, 22, 23.
- Metaphysics
- Plato’s, the formation of, 132–136;
- Plato’s, the development of, 136–141;
- Aristotle’s, 185–194;
- abandonment of, in Hellenic-Roman period, 216;
- of Plotinus, 294–297.
- Metrocles
- 95.
- Middle Ages
- characteristics and conditions of, 319–333;
- and the Hellenic-Roman period, comparison of, 319, 320;
- the mediæval man, 320, 321;
- how the universe appeared to the mediæval man, 322–325;
- the mediæval man at school, 325, 326;
- a mediæval library, 326–328;
- the three periods of, 328–330;
- summary of the political and educational worlds of the mediæval man, 330–333;
- the early period of, 330–332, 334–353;
- the transitional period of, 332, 354–367;
- the period of classic scholasticism, 333, 368–394.
- Milesian school
- 24;
- the members of, 24, 25;
- the philosophy of, 25, 26
- the teaching of, compared with that of Heracleitus and the Eleatics, 22, 23.
- Milton, John
- 325.
- Modern philosophy
- length of, 1;
- underlying character of, 3;
- divisions of, 4.
- Mohammedanism
- growth of, during the Middle Ages, 370–372;
- first contact with Christianity, 372, 373;
- conflict with Christianity, 374, 375.
- Monism
- defined, 10 n.;
- of the early Greeks, 10;
- displaced by pluralism in Greek philosophy, 39.
- Monists
- list of early Cosmologists who were, 20;
- discussion of the, 22–38.
- Monotheism
- defined, 10 n.;
- for the first time conceptually framed, 191.
- Monte Cassino
- founding of the monastic school at, 348.
- Moral postulate
- philosophy for the first time founded upon, 85;
- of Socrates, 85–88.
- Motion
- according to Aristotle, 195, 196.
- Mysteries
- Orphic and Eleusinian, 16–18, 38;
- Orphic, dangers of, averted by Cosmologists, 54.
- Mysticism
- in neo-Platonism, 287.
- Natural Science
- See Physics.
- Nature
- the philosophy of, 15–38;
- the word as used by the Sophists, 72, 73;
- a logical, Socrates’ attempt to find, 92;
- physical, Plato’s conception of, 142–144;
- Aristotle’s conception of, 192–194;
- Stoic conception of, 251–257.
- Neo-Platonism
- and Christianity, difference in their conception of inspiration, 276, 277;
- rise of, 279, 280;
- summary of its history, 281;
- and Platonism, 287, 288;
- and the philosophies of Philo and the neo-Pythagoreans, 288;
- and Christianity, 288–290;
- the periods of, 290;
- the Alexandrian school (scientific theory of neo-Platonism, life and writings of Plotinus), 290–298;
- the Syrian school (the systematizing of polytheism, Jamblichus), 290, 298, 299;
- the Athenian school (Proclus), 290, 299–301;
- its influence on Christianity, 306.
- Neo-Pythagoreanism
- 281, 285–287;
- and neo-Platonism, 288.
- Nominalism
- 103, 358, 362–365, 391, 392.
- Norton, Arthur O.
- Readings in the History of Education, 377 n.
- Nous
- Anaxagoras’ conception of, 47;
- of Plotinus, 294.
- Numbers
- Pythagorean conception of, 49–51.
- Objective character of Greek philosophy
- 2, 100, 101.
- Objective Idealism
- 104.
- Objective Realism
- 104.
- Ockam, William of
- 387 n., 390;
- the course of philosophy after, 393, 394.
- Order
- thought of, developed into clearness by Cosmologists, 54.
- Origen
- 280, 281, 314–318.
- Orphic
- See Mysteries.
- Oxford, University of
- 377.
- Palmer, G. H.
- on Socrates, 79.
- Panætius
- 270, 271.
- Pantheism
- defined, 10 n.;
- dynamic, of Plotinus, 293;
- of Erigena, 351–353;
- of the realists, 363.
- Paris, University of
- 377.
- Parker, C. P.
- cited, 258 n.
- Parmenides
- life, 32;
- develops the doctrine of Xenophanes, 32 f.;
- his philosophy, 33–35;
- and Heracleitus, results of the conflict between, 37, 38.
- See Eleatic School.
- Particulars and Universals
- according to Thomas Aquinas, 383–385.
- Pater, Walter
- Marius the Epicurean, 227 n.
- Patmore, Coventry
- Angel in the House, 153 n.
- Patristics
- 302–318.
- Perception
- and conception, 83 n.;
- according to Plato, 134;
- in Aristotle, 177–179.
- Pericles
- 58.
- Periods
- of philosophy, the three general, 1–4;
- of Greek philosophy, 12–14.
- Peripatetics
- See Lyceum.
- Persia
- 15, 16.
- Persian Wars
- their importance, 55–57, 62.
- Personality
- spiritual, increased importance of, in history, 277–279.
- Pessimism
- result of theory of Cyrenaics, 97.
- Peter the Lombard
- 379, 380.
- Phædo
- founder of the Elean-Eretrian school, 93.
- Philo
- Greek-Jewish philosophy of, 281–284;
- and neo-Platonism, 288.
- Philoponus
- 299.
- Philosophic skepticism
- See Skepticism.
- Physical universe
- early Greek tendency toward scientific explanation of, 10, 11.
- Physics
- Socrates’ view of, 80;
- enrichment of, under Democritus, 109–111;
- Plato’s conception of, 142–144;
- Aristotle’s theory of, 194–196;
- of Epicurus, 238–240.
- Plato
- 104;
- parts of works to be read, 75 n.;
- his place in Greek history, 93, 98–100, 103, 104;
- and Democritus, their similarities and differences, 104–106;
- the period of his life, 119, 120;
- the difficulties in understanding the teaching of, 120, 121;
- the chronology of his dialogues, 119, 120;
- the life and writings of, 121, 126;
- his student life, 121, 122;
- as traveler, 122–124;
- as teacher of the Academy, 124–126;
- concerning his dialogues, 126–128;
- the factors in the construction of his doctrine, 128–131;
- his inherited tendencies, 128–130;
- his philosophical sources, 130, 131;
- the divisions of his philosophy, 131, 132;
- summary of his doctrine, 132;
- the formation of his metaphysics, 132–136;
- the development of his metaphysics (the development of his ideas in the two drafts), 136–141;
- his conception of God, 141, 142;
- his conception of physical nature, 142–144;
- his conception of man, 144–146;
- his doctrine of immortality, 146–150;
- the two tendencies in, 150, 151;
- Platonic love, 151–153;
- his theory of ethics, 153–158;
- development of his theory of the Good, 153, 154;
- the four cardinal virtues, 154, 155;
- his theory of political society, 155–158;
- a selection of passages from, for English readers, 158–165;
- in the Middle Ages, 331, 337, 338, 360, 363.
- Platonism
- the revival of, 279;
- and neo-Platonism, 287, 288.
- Platonists
- Eclectic, 285.
- Pleasure
- of Epicurus, 230–233.
- See Happiness.
- Plotinus
- 280, 287, 288;
- life and writings of, 290, 291;
- general character of his teaching, 291, 292;
- the mystic God of, 292, 293;
- the two problems of, 293;
- the metaphysical problem of, 294–297;
- the ethical problem of, 297, 298.
- Pluralism
- tried to reconcile extremes of Milesian school, 39, 40;
- and hylozoism, 41.
- Pluralists
- list of later Cosmologists who were, 20;
- their new conception of change, 40;
- their new conception of the unchanging, 40, 41;
- introduction of conception of efficient cause by, 41;
- summary of similarities and differences in theories of, 41, 42;
- their lives span the fifth century, 42.
- See Empedocles, etc.
- Plutarch
- neo-Platonist, 299.
- Political philosophy of Aristotle
- 202, 203.
- Political society
- Plato’s theory of, 155–158.
- Polytheism
- Homeric, 19.
- Polytheisms
- the systematizing of, 298, 299.
- Porphyry
- 291, 298, 357.
- Posidonius
- 270, 271.
- Primary and secondary qualities
- 116.
- Probabilism in Stoicism
- 262.
- Proclus
- 299–301.
- Prodicus
- 66, 68.
- Protagoras
- 66, 67;
- the relativism of, 69, 70;
- his point of view compared with that of Socrates, 81.
- Psychology
- materialistic, of Democritus, 111–114;
- Plato’s, 144–146;
- of Aristotle, 196–199;
- the Stoic, 248–250.
- Ptolemy
- his cosmography, 322–325.
- Purpose
- Aristotle’s conceptions of, 186–190.
- Pyrrho
- 266.
- Pyrrhonism
- 265, 266.
- Pythagoras
- 17.
- Pythagoreanism
- neo-, 281, 285–287;
- and neo-Platonism, 288.
- Pythagoreans
- the early, 17;
- the later, 44, 48, 49;
- their conception of Being, 49–51;
- their astronomy, 49, 52, 53;
- their dualism, 51, 52.
- Qualitative changes of phenomena
- 196–202.
- Rationalism
- defined, 104 n.;
- of Plato and Democritus, 104;
- of Abelard, 365–367.
- Realism
- 100, 104, 358, 362–365;
- objective, 104.
- Reason and dogma
- the relation between, 355, 356, 360–362, 365–367.
- Reconcilers
- See Pluralists.
- Relativism
- of Protagoras, 69, 70;
- represented by the anthropologists, 103.
- Religion
- of the Greeks, organization of, 8, 9, 10;
- the new, perils of, 16–18;
- in Epicurus’s system, 236, 237;
- and science, the separation of, under Duns Scotus, 387, 388.
- Religious feeling
- two causes of the rise of, 272–274.
- Religious period of the Hellenic-Roman period
- 208, 209;
- treated, 273–301;
- the divisions of, 280, 281.
- Religious philosophies
- Hellenic, rise of, 280, 282;
- summary of history of, 281;
- introductory period of, 281–287;
- development period of, 281, 287, 288.
- Revival of Learning, the
- 375–378.
- Rhabanus Maurus
- 350.
- Rhetoric among the Greeks
- 60.
- Romans
- their conquest of Greece, 205–208.
- Roscellinus
- life and teaching, 361, 362.
- Rossetti, Christina
- Shadow of Dante cited, 325 n.
- Rousseau and Epicurus
- 229.
- St. Ambrose
- 306.
- Salerno, University of
- 377.
- Scholasticism
- what it is, 355–359;
- of Anselm, 359–361;
- of Roscellinus, 361, 362;
- of Abelard, 363–367;
- classic, period of, 333, 368–394.
- School
- in early Greek philosophy, meaning of, 19.
- Schools, the
- 214, 218–226;
- fusion of doctrines in, 269;
- after 150 B. C., notable names in, 271.
- See Academy, Lyceum, etc.
- Science
- early tendencies toward, among the Greeks, 10, 11;
- growth of, in Hellenic-Roman period, 216, 217;
- secular, of the age of Augustine, 339;
- and religion, the separation of, under Duns Scotus, 387, 388.
- Scotus, Duns
- gave a new direction to philosophy, 369;
- upheld the primacy of the Will, 385, 386;
- the founder of the Franciscan tradition (life and philosophical position of), 386, 387;
- his conception of the twofold truth, 387;
- the inscrutable will of God, according to, 388, 389;
- the problem of individuality, according to, 389, 390;
- the course of philosophy after, 390, 391.
- Secondary and primary qualities
- 116.
- Secular science of the age of Augustine
- 339.
- Seignobos, Charles
- History of Mediæval Civilization, 373 n.
- Seneca
- quoted, 234.
- Sensationalism
- defined, 104 n.
- Sensationalistic skepticism
- 268, 269.
- Sextus Empiricus
- 268.
- Sill
- The Two Aphrodites, 153 n.
- Simplicius
- 299.
- Skepticism
- what it is, 69;
- the undercurrent of, in the Hellenic-Roman period, 209–211;
- philosophic, the appearances of, 264, 265;
- the three phases of, 265–269;
- of the Academy, 266–268;
- sensationalistic, 268, 269.
- Socrates, and Aristophanes
- opposed the Sophists, 74;
- works on, for reading, 75;
- personality and life of, 75–80;
- his dæmon, 77, 83;
- and the Sophists, 80–82;
- unsystematic character of his philosophy, 82, 83;
- the ideal of, 83–85;
- what his ideal involves, 85–88;
- the two steps of his method, 88–91;
- and Athens, 91;
- the logical expedients of, 92, 93;
- and the Lesser Socratics, 93–95.
- Socratics
- the Lesser, and Socrates, 93–95.
- Sophists
- significance of, 64–67;
- the prominent, 67, 68;
- the philosophy of, 68–71;
- the ethics of, 71–73;
- summary of their work, 73;
- met in two ways by Socrates and Aristophanes, 74;
- and Socrates, 80–82.
- Soul
- Plato’s doctrine of, 145–150;
- according to Aristotle, 196, 197;
- of Plotinus, 295, 297, 298.
- Spenser, Edmund
- Hymn in Honor of Beauty, 153 n.
- Spiritual authority
- the need of, 275–277;
- the turning to the present for, 287, 288.
- Spirituality
- rise of the conception of, 277–279.
- State
- Plato’s doctrine of, 155–158;
- and church, Aquinas’s and Dante’s views of, 382.
- Stoic school, the
- 222–225;
- inclines to eclecticism, 269, 270.
- Stoicism
- and Epicureanism, summary of agreements and differences, 225, 226;
- position of, in antiquity, 241, 242;
- the three periods of, 242, 243;
- leaders of, 243–246;
- writings of, 246;
- the two prominent conceptions of, 247, 248;
- the conception of personality, 248;
- the psychology of, 248–250;
- the highest good, 250, 251;
- the conception of nature, 251–256;
- conceptions of nature and personality supplement each other, 256, 257;
- and society, 257–259;
- duty and responsibility, 259, 260;
- the problem of evil and the problem of freedom, 260, 261;
- modifications of, after the first period, 261–263;
- its influence on Christianity, 305.
- Stoics and Cynics
- 246, 247.
- Storm and Stress
- 362, 363.
- Sums
- of Peter the Lombard, 379, 380.
- Syllogism, the
- 182.
- Syrian school of neo-Platonism
- 290, 298, 299.
- Syrianus
- 299.
- Systematic period of Greek philosophy
- 12–14;
- treated, 98–203;
- the three philosophers of, their place in Greek history, 98–100;
- the fundamental principle of, 100–102.
- Tatian
- 313.
- Teleology
- defined, 105 n.
- Terminism
- 392.
- Tertullian
- 313.
- Teuffel, W. S.
- History of Roman Literature, 227 n.
- Thales
- 24, 25.
- Theological series of Aristotle
- 196–202.
- Thrasymachus
- 68.
- Timon
- 266.
- Transitional period of Middle Ages
- 332, 354–357.
- Turner, William
- History of Philosophy, 336 n.
- Twofold reality
- world of, Democritus’ theory of, 114–116.
- Ueberweg
- History of Philosophy, quoted, 6;
- cited, 269 n.
- Unchanging, the
- as conceived by the Pluralists, 40, 41.
- Universalia ante rem
- 104, 358, 362–365, 384.
- Universalia in re
- 104, 358, 364, 365, 384.
- Universalia post rem
- 103, 358, 362–365, 384.
- Universals and particulars
- according to Thomas Aquinas, 383–385.
- Universe
- diagram of Dante’s conception of, 376.
- Universities
- the establishment of, 377.
- Useful, the
- according to Socrates, 87, 88.
- Valentinus
- Gnostic, 310.
- Vincent of Beauvais
- 379.
- Virtue
- meaning of, 84;
- according to Socrates, 84–88;
- according to the Cynics, 95;
- according to Aristotle, 199–202;
- place of, in Epicureanism, 233.
- Virtues
- the four cardinal, in Plato, 154, 155.
- Weber
- History of Philosophy cited, 269 n.
- Wheeler, B. I.
- Life of Alexander the Great, cited, 56 n.;
- quoted, 172.
- Will
- freedom of. See Freedom.
- Will or intellect
- the question of the primacy of, 385, 386, 388, 389.
- William of Aubergne
- 379.
- William of Champeaux
- 363.
- Windelband
- History of Ancient Philosophy, 37 n.;
- cited, 121 n., 311 n.;
- quoted, 254.
- Witte, Karl
- Essays on Dante, 325 n.
- Wordsworth, William
- Dion, 123 n.;
- Ode on Intimations of Immortality quoted, 148.
- Xenophanes
- religious philosopher, 26 f.;
- philosophy of, 27 f.
- Xenophon
- parts of works to be read, 75 n.;
- on Socrates, 76, 93.
- Zeller, Edward
- Pre-Socratic Philosophy, 3 n., 100 n.;
- quoted, 101, 102;
- Greek Philosophy, 37 n.
- Zeno
- Eleatic, his life, 35 f.;
- his philosophy, 36, 37.
- See Eleatic school.
- Zeno
- Stoic, 242, 244, 245.
Footnotes.
| 1 – | Read Knight, Life and Teaching of Hume, pp. 102 f. (Blackwood Series); Falckenberg, Hist. Modern Phil., p. 10; Zeller, Pre-Socratic Phil., vol. i, pp. 161 f. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 – | Read Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, pp. 263 ff., especially the résumé. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 – | Ueberweg, Hist. of Phil., vol. i, p. 7. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 – | Monism is the belief that reality is a oneness without any necessary implication as to the character of that oneness. Monotheism is a kind of monism, in which some definite character is ascribed to the oneness, like the active principle in the world or the cause of the world. Pantheism, on the other hand, is a kind of monism in which the emphasis is upon the all-inclusive character of reality. In pantheism God and nature are two inseparable aspects of reality. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 – | Bury, Hist. of Greece, p. 321, calls the tradition of the Wise Men a legend. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6 – | Bury, History of Greece, p. 311. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7 – | Burnet, Early Greek Philosophers, p. 104, for injunctions upon the private life of the early Pythagoreans. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 8 – | Note further that in future philosophical discussions of this problem, the technical word “Being” is used for the Unchanging or the substance that remains forever like itself, and the technical word “Becoming” is used for the changing processes of Nature. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 9 – | “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10 – | Read Windelband, Hist. of Ancient Phil., pp. 67 ff.; Zeller, Greek Philosophy, pp. 63 ff. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 11 – | Read Matthew Arnold, Empedocles (a poem). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 12 – | Read Plato, Phaedo, 97, B. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 13 – | Dualism: the belief that the world is to be explained by two independent and coexistent principles. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 14 – | Wheeler, History of Alexander the Great. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 15 – | Read Grote, History of Greece, vol. viii, pp. 334–347. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 16 – | Read H. Jackson in Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Sophists”. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 17 – |
The student should read the following references in Plato’s dialogues and Xenophon’s Symposium and Memorabilia. The translations referred to here are Jowett’s Plato and Cooper, Spelman, etc., translation, Whole Works of Xenophon. (1851.) For the method of Socrates, read Charmides, Lysis, and Laches. For the personal appearance of Socrates, read Plato, Symposium, pp. 586 ff. and Xenophon, Symposium, p. 615. For the physical endurance of Socrates, read Plato, Symposium, p. 591. For Socrates’ dislike of nature, read Plato, Phædrus, p. 435, and Xenophon, Memorabilia, p. 521. For the charges, defense, and trial of Socrates, read Plato, Apology, pp. 116 and 129. For the confinement of Socrates in prison, read Crito, beginning and end of the dialogue. For description of the death scene of Socrates, read Plato, Phædo, beginning and end of the dialogue. For description of the dæmoniacal sign, read Plato, Apology, pp. 125–126, and Xenophon, Memorabilia, pp. 531 ff., 585 ff. For the oracle’s statement that Socrates is the wisest of men, read Plato, Apology, p. 114. |
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| 18 – | What is the difference between perception and conception? We have heard a good deal about perceptions in the doctrine of Protagoras. We have now reached a point where many of the theories will involve a comparison of perception with conception. An understanding of the difference between perception and conception will be necessary for an understanding of the doctrines, especially of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. In general, perception is the consciousness of an object in which some actual sensation of it is present; a conception is the consciousness of an object in which no actual sensation of it is present. Thus I perceive a tree, when my retina is actually stimulated; I conceive a tree, when I turn my head away and no sense organ is actually stimulated, i. e. I do not touch, see, hear the tree. To the Greek the perception was particular and transient; the conception was, on the other hand, universal or general and permanent. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 19 – | Read Zeller, Pre-Socratic Phil., vol. i, pp. 138–149, concerning the objective character of Greek morality, art, and philosophy. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 20 – | Zeller, Pre-Socratic Phil., vol. i, p. 162. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 21 – | Zeller, Pre-Socratic Phil., vol. i, p. 162. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 22 – | Rationalism and sensationalism refer to the sources from which knowledge is obtained. Rationalism is to be contrasted with sensationalism. Rationalism is the belief that the reason is an independent source of knowledge and has a higher authority than sense-perception. Sensationalism is the belief that all our knowledge originates in sensations. Empiricism is often used for sensationalism. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 23 – | Teleology is the doctrine that things exist for some purpose. A teleological cause, which is the same as “final cause” or “end,” is the purpose involved in an action. It is contrasted with mechanical or efficient cause. A trolley car is moving and a man runs to catch it. Electricity is the mechanical cause of the movement of the car. The purpose of the man is the teleological cause of his running; the strength in his legs is the mechanical or efficient cause of his running. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 24 – | Atoms differ primarily in form (ἰδέα); size is referred in part to form. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 25 – | These all reduce to form,—see above. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 26 – | Windelband, Hist. of Ancient Phil., pp. 183–189. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 27 – | Read Wordsworth, Dion. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 28 – |
B. Jowett, Dialogues of Plato, trans. into English with analyses and introductions, 4 vols. See p. 158 for selections from the dialogues made by Jowett for English readers. |
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| 29 – | Goethe. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 30 – | For the distinction between perception and conception, see p. 83. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 31 – | Read Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 32 – | Read Edmund Spenser, Hymn in Honor of Beauty; Emerson, Essay on Love, also the poem on Initial, Dæmonic, and Celestial Love; Bacon, Essay on Love; Patmore, Angel in the House; Sill, The Two Aphrodites. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 33 – | B. I. Wheeler, Life of Alexander the Great. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 34 – | Read Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean; Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean, p. 184, for the Golden Maxims of Epicurus; Teuffel, History of Roman Literature, pp. 83–86. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 35 – | Windelband, Hist. of Phil., p. 183. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 36 – | Adamson, The Development of Greek Philosophy, p. 267. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 37 – | Professor C. P. Parker. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 38 – | A. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean, pp. 322 ff. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 39 – | Read Grote, Plato, vol. iii, pp. 482–490, for the interesting sophistical problems of the Liar, the Person Disguised under a Veil, Electra, Sorites, Cornutus, and the Bald Man. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 40 – | For a statement of these tropes, see Weber, Hist. of Phil., p. 153. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 41 – | Ueberweg, Hist. of Phil., vol. i, p. 216. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 42 – | Read Dill, Roman Society, first three chapters. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 43 – | Read Charles Kingsley, Hypatia, a novel. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 44 – | Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 182. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 45 – | Harnack, Outlines of the Hist. of Dogma, p. 120. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 46 – | Windelband, Hist. of Ancient Phil., p. 357. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 47 – | Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma, p. 159. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 48 – | Read Rossetti, Shadow of Dante, pp. 9–14; Karl Witte, Essays on Dante, pp. 99 ff. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 49 – | Read Eucken, Problem of Human Life, pp. 219–221, 232, 236, 245–248; Turner, Hist. of Philosophy, p. 226; De Wulf, Hist. of Mediæval Phil., pp. 90–98; Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, vol. v, pp. 3–6. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 50 – | Eucken, Problem of Human Life, p. 247. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 51 – | Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, vol. v, p. 3. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 52 – | There is this difference between Augustine’s position and that of Descartes. Augustine’s Quod si fallor, sum is a refutation of the doctrine of probability of the Academy, not a demonstration; Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum is positive,—a subtle but an important difference between the two thinkers. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 53 – | Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, vol. v, p. 337. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 54 – | Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, vol. v, p. 112, n. 4. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 55 – | Harnack, vol. vi, p. 7. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 56 – | Glaber, Hist., lib. III, 4. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 57 – | In this period the conceptualists were confused with nominalists and called nominalists. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 58 – | Historians are attaching more importance than formerly to Constantinople as an intellectual centre of that time. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 59 – | Read on this point Seignobos, Hist. of Mediæval Civilization, pp. 117 f. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 60 – | Read Emerton, Mediæval Europe, pp. 358–397; Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, pp. 258–278. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 61 – |
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| 62 – | Read Norton, Readings in the Hist. of Education, pp. 102–103. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 63 – | Dante in De Monarchia did not share in Thomas’s subordination of the state to the church. Both Dante and Thomas believed that destiny lies in the race, but the great poet regarded man as destined equally for earthly and heavenly happiness. To Dante the church and the state are powers of like authority. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 64 – | Dante follows Thomas in placing the intellectual virtues above the practical, and in pointing to the intellectual intuition of God as the goal of human attainment. Beatrice is Dante’s expression of this ideal. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 65 – | De Wulf, Hist. of Mediæval Phil., p. 323. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 66 – | Roger Bacon (1214–1292) lived at Oxford two generations before Scotus. He was so versatile that he was not able to dogmatize in any one field. He believed that theology was based on the will of God, all other science on the reason. He influenced both Scotus and Ockam to turn from authority to experience. Morality was to him the content of universal religion. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
