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The Greek Philosophers

Alfred William Benn

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THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

BY ALFRED WILLIAM BENN Εὑρηκέναι μὲν οὖν τινὰς τῶν ἀρχαίων καὶ μακαρίων φιλοσόφων τὸ ἀληθὲς δεῖ νομίζειν· τίνες δὲ οἱ τυχόντες μάλιστα καὶ πῶς ἂν καὶ ἡμῖν σύνεσις περὶ τούτων γένοιτο ἐπισκέψασθαι προσήκει Plotinus Quamquam ab his philosophiam et omnes ingenuas disciplinas habemus: sed tamen est aliquid quod nobis non liceat, liceat illis Cicero IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, &amp; CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1882 AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO J. B. B....

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PREFACE.

PREFACE.

A considerable portion of the present work, comprising the whole of the first volume and the first two chapters of the second, is reprinted with corrections and additions from the Westminster Review . The last chapter of the second volume has already appeared under a slightly different title in Mind for January and April 1882. The chapters entitled, ‘The Sceptics and Eclectics,’ ‘The Religious Revival,’ and ‘The Spiritualism of Plotinus,’ are now published for the first time. The subject of Gree

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ADDITIONAL REFERENCES.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES.

Transcriber’s Note These have been marked up as footnotes in the text, using alphabetic coding. This identifies the page and line number rather than any precise text. A. Page 9, line 18. Plutarch ( ut fertur ), Plac. Phil. , I., iii., 4. B. Page 15, line 26. Xenophanes, Fragm. 19 and 21, ed. Mullach. C. Page 41, line 25. Diogenes Laert., IX., 34. The words ‘in the Eastern countries where he had travelled,’ are a conjectural addition, but they seem justified by the context. D. Page 43, line 11. P

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I.

I.

During the two centuries that ended with the close of the Peloponnesian war, a single race, weak numerically, and weakened still further by political disunion, simultaneously developed all the highest human faculties to an extent possibly rivalled but certainly not surpassed by the collective efforts of that vastly greater population which now wields the accumulated resources of modern Europe. This race, while maintaining a precarious foothold on the shores of the Mediterranean by repeated prodi

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II.

II.

Thales, of Miletus, an Ionian geometrician and astronomer, about whose age considerable uncertainty prevails, but who seems to have flourished towards the close of the seventh century before our era, is by general consent regarded as the father of Greek physical philosophy. Others before him had attempted to account for the world’s origin, but none like him had traced it back to a purely natural beginning. According to Thales all things have come from water. That the earth is entirely enclosed b

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III.

III.

Such a thinker was Xenophanes, of Colophon. Driven, like Pythagoras, from his native city by civil discords, he spent the greater part of an unusually protracted life wandering through the Greek colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy, and reciting his own verses, not always, as it would appear, to a very attentive audience. Elea, an Italiote city, seems to have been his favourite resort, and the school of philosophy which he founded there has immortalised the name of this otherwise obscure Phocae

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IV.

IV.

We now enter on the last period of purely objective philosophy, an age of mediating and reconciling, but still profoundly original speculation. Its principal representatives, with whom alone we have to deal, are Empedocles, the Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, and Anaxagoras. There is considerable doubt and difficulty respecting the order in which they should be placed. Anaxagoras was unquestionably the oldest and Democritus the youngest of the four, the difference between their ages being fo

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V.

V.

Reasons have already been suggested for placing Anaxagoras last in order among the physical philosophers, notwithstanding his priority in point of age to more than one of them. He was born, according to the most credible accounts, 500 B.C. , at Clazomenae, an Ionian city, and settled in Athens when twenty years of age. There he spent much the greater part of a long life, illustrating the type of character which Euripides—expressly referring, as is supposed, to the Ionian sage—has described in th

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VI.

VI.

And now, looking back at the whole course of early Greek thought, presenting as it does a gradual development and an organic unity which prove it to be truly a native growth, a spontaneous product of the Greek mind, let us take one step further and enquire whether before the birth of pure speculation, or parallel with but apart from its rudimentary efforts, there were not certain tendencies displayed in the other great departments of intellectual activity, fixed forms as it were in which the Hel

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I.

I.

In the preceding chapter we traced the rise and progress of physical philosophy among the ancient Greeks. We showed how a few great thinkers, borne on by an unparalleled development of intellectual activity, worked out ideas respecting the order of nature and the constitution of matter which, after more than two thousand years, still remain as fresh and fruitful as ever; and we found that, in achieving these results, Greek thought was itself determined by ascertainable laws. Whether controlling

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II.

II.

Thus much for the current prejudices which seemed likely to interfere with a favourable consideration of our subject. We have next to study the conditions by which the form of Greek ethical philosophy was originally determined. Foremost among these must be placed the moral conceptions already current long before systematic reflection could begin. What they were may be partly gathered from some wise saws attributed by the Greeks themselves to their Seven Sages, but probably current at a much earl

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III.

III.

This process was conceived by Aeschylus as a conflict between two generations of gods, ending with their complete reconciliation. In the Prometheus Bound we have the commencement of the conflict, in the Eumenides its close. Our sympathies are apparently at first intended to be enlisted on behalf of the older divinities, but at last are claimed exclusively by the younger. As opposed to Prometheus, Zeus is evidently in the wrong, and seeks to make up for his deficiencies by arbitrary violence. In

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IV.

IV.

The word Sophist in modern languages means one who purposely uses fallacious arguments. Our definition was probably derived from that given by Aristotle in his Topics , but does not entirely reproduce it. What we call sophistry was with him eristic, or the art of unfair disputation; and by Sophist he means one who practises the eristic art for gain. He also defines sophistry as the appearance without the reality of wisdom. A very similar account of the Sophists and their art is given by Plato in

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V.

V.

We have seen how the idea of Nature, first evolved by physical philosophy, was taken by some, at least, among the Sophists as a basis for their ethical teaching; then how an interpretation utterly opposed to theirs was put on it by practical men, and how this second interpretation was so generalised by the younger rhetoricians as to involve the denial of all morality whatever. Meanwhile, another equally important conception, destined to come into speedy and prolonged antagonism with the idea of

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VI.

VI.

From utter confusion to extreme nihilism there was but a single step. This step was taken by Gorgias, the Sicilian rhetorician, who held the same relation towards western Hellas and the Eleatic school as that which Protagoras held towards eastern Hellas and the philosophy of Heracleitus. He, like his eminent contemporary, was opposed to the thinkers whom, borrowing a useful term from the nomenclature of the last century, we may call the Greek physiocrats. To confute them, he wrote a book with th

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VII.

VII.

Our readers have now before them everything of importance that is known about the Sophists, and something more that is not known for certain, but may, we think, be reasonably conjectured. Taking the whole class together, they represent a combination of three distinct tendencies, the endeavour to supply an encyclopaedic training for youth, the cultivation of political rhetoric as a special art, and the search after a scientific foundation for ethics derived from the results of previous philosophy

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I.

I.

Apart from legendary reputations, there is no name in the world’s history more famous than that of Socrates, and in the history of philosophy there is none so famous. The only thinker that approaches him in celebrity is his own disciple Plato. Every one who has heard of Greece or Athens has heard of him. Every one who has heard of him knows that he was supremely good and great. Each successive generation has confirmed the reputed Delphic oracle that no man was wiser than Socrates. He, with one o

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II.

II.

Before entering on our task of reconstruction, we must turn aside to consider with what success the same enterprise has been attempted by modern German criticism, especially by its chief contemporary representative, the last and most distinguished historian of Greek philosophy. The result at which Zeller, following Schleiermacher, arrives is that the great achievement of Socrates was to put forward an adequate idea of knowledge; in other words, to show what true science ought to be, and what, as

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III.

III.

So far we have been occupied in disputing the views of others; it is now time that our own view should be stated. We maintain, then, that Socrates first brought out the idea, not of knowledge, but of mind in its full significance; that he first studied the whole circle of human interests as affected by mind; that, in creating dialectics, he gave this study its proper method, and simultaneously gave his method the only subject-matter on which it could be profitably exercised; finally, that by the

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IV.

IV.

To Socrates himself the strongest reason for believing in the identity of conviction and practice was, perhaps, that he had made it a living reality. With him to know the right and to do it were the same. In this sense we have already said that his life was the first verification of his philosophy. And just as the results of his ethical teaching can only be ideally separated from their application to his conduct, so also these results themselves cannot be kept apart from the method by which they

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V.

V.

Thus, then, the Socratic dialogue has a double aspect. It is, like all philosophy, a perpetual carrying of life into ideas and of ideas into life. Life is raised to a higher level by thought; thought, when brought into contact with life, gains movement and growth, assimilative and reproductive power. If action is to be harmonised, we must regulate it by universal principles; if our principles are to be efficacious, they must be adopted; if they are to be adopted, we must demonstrate them to the

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VI.

VI.

Consistency is, indeed, the one word which, better than any other, expresses the whole character of Socrates, and the whole of philosophy as well. Here the supreme conception of mind reappears under its most rigorous, but, at the same time, its most beneficent aspect. It is the temperance which no allurement can surprise; the fortitude which no terror can break through; the justice which eliminates all personal considerations, egoistic and altruistic alike; the truthfulness which, with exactest

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VII.

VII.

This Daemonium, whatever it may have been, formed one of the ostensible grounds on which its possessor was prosecuted and condemned to death for impiety. We might have spared ourselves the trouble of going over the circumstances connected with that tragical event, had not various attempts been made in some well-known works to extenuate the significance of a singularly atrocious crime. The case stands thus. In the year 399 B.C. Socrates, who was then over seventy, and had never in his life been b

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I.

I.

In studying the growth of philosophy as an historical evolution, repetitions and anticipations must necessarily be of frequent occurrence. Ideas meet us at every step which can only be appreciated when we trace out their later developments, or only understood when we refer them back to earlier and half-forgotten modes of thought. The speculative tissue is woven out of filaments so delicate and so complicated that it is almost impossible to say where one begins and the other ends. Even conception

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II.

II.

There is a story that Plato used to thank the gods, in what some might consider a rather Pharisaic spirit, for having made him a human being instead of a brute, a man instead of a woman, and a Greek instead of a barbarian; but more than anything else for having permitted him to be born in the time of Socrates. It will be observed that all these blessings tended in one direction, the complete supremacy in his character of reason over impulse and sense. To assert, extend, and organise that suprema

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III.

III.

Our survey of Plato’s first period is now complete; and we have to enter on the far more arduous task of tracing out the circumstances, impulses, and ideas by which all the scattered materials of Greek life, Greek art, and Greek thought were shaped into a new system and stamped with the impress of an imperishable genius. At the threshold of this second period the personality of Plato himself emerges into greater distinctness, and we have to consider what part it played in an evolution where univ

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IV.

IV.

To illustrate the relation in which Plato stood towards his own times, we have already had occasion to draw largely on the productions of his maturer manhood. We have now to take up the broken thread of our systematic exposition, and to trace the development of his philosophy through that wonderful series of compositions which entitle him to rank among the greatest writers, the most comprehensive thinkers, and the purest religious teachers of all ages. In the presence of such glory a mere diverg

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I.

I.

In the last chapter we considered the philosophy of Plato chiefly under its critical and negative aspects. We saw how it was exclusively from that side that he at first apprehended and enlarged the dialectic of Socrates, how deeply his scepticism was coloured by the religious reaction of the age, and how he attempted, out of his master’s mouth, to overturn the positive teaching of the master himself. We saw how, in the Protagoras , he sketched a theory of ethics, which was no sooner completed th

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II.

II.

The study of psychology with Plato stands in a fourfold relation to his general theory of the world. The dialectic method, without which Nature would remain unintelligible, is a function of the soul, and constitutes its most essential activity; then soul, as distinguished from body, represents the higher, supersensual element of existence; thirdly, the objective dualism of reality and appearance is reproduced in the subjective dualism of reason and sense; and lastly, soul, as the original spring

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III.

III.

So far we have followed the evolution of Plato’s philosophy as it may have been effected under the impulse of purely theoretical motives. We have now to consider what form was imposed on it by the more imperious exigencies of practical experience. Here, again, we find Plato taking up and continuing the work of Socrates, but on a vastly greater scale. There was, indeed, a kind of pre-established harmony between the expression of thought on the one hand and the increasing need for its application

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IV.

IV.

Plato, like Socrates, makes religious instruction the basis of education. But where the master had been content to set old beliefs on a new basis of demonstration, the disciple aimed at nothing less than their complete purification from irrational and immoral ingredients. He lays down two great principles, that God is good, and that He is true. 142 Every story which is inconsistent with such a character must be rejected; so also must everything in the poets which redounds to the discredit of the

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V.

V.

Plato had begun by condemning poetry only in so far as it was inconsistent with true religion and morality. At last, with his usual propensity to generalise, he condemned it and, by implication, every imitative art quâ art, as a delusion and a sham, twice removed from the truth of things, because a copy of the phenomena which are themselves unreal representations of an archetypal idea. His iconoclasm may remind us of other ethical theologians both before and after, whether Hebrew, Moslem, or Pur

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VI.

VI.

According to Hegel, 147 the Platonic polity, so far from being an impracticable dream, had already found its realisation in Greek life, and did but give a purer expression to the constitutive principle of every ancient commonwealth. There are, he tells us, three stages in the moral development of mankind. The first is purely objective. It represents a régime where rules of conduct are entirely imposed from without; they are, as it were, embodied in the framework of society; they rest, not on rea

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VII.

VII.

But a profounder analysis of experience is necessary before we can come to the real roots of Plato’s scheme. It must be remembered that our philosopher was a revolutionist of the most thorough-going description, that he objected not to this or that constitution of his time, but to all existing consti tutions whatever. Now, every great revolutionary movement, if in some respects an advance and an evolution, is in other respects a retrogression and a dissolution. When the most complex forms of pol

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VIII.

VIII.

The social studies through which we have accompanied Plato seem to have reacted on his more abstract speculations, and to have largely modified the extreme opposition in which these had formerly stood to current notions, whether of a popular or a philosophical character. The change first becomes perceptible in his theory of Ideas. This is a subject on which, for the sake of greater clearness, we have hitherto refrained from entering; and that we should have succeeded in avoiding it so long would

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IX.

IX.

The old age of Plato seems to have been marked by restless activity in more directions than one. He began various works which were never finished, and projected others which were never begun. He became possessed by a devouring zeal for social reform. It seemed to him that nothing was wanting but an enlightened despot to make his ideal State a reality. According to one story, he fancied that such an instrument might be found in the younger Dionysius. If so, his expectations were speedily disappoi

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I.

I.

Within the last twelve years several books, both large and small, have appeared, dealing either with the philosophy of Aristotle as a whole, or with the general principles on which it is constructed. The Berlin edition of Aristotle’s collected works was supplemented in 1870 by the publication of a magnificent index, filling nearly nine hundred quarto pages, for which we have to thank the learning and industry of Bonitz. 161 Then came the unfinished treatise of George Grote, planned on so vast a

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II.

II.

Personally, we know more about Aristotle than about any other Greek philosopher of the classic period; but what we know does not amount to much. It is little more than the skeleton of a life, a bald enumeration of names and dates and places, with a few more or less doubtful anecdotes interspersed. These we shall now relate, together with whatever inferences the facts seem to warrant. Aristotle was born 384 B.C. , at Stageira, a Greek colony in Thrace. It is remarkable that every single Greek thi

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III.

III.

It is an often-quoted observation of Friedrich Schlegel’s that every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. If we narrow the remark to the only class which, perhaps, its author recognised as human beings, namely, all thinking men, it will be found to contain a certain amount of truth, though probably not what Schlegel intended; at any rate something requiring to be supplemented by other truths before its full meaning can be understood. The common opinion seems to be that Plato was a

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IV.

IV.

On turning to Aristotle’s Rhetoric we find that, from a practical point of view, his failure here is, if possible, still more complete. This treatise contains, as we have already observed, an immense mass of more or less valuable information on the subject of psychology, ethics, and dialectic, but gives exceedingly little advice about the very essence of rhetoric as an art, which is to say whatever you have to say in the most telling manner, by the arrangement of topics and arguments, by the use

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V.

V.

But if Aristotle had not his master’s enthusiasm for practical reforms, nor his master’s command of all the forces by which humanity is raised to a higher life, he had, more even than his master, the Greek passion for knowledge as such, apart from its utilitarian applications, and embracing in its vast orb the lowliest things with the loftiest, the most fragmentary glimpses and the largest revelations of truth. He demanded nothing but the materials for generalisation, and there was nothing from

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VI.

VI.

The truth is that while our philosopher had one of the most powerful intellects ever possessed by any man, it was an intellect strictly limited to the surface of things. He was utterly incapable of divining the hidden forces by which inorganic nature and life and human society are moved. He had neither the genius which can reconstruct the past, nor the genius which partly moulds, partly foretells the future. But wherever he has to observe or to report, to enumerate or to analyse, to describe or

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VII.

VII.

This, then, was the revolution effected by Aristotle, that he found Greek thought in the form of a solid, and unrolled into a surface of the utmost possible tenuity, transparency, and extension. In so doing, he completed what Socrates and Plato had begun, he paralleled the course already described by Greek poetry, and he offered the first example of what since then has more than once recurred in the history of philosophy. It was thus that the residual substance of Locke and Berkeley was resolved

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I.

I.

We have considered the Aristotelian philosophy in relation to the great concrete interests of life, morals, politics, literature, and science. We have now to ask what it has to tell us about the deepest and gravest problems of any, the first principles of Being and Knowing, God and the soul, spirit and matter, metaphysics, psychology, and logic. We saw that very high claims were advanced on behalf of Aristotle in respect to his treatment of these topics; and had we begun with them, we should onl

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II.

II.

Ever since the age of Parmenides and Heracleitus, Greek thought had been haunted by a pervading dualism which each system had in turn attempted to reconcile, with no better result than its reproduction under altered names. And speculation had latterly become still further perplexed by the question whether the antithetical couples supposed to divide all Nature between them could or could not be reduced to so many aspects of a single opposition. In the last chapter but one we showed that there wer

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III.

III.

Before entering on the chain of reasoning which led Aristotle to postulate the existence of a personal First Cause, we must explain the difference between his scientific standpoint, and that which is now accepted by all educated minds. To him the eternity not only of Matter, but also of what he called Form,—that is to say, the collection of attributes giving definiteness to natural aggregates, more especially those known as organic species—was an axiomatic certainty. Every type, capable of self-

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IV.

IV.

In mastering Aristotle’s cosmology, we have gained the key to his entire method of systematisation. Henceforth, the Stagirite has no secrets from us. Where we were formerly content to show that he erred, we can now show why he erred; by generalising his principles of arrangement, we can exhibit them still more clearly in their conflict with modern thought. The method, then, pursued by Aristotle is to divide his subject into two more or less unequal masses, one of which is supposed to be governed

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V.

V.

We have now to consider how Aristotle treats psychology, not in connexion with biology, but as a distinct science—a separation not quite consistent with his own definition of soul, but forced on him by the traditions of Greek philosophy and by the nature of things. Here the fundamental antithesis assumes a three-fold form. First the theoretical activity of mind is distinguished from its practical activity; the one being exercised on things which cannot, the other on things which can, be changed.

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VI.

VI.

We now pass to the consideration of Aristotle’s most important achievement—his system of logic. And as, here also, we shall find much to criticise, it is as well to begin by saying that, in our opinion, his contributions to the science are the most valuable ever made, and perhaps have done more to advance it than all other writings on the same subject put together. The principal business of reason is, as we have seen, to form abstract ideas or concepts of things. But before the time of Aristotle

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VII.

VII.

We have endeavoured to show that Aristotle’s account of the syllogism is redundant on the one side and defective on the other, both errors being due to a false analysis of the reasoning process itself, combined with a false metaphysical philosophy. The same evil influences tell with much greater effect on his theory of applied reasoning. Here the fundamental division, corresponding to that between heaven and earth in the cosmos, is between demonstration and dialectic or experimental reasoning. T

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VIII.

VIII.

We have now concluded our survey of the first great mental antithesis, that between reason on the one hand, and sense and opinion on the other. The next antithesis, that between reason and passion, will occupy us a much shorter time. With it we pass from theory to practice, from metaphysics and logic to moral philosophy. But, as we saw in the preceding chapter, Aristotle is not a practical genius; for him the supreme interest of life is still the acquisition of knowledge. Theorising activity cor

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IX.

IX.

Notwithstanding the radical error of Aristotle’s philosophy—the false abstraction and isolation of the intellectual from the material sphere in Nature and in human life—it may furnish a useful corrective to the much falser philosophy insinuated, if not inculcated, by some moralists of our own age and country. Taken altogether, the teaching of these writers seems to be that the industry which addresses itself to the satisfaction of our material wants is much more meritorious than the artistic wor

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THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

BY ALFRED WILLIAM BENN Εὑρηκέναι μὲν οὖν τινὰς τῶν ἀρχαίων καὶ μακαρίων φιλοσόφων τὸ ἀληθὲς δεῖ νομίζειν· τίνες δὲ οἱ τυχόντες μάλιστα καὶ πῶς ἂν καὶ ἡμῖν σύνεσις περὶ τούτων γένοιτο ἐπισκέψασθαι προσήκει Plotinus Quamquam ab his philosophiam et omnes ingenuas disciplinas habemus: sed tamen est aliquid quod nobis non liceat, liceat illis Cicero IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, &amp; CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1882 ( The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved

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I.

I.

The systems of Plato and Aristotle were splendid digressions from the main line of ancient speculation rather than stages in its regular development. The philosophers who came after them went back to an earlier tradition, and the influence of the two greatest Hellenic masters, when it was felt at all, was felt almost entirely as a disturbing or deflecting force. The extraordinary reach of their principles could not, in truth, be appreciated until the organised experience of mankind had accumulat

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II.

II.

One day, some few years after the death of Aristotle, a short, lean, swarthy young man, of weak build, with clumsily shaped limbs, and head inclined to one side, was standing in an Athenian bookshop, intently studying a roll of manuscript. His name was Zeno, and he was a native of Citium, a Greek colony in Cyprus, where the Hellenic element had become adulterated with a considerable Phoenician infusion. According to some accounts, Zeno had come to the great centre of intellectual activity to stu

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III.

III.

In their theory of cognition the Stoics chiefly followed Aristotle; only with them the doctrine of empiricism is enunciated so distinctly as to be placed beyond the reach of misinterpretation. The mind is at first a tabula rasa , and all our ideas are derived exclusively from the senses. 37 But while knowledge as a whole rests on sense, the validity of each particular sense-perception must be determined by an appeal to reason, in other words, to the totality of our acquired experience. 38 So als

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IV.

IV.

The inconsistencies of a great philosophical system are best explained by examining its historical antecedents. We have already attempted to disentangle the roots from which Stoicism was nourished, but one of the most important has not yet been taken into account. This was the still continued influence of Parmenides, derived, if not from his original teaching, then from some one or more of the altered shapes through which it had passed. It has been shown how Zeno used the Heracleitean method to

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V.

V.

If now, abandoning all technicalities, we endeavour to estimate the significance and value of the most general ideas contributed by Stoicism to ethical speculation, we shall find that they may be most conveniently considered under the following heads. First of all, the Stoics made morality completely inward. They declared that the intention was equivalent to the deed, and that the wish was equivalent to the intention—a view which has been made familiar to all by the teaching of the Gospel, but t

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VI.

VI.

It is probable that the philanthropic tendencies of the Stoics were, to a great extent, neutralised by the extreme individualism which formed the reverse side of their philosophical character; and also by what may be called the subjective idealism of their ethics. According to their principles, no one can really do good to any one else, since what does not depend on my will is not a good to me. The altruistic virtues are valuable, not as sources of beneficent action, but as manifestations of ben

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VII.

VII.

Before parting with Stoicism we have to say a few words on the metaphysical foundation of the whole system—the theory of Nature considered as a moral guide and support. It has been shown that the ultimate object of this, as of many other ethical theories, both ancient and modern, was to reconcile the instincts of individual self-preservation with virtue, which is the instinct of self-preservation in an entire community. The Stoics identified both impulses by declaring that virtue is the sole goo

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I.

I.

Among the systems of ancient philosophy, Epicureanism is remarkable for the completeness with which its doctrines were worked out by their first author, and for the fidelity with which they were handed down to the latest generation of his disciples. For a period of more than five hundred years, nothing was added to, and nothing was taken away from, the original teaching of Epicurus. In this, as in other respects, it offers a striking contrast to the system which we last reviewed. In our sketch o

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II.

II.

Epicurus was born 341 B.C. , about the same time as Zeno the Stoic. Unlike all the other philosophers of his age, he was of Athenian parentage; that is to say, he belonged to a race of exclusively practical tendencies, and marked by a singular inaptitude or distaste for physical enquiries. His father, a poor colonist in Samos, was, apparently, not able to give him a very regular education. At eighteen he was sent to Athens, but was shortly afterwards obliged to rejoin his family, who were driven

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III.

III.

We have now to see how, granting Epicurus his conception of painlessness as the supreme good, he proceeds to evolve from it a whole ethical, theological, and physical system. For reasons already mentioned, the ethical development must be studied first. We shall therefore begin with an analysis of the particular virtues. Temperance, as the great self-regarding duty, obviously takes precedence of the others. In dealing with this branch of his subject, there was nothing to prevent Epicurus from pro

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IV.

IV.

After eliminating all the sources of misery due to folly and vice, Epicurus had still to deal with what, in his opinion, were the most formidable obstacles to human happiness, dread of the divine anger and dread of death, either in itself, or as the entrance on another life. To meet these, he compiled, for we can hardly say constructed, an elaborate system of physical philosophy, having for its object to show that Nature is entirely governed by mechanical causes, and that the soul perishes with

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V.

V.

It is generally assumed by the German critics that the atomic theory was peculiarly fitted to serve as a basis for the individualistic ethics of Epicureanism. To this we can hardly agree. The insignificance and powerlessness of the atoms, except when aggregated together in enormous numbers, would seem to be naturally more favourable to a system where the community went for everything and the individual for nothing; nor does the general acceptance of atomism by modern science seem to be accompani

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VI.

VI.

The Epicurean philosophy of external Nature was used as an instrument for destroying the uncomfortable belief in Divine Providence. The Epicurean philosophy of mind was used to destroy the still more uncomfortable belief in man’s immortality. As opinions then stood, the task was a comparatively easy one. In our discussion of Stoicism, we observed that the spiritualism of Plato and Aristotle was far before their age, and was not accepted or even understood by their countrymen for a long time to c

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VII.

VII.

Next to its bearing on the question of immortality, the Epicurean psychology is most interesting as a contribution to the theory of cognition. Epicurus holds that all our knowledge is derived from experience, and all our experience, directly or indirectly, from the presentations of sense. So far he says no more than would be admitted by the Stoics, by Aristotle, and indeed by every Greek philosopher except Plato. There is, therefore, no necessary connexion between his views in this respect and h

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VIII.

VIII.

We have already repeatedly alluded to the only man of genius whom Epicureanism ever counted among its disciples. It is time that we should determine with more precision the actual relation in which he stood to the master whom, with a touching survival of religious sentiment, he revered as a saviour and a god. Lucretius has been called Rome’s only great speculative genius. This is, of course, absurd. A talent for lucid ex position does not constitute speculative genius, especially when it is unac

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IX.

IX.

Returning once more to Epicurus, we have now to sum up the characteristic excellences and defects of his philosophy. The revival of the atomic theory showed unquestionable courage and insight. Outside the school of Democritus, it was, so far as we know, accepted by no other thinker. Plato never mentions it. Aristotle examined and rejected it. The opponents of Epicurus himself treated it as a self-evident absurdity. 208 Only Marcus Aurelius seems to have contemplated the possibility of its truth.

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I.

I.

The year 155 B.C. was signalised by an important event, if not in the history of ideas, at least in the history of their diffusion. This was the despatch of an embassy from the Athenian people to the Roman Senate, consisting of three philosophers, the heads of their respective schools—Carneades the Academician, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Diogenes the Stoic. Philosophic teaching, once proscribed at Athens, had, at the time of which we are speaking, become her chief distinction, and the most h

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II.

II.

In modern parlance, the word scepticism is often used to denote absolute unbelief. This, however, is a misapplication; and, properly speaking, it should be reserved, as it was by the Greeks, for those cases in which belief is simply withheld, or in which, as its etymology implies, the mental state connoted is a desire to consider of the matter before coming to a decision. But, of course, there are occasions when, either from prudence or politeness, absolute rejection of a proposition is veiled u

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III.

III.

A new period begins with the Greek Humanists. We use this term in preference to that of Sophists, because, as has been shown, in specially dealing with the subject, half the teachers known under the latter denomination made it their business to popularise physical science and to apply it to morality, while the other half struck out an entirely different line, and founded their educational system on the express rejection of such investigations; their method being, in this respect, foreshadowed by

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IV.

IV.

So far, the sceptical theory had been put forward after a somewhat fragmentary fashion, and in strict dependence on the previous development of dogmatic philosophy. With the Humanists it had taken the form of an attack on physical science; with the Megarians, of a criticism on the Socratic dialectic; with both, it had been pushed to the length of an absolute negation, logically not more defensible than the affirmations to which it was opposed. What remained was that, after being consistently for

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V.

V.

When we last had occasion to speak of the Platonic school, it was represented by Polemo, one of the teachers from whose lessons Zeno the Stoic seems to have compiled his system. Under his superintendence, Platonism had completely abandoned the metaphysical traditions of its founder. Physics and dialectics had already been absorbed by Aristotelianism. Mathematics had passed into the hands of experts. Nothing remained but the theory of ethics; and, as an ethical teacher, Polemo was only distinguis

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VI.

VI.

We have now reached a point where Greek philosophy seems to have swung back into the position which it occupied three hundred years before, towards the close of the Peloponnesian War. The ground is again divided between naturalists and humanists, the one school offering an encyclopaedic training in physical science and exact philology, the other literary, sceptical, and limiting its attention to the more immediate interests of life; but both agreeing in the supreme importance of conduct, and dif

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VII.

VII.

We have now reached a point in history where the Greek intellect seems to be struck with a partial paralysis, continuing for a century and a half. During that period, its activity—what there is of it—is shown only in criticism and erudition. There is learning, there is research, there is acuteness, there is even good taste, but originality and eloquence are extinct. Is it a coincidence, or is it something more, that this interval of sterility should occur simultaneously with the most splendid pe

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VIII.

VIII.

The greatest of Roman orators and writers was also the first Roman that held opinions of his own in philosophy. How much original thought occurs in his voluminous contributions to the literature of the subject is more than we can determine, the Greek authorities on which he drew being known almost exclusively through the references to them contained in his disquisitions. But, judging from the evidence before us, carefully sifted as it has been by German scholars, we should feel disposed to assig

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IX.

IX.

We have seen what was the guiding principle of Cicero’s philosophical method. By interrogating all the systems of his time, he hoped to elicit their points of agreement, and to utilise the result for the practical purposes of life. As actually applied, the effect of this method was not to reconcile the current theories with one another, nor yet to lay the foundation of a more comprehensive philosophy, but to throw back thought on an order of ideas which, from their great popularity, had been inc

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X.

X.

Thus the final effect of its communion with the Roman mind was not so much to develope Greek philosophy any further, or to reconcile its warring sects with one another, as to aid in their decomposition by throwing them back on the earlier forms whence they had sprung. Accordingly we find that the philosophic activity of Hellas immediately before and after the Christian era—so far as there was any at all—consisted in a revival of the Pythagorean and Cynic schools, accompanied by a corresponding r

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XI.

XI.

The effect aimed at by ancient Scepticism under its last form was to throw back reflection on its original starting-point. Life was once more handed over to the guidance of sense, appetite, custom, and art. 303 We may call this residuum the philosophy of the dinner-bell. That institution implies the feeling of hunger, the directing sensation of sound, the habit of eating together at a fixed time, and the art of determining time by observing the celestial revolutions. Even so limited a view conta

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I.

I.

The result of recent enquiries into the state of civilisation under the Roman Empire during the first two centuries of its existence, has been to suggest conclusions in many respects at variance with those formerly entertained. Instead of the intellectual stagnation, the moral turpitude, and the religious indifference which were once supposed to have been the most marked characteristics of that period, modern scholars discern symptoms of active and fruitful thought, of purity and disinterestedne

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II.

II.

In the world of thought no less than in the world of action, the boundless license which characterised the last days of Roman republicanism was followed by a period of tranquillity and restraint. Augustus endeavoured to associate his system of imperialism with a revival of religious authority. By his orders a great number of ruinous temples were restored, and the old ceremonies were celebrated once more with all their former pomp. His efforts in this direction were ably seconded by the greatest

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III.

III.

After the revolution which destroyed the political power of the old aristocracy, there came a further revolution the effect of which was to diminish largely its social predominance. We learn from the bitter sarcasms of Horace and Juvenal that under the empire wealth took the place of birth, if not, as those satirists pretend, of merit, as a passport to distinction and respect. Merely to possess a certain amount of money procured admission to the equestrian and senatorial orders; while a smaller

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IV.

IV.

We have now to show what new beliefs gained most ground, and what old beliefs were most successfully revived, through the combination of favourable conditions, an analysis of which has been attempted in the preceding pages. Among the host of creeds which at this period competed with one another for the favour of the rich or for the suffrages of the poor, there were some that possessed a marked advantage over their rivals in the struggle for existence. The worship of Nature considered as imaging

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V.

V.

The old religions of Greece and Italy were essentially oracular. While inculcating the existence of supernatural beings, and prescribing the modes according to which such beings were to be worshipped, they paid most attention to the interpretation of the signs by which either future events in general, or the consequences of particular actions, were supposed to be divinely revealed. Of these intimations, some were given to the whole world, so that he who ran might read, others were reserved for c

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VI.

VI.

Another wide-spread superstition was the belief in prophetic or premonitory dreams. This was shared by some even among those who rejected supernatural religion,—a phenomenon not unparalleled at the present day. Thus the elder Pliny tells us how a soldier of the Praetorian Guard in Rome was cured of hydrophobia by a remedy revealed in a dream to his mother in Spain, and communicated by her to him. The letter describing it was written without any knowledge of his mishap, and arrived just in time t

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VII.

VII.

We now pass to a form of supernaturalism more characteristic than any other of the direction which men’s thoughts were taking under the Roman empire, and more or less profoundly connected with all the other religious manifestations which have hitherto engaged our attention. This is the doctrine of immortality, a doctrine far more generally accepted in the first centuries of the Christian era, but quite apart from Christian influence, than is supposed by most persons. Here our most trustworthy in

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VIII.

VIII.

We have now to consider how the philosophy of the empire was affected by the atmosphere of supernaturalism which surrounded it on every side. Of the Epicureans it need only be said that they were true to their trust, and upheld the principles of their founder so long as the sect itself continued to exist. But we may reckon it as a first consequence of the religious reaction, that, after Lucretius, Epicureanism failed to secure the adhesion of a single eminent man, and that, even as a popular phi

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IX.

IX.

The most important result of the old Pythagorean teaching was, that it contributed a large element—somewhat too large, indeed,—to Plato’s philosophy. Neo-Pythagoreanism bears precisely the same relation to that revived Platonism which was the last outcome of ancient thought. It will be remembered that the great controversy between Stoicism and Scepticism, which for centuries divided the schools of Athens, and was passed on by them to Cicero and his contemporaries, seemed tending towards a reconc

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X.

X.

In conclusion, a few words may profitably be devoted to the question whether the rationalistic movement of our own age is likely to be followed by such another supernaturalist reaction as that which made itself so powerfully felt during the first centuries of Roman imperialism. There is, no doubt, a certain superficial resemblance between the world of the Caesars and the world in which we live. Everywhere we see aristocracies giving way to more centralised and equitable forms of government, the

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I.

I.

Among the most interesting of Plutarch’s religious writings is one entitled On the Delays in the Divine Vengeance . As might be expected from the name, it deals with a problem closely akin to that which ages before had been made the subject of such sublime imagery and such inconclusive reasoning by the author of the Book of Job. What troubled the Hebrew poet was the apparently undeserved suffering of the just. What the Greek moralist feels himself called on to explain is the apparent prosperity

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II.

II.

Plotinus is not only the greatest and most celebrated of the Neo-Platonists, he is also the first respecting whose opinions we have any authentic information, and therefore the one who for all practical purposes must be regarded as the founder of the school. What we know about his life is derived from a biography written by his disciple Porphyry. This is a rather foolish performance; but it possesses considerable interest, both on account of the information which it was intended to supply, and a

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III.

III.

In point of style, Plotinus is much the most difficult of the ancient philosophers, and, in this respect, is only surpassed by a very few of the moderns. Even Longinus, who was one of the most intelligent critics then living, and who, besides, had been educated in the same school with our philosopher, could not make head or tail of his books when copies of them were sent to him by Porphyry, and supposed, after the manner of philologists, that the text must be corrupt, much to the disgust of Porp

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IV.

IV.

It has been already mentioned how large a place was given to erotic questions by the literary Platonists of the second century. Even in the school of Plotinus, Platonic love continued to be discussed, sometimes with a freedom which pained and disgusted the master beyond measure. 431 His first essay was apparently suggested by a question put to him in the course of some such debate. 432 The subject is beauty. In his treatment of it, we find our philosopher at once rising superior to the indecorou

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V.

V.

Our personality, says the Alexandrian philosopher, cannot be a property of the body, for this is composed of parts, and is in a state of perpetual flux. A man’s self, then, is his soul; and the soul cannot be material, for the ultimate elements of matter are inanimate, and it is inconceivable that animation and reason should result from the aggregation of particles which, taken singly, are destitute of both; while, even were it possible, their disposition in a certain order would argue the prese

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VI.

VI.

We have seen how Plotinus establishes the spiritualistic basis of his philosophy. We have now to see how he works out from it in all directions, developing the results of his previous enquiries into a complete metaphysical system. It will have been observed that the whole method of reasoning by which materialism was overthrown, rested on the antithesis between the unity of consciousness and the divisibility of corporeal substance. Very much the same method was afterwards employed by Cartesianism

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VII.

VII.

So far our investigation has been analytical. We have seen Plotinus acquire, one after another, the elements out of which his system has still to be constructed. The first step was to separate spirit from matter. They are respectively distinguished as principles of union and of division. The bodies given to us in experience are a combination of the two, a dispersion of form over an infinitely extended, infinitely divisible, infinitely changeful substratum. Our own souls, which at first seemed so

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VIII.

VIII.

All virtue, with Plotinus, rests on the superiority of the soul to the body. So far, he follows the common doctrine of Plato and Aristotle. But in working out the distinction, he is influenced by the individualising and theoretic philosophy of the latter rather than by the social and practical philosophy of the former. Or, again, we may say that with him the intellectualism of Aristotle is heightened and warmed by the religious aspirations of Plato, strengthened and purified by the Stoic passion

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IX.

IX.

Every great system of philosophy may be considered from four distinct points of view. We may ask what is its value as a theory of the world and of human life, measured either by the number of new truths which it contains, or by the stimulus to new thought which it affords. Or we may consider it from the aesthetic side, as a monumental structure interesting us not by its utility, but by its beauty and grandeur. Under this aspect, a system may be admirable for its completeness, coherence, and symm

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X.

X.

In the foregoing remarks we have already passed from the purely aesthetic to the historical or psychological view of Neo-Platonism—that is, the view which considers a philosophy in reference to the circumstances of its origin. Every speculative system reflects, more or less fully, the spirit of the age in which it was born; and the absence of all allusion to contemporary events does not prove that the system of Plotinus was an exception to this rule. It only proves that the tendency of the age w

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XI.

XI.

In fixing the relation of Plotinus to his own age, we have gone far towards fixing his relation to all ages, the place which he occupies in the development of philosophy as a connected whole. We have seen that as an attempt to discover the truth of things, his speculations are worthless and worse than worthless, since their method no less than their teaching is false. Nevertheless, Wisdom is justified of all her children. Without adding anything to the sum of positive knowledge, Plotinus produce

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XII.527

XII.527

The history of Neo-Platonism, subsequently to the death of Plotinus, decomposes itself into several distinct tendencies, pursuing more or less divergent lines of direction. First of all, it was drawn into the supernaturalist movement against which it had originally been, in part at least, a reaction and a protest. One sees from the life of its founder how far his two favourite disciples, Amelius and Porphyry, were from sharing his superiority to the superstitions of the age. Both had been educat

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I.

I.

Adequately to exhibit the relation of Greek philosophy to modern thought would require a volume. The object of the present discussion is merely to show in what ways that relation has been most clearly manifested, and what assistance it may afford us in solving some important problems connected with the development of metaphysical and moral speculation. Historians often speak as if philosophy took an entirely fresh start at different epochs of its existence. One such break is variously associated

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II.

II.

Of all testimonies to the restored supremacy of Aristotelianism, there is none so remarkable as that afforded by the thinker who, more than any other, has enjoyed the credit of its overthrow. To call Francis Bacon an Aristotelian will seem to most readers a paradox. Such an appellation would, however, be much nearer the truth than were the titles formerly bestowed on the author of the Novum Organum . The notion, indeed, that he was in any sense the father of modern science is rapidly disappearin

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III.

III.

We may consider it a fortunate circumstance that the philosophy of Form,—that is to say, of description, definition, classification, and sensuous perception, as distinguished from mathematical analysis and deductive reasoning,—was associated with a demonstrably false cosmology, as it thus became much more thoroughly discredited than would otherwise have been possible. At this juncture, the first to perceive and point out how profoundly an acceptance of the Copernican theory must affect men’s bel

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IV.

IV.

To understand Descartes aright, we must provisionally disregard the account given in his work on Method of the process by which he arrived at a new theory of the world; for, in truth, there was nothing new about it except the pro portion in which fragments taken from older systems were selected and recombined. As we have already noticed, there is no such thing as spinning philosophies out of one’s own head; and, in the case of Descartes, even the belief that he was so doing came to him from Plat

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V.

V.

The author of the Leviathan has sometimes been represented as one who carried the Baconian method into politics, and prepared the way for its more thorough application to psychology by Locke. But this view, which regards the three great leaders of English philosophy in the seventeenth century as successive links in a connected series, is a misapprehension of history, which could only have arisen through leaving out of account the contemporary development of Continental speculation, and through t

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VI.

VI.

Whether Spinoza ever read Plato is doubtful. One hardly sees why he should have neglected a writer whose works were easily accessible, and at that time very popular with thinking minds. But whether he was acquainted with the Dialogues at first hand or not, Plato will help us to understand Spinoza, for it was through the door of geometry that he entered philosophy, and under the guidance of one who was saturated with the Platonic spirit; so far as Christianity influenced him, it was through eleme

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VII.

VII.

It has been already shown how Extension, having become identified with matter, took on its mechanical qualities, and was conceived as a connected series of causes or modes of motion. The parallel found by Spinoza for this series in Thought is the chain of reasons and consequents forming a demonstrative argument; and here he is obviously following Aristotle, who although ostensibly distinguishing between formal and efficient causes, hopelessly confounds them in the second book of his Posterior An

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VIII.

VIII.

From this grand synthesis, however, a single element was omitted; and, like the uninvited guest of fairy tradition, it proved strong enough singly to destroy what had been constructed by the united efforts of all the rest. This was the sceptical principle, the critical analysis of ideas, first exercised by Protagoras, made a new starting-point by Socrates, carried to perfection by Plato, supplementing experience with Aristotle, and finally proclaimed in its purity as the sole function of philoso

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IX.

IX.

The naturalism and utilitarianism of the eighteenth century are the last conceptions directly inherited from ancient philosophy by modern thought. Henceforward, whatever light the study of the former can throw on the vicissitudes of the latter is due either to their partial parallelism, or to an influence becoming every day fainter and more difficult to trace amid the multitude of factors involved. The progress of analytical criticism was continually deflected or arrested by the still powerful r

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