A STUDENT’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 1 HE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . CHirAOO DALLAS • ATLANTA • gAN FRANCIBOD LONDON • MANILA BRETT-MACMILLAN LTD. TORONTO A STUDENTS HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY SCI.. KOLKA1 liiiiiiiiiiiiHi 3936 BY ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS, Ph.D. PORMEKLV PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN VALE UNIVERSITY THIRD EDITION NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Copyright, iqoi, 1907, 1932, Sy the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Copyright, 1929 and i935» By ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS. All rights reserved — no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to (juote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. Twenty-Sixth Printing, 1968 U 3 ^ E CEN: • v/h-. . c. . bo. Printed in the United States of America PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION I have tried in the present volume to give an account of philo- sophical development which shall contain the most of what a stu- dent can fairly be expected to get from a college course, and which shall be adapted to class-room work. What I have attempted to accomplish will be sufficiently covered in the following state- ments : — I. The chief aim has been simplicity, in so far as this is possible without losing sight of the real meaning of philosophical problems. In summing up the thought of any single man, I have left out ref- erence to the minor points of his teaching, and have endeavored to emphasize the spirit in which he philosophized, and the main problems in connection with which he has made an impression. Similarly, I have passed over many minor names without mention, unless some literary or historical interest creates the presumption that the student is already acquainted with them in a general way. Of course, the relative space that can most profitably be given to different topics is a matter of judgment, and I cannot hope that my choice will always be approved. But it is clear, I think, that the same principle can hardly be used in an introductory work that would suit more advanced students. I have tried continually to keep in mind the results that can reasonably be hoped for from a college class. So, for example, the medieval period is intrinsb cally of great importance. But, from the standpoint of an intro^ ductory course, it has also marked disadvantages, and I have, accordingly, only given it a brief space. Similarly, I have not attempted to trace the more technical lines of influence from one philosopher to another, as they are almost impossible for the student to grasp. Whatever the success of the present attempt, I think there is a place for a book with this selective purpose alongside such a volume VI Preface to the First Edition as, e.g., Weber’s. The attempt to give a summary of all the im- portant facts which a student with a more technical interest in philosophy would find useful, serves a valuable end, and an end with which the present volume does not pretend to compete ; but it seems to me that the two aims are not altogether compatible in the same book. The wealth of material is bound to confuse the beginner, no matter how clearly it is put. I have attempted rather to create certain broad, general impressions, leaving further details to come from other sources. 2. Whenever I could, I have given the thought of the writers in their own words, particularly where the literary interest can be made to supplement the philosophical. In this way it is possible to give the exposition an attractiveness which no mere summing up could have, and it will often supply, I think, by its suggestion of the personality back of the thought, a needed clew for the under- standing of the thought itself. I hope also it may be the means of arousing an interest in the masterpieces of philosophy at first hand, and may suggest that they have a really human and vital side. The desirability of a considerable amount of such reading at first hand it is hardly necessary to insist upon. The literary interest .s also responsible for my giving one or two things an amount of space which is perhaps not entirely proportionate to their philosophical importance. 3. I have assumed that the study of the history of philosophy wiU centre about the systems of individual men ; but I have tried also to bear in mind the need of relating these to the more general history of civilization. This I have attempted through the medium ot a somewhat mild reproduction of the Hegelian philosophy of history. Doubtless this might have been made much more attrac- tive and illuminating ; but I do not think that, given the concrete knowledge that can be presupposed in the average student, it would be wise to attempt to make this aspect of the study otherwise than subordinate in a textbook. In the lists of references which are added to nearly every section, the aim has been to give such as the student is likely to find helpful. The list might have been enlarged indefinitely, especially by the Preface to the First Edition addition of French and German books ; but these can so seldom ht made use of by the college student to advantage that a reference to them did not seem necessary. I have to acknowledge my own obli- gation to very many of these volumes, perhaps to Windelband most of all. Acknowledgments are due to the following publishers for their permission to utilize various translations of philosophical works: Macmillan & Co. ; Geo. Bell & Sons ; A. & C. Black ; Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co. ; Cambridge University Press ; Henry Holt & Co, ; Chas. Scribner’s Sons ; G. P. Putnam’s Sons ; Hough- ton, Mifflin & Co. In several cases acknowledgments are due also to the authors for a personal permission. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION At the request of the publishers I have undertaken — a task I should never have chosen for myself — the revision of an early phil- osophical venture which first appeared over thirty years ago. I had strong misgivings in returning to a book into which I had not looked for many years, and which represented no extreme amount of labor in the first place. The misgivings were justified, though perhaps not quite to the extent that I had feared. I have made numerous minor changes on almost every page, and some consider- able portions called urgently for a complete rewriting; but apart from dropping out most of the Hegelian padding, the general plan has been left pretty much as it was. More drastic alterations would doubtless have produced a better book, but for this I had no inclination ; and I am not sure it would have been better for its purpose. The only merit I have ever been disposed to claim is a relative simplicity of treatment, which under American college conditions still seems to me to be desirable ; and further changer might very well have detracted from this merit, such as it is. I may add that the revision no more than the earlier edition pretends to originality, or to much independent scholarship even. I have had some trouble in deciding how far to go in bringing the story of philosophy up to date. My own judgment would have been to break off the narrrative a number of decades back ; a course in the history of philosophy seldom, I imagine, has much time to spare for contemporary thought, and a cursory survey of all deserving thinkers of the past and present generation would be of doubtful educational value. However something seems to be de- manded here ; and I have compromised by picking out a few out- standing tendencies, for the most part such as have made some popular appeal, and of which the average educated person therefore already may be supposed to be aware. I have not even adhered ix X Preface to the Third Edition to this principle quite consistently ; certain contemporary move- ments which might have qualified I have left out because I felt myself unable within a reasonable amount of space to give an ac- count which appeared to me to possess the elements of intelligi- bility. A. K. R. Rockport, Mass. January, 1932. CONTENTS Introduction § I. Science and Philosophy I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Scientific Period § 2. The Milesian School, Thales j Anaximander ^ Anaximenes , . g § 3. The Pythagoreans § 4. Heracleitus . 22 § 5. The Eleatic School, Xenophanes y Parmenides y Zeno, Melissus . 27 §6. The Pluralists. Empedocles y Anaxagoras y Leucippus and Democritus 32 The Early Moralists § 7. The Sophists § 8. Socrates § 9. The School of Megara. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, Antisthenes and the Cynics .......... 68 Plato and Aristotle § 10. Plato 75 1. Ethical and Social Philosophy. The Republic ... 78 2. The Theory of Ideas” 87 3. The Later Dialogues g6 i II. Aristotle 1. Metaphysics, Logic, Physics, Biology, Psychology . . 105 2. Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics 113 The Later Ethical Period §12. Introduction 126 § 13. Epicurus and Epicureanism 129 § 14. Zeno. The Stoics 137 §15. The Sceptics 155 § 16. The Scientific Movemcfit. Eclecticism. Philo , . • . 160 xi XU Contents The Religious Period PAGE § 17. Introduction 1O4 § 18. Plotinus and Neo-Platonism 167 § 19. Christianity, The Church Fathers. Augustine . , . -175 n. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY The Middle Ages I 20. Introduction 187 § 21. The First Period. Scotus ErigenOy AnsehUy Abelard . .100 § 22. The Second Period. The Revival of Aristotle y Thomas Aquinas y Duns Scotus y William of Occam 199 Transition to Modern Philosophy § 23. The Renaissance. Bruno 208 § 24. Bacon 214 $ 25. Hobbes 223 III. MODERN PHILOSOPHY § 26. Introduction 231 Systems of Rationalism § 27. Descartes. The Cartesian School 236 § 28. Spinoza 254 1. Spinoza’s Metaphysics 258 2. The Doctrine of Salvation 266 § 29. Leibniz 278 The Growth of Empiricism and the Enlightenment i 30. Locke 1. The Source of Knowledge 295 2. Nature and Extent of Knowledge 306 § 31. Berkeley 213 § 32. Hume §33. The Enlightenment. Deism. The Ethical Development . . .350 § 34. The French Enlightenment. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. The Materialists. Rousseau. Lessing and Herder .... 362 Contents xiii German Idealism I’AGE § 35. Katji 370 § 36. Fichte and Schelling 400 § 37. Ilcgd 406 1. The General Nature of Hegel’s Philosophy .... 406 2. The Stages in the Development of Spirit . . , .411 More Recent Tendencies in Philosopuy § 38. Schopenhauer 425 § 39. Comte and Positivism . . . . . . . . -435 § 40. U tilitarianism. Bcntham^ the Mills ...... 443 § 41. Evolution. Darwin ^ Spencer ........ 449 § 42. Idealism ........... 459 § 43. Nietzsche. Bergson. Pragmatism 4O7 § 44. Conclusion 481 Index c c . , 485 A STUDENT’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION § 1. Science and Philosophy Philosophy is one of those ambiguous terms which there is no great profit in trying to compress within the limits of a formal definition. The only way to arrive at any real sense of the meaning of philosophy is by philosophizing ; and since this is something to which men are inclined in very different degrees, it is no wonder they should have held a variety of opinions about its nature and have disagreed about its human value. For the most part there- fore it may be just as well to leave its actual meaning to take on shape as we proceed. Nevertheless there are a few general remarks which it will be desirable to make by way of preparation, par- ticularly as they bear on one large distinction that will confront us at the start. This is the distinction we are called upon to draw between philosophy and another great product of the human intellect — science. It is not always that the two have been on very friendly terms. The scientist more especially has shown a frequent dis- position to look with disfavor on philosophy, and to contrast it as mere speculative guesswork with his own realistic methods and verifiable results ; probably such an attitude never has been more prevalent or had a more respectable backing than at the present day. This hardly does justice however to what historically has been the close connection between the scientific and the philosophic problem. In the beginning it is almost impossible indeed to dis- tinguish between the two with any great precision. Whether we £ A Student^ s history of Philosophy are to call Thales and his immediate successors scientists or philoso- phers is largely a matter of choice ; and from the age of Thales to the present time the developments of scientific and of philosophic thought have been so closely intertwined that neither can be really understood without the other. Nearly all the greater and more creative periods of philosophy have had their roots in new dis~ coveries about the nature of the world for which science primarily is responsible. It would be possible — there always have been men to take this view — to interpret this entirely to the advantage of science, and to urge that philosophy is a mere parasite which adopts scientific conclusions only to pervert them by unwarranted speculative fancies. But this leaves out of account important aspects of the actual situation. While a good deal of valuable scientific work is no doubt of a purely factual sort, and makes no attempt to go beyond the description of phenomena and the determi- nation of particular sequences, the greater scientists almost never stop with this. Like the philosopher, they wish in some fashion to interpret their results ; and to this end they not only enlist con- ceptual tools which have been given shape by the efforts of past philosophies, but frequently they go on to extend their con- clusions to the world at large in a way that is indistinguishable from the methods which in the philosopher are made an occasion of reproach. We may start with a characteristic which science and philosophy possess in common ; they are both inspired by a large infusion of disinterested intellectual curiosity, a desire to know for the sake of knowing without much regard to immediate practical consequences and rewards. It is the presence of this intangible spirit of dis- interestedness, of critical detachment, which explains and justifies the leading role it has been customary to assign to Greece in the development of human thought. There were elements of weak- ness in the Greek character which had unfortunate consequences later on as it came into contact with races of a tougher fiber. It is on the whole rather deficient in those qualities of religious serious- ness and of moral zeal which we find, for example, in the Hebrew. But the very absence of these qualities made it possible for the Introduction 3 Greek to undertake a task for which the Hebrew was unfitted. Religion and morality alike are naturally lacking in the power of self-criticism. They lay claim to an importance which makes it no easy matter to get outside them and view them in perspective; dogmatism and intolerance have been in consequence their usual fruit. A philosophy of religion and a philosophy of ethics pre- suppose on the other hand that we are freed to an extent from their immediate emotional compulsion and are trying impartially to appraise them ; and this is a feat which no one prior to the Greeks had been able to accomplish. Such a disinterested outlook is closely connected with another gift which the Greeks possessed in a preeminent degree — the gift of artistic expression. Art is indeed the outstanding example of the disinterested outlook. Beauty, as Kant has said, gives us pleasure in the mere contemplation of itself, apart from the vulgar thought of possession and use. And we find in consequence Greek philosophy in its highest expressions con- nected with art hardly less intimately than with science. In fact philosophy, and to a lesser extent even science itself, has never lost its dependence on aesthetics. A sense for the same qualities at which the artist aims — simplicity, proportion, harmony — has constantly served to guide the scientist as well; a ^‘beautifuT’ theory is a phrase that rises naturally to his lips. And all the major philosophies are in a real sense works of art, whose appeal lies often quite as much in the satisfaction with which the philosopher con- templates their intellectual neatness and logical precision as in their conformity with empirical fact. It is worth pausing for a moment to take notice of one conse- quence of this relative separation from immediate needs ; we ought not to expect either philosophy or science to show so intimate a connection with the economic sources of historical culture and development as that which we do undoubtedly discover in the case of religion or of morals. The popular vogue of a philosophy will no doubt be influenced by historical causes ; and the philosopher him- self cannot escape being moulded by his surroundings, and may have his mind turned in this or that direction by their dominant trend. But a major philosophy, at any rate, is far too individual a 4 A Students History of Philosophy matter, with its source in persisting human attributes and its out- come guided by an impersonal logic, to make it safe to carry too far an objectively historical interpretation. As a matter of fact nearly every type of philosophy since current has its representative in the comparatively brief stretch of history which marks the fertile oeriod of Greek thought ; and the responsibility for this rich output lies pretty clearly not so much in the political and economic changes in Greek life, though these often are enlightening, as in the more general fact that the human mind for the first time had been set free to indulge in a boundless curiosity about the world, and to follow out new ideas to their conclusions. Meanwhile it is not the similarity between science and philosophy, but their differences, that we set out to consider. And since all the fundamental motives that enter into what has commonly been termed philosophy are present in Greek thought, it will assist in what follows if we stop a moment to distinguish the most important. The first difference is a relative one, to which it is not easy to set hard and fast limitations ; roughly however we may say that a man is a scientist when he is trying to formulate the actual laws which explain the facts and sequences in the world, while he enters the field of philosophy as soon as he undertakes to lay down general propositions about the ultimate nature of the world, in essence and in the large. This last we may take to represent the fundamental problem of philosophy, and it was clearly formulated by the Greeks ; what in the last analysis is real ? what is the character of Being as such ? When one asks this question and attempts to answer it, he becomes by that fact a philosopher, even if his main work lies else- where. It is because the question forces itself so inevitably upon the mind of anyone who brings a disinterested curiosity to his con- templation of the world, that it is so difficult historically to separate science and philosophy ; nevertheless it is possible to draw a line here with approximate exactness. If for example one is interested in the precise relationships of space or number, he is a mathemati- cian or a scientist ; he becomes a philosopher when he raises the question, What is space ? Or again the scientist may for purposes of causal explanation assume the existence of atomic structures, and Introduction 5 use them to account in detail for the behavior of physical objects ; but if he asks himself whether atoms are ultimate constituents of reality, and if so in what relationship they stand to other apparent or possible realities — to meaning or purpose in the universe or to psychological feelings and sensations — he now is shifting to an- other problem and to other methods which men have agreed to call philosophical. Even the denial that anything at all exists deserving to be called real outside the facts and happenings which it is the business of science to explain is as such a philosophical rather than a scientific dogma. It is one thing to formulate the laws that phenomena reveal, and quite another to assert that beyond such empirical laws the human mind is incompetent to range; to say that only phenomena are real is to commit oneself to one theory of reality in particular, and so to pronounce on questions to which strictly scientific methods are unequal. And in raising the point of method we come across a second dis- tinction that can be drawn between philosophy and science. With- out entering into a discussion of what is in itself one of the problems of philosophy, there is a difference here that lies upon the surface. Scientific method is primarily experimental; it involves putting theory to the test in terms of specific empirical consequences. When we turn to philosophy, however, experiment usually is found to be impracticable in view of the very general and comprehensive problems that are raised. The philosopher deals for the most part with ideas rather than events. A major portion of his task, in other words, has to do with a logical analysis of his terms, in the effort to rid them of self-contradiction, and to render them con- sistent not only with the facts of experience, but with the other general terms that thought employs. This is not a full account of philosophic method, nor is it indeed peculiar to philosophy; but whenever we find men concerning themselves on a large scale with the logical analysis and criticism of ideas we are usually justified in speaking of them as philosophers. The third characteristic of the philosophic problem is a narrower and more specific one. The scientist, like the ordinary man, takes it for granted that we have a certain amount of valid knowledge ; 6 A Student's History of Pidlosophy and he sets about making this knowledge more exact and depend- able. But when the problem of philosophy is raised, it very soon is seen that this assumption might be called in question. The real no doubt is what it is. But before reality can be talked or reasoned about, it must first have filtered through our thinking processes ; and it becomes a distinct possibility therefore that this separation between knowledge and the thing it knows may affect our con- fidence in the results of knowing. It is even conceivable that we and our organs of appreciation may be so constituted as to make it impossible we should ever cross the gulf. For most purposes we do not need to entertain this possibility. But if we are to be thorough- going — and philosophy which fails to be thoroughgoing is hardly worth the effort — we are bound, before we commit ourselves finally to any judgments about the real, to examine the processes by which reality becomes known to us as human beings. The theory of knowledge therefore, or, as it technically is called, epistemology, has almost from the start been of very great significance for the philosopher’s problem; and when we find it engaging men’s at- tention we can be pretty sure that we are in the field of philosophy rather than of science. There is one final problem belonging to philosophy which in its way is the most important one of all ; at any rate it is here that the philosopher comes into closest contact with the needs and interests of men generally. Just as the work of the physical sciences may be supplemented by the more general and speculative effort to identify the ultimate nature of the realities with which physics deals, so the social and psychological interests of man may take on a more universal form comparable to the quest for reality in the outer world. Instead of asking about the nature of Being we may ask about the nature of the Good ; and the Good itself is, or very well may be, one form of the real. Philosophy here has turned into what we are accustomed to call a ‘^philosophy of life.” This means we once more are adopting the critical and intellectually dis- interested point of view ; instead of stopping with particular forms of human good in their popular acceptance, and enlisting these in the cause of getting practical results, we are setting out to ask what Introduction 7 goodness really is, and how it may throw light on the possibility of a genuinely unified and satisfactory plan of living. And now for such a question to be answered fully we might need to take one further step, by showing how the good as a goal for human life stands related to that larger reality which we call the world of nature. This is at any rate the ultimate quest on which most of the greater philosophies have embarked — a quest which, could it ever be successful, would give us a solution of the riddles which set philosophy on its way. GENERAL LITERATURE Whole Period: Lange, History of Materialism, 3 vols. Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy. Weber, History of Philosophy (revised edition). Windelband, History of Philosophy. Turner, History of Philosophy. Sidgwick, History of Ethics. Hunter, History of Philosophy. Cushman, Beginners^ History of Philosophy, 2 vols. Thilly, History of Philosophy. Alexander, A Short History of Philosophy, Webb, History of Philosophy. Durant, The Story of Philosophy. Marvin, History of European Philosophy. Articles in Encyclopedia Britannica and in Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Ancient PmLOSOPHY: Benn, The Greek Philosophers, 2 vols. Benn, The Philosophy of Greece considered in Relation to the Character and History of its People. Grote, History of Greece, Mayor, Sketch of Ancient Philosophy from Thales to Cicero, Windelband, History of Greek Philosophy. Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy. Marshall, Short History of Greek Philosophy. Gomperz, The Greek Thinkers, 4 vols. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers (Bohn’s Library), Bussell, The School of Plato. 8 A Student^s History of Philosophy Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, Hyde, Five Great Philosophies of Life. Adamson, Development of Greek Philosophy. Appleton, Elements of Greek Philosophy. Dickinson, The Greek View of Life. Bakewell, Source Book of Ancient Philosophy. Stace, Critical History of Greek Philosophy. Fuller, History of Greek Philosophy ^ 3 vols. Burnet, History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I. Taylor, Greek Philosophy. Translations in Loeb’s Classical Library and Bohn’s Library. Modern Philosophy: Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 2 vols. Hoffding, Modern Philosophers. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy. . Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols. Adamson, The Development of Modern Philosophy, 2 vols. Levy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France. Calkins, Persistent Problems of Philosophy. Merz, History of European Thought in the Nimteenth Century* Rogers, English and American Philosophy since 1800. Forsyth, English Philosophy. J. Seth, English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy. Gunn, Modern French Philosophy. Sorley, History of English Philosophy. Ruggiero, Modern Philosophy. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers. I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY THE SCIENTIFIC PERIOD § 2. The Milesian School. Thales y Anaximander y Anaximenes I. Thales. — Greek philosophy, in its distinctive sense, had its start at Miletus in the early part of the sixth century b.c. Miletus was the richest and most powerful of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. Situated on the great trade routes through which most of the commerce of the world then flowed, Asia Minor had reached a high degree of prosperity and cultivation ; Croesus, the Lydian monarch, still remains the popular synonym for enormous wealth. Along with this there had followed, it is true, the con- sequences that usually attend conspicuous material prosperity. The social sanctions which a more primitive culture had found in custom and religion were beginning to break down ; and no longer buttressed by these sanctions, the aristocracy of trade which had displaced the earlier Greek feudalism was in constant trouble with the populace and their demagogic leaders. The culture which grew up about the courts of powerful rulers shared in the defects of the society which fostered it ; it was artificial, somewhat sentimental, and inclined to sceptical disillusionment and pessimism. Its chief intellectual product took the form of lyric poetry, which occupied itself with the personal feelings of the poet especially in the field of love, and which had little to do with larger social interests except as these found expression in partisan animosities generated by the clash of patrician and plebeian. At the same time it was a genuine culture of its sort ; wealth had brought opportunity for leisure, and this leisure the active Greek mind had been quick to turn to account. It was in such an atmosphere that science and philosophy took '•.heir rise; and the credit for taking the first step is universally 9 lo A Students History of Philosophy ascribed to Thales. About Thales himself we have very little authentic information. Various anecdotes about him have come down to us which may or may not be true. One popular story is that he fell into a well while gazing at the stars ; but this has the appearance of being one of those favorite jests on the impracticality of the philosophic temper rather than a fact of history. At any rate we are told other things that hardly fit in with the character of a dreamer ; he is said for example to have shown his sagacity by foreseeing a bumper olive crop and cornering the market in oil. More historical perhaps is the statement that he predicted an eclipse of the sun that put an end to the fighting between Lydians and Medes. According to another account he attended Croesus on an expedition in the capacity of military engineer, and diverted for him the course of the river Halys; and he is credited with a realistic statesmanship in the attempt to induce the Ionian cities to unite in a confederacy to meet the threat against their liberties. Our knowledge of Thales^ philosophical opinions is practically limited to the statement that he found the cause of everything in water. This may seem a slight foundation for a philosophic reputation, and of course it does not go very far toward either a scientific or a philosophic explanation of the world. What gives it its importance is not its success as a theory, but the nature of the question which we have ground for thinking Thales was the first to ask. The thing at which he is aiming is a ‘‘cosmology^' — a com- prehensive attempt, in other words, to account for the universe in naturalistic terms; what is the elementary sort of reality, the primary substance, out of which things as we know them in experi- ence arise as a consequence of its fundamental nature ? We may contrast with such an attitude two products in particular of the intellectual past. Attempts on a grand scale to account for the universe existed long before Thales’ day, and with some of these he was perfectly familiar. Practically every race has its cosmogonies, so-called ; the one we are most familiar with is that which meets us in the book of Genesis. A cosmogony represents an effort by the primitive mind to make itself a little more at home in a mysterious and threatening world ; it is a confused mixture of various motives The Scientific Period II — religious, moral, fanciful — with roots stretching back so far into the dim past that we can only guess at what they originally may have meant. As a product of the imagination it may possess to a slight extent that quality of disinterestedness which belongs also to the scientific spirit. But cosmogonies, notwithstanding a dash of crude empirical observation that may enter into them, are negli- gible for the growth of human thought, because they are wholly lacking in the sort of method that alone can give reliability to knowledge. A scientific cosmology breaks completely with all such ungrounded fables ; it looks for the cause of things, not in mytho- logical fancies, but in actual physical agents which it sees at work, and which it can subject potentially to some sort of experimental testing. Along with religious cosmogonies there was another and much more useful intellectual product of the past to which Thales had access. There is a sense in which the beginnings of science may be traced back to earlier civilizations, more particularly those of Babylonia and Egypt. Asia Minor was in easy touch with both — one reason doubtless why the intellectual development of the Ionian colonies was ahead of that of Greece. Thales consequently was in a position to learn whatever there was to be learned from such sources, and we are told indeed that he was the first to introduce geometry into Greece and to write a history of mathe- matics. But this does not deduct substantially from his original- ity ; for the earlier sciences, if we may call them such, differ markedly from science as through the Greek influence we have come to think of it. At best they were purely observational in their nature. Thus the priests had for centuries been making laborious records of cyclical changes in the heavens, and these were of the greatest service to the later science of astronomy ; but their own final interest in these facts lay in the realm of astrology and divination rather than in that of scientific explanation, to which they seem not to have made the first advances. In a similar way arithmetic and geometry among the Egyptians represented a utilitarian rather than a scientific interest, and took the form of practical rules of thumb, capable only of approximate exactness, for 13 A Student^ s History of Philosophy ase in the market or for measuring fields and pyramids. It was the Greeks who first turned these into an abstract science of exact mathematical relationships, and so made possible the immense part which mathematics since has played in enlarging our understanding of the world. Why Thales picked out water as the ultimate substance is con- jectural, but it is not difficult to see plausible reasons for his choice. Water has the mobility that might seem to go along with the power of universal transformation. It does as a matter of fact appear to be intermediate between two other forms of matter; it solidifies into ice, and passes into steam or mist. It is essential to growth and generation everywhere. The process of transformation might appear to be taking place visibly in nature. The sun draws water, which then is given back in the form of rain ; and the rain in turn sinks into the ground where it is converted into the manifold products of the soil. It is worth stopping here a moment to observe that, as will soon appear, when Greek science talks about such things as water, air and fire it is not so much the actual objects of experience that it has in mind, as it is certain general qualities of matter in the form more especially of pairs of opposites — the cold and the hot, the moist and the dry, the hard and the soft, light and darkness. These still are thought of to be sure as things,’’ for the distinction between things and qualities had not yet been drawn; nevertheless it is what we nowadays should call the qualitative side of things that thought primarily is trying to explain and reduce to some kind of uliity. 2. Anaximander . — The second Milesian philosopher is Anaxi- mander. Anaximander would seem to have made explicit that contrast of physical opposites of which mention has just been made, and to have been led by this to abandon the search for a single determinate substance from which everything else can be derived. It is probable he felt that Thales, in making water ultimate, was giving an undue importance to the “wet,” whereas a true theory must take account of the principle of “justice” between opposites, and not exalt one at the expense of the other ; if the wet had a The Scientific Period 13 monopoly of reality, by this time it would be holding undisputed sway, and nature as we know it would have disappeared. Nor is it easy to see how any particular thing should be able to turn into something different ; the notion of a change of quality is to say the least obscure. For reasons of this sort Anaximander was led to give up the search for any single ultimate element, and to find the original source of things in a boundless something (to aireipov) out of which empirical differences arise. From this source the oppo- sites are separated out’^ ; they are not derived one from another. The processes of nature are due to the temporary encroachment of one opposite on the other — an encroachment which is then cor- rected by a movement in the contrary direction; thus winter encroaches on summer only in turn to be driven back as the ‘^hot’' gets the upper hand. Anaximander^s cosmology, growing out of this general con- ception, shows strikingly how far in a short time the Greek mind had been able to travel toward an essentially scientific way of look- ing at the world. Since the original mass is unlimited, ours is not the only world ; at any point in it a world process may be set up, due to a sort of vortex or whirling motion in the Boundless. Our world does not rest accordingly on anything, but swings free in space; it has the shape of a cylinder, and we live on the upper surface. The sun, moon and stars are rings of fire surrounding the earth ; since however they are obscured by air or mist we do not see them as rings, but only see the apertures through which the fire escapes “as through the nozzle of a pair of bellows.” Eclipses are due to the stoppage of these apertures. Living creatures arose' from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun ; man was like a fish in the beginning. Land animals are the result of adap- tation to a new environment. To show that man must have sprung from a lower species Anaximander uses a very modem-sounding argument. Other animals quickly find food for themselves, while man alone requires a lengthy period of suckling ; had he originally therefore had his present form he would never have survived. 3. Anaximenes. — Anaximenes, the last of the early Milesians, turns back from the Boundless to a renewed attempt to assign to 14 A Stiidenfs History of Philosophy the primary source a determinate character. This was made possible by his more precise account of that process of transition from one form to another which his predecessors had left undefined ; he identifies change, that is, with the empirically verifiable process of condensation and rarefaction. But instead of following Thales and finding the ultimate element in water, Anaximenes turned to air or vapor or light mist. This might not unnaturally be sug- gested by his account of change. Mist condenses into water ; when it is dilated and becomes rarer it passes into the shimmer of heat or fire. And this probably was reinforced by another motive, which is significant as an illustration of what was to be the growing tend- ency of philosophy to turn from meteorology to physiology as a source of scientific explanation — a natural tendency in view of the strides that were being made in the art of medicine. We still speak of the ^‘breath of life,’^ as if air were the vital principle that animates the human frame. And just as the soul, being air, holds the body together, so Anaximenes thinks of the world as itself a living organ- ism whose processes are maintained by inhaling the breath or air which encompasses it. § 3. The Pythagoreans I . The Milesian School came to an end with the fall of Miletus in 494 B.C., though its doctrines reappear and continue to influence the course of scientific thinking. Before, however, following the main trend of the cosmological development that had thus been started, something will need to be said about another and relatively inde- pendent strain which was also to have an important influence on the course of thought. It was to do this in particular by turning at- tention to one of the most essential conditions of scientific progress. Mathematics is a halfway house between science and philosophy. In so far as it deals directly with ideas rather than with things its affinity is with philosophy, and on its speculative side it often in fact has played a leading role in systems of metaphysics. On the other hand it is so bound up with natural processes, and is so essential alike to exact description and to prediction, that the sciences almost without exception would be lost without it. The Scientific Period IS As physical theory took its rise in Asia Minor, so the new develop- ment belongs also not to Greece proper, but to the Greek colonies in southern Italy. Pythagoras^ the founder of the movement, was an Ionian, a native of the island of Samos, and we are told that he had originally been a disciple of Anaximander; but sometime in the latter part of the sixth century he left his city, for political reasons it is likely, and settled at Croton. Here he established a commu- nity, or brotherhood, which was partly religious, partly scientific, and, in course of time at any rate, partly political. Its political activity was the source of constant trouble ; Pythagoras was himself compelled to leave the city, and after his death the brotherhood was driven out with much loss of life and property. Following this expulsion the survivors settled in other Greek cities, where they continued to exert a powerful intellectual influence. Pythagoras himself has come down to us as a semi-mythical figure, and about his real teachings there has been a wide difference of opinion. This comes in part from the difficulty in determining how much is due to Pythagoras and how much to the later Pythag- oreans ; and it is complicated by the fact that two distinct strains enter into Pythagoreanism whose connection is at first sight not too obvious. It was both a religious community, and a scientific and philosophical school. Later on the two motives were found incom- patible and tended to part company ; there seems no good ground for doubting however that originally they existed in conjunction, and that Pythagoras was responsible for both. Both at any rate were familiar to Socrates and Plato, and both contribute important elements to an understanding of subsequent Greek philosophy as it has come down to us through its historically most important representatives. 2. To appreciate the religious or mystical side of Pythagoras’ teaching it will be necessary to have a few words first to say about Greek religion m general. We are most familiar with this in its mythological form. It is questionable however whether the array of deities that constitute the Greek pantheon really entered vitally into the religious life of the Greek people. Even in Homer the gods are treated too cavalierly to make it easy to thmk of most of i6 A Students History of Philosophy them as the objects of any very sincere religious feeling or worship ; and with the increase of sophistication, in Ionia in particular, religious scepticism became pretty much the vogue. The scientist still continued to talk about the gods. But more and more these came to be identified with natural processes or with the natural universe as a whole, and religion, if it still can so be called, to pass into a pantheism which had little connection with its historic mean- ing ; we shall meet presently this tendency in full swing in con- nection with the name of Xenophanes. One difficulty in particular lay in the way of taking the traditional Greek mythology too seriously. The ribald stories told about the gods, their all-too- human failings, seemed to the cultivated Greek, no less than to us today, entirely incredible ; Plato for example takes much pains to show that such tales are inconsistent with anything like religious or moral reverence, and so will have to be rejected. As always is the case however, scepticism was confined to the educated classes, and did not spread far among the masses of the people. The average Greek, like the average man everywhere, stuck to the religion of his fathers, and took it seriously enough to resent, with violence at times, any meddling with it. Even culti- vated Athens has the invidious distinction of having banished one philosopher and put to death another on grounds nominally religious. It has however to be noticed here that popular Greek religion had little to do with theology, or with emotional fervor even. It was primarily a matter of ceremonial rites which safeguarded the routine of life and lent it dignity. The real objects of its worship were not the greater deities, but humbler and often local ones connected more directly with men^s everyday affairs. What accordingly the popu- lace resented was not the holding of heterodox beliefs, but the undermining of familiar habits. The Athenian democracy was suspicious with some reason of attacks on settled customs; and that the new opinions were chiefly current among their traditional aristocratic foes did not help to recommend them. Meanwhile there was another form that Greek religion took which is not identical either with a rationalistic pantheism or with the rites and observances which it was the business of the priests to The Scientific Period handle. Religion is more deepseated than theology, or than custom even. It appeals to the emotions also ; and in all ages there are people who demand this emotional satisfaction. The worship of Dionysus in particular had furnished an outlet for such emotional cravings through the instrumentality of orgiastic practices — frenzied dancing, intoxication, the induction of a state of trance that seemed to release the worshiper from his human limitations ; and these practices were safeguarded by esoteric rites which were called the mysteries, and which were jealously guarded against the curiosity of the uninitiated. This worship of Dionysus was given a more distinctively moral significance in the Orphic religion — so called because it connected itself with the mythical poet Orpheus — which had gained a wide following all over Greece. Orphicism found its adherents for the most part in the humbler classes of society ; it was looked down upon by most reputable people, and it had indeed features that offered an excuse for this disparagement. Nevertheless it was the expression of a real religious need, such as we may always expect will be in evidence when social life is undergoing profound disturb- ances and the old landmarks are threatened. The same conditions that among the cultivated classes in Ionia had given rise to a refined disillusionment with life, among the people resulted rather in a heightened sense of sin, the resort to ritualism and asceticism as a method of salvation, and the return to a religious fundamentalism represented by those obscure and superstitious roots of religion that go back to man’s savage ancestry. And along with this certain new ideas came likewise to the front that were foreign to the accepted notions of the Greeks — ideas that will meet us again in Socrates and Plato. These center about tne notion of immortality, conceived now as a vital reality and not as the colorless existence of shades in a gloomy underworld. For Orphicism, immortality is both a personal hope and a way of lifCw True life is not to be found here on earth ; what men call life is really death, and the body is the tomb of the soul. By reason of itc bodily contamination the soul is forced to pass through an in- definite series of reincarnations, taking on this form or that accord- i8 A Students History of Philosophy ing as it has been more or less true to its immortal nature. And the aim of religion is redemption from the wheel of birth, and so from the body with its desires and sensations, through a system of purifi- cations which finally will free the immortal and preexisting soul from its earthly trammels, and bring it to the regions of the blest where it will dwell forever with the gods. 3. On its first or religious side it is this Orphic doctrine of salvation that meets us in Pythagoreanism, though it connects itself here with the worship of the Delian Apollo rather than with Dionysus. The brotherhood was a community engaged in the quest for religious purification or purgation, through practices which at their lower level had slight connection with philosophy. Some of the rules of the order have come down to us, and they throw an in- teresting light upon its character. Do not sit on a quart measure ; do not eat the heart ; do not stir the fire with iron ; do not look in a mirror beside a light ; do not eat beans ; when you rise from the bedclothes roll them together and smooth out the impress of the body : these are a few that are sufficiently characteristic. Most of these rules seem so trivial that later there was a disposition to interpret them metaphorically, and to find in them some hidden wisdom. But anthropology makes it plain that they are simply primitive survivals based on the notion of magic and taboo ; the final injunction, for example, is one form of the superstition, to be met with everywhere, that similarity between objects, or close contiguity, implies a causal relationship as well, so that if an enemy can get access to an efiigy that suggests me or to some object con- nected with my person he is in a position to do me harm. These survivals seem to have appealed to Pythagoras as a suitable instru- ment for bringing about a reform of the luxury and license which marked the age, and which have made the neighboring city of Sybaris a byword for self-indulgence; a religious revival nearly always tends to turn back to the authority of ancient customs in which the religious feeling is deeply implicated, particularly on its more gloomy side. But purification did not stop with ritual and magic ; the com- munity had other and more intellectual interests as well which were The Scientific Period pressed into the same service. We know that it busied itself with the art of medicine and with musical studies. Now medicine has an obvious connection with the idea of “purgation.^^ And as medicine is a purge for the aiLiig body, so is music for Pythagoras a purge for the soul. That such a notion is not arbitrary is shown by the use to which Aristotle late; on puts it to explain the nature and effects of tragedy, and it was not an unfamiliar idea before Pythagoras’ time ; the Corybantic priests had used wild strains of music in the treat menl of hysterical patients in order to bring on exhaustion followed by a healthy sleep. But there is a higher method of catharsis still ; and here at last we come into contact with philosophy and science. To Pythagoras i« probably to be attributed the famous doctrine of the Three Lives Just as there are three sorts of people who attend the Olympic games — those who come to buy and sell, those who come to com- pete, and those who come simply to look on — so mankind in general may be classified as lovers of A^ealth, lovers of honor, and lovers of wisdom (<^t\dso<^ot) ; and this last type is higher than the other two. To the love of wisdom then, to the calm and disinter- ested pursuit of science, Pythagoras looked for the culmination of that same moral process of purification which started with riiua* and taboo. Philosophy, so Socrates is made to say in one of hia Pythagorean moods, is the highest music; in the contemplation of absolute truth one may find the serenity which frees him from the distractions of the body and prepares him for an ultimate release. The special subject matter of this discipline was mathematics ; and Pythagoras’ philosophy is summed up in i he doctrine that things are numbers. If we take number in its abstract modern sense, as distinguished from concrete things that can be numbered, it is not easy to make much of this statement. In a general way we may indeed compare it with the notion, underlying ail modern science, that the aim of scientific inquiry is the discovery of mathematical or numerical relationships ; and it is in this direction that in fact the Pythagorean philosophy is pointed. But Greek thought was still In far too crude a state for such a conception of scientific method to become fully explicit ; and in an> case it hardly explains hoK 20 A Student's History of Philosophy numbers could come to be identified with things. For this sontt interpretation is required. The first thing to notice is that for the Pythagoreans the units of number are conceived as physical points — points, namely, which are not disembodied abstractions without length, breadth or thick- ness, but which possess actual magnitude. This is indeed a very primitive way of reoresenting numbers — by dots arranged sym* metrically so as easily to be recognized, as wc still arrange them on dice for example. And in this way evidently we are brought back more closely to the world of extended objects than the term ''num- bei might at first suggest. At least we can see how geometrir;il figures might be generated from such points or units, and posses? certain definable properties in consequence ; and it is not impos- sible, accordingly, to think of objects as figurate constructs which give definite shape to an original indeterminate stuff or matter. To be sure we cannot go very far with this without getting into \rouble ; spatial forms may be so conceived, but what of the more concrete things of experience such as dogs and men ? We aio told how one of the later Pythagoreans went about this; he drew a pattern of some natural object and proceeded to fill it in with nebbles or counters, the number of the object in question, its sp)tcific form or formula, being represented by the number of the pebbles. The difficulties are still more apparent when we turn to abstract conceptions ; when we are told for example that justice is a square number, that opportunity is represented by the number seven, and marriage by the number five — the first harmony be- tween the male (odd) and the female (even) — we clearly have entered the region of pure fancy. (jeneralized, the Pythagorean philosophy gets expression in a conception of the cosmos as the union of two factors — the Un- limited, and the Limit ; in other words, as the last paragraph has suggested, it is due to a process whereby empty space — though as a matter of fact the notion of space had not as yet been distinguished from that of an indeterminate and boundless stuff which Pythag- oras, following Anaximenes, conceived as air — is measured off and given determinateness through the imposition of a pattern or enclos- The Scientific Period ing figure. It has been suggested that we may get a picture of what Pythagoras has in mind if we think of the spectacle of the starry heavens — a field of darkness dotted and marked off by points of light ; in fact darkness is for the Pythagoreans just a sort of mist or vapor. The whole character that actual reality takes on for us would thus be clue to forms’^ capable of receiving a mathematical expression — a doctrine that was to issue in Plato’s famous “ theory of Ideas,” as it has usually been called, and through him to influence all subsequent thought. 4. Historically however it is very likely that the first suggestion of the “number theory” may have come from another source ; at any rate it is here that its greatest scientific significance is found. The most important scientific discovery by Pythagoras lies in the field of music. He was the first to discover, by experimenting with a vibrating cord, that the intervals of the scale which strike the ear as concordant are associated with invariable and definite pro- portions in the length of one string to another ; between the four perfectly concordant notes of the lyre the two middle notes stand in the relation of arithmetical means to the two extremes. It is in this conception of a “ mean,” a definite ratio or proportion, that Pythag- oras brings to light for the first time a tool capable of a genuine scientific application in the modern sense ; conceivably indeed it might turn out to be a universal tool, and the key for unlocking nature’s secrets. If high and low can thus be brought together, so too might the other opposites of Greek scientific thought ; at any rate a new way of conceiving nature has been disclosed to the philosopher. The opposites neither pass into one another, nor are “separated out”; things in the world are due to a “blend” or mixture of extremes, and have their specific character in terms of a balance between the “too much” and the “too little.” Pythag- oras was himself not in a position to make any further use of this conception for the purposes of physics ; but in a less exacting field it was capable of an immediate extension. It could be applied for instance to the field of medicine; health is in a similar way the balance of the opposites in the body — the hot and the cold, the wet and the dry — while disease comes from the lack of such a proper 22 A Sti4dent's History of Philosophy balance. So again the possibilities for ethics are apparent, as Plato and Aristotle in particular were to show. In this way, then, the forms which are imposed on the Unlimited take on the character of quantitative formulas which express the specific nature of an object, numbers meanwhile still retaining the quality of spatial magnitude which gives them a standing in the physical world. § 4. Hcracleitus I. In the preceding speculations one notion in particular had been implicit which had not as yet received the attention it deserved. The Milesians had assumed the fact of change as some- thing self-evident, and they had assumed, too, that there must be an underlying unity to this changing world. But here are two ideas certain to make trouble as soon as they are distinctly recognized. The reality which changes must all the time be one and the same reality at bottom, or else there is no meaning in the statement that it changes. Nothing changes except as it becomes different from what it was before; and there is no ^Tt,” no something which’’ changes, unless there is an identity, or sameness, which persists through the successive moments of change. And yet if it changes it must be different from itself, and so not one reality, but more than one ; it must at once persist, and pass away. How are these seemingly very opposite notions — the one and the many, sameness and difference, permanence and change — to be reconciled and combined? Greek thinkers were presently to be very much en- gaged with problems such as these ; and one of the chief contrib- uting causes was the new turn given to philosophy by Heraclcilus. Heracleitus was an Ephesian, of aristocratic family and high position. It already has appeared that there was much in the political condition of the cities of Asia Minor to force the reality of change upon men’s notice; this shows for example in the lyric poetry of the period, with its fondness for dwelling on the endless vicissitudes of fortune and the uncertainty of human fife and happi- ness. Apart from the perils that grew out of external relations to the great Oriental powers, there was within each city an ever present danger from civil strife ; Heracleitus was himself among those who The Scientific Period 23 had suffered from these conditions, and it was very likely his con- tempt for the democratic tendencies of his day which turned him from public life to philosophical pursuits. His reputation for gloomy misanthropy gave him in antiquity the title of the Weeping Philosopher ; while the Delphic character of his writings — they require, says Socrates, a Delian diver to get at the meaning of them — caused him to be designated as Heracleitus the Obscure. Heracleitus gets rid, implicitly at least, of the difficulty of reconcil- ing permanence with change, by the denial that any such thing as permanence exists at all. There is no static Being, no unchanging element; change, movement, is Lord of the universe. Nothing ever is, but e^'^erything is becoming; all things are passing, and nothing abides. “You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. ^ Man is no exception ; he is “kindled and put out like a light in the night-time.’’ Hera- cleitus formulates this conception by saying that — not Water or Mist, but — Fire is the ultimate ground of the world. “All things are exchanged for Fire, and Fire for all things, as wares are ex- changed for gold, and gold for wares.” This is not intended to be figurative; Heracleitus means literal fire, just as Thales meant literal water. But it is fire as it embodies primarily the fact of change. Nor could his thought perhaps have found better expres- sion than in terms of the all-transforming, shifting flame, ever pass- ing away in smoke, ever renewing itself by taking up the substance of solid bodies which undergo destruction that it may live. We have the appearance of permanence, just as the flame seems to be an identical thing; in reality however its content is every moment altering. This doctrine — that everything, as Plato maliciously puts it, is in a flux like leaky vessels, that there is no rest or permanence any- where in the universe, no solid foothold which is not, the very moment we try to occupy it, silently shifting beneath us — may seem to us at first to be as paradoxical as it appeared to his con- temporaries. The natural reaction finds expression in the jest ^ This and succeedinK quotations from the earlier philosophers arc taken from Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy, A. & C. Black. 24 A Student's History of Philosophy which puts Heracleitus’ argument in the mouth of a debtor who does not wish to pay — how can he be liable, since he is not 4.he same man who contracted the debt ? We are not easily satisfied to give up identity and permanence in things ; if an object has already come to be something different before we can give a name to it, how are we to make any articulate utterance at all? When we reflect, however, we see that, in spite of difficulties, this is very like the accepted views of modern science. For science also there is nothing that stands still. The stone that seems to he unchanged and motionless is, on the one hand, whirling through space along with the planet which bears us with it on its surface, while on the other hand it is itself a little world of quivering forces where the most intense activity reigns. Our own bodies too are changing every moment of our lives, and our minds are changing with them ; there is no such thing as stopping the flow of consciousness without blot- ting it out altogether. Heracleitus has laid hold accordingly of a highly important feature of reality, which will need to be taken account of in every future attempt at philosophizing. 2 . Is there, then, no unity at all to the world ? If so, how can we account for even the appearance of permanence ? Heracleitus does not deny unity of a sort. But the unity is not one of unchanging substance ; it is what we call nowadays the unity of law. The process of change does not take place in an unregulated and lawless way ; it is rhythmical change, kept within the bounds of definite pro- portions. As the heavenly fires are transmuted successively into vapor, water, earth, so a corresponding series of Iransformations ascends upward to fire again, only to start once more on the same ceaseless round. The universe is thus a closed circuit in v/hich an ascending and a descending current counterbalance each other — an “ ever-living Fire with measures of it kindling and measures going out.” It is this opposition of motions, and the measured balance between them, which produces the delusive appearance of rest and fixity; a ‘Thing” is constituted, not by the presence of identical elements, but by a relatively constant content due to the fact that what is lost in one direction is compensated by the returning process. To repeat then, nothing in the world is self-contained and self- The Scientific Period 2 ^ complete ; everything is forever passing into something else, and has an existence only in relation to this process. ‘‘Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire ; water lives the death of air, earth that of water.’’ This is the first philosophic statement of the famous doctrine of relativity, which in one form or another has played an important part in subsequent thought down to the present day. And not only is everything passing into something else, but it is forever passing into its opposite. All reality is born of the clash of opposing principles, the tension of conflicting forces. Homer was wrong in saying : Would that strife might perish frona among gods and men 1 He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe ; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.” St^'ife is “father of all, and king of all.” This union of contrasts Heracleitus is never weary of tracing out. Organic life is produced by the male and the female, musical har- mony by sharp and flat notes. The painter creates his harmonious effects by the contrast of colors. The sea is the purest and the impurest water ; fish can drink it and it is good for them, while to men it is undrinkable and destructive. It is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old ; we can- not lay our finger on the moment when youth becomes old age, since neither term has any meaning except in contrast to the other. “ God is night and day, winter and summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety; but he takes various shapes, just as fire when it is mingled with different incenses is named according to the savor of each.” The same thought Heracleitus applies to the treatment of the ethical life. Just as the light and the heavy, the warm and the cold, plenty and want, are relative terms, so likewise are good and evil. “Physicians who cut, burn, stab and rack the sick, then complain that they do not get any adequate recompense for it.” “Men would not have known the name of justice if there were no in- justice.” “It is not good for men to get all they wish. It is dis- ease that makes health pleasant and good ; hunger, plenty ; and weariness, rest.” What we call good or bad has no existence except in relation to a possible worse or better ; were either of the related A Student's History of Philosophy terms wanting the moral life would cease to exist. At least this is true of human morality, though Heracleitus still speaks of God him^ self as one to whom all things are ‘‘fair and good and right.’’ 3. One other problem begins faintly to emerge in Heracleitus — what has been referred to as the problem of knowledge. Since the vulgar notion is that the things which the senses reveal to us are more or less solid and permanent, a distinction has to be drawn between sense knowledge, which is fallacious and the source of all kinds of illusion, and that true wisdom which consists in a per- ception of the underlying unity of the various opposites. And this last becomes possible because man is no mere separate individual, but a part of the all-comprehending Fire that constitutes the universe ; he can know objective truth because in essence he is identical with that truth. This connects itself in Heracleitus with his doctrine of the upward and the downward paths ; it is from the ascending current, toward the everlasting Fire, that knowledge derives — the dry soul is the wisest and best — while pleasure, folly, sleep and death are due to the downward nath and the encroachment of the moist. Heracleitus finds a proof in the phenomena of drunkenness; the drunken man is “led by a beard- less lad, tripping, not knowing where he steps, having his soul moist.” The answer given by Heracleitus to the problem of philosophy is cne which is likely to grow in force the more one thinks of it. But can we be really satisfied to stop here ? Can the fact of law furnish all the unity and permanence our thought requires? What is measure or law, indeed, over and above the multitude of particular facts and changes, each distinct and unrelated? If it is only an ideal fact in our minds, it has no constitutive force in the material world without ; and if it is a material fact, does it not furnish simply another element to be brought into unity, and not a unifying bond at all ? At any rate it hardly satisfies our first feeling of what the situation calls for ; instinctively we seek to find a solid and per- manent background for this universal flow of events, an unchanging subject of change, which shall bind the multiplicity into a real whole, and give us something definite to grasp and rest upon. This factor The Scientific Period 27 of permanence, of static Being, which Heracleitus denied, is brought into a one-sided prominence by an opposing group of thinkers, whose connection with the city of EJea, in southern Italy, has given them the name of the Elcatic School. § 5. The Elcatic School, Xenophanes^ Parmenides ^ Zeno, Melissus I. Xenophanes. — The reputed founder of the Eleatic school was Xenophanes, an older contemporary of Heracleitus and a native of Colophon, whence he fled in consequence of the Persian conquest of Ionia. Xenophanes was however not in reality a philosop)her in the proper sense; he was a poet turned satirist and religious reformer. As a satirist, he sets himself against the florid and artificial culture of Magna Graecia — its luxuries, its purple gar- ments, its fops “proud of their comely locks, anointed with un- guents of rich perfume^’ — in favor of an ideal of plain living and high thinking, of simplicity, moderation, and good taste. In like manner he ridicules the exaggerated athleticism of the day — the preference of muscle to brains, “strength to wisdom — and the immaturity and affectation of its intellectual interests; “there is nothing praiseworthy in discussing battles of Titans, or of giants and centaurs, fictions of former ages, nor in plotting violent revo- lutions.’^ As against this he exalts the true life of intellect. And Xenophanes’ conception of the intellectual life has a distinctly modern flavor. It is modern in its sceptical caution. “There never was nor will be a man who has clear certainty as to what I say about the gods and about all things ; for even if he does chance to say what is right, yet he himself does not know that it is so. But all are free to guess.” And more especially is it modern in its naturalism. It is this naturalistic strain that was the main source of Xenophanes’ influence, and that gives him such philosophical importance as he may possess. It has appeared already that the movement of Ionian science, and the tendency of a sophisticated culture as well, had been away from popular religion. Xenophanes is the most outspoken repre- sentative of this enlightenment. His impatience with the intel- lectual futility and low moral grade of many of the old beliefs and 28 A Student's History of Philosophy stories about the gods leads him to a sharp polemic against the popular theology. “Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among men, thefts and adulteries and deceptions of one another.’’ “But mortals thinly that the gods are born as they are, and have perception like theirs, and voice and form.” “Yes, and if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the form of each.” “ So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed ; the lliracians give theirs red hair and blue eyes.” In truth there is One God, the greatest among gods and men, :omparable to mortals neither in form nor thought ; without toil he swayeth all things by the thought of his mind ; and he abides! ever in the selfsame place moving not at all, nor does it befit him to go about now hither, now thither. ' We are not however to suppose that this is meant to be a profes- sion of monotheism in the ordinary sense ; the One God of Xeno- phanes is expressly said to exclude all anthropomorphic elements. What Xenophanes is really trying to assert is, not that the reality of the universe is God as the religionist uses the term, but that what we name God is the one eternal and unchanging world of nature. It is true attributes are assigned to nature which later came to be regarded as spiritual or immaterial. But this means only that the Greeks had not yet succeeded in making distinctions which to the modern mind may seem fairly evident ; down to the time of Plato we shall find philosophers attributing such qualities to reality without a suspicion that they may be casting doubt thereby on its strictly physical existence. 2. Parmenides. — It is not impossible that, as tradition tells us, the real founder of the Eleatic school, Parmenides of Elea, may originally have been a disciple of Xenophanes, and have been influenced by his pantheistic doctrine of the One. But if so he was at least to give it a direction vastly more significant for phi- losophy. Parmenides is one of the great philosophical thinkers of pre-Socratic times, in some ways possibly the greatest. It was he The Scientific Period 29 who turned philosophy explicitly from cosmological speculations to an examination of ideas or concepts. This does not mean that he converted reality into a merely logical existence ; he continued to think of it as physical, and indeed he has been called by one recent critic the father of Materialism. But his method is that of logic rather than of physical explanation ; it is the method of removing inner inconsistencies from our thought, and requiring reality to submit to the demands which consistent thinking makes upon it. Parmenides’ chief work, which has come down to us only in fragments, takes the form of a poem, or at least of verse, since Parmenides was not a poet by natural endowment. In the exor- dium he represents himself as borne on a chariot, attended by the Sun maidens, through the gate of Day and Night into the realm of Day. He arrives at the palace of a Goddess, who welcomes him and proceeds to instruct him in the two ways of Truth and of deceptive Belief. The second part of the poem deals with the wav of Belief, and contains cosmological speculations which modern scholarship has shown to be identifiable in considerable part with the cosmology of Pythagoras. It has been plausibly conjectured, therefore, that Parmenides is telling us of his own philosophical conversion from Pythagoreanism to a new and more adequate philosophy; and the reason he takes the trouble to expound the way of error is, presumably, in part that he wishes to contrast his former with his latter state, and in part that he is setting forth the erroneous doctrines which his followers will be called on to meet and to refute. Of all philosophical systems, that of Parmenides is perhaps the most paradoxical. It is based on the absolute denial of change and multiplicity in the world, and their reduction to pure illusion. Only the One exists, and that One is eternal, immutable, immovable, indivisible. The practical refutation of this, by facts, is perfectly easy ; it does not describe the world as we actually know it, and if the world really were such a world, then all philosophies with their reasonings about Being would themselves be wiped out along with everything else that is partial. The illusions which philosophy 30 A Studenl^s History of Philosophy attempts to correct would be impossible even as illusions. Pai- menides’ philosophy, however, does not pretend to be based on empirical facts ; it declares that facts themselves must be subjected to the laws of thought or logic, and if they prove to be sclf-contra- dictory must be rejected. If we cannot think them we have no right to call them facts. ^'What can be spoken and thought is; for it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be.” So long as thought is true to itself no effort can make the being of Not-bcing intelligible; and if it is not intelligible, if it is incapable of being thought, it does not exist. Only Being exists, eternal, immovable, unchanged. It cannot have come into being, for to do this it must have arisen either from something or from nothing. It cannot have arisen from nothing, for nothing is the absence of the real ; it cannot have arisen from something, for there is nothing other than what is. Being cannot be divisible, since it is all alike, and there is no more of it in one place than in another to hinder it from holding together, nor less of it, but every- thing is full of what is. There can be no break between its parts ; to say that such a break is real is to say that it itself is Being or body, and so body is continuous after all. It is without motion ; for it could only move in space, and space either is or is not. If space is, it is Being, and Being moves in Being, which is equivalent to saying that it is at rest. If space is nothing, it does not exist, is Not-being, and so nothing can move in it. Being must be finite, for it is in need of nothing, while if it were infinite it would stand in need of everything. As it cannot be in one direction any more than in another, it must be spherical in shape, since the sphere is the only figure of which this can be said. Being is thus an eternal, self-complete, spherical, motionless, solid body, beyond or apart from which there is pure nothingness. 3. Zeno and Mclissus. — The paradoxical arguments of Par- menides, appearing as they did at a time when the human mind was first beginning to taste the delights of metaphysical inquiry, had an immense influence. Among his more immediate adherents the best known are Zeno of Elea, and Melissus of Samos, the latter a general who won a victory over Athens in 442 b.c. Melissus came The Scientific Period 31 to be the recognized spokesman of the Eleatic philosophy in his day, though he did little more than restate Parmenides’ position. His only important innovation is his rejection of Parmenides’ finite ball of Being ; he argued that since the real can only be limited by empty space, and since there is no empty space. Being must be infinitely extended. Zeno, an older contemporary, is much better known to us through his exceedingly acute attempts to strengthen the Eleatic doctrine by a counter-attack intended to show that the difficulties it involves for common sense are matched by difficulties equally as great for those who believe in multiplicity and change. He does this by the logical device of taking his opponent’s position as a premise, and showing that this leads either to two opposite conclusions that contradict one another, or else to a reductio ad absurdum. For example, if things are many and made up of parts, as his pluralistic contemporaries maintained, the parts must be just as many as they are, and neither more nor less. On the other hand if things are many, each part is capable of division, and these parts in turn can be divided in an endless process. Consequently things are both finite and infinite in number. Again, if there is space it will be in something ; for all that is is in something, and what is in something is in space. So space will be in space, and this space in another space, and so on ad infinitum ; and this is an absurdity. Another argument, a favorite in later times, deals with the relation of part to whole. The effect of a sum of units ought to be no more than the sum of the effects produced by each separately. Drop a grain of millet seed, and it will make no noise. Drop a whole measure of seed and it will. If consequently a whole is made up of parts then — unless a noise can be compounded out of silences — a single seed ought to make a noise, which as a matter of fact it does not do. Zeno’s most famous arguments are those by which he attacks the possibility of motion. If a thing moves from one point to an- other, it must first pass through half the distance ; before it can do this it must traverse a half of the half, and so on forever ; it has therefore to pass through an infinite number of points, and this is impossible in a finite time. The same difficulty appears in the 32 A Student's History of Philosophy paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. Achilles never can overtake the tortoise, because, while he is reaching what at any moment is the tortoise’s starting point the latter will have gained a certain amount of ground; and as Achilles always must reach first the position previously occupied by his competitor, the tortoise will forever keep just a little ahead. Similarly of the flying arrow. In order that an arrow flying through space should reach its desti- nation, it must successively occupy a series of positions. But at any moment we may choose it is in a particular place, and therefore is at rest, since an object is at rest when it occupies a space equal to itself. And as no summing up of states of rest can result in mo- tion, it can never move. These puzzles have exercised the human mind ever since Zeno’s day, and even now there is no universal agreement as to how they should be solved. To realize their his- torical significance however, one needs to note the particular op- ponents against whom they were directed. What Zeno would appear to have had in mind is the Pythagorean assumption that lines are made up of discrete points ; and on this showing his argu- ments are sound. § 6. The Pluralists. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus I. Empedocles, — The conclusions which the Eleatics had reached were naturally a challenge to all contemporary thinkers who took an interest in scientific explanation, since, if accepted, they wiped out at a stroke the whole world with which science deals. Philosophy now takes accordingly a new start, as various thinkers attempted to rescue the Ionian speculations from this logical im- passe. They did this by giving up the search for any single element out of which things can be derived, and by substituting a plurality of independent units; and by this path they arrived ultimately at a goal which represents the high-water mark of Greek physical science — that so-called atomic view of the structure of reality, which was destined later on under more propitious circumstances to become the working theory of modern science. The Scientific Period 33 Empedocles, with whom this new tendency takes its start, was a native of Sicily, and a man of note and political influence. His extensive knowledge, and his skill in medicine, caused him to be regarded as the possessor of almost supernatural powers — a reputation which he seems not to have taken any trouble to dis- claim. A mixture of charlatanism with what is essentially a true scientific spirit has not been uncommon at periods when new possi- bilities of knowledge are beginning to dawn upon men^s minds; Paracelsus is a more modern illustration. At such times there seem no limits to what science can hope to accomplish. ‘'And thou shalt learn, Empedocles says at the beginning of his great philo- sophical poem, “all the drugs that are a defence against ills and old age, since for thee alone shall I accomplish all this. Thou shah arrest the violence of the weariless winds that arise and sweep the earth, laying waste the cornfields with their breath ; and again, when thou so desircst, thou shalt bring their blasts back again with a rush. Thou shalt cause for men a seasonable drought after the dark rains, and again after the summer drought thou shalt pro- duce the streams that feed the trees as they pour down from the sky. Thou shalt bring back from Hades the life of a dead man.” If science has not done precisely these things, it has enabled men to perform wonders almost as great in the way of controlling natural forces ; it is only the desire to reach these results by short cuts, and the failure to perceive that they require a long process of patient investigation, that turns men’s thoughts in the direction of occult powers, in the manipulation of which they are partly self-deceived, in part conscious deceivers. Whatever deductions we may need to make, however, we do find in Empedocles a real perception of the value and necessity of true scientific knowledge. Man is by nature weak, ignorant and self- deluded. “ For straitened are the powers with which their bodily parts are endowed, and many are the woes that burst in on them, and blunt the edge of their careful thoughts. They behold but a brief span of a life that is no life, and, doomed to swift death, are borne away and fly off like smoke. Each is convinced of that alone which he has chanced upon as he is hurried to and fro, and idly 34 A Student's History of Philosophy fancies he has found the whole. So hardly can these things be seen by the eyes or heard by the ears of men, so hardly grasped by their mind ! Our only salvation is through knowledge, or science ; and in his own philosophy, Empedocles thinks that he has found the key to man’s enfranchisement. Empedocles had felt the force of Parmenides’ reasonings ; but he could not rest content with their one-sidedness. Change and generation undoubtedly exist, and have somehow to be explained. Now even if Parmenides’ proof of the non-existence of empty space be allowed — and Empedocles follows him in this — one possibility of motion still remains. The parts of the solid mass might conceiv- ably change their position with reference to one another without the need of empty space between them, one part slipping contin- uously into the place left vacant by its neighbor just as the parts of water seem to do. There would be no gain in this if each part were exactly the same as every other. But if we conceive a primitive difference in the nature of the parts, then their shiftings of position might be utilized to account for the changing phenomena of the sensible world. This is Empedocles’ new thought : generation is merely change of composition. ‘‘There is no coming into being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in baneful deaih, but only mingling, and separation of what has been mingled.” “When the elements have been mingled in the fashion of a man, and come to the light of day, or in the fashion of the race of wild beasts or plants or birds, then men say that these come into being ; and when they are separated, they call that, as is the custom, woful death.” “‘Just as when painters are elaborating temple offerings, men whom Metis has well taught their art — they, when they have taken pig- ments of many colors with their hands, mix them in a harmony, more of some and less of others, and from them produce shapes like unto all things, making trees and men and women, beasts and birds and fishes that dwell in the waters, yea, and gods that live long lives, and are exalted in honor — so let not the error prevail over thy mind that there is any other source of all the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers.” This marks the path accordingly by which the reconciliation of The Scientific Period 35 change and permanence was to be attempted. If reality is One the arguments of Parmenides are irrefragable, and the world of generation has no existence. But if reality is Many, and not One, then we can account for both factors ; permanence belongs to the elements themselves, change to their shifting relations. So by setting up four separate elements — Earth, Water, Air and Fire — Empedocles thought that he could explain, through their varying combinations, those apparent differences in the world of individual objects which Parmenides had left himself no way of accounting for even as illusion. In another direction, also, Parmenides’ influence would seem to have been felt. By the earlier philosophers motion had been taken for granted ; matter possesses in its own right the power of change. By his doctrine of the absolute immobility of Being, Parmenides had detached this quality of motion from the concep- tion of matter ; and Empedocles finds it necessary therefore to have recourse to a separate principle in order to start bodies moving again. So he is led to postulate, in addition to his four elements, two other agencies to which he gives the names of Love and Hate — names which should not however lead us to suppose that he looks on them as any less material than the other elements. Love acts In a way to bring about a complete intermixture of the unlike ele- ments, ^^as a baker cementing barley meal with water.” Hate breaks up this intermixture, and allows the natural afi&nity of ele- ments of the same kind to have its way. The history of the uni- verse is thus an oscillation of two alternate movements. At the start Hate is at the outside of the sphere, with all the elements in complete union. Then Hate is drawn inside and gradually drives Love to the center, only to be forced out again as the reverse proc- ess begins. To the rivalry between the two agencies the actual phenomena of change are due. The stage of the world in which we ourselves are living is that in which Hate is encroaching on Love. One point in Empedocles’ cosmology is worth referring to, since it anticipates in a rather bizarre form a very modern scientific doc- trine. This is his conception of an organic evolution — an evolu- tion that takes place, however, in the other stage of the world A Studmfs History of Philosophy 3 ^ process where Love is getting the upper hand. The limbs and organs arose in separation to begin with — ‘‘heads without necks, arms bereft of shoulders, eyes in want of foreheads’’ — and com- bined at first to produce all sorts of monsters, “oxen with heads of men and men with heads of oxen” ; organic forms as we know them are the result of the struggle for existence between these accidental variations, and the survival of the fittest. One other problem which already has appeared in Heracleitus receives a somewhat fuller treatment at the hands of Empedocles — the problem of knowing. We can know everything because we are ourselves compounded of everything. All the elements enter into our make-up — earth to form the solid parts, water the liquid, air the vital breath, fire the soul. We are able to perceive any particular thing, therefore, because we are that thing ; like is known by like. “For it is with earth that we see earth, and water with water ; by air we see bright air, by fire destroying fire. By love do we see love, and hate by grievous hate.” Empedocles explains sensation by a theory — afterwards to be made more precise by Democritus — of effluences thrown off by objects, and entering the body through pores adapted to their several natures. 2. Anaxagoras. — With the name of Anaxagoras we come for the first time into connection with the city of Athens. Anaxagoras was not himself an Athenian citizen, being a native of Clazomenae in Ionia ; but he resided in Athens for some years, and was a promi- nent figure in the brilliant circle which surrounded Pericles. An- axagoras was the first victim of the distrust toward the new phi- losophy which the Athenian people later on were to display in the more famous case of Socrates. His naturalistic explanation of the sun as a red-hot stone “larger than the Peloponnesus” led to an accusation of impiety, though it is very likely that a political animus lay behind the charge ; at any rate he was thrown into prison, and escaped only at the price of leaving the city. Empedocles had thought that by the admission of four distinct elements the infinite variety of the world could be explained ; this appeared to Anaxagoras an impossibility. The qualities revealed in the world are too multitudinous for so limited a machinery ; we Tnt Scientific Period 5W cannot stop short with four elements, but must postulate an in- definite variety of qualitative characters. These qualitatively simple facts — hot and cold, moist and dry, and the like — are everywhere diffused in nature ; indeed in each individual bit of matter regardless of how finely it may be divided — and it may be divided to infinity — all of them without exception are present. There is no such thing as an ultimate particle that is simple in its nature; everything is in everything else, and things are not “cut off from one another with a hatchet/’ On the other hand, the constituents are combined in varying proportions in the “seeds’^ of things, and in this way we may account for the vast variety among the objects which the empirical world presents. We name a thing after the quality that strikes the senses most forcibly; snow, for example, is black as well as white, but we call it white because the white predominates. Along with this hypothesis, Anaxagoras is celebrated in antiquity as the originator of one other doctrine in particular. Parmenides’ argument had left him, as it had left Empedocles, in a position where he needed an outside source of movement. Now the starting point in science is the recognition that the world is not the purely haphazard affair that many of its phenomena might at first sight lead us to suppose, but that, most conspicuously in its larger proc- esses such as the changes of the seasons and the movements of the heavenly bodies, it shows evidence of harmony and order. But law or order, because it is intelligible, it is natural, for unsophisti- cated thought at any rate, to regard as a product of intelligence. And when it is considered, further, that creatures possessing life and thought have the apparent power of self-movement and self- direction, it is easy to see why Anaxagoras should have been led to identify the moving principle of the universe with Mind. On the one hand then are the elements, entirely inert, while over against them, and not itself a mixture like the rest, stands Mind or Nous, which alone is self-moved, and which is the cause of motion in everything else. This is the first explicit separation of the rational life of mind, under its own proper name, from its entanglement with the rest $8 A Studenl's History of PhilosopHy of the universe; and it marks an important step in philosophical analysis. With Anaxagoras indeed the conception still remains confused and obscure. Notwithstanding its distinction from the elements, Nous still remains a material agency ; it is the thinnest of all things, which because it is unmixed and contains no parts of other things is able to master them — to know and move them. Nor does Anaxagoras put his new principle to use in explaining natural phenomena in detail; it serves only to start the whirling movement that sets up the cosmos. In one of the Platonic dia- logues we have an account of the disappointment Socrates had felt when he came to the study of Anaxagoras’ system. He had been told that here everything was accounted for by Mind, and he had in consequence expected to find the purpose of things pointed out to him — the earth’s shape for example, or the motions of the heavenly bodies, explained by reference to the end they serve. And instead of this he found Anaxagoras having recourse to just the same agencies — air and ether and water — that were to be met with in the other philosophers. One other novelty appears in a correction which Anaxagoras makes to Empedocles’ theory of sense perception ; we perceive by unlikes rather than by likes. Sensation is produced through the stimulation of one opposite by another; witness the indifference of the body to temperatures similar to its own. The cold is known by the warm in us, the sweet by the sour, the fresh by the salt, in virtue of our deficiency in each. This is why normally we cannot see in the dark ; we see by means of the dark pupil of the eye, and no image is cast on a surface where the color is the same. 3. Leucippus. — The doctrine of atomic elements took its final step in Leucippus^ and in his greater pupil Democritus of Abdera. The issue of this new atomism lay in a denial of all differences in quality among the elements, and a return to the Eleatic conception of being as mere body stripped of qualitative characteristics. Since however Leucippus was not prepared to abandon the reality of change, and since he accepted, equally with his predecessors, change in spatial position as the only agency competent to explain phenomena, he was forced to admit what the Eleatics had denied, The Scientific Period 39 and to assume that empty space has in some sense a real existence. In this way the solid lump of being which for Parmenides had con- stituted reality now gets split up into an infinite multitude of reproductions of itself in miniature, or atoms. These atoms, too infinitesimal to be visible to the eye, and differing from one another only in shape, size, position and arrangement, are eternal and unalterable, and individually possess indeed all the characteris- tics of Parmenides’ Being except its immobility. They and their changing relationships alone are real ; all else is appearance, to be explained ultimately in terms of these real movements in space. The random movements of the atoms as they oscillate in all direc- tions and impinge on one another may anywhere set up a vortex or whirling motion. This brings atoms similar in shape and size together, as the shaking of a sieve sorts out millet, wheat and barley, or as waves sort the pebbles on a beach ; and in this way Emped- ocles’ elements — earth, water, air and fire — come into being. As in a whirlpool, the larger bodies move to the center, while the smaller arc forced toward the outside ; and so a world process is under way. In Leucippus we have the first clear statement of a philosophical materialism in its ordinary modern meaning — the reduction of true reality, that is, to what later came to be known as the primary qualities of body. This has proved to be a point of view of the greatest significance for scientific thought ; by its reduction of qualitative to quantitative differences it made possible, in particular, that application of mathematics to the treatment of phenomena which is essential to the modern notion of a scientific law. Leucip- pus gets rid of the last temptation to a teleological explanation of events by restoring motion to the elements as an original possession ; with all the data required for an understanding of the world thus immanent in the atoms themselves, there was no longer any need to appeal to Love or Nous, or to anything except the necessary laws of mechanical impact. Mind or soul is only a particular form of atomic matter ; it is composed of the fire atoms, which are the smallest, smoothest and most active of all, and which dart about in all directions like motes in a sunbeam. These soul atoms exist 40 A Student^s History of Philosophy everywhere, though they are only endowed with sensation when they come together in certain quantities, as they do in the human body; consciousness accordingly will disappear again when the body is dissolved. 4. Democritus. — The scientific elaboration of this standpoint at the hands of Democritus (about 460-360 b.c.) was one of the great philosophical achievements of antiquity. Democritus is to be classed indeed, not with the earlier philosophers, but rather with Plato and Aristotle, whom he rivals in the comprehensiveness of his system. For one thing, he goes beyond his predecessors in the more elaborate treatment which he gives to the knowledge problem. This is a problem which had grown more insistent with the progress of science, and the growing rift between ordinary sense perception and scientific thought. Democritus finds a solu- tion in his theory of “images’’ — a theory which remained influ- ential even down to the time of Locke, and which is gi^^en a certain verisimilitude if we remember that in vision an image is actually present in the pupil of the eye. External objects, according to this theory, shed copies or images of themselves ; these enter the sense organs which are fitted to receive them, and by setting in motion the soul atoms give rise to perception. Differences in color are due to the smoothness or roughness of the impinging images ; taste and smell to differences in the shape of the atoms ; and so on for all the sense properties. By this doctrine Democritus is able also to offer an explanation of the important and perplexing fe.ct of error or mistaken knowledge. The images do not reach our senses quite so spick and span as when they started on their journey, but are more or less battered and distorted by their progress through the intervening air; this explains why things seem indistinct at a distance, and why if the distance is great enough they cannot be seen at all. Were no obstacle thus present “we could see an ant crawling on the sky.” Also as they enter the sense organs there is a similar distortion ; they do not fit exactly into the pores or cavities, and so are still further abraded and wrenched from their original form. So far we have a theory that would seem to point to a thorough- The Scientific Period 41 going relativity of knowledge such as we shall meet presently in connection with certain of the Sophists. And as regards the senses Democritus not only admits but insists that this is so. “By the senses we in truth know nothing sure, but only something that changes according to the disposition of the body and of the things that enter into it or resist ii.” Here lies the explanation of the fact that there are so many variations in the way different men perceive the same objects, and the fact that the same man may feel a thing as sweet or bitter, pleasant or painful, according to his physical state. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste are consequently bastard forms of knowledge ; in reality there are only atoms and the void. But in saying this we already are presupposing that not all knowl- edge shares the liabilities of the senses; we “know” the atoms, and such knowledge by hypothesis is true and adequate. How is this possibility of true knowledge to be accounted for ? In looking for an answer Democritus has to keep of course to his universe of atoms ; but he does not need to go far for a solution. True thought is caused by the finer images which copy the atomic structure of things, and which are able to reach the soul atoms, not through the disturbing senses, but more directly ; for the soul is not localized in the senses merely, but is diffused throughout the body, so that the finer images may get into immediate touch with it. Furthermore the motion of these images is less violent. Sensation, being due to larger and ^^oarscr images, throws the soul into violent commotion and thus results in perceptions more or less confused ; whereas the atomic images give rise to a gentler motion of the soul which eliminates confusing disturbances. And in this last consideration we have a point of contact with certain ethical conclusions by which Democritus^ philosophy is rounded off. As might be expected, his ethical theory takes a hedonistic form. Pleasure and pain alone are what determine happiness; “the best thing for a man is to pass his life so as to have as much joy and as little trouble as possible.” But between pleasures we are able to discriminate ; and the ordinary pleasures of the senses no more constitute true happiness than sense percep- tion constitutes true knowledge. The pleasures of the senses differ 42 A Student's History of Philosophy with different people, as sensations do ; they are too transitory to form the content of real happiness, and they pass too easily into pain. The mind must judge between pleasures and weigh their rela- tive values. For the reflective mind, accordingly, the true end of life is to be found not in tumultuous pleasures or in external goods, but in the calm of body which is health, and the calm of soul which is cheerfulness. ^^He who chooses the goods of the soul chooses the more divine ; he who chooses the goods of the body chooses the human.” LITER.\TURE Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed. Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece. Zeller, Pre-Soeratic Philosophy ^ 2 vols. Scoon, Greek Philosophy before Plato. Patrick, Hcracleitus on Nature. Symonds, Greek Poets, Vol. i. Benn, Early Greek Philosophy. Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy. Robin, Greek Thought and the Origins of the Scientific Spirit. THE EARLY MORALISTS § 7. The Sophists I. The Growth of Critical Inquiry. — So far the powers of the Greek mind had been directed chiefly to the theoretical solution of the cosmological problems that are connected with processes in nature ; and along this line the results had been somewhat re- markable. In a comparatively short space of time a conception had been elaborated which is strikingly similar to that on which modern science has most commonly proceeded. The reduction of qualitative to quantitative diflerences, the connection of mathe- matics with scientific method, the resolution of all phenomenal bodies into a multitude of minute moving particles or atoms, of all change into change of position on the part of these atoms and all efficiency into mechanical impact, is expressed with a definiteness that leaves little to be desired. But now this development comes abruptly to an end, and for nearly two thousand years the course of human thought takes, in its dominant asp)ects, a different direction. One reason for this lay in the very merits of the atomic hypothesis; it was the natural cul- mination of the problems which the lonians had inaugurated, and having arrived at this point the Greeks could go no further until a new instrument had been created. It is here the great difference lies between ancient science and that of the present day. Modern science is no mere guess at the ultimate nature of things in general, but an experimental investigation of the way in which things in particular really act. It is this which gives it its immense influence on modern life. To know the actual laws of things is to be able to control them ; and this practical service is what renders science one of the most powerful instruments of growth in civilization that has ever been devised. The Greeks, on the contrary, had not reached 43 44 A Students History of Philosophy the point where they could master the concrete behavior of objects. Their atomism is less a science than a philosophy, intent chiefly on the theoretical interest of reducing complexity to a single formula. As such it has no great contribution to make to the concrete human ends out of which the larger movements of human thought always flow ; it is not far enough advanced to touch human life on the practical side, like modern science, while it is plainly inadequate to satisfy the spiritual interests of man. It was only natural there- fore that physical speculations should for a time be subordinated to the more pressing problems which have to do with individual and social conduct, that is, to Ethics ; it was not till these had in their turn been to some extent worked out that the human mind was able to come back with profit to the physical aspects of the universe. Meanwhile, in a negative way, the theories of the physical philosophers had helped prepare for this subsequent movement — a movement which represents most characteristically the genius of Greek thought. At first philosophy had directed its criticism only against such ideas as were primarily theoretical in their nature, and had left comparatively untouched the realm of conduct. Any real tampering with the foundations of social life would indeed at the start have been strongly resented ; a society based on the morality of custom and tradition cannot afford to allow too free an examination of its sanctions. Indirectly, however, philosophy had helped to undermine these sanctions. Morality and the social life always stand for the mass of men in close connection with religious ideas and practices, and this especially is true of early society, where religion is still intimately bound up with every detail of life. The physical philosophies had weakened materially the hold of popular religion for a multitude of educated men. The stories about the gods, offensive alike to the scientific and to the moral sense, began to be rationalized and explained away; and while philosophers might not go to the length of denying outright the gods^ existence, still the dearly defined conceptions of the past were all the time being attenuated into a vague naturalistic pantheism whose con- nection with concrete conduct was very slight indeed. This growth of naturalism, and the decay of an active belief in the old my- The Early Moralists 45 thology, shows itself plainly, for example, in the Greek historians. There is already in Herodotus a fair development of the historical spirit which stops to weigh the evidence even in the case of stories that are sacred. In spite of a good deal of native piety, Herodotus is glad to rationalize when he sees his way to it ; thus he explains the legend of the rape of Europa as perhaps growing out of what was historically a capture by pirates. And in Thucydides we have a thoroughly modern historian whose narrative has become purely secular, and who has nothing to do with anything except human and natural motives. When therefore the ideas of conduct came themselves in turn to be criticized, they already had lost some of their vitality. There had always been a certain amount of ethical reflection among the Greeks. The early moralists had indeed been content with the enunciation of disconnected ethical and prudential maxims with moderation as their keynote — maxims whose social and political applications were partisan rather than fundamental. Still this moralizing was already symptomatic of a growing spirit of unrest and a sense of insecurity. Meanwhile the tacit acquies- cence in the status quo, the unquestioning acceptance of law as obligatory and divine, the merging of the individual life as a matter of course in the community life, could hardly remain unchallenged under the conditions that marked Greek politics during the sixth and fifth centuries. Constant revolutions and changes of govern- ment, and the increasing spread of democratic principles, made it impossible that the old attitude should be persevered in. So too the appearance everywhere in the Greek cities of the Tyrant, a vigorous personality who, often from the r 61 e of popular hero, ended by setting up his private will as absolute, had impressed on the age a stamp of egoism and individualism which was not conducive to a reverence for tradition. In this social turmoil, with the old ideals based on the life of custom yielding to new circumstances, it was natural that thoughtful minds should turn to the task of finding some more substantial basis for law and justice and morality, and of vindicating at the bar of reason the institutions which hitherto had been accepted on authority. This sense of the conflict between 46 A Studenfs History of Philosophy the new and the old we may see in the development of the Greek drama. In the earlier dramatists, Aeschylus and Sophocles, it is still more or less implicit, and takes the form of a deepening of the ethical consciousness and a moralization of the older Greek my- thology. But in Euripides it has come to full self-expression, and its issue is a pervasive scepticism and individualism and modernity which makes it very clear how far thought had advanced from its primitive caution. 2. The Sophists. — Among the influences responsible for bring- ing this change of attitude to consciousness the appearance of the Sophist was not the least important. The Sophistic movement was in the main an outgrowth of the political conditions of the time. For a young man of good birth the natural eareer to look forward to was in connection with the political life of his city ; and for this, as well as for the still more fundamental purpose of self-defence against the jealous suspicion of his democratic neighbors, the almost indis- pensable qualification was the ability to speak persuasively in pub- lic. A demand arose accordingly for teachers who should train men for public life ; and this demand the Sophists undertook to meet. The representatives of the higher education of the day, they made the teaching of wisdom a profession. As there were no settled seats of learning they wandered from city to city, picking up their pupils wherever they could find them. The basis of their work was apt to be rhetorical ; but with the abler Sophists this was broadened out to cover the field of an all-round and liberal culture. Any knowl- edge that was available of the working of the human mind, of history, literature or grammar, of logic or the forms of argument, of political constitutions, of the nature of justice or of virtue, was regarded as appropriate to the end in view. And so in the case of the greater Sophists we meet with men possessed of a varied learn- ing, made acceptable through the cultivation of a high degree of skill in presentation. All this seems innocent enough, and hardly sufficient to justify the hostility and suspicion with which the Sophists were generally regarded by the populace, and by such reactionary upholders of tradition as Aristophanes. Grounds for this suspicion were not The Early Moralists 47 however lacking. Practically there was always a chance that the Sophistic skill might be prostituted to undesirable purposes. In Aristophanes' Clouds the worthy Strepsiades, driven to his wits’ end by the debts in which his son has involved him, is represented as turning to the Sophist Socrates for the means to extricate himself by cheating his creditors ; and when, after he proves too stupid him- self to master the new learning, his son takes his place, and ends by winning his suits in the courts, the latter shows himself a proficient disciple by ill-treating his own father, and then justifying his actions in true sophistic style. And apart from such chances for abuse there were other reasons for the popular distrust. Naturally the Sophists found their clients mainly in the aristocratic classes, where alone the adequate leisure could be looked for, as well as the ability to pay the rather stiff fees they were inclined to ask. And to acquire the reputation of being hangers-on to the aristocracy was of course not a way to popular favor. Nor was a more fundamental ground for suspicion wholly lacking. Men do not like to have the foundations of their lives disturbed ; and when these foundations have no better warrant than unthinking custom, any habit of unrestricted inquiry and discussion is an apparent menace to security. Just the admission that each man has the right to test the truth of anything whatsoever by referring it to his private judgment seems at first to do away with the possi- bility of public standards. Such a risk was heightened, as has been remarked, by the practical aim of the Sophistic teaching. The goal of the politician is not so much truth as victory. This made it necessary that, like the modern lawyer, he should be nimble-witted enough to take any side, to seize any loophole of argument, to be able, if need be, to make the worse appear the better reason — a procedure likely to obscure rather than clarify the ultimate prin- ciples of truth if any such there be. On this basis it easily was possible for a way of thinking to arise that should reduce society to a crowd of private individuals, each looking out for his own interests — a conception which had its counterpart in that atomism in the outer world with which the theories of the physical philosophers were familiarizing men’s minds. 4^ A Student's History of Philosophy In the case of the earlier and greater Sophists we are not justified in assuming any intention thus to undermine the foundations of society or to promote an extreme scepticism and individualism. For the most part these were men of excellent moral ideals, who honestly meant to train their pupils to a life of virtue and usefulness in the state ; the famous Choice of Hercules by Prodicus, and the discourse of Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue, keep safely to the path of a familiar and rather commonplace morality. At the same time forces had been put in motion to which it was no easy thing to set a limit. The conditions tending to break down the sacredness traditionally attaching to social law and custom had had one result of particular importance. This was the growing recognition of a distinction between existing laws and prescriptions of morality, and those ultimate principles of justice and legality which reason can disclose — as it came to be expressed, between what is right only by custom or convention and what is right by nature. At the start this might be meant to justify genuine morality as against mere convention ; but once started on such a line there was no telling what might be the outcome. The almost universal assumption which lies back of moralizing reflection and ethical exhortation in early times — that virtue and justice are the only safe way of get- ting on in the world, and should be sought as a matter of far- sighted prudence — becomes less obvious as it is pondered over. To the intelligence enlightened by the casting off of unthinking habits of moral judgment it does not seem evident that the righteous always prosper and the wicked come to grief. Injustice has its full share, if not more than its share, of the good things of life, and apparently enjoys them none the less for the crimes that have been committed to procure them. If then the motive of conduct is one’s own advantage and happiness — and what other end can main- tain itself ? — and if the fear of the gods, whose very existence is in question, is no longer before the eyes of the emancipated man, have virtue and justice themselves any other title to our respect than mere convention? It may be advisable often to yield to the prejudice in favor of these things; but if we can disregard them safely, and it is clearly to our interest to do so, The Early Moralists 49 it is folly to allow words like injustice’’ and ‘^evil” to stand in our way. There were not lacking men to draw this final conclusion. In the last resort, might is right. The law of nature is to satisfy, if we can, those appetites which nature has implanted in us in common with the rest of her creatures. ‘^For nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the weaker, and in many ways she shows among men as well as among animals that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior. ... If there were a man who had sufficient force, he would trample under foot all our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws, sinning against nature; the slave would rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and natural justice would shine forth.” ^ These conclusions were not often so nakedly expressed but they were in the air, not so much as the opinions of any group of individual thinkers as a state of mind in ‘‘ that great Sophist, the Public ” ; it is no Sophist, but a practical politician and man of the world, a despiser of philosophy, who stands in Plato as the most extreme and outspoken representative of the gospel of force. ^‘The Sophists do but fan and add fuel to the fire in which Greece, as they wander like ardent missionaries about it, is flaming itself away.” ^ 3. Protagoras and Gorgias, — In Plato’s dialogue, the Protagoras, we have an interesting picture of what the Sophists and their activities were like — a picture which we have no reason to suppose is not drawn to life, and which probably is no less true in that it is given a slightly satirical twist as viewed through the humorous eye of Socrates. Three of the four most famous names among the Sophists are in Athens, and a meeting has taken place at the house of Callias. Two of them play a minor role in the dialogue, as they do in the history of philosophy. ProdicMs of Ceos is known as an early grammarian of a sort, whose specialty is the discrimination of synonyms — an art which he proceeds at once to show off when the ^ Plato, Gorgias, 483 This, and the subsequent quotations from Plato, are from Jowett’s translation, Oxford University Press, American ed. by Chas. Scribner’s Sons. * Pater, Plato and Platonism. 50 A Student's History of Philosophy chance arrives in the dialogue. Hippias of Elis was a universal genius and foe to specialism, prepared to lecture on any subject, and claiming a proficiency in every art ; he is said to have appeared at the Olympic games gorgeously attired in a costume entirely of his own making down to the ring on his linger. Both arc entirely over- shadowed by Protagoras j the greatest figure of his day among the Sophists. The dialogue starts with an account of the excitement among the intelligentsia of Athens as the news goes about that Protagoras is in the city, the hurried gathering of his admirers be- fore daybreak, the visit of Socrates and a younger friend to Callias^ house where they find Hippias already answering questions about astronomy, Prodicus still abed but talking continuously in a boom- ing voice, and Protagoras walking up and down and discoursing to eager listeners. for me, when I saw their evolutions I was delighted with the admirable care they took not to hinder Protag- oras at any moment by getting in front, but whenever the master turned about and those with him, it was fine to see the orderly manner in which his train of listeners split up into two parties on this side and on that, and wheeling round formed up again each time in his rear most admirably.’’ Of Protagoras himself the picture drawn is respectful if not enthusiastic ; at least there is nc trace of hostility on Plato’s part. Protagoras is slightly pompous and dogmatic and does not take to criticism very kindly ; he is dis- posed to monopolize the conversation and to discourse at great length in spite of Socrates’ efforts to keep him to the point, to be more inclined to rhetoric than to accurate definition, and much more ready to instruct others than to learn himself. But on the whole he appears in a not unfavorable light as a man of learning, intelligence and eloquence, fully persuaded that he is promoting the good of his hearers and of society in general. Protagoras’ chief contribution to philosophy does not appear in the dialogue that goes by his name, but elsewhere Plato examines it in considerable detail.^ It is summed up in the still famous phrase, Man is the measure of all things. It is not wholly clear how far Protagoras meant to go in this ; perhaps it was intended pri- * In the Theaetetus. The Early Moralists 51 marily to repudiate the metaphysical pretensions of the early philosophers, and to call philosophy back to man and man’s affairs as the only thing which it is really important for us to know. But it certainly was understood by later thinkers, Plato included, as the expression of a thoroughgoing scepticism. Things are to me as they appear to me, and to you as they appear to you, and no ground exists for saying that one opinion is any truer than the other. There are many facts of experience that lend verisimilitude to such a claim, more particularly when it is applied to the facts of sense perception ; and since these facts had already been exploited by philosophers, as Protagoras must have been aware, it seems un- likely he would have put the matter as he did if he had not intended in some sense to subscribe to the sceptical consequences. Against this is the difficulty to be noted that he apparently did not draw the practical conclusions that might seem to be implied. In the dia^ logue there is no evidence of real moral scepticism, for example ; on the contrary, Protagoras accepts almost ostentatiously the same conceptions of virtue and the social good that are held by the ordinary man. Plato in the Theactetus suggests a possible way out of the apparent contradiction. About any matter of opinion it is possible to make two opposite statements ; but while both may equally be “ tiue” — — since we have no test of truth other than that it seems true to this or tha^ individual — nevertheless one may be better’^ than an- other ; it is more serviceable, that is, to human life. And as the sense perception of the man in normal health is better than the equally ^‘true” or real sensations that result from diseased or imperfect organs, so the common sense of mankind which has been embodied in laws and accepted social institutions has a similar pragmatic claim on our acceptance. It is the business of the educator to bring about by words the same change which the physician works by the aid of drugs. You cannot say that the sick man because he has one sort of sense impression is foolish, while the healthy man is wise ; and in the same way education does not aim to make men wiser, but to produce mental health by changing the worse state into the better. Plato does not give the impression 52 ^ HiU^tlsnfs History of Philosophy that this was an explanation that Protagoras actually advanced; but it would explain what seems to have been his attitude in practice. Thus he argues in the dialogue, as against the point made by Socrates that virtue has no teachers, that all men are teachers of virtue; we j/ick up knowledge from the common life about us, though this has to be extended by the familiar processes of edu- cation, by occasional correction from the laws, and by the wisdom of superior men, of whom Protagoras docs not deny that he is one. A more explicit scepticism might appear to be implied in another passage that has been preserved. ‘‘With regard to the gods,^' Protagoras writes, “ I cannot feel sure either that they are or that they are not, nor what they are hke in figure ; for there are many things that hinder sure knowledge, the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life.’’ It was not however with speculative theology that Greek religion was concerned, but with the observ- ances of public worship ; and we have no reason to suppose that here too Protagoras was not ready to conform to custom. The next most important Sophist was Gorgias, who also has given his name to one of Plato’s dialogues. Gorgias was a native of Sicily, and was already advanced in years when, in 427 b.c., he came to Athens as an ambassador from his city. His interest lay more in the direction of rhetoric than did that of Protagoras, and his influence on the development of prose style was considerable. As a philosopher his reputation rests on his sceptical extension of the Eleatic argument against Not-being to the knowledge of Being like- wise ; he sought to prove, first, that nothing w, secondly, that if there is any thing we cannot know it, and, finally, that even if we could know it we could not communicate our knowledge to anyone else. Here at any rate the probability would appear to be that Gorgias’ real purpose is not to expound a serious philosophy of scepticism and nihilism, but rather to demolish the pretensions of metaphysics in the interest of more practical concerns. § 8. Socrates I. Socrates (469-399 B.c.) was the son of an Athenian sculptor, but abandoned his father’s p»*ofession for the more congenial pursuit The Early Moralists S3 of philosophy. There is no more picturesque figure in the history of Greece. In personal appearance the very opposite of the Greek ideal, with protruding eyes, thick lips, snub nose and a peculiar gait, this was forgotten when one came under the charm of his person- ality and his conversation. And conversation was the business of his life. Living in the most frugal manner, his meat and drink of the cheapest sort, without shoes to his feet the whole year round, and clinging to a single threadbare cloak that served for summer and winter alike, he spent his time in the market-place or wherever men came together, satisfied if only he could find some one with whom to talk about the questions in which he took a perennial interest. “I have a benevolent habit, he says jokingly in one of Platons dialogues, '^of pouring out myself to everybody, and I would even pay for a listener if I couldn’t get one in any other way.” In con- sequence of his moderate and abstemious life his powers of endur- ance were remarkable. On military campaigns, besides showing great bravery in battle, he had an extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue and going without food ; ^^and when during a severe winter the rest either remained indoors, or, if they went out, had on no end of clothing, and were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felts and fleeces, in the midst of this Socrates, with his bare feet on the ice, and in his ordinary dress, marched better than any of the other soldiers who had their shoes on.” His courage was shown in peace as well as in war. When acting as president of the prytanes he had declined, in face of the popular clamor, to put to vote illegally the resolution condemning the generals at Arginusae ; and once again, in the perilous times under the Thirty Tyrants, he had, at the risk of his life, refused to act contrary to the laws at their bidding. This combination of rectitude of character with striking intellectual gifts — a combination which his personal peculiarities served rather to heighten than obscure — gave to Socrates an influence un- equalled by any thinker of his day. Socrates’ youth and early manhood were contemporaneous witli the most brilliant period of Athenian history. About the enlight- ened democratic leader Pericles there was gathered a galaxy of famous men drawn from the fields of literature, philosophy and art. 54 A Studenfs History of Philosophy Philosophy was represented in particular by Anaxagoras, but other eminent thinkers visited the city from time to time. Socrates seems not to have met Anaxagoras, but there is reason to believe that he was fully alive to the new scientific ideas that had made such a stir throughout the Hellenic world. When Aristophanes set out to satirize the intellectual modernism of the day in his comedy the Clouds, he chose Socrates to represent it. Socrates appears as the head of a school or Thinking Shop. One scientific tendency regarded Air as the instrument of thought; Socrates accordingly is found by his visitors suspended in a basket that he may get plenty of pure air for his thinking. With his disciples he is engaged in various scientific investigations, such as measuring the distance fleas can jump in terms of their own footprints. Aristophanes has often been regarded as intending here not to draw a picture of the historic Socrates, but only to give Socrates’ name to a composite picture of the scientists and Sophists generally. But this, highly unlikely in itself, is made still more improbable by the fact that Plato also definitely tells us that Socrates had passed through a period when he was much concerned with the physical speculations that were exercising the minds of scientists at the time — whether we think with air or blood or fire, whether organisms are brought about through a sort of fermentation by heat and cold, what is the cause of destruction and decay, and the like.’^ That he later abandoned such interests was due mainly, it would seem, to the vein of practicality which is one of his leading char- acteristics. He found the theories of the scientists altogether too speculative and pretentious to suit him ; there was too much guess- work in them, and they really didn’t explain things after all. In his later life, in the period when we know most about him, his intel- lectual interests had taken accordingly a different direction. Here we enter very controversial ground. There is no agreement among scholars about the actual character of Socrates’ contributions to philosophy, and the account that follows must therefore be taken as open to dispute. The trouble comes partly from the fact that we have two pictures of him that are very far apart, Xenophon * Phaedo, The Early Moralists 55 depicts him merely as an edifying moral teacher, and one whose runge of ideas, moreover, does not extend beyond the customary moral and religious commonplaces. In Plato, on the other hand, he is a genuine and original philosopher, with an explicit theory of the universe which anticipates, if indeed it is not identical with, the one that has commonly been attributed to Plato himself. There is a growing tendency to believe that Platons account is on the whole nearer to the truth ; but even if we grant this, difficulties still remain in the way of distinguishing between Socrates’ own ideas and the additions which Plato made to them. It will be necessary therefore to proceed with caution if we are not to get in trouble. Plato’s account, which on the surface seems to be intended, up to a point at least, to be genuinely biographical, is in brief as follows : ^ Dissatisfied with the explanations of the physicists, Socrates had turned eagerly to what he had been told was Anaxagoras’ attempt to account for things in terms of Mind. But this too disappointed him ; after all he found the new philosophy falling back on purely mechanical causes just like those that had preceded it. Accord- ingly he was led to strike out a new path. Instead of looking to the physical world, he turned his gaze within to the intellectual essences which the mind itself reveals. What is the cause of beautiful objects, for example? It is not their lovely color, or their shape, or any other of the particular qualities that in a given case may or may not be present. Can it be anything else than Beauty itself, absolute and intrinsic Beauty, in which the things we call beautiful somehow share ? This means that physical explanations are on the wrong track. We are not to say, for instance, that one man is greater or smaller than another by a head ; that is saying, first, that the greater is greater and the smaller is smaller by the same thing, and, secondly, that since a head is small the greater man is greater by something which is small. No, it is greatness alone that makes great things great, smallness that makes small things small, beauty that makes things beautiful, goodness that makes things good. That there exists such a thing as absolute beauty, absolute good- ness, absolute equahty, Socrates takes as self-evident; it is an ^ Phaedu, 96-102. 56 A Student's History of Philosophy assumption which, however he arrives at it, he never for a moment doubts. If then we take this as a starting point, where does it lead us? Some things to begin with we can say with considerable assurance. In the first place, Socrates is now concerned with the life of the spirit rather than with physical science. This by itself was a revolutionary innovation, and marks a fresh stage in the history of thought. Socrates’ philosophy is primarily a moral philosophy; it is occupied with questions about virtue, the good, the ends that lend value to human living. Furthermore — on this point all the accounts agree — we know that Socrates identified virtue with knowledge; and he believed that in some real sense virtue is no mere collection of separate virtues but is one and indivisible. We have to ask therefore what more concretely he may be supposed to mean by this. 2. We may start from an incident in Socrates’ life to which he apparently attached some importance. As he tells the story in Plato’s Apology, the report had come to him that Chaerophon, a friend of his, had put to the oracle at Delphi the question : Is any man living wiser than Socrates? and the reply had been that Socrates was indeed the wisest of mankind. Unable, in the consciousness of his own ignorance, to understand this, and vet not wanting to doubt the word of the god, Socrates had gone trom one man to another who was reputed wise that he might test this wisdom ; and in every case he had found a conceit of knowledge with nothing in reality to back it. A little questioning had quickly brought to light that each man was as ignorant as he of all the higher concerns of human life ; the only diflerence lay in the fact that all the rest supposed themselves to be very wise indeed, whereas Socrates, though he was as ignorant as they, at least knew that he knew nothing. He concluded, therefore, that it was this con- sciousness of his own ignorance to which the oracle had been refer- ring, and that, by thus commending him, the god had chosen him out as an instrument for pricking the bubble of universal self*' deception. Convinced profoundly that knowledge alone is salva- tion he saw that the first and essential step toward getting rid of the The Early Moralists 57 confused mass of opinion going by the name of knowledge was to make its inadequacy apparent. He was the divinely appointed gadfly given to the state, which is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.” On the negative side, accordingly, Socrates believed he had a mission to show up the false claims of that which ordinarily goes by the name of human wisdom, but which really is ignorance parading in the guise of knowledge. Throughout his life this occupied a good share of his endeavor. The process was kindly and sympathetic in dealing with his friends or with anyone who showed an open mind ; it was more caustic and ironic where an arrogant dogmatism was in evidence. But it is the first essential if a man is ever to arrive at that true knowledge in which virtue consists. “Know thyself” is the first duty of man ; and self-knowledge Socrates looked in vain to find. The carpenter, the smith, the flute player, the pilot, each knows his own business ; he trains himself for one definite thing, and he can tell you what that thing is and what purpose it serves. But for his vocation as a man there is no special training and no Uachers. There were the Sophists to be sure, who professed to educate men in the virtues of citizenship. But when one came down to cases this amounted only to a training in the superficial arts of the politician ; as to what really constitutes the good of man and of the state — what in itself virtue is — they are as ignorant as any one. But if we need knowledge for the simplest and humblest pursuits, most of all do we need it for that pursuit which is ultimate and supreme. Socrates’ task is thus fundamentally a moral and religious one. “ Men of Athens, I honor and love you ; but I shall obey God rather th^'n you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting every one whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, say- ing : O my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom, and truth, and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all ?” 58 A Student's History of Philosophy Socrates begins, then, by shaking the foundations of a false assurance of knowledge. Starting in with an appearance of agree- ment, and a depreciation of his own wisdom as compared with that which his interlocutor undoubtedly possesses, he induces the latter to offer a definition of the matter in hand. Then by a series of skilful questions he develops the most contradictory conclusions from this, until, as Euthyphro says, '‘somehow or other our argu- ments, on whatever grounds we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away” ; and the one with whom he is arguing is compelled to confess that he has never carefully considered the subject, and that his notions about it are based on mere confused opinion. This is the famous Socratic irony. But implied in this is a more positive assumption. If the ele- ments of knowledge did not exist below the surface of opinion, we should have no standard by which to correct our first thoughts. Socrates’ questioning is intended, therefore, not to leave men con- fused and doubting, but to disentangle and bring to light what implicitly is there already; he is an intellectual midwife to bring truth to its birth. If knowledge is possible at all, then down be- neath the unessential differences due to individual prejudices and opinions there is something on which men agree, or can be led to agree. The method of philosophy will consist in stripping off these outer husks and laying bare the universal element which they con- ceal; only when we thus have got down to fundamentals, wheix instead of taking our terms for granted in a dogmatic way we have tested their credentials and found out what really and essentially they stand for, do we have anything that deserves to be called real knowledge. Now in the first place such a statement means at least as much as this, that Socrates has gone beyond the sceptical and individual- istic tendencies implicit in the Sophistic movement. Instead of looking for man’s nature in those private desires, feelings and sensations which separate him from other men, he looked rather to the rational elements that bind all men together in the bonds of a ^alid knowledge and a universal moral insight. It was this tend- mey which Plato and Aristotle carried on, and which in their hands The Early Moralists S9 was to shape Greek thought in the form which left its most signifi- cant and lasting impress on the future. What we have now to examine is the sense which it bore to Socrates himself. 3. In Xenophon’s picture Socrates appears, as has been said, as a rather plodding exponent of the customary virtues, for which he has neat and commonplace definitions to which he leads his hearers up by a process of questioning that only in appearance represents a genuine search for truth still undiscovered. It is a radically different Socrates that we meet in Plato. Even in the shorter and simpler dialogues which were undoubtedly the first to be written, there is almost no trace of the didacticism which makes out of Socrates an earlier Dr. Johnson ; while he is engaged with the same general subjects as in Xenophon — justice and temperance, piety and courage — it is in the spirit of the truthseeker rather than of the exhorter. If there is one thing about Socrates that is well attested, it is the profession he makes of his own ignorance ; and the almost entire lack of definite conclusions in these dialogues, while perplex- ing to the reader, must be regarded therefore as far truer to historical fact than Xenophon’s cut-and-dried definitions. There is also a much more important and fundamental difference. This meets us most conspicuously in a second group of dialogues, in- cluding among others the Phacdo^ the Symposium and the Phacdrus, where Plato’s literary art comes near to attaining its highest per- fection ; and since one cannot go much farther in the interpretation either of Socrates or of Plato until he has formed some opinion about this, it will be necessary to consider it more carefully. Briefly it has to do with a very decided touch of mysticism attributed to Socrates — a mysticism which in a thin and sentimentalized form has reached us in the so-called doctrine of “ Platonic love,” and which historically connects itself with the Orphic mysteries and with Pythagoreanism on its religious side. Are we justified in ascribing this to Socrates — who in that case must have been a very different sort of man indeed from the sort that Xenophon presents — or does it come originally from Plato, who creates a new and unhistorical Socrates to serve as his mouthpiece? As against this last alternative it is not very easy to suppose, for 6o A Student's History of Philosophy one thing, that Plato's literary conscience would have permitted him to take such liberties with the character of a well-known Athenian, only recently martyred, whom he himself held in affectionate remembrance. In the Symposium, for example, where a particu- larly lifelike portrait is drawn for us, we find Socrates present at a banquet with his cronies, each of whom contributes to the entertain- ment an after-dinner eulogy on Love ; if now Plato when he comes to Socrates goes out of his way to represent him as temperament- ally at very near the opposite extreme of character from what he really was, he at least is sinning against every canon of art. Nor are other difficulties lacking. Plato as we know him from his dialogues was an intellectually fastidious man whom we scarcely should expect to find much attracted by the homely and somewhat uncouth Orphic theology and life unless it came recommended to him from some trusted source, and no such likely source can be pointed to other than Socrates himself ; it was only later that Plato seems to have come into direct contact with the Pythagoreans, and then chiefly on the mathematical and scientific side. In Socrates’ case, on the contrary, the evidence goes to show that an Orphic tendency did actually exist. The inner voice which spoke to him every now and then to hold him back from some course of conduct, the disposition to take dreams and oracles seriously as divine messages, his notorious trances — at one time when in camp, to the amazement of his fellow soldiers who timed him, he stood in a trance out of doors from early morning on one day till sunrise on the next — all indicate the presence of a mystical vein. We seem fairly safe in following Plato, then, and assuming that among Socrates’ beliefs the traditional doctrine^ of the Orphics and Pythagoreans held an important place — the doctrine of the body as the tomb of the soul, of transmigration as a moral economy through which the deeds of the body are punished or rewarded hy reincarnation in a lower or a higher form, of a realm of true reality above the world of sense to which the soul aspires, and of philosophy? as a method of salvation whereby the soul, through feeding on the truth congenial to its divine nature, is enabled to escape the wheel Df birth and attain to the final consummation of a unity with God. The Early Moralists 6i To the body are due our aberrations and failures to see the truth ; ^^it draws the soul down into the region of the changeable, where it wanders and is confused ; the world spins around her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence.’’ For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food, and also is liable to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after truth, and, by filling us so full of loves, and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly, prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a thought. For whence come wars and fightings and factions? whence but from the body and the lust of the body?” ‘'Each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail, and rivets the soul to the body, and engrosses her, and makes her believe that to be true which the body affirms to be true ; and from agreeing with the body, and having the same delights, she is obliged to have the same habits and ways, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure to the world below, but is always saturated with the body.” Philosophy alone is the means through which enfranchise- ment is to be secured. "When returning into herself the soul reflects, then she parses into the realm of purity and eternity and immortality and unchangeableness which are her kindred ; and with them she ever lives, and is not let or hindered. There she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging, is unchanging ; and this state of the soul is called wisdom.” ^ It is but partially indeed that we can attain this in our present life, for we are still clogged by the weight of the body; before the common variety of soul can attain its true destiny it must pass through many reincarnations and undergo many adventures. Only the soul of the philosopher may pass at once to the celestial realm and be purged completely from the taint of earth. 4. It is this general background which we find implied in Socra- tes’ discourse in the Symposium. Love — the subject of the Symposium — is not, as the previous speaker had declared, posses- sion, but the desire for a good in which the soul as yet is lacking ; for no man desires what he already has. What is its true object * Phafdo, 79, 66, 8j 62 A Student's History of Philosophy then ? Socrates’ answer he professes to have learned from a wis^ woman of Mantineia. Eros is neither a God nor a mere mortal, but a spirit intermediate between the two. He is the child of Plenty by the beggarmaid Need, inheriting from both his parents ; and it is thus his nature to aspire after something of which he feels his present lack. Moreover Love desires the possession of its good eternally; this is why parents wish to perpetuate themselves in their offspring, and why men aim at an enduring fame. But the longing for an eternal good does not stop here ; it manifests itself in higher and more adequate forms. It will pass from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, from these to the beauty that informs social laws and institutions, then to the intellectual beauties of the sciences. And still one higher stage remains — the search of the philosopher for the supreme beauty which finally shall satisfy the soul’s cravings. ^‘He who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or in the likeness of a face, or hands, or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, nor existing in any other being ; but Beauty only, absolute, separate, simple, everlast- ing, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, js imparted to the ever growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He only uses the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upward for the sake of that other Beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute Beauty, and at last knows what the essence of Beauty is.” ^ Here once more we have arrived then at the point to which we were brought in Plato’s account of Socrates’ intellectual develop- ment — the conviction that behind the flux of sensible appearance, and somehow capable of explaining it, there lies a most real world which is subject neither to generation nor decay, and which, what- ever else we may say about it, we can at least be assured is the abode * Symposium, 211 The Early Moralists 63 alike of perfect Beauty and of perfect Goodness. And if we are justified in actually ascribing this to Socrates, it is here we shall plainly have to look to find that virture which is knowledge, and which constitutes the end of the Socratic search. From such a standpoint all the virtues will be one at bottom ; for it is only the oneness of the universal good that makes particular good things possible at all. And knowledge in the strictest sense is virtue, not a mere means to its attainment in the sense that a knowledge of economics is a way of getting money ; the beatific vision is itself the goal of life and the end of striving. So too a man cannot really know the good and still follow evil ; he cannot look upon its perfect beauty without loving it, and love will constrain his action. Now this result, if we accept it, will make it necessary to revise one traditional way of understanding the Socratic quest. It has often been supposed, largely through the influence of Xenophon once more, that Socrates’ main interest lay in drawing up logical definitions of the several virtues, framing adequate intellectual ‘‘concepts” of them. If this had been the case, there seems no reason why he should have continued to insist so strongly on his ignorance; such concepts are not beyond the reach of an acute intelligence, and Xenophon in fact represents Socrates as having no great trouble in arriving at them. It is true that absolute Good and absolute Beauty also might be conceived as the outcome of such a logical process of stripping away particular diflerences and leaving behind only what is common. But this also is an easily attainable goal ; and in neither case have we any satisfactory ex- planation for what in Socrates is most distinctive — the love and fervor which the good is able to inspire in him. It is just this emotional appeal that the mystical strain in Socrates accounts for. After all, when we get down to fundamentals, it is on moral assurance and not on ignorance and scepticism that Socrates’ chief emphasis is placed. We may not have what science or com- mon sense calls knowledge. But in his soul man does know the good, and it is just the need of clarifying this knowledge he already implicitly possesses that guides the philosopher in his task. “Thi? is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general. ^ Student's History of Philosophy and in which I might, perhaps, fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas 1 know but little of the world below I do not sup- pose that I know. But I do know’’ — and here the positive side comes in — “ that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.” Knowledge is thus in the last resort the knowledge of those spirit- ual ^‘values” which are innate in man’s constitution, and which reveal to him the true nature of the ends that lend significance to his existence. This is why they cannot be taught in the ordinary sense. You cannot make a man admit that anything is good unless he himself has the power of feeling this is so ; the true business of the teacher is not to convey new information or to put into the mind ideas that were not there before, but to lead his pupils to see and appreciate on their own account the truths by which men live. Such knowledge cannot therefore be a product of conceptual defini- tion. It is an insight native to man’s moral being, which has to be presupposed before any attempt at definition can get under way , the task of philosophy is not to create it by what we now call logical induction, but to clear away the confusing unessentials by which it has been overlaid. The very fact that we can judge particular things to be imperfect shows that we already have a standard by reference to which they fall short. Take an instance from geom- etry : We never have seen the perfect circle, and yet we know that any given circle comes short of perfection ; how can we know this except as we are able to compare the visible circle with the ideal circle for which it gives the cue, and which we never can see with the bodily eye? And if thus it is impossible to suppose such patterns to have sprung from sense experience, they can only be explained as traces left upon the soul in a previous existence. Knowledge is recollection; before that union with the body which has immersed it in the world of sense, the soul lived in the realm of true reality where it came face to face with God and the changeless Ideas. So far perhaps we are entitled to go. But there is one further step that is more debatable. It has appeared that Socrates had The Early Moralists 6S probably been influenced by the Pythagorean philosophy. Now Pythagoreanism had two sides. On one side it is a method of salvation first of all, a way of escape from the imperfections of the bodily existence into a purer realm where man becomes one with the divine ; and it is with this that the doctrine of the Sympo- sium most obviously connects. But Pythagoras had been a scientist as well, who wished to account for the empirical world with which science is primarily concerned. This likewise he did through his theory of Forms — the universal mathematical patterns which, imposed on the Unlimited, bring the structure of the world as we know it into being. Beauty and Justice and the Good are then Pythagorean Forms. But they no longer are conceived by Socrates as numbers.'' Soc- rates has shifted the whole problem from the outer to the inner world, from science to morals; the things of which, since they are not physical, the Pythagoreans had been unable to give any coher- ent account, now represent the proper and essential meaning of the forms, though other forms more closely connected with the world of nature may still be thought of as existing. And with the immate- rializingof the forms a new set of problems arises for thephilosopner. How are forms, no longer physical in character, to be connected up with the world with which physics deals, and how do they account for — how even can they be reconciled with — the processes of nature where things have no continuing existence but are all the time coming into being and decaying? And if there are many forms, how arc they to be thought of as related alike to one another and to the comprehensive Good ? Socrates may or may not have busied himself with questions such as these, and so have been the originator of that specific “theory of Ideas" of which Plato has traditionally been regarded as the author. But the evidence is less conclusive here than for his acceptance of forms in their reli- gious or mystical significance ; and since we know tliat these were in any case problems that much exercised Plato, we may follow the usual practice and reserve their treatment to a later point, leaving the question open as to just how the credit is to be divided. 66 A Student^s History of Philosophy 5. It is not strange that Socrates should have raised up enemies 0.S well as friends. Few people can bear with equanimity the pub- lic exposure of their own ignorance ; and Socrates’ conception of his moral mission made him careless of the hard feelings he might excite. He fell, too, under the public suspicion which the sceptical and irreligious tendencies in the Sophistic movement had aroused in the minds of lovers of the old ways, although he was hirr self of a deeply religious nature and an observer of the customary forms of worship. More important still, his political sympathies were in question ; and the Athenian people were in a suspicious mood. Soc- rates probably had not hesitated to expose the faults of democracy, and he had had close relations with some of the young aristocrats, notably Alcibiades the stormy petrel of Athenian politics, and Critias, who had been a leading spirit in the aristocratic revolution that had just had a brief day of power. Not long after the over- throw of the Thirty, therefore, he was publicly accused of denying the gods of the city and of corrupting its youths, and was brought to trial. If he had been willing to adopt a conciliatory tone he probably would have escaped ; but he refused to lower himself by flattering the people when he was conscious of no guilt, and he was condemned to drink the hemlock. And Crito made a sign to the servant ; and the servant went in and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Socrates said : You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The man answered : You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poi- son will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, as his man- ner was, took the cup and said : What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not? The man answered : We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said ; yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world — may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. Then holding The Early Moralists 67 the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank oflF the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sor- row ; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast ; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a com- panion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself un- able to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I fol- lowed ; and at that moment Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not ofifend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that we were ashamed, and refrained our tears ; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs ; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel ; and he said, No ; and then his leg, and so upwards and up- wards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself and said : When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words) — he said : Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius ; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito ; is there anything else? There was no answer to this ques- tion ; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the at- tendant uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known. ^ Phaedo, 117. 68 A Sluden^s History of Philosophy § 9. The School of Megara. Aristippus and the Cytenaics. Antisthenes and the Cynics I. The School of Me gar a. — Along with the more important de- velopment of Socrates’ teaching which we shall meet with when we come to Plato, there were several distinct schools which traced their origin to him, some of them as far apart as they very well could be. One of these, whose interest lay primarily in metaphysics, was the school of Megara founded by Euclides. Euclides besides being a disciple of Socrates was also an Eleatic ; and he used Socrates’ conception of the Good to give a more significant content to the Parmenidean One, with which indeed it might well appear to have an affinity by reason of its character of universality and indivisi- bility and unchanging being. As an Eleatic, Euclides denied of course the reality of the world of sense ; and the way he went about to prove this was by the form of argument which Zeno had popularized, and which came to be called Eristic. This method later developed into a rather cheap form of logical quibbling such as we come across in several of Plato’s dialogues; this gave it a bad name, though a real problem underlay it to which Plato was the first to supply an answer — the problem of what we really mean when we say that a thing ‘4s” or “is not” lx) and so. More permanently important for the later history of thought were two other tendencies — the Cynicism of Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaicism of Aristippus. Both of these turn their backs on metaphysics, and connect themselves rather with Socrates’ ethical interest; and in them we meet with the first clear and definite formulation of two great types of ethical theory which ever since have been engaged in bitter strife with one another. It is natural to suppose that both alike could profess to go back to Socrates only because Socrates had left so many loose ends in his own ethical doctrines. That virtue is man’s highest good, and that virtue is intimately bound up with knowledge or insight — of this he was as- sured. But virtue is good for what ? for its own sake ? This does not seem altogether satisfactory to men’s ordinary way of thinking ; The Early Moralists 6g to say that the supreme good is virtue, and that virtue is insight into the good, might appear to be going in a circle. And if we try to go farther there is only one answer that seems obvious and un- ambiguous to common sense ; the end is happiness or pleasure. All men will agree that pleasure is a good in its own right, needing no justification by reference to a remoter end ; and it is the only good about which they would so agree. 2. The Cyrenaics. — Such a way of thinking, into which Soc- rates must no doubt have seemed to fall at times, especially when meeting men on their own ground, is erected by Aristippus of Gy- rene to the position of a central doctrine. Such a doctrine prob- ably never has received a more clear-cut formulation than in this its first fully articulate expression. Aristippus turns away com- pletely from the outer world, about which, as the Protagorean scepticism had shown, we can have no valid common knowledge, to the one thing that we can really know and that really holds an interest for us — our own feelings and sensations. Plere, in the feeling of pleasure that comes immediately home to me, I have something that I do not need to test by any further standard- It neither demands nor is capable of proof ; if it is felt as good it really 'is good, because goodness has no other meaning than felt good- ness. It makes no difference if another man declines to call it good, or indeed if I change my own belief about it ; the only good with which I am concerned is what is good for me, and good for me now. Between pleasures there is no intrinsic difference of quality, of higher and lower ; all pleasures alike in the end are pleasures of the body, and the only thing we need to ask is, which is the most pleas- urable? Furthermore, since we live only in the present, it is the pleasure of the moment that concerns us. We have nothing to do with a past no longer in existence, or with a future that has not yet come to be ; not only does present feeling have a vividness and poignancy which is lacking in memory and anticipation, but we cannot tell anyhow what the future consequences are going to be, and so we are likely if we give them too much thought to lose the substance for a shadow. The wise man therefore will take pleasure as it comes, and make the most of it ; the ideal of life is to live from 70 A Studenfs History of Philosophy moment to moment filling each with the fullest delight that sens(^ and mind alike are capable of receiving. Unfortunately for Aristippus, however, this is a plan of life which simply cannot be lived up to in any literal way. Our acts have consequences which we do not intend, and so in our well-meant pursuit of pleasure we continually are blundering upon pain and loss. In practice therefore he was forced to modify to an extent the thoroughgoing nature of his doctrine, and allow a place for the Socratic insight. Only the wise man can be truly and permanently happy — he who does not let himself be carried off his feet by the rush of his passion, who can enjoy while at the same time he stands above enjoyment as its master. He must have the ability to weigh and compound his pleasures rightly and,, while he seizes on the fleeting moment, at the same time to look beyond the moment and choose in view of the probable consequences he foresees. Since it is the part of wisdom therefore to avoid pain as well as to win pleasure, the life of sensuous enjoyment will have to be checked and moderated somewhat in favor of the less intense but safer joys of the mind. It is not that any shame attaches to the senses, or that any higher law exists to which they are subordinate. There is no particular reason why I should not commit a so-called “im- moral act if the temptation is great enough and I can get away with it; a wise man, says Theodorus, “may steal and commit adultery and sacrilege at proper seasons, for none of these actions is disgraceful by nature if one can put out of sight the common opinion about them which owes its existence to the consent of fools.” However, prudential reasons do exist for going slowly — not only the popular discredit that attaches to certain acts, but the more active penalties that society may inflict, as well as the natural consequences that follow from immoderate indulgence. Of course it follows that society will have no constitutive part to play in a rational scheme of life. The good at which I aim is my own good and not the general happiness, as modern hedonists commonly have been disposed to hold. Cyrenaicism is not indeed, like its Cynic rival, positively anti-social. The wise man will take the world as he finds it, and pick up such pleasures as he can from The Early Moralists 71 the social amenities. But society, while it may be the source of i:ertain secondary values, has no intrinsic worth ; friendship for instance is not disinterested, but has its justification in what I can get out of it for myself. And certainly the philosopher will net spend himself for the benefit of the state. ^'1 do not dream for a moment/’ Xenophon makes Aristippus say to Socrates, ‘‘of ranking myself in the class of those who wish to rule. In fact, considering how serious a business it is to cater for one’s private needs, I look upon it as the mark of a fool not to be content with that, but to further saddle oneself with the duty of providing the rest of the community with whatever they may be pleased to want. If any one desires to have a heap of pother himself, and be a nuisance to the rest of the world, I will educate him in the manner suggested ; but for myself I beg to be enrolled amongst those who wish to spend their days as easily and pleasantly as possible.” After the same fashion Theodorus : “It is not reasonable that a wise man should hazard himself for his country, and endanger wisdom for a set of fools.” There are various contributions that Cyrenaicism might be thought to make to an ethical ideal, but since they stand out much more clearly in the later form given to hedonism at the hands of Epicurus there will be no need to dwell upon them here. It is true hedonism leaves no room for refined sentiments about the good and the just, for the beauty of righteousness or the nobility of duty. But in compensation it offers a clearcut view of life with no non- sense about it, lending itself to what is intellectually the simplest and most straightforward of all ethical theories, and appealing powerfully to the natural man. The drawback is that the universe does not always seem to be arranged for the purpose of enabling gentlemen to avoid all disagreeable duties and to live “as easily and pleasantly as possible.” Accordingly this logic of experience led among the later Cyrenaics to a growing tendency to shift the emphasis from the positive feeling of pleasure to the negative good of a freedom from pain — a tendency that reached its culmination in the open pessimism of Ihgesias. Hegesias feels so strongly how ill-calculated life is to yif^M even a balance of pleasure that ha 72 A Student's History of Philosophy denies it any value. ‘‘Life only appears a good thing to a fool; to the wise man it is indifferent.” Instead he turns his eyes to the painlessness of death ; and this thought he presented so persua- sively that he was known as the “advocate of death” or suicide. 3. The Cynics. — As against Aristippus, Antisthenes and the Cynics took their start from another and more characteristic side of Socrates’ teaching. “Virtue for virtue’s sake” is a moral slogan which has certain obvious advantages over pleasure in the way of edification. But before adopting it we have the preliminary and not quite easy task of deciding what it means. When we hear such a phrase today the meaning usually is not far to seek ; it stands for the supremacy of the conventionally accepted moral duties about whose authority men are never to ask questions. But this has nothing in common with the Cynic meaning ; in fact they outraged public sentiment by their attack on such conventional virtues. It was in a very different direction that the Cynic looked for the content to virtue that was necessary to give it rational standing. The hint toward their own doctrine came from Socrates, if not expressly from his words at any rate from his life. Xenophon calls attention to this side of Socrates in the reply which he repre- sents him as making to Antiphon when he is taunted with his frugal way of living and with the absence of all pleasures from his life. “Again, if it be a question of helping our friends or country, which of the two will have the larger leisure to devote to these objects? he who leads the life which I lead to-day ? or he who lives in the style which you deem so fortunate? Which of the two will adopt a soldier’s life more easily? the man who Cannot get on without expensive living, or he to whom whatever comes to hand suffices? Which will be the readier to capitulate and cry mercy in a siege? a man of elaborate wants, or he who can get along happily with the readiest things to hand? You, Antiphon, would seem to sug- gest that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance ; I hold a different creed. To have no wants at all is, to my mind, an attri- bute of godhead; to have as few wants as possible the nearest approach to godhead.” Whether the particular instance is his- The Early Moralists 73 torical or not. there can be no doubt that one of the things in Socrates that most impressed his contemporaries was the simplicity of his life, and its freedom from the pressure of those wants and ambitions that complicate living for the ordinary man. Here accordingly Antisthenes found the answer he was looking for. If virtue, as the rational conduct of life, is to be an end in itself, and bring satisfaction quite apart from anything outside it, it follows that the course of our life must be freed as much as pos- sible from the chances of the outer world, whi h are constantly liable to interlere with our happiness if this is made dependent on them. It must be freed from everything that does not lie wholly within the power of the mind itself ; and this can only come about ds we suppress the desires which make things attractive or fearful. That is the only rational and virtuous life which has the fewest possible wants, and which is thus, in so far as may be, self-centered and self-sufficient. Such an ideal might well be interpreted in a way to make it decidedly inviting to a mind with any tinge of moral enthusiasm. The Cynic however ran the risk of losing much of its appeal by pressing it rather far. In his opposition of nature ” to convention, he set out to rid himself not only of those artificial wants that com- plicate and enervate life, but of all ties whatsoever that bind a man to the rest of the world. Antisthenes found a logical basis for this attitude in his strong opposition to that other side of Socrates’ teaching, developed by Plato in particular, which finds true reality in the universal “forms” rather than in the particular things in which they are embodied. For Antisthenes, particulars alone are real ; a man is just himself and not an instance of a more inclusive class, and to find himself he has accordingly to strip off the qualities that make him a social being in favor of a few residual wants that cannot be escaped — sex and food and shelter. Thus marriage and the family go by the board, since the fundamental needs of sex and reproduction can be satisfied without them. All forms of government are rejected as equally bad. Nationality and pa- triotism have no place among the virtues for one whose country ’s the entire world. The economic arrangements of society are 74 A Student's History of Philosophy useless if a man has no economic wants that cannot easily be met. Religion as a system of rites and institutions interjected between man and the gods is entirely unnecessary. The Cynic thus places himself deliberately outside the current of the world’s life, but it is not because, like the early Christian, he finds here no abiding city and so looks for another and a heavenly. He breaks all national and civic bonds, not to enter into some higher life, but to be free from bonds altogether. Like the Cyrenaic he is a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world ; but in neither case does the term stand for any enthusiasm for humanity, but only for a negation of social duties. In the midst of civilized society he tries to live in a state of nature and lead the existence of a savage. Diogenes wanders about Greece with his beggar’s staff and wallet, having no other shelter than a tub, and throws away his cup as a last useless luxury on seeing a child drink from his hands. Such an attitude might call for sympathy as a somewhat osten- tatious acceptance of an enforced exclusion from the goods of civi- lization. Cynicism was, indeed, essentially the philosophy of the poor man, who already knew what it was to feel wants unsatisfied before he made a virtue of his necessity. But the Cynic did not stop here. Common decency itself he places among the conven- tions of which he prides himself on being rid ; and doctrines such as the community of women, and even the harmlessness of eating human flesh, are propounded in a rather offensive form. Under these conditions ethical and intellectual ideals could hardly in the end survive. When the human relationships that constitute the ’central fact of the ethical life were torn away the result was natu- rally a moral temper that sometimes approached the grossness of the animal ; and with no content for the intellect to feed upon it too could have no healthy growth. The dominant characteristic of most of the Cynics came to be a Pharisaic pride in their own spiritual poverty, which showed itself in a flaunting of their peculi- arities in the face of every one, and in an arrogant criticism of others ; I see your pride, says Socrates to Antisthenes, through the holes in your cloak. The indei.endence which they prized almost more than anvthing else was the freedom of a sharp tongue which The Early Moralists 75 held no man in reverence — an independence typified by Diogenes ordering Alexander to stand out of his sunlight. The truth in Cyni- cism passed over to the later Stoics, as the Cyrenaic philosophy was revived in Epicureanism ; but in Stoicism this is so much more impressively formulated that we may postpone any further consideration of it for the present. LITERATURE Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools. Grote, History of Greece^ Vol. 8. Taylor, V aria Socratic a. Taylor, Plato's Biography of Socrates. Plato, Earlier Dialogues. Xenophon, Memorabilia. Forbes, Socrates. Watson, Hedonistic Theories. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, Seth, Study of Ethical Principles. Pater, Marius the Epicurean. PLATO AND ARISTOTLE § 10 . Plato Plato was born in 427 b.c., and so was still under thirty when Socrates was put to death. He came from a distinguished family on both his father’s and his mother’s side, the latter tracing her descent to a kinsman and friend of Solon, the great Athenian law- giver. The political sympathies of the family were traditionally with the democracy, and Plato had looked forward to a political career in Athens. But the course of pohtical democracy at the close of the fifth century was not of a sort to encourage this ambition in him, and Socrates’ execution seems even to have left him not quite certain of his personal safety ; at any rate he left the city soon after, and for some ten years we have little reliable information about him. He stopped for a time at Megara with Euclides, Soc- rates’ Eleatic follower ; and at the end of the period we find him in southern Italy, where he must have come into first-hand contact with the leaders of Pythagorean thought. Here he also made an acquaintance which was to have consequences later on. Dion, a brother-in-law of Dionysius the famous tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, was an able man with intellectual interests, and through his friendship Plato was led to make his first visit to Syracuse; but he was too outspoken to hit it off very well with Dionysius, and according to tradition the tyrant handed him over to the Spartans who sold him into slavery. At about the age of forty Plato was back in Athens. By this time he had written the minor dialogues, and in all likelihood a major part at least of a second group — including among others the Protagoras, Phaedrus, Phaedo and Symposium — in which his literary art reaches its highest perfection. Soon after his return he founded the school which was to make him the most prominent !76 Plato and Aristotle 77 intellectual figure in Greece throughout the rest of his fife. This was established on his private estate situated near the Academy, a gymnasium just outside the city ; and it almost immediately became the educational center of Greece, attracting students from every part of the Hellenic world. To this school Plato devoted the remainder of his life, his teaching being interrupted however by two episodes. These had to do with Plato’s only incursion into active political affairs, though indirectly his influence was considerable; the Aca- demic curriculum was in fact largely directed toward a training in political science and statesmanship. After the death of Dionysius he was persuaded by Dion to come to Sicily and undertake the edu- cation of Dionysius the Younger. Dionysius, at that time a man of about thirty, while possessed of some natural ability was almost totally uneducated ; his father had been suspicious of his heir and probable successor and had kept him from taking any part in public matters. Here was an opportunity such as Plato had looked forward to ; the union of supreme authority in a state with the pos- sibility of a true philosophical training might conceivably result in the philosopher-king of his imagination, and a sense of duty led him somewhat reluctantly to try his hand. At first he was measur- ably successful, and made an impression on the young king’s nature. For a time philosophy was the fashion in the Sicilian court ; the floors were strewn with sand, and the courtiers suspended their revels and busied themselves tracing geometrical figures. But Dionysius’ nature was too feeble and court influences too much opposed to a reign of virtue and reason for this to keep up very long ; and at the outbreak of a war Plato was permitted to follow his inclinations and return to Athens. He still remained however on good terms with Dionysius, and some correspondence passed between them ; and when later Dionysius insisted that he fulfil a promise to return to Syracuse he allowed himself again to be per- suaded. The second venture was even less successful than the first, and Plato, thoroughly disillusioned, had some difficulty in getting away. Finally Dionysius was induced to let him depart and he came back to Athens, this time for good. Plato died in 347 B c. 78 A Siadenl's History of Philosophy I. ETHICAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. THE REPUBLIC 1. The Republic. — It is in the Republic that we find the most comprehensive expression of what the world has come to think of as the Platonic philosophy, and it will offer therefore the best starting-point for a summary. In writing the Republic Plato may have drawn, and probably did draw, to an indefinite extent upon reminiscences of Socrates ; but the large impression which it leaves is that we are dealing here with a thinker who has a more carefully reasoned system of philosof)hy than we can easily attribute to Soc- rates himself. The whole volume is a cumulative argument, into which there are subtly interwoven opinions on almost every subject of philosophical importance ; of the Socratic casualness and “igno- rance” there are few signs. And as a matter of fact the book seems most readily explained in terms of a Platonic rather than a Socratic purpose. Like the Phaedrus, which was written at about the same period in Plato’s life, and which has the appearance of being meant to justify the need of a more thorough training for public life than rhetoric in its common acceptation gave, the Repub- lic has many of the earmarks of a manifesto or prospectus of the new school which Plato had just started or was about to start. A con- siderable portion of the book is engaged directly in laying down the essentials of a sound education, starting from the earliest years of childhood, and culminating in a university curriculum. Still more fundamentally, it has to do with the possibility of an education that shall fit a man for public life ; the central plot of the book is con- cerned with virtue in the form of “justice,” alike as the end of individuals and of the state, and we are led up to the first systematic attempt at a political science. We may accordingly assume that here the Socratic thought has passed through the mind of Plato and represents, roughly at any rate, his own views at the moment. 2. The Nature of Justice. — As in Socrates, the underlying ques- tion one has first to answer before education can proceed is the question, What is the nature of the end in which man finds his well-being, the “virtue” which is the expression of his proper function as a man? The discussion starts from a consideration Plato and Aristotle 79 of the particular and very typical virtue — justice. Men say that justice is honorable and good ; what is their ground for such a statement ? In point of fact, unless they simply take it for granted on the evidence of a general moral agreement among mankind, they usually go to work to substantiate and to recommend it by an appeal to consequences. ^'Parents and tutors are always telling their sons and their wards that they are to be just ; but why ? Not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation, in the hope of obtaining some of those offices and marriages and other advantages that Glaucon was enumerating as accruing to the just from a fair reputation ; and they throw in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of blessings which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious. And this accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says that for the just the gods make ‘ The oaks to bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle, And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their own fleeces.’ And Homer has a very similar strain ; for he speaks of one whose fame is * As the fame of some blameless king, who iiKe a God Maintains justice, for whom the black earth brings forth WTieat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit, And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish.’ Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son offer the just ; they take them down into the world below, where they have the saints feasting on couches with crowns on their heads, and passing their whole time in drinking ; their idea seems to be that an immortality of drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. But about the wicked there is another strain ; they bury them in a slough, and make them carry water in a sieve ; that is their por- tion in the world below, and even while living they bring them to infamy.”^ But what if one sees fit to doubt the cogency of this appeal? What if, as he looks about the world, he sees the wicked triumph ^ Rf public, 36 So A Studenfs History of Philosophy and the righteous man despised, injustice seated in high places tyrannizing over the just and making their lot miserable? What if his reason tells him that the gods of whom the poets sing are only myths, or, if they exist, have no concern with human affairs ; and so men can look beyond the grave, with no fear of meeting there with any punishment for their misdeeds ? Is there still any reason why a man should follow justice rather than its opposite ? Doubt- less the reputation for justice passes current in the world for a cer- tain value; but if one could keep the appearance without being hampered with the reality, would he not be so much the better off ? Suppose we take the most extreme case imaginable — an unjust man who possesses all the things that men call blessings, and who, in spite of his inner corruption, contrives that every one should deem him righteous, and passes to his grave full of years and honors ; and, over against him, the just man who has no reward whatever beyond his own consciousness of rectitude, who goes through life a prey to every kind of wretchedness and misfortune brought on him by his very righteousness, and who, moreover, has the reputa- tion ever3rwhere of being actually unjust. Can we still say in such a case that the life of the just man alone is truly blessed, or that justice is anything but an evil ? Yes, says Plato ; in spite of all it is only the just life that has any real worth. The consequences in the way of pain or pleasure make not the slightest odds. The good man who suffers unjustly is still more to be envied than the tyrant who persecutes him. The wron^ doer who enjoys his ill-gotten gains unmolested is not the happier for his immunity ; rather he is the more miserable if he be not made to meet with retribution. This then is the paradox which Plato’s theory of the good must justify. Clearly it will be necessary to know, first, just what it is we mean by justice and the just life ; and the need for answering this leads Plato to attempt a psychology of the human soul. For if virtue is an attribute of man’s nature, we must be able to define in what this nature consists. In its primitive form the soul, or ghost, had commonly been con- ceived as a sort of fine matter, which in Homer may be seen sepa- Plato and Aristotle 8i rating itself from the body like a smoke at death, and about which there centered such vague notions as the Greeks possessed of immor- tality and of future retribution or rewards. But in this sense the soul plainly is of small account as an explanation of the concrete processes that make up our actual experience. Toward a more em- pirical psychology the Greeks also had made some progress in an un- systematic way ; it had been a necessity, indeed, of their political life. When political affairs are carried on by free discussion, and in- fluence won not by arbitrary force but by persuasion, a certain rough knowledge of the workings of the human mind is indispensable. The successful orator must to a certain extent have classified men in types, and made himself familiar with the sort of motive that is likely to appeal to each ; and thus there had grown up a con- siderable body of practical wisdom that dealt with psychological processes. The beginnings of a more scientific treatment had like- wise been made by the philosophers ; in particular, thought had ueen separated from sensation, and of sensation various theories were current. And among the Pythagoreans, under the influence of their religious motive, the soul itself had reappeared as a philo- sophically significant conception, and crude beginnings made to- wards its analysis. The method of psychology was still, however, too little developed to permit Plato to go at his task directly by an examination of the individual consciousness ; and so he approaches it in a roundabout way. What we are after is to get an understanding of what justice is as apj)lied to the human soul. But the word “justice^’ is also used in an objective sense, in connection with the life of the state. If we turn first then to the study of justice as it is writ large in the state, we shall make our task an easier one ; afterwards, unless the two are quite distinct, we can transfer our results to the more ob- scure problem, or at any rate can get a clew for its solution. What then is justice in the state? Without going into detail, it is enough to say that Plato finds the essence of justice in order. The end of the state is the common good, and injustice makes this unattainable ; it sets men at variance with their neighbors, and renders harmonious action impossible. 82 A Student's History of Philosophy Justice is accordingly a state of things where each man has his own work to do, and does it without trying to go outside his proper sphere and take on himself the function which some one else is better fitted to perform ; it is “ minding one’s own business.” Now in any self-sufficing state there will be three classes of citizens needed. There is the working class, the farmers and artisans, on whose shoulders rests the burden of providing the material goods without which life and civilization are impossible ; the special virtue that belongs to this class is obedience, self-control or tem- perance. Above them is the warrior class on whom devolves the de- fence of the state against attack ; and their chief virtue, naturally, is courage. Finally there are the rulers, who must be possessed first of all of wisdom. Justice will consist in the right coordination of these separate classes, each with its characteristic virtue. When each attends to its own business we have an ordered and harmonious whole, in which all the parts work smoothly together, not in the interests of one individual or of one class only, but for the common good of all. And such a state is what we call a just state. When we take this clew and apply it to the individual soul we find that an analogy exists. To the lower class there corresponds, we may say, that more ignoble part of man’s nature — the sensa- tions, desires and appetites. These have in themselves no princi- ple of order, and are only tolerable as they are brought under the sway of some higher faculty which subjects them to the rule of temperance. This higher power is the mind, or reason, wherein wisdom resides ; and as it is the function of the appetites to obey, so it belongs to the mind by divine right to rule. Between these, and corresponding to the warrior class in the state, there is a third faculty which it is less easy to define. This is the forceful, ener- getic side of man’s nature, which Plato calls spirit (as we use the adjective ‘‘spirited”). This is not in itself ignoble, as are the sen- sations and appetites; it is the basis of certain very admirable virtues — the heroic virtues, as opposed to those that are due to wisdom. Since however it is in itself unintelligent, and liable to turn into blind passion, it stands on a lower level than reason ; it also is the servant of mind, though a servant which by helping tame Plato and Aristotle 83 the unbridled desires of the lower nature is a potential ally rathei than a hindrance. These three faculties are in some real sense distinct ; if man’s nature were one and indivisable it would be im^ possible to explain how it comes to pass that the reason often has to fight with all its strength against the sensuous desires. On the other hand they are not separate and unrelated. Our lower facul- ties are intended to be subject to and used in the service of the higher ; the body is for the sake of the soul. 3. The Ethical Ideal. — This relation Plato expresses elsewhere in the famous figure of the charioteer and the winged horses. One ol these is of noble origin, and the other of ignoble ; and so natu- rally there is a great deal of trouble in managing them. The noble steed is striving continualh^ to mount to the region of the heavens, where it may look upon the images of divine beauty and wisdom that are proper to its nature ; the ignoble is ever dragging it down to the earth and earthly delights. Now just as, in the state, justice consists in the proper subordination ol the different classes, so the just soul is one in which a similar subordination of parts exists ; where the charioteer has got control of his steeds and can cruide them to the heights of heaven; where the body submits it self to the sway of the soul, the beast in man to that part of him which is truly human. For the just man does not permit the sev- eral elements within him to meddle with one another, but he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he will begin to act if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or of private business ; in all which cases he will think and call just and good action that which preserves and cooperates with this condition, and the knowledge which presides over this, wisdom ; and unjust action that which at any time destroys this, and the opinion which presides over unjust action, ignorance.”^ Why then is virtue honorable and to be desired? Just because ' Republic, 44 ^. 84 A Students History of Philosophy man is man and not a brute ; because he cannot win any true and lasting satisfaction except as he realizes his essential manhood. What advantage is it to him if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? ^^How would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he received? and will any one say that he is not a miserable caitiff who sells his own divine being to that which is most godless and detestable, and has no pity. Eri- phyle took the necklace as the price of her husband^s life, but he is taking a bribe to compass a worse ruin.’’ Virtue is the health of the soul; without it there is nothing but disease ana aetormity. ^^If when the bodily constitution is gone life is no longer endurable though pampered with every sort of meats and drinks, shall we be told that life is worth having when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, even though a man be allowed to do whatever he pleases, if at the same time he is forbidden to escape from vice and injustice, or attain justice and virtue?”^ The wicked man vainly imagines that his is the life of liberty ; it has neither order nor law, and this he deems joy, and freedom, and happiness. He does not know that he is in reality a slave — a slave to his passions and no longer master of himself. In spite then of appearances and all that men may say, it is only the vir^ tuous life that brings true and lasting happiness. 4. Social Philosophy, — It is clear that in such an ideal a sceptical individualism in the moral and social life has been transcended. In- deed it is transcended so completely that we run some risk of losing whatever element of value it may contain. The private nature of a man, in the interpretation which Plato goes on to give, has all the time a tendency to be thrust into the background by that universal, rational element which he has in common with other men, and which makes him first of all a member of the state and a part of the universe. To be sure it is no longer the purely traditional order o> * Republic, 44s, '^ 8 q Plato and Aristotle 8s society which Plato exalts to the position of arbiter in man’s life. His Republic is an ideal fashioned by reason, and differing in many respects from anything that history has to show. But when the ideal has once been set up it is to rule with a rod of iron. Since men cannot be trusted always to know their true interests and prefer them to those that are more specious and evanescent, the state must have the authority to force them into the ways of righteousness. For the democratic state with its ideal of liberty and equality Plato has slight respect ; of all the forms of government that are not entire perversions a democracy is the worst. ^‘No one who does not know would believe how much greater is the liberty which animals who are under the dominion of men have in a democracy than in any other state. For truly the dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their she-mis tresses, and the horses and asses come to have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of free men, and they will run at anybody whom they meet in the street if he does not get out of their way, and everything is just ready to burst with liberty.” ^ Men however are not equal, and it is only a perversion that the worst should rule the best. People will be vastly better off if they cease bothering their heads about affairs of state, and turn over the conduct of their lives to those whose wisdom gives them the right to rule. Then only, with a philosopher- king who knows what is best, and a state that will submit itself to wise direction, shall we have a remedy for the ills of the world, and a chance for man to realize his highest good. Based as it is, then, on the conviction that the claims of the state come first, and that the mass of men are not of themselves capable of living the true life of reason, Plato’s Republic represents the carrying out in the strictest way of paternalism in government. Everything must bow to the supposed interests of the whole. It has appeared already that the citizens are to form three classes, or castes, though the separation is not hard and fast ; according to the promise which children show they are to be advanced or degraded into a higher or a lower class than that in which they happen to be born. The lower class does not receive much attention from Plato ; ^ Republic, 563 86 A Student's History of Philosophy its duty is simply to obey its rulers blindly and perform faithfully the tasks imposed upon it. It does not possess the rights of citizen- ship ; no free citizen is allowed to earn his living by an illiberal trade. The industrial life is for Plato a degradation, and renders attention to the true art of living impossible ; society has con- sequently to be built up on the basis of a large class of men who fail to share in its spiritual benefits, though in some ways they are freer to enjoy themselves than are their rulers. To produce the right kind of citizen there is devised an elaborate social machinery. In the first place children are to be examined at birth, and those who do not appear physically strong and perfect are to be put out of the way, with due regard to decency and order. The survivors are then to be subjected to a rigid system of state education, whose provisions, once established, are not to be altered by a hair. Even the playthings for children are carefully selected and no innovations are to be allowed under severe penalties ; for if change once begins even in small things, no one can set limits to it. As soon as possible a child's capacity is to be determined by experts and his place in the social system settled for him ; and thereafter educational methods are all directed to the inculcation of a spirit of unquestioning obedience. In the case of the guardians this supervision follows the citizen throughout his life ; for it is of no avail, Plato thinks, to make laws concerning the public relations of men unless we regulate their private life also. *'In the first place, none of them should have any property beyond what is absolutely necessary ; neither should they have a private house with bars and ■bolts, closed against any one who has a mind to enter ; their pro- visions should be only such as are required by trained warriors who are men of temperance and courage ; their agreement is to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more, and they will have common meals and live together, like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God ; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of that earthly dross which passes under the name of gold, and ought not to pollute the divine by earthly intermixture, for that commoner metal has been the source of many Plato and Aristotle 87 unholy deeds ; but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and the salvation of the State.” ^ Even wives should be held in common, and children should be brought up by the state and kept in ignorance of their real parents. By doing away with private interests in this wholesale fashion, and by compelling men to have their pleasures and pains in common, Plato hoped to eliminate those occasions of discord which grow out of separate and clashing aims among the citizens. The history of the Roman Catholic priesthood shows how powerful an instrument it is actually possible to create in this way. So in every possible direction the state is to be guarded carefully from all influences that might seem in any way harmful. It is to be isolated as much as possible from foreign trade and foreign inter- course. Amusements and the arts are to be under strict super- vision. All music that is emotional and exciting in its nature is to be prohibited, and the theater to be put under a ban. Poetry is ta be subjected to a strict censorship, and everything whose moral tendency is not immediate and apparent is to be rejected regardless of its artistic excellence. The poet is to be confined to singing the praises of virtue and hymns to the gods; no suggestion is to be tolerated that the way of vice might have its attractions or that virtue sometimes proves a thorny road. And finally religion, which of course likewise is to be under the control of the state, will add the fear of divine vengeance to the political checks on conduct. 2. THE THEORY OF IDEAS” I. We are ready now to turn to the general presupposition which underlies this treatment by Plato of the problems of ethics and of politics. This we shall find in a certain attitude which he adopts toward ‘‘knowledge” and its possibilities — an attitude which gets expression in the theory of “ideas,” or “forms,” which we have already met in Socrates, and with which Platons name has ever since been in a special way connected. * Republic, ai6. 88 A Student's History of Philosophy The starting-point of the theory, in Plato as in Socrates, is the certainty that ti ath exists, and that truth is stedfast and abiding. Various current theories had cast doubt on this. There was the ‘‘flowing philosophy^’ of Heracleitus which emphasized the rela- tivity of knowledge ; Plato had himself been influenced by this, and he continued to regard it as essentially a true account of the world of phenomena and change which sense reveals. We have met the same tendency in Protagoras and his famous utterance that “man is the measure of all things.” To any such philosophy regarded as a final word, Plato was unalterably opposed. Why, so he asks in the Theaetctus, should the “truth” that all truth is relative be more true than its opposite? it is true to the man who thinks it so, and that is all. “The best of the joke is, that Protagoras ac- knowledges the truth of their opinion who believe his opinion to be false ; for in admitting that the opinions of all men are true, in effect he grants that the opinion of his opponents is true.” We cannot then give up our belief in knowledge ; a consistent scep- ticism would have to be completely speechless. And knowledge implies fixity, an abiding nature somewhere; for it would no longer be knowledge if a transition were going on in it continually. Socrates had pointed out where this fixity is to be looked for. It is present, not in the flux of sense experience, but in thought. Philosophy has to do with the common nature which makes a thing what it is; with those essential characteristics which by their presence in the individual object constitute it more than a mere individual. If we want to know what a man is, or what is virtue, it is not enough to name this or that man, or to enumerate a string of virtues ; different men are not different in kind, but each is a man by reason of a nature that belongs to man as such. Such fixed and universal ideas, consequently, constitute the truth of which the scientist and the philosopher are in search. But where are we to look for the abiding place of the object to which these true ideas refer, of which they are valid ? In the sense world we can find no such object; there everything is ephemeral, in constant process of change. Is it a mere fiction then ? That would be intolerable. Are there to be real objects corresponding to our Plato and Aristotle S9 sensations, and nothing real to correspond to thought, whose dignity is so much greater, and to which we bring our sense per- ception to be tested ? No, along with the world of perception with its change and unrest there must be another realm. This is the realm of true and abiding existence. On the one hand are the individual things which we see when we open our eyes ; and these are given over without reserve to multiplicity, relativity, the Hera- cleitean flux. To this sense world belongs all the uncertainty that the individualist and the sensationalist had found in knowledge ; it is in truth a perpetual process of change which will not stand still long enough to give rise to the possibility of an authoritative standard. But for just this reason it can be only a phenomenal world, and not the world of true being. This latter is the world of the Idea or Form — absolute, abiding, without variableness or shadow of turning, which sensation never can attain to, but thought alone. ‘‘Over against that world of flux, ‘ Where nothing is, but all things seem,^ it is the vocation of Plato to set up a standard of unchangeable reality, which in its highest theoretic development becomes the world of eternal and immutable ideas, indefectible outlines of thought, yet also the veritable things of experience; the perfect Justice, for example, which if even the gods mistake it for perfect injustice is not moved out of its place ; the beauty which is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In such ideas, or ideals, eternal as participating in the essential character of the facts they represent to us, we come in contact, as he supposes, with the insoluble, immov- able granite, beneath and amid the wasting torrent of mere phe- nomena.” ^ Such a tendency to find the highest truth in “universals” has of course always had to meet with strong opposition alike from popular and from scientific thinking. “Nominalism” — the view that only particulars are real — may easily seem to be the only natural way of looking at the facts, as well as the only way likely to be scientifically fruitful. How can that exist which is nothing in ' I*atcr, Plata and Platonism. 90 A Student's History of Philosophy particular, but only something in general? Is ^‘man’’ anything more than the abstraction of a certain number of characteristics which we have seen in individual men, and which now are held together in the mind? The thought of man is real, indeed, as my thought ; but has it any other reality, except as we go back again to the particular men from whom the qualities were abstracted ? How are we possibly to conceive of that as having any actual existence which is neither an inch, nor a foot, nor a yard long, nor possessed of any definite length, but which is only length in general ? However we have only to go a little deeper to sec that Plato's problem was very far from being an artificial one. Do we not con- stantly assume that, through the thought which transcends par- ticular objects, we are getting nearer to the truth? For whom is the tree or the flower more real, the child who sees it barely in its separateness in si)acc, or the naturalist for whom it epitomizes the history of ages dead and gone and sends forth lines of relationship to ail living things ? And yet it is in terms of ideas " that this wider knowledge is embodied. We are stating more and more adequately what ‘^kind" of a thing it is, interpreting it in terms of general notions. That our ideas are valid of reality we cannot possibly refuse to say without destroying the worth of thinking altogether. And if valid of the real world, must they not somehow be present in that world ? We come closer to the real force of Plato’s thought if, instead of such a concept as '‘man,” we substitute the notion of a scientific law. Put in such terms, we find ourselves almost compelled to think of the "idea” as something real and ultimate. The law of gravitation is a "universal,” an unchanging truth, which we dis- tinguish from the particular events in which it finds expression ; and yet we hardly feel satisfied to suppose that it has no reality apart from our faculty of generalization, and that it stands for nothing in the outer world over and above the separate events themselves. So too for our " ideals ” ; ideals tend naturally to claim objective validity, and not a subjective existence simply. Par- ticularly compelling is the impression we get when we turn our eyes to that great system of relationships which constitutes the subject- Plato and Aristotle 91 matter of mathematics. Here are truths which are not physical at all, though they apply to physical things ; moreover they are true universally and eternally. The truth about the angles of a triangle does not come into existence when the human mind for the first time perceives it ; and the fact that there are many mathematical relationships which man never has made and never will make the object of his thought does not in the least prevent their being true and valid. We may hesitate to say that they eternally exist.’’ But that they have some sort of being independent both of things and thoughts we find it very difficult to avoid supposing. 2. This natural “realism” is, then, the starting-point of Plato’s theory ; and it remains to ask how he himself meant it to be inter- preted. Here we come up against the difficulty that already has been mentioned ; just how is Plato’s own belief related to what he had learned from Socrates? To this only a tentative answer can be given here ; but a few things can perhaps be said without tres- passing too much on controversial issues. We need to call attention in ihe first place to a divergence be- tween the theory of forms as it meets us in the group of dialogue*: belonging to the middle period of Platv^’s literary activity, and what we have reason to suppose represents his teaching in the Academy. We know from Aristotle that this last took on a more definitely Pythagorean guise ; the forms are expressly identified with “ num- bers.” There is almost no ground lor thinking that this last doctrine was a Socratic doctrine. Plato may very well have been led to it through his later contact with the Pythagoreans in southern Italy. However it is reasonable to suppose that before this hap- pened he had already been introduced to the forms, or universal natures, or essences, by Socrates, and had passed through a period when be thought of them more nearly in their Socratic meaning. Nor does it seem likely he would have been oblivious to the ulti- mate questions which they raised, or would have failed in his own t liinking to make some effort to straighten matters out. What sort of metaphysical being attaches to these forms, or first principles of explanation? hov do they get connected with particular objects? how can they in Iheii eternal and immutable existence be supposed 92 A Students History of Philosophy to give rise to change and generation? While both the religious and the scientific interest, not always distinguished sharply, find a place in Plato’s pages, we can feel fairly confident that it was the second that to his natural turn of mind appealed most strongly, since it is with such an interest that we later on find him occupied almost exclusively ; at any rate to Plato as an educator it is the scientific use and not the mere contemplation of the forms that was bound to be of most concern. We may illustrate the difference by two competing pictures of the philosophic life which find a place in the dialogues. In the one case — and this seems the sense it had primarily for Socrates — it means a life freed from the fetters of the body and from the sensual pleasures which contaminate the soul — a freedom attainable in the occasional moments of mystical expe- rience which Plato seems to imply that Socrates had enjoyed, though only completely attained in another form of existence when the bod^ has been left behind. The other and, it would seem, more dis- tinctively Platonic ideal of the philosophic life has a quite different complexion ; it is the theoretic life, the life of pure scientific think- ing released from practical demands upon our time and effort. Here the thing that makes all the trouble is not primarily the sensual but the ^‘sensible” — that character attaching to sense perception which sets the problems the scientist has to answer. To such a philosophic temper the ordinary business of mankind yields but slight entertainment. ‘^Political ambition and office getting, clubs and banquets, revels and singing maidens, do not enter into the philosopher’s dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to anyone from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which he no more knows than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean.” ^‘The truth is that only the outer form of him is in the city ; his mind, disdaining the littleness and nothingness of human things, is flying all abroad, as Pindar says, measuring with line and rule the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all, but not condescending to anything which ‘s within reach. 1 Theaeictus, 173 Plato and Aristotle 93 The acceptance of the Socratic forms made it imperative, then, if scientific knowledge is to be attained, that certain fundamental questions of theory should be met; what is the nature of these forms, and how in particular do they stand related to the world of sense? On Socrates’ showing, the best answer might appear to be the answer which in the earlier dialogues finds expression in the doctrine of “participation.” A particular object, that is to say, is the meeting point of independent and self-contained and immutable forms ; it is an individual of which various universal terms can be predicated, and in which somehow they are present to lend that universal character which alone takes things out of the flux of sensation and makes them an object of knowledge. But Plato does not seem to have found this answer quite sufficient. As we see from the Parmenides in particular, he was quite conscious that such a mode of statement lays itself open to serious logical objections. In the Parmenides the reality of the forms is still assumed as some- thing beyond question, but the effort to bring them into relation to the world of things is shown to be beset with many troubles. However we elect to put it — that things “participate” in the forms, or that they “imitate” the forms — we find ourselves in difficulties. The difficulties get no solution in the dialogue, and whether Plato ever arrived at an answer that fully satisfied him it is a little hard to say ; certainly he was not able to convince his pupil Aristotle. Meanwhile we do know that he tried at any rate to give a more precise account of the nature of the forms themselves, and that in this attempt he was influenced by the Pythagorean doctrine. 3. A hint of this new development may perhaps be found in the Republic. Here mathematics appears in his curriculum as the study which in a preeminent degree brings us into contact with the real. But even the intellectual rigor of mathematics still falls a little short of what knowledge ought to be ; mathematics leads to necessary conclusions when you admit its premises, but these premises are not themselves seen to be necessary. The mind will not rest satisfied until they in their turn can be shown to follow from a further prem- ise which is intelligible in its own right ; and so the crown alike of education and of science is to be found in an ultimate discipline 94 A Student's History of Philosophy which Plato calls Dialectic, and which we probably should speak of as metaphysics. What Plato seems to be trying to say i? that the source of all reality is to be looked for in an ultimate kind of truth from which mathematical truths themselves can be derived, and which by way of mathematics can then be used for explaining the actual patterns that make up the structure of the world. It is not easy at the present day to make sure just what this doctrine was ; Plato him- self tells us in a letter that it was not to be found in his written works. It was apparently too subtle and difficult to have much chance of being understood except through the direct contact of teacher with pupil ; it could not be set forth by reasoning or logic, since by hypothesis the final truth from which all derivative truths arise is something not to be demonstrated, but only to be seen directly. What Plato appears to be aiming at is, in brief, the derivation of arithmetical number from more elementary concepts — the reduction of mathematics ultimately to logic. And he does this by finding the essence of number in the product of a Limit, or the One, and of the Unlimited or Continuous. This last is in a certain sense Nol-being; but only in the sense, not that it is nothing,’^ but that it is not anything in particular until it gets some particular or quantitative expression by combining with the One. Plato adds to this the further doctrine that the number series does not, as the Pythagoreans held, start from the unit, but from zero ; it includes the infinitely small as well as the infinitely great. To the continuum which makes number possible, therefore, Plato gives the name of the Indeterminate Dyad, or the Great and Small ; and he apparently looks to this conception for a solution of the puzzles about incommensurables which had been forcing themselves on the attention of mathematicians. Reality is thus an ideal system which has its logical and principled basis in the imposition of definite limit or measure on an indefinite continuity, and which is represented in the concrete sciences by the mathematical relations constituting the forms or patterns which reason seeks to discover as the truth underlying the world of sense. And it is in this light therefore that we shall have to interpret the Plato and Aristotle 95 notion of the Good, which remains Plato’s name for reality in its highest reach. The Good, according to Aristotle, is to be identified with the One which combines with the Indeterminate Dyad ; it is, in other words, the principle and source of measure^ which, as Plato tells us in the Philcbus, ranks highest in the list of goods, higher even than beauty, mind and wisdom. Plato is thus continuing in a sense the Socratic tradition of the Good as an eternally real object residing in a supersensil)lc world. But the meaning he intends this to convey is a different one. The ethical and religious fervor of Socrates has given place to a fervor that is primarily speculative ; and we are told accordingly that listeners who came to Plato’s famous lecture on the Good went away much perplexed because they heard of nothing but numbers, and geometry, and astronomy, and the One. Why then did Plato continue to call by a name that stands for ‘Value” a reality conceived by him in terms of human understand- ing first of all ? Not, we may suppose, because he was thinking of those human values which the term good naturally suggests ; to suppose indeed that the eternal and unchanging realm of logical and mathematical truth should suffer the intrusion of a merely human teleology would be in Plato’s view a desecration. This last appears even in the Republic as belonging to the lower world of appearance, and it is related to an absolute good, not as identical with its essence, bat, like all finite things, as dependent on it for such measure of reality as it may possess. Teleology has to be inter- preted in the last analysis in the light, not of human functions, but of that aesthetic value which for the man of intellect attaches to rational order as such — an order that finds its most striking expression in the “beautiful” relationships of mathematics. “Everything that is good is fair, and the fair is not without measure.” It is in this absolute sphere where the power of the good has retired into the region of the beautiful that we apparently are to look for the good as such — in the eternal logical perfection of “system,” and not in the temporal connection of means with ends. Only here does human teleology find its real significance. The ears and the eyes are for a purpose, but it is not the crude pur- 96 A Student's History of Philosophy pose of satisfying natural needs ; it is in order that, through perceiv- ing the movements of the heavenly bodies and the harmonies of musical sounds, they thus may introduce the mind to the true objects of its desire. 3. THE LATER DIALOGUES 1. It remains to give more briefly some account of the dialogues which Plato wrote well after the Academy was founded, and which, though they are much less familiar to us through their relative neg- lect of the literary and dramatic graces, really represent his matur- est thought. Two of these, the Parmenides and the Theaeietus^ are probably the earliest of the group, and were composed not very far apart. About the Parmenides a word already has been said. The Theaetetus is a critical examination of the nature of knowledge. Here Plato takes up the two current types of theory — that knowl- edge is sensation, and that knowledge is thought or judgment — and finds neither satisfactory. The doctrine of Protagoras and of Heracleitus leads to a thoroughgoing relativism which makes knowl- edge impossible ; we find nothing on which to rest our feet till we pass beyond sensations to those common attributes — unity and difference, sameness and otherness, and the like — which we reach not through the senses but by thought. But the Eleatic or Mega- rian attempt to explain knowledge in terms of judgment is equally unsuccessful. The fatal difficulty is its failure to explain the pos- sibility of error. Either you know what you are judging about, or you do not. If you do know, you cannot judge falsely ; if you do not, your mind is a mere blank and you cannot make any judgment at all. Various ways of evading the difficulty are canvassed, but none of them are found to be successful. On the one hand, then, we have a theory for which nothing is true, and on the other a theory for which everything is true ; and neither is good enough to account for actual knowledge. Here Plato drops the investigation, and leaves the matter in the air. 2. The Sophist belongs to a later period in Platons life, and here some of the questions raised in the Theaetetus come up again. One diflSculty in particular, which had proved a puzzle to preceding Plato and Aristotle 97 chinkers, and to which the paradoxes of the Eleatics had been chiefly due, now gets a solution. This is the difficulty attending predication ; how can we say that a thing is not so and so ? To this Plato gives the answer: ‘^is not” does not mean ‘Moes not exist.” It means ‘‘is other than”; it has a logical and not an existential significance. If we say then that an object is not beauti- ful, not-beautiful is not a name for nothing, but for all the things other than the things that arc beautiful ; and these not-beautiful things arc just as truly as the things that are beautiful. In this sense not-being is as real as being, and the difficulties raised by Parmenides’ philosophy have been removed. We can now see how error is possible ; a false belief that Theaetetus is flying is not a belief about nothing, but a belief which asserts that he is doing something different from the thing he actually is doing. Mean- while, and in particular, the way now is open for bringing the various general concepts or categories of thought into some sort of intelligible connection or system — a necessity if knowledge or science is to be rendered possible. Not all such general attributes can combine, or be predicated one of the other; we can say for instance that motion and rest both arc, or partake of being, but not that rest is motion, or that motion is rest. It is the business of philosophy to work out these connections^, and so combine the Many and the One. 3. The Fhilehus, a dialogue of Plato’s old age, is noteworthy partly from the fact that it shows his attitude toward an important problem which had been, and was to continue to be, much dis- cussed by ethical philosophy, and also because the method which he uses brings us closer than does anything else in his writings to his fundamental metaphysics. The place that pleasure ought to hold in the rational life raises questions which had received frequent but unsystematic treatment in the earlier dialogues. Just how Socra- tes himself had stood on such a question is a little difficult to say ; it may be doubted whether he ever committed himself to any very explicit doctrine. Probably, as was said before, we are safer in look- ing to his life than to his teaching; here indeed a pretty well- defined attitude appears. Pleasure is not something necessarily 98 A Student^ s History of Philosophy and essentially base ; Socrates did not refuse to enjoy simple and natural pleasures when they came his way. The case against pleasure is not that it is bad, but that it is unimportant. So long as we can take it or leave it alone, so long as it does not “possess” us, we do not need to bother very much about it. But pleasure is dangerous because it has so strong a tendency not to stop here, but to usurp a place that does not by right belong to it ; and then it becomes a positive evil by blocking the way to man^s true end and good. To this last judgment Plato undoubtedly subscribed. When he condemns pleasure, as he often does, what he has in mind in the first instance is this disrupting influence pleasure is likely to have on a rationally ordered life ; he is expressing primarily his instinctive repugnance to excess, disorder, disproportion and the haphazard life of license and riot that results from an undisciplined gratification of man’s lower nature. There is a natural tendency in such an emphasis to pass to the opposite extreme, and Plato is not free from this temptation. The higher pleasures, he quite definitely believes, are the pleasures of the mind, and at times he seems on the point of regarding these not only as higher but as self-sufficient. But this is a personal preference, and not “science.” A scientific theory of ethics must start by accepting the facts of man’s experience ; and just as the theory of knowledge has to find a place both for sensation and for judgment, so a theory of ethics must take account alike of pleasure and of wisdom as constituents of human good. That pleasure alone is not sufficient to constitute a worthy end hardly needs much proof. There is no good which men call desir- able — money, position, beauty — which may not, if it fall into the hands of a fool, bring about his ruin ; of what avail is it to possess a gold mine if we do not know how to use our wealth except to bring harm on ourselves? Pleasure then “ranks not first, no, not even if all the oxen and horses and animals in the world in their pursuit of enjoyment thus assert, and the many, trusting in them as divineis trust in birds, determine that pleasure makes up the good of life, and deem the lust of animals to be better witness than the inspira- tions of divine philosophy.” Above pleasure there is a higher and Aristotle 99k principle by which pleasures must be judged. “ Do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance ? that the fool is pleased when he is filled with foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom ? and may not he be justly deemed a fool who says that these pairs of pleasures are respectively alike?’' It is as in the case of aesthetic taste. The excellence of music may be measured by pleasure, but the pleasure must not be that of the chance hearer ; “ the fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one man who is preeminent in virtue and education.” ^ But neither is wisdom to be identified with the good to the exclusion of pleasure. Certainly this is not the case if wisdom is accompanied by positive pain. About a state of wisdom that is neither pleasurable nor painful there might be more chance for dis- pute ; such we may deem the felicity of the gods to be. But Plato is ready to admit that to the natural man the thought has no attractions. The supreme end consequently will combine the two Here are two fountains that are flowing at our side ; one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a fountain of honey ; the other, which is a sober draught in which no wine mingles, is of water pure and healthful. Out of these wc may seek to make the fairest of aU possible mixtures,” It is with the principles governing this mixture that the philo- sophical scientist is concerned. Plato starts with the principle to which attention earlier was called ; the highest rank among possible goods is to be assigned to measure.” The ultimate reason why we cannot take pleasure as our standard is that pleasure, as a form of feeling, is a continuum, an indefinite more or less of quality without the quantitative determinations that lend themselves to exact knowledge ; pleasure can be brought within the confines of the good only in so far as feeling receives the impress of limit or measure. Assuming then that the first place will belong to measure, and to the symmetry, beauty and perfection of the ideal type in which measure gets expression, it will be the particular business of the scientist to I Laws, 658 lOO A Students History of Philosophy estimate the various grades of knowledge and of pleasure that have a right to enter into the loveliest mixture. Here we may say at once that, as between thought and pleasure, thought indubitably will at least have the higher place ; if a thing is good in proportion to the presence of measure in it, it is obvious that mind, whose essence it is to deal with exact relationships, must be much more closely akin than pleasure is to the divine mind which is the cause of order in the cosmos. Moreover in the realm of knowl- edge there is a gradation. Knowledge will differ in reality or truth in proportion to the reality of the objects with which it deals — which means that it will be valuable in proportion to the presence of number in it. The highest rank therefore will belong to the dia- lectical knowledge of the philosopher. But less exact forms of mind will also find a place in so far as they too in their degree aim at precision — science, art and even true opinion. In the lower half of the scale stand pleasures ; and these too can be arranged in a relative order of value. Pleasures differ in their purity — their relative freedom from attendant pain. The intel- lectual pleasures are the purest, and will stand therefore at the top. But there are other pleasures also that Plato does not reject. Cer- tain of the senses — notably sight and hearing — have pleasures which are attended by no consciousness of want or pain, and are therefore relatively pure; here belong in particular the aesthetic pleasures of line, color and harmony. And in addition there are ‘‘necessary pleasures — the natural f)leasures of biological desire when these are kept within the bounds of health and temperance. All these may be called “true” pleasures, and as such they have a place in the good life. Meanwhile it has to be noted that while pleasures are allowed to enter into the fairest mixture, it is not their quality of pleasureable- ness that gives to them this right. Pleasures are “good” not be- cause they are pleasant, but by reason of the presence in them of the measure that alone gives value. “Purity” is thus to be regarded as an intrinsic rather than a utilitarian ground of preference. It is not because of our dislike for pain that pure pleasures appeal to the philosopher, but because purity is itself an aesthetic quality and Plato and Aristotle lOI so a good ; pleasure that runs true to type is better than pleasure obscured by a combination with its opposite, in the same way that a little pure white is fairer and truer than a great deal that is mixedo And equally of necessary pleasures ; it is only for the sake of the rational life that we need to consider them. We should indulge natural desires, Plato had said in the Republic, just enough to lay them to sleep and prevent them from interfering with the higher life cf thought ; by calling them necessary, the philosopher means that if it were not for their necessity he would have no interest in them. Meanwhile there remain false pleasures also, from which the element of measure is lacking ; and these will be excluded from the mixture. Some of them are false in the sense that they are con- taminated by their connection with false opinion ; we look forward with anticipation to consequences that never actually materialize. Or wf: may overestimate the worth of pleasures by reason of their being mixed up with a preceding painful state that colors them by contrast ; here belong the pleasures of excess, which seem to be the most intense of all, but whose intensity is really dependent on an exaggeration of desire and so on attendant pain. Such pleasures have no true being, and they are not therefore to be reckoned in the class of the good. 4. The Timacus is a book which had a large influence on the religious philosophy of the Middle Ages, but which is apt to prove a puzzle to the modern reader. It is the only one of Plato’s dialogues to deal with the problems of physical science ; and it takes the form of a cosmology along Pythagorean lines. Its present interest lies however largely in the appearance of a new side of Plato’s phi- losophy for which his earlier works will hardly have prepared us. One of the great difiiculties that any doctrine of forms presents is that of accounting for the fact of generation, change or motion. There is no obvious cause for this in the forms themselves, since these are changeless and eternally perfect ; among them there is, to be sure, the form or idea of motion, but the idea of motion does not move. Plato finds a true cause in the notion of the ‘‘soul.’^ The soul alone among the objects of experience does not only move, but 102 A Students History of Philosophy is self-moved; this power of self-motion constitutes indeed the definition of a soul, and Plato uses it as the basis of one of the several arguments by which he undertakes to prove the souPs immortality. In the TimacMs, then, this notion is used to solve the problem of a world of generation, which is due to a Soul eternally self-moved and having the power of imparting motion. God is not the only being to whom the term applies ; he has created subordinate souls as well — a cosmic soul and other lesser ones, including gods and men. But God is the ultimate and supremely good soul, and it is he who is responsible for those motions which are ^^good^’ — which reveal the presence of order and system in the world such as is most conspicuous in the motions of the heavenly bodies. Incidentally Plato in the Laws uses the notion of subordinate souls to explain the fact of evil ; since God is wholly good, he cannot be responsible for bad or disorderly motions in the lower world. Meanwhile al- though God is good, he is not the Good, which has its own being as the source of the pattern which God follows in his creation of the world. The details of this creation it is not necessary to stop upon, especially as for Plato himself they do not represent knowledge or science in the strict sense, but only more or less mythological approximations to the truth. It is enough to note its more general metaphysical outcome ; corporeal things are the result of a mixture of form with the ‘‘bastard'’ concept of space, the physical “ele- ments" being conceived as geometrical solids which embody the principles of number. ’ 5. In the Staiesman and, in particular, the Laws, Plato returns to the problems of political science — including that of public education — which he had dealt with in the Republic, Here the treatment is much more realistic, and aims in detail to meet actual Greek problems. The thoioughgoing communism of the earlier dialogue is abandoned — though plenty of occasion still is found for Plato's paternalistic bent — as well as any real hope for the appearance of a philosopher-king. Plato now places his reliance on sound constitutional principles — a reign of law administered by the best minds — with a constitutional monarchy standing as the FLato and AristoUe 103 best available type of government. The Laws, probably the last book of Plato’s to be published, possesses a good deal of human interest and represents some of Plato’s ripest thinking, but it is far too detailed to lend itself to a summary. 6 . The Academy. — The school which Plato founded, and which was called the Academy, continued in existence several centuries after his death, although it passed through a number of vicissitudes. At different periods of its existence it represents different tendencies, and is known successively as the Older Academy, the Middle Academy, and the New Academy. Plato’s real successor however is not found among the more orthodox followers who formed the Academy, but rather in Aristotle, the originator of a new and rival school. LITERATURE Plato, Dialogms. Van Oordt, Plato and his Times. J. Seth, Study of Ethical Principles. Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Plato. Nettleship, Theory of Education in Platons Republic (in Hellenica) Bosanquet, A Companion to Platons Republic. Zeller, Plato. Pater, Plato and Platonism. Ritchie, Plato. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, 3 vols. Collins, Plato. Shorey, The Unity of Plato's Thought. Shorey, Idea of the Good in Plato's Republic. More, Platonism. More, Religion of Plato. Stewart, Myths of Plato. Stewart, Plato's Doctrine of Ideas. Barker, Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle. Barker, Greek Political Theory. Plato and his Predecessors. Taylor, Plato. Taylor, Plato. The Man and his Work. Field, Plato and his Contemporaries. Lodge, Plato's Theory of Ethics. Burnet, Platonism. Adam, Plato: Moral and Political Ideals. 104 A Student's History of Philosophy § 11 . Aristotle Aristotle was born in 384 b.c. at Stagira, a town of Thrace. He came from a family of physicians, and his father was court physician to the king of Macedon. At the age of eighteen he turned defi- nitely from his ancestral calling to enter Plato’s Academy at Athens ; Plato was at that time around sixty years of age. Aristotle re- mained a member of the Academy for eighteen years, leaving Athens only when Plato died. Four years later he was called by Philip of Macedon to conduct the education of his son Alexander, afterwards to be called the Great, and then a boy of thirteen. About 335 B.c. he returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum, in a grove outside the city sacred to Lyceius; the school got the name of the Peripetetic school from Aristotle’s practice of walking up and down as he discussed matters with his pupils. Twelve years later, being threatened with prosecution for impiety and for his Macedonian connections, he went into voluntary exile, dying almost immediately thereafter in 322 b.c. In passing from Plato to Aristotle we are conscious of a marked change of atmosphere, though this is probably more noticeable than it would have been were we in possession still of Aristotle’s own published works, whose literary merits were highly thought of by antiquity. Instead the writings that have come down to us bear the earmarks of lectures or lecture notes intended for instruction in the Lyceum ; and they have the defects attaching to such a purpose, being highly technical, often repetitious or else unduly sketchy, and not infrequently obscure. At any rate they show the long step thought has taken away from the imaginative unity of the earlier Platonic dialogues in the direction of scientific specialization. Here we are in contact with the type of mind which we now are accustomed to think of as the scientific type. This does not mean that Aristotle is no metaphysician. He combines in himself as few philosophers have done the scientific with the metaphysical interest, and throughout his multitudinous investigations in detail there runs a single principle by which he undertakes to gather up and unify the whole preceding course of philosophical and scientific thought. Plato and Aristotle loS I. METAPHYSICS, LOGIC, PHYSICS, BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY I. Form and Matter, — We may take a start from a doctrine on which Aristotle lays some stress, and by reference to which he pro- poses to correct the deficiencies latent in all previous systems. This is his doctrine that any complete way of explaining things involves a fourfold distinction in the term ‘‘cause”; there is the material cause^ the efficient cause, the formal cause and the final cause. To take an example — say a manufactured article like a chair — the material cause is the wood out of which the chair is made, the effi- cient cause is found in the muscular movements by which the material is fashioned, the formal cause is the ideal pattern in the workman’s mind which guides these movements, the final cause is the purpose to which the finished object is to be put. It is a defect in all previous philosophies that none of them has realized the need of taking all of these considerations into account for a full explana- tion, though each individually has been recognized in one con- nection or another. Thus the elements of the lonians are material causes ; they are the stuff out of which everything is constituted. Again, Love and Hate in Empedocles, or Nous in Anaxagoras, are a recognition of the second principle, since their only function is to impart motion to the elements. And the Pythagoreans, and Plato in particular, had contributed the notion of a formal cause. The business of a ‘systematic philosophy is now to give, not one of these, but all of them their due. It is one type of cause in particular however — formal cause — that plays the outstanding role in Aristotle’s reconstruction of philosophy ; and his meaning can best be approached by first con- sidering what he has to say about this. It is one of the leading motives of his Metaphysics — a collection of writings so called from the fact that in a later collection of his works they came after the treatises on physLs (/xcra ra <^)ucrtKa) — to show that the Platonic doctrine of forms cannot be accepted as it stands, and to put in its place a more adequate conception. Generally speaking, his objection lies against what he regards as Plato’s disposition to separate the forms from the actual things of experience. Plato io6 A Student's History of Philosophy already had himself, in the Parmenides^ noticed the objections that can be raised to a belief in such transcendent forms, and these objections Aristotle repeats and amplifies. It would be impossible to prove the existence of such forms if they were separate from the world to which w^e and our knowing processes belong ; nor, if they existed, should we be able to explain by reference to them anything whatever in this lower world from which we have so carefully removed them. The statement that things '‘imitate” the forms or "participate ” in them is only a metaphor which conveys no genuine meaning. But it does not follow that the form has no existence, and that the only reality is the world of individual objects. The form does exist, and it is a very essential part of reality ; only it exists in the world, and in things, not outside of and apart from them. The best way to gain a notion of what Aristotle means by this is to take a concrete illustration. We shall find the most enlightening illustration in what we call an organism. What is it we mean by an oak tree, for example? Is it merely a collection of the particular parts that go to make it up as an object in space ? But where shall we start to make such an analysis ? If we take the acorn — and there surely is a sense in wTich the oak already exists in the acorn — we shall get one result ; if v;e wait till the tree is full grown we shall get another and a very different one. The idea of the tree, that is, evidently includes more than is present at any one moment of the tree^s existence ; all the processes by which it changes from the acorn to maturity also belong to the complete notion of what a tree is. Nor is this all. Any mere description of the part^ misses the unity of the organism, that which makes it a single object ; we must also introduce into the idea of the tree as a whole the relation of each part to the other parts and to the entire organism. If there were no "form” or type, if the particular facts were everything, there would be no tree, but only a series of molecular changes. Looked at from one standpoint the tree can no douDt be reduced to a succession of such changes, entirely conti’^uous with all the other changes in the universe. But a tree is, for our knowledge, more than this; it is a single process, possessing as an organism its own peculiar unity of end. Only again it is not an end that comes literally at the Plato and Aristotle 107 finish — such an end is but the end of death ; nor does it exist in any sense outside the life of the tree. The life process is itself the end ; the tree fulfils the purpose which it embodies in the very act of growing. This is essentially what Aristotle means. As the tree is nothing outside the whole process of growth, regarded as bound into a unity by its relation to the organic type, so the concept in general does not exist separate from the material world of generation, but only in that world. Matter and form are relative terms, neither of which has any real existence apart from the other. Matter is the organic process looked at from the side of p)otentiality, of what as yet is unrealized, as the acorn is the material from which the oak will spjring. This does not mean that matter is some “thing,” an actual bit of stuff out of which the world is made. The material which goes into things may indeed in a secondary sense be called their matter ; but it is already a particular “ kind ” of matter which, in however rudimentary a form, possesses definite characteristics. Pure matter does not “exist” ; it is in the strict sense just poten- tiality or possibility — the possibility of the realization of form. Form on the other hand is the same process on the side of actuality or fulfilment. It is the inner meaning expressing itseK concretely in material shajje, the end which governs the series of particular changes ; it also in itself is an abstraction, and becomes an object of knowledge only as it is embodied in a “thing.” The transition from the potential to the actual is motion, or evolution, or develop- ment. True existence thus is something not ap^ait from the phenomenal world, but realized in it : it is possibility made real, the potential actualized, Aristotle's cntelechy. Such a concept ion would apparently involve, if taken seriously, an important change in philosophical standpoint ; it would substitute a reality which is changing or dynamic for an all-complete perfec- tion, as indeed Heraclcitus had already done when he made reality a process of Becoming. There is another side however to .Aris- totle's theory which prevents our taking this too strictly. A lifferent type of illustration will suggest the point. Aristotle does not confine his examples to organic life, where matter and form are io8 A Student's History of Philosophy in truth only distinguishable and not separate, but also turns fre- .quently to illustrations from human workmanship, especially in artistic creation. Take a statue for example ; the reality of the statue is the marble shaped to body forth the sculptor^s ideal. Here we have two sides again — the material which furnishes the conditions for the artistes work, and the idea in his mind that repre- sents the pattern which his activity follows and the end toward which it is directed. But there is a degree of separation here that did not exist in the case of the tree. The two things have a relation, it is true. Even in the rough the marble may be said to be not something altogether separate and independent, since the sculptor sees in it the possibility of realizing his ideal ; and his ideal is not the mere dream it would have been apart from the possibility of being realized in the marble. Still, in the illustration, the form and the matter both have a real existence before they meet in the statue. If we apply this illustration to the world at large, it leads to the conception of a graded series of realities, each step in the series revealing more and more those universal relationships which go to render it intelligible, an object of true knowledge. In the actual world of generation the formal element exists nowhere in more than a relative degree of purity. Everything is alike matter and form — matter to what lies above it in the scale, form to what is lower down. The marble is matter to the statue, but it is not pure matter ; it also has definite characteristics, and so in relation to a lower grade of matter it stands itself as form. The tree is form in relation to the elements that are taken from the soil to further its grow’th, matter in relation to the house which is made from its timber. But when we re^ch the upper limit the situation changes. The rational types which reveal themselves in the world process are not, for Aristotle, actually generated by the process as such, as in modern philosophies of evolution. Rather, they are eternally implied as the necessary condition for the world^s intelligibility. At the end of the series, therefore, lies that which no longer is relative merely, but absolute ; it is pure Form, beyond which there is nothing to which it can stand in the relation of matter. Plato and Aristotle 109 Here we seem to be getting pretty close after all to that separation of form from the empirical world which Aristotle criticizes in Plato. Aristotle saves himself however, technically at least, by resorting to theology. Even in the supra-sensible realm pure form does not exist as such. It is Aristotle's doctrine that nothing can exist which is not an individual substance ; and form is by definition not individual, but universal and abstract. But while it cannot exist in its own right it may exist, even without matter, if we can find an immaterial substance to embody it. Such an individual substance is God. God is absolute mind with no touch of the corporeal. His is the life of pure thought that has no foreign content — thought that thinks itself. Unmoved himself, he is the mover of the uni- verse, not as an active agent, but as the final end of all, the ideal toward which the whole creation moves by an inner necessity, as the beautiful and the good stir our endeavor to realize them not by anything they themselves do, but by the appeal they make to our desires as worthy of being realized. God is spirit without body, mind without sense, pure activity without action or desire. Aristotle’s philosophy thus has two aspects. As science it issues in a teleological hierarchy of existents ; it is an impressive attempt to bring together all the facts of man’s experience into a graduated scale of forms or species, each gathering up into itself the meaning of what had gone before, while at the same time it faces ahead toward something higher, more rational, and more self-complete. On the other hand this whole process is topped by a half metaphysical, half religious doctrine where dualism reappears in a different guise. It is the first aspect that is mainly responsible for Aristotle’s influence on subsequent thought, though as the propounder of what has per- haps a right to be called the first clear formulation of a philosophic theism the other side as well is by no means negligible. We may however overlook this for the most part in what remains to be said about his philosophy. 2. Logic. — And first a word about scientific method in general as Aristotle conceives it. Aristotle’s most perfect achievement is his Logic, found chiefly in the collection of writings called the Organon. Of course there had been before his time some isolated no A Sticdenfs History of Philosophy treatment of logical details, and Zeno and other philosophers had made significant contributions to the technique of argument ; but there was nc connected body of logical doctrine. Aristotle not only succeeded in creating such a science, but he did his work so thoroughly that, in its special field, it has remained practically un- changed ever since. Foimal Logic as it is called — the analysis of the processes of deductive argument as this is taught to-day — * docs not differ essentially from the formulation which x\ristot!e gave it over two thousand years ago. Aristotle’s logic centers about two things in particular — defi- nition, and the syllogism. Definition aims to set forth the character of those natural types which represent the cleavage into which the world of nature falls, and which are presupposed as the forms that render exydanation possible ; technically it consists in subsuming a species under the next higher or more general concept or genus, from which it is distinguished by means of its distinctive character or ‘‘difference.” The syllogism, or process of proof, establishes the necessary logical connection between concepts through the medium of two premises and a middle term, which last, by standing in a relation to each concept separately, uncovers the relation of one to the other. At the present day it is universally recognized that formal logic has a very secondary value for scientific thinking ; the syllogism represents in an abstract and somewhat artificial form processes involved in human argument, and it is more or less useful in point- ing out possible defects or fallacies, but no one supposes that it tells the scientist how to go to work to discover the actual constitution of the world. But for Aristotle, with his theory of forms, this is just what logic was supposed to do. It is the business of science to demonstrate by means of the syllogism those properties of objects which follow from the definition of the species, on the basis of certain necessary principles of thought, some of them, like the laws of contradiction and of excluded middle, being common to all the sciences alike, while others, like the axioms of mathematics, are peculiar to a limited group. We cannot in this way arrive at all the facts which the actual world presents; there are other acci- Plato and Aristotle III dental or contingent characters which depend on conditions external to the form or essence of the species. But this is not science in the strict sense. Science, true knowledge, is necessary knowledge, and only through the syllogism is such knowledge to be attained. The various characteristics in which members of a class differ from one another are therefore not capable of being brought within knowledge in the scientific sense ; we can ^‘know ’’ that Socrates is mortal, but not that he is snub-nosed and talkative. 3. Physics. — It would be impossible here to give more than a hint of the way in which Aristotle goes on to apply his general con- ception to the wealth of detail he has gathered together. We have seen that each successive stage in the complexity of the world process stands to its predecessor in the relation of form to matter. At the bottom stands pure matter, which is not what we should call a form of matter at all, but a principle, an abstract condition of the real, a mere limit to the process of explanation. The first stage in the actual development of nature is to be found in the primitive elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire. These are no longer pure matter, but in them matter has taken on a definite though still a very elementary form ; they constitute the formed matter which all the more complex objects of experience presuppose. From the elements we pass upward through mechanical changes and changes of quality to organic life ; in organisms we advance from the vegetative life of the plant to the animal soul which is capable of sensation and motion, and from the animal soul to man in his true essence as a rational being, each step being governed by an upward impulse toward the next succeeding step which constitutes the goal toward which it is striving. And every successive stage, once more, gathers up wdthin itself the preceding stage. Mechanical and chemical changes still take place in the organism ; the vegetative soul — the life principle — persists in the animal ; and all alike are presupposed in the exercise of the practical reason. The physical theories of Aristotle are his least important contri- bution ; they are not particularly original, and they do not always represent the best insight even of his own day. One point however \s worth noting here, since it calls attention to the dangers involved II2 A Student's History of Philosophy in subordinating science to a metaphysical principle. To the four elements already mentioned Aristotle adds a fifth. This is almost infinitely finer than the other four, and is free from generation and decay ; and it is the stuff out of which the heavens are made. For the super-terrestrial regions represent to Aristotle by far the most perfect product of nature — so perfect that they all but attain to the apotheosis of pure Form. In the undeviating regularity of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and in the circular motion which, without end or beginning, comes closest to what is eternal and unchanging, we find the most adequate embodiment of form in the physical universe. Indeed it has only one imperfection, that it does move. The circular motion of the celestial element is far superior to the rectilinear motion of terrestrial things ; but it still falls short of the motionless serenity, the activity without change, of God, and shows therefore the presence still of matter, however refined. 4. Biology and Psychology. — Aristotle is more at home when he reaches the biological stage, as we might perhaps have expected in view of his family traditions; here he has collected a mass of original observations, and his treatment has an importance for the later growth of the biological sciences. The general outcome is an evolution from the simple to the increasingly more complex and more perfect — an evolution, however, where the successive forms are not in the Darwinian sense the result of the evolving process, but where the entire process is brought into being and directed by the formal essences that define each fresh species, all pointing to the highest organic form — man. The development passes from simple and homogeneous parts like flesh and bone, through the hetero- geneous part or organ, to the unitary organism, which in turn rises to still higher forms as organs and functions are multiplied. The ^Torm that serves as the principle for explaining living creatures is called the soul, which is distinguished as vegetative, animal and rational in the order of relative perfection. In becoming aware of its real essence the soul makes explicit the unconscious teleology of nature, and sets this up as a conscious end, or final cause. The goal toward which it moves in its desire for completion is the highest or Plato and AristoUe 113 rational soul. It is their adaptability to the ends of reason that explains the bodily organs peculiar to man : thus through his erect carriage his parts assume the ^'naturaP' position of up and down, and the fore legs are replaced by more efficient organs ; sensitivity is increased by the development of heart and brain — the blood is for Aristotle the scat of sensation, and the brain is a means of cool- ing and tempering the heat of the blood ; there is a shedding of excrescences like horns and feathers, which are due to surplus matter not fully utilized ; and the greater smoothness in the texture of the skin refines the sense of touch — the primary sense. The same method also is applicable to psychology ; here Aris- totle’s treatment is often suggestive, and many of the things he has to say about memory, desire, the processes of sensation, the unity of consciousness, the association of ideas, are anticipations of modern psychological doctrines. By regarding the human soul as the entelechy of the body, in whose service the whole body is enlisted, Aristotle has in particular a way of avoiding the dualism which was until quite recent times a characteristic of modern psy- chological thinking ; the subject-matter of psychology is the whole psycho-physical man, and not mind by itself. Dualism in another form however still persists; the ‘‘reason’^ responsible for the whole process of generation is itself an eternal essence which enters from without, and through which man is made part of a world that is not in time at all. At the start knowledge is utilitarian and instrumental. But in proportion as the bodily needs are satisfied, and opportunity for leisure is provided, knowledge is freed from its service to the practical life and becomes an end for itself in which, as will appear, man’s highest felicity consists. 2. ETinCS, POLITICS, AESTHETICS I. The Summum Bomim. — It is Aristotle’s treatment of ethics and political science that chiefly recommends him to the modern reader. Here he takes his start from Plato’s query : What is the end of life, the highest good ? If we were to ask the opinion of men in general, we should find most of them agreeing both that happi- ness, and virtue, enter into the composition of the good ; and we 1 14 A Student's History of Philosophy have accordingly to settle on the meaning of these terms. Here again Aristotle^s metaphysics helps him out. The end of a thing is the fulfilment of its form/’ the realization of the potentialities of its own intrinsic nature. If then we are able to define that which constitutes a man as such; we can determine what is for him the summum honum. “Perhaps it seems a truth which is generally admitted, that happiness is the supreme good ; what is wanted is to define its nature a little more clearly. The best way of arriving at such a definition will probably be to ascertain the function of Man. For as with a flute player, a statuary, or any artisan, or in fact anybody who has a definite function and action, his goodness or excellence seems to lie in his function, so it would seem to be with Man, if indeed he has a definite function. Can it be said, then, that while a carpenter and a cobbler have definite functions and actions, Man, unlike them, is naturally functionless? The reasonable view is, that as the eye, the hand, the foot, and similarly each several part of the body, has a definite function, so Man may be regarded as having a definite function apart from all these. What then can this function be? It is not fife, for life is apparently something which man shares with the plants, and it is .something peculiar to him that we are looking for. We must exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and increase. There is, next, what may be called the life of sensa- tion. But this too is apparently shared by Man with horses, cattle and all other animals. There remains what I may call the practical life of the rational part of Man’s being. But the rational part is twofold; it is rational partly in the sense of being obedient to reason, and partly in the sense of possessing reason and intelligence. The practical life, too, may be conceived of in two ways, but we must understand by it the life of activity, as this seems to be the truer form of the conception. The function of Man, then, is an activity of soul in accordance with reason, or not independently of reason. Again, the functions of a person of a certain kind, and of such a person who is good of his kind, for example, of a harpist and a good harpist, are in our view generically the same, and this view is true of people of all kinds without exception, the superior excellence t'Lato ana Aristoue being only an addition to the function ; for it is the function of a harpist to play the harp, and of the good harpist to play the harp well. This being so, if we define the function of Man as a kind of life, and this life as an activity of soul, or a course of action, in con- formity with reason, if the function of a good man is such activity or action of a good and noble kind, and if everything is successfully performed when it is performed in accordance with its proper excellence, it follows that the good of Man is an activity of soul in accordance with virtue, or, if there are more virtues than one, in accordance with the best and most complete virtue. But it is necessary to add the words 'in a complete life.^ For as one swallow or one day does not make a spring, so one day or a short time does not make a fortunate or happy man.’’ ^ And, finally, we have to add to this certain external conditions that are favorable to virtuous living — health, beauty, money, luck — not because they are good in themselves, but because without them man’s nature normally does not get a fair chance to express itself. Happiness or well-being, then, consists in the unobstructed realization of man’s rational nature ; it is the active and continuous exercise, under sufficiently favorable conditions, of this nature functioning at its best. In this there clearly is a place for pleasure ; indeed in Aristotle’s psychology pleasure is to be explained pre- cisely as a necessary concomitant, a superadded perfection, attend- ing upon activity in so far as it is successful. Accordingly he is not afraid to use the word pleasure freely. "Happiness is the best and noblest and pleasantest thing in the world, nor is there any such distinction between goodness and nobleness, and pleasure, as the epigram at Delos suggests : “ ‘ Justice is noblest, healtk is best, To gain one’s end is pleasantest.’ ” This of course does not justify any and every pleasure. " Pleasures are desirable, but not if they are immoral in their origin ; just as wealth is pleasant, but not if it be obtained at the cost of turning traitor to one’s country ; or health, but not at the cost of eating an>' 1 Ethics, I, 6, Wclldon’s translation, The Macmillan Company. ii6 A Students History oj Philosophy food however disagreeable/’ Nor are we speaking of purely trivial pleasures. Happiness does not consist in amusement. It would be paradoxical to hold that the end of human life is amusement, and that we should toil and suffer all our life for the sake of amusing our- selves.” The pleasure ranks according to the excellence of the faculty exercised ; and so while the highest virtue is by that very fact the highest pleasure also, happiness, or well-being, as the activity of that part of our nature which is most truly human, is a better term to use than pleasure. ''It is reasonable not to speak of an ox, or a horse, or any other animal, as happy — even of a child. For happiness demands a complete virtue and a complete life.” In calling pleasures better or worse in proportion as they are attendant on a higher or a lower function, we are already precluded from expecting very much from them in the way of actual guidance in the moral life. Before pleasures can themselves be judged we have to rank men in terms of virtue or of character ; in fact the only practicable way of defining a good pleasure is by saying that it is the pleasure which the good man would choose. When people are in a good state of health, it is the things which are truly wholesome that will seem wholesome to them ; and, similarly, moral health is the condition whicn aetermines whether a man’s desires will correspond to what actually, and not in appearance only, constitutes his happi- ness. The great word in moral theory is not pleasure, but virtue. It remains to ask therefore what this virtue is that constitutes the proper excellence of man. 2. The Nature of Virtue. — We may note to begin with that, as a consequence of the division of man’s soul between intellect, and the lower desires and impulses which are only capable of acting in subjection to reason without being rational in their own right, virtue may take two forms — intellectual and moral virtue. Since reason is the essential element in man, it follows that the highest excellence is to be found in the life of philosophy — of pure rational insight or contemplation. The pleasure of speculation is of all pleasures the highest, the most continuous, the purest, the most self-sufficient, in the decree that the reason is divine in comparison Plato and Aristotle 117 with the rest of the constituents of man’s nature. Moral virtues are human ; this one is godlike. “Our conception of the gods is that they are preeminently happy and fortunate. But what kind of actions do we properly attribute to them? Are they just actions? But it would make the gods ridiculous to suppose that they form contracts, restore deposits, and so on. Are they, then, courageous actions? Do the gods endure dangers and alarms for the sake of honor? Or liberal actions? But to whom should they give money ? It would be absurd to suppose that they have a currency, or anything of the kind. Surely, to praise the gods for temperance is to degrade them ; they are exempt from low desires. We may go through the whole category of virtues, and it will appear that what- ever relates to moral action is petty and unworthy of the gods. Yet the gods are universally conceived as living, and therefore as dis- playing activity ; they are certainly not conceived as sleeping like Endymion. If, then, action, and still more production, is denied to one who is alive, what is left but speculation ? It follows that the activity of God, being preeminently blissful, will be speculative, and, if so, then the human activity which is most nearly related to it will be most capable of happiness.” ^ However it is not with the super-life of the theoretic reason that the bulk of Aristotle’s treatise deals. Primarily he is concerned as a scientist with the natural history of man’s ethical experience ; and the great majority of men of course never reach the highest stage at all. Reason can only mean for them moral reason, or reason in the secondary sense in which it enters into and directs their practical activities rather than as it constitutes a final end in itself. We have to determine therefore in what a life according to reason in this less ultimate sense consists. To begin with, nothing deserves to be called a virtue unless it is the outcome of rational choice. A purely natural and spontaneous impulse is not as yet a virtue, though it may be the starting-point for one. Thus an instinctive disregard of risks is not the same thing as courage in the moral sense ; true courage exists only when dangers are faced deliberately and for the sake of some worth 3^ end. »X, 8. ii8 A Student's History of Philosophy We may admire such a temperamental gift of nature, but we do not praise it ; and it is one of the empirical differentia of a virtue that it is an object of praise. Again, this act of deliberate choice must not stop with a desultory exercise, but must attain a quality of permanence and depend- ability. A virtue is a habit of rational choice ; to produce a virtue we must not only use our reason, but we must act repeatedly in the way reason directs until this sort of action has become a second nature. “ It is neither by nature, nor in defiance of nature, that virtues are implanted in us. Nature gives us the capacity of re- ceiving them, and that capacity is perfected by habit.” As builders learn by building, and harpists by playing the harp, so it is by do- ing just acts that we become just. As in the Olympian games it is not the most beautiful and strongest persons who receive the crown but they who actually enter the list as combatants, so it is they who act rightly that attain to what is noble and good in life.” Even philosophy will not make a man virtuous till it is put into practice ; those who imagine otherwise are like people who listen attentively to their doctors, but never do anything that their doc- tors tell them. Virtue stands accordingly for a definite habit of mind, brought about by a repetition of acts in which the impulse is directed by voluntary and intelligent effort in such a way as to express man’s essential nature. But here a further question will arise. In order that we may have a virtue, desire must be subjected to the rule of reason. But on what principle does reason act? The resultant pleasure is no test, for we have already seen that pleasure itself presupposes a prior standard in the shape of the good man with his character already formed. The ‘‘rational” will therefore need some further defini- tion if it is to serve as a practical guide. Such a principle Aristotle finds in his famous doctrine that virtue is a mean. An impulse has in it the possibility of giving rise to a virtue by taking the middle course between the two extremes of excess and deficiency. “The first point to be observed is, that in such matters as we are considering deficiency and excess are equally fatal. It is so as we observe in regard to health and strengtn ; for Plato and Aristotle 119 we must judge of what we cannot see by the evidence of what we do see. Excess or deficiency of gymnastic exercise is fatal to strength. Similarly an excess or deficiency of meat and drink is fatal to health, whereas a suitable amount produces, augments and sustains it. It is the same, then, with temperance, courage and the other virtues. A person who avoids and is afraid of everything and faces nothing becomes a coward ; a person who is not afraid of anything but is ready to face everything becomes foolhardy. Similarly, he who enjoys every pleasure and never abstains from any pleasure is li('entious ; he who eschews all pleasures, like a boor, is an insensible sort of person.” ^ In like manner liberality lies between avarice and prodigality, modesty between impudence and bashfulness, sincerity between self-disparagement and boastfulness, good temper between dulncss and irascibility, friendly civility between surliness and obsequiousness, just resentment between callousness and spite- fulness, high-mindedness between littleness of mind and pompous- ness. Put in a somewhat less mechanical way, moral virtue is the sort of action that meets adequately any situation that confronts us ; the mean of right giving, for example, is to give to the right person the right amount, at the right time, for the right cause and in the right way. It is fairly obvious, however, that this definition of virtue as a mean, even allowing that it is more widely applicable to the several virtues than it appears to be, still falls a good deal short of a definite rule of guidance. If human impulses lent themselves to anything like an exact mathematical treatment, we should indeed have a serviceable instrument. But this is not the case, as Aristotle is of course quite aware ; the point which avoids alike the too much and the too little is a highly indefinite point that will differ with circumstances and with different agents, just as an amount of food suited to a vigorous constitution will for another man be excessive. What in fact the principle amounts to is simply a restatement of the familiar Greek ideal of moderation; it is only in appearance that it lends itself to scientific precision. Aristotle adds to be sure a few practical suggestions that help out 1 II, 2. 120 A Students History of Philosophy a little. Thus in aiming at a mean we should avoid obvious extremes, and when we cannot hit the mean exactly should take the lesser of two evils; we should observe the things to which We are particularly prone and force ourselves in the opposite f^rection, as we pull a crooked stick straight by bending it back- ward ; we should always be on our guard against the enticements of pleasure, since pleasure is not conducive to impartiality of judg- ment. But something more than these desultory bits of moral counsel is required before we shall be in a position in practice to determine the actual content of the rational life. The way in which Aristotle goes to work to satisfy this need calls attention to the fundamental conservatism of his ethical outlook ; in general it consists in pointing us to the standards already implicit in the wisdom of the past. The good is not something each one has to discover for himself by the aid of his private reason. He can presuppose the true ^Torm” of man already in the best achieve- ments of the race ; the touchstone of moral truth is the settled character of those persons in whom the highest insight of Greek society is embodied. Just as in the case of a refined gentleman in whom good breeding has become instinctive, the wise man in a moral sense does not need for the most part to fall back on explicit reasoning. He sees instinctively, by means of a certain moral tact that grows up gradually in anyone of naturally good disposition through his contact with the world, that this under the circum- stances is for him the proper course ; and the more he grows in wis- dom and experience the easier the perception comes. For the most part we are pretty safe accordingly in following the undemonstrated assertions and opinions of old, experienced and prudent men ; and if the judgment of the wise and the judgment of the many coincide, we have as sound a reason for accepting it as we can very well expect. All this is the easier for Aristotle in that he does not feel under obligation to lake account of a vast variety of personal aims such as complicate for the modern man the problem of self-reali- zation. While ethics is not for him a science — human conduct is too much immersed in the contingent to permit of this — it ap- proaches a science in so far as its subject-matter will permit ; and Flato and Aristotle 121 here as elsewhere the business of science is with the universal — with the species rather than the individual. The good we are looking for is thus the good for man, not the good of this or that man in par- ticular ; and as such it is capable of a formulation which does away with many of the complications that arise when the end is defined in terms of my personal constitution, and which we shall have more reason therefore to expect to find realized in the historical process to which the “form” of man has given shape. The ideal, then, for man in his everyday conduct, is set for him by the accepted moral opinion of the day. This means the ‘‘best’’ opinion ; but the best is only that which is most respected and respectable — the opinion generally current among those who are recognized as pillars of the state. Accordingly we find Aristotle saying that a man’s goodness is relative to the character of the state in which he lives, even though this means that he must in consequence fall short of the ideally good man in stature. There thus is no provision in his philosophy for growth in moral wisdom that shall render a man wiser than his age or nation. There remains one further principle that can be employed to an extent in guiding conduct. The speculative wisdom which for Aristotle remains man’s highest good is not itself engaged with the problems of moral action ; it is speculation that has no other end beyond itself. But by this very fact it furnishes a goal toward which life may be directed. Practical wisdom is the steward of the household which procures leisure for the master — philosophy — by subduing the passions and keeping them in order. “Whatever choice or possession of the natural goods will most produce the contemplation of God, that choice or possession is best ; this is the noblest standard, and any that through deficiency or excess hinders one from the contemplation of God and reverence of God is bad.” 3. Political Theory, — Meanwhile man is more than an individ- ual. By nature he is a political animal, who can attain his highest good only in society; and Ethics accordingly is subordinate to Politics. Society arises out of the physical needs of man, who be- cause he is not self-sufficing has to cooperate with his fellow-man in order to be sure of subsistence ; but this is not its sole or highest 122 A Student's History of Philosophy ground. Originating in the bare needs of life, it continues for the sake of the good life. The state therefore, and the science which deals with the state, have an ethical rather than a merely utilitarian aim. ^‘Political science is concerned with nothing so much as with producing a certain character in the citizens, or, in other words, with making them good, and capable of performing noble actions.’’ Aristotle goes on to discuss a variety of problems relating to the cheory of government. Plato’s ideal state is criticized with more or less effectiveness, particularly in its communistic features. As against Plato he argues, for example, that the happiness of citizens and classes ought not to be submerged in the requirements of the social organism, that an abstract devotion to the state cannot take the place of personal interests such as get expression in the family and in property, that tlie unity of society needs to be interpreted not as sameness but as cooperation between a variety of individual aims. Specifically, the aim of the state can perhaps be best expressed as a preparation for that life of leisure in which man’s highest good will be found ; like many others since his day, Aris- totle conceives of civilization as sufficiently vindicated by the existence of a leisure class of high-minded and cultivated gentlemen, supported by the labor of a menial class of peasants and workers who alike from deficiencies of nature, and from the demands of their occupation, are excluded from the higher life and so from the real rights of citizenship. About the content of this life of leisure Aristotle is not entirely explicit. For the standards of a leisure class of wealthy parvemus he has nothing but contempt. Nor does art have anything like the part to play that it does in similar ideals in more recent days ; the contemplation of works of art is only a form of amusement, while artistic craftsmanship belongs to thr field of manual labor, so that too professional a skill in any of the arts is a disgrace to a free citizen. There remain, to occupiy the time, the direction of the necessary affairs of household and of state, the pleasures of friendly intercourse among equals, and, in par- ticular, the strictly intellectual work of the scientist and philoso- pher. To this may be added the vocation of a university professor Plato and Aristotle 123 who combines instruction with research — a profession that would seem to represent for Aristotle the highest reach of purely human felicity. In his discussion of the forms of government Aristotle refuses to be content with setting up a single ideal. He has his own notion of what abstractly is the best form of government — the rule, namely, of a single man, provided we could find one preeminently wise and good. But a political treatise should recognize actual conditions ; and in practice the ‘‘best^’ government is a relative term, and will differ with the character of the people who are to be governed. In general there are three sound types of government — monarchy, aristocracy, and polity or constitutional government. When one man stands out preeminently among his fellow-citizens a monarchy is, as has been said, the natural form ; when a few men are ob- viously superior in virtue, an aristocracy. It is not to be forgotten, however, that mere numbers give a certain stability and massive wisdom in affairs of government ; while the individual members of the multitude therefore may be inferior to a chosen few, yet, taken collectively, their wisdom may conceivably be superior, since they supplement one another. In particular, they may be the best judges of what affects themselves, as a guest is a better judge of a feast than the cook who prepares it. So also a mass of men is apt to be more incorruptible than a single man ; while any permanent exclusion of the multitude from political office is likely to be danger- ous. Each of the three types of government may be perverted, and we have as a result tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. This comes about when the ruling class ceases to aim at the common interest and has instead its own advantage in view. For the average state a mixture of the types is advisable ; roughly this means a democ- racy modified by oligarchical principles such as property quali- fications and a relative independence of the magistrates. The advantages are best secured in a state in which the middle class is strong ; this is likely to be more permanent than where either of the extremes of wealth or poverty predominates, and is more conducive to the spirit of friendship and comradeship which flourishes only among equals. 124 A Student's History of Philosophy To a large extent of course the reasonings of Aristotle apply to conditions dissimilar to those which any modern country has to meet. Greek society was founded on the institution of slavery — an institution which Aristotle justifies theoretically on the ground that some men find their whole life in bodily action and so are slaves by nature. Another important difference is suggested in his at- titude toward the worker in general. No man can practise virtue, he declares, who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer ; and the assertion that greatness is impossible to a state which produces numerous artisans but few soldiers, reveals a social condition far removed from modern industrial society. So again the fact that the principle of representative government lies beyond his vision renders it inevitable that the state of which he speaks should be very limited in size ; a democracy in the modern sense, as distinct from the city-state of the Greeks, he is unable to imagine. Nevertheless, the Politics is interesting even at the present day, and at times its modernness of tone is striking. 4. Aesthetics. — The Poetics is rather slight in nature, but as the first attempt to treat in a separate way that side of philosophy which in its larger aspect is now known as Aesthetics it deserves some mention : — In the Poetic^ Aristotle takes Plato’s view of poetry as a branch of Imitation, and divides it into three parts. Epic, Tragic and Comic. All imitation is a source of pleasure, but the imitation of the poet or artist is not simple representation of ordinary fact, but of the universal or ideal which underlies ordinary fact; whence poetry is more philosophical than history. This is most conspicuous in Tragedy, where the characters are all on a grander scale than those of common life ; but even Comedy selects and heightens in its imitation of the grotesque. Tragedy is not, as Plato thought, a mere enfeebling luxury ; rather it makes use of the feelings of pity and terror to purify similar affections in ourselves, that is, it gives a safe vent to our feelings by taking us out of ourselves and opening our hearts to sympathize with the heavier woes of humanity at large, typified in the persons of the drama ; while it chastens and controls the vehemence of passion by never allowing its expression FLaio and Aristotle I2S to transgress the limits of beauty, and by recognizing the righteous meaning and use of suffering/’ ^ The school which Aristotle founded was known as the Peripatetic school. It maintained an existence alongside the Academy till well into the Christian era, but produced no new doctrines of any great importance. LITERATURE Aristotle, Organon^ Metaphysics y Dc Animay Nichomachean Ethics y PoliticSy PocticSy Rhetoric. Translations : Welldon {EthicSy Politics j Rhetoric ) ; Jowett {Politics ) ; Wallace (Psychology ) ; Hammond (Psy- chology) ; Wharton (Poetics) ; Smith and Ross (Works). Zeller, Aristotle atid the E.arlier Peripatetics y 2 vols. Grote, AristotlCy 2 vols. Wallace, Outlines of Aristotle^ s Philosophy. A. Grant, Aristotle. Davidson, Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals. Bradley, Aristotle’s Theory of the State (in Hellenica). Barker, Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle. Ross, Aristotle. Taylor, Aristotle. Stocks, Aristotelianism. Ross, Metaphysics. Burnet, Ethics. Newman, Politics. i Quoled from Mayor, A Sketch of Ancient Philosophy y Cambridge University Press, THE LATER ETHICAL PERIOD § 12 . Introduction With Aristotle, the period of great speculative systems comes for the time being to a close. In his successors the course of philoso- phy took a new turn, which it was to follow for several centuries. The reason for this new departure there has already been occa- sion to notice ; it is due to the breakdown of Greek political and social life. From Socrates to Aristotle philosophy had made an attempt to stem the current and to give a rational basis to that Meal of a corporate life which, resting originally on the foundation of a customary morality, had begun to totter when this morality was undermined alike by political ineffectiveness and by philosoph- ical scepticism. But the attempt was not successful ; we see a recognition of its hopelessness in the growing prominence assigned to the theoretic life as a substitute for an active participation in social interests. After the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, and the fall of Athens, things went from bad to worse in Greece. Feuds and jealousies increased among the numerous petty states into which the country was divided. Personal ambitions led to the solicitation of foreign interference, especially from Persia ; and the employment of mercenaries still further threatened the existence of freedom. With the loss of Greek independence, and the suprem- acy of Macedon, the failure of Greek civilization became a settled fact, however much the attempt might be made to nurse the forms of freedom. The appearance of isolated patriots only brought into clearer relief the incapacity for united action on the part of Greece as a whole ; so that the final loss of all chance of independence by the intervention of the Roman power was in some ways a blessing to the country. After the capture of Corinth by Mummius, in 146 B.C., Greece became a Roman province under the name of Achaia. 126 ifie Later Ktkicat Feriod 127 It is not surprising therefore that philosophy turned away from the ideal of man as an organic member of a social order, and occu- pied itself instead with the private individual, and the way in which he might obtain such satisfaction as he could in the troublouL times in which his lot was cast. A new social ideal with any vitality in it could only come into being after history had prepared the way. Meanwhile men must have something as a guiding principle ; and to get this they looked in two directions. On the one hand there begins now to some extent that running after Oriental cults which forms a striking feature in the life of the Empi^^e later on ; more sober minds, on the other hand, turned to philosophy for guidance and comfort. For the next few centuries, accordingly, philosophy assumes an intensely practical aspect; it aims to be nothing more nor less than a complete art of living. You pretend that you are not cal- culated for philosophy? says Diogenes; why then do you live, if you have no desire to live properly ? Philosophy,^’ writes Seneca, is not a theory for popular acceptance and designed for show ; it is not in words, but in deeds. It is not employed to help us pass the day agreeably or to remove ennui from our leisure ; it forms and fashions the mind, sets in order our life, directs our action, shows what ought to be done and to be left undone ; it sits at the helm and guides the course through perplexities and dangers. Without it none can live fearlessly, none securely ; countless things happen every hour which call for counsel, and this can only be sought for in philosophy. Whether fate constrains by an inexorable law, or God is judge of the universe and arranges all things, or chance without reference to any order impels and confounds the affairs of men, philosophy ought to be our safeguard. It will encourage us to obey God willingly, to obey fortune without yielding ; it will teach us to follow God, to put up with chance.” ^ Furthermore in all its more important tendencies the philoso- phy of the next few centuries is practically agreed in this : that if there is any good attainable at all it must be found by each man within himself. Circumstances have passed beyond man’s power ^ Letters, II, 4. 128 A StiidenVs History of Philosophy of control ; but if he cannot remedy the ills of the outer world he can at least make himself independent of it, can cultivate that philosophic calm and poise which finds all the elements of happiness within the mind itself, and thus can be put beyond the power of chance to harm. Both of the two more original philosophical currents of the period have primarily in view thi?; practical end. Although they arc reached by very different roads, the airaJS^m (freedom from emotion) of the Stoics, and the arapaiCa (imperturbability) of Epicureanism, bear a close resemblance. The same thing is true of another characteristic tendency of the time — Scepticism. A distrust of the powers of reason usually suc- ceeds a period of great speculative activity. As the ideals which give rise to systems of thought in such a period lose their freshness, the theoretical gaps in the arguments on which they have been based begin to monopolize attention. And since ultimate beliefs always are at bottom a matter of faith rather than of demonstration, and no new enthusiasm had as yet appeared to back knowledge with conviction, a sceptical distrust of the possibility of knowledge wa^ a natural outcome. But here too the interest was not primarily theoretical. Scepticism, like its rivals, is a discipline to prepare the mind for assuming such an attitude toward life as will enable it to secure what satisfaction it may. Such disinterested intellectual curiosity as remained directed itself largely to the investigation of literary, grammatical and historical details, where no great theoretical principles were involved. The same lack of intellectual grasp which showed itself on the one hand in the sceptical abandonment of the possibility of knowl- edge and, on the other, in a painstaking collection of facts, gave rise also to the tendency to Eclecticism. Unable to deal with funda- mental principles, there was a growing disposition to settle the disputes of philosophy by an uncritical combination of the various systems. The practical nature of the Roman mind, and its dis- inclination for metaphysical thinking, gave a special impulse to this tendency. And, finally, as the inability of philosophy by itself to satisfy men became more and more evident, a union of philosophy The Later Ethical Period [^ 29 j with religion was attempted, culminating in the religious meta* physics of the Neo-Platonists. § 13. Epicurus and Epicureanism I. Epicurus (341-270 B.c.) was of Athenian descent, though he was born in the island of Samos. About 306 he founded his school, which was held in his own gardens at Athens. Here he gathered about him a group of enthusiastic disciples, including among their number even women and slaves, who were bound together by the closest ties of intimacy and friendship. In this group Epicurus reigned supreme. His followers regarded him with the utmost veneration — a veneration which is expressed in the words of Lucretius in later days : “ For if we must speak as the acknowledged grandeur of the thing itself demands, a God he was, a God, most noble Mummius, who first found out that plan of life which is now termed wisdom, and who by trained skill rescued life from such great billows and such thick darkness, and moored it in so perfect a calm and in so brilliant a light.” ^ His teachings were memorized by his pupils and accepted without change, down to unimportant details. So rigidly did he impress his views upon them that, in spite of the long life which the school enjoyed, its speculative opinions scarcely altered to the end. Partly for this reason, the names which represent the later history of the school are only of secondary importance; Lucretius^ among its Roman adherents, is indeed famous, but rather as a poet than an inde- pendent philosopher. Epicurus’ philosophy is a combination of the hedonism of the Cyrenaics with the atomism of Democritus. First of all it is a hedonism — a theory of the end of life, the highest good. Like Aristippus before him, Epicurus found in pleasure the one obvious and undeniable good ; even when we speak of virtue as a good, as no doubt we do and may, it is really the pleasure which accompanies the exercise of virtue that we have in mind. But here begin certain complications. When Aristippus had said these same things he > Lucretius, V, 1 7 , Munro’s translation, Geo. Bell & Sons. 130 A Student's History of Philosophy had been pretty clear what he meant ; pleasure stood to him for just what it does to the ordinary man. Nor could Epicurus very well deny that such pleasure is a good ; he declares indeed that no conception of the good is possible apart from bodily enjoyments, while Metrodorus, one of his followers, asserts baldly that every- thing good has reference to the belly. But ethical philosophy is more sophisticated now than it had been in Aristippus’ time; the stumbling-blocks in the way of pleasure-getting are more clearly recognized. And in endeavoring to take account of this Epicurus goes farther than he might seem to be justified in doing. In part he lays stress on the need for selecting our pleasures wisely, for avoiding those unregulated impulses which bring evils in their train, for preferring simple and natural joys to the questionable delights of luxury and extravagance ; and in so far there is no inconsistency with his starting-point. But when he goes on also to disparage all positive pleasures in favor of a phil- osophic poise of mind (ataraxy), a quiet and undisturbed possession of one’s faculties free from pain of body and trouble of spirit, it is not easy always to distinguish his position from that of his oppo- nents. the Stoics ; and he is sometimes led to adopt an attitude toward sensuous satisfaction hardly to be expected of a hedonist. He even takes up with the theory that positive pleasures represent no more than the relief that results from the removal of a pain. They are only the preliminaries therefore of a true satisfaction, which in itself is nothing but the freedom from pain which leaves the mind without craving and without agitation ; pleasures may be varied, but they cannot be increased. “The end of our living is to be free from pain and fear. And when once we have reached this, all the tempest of the soul is laid. When we need pleasure is when we are grieved because of the absence of pleasure ; but when we feel no pain, then we no longer stand in need of pleasure.” ^ This calm of mind may even render a man contented in spite of physical tortures, if he will only assert his independence of adven- titious aids to happiness and refuse to let himseE be disturbed ; torn on the rack the philosopher may exclaim, Row sweet ! So far ' Uiog. Laertius, Life of Epicurus, § 27. The Later Ethical Period ^ 3 ^ have we travelled from the conception of happiness as a mere agree- able titillation of the senses. But whether or not Epicurus is logically consistent in his position, at any rate he created an ideal which appealed powerfully to a certain type of mind, and which even today, as a working theory of life, exerts a wide influence. It is not a strenuous ideal ; it calls for no heroism or sacrifice. But this very fact constitutes its charm for certain moods which to few men are wholly unknown. And the attitude of opposition which, in the interests of an aesthetic sim- plicity, it assumes toward the more flagrant vices and follies, gives it a sufficient moral flavor to hide its more dubious aspects. What — so its burden is — does man’s fret and ambition and busy toil after all avail him? Does all the boasted advance of civilization add one real pleasure to his life ? Does it do anything, indeed, but plague him with added cares, and weary him with war and strife? He longs to be rich, and famous, and powerful, and is dragged hither and thither by his ambition, only to expose himself to envy and the daily risk of ruin, and win nothing in the end. A frugal subsistence joined to a contented mind alone is true riches. If any one thinks his own not to be most ample, he may become lord of the whole world, and will yet be wretched.” The wise man will not despise pleasure when it comes to him ; but he will not be dependent on it. He will be able to get along contentedly with little, finding his satisfaction in the common things and incidents of life, and getting an added zest from the very consciousness of his ability to go with- out. ‘‘He enjoys wealth most who needs it least. If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires.” Epicureanism is then in one aspect, like the message of Rousseau in modern times, a summons to return from the complexities of civilization to nature and natural pleasures ; to take fife easily and simply, and cease to worry over trifles ; to depend for happiness less on highly spiced foods and elaborate banquets than on a good digestion and the company of friends. This ideal was exemplified in the life of the early Epicureans. “When,” says Seneca, “you come to the gardens where the words are inscribed : Friend, here it 132 A Student's History of Philosophy wiU 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 very drinks the j afford, but assuage it by a remedy which is natural and costs nothing. In this pleasure I have grown old.’’ ^ “For myself,” writes Epicurus to a friend, “I can be pleased with bread and water ; yet send me a little cheese, that when I want to be extravagant I may be ” ; and he boasts that while Metrodorus had only reduced his expenses to sixpence, he himself had been able to live comfortably on a less sum. The parallel with Rousseau extends also to Epicurus’ estimate of science and human learning. Although he finds his chief good in mental pleasures, he is very far from commending the strenuous intellectual life which Plato, for example, regarded as a man’s high- est source of happiness. He is quite as easy-going here as in the rest of his theory. Intellectual enjoyment means refined conver- sation, pleasant intercourse between friends, and not any anxious and soul-disturbing search for the hidden truth of things. For what commonly goes by the name of learning and culture Epicurus has little respect ; he was himself not a trained thinker, and he did not require more than the rudiments of education for his disciples. If they were able to read and write they had all that was essential ; mathematics, logic and rhetoric, the theory of music and art, the researches of the grammarian and historian, were disparaged by him as contributing nothing to human happiness, and so as a mere waste of time. “One need not bother himself,” says Metro- dorus, “if he has never read a line of Homer, and does not know whether Hector was a Trojan or a Greek.” How does it Happen, then, that the scientific explanation of the universe as represented in the theories of Democritus plays so large a part in the Epicurean teaching? Why does Epicurus insist upon this as an essential part of his philosophy and impose it dogmatically upon his followers? * Letters, ii, 9. The Later Ethical Period 133 2. The primary reason is not that Epicurus had, like the modern scientist, a feeling for positive and concrete fact in opposition to the verbal subtilties of logic, grammar and metaphysics; it is an entirely practical reason. Physical science is, for Epicurus, an instrument for making possible that calm of mind in which the end of life consists. And it does this because it rids us once for all of that which is the greatest foe to inward peace and a contented acquiescence — namely, religion. ‘'Will wealth and power,” writes Lucretius, “avail anything to cause religious scruples scared to fly panic-stricken from the mind, and that the fears of death leave the breast unembarrassed and free from care? But if we see that such things are food for laughter and mere mockeries, and in good truth the fears of men and dogging cares dread not the clash ol arms and cruel weapons, if unabashed they mix among kings and kesars, and stand not in awe of the glitter of gold nor the brilliant sheen of the purple robe, how can you doubt that this is wholly the prerogative of reason, when the whole life is withal a struggle in the dark ? For even as children are flurried and dread all things in the thick darkness, thus we in the daylight fear at times things not a whit more to be dreaded than those which children shudder at in the dark and fancy sure to be. This terror therefore and darkness of mind must be dispelled, not by the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and law of nature.” ^ It is the great work of science, then, to sweep aside the chimeras and religious scruples which make men slaves to their own diseased fancies, which upset the calculations of life, trouble all the future with superstitious fear, and put repose and happiness beyond their reach ; and it does this by substituting a purely natural and mechanical explanation for events, and so making religion super- fluous. Men have imagined that the world is made and ruled by gods whose favor they must secure and whose wrath they must propitiate. These gods are continually interfering in the affairs of men, punishing and rewarding, hurling the thunderbolt and ending plagues and earthquakes. The soul moreover is immortal, and so we must still look forward to possible vengeance in a future ' 11, 1. 43- 134 A Student s History of Philosophy life and to the woes of Tartarus. Doubtless such stories had, with the rise of science and philosophy, long since come to be more or less discredited in the eyes of educated men. But now that every- thing in the world was in a state of change and the landmarks which had guided men were disappearing, the need for something to which to cling had begun to manifest itself in a return to the superstitions which it was supposed had been outgrown. It is against this tendency that Epicurus sets himself. Only by ridding oneself of the vague hopes and fears which tear and distract the mind, and prevent it from finding its satisfaction in the present, can the true end of life be attained ; and this is what science has accomplished. Only our ignorance lets us imagine that events are brought about by supernatural interference ; true reason tells a different story. The lightning for example, the dreaded thunder- bolt of Jove, is a purely natural fact — fire, it may be, struck out by the chance collision of the clouds; given atoms and the void in which they move, and we have the data for explaining everything. And if we do not have to fear the vengeance of the gods in this life, no more is there any reason why we should look forward to punishment in another world. This fear of hell seems to the Epicurean one of the greatest evils that religion brings in its train. But there is no place for hell in the world which science knows. “No Tantalus in a lower world fears the huge stone that hangs over him ; the true Tantalus is he who vexes himself by a baseless dread of the gods, and fears such fall of luck as chance brings to him.’’ The idea of immortality is a vain imagination; 'the soul of man is even more unenduring than the world about him. And if death for us ends all, why should we fear it ? there are no evils it can bring, for there is no life or consciousness in the grave to which we go. “Where we are, death is not yet ; and where death comes, there we are not,” In spite however of thus rejecting alike the threats and the consolations of religion, Epicurus does not deny altogether the existence of the gods. His theory of knowledge, adopted from Democritus, which requires for perception and thought alike an objective cause in the shape of filmy images which objects contin- Tlte Later Ethical Period 135 ually are shedding, leads him to accept the real existence of divine and glorious forms in order to account for man’s belief in them. But such gods are neither to be feared nor loved. Living an un- ruffled life in the interspaces of the heavenly regions, where neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall, an ever cloudless ether over- canopics them, and they laugh with light shed largely round. Nature supplies all their wants, and nothing ever impairs their peace of mind.” Enjoying perfect felicity, they feel no concern for human things; the good and ill of the world alike fail to move them ; wrapped in eternal repose, in want of nothing from us, they are neither to be gained by our prayers nor stirred by us to anger. In spite of the fact therefore that Epicureanism allied itself with the scientific view of the world, it was itself singularly lacking in the scientific temper. Its interest was not in getting at truth, but in bolstering up the particular view of life which it wished to adopt. It lays in consequence but little stress on the details of scientific explanation. Certainty is not attainable, or even much to be desired ; a phenomenon might very well be explained in more ways than one, and it makes little difference which explanation we choose to adopt so long as it enables us to exclude the supernatural. One point in particular would suggest that Epicurus had not the purely scientific interest very much at heart. For Democritus the atoms are subjected rigidly to law. This belief in law as universal Epicurus rejects. ‘^It would be better to believe the fables about the gods than be a slave to the Fate taught by the physical philosophers ; for the theological myth gives a faint hope of averting the wrath of God by giving him honor, while the Fate of the philosophers is deaf to all supplications.” ^ So when he comes to account for the beginning of the world he departs from Democritus; as all the atoms naturally fall downward in a parallel direction, and fall equally fast so long as there is nothing to oppose them, they never would come into contact were it not for a primordial deviation from a straight line which must have been uncaused. ^ Diog Laertius, Life of Epicurus, § 2T- 136 A Student’s History of Philosophy 3. Some of the reasons for the success which Epicurus^ teaching met have already been suggested. It offers a conception of life which is intelligible to the average man in his average moods. It is easily formulated, is free from mystical and transcendental elements, and calls for no flights of moral or intellectual enthusiasm. But this also might be thought to constitute a limitation. The charges of loose living frequently brought against Epicurus himself were certainly far from being true ; and while in later times many who called themselves Epicureans made his doctrine an excuse for an unregulated pursuit of pleasure, this is by no means characteristic of the stricter members of the school, nor is it countenanced by the words of the founder. Pleasure and virtue are synonymous with Epicurus ; it is impossible to live pleasantly without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly. It might be argued that there is really nothing in Epicurus^ premises which can fairly be opposed to the indulgence in any pleasure, provided it be pursued judiciously and with due regard to consequences. Acts of moral wrong-doing, to be sure, are opposed to certain prejudices on the part of mankind at large, and so if they are detected they will meet with punishment. But these moral prejudices are, for the philosopher, theoretically a matter of convention ; if one can commit a crime and reap the benefits without discovery, there appears no good reason why he should refrain from gratifying his desires in the unconventional way. All that Epicurus can answer is, that even if the criminal is not found out the possibility of detection always will be present and, by rendering him continually uneasy, will destroy that peace of mind in which happiness consists. But whatever may be true in theory, in practice there is nothing necessarily immoral in the Epicurean way of life. It is not the more flagrant abuses to which it may or may not lead that constitutes the special weakness of Epicureanism, but rather a certain flabbiness of moral fibre which it reveals even when it is at its best. It is, as Cicero calls it, a bourgeois philosophy ; its very virtues have only to be turned at another angle to seem commonplace. Cheerfulness of mind, pleasant conversation, a life The Later Ethical Period 137 ordered by good taste and aesthetic moderation, are good in them- selves ; but they may be won at the expense of other qualities. Heroism, self-sacrifice, an honest enthusiasm for what is best in conduct or even in art — for these things Epicureanism would appear to have no place. It sets its face against ambition, and money-getting, and vulgar pleasure-seeking, not because there is a worthier life for man to lead, but because nothing after all is much worth while. I am no doubt a fool if I weary myself with striving after wealth and luxury, fame and position ; but I should be equally a fool if I were to delude myself with fine phrases about virtue and humanity, patriotism and duty. ‘‘It is not our business to work for crowns by saving the Greeks, but to enjoy ourselves in good eating and drinking.” Such a conception of life is crystallized in the Epicurean notion of the gods as they sit beside their nectar careless of the downtrodden race of men below. That this should have seemed the only true ideal of life, and that the Epicurean should find it unthinkable that one who had the power of attaining it should voluntarily take upon himself cares and responsibilities lor the sake of others, is perhaps his severest condemnation. LITERATURE Zeller, Epicureans , Stoics and Sceptics » Lucretius, De Natura Rerum. Wallace, Epicureanism. Courtney, Epicureanism (in Hellenica). Pater, Marius the Epicurean. Masson, The Atomic Theory of Lucretius, Watson, Hedonistic Theories. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean. Taylor, Epicurus. Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus. § 14. Zeno. The Stoics If Epicureanism was of a nature to appeal strongly to the world weariness of a society in which indolence and corruption had dulled the edge, in less strenuous minds, of any oronounced belief in virtuCr 136 A pt Jh^flUoSOpflJ it was a very different sort of philosophy that would recommend itself to the typical Roman of the Republic, and to those men who carried on the traditions of the Republic. The same intellectual temper which in public life produced a Cato, received expression in the world of philosophy as Stoicism. It is true Stoicism is not Roman in its origin. But neither is it typically Greek, although Athens, as the intellectual center of the world, was naturally chosen by Zeno (340-265 b.c.), the founder of the school, as the most fitting place in which to establish himself as a teacher. Zeno was himself however a merchant of Cyprus, probably of Phoenician stock, and nearly all the succeeding heads of the school were born outside of Greece ; so that the more ascetic temper which Stoicism displays may perhaps be traced in part to an Oriental strain. At all events Stoicism offered to the nobler minds of the day a welcome refuge from the trivialities of the life which surrounded them ; and it succeeded in evolving a type of character and belief superior to anything that its contemporary rivals had to show. I. Metaphysics. — Objectively, the Stoic philosophy is aiming at a result which has points of contact with Epicureanism. For both the true end of life might be described as freedom from dis- turbing desires and from the pressure of external things, and a discipline of the mind that shall enable it to find satisfaction within itself. For both the attaining of this end is the great aim of philos- ophy. But the real meaning of the end, and the attitude of mind for which it called, were in the two cases widely different. As the Epicurean went back to Aristippus and his doctrine of pleasure as the end of life, so the Stoics are connected with that development of Socrates’ thought which, in the Cynics, made virtue the highest good. But whereas the Cynics had for the most part stopped with negative results, in the case of the Stoics the possession of a different theoretical background enabled them to correct in a degree the onesidedness alike of their predecessors and of their rivals the Epicureans. Instead, that is, of accepting the individualism and atomism of Epicurus, they start from the other end. Reality is an organic whole, an intimate combination of form and matter, soul and body. The Later Ethical Period 139 through which one universal life pulsates. This connected whole is called indifferently God, or nature. Now man, like everything else, is a part of the universal nature ; and in this way conformity to nature becomes a formula which has in it the possibility of giving some real content to the life of virtue. The Cynic protest against convention is translated into a positive law of duty ; the knowledge in which virtue consists becomes a knowledge of the true nature of things, and virtuous conduct such conduct as will further the life of nature — of that whole to which we belong as parts, and which is interpretable in terms of our rational hfe. Here consequently the Stoic view of life comes in sharp conflict with that of Epicurus. For Epicurus, man is set down in a universe which is an interplay of senseless atoms, and he exists as a creature who, though of slight powers and open to strange vicissitudes, is nevertheless within his humble sphere a free agent, bound by no loyalties beyond himself, and concerned only to make the most he can of his private life under the guidance of an unpretentious ideal of pleasure. The Stoic too is concerned in practice with the possi- bilities of his personal satisfaction. But these possibilities he pro- poses to arrive at, not by disregarding the cosmos which surrounds him, but by looking to this as the source of all true knowledge about himself. Instead of going his own way regardless of the greater powers of nature, it is his business as a rational being to discover how the universe is going, and adjust his own step to It. From this universe at large all human values spring. And man is accordingly not a stranger in the world, but the product of righteous forces which work themselves out, in part through him, but in any case inevitably and on a universal scale. Before considering further what this ideal means concretely, a few words need to be added to complete the account of the general metaphysical theory of the school. The conception of the universe as a unitary whole, instead of as a collection of atomic elements, implies the reality of its rationality, or what Plato calls the Form. But the Stoic agrees with Aristotle in denying that the two things, matter and form, are at all separate ; meaning exists in the world, not in a realm beyond it. Even Aristotle, however, had ended up 140 A Student's History of Phitosophy with pure form ; the Stoics get rid of the last trace of transcenden- talism by reducing form itself to matter. The result is a material- istic pantheism. The world of material nature is the sole reality ; but it is not dead matter. It is living, informed by a rational sou] — is God. This soul of the world, the Logos, or rational principle, is ever3rwhere present as a more active and subtle kind of matter, just as the human soul is present in the body directing it to rational ends ; indeed what we call the human soul — pneuma^ breath or spirit — is but a part of this greater world soul, participating in its rational qualities, and received back finally into the universal reason where its individuality is lost. In opposition therefore to the explanation of the world processes by chance or mechanism, the Stoic conception is throughout teleological. Everything flows of necessity from the nature of the whole ; and since that whole is Reason, everything has its place in an intelligible scheme. The combination of so thoroughly ideal- istic a tendency with materialism — a materialism which argues that an emotion, for example, is matte**, since it would have no power to move a man unless it came in spatial contact with him — clearly gives rise to difficulties ; and it shows the decline of first- rate philosophical insight that the Stoics were able to ignore these difl 5 culties. 2. The Ethical Ideal. — With this general sketch of the Stoic metaphysics, we may turn back to their ethical conception. There are two words about which the Stoic ethics turns — nalure, and virtue; and of the two the first is on the whole perhaps the more enlightening. It has appeared that, for the Stoic, Nature is a unitary whole in which every human act as well as every other physical event is subject to necessary laws. As a consequence natural living is connected not, as in the case of Epicurus, with individual desires and pleasures, but with the more general char- acteristics that belong to man as a component part of the one sig- nificant meaning of the world. The Stoics do not overlook the natural impulses ; they are the starting-point of conduct. But they are not the source of virtue; from the standpoint of the good they are indifferent. Not only is it true that virtue does not arise except The Later Ethical Period i4t as the natural capacities are subjected to reason, but it is this act of rational judgment and choice in which alone virtue consists. Only the good will, the rational attitude itself in its coincidence with the universal reason, makes a man virtuous. A particular desire may be in accordance with nature. But it is never so essential that it may not be dispensed with ; and nothing is really good if we can get along without it. Such a conception is connected with an innovation which the Stoics introduce into the psychology of Plato and Aristotle. In- stead of making the feelings and emotions constitute a subordinate part or function of the soul standing over against the reason, they regard them rather as a disease, an imperfection, a disturbance of the reason itself. It follows that the emotions are not something to be regulated simply and held in check by the reason ; they must be utterly rooted out. As a disease, emotion is not to be tolerated for a moment ; if we give it ever so slight a foothold it is bound to grow and spread contagion. The true ethical ideal, therefore, is entire freedom from the emotions. It is not a question of temper- ing one’s passions ; that is to rest satisfied with being only a little mad, a little sick. The wise man must aim at perfect health of soul ; he must have no passions at all. But may we not indulge in compassion for example, pity a friend in distress? Relieve our friend, by all means ; but as for pity, no. Such a thing seems harm- less; but as sure as we give way to it, we shall find it gaining strength and becoming ungovernable. Pity, too, is apt to make a man bungle his work, and thus actually to defeat its own end. It is true, so at least the later Stoics had to admit, that there are certain weaknesses of the flesh — the blush that rises unbidden to the cheek, the instinctive shrinking before pain and suffering — which I may not be able wholly to control ; but these are no more than affections of the body, and need not touch the mind unless the mind itself shall so permit. An emotion in the strict sense is a dis- turbance of the mind ; and over that the mind has full control, and may give or withhold its consent. The truly virtuous life, then, will be a life that is free and undis- turbed by the emotions ; and that will only be possible as we refuse 142 A Stiidenfs History of Philosophy to allow our will to be coerced by those external things and events which lie outside the power of the mind itself. Let us recognize that only that is evil which we choose to regard as such ; if we refuse to call it evil it may, indeed, harm our body, but it cannot touch the inner self. Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.” ^'Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint : I have been harmed. Take away the complaint: I have been harmed, and the harm is done away.” Instead of striving to win this and avoid that, let us rid ourselves of the desires which make things attractive or dreadful. It is the good fortune of the wise man not to need any good fortune. That only is a real evil which degrades the soul from its true dignity ; and that only a good which enables the soul to stand fast in its integrity. Soon thou wilt be ashes or a skeleton, and either a name, or not a name even. And the things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, and like little dogs biting one another, and little children quarrelling and laughing and then straightway weeping.” What is pleasure, for which men fight and die ? Transitory, tiresome, sickly, it scarce outlives the tasting of it. ‘‘I am seeking,” says Seneca, “to find what is good for a man, not for his belly. Why, cattle and whales have larger ones than he.” Are we taken with a life of luxury and outward show ? “ As we sit at table, let us consider that this is but che dead body of a fish, that the dead body of a bird or of a pig ; and again, that this Falernian is only a little grape juice, and this purple robe some sheep’s wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish.” Or do we work for fame, that future generations may praise us? Let us remember that men of after times will be exactly such as those whom now we despise and cannot endure, just as foolish and unthinking, just as short-lived. Let us then stand steadfast in the faith that nothing can harm us unless we ourselves open the gate to the enemy ; that nothing is necessary save those inner possessions of which no one ran rob us. Such an ideal of character — the ideal of the wise man, or the The Later Ethical Period 143 sage — stands the chance however of becoming somewhat too stern and forbidding in its nature. In the rigor of their conception the Stoics seemed to make no allowance for the frailty of human nature. As in the later Christian doctrine, a man was either wholly saved or wholly lost, perfect and complete or else with no good thing in him ; just as a stick is either straight or crooked, and there is no middle alternative. The man who is a hundred furlongs from Canopus, and the man who is only one, are both equally not in Canopus. For virtues are not many, but one, since all go back to the inner unity of the will which alone is good. If therefore the will is sound, the man possesses at one stroke all possible goods and perfections ; if it is weak in one point it is weak in all, for no chain is stronger than its weakest link. The Stoics speak of the sage, accordingly, in the most extravagant terms ; since all goods are one, he alone is just, wise, beautiful, brave, a king, an orator, rich, a legislator. So also there is no gradual progress toward virtue. The wise man becomes wise by a sudden conversion, which in a single moment bridges the gulf between total depravity and perfection. The world thus becomes divided between two classes — the sages, a scat- tered few, and the vast multitude of men, mostly fools. And the tendency was strong to make this division a source of Pharisaic pride, and to transfer the contemptuous disregard in which outer things were held to the men also who took delight in these things — that is, to mankind in general. Time tended to soften somewhat the asperity of this attitude The ideal sage, in his perfection, was too rare a phenomenon in the world, and the failure of the average Stoic to live up to the standard thus set was too obvious to himself and to his opponents alike ; and sc concessions necessarily were made. It had to be allowed that, after all, there are various grades of attainment, and that one is higher than another. So too it was found impossible, without too great paradox, to hold that everything in the world outside the good will is totally indifiFerent. Common sense will never admit that health and fortune, because they are more or less fortuitous and can at a pinch be dispensed with, are quite on a level with disease and penury. Accordingly, along with what is absolutely good, the 144 A Students History of Philosophy Stoics were led to make a distinction between those external things which tend to promote the good life and supply it with material, and those which have the opposite tendency ; and it was admitted that, although the former are not good in the proper and ultimate sense, they yet are good in a secondary way, and relatively, the term ^‘indifferent^’ being now applied to the third and more limited class of things which are recognized by common sense as having no important bearing on our lives. As a matter of fact, the assertion that pleasure and pain are absolutely indifferent and on an equality is clearly only a paradoxical overstatement of certain familiar truths apart from which it would carry no conviction at all. The truth that underlies it is, of course, that pain may be endured with cheer- fulness by the brave man when it is inevitable, and even welcomed when it is a step toward some higher good ; that pleasure is sub- ordinate to character, and unworthy to engross the affections and to stand in the way of better things. And while the Stoic always retains his tendency to paradox, this more moderate attitude comes to be adopted also on occasion. The desirable thing is not to have the fire burn me — that I would willingly avoid if I could — but to refuse to let the pain of burning conquer me. Even positive pleasure is not wholly to be despised in so far as it follows virtue naturally and is not aimed at on its own account — “as in a tilled field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these may charm the eye, all this labor was not spent in order to produce them.” 3. Social Philosophy, — There is one further way in which the Stoic conception of Nature tends to set him in opposition to the Epicurean ; it gave a sanction to society and its institutions for which Epicureanism has no counterpart. As an expression of universal law, man is related to his fellows essentially and fun- damentally ; sooner will one find anything earthy which comes in contact with no earthy thing than a man altogether separated from other men. To be sure, as states then were constituted, the Stoic might be excused from taking an active part in politics ; but theo- retically he was even in his private life still working for the pub- lic weal. “The services of a good citizen are never thrown away ; The Later Ethical Period I4S he does good by being heard and seen, by his expression, his gestures, his silent determination, and his very walk.’’ Nor is this limited, as with the ancient Greek, to one’s own particular state or city. My nature,” says the Emperor Aurelius, ^^is rational and social, and my city and my country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.” This cosmopolitanism, which prided itself on the sentiment, I am first of all a man — Homo sum — was not indeed due to any very deep-seated feeling for humanity, and it did not need to carry any great sense of human obligation. As a matter of fact it does not always enable us in practice to draw a sharp line between Stoic and Epicurean. Epicurus’ theory also had led to a cosmopolitanism of a sort ; and the vagueness and generality of the Stoic’s conception had some tendency to move toward a disparagement of particular social duties which at times approaches the individualism of his rival. But in theory there was a wide difference ; whereas for Epicurus man is a citizen of the world simply because there is noth- ing that ties him to other men or to any particular community or state, the Stoic finds his justification precisely in such a connecting link. The consequence was an attitude of at least nominal piety toward all reputable forms of custom and institution. The natural logic of a deterministic pantheism was in the direction of an acquies- cence in those established institutional values in which the universal reason has expressed itself — a tendency which, as Stoicism degen- erated in becoming popularized, comes into the open as a disposition on the part of the Stoic preacher to act as an apologist for conven- tional morality and religion. In this there lay, however, a certain difficulty for the Stoic position. The law of duty as it leads a man to play his part in a world in which Reason has been incarnated, and the law of duty as a man owes it to his inner self and to the integrity of will that is alone a good, do not seem sure of coinciding. It was his perception of the hollowness of all earthly things which first set the Stoic on his search for that steadiness and immutability in which the everyday notion of the good is lacking ; and if the only good for man is thus the strength of mind that can make a willing assent to the universal 146 A Student's History of Philosophy Reason a sufficient substitute for all lesser claims, what possible concern can he have with the way things turn out in the world of sense ? Why should I aim at this or that partial result in a world which, if I view it in one light, is already all that God meant it to be, and which in another light would still, whatever happened, remain irrelevant to the one ideal of a mind fearless and unshaken ? The Stoics met the difficulty by taking both the demands as they stand and combining them. The universe is the expression of reason and of purpose ; and in the natural constitution of man, and the natural order of society, we have the prophecy at least of what for man makes up the life of reason which the will is to adopt. In consequence he will live this life, accept the duties it imposes, co- operate in the universal enterprise. But none of these things in itself is that is a term which applies only to the right direc- tion of the will itself. Very well, then, he will not call them good or set his heart upon them ; he will not permit them to arouse desire or excite emotion. He will exercise his duties as a citizen, not from any sense of patriotism, but solely because it is the right thing to do. He will assume the responsibilities of a family because it is a human function to carry on the race, not out of any affection for wife or children. He will aim to do good to his fellow man, but only from a sense of duty. In general he will perform conscientiously the tasks which God by placing him in the world imposed upon him. But at the same time he will protect his own self-sufficiency by resolutely excluding from his mind all disturbing emotions and all desire to see things turn out in this way rather than in that ; the outcome he will leave to God, dissociating himself meticulously from every concern except for his own inner poise of mind. 4. Summary. — Taken at its best, and more particularly in the person of some of its later representatives. Stoicism offers an ideal of life seldom surpassed for noble simplicity. will look upon death or upon a comedy, says Seneca, *‘with the same expression of countenance. I will submit to labors however great they may be, supporting the strength of my body by that of my mind. I will despise riches when I have them as much as when I have them not. Whether fortune comes or goes, I will take no notice of her. I wih The Later Ethical Period 147 i^iew all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all mankind. I will so live as to remember that I was born for others, and will thank nature on this account ; for in what fashion could she have done better for me ? She has given me alone to all, and all to me alone. Whatever I may possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly. I will think that 1 have no possessions so real as those which I have given away to deserving people. I never will consider a gift to be a large one if it be bestowed upon a worthy object. I will do nothing because of public opinion, but everything because of conscience. Whenever I do anything alone by myself, I will believe that the eyes of the Roman people are upon me while I do it. In eating and drinking my object shall be to quench the desires of nature, not to fill and empty my belly. I will be agreeable with my friends, gentle and mild to my foes. I will grant pardon before I am asked for it, and will meet the wishes of honorable men halfway. I will bear in mind that the world is my native city, that its governors are the gods, and that they stand above and around me criticising whatever I do or say. When either nature demands my breath again, or reason bids me dismiss it, I will quit this life, calUng all to witness that I have loved a good conscience and good pursuits, and that no one’s freedom, my own least of all, has been impaired through me.” So Epictetus: *'My man, as the proverb says, make a desperate effort on behalf of tranquillity of mind, freedom and magnanimity. Lift up your eyes at last as released from slavery. Dare to look up to God and say : Deal with me for the future as thou wilt, I refuse nothing that pleases thee ; clothe me in any dress thou choosest. Who would Hercules have been if he had sat at home? He would have been Eurystheus and not Hercules. But you are not Hercules, and you are not able to purge away the wick- edness of others. Clear away your own ; from yourself, from 3^our thoughts cast away, instead of Procrustes and Sciron, sadness, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, intemperance.” ‘‘Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which 148 A Students History of Philosophy needs walls and curtains.’’ A God dwells in the breast of every good man ; let us not disgrace the abode of divinity. Virtue needs no external rewards. As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.” The life of virtue is all-sufficient; it fills the whole soul and takes away the sensibility of any loss. What matters it if a stream be interrupted or cut off if the fountain from whence it flowed be still alive? As the stars hide their diminished heads before the brightness of the sun, so afflictions are crushed and dissipated by the greatness of virtue, and all man»"ier of annoyances have no more effect upon her than a shower of laLi upon the sea. To attain then this integrity of soul, to be able to meet life cheer- fully and confidently without fearing anything it can do to us — this alone constitutes man’s good ; mere pleasures seem poor and worthless in comparison. We are in the world not to live pleasantly but to quit us like men. ^^In the morning when thou risest unwill- ingly, let this thought be present : I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied, if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world ? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant. Dost thou exist, then, to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to put in order their several parts of the universe ? and art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?” So likewise rank and riches have no honest value. It matters not whence we come, but whither we go. For a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, which serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man’s business. It is the edge and temper of the blade that makes a good sword, not the richness of the scabbard ; and so it is not money and possessions that make a man considerable, but his virtue. “They are amusing The Later Ethical Period 149 fellows who are proud of things which are not in our power. A man says : I am better than you, for I possess much land, and you are wasting with hunger. Another says : I am of consular rank ; another : I have curly hair. But a horse does not say to a horse : I am superior to you, for I possess much fodder and much barley, and my bits are of gold, and my harness is embroidered ; but he says : I am swifter than you. And every animal is better or worse from his own merit or his own badness. Is there then no virtue in man only, and must we look to the hair and our clothes, and to our ancestors?” Every man is worth just as much as the things about which he busies himself. Let our riches consist in coveting nothing, and our peace in fearing nothing. Secure in the eternal possession of himself, a man can afford to despise the buffets of fortune, and can even welcome them, in the confidence that all things are working for his good. It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it. Outward circum- stances are not our masters ; where a man can live at all he can also live well. A wise man is out of the reach of fortune, and attempts upon him are no more than Xerxes’ arrows ; they may darken the day, but they cannot strike the sun. I must die. Must I then die lamenting ? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment? Tell me the secret which you possess. I will not, for this is in my power. But I will put you in chains. Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower. I will throw you into prison. My poor body, you mean. I will cut your head off. When, then, have I told you that my head alone can not be cut off ? ” Not even death to the wise man is a thing to dread ; like birth and all that the seasons bring, it is but one of the things which nature wills. ‘^For as to children masks appear terrible and fearful from inexperience, we also are affected in like manner by events for no other reason. What is death? A tragic mask. Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separated from the spirit either now or later, as it was separated from it before.” ^‘Pass, then, through thy little space of time conformably to nature, and 150 A Students History of Philosophy end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.^^ Life itself is neither good nor evil, but only a place for good and evil. This indifference the Stoics carried to the extent even of advocating the voluntary giving up of life by suicide if occasion seemed to call for it. When life is so questionable a good, why not rid ourselves of a troublesome burden? “The house is smoky and I quit it.” “The door is open ; be not more timid than little children, but as they say when the thing does not please them : I will play no longer, so do you, when things seem to you of such a kind, say : I will no longer play, and be gone. But if you stay, do not complain.” ^ 5. The Problem of Evil. — Before bringing the account of Stoicism to a close there are two problems in particular that it still remains to mention briefly — problems which the require- ments of their theory led the Stoics to give a special prominence. These are the problems of evil, and of human freedom. As has been said, the Stoic accepts the teleological explanation of the universe, as against the theory of unmeaning mechanism ; to him it is self-evident that the world is framed in accordance with a ra- tional purpose. Accordingly the world must be a perfect world ; and this the Stoics attempted to establish by appealing to the harmony and beauty that is present in it, and the apparent adapta- tion of means to end, especially in organic life. Thus the peacock is made for the sake of its beautiful tail ; horses are made for riding ; sheep to supply clothing for man, and dogs to guard and help him , asses to carry his burdens. Such reasoning, however, unless a severe restraint was put upon it, was clearly in danger of descending to trivialities; and at its best there still remain the difficulties raised by the numerous cases where, especially if we take human life as the end of creation, the products of nature seem quite irreb evant or else positively harmful. So the Stoics were put upon their mettle to meet these objections, and still maintain the perfection of the universe. In doing this they succeeded in bringing out a suggestion, ^ Quotations from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. The Later Ethical Period ^51 least, of most of the considerations by which subsequent thought has tried to vindicate the ways of God to man. As regards physical evils, at any rate, they had already met the difficulty consistently, even if paradoxically, by their denial that such things are evil at all. Many afflictions may befall a good man, but no evil, for contraries will never incorporate ; all the rivers of the world are never able to change the taste and quality of the ocean. Or again, if we wish to take it on ground somewhat less high, let us remember that we only have to live each moment at a time. It is neither the future nor the past that pains me, but only the present. If then I do not let my thoughts embrace at once all the troubles I may expect to befall me, but consider each occasion by itself, I shall be ashamed to confess that there is in it anything intolerable and past bearing. Meanwhile there are other more positive considerations. The con- ception of the world as a unity enables us to explain a seeming imperfection by its relation to the larger scheme of things into which it enters; a partial evil becomes a universal good. *^Must my leg then be lamed? Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg find fault with the world ? Will you not willingly surrender it for the whole ? Know you not how small a part you are com- pared with the whole ^‘If a good man had foreknowledge of what would happen, he would cooperate toward his own sickness and death and mutilation, since he knows that these things are assigned to him according to the universal arrangement, and that the whole is superior to the part.’’ “But how is it said that some external things are according to nature, and others contrary to nature? It is said as it might be said if we were separated from society ; for to the foot I shall say that it is according to nature for it to be clean ; but if you take it as a foot, and as a thing not inde- pendent, it will befit it both to step into the mud, and tread on thorns, and sometimes to be cast off for the good of the whole body ; otherwise it is no longer a foot. We should think in some such way about ourselves also. What are you? A man. If you con- sider yourself as detached from other men, it is according to nature to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you consider vourself as a man, and a part of a certain whole, it is for the sake 152 A Student's History of Philosophy of that whole that at one time you should be sick, at another time take a voyage and run into danger, at another time be in want, and in some cases die prematurely. Why then are you troubled ? Do you not know that as a foot is no longer a foot if it is detached from the body, so you are no longer a man if you are separated from other men?'' It is true that often this does not carry us very far practically, since we are unable to put ourselves at the point of view of the whole ; and so we may be forced to fall back on the blind faith that nature can do no wrong. But sometimes also, and particularly when we take moral welfare into view, we can see how evil ma}^ work for good. As a master gives his most hopeful scholars the hardest lessons, so does God deal with the most generous spirits. In reality no one is more unhappy than the man whom no misfortune has ever befallen. How many are there in the world that enjoy all things to their own wish, whom God never thought worthy of a trial. If it might be imagined that the Almighty should take off his thought from the care of his whole work, what more glorious spectacle could he reflect upon than a valiant man struggling with adverse fortune? Calamity is the touchstone of a brave mind that resolves to live and die master of itself. Adversity is the better for us all, for it is God's mercy to show the world their errors, and that the things they fear and covet are neither good nor evil, being the common and promiscuous lot of good men and bad. 6. The Problem of Freedom, — The second problem is that which had to do with freedom, or free will. The whole ethical stand- point of the Stoics presupposed an insistence on the supreme reality of duty, and on the responsibility that goes along with duty. On the other side their metaphysics made of the human agent a cog in a universal system ruled everywhere by strict necessity. Their opponents were quick to point out the apparent contradiction, and to insist that no place was left for real freedom and responsibil- ity. A reconciliation of freedom with determinism was accordingly a matter of some importance for them ; and the result was a con- ception of freedom which has proved to be a lasting contribution ike Later Ethical Period 153 to ph/losophy. So conceived, freedom acts to be sure in accord- ance with necessity. But this necessity is an expression of man^s nature ; in yielding to it I am yielding not to an outside force, but to the law of my own being. And is not this, indeed, the only view of liberty that will stand examination? *^But you say: I would Kke to have everything result just as I like, and in whatever way I like. You are mad, you are beside yourself. Do you not know that freedom is a noble and valuable thing? But for me inconsiderately to wish for things to happen as I inconsiderately like, this appears to me not only not noble, but even most base. For how do we proceed in the matter of writing? Do I wish to write the name of Dion as I choose? No; but I am taught to choose to write it as it ought to be written. And how with respect to music ? In the same manner. If it were not so it would be of no value to know anything, if knowledge were adapted to every man’s whim. Is it then in this alone, in this which is the greatest and the chief thing — I mean freedom — that I am permitted to will inconsiderately? By no means, but to be instructed is this : to learn to wish that everything may happen as it does.” ‘‘We are born subjects, but to obey God is perfect liberty.” 7. Stoicism and Christianity, — Stoicism, it will probably have be^n apparent, offers in a number of ways points of contact with the Cnristian religion, and in fact it played a part in the preparation 'vhich rendered the triumph of Christianity possible. The con- ception of the omnipresence of God as pneuma or spirit, the novel emphasis laid upon duty as the inner law of man’s nature, the ideal of a life of self-denial easily passing into an ascetic contempt for the things of this world, are among the points of resemblance that will suggest themselves. But the points of difference are equally appar- ent. While the God of the Stoics is primarily one of impersonal in- telligence and power, the God of Christianity is a God of love. The outlines of the Stoic conception are almost uniformly hard and un- compromising ; God looks after the perfection of the whole, but this may or may not be compatible with the happiness of individuals. The same harshness was carried over into the relations of man to man ; more truly, perhaps, the first fact is a reflex of the second. 154 A Student's History of Philosophy Theoretically the Stoics, even the milder Stoics, recommend an insensibility which is hardly human. A wise man is not affected by the loss of children or friends. ‘‘To feel pain or grief for the mis- fortunes of others/’ says Seneca, “is a weakness unworthy of the sage; for nothing should cloud his serenity or shake hi» firmness.” It follows that Stoicism can only appeal as a reward to the sense of satisfaction in one’s mere power of endurance. Christianity on the other hand is a religion of hope and consolation ; while it holds to the necessity of rejecting the solicitations of the senses, it does not make this negation an end in itself but a means to a fuller life, in another world if not in the present one. This doctrine of immortal- ity finds no real place in Stoicicm ; to the Stoic immortality is only a possible hypothesis which carries no special consolation with it, and which in any case means only an extension of life and not its eternity. For even if our self-identity continues for a time after death, the final overthrow of this world of ours is bound to come ; and in the universal conflagration which will then take place, all finite souls will be reabsorbed into the world soul and lose their individuality. Finally, Stoicism is primarily an ethics and not, like Christianity, a religion. The philosopher attains virtue by his own efforts ; he looks to himself for help, not to God. The wise man, so the Stoic could say, is as necessary to Zeus as Zeus to the wise man. In one way he is even superior to God ; God is beyond suffering evil, while the wise man is above it. God surpasses the good man in this only, that he is longer good ; the good man can excel God in the patience with which he bears the trials of his mortal lot. The result is, at its best, a respect for oneself and one’s own integrity which is whole- some and heroic ; at its worst, a Pharisaic pride in one’s individual achievement and a contemptuous disregard for weaker men. But in any case it is a creed only for exceptional natures; while it fostered ideals which proved a saving leaven, it was too intellectual and self-centered to regenerate society. In the need that was felt for something that should appeal not to the intellect or bare will alone but to the feelings and emotions likewise, and which should 2 he Later Eihual Period 155 take man out of himself and reinforce his weakness through some higher power, ethical philosophy was gradually to be displaced by a religious philosophy. LITERATURE Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts. Seneca, Dialogues^ On Benefits, On Clemency , Letters. Epictetus, Discourses and Encheiridion. Cicero, Philosophical Works. Plutarch, Morals. Capes, Stoicism. Br^^ant, The Mutual Influence of Christianity and the Stoic School Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics. Seth, Study of Ethical Principles. Matthew Arnold, Marcus Aurelius (in Essays). Jackson, Sc'neca and Kant. Watson, Life of M. Aurelius. Bruce, Moral Order of the World in Ancient and Modern Thought. Murray, The Stoic Philosophy. Stock, Stoicism. Arnold, Roman Stoicism. Be van. Stoics and Sceptics. Davidson, The Stoic Creed. Wenley, Stoicism. § 15, The Sceptics 1. Before turning however to this next development, it is neces- sary to give a brief account of the other tendencies of the period we have been considering. Of these the most important is Scepti- cism. The first representative of Scepticism was Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 B.C.), a contemporary of Aristotle. Like Zeno and Epi- curus, Pyrrho brought to philosophy a practical interest and bent. But instead of attempting to find satisfaction through the medium of a dogmatic system of belief, he thought it was just in this direc- tion that inquietude and perplexity lay. For after all that men have philosophized, what agreement have they reached on the simplest questions? Each school has its own special answer, which differs from the answer given by any other school. Let us 156 A Students History of Philosophy recognize then that much thinking is a weariness to the flesh ; that speculation only involves us in doubt and uncertainty ; that every question may be argued equally well on either side, so that a final decision is impossible. Let us find peace of mind by acquiescing in our enforced ignorance, and regarding as indifferent to us all ex- ternal things, since we cannot possibly know the truth about them. In later days stories were current of the way in which Pyrrho ex- emplified his own philosophy in practice — how for example he declined to trust his senses even to the extent of turning out for a wagon or a precipice, and so had to be rescued by his friends. Pyrrho had no very great influence on the thought of his own day ; the field was not yet ready for him. But as the period of originality in speculative thinking became more distant, a new sceptical reaction grew up against the dogmatism of the dominant schools. This reaction succeeded in finding a home temporarily in the Academy itself, where it was adopted in the first place chiefly as a weapon against the Stoics. The most important names in con* nection with the Middle Academy, as it is called, are those of Arcesilaus (31 5-241 b.c.), and his more brilliant successor Carneades (2 1 5-130 B.C.). By Carneades scepticism was carried over into the realm of ethics as well ; and it is related that while on a political embassy to Rome he created a great sensation by arguing very eloquently in a public discourse in behalf of justice, and then the next day speaking with equal effect against it. The Academic doctrine had however a more positive side as well. Although cer- tainty cannot be attained, yet practical needs require that there should be something to render decision possible. This the Academics tried to give in their doctrine of probability. A thing may not be capable of proof, but it still may be more probable than its opposite ; and this logic of probability is for practical needs as good as demonstration. A third tendency in Scepticism, which considered that the Academy was still too dogmatic and so pro- fessed to go back to the more thoroughgoing doctrine of Pyrrho, is found among the so-called Empiricists, who are chiefly physicians. Of these the most important are Aenesidemus of Cnossus and Sextus Empiricus. The Later Ethical Period 157 2. The arguments of the Sceptics may be divided roughly into two classes — those empirical proofs, drawn chiefly from sensation, which show the actual uncertainty and contradictoriness of our knowledge, and the more theoretical considerations that have to do with the nature of thought or reason. These arguments have become familiar at the present day, and may be reproduced briefly as follows : ^ — There are, first, the differences in the organization of animals, and the consequent difference in the impressions which the same object makes upon them. What is pleasant to one is disagreeable to another ; what is useful to one to another is fatal. Thus young branches are eagerly eaten by the goat but are bitter to mankind ; hemlock is nutritious to the quail but deadly to man. So animals differ vastly in the degree of development of their faculties. The hawk is far more keen-sighted than man, the dog has a much acutef scei \t. Must it not be a different world then that reveals itself to different beings? and who is to decide which is the true world? Among men themselves there is the same variety in the ways in which things affect them. According to Demophon, the steward of Alexander used to feel warm in the shade and to shiver in the sun Andron the Argive travelled through the deserts of Libya without once drinking. Again one man is fond of medicine, another of farming, another of commerce. How are we to set up any standard in the midst of the confusion that meets us ? Everything goes back to personal tastes, and about tastes there is no disputing. Furthermore, look at the different ways in which the same object will appear to the different senses. An apple presents itself to the sense of sight as yellow, to the taste as sweet, to the smell as fragranL. Does not this very fact that each sense modifies the report which an object sends in so as to change its character entirely show that we never get the true object at all? Conceivably there might be countless other senses, and each of these would have just as much, or just as little, title to be believed as those we possess. And in the human constitution there are continual changes going on which affect our whole view of things. Health, sickness, sleep, ' Taken largely from Diogenes Laertius’ life of Pyrrho, Bohn’s Classical Library. 158 A Students History of Philosophy waking, joy, grief, youth, old age, courage, fear, want, abundance, hatred, friendship, warmth, cold, ease or difficulty of breathing — all determine us to the most varied and contradictory notions about the real nature of facts. What are we to take as the normal state, where things appear in their truth? And what opinion can we have of a being whose powers and faculties can be so easily upset and confounded by the most trifling cause ? Consider next the matter of custom and tradition, and the effect which habit, education and environment have in determining a man’s beliefs. In the face of this, how can we suppose that there is any absolute foundation of true or false, right or wrong? In one community certain customs rule, and everybody regards them as eminently right and natural. Pass into the next country and you will find these same customs condemned as vicious and absurd. The Persians do not think it unnatural for a man to marry his daughter; but among the Greeks it is unlawful. The Cilicians delight in piracy while the Greeks avoid it. Different nations worship different Gods, and worship them by different rites. And in the same country customs are all the while changing. We see scarcely anything just or unjust that does not change quality in changing climate. Three degrees of higher latitude overturn all jurisprudence. A meridian decides the truth. Fundamental laws change ; right has its epochs. Pitiable justice, bounded by a river or a mountain ! Truth this side the Pyrenees, error that side.” ^ In the object, as well as in the subject, there are causes of con- fusion. Nothing is seen by us simply and by itself, but in combi- .nation either with air, or with light, or with moisture, or heat, or cold, or motion, or evaporation or some other power. Sounds, for example, are different according as the air is dense or rare. Purple exhibits a different hue in the sun, in the moonlight and by lamp- light. A stone which one cannot lift in the air is easily displaced in the water. It follows that we cannot know positively the peculiar qualities of anything, just as we cannot distinguish the real prop- erties of oil in ointment. Another frutif ul cause of uncertainty is the position, distance and ^ Pascal, Thoughts. The Later Ethical Per%od 150 spatial relations of objects. Objects that we believe to be large sometimes appear small ; those that we believe to be square some- times appear round ; those that we fancy even appear full of pro- jections ; those that we think straight seem bent ; those that we think colorless appear colored. A vessel seen at a distance seems stationary. Mountains at a distance look smooth, but when beheld close at hand they are rough. The sun on account of its distance appears small ; and it has one appearance at its rise, and quite another at midday. The neck of the dove changes its color as it turns. Since then it is impossible to view things irrespectively of place and position, it is clear that their real nature is not known. In the same way qualities differ according to qua-ntities. The horn of the goat is black ; the detached fragments of this horn are whitish. A moderate quantity of wine invigorates, while an excessive quantity weakens. Certain poisons are fatal when taken alone ; in mixture with other substances they cure. The frequency or rarity of a thing determines our view of it. Earthquakes excite no wonder among those nations with whom they are of frequent occurrence; nor does the sun astonish us, because we see it every day. Finally, we cannot say anything about an object without Involv- ing, explicitly or implicitly, a comparison or relation with other things. Thus light and heavy, strong and weak, greater and less, above and below, right and left, are obviously only relative terms. In the same way a man is spoken of as a father, or brother, or cousin in relation to some other persons ; day gets its title from its relation to the sun ; and everything has its distinctive name in relation to human thought. We cannot strip off these relations and have any content left ; and consequently all our knowledge is relative — never of the thing in itself. If perception is incapable of giving us truth, so equally is thought ; and the difficulties in the process of syllogistic reasoning are accord- ingly pointed out. And if neither sensation by itself, nor thought by itself, can attain to certainty, their combination is clearly in no better case. The whole matter is summed up in the discussion about the criterion of truth. Every demonstration depends on the i6o A Stitdenfs History of Philosophy validity of certain premises, and these must themselves in turn be established if the whole process is not to hang in the air. Con- sequently, unless we go on forever establishing one truth by another, we are compelled to find somewhere a starting-point that is abso- lutely certain in itself. But what way have we of recognizing such a truth ? The Sceptics of course deny that there is any criterion. Sensation will not give it, for sensations have been shown to be utterly unreliable. Shall we say, with the Stoics, that it is the clearness and self-evidence with which a truth comes home to us, or its universal acceptance by mankind ? But universal agreemep.t does not exist, and would prove nothing if it did ; and we are often very clear and very positive about what turns out to be no truth at all. The Sceptics went on to show in detail, and with much acute- ness, the flaws in the reasonings and results of the dogmatic philoso- phers. The most extensive account that we possess of the sceptical arguments is in a work by Sextus Empiricus entitled Against the Mathematicians, In this it is interesting to note that, among other things, the idea of causality is subjected to a destructive criticise l I t is this same problem which occupied the greatest of modem sceptics — David Hume. § 16. The Scientific Movement. Eclecticism. Philo I. Meanwhile, in another part of the world, a very considerable intellectual activity had been going on which, although it lies out- side the main movement of philosophy, deserves a brief mention. In Athens, which after its loss of political importance had become . practically a University town, the speculative interest continued to be predominant ; but elsewhere the scientific side of Aristotle^s work was being carried on with a considerable degree of success. Alex- andria, in Northern Egypt, had been founded by the conqueror in the second half of the fourth century, and under the enlightened rule of the earlier Ptolemies it sprang to a place among the centers of the world. What its position did for it commercially, the founding of the great University of Alexandria accomplished in other lines. To this immense school, the greatest of ancient times, students came from all over the world. Its magnificent equipment, its botanical The Later Ethical Period i6i garden, observatory and anatomical building, its collection of animals from every land, and its great library, amounting at one time to seven hundred thousand volumes, gave a great impetus to scholarship and science. A series of eminent scientists made the Museum illustrious : the best known are the mathematician Euclid^ and the astronomer Ptolemy, who gives his name to the system which maintained itself down to the time of Copernicus, and whose Geography was used in the schools of Europe for fourteen centuries. So also literature was encouraged and had a considerable develop- ment. It is true that, for the most part, there was no great origi- nality shown ; still the very dependence on the past gave rise to valuable results in the creation of a new interest in literary and linguistic studies. The history of literature, the critical investiga- tion of problems of style, and the study of language and grammar, were put upon something like a systematic basis. In other cities too, such as Rhodes, Antioch and Tarsus, similar schools sprang up, and became centers of an active intellectual life. 2, Meanwhile in the realm of speculative thought there is one more tendency to be noted. Scepticism was too negative to satisfy any save a few ; but it was not without an indirect effect even in wider circles. The criticism which it brought against all philoso- phies alike would, at least, tend to prick the conceit that in any one school the absolute truth was contained. And the necessary recog- nition of the many points of similarity between Stoic, Academic and Peripatetic, which constant discussion brought about, also helped to lessen their opposition. Just as, in the Macedonian and Roman empires, political and racial extremes were gradually worn away, and compromises accepted to the end that all men might dwell together in a practical unity, so the teaching of the various schools began to be brought together on a common basis from which the more extreme differences had been eliminated. At least this was true of all except the Epicureans, who continued to stand out as heterodox, and to whose mechanistic and hedonistic tendencies the other schools found themselves opposed on a common ground. This eclectic tendency was in particular due to the contact of Greek philosophy with the Romans. Themselves without any strong z 62 A Student's History of Philosophy theoretical interests, and caring for philosophy, if they cared for it at all, mainly for its practical ends, the Romans would in general have but little sympathy with subtle metaphysical distinctions To them the disputes of the philosophers were likely to seem trifling and uncalled for, and capable of being easily settled by a little common sense ; the pro-consul Gellius actually took upon himself to urge the Athenian philosophers to come to a compromise, and offered his own services as mediator. Of this syncretistic temper Cicero is the most eminent representative ; without any great philo- sophic gifts himself, his chief service is as a popularizer of Greek ideas. 3. What has been said so far of Eclecticism has had in view chiefly the philosophy of the West. The same general attitude brought about another movement which proved of considerable importance — the union, namely, of Oriental elements with the stream of European thought. It was at Alexandria that this tendency crystallized. Among the inhabitants of Alexandria there were a large number of Jewish colonists, who by their activity and abilities had made themselves a power. Among these exiles the Hellenizing tendencies which, in opposition to orthodox Judaism, had very nearly won the day even in Palestine itself, had an oppor- tunity to work out freely. As early as the third century a trans- lation was made of the Hebrew scriptures into the Greek of the Septuagint, and a considerable literature sprang up in which Jewish views of life are modified by contact with Western ideas ; some of this is preserved among the books of the Apocrypha. , When, in the second century before Christ, the influence of the University at Alexandria waned and many of the Greek professors left the city, the Hellenistic Jewish thought became the dominant intellectual force. And in Philo ^ a Jew of great learning and ability, a systematic attempt was made, about the beginning of the Christian era, to show the inner harmony between Plato and Moses, Jewish religious thought and Greek philosophy. This attempt gave evidence of some power of original thought, and influenced the future development alike of philosophy and of Christian doctrine. According to Philo^s conception God, like the The Later Ethical Period 163 monarch in the Oriental state, stands apart from the world in an ineffable perfection, and has to be connected with actual things by a series of lesser but more intelligible forms which are thought of, sometimes as Platonic ideas, sometimes from the standpoint of the Old Testament angelology. These are somehow an offshoot from God's nature without actually belonging to it as its component parts. The conception has its most important consequence in Philo’s doctrine of the Logos — the mediator of God’s revelation of himself. The repugnance of the Hebrew scriptures to Greek ways of thinking was overcome by having recourse to an ingenious method of allegorical interpretation. LITERATURE Maccoll, The Greek Sceptics. Zeller, StoicSy Epicureans and Sceptics. Patrick, The Greek Sceptics. Sevan, Stoics a?id Sceptics. Cicero, Philosophical Works (Bohn’s Library). Schiirer, History of the Jewish PeoplCy 5 vols. Philo, Works (Bohn’s Library). Drummond, Philo- Judaeus y 2 vols. Mahafly, Greek Life and Thought. Mahafly, Silver Age of the Greek World. Conybeare, Philo. Pfleiderer, History of the Philosophy of Religoi^t, THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD § 17. Introduction The tendency just described was in part accountable for, in part the outgrowth of, a new direction which was imparting itself ta philosophic thought, and through which philosophy was passing from an ethical to a religious or theosophic basis. Even in quarters where the influence of the Orient was not specially in evidence this religious trend may be observed. Stoicism had, in particular, attempted to act the part of a substitute for religion, and to meet the needs which the national religion had lost any real capacity for satisfying. Alongside the priest, absorbed in the ceremonial and political duties of his office, the Stoic or Cynic philosopher was generally recognized as the real spiritual guide of his time. He occupied a position similar in many respects to that of the modern clergyman. Peculiarities of dress and appearance — his cloak and long beard — marked him off from the rest of men ; he was appealed to for advice in difficult moral problems ; a philosopher was attached to many of the Roman families as a sort of family chaplain ; he was called in along with the physician at a death-bed. The discourses which he was accustomed to deliver had a close analogy to the modern sermon, and are indeed historically related to it. In attempting thus to meet the new needs of the age, there resulted within Stoicism itself an appreciable change of tone. In the later Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus, We have a reaction against the logical subtilties and unprofitable formalism to which the Stoic sage had become very generally addicted, and a reaflirmation of the practical nature of philosophy ; and in this reaffirmation the religious side receives an emphasis it had not had before. Nature takes on more the character of a God The Religious Period. 165 whose sons men are, and with whom they can enter into a relation- ship of love and gratitude. ‘‘We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres/’ says Seneca, “or a little money ; and yet for the free- dom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, as life, health and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation. If a man bestows upon us a house that is delicately beautified with paintings, statues, gilding and marbles, we make a mighty business of it, and yet it lies at the mercy of a puff of wind, the snuff of a candle, and a hundred other accidents to lay it in the dust. And is it nothing now to sleep under the canopy of heaven, where we have the globe of the earth as our place of repose and the glories of the heavens for our spectacle?” In like manner a more human feeling toward our fellows con- nects itself with the same religious motive, and the Pharisaic opposition of the sage to the fool is tempered by the recognition of the universal brotherhood of man. How shall we despise one another ? Are not Alexander the Macedonian and his groom alike parts of nature, and brought to the same level by death? Or why should we be angry vdth our fellow-men and blame them for their injurious and evil deeds? Nature is working in them with the same necessity as in every part of her domain, and we may as well be angry that thistles do not bring forth apples or that every pebble on the ground is not an Oriental pearl. The immortal gods are not vexed because during so long a time they must tolerate men continually ; and they in addition take care of them in every way. Shall you, whose life is so brief, become wearied of enduring the wicked, and that too when you yourself are one of them ? Meanwhile the demand was growing more insistent for some cure for the ills of life more thoroughgoing than the current philosophy, even at its best, was offering. The age was filled with a sense of spiritual unrest. The corruption of the ruling class, the contrasts of luxury and misery, the insecurity of life and property, the sense of world weariness which marked the passing of moral enthusiasms, brought home to men the feeling that the world was growing old and that some catastrophe was impending. A new sense of sin and evil which outgrew the ability of Stoicism to cope with it was making i66 A Students History of Philosophy its appearance ; while the Stoic ideal of virtue, felt by bitter expe* rience to lie beyond the reach of unaided human effort, lost its original appeal. This sense of sin and of human insufficiency resulted in an im- mense impetus to the religious life, especially on its superstitious side. Adherents of the religions of the East poured into Rome, and gained converts and wealth on every side. Their ascetic practices, their fantastic mythologies, their mysterious purificatory rites, were grasped at eagerly. In a more articulate form the same tendencies found an expression in philosophy. The attempt at a combination of Eastern and Western thought from the Oriental side by the Jew Philo has already been referred to ; and the same attempt was made by Greeks as well. A point of departure was secured by going back to some of those aspects of the previous philosophy which the more recent ethical development has neg- lected. The earliest attempt centers about the name of Pythag- oras — a name which by reason of the mythical haze that sur- rounded it offered a convenient handle. A Neo-Pythagoreanism arose in Alexandria as a half-religious sect with ascetic tenden- cies ; here belongs the name of the notorious religious teacher and wonder-worker, Apollonius of Tyana. It was to Plato how- ever that the thought of the time more and more turned to lend authority to its philosophical speculations. In Plutarch we have a position, allied to that of the Neo-Pythagoreans, which appeals thus to Plato rather than to Pythagoras, though without any great depth of insight, and with an intermixture of mysticism and magic; and in the third century a.d. this Platonic influence culminates in what was to prove the last great system of Greek thought — Neo-Platonism. LITERATURE Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. Apuleius, Works (Bohn’s Library). Lucian, Dialogues. Plutarch, Morals. Tredwell, Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Mahaffy, Greek World under Roman Sway, The Religious Period 167 § 18 . Plotinus and N eo~Platonism Plotinus (204-269 A.D.), of Lycopolis in Egypt, came to Rome about 244, and taught philosophy there for twenty-five years. He was a disciple, at Alexandria, of Ammonius Saccus, who is some- times reckoned as the founder of Neo-Platonism ; but the latter’s fame is dwarfed by that of his greater pupil. Plotinus had also come in contact with Persian ideas through having taken part in an expedition of the Emperor Gordian against that country, in which he barely escaped with his life. In Rome his success was pro- nounced, and he included an emperor and an empress among his disciples. I. The Doctrine of God. — Neo-Platonism is a religious philoso-j phy which connects itself closely with the consciousness of evil and the felt need for salvation. As such it presupposes naturally a certain dualism in the ethical life ; and such a dualism always finds it easy to take on a more universal form. The consciousness of a moral struggle in ourselves tends to report itself metaphysically as a division of the world into a good principle and a principle of evil ; we meet this in the religion of Persia for example, where the history of the world reduces itself to a contest between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and the devil, light and darkness. Now according to the psychology most widely current, the natural interpretation of evil in ourselves is by referring it to the dominance of the ‘Mower” or more obviously physical appetites, and by finding the root of evil therefore in the body — that is, in matter. This way of thinking we come across almost everywhere. In some instances, as in the semi-Christian sect of the Manichaeans, it meets us in its most extreme form ; and even where there is no desire to make the dualism absolute, as in the case of the more orthodox Christian teachings and in Neo-Platonism itself, the influence still makes its presence felt. Matter is felt somehow to be evil, and the flesh always and necessarily at war against the spirit. Salvation therefore lies not in regulating our bodily desires but in exterminating them, in outgrowing the life of the senses and leaving it behind while we find our blessedness in the pure life of the spirit. i68 A Sludenl^s History of Philosophy Plotinus is said by tradition to have been ashamed that he had a body ; he would never name his parents, or remember his birthday The human side of life — its feelings, emotions, everyday activities — thus loses all its worth ; it is as nothing to the soul, the real self. The sensuous life is a mere stage play — all the misery in it is only imaginary, all grief a mere cheat of the players. To connect this with the doctrine of Plato was not a difficult task. If it does not represent the whole of Plato, or even the best part of him, still there is much in his writings that lends itself to such a mode of thought ; he too had disparaged the life of sense, and had appeared to find the highest good in a transcendent world. But the Neo-Platonists left Plato far behind. Reality had still been for Plato the world of Forms, and the Forms are nothing except as they have an intellectual and rational status. But there is another way in which the mind might go to work in order to arrive at ultimate reality — by dropping all distinctions and determinate differences. And in Plotinus it is this latter tendency that gets the upper hand ; on such a showing God becomes the infinite blank before which all human thought is powerless. There is one way in which the claim that God is unknowable might be interpreted that carries no offence to the ordinary religious consciousness; it might only mean that God is far beyond our perfect comprehension. We cannot with our limited thought processes exhaust the depths of his nature; his goodness is un- searchable and his ways past finding out. At the same time the knowledge which we do possess, though not exhaustive, is so far as it goes felt to be real knowledge ; the relations under which we see the truth are but a small part of all the relations that would con- stitute it for a perfect intelligence, but they nevertheless are valid in their own degree. The other way is to insist that in God intelligence is itself literally transcended, that in his truth he is wholly unintelligible. We attain to him not by trying to make our knowledge more complete, but by giving up any attempt at comprehension, and allowing the distinct conceptions of the intellect to fade into the haze of an immediate identity of feeling. It is this latter path which mysti- The Religious Period 1 6^ cism takes. To know God it is not enough to get rid of the sensuous and the bodily life ; we must get rid of the intellect as welL We must separate ourselves from all things and be alone; must cut loose from every definite idea that can occupy the mind. All we can say is that God is the ultimate unity ; nay, we cannot say even so much as this, for in speaking of him as unity we are predicating an idea of him, and so are limiting his absoluteness. God tran- scends everything that we can say or think. We cannot say so much as that he exists, for he transcends existence. He does not live, for it is he who gives life. He is not good, for he stands above goodness. He neither knows anything, nor has anything of which he is ignorant, for knowledge has no meaning in connection with his nature. We recognize him only by a blind feeling of something real,^’ ‘‘as those who energize enthusiastically, and become divinely inspired, perceive indeed that they have something greater in them- selves, though they do not know what it is.” ^ The only truth is a negative truth ; to reach him we must lay aside all positive attributes. The result is that no intellectual processes will bring us into that immediate contact with God which is salvation; the ultimate method of religion is not thought, but mystic feeling. The Neo- Platonist does not to be sure, as some mystics have done, despise the intellectual life, and attempt by a single leap to reach the con- summation of an identity with God. The cultivation of the intel- lectual insight is an essential preliminary task; for of all things mind is nearest to the divine source, and we must pass through it on our upward progress. But there remains a step still to be taken. “The wizard king builds his tower of speculation by the hands of human workmen till he reaches the top story, and then summons his genii to fashion the battlements of adamant, and crown them with starry fire.” ^ The final goal is that ecstasy in which person- ality and thought and consciousness are left behind, and we melt to a oneness with the Absolute into which no shade of difference enters. 2. The Relation of God and the World. — But here we may seem to have reached a position inconsistent with the ethical dualism from ^ Plotinus, V, 3, 14. * Vaughan. Hours with the Mystics. A Student's Biswry of Philosophy 170 which we started. If all distinctions are unreal and the One the sole reaUty, we have at a stroke blotted out the entire universe of oui experience as less even than a dream ; and with it has gone any difference between good and bad as well. The contradiction be- tween the two standpoints is in fact an absolute one. But since each represents a motive which the Neo-Platonist is unwilling to abandon, he is forced to attempt a reconciliation; and to this adjudication of the quarrel between the monistic aspirations of metaphysics and religion and the dualism of the ethical ex- perience, a good share of Plotinus’ effort is directed. In a general way he does this through a device which, though not novel, was here for the first time given a significant philosophical expression. There had been a rather frequent disposition in pre- ceding attempts at a religious philosophizing to think that the gap between God and matter can be bridged over if we introduce a graduated scale of existence, connecting the two extremes by a series of smaller differences. In the Logos doctrine of Philo, the aeons of the Christian Gnostics, the demonology of the Neo-Pythag- oreans, we have such an attempt to mediate between the supreme God and those facts of the material world which are thought to be unworthy of him. Theoretically of course there is no advantage which a small gap has over a large one ; the difficulty is that there should be any gap at all. Still it is a help to the imagination if the transition can be made less noticeable. And the delegation of the responsibility for imperfection to some inferior grade of reality pro- vides a makeshift for retaining, along with these imperfections, the notion of perfection also. In Neo-Platonism this takes the form of, a theory of Emanation. Finite existence is accounted for as a progressive falling away from an original perfection. It is the very nature of the Good that out of its superabundance it should overflow, until every possibility of good and every possible kind of perfection has been realized. We should of course guard against thinking of this as a partition of the original unity, for God is no sum of parts ; he is an indivisible whole who in his giving still abides with no diminution of his essence. The process may more truly be compared to the gleaming of a bright The Religious Period 171 body, to the radiation of the sun, to a cup which eternally overflows because its contents are infinite and cannot be confined within it The figure of light is the one which on the whole is least inadequate. As light shines into the darkness, and illuminates it, without at the same time suffering in its own existence, so the workings of the Eternal One overflow from its central being without thereby lessening in any degree the reality of their source. And as the brightness of the light decreases continually in intensity until it loses itself in the surrounding darkness, so the power of the Absolute expresses itself in more and more diluted form in the hierarchy of the phenomenal world. This hierarchy is represented by the three stages of mind or rational spirit, soul and body. Each stage has a dual aspect. On the one hand it looks toward, and is constituted by, the truer reality in the scale of being above ; it is an imitation of this, as the spoken words imitate or represent the thought in the mind. On the other hand, it itself overflows to carry on its measure of perfection to the next lower stage. The material world is the lowest stage of all — an image in an image, the shadow of a shadow. And since now every series must have its limit, in the end we come to pure matter, Not-being, wherein is no reality at all. Pure matter is not a ''thing’’ ; it is difficult indeed to know just how to talk about it. While it can only be defined as a negative limit to the real, still absolute nothingness could hardly serve even as a limit ; it must have some metaphysical validity at least, or gradations of value in existence would never intrude to make trouble for the philosopher. Verbally we may say that evil is no substantial fact standing over against the good as a positive constituent of the world ; just in so far as a thing is, as it partakes of reality, it is good, and it is evil only in so far as it is not. But after all it is a positive sort of nothing ; why otherwise should not all reality be wholly positive, as God is, and possess no lack ? In the end a dualism still remains, however attenuated it may be. It would be impossible here to attempt to follow the involutions of Plotinus’ treatment of the problem of evil ; it will be enough to note that he anticipates with great detail and subtlety all theodicies since his day. Whatever standing we may decide to give to pure 172 A Sludenl’s History of Philosophy matter as the negative principle of evil, Plotinus does not sympa^ thizw with those contemporary religions and philosophies which regarded this existing world as evil through and through ; on the contrary, he has a large interest in explaining apparent evils away in the light of their participation in reality and perfection. For all reality, once more, is good in so far as it is real ; even the body is bad not in its own right but because it fills the soul with pleasures and pains, and so turns the mind from its true object to a pre- occupation with particular things. It is only when we touch absolute bottom in pure matter, pure want and insufl&ciency, the limit that has nothing left of perfection in it, that we get a genuine principle of evil. This infects to an extent — though only to an extent — the lower stage of material existence. Soul and intellect on the other hand are not evil at all ; they merely represent varying grades of perfection, each perfect in its kind, though it may not be of the highest kind. Such a naturalistic emphasis in Plotinus gets expression in what is the first systematic attempt at a metaphysics of beauty, or theory of aesthetics ; beauty is the shining through of the ^iritual reality in the lower forms whose truth it constitutes. And this naturalism tempers the ascetic tendencies in his philosophy. ^^To despise the world, and the gods, and other beautiful natures that are contained in it, is not to become a good man. He who loves anything is delighted with everything which is allied to the object of his love ; for you also love the children of the father whom you love. But every soul is the daughter of the father of the universe.” ‘‘His mind must be dull and sluggish in the extreme, and incapable of being incited to anything else, who, in seeing all the beautiful objects of the sensible world, all this symmetry and great arrange- ment of things, and the form apparent in the stars, though so remote, is not from this view mentally agitated, and does not venerate them as admirable productions of still more admirable causes.” ^ 3. The Process of Salvation. — Meanwhile, however we may account for it, evil as a practical problem still remains with us ; and 1 Plotinus, II, 9, 16. The Religious Period 173 the final task of philosophy is to show how we may escape it and attain salvation. Here Plotinus has a clearer path. As the phenomenal world has its being through a falling away from the Absolute, so there persists in it a longing to return to its original perfection. This return forms the substance of the ethical and religious life. We must rid ourselves of the restrictions of matter and, rising above the realm of the particular and finite, retrace our steps toward God. In general, the process consists in penetrating to the universal ideas which underlie the world of phenomena, and so accustoming the soul to its proper food. *'The soul perceives temperance and justice in the intellection of herself and of that which she formerly was, and views them like statues established in herself which through time have become covered with rust. These she then purifies, just as if gold were animated and, in consequence of being incrusted with earth, not perceiving itself to be gold, should be ignorant of itself ; but afterward, shaking off the earth which adheres to it, should be filled with admiration in beholding itself pure and alone.'^ ^ This is of necessity a gradual process. The soul is like '‘children who, immediately torn from their parents, and for a long time nurtured at a great distance from them, become ignorant both of themselves and their parents’"; it must be prepared by degrees — through the contemplation of beautiful objects, beautiful sentiments, beautiful actions, beautiful souls — for the sudden burst of light which marks the final vision. "All that tends to purify and elevate the mind will assist in this attainment, and there are three different roads by which the end may be reached. The love of beauty which exalts the poet, that devotion to the one and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher, and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity toward perfection — these are the great highway? conducting to that height above the actual and the par- ticular where we stand in the immediate presence of the infinite, who shines out as from the deeps of the soul.” ^ In all this the soul must be ever on its guard not to remain entangled in mere particulars ; herein lies the relative imperfection 1 Plotinus, IV, 7, 10. * Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics. 174 A Studenfs History of Philosophy of the life of moral conduct as an ultimate end. In a good deed there is implicit a universal value ; but it is only ascetic contempla- tion which is able to free this ideal fact from the unessentials in which it is immersed. As Ulysses from the magician Circe, we must flee to our native land. The love of God means the giving up of all earthly loves. And when one has seen God face to face he cares for no minor beauties. As one who, entering into the interior of the adytum, leaves behind all the statues in the temple, or as those who enter the sanctuaries purify themselves, laying aside their garments, and enter naked, so should the soul approach its goal. “This therefore is the life of the gods and of divine and happy men — a liberation from all terrene affairs, a life unaccompanied with human pleasures, a flight of the alone to the alone. An immortality in the ordinary sense is a denial of true life ; “a resurrection with body is a transmigration from sleep to sleep, like a man passing in the dark from bed to bed.’’ The true goal is only reached when the soul loses all thought, desire and activity, all individual life, in an ecstasy of immediate union with God. “This is the true end of the soul, to come into contact with his light, and to behold him through it, not by the light of another thing, but to perceive that very thing itself through which it sees.”^ In this “darkness which transcends all gnostic illumination ” it does not see another, but becomes one with God, absorbed, conjoining center with center. 4. Later Neo-Platonism. — The spiritualization of the world in which Neo-Platonism results opened the way for an appeal to non- physical agencies in the explanation of events which might easily become fantastic; and among the successors of Plotinus this is what took place. The world becomes a great hierarchy of souls — Gods, demons, men, — and the mystical affinities and relation- ships between souls, which find expression in divination, astrology and magical rites, tend to take the place of sober investigation. JamblicuSy the founder of Syrian Neo-Platonism, has a special connection with this tendency. Historically this last outcome of Greek thought gets an import tance through making itself the champion of Paganism in the now ^ Plotinus, VI, 9, II ; III, 6, 6; V, 3, 17. The Religious Period 175 losing struggle which this was carrying on with Christianity. The struggle was wholly unsuccessful. The immediate future belonged to Christianity ; philosophy could hope to survive, not by antago- nizing it and joining forces with its rival, but by accepting the new contribution it was making. For a moment Paganism seemed to have a chance of success when the Emperor Julian, called by Christians the Apostate — a man trained in the school of the Neo- Platonists — attempted to reverse the verdict of history. But a half-sentimental regret for the beauty of the pagan past was no match for the living forces of the present ; and at the death of Julian his plans came to nothing. The last refuge of Neo-Platonism was the Academy at Athens, in connection with which the name of Proclus is the most important. But in 529 a.d. the Academy was closed by order of the Emperor Justinian, the teaching of heathen philosophy was forbidden, and the philosophers driven into exile. LITERATURE Taylor, Select Works of Plotinus. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics. Whittaker, The Nco-Platonists. Bigg, Neo-Platonism. Guthrie, Plotinus. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus ^ 2 vols. Fuller, The Problem of Evil in Plotinus. § 19. Christianity. The Church Fathers. Augustine I. The new power which thus seemed to have supplanted the old was, in its inception, not a philosophy but a life. Questions of theory occupied the early disciples but little. Belief in God, and the influence of the personality of Christ in renewing the life of the soul, were the central features of the new religion ; the evidences of acceptance with God were the fruits of love, peace, righteous- ness, and not a belief in any set of doctrines. At the start Christianity had thus no conscious dependence on philosophical thought ; and among many of the early fathers, as, for example, Tertullian, there was a disposition to be openly hostile 176 A Students History of Philosophy to the encroachments of philosophy as likely to corrupt the purity and simplicity of faith in the gospel. Nevertheless if Christianity was to continue to expand, its coming under the influence of Greek forms of thought was a foregone conclusion. As converts began to come in from the Gentile world, they would bring with them in- evitably their former modes of thinking. Some of them, like Justin Martyr, had been philosophers before they became Christians. They had sought for truth as Stoics, and Peripatetics, and Pythag- oreans ; and now that they had found the goal of their seeking in the religion of Christ they could hardly fail to look at this in terms of the problems they had previously been trying to solve, and to regard it as the true philosophy as well as the true life. The need for justifying their faith to the heathen world would lead them in the same direction. In this there was of course some danger. In many cases the theoretical interest began to overshadow the practical and moral, even sometimes to displace it. By a very considerable body of Christians, the essential thing canie to be looked upon not as a Christ-like character, but as a superior and esoteric knowledge (gnosis) f in which the Christian tinge was sometimes merely nominal. This attempt by Gnosticism to capture the new religion in the interest of Graeco-Oriental philosophy constituted one of the earliest and gravest dangers to the Church, which was only averted after many years of controversy. But although the Gnostics were defeated, they left their mark upon their antagonists. The Church never went back to the primitive form of un dogmatic Christianity which had represented its early type. It rejected such doctrines as were inconsistent with its genius ; but it began, nevertheless, to lay greater stress upon doctrinal agreement and theoretical formulation. For this work it had almost of necessity to make use of the intel- lectual tools which Greek philosophy had forged. There was a more conscious use of these in some cases than in others. In Alexandria, especially, where philosophical traditions were strong, there arose a school of philosophical theologians of which Origen (185-254) is the most important representative. These attempted with clear insight, and very considerable ability, to Platonize theology. And The Religious Period 177 even when theology supposed it was dispensing with the help of| philosophy it was still dependent upon it at every step. From one point of view this involved a loss. The substitution of dogma for the free spirit of devotion went along necessarily with a certain lowering of standards and misplacement of emphasis. But the change could hardly have been avoided if Christianity was to do the work it actually succeeded in doing. As time went on the character of the Church altered. It became, of course, larger and more unwieldy ; and along with those who were genuinely permeated by the spirit of the gospel there began to flock to it, attracted by its growing success, a multitude of men who were only superficially affected by their new professions. Later on it was the Church which more and more was forced to assume many of the civil functions of society in order that anarchy might be averted. Under these conditions nothing but a strong ecclesiastical organization, and a definitely formulated creed, could have held the Church together as a catholic body. The Church creed preserved Christianity on a distinctly lower level than in primitive Apostolic times ; but it did preserve it. The process of creating an orthodox body of doctrine was of course no immediate result; it extended through several centuries. During this time the Church had to meet and conquer numerous heresies — tendencies, that is, which afterward were pronounced heresies by their victorious opponents, though there were moments when it seemed that they might themselves conquer and be accepted as the orthodox opinion. In the long run, how- ever, the Church was led to avoid such dogmas as were inconsistent with the work marked out for it, and to arrive at a basis of general agreement. 2. If we compare this resultant body of doctrine with the purely philosophical development of Neo-Platonism which falls within the same general period, we shall find both resemblences and differ- ences. Both deal with the same general problems — with God and his relation to the world, with the nature of sin or evil, and with the way of salvation. They agree, furthermore, in that for both the path to God is not through the discursive exercise of reason but through an immediate revelation. But here they separate. For 178 A Studenfs History of FhUosopny the Platonist the revelation is one that comes directly to the philoso- pher i 1 those moments of ecstasy when he merges with the divine. The claims of immediacy in the form of a direct experience of God are not lacking, it is true, in Christianity ; and in Christian mysti- cism a direct Neo-Platonist influence continues down to modern times. But circumstances compelled the Church to put its em- phasis on the fact of a single historical revelation. In the primi- tive Church, where conditions were freer and the spiritual life more spontaneous, a claim to inspiration was not uncommon, and prophets and apostles were numerous. But the farther Chris- tianity got away from its original source, the more the need for some commonly accepted standard grew evident. That standard could be nothing but conformity with the teachings of Christ and his immediate disciples. Accordingly the insistence on the authority of a definite historical revelation in the past came to be more and more the position of the orthodox body of Christians. This was mediated at first by oral tradition ; and then, as time made tra- dition less reliable, by a gradually formed canon of sacred writings that were believed to go back to Apostles and eye-witnesses. And when now the Montanists claimed the right to do what the early Church had done and to supplement this historical message by the immediate testimony of prophetic inspiration, the attempt was recognized as dangerously lawless and condemned as a heresy. The problem of evil also reached its orthodox solution only after controversy. In the various heretical sects nearly every current answer to the problem was reproduced, down to the baldest dualism of the good and evil principle. The temptation to find the root of evil in matter was very strong. Nowhere was the antagonism between the life of the flesh and the life of the spirit more pro- nounced than in the experience of Christians, or the necessity more keenly felt of mortifying the deeds of the body for the salvation of the soul. But the central fact of the Incarnation, along with a feel- ing for the dignity and the infinitude of God, caused the Church to reject all attempts to regard matter as essentially evil. The stronger sense of sin which characterized the Christian conscious- ness kept it also from being satisfied with any doctrine of evil as The Religiom Periud 179 mere privation or absence of reality. Christianity found a solution, instead, in the moral realm, by having recourse to the freedom of the will. God created all finite beings good, even the devil himself. But he gave them also the power of choice ; and by falling away from God they have perverted this power to evil. Evil is thus the fault of the creature, not of the creator. It is true that along with this there was a good deal of practical dualism. The tendency to regard the body as naturally evil and apart from God, and the con- sequent impulse to the ascetic life, gained a firm foothold in the Church, and became invested with an odor of superior sanctity. But this feeling did not succeed in getting itself expressed con- sistently in the form of dogma ; on the contrary, in the doctrine of ^he resurrection of the body the Church definitely cut loose from the Neo-Platonic conception of blessedness as a complete emanci- pation from the bodily life. By rejecting an ultimate dualism, Christianity was left the problem of explaining the existence of the world in its distinction from the absolute nature of God; and here also its attitude is opposed to that of Neo-Platonism. In refusing to regard the world as independently and eternally real while at the same time denying that it dther is a part of God himself or an emanation from his being, the Church had recourse to the theory of the creation of the world out of nothing. In this way it can be looked upon as depend^ ent wholly on God’s power, and yet as not in any sense identical with him. This latter or pantheistic standpoint the Church con- sistently frowned upon, in spite of the fact that the philosophical framework of its theology, in so far as it was taken from the Greeks, was all the time drawing it in that direction. But counteracting this logical compulsion, and counteracting it for the most part successfully, there was another factor which the influence of Christianity had much to do with raising to a position of phil osophical importance — the feeling for personality. In early times the individual had been largely swallowed up in the community; the tribe or state had stood before his vision as supreme, and in comparison his own rights and importance were as nothing. The Sophists had made a start toward breaking up this A Student^ s History of Philosophy iSo unity, and the same general tendency was being repeated in the Ro- man world. The early Roman, in a peculiarly pronounced way, li\ed his whole life with reference to the State, and made the glory of his country the main goal of his labor. But while the young and vigorous Republic might seem an end to which it was worth while for a man to devote his life, an Empire, luxurious and corrupt, where the will of a single man was supreme and that man often a monster of iniquity and madness, could hardly continue to supply a rational motive and ideal. At the same time the rule of Rome appeared too inevitable for any other and worthier national life to take its place. Accordingly the individual man was thrown back upon himself, and a demand was set up for a satisfaction that should come home to him personally and singly. The hopelessness of the outlook, however, reported itself in the prevalent severity and rigor of the ideal. In Stoicism, and in the asceticism of the religious tendencies, there is the same inability to get much positive and hopeful content into life ; since man must needs suffer let him make a virtue of necessity, and take what satis- faction he can in his power to do without. Such a conception was too negative to set in motion forces that should influence power- fully the life of mankind at large ; the natural desire of men in general was for a warmer and more comforting ideal. Still it did help to deepen the feeling of individuality. It called forth a sense of power and responsibility in the man who thus was bending all his energies to the crushing out of his desires and passions ; and by do- ing this it paved the way for a more positive meaning to personality. Such a content to the individual life Christianity brought. Here also there was conflict and repression ; but it was not repression that ended with itself. Man crushed out the old self only that God might enter. The feelings no longer were starved ; they were set free and stimulated. And with this appeal to his emotional life, the value of man as such was felt in a way it had not been before. The conception of God as a potentate, to be approached only through rites and ceremonies which were primarily a state affair, gave place to the thought of him as a father in direct contact with his children. And when God could reveal himself directly to his humblest The Religious Period i8i creature, when he loved him and desired his salvation, then not simply humanity in the large, but each individual man, became a thing of worth. Wherever this conception really came home to men, it worked an immediate change in all the current ideals of society. The artificial barriers of rich and poor, slave and free, noble and common, became a thing of no importance. A new respect for human life grew up amid the almost incredible callous- ness of the Roman world. Hope and confidence took the place of despair or of a forced unconcern ; the goodness of God, and the worth of the human soul, must in the end lead to happiness. With this new sense of personality and moral agency the vague pantheism of past philosophies, and the ultimate absorption of man’s life in the divine life, was no longer felt to be satisfactory. Man is a being created in the image of God, who may, as the fact of sin reveals, even set himself in opposition to the God who made him. Personal immortality, which in Greek philosophy had for the most part either been rejected outright or held with much hesitation, becomes a fundmental article of the Christian creed. The same thing determines too the way we look at God. God also must be thought of not as a vague abstraction above all definite conceptions, the conception of personality included, but as himself a person. All things flow from him, not by any fatalistic law of necessity, but in accordance with his intelligent purpose and by an act of free creation. 3. The process by which, under the influence of such ideas as these, the fluid beliefs of the early Church were gradually shaped into a highly complex dogmatic system, belongs to the history of theology ; here it will be enough to say a word about the last and greatest of the Fathers to whom this shaping was due. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, marks the transition between the constructive period of Christian thought, and the long period of the Middle Ages when dogma had become fixed and stereotyped. Augustine is not only one of the great thinkers of the world, but he also has a particularly interesting personality — a personality of which we know a good deal through his own Confessions. He was born in Africa in 354 a.d. His mother was a woman of great strength of i 82 A Student^s History of Philosophy character, and a devoted adherent of Catholic Christianity ; and it came to be her one aim in life to see her son a Christian. For many years this wish did not seem Ukely to be fulfilled. Augustine^s youth in the corrupt city of Carthage made him familiar with a life of dissipation; and the ambition which his brilliant intellectual gifts justified turned him to secular pursuits. He became a rhetorician, and after leaving Carthage practised for a time in Rome, and then in Milan. Meanwhile he had discovered an apti- tude for philosophy, and had made himself familiar to a considerable extent with philosophic thought. At an early age he was attracted by the Manichaeans and their solution of the problem of evil. But from the first he felt the crudity of their metaphysics ; and while it was some time before he was ready definitely to reject their doc- trines, his further intellectual development carried him continually away from them. In Milan he came under the influence of Ambrose, whose preaching made a profound impression on him. Finally, after a violent struggle against the complete self-abnegation which seemed to him to be demanded by Christianity, he passed through an experience which led him once for all to abandon his old life. Thereafter, till his death as Bishop of Hippo in 430, he devoted his time and abilities wholly to the service of the Church and Catholic Christianity. In Augustine we find two strains of thought opposing one another. As a philosopher — and he was a philosopher before he was a theologian — he anticipates in a remarkable way the standpoint of later thought. The modern movement, beginning with Des- cartes, which turns away from objective knowledge to the self as a clew for interpreting reality, finds its counterpart, often very exact, in Augustine’s writings. Augustine even goes beyond Descartes by the emphasis he places on the nature of the self as active will, in opposition to the intellectualism which had characterized an- cient philosophy. The freedom of the will, accordingly, assumes a prominent place in his earlier thought. But in this purely philosophical tendency Augustine was too far in advance of his age to have any immediate effect. What the times demanded was something quite different. It was, therefore. I'fie Religious Period 183 the second tendency in Augustine which became the dominant and important one, both in its influence on the Church and in his own development. For the moment the need was for authority; and this authority the Church alone was in a position to exercise. The Roman mind was naturally of the legalistic type. It tended to think of God, not as working in a world akin to him by coming home to the lives and consciences of men, but as a judge and law- giver, promulgating a definite constitution and definite enactments, and holding men to obedience under pain of punishment. Such a forensic conception made necessary a mediator between God and man — an institution which should act as a conservator of God’s interests on earth. And this need for a Church possessing a clearly defined body of doctrine and having an authoritative legal status grew all the time greater the more the weakness of the Empire became apparent. This alone could preserve men from intellectual anarchy during a period which neither produced the ability, nor offered the external opportunity, for an attainment of truth by the individual; this alone could present the objective organization and the prestige to stand up against the social con- vulsions which were impending. Both of these things appealed powerfully to Augustine himself. He also had experienced the impotency of reason, and had passed from one stage of thought to another until he had reached at one time a more or less complete Academic scepticism. The ideal of a Church which offered an infallible system of doctrine, based on authority, and satisfying his religious needs, attracted him, as it has many others since. On the other hand the outer splendor and impressiveness of the Milan Church also affected a mind by nature ambitious and eager for a career. Accordingly when, as Bishop of Hippo, he himself had reached a position of authority, we find Augustine the philosopher giving way to Augustine the theologian, and devoting all the powers of his mind to the support of the Church whose authority he was to help establish securely for future ages. This new standpoint involved more or less collision with the old. If the Church is to be the absolute mediator between God and man the emphasis can no longer rest on the subjective side, or on the idea 184 A Students History of Philosophy of man as a free will. If God reveals himself directly in the con- sciousness of the individual, the importance of the Church as an organization becomes secondary. The doctrine that there is salvation only within the limits of the Church is a necessity if its authority is to be maintained. Augustine is not ready to deny the principle of free will ; but he limits its application in such a way as practically to transform it into determinism. The first man Adam was, indeed, free ; he had the power to choose what course he pleased. But having thus saved his general principle, Augustine can go on to deny freedom elsewhere. By his apostasy from God Adam corrupted human nature, and the race lost its power of free action. Henceforth man is predetermined to sin, and cannot possibly escape from its power save by the supernatural aid of God’s grace. This grace comes only through the Church, by the rite of baptism. Accordingly the Church holds the key to salvation, and no one outside its organization can hope to escape the condemna- tion which his guilt deserves. Meanwhile if freedom is denied to man, it is asserted all the more emphatically of God. God chooses to save certain men, and damn others, solely because he wills to do so, without reference to any merit on their part. In the City of God, Augustine formulates his view of the Church in the most elaborate philosophy of history that had so far been attempted. All history is regarded as a conflict between the earthly city which belongs to the children of the world, and the City of God, the Church — a drama to end in the final victory and felicity of the saints. Already Rome had been sacked by the Goths, and its pagan glory was drawing to an end. The pro- phetic vision of a triumphant theocracy filled Augustine’s mind, and like many another prophecy it helped to bring about its own fulfilment. It is the Church which is to be the dominant factor in the next period of human history. LITERATURE Donaldson, Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine, Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria. Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought. The Religious Period Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, Augustine, Confessions^ City of God, Harnack, History of Dogma. Hatch, Hihhcrt Lectures. Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine. McCabe, St. Augustine and his Age. II. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE TRAN- SITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY THE MIDDLE AGES § 20 . Introduction Not long after Augustine’s death the Roman Empire fell, and we enter upon a new era in the history of the world and of thought. What is the general character and significance of this period ? 1. The Greek Element. — Our modern thought is a compound into which three main elements enter. Its framework, the con- cepts or ideas which it uses, come to us largely from the Greeks. But philosophy is not simply an exercise of intellectual comprehen- sion. It grows out of the needs of human life, and can only get its final justification as it succeeds in organizing this and rendering it effective. And here the Greeks may be said to have failed. All the Greek philosophizing could not prevent the break-up of Greek social and political life ; indeed philosophy was one of the elements that hastened this dissolution. And the Greeks had not the necessary political genius to enable them to work out a practical substitute for the forms that had proved inadequate. 2. The Roman Element. — This lack was supplied by the Roman element. However he might be wanting in intellectual subtilty, the Roman was preeminently fitted to impress upon the world the value and the reality of government and law. The principle of authority ran through his life — the authority of husband over wife, of father over son, of master over slave, of state over citizen. And while the outcome was often harsh and forbidding in appear- a4ce, yet the rule of blood and iron was the only means of reducing the world to at least a measure of order. 187 i88 A Stidenfs History of Philosophy The results of this genius for organization passed over to later times, even after the Empire itself had fallen. To the Roman is largely due that external framework of society and government without which the spiritual side of civilization would be impossible. The most important form in which this inheritance was transmitted was that combination of Roman practical efficiency with Greek philosophy which took the shape of Roman law. The Stoics in particular had reached the conception of a law of nature binding on all men alike, and of a consequent cosmopolitanism which recog- nized the essential equality of all men as expressions of the univer- sal reason working throughout the universe. This conception had important results by being brought into contact with practical legislation. As the power of Rome gradually extended there grew up, alongside the civil law, the so-called 7W5 gentium , governed her relation to those who were not citizens, and which it was the policy of Rome to make broad and tolerant in its provisions, leaving local customs as much as possible unchanged. In this way there arose, alongside the ordinary Roman procedure, the idea of a more common and universal law, which under the influence of Stoic thought assumed a position of special importance. As opposed to the particular and more or less conventional enactments due to local or temporary conditions, it came to be regarded as the law of nature, binding upon all by the original constitution of man's being, and recognized by him intuitively as such. This conception had a very considerable influence in rendering possible a more rational and scientific treatment of legislation; in particular, it gave the theoretical basis for that codification of the laws of the Empire, represented in the Justinian and in other codes, which still remains the legal groundwork of our modern life. 3. The Christian Element, — The work of the Romans was thus the work of embodying in actual institutions the ideas which, for the Greek philosophers, had been largely theory. But while by their political genius they thus performed a service of the greatest value for later civilization, in one essential element they were lack- ing. Roman civilization tended to overbear the individual, and so to furnish no motive power for growth and progress; in additiop The Middle Ages 189 man needed to be taught his proper worth, and be given an inspira- tion that should set him to work. This emphasis on the develop- ment of the personal life as the only security for stability and progress in societ y, Christianity, potentially at least, supplied. By its appeal to the feelings it set free latent forces in man’s nature, and it created a new sense of the value of the individual life by relating it to the life of all men through their common relation to God. It is true this ideal was more or less unstable. It depended coo exclusively on an appeal to the emotions, which necessarily lost something of their force as time went on ; there was lacking the definite intellectual grasp, and the concrete institutional forms, to direct the emotional life and give consistency and permanency to its workings. Christianity needed therefore to be supplemented by the contributions which Greece and Rome had to offer. It took many centuries for this union to become effective, and often in the meantime the characteristic spirit of Christianity seemed on the point of dying out. But its influence never was completely lost even in the darkest ages, and under more favorable conditions it was destined to contribute to modern life and thought some of their most valuable features. 4. The German Element. — There is still a fourth element which enters into modern life — the Teutonic. The problem of the future was to create a new and more adequate ideal of human living. Conceivably the Roman world might have had within it the power to make a fresh start and assume this task. But historically this is not what happened. The German hordes which for some time had been pressing the Empire from the north became more and more threatening the more the vigor of the restraining forces was impaired. At last the exhaustion of the Empire became too great to hold them back any longer ; in successive waves they overran the provinces, and Italy itself. Rome was captured, and the con- querors set up kingdoms of their own. If civilization was to be carried on at all, it could only be by the assimilation of this new material. In point of fact the Teutons, though barbarians, had in them the possibilities of a development higher in some ways than any that A Siudenfs History of Philosophy 190 had preceded. Their most striking characteristic was a pro- nounced sense of individuality and love of freedom, along with a simplicity of character and ruggedness of moral nature that fur- nished admirable soil for Christianity. Before however they could realize their destiny a long period of training was required. It was the special work of the Middle Ages to take the raw material at its disposal and impress upon it the ideas and institutional forms that could be rescued from the wreck of the ancient world. The time was again to come when a radical criticism of beliefs and institutions was possible and necessary, but this was still a long way off ; that when it came it did not result in more violent disturbances to society was due, along with a difference in racial characteristics, to the thoroughness with which the Middle Ages had done their work of education. § 21. The First Period. Scotus Erigena^ Anselm ^ Abelard I. The Church and the Barbarians. — When Rome fell, the only institution capable of standing for law and order was the Church. Since this was divorced largely from the political state, it would arouse no special antagonism on the part of the victors, while its sanctity and external lustre were calculated to excite awe in the minds of barbarians accustomed only to the rudest life. When the Goths sacked Rome they still respected the Church, and offered it the privilege of asylum ; and during the period which followed it was the Church that stood as a defence against anarchy. Stretch- ing as it did throughout the Empire, with a strong internal organi- zation, it at once set about the task of conquering the victors — a task which it accomplished in a surprisingly short space of time. The Germans, sepaiated from the local associations of their own religion, showed a readiness to accept the cult of a higher civiliza- tion in which there was so much to impress the senses, and which displayed such skill in adapting itself to the people with whom it had to deal. The Church begins, accordingly, the victorious career which was to make it, not simply the arbiter of the intellectual beliefs of the world, but, as a vast hierarchy centering in the Pope at The Middle Ages igi Rome, a great and at times the ultimate exponent of civil authority also, able to enforce its commands upon kings and emperors. Meanwhile the intellectual life of antiquity seemed on the point of being eclipsed. In the centuries following the fall of the Empire the literature and culture of Greece and Rome became almost as if they had never been ; outside the Church there was no leisure for such things, and inside the Church little inclination. All true wisdom was given in the Church creed — all that was necessary to salvation. Heathen learning and philosophy were useless, as heathen art was vicious, and if they were not regarded as positively un-Christian and so deserving to be rooted up and destroyed, they were at least a matter of indifference. '‘A report has reached us,^’ writes Gregory the Great to the Bishop of Vienne, ‘‘which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to thy friends. Whereat we are so offended and filled with scorn that our former opinion of thee is turned to mourning. The same mouth singeth not the praises of Jove and the praises of Christ. Some slight respect for intellectual culture still persisted in the monasteries; but it was elementary, and chiefly ecclesiastical in type. Previous philosophy survived for the most part only as it filtered through the writings of the Fathers, who frequently were hostile to it. Of the works of Plato and Aristotle only the merest fraction was known, and this through translation and commentary. 2. Scholasticism. — When accordingly, about 900 a . d ., a some- what greater activity shows itself in the life of thought, this new intellectual interest takes a particular direction. Scholasticism has two main characteristics. It is, in the first place, a philosophy of dogmatic religion, assuming a certain subject-matter as absolute and unquestioned. The Church could not consistently allow freedom in the search for truth, since she herself already possessed the truth by an infallible revelation ; the limits within which thought could move were necessarily strictly defined. Meanwhile a certain work was left for the intellect which was not obviously dangerous. This was the work of showing that the doctrinal con- tent is also self-consistent and rational. Granting that dogma is to be taken as established, it yet might seem a pious task to show how. 192 A Stidenfs History of Philosophy when given, it is acceptable to the reason and capable of being justified by it. There was indeed danger in this, as the Church was later on to discover — the danger that the rational justification should become a requirement, and the dogma be measured by its standard and derive authority from it. But meanwhile to oppose the tendency would have been to oppose all intellectual life what- ever, and this not even the Church would have been powerful enough to do successfully. The most prominent characteristic of Scholasticism, then, is its function as a systematizer and rationalizer of religious dogma. And in connection with this there was another circumstance that largely determined its peculiar character. This was the barrenness of the material with which it had to work. The very considerable sum of concrete knowledge about the world which antiquity had collected had dropped out of existence for the Middle Ages. In- stead of being able therefore to utilize the fruits of a rich human experience, the Schoolmen were compelled to deal very largely with abstractions. All they could do was to draw fine distinctions and work out logical implications from the most general statements about the world. And while to this task they often brought a sur- prising ability and acuteness, the lack of a worthy subject-matter was bound to vitiate their efforts and give to their speculations that air of unreality and triviality which strikes the modern mind so forcibly. Surely,’’ says Bacon — who to be sure is not a very sympathetic or impartial critic — “like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrify and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and dissolve into a number of subtile, idle, unwholesome, and as I may term them, vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign among the school- men, who, having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges ; and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity The Middle Ages 193 of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contem- plation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby ; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh its web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learn- ing, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no sub- stance or profit.*’ 3. Erigena. Realism and Nominalism. — The first period of the scholastic philosophy may be taken as extending to about the twelfth century, and it is marked by a comparative degree of specu- lative freedom. After the long night of the intellect, men redis- covered the delights of reason with a feverish joy. The most trivial logical questions had the power of rousing an unbounded enthu- siasm. And the naive confidence in the accord of reason with dogma — a confidence which could not be shaken until experience had shown something of the direction in which reason was to lead — made possible a less guarded attitude than afterward could be allowed. It is true that in the case of the first great philosopher of the Middle Ages, John Scotus Erigena (about 810-880), the Church was already inclined to be on its guard. Nevertheless we find in not a few instances a frankness and boldness in the expression of entirely rationalistic opinions which indicates the absence of any- thing like the more effective censorship and control of a later period. In general, the determining influence upon this period of phi- losophy was Plato. It was Plato, however, not at first hand, but through the medium of Neo-Platonism. Erigena was a native of Ireland, a country in which the best learning of the day had taken refuge ; his scholarship was varied and profound for his time, and he possessed the unusual accomplishment of a knowledge of Greek. He was, therefore, fitted to bring about that first infusion of ancient thought which was to be repeated on a larger scale at each new step of advance down to the times of the Renaissance. It was Erigena’s revival of the transcendental standpoint of Neo- Platonism, with its graded hierarchy of existence, which was largely influential in shaping the course of what, as opposed to the more m A Students Emory of Philosophy purely theological problems dealing with the interpretation ol dogma, was to constitute the great philosophical problem of the Middle Ages. This is the question as to the reality of universals — a question that goes back to Plato. It divided the thinkers of the Middle Ages into three great schools — the Realists, the Nominalists, and those who tried to mediate between the two. The Realists, who are represented by Erigena, take their stand with Plato, and declare that class terms are real — more real than individual things. The more general a term is, the more reality it possesses; man is more real than particular men, the circle than particular circles. The Nominalists, on the other hand, taking up the cause of common sense, denied that the concept, or class, has an existence of its own beyond the individuals which make up the class; it is these individuals that alone are real. For extreme Nominalism, of which Roscellinus is one of the earliest represen- tatives, the concept is absolutely nothing but a common name which can be applied to a number of particular things. In ringing the changes upon this problem a good share of the philosophical energies of the Middle Ages is expended. So far as the net result is concerned it is for us not very large. The problem had been treated by the Greek philosophers with far more concrete knowledge and genuine insight; the Scholastics hardly did more than add some logical detail, and an elaborate philosophical termi- nology which has not proved an unmixed blessing. There is how- ever a significance which the controversy possesses apart from the questions of metaphysics that are directly involved. It represents one aspect of the fundamental struggle between the dominant mode of thought of the Middle Ages, and the beginnings of the modern scientific and individualistic spirit which was to undermine the power of the Church and create a new civilization. It was natural that the Church should be realistic. The graded system of reality which absorbed the part in the whole, the less general in the more general, was a counterpart, in the intellectual world, of the hierarchy of the Roman ecclesiastical system, at the top of which the Pope stood supreme as the representative of the Church universal. To admit that the individual alone is real, and The Middle Ages I9S not the class, would have been to deny that solidarity of the human race on which the whole Church doctrine of sin and redemption was based ; it would have been to admit that particular persons and particular churches have reality while the one Holy Catholic Church is a mere name, and so that the mediation of the Church is unnecessary in religion. Furthermore if Nominalism were true, and particular things alone were real, then consistently men’s attention ought to be directed to such things, and secular and scientific interests, rather than religious and ecclesiastical ones, should hold the foremost place. Nominalism was the natural ally of the scientific spirit, even if this was not consciously present in the minds of the earlier Nomi- nalists; and science is incompatible with an exclusive interest in personal salvation such as the Church endeavored .to foster, and on the existence of which its authority rested. When it was worked out, moreover. Nominalism was bound to conflict with the whole principle of dogmatism. A dogma is a past generalization which is divorced from the correcting influence of new facts and taken as necessarily and absolutely true. With such traditional general- izations the Church was identified; it stood for authority rather than investigation — the authority of other people’s experience in the past. To center attention on the particular facts out of which generalizations grow, and to maintain the superior validity of these facts, was to substitute the principle of private judgment. In its earlier history Nominalism was not aware of all its implica- tions. In taking its stand upon the common-sense denial that class terms have an objective existence apart from things, it sup- posed itself to be entirely orthodox ; indeed it was able to retort the cry of heresy against its rival. Without doubt the logical tendency of Realism was in the direction of pantheism. If individuals exist only as members of the class and not in their own right, then the highest concept, God, is the sole reality, in whom alone all lesser facts — the world and man — have being. God is everything that truly is,” says Erigena; and again, “This is the end of all things visible and invisible, when all visible things pass into intellectual, and the intellectual into God, by a marvellous and A Students History of Philosophy 196 unspeakable union.’’ It is true that he adds, ‘‘yet not by any confusion or distinction of essences or substances”; but it is a question what he can really mean by this. In spite of the risk, however, the Church remained realistic. The need was still for a unifying force in opposition to disintegrating tendencies such as were present in feudalism for example. Realism alone supplied a theoretical basis for this, and Nominalism had accordingly to wait for a more favorable opportunity. 4. Anselm . — The typical exponent of Realism in the first period of the Middle Ages is Anselm. Born in Aosta in 1033, he was attracted to the famous monastery of Bee, in Normandy, by the name of Lanfranc, whom he afterward succeeded as Abbot. Later he was again made Lanfranc’s successor as Archbishop of Canterbury under William the Red; and in this office, after a career marked by a number of vicissitudes which his conscientious- ness and uprightness occasioned, he died in 1109. Anselm com- bines in a remarkable way a strong speculative bent with genuine piety, an unflinching acceptance of the orthodox creed, and a confidence that reason and revelation will lead to the same goal. With Anselm there is no question of doubting the doctrines of the Church ; faith must always precede knowledge. In the last resort we do not reason in order that we may believe. We believe in order that we may know ; the unbehever who does not first perceive the truth by faith can no more arrive at an understanding of the truth than the blind man who does not see the light can understand the light. Our duty is therefore to accept the teachings of the Church in all sincerity and humility, and strive to comprehend them. If we succeed, we may thank God ; if we do not, let us simply end our search and submit to God’s will, instead of denying the dogma and allowing our reason to stray outside the limits which it sets. Anselm is himself however fully convinced that the attempt will be successful. In the endeavor to make the objects of faith intel- ligible to reason he examines the fundamental doctrines of the Church, particularly the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atone- ment, in a way that deeply influenced subsequent theology. On the more distinctively philosophical side he is now remembered The Middle Ages 197 chiefly for his attempts to prove the existence of God. He threw himself into this problem with an intensity of earnestness which often made him go without food and sleep. The most characteristic result of his meditations was the famous ontological argument — an argument which has appealed to some of the greatest thinkers since Anselm's day, and which still retains an influence and a fas- cination. The argument is substantially as follows: We define God as a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Now there is in the mind the idea of such a being. But also such a being must exist outside the mind; if it did not, it would fail to be a being than which nothing greater can be thought, since a being with the added attribute of existence is greater than one merely in idea. Therefore God exists not merely in the mind, but also as a real existence outside the mind. The obvious criticism was seen by a contemporary of Anselm, a monk named Gaunilo ; he points out that it bases itself solely upon the idea of perfection and the idea of existence, and does not prove anything whatever about an objective reality corresponding to these ideas of ours. To a con- vinced realist however, who starts from the superior reality of universals, the objection would probably not appear well founded. 5. The Growth of Rationalism, Abelard and Conceptualism. — The tendencies which in Anselm had been held in equilibrium could not, however, be expected to continue always to exist together in entire harmony. The rational and logical spirit, grown by exercise, was bound to show a disposition to break loose from its connection with theology and to set up on its own account. As against the ideal of a unified intellectual life in which reason acts as the obedient handmaid of the Church, three somewhat specialized attitudes can be distinguished in the thought of the day. On the one hand stood the theologians proper, who fell back upon authority and aimed simply to set forth the dogmas as they had been handed down from the Fathers. More or less in competition with this there was the growing interest in dialectical and logical skill for its own sake, apart from the service which it rendered to theology. Meanwhile a third attitude also was assuming some importance. Dissatisfied alike with the formalism of the theologians and with the abstract iqS A Student^s History of Philosophy rationalism of the philosophers, the more religious natures here and there, reverting to a tendency which had come down from the Neo-Platonists, found refuge in mysticism. This movement connects itself in particular with the abbey of St. Victor. Besides Hugo of St. Victor (1096-1140), and his followers Richard and Walter, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) may be mentioned as its best-known representative, though from a standpoint less philosophically grounded. By its cultivation of freedom and spontaneity in the religious life, mysticism had a part to play among the influences which later were to bring the Middle Ages to a close. For the present, however, the growing rationalistic spirit was of special significance. This has its most remarkable representative in the famous Abelard (1079-1142). Abelard was the possessor of a t5^ically French intellect — keen, clear cut, impatient of mysticism and obscurity; and his striking talents early gave promise of a brilliant career. He became a pupil of William of Champeaux, in Paris, but soon came into collision with his teacher, and defeated him so signally in argument that William’s popularity waned and Abelard was the hero of the day. At the age of twenty-two he had opened a school of his own at Melun, and both here, and later on in Paris, was extraordinarily successful as a teacher. William was an extreme Realist, and in opposition to him Abelard took an inter- mediate position. Traditionally he has been regarded as the founder of Conceptualism ; and while there is some doubt about his real teaching, it would seem to have approached at any rate to this position. Conceptualism is substantially identical with the more commonly received opinion about the nature of universal terms at the present day. The class term has no objective existence as such ; it exists only as a thought, a concept in our minds. But neither is it a mere breath or word. There at least exists in the particular things a similarity or identity of qualities, through whose abstraction by a mental act the concept is formed ; and to this extent it is objectively valid. Conceptualism in this sense was taken account of in the more moderate realism which later, in St. Thomas Aquinas, came to be the orthodox doctrine. It is granted that only in the mind does the universal appear in its full potential The Middle Ages 199 ity ; but it exists implicitly as an essence in things themselves, and outside the mind it has an explicit existence also as an idea in the mind of God. The clearness and independence of Abelard’s mind showed itself in other fields as well. He brought the same rationalistic temper to subjects more directly connected with the dogmas of the Church. With rather surprising frankness he condemns the credulity which is willing to take beliefs on trust without a rational justification. doctiine is not believed,” he declares, '^because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so.” Doubt is no sin, as the Church had held ; ‘‘by doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.” He confesses to an admi- ration for the ancient philosophers, and finds expressed in them the essential doctrines of religion and morality; “Shall we people hell,” he writes, “with men v/hose life and teachings are truly evangelical and apostolic in their perfection, and differ in nothing, or very little, from the Christian religion?” The attempt is made to establish a theory of ethics independent of dogmatic sanctions. Christianity itself Abelard regards as, fundamentally, the rehabili- tation of the natural moral law which was revealed to the Greek sages also ; that which in Christianity is mysterious and not open to rational interpretation he was inclined to minimize. This nat- uralistic tone appears in his treatment of the particular dogmas ; the three persons of the Trinity, for example, are resolved into three attributes of God — power, wisdom and goodness — united in a single personality. § 22. The Second Period. The Revival of Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas j Duns Scotus, William of Occam I. Arabian Philosophy. The Crusades. — Abelard’s views were :ondemned by the Church; but this did not prevent the spread of the rationalistic and independent spirit. For a time it al- most looked as if' the Renaissance might be anticipated by several centuries. One factor in this was the influence of Arabian thought. While Europe had been asleep, learning had taken refuge among the Mohammedans. The works of Greek philosophy, 200 A Student's History of Philosophy especially Aristotle’s, were preserved and studied when they were known to Christian scholars only in the most fragmentary form. In the courts of the Eastern caliphs, and in the kingdom of the Moors in Spain, there came about a brief period of culture in which a considerable scientific activity went along with a vigorous, though not very original, philosophical revival. The most important name among the Arabian commentators and philosophers who influenced the later Scholasticism is that of Averrocs (1126-1198). The reception of this influence was made easier by a change which was beginning to come over the spirit of the age, and which was furthered in particular by the Crusades. These great religious wars had turned out quite otherwise than their promoters had anticipated. The religious results, from the standpoint of Catholi- cism, were almost nothing, while there were other consequences entirely opposed to the Church’s desire. The men of Europe had their dormant wits effectually shaken by contact with other peoples, and by the novel experiences which their wanderings brought them. Christendom found to its surprise that those whom it had been accustomed to look upon with contempt as heretics were in reality a brave and warlike people, with many virtues of their own, and a civilization in some respects superior to that of Europe. Contact with them inevitably rubbed off to some extent the provincialism on which the hold of the Church depended in a measure ; and the feeling of respect which the field of battle engen- dered facilitated an exchange of ideas. So also two other tend- encies which were to weaken the power of the Church received a stimulus from the Crusades. The rivalry resulting from the coming together of men from every country in Europe brought to the surface a new sense of national spirit which was opposed to the pretensions of the Church. Furthermore, commercial activity was given an impetus owing to the necessity of transporting and provisioning the large armies of the Crusaders, as well as to the closer communication brought about between the East and the West, and the revelation of new luxuries and new wants. Both of these things tended to accentuate the new secular spirit as opposed to the religious. The Middle Ages 201 Many of the conditions, accordingly, seemed to be favorable to a breaking away from the authority of the Church ; and indeed on a small scale some of the features of the Renaissance were actually anticipated. The widespread interest in learning is shown in the rise of the great Universities, while in the court of Frederick the Second, more especially, a new culture was introduced which was as thoroughly pagan as that which characterized the Italian cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To Frederick all religion was alike untrue, Mohammed and Christ alike imposters. But the movement was premature ; it had no sufficient knowledge to back it, and the hold of the Church was still too great to be broken. The new forces were turned safely into ecclesiastical channels, and spent themselves in infusing fresh life into Scholasticism rather than in breaking away from it. The Church philosophy got possession of the Universities, where it remained intrenched even after a different spirit had come over the outer world ; and the awakening was postponed for several centuries. 2. The Revival of Aristotle, Aquinas, — In turning the new tendencies to her own account the Church showed her usual astute- ness. One chief incentive to the threatened revolution in the intellectual world was due to the opening for the first time to Europe of a knowledge of the real Aristotle, and the coming of its scholars into contact with a mind of the first order whose thinking was not specifically theological. It is the influence of Aristotle which is the dominant factor in the whole of the following period. At first the Church had been alarmed at the evident dangers involved in the situation, and it had tried to avert them by con- demning Aristotle. But as the Greek text came to be known, and the pantheistic tinge which Aristotle had taken from his Arabian commentators was found not to be necessary to his interpretation, the attitude of the Church was altered. She began to realize that she had in Aristotle a possible instrument for her own ends. And so effectively did she use this that when, later on, the emancipation of the intellect was brought about, Aristotle instead of being the agent of that emancipation was the one chief obstacle against which the new spirit had to make war. By setting up the dictatorship of 202 A Sti 4 denfs History of Philosophy Aristotle, the Ctiurch had set bounds to the intellect more effect- ually than she had ever been able to do by means of dogma. There had been no recognized authority in the realm of pure reason in the earlier Middle Ages, and accordingly, within the limits of certain dogmatic results, the reason had had free play. By establishing now the supreme authority of Aristotle in every sphere to which reasoning applies, and by interpreting Aristotle in her own way, a tool was at hand for holding the reason in check without at the same Ome denying it its rights. Even in matters of science the question was, not what does nature reveal, but what does Aristotle say; and when science began to emerge, the authority of the philosopher was actively used to check its growth. ^'My son,’' so according to an anecdote was the reply made to one who thought he had discovered spots on the sun, have read Aristotle many times, and I assure you that there is nothing of the kind mentioned by him. Be certain therefore that the spots which you have seen are in your eyes and not in the sun.” Following the work of such men as Alexander of Hales, St, Bon- aventure and Albert the Great, the formulation of Scholasticism in Aristotelian terms was given its final shape at the hands of St, Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor (1225-1274), a pupil 0^ Albert’s, and one of the most comprehensive minds in the history of thought. Here by means of the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, all existence is arranged in a hierarchical system in which the lower is subordinated to the higher — body to soul, matter to spirit, philosophy to theology, the secular power to the ecclesiastical — with a thoroughness and acuteness which left a lasting impression, and which settled what was practically to be the official philosophy of the Catholic Church. It is in Aquinas that the formula was at last attained which was to be accepted by the Church as the final statement of the relation that exists between philosophy and revelation, reason and faith. The naive confidence in the ability of reason to justify the full content of religious belief had not been supported by experience. It came to be recognized that there are heights to which reason cannot pos- sibly reach. The loftier truths of revelation belong to a sphere The Middle Ages 203 where reason is incompetent to decide ; they are mysteries, to be accepted only on the ground of a faith in authority. But while the fields of reason and of faith are thus not coextensive, and while therefore philosophy cannot hope to make theology fully intelligible to the limited powers of the human mind, there need not for all that be any actual contradiction between the two. So far as it goes, reason is harmonious with faith ; but there comes a point where it no longer is able to pass judgment, and here faith steps in as a more ultimate principle, which stands to the natural powers of the mind as their final consummation. 3. Religion and Reason. The Revival of Nominalism. — In the system of Aquinas the scholastic philosophy reached its culminat- ing point ; from this time on the interest centers in the emergence of those tendencies which finally were to undermine it, and intro- duce the modern period. It will be sufficient here to point out certain factors in this evolution. The distinction which had now been clearly drawn between natural and revealed religion, reason and theology, was not of a nature to stop within the limits to which Aquinas had attempted to confine it. The notion of revelation as something above reason furnished a basis for a separation between the two realms which grew continually more pronounced. In accordance with this distinction religion comes to be taken as having a special organ — faith — with regard to which reason has nothing to say. In one form or other this has been a widely influential attitude down to the present day. To the man of religious interests who wishes to be undisturbed in his cherished beliefs, and who chafes at the violence which often seems to be done, not to these simply but to his reason likewise, by the attempt to bring the two together, it may seem a welcome relief to give up the whole endeavor to harmonize his knowledge with his faith, and be able to deny to reason the right to interfere in the separate province of religion. At the same time he gains for reason a free play in its own proper field, unchecked by the irritating feeling that it must continually be squared with some preconceived result. To-day, for example, it is common to find men securing for themselves the right to follow the leadings of 204 A Sludenl^s History of Philosophy science and still to retain the religious beliefs upon which science seems to cast doubt, by adopting the principle of a division of labor, according to which reason is to be allowed its validity, but only in the lower region of empirical phenomena. Even if it comes there- fore to an apparent contradiction between scientific and religious truth, this contradiction means nothing ; science does not pretend to absolute truth, and may still remain practically valid even if it does not square with truth in its final and transcendent form. The intent of this is to save religion ; but it is easy to see that the same attitude may just as well be adopted from a different motive. Especially in an age when religious authority is strong and requires evasion if thought is to have free scope, it may be seized upon as a pretext by men who have no concern for religion, and only want a chance to rationalize the universe. If revelation and reason are distinct, there can be no harm in pushing the conclusions of reason to any result, however extreme, since religion is not prejudiced thereby. This attitude found expression in the famous doctrine of the ‘twofold truth’’ — the doctrine, namely, that a thing might be true according to reason which was not true theologically, and vice versa. In the case of many who adopted this point of view in practice, there was no intention of undermining religion or the Church. Nevertheless the tendency was due at bottom to a demand for the emancipation of the reason from Church trammels, and this in the end was bound to weaken her authority. Aquinas’ contention that certain doctrines are beyond discovery by the unassisted reason was gradually widened. The doctrines which natural theology, or rational thought, could attain to and defend successfully decreased in number, until, in William of Occam, even the arguments for the existence of God were held to be insufiScient. But when it has reached this point philosophy is no longer in any positive way a minister to theology as it had started out by being. It has become a mere critical inquiry into the nature of reason which ends in discrediting the capacity of knowledge for reaching ultimate truth, or for dealing with anything except the phenomenal world. This is, in one aspect, the meaning of a controversy which forms one of the central points about which the thought of the The Middle Ages 205 later Middle Ages turns — the question as to the primacy of the intellect or of the will. The Thomists, or followers of Aquinas, maintained the ancient doctrine that intellect is original and supreme, and that God’s will is determined by his knowledge. Their opponents, who are represented by the Franciscans, Duns Scotus and William of Occam — Thomas was a Dominican, and a rivalry between the two orders intensified the philosophical rivalry — maintained, on the contrary, that if God’s will is limited by an eternal truth then there is something above God which determines him. Accordingly God must be conceived as an absolutely free will ; and therefore truth and falsehood, right and wrong, are nothing in themselves, but are established by God’s voluntary act. On the practical side this means tdat religion is no longer identified with a reasoned statement of truth, but is a disposition of will, a moral life, which obeys the law of duty imposed on it by God’s authority. If truth rests on the inscrutable will of God, it must of necessity be unknowable by the natural reason. The only sphere which is left to reason is, accordingly, the lower or natural world which does not come in contact with the realm of ultimate reality. But when it has thus been forced to become purely naturalistic, reason is ready for a further step. Men cannot continue indefinitely to hold to truth which not only has no rational ground, but which actually is contradicted by all that human beings mean by reason. That which has reason on its side cannot fail in the long run to get an advantage ; the subjects with which it deals are going to gain constantly in interest and in consequent reality. And if it has been admitted that reason confines us to the natural world from which all supersensible realities are excluded, then inevitably the conclusion will in time be drawn that this world is the only true one, and that supersensible realities do not exist. The supersensible world may still be handed over to theology to do with as it pleases, and there may be no open break so long as theology does not attempt to compete with scientific explanations ; this, for instance, is Bacon’s attitude later on. But to all intents and purposes theology has been dispossessed of all real rights. The tendency, therefore, of the doctrine of twofold truth was to confine 2o6 A Student's History of Philosophy philosophy to the physical world, and so to prepare the ground for science as the highest truth which we are capable of knowing. The same tendency shows itself in the revival of Nominalism. The older Nominalism had failed because the age was still need of the unifying authority of the Church, and Realism had been the philosophical justification of this authority. Aquinas was a Realist, although not of the more extreme type ; and so also was Duns Scotus. But in William of Occam the nominalistic tendency becomes once more explicit. Individual things are the only realities; concepts have no existence extra mentcm. Interpreted, this means that the period of authority is passing. Nominalism, by its insistence on the reality of particular things, justified the grow- ing scientific spirit in its attention to facts rather than to dogmas. It justified the revolt of individuals against the ready-made generalizations of the past, and of nations against the absolutism of the Catholic Church. It was no longer therefore opposed to the needs of the age, but was in line with what was soon to become a dominant tendency. 4. The Beginnings of Science, — By itself the purely logical movement within Scholasticism would have had no great result; it needed to be reenforced by the concrete growth of knowledge. During the Middle Ages this was rendered impossible in any con- siderable degree. Some interest in science had been aroused through contact with the Mohammedans and an acquaintance with the works of Aristotle. But it was not encouraged either by the Church or by public opinion. The Church felt more or less clearly that the growth of knowledge was a menace to its own position ; while to the popular mind too close a familiarity with the works of nature was supposed to argue an unholy connection with the powers of evil. Even the office of Pope did not prevent the possessor of unusual scientific knowledge from being looked on with suspicion, while a less influential man, like the monk Roger Bacon (12 14-1294), was compelled to pay the full penalty for being in advance of his age. Bacon saw the problems of science with remarkable clearness, and his Opus Majus is a monument of in- dustry. But as a result he only gained the popular name of being The Middle Ages 207 a wizard and magician, while by the Church his work was con- demned and he himself confined for many years as a prisoner in his cell. In spite of everything, however, the scientific spirit persisted and grew in strength ; and when at last the conditions were ripe it suddenly attained a development which has been the means of determining the whole course of modern thought. LITERATURE Poole, Illustrations of Thought in fhe Middle Ages. Adams, Civilization in the Middle Ages. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages. Emerton, Medieval Europe. Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages. West, Alcuin. Church, St Anselm. Storrs, Bernard of Clairvaux. Compayre, Abelard. Laurie, The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. Deane, Translation of Anselm’s Proslogium, Monologium, Cur Deus Homo. De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, 2 vols. Lecky, History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe. Rickaby, Translation of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. Gardner, John the Scot. McCabe, Abelard. Vaughan, St. Thomas of A quin. Taylor, The Medieval Mind. Thompson, History of the Middle Ages. Gibson, Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. De Wulf, Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages. McKeon, Selections from Medieval Philosophers. Grabmann, Thomas Aquinas. TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY § 23. The Renaissance. Bruno I. The Renaissance and the Reformation. — The necessary con- ditions for the introduction of the modern period were brought about by the great movement which, from its various aspects, is called the Renaissance, or the Revival of Learning, or the Refor- mation. It has already been seen that the influences bringing this about had been at work at least as early as the Crusades. From that time on society was gradually becoming transformed away from the ecclesiastical and toward the secular ideal. The growth of commerce and industry necessarily gave an emphasis to secular interests. The new social class which in consequence rose to im- portance alongside the nobles and the clergy tended to ally itself with the king in his struggles with the feudal lords, since only through a strong central authority could trade and industry be pro- tected ; and this joined with other influences in building up a new national spirit. Nations began with growing success to break away from ecclesiastical control, and to separate the civil power from the spiritual. Here the Nominalism of the later Scholastics threw in its lot with the new tendency, and we tind Occam openly on the side of national authority in its conflicts with the Pope. It was in Italy that the Renaissance first became an accomplished fact. Here the greater commercial activity, and the intense rivalry between the different cities, had been coincident with the rise of an aggressive and relatively unmoral individualism. As early as the fourteenth century the main features of the literary renaissance appear in Petrarch and Boccaccio. But it is from the year 1453 that the Renaissance is commonly dated. In that year Constanti- nople, the capital of the Eastern Empire, which had continued up to this time to maintain an ignoble existence, was taken by the 208 Transition to Modern Philosophy 209 Turks, Many of the Greek scholars, driven from their country, took refuge in Italy. Here they found the soil prepared for them, and the result was immediate and revolutionary. The revelation of the real spirit of classical antiquity to men beginning to feel the possession of new powers of life and capacities of appreciation, and heartily sick of the dry and tasteless theological nourishment with which they had had to satisfy themselves, overturned all their old ideas. The shackles of the Church fell from their minds, and they turned back to the past with a passionate delight. A civilization sprang up which, as opposed to the religious civilization of the Middle Ages, was definitely pagan in its spirit — pagan not only in its love of beauty and literature and its delight in living, but also in its frank sensualism and egoism. The whole scale of values was shifted. “ Men cared more for an old manuscript of the poets than for the prophets and apostles ; for a Greek vase or statue than for temperance and holy living.” A new zest for all that was human and beautiful found expression in a great period of artistic creation. Even the court of St. Peter’s was paganized, and we have the spectacle of a series of Popes whose vices have made their names synonyms of infamy, but who nevertheless were accomplished scholars, artistic dilettantes, and patrons of art and learning. In philosophy nearly every system of ancient times was revived. Plato, the artist among philosophers, attracted a large following, and a Platonic Academy was founded in Florence. Other scholars set up Aristotle, interpreted not as he had been by the Church, but freely and naturalistically ; while still others turned to Pythago- reanism and Neo-Platonism, to Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism, and even to the earlier Greek schools. Beyond Italy the Renaissance took on a somewhat different character. In Germany, where it was grafted on a type of mind naturally profounder and more religious, and where the religious life had already been deepened by the mysticism of Eckhart and Tauler and the Brethren of the Common Life, its most character- istic product was the Reformation of Luther ; even Humanism in its German form, as typified in Erasmus and Melanchthon, shows strong religious sympathies. But the Reformation is an exDression 210 A Student's History of Philosophy of the same revolt against authority. By its doctrine of justifi- cation by faith apart from any external mediation, and by its appeal to immediate Christian experience, it stood for individual freedom as against the pretensions of the Church. Moreover along with these there went other and more external changes, which in a short space still further revolutionized the old order. The voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Balboa and Magellan, resulting, among other things, in the discovery of America and of the road to the Indies, changed the map of the world, and opened up vast possibilities which had not been dreamed of before. In quick succession there came also a series of inventions of world-wide significance. The discovery of gunpowder revo- lutionized the art of war, and put the common soldier and the noble on an equal footing; printing first made possible a generally diffused knowledge and culture ; while the telescope laid open the structure of the heavens, and the compass enlarged the boundaries of the earth. All these changes furnished a powerful spur to the imaginative and creative spirit, to which the Elizabethan age in England bears special witness. And, finally, there came forward to realize the new possibilities in the way of knowledge a brilliant group of scientists of the first magnitude — Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and others — whose investigations gave a firm foundation to those scientific methods and conceptions which were destined to enter into all future thought. In particular Copernicus, by shifting the center of the universe from our earth and making this but a point in a vast system, created a profound impression on men^s imagina- tions, and perhaps more than any other' single influence helped to cut the ground from beneath the narrow theological view of life which hitherto had dominated men^s minds. God could no longer be conceived as having his local habitation in the heavens; the whole geography of the spiritual world was thrown into confusion, and the conception of God’s relation to the universe transformed. In a word, a wholly new way of looking at the world emerged — the way of the modem man. Nothing could be more modern in tone, for example, than the essays of Montaigne ; in their cool conunon Transition to Modern Philosophy 2H senile, their cautious scepticism, their condemnation of superstition and religious fanaticism, and their wide spirit of toleration, they mark the complete emancipation of cultivated thought from ecclesiastical influences, and the secularization of human life and human interests. 2. Bnmo. — Turning now to the way in which this enormous change is mirrored in philosophical theory, we may pass over the transition period briefly. At first, as has been said, men had been compelled to go back to the remoter past to get that concrete con- tent the lack of which repelled them in the Middle Ages, but which they were not yet ready to supply from their own resources. But soon the mere renewal of ancient systems gave place to more original attempts. What is most characteristic of the Renaissance period in philosophy may be found in Giordano Bruno. Bruno was a Dominican monk, born near Naples in 1548. His fiery spirit and poetic temperament soon however put him out of sympathy with dogmatic and ascetic Catholicism. Persecuted in consequence by the Church, he passed a varied and unhappy life wandering from country to country — Switzerland, Germany, England, France, — but nowhere finding peace. At last he fell into the clutches of the Inquisition, and was burnt at the stake in Rome (1600). In Bruno there are most of the elements that go to make the Renaissance period attractive. There is the ardent enthusiasm for nature and beauty ; the revolt from asceticism and Scholasticism alike ; the consciousness of a new and vaster universe suddenly laid open to man, and the confidence that it can be grasped without the long process of careful investigation whose necessity time was to show ; and, finally, along with this, the inevitable ferment and un- clearness of new ideas imperfectly apprehended. In his zeal for life Bruno goes back to the ancient Hylozoism. All nature is alive. A world soul permeates everything. The universe is a great organism, whose dwelling-place is the infinite reaches of space. To this emo- tional realization of the infiniteness and divineness of the natural world his eyes had been opened first by the Copemican theory. “By this knowledge we are loosened from the chains of a most nar- row dungeon, and set at liberty to rove in a most august empire ; 212 A Students History of Philosophy we are removed from presumptuous boundaries and poverty to the innumerable riches of an infinite space, of so worthy a field, and of such beautiful worlds.’^ Nothing now is limited and restricted, and nothing is dead matter. As he looks forth on the world man comes in contact everywhere with a power akin to him, which is nearer to him than he is to himself, and yet which pulsates through the remotest regions of the heavens and informs all things. “It is not reasonable to believe that any part of the world is without a soul life, sensation and organic structure. From this infinite All, full of beauty and splendor, from the vast worlds which circle above us to the sparkling dust of stars beyond, the conclusion is drawn that there are an infinity of creatures, a vast multitude, which, each in its degree, mirrors forth the splendor, wisdom and excellence of the divine beauty.’^ The stars have intellectual and sense life — “those sons of God who shouted for joy at the creation, the flaming heralds his ministers and the ambassadors of his glory, a living mirror of the infinite Deity/^ Accordingly we must rid ourselves of the paltry thought that it is for us that all things are created. “Only one bereft of his reason could believe that those infinite spaces, tenanted by vast and magnificent bodies, are designed only to give us light, or to receive the clear shining of the earth, “ If in the eyes of God there is but one starry globe, if the sun and moon and all creation are made for the good of the earth and for the welfare of man, humanity may be exalted, but is not the Godhead abased ? Is this not to straiten and confine his providence ? What ! is a feeble human creature the only object worthy of the care of God? No, the earth is but a planet, the rank she holds among the stars is but by usurpation ; it is time to dethrone her. The ruler of our earth is not man, but the sun, with the life which breathes in common through the universe. Let the earth eschew privilege ; let her fulfil her course, and obey. Let not this contemplation dispirit man, as if he thought himself abandoned by God ; for in extending and enlarging the universe, he is himself elevated beyond measure, and his intelligence is no longer deprived of breathing space beneath a sky meagre, narrow, and ill-contrived in its proportions. Dwellers in a star, are we not Transition to Modern Philosophy 213 comprehended within the celestial plains, and established within the very precincts of heaven?^’ ‘‘This is that philosophy which opens the senses, which satisfies the mind, which enlarges the under- standing, and which leads man to the only true beatitude ; for it frees him from the solicitous pursuit of pleasure, and from the anxious apprehensions of pain, seeing that everything is subject to a most good and efficient cause. ^ In this conception of the universe there are two sides, both of which Bruno wishes to emphasize. On the one hand he insists upon the unity of the whole. Reality is an eternal spirit, one and indi- visible, and as such alone possesses truth ; all things that appear are but images of this ultimate reality. “The heavens are a picture, a book, a mirror, wherein man can behold and read the form and the laws of supreme goodness, the plan and total of perfection.” “From this spirit, which is One, all being flows ; there is one truth and one goodness penetrating and governing all things. In nature are the thoughts of God. They are made manifest in figures and vestiges to the eye of sense ; they are reproduced in our thoughts, where alone we can arrive at consciousness of true being. We are surrounded by eternity and by the uniting of love. There is but one centre from which all species issue, as rays from a sun, and to which all species return. There is but one celestial expanse, where the stars choir forth unbroken harmony. From this spirit, which is called the Life of the Universe, proceeds the life and soul of every- thing which has soul and life, the which life, however, I understand to be immortal, as well in bodies as in their souls, there being no other death than division and congregation.” ^ But while now God is the whole, he also is a whole which is present in its complete- ness in each single part. He is in the blade of grass, in the grain of sand, in the atom that floats in the sunbeam, as well as in the bound- less All. Each man is a point in which the fulness of the Godhead is reflected ; it represents the whole ; it is the microcosm which in miniature reproduces the great macrocosm of the universe. With Bruno “man is a mirror within a mirror, and his perception of ^ Taken from Frith, Life of Bruno ^ pp. 42-46, Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co. * Ibid., p. 278. 214 ^ Siudenl^s History of Philosophy things is a reflection of nature, which is the reflection of the thought of God.” 3. Paracelsus. — Evidently the return to nature in this its early form lends itself rather to a poetical glorification of the world, an imaginative interpretation which reaches its goal by a subjective leap, rather than to the sober attention to details which was needed before science could be established. The same tendency to pre- matureness showed itself in the form likewise of an interest in magic, astrology, alchemy and the search for the philosopher's stone. Paracelsus is the type of a host of men who sprang up all over Europe — men of enthusiasm for nature, and to some extent of good ideals, but men whose undisciplined imaginations led them beyond the bounds of sober thinking. • Some valuable knowledge about the world did, it is true, result ; in alchemy, in particular, the search for that which should turn everything to gold was the means of giving a start to the science of chemistry. But before real progress could be made these attractive but not very fruitful methods of magic and theosophy had, equally with the barren logic of the Schoolmen, to be definitely set aside. LITERATURE Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance, Montaigne, Essays. Cellini, A utohiography. Owen, The Sceptics of the Italian Renaissance. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy ^ 7 vols. Frith, Life of Bruno. Smith, Erasmus. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno. Lindsay, History of the Reformation. Boulting, Giordano Bruno. § 24 . Bacon I. The Defects of the Existing Philosophy. — The man who came forward to attempt this task was Francis Bacon (1561-1626). In Bacon^s checkered career — a career ending in his disgrace and Transition to Modern Philosophy 215 removal from the Lord Chancellorship — there is rather too obvious a lack of any very delicate sense of personal honor and dignity to arouse an unqualified respect. Nor indeed as a thinker is Bacon deserving of the excessive admiration which it was once the fashion to bestow upon him. About the more ultimate questions of philosophy he has little to say ; and even on the side of science and the world of nature his work is far from final. He continually promises more than he is able to perform. It was other men who were actually doing the things whose necessity Bacon was pointing out, and Bacon was not always able to recognize the value of their work ; he never accepted the Copernican theory, for example. But in spite of these defects the work which he accomplished was an important one. What the times needed was not simply men to carry out practically the new methods of science in a detailed investigation of the world, but also some one with the breadth of vision to realize clearly and in a large way what these methods meant, to emphasize their relation to previous methods, and to set them in connection with some worthy end in terms of human life. For this task Bacon was well equipped. The cathoUcity of his scientific interests enabled him to keep in view and call attention to dieir more universal aspects. So too his reputation as a statesman lent to his words a special weight ; while the gifts of a great writer, helped out by a wide learning, gave his exposition an impressive- ness which much increased its influence. Bacon starts with the recognition that philosophy has broken down and is in general disrepute. What is the reason for this, when other things are prospering? Take the mechanical arts — they grow and perfect themselves daily as if enjoying a certain vital air, while philosophy, like a statue, is adorned and celebrated, but moves not. The former also are seen rude and commonly without proportion and cumbrous in the hands of their first authors, but afterward get new strength and aptness ; the latter is in its greatest vigor with its first author, and afterward declines.^^ This is a feel- ing about philosophy which frequently finds expression; and in Bacon's time it had a special justification. ‘‘The fable of Scylla is a lively image of the present state of letters, with the countenance 2i6 A Students History of Philosophy and expression of a virgin above, the end in a multitude of barking questions, fruitful of controversy, and barren of effect/’ ^ This unfortunate state of affairs has three main roots, three ‘‘distempers of learning” : the first fantastical learning, the second contentious learning, and the last delicate learning. By delicate learning Bacon means the dilettante spirit which the Renaissance had made fashionable ; here words usurp the place of substance, and matters of style and polished phrases are substituted for rea) weight of meaning. “Of this vanity Pygmalion’s frenzy is a good emblem ; for words are but the images of matter, and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture.” The second distemper is that which the Schoolmen represent, and the image of Scylla will stand for it. The first, or fantastical learning, is exemplified in the spirit that makes men run after old wives’ tales, wonders, ghosts and miracles ; or in a pseudo-scientific form gains credence for alchemy and natural magic. From these three roots grow the numerous errors which infect philosophy ; and of these Bacon names a long list. There is the extreme affecting either of antiquity or novelty, “whence it seemeth the children of time do take after the nature and malice of the father. For as he devoureth his children, so one of them seeketh to devour and suppress the others ; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, novelty cannot be content to add but it must deface. Antiquity deserveth that reverence that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way ; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, those times are the ancient times when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient by a computation backward from ourselves.” Other errors, depending on this, take the form of a “ distrust that anything should be now to be found out which the world should have missed and passed over so long time ” ; or the “conceit that of former opinions the best hath still prevailed and suppressed the rest, so that the result of new search will be nothing save to light upon exploded errors. The truth is, that time 1 Great Instauration, Preface. Transition to Modern Philosophy 217 seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and clrowndeth that which is weighty and soha/’ To these we may add the premature formulation of knowledge which checks its growth ; an extreme specialization ; too much confidence in man^s own wit and understanding apart from the contemplation of nature ; an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment; a lazy content with discourses already made. And, finally, there is the greatest error of all — “ the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge. For men have ^entered into a desire of learning or knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite, sometimes to entertain their minds with vanity and delight, sometimes for ornament and reputation, sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and con- tradiction, and most times for lucre and profession ; and seldom to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men. As if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a restless spirit ; or a tarasse for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for profit or sale ; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the creator and the relief of man’s estate. Howbeit I do not mean, when I speak of use and action, that end before mentioned of the applying of knowledge to lucre and profession ; for I am not ignorant how much that divideth and interrupteth the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanla, which while she goeth aside and stoppeth to take up, the race is hindered. But as both heaven and earth do conspire and contribute to the use and benefit of man, so the end ought to be, for both natural and moral philosophies, to separate and reject vain speculations and whatso- ever is empty and void, and to preserve and augment whatever is solid and fruitful.” ^ 2. The Aim of Philosophy, — For Bacon, then, philosophy, m opposition to the practical barrenness of the Scholastics, has the > Adv. of Learning, Spedding’s ed., Vol VI, pp. 1 17-135 2I8 A ^ItuienVs History of Fhilosophy definite function of serving for the benefit and relief of the state and society of man — for a “restitution and reinvesting of man to the sovereignty and power, in that wheresoever he shall be able to caU the creatures by their true name he shall again command them which he had in his first state of creation.” ^ Such an ideal is pictured in the unfinished fragment of the New Atlantis. Here Bacon imagines an island, shut off from the rest of the world, and raised to a high point of felicity and civilization ; and this is brought about simply by a systematic application of the human mind to a discovery of the secrets of nature, and the utihzation of these for inventions intended to secure man^s control over his environment. In a sort of scientific society called Solomon’s House, this aim is carried out with a high degree of organization and efficiency ; and Bacon gives rein to his imagination in anticipating all sorts of pos- sible results of inventive skill, including the microphone and tele- phone, the flying machine and submarine vessels, to say nothing of several kinds of perpetual motion. This whole conception, it is to be observed, is thoroughly practical and secular. All speculative questions relating to God and his purposes, or to the ultimate destiny of man, are excluded from the realm of reason, and handed over to theology and faith. At most a contemplation of the world ■ — and this is the true sphere of philosophy — may be made to refute atheism ; but it can supply no positive content. To be sure, Bacon still is ready to acknowledge the truth of theology in its own sphere; but he deprecates any mingling of theology and reason. “If any man shall think by view and inquiry into sensible and material things to attain to any light for the revelation of the nature and will of God, he shall dangerously abuse himself. It is true that the contemplation of the creatures of God hath for end, as to the natures of the creatures themselves, knowledge, but as to the nature of God, no knowledge, but wonder, which is nothing else but contemplation broken off or losing itself. Nay, further, as ii was aptly said by one of Plato’s school, the sense of man resembles the sun, which openeth and revealeth the terrestrial globe, but obscur- ^th and concealeth the celestial ; so doth the sense discover natural * Interpretation of Nature, Vol. VI, p. 34. Transition to Modern Philosophy 219 things but darken and shut up divine.” ^ Theology is grounded only on the word of God, and not upon the light of nature ; to the latter it may be but foolishness, as that faith which was accounted to Abraham for righteousness was of such a point as whereat Sarah laughed, who therein was an image of natural reason.” Whether this profession of faith in theology is altogether sincere may be a matter of some doubt ; at any rate, the thing Bacon is most con- cerned with is, not to establish faith, but to free reason, and give it full play in its proper sphere. As reason has nothing to say about the concerns of theology, so theology, on its side, must not meddle in matters which do not belong to it. The Bible is made to teach religion, not science ; and to endeavor, as some have done, to build a system of natural philosophy on Scripture is to seek the dead among the living. 3. Method of Induction. — What now is the new method by which Bacon looked to see human thought and life straightway revolutionized? In the first place it is empiricism, as opposed to the syllogistic reasoning of the Scholastics. Bacon thought that ^‘theories and opinions and common notions, so far as can be obtained from the stiffness and firmness of the mind, should be entirely done away with, and that the understanding should begin anew plainly and fairly with particulars, since there is no other entrance open to the kingdom of nature than to the kingdom of heaven, into which no one may enter except in the form of a little child.” ^ These prepossessions of which it is our first duty to rid ourselves are what Bacon metaphorically calls Idols : — Idols of the Tribe, or the predispositions which by the natural working of the mind more or less beset every one ; Idols of the Cave, or individual idiosyncrasies, due to mental and bodily structure, habits, education or accident, which refract and discolor the light of nature; Idols of the Forum, or of language, ‘Tor men believe that their reason governs words, but it is also true that words, like the arrows from a Tartar bow, are shot back and react upon the mind”; and Idols of the Theatre arising from the dogmas of philosophers, so called because all received systems are but ^‘so many stage plays, repre- * Inter, of Nature^ Vol. VI, p. ag. * Novum Organtm, § 68. 220 A Student^ s History of Philosophy senting worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.’’ ^ Abandoning these presuppositions, we are to begin with thi particular facts, and only arrive at generalisations by a gradual process instead of at a single leap. The syllogism, on which the Schoolmen rely, is a useful instrument in certain cases, but it is incompetent to reach the truth of nature. Dealing as it does with words and ideas rather than with things, whenever these ideas happen to be vague, incomplete and not sufficiently defined — and this is usually the case — it falls at once to the ground. Let us abandon all such trifling with nature, and come to her with open minds to learn what she has to teach; let us “approach with humility and veneration to unroll the volume of creation, to linger and meditate therein, and with minds washed clean from opinions to study it in purity and integrity. For this is that sound and language which went forth into all lands, and did not incur the confusion of Babel ; this should men study to be perfect in, and, becoming again as little children, condescend to take the alphabet of it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the interpretation thereof, but pursue it strenuously, and persevere even unto death.” Induction from empirical particulars is thus the general method of science. But induction must itself escape the perils that attend it as it has commonly been applied. What logic has had in a meager way to say of induction, as a mere enumeration of particu- lars, is vicious and incompetent. “To conclude upon an enumera- tion of particulars without instance contradictory is no conclusion, but a conjecture ; for who can assure in many subjects, upon those particulars which appear of a side, that there are not others on the contrary side which appear not. As if Samuel should have rested upon those sons of Jesse which were brought before him, and failed of David, which was in the field.” ^ True induction accordingly must not be in too great haste to generahze, but must consider care- fully all opposing instances. It must not specialize and confine itself to a few objects but must be universal in its scope. It mus^ 1 Novum Organum, 30 ff- * of Learning, Vol. VI, p. 265. transition to Modern Philosophy 221 not be too ready to run after immediate utility, but must look foi • experiments that shall afford light rather than profit, ‘‘imitating the divine creation, which only produced light on the first day, and assigned that whole day to its creation, without adding any ma- terial work.” And it must subject its data to the most careful experimental examination, “not following the common example of accepting any vague report or tradition for fact ; so that a system has been pursued in philosophy with regard to experience, resem- bling that of a kingdom or state which would direct its councils or affairs according to the gossip of city and street politicians, instead of the letters and reports of ambassadors and messengers worthy of credit.” More definitely, the new method from which Bacon hoped so much was briefly this ; After clearing the mind of presuppositions, the next step is to gather and carefully tabulate all possible knowl- edge of the facts of nature ; for it is useless to clear the mirror if it have no images to reflect. These facts are not to be taken at haphazard, but are to be the result of careful and exact experiment, in which the natural imperfections of the senses are to be assisted by whatever instruments and processes may be necessary. Such a catalogue of facts Bacon himself started, and he expected that a determined and concerted effort on the part of men of science would soon render it practically exhaustive. The problem of science now is to discover what, following the scholastic terminology, Bacon calls the “ forms ” of things. Every “ simple nature,” that is, or ultimate quality, has a form, or essence, or law, which is always present where the quality is, and which, if it can be discovered, will always serve to superinduce the quality in any particular object. Suppose, then, that we wish to discover the form of a simple nature like heat. Using the tabulations we have made of all the cases in nature where heat appears, and, again, of cases where it is absent, we find by a process of comparison and exclusion what the form of heat must be It cannot be weight, for example, for we find heavy bodies in both lists ; nor can it be a host of other things for the same reason. And at last we hit upon motion as the one thing which always is present when heat is present, and absent when heat is absent Finally, we 222 A Students History of Philosophy may draw up a third list which represents the presence of the quality in varying degrees ; and in this we ought to find the form presenting a similar variation. This is, in brief, Bacon’s scientific method, though of course it admits of working out in greater detail, particularly in the way of formulating certain kinds of cases which are especially illuminating as test instances. The results of Bacon’s work were incommensurate with the promises he had held out. What he did was to call attention in an impressive way to the necessity for induction, experiment, and the empirical study of facts. But his great work remained at his death the mere sketch of a method which he had found it impossible to exhibit in its actual working; and he had not sufficiently under- stood the conditions of science to lay out a path for others. In particular, he was almost wholly blind to the important part which deduction plays in scientific inquiry. As he conceived it. Bacon’s method was almost mechanical in its nature, leaving little to that scientific imagination and fertility of hypothesis which characterizes the great scientists. ‘^Our method of discovering the sciences,” he says, ^Ts such as to leave little to the acuteness and strength of wit, and, indeed, rather to level wit and intellect. For as in the drawing of a straight line or accurate circle by the hand much depends upon its steadiness and practice, but if a ruler or compass be employed there is little occasion for either, so it is with our method.” ‘ LITERATURE Bacon, Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum; De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum; New Atlantis. Fowler, Bacon. Spedding, Life and Times of Francis Bacons 2 vols. Fischer, Bacon and his Successors. Nichol, Bacony 2 vols. Church, Bacon. Steeves, Francis Bacon. Broad, Philosophy of Francis Bacon. Taylor, Francis Bacon. ^ Novnm Organum, § 61. Transition to Modern Philosophy 223 §25. Hohhes I. The deductive side of science, whose importance Bacon had overlooked, was emphasized by another Englishman, Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes, the son of a clergyman, was born at Malmesbury in 1588. After passing through the University of Oxford he became a tutor in the Cavendish family, with which he remained more or less closely connected throughout the course of a long life. In his earlier years he gave no special philosophical promise. He took no interest in the scholastic doctrines which still were taught at Oxford, but neither did he actively revolt against them ; his tastes lay in a different direction. It was not till his fortieth year that an acci- dental event gave a new turn to his thought. Picking up a book on geometry, of which to that time he had been ignorant, he was greatly impressed by it. ‘Ht is impossible,’’ he is reported to have said as he read the 47 th proposition ; and as he went back and traced the steps which led up to the proof of the proposition an interest was aroused which set him at once to the study of mathematics. Com- bined with a growing interest in the physical sciences, the outcome of this was a new philosophical standpoint. Hobbes starts from the thesis that the cause of all events what- soever can be reduced to motion, and thus can be made amenable to mathematical and deductive treatment. Philosophy is the reasoned knowledge of effects from causes and causes from effects ; and since these are always motions, philosophy is the doctrine of the motion of bodies. Such an idea meant the freeing ot science from esoteric natures, Aristotelian forms, and final causes, and its restriction to exact quantitative investigations. It is true Hobbes was only pointing out what was already the conscious method of his scientific contemporaries. Nor was he able to con- tribute to the history of science any results to be compared in value for a moment with theirs. He came to the study of mathematics too late ever to be master of it ; and in his extended controversies with mathematicians of his day he com.mitted himself to positions that were hopelessly in the wrong, as, for example, in his insistence on the possibility of squaring the circle. But Hobbes is not inter- 224 A StiKlenfs History of Philosophy ested in scientific methods simply; he intends to assert a philo- sophical principle which is universal, and which results in an entirely mechanical and materialistic metaphysics. Not only is a mechani- cal explanation to be given to events in the material world, but the same method is to be followed in psychology and sociology. Con- sciousness likewise is a form of motion. It is reducible, that is, to changes in the nervous system ; these changes are brought home to us in what we call sensations, and by the combination of sensations the entire life of consciousness is to be explained. In the same way the life of society, in turn, is a still more complex mechanism, strictly determined, and so capable of being treated deductively, In Hobbes’ original plan a trilogy of works — De Corpore, Dt Homine and De Give — was to follow up these mechanical prin- ciples through all their workings. 2. As it happened, he was induced by the course of events to change his original plan and produce the last part of his work earlier than he had intended. The occasion of this was the political situation in England, which resulted in the beheading of Charles the First and the exile of the Royalists. Hobbes, by his connection with the Cavendishes, was naturally in sympathy with the Royalist party, and his social philosophy, on which his chief historical importance rests, is meant to be a message for the times. In this his actual procedure is not in point of fact what his theory demands ; neither Hobbes nor any philosopher before or since has ever done much toward accounting for the concrete facts of human life in terms simply of the laws of motion. What he does rather is to attempt:, not a mechanistic, but a “naturalistic” treatment of man and society — to explain them, that is to say, on the basis of those relatively simple desires and motives that most obviously pertain to the human animal as a biological phenomenon. Hobbes starts from the conception of man as naturally self-seek- ing and egoistic, and nothing more. A man loves only himself ; he cares for others only as they minister to his own pleasure. “If by nature one man should love another as man, there is no reason why every man should not equally every man.” This idea of human nature Hobbes corroborates by various facts drawn from a cynical Transition to Modern Philosophy 225 observation of men’s foibles. In a company, for example, is not each one anxious to tell his own story, and impatient of hstening to others ; and when one leaves, are not the rest always ready to talk over his faults? None of the reputable qualities and virtues are in truth disinterested ; only in appearance do they have in view a good that is located outside the agent. Thus pity, or grief for the calamity of others, arises from the imagination that the hke calamity may befall ourselves. Laughter is a ‘‘sudden glory” caused either by some sudden act of our own that pleases us, or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another by comparison whereof we suddenly applaud ourselves. The value or worth of a man is his “price,” or what would be given by another for the use of his power; honor and dishonor are the manifestations of this value, or the “opinion of power,” whether just or unjust makes no difference. The “social” character of man in which philosophers had professed to find the origin of society has no existence ; we seek society not for its own sake, but that we may receive some honor or profit by it. There is no disinterested satisfaction in social inter- course; “all the pleasure and jollity of mind consists in this, even to get some with whom comparing, it may find somewhat wherein to triumph and vaunt itself.” ^ This view of human nature Hobbes attempts to put on a scientific basis. The basis is physiological, and goes back to primitive move- ments of appetite or desire, and aversion. Objects of desire and aversion we are said to love or hate — desire and love being one and the same thing save that by desire we always signify the absence of the object, and by love most commonly its presence. Similarly such objects constitute what men call “good” and “evil.” The feeling or appearance of appetite is pleasure, of aversion pain ; or when they arise from a mental expectation of future consequences, they are known as joy and grief. Out of the simple passions all the other and more complex emotions are derivable. Thus appetite with an opinion of attaining is called hope ; aversion with an opinion of hurt from the object, fear; aversion with hope of avoiding that hurt by resistance, courage ; sudden courage, anger ; * De Give, I. 2. si- 226 A Studenfs History of Philosophy ^rief for the discovery of some defect of ability, shame ; and the like. ' Now in a state of nature, where selfish characteristics rule un- restrained, the result must be a condition of continual warfare in which each man’s hand is raised against his neighbor. All men will have an appetite for the same things, and each man’s selfishness will lead him consequently to encroach upon his fellows whenever he has the opportunity. Under such conditions there is no satisfac- tion possible in life, no place for industry, navigation, commodious building, knowledge of nature, arts, letters, society ; what is worst of all, there is continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Does any one doubt that this is what human nature, unrestrained, would lead to ? ‘‘Let him therefore consider with himself,” says Hobbes, “when taking a journey, he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied ; when going to sleep he locks his doors ; when even in his house he locks his chests ; and this when he knows there be laws and public officers armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him.” ^ It is the intolerableness of this state of things which gives rise to society and government. Society does not call into play any new or non-egoistic impulses ; all social life springs either from poverty or vainglory, and it exists for glory or for gain. But it is found that selfishness can be gratified better by peace than by war. “The passions that inclme men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement.” ^ An enlightened self-interest will lead a man to see that it is vastly preferable for him to give up the abstract right to everything which he is strong enough to wrest from other men and keep, and to refrain from aggression upon their liberty, provided he is certain of securing a like immunity for himself. But this last is only possible on two conditions : First, all men alike must enter into the agreement to respect one another’s rights ; and, second, the carrying out of the compact must be guaranteed by the creation of a single power ^ Leviathan, Ch. 13. 3 Transition to Modern Philosophy 227 sufficiently strong to enforce its demands upon individuals, since the only way to keep men to their contracts is by physical com- pulsion. “Covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at air’ ; ^ witness the acts of nations, and the almost entire lack of good faith and honor in their dealings with one another, since here there is no such authority to compel them to live up to their promises. For the sake then of peace and protection, men will be willing to hand over their individual rights and powers to one man or assem- bly of men — to submit their wills to a single will which they thus endow once for all with the supreme authority necessary to maintain order; and when such an agreement comes about, society and government succeed to the original state of anarchy. Men uni- versally will find this to their advantage, for there is no one enough superior to his fellows to be secure against aggression. “For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.” An even greater equality exists in natural gifts of the mind; “for there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of a thing than that every man is contented with his own share.” It follows as one consequence from this theory that “right” and “morality” are a creation of the state; they relate to man only in society, and not in his original solitude. By natural endowment man has nothing but instincts of self-seeking and self-preservation, and there is no limit to these except the power of gratifying them. Obligation, duty, right and wrong, have as yet no meaning. Duty only arises when there steps in an outside power to impose laws ; and this power is the state. Right and wrong are thus identical with the commands and prohibitions of the state. “The desires and other passions of men are in themselves no sin ; no more are the actions that proceed from those passions till they know a law that forbids them, which, till laws be made, they cannot know ; nor can any law be made till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it.” ^ A man can therefore have no individual morality that ^lUd.y Ch. 17. Ch. 12. 228 A Studenfs History of Philosophy conflicts with these commands of his rulers ; in making a claim to this he would be breaking the contract which gives rise to morality, and so be putting himself outside the pale of society in which alone the words have meaning. So religion too must be a state affair ; as the commonwealth is one person, it should exhibit to God but one worship. Hobbes takes for granted, as a corollary of his views of human nature, that each man will if left to himself attempt to force his own opinions on other men ; and so a central authority is necessary, here as else- where, to keep men within bounds. Rights of conscience and of private judgment are on such a view irrelevant ; religion is some- thing not to be believed on reason, but accepted under orders. “For it is with the mysteries of our religion as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole have the virtue to cure, but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect’’; we must trust in him that speaketh though the mind be incapable of any notion at all from the words spoken. And who now is it that shall judge whether a revelation be from God? Evidently, unless we go back to private judgment again, not individuals, nor any arbitrary collection of individuals in a church, but only the com- monwealth as a whole. Outward conformity to the worship of the ^established Church, and a profession of belief, is therefore a neces- sity of civil order. This is Hobbes’ answer to the religious fanati- cism in which the political troubles of his day had their more ammediate source. Meanwhile, he is free to grant, it is only “con- formity” with which the state is much concerned. It does not, because it cannot, constrain the minds of its citizens ; in your own heart you may believe what you please if only you keep it to your- self. If this is thought disingenuous, Hobbes bids you remember that, in your profession of belief under compulsion, the king is really acting, not you, and so you are not responsible for the con- tradiction. The practical issue of all this is that the will of the state — that is, of the king, or the authorities who represent the established gov- ernment — is supreme, unlimited and inalienable, and that diso- bedience or rebellion is in every case imjustified. Nothing can Transition to Modern Philosophy »29 release the subject from the duty of obedience. The contract is not between people and ruler, but is a covenant of the people with one another, to which the ruler is not a party; and accordingly no possible act of his can be a breach of contract and furnish an excuse for rebellion. Rebellion cannot be justified legally, because the sovereign is himself the source of law. It cannot be justified by natural rights which the subject possesses — to life, liberty, property — because the very possibility of the existence of govern- ment implies that the subject has freely signed these natural rights away. Nothing the sovereign can do to a subject can properly be called injustice. The king is acting by the authority given him by the people, and to complain of his act is to complain of oneself ; if the subject dissents, he has already voluntarily made his dissent a crime. Does the king seize a man’s property ? He has property rights only with reference to others, not to the sovereign. The king is the recipient of power freely handed over to him, and once given this cannot be recalled. For what would such a recall mean? It would mean that society no longer exists, that no one remains to judge disputes, and that the original anarchy has returned ; and any conceivable act of despotism on the part of the ruler is prefer- able to this. 3. The philosophy of Hobbes had shown a clear understanding of certain aspects of the scientific problem, but it was not altogether fitted to give the new impetus for which philosophy was waiting. In the first place its theory of knowledge was not wholly satisfactory. Hobbes had accepted Nominalism and denied the reality of uni- versal ; concepts are mere counters which the mind uses to reckon with, and represent no objective realities. So long as we keep to the empirical side of science, as Bacon did, there is not so obvious a difficulty in attributing reality simply to individual things. But trouble starts when, with Hobbes, we lay emphasis on deduction and mathematical law. For these laws themselves are concepts, or universals, and so instead of having the highest reality for science they would seem to have no reality at all. In the second place Hobbes’ materialism fails to give a very satisfactory account, in terms of his ultimate presuppositions, of 230 A students History of Philosophy the nature of those human facts of conscious experience which make up one of the great divisions into which phenomena fall. It is true that physical laws can be appealed to more or less successfully to account for the appearance and connection of mental phenomena ; here Hobbes’ position is an anticipation of modern physiological psychology. But as metaphysics it is crude. Matter and mind cannot be identified outright, and a sensation made literally the same thing as a motion of brain particles, except by a confusion of thought. It needed a clearer recognition of the distinctive char- acter of consciousness, and an appreciation of the problems which its relationship to the material world involves, to bring about the rise of modern philosophy in its fullest sense. LITERATURE Hobbes, On Human Nature; De Give; Leviathan; De Cor pore; Oj Liberty and Necessity; De Ilomine. Sneath, The Ethics of Hobbes. Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy. Robertson, Hobbes. Patten, Development of English Thought. Watson, Hedonistic Theories. Stephen, Hobbes. Woodbridge, The Philosophy of Hobbes in Extracts and Notes collected from His Writings. Taylor, Hobbes. Graham, English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine. III. MODERN PHILOSOPHY § 26 . Introduction I. Before proceeding to consider the more important modern philosophers it may be well to sum up briefly. It has been said that the task of the Middle Ages was primarily a task of training. Confronting the chaos brought about through the breakdown of ancient civilization, by centuries of authority, and in ways that were often harsh, crude and arbitrary, the Church had succeeded in instilling so thoroughly settled habits of thought and action that these remain a part of our inheritance to the present day. Such an attitude of unreasoning acceptance does not give play to man’s highest powers. In the stress of conditions in the medieval period the specific contribution of Christianity — the bringing back of conduct to the inner personality, and the founding of all the outer life on the individual will and conscience — had a tendency to be obscured ; and it has been the work of modern times to bring this once more to the front. But for whatever measure of success it has had in this undertaking the preceding centuries of authority should receive some credit. It was inevitable that before a new spirit of freedom and individuality should get a solid foothold there would first have to be a negative movement of revolt to clear the ground. Much the same situation had arisen before in what has been called the Greek Enlightenment; and there scepticism and the criticism of authority had helped bring about social disintegra- tion also. That the same result did not follow now was due in part to the thoroughness with which the medieval period had done its work. Save in exceptional instances, the spirit of change was regulated and restrained in a way to prevent any violent catastro- phes, and to substitute for revolution a process of gradual modifi- cation. 231 232 A Students History of Philosophy The history of modern thought is, in brief, the history of the way in which a life according to authority passes, through an inter- mediate period of protest and criticism, to an attempt at recon- struction along lines that should meet more successfully man’s reasonable needs. Philosophy proper has its setting in this more fundamental change. It is only as man understands himself and the world in which he lives that he can move effectively for practical freedom ; intellectual enfranchisement is a part of social progress. So we find modern thought taking two directions, according as it concerns itself primarily with the external world, or with the facts of human nature and the human mind. It is the attempted com- bination and reconciliation of these two motives, and the relating of them both to the life of man as a social being, which furnishes the main problems with which modern philosophy is engaged and the most general clue to its understanding. 2. It already has been said that one distinctive characteristic of modern thought is the way in which it bases itself upon the individual man. Its watchword is progress, and it is only through individual initiative that conscious progress can take place ; so long as men receive their principles from external authority, these stand over against them as an unchangeable ideal to which they may not set themselves in opposition. In science, this individualism takes the form of free investigation and experiment, of a direct interroga- tion of nature uninfluenced by traditional opinions. In the world of human life it means the assertion of the right of private judgment, the privilege of criticising all the dogmas of religion and political authority, the setting up of the individual reason as the final court of appeal. Accordingly the first phase of modern thought takes the form of a scientific Rationalism — an appeal to reason that derives its method and criterion from the new scientific inquiry. From Descartes to Leibniz there is a period of ambitious meta^ physical systems all having a close connection with physics and mathematics, and showing a firm confidence in the power of reason to discover the ultimate secrets of the universe. 3. But Rationalism had its dangers. In the reaction against authority and the oast, reason came to mean man’s private reason Modern Philosophy 233 in a rather too exclusive sense. It was reason in the form of certain principles, necessarily abstract, that were supposed to reveal their truth directly to the individual in his isolation from the life, experience and institutions of the race ; the historical sense, the sense of perspective needed to correct the self-assurance of the critical intellect, was conspicuously lacking. With no regard for how beliefs and institutions had come into being, or what in their historical environment was the value which they possessed, men were accustomed to judge and to condemn, often in a supercilious and shallow fashion, everything that did not approve itself clearly to these narrow and abstract principles which they had set up as the ultimate criterion. Reason in this meaning tended inevitably to separate itself from other aspects of the human spirit, and became actively opposed to all feelings, aspirations and enthusiasms which could not meet its tests. Hence the emotionally cold and un- imaginative type which presents itself in the so-called Enlighten- ment of the eighteenth century. 4. Nor did the process stop with this. After being used as an instrument for getting rid of other beliefs, reason began to call itself in question. Ancient scepticism had already thrown doubt upon the powers of the human mind, and this scepticism had been revived by men like Montaigne and Pascal. One great fact how- ever tended to prevent such an attitude from having much weight — the evident and marvellous success of science. So long as men were actually showing by the use of reason what undeniable results could be obtained, it needed more than a revival of ancient doubts to shake the hold of Rationalism. But a more profound and thorough- going criticism had been gaining headway. As the question was forced upon philosophy : What is the origin and sanction of these metaphysical principles that have been used so freely? the current of thought for the time being changes its direction, and becomes primarily a theory of knowledge. The result is that Rationalism was gradually undermined. Locke, the Englishman, institutes an inquiry into the origin of knowledge, and, true to the English traditions represented in Bacon, he finds this to be wholly empirical. Experience is the source of all we know ; the innate and universal 234 A Students History of Philosophy ideas of reason on which the Rationalists had relied have no exist- ence. But if this is true not only philosophy but science is affected in so far as science pretends to anything like certainty. The result is Scepticism, which reached its culminating point in David Hume. 5. Along this line it was impossible to go farther. Meanwhile however another movement was preparing destined to give a new turn to the thought of the age. In a measure Rousseau may be taken as the precursor of this movement. Showing in himself many of the distinctive faults of the preceding period, he yet set himself in conscious opposition to it by an emphasis, one-sided indeed, but perhaps unavoidably so, on some of the facts of human life which Rationalism had neglected, more particularly the fact of feeling. In France the negative side of his influence predom- inated, and had its issue in the Revolution. But in Germany there appeared men of genius who were prepared to receive from him a more positive inspiration. The brilliant period of German liter^ ature that begins with Lessing and Herder, seizing on the vital part of Rousseau, supplemented it in a way to create a new human stand- point. The thought of man as an integral part of the life of the world instead of as just a separate individual ; of God as an imma- nent spirit rather than a far-off abstraction ; of beliefs and institu- tions as having their roots in history, and needing in consequence to be judged in terms of their concrete setting ; of the value of art and religion, and the emotional side of life in general, as opposed to iht deification of the abstract reason — all these things were brought in to renew and vitalize philosophy. They constitute the main significance of that series of philosophical systems, from Kant to Hegel, which makes this one of the outstanding periods in the history of human speculation. 6. But German Idealism in its turn failed to fulfil the prophecies of its more enthusiastic followers ; the faith that in Hegel’s books the intelligible universe had come to final flower did not stand the test of time. For one thing. Idealism through its primary concern with the spiritual experience had run the risk of neglecting the equally insistent facts of the physical world of science. Science meanwhil^ was not standing still ; another great scientific epoch, centering Modern Philosophy 235 about the notion of Evolution in particular, was transforming all along the line traditional ways of interpreting physical and human facts alike. With the notion of an absolute and timeless universe the principle of evolution clearly was out of step ; and there were other reasons too for a reaction. The Idealist’s sympathy had been with finality rather than with experiment and progress ; he pre- ferred to point out the reason implicit in things as they now exist instead of asking how they might be changed for the better. To this the reforming spirit of the new age could not but object. In consequence we find a variety of tendencies emerging which, while they lend themselves to no single picture, agree for the most part in repudiating the traditional Idealism ; change takes the place of permanence, pluralism of a single ideal unity, individualism of social conservatism, experimentalism of metaphysics. And this conflict continues to the present day. SYSTEMS OF RATIONALISM § 27 . Descartes. The Cartesian School I. The Method of Philosophy. — It is with Rene Descartes (1596- 1650) that modern philosophy