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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a ■^••^opy order ?f *n its judgement, fulfillment o- '.^e order would involve violation of the copyriaHt i?^w A UTHOR : TCHELL ELLEN TITLE: STUDY OF G PHILOSOPHY PLACE: CHICAGO DA TE : 1891 EEK COLUMBIA UNIVEI^ITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # Restrictions on Use: DI13LIOGRAPHIC MICROrORM TARHFT Original Material as I^ihned - Existing Bibliographic Record 182 H692 %. ■ ■■ »i < II p i WW MitcheU, EUen M. A study of Greek philosophy, by EUen M. MitcheU. W ith an introduction by William RounseviUe Alger. Chi- cago, b. C. Gnggs and company, 1891. xxviii, 282 p. 19^*". "A list of reference books": p. cviii-viii. j- Philosophy, Ancient. Library of Congress (30dl, B171.M7 10-2148^ jy TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: J/jC FILM SIZE: 2l^My:^ IMAX?E PLACEMENT: lA (tl/r?lB IID DATE FILMED: ^UU^ INITIALS__rV}:P HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODn RinnP PT 1 J- Association for information and Image {Management 1100 Wayne Avenue Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 IlL I I mmmhmlm^^ 5 6 iliiiiliiiilii m 9 10 11 12 MMmjmmmijmiMmjjm^ 8 T 11 Inches 1.0 I.I 1.25 TIT 4 Li ■ 50 |56 Lil ltd 2.8 2.5 ■ a2 2.2 |3j6 |40 2.0 1.8 1.4 1.6 TIT 13 14 15 mm MRNUFfiCTURED TO fillM STRNDRRDS BY RPPLIED IMPGE. INC. ■ ^ — ' i jij ^- a> ' v JJ ^-j U. I 1-1 CHARLES KNAPP LIBRARY 1937 "^ '^ — ^^ '^ ' c / Columbia e!ni\jcrsittp mttifiCitpiifilciuPark LIBRARY n i- fimMiMiilisiit^^^^SmSMXiS^siMMMi GRIGGS'S GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS AND STUDENTS. Under the Editorial Supervision op Professor G. S. Morris, Ph.D. DEVOTED TO A ^«I™AL^EXP0SIT10^^^ MASTER-PIECES ^' ^Hn^ ^RvS^'^^^^'^c ^ P^^^^^ REASON. A critical Exposi- tion. By George S. Morris, Pli.D. n 05 II. SCIIELLING'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. A Critiral SSpn'iT,;,- By John Watson, LL.D.. Prof essor of Philosophy Queen s L niversity, Kingston, Canada. . . 1 25 ™- ^K?;?E;,S SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. A Critical Exposition: ^LS;J^- ^^E««=TT, D.D., Professor of Theology, Harvard Uni- veiMij J 2g IV. "EGELS ESTHETICS.. A Critical Exposition. Bv J. S. kEi^ bault Minn ^^^^^^^^^ ^° ^^^ Seaburj' Divinity School, Fari- ^" ^PoS, dT,S?L d"^ ^"'''^'^ ^''^'^'^"^^^^ By President Noah VI. HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE AND OF IUSTOKy" A Critical Exposition. By Geok(;e S. Morris, Ph I) " 1 25 LNDERSTANpiNG. A Critical Exposition. By John Dewey, Ph.D., of the I niversity of Michigan. . . . . . ] 1.25 ^"' ^FiH^i-^,}'^^}^. A I^?«k on the Genesis of the Categories of {r^n^'r'^a n ^''^■'''^^ Exposition. By William T. IIarris L.L.L»., L. b. ComnnssioiitT ot Education 150 THE WORLD ENERGY AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. By Wil- LiAM M. Bryant, author of "Philosophy of Art," etc. l:»nio, cloth. 81 50 ^^ ompnnri"^n^-^?"T>K^^''.^^">^»^^^ ntimate Social and Scientific Outcome of Original Christianity in its Conflict wi»h Surviving An- cient Heathenism. By Philip C.Friese. 12mo. cloth 100 ^^P^f "r7"^V'"T ^^'? THINKERS. Introductorv Studies. Criti- MoRR^rSo;*?loth"^ Philosophical. By Professor Georoe S. ^^ nn'rlMl^ flUl^^^ ^V""^.^ ?^ the leading features and development of our great schools of philoi^ophy r-£dinburgh Scofsrtian DEMOSTHENES. A Study of Political Elonnence in (;rooce. With ^xtractsfrom his Orations and a Critical Discussion of the "Trial on the Crown/' From the French of Professor L. Bukd.f, of the L niversity of France. Octavo, cloth, gilt top ' 2 50 orator/'-L%yX'r ''"^''' "^'' ^"^'" ^' '''' ^'^"' ^'^"^^ A MANUAL OF ('LASSICAL LITERATURE. Comprising Bi<.grai.hi- wYth m,fs?riful^v 'i''%^^'^" Principal Greek an?l Honian Author , ^f thl li^^'^^'^'^f Extracts from Their Works. Also a Brief Survey of the Rise and Progress of the Various forms of Literature with So 3i«''°' ""^ ^^^ ^""^' Authors. By Charles Morris i?mo I/6U pages. •••....... 1 fSO S. (). GRIGGS AND CO., Publishebs! A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 3Y ELLEN M. MITCHELL. WITH AN INTRODUCTION By WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 1891. * • < « • • t ' « • » • « • c % • » * « « • * • ♦ • -•• • , • < < * • t » • * > • < • • r . • • • » « • f • • t • » c* I TO Copyright, 1891, By S. C. GRIGGS & COMPANY THE KANT CLUB OF DENVER THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. PRESS OP KNIGHT, LEONARD A CO., CHICAGO. PREFACE. IT may be interesting to my readers to know some- thing of the genesis of this book. Twelve years ago, in St. Louis, a little band of women used to as- semble every week to study and discuss the problems of philosophy. I led the circle as teacher and learner. Beginning with the study of Greek thought, and apply- ing myself diligently to the works of its great masters, and the commentaries to be found in English, German and French, I sought continually to make clear to others what became clear to mvself. At the end of two years, the circle in St. Louis was exchanged for one in Denver, but with unabated interest and enthu- siasm on my own part and that of my co-workers. At their request, the verbal exposition became a written one, and finally developed into its present form. Whatever merit it possesses is due in part to those who have helped me towards the light by their eager questions, tlieir hesitation at the obscure, their quick appreciation of spiritual truth hidden beneath abstruse phraseology, their loving fellowship and sympathy. Above all other teachers I am indebted to Dr. Wil- liam T. Harris. From him I first learned to seek phi- losophy in the history of philosophy, and to find it every- where as the spiritual interpretation of the universe. I have also received help and stimulus from the exposi- m 1 vi PREFACE. . tions and lectures of Prof. F. Louis Soldan, of St. Louis; Prof. D. J. Snider, of Chicago; Prof. Thomas Davidson, of New York; from the Concord School of Philosophy, and the Kant Club, of Denver. I have consulted all the accessible authorities, but have relied chiefly on the histories of Greek philosophy byZeller and Hegel. The quotations are from the ori- ginal German, except where I have availed myself of those of Dr. Harris, in his translation of Hegel's chap- ters on Plato and Aristotle, published in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. The greater part of Zeller's work is to be found in an English translation, but not that of Hegel, with the above exception. In order not to encumber my pages with notes and quotation marks, I here acknowledge my general indebt- edness to Zeller and Hegel, and append a list of the most important worl^ that I have read and studied in the prosecution of my task. Ellen M. Mitchell. Syracuse, N. Y., August, 1891. f 1: A LIST OF REFERENCE BOOKS ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Die PniLosoPHiE der Griechen, eine Untersuchung uber Character, Gang und Hauitmomente ihrer Entwickelung. By Ed. Zeller. English translation of a part of this work by Sarah F. AUeyne, 0. J. lleiehel, Alfred Goodwin, and Evelyn Abbott. Vorlesunoen uber die Gesciiichte der Philosophie. By G. W. Hegel. English translation of the chapters on Plato and Aris- totle by Dr. William T. Harris, in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Geschichte der Philosophie im Umriss. By Albert Sehwegler. Two English translations, the first by J. H. Sterling, the second by J. H. Seelye. History of Philosophy. From Thales to the Present Time. By Friedrieh Ueberweg. English translation by Proi. George S. Morris. Geschichte der Philosophie. By J. E. Erdmann. English translation, edited by Prof. Williston S. Hough. Introduction a l'Histoire de la Philosophie. By Victor Cousin. English translation, by 0. W. Wight. Lectures on Greek Philosophy. By James Frederick Ferrier. Ancient and Modern Philosophy. By Frederick Denison Maurice. Christianity and Greek Philosophy. By B. F. Cocker, D. D. The Science of Thought. By Charles Carroll Everett. The Fragments of Parmenides. Translated by Thomas David- son, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. vU Vlll REFERENCE BOOKS ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Plato's Works, translated into German, with Introductions, by F. Schleierniacher. Plato's Dialogues. Translated into English, with Analyses, by Prof. B. Jowett. Aristotle. By Sir Alexander Grant. Aristotle's De Anima. English translation, with introduction and notes, by Edwin Wallace. Aristotle's Ethics. English translation, with notes and essays, by Sir Alexander Grant. Aristotle's Politics. English translation, with notes, by Prof. B. Jowett. Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle. By Edwin Wal- lace. I EssAi suR LA Metaphysic^ue d'Aristotle. By Felix Ravaisson. Prolegomena to Ethics. By Thomas Hill Green. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Edited by Dr. William T. Harris. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. THE CLAIM AND CHARM OF PHILOSOPHY AS A STUDY. By William Rounseville Alger. Page CHAPTER I. PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY. Philosophy a progressive process of knowledge comprehending the progressive process of culture; philosophy a history of philosophy; self-knowledge and knowledge of the world; philosophy the self-knowledge of the human race. CHAPTER II. CHARACTER OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Greek being the unity of the spiritual and the natural; the stage of Greek consciousness the stage of beauty; the classic style in philosophy; contrast between Greek and modern philosophy CHAPTER in. PRE-SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. The rise of philosophy in Greece; perception of nature its basis; the Ionian phi- losophers, the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, Heraclitus, the Atoraists, Anaxagoras CHAPTER IV. THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. Thales; his proposition that water is the originative principle of all things an at- i5 CONTENTS. CONTENTS. XI tempt to trace multiplicity back to unity; Anaximander; Anaximenes ; the philosophic significance of Ionic philos- ophy CHAPTER V. PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS. Pabu- lous stories of Pythagoras; the Pythagorean Order; Aris- totle's explanation of the Pythagorean principle; numl)er both form and substance, but the two not yet definitely separated; mathematics and music; metempsychosis; the Doric character of Pythagoreanism CHAPTER VI. THE ELKATICS. Thought freed wholly from the finite affirms its own infinity; Xenophanes declares that Gotl is pure spirit; the principle of Parmenides pure being; the contradiction between Being and Appearance; Zeno the inventor of dialectic; his arguments against the possibil- ity of motion; the importance of the Eleatic principle and its influence upon language CHAPTER VII. HERACLITUS. The principle of the Becoming; fire the symbol of the Becoming; the consciousness of truth a consciousness of the universal ; the principle of the Becom- ing antithetical to that of Being, but both alike valid. CHAPTER VIII. EMPEDOCLES. A mediator between God and men; doc- trine of the four elements; two moving forces, love and hate; belief in metempsychosis; value of his philosophy. CHAPTER IX. THE ATOMISTS. Leucippus and Democritus; the full and the void, or atoms and empty space; atoms an object of 10 14 19 27 31 thought, not of sensuous experience; the Atomistic philos- ophy a mediation between the principles of Heraclitus and of the Eleatics CHAPTER X. ANAXAGORAS. Athens and Sparta; the principle of Anax- agoras intelligence (vovf); its mechanical application; individualized atoms; Anaxagoras closes the old period and opens the new CHAPTER XI. THE SOPHISTS. Influence of democracy upon philosophy; the true meaning of culture ; theoretical and practical ego- ism; definition of the sophist; method of Greek education; rhetorical skill of the Sophists; their final criterion of judgment "particular subjectivity," the individual self; relativity of truth and goodness; the Sophists the Ency- clopaedists of Greece CHAPTER XII. INDIVIDUAL SOPHISTS. Protagoras; his fundamental proposition, "Man is the measure of all things;" its one- sided interpretation, truth is relative, not absolute; the three propositions of Gorgias; based on the contradictory nature of sensuous phenomena they are unanswerable from that point of view CHAPTER XIII. SOCRATES. The teaching of Socrates the positive comple- ment of the Sophistic philosophy; one principle repre- sented at different stages of growth by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; the philosophy of Socrates closely connect- ed with his life; his mode of instruction; his character a model of virtue; his friendship for young men; Xanthippe; his inner absorption; different interpretations of his "d»- 86 40 45 55 xii CONTENTS. mon," or "genius;" the characteristics of Greek and modern consciousness united in Socrates. CHAPTER XIV. THE FATE OF SOCRATES. His trial; his fate the trag- gedy of Athens and Greece ; his last hours; Socrates and Aristophanes; the teachings of Socrates misunderstood; Socrates the precursor and founder of our moral view of the world; the truth of Subjectivity not the exclusive feeling of self, but the universal idea of self. CHAPTER XV. THE SOURCES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. The union of the ethical and the scientific, morality and knowledge ; an absolute moral authority at the basis of self -consciousness ; true knowledge derived from correct concepts; the Socratic method; the Socratic irony; the Socratic Eros; the So cratic process of induction and definition ; the relation between the universal concepts of Socrates and the Ideas of Plato CHAPTER XVI. THE SOCRATIC ETHICS. Virtue true knowledge ; self- knowledge morally essential; the attainment of moral independence; the concept of the Good and its abstract character; the office of friendship ; the state, the family, and the individual; an ideal view of nature ; the Socratic trinity, knowledge, virtue, happiness CHAPTER XVII. THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. Varied character of the impression produced by Socrates; Euclid and the Megarian School; Antisthenes and the Cynics; Aristippus and the Cyrenaics; the only complete Socratist Plato 61 70 78 85 93 CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTER XVIII. PLATO'S LIFE AND WRITINGS. Early influences; acquaintance with Socrates; travels; the Academy; per- sonal character; quotation from Goethe; arrangement of his dialogues io2 CHAPTER XIX. CHARACTER OF PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. Socratic basis of Plato's philosophy; idealism the deepest principle of all sjieculation ; form of Plato's exposition; employ- ment of myths; knowledge the activity of the soul itself in the sphere of Ideas; virtue based upon knowledge; ex- altation of Love ; Dialectic ; Idea of the Good ; allegory of the cave ; meaning of cdiication ; philosophy the royal science ; quotation from Emerson 109 CHAPTER XX. THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. Dialectic the science of true Being, the inquiry into Ideas; Ideas the eternal prototypes of Being; the laws of thought objective as well as sub- jective; opinion the middle ground between ignorance and knowledge ; knowledge as opposed to perception considered in the TheiPtetus; the ideas of movement and rest, of Being and non-Being, investigated in the Sophist; Being defined in the Parmenides as a unity which includes multiplicity; the distinction between the absolute and the relative in the Philebus; dialectic inseparably united with moral culture; the Divine reason identified with God. . . 119 CHAPTER XXI. THE PLATONIC PHYSICS. Views of nature in the Tim- aeus; creation of the world; the world-soul; Hegel's in- terpretation of Plato's thought; matter; the human soul; the doctrine of reminiscence; immortality; retribution after death; ethics the central point of Platonic philoso- phy 137 / XIV . CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXII. THE PLATONIC ETHICS. The good the endeavor of the soul to become like God ; philosophy a means of purifica- tion ; virtue the internal harmony and health of the soul ; virtue its own reward, vice its own punishment; justice the fundamental principle of Plato's ethics; his ideal Re- public; his communistic views; violation of subjective freedom; Science of the Beautiful; the basis of Plato's philosophy the substantial Idea ; the older Academy. 147 CHAPTER XXIII. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ARISTOTLE. Early influ- ences; relation to Plato; tutor of Alexander the Great; school in Athens; technical and popular lectures; style of exposition; stupendous achievements in science and phi- losophy; strange fate of his manuscripts; Aristotle's writings the basis of Scholasticism ; their influence upon modern thinkers 1^ CHAPTER XXIV. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY. Philosophy the knowledge of final causes; Aristotle not an empiricist, but unites scientific observation with dialectic ; his style severely logical ; the Platonic idea the Aristotelian form toward which the sensuous strives with inner necessity; Aristotle's philoso- phy original and independent, though resting on a So- cratic-Platonic basis 170 CHAPTER XXV. ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC. The formal activity of the pure understanding described by Aristotle for all time ; the categories; the nature of the concept; the judgment and the syllogism; the theory of scientific demonstration; a necessary limit to mediatory knowing; the '* prior in nature " and the " prior for us; " proofs of probability ; the CONTENTS. laws of the understanding formal laws, to attain specula- tive truth its logic must become the logic of Reason. CHAPTER XXVI. ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. First Philosophy, or Wis- dom ; Being-in-itself the common basis of categories and pro[)ositions ; earlier theories examined and criticized by Aristotle; agreement and disagreement with Plato; the Idea with both related to an objective reality, but Plato emphasizes its transcendence, Aristotle its immanence ; the relation of form to matter; the becoming, or the nature of change; the substrate of change matter; matter pure potentiality ; motion the energy of matter ; motion presupposes a moving cause itself unmoved, Absolute Spirit; the universe a continuous system of ascending progression ; Absolute Good the final end of everything ; the Divine activity the activity of pure thought ; God not mere abstract Being, but living, eternal Energy. CHAPTER XXYII. ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. Nature as a whole a gradual overcoming of matter through form; motion, space, time; life the jwwor of self-motion; the soul, entelechy, the unity which embraces life, sense-perception, and thought ; the vegetative, the sensitive, and the cognitive soul ; dun- amis &nd energeia; free-will; the active and the passive reason CHAPTER XXVIII. ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. Happiness the chief good for man; its highest realization participation in the blessed life of God; the moral significance of dunamis and energeia; natural tendencies the basis of morality, but morality their transformation through rational insight and will ; the law of moderation ; moral and intellectual virtue; the relation of happiness to self -consciousness ; the distinction between XV 176 182 197 XVI CONTENTS. happiness and pleasure; the highest virtue an excellence of the intellect ; friendship 210 CHAPTER XXIX. ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY OF ART, ETC. Politics the presupposition and completion of ethics; the relation of the family; prejudice against trade and traffic; opposition to Plato's communism; Aristotle's ideal state; his views on education; wise men rather than wise laws; the ultimate identification of politics with ethics; Art closely connected with spiritual development; purification (katharsis) ; the Peripatetic School 217 CHAPTER XXX. TRANSITION TO THE POST-ARISTOTELIAN PHILOS- OPHY. The affirmation of self-thinking Reason the cul- mination of Greek philosophy; thought the unity of the subjective and objective with Aristotle; later schools neg- lect the objective and emphasize the subjective ; abstract universality of thought in Stoicism; abstract individuality of feeling in Epicureanism; the negation of this one- sidedness in Scepticism; the final attempt to solve the dualism between subjective and objective in Neo-Plato- nism. 225 CHAPTER XXXI. STOICISM. Life and character of Zeno; aim of Stoic phil- osophy the exercise of virtue; virtue depends upon knowledge; Stoic view of nature dynamic; Destiny and Providence; the human will identified with universal law- through self-conscious obedience; pleasure, not the aim, but a result of moral activity, different from virtue in essence and kind; duty for its own sake a categorical im- perative; the ideal wise man; self-culture and the social well-being of the community; a universal human brother- hood. 229 CONTENTS. XVll CHAPTER XXXII. EPICUREANISM. Personal influence of Epicurus; the aim of philosophy to promote happiness; theoretical interests subordinated to practical ; the test of truth sensuous per- ception; Epicurus the inventor of empirical physics and empirical psychology; the supreme good not to suffer; virtue never an end in itself, but a means to pleasure; the highest form of social life friendship; one and the same principle viewed from opposite sides in Stoicism and Epicureanism 245 CHAPTER XXXIII. SCEPTICISM. Philosophy contains in itself the negative of Scepticism as its own dialectic ; the New Academy ; the contrast between thought and being; Pyrrho of Elis; the ten tropes; the consciousness of the negative and the defi- nition of its forms of the highest importance in philosophy. 254 CHAPTER XXXIV. ECLECTICISM. Character of Eclecticism ; Cicero the repre- sentative lioman Eclectic; the softened Stoicism of Sen- eca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius ; Plutarch's aim in philosophy to create moral character; the union of Hellenic philosophy and Hebraic theology in Philo. 261 CHAPTER XXXV. NEO-PLATONISM. The aim of Neo-Platonism ; Platonism posits the One only as the primitive source of all being; the One produces nous, pure reason; pure reason pro- duces the world-soul ; the human soul once a part of the world-soul; its descent into the sensuous from which it must be freed to regain its original purity; the perfect life the life of thought; the highest knowledge the self-intu- ition of reason ; mystical union with God the final aim of philosophy; the doctrines of Platonism popularized by XVlll CONTENTS. Porphyry ; the speculative basis of religion sought by Jamblichus; Proclus the representative of Scholasticism in Greek philosophy ; the creation of the finite and its re- turn to the Infinite conceived as a spiral descent and ascent; the ways to God three, love, truth, faith; the altar of the Absolute One a luminous centre in whose flame all is consumed and united ; Neo-Platonism a high idealism 265 CHAPTER XXXVI. THE CLOSE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. The great work achieved by human reason in Greek philosophy ; the propaedeutic office it fulfilled for Christianity; its affirma- tion of the existence of God and of the soul : its identifica- tion of faith and knowledge, God's revelation to man and man's discovery of God 279 INTRODUCTION. THE CLAIM AND CHARM OF PHILOSOPHY %AS A STUDY. THE REASON that so many persons study the less important and less attractive branches of knowl- edge, while so few turn their attention to its supreme department, is that a multitude perceive the value and the interest of the inferior parts where one appre- ciates the claim and charm of the all-commanding whole. In the special domains of study the materials lie open to the senses and the understanding, in tangible form, to be experimentally dealt with, and to be mastered by efforts easily made, little by little. But in that universal field of principles, laws and processes, which philosophy covers, the appeal is made to the reflective faculties and speculative insight ; and these, with the vast majority of persons, are not keenly alive but undeveloped and disinclined to exer- tion. For every student of philosophy, without doubt, there are a hundred students of botany. Aside from utility, there is a strong attraction to the investiga- tion of the structure and life of plants and flowers ; for they comprise one of tlie chief domains of material beauty. But, both in dignity of range and intensity of interest, how incomparably superior is the study xlx XX A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. of metaphysics ; since this explores the very ground and nature and operation of beauty itself, not merely in its physical manifestations but also in its intel- lectual and moral forms, and in its constituent es- sence as the living revelation of the perfection of God! So there ^re a thousand avid devourers of poetry and romantic literature where there is one earnest reader of philosophical dissertations and treatises. This is because the pictures and narration of the former delight the craving sensuous powers of the mind, and exact no costly effort; while the profound discrimi- nation and sustained stretch of the latter overtask the attention and interest of all except serious and robust spirits. And yet what an immense advantage the ripe philosopher has over the mere poet or roman- ticist, in the solid service and joy yielded by the exercise of their respective gifts and discipline ! For while poetry pleases, with the rich loveliness and freedom of its productions, philosophy, not content with an empty enjoyment of them, lays bare the innermost secrets of those productions, and of their origin, by expounding the fundamental nature and offices of the imagination and rhythm and metaphor, whereby their matter is given and their spells are woven. All other modes of inquisitive spiritual activ- ity are partial and preliminary ; philosophy alone final or complete. The etymological force of the word philosophy is the love of wisdom. Seizing this, we grasp a de- scriptive phrase, not a definition; we take possession INTRODUCTION. xxi of the practical substance but miss the dialectic es- sence. Nevertheless this fructiferous ethical aspect is almost as valuable as the constitutive procedure itself. For the keenest metaphysical analysis or synthesis is no more than a vacant gymnastic of abstractions, if it do not begin and end in the love of wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge enriching experience with blessed fruits. Wisdom is assimilative insight in fruition at its goal. And to the pursuit of this man has an integral vocation lodged in the generic core of his being. Luminous demo' ration of the accuracy of this statement is easy, and may be given in a single sentence. As the transcendent paragon of animals, the only one who caps the climax of animality with the sur- passing crown of rationality, nian fulfills his destiny by the progressive attainment of applied and enjoyed truth. And that is the real definition of wisdom. What is wisdom but truth happily realized in a liv- ing experience of its uses ? All knowledge that falls short of this is mere information in a storehouse. Wisdom is the term or end in which alone a rational nature reposes with satisfaction. Familiarity with it, according to a wonderful passage of Scripture, is friendship with that Divine Playfellow whose delight is in the children of men. Thus understood, is it not obvious that the study of philosophy presents both a claim and a charm of the supreme order? But let us leave the surface of description, and enter the depth of definition. What is philosophy? It is that form of thinking wherein all the parts imply XXll A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. one another, and every part implies the whole. It is that kind of knowledge which has its presuppositions in itself, and is, therefore, independent of all other knowledge, while all other knowledge is dependent on it. It is the self-seizure of the idea in reflective consciousness. It is the science of self-activity. It is the pure search after the First Principle, the finding of it, and the deduction thence of all else. It takes for its province those elements and methods which are common to all the special sciences, and groups them in a sovereign unification. Hence, with entire justice, it has generally been designated the science of sciences, queen of all the rest. The definition of philosophy given by the great mas- ters of thinking are all in substantial agreement under their verbal differences. For example, Ueberweg form- ulates it as the Science of Principles; Fichte, as the Science of Knowledge; Rosmini, as the Science of Ulti- mate Grounds. In response to every why asked by the 'human mind the philosopher undertakes to reach an answer so comprehensive and final that it cannot be transcended. The aim of philosophical study, then, is the conquest of truth in its universal essence, aspects, relations, source and end. And so it is the specialty of its royal prerogative to forerun, pervade and follow, all the other sciences which are sub- divided under its universality, and subordinated to its authority. Its cultivators study the nature and pro- vidence of God, in theology; the character and exper- ience of man, in psychology; the phenomena ard laws of the universe, in cosmology; and the varied treasures INTKODUCTION. xxni of the other special domains of knowledge, under their several rubrics. In all these departments the laws of consciousness, observation, cognition, discrimi- nation, classification, congruity, are the same; and they can be furnished -by philosophy alone. It is, then, plainly, unrivaled in its importance. Strenuous efforts have recently been made in several elaborate lectures to show that ethical science does not depend either on religion or philosophy, but is every way competent to itself. This is a shallow con- fusion of thought, and an unwarrantable use of lan- guage. The case may be conclusively stated in a nut- shell thus : Philosophy is the science of ultimate grounds. Morality is the science of right and wrong in human conduct. Every concept that enters into it, such as causation, duty, conscience, motive, sanction, vice, crime, penalty, derives its significance from cer- tain principles, theoretical and practical. If moral science furnishes these principles from its own resources, it is itself a philosophy. If it looks elsewhere for them, it presupposes a foundation deeper and broader than itself. By consequence, ethics necessarily rests on philosophy. There is another consideratioil which places the importance and the attractiveness of this study in a still more striking light. The highest intellectual power and dignity of which our nature is capable can be realized only through the cultivation of philosophy, which deals directly with the sublimest thoughts con- ceivable by any minds created or uncreated. Consider, for instance, the content of the idea of absolute per- XXIV A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTION. XXV fection indicated by the word God. Tlie meaning of this word, the greatest in human language, is a com- pletely self-determined Person, who is a free infinitude of love, wisdom, power, holiness and bliss, forever giv- ing himself to a boundless number of persons, whom he creates for the purpose of multiplying his perfec- fection by them! Such is the developed Christian idea of God. Pure act is a self-distinguishing unity, which has no potentialities. That is, all possible pre' suppositions are actualized in it. This is at once the realized experience of God and the offered destiny of man. Being is knovvableness; and man is a free power of determining it for himself. His determina- tions of pure being are ideas, which are universal and infinite in their nature. There is nothing real apart from thought ; for the thinking of God originates all that is. And thought can comprehend all else while nothing else can comprehend thought. Knowledge, without which ignorance could not be known, is par- ticipation of omniscience; as duration, without which time could not be known, is participation of eternity. And knowledge is possible only as the progressive actualization in us of a self-consciousness in itself com- plete, and in itself including the universe as its object. That is to say, all true knowledge in man is his par- ticipation of the creative thinking of God. Thus we become, as the New Testament says, '* partakers of the divine nature.^' What other dignity is worthy of com- parison with this? But clearly it cannot be bestowed by any degree of familiarity with the physical sciences, or with the political sciences, or with historic or liter- ary lore. It is to be achieved by the development of the spirit in the study of philosophy. It is astonishing how materialistic science is over- rated and ideal philosophy underrated at the pres- ent time. It is as if one should put a high value on a pebble because he can clutch it, and despise a star because he cannot. A popular declaimer, whose name rings through A erica, says, ''Darwin contented himself with giving to his fellowmen the greatest and the sublimest truths that man has spoken since lips uttered speech I" What are those truths ? That all through nature there is a struggle for existence, from the lowest vermin to the highest animals; and that in that struggle a law of natural selection causes the survival of those best ntted to their environment. Whatever value may be assigned to these formulas, surely they cannot, for purity, grandeur, beauty, inspiring power, stand in any com- parison with the cardinal doctrines of philosophy, such as the perfection of God, the infinity of intel- lect, the immortality of the soul, the absolute au- thority of right. The weightiest sentences Darwin ever wrote are utterly insignificant when set along side of any one of hundreds of sentences which may be quoted from the really sovereign thinkers repre- sented by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Leib- nitz, Kant, Hegel. 'No one able to appreciate them can pay even passing attention to such statements as the following, without seeing that the study of philosophy is the sublimest and worthiest of all studies. Infinite being XXVI A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. is the object of thought, and personal spirit is the thinking subject capable of distinguishing it into in- finite determinations. Being is one and personalities are innumerable : but the whole of the object is for every one of the subjects. Consciousness is a poten- tial infinite ; because it cannot be limited by any- thing of which it is unconscious. Therefore it is exclusively self -limited ; and self -limitation is the definition of the true infinite. Consciousness is a self -determinable mirror which becomes whatever it reflects. For certainly nothing can enter conscious- ness save as this from its own substance creates a representation of that which enters it. Here is mat- ter for one to muse over with worshiping wonder as long as he lives. Finally, in illustration of the claim and charm of philosophy as a study, we must say that it is not only the most comprehensive and exalted of all studies, but it is also the purest, the freest, the most beau- tiful and delightful. The subject is self-contained and the student is self-sufficing. Stimulants and aids may be attained abroad, from books and from teachers. But all the essential data are in the student himself. The learning faculties, being, nature, life, humanity, God, are all within his immediate reach, just as they were with Fichte or with Pythagoras. And great attain- ments were as easy for the ancient masters of insight as they are for the latest student, because all that they did for themselves he must now do for himself in his own psychical work-shop. If the deepest thoughts have been thought many times already it is INTRODUCTION. XX vn none the less necessary that each new comer think them again. He never can obtain them from another. And nothing can be imagined cleaner, lovelier, or more precious, than the task whose triumphant ac- complishment initiates the performer, even in this dim world, into that sacred hierarchy of intelligences who contemplate the divine archetypes. The differential and integral calculus is the science of continuous being and its determinations, in the mathematical or formal order. The dialectic is the science of contin- uous being and its determinations, in the moral or substantial order. Leibnitz began the unification of these two and Swedenborg wished to continue it. When some inspired genius, in the future, shall complete this unification of the mathematical and the metaphysical dialectic, and simplify it for popular communication, the epoch of illumination and re- demption for which travailing humanity waits so long will dawn. In the meantime what matchless privileges wait on the secluded employment of the philosopher ! That the study of metaphysics is repulsively dry, barren, knotty [and wearisome, is a vulgar prejudice of ig- norance and frivolity. Earnestness and patience will find it no more difficult than the other chief disci- plines of wisdom. It deals with the ideal realities of good, truth, right, use, beauty, immortality, in their origins and ultimates. And these are the substantial thoughts of God by whose means the thinking sub- ject, — under the lights of nature, reason, and divinity, XXVlll A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. —changes itself from natural shadow through rational reflection into divine substance. This is a province of culture preeminently suitable for women, it is so pure a domain of beauty. How charming is divine philosophy I Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose; But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns. The accomplished and amiable writer of the present work herein sets an excellent example which it is to be hoped a multitude of her sisters will be quick to follow. Nothing can become them better or profit them more. It is an employment without any compromises either of modesty, refinement or aspiration. No perishable tpols are needed. No filthy experiments with furnaces and retorts or earths and smuts and moulds and rots are called for. And however arduously the workers toil they make no noise and leave no chips or dust or slag. The material is spirit, the labor is silence, the course is intelligence and affection, the product is wisdom and character, the path of advance is infinity, the goal is God. And if that goal be a retreating one the pursuer carries at every step a substantial reflex of it in his own breast. William Rounseville Alger. A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER I. philosophy and history. rriO understand what is meant by philosophy we must -■^ understand what is meant by development, that it implies not only potentiality but reality. One may say that man is reasonable by nature, but in the child, reason is a possibility not yet realized. Education must develop and bring it to consciousness. Our potentialities as spiritual beings are infinite, but are transformed into realities only through an active cooperation which makes them objects of conscious endeavor and aspiration. As the seed under favorable conditions produces the plant, the blossom, the fruit, and returns again to seed, the spiritual germ in man expands, unfolds, and produces its fruit. But here the comparison ceases, for the spiritual fruit becomes matter for a higher form of growth, a higher grade of development. Each age inherits the culture and experience of preceding ages, and though a particular race or people may retrograde by reason of external conflicts or inner exhaustion, humanity as a whole steadily and consistently develops its latent possi- bilities. Progress is not in a straight line, but in a series of widening circles. *' Philosophy looks through 1 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. the totality of circles, comprehending in a progressive process of knowledge the progessive process of culture/' says Kuno Fischer. What else, then, is philosophy, except a history of philosophy? Are we to look for reason only in the products of nature, and not in those of spirit ? He who considers the diiferent systems of philosophy as mere acci- dents instead of a necessity, doubts the rule of reason. If the universe is divinely governed, each great system of thought must possess historic worth and "historic truth. For the object of knowledge in philosophy is the human spirit itself, and truth is a living process which develops and advances in the civilizing course of humanity. ^*But does not philosophy embrace in its problems something more than the human spirit?'' asks Kuno Fischer. We call it self-knowledge ; it calls itself knowledge of the world. Only a few times in the course of its history has the Delphic word, ''Know thyself,'' appeared at the head of philosophy, as the first of all problems. Whenever this has happened there has come a turning point in its history ; as with the Socratic epoch in ancient times, the Kantian in modern times. These epochs would not so clearly illu- minate the way on all sides if they did not bring to light the nature of the matter in its whole extent. Human self-knowledge is not only the deepest but the most comprehensive of all problems, including in itself, if carefully analyzed, knowledge of the world. Does this statement appear incredible ? Surelv it is not difficult to see that the world as an object of thought is only possible under the condition of a self-conscious PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY. being who makes it such an object, such a problem. Here we reach the great riddle of things. What is the world independent of our thought, our representation of it ? Is there any knowledge of it distinct from and independent of human self-knowledge? Is not philos- ophy the self-knowledge attained by the human race in its successive stages of development ? Does it not seek to comprehend the innermost motive of every form of culture, to make clear to the human spirit its own strivings ? What lies in the act of self-knowledge applied to our individual consciousness ? We draw back from the external world, make the life we have hitherto lived an object of reflection, regard it critically and perceive its defects. Can we return to the old condition ? No, we are freed from it in a measure, we are no longer what we were ; earnest self-knowledge is a renewal and transformation of our life. It is a crisis, a turn- ing-point in our spiritual career, preparing us for new interests and higher forms of culture than those we have outlived. We begin to philosophize so far as we are able, and our philosophy is a fruit of our culture, however ripe or unripe. This is the significance of self-knowledge in the experience and development of individual life. Similar crises occur in the collected life of humanity, and are expressed in the great systems of philosophy, which work as historic factors in the culture of successive ages, defining and influencing progress, identical on one side with the spirit of their time, but introducing, on the other, a new form of development. CHAPTER II. CHARACTER OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. /^NE people above all was philosophic in antiquity, ^-^^ the Greek. Their philosophy sprang from the basis of their national life, and can only be compre- bended by studying the peculiarities of Greek being. They received the beginnings of their religion and their culture from Asia and from Egypt, but so transformed and enriched the foreign material that all which we recognize and value in it is essentially Greek. They breathed into it the breath of spiritual life, the soul of freedom and beauty. They even forgot, ungratefully, the foreign sources of their culture, and looked upon It wholly as their own merit and achievement. Hegel calls the Greek spirit the plastic artist, forming the stone into a work of art. The stone does not remain stone in this formative process, but is transfigured by the idea shining through it; nevertheless, without the stone, the artist could not embody the idea. Herein lies the distinctive character of Greek being, that unbroken unity of the spiritual and the natural, which constitutes at once its glory and its limitation. Breaking through the Oriental dependence on the powers of nature, the Greek subordinates the sensuous to a tool and sign of the spiritual, and supplants his own natural condition by the higher one of a morally CHARACTER OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 5 free, beautiful human culture. The happiness he strives for he wishes to attain through the development of his bodily and spiritual powers, through vigorous par- ticipation in the thoughts and activities of his fellow- citizens. His morality rests upon the basis of natural disposition. From the old Greek point of view man is not required to renounce his physical desires and be changed in the depths of his being ; the natural inclina- tions as such are justified, virtue consists in the de- velopment of every faculty, and the highest moral law is to follow the course of nature freely and reasonably, observing the right measure and proportion. The cus- tom of his people is to the Greek the highest moral authority, life in and for the State the highest duty ; beyond these limits he scarcely recognizes moral obliga- tion. This very limitation, the narrowness of Greek relations and sympathies, was fitted to produce great individualities, classic characters. The stage of Greek consciousness is the stage of beauty. There is no contradiction present between the sensuous appearance and the idea ; one completely real- izes and interprets the other. Thus the Greeks remain unrivaled masters for all time in sculpture, in the epic, the classic form of architecture. Religion and art are identified. ^*The Greek divine service," says Mr. Denton J. Snider, '' was an act of the poetic im- agination ; worship was a poem conceived, if not sung ; therein was the worshiper elevated into the presence of the beautiful God, into whose image he was to trans- form himself, and be a living embodiment of the Re- ligion of Beauty." b A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. This plastic spirit characterizes Greek activity even in the domain of philosophy. Nothing is forced or artificial in the development of its problems; nowhere is there a break in the advancing course of ideas; a connection of the most vital kind unites the members of this far-extended series into one harmonious whole. ''That plastic quiet with which a Parmenides, a Plato, an Aristotle, treat the most difficult problems/' says Zeller, '' is the same thing in the domain of scientific thinking that we call the classic style in that of art." The Greek philosopher directs himself simply to the matter, and accepts what appears to him as true and real. This immediate relation to the object of his thought was only possible because it proceeded from a more imperfect experience, a more limited knowledge of nature, a weaker development of inner life, than our own. The modern philosopher has to deal with a greater mass of facts and laws, facts carefully examined, laws strictly defined. Hence his critical attitude. He begins with doubt, and is forced by his starting-point to keep the possibility and the conditions of knowledge in continual sight. At the beginning of Greek philosophy, it is the external world which first draws attention to itself, and suggests the question as to its causes. What lies at the basis of all the changes which the senses perceive ? What is the substance out of which the world is made ? This question is followed by another. How is the world made? These two taken together express the main problem of Greek philosophy: How do matter and form unite ? The character of the answers I shall seek to interpret in the following pages. CHAPTER III. PRE-SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. THIS division includes the Ionian philosophers, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes ; Pytha- goras and his disciples ; the Eleatics, Xenophanes, Par- menides, and Zeno ; Heraclitus, Empedocles, Leucippus, Democritus, and Anaxagoras. Greek philosophy began in the sixth century B. C, born in the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor at the time of their political decadence. KroDsus and the Lydians had first imperiled Ionian freedom ; later, the Persians de- stroyed it wholly. Dissatisfied with the world of reality which lay in ruins, thought fled to an ideal realm of its own creation. Perception of nature is the basis from which this early philosophy proceeds. The universal is conceived in a material form, as water, air, etc. But water as the fund- amental element of things, the primitive substance un- derneath nature's manifold changes, can only be an object of thought, not of sensuous perception. To say that all things are made of water is to say also that these many appearances of nature perceived by the senses proceed from one cause. Multiplicity is traced back to unity ; the Many are comprehended in the One. Thought makes a farther advance when the Pythago- reans conceive the essence of things as number. Without 7 8 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. matter there could not be number, since we could have neither extension nor division in space and time. But number itself is immaterial, lifted above the world of the senses, though not independent of it wholly. The Eleatics go a step farther; abstract their principle from everything material, and call it pure Being. Change is impossible, they say ; how is anything to pass from an unchangeable to a changeable condition ? How did the world begin ? Beginning implies movement ; how coukl the immovable move ? Fixing their gaze oh the unity of thought, they deny the multiplicity of nature, deny nature altogether. They first make the great discov- ery that contradictions are contained in our natural thinking, that the sensuous representation of the world is not the true one — a discovery rich in results for all time. Heraclitus regards the problem from another point of view. To him, also, it is incomprehensible that the un- changeable should change. But he does not therefore deny change ; he affirms it as the fact of all facts, and believes that it is eternal, that ** everything flows," that the essence of things is itself the Becoming. He makes energy the primal principle instead of the Ionic matter. Becoming is the unity of being and non- being ; some- thing is, and at the same time is not. The whole world of experience is in a state of transition from one condi- tion to another. All finite existences are changing, pass- ing away. Transitoriness belongs to the nature of finite being. Hence the Eleatics denied it, denied the world of matter, and affirmed the reality of the infinite — the world of thought. The principle of Heraclitus implies. PRE-SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 9 on the other hand, the infinite within the finite, as the divine activity producing change. Empedocles and the Atomists offer another explana- tion. Matter itself is considered as the abiding, the unchanging. What we call change is produced by the union and separation of numberless primordial elements or atoms. Anaxagoras took the next step in philosophy. Whence come the order and arrangement of the world, if the atoms are only drawn together by a mechanical, blind movement ? What is it that directs the movement ? It must be an intelligent principle, says Anaxagoras. The essence of the world is mind, not matter. Here the first period of Greek philosophy closes. The problems of nature have been so far investigated that from their solutions spirit proceeds as the moving, direct- ing thought — self -creative activity. CHAPTER IV. THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. rpHALES.— With Thales we begin the history of phi- -■- losophy. He was a native of Miletus, born about 640 B. C, a contemporary of Krcesus and Solon. His position at the head of the Seven Wise Men proves that he was greatly esteemed for practical wisdom by his fel- low-citizens. He is supposed to have studied mathematics in Egypt, and was the first to teach geometry in Greece. Diogenes Laertius relates an anecdote illustrating his interest in astronomy. Looking up to observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and the people mocked him that, seeking to comprehend heavenly things, he could not see what lay at his feet. This is an old version of the com- mon reproach brought against philosophers and philoso- phy. One critic remarks that the mockers could not stumble and fall into the ditch because they lay there already and never looked upward. Thales left no writings. All we know of his philoso- phy is the proposition that all things arise from and consist of water. Aristotle suggests that Thales was led to this thought by observing that dampness belongs to the nature of seeds and nutriment ; that warmth itself comes from moisture, and thereby life itself. So far as we know, Thales did little more than enunciate his prin- ciple. Wherein, then, lies his philosophic significance ? 10 THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 11 Why does philosophy begin with Thales ? Because he first makes the attempt to explain natural appearances from their universal ground. He draws back from the world of nature, where he sees only change and multipli- city, and seeks to reduce all things to one simple sub- stance, uncreated and imperishable. This substance he calls water, giving it a physical form, but meaning by it the essence of things, that which is not perceived by the senses, the unity underlying multiplicity. It wa^ a grand aftirmation of the human spirit, this affirmation of the One made by Thales in that old Greek world where the very gods had a theogony and were many and changing. Anaxmander.-An^ximandev of Miletus, some years younger than Thales, appears to have been his friend and disciple. He was the first to apply the word principle (apxv) to the original essence which he assumed. What he meant by this essence which he defined as - unlim- ited, eternal and unconditioned," is not clear to his commentators. It was neither -water nor air," but -contains in itself and rules everything," and is -di- vine, immortal, imperishable." The parts of the infinite change, but it is itself unchangeable. It is farther said to be infinite in magnitude, but not in number. Anaxi- mander affirmed its absolute continuity, but not its absolute discretion, as was afterwards maintained by Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and the Atomists. Aristotle is supposed to have been alluding to Anaximander when he speaks of a principle which is neither water nor air, but -thicker than air and thinner than water." It is certainlv material, and seems to have been matter gener- ally, since Anaximander separates from it the elemental 12 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. opposites, warm and cold, moist and dry, and brings to- gether the homogeneous in such a way that what is gold becomes gold, what is earth becomes earth, and yet noth- ing arises or begins to be, but all is contained potentially in the original substance. This imperfect attempt to trace back natural appearances scientifically and to ex- plain the world from physical grounds denotes a great advance of thought in comparison with the myths of the old cosmogonies. Anaximenes. — Anaximenes was younger than Anaxi- mander, and is supposed to have been one of his disci- ples. Like Thales he represents the absolute under a physical form, but as air instead of water. Air seems less material than water ; we do not see it, but feel its motion. *' As our soul, which is air, holds us together, so spirit and air, which are synonymous, animate the universe.'" He thus compares his essence to the soul, and seems to form a transition from the natural philoso- phy of his predecessors to the philosophy of conscious- ness. Diogenes of Apollonia, Idaeus of Himera, and Arche- laus, are also called Ionian philosophers, but we know little of them except their names, and that they sup- ported in part or wholly the views of their predecessors. Aristotle calls attention to the fact that the earth is not assumed as a first principle by any of these early philosophers, because it appears like an aggregate of many single parts, and does not represent unity in a sensuous form as completely as water, air or fire. The greatness of their thought consisted in their conception of oue universal substance, expressed as a form of mat- THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 13 ter, but uncreated and imperishable, at the basis of nature's changing and manifold appearances. CHAPTER V. PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS. THE next step in philosophy was taken by Pythago- ras of Samos, who lived between 540 and 500 B. C. He is the hero of many fabulous stories, and the accounts we possess of his life and achievements are so interwoven with the fanciful inventions of his later adherents that we cannot tell what is or is not historical. He is supposed to have traveled in Egypt and through intercourse with its priestly caste to have conceived the idea which he afterwards executed, the foundation of a society or order devoted to man's moral regeneration. Upon his return he settled at Cro- tona, in Lower Italy, or Magna Graecia, where he ap- pears to have distinguished himself not only as a states- man, a warrior, and a political law-giver, but as a teacher of morality and personal culture. He is said to have possessed great personal beauty and a majestic presence, which, added to his eloquence, inspired his listeners with awe and admiration. He was the first to give himself the name of ^^A^tro^c (lover of wisdom), instead of (yoiaTrj(;) sls a calling, _Phito first and Aristotle afterward narrowed the significance of ^ The term. The Sophist, according to Plato, is a hunter who seeks to capture wealthy young men by promising to teach them virtue ; or a trader who traffics in knowledge ; or a craftsman who makes gold through controversies, etc., etc. Sophistry is an art of delusion ; it consists in knowing how to entangle others in contradictions, in an assumption of wisdom and virtue without possessing either, or even believing in their reality. Aristotle de- scribes it similarly as a science limiting itself to non- essentials, or as the art of making money with mere apparent wisdom. This judgment passed upon the Sophists by the two greatest thinkers of Greece, colored the opinions of later writers, justifying the assertion of Grote that **few characters in history have been so hardly dealt with as the so-called Sophists." Opinions still differ as to their historical importance. Grote excul- pates them from the charge of corrupt and immoral teaching, but asserts that they had ''nothing in common THE SOPHISTS. 49 except their profession as paid teachers." Hegel, on the other hand, finds that they constitute a distinct school of philosophic thought, and that the character of their work is positive as well as negative. The previous method of teaching with the Greeks re- quired no teachers except for writing, arithmetic, music and gymnastics. Individual youths who desired wider culture attached themselves to some illustrious man, not for formal instruction, but simply on account of the in- fluence that, without express intention, results from free personal intercourse. The earlier philosophers had no especial school, but imparted their viev/s to a narrow circle composed for the most part of personal friends. With the Sophists we see a new order of things. On one side it is clear that wider knowledge is necessary for y those who wish to distinguish themselves in public life ; [ on the other side knowledge is sought, not so much for itself as for practical utility. Sophistry appears to \ stand on the boundary between philosophy and politics ; practice is to be supported by theory, but theory / itself becomes little more than a means of help for ^ practice. The Sophists have been censured for their readiness in adducing reasons and arguments on both sides of a ques- tion. But this is not so much a peculiarity of theirs as one belonging to the stage of reflection reached at that time. In the worst action there lies some point of view from which it can be justified and defended. For in- stance, the duty of self-preservation might be pleaded to extenuate a soldier's desertion on the eve of battle. Ex- cuses might be found even for the crimes of treachery 50 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. and assassination, and some good motive might be discov- ered in every evil action. The Sophist knew that everything can be proved. Gorgias says in Plato's Dialogues: ''The art of the Sophists is a greater good than all arts ; it is able to persuade as it will the people, the senate, and the judges.'' The Sophists were acquainted with so many points of view that they could lift into prominence or degrade into insignificance every duty and law hitherto held valid. The ordinary consciousness is confused, as frequently happens with Socrates, when some opinion or belief firmly held is suddenly brought into collision with others equally valid. Thus, in the instance mentioned of the soldier's desertion, the virtue of bravery which risks life is opposed to the duty of its preservation. Dionysodorus says : " You want Cleinias to be wise. Then you want him to be what he is not, and not to be what he is ? — not to be— that is, to perish ? Dionysodorus says : '' Who lies says what is not, but one cannot say what is not — therefore no one can lie." These fallacies appear trifling to us now, as Jowett observes, but were not trifling in the age before logic, at a time when language was first beginning to perplex human thought. They show us, fai'ther, how the art of speech assumed more and more prominence until phi- losophy was almost neglected for rhetoric. Hegel says that sophistry is a danger that always menaces culture. We moderns admire what Plato would have termed sophistic grounds of action. '' Deceive not that you may not lose credit and therefore money." THE SOPHISTS. 51 Similar arguments are brought forward even in sermons and moral discourses to recommend the practice of virtue. Regarding the accusation brought against the Sophists that they used their talents for money-getting, we easily discover its basis in the prevalent Greek views on this subject. So long as philosophic instruction was confined to friends nothing could be said of pay. Plato and Aristotle regarded it from this point of view. Wisdom, like love, should not be sold, says Socrates, but given as a free gift. Plato and Aristotle maintain that the rela- tion of teacher and scholar is not one of business, but of friendship ; the service of the teacher cannot be weighed with money, but can only be returned with love and gratitude. Favored by personal prosperity and sharing the old Greek prejudice against business, they could afford to scorn pecuniary reward for their teaching, l^ut to call the Sophists self-seeking and money-coveting merely because they received pay for the instruction they imparted, is unjust ; unjust even from their ideal point of view, since Greek custom permitted painters, musicians, rhetoricians, poets, etc., to win life-subsist- ence through the work to which they dedicated time and power. The masses of the people, who, like Plato and Aristotle, regarded the Sophists with disfavor, were farther preju- diced against them as foreigners, '' destroyers of the old," innovators and revolutionists. Their gains were doubt- less exaggerated ; only a few showed themselves mean and avaricious. Protagoras says : ** When a man has been my pupil, if he likes, he pays my price, but there is rn /) 52 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE SOPHISTS. 53 no compulsion, and if he does not like, he has only to go into a temple and take an oath of the value of the instnictions, and he pays no more than he declares to be their value." Zeller thinks that this prejudice against the Sophists a& money-makers did more to injure their reputation than anything else. But he also notices a risk which is incurred when instruction concerning the duties of public life is placed exclusively in the hands of teachers who are dependent for support on the pay received ; a risk that their activity as teachers may be limited to the wishes and needs of those scholars who are able to seek and pay for instruction. Only a few will see the neces- sity of studies whose practical application is not im- mediately apparent. If, from the beginning, Sophistry was inclined to limit instruction to the useful and prac- tical, this onc-sidedness must have been strengthened by the dependence of Sophistic teachers on the tastes and wishes of their listeners. We shall therefore find that tlie Sophists do not teach men concerning the aim oj their activity, but seek ratherfo~8K6w the means which secure individual success. But the question arises : Is there a firm basis to be found anywhere in the doctrines of the Sophists ? What is their final criterion of judgment, since to constitute philosophy there must be one ? It is the individual self, this particular me, which remains steady when everything else wavers, what Hegel calls *^ particular subjectivity." To this single ^elf of mine, to my pleasure, to mt/ vanity, to my g^ory, to wjr h«nor» I refer ovcTytliing. ini*ll' jad^w^^ut, and al! jxirtwular conducts There i« no other <30urt of appeal ; herein lies tlie danger of So- phistry. This individual will of mine is erected mto an absolute principle ; everything else changes, but this remains steadfast. Truth and goodness have only a relative significance ; this thing seems true to me and false to another, or good to me and evil to another. The standpoints are as many and as widely different as individuals. Hence the negative attitude of Sophistry towards knowloclgc and morality. Zeller call* tl>c Sophist* the Kncyclop»di«U of Greece, the Aufkluret (cU*r«rt.op) of their age, parlicipatiiiK in the advantngee as mi41 as in tlw dUadvantagea of thi« position. He contnisU tlwir boastfiila«s and a8«ira|i- tion, their unit«idy, wandcrinK life, Uieir gold-wiuning, their mutual jealoittieB, with the earnest humility of Anaxa<-oras and Democritus. the unaawming greatnc^ of Socrates, th« noble pnde of Plato ; ho finds ihal their eloquence is but supcrlicbl and aearrea lakehood as well as truth, that their scientific views are shallow, their moral axioms dangewns. But on the other hand he thinks it would l)e unjn«l to their r<»l •I'hieTemente to treat them men^lj as dwtroyer^ He agr<« with Hegel that the principle- of subjectivity first makee itself valid in the age of the Soi>hi8tK[>« wachia the oonscious. ness that it is noce«ary to a«t from poraonal inught and conviction, he loees his renoiation for custom and tradition, and will accept nothing m tnie which he liaa not himself tested. But ho does not at onco discover the right diVMion, the point where he is to place him- self in order to pwforve hia mental and moral equi- librium, lie recoguiz** eorrvc4ly thiU tradition as such 54 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. does not prove the truth of an axiom or the authority of a law ; but to conclude therefore that truth does not exist, and that the individual is a law unto himself, is to introduce scientific scepticism and moral confusion. So, too, in the sphere of religion. The Sophists are not to be reproached that they doubted the existence of the old gods of the Greek world, and saw in them only magnified reflections of the virtues and frailties of human beings. What they needed was to complete denial by affirmation, not to lose faith in religion because they lost faith in polytheism. Neve rtheless, Sophi stry, w ith all its_shortcomings, is the fruit and the organ of the ttiosi thoroagkxavolution which ever happened, in the thought and spiritual life of the Greek nation, ,1'his people stood on theihreshold of a new era ; the view opened into a world, hitherto unknown, of freedom and of culture. Is it strange that they became dizzy on the height so quickly attained, that the feeling of self overstepped all limits, that man, recognizing the origin of laws in the human will, believed himself no longer bound by their authority, that he held everything as subjective appearance because he saw everything in the mirror of his own consciousness ? The one-sided ness of Sophistry could not be avoided. The fermentation of the age drove _to the surface .many impure and muddy substances, but the human spirit must pass through this fermentation before it could purify itself to Socratic wisdom ; and as the Germans without a clearing-up period might not have had Kant, so the Greeks without Sophistry might not have had Socrates and a Socratic school of philosophy. j CHAPTER XII. INDIVIDUAL SOPHISTS. ROTAGORAS.— There were many renowned So- phists, but the first and most celebrated is Protagoras of Abdera, born about 490 B. C. Little is known con- cerning his life, save that it was devoted to study and the pursuit of his calling as a public teacher and lecturer, first in Sicily, afterward in Athens. He was an intimate friend of Pericles, with whom he is said to have had an argument once, lasting the whole day, as to whether the javelin, or the one who threw it, or the one who arranged the game, is guilty of the death of a man accidentally hit and killed. Protagoras, like Anaxagoras, was accused of impiety and banished from Athens. The especial cause of his banishment was a writing beginning with these words: '' Concerning the gods, I know not whether they exist or not ; for there is much to prevent the attainment of this knowledge in the obscurity of the matter itself, as well as in the shortness of human life.'' All copies of the work that could be found were publicly burnt in the market-place at Athens, at the command of the state, and so far as we know this is the first recorded instance of such an auto da fe, Protagoras was drowned at sea on a voyage to Sicily, either in his seventieth or nine- tieth year, authorities differing in regard to his age and the time of his death. 56 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. INDIVIDUAL SOPHISTS. 57 #» His fundamental proposition as a philosopher is the following: Man is the measure of all things, of that which is that it is, and of that which is not that it is not. Taken in its true sense, this is a grand utterance, but it is at the same time ambiguous. Is it man on the side of his particularity, the accidental individual, who is the measure of all things, or is it the self-conscious reason within him, man on the side of his universality, who is the measure of all things ? If the first, then the centre of all striving is the individual with his egotism and self- ishness, his petty interests and aims. It was thus un- derstood by the Sophists, and it is the chief ground of reproach brought against their teaching. But Socrates and Plato emphasize the deeper truth contained in the proposition of Protagoras; that man as a thinking, ra- tional being is the measure of all things, that reason, thought, self-consciousness, is not a special characteristic, distinguishing me from my fellow men, but is that in which all participate, the universal substance in which all alike have their spiritual being. The true measure of things is not my thought, nor your thought, but thought itself, the absolute within us, miyie and yours, whose eternal essence is ever the same, unaffected by our individual will and opinion. Protagoras, however, according to Plato, saw but one side of the truth contained in his proposition. Starting from the doctrine of Heraclitus, that everything is in a constant flow, he applied it to human thought, and de- clared that nothing is in itself true or false, but true or false only as it is related to the thinking subject. His illustrations are drawn from the facts of sensuous per- ception. For instance, it may happen that a wind appears cold to one, warm to another ; we cannot, there- fore, say of the wind itself that it is either hot or cold. Warmth and cold exist only for us, the feeling, perceiv- ing subject. We have first the assertion that nothing is in itself as it appears ; and then, that it is true as it ap- pears, a contradictory affirmation. We can argue with equal justice that the wind is cold, or that the wind is warm ; that is to say, truth is relative, but not absolute. Protagoras was the first to show how '' theses might be defended and attacked, and contradictory propositions maintained on every subject.^' He made a scientific study of language, distinguishing the gender of nouns, the moods of verbs, etc. The fallacy of his reasoning and of Sophistic reasoning generally consists in giving objective validity to that which is merely subjective, the sensuous perception, the accidental opinion or caprice of the individual. The wind is not cold in itself because it appears so ; that which is true of it is the appearance only. The whole world of sensuous perception is simply appearance ; we can affirm nothing of it except as it is related to thought, the thinking, self-conscious subject. Here lies the truth of the Sophistic doctrine, a truth developed one-sidedly by Protagoras and his followers, yet fruitful in its effects on the progress of philosophy. Gnraias. — Another famous Sophist was Gorgias, who came to Athens during the Peloponnesian war as an ambassador from his native city, Leontium, Sicily. He remained there for some time, but passed the latter part of his life in Thessaly, where he died at an advanced 58 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. age. The approximate dates of his birth and death are respectively, 483 and 375 B. C. He taught the art of rhetoric, describing it as the ''worker of conviction." He appears to have been greatly admired and esteemed by his contemporaries, with the exception of Plato, who ridicules his ostentatious appearance, and affirms that rhetoric, as taught by Gorgias, is not an art, but a form of quackery, a mass of poetic figures and brilliant meta- phors, intended to corrupt and delude the mind of the listener. It is possible that Plato, in his denunciations, refers less to Gorgias himself than to his followers. The philosophic doctrine of Gorgias is contained in his work ''Concerning Not-Being, or Nature." It was divided into three parts, according to Sextus Empiricus, devoted respectively to the enumeration and proof of the three following propositions: First, that nothing exists ; second, that if anything existed it would be unknowable ; third, that if it existed and were knowable the communi- cation of the knowledge to others would be impossible. Tiedemann says that Gorgias went much farther than any man of sound common-sense can go. Hegel thereupon replies that one might say the same of any philosopher, for what is called sound common-sense is not philosophy, and is often very unsound, since it is ruled by the man- ner of thinking, the maxims and prejudices peculiar to the time. Gorgias did go farther than sound common- sense, but so did Copernicus, in the opinion of his age, when he affirmed that the earth revolves around the sun. The propositions of Gorgias are not so meaningless as they appear. He asserts, first, that nothing exists, be- cause in order to exist, its being must be derived from INDIVIDUAL SOPHISTS. 69 another or must be eternal. He then goes on to prove that both hypotheses lead to contradictions. If derived from another, it must be either from the existent or the non-existent; but this is impossible according to the Eleatic theory. If eternal, it must be infinite, but the infinite is nowhere, and what is nowhere is not. The proof of his second proposition, that if anything existed it would be unknowable, is as follows: If the knowledge were possible, then all that is thought must exist, and we could not think the non-existent, Scylla and Charybdis, for instance. Gorgias here falls into the idealism of mod- ern times, according to which the world of objective existence is merely the product of subjective thought. He affirms, lastly, that if anything existed, and were knowable, the knowledge of it could not be communi- cated to others. The eye sees colors, the ear hears sounds, but the notion of color cannot be conveyed by sounds, nor by words, nor can the notion of sound be conveyed by color. How, then, if it is impossible to express through one sense what is conveyed to another, can the same idea be in two persons, as it must be in order to constitute a communication of knowledge, if the persons are different one from the other? The dialectic of Gorgiaa is based wholly on the contradictory nature of sensuous phenomena, and is unanswerable from the standpoint of any physical theory of the universe. Dther Sophists.— Other well-known Sophists were Hippias and Prodicus. Hippias is described as a man of honorable character and of great learning, distinguished more for rhetorical talent than for his philosophical doc- trines. Plato ascribes to him the sentiment that law is tM 60 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. the tyrant of men, forcing them frequently to do what is contrary to nature. Prodicus was greatly admired by the ancients. The saying, ''As wise as Prodicus," became a proverb. He wrote discourses on moral subjects, but his chief merit rests on the distinctions he made between words of similar meaning, synonyms. Of the other Sophists we know little, except from the testimony of Plato, who describes them in his dialogues, one as teaching the law of the stronger, that right is might, another as declaring that faith in the gods is the invention of wise and cunning statesmen, their dialectic art deteriorating and their doctrines illustrating more and more the evil consequences resulting from their standpoint, the elevation of the subjective opinion and will of the individual into an absolute standard of thought and action. ^ CHAPTER XIII. SOCRATES. C THE age of Socrates was the age of the Sophists ; Protagoras and Gorgias were his contemporaries. Socrates is frequently called a Sophist, and is held up to ridicule in the '^Clouds" of Aristophanes as the representative of Sophistic doctrines. But his teaching, in reality, is the positive complement of the Sophistic philosophy, whose destructive tendencies he vanquished on their own ground, on the truth implicitly contained injheirjmii piindpieaj*' Socrates did not grow out of the earth like a fungus," says Hegel, ''but stands in definite continuity with his time, and is not only a figure of supreme importance in the history of philosophy, perhaps the most interesting of all among the ancients, but is a world-historical person. For he represents a turning-point of the human spirit in upon itself in the manner of philosophic thought." Pre-Socratic philosophy proceeded from observation of nature ; the Sophists first deviated from physical in- quiries, and made man himself a special object of study. This direction is the ruling one with Socrates ; he neg- lects nature, occupying himself almost exclusively with questions whose solution he refers, not to the accidental will of the individual, but to true knowledge, the ab- solute essence of spirit. Earlier philosophy was dog- 61 X 62 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. SOCRATES. 63 matic, applying itself immediately to the world of nature, and defining its being from single prominent peculiar- ities. It was therefore one-sided and contradictory, and could not resist the attacks of the Sophists, or satisfy the need of the time. The basis of the philosophic structure must be laid deeper, contradictions must be compared and reconciled through some common standard, different points of view must be harmonized, thought must grasp the real and permanent beneath the changing appearance. How was this to be accomplished? Socrates answered the problem by developing the content of thought itself through a dialectic process of defin- ition and division, the art of forming concepts. In order to have a clear conception of an object I must be able to grasp together its different peculiarities, not concluding with the Sophists that they are mutually destructive because they contain opposite determina- tions, but finding that they complete each other through their very contradictions, which are all dissolved in a higher bond of unity. To define the conception of justice or valor, Socrates would start from individual examples, and from these deduce their universal char- acter — their true concepts. Philosophy, according to this view, begins, not with the observation of external but of internal phenomena ; not with physics, but with ethics, the truths revealed by God to human consciousness. The world of nature sinks into the background ; self-knowledge is the supreme object of all striving. In the place of dog- matism we have dialectic ; in the place of materialism. idealism. The problem of the world is included in the higher problem of self. The question is asked : How can true knowledge be obtained ? Socrates offers the first solution, asserting that the standard of human thought and knowledge lies in a knowledge of concepts, which can only be gained by a critical investigation of their essence. Plato concludes ihat objective concepts, ideas, are in the true sense the only reality ; and Aristotle affirms finally that the concept, or form, constitutes the moving power, the soul of things, that the absolutely real is pure spirit thinking itself, that thinking is the highest reality, and therefore the highest happiness for man. "It is thus one principle," says Zeller, '* repre- sented at different stages of growth, by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle." Socrates may be called the swelling germ, Plato the rich blossom, and Aristotle the ripened fruit of Greek philosophy, on the summit of its historical development. LIFE AND CHARACTER. The philosophy of Socrates is closely connected with his life and personal character. He was born in the year 4G9 B. C. His father was a sculptor, and Socrates himself followed this occupation for a time ; three draped figures of the Graces, said to be his work, were seen by Pausanias in the Acropolis. His mother was a midwife, and he frequently compares his art io hers, since it consists rather in helping others to the birth of thoughts, than in producing them himself. Little is known of his early education, but he must have par- ticipated in all the elements of culture to be found at that time in Athens. In the dialogue of Phaedo, 64 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Socrates is represented as passing from the views of the early physicists and of Anaxagoras to his own pecu- liar point of view ; and although Plato's testimony is doubtless influenced by the Platonic doctrine of ideas, it is probable, as Ueberweg says, that Plato transfers from his own thought only that which would naturally follow from the views h'feld by the historical Socrates. Socrates took part in the military campaigns of Potid^a, Delium, and Amphipolis, during the Pelopon- nesian war, and was distinguished, not only for his in- trepidity and endurance, but for saving the lives of his fellow-citizens, Alcibiades and Xenophon. He never left Athens on any other occasion, except once to attend a public festival. He withdrew from political activity so far as was consistent with his duty as an Athenian citizen, and during the course of a long life held but once a public office. It is noteworthy that in this position he displayed that fearless adherence to what he considered right which characterized all his conduct ; he could not be intimidated, either by the wrath of the rulers or of the people, to acquiesce in an illegal measure. It is uncertain at what time Socrates first began to devote himself to what he regarded as his peculiar mission, the awakening of his fellow-men to moral con- sciousness and a desire after true knowledge. He is uniformly represented by his followers as a man already advanced in years. His mode of instruction was wholly different from that of the Sophists. Day after day he went to the markets and the public walks, to the gymnasia and the workshops, in order to converse SOCEATES. 65 with young and old, with citizens and strangers. He would begin with the topic nearest at hand, the trade of the cobbler, perhaps, or of the blacksmith, then give the discourse such a turn as to elicit from the mind of hia listener some truth or thought hitherto undiscovered. This was the great vocation to which he devoted himself unweariedly, contending against the self-conceit, the boastfulness and frivolity of youth, seeking to guide all with whom he came in contact to true self-knowledge and morality. His own character is described as a model of virtue. '*No one," says Xenophon, ''has seen or heard any- thing unworthy of Socrates ; he was so pious that he did nothing without the advice of the gods ; so just that he never injured any one in the least ; so much a master of himself that he never chose the pleasant in- stead of the good ; so discerning that he never failed to distinguish the better from the worse ; in a word, he was the best and happiest man possible.'' Plato also extols the simplicity, the moderation, the self-control of Socrates, whom he represents as the best man of his time, the most just and full of insight, inspired by the deepest piety, dedicating his whole life to the service of others, and dying a martyr in accord- ance with what he believed to be the will of God. Other writers dwell upon his Athenian polish and urbanity, his cheerfulness and humor, his real kindness of heart, and describe him as the perfect model of a highly-cultivated man, knowing how to avoid the dis- agreeable in his intercourse with others and to stimulate into activity whatever was best and most worthy. Ac- 66 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. cording to his own testimony, he only became what he was after a long struggle with lower passions and im- pulses. ''He stands before us," says Hegel, ''a finished work of classic art, who has brought himself to this height. In a work of art every feature is designed to bring out one idea, to represent one character, that it may constitute a living and beautiful creation; for the highest beauty consists in the most complete develop- ment on all sides of individuality according to one inner principle. The great men of that time are such works of art. The highest plastic individual as a statesman is Pericles, and around him like stars, Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, etc., have worked out their own individuality and given it a peculiar character, which is the ruling, innermost principle of their being and culture. Pericles lived only for this aim, to be a statesman ; and Plutarch relates that he never smiled or went to a banquet after he devoted himself to statesmanship. Thus did Socrates also, through his art and the power of self-conscious will, develop in himself this definite character, and acquire this skill in his life-vocation. Through his principle he gained an influence still active in religion, science, and right, because since him the genius of inner con- viction is the basis which is valid first of all to man." But Socrates is, nevertheless, a thorough Greek, and cannot be taken as the universal moral standard for all time. Plato in a characteristic scene describes the moderation of Socrates in regard to wine, which was- in reality no moderation according to the usual sense SOCRATES. 67 of the word, since the simple fact is that he can drink more wine than others without being intoxicated. Was he able to do this, as Hegel intimates, through the power of self-conscious will ? His moderation is cer- tainly not asceticism, and his self-control is not self- denial, but consists rather in a state of mental freedom which is never lost amid the seductions of the senses. Another peculiarity of his character, purely Greek, was his ardent friendship for young men, and his neg- lect of the domestic relation. Whatever may be the truth in regard to the ill-nature of Xanthippe (and she has not been without her defenders), it is certain that a man like Socrates would have tried the patience of any modern wife or mother. But we must not forget that this was one great blemish of Athenian civilization, — the exclusion of wives, mothers, and sisters from social and intellectual companionsliip with their husbands, sons and brothers. On tlie one side, the peculiarities of Socrates are essentially Greek ; on the other, essentially modern. His own personal appearance expressed the contradiction l)etween the outward and the inward, so foreign to the classic ideal. The ugliness of his face and figure, his neglect of beauty of form in his philosophic discourses, and the homely illustrations which he used drawn from the most prosaic trades and occupations, must have offended the artistic instinct of the Greeks, and en- hanced for them the singularity of his appearance. Plato represents him, in the Phfedrus, as refusing to walk out because he can learn nothing from the trees and from the country. 68 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. United with this indifference to the external world was an absorption in his innermost self, whicli at times seemed half to overpower the clearness of his consciousness. To this may be referred the ecstatic states, described in Plato's Symposium, and that demonic revelation, known as the ^^ Genius*' of Socrates, which he ascribed without farther analysis to divine agency. Plato and Xenophon mention only demonic signs, and nowhere speak as if Socrates believed in a personal demon. Hegel compares the voice heard by Socrates to that prophetic knowledge sometimes evinced by the dy- ing, or those very ill, inexplicable from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness. In the Apology, Socrates says : '*Some may wonder why I go about in private, giving advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the State. I will tell you the reason of this. You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Miletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.'' Had the voice been that of conscience it would have commanded as well as forbidden, and would have been concerned with the moral value and worthlessness of an action, rather than its consequences. One explanation considers it as a kind of practical insight, or tact, an immediate conviction of the suitableness or unsuita- bleness of certain actions, resulting partly from life- SOCBATES. 69 experience, partly from self-knowledge, but transformed according to the spirit of the time into a divine revela- tion. Hegel thinks that it occupied the middle ground between the external Greek oracle and the purely in- ternal oracle of spirit, marking the transition of human consciousness from reliance on outward to reliance on inward authority. The Greeks, with all their freedom, did not decide from subjective conviction, but in doubt- ful matters concerning the state, or mere private affairs, consulted the oracle. They had not reached the modern standpoint which demands the testimony of the spirit within for every decision. It is the principle of Socrates which effects this world-conversion, and Socrates therefore unites in himself the charac- teristics of Greek and of modern consciousness ; ''distin- guished from all his contemporaries," says Zeller, **by that power of inward concentration, so foreign to his race, through which an invisible breach first took place in the plastic unity of Greek life." THE FATE OF SOCRATES. 71 CHAPTER XIV. THE FATE OF SOCRATES. I N his seventieth year, Socrates was brought to trial by his fellow-citizeus in Athens. The accusation against him consisted of two points : that he was neg- lecting the gods of the state, and introducing new deities, and that he was corrupting the youth. The accusers were Meletus, a poet, Anytus, a demagogue, and Lycon, an orator,— men of comparative insignifi- cance in the state. It was contrary to the nature of Socrates to de- fend himself by means of the artful oratory then practiced in Athens. He relied on the simple truth, and left the issue in tlie hands of God. His lan- guage was not that of a criminal, but of an impartial reasoner who would fain dispel erroneous notions. He would not condescend to address the judges in terms of entreaty. His proud and dignified bearing offended the membei-8 of a popular tribunal accustomed to deference and homage from the most eminent statesmen and gen- erals. He was pronounced guilty by a small majority. But according to the Athenian laws he was left free to express an opinion as to the punishment he sliould re- ceive, this expression being an implied acknowledgment of guilt. He refused to name any punishment, but de- clared himself worthy of reward as a benefactor of the 70 state. Finally, however, he yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and consented to a fine of thirty minae, which he could pay without owning himself guilty. He was thereupon condemned to death. The execution of the sentence was delayed thirty days, until the return of the sacred ship from Delos. Socrates employed the time in social intercourse with his friends, retaining through the whole period his accustomed cheer- fulness and serenity. He scorned, as unworthy, the means of escape offered by his friend Crito, believing that, as a citizen of the state, he ought to obey its laws and submit to its sentence of death. This seems slightly at variance with his refusal to acknowledge him- self guilty. But the refusal was based on a higher law than that of the state, *' The unwritten laws of God that know no change." Conscious of the right, Socrates would not yield. He acknowledged the sovereignty of the people with this one exception. The competence of the court is presupposed to-day, and the sentence is executed without farther formalities ; regard is paid rather to the act than to the disposition of the subject. But the Athenians required that the decree of the court should be sanctioned by the convicted man himself, who was left free to estimate his own punish- ment and thereby acknowledge the justice of bis sen- tence. Socrates, who stood acquitted before the bar of his own individual conscience, opposed this acquittal to the conviction of the judges. But the first principle of a state is this : that there is no higher reason, or conscience, or justice, than that which the state recognizes. Hence the fate of 72 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Socrates is truly tragic, like the fate of Antigone. There is a conflict between his duty to the state and his duty to himself; between the law of the land and the diviner law within his own breast. Two moral forces come into collision one with the other, and this is what is meant by the tragic and tragedy. The fate of Socrates is not merely personal ; it is the tragedy of Athens, of Greece. Two rights, equally valid, are op- posed to each other ; the right of objective freedom secured by life in and for the state, and the right of subjective freedom, of the individual conscience. The Athenian people had reached that point in their develop- ment when the state, the outward manifestation of their national spirit, no longer satisfied the inner needs of the individual. In condemning Socrates to death they com- mitted the injustice of making him pay the penalty of that which was historically the fault of all, if fault it were. Plato has given us a touching and beautiful picture of the last hours of Socrates. They were passed in quiet converse with his friends on the subject of immortality. When the final moment came he calmly drank the cup of poisoned hemlock, conscious that death would strengthen his influence and give to his life and work the highest stamp of truth. Different opinions have been held by different writers as to the causes and the justice of his condemnation. Hegel believes that both Socrates and the Athenian peo- ple were alike innocent and alike guilty ; that Socrates was the representative of the modern spirit, the principle of subjectivity, the individual conscience, as opposed to THE FATE OF SOCRATES. 73 the unreflecting Greek morality resting on the basis of tradition. But the Athenian people themselves had advanced beyond their old standpoint ; they too, as well as Socrates, were in part children of the new time. The moral life of Greece rested originally on authority ; Socrates substituted instead personal conviction. The indi- vidual is not simply to obey the law, he is to discover, in and for himself, its reason and its justice. Socrates spent his life in examining the current notions respecting morals, seeking their causes and testing their truth. The examination led him to the same results, essentially, as those which were established by custom and tradition. Nevertheless, his attitude towards the old Greek morality was a critical attitude. If man is to follow his private convictions he will agree with the popular will only when it agrees with his own. If the two conflict there is little doubt what side he will espouse. This is the principle avowed by Socrates in the celebrated declaration that he would obey God rather than the Athenians. Plato says there was a general belief that the teaching of Socrates was of a dangerous character, and he adds that it was then impossible for any one to speak the truth in political matters without being persecuted as a vain babbler, a corrupter of youth. It is certain, from the testimony of Xenophon and Aristophanes, that the preju- dice against Socrates was not confined to the masses, but was shared by men of influence in the state. Aristo- phanes, an enthusiastic admirer of the ''good old times," was bitterly hostile to the new ideas introduced into Athens by the Sophists, among whom he classed Socrates as the most dangerous. 74 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE FATE OF SOCRATES. 75 Aristophanes and the Aristophanic comedy are as much a product of the time as Socrates and the Socratic philosophy ; both are stars of lesser and greater magnitude in that brilliant galaxy which constitutes the glory of Athens. Aristo])hanes, though sincere in his advocacy of the old and his scorn for the new, was himself infected by the very spirit which he attacks, the spirit of progress. His representation of Socrates in the ''Clouds" though an unmistakable likeness, is not only exaggerated, but essentially false, -and can only be des- ignated,^^ says Schwegler, -as a culpable misunderstand- ing, and as an act of gross injustice, brought about by blinded passion ; and Hegel, when he attempts to defend the conduct of Aristophanes, forgets that while the comic writer may caricature, he must do it without having re- course to public calumniation." The charge brought by Aristophanes against Socrates was three-fold: that he devoted himself intellectually to useless subtleties ; that he rejected the Athenian gods ; and finally, that he was able by Sophistic reasoning to gain for the wrong side the victory over the righr, to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. That the comedy of Aristophanes was the originating cause of the persecution directed against Socrates is improbable, yet it doubtless expressed what others thought, and could not have been without its influence, for twenty-four years later, when Socrates was legally accused and convicted, it was upon similar grounds to those brought against him'in the - Clouds." All the charges seem to rest upon misunderstand- ings and false inferences. For instance, it was said that he rejected the gods of the State, and substituted in their place a deity of his own, his demon. This was untrue. He worshipped in the Athenian temples like his fellow-citizens ; his demon was not a new god, but a private subjective oracle. Socrates, according to Hegel, is the hero who substitutes for the Delphic god and the Delphic oracle this principle: man must find in himself that which is true. The thinking self-consciousness, not the external oracle, is the final authoritv. This inner certainty was in truth a new faith differing from the old, but not a new god in the sense meant by his accusers. It was also said that Socrates had corrupted the Athe- nian youth. Here again he is identified with the Sophists; the charge is the same as that brought against their teaching. The views of Critias and Alcibiades are un- justly ascribed to his influence ; and it is concluded that he taught men to despise their parents and relations be- cause he counselled Anytus to educate his son for some- thing higher than the leather business. The inference is unfair, though it is a delicate matter for a third person to interfere in the relation between parent and child. Nothing in the shape of actual deeds could be laid to the charge of Socrates. He conscientiously fulfilled his duties as a citizen, and never transgressed the laws of the State. His political theories did not correspond with the existing Athenian institutions, but this was not a crime. He did not believe in awarding power by lot or election, but according to the qualifications of individuals. This may have led to his being suspected of aristocratic lean- ings by the Athenian democracy. But it could not affect the purity of his character as a citizen. Nevertheless, the 76 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. wht)le character of his philosophy, the demand for self- knowledge, the inward turn given to thought, must have weakened in himself, and in his disciples, that attachment to political life which was the soul of Greek activity. Even his demon, his subjective oracle, was dangerous in a country where oracles had not only a religious but a political significance. Zeller calls Socrates the precursor and founder of our moral view of the world ; but adds, that to one starting from the old Greek view of the state and of right, his condemnation cannot appear altogether unjust. The truth was that in Athens itself the old morality was de- caying, and that Socrates simply entered into the spirit of his time, trying to reform it by means of itself, instead of uselessly attempting to bring back a type of culture that was gone forever. It was a mistake to hold him re- sponsible for the corruption in faith and morals which he was trying to check in the only way possible. Zeller thinks that his condemnation was not only a great in- justice according to our conception of right, but was a political anachronism according to the standard of his own time. A reformer who is truly conservative is at- tacked by nominal and imaginary restorers of the good old times. The Athenians, in punishing him, gave them- selves up for lost ; for in reality it is not for destroying, but for attempting to restore morals that he is punished. Aristophanes and his followers took one way to rebut the Sophists ; Socrates took another. He too, like the Sophists, emphasizes the principle of subjectivity ; but he shows that the truth lies not in the feeling of self, which is egotistic and exclusive, but in the idea of self, which is THE FATE OF SOCRATES. 77 universal and comprehensive. Confounded with the So- phists by his accusers, the higher principle of Socrates was misunderstood and misinterpreted. The spirit of Athens was divided within itself ; its internal rupture was reflected in its declining strength and power, and finally it yielded its independence, and became subject, first to Sparta, then to Macedonia. Socrates died twenty-nine years after the death of Pericles, and forty-four years before the birth of Alexan- der. He witnessed the glory and the decline of Athens, its culminating point of splendor and the beginning of its ruin. CHAPTER XV. THE SOURCES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. QIOCRATES committed nothing to writing, and our ^ knowledge of his doctrines is derived from tlie ac- counts of Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle. Though it is doubtless true that in Plato's Dialogues the thoughts of Plato himself are frequently placed in the mouth of Soc- rates, the elements peculiar to each are easily discernible. Plato's picture of Socrates agrees substantially with that of Xenophon in those dialogues wherein he claims to be true to facts, the Apology and the Symposium. Socrates had been dead six years when Xenophon wrote the Me- morabilia and the Symposium, partly from his own recol- lection, partly from that of his friends. He was present in person at some of the scenes which he describes ; when he was not present he mentions his authority. But Xenophon appears to have been a practical man, deficient in the philosophical sense ; his representation of Socrates is therefore one-sided. He emphasizes the ethical, but neglects the scientific side of the Socratic teaching. It was the union of the two that constituted its peculiarity. Socrates recognized that morality must be established on a scientific basis before reform is possible. I must not only do what is right ; I must do it with a clear con- sciousness that it is right. Socrates could not distinguish 78 THE SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 79 between morality and knowledge ; in this, as Zeller ob- serves, he was the child of his age. He sought to reform morals by means of knowledge ; and the two were so closely associated in his own mind that he could find no object for knowledge except human conduct, and no guarantee for conduct except knowledge. Hence the deep importance attached to the personality of the thinker, the impossibility of considering the philosophy of Soc- rates apart from his life and character. ** In Socrates commences an unbounded reference to the person,'' says Hegel, *'to the freedom of the inner life." This is the source of his one-sideduess ; he directs all his activity and striving towards morals, and neglects the other sciences. He teaches each one to find as the essence of his own individual being the absolute and uni- versal concept of the good. Consciousness turns inward upon itself, and tests the xalidity of every moral axiom by an inner standard of right. That it is a decree of the state or the will of the gods is not enough ; the moral consciousness asks: Is it true in itself ? This return into itself is the highest bloom of the Athenian spirit, a point of culture not reached by the Spartans. But it is fraught with danger. It is the isolating of the individual from the universal, the care of man for his single self at the cost of the state, a higher and more comprehensive self. Morality wavers when man makes for himself, in- dividually, his own laws and maxims. But Socrates penetrated to the kernel of the matter, and found at the basis of self-consciousness an absolute moral authority. He taught men to find the good and the true within their own thought. That knowledge 80 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 81 is elicited from the mind itself, that it comes from within and not from without, is a thought contained in the doctrine of Socrates, but developed more fully by Plato. No external power can force a man to think, he must think for and from himself. To learn is only to become acquainted with external things through experience. But the knowledge of uuiversals, the only true knowledge, belongs to thought. Nothing is valid, according to Socrates, without the inner testimony of the spirit. Hegel thus expresses it: " As it is said in the Bible, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, so that which is true and right to me must be spirit of my spirit." There is that within me, planted by nature, belonging to me as a particular individual, the selfish self; there is that within me, higher and holier, a part of the divine reason, belong- ing to me as an immortal person, the unselfish self. Socrates opposed the second to the first, man the uni- versal to man the particular. The Sophists insisted upon the feeling of self, which is egotistic and ex- clusive ; Socrates insisted upon the idea of self, which is universal and inclusive, **the true equalizer of the human race." His philosophy starts from the Delphic oracle, ^'Know thyself," and involves a thorough sifting and testing of the general concepts found within the mind. The majority of men confine themselves to supposi- tions and traditionary facts, whose accuracy they neither question nor examine. They think themselves wise when in reality they know nothing. This is the meaning of the Delphic oracle that calls Socrates the wisest of men, wisest in this, that he is conscious of his own ignorance. To possess this consciousness is most helpful to the seeker after truth, who must have an open eye, a single purpose, and an honest mind to receive it when it comes. Socrates taught men to think for themselves, to analyze their language and thoughts, to test their opinions, to reason from the particular and contin- gent to the universal and necessary. Instead of vague notions, he sought to obtain correct concepts of every object, by considering it on all sides, under different points of view, that his knowledge of it might be true instead of imaginary. The soul of his teaching is contained in the principle that true knowledge must proceed from correct concepts. The ordinary way is to accept things as they appear to the senses ; but when man begins to reflect he begins also to correct his sensuous impressions by means of thought. What is thought ? Can you think a single thing, a maple, for instance, without including in your thought the class, or genus tree, to which it belongs ? Does not the essence of thinking consist in having something more present to the mind than that which ostensibly claims the attention ? This something more is what Socrates seeks to analyze and define, the general con- cept as distinguished from the particular sensuous im- pression. According to Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, Socrates introduced the method of inductive reasoning and of logical definition, which constitutes the basis of scientific investigation. How these elements stand 82 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. related to his fundamental principle of self-knovledge will be shown presently. Tlio mctliod wae not BomethiDg doarij defined in his own ronsnion«no88, but ft natqnil manner of philoe- ophizing und imparting ingtruction pecnlinr to himself. Ho nought fir8t to convinco men of their ignoninoe. Nothing is nioro fatal than to beliere yon knowr wluit you do not know. Nothing 18 more eseeutinl than to igninh between irluii you know and what you only think jou know. Self-examination is a preliminary step to the attainment of true knowledge ; and liimalated raon to attempt the tinii. .Apparently ignorant and eager to 1)0 inxtruetcd by tho««o with whom lie oonrerees^ he aecopta their opinions only to entangle them aftervarda in contrudictiony and absurdities, dodncing unexpected oonsequences^ and confusing tbem more and more until finally their supposed knowledge tanislic^. This is the celebrated Socratic irony^ the critical factor in the Soeralio method^ assuming its peculiar form from the presupposed ignorance of the one who niHa* it luc an instrument. Tlie subject upon whom it ix pntctifcd discover that lu; known nothing, and rc^rds all his previous notions and beliefs dintrtiKt fully. It iM not ii sceptical denial of knowhslgt; on the part of Socmton^ but an acknowledgment of his own ignorance^ and a discovery of the ignorance of thoee to wliom he ap- plies his testing process. ^^The idea of knowing was an infinite problem to Socrates,'* says Zeller, *' opposite which be could only bo conscious of his own uncertainty." THK SOCttATT" I*nTI.O'«iOPnT. ^ Socfilet^ like the Sophi*^ * tui all that had IMpeviously passed for tmth < farther, he strikes out a new road for its attainment, leading to a new world of thought, whose oonqncst h reaerred for Plato and Aristotle, but whose discovery is due to Socrates bimiielL Not fnuling in him»lf what he •ought, he aj>plied to othem; love of knowltslge is an impulse to friendship, and the blending ol Ibe two ooDStitutiM the Socratic Kros. By a kirn! of art that he calls intdlectual midwifery, be sought Ui help into the world tboughu that lie laU»nt in every one's con- sctottsnesa. This u the positire Ma of his interrogatory atiidjsis, an attempt to produ<^e rwil knowledge, which according to his idea and method can only proooed from true concepts. His method is that of induetion. Starting from tbo Amplest object and the moit common notioiut concerning ii» he analyzes them so thoroughly a* to bring o«t the opposition which each contains within itself, or in r a\ to »orae other; correcU one-sided aisumptionM by additional obaarratioiiB ; and succeeds finally in separating that which belongs to tlie esaenoe of the object from that whioh is aoctdental and couUn- gent It is a procees of d ion. the art of forming concepts. It is also a culture of self-consciousneis. the development of reason. Thu child and tlie savage dwell in a world of concrete .^le representations ; the adult and the civiliaed man live amid thoughia and abstractions. IlluKtrations that appear tedkMis and trivial to us in our present stage of reflection were sawntial to clearness of expression in the i^ of Socrates. It 84 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. ■n The important element in liis dialogues is their method, the fact that what were formerly unexplained hypotheses and unconscious guess-work is now arrived at by a process of thinking. His investigations are directed mainly towards the necessity of knowledge and the nature of morality, towards moral and intellectual self-analysis. The critical discussions in which he en- gages oblige the speakers to consider what their notions imply, and the aim of their actions. The problem of philosophy for Socrates, according to Aristotle, is to seek for the essence of virtue, and virtue is regarded as a knowing. Socrates seeks to define the concept of temperance, of valor, of justice, because according to his idea a knowledge of their real essence constitutes the only safe moral guide. Schwegler characterizes the Socratic method *'as the skill by which a certain number of given, homogeneous and individual phenomena was taken, and their logical unity, the universal principle which lay at their basis, inductively found. This method presupposes the recog- nition that the essence of the objects must be compre- hended in the thought, that the conception is the true being of the thing. Hence we see that the Platonic doctrine of ideas is only the objectifying of this method which in Socrates appears no farther than a subjective dexterity. The Platonic ideas are the universal concepts of Socrates posited as real individual beings.'' CHAPTER XVI. THE SOCRATIC ETHICS. THE leading thought of the ethics of Socrates is expressed in the sentence: All virtue is true knowledge. '' Socrates, by laying down thought, or more strictly self -consciousness, as the groundwork of ethics,'' says Prof. Ferrier, '' supplies the truest of all founda- tions for a system of absolute morality, and contains the germ of all the ethical speculations, whether polemi- cal or positive, which have been unfolded since his time." We cannot do right without knowing what right is ; to know it and not to do it appeared impossible to Socrates. No man, according to his theory, is vol- untarily vicious. If he knew that thinking was his real self, his real nature, and that appetites and passions are enslaving forces, he would aim at their restraint, and at the preservation of his true being and personality. Man does not pursue evil unless he thinks it good for himself, unless he mistakes the essence of his own nature, and believes that it consists of sensation instead of thought. Right action follows necessarily from a knowledge of the right, according to the Socratic prin- ciple ; wrong action, from an absence of knowledge. As regards the virtue of bravery, Socrates argued that he who recognizes the true nature of an apparent danger 85 86 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. and the means to meet it, has more courage than he who does not. Nothing is more essential morally than self-knowledge ; because he who knows himself truly will unfailingly do what is right, while he who is igno- rant of himself, or who mistakes apparent for real knowledge, will do wrong. With Socrates, knowledge is not merely an indispensable condition, and means of help to virtue, but it is the whole of virtue. Plato and Aristotle correct this one-sidedness. Aris- totle objects that Socrates does not distinguish between the intellectual and the emotional parts of the soul, that he deprives our virtuous affections of the warmth and spontaneity by which they are characterized. What is wanting in Socrates is the side of subjective reality which we call the heart. Knowledge is essential to virtue, but is not the whole of virtue, or virtue would belong only to thought, to the intellect alone. The experiences of the time convinced Socrates that tradition and custom, even the authority of the laws, could not oppose moral scepticism ; that the basis must be laid deeper, that the activity of man must be guided by clear and definite knowledge. If the question is asked. Knowledge of what? Socrates replies. Of the Good. But what is the good ? The good, according to his definition, is the concept of knowledge treated as an aim, or knowledge itself in its practical applica- tion ; an explanation indeterminate enough to admit of various interpretations. Socrates at one time ex- plains the good as the useful, and apparently recom- mends virtue because it is most richly rewarded by God and man. At another time he qualifies this statement THE SOCRATIC ETHICS. 87 by saying that virtue is useful because it is connected with the health of the soul, the divine part in man, the seat of reason. It is certainly a contradiction, as Zeller says, to explain virtue as the highest aim of life, and at the same time to recommend it on account of the advan- tages it brings. But this contradiction proceeds from the abstract character of the concept of virtue, and the impossibility of deriving definite moral activity from the general principle that virtue is a knowing. Kant is not wholly free from the same inconsistency. He rejects most decidedly every moral standard based on experience, and yet, in determining the maxims suited to the principle of universal legislation, determines them according to the consequences which would follow were they universally adopted. The defect in the ethics of Socrates is not so much a want of moral value as of scientific reflection. Though accident in a great measure guided the discourses of Socrates, there were three points, according to Xenophon, that he treated with especial preference. The first was the independence of the individual through the limitation of his wants and desires ; the second was the ennobling of the life of the soul through friend- ship ; the third and most important was the further- ance of the common weal by an ordered life in and for the state. Man, according to Socrates, only becomes master of himself through freedom from needs, and the exercise of his thinking faculty ; if dependent on bodily conditions and enjoyments, he is a slave. Socrates did not shun sensuous pleasures, but was 88 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE SOCRATIC ETHICS. 89 able to preserve in the midst of them perfect control of himself and of his thought. A thorough Greek, he aimed at moderation and freedom of mind rather than asceticism. He appreciated highly the worth of true friendship, affirming that it was conformable to man's nature, and necessary for mutual help and interchange of ideas. So far as it proceeds from human needs and wants it is based on utility ; but Socrates conceives it also in its ideal form, existing only for the sake of the good. In his low estimation of marriage and the office of woman in the household, he agreed with his fellow- countrymen, and speaks '' like the husband of Xanthippe rather than the friend of Aspasia." Yet he expressly acknowledges his indebtedness to one woman, Diotima, and says that she was his teacher in the love of wisdom, or philosophy. His own conduct shows little regard for domestic life. He considers the state and not the family, as the chief object of moral activity, and here^ again he is purely Greek. He not only requires the most unconditional obedience to the laws, but wishes every- one of ability to take part in their administration, since the welfare of individuals depends on the welfare of the community. This is in accordance with the old Greek view of the state; but he departs from it widely in other re- spects. He demands that everyone who aspires to be a statesman shall prepare himself by a thorough course of self-analysis and discipline, and only recognizes a right and a capacity to discharge political duties when these conditions have been fulfilled. He believes that where the rule of the majority prevails an upright man ' m can do nothing but return to private life. In place of equality, or an aristocracy of birth and wealth, he would substitute an aristocracy of intelligence, like Plato in the Republic. These ideas brought him into collision with the Athenian democracy. While insisting on obedience to the laws, he at the same time tests their validity by an inner standard set up by himself, the individual con- science. This contradiction is not peculiar to Socrates, but is manifested at once if one seeks to make a law of the state, or any rule of conduct absolute. Even the command, '' Thou shalt not kill," is conditioned by circumstances. The same consciousness that recognizes this as an imperative duty, impels one to battle bravely in defense of his country, or to slay his country's enemies. The laws of the land must be obeyed, but there are times and occasions when disobedience is sublime, and lifts the individual to a height of moral grandeur ordin- arily unattainable. This was the case with Socrates himself, and the Antigone of Sophocles. But the in- dividual must not set up his arbitrary will against the will of the state, unless he possesses an insight into the eternal principles of law and justice and morality, and decides according to their dictates instead of following his own subjective liking and inclination. This relation between the subjective will of the indi- vidual and his objective will as embodied in the state, is more a matter of conscious reflection to-day, than it was in the time of Socrates. It was misunderstood by some of his favorite disciples, notably Alcibiades and Critias, one of whom became the enemy and betrayer 90 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE SOCRATIC ETHICS. 91 of his country, the other its opponent and tyrant. They lived in accordance with a one-sided interpretation of the Socratic principle of subjectivity, and cast upon their teacher and his doctrines a discreditable reflection wholly undeserved. For the aim of Socrates, in the self-culture of the individual, was not that of the Sophists, to advance private interest and acquire per- sonal power and dexterity ; but to attain true knowledge, and thereby establish the sovereignty of virtue and the well-being of the community. What he sought was to reform the state rather than the means by which it might be governed. It is uncertain whether Socrates went beyond the common Greek view of morality, inculcating good towards friends, but permitting evil towards enemies. In one of the earliest dialogues of Plato, he is made to say that wrong-doing cannot be permitted even towards one from whom wrong-doing has been suffered. Whether this sentiment is Plato's own or that of historical Socrates, is undetermined. As to the disgrace that was generally attached to trade and commercial pursuits by the Greeks, Socrates held that any useful activity was lionorable, and that idleness alone ought to call forth shame. Nahire.—ln his view of nature he refers all physical phenomena to man as their highest end. ^'He dwells on the Creator rather than the creation," and shows what care has been taken to provide for human needs and wants. He argues that a belief in God and provi- dence would not be inborn in men of all conditions and times if it were not true. The founder of a scientific doctrine of ethics, he is the founder also of that ideal view of nature, which in spite of all abuses and objections has proved itself of value in the study of empirical phenomena. The adaptation of means to ends in the world of nature, its reasonable arrangement, led him to the conception of the one Supreme Being who sustains to it the relation of soul to body. Yet he frequently peaks of the gods as many, in accordance with the popular faith. He discussed the question of existence after death, and considered it highly probable. *' Hap- piness, virtue, knowledge,— this was the Socratic trin- ity," says Dr. Lord, '' the three indissolubly connected together, and forming the life of the soul,— the only precious thing a man has, since it is immortal/* CHAPTER XVII THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. A SPIRIT like that of Socrates could not fail to -^--^ produce a lasting impression on his immediate contemporaries and followers, an impression, too, of the most varied character, due in part to the lack of sys- tem in his philosophy, in part to the convictions and beliefs peculiar to individuals. Many simply per- ceived and were influenced by his logical personality, his pure character and lofty moral maxims. Xeno- phon, whose honest integrity and genuine worth win our admiration, depicts Socrates in the most glowing colors as a man and a moralist, but leaves untouched the profounder phases of his thought. A few looked deeper; but even they conceived the Socratic theories one-sidedly, fastening on those which they understood best, and adding others from older systems of philoso- phy. One thinker alone, Plato, comprehended his master fully, and developed to rich fruition the truths explicit and implicit in the doctrines of Socrates. Four Socratists besides Plato founded schools of philosophy : Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes and Aristip- pus. Euclid and Phaedo are closely related, and con- fine themselves chiefly to questions concerning the dialectic of Socrates ; Antisthenes and Aristippus, on 92 THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 93 the other hand, neglect everything but the ethical side of his teaching, understanding and expounding it in different senses, diverging widely not only from Socrates, but from each other. Socrates defined the object of man's striving as a knowledge of the Good, but he left it for each to determine in what the Good consists and how it is to be pursued. Different theories and different modes of interpretation naturally followed from a principle so abstract. The mission of Socrates was simply to bring men to true wisdom, and to prove that it be- gins with knowledge of self, including but not in- cluded by the knowledge of the world. From this time henceforth philosophy no longer asks, What is nature ? — but. What is truth ? Man becomes conscious not only of a contradiction between himself and the outer world, but of a contradiction in his own in- terior being, in thought itself. This was the service of Socrates, and it was impossible for one man to do more than to thus prepare the ground for the munif- icent harvest afterward reaped by Plato and Aristotle. THE MEGARIAN SCHOOL. The Megarian school is named from its founder, Euclid of Megara. lie must not be confounded with the Alexandrian mathematician who lived a century later. It is related that when the Athenians and Megarians were at war with each other, he used to steal into Athens at night disguised as a woman, risking his life to hear and converse with Socrates. He was noted both for his obstinacy and calmness in disputing. Once when an adversary cried out in wrath: 94 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. "I will die if I do not avenge myself upon you"; Euclid replied, ''I will die if I do not so soften your anger by the mildness of my speech that you will love me instead/' Euclid was present at the death of Socrates, but after that event returned to Megara, accompanied by many of the Socratists, who remained abroad until the tide of opinion turned at Athens, and the accusers of Socrates were themselves punished. In his philosophy, Euclid combined the Eleatic principle of being with the Socratic ethics, and affirmed that the Good is one, though disguised under many names, as intelligence, God, thought, etc. The Good alone is; what is opposed to it is not, lias no real being. The senses are false witnesses ; they show us multiplicity, delusive and changing appearances. Thought alone is able to grasp the immutable essence of things. The Megarian school was kept up for a time after the death of Euclid, but exercised little influence on the course of philosophy. Eubulides, one of its best known leaders, and a disciple of Euclid, was noted for his sophisms. The Greeks were fond of finding the contradictions that underlie our ordinary speech and representations. Each sentence is a unit, but at the same time consists of a subject and predicate differing from each other; being and non-being are contained in language and in thought. But the com- mon consciousness is confused by an arbitrary separa- tion between the positive and negative elements of a sentence, not perceiving that truth is only to be found THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 95 in the unity of opposites. '^If any one confesses that he lies, does he lie, or tell the truth ? " Here is a dilemma like that of Sancho Panza, who in his character of ruler and judge had to decide the fol- lowing case : A rich man had erected a bridge for the benefit of travelers, and near by a gallows, grant- ing a free passage to any one on condition that he would say truly * whither he was going and agree to be hanged if he spoke falsely. One came finally, who in response to the question whither he was going answered, to be hanged on the gallows near the bridge. The owner was in great perplexity. If the man were hung he would have spoken the truth ; if he were not hung, he would have spoken falsely. Sancho directed that the milder interpretation be placed on the case, and that the man should be permitted to cross the bridge. The Megarians delighted in similar puzzles, but did not solve them as satisfactorily as Sancho. Carried to a higher point of acuteness and subtlety by the Sceptics, they finally led to absolute negation of all knowledge and reality. Stilpo was a member of the Megarian school, but united with its doctrines other tendencies belonging to the Cynics. Diogenes Laertius says that he so far surpassed all others in acuteness of speech that the whole of Greece contemplating him was in danger of becoming Megarians. llis character was held in the highest veneration. When Megara was taken and plundered he was questioned as to his loss, and replied that he had seen no one carrying away science. A condition of apathy was his highest moral ideal. He 96 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. thought that the wise man should be sufficient to himself, not even needing friends in order to be happy. When made acquainted with the vicious life led by his daughter, he replied that if he could not bring her to honor neither could she bring him to dishonor. Phaedo, a favorite disciple of Socrates, founded a school in Elis, resembling the Megarian in its charac- ter and tendency. He is the person represented by Plato, the narrator of the last conversation of Socrates. THE CYNICS. According to Zeller, the Cynical school was like the Megarian, a blending of Socratic philosophy with Eleatic and Sophistic doctrines, the two uniting in Stilpo, and going over into Stoicism with Zeno, who was one of Stilpo^s disciples. Antisthenes, the founder of Cynicism, was in early life a disciple of Gorgias, and himself gave instruction in the art of rhetoric and the doctrines of the Sophists. Later, he became attached to Socrates, and was one of his most en- thusiastic adherents. He taught in a gymnasium called Cynosarges, and appears to have been a man of high moral character, though Plato and Aristotle speak of his culture as superficial. He recognized virtue as the supreme aim of life, and thought all knowledge useless that did not serve ethical aims. Virtue needs nothing except the strength of character of Socrates; it can do without theories and principles. The good is beautiful, the bad is ugly. The wise man is sufficient to himself ; he pos- sesses everything which others only seem to possess. THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 97 His own virtue makes him happy; he is at home everywhere in the world. Happiness is the final aim, but happiness and virtue are one. There is no good except virtue, no evil except vice. He alone is happy who is independent of externals, who desires nothing outside of that which is absolutely within his con- trol. He must be lifted above poverty and riches, honor and shame, life and death, must fear nobody and care for nothing. He must be indifferent to all that concerns the public life of society and the pri- vate life of home; his feelings must be deadened to insensibility ; he must renounce enjoyment itself, and find supreme self-satisfaction in virtue only. The freedom of the Cynics is abstract and negative. True freedom consists in the control of one's needs and desires, not in their complete denial. Nor is it the highest morality to withdraw from human duties and relations, from participation in the life and in- terests of our fellow-men. One may admire the force of will with which the Cynics pursued their aim, though it led to spiritual vanity and pride, rather than to Socratic elevation of character. They regarded themselves as physicians, able to heal the moral sickness of men, most of whom were fools enslaved by their desires. They occupied a peculiar position in the Greek world, and have been called the Capuchins of antiquity. In spite of their strangeness and extravagance, their influence was in part beneficial. They are said to have worn a distinctive dress, ragged and dirty, which did not escape the criticism of Socrates, to whom Antisthenes displayed 98 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. the holes in his garment. **Ah/' said Socrates, ''through the hole itself I see your vanity.'' Diogenes, of Sinope, was a disciple of Antisthenes, whose theories he exaggerated to the point of absurdity. *' To have no needs," said Diogenes, '* is divine ; to have as few as possible comes nearest the divine." He threw away his cup as useless when he saw a boy drinking out of the palm of his hand. He once entered the dwelling of Plato, and walked around with dirty feet upon a beautiful carpet, saying, ''Thus I trample on the pride of Plato." "' Yes, but with a pride as great," replied Plato calmly. The requirements of Cynicism were too severe to at- tract many disciples. It was incapable of scientific development. Its practical activity was of a negative kind, demanding renunciation and the separation of the individual from society. Man was to rely simply on his single self isolated from all other human selves, thus opening the way to vanity and pride and arbitrari- ness. '' Cynicism thus touched its diametrical opposite — Hedonism," says Zeller. THE CYRENAIC SCHOOL. Aristippus of Cyrene, the founder of the Cyrenaic or Hedonic school, was a disciple of Socrates, though he is represented by Aristotle as a Sophist. He appears to have been a man of considerable culture when he first met Socrates. Brought up in the midst of wealth and luxury, his pleasure-loving habits contrasted strangely with the simplicity of his master. Of all the Socratists he was the first to require pay for his instruc- tions, and himself sent money to Socrates, which was promptly returned. THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 99 Aristippus agrees with Antisthenes that happiness is the aim of philosophy, but he understands by happiness pleasure, the enjoyment of the moment. Only the present is ours, we must cease to concern ourselves with the past and the future; we can no longer possess the one and may never possess the other. Pleasure is a sensation of gentle motion ; pain, of violent motion ; the mean between the two is indifference. Pleasure is alone worthy of desire; quiet is mere insensibility like that of sleep. But insight is needed that we may choose and discriminate between our various appetites and desires ; pleasure is sometimes bought at the expense of great pain. The Cyrenaics, like the Epicureans, are forced to consider the results of actions, and soon discover that there are pleasures of the mind that outweigh in value those of the body. Mere satisfaction of the sensuous desires will not produce happiness ; insight must be added, and the right mental disposition. Life offers the most to him who renounces no enjoyment, but remains at every instant master of himself. Aristippus led a life of self-enjoyment, preserving his serenity under all circumstances. He knew how to use men and things for his own advantage, and made it his principle to free himself as far as possi- ble from all sources of annoyance and trouble. He repels us by his superficial morality, and at the same time attracts us by his rare equanimity and modera- tion, which were purely Socratic. His principle is one that contradicts itself. He declares that to be happy man must surrender him- 100 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. self with the full freedom of cousciousness to the en- joyment of the present moment. But that freedom can only be attained by an elevation above immediate conditions and feelings. He bids us take no thought of the past or the future, and yet recommends in- sight and a consideration of the results of actions. Though he believes that pleasure is fixed by nature as man's ultimate aim, he sees that the aim is defeated unless it is controlled by prudential motives. It is said that his grandson, Aristippus the younger, first systematized the doctrine of Hedonism. Other leaders of the school were Hegesias, Theodorus, and Anniceris. Hedonism, Epicureanism, Eudsemonism and Utili- tarianism, agree in considering man chiefly on the side of his sensations, as a being susceptible of pleas- ure and pain, whose proper pursuit is happiness. Op- posite schools of morality, like the Cynics and Stoics, regard man almost exclusively on the side of his thoughts, as a being endowed with reason, self-con- sciousness, whose proper pursuit is virtue, the perfecting of his higher nature. The two ends usually harmonize, but when they conflict the question arises : Must we strive after the right or the useful, the just or the ex- pedient ? It is certain that Socrates answered the ques- tion in favor of right and justice, whatever Euda?mon- istic interpretation may be placed on his theories. He was so many-sided that he was the source of fruitful impulses in widely different directions, while at the same time his thought was so imperfectly systematized as to be easily misunderstood and misapplied. THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 101 There is much in the doctrine of the Megarians, of the Cynics, and of the Cyrenaics, that is Sophistic rather than Socratic. But it is nevertheless clear that the three schools proceeded from Socrates as their starting point, and were necessary in order to bring to light all the consequences of the Socratic principles. Their scientific achievements were slight, but they were not without influence on the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and on the later course of philosophy. Cynicism anticipated Stoicism ; Cyrenaicism antici- pated Epicureanism. But Plato is the complete Socrat- ist, comprehending and working out the thought of his master, developing its rich content, and adding to it his own invaluable contributions. CHAPTER XVIII. Plato's life and writings. nnHERE is no ancient philosopher with whose life we -■- are more intimately acquainted than with that of Plato, yet even in his case authorities vary. He was born in the year 429 B.C., at the beginning of the Pelo- ponnesian war, the year in which Pericles died. His father, Ariston, was a descendant of Codrus, the last hero-king of Attica ; his mother, Perictione, was a descendant of Solon. His mother's uncle was the famous Kritias, the most talented and the most danger- ous of the thirty tyrants of Athens. Born of this illustrious race and favored by wealth, Plato must have found in his surroundings abundant means for the highest culture attainable in Athens. He received instruction from the most famous Sophists, and one of his teachers gave him the name that he Jias made illustrious — Plato ; he was called by his family Aristokles. Some ascribe the name to the breadth of his forehead, others to the breadth of his mind and the wealth of his discourse. In his youth he cultivated poetry and wrote tragedies, dithyrambs and songs. In an epigram on Aster, one of his best friends, is a thought that reminds one of Komeo and Juliet : " To the stars thou look'st, my Aster, O, would that I were the heavens, So that I could see thee with so many eyes ! " 102 PLATO S LIFE AND WRITINGS. 103 In his twentieth year Plato made the acquaintance of Socrates, and during the long and confidential inter- course that followed, penetrated so deeply into the spirit of his master as to create for us his living portrait set in a frame of ideal beauty. The night before they met Socrates dreamed that a swan, the bird of Apollo, flew towards him with a melodious song, nestled in his breast, and then soared upward to heaven. Plato appreciated the debt he owed to Socrates and regarded it as the highest favor of fortune that he should have been born in his lifetime. His imaginative nature needed the log- ical discipline to which Socrates subjected his disciples, and it was, doubtless, this training that converted the poet into the philosopher. But the poet in Plato was never wholly lost ; truth for him was ever one with beauty. It is probable that, at this time or earlier, Plato studied the systems of other philosophers. Aristotle says that lie had been initiated into the Heraclitic doctrines by Cratylus before he met Socrates. The tragic fate of his master must have been a heavy blow to Plato, and could not but deepen his reverence for the character and the principles that met even the ordeal of death unmoved. If, before this time, he had been reluctant to enter political life it is not strange that after the condemnation of Socrates he should renounce it entirely. The Athenian state api>eared to him hope- lessly inefficient, and it is well for humanity that he did not sacrifice himself in its ruin, but fled for refuge and strength to a higher, supersensuous world, — the world of Ideas. After the execution of Socrates, Plato left Athens, 104 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. PLATO'S LIFE AND WRITINGS. 105 and took up his abode for a time at Megara, with his friend Euclid, the founder of the Megarian School of philosophy. He afterwards traveled to Kyrene, Egypt, Magna Gr«eia and Sicily. It is impossible to ascertain with certainty how long he remained in Megara, or whether he returned to Athens and taught philosophy, before completing what Schwegler terms his *' Wa)ider- jahre." He gained from his travels a closer acquaintance with the Pythagorean school of philosophy, and a deeper knowledge of mathematics, which he studied under the guidance of the most celebrated mathematicians of the time. Zeller and other authorities regard as legendary the stories that are told of his stay in Egypt, and of the priestly lore and mysteries into which he was there initiated. In Sicily, Plato visited the court of Dionysius the elder, whose youthful brother-in-law, Dion, embraced his doctrines. But the philosopher's plain speaking did not please Dionysius. Offended at his declara- tion that happiness is not dependent on external circumstances, he sent the philosopher to be sold in the slave-market of ^gina. The accounts of the affair vary, but Plato is said to have been ransomed by Anniceris, a Cyrenian. Dion and other friends, as the story goes, wished to repay the price of the ransom, but Anniceris refused the money for himself, and applied it to the purchase of the garden in the Academy. Here Plato gathered a chosen circle of disciples whom he instructed in philosophy. Among his auditors were two women. The Academy was a grove in the suburbs of Athens, used as a gymnasium, and named in honor of the hero Academus, whose fame is entirely eclipsed by that of Plato. Concerning the manner of his instruction we know little except what may be inferred from the form of his writings, and the decided way in which he condemns the long speeches of the rhetoricians, who know neither how to ask nor to answer questions. His discourses were doubtless conversational in character, although according to Aristotle he seems also to have delivered connected lectures, where the nature of the exposition rendered it necessary. On the death of the elder Dionysius, Plato again visited Sicily, influenced by his friendship for Dion and the hope that he might effect a reform in the Sicilian constitution by winning over to his political views the heir of the throne, the younger Dionysius. Dionysius received Plato politely ; but the philosopher's expectations were disappointed, for the young man had *' one of those mediocre natures who in a half-hearted way strive for fame and distinction, but are capable of no depth and no earnestness.'' A quarrel breaking out between Dio- nysius and Dion which led to the banishment of the latter, Plato returned to Athens. Some years afterward, moved by the solicitations of Dionysius and the entreaties of his friends, he made a third voyage to Sicily, hoping to effect a reconciliation between Dionysius and Dion. He not only failed in the attempt, but was so mistrusted by the tyrant that his life was endangered, and was saved only at the intercession of the Pythagoreans, then at the head of the Tarentine state. Ml 106 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. It is said, that Plato refused offers from various Greek states to become their lawgiver. It was a time when they did not prosper with their constitutions. But constitutions to be effective must be the outgrowtli of historical conditions rather than the creation of indi- viduals. Honored everywhere, especially in Athens, Plato died on his birthday, in his 81st year, at a marriage feast. He was buried in the Ceramicus, not far from the Academy. Plato lived at a time when Greece had reached her highest point of splendor, and was steadily declining in national greatness. His own nature and the influence of the time led him to philosophy rather than politics. His personality was more aristocratic than that of Soc- rates. Endowed with artistic tastes and the Greek love of beauty, he was not free from wants and desires, nor indifferent to the externals of life. But he always prac- ticed the simplicity and moderation which he inculcated in his philosophy. He was exclusive in his friendships and did not seek to share his thoughts with all ; he loved rather to shut out the world with its disturbing clamor. The aristocracy of intelligence, advocated in his ideal State, is deeply rooted in his own character. He united lofty moral principles with a rare susceptibility for beauty, grandeur of intellect with tenderness of feeling, enthusiasm with serenity, developing himself on all sides harmoniously, in accordance with the Greek ideal of human perfection. *' Plato's relation to the world is that of a superior spirit," says Goethe, '' whose good pleasure it is to dwell Plato's life and writings. 107 in it for a time. It is not so much his concern to become acquainted with it— for the world and its nature are things which he presupposes — as to kindly communicate to it that which he brings with him, and of which it stands in great need. He penetrates into its depths, more that he may replenish them from the fullness of his own nature, than that he may fathom their mysteries. He scales its heights as one yearning after renewed participation in the source of his being. All that he utters has reference to something eternally complete, good, true, beautiful, whose furtherance he strives to promote in every bosom.'' Like Pythagoras, he has been compared to Apollo, who in the bright clearness of his spirit was to the Greeks the very type of moral beauty, perfection and harmony. His literary activity extended over the greater part of his life, and it is thought that none of his writ- ings intended for publicity have been lost. Doubts have been thrown upon the genuineness of some of the minor Dialogues, but the authenticity of the greater ones is placed beyond dispute by the testimony of Aristotle. It is impossible to determine with cer- tainty the dates of the several writings, a point that might help us towards comprehending the historical development of Plato's system of philosophy. Schleiermacher classified the Dialogues according to an internal principle of connection, believing that Plato so planned his inquiries as to produce upon the reader's mind a certain effect, which would be presupposed in the succeeding investigation. He dis- 108 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. tinguished three divisions united in one organic whole; the elementary, the indirectly inquiring, and the ex- pository or constructive dialogues. Hermann agrees with Schleiermacher as to the unity of the writings, but finds its cause in the growth of Plato's mind rather than in any conscious design. He also arranges the Dialogues in three classes. The first is the Socratic elementary class, written before or immediately after the death of Socrates, dramatic in style and full of specious arguments, but pene- trating no deeper than Socrates into the fundamental problems of thought. The second is the dialectic or mediatory class, written under the influence of the Megaro-Eleatic philosophy, distinguished by more search- ing criticism and less beauty of form. The third is the expository or constructive class, uniting the artis- tic fullness of the first with the philosophic profundity of the second, enriched by all the elements of an enlarged experience, and fused together into one per- fect creation. Hegel ascribes little importance to these inquiries, believing that it is only ignorance of philosophy that renders the apprehension of Plato's thought difficult. His system exhibits a totality of the Idea, in which the one-sided abstractions of earlier philosophers taken up into his deeper principle attain concrete unity and truth. For the concrete, according to Hegel, is the unity of different principles, each one of which must be set up as the sole truth in order to be de- veloped and clearly conceived. CHAPTER XIX. CHARACTER OF PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. PLATO'S view concerning philosophy rests on a Socratic basis, but he goes far beyond his mas- ter in working out and perfecting his system of thought. With Plato as with Socrates, right action and right thinking are one ; philosophy is inseparably connected with morality and religion. But it was Plato who first developed into a systematic whole the ethical concepts of Socrates, and found not only their basis but a guide for the explanation of the natural universe in dialectic, or the pure science of Ideas. That there is a difference as well as a connection be- tween knowledge and action, was not wholly unobserved by Plato, although it was Aristotle who first clearly analyzed both, and distinguished beneath all apparent contradictions an essential identity in the activity of thought itself. Plato, like Aristotle, entered upon physical investi- gations, which had been entirely neglected by Soc- rates. But Plato's achievements in this field are slight ; to him the contemplation of pure ideas was far more important than the study of empirical data in the world of sense. For he regarded material things as types of eternal ideas, a world of shadows to be left behind if we would gain spiritual insight. He gladly 109 110 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. turned from the transient appearance to its underly- ing reality, from the infinite in its finite manifesta- tions to its revelation in pure thought. Plato was the first Greek philosopher who studied the doctrines of his predecessors, and consciously united in a higher principle the truth of their contradictory statements. "The Socratic philosophy of concepts was transplanted by him into the fruitful and well-tilled soil of the previous natural philosophy," says Zeller, "thence to appropriate to itself all kindred matter ; and in thus permeating the older speculation with the spirit of Socrates, purifying and refining it by dialectic, which was itself extended to metaphysical speculation ; in thus perfecting ethics by natural philosophy and natural philosophy by ethics, Plato has accomplished one of the greatest intellectual creations ever known." He has proclaimed with energy and enthusiasm the deepest principle of all speculation, the idealism of thought, and given an impulse to the progress of philo- sophy, transcending far the bounds of his own system. The form of the Platonic exposition, as is well known, is unique, and required an artistic nature for its construction. It is that of the philosophic dialogue, which retains the reciprocal kindling of thought pecu- liar to verbal intercourse, guided by a scientific pur- pose rather than contingent motives. Everything is simple and plastic. We are taken to the halls of the Gymnasia, or to the Academy, or to a banquet, or to the clear waters of the Ilyssus, where Socrates and other cultivated men are conversing. Each concedes to the other a perfect right to hold and to utter per- CHAKACTER OF PLATO's PHILOSOPHY. Ill sonal sentiments and opinions, which is the secret of that delightful Greek urbanity whose charm we all ac- knowledge. Socrates is the chief speaker and his per- sonality, idealized by Plato, is the bond of artistic unity between the dialogues. Plato realized that he owed the beautiful fruit of his thought to the seed that Socrates so generously scattered, and his writings are one grateful acknowledgment to the revered and beloved master. It is not difficult to distinguish in the dialogue what belongs to Plato and what belongs to Socrates; for philosophy is one, and later systems of thought can only develop the truth implicitly contained in the earlier. Plato's creative genius is shown by the man- ner in which he uses his intellectual material, original and inherited, forming it into a plastic whole as beautiful and complete as a work of Phidias. Thought to him is a conversation of the soul with itself, and the form of the dialogue is essentially connected with his idea of philosophy. He had a deep conviction of the advan- tages of speech as compared with writing, and sought by his peculiar method to compel the reader to an ac- tive participation in philosophic inquiries. He first arouses interest in the different opinions expressed by various speakers, and then, after a rigid analysis and investigation which exhibits their incompleteness, leaves the reader to discover for himself the central point of unity in the argument. The unfolding of the dialogue IS in fact the development of a philosophic theme. The speakers not only give their opinions, but fill the parts prescribed for them by the author. Many of the 112 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. questions of Socrates are so framed that a simple yes or no, is all the answer required; but, with few ex- ceptions, the art is so perfect as to preserve the life and spirit of a real conversation. Philosophy to Plato was not a mere doctrine, but a living power which he sought to communicate to others through actual personal communion, or the written speech that resembled it most nearly. The philosophic dialogue is as much his creation and peculiarity as the system of thought it embodies, and could never have reached equal perfection earlier or later. Philosophy demanded a sharper discrimination between the aesthetic impulse and scientific cognition, and renounced the plastic beauty of Plato's style for a more systematic exposition of its principles in the works of Aristotle. The employment of myths is another peculiarity of Plato's philosophy. The myth is an exposition by means of sensuous pictures addressed to imagination and feeling rather than to the pure thinking activity. It is a poetic presentment of that which the author believes to be true, but cannot prove scientifically. Like all symbolic representation, it is necessarily ob- scure and ambiguous. To interpret it strictly would be the task, and not a very enviable one, of some person who had plenty of time on his hands, says Plato in the Phaedo. Too much or too little is fre- quently found in it ; its hidden meaning is either extended to utterly foreign subjects or lost sight of entirely. It was the poet in Plato that clothed the myth in such mystic radiance, but its use was a neces- sity to the philosopher. He could not otherwise fill CHARACTER OF PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 113 up the gaps in scientific knowledge that existed in his day, or express those higher realities of religion and faith which transcend human experience. But, from a scientific point of view, Plato's use of the myth is a sign of weakness rather than of strength. The idea clothed in a sensuous form is neither fully comprehended nor expressed. Plato, like a creative art- ist, thinks in pictures and sees the truth intuitively; but this is poetry rather than philosophy. Philosophy must confine itself strictly to the domain of the pure intellect, and leave to poetry that of the imagination. Plato himself, in distinguishing between the dif- ferent grades of knowing, placed the truth in that alone which is produced through thought. In oppo- sition to the view of ordinary consciousness and that of the Sophists, he teaches that knowledge is neither perception nor correct opinion, but the activity of the soul itself in the sphere of ideas. If perception were knowledge, that would be true for each man which appears to him true ; if correct opinion were knowl- edge, there would be no possibility of false opinion, for we can only know or not know. Opinion is in- termediate between knowledge and ignorance, and is uncertain and variable because it lacks insight into the necessity of truth. Passing from the theoretical to the practical, Plato teaches that the virtue which is guided by opinion IS dependent on chance, and circumstances, and the subjective will of the individual. But virtue in its essence is immutable, and is based upon knowledge. Against the view of the Sophists, who consider pleas- 114 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. lire the highest good, Plato argues that the good can only be the just, that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, to be punished for evil than to re- main unpunished. '*The philosopher only has true happiness," he says, ^'for his pleasure alone consists in being filled with something real; that is the sole pleasure which is unalloyed and bound to no condi- tioning pain. The question whether justice is more profitable than injustice is as absurd as would be the inquiry, 'Is it better to be sick or well?''' Philosophy, according to Plato, is derived from practical necessity, and springs from inspiration or enthusiasm, the philosophic Eros, This enthusiasm assumes the form of love on account of the special brightness which distinguishes the visible copies of the beautiful. The soul, through love, seeks to fill itself with what is eternal and imperishable. Love is the striving of mortal nature after immortality. It does not at first reveal its true nature, but rises gradually from the love of beautiful forms to the love of beau- tiful souls, and finally to the love of that which is its true goal— the Divine Idea, or Beauty in Eternal Existence. Love, as conceived by Plato, is the philo- sophic impulse which seeks, through speculative knowl- edge and the practice of virtue, to expand the finite to infinity. When we ask how love is to obtain its highest object of endeavor, Plato unexpectedly supplements love by logic, and adds to the philosophic impulse .a severe training in the dialectic method. ^* Enthusi- asm is the first irregular production of ideas," says CHARACTER OF PLATO S PHILOSOPHY. 115 Hegel, **but it is scientific thought that brings them into a rationally developed shape and into the day- light." Plato declares that dialectic is the true fire of Prometheus, the instrument by means of which the pure idea is developed. It is a recognition of the essence of things, of the One in the Many, and the Many in the One. It proves that the only real- ity is spirit, and that thought is the truth of the sensuous world. Through the union of love and logic, of the dia- lectic impulse and tlie philosophic method, Plato de- velops his philosophy. The highest object of thought is the Idea of the Good, and the chief problem of education is to incline the soul towards this Idea. In a brilliant allegory Plato represents men as dwell- ing underground, in a cave, with a long entrance open towards the light. At a distance above and behind them a fire is blazing, but they are fastened in such a manner that they cannot turn their heads, and can only see the shadows cast by those who pass along a raised way between them and the fire. They look upon these shadows as realities ; and if one is freed and dragged toward the fire, or upward into the full blaze of the sun, he is filled with pain and terror, and blinded by excess of light. But he will come at last to recognize the truth, and will see that what he now beholds is the substance of the shadow. Should he descend again into the darkness of the cave, he will not see as well as his companions, and will be mocked as one who went on a visit to the sun and lost his eyes. But the way into the light 116 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. is the way to knowledge, and those who attain to the beatific vision of the Idea of the Good are always going upward. The soul must be turned away from the transient occurrences surrounding it until it is able to contemplate true existence. This is the mean- ing of education ; it is a knowing from within, and not from without. He alone is capable of philo- sophic cognition who has learned to renounce the sensuous, and to direct his vision towards true Being. Philosophy, to Plato, is the royal science that all others must serve, the realization and perfection of human nature, the absolute consummation of the spir- itual life. "The knowledge of the most excellent things begins through the eyes,'" he says in the Tim- aeus. '' The distinction of the visible day from the night, the lunations and revolutions of the planets, have produced the knowledge of time and given rise to the investigation of the nature of the whole. Whence we have gained philosophy ; and a greater good than it, given by God to man, has neither come nor will ever come." Plato recognizes that God alone is wise, and does not claim for man divinity, but only its likeness. He acknowledges that it is difficult for the human soul amid its earthly surroundings to attain the pure intuition of truth, but sees in self-activitv the means of development. He would even base the organism of the state on philosophy. ''Until philosophers rule in the state, or the now so-called kings and men in power philosophize truly and perfectly, and thus the ruling power and philosophy coincide — until the dif- 'a CHARACTER OF PLATO S PHILOSOPHY. 117 ferent dispositions are united which now are isolated, and engaged in these provinces separately for them- selves, pursuing the one or the other ; until then, oh friend Glaucon, there will be no end of evil for the people, nor, think I, for the human race in gen- eral." Plato's thought, so far as it means that uni- versal principles should direct and control the state, is true, and is generally acknowledged to-day as the substantial basis of government. ''Plato has indicated every eminent point in spec- ulation," says Emerson. "He wrote on the scale of the mind itself, so that all things have symmetry in his tablet. He put in all the past without weari- ness, and descended into detail with a courage like that he witnessed in nature. One would say that his forerunners had mapped out each a farm, or a district, or an island, in intellectual geography, and that Plato first drew the sphere. He domesticates the soul in nature ; man is the microcosm. All the circles of the visible heaven represent as many cir- cles in the rational soul. There is no lawless par- ticle, and there is nothing casual in the action of the human mind. * * * * Before all men he saw the intellectual values of the moral sentiment. He describes his own ideal when he paints in the Tim- a?us a god leading things out of disorder into order. He kindled a fire so truly in the centre that we see the sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, equa- tor, and lines of latitude, every arc and every node ; a theory so arranged, so modulated that you would say the winds of ages had swept through this rhythmic 118 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. I \ structure, and not that it was the brief extempore blotting of one short-lived scribe. * * * xiis sub- tlety commended him to men of thought. The se- cret of his popular success is the moral aim, which endeared him to mankind. Intellect, he said, is king of heaven and earth ; but in Plato, intellect is always moral." i :\ '- , CHAPTER XX. THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. THE division of philosophy into dialectic, physics, and ethics, is that which is generally adopted in the exposition of the Platonic system. This classifi- cation cannot be distinctly ascribed to Plato himself, but is one presupposed by Aristotle, and employed by Plato's disciple, Xenocrates. Dialectic, in the higher sense of the word, is the science of true Being, the inquiry into Ideas. The Idea for Plato is the true Universal, the essence of things, that which abides uniform and self-identical amid all finite changes and contradictions. It is ap- prehended, not by the senses, but by reason alone. All that the senses perceive is constantly changing, becoming ; no single thing exists truly, for it depends on another, and is self-contradictory ; the true is not the sensible, but the intelligible world. ''There are two sorts of things," says the Timaeus, ''one that always is and becomes not, and one that always be- comes and never is. The former, that, namely, which is always in the same state, is apprehended through reflection by means of reason ; the other, again, which comes to be and ceases to be, but properly never is, is apprehended through opinion by means of sensuous perception and without reason." One is the arche- 110 120 A STUDY OF GREEK PHII.(»OPHY. typal Idea ; the the other is iu imperfoct copy. Wo are led to the first when ^xe look for the ultimate end of the second ; that which U fair and good in the finite world can only heoome bo through jKirtid- pation in Infinite Beauty and GoodneM. £\ ling points to the idea as the csliho of lis exiKti^iicx! ; tho Ideal is the only Real. This particular r^ with itt hloom and fragrance, is a traiiKiton* imago of the ani- Torttl tone that nartr fuden. Ht«gi4 di:irtiiiguU)ietf hctweoD tlte higher form of dia- lectic employed hy PUto. and tluit which he ti«od in common with Socraltt and tl»o SophJKts. In Komo of tlie dialojjpaes, C in appanaitly an art of over- turning the common notions of moo bj eboving what coiitnidictionN thcj contain and how inadequate tbej aro as scientific knowledge. Its pnrpoee is to direct men to se^irch for what is inst««d of what appemrs; bnt its rwnlt is negative and dcetmctivi:. That Plato ap- preciated the danger involved in this nse of dialectic is erident from the advice given in the Republic^ that dtizena should not be initiated into the art before thej had completed their thirtieth year. But ihf.n^ is a pc(3itive side even to thi.t form of dialectic. It daasifles under one general riev tlie nottomi analyxed* and thus brings to oonBcionsneas the Univeraal. Plato seens a little tedious to modem thought in thii; pro- oedure becaaae the abatraetiona at uhich lie arrivea are part of our intellectual inheritanco. ''The dialectic aa speculativo i^ the Platonic dia- lectic proper/' aays H<^1 ; "ii does UfOi end with a negative rf^alt, hut pneeente the union of antithn'.ic THK PLATOXir DIALBCTIC. 121 ddee which have annulled each otlier. What Plato aeaka in the dialectic is the pure thought of the rear BOH, from uhti^h he verj carefnllj discriminates the understanding. One can have tlionght conceming many thingi^, if ho has thought at all ; but Plato does not mean this sort of thoughtiL The true spec- ulative gfeatnees of i :it<>, cliat through irhi<;h he miikea an epoch in the liistory of philoeophyy and conacqnently in the world-historj in general, is the more definite comprehenaion of the Idea ; an infnght which some centuries later constitutee tho funda- mental element in the formation of the world-his- tor>* and in the new organic form of tho human S|»iriL ** Plato*< dialectic atarta from that of Socrates^ but bu unitcK in hiN thought all the pnnoi|i]6a of the earlier philoeophera^ diiKolving tlunr oontm ms by means of that higher insight into trutii contained in hu theory of Ideas. Ho dcrivoi from Ileniolitus the doctrine tliat seosnous things are i)- cednro must refer to something different from sense, for sensible thingB^ being always liable to change* cannot be universally defined/' That which eziste ab& y, and is alone the object of knowledge, be calls Ideas, The sensuous manifold that we perceive is what it is by virtue of partici)xition in Ideas. The visible is but an adumbration of the invisible; senae 122 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. reflects imperfectly the reality of thought. Ideas are the eternal prototypes of Being; from them all other things are copied. They belong to the spiritual and not to the material world ; they are accessible to the contemplation of reason alone, and can neither be seen nor apprehended by sense and understanding. In the Symposium, Plato defines the Idea of the Beautiful, and shows how one may be guided from the love of its imperfect copies in the world of sense, on and on, with increasing apprehension of the truth until, at last, purified of earthly leaven, he sees what the essence of Beauty is, and beholds its divine Idea, the Infinite Cause of all that is fair and lovely in earth or heaven. ''But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty — the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and vanities of human life — thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty, divine and simple, and bringing into being and educating true creations of virtue and not idols only? Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye sf the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities; for he has hold not of an image but of a reality, and bringing forth and educating true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man 9^' may Ideas are present in the mind of every individ- ual, but few are aware of their existence, or know anything of their nature and character. The special THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 123 function of dialectic is to make us conscious of their presence, and to purify our thinking by directing it towards the true aim of human activity, the spirit- ual rather than the material. Education is not only useful information, but an illumination and purifica- tion of the soul. In the seventh Book of the Re- public, Plato explains the nature of dialectic and the training that is necessary to draw the soul upwards. Arithmetic and geography prepare the mind for true science by teaching it how to deal with abstractions apart from sensible objects. Yet mathematics is but a dream and a hypothesis, never analyzing its own principles in order to attain true knowledge. Dia- lectic, and dialectic alone, is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to establish them, and teaches the eye of the soul, buried in the slough of ignorance, to look upwards, using as handmaids the other sciences. Dialectic may be further defined / as the science which explains the essence of each thing, which distinguishes and abstracts the concep- tion of the Good, and is ready to disprove all ob- jections, not by appeals to opinion, but to true ex- istence. This is the knowledge without which man apprehends only shadows, and dreaming and slum- bering in this life reaches its end before he is well awake. To become conscious that one cannot think a sensation without passing beyond it to the idea that lies at its basis, is a discovery that summons the hu- man intellect to put forth its utmost capacities. To think is to pass from the singular and particular to 124 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. the idea or the universal. Before me lie a rose and a lily, and I apprehend that each is like and unlike the other. But whence comes this appre- hension? Can resemblance or difference be seen, or touched, or perceived by any of the senses? Are they not universal relations which can only be appre- hended by the intellect? Are they not laws of thought without which intelligence could not operate? Can we think at all except under the conditions of resemblance and difference, of genus and species? Can we know anything of a world that is not con- structed in conformity with these ideas? Are not the laws of thought objective as well as subjective, universal, necessary? Absolute and universal truth, according to Plato, must address itself to all intellect, and he therefore argues that ideas are the truest realities because they are the principles without which there could be neither intelligence nor the object of intelligence. The world of thought is the actual Avorld itself ; it alone exists truly and is capable of being known. It does not lie outside of reality, it is not beyond in heaven or elsewhere, it is here and now, eternal and divine in its nature. To become conscious of its presence we have only to develop our inner capacities, to see with the eye of the mind. " Ideas are to be reached only in and through scientific cognition, " says Hegel, *'they are immediate intuitions only in so far as they consist of the simple results which scientific cognition arrives at by its processes.'^ Science, the knowledge of that which is in truth, THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 125 is therefore distinguished from opinion. Plato, in the Republic, says that opinion is the middle ground between ignorance and knowledge, and that its con- tent is a mingling of Being and Nought. The subject matter of opinion is the world of sensuous objects, the individual thought which at the same time is and is not, since it only participates in ideas and reflects them imperfectly. Can we say of any finite thing that it is absolutely large or small, light or heavy? It is not merely one of these opposites but the other, as, for instance, in the Phaedo, Sim- mias is large in comparison with Socrates, small in comparison with Phsedo. But the idea of largeness remains what it is permanently, and is never at the same time identical with smallness. Only the idea can be known ; for of thought which is constantly changing, we may have opinion but not knowledge. Opinion refers to the material, knowledge to the im- material. To assume that the two are identical is to become a materialist ; to distinguish between them is to acknowledge the existence of Ideas, unchangea- ble and imperishable. The nature of knowledge, as opposed to perception, is considered at length in the Theaetetus. The definition that ** Knowledge is sensible perception/' is first ana- lyzed. This is soon identified with the saying of Protogoras that '*Man is the measure of all things." ** Things are to me as they appear to me and to you as they appear to you.'' Suppose the same wind blowing in our faces ; it is hot or cold, according to your feeling, or to mine. Feeling, perception, appearance, are identi- 126 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. cal with being and knowledge. But if truth is only sen- sation and one man's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his own judge, and everything that he Judges is right and true, why should we go for instruct- ion to Protagoras, or know less than he, or refuse to believe the contradictory proposition, that every man is not the measure of all things ? What need of discus- sion, or debate, or scientific inquiry, if subjective feeling is the criterion of knowledge ? Would not Prota- goras have to contradict himself and admit the truth of what his opponents advance, if every man perceives and feels correctly ? How could there be any difference in the judgments of men about the future ? Yet we admit practically that only the wise man knows what is expedient for the future. The farmer is a better judge of the prospective harvest than -the man who knows nothing of farming; Protagoras himself is a better judge of the probable effect of a speech than an indifferent person. Finally, if the objects of sen- sation are constantly moving and changing, as Protagoras asserts, how is it possible to fix them even for an instant ? Is not perception itself annihilated ? What can be pre- dicted of that which is in a perpetual flux ? It has been objected that Plato is not wholly fair to Protagoras and interprets him one-sidedly. But the truth remains, that knowledge is not sensible perception, or in Plato's words, ''Knowledge does not consist in im- pressions of sense, but in reasoning about them ; in that only, and not in the mere impression, truth and being can be attained.'' '*We cannot apprehend either through hearing or through sight that which they have in THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 127 common. To compare one sensation with another im- plies a principle which is above sensation. To com- bine perceptions in the unity of self-consciousness is a purely intellectual act. Through what organ of the body would oqe perceive mathematical and other abstrac- tions, unity and multiplicity, sameness and difference, likeness and unlikeness, and the most universal of all, being ? We know a thing to be hard or soft by the touch, but the essential being of hardness or softness, their op- position to one another and the nature of the opposition, is slowly learned by reflection and experience. Knowledge, then, is not perception, and must be sought elsewhere. Is it correct opinion ? The Greek word for opinion (rfo;ta), like the German Meinung and Vorstellufig, is difficult to translate. It is used in various senses by Plato, and is explained by one commentator as crude conception, feeling, instinctive conviction. But these terms do not exhaust its meaning, as is evident from the following passage : '* The soul when thinking appears to me to be just talking — asking questions of herself, and answering them, affirming and denying. And when she has arrived at a decision, either gradually or by a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed, and does not doubt, this is called her opinion." Plato proves that opinion is not knowledge, and the dialogue ends without reaching the definition sought. The light thrown on the subject, though indirect, is none the less valuable. The work begun in the Theaetetus is continued in the Sophist, where Plato investigates the ideas of movement and rest, of Being and Non-Being. The 128 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Sophist is an imaginary representative of false opinion. But falsehood is that which is not, and therefore has no existence. If we admit that falsehood exists, we presuppose the conception of Non-Being; -for only that opinion can be named false which asserts the non- existence of things which are, and the existence of things which are not.- The same difficulty occurs if we define the Sophist as the imitator of appear- ance and not of reality. How can he imitate that which is not ? The argument again asserts the exist- ence of Non-Being, which is positively denied by Parmenides and the Eleatics. Parmenides affirms that all things are one, that we cannot perceive the many because the many are not, that plurality and change, space and time, are merely illusions of the senses. Plato, on the other hand, seeks to establish the reality of Non-Being, explain- ing it as the other of Being, both of which belong to all things. Non-Being is negation, and is essen- tial to any distinction. It becomes, as it were, posi- tive in relation to that to which it is opposed. The not large is as real as the large, darkness is as real as light, cold as heat. In relation to itself light is, in relation to darkness, is not ; to know what it is we must know what it is not; negation is as neces- sary as affirmation. True being contains difference a^ well as identity, being for others as well as for self. The being of the Eleatics is altogether exclusive ; the being of Plato is altogether inclusive. In opposition to the Eleatics, the Sophists hold fast to Non-Being, which is the standpoint of sensa- THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 129 tion, or the many. This view leads to materialism, to the belief of those who, according to Plato, *'are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and seem determined to grasp in their hands rocks and oaks ; of these they lay hold and are obstinate in maintaining that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or es- sence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him and will hear of nothing but body." Plato represents their opponents as cau- tiously defending themselves from above out of an un- seen world, mightily contending that true essence con- sists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas ; the bodies which the materialists maintain to be the very truth they break up into little bits by arguments and affirm them to be generation and not essenice. These *' Friends of Ideas,'' as Plato terms them, assert that neither motion, nor life, nor soul, nor mind, are pres- ent with absolute Being, that to it belongs neither activity nor passivity. Against this doctrine of '' an everlasting fixture in awful unmeaniugiiess," Plato argues forcibly that the Divine Reason could exist nowhere, nor in any one, if it were unmoved, and had neither life, nor soul, nor thought. If we are to participate in Being, we must act upon it or be acted upon by it ; if we are to know Being; a capacity of being known must correspond to our faculty of knowledge. It is as difficult to conceive Being as Non-Being if the two are held in utter isola- tion, Non- Being is the principle of the other which 130 A STUDY OF GKEEK PHILOSOPHY. runs through all things. In spite of Parmenides who says, '* Non-Being never is and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way of inquiry/' Plato proves that *' there is a communion of classes, and that being, and difference, or other, traverse all things, and mutually interpenetrate, so that the other partakes of being and is by reason of this participation, and yet is not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than being, is clearly and manifestly not-be- ing. And again, being, though partaking of tlie other, becomes a class other than the remaining classes, and being other than all of them, is not each one of them and is not all the rest, so that there are thou- sands and thousands of cases in which being is not as well as is, and all other things, whether regarded individually or collectively, in many respects are, and in many respects are not." The concept of motion, for instance, excludes that of rest, but both participate in being. Each is identi- cal with itself, but the other of the other. So far as concepts are alike, the being denoted by one be- longs to the other ; so far as they are different, the contrary is the case, and the being of one is the non-being of the other. The concept man, for in- stance, includes all those concepts which distinguish man as an animal, and those also which separate him from other animals, but it excludes an infinite num- ber of concepts which are other and different from man. Thus in every being there is also a non-being, the difference. He is the master of dialectic who gees clearly the reciprocal relatipu of concepts, and THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 131 knows what classes have and have not communion with one another. But he who is always bringing forward oppositions in argument is but a little way in the investigation of truth. The attempt at uni- versal separation is the annihilation of reason, for thought consists in the uniting of ideas. The identity of Being and Non-Being constitutes, according to Hegel, the true point of interest in Platonic philosophy. *'As for the imagination,'' he says, "it is well enough to arouse it and animate it with representations of the Beautiful and the Good ; but the thinking cognition asks after a definite state- ment regarding the nature of the Eternal and Divine. And the nature of this Eternal and Divine is, es- sentially, free determination alone, and the being de- termined does not in any way interfere with its universality ; a limitation (for every determination is limitation) which nevertheless leaves the Universal in its infinitude free by itself. Freedom exists only in the return-into itself, the undistinguished is lifeless ; the active, living, concrete universal is, therefore, that which distinguishes itself within itself, but remains free in the process. This determination consists only in this; that the one is self-identical in its Other, in the Many, in the Different." The Parmenides, through a more abstract and elaborate dialectic, attains the same result as the Sophist. Parmenides is the chief speaker, and his conclusion that the one is not thinkable without the many, nor the many without the one, is opposed to the Eleatic doctrine. But Plato may have regarded 132 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. his theory of ideas as a development of the Eleatic conception of being, and a conciliation of its contra- dictory elements. Parmenides certainly assails Plato's theory in the first part of his discourse, anticipating in the most wonderful way the criticism of after ages. Plato here touches on the deepest problem of philoso- phy, the connection between the Ideas in us and the Absolute Idea, between the human and the Divine. Concerning the unity of the one and the many, Socrates says; ''I should be surprised to hear that the genera and the species had opposite qualities in themselves ; but if a person wanted to prove to me that I was many and one, there would be no mar- vel in that. When he wanted to show that I was many he would say that I have a right and a left side, and an upper and a lower half, for I cannot deny that I partake of multitude ; when, on the other hand, he wants to prove that I am one, he will say that we who are here assembled are seven, and that I am one and partake of the one, and in saying both he speaks truly. • • • If, however, as I was suggesting just now, we have to make an abstrac- tion, I mean of like, unlike, one, many, rest, motion, and similar ideas and then to show that these in their abstract form admit of admixture and separation, I should greatly wonder at that."' Parmenides admires the noble ardor with which the youthful Socrates pursues philosophy, not holding fast to the sensuous, but to concepts which are seized by thought alone. But he recommends Socrates to practice dialectic, and to consider not only what fol- THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 133 lows from assuming a determination, but what follows from assuming its opposite. This leads to the second and most important part of the dialogue, the dialecti- cal treatment of the one and the many by Parme- nides himself. It is first proved that the one that can- not be many is not even one, that it is '* neither named nor uttered, nor conceived, nor known," and that the reality of the many apart from the one is also unthinkable. The hypothesis that the one is not is equally impossible to thought, and the conclusion is reached that *' whether one is or is not, one and the other in relation to themselves or one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear and appear not." *'The One is the Totality — All that is — Being and Non-Being — One and Many," to quote the words of Mr. S. H. Emery, in his exposition of the Parme- nides, published in the Jourfial of Speculative Philoso- phy. ''The negative series of propositions contains the first negation of a negation," says Prof. Jowett. ''Two minus signs in arithmetic or algebra make a plus. Two negations destroy each other. This subtle notion is the foundation of the Hegelian logic. The mind must not only admit that determination is negation, but must get through negation into affirmation. • • • That Plato and the most subtle philosopher of the nineteenth century should have lighted upon the same notion is a singular coincidence of ancient and modern thought." True Being must be defined as a unity which in- cludes in itself multiplicity. All things draw their 134 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. existence from the one and the many, and contain the finite and the infinite as a part of tlieir nature. The phenomenal world derives its reality from that which shines through it — Ideas. Plato does not deny, but explains actual existence. The plurality of the phenomenon is sustained and comprehended by the unity of the idea. In the Philebus, Plato distinguishes four determi- nations of existence ; the infinite, or unlimited, the limited, the union of the two, and the cause of the union. To the cause he ascribes reason and wisdom ; it is the Divine Providence everywhere adapting means to ends ; the Absolute comprehending in itself the finite and the infinite. **The distinction of the absolute and relative forms the logical ground-work of Plato's whole system," says Zeller ; '*for the idea exists in and for itself ; the phenomenon, and to the fullest extent, matter, only in relation to something else.'' In bridging the chasm between thought and sense, between ideas and phenomena, Plato is not always consistent with himself. At one time he describes the outward world as if it were mere subjective ap- pearance ; at another, he demands that the meanest material existence shall not be left without an idea. He struggles against this dualism, but does not over- come it wholly. That the essence of things is the same as the divine essence, is implied in his specu- lations, although in the Timaeus, as Hegel says, **the two appear distinct from each other — God, A7id the essence of things." THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC. 135 Plato also expressed the union of the one and the many by describing the ideas as numbers. That ideas are nothing but numbers is a view ascribed to Plato by Aristotle, but not found in the dialogues and therefore unsubstantiated. The Platonic Ideas are so related as to form a graduated series and organism, combining, excluding, or participating in one another in all conceivable ways. The lower presuppose the higher, and the high- est of all, without presupposition, is the Idea of the Good, which gives to everything whatever worth it possesses. As the sun in the visible world enlightens the eye and reveals things seen, everywhere causing growth and increase, so in the invisible world the Good is the source of truth and knowledge. It is represented as the goal of human activity, that which all men pursue under different names, the ultimate end of the world, the source of reality and reason. It is higher than the idea of Being ; everything that is and is knowable has received from God its exist- ence and its ability to be known. Plato clearly as- serts in the Philebus that the Divine Reason is none other than the Good, and identifies it in the Timseus with the Creator and world-builder. He seems never to have separated in his thought God as a person from the Idea of the Good. Plato identifies religion with philosophy; God in an absolute sense is not distinct from the highest of the Ideas. He recognizes the gods of the popular religion, but places above them One who is all-wise and all-powerful, creating the world because He is 136 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. good and ruling it by the supremacy of His reason. From His goodness he deduces His unchangeableness ; for that which is perfect can neither be changed by another nor alter in itself. God is wanting in nothing that is fair and excellent ; He is able to do whatever can be done at all ; His wisdom is seen in the per- fect adaptation of means to ends; He is absolute goodness and justice. To worship God is to seek to be like Him, to create in ourselves His image. Philosophy is not mere abstract specuhition, it is love and life, the filling of the soul with the true and the infinite. Dialectic, the development of the method by which the truth is ascertained, is inseparably united with moral culture. Plato teaches us to open the inward eye and see that which is in reality, turning away the thought and inclination from the sensible to the intelligible. The discipline of dialectic is moral as well as intellectual ; the highest insight which it enables us to attain is the object of religion as well as of philosophy— the Idea of God as Absolute Good- ness. CHAPTER XXI. THE PLATONIC PHYSICS. PLATO'S discussions concerning the world of phe- nomena, the Cosmos and man, are included un- der the name of Physics. But he tells us that in this field of investigation we must be content to take probability for our guide, and not look for the same accuracy of treatment as in dialectic. His themes are set forth in the Timaeus, the most diffi- cult and obscure of his dialogues, and the one most strongly colored with Pythagoreanism. Nature, the world of phenomena, is that which is always becoming and never is ; it is apprehended not by reason and reflection, but by opinion with the help of sense. As visible and tangible it must have been created ; and that which is created must have a cause. This cause is the Father of all who looked to an eternal archetype, for the world is the fairest of creations, and God is the best of causes. He created the world because He was good, and de- sired that all things should be as like Himself as possible. He brought order out of disorder, and re- flecting that of visible things the intelligent is su- perior to the unintelligent. He put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, and framed the universe to be the best and fairest work in the order of nature. 137 138 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Thus, through the providence of God, the world became a living soul and truly rational. He created it before the body, compounding out of the un- changeable and indivisible essence and also out of the divisible and corporeal a third nature interme- diate between them which partook of the same and the other. The whole was divided lengthwise, and the two halves were bent into an outer and an in- ner circle; the outer is the circle of the same, or the sphere of fixed stars; the inner is the circle of the other, which forms the seven spheres of the planets. In the circular revolution of these spheres the soul turning on itself moves, and at the same time moves the corporeal, interfused everywhere from the centre of the universe to the circumference. Its form, that of a sphere, is the most perfect and uniform of shapes, comprehending all others; and its motion is circular because, as return into itself, it is most appropriate to mind and intelligence. It is divided according to the cardinal numbers of the harmonic and astronomical systems, for numbers are the mean between mere sensuous existence and the pure idea, and the soul of the world must compre- hend in itself all proportion and measure. The mythical element is at once apparent in this descrip- tion. The immaterial is confused with the material ; imagination seeks to picture that which cannot be pictured, but which can only be thought by the pure reason. Plato believed the Cosmos to be a living creature with a soul. All that is moved by another must be THE PLAT6nIC physics. 139 preceded by the self-moved ; the corporeal is moved by another, the soul is self-moved. If we regard the universe, it is impossible to doubt that it is ruled by intelligence, and where, except in the soul, can this intelligence dwell ? The soul is therefore prior to the body, both in man and in the Cosmos. And as the body of the Cosmos is more glorious and mighty than ours, its soul transcends our soul in perfection. The soul of the world is the inter- mediate principle between the Idea and the phenom- enon, participating in the Divine Reason and im- parting it to the corporeal. It is not only the cause of material motion, but it is also the source of spiritual life and knowledge. Never growing old nor passing away, it is the perfect copy of the ever- lasting and invisible God, itself a blessed god exalt- ed above all other created deities. ''Even Plato is too deeply penetrated with the glory of nature to despise her as the non-divine," says Zeller, ''or to rank her as the unspiritual, below human self-con- sciousness." Hegel finds a profound meaning underlying Plato's doctrine of the world-soul. The nature of the Ab- solute Idea is shown in forming out of the undi- vided and the divided a mixture, partaking of the nature of the self-identical and of the other, and uniting all into one whole which is " the true mat- ter, the absolute stuff (material) which is sundered in itself, as an abiding and indissoluble unity of one and many. Phito finds the soul to be the all-in- cluding simple in the ide» of the corporeal universe; 140 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY to him the essence of the corporeal and of the soul is that of the Unity in the Difference. This two- fold Essence, posited in and for itself in the Differ- ence, systematizes itself within the One into many moments, which, how^ever, are movements; so this reality and the mentioned essence are, taken together, the whole in the antithesis of soul and body, and the antithetic sides are again one. Spirit is the all- penetrating to which the corporeal is opposed, though the former (spirit) is, in fact, this extension itself." The archetype of the world-soul exists alone in thought, in eternal self-identity; but entering into antithesis a copy arises and becomes visible. The archetype is the life eternal ; the copy is the system of sidereal motion, a self-moving image of the eter- nal. Moved according to number it is what we call time. The true time is eternal, or the present. Every thought exists in time ; like space, it is sen- suous and not sensuous, the form in which spirit becomes objective. Opposite to true time, or the eternal present, the form of the self-identical, is that of the self-changing, the phenomenal world of mat- ter. Space is its ideal essence, as time is the abso- lute principle of the immediate image of the Eternal. That Plato believed matter to be eternal, indepen- dent, existing as chaos before the creation of the world, might be inferred from certain passages of the Tim^us. But to interpret literally what was only meant figuratively would contradict other statements of a deeper philosophic import, and would place be- THE PLATONIC PHYSICS. Ul side the Idea of the Good another entity, equally permanent and self-identical. Plato seems rather to conceive matter as the unlimited, the condition of separation and division, the objective which has the power of receiving the idea and reflecting it in the phenomenon. It is the ground of change and of ex- tension, and must be different from the Idea, because it is that in which its copy exists. Plato enters into details concerning the derivation of the four elements, and classifies animated beings accord- ingly into those of fire or light, of air, of water, and of earth, lie describes the earth as at rest in the centre of the universe, and conceives the stars as immortal deities. His discussions concerning organic nature and the structure of the human body remind us that science was yet in its infancy. He distinguishes between two causes, the divine and the necessary. The divine ap- pertains to the eternal, the necessary to the finite and mortal. God himself is the author of the first ; but the second He commits to His assistants for the produc- tion and regulation of mortal things; ''an easy mode of transition from the divine to the finite," says Hegel. Plato's theory of the human soul is the completion of his physics. Conceived apart from its union with the body, the essence of the human soul is the same as that of the world-soul. Reason cannot impart itself to man except through its instrumentality ; participating in the idea of life it can never participate in the op- posite idea, that of death. It is self-moved and the source of motion in all other things; it is indestruct- 142 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. ible, Without end or beginning, free from change and multiplicity. Its connection with matter is expressed mythically as a lapse to a lower condition. The soul .s represented under the figure of two winged steeds and a charioteer. The white horse is the symbol of Us higher aspirations, the black horse is the symbol of appetite and impulse, the charioteer is the reason. If perfect and fully winged it soars upward and regulates the world, if imperfect it droops and receives an earthly form, which appears to be self-moved, but is really moved by the soul. The immortal, according to Hegel's interpretation of Plato's thought, is that whose soul and body are indivisibly in one, the identity of the real and the ideal, of the finite and the infinite. "Now the chariots of the gods, self-balanced, upward glide in obedience to the rein ; but the others have a difficulty, for the steed who has evil in him, if he has not been properly trained by the charioteer, gravitates and inclines and sinks towards the earth ; and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict in the soul For the immortal souls, when they are at the end of their course, go out and stand upon the back of hea- ven, and the revolution of the spheres carries them round and they behold the world beyond. * * * The colorless and formless and intangible essence is visible to the mind, which is the only lord of the soul. * * During the revolution she beholds jus- tice temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call ex- istence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute. This is the life of the gods. But other souls, trying THE PLATONIC PHYSICS. 143 .7i, to reach the same heights, fail, and fall upon the earth, occupying a higher or lower station as they have more or less truth. But memories of the glories of heaven remain as reminiscence, and the soul by con tinuous effort and aspiration may again soar upward to regain its lost inheritance." The allegorical character of this description must not be forgotten. That Plato believed in the pre-existence of the soul, and that its life on earth is a lapse from a perfect condition, is generally assumed, but rests princi- pally o„ mythical statements. The soul that looks upon true being is the pure thinking activity itself, the d.vmity withm man ; the soul that falls to earth takes appearance for reality, opinion for knowledge. Plato affirms that the soul must be freed from the dominion of the senses before it can behold that which truly exists, that to which change and death are foreign Ihrough Its union with a mortal body, it is subject to sensuous needs and greeds, but in its essence it is divine Accordingly, he distinguishes within it the mortal and irrational from the immortal and rational. The irra tional IS again divided into two parts ; the first, the white horse of the myth, is courage, or will ; the second IS mere sensuous appetite and desire. Reason, or thought has its dwelling in the head; courage, in the breast ; desire, in the lower regions. Courage is nobler than appetite, but acts frequently without reflection and belongs to the physiological, natural side of man A curious theory accounts for the way in which desire 18 ruled. Reason mirrors pleasant or terrible pictures on the smooth surface of the liver, and by means of 144 A STUDY OP GREEK PHILOSOPHY. imagination alarms or quiets the lower appetites. The liver is the organ of presentiments and of prophetic dreams, which are ascribed to the irrational side of the soul. Plato constantly teaches that corporeal existence is not true life, and that the soul proclaims its divine origin in its conflict with the body, its love for beauty, its longing for knowledge, its aspiration towards the good. To educate the soul is to bring to consciousness what it is in itself. Plato asserts that what we seem to learn is nothing but reminiscence, that learning is a process of recalling that which we possess already. **The soul, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things tliat there are, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all ; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting, or as men say, learning all out of a single recollection, if a man is strenuous and does not faint ; for all inquiry and all learning is but a recollection." Hegel thinks that Plato conceives the true nature of consciousness in the doctrine of reminiscence. Spirit includes both subjective and objective, the thinking sub- ject and the object thought. But the two appear sun- dered at first as the inner and the outer, and must be identified in thought to produce knowledge and science. Images of individual tranfiilon* thiogs conic from witli* ou( and are tho subject of opinion ; but anivcrtal THE PLATONIC PHYSICS. 145 thoughts, which alone are true, have their birth in the soul and belong to its essence. We convert what is sensuously perceived into something internal and uni- versal through the act by which we go into ourselves and recall it in the depths of consciousness. There dwells in each man as an immanent faculty of his soul, the organ with which he learns; and the art of in- struction is that of turning the soul away from tran- sient sensations and i!nax<^« lowardn the contemplation of the true and the good. But 80 far as Plato r(»])rc8ent8 all knowledge as pObKcwed by tho individual conscious- ness in a previous state of oxiHtonce, it belongs to his figurative way of imagining, by means of the myth, re- lations of pure thought. T\w. individual consciougness, not as a mere exclusive individual, but as inclusive, universal and divine iii its ('nwuicc, has in itKelf poten- tially the content of knowing, which can bo developed only through its own uc^tivity, Plato's doctrine of tho imm. r*!ty of the BOol ii based on its essential naturo, which excludes iht poiii* bility of its destruction. The soul in the priuciplc of motion, and is inscpimiblj combined with the idea of life. The composite alone is subjeu and decay; but the soul in it« eaw&ce in Kimple, self-iden- tical, incapable of any ohango. It^ subetance .. iliat which remains ever the aaine trmk vhen inTolred irith external material which «wm» foreign to it«elf. I represent by myself one eensuoas image afttsr jDolhcr> but their changes do not affect mj thinking acUntj, wliich ramoins in permanent self-idei ixogniang all the iiniigee as my production. 146 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Plato's belief in retribution after death is closely connected with his doctrine of immortality. As it is impossible to determine the precise way in which souls are punished, he represented it mythically as transmigration, a theory borrowed from the Pythagor- eans. The soul which has yielded to appetite and sensuous desire must enter lower forms of existence ; the soul which, through conflict and aspiration, has risen above the corporeal, attains a state of blissful repose. "The process of the world, the history of the universe, has no other import than this perpet- ual transition of Psyche between the higher and the lower, the divine and the human world,'' says Schweg- ler. At once spiritual and unspiritual, free and un- free, the two contradictory elements of the soul are manifested as a succession in time. Man is the union of sense and reason ; the soul, therefore, is inclined both to the sensuous and the ideal. The solution of this enigma can only be found in its ethical nature and destiny, which is the central point of the Pla- tonic philosophy. CHAPTER XXII. THE PLATONIC ETHICS. rpo SOCRATES Plato owed, in part, the purity and -J- fervor of his strivings, his conviction of the ne- cessity of moral knowledge. His lofty idealism lifted ethics to a height, transcended only by Christianity. He sought first to ascertain and establish the ulti- mate aim of moral activity, or the supreme good ; he treated next of its realization in individuals, or virtue; and finally of that toward which all morality tends, the objective actualization of the good in the state. The good is what all men desire ; to possess it is happiness: in what does it consist? Not in this changing and perishable sensuous existence, but in the life of thought, pure contemplation, the endeavor of the soul to become like God. "Evils, Theodo- rus, can never perish," says Plato, in the Thea?- tetus, "for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Of necessity they hover around this mortal sphere and the earthly nature, having no place among the gods in heaven. Where- fore, also, we ought to fly away thither, and to fly thither is to become like God, as far as this is pos- sible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise." In other dialogues, the body appears as a fetter, a 147 148 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. dungeon of the soul, the grave of the higher life. The task of the soul is to purify and emancipate it- self from corporeal influence, to withdraw from the sensuous into the life of thought. The appetites and passions, the lower element of the soul, seduce us from our true destiny, degrade the human into the animal, and are the root of vice and misery. Phi- losophy is a means of purification, freeing the soul from its sensuous fetters, and lifting it into the world of Ideas where it beholds the good and the true, regaining the blessedness it had lost through its im- mersion in matter. But this withdrawal from finite conditions is a negative theory of morality, which Plato completed by other views, ascribing more importance to the sensible world as that which reveals the Idea. He refutes the doctrine of pleasure as the highest good, becafise pleas- ure is relative and is quickly transformed into pain. It is also changing and indefinite, and cannot be the aim of the souFs activity. But a life without pleas- ure or pain would be pure apathy. The good does not entirely exclude pleasure, but it must be guided by reason so as to produce order and measure. The chief constituent of the Supreme Good is participa- tion in ideal knowledge ; the second, the formation of that which is harmonious, beautiful and perfect; the third, mind and wisdom; the fourth, the special sci- ences, the arts and right opinions ; the fifth and last, the pure and painless pleasures of the senses. *'We cannot fail to perceive the moderation, the respect for all that is in human nature, the harmonious cul- THE PLATONIC ETHICS. 149 ture of the whole man, by which the Platonic ethics prove themselves such genuine fruits of the Greek national mind," says Zeller. The essential means of happiness is virtue, the in- ternal harmony and health of the soul. If passion and appetite rule, the human and divine element in our nature is subjected to the animal ; the soul is miserable and enslaved. The virtuous man alone is free and happy ; his soul takes hold of the Eternal, for true philosophy and perfect morality are one. Plato transcends the Socratic doctrine of expediency; virtue in itself is its own reward, vice its own pun- ishment. Were it possible for the righteous to be mistaken by God as well as by man, and for the wicked to conceal their wickedness from both, the first would still be happy, the second unhappy. Vir- tue has unconditional worth, independently of future retribution. Plato followed Socrates at first, and identified vir- tue with knowledge, but was led by reflection to modify this view. Although the inclination towards virtue is implanted in human nature itself, he recog- nized that moral disposition varies according to tem- peraments and individuals. Ordinary virtue, founded on habit, custom and right opinion, must precede the higher morality, he says in the Republic. The first is presupposed by the second, and the second is per- fected by philosophy. He believed, with Socrates, in the unity of virtue, but at the same time admitted a plurality of moral attributes, assigning them to dif- ferent parts of the soul. The virtue of reason is 150 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. wisdom, the rule of the soul's life ; the virtue of the heart is courage, or valor, whicli helps reason in the struggle against outward and inward peril ; the virtue of sensuous appetite is self-control, or temperance ; and finally, the virtue which unites the others that there may be perfect internal harmony, is justice. Plato attempted no systematic application of his principles to subjective morality. He transcended the ordinary Greek view in his belief that the just man should do good even to his enemies, and ought never to commit suicide, because his life was not his own, but a gift from God. He was not able to free himself altogether from the defects of Greek morality. He exalted woman mentally and morally, yet misunderstood wholly the ethical import of marriage, regarding it chiefly from a physiological point of view. He shared the con- tempt of the Greeks for trade and commerce, which relate merely to the satisfaction of bodily wants, and proceed from the lower appetitive part of the soul. He insisted on a just and humane treatment of slaves, but did not object to slavery itself. '' Justice in large letters," morality actualized in the life of the state, objective rather than subjective, is the fundamental principle of Plato's ethics. Eter- nal right, the Good, is embodied in the constitution of society itself, to which individuals must conform, even at the cost of self-sacrifice, because they have no other way of self-assertion. The idea of political justice is inseparable from that of individual justice, in Plato's thought. The principle of the modern THE PLATONIC ETHICS. 151 world, subjective freedom, the right of the individual to his own moral conviction, appeared to Plato an element of destruction. *'The true ideal is not something that merely ought to be actual, but that is actual," says Hegel. **For that which is actual is reasonable. * • • If one would recognize the actuality of substance he must look through the surface on which the passions contend for mastery. The temporal, the perishable, exists, it is true, and it can make needs and wants enough for any one; but nevertheless it is no true actuality, no more than is the particularity of the sub- ject, his wishes and inclinations. If we consider the content of the Platonic Idea, we shall see that Plato has portrayed in the Republic the Greek ethical cul- ture in its most substantial form ; the Greek national life is what constitutes the true content of his work. Plato is not the man to busy himself with abstract theories and principles ; his true spirit has recognized and unfolded the true; and this could be nothing else than the true in the world in which he lived, this one spirit which was vital in him as well as in Greece. No one can transcend his time; the spirit of his time is also his spirit, but he must see to it that he does not fail to recognize it according to its content." Justice, according to Plato, is the order of the State, and the State is the outward embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The ethical is held fast as the divine substance of the State; the true State should be a pattern of true 152 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. virtue. It alone can secure tlie general victory of good over evil. But the only power that can place morality on a firm foundation, free it from contin- gency, and guarantee its existence and continuance, is philosophy. Proceeding from the State to the in- dividual, from the political and ethical to the moral idea, Plato preserves the true character of Greek thought. What he seeks to discover is the principle which lies at the foundation of society, connecting it with the individual mind, so that the law of the one must be the law of the other. He divides his citizens into three classes, correspond- ing to the three parts of the soul. The highest rank is that of the rulers, or learned men, the State guard- ians ; the second is that of the warriors who protect the State and maintain its laws ; the third and most numerous is that of the agriculturists and artisans, who provide the necessities of life, laboring for the gratifi- cation of sense and appetite. The only means of advancement is to excel others in knowledge and virtue ; exceptional ability of this kind is always rewarded by the State. The ruling class who deliberate concerning the general interest ex- press the idea of wisdom ; the warriors, that of courage, fortitude, steadfastness of spirit, the firm assertion of what is just ; the laborers, that of temperance or self-control. The qualities of each class interpene- trate the rest, and are brought into harmony though a deeper principle, that of justice, which determines the true relation of all things and persons to each other, and itself a virtue is the universal substance THE PLATONIC ETHICS. 153 out of which particular virtues arise. To the indi- vidual as to the State, justice is so related as to give the supremacy to reason, subjecting the lower part of the soul to the higher, the principle of sense to that of intelligence. *^ The just man does not permit the several ele- ments 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, which may be compared to the middle, higher, and lower divisions of the scale, and the intermediate intervals, when he has bound together all these, 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 prop- erty, or in the treatment of the body, or some af- fair of politics or 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." The Platonic State is an aristocracy which excludes part of its citizens from any direct share in political power. As in the soul, the smallest part is to rule, so in the State the minority who excel the rest in virtue and intelligence, are alone to govern. Their power is unbounded and unshared. Nothing is more dangerous to a State than to entrust public matters 154 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE PLATONIC ETHICS. 155 to the mcompetent; neither the artisans nor the warnors are to step outside of their respective spheres. Ihe only means of advancement is exceptional abilitv • the mass of the people are not to meddle either with weapons or with politics. On the other hand industrial activity is prohibited to the warriors and rulers ; they are even forbidden to possess private property, but must devote themselves entirely to the State and derive their subsistence from the labor of the third class. The State is wise when the rulers are wise ; courageous when its warriors are courageous • temperate when the passions of the multitude are restrained by reason and the striving toward the good TVhen everyone fulfills his appointed duty, and the different classes are united in one organism, justice The first condition and final aim of the State is the virtue of Its citizens. In order to secure this Plato would regulate their whole manner of life and educa- tion. He would even place the parentage of the citi- zens under State control. The children belong to the State ak.ne : they are to be separated from their par- ents and brought up publicly from the first moment of their existence. The magistrates are to determine their vocation, placing them in the rank for which they seem fitted by natural disposition and character. The higher class are to receive instruction in music, iterature, and gymnastics. But Plato admonishes us tha even in studying gymnastics we must remember that the soul is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and that the first should be considered rather than the second. Under music, which Plato calls the fortress of the State, he includes poetry and moral culture generally, the development in the soul of that sense of order and harmony which will keep a man steadfast in the right way before he attains scientific knowledge. The mere athlete becomes a savage, the mere musician grows effeminate ; the two must be mingled in fair proportions if the soul is to be duly attempered. When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision. Art is subordinated to ethics in the Platonic state. The poets. Homer and Hesiod, are banished because their representations of God are unworthy. In so far as their stories of the gods were accepted by the Greeks as uni- versal maxims and divine laws, Plato is justified, al- though he wholly mistakes the ethical idea which under- lies their poetry and constitutes its real substance. True art is not fanciful and imitative, but the expression of the highest moral energy, according to Plato. After the preparatory discipline in music and gym- nastics, the highest class are to receive intellectual train- ing in dialectic, which extends far into manhood. Education should never finish, beginning with gymnas- tics in youth, and ending with philosophy in maturer life. Then, when nature begins to decay, the soul re- tires into herself and is the ^'spectator of all time and all existence.'' That the citizens may belong wholly to the state, Plato lays down a rule of life for the two higher classes. They are to have common dwellings and common meals, a 156 A STUDY OF GKEEK PHILOSOPHY. community of property, and of wives and children. They can possess neither gold nor silver, but receive a moderate maintenance provided by the third class. Women are to share the education of men in war and in political affairs. Lawyers and physicians will have little to do on account of the virtue of the citizens and their healthy mode of life. If one cannot be cured quickly and simply, it is better to die than to live for the care of a sickly body The physician shall have personal experience of disease, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. The lawyer, on the other hand, controls mind by mind, and should have no experience of evil. The ideal judge should be advanced in years, should have passed an in- nocent youth and acquired experience of evil late in life by observation. Virtue can know vice, but vice can never know virtue. As to the great mass of citizens, the artisans and the agriculturists, they are left to themselves ; '' for it is not of much importance where the corruption of society and pretension to be what you are not extends only to cob- blers ; but w^hen the guardians of the laws and of the government are only seemers and not real guardians, that is the utter ruin of the state."' Plato probably believed that a certain amount of culture would be diffused from the higher classes to the lower. With his Greek preju- dice against industrial activity, he fails to see the eco- nomical importance of the laboring classes, just as he ignores their political significance. His government is an aristocracy, but an aristocracy based on the possession of intelligence and virtue. He foresees the ridicule that will be directed against THE PLATOi^lC ETHICS. 157 his proposition, that the rulers of a state must be phi- losophers. He explains why it is that the study of phi- losophy unfits one to be a practical politician. The phi- losopher is one whose mind is fixed upon the end and meaning of things, their substance and reality. The rest of the world are following images and shadows, blindly feeling after the good. The philosopher must either descend to this pursuit, where he necessarily stumbles and deserves contempt, or he must keep his own high course, which as unintelligible is despised. But how would it be if when he has come out into the light where he sees all things as they are, he neither glorifies himself by living apart from men, nor confuses his light with their darkness, but dwelling in the midst of them seeks rather to lead them upward by the same path which he has followed ? Philosophy, tlien, would harmonize with politics ; the moving spring of the state would not be the self-seeking principle, but the divine Idea leading men towards the good. The most striking peculiarity of the Platonic re- public is the entire subordination of the individual to the state, the exclusion of subjective freedom. That individual inclination should be ignored in the choice of a vocation, is opposed to modern thought. It is not for one man to prescribe for another that he shall follow this or that vocation, that he shall become a shoemaker, or a lawyer, or a soldier. It is his right as a person to decide the matter for himself without regard to external circum- stances. To do away with the principle of private property is another violation of subjective freedom. Property is a 158 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. possession which belongs to me as this particular person, and through it I exist as an abstract individual self. The laborers, tradesmen and agriculturists of the Platonic state produce the necessaries of life for all, and the pro- ducer like the rest uses from the common store whatever he needs. The objection brought by Aristotle against this view is still valid, that it would take from men the stimulus to activity. Property, according to Hegel, is an object into which I have introduced my will, and by this act I have made it mine, so that he who touches it touches me, and touches that will which is the substance of my personality. '* The essential point is that my free- will takes the first necessary step toward becoming ob- jectively real in the possession of actual objects,'' says Professor Morris, in his interpretation of Hegel's thought, "and the essential truth is that just as the free-will can- not be conceived as a mere means to an end foreign to itself, so property, being according to its true conception and definition only the primary form in which the free- will renders itself objectively real, has something of the like character of an absolute end, and is proportionately sacred and inviolable." The doctrine in Plato that has excited most horror is not a community of property, but a community of wives and children. How could this great moral teacher have so misunderstood and violated the sanctity of the family ? There is no sentiment or imagination in his conception of marriage ; his one aim is to improve the race without regard to individual inclination. The Greek exalted friendship above love, and looked upon the family as a customary institution, necessary but not sacred like the THE PLATONIC ETHICS. 159 State. Professor Jowett reminds us that the side from which Plato regarded the social problem is one from which we habitually turn away. ** That the most im- portant influence on human life should be wholly left to chance or shrouded in mystery, and instead of being dis- ciplined or understood, should be required to conform only to an external standard of propriety, cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or satisfactory con- dition of human things." Plato felt the necessity of a universal community in the life of man, the truth implied in the existence of society and realized historically in the doctrines of Christianity. The ends for which he strove were high and noble, but he fell into grave errors as to the means that should be used for their attainment. The self-will of individuals had been the ruin of Athens and of Greece, and in excluding it from his Eepublic, he did not see that he was converting the individual into a mere instrument of the state, and that the subjective side is as essential to the realization of free- dom as the objective. This is the limit of Plato's thought of the state, and it was the limit of his age. *'The deficiency of subjectivity is the deficiency of the Greek ethical idea itself." (Hegel.) Plato sought to stifle the passions and inclinations of men and exclude selfishness, by excluding property and family life and the choice of occupation ; all of which relate to the principle of subjective freedom. He clearly recognized that when individuals pursue private aims and interests without regard to the com- mon welfare, the destruction of the state is imminent 160 A STUDY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. But the soul of man is in itself an absolute end and aim, and justice demands that each individual, by his own self-conscious knowing and willing, shall enter into harmony with other individuals through institu- tions, the family, society and the state. Plato condemned the particular interest of the indi- vidual as an unworthy factor in the ethical organism of the State. But this is abstract rather than concrete freedom. The opposite of his principle, the setting up of the private will of the individual as a supreme au- thority, has been advocated in modern times by Rous- seau and others. But this view is equally one-sided and abstract. The State must not ignore the particular opinions and volitions of individuals, but must realize through them the universal will and interest of man. The individual, on the other hand, must not devote him- self exclusively to that which is private an