Plato and Aristotle mark the culmination of a great period in Greek
thought. After them metaphysical speculation made little if any advance
in antiquity. Indeed we are all aware of the fact that the greater
part of the thinking world has been divided between Platonists and
Aristotelians ever since, although in our own time we are seeing
a return by some to the philosophic position of the Sophists and
Heraclitus.
Now in our discussion of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle you
must have felt that their systems were for the intellectual élite.
The large demands which they make upon the reason and the habit of
reasoning unfit them for the great majority of mankind, since the
average man desires a practical guide in life which he can readily
follow, rather than a philosophical system which he can grasp only by
the careful use of his intellect. Furthermore, in the period after
Alexander, when national life and interests were weakened or destroyed
by the Macedonian’s conquests and the struggles of his successors,
the individual was forced to withdraw from public life; he lost the
satisfactions which the politics of his community had once furnished,
felt himself without the social supports which the compact life of his
city-state had formerly given, and so, turned in on himself, he
naturally sought for a sure rule of life and a guarantee of individual
happiness. We shall now consider first a school of practical philosophy
which followed Aristotle—that of the Stoics, and then some mystic
philosophies of the early centuries of our era.
Socrates, the great teacher and the dramatic spokesman of Plato’s
dialogues, gave the impulse to many philosophic systems. The only one
we need to glance at now is that of the Cynics founded by Antisthenes,
who had been one of Socrates’ many pupils. It was continued by the
whimsical and notorious Diogenes of Sinope, whose name is familiar
to us all. The founder of Cynicism emphasized the Socratic aim of
individual virtue to the neglect of all else, for like his master he
maintained that virtue was the only good, the sole aim in life, and
that it was sufficient in itself for happiness. But he also went to the
extreme of declaring that all external relations and obligations were
to be neglected, and that there was no middle ground of the slightest
importance between virtue and vice. Antisthenes also taught that
whoever possessed virtue was wise, the rest of the world foolish; and
that virtue was a thing which could be taught, and which once learned
could never be lost. To the Cynic all pleasure was vicious, but sweat
and toil blessings if associated with the individual freedom which was
the aim of the school. Although the Cynics were concerned only with
practical virtue in this world here and now, their puritanical and
doctrinaire system deserves this place in our consideration, because it
was the first to attempt to make philosophy a practical guide for
the common man in everyday life. It is quite true that this was also
Socrates’ position, but his mind and common sense took so large a
view of the relations of man that he never fell into the narrow
exclusiveness of the Cynics. With them philosophy was not speculative,
but became the art of virtuous living; it easily degenerated into
insolent and ostentatious show, and doubtless deserved many of the
jibes which the later satirists threw at it. Within the sect, strictly
speaking, the doctrine of virtue as man’s chief good came to little
because it lacked the principle of moral activity. The will of man
was not challenged to act in advancing him along the path of virtue.
But Stoicism took over the doctrine, gave it life by insisting on the
exercise of the will in the practice of virtue, and made thereby such
a contribution to the practical life of virtue that we are still the
Stoics’ heirs.
It was toward the close of the fourth century that Zeno of Citium
in the island of Cyprus established a school in the Painted Porch
(Στοὰ ποικίλη) at Athens. Zeno had been an adherent of no one school
or philosophical sect: he had listened to both Cynic, Megarian, and
Platonic teachers. It was natural, therefore, in view of the training
of the founder and of the fact that he was born in a place distant from
the great centers of the Greek world, that the Stoic school from the
beginning should draw its tenets from many sources and that it should
have a cosmopolitan character.
Furthermore the time in which it was founded had a potent and direct
influence upon it. Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C.,
after carrying his arms to the banks of the Indus and enlarging the
Greek world far beyond even his own vast dreams. The ideal state,
even in the mind of Alexander’s great teacher Aristotle, was at this
time thought to be one which corresponded closely to the actual Greek
state, a community of limited size, whose free population should be
all of the same stock, and one in which the manual toil should be
performed by slaves. A sharp contrast to this was the mighty empire
which Aristotle’s pupil carved in an incredible fashion out of Europe,
Africa, and Asia. It is not to be wondered at that a philosophy, the
principles of which were drawn from various Athenian schools, as I
have just said, and which was developed by men like Zeno of Citium and
Chrysippus of Soli in Cilicia should have a character which made it
appeal to the enlarged and varied world of Hellenism, and to the Roman
Empire which succeeded that of Alexander.
The development of Stoicism corresponded to its eclectic origin. The
system established by Zeno was enlarged and rounded out by Chrysippus.
It was welcomed by the Romans in the second century B.C. when
Panaetius of Rhodes transplanted the system to Rome. In the hands of
its earliest leaders the school had held to a severe and uncompromising
doctrine, not dissimilar to that of the Cynics. But Panaetius greatly
modified this teaching, and accommodated the school to the other great
philosophic systems of the time, especially to the doctrines of Plato
and Aristotle; and thus he made Stoicism suited to the educated Roman
world. Among his disciples he numbered many of the Roman aristocracy
of the second century B.C., the most famous of whom were
Laelius and the younger Scipio. That unyielding dogmatism of the older
school which had paralleled Cynicism in teaching that between virtue
and vice there was no intermediate position, that the philosopher was
the perfectly virtuous man, and that he and the vicious were absolutely
separated, was replaced by a doctrine of the possibility of gradual
progress in virtue. Indeed some with good sense held that this was
the most to which man could attain, that he could never hope to reach
perfection, but that his duty was to accomplish a daily advance toward
excellence. Panaetius did a great service in adapting Stoicism to
life. A famous pupil of Panaetius was Posidonius of Apamea in Syria,
who drew many Romans to hear him at his school in Rhodes, among them
Cicero and Pompey. He carried still further the synthesis of Stoicism
with Platonism and Aristotelianism, and by the astounding range of his
learning and the brilliancy of his style acquired a large influence. He
seems also to have given Stoicism a strong religious cast.
Like other philosophies Stoicism had embraced many subjects—logic,
including dialectic and rhetoric, physical science, including cosmology
and theology, and ethics. But by the first century of the Roman Empire
it had become almost exclusively a philosophy of moral and religious
edification, well calculated to steel men against the distress and
trouble of that age. Its great representatives in this last period were
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, whose works are still a source
of strength for many thoughtful men.
Let us now consider briefly the system of the Stoics. Our theme
confines us chiefly to the moral and religious sides of their
philosophy; but this is only a slight limitation, for true to the
teachings of the Cynics, who had greatly influenced the founder of
the school, throughout their history the Stoics laid much emphasis on
ethics, that is, on the art of a righteous and virtuous life. They were
never so much concerned with speculation as to the nature of virtue as
with its practice. To them virtue was man’s highest aim, and by it they
meant righteousness in the practical relations of life. They defined it
as a condition of the soul in which the soul is in continuous harmony
with itself. Virtue they subdivided into the four chief elements of
intelligence, discretion, courage, and justice. Some also recognized
subordinate virtues, but these I name were the four that made up
the supreme excellence. Furthermore the Stoics, like Socrates and
the Cynics, identified virtue with knowledge and regarded the ideal
philosopher as the one who had attained to true and complete wisdom and
consequently to perfect virtue. Therefore the ideal of the wise man
became the very center of the Stoic doctrine. He was thought to combine
in himself all perfection, and as Seneca says, differs from God only by
being mortal. As I have already observed, the early Stoics had fixed
an absolute gulf between the perfect wise man and the unwise; like the
Cynics they had declared that virtue once attained could not be lost;
but the practical good sense of a later age modified these extreme
views and taught that there were degrees in virtue, and that the most
that the ordinary man could do was daily to advance and make progress
toward his goal. As Seneca says: “I am not yet wise, nor shall I ever
be. Do not ask me to be equal to the best but rather to be better
than the base. This is enough for me—to take away daily something
from my faults and daily to reject my errors.”[225] That man might
attain to virtue, according to the Stoic, he must free himself from
the world and its influences, through the exercise of his will he must
strive to attain to freedom from all excess of feeling and passion.
The extremist said that he must raise himself to a position where he
was entirely free from passion, where he had attained to complete
ἀπάθεια. The milder Stoics held the view that the wise man would not
be one who felt no passion or desire, but rather one in whom virtue
overmastered the passions. The mastery, whether complete or partial,
all agreed was to be attained by the exercise of the will; therefore
man must regard as wholly indifferent to him all things that are not
within the control of that faculty. On this point Epictetus discourses
most interestingly.[226] He points out that the materials we employ in
life are indifferent to us, neither good nor bad; they are like the
dice with which we play our game. But like the gamester we must try to
manage life dexterously; whatever happens we must say: “Externals are
not within my power; choice is. Where then shall I seek good and evil?
Why, within, in what is my own.” And then he continues, pointing out
that we must count nothing good or evil, profitable or hurtful, or of
any concern to us, that is controlled by others. In tranquillity and
calm we must accept what life brings, concerned only with what actually
depends on the will of each one of us. We must act in life as we do in
a voyage: the individual can choose the pilot, the sailors, and the
hour of his departure; after that he must meet quietly all that comes,
for he has done his part; and if a storm arise, he must face with
indifference disaster or safety, for these matters are quite beyond
the control of his will. So sickness and health, abundance and need,
high position or the loss of station are things which my will cannot
control. Therefore to me as a philosopher they are indifferent; I must
have no anxiety about them; they really are not my affair. But my
thoughts and my acts are matters that I can control, and in them I must
find all my concern. The external circumstances, the acts of others,
do not touch me, but my own acts, my own relations, my own inner life
are things to which I must give all of my attention. So the Stoic
reasoned, holding that virtue was quite sufficient for happiness, and
that it made man master of his world. Thus we see that to the doctrine
of virtue, which the Cynics had magnified, the Stoics had added the
vitalizing principle of the operation of man’s will, and thereby had
made the pursuit of wisdom, which to them was identical with virtue, a
powerful means of moral and spiritual edification.
But when the Stoic discoursed of virtue and wisdom, what did he
conceive the highest aim of man to be? “To live in accord with Nature,”
was the answer which the followers of Zeno usually gave. By that they
meant that man must bring himself into accord with that Nature which
rules all things; that he must make his will and reason agree with the
universal will and reason of which in truth they are a part. Others
said that one must live in harmony with himself. But as we shall
presently see, their definition was essentially the same as that of
their fellows, for to the Stoic man was in himself an epitome of the
cosmos.
In their explanation of the universe the Stoics held to a materialism
which they borrowed from the teachings of Heraclitus, who had
maintained that only matter had any existence whatever; therefore their
system was in theory a materialistic monism, but with their monistic
principle they combined an idea which in reality they had derived from
Aristotle, apparently without realizing the possible consequence to
their view that matter alone exists. Although holding that everything
is material, they recognized in all things the presence of an active
and a passive principle, the active principle forming and directing,
the other being formed and directed, so that by the operation of the
active principle upon the passive all the phenomena of the world
come into being. The passive principle corresponded to Aristotle’s
material, while the active principle included both his efficient
and final causes. To their active principle the Stoics gave all the
characteristics that Heraclitus had given to his λόγος, reason, or
Anaxagoras to his νοῦς, mind. In short they attributed to it all
the characteristics of reason and intelligence, so that in spite of
their argument that the active principle was no less material than
the passive, that it was the element of fire or vapor or both, it was
inevitable that in practice their philosophy should ultimately tend
toward a dualism and that the ancient conflict of matter and mind, of
body and soul, should have its place in their teaching. They thought
that the operative principle, fire, the divine reason, expresses
itself in every part of the universe, that everything which exists
is permeated by this divine spirit and directed by it. It is nothing
less than the world-reason, God, which begets all things; so that
they called it λόγος σπερματικός, that is, the reason that contains
within itself the germs of all things that are to be. Now since man
is of course a part of the cosmos, the Stoic argued that in him the
world-reason naturally expresses itself; it is that which guides him,
in fact it is his reason, the directing portion of his soul. And
it is the possession of this soul, itself a part of the universal
reason, which makes it possible for man to live in accord with Nature,
for he attains that aim whenever his soul is in agreement with the
universal soul which is its source. In this way the Stoic, for all his
materialism, emphasized the divine nature of man and the community of
human reason with God.
The pantheistic character of this philosophy is now evident. The
world-reason, God, whatever the Stoic might call it, is all, embraces
all within itself, and permeates all. This conception is in marked
contrast to the teachings of Aristotle and the later Platonists,
who conceived of God as transcendent, removed from the world about
us. We have here the doctrine of the immanence of God, in whom all
things live and move and have their being, because the world-reason is
the principle on which all life and action directly depend. In this
doctrine of the immanence of God the Stoics brought together again the
worlds of matter and of reason which Plato had separated; and in the
pantheistic character of this teaching they established a belief which
later fitted in with the general course of pagan thought under the
Roman Empire, when philosophy and religion were at one in recognizing
the existence in the world of but a single divine principle, although
all systems, including Stoicism, found a way to provide for the
multitude of gods which popular belief demanded.
The Stoic theology then is in technical language a materialistic
pantheism, and the world is only a mode of God. Such abstractions are
difficult to grasp and have no personal meaning for the common man.
But in practice the Stoic thought and spoke of God as a personality.
Nowhere is this feeling expressed with so much devotion as in
Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus; the language is largely that of poetic
tradition, but the thought is not that of common polytheism:
Most glorious of immortals, many named, powerful over all,
Zeus, thou author of all nature, guiding all with law,
Hail to thee. Thee ’tis right all mortals should address,
For from thee men derive their race, they who alone
Of all things mortal, living, creeping on the ground,
Have gift of speech. So will I hymn thee, and thy power forever sing.
For thee this entire cosmos, circling earth around,
Obeys where’er thou leadest, and ’tis gladly ruled by thee.
Such servant hast thou in thy hands invincible,
The two-edged thunderbolt, ever living flame.
For by its strokes are all things in nature wrought;
With it thou dost direct the common law, which throughout all
Forever moves, with every gleam commingled, great and small.
’Tis this hath made thee supreme king o’er all;
For naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God,
Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep,
Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.[227]
But some of you have doubtless remembered that Fate (εἱμαρμένη) plays a
large part in Stoicism, that the Stoic writers describe it as the cause
that works through all things and brings all things to pass.[228] We
must therefore consider what the Stoic meant by Fate, how he explained
the existence of evil, and what provision he made for the freedom of
the will. Fate was identified with reason or with what we call natural
law; and since the Stoic held that it does not operate in a mechanical
way, but is directed by reason to the best possible ends, it followed
that Fate became identical with Providence (πρόνοια).[229] This world
then for the Stoic is the best of all possible worlds. Yet the question
will inevitably be asked as to why it is that evil can exist in such a
world, in which a particular Providence rules all things for the best.
We have already seen that Cleanthes held that God directed all things
but the deeds of the wicked:
Naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God,
Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep,
Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.
For the most part however the Stoics did not attempt to place evil
outside the domain of Fate, but boldly maintained that the existence of
good is inconceivable without the existence of its opposite, evil. They
taught that many of the things which are ordinarily reckoned evils by
men were nothing of the sort; what we call physical evils, for example,
were for them not evils, because they could not affect the wise man,
the philosopher; or if they affected him, they could serve only as
discipline, and therefore contribute to good ends. Man has within him
the possibility of good; he must also have the possibility of evil, and
therefore he must possess the freedom of choice without which goodness
or evil has no moral value. Evil therefore like the good must be part
of a world in which God rules all things to the best and wisest ends.
Still there remains the difficulty that if man can determine his own
choice, how can we still speak of Fate as directing the world. The
answer is found in the nature of man, whose body is properly directed
by his soul. This soul through experience develops reason, and the
reasoning soul, as we have already seen, is a part of the universal
reason, God. When the reason rules a man’s impulses and directs his
will to follow the right course, it leads him into the path of freedom,
for freedom consists in the complete subjugation of the impulses to
reason. The Stoic had only to appeal to common experience to show that
if the body and its impulses prevail, man obviously is a slave; but if
reason dominates he is free. As Epictetus taught: “Freedom and slavery,
the first is the name of virtue, the other of vice, but both are the
effects of choice. Those who do not have the power of choice are
touched by neither of these things. But the soul is accustomed to be
master of the body, and the things of the body have properly nothing to
do with the will to choose; for no man is a slave if he is free in his
power to choose.”[230] The perfect philosopher, then, is wholly free,
for his every act is guided by reason, and therefore he lives perfectly
in accord with Nature and himself. Freedom lies in choice, but the
choice once made, the consequences inevitably follow. So the freedom of
the individual was reconciled with the rule of a determining Fate.
We have thus far seen that Stoicism was a philosophy for the
individual; that it demanded that man, being a free agent, recognize
his high calling as a reasonable being and put himself by the exercise
of his will into accord with Nature and himself, and so attain or at
least advance toward perfection. But in contrast to Cynicism Stoicism
did not demand that its sectaries should cut themselves off from
society; on the contrary it recognized that man is normally a member
of a social group. If in its doctrine of personal edification it was
strongly individualistic, it was no less cosmopolitan in its social
philosophy. Although the earlier Stoics had not taken part in political
life—probably because of the conditions of the time,—none had
forbidden participation in public affairs, but on the contrary all
favored it. Moreover the Stoic could not limit his view to the small
political unit or to the society contained therein; but inasmuch as
each individual possesses a soul that is a part of the cosmic reason,
all mankind is a community of reasoning beings, and every man is a
brother of every other.[231] Thus Stoicism gave a philosophic basis
to the idea of the brotherhood of man. It taught also that external
circumstances, birth, wealth, high position, physical freedom or
slavery, are indifferent matters; that the slave if a philosopher is
the equal of the philosophic emperor. Such doctrines as these gave
a new dignity to the individual and were destined to produce great
social effects in the course of time: they resulted toward the close
of the first century of our era in a new humanitarian spirit which
began to care for the poor and the weak. Ultimately the Stoic Roman
jurists wrote into the great law-codes the doctrine of the brotherhood
of man, distinguishing between natural law, according to which all
men are brothers on an equal footing, and human law which has brought
about distinctions. These law-codes saved the written doctrine for the
later centuries, and Christianity on its part absorbed much of Stoic
teaching; through these two channels we have inherited many of the
ideas which are moving forces in modern democracy.
These matters touch us so closely that we may well pause for a moment
and listen to some ancient witnesses. On the question whether a slave
could be said to confer benefits on his master, Seneca wrote that
whoever denied the possibility of this was ignorant of the principles
of all human law: “for the question is as to the spirit of the one who
confers the benefit, not as to his position in life. Virtue is closed
to no man; but she is open for all, admits all, invites all, both
freeborn and freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles all alike. She does
not choose house or wealth; she is satisfied with the bare man and
asks nothing more.”[232] Again he points out that only the body can be
enslaved; that no prison can hold the mind and keep it from consorting
with the divine.[233] He sums up: “All of us have the same origin, the
same source; no man is nobler than another save he who has a more
upright character and one better fitted to honorable pursuits.”[234]
The great jurists speak no less plainly than the philosopher. Julius
Paulus, at the beginning of the third century of our era, laid down
the principle that nature has established between men a certain
relationship; this his contemporary Ulpian expressed more plainly
in these words: “By natural law all men are equal.” And Florentinus
wrote: “Slavery is a provision of the law of nations, by which one
man, contrary to the law of nature, is subject to the domination of
another.”[235]
Such doctrines as these naturally broke down allegiance to city and
nation, and made men feel that they were citizens of the world. Seneca
distinguished two states, the one that into which a man is born; the
other, the great and true commonwealth where dwell both gods and men,
in which one looks not to this corner or to that, but measures its
borders by the course of the sun.[236] In like language Musonius taught
that the wise man, i.e., the philosopher, believes himself to be a
citizen of the city of God, which consists of gods and men.[237] So the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius reflected: “To me as Antoninus my city is Rome,
but as a man it is the universe.”[238]
We may seem to have wandered somewhat from the religious aspect of
Stoicism, but the digression finds its justification not only in the
fact that both the belief in the natural equality of men and the
cosmopolitan character of Stoicism grew out of the doctrine that
each man’s reason is a part of the universal reason, but also in the
significance these things had for that time and for ours.
The Stoic felt himself commissioned to preach and to turn men from
their evil ways; he became a missionary to the world, exhorting men to
the pursuit of sobriety, patience, virtue, and to the imitation of God.
Seneca recalled with new emphasis Plato’s definition of man’s duty:
“The first point in the worship of the gods is to believe that the gods
exist; second to render unto them their majesty; to render likewise
their goodness without which there is no majesty; to know that the gods
preside over the world, that they direct the universe by their power,
protect mankind, and sometimes have regard for individuals. The gods
neither bring evil nor have it in themselves; but they chastise and
check some men, they inflict penalties, sometimes they punish under
the guise of blessings. Would’st thou propitiate the gods? Be thou
good thyself. He has worshipped them aright who has imitated them.”
And again: “The divine nature is not worshipped with the fat bodies
of slain bulls, or with gold or silver votive offerings, or with
money collected for the sacred treasury, but with a pious and upright
will.”[239] Epictetus reviews the gifts of providence to men and asks:
“What words can praise the works of providence in us and set them
forth according to their worth? If we have understanding, ought we to
do anything else, individually or all together, save sing hymns and
bless the deity and tell of his benefits?... But since most of you have
become blind, should there not be someone to fulfill this duty and on
behalf of all to sing the hymn to God? For what else can I do, a lame
old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I should do
the part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I should do the part of a
swan. But now I am a rational creature, and therefore must praise God.
This is my task. I will do it, nor will I leave my post, so long as I
may keep it; and I urge you to join in this same song.”[240]
Under the Empire Stoicism lost the moderate interest in speculation
which it had once had, and became almost exclusively a moral
philosophy. It was an age which called for moral resistance, when men
were obliged to steel themselves to endure oppression and disaster, to
“endure and refrain.” This is the motto of the later Stoics, ἀνέχου
καὶ ἀπέχου, by which they meant: “Refrain from all that thy will
cannot control; endure all that may assault thee; practise thyself in
following the guide of reason; resist all passions.” This is almost the
sum total of the discourses of Epictetus. The ancient conflict between
body and soul also came to the front once more, and Stoicism showed
the same ascetic tendency that is found in all the later philosophies.
To it Marcus Aurelius gives clearest expression. Reflecting on his own
nature the Emperor quotes a saying of Epictetus: “Thou art a poor soul
burdened with a corpse.”[241] Again in self-exhortation he says: “ This
thing I am is but flesh, breath, and the guiding reason. Farewell my
books! strain after them no more. They are not for thee. As if already
in the presence of death, despise thy flesh—it is only foul blood and
bones, a web and tissue of sinews and veins and arteries. Consider
breath too! What is it? A puff of wind never the same, but every moment
exhaled and again inhaled. Last comes the guiding reason—on that set
all thy mind.”[242]
The Emperor bids his books farewell. Philosophy was no longer a thing
for the closet and the scholar’s study, but a matter of practical life
in the market place and public square; the unlettered might pursue it
as well as the learned, for it was the art of living—an art which the
noblest pursued with all the enthusiasm of religious emotion. Although
the Stoic was most concerned with the present, and could offer no
continued life for the individual soul beyond the time when all the
universe should sink back into the original fire, his fervor could be
that of the seer with a vision of eternity.
The contributions which the Stoics made to the ethical and religious
life were large. They showed that there is a moral order in nature
to which man as a part of nature must conform; by emphasizing the
community of reason between man and God, so that in Epictetus’ phrase
we are but fragments of God,[243] they gave a religious sanction to
duty toward God and man which had hitherto been lacking; and by the
conclusions which they logically drew as to the brotherhood of man,
disregarding distinctions of birth, position, or race, and looking
to character alone, they gave a great impulse to the improvement of
morals, to the spread of justice and kindliness in private relations,
and to a genuine love for humanity. The stimulus which a belief in
personal immortality might have given them was replaced by a sense of
divine kinship and a challenge to the will to choose the nobler course
under the guide of reason.
On the theological side they established the doctrine of the immanence
of God in opposition to the transcendental views of the Platonists and
Aristotelians. Since the whole cosmos is in their view animated by the
universal reason, every part of it is alive. The heavenly bodies were
therefore naturally regarded as divine, gods to whom the names of the
greater gods of popular theology were conveniently given. But on the
whole the traditional gods were explained allegorically, being regarded
as the names assigned to various manifestations of God in nature. So
Zeus was the heavens or the ether, Hera air, Poseidon the waters,
Demeter earth, Hephaestus fire, Hades darkness, and so on. Now this
physical allegorizing tended to destroy all belief in the mythological
divinities more effectually perhaps than any other assault that had
been made since the attacks began in the sixth century. But we must not
think that the Stoics disbelieved in the existence of gods. I have just
spoken of their doctrine that the heavenly bodies are divine; and they
held that the spirits of the wisest and best survive the body as lesser
divinities, as daemons. All these, however, will cease to be when the
present age comes to an end and the cosmos sinks back into universal
fire.
* * * * *
In the religious philosophies which we have thus far considered
the reason and the will were the chief means by which security and
happiness here or hereafter could be obtained. These systems taught
that salvation was a matter of man’s own effort, and within his
own power. Yet in Marcus Aurelius, for example, we have again and
again clear evidence that the last great Stoic was conscious of the
insufficiency of man to save his own soul unaided, and the philosophies
to which we are now to turn recognize man’s weakness and make salvation
an act of grace from God.
As we have remarked before, the last three centuries before our era
among the Greeks were centuries in which their national life and
culture decayed. Autocratic forms of government arose which cut men
off from active participation in politics and turned their attention
in upon themselves. There was a loss of creative power in literature,
art, and speculative thought; and men were conscious of a failure of
the sense which their forefathers had had, that this life could give
them great satisfaction. These things, and the extremes of wealth
and poverty, terror of the imperial power, the selfish greed and
hopelessness of the mass of the people, all combined under the early
Empire to fill the minds of the thoughtful with sadness and pessimism.
We find these sentiments in every writer of the first two centuries
of our era who deals with contemporary society. Seneca feels that the
world is lost and helpless; that life itself is a fatal gift compared
with which nothing is so deceitful and treacherous. Filled with ardour
for his philosophy and with confidence in the efficacy of its moral
teachings, he nevertheless at times loses heart. This is likewise true
of the rest. As we read the pages of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in
spite of the inspiring words of that halting slave who in Nicopolis
preached high fortitude to his hearers and of the Emperor who in
distant camp among the Quadi on the banks of the Gran or in winter
quarters at Carnuntum recounted his blessings and exhorted his own soul
to endure, we have at times an inevitable sense of the hopelessness of
the struggle. Furthermore, as has been frequently pointed out, the last
centuries before our era had been marked by a feeling on the part of
many of a separation from God and by a longing in some way to bridge
the gulf between the human and the divine, to secure a revelation from
heaven, and to attain to direct vision and knowledge of God. As the
satisfactions of life, which the earlier, freer centuries had given,
grew less, in weariness of spirit, conscious of his own weakness and
lack of power to secure his soul’s freedom and happiness, man turned
for help from outside himself. The reason and the will alone had
failed. God’s grace was needed for salvation.
The conquests of Alexander had not only diffused Hellenic speech and
thought over a wide area, but they had also opened the way by which
the nearer East could influence the western part of the ancient world.
Alexandria in Egypt became the chief intellectual center; from it
especially spread intellectual movements to the remoter parts of the
Roman world. As I hope to show in my next lecture, Greek culture became
the common property of all educated men. It was natural also that some
of the philosophies cultivated at Alexandria should show the influence
of Jewish thought, for this metropolis had been from its founding a
center for Jews as well as Greeks.
The longing for tranquillity in this life, for a revelation of God,
and for the assurance of personal salvation which could not find
satisfaction in Stoicism, Epicureanism, and the later Aristotelian
schools, led to a revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of Platonism.
These elements, combined in more than one case with Jewish thought,
were the materials out of which the principal mystic schools developed
at Alexandria. The three with which we are chiefly concerned are
Neopythagoreanism, Judeo-Aexandrian philosophy, and Neoplatonism.
The Pythagorean school had ceased to have a separate existence by
the fourth century B.C., but the ideas which the school had
cherished were not lost. In the last century before our era these
doctrines were revived, and in accordance with the syncretistic spirit
of the age were combined with Platonic teachings into a philosophic, or
as we may more truly say, a theosophic system. The first representative
of this revival known to us by name is Nigidius Figulus, a friend
and contemporary of Cicero. Its most famous leader was Apollonius of
Tyana in Cappadocia, who lived under Nero. By the third century a mass
of marvellous legends had gathered about this Apollonius which is
preserved in his life, written about 210 A.D. by Philostratus
at the request of the Empress Julia Domna.
The extant evidence shows us clearly that by the second century
B.C. the process had begun at Alexandria of reconciling Jewish
theology with Greek philosophy. The first, however, to combine the two
into a system, known to us as the Judeo-Aexandrian, was the learned
Philo, who was born about 25 B.C. He belonged to one of the
most prominent Jewish families; in 40 A.D., he was chosen to
head a delegation of Aexandrian Jews which was sent to the Emperor
Caligula. His purpose in common with the other adherents of this school
was primarily religious, and he aimed at a better understanding of
his own religion rather than at building up a system of philosophic
thought. To accomplish his purpose he took from the Hellenic schools
whatever seemed useful, without troubling himself overmuch about the
logical relation of the parts which he wove together. The movement
actually developed a school which had a large historical significance.
The third philosophy is Neoplatonism, founded at Alexandria, according
to tradition, by Ammonius Saccas at the beginning of the third century.
Ammonius had been reared in the Christian faith, but on reaching
maturity returned to pagan philosophy. His instruction was given wholly
by word of mouth. Of his numerous pupils the most famous were Origen,
the church father, and Plotinus. The latter and his pupil Porphyry were
the chief representatives of the school in the period we have now under
consideration.
Obviously in the time at our disposal we cannot consider in detail all
the several doctrines of these three schools, but we must focus our
attention on certain elements which are of prime importance in the
pagan philosophy of the day and most significant because of their
relation to Christianity. Before we proceed to this, however, I must
ask you to remember that we are now dealing not with rigidly logical
systems, but with mystic philosophies, with theosophies. There is much
in them, therefore, that we cannot hope to understand clearly, because
these philosophers themselves abandoned the path of reason alone and
let intuition and emotion guide them in their loftiest experiences.
Let us first examine certain characteristics common to all these
schools. They all combine large elements drawn from Platonism with
borrowings from later philosophies, especially Stoicism; and, as I have
already indicated, Judeo-Alexandrianism shows the influence of Jewish
thought. All hold to the dual nature of man, a view which first became
of religious significance with the Orphics in the sixth century. Plato,
you will remember, emphasized the conflict of flesh and spirit, and we
have seen how the Stoics, for all their monistic theory, came finally
to the same dualism. Closely connected with this view was the contempt
for the world of the senses which these schools show. This was due to a
development of the Platonic doctrines of matter and of the descent of
souls into corporeal dwellings; these teachings in their turn led to a
confirmation of the belief that the ascetic life was the proper one for
the philosopher—a doctrine which had been held in considerable degree
by the Stoics and Cynics. In theology all maintained the transcendence
of God, and postulated between God and this world intermediary powers,
which work God’s will and cause all the sensible phenomena with which
we are acquainted. Finally all believed in the possibility of a direct
revelation of God to man, when in a state of enthusiasm or ecstasy.
This belief in direct divine revelation, together with the ascetic
tendencies of the several schools, led to the establishment of the
ideal of sanctity as that toward which the faithful sectary should
strive. Pythagoras was canonized by his later followers, Plato became
“the divine”; Apollonius of Tyana grew in tradition to be the model
of the saint on earth. He was regarded as one filled with divine
inspiration, a worker of miracles. He ate no flesh, but lived solely
on bread, fruits, and ordinary herbs; water was his only drink; he
practised silence and neglected his person. The same description almost
fits Plotinus, as made known to us by his biographer Porphyry. In all
the essential practices these pagan saints anticipated their later
Christian counterparts.
Let us look at the theology of these schools a little more closely.
But before we proceed, it is important to define clearly what we mean
by the transcendence of God, for the term is often loosely used. A
transcendent god is one who is absolutely above the world and above
man’s knowledge, a god who is so far removed that man can have no
dealings with him directly, nor can he deal directly with man or
make his works manifest to man, save through an intermediary. Such
essentially was Aristotle’s God, his First Cause. The opposite idea
is that of the immanence of God, such as we have seen in the Stoic
teachings, in which God is conceived of as existing in all things. Now
it is evident that in any system of philosophy or theology which
believes in a transcendent God, and yet regards the visible world,
including man, as the creation of the divine, some provision must be
made for a being or beings, mediary between the transcendent God and
the world, which shall express God’s will and make God intelligible
to man. If such a being or beings do not exist to serve as mediators
between the world and God, then man can have no knowledge of the divine
whatsoever, and God cannot express himself in the world. Now in Plato’s
philosophy the transcendency of God was at least implicit, it was
clearly defined in Aristotle’s thought, and the idea certainly belonged
to the Jewish-Alexandrian thought of the last two centuries before the
beginning of the Christian era. Philo sets forth the doctrine most
plainly. According to him God is so far above all mortal things that he
must be defined in a negative way. All that we can say of him is that
he is pure being, incorporeal, invisible, without qualities, above all
virtue, and above all knowledge. We therefore cannot say that God is
good or beautiful, because he is above all beauty and goodness; he is
eternal, unchanging, existing in and for himself alone. His perfection
is beyond our power to comprehend; our intellect cannot grasp his
nature. All that man can know or say of God is that God _is_.[244] Yet
naturally Philo is not content with negative definitions, but does
attempt to express in a more or less traditional fashion the perfection
of God; he speaks of him as that being which includes all reality
within himself, or as the only being of whom real existence can be
predicated; again as the absolute happy and perfect being; or as the
original of all beauty. He likewise pictures God as the source of all
activity, as the being to whom endless activity is as proper as it is
for fire to burn or snow to chill; God is therefore the cause of all
the activity in the world, as he is the supreme cause of all things.
Yet with his view of the transcendence of God, Philo could not say that
God is present in the world save in his acts; and these acts he does
not perform directly, for if God were to deal directly with the matter
out of which the visible world is made, contact with that matter would
defile the divine perfection. The creation of the world, therefore,
God accomplished by incorporeal powers (δυνάμεις), by ideas (ἰδέαι),
which are his servants.[245] The chief of these is the supreme reason,
the word, the logos. In this logos all the ideas have their place,
as the plan of a city has its place in the soul of its architect.
The logos stands midway between God and the created world; it is not
eternal as God is, or mortal as we, but occupies a middle position. The
indebtedness of Philo to Plato is self-evident. Plato’s absolute and
Plato’s ideas have been made mediary between the transcendent God and
the visible world. This term, logos, the word, had been familiar not
only to Greek philosophy from the time of Heraclitus but it had also a
verbal parallel at least in certain Jewish expressions, “the wisdom of
God,” “the word of God,” which Philo interprets in terms of the logos.
According to Philo the logos has a double rôle. Through the logos God
created the world out of inert and formless matter, and continues to
reveal himself through it to the world. The logos also serves as the
high priest, the intercessor and advocate of the world with God.[246]
Let me here note, however, that in Philo’s thought the logos could not
take corporeal form; it could not become flesh and dwell among us,
and therefore it was not possible that the logos should be identified
completely with the idea of the Jewish Messiah.
Following Plato and the Stoics Philo teaches that man’s reason, his
soul, is a particle, so to speak, of the divine intelligence that has
entered into the human body. The human spirit, therefore, is divine,
but man’s body is mortal and sinful. Here then, as in most of the
philosophies which were influenced by Platonism, a discipline is
necessary to subdue the flesh and free the spirit: man must constantly
exercise his choice in preferring the things of the spirit, for through
the gift of God man is free with power to choose the right or wrong.
The moral obligation of man and the path of his salvation is the same
as we have seen in earlier Greek thought. To this end Philo lays much
weight on practice and education as contributing to advance in virtue;
he is fired with a passionate longing for purity. In a notable passage
he speaks thus to his own soul: “Haste thee, O my soul, to become God’s
dwelling place, pure, holy; to become strong instead of utterly weak,
powerful instead of impotent, wise instead of foolish, most reasonable
instead of wandering.”[247] Yet he goes beyond his predecessors in
teaching that man is so possessed by sin that he can escape from the
bondage only by divine help; that his own reason and his own will are
insufficient for the task. Knowledge and virtue are not acquired by
unaided human effort, but are the gifts of God. Philo outdoes even
the Stoics in requiring man to free himself from the passions of the
body, and yet he points out that just because man is subject to these
passions, because he is a sinner, he cannot unaided follow and imitate
God, or make himself God’s holy temple. Man’s goodness then is due to
the favor of God; salvation is an act of grace.
The end of man’s effort and hope is to attain to knowledge of God and
thereby to find supreme happiness. But man cannot reach this by his
own will or intellect, for God is so far removed from the world that
he cannot be fully apprehended by one dwelling here, so that the gulf
between man and God must be bridged. This is possible, Philo teaches,
when the soul in ecstasy passes out of itself, beyond the sensuous
world, the realm of ideas and the logos, to be at one with God. This
vision of God is the supreme blessing, accorded only to the most
perfect and holy among men; in it the human soul finds not only its
rest and full satisfaction, but its own consummation.[248]
You recognize at once that we have here philosophy fired with religious
emotion, that in Philo’s system at the end reason gives way before a
passionate desire for revelation through union with God. Philosophy
has become theosophy. The ecstacy which we have hitherto seen, has
been connected chiefly with the worship of Dionysus, in which it was
stimulated by means which we find offensive. But this ecstasy is not
aroused by dance or music, or indeed by contemplation, but is attained
in a purely passive condition when the soul is emptied of itself and
becomes one with the Absolute.
These same ideas—the transcendence of God, the existence of mediary
powers between God and the world, the ascetic life as a means of
growth, the dependence of man on God’s grace for his salvation, the
possibility of the Beatific Vision—all are common in varying degrees
to all the mystic philosophies of the day. In the third century
Neoplatonism became the most popular and influential. Through Origen
and St. Augustine it passed into Christian theology. The real problem
for Neoplatonism, as for the other religious philosophies of this
time, was to set forth the way by which the soul of man could grasp
the Divine directly and find its happiness and complete satisfaction
in perfect unity with him. We have just seen how Philo had conceived
of God as wholly transcendent, and had established the logos as the
mediator who furnishes the necessary connection between the eternal,
transcendent God and the created, temporal world. Plotinus outdid
Philo in that he removed his God one stage still farther away. His
definition of God is necessarily similar to that of Philo, but he
endeavors to give a notion of an Absolute more remote, if possible,
than that of his predecessors. God he says is neither reason itself
nor can he be grasped by the use of reason, but is above all knowledge
and reason.[249] We must conceive of him as absolute unity, as at once
pure creative activity, the first cause, the power on which the world
depends, and at the same time as the final cause toward which the world
is tending. The acts of creation are constant; yet God does not create
the visible world directly, but as the sun without effort or loss to
itself sends out its rays, so God out of the fullness of his perfection
emanates Intelligence (Νοῦς), in which are immanent the Ideas: these
are the causes of all things which come into being. The second grade
of emanation is that of the World-soul (Ψυχή), which pours itself out,
so to speak, into the individual souls. The last stage of emanation is
that of Matter, the material which in itself has no characteristics of
being. The sensible world is produced by the action of the Ideas on
Matter, forming and shaping it through Intelligence.[250] You will note
here the four stages, God, Intelligence, Soul, and Matter, as compared
with Philo’s three, God, the Logos, and Matter.
You may well ask at this point why these later philosophers with
their desire to know God, should still lay so much emphasis on his
transcendence, apparently vying with one another in pushing the Divine
beyond the universe, which they still regarded as his creation. Now
we have already seen that Plato implied that his material principle
was imperfect and thereby the source of evil, and that his Absolute,
the supreme Idea, was separate from matter. In the period we are
now considering all schools which owed ultimate allegiance to Plato
or the Pythagoreans held to a clearly defined dualistic view of the
universe. Conscious that the visible, material world is imperfect and
full of evil, unstable and decaying, they argued that God cannot be
immanent in the world, for if he were, he would be subject to evil,
imperfection, and change, whereas we must conceive him to be good,
perfect, and unchanging unity. Therefore the motive which prompted all
these theologians was their desire to save the unity and perfection of
God by removing him from all possible contact with matter, to which
some like the Neoplatonists, following Plato, absolutely denied all
the attributes of being. And the doctrine of divine transcendence was
the more natural for Philo and all who had come under the influence of
Jewish thought, since the Old Testament constantly affirms the absolute
exaltation and perfection of God. In like manner the doctrine of
mediary powers was helped by the Jewish idea of the wisdom of God and
the popular post-exilic belief in angels.
Yet when the theologians had removed God beyond the confines of the
world, beyond all knowledge, they had still to deal with the passionate
longing for knowledge of God and for assurance of salvation which was
strong in large numbers of the uninstructed, as well as in the
philosophic élite. This knowledge and assurance could only be supplied
by a belief in the direct revelation of God to man. Such a belief was
traditional in the Old Testament; on the Greek side it was fostered by
the feeling that the great teachers Pythagoras and Plato were divinely
inspired; and in the popular Oriental religions which we shall consider
in a later lecture, divine revelation was a fundamental article of
faith. But let us return to Plotinus.
The second grade of emanation in the Neoplatonic system is the
World-soul (Ψυχή),[251] which, though inferior to Intelligence (Νοῦς),
is nevertheless divine and immaterial. It stands midway between
Intelligence and Matter and is related to both. Within the World-soul,
which is the highest of all souls, corresponding to Plato’s idea of
the Good, are all individual souls.[252] These descend into matter and,
pervading bodies in all their parts, give them sensation, reason, and
all their life. But even as the sunlight descending into darkness is
dimmed or wholly lost, so by their descent and birth into corporeal
forms souls are made to forget their divine origin. They wish to be
independent; like children who leave their parents and dwell apart from
them, the souls of men forget their own nature and their divine father;
they lose their freedom; they honor that which is not honorable, and
so fall deeper into sin. The sinner therefore must be turned from his
ways, must be made to remember his divine race, to honor the things
of the spirit, and to cease reverencing those things which are not
the soul’s concern.[253] The soul’s return is to be accomplished by an
asceticism with which we are now familiar. This the leaders illustrated
in their own lives. Porphyry tells us that his master remained
unmarried, abstained from animal food, lived in the simplest fashion,
and so despised his body that he seemed ashamed of its possession.[254]
The pupil laid even more stress on the subjugation of the flesh that
the soul might be free and return toward God. “The more we turn toward
that which is mortal,” he says, “the more we unfit our minds for the
infinite grandeur, and the more we withdraw from attachment to the
body, in that same measure we approach the divine.”[255] He taught that
men must regard their bodies as garments, which not only burden but
actually defile them, and which they like athletes must lay aside
that naked and unclothed they may enter the stadium to contend in the
Olympia of the soul.[256]
Plotinus, however, held that men would not all rise above the plane of
the senses, but that many would remain caught by them, thinking that
the good is identical with pleasure and pain with evil; others are more
capable, he said, but they cannot turn their gaze upward, and so they
devote themselves to the virtues of the practical life. But there is a
third class of divine men of greater strength and keener insight, who
can see and follow the gleam from above, so that they rise beyond the
mists of this world to their true and natural abode, like men returning
to their native city after long wandering.[257]
The soul’s final aim in its flight from evil Plotinus defines in
Plato’s words: it is likeness to God.[258] That is the sum of all
virtue. But the master distinguishes grades and degrees of virtue in
practice. There are the social virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance,
and justice, which serve to regulate the passions and help man to
form right opinions. At this stage these cardinal virtues are related
solely to external objects, and serve primarily to better man in his
mundane activities. Next come those virtues which purify the soul from
the pollution of the body, the activities which have nothing to do
with the body but belong wholly to the soul; they are concerned with
thought and reason. But in the highest range the virtues of the lower
stages are no longer related to external objects, but have to do with
the Intelligence (Νοῦς) alone. This is the contemplative life, man’s
highest activity, in which he becomes himself divine.[259]
Yet the Neoplatonist held that there is a still higher stage.
When man’s soul has mounted upward to Intelligence and lives the
contemplative life, the space between Intelligence and God is yet
unbridged. This gulf can only be crossed when the soul in ecstasy,
forgetful of all thought and of self, rises to complete knowledge and
union with the One.[260] This supreme privilege, according to Porphyry,
was vouchsafed his master four times in the years he was his pupil; and
once he too had seen the Beatific Vision.[261]
It is evident that Neoplatonism, the last stage of Greek philosophy,
is no isolated or strange phenomenon. On its metaphysical side it is
the consummation and final synthesis of the whole course of Greek
thought from the sixth century to its own day; likewise in ethics it
combined the views of its chief predecessors as its leaders understood
them; and finally in the doctrine of the soul’s union with God it only
carried the mystical tendencies of previous centuries to their natural
conclusion.
If time allowed, we might consider the way in which the Neoplatonists
reconciled their theology with the polytheism and demonology of popular
belief, but that would lead us too far; indeed it would take us away
from our own proper subject and from the main interest of the great
leaders of this school. They were most concerned with finding out and
showing men the true path to the soul’s peace and happiness, and we are
chiefly interested in the history of their thought on this high theme.
They found their object not in the exercise of the reason or the will
alone, but in mysticism.