CHAPTER IV.

GREEK AGE OF INQUIRY.

RISE AND DECLINE OF PHYSICAL SPECULATION.

IONIAN PHILOSOPHY, _commencing from Egyptian Ideas, identifies

in Water, or Air, or Fire, the First Principle.--Emerging from

the Stage of Sorcery, it founds Psychology, Biology,

Cosmogony, Astronomy, and ends in doubting whether there is

any Criterion of Truth._

ITALIAN PHILOSOPHY _depends on Numbers and Harmonies.--It

reproduces the Egyptian and Hindu Doctrine of Transmigration._

ELEATIC PHILOSOPHY _presents a great Advance, indicating a

rapid Approach to Oriental Ideas.--It assumes a Pantheistic

Aspect._

RISE OF PHILOSOPHY IN EUROPEAN GREECE.--_Relations and

Influence of the Mediterranean Commercial and Colonial

System.--Athens attains to commercial Supremacy.--Her vast

Progress in Intelligence and Art.--Her Demoralization.--She

becomes the Intellectual Centre of the Mediterranean._

_Commencement of the Athenian higher Analysis.--It is

conducted by_ THE SOPHISTS, _who reject Philosophy, Religion,

and even Morality, and end in Atheism._

_Political Dangers of the higher Analysis.--Illustration from

the Middle Ages._

[Sidenote: Origin of Greek philosophy.]

In Chapter II. I have described the origin and decline of Greek

Mythology; in this, I am to relate the first European attempt at

philosophizing. The Ionian systems spring directly out of the

contemporary religious opinions, and appear as a phase in Greek

comparative theology.

[Sidenote: Its imperfections.]

Contrasted with the psychical condition of India, we cannot but be

struck with the feebleness of these first European efforts. They

correspond to that period in which the mind has shaken off its ideas of

sorcery, but has not advanced beyond geocentral and anthropocentral

conceptions. As is uniformly observed, as soon as man has collected

what he considers to be trustworthy data, he forthwith applies them to a

cosmogony, and develops pseudo-scientific systems. It is not until a

later period that he awakens to the suspicion that we have no absolute

knowledge of truth.

The reader, who might, perhaps, be repelled by the apparent

worthlessness of the succession of Greek opinions now to be described,

will find them assume an interest, if considered in the aggregate, or

viewed as a series of steps or stages of European approach to

conclusions long before arrived at in Egypt and India. Far in advance of

anything that Greece can offer, the intellectual history of India

furnishes systems at once consistent and imposing--systems not remaining

useless speculations, but becoming inwoven in social life.

[Sidenote: Commences in Asia Minor.]

Greek philosophy is considered as having originated with Thales, who,

though of Phoenician descent, was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in

Asia Minor, about B.C. 640. At that time, as related in the last

chapter, the Egyptian ports had been opened to foreigners by

Psammetichus. In the civil war which that monarch had been waging with

his colleagues, he owed his success to Ionian and other Greek

mercenaries whom he had employed; but, though proving victor in the

contest, his political position was such as to compel him to depart from

the maxims followed in his country for so many thousand years, and to

permit foreigners to have access to it. Hitherto the Europeans had been

only known to the Egyptians as pirates and cannibals.

[Sidenote: Doctrine of Thales]

[Sidenote: is derived from Egypt.]

[Sidenote: Importance of water in Egypt.]

From the doctrine of Thales, it may be inferred that, though he had

visited Egypt, he had never been in communication with its sources of

learning, but had merely mingled among the vulgar, from whom he had

gathered the popular notion that the first principle is water. The state

of things in Egypt suggests that this primitive dogma of European

philosophy was a popular notion in that country. With but little care on

the part of men the fertilizing Nile-water yielded those abundant crops

which made Egypt the granary of the Old World. It might therefore be

said, both philosophically and facetiously, that the first principle of

all things is water. The harvests depended on it, and, through them,

animals and man. The government of the country was supported by it, for

the financial system was founded on a tax paid by the proprietors of the

land for the use of the public sluices and aqueducts. There was not a

peasant to whom it was not apparent that water is the first principle of

all things, even of taxation; and, since it was not only necessary to

survey lands to ascertain the surface that had been irrigated, but to

redetermine their boundaries after the subsidence of the flood, even the

scribes and surveyors might concede that geometry itself was indebted

for its origin to water.

[Sidenote: Thales asserts that water is the first principle.]

If, therefore, in any part of the Old World, this doctrine had both a

vulgar and a philosophical significance, that country was Egypt. We may

picture to ourselves the inquisitive but ill-instructed Thales carried

in some pirate-ship or trading-bark to the mysterious Nile, respecting

which Ionia was full of legends and myths. He saw the aqueducts, canals,

flood-gates, the great Lake Moeris, dug by the hand of man as many

ages before his day as have elapsed from his day to ours; he saw on all

sides the adoration paid to the river, for it had actually become

deified; he learned from the vulgar, with whom alone he came in contact,

their universal belief that all things arise from water--from the vulgar

alone, for, had he ever been taught by the priests, we should have found

traces in his system of the doctrines of emanation, transmigration, and

absorption, which were imported into Greece in later times. We may

interpret the story of Thales on the principles which would apply in the

case of some intelligent Indian who should find his way to the outposts

of a civilized country. Imperfectly acquainted with the language, and

coming in contact with the lower class alone, he might learn their

vulgar philosophy, and carry back the fancied treasure to his home.

As to the profound meaning which some have been disposed to extract from

the dogma of Thales, we shall, perhaps, be warranted in rejecting it

altogether. It has been affirmed that he attempted to concentrate all

supernatural powers in one; to reduce all possible agents to unity; in

short, out of polytheism to bring forth monotheism; to determine the

invariable in the variable; and to ascertain the beginning of things:

that he observed how infinite is the sea; how necessary moisture is to

growth; nay, even how essential it was to the well-being of himself;

"that without moisture his own body would not have been what it was, but

a dry husk falling to pieces." Nor can we adopt the opinion that the

intention of Thales was to establish a coincidence between philosophy

and the popular theology as delivered by Hesiod, who affirms that

Oceanus is one of the parent-gods of Nature. The imputation of

irreligion made against him shows at what an early period the antagonism

of polytheism and scientific inquiry was recognized. But it is possible

to believe that all things are formed out of one primordial substance,

without denying the existence of a creative power. Or, to use the Indian

illustration, the clay may not be the potter.

[Sidenote: Other doctrines of Thales.]

Thales is said to have predicted the solar eclipse which terminated a

battle between the Medes and Lydians, but it has been suggestively

remarked that it is not stated that he predicted the day on which it

should occur. He had an idea that warmth originates from or is nourished

by humidity, and that even the sun and stars derived their aliment out

of the sea at the time of their rising and setting. Indeed, he regarded

them as living beings; obtaining an argument from the phenomena of amber

and the magnet, supposed by him to possess a living soul, because they

have a moving force. Moreover, he taught that the whole world is an

insouled thing, and that it is full of dæmons. Thales had, therefore,

not completely passed out of the stage of sorcery.

His system obtained importance not only from its own plausibility, but

because it was introduced under favourable auspices and at a favourable

time. It came into Asia Minor as a portion of the wisdom of Egypt, and

therefore with a prestige sufficient to assure for it an attentive

reception. But this would have been of little avail had not the mental

culture of Ionia been advanced to a degree suitable for offering to it

conditions of development. Under such circumstances the Egyptian dogma

formed the starting-point for a special method of philosophizing.

[Sidenote: They constitute the starting-point of Ionian philosophy.]

The manner in which that development took place illustrates the vigour

of the Grecian mind. In Egypt a doctrine might exist for thousands of

years, protected by its mere antiquity from controversy or even

examination, and hence sink with the lapse of time into an ineffectual

and lifeless state; but the same doctrine brought into a young community

full of activity would quickly be made productive and yield new results.

As seeds taken from the coffins of mummies, wherein they have been shut

up for thousands of years, when placed under circumstances favourable

for development in a rich soil, and supplied with moisture, have

forthwith, even in our own times, germinated, borne flowers, and matured

new seeds, so the rude philosophy of Thales passed through a like

development. Its tendency is shown in the attempt it at once made to

describe the universe, even before the parts thereof had been

determined.

[Sidenote: Anaximenes asserts that air is the first principle.]

[Sidenote: It is also the soul.]

[Sidenote: The air is God.]

But it is not alone the water or ocean that seems to be infinite, and

capable of furnishing a supply for the origin of all other things. The

air, also, appears to reach as far as the stars. On it, as Anaximenes of

Miletus remarks, "the very earth itself floats like a broad leaf."

Accordingly, this Ionian, stimulated doubtless by the hope of sharing in

or succeeding to the celebrity that Thales had enjoyed for a century,

proposed to substitute for water, as the primitive source of things,

atmospheric air. And, in truth, there seem to be reasons for bestowing

upon it such a pre-eminence. To those who have not looked closely into

the matter, it would appear that water itself is generated from it, as

when clouds are formed, and from them rain-drops, and springs, and

fountains, and rivers, and even the sea. He also attributes infinity to

it, a dogma scarcely requiring any exercise of the imagination, but

being rather the expression of an ostensible fact; for who, when he

looks upward, can discern the boundary of the atmosphere. Anaximenes

also held that even the human soul itself is nothing but air, since life

consists in inhaling and exhaling it, and ceases as soon as that

process stops. He taught also that warmth and cold arise from mere

rarefaction and condensation, and gave as a proof the fact that when we

breathe with the lips drawn together the air is cold, but it becomes

warm when we breathe through the widely-opened mouth. Hence he concluded

that, with a sufficient rarefaction, air might turn into fire, and that

this probably was the origin of the sun and stars, blazing comets, and

other meteors; but if by chance it should undergo condensation, it would

turn into wind and clouds, or, if that operation should be still more

increased, into water, snow, hail, and, at last, even into earth itself.

And since it is seen from the results of breathing that the air is a

life-giving principle to man, nay, even is actually his soul, it would

appear to be a just inference that the infinite air is God and that the

gods and goddesses have sprung from it.

Such was the philosophy of Anaximenes. It was the beginning of that

stimulation of activity by rival schools which played so distinguished a

part in the Greek intellectual movement. Its superiority over the

doctrine of Thales evidently consists in this, that it not only assigns

a primitive substance, but even undertakes to show by observation and

experiment how others arise from it, and transformations occur. As to

the discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic by the aid of a gnomon

attributed to Anaximenes, it was merely a boast of his vainglorious

countrymen, and altogether beyond the scientific grasp of one who had no

more exact idea of the nature of the earth than that it was "like a

broad leaf floating in the air."

[Sidenote: Diogenes asserts that air is the soul of the world.]

The doctrines of Anaximenes received a very important development in the

hands of Diogenes of Apollonia, who asserted that all things originate

from one essence, which, undergoing continual changes, becoming

different at different times, turns back again to the same state. He

regarded the entire world as a living being, spontaneously evolving and

transforming itself, and agreed with Anaximenes that the soul of man is

nothing but air, as is also the soul of the world. From this it follows

that the air must be eternal, imperishable, and endowed with

consciousness. "It knows much; for without reason it would be impossible

for all to be arranged so duly and proportionately as that all should

maintain its fitting measure, winter and summer, night and day, the

rain, the wind, and fair weather; and whatever object we consider will

be found to have been ordered in the best and most beautiful manner

possible." "But that which has knowledge is that which men call air; it

is it that regulates and governs all, and hence it is the use of air to

pervade all, and to dispose all, and to be in all, for there is nothing

that has not part in it."

[Sidenote: Difficulty of rising above fetichism.]

[Sidenote: Astronomy and chemistry have passed beyond the fetich stage.]

The early cultivator of philosophy emerges with difficulty from

fetichism. The harmony observed among the parts of the world is easily

explained on the hypothesis of a spiritual principle residing in things,

and arranging them by its intelligent volition. It is not at once that

he rises to the conception that all this beauty and harmony are due to

the operation of law. We are so prone to judge of the process of

external things from the modes of our own personal experience, our acts

being determined by the exercise of our wills, that it is with

difficulty we disentangle ourselves from such notions in the explanation

of natural phenomena. Fetichism may be observed in the infancy of many

of the natural sciences. Thus the electrical power of amber was imputed

to a soul residing in that substance, a similar explanation being also

given of the control of the magnet over iron. The movements of the

planetary bodies, Mercury, Venus, Mars, were attributed to an

intelligent principle residing in each, guiding and controlling the

motions, and ordering all things for the best. It was an epoch in the

history of the human mind when astronomy set an example to all other

sciences of shaking off its fetichism, and showing that the intricate

movements of the heavenly bodies are all capable not only of being

explained, but even foretold, if once was admitted the existence of a

simple, yet universal, invariable, and eternal law.

Not without difficulty do men perceive that there is nothing

inconsistent between invariable law and endlessly varying phenomena, and

that it is a more noble view of the government of this world to impute

its order to a penetrating primitive wisdom, which could foresee

consequences throughout a future eternity, and provide for them in the

original plan at the outset, than to invoke the perpetual intervention

of an ever-acting spiritual agency for the purpose of warding off

misfortunes that might happen, and setting things to rights. Chemistry

furnishes us with a striking example--an example very opportune in the

case we are considering--of the doctrine of Diogenes of Apollonia, that

the air is actually a spiritual being; for, on the discovery of several

of the gases by the earlier experimenters, they were not only regarded

as of a spiritual nature, but actually received the name under which

they pass to this day, gheist or gas, from a belief that they were

ghosts. If a labourer descended into a well and was suffocated, as if

struck dead by some invisible hand; if a lamp lowered down burnt for a

few moments with a lurid flame, and was then extinguished; if, in a coal

mine, when the unwary workman exposed a light, on a sudden the place was

filled with flashing flames and thundering explosions, tearing down the

rocks and destroying every living thing in the way, often, too, without

leaving on the dead any marks of violence; what better explanation could

be given of such catastrophes than to impute them to some supernatural

agent? Nor was there any want, in those times, of well-authenticated

stories of unearthly faces and forms seen in such solitudes.

[Sidenote: Origin of psychology.]

The modification made by Diogenes in the theory of Anaximenes, by

converting it from a physical into a psychological system, is important,

as marking the beginning of the special philosophy of Greece. The

investigation of the intellectual development of the universe led the

Greeks to the study of the intellect itself. In his special doctrine,

Diogenes imputed the changeability of the air to its mobility; a

property in which he thought it excelled all other substances, because

it is among the rarest or thinnest of the elements. It is, however, said

by some, who are disposed to transcendentalize his doctrine, that he did

not mean the common atmospheric air, but something more attenuated and

warm; and since, in its purest state, it constitutes the most perfect

intellect, inferior degrees of reason must be owing to an increase of

its density and moisture. Upon such a principle, the whole earth is

animated by the breath of life; the souls of brutes, which differ from

one another so much in intelligence, are only air in its various

conditions of moisture and warmth. He explained the production of the

world through condensation of the earth from air by cold, the warmth

rising upward and forming the sun; in the stars he thought he recognized

the respiratory organs of the world. From the preponderance of moist air

in the constitution of brutes, he inferred that they are like the

insane, incapable of thought, for thickness of the air impedes

respiration, and therefore quick apprehension. From the fact that plants

have no cavities wherein to receive the air, and are altogether

unintelligent, he was led to the principle that the thinking power of

man arises from the flowing of that substance throughout the body in the

blood. He also explained the superior intelligence of men from their

breathing a purer air than the beasts, which carry their nostrils near

the ground. In these crude and puerile speculations we have the

beginning of mental philosophy.

[Sidenote: Modern discoveries as to the relations of the air.]

[Sidenote: Inter-dependence of animals and plants.]

[Sidenote: Agency of the sun.]

I cannot dismiss the system of the Apollonian without setting in

contrast with it the discoveries of modern science respecting the

relations of the air. Toward the world of life it stands in a position

of wonderful interest. Decomposed into its constituents by the skill of

chemistry, it is no longer looked upon as a homogeneous body; its

ingredients have not only been separated, but the functions they

discharge have been ascertained. From one of these, carbonic acid, all

the various forms of plants arise; that substance being decomposed by

the rays of the sun, and furnishing to vegetables carbon, their chief

solid ingredient. All those beautifully diversified organic productions,

from the mosses of the icy regions to the palms characteristic of the

landscapes of the tropics--all those we cast away as worthless weeds,

and those for the obtaining of which we expend the sweat of our

brow--all, without any exception, are obtained from the atmosphere by

the influence of the sun. And since without plants the life of animals

could not be maintained, they constitute the means by which the aërial

material, vivified, as it may be said, by the rays of the sun, is

conveyed even into the composition of man himself. As food, they serve

to repair the waste of the body necessarily occasioned in the acts of

moving and thinking. For a time, therefore, these ingredients, once a

part of the structure of plants, enter as essential constituents in the

structure of animals. Yet it is only in a momentary way, for the

essential condition of animal activity is that there shall be unceasing

interstitial death; not a finger can be lifted without the waste of

muscular material; not a thought arise without the destruction of

cerebral substance. From the animal system the products of decay are

forthwith removed, often by mechanisms of the most exquisite

construction; but their uses are not ended, for sooner or later they

find their way back again into the air, and again serve for the

origination of plants. It is needless to trace these changes in all

their details; the same order or cycle of progress holds good for the

water, the ammonia; they pass from the inorganic to the living state,

and back to the inorganic again; now the same particle is found in the

air next aiding in the composition of a plant, then in the body of an

animal, and back in the air once more. In this perpetual revolution

material particles run, the dominating influence determining and

controlling their movement being in that great centre of our system, the

sun. From him, in the summer days, plants receive, and, as it were,

store up that warmth which, at a subsequent time, is to reappear in the

glow of health of man, or to be rekindled in the blush of shame, or to

consume in the burning fever. Nor is there any limit of time. The heat

we derive from the combustion of stubble came from the sun as it were

only yesterday; but that with which we moderate the rigour of winter

when we burn anthracite or bituminous coal was also derived from the

same source in the ultra-tropical climate of the secondary times,

perhaps a thousand centuries ago.

In such perpetually recurring cycles are the movements of material

things accomplished, and all takes place under the dominion of

invariable law. The air is the source whence all organisms have come; it

is the receptacle to which they all return. Its parts are awakened into

life, not by the influence of any terrestrial agency or principle

concealed in itself, as Diogenes supposed, but by a star which is ninety

millions of miles distant, the source, direct or indirect, of every

terrestrial movement, and the dispenser of light and life.

[Sidenote: Heraclitus asserts that fire is the first principle.]

[Sidenote: The fictitious permanence of successive forms.]

To Thales and Diogenes, whose primordial elements were water and air

respectively, we must add Heraclitus of Ephesus, who maintained that the

first principle is fire. He illustrated the tendency which Greek

philosophy had already assumed of opposition to Polytheism and the

idolatrous practices of the age. It is said that in his work, ethical,

political, physical, and theological subjects were so confused, and so

great was the difficulty of understanding his meaning, that he obtained

the surname of "the Obscure." In this respect he has had among modern

metaphysicians many successors. He founds his system, however, upon the

simple axiom that "all is convertible into fire, and fire into all."

Perhaps by the term fire he understood what is at present meant by heat,

for he expressly says that he does not mean flame, but something merely

dry and warm. He considered that this principle is in a state of

perpetual activity, forming and absorbing every individual thing. He

says, "All is, and is not; for though it does in truth come into being,

yet it forthwith ceases to be." "No one has ever been twice on the same

stream, for different waters are constantly flowing down. It dissipates

its waters and gathers them again; it approaches and recedes, overflows

and fails." And to teach us that we ourselves are changing and have

changed, he says, "On the same stream we embark and embark not, we are

and we are not." By such illustrations he implies that life is only an

unceasing motion, and we cannot fail to remark that the Greek turn of

thought is fast following that of the Hindu.

But Heraclitus totally fails to free himself from local conceptions. He

speaks of the motion of the primordial principle in the upward and

downward directions, in the higher and lower regions. He says that the

chief accumulation thereof is above, and the chief deficiency below: and

hence he regards the soul of a man as a portion of fire migrated from

heaven. He carries his ideas of the transitory nature of all phenomena

to their last consequences, and illustrates the noble doctrine that all

which appears to us to be permanent is only a regulated and

self-renewing concurrence of similar and opposite motions by such

extravagances as that the sun is daily destroyed and renewed.

[Sidenote: Physical and physiological doctrines of Heraclitus.]

In the midst of many wild physical statements many true axioms are

delivered. "All is ordered by reason and intelligence, though all is

subject to Fate." Already he perceived what the metaphysicians of our

own times are illustrating, that "man's mind can produce no certain

knowledge from its own interior resources alone." He regarded the organs

of sense as being the channels through which the outer life of the

world, and therewith truth, enters into the mind, and that in sleep,

when the organs of sense are closed, we are shut out from all communion

with the surrounding universal spirit. In his view every thing is

animated and insouled, but to different degrees, organic objects being

most completely or perfectly so. His astronomy may be anticipated from

what has been said respecting the sun, which he moreover regarded as

being scarcely more than a foot in diameter, and, like all other

celestial objects, a mere meteor. His moral system was altogether based

upon the physical, the fundamental dogma being the excellence of fire.

Thus he accounted for the imbecility of the drunkard by his having a

moist soul, and drew the inference that a warm or dry soul is the wisest

and best; with justifiable patriotism asserting that the noblest souls

must belong to a climate that is dry, intending thereby to indicate that

Greece is man's fittest and truest country. There can be no doubt that

in Heraclitus there is a strong tendency to the doctrine of a soul of

the world. If the divinity is undistinguishable from heat, whither can

we go to escape its influences? And in the restless activity and

incessant changes it produces in every thing within our reach, do we not

recognize the tokens of the illimitable and unshackled?

[Sidenote: The puerility of Ionian philosophy.]

I have lingered on the chief features of the early Greek philosophy as

exhibited in the physical school of Ionia. They serve to impress upon

us its intrinsic imperfection. It is a mixture of the physical,

metaphysical, and mystical which, upon the whole, has no other value

than this, that it shows how feeble were the beginnings of our

knowledge--that we commenced with the importation of a few vulgar errors

from Egypt. In presence of the utilitarian philosophy of that country

and the theology of India, how vain and even childish are these germs of

science in Greece! Yet this very imperfection is not without its use,

since it warns us of the inferior position in which we stand as respects

the time of our civilization when compared with those ancient states,

and teaches us to reject the assertion which so many European scholars

have wearied themselves in establishing, that Greece led the way to all

human knowledge of any value. Above all, it impresses upon us more

appropriate, because more humble views of our present attainments and

position, and gives us to understand that other races of men not only

preceded us in intellectual culture, but have equalled, and perhaps

surpassed every thing that we have yet done in mental philosophy.

[Sidenote: Anaximander's doctrine of the Infinite.]

[Sidenote: Origin of cosmogony.]

[Sidenote: Origin of biology.]

Of the other founders of Ionic sects it may be observed that, though

they gave to their doctrines different forms, the method of reasoning

was essentially the same in them all. Of this a better illustration

could not be given than in the philosophy of Anaximander of Miletus, who

was contemporary with Thales. He started with the postulate that things

arose by separation from a universal mixture of all: his primordial

principle was therefore chaos, though he veiled it in the metaphysically

obscure designation "The Infinite." The want of precision in this

respect gave rise to much difference of opinion as to his tenets. To his

chaos he imputed an internal energy, by which its parts spontaneously

separated from each other; to those parts he imputed absolute

unchangeability. He taught that the earth is of a cylindrical form, its

base being one-third of its altitude; it is retained in the centre of

the world by the air in an equality of distance from all the boundaries

of the universe; that the fixed stars and planets revolved round it,

each being fastened to a crystalline ring; and beyond them, in like

manner, the moon, and, still farther off, the sun. He conceived of an

opposition between the central and circumferential regions, the former

being naturally cold, and the latter hot; indeed, in his opinion, the

settling of the cold parts to the centre, and the ascending of the hot,

gave origin, respectively, to the formation of the earth and shining

celestial bodies, the latter first existing as a complete shell or

sphere, which, undergoing destruction, broke up into stars. Already we

perceive the tendency of Greek philosophy to shape itself into systems

of cosmogony, founded upon the disturbance of the chaotic matter by heat

and cold. Nay, more, Anaximander explained the origin of living

creatures on like principles, for the sun's heat, acting upon the primal

miry earth, produced filmy bladders or bubbles, and these, becoming

surrounded with a prickly rind, at length burst open, and, as from an

egg, animals came forth. At first they were ill-formed and imperfect,

but subsequently elaborated and developed. As to man, so far from being

produced in his perfect shape, he was ejected as a fish, and under that

form continued in the muddy water until he was capable of supporting

himself on dry land. Besides "the Infinite" being thus the cause of

generation, it was also the cause of destruction: "things must all

return whence they came, according to destiny, for they must all, in

order of time, undergo due penalties and expiations of wrong-doing."

This expression obviously contains a moral consideration, and is an

exemplification of the commencing feeble interconnection between

physical and moral philosophy.

As to the more solid discoveries attributed to this philosopher, we may

dispose of them in the same manner that we have dealt with the like

facts in the biographies of his predecessors--they are idle inventions

of his vainglorious countrymen. That he was the first to make maps is

scarcely consistent with the well-known fact that the Egyptians had

cultivated geometry for that express purpose thirty centuries before he

was born. As to his inventing sun-dials, the shadow had gone back on

that of Ahaz a long time before. In reality, the sun-dial was a very

ancient Oriental invention. And as to his being the first to make an

exact calculation of the size and distance of the heavenly bodies, it

need only be remarked that those who have so greatly extolled his

labours must have overlooked how incompatible such discoveries are with

a system which assumes that the earth is cylindrical in shape, and kept

in the midst of the heavens by the atmosphere; that the sun is farther

off than the fixed stars; and that each of the heavenly bodies is made

to revolve by means of a crystalline wheel.

The philosopher whose views we have next to consider is Anaxagoras of

Clazomene, the friend and master of Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates.

Like several of his predecessors, he had visited Egypt. Among his

disciples were numbered some of the most eminent men of those times.

[Sidenote: Anaxagoras teaches the unchangeability of the universe.]

[Sidenote: The primal intellect.]

[Sidenote: Cosmogony of Anaxagoras.]

The fundamental principle of his philosophy was the recognition of the

unchangeability of the universe as a whole, the variety of forms that we

see being produced by new arrangements of its constituent parts. Such a

doctrine includes, of course, the idea of the eternity of matter.

Anaxagoras says, "Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins or

ceases to be, for nothing comes into being or is destroyed, but all is

an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent things, so that all becoming

might more correctly be called becoming-mixed, and all corruption

becoming-separate." In such a statement we cannot fail to remark that

the Greek is fast passing into the track of the Egyptian and the Hindu.

In some respects his views recall those of the chaos of Anaximander, as

when he says, "Together were all things infinite in number and

smallness; nothing was distinguishable. Before they were sorted, while

all was together, there was no quality noticeable." To the first moving

force which arranged the parts of things out of the chaos, he gave the

designation of "the Intellect," rejecting Fate as an empty name, and

imputing all things to Reason. He made no distinction between the Soul

and Intellect. His tenets evidently include a dualism indicated by the

moving force and the moved mass, an opposition between the corporeal and

mental. This indicated that for philosophy there are two separate

routes, the physical and intellectual. While Reason is thus the prime

mover in his philosophy, he likewise employed many subordinate agents in

the government of things--for instance, air, water, and fire, being

evidently unable to explain the state of nature in a satisfactory way by

the operation of the Intellect alone. We recognize in the details of his

system ideas derived from former ones, such as the settling of the cold

and dense below, and the rising of the warm and light above. In the

beginning the action of Intellect was only partial; that which was

primarily moved was only imperfectly sorted, and contained in itself the

capability of many separations. From this point his system became a

cosmogony, showing how the elements and fogs, stones, stars, and the

sea, were produced. These explanations, as mighty be anticipated, have

no exactness. Among his primary elements are many incongruous things,

such as cold, colour, fire, gold, lead, corn, marrow, blood, &c. This

doctrine implied that in compound things there was not a formation, but

an arrangement. It required, therefore, many elements instead of a

single one. Flesh is made of fleshy particles, bones of bony, gold of

golden, lead of leaden, wood of wooden, &c. These analogous constituents

are homoeomeriæ. Of an infinite number of kinds, they composed the

infinite all, which is a mixture of them. From such conditions

Anaxagoras proves that all the parts of an animal body pre-exist in the

food, and are merely collected therefrom. As to the phenomena of life,

he explains it on his doctrine of dualism between mind and matter; he

teaches that sleep is produced by the reaction of the latter on the

former. Even plants he regards as only rooted animals, motionless, but

having sensations and desires; he imputes the superiority of man to the

mere fact of his having hands. He explains our mental perceptions upon

the hypothesis that we have naturally within us the contraries of all

the qualities of external things; and that, when we consider an object,

we become aware of the preponderance of those qualities in our mind

which are deficient in it. Hence all sensation is attended with pain.

His doctrine of the production of animals was founded on the action of

the sunlight on the miry earth. The earth he places in the centre of

the world, whither it was carried by a whirlwind, the pole being

originally in the zenith; but, when animals issued from the mud, its

position was changed by the Intellect, so that there might be suitable

climates. In some particulars his crude guesses present amusing

anticipations of subsequent discoveries. Thus he maintained that the

moon has mountains, and valleys like the earth; that there have been

grand epochs in the history of our globe, in which it has been

successively modified by fire and water; that the hills of Lampsacus

would one day be under the sea, if time did not too soon fail.

[Sidenote: Doubts whether we have any criterion of truth.]

As to the nature of human knowledge, Anaxagoras, asserted that by the

Intellect alone do we become acquainted with the truth, the senses being

altogether untrustworthy. He illustrated this by putting a drop of

coloured liquid into a quantity of clear water, the eye being unable to

recognize any change. Upon such principles also he asserted that snow is

not white, but black, since it is composed of water, of which the colour

is black; and hence he drew such conclusions as that "things are to each

man according as they seem to him." It was doubtless the recognition of

the unreliability of the senses that extorted from him the well-known

complaint: "Nothing can be known; nothing can be learned; nothing can be

certain; sense is limited; intellect is weak; life is short."

[Sidenote: Anaxagoras is persecuted.]

The biography of Anaxagoras is not without interest. Born in affluence,

he devoted all his means to philosophy, and in his old age encountered

poverty and want. He was accused by the superstitious Athenian populace

of Atheism and impiety to the gods, since he asserted that the sun and

moon consist of earth and stone, and that the so-called divine miracles

of the times were nothing more than common natural effects. For these

reasons, and also because of the Magianism of his doctrine--for he

taught the antagonism of mind and matter, a dogma of the detested

Persians--he was thrown into prison, condemned to death, and barely

escaped through the influence of Pericles. He fled to Lampsacus, where

he ended his days in exile. His vainglorious countrymen, however,

conferred honour upon his memory in their customary exaggerated way,

boasting that he was the first to explain the phases of the moon, the

nature of solar and lunar eclipses, that he had the power of foretelling

future events, and had even predicted the fall of a meteoric stone.

From the biography of Anaxagoras, as well as of several of his

contemporaries and successors, we may learn that a popular opposition

was springing up against philosophy, not limited to a mere social

protest, but carried out into political injustice. The antagonism

between learning and Polytheism was becoming every day more distinct. Of

the philosophers, some were obliged to flee into exile, some suffered

death. The natural result of such a state of things was to force them to

practise concealment and mystification, as is strikingly shown in the

history of the Pythagoreans.

[Sidenote: Pythagoras, biography of.]

Of Pythagoras, the founder of this sect, but little is known with

certainty; even the date of his birth is contested, probably he was born

at Samos about B.C. 540. If we were not expressly told so, we should

recognize from his doctrines that he had been in Egypt and India. Some

eminent scholars, who desire on all occasions to magnify the learning of

ancient Europe, depreciate as far as they can the universal testimony of

antiquity that such was the origin of the knowledge of Pythagoras,

asserting that the constitution of the Egyptian priesthood rendered it

impossible for a foreigner to become initiated. They forget that the

ancient system of that country had been totally destroyed in the great

revolution which took place more than a century before those times. If

it were not explicitly stated by the ancients that Pythagoras lived for

twenty-two years in Egypt, there is sufficient internal evidence in his

story to prove that he had been there a long time. As a connoisseur can

detect the hand of a master by the style of a picture, so one who has

devoted attention to the old systems of thought sees, at a glance, the

Egyptian in the philosophy of Pythagoras.

He passed into Italy during the reign of Tarquin the Proud, and settled

at Crotona, a Greek colonial city on the Bay of Tarentum. At first he

established a school, but, favoured by local dissensions, he gradually

organized from the youths who availed themselves of his instructions a

secret political society. Already it had passed into a maxim among the

learned Greeks that it is not advantageous to communicate knowledge too

freely to the people--a bitter experience in persecutions seemed to

demonstrate that the maxim was founded on truth. The step from a secret

philosophical society to a political conspiracy is but short. Pythagoras

appears to have taken it. The disciples who were admitted to his

scientific secrets after a period of probation and process of

examination constituted a ready instrument of intrigue against the

state, the issue of which, after a time, appeared in the supplanting of

the ancient senate and the exaltation of Pythagoras and his club to the

administration of government. The actions of men in all times are

determined by similar principles; and as it would be now with such a

conspiracy, so it was then; for, though the Pythagorean influence spread

from Crotona to other Italian towns, an overwhelming reaction soon set

in, the innovators were driven into exile, their institutions destroyed,

and their founder fell a victim to his enemies.

The organization attempted by the Pythagoreans is an exception to the

general policy of the Greeks. The philosophical schools had been merely

points of reunion for those entertaining similar opinions; but in the

state they can hardly be regarded as having had any political existence.

[Sidenote: His miracles.]

It is difficult, when the political or religious feelings of men have

been engaged, to ascertain the truth of events in which they have been

concerned; deception, and falsehood, seem to be licensed. In the midst

of the troubles befalling Italy as the consequence of these Pythagorean

machinations, it is impossible to ascertain facts with certainty. One

party exalts Pythagoras to a superhuman state; it pictures him majestic

and impassive, clothed in robes of white, with a golden coronet around

his brows, listening to the music of the spheres, or seeking relaxation

in the more humble hymns of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales; lost in the

contemplation of Nature, or rapt in ecstasy in his meditations on God;

manifesting his descent from Apollo or Hermes by the working of

miracles, predicting future events, conversing with genii in the

solitude of a dark cavern, and even surpassing the wonder of speaking

simultaneously in different tongues, since it was established, by the

most indisputable testimony, that he had accomplished the prodigy of

being present with and addressing the people in several different places

at the same time. It seems not to have occurred to his disciples that

such preposterous assertions cannot be sustained by any evidence

whatsoever; and that the stronger and clearer such evidence is, instead

of supporting the fact for which it is brought forward, it the more

serves to shake our confidence in the truth of man, or impresses on us

the conclusion that he is easily lead to the adoption of falsehood, and

is readily deceived by imposture.

[Sidenote: His character.]

By his opponents he was denounced as a quack, or, at the best, a

visionary mystic, who had deluded the young with the mummeries of a

free-masonry; had turned the weak-minded into shallow enthusiasts and

grim ascetics; and as having conspired against a state which had given

him an honourable refuge, and brought disorder and bloodshed upon it.

Between such contradictory statements, it is difficult to determine how

much we should impute to the philosopher and how much to the trickster.

In this uncertainty, the Pythagoreans reap the fruit of one of their

favourite maxims, "Not unto all should all be made known." Perhaps at

the bottom of these political movements lay the hope of establishing a

central point of union for the numerous Greek colonies of Italy, which,

though they were rich and highly civilized, were, by reason of their

isolation and antagonism, essentially weak. Could they have been united

in a powerful federation by the aid of some political or religious bond,

they might have exerted a singular influence on the rising fortunes of

Rome, and thereby on humanity.

[Sidenote: Pythagoras asserts that number is the first principle.]

The fundamental dogma of the Pythagoreans was that "number is the

essence or first principle of things." This led them at once to the

study of the mysteries of figures and of arithmetical relations, and

plunged them into the wildest fantasies when it took the absurd form

that numbers are actually things.

The approval of the doctrines of Pythagoras so generally expressed was

doubtless very much due to the fact that they supplied an intellectual

void. Those who had been in the foremost ranks of philosophy had come to

the conclusion that, as regard external things, and even ourselves, we

have no criterion of truth; but in the properties of numbers and their

relations, such a criterion does exist.

[Sidenote: Pythagorean philosophy.]

It would scarcely repay the reader to pursue this system in its details;

a very superficial representation of it is all that is necessary for our

purpose. It recognizes two species of numbers, the odd and even; and

since one, or unity, must be at once both odd and even, it must be the

very essence of number, and the ground of all other numbers; hence the

meaning of the Pythagorean expression, "All comes from one;" which also

took form in the mystical allusion, "God embraces all and actuates all,

and is but one." To the number ten extraordinary importance was imputed,

since it contains in itself, or arises from the addition of, 1, 2, 3,

4--that is, of even and odd numbers together; hence it received the name

of the grand tetractys, because it so contains the first four numbers.

Some, however, assert that that designation was imposed on the number

thirty-six. To the triad the Pythagoreans likewise attached much

significance, since it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. To unity,

or one, they gave the designation of the even-odd, asserting that it

contained the property both of the even and odd, as is plain from the

fact that if one be added to an even number it becomes odd, but if to an

odd number it becomes even. They arranged the primary elements of nature

in a table of ten contraries, of which the odd and even are one, and

light and darkness another. They said that "the nature and energy of

number may be traced not only in divine and dæmonish things, but in

human works and words everywhere, and in all works of art and in music."

They even linked their arithmetical views to morality, through the

observation that numbers never lie; that they are hostile to falsehood;

and that, therefore, truth belongs to their family: their fanciful

speculations led them to infer that in the limitless or infinite,

falsehood and envy must reign. From similar reasoning, they concluded

that the number one contained not only the perfect, but also the

imperfect; hence it follows that the most good, most beautiful, and most

true are not at the beginning, but that they are in the process of time

evolved. They held that whatever we know must have had a beginning, a

middle, and an end, of which the beginning and end are the boundaries or

limits; but the middle is unlimited, and, as a consequence, may be

subdivided _ad infinitum_. They therefore resolved corporeal existence

into points, as is set forth in their maxim that "all is composed of

points or spacial units, which, taken together, constitute a number."

Such being their ideas of the limiting which constitutes the extreme,

they understood by the unlimited the intermediate space or interval. By

the aid of these intervals they obtained a conception of space; for,

since the units, or monads, as they were also called, are merely

geometrical points, no number of them could produce a line, but by the

union of monads and intervals conjointly a line can arise, and also a

surface, and also a solid. As to the interval thus existing between

monads, some considered it as being mere aërial breath, but the orthodox

regarded it as a vacuum; hence we perceive the meaning of their absurd

affirmation that all things are produced by a vacuum. As it is not to be

overlooked that the monads are merely mathematical points, and have no

dimensions or size, substances actually contain no matter, and are

nothing more than forms.

[Sidenote: Pythagorean cosmogony.]

[Sidenote: Modern Pythagorisms in chemistry.]

The Pythagoreans applied these principles to account for the origin of

the world, saying that, since its very existence is an illusion, it

could not have any origin in time, but only seemingly so to human

thought. As to time itself, they regarded it as "existing only by the

distinction of a series of different moments, which, however, are again

restored to unity by the limiting moments." The diversity of relations

we find in the world they supposed to be occasioned by the bond of

harmony. "Since the principles of things are neither similar nor

congenerous, it is impossible for them to be brought into order except

by the intervention of harmony, whatever may have been the manner in

which it took place. Like and homogeneous things, indeed, would not

have required harmony; but, as to the dissimilar and unsymmetrical, such

must necessarily be held together by harmony if they are to be contained

in a world of order." In this manner they confused together the ideas of

number and harmony, regarding the world not only as a combination of

contraries, but as an orderly and harmonical combination thereof. To

particular numbers they therefore imputed great significance, asserting

that "there are seven chords or harmonies, seven pleiads, seven vowels,

and that certain parts of the bodies of animals change in the course of

seven years." They carried to an extreme the numerical doctrine,

assigning certain numbers as the representatives of a bird, a horse, a

man. This doctrine may be illustrated by facts familiar to chemists,

who, in like manner, attach significant numbers to the names of things.

Taking hydrogen as unity, 6 belongs to carbon, 8 to oxygen, 16 to

sulphur. Carrying those principles out, there is no substance,

elementary or compound, inorganic or organic, to which an expressive

number does not belong. Nay, even an archetypal form, as of man or any

other such composite structure, may thus possess a typical number, the

sum of the numbers of its constituent parts. It signifies nothing what

interpretation we give to these numbers, whether we regarded them as

atomic weights, or, declining the idea of atoms, consider them as the

representatives of force. As in the ancient philosophical doctrine, so

in modern science, the number is invariably connected with the name of a

thing, of whatever description the thing may be.

[Sidenote: Pythagorean physics and psychology.]

The grand standard of harmonical relation among the Pythagoreans was the

musical octave. Physical qualities, such as colour and tone, were

supposed to appertain to the surface of bodies. Of the elements they

enumerated five--earth, air, fire, water, and ether, connecting

therewith the fact that man has five organs of sense. Of the planets

they numbered five, which, together with the sun, moon, and earth, are

placed apart at distances determined by a musical law, and in their

movements through space give rise to a sound, the harmony of the

spheres, unnoticed by us because we habitually hear it. They place the

sun in the centre of the system, round which, with the other planets,

the earth revolves. At this point the geocentric doctrine is being

abandoned and the heliocentric takes its place. As the circle is the

most perfect of forms, the movements of the planets are circular. They

maintained that the moon is inhabited, and like the earth, but the

people there are taller than men, in the proportion as the moon's

periodic rotation is greater than that of the earth. They explained the

Milky Way as having been occasioned by the fall of a star, or as having

been formerly the path of the sun. They asserted that the world is

eternal, but the earth is transitory and liable to change, the universe

being in the shape of a sphere. They held that the soul of man is merely

an efflux of the universal soul, and that it comes into the body from

without. From dreams and the events of sickness they inferred the

existence of good and evil dæmons. They supposed that souls can exist

without the body, leading a kind of dream-life, and identified the motes

in the sunbeam with them. Their heroes and dæmons were souls not yet

become embodied, or who had ceased to be so. The doctrine of

transmigration which they had adopted was in harmony with such views,

and, if it does not imply the absolute immortality of the soul, at least

asserts its existence after the death of the body, for the disembodied

spirit becomes incarnate again as soon as it finds a tenement which fits

it. To their life after death the Pythagoreans added a doctrine of

retributive rewards and punishments, and, in this respect, what has been

said of animals forming a penitential mechanism in the theology of India

and Egypt, holds good for the Pythagoreans too.

Of their system of politics nothing can now with certainty be affirmed

beyond the fact that its prime element was an aristocracy; of their rule

of private life, but little beyond its including a recommendation of

moderation in all things, the cultivation of friendship, the observance

of faith, and the practice of self-denial, promoted by ascetic

exercises. It was a maxim with them that a right education is not only

of importance to the individual, but also to the interests of the state.

Pythagoras himself, as is well known, paid much attention to the

determination of extension and gravity, the ratios of musical tones,

astronomy, and medicine. He directed his disciples, in their orgies or

secret worship, to practise gymnastics, dancing, music. In

correspondence with his principle of imparting to men only such

knowledge as they were fitted to receive, he communicated to those who

were less perfectly prepared exoteric doctrines, reserving the esoteric

for the privileged few who had passed five years in silence, had endured

humiliation, and been purged by self-denial and sacrifice.

[Sidenote: The Eleatic philosophy.]

We have now reached the consideration of the Eleatic philosophy. It

differs from the preceding in its neglect of material things, and its

devotion to the supra-sensible. It derives its name from Elea, a Greek

colonial city of Italy, its chief authors being Xenophanes, Parmenides,

and Zeno.

[Sidenote: Xenophanes represents a great philosophical advance.]

Xenophanes was a native of Ionia, from which having been exiled, he

appears to have settled at last in Elea, after leading for many years

the life of a wandering rhapsodist. He gave his doctrines a poetical

form for the purpose of more easily diffusing them. To the multitude he

became conspicuous from his opposition to Homer, Hesiod, and other

popular poets, whom he denounced for promoting the base polytheism of

the times, and degrading the idea of the divine by the immoralities they

attributed to the gods. He proclaimed God as an all-powerful Being,

existing from eternity, and without any likeness to man. A strict

monotheist, he denounced the plurality of gods as an inconceivable

error, asserting that of the all-powerful and all-perfect there could

not, in the nature of things, be more than one; for, if there were only

so many as two, those attributes could not apply to one of them, much

less, then, if there were many. This one principle or power was to him

the same as the universe, the substance of which, having existed from

all eternity, must necessarily be identical with God; for, since it is

impossible that there should be two Omnipresents, so also it is

impossible that there should be two Eternals. It therefore may be said

that there is a tincture of Orientalism in his ideas, since it would

scarcely be possible to offer a more succinct and luminous exposition of

the pantheism of India.

[Sidenote: He approaches the Indian ideas.]

The reader who has been wearied with the frivolities of the Ionian

philosophy, and lost in the mysticisms of Pythagoras, cannot fail to

recognize that here we have something of a very different kind. To an

Oriental dignity of conception is added an extraordinary clearness and

precision of reasoning.

[Sidenote: Theology of Xenophanes.]

To Xenophanes all revelation is a pure fiction; the discovery of the

invisible is to be made by the intellect of man alone. The vulgar belief

which imputes to the Deity the sentiments, passions, and crimes of man,

is blasphemous and accursed. He exposes the impiety of those who would

figure the Great Supreme under the form of a man, telling them that if

the ox or the lion could rise to a conception of the Deity, they might

as well embody him under their own shape; that the negro represents him

with a flat nose and black face; the Thracian with blue eyes and a ruddy

complexion. "There is but one God; he has no resemblance to the bodily

form of man, nor are his thoughts like ours." He taught that God is

without parts, and throughout alike; for, if he had parts, some would be

ruled by others, and others would rule, which is impossible, for the

very notion of God implies his perfect and thorough sovereignty.

Throughout he must be Reason, and Intelligence, and Omnipotence, "ruling

the universe without trouble by Reason and Insight." He conceived that

the Supreme understands by a sensual perception, and not only thinks,

but sees and hears throughout. In a symbolical manner he represented God

as a sphere, like the heavens, which encompass man and all earthly

things.

[Sidenote: His physical views.]

In his natural philosophy it is said that he adopted the four elements,

Earth, Air, Fire, Water; though by some it is asserted that, from

observing fossil fish, on the tops of mountains, he was led to the

belief that the earth itself arose from water; and generally, that the

phenomena of nature originate in combinations of the primary elements.

From such views he inferred that all things are necessarily transitory,

and that men, and even the earth itself, must pass away. As to the

latter, he regarded it as a flat surface, the inferior region of which

extends indefinitely downward, and so gives a solid foundation. His

physical views he, however, held with a doubt almost bordering on

scepticism: "No mortal man ever did, or ever shall know God and the

universe thoroughly; for, since error is so spread over all things, it

is impossible for us to be certain even when we utter the true and the

perfect." It seemed to him hopeless that man could ever ascertain the

truth, since he has no other aid than truthless appearances.

[Sidenote: Some of his thoughts reappear in Newton.]

I cannot dismiss this imperfect account of Xenophanes, who was,

undoubtedly, one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers, without an

allusion to his denunciation of Homer, and other poets of his country,

because they had aided in degrading the idea of the Divinity; and also

to his faith in human nature, his rejection of the principle of

concealing truth from the multitude, and his self-devotion in diffusing

it among all at a risk of liberty and life. He wandered from country to

country, withstanding polytheism to its face, and imparting wisdom in

rhapsodies and hymns, the form, above all others, calculated most

quickly in those times to spread knowledge abroad. To those who are

disposed to depreciate his philosophical conclusions, it may be remarked

that in some of their most striking features they have been reproduced

in modern times, and I would offer to them a quotation from the General

Scholium at the end of the third book of the Principia of Newton: "The

Supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he exists

_always_ and _everywhere_. Whence, also, he is all similar, all eye, all

ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to

act, but in a manner not at all human, not at all corporeal; in a manner

utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we

no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and

understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily

figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched, nor

ought to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing.

We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of anything

is we know not."

[Sidenote: Parmenides on reason and opinion.]

[Sidenote: Philosophy becoming Pantheism.]

To the Eleatic system thus originating with Xenophanes is to be

attributed the dialectic phase henceforward so prominently exhibited by

Greek philosophy. It abandoned, for the most part, the pursuits which

had occupied the Ionians--the investigation of visible nature, the

phenomena of material things, and the laws presiding over them;

conceiving such to be merely deceptive, and attaching itself to what

seemed to be the only true knowledge--an investigation of Being and of

God. By the Eleats, since all change appeared to be an impossibility,

the phenomena of succession presented by the world were regarded as a

pure illusion, and they asserted that Time, and Motion, and Space are

phantasms of the imagination, or vain deceptions of the senses. They

therefore separated reason from opinion, attributing to the former

conceptions of absolute truth, and to the latter imperfections arising

from the fictions of sense. It was on this principle that Parmenides

divided his work on "Nature" into two books, the first on Reason, the

second on Opinion. Starting from the nature of Being, the uncreated and

unchangeable, he denied altogether the idea of succession in time, and

also the relations of space, and pronounced change and motion, of

whatever kind they may be, mere illusions of opinion. His pantheism

appears in the declaration that the All is thought and intelligence; and

this, indeed, constitutes the essential feature of his doctrine, for, by

thus placing thought and being in parallelism with each other, and

interconnecting them by the conception that it is for the sake of being

that thought exists, he showed that they must necessarily be conceived

of as one.

Such profound doctrines occupied the first book of the poem of

Parmenides; in the second he treated of opinion, which, as we have said,

is altogether dependent on the senses, and therefore untrustworthy, not,

however, that it must necessarily be absolutely false. It is scarcely

possible for us to reconstruct from the remains of his works the details

of his theory, or to show his approach to the Ionian doctrines by the

assumption of the existence in nature of two opposite species--ethereal

fire and heavy night; of an equal proportion of which all things

consist, fire being the true, and night the phenomenal. From such an

unsubstantial and delusive basis it would not repay us, even if we had

the means of accomplishing it, to give an exposition of his physical

system. In many respects it degenerated into a wild vagary; as, for

example, when he placed an overruling dæmon in the centre of the

phenomenal world. Nor need we be detained by his extravagant

reproduction of the old doctrine of the generation of animals from miry

clay, nor follow his explanation of the nature of man, who, since he is

composed of light and darkness, participates in both, and can never

ascertain absolute truth. By other routes, and upon far less fanciful

principles, modern philosophy has at last come to the same melancholy

conclusion.

[Sidenote: Doctrines of Parmenides carried out by Zeno;]

The doctrines of Parmenides were carried out by Zeno the Eleatic, who is

said to have been his adopted son. He brought into use the method of

refuting error by the _reductio ad absurdum_. His compositions were in

prose, and not in poetry, as were those of his predecessors. As it had

been the object of Parmenides to establish the existence of "the One,"

it was the object of Zeno to establish the non-existence of "the Many."

Agreeably to such principles, he started from the position that only one

thing really exists, and that all others are mere modifications or

appearances of it. He denied motion, but admitted the appearance of it;

regarding it as a name given to a series of conditions, each of which is

necessarily rest. This dogma against the possibility of motion he

maintained by four arguments; the second of them is the celebrated

Achilles puzzle. It is thus stated: "Suppose Achilles to run ten times

as fast as a tortoise, yet, if the tortoise has the start, Achilles can

never overtake him; for, if they are separated at first by an interval

of a thousand feet, when Achilles has run these thousand feet the

tortoise will have run a hundred, and when Achilles has run these

hundred the tortoise will have got on ten, and so on for ever; therefore

Achilles may run for ever without overtaking the tortoise." Such were

his arguments against the existence of motion; his proof of the

existence of One, the indivisible and infinite, may thus be stated: "To

suppose that the one is divisible is to suppose it finite. If divisible,

it must be infinitely divisible. But suppose two things to exist, then

there must necessarily be an interval between those two--something

separating and limiting them. What is that something? It is some _other_

thing. But then if not the _same_ thing, _it also_ must be separated and

limited, and so on _ad infinitum_. Thus only one thing can exist as the

substratum for all manifold appearances." Zeno furnishes us with an

illustration of the fallibility of the indications of sense in his

argument against Protagoras. It may be here introduced as a specimen of

his method: "He asked if a grain of corn, or the ten thousandth part of

a grain, would, when it fell to the ground, make a noise. Being answered

in the negative, he further asked whether, then, would a measure of

corn. This being necessarily affirmed, he then demanded whether the

measure was not in some determinate ratio to the single grain; as this

could not be denied, he was able to conclude, either, then, the bushel

of corn makes no noise on falling, or else the very smallest portion of

a grain does the same."

[Sidenote: and by Melissus of Samos.]

To the names already given as belonging to the Eleatic school may be

added that of Melissus of Samos, who also founded his argument on the

nature of Being, deducing its unity, unchangeability, and

indivisibility. He denied, like the rest of his school, all change and

motion, regarding them as mere illusions of the senses. From the

indivisibility of being he inferred its incorporeality, and therefore

denied all bodily existence.

[Sidenote: Biography of Empedocles.]

The list of Eleatic philosophers is doubtfully closed by the name of

Empedocles of Agrigentum, who in legend almost rivals Pythagoras. In the

East he learned medicine and magic, the art of working miracles, of

producing rain and wind. He decked himself in priestly garments, a

golden girdle, and a crown, proclaiming himself to be a god. It is said

by some that he never died, but ascended to the skies in the midst of a

supernatural glory. By some it is related that he leaped into the crater

of Etna, that, the manner of his death being unknown, he might still

continue to pass for a god--an expectation disappointed by an eruption

which cast out one of his brazen sandals.

[Sidenote: He mingles mysticism with philosophy.]

Agreeably to the school to which he belonged, he relied on Reason and

distrusted the Senses. From his fragments it has been inferred that he

was sceptical of the guidance of the former as well as of the latter,

founding his distrust on the imperfection the soul has contracted, and

for which it has been condemned to existence in this world, and even to

transmigration from body to body. Adopting the Eleatic doctrine that

like can be only known by like, fire by fire, love by love, the

recognition of the divine by man is sufficient proof that the Divine

exists. His primary elements were four--Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; to

these he added two principles, Love and Hate. The four elements he

regarded as four gods, or divine eternal forces, since out of them all

things are made. Love he regards as the creative power, the destroyer or

modifier being Hate. It is obvious, therefore, that in him the strictly

philosophical system of Xenophanes had degenerated into a mixed and

mystical view, in which the physical, the metaphysical, and the moral

were confounded together; and that, as the necessary consequence of such

a state, the principles of knowledge were becoming unsettled, a

suspicion arising that all philosophical systems were untrustworthy, and

a general scepticism was already setting in.

To this result also, in no small degree, the labours of Democritus of

Abdera tended. He had had the advantages derived from wealth in the

procurement of knowledge, for it is said that his father was rich enough

to be able to entertain the Persian King Xerxes, who was so gratified

thereby that he left several Magi and Chaldæans to complete the

education of the youth. On his father's death, Democritus, dividing with

his brothers the estate, took as his portion the share consisting of

money, leaving to them the lands, that he might be better able to devote

himself to travelling. He passed into Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia, and

India, gathering knowledge from all those sources.

[Sidenote: Democritus asserts the untrustworthiness of knowledge.]

According to Democritus, "Nothing is true, or, if so, is not certain to

us." Nevertheless, as, in his system sensation constitutes thought, and,

at the same time, is but a change in the sentient being, "sensations are

of necessity true;" from which somewhat obscure passage we may infer

that, in the view of Democritus, though sensation is true subjectively,

it is not true objectively. The sweet, the bitter, the hot, the cold,

are simply creations of the mind; but in the outer object to which we

append them, atoms and space alone exist, and our opinion of the

properties of such objects is founded upon images emitted by them

falling upon the senses. Confounding in this manner sensation with

thought, and making them identical, he, moreover, included Reflexion as

necessary for true knowledge, Sensation by itself being untrustworthy.

Thus, though Sensation may indicate to us that sweet, bitter, hot, cold,

occur in bodies, Reflexion teaches us that this is altogether an

illusion, and that, in reality, atoms and space alone exist.

[Sidenote: He introduces the atomic theory.]

[Sidenote: Destiny, Fate and resistless law.]

Devoting his attention, then, to the problem of perception--how the mind

becomes aware of the existence of external things--he resorted to the

hypothesis that they constantly throw off images of themselves, which

are assimilated by the air through which they have to pass, and enter

the soul by pores in its sensitive organs. Hence such images, being

merely of the superficial form, are necessarily imperfect and untrue,

and so, therefore, must be the knowledge yielded by them. Democritus

rejected the one element of the Eleatics, affirming that there must be

many; but he did not receive the four of Empedocles, nor his principles

of Love and Hate, nor the homoeomeriæ of Anaxagoras. He also denied

that the primary elements had any sensible qualities whatever. He

conceived of all things as being composed of invisible, intangible, and

indivisible particles or atoms, which, by reason of variation in their

configuration, combination, or position, give rise to the varieties of

forms: to the atom he imputed self-existence and eternal duration. His

doctrine, therefore, explains how it is that the many can arise from the

one, and in this particular he reconciled the apparent contradictions of

the Ionians and Eleatics. The theory of chemistry, as it now exists,

essentially includes his views. The general formative principle of

Nature he regarded as being Destiny or Fate; but there are indications

that by this he meant nothing more than irreversible law.

[Sidenote: Is led to atheism.]

A system thus based upon severe mathematical considerations, and taking

as its starting-point a vacuum and atoms--the former actionless and

passionless; which considers the production of new things as only new

aggregations, and the decay of the old as separations; which recognizes

in compound bodies specific arrangements of atoms to one another; which

can rise to the conception that even a single atom may constitute a

world--such a system may commend itself to our attention for its

results, but surely not to our approval, when we find it carrying us to

the conclusions that even mathematical cognition is a mere semblance;

that the soul is only a finely-constituted form fitted into the grosser

bodily frame; that even for reason itself there is an absolute

impossibility of all certainty; that scepticism is to be indulged in to

that degree that we may doubt whether, when a cone has been cut asunder,

its two surfaces are alike; that the final result of human inquiry is

the absolute demonstration that man is incapable of knowledge; that,

even if the truth be in his possession, he can never be certain of it;

that the world is an illusive phantasm, and that there is no God.

[Sidenote: Legends of Democritus.]

I need scarcely refer to the legendary stories related of Democritus, as

that he put out his eyes with a burning-glass that he might no longer be

deluded with their false indications, and more tranquilly exercise his

reason--a fiction bearing upon its face the contemptuous accusation of

his antagonists, but, by the stolidity of subsequent ages, received as

an actual fact instead of a sarcasm. As to his habit of so constantly

deriding the knowledge and follies of men that he universally acquired

the epithet of the laughing philosopher, we may receive the opinion of

the great physician Hippocrates, who being requested by the people of

Abdera to cure him of his madness, after long discoursing with him,

expressed himself penetrated with admiration, and even with the most

profound veneration for him, and rebuked those who had sent him with the

remark that they themselves were the more distempered of the two.

[Sidenote: Rise of philosophy in European Greece.]

[Sidenote: Commercial communities favourable to new ideas.]

Thus far European Greece had done but little in the cause of philosophy.

The chief schools were in Asia Minor, or among the Greek colonies of

Italy. But the time had now arrived when the mother country was to

enter upon a distinguished career, though, it must be confessed, from a

most unfavourable beginning. This was by no means the only occasion on

which the intellectual activity of the Greek colonies made itself felt

in the destinies of Europe. The mercantile character in a community has

ever been found conducive to mental activity and physical adventure; it

holds in light esteem prescriptive opinion, and puts things at the

actual value they at the time possess. If the Greek colonies thus

discharged the important function of introducing and disseminating

speculative philosophy, we shall find them again, five hundred years

later, occupied with a similar task on the advent of that period in

which philosophical speculation was about to be supplanted by religious

faith. For there can be no doubt that, humanly speaking, the cause of

the rapid propagation of Christianity, in its first ages, lay in the

extraordinary facilities existing among the commercial communities

scattered all around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, from the ports

of the Levant to those of France and Spain. An incessant intercourse was

kept up among them during the five centuries before Christ; it became,

under Roman influence, more and more active, and of increasing political

importance. Such a state of things is in the highest degree conducive to

the propagation of thought, and, indeed, to its origination, through the

constant excitement it furnishes to intellectual activity. Commercial

communities, in this respect, present a striking contrast to

agricultural. By their aid speculative philosophy was rapidly

disseminated everywhere, as was subsequently Christianity. But the

agriculturists steadfastly adhered with marvellous stolidity to their

ancestral traditions and polytheistic absurdities, until the very

designation--paganism--under which their system passes was given as a

nickname derived from themselves.

[Sidenote: Philosophical influence of the Greek colonies.]

The intellectual condition of the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily has

not attracted the attention of critics in the manner it deserves. For,

though its political result may appear to those whose attention is fixed

by mere material aggrandizement to have been totally eclipsed by the

subsequent power of the Roman republic, to one who looks at things in a

mere general way it may be a probable inquiry whether the philosophy

cultivated in those towns has not, in the course of ages, produced as

solid and lasting results as the military achievements of the Eternal

City. The relations of the Italian peninsula to the career of European

civilization are to be classified under three epochs, the first

corresponding to the philosophy generated in the southern Greek towns:

this would have attained the elevation long before reached in the

advanced systems of India had it not been prevented by the rapid

development of Roman power; the second presents the military influence

of republican and imperial Rome; to the third belongs the agency of

ecclesiastical Rome--for the production of the last we shall find

hereafter that the preceding two conspire. The Italian effect upon the

whole has therefore been philosophical, material, and mixed. We are

greatly in want of a history of the first, for which doubtless many

facts still remain to a painstaking and enlightened inquirer.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Greek colonial system.]

It was on account of her small territory and her numerous population

that Greece was obliged to colonize. To these motives must be added

internal dissensions, and particularly the consequences of unequal

marriages. So numerous did these colonies and their offshoots become,

that a great Greek influence pervaded all the Mediterranean shores and

many of the most important islands, attention more particularly being

paid to the latter, from their supposed strategical value; thus, in the

opinion of Alexander the Great, the command of the Mediterranean lay in

the possession of Cyprus. The Greek colonists were filibusters; they

seized by force the women wherever they settled, but their children were

taught to speak the paternal language, as has been the case in more

recent times with the descendants of the Spaniards in America. The

wealth of some of these Greek colonial towns is said to have been

incredible. Crotona was more than twelve miles in circumference; and

Sybaris, another of the Italiot cities, was so luxurious and dissipated

as even to give rise to a proverb. The prosperity of these places was

due to two causes: they were not only the centres of great agricultural

districts, but carried on also an active commerce in all directions, the

dense population of the mother country offering them a steady and

profitable market; they also maintained an active traffic with all the

Mediterranean cities; thus, if they furnished Athens with corn, they

also furnished Carthage with oil. In the Greek cities connected with

this colonial system, especially in Athens, the business of

ship-building and navigation was so extensively prosecuted as to give a

special character to public life. In other parts of Greece, as in

Sparta, it was altogether different. In that state the laws of Lycurgus

had abolished private property; all things were held in common; savage

life was reduced to a system, and therefore there was no object in

commerce. But in Athens, commerce was regarded as being so far from

dishonourable that some of the most illustrious men, whose names have

descended to us as philosophers, were occupied with mercantile pursuits.

Aristotle kept a druggist's shop in Athens, and Plato sold oil in Egypt.

[Sidenote: Carthaginian supremacy in the Mediterranean.]

It was the intention of Athens, had she succeeded in the conquest of

Sicily, to make an attempt upon Carthage, foreseeing therein the

dominion of the Mediterranean, as was actually realized subsequently by

Rome. The destruction of that city constituted the point of ascendancy

in the history of the Great Republic. Carthage stood upon a peninsula

forty-five miles round, with a neck only three miles across. Her

territory has been estimated as having a sea-line of not less than 1400

miles, and containing 300 towns; she had also possessions in Spain, in

Sicily, and other Mediterranean islands, acquired, not by conquest, but

by colonization. In the silver mines of Spain she employed not less than

forty thousand men. In these respects she was guided by the maxims of

her Phoenician ancestry, for the Tyrians had colonized for depôts, and

had forty stations of that kind in the Mediterranean. Indeed, Carthage

herself originated in that way, owing her development to the position

she held at the junction of the east and west basins. The Carthaginian

merchants did not carry for hire, but dealt in their commodities. This

implied an extensive system of depôts and bonding. They had anticipated

many of the devices of modern commerce. They effected insurances, made

loans on bottomry, and it has been supposed that their leathern money

may have been of the nature of our bank notes.

[Sidenote: Attempts of the Persians at dominion in the Mediterranean.]

[Sidenote: Contest between them and the Greeks.]

[Sidenote: The fifty years' war, and eventual supremacy of Athens.]

In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the attempts of the Asiatics

on Egypt and the south shore of the Mediterranean; we have now to turn

to their operations on the north shore, the consequences of which are of

the utmost interest in the history of philosophy. It appears that the

cities of Asia Minor, after their contest with the Lydian kings, had

fallen an easy prey to the Persian power. It remained, therefore, only

for that power to pass to the European continent. A pretext is easily

found where the policy is so clear. So far as the internal condition of

Greece was concerned, nothing could be more tempting to an invader.

There seemed to be no bond of union between the different towns, and,

indeed, the more prominent ones might be regarded as in a state of

chronic revolution. In Athens, since B.C. 622, the laws of Draco had

been supplanted by those of Solon; and again and again the government

had been seized by violence or gained through intrigue by one adventurer

after another. Under these circumstances the Persian king passed an army

into Europe. The military events of both this and the succeeding

invasion under Xerxes have been more than sufficiently illustrated by

the brilliant imagination of the lively Greeks. It was needless,

however, to devise such fictions as the million of men who crossed into

Europe, or the two hundred thousand who lay dead upon the field after

the battle of Platæa. If there were not such stubborn facts as the

capture and burning of Athens, the circumstance that these wars lasted

for fifty years would be sufficient to inform us that all the advantages

were not on one side. Wars do not last so long without bringing upon

both parties disasters as well as conferring glories; and had these been

as exterminating and overwhelming as classical authors have supposed,

our surprise may well be excited that the Persian annals have preserved

so little memory of them. Greece did not perceive that, if posterity

must take her accounts as true, it must give the palm of glory to

Persia, who could, with unfaltering perseverance, persist in attacks

illustrated by such unparalleled catastrophes. She did not perceive that

the annals of a nation may be more splendid from their exhibiting a

courage which could bear up for half a century against continual

disasters, and extract victory at last from defeat.

In pursuance of their policy, the Persians extended their dominion to

Cyrene and Barca on the south, as well as to Thrace and Macedonia on the

north. The Persian wars gave rise to that wonderful development in Greek

art which has so worthily excited the admiration of subsequent ages. The

assertion is quite true that after those wars the Greeks could form in

sculpture living men. On the part of the Persians, these military

undertakings were not of the base kind so common in antiquity; they were

the carrying out of a policy conceived with great ability, their object

being to obtain countries for tribute and not for devastation. The great

critic Niebuhr, by whose opinions I am guided in the views I express of

these events, admits that the Greek accounts, when examined, present

little that was possible. The Persian empire does not seem to have

suffered at all; and Plato, whose opinion must be considered as of very

great authority, says that, on the whole, the Persian wars reflect

extremely little honour on the Greeks. It was asserted that only

thirty-one towns, and most of them small ones, were faithful to Greece.

Treason to her seems for years in succession to have infected all her

ablest men. It was not Pausanias alone who wanted to be king under the

supremacy of Persia. Such a satrap would have borne about the same

relation to the great king as the modern pacha does to the grand

seignior. However, we must do justice to those able men. A king was what

Greece in reality required; had she secured one at this time strong

enough to hold her conflicting interests in check, she would have become

the mistress of the world. Her leading men saw this.

[Sidenote: The consequence is her vast intellectual progress.]

[Sidenote: Her progress in art.]

The elevating effect of the Persian wars was chiefly felt in Athens. It

was there that the grand development of pure art, literature, and

science took place. As to Sparta, she remained barbarous as she had ever

been; the Spartans continuing robbers and impostors, in their national

life exhibiting not a single feature that can be commended. Mechanical

art reached its perfection at Corinth; real art at Athens, finding a

multitude not only of true, but also of new expressions. Before Pericles

the only style of architecture was the Doric; his became at once the age

of perfect beauty. It also became the age of freedom in thinking and

departure from the national faith. In this respect the history of

Pericles and of Aspasia is very significant. His, also, was the great

age of oratory, but of oratory leading to delusion, the democratical

forms of Athens being altogether deceptive, power ever remaining in the

hands of a few leading men, who did everything. The true popular

sentiment, as was almost always the case under those ancient republican

institutions, could find for itself no means of expression. The great

men were only too prone to regard their fellow-citizens as a rabble,

mere things to be played off against one another, and to consider that

the objects of life are dominion and lust, that love, self-sacrifice,

and devotion are fictions; that oaths are only good for deception.

[Sidenote: The treaty with Persia.]

Though the standard of statesmanship, at the period of the Persian wars,

was very low, there can be no doubt that among the Greek leaders were

those who clearly understood the causes of the Asiatic attack; and

hence, with an instinct of self-preservation, defensive alliances were

continually maintained with Egypt. When their valour and endurance had

given to the Greeks a glorious issue to the war, the articles contained

in the final treaty manifest clearly the motives and understandings of

both parties. No Persian vessel was to appear between the Cyanean Rocks

and Chelidonian Islands; no Persian army to approach within three days'

journey of the Mediterranean Sea, B.C. 449.

[Sidenote: She becomes the centre of policy and philosophy.]

To Athens herself the war had given political supremacy. We need only

look at her condition fifty years after the battle of Platæa. She was

mistress of more than a thousand miles of the coast of Asia Minor; she

held as dependencies more than forty islands; she controlled the straits

between Europe and Asia; her fleets ranged the Mediterranean and the

Black Seas; she had monopolized the trade of all the adjoining

countries; her magazines were full of the most valuable objects of

commerce. From the ashes of the Persian fire she had risen up so

supremely beautiful that her temples, her statues, her works of art, in

their exquisite perfection, have since had no parallel in the world. Her

intellectual supremacy equalled her political. To her, as to a focal

point, the rays of light from every direction converged. The

philosophers of Italy and Asia Minor directed their steps to her as to

the acknowledged centre of mental activity. As to Egypt, an utter ruin

had befallen her since she was desolated by the Persian arms. Yet we

must not therefore infer that though, as conquerors, the Persians had

trodden out the most aged civilization on the globe, as sovereigns they

were haters of knowledge, or merciless as kings. We must not forget that

the Greeks of Asia Minor were satisfied with their rule, or, at all

events, preferred rather to remain their subjects than to contract any

permanent political connexions with the conquering Greeks of Europe.

In this condition of political glory, Athens became not only the

birthplace of new and beautiful productions of art, founded on a more

just appreciation of the true than had yet been attained to in any

previous age of the world (which, it may be added, have never been

surpassed, if, indeed, they have been equalled since), she also became

the receptacle for every philosophical opinion, new and old. Ionian,

Italian, Egyptian, Persian, all were brought to her, and contrasted and

compared together. Indeed, the philosophical celebrity of Greece is

altogether due to Athens. The rest of the country participated but

little in the cultivation of learning. It is a popular error that

Greece, in the aggregate, was a learned country.

[Sidenote: State of philosophy at this juncture.]

We have already seen how the researches of individual inquirers, passing

from point to point, had conducted them, in many instances, to a

suspicion of the futility of human knowledge; and looking at the

results reached by the successive philosophical schools, we cannot fail

to remark that there was a general tendency to scepticism. We have seen

how, from the material and tangible beginnings of the Ionians, the

Eleatics land us not only in a blank atheism, but in a disbelief of the

existence of the world. And though it may be said that these were only

the isolated results of special schools, it is not to be forgotten that

they were of schools the most advanced. The time had now arrived when

the name of a master was no more to usurp the place of reason, as had

been hitherto the case; when these last results of the different methods

of philosophizing were to be brought together, a criticism of a higher

order established, and conclusions of a higher order deduced.

[Sidenote: Commencement of the higher analysis.]

Thus it will ever be with all human investigation. The primitive

philosophical elements from which we start are examined, first by one

and then by another, each drawing his own special conclusions and

deductions, and each firmly believing in the truth of his inferences.

Each analyst has seen the whole subject from a particular point of view,

without concerning himself with the discordances, contradictions, and

incompatibilities obvious enough when his conclusions come to be

compared with those of other analysts as skilful as himself. In process

of time, it needs must be that a new school of examiners will arise,

who, taking the results at which their predecessors have arrived from an

examination of the primary elements, will institute a secondary

comparison; a comparison of results with results; a comparison of a

higher order, and more likely to lead to absolute truth.

[Sidenote: Illustration from subsequent Roman history.]

Perhaps I cannot better convey what I here mean by this secondary and

higher analysis of philosophical questions than by introducing, as an

illustration, what took place subsequently in Rome, through her policy

of universal religious toleration. The priests and followers of every

god and of every faith were permitted to pursue without molestation

their special forms of worship. Of these, it may be supposed that nearly

all were perfectly sincere in their adherence to their special

divinity, and, if the occasion had arisen, could have furnished

unanswerable arguments in behalf of his supremacy and of the truth of

his doctrines. Yet it is very clear that, by thus bringing these several

primary systems into contact, a comparison of a secondary and of a

higher order, and therefore far more likely to approach to absolute

truth, must needs be established among them. It is very well known that

the popular result of this secondary examination was the philosophical

rejection of polytheism.

[Sidenote: The Sophists.]

[Sidenote: They reject philosophy, and even morality.]

So, in Athens the result of the secondary examination of philosophical

systems and deductions was scepticism as regards them all, and the rise

of a new order of men--the Sophists--who not only rejected the validity

of all former philosophical methods, but carried their infidelity to a

degree plainly not warranted by the facts of the case, in this, that

they not only denied that human reason had thus far succeeded in

ascertaining anything, but even affirmed that it is incapable, from its

very nature, as dependent on human organization, or the condition under

which it acts, of determining the truth at all; nay, that even if the

truth is actually in its possession, since it has no criterion by which

to recognize it, it cannot so much as be certain that it is in such

possession of it. From these principles it follows that, since we have

no standard of the true, neither can we have any standard of the good,

and that our ideas of what is good and what is evil are altogether

produced by education or by convention. Or, to use the phrase adopted by

the Sophists, "it is might that makes right." Right and wrong are hence

seen to be mere fictions created by society, having no eternal or

absolute existence in nature. The will of a monarch, or of a majority in

a community, declares what the law shall be; the law defines what is

right and what is wrong; and these, therefore, instead of having an

actual existence, are mere illusions, owing their birth to the exercise

of force. It is might that has determined and defined what is right. And

hence it follows that it is needless for a man to trouble himself with

the monitions of conscience, or to be troubled thereby, for conscience,

instead of being anything real, is an imaginary fiction, or, at the

best, owes its origin to education, and is the creation of our social

state. Hence the wise will give himself no concern as to a meritorious

act or a crime, seeing that the one is intrinsically neither better nor

worse than the other; but he will give himself sedulous concern as

respects his outer or external relations--his position in society;

conforming his acts to that standard which it in its wisdom or folly,

but in the exercise of its might, has declared shall be regarded as

right. Or, if his occasions be such as to make it for his interest to

depart from the social rule, let him do it in secrecy; or, what is far

better, let him cultivate rhetoric, that noble art by which the wrong

may be made to appear the right; by which he who has committed a crime

may so mystify society as to delude it into the belief that he is worthy

of praise; and by which he may prove that his enemy, who has really

performed some meritorious deed, has been guilty of a crime. Animated by

such considerations, the Sophists passed from place to place, offering

to sell for a sum of money a knowledge of the rhetorical art, and

disposed of their services in the instruction of the youth of wealthy

and noble families.

What shall we say of such a system and of such a state of things? Simply

this: that it indicated a complete mental and social demoralization--mental

demoralization, for the principles of knowledge were sapped, and man

persuaded that his reason was no guide; social demoralization, for he was

taught that right and wrong, virtue and vice, conscience, and law, and God,

are imaginary fictions; that there is no harm in the commission of sin,

though there may be harm, as assuredly there is folly, in being detected

therein; that it is excellent for a man to sell his country to the Persian

king, provided that the sum of money he receives is large enough, and that

the transaction is so darkly conducted that the public, and particularly

his enemies, can never find it out. Let him never forget that patriotism is

the first delusion of a simpleton, and the last refuge of a knave.

[Sidenote: They reject the national religion.]

[Sidenote: Spread of their opinions among the highest classes.]

[Sidenote: They end in blank atheism.]

Such were the results of the first attempt to correct the partial

philosophies, by submitting them to the measure of a more universal one;

such the manner in which, instead of only losing their exclusiveness and

imperfections by their contact with one another, they were wrested from

their proper object, and made subservient to the purpose of deception.

Nor was it science alone that was affected; already might be discerned

the foreshadowings of that conviction which many centuries later

occasioned the final destruction of polytheism in Rome. Already, in

Athens, the voice of philosophers was heard, that among so many gods and

so many different worships it was impossible for a man to ascertain what

is true. Already, many even of the educated were overwhelmed with the

ominous suggestion that, if ever it had been the will of heaven to

reveal any form of faith to the world, such a revelation, considering

its origin, must necessarily have come with sufficient power to override

all opposition; that if there existed only as many as two forms of faith

synchronous and successful in the world, that fact would of itself

demonstrate that neither of them is true, and that there never had been

any revelation from an all-wise and omnipotent God. Nor was it merely

among the speculative men that these infidelities were cherished; the

leading politicians and statesmen had become deeply infected with them.

It was not Anaxagoras alone who was convicted of atheism; the same

charge was made against Pericles, the head of the republic--he who had

done so much for the glory of Athens--the man who, in practical life,

was, beyond all question, the first of his age. With difficulty he

succeeded, by the use of what influence remained to him, in saving the

life of the guilty philosopher his friend, but in the public estimation

he was universally viewed as a participator in his crime. If the

foundations of philosophy and those of religion were thus sapped, the

foundations of law experienced no better fate. The Sophists, who were

wandering all over the world, saw that each nation had its own ideas of

merit and demerit, and therefore its own system of law; that even in

different towns there were contrary conceptions of right and wrong, and

therefore opposing codes. It is evident that in such examinations they

applied the same principles which had guided them in their analysis of

philosophy and religion, and that the result could be no other than it

was, to bring them to the conclusion that there is nothing absolute in

justice or in law. To what an appalling condition society has arrived,

when it reaches the positive conclusion that there is no truth, no

religion, no justice, no virtue in the world; that the only object of

human exertion is unrestrained physical enjoyment; the only standard of

a man's position, wealth; that, since there is no possibility of truth,

whose eternal principles might serve for an uncontrovertible and common

guide, we should resort to deception and the arts of persuasion, that we

may dupe others for our purposes; that there is no sin in undermining

the social contract; no crime in blasphemy, or rather there is no

blasphemy at all, since there are no gods; that "man is the measure of

all things," as Protagoras teaches, and that "he is the criterion of

existence;" that "thought is only the relation of the thinking subject

to the object thought of, and that the thinking subject, the soul, is

nothing more than the sum of the different moments of thinking." It is

no wonder that that Sophist who was the author of such doctrines should

be condemned to death to satisfy the clamours of a populace who had not

advanced sufficiently into the depths of this secondary, this higher

philosophy, and that it was only by flight that he could save himself

from the punishment awaiting the opening sentiment of his book: "Of the

gods I cannot tell whether they are or not, for much hinders us from

knowing this--both the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of

life." It is no wonder that the social demoralization spread apace, when

men like Gorgias, the disciple of Empedocles, were to be found, who

laughed at virtue, made an open derision of morality, and proved, by

metaphysical demonstration, that nothing at all exists.

[Sidenote: Political dangers of the higher analysis.]

[Sidenote: Illustrations from the Middle Ages.]

[Sidenote: Danger of intellect outgrowing formulas of faith.]

[Sidenote: Absolute necessity of preparing communities for these

changes.]

From these statements respecting the crisis at which ancient philosophy

had arrived, we might be disposed to believe that the result was

unmitigated evil, for it scarcely deserves mention that the quibbles and

disputes of the Sophists occasioned an extraordinary improvement of the

Greek language, introducing precision into its terms, and a wonderful

dialectical skill into its use. For us there may be extracted from these

melancholy conclusions at least one instructive lesson--that it is not

during the process of decomposition of philosophies, and especially of

religions, that social changes occur, for such breakings-up commonly go

on in an isolated, and therefore innocuous way; but if by chance the

fragments and decomposed portions are brought together, and attempts are

made by fusion to incorporate them anew, or to extract from them, by a

secondary analysis, what truth they contain, a crisis is at once brought

on, and--such is the course of events--in the catastrophe that ensues

they are commonly all absolutely destroyed. It was doubtless their

foresight of such consequences that inspired the Italian statesmen of

the Middle Ages with a resolute purpose of crushing in the bud every

encroachment on ecclesiastical authority, and every attempt at

individual interpretation of religious doctrines. For it is not to be

supposed that men of clear intellect should be insensible to the obvious

unreasonableness of many of the dogmas that had been consecrated by

authority. But if once permission were accorded to human criticism and

human interpretation, what other issue could there be than that doctrine

upon doctrine, and sect upon sect should arise; that theological

principles should undergo a total decomposition, until two men could

scarcely be found whose views coincided; nay, even more than that, that

the same man should change his opinion with the changing incidents of

the different periods of his life. No matter what might be the plausible

guise of the beginning, and the ostensibly cogent arguments for its

necessity, once let the decomposition commence, and no human power could

arrest it until it had become thorough and complete. Considering the

prestige, the authority, and the mass of fact to be dealt with, it might

take many centuries for this process to be finished, but that that

result would at length be accomplished no enlightened man could doubt.

The experience of the ancient European world had shown that in the act

of such decompositions there is but little danger, since, for the time

being, each sect, and, indeed, each individual, has a guiding rule of

life. But as soon as the period of secondary analysis is reached a

crisis must inevitably ensue, in all probability involving not only

religion, but also the social contract. And though, by the exercise of

force on the part of the interests that are disturbed, aided by that

popular sentiment which is abhorrent of anarchy, the crisis might, for a

time, be put off, it could not be otherwise than that Europe should be

left in that deplorable state which must result when the intellect of a

people has outgrown its formulas of faith. A fearful condition to

contemplate, for such a dislocation must also affect political

relations, and necessarily implies revolt against existing law. Nations

plunged in the abyss of irreligion must necessarily be nations in

anarchy. For a time their tendency to explosion may be kept down by the

firm application of the hand of power; but this is simply an antagonism,

it is no cure. The social putrefaction proceeds, working its way

downward into classes that are lower and lower, until at length it

involves the institutions that are relied on for its arrest. Armies, the

machinery of compression, once infected, the end is at hand, but no

human foresight can predict what the event shall be, especially if the

contemporaneous ruling powers have either ignorantly or wilfully

neglected to prepare society for the inevitable trial it is about to

undergo. It is the most solemn of all the duties of governments, when

once they have become aware of such a momentous condition, to prepare

the nations for its fearful consequences. For this it may, perhaps, be

lawful for them to dissemble in a temporary manner, as it is sometimes

proper for a physician to dissemble with his patient; it may be lawful

for them even to resort to the use of force, but never should such

measures of doubtful correctness be adopted without others directed to a

preparation of the mass of society for the trials through which it is

about to pass. Such, doubtless, were the profound views of the great

Italian statesmen of the Middle Ages; such, doubtless, were the

arguments by which they justified to themselves resistance against the

beginning of the evil--a course for which Europe has too often and

unfairly condemned them.

[Sidenote: Summary of the preceding theories.]

It remains for us now to review the details presented in the foregoing

pages for the purpose of determining the successive phases of

development through which the Greek mind passed. It is not with the

truth or fallacy of these details that we have to do, but with their

order of occurrence. They are points enabling us to describe graphically

the curve of Grecian intellectual advance.

The starting point of Greek philosophy is physical and geocentral. The

earth is the grand object of the universe, and, as the necessary result,

erroneous ideas are entertained as to the relations and dimensions of

the sea and air. This philosophy was hardly a century old before it

began to cosmogonize, using the principles it considered itself sure of.

Long before it was able to get rid of local ideas, such as upward and

downward in space, it undertook to explain the origin of the world.

But, as advances were made, it was recognized that creation, in its

various parts, displays intention and design, the adaptation of means to

secure proposed ends. This suggested a reasoning and voluntary agency,

like that of man, in the government of the world; and from a continual

reference to human habits and acts, Greek philosophy passed through its

stage of anthropoid conceptions.

A little farther progress awakened suspicions that the mind of man can

obtain no certain knowledge; and the opinion at last prevailed that we

have no trustworthy criterion of truth. In the scepticism thus setting

in, the approach to Oriental ideas is each successive instant more and

more distinct.

[Sidenote: Approach to Oriental ideas.]

This period of doubt was the immediate forerunner of more correct

cosmical opinions. The heliocentric mechanism of the planetary system

was introduced, the earth deposed to a subordinate position. The

doctrines, both physical and intellectual, founded on geocentric ideas,

were necessarily endangered, and, since these had connected themselves

with the prevailing religious views, and were represented by important

material interests, the public began to practise persecution and the

philosophers hypocrisy. Pantheistic notions of the nature of the world

became more distinct, and, as their necessary consequence, the doctrines

of Emanation, Transmigration, and Absorption were entertained. From this

it is but a step to the suspicion that matter, motion, and time are

phantasms of the imagination--opinions embodied in the atomic theory,

which asserts that atoms and space alone exist; and which became more

refined when it recognized that atoms are only mathematical points; and

still more so when it considered them as mere centres of force. The

brink of Buddhism was here approached.

As must necessarily ever be the case where men are coexisting in

different psychical stages of advance, some having made a less, some a

greater intellectual progress, all these views which we have described

successively, were at last contemporaneously entertained. At this point

commenced the action of the Sophists, who, by setting the doctrines of

one school in opposition to those of another, and representing them all

as of equal value, occasioned the destruction of them all, and the

philosophy founded on physical speculation came to an end.

[Sidenote: Uniformity in the manner of intellectual progress.]

Of this phase of Greek intellectual life, if we compare the beginning

with the close, we cannot fail to observe how great is the improvement.

The thoughts dealt with at the later period are intrinsically of a

higher order than those at the outset. From the puerilities and errors

with which we have thus been occupied, we learn that there is a definite

mode of progress for the mind of man; from the history of later times we

shall find that it is ever in the same direction.