THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH.
RISE AND DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
SOCRATES _rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and
asserts the Importance of Virtue and Morality, thereby
inaugurating an Age of Faith.--His Life and Death.--The
schools originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of
Pleasure and Gratification of Self._
PLATO _founds the Academy.--His three primal Principles.--The
Existence of a personal God.--Nature of the World and the
Soul.--The ideal Theory, Generals or
Types.--Reminiscence.--Transmigration.--Plato's political
Institutions.--His Republic.--His Proofs of the Immortality of
the Soul.--Criticism on his Doctrines._
RISE OF THE SCEPTICS, _who conduct the higher Analysis of
Ethical Philosophy.--Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of
Knowledge.--Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference,
Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by
Epicurus.--Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems
in the later Academies.--Their Errors and Duplicities.--End
of the Greek Age of Faith._
[Sidenote: Greek philosophy on the basis of ethics.]
The Sophists had brought on an intellectual anarchy. It is not in the
nature of humanity to be contented with such a state. Thwarted in its
expectations from physics, the Greek mind turned its attention to
morals. In the progress of life, it is but a step from the age of
Inquiry to the age of Faith.
[Sidenote: Socrates: his mode of teaching.]
[Sidenote: The doctrines of Socrates.]
[Sidenote: Opposes mathematics and physics.]
Socrates, who led the way in this movement, was born B.C. 469. He
exercised an influence in some respects felt to our times. Having
experienced the unprofitable results arising from physical speculation,
he set in contrast there with the solid advantages to be enjoyed from
the cultivation of virtue and morality. His life was a perpetual combat
with the Sophists. His manner of instruction was by conversation, in
which, according to the uniform testimony of all who heard him, he
singularly excelled. He resorted to definitions, and therefrom drew
deductions, conveying his argument under the form of a dialogue. Unlike
his predecessors, who sought for truth in the investigation of outward
things, he turned his attention inward, asserting the supremacy of
virtue and its identity with knowledge, and the necessity of an
adherence to the strict principles of justice. Considering the depraved
condition to which the Sophists had reduced society, he insisted on a
change in the manner of education of youth, so as to bring it in
accordance with the principle that happiness is only to be found in the
pursuit of virtue and goodness. Thus, therefore, he completely
substituted the moral for the physical, and in this essentially consists
the philosophical revolution he effected. He had no school, properly
speaking, nor did he elaborate any special ethical system; to those who
inquired how they should know good from evil and right from wrong, he
recommended the decisions of the laws of their country. It does not
appear that he ever entered on any inquiry respecting the nature of God,
simply viewing his existence as a fact of which there was abundant and
incontrovertible proof. Though rejecting the crude religious ideas of
his nation, and totally opposed to anthropomorphism, he carefully
avoided the giving of public offence by improper allusions to the
prevailing superstition; nay, even as a good citizen, he set an example
of conforming to its requirements. In his judgment, the fault of the
Sophists consisted in this, that they had subverted useless speculation,
but had substituted for it no scientific evidence. Nevertheless, if man
did not know, he might believe, and demonstration might be profitably
supplanted by faith. He therefore insisted on the great doctrines of the
immortality of the soul and the government of the world by Providence;
but it is not to be denied that there are plain indications, in some of
his sentiments, of a conviction that the Supreme Being is the soul of
the world. He professed that his own chief wisdom consisted in the
knowledge of his own ignorance, and dissuaded his friends from the
cultivation of mathematics and physics, since he affirmed that the
former leads to vain conclusions, the latter to atheism. In his system
everything turns on the explanation of terms; but his processes of
reasoning are often imperfect, his conclusions, therefore, liable to be
incorrect. In this way, he maintained that no one would knowingly commit
a wrong act, because he that knew a thing to be good would do it; that
it is only involuntarily that the bad are bad; that he who knowingly
tells a lie is a better man than he who tells a lie in ignorance; and
that it is right to injure one's enemies.
[Sidenote: Superficiality of his views.]
From such a statement of the philosophy of Socrates, we cannot fail to
remark how superficial it must have been; it perpetually mistakes
differences of words for distinctions of things; it also possessed
little novelty. The enforcement of morality cannot be regarded as
anything new, since probably there has never been an age in which good
men were not to be found, who observed, as their rule of life, the
maxims taught by Socrates; and hence we may reasonably inquire what it
was that has spread over the name of this great man such an unfading
lustre, and why he stands out in such extraordinary prominence among the
benefactors of his race.
[Sidenote: Causes of the celebrity of Socrates.]
Socrates was happy in two things: happy in those who recorded his life,
and happy in the circumstances of his death. It is not given to every
great man to have Xenophon and Plato for his biographers; it is not
given to every one who has overpassed the limit of life, and, in the
natural course of events, has but a little longer to continue, to attain
the crown of martyrdom in behalf of virtue and morality. In an evil hour
for the glory of Athens, his countrymen put him to death. It was too
late when they awoke and saw that they could give no answer to the voice
of posterity, demanding why they had perpetrated this crime. With truth
Socrates said, at the close of his noble speech to the judges who had
condemned him, "It is now time that we depart--I to die, you to live;
but which has the better destiny is unknown to all except God." The
future has resolved that doubt. For Socrates there was reserved the
happier lot.
[Sidenote: The ostensible accusations against him.]
No little obscurity still remains as respects the true nature of this
dark transaction. The articles of accusation were three: he rejects the
gods of his country; he introduces new ones; he perverts the education
of youth. With truth might his friends say it was wonderful that he
should be accused of impiety, the whole tenor of whose life was
reverence for God--a recognition not only of the divine existence, but
of the divine superintendence. "It is only a madman," he would say, "who
imputes success in life to human prudence;" and as to the necessity of a
right education for the young, "It is only the wise who are fit to
govern men." We must conclude that the accusations were only ostensible
or fictitious, and that beneath them lay some reality which could
reconcile the Athenians to the perpetration of so great a crime.
Shall we find in his private life any explanation of this mystery?
Unfortunately, the details of it which have descended to us are few. To
the investigations of classical criticism we can scarcely look with any
hope, for classical criticism has hitherto been in a state of singular
innocence, so far as the actual affairs of life are concerned. It
regards Athenians and Romans not as men and women like ourselves, but as
the personages presented by fictitious literature, whose lives are
exceptions to the common laws of human nature; who live in the midst of
scenes of endless surprises and occurrences ever bordering on the
marvellous.
[Sidenote: The character of Socrates in Athens.]
[Sidenote: Xantippe his wife.]
[Sidenote: He is really the victim of political animosity.]
If we examine the case according to everyday principles, we cannot fail
to remark that the Socrates of our imagination is a very different man
from the Socrates of contemporaneous Athenians. To us he appears a
transcendent genius, to whom the great names of antiquity render their
profound homage; a martyr in behalf of principles, of which, if society
be devoid, life itself is scarcely of any worth, and for the defence of
which it is the highest glory that a man should be called upon to die.
To them Socrates was no more than an idle lounger in the public places
and corners of the streets; grotesque, and even repulsive in his person;
affecting in the oddities of his walking and in his appearance many of
the manners of the mountebank. Neglecting the pursuit of an honest
calling, for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he
wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his lecherous
countenance and satyr-like person could gather around him, leading them
astray from the gods of his country, the flimsy veil of his hypocrisy
being too transparent to conceal his infidelity. Nevertheless, he was a
very brave soldier, as those who served with him testify. It does not
appear that he was observant of those cares which by most men are
probably considered as paramount, giving himself but little concern for
the support of his children and wife. The good woman Xantippe is, to all
appearance, one of those characters who are unfairly judged of by the
world. Socrates married her because of her singular conversational
powers; and though he himself, according to universal testimony,
possessed extraordinary merits in that respect, he found to his cost,
when too late, so commanding were her excellencies, that he was
altogether her inferior. Among the amusing instances related of his
domestic difficulties were the consequences of his invitations to
persons to dine with him when there was nothing in the house wherewith
to entertain them, a proceeding severely trying to the temper of
Xantippe, whose cause would unquestionably be defended by the matrons of
any nation. It was nothing but the mortification of a high-spirited
woman at the acts of a man who was too shiftless to have any concern for
his domestic honour. He would not gratify her urgent entreaties by
accepting from those upon whom he lavished his time the money that was
so greatly needed at home. After his condemnation, she carried her
children with her to his prison, and was dismissed by him, as he told
his friends, from his apprehension of her deep distress. To the last we
see her bearing herself in a manner honourable to a woman and a wife.
There is surely something wrong in a man's life when the mother of his
children is protesting against his conduct, and her complaints are
countenanced by the community. In view of all the incidents of the
history of Socrates, we can come to no other conclusion than that the
Athenians regarded him as an unworthy, and perhaps troublesome member of
society. There can be no doubt that his trial and condemnation were
connected with political measures. He himself said that he should have
suffered death previously, in the affair of Leon of Salamis, had not the
government been broken up. His bias was toward aristocracy, not toward
democracy. In common with his party, he had been engaged in undertakings
that could not do otherwise than entail mortal animosities; and it is
not to be overlooked that his indictment was brought forward by Anytus,
who was conspicuous in restoring the old order of things. The mistake
made by the Athenians was in applying a punishment altogether beyond the
real offence, and in adding thereto the persecution of those who had
embraced the tenets of Socrates by driving them into exile. Not only
admiration for the memory of their master, but also a recollection of
their own wrongs, made these men eloquent eulogists. Had Socrates
appeared to the Athenians as he appears to us, it is not consistent with
human proceedings that they should have acted in so barbarous and
totally indefensible a manner.
[Sidenote: The Dæmon of Socrates.]
If by the Dæmon to whose suggestions Socrates is said to have listened
anything more was meant than conscience, we must infer that he laboured
under that mental malady to which those are liable who, either through
penury or designedly, submit to extreme abstinence, and, thereby
injuring the brain, fall into hallucination. Such cases are by no means
of infrequent occurrence. Mohammed was affected in that manner.
[Sidenote: The Megaric school. The wise should be insensible to pain.]
After the death of Socrates there arose several schools professing to be
founded upon his principles. The divergences they exhibited when
compared with one another prove how little there was of precision in
those principles. Among these imitators is numbered Euclid of Megara,
who had been in the habit of incurring considerable personal risk for
the sake of listening to the great teacher, it being a capital offence
for a native of Megara to be found in Athens. Upon their persecution,
Plato and other disciples of Socrates fled to Euclid, and were well
received by him. His system was a mixture of the Eleatic and Socratic,
the ethical preponderating in his doctrine. He maintained the existence
of one Being, the Good, having various aspects--Wisdom, God, Reason,
and showed an inclination to the tendency afterward fully developed by
the Cynical school in his dogma that the wise man should be insensible
to pain.
[Sidenote: The Cyrenaic school. Pleasure is the object of life.]
With the Megaric school is usually classified the Cyrenaic founded by
Aristippus. Like Socrates, he held in disdain physical speculations, and
directed his attention to the moral. In his opinion, happiness consists
in pleasure; and, indeed, he recognized in pleasure and pain the
criteria of external things. He denied that we can know anything with
certainty, our senses being so liable to deceive us; but, though we may
not perceive things truly, it is true that we perceive. With the
Cyrenaic school, pleasure was the great end and object of life.
[Sidenote: The Cynical school: a contempt for others and gratification
of self.]
[Sidenote: Antisthenes.]
To these may be added the Cynical school, founded by Antisthenes, whose
system is personal and ferocious: it is a battle of the mind against the
body; it is a pursuit of pleasure of a mental kind, corporeal enjoyment
being utterly unworthy of a man. Its nature is very well shown in the
character of its founder, who abandoned all the conveniences and
comforts of life, voluntarily encountering poverty and exposure to the
inclemency of the seasons. His garments were of the meanest kind, his
beard neglected, his person filthy, his diet bordering on starvation. To
the passers-by this ragged misanthrope indulged in contemptuous
language, and offended them by the indecency of his gestures. Abandoned
at last by every one except Diogenes of Sinope, he expired in extreme
wretchedness. It had been a favourite doctrine with him that friendship
and patriotism are altogether worthless; and in his last agony, Diogenes
asking him whether he needed a friend, "Will a friend release me from
this pain?" he inquired. Diogenes handed him a dagger, saying, "This
will." "I want to be free from pain, but not from life." Into such
degradation had philosophy, as represented by the Cynical school,
fallen, that it may be doubted whether it is right to include a man like
Antisthenes among those who derive their title from their love of
wisdom--a man who condemned the knowledge of reading and writing, who
depreciated the institution of marriage, and professed that he saw no
other advantage in philosophy than that it enabled him to keep company
with himself.
[Sidenote: Diogenes of Sinope.]
[Sidenote: His irreverence.]
The wretched doctrines of Cynicism were carried to their utmost
application by Diogenes of Sinope. In early life he had been accustomed
to luxury and ease; but his father, who was a wealthy banker, having
been convicted of debasing the coinage, Diogenes, who in some manner
shared in the disgrace, was in a very fit state of mind to embrace
doctrines implying a contempt for the goods of the world and for the
opinions of men. He may be considered as the prototype of the hermits of
a later period in his attempts at the subjugation of the natural
appetites by means of starvation. Looking upon the body as a mere clog
to the soul, he mortified it in every possible manner, feeding it on raw
meat and leaves, and making it dwell in a tub. He professed that the
nearer a man approaches to suicide the nearer he approaches to virtue.
He wore no other dress than a scanty cloak; a wallet, a stick, and a
drinking-cup completed his equipment: the cup he threw away as useless
on seeing a boy take water in the hollow of his hand. It was his delight
to offend every idea of social decency by performing all the acts of
life publicly, asserting that whatever is not improper in itself ought
to be done openly. It is said that his death, which occurred in his
ninetieth year, was in consequence of devouring a neat's foot raw. From
his carrying the Socratic notions to an extreme, he merits the
designation applied to him, "the mad Socrates." His contempt for the
opinions of others, and his religious disbelief, are illustrated by an
incident related of him, that, having in a moment of weakness made a
promise to some friends that he would offer a sacrifice to Diana, he
repaired the next day to her temple, and, taking a louse from his head,
cracked it upon her altar.
[Sidenote: Decline of morality.]
What a melancholy illustration of the tendency of the human mind do
these facts offer. What a quick, yet inevitable descent from the
morality of Socrates. Selfishness is enthroned; friendship and
patriotism are looked upon as the affairs of a fool; happy is the man
who stands in no need of a friend; still happier he who has not one. No
action is intrinsically bad; even robbery, adultery, sacrilege, are
only crimes by public agreement. The sage will take care how he indulges
in the weakness of gratitude or benevolence, or any other such sickly
sentiment. If he can find pleasure, let him enjoy it; if pain is
inflicted on him, let him bear it; but, above all, let him remember that
death is just as desirable as life.
If the physical speculations of Greece had ended in sophistry and
atheism, ethical investigations, it thus appears, had borne no better
fruit. Both systems, when carried to their consequences, had been found
to be not only useless to society, but actually prejudicial to its best
interests. As far as could be seen, in the times of which we are
speaking, the prospects for civilization were dark and discouraging; nor
did it appear possible that any successful attempts could be made to
extract from philosophy anything completely suitable to the wants of
man. Yet, in the midst of these discreditable delusions, one of the
friends and disciples of Socrates--indeed, it may be said, his chief
disciple, Plato, was laying the foundation of another system, which,
though it contained much that was false and more that was vain,
contained also some things vigorous enough to descend to our times.
[Sidenote: Birth of Plato.]
Plato was born about B.C. 426. Antiquity has often delighted to cast a
halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works
of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal
honours. A legend, into the authenticity of which we will abstain from
inquiring, asserted that his mother Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered
an immaculate conception through the influences of Apollo. The god
declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage
of the child. The wisdom of this great writer may justify such a noble
descent, and, in some degree, excuse the credulity of his admiring and
affectionate disciples, who gave a ready ear to the impossible story.
[Sidenote: His education and teaching.]
To the knowledge acquired by Plato during the eight or ten years he had
spent with Socrates, he added all that could be obtained from the
philosophers of Egypt, Cyrene, Persia, and Tarentum. With every
advantage arising from wealth and an illustrious parentage, if even it
was only of an earthly kind, for he numbered Solon among his ancestors,
he availed himself of the teaching of the chief philosophers of the age,
and at length, returning to his native country, founded a school in the
grove of Hecademus. Thrice during his career as a teacher he visited
Sicily on each occasion returning to the retirement of his academy. He
attained the advanced age of eighty-three years. It has been given to
few men to exercise so profound an influence on the opinions of
posterity, and yet it is said that during his lifetime Plato had no
friends. He quarrelled with most of those who had been his
fellow-disciples of Socrates; and, as might be anticipated from the
venerable age to which he attained, and the uncertain foundation upon
which his doctrines reposed, his opinions were very often contradictory,
and his philosophy exhibited many variations. To his doctrines we must
now attend.
[Sidenote: The doctrines of Plato. The three primary principles.]
It was the belief of Plato that matter is coeternal with God, and that,
indeed, there are three primary principles--God, Matter, Ideas; all
animate and inanimate things being fashioned by God from matter, which,
being capable of receiving any impress, may be designated with propriety
the Mother of Forms. He held that intellect existed before such forms
were produced, but not antecedently to matter. To matter he imputed a
refractory or resisting quality, the origin of the disorders and
disturbances occurring in the world; he also regarded it us the cause of
evil, accounting thereby for the preponderance of evil, which must
exceed the good in proportion as matter exceeds ideas. It is not without
reason, therefore, that Plato has been accused of Magianism. These
doctrines are of an Oriental cast.
[Sidenote: He asserts the existence of a personal God.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the soul.]
The existence of God, an independent and personal maker of the world, he
inferred from proofs of intelligence and design presented by natural
objects. "All in the world is for the sake of the rest, and the places
of the single parts are so ordered as to subserve to the preservation
and excellency of the whole; hence all things are derived from the
operation of a Divine intellectual cause." From the marks of unity in
that design he deduced the unity of God, the Supreme Intelligence,
incorporeal, without beginning, end, or change. His god is the fashioner
and father of the universe, in contradistinction to impersonal Nature.
In one sense, he taught that the soul is immortal and imperishable; in
another, he denied that each individual soul either has had or will
continue to have an everlasting duration. From what has been said on a
former page, it will be understood that this psychological doctrine is
essentially Indian. His views of the ancient condition of and former
relations of the soul enabled Plato to introduce the celebrated doctrine
of Reminiscence, and to account for what have otherwise been termed
innate ideas. They are the recollections of things with which the soul
was once familiar.
[Sidenote: Plato's Ideal theory.]
[Sidenote: Exemplars or types.]
The reason of God contemplates and comprehends the exemplars or original
models of all natural forms, whatever they may be; for visible things
are only fleeting shadows, quickly passing away; ideas or exemplars are
everlasting. With so much power did he set forth this theory of ideas,
and, it must be added, with so much obscurity, that some have asserted
his belief in an extramundane space in which exist incorporeal beings,
the ideas or original exemplars of all organic and inorganic forms. An
illustration may remove some of the obscurity of these views. Thus all
men, though they may present different appearances when compared with
each other, are obviously fashioned upon the same model, to which they
all more or less perfectly conform. All trees of the same kind, though
they may differ from one another, are, in like manner, fashioned upon a
common model, to which they more or less perfectly conform. To such
models, exemplars, or types, Plato gave the designation of Ideas. Our
knowledge thereof is clearly not obtained from the senses, but from
reflection. Now Plato asserted that these ideas are not only conceptions
of the mind, but actually perceptions or entities having a real
existence; nay, more, that they are the only real existences. Objects
are thus only material embodiments of ideas, and in representation are
not exact; for correspondence between an object and its model is only so
far as circumstances will permit. Hence we can never determine all the
properties or functions of the idea from an examination of its imperfect
material representation, any more than we can discover the character or
qualities of a man from pictures of him, no matter how excellent those
pictures may be.
[Sidenote: Doctrine of Reminiscence.]
[Sidenote: Recollections during transmigration.]
The Ideal theory of Plato, therefore, teaches that, beyond this world of
delusive appearances, this world of material objects, there is another
world, invisible, eternal, and essentially true; that, though we cannot
trust our senses for the correctness of the indications they yield,
there are other impressions upon which we may fall back to aid us in
coming to the truth, the reminiscences or recollections still abiding in
the soul of the things it formerly knew, either in the realm of pure
ideas, or in the states of former life through which it has passed. For
Plato says that there are souls which, in periods of many thousand
years, have successively transmigrated through bodies of various kinds.
Of these various conditions they retain a recollection, more faintly or
vividly, as the case may be. Ideas seeming to be implanted in the human
mind, but certainly never communicated to us by the senses, are derived
from those former states. If this recollection of ancient events and
conditions were absolutely precise and correct, then man would have an
innate means for determining the truth. But such reminiscences being, in
their nature, imperfect and uncertain, we never can attain to absolute
truth. With Plato, the Beautiful is the perfect image of the true. Love
is the desire of the soul for Beauty, the attraction of like for like,
the longing of the divinity within us for the divinity beyond us; and
the Good, which is beauty, truth, justice, is God--God in his abstract
state.
[Sidenote: God is the sum of ideas.]
[Sidenote: The nature of the world and of the gods.]
[Sidenote: Triple constitution of the soul.]
[Sidenote: Transmigration and future rewards and punishments.]
[Sidenote: The physiology of Plato.]
From the Platonic system it therefore followed that science is
impossible to man, and possible only to God; that, however, recollecting
our origin, we ought not to despair, but elevate our intellectual aim as
high as we may; that all knowledge is not attributable to our present
senses; for, if that were the case, all men would be equally wise, their
senses being equal in acuteness; but a very large portion, and by far
the surest portion, is derived from reminiscence of our former states;
that each individual soul is an idea; and that, of ideas generally, the
lower are held together by the higher, and hence, finally by one which
is supreme; that God is the sum of ideas, and is therefore eternal and
unchangeable, the sensuous conditions of time and space having no
relation to him, and being inapplicable in any conception of his
attributes; that he is the measure of all things, and not man, as
Protagoras supposed; that the universe is a type of him; that matter
itself is an absolute negation, and is the same as space; that the forms
presented by our senses are unsubstantial shadows, and no reality; that,
so far from there being an infinity of worlds, there is but one, which,
as the work of God, is neither subject to age nor decay, and that it
consists of a body and a soul; in another respect it may be said to be
composed of fire and earth, which can only be made to cohere through the
intermedium of air and water, and hence the necessity of the existence
of the four elements; that of geometrical forms, the pyramid corresponds
to fire, the cube to earth, the octahedron to air, these forms being
produced from triangles connected by certain numerical ratios; that the
entire sum of vitality is divided by God into seven parts, answering to
the divisions of the musical octave, or to the seven planets; that the
world is an animal having within it a soul; for man is warm, and so is
the world; man is made of various elements, and so is the world; and, as
the body of man has a soul, so too must the world have one; that there
is a race of created, generated, and visible gods, who must be
distinguished from the eternal, their bodies being composed for the most
part of fire, their shape spherical; that the earth is the oldest and
first of the starry bodies, its place being in the centre of the
universe, or in the axis thereof, where it remains, balanced by its own
equilibrium; that perhaps it is an ensouled being and a generated god;
that the mortal races are three, answering to Earth, Air, and Water;
that the male man was the first made of mortals, and that from him the
female, and beasts, and birds, and fishes issued forth; that the
superiority of man depends upon his being a religious animal; that each
mortal consists of two portions, a soul and a body--their separation
constitutes death; that of the soul there are two primitive component
parts, a mortal and an immortal, the one being made by the created gods,
and the other by the Supreme; that, for the purpose of uniting these
parts together, it is necessary that there should be an intermedium, and
that this is the dæmonic portion or spirit; that our mental struggles
arise from this triple constitution of Appetite, Spirit, and Reason;
that Reason alone is immortal, and the others die; that the number of
souls in the universe is invariable or constant; that the sentiment of
pre-existence proves the soul to have existed before the body; that,
since the soul is the cause of motion, it can neither be produced nor
decay, else all motion must eventually cease; that, as to the condition
of departed souls, they hover as shades around the graves, pining for
restoration to their lifeless bodies, or migrating through various human
or brute shapes, but that an unembodied life in God is reserved for the
virtuous philosopher; that valour is nothing but knowledge, and virtue a
knowledge of good; that the soul, on entering the body, is irrational or
in a trance, and that the god, the star who formed its created part,
influences its career, and hence its fortunes may be predicted by
astrological computations; that there are future rewards and
punishments, a residence being appointed for the righteous in his
kindred star; for those whose lives have been less pure there is a
second birth under the form of a woman, and, if evil courses are still
persisted in, successive transmigrations through various brutes are in
reserve--the frivolous passing into birds, the unphilosophical into
beasts, the ignorant into fishes; that the world undergoes periodical
revolutions by fire and water, its destructions and reproductions
depending upon the coincidences of the stars. Of Plato's views of human
physiology I can offer no better statement than the following from
Ritter: "All in the human body is formed for the sake of the Reason,
after certain determinate ends. Accordingly, first of all, a seat must
be provided for the god-like portion of the soul, the head, viz., which
is round, and similar to the perfect shape of the whole, furnished with
the organs of cognition, slightly covered with flesh, which impedes the
senses. To the head is given the direction of the whole frame, hence its
position at the top; and, since the animal creation possesses all the
six irregular motions, and the head ought not to roll upon the ground,
the human form is long, with legs for walking and arms for serving the
body, and the anterior part is fashioned differently from the posterior.
Now, the reason being seated in the head, the spirit or irascible soul
has its seat in the breast, under the head, in order that it may be
within call and command of the Reason, but yet separated from the head
by the neck, that it might not mix with it. The concupiscible has
likewise its particular seat in the lower part of the trunk, the
abdomen, separated by the diaphragm from that of the irascible, since it
is destined, being separate from both, to be governed and held in order
both by the spirit and the Reason. For this end God has given it a
watch, the liver, which is dense, smooth, and shining, and, containing
in combination both bitter and sweet, is fitted to receive and reflect,
as a mirror, the images of thoughts. Whenever the Reason disapproves, it
checks inordinate desires by its bitterness, and, on the other hand,
when it approves, all is soothed into gentle repose by its sweetness;
moreover, in sleep, in sickness, or in inspiration it becomes prophetic,
so that even the vilest portion of the body is in a certain degree
participant of truth. In other respects the lower portion of the trunk
is fashioned with equal adaptation for the ends it has to serve. The
spleen is placed on the left side of the liver, in order to secrete and
carry off the impurities which the diseases of the body might produce
and accumulate. The intestines are coiled many times, in order that the
food may not pass too quickly through the body, and so occasion again an
immoderate desire for more; for such a constant appetite would render
the pursuit of philosophy impossible, and make man disobedient to the
commands of the divinity within him."
[Sidenote: His ethical ideas.]
The reader will gather from the preceding paragraph how much of wisdom
and of folly, of knowledge and of ignorance, the doctrines of Plato
present. I may be permitted to continue this analysis of his writings a
little farther, with the intention of exhibiting the manner in which he
carried his views into practice; for Plato asserted that, though the
supreme good is unattainable by our reason, we must try to resemble God
as far as it is possible for the changeable to copy the eternal;
remembering that pleasure is not the end of man, and, though the sensual
part of the soul dwells on eating and drinking, riches and pleasure, and
the spiritual on worldly honours and distinctions, the reason is devoted
to knowledge. Pleasure, therefore, cannot be attributed to the gods,
though knowledge may; pleasure, which is not a good in itself, but only
a means thereto. Each of the three parts of the soul has its own
appropriate virtue, that of reason being wisdom; that of the spirit,
courage; that of the appetite, temperance; and for the sake of
perfection, justice is added for the mutual regulation of the other
three.
[Sidenote: His proposed political institutions.]
[Sidenote: The Republic of Plato.]
In carrying his ethical conceptions into practice, Plato insists that
the state is everything, and that what is in opposition to it ought to
be destroyed. He denies the right of property; strikes at the very
existence of the family, pressing his doctrines to such an extreme as to
consider women as public property, to be used for the purposes of the
state; he teaches that education should be a governmental duty, and that
religion must be absolutely subjected to the politician; that children
do not belong to their parents, but to the state; that the aim of
government should not be the happiness of the individual, but that of
the whole; and that men are to be considered not as men, but as elements
of the state, a perfect subject differing from a slave only in this,
that he has the state for his master. He recommends the exposure of
deformed and sickly infants, and requires every citizen to be initiated
into every species of falsehood and fraud. Distinguishing between mere
social unions and true polities, and insisting that there should be an
analogy between the state and the soul as respects triple constitution,
he establishes a division of ruler, warriors, and labourers, preferring,
therefore, a monarchy reposing on aristocracy, particularly of talent.
Though he considers music essential to education, his opinion of the
fine arts is so low that he would admit into his state painters and
musicians only under severe restrictions, or not at all. It was for the
sake of having this chimerical republic realized in Sicily that he made
a journey to Dionysius; and it may be added that it was well for those
whom he hoped to have subjected to the experiment that his wild and
visionary scheme was never permitted to be carried into effect. In our
times extravagant social plans have been proposed, and some have been
attempted; but we have witnessed nothing so absurd as this vaunted
republic of Plato. It shows a surprising ignorance of the acts and wants
of man in his social condition.
Some of the more important doctrines of Plato are worthy of further
reflection. I shall therefore detain the reader a short time to offer a
few remarks upon them.
[Sidenote: Grandeur of Plato's conceptions of God]
It was a beautiful conception of this philosophy that ideas are
connected together by others of a higher order, and these, in their
turn, by others still higher, their generality and power increasing as
we ascend, until finally a culminating point is reached--a last, a
supreme, an all-ruling idea, which is God. Approaching in this elevated
manner to the doctrine of an Almighty Being, we are free from those
fallacies we are otherwise liable to fall into when we mingle notions
derived from time and space with the attributes of God; we also avoid
those obscurities necessarily encountered when we attempt the
consideration of the illimitable and eternal.
[Sidenote: and of the soul.]
[Sidenote: The sentiment of pre-existence.]
Plato's views of the immortality of the soul offer a striking contrast
to those of the popular philosophy and superstition of his time. They
recall, in many respects, the doctrines of India. In Greece, those who
held the most enlarged views entertained what might be termed a doctrine
of semi-immortality. They looked for a continuance of the soul in an
endless futurity, but gave themselves no concern about the eternity
which is past. But Plato considered the soul as having already eternally
existed, the present life being only a moment in our career; he looked
forward with an undoubting faith to the changes through which we must
hereafter pass. As sparks issue forth from a flame, so doubtless to his
imagination did the soul of man issue forth from the soul of the world.
Innate ideas and the sentiment of pre-existence indicate our past life.
By the latter is meant that on some occasion perhaps of trivial concern,
or perhaps in some momentous event, it suddenly occurs to us that we
have been in like circumstances, and surrounded by the things at that
instant present on some other occasion before; but the recollection,
though forcibly impressing us with surprise, is misty and confused. With
Plato shall we say it was in one of our prior states of existence, and
the long-forgotten transactions are now suddenly flashing upon us?
[Sidenote: But this arises from the anatomical construction of the
brain.]
But Plato did not know the double structure and the double action of the
brain of man; he did not remember that the mind may lose all recognition
of the lapse of time, and, with equal facility, compress into the
twinkling of an eye events so numerous that for their occurrence days
and even years would seem to be required; or, conversely, that it can
take a single, a simple idea, which one would suppose might be disposed
of in a moment, and dwell upon it, dilating or swelling it out, until
all the hours of a long night are consumed. Of the truth of these
singular effects we have not only such testimony as that offered by
those who have been restored from death by drowning, who describe the
flood of memory rushing upon them in the last moment of their mortal
agony, the long train of all the affairs in which they have borne a part
seen in an instant, as we see the landscape, with all its various
objects, by a flash of lightning at night, and that with appalling
distinctness, but also from our own experience in our dreams. It is
shown in my Physiology how the phenomena of the sentiment of
pre-existence may, upon these principles, be explained, each hemisphere
of the brain thinking for itself, and the mind deluded as respects the
lapse of time, mistaking these simultaneous actions for successive ones,
and referring one of the two impressions to an indistinct and misty
past. To Plato such facts as these afforded copious proofs of the prior
existence of the soul, and strong foundations for a faith in its future
life.
[Sidenote: The double immortality, past and future.]
Thus Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul implies a double
immortality; the past eternity, as well as that to come, falls within
its scope. In the national superstition of his time, the spiritual
principle seemed to arise without author or generator, finding its
chance residence in the tabernacle of the body, growing with its growth
and strengthening with its strength, acquiring for each period of life a
correspondence of form and of feature with its companion the body,
successively assuming the appearance of the infant, the youth, the
adult, the white-bearded patriarch. The shade who wandered in the
Stygian fields, or stood before the tribunal of Minos to receive his
doom, was thought to correspond in aspect with the aspect of the body at
death. It was thus that Ulysses recognized the forms of Patroclus and
Achilles, and other heroes of the ten years' siege; it was thus that the
peasant recognized the ghost of his enemy or friend. As a matter of
superstition, these notions had their use, but in a philosophical sense
it is impossible to conceive anything more defective.
[Sidenote: Relations of the past and future to man.]
Man differs from a lifeless body or a brute in this, that it is not with
the present moment alone that he has to deal. For the brute the past,
when gone, is clean gone for ever; and the future, before it approaches,
is as if it were never to be. Man, by his recollection, makes the past a
part of the present, and his foreknowledge adds the future thereto,
thereby uniting the three in one.
[Sidenote: Criticism on the Ideal theory.]
Some of the illustrations commonly given of Plato's Ideal theory may
also be instructively used for showing the manner in which his facts are
dealt with by the methods of modern science. Thus Plato would say that
there is contained in every acorn the ideal type of an oak, in
accordance with which as soon as suitable circumstances occur, the acorn
will develop itself into an oak, and into no other tree. In the act of
development of such a seed into its final growth there are, therefore,
two things demanding attention, the intrinsic character of the seed and
the external forces acting upon it. The Platonic doctrine draws such a
distinction emphatically; its essential purpose is to assert the
absolute existence and independence of that innate type and its
imperishability. Though it requires the agency of external circumstances
for its complete realization, its being is altogether irrespective of
them. There are, therefore, in such a case, two elements concerned--an
internal and an external. A like duality is perceived in many other
physiological instances, as in the relationship of mind and matter,
thought and sensation. It is the aim of the Platonic philosophy to
magnify the internal at the expense of the external in the case of man,
thereby asserting the absolute supremacy of intellect; this being the
particular in which man is distinguished from the brutes and lower
organisms, in whom the external relatively predominates. The development
of any such organism, be it plant or animal, is therefore nothing but a
manifestation of the Divine idea of Platonism. Many instances of natural
history offer striking illustrations, as when that which might have been
a branch is developed into a flower, the parts thereof showing a
disposition to arrange themselves by fives or by threes. The persistency
with which this occurs in organisms of the same species, is, in the
Platonic interpretation, a proof that, though individuals may perish,
the idea is immortal. How else, in this manner, could the like extricate
itself from the unlike; the one deliver itself from, and make itself
manifest among the many?
Such is an instance of Plato's views; but the very illustration, thus
serving to bring them so explicitly before us, may teach us another,
and, perhaps, a more correct doctrine. For, considering the duality
presented by such cases, the internal and external, the immortal hidden
type and the power acting upon it without, the character and the
circumstances, may we not pertinently inquire by what authority does
Plato diminish the influence of the latter and enhance the value of the
former? Why are facts to be burdened with such hypothetical creations,
when it is obvious that a much simpler explanation is sufficient? Let us
admit, as our best physiological views direct, that the starting-point
of every organism, low or high, vegetable or animal, or whatever else,
is a simple cell, the manner of development of which depends altogether
on the circumstances and influences to which it is exposed; that, so
long as those circumstances are the same the resulting form will be the
same, and that as soon as those circumstances differ the resulting form
differs too. The offspring is like its parent, not because it includes
an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to
the same conditions as was its parent. Elsewhere I have endeavoured to
show that we must acknowledge this absolute dominion of physical agents
over organic forms as the fundamental principle in all the sciences of
organization; indeed, the main object of my work on Physiology was to
enforce this very doctrine. But such a doctrine is altogether
inconsistent with the Ideal theory of Platonism. It is no latent
imperishable type existing from eternity that is dominating in such
developments, but they take place as the issue of a resistless law,
variety being possible under variation of environment. Hence we may
perhaps excuse ourselves from that suprasensual world in which reside
typical forms, universals, ideas of created things, declining this
complex machinery of Platonism, and substituting for it a simple notion
of law. Nor shall we find, if from this starting-point we direct our
thoughts upward, as Plato did from subordinate ideas to the first idea,
anything incompatible with the noble conclusion to which he eventually
came, anything incompatible with the majesty of God, whose existence and
attributes may be asserted with more precision and distinctness from
considerations of the operation of immutable law than they can be from
the starting-point of fantastic, imaginary, ideal forms.
[Sidenote: Rise of the Sceptics.]
We have seen how the pre-Socratic philosophy ended in the Sophists; we
have now to see how the post-Socratic ended in the Sceptics. Again was
repeated the same result exhibited in former times, that the doctrines
of the different schools, even those supposed to be matters of absolute
demonstration, were not only essentially different, but in contradiction
to one another. Again, therefore, the opinion was resumed that the
intellect of man possesses no criterion of truth, being neither able to
distinguish among the contradictions of the impressions of the senses,
nor to judge of the correctness of philosophical deductions, nor even
to determine the intrinsic morality of acts. And, if there be no
criterion of truth, there can be no certain ground of science, and there
remains nothing for us but doubt. Such was the conclusion to which
Pyrrho, the founder of the Sceptics, came. He lived about B.C. 300. His
philosophical doctrine of the necessity of suspending or refusing our
assent from want of a criterion of judgment led by a natural transition
to the moral doctrine that virtue and happiness consist in perfect
quiescence or freedom from all mental perturbation. This doctrine, it is
said, he had learned in India from the Brahmans, whither he had been in
the expedition of Alexander. On his return to Europe he taught these
views in his school at Elis; but Greek philosophy, in its own order of
advancement, was verging on the discovery of these conclusions.
[Sidenote: Secondary analysis of ethical philosophy.]
The Sceptical school was thus founded on the assertion that man can
never ascertain the true among phenomena, and therefore can never know
whether things are in accordance or discordance with their appearances,
for the same object appears differently to us in different positions and
at different times. Doubtless it also appears differently to various
individuals. Among such appearances, how shall we select the true one,
and, if we make a selection, how shall we be absolutely certain that we
are right? Moreover, the properties we impute to things, such as colour,
smell, taste, hardness, and the like, are dependent upon our senses; but
we very well know that our senses are perpetually yielding to us
contradictory indications, and it is in vain that we expect Reason to
enable us to distinguish with correctness, or furnish us a criterion of
the truth. The Sceptical school thus made use of the weapon which the
Sophists had so destructively employed, directing it, however, chiefly
against ethics. But let us ascend a step higher. If we rely upon Reason,
how do we know that Reason itself is trustworthy? Do we not want some
criterion for it? And, even if such a criterion existed, must we not
have for it, in its turn, some higher criterion? The Sceptic thus
justified his assertion that to man there is no criterion of truth.
[Sidenote: The doctrines of Pyrrho.]
[Sidenote: No certainty in knowledge.]
In accordance with these principles, the Sceptics denied that we can
ever attain to a knowledge of existence from a knowledge of phenomena.
They carried their doubt to such an extreme as to assert that we can
never know the truth of anything that we have asserted, no, not even the
truth of this very assertion itself. "We assert nothing," said they;
"no, not even that we assert nothing." They declared that the system of
induction is at best only a system of probability, for an induction can
only be certain when every one and all of the individual things have
been examined and demonstrated to agree with the universal. If one
single exception among myriads of examples be discovered, the induction
is destroyed. But how shall we be sure, in any one case, that we have
examined all the individuals? therefore we must ever doubt. As to the
method of definitions, it is clear that it is altogether useless; for,
if we are ignorant of a thing, we cannot define it, and if we know a
thing, a definition adds nothing to our knowledge. In thus destroying
definitions and inductions they destroyed all philosophical method.
[Sidenote: The doctrines of Epicurus.]
[Sidenote: Tranquil indifference is best for man.]
But if there be this impossibility of attaining knowledge, what is the
use of man giving himself any trouble about the matter? Is it not best
to accept life as it comes, and enjoy pleasure while he may? And this is
what Epicurus, B.C. 342, had already advised men to do. Like Socrates,
he disparages science, and looks upon pleasure as the main object of
life and the criterion of virtue. Asserting that truth cannot be
determined by Reason alone, he gives up philosophy in despair, or
regards it as an inferior or ineffectual means of contributing to
happiness. In his view the proper division of philosophy is into Ethics,
Canonic, and Physics, the two latter being of very little importance
compared with the first. The wise man or sage must seek in an Oriental
quietism for the chief happiness of life, indulging himself in a
temperate manner as respects his present appetite, and adding thereto
the recollection of similar sensual pleasures that are past, and the
expectation of new ones reserved for the future. He must look on
philosophy as the art of enjoying life. He should give himself no
concern as to death or the power of the gods, who are only a delusion;
none as respects a future state, remembering that the soul, which is
nothing more than a congeries of atoms, is resolved into those
constituents at death. There can be no doubt that such doctrines were
very well suited to the times in which they were introduced; for so
great was the social and political disturbance, so great the uncertainty
of the tenure of property, that it might well be suggested what better
could a man do than enjoy his own while it was yet in his possession?
nor was the inducement to such a course lessened by extravagant
dissipations when courtesans and cooks, jesters and buffoons, splendid
attire and magnificent appointments had become essential to life.
Demetrius Poliorcetes, who understood the condition of things
thoroughly, says, "There was not, in my time, in Athens, one great or
noble mind." In such a social state, it is not at all surprising that
Epicurus had many followers, and that there were many who agreed with
him in thinking that happiness is best found in a tranquil indifference,
and in believing that there is nothing in reality good or bad; that it
is best to decide upon nothing, but to leave affairs to chance; that
there is, after all, little or no difference between life and death:
that a wise man will regard philosophy as an activity of ideas and
arguments which may tend to happiness; that its physical branch is of no
other use than to correct superstitious fancies as to death, and remove
the fear of meteors, prodigies, and other phenomena by explaining their
nature; that the views of Democritus and Aristotle may be made to some
extent available for the procurement of pleasure; and that we may learn
from the brutes, who pursue pleasure and avoid pain, what ought to be
our course. Upon the whole, it will be found that there is a connexion
between pleasure and virtue, especially if we enlarge our views and seek
for pleasure, not in the gratification of the present moment, but in the
aggregate offered by existence. The pleasures of the soul all originate
in the pleasures of the flesh; not only those of the time being, but
also those recollected in the past and anticipated in the future. The
sage will therefore provide for all these, and, remembering that pain is
in its nature transient, but pleasure is enduring, he will not hesitate
to encounter the former if he can be certain that it will procure him
the latter; he will dismiss from his mind all idle fears of the gods and
of destiny, for these are fictions beneficial only to women and the
vulgar; yet, since they are the objects of the national superstition, it
is needless to procure one's self disfavour by openly deriding them. It
will therefore be better for the sage to treat them with apparent
solemnity, or at least with outward respect, though he may laugh at the
imposition in his heart. As to the fear of death, he will be especially
careful to rid himself from it, remembering that death is only a
deliverer from the miseries of life.
[Sidenote: Imperfections of the Canonic of Epicurus,]
Under the title of Canonic Epicurus delivers his philosophical views;
they are, however, of a very superficial kind. He insists that our
sensuous impressions are the criterion of truth, and that even the
sensations of a lunatic and a dreamer are true. But, besides the
impressions of the moment, memory is also to be looked upon as a
criterion--memory, which is the basis of experience.
[Sidenote: and contradictions of his Physics.]
[Sidenote: His irreligion.]
In his Physics he adopts the Atomic theory of Democritus, though in many
respects it ill accords with his Ethics or Canonic; but so low is his
esteem of its value that he cares nothing for that. Though atoms and a
void are in their nature imperceptible to the senses, he acknowledges
their existence, asserting the occurrence of an infinite number of atoms
of different kinds in the infinite void, which, because of their weight,
precipitate themselves perpendicularly downward with an equable motion;
but some of them, through an unaccountable internal force, have deviated
from their perpendicular path, and, sticking together after their
collision, have given rise to the world. Not much better than these
vague puerilities are his notions about the size of the sun, the nature
of eclipses, and other astronomical phenomena; but he justifies his
contradictions and superficiality by asserting that it is altogether
useless for a man to know such things, and that the sage ought to give
himself no trouble about them. As to the soul, he says that it must be
of a material or corporeal nature, for this simple reason, that there is
nothing incorporeal but a vacuum; he inclines to the belief that it is
a rarefied body, easily movable, and somewhat of the nature of a vapour;
he divides it into four activities, corresponding to the four elements
entering into its constitution; and that, so far from being immortal, it
is decomposed into its integral atoms, dying when the body dies. With
the atomic doctrines of Democritus, Epicurus adopts the notions of that
philosopher respecting sensation, to the effect that eidola or images
are sloughed off from all external objects, and find access to the brain
through the eye. In his theology he admits, under the circumstances we
have mentioned, anthropomorphic gods, pretending to account for their
origin in the chance concourse of atoms, and suggesting that they
display their quietism and blessedness by giving themselves no concern
about man or his affairs. By such derisive promptings does Epicurus mock
at the religion of his country--its rituals, sacrifices, prayers, and
observances. He offers no better evidence of the existence of God than
that there is a general belief current among men in support of such a
notion; but, when brought to the point, he does not hesitate to utter
his disbelief in the national theology, and to declare that, in his
judgment, it is blind chance that rules the world.
[Sidenote: Epicureans of modern times.]
Such are the opinions to which the name of Epicurus has been attached;
but there were Epicureans ages before that philosopher was born, and
Epicureans there will be in all time to come. They abound in our own
days, ever characterized by the same features--an intense egoism in
their social relations, superficiality in their philosophical views, if
the term philosophical can be justly applied to intellects so narrow;
they manifest an accordance often loud and particular with the religion
of their country, while in their hearts and in their lives they are
utter infidels. These are they who constitute the most specious part of
modern society, and are often the self-proclaimed guardians of its
interests. They are to be found in every grade of life; in the senate,
in the army, in the professions, and especially in commercial pursuits,
which, unhappily, tend too frequently to the development of selfishness.
It is to them that society is indebted for more than half its
corruptions, all its hypocrisy, and more than half its sins. It is they
who infuse into it falsehood as respects the past, imposture as respects
the present, fraud as respects the future; who teach it by example that
the course of a man's life ought to be determined upon principles of
selfishness; that gratitude and affection are well enough if displayed
for effect, but that they should never be felt; that men are to be
looked upon not as men, but as things to be used; that knowledge and
integrity, patriotism and virtue, are the delusions of simpletons; and
that wealth is the only object which is really worthy of the homage of
man.
[Sidenote: The Middle Academy of Arcesilaus.]
[Sidenote: The New Academy of Carneades.]
[Sidenote: The duplicity of the later Academicians.]
[Sidenote: The fourth and fifth Academies.]
It now only remains in this chapter to speak of the later Platonism. The
Old Academy, of which Plato was the founder, limited its labours to the
illustration and defence of his doctrines. The Middle Academy,
originating with Arcesilaus, born B.C. 316, maintained a warfare with
the Stoics, developed the doctrine of the uncertainty of sensual
impressions and the nothingness of human knowledge. The New Academy was
founded by Carneades, born B.C. 213, and participated with the preceding
in many of its fundamental positions. On the one side Carneades leans to
scepticism, on the other he accepts probability as his guide. This
school so rapidly degenerated that at last it occupied itself with
rhetoric alone. The gradual increase of scepticism and indifference
throughout this period is obvious enough; thus Arcesilaus said that he
knew nothing, not even his own ignorance, and denied both intellectual
and sensuous knowledge. Carneades, obtaining his views from the old
philosophy, found therein arguments suitable for his purpose against
necessity, God, soothsaying; he did not admit that there is any such
thing as justice in the abstract, declaring that it is a purely
conventional thing; indeed, it was his rhetorical display, alternately
in praise of justice and against it, on the occasion of his visit to
Rome, that led Cato to have him expelled from the city. Though Plato had
been the representative of an age of faith, a secondary analysis of all
his works, implying an exposition of their contradictions, ended in
scepticism. If we may undertake to determine the precise aim of a
philosophy whose representatives stood in such an attitude of rhetorical
duplicity, it may be said to be the demonstration that there is no
criterion of truth in this world. Persuaded thus of the impossibility of
philosophy, Carneades was led to recommend his theory of the probable.
"That which has been most perfectly analyzed and examined, and found to
be devoid of improbability, is the most probable idea." The degeneration
of philosophy now became truly complete, the labours of so many great
men being degraded to rhetorical and artistic purposes. It was seen by
all that Plato had destroyed all trust in the indications of the senses,
and substituted for it the Ideal theory. Aristotle had destroyed that,
and there was nothing left to the world but scepticism. A fourth Academy
was founded by Philo of Larissa, a fifth by Antiochus of Ascalon. It was
reserved for this teacher to attach the Porch to the Academy, and to
merge the doctrines of Plato in those of the Stoics. Such a
heterogeneous mixture demonstrates the pass to which speculative
philosophy had come, and shows us clearly that her disciples had
abandoned her in despair.
[Sidenote: End of the Greek age of Faith.]
So ends the Greek age of Faith. How strikingly does its history recall
the corresponding period of individual life--the trusting spirit and the
disappointment of youth. We enter on it full of confidence in things and
men, never suspecting that the one may disappoint, the other deceive.
Our early experiences, if considered at all, afford only matter of
surprise that we could ever have been seriously occupied in such folly,
or actuated by motives now seeming so inadequate. It never occurs to us
that, in our present state, though the pursuits may have changed, they
are none the less vain, the objects none the less delusive.
The second age of Greek philosophy ended in sophism, the third in
scepticism. Speculative philosophy strikes at last upon a limit which it
can not overpass. This is its state even in our own times. It
reverberates against the wall that confines it without the least chance
of making its way through.