Of all the benefits that modern times owe to antiquity, the most
important but at the same time the least often acknowledged, is the
boon of philosophy. The poets, orators, and historians of Greece and
Rome are in the hands of every school-boy, and are the pleasure and
study of all who pretend to education, while the works of Plato,
Aristotle, Plotinus, and the other lights of antiquity (the heralds,
they have been called, of the true cross) languish here and there on
the shelves of some old library, or in the shop of some antiquarian
Bibliopole. There is this remarkable difference between philosophy and
the lighter literature of antiquity. Homer and Herodotus, Demosthenes
and his fellow orators, flashed out, as it were, from the bosom of the
people with no warning—no precursor, and first established that order
or sequence of literary cultivation which the experience of subsequent
ages has proved infallible; I mean first, poetry and eloquence—next,
history, and last of all, philosophy. Philosophy itself was no child
of the moment. As the sea-beach gains something as each wave rolls
over it, so was it with philosophy. Each age made its deposit at the
bank of truth, and slowly and imperceptibly, but with not less
security, was that mountain raised, which, however wildly raged the
storms of the middle ages—how much so ever its fair face was
obscured—still never ceased to exist, but served as a place of rest to
the weary bird of literature, a rest whence the yet callow philosophy
and unfledged history might wing their infantine flight. We may give
an era to history—for there is great difference between it and
tradition—we may positively ascertain the first poet, but we cannot
approximate to the first philosopher. Socrates is not the only sage
who never gave his lucubrations to posterity, and we learn from its
very name, (love of wisdom,) that it is coeval with mind, nay, almost
one of its principles. Were we to treat as philosophy only what has
been written, we should be forced again to bound our researches by
what has descended to us, and short indeed would be our course; but it
is not so. We know with as much certainty the opinions of those who
never wrote, as we do those of Plato and his followers, and are thus
able to trace philosophy _ab ovo usque ad mala_, from the alpha not to
the omega, for that has not been reached, but to the point at which we
find it now.
Philosophy first presents itself to the historian about the
commencement of the sixth century. The country where we first behold
it, is Asia Minor; beneath its warm climate the Grecian colonists, who
from time to time had settled there, grew day by day more and more
cultivated, till at length they were the tutors of their father-land.
Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytelene in Lesbos, Bias of Priene
flourished in a quick succession, while as yet Hellas had produced but
Solon, who was more lawgiver than sage, and who would better be
associated with Lycurgus than with Thales.
The philosophy of Ionia was echoed back with increased vigor from
Magna Grecia. It is customary for the imagination, when Italy is its
theme, to fly back to the days of Rome—to revel with Horace and with
Cicero, with Virgil and Macænas. How great so ever may be our
veneration for those later ages, they should never blot out from
memory Italy’s earlier civilization, when Apuleia and Brutium were
seats of learning instead of Tuscany, and when Pythagoras was master
of its philosophy instead of Cicero and Seneca.
The _point de depart_ of philosophy was the origin of the world and
its elementary principle. Perhaps it was necessary that the mental
machinery should first be employed upon the grosser matter ere it
should seize hold of that most delicate of all materials, mind—that
{740} the artillerymen of logic should first acquire skill in
battering to pieces erroneous opinions on natural philosophy ere his
piece should be directed against errors in ethics and psychology. Its
_modus operandi_ was, generally, that of empiricism. This is in a
degree true of all from Thales to Plato.
As the astrologers and alchemists of all ages, so did the philosophers
of the time of Thales. Though arguing on correct bases, they obtained
the most improper results. Pushing their analysis beyond the bound of
reason—not content with the phenomena of matter, of which experience
has taught us more than suffices for the mind of man, they sought to
discover the _arcanum_, the hidden principle of the world’s existence.
They failed of course, and it is a humiliating though not less
instructive task to glance in succession at the varied, though not
less incoherent, labors of those great spirits who, notwithstanding
that absurdity which belonged more properly to their age than to them
individually, yet emitted occasional glimpses of what we in vain would
hope had led to better results.
According to Thales the principle of the world is water. He is said to
have been induced to adopt this, in consequence of some partial
experiments. There was besides another principle, prime mover of all
things, which he called _nous_. To him we are indebted for that best
and most ancient of maxims, _Know thyself_.
Friend and townsman of Thales was Anaxamander. He lit his lamp at the
same light and cast its blaze on the same subjects. His _point de
depart_ is infinity, which he surnamed all-containing and divine,
without determining it more precisely. Perpetual changes of earth and
of things can take place in infinity. These were his _principia_, but
from them he developed multitudes of doctrines which it is not now
important to examine. He bent his attention to astronomy, and nearly
similar were the doctrines of Pherecydes of Syros. He called his
trinity of principles, God, time, and matter. He attempted to explain
animated bodies and mankind. He considered the soul as imperishable.
Anaxamander and Pherecydes were the two first philosophers who wrote
their doctrines out.
Now bursts on us a genius of the most astounding kind—Pythagoras.
Mighty as was his fame—great as the influence he exerted on
posterity—Homer-like, it seems his doom was to have “no place of
burial or of birth.” Iamblychus, in his life of Pythagoras, makes him
appear even from his infancy a sage and a philosopher. Where he was
instructed—how—by whom—we know not. There are accounts that he
travelled far and wide in search of science, studied among the
Egyptians for twenty-two years, and travelled so far as to meet and
converse with the Indian Gymnosophists. His life was a varied one—now
persecuted from town to town—now a prisoner at Babylon. With the sages
of Egypt he doubtless there met with, and imbibed a portion at least
of that God-revealed doctrine, which we have reason to believe had
sent some glimmerings of its glorious radiance to Babylon, the Rome,
the Athens of the East.
In our days, when the genius of the press flits from clime to
clime—when distance is annihilated, it seems a small matter to us to
study the philosophy, to pour over the lucubrations of distant lands;
but it was not so then. Each dogma was learned with difficulty and
attained with labor; we may then judge how great was that philosophic
spirit which prompted its possessor to so long and painful voyages,
and how strongly circumstances favored him, turning even apparent
obstructions into favorable events. For another paper we reserve the
philosophy of Pythagoras.