present foundation and possible future extension of human knowledge as
was occupied by the ancient Sceptics with regard to the possibility of
all knowledge. Its conclusions also are based on a very insufficient
experience of what can be effected by experience, and on an analysis of
cognition largely adopted from the system which it seeks to overthrow.
Like Scepticism also, when logically thought out, it tends to issue
in a self-contradiction, at one time affirming the consciousness of
what is, by definition, beyond consciousness; and at another time
dogmatically determining the points on which we must remain for ever
ignorant. It may be that some problems, as stated by modern thinkers,
are insoluble; but perhaps we may find our way our of them by
transforming the question to be solved.
If, in the domain of pure speculation, contemporary agnosticism
exaggerates the existing divergences, in ethics its whole effort is,
contrariwise, to reduce and reconcile them. Such was also the tendency
of Carneades. He declared that, in their controversy about the highest
good, the difference between the Stoics and the Peripatetics was purely
verbal. Both held that we are naturally framed for the pursuit of
certain objects, and that virtuous living is the only means by which
they can be attained. But while the disciples of Aristotle held that
the satisfaction of our natural impulses remains from first to last
the only end, the disciples of Zeno insisted that at some point—not,
as would seem very particularly specified—virtuous conduct, which was
originally the means towards this satisfaction, becomes substituted
for it as the supreme and ultimate good.[253] That the point at issue
was more important than it seemed is evident from its reproduction
under another form in modern ethical philosophy. For, among ourselves,
the controversy between utilitarianism and what, for want of a better
name, we must call intuitionism, is gradually narrowing itself to the
question whether the pursuit of another’s good has or has not a higher
value than the quantity of pleasure which accrues to him from it,
_plus_ the effects of a good example and the benefits that society at
large is likely to gain from the strength which exercise gives to the
altruistic dispositions of one of its members. Those who attribute an
absolute value to altruism, as such, connect this value in some way
or other with the spiritual welfare of the agent; and they hold that
without such a gain to himself he would gradually fall back on a life
of calculating selfishness or of unregulated impulse. Here we have the
return from a social to an individual morality. The Stoics, conversely,
were feeling their way from the good of the individual to that of the
community; and they could only bridge the chasm by converting what
had originally been a means towards self-preservation into an end in
itself. This Carneades could not see. Convinced that happiness was both
necessary and attainable, but convinced also that the systems which
had hitherto offered it as their reward were logically untenable, he
wished to place morality on the broad basis of what was held in common
by all schools, and this seemed to be the rule of obedience to Nature’s
dictates,—a rule which had also the great merit of bidding men do in
the name of philosophy what they already felt inclined to do without
any philosophy at all. We are told, indeed, that he would not commit
himself to any particular system of ethics; the inference, however, is
not that he ignored the necessity of a moral law, but that he wished to
extricate it from a compromising alliance with untenable speculative
dogmas. Nevertheless his acceptance of Nature as a real entity was a
survival of metaphysics; and his morality was, so far as it went, an
incipient return to the traditions of the Old Academy.
VI.
We have now reached a point where Greek philosophy seems to have swung
back into the position which it occupied three hundred years before,
towards the close of the Peloponnesian War. The ground is again
divided between naturalists and humanists, the one school offering
an encyclopaedic training in physical science and exact philology,
the other literary, sceptical, and limiting its attention to the
more immediate interests of life; but both agreeing in the supreme
importance of conduct, and differing chiefly as to whether its basis
should or should not be sought in a knowledge of the external world.
Materialism is again in the ascendant, to this extent at least, that
no other theory is contemplated by the students of physical science;
while the promise of a spiritualistic creed is to be found, if at all,
in the school whose scepticism throws it back on the subjective sphere,
the invisible and impalpable world of mind. The attitude of philosophy
towards religion has, indeed, undergone a marked change; for the Stoic
naturalists count themselves among the most strenuous supporters of
beliefs and practices which their Sophistic predecessors had contemned,
while the humanist criticism is cautiously guarded by at least an
external conformity to established usage; but the Platonic doctrine of
immortality has disappeared with the dogmatic spiritualism on which it
rested; and faith in superior beings tends to dissociate itself from
morality, or to become identified with a simple belief in the fixity of
natural law.
Whenever naturalism and scepticism have thus stood opposed, the result
has been their transformation or absorption into a new philosophy,
combining the systematic formalism of the one with the introspective
idealism of the other. In Greece such a revolution had already been
effected once before by Plato; and a restoration of his system seemed
the most obvious solution that could offer itself on the present
occasion. Such was, in fact, the solution eventually adopted; what
we have to explain is why its adoption was delayed so long. For
this various reasons may be offered. To begin with, the speculative
languor of the age was unfavourable to the rise of a new school.
Greece was almost depopulated by the demands of foreign service; and
at Alexandria, where a new centre of Hellenism had been created, its
best energies were absorbed by the cultivation of positive science.
It was, no doubt, in great part owing to the dearth of ability that
ideas which, at an earlier period, would have been immediately taken
up and developed, were allowed to remain stationary for a hundred
years—the interval separating a Carneades from an Arcesilaus. The
regular organisation of philosophical teaching was another hindrance
to progress. A certain amount of property was annexed to the headships
of the different schools, and served as an endowment, not of research
but of contented acquiescence in the received traditions. Moreover, the
jealousy with which the professors of rival doctrines would naturally
regard one another, was likely to prevent their mutual approximation
from going beyond certain not very close limits, and might even lead
to a still severer definition of the characteristic tenets which
still kept them apart. Another and deeper disturbing force lay in the
dissensions which, at a very early stage of its development, had split
the spiritualistic philosophy into two opposing tendencies respectively
represented by Plato and Aristotle. Any thinker who wandered away
from the principles either of Stoicism or of Scepticism was more
likely to find himself bewildered by the conflicting claims of these
two illustrious masters, than to discern the common ground on which
they stood, or to bring them within the grasp of a single reconciling
system. Finally, an enormous perturbation in the normal course of
speculation was produced by the entrance of Rome on the philosophical
scene. But before estimating the influence of this new force, we must
follow events to the point at which it first becomes of calculable
importance.
We have seen how Carneades, alike in his theory of probability and
in his ethical eclecticism, had departed from the extreme sceptical
standpoint. His successor, Clitomachus, was content with committing
the doctrines of the master to writing. A further step was taken by
the next Scholarch, Philo, who is known as the Larissaean, in order to
distinguish him from his more celebrated namesake, the Alexandrian Jew.
This philosopher asserted that the negations of the New Academy were
not to be taken as a profession of absolute scepticism, but merely as
a criticism on the untenable pretensions of the Stoa. His own position
was that, as a matter of fact, we have some certain knowledge of
the external world, but that no logical account can be given of the
process by which it is obtained—we can only say that such an assurance
has been naturally stamped on our minds.[254] This is the theory of
intuitions or innate ideas, still held by many persons; and, as such,
it marks a return to pure Platonism, having been evidently suggested
by the semi-mythological fancies of the _Meno_ and the _Phaedrus_.
With Philo as with those Scotch professors who long afterwards took up
substantially the same position, the leading motive was a practical
one, the necessity of placing morality on some stronger ground than
that of mere probability. Neither he nor his imitators saw that if
ethical principles are self-evident, they need no objective support; if
they are derivative and contingent, they cannot impart to metaphysics
a certainty which they do not independently possess. The return to
the old Academic standpoint was completed by a much more vigorous
thinker than Philo, his pupil, opponent, and eventual successor,
Antiochus. So far from attempting any compromise with the Sceptics,
this philosopher openly declared that they had led the school away from
its true traditions; and claimed for his own teaching the merit of
reproducing the original doctrine of Plato.[255] In reality, he was, as
Zeller has shown, an eclectic.[256] It is by arguments borrowed from
Stoicism that he vindicates the certainty of human knowledge. Pushing
the practical postulate to its logical conclusion, he maintains, not
only that we are in possession of the truth, but also—what Philo had
denied—that true beliefs bear on their face the evidence by which they
are distinguished from illusions. Admitting that the senses are liable
to error, he asserts the possibility of rectifying their mistakes, and
of reasoning from a subjective impression to its objective cause. The
Sceptical negation of truth he meets with the familiar argument that it
is suicidal, for to be convinced that there can be no conviction is a
contradiction in terms; while to argue that truth is indistinguishable
from falsehood implies an illogical confidence in the validity of
logical processes; besides involving the assumption that there are
false appearances and that they are known to us as such, which would
be impossible unless we were in a position to compare them with the
corresponding truths.[257] For his own part, Antiochus adopted without
alteration the empirical theory of Chrysippus, according to which
knowledge is elaborated by reflection out of the materials supplied
by sense. His physics were also those of Stoicism with a slight
Peripatetic admixture, but without any modification of their purely
materialistic character. In ethics he remained truer to the Academic
tradition, refusing to follow the Stoics in their absolute isolation
of virtue from vice, and of happiness from external circumstances,
involving as it did the equality of all transgressions and the
worthlessness of worldly goods. But the disciples of the Porch had
made such large concessions to common sense by their theories of
preference and of progress, that even here there was very little left
to distinguish his teaching from theirs.[258]
Meanwhile a series of Stoic thinkers had also been feeling their
way towards a compromise with Plato and Aristotle, which, so far as
it went, was a step in the direction of spiritualism. We have seen,
in a former chapter, how one of the great distinguishing marks of
Stoicism, as compared with the systems immediately preceding it, was
the substitution of a pervading monism for their antithesis between God
and the world, between heaven and earth, between reason and sense. It
will be remembered also that this monistic creed was associated with
a return to the Heracleitean theory that the world is periodically
destroyed by fire. Now, with reference to three out of these four
points, Boêthus, a Stoic contemporary of Carneades, returned to the
Aristotelian doctrine. While still holding to the materialism of
his own school, including a belief in the corporeal nature of the
divinity, he separated God from the world, and represented him as
governing its movements from without; the world itself he maintained
to be eternal; and in the mind of man he recognised reason or nous as
an independent source of conviction. In his cosmology, Boêthus was
followed by a more celebrated master, Panaetius, who also adopted the
Aristotelian rationalism so far as to deny the continued existence of
the soul after death, and to repudiate the belief in divination which
Stoicism had borrowed from popular superstition; while in psychology
he partially restored the distinction between life and mind which had
been obliterated by his predecessors.[259] The dualistic theory of mind
was carried still further by Posidonius, the most eminent Stoic of the
first century B.C. This very learned and accomplished master, while
returning in other points to a stricter orthodoxy, was led to admit
the Platonic distinction between reason and passion, and to make it
the basis of his ethical system.[260] But the Platonising tendencies
of Posidonius had no more power than those of Antiochus to effect
a true spiritualistic revival, since neither they nor any of their
contemporaries had any genius for metaphysical speculation; while the
increased attention paid to Aristotle did not extend to the fundamental
principles of his system, which, even within the Peripatetic school,
were so misconceived as to be interpreted in a thoroughly materialistic
sense.[261]
A distinct parallelism may be traced in the lines of evolution
along which we have accompanied our two opposing schools. While the
Academicians were coming over to the Stoic theory of cognition, the
Stoics themselves were moving in the same general direction, and
seeking for an external reality more in consonance with their notions
of certainty than the philosophy of their first teachers could supply.
For, as originally constituted, Stoicism included a large element
of scepticism, which must often have laid its advocates open to the
charge of inconsistency from those who accepted the same principle in
a more undiluted form. The Heracleitean flux adopted by Zeno as the
physical basis of his system, was much better suited to a sceptical
than to a dogmatic philosophy, as the use to which it was put by
Protagoras and Plato sufficiently proved; and this was probably the
reason why Boêthus and Panaetius partially discarded it in favour
of a more stable cosmology. The dialectical studies of the school
also tended to suggest more difficulties than they could remove. The
comprehensive systematisation of Chrysippus, like that of Plato and
Aristotle, had for its object the illustration of each topic from
every point of view, and especially from the negative as well as
from the positive side. The consequence was that his indefatigable
erudition had collected a great number of logical puzzles which he
had either neglected or found himself unable to solve. There would,
therefore, be a growing inclination to substitute a literary and
rhetorical for a logical training: and as we shall presently see, there
was an extraneous influence acting in the same direction. Finally,
the rigour of Stoic morality had been strained to such a pitch that
its professors were driven to admit the complete ideality of virtue.
Their sage had never shown himself on earth, at least within the
historical period; and the whole world of human interests being, from
the rational point of view, either a delusion or a failure, stood in
permanent contradiction to their optimistic theory of Nature. The
Sceptics were quite aware of this practical approximation to their
own views, and sometimes took advantage of it to turn the tables on
their opponents with telling effect. Thus, on the occasion of that
philosophical embassy with an account of which the present chapter
began, when a noble Roman playfully observed to Carneades, ‘You must
think that I am not a Praetor as I am not a sage, and that Rome is
neither a city nor a state,’ the great Sceptic replied, turning to his
colleague Diogenes, ‘That is what my Stoic friend here would say.’[262]
And Plutarch, in two sharp attacks on the Stoics, written from the
Academic point of view, and probably compiled from documents of a much
earlier period,[263] charges them with outraging common sense by their
wholesale practical negations, to at least as great an extent as the
Sceptics outraged it by their suspense of judgment. How the ethical
system of Stoicism was modified so as to meet these criticisms has been
related in a former chapter; and we have just seen how Posidonius,
by his partial return to the Platonic psychology, with its division
between reason and impulse, contributed to a still further change in
the same conciliatory sense.
VII.
We have now reached a point in history where the Greek intellect seems
to be struck with a partial paralysis, continuing for a century and a
half. During that period, its activity—what there is of it—is shown
only in criticism and erudition. There is learning, there is research,
there is acuteness, there is even good taste, but originality and
eloquence are extinct. Is it a coincidence, or is it something more,
that this interval of sterility should occur simultaneously with the
most splendid period of Latin literature, and that the new birth of
Greek culture should be followed by the decrepitude and death of the
Latin muse? It is certain that in modern Europe, possessing as it
does so many independent sources of vitality, the flowering-times
of different countries rarely coincide; England and Spain, from the
middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century,
being the only instances that we can recall of two countries
almost simultaneously reaching the highest point of their literary
development. Possibly, during the great age of Latin literature, all
the most aspiring Greeks found employment as tutors in Roman families;
while the reading public of the West were too much absorbed by the
masterpieces composed in their own language, or too elated with
the consciousness of a new superiority, to encourage the rivalry of
those from whom they had wrested not only poetical independence, but
also, what till then had never been disputed with the Greeks, supreme
dominion in the world of mind. It is, at any rate, significant that
while Greek was the favourite language of Roman lovers in the time of
Lucretius and again in the time of Juvenal, there are no allusions to
its having been employed by them during the intermediate period.[264]
Be this as it may, from the fall of the Republic to the time of Trajan,
philosophy, like poetry and eloquence—or at least all philosophy that
was positive and practical—became domiciled in Rome, and received the
stamp of the Roman character. How Stoicism was affected by the change
has been pointed out in a former chapter. What we have now to study is
chiefly the reaction of Rome on the Greek mind, and its bearing on the
subsequent development of thought.
This reaction had begun to make itself felt long before the birth of
a philosophical literature in the Latin language. It may be traced to
the time when the lecture-halls at Athens were first visited by Roman
students, and Greek professors first received on terms of intimate
companionship into the houses of Roman nobles. In each instance, but
more especially in the latter, not only would the pupil imbibe new
ideas from the master, but the master would suit his teaching to the
tastes and capacities of the pupil. The result would be an intellectual
condition somewhat resembling that which attended the popularisation of
philosophy in Athens during the latter half of the fifth century B.C.;
and all the more so as speculation had already spontaneously reverted
to the Sophistic standpoint. The parallel will be still more complete
if we take the word Sophist in its original and comprehensive sense. We
may then say that while Carneades, with his entrancing eloquence and
his readiness to argue both sides of a question, was the Protagoras
of the new movement; Panaetius, the dignified rationalist and honoured
friend of Laelius and the younger Scipio, its Prodicus; and Posidonius,
the astronomer and encyclopaedic scholar, its Hippias, Phaedrus the
Epicurean was its Anaxagoras or Democritus.
The Epicurean philosophy was, in fact, the first to gain a footing in
Rome; and it thereby acquired a position of comparative equality with
the other schools, to which it was not really entitled, but which it
has ever since succeeded in maintaining. The new doctrine fell like
a spark on a mass of combustible material. The Romans were full of
curiosity about Nature and her workings; full of contempt for the
degrading Etruscan superstitions which hampered them at every turn, and
the falsity of which was proving too much even for the official gravity
of their state-appointed interpreters; full of impatience at the Greek
mythology which was beginning to substitute itself for the severe
abstractions of their own more spiritual faith;[265] full of loathing
for the Asiatic orgies which were being introduced into the highest
society of their own city. Epicureanism offered them a complete and
easily intelligible theory of the world, which at the same time came
as a deliverance from supernatural terrors. The consequence was that
its different parts were thrown out of perspective, and their relative
importance almost reversed. Originally framed as an ethical system
with certain physical and theological implications, it was interpreted
by Lucretius, and apparently also by his Roman predecessors,[266] as
a scientific and anti-religious system, with certain references to
conduct neither very prominently brought forward nor very distinctly
conceived. And we know from the contents of the papyrus rolls
discovered at Herculaneum, that those who studied the system in its
original sources paid particular attention to the voluminous physical
treatises of Epicurus, as well as to the theological works of his
successors. Nor was this change of front limited to Epicureanism, if,
as we may suspect, the rationalistic direction taken by Panaetius was
due, at least in part, to a similar demand on the side of his Roman
admirers.
But what had happened once before when philosophy was taken up by men
of the world, repeated itself on this occasion. Attention was diverted
from speculative to ethical problems, or at least to issues lying on
the borderland between speculation and practice, such as those relating
to the criterion of truth and the nature of the highest good. On
neither of these topics had Epicureanism a consistent answer to give,
especially when subjected to the cross-examination of rival schools
eager to secure Roman favour for their own doctrines. Stated under any
form, the Epicurean morality could not long satisfy the conquerors of
the world. To some of them it would seem a shameful dereliction of
duty, to others an irksome restraint on self-indulgence, while all
would be alienated by its declared contempt for the general interests
of culture and ambition. Add to this that the slightest acquaintance
with astronomy, as it was then taught in Hellenic countries, would be
fatal to a belief in the Epicurean physics, and we shall understand
that the cause for which Lucretius contended was already lost before
his great poem saw the light.
The requirements which Epicureanism failed to meet, were, to a
great extent, satisfied by Stoicism. This philosophy had, from a
comparatively early period, won the favour of a select class, but had
been temporarily overshadowed by the popularity of its hedonistic and
anti-religious rival, when a knowledge of the Greek systems first
became diffused through Italy. The uncouth language of the early
Stoics and the apparently unpractical character of their theories
doubtless exercised a repellent effect on many who were not out of
sympathy with their general spirit. These difficulties were overcome
first by Panaetius, and then, to a still greater extent, by Posidonius,
the elder contemporary and friend of Pompeius and Cicero, who was
remarkable not only for his enormous learning but also for his
oratorical talent.[267] It seems probable that the lessons of this
distinguished man marked the beginning of that religious reaction
which eventually carried all before it. We have already seen how he
abandoned the rationalistic direction struck out by his predecessor,
Panaetius; and his return to the old Stoic orthodoxy may very well have
responded to a revival of religious feeling among the educated Roman
public, who by this time must have discovered that there were other
ways of escaping from superstition besides a complete rejection of the
supernatural.
The triumph of Stoicism was, however, retarded by the combined
influence of the Academic and Peripatetic schools. Both claimed the
theory of a morality founded on natural law as a doctrine of their own,
borrowed from them without acknowledgment by the Porch, and restated
under an offensively paradoxical form. To a Roman, the Academy would
offer the further attraction of complete immunity from the bondage of a
speculative system, freedom of enquiry limited only by the exigencies
of practical life, and a conveniently elastic interpretation of the
extent to which popular faiths might be accepted as true. If absolute
suspense of judgment jarred on his moral convictions, it was ready
with accommodations and concessions. We have seen how the scepticism
of Carneades was first modified by Philo, and then openly renounced by
Philo’s successor, Antiochus. Roman influence may have been at work
with both; for Philo spent some time in the capital of the empire,
whither he was driven by the events of the first Mithridatic War; while
Antiochus was the friend of Lucullus and the teacher of Cicero.[268]
VIII.
The greatest of Roman orators and writers was also the first Roman
that held opinions of his own in philosophy. How much original thought
occurs in his voluminous contributions to the literature of the
subject is more than we can determine, the Greek authorities on which
he drew being known almost exclusively through the references to them
contained in his disquisitions. But, judging from the evidence before
us, carefully sifted as it has been by German scholars, we should
feel disposed to assign him a foremost rank among the thinkers of an
age certainly not distinguished either for fertility or for depth
of thought. It seems clear that he gave a new basis to the eclectic
tendencies of his contemporaries, and that this basis was subsequently
accepted by other philosophers whose speculative capacity has never
been questioned. Cicero describes himself as an adherent of the New
Academy, and expressly claims to have reasserted its principles after
they had fallen into neglect among the Greeks, more particularly as
against his own old master Antiochus, whose Stoicising theory of
cognition he agrees with Philo in repudiating.[269] Like Philo also,
he bases certainty on the twofold ground of a moral necessity for
acting on our beliefs,[270] and the existence of moral intuitions, or
natural tendencies to believe in the mind itself;[271] or, perhaps,
more properly speaking, on the single ground of a moral sense.
This, as already stated, was unquestionably a reproduction of the
Platonic ideas under their subjective aspect. But in his general
views about the nature and limits of human knowledge, Cicero leaves
the Academy behind him, and goes back to Socrates. Perhaps no two
men of great genius could be more unlike than these two,—for us the
most living figures in ancient history if not in all history,—the
Roman being as much a type of time-servingness and vacillation as the
Athenian was of consistency and resolute independence. Yet, in its
mere external results, the philosophy of Socrates is perhaps more
faithfully reproduced by Cicero than by any subsequent enquirer; and
the differences between them are easily accounted for by the long
interval separating their ages from one another. Each set out with
the same eager desire to collect knowledge from every quarter; each
sought above all things for that kind of knowledge which seemed to be
of the greatest practical importance; and each was led to believe that
this did not include speculations relating to the physical world; one
great motive to the partial scepticism professed by both being the
irreconcilable disagreement of those who had attempted an explanation
of its mysteries. The deeper ground of man’s ignorance in this respect
was stated somewhat differently by each; or perhaps we should say that
the same reason is expressed in a mythical form by the one and in a
scientific form by the other. Socrates held that the nature of things
is a secret which the gods have reserved for themselves; while, in
Cicero’s opinion, the heavens are so remote, the interior of the earth
so dark, the mechanism of our own bodies so complicated and subtle, as
to be placed beyond the reach of fruitful observation.[272] Nor did
this deprivation seem any great hardship to either, since, as citizens
of great and free states, both were pre-eminently interested in the
study of social life; and it is characteristic of their common tendency
that both should have been not only great talkers and observers but
also great readers of ancient literature.[273]
With regard to ethics, there is, of course, a great difference between
the innovating, creative genius of the Greek and the receptive but
timid intelligence of the Roman. Yet the uncertainty which, in the one
case, was due to the absence of any fixed system, is equally present in
the other, owing to the embarrassment of having so many systems among
which to choose. Three ethical motives were constantly present to the
thoughts of Socrates: the utility of virtue, from a material point
of view, to the individual; its social necessity; and its connexion
with the dual constitution of man as a being composed of two elements
whereof the one is infinitely superior to the other; but he never was
able, or never attempted to co-ordinate them under a single principle.
His successors tried to discover such a principle in the idea of
natural law, but could neither establish nor apply it in a satisfactory
manner. Cicero reproduces the Socratic elements, sometimes in their
original dispersion and confusion, sometimes with the additional
complication and perplexity introduced by the idea through which it had
been hoped to systematise and reconcile them. To him, indeed, that idea
was even more important than to the Greek moralists; for he looked on
Nature as the common ground where philosophy and untrained experience
might meet for mutual confirmation and support.[274] We have seen how
he adopted the theory—as yet not very clearly formulated—of a moral
sense, or general faculty of intuition, from Philo. To study and obey
the dictates of this faculty, as distinguished from the depraving
influence of custom, was his method of arriving at truth and right.
But if, when properly consulted, it always gave the same response, a
similar unanimity might be expected in the doctrines of the various
philosophical schools; and the adhesion of Academicians, Peripatetics,
and Stoics to the precept, Follow Nature, seemed to demonstrate that
such an agreement actually existed. Hence Cicero over and over again
labours to prove that their disputes were merely verbal, and that
Stoicism in particular had borrowed its ethics wholesale from his own
favourite sect. Yet from time to time their discrepancies would force
themselves on his notice; and by none have the differences separating
Stoicism from its rivals been stated with more clearness, concision,
and point.[275] These relate to the absolute self-sufficingness
of virtue, its unity, and the incompatibility of emotion with its
exercise. But Cicero seems to have regarded the theory of preference
and rejection as a concession to common sense amounting to a surrender
of whatever was parodoxical and exclusive in the Stoic standpoint.[276]
And with respect to the question round which controversy raged most
fiercely, namely, whether virtue was the sole or merely the chief
condition of happiness, Cicero, as a man of the world, considered that
it was practically of no consequence which side prevailed.[277] It
would be unfair to blame him for not seeing, what the stricter school
felt rather than saw, that the happiness associated with goodness was
not of an individual but of a social character, and therefore could not
properly be compared with objects of purely individual desire, such as
health, wealth, friends, and worldly fame.
But even taken in its mildest form, there were difficulties about
Greek idealism which still remained unsolved. They may be summed up in
one word, the necessity of subordinating all personal and passionate
feelings to a higher law, whatever the dictates of that law may be. Of
such self-suppression few men were less capable than Cicero. Whether
virtue meant the extirpation or merely the moderation of desire and
emotion, it was equally impossible to one of whom Macaulay has said,
with not more severity than truth, that his whole soul was under the
dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear.[278] Such weak and
well-intentioned natures almost always take refuge from their sorrows
and self-reproaches in religion; and probably the religious sentiment
was more highly developed in Cicero than in any other thinker of the
age. Here also a parallel with Socrates naturally suggests itself.
The relation between the two amounts to more than a mere analogy;
for not only was the intellectual condition of old Athens repeating
itself in Rome, but the religious opinions of all cultivated Romans
who still retained their belief in a providential God, were, to an
even greater extent than their ethics, derived through Stoicism from
the great founder of rational theology. Cicero, like Socrates, views
God under the threefold aspect of a creator, a providence, and an
informing spirit:—identical in his nature with the soul of man, and
having man for his peculiar care. With regard to the evidence of
his existence, the teleological argument derived from the structure
of organised beings is common to both; the argument from universal
belief, doubtless a powerful motive with Socrates, is more distinctly
put forward by Cicero; and while both regard the heavenly luminaries
as manifest embodiments of the divine essence, Cicero is led by
the traditions of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, to present the
regularity of their movements as the most convincing revelation of a
superhuman intelligence, and to identify the outermost starry sphere
with the highest God of all.[279] Intimately associated with this
view is his belief in the immortality of the soul, which he supposes
will return after death to the eternal and unchangeable sphere whence
it originally proceeded.[280] But his familiarity with the sceptical
arguments of Carneades prevented Cicero from putting forward his
theological beliefs with the same confidence as Socrates; while, at the
same time, it enabled him to take up a much more decided attitude of
hostility towards the popular superstitions from which he was anxious,
so far as possible, to purify true religion.[281] To sum up: Cicero,
like Kant, seems to have been chiefly impressed by two phenomena,
the starry heavens without and the moral law within; each in its own
way giving him the idea of unchanging and everlasting continuance,
and both testifying to the existence of a power by which all things
are regulated for the best. But the materialism of his age naturally
prevented him from regarding the external order as a mere reflex
or lower manifestation of the inward law by which all spirits feel
themselves to be members of the same intelligible community.
We have illustrated the position of Cicero by reference to the master
who, more than any other Greek philosopher, seems to have satisfied his
ideal of perfect wisdom. We must now observe that nothing is better
calculated to show how inadequate was the view once universally taken
of Socrates, and still, perhaps, taken by all who are not scholars,
than that it should be applicable in so many points to Cicero as
well. For, while the influence of the one on human thought was the
greatest ever exercised by a single individual, the influence of the
other was limited to the acceleration of a movement already in full
activity, and moreover tending on the whole in a retrograde direction.
The immeasurable superiority of the Athenian lies in his dialectical
method. It was not by a mere elimination of differences that he hoped
to establish a general agreement, but by reasoning down from admitted
principles, which were themselves to be the result of scientific
induction brought to bear on a comprehensive and ever-widening area
of experience. Hence his scepticism, which was directed against
authority, tended as much to stimulate enquiry as that of the Roman
declaimer, which was directed against reason, tended to deaden or to
depress it. Hence, also, the political philosophy of Socrates was as
revolutionary as that of his imitator was conservative. Both were,
in a certain sense, aristocrats; but while the aristocracy of the
elegant rhetorician meant a clique of indolent and incapable nobles,
that of the sturdy craftsman meant a band of highly-trained specialists
maintained in power by the choice, the confidence, and the willing
obedience of an intelligent people. And while the religion of Cicero
was a blind reliance on providence supplemented by priestcraft in this
world, with the hope, if things came to the worst, of a safe retreat
from trouble in the next; the religion of Socrates was an active
co-operation with the universal mind, an attempt to make reason and the
will of God prevail on earth, with the hope, if there was any future
state, of carrying on in it the intellectual warfare which alone had
made life worth living here. No less a contrast could be expected
between the orator who turned to philosophy only for the occupation of
a leisure hour, or for relief from the pangs of disappointed ambition,
and the thinker who gave her his whole existence as the elect apostle
and martyr of her creed.
IX.
We have seen what was the guiding principle of Cicero’s philosophical
method. By interrogating all the systems of his time, he hoped to
elicit their points of agreement, and to utilise the result for the
practical purposes of life. As actually applied, the effect of this
method was not to reconcile the current theories with one another,
nor yet to lay the foundation of a more comprehensive philosophy, but
to throw back thought on an order of ideas which, from their great
popularity, had been incorporated with every system in turn, and,
for that very reason, seemed to embody the precise points on which
all were agreed. These were the idea of Nature, the idea of mind or
reason, and the idea of utility. We have frequently come across them
in the course of the present work. Here it will suffice to recall the
fact that they had been first raised to distinct consciousness when
the results of early Greek thought were brought into contact with the
experiences of Greek life, and more especially of Athenian life, in
the age of Pericles. As originally understood, they gave rise to many
complications and cross divisions, arising from what was considered
to be their mutual incompatibility or equivalence. Thus Nature was
openly rejected by the sceptical Sophists, ignored by Socrates, and,
during a long period of his career, treated with very little respect
by Plato; reason, in its more elaborate forms, was slighted by the
Cynics, and employed for its own destruction by the Megarians, in both
cases as an enemy to utility; while to Aristotle the pure exercise
of reason was the highest utility of any, and Nature only a lower
manifestation of the same idealising process. At a later period, we
find Nature accepted as a watchword by Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics
alike, although, of course, each attached a widely different meaning
to the term; the supremacy of reason, without whose aid, indeed,
their controversies could not have been carried on, is recognised
with similar unanimity; and each sect lays exclusive stress on the
connexion of its principles with human happiness, thus making utility
the foremost consideration in philosophy. Consequently, to whatever
system a Roman turned, he would recognise the three great regulative
conceptions of Greek thought, although frequently enveloped in a
network of fine-spun distinctions and inferences which to him must
have seemed neither natural nor reasonable nor useful. On the other
hand, apart from such subtleties, he could readily translate all three
into terms which seemed to show that, so far from being divided by any
essential incompatibility, they did but represent different aspects
of a single harmonious ideal. Nature meant simplicity, orderliness,
universality, and the spontaneous consentience of unsophisticated
minds. Reason meant human dignity, especially as manifested in the
conquest of fear and of desire. And whatever was natural and reasonable
seemed to satisfy the requirements of utility as well. It might seem
also that these very principles were embodied in the facts of old
Roman life and of Rome’s imperial destiny. The only question was which
school of Greek philosophy gave them their clearest and completest
interpretation. Lucretius would have said that it was the system of
Epicurus; but such a misconception was only rendered possible by the
poet’s seclusion from imperial interests, and, apparently, by his
unacquaintance with the more refined forms of Hellenic thought. Rome
could not find in Epicureanism the comprehensiveness, the cohesion, and
the power which marked her own character, and which she only required
to have expressed under a speculative form. Then came Cicero, with his
modernised rhetorical version of what he conceived to be the Socratic
philosophy. His teaching was far better suited than that of his great
contemporary to the tastes of his countrymen, and probably contributed
in no small degree to the subsequent discredit of Epicureanism; yet,
by a strange irony, it told, to the same extent, in favour of a
philosophy from which Cicero himself was probably even more averse
than from the morality of the Garden. In his hands, the Academic
criticism had simply the effect of dissolving away those elements
which distinguished Stoicism from Cynicism; while his eclecticism
brought into view certain principles more characteristic of the Cynics
than of any other sect. The Nature to whose guidance he constantly
appeals was, properly speaking, not a Socratic but a Sophistic or Cynic
idea; and when the Stoics appropriated it, they were only reclaiming
an ancestral possession. The exclusion of theoretical studies and
dialectical subtleties from philosophy was also Cynic; the Stoic
theology when purified, as Cicero desired that it should be purified,
from its superstitious ingredients, was no other than the naturalistic
monotheism of Antisthenes; and the Stoic morality without its paradoxes
was little more than an ennobled Cynicism. The curve described by
thought was determined by forces of almost mechanical simplicity. The
Greek Eclectics, seeking a middle term between the Academy and the
Porch, had fallen back on Plato; Cicero, pursuing the same direction,
receded to Socrates; but the continued attraction of Stoicism drew
him to a point where the two were linked together by their historical
intermediary, the Cynic school. And, by a singular coincidence, the
primal forms of Roman life, half godlike and half brutal, were found,
better than anything in Hellenic experience, to realise the ideal of
a sect which had taken Heracles for its patron saint. Had Diogenes
searched the Roman Forum, he would have met with a man at every step.
Meanwhile the morality of Stoicism had enlisted a force of incalculable
importance on its behalf. This was the life and death of the younger
Cato. However narrow his intellect, however impracticable his
principles, however hopeless his resistance to the course of history,
Cato had merits which in the eyes of his countrymen placed him even
higher than Caesar; and this impression was probably strengthened
by the extraordinary want of tact which the great conqueror showed
when he insulted the memory of his noblest foe. Pure in an age of
corruption, disinterested in an age of greed, devotedly patriotic in
an age of selfish ambition, faithful unto death in an age of shameless
tergiversation, and withal of singularly mild and gentle character,
Cato lived and died for the law of conscience, proving by his example
that if a revival of old Roman virtue were still possible, only through
the lessons of Greek philosophy could this miracle be wrought. And
it was equally clear that Rome could only accept philosophy under a
form harmonising with her ancient traditions, and embodying doctrines
like those which the martyred saint of her republican liberties had
professed.
The Roman reformers were satisfied to call themselves Stoics; and, in
reviewing the Stoic system, we saw to what an extent they welcomed
and developed some of its fundamental thoughts. But we have now to
add that the current which bore them on had its source deeper down
than the elaborate combinations of Zeno and Chrysippus, and entered
into the composition of every other system that acted on the Roman
intellect simultaneously with theirs. Thus whatever forces co-operated
with Stoicism had the effect not of complicating but of simplifying its
tendencies, by bringing into exclusive prominence the original impulse
whence they sprang, which was the idea of Natural Law. Hence the
form ultimately assumed by Roman thought was a philosophy of Nature,
sometimes appearing more under a Stoic, and sometimes more under a
Cynic guise. Everything in Roman poetry that is not copied from Greek
models or inspired by Italian passion—in other words, its didactic,
descriptive, and satiric elements—may be traced to this philosophy.
Doubtless the inculcation of useful arts, the delight in beautiful
scenery, the praises of rustic simplicity, the fierce protests against
vice under all its forms, and the celebration of an imperial destiny,
which form the staple of Rome’s national literature, spring from her
own deepest life; but the quickening power of Greek thought was needed
to develope them into articulate expression.
There is, indeed, nothing more nobly characteristic of the Hellenic
spirit, especially as organised by Socrates, than its capacity not
only for communicating, but for awakening ideas; thus enabling all
the nations among which it spread to realise the whole potential
treasure of theoretical and practical energy with which they were
endowed. And, from this point of view, we may say that what seems
most distinctively proper to Rome—the triumphant consciousness of
herself as a world-conquering and world-ruling power—came to her from
Greece, and under the form of a Greek idea, the idea of providential
destiny. It was to make his countrymen understand the fateful character
and inevitable march of her empire that Polybius composed his great
history; it was also by a Greek that the most successful of her early
national epics was sung; and when at last her language was wrought into
an adequate instrument of literary expression—thanks also to Greek
rhetorical teaching,—and the culture of her children had advanced so
far that they could venture to compete with the Greeks on their own
ground, it was still only under forms suggested by Stoicism that Virgil
could rewrite the story of his country’s dedication to her predestined
task.
That Virgil was acquainted with this philosophy and had accepted some
of its principal conclusions is evident from a famous passage in the
Sixth _Aeneid_,[282] setting forth the theory of a universal and
all-penetrating soul composed of fiery matter, whence the particular
souls of men and animals are derived, by a process likened to the
scattering and germination of seeds; from another equally famous
passage in the Fourth _Eclogue_,[283] describing the periodical
recurrence of events in the same order as before; and also, although
to a less extent, from his acceptance of the Stoic astronomy in the
_Georgics_;[284] a circumstance which, by the way, renders it most
unlikely that he looked up to Lucretius as an authority in physical
science.[285] But even apart from this collateral evidence, one can
see that the _Aeneid_ is a Stoic poem. It is filled with the ideas
of mutation and vicissitude overruled by a divinely appointed order;
of the prophetic intimations by which that order is revealed; of the
obedience to reason by which passion is subdued; and of the faith
in divine goodness by which suffering is made easy to be borne. And
there are also gleams of that universal humanity familiar to Stoicism,
which read to some like an anticipation of the Christian or the modern
spirit, but which really resemble them only as earlier manifestations
of the same great philosophical movement.
This analogy with subsequent developments is aided, so far as it goes,
by the admixture of a certain Platonic element with Virgil’s Stoicism,
shown chiefly by the references to an antenatal existence of the soul,
introduced for the purpose of bringing Rome’s future heroes on the
scene. This, however, is the last example of an attempt on the part of
a Roman writer to combine Plato’s teaching with Stoicism.[286] At a
time when the Romans were more conscious of their literary dependence
on Greece than was the case after the Augustan age had reached its
zenith, they were probably drawn by the beauty of its literary form to
study a system which could otherwise interest them but little. Thus,
not only is Cicero full of admiration for Plato—as, indeed, might
be expected with so highly cultivated a disciple of the Academy—but
Cato, according to the well-known story, spent his last hours reading
and re-reading the _Phaedo_; and his nephew Brutus also occupied an
intermediate position between the Old Academy and the Porch. The
Roman love of simplification and archaism induced subsequent thinkers
either to let Platonism drop altogether, or to study those elements
in which it differed from the pure naturalistic doctrine under their
Pythagorean form. It may even be doubted whether Virgil’s psychology is
not derived from Pythagoras rather than from Plato; Ovid, so far as he
philosophises at all, is unquestionably a follower of the former;[287]
and in the moral teaching of the Sextii, who flourished under Augustus,
Pythagorean principles are blended with Stoicism.[288] It is another
manifestation of the same effort to grasp every Greek doctrine by its
roots, that Horace should proclaim himself the disciple of Aristippus
rather than of Epicurus.[289] Even he, however, feels himself drawn
with advancing years towards the nobler faith which was now carrying
all before it.[290]
With Seneca and his contemporaries, Stoicism has shaken itself free
from alien ingredients, and has become the accepted creed of the whole
republican opposition, being especially pronounced in the writings
of the two young poets, Persius and Lucan. But in proportion as
naturalistic philosophy assumed the form of a protest against vice,
luxury, inhumanity, despotism, and degradation, or of an exhortation to
welcome death as a deliverance from those evils, in the same proportion
did it tend to fall back into simple Cynicism; and on this side also
it found a ready response, not only in the heroic fortitude, but also
in the brutal coarseness and scurrility of the Roman character. Hence
the _Satires_ of the last great Roman poet, Juvenal, are an even more
distinct expression of Cynic than the epic of Virgil had been of Stoic
sentiment. Along with whatever was good and wholesome in Cynicism there
is the shameless indecency of the Cynics, and their unquestioning
acceptance of mendicancy and prostitution as convenient helps to
leading a natural and easily contented life. And it may be noticed
that the free-thinking tendencies which distinguished the Cynics from
the Stoics are also displayed in Juvenal’s occasional denunciations of
superstition.
X.
Thus the final effect of its communion with the Roman mind was not
so much to develope Greek philosophy any further, or to reconcile
its warring sects with one another, as to aid in their decomposition
by throwing them back on the earlier forms whence they had sprung.
Accordingly we find that the philosophic activity of Hellas immediately
before and after the Christian era—so far as there was any at
all—consisted in a revival of the Pythagorean and Cynic schools,
accompanied by a corresponding resuscitation of primitive Scepticism.
This last takes the shape of a very distinct protest against the
fashionable naturalism of the age, just as the scepticism of Protagoras
and Gorgias—if our view be correct—had once been called forth by the
naturalism of Prodicus and Hippias. The principal representative, if
not the founder, of Neo-Scepticism was Aenesidêmus, who taught in
Alexandria, when we are not informed, but probably after the middle
of the first century A.D.[291] An avowed disciple of Pyrrho, his
object was to reassert the sceptical principle in its original purity,
especially as against the Academicians, whom he charged with having
first perverted and then completely abandoned it.[292] Aenesidêmus
would hear nothing of probabilities nor of moral certainties. He also
claimed to distinguish himself from the Academicians by refusing to
assert even so much as that nothing can be asserted; but it appears
that, in this point, he had been fully anticipated by Arcesilaus and
Carneades.[293] For the rest, his own Scepticism recalls the method of
Gorgias and Protagoras much more distinctly than the method of the New
Academy—a fresh illustration of the archaic and revivalist tendencies
displayed by philosophy at this period. In other words, it is not
against the reasoning processes that his criticisms are directed, but
against the theory of causation on the objective side, and against the
credibility of our immediate perceptions on the subjective side.[294]
But, in both directions, he has worked out the difficulties of the old
Sophists with a minuteness and a precision unknown to them; and some of
his points have been found worth repeating in a different connexion by
modern critics. Thus, in analysing the theory of causation, he draws
attention to the plurality of causes as an obstacle to connecting
any given consequent with one antecedent more than with another; to
the illegitimate assumption that the laws inferred from experience
hold good under unknown conditions; to the arbitrary assumption of
hypothetical causes not evinced by experience; and to the absurdity
of introducing a new difficulty for the purpose of explaining an
old one.[295] With regard to causation itself, Aenesidêmus seems
to have resolved it into action and reaction, thus eliminating the
condition of antecedence and consequence, without which it becomes
unintelligible.[296]
The Alexandrian Sceptic’s general arguments against the possibility
of knowledge resolve themselves into a criticism of what Sir W.
Hamilton called Natural Realism, somewhat complicated and confused
by a simultaneous attack on the theory of natural morality conceived
as something eternal and immutable. They are summed up in the famous
ten Tropes. Of these the first three are founded on the conflicting
sensations produced by the same object when acting on different
animals—as is inferred from the marked contrast presented by their
several varieties of origin and structure,—on different men, and on
the different senses of the same individual. The fourth, which has
evidently an ethical bearing, enlarges on the changes in men’s views
caused by mental and bodily changes, according to their health, age,
disposition, and so forth. The next five Tropes relate to circumstances
connected with the objects themselves: their distance and position as
regards the spectator, the disturbance produced in their proper action
by external influences such as air and light, together with the various
membranes and humours composing the organs of sense through which they
are apprehended; their quantitative variation, involving as it does
opposite effects on the senses, or as with medicines, on the health;
the law of relativity, according to which many things are only known
when taken in company with others, such as double and half, right and
left, whole and part; comparative frequency or rarity of occurrence, as
with comets, which, while really of much less importance than the sun,
excite much more interest from their being so seldom seen. Finally, the
tenth Trope is purely ethical, and infers the non-existence of a fixed
moral standard from the divergent and even opposite customs prevailing
among different nations.[297]
In his attacks on the prevalent theories of ethics, Aenesidêmus again
reminds us both of Protagoras and of modern agnosticism. According to
him, the general disagreement of mankind proves, among other things,
that there is no definable highest good—it is neither virtue, nor
pleasure, nor knowledge.[298] In the absence of any dogmatic teaching
on the subject at the time when he lived, Protagoras could not give an
opinion with regard to the _summum bonum_; but Plato’s famous dialogue
represents him as one who, from his point of view, would be unwilling
to admit the possibility of introducing fixed principles into conduct;
and in like manner, Mr. Herbert Spencer, while accepting the hedonistic
principle, gives it such an extremely general signification that he
is thrown back on the sceptical principle of leaving everyone free to
follow his own inclinations, provided that, in so doing, he does not
interfere with the liberty of others.
The parallel between Aenesidêmus and Protagoras would become still more
complete were it true that the Alexandrian philosopher also sought
to base his Scepticism on the Heracleitean theory of Nature, arguing
that contradictory assertions are necessitated by the presence of
contradictory properties in every object.
That Aenesidêmus held this view is stated as a fact by Sextus, whose
testimony is here corroborated by Tertullian, or rather by Tertullian’s
informant, Soranus. We find, however, that Zeller, who formerly
accepted the statement in question as true, has latterly seen reason to
reject it. Aenesidêmus cannot, he thinks, have been guilty of so great
an inconsistency as to base his Scepticism on the dogmatic physics of
Heracleitus. And he explains the agreement of the ancient authorities
by supposing that the original work of Aenesidêmus contained a critical
account of the Heracleitean theory, that this was misinterpreted into
an expression of his adhesion to it by Soranus, and that the blunder
was adopted at second-hand by both Sextus and Tertullian.[299]
It is, at any rate, certain that the successors of Aenesidêmus adhered
to the standpoint of Pyrrho. One of them, Agrippa, both simplified and
strengthened the arguments of the school by reducing the ten Tropes to
five. The earlier objections to human certainty were summed up under
two heads: the irreconcilable conflict of opinions on all subjects; and
the essential relativity of consciousness, in which the percipient and
the perceived are so intimately united that what things in themselves
are cannot possibly be discovered. The other three Tropes relate to the
baselessness of reasoning. They were evidently suggested by Aristotle’s
remarks on the subject. The process of proof cannot be carried
backwards _ad infinitum_, nor can it legitimately revolve in a circle.
Thus much had already been admitted, or rather insisted on by the great
founder of logic. But the Sceptics could not agree to Aristotle’s
contention, that demonstration may be based on first principles of
self-evident certainty. They here fell back on their main argument;
that the absence of general agreement on every point is fatal to the
existence of such pretended axioms. A still further simplification was
effected by the reduction of the five Tropes to two—that all reasoning
rests on intuition, and that men’s intuitions are irreconcilably at
variance with one another.[300] As against true science, the sceptical
Tropes are powerless, for the validity of its principles has nothing
to do with their general acceptance. They are laid before the learner
for his instruction, and if he chooses to regard them as either false
or doubtful, the misfortune will be his and not theirs. But as against
all attempts to constrain belief by an appeal to authority, the Tropes
still remain invincible. Whether the testimony invoked be that of
ancient traditions or of a supposed inward witness, there is always the
same fatal objection that other traditions and other inward witnesses
tell quite a different story. The task of deciding between them must,
after all, be handed over to an impersonal reason. In other words, each
individual must judge for himself and at his own risk, just as he does
in questions of physical science.
We have already observed that Scepticism among the ancients was often
cultivated in connexion with some positive doctrine which it indirectly
served to recommend. In the case of its last supporters, this was the
study of medicine on an empirical as opposed to a deductive method.
The Sceptical contention is that we cannot go beyond appearances;
the empirical contention is, that all knowledge comes to us from
experience, and that this only shows us how phenomena are related to
one another, not how they are related to their underlying causes,
whether efficient or final. These allied points of view have been
brought into still more intimate association by modern thought, which,
as will be shown in the concluding chapter, has sprung from a modified
form of the ancient Scepticism, powerfully aided by a simultaneous
development of physical science. At the same time, the new school
have succeeded in shaking off the narrowness and timidity of their
predecessors, who were still so far under the influence of the old
dogmatists as to believe that there was an inherent opposition between
observation and reasoning in the methods of discovery, between facts
and explanations in the truths of science, and between antecedence
and causation in the realities of Nature. In this respect, astronomy
has done more for the right adjustment of our conceptions than any
other branch of knowledge; and it is remarkable that Sextus Empiricus,
the last eminent representative of ancient Scepticism, and the only
one (unless Cicero is to be called a Sceptic) whose writings are
still extant, should expressly except astronomy from the destructive
criticism to which he subjects the whole range of studies included in
what we should call the university curriculum of his time.[301] We need
not enter into an analysis of the ponderous compilation referred to;
for nearly every point of interest which it comprises has already been
touched on in the course of our investigation; and Sextus differs only
from his predecessors by adding the arguments of the New Academy to
those of Protagoras and Pyrrho, thus completing the Sceptical cycle.
It will be enough to notice the singular circumstance that so copious
and careful an enumeration of the grounds which it was possible to urge
against dogmatism—including, as we have seen, many still employed for
the same or other purposes,—should have omitted the two most powerful
solvents of any. These were left for the exquisite critical acumen of
Hume to discover. They relate to the conception of causation, and to
the conception of our own personality as an indivisible, continuously
existing substance, being attempts to show that both involve
assumptions of an illegitimate character. Sextus comes up to the very
verge of Hume’s objection to the former when he observes that causation
implies relation, which can only exist in thought;[302] but he does not
ask how we come to think such a relation, still less does he connect
it with the perception of phenomenal antecedence; and his attacks on
the various mental faculties assumed by psychologists pass over the
fundamental postulate of personal identity, thus leaving Descartes what
seemed a safe foundation whereon to rebuild the edifice of metaphysical
philosophy.
XI.
The effect aimed at by ancient Scepticism under its last form was to
throw back reflection on its original starting-point. Life was once
more handed over to the guidance of sense, appetite, custom, and
art.[303] We may call this residuum the philosophy of the dinner-bell.
That institution implies the feeling of hunger, the directing sensation
of sound, the habit of eating together at a fixed time, and the art
of determining time by observing the celestial revolutions. Even so
limited a view contains indefinite possibilities of expansion. It
involves the three fundamental relations that other philosophies have
for their object to work out with greater distinctness and in fuller
detail: the relation between feeling and action, binding together past,
present, and future in the consciousness of personal identity; the
relation of ourselves to a collective society of similarly constituted
beings, our intercourse with whom is subject from the very first to
laws of morality and of logic; and, finally, the relation in which we
stand, both singly and combined, to that universal order by which all
alike are enveloped and borne along, with its suggestions of a still
larger logic and an auguster morality springing from the essential
dependence of our individual and social selves on an even deeper
identity than that which they immediately reveal. We have already had
occasion to observe how the noble teaching of Plato and the Stoics
resumes itself in a confession of this threefold synthesis; and we
now see how, putting them at their very lowest, nothing less than
this will content the claims of thought. Thus, in less time than it
took Berkeley to pass from tar-water to the Trinity, we have led our
Sceptics from their philosophy of the dinner-bell to a philosophy
which the Catholic symbols, with their mythologising tendencies, can
but imperfectly represent. And to carry them with us thus far, nothing
more than one of their own favourite methods is needed. Wherever they
attempt to arrest the progress of enquiry and generalisation, we can
show them that no real line of demarcation exists. Let them once admit
the idea of a relation connecting the elements of consciousness, and
it will carry them over every limit except that which is reached when
the universe becomes conscious of itself. Let them deny the idea of a
relation, and we may safely leave them to the endless task of analysing
consciousness into elements which are feelings and nothing more. The
magician in the story got rid of a too importunate familiar by setting
him to spin ropes of sand. The spirit of Scepticism is exorcised by
setting it to divide the strands of reason into breadthless lines and
unextended points.
What influence Scepticism exercised on the subsequent course of Greek
thought is difficult to determine. If we are to believe Diogenes
Laertius, who flourished in the second quarter of the third century
A.D., every school except Epicureanism had at that time sunk into utter
neglect;[304] and it is natural to connect this catastrophe with the
activity of the Sceptics, and especially of Sextus Empiricus, whose
critical compilation had appeared not long before. Such a conclusion
would be supported by the circumstance that Lucian, writing more than
fifty years earlier, directs his attacks on contemporary philosophy
chiefly from the Sceptical standpoint; his _Hermotimus_ in particular
being a popularised version of the chief difficulties raised from that
quarter. Still it remains to be shown why the criticism of the Greek
Humanists, of Pyrrho, and of the New Academy should have produced so
much more powerful an effect under their revived form than when they
were first promulgated; and it may be asked whether the decline of
philosophy should not rather be attributed to the general barbarisation
of the Roman empire at that period.
We have also to consider in what relation the new Scepticism stood
to the new Platonism by which, in common with every other school, it
was eventually either displaced or absorbed. The answer usually given
to this question is that the one was a reaction from the other. It
is said that philosophy, in despair of being able to discover truth
by reason, took refuge in the doctrine that it could be attained by
supernatural revelation; and that this doctrine is the characteristic
mark distinguishing the system of Plotinus from its predecessors.
That a belief in the possibility of receiving divine communications
was widely diffused during the last centuries of polytheism is, no
doubt, established, but that it ever formed more than an adjunct to
Neo-Platonism seems questionable; and there is no evidence that we are
aware of to show that it was occasioned by a reaction from Scepticism.
As a defence against the arguments of Pyrrho and his successors, it
would, in truth, have been quite unavailing; for whatever objections
applied to men’s natural perceptions, would have applied with still
greater force to the alleged supernatural revelation. Moreover, the
mystical element of Neo-Platonism appears only in its consummation—in
the ultimate union of the individual soul with the absolute One; the
rest of the system being reasoned out in accordance with the ordinary
laws of logic, and in apparent disregard of the Sceptical attacks on
their validity.
The truth is that critics seem to have been misled by a superficial
analogy between the spiritualistic revival accomplished by Plotinus,
and the Romantic revival which marked the beginning of the present
century. The two movements have, no doubt, several traits in common;
but there is this great difference between them, that the latter
was, what the former was not, a reaction against individualism,
agnosticism, and religious unbelief. The right analogy will be found
not by looking forward but by looking back. It will then be seen
that the Neo-Platonists were what their traditional name implies,
disciples of Plato, and not only of Plato but of Aristotle as well.
They stood in the same relation to the systems which they opposed as
that in which the two great founders of spiritualism had stood to
the naturalistic and humanist schools of their time—of course with
whatever modifications of a common standpoint were necessitated by the
substitution of a declining for a progressive civilisation. Like Plato
also, they were profoundly influenced by the Pythagorean philosophy,
with its curious combination of mystical asceticism and mathematics.
And, to complete the analogy, they too found themselves in presence of
a powerful religious reaction, against the excesses of which, like him,
they at first protested, although with less than his authority, and
only, like him, to be at last carried away by its resistless torrent.
It is to the study of this religious movement that we must now address
ourselves, before entering on an examination of the latest form assumed
by Greek philosophy among the Greeks themselves.
_Note._—It does not enter into the plan of this work to study the
educational and social aspects of Greek philosophy under the Roman
Empire. Those who wish for information on the subject should consult
Capes’s _Stoicism_, Martha’s _Moralistes sous l’Empire Romain_,
Renan’s _Marc-Aurèle_, chap, iii., Aubertin’s _Sénèque et Saint
Paul_, Havet’s _Christianisme et ses Origines_, Vol. II., Gaston
Boissier’s _Religion Romaine_, Duruy’s _Histoire Romaine_, chap, lxi.,
Friedländer’s _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Rom’s_, Vol.
III., chap. v. (5th ed.), and Bruno Bauer’s _Christus und die Cäsaren_.