  CHAPTER I.ATHENS, AND THE MEN OF ATHENS.
There is no event recorded in the annals of the early church so replete with interest to the Christian student, or which takes so deep a hold on the imagination, and the sympathies of him who is at all familiar with the history of Ancient Greece, as the one recited above. Here we see the Apostle Paul standing on the Areopagus at Athens, surrounded by the temples, statues, and altars, which Grecian art had consecrated to Pagan worship, and proclaiming to the inquisitive Athenians, "the strangers" who had come to Athens for business or for pleasure, and the philosophers and students of the Lyceum, the Academy, the Stoa, and the Garden, "the unknown God." Whether we dwell in our imagination on the artistic grandeur and imposing magnificence of the city in which Paul found himself a solitary stranger, or recall the illustrious names which by their achievements in arts and philosophy have shed around the city of Athens an immortal glory,--or whether, fixing our attention on the lonely wanderer amid the porticoes, and groves, and temples of this classic city, we attempt That the objects which met the eye of Paul on every hand, and the opinions he heard everywhere expressed in Athens, must have exerted a powerful influence upon the current of his thoughts, as well as upon the state of his emotions, is a legitimate and natural presumption. Not only was "his spirit stirred within him"--his heart deeply moved and agitated when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry--but his thoughtful, philosophic mind would be engaged in pondering those deeply interesting questions which underlie the whole system of Grecian polytheism. The circumstances of the hour would, no doubt, in a large degree determine the line of argument, the form of his discourse, and the peculiarities of his phraseology. The more vividly, therefore, we can represent the scenes and realize the surrounding incidents; the more thoroughly we can enter into sympathy with the modes of thought and feeling peculiar to the Athenians; the more perfectly we can comprehend the spirit and tendency of the age; the more immediate our acquaintance with the religious opinions and philosophical ideas then prevalent in Athens, the more perfect will be our comprehension of the apostle's argument, the deeper our interest in his theme. Some preliminary notices of Athens and "the Men of Athens" will therefore be appropriate as introductory to a series of discourses on Paul's sermon on Mars' Hill. The peculiar connection that subsists between Geography and History, between a people and the country they inhabit, will justify the extension of our survey beyond the mere topography The soil on which a people dwell, the air they breathe, the mountains and seas by which they are surrounded, the skies that overshadow them,--all these exert a powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region--its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, and, to some extent, the moral history of its population. "History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it."
It is, however, of the utmost consequence the reader should understand that there are two widely different methods of treating this deeply interesting subject--methods which proceed on fundamentally opposite views of man and of nature. One method is that pursued by Buckle in his "History of Civilization in England." The tendency of his work is the assertion of the supremacy of material conditions over the development of human history, and indeed of every individual mind. Here man is purely passive in the hands of nature. Exterior conditions are the chief, if not the only causes of man's intellectual
It will be readily perceived that, in attempting to estimate the influence which exterior conditions exert in the determination of national character, we encounter peculiar difficulties. We can not in these studies expect the precision and accuracy which is attained in the mathematical, or the purely physical sciences. We possess no control over the "materiel" of our inquiry; we have no power of placing it in new conditions, and submitting it to the test of new experiments, as in the physical sciences. National character is a complex result--a product of the action and reaction of primary and secondary causes. It is a conjoint effect of the action of the primitive elements and laws originally implanted in humanity by the Creator, of the free causality and self-determining power of man, and of all the conditions, permanent and accidental, within which the national life has been developed. And in cases where physical and moral causes are blended, and reciprocally conditioned and modified in their operation;--where primary results undergo endless modifications from the influence of surrounding circumstances, and the reaction of social and political institutions;--and where each individual of the great aggregate wields a causal power that obeys no specific law, and by his own inherent power sets in motion new trains of causes which can not be reduced to statistics, we grant that we are in possession of no instrument of exact analysis by which the complex phenomena of national character may be reduced to primitive elements. All that we can hope is, to ascertain, by psychological analysis, what are the fundamental ideas and laws of humanity; to grasp the exterior conditions which are, There are unquestionably fundamental powers and laws in human nature which have their development in the course of history. There are certain primitive ideas, imbedded in the constitution of each individual mind, which are revealed in the universal consciousness of our race, under the conditions of experience--the exterior conditions of physical nature and human society. Such are the ideas of cause and substance; of unity and infinity, which govern all the processes of discursive thought, and lead us to the recognition of Being in se;--such the ideas of right, of duty, of accountability, and of retribution, which regulate all the conceptions we form of our relations to all other moral beings, and constitute morality;--such the ideas of order, of proportion, and of harmony, which preside in the realms of art, and constitute the beau-ideal of esthetics;--such the ideas of God, the soul, and immortality, which rule in the domains of religion, and determine man a religious being. These constitute the identity of human nature under all circumstances; these characterize humanity in all conditions. Like permanent germs in vegetable life, always producing the same species of plants; or like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity, under all the varying conditions of life and society. The acorn must produce an oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always produce its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal nature, but also in his mental constitution. But the germination of every seed depends on conditions ab extra, and all germs are modified, in their development, by geographical and climatal surroundings. The development of the acorn into a mature and perfect oak greatly depends on the exterior conditions of soil, and moisture, light, and heat. By these it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be stunted in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of conditions, or it may perish under another. The Brassica oleracea, in its native habitat on the shore of the sea, is a bitter plant with wavy sea-green leaves; in the cultivated garden it is the cauliflower. The single rose, under altered conditions, becomes a double rose; and creepers rear their stalks and stand erect. Plants, which in a cold climate are annuals, become perennial when transported to the torrid zone.
The power which man exerts over material conditions, by virtue of his intelligence and freedom, is also an important element which, in these studies, we should not depreciate or ignore. We must accept, with all its consequences, the dictum of universal consciousness that man is free. He is not absolutely subject to, and moulded by nature. He has the power to control the circumstances by which he is surrounded--to
Nations, like persons, have an Individuality. They present certain characteristic marks which constitute their proper identity, and separate them from the surrounding nations of the earth; such, for example, as complexion, physiognomy, language, pursuits, customs, institutions, sentiments, ideas. The individuality of a nation is determined mainly from without, and not, like human individuality, from within. The laws of a man's personal character have their home in the soul; and the peculiarities and habits, and that conduct of life, which constitute his responsible character are, in a great degree, the consequence of his own free choice. But dwelling, as he does, in society, where he is continually influenced by the example and opinions of his neighbors; subject, as he is, to the ceaseless influence of climate, scenery, and other terrestrial conditions, the characteristics which result from these relations, and which are common to all who dwell in the same regions, and under the same institutions, constitute a national individuality. Individual Now, that man's complexion, his pursuits, his habits, his ideas are greatly modified by his geographical surroundings, is the most obvious of truths. No one doubts that the complexion of man is greatly affected by climatic conditions. The appearance, habits, pursuits of the man who lives within the tropics must, necessarily, differ from those of the man who dwells within the temperate zone. No one expects that the dweller on the mountain will have the same characteristics as the man who resides on the plains; or that he whose home is in the interior of a continent will have the same habits as the man whose home is on the islands of the sea. The denizen of the primeval forest will most naturally become a huntsman. The dweller on the extended plain, or fertile mountain slope, will lead a pastoral, or an agricultural life. Those who live on the margin of great rivers, or the borders of the sea, will "do business on the great waters." Commerce and navigation will be their chief pursuits. The people whose home is on the margin of the lake, or bay, or inland sea, or the thickly studded archipelago, are mostly fishermen. And then it is a no less obvious truth that men's pursuits exert a moulding influence on their habits, their forms of speech, their sentiments, and their ideas. Let any one take pains to observe the peculiarities which characterize the huntsman, the shepherd, the agriculturist, or the fisherman, and he will be convinced that their occupations stamp the whole of their thoughts and feelings; color all their conceptions of things outside their own peculiar field; direct their simple philosophy of life; and give a tone, even, to their religious emotions. The general aspects of nature, the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and
The influence of external nature on the imagination--the creative faculty in man--is obvious and remarkable. It reveals itself in all the productions of man--his architecture, his sculpture, his painting, and his poetry. Oriental architecture is characterized by the boldness and massiveness of all its parts, and the monotonous uniformity of all its features. This is but the expression, in a material form, of that shadowy feeling of infinity, and unity, and immobility which an unbroken continent of vast deserts and continuous lofty mountain chains would naturally inspire. The simple grandeur and perfect harmony and graceful blending of light and shade so peculiar to Grecian architecture are the product of a country whose area is diversified by the harmonious blending of land and water, mountain and plain, all bathed in purest light, and canopied with skies of serenest blue. And they are also the product of The history of painting and of sculpture will also show that the varied "styles of art" are largely the result of the aspects which external nature presented to the eye of man. Oriental sculpture, like its architecture, was characterized by massiveness of form and tranquillity of expression; and its painting was, at best, but colored sculpture. The most striking objects are colossal figures, in which the human form is strangely combined with the brute, as in the winged bulls of Nineveh and the sphinxes of Egypt. Man is regarded simply as a part of nature, he does not rise above the plane of animal life. The soul has its immortality only in an eternal metempsychosis--a cycle of life which sweeps through all the brute creation. But in Grecian sculpture we have less of nature, more of man; less of massiveness, more of grace and elegance; less repose, and more of action. Now the connection between these styles of art, and the countries in which they were developed, is at once suggested to the thoughtful mind. And then, finally, the literature of a people equally reveals the impress of surrounding cosmical conditions. "The poems of Ossian are but the echo of the wild, rough, cloudy highlands of his Scottish home." The forest songs of the wild Indian, the negro's plaintive melodies in the rice-fields of Carolina, the
In seeking, therefore, to determine correctly what are the characteristics of a nation, we must endeavor to trace how far the physical constitution of that people, their temperament, their habits, their sentiments, and their ideas have been formed, or modified, under the surrounding geographical conditions, which, as we have seen, greatly determine a nation's individuality. Guided by these lights, let us approach the study of "the men of Athens." Attica, of which Athens was the capital, and whose entire populations were called "Athenians," was the most important of all the Hellenic states. It is a triangular peninsula, the base of which is defined by the high mountain ranges of CithÆron Hills of inferior elevation connect the mountain ranges of CithÆron and Parnes with the mountainous surface of the south-east of the peninsula. These hills, commencing with the promontory of Sunium itself, which forms the vertex of the triangle, rise gradually on the south-east to the round summit of Hymettus, and onward to the higher peak of Pentelicus, near Marathon, on the east. The rest of Attica is all a plain, one reach of which comes down to the sea on the south, at the very base of Hymettus. Here, about five miles from the shore, an abrupt rock rises from the plain, about 200 feet high, bordered on the south by lower eminences. That rock is the Acropolis. Those lower eminences are the Areopagus, the Pmyx, and the Museum. In the valley formed by these four hills we have the Agora, and the varied undulations of these hills determine the features of the city of Athens.
Nearly all writers on the topography of Athens derive their materials from Pausanias, who visited the city in the early part of the second century, and whose "Itinerary of Greece" is still extant.
There were two places in Athens known by the name of Ceramicus, one without the walls, forming part of the suburbs; and the other within the walls, embracing a very important section of the city. The outer Ceramicus was covered with the sepulchres of the Athenians who had been slain in battle, and buried at the public expense; it communicated with the inner Ceramicus by the gate Dipylum. The Ceramicus within the city probably included the Agora, the Stoa Basileios, and the Stoa Poecile, besides various other temples and public buildings. Having fairly passed the city gates, a long street is before us with a colonnade or cloister on either hand; and at the end of this street, by turning to the left, we might go through the whole Ceramicus to the open country, and the groves of the Academy. But we turn to the right, and enter the Agora,--the market-place, as it is called in the English translation of the sacred narrative. We are not, however, to conceive of the market-place at Athens as bearing any resemblance to the bare, undecorated spaces appropriated to business in our modern towns; but rather as a magnificent public square, closed in by grand historic buildings, of the highest style of architecture; planted The most important buildings of the Agora are the Porticoes or cloisters, the most remarkable of which are the Stoa Basileios, or Portico of the king; the Stoa Eleutherius, or Portico of the Jupiter of Freedom; and the Stoa Poecile, or Painted Porch. These Porticoes were covered walks, the roof being supported by columns, at least on one side, and by solid masonry on the other. Such shaded walks are almost indispensable in the south of Europe, where the people live much in the open air, and they afford a grateful protection from the heat of the sun, as well as a shelter from the rain. Seats were also provided where the loungers might rest, and the philosophers and rhetoricians sit down for intellectual conversation. The "Stoic" school of philosophy derived its name from the circumstance that its founder, Zeno, used to meet and converse with his disciples under one of these porticoes,--the Stoa Poecile. These porticoes were not only built in the most magnificent style of architecture, but adorned with paintings and statuary by the best masters. On the roof of the Stoa Basileios were statues of Theseus and the Day. In front of the Stoa Eleutherius was placed the divinity to whom it was dedicated; and within were allegorical paintings, celebrating the rise of "the fierce democracy." The Stoa Poecile derived its name It is beyond our purpose to describe all the public edifices,--the temples, gymnasia, and theatres which crowd the Ceramic area, and that portion of the city lying to the west and south of the Acropolis. Our object is, if possible, to convey to the reader some conception of the ancient splendor and magnificence of Athens; to revive the scenes amidst which the Athenians daily moved, and which may be presumed to have exerted a powerful influence upon the manners, the taste, the habits of thought, and the entire character of the Athenian people. To secure this object we need only direct attention to the Acropolis, which was crowded with the monuments of Athenian glory, and exhibited an amazing concentration of all that was most perfect in art, unsurpassed in excellence, and unrivalled in richness and splendor. It was "the peerless gem of Greece, the glory and pride of art, the wonder and envy of the world." The western side of the Acropolis, which furnished the only access to the summit of the hill, was about 168 feet in breadth; an opening so narrow that, to the artists of Pericles, it appeared practicable to fill up the space with a single building, which, in serving the purpose of a gateway to the Acropolis, should also contribute to adorn, as well as fortify the citadel. This work, the greatest achievement of civil architecture in Athens, which rivalled the Parthenon in felicity of execution, and surpassed it in boldness and originality of design, consisted of a grand central colonnade closed by projecting wings. This incomparable edifice, built of Pentelic marble, received the name of PropylÆa from its forming the vestibule to the five-fold gates by which the citadel was entered. In front of the right wing there stood a A gigantic flight of steps conducted from the five-fold gates to the platform of the Acropolis, which was, in fact, one vast composition of architecture and sculpture dedicated to the national glory. Here stood the Parthenon, or temple of the Virgin Goddess, the glorious temple which rose in the proudest period of Athenian history to the honor of Minerva, and which ages have only partially effaced. This magnificent temple, "by its united excellences of materials, design, and decoration, internal as well as external, has been universally considered the most perfect which human genius ever planned and executed. Its dimensions were sufficiently large to produce an impression of grandeur and sublimity, which was not disturbed by any obtrusive subdivision of parts; and, whether viewed at a small or greater distance, there was nothing to divert the mind of the spectator from contemplating the unity as well as majesty of mass and outline; circumstances which form the first and most remarkable characteristic of every Greek temple erected during the purer ages of Grecian taste and genius."
It would be impossible to convey any just and adequate conception of the artistic decorations of this wonderful edifice. The two pediments of the temple were decorated with magnificent compositions of statuary, each consisting of about twenty entire figures of colossal size; the one on the western pediment representing the birth of Minerva, and the other, on the eastern pediment, the contest between that goddess and Neptune for the possession of Attica. Under the outer cornice were ninety-two groups, raised in high relief from tablets about four feet square, representing the victories achieved by her companions. Round the inner frieze was presented the procession of the Parthenon on the grand quinquennial festival of the PanathenÆa. The procession is represented as advancing in two parallel columns from west to east; one proceeding along the northern, the other along the southern side of the temple; part facing The statue of the virgin goddess, the work of Phidias, stood in the eastern chamber of the cella, and was composed of ivory and gold. It had but one rival in the world, the Jupiter Olympus of the same famous artist. On the summit or apex of the helmet was placed a sphinx, with griffins on either side. The figure of the goddess was represented in an erect martial attitude, and clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. On the breast was a head of Medusa, wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high. The goddess held a spear in her hand, and an Ægis lay at her feet, while on her right, and near the spear, was a figure of a serpent, believed to represent that of Erichthonius. According to Pliny, the entire height of the statue was twenty-six cubits (about forty feet), and the artist, Phidias, had ingeniously contrived that the gold with which the statue was encrusted might be removed at pleasure. The battle of the Centaurs and LapithÆ was carved upon the sandals; the battle of the Amazons was represented on the Ægis which lay at her feet, and on the pedestal was sculptured the birth of Pandora. The temple of Erechtheus, the most ancient structure in Athens, stood on the northern side of the Acropolis. The statue of Zeus Polieus stood between the PropylÆa and the Parthenon. The brazen colossus of Minerva, cast from the spoils of Marathon, appears to have occupied the space between the Erechtheium and the PropylÆa, near the Pelasgic or northern wall. This statue of the tutelary divinity of Athens and Attica rose in gigantic proportions above all the buildings of the Acropolis, the flashing of whose helmet plumes met the sailor's eye as he approached from the Sunian promontory. And the remaining space of the wide area was literally crowded with statuary, amongst which were Theseus contending with the Minotaur; Hercules strangling the serpents; the Earth imploring showers from Jupiter; and Minerva causing the olive to sprout, while Neptune raises the waves. After these works The Areopagus, or hill of Ares (Mars), so called, it is said, in consequence of that god having been the first person tried there for the crime of murder, was, beyond all doubt, the rocky height which is separated from the western end of the Acropolis by a hollow, forming a communication between the northern and southern divisions of the city. The court of the Areopagus was simply an open space on the highest summit of the hill, the judges sitting in the open air, on rude seats of stone, hewn out of the solid rock. Near to the spot on which the court was held was the sanctuary of the Furies, the avenging deities of Grecian mythology, whose presence gave additional solemnity to the scene. The place and the court were regarded by the people with superstitious reverence. This completes, our survey of the principal buildings, monuments, and localities within the city of Athens. We do not imagine we have succeeded in conveying any adequate idea of the ancient splendor and glory of this city, which was not only the capital of Attica, but also "The eye of Greece, mother of art and eloquence." We trust, however, that we have contributed somewhat towards awakening in the reader's mind a deeper interest in these classic scenes, and enabling him to appreciate, more vividly, the allusions we may hereafter make to them. The mere dry recital of geographical details, and topographical notices is, however, of little interest in itself, and by itself. A tract of country derives its chief interest from its historic associations--its immediate relations to man. The events which have transpired therein, the noble or ignoble deeds, the grand achievements, or the great disasters of which it has been the theatre, these constitute the living heart of its geography. Palestine Here on a narrow spot of less superficies than the little State of Rhode Island there flourished a republic which, in the grandeur of her military and naval achievements, at Marathon, ThermopylÆ, PlatÆa, and Salamis, in the sublime creations of her painters, sculptors, and architects, and the unrivalled productions of her poets, orators, and philosophers, has left a lingering glory on the historic page, which twenty centuries have not been able to eclipse or dim. The names of Solon and Pericles; of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; of Isocrates and Demosthenes; of Myron, Phidias, and Praxiteles; of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Thucydides; of Sophocles and Euripides, have shed an undying lustre on Athens and Attica. How much of this universal renown, this imperishable glory attained by the Athenian people, is to be ascribed to their geographical position and surroundings, and to the elastic, bracing air, the enchanting scenery, the glorious skies, which poured their daily inspiration on the Athenian mind, is a problem we may scarcely hope to solve. Of this, at least, we may be sure, that all these geographical and cosmical conditions were ordained by God, and ordained, also, for some noble and worthy end. That God, "the Father of all the families of the earth," cared for the Athenian people as much as for Jewish and Christian nations, we can not doubt. That they were the subjects of a Providence, and that, in God's great plan of human history, they had an important part to fulfill, we must believe. That God "determined the time of The geographical position of Greece was favorable to the freest commercial and maritime intercourse with the great historic nations--those nations most advanced in science, literature, and art. Bounded on the west by the Adriatic and Ionian seas, by the Mediterranean on the south, and on the east by the Ægean Sea, her populations enjoyed a free intercommunication with the Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, Phoenicians, Romans, and Carthaginians. This peculiarity in the geographical position of the Grecian peninsula could not fail to awaken in its people a taste for navigation, and lead them to active commercial intercourse with foreign nations.
Then further, the peculiar configuration of Greece, the wonderful complexity of its coast-line, its peninsular forms, the number of its islands, and the singular distribution of its mountains, all seem to mark it as the theatre of activity, of movement, of individuality, and of freedom. An extensive continent,
The peculiar configuration of the territory of Greece, its forms of relief, "so like, in many respects, to Switzerland," could not fail to exert a powerful influence on the character and destiny of its people. Its inclosing mountains materially increased their defensive power, and, at the same time, inspired them with the love of liberty. Those mountains, as we have
The soil of Attica was not the most favorable to agricultural pursuits. In many places it was stony and uneven, and a considerable proportion was bare rock, on which nothing could be grown. Not half the surface was capable of cultivation. In this respect it may be fitly compared to some of the New England States. The light, dry soil produced excellent barley, but not enough of wheat for their own consumption. Demosthenes informs us that Athens brought every year, from Byzantium, four hundred thousand medimni of wheat. The alluvial plains, under industrious cultivation, would furnish a frugal subsistence for a large population, and the mildness of the climate allowed all the more valuable products to ripen early, and go out of season last. Such conditions, of course, would furnish motives for skill and industry, and demand of the people frugal and temperate habits. The luxuriance of a tropical climate tends to improvidence and indolence. Where nature pours her fullness into the lap of ease, forethought and providence are little needed. There is none of that struggle for existence which awakens sagacity, and calls into exercise the active powers of man. But in a country where nature only yields her fruits as the reward of toil, and yet enough to the intelligent culture of the soil, there habits of patient industry must be formed. The alternations of summer and winter excite to forethought and providence, and the comparative poverty of the soil will prompt to frugality. Man naturally aspires to improve his condition by all the means within his power. He becomes a careful observer of nature, he treasures up the results of observation, he compares one fact with another and notes their relations, and he makes new experiments to test his conclusions, and thus he awakes to the vigorous exercise of all his powers. These physical conditions must develop a hardy, vigorous, prudent, and
The climate of Attica is what, in physical geography, would be called maritime. "Here are allied the continental vigor and oceanic softness, in a fortunate union, mutually tempering each other."
The natural scenery of Greece was of unrivalled grandeur--surpassing Italy, perhaps every country in the world. It combined in the highest degree every feature essential to the highest beauty of a landscape except, perhaps, large rivers. But this was more than compensated for by the proximity of the sea, which, by its numerous arms, seemed to embrace the land on nearly every side. Its mountains, encircled with zones of wood, and capped with snow, though much lower than the Alps, are as imposing by the suddenness of their elevation--"pillars of heaven, the fosterers of enduring snows." "Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The freeborn wanderer of the mountain air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beams Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but nature still is fair."
The effect of this scenery upon the character, the imagination, the taste of the Athenians must have been immense. Under the influence of such sublime objects, the human mind becomes gifted as with inspiration, and is by nature filled with poetic images. "Greece became the birth-place of taste, of art, and eloquence, the chosen sanctuary of the muses, the prototype of all that is graceful, and dignified, and grand in sentiment and action." And now, if we have succeeded in clearly presenting and properly grouping the facts, and in estimating the influence of geographical position and surroundings on national character, we have secured the natural criteria by which we examine, and even correct the portraiture of the Athenian character usually presented by the historian. The character of the Athenians has been sketched by Plutarch
That the Athenians were remarkable for the ardor and vivacity of their temperament,--that they were liable to sudden gusts of passion,--that they were inconstant in their affections, intolerant of dictation, impatient of control, and hasty to resent every assumption of superiority,--that they were pleased with flattery, and too ready to lend a willing ear to the adulation of the demagogue,--and that they were impetuous and brave, yet liable to be excessively elated by success, and depressed by misfortune, we may readily believe, because such traits of character are in perfect harmony with all the facts and conclusions already presented. Such characteristics were the natural product of the warm and genial sunlight, the elastic bracing air, the ethereal skies, the glorious mountain scenery, and the elaborate blending of sea and land, so peculiar to Greece and the whole of Southern Europe.
The consciousness of power, the feeling of independence, the ardent love of freedom induced in the Athenian mind by the objective freedom of movement which his geographical position afforded, and that subordination and subserviency of physical nature to man so peculiar to Greece, determined the democratic character of all their political institutions. And these institutions reacted upon the character of the people and intensified their love of liberty. This passionate love of personal freedom, amounting almost to disease, excited them to a constant and almost distressing vigilance. And it is not to be wondered at if it displayed itself in an extreme jealousy of their rulers, an incessant supervision and criticism of all their proceedings, and an intense and passionate hatred of tyrants and of tyranny. The popular legislator or the successful soldier might dare to encroach upon their liberties in the moment when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were certainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,
In their private life the Athenians were courteous, generous, and humane. Whilst bold and free in the expression of their opinions, they paid the greatest attention to rules of politeness, and were nicely delicate on points of decorum. They had a natural sense of what was becoming and appropriate, and an innate aversion to all extravagance. A graceful demeanor and a quiet dignity were distinguishing traits of Athenian character. They were temperate and frugal
In Athens there existed a providential collocation of the most favorable conditions in which humanity can be placed for securing its highest natural development. Athenian civilization is the solution, on the theatre of history, of the problem--What degree of perfection can humanity, under the most favorable conditions, attain, without the supernatural light, and guidance, and grace of Christianity?
Here the most perfect ideals of beauty and excellence in physical development, in manners, in plastic art, in literary creations, were realized. The songs of Homer, the dialogues of Plato, the speeches of Demosthenes, and the statues of Phidias, if not unrivalled, are at least unsurpassed by any thing that has been achieved by their successors. Literature in its most flourishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art has looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models. Here the ideas of personal liberty, of individual rights, of freedom in thought and action, had a wonderful expansion. Here the lasting foundations of the principal arts and sciences were laid, and in some of them triumphs were achieved which have not been eclipsed. Here the sun of human reason attained a meridian splendor, and illuminated every field in the domain of moral truth. And here humanity reached the highest degree of civilization of which it is capable under purely natural conditions. And now, the question with which we are more immediately concerned is, what were the specific and valuable results attained by the Athenian mind in religion and philosophy, the two momenta of the human mind? This will be the subject of discussion in subsequent chapters. The order in which the discussion shall proceed is determined for us by the natural development of thought. The two fundamental momenta of thought and its development are spontaneity
CHAPTER II.THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
As a prelude and preparation for the study of the religion of the Athenians, it may be well to consider religion in its more abstract and universal form; and inquire in what does religion essentially consist; how far is it grounded in the nature of man; and especially, what is there in the mental constitution of man, or in his exterior conditions, which determines him to a mode of life which may be denominated religious? As a preliminary inquiry, this may materially aid us in understanding the nature, and estimating the value of the religious conceptions and sentiments which were developed by the Greek mind. Religion, in its most generic conception, may be defined as a form of thought, feeling, and action, which has the Divine for its object, basis, and end. Or, in other words, it is a mode of life determined by the recognition of some relation to, and consciousness of dependence upon, a Supreme Being. This general conception of religion underlies all the specific forms of religion which have appeared in the world, whether heathen, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian. That a religious destination appertains to man as man, whether he has been raised to a full religious consciousness, or is simply considered as capable of being so raised, can not be denied. In all ages man has revealed an instinctive tendency, or natural aptitude for religion, and he has developed feelings and emotions which have always characterized him as a religious being. Religious ideas and sentiments have prevailed among all nations, and have exerted a powerful influence on This universality of religious sentiment and religious worship must be conceded as a fact of human nature, and, as a universal fact, it demands an explanation. Every event must have a cause. Every phenomenon must have its ground, and reason, and law. The facts of religious history, the past and present religious phenomena of the world can be no exception to this fundamental principle; they press their imperious demand to be studied and explained, as much as the phenomena of the material or the events of the moral world. The phenomena of religion, being universally revealed wherever man is found, must be grounded in some universal principle, on some original law, which is connate with, and natural to man. At any rate, there must be something in the nature of man, or in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably leads man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of an original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to recognize and bow down before a Superior Power. The full recognition and adequate explanation of the facts of religious history will constitute a philosophy of religion. The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in SUPERSTITION, that is, in a fear of invisible and supernatural powers, generated by ignorance of nature. II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that PROCESS or EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity), which gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to perfect self-consciousness in philosophy. III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--the feeling of dependence and of obligation; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith, traces this dependence and obligation we call God. IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of REASON, that is, the necessary À priori ideas of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful and contingent phenomena of the world. V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to which reason is related as a purely passive organ, and heathenism as a feeble relic. As a philosophy of religion--an attempt to supply the rationale of the religious phenomena of the world, the first hypothesis is a skeptical philosophy, which necessarily leads to Atheism. The second is an idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in Pantheism. The third is an intuitional or "faith-philosophy," which finally ends in Mysticism. The fourth is a rationalistic or "spiritualistic" philosophy, which yields pure Theism. The last is an empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culminates in Dogmatic Theology. In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the question which now presents itself for our consideration is,--does any one of these hypotheses meet and satisfy the demands of I. It is affirmed that the religious phenomena of the world had their origin in SUPERSTITION, that is, in a fear of unseen and supernatural powers, generated from ignorance of nature. This explanation was first offered by Epicurus. He felt that the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause; and he found it, or presumed he found it not in a spiritual God, which he claims can not exist, nor in corporeal god which no one has seen, but in "phantoms of the mind generated by fear." When man has been unable to explain any natural phenomenon, to assign a cause within the sphere of nature, he has had recourse to supernatural powers, or living personalities behind nature, which move and control nature in an arbitrary and capricious manner. These imaginary powers are supposed to be continually interfering in the affairs of individuals and nations. They bestow blessings or inflict calamities. They reward virtue and punish vice. They are, therefore, the objects of "sacred awe" and "superstitious fear." Whate'er in heaven, In earth, man sees mysterious, shakes his mind With sacred awe o'erwhelms him, and his soul Bows to the dust; the cause of things conceal Once from his vision, instant to the gods All empire he transfers, all rule supreme, And doubtful whence they spring, with headlong haste Calls them the workmanship of power divine. For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned In heaven sublime--to SUPERSTITION back Lapses, and fears a tyrant host, and then Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do, While yet himself nor knows what may be done, Nor what may never, nature powers defined Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass: Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks.
In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, consequently, of all religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that "nature" alone is adequate to the production of all things, and there is no need to drag in a "divine power" to explain the phenomena of the world. This theory has been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been the first to discover the great law of the three successive stages or phases of human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in dealing with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a Theological, second, a Metaphysical, and finally reaches a third, or Positive stage. In attempting an explanation of the universe, human thought, in its earliest stages of development, resorts to the idea of living personal agents enshrined in and moving every object, whether organic or inorganic, natural or artificial. In an advanced stage, it conceives a number of personal beings The next stage, the Metaphysical, is a transitional stage, in which man substitutes abstract entities, as substance, force, Being in se, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theological conceptions. During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful solvent, which decomposes and dissipates theology. It is only in the last--the Positive stage--that man becomes willing to relinquish all theological ideas and metaphysical notions, and confine his attention to the study of phenomena in their relation to time and space; discarding all inquiries as to causes, whether efficient or final, and denying the existence of all entities and powers beyond nature. The first stage, in its religious phase, is Theistic, the second is Pantheistic, the last is Atheistic. The proofs offered by Comte in support of this theory are derived: I. From Cerebral Organization. There are three grand divisions of the Brain, the Medulla Oblongata, the Cerebellum, and the Cerebrum; the first represents the merely animal instincts the second, the more elevated sentiments, the third, the intellectual powers. Human nature must, therefore, both in the individual and in the race, be developed in the following order: (1.) in animal instincts; (2.) in social affections and communal tendencies; (3.) in intellectual pursuits. Infant life is a merely animal existence, shared in common with the brute; Now, without offering any opinion as to the merits of the phrenological theories of Gall and Spurzheim, we may ask, what relation has this order to the law of development presented by Comte? Is there any imaginable connection between animal propensities and theological ideas; between social affections and metaphysical speculations? Are not the intellectual powers as much concerned with theological ideas and metaphysical speculations as with positive science? And is it not more probable, more in accordance with facts, that all the powers of the mind, instinct, feeling, and thought, enter into action simultaneously, and condition each other? The very first act of perception, the first distinct cognition of an object, involves thought as much as the last generalization of science. We know nothing of mind except as the development of thought, and the first unfolding, even of the infant mind, reveals an intellectual act, a discrimination between a self and an object which is not self, and a recognition of resemblance, or difference between this object and that. And what does Positive science, in its most mature and perfect form, claim to do more than "to study actual phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession." Cerebral organization may furnish plausible analogies in favor of some theory of human development, but certainly not the one proposed by Aug. Comte. The attempt, however, to construct a chart of human history on such an À priori method,--to construct an ideal framework into which human nature must necessarily grow, is a violation of the first and most fundamental principle of the Positive science, which demands that we shall confine ourselves strictly to the study of actual 2. The second order of proof is attempted to be drawn from the analogies of individual experience. It is claimed that the history of the race is the same as that of each individual mind; and it is affirmed that man is religious in infancy, metaphysical in youth, and positive, that is, scientific without being religious, in mature manhood; the history of the race must therefore have followed the same order. We are under no necessity of denying that there is some analogy between the development of mind in the individual man, and in humanity as a whole, in order to refute the theory of Comte. Still, it must not be overlooked that the development of mind, in all cases and in all ages, is materially affected by exterior conditions. The influence of geographical and climatic conditions, of social and national institutions, and especially of education, however difficult to be estimated, can not be utterly disregarded. And whether all these influences have not been controlled, and collocated, and adjusted by a Supreme Mind in the education of humanity, is also a question which can not be pushed aside as of no consequence. Now, unless it can be shown that the same outward conditions which have accompanied the individual and modified his mental development, have been repealed in the history of the race, and repeated in the same order of succession, the argument has no value. But, even supposing it could be shown that the development of mind in humanity has followed the same order as that of the individual, we confidently affirm that Comte has not given the true history of the development of the individual mind. The 3. The third proof is drawn from a survey of the history of certain portions of our race. Comte is far from being assured that the progress of humanity, under the operation of his grand law of development, has been uniform and invariable. The majority of the human race, the vast populations of India, China, and Japan, have remained stationary; they are still in the Theological stage, and consequently furnish no evidence in support of his theory. For this reason he confines himself to the "Élite" or advance-guard of humanity, and in this way makes the history of humanity a very "abstract history" indeed. Starting with Greece as the representative of ancient civilization, passing thence to Roman
The signal defect of Comte's historical survey, however, is, that it furnishes no evidence of the general prevalence of Fetichism in primitive times. The writings of Moses are certainly entitled to as much consideration and credence as the writings of Berosus, Manetho, and Herodotus; and, it will not be denied, they teach that the faith of the earliest families and races of men was monotheistic. The early Vedas, the Institutes of Menu,
The three stages of development which Comte describes as necessarily successive, have, for centuries past, been simultaneous. The theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific elements coexist now, and there is no real, radical, or necessary conflict between them. Theological and metaphysical ideas hold their ground as securely under the influence of enlarged scientific discovery as before; and there is no reason to suppose they ever had more power over the mind of man than they have to-day. The notion that God is dethroned by the wonderful discoveries of modern science, and theology is dead, is the dream of the "profond orage cÉrÉbral" which interrupted the course of Comte's lectures in 1826. As easily may the hand of Positivism arrest the course of the sun, as prevent the instinctive thought of human reason recognizing and affirming the existence of a God. And so long as ever the human mind is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it seek... [Transcriber's note: In the original document, page 64 is a duplication of page 63. The real page 64 seems to be missing.] ....eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena--that is, to changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient or final, are unknown and unknowable; all inquiry regarding them must be inhibited, "for Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes at all." II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts of religious history is, that religion is part of that PROCESS OR EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity) which, gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the fullest self-consciousness in philosophy. This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy the subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of "Absolute Identity." Its fundamental position is that thought and being, subject and object, the perceiving mind and the thing perceived, are ultimately and essentially one, and that the only actual reality is that which results from their mutual relation. The outward thing is nothing, the inward perception is nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only reality is the relation, or rather synthesis of the two; the essence or nature of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two opposites, are therefore the concrete realities of Hegel; and the process of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the process of all existence--the Absolute Idea. The Absolute(die IdÉe) thus forms the beginning, middle, and end of the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or thought, of which nature, mind, history, religion, and philosophy, are the manifestation. "The absolute is, with him, not the infinite substance, as with Spinoza; nor the infinite subject, as It will thus be seen that the Absolute is, with Hegel, the sum of all actual and possible existence; "nothing is true and real except so far as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit." God is, therefore, according to Hegel, "no motionless, eternally self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal process of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the eternal self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconciliation or synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary elements, into the constitution of the Divine Being. This self-evolution, whereby the absolute enters into antithesis, and returns to itself again, is the eternal self-actualization of its being, and which at once constitutes the beginning, middle, and end, as in the circle, where the beginning is at the same time the end, and the end the beginning."
The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development of this idea of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with it; for God, says he, "is only the Absolute
It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a new logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his logic is the identity of contraries or contradictions. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but constitutes them. In every idea we form, there must be two things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear conception. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of darkness; good can not be thought except in opposition to evil. All life, all reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements, which, together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each other. The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequences of this law. 1. The Absolute is the Being (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and "the Being" is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract, undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea. 2. The Absolute is the Nothing (das Absolute ist das Nichts). 3. Being and Nothing are identical (das Seyn und das Nichts ist dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being is Being--the Anders-seyn--which becomes as Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some sense, an actual thing. Being and Nothing are thus the two elements which enter into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both together combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or the becoming of something out of nothing,--the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that is, of nature. The "Philosophy of Nature" exhibits a series of necessary movements which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale of sensible existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and physiology are resolved into a series of oppositions. But the law which governs this development requires the self-reconciliation of these opposites. The idea, therefore, which in nature was unconscious and ignorant of itself, returns upon itself, and becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes mind. The science of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is the "Philosophy of Mind." The "Philosophy of Mind" is subdivided by Hegel into three parts. There is, first, the subjective or individual mind (psychology); then the objective or universal mind, as represented in society, the state, and in history (ethics, political philosophy, or jurisprudence, and philosophy of history); and, finally, the union of the subjective and objective mind, or the absolute mind. This last manifests itself again under three forms, representing the three degrees of the self-consciousness of the Spirit, as the eternal truth. These are, first, art, or the representation of beauty (Æsthetics); secondly, religion, in the general acceptation It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philosophy of Hegel is essentially pantheistic. "God is not a person, but personality itself, i.e., the universal personality, which realizes itself in every human consciousness, as so many separate thoughts of one eternal mind. The idea we form of the absolute is, to Hegel, the absolute itself, its essential existence being identical with our conception of it. Apart from, and out of the world, there is no God; and so also, apart from the universal consciousness of man, there is no Divine consciousness or personality."
This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and conflicts with the actual facts of man's religious nature and religious history. If the word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is "a mode of life determined by the consciousness of dependence upon, and obligation to God." It is reverence for, gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from humanity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of God--a stage in the development or self-actualization of God. Viewed under one aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God--the worship of God by God; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since God only becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is that upon which his entire method proceeds, viz., "the identity of subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the consciousness of each individual man, and the universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If thought and being are identical, then whatever is true of ideas is also true of objects, and then, as Kant had before remarked,
III. The third hypothesis affirms that the phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--the feeling of dependence and of obligation; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition of instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obligation we call God. This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent upon the differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory of Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Hamilton. Its fundamental position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either from sense or reason, and, consequently, the only valid source of real knowledge is feeling--faith, intuition, or, as it is called by some, inspiration. There have been those, in all ages, who have made all knowledge of invisible, supersensuous, divine things, to rest upon an internal feeling, or immediate, inward vision. The Oriental Mystics, the Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek and Latin Church, the German Mystics of the 14th century, the Theosophists of the Reformation, the Quietists of France, the Quakers, have all appealed to some special faculty, distinct from the understanding and reason, for the immediate cognition of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that special faculty was regarded as an "interior eye" which was illuminated by the "Universal Light;" by others, as a peculiar sensibility of the soul--a feeling in whose perfect calm and utter quiescence the Divinity was mirrored; or which, in an ecstatic Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the "faith-philosophy," as it is now designated, a definite form. He assumes the position that all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready formed. The process of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of perception there is something actual and present, which can not be referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world, and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an immediate knowledge of a spiritual world--God, the soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosophic knowledge is thus based upon belief, which Jacobi regards as a fact of our inward sensibility--a sort of knowledge produced by an immediate feeling of the soul--a direct apprehension, without proof, of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal. Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the deservedly greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth in Theology could not be obtained by reason, but by a feeling, insight, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called God-consciousness, and in its highest form, Christian-consciousness. The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the feeling of dependence on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness is the perfect union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion with God. Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of self-consciousness. "In all self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn, and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet something else from whence the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would not be just this." We have, then, in our self-consciousness a feeling of direct dependence, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are revealed in us."
The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his "Limits of Religious Thought." He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in feeling, and that the felt is the first intimation or presentiment of the Divine. Man "feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct to worship, before he can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevolence
This "philosophy of feeling," or of faith generated by feeling, has an interest and a significance which has not been adequately recognized by writers on natural theology. Feeling, sentiment, enthusiasm, have always played an important part in the history of religion. Indeed it must be conceded that religion is a right state of feeling towards God--religion is piety. A philosophy of the religious emotion is, therefore, demanded in order to the full interpretation of the religious phenomena of the world. But the notion that internal feeling, a peculiar determination of the sensibility, is the source of religious ideas:--that God can be known immediately by feeling without the mediation of the truth that manifests God; that he can be felt as the qualities of matter can be felt; and that this affection of the inward sense can reveal the character and perfections of God, is an unphilosophical and groundless assumption. To assert, with Nitzsch, that "feeling has reason, and is reason, and that the sensible and felt God-consciousness generates out of itself fundamental conceptions," is to confound the most fundamental psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized classifications of mental science to the necessities of a theory. Indeed, we are informed that it is "by means of an independent psychology, and conformably to it," that Schleiermacher illustrates his "philosophy of feeling."
The question as to the relative order of cognition and feeling, that is, as to whether feeling is the first or original form of the religious consciousness, or whether feeling be not consequent upon some idea or cognition of God, is one which can not be determined on empirical grounds. We are precluded from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of mental development in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If we attempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the wider field of universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of mind in humanity are lost in the border-land of mystery, of which history furnishes no authentic records. All dogmatic affirmation must, therefore, be unjustifiable. The assertion that religious feeling precedes all cognition,--that "the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, and the instinct of worship" are developed first in the mind, before the reason is exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable doctrine is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action simultaneously--the reason with the senses, the feelings with the reason, the judgment with both the senses and the reason, and that from their primary and simultaneous action arises the complex result, called consciousness, or conjoint knowledge.
A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the À priori idea of space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of event without the rational idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the rational idea of identity or unity. And so the mere "feeling of dependence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of God, without the rational À priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowledge, and never can become knowledge, without the intervention of reason, and a concentrated self feeling can not rise essentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being ruling over nature and man. Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its pathological form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any significance. Regarded in its moral form, as "the feeling of obligation," it can have no real meaning unless a "law of duty" be known and recognized. Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty is. When that which is right, and just, and good is revealed to the mind, then the sense of obligation may urge man to the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the good, are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, consequently, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmonious Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity." We think his "fact of religious intuition" is as inadequate as Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of religion. In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is a Power or Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power or Being "we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr. Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and even the existence of God is "assumed" and we are entitled to ask on what ground it is assumed. It will not be asserted that feeling alone generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a logical connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation between the feeling and the idea, so that when the feeling is present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This latter opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of God as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation
The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted from the union of thought and feeling--the living and harmonious relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which disregards either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena. IV. The fourth hypothesis is, that religion has had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of REASON; that is, in the necessary, À priori ideas of the infinite, the perfect, the unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful, contingent phenomena of the world. This will at once be recognized by the intelligent reader as the doctrine of Cousin, by whom pure reason is regarded as the grand faculty or organ of religion. Religion, in the estimation of Cousin, is grounded on cognition rather than upon feeling. It is the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of duty in its relation to God and to human happiness; and as reason is the general faculty of all knowing, it must be the faculty of religion. "In its most elevated point of view, religion is the relation of absolute truth to absolute Being," and as absolute truth is apprehended by the reason alone, reason "is the veridical and religious part of the nature of man."
The especial function of reason, therefore, is to reveal to us the invisible, the supersensuous, the Divine. "It was bestowed upon us for this very purpose of going, without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and from necessary and eternal truths, to the eternal and necessary principle" that is God. Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being directly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To assert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of God, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with God. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a manifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."
Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to the reason of man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual revelation of God to man. The mind of man is
It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which this philosophy of religion is to be tested are-- 1st. How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in possession of universal and necessary principles or absolute truths? and, 2d. How are these principles shown to be absolute? how far do these principles of reason possess absolute authority? The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove reason to be in possession of universal and necessary principles by the analysis of the contents of consciousness, that is, by psychological analysis. The phenomena of consciousness, in their primitive condition, are necessarily complex, concrete, and particular. All our primary ideas are complex ideas, for the evident reason that all, or nearly all, our faculties enter at once into exercise; their simultaneous action giving us, at the same time, a certain number of ideas connected with each other, and forming a whole. For example, the idea of the exterior world, which is given us so quickly, is a complex idea, which contains a number of ideas. There is the idea of the secondary qualities of exterior objects; there is the idea of the primary qualities; there is the idea of the permanent reality of something to which you refer these qualities, to wit, matter; there is the idea of space which contains bodies; there is the idea of time in which movements are effected. All these ideas are acquired The application of analysis to this complex phenomenon clearly reveals that there are simple ideas, beliefs, principles in the mind which can not have been derived from sense and experience, which sense and experience do not account for, and which are the suggestions of reason alone: the idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Eternal; the true, the beautiful, the good; the principle of causality, of substance, of unity, of intentionality; the principle of duty, of obligation, of accountability, of retribution. These principles, in their natural and regular development, carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and reveal to us a world of real being beyond the world of sense. They carry us up to an absolute Being, the fountain of all existence--a living, personal, righteous God--the author, the sustainer, and ruler of the universe. The proof that these principles are absolute, and possessed of absolute authority, is drawn, first, from the impersonality of reason, or, rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or truths of reason. It is not we who create these ideas, neither can we change them at our pleasure. We are conscious that the will, in all its various efforts, is enstamped with the impress of our personality. Our volitions are our own. So, also, our desires are our own, our emotions are our own. But this is not the same with our rational ideas or principles. The ideas of substance, of cause, of unity, of intentionality do not belong to one person any more than to another; they belong to mind as mind, they are revealed in the universal intelligence of the race. Absolute truth has no element of personality about it. Man may say "my reason," but give him credit for never having dared to say "my truth." So far from rational ideas being individual, their peculiar characteristic is that they are opposed to individuality, that is, they are universal and necessary. Instead of being circumscribed within the limits of experience, they surpass and govern it; they are universal in the midst of particular
The second proof is derived from the distinction between the spontaneous and reflective movements of reason. Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary; reflection is personal, spontaneity is impersonal; reflection is analytic, spontaneity is synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. Reflection is a process, more or less tardy, in the individual and in the race. It sometimes engenders error and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, from being rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force of habit, as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the true logic of nature,--instant, direct, and infallible. It is a primitive affirmation which implies no negation, and therefore yields positive knowledge. To reflect is to return to that which was. It is, by the aid of memory, to return to the past, and to render it present to the eye of consciousness. Reflection, therefore, creates nothing; it supposes an anterior operation of the mind in which there necessarily must be as many terms as are discovered by reflection. Before all reflection there comes spontaneity--a spontaneity of the intellect, which seizes truth at once, without traversing doubt and error. "We thus attain to a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition, the legitimate daughter of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, It is this spontaneity of thought which gives birth to religion. The instinctive thought which darts through the world, even to God, is natural religion. "All thought implies a spontaneous faith in God, and there is no such thing as natural atheism. Doubt and skepticism may mingle with reflective thought, but beneath reflection there is still spontaneity. When the scholar has denied the existence of God, listen to the man, interrogate him, take him unawares, and you will see that all his words envelop the idea of God, and that faith in God is, without his recognition, at the bottom, in his heart." Religion, then, in the system of Cousin, does not begin with reflection, with science, but with faith. There is, however, this difference to be noted between the theory of the "faith-philosophers" (Jacobi, Schleiermacher, etc.) and the theory of Cousin. With them, faith is grounded on sensation or feeling; with him, it is grounded on reason. "Faith, whatever may be its form, whatever may be its object, common or sublime, can be nothing else than the consent of reason. That is the foundation of faith."
Religion is, therefore, with Cousin, at bottom, pure Theism. He thinks, however, that "true theism is not a dead religion that forgets precisely the fundamental attributes of God." It recognizes God as creator, preserver, and governor; it celebrates The spontaneous action of reason, in its greatest energy, is inspiration. "Inspiration, daughter of the soul and heaven, speaks from on high with an absolute authority. It commands faith; so all its words are hymns, and its natural language is poetry." "Thus, in the cradle of civilization, he who possessed in a higher degree than his fellows the gift of inspiration, passed for the confidant and the interpreter of God. He is so for others, because he is so for himself; and he is so, in fact, in a philosophic sense. Behold the sacred origin of prophecies, of pontificates, and of modes of worship."
As an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human intelligence, the doctrine of Cousin must be regarded as eminently logical, adequate, and satisfactory. As a theory of the origin of religion, as a philosophy which shall explain all the phenomena of religion, it must be pronounced defective, and, in some of its aspects, erroneous. First, it does not take proper account of that living force which has in all ages developed so much energy, and wrought such vast results in the history of religion, viz., the power of the heart. Cousin discourses eloquently on the spontaneous, instinctive movements of the reason, but he overlooks, in a great measure, the instinctive movements of the heart. He does not duly estimate the feeling of reverence and awe which rises spontaneously in presence of the vastness and grandeur of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is a symbol and shadow. He disregards that sense of an overshadowing Presence which, at least in seasons of tenderness Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illuminated by the light of God. It is quite pertinent to ask, Why may not the universal heart of humanity be touched and moved by the spirit of God? If the ideas of reason be a revelation from God, may not the instinctive feelings of the heart be an inspiration of God? May not God come near to the heart of man and awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible Presence, and an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him? May he not draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and raise man to a conscious fellowship? Is not God indeed the great want of the human heart? Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influence of revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and of the positive institutions of religion, as a divine economy, supernaturally originated in the world. He grants, indeed, that "a primitive revelation throws light upon the cradle of human civilization," and that "all antique traditions refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand of God, received from him immediately all lights, and all truths."
V. The fifth hypothesis offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world is that they had their origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to which reason is related as a purely passive organ, and Ethnicism as a feeble relic. This is the theory of the school of "dogmatic theologians," of which the ablest and most familiar presentation is found in the "Theological Institutes" of R. Watson.
The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the idea of duty, and the knowledge of right and wrong. "A direct communication of the Divine Will was made to the primogenitors
The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this theory will be obvious from the following considerations: 1. It is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the well-being of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition is admitted, even by Mr. Watson, to be. The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep moral necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The perfection of humanity can never be secured, the destination of humanity can never be achieved, the purpose of God in the existence of humanity can never be accomplished, without the idea of God, and of the relation of man to God, being present to the human mind. Society needs the idea of a Supreme Ruler as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis of social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved. Intellectual creatureship, social order, human progress, are inconceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of accountability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should, 2. This theory is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the universality of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas. Take, for example, the idea of God. As a matter of fact we affirm, in opposition to Watson, the universality of this idea. The idea of God is connatural to the human mind. Wherever
Now had the idea of God rested solely on tradition, it were the most natural probability that it might be lost, nay, must be lost, amongst those races of men who were geographically and chronologically far removed from the primitive cradle of humanity in the East. The people who, in their migrations, had wandered to the remotest parts of the earth, and had become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,--a necessity of thought. A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to
3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence "purely passive" and utterly unfurnished with any À priori ideas or necessary laws of cognition and thought. Of course it is not denied that important verbal communications relating to the character of God, and the duties we owe to God, were given to the first human pair, more clear and definite, it may be, than any knowledge attained by Socrates and Plato through their dialectic processes, and that these oral revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And furthermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure fountain of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among the heathen nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny. All this, however, supposes, at least, a natural power and
It may be affirmed that, preceding or accompanying the announcement of the Divine Name, there was given to the first human pair, and to the early fathers of our race, some visible manifestation of the presence of God, and some supernatural display of divine power. What, then, was the character of these early manifestations, and were they adequate to convey the proper idea of God? Did God first reveal himself in human form, and if so, how could their conception of God advance beyond a rude anthropomorphism? Did he reveal his presence in a vast columnar cloud or a pillar of fire? How could such an image convey any conception of the intelligence, the omnipresence, the eternity of God? Nay, can the infinite and eternal Mind be represented by any visible manifestation? Can the human mind conceive an image of God? The knowledge of God, it is clear, can not be conveyed by any sensible sign or symbol if man has no prior rational idea of God as the Infinite and the Perfect Being. If the facts of order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the À priori ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work of an intelligent mind, how
Miracles, in short, were never intended to prove the existence of God. The foundation of this truth had already been laid in the constitution and laws of the human mind, and miracles were designed to convince us that He of whose existence we had a prior certainty, spoke to us by His Messenger, and in this way attested his credentials. To the man who has a rational belief in the existence of God this evidence of a divine mission is at once appropriate and conclusive. "Master, we know thou art a teacher sent from God; for no man can do the works which thou doest, except God be with him." The Christian missionary does not commence his instruction to the heathen, who have an imperfect, or even erroneous conception of "the Great Spirit," by narrating the miracles of Christ, or quoting the testimony of the Divine Book he carries along with him. He points to the heavens and the earth, and says, "There is a Being who made all these things, and Jehovah is The results of our study of the various hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world may be summed up as follows: The first and second theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an explanation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, taken by itself, is incomplete and inadequate. The third hypothesis overrates feeling; the fourth, reason; the fifth, verbal instruction. The first extreme is Mysticism, the second is Rationalism, the last is Dogmatism. Reason, feeling, and faith in testimony must be combined, and mutually condition each other. No purely rationalistic hypothesis will meet and satisfy the wants and yearnings of the heart. No theory based on feeling alone can satisfy the demands of the human intellect. And, finally, an hypothesis which bases all religion upon historical testimony and outward fact, and despises and tramples upon the intuitions of the reason and the instincts of the heart can never command the general faith of mankind. Religion embraces and conditionates the whole sphere of life--thought, feeling, faith, and action; it must therefore be grounded in the entire spiritual nature of man. Our criticism of opposite theories has thus prepared the way for, and obviated the necessity of an extended discussion of the hypothesis we now advance. The universal phenomenon of religion has originated in the À priori apperceptions of reason, and the natural instinctive feelings of the heart, which, from age to age, have been vitalized, unfolded, and perfected by supernatural communications and testamentary revelations. There are universal facts of religious history which can only be explained on the first principle of this hypothesis; there are special facts which can only be explained on the latter principle. The universal prevalence of the idea of God, and the feeling of obligation to obey and worship God, belong to the first order of facts; the general prevalence of expiatory sacrifices, of the rite of circumcision, and the observance of sacred and holy days, belong to the latter. To the last class of facts the observance of the Christian Sabbath, and the rites of Baptism and the Lord's Supper may be added. The history of all religions clearly attests that there are two orders of principles--the natural and the positive, and, in some measure, two authorities of religious life which are intimately related without negativing each other. The characteristic of the natural is that it is intrinsic, of the positive, that it is extrinsic. In all ages men have sought the authority of the positive in that which is immediately beyond and above man--in some "voice of the Divinity" toning down the stream of ages, or speaking through a prophet or oracle, or written in some inspired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority of the natural in that which is immediately within man--the voice of the Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of man. A careful study of the history of religion will show a reciprocal relation between the two, and indicate their common source. We expect to find that our hypothesis will be abundantly sustained by the study of the Religion of the Athenians. CHAPTER III.THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS."All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion (de?s?da?µ??est?????). For as I passed through your city, and beheld the objects of your worship, I found amongst them an altar with this inscription--'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.' Whom therefore ye worship...."--ST. PAUL. Through one of those remarkable counter-strokes of Divine Providence by which the evil designs of men are overruled, and made to subserve the purposes of God, the Apostle Paul was brought to Athens. He walked beneath its stately porticoes, he entered its solemn temples, he stood before its glorious statuary, he viewed its beautiful altars--all devoted to pagan worship. And "his spirit was stirred within him," he was moved with indignation "when he saw the city full of images of the gods."
Standing in the market-place, and looking up to the Areopagus, Paul would see the temple of Mars, from whom the hill derived its name. And turning toward the Acropolis, he would behold, closing the long perspective, a series of little sanctuaries on the very ledges of the rocks, shrines of Bacchus and Æsculapius, Venus, Earth, and Ceres, ending with the lovely form of the Temple of Unwinged Victory, which glittered in front of the PropylÆa. If the apostle entered the "fivefold gates," and ascended the flight of stone steps to the platform of the Acropolis, he would find the whole area one grand composition of architecture and statuary dedicated to the worship of the gods. Here stood the Parthenon, the Virgin House, the glorious temple which was erected during the proudest days of Athenian glory, an entire offering to Minerva, the tutelary divinity of Athens. Within was the colossal statue of the goddess wrought in ivory and gold. Outside the temple there stood another statue of Minerva, cast from the brazen spoils of Marathon; and near by yet another brazen Pallas, which was called by pre-eminence "the Beautiful." Indeed, to whatever part of Athens the apostle wandered, he would meet the evidences of their "carefulness in religion," for every public place and every public building was a sanctuary of some god. The Metroum, or record-house, was a temple to the mother of the gods. The council-house held statues of Apollo and Jupiter, with an altar to Vesta. The theatre at the base of the Acropolis was consecrated to Bacchus. The Pnyx was dedicated to Jupiter on high. And as if, in this direction, the Attic imagination knew no bounds, abstractions were deified; altars were erected to Fame, to Energy, to Modesty, and even to Pity, and these abstractions were honored and worshipped as gods. The impression made upon the mind of Paul was, that the city was literally "full of idols," or images of the gods. This impression is sustained by the testimony of numerous Greek and Roman writers. Pausanias declares that Athens "had more images than all the rest of Greece;" and Petronius, the Roman satirist, says, "it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man."
No wonder, then, that as Paul wandered amid these scenes "his spirit was stirred in him." He burned with holy zeal to maintain the honor of the true and only God, whom now he saw dishonored on every side. He was filled with compassion for those Athenians who, notwithstanding their intellectual greatness, had changed the glory of God into an image made in the likeness of corruptible man, and who really worshipped the creature more than the Creator. The images intended to symbolize the invisible perfections of God were usurping the place of God, and receiving the worship due alone to him. We may presume the apostle was not insensible to the beauties of Grecian art. The sublime architecture of the PropylÆa and the Parthenon, the magnificent sculpture of Phidias and Praxiteles, could not fail to excite his wonder. But he remembered that those superb temples and this glorious statuary were the creation of the pagan spirit, and devoted to polytheistic worship. The glory of the supreme God was obscured by all this symbolism. The creatures formed by God, the symbols of his power and presence in nature, the ministers of his providence and moral government, were receiving the honor due to him. Over all this scene of material beauty and Æsthetic perfection there rose in dark and hideous proportions the errors and delusions and sins against the living God which Polytheism nurtured, and unable any longer to restrain himself, he commenced to "reason" with the crowds of Athenians who stood beneath the shadows of the plane-trees, or lounged Surrounded by these men of thoughtful, philosophic mind--men who had deeply pondered the great problem of existence, who had earnestly inquired after the "first principles of things;" men who had reasoned high of creation, fate, and providence; of right and wrong; of conscience, law, and retribution; and had formed strong and decided opinions on all these questions--he delivered his discourse on the being, the providence, the spirituality, and the moral government of God. This grand theme was suggested by an inscription he had observed on one of the altars of the city, which was dedicated "To the Unknown God." "Ye men of Athens! every thing which I behold bears witness to your carefulness in religion.
The assertion that the Athenians were "a religious people" will, to many of our readers, appear a strange and startling utterance, which has in it more of novelty than truth. Nay, some will be shocked to hear the Apostle Paul described as complimenting these Athenians--these pagan worshippers--on their "carefulness in religion." We have been so long accustomed to use the word "heathen" as an opprobrious epithet--expressing, indeed, the utmost extremes of ignorance, and barbarism, and cruelty, that it has become difficult for us to believe that in a heathen there can be any good. and we can scarcely tolerate another version, even if it can be shown that it approaches nearer to the actual language employed by Paul. We must, therefore, ask the patience and candor of the reader, while we endeavor to show, on the authority of Paul's words, that the Athenians were a "religious people," and that all our notions to the contrary are founded on prejudice and misapprehension. First, then, let us commence even with our English version: "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." And what now is the meaning of the word "superstition?" It is true, we now use it only in an evil sense, to express a belief in the agency of invisible, capricious, malignant powers, which fills the mind with fear and terror, and sees in every unexplained phenomenon of nature an omen, or prognostic, of some future evil. But this is not its proper and original meaning. Superstition is from the Latin superstitio, which means a superabundance of religion,
Nor are we for a moment to suppose the apostle is here dealing in hollow compliments, or having recourse to a "pious fraud." Such a course would have been altogether out of character with Paul, and to suppose him capable of pursuing such a course is to do him great injustice. If "to the Jews he became as a Jew," it was because he recognized in Judaism the same fundamental truths which underlie the Christian system. And if here he seems to become, in any sense, at one with "heathenism," that he might gain the heathen to the faith of Christ, it was because he found in heathenism some elements of truth akin to Christianity, and a state of feeling favorable to an inquiry into the truths he had to present. He beheld in Athens an altar reared to the God he worshipped, and it afforded him some pleasure to find that God was not totally forgotten, and his worship totally neglected, by the Athenians. The God whom they knew imperfectly, "Him" said he, "I declare unto you;" I now desire to make him more fully known. The worship of "the Unknown God" was a recognition of the being of a God whose nature transcends all human thought, a God who is ineffable; who, as Plato said, "is hard to be discovered, and having discovered him, to make him known to all, impossible."
The case of the Athenians has, therefore, a peculiar interest to every thoughtful mind. It confirms the belief that religion is a necessity to every human mind, a want of every human heart.
The unwillingness of many to recognize a religious element in the Athenian mind is further accounted for by their misconception of the meaning of the word "religion." We are all too much accustomed to regard religion as a mere system of dogmatic teaching. We use the terms "Christian religion," "Jewish religion," "Mohammedan religion," as comprehending simply the characteristic doctrines by which each is distinguished; whereas religion is a mode of thought, and feeling, and action, determined by the consciousness of our relation to and our dependence upon God. It does not appropriate to itself any specific department of our mental powers and susceptibilities, but it conditions the entire functions and circle of our spiritual life. It is not simply a mode of conceiving God in thought, nor simply a mode of venerating God in the affections, nor yet simply a mode of worshipping God in outward and formal acts, but it comprehends the whole. Religion (religere, respect, awe, reverence) regulates our thoughts, feelings, and acts towards God. "It is a reference and a relationship of our finite consciousness to the Creator and Sustainer and Governor of the universe." It is such a consciousness of the Divine as shall awaken in the heart of man the sentiments of reverence, fear, and gratitude towards God; such a sense of dependence as shall prompt man to pray, and lead him to perform external acts of worship. Religion does not, therefore, consist exclusively in knowledge, however correct; and yet it must be preceded and accompanied by some intuitive cognition of a Supreme Being, and some conception of him as a free moral personality. But the religious sentiments, which belong rather to the heart than to the understanding of man--the consciousness of dependence, Regarding this, then, as the generic conception of religion, namely, that it is a mode of thought and feeling and action determined by our consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, we claim that the apostle was perfectly right in complimenting the Athenians on their "more than ordinary religiousness," for, 1. They had, in some degree at least, that faith in the being and providence of God which precedes and accompanies all religion. They had erected an altar to the unseen, the unsearchable, the incomprehensible, the unknown God. And this "unknown God" whom the Athenians "worshipped" was the true God, the God whom Paul worshipped, and whom he desired more fully to reveal to them; "Him declare I unto you." The Athenians had, therefore, some knowledge of the true God, some dim recognition, at least, of his being, and some conception, however imperfect, of his character. The Deity to whom the Athenians reared this altar is called "the unknown God," because he is unseen by all human eyes and incomprehensible to human thought. There is a sense in which to Paul, as well as to the Athenians--to the Christian as well as to the pagan--to the philosopher as well as to the peasant--God is "the unknown," and in which he must forever remain the incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thoughtful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his mind God is "the ineffable," the unspeakable. Zophar, the friend of Job, asks, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" This knowledge is "high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Does not Wesley teach us to sing, "Hail, Father, whose creating call Unnumbered worlds attend; Jehovah, comprehending all, Whom none can comprehend?" To his mind, as well as to the mind of the Athenian, God was "the great unseen, unknown." "Beyond the universe and man," says Cousin, "there remains in God something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence, in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in this inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is therefore to us incomprehensible."
When, therefore, the apostle affirms that while the Athenians worshipped the God whom he proclaimed they "knew him not," we can not understand him as saying they were destitute of all faith in the being of God, and of all ideas of his real character. Because for him to have asserted they had no knowledge of God would not only have been contrary to all the facts of the case, but also an utter contradiction of all his settled convictions and his recorded opinions. There is not in modern times a more earnest asserter of the doctrine that the human mind has an intuitive cognition of God, and that the external world reveals God to man. There is a passage in his letter to the Romans which is justly entitled to stand at the head of all discourses on "natural theology," Rom. i. 19-21. Speaking of the heathen world, who had not been favored, as the Jews, with Not only is the being of God revealed to man in the constitution and laws of his rational and moral nature, but God is also manifested to us objectively in the realm of things around us; therefore Paul adds, "The invisible things of him, even his eternal power and Godhead, from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." The world of sense, therefore, discloses the being and perfections of God. The invisible attributes of God are made apparent by the things that are visible. Forth out of nature, as the product of the Divine Mind, the supernatural shines. The forces, laws, and harmonies of the universe are indices of the presence of a presiding and informing Intelligence. The creation itself is an example of God's coming forth out of the mysterious depths of his own eternal and invisible being, and making himself apparent to man. There, on the pages of the volume of nature, we may read, in the marvellous language of symbol, the grand conceptions, the glorious thoughts, the ideals of beauty which dwell in the uncreated Mind, These two sources of knowledge--the subjective teachings of God in the human soul, and the objective manifestations of God in the visible universe--harmonize, and, together, fill up the complement of our natural idea of God. They are two hemispheres of thought, which together form one full-orbed fountain of light, and ought never to be separated in our philosophy. And, inasmuch as this divine light shines on all human minds, and these works of God are seen by all human eyes, the apostle argues that the heathen world "is without excuse, because, knowing God (????te? t?? Te??) they did not glorify him as God, neither were thankful; but in their reasonings they went astray after vanities, and their hearts, being
The brief and elliptical report of Paul's address on Mars' Hill must therefore, in all fairness, be interpreted in the light of his more carefully elaborated statements in the Epistle to the Romans. And when Paul intimates that the Athenians "knew not God," we can not understand him as saying they had no knowledge, but that their knowledge was imperfect. They did not know God as Creator, Father, and Ruler; above all, they did not know him as a pardoning God and a sanctifying Spirit. They had not that knowledge of God which purifies the heart, and changes the character, and gives its possessor eternal life. The apostle clearly and unequivocally recognizes this truth, that the idea of God is connatural to the human mind; that in fact there is not to be found a race of men upon the face of the globe utterly destitute of some idea of a Supreme Being. Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthful development, it has spontaneously and necessarily led the human mind to the recognition of a God. The Athenians were no exception to this general law. They believed in the existence of one supreme and eternal Mind, invisible, incomprehensible, infeffable--"the unknown God." 2. The Athenians had also that consciousness of dependence upon God which is the foundation of all the primary religious emotions. When the apostle affirmed that "in God we live, and move, and have our being," he uttered the sentiments of many, if not all, of his hearers, and in support of that affirmation he could quote the words of their own poets, for we are also his offspring;
A little reflection will convince us that this is the necessary order in which human consciousness is developed. There are at least two fundamental and radical tendencies If we consider the first of these factors more closely, we shall discover that self-consciousness exists under limitations and conditions. Man can not become clearly conscious of self without distinguishing himself from the outer world of sensation, nor without distinguishing self and the world from another being upon whom they depend as the ultimate substance and cause. Mere coenoeesthesis is not consciousness. Common feeling is unquestionably found among the lowest forms of animal life, the protozoa; but it can never rise to a clear consciousness of personality until it can distinguish itself from sensation, and acquire a presentiment of a divine power, on which self and the outer world depend. The Ego does not exist for itself, can not perceive itself, but by distinguishing itself from the ceaseless flow and change of sensation, and by this act of distinguishing, the Ego takes place in consciousness. And the Ego can not perceive itself, nor cognize sensation as a state or affection of the Ego except by the intervention of the reason, which supplies the two great fundamental laws of causality and substance. The facts of consciousness thus comprehend three elements--self, nature, and God. The determinate being, the Ego, is never an absolutely independent being, but is always in some way or other codetermined by another; it can not, therefore, be an absolutely original and independent, but must in some way or another be a derived and conditioned existence. Now that which limits and conditions human self-consciousness can not be mere nature, because nature can not give what it does not possess; it can not produce what is toto genere different from itself. Self-consciousness can not arise out of unconsciousness. This new beginning is beyond the power of nature. Personal power, the creative principle of all new beginnings, is alone adequate to its production. If, then, self-consciousness
Self-determination, equally with self-consciousness, exists in us under manifold limitations. Self-determination is limited by physical, corporeal, and mental conditions, so that there is "an impassable boundary line drawn around the area of volitional freedom." But the most fundamental and original limitation is that of duty. The self-determining power of man is not only circumscribed by necessary conditions, but also by the moral law in the consciousness of man. Self-determination alone does not suffice for the full conception of responsible freedom; it only becomes, will, properly by its being an intelligent and conscious determination; that is, the rational subject is able previously to recognize "the right," and present before his mind that which he ought to do, that which he is morally bound to realize and actualize by his own self-determination and choice. Accordingly we find in our inmost being a sense of obligation to obey the moral law as revealed in the conscience. As we can not become conscious of self without also becoming conscious of God, so we can not become properly Now this moral law, as revealed in the conscience, is not a mere autonomy--a simple subjective law having no relation to a personal lawgiver out of and above man. Every admonition of conscience directly excites the consciousness of a God to whom man is accountable. The universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, has always associated the phenomena of conscience with the idea of a personal Power above man, to whom he is subject and upon whom he depends. In every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty apprehensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices, and penances, and prayers to expatiate his wrath. It is clear, then, that if man has duties there must he a self-conscious Will by whom these duties are imposed, for only a real will can be legislative. If man has a sense of obligation, there must be a supreme authority by which he is obliged. If he is responsible, there must be a being to whom he is accountable.
This feeling of dependence, and this consequent sense of obligation, lie at the very foundation of all religion. They lead the mind towards God, and anchor it in the Divine. They prompt man to pray, and inspire him with an instinctive confidence in the efficacy of prayer. So that prayer is natural to man, and necessary to man. Never yet has the traveller found a people on earth without prayer. Races of men have been found without houses, without raiment, without arts and sciences, but never without prayer any more than without speech. Plutarch wrote, eighteen centuries ago, If you go through all the world, you may find cities without walls, without letters, without rulers, without money, without theatres, but never without temples and gods, or without prayers, oaths, prophecies, and sacrifices, used to obtain blessings and benefits, or to avert curses and calamities.
This universal tendency to recognize a superior Power upon whom we are dependent, and by whose hand our well-being and our destinies are absolutely controlled, has revealed itself even amid the most complicated forms of polytheistic worship. Amid the even and undisturbed flow of every-day life they might be satisfied with the worship of subordinate deities, but in the midst of sudden and unexpected calamities, and of terrible catastrophes, then they cried to the Supreme God.
"Thus also Minutius Felix says, 'When they stretch out their hands to heaven they mention only God; and these forms of speech, He is great, and God is true, and If God grant(which are the natural language of the vulgar), are a plain confession of the truth of Christianity.' And also Lactantius testifies, 'When they swear, and when they wish, and when they give thanks, they name not many gods, but God only; the truth, by a secret force of nature, thus breaking forth from them whether they will or no;' and again he says, 'They fly to God; aid is desired of God; they pray that God would help them; and when one is reduced to extreme necessity, he begs for God's sake, and by his divine power alone implores the mercy of men.'"
"The unknown God" was their deliverer from the plague. And the erection of an altar to him was a confession of their absolute dependence upon him, of their obligation to worship him, as well as of their need of a deeper knowledge of him. The gods who were known and named were not able to deliver them in times of calamity, and they were compelled to look beyond the existing forms of Grecian mythology for relief. Beyond all the gods of the Olympus there was "one God over all," the Father of gods and men, the Creator of all the subordinate local deities, upon whom even these created gods were dependent, upon whom man was absolutely dependent, and therefore in times of deepest need, of severest suffering, of extremest peril, then they cried to the living, supreme, eternal God.
3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious emotions which always accompany the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being. The first emotional element of all religion is fear. This is unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and presence pervading and informing all nature is beautifully described by Wordsworth in his history of the development of the Scottish herdsman's mind: So the foundations of his mind were laid In such communion, not from terror free. While yet a child, and long before his time, Had he perceived the presence and the power Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed So vividly great objects, that they lay Upon his mind like substances, whose presence Perplexed the bodily sense. ... In the after-day Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn, And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags, He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind.... Such was the Boy,--but for the growing Youth, What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked: Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched. And in their silent faces could he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life, In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God. But it may be said this is all mere poetry; to which we answer, in the words of Aristotle, "Poetry is a thing more philosophical and weightier than history." It is true that all minds may not be developed in precisely the same manner as Wordsworth's herdsman's, because the development of every individual mind is modified in some measure by exterior conditions. Men may contemplate nature from different points of view. Some may be impressed with one aspect of nature, some with another. But none will fail to recognize a mysterious presence and invisible power beneath all the fleeting and changeful phenomena of the universe. "And sometimes there are moments of tenderness, of sorrow, and of vague mystery which bring the feeling of the Infinite Presence close to the human heart."
Now we hold that this feeling and sentiment of the Divine--the supernatural--exists in every mind. It may be, it undoubtedly is, somewhat modified in its manifestations by the circumstances in which men are placed, and the degree of culture they have enjoyed. The African Fetichist, in his moral and intellectual debasement, conceives a supernatural power enshrined in every object of nature. The rude Fijian regards with dread, and even terror, the Being who darts the lightnings and wields the thunderbolts. The Indian "sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." The Scottish "herdsman" on the lonely
Along with this sentiment of the Divine there is also associated, in all human minds, an instinctive yearning after the Invisible; not a mere feeling of curiosity to pierce the mystery of being and of life, but what Paul designates "a feeling after God," which prompts man to seek after a deeper knowledge, and a more immediate consciousness. To attain this deeper knowledge--this more conscious realization of the being and the presence of God, has been the effort of all philosophy and all religion in all ages. The Hindoo Yogis proposes to withdraw into his inmost self, and by a complete suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.
"'Par delÀ tous ces cieux le Dieu des cieux rÉside.'" So Voltaire has said, and the God who is beyond the skies is not nature personified, but a supernatural Personality. It is to this highest Personality that all religions address themselves. It is to bring man into communion with Him that they exist.
4. The Athenians had that deep consciousness of sin and guilt, and of consequent liability to punishment, which confesses the need of expiation by piacular sacrifices. Every man feels himself to be an accountable being, and he is conscious that in wrong-doing he is deserving of blame and of punishment. Deep within the soul of the transgressor is the consciousness that he is a guilty man, and he is haunted with the perpetual apprehension of a retribution which, like the spectre of evil omen, crosses his every path, and meets him at every turn. "Tis guilt alone, Like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mode, Fills the light air with visionary terrors, And shapeless forms of fear." Man does not possess this consciousness of guilt so much as it holds possession of him. It pursues the fugitive from justice, and it lays hold on the man who has resisted or escaped the hand of the executioner. The sense of guilt is a power over and above man; a power so wonderful that it often compels the most reckless criminal to deliver himself up, with the confession of his deed, to the sword of justice, when a falsehood would have easily protected him. Man is only able by persevering, ever-repeated efforts at self-induration, against the remonstrances of conscience, to withdraw himself from its power. His success is, however, but very partial; for sometimes, in the moments of his greatest security, the reproaches of conscience break in upon him like a flood, and sweep away all his refuge of lies. "The evil conscience is the divine bond which binds the created spirit, even in deep apostasy, to its Original. In the consciousness of guilt there is revealed the essential relation of our spirit to God, although misunderstood by man until he has something higher than his evil conscience. The trouble and anguish which the remonstrances of this consciousness excite--the inward unrest which sometimes seizes the slave of sin--are proofs that he has not quite broken away from God."
In Grecian mythology there was a very distinct recognition of the power of conscience, and a reference of its authority to the Divinity, together with the idea of retribution. Nemesis was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraidings of conscience, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in the human heart after the commission of sin. And as the feeling of remorse may be considered as the consequence of the displeasure and vengeance of an offended God, Nemesis came to be regarded as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable Along with this deep consciousness of guilt, and this fear of retribution which haunts the guilty mind, there has also rested upon the heart of universal humanity a deep and abiding conviction that something must be done to expiate the guilt of sin--some restitution must be made, some suffering must be endured,
It must be known to every one at all acquainted with Greek mythology that the idea of expiation--atonement--was a fundamental idea of their religion. Independent of any historical research, a very slight glance at the Greek and Roman classics, especially the poets, who were the theologians of that age, can leave little doubt upon this head.
We do not deem it needful to discuss at length the question which has been so earnestly debated among theologians, as to whether the idea of expiation be a primitive and necessary idea of the human mind, or whether the practice of piacular sacrifices came into the post-diluvian world with Noah, as a This much, however, must be conceded on all hands, that there are certain fundamental intuitions, universal and necessary, which underlie the almost universal practice of expiatory sacrifice, namely, the universal consciousness of guilt, and the universal conviction that something must be done to expiate guilt, to compensate for wrong, and to atone for past misdeeds. But how that expiation can be effected, how that atonement can be made, is a question which reason does not seem competent to answer. That personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own sins are not transferable either in their guilt or punishment, is so obviously just that we feel it must have been as clear to the mind of the Greek who brought his victim to be offered to Zeus, as it is to the philosophic mind of to-day.
The origin of expiatory sacrifices can not, we think, be explained except on the principle of a primitive revelation and a positive appointment of God. They can not be understood except as a divinely-appointed symbolism, in which there is exhibited a confession of personal guilt and desert of punishment; an intimation and a hope that God will be propitious and merciful; and a typical promise and prophecy of a future Redeemer from sin, who shall "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." This sacred rite was instituted in connection with the protevangelium given to our first parents; it was diffused among the nations by tradition, and has been kept alive as a general, and, indeed, almost universal observance, by that deep sense of sin, and consciousness of guilt, and personal urgency of the need of a reconciliation, which are so clearly displayed in Grecian mythology. The legitimate inference we find ourselves entitled to draw from the words of Paul, when fairly interpreted in the light of the past religious history of the world, is, that the Athenians were a religious people; that is, they were, however unknowing, believers in and worshippers of the One Supreme God. CHAPTER IV.THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS: ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND SYMBOLICAL ASPECTS.
The conclusion reached in the previous chapter that the Athenians were believers in and worshippers of the One Supreme God, has been challenged with some considerable show of reason and force, on the ground that they were Polytheists and Idolaters. An objection which presents itself so immediately on the very face of the sacred narrative, and which is sustained by the unanimous voice of history, is entitled to the fullest consideration. And as the interests of truth are infinitely more precious than the maintenance of any theory, however plausible, we are constrained to accord to this objection the fullest weight, and give to it the most impartial consideration. We can not do otherwise than at once admit that the Athenians were Polytheists--they worshipped "many gods" besides "the unknown God." It is equally true that they were Idolaters--they worshipped images or statues of the gods, which images were also, by an easy metonymy, called "gods." But surely no one supposes that this is all that can be said upon the subject, and that, after such admissions, the discussion must be closed. On the contrary, we have, as yet, scarce caught a glimpse of the real character and genius of Grecian The assumption that the heathen regarded the images "graven by art and device of man" as the real creators of the world and man, or as having any control over the destinies of men, sinks at once under the weight of its own absurdity. Such hypothesis is repudiated with scorn and indignation by the heathens themselves. Cotta, in Cicero, declares explicitly: "though it be common and familiar language amongst us to call corn Ceres, and wine Bacchus, yet who can think any one so mad as to take that to be really a god that he feeds upon?"
And furthermore, that even the invisible divinities which these images were designed to represent, were each independent, self-existent beings, and that the stories which are told concerning them by Homer and Hesiod were received in a literal sense, is equally improbable. The earliest philosophers knew as well as we know, that the Deity, in order to be Deity, must be either perfect or nothing--that he must be one, not many--without parts and passions; and they were scandalized and shocked by the religious fables of the ancient mythology as much as we are. Xenophanes, who lived, as we know, before Pythagoras, accuses Homer and Hesiod of having ascribed to the gods every thing that is disgraceful amongst men, as stealing, adultery, and deceit. He remarks "that men seem to have
If, then, poetic and allegorical representations of divine things are to be permitted in the ideal republic, then the founders of the state are to prescribe "the moulds in which the poets are to cast their fictions." "Now what are these moulds to be in the case of Theology? They may be described as follows: It is right always to represent God as he really is, whether the poet describe him in an epic, or a lyric, or a dramatic poem. Now God is, beyond all else, good in reality, and therefore so to be represented. But nothing that is good is hurtful. That which is good hurts not; does no evil; is the cause of no evil. That which is good is beneficial; is the cause of good. And, therefore, that which is good is not the cause of all which is and happens, but only of that which is as it should be.... The good things we must ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and not in him, the causes of evil things." We must, then, express our disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, who is guilty of such a foolish blunder as to tell us (Iliad, xxiv. 660) that: 'Fast by the threshold of Jove's court are placed Two casks--one stored with evil, one with good:'placed and that he for whom the Thunderer mingles both-- 'He leads a life checkered with good and ill.' But as for the man to whom he gives the bitter cup unmixed-- 'He walks The blessed earth unbless'd, go where he will.' And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties by the act of Pandarus was brought about by AthenÉ and Zeus (Iliad, ii. 60), we should refuse our approbation. Nor can we allow it to be said that the strife and trial of strength between Inasmuch as God is perfect to the utmost in beauty and goodness, he abides ever the same, and without any variation in his form. Then let no poet tell us that (Odyss. xvii. 582) 'In similitude of strangers oft The Gods, who can with ease all shapes assume, Repair to populous cities.' And let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, or introduce in tragedies, or any other poems, Hera transformed into the guise of a princess collecting 'Alms for the life-giving children of Inachus, river of Argos,' not to mention many other falsehoods which we must interdict. "When a poet holds such language concerning the gods, we shall be angry with him, and refuse him a chorus. Neither shall we allow our teachers to use his writings for the instruction of the young, if we would have our guards grow up to be as god-like and god-fearing as it is possible for men to be." We are thus constrained by the statements of the heathens themselves, as well as by the dictates of common sense, to look beyond the external drapery and the material forms of Polytheism for some deeper and truer meaning that shall be more in harmony with the facts of the universal religious consciousness of our race. The religion of ancient Greece consisted in something more than the fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo and Minerva, of Venus and Bacchus. "Through the rank and poisonous vegetation of mythic phraseology, we may always catch a glimpse of an original stem round which it creeps and winds itself, and without which it can not enjoy that parasitical existence which has been mistaken for independent vitality."
It is an obvious truth, attested by the voice of universal consciousness as revealed in history, that the human mind can never rest satisfied within the sphere of sensible phenomena. Man is impelled by an inward necessity to pass, in thought, beyond the boundary-line of sense, and inquire after causes and entities which his reason assures him must lie beneath all sensible appearances. He must and will interpret nature according to the forms of his own personality, or according to the fundamental ideas of his own reason. In the childlike subjectivity of the undisciplined mind he will either transfer to nature the phenomena of his own personality, regarding the world as a living organism which has within it an informing soul, and thus attain a pantheistic conception of the universe; or else he will fix upon some extraordinary and inexplicable phenomenon of nature, and, investing it with supernatural significance, will rise from thence to a religious and theocratic conception of nature as a whole. An intelligence--a mind within nature, and inseparable from nature, or else above nature and governing nature, is, for man, an inevitable thought. It is equally obvious that humanity can never relegate itself from a supernatural origin, neither can it ever absolve itself from a permanent correlation with the Divine. Man feels within him an instinctive nobility. He did not arise out of the bosom of nature; in some mysterious way he has descended from an eternal mind, he is "the offspring of God." And furthermore, a theocratic conception of nature, associated with a pre-eminent regard for certain apparently supernatural experiences in the history of humanity, becomes the foundation of governments, of civil authority, and of laws. Society can not be founded without the aid of the Deity, and a commonwealth can only be organized by Divine interposition. "A Ceres must appear and sow the fields with corn." And a Numa or a Lycurgus must be heralded by the oracle as "Dear to Jove, and all who sit in the halls of the Olympus." He must be a "descendant of Zeus," appointed by the gods Grecian polytheism can not be otherwise regarded than as a poetico-historical religion of myth and symbol which is under-laid by a natural Theism; a parasitical growth which winds itself around the original stem of instinctive faith in a supernatural Power and Presence which pervades the universe. The myths are oral traditions, floating down from that dim; twilight of poetic history, which separates real history, with its fixed chronology, from the unmeasured and unrecorded eternity--faint echoes from that mystic border-land which divides the natural from the supernatural, and in which they seem to have been marvellously commingled. They are the lingering memories of those manifestations of God to men, in which he or his celestial ministers came into visible intercourse with our race; the reality of which is attested by sacred history. In all these myths there is a theogonic and cosmogonic element. They tell of the generation of the celestial and aËrial divinities--the subordinate agents and ministers of the Divine government. They attempt an explanation of the genesis of the visible universe, the origin of humanity, and the development of human society. In the presence of history, the substance of these myths is preserved by symbols, that is, by means of natural or artificial, real or striking objects, which, by some analogy Whilst the pagan polytheistic worship is, under one aspect, to be regarded as a departure from God, inasmuch as it takes away the honor due to God alone, and transfers it to the creature; still, under another aspect, we can not fail to recognize in it the effort of the human mind to fill up the chasm that seemed, to the undisciplined mind, to separate God and man--and to bridge the gulf between the visible and the invisible, the finite and the infinite. It was unquestionably an attempt to bring God nearer to the sense and comprehension of man. It had its origin in that instinctive yearning after the supernatural, the Divine, which dwells in all human hearts, and which has revealed itself in all philosophies, mysticisms, and religions.
A philosophy of Grecian mythology, such as we have outlined in the preceding paragraphs, is, in our judgment, perfectly consistent with the views announced by Paul in his address to the Athenians. He intimates that the Athenians "thought that the Godhead was like unto (? ?a? ?µ????)--to be imaged or represented by human art--by gold, and silver, and precious stone graven by art, and device of man;" that is, they thought the perfections of God could be represented to the eye by an image, or symbol. The views of Paul are still more articulately expressed in Romans, i. 23, 25: "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the similitude of an image of corruptible man,.... and they worshipped and served the thing made, pa??--rather than, or more than the Creator." Here, then, the apostle intimates, first, that the heathen knew God,
It is at once conceded by us, that the "sensus numinis," the natural intuition of a Supreme Mind, whose power and presence are revealed in nature, can not maintain itself, as an influential, and vivifying, and regulative belief amongst men, without the continual supernatural interposition of God; that is, without a succession of Divine revelations. And further, we grant that, instead of this symbolic mode of worship deepening and vitalizing the sense of God as a living power and presence, there is great danger that the symbol shall at length unconsciously take the place of God, and be worshipped instead of Him. From the purest form of symbolism which prevailed in The views here presented will, we venture to believe, be found most in harmony with a true philosophy of the human mind; with the religious phenomena of the world; and, as we shall subsequently see, with the writings of those poets and philosophers who may be fairly regarded as representing the sentiments and opinions of the ancient world. At the same time, we have no desire to conceal the fact that this whole question as to the origin, and character, and philosophy of the mythology and symbolism of the religions of the ancient world has been a subject of earnest controversy from Patristic times down to the present hour, and that even to-day there exists a wide diversity of opinion among philosophers, as well as theologians. The principal theories offered may be classed as the ethical, the physical, and the historical, according to the different objects the framers of the myths are supposed to have had in view. Some have regarded the myths as invented by the priests and wise men of old for the improvement and government of society, It is beyond our design to discuss all the various theories presented, or even to give a history of opinions entertained.
There are two fundamental propositions laid down by Cudworth which constitute the basis of this hypothesis. 1. No well-authenticated instance can be furnished from among the Greek Polytheists of one who taught the existence of a multiplicity of independenty uncreated, self-existent deities; they almost universally 2. The Greek Polytheists taught a plurality of "GENERATED DEITIES," who owe their existence to the power and will of the Supreme God, who are by Him invested with delegated powers, and who, as the agents of his universal providence, preside over different departments of the created universe. The evidence presented by Cudworth in support of his theses is so varied and so voluminous, that it defies all attempts at condensation. His volumes exhibit an extent of reading, of patient research, and of varied learning, which is truly amazing. The discussion of these propositions involves, in fact, nothing less than a complete and exhaustive survey of the entire field of ancient literature, a careful study of the Greek and Latin poets, of the Oriental, Greek, and Alexandrian philosophers, and a review of the statements and criticisms of Rabbinical and Patristic writers in regard to the religions of the pagan world. An adequate conception of the varied and weighty evidence which is collected by our author from these fields, in support of his views, could only be conveyed by transcribing to our pages the larger portion of his memorable fourth chapter. But inasmuch as Grecian polytheism is, in fact, the culmination of all the mythological systems of the ancient world, the fully-developed flower and ripened fruit of the cosmical and theological conceptions of the childhood-condition of humanity, we propose to epitomize the results of his inquiry as to the theological, opinions of the Greeks, supplying additional confirmation of his views from other sources. And first, he proves most conclusively that Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod, 'First of all the gods planned he love;' and further, Hesiod: 'First of all was Chaos, afterwards Earth, With her spacious bosom, And Love, who is pre-eminent among all the immortals;' as intimating here that in entities there should exist some cause that will impart motion, and hold bodies in union together. But how, in regard to these, one ought to distribute them, as to the order of priority, can be decided afterwards.
Now whether this "first principle," called "Love," "the cause of motion and of union" in the universe, was regarded as a personal Being, and whether, as the ancient scholiast taught, Hesiod's love was "the heavenly Love, which is also God, that other love that was born of Venus being junior," is just now of no moment to the argument. The more important inference is,
The careful reader of Cudworth will also learn another truth of the utmost importance in this connection, viz., that the theogony of the Greek poets was, in fact, a cosmogony, the generation of the gods being, in reality, the generation of the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the various powers and phenomena of nature. This is dimly shadowed forth in the very names which are given to some of these divinities. Thus Helios is the sun, Selena is the moon, Zeus the sky--the deep blue heaven, Eos the dawn, and Erse the dew. It is rendered still more evident by the opening lines of Hesiod's "Theogonia," in which he invokes the muses: "Hail ye daughters of Jupiter! Grant a delightsome song. Tell of the race of immortal gods, always existing, Who are the offspring of the earth, of the starry sky, And of the gloomy night, whom also the ocean nourisheth. Tell how the gods and the earth at first were made, And the rivers, and the mighty deep, boiling with waves, And the glowing stars, and the broad heavens above, And the gods, givers of good, born of these." Where we see plainly that the generation of the gods is the generation of the earth, the heaven, the stars, the seas, the rivers, and other things produced by them. "But immediately after invocation of the Muses the poet begins with Chaos, and Tartara, and Love, as the first principles, and then proceeds to the production of the earth and of night out of chaos; of the ether and of day, from night; of the starry heavens, mountains, and seas. All which generation of gods is really nothing but But in spite of all this mythological obscuration, the belief in one Supreme God is here and there most clearly recognizable. "That Zeus was originally to the Greeks the Supreme God, the true God--nay, at some time their only God--can be perceived in spite of the haze which mythology has raised around his name."
In Homer there is a perpetual blending of the natural and the supernatural, the human and divine. The Iliad is an incongruous medley of theology, physics, and history. In its gorgeous scenic representations, nature, humanity, and deity are
"When Homer introduces Eumaios, the swineherd, speaking of this life and the higher powers that rule it, he knows
The Greek tragedians were the great religious instructors of the Athenian people. "Greek tragedy grew up in connection with religious worship, and constituted not only a popular but a sacred element in the festivals of the gods.... In short,
Now it is unquestionable that, with the tragedians, Zeus is the Supreme God. Æschylus is pre-eminently the theological poet of Greece. The great problems which lie at the foundation of religious faith and practice are the main staple of nearly all his tragedies. Homer, Hesiod, the sacred poets, had looked at these questions in their purely poetic aspects. The subsequent philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, developed them more fully by their didactic method. Æschylus stands on the dividing-line between them, no less poetic than the former, scarcely less philosophical than the latter, but more intensely practical, personal, and theological than either. The character of the Supreme Divinity, as represented in his tragedies, approaches more nearly to the Christian idea of God. He is the Universal Father--Father of gods and men; the Universal Cause (pa?a?t???, Agamem. 1485); the All-seer and All-doer (pa?t?pt??, pa?e???t??, ibid, and Sup. 139); the All-wise and All-controlling (pa???at??, Sup. 813); the Just and the Executor of justice (d???f????, Agamem. 525); true and incapable of falsehood (Prom. 1031); ?e?d????e?? ??? ??? ?p?stata? st?µa t? d???, ???? p?? ?p?? te?e?,-- holy (?????, Sup. 650); merciful (p?e?µ????, ibid. 139); the God especially of the suppliant and the stranger (Supplices, passim); the most high and perfect One (t??e??? ???st??, Eumen. Sophocles was the great master who carried Greek tragedy to its highest perfection. Only seven out of more than a hundred of his tragedies have come down to us. There are passages cited by Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, and others which are not found in those tragedies now extant. The most famous and extensively quoted passage is given by Cudworth. ??? ta?? ????e?a?s??, e?? ?st?? ?e??, ?? ???a??? t? ?te??e ?a? ?a?a? µa????, ???t?? te ?a??p?? ??dµa, ????µ?? ß?a?, ?. t. ?. This "one only God" is Zeus, who is the God of justice, and reigns supreme: "Still in yon starry heaven supreme, Jove, all-beholding, all-directing, dwells-- To him commit thy vengeance."--"Electra," p. 174 sqq. This description of the unsleeping, undecaying power and dominion of Zeus is worthy of some Hebrew prophet-- "Spurning the power of age, enthroned in might, Thou dwell'st mid heaven's broad light; This was in ages past thy firm decree, Is now, and shall forever be: That none of mortal race on earth shall know A life of joy serene, a course unmarked by woe." "Antigone," pp. 606-614.
Whether we regard the poets as the principal theological teachers of the ancient Greeks, or as the compilers, systematizers, and artistic embellishers of the theological traditions and myths which were afloat in the primitive Hellenic families, we can not resist the conclusion that, for the masses of the people Zeus was the Supreme God, "the God of gods" as Plato calls "O Zeus, father, O Zeus, king." In moments of deepest sorrow, of immediate urgency and need, of greatest stress and danger, they had recourse to Zeus. "Courage, courage, my child! There is still in heaven the great Zeus; He watches over all things, and he rules. Commit thy exceeding bitter griefs to him, And be not angry against thine enemies, Nor forget them."
He was supplicated, as the God who reigns on high, in the prayer of the Athenian-- "Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians and on their fields." It has been urged that, as Zeus means the sky, therefore he is no more than the deep concave of heaven personified and deified, and that consequently Zeus is not the true, the only God. This argument is only equalled in feebleness by that of the materialist, who argues that "spiritus" means simply breath, therefore the breath is the soul. Even if the Greeks remembered that, originally, Zeus meant the sky, that would have no more perplexed their minds than the remembrance that "thymos"--mind--meant originally blast. "The fathers of Greek theology gave to that Supreme Intelligence, which they instinctively recognized as above and ruling over the universe, the name of Zeus; but in doing so, they knew well that by Zeus they meant more than the sky. The unfathomable depth, the everlasting
The high and brilliant sky has, in many languages and many religions, been regarded as the dwelling-place of God. Indeed, to all of us in Christian times "God is above;" he is "the God of heaven;" "his throne is in the heavens;" "he reigns on high." Now, without doing any violence to thought, the name of the abode might be transferred to him who dwells in heaven. So that in our own language "heaven" may still be used as a synonym for "God." The prodigal son is still represented as saying, I have sinned against "heaven." And a Christian poet has taught us to sing-- "High heaven, that heard my solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear," etc. Whenever, therefore, we find the name of heaven thus used to designate also the Deity, we must bear in mind that those by whom it was originally employed were simply transferring that name from an object visible to the eye of sense to another object perceived by the eye of reason. They who at first called God "Heaven" had some conception within them they wished to name--the growing image of a God, and they fixed upon the vastest, grandest, purest object in nature, the deep blue concave of heaven, overshadowing all, and embracing all, as the
Notwithstanding, then, that the instinctive, native faith of humanity in the existence of one supreme God was overlaid and almost buried beneath the rank and luxuriant vegetation of Grecian mythology, we can still catch glimpses here and there of the solid trunk of native faith, around which this parasitic growth of fancy is entwined. Above all the phantasmata of gods and goddesses who descended to the plains of Troy, and mingled in the din and strife of battle, we can recognize an overshadowing, all-embracing Power and Providence that dwells on high, which never descends into the battle-field, and is never seen by mortal eyes--the Universal King and Father,--the "God of gods." Besides the direct evidence, which is furnished by the poets and mythologists, of the presence of this universal faith in "the heavenly Father," there is also a large amount of collateral testimony that this idea of one Supreme God was generally entertained by the Greek pagans, whether learned or unlearned.
From the poets we now pass to the philosophers. The former we have regarded as reflecting the traditional beliefs of the unreasoning multitude. The philosophers unquestionably represent the reflective spirit, the speculative thought, of the educated classes of Greek society. Turning to the writings of the philosophers, we may therefore reasonably expect that, instead of the dim, undefined, and nebulous form in which the religious sentiment revealed itself amongst the unreflecting portions of the Greek populations, we shall find their theological ideas distinctly and articulately expressed, and that we shall consequently be able to determine their religious opinions with considerable accuracy. Now that Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all believers in the existence of one supreme, uncreated, eternal God, has been, we think, clearly shown by Cudworth.
In subsequent chapters on "the Philosophers of Athens," we shall enter more fully into the discussion of this question. Meantime we assume that, with few exceptions, the Greek philosophers were "genuine Theists." The point, however, with which we are now concerned is, that whilst they believed in one supreme, uncreated, eternal God, they at the same time recognized the existence of a plurality of generated deities who owe their existence to the power and will of the Supreme God, and who, as the agents and ministers of His universal providence, preside over different departments of the created universe. They are at once Monotheists and Polytheists--believers in "one God" and "many gods." This is a peculiarity, Now that there can be but one infinite and absolutely perfect Being--one supreme, uncreated, eternal God--is self-evident; therefore a multiplicity of such gods is a contradiction and an impossibility. The early philosophers knew this as well as the modern. The Deity, in order to be Deity, must be one and not many: must be perfect or nothing. If, therefore, we would do justice to these old Greeks, we must inquire what explanations they have offered in regard to "the many gods" of which they speak. We must ascertain whether they regarded these "gods" as created or uncreated beings, dependent or independent, temporal or eternal We must inquire in what sense the term "god" is applied to these lesser divinities,--whether it is not applied in an accommodated and therefore allowable sense, as in the sacred Scriptures it is applied to kings and magistrates, and those who are appointed by God as the teachers and rulers of men. "They are called gods to whom the word of God came." Thales, one of the most ancient of the Greek philosophers, taught the existence of a plurality of gods, as is evident from that saying of his, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, "The world has life, and is full of gods."
Xenophanes was also an assertor of many gods, and one God; but his one God is unquestionably supreme. "There is one God, the greatest amongst gods and men;" or, "God is one, the greatest amongst gods and men." Empedocles also believed in one Supreme God, who "is wholly and perfectly mind, ineffable, holy, with rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the whole world," and from whom all things else are derived,--"all things that are upon the earth, and in the air and water, may be truly called the works of God, who ruleth over the world, out of whom, according to Empedocles, proceed all things, plants, men, beasts, and gods."
It were needless to attempt the proof that Plato believed in one Supreme God, and only one. This one Being is, with him, And yet remarkable as these expressions are, sounding, as they do, so like the language of inspiration,
And, now that we have in Plato the culmination of Grecian speculative thought, we may learn from him the mature and final judgment of the ancients in regard to the gods of pagan mythology. We open the TimÆus, and here we find his views most definitely expressed. After giving an account of the "generation" of the sun, and moon, and planets, which are by him designated as "visible gods," he then proceeds "to speak concerning the other divinities:" "We must on this subject assent to those who in former times have spoken thereon; who were, as they said, the offspring of the gods, and who doubtless were well acquainted with their own ancestors..... Let then the genealogy of the gods be, and be acknowledged to be, that which they deliver. Of Earth and Heaven the children were Oceanus and Tethys; and of these the children were Phorcys, and Kronos, and Rhea, and all that followed these; and from these were born Zeus and Hera, and those who are regarded as brothers and sisters of these, and others their offspring. 'Gods, and sons of gods, of whom I am the father and the author, produced by me, ye are indestructible because I will.... Now inasmuch as you have been generated, you are hence not immortal, nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall never be dissolved nor become subject to the fatality of death, because so I have willed.... Learn, therefore, my commands. Three races of mortals yet remain to be created. Unless these be created, the universe will be imperfect, for it will not contain within it every kind of animal.... In order that these mortal creatures may be, and that this world may be really a cosmos, do you apply yourselves to the creation of animals, imitating the exercises of my power in creating you.'"
Here, then, we see that Plato carefully distinguishes between the sole Eternal Author of the universe, on one hand, and the "souls," vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the heavenly orbs, and diffuses through all nature, on the other. These subordinate powers or agents are all created, "generated deities," who owe their continued existence to the will of God; and though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, and a subsequent direction and government of created things, they are still only the servants and the deputies of the Supreme Creator, and Director, and Ruler of all things. These subordinate agents and ministers employed in the creation and providential government of the world appear, in the estimation of Plato, to have been needed-- 1. To satisfy the demands of the popular faith, which presented its facts to be explained no less than those of external nature. Plato had evidently a great veneration for antiquity, a peculiar regard for "tradition venerable through ancient report," and "doctrines hoary with years."
2. These intermediate agents seem to have been demanded to satisfy the disposition and tendency which has revealed itself in all systems, of interposing some scale of ascent between the material creation and the infinite Creator. The mechanical theory of the universe has interposed its long series of secondary causes--the qualities, properties, laws, forces of nature; the vital theory which attaches a separate "soul" to the various parts of nature as the cause and intelligent director of its movements. Of these "souls" or gods, there were different orders and degrees--deified men or heroes, aËrial, terrestrial, and celestial divinities, ascending from nature up to God. And this tendency to supply some scale of ascent towards the Deity, or at least to people the vast territory which seems to swell between the world and God, finds some countenance in "the angels and archangels," "the thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers" of the Christian scriptures. 3. These inferior ministers also seemed to Plato to increase the stately grandeur and imperial majesty of the Divine government. They swell the retinue of the Deity in his grand "circuit through the highest arch of heaven."
4. And, finally, the host of inferior deities interposed between the material sensible world and God seemed to Plato as needful in order to explain the apparent defects and disorders of sublunary affairs. Plato was jealous of the Divine honor. "All good must be ascribed to God, and nothing but good. We must find evil, disorder, suffering, in some other cause."
Aristotle seems to have regarded the popular polytheism of Greece as a perverted relic of a deeper and purer "Theology" which he conceives to have been, in all probability, perfected in the distant past, and then comparatively lost. He says-- "The tradition has come down from very ancient times, being left in a mythical garb to succeeding generations, that these (the heavenly bodies) are gods, and that the Divinity encompasses the whole of nature. There have been made, however, to these certain fabulous additions for the purpose of winning the belief of the multitude, and thus securing their obedience to the laws, and their co-operation towards advancing the general welfare of the state. These additions have been to the effect that these gods were of the same form as men, and even that some of them were in appearance similar to certain others amongst the rest of the animal creation. The wise course, however, would be for the philosopher to disengage from these traditions the false element, and to embrace that which is true; and the truth lies in that portion of this ancient doctrine which regards the first and deepest ground of all existence to be the Divine, and this he may regard as a divine utterance. In all probability, every art, and science, and philosophy has been over and over again discovered to the farthest extent possible, and then again lost; and we may conceive these opinions to have been preserved to us as a sort of fragment of these lost philosophers. We see, then, to some extent the relation of the popular belief to these ancient opinions."
The views of the educated and philosophic mind of Greece in regard to the mythological deities may, in conclusion, be thus briefly stated-- I. They are all created beings--"GENERATED DEITIES," who are dependent on, and subject to, the will of one supreme God. II. They are the AGENTS employed by God in the creation of, at least some parts of, the universe, and in the movement and direction of the entire cosmos; and they are also the MINISTERS and MESSENGERS of that universal providence which he exercises over the human race. These subordinate deities are, 1. the greater parts of the visible mundane system animated by intelligent souls, and called "sensible gods"--the sun, the moon, the stars, and even the earth itself, and known by the names Helios, Selena, Kronos, Hermes, etc. 2. Some are invisible powers, having peculiar offices and functions and presiding over special places provinces and departments of the universe;--one ruling in the heavens (Zeus), another in the air (Juno), another in the sea (Neptune), another in the subterranean regions (Pluto); one god presiding over learning and wisdom (Minerva), another over poetry, music, and religion (Apollo), another over justice and political order (Themis), another over war (Mars), another over corn (Ceres), and another the vine (Bacchus). 3. Others, again, are ethereal and aËrial beings, who have the guardianship of individual persons and things, and are called demons, genii, and lares; superior indeed to men, but inferior to the gods above named. "Wherefore, since there were no other gods among the Pagans besides those above enumerated, unless their images, statues, and symbols should be accounted such (because they were also sometimes abusively called 'gods'), which could not be supposed by them to have been unmade or without beginning, they being the workmanship of their own hands, we conclude, universally, that all that multiplicity of Pagan gods which make so great a show and noise was really either nothing but several names and notions of one supreme Deity, according to his different manifestations, gifts, and effects upon the world personated, or else many inferior understanding beings,
That the heathen regard the one Supreme Being as the first and chief object of worship is evident from the apologies which they offered for worshipping, besides Him, many inferior divinities. 1. They claimed to worship them only as inferior beings, and that therefore they were not guilty of giving them that honor which belonged to the Supreme. They claimed to worship the supreme God incomparably above all. 2. That this honor which is bestowed upon the inferior divinities does ultimately redound to the supreme God, and aggrandize his state and majesty, they being all his ministers and attendants. 3. That as demons are mediators between the celestial gods and men, so those celestial gods are also mediators between men and the supreme God, and, as it were, convenient steps by which we ought with reverence to approach him. 4. That demons or angels being appointed to preside over kingdoms, cities, and persons, and being many ways benefactors to us, thanks ought to be returned to them by sacrifice. 5. Lastly, that it can not be thought that the Supreme Being will envy those inferior beings that worship or honor which is bestowed upon them; nor suspect that any of these inferior deities will factiously go about to set up themselves against the Supreme God. The Pagans, furthermore, apologized for worshipping God in images, statues, and symbols, on the ground that these were only schetically worshipped by them, the honor passing from them to the prototype. And since we live in bodies, and can To the Christian conscience the above reasons assigned furnish no real justification of Polytheism and Idolatry; but they are certainly a tacit confession of their belief in the one Supreme God, and their conviction that, notwithstanding their idolatry, He only ought to be worshipped. The heathen polytheists are therefore justly condemned in Scripture, and pronounced to be "inexcusable." They had the knowledge of the true God--" they knew God" and yet "they glorified him not as God." "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of corruptible man." And, finally, they ended in "worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator."
It can not, then, with justice be denied that the Athenians had some knowledge of the true God, and some just and worthy conceptions of his character. It is equally certain that a powerful and influential religious sentiment pervaded the Athenian mind. Their extreme "carefulness in religion" must be conceded by us, and, in some sense, commended by us, as it was by Paul in his address on Mars' Hill. At the same time it must also be admitted and deplored that the purer theology of primitive times was corrupted by offensive legends, and encrusted by polluting myths, though not utterly defaced.
The influence of the religious dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles on the Athenian mind must not be overlooked. No writer of pagan antiquity made the voice of conscience speak with the same power and authority that Æschylus did. "Crime," he says, "never dies without posterity." "Blood that has been shed congeals on the ground, crying out for an avenger." The old poet made himself the echo of what he called "the lyreless hymn of the Furies," who, with him, represented severe Justice striking the guilty when his hour comes, and giving warning beforehand by the terrors which haunt him. His dramas are characterized by deep religious feeling. Reverence for the gods, the recognition of an inflexible moral order, resignation to the decisions of Heaven, an abiding presentiment of a future state of reward and punishment, are strikingly predominant. Whilst Æschylus reveals to us the sombre, terror-stricken "Oh be the lot forever mine Unsullied to maintain, In act and word, with awe divine, What potent laws ordain. "Laws spring from purer realms above: Their father is the Olympian Jove. Ne'er shall oblivion veil their front sublime, Th' indwelling god is great, nor fears the wastes of time." The religious inspiration that animates Sophocles breaks out with incomparable beauty in the last words of Œdipus, when the old banished king sees through the darkness of death a mysterious light dawn, which illumines his blind eyes, and which brings to him the assurance of a blessed immortality.
Such a theology could not have been utterly powerless. The influence of truth, in every measure and degree, must be salutary, and especially of truth in relation to God, to duty, and to immortality. The religion of the Athenians must have had some wholesome and conserving influence of the social and political life of Athens.
The religion of the Athenians was unable to deliver them from the guilt of sin, redeem them from its power, and make them pure and holy. It gave the Athenian no victory over himself, and, practically, brought him no nearer to the living God. But it awakened and educated the conscience, it developed more fully the sense of sin and guilt, and it made man conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt; and "the day that humanity awakens to the want of something more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the need of being saved and restored from the consequences of sin" by a higher power. Æsthetic taste had found its fullest gratification in Athens; poetry, sculpture, architecture, had been carried to the highest perfection; a noble civilization had been reached; but "the need of something deeper and truer was written on the very stones." The highest consummation of Paganism was an altar to "the unknown God," the knowledge of whom it needed, as the source of purity and peace. The strength and the weakness of Grecian mythology CHAPTER V.THE UNKNOWN GOD."As I passed by, and beheld your sacred objects, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God."--ST. PAUL. "That which can be known of God is manifested in their hearts, God himself having shown it to them" [the heathen nations].--ST. PAUL. Having now reached our first landing-place, from whence we may survey the fields that we have traversed, it may be well to set down in definite propositions the results we have attained. We may then carry them forward, as torches, to illuminate the path of future and still profounder inquiries. The principles we have assumed as the only adequate and legitimate interpretation of the facts of religious history, and which an extended study of the most fully-developed religious system of the ancient world confirms, may be thus announced: I. A religious nature and destination appertain to man, so that the purposes of his existence and the perfection of his being can only be secured in and through religion. II. The idea of God as the unconditioned Cause, the infinite Mind, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, and the consciousness of dependence upon and obligation to God, are the fundamental principles of all religion. III. Inasmuch as man is a religious being, the instincts and emotions of his nature constraining him to worship, there must also be implanted in his rational nature some original À priori ideas or laws of thought which furnish the necessary cognition of the object of worship; that is, some native, spontaneous cognition of God. A mere blind impulse would not be adequate to guide man to the true end and perfection of his being without rational ideas; a tendency or appetency, without a revealed object, That man has a native, spontaneous apperception of a God, in the true import of that sacred name, has been denied by men of totally opposite schools and tendencies of thought--by the Idealist and the Materialist; by the Theologian and the Atheist. Though differing essentially in their general principles and method, they are agreed in asserting that God is absolutely "the unknown;" and that, so far as reason and logic are concerned, man can not attain to any knowledge of the first principles and causes of the universe, and, consequently, can not determine whether the first principle or principles be intelligent or unintelligent, personal or impersonal, finite or infinite, one or many righteous or non-righteous, evil or good. The various opponents of the doctrine that God can be cognized by human reason may be classified as follows: I. Those who assert that all human knowledge is necessarily confined to the observation and classification of phenomena in their orders of co-existence, succession, and resemblance. Man has no faculty for cognizing substances, causes, forces, reasons, first principles--no power by which he can know God. This class may be again subdivided into-- 1. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification of mental phenomena (e. g., Idealists like J. S. Mill). 2. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification of material phenomena (e. g., Materialists like Comte). II. The second class comprises all who admit that philosophic knowledge is the knowledge of effects as dependent on causes, and of qualities as inherent in substances; but at the same time assert that "all knowledge is of the phenomenal." Philosophy can never attain to a positive knowledge of the First Cause. Of existence, absolutely and in itself, we know nothing. The infinite 1. Those who affirm that our idea of the Infinite First Cause is grounded on an intuitional or subjective faith, necessitated by an "impotence of thought"--that is, by a mental inability to conceive an absolute limitation or an infinite illimitation, an absolute commencement or an infinite non-commencement. Both contradictory opposites are equally incomprehensible and inconceivable to us; and yet, though unable to view either as possible, we are forced by a higher law--the "Law of Excluded Middle"--to admit that one, and only one, is necessary (e. g., Hamilton and Mansel). 2. Those who assert that our idea of God rests solely on an historical or objective faith in testimony--the testimony of Scripture, which assures us that, in the course of history, God has manifested his existence in an objective manner to the senses, and given verbal communications of his character and will to men; human reason being utterly incapacitated by the fall, and the consequent depravity of man, to attain any knowledge of the unity, spirituality, and righteousness of God (e. g., Watson, and Dogmatic Theologians generally). It will thus be manifest that the great question, the central and vital question which demands a thorough and searching consideration, is the following, to wit: Is God cognizable by human reason? Can man attain to a positive cognition of God--can he know God; or is all our supposed knowledge "a learned ignorance,"
Before entering upon the discussion of the negative positions enumerated in the above classification, it may be important we should state our own position explicitly, and exhibit what we regard as the true doctrine of the genesis of the idea of God in the human intelligence. The real question at issue will then stand out in clear relief, and precision will be given to the entire discussion. (i.) We hold that the idea of God is a common phenomenon of the universal human intelligence. It is found in all minds where reason has had its normal and healthy development; and no race of men has ever been found utterly destitute of the idea of God. The proof of this position has already been furnished in chap, ii.,
(ii.) We do not hold that the idea of God, in its completeness, is a simple, direct, and immediate intuition of the reason alone, independent of all experience, and all knowledge of the external world. The idea of God is a complex idea, and not a simple idea. The affirmation, "God exists," is a synthetic and primitive judgment spontaneously developed in the mind, and developed, too, independent of all reflective reasoning. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the outer world of nature and the primary intuitions of the inner world of reason--a logical deduction from the self-evident truths given in sense, consciousness, and reason. "We do not perceive God, but we conceive Him upon the faith of this admirable world exposed to view, and upon the other world, more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves."
As the vital and rudimentary germ of the oak is contained in the acorn; as it is quickened and excited to activity by the external conditions of moisture, light, and heat, and is fully de The logical demonstration of the being of God commences with the analysis of thought. It asks, What are the ideas which exist in the human intelligence? What are their actual characteristics, and what their primitive characteristics? What is their origin, and what their validity? Having, by this process, found that some of our ideas are subjective, and some objective that some are derived from experience, and that some can not be derived from experience, but are inherent in the very constitution of the mind itself, as À priori ideas of reason; that these are characterized as self-evident, universal, and necessary and that, as laws of thought, they govern the mind in all its conceptions of the universe; it has formulated these necessary judgments, and presented them as distinct and articulate propositions. These À priori, necessary judgments constitute the major premise of the Theistic syllogism, and, in view of the facts of the universe, necessitate the affirmation of the existence of a God as the only valid explanation of the facts. The natural or chronological order in which the idea of God is developed in the human intelligence, is the reverse process of the scientific or logical order, in which the demonstration of the being of God is presented by philosophy; the latter is reflective and analytic, the former is spontaneous and synthetic. The natural order commences with the knowledge of the facts of the universe, material and mental, as revealed by sensation and experience. In presence of these facts of the universe, the À priori ideas of power, cause, reason, and end are evoked into consciousness with greater or less distinctness; and the judgment, by a natural and spontaneous logic, free from all The Theistic argument is, therefore, necessarily composed of both experiential and À priori elements. An À posteriori element exists as a condition of the logical demonstration The rational À priori element is, however, the logical basis, the only valid foundation of the Theistic demonstration. The facts of the universe alone would never lead man to the recognition of a God, if the reason, in presence of these facts, did not enounce certain necessary and universal principles which are the logical antecedents, and adequate explanation of the facts. Of what use would it be to point to the events and changes of the material universe as proofs of the existence of a First Cause, unless we take account of the universal and necessary truth that "every change must have an efficient cause;" that all phenomena are an indication of power; and that "there is an ultimate and sufficient reason why all things exist, and are as they are, and not otherwise." There would be no logical force in enumerating the facts of order and special adaptation which literally crowd the universe, as proofs of the existence of an Intelligent Creator, if the mind did not affirm the necessary principle that "facts of order, having a commencement in time, suppose mind as their source and exponent." There is no logical conclusiveness in the assertion of Paley, "that experience teaches us that a designer must be a person," because, as Hume justly remarks, our "experience" is narrowed down to a mere point, "and can not be a rule for a universe;" but there is an infinitude of force in that dictum of reason, that "intelligence, self-consciousness, and self-determination necessarily The conclusion, therefore, is, that, as the idea of God is a complex idea, so there are necessarily a number of simple À priori principles, and a variety of experiential facts conspiring to its development in the human intelligence. (iii.) The universe presents to the human mind an aggregation and history of phenomena which demands the idea of a God--a self-existent, intelligent, personal, righteous First Cause--as its adequate explanation. The attempt of Positivism to confine all human knowledge to the observation and classification of phenomena, and arrest and foreclose all inquiry as to causes, efficient, final, and ultimate, is simply futile and absurd. It were just as easy to arrest the course of the sun in mid-heaven as to prevent the human mind from seeking to pass beyond phenomena, and ascertain the ground, and reason, and cause of all phenomena. The history of speculative thought clearly attests that, in all ages, the inquiry after the Ultimate Cause and Reason of all existence--the ????, or First Principle of all things--has been the inevitable and necessary tendency of the human mind; to resist which, skepticism and positivism have been utterly impotent. The first philosophers, of the Ionian school, had just as strong a faith in the existence of a Supreme Reality--an Ultimate Cause--as Leibnitz and Cousin. But when, by reflective thought, they attempted to render an account to themselves of this instinctive faith, they imagined that its object must be in some way appreciable to sense, and they sought it in some physical element, or under some visible and tangible shrine. Still, however We readily grant that all our empirical knowledge is confined to phenomena in their orders of co-existence, succession, and resemblance. "To our objective perception and comparison nothing is given but qualities and changes; to our inductive generalization nothing but the shifting and grouping of these in time and space." Were it, however, our immediate concern to discuss the question, we could easily show that sensationalism has never succeeded in tracing the genetic origin of our ideas of space and time to observation and experience; and, without the À priori idea of space, as the place of bodies, and of time, as the condition of succession, we can not conceive of phenomena at all. If, therefore, we know any thing beyond phenomena and their mutual relations; if we have any cognition of realities underlying phenomena, and of the relations of phenomena to their objective ground, it must be given by some faculty distinct from sense-perception, and in some process distinct from inductive generalization. The knowledge of real Being and real Power, of an ultimate Reason and a personal Will, is derived from the apperception of pure reason, which affirms the necessary existence of a Supreme Reality--an Uncreated Being beyond all phenomena, which is the ground and reason of the existence--the contemporaneousness and succession--the likeness and unlikeness, of all phenomena. The immediate presentation of phenomena to sensation is the occasion of the development in consciousness of these À This necessary relation between the À priori and À posteriori elements of knowledge is not a mere subjective law of thought. It is both a law of thought and a law of things. Between the À posteriori facts of the universe and the À priori ideas of the reason there is an absolute nexus, a universal and necessary correlation; so that the cognition of the latter is possible only on the cognition of the former; and the objective existence of the realities, represented by the ideas of reason, is the condition, sine qua non, of the existence of the phenomena presented to sense. If, in one indivisible act of consciousness, we immediately perceive extended matter exterior to our percipient mind, then Extension exists objectively; and if Extension exists objectively, then Space, its conditio sine qua non, also exists objectively. And if a definite body reveals to us the Space in which it is contained, if a succession of pulsations or movements exhibit the uniform Time beneath, so do the changeful phenomena of the universe demand a living Power behind, and the existing order and regular evolution of the universe presuppose Thought--prevision, and predetermination, by an intelligent mind. If, then, the universe is a created effect, it must furnish some indications of the character of its cause. If, as Plato taught, the world is a "created image" of the eternal archetypes which dwell in the uncreated Mind, and if the subjective ideas which Without making any pretension to profound scientific accuracy, we offer the following tentative classification of the facts of the universe, material and mental, which may be regarded as hints and adumbrations of the ultimate ground, and reason, and cause, of the universe. We shall venture to classify these facts as indicative of some fundamental relation; (i.) to Permanent Being or Reality; (ii.) to Reason and Thought; (iii.) to Moral Ideas and Ends. (i.) Facts of the universe which indicate some fundamental relation to Permanent Being or Reality. 1. Qualitative Phenomena (properties, attributes, qualities)--the predicates of a subject; which phenomena, being characterized by likeness and unlikeness, are capable of comparison and classification, and thus of revealing something as to the nature of the subject. 2. Dynamical Phenomena (protension, movement, 3. Quantitative Phenomena (totality, multiplicity, relative unity)--a multiplicity of objects having relative and composite unity, which suggests some relation to an absolute and indivisible unity. 4. Statical Phenomena (extension, magnitude, divisibility)--bodies co-existing in space which are limited, conditioned, relative, dependent, and indicate some relation to that which is self-existent, unconditioned, and absolute. (ii.) Facts of the universe which indicate some fundamental relation to Reason or Thought. 1. Numerical and Geometrical Proportion.--Definite proportion of elements (Chemistry), symmetrical arrangement of parts (Crystallography), numerical and geometrical relation of the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies (Spherical Astronomy), all of which are capable of exact mathematical expression. 2. Archetypal Forms.--The uniform succession of new existences, and the progressive evolution of new orders and species, conformable to fixed and definite ideal archetypes, the indication of a comprehensive plan(Morphological Botany, Comparative Anatomy). 3. Teleology of Organs.--The adaptation of organs to the fulfillment of special functions, indicating design(Comparative Physiology). 4. Combination of Homotypes and Analogues.--Diversified homologous forms made to fulfill analogous functions, or special purposes fulfilled whilst maintaining a general plan, indicating choice and alternativity. (iii.) Facts of the universe which indicate some fundamental relation to Moral Ideas and Ends. 1. Ethical Distinctions.--The universal tendency to discriminate between voluntary acts as right or wrong, indicating some relation to an immutable moral standard of right. 2. Sense of Obligation.--The universal consciousness of dependence and obligation, indicating some relation to Supreme Power, an Absolute Authority. 3. Feeling of Responsibility.--The universal consciousness of liability to be required to give account for, and endure the consequences of our action, indicating some relation to a Supreme Judge. 4. Retributive Issues.--The pleasure and pain resulting from moral action in this life, and the universal anticipation of pleasure or pain in the future, as the consequence of present conduct, indicate an absolute Justice ruling the world and man. Now, if the universe be a created effect, it must, in some degree at least, reveal the character of its Author and cause. We are entitled to regard it as a created symbol and image of the Deity; it must bear the impress of his power; it must reveal his infinite presence; it must express his thoughts; it must embody and realize his ideals, so far, at least, as material symbols will permit. Just as we see the power and thought of man revealed in his works, his energy and skill, his ideal and his taste expressed in his mechanical, artistic, and literary creations, so we may see the mind and character of God displayed in his works. The skill and contrivance of Watts, and Fulton, and Stephenson were exhibited in their mechanical productions. The pure, the intense, the visionary impersonation of the soul which the artist had conjured in his own imagination was wrought out in PsychÉ. The colossal grandeur of Michael Angelo's ideals, the ethereal and saintly elegance of Raphael's were realized upon the canvas. So he who is familiar with the ideal of the sculptor or the painter can identify his creations even when the author's name is not affixed. And so the "eternal Power" of God is "clearly seen" in the mighty orbs which float in the The reader can not have failed to observe the form in which the Theistic argument is stated; "if the finite universe is a created effect, it must reveal something as to the nature of its cause: if the existing order and arrangement of the universe had a commencement in time, it must have an ultimate and adequate cause." The question, therefore, presents itself in a definite form: "Is the universe finite or infinite; had the order of the universe a beginning, or is it eternal?" It will be seen at a glance that this is the central and vital question in the Theistic argument. If the order and arrangement of the universe is eternal, then that order is an inherent law of nature, and, as eternal, does not imply a cause ab extra: if it is not eternal, then the ultimate cause of that order must be a power above and beyond nature. In the former case the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism is utterly invalidated; in the latter case it is abundantly sustained. Some Theistic writers--as Descartes, Pascal, Leibnitz, and Saisset--have made the fatal admission that the universe is, in some sense, infinite and eternal. In making this admission they have unwittingly surrendered the citadel of strength, and deprived the argument by which they would prove the being of a God of all its logical force. That argument is thus presented by Saisset: "The finite supposes the infinite. Extension supposes first space, then immensity: duration supposes first time, then eternity. A sudden and irresistible judgment refers this to the necessary, infinite, perfect being."
A closer examination of the statements and reasonings of Descartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz, as furnished by Saisset, will show that these distinguished mathematicans were misled by the false notion of "mathematical infinitude." Their infinite universe, after all, is not an "absolute," but a "relative" infinite; that is, the indefinite. "The universe must extend indefinitely in time and space, in the infinite greatness, and in the infinite littleness of its parts--in the infinite variety of its species, of its forms, and of its degrees of existence. The finite can not express the infinite but by being multiplied infinitely. The finite, so far as it is finite, is not in any reasonable relation, or in any intelligible proportion to the infinite. But the finite, as multiplied infinitely,
The introduction of the idea of "the mathematical infinite" into metaphysical speculation, especially by Kant and Hamilton, with the design, it would seem, of transforming the idea of infinity into a sensuous conception, has generated innumerable paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infinity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and
Mathematics is conversant with quantities and quantitative relations. The conception of quantity, therefore, if rigorously analyzed, will indicate À priori the natural and impassable boundaries of the science; while a subsequent examination of the quantities called infinite in the mathematical sense, and of the algebraic symbol of infinity, will be seen to verify the results of this Á priori analysis. Quantity is that attribute of things in virtue of which they are susceptible of exact mensuration. The question how much, or how many (quantus), implies the answer, so much, or so many (tantus); but the answer is possible only through reference to some standard of magnitude or multitude arbitrarily assumed. Every object, therefore, of which quantity, in the mathematical sense, is predicable, must be by its essential nature mensurable. Now mensurability implies the existence of actual, definite limits, since without them there could be no fixed relation between the given object and the standard of measurement, and, consequently, no possibility of exact mensuration. In fact, since quantification is the object of all mathematical operations, mathematics may be not inaptly defined as the science of the determinations of limits. It is evident, therefore, that the terms quantity and finitude express the same attribute, namely, limitation--the former relatively, the latter absolutely; for quantity is limitation considered with relation to some standard of measurement, and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself. The sphere of quantity, therefore, is absolutely identical with the sphere of the finite; and the phrase infinite quantity, if strictly construed, is a contradiction in terms. The result thus attained by considering abstract quantity is corroborated by considering concrete and discrete quantities. Such expressions as infinite sphere, radius, parallelogram, line, and so forth, are self-contradictory. A sphere is limited by its The same conclusion is forced upon us, if from geometry we turn to arithmetic. The phrases infinite number, infinite series, infinite process, and so forth, are all contradictory when literally construed. Number is a relation among separate unities or integers, which, considered objectively as independent of our cognitive powers, must constitute an exact sum; and this exactitude, or synthetic totality, is limitation. If considered subjectively in the mode of its cognition, a number is infinite only in the sense that it is beyond the power of our imagination or conception, which is an abuse of the term. In either case the totality is fixed; that is, finite. So, too, of series and process. Since every series involves a succession of terms or numbers, and every process a succession of steps or stages, the notion of series and process plainly involves that of number, and must be rigorously dissociated from the idea of infinity. At any one step, at any one term, the number attained is determinate, hence finite. The fact that, by the law of the series or of the process, we may continue the operation as long as we please, does not justify the application of the term infinite to the operation itself; if any thing is infinite, it is the will which continues the operation, which is absurd if said of human wills. Consequently, the attribute of infinity is not predicable either of 'diminution without limit,' 'augmentation without limit,' or 'endless approximation to a fixed limit,' for these mathematical processes continue only as we continue them, consist of steps successively accomplished, and are limited by the very fact of this serial incompletion. "We can not forbear pointing out an important application of these results to the Critical Philosophy. Kant bases each of his famous four antinomies on the demand of pure reason for unconditioned totality in a regressive series of conditions. This, he says, must be realized either in an absolute first of the series, conditioning all the other members, but itself unconditioned, or else in the absolute infinity of the series without a first; but reason is utterly unable, on account of mutual contradiction, to decide in which of the two alternatives the unconditioned is found. By the principles we have laid down, however, the problem is solved. The absolute infinity of a series is a contradiction in adjecto. As every number, although immeasurably and inconceivably great, is impossible unless unity is given as its basis, so every series, being itself a number, is impossible unless a first term is given as a commencement. Through a first term alone is the unconditioned possible; that is, if it does not exist in a first term, it can not exist at all; of the two alternatives, therefore, one altogether disappears, and reason is freed from the dilemma of a compulsory yet impossible decision. Even if it should be allowed that the series has no first term, but has originated ab oeterno, it must always at each instant have a last term; the series, as a whole, can not be infinite, and hence can not, as Kant claims it can, realize in its wholeness unconditioned totality. Since countless terms forever remain unreached, the series is forever limited by them. Kant himself admits that it can never be completed, and is only potentially infinite; actually, therefore, by his own admission, it is finite. But a last term implies a first, as absolutely as one end of a string implies the other; the only possibility of an unconditioned lies in Kant's first alternative, and if, as he maintains "The word infinite, therefore, in mathematical usage, as applied to process and to quantity, has a two-fold signification. An infinite process is one which we can continue as long as we please, but which exists solely in our continuance of it.
The above must be regarded as a complete refutation of the The universe of sense-perception and sensuous imagination is a phenomenal universe, a genesis, a perpetual becoming, an entrance into existence, and an exit thence; the Theist is, therefore, perfectly justified in regarding it as disqualified for self-existence, and in passing behind it for the Supreme Entity that needs no cause. Phenomena demand causation, entities dispense with it. No one asks for a cause of the space which contains the universe, or of the Eternity on the bosom of which it floats. Everywhere the line is necessarily drawn upon the same principle; that entities may have self-existence, phenomena must have a cause.
IV. Psychological analysis clearly attests that in the phenomena of consciousness there are found elements or principles which, in their regular and normal development, transcend the limits of consciousness, and attain to the knowledge of Absolute Being, Absolute Reason, Absolute Good, i.e., GOD. The analysis of thought clearly reveals that the mind of man is in possession of ideas, notions, beliefs, principles (as e.g., the idea of space, duration, cause, substance, unity, infinity), which are not derived from sensation and experience, and which can not be drawn out of sensation and experience by any process of generalization. These ideas have this incontestable peculiarity,
Take, again, the ideas of event and cause. The idea of an event is a contingent idea; it is the idea of something which might or might not have happened. There is no impossibility or contradiction in either supposition. The idea of cause is a necessary idea. An event being given, the idea of cause is necessarily implied. An uncaused event is an impossible conception. The idea of cause is also a universal idea extending to all events, actual or conceivable, and affirmed by all minds. It is a rational fact, attested by universal consciousness, that we can not think of an event transpiring without a cause; of a thing being the author of its own existence; of something generated by and out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil is a universal law of thought and of things. This universal "law of causality" is clearly distinguishable from a general truth reached by induction. For example, it is a very general truth that, during twenty-four hours, day is succeeded by night. But this is not Thus it is evident that the human mind is in possession of two distinct orders of primitive cognitions,--one, contingent, relative, and phenomenal; the other universal, necessary, and absolute. These two distinct orders of cognition presuppose the existence in man of two distinct faculties or organs of knowledge--sensation, external and internal, which perceives the contingent, relative, and phenomenal, and reason, which apprehends the universal, necessary, and absolute. The knowledge which is derived from sensation and experience is called empirical knowledge, or knowledge À posteriori, because subsequent to, and consequent upon, the exercise of the faculties of observation. The knowledge derived from reason is called transcendental knowledge, or knowledge À priori, because it furnishes laws to, and governs the exercise of the faculties of observation and thought, and is not the result of their exercise. The sensibility brings the mind into relation with the physical world, the reason puts mind in communication with the intelligible world--the sphere of À priori principles, of necessary and absolute truths, which depend upon neither the world nor the conscious self, and which reveal to man the existence of the soul, nature, and God. Every distinct fact of consciousness is thus at once psychological and ontological, and contains these We do not profess to be able to give a clear explication and complete enumeration of all the ideas of reason, and of the necessary and universal principles or axioms which are grounded on these ideas. This is still the grand desideratum of metaphysical science. Its achievement will give us a primordial logic, which shall be as exact in its procedure and as certain in its conclusions as the mathematical sciences. Meantime, it may be affirmed that philosophic analysis, in the person of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Cousin, has succeeded in disengaging such À priori ideas, and formulating such principles and laws of thought, as lead infallibly to the cognition of the Absolute Being, the Absolute Reason, the Absolute Good, that is, GOD. It would carry us too far beyond our present design were we to exhibit, in each instance, the process of immediate abstraction by which the contingent and relative element of knowledge is eliminated, and the necessary and absolute principle is disengaged. We shall simply state the method, and show its application by a single illustration. There are unquestionably two sorts of abstraction: 1. "Comparative abstraction, operating upon several real objects, and seizing their resemblances in order to form an abstract idea, which is collective and mediate; collective, because different individuals concur in its formation; mediate, because it requires several intermediate operations." This is the method of the physical sciences, which comprises comparison, abstraction, and generalization. The result in this process is the attainment of a general truth. 2. "Immediate abstraction, not comparative; operating not upon several concretes, but upon a single one, eliminating and neglecting its individual and variable part, and disengaging the absolute part, which it raises at once to its pure form." The parts to be eliminated in a concrete cognition are, first, the quality of the object, and the circumstances "Let us take, as an example, the principle of cause. To be able to say that the event I see must have a cause, it is not indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can not change in respect to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less number of applications. The only difference that it is subject to in regard to us is that we apply it, whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its particular application. The question is not to eliminate the particularity of the phenomenon wherein it appears to us, whether it be the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for every event that begins to exist. Here it is not because I am the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf falls; at the same moment I think, I believe, I declare that this falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed; at the same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause. Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them can not but have a cause. Now I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from the particular in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in the thousandth; for a thousandth
The following schema will exhibit the generally accepted results of this method of analysis applied to the phenomena of thought: (i.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments from whence is derived the cognition of Absolute Being. 1. The principle of Substance; thus enounced--"every quality supposes a subject or real being." 2. The principle of Causality; "every thing that begins to be supposes a power adequate to its production, i.e., an efficient cause." 3. The principle of Unity; "all differentiation and plurality supposes an incomposite unity; all diversity, an ultimate and indivisible identity." 4. The principle of the Unconditioned; "the finite supposes the infinite, the dependent supposes the self-existent, the temporal supposes the eternal." (ii.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments, from which is derived the cognition of the Absolute Reason. 1. The principle of Ideality; thus enounced, "facts of order--definite proportion, symmetrical arrangement, numerical 2. The principle of Consecution; "the uniform succession and progressive evolution of new existences, according to fixed definite archetypes, suppose a unity of thought--a comprehensive plan embracing all existence." 3. The principle of Intentionality or Final Cause; "every means supposes an end contemplated, and a choice and adaptation of means to secure the end." 4. The principle of Personality; "intelligent purpose and voluntary choice imply a personal agent." (iii.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments, from whence is derived the cognition of the Absolute Good. 1. The principle of Moral Law; thus enounced, "the action of a voluntary agent necessarily characterized as right or wrong, supposes an immutable and universal standard of right--an absolute moral Law." 2. The principle of Moral Obligation; "the feeling of obligation to obey a law of duty supposes a Lawgiver by whose authority we are obliged." 3. The principle of Moral Desert; "the feeling of personal accountability and of moral desert supposes a judge to whom we must give account, and who shall determine our award." 4. The pnnciple of Retribution; "retributive issues in this life, and the existence in all minds of an impersonal justice which demands that, in the final issue, every being shall receive his just deserts, suppose a being of absolute justice who shall render to every man according to his works." A more profound and exhaustive analysis may perhaps resolve all these primitive judgments into one universal principle or law, which Leibnitz has designated "The principle or law of sufficient reason," and which is thus enounced--there must be an ultimate and sufficient reason why any thing exists, and These fundamental principles, primitive judgments, axioms, or necessary and determinate forms of thought, exist potentially or germinally in all human minds; they are spontaneously developed in presence of the phenomena of the universe, material and mental; they govern the original movement of the mind, even when not appearing in consciousness in their pure and abstract form; and they compel us to affirm a permanent being or reality behind all phenomena--a power adequate to the production of change, back of all events; a personal Mind, as the explanation of all the facts of order, and uniform succession, and regular evolution; and a personal Lawgiver and Righteous Judge as the ultimate ground and reason of all the phenomena of the moral world; in short, to affirm an Unconditioned Cause of all finite and secondary causes; a First Principle of all principles; an Ultimate Reason of all reasons; an immutable Uncreated Justice, the living light of conscience; a King immortal, eternal, invisible, the only wise God, the ruler of the world and man. Our position, then, is, that the idea of God is revealed to man in the natural and spontaneous development of his intelligence, and that the existence of a Supreme Reality corresponding to, and represented by this idea, is rationally and logically And now from this position, which we regard as impregnable, we shall be prepared more deliberately and intelligibly to contemplate the various assaults which are openly or covertly made upon the doctrine that God is cognizable by human reason. CHAPTER VI.THE UNKNOWN GOD (continued).IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON?"The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but the confession of despair."--LIGHTFOOT. At the outset of this inquiry we attempted a hasty grouping of the various parties and schools which are arrayed against the doctrine that God is cognizable by human reason, and in general terms we sought to indicate the ground they occupy. Viewed from a philosophical stand-point, we found one party marshalled under the standard of Idealism; another of Materialism and, again, another of Natural Realism. Regarded in their theological aspects, some are positive Atheists; others, strange to say, are earnest Theists; whilst others occupy a position of mere Indifferentism. Yet, notwithstanding the remarkable diversity, and even antagonism of their philosophical and theological opinions, they are all agreed in denying to reason any valid cognition of God. The survey of Natural Theism we have completed in the previous chapter will enable us still further to indicate the exact points against which their attacks are directed, and also to estimate the character and force of the weapons employed. With or without design, they are, each in their way, assailing one or other of the principles upon which we rest our demonstration of the being of God. As we proceed, we shall find that Mill and the Constructive Idealists are really engaged in undermining "the principle of substance;" their doctrine is a virtual denial of all objective realities answering to our subjective ideas of matter, mind, and God. The assaults of Comte (i.) We commence with the Idealistic School, of which John Stuart Mill must be regarded as the ablest living representative. The doctrine of this school is that all our knowledge is necessarily confined to mental phenomena; that is, "to feelings or states of consciousness," and "the succession and co-existence, the likeness and unlikeness between these feelings or states of consciousness."
It is admitted by Mill that one apparent element in this total result is the general conviction that our own existence is really distinct from the external world, and that the personal ego has an essential identity distinct from the fleeting phenomena of sensation. But this persuasion is treated by him as a mere illusion--a leap beyond the original datum for which we have no authority. Of a real substance or substratum called Mind, of a real substance or substratum called Matter, underlying the series of feelings--"the thread of consciousness"--we do know and can know nothing; and in affirming the existence of such substrata we are making a supposition we can not possibly verify. The ultimate datum of speculative philosophy is not "I think," but simply "Thoughts or feelings are." The belief in a permanent subject or substance, called matter, as the ground and plexus of physical phenomena, and of a permanent subject or substance, called mind, as the ground and plexus of mental phenomena, is not a primitive and original intuition ?f reason. It is simply through the action of the principle of association among the ultimate phenomena, called feelings, that this (erroneous) separation of the phenomena into two orders or aggregates--one called mind or self; the other matter, or not self--takes place; and without this curdling or associating process no such notion or belief could have been generated. "The principle of substance," as an ultimate law of thought, is, therefore, to be regarded as a transcendental dream. But now that the notion of mind or self, and of matter or not self, do exist as common convictions of our race, what is philosophy to make of them? After a great many qualifications and explanations, Mr. Mill has, in his "Logic," summed up his doctrine of Constructive Idealism in the following words: "As body is the mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks."
And now that matter, as a real existence, has disappeared under Mr. Mill's analysis, what shall be said of mind or self? Is there any permanent subject or real entity underlying the phenomena of feeling? In feeling, is there a personal self that feels, thinks, and wills? It would seem not. Mind, as well as matter, resolves itself into a "series of feelings," varying and fugitive from moment to moment, in a sea of possibilities of
The ultimate fact of the phenomenal world, then, in the philosophy of Mill, is neither matter nor mind, but feelings or states of consciousness associated together by the relations, amongst themselves, of recurrence, co-existence, and resemblance. The existence of self, except as "a series of feelings;" the existence of any thing other than self, except as a feigned unknown cause of sensation, is rigorously denied. Mr. Mill does not content himself with saying that we are ignorant of the nature of matter and mind, but he asserts we are ignorant of the existence of matter and mind as real entities. The bearing of this doctrine of Idealism upon Theism and Theology will be instantly apparent to the reader. If I am necessarily ignorant of the existence of the external world, and of the personal ego, or real self, I must be equally ignorant of the existence of God. If one is a mere supposition, an illusion, so the other must be. Mr. Mill, however, is one of those courteous and affable writers who are always conscious, as it were, of the presence of their readers, and extremely careful not to shock their feelings or prejudices; besides, he has too much conscious self-respect to avow himself an atheist. As a speculative philosopher, he would rather regard Theism and Theology as "open questions," and he satisfies himself with saying, if you believe in the existence of God, or in Christianity, I do not interfere with you. "As a theory," he tells us that his doctrine leaves the evidence of the existence of God exactly as it was before. Supposing me to believe that the Divine mind is simply the series of the Divine thoughts and feelings prolonged through eternity, that would be, at any rate, believing God's existence to be as real as my own The design argument is drawn from the analogies of human experience. From the relation which human works bear to human thoughts and feelings, it infers a corresponding relation between works more or less similar, but superhuman, and superhuman thoughts and feelings. If it prove these, nobody but a metaphysician needs care whether or not it proves a mysterious substratum for them. And now let us close Mr. Mill's book, and, introverting our mental gaze, interrogate consciousness, the verdict of which, even Mr. Mill assures us, is admitted on all hands to be a decision without appeal.
1. We have an ineradicable, and, as it would seem, an intuitive faith in the real existence of an external world distinct from our sensations, and also of a personal self, which we call "I," "myself," as distinct from "my sensations," and "my feelings." We find, also, that this is confessedly the common belief of mankind. There have been a few philosophers who
Still less does the phrase "a permanent possibility of feelings" exhaust all our conception of a personal self. Recurring to the experiences of yesterday, I remember the feelings I experienced on beholding the sun, and also on pressing against the closed door, and I confidently expect the recurrence, under the same circumstances, of the same feelings. Does the belief in "a permanent possibility of feelings" explain the act of memory by which I recall the past event, and the act of prevision by which I anticipate the recurrence of the like experience in the future? Who or what is the "I" that remembers and the "I" that anticipates? The "ego," the personal mind, is, according to Mill, a mere "series of feelings," or, more correctly, a flash of "present feelings" on "a background of possibilities of present feelings."
2. What, then, is the verdict of consciousness as to the existence of a permanent substance, an abiding existence which is the subject of all the varying phenomena? Of what are we really conscious when we say "I think," "I feel," "I will?" Are we simply conscious of thought, feeling, and volition, or of a self, a person, which thinks, feels, and wills? The man who honestly and unreservedly accepts the testimony of consciousness in all its integrity must answer at once, we have an immediate consciousness, not merely of the phenomena of mind, but of a personal self as passively or actively related to the phenomena. We are conscious not merely of the act of volition, but of a self, a power, producing the volition. We are conscious not merely of feeling, but of a being who is the subject of the feeling. We are conscious not simply of thought, but of a real entity that thinks. "It is clearly a flat contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately conscious of myself, but only of my sensations
The testimony of consciousness, then, is indubitable that we have a direct, immediate cognition of self--I know myself as a distinctly existing being. This permanent self, to which I refer the earlier and later stages of consciousness, the past as well as the present feeling, and which I know abides the same under all phenomenal changes, constitutes my personal identity. It is this abiding self which unites the past and the present, and, from the present stretches onward to the future. We know self immediately, as existing, as in active operation, and as having permanence--or, in other words, as a "substance." This one immediately presented substance, myself, may be regarded as furnishing a positive basis for that other notion of substance, which is representatively thought, as the subject of all sensible qualities. 3. We may now inquire what is the testimony of consciousness as to the existence of the extra-mental world? Are we conscious of perceiving external objects immediately and in themselves, or only mediately through some vicarious image or representative idea to which we fictitiously ascribe an objective reality? The answer of common sense is that we are immediately conscious, in perception, of an ego and a non-ego known together, and known in contrast to each other; we are conscious of a perceiving subject, and of an external reality, as the object perceived.
We remark, in conclusion, that if the testimony of consciousness is not accepted in all its integrity, we are necessarily involved in the Nihilism of Hume and Fichte; the phenomena of mind and matter are, on analysis, resolved into an absolute nothingness--"a play of phantasms in a void." (ii.) We turn, secondly, to the Materialistic School as represented by Aug. Comte. The doctrine of this school is that all knowledge is limited to material phenomena--that is, to appearances perceptible to sense. We do not know the essence of any object, nor the real mode of procedure of any event, but simply its relations to other events, as similar or dissimilar, co-existent or successive. These relations are constant; under the same conditions, they are always the same. The constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them, as antecedent and consequent, are termed laws. The laws of phenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their ultimate causes, efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us.
It is not our intention to review the system of philosophy propounded by Aug. Comte; we are now chiefly concerned with his denial of all causation. 1. As to Efficient Causes.--Had Comte contented himself with the assertion that causes lie beyond the field of sensible observation, and that inductive science can not carry us beyond the relations of co-existence and succession among phenomena, he would have stated an important truth, but certainly not a new truth. It had already been announced by distinguished mental philosophers, as, for example, M. de Biran and Victor Cousin.
Now we affirm that the human mind has just as direct, immediate, and positive knowledge of cause as it has of effect. The idea of cause, the intuition power, is given in the immediate consciousness of mind as determining its own operations. Our first, and, in fact, our only presentation of power or cause, is that of self as willing. In every act of volition I am fully
Thus much for the origin of the idea of cause. We have the same direct intuitive knowledge of cause that we have of effect; but we have not yet rendered a full and adequate account
Comte, however, is determined to treat the idea of causation as an illusion, whether under its psychological form, as will, or under its scientific form, as force. He feels that Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes;
In common with most atheistical writers, Comte is involved in the fatal contradiction of at one time assuming, and at another of denying the freedom of the will, to serve the exigencies of his theory. To prove that the order of the universe can not be the product of a Supreme Intelligence, he assumes that the products of mind must be characterized by freedom and variety--the phenomena of mind must not be subject to uniform and necessary laws; and inasmuch as the phenomena presented by external nature are subject to uniform and changeless laws, they can not be the product of mind. "Look at the whole frame of things," says he; "how can it be the product of mind--of a supernatural Will? Is it not subject to regular laws, and do we not actually obtain prevision of its phenomena? If it were the product of mind, its order would be variable and free." Here, then, it is admitted that freedom is an essential characteristic of mind. And this admission is no doubt a thoughtless, unconscious betrayal of the innate belief of all minds in the freedom of the will. But when Comte comes to deal with this freedom as an objective question of philosophy, when he directs his attention to the only will of which we have a direct and immediate knowledge, he denies freedom and variety, and asserts in the most arbitrary manner that the movements of the mind, like all the phenomena of nature, must be subject to uniform, changeless, and necessary laws. And if we have not The word "force," representing as it does a subtile menial conception, and not a phenomenon of sense, must also be banished from the domains of Positive Science as an intruder, lest its presence should lend any countenance to the idea of causation. "Forces in mechanics are only movements, produced, or tending to be produced." In order to "cancel altogether the old metaphysical notion of force," another form of expression is demanded. It is claimed that all we do know or can possibly know is the successions of phenomena in time. What, then, is the term which henceforth, in our dynamics, shall take the place of "force?" Is it "Time-succession?" Then let any one attempt to express the various forms and intensities of movement and change presented to the senses (as e.g., the phenomena of heat, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, muscular and nervous action, etc.) in terms of Time-succession, and he will at once become conscious of the utter hopelessness of physics, without the hyperphysical idea of force, to render itself intelligible.
It is furthermore worthy of being noted that, in the modern doctrine of the Correlation and Conservation of Forces, science is inevitably approaching the idea that all kinds of force are
2. As to Final Causes--that is, reasons, purposes, or ends for which things exist--these, we are told by Comte, are all "disproved" by Positive Science, which rigidly limits us to "the history of what is," and forbids all inquiry into reasons why it is. The question whether there be any intelligent purpose in the order and arrangement of the universe, is not a subject of scientific inquiry at all; and whenever it has been permitted to obtrude itself, it has thrown a false light over the facts, and led the inquirer astray. The discoveries of modern astronomy are specially instanced by Comte as completely overthrowing the notion of any conscious design or intelligent purpose in the universe. The order and stability of the solar system are found to be the necessary consequences of gravitation, and are adequately explained without any reference to purposes or ends to be fulfilled in the disposition and arrangement of the heavenly bodies. "With persons unused to the study of the celestial bodies, though very likely informed on other parts of natural philosophy, astronomy has still the reputation of being a science eminently religious, as if the famous words, 'The heavens The task of "conceiving a better arrangement" of the celestial orbs, and improving the system of the universe generally, we shall leave to those who imagine themselves possessed of that omniscience which comprehends all the facts and relations of the actual universe, and foreknows all the details and relations of all possible universes so accurately as to be able to
The only plausible argument in the above quotation from Comte is, that the whole phenomena of the solar system are adequately explained by the law of gravitation, without the intervention of any intelligent purpose. Let it be borne in mind that it is a fundamental principle of the Positive philosophy that all human knowledge is necessarily confined to phenomena perceptible to sense, and that the fast and highest achievement of human science is to observe and record "the invariable relations of resemblance and succession among phenomena." We can not possibly know any thing of even the existence of "causes" or "forces" lying back of phenomena, nor of "reasons" or "purposes" determining the relations of phenomena. The "law of gravitation" must, therefore, be simply the statement of a fact, the expression of an observed order of phenomena. But the simple statement of a fact is no explanation of the fact. The formal expression of an observed order of succession among phenomena is no explanation of that order. For what do we mean by an explanation? Is it not a "making plain" to the understanding? It is, in short, a complete answer to the questions how is it so? and why is it so? Now, if Comte denies to himself and to us all knowledge of efficient and final causation, if we are in utter ignorance of "forces" operating in nature, and of "reasons" for which things exist in Practically, however, Comte regards gravitation as a force. The order of the solar system has been established and is still maintained by the mutual gravity of its several parts. We shall not stop here to note the inconsistency of his denying to us the knowledge of, even the existence of, force, and yet at the same time assuming to treat gravitation as a force really adequate to the explanation of the how and why of the phenomena of the universe, without any reference to a supernatural will or an intelligent mind. The question with which we are immediately concerned is whether gravitation alone is adequate to the explanation of the phenomena of the heavens? A review in extenso of Comte's answer to this question would lead us into all the inextricable mazes of the nebular hypothesis, and involve us in a more extended discussion than our space permits and our limited scientific knowledge justifies. For the masses of the people the whole question of cosmical development resolves itself into "a balancing of authorities;" they are not in a position to verify the reasonings for and against this theory by actual observation of astral phenomena, and the application of mathematical calculus; they are, therefore, guided by balancing in their own minds the statements of the distinguished astronomers who, by the united suffrages of the scientific world, are regarded as "authorities." For us, at present, it is enough that the nebular hypothesis is rejected by some of the greatest astronomers that have lived. We need only mention the names of Sir William Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Prof. Nichol, Earl Rosse, Sir David Brewster, and Prof. Whewell. But if we grant that the nebular hypothesis is entitled to take rank as an established theory of the development of the solar system, it by no means proves that the solar system was formed without the intervention of intelligence and design. On this point we shall content ourselves with quoting the words of one whose encyclopÆdian knowledge was confessedly equal to that of Comte, and who in candor and accuracy was certainly
The harmony of the solar system in all its phenomena does not depend upon the operation of any one law, but from the special adjustment of several laws. There are certain agents operating throughout the entire system which have different properties, and which require special adjustment to each other, in order to their beneficial operation. 1st. There is Gravitation, prevailing apparently through all space. But it does not
The recognition of all teleology of organs in vegetable and animal physiology is also persistently repudiated by this school. When Cuvier speaks of the combination of organs in such order as to adapt the animal to the part which it has to play in nature, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire replies, "I know nothing of animals which have to play a part in nature." "I have read,
It is hardly worth while to reply to the lame argument of Geoffroy, which needs a "crutch" for its support. The very illustration, undignified and irrelevant as it is, tells altogether against its author. For, first, the crutch is certainly a contrivance designed for locomotion; secondly, the length and strength and lightness of the crutch are all matters of calculation and adjustment; and, thirdly, all the adaptations of the crutch are well-considered, in order to enable the lame man to walk; the function of the crutch is the final cause of its creation. This crutch is clearly out of place in Geoffroy's argument, and utterly breaks down. It is in its place in the teleological argument, and stands well, though it may not behave as well as the living limb. The understanding of a child can perceive that the design-argument does not assert that men were intended to have amputated limbs, but that crutches are designed for those whose limbs are paralyzed or amputated. The existence of useless members, of rudimentary and abortive limbs, does seem, at first sight, to be unfavorable to the idea of supremacy of purpose and all-pervading design. It should be remarked, however, that this is an argument based upon our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. It does not by any means follow that because we have discovered no reasons for their existence, therefore there are no reasons. Science, in enlarging its conquests of nature, is perpetually discovering the usefulness of arrangements of which our fathers were ignorant, and the reasons of things which to their minds, were concealed; and it ill becomes the men who so far "mistrust their own feeble powers" as to be afraid of ascribing any intention to God or nature, to dogmatically affirm there is no purpose in the existence of any thing. And then we may ask,
The "true naturalist," therefore, recognizes two great principles pervading the universe--a principle of order--a unity of plan, and a principle of special adaptation, by which each object, though constructed upon a general plan, is at the same time accommodated to the place it has to occupy and the purpose it has to serve. In other words, there is homology of structure and analogy of function, conformity to archetypal forms and Teleology of organs, in wonderful combination. Now, in the Materialistic school, it has been the prevalent practice to set up the unity of plan in animal structures, in opposition to the principle of Final Causes: Morphology has been opposed to Teleology. But in nature there is no such opposition; on the contrary, there is a beautiful co-ordination. The same bones, in different animals, are made subservient to the widest possible diversity of functions. The same limbs are converted into fins, paddles, wings, legs, and arms. "No comparative anatomist has the slightest hesitation in admitting that the pectoral fin of a fish, the wing of a bird, the paddle of the dolphin, the fore-leg of a deer, the wing of a bat, and the arm of a man, are the same organs, notwithstanding that their forms are so varied, and the uses to which they are applied so unlike each other."
We conclude that we are justly entitled to regard "the principle of intentionality" as a primary and necessary law of thought, under which we can not avoid conceiving and describing the facts of the universe--the special adaptation of means to ends necessarily implies mind. Whenever and wherever we observe the adaptation of an organism to the fulfillment of a special end, we can not avoid conceiving of that end as foreseen and premeditated, the means as selected and adjusted with a view to that end, and creative energy put forth to secure the end--all which is the work of intelligence and will.
So that the assumption of final causes has not, as Bacon affirms, "led men astray" and "prejudiced further discovery;" on the contrary, it has had a large share in every discovery in anatomy and physiology, zoology and botany. The use of every organ has been discovered by starting from the assumption that it must have some use. The belief in a creative purpose led Harvey to discover the circulation of the blood. He says: "When I took notice that the valves in the veins of so many parts of the body were so placed that they gave a free passage to the blood towards the heart, but opposed the passage of the venal blood the contrary way, I was incited to imagine that so provident a cause as Nature has not placed so many valves without design, and no design seemed more probable than the circulation of the blood."
CHAPTER VII.THE UNKNOWN GOD (continued).IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON? (continued).
In the previous chapter we have considered the answers to this question which are given by the Idealistic and Materialistic schools; it devolves upon us now to review (iii.) the position of the school of Natural Realism or Natural Dualism, at the head of which stands Sir William Hamilton. It is admitted by this school that philosophic knowledge is "the knowledge of effects as dependent on their causes,"
1. As to Events and Causes.--"Events do not occur isolated, apart, by themselves; they occur and are conceived by us only in connection. Our observation affords us no example of a phenomenon which is not an effect; nay, our thought can not even realize to itself the possibility of a phenomenon without a cause. By the necessity we are under of thinking some cause for every phenomenon, and by our original ignorance of what particular causes belong to what particular effects, it is rendered impossible for us to acquiesce in the mere knowledge of the fact of the phenomenon; on the contrary, we are determined, we are necessitated to regard each phenomenon as only partially known until we discover the causes on which it depends for its existence.
2. As to Qualities and Substance, or Phenomena and Reality.--As phenomena appear only in conjunction, we are compelled, by the constitution of our nature, to think them conjoined in and by something; and as they are phenomena, we can not think them phenomena of nothing, but must regard them as properties or qualities of something.
The obvious doctrine of the above quotations is, that we
Now, after these explicit statements that we have an intuitive knowledge of matter and mind--a direct and immediate
It has been supposed that the chief glory of Sir William Hamilton rested upon his able exposition and defense of the doctrine of Natural Realism. There are, however, indications in his writings that he regarded "the Philosophy of the Conditioned" as his grand achievement. The Law of the Conditioned had "not been generalized by any previous philosopher;" and, in laying down that law, he felt that he had made a new and important contribution to speculative thought. The principles upon which this philosophy is based are: 1. The Relativity of all Human Knowledge.--Existence is not cognized absolutely and in itself, but only under special modes which are related to our faculties, and, in fact, determined by 2. The Conditionality of all Thinking.--Thought necessarily supposes conditions. "To think is to condition; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought. As the eagle can not out-soar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he is supported, so the mind can not transcend the sphere of limitation within and through which the possibility of thought is realized. Thought is only of the conditioned, because, as we have said, to think is to condition." 3. The notion of the Infinite--the Absolute, as entertained by man, is a mere "negation of thought."--By this Hamilton does not mean that the idea of the Infinite is a negative idea. "The Infinite and the Absolute are only the names of two counter imbecilities of the human mind" The grand law which Hamilton generalizes from the above is, "that the conceivable is in every relation bounded by the inconceivable." Or, again, "The conditioned or the thinkable lies between two extremes or poles; and these extremes or poles are each of them unconditioned, each of them inconceivable, each of them exclusive or contradictory of the other."
In attempting a brief criticism of "the Philosophy of the Conditioned," we may commence by inquiring: I. What is the real import and significance of the doctrine "that all human knowledge is only of the relative or phenomenal?" Hamilton calls this "the great axiom" of philosophy. That we may distinctly comprehend its meaning, and understand its bearing on the subject under discussion, we must ascertain the sense in which he uses the words "phenomenal" and "relative." The importance of an exact terminology is fully appreciated by our author; and accordingly, in three Lectures (VIII., IX., X.), he has given a full explication of the terms most commonly employed in philosophic discussions. Here the word "phenomenon" is set down as the necessary "correlative" of the word "subject" or "substance." "These terms can not be explained apart, for each is correlative of the other, each can be comprehended only in and through its correlative. The term 'subject' is used to denote the unknown (?) basis which lies under the various phenomena or properties of which we become aware, whether in our external or internal experience."
It is manifest, however, that Hamilton does employ these terms as synonymous, and this we apprehend is the first false step in his philosophy of the conditioned. "All our knowledge is of the relative or phenomenal." Throughout the whole of Lectures VIII. and IX., in which he explains the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge, these terms are used as precisely analogous. Now, in opposition to this, we maintain that the relative is not always the phenomenal. A thing may be "in relation" and yet not be a phenomenon. "The subject or substance" may be, and really is, on the admission of Hamilton himself, correlated to the phenomenon. The ego, "the conscious subject"
It is thus obvious that, with proper qualifications, we may admit the relativity of human knowledge, and yet at the same time reject the doctrine of Hamilton, that all human knowledge is only of the phenomenal. "The relativity of human knowledge," like most other phrases into which the word "relative" enters, is vague, and admits of a variety of meanings. If by this phrase is meant "that we can not know objects except as related to our faculties, or as our faculties are related to them," we accept the statement, but regard it as a mere truism leading to no consequences, and hardly worth stating in words. It is simply another way of saying that, in order to an object's being known, it must come within the range of our intellectual vision, and that we can only know as much as we are capable of knowing. Or, if by this phrase is meant "that we can only know things by and through the phenomena they present," we admit this also, for we can no more know substances apart from their properties, than we can know qualities apart from the substances in which they inhere. Substances can be known only in and through their phenomena. Take away the properties, and the thing has no longer any existence. Eliminate extension, form, density, etc., from matter, and what have you left? "The thing in itself," apart from its qualities, is nothing. Or, again, if by the relativity of knowledge is meant "that all consciousness, all thought are relative," we accept this statement also. To conceive, to reflect, to know, is to deal with difference and relation; the relation of subject and object; the relation of objects among themselves; the relation of phenomena to reality, of becoming to being. The reason of man is unquestionably correlated to that which is beyond phenomena; it is able to apprehend the necessary relation between phenomena and being, extension and space, succession and time, event and cause, the finite and the infinite. We may thus admit the relative It is not, however, in any of these precise forms that Hamilton holds the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. He assumes a middle place between Reid and Kant, and endeavors to blend the subjective idealism of the latter with the realism of the former. "He identifies the phenomenon of the German with the quality of the British philosophy,"
This, in its main features, is evidently the doctrine propounded by Hamilton. The special modes in which existence is cognizable" are presented to, and known by, the mind under modifications determined by the faculties themselves."
Let us test the validity of this majestic deliverance. No man is justified in making this assertion unless, 1. He knows things as they exist; 2. He knows things not only as they exist but as they appear; 3. He is able to compare things as they exist with the same things as they appear. Now, inasmuch as Sir William Hamilton affirms we do not know things as they exist, but only as they appear, how can he know that there is any difference between things as they exist and as they appear? What is this "thing in itself" about which Hamilton has so much to say, and yet about which he professes to know nothing? We readily understand what is meant by the thing; it is the object as existing--a substance manifesting certain characteristic qualities. But what is meant by in itself? There can be no in itself besides or beyond the thing. If Hamilton means that "the thing itself" is the thing apart from all relation, and devoid of all properties or qualities, we do not acknowledge any such thing. A thing apart from all relation, and devoid of all qualities, is simply pure nothing, if such a solecism may be permitted. With such a definition of Being in se, the logic of Hegel is invincible, "Being and Nothing are identical." And now, if "the thing in itself" be, as Hamilton says it is, absolutely unknown, how can he affirm or deny any thing in regard to it? By what right does he prejudge a hidden reality, and give or refuse its predicates; as, for example, that it is conditioned or unconditioned, in relation or aloof from relation, finite or infinite? Is it not plain that, in declaring a thing in its inmost nature or essence to be inscrutable, it is assumed to be partially known? And it is obvious, notwithstanding some unguarded expressions to the contrary, that Hamilton does
Admitting the relative character of human thought as a psychological fact, Mr. Martineau has conclusively shown that this law, instead of visiting us with disability to transcend phenomena, operates as a revelation of what exists beyond. "The finite "What we have said with regard to space and time applies equally t? the case of Causation. Here, too, the finite offered to perception introduces to an Infinite supplied by thought. As a definite body reveals also the space around, and an interrupted succession exhibits the uniform time beneath, so does the passing phenomenon demand for itself a power beneath. The space, and time, and power, not being part of the thing perceived, but its conditions, are guaranteed to us, therefore, on the warrant, not of sense, but of intellect." "We conclude, then, on reviewing these examples of Space, and Time, and Causation, that ontological ideas introducing us to certain fixed entities belong no less to our knowledge than scientific ideas of phenomenal disposition and succession."
There is a thread of fallacy running through the whole of Hamilton's reasonings, consequent upon a false definition of the Absolute at the outset. The Absolute is defined as that which exists in and by itself, aloof from and out of all relation. An absolute, as thus defined, does not and can not exist; it is 2. We proceed to consider the second fundamental principle of Hamilton's philosophy of the conditioned, viz., that "conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought," and that thought necessarily imposes conditions on its object. "Thought," says Hamilton, "can not transcend consciousness: consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and an object known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other"
If by "the infinite in thought" is here meant the infinite compassed or contained in thought, we readily grant that the
The grand logical barrier which Hamilton perpetually interposes to all possible cognition of God as infinite is, that to think is to condition--to limit; and as the Infinite is the unconditioned, the unlimited, therefore "the Infinite can not be There is a lurking sophism in the whole phraseology of Hamilton in regard to this subject. He is perpetually talking about "thinking a thing"--"thinking the Infinite." Now we do not think a thing, but we think of or concerning a thing. We do not think a man, neither does our thought impose any conditions upon the man, so that he must be as our thought conceives or represents him; but our thought is of the man, concerning or about the man, and is only so far true and valid as it conforms to the objective reality. And so we do not "think the Infinite;" that is, our thought neither contains nor conditions the Infinite Being, but our thoughts are about the Infinite One; and if we do not think of Him as a being of infinite perfection, our thought is neither worthy, nor just, nor true.
But we are told the law of all thought and of all being is determination; consequently, negation of some quality or some potentiality; whereas the Infinite is "the One and the All" (t? ?? ?a? ???),
The fallacy of this reasoning consists in confounding a supposed Quantitative Infinite with the Qualitative Infinite--the totality of existence with the infinitely perfect One. "Qualitative infinity is a secondary predicate; that is, the attribute of an attribute, and is expressed by the adverb infinitely rather than the adjective infinite. For instance, it is a strict use of language to say, that space is infinite, but it is an elliptical use of language to say, God is infinite. Precision of language would require us to say, God is infinitely good, wise, and great; or God is good, and his goodness is infinite. The distinction may seem trivial, but it is based upon an important difference between the infinity of space and time on the one hand, and the infinity of God on the other. Neither philosophy nor theology can afford to disregard the difference. Quantitative Infinity is illimitation by quantity. Qualitative Infinity is illimitation by degree. Quantity and degree alike imply finitude, and are categories of the finite alone. The danger of arguing from the former kind of infinitude to the latter can not be overstated. God alone possesses Qualitative Infinity, which is strictly synonymous with absolute perfection; and the neglect of the distinction between this and Quantitative Infinity, leads irresistibly to pantheistic and materialistic notions. Spinozism is possible only by the elevation of 'infinite extension' to the dignity of a divine attribute. Dr. Samuel Clarke's identification of God's immensity with space has been shown by Martin to ultimate in Pantheism. From ratiocinations concerning the incomprehensibility of infinite space and time, Hamilton and Mansel pass at once to conclusions concerning the incomprehensibility of God. The inconsequence of all such arguments is absolute; and if philosophy tolerates the transference of spatial or temporal analogies to the nature of God, she must reconcile herself The thought will have already suggested itself to the mind of the reader that for Hamilton to assert that the Infinite, as thus defined (the One and the All), is absolutely unknown, is certainly the greatest absurdity, for in that case nothing can be known. This Infinite must be at least partially known, or all human knowledge is reduced to zero. To the all-inclusive Infinite every thing affirmative belongs, not only to be, but to be known. To claim it for being, yet deny it to thought, is thus impossible. The Infinite, which includes all real existence, is certainly possible to cognition. The whole argument as regards the conditionating nature of all thought is condensed into four words by Spinoza--"Omnis determinatio est negatio;" all determination is negation. Nothing can be more arbitrary or more fallacious than this principle. It arises from the confusion of two things essentially different--the limits of a being, and its determinate and distinguishing characteristics. The limit of a being is its imperfection; the determination of a being is its perfection. The less a thing is determined, the more it sinks in the scale of being; the most determinate being is the most perfect being. "In this sense God is the only being absolutely determined. For there must be something indetermined in all finite beings, since they have all imperfect powers which tend towards their development after an indefinite manner. God alone, the complete Being in whom all powers are actualized, escapes by His own perfection from all progress, and development, and indetermination."
All real being must be determined; only pure Nothing can be undetermined. Determination is, however, one thing; and limitation is essentially another thing. "Even space and time, though cognized solely by negative characteristics, are determined in so far as differentiated from the existences they contain; but this differentiation involves no limitation of their infinity." If all distinction is determination, and if all determination is negation, that is (as here used), limitation, then the infinite, as distinguished from the finite, loses its own infinity, and either becomes identical with the finite, or else vanishes into pure nothing. If Hamilton will persist in affirming that all determination is limitation, he has no other alternatives but to accept the doctrine of Absolute Nihilism, or of Absolute Identity. If the Absolute is the indeterminate--that is, no attributes, no consciousness, no relations--it is pure non-being. If the Infinite is "the One and All," then there is but one substance, one absolute entity. Herbert Spencer professes to be carrying out, a step farther, the doctrine put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel, viz., "the philosophy of the Unconditioned." In other words, he carries that doctrine forward to its rigidly logical consequences, and utters the last word which Hamilton and Mansel dare not utter--"Apprehensible by us there is no God." The Ultimate Reality is absolutely unknown; it can not be apprehended by the human intellect, and it can not present itself to the intellect at all. This Ultimate Reality can not be intelligent, because to think is to condition, and the Absolute is the unconditioned; can not be conscious, because all consciousness is of plurality and difference, and the Absolute is one; can not be personal, because personality is determination or limitation, and the Infinite is the illimitable. It is "audacious," "irreverent," "impious," to apply any of these predicates to it; to regard it as Mind, or speak of it as Righteous. And yet of this Primary Existence--inscrutable, and
3. We advance to the review of the third fundamental principle of Hamilton's philosophy of the Unconditioned, viz., that the terms infinite and absolute are names for a "mere negation of thought"--a "mental impotence" to think, or, in other words, the absence of all the conditions under which thought is possible. This principle is based upon a distinction between "positive" and "negative" thought, which is made with an air of wonderful precision and accuracy in "the Alphabet of Human Thought."
It is barely conceivable that Hamilton might imagine himself possessed of this singular power of "performing an act of negative thought"--that is, of thinking and not thinking at once, or of "thinking something" that "becomes nothing;" we are not conscious of any such power. To think without an object of thought, or to think of something without any qualities, or to think "something" which in the act of thought melts away into "nothing," is an absurdity and a contradiction. We can not think about nothing. All thought must have an object, and every object must have some predicate. Even space has some predicates--as receptivity, unity, and infinity. Thought can only be realized by thinking something existing, and existing in a determinate manner; and when we cease to think something having predicates, we cease to think at all. This is emphatically asserted by Hamilton himself.
The conclusion of Hamilton's reasoning in regard to "negative thinking" is, that we can form no notion of the Infinite Being. We have no positive idea of such a Being. We can think of him only by "the thinking away of every characteristic" which can be conceived, and thus "ceasing to think at all." We can only form a "negative concept," which, we are told, "is in fact no concept at all." We can form only a "negative notion," which, we are informed, "is only the negation of a notion." This is the impenetrable abyss of total gloom and emptiness into which the philosophy of the conditions leads us at last.
Still we have the word infinite, and we have the notion which the word expresses. This, at least, is spared to us by Sir William Hamilton. He who says we have no such notion asks the question how we have it? Here it may be asked, how have we, then, the word infinite? How have we the notion which this word expresses? The answer to this question is contained in the distinction of positive and negative thought. We have a positive concept of a thing when we think of it by the qualities of which it is the complement. But as the attribution of qualities is an affirmation, as affirmation and negation are relatives, and as relatives are known only in and through each other, we can not, therefore, have a consciousness of the affirmation of any quality without having, at the same time, the correlative consciousness of its negation. Now the one consciousness is a positive, the other consciousness is a negative notion; and as all language is the reflex of thought, the positive and negative notions are expressed by positive and negative names. Thus it is with the Infinite.
To say that the finite is comprehensible in and by itself, and the infinite is incomprehensible in and by itself, is to make an assertion utterly at variance both with psychology and logic. The finite is no more comprehensible in itself than the infinite. "Relatives are known only in and through each other." Whilst denying that the infinite can by us be known, Hamilton tells us he is "far from denying that it is, must, and ought to be believed."
A full exposition of Sir William Hamilton's views of Faith in its connection with Philosophy would have been deeply interesting to us, and it would have filled up a gap in the interpretation of his system. The question naturally presents itself, how would he have discriminated between faith and knowledge, so as to assign to each its province? If our notion of the Infinite Being rests entirely upon faith, then upon what ultimate ground does faith itself rest? On the authority of Scripture, of the Church, or of reason? The only explicit statement of his view which has fallen in our way is a note in his edition of Reid.
Here we have, first, an attempted distinction between faith and knowledge. "We know what rests upon reason;" that is, whatever we obtain by deduction or induction, whatever is capable of explication and proof, is knowledge. "We believe what rests upon authority;" that is, whatever we obtain by intellectual intuition or pure apperception, and is incapable of explication and of proof, is "a belief or trust." These instinctive beliefs, which are, as it were, the first principles upon which all knowledge rests, are, however, indiscriminately called by Hamilton "cognitions," "beliefs," "judgments." He declares most explicitly "that the principles of our knowledge must themselves be knowledges;"
And now we seem to have penetrated to the centre of Hamilton's philosophy, and the vital point may be touched by one crucial question, Upon what ultimate ground does faith itself rest? Hamilton says, "we believe what rests upon authority." But what is that authority? I. It is not the authority of Divine Revelation, because beliefs are called "instinctive," "native," "innate," "common," "catholic,"
The answer to this question is given in the so-called "Law of the Conditioned," which is thus laid down: "All that is conceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, as contradictory of each other, can not both be true, but of which, as mutual contradictories, one must." For example, we conceive space, but "The conditioned is the mean between two extremes--two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principle of contradiction, and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary. We are thus warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and the finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality."
Such a faith, however, is built upon the clouds, and the whole structure of this philosophy is "a castle in the air"--an attempt to organize Nescience into Science, and evoke something out of nothing. To pretend to believe in that respecting which I can form no notion is in reality not to believe at all. The nature which compels me to believe in the Infinite must supply me some object upon which my belief can take hold. We can not believe in contradictions. Our faith must be a rational belief--a faith in the ultimate harmony and unity of all truth, in the veracity and integrity of human reason as the organ of truth; and, above all, a faith in the veracity of God, who is the author and illuminator of our mental constitution. "We can not suppose that we are created capable of intelligence in order to be made victims of delusion--that God is a deceiver, and the root of our nature a lie."
1. "The Law of the Conditioned," as enounced by Hamilton, is contradictory. It predicates contradiction of two extremes, which are asserted to be equally incomprehensible and incognizable. If they are utterly incognizable, how does Hamilton know that they are contradictory? The mutual relation of two objects is said to be known, but the objects themselves are absolutely unknown. But how can we know any relation except by an act of comparison, and how can we compare two objects so as to affirm their relation, if the objects are absolutely unknown? "The Infinite is defined as Unconditional Illimitation; the Absolute as Conditional Limitation. Yet almost in the same breath we are told that each is utterly inconceivable, each the mere negation of thought. On the one hand, we are told they differ; on the other, we are told they do not differ. Now which does Hamilton mean? If he insist upon the definitions as yielding a ground of conceivable difference, he must abandon the inconceivability; but if he insist upon the inconceivability, he must abandon the definition as sheer verbiage, devoid of all conceivable meaning. There is no possible
2. "The Law of the Conditioned," as a ground of faith in the Infinite Being, is utterly void, meaningless, and ineffectual. Let us re-state it in Hamilton's own words: "The conditioned is the mean between two extremes, two inconditionates exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principle of Contradiction and Excluded Middle, one must be admitted as necessary." It is scarcely needful to explain to the intelligent reader the above logical principles; that they may, however, be clearly before the mind in this connection, we state that the principle of Contradiction is this: "A thing can not at the same time be and not be; A is, A is not, are propositions which can not both be true at once." The principle of Excluded Middle is this: "A thing either is or is not--A either is or is not B; there is no medium."
3. The whole of this confusion in thought and expression results from the habit of confounding the sensuous imagination with the non-sensuous reason, and the consequent co-ordination of an imageable conception with an abstract idea. The objects of sense and the sensuous imagination may be characterized as extension, limitation, figure, position, etc.; the objects of the non-sensuous reason may be characterized as universality, eternity, infinity. I can form an image of an extended and figured object, but I can not form an image of space, time, or God; neither, indeed, can I form an image of Goodness, Justice, or Truth. But I can have a clear and precise idea of space, and time, and God, as I can of Justice, Goodness, and Truth. There are many things which I can most surely know that I can not possibly comprehend, if to comprehend is to form a mental image of a thing. There is nothing which I more certainly know than that space is infinite, and eternity unbeginning and endless; but I can not comprehend the infinity of space or the illimitability of eternity. I know that God is, that he is a being of infinite perfection, but I can not throw my thoughts around and comprehend the infinity of God. (iv.) We come, lastly, to consider the position of the Dogmatic Theologians.
1st. The invalidity of "the principle of causality" is asserted by this author. "We allow that the argument which proves that the effects with which we are surrounded have been caused, and thus leads us up through a chain of subordinate causes to one First Cause, has a simplicity, an obviousness, and a force which, when we are previously furnished with the idea of God, makes it, at first sight, difficult to conceive that men, under any degree of cultivation, should be inadequate to it; yet if ever the human mind commenced such an inquiry at all, it is highly probable that it would rest in the notion of an eternal succession of causes and effects, rather than acquire the ideas of creation, in the proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator." For a defense of "the principle of causality" we must refer the reader to our remarks on the philosophy of Comte. We shall now only remark on one or two peculiarities in the above statement which betray an utter misapprehension of the nature of the argument. We need scarcely direct attention to the unfortunate and, indeed, absurd phrase, "an eternal succession of causes and effects." An "eternal succession" is a contradictio in adjecto, and as such inconceivable and unthinkable. No human mind can "rest" in any such thing, because an eternal succession is no rest at all. All "succession" is finite and temporal, capable of numeration, and therefore can not be eternal.
Let us re-state the principle of causality as a universal and necessary law of thought. "All phenomena present themselves to us as the expression of POWER, and refer us to a causal ground whence they issue." That "power" is intuitively and spontaneously apprehended by the human mind as Supreme and Ultimate--"the causal ground" is a personal God. All the phenomena of nature present themselves to us as "effects," and we know nothing of "subordinate causes" except as modes of the Divine Efficiency.
The assertion that Plato taught "the eternity of matter," and that consequently he did not arrive at the idea of a Supreme and Ultimate Cause, is incapable of proof. The term ??? = matter does not occur in the writings of Plato, or, indeed, of any of his predecessors, and is peculiarly Aristotelian. The ground of the world of sense is called by Plato "the receptacle" (?p?d???), "the nurse" (t?????) of all that is produced, and was apparently identified, in his mind, with pure space--a logical rather than a physical entity--the mere negative condition and medium of Divine manifestation. He never regards it as a "cause," or ascribes to it any efficiency. We grant that The admission that something has always existed besides the Deity, as a mere logical condition of the exercise of divine power (e.g., space), would not invalidate the argument for the existence of God. The proof of the Divine Existence, as Chalmers has shown, does not rest on the existence of matter, but on the orderly arrangement of matter; and the grand question of Theism is not whether the matter of the world, but whether the present order of the world had a commencement. 2d. Doubt is cast by our author upon the validity of "the principle of the Unconditioned or the Infinite." "Supposing it were conceded that some faint glimmering of this great truth [the existence of a First Cause] might, by induction, have been discovered by contemplative minds, by what means could they have demonstrated to themselves that he is eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent?"
To this assertion that the connection of things visible and things invisible, finite and infinite, objects of sense and objects of faith, is utterly imperceptible to human thought, we might That this connection is "not perceptible to human observation," if by this our author means "not perceptible to sense," we readily admit. No one ever asserted it was perceptible to human observation. We say that this connection is perceptible to human reason, and is revealed in every attempt to think about, and seek an explanation of, the phenomenal world. The Phenomenal and the Real, Genesis and Being, Space and Extension, Succession and Duration, Time and Eternity, the Finite and the Infinite, are correlatives which are given in one and the same indivisible act of thought. "The conception of one term of a relation necessarily implies that of the other; it being the very nature of a correlative to be thinkable only through the conjunct thought of its correlative; for a relation is, in truth, a thought one and indivisible; and whilst the thinking of one relation necessarily involves the thought of its two terms, so it is, with equal necessity, itself involved in the thought of either."
The reverence which, from boyhood, we have entertained for the distinguished author of the "Institutes" restrains us from speaking in adequate terms of reprobation of the statement that "the First Cause" may be known, and yet not conceived "as eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent". Surely that which is the ground and reason of all existence must have the ground and reason of its own existence in itself. That which is first in the order of existence, and in the logical order of thought, can have nothing prior to itself. If the supposed First Cause is not necessarily self-existent and independent, it is not the first; if it has a dependent existence, there must be a prior being on which it depends. If the First Cause is not eternal, then prior to this Ultimate Cause there was nothingness and vacuity, and pure nothing, by its own act, became something. But "Ex nihilo nihil" is a universal law of thought. To ask the question whether the First Cause be self-existent and eternal, is, in effect, to ask the question "who made God?" and this is not the question of an adult theologian, but of a little child. Surely Mr. Watson must have penned the above passage without any reflection on its real import
3d. The validity of "the principle of unity" is also discredited by Watson. "If, however, it were conceded that some glimmerings of this great truth, the existence of a First Cause,
We might answer directly, and at once, that the oneness or unity of God is necessarily contained in "the very notion of a First Cause"--a first cause is not many causes, but one. By a First Cause we do not, however, understand the first of a numerical series, but an ????--a principle, itself unbeginning, which is the source of all beginning. Our categorical answer, therefore, must be that the unity of God is a sublime deliverance of reason--God is one God. It is a first principle of reason that all differentiation and plurality supposes an incomposite unity, all diversity implies an indivisible identity. The sensuous perception of a plurality of parts supposes the rational idea of an absolute unity, which has no parts, as its necessary correlative. For example, extension is a congeries of indefinitesimal parts; the continuity of matter, as empirically known by us, is never absolute. Space is absolutely continuous, incapable of division into integral parts, illimitable, and, as rationally known by us, an absolute unity. The cognition of limited extension, which is the subject of quantitative measurement, involves the conception of unlimited space, which is the negation of all plurality and complexity of parts. And so the cognition of a phenomenal universe in which we see only difference, This law of thought lies at the basis of that universal desire of unity, and that universal effort to reduce all our knowledge to unity, which has revealed itself in the history of philosophy, and also of inductive science. "Reason, intellect, ????, concatenating thoughts and objects into system, and tending upward from particular facts to general laws, from general laws to universal principles, is never satisfied in its ascent till it comprehends all laws in a single formula, and consummates all conditional knowledge in the unity of unconditional existence." "The history of philosophy is only the history of this tendency, and philosophers have borne ample testimony to its reality. 'The mind,' says Anaxagoras, 'only knows when it subdues its objects, when it reduces the many to the one.' 'The end of philosophy,' says Plato, 'is the intuition of unity.' 'All knowledge,' say the Platonists, 'is the gathering up into one, and the indivisible apprehension of this unity by the knowing mind.'"
This law has been the guiding principle of the Inductive Sciences, and has led to some of its most important discoveries. The unity which has been attained in physical science is not, however, the absolute unity of a material substratum, but a unity of Will and of Thought. The late discovery of the monogenesis, reciprocal convertibility, and indestructibility of all Forces in nature, leads us upward towards the recognition of one Omnipresent and Omnipotent Will, which, like a mighty tide, sweeps through the universe and effects all its changes. The universal prevalence of the same physical laws and numerical relations throughout all space, and of the same archetypal forms and teleology of organs throughout all past time, reveals to us a Unity of Thought which grasps the entire details of the universe in one comprehensive plan.
4th. By denying that man has any intuitive cognitions of right and wrong, or any native and original feeling of obligation, Mr. Watson invalidates "the moral argument" for the existence of a Righteous God. "As far as man's reason has applied itself to the discovery of truth or duty it has generally gone astray."
Now we shall not occupy our space in the elaboration of the proposition that the universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in human history, languages, legislations, and sentiments, bears testimony to the fact that the ideas of right, duty, and responsibility are native to the human mind; we shall simply make our appeal to those Sacred Writings whose verdict must be final with all theologians. That the fundamental principles of the moral law do exist, subjectively, in all human minds is distinctly affirmed by Paul, in a passage which deserves to be regarded as the chief corner-stone of moral science. "The Gentiles (????, heathen), which have not the written law, do by the guidance of nature (reason or conscience) the works enjoined by the revealed law; these, having no written law, are a law unto themselves; who show plainly the works of the law written on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and also their reasonings one with another, when they accuse, or else excuse, each other."
Now this "law written within the heart" immediately and naturally suggests the idea of a Lawgiver who is over us. This felt presence of Conscience, approving or condemning our conduct, suggests, as with the speed of the lightning-flash, the notion of a Judge who will finally call us to account. This "accusing or excusing of each other," this recognition of good or ill desert, points us to, and constrains us to recognize, a future Retribution; so that some hope or fear of another life has been in all ages a universal phenomenon of humanity. It is affirmed, however, that whilst this capacity to know God may have been an original endowment of human nature, yet, in consequence of the fall, "the understanding and reason are weakened by the deterioration of his whole intellectual nature."
We reverently and believingly accept the teaching of Scripture as to the depravity of man. We acknowledge that "the understanding is darkened" by sin. At the same time, we earnestly maintain that the Scriptures do not teach that the fundamental laws of mind, the first principles of reason, are utterly traversed and obliterated by sin, so that man is not able to recognize the existence of God, and feel his obligation to Him. "Though they(the heathen) knew God (d??t? ????te?), they did not glorify him as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imagination, and their foolish hearts were
We conclude our review of opposing schools by the re-affirmation of our position, that God is cognizable by human reason. The human mind, under the guidance of necessary laws of thought, is able, from the facts of the universe, to affirm the existence of God, and to attain some valid knowledge of his character and will. Every attempt to solve the great problem of existence, to offer an explanation of the phenomenal world, or to explore the fundamental idea of reason, when fairly and fully conducted, has resulted in the recognition of a Supreme CHAPTER VIII.THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS.PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOL.SENSATIONAL: THALES--ANAXIMENES--HERACLITUS--ANAXIMANDER--LEUCIPPUS--DEMOCRITUS.
Of all the monuments of the greatness of Athens which have survived the changes and the wastes of time, the most perfect and the most enduring is her philosophy. The PropylÆa, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheum, those peerless gems of Grecian architecture, are now in ruins. The magnificent sculpture of Phidias, which adorned the pediment, and outer cornice, and inner frieze of these temples, and the unrivalled statuary of gods and heroes which crowded the platform of the Acropolis, making it an earthly Olympus, are now no more, save a few broken fragments which have been carried to other lands, and, in their exile, tell the mournful story of the departed grandeur of their ancient home. The brazen statue of Minerva, cast from the spoils of Marathon, which rose in giant grandeur above the buildings of the Acropolis, and the flashing of whose helmet plumes was seen by the mariner as soon as he had rounded the Sunian promontory; and that other brazen Pallas, called, by pre-eminence, "the Beautiful;" and the enormous Colossus of ivory and of gold, "the Immortal Maid"--the protecting goddess of the Parthenon--these have
Philosophy is, then, the world-enduring monument of the greatness and the glory of Athens. Whilst Greece will be forever memorable as "the country of wisdom and of wise men," Athens will always be pre-eminently memorable as the University of Greece. This was the home of Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle--the three imperial names which, for twenty centuries, reigned supreme in the world of philosophic thought. Here schools of philosophy were founded to which students were attracted from every part of the civilized world, and by which an impulse and a direction was given to human thought in every land and in every age. Standing on the Acropolis at Athens, and looking over the city and the open country, the Apostle would see these places which are inseparably associated with the names of the men who have always been recognized as the great teachers of the pagan world, and who have also exerted a powerful influence upon Christian minds of every age. "In opposite directions he would see the suburbs where Plato and Aristotle, the two pupils of Socrates, held their illustrious schools. The streamless bed of the Ilissus passes between the Acropolis and Hymettus in a south-westerly direction, until it vanishes in the On the opposite side of the city, the most beautiful of the Athenian suburbs, we have the scene of Plato's teaching. Beyond the outer Ceramicus, which was crowded with the sepulchres of those Athenians who had fallen in battle, and were buried at the public expense, the eye of Paul would rest on the favored stream of the Cephisus, flowing towards the west. On the banks of this stream the Academy was situated. A wall, built at great expense by Hipparchus, surrounded it, and Cimon planted long avenues of trees and erected fountains. Beneath the plane-trees which shaded the numerous walks there assembled the master-spirits of the age. This was the favorite resort of poets and philosophers. Here the divine spirit of Plato poured forth its sublimest speculations in streams of matchless eloquence; and here he founded a school which was destined to exert a powerful and perennial influence on human minds and hearts in all coming time. Looking down from the Acropolis upon the Agora, Paul would distinguish a cloister or colonnade. This is the Stoa Poecile, or "Painted Porch," so called because its walls were decorated with fresco paintings of the legendary wars of Greece, and the more glorious struggle at Marathon. It was here that Zeno first opened that celebrated school which thence received the name of Stoic. The site of the garden where Epicurus taught is now unknown. It was no doubt within the city walls, and not far distant from the Agora. It was well known in the time of Cicero, who visited Athens as a student little more than
Here, then, in Athens the Apostle was brought into immediate contact with all the phases of philosophic thought which had appeared in the ancient world. "Amongst those who sauntered beneath the cool shadows of the plane-trees in the Agora, and gathered in knots under the porticoes, eagerly discussing the questions of the day, were the philosophers, in the garb of their several sects, ready for any new question on which they might exercise their subtlety or display their rhetoric." If there were any in that motley group who cherished the principles and retained the spirit of the true Platonic school, we may presume they felt an inward intellectual sympathy with the doctrine enounced by Paul. With Plato, "philosophy was only another name for religion: philosophy is the love of perfect Wisdom; perfect Wisdom and perfect Goodness are identical: the perfect Good is God himself; philosophy is the love of God."
If, however, we would justly appreciate the relation of pagan philosophy to Christian truth, we must note that, when Paul arrived in Athens, the age of Athenian glory had passed away. Not only had her national greatness waned, and her national spirit degenerated, but her intellectual power exhibited unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and weakness, and decay. If philosophy had borne any fruit, of course that fruit remained. If, in the palmy days of Athenian greatness, any field of human inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time; and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either the problems they sought to solve were proved to be insoluble, or their methods of solution were found to be inadequate; for here the mightiest minds had grappled with the great problems of being and of destiny. Here vigorous intellects had struggled to pierce the darkness which hangs alike over the beginning and the end of human existence. Here profoundly earnest men had questioned nature, reason, antiquity, oracles, in the hope they might learn something of that invisible world of real being which they instinctively felt must lie beneath the world of fleeting forms and ever-changing appearances. Here philosophy had directed her course towards every point in the compass of thought, and touched every accessible point. The
These preliminary considerations will have prepared the way for, and awakened in our minds a profound interest in, the inquiry--1st. What permanent results has Greek philosophy bequeathed to the world? 2d. In what manner did Greek philosophy fulfill for Christianity a propoedeutic office? It will at once be obvious, even to those who are least conversant with our theme, that it would be fruitless to attempt the answer to these important questions before we have made a careful survey of the entire history of philosophic thought in Greece. We must have a clear and definite conception of the problems they sought to solve, and we must comprehend their methods of inquiry, before we can hope to appreciate the results they reached, or determine whether they did arrive at any definite and valuable conclusions. It will, therefore, devolve upon us to present a brief and yet comprehensive epitome of the history of Grecian speculative thought. "Philosophy," says Cousin, "is reflection, and nothing else than reflection, in a vast form"--"Reflection elevated to the rank and authority of a method." It is the mind looking back upon its own sensations, perceptions, cognitions, ideas, and from thence to the causes of these sensations, cognitions, and ideas. It is thought passing beyond the simple perceptions of things, beyond the mere spontaneous operations of the mind in the cognition of things to seek the ground, and reason, and law of things. It is the effort of reason to solve the great problem of "Being and Becoming," of appearance and reality, of the changeful and the permanent. Beneath the endless diversity of the universe, of existence and action, there must be a principle This fundamental question has assumed three separate forms or aspects in the history of philosophy. These forms have been determined by the objective phenomena which most immediately arrested and engaged the attention of men. If external nature has been the chief object of attention, then the problem of philosophy has been, What is the ????--the beginning; what are the first principles--the elements from which, the ideas or laws according to which, the efficient cause or energy by which, and the reason or end for which the universe exists? During this period reflective thought was a PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. If the phenomena of mind--the opinions, beliefs, judgments of men--are the chief object of attention, then the problem of philosophy has been, What are the fundamental Ideas which are unchangeable and permanent amid all the diversities of human opinions, connecting appearance with reality, and constituting a ground of certain knowledge or absolute truth? Reflective thought is now a PHILOSOPHY OF IDEAS. Then, lastly, if the practical activities of life and the means of well-being be the grand object of attention, then the problem of philosophy has been, What is the ultimate standard by which, amid all the diversities of human conduct, we may determine what is right and good in individual, social, and political life? And now reflective thought is a PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. These are the grand problems with which philosophy has grappled ever since the dawn of reflection. They all appear in Greek philosophy, and have a marked chronology. As systems they succeed each other, just as rigorously as the phenomena of Greek civilization. I. THE PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS. II. THE SOCRATIC SCHOOLS. III. THE POST-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS. The history of philosophy is thus divided into three grand epochs. The first reaching from Thales to the time of Socrates (B.C. 639-469): the second from the birth of Socrates to the death of Aristotle (B.C. 469-322); the third from the death of Aristotle to the Christian era (B.C. 322, A.D. 1). Greek philosophy during the first period was almost exclusively a philosophy of nature; during the second period, a philosophy of mind; during the last period, a philosophy of life. Nature, man, and society complete the circle of thought. Successive systems, of course, overlap each other, both in the order of time and as subjects of human speculation; and the results of one epoch of thought are transmitted to and appropriated by another; but, in a general sense, the order of succession has been very much as here indicated. Setting aside minor schools and merely incidental discussions, and fixing our attention on the general aspects of each historic period, we shall discover that the first period was eminently Physical, the second Psychological, the last Ethical. Every stage of progress which reason, on À priori grounds, would suggest as the natural order of thought, or of which the development of an individual mind would furnish an analogy, had a corresponding realization in the development of Grecian thought from the time of Thales to the Christian era. "Thought," says Cousin, "in the first trial of its strength is drawn without." The first object which engages the attention of the child is the outer world. He asks the If now we have succeeded in presenting the real problem of philosophy, it will at once be obvious that the inquiry was not, in any proper sense, theological. Speculative thought, during the period we have marked as the era of Greek philosophy, was not an inquiry concerning the existence or nature of God, or concerning the relations of man to God, or the duties which man owes to God. These questions were all remitted to the The poets who appeared in the dim twilight of Grecian civilization--Orpheus, MusÆus, Homer, Hesiod--seem to have occupied the same relation to the popular mind in Greece which the Bible now sustains to Christian communities.
These ancient poems, then, were the public documents of the religion of Greece--the repositories of the national faith. And it is deserving of especial note that the philosopher was just as anxious to sustain his speculations by quoting the high traditional authority of the ancient theologian, as the propounder of modern novelties is to sustain his notions by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. Numerous examples of this solicitude will recur at once to the remembrance of the student of Plato. All encroachments of philosophy upon the domains of religion were watched as jealously in Athens in the sixth century before Christ, as the encroachments of science upon the fields of theology were watched in Rome in the seventeenth century after Christ. The court of the Areopagus was as earnest, though not as fanatical and cruel, in the defense of the ancient faith, as the court of the Inquisition was in the defense of the dogmas of the Romish Church. The people, also, as "the sacred wars" of Greece attest, were ready quickly to repel every assault upon the majesty of their religion. And so
It is unnecessary that we should, in this place, again attempt the delineation of the theological opinions of the earlier periods of Grecian civilization. That the ancient Greeks believed in one Supreme God has been conclusively proved by Cudworth. The argument of his fourth chapter is incontrovertible.
Let us not, therefore, be too hasty in representing the early philosophers as destitute of the idea of a God, because in the imperfect and fragmentary representations which are given us of the philosophical opinions of Thales, and Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, we find no explicit allusions to the Uncreated Mind as the first principle and cause of all. A few sentences will comprehend the whole of what remains of the opinions of the earliest philosophers, and these were transmitted for ages by oral tradition. To Plato and Aristotle we are chiefly indebted for a stereotype of those scattered, fragmentary sentences which came to their hands through the dim and distorting medium of more than two centuries. Surely no one imagines these few sentences contain and sum up the results of a lifetime of earnest thought, or represent all the opinions and beliefs of the earliest philosophers! And should we find therein no recognition of a personal God, would it not be most unfair and illogical to assert that they were utterly ignorant of a God, or wickedly denied his being? If they say "there is no God," then they are foolish Atheists; if they are silent on that subject, we have a right to assume they were Theists, for it is most natural to believe in God. And yet it has been quite customary for Christian teachers, after the manner of some Patristic writers, to deny to those early sages the smallest glimpse of underived and independent Now in regard to the theological opinions of the Greek philosophers, we shall venture this general lemma--the majority of them recognized an "incorporeal substance" "Whose body nature is, and God the soul." Unquestionably most on them recognized the existence of two first principles, substances essentially distinct, which had co-existed from eternity--an incorporeal Deity and matter.
Those writers
So much being premised, we proceed to consider the efforts and the results of philosophic thought in THE PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS. "The first act in the drama of Grecian speculation was performed on the varied theatre of the Grecian colonies--Asiatic, insular, and Italian, verging at length (in Anaxagoras) towards Athens." During the progress of this drama two distinct schools of philosophy were developed, having distinct geographical provinces, one on the east, the other on the west, of the peninsula of Greece, and deriving their names from the localities in which they flourished. The earliest was the Ionian; the latter was the Italian school. It would be extremely difficult, at this remote period, to estimate the influence which geographical conditions and ethnical relations exerted in determining the course of philosophic thought in these schools. Unquestionably those conditions contributed somewhat towards fixing their individuality. At the same time, it must be granted that the distinction in these two schools of philosophy is of a deeper character than can be represented or explained by geographical surroundings; it is a distinction reaching to the very foundation of their habits of thought. These schools represent two distinct aspects of philosophic thought, two distinct methods in which the human mind has essayed to solve the problem of the universe. The ante-Socratic schools were chiefly occupied with the Now there are two distinct aspects under which nature presents itself to the observant mind. The first and most obvious is the simple phenomena as perceived by the senses. The second is the relations of phenomena, cognized by the reason alone. Let phenomena, which are indeed the first objects of perception, continue to be the chief and almost exclusive object of thought, and philosophy is on the highway of pure physics. On the other hand, instead of stopping at phenomena, let their relations become the sole object of thought, and philosophy is now on the road of purely mathematical or metaphysical abstraction. Thus two schools of philosophy are developed, the one SENSATIONAL, the other IDEALIST. Now these, it will be found, are the leading and characteristic tendencies of the two grand divisions of the pre-Socratic schools; the Ionian is sensational, the Italian is idealist. These two schools have again been the subject of a further subdivision based upon diverse habits of thought. The Ionian school sought to explain the universe by physical analogies. Of these there are two clear and obvious divisions--analogies suggested by living organisms, and analogies suggested by mechanical arrangements. One class of philosophers in the Ionian school laid hold on the first analogy. They regarded the world as a living being, spontaneously evolving itself--a vital organism whose successive developments and transformations constitute all visible phenomena. A second class laid hold on the analogy suggested by mechanical arrangements. For them the universe was a grand superstructure, built up from elemental particles, arranged and united by some ab-extra power or force, or else aggregated by some inherent mutual
The Italian school sought to explain the universe by rational conceptions and À priori ideas. Now to those who seek, by simple reflection, to investigate the relations of the external world this marked distinction will present itself: some are relations between sensible phenomena--relations of time, of place, of number, of proportion, and of harmony; others are relations of phenomena to essential being--relations of qualities to substance, of becoming to being, of the finite to the infinite. The former constituted the field of Pythagorean the latter of Eleatic contemplation. The Pythagoreans sought to explain the universe by numbers, forms, and harmonies; the Eleatics by the À priori ideas of unity, substance, Being in se, the Infinite. Thus were constituted a Mathematical and a Metaphysical sect in the Italian school. The pre-Socratic schools may, therefore, be tabulated in the following order: I. IONIAN (Sensational), (1.) PHYSICAL {Dynamical or Vital. {Mechanical. II. Italian (Idealist), {(2.) MATHEMATICAL Pythagoreans. {(3.) METAPHYSICAL Eleatics. I. The Ionian or Physical School.--We have premised that the philosophers of this school attempted the explanation of the universe by physical analogies. One class of these early speculators, the Dynamical, or vital theorists, proceeded on the supposition of a living energy infolded in nature, which in its spontaneous development continuously undergoes alteration both of quality and form. This imperfect analogy is the first hypothesis of childhood. The child personifies the stone that hurts him, and his first impulse is to resent the injury as though he imagined it to be endowed with consciousness, and to be acting with design. The childhood of superstition (whose genius is multiplicity) personifies each individual existence--a rude Fetichism, which imagines a supernatural power and presence enshrined in every object of Therefore, in attempting to construct a theory of the universe they commenced by postulating an ????--a first principle or element out of which, by a vital process, all else should be produced. "Accordingly, whatever seemed the most subtle or pliable, as well as universal element in the mass of the visible world, was marked as the seminal principle whose successive developments and transformations produced all the rest."
Thales of Miletus(B.C. 636-542) was the first to lead the way in the perilous inquiry after an ????, or first principle, which should furnish a rational explanation of the universe. Following, as it would seem, the genealogy of Hesiod, he supposed water to be the primal element out of which all material things were produced. Aristotle supposes he was impressed with this idea from observing that all things are nourished by moisture; warmth itself, he declared, proceeded from moisture; the seeds of all things are moist; water, when condensed, becomes earth. And now, from this brief statement of the Thalean physics, are we to conclude that he recognized only a material cause of the universe? Such is the impression we receive from the reading of the First Book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. His evident purpose is to prove that the first philosophers of the Ionian school did not recognize an efficient cause. In his opinion, they were decidedly materialistic. Now to question the authority of Aristotle may appear to many an act of presumption. But Aristotle was not infallible; and nothing is more certain than that in more than one instance he does great injustice to his predecessors.
The evidence, we think, is conclusive that, with this primal element (water), Thales associated a formative principle of motion; to the "material" he added the "efficient" cause. A strong presumption in favor of this opinion is grounded on the psychological views of Thales. The author of "De Placitis Philosophorum" associates him with Pythagoras and Plato, in teaching that the soul is incorporeal, making it naturally self-active, and an intelligent substance.
Anaximenes of Miletus (B.C. 529-480) we place next to Thales in the consecutive history of thought. It has been usual to rank Anaximander next to the founder of the Ionian School. The entire complexion of his system is, however, unlike that of a pupil of Thales. And we think a careful consideration of his views will justify our placing him at the head of the Mechanical or Atomic division of the Ionian school. Anaximenes is the historical successor of Thales; he was unquestionably a vitalist. He took up the speculation where Thales had left it, and he carried it a step forward in its development. Pursuing the same method as Thales, he was not, however, satisfied with the conclusion he had reached. Water was not to Anaximenes the most significant, neither was it the most universal element. But air seemed universally present. "The earth was a broad leaf resting upon it. All things were produced from it; all things were resolved into it. When he breathed he drew in a part of this universal life. All things are nourished by air."
This brief notice of the physical speculations of Anaximenes is all that has survived of his opinions. We search in vain for some intimations of his theological views. On this merely Some indications of the views of Anaximenes may perhaps be gathered from the teachings of Diogenes of Apollonia (B.C. 520-490,) who was the disciple, and is generally regarded as the commentator and expounder of the views of Anaximenes. The air of Diogenes was a soul; therefore it was living, and not only living, but conscious and intelligent. "It knows much," says he; "for without reason it would be impossible for all to be arranged duly and proportionately; and whatever objects we consider will be found to be so arranged and ordered in the best and most beautiful manner."
Heraclitus of Ephesus(B.C. 503-420) comes next in the order of speculative thought. In his philosophy, fire is the ????, or first principle; but not fire in the usual acceptation of that term. The Heraclitean "fire" is not flame, which is only an intensity of fire, but a warm, dry vapor--an ether, which may be illustrated, perhaps, by the "caloric" of modern chemistry. This "ether" was the primal element out of which the universe was formed; it was also a vital power or principle which animated the universe, and, in fact, the cause of all its successive phenomenal changes. "The world," he said, "was neither made by the gods nor men, and it was, and is, and ever shall be, an ever-living fire, in due proportion self-enkindled, and in due measure self-extinguished."
Heraclitus was the first to proclaim the doctrine of the perpetual fluxion of the universe (t? ????, t? ?????µe???--Unrest and Development), the endless changes of matter, and the mutability and perishability of all individual things. This restless, changing flow of things, which never are, but always are becoming, he pronounced to be the One and the All. From this statement of the physical theory of Heraclitus we might naturally infer that he was a Hylopathean Atheist. Such an hypothesis would not, however, be truthful or legitimate. On a more careful examination, his system will be found to stand half-way between the materialistic and the spiritual conception
The general inference, therefore, from all that remains of the doctrine of Heraclitus is that he was a Materialistic Pantheist. His God was a living, rational, intelligent Ether--a soul pervading the universe. The form of the universe, its ever-changing phenomena, were a necessary emanation from, or a perpetual transformation of, this universal soul. With Heraclitus we close our survey of that sect of the physical school which regarded the world as a living organism. The second subdivision of the physical school, the Mechanical Anaximander of Miletus (born B.C. 610) we place at the head of the Mechanical sect of the Ionian school; first, on the authority of Aristotle, who intimates that the philosophic dogmata of Anaximander "resemble those of Democritus," who was certainly an Atomist; and, secondly, because we can clearly trace a genetic connection between the opinions of Democritus and Leucippus and those of Anaximander. The ????, or first principle of Anaximander, was t? ?pe????, the boundless, the illimitable, the infinite. Some historians of philosophy have imagined that the infinite of Anaximander was the "unlimited all," and have therefore placed him at the head of the Italian or "idealistic school." These writers are manifestly in error. Anaximander was unquestionably a sensationalist. Whatever his "infinite" may be found to be, one thing is clear, it was not a "metaphysical infinite"--it did not include infinite power, much less infinite mind. The testimony of Aristotle is conclusive that by "the infinite" Anaximander understood the multitude of primary, material particles. He calls it "a µ??µa, or mixture of elements."
Leucippus of Miletus (B.C. 500-400) appears, in the order of speculation, as the successor of Anaximander. Atoms and space are, in his philosophy, the ???a?, or first principles of all things. "Leucippus (and his companion, Democritus) assert that the plenum and the vacuum [i.e., body and space] are the first principles, whereof one is the Ens, the other Non-ens; the differences of the body, which are only figure, order, and position, are the causes of all others."
He also taught that the elements, and the worlds derived from them, are infinite. He describes the manner in which the worlds are produced as follows: "Many bodies of various kinds and shapes are borne by amputation from the infinite [i.e., the chaotic µ??µa of Anaximander] into a vast vacuum, and then they, being collected together, produce a vortex; according to which, they, dashing against each other, and whirling about in every direction, are separated in such a way that like attaches itself to like; bodies are thus, without ceasing, united according to the impulse given by the vortex, and in this way the earth was produced."
Democritus of Abdera (B.C. 460-357), the companion of Leucippus, also taught "that atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe."
The psychological opinions of Democritus were as decidedly materialistic as his physical theories. All knowledge is derived from sensation. It is only by material impact that we can know the external world, and every sense is, in reality, a kind of touch. Material images are being continually thrown off from the surface of external objects which come into actual contact with the organs of sense. The primary qualities of matter, that is, those which are involved in extension in space, are the only objects of real knowledge; the secondary qualities of matter, as softness, hardness, sweetness, bitterness, and the like, are but modifications of the human sensibilities. "The sweet exists only in form--the bitter in form, hot in form, color in form; but in causal reality only atoms and space exist. The sensible things which are supposed by opinion
Thus by Democritus was laid the basis of a system of absolute materialism, which was elaborated and completed by Epicurus, and has been transmitted to our times. It has undergone some slight modifications, adapting it to the progress of physical science; but it is to-day substantially the theory of Democritus. In Democritus we have the culmination of the mechanical theory of the Ionian or Physical school. In physics and psychology it terminated in pure materialism. In theology it ends in positive Atheism. The fundamental error of all the philosophers of the physical school was the assumption, tacitly or avowedly, that sense-perception is the only source of knowledge. This was the fruitful source of all their erroneous conclusions, the parent of all their materialistic tendencies. This led them continually to seek an ????, or first principle of the universe, which should, under some form, be appreciable to sense; and consequently the course of thought tended naturally towards materialism. Thales was unquestionably a dualist. Instructed by traditional intimations, or more probably guided by the spontaneous apperceptions of reason, he recognized, with more or less distinctness, an incorporeal Deity as the moving, animating, and organizing cause of the universe. The idea of God is a truth so self-evident as to need no demonstration. The human mind does not attain to the idea of a God as the last consequence of a series of antecedent principles. It comes at once, by an inherent and necessary movement of thought, to the recognition of God as the First Principle of all principles. But when, instead of hearkening to the simple and spontaneous intuitions of the mind, man turns to the world of sense, and loses himself in discursive thought, the conviction of a personal God becomes obscured. Then, amid the endlessly diversified phenomena of the universe, he seeks for a cause or origin which in some form CHAPTER IX.THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).IDEALIST: PYTHAGORAS--XENOPHANES--PARMENIDES--ZENO. NATURAL REALIST: ANAXAGORAS.SOCRATIC SCHOOL.SOCRATES.In the previous chapter we commenced our inquiry with the assumption that, in the absence of the true inductive method of philosophy which observes, and classifies, and generalizes facts, and thence attains a general principle or law, two only methods were possible to the early speculators who sought an explanation of the universe--1st, That of reasoning from physical analogies; or, 2d, That of deduction from rational conceptions, or À priori ideas. Accordingly we found that one class of speculators fixed their attention solely on the mere phenomena of nature, and endeavored, amid sensible things, to find a single element which, being more subtile, and pliable, and universally diffused, could be regarded as the ground and original of all the rest, and from which, by a vital transformation, or by a mechanical combination and arrangement of parts, all the rest should be evolved. The other class passed beyond the simple phenomena, and considered only the abstract relations of phenomena among themselves, or the relations of phenomena to the necessary and universal ideas of the reason, and supposed that, in these relations, they had found an explanation of the universe. The former was the Ionian or Sensation school; the latter was the Italian or Idealist school. We have traced the method according to which the Ionian THE ITALIAN OR IDEALIST SCHOOL. This school we have found to be naturally subdivided into--1st, The Mathematical sect, which attempted the explanation of the universe by the abstract conceptions of number, proportion, order, and harmony; and, 2d, The Metaphysical school, which attempted the interpretation of the universe according to the À priori ideas of unity, of Being in se, of the Infinite, and the Absolute. Pythagoras of Samos(born B.C. 605) was the founder of the Mathematical school. We are conscious of the difficulties which are to be encountered by the student who seeks to attain a definite comprehension of the real opinions of Pythagoras. The genuineness of many of those writings which were once supposed to represent his views, is now questioned. "Modern criticism has clearly shown that the works ascribed to TimÆus and Archytas are spurious; and the treatise of Ocellus Lucanus on 'The Nature of the All' can not have been written by a Pythagorean."
We may safely assume that the proposition from which Pythagoras started was the fundamental idea of all Greek speculation--that beneath the fleeting forms and successive changes of the universe there is some permanent principle of unity
Aristotle affirms that Pythagoras taught "that numbers are the first principles of all entities," and, "as it were, a material cause of things,"
Are we then required to accept the dictum of Aristotle as final and decisive? Did Pythagoras really teach that numbers are real entities--the substance and cause of all other existences? The reader may be aware that this is a point upon which the historians of philosophy are not agreed. Ritter is decidedly of opinion that the Pythagorean formula "can only be taken symbolically."
We grant there is considerable force in the argument of Lewes. He urges, with some pertinence, the unquestionable fact that Aristotle asserts, again and again, that the Pythagoreans taught "that numbers are the principles and substance of things as well as the causes of their modifications;" and he argues that we are not justified in rejecting the authority of Aristotle, unless better evidence can be produced. So far, however, as the authority of Aristotle is concerned, even Lewes himself charges him, in more than one instance, with strangely misrepresenting the opinions of his predecessors.
Now the writings of Plato are all extant to-day, and accessible in an excellent English translation to any of our readers. Cousin has shown,
It is, however, a matter of the deepest interest for us to find the evidence gleaming out here and there, on the pages of Aristotle, that he had some knowledge of the fact that the Pythagorean numbers were regarded as symbols. The "numbers" of Pythagoras are, in the mind of Aristotle, clearly identified with the "forms" of Plato. Now, in Chapter VI. of the First Book he says that Plato taught that these "forms" were pa?ade??µata--models, patterns, exemplars after which created things were framed. The numbers of Pythagoras, then, are also models and exemplars. This also is admitted by Aristotle. The Pythagoreans indeed affirm that entities subsist by an imitation (µ?µ?s??) of numbers.
The fact seems to be this, the Pythagoreans busied themselves chiefly with what Aristotle designates "the formal cause," and gave little attention to the inquiry concerning "the material cause." This is admitted by Aristotle. Concerning fire, or earth, or the other bodies of such kind, they have declared nothing whatsoever, inasmuch as affirming, in my opinion, nothing that is peculiar concerning sensible natures.
These preliminary considerations will have cleared and prepared the way for a fuller presentation of the philosophic system of Pythagoras. The most comprehensive and satisfactory exposition of his "method" is that given by Wm Archer Butler in his "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," and we feel we can not do better than condense his pages.
Pythagoras had long devoted his intellectual adoration to the lofty idea of order, which seemed to reveal itself to his mind, as the presiding genius of the serene and silent world. He had, from his youth, dwelt with delight upon the eternal relations of space, and determinate form, and number, in which the very idea of proportion seems to find its first and immediate development, and without the latter of which (number), all proportion is absolutely inconceivable. To this ardent genius, whose inventive energies were daily adding new and surprising contributions to the sum of discoverable relations, it at length began to appear as if the whole secret of the universe was hidden in these mysterious correspondences. In making this extensive generalization, Pythagoras may, on his known principles, be supposed to have reasoned as follows: The mind of man perceives the relations of an eternal order in the proportions of space, and form, and number. That mind is, no doubt, a portion of the soul which animates and governs the universe; for on what other supposition shall we account
Again, the world is assuredly perfect, as being the sensible image and copy of the Divinity, the outward and multiple development of the Eternal Unity. It must, therefore, when thoroughly known and properly interpreted, answer to all which Though Pythagoras found in geometry the fitting initiative for abstract speculation, it is remarkable that he himself preferred to constitute the science of Numbers as the true representative of the laws of the universe. The reason appears to be this: that though geometry speaks indeed of eternal truths, yet when the notion of symmetry and proportion is introduced, it is often necessary to insist, in preference, upon the properties of numbers. Hence, though the universe displays the geometry of its Constructor or Animator, yet nature was eminently defined as the µ?µ?s?? t?? ????µ??--the imitation of numbers. The key to all the Pythagorean dogmas, then, seems to be the general formula of unity in multiplicity:--unity either evolving itself into multiplicity, or unity discovered as pervading multiplicity. The principle of all things, the same principle which in this philosophy, as in others, was customarily called Deity, is the primitive unit from which all proceeds in the accordant relations of the universal scheme. Into the sensible world of multitude, the all-pervading Unity has infused his own ineffable nature; he has impressed his own image upon that world which is to represent him in the sphere of sense and man. What, then, is that which is at once single and multiple, identical and diversified--which we perceive as the combination of a thousand elements, yet as the expression of a single spirit--which is a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason? What is it but harmony--proportion--the one governing the many, the many lost in the one? The world is therefore a harmony in innumerable degrees, from the most complicated to the most simple: it is now a Triad, combining the Monad and the Duad, and partaking of the nature of both; now a Tetrad, The psychology of the Pythagoreans was greatly modified by their physical, and still more, by their moral tenets. The soul was ????µ?? ?a?t?? ?????--a self-moving number or Monad, the copy (as we have seen) of that Infinite Monad which unfolds from its own incomprehensible essence all the relations of the universe. This soul has three elements, Reason (????), Intelligence (f???), and Passion (??µ??). The two last, man has in common with brutes, the first is his grand and peculiar characteristic. It has, hence, been argued that Pythagoras could not have held the doctrine of "transmigration." This clear separation of man from the brute, by this signal endowment of reason, which is sempiternal, seems a refutation of those who charge him with the doctrine. In the department of morals, the legislator of Crotona found his appropriate sphere. In his use of numerical notation, moral good was essential unity--evil, essential plurality and division. In the fixed truths of mathematical abstractions he found the exemplars of social and personal virtue. The rule or law of all morality is resemblance to God; that is, the return of number to its root, to unity,
Thus have we, in Pythagoras, the dawn of an Idealist school; for mathematics are founded upon abstractions, and there is consequently an intimate connection between mathematics and idealism. The relations of space, and number, and determinate form, are, like the relations of cause and effect, of phenomena and substance, perceptible only in thought; and the mind which has been disciplined to abstract thought by the study of mathematics, is prepared and disposed for purely metaphysical studies. "The looking into mathematical learning is a kind
Now if the testimony of both reason and sense, as given in consciousness, is accepted as of equal authority, and each faculty is regarded as, within its own sphere, a source of real, valid knowledge, then a consistent and harmonious system of Natural Realism or Natural Dualism will be the result. If the testimony of sense is questioned and distrusted, and the mind is denied any immediate knowledge of the sensible world, and yet the existence of an external world is maintained by various hypotheses and reasonings, the consequence will be a species of Hypothetical Dualism or Cosmothetic Idealism. But if the affirmations of reason, as to the unity of the cosmos, are alone accepted, and the evidence of the senses, as to the variety and multiplicity of the world, is entirely disregarded, then we have a system of Absolute Idealism. Pythagoras regarded the harmony which pervades the diversified phenomena of the outer world as a manifestation of the unity of its eternal principle, or as the perpetual evolution of that unity, and the consequent tendency of his system was to depreciate the sensible. Following out this tendency, the Eleatics first neglected, and finally denied the variety of the universe--denied the real existence of the external world, and asserted an absolute metaphysical unity. Xenophanes of Colophon, in Ionia (B.C. 616-516), was the founder of this celebrated school of Elea. He left Ionia, and arrived in Italy about the same time as Pythagoras, bringing with him to Italy his Ionian tendencies; he there amalgamated them with Pythagorean speculations. Pythagoras had succeeded in fixing the attention of his countrymen on the harmony which pervades the material world, We are not, however, to suppose that Xenophanes denied entirely the existence of plurality. "The great Rhapsodist of Truth" was guided by the spontaneous intuitions of his mind (which seemed to partake of the character of an inspiration), to a clearer vision of the truth than were his successors of the same school by their discursive reasonings. "The One" of Xenophanes was clearly distinguished from the outward universe (t? p????) on the one hand, and from the "non-ens" on the other. It was his disciple, Parmenides, who imagined the logical necessity of identifying plurality with the "non-ens" and thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world. The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Parmenides seems to have had a peculiar charm for the Grecian mind, and to have diverted the eyes of antiquity from the views of the more earnest and devout Xenophanes, whose opinions were too often confounded with those of his successors of the Eleatic school. "Accordingly we find that Xenophanes has obtained credit for much that is, exclusively, the property of Parmenides and Zeno, in particular for denying plurality, and for identifying God with the universe."
In theology, Xenophanes was unquestionably a Theist. He "There is one God, of all beings, divine and human, the greatest: Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in mind." He has no parts, no organs, as men have, being "All sight, all ear, all intelligence; Wholly exempt from toil, he sways all things by thought and will." Xenophanes also taught that God is "uncreated" or "uncaused," and that he is "excellent" as well as "all-powerful."
Parmenides of Elea (born B.C. 536) was the philosopher who framed the psychological opinions of the Idealist school into a precise and comprehensive system. He was the first carefully to distinguish between Truth (????e?a?) and Opinion (d??a?)--between ideas obtained through the reason and the simple perceptions of sense. Assuming that reason and sense are the only sources of knowledge, he held that they furnish the mind with two distinct classes of cognitions--one variable, fleeting, Proceeding on these principles, he rejects the dualistic system of the universe, and boldly declared that all essences are fundamentally one--that, in fact, there is no real plurality, and that all the diversity which "appears" is merely presented under a peculiar aesthetic or sensible law. The senses, it is true, teach us that there are "many things," but reason affirms that, at bottom, there exists only "the one." Whatever, therefore, manifests itself in the field of sense is merely illusory--the mental representation of a phenomenal world, which to experience seems diversified, but which reason can not possibly admit to be other than "immovable" and "one." There is but one Being in the universe, eternal, immovable, absolute; and of this unconditioned being all phenomenal existences, whether material or mental, are but the attributes and modes. Hence the two great maxims of the Eleatic school, derived from Parmenides--t? p??ta ??, "The All is One" and t? a?t? ??e?? te ?a? e??a? (Idem est cogitare atque esse), "Thought and Being are identical." The last remarkable dictum is the fundamental principle of the modern pantheistic doctrine of "absolute identity" as taught by Schelling and Hegel.
Lewes asserts that "Parmenides did not, with Xenophanes, call 'the One' God; he called it Being. Zeno of Elea (born B.C. 500) was the logician of the Eleatic school. He was, says Diogenes Laertius, "the inventor of Dialectics."
This organon, however, Zeno used very imperfectly. In his hands it was simply the "reductio ad absurdum" of opposing opinions as the means of sustaining the tenets of his own sect. Parmenides had asserted, on À priori grounds, the existence of "the One." Zeno would prove by his dialectic the non-existence of "the many." His grand position was that all phenomena, all that appears to sense, is but a modification of the absolute One. And he displays a vast amount of dialectic subtilty in the effort to prove that all "appearances" are unreal, and that all movement and change is a mere "seeming"--not a reality. What men call motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately, is rest. "Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant."
Aristotle assures us that Zeno, "by his one Ens, which neither was moved nor movable, meaneth God." And he also informs us that "Zeno endeavored to demonstrate that there is but one God, from the idea which all men have of him, as that which is the best, supremest, most powerful of all, or an absolutely perfect being" ("De Xenophane, Zenone, et Gorgia"). With Zeno we close our survey of the second grand line of independent inquiry by which philosophy sought to solve the problem of the universe. The reader will be struck with the resemblance which subsists between the history of its development and that of the modern Idealist school. Pythagoras was the Descartes, Parmenides the Spinoza, and Zeno the Hegel of the Italian school. In this survey of the speculations of the pre-Socratic schools of philosophy, we have followed the course of two opposite streams of thought which had their common origin in one fundamental principle or law of the human mind--the intuition of unity--"or the desire to comprehend all the facts of the universe in a single formula, and consummate all conditional knowledge in the unity of unconditioned existence." The history of this tendency is, in fact, the history of all philosophy. "The end of all philosophy," says Plato, "is the intuition of unity." "All knowledge," said the Platonists, "is the gathering up into one."
Starting from this fundamental idea, that, beneath the endless flux and change of the visible universe, there must be a permanent principle of unity, we have seen developed two opposite schools of speculative thought. As the traveller, standing on the ridges of the Andes, may see the head-waters of the great South American rivers mingling in one, so the student of philosophy, standing on the elevated plane of analytic thought, may discover, The radical error of both these systems is at once apparent. The testimony of the primary faculties of the mind was not regarded as each, within its sphere, final and decisive. The duality of consciousness was not accepted in all its integrity; one school rejected the testimony of reason, the other denied the veracity of the senses, and both prepared the way for the skepticism of the Sophists. We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that there were some philosophers of the pre-Socratic school, as Anaxagoras and Empedocles, who recognized the partial and exclusive character of both these systems, and sought, by a method which Cousin would designate as Eclecticism, to combine the element of truth contained in each. Anaxagoras of Clazomencoe (B.C. 500-428) added to the Ionian philosophy of a material element or elements the Italian idea of a spirit distinct from, and independent of the world, which has within itself the principle of a spontaneous activity--???? a?t???at??, and which is the first cause of motion in the universe--???? t?? ????se??.
In his physical theory, Anaxagoras was an Atomist. Instead of one element, he declared that the elements or first principles were numerous, or even infinite. No point in space is unoccupied by these atoms, which are infinitely divisible. He imagined that, in nature, there are as many kinds of principles as there are species of compound bodies, and that the peculiar form of the primary particles of which any body is composed is the same with the qualities of the compound body itself. This was the celebrated doctrine of Homoeomeria, of which Lucretius furnishes a luminous account in his philosophic poem "De Natura Rerum"-- "That bone from bones Minute, and embryon; nerve from nerves arise; And blood from blood, by countless drops increased. Gold, too, from golden atoms, earths concrete, From earths extreme; from fiery matters, fire; And lymph from limpen dews. And thus throughout From primal kinds that kinds perpetual spring." These primary particles were regarded by Anaxagoras as eternal; because he held the dogma, peculiar to all the Ionians, that nothing can be really created or annihilated (de nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti). But he saw, nevertheless, that the simple existence of "inert" matter, even from eternity, could not explain the motion and the harmony of the material world. Hence he saw the necessity of another power--the power of Intelligence. "All things were in chaos; then came Intelligence and introduced Order." Anaxagoras, unlike the pantheistic speculators of the Ionian school, rigidly separated the Supreme Intelligence from the material universe. The ???? of Anaxagoras is a principle, infinite, independent (a?t???at??), omnipresent (?? pa?t? pa?t?? µ???a ????), the subtilest and purest of things (?ept?tat?? p??t?? ???µ?t?? ?a? ?a?a??tat??); and incapable of mixture with aught besides; it is also omniscient (p??ta ????), and unchangeable (p?? ?µ???? ?st?).--Simplicius, in "Arist. Phys." i. 33.
Thus did Anaxagoras bridge the chasm between the Ionian and the Italian schools. He accepted both doctrines with some modifications. He believed in the real existence of the phenomenal world, and he also believed in the real existence of "The Infinite Mind," whose Intelligence and Omnipotence were manifested in the laws and relations which pervade the world. He proclaimed the existence of the Infinite Intelligence ("the ONE"), who was the Architect and Governor of the Infinite Matter ("the MANY"). On the question as to the origin and certainty of human knowledge, Anaxagoras differed both from the Ionians and the Eleatics. Neither the sense alone, nor the reason alone, were for him a ground of certitude. He held that reason (?????) was the regulative faculty of the mind, as the ????, or Supreme Intelligence, was the regulative power of the universe. And he admitted that the senses were veracious in their reports; but they reported only in regard to phenomena. The senses, then, perceive phenomena, but it is the reason alone which recognizes noumena, that is, the reason perceives being in and through phenomena, substance in and through qualities; an anticipation of the fundamental principle of modern psychology--"that every power or substance in existence is knowable to us, so far only, as we know its phenomena." Thus, again, does he bridge the chasm that separates between the Sensationalist and the Idealist. The Ionians relied solely on the intuitions of sense; the Eleatics accepted only the apperceptions of pure reason; he accepted the testimony of both, and in the synthesis of subject and object--the union of an element supplied by sensation, and an element supplied by reason, he found real, certain knowledge. The harmony which the doctrine of Anaxagoras introduced into the philosophy of Athens, soon attracted attention and multiplied disciples. He was teaching when Socrates arrived in Athens, and the latter attended his school. The influence which the doctrine of Anaxagoras exerted upon the mind of Socrates (leading him to recognize Intelligence as the cause
We have devoted a much larger space than we originally designed to the ante-Socratic schools--quite out of proportion, indeed, with that we shall be able to appropriate to their successors. But inasmuch as all the great primary problems of thought, which are subsequently discussed by Plato and Aristotle, were started, and received, at least, typical answers in those schools, we can not hope to understand Plato, or Aristotle, or even Epicurus, or Zeno of Cittium, unless we have first mastered the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras.
II. THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL. The first cycle of philosophy was now complete. That form of Grecian speculative thought which, during the first period of its development, was a philosophy of nature, had reached its maturity; it had sought "the first principles of all things" in the study of external nature, and had signally failed. In this pursuit of first principles as the basis of a true and certain knowledge of the system of the universe, the two leading schools had been carried to opposite poles of thought. One had asserted that experience alone, the other, that reason alone was the sole criterion of truth. As the last consequence of this imperfect method, Leucippus had denied the existence of "the one," and Zeno had denied the existence of "the many." The Ionian school, in Democritus, had landed in Materialism; the Italian, in Parmenides, had ended in Pantheism; and, as the necessary result of this partial and defective method of inquiry, which ended in doubt and contradiction, a spirit of general The Sophists, who belonged to no particular school, laid hold on the elements of skepticism contained in both the pre-Socratic schools of philosophy, and they declared that "the s?f?a" was not only unattainable, but that no relative degree of it was possible for the human faculties.
There were others who laid hold on the weapons which Zeno had prepared to their hands. He had asserted that all the objects of sense were mere phantoms--delusive and transitory. By the subtilties of dialectic quibbling, he had attempted to prove that "change" meant "permanence," and "motion" meant "rest."
SOCRATES (B.C. 469-399), the grand central figure in the group of ancient philosophers, arrived in Athens in the midst of this general skepticism. He had an invincible faith in truth. "He made her the mistress of his soul, and with patient labor, and unwearied energy, did his great and noble soul toil after perfect communion with her." He was disappointed and dissatisfied with the results that had been reached by the methods of his predecessors, and he was convinced that by these methods the problem of the universe could not be solved. He therefore turned away from physical inquiries, and devoted his
Truth has a rational, À priori foundation in the constitution of the human mind. There are ideas connatural to the human reason which are the copies of those archetypal ideas which belong to the Eternal Reason. The grand problem of philosophy, therefore, now is--What are these fundamental IDEAS which are unchangeable and permanent, amid all the diversifies of human opinion, connecting appearance with reality, and constituting a ground of certain knowledge or absolute truth? Socrates may
By the general consent of antiquity, as well as by the concurrent judgment of all modern historians of philosophy, Socrates is regarded as having effected a complete revolution in philosophic thought, and, by universal consent, he is placed at the commencement of a new era in philosophy. Schleiermacher has said, "the service which Socrates rendered t? philosophy consisted not so much in the truths arrived at as in the METHOD by which truth is sought." As Bacon inaugurated a new method in physical inquiry, so Socrates inaugurated a new method in metaphysical inquiry. What, then, was this new method? It was no other than the inductive method applied to the facts of consciousness. This method is thus defined by Aristotle: "Induction is the process from particulars to generals;" that is, it is the process of discovering laws from facts, causes from effects, being from phenomena. But how is this process of induction conducted? By observing and enumerating the real facts which are presented in consciousness, by noting their relations of resemblance or difference, and by classifying these facts by the aid of these relations. In other words, it is analysis applied to the phenomena of mind.
In what are usually regarded as the purely Socratic dialogues,
We must not, however, from thence conclude that Socrates did not himself attain any definite conclusions, or reach any specific and valuable results. When, in reply to his friends who reported the answer of the oracle of Delphi, that "Socrates was the wisest of men," he said, "he supposed the oracle declared him wise because he knew nothing," he did not mean that true knowledge was unattainable, for his whole life had been spent in efforts to attain it. He simply indicates the disposition of mind which is most befitting and most helpful to the seeker Socrates unquestionably believed in one Supreme God, the immaterial, infinite Governor of all. He cherished that instinctive, spontaneous faith in God and his Providence which is the universal faith of the human heart. He saw this faith revealed in the religious sentiments of all nations, and in the tendency to worship so universally characteristic of humanity. The faith of Socrates was not, however, grounded on mere feeling and sentiment. He endeavored to place the knowledge of God on a rational basis. We can not read the arguments he employed without being convinced that he anticipated all the subsequent writers on Natural Theology in his treatment of the argument from special ends or final causes. We venture to abridge the account which is given by Xenophon of the conversation with Aristodemus:
"I will now relate the manner in which I once heard Socrates discoursing with Aristodemus concerning the Deity; for, observing that he never prayed nor sacrificed to the gods, but, on the contrary, ridiculed those who did, he said to him: "'Tell me, Aristodemus, is there any man you admire on "'But which seemed to you most worthy of admiration, Aristodemus--the artist who forms images void of motion and intelligence, or one who has skill to produce animals that are endued, not only with activity, but understanding?' "'The latter, there can be no doubt,' replied Aristodemus, 'provided the production was not the effect of chance, but of wisdom and contrivance.' "'But since there are many things, some of which we can easily see the use of, while we can not say of others to what purpose they are produced, which of these, Aristodemus, do you suppose the work of wisdom?' "'It would seem the most reasonable to affirm it of those whose fitness and utility are so evidently apparent,' answered Aristodemus. "'But it is evidently apparent that He who, at the beginning, made man, endued him with senses because they were good for him; eyes wherewith to behold what is visible, and ears to hear whatever was heard; for, say, Aristodemus, to what purpose should odor be prepared, if the sense of smelling had been denied or why the distinction of bitter or sweet, of savory or unsavory, unless a palate had been likewise given, conveniently placed to arbitrate between them and proclaim the difference? Is not that Providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner conspicuous, which, because the eye of a man is so delicate in its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors whereby to secure it, which extend of themselves whenever it is needful, and again close when sleep approaches? Are not these eyelids provided, as it were, with a fence on the edge of them to keep off the wind and guard the eye? Even the eyebrow itself is not without its office, but, as a penthouse, is prepared to turn off the sweat, which falling from the forehead "'I have no longer any doubt,' replied Aristodemus; 'and, indeed, the more I consider it, the more evident it appears to me that man must be the masterpiece of some great Artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favor of Him who hath thus formed it.' "'But, further (unless thou desirest to ask me questions), seeing, Aristodemus, thou thyself art conscious of reason and intelligence, supposest thou there is no intelligence elsewhere? Thou knowest thy body to be a small part of that wide-extended earth thou everywhere beholdest; the moisture contained in it thou also knowest to be a portion of that mighty mass of waters whereof seas themselves are but a part, while the rest of the elements contribute out of their abundance to thy formation. It is the soul, then, alone, that intellectual part of us, which is come to thee by some lucky chance, from I know not where. If so, there is no intelligence elsewhere; and we must be forced to confess that this stupendous universe, with all the various bodies contained therein--equally amazing, whether we consider their magnitude or number, whatever their use, whatever their order--all have been produced by chance, not by intelligence!' "'It is with difficulty that I can suppose otherwise,' returned Aristodemus; 'for I behold none of those gods whom you speak of as framing and governing the world; whereas I see the artists when at their work here among us.' "'Neither yet seest thou thy soul, Aristodemus, which, however, "'I do not despise the gods,' said Aristodemus; 'on the contrary, I conceive so highly of their excellency, as to suppose they stand in no need of me or of my services.' "'Thou mistakest the matter,' Aristodemus, 'the great magnificence they have shown in their care of thee, so much the more honor and service thou owest them.' "'Be assured,' said Aristodemus, 'if I once could persuade myself the gods take care of man, I should want no monitor to remind me of my duty.' "'And canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, if the gods take care of man? Hath not the glorious privilege of walking upright been alone bestowed on him, whereby he may with the better advantage survey what is around him, contemplate with more ease those splendid objects which are above, and avoid the numerous ills and inconveniences which would otherwise befall him? Other animals, indeed, they have provided with feet; but to man they have also given hands, with which he can form many things for use, and make himself happier than creatures of any other kind. A tongue hath been bestowed on every other animal; but what animal, except man, hath the power of forming words with it whereby to explain his thoughts and make them intelligible to others? But it is not with respect to the body alone that the gods have shown themselves bountiful to man. Their most excellent gift is that of a soul they have infused into him, which so far surpasses what is elsewhere to be found; for by what animal except man is even the existence of the gods discovered, who have produced and still uphold in such regular order this beautiful and stupendous frame of the universe? What other creature is to be found that can serve and adore them?... In thee, Aristodemus, has been joined to a wonderful soul a body no less wonderful; and sayest thou, after this, the gods take no thought for me? What wouldst thou, then, more to convince thee of their care?' "'I would they should send and inform me,' said Aristodemus, 'what things I ought or ought not to do, in like manner as thou sayest they frequently do to thee.'" In reply, Socrates shows that the revelations of God which are made in nature, in history, in consciousness, and by oracles, are made for all men and to all men. He then concludes with these remarkable words: "As, therefore, amongst men we make best trial of the affection and gratitude of our neighbor by showing him kindness, and make discovery of his wisdom by consulting him in our distress, do thou, in like manner, behave towards the gods; and if thou wouldst experience what their wisdom and their love, render thyself deserving of some of those divine secrets which may not be penetrated by man, and are imparted to those alone who consult, who adore, and who obey the Deity. Then shalt thou, my Aristodemus, understand there is a Being whose eye passes through all nature, and whose ear is open to every sound; extended to all places, extending through all time; and whose bounty and care can know no other bounds than those fixed by his own creation".
Socrates was no less earnest in his belief in the immortality of the soul, and a state of future retribution. He had reverently listened to the intuitions of his own soul--the instinctive longings and aspirations of his own heart, as a revelation from God. He felt that all the powers and susceptibilities of his inward nature were in conscious adaptation to the idea of immortality, and that its realization was the appropriate destiny of man. He was convinced that a future life was needed to avenge the wrongs and reverse the unjust judgments of the present life;
Whilst, then, Socrates was not the first to teach the doctrine of immortality, because no one could be said to have first discovered it any more than to have first discovered the existence of a God, he was certainly the first to place it upon a philosophic basis. The PhÆdo presents the doctrine and the reasoning by which Socrates had elevated his mind above the fear of death. Some of the arguments may be purely Platonic, the argument especially grounded on "ideas;" still, as a whole, it must be regarded as a tolerably correct presentation of the manner in which Socrates would prove the immortality of the soul. In Ethics, Socrates was pre-eminently himself. The systematic resolution of the whole theory of society into the elementary principle of natural law, was peculiar to him. Justice was the cardinal principle which must lie at the foundation of all good government. The word s?f?a--wisdom--included all excellency in personal morals, whether as manifested (reflectively) in the conduct of one's self, or (socially) towards others. And Happiness, in its purity and perfection, can only be found in virtuous action.
Socrates left nothing behind him that could with propriety be called a school. His chief glory is that he inaugurated a new method of inquiry, which, in Plato and Aristotle, we shall see applied. He gave a new and vital impulse to human thought, which endured for ages; "and he left, as an inheritance for humanity, the example of a heroic life devoted wholly to the pursuit of truth, and crowned with martyrdom." CHAPTER X.THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).PLATO.We have seen that the advent of Socrates marks a new era in the history of speculative thought. Greek philosophy, which at first was a philosophy of nature, now changes its direction, its character, and its method, and becomes a philosophy of mind. This, of course, does not mean that now it had mind alone for its object; on the contrary, it tended, as indeed philosophy must always tend, to the conception of a rational ideal or intellectual system of the universe. It started from the phenomena of mind, began with the study of human thought, and it made the knowledge of mind, of its ideas and laws, the basis of a higher philosophy, which should interpret all nature. In other words, it proceeded from psychology, through dialectics, to ontology.
This new movement we have designated in general terms as the Socratic School. Not that we are to suppose that, in any technical sense, Socrates founded a school. The Academy, the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the Garden, were each the chosen resort of distinct philosophic sects, the locality of separate schools; but Athens itself, the whole city, was the scene of the studies, the conversations, and the labors of Socrates. He wandered through the streets absorbed in thought. Sometimes he stood still for hours lost in profoundest meditation; at other times he might be seen in the market-place, surrounded by a crowd of Athenians, eagerly discussing the great questions of the day. Socrates, then, was not, in the usual sense of the word, a teacher. He is not to be found in the Stoa or the Grove, with official aspect, expounding a system of doctrine. He is "the garrulous oddity" of the streets, putting the most searching and perplexing questions to every bystander, and making every man conscious of his ignorance. He delivered no lectures; he simply talked. He wrote no books; he only argued: and what is usually styled his school must be understood as embracing those who attended him in public as listeners and admirers, and who caught his spirit, adopted his philosophic method, and, in after life, elaborated and systematized the ideas they had gathered from him. Among the regular or the occasional hearers of Socrates were many who were little addicted to philosophic speculation. Some were warriors, as Nicias and Laches; some statesmen, as Critias and Critobulus; some were politicians, in the worst sense of that word, as Glaucon; and some were young men of fashion, as Euthydemus and Alcibiades. These were all alike delighted with his inimitable irony, his versatility of genius, his charming modes of conversation, his adroitness of reply; and they were compelled to confess the wisdom and justness of his opinions, and to admire the purity and goodness of his life. The magic power which he wielded, even over men of dissolute character, is strikingly depicted by Alcibiades in his speech at "the Banquet."
Plato (B.C. 430-347) was pre-eminently the pupil of Socrates. He came to Socrates when he was but twenty years of age, and remained with him to the day of his death. Diogenes Laertius reports the story of Socrates having dreamed he found an unfledged cygnet on his knee. In a few moments it became winged and flew away, uttering a sweet sound. The next day a young man came to him who was said to reckon Solon among his near ancestors, and who looked, through him, to Codrus and the god Poseidon. That young man was Plato, and Socrates pronounced him to be the bird he had seen in his dream.
Some have supposed that this old tradition intimates that Plato departed from the method of his master--he became fledged and flew away into the air. But we know that Plato did not desert his master whilst he was living, and there is no evidence that he abandoned his method after he was dead. He was the best expounder and the most rigid observer of the Socratic "organon." The influence of Socrates upon the philosophy of Plato is everywhere discernible. Plato had been taught by Socrates, that beyond the world of sense there is a world of eternal truth, seen by the eye of reason alone. He had also learned from him that the eye of reason is purified and strengthened by reflection, and that to reflect is to observe, and analyze, and define, and classify the facts of consciousness. Self-reflection, then, he had been taught to regard as the key of real knowledge. By a completer induction, a more careful and exact analysis, and a more accurate definition, he carried this philosophic method forward towards maturity. He sought to solve the problem of being by the principles revealed in his own consciousness, and in the ultimate ideas of the reason to find the foundation of all real knowledge, of all truth, and of all certitude. Plato was admirably fitted for these sublime investigations by the possession of those moral qualities which were so prominent in the character of his master. He had that same deep
Added to these moral qualifications, Plato had the further qualification of a comprehensive knowledge of all that had been achieved by his predecessors. In this regard he had enjoyed advantages superior to those of Socrates. Socrates was deficient in erudition, properly so called. He had studied men rather than books. His wisdom consisted in an extensive observation, the results of which he had generalized with more or less accuracy. A complete philosophic method demands not only a knowledge of contemporaneous opinions and modes of thought, but also a knowledge of the succession and development
The question as to the nature, the sources, and the validity of human knowledge had attracted general attention previous to the time of Socrates and Plato. As the results of this protracted controversy, the opinions of philosophers had finally crystallized in two well-defined and opposite theories of knowledge. 1. That which reduced all knowledge to the accidental and This doctrine had its foundation in the physical philosophy of Heraclitus. He had taught that all things are in a perpetual flux and change. "Motion gives the appearance of existence and of generation." "Nothing is, but is always a becoming"
2. The second theory is that which denies the existence (except as phantasms, images, or mere illusions of the mind) of the whole of sensible phenomena, and refers all knowledge to the rational apperception of unity (t? ??) or the One. This was the doctrine of the later Eleatics. The world of sense was, to Parmenides and Zeno, a blank negation, the non ens. The identity of thought and existence was the fundamental principle of their philosophy. "Thought is the same thing as the cause of thought; For without the thing in which it is announced, You can not find the thought; for there is nothing, nor shall be, Except the existing."
This theory, therefore, denied to man any valid knowledge of the external world. It will at once be apparent to the intelligent reader that the direct and natural result of both these theories
Therefore the grand, the vital, the most urgent question for his times, as indeed for all times, was, What is Truth? What is Right? In the midst of all this variableness and uncertainty of human opinion, is there no ground of certainty? Amid all the fluctuations and changes around us and within us, is there nothing that is immutable and permanent? Have we no ultimate standard of Right? Is there no criterion of Truth? Plato believed most confidently there was such a criterion and standard. He had learned from Socrates, his master, to cherish an unwavering faith in the existence of an Eternal Truth, an Eternal Order, an Eternal Good, the knowledge of which is essential to the perfection and happiness of man, and which knowledge must therefore be presumed to be attainable by man. Henceforth, therefore, the ceaseless effort of Plato's life is to attain a standard (???t?????)
At the outset of his philosophic studies, Plato had derived from Socrates an important principle, which became the guide of all his subsequent inquiries. He had learned from him that the criterion of truth must be no longer sought amid the ever-changing phenomena of the "sensible world." This had been attempted by the philosophers of the Ionian school, and ended in failure and defeat. It must therefore be sought in the metaphenomenal--the "intelligible world;" that is, it must be sought in the apperceptions of the reason, and not in opinions founded on sensation. In other words, he must look within. Here, by reflection, he could recognize, dimly and imperfectly at first, but increasing gradually in clearness and distinctness, two classes of cognitions, having essentially distinct and opposite characteristics. He found one class that was complex (s???e??µ????), He found, then, that there are in all minds certain "principles" which are fundamental--principles which lie at the basis of all our cognitions of the objective world, and which, as "mental laws," determine all our forms of thought; and principles, too, which have this marvellous and undeniable character, that they are encountered in the most common experiences, and, at the same time, instead of being circumscribed within the limits of experience, transcend and govern it--principles which are universal in the midst of particular phenomena--necessary, though mingled with things contingent--to our eyes infinite and absolute, even when appearing in us the relative and finite beings that we are.
In attempting to present to the reader an adequate representation of the Platonic Ideas, we shall be under the necessity of anticipating some of the results of his Dialectical method before we have expounded that method. And, further, in order that it may be properly appreciated by the modern student, we shall avail ourselves of the lights which modern psychology, faithful to the method of Plato, has thrown upon the subject. Whilst, however, we admit that modern psychology has succeeded in giving more definiteness and precision to the "doctrine of Ideas," we shall find that all that is fundamentally valuable and true was present to the mind of Plato. Whatever superiority the "Spiritual" philosophy of to-day may have over In order to the completeness of our preliminary exposition of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, we shall conditionally assume, as a natural and legitimate hypothesis, the doctrine so earnestly asserted by Plato, that the visible universe, at least in its present form, is an effect which must have had a cause,
"Let us declare," says Plato, "with what motive the Creator hath formed nature and the universe. He was good, and in the good no manner of envy can, on any subject, possibly subsist. Exempt from envy, he had wished that all things should, as far as possible, resemble himself.... It was not, and is not to be allowed for the Supremely Good to do any thing except what is most excellent (?????st??)--most fair, most beautiful."
And then, furthermore, if this Supreme Intelligence, this Eternal Mind, shall create another mind, it must, in a still higher degree, resemble him. Inasmuch as it is a rational nature, it must, in a peculiar sense, partake of the Divine characteristics. "The soul," says Plato, "is that which most partakes of the Divine"
And now we are prepared to form a clear conception of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Viewed in their relation to the Eternal Reason, as giving the primordial thought and law of all being, these principles are simply e?d? a?t? ?a?? a?t?--ideas in themselves--the essential qualities or attributes of Him who is the supreme and ultimate Cause of all existence. When regarded as before the Divine imagination, giving definite forms and relations, they are the t?p??, the pa?ade??µata--the types,
Science is, then, according to Plato, the knowledge of universal, necessary, unchangeable, and eternal ideas. The simple cognition of the concrete phenomena of the universe is not regarded by him as real knowledge. "Science, or real knowledge, belongs to Being, and ignorance to non-Being." Whilst that which is conversant only "with that which partakes of both--of being Plato, in the "TheÆtetus," puts this question by the interlocutor Socrates, "What is Science (??p?st?µ?) or positive knowledge?"
This investigation is resumed in the "Republic." This That we may reach a comprehensive view of this "sublimest of sciences," we shall find it necessary to consider-- 1st. What are the powers or faculties by which we obtain knowledge, and what are the limits and degrees of human knowledge? 2d. What is the method in which, or the processes and laws according to which, the mind operates in obtaining knowledge? 3d. What are the ultimate results attained by this method? what are the objective and ontological grounds of all real knowledge? The answer to the first question will give the PLATONIC PSYCHOLOGY; the answer to the second will exhibit the PLATONIC DIALECTIC; the answer to the last will reveal the PLATONIC ONTOLOGY. I. PLATONIC PSYCHOLOGY. Every successful inquiry as to the reality and validity of human knowledge must commence by clearly determining, by rigid analysis, what are the actual phenomena presented in consciousness, what are the powers or faculties supposed by these phenomena, and what reliance are we to place upon the testimony of these faculties? And, especially, if it be asserted that there is a science of absolute Reality, of ultimate and essential Being, then the most important and vital question is, By what power do we cognize real Being? through what faculty do we obtain the knowledge of that which absolutely is? If by sensation we only obtain the knowledge of the fleeting and the transitory, "the becoming" how do we attain to the knowledge Plato commences this inquiry by first defining his understanding of the word d??aµ??--power or faculty. "We will say faculties (d???µe??) are a certain kind of real existences by which we can do whatever we are able (e.g., to know), as there are powers by which every thing does what it does: the eye has a power of seeing; the ear has a power of hearing. But these powers (of which I now speak) have no color or figure to which I can so refer that I can distinguish one power from another. In order to make such distinction, I must look at the power itself, and see what it is, and what it does. In that way I discern the power of each thing, and that is the same power which produces the same effect, and that is a different power which produces a different effect."
We have seen that our first conceptions (i.e., first in the order of time) are of the mingled, the concrete (t? s???e??µ????), "the multiplicity of things to which the multitude ascribe beauty, etc. Primarily nothing is given in the abstract (t? ?e????sµ????), but every thing in the concrete. The primary faculties of the mind enter into action spontaneously and simultaneously; all our primary notions are consequently synthetic. When reflection is applied to this primary totality of consciousness, that is, when we analyze our notions, we find them composed of diverse and opposite elements, some of which are variable, contingent, individual, and relative, others are permanent, unchangeable, universal, necessary, and absolute. Now these elements, so diverse, so opposite, can not have been obtained from the same source; they must be supplied by separate powers. "Can any man with common sense reduce under one what is infallible, and what is not infallible?"
These primitive intuitions--the simple perceptions of sense, and the À priori intuitions of the reason, which constitute the elements of all our complex notions, have essentially diverse objects--the sensible or ectypal world, seen by the eye and touched by the hand, which Plato calls d??ast??--the subject of opinion; and the noetic or archetypal world, perceived by reason, and which he calls d?a???t????--the subject of rational intuition or science. "It is plain," therefore, argues Plato, "that opinion is a different thing from science. They must, therefore, have a different faculty in reference to a different object--science as regards that which is, so as to know the nature of real being--opinion as regards that which can not be said absolutely to be, or not to be. That which is known and that which is opined can not possibly be the same,... since they are naturally faculties of different things, and both of them are faculties--opinion and science, and each of them different from the other."
According to the scheme of Plato, these two general divisions of the mental powers are capable of a further subdivision. He says: Consider that there are two kinds of things, the intelligible and the visible; two different regions, the intelligible world and the sensible world. Now take a line divided into two equal segments to represent these two regions, and again divide each segment in the same ratio--both that of the visible and that of the intelligible species. The parts of each segment are to represent differences of clearness and indistinctness. In the visible world the parts are things and images. By images I mean shadows, You allow that this difference corresponds to the difference of knowledge and opinion; and the opinionable is to the knowable as the image to the reality.
Now we have to divide the segment which represents Thus, to explain a problem in geometry, the geometers make certain hypotheses (namely, definitions and postulates) about numbers and angles, and the like, and reason from them--giving no reason for their assumptions, but taking them as evident to all; and, reasoning from them, they prove the propositions which they have in view. And in such reasonings, they use visible figures or diagrams--to reason about a square, for instance, with its diagonals; but these reasonings are not really about these visible figures, but about the mental figures, and which they conceive in thought. The diagrams which they draw, being visible, are the images of thoughts which the geometer has in his mind, and these images he uses in his reasoning. There may be images of these images--shadows and reflections in water, as of other visible things; but still these diagrams are only images of conceptions. This, then, is one kind of intelligible things: conceptions--for instance, geometrical conceptions of figures. But in dealing with these the mind depends upon assumptions, and does not ascend to first principles. It does not ascend above these assumptions, but uses images borrowed from a lower region (the visible world), these images being chosen so as to be as distinct as may be. Now the other kind of intelligible things is this: that which the Reason includes, in virtue of its power of reasoning, when it regards the assumptions of the sciences as (what they are) assumptions only, and uses them as occasions and starting-points, that from these it may ascend to the Absolute, which does not depend upon assumption, the origin of scientific truth. The reason takes hold of this first principle of truth, and availing itself of all the connections and relations of this principle, it proceeds to the conclusion--using no sensible image in doing this, but contemplates the idea alone; and with these ideas the process begins, goes on, and terminates. "I apprehend," said Glaucon, "but not very clearly, for the matter is somewhat abstruse. You wish to prove that the knowledge which by the reason, in an intuitive manner, we may acquire of real existence and intelligible things is of a higher degree of certainty than the knowledge which belongs to what are commonly called the Sciences. Such sciences, you say, have certain assumptions for their basis; and these assumptions are by the student of such sciences apprehended not by sense, but by a mental operation--by conception. "But inasmuch as such students ascend no higher than assumptions, and do not go to the first principles of truth, they do not seem to have true knowledge, intellectual insight, intuitive reason, on the subjects of their reasonings, though the subjects are intelligible things. And you call this habit and practice of the geometers and others by the name of JUDGMENT (d?????a), not reason, or insight, or intuition--taking judgment to be something between opinion, on the one side, and intuitive reason, on the other. "You have explained it well," said I. "And now consider these four kinds of things we have spoken of, as corresponding to four affections (or faculties) of the mind. INTUITIVE REASON (???s??), the highest; JUDGMENT (d?????a)(or discursive reason), the next; the third, BELIEF (p?st??); and the fourth, CONJECTURE, or guess (e??as?a); and arrange them in order, so that they may be held to have more or less certainty, as their objects have more or less truth."
The foregoing diagram, borrowed from Whewell, with some modifications and additions we have ventured to make, exhibits a perfect view of the Platonic scheme of the cognitive powers--the faculties by which the mind attains to different degrees of knowledge, "having more or less certainty, as their objects have more or less truth." 1st. SENSATION (a?s??s??).--This term is employed by Plato to denote the passive mental states or affections which are produced within us by external objects through the medium of the vital organization, and also the cognition or vital perception or consciousness 2d. PHANTASY (fa?tas?a).--This term is employed to describe the power which the mind possesses of imagining or representing whatever has once been the object of sensation. This may be done involuntarily as "in dreams, disease, and hallucination,"
The conjoint action of these two powers results in what Plato calls opinion (d??a). "Opinion is the complication of memory and sensation. For when we meet for the first time with a thing perceptible by a sense, and a sensation is produced by it, and from this sensation a memory, and we subsequently meet again with the same thing perceived by a sense, we combine the memory previously brought into action with the sensation produced a second time, and we say within ourselves [this is] Socrates, or a horse, or fire, or whatever thing there may be of We are not from hence to infer that Plato intended to deny all reality whatever to the objects of sensible experience. These transitory phenomena were not real existences, but they were images of real existences. The world itself is but the image, in the sphere of sense, of those ideas of Order, and Proportion, and Harmony, which dwell in the Divine Intellect, and are mirrored in the soul of man. "Time itself is a moving image of Eternity."
3d. JUDGMENT (d?????a, ?????), the Discursive Faculty, or the Faculty of Relations.--According to Plato, this faculty proceeds on the assumption of certain principles as true, without inquiring into their validity, and reasons, by deduction, to the conclusions which necessarily flow from these principles. These assumptions Plato calls hypotheses (?p???se??). But by hypotheses he does not mean baseless assumptions--"mere theories--"but
All judgments are therefore founded on relations. To judge is to compare two terms. "Every judgment has three parts: the subject, or notion about which the judgment is; the predicate, or notion with which the subject is compared; and the copula, or nexus, which expresses the connection or relation between them.
The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discursive Reason, Plato does not regard as "real Science." "It is something between Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on the other."
4th. REASON (?????)--Intuitive Reason, is the organ of self-evident, necessary, and universal Truth. In an immediate, direct, and intuitive manner, it takes hold on truth with absolute certainty. The reason, through the medium of ideas, holds communion with the world of real Being. These ideas are the light which reveals the world of unseen realities, as the sun reveals the world of sensible forms. "The idea of the good is the sun of the Intelligible World; it sheds on objects the light of truth, and gives to the soul that knows, the power of knowing."
Thus the soul (????) as a composite nature is on one side linked to the eternal world, its essence being generated of that ineffable element which constitutes the real, the immutable, and the permanent. It is a beam of the eternal Sun, a spark of the Divinity, an emanation from God. On the other side it is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its emotive part
In the allegory of the "Chariot and Winged Steeds"
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Has had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar, Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home."
Exiled from the true home of the spirit, imprisoned in the body, disordered by passion, and beclouded by sense, the soul has yet longings after that state of perfect knowledge, and purity, and bliss, in which it was first created. Its affinities are still on high. It yearns for a higher and nobler form of life. It essays to rise, but its eye is darkened by sense, its wings are besmeared by passion and lust; it is "borne downward, until at length it falls upon and attaches itself to that which is material and sensual," and it flounders and grovels still amid the objects of sense. And now, with all that seriousness and earnestness of spirit which is peculiarly Christian, Plato asks how the soul may be delivered from the illusions of sense, the distempering influence of the body, and the disturbances of passion, which becloud its vision of the real, the good, and the true? Plato believed and hoped this could be accomplished by philosophy. This he regarded as a grand intellectual discipline for the purification of the soul. By this it was to be
CHAPTER XI.THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued.)THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).PLATO.II. THE PLATONIC DIALECTIC.The Platonic Dialectic is the Science of Eternal and Immutable Principles, and the method (???a???) by which these first principles are brought forward into the clear light of consciousness. The student of Plato will have discovered that he makes no distinction between logic and metaphysics. These are closely united in the one science to which he gives the name of "Dialectic" and which was at once the science of the ideas and laws of the Reason, and of the mental process by which the knowledge of Real Being is attained, and a ground of absolute certainty is found. This science has, in modern times, been called Primordial or Transcendental Logic. We have seen that Plato taught that the human reason is originally in possession of fundamental and necessary ideas--the copies of the archetypal ideas which dwell in the eternal Reason; and that these ideas are the primordial laws of thought--that is, they are the laws under which we conceive of all objective things, and reason concerning all existence. These ideas, he held, are not derived from sensation, neither are they generalizations from experience, but they are inborn and connatural. And, further, he entertained the belief, more, however, as a reasonable hypothesis
All knowledge of truth and reality is, therefore, according to Plato, a REMINISCENCE (???µ??s??)--a recovery of partially forgotten ideas which the soul possessed in another state of existence; and the dialectic of Plato is simply the effort, by apt interrogation, to lead the mind to "recollect"
Now whilst we readily grant that the instance given in the "Meno" does not sustain the inference of Plato that "the boy" had learnt these geometrical truths "in eternity," and that they had simply been brought forward into the view of his And this was the grand aim of his Dialectic--to elicit, to bring to light the truths which are already in the mind--"a µa?e?s??" a kind of intellectual midwifery
It is thus, at first sight, obvious that it was a higher and more comprehensive science than the art of deduction. For it
The process of investigation adopted by Plato thus corresponds with the inductive method of modern times, with this simple difference, that Bacon conducted science into the world of matter, whilst Plato directed it to the world of mind. The dialectic of Plato aimed at the discovery of the "laws of thought;" the modern inductive philosophy aims at the discovery of the "laws of nature." The latter concerns itself chiefly with the inquiry after the "causes" of material phenomena; the former concerned itself with the inquiry after the "first principles" of all knowledge and of all existence. Both processes are, therefore, carried on by interrogation. The analysis which seeks for a law of nature proceeds by the interrogation of nature. The analysis of Plato proceeds by the interrogation of mind, in order to discover the fundamental ideas which lie at the basis of all cognition, which determine all our Now the fact that such an inquiry has originated in the human mind, and that it can not rest satisfied without some solution, is conclusive evidence that the mind has an instinctive belief, a proleptic anticipation, that such knowledge can be attained. There must unquestionably be some mental initiative which is the motive and guide to all philosophical inquiry. We must have some well-grounded conviction, some À priori belief, some pre-cognition "ad intentionem ejus quod quÆritur,"
Now this mental initiative of every process of induction is the intuitive and necessary conviction that there must be a sufficient reason why every thing exists, and why it is as it is, and not otherwise;
The first business of Plato's dialectic is to demonstrate that the ground and reason of all existence can not be found in the mere objects of sense, nor in any opinions or judgments founded upon sensation. Principles are only so far "first principles" as they are permanent and unchangeable, depending on neither time, nor place, nor circumstances. But the objects of sense are in ceaseless flux and change; they are "always becoming;" they can not be said to have any "real being." They are not to-day what they were yesterday, and they will never again be what they are now; consequently all opinions founded on mere phenomena are equally fluctuating and uncertain. Setting out, therefore, from the assumption of the fallaciousness of "opinion" it examined the various hypotheses
The dialectic process thus consisted almost entirely of refutation,
By the application of this method, Plato had not only exposed the insufficiency and self-contradiction of all results obtained by a mere À posteriori generalization of the simple facts of experience, but he demonstrated, as a consequence, that we are in possession of some elements of knowledge which have not been derived from sensation; that there are, in all minds, certain notions, principles, or ideas, which have been furnished by a higher faculty than sense; and that these notions, principles, or ideas, transcend the limits of experience, and reveal the knowledge of real being--t? ??t?? ??--Being in se. To determine what these principles or ideas are, Plato now addresses himself to the analysis of thought. "It is the glory of Plato to have borne the light of analysis into the most obscure and inmost region; he searched out what, in this totality which forms consciousness, is the province of reason; what comes from it, and not from the imagination and the senses--from within, and not from without."
We have already seen that, in his first efforts at applying reflection to the concrete phenomena of consciousness, Plato had recognized two distinct classes of cognitions, marked by characteristics essentially opposite;--one of "sensible" objects having a definite outline, limit, and figure, and capable of being imaged and represented to the mind in a determinate form--the other of "intelligible" objects, which can not be outlined or represented in the memory or the imagination by any figures or images, and are, therefore, the objects of purely rational conception. He found, also, that we arrive at one class of cognitions "mediately" through images generated in the vital organism, or by some testimony, definition, or explication of others; whilst we arrive at the other class "immediately" by simple intuition, or rational apperception. The mind stands face to face with the object, and gazes directly upon it. The reality of that object is revealed in its own light, and we find it impossible to refuse our assent--that is, it is self-evident. One class consisted of contingent ideas--that is, their objects are conceived as existing, with the possibility, without any contradiction, of conceiving of their non-existence; the other consisted of necessary ideas--their objects are conceived as existing with the absolute impossibility of conceiving of their non-existence. Thus we can conceive of this book, this table, this earth, as not existing, but we can not conceive the non-existence of space. We can conceive of succession in time as not existing, but we can not, in thought, annihilate duration. We can imagine this or that particular thing not to have been, but we can not conceive of the extinction of Being in itself. He further observed, that one class of our cognitions are conditional ideas; the existence of their objects is conceived only on the supposition of some antecedent existence, as for example, the idea of qualities, phenomena, events; whilst the other class of cognitions are unconditional and absolute--we can conceive of their objects as To reach this objective reality on which the ideas of reason repose, is the grand effort of Plato's dialectic. He seeks, by a rigid analysis, clearly to separate, and accurately to define the À priori conceptions of reason. And it was only when he had eliminated every element which is particular, contingent, and relative, and had defined the results in precise and accurate language, that he regarded the process as complete. The ideas which are self-evident, universal, and necessary, were then clearly disengaged, and raised to their pure and absolute form. "You call the man dialectical who requires a reason of the essence or being of each thing. As the dialectical man can define the essence of every thing, so can he of the good. He can define the idea of the good, separating it from all others--follow it through all windings, as in a battle, resolved to mark it, not according to opinion, but according to science."
Abstraction is thus the process, the instrument of the Platonic
Abstraction, then, it will be seen, creates nothing; neither does it add any new element to the store of actual cognitions already possessed by all human minds. It simply brings forward into a clearer and more definite recognition, that which necessarily belongs to the mind as part of its latent furniture, and which, as a law of thought, has always unconsciously governed all its spontaneous movements. As a process of rational inquiry, it was needful to bring the mind into intelligible and conscious communion with the world of Ideas. These ideas are partially revealed in the sensible world, all things being formed, as Plato believed, according to ideas as models and exemplars, of which sensible objects are the copies. They are more fully manifested in the constitution of the human mind which, by virtue of its kindred nature with the original essence or being, must know them intuitively and immediately. And But whilst Plato has certainly exhibited the true method of investigation by which the ideas of reason are to be separated from all concrete phenomena and set clearly before the mind, he has not attempted a complete enumeration of the ideas of reason; indeed, such an enumeration is still the grand desideratum of philosophy. We can not fail, however, in the careful study of his writings, to recognize the grand Triad of Absolute Ideas--ideas which Cousin, after Plato, has so fully exhibited, viz., the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. PLATONIC SCHEME OF IDEASI. The idea of ABSOLUTE TRUTH or REALITY (t? ??????--t? ??)--the ground and efficient cause of all existence, and by participating in which all phenomenal existence has only so far a reality, sensible things being merely shadows and resemblances of ideas. This idea is developed in the human intelligence in its relation with the phenomenal world; as, 1. The idea of SUBSTANCE (??s?a)--the ground of all phenomena, "the being or essence of all things," the permanent reality.--"TimÆeus," ch. ix. and xii.; "Republic," bk. vii. ch. xiv.; "PhÆdo,"§§ 63-67, 73. 2. The idea of CAUSE (a?t?a)--the power or efficiency by which things that "become," or begin to be, are generated or produced.--"TimÆus," ch. ix.; "Sophist," § 109; "Philebus," §§ 45, 46. 3. The idea of IDENTITY (a?t? t? ?s??)--that which "does not change," "is always the same, simple and uniform, incomposite and indissoluble,"--that which constitutes personality or self-hood.--"PhÆdo," §§ 61-75; "TimÆus," ch. ix.; "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xix. and xx. 4. The idea of UNITY (t? ??)--one mind or intelligence pervading the universe, the comprehensive conscious thought or plan which binds all parts of the universe in one great 5. The idea of the INFINITE (t? ?pe????)--that which is unlimited and unconditioned, "has no parts, bounds, no beginning, nor middle, nor end."--"Parmenides," §§ 22, 23. II. The idea of ABSOLUTE BEAUTY (t? ?a???)--the formal cause of the universe, and by participation in which all created things have only so far a real beauty.--"TimÆus," ch. xi, "Greater Hippias," §§ 17, 18; "Republic," bk. v. ch. 22. This idea is developed in the human intelligence in its relation to the organic world; as, 1. The Idea of PROPORTION or SYMMETRY (s?µµet??a)--the proper relation of parts to an organic whole resulting in a harmony (??sµ??), and which relation admits of mathematical expression.--"TimÆus," ch. lxix.; "Philebus," § 155 ("TimÆus," ch. xi. and xii., where the relation of numerical proportions to material elements is expounded). 2. The idea of DETERMINATE FORM (pa??de??µa ????t?p??)--the eternal models or archetypes according to which all things are framed, and which admit of geometrical representation.--"TimÆus," ch. ix.; "PhÆdo," §112 ("TimÆus," ch. xxviii.-xxxi., where the relation of geometrical forms to material elements is exhibited). 3. The idea of RHYTHM (???µ??)--measured movement in time and space, resulting in melody and grace.--"Republic," bk. iii. ch. xi. and xii.; "Philebus," § 21. 4. The idea of FITNESS or ADAPTATION (???s???)--effectiveness to some purpose or end.--"Greater Hippias," § 35. 5. The idea of PERFECTION (te?e??t??)--that which is complete, "a structure which is whole and finished--of whole and perfect parts."--"TimÆus," ch. xi., xii., and xliii. III. The idea of ABSOLUTE GOOD (t? ??a???)--the final cause or reason of all existence, the sun of the invisible world, that pours upon all things the revealing light of truth. The first Good
This idea is developed in the human intelligence in its relation to the world of moral order; as, 1. The idea of WISDOM or PRUDENCE (f????s??)--thoughtfulness, rightness of intention, following the guidance of reason, the right direction of the energy or will.--"Republic," bk. iv. ch. vii., bk. vi. ch. ii. 2. The idea of COURAGE or FORTITUDE (??d??a)--zeal, energy, firmness in the maintenance of honor and right, virtuous indignation against wrong.--"Republic," bk. iv. ch. viii.; "Laches;" "Meno," § 24. 3. The idea of SELF-CONTROL or TEMPERANCE (s?f??s???)--sound-mindedness, moderation, dignity.--"Republic," bk. iv. ch. ix.; "Meno," § 24; "PhÆdo," § 35. 4. The idea of JUSTICE (d??a??s???)--the harmony or perfect proportional action of all the powers of the soul.--"Republic," bk. i. ch. vi., bk. iv. ch. x.-xii., bk. vi. ch. ii. and xvi.; "Philebus," § 155; "PhÆdo," § 54; "TheÆtetus," §§ 84, 85. Plato's idea of Justice comprehends-- (1) EQUITY (?s?t??)--the rendering to every man his due.--"Republic," bk. i. ch. vi. (2.) VERACITY (????e?a)--the utterance of what is true.--"Republic," bk. i. ch. v., bk. ii. ch. xx., bk. vi. ch. ii. (3.) FAITHFULNESS (p?st?t??)--the strict performance of a trust.--"Republic," bk. i. ch. v., bk. vi. ch. ii. (4.) USEFULNESS (?f??tµ??)--the answering of some valuable end.--"Republic," bk. ii. ch. xviii., bk. iv. ch. xviii.; "Meno," § 22. (5.) BENEVOLENCE (e????a)--seeking the well-being of others.--"Republic," bk. i. ch. xvii., bk. ii. ch. xviii. (6.) HOLINESS (?s??t??)--purity of mind, piety.--"Protagoras," §§ 52-54; "PhÆdo," § 32; "TheÆtetus," § 84. The final effort of Plato's Dialectic was to ascend from these ideas of Absolute Truth, and Absolute Beauty, and Absolute Goodness to the Absolute Being, in whom they are all united, and from whom they all proceed. "He who possesses the true love of science is naturally carried in his aspirations to the real Being; and his love, so far from suffering itself to be retarded by the multitude of things whose reality is only apparent, knows no repose until it have arrived at union with the essence of each object, by the part of the soul which is akin to the permanent and essential; so that this divine conjunction having produced intelligence and truth, the knowledge of being is won."
To the mind of Plato, there was in every thing, even the smallest and most insignificant of sensible objects, a reality just in so far as it participates in some archetypal form or idea. These archetypal forms or ideas are the "thoughts of God"
This passage from psychology to ontology is not achieved per saltum, or effected by any arbitrary or unwarrantable assumption. There are principles revealed in the centre of our consciousness, whose regular development carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and attain to the knowledge of actual being. The absolute principles of causality and substance, of intentionality and unity, unquestionably give us the absolute Being. Indeed the absolute truth that every idea supposes a being in which it resides, and which is but another form of the law or principle of substance, viz., that every quality supposes a substance or being in which it inheres, is adequate to carry us from Idea to Being. "There is not a single cognition which does not suggest to us the notion of existence, and there is not an unconditional and absolute truth which does not necessarily imply an absolute and unconditional Being."
This, then, is the dialectic of Plato. Instead of losing himself amid the endless variety of particular phenomena, he would search for principles and laws, and from thence ascend to the great Legislator, the First Principle of all Principles. Instead of stopping at the relations of sensible objects to the general ideas with which they are commingled, he will pass to their eternal Paradigms--from the just thing to the idea of absolute justice, from the particular good to the absolute good, from beautiful things to the absolute beauty, and thence to the ultimate reality--the absolute Being. By the realization of the lower idea, embodied in the forms of the visible universe and in the necessary laws of thought, he sought to rise to the higher idea, in its pure and abstract form--the Supreme Idea, containing in itself all other ideas--the One Intelligence which unites the universe in a harmonious whole. "The Dialectic faculty proceeds from hypothesis to an unhypothetical principle.... It uses hypotheses as steps, and starting-points, in order to proceed from thence to the absolute. The Intuitive Reason takes hold of the First Principle of the Universe, and avails itself of all the connections and relations of that principle. It ascends from idea to idea, until it has reached the Supreme Idea"--the Absolute Good--that is, God.
We are thus brought, in the course of our examination of the Platonic method, to the results obtained by this method--or, in other words, to III. THE PLATONIC ONTOLOGY.The grand object of all philosophic inquiry in ancient Greece was to attain to the knowledge of real Being--that Being which is permanent, unchangeable, and eternal. It had proceeded on the intuitive conviction, that beneath all the endless diversity of the universe there must be a principle of unity--below all fleeting appearances there must be a permanent substance--beyond all this everlasting flow and change, this beginning and end of finite existence, there must be an eternal Plato had assiduously labored at the solution of this problem. The object of his dialectic was "to lead upward the soul to the knowledge of real being," 1st. Beneath all SENSIBLE phenomena there is an unchangeable subject-matter, the mysterious substratum of the world of sense, which he calls the receptacle (?p?d???) the nurse (t?????) of all that is produced. It is this "substratum or physical groundwork" which gives a reality and definiteness to the evanescent phantoms of sense, for, in their ceaseless change, they can not justify any title whatever. It alone can be styled "this" or "that" (t?de or t??t?); they rise no higher than "of such kind" or " of what kind or quality" (t????t?? or ?p??????? t?).
It should, however, be distinctly noted that Plato does not use the word ???--matter. This term is first employed by Aristotle to express "the substance which is the subject of all changes."
There has been much discussion as to whether Plato held that this "Receptacle" and "Nurse" of forms and ideas was eternal, or generated in time. Perhaps no one has more carefully studied the writings of Plato than William Archer Butler, and his conclusions in regard to this subject are presented in the following words: "As, on the one hand, he maintained a strict system of dualism, and avoided, without a single deviation, that seduction of pantheism to which so many abstract speculators of his own school have fallen victims; so, on the other hand, it appears to me that he did not scruple to place this principle, the opposite of the Divine intelligence, in a sphere independent of temporal origination.... But we can scarcely enter into his views, unless we ascertain his notions of the nature of Time itself. This was considered to have been
2d. Beneath all mental phenomena there is a permanent subject or substratum which he designates THE IDENTICAL (t? a?t?)--the rational element of the soul--"the principle of self-activity" or self-determination. There are three principles into which Plato analyzes the soul--the principle of the Identical, the Diverse, and the Intermediate Essence.
This doctrine of the eternity of the free and rational element of the soul must, of course, appear strange and even repulsive to those who are unacquainted with the Platonic notion of eternity as a fixed state out of time, which has no past, present, Now, that the human soul, like the uncreated Deity, has always had a distinct, conscious, personal, independent being, does not appear to be the doctrine of Plato. He teaches, most distinctly, that the "divine," the immortal part, was created, or rather "generated," in eternity. "The Deity himself formed the divine, and he delivered over to his celestial offspring [the subordinate and generated gods] the task of forming the mortal. These subordinate deities, copying the example of their parent, and receiving from his hands the immortal principle of the human soul, fashioned subsequently to this the mortal body, which they consigned to the soul as a vehicle, and in which they placed another kind of soul, mortal, the seat of violent and fatal affections."
That portion of the soul which Plato regarded as "immortal" and "to be entitled divine," is thus the "offspring of God"--a ray of the Divinity "generated" by, or emanating from, the Deity. He seems to have conceived it as co-eternal with its ideal objects, in some mysterious ultimate unity. "The true foundation of the Platonic theory of the constitution of the soul is this fundamental principle of his philosophy--the oneness of truth and knowledge.
1. The soul is immortal, because it is incorporeal. There are two kinds of existences, one compounded, the other simple; the former subject to change, the latter unchangeable; one perceptible to sense, the other comprehended by mind alone. The one is visible, the other is invisible. When the soul employs the bodily senses, it wanders and is confused; but when it abstracts itself from the body, it attains to knowledge which is stable, unchangeable, and immortal. The soul, therefore, being uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, must be indissoluble--that is to say, immortal.
2. The soul is immortal, because it has an independent power of self-motion--that is, it has self-activity and self-determination. No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be conceived as the originator of free and voluntary movement. Now that which can not move itself, but derives its motion from something else, may cease to move, and perish. "But that which is self-moved, never ceases to be active, and is also the cause of motion to all other things that are moved." And "whatever is continually active is immortal." This "self-activity is," says Plato, "the very essence and true notion of the soul." 3. The soul is immortal, because it possesses universal, necessary, and absolute ideas, which transcend all material conditions, and bespeak an origin immeasurably above the body. No modifications of matter, however refined, however elaborated, can give the Absolute, the Necessary, the Eternal. But the soul has the ideas of absolute beauty, goodness, perfection, identity, and duration, and it possesses these ideas in virtue of its having a nature which is one, simple, identical, and in some sense, eternal. In the concluding sections of the "PhÆdo" he urges the doctrine with earnestness and feeling as the grand motive to a virtuous life, for "the reward is noble and the hope is great."
4. Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND, the First Principle of all Principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe, the ultimate Substance from which all other things derive their being and essence, the First and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe, who is called by way of pre-eminence and excellence the Supreme Good, THE GOD (? ?e??), "the God over all," (? ?p? p?s? ?e??). This SUPREME MIND,
Beyond the sensible world, Plato conceived another world of intelligibles or ideas. These ideas are not, however, distinct and independent existences. "What general notions are to our own minds, ideas are to the Supreme Reason (???? ßas??e??); they are the eternal thoughts of the Divine Intellect."
God is therefore, with Plato, the First Principle of all Principles; the Divine energy or power is the efficient cause, the Divine beauty the formal cause, and the Divine goodness the final cause of all existence. The eternal unity of the principles of Order, Goodness, and Truth, in an ultimate reality--the ETERNAL MIND, is thus the fundamental principle which pervades the whole of the Platonic philosophy. And now, having attained this sublime elevation, he looks down from thence upon the sensible, the phenomenal world, and upon the temporal life of man; and in the light of this great principle he attempts to explain their meaning and purpose. The results he attained in the former case constitute the Platonic Physics, in the latter, the Platonic Ethics. I. PLATONIC PHYSICS.Firmly believing in the absolute excellence of the Deity, and regarding the Divine Goodness as the Final Cause of the universe, he pronounces the physical world to be an image of the perfection of God. Anaxagoras, no doubt, prepared the way for this theory. Every one who has read the "PhÆdo," will remember the remarkable passage in which Socrates gives utterance to the disappointment which he had experienced when expecting from physical science an explanation of the universe. "When I was young," he said--"it is not to be told how eager I was about physical inquiries, and curious to know how the universe came to be as it is; and when I heard that Anaxagoras was teaching that all was arranged by mind, I was delighted with the prospect of hearing such a doctrine unfolded; I thought to myself, if he teaches that mind made every thing to be as it is, he will explain how it is BEST for it to be, and show that so it is." But Anaxagoras, it appears, lost sight of this principle, and descended to the explanation of the universe by material causes. "Great was my hope," says Socrates, "and equally great my disappointment."
Plato accepted this suggestion of Anaxagoras with all his peculiar earnestness, and devoted himself to its fuller development. It were a vain and profitless theory, which, whilst it assumed the existence of a Supreme Mind, did not represent that mind as operating in the universe by design, and as exhibiting his intelligence, and justice, and goodness, as well as his power, in every thing. If it be granted that there is a Supreme Mind, then, argued Plato, he must be regarded as "the measure of all things," and all things must have been framed according to a plan or "model" which that mind supplied. Intelligence must be regarded as having a purpose, and as working towards an end, for it is this alone which distinguishes reason from unreason, and mind from mere unintelligent force. The only proper model which could be presented to the Supreme The physical system of Plato being thus intended to illustrate a principle of optimism, the following results may be expected: 1. That it will mainly concern itself with final causes. The universe being regarded chiefly, as indeed it is, an indication of the Divine Intelligence--every phenomenon will be contemplated in that light. Nature is the volume in which the Deity reveals his own perfections; it is therefore to be studied solely with this motive, that we may learn from thence the perfection of God. The TimÆus is a series of ingenious hypotheses designed to deepen and vivify our sense of the harmony, and symmetry, and beauty of the universe, and, as a consequence, of the wisdom, and excellence, and goodness, of its Author.
Whatever physical truths were within the author's reach, took their place in the general array: the vacancies were filled up with the best suppositions admitted by the limited science of the time. 2. It may be expected that a system of physics raised on optimistic principles will be mathematical rather than experimental. "Intended to embody conceptions of proportion and harmony, it will have recourse to that department of science which deals with the proportions in space and number. Such applications of mathematical truths, not being raised on ascertained facts, can only accidentally represent the real laws of the physical system; they will, however, vivify the student's apprehension of harmony in the same manner as a happy parable, though not founded in real history, will enliven his perceptions of moral truth."
3. Another peculiarity of such a system will be an impatience of every merely mechanical theory of the operations of nature. "The psychology of Plato led him to recognize mind wherever there was motion, and hence not only to require a Deity as first mover of the universe, but also to conceive the propriety of separate and subordinate agents attached to each of its parts, as principles of motion, no less than intelligent directors. These agents were entitled 'gods' by an easy figure, discernible even in the sacred language,
The application of this fundamental conception of the Platonic system--the eternal unity of the principles of Order, Goodness, and Truth in an ultimate reality, the Eternal Mind--to the elucidation of the temporal life of man, yields, as a result-- II. THE PLATONIC ETHICS.Believing firmly that there are unchangeable, necessary, and absolute principles, which are the perfections of the Eternal Mind, Plato must, of course, have been a believer in an immutable morality. He held that there is a rightness, a justice, an And inasmuch as man is a partaker of the Divine essence, and as the ideas which dwell in the human reason are "copies" of those which dwell in the Divine reason, man may rise to the apprehension and recognition of the immutable and eternal principles of righteousness, and "by communion with that which is Divine, and subject to the law of order, may become himself a subject of order, and divine, so far as it is possible for man."
The attainment of this consummation is the grand purpose of the Platonic philosophy. Its ultimate object is "the purification of the soul," and its pervading spirit is the aspiration after perfection. The whole system of Plato has therefore an eminently ethical character. It is a speculative philosophy directed to a practical purpose. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Now wisdom (s?f?a) is expressly declared by Plato to belong alone to the Supreme Divinity, The two great principles which can be clearly traced as pervading the ethical system of Plato are-- 1. That no man is willingly evil. 2. That every man is endued with the power of producing changes in his moral character
The first of these principles is the counterpart ethical expression of his theory of immutable Being. The second is the counterpart of his theory of phenomenal change, or mere Becoming. The soul of man is framed after the pattern of the immutable ideas of the just, and the true, and the good, which dwell in the Eternal Mind--that is, it is made in the image of God. The soul in its ultimate essence is formed of "the immutable" and "the permanent." The presence of the ideas of the just, and the true, and the good in the reason of man, constitute him a This, then, is the meaning of the oft-repeated assertion of Plato "that no man is willingly evil;" viz., that no man deliberately chooses evil as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, careful to guard the doctrine from misconception. He readily grants that acts of wrong are distinguished as voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor demerit, reward nor punishment.
How is it, then, it may be asked, that men become evil? The answer of Plato is, that the soul has in it a principle of change, in the power of regulating the desires--in indulging them to excess, or moderating them according to the demands
Independent of all other considerations, virtue is, therefore, to be pursued as the true good of the soul. Wisdom, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, the four cardinal virtues of the Platonic system, are to be cultivated as the means of securing the purification and perfection of the inner man. And the ordinary pleasures, "the lesser goods" of life, are only to be so far pursued as they are subservient to, and compatible with, the higher and holier duty of striving after "the resemblance to God." CHAPTER XII.THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).ARISTOTLE.Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony of Thrace, B.C. 384. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician in the Court of Amyntas II., King of Macedonia, and is reported to have written several works on Medicine and Natural History. From his father, Aristotle seems to have inherited a love for the natural sciences, which was fostered by the circumstances which surrounded him in early life, and which exerted a determining influence upon the studies of his riper years. Impelled by an insatiate desire for knowledge, he, at seventeen years of age, repaired to Athens, the city of Plato and the university of the world. Plato was then absent in Sicily; on his return Aristotle entered his school, became an ardent student of philosophy, and remained until the death of Plato, B.C. 348. He therefore listened to the instructions of Plato for twenty years. The mental characteristics of the pupil and the teacher were strikingly dissimilar. Plato was poetic, ideal, and in some degree mystical. Aristotle was prosaic, systematic, and practical. Plato was intuitive and synthetical. Aristotle was logical and analytical. It was therefore but natural that, to the mind of Aristotle, there should appear something confused, irregular, and incomplete in the discourses of his master. There was a strange commingling of questions concerning the grounds of morality, and statements concerning the nature of science; of inquiries concerning "real being," and speculations on the ordering of a model Republic, in the same discourse. Ethics, Such being the mental characteristics of the two men--their type of mind so opposite--we are prepared to expect that, in pursuing his inquiries, Aristotle would develop a different Organon from that of Plato, and that the teachings of Aristotle will give a new direction to philosophic thought. ARISTOTELIAN ORGANON. Plato made use of psychological and logical analysis in order to draw from the depth of consciousness certain fundamental ideas which are inherent in the mind--born with it, and not Aristotle will reverse this process. He will commence with sensation, and proceed, by induction, from the known to the unknown. The repetition of sensations produces recollection, recollection experience, and experience produces science.
Disregarding the Platonic notion of the unity of all Being in the absolute idea, he fixed his immediate attention on the manifoldness of the phenomenal, and by a classification of all the objects of experience he sought to attain to "general notions." Concentrating all his attention on the individual, the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from the particular to the general; and then, by a strange paralogism, "the universal" is confounded with "the general" or, by a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted into the universal. Thus "induction is the pathway from
Aristotle admits, however, that there are ideas or principles in the mind which can not be explained by experience, and we are therefore entitled to an answer to the question--how are these obtained? "Sensible experience gives us what is here, there, now, in such and such a manner, but it is impossible for it to give what is everywhere and at all times."
The human mind, he tells us, has two kinds of intelligence--the passive intelligence (???? pa??t????), which is the receptacle of forms (de?t???? t?? e?d???); and the active intelligence (???? p???t????), which impresses the seal of thought upon the data furnished by experience, and combines them into the unity of a single judgment, thus attaining "general notions."
The points of contrast between the two methods may now be presented in a few sentences. Plato held that all our cognitions are reducible to two elements--one derived from sense, the other from pure reason; one element particular, contingent, and relative, the other universal, necessary, and absolute. By an act of immediate abstraction Plato will eliminate the particular, contingent, and relative phenomena, and disengage the universal, necessary, and absolute ideas which underlie and determine all phenomena. These ideas are the thoughts of the Divine Mind, according to which all particular and individual existences are generated, and, as divine thoughts, they are real and permanent existences. Thus by a process of immediate abstraction, he will rise from particular and contingent phenomena to universal and necessary principles, and from these to the First Principle of all principles, the First Cause of all causes--that is, to God. Aristotle, on the contrary, held that all of our knowledge begins with "the singular," that is, with the particular and the relative, and is derived from sensation and experience. The "sensible object," taken as it is without any sifting and probing, is the basis of science, and reason is simply the architect constructing science according to certain "forms" or laws inherent in mind. The object, then, of metaphysical science is to investigate those "universal notions" under which the mind conceives of and represents to itself external objects, and speculates concerning them. Aristotle, therefore, agrees with Plato in teaching "that science can only be a science of universals,"
ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC. Pure Logic is the science of the formal laws of thought. Its office is to ascertain the rules or conditions under which the mind, by its own constitution, reasons and discourses. The The first treatise is the "Categories" or "Predicaments"--a work which treats of the universal determinations of Being. It is a classification of all our mental conceptions. As a matter of fact, the mind forms notions or conceptions about those natures and essences of things which present an outward image to the senses, or those, equally real, which utter themselves to the mind. These may be defined and classified; there may be general conceptions to which all particular conceptions are referable. This classification has been attempted by Aristotle, and as the result we have the ten "Categories" of Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Time, Place, Position, Possession, Action, Passion. He does not pretend that this classification is complete, but he held these "Predicaments" to be the most universal expressions for the various relations of things, under some one of which every thing might be reduced. The second treatise, "On Interpretation," investigates language as the expression of thought; and inasmuch as a true or false thought must be expressed by the union or separation of a subject and a predicate, he deems it necessary to discuss the parts of speech--the general term and the verb--and the modes of affirmation and denial. In this treatise he develops the nature and limitations of propositions, the meaning of contraries and contradictions, and the force of affirmations and denials in possible, contingent, and necessary matter. The third are the "Analytics," which show how conclusions are to be referred back to their principles, and arranged in the order of their precedence. The First or Prior Analytic presents the universal doctrine Now, if Logic is of any value as an instrument for the discovery of truth, the attainment of certitude, it must teach us not only how to deduce conclusions from premises, but it must certify to us the validity of the principles from whence we reason and this is attempted by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytic. This treatise opens with the following statement: All doctrine, and all intellectual discipline, arises from a prior or pre-existent knowledge. This is evident, if we survey them all; for both mathematical sciences, and also each of the arts, are obtained in this manner. The same holds true in the case of reasonings, whether through [deductive] Syllogism or through Induction, for both accomplish the instruction they afford from information previously known--the former (syllogistic reasoning) receiving it, as it were, from the traditions of the intelligent, the latter (inductive reasoning) manifesting the universal through the light of the singular.
Both these processes are based upon an anterior knowledge. Demonstrative science must be from things true, first, immediate, more known than, prior to, and the causes of, the conclusion, for thus there will be the appropriate first principles of whatever is demonstrated. 1. In regard to deductive or syllogistic reasoning, the views of Aristotle are very distinctly expressed. Syllogistic reasoning "proceeds from generals to particulars."
2. General principles being thus furnished by induction, we may now inquire whence, according to Aristotle, are the materials for induction derived? What is the character of that "anterior knowledge" which is the basis of the inductive process? Induction, says Aristotle, is "the progression from singulars to universals."
This classification, however, is based upon a very superficial acquaintance with the philosophy of Aristotle as a whole. The practice, so commonly resorted to, of determining the character of the Aristotelian philosophy by the light of one or two passages quoted from his "Metaphysics," is unjust both to Aristotle and to the history of philosophic thought. We can not expect to attain a correct understanding of the views of Aristotle concerning the sources and grounds of all knowledge without some attention to his psychology. A careful study of his writings will show that the terms "sensation" (a?s??s??) and "experience" (?µpe???a) are employed in a much more comprehensive sense than is usual in modern philosophic writings. "Sensation," in its lowest form, is defined by Aristotle as "an excitation of the soul through the body,"
So much being premised, we proceed to remark that there is a distinction perpetually recurring in the writings of Aristotle between the elements or first principles of knowledge which are "clearest in their own nature" and those which "are clearest to our perception." (i.) The immediate or intuitive perceptions of sense, (ii.) The immediate or intuitive apperceptions of pure reason,
The objects of sense-perception are external, individual, "nearest to sense," and occasionally or contingently present to sense. The objects of the intellect are inward, universal, and the essential property of the soul. They are "remote from sense," "prior by nature;" they are "forms" essentially inherent in the soul previous to experience; and it is the office of experience to bring them forward into the light of consciousness, or, in the language of Aristotle, "to evoke them from potentiality into actuality." And further, from the "prior" and immediate intuitions of sense and intellect, all our secondary, our scientific and practical knowledge is drawn by logical processes. The Aristotelian distribution of the intellectual faculties corresponds fully to this division of the objects of knowledge. The human intellect is divided by Aristotle into, 1. The Passive or Receptive Intellect (???? paf?t????).--Its office is the reception of sensible impressions or images (Fa?t?sµata) and their retention in the mind (µ??µ?). These sensible forms or images are essentially immaterial. "Each sensoriurn (a?s??t????) is receptive of the sensible quality without the matter, and hence when the sensibles themselves are absent, sensations and fa?tas???? remain."
2. The Active or Creative Intellect (???? p???t????).--This is the power or faculty which, by its own inherent power, impresses "form" upon the material of thought supplied by sense-perception, exactly as the First Cause combines it, in the universe, with the recipient matter. "It is necessary," says Aristotle, "that these two modes should be opposed to each other, as matter is opposed to form, and to all that gives form. The receptive reason, which is as matter, becomes all things by receiving their forms. The creative reason gives existence to all things, as light calls color into being. The creative reason transcends the body, being capable of separation from it, and from all things; it is an everlasting existence, incapable of being mingled with matter, or affected by it; prior, and subsequent to the individual mind. The receptive reason is necessary to individual thought, but it is perishable, and by its decay all memory, and therefore individuality, is lost to the higher and immortal reason." This "Active or Creative Intellect" is again further subdivided, by Aristotle-- 1. The Scientific (?p?st?µ??????) part--the "virtue," faculty, or "habit of principles." He also designates it as the "place of principles," and further defines it as the power "which apprehends those existences whose principles can not be otherwise than they are"--that is, self-evident, immutable, and necessary truths 2. The Reasoning (????st????) part--the power by which we draw conclusions from premises, and "contemplate contingent matter" The correlatives noetic and dianoetic, says Hamilton, would afford the best philosophic designation of these two faculties; the knowledge attained by the former is an "intuitive principle"--a truth at first hand; that obtained by the latter is a "demonstrative proposition"--a truth at second hand. The preceding notices of the psychology of Aristotle will aid us materially in interpreting his remarks "Upon the Method and Habits necessary to the ascertainment of Principles."
"That it is impossible to have scientific knowledge through demonstration without a knowledge of first immediate principles, has been elucidated before." This being established, he 1. The knowledge of first principles is attained by the intuition of sense--the immediate perception of external objects, as the exciting or occasional cause of their development in the mind. "Now there appears inherent in all animals an innate power called sensible perception (a?s??s??); but sense being inherent, in some animals a permanency of the sensible object is engendered, but in others it is not engendered. Those, therefore, wherein the sensible object does not remain have no knowledge without sensible perception, but others, when they perceive, retain one certain thing in the soul,... with some, reason is produced from the permanency (of the sensible impression), [as in man], but in others it is not [as in the brute]. From sense, therefore, as we say, memory is produced, and from the repeated remembrance of the same thing we get experience.... From experience, or from every universal remaining in the soul--the one besides the many which in all of them is one and the same--the principles of art and science arise. If experience is conversant with generation, the principles of art; if with being, the principles of science.... Let us again explain: When one thing without difference abides, there is then the first universal (notion) [developed] in the soul; for the singular indeed is perceived by sense, but sense is [also] of the universal"--that is, the universal is immanent in the sensible object as a property giving it "form." "It is manifest, then, that primary things become necessarily known by induction, for thus sensible perception produces [develops or evokes] the universal." 2. The knowledge of first principles is attained by the intuition of pure intellect (????)--that is, "intellect itself is the principle of science" or, in other words, intellect is the efficient, essential cause of the knowledge of first principles. "Of those habits which are about intellect by which we ascertain truth, some
The doctrine of Aristotle regarding "first principles" may perhaps be summed up as follows: All demonstrative science is based upon universals "prior in nature"--that is, upon À priori, self-evident, necessary, and immutable principles. Our knowledge of these "first and immediate principles" is dependent primarily on intellect (????) or intuitive reason, and secondarily on sense, experience, and induction. Prior to experience, the intellect contains these principles in itself potentially, as "forms," "laws," "habitudes," or "predicaments" of thought; but they can not be "evoked into energy," can not be revealed in consciousness, except on condition of experience, and they can only be scientifically developed by logical abstraction and definition. The ultimate ground of all truth and certainty is thus a mode of our own mind, a subjective necessity of thinking, and truth is not in things, but in our own minds.
ARISTOTELIAN THEOLOGY Theoretical philosophy, "the science which has truth for its end," is divided by Aristotle into Physics, Mathematics, and Theology, or the First Philosophy, now commonly known as "Metaphysics," because it is beyond or above physics, and is concerned with the primitive ground and cause of all things. In the former two we have now no immediate interest, but with Theology, as "the science of the Divine," "The Metaphysics" of Aristotle opens by an enumeration of "the principles or causes"
1. The Material Cause (t?? ???? ?a? t? ?p??e?µe???)--the matter and subject--that out of which a given thing has been originated. "From the analogy which this principle has to wood or stone, or any actual matter out of which a work of nature 2. The Formal Cause (t?? ??s?a? ?a? t? t? e??a?)--the being or abstract essence of a thing--that primary nature on which all its properties depend. To this Aristotle gave the name of e?d??--the form or exemplar according to which a thing is produced. 3. The Moving or Efficient Cause (??e? ? ???? t?? ????se??)--the origin and principle of motion--that by which a thing is produced. 4. The Final Cause (t? ?? ??e?e? ?a? t? ??a???)--the good end answered by the existence of any thing--that for the sake of which any thing is produced--the ??e?a t??, or reason for it.
Causes are, therefore, the elements into which the mind resolves its first rough conception of an object. That object is what it is, by reason of the matter out of which it sprang, the moving cause which gave it birth, the idea or form which it realizes, and the end or object which it attains. The knowledge of a thing implies knowing it from these four points of view--that is, knowing its four causes or principles. These four determinations of being are, on a further and closer analysis, resolved into the fundamental antithesis of MATTER and FORM. "All things that are produced," says Aristotle,
In proof that the e?d?? or form is an efficient principle operating in every object, which makes it, to our conception, what it is, Aristotle brings forward the subject of generation or production.
From the above it appears that the efficient cause is regarded by Aristotle as identical with the formal cause. So also the final cause--the end for the sake of which any thing exists--can hardly be separated from the perfection of that thing, that is, from its conception or form. The desire for the end gives the first impulse of motion; thus the final cause of any thing becomes identical with the good of that thing. "The moving cause of the house is the builder, but the moving cause of the builder is the end to be attained--that is, the house." From such examples as these it would seem that the determinations of form and end are considered by Aristotle as one, in so far as both are merged in the conception of actuality; for he regarded the end of every thing to be its completed being--the perfect realization of its idea or form. The only fundamental determinations, therefore, which can not be wholly resolved into each other are matter and form.
The opposition of matter and form, with Aristotle, corresponds This is a further and indeed a most important step in the Aristotelian theology. Matter, as we have seen, after all, amounts to merely capacity for action, and if we can not discover some productive power to develop potentiality into actuality, we look in vain for some explanation of the phenomena around us. The discovery, however, of energy (?????e?a), as a principle of this description, is precisely what we wanted, and a momentary glance at the actual phenomena will show its perfect identity with the e?d??, or form. matter is a capacity or potentiality (d??aµ??), requiring the co-operation of the energy to produce a result.
"In Physics d??aµ?? answers to the necessary conditions for the existence of any thing before that thing exists. It thus corresponds to ???, both to the p??t? ???--the first matter, or matter devoid of all qualities, which is capable of becoming any definite substance, as, for example, marble; and also to the ?s??t? ???--or matter capable of receiving form, as marble the form of the statue." Marble then exists potentially in the simple elements before it is marble. The statue exists potentially in the marble before it is carved. All objects of thought exist, either purely in potentiality, or purely in actuality, or both in potentiality and in actuality. This division makes an entire chain of all existence. At the one end is matter, the p??t? ??? which has a merely potential existence, which is necessary as a condition, but which having no form and no qualities, is totally incapable of being realized by the mind. At the other end of the chain is pure form, which is not at all matter, the absolute and the unconditioned, the eternal substance and energy without matter (??s?a ??d??? ?a? ?????e?a ??e? d???µe??), who can not be thought as non-existing--the self-existent God. Between these two extremes is the whole row of creatures, which out of potentiality evermore spring into actual being.
The relation of actuality to potentiality is the subject of an extended and elaborate discussion in book viii., the general results of which may be summed up in the following propositions: 1. The relation of Actuality to Potentiality is as the Perfect to the Imperfect.--The progress from potentiality to actuality is motion or production (????s?? or ???es??). But this motion is transitional, and in itself imperfect--it tends towards an end, but does not include the end in itself. But actuality, if it implies 2. The Relation of Actuality to Potentiality is a causal Relation.--A thing which is endued with a simple capacity of being may nevertheless not actually exist, and a thing may have a capacity of being and really exist. Since this is the case, there must ensue between non-being and real being some such principle as energy, in order to account for the transition or change.
3. The Relation of Actuality and Potentiality is a Relation of Priority.--Actuality, says Aristotle, is prior to potentiality in the order of reason, in the order of substance, and also (though not invariably) in the order of time. The first of all capacities is a capacity of energizing or assuming a state of activity; for example, a man who has the capacity of building is one who is
And now having laid down these fundamental principles of metaphysical science, as preparatory to Theology, Aristotle proceeds to establish the conception of the Absolute or Divine Spirit as the eternal, immutable Substance, the immaterial Energy, the unchangeable Form of Forms, the first moving Cause. I. The Ontological Form of Proof.--It is necessary to conceive an eternal and immutable substance--an actuality which is absolute and prior, both logically and chronologically, to all 2. The Cosmological Form of Proof.--It is impossible that there should be motion, genesis, or a chain of causes, except on the assumption of a first Moving Cause, since that which exists only in capacity can not, of itself energize, and consequently without a principle of motion which is essentially active, we have only a principle of immobility. The principle "ex nihilo nihil" forbids us to assume that motion can arise out of immobility, being out of non-being. "How can matter be put in motion if nothing that subsists in energy exist, and is its cause?" All becoming, therefore, necessarily supposes that which has not become, that which is eternally self-active as the principle and cause of all motion. There is no refuge from the notion that all things are "born of night and nothingness" except in this belief.
The existence of an eternal principle subsisting in energy is also demanded to explain the order of the world. "For how, let me ask, will there prevail order on the supposition that there is no subsistence of that which is eternal, and which involves a separable existence, and is permanent."
3. The Moral Form of Proof.--So far as the relation of potentiality and actuality is identical with the relation of matter and form, the argument for the existence of God may be thus presented: The conception of an absolute matter without form, involves the supposition of an absolute form without matter. And since the conception of form resolves itself into motion, conception, purpose or end, so the Eternal One is the absolute principle of motion (the p??t?? ??????), the absolute conception or pure intelligence (the pure t? ?? e??a?), and the absolute ground, reason, or end of all being. All the other predicates of the First Cause follow from the above principles with logical necessity. (i.) He is, of course, pure intellect, because he is absolutely immaterial and free from nature. He is active intelligence, because his essence is pure actuality. He is self-contemplating and self-conscious intelligence, because the divine thought can not attain its actuality in any thing extrinsic; it would depend on something else than self--some potential existence for its actualization. Hence the famous definition of the absolute as "the thought of thought" (???s?? ???se??).
(ii.) He is also essential life. "The principle of life is inherent in the Deity, for the energy or active exercise of mind constitutes life, and God constitutes this energy; and essential (iii.) Unity belongs to him, since multiplicity implies matter; and the highest idea or form of the world must be absolutely immaterial. (iv.) He is immovable and ever abideth the same; since otherwise he could not be the absolute mover, and the cause of all becoming, if he were subject to change.
(v.) He is the ever-blessed God.--"The life of God is of a kind with those highest moods which, with us, last a brief space, it being impossible they should be permanent; whereas, with Him they are permanent, since His ever-present consciousness is pleasure itself. And it is because they are vivid states of consciousness, that waking, and perception, and thought, are the sweetest of all things. Now essential perception is the perception of that which is most excellent,... and the mind perceives itself by participating of its own object of perception; but it is a sort of coalescence of both that, in the Divine Mind, creates a regular identity between the two, so that with God both (the thinker and the thought, the subject and object) are the same. In possession of this prerogative, He subsists in the exercise of energy; and the contemplation of his own perfections is what, to God, must be most agreeable and excellent. This condition of existence, after so excellent a manner, is what
The theology of Aristotle may be summed up in the following sentences selected from book xi. of his "Metaphysics:" "This motionless cause of motion is a necessary being; and, by virtue of such necessity, is the all-perfect being. This all-pervading principle penetrates heaven and all nature. It eternally possesses perfect happiness; and its happiness is in action. This primal mover is immaterial; for its essence is in energy. It is pure thought--thought thinking itself--the thought of thought. The activity of pure intelligence--such is the perfect, eternal life of God. This primal cause of change, this absolute perfection, moves the world by the universal desire for the absolute good, by the attraction exercised upon it by the Eternal Mind--the serene energy of Divine Intelligence." It can not be denied that, so far as it goes, this conception of the Deity is admirable, worthy, and just. Viewed from a Christian stand-point, we at once concede that it is essentially defective. There is no clear and distinct recognition of God as Creator and Governor of the universe; he is chiefly regarded as the Life of the universe--the Intellect, the Energy--that which gives excellence, and perfection, and gladness to the whole system of things. The Theology of Aristotle is, in fact, metaphysical rather than practical. He does not contemplate the Deity as a moral Governor. Whilst Plato speaks of "being made like God through becoming just and holy," Aristotle asserts that "all moral virtues are totally unworthy of being ascribed to God."
Morality has no basis in the Divine nature, no eternal type in the perfections and government of God, and no supports and aids from above. The theology of Aristotle foreshadows the character of the ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS. We do not find in Aristotle any distinct recognition of an eternal and immutable morality, an absolute right, which has its foundation in the nature of God. Plato had taught that there was "an absolute Good, above and beyond all existence in dignity and power;" which is, in fact, "the cause of all existence and all knowledge," and which is God; that all other things are good in proportion as they "partake of this absolute Good;" and that all men are so far good as they "resemble God." But with this position Aristotle joins issue. After stating the doctrine of Plato in the following words--"Some have thought that, besides all these manifold goods upon earth, there is some absolute good, which is the cause to all these of their being good"--he proceeds to criticise that idea, and concludes his argument by saying--"we must dismiss the idea at present, for if there is any one good, universal and generic, or transcendental and absolute, it obviously can never be realized nor possessed by man; whereas something of this latter kind is what we are inquiring after." He follows up these remarks by saying that "Perhaps the knowledge of the idea may be regarded by some as useful, as a pattern (pa??de??µa) by which to judge of relative good." Against this he argues that "There is no trace of the arts making use of any such conception; the cobbler, the carpenter, the physician, and the general, all pursue their vocations without respect to the absolute good, nor is it easy to see how they would be benefited by apprehending it."
Instead, therefore, of seeking to attain to "a transcendental
Now an end or final cause implies an intelligence--implies a mind to perceive and desire it. This is distinctly recognized by Aristotle. The question, therefore, naturally arises--is that end fixed for man by a higher intelligence, and does it exist for man both as an idea and as an ideal? Can man, first, intellectually apprehend the idea, and then consciously strive after its realization? Is it the duty of man to aim at fulfilling the purposes of his Creator? To this it may be answered that Aristotle is not at all explicit as to God's moral government of the world. "Moral government," in the now common acceptation of the term, has no place in the system of Aristotle, and the idea of "duty" is scarcely recognized. He considers "the good" chiefly in relation to the constitution and natural condition of man. "It is" says he, "the end towards which nature tends." As physical things strive unconsciously after the end of their existence, so man strives after the good attainable in life. Socrates had identified virtue and knowledge, he had taught that "virtue is a Science." Aristotle contended that virtue is an art, like music and architecture, which must be attained by exercise. It is not purely intellectual, it is the bloom of the physical, which has become ethical. As the flower of the field, obeying the laws of its organization, springs up, blooms, and attains its own peculiar perfection, so there is an instinctive desire (??e???) in the soul which at first unconsciously yearns after the good, and subsequently the good is sought with full moral intent and insight. Aristotle assumes that the desires or instincts of man are so framed as to imply the existence of this end (t????).
Aristotle's question, therefore, is, What is the chief good for man as man? not what is his chief good as a spiritual and an immortal being? or what is his chief good as a being related to and dependent upon God? And the conclusion at which he arrives is, that it is the absolute satisfaction of our whole nature--that which men are agreed in calling happiness. This happiness, however, is not mere sensual pleasure. The brute shares this in common with man, therefore it can not constitute the happiness of man. Human happiness must express the completeness of rational existence. And inasmuch as intelligence is essential activity, as the soul is the entelechy of the body, therefore the happiness of man can not consist in a mere passive condition. It must, therefore, consist in perfect activity in well-doing, and especially in contemplative thought,
From what has been already stated, it will be seen that the Aristotelian conception of Virtue is not conformity to an absolute and immutable standard of right. It is defined by him as the observation of the right mean (µes?t??) in action--that is, the right mean relatively to ourselves. "Virtue is a habit deliberately choosing, existing as a mean (µ?s??) which refers to us, and is defined by reason, and as a prudent man would define it; and it is a mean between two evils, the one consisting in excess, the other in defect; and further, it is a mean, in that one of these falls short of, and the other exceeds, what is right both in passions and actions; and that virtue both finds and chooses the mean."
It will at once be seen that this classification has no stable foundation. It furnishes no ultimate standard of right. The mean is a wavering line. It differs under different circumstances and relations, and in different times and places. That mean which is sufficient for one individual is insufficient for another. The virtue of a man, of a slave, and of a child, is respectively different. There are as many virtues as there are circumstances in life; and as men are ever entering into new relations, in which it is difficult to determine the correct method of action, the separate virtues can not be limited to any definite number. Imperfect as the ethical system of Aristotle may appear to us who live in Christian times, it must be admitted that his writings abound with just and pure sentiments. His science of Ethics is a discipline of human character in order to human happiness. And whilst it must be admitted that it is directed solely to the improvement of man in the present life, he aims to build that improvement on pure and noble principles, and seeks to elevate man to the highest perfection of which he could conceive. "And no greater praise can be given to a work of heathen morality than to say, as may be said of the ethical writings of Aristotle, that they contain nothing which a Christian may dispense with, no precept of life which is not an element of Christian character; and that they only fail in elevating the heart and the mind to objects which it needed Divine Wisdom to reveal."
CHAPTER XIII.THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued)POST-SOCRATIC SCHOOL.EPICURUS AND ZENO.Philosophy, after the time of Aristotle, takes a new direction. In the pre-Socratic schools, we have seen it was mainly a philosophy of nature; in the Socratic school it was characterized as a philosophy of mind; and now in the post-Socratic schools it becomes a philosophy of life--a moral philosophy. Instead of aiming at the knowledge of real Being--of the permanent, unchangeable, eternal principles which underlie all phenomena, it was now content to aim, chiefly, at individual happiness. The primary question now discussed, as of the most vital importance, is, What is the ultimate standard by which, amid all the diversities of human conduct and opinion, we may determine what is right and good in individual and social life? This remarkable change in the course of philosophic inquiry was mainly due-- 1st. To the altered circumstances of the times. An age of civil disturbance and political intrigue succeeded the Alexandrian period. The different states of Greece lost their independence, and became gradually subject to a foreign yoke. Handed over from one domination to another, in the struggles of Alexander's lieutenants, they endeavored to reconquer their independence by forming themselves into confederations, but were powerless to unite in the defense of a common cause. The AchÆan and Etolian leagues were weakened by internal discords; and it was in vain that Sparta tried to recover her ancient liberties. Divided amongst themselves, the smaller states invoked the aid of dangerous allies--at one time appealing to Macedon, at another to Egypt. In this way they prepared for the total ruin of Greek liberty, which was destined to be extinguished by Rome.
During this period of hopeless turmoil and social disorder, all lofty pursuits and all great principles were lost sight of and abandoned. The philosophic movement followed the downward course of society, and men became chiefly concerned for their personal interest and safety. The wars of the Succession almost obliterated the idea of society, and philosophy was mainly directed to the securing of personal happiness; it became, in fact, "the art of making one's self happy." The sad reverses to which the Grecian mind had been subjected produced a feeling of exhaustion and indifference, which soon reflected itself in the philosophy of the age. 2d. In connection with the altered circumstances of the age, we must also take account of the apparent failure of the Socratic method to solve the problem of Being. The teaching of Aristotle had fostered the suspicion that the dialectic method was a failure, and thus prepared the way for a return to sensualism. He had taught that individuals alone have a real existence, and that the "essence" of things is not to be sought in the elements of unity and generality, or in the idea, as Plato taught, but in the elements of diversity and speciality. And furthermore, in opposition to Plato, he had taught his disciples to attach themselves to sensation, as the source of all knowledge. As the direct consequence of this teaching, we find his immediate successors, Dicearchus and Straton, deliberately setting aside "the god of philosophy," affirming "that a divinity was unnecessary to the explanation of the existence and order of the universe." Stimulated by the social degeneracy of the times, the characteristic skepticism of the Greek intellect bursts forth anew. As the skepticism of the Sophists marked the close of the first period of philosophy, And yet there must some function, undoubtedly, remain for the "wise man" (s?f??). Reason was given for some purpose. Philosophy must have some end. And inasmuch as it is not to determine speculative questions, it must be to determine practical questions. May it not teach men to act rather than to think? The philosopher, the schools, the disciples, survive the darkening flood of skepticism. Three centuries before Christ, the Peripatetic and Platonic schools are succeeded by two other schools, which inherit their importance, and which, in other forms, and by an under-current, perpetuate the disputes of the Peripatetics and Platonists, namely, the Epicureans and Stoics. With Aristotle and Plato, philosophy embraced in its circle nature, humanity, and God; In dealing with morals two opposite methods of inquiry were possible: 1. To judge of the quality of actions by their RESULTS. 2. To search for the quality of actions in the actions them selves. Utility, which in its last analysis is Pleasure, is the test of right, in the first method; an assumed or discovered Law of Nature, in the second. If the world were perfect, and the balance of the human faculties undisturbed, it is evident that both systems would give identical results. As it is, there is a tendency to error on each side, which is fully developed in the rival schools of the Epicureans and Stoics, who practically divided the suffrages of the mass of educated men until the coming of Christ. EPICUREANS. Epicurus was born B.C. 342, and died B.C. 270. He purchased a Garden within the city, and commenced, at thirty-six years of age, to teach philosophy. The Platonists had their academic Grove: the Aristotelians walked in the Lyceum: the Stoics occupied the Porch: the Epicureans had their Garden, where they lived a tranquil life, and seem to have had a community of goods. There is not one of all the various founders of the ancient philosophical schools whose memory was cherished with so much veneration by his disciples as that of Epicurus. For several centuries after his death, his portrait was treated by them with all the honors of a sacred relic: it was carried about with them in their journeys, it was hung up in their schools, it was preserved with reverence in their private chambers; his birthday was celebrated with sacrifices and other religious So much honor having been paid to the memory of Epicurus, we naturally expect that his works would have been preserved with religious care. He was one of the most prolific of the ancient Greek writers. Diogenes calls him "a most voluminous writer," and estimates the number of works composed by him at no less than three hundred, the principal of which he enumerates.
We are thus left to depend mainly on his disciples and successors for any general account of his system. And of the earliest and most immediate of these the writings have perished.
It is said of Epicurus that he loved to hearken to the stories of the indifference and apathy of Pyrrhon, and that, in these qualities, he aspired to imitate him. But Epicurus was not, like Pyrrhon, a skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most imperious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own philosophy--he was a "self-taught" man! Now "Epicurus might be perfectly honest in saying he had read very little, and had worked out the conclusions in his own mind, but he was a copyist, nevertheless; few men more entirely so."
The grand object of philosophy, according to Epicurus, is the attainment of a happy life. "Philosophy," says he, "is the power by which reason conducts men to happiness." Truth is a merely relative thing, a variable quantity; and therefore the pursuit of truth for its own sake is superfluous and useless. There is no such thing as absolute, unchangeable right: no action is intrinsically right or wrong. "We choose the virtues, not on their own account, but for the sake of pleasure, just as we seek the skill of the physician for the sake of health."
The proof which Epicurus offers in support of his doctrine, "that pleasure is the chief good," is truly characteristic. "All animals from the moment of their birth are delighted with pleasure and offended with pain, by their natural instincts, and without the employment of reason. Therefore we, also, of our own inclination, flee from pain."
"Every kind of pleasure" is, in the estimation of Epicurus, "alike good," and alike proper. "If those things which make the pleasures of debauched men put an end to the fears of the mind, and to those which arise about the heavenly bodies [supernatural powers], and death and pain,... we should have no pretense for blaming those who wholly devote themselves to pleasure, and who never feel any pain, or grief (which is the chief evil) from any quarter." 1. The pleasure of movement, excitement, energy (?d??? ?? ????se?).
2. The second kind of pleasure is the pleasure of repose, tranquillity, impassibility (?d??? ?atast?µat???). This is a state, a "condition," rather than a motion. It is "the freedom of the body from pain, and the soul from confusion." Now, whilst "no pleasure is intrinsically bad,"
Social morality is, like private morality, founded upon utility. As nothing is intrinsically right or wrong in private life, so nothing is intrinsically just or unjust in social life. "Justice has no independent existence: it results from mutual contracts, and establishes itself wherever there is a mutual engagement to guard against doing or sustaining any injury. Injustice is not intrinsically bad; it has this character only because there is joined with it the fear of not escaping those who are appointed to punish actions marked with this character." If you ask Epicurus what a man shall do when it is clearly his immediate interest to violate the social contract, he would answer, that if your general interest is secured by always observing it, you must make momentary sacrifices for the sake of future good. But "when, in consequence of new circumstances, a thing which has been pronounced just does not any longer appear to agree with utility, the thing which was just... ceases to be just the moment it ceases to be useful." With coarse and energetic minds the doctrine of Epicurus would inevitably lead to the grossest sensuality and crime; with men whose temperament was more apathetic, or whose tastes were more pure, it would develop a refined selfishness-- a perfect egoism, which Epicurus has adorned with the name "tranquillity of mind--impassibility," (?ta?a??a).
To secure this highest kind of happiness--this pure impassivity, it was necessary to get rid of all superstitious fears of death, of supernatural beings, and of a future retribution.
That ignorance which occasions man's misery is two-fold, (i.) Ignorance of the external world, which leads to superstition. All unexplained phenomena are ascribed to unseen, supernatural powers; often to malignant powers, which take pleasure in tormenting man; sometimes to a Supreme and Righteous Power, which rewards and punishes men for their good or evil conduct. Hence a knowledge of Physics, particularly the physics which Democritus taught, was needful to deliver men from false hopes and false fears.
Physics and Psychology are thus the only studies which Epicurus would tolerate as "conducive to the happiness of man." The pursuit of truth for its own sake was useless. Dialectics, which distinguish the true from the false, the good from the bad, on À priori grounds, must be banished as an unnecessary toil, which yields no enjoyment. Theology must be cancelled entirely, because it fosters superstitious fears. The idea of God's taking knowledge of, disapproving, condemning, punishing the evil conduct of men, is an unpleasant thought. Physics and Psychology are the most useful, because the most "agreeable," the most "comfortable" sciences. EPICUREAN PHYSICS. In his physical theories Epicurus followed Leucippus and Democritus. He expounds these theories in his letters to Herodotus and Pythocles, which are preserved in Diogenes Laertius. The fundamental principle of his philosophy is the ancient maxim--"de nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil fosse reverti;" but instead of employing this maxim in the sense in which it is used by Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and others, to prove there must be something self-existent and eternal, or in other words, "that nothing which once was not can ever of itself come into being," he uses it to disprove a divine creation, and even presents the maxim in an altered form--viz., "nothing is ever divinely generated from nothing;"
The two great principles of nature are a vacuum, and a plenum. The plenum is body, or tangible nature; the vacuum is space, or intangible nature. "We know by the evidences of the senses (which are our only rule of reasoning) that bodies have a real existence, and we infer from the evidence of the senses that the vacuum has a real existence; for if space have no real existence, there would be nothing in which bodies can move, as we see they really do move. Let us add to this reflection that one can not conceive, either in virtue of perception, Of bodies some are "combinations"--concrete bodies--and some are primordial "elements," out of which combinations are formed. These primordial elements, out of which the universe is generated, are "atoms" (?t?µ??). These atoms are "the first principles" and "seeds" of all things. The only qualities of atoms are form, magnitude, and density. All the other sensible qualities of matter--the secondary qualities-- as color, odor, sweetness, bitterness, etc.--are necessarily inherent in form. All secondary qualities are changeable, but the primary atoms are unchangeable; "for in the dissolution of combined bodies there must be something solid and indestructible, of such a kind that it will not change, either into what does not exist, or out of what does not exist, but the change results from a simple displacement of parts, which is the most usual case, or from an addition or subtraction of particles."
The atoms are not all of one form, but of different forms suited to the production of different substances by combination; some are square, some triangular, some smooth and spherical, some are hooked with points. They are also diversified in magnitude and density. The number of original forms is "incalculably varied," but not infinite. "Every variety of forms contains an infinitude of atoms, but there is not, for that reason, an infinitude of forms; it is only the number of them which is beyond computation."
A variety of these primordial forms enter into the composition of all sensible objects, because sensible objects possess different qualities, and these diversified qualities can only result from the combination of different original forms. "The earth has, in itself, primary atoms from which springs, rolling forth cool water, incessantly recruit the immense sea; it has also atoms from which fire arises.... Moreover, the earth contains atoms from which it can raise up rich corn and cheerful groves for the tribes of men...." So that "no object in nature is constituted of one kind of elements, and whatever possesses in itself must numerous powers and energies, thus demonstrates that it contains more numerous kinds of primary particles," "The atoms are in a continual state of motion" and "have moved with equal rapidity from all eternity, since it is evident the vacuum can offer no resistance to the heaviest, any more than the lightest." The primary and original movement of all atoms is in straight lines, by virtue of their own weight. The vacuum separates all atoms one from another, at greater or less distances, and they preserve their own peculiar motion in the densest substances.
And now the grand crucial question arises--How do atoms combine so as to form concrete bodies? If they move in straight lines, and with equal rapidity from all eternity, then they can never unite so as to form concrete substances. They can only coalesce by deviating from a straight line.
By a slight "voluntary" deflection from the straight line, atoms are now brought into contact with each other; "they
And now Lucretius shall describe the formation of the different parts of the world according to the cosmogony of Epicurus. We quote from Good's translation: But from this boundless mass of matter first How heaven, and earth, and ocean, sun, and moon, Rose in nice order, now the muse shall tell. For never, doubtless, from result of thought, Or mutual compact, could primordial seeds First harmonize, or move with powers precise. But countless crowds in countless manners urged, From time eternal, by intrinsic weight And ceaseless repercussion, to combine In all the possibilities of forms, Of actions, and connections, and exert In every change some effort to create-- Reared the rude frame at length, abruptly reared, Which, when once gendered, must the basis prove Of things sublime; and whence eventual rose Heaven, earth, and ocean, and the tribes of sense. Yet now nor sun on fiery wheel was seen Riding sublime, nor stars adorned the pole, Nor heaven, nor earth, nor air, nor ocean lived, Nor aught of prospect mortal sight surveyed; But one vast chaos, boisterous and confused. Yet order hence began; congenial parts Parts joined congenial; and the rising world Gradual evolved: its mighty members each From each divided, and matured complete From seeds appropriate; whose wild discortderst, Reared by their strange diversities of form, With ruthless war so broke their proper paths, Their motions, intervals, conjunctions, weights, And repercussions, nought of genial act Till now could follow, nor the seeds themselves E'en though conjoined in mutual bonds, co Thus air, secreted, rose o'er laboring earth; Secreted ocean flowed; and the pure fire, Secreted too, toward ether sprang sublime. But first the seeds terrene, since ponderous most And most perplext, in close embraces clung, And towards the centre conglobating sunk. And as the bond grew firmer, ampler forth Pressed they the fluid essences that reared Sun, moon, and stars, and main, and heaven's high wall. For those of atoms lighter far consist, Subtiler, and more rotund than those of earth. Whence, from the pores terrene, with foremost haste Rushed the bright ether, towering high, and swift Streams of fire attracting as it flowed. Then mounted, next, the base of sun and moon, 'Twixt earth and ether, in the midway air Rolling their orbs; for into neither these Could blend harmonious, since too light with earth To sink deprest, while yet too ponderous far To fly with ether toward the realms extreme: So 'twixt the two they hovered; vital there Moving forever, parts of the vast whole; As move forever in the frame of man Some active organs, while some oft repose.
After explaining the origin and causes of the varied celestial phenomena, he proceeds to give an account of the production of plants, animals, and man: Once more return we to the world's pure prime, Her fields yet liquid, and the tribes survey First she put forth, and trusted to the winds. And first the race she reared of verdant herbs, Glistening o'er every hill; the fields at large Shone with the verdant tincture, and the trees Felt the deep impulse, and with outstretched arms Broke from their bonds rejoicing. As the down Shoots from the winged nations, or from beasts Bristles or hair, so poured the new-born earth Plants, fruits, and herbage. Then, in order next, Raised she the sentient tribes, in various modes, By various powers distinguished: for not heaven Down dropped them, nor from ocean's briny waves Sprang they, terrestrial sole; whence, justly Earth Claims the dear name of mother, since alone Flowed from herself whate'er the sight surveys. E'en now oft rears she many a sentient tribe By showers and sunshine ushered into day. Whence less stupendous tribes should then have risen More, and of ampler make, herself new-formed, In flower of youth, and Ether all mature. Of these birds first, of wing and plume diverse, Broke their light shells in spring-time: as in spring Still breaks the grasshopper his curious web, And seeks, spontaneous, foods and vital air. Then rushed the ranks of mortals; for the soil, Exuberant then, with warmth and moisture teemed. So, o'er each scene appropriate, myriad wombs Shot, and expanded, to the genial sward By fibres fixt; and as, in ripened hour, Their liquid orbs the daring foetus broke Of breath impatient, nature here transformed Th' assenting earth, and taught her opening veins With juice to flow lacteal; as the fair Now with sweet milk o'erflows, whose raptured breast First hails the stranger-babe, since all absorbed Of nurture, to the genial tide converts. Earth fed the nursling, the warm ether clothed, And the soft downy grass his couch compressed.
A state of pure savagism, or rather of mere animalism, was the primitive condition of man. He wandered naked in the woods, feeding on acorns and wild fruits, and quenched his thirst at the "echoing waterfalls," in company with the wild beast. Through the remaining part of book v. Lucretius describes how speech was invented; how society originated, and governments were instituted; how civilization commenced; and how religion arose out of ignorance of natural causes; how the arts Such are the physical theories of the Epicureans. The primordial elements of matter are infinite, eternal, and self-moved. After ages upon ages of chaotic strife, the universe at length arose out of an infinite number of atoms, and a finite number of forms, by a fortuitous combination. Plants, animals, and man were spontaneously generated from ether and earth. Languages, society, governments, arts were gradually developed. And all was achieved simply by blind, unconscious nature-forces, without any designing, presiding, and governing Intelligence--that is, without a God. The evil genius which presided over the method of Epicurus, and perverted all his processes of thought, is clearly apparent. The end of his philosophy was not the discovery of truth. He does not commence his inquiry into the principles or causes which are adequate to the explanation of the universe, with an unprejudiced mind. He everywhere develops a malignant hostility to religion, and the avowed object of his physical theories is to rid the human mind of all fear of supernatural powers--that is, of all fear of God.
To "expel these fancies from the mind" as "inconsistent with its tranquillity and opposed to human happiness," is the end, Epicurus is, then, an unmistakable Atheist. He did not admit a God in any rational sense. True, he professed to believe in gods, but evidently in a very equivocal manner, and solely to escape the popular condemnation. "They are not pure spirits, for there is no spirit in the atomic theory; they are not bodies, for where are the bodies that we may call gods? In this embarrassment, Epicurus, compelled to acknowledge that the human race believes in the existence of gods, addresses himself to an old theory of Democritus--that is, he appeals to dreams. As in dreams there are images that act upon and determine in us agreeable or painful sensations, without proceeding from exterior bodies, so the gods are images similar to those of dreams, but greater, having the human form; images which are not precisely bodies, and yet not deprived of materiality which are whatever you please, but which, in short, must be admitted, since the human race believes in gods, and since the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause."
It is needless to offer any criticism on the reasoning of Epicurus. One fact will have obviously presented itself to the mind of the reflecting reader. He starts with atoms having
EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY. In the system of Epicurus, the soul is regarded as corporeal or material, like the body; they form, together, one nature or substance. The soul is composed of atoms exceedingly diminutive, smooth, and round, and connected with or diffused through the veins, viscera, and nerves. The substance of the soul is not to be regarded as simple and uncompounded; its constituent parts are aura, heat, and air. These are not sufficient, however, even in the judgment of Epicurus, to account for sensation; they are not adequate to generate sensible motives such as revolve any thoughts in the mind. "A certain fourth nature, or substance, must, therefore, necessarily be added to these, that is wholly without a name; it is a substance, however, than which nothing exists more active or more subtile, nor is any thing more essentially composed of small and smooth elementary particles; and it is this substance which first distributes sensible motions through the members."
Epicurus is at great pains to prove that the soul is material; and it can not be denied that he marshals his arguments with great skill. Modern materialism may have added additional illustrations, but it has contributed no new lines of proof. The weapons are borrowed from the old arsenal, and they are not wielded with any greater skill than they were by Epicurus himself, I. The soul and the body act and react upon each
Such being the nature of the soul, inasmuch as it is material, all its knowledge must be derived from sensation. The famous doctrine of perception, as taught by Epicurus, is grounded upon this pre-supposition that the soul is corporeal. "The e?d??a ?p?????a?--imagines, simulacra rerum, etc., are, like pellicles, continually flying off from objects; and these material 'likenesses,' diffusing themselves everywhere in the air, are propelled to the perceptive organs." These images of things coming in contact with the senses produce sensation (a?s??s??). A sensation may be considered either as regards its object, or as regards him who experiences it. As regards him who experiences it, it is simply a passive affection, an agreeable or disagreeable feeling, passion, or sentiment (t? p????). But along with sensation there is inseparably associated some knowledge of the object which excites sensation; and it is for this reason that Epicurus marked the intimate relation of these two phenomena by giving them analogous names. Because the second phenomenon is joined to the first, he calls it ?pa?s??s??-- The system of Epicurus is thus a system of pure materialism, but not a system of materialism drawn, as a logical consequence, from a careful and unprejudiced study of the whole phenomena of mind. His openly avowed design is to deliver men from the fear of death, and rid them of all apprehension of a future retribution. "Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no means of resisting them." "Death is nothing, and naught after death," he will not permit any mental phenomena to suggest to him the idea of an incorporeal spiritual substance. Matter, under any form known to Epicurus, is confessedly insufficient to explain sensation and thought; a "nameless something" must be supposed. But may not "that principle which lies entirely hid, and remains in secret"
The concluding portion of the third book, in which Lucretius discourses on death, is a mournful picture of the condition of the heathen mind before Christianity "brought life and immortality fully to light." It comes to us, like a voice from the grave of two thousand years, to prove they were "without hope." To be delivered from the fear of future retribution, they would sacrifice the hope of an immortal life. To extintinguish guilt they would annihilate the soul. The only way in which Lucretius can console man in prospect of death is, by reminding him that he will escape the ills of life. "'But thy dear home shall never greet thee more! No more the best of wives!--thy babes beloved, Whose haste half-met thee, emulous to snatch The dulcet kiss that roused thy secret soul, Again shall never hasten!--nor thine arm, With deeds heroic, guard thy country's weal!-- Oh mournful, mournful fate!' thy friends exclaim! 'One envious hour of these invalued joys Robs thee forever!--But they add not here, 'It robs thee, too, of all desire of joy'-- A truth, once uttered, that the mind would free From every dread and trouble. 'Thou art safe The sleep of death protects thee, and secures From all the unnumbered woes of mortal life! While we, alas! the sacred urn around That holds thine ashes, shall insatiate weep, Nor time destroy the eternal grief we feel!' What, then, has death, if death be mere repose, And quiet only in a peaceful grave,-- What has it thus to mar this life of man?"
This is all the comfort that Epicureanism can offer; and if "the wretch still laments the approach of death," she addresses him "with voice severe"-- "Vile coward! dry thine eyes-- Hence with thy snivelling sorrows, and depart!" It is evident that such a system of philosophy outrages the purest and noblest sentiments of humanity, and, in fact, condemns itself. It was born of selfishness and social degeneracy, and could perpetuate itself only in an age of corruption, because it inculcated the lawfulness of sensuality and the impunity of injustice. Its existence at this precise period in Grecian history forcibly illustrates the truth, that Atheism is a disease of the heart rather than the head. It seeks to set man free to follow his own inclinations, by ridding him of all faith in a Divinity and in an immortal life, and thus exonerating him from all accountability and all future retribution. But it failed to perceive that, in the most effectual manner, it annihilated all real liberty, all true nobleness, and made of man an abject slave. STOICISM. The Stoical school was founded by Zeno of Citium, who flourished B.C. 290. He taught in the Stoa Poecile, or Painted Porch; and his disciples thence derived the name of Stoics. Zeno was succeeded by Cleanthes (B.C. 260); and Cleanthes by Chrysippus (B.C. 240), whose vigorous intellect gave unity and completeness to the Stoical philosophy. He is reported to have said to Cleanthes,--"Give me your doctrines, and I will find the demonstrations."
None of the writings of the early Stoics, save a "Hymn to Jupiter," by Cleanthes, have survived. We are chiefly indebted
The philosophy of the Stoics, like that of the Epicureans, was mainly a philosophy of life--that is, a moral philosophy. The manner in which they approached the study of morals, and the principles upon which they grounded morality, were, however, essentially different. The grand object of Epicurus was to make the current of life flow on as comfortably as possible, without any distracting thoughts of the past or any disturbing visions of the future. He therefore starts with this fundamental principle, that the true philosophy of life is to enjoy one's self--the aim of existence is to be happy. Whatever in a man's beliefs or conduct tends to secure happiness is right; whatever awakens uneasiness, apprehension, or fear, is wrong. And inasmuch as the idea of a Divine Creator and Governor of the universe, and the belief in a future life and retribution, are uncomfortable thoughts, exciting superstitious fears, they ought to be rejected. The Physics and the Psychology of Epicurus are thus the natural outgrowth of his Morality. Zeno was evidently a more earnest, serious, and thoughtful man. He cherished a nobler ideal of life than to suppose "man must do voluntarily, what the brute does instinctively-- eschew pain, and seek pleasure." He therefore seeks to ascertain whether there be not some "principle of nature," or some law of nature, which determines what is right in human action --whether there be not some light under which, on contemplating an action, we may at once pronounce upon its intrinsic rightness, or otherwise. This he believes he has found in the universal reason which fashioned, and permeates, and vivifies the universe, and is the light and life of the human soul. The
PHYSIOLOGY. Diogenes Laertius tells us that the Stoics held "that there are two general principles in the universe--the passive principle (t? p?s???), which is matter, an existence without any distinctive quality, and the active principle (t? p?????), which is the reason existing in the passive, that is to say, God. For that He, being eternal, and existing throughout all matter, makes every thing."
These two principles are not, however, regarded by the Stoics as having a distinct, separate, and independent existence. One is substance (??s?a); the other is quality (p????). The primordial matter is the passive ground of all existence--the original substratum for the Divine activity. The Divine Reason is the active or formative energy which dwells within, and is essentially united to, the primary substance. The Stoics, therefore, regarded all existence as reducible, in its last analysis, to one substance, which on the side of its passivity and capacity of change, they called hyle (???);
Schwegler affirms that, in physics, the Stoics, for the most part, followed Heraclitus, and especially "carried out the proposition that nothing incorporeal exists; every thing is essentially corporeal." The pantheism of Zeno is therefore "materialistic."
On a careful collation of the fragmentary remains of the early Stoics, we fancy we catch glimpses of the theory held by some modern pantheists, that the material elements, "having
The God of the Stoics is not, however, a mere principle of life vitalizing nature, but an intelligent principle directing nature; and, above all, a moral principle, governing the human race. "God is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil; having a foreknowledge of the world, and of all that is in the world."
Most glorious of the immortal Powers above! O thou of many names! mysterious Jove: For evermore almighty! Nature's source! Thou governest all things in their order'd course! All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame, E'en mortal creatures may address thy name; For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth, Echo thy being with reflected birth-- Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound: The universe, that rolls this globe around, Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides, And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides. The lightnings are thy ministers of ire; The double-forked and ever-living fire; In thy unconquerable hands they glow, And at the flash all nature quakes below. Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw To one immense, inevitable law: And, with the various mass of breathing souls, Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls. Dread genius of creation! all things bow To thee: the universal monarch thou! Nor aught is done without thy wise control, On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole, Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind, Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind, Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion, to thy sight, Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright. Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings To one apt harmony the strife of things. One ever-during law still binds the whole, Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul. Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize The law of God eludes their ears and eyes. Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey; But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray. Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the gulf within, And their whole souls are centred in their sin. But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given! Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven! Save from their dreadful error lost mankind! Father! disperse these shadows of the mind! Give them thy pure and righteous law to know; Wherewith thy justice governs all below. Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way, Shall men that honor to thyself repay; And bid thy mighty works in praises ring, As well befits a mortal's lips to sing: More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers can be, Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.
PSYCHOLOGY. As in the world there are two principles, the passive and the active, so in the understanding there are two elements: a passive element--sensation, and an active element--reason. All knowledge commences with the phenomena of sensation (a?s??s??). This produces in the soul an image (fa?tas?a), which corresponds to the exterior object, and which Chrysippus regarded as a modification of the mind (??????s??). Associate with sensibility is thought--the faculty of general ideas--the ????? ?????, or right reason, as the supreme power and the guiding light of humanity. This active principle is of divine origin, "a part or shred of the Divinity."
This "right reason," or "common reason," is the source and criterion of all truth; "for our individual natures are all parts of the universal nature," and, therefore, all the dictates of "common reason" are "identical with that right reason which pervades every thing, being the same with Jupiter, who is the regulator and chief manager of all things." The fundamental canon of the logic of the Stoics, therefore, was that "what appears to all, that is to be believed, for it is apprehended by the reason, which is common and Divine." It is needless to remark that the Stoics were compelled by their physiological theory to deny the proper immortality of the soul. Some of them seem to have supposed that it might, for a season, survive the death of the body, but its ultimate destination was absorption into the Divine essence. It must return to its original source. ETHICS. If reason be the great organizing and controlling law of the universe, then, to live conformable to reason is the great practical law of life. Accordingly, the fundamental ethical maxim of the Stoics is, "Live conformably with nature--that is, with reason, or the will of the universal governor and manager of all things."
It is obvious that this doctrine must lead to a social morality and a jurisprudence the very opposite of the Epicurean. If we must do that which is good--that is, that which is reasonable, regardless of all consequences, then it is not for the pleasurable or useful results which flow from it that justice The sublime heroism of the Stoic school is well expressed in the manly precept, "??e???"--sustine--endure. "Endure the sorrows engendered by the bitter struggle between the passions support all the evils which fortune shall send thee--calumny, betrayal, poverty, exile, irons, death itself." In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius this spirit seems to rise almost to the grandeur of Christian resignation. "Dare to lift up thine eyes to God and say, 'Use me hereafter to whatsoever thou pleasest. I agree, and am of the same mind with thee, indifferent to all things. Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me act what part thou wilt, either of a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.'"
Amid the fearful moral degeneracy of imperial Rome, Stoicism became the refuge of all noble spirits. But, in spite of its severity, and its apparent triumph over the feelings, it brought no real freedom and peace. "Stoical morality, strictly speaking, is, at bottom, only a slavish morality, excellent in Epictetus; admirable still, but useless to the world, in Marcus Aurelius." Pride takes the place of real disinterestedness. It stands alone in haughty grandeur and solitary isolation, tainted with an incurable egoism. Disheartened by its metaphysical impotence, which robs God of all personality, and man of all hope of immortality; defeated in its struggle to obtain purity of soul, it sinks into despair, and often terminates, as in the case of its two first leaders, Zeno and Cleanthes, and the two Romans, Cato and Seneca, in self-murder. "Thus philosophy is only an apprenticeship of death, and not of life; it tends to death by its image, apathy and ataraxy."
CHAPTER XIV.THE PROPÆDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY."Philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, and it now proved useful for godliness, being in some part a preliminary discipline (p??pa?de?a t?? ??sa) for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration. Perhaps we may say it was given to the Greeks with this special object; for philosophy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Jews, 'a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ.'" --CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS. Philosophy, says Cousin, is the effort of reflection--the attempt of the human mind to develop in systematic and logical form that which has dimly revealed itself in the spontaneous thought of ages, and to account to itself in some manner for its native and instinctive beliefs. We may further add, it is the effort of the human mind to attain to truth and certitude on purely rational grounds, uncontrolled by traditional authorities. The sublime era of Greek philosophy was, in fact, an independent effort of human reason to solve the great problems of existence, of knowledge, and of duty. It was an attempt to explain the phenomenal history of the universe, to interpret the fundamental ideas and laws of human reason, to comprehend the utterances of conscience, and to ascertain what Ultimate and Supreme Reality underlies the world of phenomena, of thought, and of moral feeling.
The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium of all God's direct communications to our race--the revealer of God, is also "the Father of the spirits of all flesh." That divine inbreathing which first constituted man "a living soul" --that "inspiration of the Almighty which giveth man understanding," and still "teacheth him knowledge," proceeds from the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and seers of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers of the new. That "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, as well as on the mind of Abraham and Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician woman, and, in a higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence, on the mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be wondered at, then, if, in the teaching of Socrates and Plato, we should find a striking harmony of sentiment, and even form of expression, with some parts of the Christian revelation. No short-sighted jealousy ought to impugn the honesty of our judgment, if, in the speculations of Plato, we catch glimpses of a world of ideas not unlike that which Christianity discloses, and hear words not unfamiliar to those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. If, then, there exists some correlation between Divine and human reason, and if the light which illuminates all minds in Christian and in heathen lands is the same "true light," though differing in degrees of brightness, it is most natural and reasonable to expect some connection and some correspondence between the discoveries of philosophy and the revelations of the Sacred Oracles. Although Christianity is confessedly something which is above reason and nature--something communicated from above, and therefore in the fullest sense supernatural and Christianity, then, must have some connection with the reason of man, and it must also have some relation to the progressive developments of human thought in the ages which preceded the advent of Christ. Christianity did not break suddenly upon the world as a new commencement altogether unconnected with the past, and wanting in all points of sympathy and contact with the then present. It proceeded along A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. The divine light, in passing through such a medium, would have been darkened and obscured. The lens through which the heavenly rays are to be transmitted must first be prepared and polished. The intellectual eye itself must be gradually accustomed to the light. Hence it is that all revelation has been progressive, commencing, in the infancy of our race, with images and symbols addressed to sense, and advancing, with the education of the race, to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. The first communications to the patriarchs were always accompanied by some external, sensible appearance; they were often made through some preternatural personage in human form. Subsequently, as human thought becomes assimilated to the Divine idea, God uses man as his organ, and communicates divine knowledge as an internal and spiritual gift. The theistic conception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthropomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more spiritual. The education of Hebraic, Mosaic, and prophetic ages had gradually developed a purer theism, and prepared the Jewish mind for that sublime announcement of our Lord's--"God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit." For ages the Jews had worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem, and the inevitable tendency of thought was to localize the divine presence; but the gradual withdrawment from these localities of all visible tokens of Jehovah's presence, prepared the way for the Saviour's explicit declaration that "neither in this mountain of Samaria, nor yet at Jerusalem, The ideas of Redemption and Salvation--of atonement, expiation, pardon, adoption, and regeneration--are unique and sui-generis. Before these conceptions could be presented in the fullness and maturity of the Christian system, there was needed the culture and education of the ages of Mosaic ritualism, with its sacrificial system, its rights of purification, its priestly absolution, and its family of God.
Thus the determinations which, through Redemption, fall to the lot of history, as Nitzsch justly remarks, obey the emancipating law of gradual progress.
This work of preparation was not confined alone to Judaism. The divine plan of redemption comprehended all the race; its provisions are made in view of the wants of all the race; and we must therefore believe that the entire history of the race, previous to the coming of the Redeemer, was under a divine supervision, and directed towards the grand centre of our world's history. Greek philosophy and Grecian civilization must therefore have a place in the divine plan of history, and they must stand in an important relation to Christianity. He who "determined the time of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation in order that they may seek the Lord," can not have been unmindful of the Greek nation, and of its grandest age of philosophy. "The Father of the spirits of all flesh" could not be unconcerned in the moral and spiritual welfare of any of his children. He was as deeply interested in the Athenian as in the Hebrew. He is the God of the Gentile as well as the Jew. His tender mercies are over all his works. If the Hebrew race was selected to be the agent of his providence in one special field, and if the Jewish The chief points of excellence in the civilization of the Greeks are strikingly obvious, and may be readily presented. High perfection of the intellect and the imagination displaying itself in the various forms of art, poetry, literature, and philosophy. A wonderful freedom and activity of body and of mind, developed in trade, and colonization, in military achievement, and in subtile dialectics. A striking love of the beautiful, revealing itself in their sculpture and architecture, in the free music of prosaic numbers, and the graceful movement and measure of their poetry. A quickness of perception, a dignity of demeanor, a refinement of taste, a delicacy of moral sense, and a high degree of reverence for the divine in nature and humanity. And, in general, a ripe and all-pervading culture, which has made Athens a synonym for all that is greatest and best in the genius of man; so that literature, in its most flourishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art has looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models.
Its subserviency to this grand purpose is seen in the Greek tendency to trade and colonization. Their mental activity was accompanied by great physical freedom of movement. They displayed an inherent disposition to extensive emigration. "Without aiming at universal conquest, they developed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barbarians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the long valley which extended from the cataracts to the mouth of the Nile. The Hellenic tribes, on the other hand, though they despised the foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at which history enables us to discover them, we see them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of their native seas; and, three or four centuries before the Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies; and lower Italy, when the Roman Republic was just becoming conscious of its strength, had received the name of Greece itself. To all these places they carried their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amusements.... They were gradually taking the place of the Phoenicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers. "With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander's conquests. He took the meshes of the net of Greek civilization which were lying in disorder on the edge of the Asiatic shore, and spread them over all the countries he traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly brought together. Separate tribes were united under a common government. New cities were built as the centres of political life. New lines of communication were opened as the channels of commercial activity. The new culture penetrated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia, and a Grecian Babylon was built by the conqueror in Egypt, and called by his name. "The empire of Alexander was divided, but the effects of his campaigns and policy did not cease. The influence of these fresh elements of social life was rather increased by being brought into independent action within the sphere of distinct kingdoms. Our attention is particularly directed to two of the monarchical lines which descended from Alexander's generals--the Ptolemies, or the Greek kings of Egypt, and the SeleucidÆ, or the Greek kings of Syria. Their respective capitals, Alexandria and Antioch, became the metropolitan centres of commercial and civilized life in the East."
The spread of the Greek language was one of the most important services which the cities of Antioch and Alexandria rendered to Christianity. The Greek tongue is intimately connected with the whole system of Christian doctrine. This language, which, in symmetry of structure, in flexibility and compass of expression, in exactness and precision, in grace and elegance, exceeds every other language, became the language of theology. Next in importance to the inspiration which communicates the superhuman thought, must be the gradual development of the language in which the thought can clothe itself. That development by which the Greek language became the adequate vehicle of Divine thought, the perfect medium of the mature revelation of truth contained in the Christian Scriptures, must be regarded as the subject of a Divine providence. Christianity waited for that development, and it awaited Christianity. "The Greek tongue became to the Christian more than it had been to the Roman or the Jew. The mother-tongue of Ignatius at Antioch was that in which Philo composed his treatises at Alexandria, and which Cicero spoke at Athens. It is difficult to state in a few words the important relation which Alexandria, more especially, was destined to bear to the whole Christian Church." In that city, the Old Testament was translated into Greek; there the writings of Plato were diligently studied; there Philo, the Platonizing Jew, had sought to blend into one system the teachings of the Old Testament theology and the dialectic speculations of Plato. Numenius learns of Philo, and Plotinus of Numenius, and the ecstasy of Plotinus is the development of Philo's
Now it is the doctrine of the best philologists that language is a growth. Gradually, and by combined efforts of successive generations, it has been brought to the perfection which we so much admire in the idioms of the Bible, the poetry of Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare, and the prose compositions of Demosthenes, Cicero, Johnson, and Macaulay. The material or root-element of language may have been the product of mental instinct, or perhaps the immediate gift of God by revelation; but the formal element must have been the creation of thought, and the result of rational combination. Language is really the incarnation of thought; consequently the growth of a language, its affluence, comprehension, and fullness must depend on the vigor and activity of thought, and the acquisition of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellectual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is exceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of terms, especially such as are expressive of general notions and
If, then, language is the creation of thought, the sensible vesture with which it clothes itself, and becomes, as it were, incarnate--if the perfection and efficiency of language depends on the maturity and clearness of thought, we conclude that the wonderful adequacy and fitness of the Greek language to be the vehicle of the Divine thought, the medium of the most perfect revelation of God to men, can only be explained on the assumption that the ages of philosophic thought which, in Greece, preceded the advent of Christianity, were under the immediate supervision of a providence, and, in some degree, illuminated by the Spirit of God. Greek philosophy must therefore have fulfilled a propÆdeutic office for Christianity. "As it had been intrusted to the Hebrews to preserve and transmit the heaven-derived element of the Monotheistic religion, so it was ordained that, among the Greeks, all seeds of human culture should unfold themselves in beautiful harmony, and then Christianity, taking up the opposition between the divine and human, was to unite both in one, and show how it was necessary that both should co-operate to prepare for the appearance of itself and the unfolding of what it contains."
The arrival of Paul at Athens, in the close of this brilliant period of Greek philosophy, now assumes an aspect of deeper interest and profounder significance. It was a grand climacteric in the life of humanity--an epoch in the moral and religious history of the world. It marked the consummation of a periodic dispensation, and it opened a new era in that wonderful progression through which an overruling Providence is carrying the human race. As the coming of the Son of God to Judea in the ripeness of events--"the fullness of time"--was the consummation of the Jewish dispensation, and the event for which the Jewish age had been a preparatory discipline, so the coming of a Christian teacher to Athens, in the person of "the Apostle of the Gentiles," was the terminus ad quem towards which all the phases in the past history of philosophic thought had looked, and for which they had prepared. Christianity was brought to Athens--brought into contact with Grecian philosophy at the moment of its exhaustion--at the moment when, after ages of unwearied effort, it had become conscious of its weakness, and its comparative failure, and had abandoned many questions in despair. Greek philosophy had therefore its place in the plan of Divine Providence. It had a mission to the world; that mission was now fulfilled. If it had laid any foundation in the Athenian mind on which the Christian system could plant its higher truths--if it had raised up into the clearer light of consciousness any of those ideas imbedded in the human reason which are germane to Christian truth--if it had revealed more fully the wants and instincts of the human heart, or if it had attained the least knowledge of eternal truth and immutable right, upon this Christianity placed its imprimatur. And at those points where human reason had been made conscious of its own inefficiency, and compelled to Therefore the preparatory office of Greek religion and Greek philosophy is fully recognized by Paul in his address to the Athenians. He begins by saying that the observations he had made enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were indeed, in every respect, "a God-fearing people;"--that the God whom they knew so imperfectly as to designate Him "the Unknown," but whom "they worshipped," was the God he worshipped, and would now more fully declare to them. He assures them that their past history, and their present geographical position, had been the object of Divine foreknowledge and determination. "He hath determined beforehand the times of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation," all with this specific design, that they might "seek after," "feel after," and "find the Lord," who had never been far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were some faint adumbrations of the divine, and he looked for their firmer delineation to the figure of that gracious Master, higher and holier than man, whom he contemplated in his own imagination, and whom he was about to present to them."
This function of ancient philosophy is distinctly recognized by many of the greatest of the Fathers, as Justin, Clement, Origen, Augustine, and Theodoret. Justin Martyr believed that a ray of the Divine Logos shone on the mind of the heathen, and that the human soul instinctively turned towards God as the plant turns towards the sun. "Every race of men
In attempting to account for this partial harmony between Philosophy and Revelation, we find the Patristic writers adopting different theories. They are generally agreed in maintaining
The various attempts which have been made to trace the elevated theism and morality of Socrates and Plato to Jewish sources have signally failed. Justin Martyr and Tertullian claim that the ancient philosophers "borrowed from the Jewish prophets." Pythagoras and Plato are supposed to have travelled in the East in quest of knowledge.
Some of the ablest Christian scholars and divines of modern times, as Cudworth, Neander, Trench, PressensÉ, Merivale, Schaff, after the most careful and conscientious investigation, have come to this conclusion, that Greek philosophy fulfilled a preparatory mission for Christianity. The general conclusions they reached are forcibly presented in the words of PressensÉ: It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Greek philosophy when viewed as a preparation to Christianity. Disinterested pursuit of truth is always a great and noble task. The imperishable want of the human mind to go back to first principles, suffices to prove that this principle is divine. We may abuse speculation; we may turn it into one of the most powerful dissolvents of moral truths; and the defenders of positive creeds, alarmed by the attitude too often assumed by speculation in the presence of religion, have condemned it as mischievous in itself, confounding in their unjust prejudice its use and its abuse. But, for all serious thinkers, philosophy is one of the highest titles of nobility that humanity possesses: and when we consider its mission previous to Christianity, we feel convinced that it had its place in the Divine plan. It was not religion in itself that philosophy, through its noblest representatives, combated, but polytheism. It dethroned the false gods. Adopting what was best in paganism, philosophy employed it as an instrument to destroy paganism, and thus clear the way for definite religion. Above all, it effectually contributed to purify the idea of Divinity, though this purification was but an approximation. If at times it caught glimpses of the highest spiritualism, yet it was unable to protect itself against the return and reaction of Oriental dualism. In spite of this imperfection, which in its way served the cause of Christianity by demonstrating the necessity of revelation, men like Socrates and Plato fulfilled amongst their people a really sublime mission. They were to the heathen world the great prophets of the human conscience, which woke up at their call. And the awakening of the moral sense was at once the glory and ruin of philosophy; for conscience, once aroused, could only be satisfied by One greater than they, and must necessarily reject all systems which proved themselves insufficient to realize the moral idea they had evoked. "But to perish thus, and for such a cause, is a high honor to a philosophy. It was this made the philosophy of Greece, like the Hebrew laws, though in an inferior sense, a schoolmaster that led to Jesus Christ, according to the expression of Clement of Alexandria. Viewed in this light, it was a true gift of God, and had, too, the shadow of good things to come, awakening the presentiment and desire of them, though it could not communicate them. Nor can we conceive a better way to prepare for the advent of Him who was to be 'the Desire of Nations' before becoming their Saviour."
In previous chapters we have endeavored to sketch the history of the development of metaphysical thought, of moral feeling and idea, and of religious sentiment and want, which characterized Grecian civilization. In now offering a brief rÉsumÉ of the history of that development, with the design of more fully exhibiting the preparatory office it fulfilled for Christianity, we shall assume that the mind of the reader has already been furnished and disciplined by preparatory principles. He can scarce have failed to recognize that this development obeyed a general law, however modified by exterior and geographical conditions; the same law, in fact, which governs the development of all individual finite minds, and which law may be formulated thus:--All finite mind develops itself, first, in instinctive determinations and spontaneous faiths; then in rising doubt, and earnest questioning, and ill-directed inquiry; and, finally, in systematic philosophic thought, and rational belief. These different stages succeed each other in the individual mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood;
Nature, individual mind, and collective humanity, all obey the law of progressive development; otherwise there could be no history, for history is only of that which has movement and
We shall now endeavor to trace this process of gradual preparation for Christianity in the Greek mind-- (i.) In the field of THEISTIC conceptions. (ii.) In the department of ETHICAL ideas and principles. (iii.) In the region of RELIGIOUS sentiment. In the field of theistic conception the propÆdeutic office of Grecian philosophy is seen-- I. In the release of the popular mind from Polytheistic notion, and the purifying and spiritualizing of the Theistic idea. The idea of a Supreme Power, a living Personality, energizing in nature, and presiding over the affairs of men, is not the product of philosophy. It is the immanent, spontaneous thought of humanity. It has, therefore, existed in all ages, and revealed itself in all minds, even when it has not been presented to the understanding as a definite conception, and expressed by human language in a logical form. It is the thought which instinctively arises in the opening reason of childhood, as the dim and shadowy consciousness of a living mind behind all the movement and change of the universe. Then comes the period of doubt, of anxious questioning, and independent inquiry. The youth seeks to account to himself for this peculiar sentiment. He turns his earnest gaze towards nature, and through this living vesture of the infinite he seeks to catch some glimpses of the living Soul. In some fact appreciable to sense, in some phenomenon he can see, or hear, or touch, he would fain grasp the cause and reason of all that is. But in this field of inquiry and by this method he finds only a "receding God," who falls back as he approaches, and is ever still beyond; and he sinks down in exhaustion and feebleness, the victim of doubt, perhaps despair. Still the sentiment of the Divine remains, a living force, in the centre of his moral being. He turns his scrutinizing gaze within, and by self-reflection seeks for some rational ground for his instinctive faith. There he finds some convictions he can not doubt, some ideas he can not call in question, some thoughts he is compelled to think, some necessary and universal principles which in their natural and logical development ally him to an unseen world, And so it has been in the universal consciousness of our race as revealed in history. There was first a period of spontaneous and unreflective Theism, in which man felt the consciousness of God, but could not or did not attempt a rational explanation of his instinctive faith. He saw God in clouds and heard Him in the wind. His smile nourished the corn, and cheered the vine. The lightnings were the flashes of his vengeful ire, and the thunder was his angry voice. But the unity of God was feebly grasped, the rays of the Divinity seemed divided and scattered amidst the separate manifestations of power, and wisdom, and goodness, and retribution, which nature presented. Then plastic art, to aid and impress the imagination, created its symbols of these separate powers and principles, chiefly in human form, and gods were multiplied. But all this polytheism still rested on a dim monotheistic background, and all the gods were subordinated to Zeus--"the Father of gods and men." Humanity had still the sense of the dependence of all finite being on one great fountain-head of Intelligence and Power, and all the "generated gods" were the subjects and ministers of that One Supreme. This was the childhood of humanity so vividly represented in Homeric poetry. Then came a period of incipient reflection, and speculative thought, in which the attention of man is drawn outward to the study of nature, of which he can yet only recognize himself as an integral part. He searches for some ????--some first principle, appreciable to sense, which in its evolution shall furnish
The problem of existence still waits for and demands a solution. The heart of man, also, still cries out for the living God. The Socratic maxim, "know thyself," introverts the mental gaze, and self-reflection now becomes the method of philosophy. The Platonic analysis of thought reveals elements of knowledge which are not derived from the outer world. There are universal and necessary principles revealed in consciousness which, in their natural and logical development, transcend consciousness, and furnish the cognition of a world of Real Being, beyond the world of sense. There are absolute truths which bridge the chasm between the seen and the unseen, the fleeting and the permanent, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal. There are necessary laws of The inevitable tendency of this effort of speculative thought, spread over ages, and of the intellectual culture which necessarily resulted, was to undermine the old polytheistic religion, and to purify and elevate the theistic conception. The school of Elea rejected the gross anthropomorphism of the Homeric theology. Xenophanes, the founder of the school, was a believer in " One God, of all beings divine and human the greatest, Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in ideas." And he repels with indignation the anthropomorphic representations of the Deity. "But men foolishly think that gods are born as men are, And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice, and their figure: But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers, Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen, Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned." Empedocles also wages uncompromising war against all representations of the Deity in human form-- "For neither with head adjusted to limbs, like the human, Nor yet with two branches down from the shoulders outstretching, Neither with feet, nor swift-moving limbs,.... He is, wholly and perfectly, mind, ineffable, holy, With rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the world."
When speaking of the mythology of the older Greeks, Socrates maintains a becoming prudence; he is evidently desirous to
It was, however, the matured dialectic of Plato which gave the death-blow to polytheism. "Plato, the poet-philosopher, sacrificed Homer himself to monotheism. We may measure the energy of his conviction by the greatness of the sacrifice. He could not pardon the syren whose songs had fascinated Greece, the fresh brilliant poetry that had inspired its religion. He crowned it with flowers, but banished it, because it had lowered the religious ideal of conscience." He was sensible of the beauty of the Homeric fables, but he was also keenly alive to their religious falsehood, and therefore he excluded the poets from his ideal republic. In the education of youth, he would forbid parents and teachers repeating "the stories which Hesiod and Homer and the other poets told us." And after instancing a number of these stories "which deserve the gravest condemnation," he enjoins that God must be represented as he is in reality. "God," says he, "is, beyond all else, good in reality, and therefore so to be represented;" "he can not do evil, or be the cause of evil;" "he is of simple essence, The theistic conception, in Plato, reaches the highest purity and spirituality. God is "the Supreme Mind," "incorporeal," "unchangeable," "infinite," "absolutely perfect," "essentially good," "unoriginated and eternal." He is "the Father and Maker of the world," "the efficient Cause of all things," "the Monarch and Ruler of the world," "the Sovereign Mind that orders all things," and "pervades all things." He is "the sole principle of all things," "the beginning of all truth," "the fountain of all law and justice," "the source of all order and beauty;" in short, He is "the beginning, middle, and end of all things."
Aristotle continued the work of undermining polytheism. He defines God as "the Eternal Reason"--the Supreme Mind. "He is the immovable cause of all movement in the universe, the all-perfect principle. This principle or essence pervades all things. It eternally possesses perfect happiness, and its happiness consists in energy. This primeval mover is immaterial, for its essence is energy--it is pure thought, thought thinking itself--the thought of thought."
The preparatory office of Greek philosophy in the region of speculative thought is seen-- 2. In the development of the Theistic argument in a logical form.--Every form of the theistic proof which is now employed by writers on natural theology to demonstrate the being of God was apprehended, and logically presented, by one or other of the ancient philosophers, excepting, perhaps, the "moral argument" drawn from the facts of conscience. (I.) The ÆTIOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon the principle of causality, which may be presented in the following form:
The major premise of this syllogism is a fundamental principle of reason--a self-evident truth, an axiom of common sense, and as such has been recognized from the very dawn of philosophy. ?d??at?? ???es?a? t? ?? µ?de??? p???p?????t??--Ex nihilo nihil--Nothing which once was not, could ever of itself come into being. Nothing can be made or produced without an efficient cause, is the oldest maxim of philosophy. It is true that this maxim was abusively employed by Democritus and Epicurus to disprove a Divine creation of any thing out of nothing, yet the great body of ancient philosophers, as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, and Aristotle, regarded it as the announcement of an universal conviction, that nothing can be produced without an efficient cause;--order can not be generated out of chaos, life out of dead matter, consciousness out of unconsciousness, reason out of unreason. A first principle of life, of order, of reason, must have existed anterior to all manifestions of order, of life, of intelligence, in the visible universe. It was clearly in this sense that Cicero understood this great maxim of the ancient philosophers of Greece. With him "De nihilo nihil fit" is equivalent to "Nihil sine causa"--nothing exists without a cause. This is unquestionably the form in which that fundamental law of thought is stated by Plato: "Whatever is generated is necessarily generated from a certain cause, for it is wholly impossible that any thing should be generated without a cause."
The major premise of this syllogism is a fact of observation.
Therefore the ancient philosophers concluded justly, there must be something ??????t??--something which was never generated, something a?t????? and a???p?stat??--self-originated and self-existing, something ta?t?? and a??????--immutable and eternal, the object of rational apperception--which is the real ground and efficient cause of all that appears. (2.) The COSMOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon the principle of order, and thus presented:
The fundamental law of thought which underlies this mode of proof was clearly recognized by Pythagoras. All harmony and proportion and symmetry is the result of unity evolving itself in and pervading multiplicity. Mind or reason is unity and indivisibility; matter is diverse and multiple. Mind is the determinating principle; matter is indeterminate and indefinite. Confused matter receives form, and proportion, and order, and symmetry, by the action and interpenetration of the spiritual and indivisible element. In presence of facts of order, the human reason instinctively and necessarily affirms the presence and action of Mind. "Pythagoras had long devoted his intellectual adoration to the lofty idea of Order. To his mind it seemed as the presiding genius of the serene and silent world. He had from his youth dwelt with delight upon the eternal relations of space and number, in which the very idea of proportion seems to find its first and immediate development, until at length it seemed as if the whole secret of the universe was hidden in these mysterious correspondences. The world, in all its departments, moral and material, is a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose; it is a 'cosmos' (for the word is Pythagorean), the expression of harmony, the manifestation to sense of everlasting order; and the science of numbers is the truest representation of its eternal laws." Therefore, argued Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, as the reason of man can perceive the relations of an eternal order in the proportions of extension and number, the laws of proportion, and symmetry, and harmony must inhere in a Divine reason, an intelligent soul, which moves and animates the universe. The harmonies of the world which address themselves to the human mind must be the product of a Divine mind. The world, in its real structure, must be the image and copy of that divine proportion which the mind of man adores. It is the sensible type of the Divinity, the outward and multiple development of the Eternal Unity, the Eternal One--that is, God. The same argument is elaborated by Plato in his philosophy of beauty. God is with him the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the perfect ideal of all beauty--of all the order, proportion, harmony, sublimity, and excellence which reigns in the physical, the intellectual, and the moral world. He is the "Eternal Beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from all decay as well as increase--the perfect--the Divine Beauty"
(3.) The Teleological proof, or the argument based upon the principle of intentionality or Final Cause, and is presented in the following form:
This is peculiarly the Socratic proof. He recognized the necessity and the irresistibility of the conviction that the choice and adaptation of means to ends is the effect of Purpose, the expression of Will.
(4.) The Ontological or Ideological proof, or the argument grounded on necessary and absolute ideas, which may be thrown into the following syllogism:
This is the Platonic proof. Plato recognized the principle of substance (??s?a--?p??e?µe???), and therefore he proceeds in the "TimÆus" to inquire for the real ground of all existence; and in the "Republic," for the real ground of all truth and certitude. The universe consists of two parts, permanent existences and transient phenomena--being and genesis; the one eternally constant, the other mutable and subject to change; the former apprehended by the reason, the latter perceived by sense. For each of these there must be a principle, subject, or substratum--a principle or subject-matter, which is the ground or condition of the sensible world, and a principle or substance, which is the ground and reason of the intelligible world or world of ideas. The subject-matter, or ground of the sensible world, is "the receptacle" and "nurse" of forms, an "invisible species and formless receiver (which is not earth, or air, or fire, or water) which receives the immanence of the intelligible."
These copies of the eternal archetypes or models are perceived by the reason of man in virtue of its participation in the Ultimate Reason. The reason of man is the organ of truth; by an innate and inalienable right, it grasps unseen and eternal realities. The essence of the soul is akin to that which is real, permanent, and eternal;--It is the offspring and image of
The order in which these several methods of proof were developed, will at once present itself to the mind of the reader as the natural order of thought. The first and most obvious aspect which nature presents to the opening mind is that of movement and change--a succession of phenomena suggesting the idea of power. Secondly, a closer attention reveals a resemblance of phenomena among themselves, a uniformity of nature--an order, proportion, and harmony pervading the cosmos, which suggest an identity and unity of power and of reason, pervading and controlling all things. Thirdly, a still closer inspection of nature reveals a wonderful adaptation of means CHAPTER XV.THE PROPÆDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (continued)."If we regard this sublime philosophy as a preparation for Christianity instead of seeking in it a substitute for the Gospel, we shall not need to overstate its grandeur in order to estimate its real value."--PressensÉ. "Plato made me to know the true God. Jesus Christ showed me the way to Him."--St. Augustine. The preparatory office of Grecian philosophy is also seen in the department of morals. I. In the awakening and enthronement of Conscience as a law of duty, and the elevation and purification of the Moral Idea. The same law of evolution, which we have seen governing the history of speculative thought, may also be traced as determining the progress of ethical inquiry. In this department there are successive stages marked, both in the individual and the national mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood, submitting with unquestioning faith to prescribed and arbitrary laws; then the unsettled and ill-directed force of youth, questioning the authority of laws, and asking reasons why this or that is obligatory; then the philosophic wisdom of riper years, recognizing an inherent law of duty, which has an absolute rightness and an imperative obligation. There is first a dim and shadowy apprehension of some lines of moral distinction, and some consciousness of obligation, but these rest mainly upon an outward law--the observed practice of others, or the command of the parent as, in some sense, the command of God. Then, to attain to personal convictions, man passes through a stage of doubt; he asks for a ground of obligation, for an authority that shall approve itself to his own judgment and reason. At last he arrives at some ultimate principles of right, some immutable standard of duty; he This history of the normal development of the individual mind has its counterpart in the history of humanity. There is (1.) The age of popular and unconscious morality; (2.) The transitional, skeptical, or sophistical age; and (3.) The philosophic or conscious age of morality. "To give to each his due is just;" that is, justice is paying your debts. This doctrine being proved inadequate, an answer is given from the Sophistical point of view by Thrasymachus, who defines justice as "the advantage of the strongest"--that is, might is right, and right is might.
The era of popular and unconscious morality is represented by the times of Homer, Hesiod, the Gnomic poets, and "the Seven Wise Men of Greece." This was an age of instinctive action, rather than reflection--of poetry and feeling, rather than analytic thought. The rules of life were presented in maxims and proverbs, which do not rise above prudential counsels or empirical deductions. Morality was immediately associated with the religion of the state, and the will of the gods was the highest law for men. "Homer and Hesiod, and the Gnomic poets, constituted the educational course," to which may be added the saws and aphorisms of the Seven Wise Men, and we have before us the main sources of Greek views of duty. When the question was asked--"What is right?" the answer was given by a quotation from Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, and the like. The morality of Homer "is concrete, not abstract; it expresses the conception of a heroic life, rather than a philosophic theory. It is mixed up with a religion which really consists in a celebration of the beauty of nature, and in a deification of the strong and brilliant qualities of human nature. It is a morality uninfluenced by a regard for a future life. It clings with intense enjoyment and love to the present world, and the state after death looms up in the distance as a cold and repugnant shadow. And yet it would often hold death preferable to disgrace. The distinction between a noble and ignoble life is strongly marked in Homer, and yet a sense of right and wrong about particular actions seems fluctuating" and confused.
The transitional, skeptical, or sophistical era begins with Protagoras. Poetry and proverbs had ceased to satisfy the reason of man. The awakening intellect had begun to call in question the old maxims and "wise saws," to dispute the arbitrary authority of the poets, and even to arraign the institutions of society. It had already begun to seek for some reasonable foundation of authority for the opinions, customs, laws, and institutions which had descended to them from the past, and to ask why men were obliged to do this or that? The question whether there is at bottom any real difference between truth and error, right and wrong, was now fairly before the human mind. The ultimate standard of all truth and all right, was now the grand object of pursuit. These inquiries were not, however, conducted by the Sophists with the best motives. They were not always prompted by an earnest desire to know the truth, and an earnest purpose to embrace and do the right. They talked and argued for mere effect--to display their dialectic subtilty, or their rhetorical power. They taught virtue for mere emolument and pay. They delighted, as Cicero tells us, to plead the opposite sides of a cause with equal effect. And they found exquisite pleasure in raising difficulties, maintaining paradoxes, and passing off mere tricks of oratory for solid proofs. This is the uniform representation of the sophistical spirit which is given by all the best writers who lived nearest to their times, and who are, therefore, to be presumed to have known them best. Grote
The age of the Sophists was a transitional period--a necessary, though, in itself considered, an unhappy stage in the progress of the human mind; but it opened the way for, The Socratic, philosophic, or conscious age of morals. It has been said that "before Socrates there was no morality in Greece, but only propriety of conduct." If by this is meant that prior to Socrates men simply followed the maxims of "the Theologians,"
Socrates laid the foundation for conscious morality by placing the ground of right and wrong in an eternal and unchangeable reason which illuminates the reason and conscience of every man. He often asserted that morality is a science which can not be taught. It depends mainly upon principles which are discovered by an inward light. Accordingly he regarded it as the main business of education to "draw out" into the light of consciousness the principles of right and justice which are infolded within the conscience of man--to deliver the mind of the secret truth which was striving towards the light of day. Therefore he called his method the "maieutic" or "obstetric" art. He felt there was something divine in all men (answering to his t? da?µ????? or da?µ????? t?--a divine and supernatural something--a warning "voice"--a gnomic "sign"--a "law of God written on the heart"), which by a system of skillful interrogations he sought to elicit, so that each might hear for himself the voice of God, and, hearing, might obey. Thus was he the "great prophet of the human conscience," and a messenger of God to the heathen world, to prepare the way of the Lord. The morality of conscience was carried to its highest point by Plato. From the moment he became the disciple of When we read the "Gorgias," the "Philebus," and especially the "Republic," with what noble joy are we filled on hearing the voice of conscience, like a harp swept by a seraph's hand, uttering such deep-toned melodies! How does he drown the clamors of passion, the calculations of mere expediency, the sophism of mere personal interest and utility. If he calls us to witness the triumph of the wicked in the first part of the "Republic," it is in order that we may at the end of the book see the deceitfulness of their triumph. "As to the wicked," he says, "I maintain that even if they succeed at first in concealing what they are, most of them betray themselves at the end of their career. They are covered with opprobrium, and present evils are nothing compared with those that await them in the other life. As to the just man, whether in sickness or in poverty, these imaginary evils will turn to his advantage in this life, and after his death; because the providence of the gods is necessarily attentive to the interests of him who labors to become just, and to attain, by the practice of virtue, to the most perfect resemblance to God which is possible to man."
The obligation of moral rectitude is, by Plato, derived from the authoritative utterances of conscience as the voice of God. We must do right because reason and conscience say it is right. In the "Euthyphron" he maintains that the moral quality of actions is not dependent on the arbitrary will of a Supreme Governor;--"an act is not holy because the gods love it, but the gods love it because it is holy." The eternal law of right dwells in the Eternal Reason of God, the idea of right in all human minds is a ray of that Eternal Reason; and the requirement of the divine law that we shall do right is, and must be, in harmony with both. The present life is regarded by Plato as a state of probation and discipline, the future life as one of reward and punishment.
Plato was thus to the heathen world "the great apostle of the moral idea;" he followed up and completed the work of Socrates. "The voice of God, that still found a profound echo in man's heart, possessed in him an organ to which all Greece gave ear; and the austere revelation of conscience this time In Plato both the theistic conception and the moral idea seem to have touched the zenith. The philosophy of Aristotle, considered as a whole, appears on one side to have passed the line of the great Hellenic period. If it did not inaugurate, it at least prepared the way for the decline. It perfected logic, as the instrument of ratiocination, and gave it exactness and precision, Yet taken all in all, it was greatly inferior to its predecessor. From the moral point of view it is a decided retrogression. The god of Aristotle is indifferent to virtue. He is pure thought rather than moral perfection. He takes no cognizance of man. Morality has no eternal basis, no divine type, and no future reward. Therefore Aristotle's philosophy had little power over the conscience and heart. During the grand Platonic period human reason made its loftiest flight, it rose aloft and soared towards heaven, but alas! its wings, like those of Icarus, melted in the sun and it fell to earth again. Instead of wax it needed the strong "eagle pinions of faith" which revelation only can supply. The decadence is strongly marked both in the Epicurean and Stoic schools. They both express the feeling of exhaustion, disappointment, and despair. The popular theology had lost its hold upon the public mind. The gods no longer visited the earth. "The mysterious voice which, according to the poetic legend related by Plutarch, was heard out at sea--'Great Pan is dead'--rose up from every heart; the voice of an incredulous age proclaimed the coming end of paganism. The oracles were dumb." There was no vision in the land. All faith in a beneficent overruling Providence was lost, and the hope of immortality was well-nigh gone. The doctrines of a resurrection and a judgment to come, were objects of derisive mockery.
The preparatory office of Christianity in the field of ethics is further seen, II. In the fact that, by an experiment conducted on the largest scale, it demonstrated the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a perfect ideal of moral excellence, and develop the moral forces necessary to secure its realization. We have seen that the moral idea in Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca rose to a sublime height, and that, under its influence, they developed a noble and heroic character. At the same time it must be conceded that their ethical system was marked by signal blemishes and radical defects. After all its excellence, it did not give roundness, completeness, and symmetry to moral life. The elements which
In the department of religious feeling and sentiment, the propÆdeutic office of Greek philosophy is seen, in general, in the revealing of the immediate spiritual wants of the soul, and the distinct presentation of the problem which Christianity alone can solve. I. It awakened in man the sense of distance and estrangement from God, and the need of a Mediator--"a daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both"
During the period of unconscious and unreflective theism, the sentiment of the Divine was one of objective nearness and personal intimacy. The gods interposed directly in the affairs of men, and held frequent and familiar intercourse with our race. They descend to the battle-field of Troy, and mingle in the bloody strife. They grace the wedding-feast by their presence, and heighten the gladness with celestial music. They visit the poor and the stranger, and sometimes clothe the old and shrivelled beggar with celestial beauty. They inspire their favorites with strength and courage, and fill their mouths with wisdom and eloquence. They manifest their presence by signs and wonders, by visions and dreams, by auguries and prophetic voices. But more frequently than all, they are seen in the ordinary phenomena of nature, the sunshine and storm, the But the period of reflection is inevitable. Man turns his inquiring gaze towards nature and desires, by an imperfect effort of physical induction, to reach "the first principle and cause of things." Soon he discovers the prevalence of uniformity in nature, the actions of physical properties and agencies, and he catches some glimpses of the reign of universal law. The natural tendency of this discovery is obvious in the weakening of his sense of dependence on the immediate agency of God. The Egyptians told Herodotus that, as their fields were regularly irrigated by the waters of the Nile, they were less dependent on God than the Greeks, whose lands were watered by rains, and who must perish if Jupiter did not send them showers. 'That he might clearly see 'twixt Gods and men.' so must he, in the first place, remove from your soul the mist that now dwells there, and then apply those things through which you will be able to know
To develop this innate desire and "feeling after God" was the grand design of providence in "fixing the times" of the Greek nation, and "the boundaries of their habitation."
The idea of an Incarnation was not unfamiliar to human thought, it was no new or strange idea to the heathen mind. The numberless metamorphoses of Grecian mythology, the incarnations of Brahm, the avatars of Vishnu, and the human form of Krishna had naturalized the thought.
The last age decreËd by the Fates is come, And a new frame of all things does begin; A holy progeny from heaven descends Auspicious in his birth, which puts an end To the iron age, and from which shall arise A golden age, most glorious to behold. II. Finally, Greek philosophy prepared the way for Christianity by awakening and deepening the consciousness of guilt, and the desire for Redemption. The consciousness of sin, and the consequent need of expiation for sin, were gradually unfolded in the Greek mind. The idea of sin was at first revealed in a confused and indefinite feeling of some external, supernatural, and bewildering influence which man can not successfully resist; but yet so in harmony with the sinner's inclination, that he can not divest himself of all responsibility. "Homer has no word answering in comprehensiveness or depth of meaning to the word sin, as it is used in the Bible..... The noun ?µa?t?a which is appropriated to express this idea in the Greek of the New Testament, does not occur in the Homeric poems..... The word which is most frequently employed to express wrong-doing of every kind is ?t?, with its corresponding verb..... The radical signification of the word seems to be a befooling--a depriving one of his senses and his reason, as by unseasonable sleep, and excess of wine, joined with the influence of evil companions, and the power of destiny, or the deity. Hence, the Greek imagination, which impersonated every great power, very naturally conceived of ?t? as a person, a sort of omnipresent and universal cause of folly and sin, of mischief and misery, who, though the daughter of Jupiter, yet once fooled or misled Jupiter himself, and thenceforth, cast down from heaven to earth, walks with light feet over the heads of men, and makes all things go wrong. Hence, too, when men come to their senses, and see what folly and wrong they have perpetrated, they cast the blame on ?t?, and so, ultimately, on Jupiter and the gods."
"Oft hath this matter been by Greeks discussed, And I their frequent censure have incurred: Yet was not I the cause; but Jove, and Fate, And gloomy Erinnys, who combined to throw A strong delusion o'er my mind, that day I robb'd Achilles of his lawful prize. What could I do? a Goddess all o'erruled, Daughter of Jove, dread AtÉ, baleful power Misleading all; with light step she moves, Not on the earth, but o'er the heads of men. With blighting touch, and many hath caused to err." And yet, though Agamemnon here attempts to shuffle off the guilt of his transgression upon AtÉ, Jove, and Fate, yet at other times he confesses his folly and wrong, and makes no attempt to cast the responsibility on the gods. To satisfy the demands of divine justice, to show its hatred of sin, and to deter others from transgression, sin is punished. Punishment is the penalty due to sin; in the language of Homer, it is the payment of a debt incurred by sin. When the transgressor is punished he is said to "pay off," or "pay back" his crimes; in other words, to expatiate or atone for them. "If not at once, Yet soon or late will Jove assert their claim, And heavy penalty the perjured pay With their own blood, their children's, and their wives'." At the same time the belief is expressed that the gods may be, and often are, propitiated by prayers and sacrifices, and thus the penalty is remitted. "The Gods themselves, in virtue, honor, strength, Excelling thee, may yet be mollified; For they when mortals have transgressed, or fail'd To do aright, by sacrifice and pray'r, Libations and burnt-off'rings, may be sooth'd."
Polytheism, then, as Dr. Schaff has remarked, had the voice of conscience, and a sense, however obscure, of sin. It felt the need of reconciliation with deity, and sought that reconciliation by prayer, penance, and sacrifice. The sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the absolute need of expiation, is determined with increasing clearness and definiteness in the tragic poets. The first great law which the Tragedians recognize, as a law written on the heart, is "that the sinner must suffer for his sins." The connection between sin and suffering is constantly recognized as a natural and necessary connection, like that between sowing and reaping. A haughty spirit, blossoming, bears a crop Of woe, and reaps a harvest of despair. "Lust and violence beget lust and violence, and vengeance too, at the appointed time." The consequences of great crimes, especially in high places, extend to every person and every thing connected with them. "The country and the country's gods are polluted."
The pollution and curse of sin, when once contracted by an individual, or entailed upon a family, will rest upon them and
But after the law comes the gospel. First the controversy, then the reconciliation. A dim consciousness of sin and retribution as a fact, and of reconciliation as a want, seems to have revealed itself even in the darkest periods of history. This consciousness underlies not a few of the Greek tragedies. "The 'Prometheus Bound' was followed by the 'Prometheus Unbound,' reconciled and restored through the intervention of Jove's son. The 'Œdipus Tyrannus' of Sophocles was completed by the 'Œdipus Colonus,' where he dies in peace amid tokens of divine favor. And so the 'Agamemnon' and 'Choephoroe' reach their consummation only in the 'Eumenides,' where the Erinyes themselves are appeased, and the Furies become the gracious ones. This is not, however, without a special divine interposition, and then only after a severe struggle between the powers that cry for justice and those that plead for mercy." The office and work which, in this trilogy, is assigned to Jove's son, Apollo, must strike every reader as at least a remarkable resemblance, if not a foreshadowing of the Christian doctrine of reconciliation. "This becomes yet more striking when we bring into view the relation in which this reconciling work stands to ?e?? S?t??, Jupiter Saviour--?e?? t??t??, Jupiter "By means of Pallas and of Loxias And the third Saviour who doth all things sway." Platonism reveals a still closer affinity with Christianity in its doctrine of sin, and its sense of the need of salvation. Plato is sacredly jealous for the honor and purity of the divine character, and rejects with indignation every hypothesis which would make God the author of sin. "God, inasmuch as he is good, can not be the cause of all things, as the common doctrine represents him to be. On the contrary, he is the author of only a small part of human affairs; of the larger part he is not the author; for our evil things far outnumber our good things. The good things we must ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and not in him, the causes of evil." 'Fast by the threshold of Jove's court are placed Two casks, one stored with evil, one with good,' And that he for whom the Thunderer mingles both 'He leads a life checker'd with good and ill.'
Nor can we let our young people know that, in the words of Æschylus-- "'When to destruction God will plague a house He plants among the members guilt and sin.'" Whatever in the writings of Homer and the tragic poets give countenance to the notion that God is, in the remotest sense the author of sin, must be expunged. Here is clearly a great advance in ethical conceptions. The great defect in the ethical system of Plato was the identification of evil with the inferior or corporeal nature of man--"the irascible and concupiscible elements," fashioned by the junior divinities. The rational and immortal part of man's nature, which is derived immediately from God--the Supreme Good, naturally chooses the good as its supreme end and destination. Hence he adopted the Socratic maxim "that no man is willingly evil," that is, no man deliberately chooses evil as evil, but only as a seeming good--he does not choose evil as an end, though he may choose it voluntarily as a means. Plato manifests great solicitude to guard this maxim from misconception and abuse. Man has, in his judgment, the power to act in harmony with his higher reason, or contrary to reason; to obey the voice of conscience or the clamors of passion, and consequently he is the object of praise or blame, reward or punishment. "When a man does not consider himself, but others, as the cause of his own sins,.... and even seeks to excuse himself from blame, he dishonors and injures his own soul; so, also, when contrary to reason.... he indulges in pleasure, he dishonors it by filling it with vice and remorse."
The obstacles to a virtuous life are, however, confessedly numberless, and, humanly speaking, insurmountable. To raise one's self above the clamor of passion, the power of evil, the bondage of the flesh, is acknowledged, in mournful language,
Plato was, in some way, able to discover the need of a Saviour, to desire a Saviour, but he could not predict his appearing. Hints are obscurely given of a Conqueror of sin, an Assuager of pain, an Averter of evil in this life, and of the impending retributions of the future life; but they are exceedingly indefinite and shadowy. In all instances they are rather the language of desire, than of hope. Platonism awakened in the heart of humanity a consciousness of sin and a profound feeling of want--the want of a Redeemer from sin, a spiritual, a divine Remedy for its moral malady--and it strove after some remedial power. But it was equally conscious of failure and defeat. It could enlighten the reason, but it could only
This consciousness of the need of supernatural light and help, and this aspiration after a light supernatural and divine, which Plato inherited from Socrates, constrained him to regard with toleration, and even reverence, every apparent approach, every pretension, even, to a divine inspiration and guidance in the age in which he lived. "'The greatest blessings which men receive come through the operation of phrensy (µa??a--inspired exaltation), when phrensy is the gift of God. The prophetess of Delphi, and the priestess of Dodona, many are the benefits which in their phrensies (moments of inspiration) they have bestowed upon Greece; but in their hours of self-possession, few or none. And too long were it to speak of the Sibyl, and others, who, inspired and prophetic, have delivered
Paul, then, found, even in that focus of Paganism, the city of Athens, religious aspirations tending towards Jesus Christ. A true philosophic method, notwithstanding its shortcomings and imperfections, concluded by desiring and seeking "the Unknown God," by demanding him from all forms of worship, from all schools of philosophy. The great work of preparation in the heathen world consisted in the developing of the desire for salvation. It proved that God is the great want of every human soul; that there is a profound affinity between conscience and the living God; and that Tertullian was right The history of the religions and philosophies of human origin thus becomes to us a striking confirmation of the truth of Christianity. It shows there is a wondrous harmony between the instinctive wants and yearnings of the human heart, as well as the necessary ideas and laws of the reason, and the fundamental principles of revealed religion. There is "a law written on the heart"--written by the finger of God, which corresponds to the laws written by the same finger on "tables of stone." There are certain necessary and immutable principles and ideas infolded in the reason of man, which harmonize with the revelations of the Eternal Logos in the written word.
Here, then, are two distinct and independent revelations--the unwritten revelation which God has made to all men in the constitution of the human mind, and the external written revelation which he has made in the person and teaching of his Son. And these two are perfectly harmonious. We have here two great volumes--the volume of conscience, and the We conclude in the words of PressensÉ: "To isolate it from the past, would be to refuse to comprehend the nature of Christianity itself, and the extent of its triumphs. Although the Gospel is not, as has been affirmed, the product of anterior civilizations--a mere compound of Greek and Oriental elements--it is not the less certain that it brings to the human mind the satisfaction vainly sought by it in the East as in the West. Omnia subito is not its device, but that of the Gnostic heresy. Better to say, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, that the night of paganism had its stars to light it, but that they called to the Morning-star which stood over Bethlehem." "If we regard philosophy as a preparation for Christianity, instead of seeking in it a substitute for the Gospel, we shall not need to overstate its grandeur in order to estimate its real value." CONTENTS.A. Abstraction, comparative and immediate, 187-189; 362-364. Æschylus, his conception of the Supreme Divinity, 146; his recognition of human guilt, and need of expiation, 515-517. Ætiological proof of the existence of God, 487-489. Anaxagoras, an Eclectic, 311; in his physical theory an Atomist, 312; taught that the Order of the universe can only be explained by Intelligence, 312; his psychology, 313; the teacher of Socrates, 313. Anaximander, his first principle the infinite, 290; his infinite a chaos of primary elements, 290. Anaximenes, a vitalist, 286; his first principle air, 287. Aristotle, his opinion of the popular polytheism of Greece, 157; his classification of causes, 280, 404, 405; his misrepresentations of Pythagoras, 299; his classification of the sciences, 389; his Organon, 389-394; his Logic, 394-403; his Theology, 404-417; his Ethics, 417-421; his Categories, 395; his logical treatises, 396; on induction and deduction, 396-398; his psychology, 398, 401; on how the knowledge of first principles is attained, 394, 402, 403; on Matter and Form, 405-408; on Potentiality and Actuality, 408-412; his proof of the Divine existence, 412-415; on the chief good of man, 419, 420; his doctrine of the Mean, 420, 421; defect of his ethical system, 505. [ ???a?], or first principles, the grand object of investigation in Greek Philosophy, 271, 274, 279, 280. Athenians, criticism on Plutarch's sketch of their character, 45; their vivacity, 45; love of freedom, 46--and of country, 46; private life of, 47; intellectual character of, 48; inquisitive and analytic, 48; rare combinations of imagination and reasoning powers, 49; religion of, 98; the Athenians a religious people, 102; their faith in the being and providence of God, 107; their consciousness of dependence on God, 110, 116; their religious emotions, 117; their deep consciousness of sin and guilt, 122-124; their sense of the need of expiation, 124, 125; their religion exerted some wholesome moral influence, 162, 163. Athens, topography of 27; the Agora, 28; its porticoes, 29; the Acropolis, 30; its temples, 31; the Areopagus, 33; sacred objects in, 98, 99; images of the gods, 99; localities of schools of philosophy in, 266-268. Attica, geographical boundaries of, 26; a classic land, 34; its geographical and cosmical conditions providentially ordained for great moral ends, 34, 35; soil of, not favorable to agriculture, 40--necessitated industry and frugality, 41; the climate of, 41--its influence on the mental character of the people, 42. B. Bacon, his assertion that the search after final causes had misled scientific inquirers, 222. C. Categories of Aristotle, 395. Causality, principle of, 189; assailed by the Materialists, 194--especially by Comte, 203-209; the intuition of power a fact of immediate consciousness, 204; consciousness of effort the type of all force, 211; Aristotle on Causality, 413; Ætiological proof of existence of God, 487-489. Cause, origin of the idea of, 204, 205. Causes, Aristotle's classification of, 280, 404, 405. Chief good of man, Aristotle on, 419, 420. Cleanthes, his hymn to Jupiter, 452, 453. Comte, his theory of the origin of religion, 57-65; his doctrine that all knowledge is confined to material phenomena, 203; denies all causation, both efficient and final, 203-214. Conditioned, law of the, 227, 228; is contradictory, 250; as a ground of faith, meaningless and void, 251. Cosmological proof of the existence of God, 489, 490. Cousin, his theory that religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of reason, 78-84; criticism thereon, 84-86. Criterion of truth, Plato's search after, 333, 334. Cudworth, his interpretation of Grecian mythology, 139, 143. Cuvier, on final causes, 216, 222. D. Darwin, his inability to explain the facts of nature without recognizing design, 221, 222. Democritus, taught that atoms and the vacuum are the beginning of all things, 292; an absolute materialist, 293. Dependence, consciousness of, the foundation of primary religious emotions, 110-113. Development, law of mental, 478; three successive stages clearly marked, in the individual, 478--in the universal mind of humanity, 479, 480; (1) in the field of Theistic conceptions, 481-494; (2) in the department of morals, 495-509; (3) in the department of religious sentiment, 509-522. Dialectic of Plato, 353-369. Dogmatic Theologians, assert that all our knowledge of God is derived from the teaching of the Scriptures, 86,167; cast doubt upon the principle of causality, 253-255--upon the principle of the unconditioned, 255-257--upon the principle of unity, 258-261--and upon the immutable principles of morality, 261-263. Dynamical or Vital school of ancient philosophers, 282-289. E. Eclecticism of Anaxagoras, 311. Emotions, the religious, 117-122; sentiment of the Divine exists in all minds, 119-121; also instinctive yearning after the Invisible, 121, 122. Empedocles, a believer in one Supreme God, 153. Epicurus, his theory of the origin of religion, 56, 57; his Ethics, 427-432; his Physics, 433-438; taught that pleasure is the chief end of life, 428--that ignorance of nature is the sole cause of unhappiness, 432--that Physics and Psychology are the only studies conducive to happiness, 432--that the universe is eternal and infinite, 433--that concrete bodies are combinations of atoms, 434--that atoms have spontaneity, 436, and some degree of freedom, 436, 437; the parts of the world self-formed, 437, 438; plants, animals, and man are spontaneously generated, 438; a state of savagism the primitive condition of man, 439; his Atheism, 441; his Psychology, 442-444; the soul material and mortal, 445, 446. Eternity, Platonic notion of, 349 (note), 372, 373. Eternity of Matter, how taught by Plato, 371-373; distinctly affirmed by Epicurus, 433. Eternity of the Soul, Plato's doctrine of, 373-375. Ethical ideas and principles, gradual development of, 495, 496; (1) the age of popular and unconscious morals, 497, 498; (2) the transitional or sophistical age, 498-500; (3) the philosophic or conscious age, 500-506. Ethics of Plato, 383-387, 502-505; of Aristotle, 417-42l; of Epicurus, 427-432; of the Stoics, 454, 456. Expiation for sin, the need of, 124; universally acknowledged, 124--especially in Grecian mythology, 125--and in the language of Greece and Rome, 125. F. Facts of the universe, classification of, 175-177. Fathers, the early, recognized the propÆdeutic office of Greek philosophy, 473-475. Feeling, theories which ground all religion on, 70-74; its inadequacy, 74-78. Final Causes, impossibility of interpreting nature without recognizing, 221, 222; the assumption of final causes a means of discovery, 222, 223; Cuvier on, 216, 222; argument of Socrates from, 320-324; Plato on, 380-382; Aristotle on, 405, 413, 414; teleological proof of the existence of God, 490, 491. Force, the idea of, rejected by Comte, 207. Forces, all of one type, and that type mind, 211. Freedom, human, 19; exists under limitations, 20; both admitted and denied by Comte, 208, 209; of Will, as taught by Plato, 386, 387; admitted by Epicurus, 486. G. Geoffrey St. Hilaire, his pretense of not ascribing any intentions to nature, 216, 217. Geography and History, relations between, 14; opposite theories concerning, 15; theory of Buckle, 16--of Ritter, Guyot, and Coubin, 16; the relation one of adjustment and harmony, 16. God, universality of idea of, 89; Athenians believed in one God, 107, 147, 148; idea of God a common phenomenon of human intelligence, 168, 169; the development of this idea dependent on experience conditions, 169-172; the phenomena of the universe demand a God for their explanation, 172-175: there are principles revealed in consciousness which necessitate the idea of God, 184-189; proofs of the existence of God employed by Aristotle, 412-416--by Socrates, 320-324; views of God entertained by the Stoics, 452, 453; logical proofs of the existence of God developed by Greek philosophy, 487-494; gradual development of Theistic conception, 481-487. Gods of Grecian Mythology, how regarded by the philosophers, 151-157; views of Plato regarding them, 383. Great men, represent the spirit of their age, 20; the creation of a providence interposing in history, 21. Greece, its geographical relations favorable to free intercourse with the great historic nations, 35--to commerce, 36--to the diffusion of knowledge, 36--and to a high degree of civilization, 36; peculiar configuration of Greece conducive to activity and freedom, 36-38--and independence, 38; natural scenery, 43--its influence on imagination and taste, 44. Greek Civilization, a preparation for Christianity, 465-468. Greek Language, a providentially prepared vehicle for the perfect revelation of Christianity, 468-470. Greek Philosophy, first a philosophy of Nature, 271, 281, 282; next a philosophy of Mind, 271, 316-318; lastly a philosophy of Life, 271, 422; prepared the way for Christianity, 457-522. Greeks, the masses of the people believed in one Supreme God, 147, 148. Guilt, consciousness of, a universal fact, 122, 123; recognized in Grecian mythology, 123, 124; awakened and deepened by philosophy, 513-518. H. Hamilton, Sir W., teaches that philosophic knowledge is the knowledge of effects as dependent on causes, 224, 225; and of qualities as inherent in substances, 225, 226; and yet asserts all human knowledge is necessarily confined to phenomena, 227; his doctrine of the relativity of all knowledge, 227, 229-236; his philosophy of the conditioned, 228; conditional limitation the law of all thought, 236-242; the Infinite a mere negation of thought, 242-246; asserts we must believe in the infinity of God, 246; takes refuge in faith, 247; faith grounded on the law of the conditioned, 243, 249--that is, on contradiction, 249, 250. Hegel, his philosophy of religion, 65-70. Heraclitus, his first principle ether, 288; change, the universal law of all existence, 288; a Materialistic Pantheist, 289. Hesiod, on the generation of the gods, 142. Homer, his conception of Zeus, 144, 145. Homeric doctrine of sin, 513,514. Homeric theology, 143-145, 509, 510. Humanity, fundamental ideas and laws of, 18; developed and modified by exterior conditions, 19; the most favorable conditions existed in Athens. I. Idealism, furnishes no adequate explanation of the common belief in an external world, 193,199--and of a personal self, Ideas, Platonic doctrine of, 334-337; Platonic scheme of, 364-367. Images of the gods, how regarded by Cicero, 129--by Plutarch, 129; the heathens apologized for the use of images, 159. Immortality of the soul, taught by Socrates, 324--and by Plato, 375, 376; denied by Epicurus, 444-446. Incarnation, the idea of, not unfamiliar to heathen thought, 512. Induction, the psychological method of Plato, 356, 357. Induction and Deduction, Aristotle on, 397, 398. Infinite, the, not a mere negation of thought, 242-244; known as the necessary correlative of the finite, 245; as comprehensible in itself, as the finite is comprehensible in itself, 246; in what sense known, 252. Infinite Series, the phrase, when literally construed, a contradiction, 181,182. Infinity, qualitative and quantitative, 239; qualitative infinity possessed by God alone, 184, 239. Intentionality, principle of, 190; denied by Materialists, 194; a first law of thought, 221-223; recognized by Socrates, 320-324. Ionian School of Philosophy, a physical and sensational school, 281; subdivided into Mechanical and Dynamical, 282, 283. Italian School of Philosophy, an Idealist school, 281; subdivided into the Mathematical and Metaphysical, 282, 296. J. Jacobi, his faith-philosophy, 71. K. Knowledge, Hamilton's doctrine of relativity of, 229-236; opposite theories of knowledge among ancient philosophers, 330, 331; the tendency of these theories, 332; Plato's theory of, 333, 334; Plato's science of real knowledge, 337, 338. L. Language, inadequate to convey the idea of God, 92-94; Greek language the best medium for the Christian revelation, 468-470. Leucippus, his first principles atoms and space, 291; a pure Materialist, 292. Logic of Aristotle, 394-403. Logical Treatises of Aristotle, 395, 396. Lucretius, the expounder of the doctrines of Epicurus, 426,427; his account of the origin of worlds, 437, 438; of plants, animals, and man, 438. M. Mansel, bases religion on feeling of dependence, 72--and sense of obligation, 73. Materialists deny the principle of causality, 194, 203--and of intentionality or final cause, 211-225; Anaximander, Leucippus, and Democritus belong to the materialistic school, 286-293: Epicurus a materialist, 442-446. Mathematical Infinite, not absolute, 179, 180; capable of exact measurement, therefore limited, 180; infinite sphere, radius, line, etc., self-contradictory, 180, 181. Matter, did Plato teach the eternity of? 371-373; the doctrine of the Stoics concerning matter, 449 (note). Matter and Form, Aristotle on, 405-408. Mean, Aristotle's doctrine of the, 420. Mediator, consciousness of the need of a, awakened by Greek philosophy, 509-513. Metaphysical thought, law of its development, 478-480; three different stages in the individual mind, 478, 479; and in the universal consciousness of our race, 479. Metempsychosis regarded by Plato as a mere hypothesis, 376 (note). Mill, J. S., his doctrine that all knowledge is confined to mental phenomena, 193; his definition of matter, 196; his views of personal identity, 196, 197; his theological opinions, 197. Miracles, not designed to prove the existence of God, 95. Moral principles, universal and immutable, which lead to the recognition of a God, 190; the Dogmatic Theologians seek to invalidate the argument therefrom, 261-263. Mystics, base all religious knowledge on internal feeling, 70. Mythology, philosophy of Greek, 134-139; Cudworth's interpretation of, 139-143; recognized the consciousness of guilt and need of expiation, 123-125. N. National Character, a complex result, 17; conjoint effect of moral and physical influences, 17; human freedom not to be disregarded in the study of, 20; influence of geographical surroundings, 23--of climate and natural scenery, on the pursuits and mental character of nations, 23--on creative art, 24--and literature of nations, 25. Nations, individuality of, 22; determined mainly from without, 22. Natural Realism, 305; Anaxagoras a natural realist, 311-313. Nature, interpreted by man according to fundamental laws of his reason, 133. O. Obligation, the sense of, lies at the foundation of religion, 115. Ontological proof of the existence of God, 491-493. Ontology, of Plato, 369-379; the subject-matter of the world of sense, 370-373; the permanent substratum of mental phenomena, 373-376; the first Principle of all principles--God, 377-379, 491-493. Optimism of Plato, 382. Order of the Universe, had it a beginning, or is it eternal? 178-184. Order, principle of, pervades the universe, 220, 221; recognized by Pythagoras, 301; Cosmological proof of the existence of God, 489, 490. P. Parmenides, his theory of knowledge, 307-308; a spiritualistic Pantheist, 308, 309. Paul, St., at Athens, 14; his emotion when he saw the city full of idols, 100; the subject of his discourse, 101; brought into contact with all the phases of philosophic thought, 268, 269; his arrival at Athens an epoch in the moral history of the world, 472; he recognized the preparatory office of Greek philosophy, 473. Philosophers of Athens, 101; believed in one supreme, uncreated, eternal God, 151-157; their views of the mythological deities, 158, 159; their apologies for images and image-worship, 159, 160. Philosophic Schools, classification of, 271-273; Pre-Socratic 280-314; Socratic, 314-421; Post-Socratic, 422-456. Philosophy, the world-enduring monument of the glory of Athens, 265, 260; defined, 270, 271; an inquiry after first causes and principles, 271, 457; not in any proper sense a theological inquiry, 273-277, 279; the love of wisdom, 384, 385. Philosophy in its relation to Christianity, 268-270; sympathy of Platonism, 268; antagonism of Epicureanism and Stoicism, 269; the PropÆdeutic office of philosophy, 457-524--recognized by St. Paul, 473--and many of the early Fathers, 473-475; philosophy undermined Polytheism, and purified the Theistic idea, 481-487; developed the Theistic argument in a logical form, 487-494; it awakened Conscience and purified the Ethical idea, 495-506; demonstrated the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a perfect ideal of moral excellence, 506-509; awakened in man the sense of distance from God, and the need of a Mediator, 509-513; deepened the consciousness of sin, and the desire for a Redeemer, 513-522; the history of philosophy a confirmation of the truth of Christianity, 522-524. Philosophy of Religion, 53; based on the correlation between Divine and human reason, 458-462. Plato, condemns the poets for their unworthy representations of the gods, 130-132; his views of the gods of Grecian mythology, 154-157: the sympathy of his philosophy with Christianity, 268: followed the philosophic method of Socrates, 328; his moral qualifications for the study of philosophy, 328, 329; his literary qualifications, 329, 330; his search after a criterion of truth, 333, 334; his doctrine of Ideas, 334-337; his science of real knowledge, 337, 338; his answer to the question, What is Science? 338, 339; his Psychology 339-352; his scheme of the intellectual powers, 345; on the nature of the soul, 350; his dialectic, 353-369; his grand scheme of ideas, 364-367; his Ontology, 369-379; on the creation of time, 372; did he teach that matter is eternal? 371, 372; on the eternity of the rational element of the soul, 373-375; on the immortality of the soul, 375, 376; on God as the First Principle of all principles, 377-379; his Physics, 380-383; his Ethics, 383-387, 502-505; defects of his Plutarch, his sketches of Athenian character, 44; criticism on, 45; on the universality of prayer and sacrifice, 115. Poets, the Greek, believed in the existence of one uncreated Mind, 141; their theogony was a cosmogony, 142; the theologians of Greece, 274, 275. Polytheism, Greek, a poetico-historical religion of myth and symbol, 134; its immoralities, 160, 161; undermined by Philosophy, 484-487. Post-Socratic Schools, classification of, 425; a philosophy of life, 422-424. Potentiality and Actuality, Aristotle on, 408-412. Prayer, natural to man, 115. Preparation for Christianity, not confined to Judaism alone, 464, 465; Greek civilization also prepared the way for Christ, 465-468; Greek language a providential development as the vehicle of a more perfect revelation, 468-470; Greek philosophy fulfilled a propÆdeutic office, 470-472. Pre-Socratic Schools, classification of, 280-282; 295, 296. Principles, universal and necessary, how attained by the method of Plato, 361-364, 390; how, by the method of Aristotle, 390-394, 402, 403. Psychological analysis, logical demonstration of the existence of God begins with, 170; reveals principles which in their logical development attain to the knowledge of God, 184-189. Psychology of Heraclitus, 289; of Pythagoras, 304; of Parmenides, 307, 308; of Anaxagoras, 313; of Protagoras, 315; of Socrates, 317, 318; of Plato, 339-352; of Aristotle, 392, 398-401; of Epicurus, 442-444; of the Stoics, 453, 454. Pythagoras, his doctrine that numbers are the first principles of things, 297; how to be interpreted, 297-304; misrepresented by Aristotle, 298-300; psychology of, 304. R. Reason, insufficiency of, to elaborate a perfect ideal of moral excellence, 505-509. Redemption, desire of, awakened and defined by Greek philosophy, 513-521. Relativity of all knowledge, Hamilton's doctrine of, 229-236. Religion, the philosophy of, 53; defined 53, 106; universality of religious phenomena, 54; hypothesis offered in explanation of, 55; hypothesis of Epicurus and Comte, 56-65--of Hegel, 65-70--of Jacobi and Schleiermacher, 70-78--of Cousin, 78-86--of Dogmatic Theologians, 86-96--author's theory, 96, 97; religion of the Athenians, 98--its mythological and symbolic aspects, 128--exerted some wholesome influences, 161-163. Reminiscence, Plato on, 354, 355. Revelation, progressive, 462-464; harmony of the two revelations in the volume of conscience and the volume of the New Testament, 522-524. S. Sacrifice, universal prevalence of, 115, 124; prompted by the universal consciousness of guilt, 126: expiatory sacrifices grounded on a primitive revelation, 127. Schleiermacher, his theory that all religion is grounded on the feeling of absolute dependence, 71, 72. Science, Plato's answer to the question, What is Science? 338, 339. Self-determination, limited by idea of duty, 113; implies accountability, 114; recognizes a Lawgiver and Judge, 115. Socrates, his desire for truth, 316; his dÆmon, 317 (note); his philosophic method, 318, 319; a believer in one Supreme God, 320; his argument for the existence of God from final causes, 320-324; his belief in immortality and a future retribution, 324, 325; his Ethics, 325; the great prophet of the human conscience, 500-502. Socratic School, 314. Sophists, 315, 316; their skeptical tendency, 315; their defective ethics, 498, 499. Sophocles, believed in one Supreme God, 147. Soul, Plato on the nature of the, 350, 373; eternity of the rational element, 373-375. Spencer, H., carries the law of the Conditioned forward to its logical consequences, Atheism, 241, 242. Stoical School, 446; its philosophy a moral philosophy, 447. Psychology, 453, 454; their Ethics, 454-456; their Theology, 452,453. Substance, principle of, 189; Idealism seeks to undermine it, 193; Reason affirms a permanent substance as the ground of all mental phenomena, 201--and of the phenomena of the sensible world, 202, 203. Sufficient Reason, law of, recognized by Plato, 359. Superstition, meaning of the term as used by Paul, 103. T. Teleological proof of the existence of God, 490, 491. Thales, a believer in one uncreated God, 152; his first principles, 283; he regards water as the material cause, 284; and God as the efficient cause, 285. Theistic argument, in its logical form, 487-494. Theistic conception, gradual development of, 481-484, Theological opinions of the early periods of Greek civilization, 150, 151; 276-278. Theology of Aristotle, 404-417; identical with Metaphysics, 404, 416. Theology of the Greek poets, 143-151; proposed reform of Poetry by Plato, 131, 132. Thinking, conditionality of, 228; in what sense to be understood, 237; thought imposes no limits upon the object of thought, 237, 238. Thought, negative and positive, 242, 243; negative thought an impossibility, 243; all thought must be positive, 243. Time, Platonic notion of, 371, 372. Tragedians, the Greek, were the public religious teachers of the Athenians, 145; their theology, 146, 147; influence of the religious dramas on the Athenian mind, 161-163; guiltiness of man, and need of reconciliation confessed by, 515-517. U. Unconditioned, principle of, 189; assailed by Hamilton, 194. Unity of God, 259; an affirmation of reason, 259-261; Xenophanes taught the unity of God, 307--also Parmenides, 309--and Plato, 377--and Aristotle, 415. Unity, principle of, 189; attempt of Dogmatic Theologians to prove its insufficiency, 194, 258-261; recognized by Pythagoras, 296; his effort to reduce all the phenomena of nature to a Unity, 303, 304. Universal and necessary Principles, classification of, 189, 190; these the foundation of our cognition of a God, 191; how attained according to Plato, 360-364; how by the method of Aristotle, 390-394, 402, 403. Universe, the, is it finite or infinite? 178-184; Epicurus teaches that it is infinite, 433. Unknown God, the true God, 104; God not absolutely unknown, 107-110; classification of opponents to the doctrine that God can be cognized by reason, 166-168; Idealist School of Mill, 194-203; Materialistic School of Comte, 203-223; Hamiltonian School, 224-252; School of Dogmatic Theologians, 252-263. W. Watson, Richard, represents the views of Dogmatic Theologians 86; asserts that all our religious knowledge is derived from oral revelation, 86-88, 167; incompleteness and inadequacy of this theory, 88-96; in vindicating for the Scriptures the honor of revealing all our knowledge of God, he casts doubt upon the principle of Causality, 253-255--on the principle of the Unconditioned, 255-257--on the principle of Unity, 258-261--and on the immutable principles of Morality, 261-263. Wordsworth, on the Sentiment of the Divine, 118. X. Xenophanes, his attack on Polytheism, 130; his faith in one God, 153, 306, 307. Z. Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoical School, 446; a Spiritualistic Pantheist, 450, 451. Zeno of Elea, maintained the doctrine of Absolute Identity, 309. Zeus, originally the Supreme and only God of the Greeks, 143; the Homeric Zeus, the Supreme God, 144, 145. THE END.
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