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 school proceeded, and estimated the results attained. We now come to consider the method and results of

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 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.

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.

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 we can conceive as perfect; that is, it must be regulated by laws, of which we have the highest principles in those first and elementary properties of numbers which stand next to unity. "The world is then, through all its departments, a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose." It is a κόσµος (for the word is purely Pythagorean)--the expression of harmony, the manifestation, to sense, of everlasting order.

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 µίµησις τῶν ἀριθµῶν--the imitation of numbers.

The psychology of the Pythagoreans was greatly modified by their physical, and still more, by their moral tenets. The soul was ἀριθµὸς ἑαυτὸν κινῶν--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 (νοῦς), Intelligence (φρήν), and Passion (θυµός). 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.

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.

He has no parts, no organs, as men have, being

"All sight, all ear, all intelligence;

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.

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, in this fundamental principle, the common source of the two great systems of speculative thought which divided the ancient world. Here are the head-waters of the sensational and the idealist schools. The Ionian school started its course of inquiry in the direction of sense; it occupied itself solely with the phenomena of the external world, and it sought this principle of unity in a physical element. The Italian school started its course of inquiry in the direction of reason; it occupied itself chiefly with rational conceptions or à priori ideas, and it sought this principle of unity in purely metaphysical being. And just as the Amazon and La Plata sweep on, in opposite directions, until they reach the extremities of the continent, so these two opposite streams of thought rush onward, by the force of a logical necessity, until they terminate in the two Unitarian systems of Absolute Materialism and Absolute Idealism, and, in their theological aspects, in a pantheism which, on the one hand, identifies God with matter, or, on the other hand, swallows up the universe in God.

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.

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 Homœomeria, 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

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 (λόγος) was the regulative faculty of the mind, as the Νοῦς, 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.

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 skepticism was generated in the Athenian mind. If doubt be cast upon the veracity of the primary cognitive faculties of the mind, the flood-gates of universal skepticism are opened. If the senses are pronounced to be mendacious and illusory in their reports regarding external phenomena, and if the intuitions of the reason, in regard to the ground and cause of phenomena, are delusive, then we have no ground of certitude. If one faculty is unveracious and unreliable, how can we determine that the other is not equally so? There is, then, no such thing as universal and necessary truth. Truth is variable and uncertain, as the variable opinion of each individual.

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 tο 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.

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 after truth. He must be conscious of his own ignorance. He must not exalt himself. He must not put his own conceits in the way of the thing he would know. He must have an open eye, a single purpose, an honest mind, to prepare him to receive light when it comes. And that there is light, that there is a source whence light comes, he avowed in every word and act.

"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 account of his merits? Aristodemus having answered, 'Many,--'Name some of them, I pray you,' said Socrates. 'I admire,' said Aristodemus, 'Homer for his Epic poetry, Melanippides for his dithyrambics, Sophocles for his tragedy, Polycletus for statuary, and Zeuxis for painting.'

"'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 might enter and annoy that no less tender than astonishing part of us. Is it not to be admired that the ears should take in sounds of every sort, and yet are not too much filled with them? That the fore teeth of the animal should be formed in such a manner as is evidently best for cutting, and those on the side for grinding it to pieces? That the mouth, through which this food is conveyed, should be placed so near the nose and eyes as to prevent the passing unnoticed whatever is unfit for nourishment?... And canst thou still doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this should be a work of chance, or of wisdom and contrivance?'

"'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, most assuredly governs thy body; although it may well seem, by thy manner of talking, that it is chance and not reason which governs thee.'

"'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.'"

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.

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."