History of the Intellectual Development of Europe Volume I Part 14

In carrying his ethical conceptions into practice, Plato insists that the state is everything, and that what is in opposition to it ought to be destroyed. He denies the right of property; strikes at the very existence of the family, pressing his doctrines to such an extreme as to consider women as public property, to be used for the purposes of the state; he teaches that education should be a governmental duty, and that religion must be absolutely subjected to the politician; that children do not belong to their parents, but to the state; that the aim of government should not be the happiness of the individual, but that of the whole; and that men are to be considered not as men, but as elements of the state, a perfect subject differing from a slave only in this, that he has the state for his master. He recommends the exposure of deformed and sickly infants, and requires every citizen to be initiated into every species of falsehood and fraud. Distinguis.h.i.+ng between mere social unions and true polities, and insisting that there should be an a.n.a.logy between the state and the soul as respects triple const.i.tution, he establishes a division of ruler, warriors, and labourers, preferring, therefore, a monarchy reposing on aristocracy, particularly of talent.

Though he considers music essential to education, his opinion of the fine arts is so low that he would admit into his state painters and musicians only under severe restrictions, or not at all. It was for the sake of having this chimerical republic realized in Sicily that he made a journey to Dionysius; and it may be added that it was well for those whom he hoped to have subjected to the experiment that his wild and visionary scheme was never permitted to be carried into effect. In our times extravagant social plans have been proposed, and some have been attempted; but we have witnessed nothing so absurd as this vaunted republic of Plato. It shows a surprising ignorance of the acts and wants of man in his social condition.

Some of the more important doctrines of Plato are worthy of further reflection. I shall therefore detain the reader a short time to offer a few remarks upon them.

[Sidenote: Grandeur of Plato's conceptions of G.o.d]

It was a beautiful conception of this philosophy that ideas are connected together by others of a higher order, and these, in their turn, by others still higher, their generality and power increasing as we ascend, until finally a culminating point is reached--a last, a supreme, an all-ruling idea, which is G.o.d. Approaching in this elevated manner to the doctrine of an Almighty Being, we are free from those fallacies we are otherwise liable to fall into when we mingle notions derived from time and s.p.a.ce with the attributes of G.o.d; we also avoid those obscurities necessarily encountered when we attempt the consideration of the illimitable and eternal.

[Sidenote: and of the soul.]

[Sidenote: The sentiment of pre-existence.]

Plato's views of the immortality of the soul offer a striking contrast to those of the popular philosophy and superst.i.tion of his time. They recall, in many respects, the doctrines of India. In Greece, those who held the most enlarged views entertained what might be termed a doctrine of semi-immortality. They looked for a continuance of the soul in an endless futurity, but gave themselves no concern about the eternity which is past. But Plato considered the soul as having already eternally existed, the present life being only a moment in our career; he looked forward with an undoubting faith to the changes through which we must hereafter pa.s.s. As sparks issue forth from a flame, so doubtless to his imagination did the soul of man issue forth from the soul of the world.

Innate ideas and the sentiment of pre-existence indicate our past life.

By the latter is meant that on some occasion perhaps of trivial concern, or perhaps in some momentous event, it suddenly occurs to us that we have been in like circ.u.mstances, and surrounded by the things at that instant present on some other occasion before; but the recollection, though forcibly impressing us with surprise, is misty and confused. With Plato shall we say it was in one of our prior states of existence, and the long-forgotten transactions are now suddenly flas.h.i.+ng upon us?

[Sidenote: But this arises from the anatomical construction of the brain.]

But Plato did not know the double structure and the double action of the brain of man; he did not remember that the mind may lose all recognition of the lapse of time, and, with equal facility, compress into the twinkling of an eye events so numerous that for their occurrence days and even years would seem to be required; or, conversely, that it can take a single, a simple idea, which one would suppose might be disposed of in a moment, and dwell upon it, dilating or swelling it out, until all the hours of a long night are consumed. Of the truth of these singular effects we have not only such testimony as that offered by those who have been restored from death by drowning, who describe the flood of memory rus.h.i.+ng upon them in the last moment of their mortal agony, the long train of all the affairs in which they have borne a part seen in an instant, as we see the landscape, with all its various objects, by a flash of lightning at night, and that with appalling distinctness, but also from our own experience in our dreams. It is shown in my Physiology how the phenomena of the sentiment of pre-existence may, upon these principles, be explained, each hemisphere of the brain thinking for itself, and the mind deluded as respects the lapse of time, mistaking these simultaneous actions for successive ones, and referring one of the two impressions to an indistinct and misty past. To Plato such facts as these afforded copious proofs of the prior existence of the soul, and strong foundations for a faith in its future life.

[Sidenote: The double immortality, past and future.]

Thus Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul implies a double immortality; the past eternity, as well as that to come, falls within its scope. In the national superst.i.tion of his time, the spiritual principle seemed to arise without author or generator, finding its chance residence in the tabernacle of the body, growing with its growth and strengthening with its strength, acquiring for each period of life a correspondence of form and of feature with its companion the body, successively a.s.suming the appearance of the infant, the youth, the adult, the white-bearded patriarch. The shade who wandered in the Stygian fields, or stood before the tribunal of Minos to receive his doom, was thought to correspond in aspect with the aspect of the body at death. It was thus that Ulysses recognized the forms of Patroclus and Achilles, and other heroes of the ten years' siege; it was thus that the peasant recognized the ghost of his enemy or friend. As a matter of superst.i.tion, these notions had their use, but in a philosophical sense it is impossible to conceive anything more defective.

[Sidenote: Relations of the past and future to man.]

Man differs from a lifeless body or a brute in this, that it is not with the present moment alone that he has to deal. For the brute the past, when gone, is clean gone for ever; and the future, before it approaches, is as if it were never to be. Man, by his recollection, makes the past a part of the present, and his foreknowledge adds the future thereto, thereby uniting the three in one.

[Sidenote: Criticism on the Ideal theory.]

Some of the ill.u.s.trations commonly given of Plato's Ideal theory may also be instructively used for showing the manner in which his facts are dealt with by the methods of modern science. Thus Plato would say that there is contained in every acorn the ideal type of an oak, in accordance with which as soon as suitable circ.u.mstances occur, the acorn will develop itself into an oak, and into no other tree. In the act of development of such a seed into its final growth there are, therefore, two things demanding attention, the intrinsic character of the seed and the external forces acting upon it. The Platonic doctrine draws such a distinction emphatically; its essential purpose is to a.s.sert the absolute existence and independence of that innate type and its imperishability. Though it requires the agency of external circ.u.mstances for its complete realization, its being is altogether irrespective of them. There are, therefore, in such a case, two elements concerned--an internal and an external. A like duality is perceived in many other physiological instances, as in the relations.h.i.+p of mind and matter, thought and sensation. It is the aim of the Platonic philosophy to magnify the internal at the expense of the external in the case of man, thereby a.s.serting the absolute supremacy of intellect; this being the particular in which man is distinguished from the brutes and lower organisms, in whom the external relatively predominates. The development of any such organism, be it plant or animal, is therefore nothing but a manifestation of the Divine idea of Platonism. Many instances of natural history offer striking ill.u.s.trations, as when that which might have been a branch is developed into a flower, the parts thereof showing a disposition to arrange themselves by fives or by threes. The persistency with which this occurs in organisms of the same species, is, in the Platonic interpretation, a proof that, though individuals may perish, the idea is immortal. How else, in this manner, could the like extricate itself from the unlike; the one deliver itself from, and make itself manifest among the many?

Such is an instance of Plato's views; but the very ill.u.s.tration, thus serving to bring them so explicitly before us, may teach us another, and, perhaps, a more correct doctrine. For, considering the duality presented by such cases, the internal and external, the immortal hidden type and the power acting upon it without, the character and the circ.u.mstances, may we not pertinently inquire by what authority does Plato diminish the influence of the latter and enhance the value of the former? Why are facts to be burdened with such hypothetical creations, when it is obvious that a much simpler explanation is sufficient? Let us admit, as our best physiological views direct, that the starting-point of every organism, low or high, vegetable or animal, or whatever else, is a simple cell, the manner of development of which depends altogether on the circ.u.mstances and influences to which it is exposed; that, so long as those circ.u.mstances are the same the resulting form will be the same, and that as soon as those circ.u.mstances differ the resulting form differs too. The offspring is like its parent, not because it includes an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to the same conditions as was its parent. Elsewhere I have endeavoured to show that we must acknowledge this absolute dominion of physical agents over organic forms as the fundamental principle in all the sciences of organization; indeed, the main object of my work on Physiology was to enforce this very doctrine. But such a doctrine is altogether inconsistent with the Ideal theory of Platonism. It is no latent imperishable type existing from eternity that is dominating in such developments, but they take place as the issue of a resistless law, variety being possible under variation of environment. Hence we may perhaps excuse ourselves from that suprasensual world in which reside typical forms, universals, ideas of created things, declining this complex machinery of Platonism, and subst.i.tuting for it a simple notion of law. Nor shall we find, if from this starting-point we direct our thoughts upward, as Plato did from subordinate ideas to the first idea, anything incompatible with the n.o.ble conclusion to which he eventually came, anything incompatible with the majesty of G.o.d, whose existence and attributes may be a.s.serted with more precision and distinctness from considerations of the operation of immutable law than they can be from the starting-point of fantastic, imaginary, ideal forms.

[Sidenote: Rise of the Sceptics.]

We have seen how the pre-Socratic philosophy ended in the Sophists; we have now to see how the post-Socratic ended in the Sceptics. Again was repeated the same result exhibited in former times, that the doctrines of the different schools, even those supposed to be matters of absolute demonstration, were not only essentially different, but in contradiction to one another. Again, therefore, the opinion was resumed that the intellect of man possesses no criterion of truth, being neither able to distinguish among the contradictions of the impressions of the senses, nor to judge of the correctness of philosophical deductions, nor even to determine the intrinsic morality of acts. And, if there be no criterion of truth, there can be no certain ground of science, and there remains nothing for us but doubt. Such was the conclusion to which Pyrrho, the founder of the Sceptics, came. He lived about B.C. 300. His philosophical doctrine of the necessity of suspending or refusing our a.s.sent from want of a criterion of judgment led by a natural transition to the moral doctrine that virtue and happiness consist in perfect quiescence or freedom from all mental perturbation. This doctrine, it is said, he had learned in India from the Brahmans, whither he had been in the expedition of Alexander. On his return to Europe he taught these views in his school at Elis; but Greek philosophy, in its own order of advancement, was verging on the discovery of these conclusions.

[Sidenote: Secondary a.n.a.lysis of ethical philosophy.]

The Sceptical school was thus founded on the a.s.sertion that man can never ascertain the true among phenomena, and therefore can never know whether things are in accordance or discordance with their appearances, for the same object appears differently to us in different positions and at different times. Doubtless it also appears differently to various individuals. Among such appearances, how shall we select the true one, and, if we make a selection, how shall we be absolutely certain that we are right? Moreover, the properties we impute to things, such as colour, smell, taste, hardness, and the like, are dependent upon our senses; but we very well know that our senses are perpetually yielding to us contradictory indications, and it is in vain that we expect Reason to enable us to distinguish with correctness, or furnish us a criterion of the truth. The Sceptical school thus made use of the weapon which the Sophists had so destructively employed, directing it, however, chiefly against ethics. But let us ascend a step higher. If we rely upon Reason, how do we know that Reason itself is trustworthy? Do we not want some criterion for it? And, even if such a criterion existed, must we not have for it, in its turn, some higher criterion? The Sceptic thus justified his a.s.sertion that to man there is no criterion of truth.

[Sidenote: The doctrines of Pyrrho.]

[Sidenote: No certainty in knowledge.]

In accordance with these principles, the Sceptics denied that we can ever attain to a knowledge of existence from a knowledge of phenomena.

They carried their doubt to such an extreme as to a.s.sert that we can never know the truth of anything that we have a.s.serted, no, not even the truth of this very a.s.sertion itself. "We a.s.sert nothing," said they; "no, not even that we a.s.sert nothing." They declared that the system of induction is at best only a system of probability, for an induction can only be certain when every one and all of the individual things have been examined and demonstrated to agree with the universal. If one single exception among myriads of examples be discovered, the induction is destroyed. But how shall we be sure, in any one case, that we have examined all the individuals? therefore we must ever doubt. As to the method of definitions, it is clear that it is altogether useless; for, if we are ignorant of a thing, we cannot define it, and if we know a thing, a definition adds nothing to our knowledge. In thus destroying definitions and inductions they destroyed all philosophical method.

[Sidenote: The doctrines of Epicurus.]

[Sidenote: Tranquil indifference is best for man.]

But if there be this impossibility of attaining knowledge, what is the use of man giving himself any trouble about the matter? Is it not best to accept life as it comes, and enjoy pleasure while he may? And this is what Epicurus, B.C. 342, had already advised men to do. Like Socrates, he disparages science, and looks upon pleasure as the main object of life and the criterion of virtue. a.s.serting that truth cannot be determined by Reason alone, he gives up philosophy in despair, or regards it as an inferior or ineffectual means of contributing to happiness. In his view the proper division of philosophy is into Ethics, Canonic, and Physics, the two latter being of very little importance compared with the first. The wise man or sage must seek in an Oriental quietism for the chief happiness of life, indulging himself in a temperate manner as respects his present appet.i.te, and adding thereto the recollection of similar sensual pleasures that are past, and the expectation of new ones reserved for the future. He must look on philosophy as the art of enjoying life. He should give himself no concern as to death or the power of the G.o.ds, who are only a delusion; none as respects a future state, remembering that the soul, which is nothing more than a congeries of atoms, is resolved into those const.i.tuents at death. There can be no doubt that such doctrines were very well suited to the times in which they were introduced; for so great was the social and political disturbance, so great the uncertainty of the tenure of property, that it might well be suggested what better could a man do than enjoy his own while it was yet in his possession?

nor was the inducement to such a course lessened by extravagant dissipations when courtesans and cooks, jesters and buffoons, splendid attire and magnificent appointments had become essential to life.

Demetrius Poliorcetes, who understood the condition of things thoroughly, says, "There was not, in my time, in Athens, one great or n.o.ble mind." In such a social state, it is not at all surprising that Epicurus had many followers, and that there were many who agreed with him in thinking that happiness is best found in a tranquil indifference, and in believing that there is nothing in reality good or bad; that it is best to decide upon nothing, but to leave affairs to chance; that there is, after all, little or no difference between life and death: that a wise man will regard philosophy as an activity of ideas and arguments which may tend to happiness; that its physical branch is of no other use than to correct superst.i.tious fancies as to death, and remove the fear of meteors, prodigies, and other phenomena by explaining their nature; that the views of Democritus and Aristotle may be made to some extent available for the procurement of pleasure; and that we may learn from the brutes, who pursue pleasure and avoid pain, what ought to be our course. Upon the whole, it will be found that there is a connexion between pleasure and virtue, especially if we enlarge our views and seek for pleasure, not in the gratification of the present moment, but in the aggregate offered by existence. The pleasures of the soul all originate in the pleasures of the flesh; not only those of the time being, but also those recollected in the past and antic.i.p.ated in the future. The sage will therefore provide for all these, and, remembering that pain is in its nature transient, but pleasure is enduring, he will not hesitate to encounter the former if he can be certain that it will procure him the latter; he will dismiss from his mind all idle fears of the G.o.ds and of destiny, for these are fictions beneficial only to women and the vulgar; yet, since they are the objects of the national superst.i.tion, it is needless to procure one's self disfavour by openly deriding them. It will therefore be better for the sage to treat them with apparent solemnity, or at least with outward respect, though he may laugh at the imposition in his heart. As to the fear of death, he will be especially careful to rid himself from it, remembering that death is only a deliverer from the miseries of life.

[Sidenote: Imperfections of the Canonic of Epicurus,]

Under the t.i.tle of Canonic Epicurus delivers his philosophical views; they are, however, of a very superficial kind. He insists that our sensuous impressions are the criterion of truth, and that even the sensations of a lunatic and a dreamer are true. But, besides the impressions of the moment, memory is also to be looked upon as a criterion--memory, which is the basis of experience.

[Sidenote: and contradictions of his Physics.]

[Sidenote: His irreligion.]

In his Physics he adopts the Atomic theory of Democritus, though in many respects it ill accords with his Ethics or Canonic; but so low is his esteem of its value that he cares nothing for that. Though atoms and a void are in their nature imperceptible to the senses, he acknowledges their existence, a.s.serting the occurrence of an infinite number of atoms of different kinds in the infinite void, which, because of their weight, precipitate themselves perpendicularly downward with an equable motion; but some of them, through an unaccountable internal force, have deviated from their perpendicular path, and, sticking together after their collision, have given rise to the world. Not much better than these vague puerilities are his notions about the size of the sun, the nature of eclipses, and other astronomical phenomena; but he justifies his contradictions and superficiality by a.s.serting that it is altogether useless for a man to know such things, and that the sage ought to give himself no trouble about them. As to the soul, he says that it must be of a material or corporeal nature, for this simple reason, that there is nothing incorporeal but a vacuum; he inclines to the belief that it is a rarefied body, easily movable, and somewhat of the nature of a vapour; he divides it into four activities, corresponding to the four elements entering into its const.i.tution; and that, so far from being immortal, it is decomposed into its integral atoms, dying when the body dies. With the atomic doctrines of Democritus, Epicurus adopts the notions of that philosopher respecting sensation, to the effect that eidola or images are sloughed off from all external objects, and find access to the brain through the eye. In his theology he admits, under the circ.u.mstances we have mentioned, anthropomorphic G.o.ds, pretending to account for their origin in the chance concourse of atoms, and suggesting that they display their quietism and blessedness by giving themselves no concern about man or his affairs. By such derisive promptings does Epicurus mock at the religion of his country--its rituals, sacrifices, prayers, and observances. He offers no better evidence of the existence of G.o.d than that there is a general belief current among men in support of such a notion; but, when brought to the point, he does not hesitate to utter his disbelief in the national theology, and to declare that, in his judgment, it is blind chance that rules the world.

[Sidenote: Epicureans of modern times.]

Such are the opinions to which the name of Epicurus has been attached; but there were Epicureans ages before that philosopher was born, and Epicureans there will be in all time to come. They abound in our own days, ever characterized by the same features--an intense egoism in their social relations, superficiality in their philosophical views, if the term philosophical can be justly applied to intellects so narrow; they manifest an accordance often loud and particular with the religion of their country, while in their hearts and in their lives they are utter infidels. These are they who const.i.tute the most specious part of modern society, and are often the self-proclaimed guardians of its interests. They are to be found in every grade of life; in the senate, in the army, in the professions, and especially in commercial pursuits, which, unhappily, tend too frequently to the development of selfishness.

It is to them that society is indebted for more than half its corruptions, all its hypocrisy, and more than half its sins. It is they who infuse into it falsehood as respects the past, imposture as respects the present, fraud as respects the future; who teach it by example that the course of a man's life ought to be determined upon principles of selfishness; that grat.i.tude and affection are well enough if displayed for effect, but that they should never be felt; that men are to be looked upon not as men, but as things to be used; that knowledge and integrity, patriotism and virtue, are the delusions of simpletons; and that wealth is the only object which is really worthy of the homage of man.

[Sidenote: The Middle Academy of Arcesilaus.]

[Sidenote: The New Academy of Carneades.]

[Sidenote: The duplicity of the later Academicians.]

[Sidenote: The fourth and fifth Academies.]

It now only remains in this chapter to speak of the later Platonism. The Old Academy, of which Plato was the founder, limited its labours to the ill.u.s.tration and defence of his doctrines. The Middle Academy, originating with Arcesilaus, born B.C. 316, maintained a warfare with the Stoics, developed the doctrine of the uncertainty of sensual impressions and the nothingness of human knowledge. The New Academy was founded by Carneades, born B.C. 213, and partic.i.p.ated with the preceding in many of its fundamental positions. On the one side Carneades leans to scepticism, on the other he accepts probability as his guide. This school so rapidly degenerated that at last it occupied itself with rhetoric alone. The gradual increase of scepticism and indifference throughout this period is obvious enough; thus Arcesilaus said that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance, and denied both intellectual and sensuous knowledge. Carneades, obtaining his views from the old philosophy, found therein arguments suitable for his purpose against necessity, G.o.d, soothsaying; he did not admit that there is any such thing as justice in the abstract, declaring that it is a purely conventional thing; indeed, it was his rhetorical display, alternately in praise of justice and against it, on the occasion of his visit to Rome, that led Cato to have him expelled from the city. Though Plato had been the representative of an age of faith, a secondary a.n.a.lysis of all his works, implying an exposition of their contradictions, ended in scepticism. If we may undertake to determine the precise aim of a philosophy whose representatives stood in such an att.i.tude of rhetorical duplicity, it may be said to be the demonstration that there is no criterion of truth in this world. Persuaded thus of the impossibility of philosophy, Carneades was led to recommend his theory of the probable.

"That which has been most perfectly a.n.a.lyzed and examined, and found to be devoid of improbability, is the most probable idea." The degeneration of philosophy now became truly complete, the labours of so many great men being degraded to rhetorical and artistic purposes. It was seen by all that Plato had destroyed all trust in the indications of the senses, and subst.i.tuted for it the Ideal theory. Aristotle had destroyed that, and there was nothing left to the world but scepticism. A fourth Academy was founded by Philo of Larissa, a fifth by Antiochus of Ascalon. It was reserved for this teacher to attach the Porch to the Academy, and to merge the doctrines of Plato in those of the Stoics. Such a heterogeneous mixture demonstrates the pa.s.s to which speculative philosophy had come, and shows us clearly that her disciples had abandoned her in despair.

[Sidenote: End of the Greek age of Faith.]

So ends the Greek age of Faith. How strikingly does its history recall the corresponding period of individual life--the trusting spirit and the disappointment of youth. We enter on it full of confidence in things and men, never suspecting that the one may disappoint, the other deceive.

Our early experiences, if considered at all, afford only matter of surprise that we could ever have been seriously occupied in such folly, or actuated by motives now seeming so inadequate. It never occurs to us that, in our present state, though the pursuits may have changed, they are none the less vain, the objects none the less delusive.

The second age of Greek philosophy ended in sophism, the third in scepticism. Speculative philosophy strikes at last upon a limit which it can not overpa.s.s. This is its state even in our own times. It reverberates against the wall that confines it without the least chance of making its way through.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREEK AGE OF REASON.

RISE OF SCIENCE.