Christianity and Greek Philosophy Part 49

In the universe we see such choice and adaptation of means to ends.

Therefore, the universe is the product of an intelligent, personal Cause.

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.[893]

There is an obviousness and a directness in this mode of argument which is felt by every human mind. In the "Memorabilia" Xenophon has preserved a conversation of Socrates with Aristodemus in which he develops this proof at great length. In reading the dialogue[894] in which Socrates instances the adaptation of our organization to the external world, and the examples of design in the human frame, we are forcibly reminded of the chapters of Paley, Whewell, and M'Cosh. Well might Aristodemus exclaim: "The more I consider it, the more it is evident 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 has thus formed it." The argument from Final Causes is pursued by Plato in the "Timaeus;" and in Aristotle, G.o.d is the Final Cause of all things.[895]

[Footnote 893: "Canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this (in the human body) should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and contrivance?"--"Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 894: "Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 895: Aristotle clearly recognizes that an end or final cause implies Intelligence. "The appearance of ends and means is a proof of Design."--"Nat. Ausc.," bk. ii. ch. viii.]

(4.) The Ontological or Ideological proof, or the argument grounded on necessary and absolute ideas, which may be thrown into the following syllogism:

Every attribute or quality implies a subject, and absolute modes necessarily suppose an Absolute Being. Necessary and absolute truths or ideas are revealed in human reason as absolute modes.

Therefore universal, necessary, and absolute ideas are modes of the absolute subject--that is, G.o.d, the foundation and source of all truth.

This is the Platonic proof. Plato recognized the principle of substance (??s?a--?p??e?e???), and therefore he proceeds in the "Timaeus" to inquire for the real ground of all existence; and in the "Republic," for the real ground of all truth and cert.i.tude.

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."[896] The subject or ground of the intelligible world is that in which ideal forms, or eternal archetypes inhere, and which impresses form upon the transitional element, and fas.h.i.+ons the world after its own eternal models. This eternal and immutable substance is G.o.d, who created the universe as a copy of the eternal archetypes--the everlasting thoughts which dwell in his infinite mind.

[Footnote 896: "Timaeus," ch. xxiv.]

These copies of the eternal archetypes or models are perceived by the reason of man in virtue of its partic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d_; therefore it has a true communion with the realities of things, by virtue of this kindred and h.o.m.ogeneous nature. It can, therefore, ascend from the universal and necessary ideas, which are apprehended by the reason, to the absolute and supreme Idea, which is the attribute and perfection of G.o.d. When the human mind has contemplated any object of beauty, any fact of order, proportion, harmony, and excellency, it may rise to the notion of a quality common to all objects of beauty--from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others; from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until, from thought to thought, we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than the perfect, absolute, _Divine Beauty_.[897] When a man has, from the contemplation of instances of virtue, risen to the notion of a quality common to all these instances, this quality becomes the representative of an ineffable something which, in the sphere of immutable reality, answers to the conception in his soul. "At the extreme limits of the intellectual world is the _Idea of the Good_, which is perceived with difficulty, but, in fine, can not be perceived without concluding that it is the source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible world it produces light, and the star whence light directly comes; that in the invisible world it directly produces truth and intelligence."[898] This _absolute Good is G.o.d_.

[Footnote 897: "Banquet," -- 34.]

[Footnote 898: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. iii.]

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 _ident.i.ty 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 to the fulfillment of special ends, of organs designed to fulfill specific functions, suggesting the idea of _purpose_, _contrivance_, and _choice_, and indicating that the power which moves and determines the universe is a _personal_, _thinking_, and _voluntary_ agent. And fourthly, a profounder study of the nature of thought, an a.n.a.lysis of personal consciousness, reveals that there are necessary principles, ideas, and laws, which universally govern and determine thought to definite and immovable conceptions--as, for example, the principles of causality, of substance, of ident.i.ty or unity, of order, of intentionality; and that it is only under these laws that we can conceive the universe. By the law of substance we are compelled to regard these ideas, which are not only laws of thought but also of things, as inherent in a subject, or Being, who made all things, and whose ideas are reflected in the reason of man. Thus from universal and necessary ideas we rise to the _absolute Idea_, from immutable principles to a _First Principle of all principles_, a _First Thought_ of all thoughts--that is, to _G.o.d_. This is the history of the development of thought in the individual, and in the race--_cause_, _order_, _design_, _idea_, _being_, G.o.d.

CHAPTER XV.

THE PROPaeDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY _(continued)_.

"If we regard this sublime philosophy as a preparation for Christianity instead of seeking in it a subst.i.tute for the Gospel, we shall not need to overstate its grandeur in order to estimate its real value."--Pressense.

"Plato made me to know the true G.o.d. 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 G.o.d. Then, to attain to personal convictions, man pa.s.ses 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 recognizes an inward law of conscience, and it becomes to him as the voice of G.o.d. He extends his a.n.a.lysis to history, and he finds that the universal conscience of the race has, in all ages, uttered the same behest. Should he live in Christian times, he discovers a wondrous harmony between the voice of G.o.d within the heart, and the voice of G.o.d within the pages of inspiration. And now the convention of public opinion, and the laws of the state, are revered and upheld by him, just so far as they bear the imprimatur of reason and of conscience--that is, of G.o.d.

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_.[899] In the "Republic" of Plato, we have these three eras represented by different persons, through the course of the dialogue.

The question is started--what is Justice? and an answer is given from the stand-point of popular morality, by Polemarchus, who quotes the words of the poet Simonides,

"To give to each his due is just;"[900]

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.[901] This answer being sharply refuted, the way is opened for a more philosophic account, which is gradually evolved in book iv., Glaucon and Adimantus personifying the practical understanding, which is gradually brought into harmony with philosophy, and Socrates the higher reason, as the purely philosophic conception. Justice is found to be the right proportion and harmonious development of all the elements of the soul, and the equal balance of all the interests of society, so as to secure a well-regulated and harmonious whole.

[Footnote 899: Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 46.]

[Footnote 900: "Republic," bk. i. -- 6.]

[Footnote 901: Ibid., bk. i. -- 12.]

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 a.n.a.lytic thought. The rules of life were presented in maxims and proverbs, which do not rise above prudential counsels or empirical deductions. Morality was immediately a.s.sociated with the religion of the state, and the will of the G.o.ds was the highest law for men. "Homer and Hesiod, and the Gnomic poets, const.i.tuted 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 n.o.ble and ign.o.ble life is strongly marked in Homer, and yet a sense of right and wrong about particular actions seems fluctuating" and confused.[902] A sensuous conception of happiness is the chief good, and mere temporal advantage the princ.i.p.al reward of virtue. We hear nothing of the approving smile of conscience, of inward self-satisfaction, and peace, and harmony, resulting from the practice of virtue. Justice, energy, temperance, chast.i.ty, are enjoined, because they secure temporal good. And yet, with all this imperfection, the poets present "a remarkable picture of primitive simplicity, chast.i.ty, justice, and practical piety, under the three-fold influence of right moral feeling, mutual and fear of the divine displeasure."[903]

[Footnote 902: Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 51.]

[Footnote 903: Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," p. 167.]

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 inst.i.tutions of society. It had already begun to seek for some reasonable foundation of authority for the opinions, customs, laws, and inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.sing 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[904] has made an elaborate defense of the Sophists; he charges Plato with gross misrepresentation. His portraits of them are denounced as mere caricatures, prompted by a spirit of antagonism; all antiquity is presumed to have been misled by him. No one, however, can read Grant's "Essay on the History of Moral Philosophy in Greece"[905]

without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete and unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist in holding wicked opinions; he represents them as only too orthodox in general,[906] but capable of giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for the sake of vanity. Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral convictions than directly attacks them." The Sophists were wanting in deep conviction, in moral earnestness, in sincere love of truth, in reverence for goodness and purity, and therefore their trifling, insincere, and paradoxical teaching was unfavorable to goodness of life.

The tendency of their method is forcibly depicted in the words of Plato: "There are certain dogmas relating to what is _just_ and _good_ in which we have been brought up from childhood--obeying and reverencing them.

Other opinions recommending pleasure and license we resist, out of respect for the old hereditary maxims. Well, then, a question comes up concerning what is right? He gives some answer such as he has been taught, and straightway is refuted. He tries again, and is again refuted. And, when this has happened pretty often, he is reduced to the opinion that _nothing is either right or wrong_; and in the same way it happens about the just and the good, and all that before we have held in reverence. On this, he naturally abandons his allegiance to the old principles and takes up with those he before resisted, and so, from being a good citizen, he becomes lawless."[907] And, in point of fact, this was the theoretical landing-place of the Sophists. We do not say they became practically "lawless" and antinomian, but they did arrive at the settled opinion that right and wrong, truth and error, are solely matter of private opinion and conventional usage. Man's own fluctuating opinion is the measure and standard of all things.[908] They who "make the laws, make them for their own advantage."[909] There is no such thing as Eternal Right. "That which _appears_ just and honorable to each city is so for that city, as long as the opinion prevails."[910]

[Footnote 904: "History of Greece."]

[Footnote 905: Aristotle's "Ethics," vol. i. ch. ii.]

[Footnote 906: "His teachings will be good counsels about a man's own affairs, how best to govern his family; and also about the affairs of the state, how most ably to administer and speak of state affairs."--"Protag.," -- 26.]

[Footnote 907: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 908: "Theaetetus," -- 23.]

[Footnote 909: "Gorgias," ---- 85-89.]

[Footnote 910: "Theaetetus," ---- 65-75.]

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,"[911] and obeyed the laws of the state, without reflection and inquiry as to the intrinsic character of the acts, and without any a.n.a.lysis and exact definition, so as to attain to principles of ultimate and absolute right, it must be accepted as true--there was no philosophy of morals. Socrates is therefore justly regarded as "the father of moral philosophy." Aristotle says that he confined himself chiefly to ethical inquiries. He sought a determinate conception and an exact definition of virtue. As Xenophon has said of him, "he never ceased asking, What is piety? what is impiety? what is n.o.ble? what is base? what is just? what is unjust? what is temperance? what is madness?"[912] And these questions were not asked in the Sophistic spirit, as a dialectic exercise, or from idle curiosity. He was a perfect contrast to the Sophists. They had slighted Truth, he made her the mistress of his soul.

They had turned away from her, he longed for more perfect communion with her. They had deserted her for money and renown, he was faithful to her in poverty.[913] He wanted to know what piety was, that he might be pious. He desired to know what justice, temperance, n.o.bility, courage were, that he might cultivate and practise them. He wrote no books, delivered no lectures; he inst.i.tuted no school; he simply conversed in the shop, the market-place, the banquet-hall, and the prison. This philosophy was not so much a _doctrine_ as a _life_. "What is remarkable in him is not the _system_ but the _man_. The memory he left behind him amongst his disciples, though idealized--the affection, blended with reverence, which they never ceased to feel for his person, bear testimony to the elevation of his character and his moral purity. We recognize in him a Greek of Athens--one who had imbibed many dangerous errors, and on whom the yoke of pagan custom still weighed; but his life was nevertheless a n.o.ble life; and it is to calumny we must have recourse if we are to tarnish its beauty by odious insinuations, as Lucian did, and as has been too frequently done, after him, by unskillful defenders of Christianity,[914] who imagine it is the gainer by all that degrades human nature. Born in a humble position, dest.i.tute of all the temporal advantages which the Greeks so pa.s.sionately loved, Socrates exerted a kings.h.i.+p over minds. His dominion was the more real for being less apparent.... His power consisted of three things: his devoted affection for his disciples, his disinterested love of truth, and the perfect harmony of his life and doctrine.... If he recommended temperance and sobriety, he also set the example; poorly clad, satisfied with little, he disdained all the delicacies of life. He possessed every species of courage. On the field of battle he was intrepid, and still more intrepid when he resisted the caprices of the mult.i.tude who demanded of him, when he was a senator, to commit the injustice of summoning ten generals before the tribunals. He also infringed the iniquitous orders of the thirty tyrants of Athens. The satires of Aristophanes neither moved nor irritated him. The same dauntless firmness he displayed when brought before his judges, charged with impiety. 'If it is your wish to absolve me on condition that I henceforth be silent, I reply I love and honor you, but I ought rather to obey the G.o.ds than you. Neither in the presence of judges nor of the enemy is it permitted me, or any other man, to use every sort of means to escape death. It is not death but crime that it is difficult to avoid; crime moves faster than death. So I, old and heavy as I am, have allowed myself to be overtaken by death, while my accusers, light and vigorous, have allowed themselves to be overtaken by the light-footed crime. I go, then, to suffer death; they to suffer shame and iniquity. I abide by my punishment, as they by theirs. All is according to order.'

It was the same fidelity to duty that made Socrates refuse to escape from prison, in order not to violate the laws of his country, to which, even though irritated, more respect is due than to a father. 'Let us walk in the path,' he says 'that G.o.d has traced for us.' These last words show the profound religious sentiment which animated Socrates....

It is impossible not to feel that there was something divine in such a life crowned with such a death."[914]