As it could not be explained in accordance with their metaphysics how the individual soul arising from the World-reason should fall under the mastery of sensuous impulses, so it is equally
impossible
to understand how theoretical assent should, under certain circum stances, be given even to false ideas.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
p.
76 on the other hand, Ptut.
Stoic.
Rep. 47, 12.
f. ,
Chap. 1, § 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Epicurean*, Stoics. 203
crassly sensuous conception they expressed by the since frequently repeated comparison, that the soul is originally like a blank tablet, on which the outer world imprints its signs in the course of time. 1 More refined, but more indefinite, and yet absolutely mechanical still in its tone is the designation of Chrysippus, who called percep tion an alteration of qualities (crcpotWt? ) in the soul; for, at all events, the idea or mental presentation (^ammii) remains for
him, too, a corporeal effect or product of that which is presented
(domurroV).
Both schools explained the presence of conceptions and of general
ideas (xpoXi^wtf, and among the Stoics also koivoI cwouu) solely by the persistence of these impressions, or of parts of them, and by their combination. They combated, therefore, as the Cynics espe cially had already done, the Platonic-Aristotelian doctrine of Ideas and Forms,9 especially the assumption of an independent activity or power of forming conceptions, and traced even the most general and abstract conceptions back to this mechanism of elementary perceptions (to which they scarcely gave any further analysis). To these general ideas of experience (i/xwupia), which arise natu
rally and involuntarily (dtuo-ucw*), the Stoics indeed opposed the conceptions of science produced by the aid of a methodical con sciousness ; but even the content of these scientific conceptions was held to be exclusively derived from sensations. In this connection, both schools laid especial weight upon the co-operation of language in the origination of conceptions.
But now, in so far as the total content of impressions, and like- vise also the nature of thought, are the same among all men, it necessarily follows that under these circumstances the same general ideas will be formed, in both the theoretical and the practical domain, by means of the psychological mechanism. This consequence was drawn especially by the Stoics, whose attention was by their whole metaphysics directed vigorously to the common nature of the psy chical functions, which were all held to arise from the divine Pneuma. They taught, therefore, that the surest truth is to be sought in those ideas which develop uniformly among all men with natural neces sity, and they liked to take as their starting-point, even for scientific reasonings, these kmhu Jkvoox, or communes notiones. They have a
' Pint. Ptae. IV. 11 ; Dox, D. 400 ; Plut. Comm. Xot. 47 ; cf. beside* Plat. Tktmt. 191 C.
' Hence the Stolen regard Platonic " Ideas" (class-concepts) as merely struc tures of the human mind (iwroiiiara tidrtpa ; cf. Plut. Plac. I. 10. Dox. D. 300), »nd thtu (rave the first suggestion for the later subjective meaning of the term •idea. " Cf. § 19.
204 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
predilection for appealing to the consensus gentium — the consent of all men, — an argument whose validity it was easy for the Sceptics to shake by pointing to the negative instances of experience. 1
It was, therefore, not in the spirit of the Stoics that in the later Eclectic literature these common ideas were called innate (innate), and that Cicero especially saw in them not only that which Nature teaches equally to all, but also that which Nature or the deity has originally implanted in every one at the same time with his reason. Cicero maintains this, not only for the fundamental conceptions of morality and right, but also for the belief in the deity and in the immortality of the soul : the knowledge of God especially is held to be only man's recollection of his true origin. * This doctrine formed the best bridge between the Platonic and the Stoic theories of knowledge, and under the Stoic name of xon-al citocu the ration alistic doctrine of knowledge was propagated on into the beginnings of modern philosophy. Just by this means it retained the accessory
psychologistic meaning that rational knowledge consists in innate ideas. 5. While now the Stoics as well as the Epicureans originally traced back all the contents of ideas to sense-impressions psycho-
genetically, it was only the Epicureans who drew from this the consistent inference that the sign for the recognition of truth is solely the feeling of the necessity with which a perception forces itself upon consciousness, the irresistible clearness or vividness (ivapyaa) conjoined with the taking up of reality in the function of the senses. Every perception is as such true and irrefutable ; it exists, so to speak, as a self-certain atom of the world of conscious ness, free from doubt, independent, and immovable by any reasons whatever. * And if different and mutually contradictory perceptions of the same objects seem to exist, the error lies only in the opinion which refers them, and not in the perceptions which by the very fact of their difference prove that different outer causes correspond to them ; relativity is accordingly nothing in point against the cor rectness of all perceptions. *
Meanwhile, opinions (So£<u) constantly and necessarily go beyond this immediate presence of sense-impressions : for the knowledge requisite for acting needs also knowledge of that which is not immediately perceptible : it needs to know, on the one hand, grounds
» Cic. De Nat. Deor. I. 23, 62 f.
2 Id. De Leg. L 8, 24 : . . . til is agnoscat deum, qui unde ortus sit quasi re- cordetur ac noscal.
* The parallelism of this epistemological Atomism with the physical and ethical Atomism of the Epicureans is obvious.
* Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 203 ff.
Cma*. 1, § 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Epicurean*. 205
of phenomena (3&rjKov) , and on the other hand the expectation as to the future that may be inferred from them (wpwrfuvov). But for all these farther functions of the psychical mechanism there is, accord ing to the Epicureans, no other guaranty than perception again. For if conceptions (rpoK-qijius ) are only sense-impressions retained in the memory, they have their own certainty in the clearness or vividness of these impressions, a certainty susceptible neither of proof nor of attack; ' and hypotheses (inroKy^tm). both with regard to the imperceptible grounds of things and also with regard to future events, find their criterion solely in perception, in so far as they are
verified by or at least not refuted the former holds for the pre diction of the future, the latter for explanatory theories. ' There
therefore among the Epicureans nothing said of an independent faculty of conviction or belief whether our expectation of any event
correct we can know only when the event occurs. Thus they re nounce on principle any attempt at an actual theory of investigation.
It evident from this that the Epicureans might regard their own Atomistic metaphysics as hypothesis not refuted by facts, but that they were not permitted to regard as hypothesis that was proved. It was hypothesis, indeed, of which the essential end, as they employed was to displace other hypotheses which seemed to them ethically objectionable. Their dogmatism accordingly only problematical, and their doctrine of knowledge, in so far as
has to do with rational knowledge, very strongly permeated with scepticism. In so far as they recognise only that which passes with tense-perception as " fact," but regard such facts as completely cer tain, their standpoint to be designated as that of Positivism.
This positivism was developed in antiquity still more consistently, and in form freed from the ethical and metaphysical tendencies of Epicurus, by the theories of the later schools of empirical physi cians. These schools went with the Sceptics as regards knowledge of all that imperceptible by the senses and as regards all rational theories; on the other hand, in their recognition of the sensuous evidence of perceptions, they went with the Epicureans. Observation
(njpijffn) here portrayed as the basis of the physician's art, and ob servation retained in memory regarded as the sole essence of his theory etiological explanations especially are rejected on principle.
Connected with this the circumstance that the later Sceptics treated the conception of causality iu searching investigations and
Aa the final criterion even for the Intellectually good i*. with Epicurus, sen- ■nous pleasure, so the criterion of the truth of conceptions only sensuous
riTidneas
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'206 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
discovered its difficulties. iEnesidemus had already propounded a series of such aporise,1 and in Sextus Empiricus we find them devel oped more broadly and comprehensively. * With him not only such defects of serological theories are designated as, that they reduce the known to the unknown whicn is just as inexplicable, that they maintain one possibility among many without a sufficient reason, that they do not examine experience carefully enough with a view to possible negative instances, and finally that they after all explain that which is inaccessible to perception by some sort of a scheme known from perception, which is especially simple and therefore apparently intelligible in itself ; besides these, he searches out, also, all the general difficulties which prevent us from gaining a clear
(picturate) idea of the causal relation. The process of the action of one thing upon another, the passing over of motion from one thing to another, can be made intelligible neither on the assumption that that which acts (as force) is immaterial, nor on the opposite assumption ; nor does contact (d<f>y) which is assumed as a conditio sine qua non of the causal process (as had been already done by Aristotle) make it any more explicable. So, too, the time relation of cause and effect is extremely difficult to determine. The most important thought in these discussions, however, is the pointing out of the relativity of the causal relation : nothing is in itself a cause or effect; each of the two h such only with reference to the other; alrtov and irdcrxov are correlative terms which must not be absolutely postulated or asserted. The (Stoic) conception of an essentially efficient cause, the conception of a creative deity, is then thereby excluded.
7. The Sceptics of the Academy sought in another direction a substitute for the certainty of rational knowledge which they also had given up. Since in practical life suspense cannot be carried out as a principle of conduct and action is indispensable, and since for action determining ideas are requisite, Arcesilaus brought out the view that ideas, even though one refuse them his complete assent, are yet able to move the will,5 and that in practical life one must content himself with a certain kind of confidence or trust
(jrtoTis), according to which some ideas may in a greater degree than others be regarded as probable (tvAoyov), adapted to the purpose of life, and reasonable. 4
1 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 180 fl.
* Adv. Math. IX. 195 ff. ; cf. K. Goring, Der Begriff der Uraache in der grie- chischen Philosophie (Leips. 1874).
» Pint. Adv. Col. 26, 3.
* Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 158.
Cmap. 1, § 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Sceptic*, Strict. 207
The theory of Probabilism was carried out farther by Carneades'* in an attempt to define more exactly, according to logical relations, the particular degrees of this " belief. " The least degree of proba bility (wtBavonft) is that which (as an indistinct and imperfect form of sensuous clearness or vividness — ivapytta) belongs to the single idea that stands in no farther connections. A higher degree of probability belongs to that idea which can be united (djrcp«nra<rT<w), without any contradictions, with other ideas in connection with which it belongs. Lastly, the highest stage of belief is reached where a whole system of such connected ideas is examined as to its complete harmony and verification in experience (jrtpi<. i8c! '/i«V»>).
Empirical confidence rises, therefore, from the sensuously isolated to the logical systems of scientific research. But though in the latter form it may be completely sufficient for practical life (as Carneades assumed), it is yet not able to lead to a completely certain conviction.
8. In contrast with this, the Stoics made the most strenuous efforts to gain an epistemological substructure for their metaphysics, to which they attributed so high a value from considerations of ethi cal interest, and in spite of psycho-genetic sensualism, to rescue the rational character of science. * On the principle that like is known by like, their doctrine of the World-reason demanded a knowledge of the external Logos by the internal logos of man, — by his rea
son ;' and the ethical antagonism or dualism between virtue and the sensuous impulses required a parallel distinction between knowledge and sensuous ideas. Although, therefore, the whole material of knowledge was held to grow out of sensuous presenta tions, the Stoics pointed out, on the other hand, that in perception aa such, no knowledge whatever is contained ; that it is not to be characterised as either true or false. Truth and falsity can be predicated only when judgments (d£tu/iara) have been formed in which something is asserted or denied as to the relation of ideas. 4
nevertheless, is conceived of by the Stoics — and in this they take a new and important position, which, in antiquity, only the Sceptics approach in some degree — by no means merely as the theoretical process of ideation and combination of ideas. They recognised, as the essential characteristic in judgment, the i>eculiar art of assent (ovyKara&crif ). of approval, and of being convinced, with which the mind makes the content of the idea its own, grasps
> lb. 140 fl.
1 Cf. M. Heinr*. Zur ErkenntnissUhre der Stoiker (Lefps. 18801. • Sext. Emp. Adv. Hath. VII. 93.
'Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VIII. 10.
Jitdgment,
208 Helleni»tic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
and in a certain way takes possession of (Ka. TaXaixj3avuv) . This act of apprehension the Stoics regard as an independent function of consciousness (Tjye/ioviKoV), in the same way as they regard the assent to the impulses, which makes its appearance in passion. The arising of ideas, like that of the excitations of feeling, a process which of natural necessity and completely independent of human will (dxouo-tov) but the assent by which we make the one class, judgments, and the other, passions, decision (itpi'o-is) of con sciousness, free ((kovo-iov) from the outer world. 1
But now in the case of the wise man, by virtue of the identity of the universal with the individual logos, this assent appears only in the case of those ideas which are true the soul, therefore, in appre hending the content of these ideas, apprehends reality. Such an idea the Stoics called favTao-ia KaraX-qimKri* and they were of the conviction that such an idea must call forth the reasonable man's assent with immediate evidence or clearness. Hence assent itself
(<rvyKaTaOvTi<;) is conceived of as an activity of the thinking soul, but individual perceptions appear as the objects of assent as truly as do the intellectual activities of conception, judgment, and reason ing, based upon the individual perceptions.
If thus the Stoics understood by the fam-acrta KaTaXijirriKi} that idea by which the mind lays hold of reality, and which, therefore, so illumines the mind that this, in its assent, makes reality its own, this was indeed the correct expression for the requirement which they set up for the true idea,3 but the definition was not at all adapted to the end for which was framed that is, for a sign by which to recognise truth. For as the Sceptics4 very justly objected, the subjective mark, assent, might be shown as psychological fact in the case of multitude of evidently false ideas.
Thus the anthropological discord in the Stoic doctrine manifests
lb. VIII. 39,
In the interpretation of this term there wide divergence. According to the sources, seems now as the idea were intended which the mind lays hold of, now that which apprehends the real fact, now that by which the mind appre hends reality, and now again that which on its part so lays hold of the mind that the mind must assent to it. It has hence been supposed that the Stoics purposely constructed the expression in this ambiguous form, inasmuch as all these relations would harmonise in it, and perhaps E. Zeller (IV. 3 83) [Eng. tr. , Stoics, etc. p. 89] intended to repeat this ambiguity by his translation, concep- tional idea or perception" (begriffliche Vorstellung), which, however, has an accessory logical sense that the Stoics certainly did n6t intend.
It worth while to point out the fact that in their designations for the relation of the knowing mind to the external reality, the Stoics employ, for the m >st part, expressions from the field of the sense of touch (impression, appre hending, or grasping, etc. ), while formerly optical analogies had been preferred. Cf. 11, 2.
Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 402 ff.
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,
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it
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is a
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CuAr. 1, f 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Stoic$. 209
itself even in this central conception of their theory of knowledge.
As it could not be explained in accordance with their metaphysics how the individual soul arising from the World-reason should fall under the mastery of sensuous impulses, so it is equally impossible to understand how theoretical assent should, under certain circum stances, be given even to false ideas. Both difficulties, however, have ultimately a common ground. The Stoics agreed with Hera- clitus in identifying in their metaphysics the normative and the actual ordering of things, although these conceptions had meanwhile become much more clearly separated. Reason was for them that which should be, as well as that which is ; it was at the same time rifun and ^wm. And this antithesis, the two sides of which came into strenuous opposition in their doctrine of freedom and their
theodicy, was the problem of the future.
CHAPTER II. THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD.
J. Simon, Histoirc de VEcole d' Alexandrie. Paris, 1843 ff.
E. Matter, Essai sur VEcole d' Alexandrie. Paris, 1840 ff.
E. Vacherot, Histoire Critique de VEcole <TAlexandrie. Paris, 1846 ff.
[J. Drummond, Philo Judasus, or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy in its
Development and Completion. 2 vols. , Lond. 1888. ]
Barthfilemy St. Hilaire, Sur le Concours ouvert par VAcademie, etc. , sur VEcole
d'Alexandrie. Paris, 1845.
K. Vogt, Xeuplatonismus und Christenthum. Berlin, 1836.
Georgii, lieber die Gegensätze in der Auffassung der alexandrinischen Religions
philosophie (Zeitschr. f. hist. Theol. 1839).
E. Deutinger, Geist der christlichen Ueberlieferung. Regensburg, 1850-51.
A. Ritschi, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche. 2d ed. , Bonn, 1857. Chr. Raur, Das Christenthum der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tübingen, 1860.
J. Alzog, Grundriss der Patrulogie. 3d ed. , Freiburg i. B. 1876.
[A. V. G. Allen, The Continuity of Christian Thought. Boston, 1884. ]
Alb. Stöckl, Geschichte der Philosophie der patriotischen Zeit. Würzburg, 1859. J. Huber, Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter. Munich, 1869.
Fr. Overbeck, Ueber die Anfänge der patristischen Litteratur {Hist. Zeitschr.
■
The gradual transition of the Hellenistic-Roman philosophy from the ethical to the religious standpoint had its inner causes in this philosophy itself, and its external occasion in the imperious de mands made by the felt need of the time. For the farther the contact between the systems extended, the more it became evident how little able philosophy was to fulfil the task which it had set itself: namely, that of educating man by a sure insight to a state of virtue and happiness, to inner independence of the world. While the sceptical mode of thought, which was extending more and more, already taught that virtue consists rather in the renunciation of the attempt to know, than in knowledge itself, the view forced its way more and more, even among the Stoics, that their ideal of the wise
man, so sharply and rigidly drawn, was not entirely realised in any 210
1882).
A. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 3 vols. Freiburg i. B. 1886-90.
[J. Donaldson, Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine. ]
Cha*. 2. ] The Religious Period. 211
human being, and thus it was felt in every direction that man in his own strength can become neither knowing, nor virtuous and happy.
If, then, a disposition to welcome a higher help for ethical ends was necessarily evoked in philosophy itself, it was also true that the theoretical doctrines of the time contained a great number of religious elements. The Epicureans, to be sure, purposely excluded snch. but the Stoics, on the contrary, granted them an entrance that was all the freer. With the Stoics, not only did metaphysics lead to seeking the principle of morals in a divine command, but in their
pneutna doctrine, the possibility presented itself of giving to the creations of myth a philosophical meaning, which might be shared also by all forms of worship. Finally, the spiritual monotheism in Aristotle's teaching, and that ideal tendency with which Plato sought the abiding essence of things in a higher world of the super- sensuous, were not forgotten.
Just this dualism, which opposed the earthly world of the perish able to a suj>ersensuous world of the divine, ultimately proved to be the right expression for that inner discord which ran through the entire life of the aging Greek and Roman world. The old craving for sensuous pleasure might still celebrate its orgies in full power and U> the intoxication of the senses ; but in the midst of it all, out of surfeit and loathing grew a new craving for a purer, higher joy : and in the presence of the tremendous contrasts which the social condition of the Roman Empire brought with the look of all the millions that saw themselves excluded from the good things of this earth turned longingly toward better world. Thus in all ways deep, passionate need for true salvation of the soul (owi/pia) came to be increasingly felt, hunger for something beyond the earthly,
religious urgency without an equal.
This religious movement proved its vigour first of all in the eager
reception which foreign forms of worship found in the Graeco- Koinaii world, in the mingling and fusing of Oriental and Occidental religions. But with the adjustment which their oppositions found here and there, their strife for the mastery over men's spirits be came still more energetic, and thus the soil of the ancient world of
civilisation, after bearing the fruits of art and science, became the battleground of religions. Man's essential interest became thereby transferred for long centuries from the earthly to the heavenly tpbere he began to seek his salvation beyond the world of sense.
But the forms in which this contest of the religions was waged prove in spite of all what spiritual and intellectual power Greek science had grown to be. For so strongly was the ancient world
a
;
a
a
a
a
it,
212 Hellenistic-Roman Thought.
[Part IL
"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," so deeply had it be come permeated by the feeling of a need for knowledge, that each of the religions desired to satisfy not only the feelings but also the intellect, and was therefore anxious to transform its life into a doc trine. This is true even of Christianity, and indeed precisely true of it. The true, victorious power of the religion of Jesus lay, to be sure, in the fact that it entered this decrepit, blase" world with the youthful force of a pure, high, religious feeling, and a conviction that was courageous to the death ; but it was able to conquer the ancient civilised world only by taking it up into itself and working it over ; and as in its external conflict with the old world it shaped its own constitution ' and thereby ultimately became so strong as to be able to take possession of the Roman state, so also in its defence against the ancient philosophy it made the world of that philoso phy's ideas its own, in order thereby to build up its own dogmatic system.
Thus the needs of science and of life met. The former sought the solution of the problems at which it had been labouring in vain, in religion, and the latter desired a scientific formulation and basis for its religious longing or conviction. Hence from this time on, for many centuries, the history of philosophy is grown together with that of dogmatic theology,' and the period of religious metaphysics begins. The thought of antiquity described a peculiar curve, sepa rating itself farther and farther from religion from which it pro ceeded, reaching its extreme separation in Epicureanism, and then again steadily drawing near to religion, to return at last entirely within it.
Under these conditions it is possible to understand how that Weltanschauung which separated the supersensuous and the sensu
ous, — looking upon them, from the point of view of value, as divine perfection and earthly baseness, respectively, — constituted the common ground of the whole religious-philosophical movement. This view had already, indeed, been introduced by the Pythagoreans (cf. § 5, 7), and had been maintained even by Aristotle, but it had, without doubt, found its most forcible formulation in the Platonic metaphysics. It was, therefore, this latter system which formed the controlling ceutre for the religious closing development of ancient thought. A religious development of Platonism is the fundamental character of this period.
1 Cf. K. J. Neumann, Der rdmische Staat und die allgemeine Kirche bis auf Diocletian (Vol. I. Leips. 1890).
a It will be understood as a matter of course that the following exposition has left at one side all specifically dogmatic elements, except where they are quite inseparably interwoven with philosophical principles.
Cmaf. 2. ] The Religion* Period. 213
The geographical centre of the movement, however, is found in that city which, by its history, as well as by its population, repre sented most distinctly the mingling of peoples and of religions, — Alexandria. Here, where in the active work of the museum all treasures of Grecian culture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowded together in the great throngs of the commercial metropolis to seek a scientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed within them.
The first line of the Alexandrian philosophy is the so-called Neo- Pythagoreanism, a mode of thought which, proceeding from the religious practice of the Pythagorean mysteries, makes only an external use of the number-mysticism of the old Pythagoreans after whom it calls itself and its writings, while it finds the theoretical setting for its world-renouncing, religious-ascetic ethics in a trans formation of the Platonic metaphysics, which became of the pro- foundest value for the conception of the spiritual nature in the following period. Apollonius of Tyana, the founder of a religion, is to be regarded as typical representative of this school.
Not without influence from this school, the Stoa, also, in the time of the Empire, brought out more energetically the religious elements in its theory of the world, so that not only did the anthropological dualism of the system become sharpened, but a more theistic mode of thought gradually became substituted for the original pantheism of the school. In men like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic doctrine became completely a philosophy of deliverance or redemption.
Even Cynicism revived again about this time in a religious garb, as a rude, popular preaching of renunciation, and Demonax passes for its best-known representative.
Scarcely to be separated from the Neo-Pythagoreans are the Edectie Platonists of the first centuries of our era, such as Plutarch of Chaeronea and Apuleiux of Madaura. Later appear Numenius of Apamea and Xicomachns of Gerasa, who, besides, already stand ■oder Jewish and Christian influences as witnesses of a complete fusion of the two tendencies.
But while, in all these forms, the Hellenic element ever maintains the ascendency over the Oriental, the latter makes its appearance in very much stronger force in the Jewish philosophy of religion. As the sect of the Essenes ' probably proceeded from a contact of Neo- Y\ thagoreanism with the Hebrew religious life, so the various attempts of learned Jews to draw nearer to Greek science in the
» Cf. E. Zeller V. « 277 ff.
214 Hellenistic- Roman Thought. [Part EL
presentation of their dogmas, led ultimately to the doctrine of Philo of Alexandria, whose original elaboration of these fermenting bodies of thought influenced their further formation and movement in the most important points.
The philosophy of Christianity, which for these first centuries is usually designated by the name Patristics, unfolded in an analogous manner upon a larger scale. This philosophical secularisation of the gospel begins with the Apologists, who sought to present its re ligious belief as the only true philosophy, with the purpose of pro tecting Christianity in the eyes of the cultured world from contempt and persecution, and therefore began to adapt this content of re ligious faith to the conceptional forms of Greek science : the most important of them are Justin and Minucius Felix.
But the need of changing faith (irurrts) into knowledge or wisdom (■yvuMTis) asserted itself vigorously in the Christian communities, even without this polemical tendency. The first attempts, how
ever, which the Gnostics made to create an adequate view of the world for the new religion, proceeded from the excited phantasies of a Syrian mingling of religions, and, in spite of the employment of Hellenistic philosophemes, led to such grotesque constructions, that the Church as it grew stronger and more definitive was obliged to reject them. Saturninus, Basileides, and Valentinus are to be named as the best known of this class.
In reaction against such over-hasty attempts of religious fantasti- calness, a violent aversion toward all philosophical interpretation and adjustment of Christian faith set in, for a time, in Christian literature in the writings of men like Tatian, TertuUian, and Arno- bius. An express anti-rationalism thus came forward which never theless found it necessary on its part also to return to the related doctrines of Greek philosophy. Without this one-sidedness and with a closer approximation to the older
Hellenising Apologists, Gnosticism was combated by Irenmus and his disciple Hippolytus.
It was not until the beginning of the third century, and after all these preceding attempts, that a positive Christian theology, a sys tem of dogmatics in a complete conceptional form, was established. This came about in the School for Catechists at Alexandria, through the leaders of the school, Clement and Origen. The latter especially is to be regarded as philosophically the most important representa tive of Christianity in this period.
By his side, however, there went out from the Alexandrian phil osophic school the man who undertook to bring the religion-forming tendency of philosophy to an issue solely upon the Hellenistic basis, —Plotinus, the greatest thinker of this period. His attempt to
Chak 2. ] The Religious Period. 215
systematise all the main doctrines of Greek and Hellenistic phil osophy under the religious principle is designated as Neo- Plntonism. His doctrine is the most definitive and thoroughly constructed sys tem of science that antiquity produced. His disciple Porphyry, however, showed himself already inclined to make a religion out of this religious teaching, and Jamblichus, who is termed the leader of Syrian Neo-Platonism, transformed it into a dogmatic theology of poly theism, with which the learned and political opponents of Christianity, such as the Emperor Julian, hoped to revive the forms of worship of the heathen religions, then in a state of dissolution. After this attempt had miscarried, the Athenian school of Neo-Platonism, as the heads of which Plutarch of Athens, Proclus, and Damascitis appear, returned finally to a methodical, scholastic development of the system of Plotinus.
Thus the Hellenistic efforts to attain to a new religion by means of science remained without result in this form : the scholars dis covered no church. On the other hand, the need felt by positive religion to complete and strengthen itself in a scientific doctrine did attain its goal : the Church created its dogma. And the great course of history in this movement was, that the defeated Hellenism in its powerful death-struggle still created the conceptions by means of which the new religion shaped itself into a dogma.
While the Pythagorean mysteries had maintained their existence through all antiquity, scientific Pythagoreanism vanished as a proper school after its incorporation into the Academy (cf. p. 31). It is not until during the first ct-ntury b. c. that specifically Pythagorean doctrines become noticeable again : they appear in the Pythagorean writings, of which Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 34 ■. ). following Alexander Polyhiator, gives an account that leads us to infer an essentially Stoic influence. They are renewed expressly by Cicero's learned friend, P. Nlgidius Figulus (died 45 n. c), and And approval also with other men in Home. Cf . M. Here, Dr P. Xig. Fig. Sludiit atque Ojitribus (Berlin, 1846).
But Ifeo-Pythagoreanlsm proper was first presented in literary form by the great number of writings which became public in Alexandria at about the beginning of our era, under the names of l*ythagoras, or Philolaus, or Archytas, at other older Pythagoreans, the fragments of which give rise to so great diffi culties in forming a conception of genuine Pythagoreanisni. Cf. the lit. p. 31.
<H the personalities of the new school, on the contrary, very little is known. The only distinct figure is Apollonina of Tyana, of whose life and nature the rhetorician Philostratus (ed. by C. L. Kayser, I^eips. 1870) gava a romantic representation at the beginning of the third century, in order to portray in it the ideal of the Pythagorean life. Of the works of Apollnniua himself, who liTtd in the first century a. d. , fragments of a biography of Pythagoras and of a treatise on Sacrifice are extant. Cf. Chr. Baur, Apolloniua unit ChriMut in Drti Abhandl. zur Ge»ch. d. alt. l'hilo$. (helps. 1876). [Treiiwell, Life of AfiUluniut of Tyana, contains a good bibliography, N. Y. 188)1. ] ilia con temporary, Biodaratna of Gades, might perhaps also be mentioned.
Neo- Pythagorean and Stoic doctrines appear mingled in the Eclectic Botlon of Alexandria, who was affiliated with the Sextains (cf. p. 103). His disciple, L Annaeua Bsnaca of Cordova (4-66 ad. ), was the leader of the Stoics in tht time of the Empire.
Rep. 47, 12.
f. ,
Chap. 1, § 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Epicurean*, Stoics. 203
crassly sensuous conception they expressed by the since frequently repeated comparison, that the soul is originally like a blank tablet, on which the outer world imprints its signs in the course of time. 1 More refined, but more indefinite, and yet absolutely mechanical still in its tone is the designation of Chrysippus, who called percep tion an alteration of qualities (crcpotWt? ) in the soul; for, at all events, the idea or mental presentation (^ammii) remains for
him, too, a corporeal effect or product of that which is presented
(domurroV).
Both schools explained the presence of conceptions and of general
ideas (xpoXi^wtf, and among the Stoics also koivoI cwouu) solely by the persistence of these impressions, or of parts of them, and by their combination. They combated, therefore, as the Cynics espe cially had already done, the Platonic-Aristotelian doctrine of Ideas and Forms,9 especially the assumption of an independent activity or power of forming conceptions, and traced even the most general and abstract conceptions back to this mechanism of elementary perceptions (to which they scarcely gave any further analysis). To these general ideas of experience (i/xwupia), which arise natu
rally and involuntarily (dtuo-ucw*), the Stoics indeed opposed the conceptions of science produced by the aid of a methodical con sciousness ; but even the content of these scientific conceptions was held to be exclusively derived from sensations. In this connection, both schools laid especial weight upon the co-operation of language in the origination of conceptions.
But now, in so far as the total content of impressions, and like- vise also the nature of thought, are the same among all men, it necessarily follows that under these circumstances the same general ideas will be formed, in both the theoretical and the practical domain, by means of the psychological mechanism. This consequence was drawn especially by the Stoics, whose attention was by their whole metaphysics directed vigorously to the common nature of the psy chical functions, which were all held to arise from the divine Pneuma. They taught, therefore, that the surest truth is to be sought in those ideas which develop uniformly among all men with natural neces sity, and they liked to take as their starting-point, even for scientific reasonings, these kmhu Jkvoox, or communes notiones. They have a
' Pint. Ptae. IV. 11 ; Dox, D. 400 ; Plut. Comm. Xot. 47 ; cf. beside* Plat. Tktmt. 191 C.
' Hence the Stolen regard Platonic " Ideas" (class-concepts) as merely struc tures of the human mind (iwroiiiara tidrtpa ; cf. Plut. Plac. I. 10. Dox. D. 300), »nd thtu (rave the first suggestion for the later subjective meaning of the term •idea. " Cf. § 19.
204 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
predilection for appealing to the consensus gentium — the consent of all men, — an argument whose validity it was easy for the Sceptics to shake by pointing to the negative instances of experience. 1
It was, therefore, not in the spirit of the Stoics that in the later Eclectic literature these common ideas were called innate (innate), and that Cicero especially saw in them not only that which Nature teaches equally to all, but also that which Nature or the deity has originally implanted in every one at the same time with his reason. Cicero maintains this, not only for the fundamental conceptions of morality and right, but also for the belief in the deity and in the immortality of the soul : the knowledge of God especially is held to be only man's recollection of his true origin. * This doctrine formed the best bridge between the Platonic and the Stoic theories of knowledge, and under the Stoic name of xon-al citocu the ration alistic doctrine of knowledge was propagated on into the beginnings of modern philosophy. Just by this means it retained the accessory
psychologistic meaning that rational knowledge consists in innate ideas. 5. While now the Stoics as well as the Epicureans originally traced back all the contents of ideas to sense-impressions psycho-
genetically, it was only the Epicureans who drew from this the consistent inference that the sign for the recognition of truth is solely the feeling of the necessity with which a perception forces itself upon consciousness, the irresistible clearness or vividness (ivapyaa) conjoined with the taking up of reality in the function of the senses. Every perception is as such true and irrefutable ; it exists, so to speak, as a self-certain atom of the world of conscious ness, free from doubt, independent, and immovable by any reasons whatever. * And if different and mutually contradictory perceptions of the same objects seem to exist, the error lies only in the opinion which refers them, and not in the perceptions which by the very fact of their difference prove that different outer causes correspond to them ; relativity is accordingly nothing in point against the cor rectness of all perceptions. *
Meanwhile, opinions (So£<u) constantly and necessarily go beyond this immediate presence of sense-impressions : for the knowledge requisite for acting needs also knowledge of that which is not immediately perceptible : it needs to know, on the one hand, grounds
» Cic. De Nat. Deor. I. 23, 62 f.
2 Id. De Leg. L 8, 24 : . . . til is agnoscat deum, qui unde ortus sit quasi re- cordetur ac noscal.
* The parallelism of this epistemological Atomism with the physical and ethical Atomism of the Epicureans is obvious.
* Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 203 ff.
Cma*. 1, § 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Epicurean*. 205
of phenomena (3&rjKov) , and on the other hand the expectation as to the future that may be inferred from them (wpwrfuvov). But for all these farther functions of the psychical mechanism there is, accord ing to the Epicureans, no other guaranty than perception again. For if conceptions (rpoK-qijius ) are only sense-impressions retained in the memory, they have their own certainty in the clearness or vividness of these impressions, a certainty susceptible neither of proof nor of attack; ' and hypotheses (inroKy^tm). both with regard to the imperceptible grounds of things and also with regard to future events, find their criterion solely in perception, in so far as they are
verified by or at least not refuted the former holds for the pre diction of the future, the latter for explanatory theories. ' There
therefore among the Epicureans nothing said of an independent faculty of conviction or belief whether our expectation of any event
correct we can know only when the event occurs. Thus they re nounce on principle any attempt at an actual theory of investigation.
It evident from this that the Epicureans might regard their own Atomistic metaphysics as hypothesis not refuted by facts, but that they were not permitted to regard as hypothesis that was proved. It was hypothesis, indeed, of which the essential end, as they employed was to displace other hypotheses which seemed to them ethically objectionable. Their dogmatism accordingly only problematical, and their doctrine of knowledge, in so far as
has to do with rational knowledge, very strongly permeated with scepticism. In so far as they recognise only that which passes with tense-perception as " fact," but regard such facts as completely cer tain, their standpoint to be designated as that of Positivism.
This positivism was developed in antiquity still more consistently, and in form freed from the ethical and metaphysical tendencies of Epicurus, by the theories of the later schools of empirical physi cians. These schools went with the Sceptics as regards knowledge of all that imperceptible by the senses and as regards all rational theories; on the other hand, in their recognition of the sensuous evidence of perceptions, they went with the Epicureans. Observation
(njpijffn) here portrayed as the basis of the physician's art, and ob servation retained in memory regarded as the sole essence of his theory etiological explanations especially are rejected on principle.
Connected with this the circumstance that the later Sceptics treated the conception of causality iu searching investigations and
Aa the final criterion even for the Intellectually good i*. with Epicurus, sen- ■nous pleasure, so the criterion of the truth of conceptions only sensuous
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'206 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
discovered its difficulties. iEnesidemus had already propounded a series of such aporise,1 and in Sextus Empiricus we find them devel oped more broadly and comprehensively. * With him not only such defects of serological theories are designated as, that they reduce the known to the unknown whicn is just as inexplicable, that they maintain one possibility among many without a sufficient reason, that they do not examine experience carefully enough with a view to possible negative instances, and finally that they after all explain that which is inaccessible to perception by some sort of a scheme known from perception, which is especially simple and therefore apparently intelligible in itself ; besides these, he searches out, also, all the general difficulties which prevent us from gaining a clear
(picturate) idea of the causal relation. The process of the action of one thing upon another, the passing over of motion from one thing to another, can be made intelligible neither on the assumption that that which acts (as force) is immaterial, nor on the opposite assumption ; nor does contact (d<f>y) which is assumed as a conditio sine qua non of the causal process (as had been already done by Aristotle) make it any more explicable. So, too, the time relation of cause and effect is extremely difficult to determine. The most important thought in these discussions, however, is the pointing out of the relativity of the causal relation : nothing is in itself a cause or effect; each of the two h such only with reference to the other; alrtov and irdcrxov are correlative terms which must not be absolutely postulated or asserted. The (Stoic) conception of an essentially efficient cause, the conception of a creative deity, is then thereby excluded.
7. The Sceptics of the Academy sought in another direction a substitute for the certainty of rational knowledge which they also had given up. Since in practical life suspense cannot be carried out as a principle of conduct and action is indispensable, and since for action determining ideas are requisite, Arcesilaus brought out the view that ideas, even though one refuse them his complete assent, are yet able to move the will,5 and that in practical life one must content himself with a certain kind of confidence or trust
(jrtoTis), according to which some ideas may in a greater degree than others be regarded as probable (tvAoyov), adapted to the purpose of life, and reasonable. 4
1 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 180 fl.
* Adv. Math. IX. 195 ff. ; cf. K. Goring, Der Begriff der Uraache in der grie- chischen Philosophie (Leips. 1874).
» Pint. Adv. Col. 26, 3.
* Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 158.
Cmap. 1, § 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Sceptic*, Strict. 207
The theory of Probabilism was carried out farther by Carneades'* in an attempt to define more exactly, according to logical relations, the particular degrees of this " belief. " The least degree of proba bility (wtBavonft) is that which (as an indistinct and imperfect form of sensuous clearness or vividness — ivapytta) belongs to the single idea that stands in no farther connections. A higher degree of probability belongs to that idea which can be united (djrcp«nra<rT<w), without any contradictions, with other ideas in connection with which it belongs. Lastly, the highest stage of belief is reached where a whole system of such connected ideas is examined as to its complete harmony and verification in experience (jrtpi<. i8c! '/i«V»>).
Empirical confidence rises, therefore, from the sensuously isolated to the logical systems of scientific research. But though in the latter form it may be completely sufficient for practical life (as Carneades assumed), it is yet not able to lead to a completely certain conviction.
8. In contrast with this, the Stoics made the most strenuous efforts to gain an epistemological substructure for their metaphysics, to which they attributed so high a value from considerations of ethi cal interest, and in spite of psycho-genetic sensualism, to rescue the rational character of science. * On the principle that like is known by like, their doctrine of the World-reason demanded a knowledge of the external Logos by the internal logos of man, — by his rea
son ;' and the ethical antagonism or dualism between virtue and the sensuous impulses required a parallel distinction between knowledge and sensuous ideas. Although, therefore, the whole material of knowledge was held to grow out of sensuous presenta tions, the Stoics pointed out, on the other hand, that in perception aa such, no knowledge whatever is contained ; that it is not to be characterised as either true or false. Truth and falsity can be predicated only when judgments (d£tu/iara) have been formed in which something is asserted or denied as to the relation of ideas. 4
nevertheless, is conceived of by the Stoics — and in this they take a new and important position, which, in antiquity, only the Sceptics approach in some degree — by no means merely as the theoretical process of ideation and combination of ideas. They recognised, as the essential characteristic in judgment, the i>eculiar art of assent (ovyKara&crif ). of approval, and of being convinced, with which the mind makes the content of the idea its own, grasps
> lb. 140 fl.
1 Cf. M. Heinr*. Zur ErkenntnissUhre der Stoiker (Lefps. 18801. • Sext. Emp. Adv. Hath. VII. 93.
'Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VIII. 10.
Jitdgment,
208 Helleni»tic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
and in a certain way takes possession of (Ka. TaXaixj3avuv) . This act of apprehension the Stoics regard as an independent function of consciousness (Tjye/ioviKoV), in the same way as they regard the assent to the impulses, which makes its appearance in passion. The arising of ideas, like that of the excitations of feeling, a process which of natural necessity and completely independent of human will (dxouo-tov) but the assent by which we make the one class, judgments, and the other, passions, decision (itpi'o-is) of con sciousness, free ((kovo-iov) from the outer world. 1
But now in the case of the wise man, by virtue of the identity of the universal with the individual logos, this assent appears only in the case of those ideas which are true the soul, therefore, in appre hending the content of these ideas, apprehends reality. Such an idea the Stoics called favTao-ia KaraX-qimKri* and they were of the conviction that such an idea must call forth the reasonable man's assent with immediate evidence or clearness. Hence assent itself
(<rvyKaTaOvTi<;) is conceived of as an activity of the thinking soul, but individual perceptions appear as the objects of assent as truly as do the intellectual activities of conception, judgment, and reason ing, based upon the individual perceptions.
If thus the Stoics understood by the fam-acrta KaTaXijirriKi} that idea by which the mind lays hold of reality, and which, therefore, so illumines the mind that this, in its assent, makes reality its own, this was indeed the correct expression for the requirement which they set up for the true idea,3 but the definition was not at all adapted to the end for which was framed that is, for a sign by which to recognise truth. For as the Sceptics4 very justly objected, the subjective mark, assent, might be shown as psychological fact in the case of multitude of evidently false ideas.
Thus the anthropological discord in the Stoic doctrine manifests
lb. VIII. 39,
In the interpretation of this term there wide divergence. According to the sources, seems now as the idea were intended which the mind lays hold of, now that which apprehends the real fact, now that by which the mind appre hends reality, and now again that which on its part so lays hold of the mind that the mind must assent to it. It has hence been supposed that the Stoics purposely constructed the expression in this ambiguous form, inasmuch as all these relations would harmonise in it, and perhaps E. Zeller (IV. 3 83) [Eng. tr. , Stoics, etc. p. 89] intended to repeat this ambiguity by his translation, concep- tional idea or perception" (begriffliche Vorstellung), which, however, has an accessory logical sense that the Stoics certainly did n6t intend.
It worth while to point out the fact that in their designations for the relation of the knowing mind to the external reality, the Stoics employ, for the m >st part, expressions from the field of the sense of touch (impression, appre hending, or grasping, etc. ), while formerly optical analogies had been preferred. Cf. 11, 2.
Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 402 ff.
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CuAr. 1, f 17. ] Criteria of Truth : Stoic$. 209
itself even in this central conception of their theory of knowledge.
As it could not be explained in accordance with their metaphysics how the individual soul arising from the World-reason should fall under the mastery of sensuous impulses, so it is equally impossible to understand how theoretical assent should, under certain circum stances, be given even to false ideas. Both difficulties, however, have ultimately a common ground. The Stoics agreed with Hera- clitus in identifying in their metaphysics the normative and the actual ordering of things, although these conceptions had meanwhile become much more clearly separated. Reason was for them that which should be, as well as that which is ; it was at the same time rifun and ^wm. And this antithesis, the two sides of which came into strenuous opposition in their doctrine of freedom and their
theodicy, was the problem of the future.
CHAPTER II. THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD.
J. Simon, Histoirc de VEcole d' Alexandrie. Paris, 1843 ff.
E. Matter, Essai sur VEcole d' Alexandrie. Paris, 1840 ff.
E. Vacherot, Histoire Critique de VEcole <TAlexandrie. Paris, 1846 ff.
[J. Drummond, Philo Judasus, or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy in its
Development and Completion. 2 vols. , Lond. 1888. ]
Barthfilemy St. Hilaire, Sur le Concours ouvert par VAcademie, etc. , sur VEcole
d'Alexandrie. Paris, 1845.
K. Vogt, Xeuplatonismus und Christenthum. Berlin, 1836.
Georgii, lieber die Gegensätze in der Auffassung der alexandrinischen Religions
philosophie (Zeitschr. f. hist. Theol. 1839).
E. Deutinger, Geist der christlichen Ueberlieferung. Regensburg, 1850-51.
A. Ritschi, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche. 2d ed. , Bonn, 1857. Chr. Raur, Das Christenthum der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tübingen, 1860.
J. Alzog, Grundriss der Patrulogie. 3d ed. , Freiburg i. B. 1876.
[A. V. G. Allen, The Continuity of Christian Thought. Boston, 1884. ]
Alb. Stöckl, Geschichte der Philosophie der patriotischen Zeit. Würzburg, 1859. J. Huber, Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter. Munich, 1869.
Fr. Overbeck, Ueber die Anfänge der patristischen Litteratur {Hist. Zeitschr.
■
The gradual transition of the Hellenistic-Roman philosophy from the ethical to the religious standpoint had its inner causes in this philosophy itself, and its external occasion in the imperious de mands made by the felt need of the time. For the farther the contact between the systems extended, the more it became evident how little able philosophy was to fulfil the task which it had set itself: namely, that of educating man by a sure insight to a state of virtue and happiness, to inner independence of the world. While the sceptical mode of thought, which was extending more and more, already taught that virtue consists rather in the renunciation of the attempt to know, than in knowledge itself, the view forced its way more and more, even among the Stoics, that their ideal of the wise
man, so sharply and rigidly drawn, was not entirely realised in any 210
1882).
A. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 3 vols. Freiburg i. B. 1886-90.
[J. Donaldson, Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine. ]
Cha*. 2. ] The Religious Period. 211
human being, and thus it was felt in every direction that man in his own strength can become neither knowing, nor virtuous and happy.
If, then, a disposition to welcome a higher help for ethical ends was necessarily evoked in philosophy itself, it was also true that the theoretical doctrines of the time contained a great number of religious elements. The Epicureans, to be sure, purposely excluded snch. but the Stoics, on the contrary, granted them an entrance that was all the freer. With the Stoics, not only did metaphysics lead to seeking the principle of morals in a divine command, but in their
pneutna doctrine, the possibility presented itself of giving to the creations of myth a philosophical meaning, which might be shared also by all forms of worship. Finally, the spiritual monotheism in Aristotle's teaching, and that ideal tendency with which Plato sought the abiding essence of things in a higher world of the super- sensuous, were not forgotten.
Just this dualism, which opposed the earthly world of the perish able to a suj>ersensuous world of the divine, ultimately proved to be the right expression for that inner discord which ran through the entire life of the aging Greek and Roman world. The old craving for sensuous pleasure might still celebrate its orgies in full power and U> the intoxication of the senses ; but in the midst of it all, out of surfeit and loathing grew a new craving for a purer, higher joy : and in the presence of the tremendous contrasts which the social condition of the Roman Empire brought with the look of all the millions that saw themselves excluded from the good things of this earth turned longingly toward better world. Thus in all ways deep, passionate need for true salvation of the soul (owi/pia) came to be increasingly felt, hunger for something beyond the earthly,
religious urgency without an equal.
This religious movement proved its vigour first of all in the eager
reception which foreign forms of worship found in the Graeco- Koinaii world, in the mingling and fusing of Oriental and Occidental religions. But with the adjustment which their oppositions found here and there, their strife for the mastery over men's spirits be came still more energetic, and thus the soil of the ancient world of
civilisation, after bearing the fruits of art and science, became the battleground of religions. Man's essential interest became thereby transferred for long centuries from the earthly to the heavenly tpbere he began to seek his salvation beyond the world of sense.
But the forms in which this contest of the religions was waged prove in spite of all what spiritual and intellectual power Greek science had grown to be. For so strongly was the ancient world
a
;
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212 Hellenistic-Roman Thought.
[Part IL
"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," so deeply had it be come permeated by the feeling of a need for knowledge, that each of the religions desired to satisfy not only the feelings but also the intellect, and was therefore anxious to transform its life into a doc trine. This is true even of Christianity, and indeed precisely true of it. The true, victorious power of the religion of Jesus lay, to be sure, in the fact that it entered this decrepit, blase" world with the youthful force of a pure, high, religious feeling, and a conviction that was courageous to the death ; but it was able to conquer the ancient civilised world only by taking it up into itself and working it over ; and as in its external conflict with the old world it shaped its own constitution ' and thereby ultimately became so strong as to be able to take possession of the Roman state, so also in its defence against the ancient philosophy it made the world of that philoso phy's ideas its own, in order thereby to build up its own dogmatic system.
Thus the needs of science and of life met. The former sought the solution of the problems at which it had been labouring in vain, in religion, and the latter desired a scientific formulation and basis for its religious longing or conviction. Hence from this time on, for many centuries, the history of philosophy is grown together with that of dogmatic theology,' and the period of religious metaphysics begins. The thought of antiquity described a peculiar curve, sepa rating itself farther and farther from religion from which it pro ceeded, reaching its extreme separation in Epicureanism, and then again steadily drawing near to religion, to return at last entirely within it.
Under these conditions it is possible to understand how that Weltanschauung which separated the supersensuous and the sensu
ous, — looking upon them, from the point of view of value, as divine perfection and earthly baseness, respectively, — constituted the common ground of the whole religious-philosophical movement. This view had already, indeed, been introduced by the Pythagoreans (cf. § 5, 7), and had been maintained even by Aristotle, but it had, without doubt, found its most forcible formulation in the Platonic metaphysics. It was, therefore, this latter system which formed the controlling ceutre for the religious closing development of ancient thought. A religious development of Platonism is the fundamental character of this period.
1 Cf. K. J. Neumann, Der rdmische Staat und die allgemeine Kirche bis auf Diocletian (Vol. I. Leips. 1890).
a It will be understood as a matter of course that the following exposition has left at one side all specifically dogmatic elements, except where they are quite inseparably interwoven with philosophical principles.
Cmaf. 2. ] The Religion* Period. 213
The geographical centre of the movement, however, is found in that city which, by its history, as well as by its population, repre sented most distinctly the mingling of peoples and of religions, — Alexandria. Here, where in the active work of the museum all treasures of Grecian culture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowded together in the great throngs of the commercial metropolis to seek a scientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed within them.
The first line of the Alexandrian philosophy is the so-called Neo- Pythagoreanism, a mode of thought which, proceeding from the religious practice of the Pythagorean mysteries, makes only an external use of the number-mysticism of the old Pythagoreans after whom it calls itself and its writings, while it finds the theoretical setting for its world-renouncing, religious-ascetic ethics in a trans formation of the Platonic metaphysics, which became of the pro- foundest value for the conception of the spiritual nature in the following period. Apollonius of Tyana, the founder of a religion, is to be regarded as typical representative of this school.
Not without influence from this school, the Stoa, also, in the time of the Empire, brought out more energetically the religious elements in its theory of the world, so that not only did the anthropological dualism of the system become sharpened, but a more theistic mode of thought gradually became substituted for the original pantheism of the school. In men like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic doctrine became completely a philosophy of deliverance or redemption.
Even Cynicism revived again about this time in a religious garb, as a rude, popular preaching of renunciation, and Demonax passes for its best-known representative.
Scarcely to be separated from the Neo-Pythagoreans are the Edectie Platonists of the first centuries of our era, such as Plutarch of Chaeronea and Apuleiux of Madaura. Later appear Numenius of Apamea and Xicomachns of Gerasa, who, besides, already stand ■oder Jewish and Christian influences as witnesses of a complete fusion of the two tendencies.
But while, in all these forms, the Hellenic element ever maintains the ascendency over the Oriental, the latter makes its appearance in very much stronger force in the Jewish philosophy of religion. As the sect of the Essenes ' probably proceeded from a contact of Neo- Y\ thagoreanism with the Hebrew religious life, so the various attempts of learned Jews to draw nearer to Greek science in the
» Cf. E. Zeller V. « 277 ff.
214 Hellenistic- Roman Thought. [Part EL
presentation of their dogmas, led ultimately to the doctrine of Philo of Alexandria, whose original elaboration of these fermenting bodies of thought influenced their further formation and movement in the most important points.
The philosophy of Christianity, which for these first centuries is usually designated by the name Patristics, unfolded in an analogous manner upon a larger scale. This philosophical secularisation of the gospel begins with the Apologists, who sought to present its re ligious belief as the only true philosophy, with the purpose of pro tecting Christianity in the eyes of the cultured world from contempt and persecution, and therefore began to adapt this content of re ligious faith to the conceptional forms of Greek science : the most important of them are Justin and Minucius Felix.
But the need of changing faith (irurrts) into knowledge or wisdom (■yvuMTis) asserted itself vigorously in the Christian communities, even without this polemical tendency. The first attempts, how
ever, which the Gnostics made to create an adequate view of the world for the new religion, proceeded from the excited phantasies of a Syrian mingling of religions, and, in spite of the employment of Hellenistic philosophemes, led to such grotesque constructions, that the Church as it grew stronger and more definitive was obliged to reject them. Saturninus, Basileides, and Valentinus are to be named as the best known of this class.
In reaction against such over-hasty attempts of religious fantasti- calness, a violent aversion toward all philosophical interpretation and adjustment of Christian faith set in, for a time, in Christian literature in the writings of men like Tatian, TertuUian, and Arno- bius. An express anti-rationalism thus came forward which never theless found it necessary on its part also to return to the related doctrines of Greek philosophy. Without this one-sidedness and with a closer approximation to the older
Hellenising Apologists, Gnosticism was combated by Irenmus and his disciple Hippolytus.
It was not until the beginning of the third century, and after all these preceding attempts, that a positive Christian theology, a sys tem of dogmatics in a complete conceptional form, was established. This came about in the School for Catechists at Alexandria, through the leaders of the school, Clement and Origen. The latter especially is to be regarded as philosophically the most important representa tive of Christianity in this period.
By his side, however, there went out from the Alexandrian phil osophic school the man who undertook to bring the religion-forming tendency of philosophy to an issue solely upon the Hellenistic basis, —Plotinus, the greatest thinker of this period. His attempt to
Chak 2. ] The Religious Period. 215
systematise all the main doctrines of Greek and Hellenistic phil osophy under the religious principle is designated as Neo- Plntonism. His doctrine is the most definitive and thoroughly constructed sys tem of science that antiquity produced. His disciple Porphyry, however, showed himself already inclined to make a religion out of this religious teaching, and Jamblichus, who is termed the leader of Syrian Neo-Platonism, transformed it into a dogmatic theology of poly theism, with which the learned and political opponents of Christianity, such as the Emperor Julian, hoped to revive the forms of worship of the heathen religions, then in a state of dissolution. After this attempt had miscarried, the Athenian school of Neo-Platonism, as the heads of which Plutarch of Athens, Proclus, and Damascitis appear, returned finally to a methodical, scholastic development of the system of Plotinus.
Thus the Hellenistic efforts to attain to a new religion by means of science remained without result in this form : the scholars dis covered no church. On the other hand, the need felt by positive religion to complete and strengthen itself in a scientific doctrine did attain its goal : the Church created its dogma. And the great course of history in this movement was, that the defeated Hellenism in its powerful death-struggle still created the conceptions by means of which the new religion shaped itself into a dogma.
While the Pythagorean mysteries had maintained their existence through all antiquity, scientific Pythagoreanism vanished as a proper school after its incorporation into the Academy (cf. p. 31). It is not until during the first ct-ntury b. c. that specifically Pythagorean doctrines become noticeable again : they appear in the Pythagorean writings, of which Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 34 ■. ). following Alexander Polyhiator, gives an account that leads us to infer an essentially Stoic influence. They are renewed expressly by Cicero's learned friend, P. Nlgidius Figulus (died 45 n. c), and And approval also with other men in Home. Cf . M. Here, Dr P. Xig. Fig. Sludiit atque Ojitribus (Berlin, 1846).
But Ifeo-Pythagoreanlsm proper was first presented in literary form by the great number of writings which became public in Alexandria at about the beginning of our era, under the names of l*ythagoras, or Philolaus, or Archytas, at other older Pythagoreans, the fragments of which give rise to so great diffi culties in forming a conception of genuine Pythagoreanisni. Cf. the lit. p. 31.
<H the personalities of the new school, on the contrary, very little is known. The only distinct figure is Apollonina of Tyana, of whose life and nature the rhetorician Philostratus (ed. by C. L. Kayser, I^eips. 1870) gava a romantic representation at the beginning of the third century, in order to portray in it the ideal of the Pythagorean life. Of the works of Apollnniua himself, who liTtd in the first century a. d. , fragments of a biography of Pythagoras and of a treatise on Sacrifice are extant. Cf. Chr. Baur, Apolloniua unit ChriMut in Drti Abhandl. zur Ge»ch. d. alt. l'hilo$. (helps. 1876). [Treiiwell, Life of AfiUluniut of Tyana, contains a good bibliography, N. Y. 188)1. ] ilia con temporary, Biodaratna of Gades, might perhaps also be mentioned.
Neo- Pythagorean and Stoic doctrines appear mingled in the Eclectic Botlon of Alexandria, who was affiliated with the Sextains (cf. p. 103). His disciple, L Annaeua Bsnaca of Cordova (4-66 ad. ), was the leader of the Stoics in tht time of the Empire.
