Meanwhile
he retains his grasp upon us.
A Short History of Greek Philosophy by J. Marshall
Thus
the final end for man is by contemplation and 'daily dying to the world
of sense,' to come at last into the full inheritance in conscious
knowledge of that 'thought of God' which was latent from the first in
his soul, and of which in its fulness God Himself is eternally and
necessarily possessed.
{188}
[311]
This is really Aristotle's idea, only Plato expresses it rather under a
psychological, Aristotle under a vital, formula. God, Aristotle says,
is eternally and necessarily Entelechy, absolute realisation. _To us_,
that which is first _in time_ (the individual perception) is not first
in _essence_, or absolutely. What is first in essence or absolutely,
is the universal, that is, the form or idea, the datum of reason. And
this distinction between time and the absolute, between our individual
experience and the essential or ultimate reality, runs all through the
philosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the
'Reminiscence' of Plato.
This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms of
life, to education, to morals, to politics.
_Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every process
conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with
sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations
to that which is infinitely real,--the object, the real thing before
us,--which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the
other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind,
this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations to
another existence infinitely real,--the subject that thinks,--which
relations religion and morality and sentiment and love will never
exhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, if
we, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulated
information, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between the
two extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall find
both processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. That
is to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objects
known, by the operation of true thought and observation in the
discovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall be
increasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, by
the discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them.
Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutually
conditioning factors of the same organic function.
[316]
This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of
Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure,
and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than
Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually
contrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and the
organically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_.
But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards an
apprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favour
of mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind and
matter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical.
{190}
The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no
longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a crux
still. What is the meaning of this 'Ultimately'? Or, putting it in
Aristotle's formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality?
Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is no
unreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or in
germ _there_? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why this
groaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal 'By and by'
wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all the
clashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled and
satisfied? An illustration of Aristotle's attempt to answer this
question will be given later on (p. 201). That the answer is a failure
need not surprise us. If we even now 'see only as in a glass darkly'
on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing
'face to face. '
[326]
_Life_ is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown (above,
p. 186), but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. We
pass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants and
animals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we rise
still higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiar
function of man. Each is a _potentiality_ to that which is immediately
above it; in {191} other words, each contains in germ the possibilities
which are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there a
touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose running
through all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation for
something higher.
[339]
_Education_ is in like manner an entelechy. For what is the
_differentia_, the distinguishing character of the life of man?
Aristotle answers, the possession of reason. It is the action of
reason upon the desires that raises the life of man above the brutes.
This, observe, is not the restraining action of something wholly alien
to the desires, which is too often how Plato represents the matter.
This would be to lose the dynamic idea. The desires, as Aristotle
generally conceives them, are there in the animal life, prepared, so to
speak, to receive the organic perfection which reason alone can give
them. Intellect, on the other hand, is equally in need of the desires,
for thought without desire cannot supply motive. If intellect is
_logos_ or reason, desire is that which is fitted to be obedient to
reason.
It will be remembered that the question to which Plato addressed
himself in one of his earlier dialogues, already frequently referred
to, the _Meno_, was the teachableness of Virtue; in that dialogue he
comes to the conclusion that Virtue is teachable, but that there are
none capable of teaching it; for the {192} wise men of the time are
guided not by knowledge but by right opinion, or by a divine instinct
which is incommunicable. Plato is thus led to seek a machinery of
education, and it is with a view to this that he constructs his ideal
_Republic_. Aristotle took up this view of the state as educative of
the individual citizens, and brought it under the dynamic formula. In
the child reason is not actual; there is no rational law governing his
acts, these are the immediate result of the strongest impulse. Yet
only when a succession of virtuous acts has formed the virtuous habit
can a man be said to be truly good. How is this process to begin? The
answer is that the reason which is only latent or dynamic in the child
is actual or realised in the parent or teacher, or generally in the
community which educates the child. The law at first then is imposed
on the child from without, it has an appearance of unnaturalness, but
only an appearance. For the law is there in the child, prepared, as he
goes on in obedience, gradually to answer from within to the summons
from without, till along with the virtuous habit there emerges also
into the consciousness of the child, no longer a child but a man, the
apprehension of the law as his own truest nature.
These remarks on education are sufficient to show that in Morals also,
as conceived by Aristotle, there is a law of vital development. It may
be {193} sufficient by way of illustration to quote the introductory
sentences of Aristotle's _Ethics_, in which the question of the nature
of the chief good is, in his usual tentative manner, discussed: "If
there be any end of what we do which we desire for itself, while all
other ends are desired for it, that is, if we do not in every case have
some ulterior end (for if that were so we should go on to infinity, and
our efforts would be vain and useless), this ultimate end desired for
itself will clearly be the chief good and the ultimate best. Now since
every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is
for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims
at,--what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with
conduct? So far as the name goes all are pretty well agreed as to the
answer; gentle and simple alike declare it to be happiness, involving,
however, in their minds on the one hand well-living, on the other hand,
well-doing. When you ask them, however, to define this happiness more
exactly, you find that opinions are divided, and the many and the
philosophers have different answers.
"But if you ask a musician or a sculptor or any man of skill, any
person, in fact, who has some special work and activity, what the chief
good is for him, he will tell you that the chief good is in the work
well done. If then man has any special work or function, we may assume
that the chief good for man {194} will be in the well-doing of that
function. What now is man's special function? It cannot be mere
living, for that he has in common with plants, and we are seeking what
is peculiar to him. The mere life of nurture and growth must therefore
be put on one side. We come next to life as sensitive to pleasure and
pain. But this man shares with the horse, the ox, and other animals.
What remains is the life of action of a reasonable being. Now of
reason as it is in man there are two parts, one obeying, one possessing
and considering. And there are also two aspects in which the active or
moral life may be taken, one potential, one actual. Clearly for our
definition of the chief good we must take the moral life in its full
actual realisation, since this is superior to the other.
"If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good for
man consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of man
as man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to that
life, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then in
accordance with that excellence which is the best and the most rounded
or complete. We must add, however, the qualification, 'in a rounded
life. ' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day. And
so one day or some brief period of attainment is not sufficient to make
a man happy and blest. "
{195}
The close relation of this to the teaching of Socrates and Plato need
hardly be insisted on, or the way in which he correlates their ideas
with his own conception of an actualised perfection.
[340]
Aristotle then proceeds to a definition of the 'specific excellence' or
virtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how far
he has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. To
this end he distinguishes in man's nature three modes of existence:
first, _feelings_ such as joy, pain, anger; second, _potentialities_ or
capacities for such feelings; third, _habits_ which are built upon
these potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberation
superadded. He has no difficulty in establishing that the virtue of
man must be a habit. And the test of the excellence of that habit, as
of every other developed capacity, will be twofold; it will make the
worker good, it will cause him to produce good work.
So far Aristotle's analysis of virtue is quite on the lines of his
general philosophy. Here, however, he diverges into what seems at
first a curiously mechanical conception. Pointing out that in
everything quantitative there are two extremes conceivable, and a
_mean_ or average between them, he proceeds to define virtue as a mean
between two extremes, a mean, however, having relation to no mere
numerical standard, but having reference _to us_. In this last {196}
qualification he perhaps saves his definition from its mechanical turn,
while he leaves himself scope for much curious and ingenious
observation on the several virtues regarded as means between two
extremes. He further endeavours to save it by adding, that it is
"defined by reason, and as the wise man would define it. "
Reason then, as the impersonal ruler,--the wise man, as the
personification of reason,--this is the standard of virtue, and
therefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externality
in our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comes
only when the law without is also recognised and accepted as the law
within? The answer of Aristotle, as of his predecessors, is that this
will be brought about by wise training and virtuous surroundings, in
short, by the civic community being itself good and happy. Thus we get
another dynamic relation; for regarded as a member of the body politic
each individual becomes a potentiality along with all the other
members, conditioned by the state of which he and they are members,
brought gradually into harmony with the reason which is in the state,
and in the process realising not his own possibilities only, but those
of the community also, which exists only in and through its members.
Thus each and all, in so far as they realise their own well-being by
the perfect development of the virtuous {197} habit in their lives,
contribute _ipso facto_ to the supreme end of the state, which is the
perfect realisation of the whole possibilities of the total organism,
and consequently of every member of it.
[342]
The _State_ therefore is also an entelechy. For man is not made to
dwell alone. "There is first the fact of sex; then the fact of
children; third, the fact of variety of capacity, implying variety of
position, some having greater powers of wisdom and forethought, and
being therefore naturally the rulers; others having bodily powers
suitable for carrying out the rulers' designs, and being therefore
naturally subjects. Thus we have as a first or simplest community the
family, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which,
seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, rises
from mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. This higher
existence is as natural and necessary as any simpler form, being, in
fact, the end or final and necessary perfection of all such lower forms
of existence. Man therefore is by the natural necessity of his being a
'political animal,' and he who is not a citizen,--that is, by reason of
something peculiar in his nature and not by a mere accident,--must
either be deficient or something superhuman. And while man is the
noblest of animals when thus fully perfected in an ordered community,
on the other hand when deprived of law and justice he is the very
worst. {198} For there is nothing so dreadful as lawlessness armed.
And man is born with the arms of thought and special capacities or
excellences, which it is quite possible for him to use for other and
contrary purposes. And therefore man is the most wicked and cruel
animal living when he is vicious, the most lustful and the most
gluttonous. The justice which restrains all this is a civic quality;
and law is the orderly arrangement of the civic community" (Arist.
_Pol_. i. p. 2).
{199}
CHAPTER XX
ARISTOTLE (_concluded_)
_God and necessity--The vital principle--Soul as realisation--Function
and capacity--His method_
Throughout Aristotle's physical philosophy the [334] same conception
runs: "All animals in their fully developed state require two members
above all--one whereby to take in nourishment, the other whereby to get
rid of what is superfluous. For no animal can exist or grow without
nourishment. And there is a third member in them all half-way between
these, in which resides the principle of their life. This is the
heart, which all blood-possessing animals have. From it comes the
arterial system which Nature has made hollow to contain the liquid
blood. The situation of the heart is a commanding one, being near the
middle and rather above than below, and rather towards the front than
the back. For Nature ever establishes that which is most honourable in
the most honourable places, unless some supreme necessity overrules.
We see this most clearly in the case of man; but the same tendency for
the heart to occupy the centre is seen also in {200} other animals,
when we regard only that portion of their body which is essential, and
the limit of this is at the place where superfluities are removed. The
limbs are arranged differently in different animals, and are not among
the parts essential to life; consequently animals may live even if
these are removed. . . . Anaxagoras says that man is the wisest of
animals because he possesses hands. It would be more reasonable to say
that he possesses hands because he is the wisest. For the hands are an
instrument; and Nature always assigns an instrument to the one fitted
to use it, just as a sensible man would. For it is more reasonable to
give a flute to a flute-player than to confer on a man who has some
flutes the art of playing them. To that which is the greater and
higher she adds what is less important, and not _vice versa_.
Therefore to the creature fitted to acquire the largest number of
skills Nature assigned the hand, the instrument useful for the largest
number of purposes" (Arist. _De Part. An. _ iv. p. 10).
[332]
And in the macrocosm, the visible and invisible world about us, the
same conception holds: "The existence of God is an eternally perfect
entelechy, a life everlasting. In that, therefore, which belongs to
the divine there must be an eternally perfect movement. Therefore the
heavens, which are as it were the body of the Divine, are in form a
sphere, of {201} necessity ever in circular motion. Why then is not
this true of every portion of the universe? Because there must of
necessity be a point of rest of the circling body at the centre. Yet
the circling body cannot rest either as a whole or as regards any part
of it, otherwise its motion could not be eternal, which by nature it
is. Now that which is a violation of nature cannot be eternal, but the
violation is posterior to that which is in accordance with nature, and
thus the unnatural is a kind of displacement or degeneracy from the
natural, taking the form of a coming into being.
"Necessity then requires earth, as the element standing still at the
centre. Now if there must be earth, there must be fire. For if one of
two opposites is natural or necessary, the other must be necessary too,
each, in fact, implying the necessity of the other. For the two have
the same substantial basis, only the positive form is naturally prior
to the negative; for instance, warm is prior to cold. And in the same
way motionlessness and heaviness are predicated in virtue of the
absence of motion and lightness, _i. e. _ the latter are essentially
prior.
"Further, if there are fire and earth, there must also be the elements
which lie between these, each having an antithetic relation to each.
From this it follows that there must be a process of coming into being,
because none of these elements can be eternal, {202} but each affects,
and is affected by each, and they are mutually destructive. Now it is
not to be argued that anything which can be moved can be eternal,
except in the case of that which by its own nature has eternal motion.
And if coming into being must be predicated of these, then other forms
of change can also be predicated" (Arist. _De Coelo_, ii. p. 3).
This passage is worth quoting as illustrating, not only Aristotle's
conception of the divine entelechy, but also the ingenuity with which
he gave that appearance of logical completeness to the vague and
ill-digested scientific imaginations of the time, which remained so
evil an inheritance for thousands of years. It is to be observed, in
order to complete Aristotle's theory on this subject, that the four
elements, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, are all equally in a world which is
"contrary to nature," that is, the world of change, of coming into
being, and going out of being. Apart from these there is the element
of the Eternal Cosmos, which is "in accordance with nature," having its
own natural and eternal motion ever the same. This is the fifth or
divine element, the aetherial, by the schoolmen translated _Quinta
Essentia_, whence by a curious degradation we have our modern word
Quintessence, of that which is the finest and subtlest extract.
Still more clearly is the organic conception carried {203} out in
Aristotle's discussion of the Vital principle or Soul in the various
grades of living creatures and in man. It will be sufficient to quote
at length a chapter of Aristotle's treatise on the subject (_De Anima_,
ii. p. 1) in which this fundamental conception of Aristotle's
philosophy is very completely illustrated:--
"Now as to Substance we remark that this is one particular category
among existences, having three different aspects. First there is, so
to say, the raw material or Matter, having in it no definite character
or quality; next the Form or Specific character, in virtue of which the
thing becomes namable; and third, there is the Thing or Substance which
these two together constitute. The Matter is, in other words, the
_potentiality_ of the thing, the Form is the _realisation_ of that
potentiality. We may further have this realisation in two ways,
corresponding in character to the distinction between _knowledge_
(which we have but are not necessarily using) and actual
_contemplation_ or mental perception.
"Among substances as above defined those are most truly such which we
call _bodily objects_, and among these most especially objects which
are the products of nature, inasmuch as all other bodies must be
derived from them. Now among such natural objects some are possessed
of life, some are not; by _life_ I mean a process of spontaneous
nourishment, growth, and decay. Every natural {204} object having life
is a substance compounded, so to say, of several qualities. It is, in
fact, a bodily substance defined in virtue of its having life. Between
the living body thus defined and the Soul or Vital principle, a marked
distinction must be drawn. The body cannot be said to 'subsist in'
something else; rather must we say that it is the matter or substratum
in which something else subsists. And what we mean by the soul is just
this substance in the sense of the _form_ or specific character that
subsists in the natural body which is _potentially_ living. In other
words, the Soul is substance as _realisation_, only, however, of such a
body as has just been defined. Recalling now the distinction between
realisation as possessed knowledge and as actual contemplation, we
shall see that in its essential nature the Soul or Vital principle
corresponds rather with the first than with the second. For both sleep
and waking depend on the Soul or Life being there, but of these waking
only can be said to correspond with the active form of knowledge; sleep
is rather to be compared with the state of having without being
immediately conscious that we have. Now if we compare these two states
in respect of their priority of development in a particular person, we
shall see that the state of latent possession comes first. We may
therefore define the Soul or Vital principle as _The earliest {205}
realisation (entelechy) of a natural body having in it the potentiality
of life_.
"To every form of organic structure this definition applies, for even
the parts of plants are organs, although very simple ones; thus the
outer leaf is a protection to the pericarp, and the pericarp to the
fruit. Or, again, the roots are organs bearing an analogy to the mouth
in animals, both serving to take in food. Putting our definition,
then, into a form applicable to every stage of the Vital principle, we
shall say that _The Soul is the earliest realisation of a natural body
having organisation_.
"In this way we are relieved from the necessity of asking whether Soul
and body are one. We might as well ask whether the wax and the
impression are one, or, in short, whether the _matter_ of any object
and that whereof it is the matter or substratum are one. As has been
pointed out, unity and substantiality may have several significations,
but the truest sense of both is found in _realisation_.
"The general definition of the Soul or Vital principle above given may
be further explained as follows. The Soul is the _rational_ substance
(or function), that is to say, it is that which gives essential meaning
and reality to a body as knowable. Thus if an axe were a _natural_
instrument or organ, its rational substance would be found in its
realisation of what an axe means; this would be its _soul_. Apart
{206} from such realisation it would not be an axe at all, except in
name. Being, however, such as it is, the axe remains an axe
independently of any such realisation. For the statement that the Soul
is the _reason_ of a thing, that which gives it essential meaning and
reality, does not apply to such objects as an axe, but only to natural
bodies having power of spontaneous motion (including growth) and rest.
"Or we may illustrate what has been said by reference to the bodily
members. If the eye be a living creature, _sight_ will be its soul,
for this is the _rational_ substance (or function) of the eye. On the
other hand, the eye itself is the _material_ substance in which this
function subsists, which function being gone, the eye would no longer
be an eye, except in name, just as we can speak of the eye of a statue
or of a painted form. Now apply this illustration from a part of the
body to the whole. For as any one sense stands related to its organ,
so does the vital sense in general to the whole sensitive organism as
such, always remembering that we do not mean a dead body, but one which
really has in it potential life, as the seed or fruit has. Of course
there is a form of realisation to which the name applies in a specially
full sense, as when the axe is actually cutting, the eye actually
seeing, the man fully awake. But the Soul or Vital principle
corresponds rather with the _function_ of sight, or the _capacity_ for
cutting which {207} the axe has, the body, on the other hand, standing
in a relation of _potentiality_ to it. Now just as the eye may mean
both the actual organ or pupil, and also the function of sight, so also
the living creature means both the body and the soul. We cannot,
therefore, think of body apart from soul, or soul apart from body. If,
however, we regard the soul as composed of parts, we can see that the
realisation to which we give the name of soul is in some cases
essentially a realisation of certain parts of the body. We may,
however, conceive the soul as in other aspects separable, in so far as
the realisation cannot be connected with any bodily parts. Nay, we
cannot be certain whether the soul may not be the realisation or
perfection of the body as the sailor is of his boat. "
Observe that at the last Aristotle, though very tentatively, leaves an
opening for immortality, where, as in the case of man, there are
functions of the soul, such as philosophic contemplation, which cannot
be related to bodily conditions. He really was convinced that in man
there was a portion of that diviner aether which dwelt eternally in the
heavens, and was the ever-moving cause of all things. If there was in
man a _passive_ mind, which became all things, as all things through
sensation affected it, there was also, Aristotle argued, a _creative_
mind in man, which is above, and unmixed with, that which it
apprehends, {208} gives laws to this, is essentially prior to all
particular knowledge, is therefore eternal, not subject to the
conditions of time and space, consequently indestructible.
Finally, as a note on Aristotle's method, one may observe in this
passage, _first_, Aristotle's use of 'defining examples,' the wax, the
leaf and fruit, the axe, the eye, etc. ; _second_, his practice of
developing his distinctions gradually, Form and Matter in the abstract,
then in substances of every kind, then in natural bodies, then in
organic bodies of various grades, in separate organs, in the body as a
whole, and in the Soul as separable in man; and _thirdly_, his method
of approaching completeness in thought, by apparent contradictions or
qualifications, which aim at meeting the complexity of nature by an
equally organised complexity of analysis. To this let us simply add,
by way of final characterisation, that in the preceding pages we have
given but the merest fragment here and there of Aristotle's vast
accomplishment. So wide is the range of his ken, so minute his
observation, so subtle and complicated and allusive his illustrations,
that it is doubtful if any student of his, through all the centuries in
which he has influenced the world, ever found life long enough to
fairly and fully grasp him.
Meanwhile he retains his grasp upon us.
Form and matter, final and efficient causes, potential and actual
existences, {209} substance, accident, difference, genus, species,
predication, syllogism, deduction, induction, analogy, and multitudes
of other joints in the machinery of thought for all time, were forged
for us in the workshop of Aristotle.
{210}
CHAPTER XXI
THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS
_Greek decay--The praises of Lucretius--Canonics--Physics--The proofs
of Lucretius--The atomic soul--Mental pleasures--Natural
pleasures--Lower philosophy and higher_
Philosophy, equally complete, equally perfect in all its parts, had its
final word in Plato and Aristotle; on the great lines of universal
knowledge no further really original structures were destined to be
raised by Greek hands. We have seen a parallelism between Greek
philosophy and Greek politics in their earlier phases (see above, p.
82); the same parallelism continues to the end. Greece broke the bonds
of her intense but narrow civic life and civic thought, and spread
herself out over the world in a universal monarchy and a cosmopolitan
philosophy; but with this widening of the area of her influence
reaction came and disruption and decay; an immense stimulus was given
on the one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thought
and knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was
'living Greece no more,' her politics sank to the level of a dreary
farce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, to
an Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust of
death,' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow and
stern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy,
faded as the life of Greece decayed.
[356]
The first phase of the change, _Scepticism_, or Pyrrhonism, as it was
named from its first teacher, need not detain us long. Pyrrho was
priest of Elis; in earlier life he accompanied Alexander the Great as
far as India, and is said to have become acquainted with certain of the
philosophic sects in that country. In his sceptical doctrine he had,
like his predecessors, a school with its succession of teachers; but
the [358] world has remembered little more of him or them than two
phrases 'suspense of judgment'--this for the intellectual side of
philosophy; 'impassibility'--this for the moral. The doctrine is a
negation of doctrine, the idle dream of idle men; even Pyrrho once,
when surprised in some sudden access of fear, confessed that it was
hard for him 'to get rid of the man in himself. ' Vigorous men and
growing nations are never agnostic. They decline to rest in mere
suspense; they are extremely the opposite of impassive; they believe
earnestly, they feel strongly.
[365]
A more interesting, because more positive and constructive, personality
was that of Epicurus. This philosopher was born at Samos, in the year
341 B. C. , of Athenian parents. He came to Athens in his eighteenth
year. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle at
the Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one nor the other. After
some wanderings he returned to Athens and set up on his [366] own
account as a teacher of philosophy. He made it a matter of boasting
that he was a self-taught philosopher; and Cicero (_De Nat. Deor. _ i.
26) sarcastically remarks that one could have guessed as much, even if
Epicurus had not stated it himself; as one might of the proprietor of
an ugly house, who should boast that he had employed no architect. The
style of Epicurus was, in fact, plain and unadorned, but he seems all
the same to have been able to say what he meant; and few if any writers
ancient or modern have ever had so splendid a literary tribute, as
Epicurus had from the great Roman poet Lucretius, his follower and
expositor.
"Glory of the Greek race," he says, "who first hadst power to raise
high so bright a light in the midst of darkness so profound, shedding a
beam on all the interests of life, thee do I follow, and in the
markings of thy track do I set my footsteps now. Not that I desire to
rival thee, but rather for love of thee would fain call myself thy
disciple. For how shall the swallow rival the swan, or what speed may
the kid with its tottering limbs attain, compared with the brave might
of the scampering steed? Thou; O father, art the discoverer of nature,
thou suppliest to us a father's teachings, and from thy pages, {213}
illustrious one, even as bees sip all manner of sweets along the
flowery glades, we in like manner devour all thy golden words, golden
and right worthy to live for ever. For soon as thy philosophy, birth
of thy godlike mind, hath begun to declare the origin of things,
straightway the terrors of the soul are scattered, earth's walls are
broken apart, and through all the void I see nature in the working. I
behold the gods in manifestation of their power, I discern their
blissful seats, which never winds assail nor rain-clouds sprinkle with
their showers, nor snow falling white with hoary frost doth buffet, but
cloudless aether ever wraps them round, beaming in broad diffusion of
glorious light. For nature supplies their every want nor aught impairs
their peace of soul. But nowhere do I see any regions of hellish
darkness, nor does the earth impose a barrier to our sight of what is
done in the void beneath our feet. Wherefore a holy ecstasy and thrill
of awe possess me, while thus by thy power the secrets of nature are
disclosed to view" (Lucret. _De Nat. Rer. _ iii, 1-30).
[367]
This devotion to the memory of Epicurus on the part of Lucretius was
paralleled by the love felt for him by his contemporaries; he had
crowds of followers who loved him and who were proud to learn his words
by heart. He seems indeed to have been a man of exceptional kindness
and amiability, and the 'garden of Epicurus' became proverbial as {214}
a place of temperate pleasures and wise delights. Personally we may
take it that Epicurus was a man of simple tastes and moderate desires;
and indeed throughout its history Epicureanism as a rule of conduct has
generally been associated with the finer forms of enjoyment, rather
than the more sensual. The 'sensual sty' is a nickname, not a
description.
[369]
Philosophy Epicurus defined as a process of thought and reasoning
tending to the realisation of happiness. Arts or sciences which had no
such practical end he contemned; and, as will be observed in Lucretius'
praises of him above, even physics had but one purpose or interest, to
free the soul from [370] terrors of the unseen. Thus philosophy was
mainly concerned with conduct, _i. e. _ with Ethics, but secondarily and
negatively with Physics, to which was appended what Epicurus called
Canonics, or the science of testing, that is, a kind of logic.
[371]
Beginning with _Canonics_, as the first part of philosophy in order of
time, from the point of view of human knowledge, Epicurus laid it down
that the only source of knowledge was the senses, which gave us an
immediate and true perception of that which actually came into contact
with them. Even the visions of madmen or of dreamers he considered
were in themselves true, being produced by a physical cause of some
kind, of which these visions were the direct and immediate report.
Falsity came in with {215} people's interpretations or imaginations
with respect to these sensations.
Sensations leave a trace in the memory, and out of similarities or
analogies among sensations there are developed in the mind general
notions or types, such as 'man,' 'house,' which are also true, because
[373] they are reproductions of sensations. Thirdly, when a sensation
occurs, it is brought into relation in the mind with one or more of
these types or notions; this is _predication_, true also in so far as
its elements are true, but capable of falsehood, as subsequent or
independent sensation may prove. If supported or not contradicted by
sensation, it is or may be true; if contradicted or not supported by
sensation, it is or may be false. The importance of this statement of
the canon of truth or falsehood will be understood when we come to the
physics of Epicurus, at the basis of which is his theory of Atoms,
which by their very nature can never be directly testified to by
sensation.
[374]
This and no more was what Epicurus had to teach on the subject of
logic. He had no theory of definition, or division, or ratiocination,
or refutation, or explication; on all these matters Epicurus was, as
Cicero said, 'naked and unarmed. ' Like most self-taught or ill-taught
teachers, Epicurus trusted to his dogmas; he knew nothing and cared
nothing for logical defence.
{216}
[375]
In his _Physics_ Epicurus did little more than reproduce the doctrine
of Democritus. He starts from the fundamental proposition that
'nothing can be produced from nothing, nothing can really perish. ' The
veritable existences in nature are the Atoms, which are too minute to
be discernible by the senses, but which nevertheless have a definite
size, and cannot further be divided. They have also a definite weight
and form, but no qualities other than these. There is an infinity of
empty space; this Epicurus proves on abstract grounds, practically
because a limit to space is unthinkable. It follows that there must be
an infinite number of the atoms, otherwise they would disperse
throughout the infinite void and disappear. There is a limit, however,
to the number of varieties among the atoms in respect of form, size,
and weight. The existence of the void space is proved by the fact that
motion takes place, to which he adds the argument that it necessarily
exists also to separate the atoms one from another. So far Epicurus
and Democritus are agreed.
To the Democritean doctrine, however, Epicurus made a curious addition,
to which he himself is said to have attached much importance. The
natural course (he said) for all bodies having weight is downwards in a
straight line. It struck Epicurus that this being so, the atoms would
all travel for ever in parallel lines, and those 'clashings and
interminglings' of {217} atoms out of which he conceived all visible
forms to be produced, could never occur. He therefore laid it down
that the atoms _deviated_ the least little bit from the straight, thus
making a world possible. And Epicurus considered that this supposed
deviation of the atoms not only made a world possible, but human
freedom also. In the deviation, without apparent cause, of the
descending atoms, the law of necessity was broken, and there was room
on the one hand for man's free will, on the other, for prayer to the
gods, and for hope of their interference on our behalf.
It may be worth while summarising the proofs which Lucretius in his
great poem, professedly following in the footsteps of Epicurus, adduces
for these various doctrines.
Epicurus' first dogma is, 'Nothing proceeds from nothing,' that is,
every material object has some matter previously existing exactly equal
in quantity to it, out of which it was made. To prove this Lucretius
appeals to the _order of nature_ as seen in the seasons, in the
phenomena of growth, in the fixed relations which exist between life
and its environment as regards what is helpful or harmful, in the
limitation of size and of faculties in the several species and the
fixity of the characteristics generally in each, in the possibilities
of cultivation and improvement of species within certain limits and
under certain conditions.
{218}
To prove his second position, 'Nothing passes into nothing,' Lucretius
points out to begin with that there is a law even in destruction;
_force_ is required to dissolve or dismember anything; were it
otherwise the world would have disappeared long ago. Moreover, he
points out that it is from the elements set free by decay and death
that new things are built up; there is no waste, no visible lessening
of the resources of nature, whether in the generations of living
things, in the flow of streams and the fulness of ocean, or in the
eternal stars. Were it not so, infinite time past would have exhausted
all the matter in the universe, but Nature is clearly immortal.
Moreover, there is a correspondence between the structure of bodies and
the forces necessary to their destruction. Finally, apparent
violations of the law, when carefully examined, only tend to confirm
it. The rains no doubt disappear, but it is that their particles may
reappear in the juices of the crops and the trees and the beasts which
feed on them.
Nor need we be surprised at the doctrine that the atoms, so
all-powerful in the formation of things, are themselves invisible. The
same is true of the forest-rending blasts, the 'viewless winds' which
lash the waves and overwhelm great fleets. There are odours also that
float unseen upon the air; there are heat, and cold, and voices. There
is the process of evaporation, whereby we know that the water has gone,
{219} yet cannot see its vapour departing. There is the gradual
invisible detrition of rings upon the finger, of stones hollowed out by
dripping water, of the ploughshare in the field, and the flags upon the
streets, and the brazen statues of the gods whose fingers men kiss as
they pass the gates, and the rocks that the salt sea-brine eats into
along the shore.
That there is Empty Space or Void he proves by all the varied motions
on land and sea which we behold; by the porosity even of hardest
things, as we see in dripping caves. There is the food also which
disperses itself throughout the body, in trees and cattle. Voices pass
through closed doors, frost can pierce even to the bones. Things equal
in size vary in weight; a lump of wool has more of void in it than a
lump of lead. So much for Lucretius.
For abstract theories on physics, except as an adjunct and support to
his moral conceptions, Epicurus seems to have had very little
inclination. He thus speaks of the visible universe or Cosmos. [373]
The Cosmos is a sort of skyey enclosure, which holds within it the
stars, the earth, and all visible things. It is cut off from the
infinite by a wall of division which may be either rare or dense, in
motion or at rest, round or three-cornered or any other form. That
there is such a wall of division is quite admissible, for no object of
which we have observation is without its limit. Were this wall of
division to {220} break, everything contained within it would tumble
out. We may conceive that there are an infinite number of such Cosmic
systems, with inter-cosmic intervals throughout the infinity of space.
He is very disinclined to assume that similar phenomena, _e. g. _
eclipses of the sun or moon, always have the same cause. The various
accidental implications and interminglings of the atoms may produce the
same effect in various ways. In fact Epicurus has the same impatience
of theoretical physics as of theoretical philosophy. He is a
'practical man. '
[378]
He is getting nearer his object when he comes to the nature of the
soul. The soul, like everything else, is composed of atoms, extremely
delicate and fine. It very much resembles the breath, with a mixture
of heat thrown in, sometimes coming nearer in nature to the first,
sometimes to the second. Owing to the delicacy of its composition it
is extremely subject to variation, as we see in its passions and
liability to emotion, its phases of thought and the varied experiences
without which we cannot live. It is, moreover, the chief cause of
sensation being possible for us. Not that it could of itself have had
sensation, without the enwrapping support of the rest of the structure.
The rest of the structure, in fact, having prepared this chief cause,
gets from it a share of what comes to it, but not a share of all which
the soul has.
The soul being of material composition equally {221} with the other
portions of the bodily structure, dies of course with it, that is, its
particles like the rest are dispersed, to form new bodies. There is
nothing dreadful therefore about death, for there is nothing left to
know or feel anything about it.
As regards the process of sensation, Epicurus, like Democritus,
conceived bodies as having a power of emitting from their surface
extremely delicate images of themselves. These are composed of very
fine atoms, but, in spite of their tenuity, they are able to maintain
for a considerable time their relative form and order, though liable
after a time to distortion. They fly with great celerity through the
void, and find their way through the windows of the senses to the soul,
which by its delicacy of nature is in sympathy with them, and
apprehends their form.
[379]
The gods are indestructible, being composed of the very finest and
subtlest atoms, so as to have not a body, but _as it were_ a body.
Their life is one of perfect blessedness and peace. They are in number
countless; but the conceptions of the vulgar are erroneous respecting
them. They are not subject to the passions of humanity. Anger and joy
are alike alien to their nature; for all such feelings imply a lack of
strength. They dwell apart in the inter-cosmic spaces. As Cicero
jestingly remarks: "Epicurus by way of a joke introduced his gods so
pure that you could see through them, {222} so delicate that the wind
could blow through them, having their dwelling-place outside between
two worlds, for fear of breakage. "
[380]
Coming finally to Epicurus' theory of Ethics, we find a general
resemblance to the doctrine of Democritus and Aristippus. The end of
life is pleasure or the absence of pain. He differs, however, from the
Cyrenaics in maintaining that not the pleasure of the moment is the
end, but pleasure throughout the whole of life, and that therefore we
ought in our conduct to have regard to the future. Further he denies
that pleasure exists only in activity, it exists equally in rest and
quiet; in short, he places more emphasis in his definition on the
absence of pain or disturbance, than on the presence of positive
pleasure. And thirdly, while the Cyrenaics maintained that bodily
pleasures and pains were the keenest, Epicurus claimed these
characteristics for the pleasures of the mind, which intensified the
present feeling by anticipations of the future and recollections of the
past. And thus the wise man might be happy, even on the rack. Better
indeed was it to be unlucky and wise, than lucky and foolish. In a
similar temper Epicurus on his death-bed wrote thus to a friend: "In
the enjoyment of blessedness and peace, on this the last day of my life
I write this letter to you. Strangury has supervened, and the
extremest agony of internal {223} pains, yet resisting these has been
my joy of soul, as I recalled the thoughts which I have had in the
past. "
[381]
We must note, however, that while mental pleasures counted for much
with the Epicureans, these mental pleasures consisted not in thought
for thought's sake in any form; they had nothing to do with
contemplation. They were essentially connected with bodily
experiences; they were the memory of past, the anticipation of future,
bodily pleasures. For it is to be remembered that thoughts were with
Epicurus only converted sensations, and sensations were bodily
processes. Thus every joy of the mind was conditioned by a bodily
experience preceding it. Or as Metrodorus, Epicurus' disciple, defined
the matter: "A man is happy when his body is in good case, and he has
good hope that it will continue so. " Directly or indirectly,
therefore, every happiness came back, in the rough phrase of Epicurus,
to one's belly at last.
[382]
This theory did not, however, reduce morality to bestial
self-indulgence. If profligate pleasures could be had free from mental
apprehensions of another world and of death and pain and disease in
this, and if they brought with them guidance as to their own proper
restriction, there would be no reason whatever to blame a man for
filling himself to the full of pleasures, which brought no pain or
sorrow, that is, {224} no evil, in their train. But (Epicurus argues)
this is far from being the case. Moreover there are many pleasures
keen enough at the time, which are by no means pleasant in the
remembering. And even when we have them they bring no enjoyment to the
highest parts of our nature. What those 'highest parts' are, and by
what standard their relative importance is determined, Epicurus does
not say. He probably meant those parts of our nature which had the
widest range in space and time, our faculties, namely, of memory and
hope, of conception, of sight and hearing.
Moreover there are distinctions among desires; some are both natural
and compulsory, such as thirst; some are natural but not compulsory, as
the desire for dainties; some are neither natural nor compulsory, such
as the desire for crowns or statues. The last of these the wise man
will contemn, the second he will admit, but so as to retain his
freedom. For independence of such things is desirable, not necessarily
that we may reduce our wants to a minimum, but in order that if we
cannot enjoy many things, we may be content with few. "For I am
convinced," Epicurus continues, "that they have the greatest enjoyment
of wealth, who are least dependent upon it for enjoyment. "
Thus if Epicurus did not absolutely teach simplicity of living, he
taught his disciples the necessity of being capable of such simplicity,
which they could {225} hardly be without practice. So that in reality
the doctrine of Epicurus came very near that of his opponents. As
Seneca the Stoic observed, "Pleasure with him comes to be something
very thin and pale. In fact that law which we declare for virtue, the
same law he lays down for pleasure. "
One of the chief and highest pleasures of life Epicurus found in the
possession of friends, who provided for each other not only help and
protection, but a lifelong joy. For the 'larger friendship' of the
civic community, Epicurus seems to have had only a very neutral regard.
Justice, he says, is a convention of interests, with a view of neither
hurting or being hurt. The wise man will have nothing to do with
politics, if he can help it.
In spite of much that may offend in the doctrines of Epicurus, there is
much at least in the man which is sympathetic and attractive. What one
observes, however, when we compare such a philosophy with that of Plato
or Aristotle, is first, a total loss of constructive imagination. The
parts of the 'philosophy,' if we are so to call it, of Epicurus hang
badly together, and neither the Canonics nor the Physics show any real
faculty of serious thinking at all. The Ethics has a wider scope and a
more real relation to experience if not to reason. But it can never
satisfy the deeper apprehension of mankind.
The truest and most permanently valid revelations {226} of life come
not to the many but to the one or the few, who communicate the truth to
the many, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, always at the cost
of antagonism and ridicule. A philosophy therefore which only
represents in theoretical form the average practice of the average man,
comes into the world still-born. It has nothing to say; its hearers
know it all, and the exact value of it all, already. And in their
heart of hearts, many even of those who have stooped to a lower ideal,
and sold their birthright of hopes beyond the passing hour, for a mess
of pottage in the form of material success and easy enjoyment, have a
lurking contempt for the preachers of what they practise; as many a
slaveholder in America probably had for the clerical defenders of the
'divine institution. '
There is a wasting sense of inadequacy in this 'hand-to-mouth' theory
of living, which compels most of those who follow it to tread softly
and speak moderately. They are generally a little weary if not
cynical; they don't think much of themselves or of their success; but
they prefer to hold on as they have begun, rather than launch out into
new courses, which they feel they have not the moral force to continue.
"May I die," said the Cynic, "rather than lead a life of pleasure. "
"May I die," says the Epicurean, "rather than make a fool of myself. "
The Idealist is to them, if not {227} a hypocrite, at least a
visionary,--if not a Tartuffe, at least a Don Quixote tilting at
windmills. Yet even for poor Don Quixote, with all his blindness and
his follies, the world retains a sneaking admiration. It can spare a
few or a good many of its worldly-wisdoms, rather than lose altogether
its enthusiasms and its dreams. And the one thing which saves
Epicureanism from utter extinction as a theory, is invariably the
idealism which like a 'purple patch' adorns it here and there. No man
and no theory is wholly self-centred. Pleasure is supplanted by
Utility, and Utility becomes the greatest Happiness of the greatest
Number, and so, as Horace says (_Ep. _ I. x. 24)--
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,
Nature (like Love) thrust out of the door, will come back by the
window; and the Idealism which is not allowed to make pain a pleasure,
is required at last to translate pleasure into pains.
{228}
CHAPTER XXII
THE STOICS
_Semitic admixture--Closed fist and open hand--'Tabula rasa'--Necessity
of evil--Hymn of Cleanthes--Things indifferent--Ideal and
real--Philosophy and humanity_
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy (born _circa_ 340
B. C. ), was a native of Citium in Cyprus. The city was Greek, but with
a large Phoenician admixture. And it is curious that in this last and
sternest phase of Greek thought, not the founder only, but a large
proportion of the successive leaders of the school, came from this and
other places having Semitic elements in them. Among these places
notable as nurseries of Stoicism was Tarsus in Cilicia, the birthplace
of St. Paul. The times of preparation were drawing to a close; and
through these men, with their Eastern intensity and capacities of
self-searching and self-abasement, the philosophy of Greece was linking
itself on to the wisdom of the Hebrews.
Zeno came to Athens to study philosophy, and for twenty years he was a
pupil first of Crates the Cynic, and then of other teachers. At length
he set up a school of his own in the celebrated _Stoa {229} Poecile_
(Painted Colonnade), so named because it was adorned with frescoes by
Polygnotus. There he taught for nearly sixty years, and voluntarily
ended his life when close on a century old. His life, as Antigonus,
King of Macedon, recorded on his tomb, was consistent with his
doctrine--abstemious, [386] frugal, laborious, dutiful. He was
succeeded by Cleanthes, a native of Assos in Asia [387] Minor. But the
great constructor of the Stoic doctrine, without whom, as his
contemporaries said, there had been no Stoic school at all, was
Chrysippus, a native of Soli or of Tarsus in Cilicia. He wrote at
enormous length, supporting his teachings by an immense erudition, and
culling liberally from the poets to illustrate and enforce his views.
Learned and pedantic, his works had no inherent attraction, and nothing
of them but fragments has been preserved. We know the Stoic doctrine
mainly from the testimony and criticisms of later times.
[389]
Like the Epicureans, Zeno and his successors made philosophy primarily
a search for the chief good, a doctrine of practice and morals. But
like them they were impelled to admit a logic and a physics, at least
by way of preliminary basis to their [390] ethics. The relations of
the three they illustrated by various images. Philosophy was like an
animal; logic was its bones and sinews, ethics its flesh, physics its
life or soul. Or again, philosophy was {230} an egg; logic was the
shell, ethics the white, physics, the yolk. Or again, it was a
fruitful field; logic was the hedge, ethics the crop, physics the soil.
the final end for man is by contemplation and 'daily dying to the world
of sense,' to come at last into the full inheritance in conscious
knowledge of that 'thought of God' which was latent from the first in
his soul, and of which in its fulness God Himself is eternally and
necessarily possessed.
{188}
[311]
This is really Aristotle's idea, only Plato expresses it rather under a
psychological, Aristotle under a vital, formula. God, Aristotle says,
is eternally and necessarily Entelechy, absolute realisation. _To us_,
that which is first _in time_ (the individual perception) is not first
in _essence_, or absolutely. What is first in essence or absolutely,
is the universal, that is, the form or idea, the datum of reason. And
this distinction between time and the absolute, between our individual
experience and the essential or ultimate reality, runs all through the
philosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the
'Reminiscence' of Plato.
This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms of
life, to education, to morals, to politics.
_Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every process
conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with
sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations
to that which is infinitely real,--the object, the real thing before
us,--which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the
other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind,
this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations to
another existence infinitely real,--the subject that thinks,--which
relations religion and morality and sentiment and love will never
exhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, if
we, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulated
information, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between the
two extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall find
both processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. That
is to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objects
known, by the operation of true thought and observation in the
discovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall be
increasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, by
the discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them.
Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutually
conditioning factors of the same organic function.
[316]
This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of
Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure,
and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than
Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually
contrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and the
organically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_.
But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards an
apprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favour
of mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind and
matter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical.
{190}
The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no
longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a crux
still. What is the meaning of this 'Ultimately'? Or, putting it in
Aristotle's formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality?
Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is no
unreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or in
germ _there_? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why this
groaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal 'By and by'
wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all the
clashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled and
satisfied? An illustration of Aristotle's attempt to answer this
question will be given later on (p. 201). That the answer is a failure
need not surprise us. If we even now 'see only as in a glass darkly'
on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing
'face to face. '
[326]
_Life_ is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown (above,
p. 186), but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. We
pass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants and
animals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we rise
still higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiar
function of man. Each is a _potentiality_ to that which is immediately
above it; in {191} other words, each contains in germ the possibilities
which are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there a
touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose running
through all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation for
something higher.
[339]
_Education_ is in like manner an entelechy. For what is the
_differentia_, the distinguishing character of the life of man?
Aristotle answers, the possession of reason. It is the action of
reason upon the desires that raises the life of man above the brutes.
This, observe, is not the restraining action of something wholly alien
to the desires, which is too often how Plato represents the matter.
This would be to lose the dynamic idea. The desires, as Aristotle
generally conceives them, are there in the animal life, prepared, so to
speak, to receive the organic perfection which reason alone can give
them. Intellect, on the other hand, is equally in need of the desires,
for thought without desire cannot supply motive. If intellect is
_logos_ or reason, desire is that which is fitted to be obedient to
reason.
It will be remembered that the question to which Plato addressed
himself in one of his earlier dialogues, already frequently referred
to, the _Meno_, was the teachableness of Virtue; in that dialogue he
comes to the conclusion that Virtue is teachable, but that there are
none capable of teaching it; for the {192} wise men of the time are
guided not by knowledge but by right opinion, or by a divine instinct
which is incommunicable. Plato is thus led to seek a machinery of
education, and it is with a view to this that he constructs his ideal
_Republic_. Aristotle took up this view of the state as educative of
the individual citizens, and brought it under the dynamic formula. In
the child reason is not actual; there is no rational law governing his
acts, these are the immediate result of the strongest impulse. Yet
only when a succession of virtuous acts has formed the virtuous habit
can a man be said to be truly good. How is this process to begin? The
answer is that the reason which is only latent or dynamic in the child
is actual or realised in the parent or teacher, or generally in the
community which educates the child. The law at first then is imposed
on the child from without, it has an appearance of unnaturalness, but
only an appearance. For the law is there in the child, prepared, as he
goes on in obedience, gradually to answer from within to the summons
from without, till along with the virtuous habit there emerges also
into the consciousness of the child, no longer a child but a man, the
apprehension of the law as his own truest nature.
These remarks on education are sufficient to show that in Morals also,
as conceived by Aristotle, there is a law of vital development. It may
be {193} sufficient by way of illustration to quote the introductory
sentences of Aristotle's _Ethics_, in which the question of the nature
of the chief good is, in his usual tentative manner, discussed: "If
there be any end of what we do which we desire for itself, while all
other ends are desired for it, that is, if we do not in every case have
some ulterior end (for if that were so we should go on to infinity, and
our efforts would be vain and useless), this ultimate end desired for
itself will clearly be the chief good and the ultimate best. Now since
every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is
for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims
at,--what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with
conduct? So far as the name goes all are pretty well agreed as to the
answer; gentle and simple alike declare it to be happiness, involving,
however, in their minds on the one hand well-living, on the other hand,
well-doing. When you ask them, however, to define this happiness more
exactly, you find that opinions are divided, and the many and the
philosophers have different answers.
"But if you ask a musician or a sculptor or any man of skill, any
person, in fact, who has some special work and activity, what the chief
good is for him, he will tell you that the chief good is in the work
well done. If then man has any special work or function, we may assume
that the chief good for man {194} will be in the well-doing of that
function. What now is man's special function? It cannot be mere
living, for that he has in common with plants, and we are seeking what
is peculiar to him. The mere life of nurture and growth must therefore
be put on one side. We come next to life as sensitive to pleasure and
pain. But this man shares with the horse, the ox, and other animals.
What remains is the life of action of a reasonable being. Now of
reason as it is in man there are two parts, one obeying, one possessing
and considering. And there are also two aspects in which the active or
moral life may be taken, one potential, one actual. Clearly for our
definition of the chief good we must take the moral life in its full
actual realisation, since this is superior to the other.
"If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good for
man consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of man
as man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to that
life, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then in
accordance with that excellence which is the best and the most rounded
or complete. We must add, however, the qualification, 'in a rounded
life. ' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day. And
so one day or some brief period of attainment is not sufficient to make
a man happy and blest. "
{195}
The close relation of this to the teaching of Socrates and Plato need
hardly be insisted on, or the way in which he correlates their ideas
with his own conception of an actualised perfection.
[340]
Aristotle then proceeds to a definition of the 'specific excellence' or
virtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how far
he has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. To
this end he distinguishes in man's nature three modes of existence:
first, _feelings_ such as joy, pain, anger; second, _potentialities_ or
capacities for such feelings; third, _habits_ which are built upon
these potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberation
superadded. He has no difficulty in establishing that the virtue of
man must be a habit. And the test of the excellence of that habit, as
of every other developed capacity, will be twofold; it will make the
worker good, it will cause him to produce good work.
So far Aristotle's analysis of virtue is quite on the lines of his
general philosophy. Here, however, he diverges into what seems at
first a curiously mechanical conception. Pointing out that in
everything quantitative there are two extremes conceivable, and a
_mean_ or average between them, he proceeds to define virtue as a mean
between two extremes, a mean, however, having relation to no mere
numerical standard, but having reference _to us_. In this last {196}
qualification he perhaps saves his definition from its mechanical turn,
while he leaves himself scope for much curious and ingenious
observation on the several virtues regarded as means between two
extremes. He further endeavours to save it by adding, that it is
"defined by reason, and as the wise man would define it. "
Reason then, as the impersonal ruler,--the wise man, as the
personification of reason,--this is the standard of virtue, and
therefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externality
in our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comes
only when the law without is also recognised and accepted as the law
within? The answer of Aristotle, as of his predecessors, is that this
will be brought about by wise training and virtuous surroundings, in
short, by the civic community being itself good and happy. Thus we get
another dynamic relation; for regarded as a member of the body politic
each individual becomes a potentiality along with all the other
members, conditioned by the state of which he and they are members,
brought gradually into harmony with the reason which is in the state,
and in the process realising not his own possibilities only, but those
of the community also, which exists only in and through its members.
Thus each and all, in so far as they realise their own well-being by
the perfect development of the virtuous {197} habit in their lives,
contribute _ipso facto_ to the supreme end of the state, which is the
perfect realisation of the whole possibilities of the total organism,
and consequently of every member of it.
[342]
The _State_ therefore is also an entelechy. For man is not made to
dwell alone. "There is first the fact of sex; then the fact of
children; third, the fact of variety of capacity, implying variety of
position, some having greater powers of wisdom and forethought, and
being therefore naturally the rulers; others having bodily powers
suitable for carrying out the rulers' designs, and being therefore
naturally subjects. Thus we have as a first or simplest community the
family, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which,
seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, rises
from mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. This higher
existence is as natural and necessary as any simpler form, being, in
fact, the end or final and necessary perfection of all such lower forms
of existence. Man therefore is by the natural necessity of his being a
'political animal,' and he who is not a citizen,--that is, by reason of
something peculiar in his nature and not by a mere accident,--must
either be deficient or something superhuman. And while man is the
noblest of animals when thus fully perfected in an ordered community,
on the other hand when deprived of law and justice he is the very
worst. {198} For there is nothing so dreadful as lawlessness armed.
And man is born with the arms of thought and special capacities or
excellences, which it is quite possible for him to use for other and
contrary purposes. And therefore man is the most wicked and cruel
animal living when he is vicious, the most lustful and the most
gluttonous. The justice which restrains all this is a civic quality;
and law is the orderly arrangement of the civic community" (Arist.
_Pol_. i. p. 2).
{199}
CHAPTER XX
ARISTOTLE (_concluded_)
_God and necessity--The vital principle--Soul as realisation--Function
and capacity--His method_
Throughout Aristotle's physical philosophy the [334] same conception
runs: "All animals in their fully developed state require two members
above all--one whereby to take in nourishment, the other whereby to get
rid of what is superfluous. For no animal can exist or grow without
nourishment. And there is a third member in them all half-way between
these, in which resides the principle of their life. This is the
heart, which all blood-possessing animals have. From it comes the
arterial system which Nature has made hollow to contain the liquid
blood. The situation of the heart is a commanding one, being near the
middle and rather above than below, and rather towards the front than
the back. For Nature ever establishes that which is most honourable in
the most honourable places, unless some supreme necessity overrules.
We see this most clearly in the case of man; but the same tendency for
the heart to occupy the centre is seen also in {200} other animals,
when we regard only that portion of their body which is essential, and
the limit of this is at the place where superfluities are removed. The
limbs are arranged differently in different animals, and are not among
the parts essential to life; consequently animals may live even if
these are removed. . . . Anaxagoras says that man is the wisest of
animals because he possesses hands. It would be more reasonable to say
that he possesses hands because he is the wisest. For the hands are an
instrument; and Nature always assigns an instrument to the one fitted
to use it, just as a sensible man would. For it is more reasonable to
give a flute to a flute-player than to confer on a man who has some
flutes the art of playing them. To that which is the greater and
higher she adds what is less important, and not _vice versa_.
Therefore to the creature fitted to acquire the largest number of
skills Nature assigned the hand, the instrument useful for the largest
number of purposes" (Arist. _De Part. An. _ iv. p. 10).
[332]
And in the macrocosm, the visible and invisible world about us, the
same conception holds: "The existence of God is an eternally perfect
entelechy, a life everlasting. In that, therefore, which belongs to
the divine there must be an eternally perfect movement. Therefore the
heavens, which are as it were the body of the Divine, are in form a
sphere, of {201} necessity ever in circular motion. Why then is not
this true of every portion of the universe? Because there must of
necessity be a point of rest of the circling body at the centre. Yet
the circling body cannot rest either as a whole or as regards any part
of it, otherwise its motion could not be eternal, which by nature it
is. Now that which is a violation of nature cannot be eternal, but the
violation is posterior to that which is in accordance with nature, and
thus the unnatural is a kind of displacement or degeneracy from the
natural, taking the form of a coming into being.
"Necessity then requires earth, as the element standing still at the
centre. Now if there must be earth, there must be fire. For if one of
two opposites is natural or necessary, the other must be necessary too,
each, in fact, implying the necessity of the other. For the two have
the same substantial basis, only the positive form is naturally prior
to the negative; for instance, warm is prior to cold. And in the same
way motionlessness and heaviness are predicated in virtue of the
absence of motion and lightness, _i. e. _ the latter are essentially
prior.
"Further, if there are fire and earth, there must also be the elements
which lie between these, each having an antithetic relation to each.
From this it follows that there must be a process of coming into being,
because none of these elements can be eternal, {202} but each affects,
and is affected by each, and they are mutually destructive. Now it is
not to be argued that anything which can be moved can be eternal,
except in the case of that which by its own nature has eternal motion.
And if coming into being must be predicated of these, then other forms
of change can also be predicated" (Arist. _De Coelo_, ii. p. 3).
This passage is worth quoting as illustrating, not only Aristotle's
conception of the divine entelechy, but also the ingenuity with which
he gave that appearance of logical completeness to the vague and
ill-digested scientific imaginations of the time, which remained so
evil an inheritance for thousands of years. It is to be observed, in
order to complete Aristotle's theory on this subject, that the four
elements, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, are all equally in a world which is
"contrary to nature," that is, the world of change, of coming into
being, and going out of being. Apart from these there is the element
of the Eternal Cosmos, which is "in accordance with nature," having its
own natural and eternal motion ever the same. This is the fifth or
divine element, the aetherial, by the schoolmen translated _Quinta
Essentia_, whence by a curious degradation we have our modern word
Quintessence, of that which is the finest and subtlest extract.
Still more clearly is the organic conception carried {203} out in
Aristotle's discussion of the Vital principle or Soul in the various
grades of living creatures and in man. It will be sufficient to quote
at length a chapter of Aristotle's treatise on the subject (_De Anima_,
ii. p. 1) in which this fundamental conception of Aristotle's
philosophy is very completely illustrated:--
"Now as to Substance we remark that this is one particular category
among existences, having three different aspects. First there is, so
to say, the raw material or Matter, having in it no definite character
or quality; next the Form or Specific character, in virtue of which the
thing becomes namable; and third, there is the Thing or Substance which
these two together constitute. The Matter is, in other words, the
_potentiality_ of the thing, the Form is the _realisation_ of that
potentiality. We may further have this realisation in two ways,
corresponding in character to the distinction between _knowledge_
(which we have but are not necessarily using) and actual
_contemplation_ or mental perception.
"Among substances as above defined those are most truly such which we
call _bodily objects_, and among these most especially objects which
are the products of nature, inasmuch as all other bodies must be
derived from them. Now among such natural objects some are possessed
of life, some are not; by _life_ I mean a process of spontaneous
nourishment, growth, and decay. Every natural {204} object having life
is a substance compounded, so to say, of several qualities. It is, in
fact, a bodily substance defined in virtue of its having life. Between
the living body thus defined and the Soul or Vital principle, a marked
distinction must be drawn. The body cannot be said to 'subsist in'
something else; rather must we say that it is the matter or substratum
in which something else subsists. And what we mean by the soul is just
this substance in the sense of the _form_ or specific character that
subsists in the natural body which is _potentially_ living. In other
words, the Soul is substance as _realisation_, only, however, of such a
body as has just been defined. Recalling now the distinction between
realisation as possessed knowledge and as actual contemplation, we
shall see that in its essential nature the Soul or Vital principle
corresponds rather with the first than with the second. For both sleep
and waking depend on the Soul or Life being there, but of these waking
only can be said to correspond with the active form of knowledge; sleep
is rather to be compared with the state of having without being
immediately conscious that we have. Now if we compare these two states
in respect of their priority of development in a particular person, we
shall see that the state of latent possession comes first. We may
therefore define the Soul or Vital principle as _The earliest {205}
realisation (entelechy) of a natural body having in it the potentiality
of life_.
"To every form of organic structure this definition applies, for even
the parts of plants are organs, although very simple ones; thus the
outer leaf is a protection to the pericarp, and the pericarp to the
fruit. Or, again, the roots are organs bearing an analogy to the mouth
in animals, both serving to take in food. Putting our definition,
then, into a form applicable to every stage of the Vital principle, we
shall say that _The Soul is the earliest realisation of a natural body
having organisation_.
"In this way we are relieved from the necessity of asking whether Soul
and body are one. We might as well ask whether the wax and the
impression are one, or, in short, whether the _matter_ of any object
and that whereof it is the matter or substratum are one. As has been
pointed out, unity and substantiality may have several significations,
but the truest sense of both is found in _realisation_.
"The general definition of the Soul or Vital principle above given may
be further explained as follows. The Soul is the _rational_ substance
(or function), that is to say, it is that which gives essential meaning
and reality to a body as knowable. Thus if an axe were a _natural_
instrument or organ, its rational substance would be found in its
realisation of what an axe means; this would be its _soul_. Apart
{206} from such realisation it would not be an axe at all, except in
name. Being, however, such as it is, the axe remains an axe
independently of any such realisation. For the statement that the Soul
is the _reason_ of a thing, that which gives it essential meaning and
reality, does not apply to such objects as an axe, but only to natural
bodies having power of spontaneous motion (including growth) and rest.
"Or we may illustrate what has been said by reference to the bodily
members. If the eye be a living creature, _sight_ will be its soul,
for this is the _rational_ substance (or function) of the eye. On the
other hand, the eye itself is the _material_ substance in which this
function subsists, which function being gone, the eye would no longer
be an eye, except in name, just as we can speak of the eye of a statue
or of a painted form. Now apply this illustration from a part of the
body to the whole. For as any one sense stands related to its organ,
so does the vital sense in general to the whole sensitive organism as
such, always remembering that we do not mean a dead body, but one which
really has in it potential life, as the seed or fruit has. Of course
there is a form of realisation to which the name applies in a specially
full sense, as when the axe is actually cutting, the eye actually
seeing, the man fully awake. But the Soul or Vital principle
corresponds rather with the _function_ of sight, or the _capacity_ for
cutting which {207} the axe has, the body, on the other hand, standing
in a relation of _potentiality_ to it. Now just as the eye may mean
both the actual organ or pupil, and also the function of sight, so also
the living creature means both the body and the soul. We cannot,
therefore, think of body apart from soul, or soul apart from body. If,
however, we regard the soul as composed of parts, we can see that the
realisation to which we give the name of soul is in some cases
essentially a realisation of certain parts of the body. We may,
however, conceive the soul as in other aspects separable, in so far as
the realisation cannot be connected with any bodily parts. Nay, we
cannot be certain whether the soul may not be the realisation or
perfection of the body as the sailor is of his boat. "
Observe that at the last Aristotle, though very tentatively, leaves an
opening for immortality, where, as in the case of man, there are
functions of the soul, such as philosophic contemplation, which cannot
be related to bodily conditions. He really was convinced that in man
there was a portion of that diviner aether which dwelt eternally in the
heavens, and was the ever-moving cause of all things. If there was in
man a _passive_ mind, which became all things, as all things through
sensation affected it, there was also, Aristotle argued, a _creative_
mind in man, which is above, and unmixed with, that which it
apprehends, {208} gives laws to this, is essentially prior to all
particular knowledge, is therefore eternal, not subject to the
conditions of time and space, consequently indestructible.
Finally, as a note on Aristotle's method, one may observe in this
passage, _first_, Aristotle's use of 'defining examples,' the wax, the
leaf and fruit, the axe, the eye, etc. ; _second_, his practice of
developing his distinctions gradually, Form and Matter in the abstract,
then in substances of every kind, then in natural bodies, then in
organic bodies of various grades, in separate organs, in the body as a
whole, and in the Soul as separable in man; and _thirdly_, his method
of approaching completeness in thought, by apparent contradictions or
qualifications, which aim at meeting the complexity of nature by an
equally organised complexity of analysis. To this let us simply add,
by way of final characterisation, that in the preceding pages we have
given but the merest fragment here and there of Aristotle's vast
accomplishment. So wide is the range of his ken, so minute his
observation, so subtle and complicated and allusive his illustrations,
that it is doubtful if any student of his, through all the centuries in
which he has influenced the world, ever found life long enough to
fairly and fully grasp him.
Meanwhile he retains his grasp upon us.
Form and matter, final and efficient causes, potential and actual
existences, {209} substance, accident, difference, genus, species,
predication, syllogism, deduction, induction, analogy, and multitudes
of other joints in the machinery of thought for all time, were forged
for us in the workshop of Aristotle.
{210}
CHAPTER XXI
THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS
_Greek decay--The praises of Lucretius--Canonics--Physics--The proofs
of Lucretius--The atomic soul--Mental pleasures--Natural
pleasures--Lower philosophy and higher_
Philosophy, equally complete, equally perfect in all its parts, had its
final word in Plato and Aristotle; on the great lines of universal
knowledge no further really original structures were destined to be
raised by Greek hands. We have seen a parallelism between Greek
philosophy and Greek politics in their earlier phases (see above, p.
82); the same parallelism continues to the end. Greece broke the bonds
of her intense but narrow civic life and civic thought, and spread
herself out over the world in a universal monarchy and a cosmopolitan
philosophy; but with this widening of the area of her influence
reaction came and disruption and decay; an immense stimulus was given
on the one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thought
and knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was
'living Greece no more,' her politics sank to the level of a dreary
farce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, to
an Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust of
death,' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow and
stern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy,
faded as the life of Greece decayed.
[356]
The first phase of the change, _Scepticism_, or Pyrrhonism, as it was
named from its first teacher, need not detain us long. Pyrrho was
priest of Elis; in earlier life he accompanied Alexander the Great as
far as India, and is said to have become acquainted with certain of the
philosophic sects in that country. In his sceptical doctrine he had,
like his predecessors, a school with its succession of teachers; but
the [358] world has remembered little more of him or them than two
phrases 'suspense of judgment'--this for the intellectual side of
philosophy; 'impassibility'--this for the moral. The doctrine is a
negation of doctrine, the idle dream of idle men; even Pyrrho once,
when surprised in some sudden access of fear, confessed that it was
hard for him 'to get rid of the man in himself. ' Vigorous men and
growing nations are never agnostic. They decline to rest in mere
suspense; they are extremely the opposite of impassive; they believe
earnestly, they feel strongly.
[365]
A more interesting, because more positive and constructive, personality
was that of Epicurus. This philosopher was born at Samos, in the year
341 B. C. , of Athenian parents. He came to Athens in his eighteenth
year. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle at
the Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one nor the other. After
some wanderings he returned to Athens and set up on his [366] own
account as a teacher of philosophy. He made it a matter of boasting
that he was a self-taught philosopher; and Cicero (_De Nat. Deor. _ i.
26) sarcastically remarks that one could have guessed as much, even if
Epicurus had not stated it himself; as one might of the proprietor of
an ugly house, who should boast that he had employed no architect. The
style of Epicurus was, in fact, plain and unadorned, but he seems all
the same to have been able to say what he meant; and few if any writers
ancient or modern have ever had so splendid a literary tribute, as
Epicurus had from the great Roman poet Lucretius, his follower and
expositor.
"Glory of the Greek race," he says, "who first hadst power to raise
high so bright a light in the midst of darkness so profound, shedding a
beam on all the interests of life, thee do I follow, and in the
markings of thy track do I set my footsteps now. Not that I desire to
rival thee, but rather for love of thee would fain call myself thy
disciple. For how shall the swallow rival the swan, or what speed may
the kid with its tottering limbs attain, compared with the brave might
of the scampering steed? Thou; O father, art the discoverer of nature,
thou suppliest to us a father's teachings, and from thy pages, {213}
illustrious one, even as bees sip all manner of sweets along the
flowery glades, we in like manner devour all thy golden words, golden
and right worthy to live for ever. For soon as thy philosophy, birth
of thy godlike mind, hath begun to declare the origin of things,
straightway the terrors of the soul are scattered, earth's walls are
broken apart, and through all the void I see nature in the working. I
behold the gods in manifestation of their power, I discern their
blissful seats, which never winds assail nor rain-clouds sprinkle with
their showers, nor snow falling white with hoary frost doth buffet, but
cloudless aether ever wraps them round, beaming in broad diffusion of
glorious light. For nature supplies their every want nor aught impairs
their peace of soul. But nowhere do I see any regions of hellish
darkness, nor does the earth impose a barrier to our sight of what is
done in the void beneath our feet. Wherefore a holy ecstasy and thrill
of awe possess me, while thus by thy power the secrets of nature are
disclosed to view" (Lucret. _De Nat. Rer. _ iii, 1-30).
[367]
This devotion to the memory of Epicurus on the part of Lucretius was
paralleled by the love felt for him by his contemporaries; he had
crowds of followers who loved him and who were proud to learn his words
by heart. He seems indeed to have been a man of exceptional kindness
and amiability, and the 'garden of Epicurus' became proverbial as {214}
a place of temperate pleasures and wise delights. Personally we may
take it that Epicurus was a man of simple tastes and moderate desires;
and indeed throughout its history Epicureanism as a rule of conduct has
generally been associated with the finer forms of enjoyment, rather
than the more sensual. The 'sensual sty' is a nickname, not a
description.
[369]
Philosophy Epicurus defined as a process of thought and reasoning
tending to the realisation of happiness. Arts or sciences which had no
such practical end he contemned; and, as will be observed in Lucretius'
praises of him above, even physics had but one purpose or interest, to
free the soul from [370] terrors of the unseen. Thus philosophy was
mainly concerned with conduct, _i. e. _ with Ethics, but secondarily and
negatively with Physics, to which was appended what Epicurus called
Canonics, or the science of testing, that is, a kind of logic.
[371]
Beginning with _Canonics_, as the first part of philosophy in order of
time, from the point of view of human knowledge, Epicurus laid it down
that the only source of knowledge was the senses, which gave us an
immediate and true perception of that which actually came into contact
with them. Even the visions of madmen or of dreamers he considered
were in themselves true, being produced by a physical cause of some
kind, of which these visions were the direct and immediate report.
Falsity came in with {215} people's interpretations or imaginations
with respect to these sensations.
Sensations leave a trace in the memory, and out of similarities or
analogies among sensations there are developed in the mind general
notions or types, such as 'man,' 'house,' which are also true, because
[373] they are reproductions of sensations. Thirdly, when a sensation
occurs, it is brought into relation in the mind with one or more of
these types or notions; this is _predication_, true also in so far as
its elements are true, but capable of falsehood, as subsequent or
independent sensation may prove. If supported or not contradicted by
sensation, it is or may be true; if contradicted or not supported by
sensation, it is or may be false. The importance of this statement of
the canon of truth or falsehood will be understood when we come to the
physics of Epicurus, at the basis of which is his theory of Atoms,
which by their very nature can never be directly testified to by
sensation.
[374]
This and no more was what Epicurus had to teach on the subject of
logic. He had no theory of definition, or division, or ratiocination,
or refutation, or explication; on all these matters Epicurus was, as
Cicero said, 'naked and unarmed. ' Like most self-taught or ill-taught
teachers, Epicurus trusted to his dogmas; he knew nothing and cared
nothing for logical defence.
{216}
[375]
In his _Physics_ Epicurus did little more than reproduce the doctrine
of Democritus. He starts from the fundamental proposition that
'nothing can be produced from nothing, nothing can really perish. ' The
veritable existences in nature are the Atoms, which are too minute to
be discernible by the senses, but which nevertheless have a definite
size, and cannot further be divided. They have also a definite weight
and form, but no qualities other than these. There is an infinity of
empty space; this Epicurus proves on abstract grounds, practically
because a limit to space is unthinkable. It follows that there must be
an infinite number of the atoms, otherwise they would disperse
throughout the infinite void and disappear. There is a limit, however,
to the number of varieties among the atoms in respect of form, size,
and weight. The existence of the void space is proved by the fact that
motion takes place, to which he adds the argument that it necessarily
exists also to separate the atoms one from another. So far Epicurus
and Democritus are agreed.
To the Democritean doctrine, however, Epicurus made a curious addition,
to which he himself is said to have attached much importance. The
natural course (he said) for all bodies having weight is downwards in a
straight line. It struck Epicurus that this being so, the atoms would
all travel for ever in parallel lines, and those 'clashings and
interminglings' of {217} atoms out of which he conceived all visible
forms to be produced, could never occur. He therefore laid it down
that the atoms _deviated_ the least little bit from the straight, thus
making a world possible. And Epicurus considered that this supposed
deviation of the atoms not only made a world possible, but human
freedom also. In the deviation, without apparent cause, of the
descending atoms, the law of necessity was broken, and there was room
on the one hand for man's free will, on the other, for prayer to the
gods, and for hope of their interference on our behalf.
It may be worth while summarising the proofs which Lucretius in his
great poem, professedly following in the footsteps of Epicurus, adduces
for these various doctrines.
Epicurus' first dogma is, 'Nothing proceeds from nothing,' that is,
every material object has some matter previously existing exactly equal
in quantity to it, out of which it was made. To prove this Lucretius
appeals to the _order of nature_ as seen in the seasons, in the
phenomena of growth, in the fixed relations which exist between life
and its environment as regards what is helpful or harmful, in the
limitation of size and of faculties in the several species and the
fixity of the characteristics generally in each, in the possibilities
of cultivation and improvement of species within certain limits and
under certain conditions.
{218}
To prove his second position, 'Nothing passes into nothing,' Lucretius
points out to begin with that there is a law even in destruction;
_force_ is required to dissolve or dismember anything; were it
otherwise the world would have disappeared long ago. Moreover, he
points out that it is from the elements set free by decay and death
that new things are built up; there is no waste, no visible lessening
of the resources of nature, whether in the generations of living
things, in the flow of streams and the fulness of ocean, or in the
eternal stars. Were it not so, infinite time past would have exhausted
all the matter in the universe, but Nature is clearly immortal.
Moreover, there is a correspondence between the structure of bodies and
the forces necessary to their destruction. Finally, apparent
violations of the law, when carefully examined, only tend to confirm
it. The rains no doubt disappear, but it is that their particles may
reappear in the juices of the crops and the trees and the beasts which
feed on them.
Nor need we be surprised at the doctrine that the atoms, so
all-powerful in the formation of things, are themselves invisible. The
same is true of the forest-rending blasts, the 'viewless winds' which
lash the waves and overwhelm great fleets. There are odours also that
float unseen upon the air; there are heat, and cold, and voices. There
is the process of evaporation, whereby we know that the water has gone,
{219} yet cannot see its vapour departing. There is the gradual
invisible detrition of rings upon the finger, of stones hollowed out by
dripping water, of the ploughshare in the field, and the flags upon the
streets, and the brazen statues of the gods whose fingers men kiss as
they pass the gates, and the rocks that the salt sea-brine eats into
along the shore.
That there is Empty Space or Void he proves by all the varied motions
on land and sea which we behold; by the porosity even of hardest
things, as we see in dripping caves. There is the food also which
disperses itself throughout the body, in trees and cattle. Voices pass
through closed doors, frost can pierce even to the bones. Things equal
in size vary in weight; a lump of wool has more of void in it than a
lump of lead. So much for Lucretius.
For abstract theories on physics, except as an adjunct and support to
his moral conceptions, Epicurus seems to have had very little
inclination. He thus speaks of the visible universe or Cosmos. [373]
The Cosmos is a sort of skyey enclosure, which holds within it the
stars, the earth, and all visible things. It is cut off from the
infinite by a wall of division which may be either rare or dense, in
motion or at rest, round or three-cornered or any other form. That
there is such a wall of division is quite admissible, for no object of
which we have observation is without its limit. Were this wall of
division to {220} break, everything contained within it would tumble
out. We may conceive that there are an infinite number of such Cosmic
systems, with inter-cosmic intervals throughout the infinity of space.
He is very disinclined to assume that similar phenomena, _e. g. _
eclipses of the sun or moon, always have the same cause. The various
accidental implications and interminglings of the atoms may produce the
same effect in various ways. In fact Epicurus has the same impatience
of theoretical physics as of theoretical philosophy. He is a
'practical man. '
[378]
He is getting nearer his object when he comes to the nature of the
soul. The soul, like everything else, is composed of atoms, extremely
delicate and fine. It very much resembles the breath, with a mixture
of heat thrown in, sometimes coming nearer in nature to the first,
sometimes to the second. Owing to the delicacy of its composition it
is extremely subject to variation, as we see in its passions and
liability to emotion, its phases of thought and the varied experiences
without which we cannot live. It is, moreover, the chief cause of
sensation being possible for us. Not that it could of itself have had
sensation, without the enwrapping support of the rest of the structure.
The rest of the structure, in fact, having prepared this chief cause,
gets from it a share of what comes to it, but not a share of all which
the soul has.
The soul being of material composition equally {221} with the other
portions of the bodily structure, dies of course with it, that is, its
particles like the rest are dispersed, to form new bodies. There is
nothing dreadful therefore about death, for there is nothing left to
know or feel anything about it.
As regards the process of sensation, Epicurus, like Democritus,
conceived bodies as having a power of emitting from their surface
extremely delicate images of themselves. These are composed of very
fine atoms, but, in spite of their tenuity, they are able to maintain
for a considerable time their relative form and order, though liable
after a time to distortion. They fly with great celerity through the
void, and find their way through the windows of the senses to the soul,
which by its delicacy of nature is in sympathy with them, and
apprehends their form.
[379]
The gods are indestructible, being composed of the very finest and
subtlest atoms, so as to have not a body, but _as it were_ a body.
Their life is one of perfect blessedness and peace. They are in number
countless; but the conceptions of the vulgar are erroneous respecting
them. They are not subject to the passions of humanity. Anger and joy
are alike alien to their nature; for all such feelings imply a lack of
strength. They dwell apart in the inter-cosmic spaces. As Cicero
jestingly remarks: "Epicurus by way of a joke introduced his gods so
pure that you could see through them, {222} so delicate that the wind
could blow through them, having their dwelling-place outside between
two worlds, for fear of breakage. "
[380]
Coming finally to Epicurus' theory of Ethics, we find a general
resemblance to the doctrine of Democritus and Aristippus. The end of
life is pleasure or the absence of pain. He differs, however, from the
Cyrenaics in maintaining that not the pleasure of the moment is the
end, but pleasure throughout the whole of life, and that therefore we
ought in our conduct to have regard to the future. Further he denies
that pleasure exists only in activity, it exists equally in rest and
quiet; in short, he places more emphasis in his definition on the
absence of pain or disturbance, than on the presence of positive
pleasure. And thirdly, while the Cyrenaics maintained that bodily
pleasures and pains were the keenest, Epicurus claimed these
characteristics for the pleasures of the mind, which intensified the
present feeling by anticipations of the future and recollections of the
past. And thus the wise man might be happy, even on the rack. Better
indeed was it to be unlucky and wise, than lucky and foolish. In a
similar temper Epicurus on his death-bed wrote thus to a friend: "In
the enjoyment of blessedness and peace, on this the last day of my life
I write this letter to you. Strangury has supervened, and the
extremest agony of internal {223} pains, yet resisting these has been
my joy of soul, as I recalled the thoughts which I have had in the
past. "
[381]
We must note, however, that while mental pleasures counted for much
with the Epicureans, these mental pleasures consisted not in thought
for thought's sake in any form; they had nothing to do with
contemplation. They were essentially connected with bodily
experiences; they were the memory of past, the anticipation of future,
bodily pleasures. For it is to be remembered that thoughts were with
Epicurus only converted sensations, and sensations were bodily
processes. Thus every joy of the mind was conditioned by a bodily
experience preceding it. Or as Metrodorus, Epicurus' disciple, defined
the matter: "A man is happy when his body is in good case, and he has
good hope that it will continue so. " Directly or indirectly,
therefore, every happiness came back, in the rough phrase of Epicurus,
to one's belly at last.
[382]
This theory did not, however, reduce morality to bestial
self-indulgence. If profligate pleasures could be had free from mental
apprehensions of another world and of death and pain and disease in
this, and if they brought with them guidance as to their own proper
restriction, there would be no reason whatever to blame a man for
filling himself to the full of pleasures, which brought no pain or
sorrow, that is, {224} no evil, in their train. But (Epicurus argues)
this is far from being the case. Moreover there are many pleasures
keen enough at the time, which are by no means pleasant in the
remembering. And even when we have them they bring no enjoyment to the
highest parts of our nature. What those 'highest parts' are, and by
what standard their relative importance is determined, Epicurus does
not say. He probably meant those parts of our nature which had the
widest range in space and time, our faculties, namely, of memory and
hope, of conception, of sight and hearing.
Moreover there are distinctions among desires; some are both natural
and compulsory, such as thirst; some are natural but not compulsory, as
the desire for dainties; some are neither natural nor compulsory, such
as the desire for crowns or statues. The last of these the wise man
will contemn, the second he will admit, but so as to retain his
freedom. For independence of such things is desirable, not necessarily
that we may reduce our wants to a minimum, but in order that if we
cannot enjoy many things, we may be content with few. "For I am
convinced," Epicurus continues, "that they have the greatest enjoyment
of wealth, who are least dependent upon it for enjoyment. "
Thus if Epicurus did not absolutely teach simplicity of living, he
taught his disciples the necessity of being capable of such simplicity,
which they could {225} hardly be without practice. So that in reality
the doctrine of Epicurus came very near that of his opponents. As
Seneca the Stoic observed, "Pleasure with him comes to be something
very thin and pale. In fact that law which we declare for virtue, the
same law he lays down for pleasure. "
One of the chief and highest pleasures of life Epicurus found in the
possession of friends, who provided for each other not only help and
protection, but a lifelong joy. For the 'larger friendship' of the
civic community, Epicurus seems to have had only a very neutral regard.
Justice, he says, is a convention of interests, with a view of neither
hurting or being hurt. The wise man will have nothing to do with
politics, if he can help it.
In spite of much that may offend in the doctrines of Epicurus, there is
much at least in the man which is sympathetic and attractive. What one
observes, however, when we compare such a philosophy with that of Plato
or Aristotle, is first, a total loss of constructive imagination. The
parts of the 'philosophy,' if we are so to call it, of Epicurus hang
badly together, and neither the Canonics nor the Physics show any real
faculty of serious thinking at all. The Ethics has a wider scope and a
more real relation to experience if not to reason. But it can never
satisfy the deeper apprehension of mankind.
The truest and most permanently valid revelations {226} of life come
not to the many but to the one or the few, who communicate the truth to
the many, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, always at the cost
of antagonism and ridicule. A philosophy therefore which only
represents in theoretical form the average practice of the average man,
comes into the world still-born. It has nothing to say; its hearers
know it all, and the exact value of it all, already. And in their
heart of hearts, many even of those who have stooped to a lower ideal,
and sold their birthright of hopes beyond the passing hour, for a mess
of pottage in the form of material success and easy enjoyment, have a
lurking contempt for the preachers of what they practise; as many a
slaveholder in America probably had for the clerical defenders of the
'divine institution. '
There is a wasting sense of inadequacy in this 'hand-to-mouth' theory
of living, which compels most of those who follow it to tread softly
and speak moderately. They are generally a little weary if not
cynical; they don't think much of themselves or of their success; but
they prefer to hold on as they have begun, rather than launch out into
new courses, which they feel they have not the moral force to continue.
"May I die," said the Cynic, "rather than lead a life of pleasure. "
"May I die," says the Epicurean, "rather than make a fool of myself. "
The Idealist is to them, if not {227} a hypocrite, at least a
visionary,--if not a Tartuffe, at least a Don Quixote tilting at
windmills. Yet even for poor Don Quixote, with all his blindness and
his follies, the world retains a sneaking admiration. It can spare a
few or a good many of its worldly-wisdoms, rather than lose altogether
its enthusiasms and its dreams. And the one thing which saves
Epicureanism from utter extinction as a theory, is invariably the
idealism which like a 'purple patch' adorns it here and there. No man
and no theory is wholly self-centred. Pleasure is supplanted by
Utility, and Utility becomes the greatest Happiness of the greatest
Number, and so, as Horace says (_Ep. _ I. x. 24)--
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,
Nature (like Love) thrust out of the door, will come back by the
window; and the Idealism which is not allowed to make pain a pleasure,
is required at last to translate pleasure into pains.
{228}
CHAPTER XXII
THE STOICS
_Semitic admixture--Closed fist and open hand--'Tabula rasa'--Necessity
of evil--Hymn of Cleanthes--Things indifferent--Ideal and
real--Philosophy and humanity_
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy (born _circa_ 340
B. C. ), was a native of Citium in Cyprus. The city was Greek, but with
a large Phoenician admixture. And it is curious that in this last and
sternest phase of Greek thought, not the founder only, but a large
proportion of the successive leaders of the school, came from this and
other places having Semitic elements in them. Among these places
notable as nurseries of Stoicism was Tarsus in Cilicia, the birthplace
of St. Paul. The times of preparation were drawing to a close; and
through these men, with their Eastern intensity and capacities of
self-searching and self-abasement, the philosophy of Greece was linking
itself on to the wisdom of the Hebrews.
Zeno came to Athens to study philosophy, and for twenty years he was a
pupil first of Crates the Cynic, and then of other teachers. At length
he set up a school of his own in the celebrated _Stoa {229} Poecile_
(Painted Colonnade), so named because it was adorned with frescoes by
Polygnotus. There he taught for nearly sixty years, and voluntarily
ended his life when close on a century old. His life, as Antigonus,
King of Macedon, recorded on his tomb, was consistent with his
doctrine--abstemious, [386] frugal, laborious, dutiful. He was
succeeded by Cleanthes, a native of Assos in Asia [387] Minor. But the
great constructor of the Stoic doctrine, without whom, as his
contemporaries said, there had been no Stoic school at all, was
Chrysippus, a native of Soli or of Tarsus in Cilicia. He wrote at
enormous length, supporting his teachings by an immense erudition, and
culling liberally from the poets to illustrate and enforce his views.
Learned and pedantic, his works had no inherent attraction, and nothing
of them but fragments has been preserved. We know the Stoic doctrine
mainly from the testimony and criticisms of later times.
[389]
Like the Epicureans, Zeno and his successors made philosophy primarily
a search for the chief good, a doctrine of practice and morals. But
like them they were impelled to admit a logic and a physics, at least
by way of preliminary basis to their [390] ethics. The relations of
the three they illustrated by various images. Philosophy was like an
animal; logic was its bones and sinews, ethics its flesh, physics its
life or soul. Or again, philosophy was {230} an egg; logic was the
shell, ethics the white, physics, the yolk. Or again, it was a
fruitful field; logic was the hedge, ethics the crop, physics the soil.
