Books: The Old Roman World

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[Sidenote: The mission of Socrates.]

[Sidenote: The great aim of the Socratic method.]

So far as he was concerned in the development of Grecian philosophy
proper, he was probably inferior to some of his disciples. Yet he gave a
turning-point to a new period, when he awakened the _idea_ of
knowledge, and was the founder of the theory of scientific knowledge,
since he separated the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the
precursor of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics
explain metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world.
And he only reasoned from what was assumed to be true and invariable. He
was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. [Footnote:
Arist., _Metaph_., xiii. 4.] He gave a new method, and used great
precision of language. Although he employed induction, it was his aim to
withdraw the mind from the contemplation of nature, and to fix it on its
own phenomena,--to look inward rather than outward, as carried out so
admirably by Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention
to external nature; he gave up speculations about material phenomena,
and directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And, as he
considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self, in
other words, "that the proper study of mankind is man," he was the first
to proclaim. He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly interested
the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics; but he discussed moral
questions, such as, what is piety? what is the just and the unjust? what
is temperance? what is courage? what is the character fit for a
citizen?--and such like ethical points. And he discussed them in a
peculiar manner, in a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance,
he put perhaps this question--What is law? It was familiar and was
answered off-hand. Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh
questions applicable to specific cases, to which the respondent was
compelled to give an answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing
that the _definition_ was too narrow or too wide, or defective in
some essential condition. [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68.] The
respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
dialectic method, and the logical distribution of particulars into
species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
comprehend, but does not. He broke up the one into many by his
analytical string of questions, which was a novel mode of argument. This
was the method which he invented, and by which he separated _real_
knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to precision in
the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the false, without
aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed ignorance, and
put himself in the attitude of a learner, while he made by his cross-
examinations the man from whom he apparently sought knowledge to be as
ignorant as himself, or, still worse, absolutely ridiculous. Thus he
pulled away all the foundations on which a false science had been
erected, and indicated the way by which alone the true could be
established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way that
science could be advanced, without founding any school or advocating any
system; but he was unlike Bacon in the object of his inquiries. Bacon
was disgusted with ineffective _logical_ speculations, and Socrates
with ineffective _physical_ researches. [Footnote: Archer Butler,
s. i. 1. vii.] He never suffered a general term to remain undetermined,
but applied it at once to particulars, and by questions the purport of
which was not comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by
exciting scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the
analytical faculties, which constitute his originality. "The Socratic
dialectics, clearing away," says Grote, [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch.
68; Maurice, _Ancient Philosophy_, p. 119.] "from the mind its mist
of fancied knowledge, and, laying bare the real ignorance, produced an
immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo; the newly created
consciousness of ignorance was humiliating and painful, yet it was
combined with a yearning after truth never before experienced. Such
intellectual quickening, which could never commence until the mind had
been disabused of its original illusion of false knowledge, was
considered by Socrates not merely as the index and precursor, but as the
indisputable condition of future progress." It was the aim of Socrates
to force the seekers after truth into the path of inductive
generalization, whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed.
He thus improved the method of speculative minds, and struck out from
other minds that fire which sets light to original thought and
stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and intellectual
missionary preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles of the
succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission, and he
declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For more than
thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality, until he
arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to death, for
his teachings had undermined the popular system which the Sophists
accepted and practiced. He probably might have been acquitted if he had
chosen it, but he did not wish to live after his powers of usefulness
had passed away. He opened to science new matter and a new method, as a
basis for future philosophical systems. He was a "colloquial
dialectician," such as this world has never seen, and may never see
again. He was a skeptic respecting physics, but as far as man and
society are concerned, he thought that every man might and ought to know
what justice, temperance, courage, piety, patriotism, etc., were, and
unless he did know what they were he would not be just, temperate, etc.
He denied that men can know that on which they have bestowed no pains,
or practice what they do not know. "The method of Socrates survives
still in some of the dialogues of Plato, and is a process of eternal
value and universal application. There is no man whose notions have not
been first got together by spontaneous, unartificial associations,
resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together disparities or
inconsistencies, and having in his mind old and familiar phrases and
oracular propositions of which he has never rendered to himself an
account; and there is no man who has not found it a necessary branch of
self-education to break up, analyze, and reconstruct these ancient
mental compounds." [Footnote: Grote has written very ably, and at
unusual length, respecting Socrates and his philosophy. Thirlwall has
also reviewed Hegel and other German authors on Socrates' condemnation.
Ritter has a full chapter of great value. See Donaldson's continuation
of Muller. The original sources of knowledge respecting Socrates are
found chiefly in Plato and Xenophon. Cicero may be consulted in
his _Tusculan Questions_.] The services which he rendered to
philosophy, as enumerated by Tennemann, [Footnote: Tennemann;
Schliermacker, _Essay on the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher_,
translated by Bishop Thirlwall, and reprinted in Dr. Wigger's _Life of
Socrates_.] "are twofold,--negative and positive: _Negative_,
inasmuch as he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative
reasoning on substantial grounds, and had the wisdom to acknowledge
ignorance when necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately
what is capable, and what is not, of being accurately known.
_Positive_, inasmuch as he examined with great ability the ground
directly submitted to our understanding, and of which man is the
centre."

Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
did not bequeath a system of doctrines; he rather attempted to awaken
inquiry, for which his method was admirably adapted. He had his
admirers, who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato, all
of whom were disciples of Socrates, and founders of schools. Some only
partially adopted his method, and all differed from each other. Nor can
it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
the Cyreniac School, was a sort of Epicurean, teaching that pleasure was
the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was both
virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but despising
speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute the opinions
of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and cold, like the
ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful man, who affected
to despise all pleasures, like his own disciple Diogenes, who lived in a
tub, and carried on a war between the mind and body--brutal, scornful,
proud. To men who maintained that science was impossible, philosophy is
not much indebted, although they were disciples of Socrates. Euclid
merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and Phaedo speculated
on the oneness of the good.

[Sidenote: Plato.]

[Sidenote: His education and travels.]

[Sidenote: He adopts the Socratic method.]

It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents B.C. 429, the year
that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War, and
the most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
studying poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with philosophy. He
was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he remained ten
years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He then went on his
travels, visiting every thing worth seeing in his day, especially in
Egypt. When he returned, he commenced to teach the doctrines of his
master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near Athens,
planted with lofty plane-trees, and adorned with temples and statues.
This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
philosophy. And it is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of
his master. And surely no man ever made a richer contribution. He may
not have had the originality or breadth of Socrates, but he was more
profound. He was preeminently a great thinker--a great logician--skilled
in dialectics, and his "Dialogues" are such exercises of dialectical
method that the ancients were divided whether he was a skeptic or a
dogmatist. He adopted the Socratic method, and enlarged it. "Socrates
relied on inductive reasoning, and on definitions, as the two principles
of investigation. Definitions form the basis of all philosophy. To know
a thing, you must know what it is not. Plato added a more efficient
process of analysis and synthesis, of generalization and
classification." [Footnote: Lewes, _Biog. Hist. of Philos_.]
"Analysis," continues the same author, "as insisted on by Plato, is the
decomposition of the whole into its separate parts--is seeing the
_one_ in many. Definitions were to Plato, what general or abstract
ideas were to later metaphysicians. The individual thing was transitory;
the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the latter could
philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper definitions, had
no conception of the classification of those definitions which must
constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction of this process,
shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into man and society,
which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of dialectics." Plato was
also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the perfection of his
style, which is characterized by great harmony and rhythm, as well as
the variety of elegant figures. [Footnote: See Donaldson's quotations,
_Hist. Lit. of Greece_, vol. ii. p. 257.]

[Sidenote: His doctrines.]

[Sidenote: The end of science is the contemplation of truth.]

Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called
_Ideas_; and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the
subject matter of dialectics. He was a Realist, that is, he maintained
that every general term, or abstract idea, has a real and independent
existence. Here he probably was indebted to Pythagoras, for Plato was a
master of the whole realm of philosophical speculation; but his
conception of _ideas_ is a great advance on the conception of
_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of
sense, there was the world of eternal truth, and that there were certain
principles concerning which there could be no dispute. The soul
apprehends the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial
world that we are to find the realm of ideas. Now God is the supreme
idea. To know God should be the great aim of life. We know him by the
desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels for the
divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The longing of
the soul for beauty is _Love_. Love then is the bond which unites
the human to the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious outlines
which appeal to the senses, but is _Truth_. It is divinity. Beauty,
truth, love, these are God, the supreme desire of the soul to
comprehend, and by the contemplation of which the mortal soul sustains
itself, and by perpetual meditation becomes participant in immortality.
The communion with God presupposes immortality. The search for the
knowledge of God is the great end of life. Wisdom is the consecration of
the soul to the search; and this is effected by dialectics, for only out
of dialectics can correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux
of sensualities, can never fully attain this high excellence--the
knowledge of God, the object of all rational inquiry. Hence the
imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good is attainable; it
is not attained. God is the immutable good, and justice the rule of the
universe. "The vital principle of his philosophy is to show that true
science is the knowledge of the good; is the eternal contemplation or
truth, or ideas; and though man may not be able to apprehend it in its
unity, because he is subject to the restraints of the body, he is,
nevertheless, permitted to recognize it, imperfectly, by calling to mind
the eternal measure of existence, by which he is in his origin
connected." [Footnote: Ritter, _Hist, of Phil_., b. viii. p. 2,
chap. i.] He was unable to find a transition from his world of ideas to
that of sense, and his philosophy, vague and mystical, though severely
logical, diverts the mind from the investigations of actual life--from
that which is the object of experience.

[Sidenote: The object of Plato's inquiries.]

The writings of Plato have come down to us complete, and have been
admired by all ages for their philosophical acuteness, as well as beauty
of language. He was not the first to use the form of dialogue, but he
handled it with greater mastery than any one who preceded him, or has
come after him, and all with a view to bring his hearers to a
consciousness of knowledge or ignorance. He regarded wisdom as the
attribute of the godhead; that philosophy is the necessity of the
intellectual man, and the greatest good to which he can attain. This
wisdom presupposes, however, a communion with the divine. He regarded
the soul as immortal and indestructible. He maintained that neither
happiness nor virtue can consist in the attempt to satisfy our unbridled
desires; that virtue is purely a matter of intelligence; that passions
disturb the moral economy.

[Sidenote: God the immutable good.]

"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny," says
Hitter, "that they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the
universe. This is the noble thought which inspired him to say, that God
is the constant and immutable good; the world is good in a state of
becoming, and the human soul that in and through which the good in the
world is to be consummated. In his sublimer conception, he shows himself
the worthy disciple of Socrates. His merit lies chiefly in having
advanced certain distinct and precise rules for the Socratic method, and
in insisting, with a perfect consciousness of its importance, upon the
law of science, that to be able to descend from the higher to the lower
ideas by a principle of the reason, and reciprocally from the
multiplicity of the lower to the higher, is indispensable to the perfect
possession of any knowledge. He thus imparted to this method a more
liberal character. While he adopted many of the opinions of his
predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
divine nature, an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."

Plato is very much admired by the Germans, who look upon him as the
incarnation of dialectical power; but it were to be hoped that, some
day, these great metaphysicians may make a clearer exposition of his
doctrines, and of his services to philosophy, than they have as yet
done. To me, Ritter, Brandis, and all the great authorities, are
obscure. But that Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient
world, there can be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that, as a
dialectician, he has ever been surpassed; while his purity of life, and
his lofty inquiries, and his belief in God and immortality, make him, in
an ethical point of view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates.
He was to the Greeks what Kant was to the Germans, and these two great
thinkers resemble each other in the structure of their minds and their
relations to society.

The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler of Dublin, is devoted
to the Platonic philosophy. It is a criticism and an eulogium. No modern
writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics, are most
ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple. He
represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a contemplation
of, and the tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. The good is
enthroned by Plato in majesty supreme at the summit of the whole
universe, and the sensible world is regarded as a development of supreme
perfection in an inferior and transitory form. Nor are ideas
abstractions, as some suppose, but archetypal conceptions of the divine
mind itself--the eternal laws and reasons of things. The sensible world
is regarded as an imperfect image of ideal perfection, yet the
uncertainty of physical researches is candidly admitted. The discovery
of theological and moral truth, is the great object even of the
"_Timoeus_." Hence the physics of Plato have a theological
character--are mathematical rather than experimental. The psychology
represents the body as the prison of the soul, somewhat after the spirit
of oriental theogonists, and the aim of virtue is to preserve the
distinctness of both, and realize liberty in bonds. The doctrine of
preexistence is maintained, as well as a future state. In the ethics,
the perfection of the human soul--the perfection which it may attain--is
distinctly unfolded, and also the unity of the great ideas of the
beautiful, just, and good. The "_Phoedo_" enforces the supremacy
of wisdom, and the "_Philebus_" the "_summum bonum_." _Love_ is
the aspiration after a communion with perfection. The chief
excellence of the philosophy which Plato taught, consists in the
immutable basis assigned to the principles of moral truth; the defects
are a want of distinct apprehension of the claims of divine justice in
consequence of human sin, and an indirect discouragement of active
virtue.

The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira B.C.
384, of wealthy parents, and early evinced an insatiable thirst for
knowledge. When Plato returned from Sicily he joined his disciples, and
was his pupil for seventeen years, at Athens. On the death of Plato, he
went on his travels, and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and
B.C. 335, returned to Athens, after an absence of twelve years, and set
up a school, and taught in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and
down the shady walks which surrounded it, from which he obtained the
name of Peripatetic, which has clung to his name and philosophy. His
school had a great celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious
philosophers, statesmen, historians, and orators. He taught thirteen
years, during which he composed most of his greater works. He not only
wrote on dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various
departments. His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so
important that his royal pupil presented him with eight hundred talents--
an enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on
ethics and politics, history and rhetoric; letters, poems, and speeches,
three fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most voluminous
writers of antiquity, and probably the most learned man whose writings
have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients exercised upon the
thinking of succeeding ages so great an influence. He was an oracle
until the revival of learning.

[Sidenote: Genius of Aristotle.]

"Aristotle," says Hegel, "penetrated into the whole mass, and into every
department of the universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension
its scattered wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical
sciences owe to him their separation and commencement." [Footnote: Hagel
is said to have comprehended Aristotle better than any modern writer,
and the best work on his philosophy is by him.] He is also the father of
the history of philosophy, since he gives an historical review of the
way in which the subject has been hitherto treated by the earlier
philosophers.

"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
powerless, and has only a potential existence, and that it becomes a
living reality, only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means
of its own energy." [Footnote: Adolph Stahr, Oldenburg.]

[Sidenote: Vast attainments of Aristotle.]

But there can be no doubt as to his marvelous power of systematization.
Collecting together all the results of ancient speculation, he so
elaborated them into a coordinate system, that for two thousand years he
reigned supreme in the schools. In a literary point of view, Plato was
doubtless his superior, but Plato was a poet making philosophy divine
and musical; but Aristotle's investigations spread over a far wider
range. He wrote also on politics, natural history, and ethics, in so
comprehensive and able manner, as to prove his claim to be one of the
greatest intellects of antiquity, the most subtle and the most patient.
He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to the doctrine of ideas,
without however resolving the difficulty which divided them. As he made
matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena, he reduced the notion of
it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and established thereby a
necessary element in human science. But being bound to matter, he did
not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions of speculation; nor did
he entertain as lofty views of God, or of immortality. Neither did he
have as high an ideal of human life. His definition of the highest good
was a perfect practical activity in a perfect life.