THE NEW SYSTEM OF THOUGHT Which Dr. Snider has been specially engaged upon for some years, now embraces the following works : 1. pstcnology and the psychosis . . $1.50 2. The Will and its World 1.50 ii. Social Institutions ........ 1-50 4. The State 1-50 5. Ancient European Philosophy . . . 1 50 6. Modern European Philosophy (in prejyaration) 1 . 50 It is hoped that the latter may be completed in the course of the present year (1903). As far as can be now foreseen, the Aesthetic, or the Psychol- ogy of the Fine Arts will follow. Sigma Publishing Co. ANCIENT European Philosophy The History of Greek Philosophy Psychologically Treated. BY DENTON J. SNIDER, Litt. D. ^^^ ST. LOUIS, MO SIGMA PUBLISHING CO. 210 PINE ST. Copyright bt D. J. SNIDER, 1903. NIXON-JONES PTQ. CO., 215 PINE ST., ST. LOUIS. V l> WILLIAM W. PARSONS, einbiavia Stale Sldri^-iaC §>choo\., ^^^ toft c J I- o^ ci- (oinj |':icu6:>fiip atib '^fic Qutfvor. .•51790J Table of contents. PAGE. Introductiox 5-39 Ancient European Philosophy ... 40 Chapter I. The Hellenic Period . . 56 I. Elementalism 69 A. The Milesian Movement . . 77 1. Thales 79 2. Anaximander 83 3. Anaximines 86 B. Eleatic Movement 92 1. Xenophones 96 2. Parmenides 99 3. Zeno 103 C. The Inter-connecting Movement 113 1. Heraclitus 117 2. Pythagoras 123 3. Empedocles 139 4 CONTENTS. II. Atomism 151 A. CosMicAL Atomism — Leucippus 162 B. Noetic Atomism — Anaxagoras . 173 C. Egoistic Atomism — The Sophists 184 III. Universalism 204 1. Socrates 216 2. Plato 252 3. Aristotle 348 Chapter II. The Hellenistic Period . 459 I. The Theoretic Movement . . . 477 1. Dogmatism 481 2. Skepticism 500 3. Syncretism 512 II. The Practical Movement . . . 523 1. Stoicism 528 2. Epicureanism 537 3. Legalism 543 III. The Keligious Movement . . . 548 1. Philosophy religionizes . . 554 2. Eeligion philosophizes . . 559 3. Eeligion reveals . . . . 564 Chapter III. The Neo-Hellenic Period 577 1. Plotinus 602 2. Jamblichus 665 3. Proclus 685 INTRODUCTION, In these days not a few European writers on Philosophy have proclaimed the demise and dis- appearance of the science to which they have devoted their powers. Philosophy, then, has run its course ; but what new discipline is to take its place? Such is the coming problem. Other writers have been willing to grant to Philosophy a fresh lease of life, if it can only be brought to mend its ways. And the way often recom- mended to it is that of Natural Science, or the purely experimental method. Such a solution, however, though it has been offered by meta- physicians as well as by scientists, could only end in the abolition or at least the enslavement of Philosophy as conceived by its greatest mas- ters. An outcome of this sort seems not alto- gether satisfactory, and so the solvent word remains unspoken. (5) 6 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. On the other hand, there are men who are still constructing or re-constructing systems of Philosophy, wrought after the old pattern with new additions here and there, and spiced usually with sharp criticisms on all other systems. Of such Germany has been and still is the prolific home. In the first half of the past century, Philosophy-building became the chief occupa- tion of the highest order of German intellect, with wonderful results ; in the second half it was still kept up, though the output was less in quantity, and far inferior in originality. The result, however, can hardly be denied: ancient Greece and modern Germany show the two highest points in the development of Philosophy. But is this all of it? What is to be its future? In its antique and in its modern periods it seems to lie before us rounded out and complete. Is it again to be an epoch-making utterance of human spirit? The present work does not disguise its opinion on this point. There is good reason for believ- ing that Philosophy as the European Discipline of Thought, has substantially delivered its mes- sage. This does not mean that Philosophy is now to be thrown aside, and need no longer be studied. On the contrary its value will remain; as a ofrcat stajre in the evolution of human cul- ture it cannot be neglected. If the higher edu- cation be the reproduction of the race's spiritual INTRODUCTION. 7 movement in each individual, Philosophy will not lose its meaning. Homer delivered his message ere Greek Philosophy was born, still the works of Homer are read by more people to- day than ever before. In like manner Philoso- phy, even if it has finished its cycle and told what it has to tell, cannot be left out of man's highest trainino-. Nevertheless the demand for a new formulation of Thought is heard in the cry of the time. This means not another system of Philosophy, but a new Discipline of Thought, which does not de- stroy the old one but completes it, fulfills it. The study of Philosophy is, therefore, the introduc- tion to a new science of mind, and the History of Philosophy is the evolution of that science. What shall we call it? Our name for it is Psychol- ogy, which, even as word, has to evolve itself through several meanings, as was also the case with the word Philosophy in ancient Greece. It is possible that this statement sounds pre- tentious ; but it simply afiirms what is acknowl- edged by all thinkers. Every great and original ])eople or period in Europe has had its Philosophy, which is the expression of its spiritual character by and for thought. In like manner every great and original people or period in the Orient has found its self-expression in a Religion. But now the Occident is here, with its people, its govern- ment, its social institutions. In the natural order 8 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of things there must be a Discipline of Thought as peculiar to it as Philosophy is to Europe or as Religion is to Asia. It would be the excep- tion in all History if the American spirit should find its adequate self-expression in a Greek or German Philosophy. The institutions of a Re- public cannot have the Philosophy of an Empire ; indeed the Occident cannot have, strictly speak- ing, any Philosophy. It must have another and different Discipline of Thought, not subordinate to, but parallel with Religion and Philosophy. This is Psychologjs which though an old and hitherto subsidiary branch of knowledge, must henceforth declare and demonstrate not only its independence as a science but its supremacy. It has been heretofore enslaved to Metaphysics or Physics, one or the other of which has prescribed its method. Thus it has not been a free science. But now Psychology as the science of the Self is to make its own method and to reveal the same in all creations of the Self, human and divine. Accordingly, instead of having a Psychology which is philosophical, that is, determined by Philosophy, we are to find out that Philosophy is really psychological, that it is and always has been determined by Psychology, toward which it has been developing from the beginning. The History of Philosophy is, then, the evolution of Psychology. The grounds for these statements we shall un- INTRODUCTION. fold in some further considerations upon what we term the three fundamental Disciplines in which the Thought of mankind has uttered itself. We can well take as our starting-point the human Being, the Self, who, when he becomes human and rational, begins thinking, which is to recognize in some form or other the Self in all things. This thought of his may be and is at tirst exceedingly simple and crude, but just it is thetest of humanity. The content of it is a vague notion of the All, of the Universe, which like himself must be essentially and primarily a Self. The tirst thought then is not a part, but the Whole. It might seem easier for the primitive man to seize a piece of the Universe with his mind, but already the Universe has dawned in him and made him a man, and he must have some conception of the totality before he gets that of its part. Very indefinite and undeveloped this Whole may be in his spirit, still it lies back of every particu- lar thought and act of rational man, and is the source as well as the sign of his rationality. So we answer the question, What is the first thought — the primum cogitatum : it is the Whole underlying all wholes, namely the Universe, not by any means explicitly analj'Zed, but implicitly present and at work, seeking to make itself a reality through thovight and inthoiight. 10 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. But the human Being (or Self) very early in its rational life starts on its career of sepa- ration, and unfolds its primal division of the Universe into three parts, which are variously designated, and assume many different forms, but which, in general, correspond to God, World, and Man. These are the three original, fun- damental elements which the human mind finds in the All, and which it will strive to formu- late in each of the three comprehensive Discip- lines — Religion, Philosophy and Psjxhology . To be sure the distinction is at first unclear, uncon- cious, a bursting of the cosmical bud; the three elements overlap and intertwine, still they lie in the nature of the All, and likewise in the nature of the human mind conceiving the All. Now these three fundamentals of the Universe are not merely asunder, separated and opposed, but they form a process together, which is indeed their very essence and life. The}'^ are stages of the one movement underlying and interlinking all things, we may for the present call it the soul of the Universe. We shall hereafter find that each of these elements or parts has in itself the same process ; each member of the triune move- ment in order to be truly a member, must reflect and also enact the process of the entire Universe, and it is just this process which the thinking Self must penetrate and appropriate in order to think, that is, in order to be a thinking Self. In other INTRODUCTION. H words, God, World, and Man have in each the essential process of all three together, otherwise each could not be a stage or part of this process, or share in its life. The earliest philosopher has not failed to express some such view, conceiving that there was a World-Soul in the vast cosmical body whose members were instinct everywhere with universal life, of which his own individual life was a reflection and also a part. This process of God, World, and Man cor- responds, moreover, to that of the Self, of the Ego, which on one side it determines, on the other side is determined by it. The Universe cannot be conceived to suffer external division, for there is primarily nothing external to it till it makes externality, which is thus its own. We say, the Universe must make its own out- sideness, its own other, its own di:fference, which, therefore, lies within itself. That is, it can be conceived only as the process of self-division which is at the same time one with itself. Here- in we have already described it as Self or Ego. For the only thing conceivable by man w^hich has the power to divide itself, and still remain itself in the act, or rather to complete itself by such act, is his Self in its process, the process of self -consciousness, or of the Self knowing itself. The germinal source of all knowledge, indeed of the knowledge of the All is the self-knowino^ Self, which may furthermore be regarded as the 12 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. fundamental definition of Man, who, originally created by the All, must at last recreate the same in thought, must recreate his Creator creating him. This process of the Self or Ego in its three stages as implicit, as self-separating, and as self- returning, should have its own name; we call it the Psychosis. A full unfolding of it belongs properly to the science of Psychology (see our Psychology and Psychosis, Introduction et pas- sim). But the fact we now wish to emphasize is that the Universe shows this same general process in its triune movement of God, World and Man, which movement Man, a part of it, is forever trying to grasp and formulate as a Whole in Religion, Philosophy and Psychology. The utterance of the Little Self beholding and recog- nizing the Great Self, how each determines and is determined by the other, cannot be omitted by rational man without losing his rationality or giving up his Selfhood. Man, the created por- tion, must be creatively the Whole through his thinking, or surrender manhood. The fundamental process of the All or of the Universe is, therefore, a Psychosis too, which ought to have its special name, as it must be often used in our thinkins:. We shall term it the All-Psychosis, or the Pampsychosis after its Greek equivalent. Such a designation never fails to suggest that the Universe is a Self, and INTRODUCTION. 13 is to be seen and identified as a Self by Thouo-ht. For the human Self through thinking is to make itself aware of its oneness with the universal Self, in fact, it can know nothing at all without recognizing and sharing in the original, creative process of the Universe. Knowledge, even sen- suous knowledge of an object is some kind of reproduction of that object ; in a degree I have to reproduce the creative act which made it what it is. The common bond of Man and the Universe is the Psychosis, through which he, though a separate stage of the total process, returns and restores that total process by his thinking. In fact the main object and content of human Thought is to grasp, formulate, and thus make explicit in language this fundamental process of the Universe, which we have just named the All-Psj^chosis. The three supreme Disciplines which give expression to human Thinking are Eeligion, Philosophy, and Psychology, each of which in its way is an utterance of the All- Psychosis, thus going back to the fundamental process of the Universe for its ultimate content or subject-matter, as well as for its underlying movement or method. In regard to Psychology, we cannot here elaborate the reason why we place it in such high company, but we shall not fail to do so hereafter, only premising at present that we do not mean by it the old 14 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Rational Psychology or the newer Physiological Psychology, both of which are subordinate sciences, the one being determined by metaphys- ical and the other by physical methods. It looks as if we have now come upon the Norm of the All, the rule by which the Universe is built or builds itself both as a Whole and in its parts. This basic Norm gives the universal pro- cess of Man's Thinking, being itself just the pro- cess of the Universe, which, however, in turn is to be grasped and formulated in categories of Thought by Man's Thinking. Thus if the Norm of the Universe determines the process of human Thought, the latter goes back and determines it in definite forms of expression, producing the before-mentioned Disciplines. Using our special terms, we may call Man himself a Psj^chosis (the microcosmic Self) whose spiritual destiny is to find and to precipitate into speech the All-Psychosis (the macrocosmic Self), which, as already un- folded is the basic Norm of all things. Strictly speaking, man can only think what is already a Thought, realized or unrealized. When the in- ventor makes a new machine, he is properly re- creating a thought already existent, and putting it into a thing, realizing it (^res) or expressing it in material form. If the mind does not think Thought already existent, it is not thinking at all, it is dreaming or sensing some object. In the religious realm the expression has long since IN TR OD UC TION. 1 5 been familiar that Man is to know God, the all- creating Self in whose image the human Self has been made, and yet the latter has to return and know the former. It has already been indicated that the thinking Self (or the human Psychosis) will approach and formulate this fundamental process of the All (the Pampsychosis) in three different ways which reveal the three main Disciplines in the development of man's Thinking — the religious, the philosophical, and the pyschological, all of which are derived from the one fundamental Norm previously mentioned, and are express- ing the same. That is, all Eeligion, all Philosophy, all Psychology may be named in general. Disciplines, the universal Disciplines, in which the Thought of Man has uttered and is uttering itself in order to declare and define the one ultimate process of the Universe, or the All- Psychosis (often called simply the Universal). His Thinking, which is a Psychosis, must see and formulate the Psychosis, of God, World, and Man, separately as well as all together. The Discipline in this sense is the training or the road over which the human Ego has to travel in order to recognize universal Selfhood or the Self of the Universe, and is particularl}^ found in the History of Philosophy. Each of these three Disciplines is, then, a formulation of the one fundamental Norm of 16 ANCIENT EUROPEAN' PHILOSOPHY. the Universe, each in its own distinctive way and with its own distinctive categories. Hence comes the division into three Norms, religious, philosophical and psychological; that is, each Discipline has its own ultinlate Norm both in its form and in its method of expres sion. Still we must not forget that all of these three basic Disciplines have a common con- tent as ultimate, namely the one fundamental Norm, which in itself has its own process, which process we have called the Pampsychosis, or the triune psychical movement of the Universe. This movement we may conceive in a general way as: (1) Immediate origination, or the absolute Will which is one with Thought — God ; ( 2 ) the separated and opposite , or the originated — - World , Nature; (3) the originated as also originating — the self -returning one, the Ego, Man. Each of the three basic Disciplines proceeds from each of these three stages respectively as its creative starting-point and pervasive principle, but at the same time each contains and unfolds within itself all three above-mentioned stages of the Pam- psychosis. II. The object of the present work is to take up the philosophical Discipline, and to show all the prin- cipal variations of its Norm from its first ap- pearance in ancient Greece till the present time. INTRODUCTION. 17 As suggested in the preceding account, it lies between the religious and the psychological Dis- ciplines, being the middle term or the bridge connecting the two in thought, in time, and even in space. Plainly Philosophy is dual in its relations, be- longing both to the before and the after, and parted within itself. We shall find this dualism to be inherent and characteristic of the philo- sophical Discipline throughout, indicating it to be the second stage in the total sweep of the three Disciplines which thus form a process together or a Psychosis, though each has its own triune movement within itself thousandfold. The philosophical Norm of the formulation of the Universe is preceded by the religious Norm, and develops out of it, and indeed in reaction against it. Hence we have to consider Religion, the first Disciphne of Man in Thinking, as the forerunner and parent of Philosophy. The be- ginning and end of the religious Norm is the Supreme Being as a personal Will which creates the Universe by fiat. The primal process of this Norm runs somewhat as follows : The Creator (God), the created (the World), and finally the created (Man) , yet this created one is to return to his Creator and recreate Him in his own soul through thought and worship. Thus Man's religious destiny is that he, the derived and the created part of the process of the All, must go 2 18 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. back and reproduce in Thought the source whence he came. The thinking Ego as the founder of a Eeligion (Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Mohammed, Christ), establishes this religious Norm, and has this process, though in very different forms of realization. The absolute Person in his imme- diate will as Creator is the center and circumfer- ance of Being in Asia, which is the original home of all the great World-Religions as distinct from mere Nature-Religions. Hence we may say in general, that the religious Norm developed in the Orient, whence it has been transmitted westward, the Oriental mind being in its very nature relig- ious and creative of Religions. The religious Norm has been truly productive in Asia alone whose highest thinking spontaneously expresses itself in some form of Religion. Next we may look at the philosophical Norm which has developed specially in Europe. It seeks for the essence of the Universe or of all Being — the abiding Principle, Cause, Law of the same (the Universal). All these terms are . abstractions, not concrete things or persons. Hence Philosophy is abstract from the start, being a product of abstraction in which man is now to be trained. Thinking, therefore, be- comes fundamentally abstract through Philoso- phy. Again we must note the separation which lies in Philosophy and is explicit in its basic question: What is the essence of Being? This INTRODUCTION. 19 is, then, the dual chiinictcr of Philosophy in its origin, whereby it reflects what we may call the European dualism — the tvvofoldness which runs through Europe's Thought and Action from be- ginning to eml. But from what is this abstraction? From the creative Self or Person who now is transformed into a Principle, Cause, or Essence, which works not by will but by its own inherent continuous force. This act of abstracting from a volitional and personal energy and positing a causal and impersonal one as the creative principle of the All is the primal philosophic act, which still further unfolds in its own process, and produces many systems of abstract Thought called Philoso- phies, all of them containing in some form and likewise developing the above-mentioned primal abstraction. Philosophy, we again see, is sepa- rative, and separates from the first Discipline, Religion, and is the abstraction from God, that is, from the Oriental conception of God, thus giving birth to European Thought or Science far back in old Greece, as we shall see when we come to the details of the History of Philos- ophy. The early Greek saw in the Oriental world the capricious Will of a ruler made absolute, and felt his arbitrary power. There dawned on the Greek consciousness the idea of Law, the fixed and settled versus the volitional and uncertain in 20 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. a personal Will, be it terrestrial or celestial. From the caprice of personality on earth and in heaven, thinking Hellas began to turn away and to seek the abiding changeless principle which has no preference, but treats all alike. Hence it comes that the first age of the philosophers is also the first age of the lawgivers in Greece, who sought to establish a settled institutional order and life accordino; to law in the cities against the arbitrary rule of the despot, good or bad, many, few, or one. The strong antagonism of the philosophers to the poets, particularly to Homer and Hesiod, was grounded in the opposition of the Greek Thought to a capricious, autocratic God, who, endowed with absolute power, could do as he pleased with man and the world. As they hated the Oriental despotism and as the Greek would fight Persian political absolutism, so the philos- ophers resisted the religious absolutism of Homer and the Gods, in whom they saw the Olympian counterpart of Oriental tyranny. A lawless deity they would put under law somehow, and they placed in his stead Cause, Principal, Essence as the governing principle of the All. Greek philosophy is, accordingly, a re-action against Oriental absolutism in the form of relig- ion. It began at Miletus which was politically engaged in a struggle for autonomy with the Lydian monarchs for generations, and then with INTRODUCTION. 21 the Persian monarchs, who at last subdued her permanently In one sense the Greek thinker broke with the religion, because of its capricious and hence de- spotic Euler. But the real end of his striving was a deeper religion, whose God was not law- less and arbitrary, but institutional and self-legis- lative, under whose government there could be freedom. He saw no such deity either in his own religion or in that of the Orient, and hence comes the anti-theistic tendency observable in the early Greek philosophers. In fact this remains the inherited trouble in all Philosophy down to the present time : it is in danger of losing the element of personality in its construction of the Universe through its eagerness to get rid of the caprice of a personal Will, which could not com- port with freedom. Negatively, Philosophy too can destroy and has repeatedly destroyed freedom and also God, the very things which it ought to secure and place upon an everlasting foundation, in its zeal to affirm the stability of Law against divine and human caprice. The Natural Science of to-day, in so far as it philosophizes, dwells largely in this antinomy between Free-Will and the Laws of Nature, and seemingly cannot get out of it, though our whole industrial civilization shows Man's Free-Will grasping and employing these Laws of Nature for the securing of Free- WiU. 22 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Philosophy has hitherto been the interpreter of all Being, hence of all the other sciences, the scientia scientiarum, the knowledge of all knowl- edo;es, the Thouo;ht thinking all other Thouo;ht. ' The universal principle or essence of things is its content, and it has claimed to have the uni- versal method. But now Philosophy itself needs an interpreter, its dualism is calling for some reconciling third principle which will complete that deeper process of which it has found itself to be only a part or a phase. It has run through a line of systems from Thales down to Wundt, and to the very last it falls into the same dif- ficulty, the same dualism. No new system of Phi- losoph}'^ can cure this ailment, for as Philosophy it will show the same old birth-mark which came with it into existence from the first philosopher. Hence not a new Philosophy, but a wholly new Discipline is demanded, which the struggling Thouojlit of the time is seekino; to brins; forth out of Philosophy, as it once brought forth Philosophy out of Religion. This coming Dis- cipline we have already indicated to be Psychol- ogy in its regenerated form, which is to mediate the burning problem of Philosophy. For Phi- losophy, though starting in the interest of free- dom in the ancient world, has developed into contradiction with the freedom of the modern world, or has become at least an inadequate expression of it. INTBODUCTION. 23 So Philosophy, which has been the great inter- preter of the thought of civilization hitherto, must itself now be interpreted. Its stream of abstract categories flowing down through the ages from the old Greek world rouses the question, What does it all mean? What is the significance of Phi- losophy anyhow? The very interrogation calls for the interpreter, since Philosophy can no longer interpret itself. To be sure it has often declared itself to be the self -de finer, to be that which ex- plains all the world and itself too. This claim within limits must be pronounced valid ; for a long stretch of time and for a laro;e division of the civilized earth Philosophy has been the chief exegete of all Being, itself included. But it has come to a boundary which it cannot tran- scend. There is not one but many Philosophies, not one interpretation of the Universe, but a long series of them strung along the ages ; hence the mind has come to demand. What is the interpretation of these manifold interpretations? Something underlies them all, some unity creat- ing this multiplicity. It is no adequate answer to give us simply another Philosoph}^ for with it the same problem again comes to the front. Very common indeed is it for the latest philoso- pher to regard his system as the grand finality, as the true explanation of the Universe and of all the antecedent formulations of the Universe. But it turns out to have the same fundamental 24 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. limitation which is noticeable in the former Philosophies — a limitation which is inherent in the philosophic Norm itself and of which the time has become conscious, and hence distrust- ful. The result is that a deeper change must be made, a change to a new Norm and not to a new Philosophy which can only be another variation on the old Norm. And this new Norm is not simply to make an autocratic system of thought, but is to train every individual Self to make ulti- mately his own system or law and thus be free. The History of Philosophy (or of Philoso- phies) has, then, as its ultimate end and outcome the revelation of the new Norm which we have called psychological, and whose total process we call the Pampsychosis. Philosophy has indeed developed all lesser potentialities of Thought, making them real; but it has now turned out to be itself a huge potentiality which is to be developed into reality. The Pampsy- chosis is the lurking potential element which is secretly moving in all Philosophy from the be- ginning, and which has been impressing upon the same its process; we may call it the leading motive (the Wagnerian Leit-motif) which more or less implicitly runs through and organizes the whole sweep of philosophic harmonies from an- tique Hellas down to the present. As the Pam- psychosis is the end toward which all systems of Philosophy are moving and for which they really INTBODUCTION. 25 exist, it is the ultimate ground of them all, and hence their final interpreter, or rather it is just themselves interpreting themselves. The inference is plain that this point of view requires the complete reconstruction and re- writing of the History of Philosophy. In the light of a new Discipline the line of European Thinking is to be seen, moving through many shapes along down the course of some twenty- five centuries to its own self -illuminating end, which is just what throws back upon it this light of a new Discipline. m. In the philosophic Norm the Self of the phi- losopher is not directly introduced, though it is just what is doing the work of Philosophy. It is the philosophic Ego which is putting all Being into its categories, yet leaves itself out of its own process. That the essence of all things is the Atom, is the declaration of a well-known Philos- ophy. But who makes such a declaration and what is the source or ground of his making it? We may simply answer, Democritus, and there stop, quite as the old Greek did. But time will develop a deeper question : Democritus the phi- losopher tells us what is the essence or cause of Being ; will not somebody now tell us what is the essence or cause of Democritus the philoso- 26 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. pher himself? The reply is, Philosophy explic- itly asks for and unfolds the essence of Being, but the essence of the philosopher in formulating the essence of Being remains implicit in the philosophic Norm, which primarily makes the abstraction of essence and unfolds it in the three- fold process of universal Being — Nature's Being, God's Being, and Man's Being, which are the fundamental themes of the great historic stages of Philosophy, ancient, medieval and modern. It may be here stated that Philosophy begins with the Being of Nature or of the Cosmos (the World) which is the second stage of the total process of the All (the Pampsychosis), since it is primarily a reaction against the personal Will in creation. Philosophy regards the creative principle as immanent in the object, from which it is to be separated by thought and categorized. The philosophic abstraction moves away from a creative principle as transcendent, or from a Supreme Will outside and over all to the essence or cause which is a thought or an in- tellectual principle endowed with power. In other words, the creative Intellect now appears behind or underneath the creative Will, which previously in the religious Norm was immediate. Thus Philosophy is to see and to formulate the intellectual principle in the Universe, — not mere immediate Will, but Will explicitly mediated by Intellect or Thought. Such was the new Disci- INTBODUCTION. 27 pline which began in ancient Hellas, and which started to training man's Intellect to sec the In- tellect (or Thought) in all thins^s, Will being implied and serving the creative Intellect. The Oriental Will was crude, immediate, hence de- spotic ; the Greek proposed to have it determined both in speculation and in action by Mind, Eeason, Intellect. So he philo80[)hized Oriental religious absolutism and fought Oriental political absolutism, out of which conflict Europe was born. In the religious Norm man posits himself as the directly created, and thus as one with created Nature, though he is to rise out of Nature and return to God. But unconsciously in the religious act he, the created, has to re-produce or in away re-create by thought the creator God creating the world and himself. So much creative activity the follower or worshiper has to manifest, but when we consider the originator of a religion we find him to be a man (the name of the founder is given in all the great world-religions ) who has made the theogonic and cosmogonic formulas of the various cults of the ages, and who must accordingly re-make or re-think the Creator creating the Universe. Still in the religious Norm the creative founder posits himself simply as the created, as the merest instrument in God'.s hands, quite without much Will or Intellect of his own, so that the supreme deity may be absolutely au- 28 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tocratic and all-knowing. The founders of the great world-religions, notwithstanding, appear to have been men of prodigious Will and Intel- lect, else they surely could not have done their work. In the religious Norm the thinking Ego (as founder) does not posit itself as creative of the said religious Norm, though it has created the same in thought and formulated it specially ; on the contrary, it assigns such Norm to the imme- diate creative act of a Supreme Will. In the philosophical Norm the thinking Ego (as philos- opher) likewise does not posit itself^as creating the said philosophical Norm, though it has created the same in thought and formulated it specially ; on the contrarjs it assigns such Norm to an impersonal creative essence or intellectual principle primarily and not to the Supreme Will of a Person immediately exerted. But in the ps3^chological Norm the thinking Ego does posit itself as creating its own Norm of the Universe, as determining in thought that which determines it. In Keligion and Philosophy the thinking selves were implicit though they were doing the work of creating their respective Norms, but in Psychology, the thinking self explicitly affirms itself as the determinant in thought of that Norm which as Will and Intellect determines it. The general character of the three Norms may be indicated as follows ; — INTRODUCTION. 29 1. Eeligion — the thinking Self (implicitly) posits or takes as its point of departure God or the absolute personal Will creating the Universe. 2. Philosophy — the thinking Self (implic- itly) posits or takes as its point of departure Cause, Principle, Thought as determining or creating the Universe. 3. Psychology — the thinking Self (explicitly now) posits itself as the point of departure, which creates in thought the Universe creating it ac- tually. Thus the thinking Self has become con- scious of itself in its own process. Or, to use our technical terms, the Psychosis knows itself re-creating thePampsychosis which has created it. In Psychology, therefore, Man, the third factor of the Norm of the Universe (God, World, and Man) receives the emphasis, having been in Religion as Oriental and in Philosophy as Euro- pean partially suppressed or at least undeveloped and unconscious of his complete creative Self- hood. But now he asserts himself as the crea- tor in thought and the formulator of the new Norm of the Universe, the psychological, in which the thinker of the thought of the All is not to be left out of his own All, but is to be taken up into its process which he has found to be es- sentially his own or that of his own Ego. It will be seen that Psychology is a return to Religion from Philosophy, since it goes back to the absolute Self out of philosophic abstraction, 30 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and affirms the same to l)e creative of the human Self creative. Man could not think, he could have no form to think with, unless there was the an- tecedent Divine Thought, which he is to re-think, and so re-create. And we have the right to affirm that without this perpetual re-creation through Man, God would not be, at least would not be what He is. As Philosophy was a reac- tion against Theism as capricious, so Psychology is, in the given sense a reaction against the anti- theistic tendency of Philosophy, seeking, how- ever, the return not to a capricious and arbi- trary, but to a rational and institutional God, - who is re-created consciously by the Self which he creates, and who, divinely free, wills man's freedom. The same thought is realized politically in the Government of the United States. The citizen obeys the law, but the very law which he obeys he is ultimately to make. He almost worships the Constitution, and surely to make a worship- ful object is the highest function of a human beino-. Authority undoubtedly determines the man, but man is also to determine authority henceforth, and so be free. The Psychological State is the American, and accordingly different from the European and Oriental States. Thus the Self or Humanity has begun to attain its true worth, and to assert its most fundamen- tal right, the right which comes from its recog- INTRODUCTION. 31 nizing tluit it must determine all that determines it, recreating its own Creator, making its own Philosophy and not taking that of some other man, producing or at least reproducing all the laws which govern it politically or otherwise. So the basic Norm of the All (God, Nature, and Man) enters upon its third stage, completing its grand triune movement, which embraces spati- ally Orient, Europe, and Occident, and spiritually the three supreme Disciplines, Religion, Philoso- phy, and Psychology, the last of which shows man turning and recreating consciously the universal Norm of God, World, and himself. In Psychology the Self, thus becoming con- scious of its supreme creativity, dwells in its own eternal presence, as well as in the presence of God, who likewise dwells in its presence. God is not simply in me, but in my presence, being the essence or the very process of all objectivity. To know truly any external object, I must know Him and His process through my process of the Self or Ego. His Will is to will me and my freedom, whereby he too is a free God. In the Orient I have to be His slave; but with my enslavement He cannot be free, or only capriciously so. One of the supreme functions of Psychology is to restore, God to free- dom out of arbitrariness, out of Oriental caprice. You cannot have despotism in Heaven and freedom on Earth. The ideal must not 32 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. lag behind and drag down the real, for Religion is what ought to keep alive the ideal. Psychol- ogy in its new form must drive the despot, even though he be benevolent, out of the Universe, for its end is freedom, not capricious, but institu- tional freedom. The God-consciousness then can be restored to man and made harmonious with his political consciousness, especially in its Occidental stage which has already made valid in institutions the principle that man must determine the law which determines him and thus be free. The Universe sees itself in me, reflects itself as process in my process, which is in turn to re- flect it in Thought. I, this psychical process (Psychosis) go forth to know the All and find in it essentially the same psychical process, and identify it with myself, which is to know it in Thought. That which is Universal bears the impress of the Universe and its three-fold process, and this is what the thinking Ego sees in everything, namely Thought, the Univer- sal. This predicate can only be derived from the Universe, and is the great category of all Philosophy. IV. Philosophy at the present date is not far from 2,500 years old, and thus has a long period in which it can look back at itself, observing its greater and its lesser movements as well as seek- INTB OD UC TION. 33 ing to discover the common underlying principle of all these movements. We have already found it to be the middle or intermediate Discipline between Religion and Psychology, and we may now proceed to designate it in its own internal process. This is also threefold and bears the impress of the fundamental Norm of the Universe of which it is a product, yet also a necessary stage or part. Philosophy as a member of the Universe, must manifest the process of the Whole to which it belongs as a member. Its prime function is to grasp and formulate the funda- mental Norm, expressing the same abstractly as the Universal, which is the stamp of the Universe on everything, even on the word which you speak and which the Ego reproduces in its thought, since it too has this Norm active within itself. Every leading historian of Philosophy has divided its historic movement into three great periods : ancient, medieval and modern. It is said to fall naturally into these three divisions. Still the eager student, since his science is always seeking the essence, ground, or cause of things, must ask. Why this triple movement? Perhaps a simple inspection of the fact is enough ; but Phi- losophy, if it be true to itself, must search for the principle or reason of the phenomenon. Just at present, however, we may appeal to a consensus of the best judges upon this matter, and give a 3 34 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. brief statement of these three periods. Recol- lecting, then, that Philosophy formulates the essence of Being to be the Universal, we may begin with its first great period. 1. Ancient Philosophy, which is essentially Greek through its whole course, grasps the essence of Being as the Universal and develops the entire process of the latter within itself. It is the great and endurino; advantage of Greek Philos- ophy that it unfolds freely, without any author- ity of State or Church determining its movement from the outside. Thus it manifests the pure process of Philosophy according to its own inner nature. Of course, Greek Philosophy was in- fluenced by the time, was indeed the child of the age in which it appeared. But it came in its own way and in its own right. Hence we may say that Greek Philosophy reveals Philosophy as it is in itself to all future generations ; never again will it be so pure, so unique, so self-contained. It is thus a kind of standard in its sphere, which stand- ard is, however, to be applied in many different ways. Taking as its content the philosophic Norm of the Universe Greek Philosophy will unfold within itself, by its own innate power, all three stages of that Norm, beginning with Nature or the Cos- mos, passing to and through Man and then return- ing to God or the Absolute One in Neo-Platon- ism. Thus it completes its cycle and vanishes INTBOD UC TIO N. 35 from the real world, but remains a potent influ- ence for all time. From the first it is instinct- ively triaclal, without knowing the fact it develops according to the threefold pattern of the underlying Norm, till at last the triplicity becomes completely external and formal in the metaphysical Triads of Proclus, the last Greek philosopher of any importance. But the spirit of the Age dropping the abstract and empty Triad takes up or rather has already taken up the full and concrete Trinity, wherewith a new l)hilosophical epoch begins. 2. Medieval Philosophy affirms the essence of Being to be the Universal as God, whose process is likewise threefold, which fact is declared in the Trinity. The fundamental Norm now starts with its first member who creates the other two members, the World and Man, by an act of Will. The great struggle of Medieval Philosophy is to make this creative act of God's Will rational, and not to let it remain purely capricious as it was in the Orient. For this purpose it calls to its aid Greek Philosophy, which Avas primarily a reaction against an arbitrary Will placed at the center of the Universe. The dogma is given by the Church and is immediately accepted by Faith, but this given religious element must be made philosophical for the Reason. So Greek Philos- ophy goes out to service and becomes the hand^. 36 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHT. maid (ancilla) of Religion, losing the independ- ent position which she once held in her native land. Still, though she be determined on the one hand, on the othor she determines and she continues to give the form for all thinking. Thus Medieval Philosophy is distinctly twofold, divided, separative in character, and so belongs to the second stage in the great process of philosophical history. It moves through various phases in seeking to explain the process of God as triune, which process is primarily given by Faith but is to be translated into metaphysical categories originally elaborated by Greek Thought for showing the philosophical process which is ultimately triadal. That is, the Trinity of Per- sons is seen to be grounded on the Triad of Thought. Origen, the Christian Theologian, developed the former; Plotinus the Heathen Neo- Platonist, and more distinctly Proclus developed the latter. 3. Modern Philosophy begins with the Renas- cence, which was a return to the starting-point of European culture in order to round itself out to its last completion. There was a going back to the fountain-head of Greek spirit for a rejuvenescence of the world. Philosophy also went back and studied afresh Plato and Aris- totle, and found in them an expression of the new time. Art and Science shared in the grand revival through Hellas. But this return must be INTEODUCTION. 37 a restoration and not a relapse, a regaining of something lost, not an imitation of something past. The Eenascence is properly the third stage or the completion of a great cycle of the World's Thought, of which Greek Philosophy is the first stage. The start is not now with Nature as in the Greek period, nor with God as in the Medieval period, but witli Man whose Ego or Self is to be philosophized or categorized, chiefly in terms of Greek Thought. Modern Philosophy posits the essence of Beinoj to be the Universal as determiuincr the thinking Ego. Philosophy now begins to put its main stress upon the Ego thinking or knowing the object, applying to the same its categories and finding in the same its process. Its leading question is, What determines or causes me as thinking Ego to think the object, to think what it is, or its essence? In Greek Philosophy the question simply is. What is the essence of Being? The Greek thinkers found this essence and for- mulated it in terms which have lasted. Each of the three periods begins with a dif- ferent stage of the philosophical Norm. The Greek starts with a search for Nature's Beinsr (or Being in itself), the Medieval with a search for God's Being, the Modern with a search for Man's or the Ego's Being. Greek Philos- ophy is, therefore, a pure ontology or science of Being, Medieval Philosophy is the ontology tl179m 38 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of God, Modern Philosophy is the ontology of the Ego, or Self. Thus Greek thought with its ontology has been the philosophic determinant of both the Medieval and the Modern Epochs. But a change is coming;. The thinking; Effo discovers itself as originator, becomes conscious that it has posited the essence of Being to be the Universal in each of the three great })hilosophic stages. Philosophy has run its course and Psychology begins when this fornndation rises to the surface: the thinking Ego posits itself as determining the essence of Being to be the Universal which determines it (the thinking Ego). This means that I must posit the abso- lute power which posits me, that I must deter- mine the Norm (God, Nature, and Man) which determines me, that I must make the law which governs me. With such a conception we pass out of the sphere of Philosophy to that of Psychology, and instead of a Philosophy of Psychology we find before us the necessity of a Psychology of Philosophy, which is essentially our present work. In such fashion we bring before ourselves the fact that the long travail of European Thought called Philosophy has resulted in bringing forth a new Discipline, has led up to a realm of Thought beyond itself. Great has been this training and is not to be dispensed with 3'et by any means ; rather is its true place and value to INTBODUCTION. 39 be henceforth more clearly recognized in the universal scheme of humanity's education. Philosophy has been a school of authority placed over man to bring him to make his own author- ity even in Philosophy. Looking back through its long career, we can see that its end is Freedom, that it trains man to make a free world in order to make himself free. It unfolds into Psychology, which is supremely the free science, and therefore just the science of Freedom. Ipart fixeU ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSO- PHY. Wlieu we speak of Ancient European or Greek Philosophy, we bring before the mind a definite movement of Time, having a beginning and end. But within this movement of Time lies also a movement of Spirit which goes through its periods of rise, culmination, decline, and final cessation of activity. Moreover Greek Philosophy, thus marked out by distinct temporal limits, has its special function as a phase or part of all Philoso- phy. The student, as the best fruit of his effort, must attain to some conception of what this long discipline of European Spirit means, and dis- cover some reason why the mind of our race has had to pass through such a strenuous and peculiar training. (40) ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 41 Philosophy has, in general, to investigate and to formulate the essence of all Being, or of the Universe whose fundamental Norm it seeks to express in speech, or, more definitely, in a cate- gory. Now it is Greek Philosophy which first makes this Norm explicit as philosophical, and applies it in a number of ways, each of which gives rise to a system of Philosophy, Still all of these systems have fermenting in them and seeking; for utterance the Norm of the Universe, which, when uttered abstractly, can only be some form of the Universal. Greek Philosophy is the first to say that the essence of Being is the Universal — upon which statement a good deal is to be said hereafter, since it will embody itself in many shapes, being the subtle, ever- changing, yet ever-persistent Proteus of Greek Thought. The history of Greek Philosophy has, there- fore, a Time-element and also a Thought-element. Which of the two is to rule, the Time or the Thought? If we consider the movement of Phi- losophy as a line of successive S3^stems in simple historic sequence, we make Time the autocrat over Thought. If on the other hand we make Thought or a certain sjstem of Thought the dominant principle by which all other systems are explained, it is likely that we shall do violence to the free historic development of Philosophy. Such are the two extremes which are somehow to 42 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. be reconciled, otherwise each will lame if not crush the other. The first fact here to be noted is that Philos- ophy incorporates itself in individuals, in a long line of them stretching down Time. It is the Philosopher who primordially makes or formu- lates the Philosoph}^ His thought this is, the product of an individual brain; thus the outward appearance of the History of Philosophy is a gallery of great personalities whose names have been preserved as the thinkers of their age and as the founders of systems of Thought. They are indeed a mighty spectacle and the grand at- traction ; they are not to be neglected even on their personal side. Then their Thought is to be carefully set forth in its independence and in its connection, for it, though in itself a Whole, is soon found to be a link in a larger Whole, and finally in the largest Whole. Now the individual philosopher reflects the cast of his own mind, the circumstances of his life and the trend of his age, in his work. A thousand peculiarities flow in and color his think- ing, specially the greatness or the smallness of his native genius. He unites with others and forms a group, which has a common principle and produces a school of Philosophy. But it is soon seen that he, however colossal he may be, is a part of a mightier movement, a member of a greater totality than any individual philosopher. ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 43 He, though a process in his Thought, is but a stage in a still higher process, which has called him forth and also has apparently put an end to his existence as this individual thinker. So the philosopher lives his time and then passes away, having had his period of free activ- ity. Yet we find that he has also been influenced deeply from the outside, that he has but expressed his aofe with its institutions and its civilization. This element is not to be neglected in the History of Philosophy, the institutional element of the social, political, and religious life of the world at the time of any given Philosophy. The grand totality of existence is also sweeping through its epochs which reflect themselves most faithfully and purely in the thinking of the philosophers, who are herein subsumed under their own princi- ple. For their fundamental doctrine is that the essence of Being is the Universal, which every individual philosopher has to utter and then pass on, being simply an individual. Only insofar as he makes himself the vehicle of the Universal, will he live, though dead. Thus we find that the philosopher, even in the free activity of his inner Self has something given him from the outside, or rather imposed upon him by an apparent necessity. Into the innermost working of his own spirit creeps this external power with its behest which he cannot help obeying. Indeed it is ingrown into his very 44 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. existence, it is an integral part of his soul, that part which he must express. So there rises the question, What is this supernal Power, Energy, or Being which commands the individual philoso- pher to do its bidding, to think its Thought? The reader who has followed us hitherto will be able, doubtless, to give our answer to this question : the universal Power or rather Process over the philosopher as well as in him and moving him within is what we have called the Pampsychosis. Over and beyond the philoso- pher it is, beyond his consciousness, yet stirring him within unconsciously to make himself a link in the chain of the grand totality of Being. The moment the system of the individual thinker shows itself to be a part or a stage of a still larger process, which is beyond his conscious purpose, that moment an ordering Power has appeared, higher than he is, and working after its own Norm and for its own end. At such a point the philosopher seems to be whelmed into the vortex of Fate, an external Necessity apparently seizes his free product, and reduces this to a part of its scheme, which scheme is itself subjected in turn to a yet larger process. Thus a vast movement discloses itself, consisting of an ever-enlarging series of processes or cycles, which at last complete the total round of the History of Greek Philosophy, and of all PhilosO" phy, aud indeed of all the Disciplines. ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. 45 This History is, therefore, conceived to move forward not merely in a straight line of succes- sive systems clironologically arranged, ])ut in a chain of self-returning processes which interlink while advancing in time, the whole chain likewise being a self-returning process. The historical evolution of Philosophy is not to be dissolved into a broken succession of single systems ; it has another and far loftier character. Funda- mentally each part reflects the process of the "Whole or rather of the AH. In fact each indi- \ idual philoso})her in his thinking bears the im- press of the Universe, for he must think the Universal which can onlv be derived ultimately from the j)rocess of the Universe. Here lies the mediating principle of the above- mentioned conflict between the freedom of the philosopher from Avithin and the fate of his world and of his ag^e overwhelmino; him from Avithout and reducing his work from a Whole to a part or phase of a still greater "Whole. But really the process which he has impressed upon his work is reaflSrmed by the All or by the Universe, wdiich is just this process, and which thus pronounces his process to be its own. In Religion every man or human Self is declared to be the Son of God, the absolute Self ; in Philosophy every philosopher tliiukino; and formulating the Universal is taken u\) l)y and made to share in the process of the 46 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. All, which is primarily his own innermost Self. As individual, he is in Time and subject to the conditions and occurrences of Time, which constitute the element of Fate in his life and also in his thinking. He, the self-determined internally, is determined externally by the Neces- sity of the world, but this world is controlled by law, or better, is a part of the total process of the Universe which is the absolutely self- determined. Thus the individual philosopher must do his thinking in Time and have it laden with externality and limitation ; still upon this finite material he impresses the process of the Universe and thus makes his thought or his S3^stem an integral part of that process as actual- izing itself in Time. The philosopher who can reveal to his own age and temporal environment that the essence of all Being is the Universal has verily stamped upon Time the ineffaceable Image of the Eternal. But these eternal Images in Time, namely systems of Thought, are like the statues of the Gods, multitudinous. The History of Philosoph}', true to their temporal succession, must also be true to their spiritual principle, and em- ploy a method which gives due validity both to the Time-element and the Thought-element. Mere sequence of systems or of persons is not enough, though not to be left out; there must be in every passing system or person ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 47 the eternal presence of the one fundamental process. These general thoughts pertaining to History and to Philosophy we are now to see embodying themselves in the History of Greek Philosophy. The primal basic fact of it is to see its threefold spiritual process unfolding itself in the temporal framework of the ages. Accordingly we divide the History of Greek Philosophy into three Periods, the Hellenic, Hellenistic and the Neo- Hellenic, which is indeed the first and all-embrac- ing process of it. To each of these three periods we shall devote a few prefatory words. I. The Hellenic Period. This embraces the first great epoch of Greek Philosophy, from Thales to and through Aristotle. It seeks to know Being, to find and to formulate its principle, which is the One under all multiplic- ity. This One is at first simply a physical element, as the water of Thales, but it passes through a line unfolding concepts or categories till it reaches the self-knowing One of Aristotle. This self- knowing One is, however, still Being, not the individual Ego. This first stage of Greek Philosophy, the Hel- enic, is national, and has an external movement corresponding to Greek History. It is at first colonial, starting in the East at Miletus, moving West to Italy and Sicilv, also shooting up in the North, at Abderafor instance (Democritus), and 48 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. finally concentrating itself at Athens, as did the Greek political world and all forms of Greek Spirit. This concentration becomes profoundly internal in Aristotle's philosophy whose highest point posits the Psychosis as Being, though not as Ego. Such is the great step compassed by the Hellenic Period of Greek Philosophy in the revelation of the Pampsychosis. The movement seeks to discover the principle or inner creative element of all Being, that is, the Norm of the Universe, and in Aristotle reaches the height of seeing and declaring that this universal principle is the Thinking of Thinking. Moreover Nature (Physis) or the Cosmos is the first object of this first Period of Greek philosophizing. That is, in Thales thought starts with manifesting itself as cosmocentric. The investigator hunts after this essence in Nature, and seeks to make it explicit in categories. But from Nature philosophic interest passes to Man in Socrates. More definitely stated, the Hellenic Period shows that the essence of Being is the Universal as self -unfolding, as coming to itself consciously out of its unconscious condition. But the Universal, having recognized and for- mulated itself, moves over into the next Period. H. The HeMenistic Period. The Greek Na- tional Philosophy passes to other nations and races, which it helleuizes partly, and is partly ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 49 barbarized by them in turn ())iirbarizecl in the Greek sense, made non-Hellenic). This move- ment is connected with the loss of Greek political independence. Greek Philosophy transcends the national limit, goes to the Orient with Alexander, and moves west to Rome, the seat of univer- sal empire. Internally the self -knowing One of Aristotle enters the individual and produces the wise man, the Philosopher who is universal within, and hence ethical. If in the previous stage Greek Philosophy con- centrates itself in one city and in one mighty movement, and shows the forming of the Sun of philosophic thought, in the present stage it scat- ters itself from that center and rays out over the world, having become the irradiating luminary of that age and indeed of all succeeding ages. Thus it universalizes itself in one sense, yet it also individualizes itself, putting its principle into the individual and into his conduct, and so moral- izing him. It should be added that this inner process sepa- rates the individual from the City-State of Greece; he can no longer remain in immediate oneness with his community ; he has become a citizen of the world, being a Roman. Moreover he deems himself to have the God within him ; the Aristotelian principle of Being is turned from the world into his soul, which has thereby in it the self -knowing One. 4 50 ANCIEN T E UBOPEA N PHILOSOPHY. Thus the Hellenistic Period of Greek Philoso- phy starts with becoming anthropocentric, seek- ing to unfold and to formulate the principle of Man's Being rather than Nature's Being, which was the lirst search in the previous Hel- lenic Period. The individual is now to embody in himself the true Being of Man. Not Plato, not Aristotle is alone to be the philosopher; every man is to become a philosopher. It is true that both Plato and Aristotle sought to construct the philosophic city controlling the individual more or less from the outside; but such a city must be inside the man. We should likewise observe the separative character of this Second Period in the multi- plicity of philosophic systems which shoot forth from the previous movement of Grecian thought. The Hellenic Period was rather a succession of insights or first principles unfolding in order and constituting a great totality which is itself a self -developing system. But in the Hellenistic Period each of these single insights has a ten- dency to build itself out into a system as Stoi- cism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism, and finally Eclecticism particularly in the Roman world. But the prime fact of the Hellenistic Period may be stated more succinctly as follows : the essence Being is the Universal still, but as indi- vidualizing itself, as passing into individuals who thus become universal. But from these universal ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 51 ones there is a going back to the one Universal of Aristotle and Plato, and even beyond them. Hence the next. III. The Neo-IIeUenic Period. This is a return to Hellenic Philosophy whose self-know- ing One has been divided into many self -know- ing Ones (individuals) w^ith their varied develop- ment of centuries. So Neo-Hellenic thought posits the principle of Being anew as the One, yet not now as over the many phj'sical ones but as over the many self-knowing Ones. The One or Being of Plotinus is, accordingly, above all forms of conscious mind, and projects them into existence, downward out of itself. Hence Neo-Hellenic Philosophy strives for a principle of Being which is beyond all self-con- sciousness. The self-conscious One of Aris- totle (noesis noeseos) fell back, or perchance fell forward, into a multiplicity of self-conscious ones in Hellenisticism ; hence the absolute One (or God) must be beyond them, attainable not l)y Reason, but by Trance or Ecstasy. The One of the third period of Greek Philosophy is supra-rational; Reason (Nous) is supra-sensible; the soul (Psyche) is supra-natural. Thus there is the lapse from above to the soul which still further lapses to body and matter. Such is the tremendous struggle, truly ecstatic, to recover the One of Greek spirit, the pure Being which was veritably its essence, the 52 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Universal. "We call it a return and so it was — a return to the primal soul of Hellas through the grand separation. It was a return to Plato and hence often called Neo-Platonic ; but it was like- wise a return to Aristotle and also to Pythagoras. The world was becoming Christian ; Neo-Hellen- isni was a going back to Heathen Greece, an attempted renewal of Heathendom by ingrafting the Gods ui)on Plato and Aristotle. Thus it conflicted with Christianity on the one side, yet paved the way for Christian Scholasticism on the other. Plotinus (Neo-Platonist) has the Psychosis, he employs it and sees it as the movement of Being or the object ; but he does not recognize it as the movement of the Self or the subject, though just his Self is what is beholding and indeed creating this Psychosis of Being. Plotinus is the self-conscious One who knows and formu- lates the absolute One above all self-conscious- ness ; this is the special form of his dualism, which dualism in one shape or other is common to all European Philosoph}^ The tirst stage of Greek thinkino; has the Psychosis implicit in it till Aristotle, who reaches the point of seeing and even stating it, though he does not apply it. Plotinus, however, knows it and applies it, but still as Being, which he sometimes calls God, still this God cannot be a person, since He must be above person. ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 5 3 Greek Philosophy has as its end to make the Psychosis explicit as Being and in Being. This is necessarily the final result and conclusion of the thought of the Greeks, which strove to find the Being of all Being, to behold the essential Being in Being. Proclus, the last philosopher of this period, has the Psychosis explicit as on- tological, but not at all as psychological, nor even as theological. Doubtless intimations of both these last principles we may find in him, but not definite, not distinctly elaborated. Thus we behold the three completed stages or periods of Greek Philosophy — Hellenic, Hellen- istic, Neo-Hellenic — which in themselves form a Psychosis, making a very important cycle of the total movement of Philosophy. It has been and will remain the great intellectual training- school of mankind, teaching all who endeavor to think the thought of their race what is the creative essence of the world, or, more technically, the Psychosis of Being. The pedagogical value of Greek philosophy is of the highest, provided we get out of it its true discipline, which consists not in erudite details or a mere collection of curious opinions in chronological order. If we can bring away from its study the psychical pro- cess inherent in all existence, we have learned something: of the highest worth. There is a sense of completeness about Greek philosophy which makes it akin to Greek art. 54 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. A well-rounded, finished, plastic shape we may concede to it as a whole ; it is like the totality of Homer embracing the Iliad and the Odyssey in one completed cycle of action, which takes up in its movement many special events and charac- ters, harmonizing them all into one grand poetic organism. In like manner Greek Philosophy, th()uo;h extendin<2^ through so lono; a stretch of time and showing a vast multiplicity of princi- ples and systems, reveals an organic Whole, a complete })hil()sophic editice. Greek Philos()})liy will have much to do with the Universal; in fact, the whole Hellenic Period is the Greek mind coming to it and getting aware of it. The Universal is the process of the Universe separated bv Thought and categorized ; it is the fundamental Norm of the All, seized by the philosopher, abstracted from the reality and given an abstract name. But the philosopher is an individual living at a particular epoch, and determined by his environing world. The result is that his statement of the Universal is an indi- vidual one and falls into Time. Thus arises the series of philosophical systems Avhich form the subject-matter of the History of Philosoph3^ Still all these different sj-stems have in them a principle which is eternally the same within, but is seeking a more adequate self-expression, and hence has beo^otten this lonoj line of Philos- ophies. Such a principle is the Pampsychosis, ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 55 which must be grasped not merely as a process but as a psychical process. Or, as we have before stated, it is not simply the individual Psychosis, or Self, but the All-Psychosis, .the process of the Universe as Self or psychical, w^hich the philosopher, who is the individual Psychosis, or human Ego, seizes and formulates in his thinking, whereby he makes a Philosophy. For this Ego of mine and yours bears in itself ideally and implicitly the process of the Universe which it has to make explicit and actual in order to attain true selfhood. So it comes that the movement of Philosophy shows on the one hand the movement of the human Ego or Psychosis toward its supreme self-realization, and on the other the movement of Pampsychosis toward its highest self-expression in Thought. Such a development, as already indicated, carries us finally out of Philosophy into the new Discipline. At present, however, the first task is to take up Greek Philosophy in its first Period, and to show its unfolding in Time as well as its process in Thought. CHAPTER FIRST. — THE HELLENIC PERIOD. What we call the Hellenic Period of Greek Philosophy begins with Thales and ends with Aristotle. It is the greatest epoch in all Philos- ophy, since the latter was not only created in this time, but manifested its complete Norm, accord- ing to which it has ever since proceeded and unfolded. Hence the Hellenic Period is the most important for the student of Philosophy; in it he has the substance of the whole science, culminating in its greatest names, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. From the Thales to Aristotle is a gradual ascent from the foot to the top of the mountain, which is not only the highest elevation but also the most complete concentration of Hellenic thought. What Thales starts with unconsciously. Aristotle employs consciously ; the old Milesian (56) THE HELLENIC PEBIOD. 57 philosopher assumes that there is an essence of Being, and states it in his fashion ; but the later Attic philosopher explicitly and purposely grasps that essence of Being and elaborates it into a science which lies at the basis of all things. Hence it comes that the investigator of early Greek Philosophy looks back at it primarily ' through the eyes of Aristotle and his categories. For it was he who first became fully aware of the Greek philosophical movement and sought to express it in the terms of abstract thinking, which is indeed the creation of this Hellenic Period. Man now begins to separate the cause, the law, the principle, the essence from the immediate Being of the World, and to utter the same in human speech. Great and far-reaching is the discipline of the race in making these abstractions of pure Thought, of seeking to dis- cover and to express what truly is, namely the essence. It is man's grand process of self-sepa- ration from immediate unity with nature in which he had been hitherto chiefly a physical link. But he makes the abstraction of himself as thinking and holds this thought of his up before himself r as the true Being against the apparent Being of nature. Here he is asserting himself in his thinking as the determiner of the world, instead of being determined by it. Thus Philosophy gives forth an early note of man's freedom, even if not a complete expression thereof. 58 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. It is, then, Aristotle who is more fully aware of this abstraction of the Hellenic spirit than any other Greek, and who has consequently been able to formulate it the best. Specially in his 3Iefa2)hf/8ics he has the one theme to which he always comes back from his wildest digressions: the true Being of all things, or their essence. He turns it over in many wajs and gives to it many names, such as Real Being, Primal Being, Being as Being. Thus he strives to reach the Being underneath all Being, to which he gives also the name essence or substance, as well as cause, principle, element, etc. Through all these diverse categories we need not follow him, but we can select two, which are enough for our present purpose, namelj'. Essence and Being, which are to be united in the pivotal phrase, the Essence of Being (in Greek the ous i a oi the on). So important is this expres- sion, containing as it does the creative germ of all Greek philosophizing, that we shall devote to it specially a few pages of exposition. Hellenic Philosophy, accordingly, from the start has before it some conception of Being, which it is seeking to formulate in words, or to put into a definition or category. What is Be- ing? may be taken as the fundamental question of Greek Thought. This What calls for some- thing back of Being which explains it, calls for a Being which will enable us to know Being. THE HELLENIC FEB WD. 59 Thus the starting-point of Philosophy is a dualism, the division of Being into two sorts of Being. The Greeks will begin to name these two sorts of Being, related yet different. The first or simple Being is on or to on (the neuter participle of the verb einai, to be) ; the second Being which is to explain, or perchance to unfold, or to l)ring forth the first, is ouma (a noun derived from the feminine participle of the same verb einai, to l)e), and usually translated by the words essence or substance. It is well for the modern student usino; a different lano:uao:e to bring before his mind the linouistic sugo^estion contained in these O Gel terms for the Greek who first employed them. Tlie principal problem, then, of Greek Philos- ophy is to find and to state the ousia of the on, or as we have to translate it in words far less concrete, the essence of Being. We shall, how- ever, often use the Greek words in expressing this Greek problem, deeming that the student will thereby obtain ultiuiately a more definite idea of the subject. The question, What is the ousia of the on, calls for an answer ; this answer brings out the third principle expressed in speech, or the cate- gory specially. Greek Philosophy will give many answers to the above question, showing a line of many categories from its beginning to its end ; a chief function of it is to order and to in- 60 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. terrelate these categories. One will be Water, and another Number, still another the Becoming. Thus the temple of Greek Philosophy may be considered a Pancategoreon, in striking parallel with the Greek Pantheon, or the total temple of Greek Religion containing the many Gods who likewise evolve out of one another in the Mythus. Accordingly the oiisia of the on is expressed in a category by the philosopher, who thereby founds a special philosophy. This category is called the first principle (arche) or the cause (ai(ion) or the element (^stoicJteion) or the defini- tion {orismos). Under all these terms and others besides the student is to detect and to hold fast to the one main matter : the philosopher is seeking to express the ousia of the on (the es- sence of Being) in a category. And it may be well to note for the sake of the future that it is the philosophic Ego which is do- intr all this work, which is the secret demiurge categorizing the ousia of the on and thereby start- ing to transform the Universe into a system of Thought. When Anaximines said, air is the first principle of all things, or is the ousia of the on, he threw daringly the whole Universe into one category which expressed for him at least, the essence of all Being. Mark again his Ego, for it is the bold categorizer who is not content with mere immediate Being but seeks to penetrate and utter its essence. THE HELLENIC PEBIOD. 61 Three basic terms we have designated which together express the process of primal philosophic thought. First we place on which is Being as immediate, present, the given, possibly the sensu- ous ; the second is ousia, Being separated in itself, the Being of Being, or the Essence of Being, or the inner Being; third is the special Category which utters (or outers) this inner Being in anew Being which is speech and is the principle or element or thought of a Philosophy. We call this third the special Category, since the two others are also categories in a g-eneral sense. Moreover it should be noted that this special Category connects with the first (the on) and thus becomes a new Being in the world, but mediated through the second, ousia or essence. Thus we have the three funda- mental stages or acts of the psychical process of the Ego (immediate, separative, returning), ob- servable in the on, ousia, and the category respectively. This somewhat detailed statement, which gives the general formula of all Greek philosophizing from Thales up to Aristotle and down again to Proclus, may be illustrated by a concrete exam- ple. When Heraclitus declared that all Being had as its essence the Becoming, he went through the preceding triple process, giving the on, the ousia and the special category. Moreover this process was fundamentally that of his own Ego or Self, for he had no other means of finding or 62 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOFHY. recognizing such a process of Being. It is true that Heraclitus was not conscious of his own Ego performing this movement, nor was any Greek Philosopher fully so, from first to last. Indeed the complete self -awareness of the Ego as the creator of objective Being belongs to the modern world, really to the latest phase of the modern world, the Occident. Still the Ego of old Herac- litus, all unknown to itself, projected out of itself the foregoing process of Being. Again, Plato declares that the Idea, the so- called Platonic Idea, is the eternal, unchangeable essence of all Being, which latter is, on the con- trary, the transitory, the phenomenal. That is, Idea is the fundamental category of the Platonic system. The student will here note again the above mentioned process : Plato, asking himself the basic question of Greek Philosoplu^, What is the ousia of the on? answers his question by showing it to be expressed in the category Idea. One may observe in the present connection that the on is what is immediate, what is given to the mind from the outside, perchance visible, Avliile the ousia is something called for by the mind and even produced by it, something there- fore intellectual and lying back of the on. The human spirit passing from the on to the ousia has begun its great philosophic quest, lasting thousands of years already, and seemingly not yet ended. Eeally, let it be said here in advance, THE HELLENIC PEBIOD. 63 the spirit in this quest is seeking to find itself, or to know itself as the true ousia of the oji, or as the essence of Being, which essence it finally thinks to be just its own process of thinking. Here another example suggests itself , in a num- ber of respects the greatest name in Greek Phi- losophy, Aristotle. He throws many forms of Being into categories, he is indeed the grand cat- egorizer of the Greek world. But in a supreme moment he uttered his supreme category of the essence of Being, namely noesis noeseos, literally the Thinking of Thinking, or Thought thinking Thought. Thus Aristotle predicates the ousia of the on to be the noesis noeseos, which may be fairly considered the highest point that Hellenic Philosophy attained. For the Greek thinker has now discovered that his much hunted ousia is not simply some other form of external Being, but is Thought, yea the very process of Thought as such, or Thought thinking Thought. Still let it be remembered that this category expresses not the subjective Ego in the modern self-conscious sense, but is the utterance simply of the objec- tive principle or essence of all Being; that is, it is still a category of the ousia of the on, and another answer to the fundamental question of Greek Philosophy. That old thinker in Athens, however, has reached the point of seeing that his Thinking is one with the inner process of all Being, is indeed the essence of the objective 64 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. world, which latter is accordingly in its inner- most nature a Thinking of Thinking, not exactly as the subjective individual Ego but as the true Being of Being. To keep alive the process in this matter, the order of the three terms should not be neglected : on the first, ousia the second, and the special category the third. Thus we identify this triple process as the ever-recurring fundamental Psy- chosis underlying and generating Greek philo- sophic thought. This implicit creative Psychosis is what is to become explicit and conscious in the long discipline of Hellenic Spirit. This same tendency to find and formulate the essence of Being we may see in the ancient Greek lawgiver, who arose with the philosophers and belonged to the same spiritual movement. He took a mass of traditions, customs and prescrip- tive regulations, and out of these he extracted the essence which was his code of laws. Solon the lawgiver was also called a philosopher, and other philosophers are reputed to have given laws to their respective cities. The Law written, fixed, stable, instead of the capricious will of the absolute monarch, was the chief product of the Greek political consciousness, and was one phase of its reaction against a personal ruler like the Oriental despot. One form, then, of the essence of Being is the Law of the State. In like manner the Greek poet of this Period THE HELLENIC PERIOD. 65 took the My thus of his people, more or less chaotic and disconnected, and he unfolded the essence of it, thereby producing his poetic work, whose material he did not create, but trans- formed. More particularly sculpture, the truly Greek art of the present Hellenic Period, was a striking example of unfolding and forming the essence of Being. The sculptor Phidias would take the rude block of marble, which was Being as immediate or natural, and hew out of it the form of the God Zeus, the creative essence of all things, even of the block of marble from which he was made. So the sculptor or the artistic Ego seeks for the essence or the creative Self, and puts it into visible shape, while the philosopher is striving to find and to formulate the essential principle in the world of objects ; the outcome of the one is a statue, of the other is a category. Still each in his own way is seeking to reach and to formulate the essence of Being. So much for the germinal idea of Greek phi- losophy and indeed of all philosophy, to which idea with its formula we shall often recur, since it is that which generates the whole science, and hence is the fuudamcutal thing to be ac- quired. But now we shall return to the special subject of the present Chapter, which is the Hel- lenic Period of Greek philosophy. If we look at the total sweep of this Period we observe its rise from taking a sensuous element as the 5 66 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. essence of Being to taking the Concept, the Universal, or Thought (and indeed the Thought of Thought), as the essence of Being. It has three distinct stages which together make up its movement and are as follows : — I. Elementalism. The process of Being is elemental, since its essence is taken to be an ele- ment, which belongs to Nature, and is physical, sensuous and continuous. Or the principle of Nature as Being is an immediately given, natural object or element as substrate. This stage will show the Psychosis of Being as elemental or immediate. Here the essence of Being (the ousia of the o)i) is categorized, but the category or concept belongs to Nature or is immanent in some ele- ment of it. But now we are to see this process turn about to its opposite : instead of the concept remaining an element, the element becomes a concept and no longer is of Nature, but is of Mind. II. Atomism. The process of Being is atomic or individual. The Atom is conceived to be in- divisible, unchangeable, indestructible, and so is a concept, visible onl}' by Mind, even when it is supposed to be material (as is the Cosmical Atom of Leucippus). The essence of Being is now the Atom or the Individual (both are etymolog- ically the same). In all Atomism we have a twofoldness : the concept and the Individual, THE HELLENIC PERIOD. 67 which are in a process with each other. From considering the Atom or Individual as a concept wc pass to considering the concept as something individual (soi)liisticism). But the concept is universal and has itself as its own content; with which statement we have already passed into the next. III. Universalism . The process of Being is universal. Thus the essence of Being now is not an element nor an atom, but is the Universal as concept. The third stage returns to the first and grasps its own process therein as the essence of Being. The movement now is the process of the Universal unfolding the universal process of Being. Already in the starting-point of Thales the Universal is present and working, but potential and implicit. "When he declares that the essence of Being is the element w^ater, w^e mi\y supply the implicit Universal in his statement as follows : the essence of Being is the Universal as the element Avater. For he is unconsciously seeking the Universal, or the principle of all things, though he puts it into something wholly alien. But when Socrates ushers in the stacre of Uni- vcrsalism, he declares the essence of Being to be the concept or the Universal in itself. That is, what was before implicit, is now explicit; the third sta^e returns to the first stajj-e and draft's out to light its covert meaning, which is the 68 ANCIEN T E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. propelling cause of all Philosophy. In the Hellenic Period, Thought at last comes to recognize itself as the essence of all Being, or as the Universal, which though present in the previous stages, was unrecognized and unformu- lated. THE HELLENIC PEEIOD. 69 I. Elementalism. Thus we seek to concentrate in a vsingle word the first stage of the Hellenic Period, which stage is also a process within itself consisting of several stages. Hence we develop the thought of Ele- mentalism into the following sentence: it is ^Ae Process of Being as elemental. The essence or principle of Being (the ousia of the o/i) is an element taken from or connected with Nature. As this process of Elementalism is likewise a psychical one — which is indeed the ultimate fact of it — we shall also call it at times the elemental Fsi/chosis. Such a designation is verily far-reach- ing, since it suggests the underlying principle which interlinks this stage with all Philosophy. The early Greek philosophers began with Nature as the fountain of Being and sought to discover and formulate its essence or principle. Hence these first thinkers are called physicists or physiologists ]fy Aristotle and other later phi- losophers. Their primal struggle was with the relidous or mvthical conception of the world, which world they would remove from the per- sonal caprice of a Creator, and put under a fixed principle or law. This is very intimately con- 70 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. nected with the Greek reaction against Oriental- ism, which politically believed in the one ruler of the State, autocratic, personal, and hence capricious. The Greek began the rule of Law for the State as well as for the cosmos. lie fousfht for and thouo;ht for autonomy which was to be immanent in his city and in his universe. Such a struggle could start only on the border- land between Europe and Asia. Accordingly we find these two kinds of autonomy first asserted in the Greek cities along the coast of Asia Minor, which struggled for their independence ao'ainst the autocratic domination of the Lydian and Persian Monarchs, and began to think of the cosmos as governed and ordered by a principle or by a fixed Law. The conflict of societies and institutions called forth the first Philosophy, and indeed every succeeding Philosophy, which means anvthing to anybody. Every great social and institutional change must have in some form its Philosophy, which utters its essence or crea- tive thought in its own categories. Now Philos- ophy itself arose from the deepest of all social and institutional changes hitherto made in his- tory — that between Orient and Europe, the latter being represented in its earliest period by Ilellas. Such is the philosophic starting-point on the Eastern rim of the Hellenic world, where the latter rasped against the Orient. This rim engird- ling continental or central Hellas with a circle THE HELLENIC PERIOD. 71 of colonies which- had raj^ed out from that center eastward, westward, northward, southward, is to he particularly noticed, as these colonies are the birth-places of all the early Greek Philosophies without exception. It is a significant fact that not old Greece but new Greece began to philoso- phize, that not Athens and Lacedemon but the Ionic and Doric colonies first broke forth into Philosophy. The most aspiring, adventuresome, and liberal spirits form usually the colonists of a people, while the more timid and conservative stay at home. To leave the native town in these early da3^s, to grapple with the sea, and to wrest land from barbarous possessors both required and developed a hardy and a daring character. It is no wonder then that the great spiritual break from the old to the new was made by the colonies, whose inhabitants had already snapped the ties of their native land, and had asserted their personal courage and sclf-sufficingness. The next curious point in this connection is that Philosophy will not stay on the eastern borderland of Hellas where it arose through attrition with the Orient, but is borne across the sea from Asia Minor to Italy, yea to the Avestern coast of Italy where it springs up at Elea in a School opposite in place and in thought to the Eastern or Ionic School at Miletus, This second or Eleatic School is supposed to represent Dorism versus lonism, and thus to 72 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. indicate the great split which runs through the Hellenic world. We must grant some truth to this statement; still it is not to be forgotten that Elea was an Ionic colony (doubtless with a strong Doric admixture) from Phocaea in Asia Minor, and that Xenophanes the founder of the Eleatic School was an Ionian from Colophon. Another fact here to be mentioned is that these colonies will be joined together in an overarching philosophic movement which connects east and west. Then a northern colony, Abdera, will contribute its Philosoj)hy which is the Atomism of Leucippusand Democritus. Finally a southern colony, Cyrene, will give a modest contribution called the Cyrenaic school, which was founded bv Aristippus, a pupil of Socrates. Thus the peri- phery of colonial Philosophy is fairly complete, though its most fruitful portion lay in the east and west, whence it will gradually move to the rising center of the Greek world, Athens, and pass from its centrifugal to its centripetal period. Having thus considered the topographical re- lations of these early Greeks philosophies, we may next glance at their chronological relations. Here the uppermost fact is that nearlj^ all of them are substantially contemporaneous. Unquestion- ably the Milesian Philosophers are first in time, while the great Athenian Philosophers are later. But between these two schools lie all the early Greek systems, in a period of httle more than THE HELLENIC PEBIOD. 73 fifty years. The exact dates of their foundation and development cannot be given, but their cul- minating period can be stated as the middle half of the fifth century B. C. From this fact comes the following result : These systems have to be ordered according to their thought quite independently of their time of origin. Very treacherous is any chronological arranoenient of them. Moreover, some Philoso- phies, like some individuals, mature rapidly, others slowly. That is, one philosopher may be older in years than another, but later in his thought. Some such principle Aristotle himself acknowledges in reference to these early Greek thinkers, though he lived hardly more than a century after them, knew their writings and './as in line with their traditions. Comparing Empe- docles and Anaxagoras he saj^s (Met. I. 3, 984a) that the latter " was before the former in age, but was after him in his works," that is, more advanced in his thought. In other words chro- nology, even if we knew it exactly (and Aris- totle must have known it much more exactly than we do), is not to determine the order of the systems of these Greek philosophers. To be sure the element of time need not be wholly eschewed, but it cannot in the present case de- termine their succession. The Philosophies, then, which lie between Anaximines, the last of the Milesians, and Socrates, the first of the V 4 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Athenians, are not to be ordered according to time-relations, but according to thought-relations, being substantially synchronous in their origin and development as far as we know them at present. Thus from the rim of the Hellenic world and not from its center Philosophy seemed to burst out almost at once in different forms and in dif- ferent places. Separately, yet quite contempo- rancousl}', these diverse systems of thought sprang up and showed an inner process with one another. How shall we account for these strange philosophical phenomena, which, outwardly so disconnected in locality, nevertheless manifest al- ways an interior line of close relationship in their common national character? To answer this question we must grasp the fol- lowing thought: the total Hellenic soul was phi- losophizing, not simply one little corner of it in this place or that. The soul, we say, in the w^hole body of Hellas had felt the need of an utterance in thought, and this utterance broke forth almost simultaneously around the border of the entire Greek territory, where life was most active and progressive, and conscquentlj'^ where the earliest and strongest demand for self-expression had arisen. Now this total Hellenic soul would utter one phase of itself at Miletus, another at Elea, still another at Abdera, and so on, according to the human vehicle and the circumstances, still such a phase would belong to the whole and be THE HELLENIC PERIOD. 75 determined by it. ^Moreover all these different phases called Philosophies are required to express the total Hellenic soul in its complete process, which is indeed the fundamental process ordering these various Philosophies. Herein we may see the interior line of connection between the early Greek systems, and in fact all Greek systems, and really all Philosophy from beginning to end. Underneath the diversity of systems of thought the soul of the nation or of the age or of the world is working, and perchance wrestling to speak itself out in adequate utterances which will show various stages of the one ultimate psychical process, which stages are the particular philoso- phies of the period. In this manner what we have called the Pam- psychosis will give the first philosophic revelation of itself in the epoch before us, bringing forth and ordering after its own inner self the mani- fold and seemingly disconnected philosophic principles continually rising to the surface. For the Hellenic soul is psychical, yea in the case before us pampsychical, and its expression is not simply for Greece and the present but for Europe and the future. Thus there is a total Greek Philosophy express- ing itself in the different particular Philosophies blossoming as separate flowers around the edge of the Hellenic estate. That is. Philosophy first individualizes itself in the individual philosophers, 76 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. each with his special principle. But all these principles are to be united in one process ere we can catch the movement of the total Hellenic soul philosophizing, which is the great object of our vision in the present search. Such is, in general, the ground of the divi- sions of the subject before us. But now we return to the starting-point of the present por- tion of Greek Philosophy which we have called Elcmentalism, or the Elemental Psychosis. This we shall tind to be a psychical process with its three stages. These we designate as follows: — I. The Milesian Movement (East-colonial), whose principle is Being as a particular sensuous element. II. The Eleatic Movement (West-colonial), whose principle is Being as a universal sensuous element, or abstract Being with a sensuous sub- strate (Space). III. The Inter-connecting Movement (Inter- colonial), whose principle is Being as Becom- ing, which will pass through three different phases, yet all of them elemental. The characteristic common to eachstasre of this process is the element as sensuous ; the principle or essence of all things is declared to be ele- mental, to be a given sensuous element, which is not always material, since Space we call a sen- suous element of Nature though it is not mate- rial. Hence the pure or abstract Being of the TEE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 77 Eleatics belongs in the present division, since it has Space as its sensuous substrate. These points will come out more fuUy in the following development. More formally stated, Elementalism affirms that the essence of all Being is the Universal as an element of Nature, which thus becomes a category of Th-ought. For Elementalism, simple and'^sensuous as it is, would not be Philosophy unless it grasped and categorized the Universal in some form, which is here elemental. A. The Milesian Movement. The first Movement of Philosophy as a Euro- pean Discipline is placed at Miletus in Asia Minor during the sixth century B. C. It is a Move- ment, not some isolated bits of reflection (like those of the so-called Seven AVise Men) , and is fol- lowed by many philosophic Movements reaching down to the present time. At Miletus, then, the human mind has begun the persistent inquiry after the Essence, Law, Cause or Principle of all things, and has given the first answer to the question. This city, Miletus, was a colony of Athens, hence was an offshoot of the Greek race in Europe, which for a time outgrew and out- ranked the parent in commercial and intellec- tual greatness. Strewn along the same coast 78 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of Asia Minor were many other Greek colonies, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic, all of them alert mentally, full of business enterprise, and daring navigators ; they had grappled with the sea, making it a means of communication, and in manifold ways subject- ing it to their will. A great new epoch was dawn- ing in these groups of political communities, connected by water, otherwise independent and autonomous or seeking desperately their auton- omy. It may be said that in these cities Occi- dental freedom was in the process of being born ])oliticall3', along with the inner freedom of phi- losophic thought. For the first time in the history of mankind we hear that world-encompassing word Democracy spoken among these cities and made an object of aspiration. Miletus, the great- est of them, was, for a while at least, a Democ- racy, doubtless crude and rude enough, still the people there had the desire and in part the power to govern themselves. An interior line of con- nection we may well trace between this rise of political Freedom with the rise of Philosophy. In the Milesian Movement three individual philosophers stand out prominent as its support- ers, and their doctrines are recognized to have an internal connection, yes, to form a process together. Their common principle is often called hylozoism, which means that matter is alive, that there is no separation between matter and life. The cosmos is an animal, and the First Principle THE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 79 or Essence is not dead, but living and creative, even if it be an element. The three Milesian philosophers are Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, whose doctrines are in some respects not very certain, but may be o-iven in their leading outlines as follows. 1. Thales. — The name of Thales of Miletus heads the list of European philosophers, who succeed him in a line substantially unbroken down to the present. Authorities differ in re- gard to the exact dates of his birth and death, but his chief period of activity, political, scien- tific and philosophic, must have lain in the first half of the sixth century B. C. He must have been a mature man in 600 B. C. ; he saw his native city together with that rising Greek world along the coast of Asia Minor put under the yoke of an Oriental Monarch, Croesus, king of Lydia ; then he probably had the satisfaction of seeing this same Croesus subjected to another and greater Oriental Monarch, Cyrus of Persia. All of which is told in a fresh, simple-hearted style by the Father of History, ancient Herodotus, who regarded this conflict between Croesus and the Greek cities of the coast as the opening struggle of Orient with Occident, and as the origin of History, which may thus be said to have been definitely born at the same time and place with Philosophy. Besides these two we should also chronicle the birth of Natural Science 80 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. at the same time and place. Thus the three great disciplines of European culture appeared together (Philosophy, History, and Natural Science), and were chiefly cultivated by the same class of men, being sprung of the same great movement of human spirit. Thales, for instance, was active as statesman, scientist and philoso- pher. Evidently an integral man bearing the whole soul of his period. Undoubtedly we may find in the Orient numer- ous traces, sometimes important, though usually fitful, of Histor}^ Science and Philosophy. But they all had to be born anew for the Occident, in which they have had a continuous, ever-unfolding life down to the present. This birth, or, if you choose, re-birth of these three disciplines took place in an Asiatic borderland which had become Greek. It is a significant fact that Thales was an Oriental who had become Greek. His family was Phoenician, as reported by Diogenes Laer- tius (I. 22, 37) ; moreover he is declared to have visited Eg3'pt and to have studied its mathe- matical lore. Herodotus says that he predicted an eclipse of the sun, thus assigning to a natural cause what had hitherto been regarded as the act of a supernatural personal Will. This fact in- dicates the epoch and the great spiritual transi- tion taking place in it, whereof Thales w^as the representative. This brings us to the distinct philosophic act THE HELLENIC PERIOD. 81 of Thales : he declared water to be the substrate uuderl} ing all things, the one element in all the multiplicity of Nature. At the first glance this seems a very simple if not senseless utterance, but there is a surprising unanimity among ancient and modern philosophers that it is just the golden sentence which begins Philosophy. We observe first that it takes a physical cause or principle as the source of the world, and not a divine fiat, quite as we saw in the case of the solar eclipse. In the next place it predicates unity, the one principle of all things. Likewise it seeks for the essence of Being (the ousia of the on). With such a question propounded in such a fashion. Philosophy has certainly begun, and that is the fact to be distinctly grasped at the present stage. Thales then, is the first who definitely for- mulates the question of his period : What is the essence of all this Being which lies before us and around about us? He also answers his own question with his special category : water. Aris- totle, our oldest and best judge in these matters, places Thales at the head (Met. I. 3) ; he cites an opinion which takes those primeval Gods, Oceanus and Tethys, deities of the sea, as " the parents of generation" or of world-creating. , Thales is thus supposed to have transformed those hoary mythical shapes into a purely natural cause corresponding to the element over which 6 ^'2 AKCIEKT E UR OPE AX PSIL OSOPHY. they ruled. This again indicates the spiritual transition of which he is a representative, the transition from the mythological to the scientific, from the imaginative to the historical, from re- ligion to philosophy, from the poetic conscious- ness to prose. Nor should we omit a reflection upon the nature of water conceived as a first principle. It is supremely formable, yet always dropping back into the formless ; the waters of the Egean sea before Miletus would rise up into an infinite number of forms and half -forms (Tritons, Nereids, hundredfold Protean shapes) under the Etesian winds. A Milesian philosopher, pass- ing from the Mythus to Thought, might well consider water with its plasticity as the mother of all the forms of nature, or as the formative principle of all things. The sea appealed strongly to the plastic imagination of the Greeks as is seen both in their poetry and in their art. Their first philosopher struck this same note in his thinking when he took water as the original element of the shapes of the world. And ,we should not forget that Miletus specially was a maritime city, owing its wealth and supremacy to the outlying waters before its gates. The sea was indeed the mother of Miletus spiritually and materially, and her first philosophic word was a true echo of her own soul. But her second philosophic word was some- ^HE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 8^ what different, being spoken by another of her sons, to whom we now pass. 2. Anaximander. A friend, pupil and com- patriot of Thales, somewhat younger, yet a co- temporary substantially. Still the two differed ; as Cicero puts it, " Thales could not persuade his pupil that water was the source of every- thing." But Anaximander probably received from Thales the philosophic inspiration to seek for the source of the All, though he propounded for it a different principle. This principle was the Infinite (^to apeiron), which now makes its first appearance in Philos- ophy, and which has had a vigorous life among thinkers of the nineteenth and preceding cen- turies, with no signs of ceasing to exist in the twentieth. Such a perdurable category of human Thought did that old philosopher strike out, somewhere about five centuries and a half B. C. Anaximander, then, is the author of the philo- sophical Infinite, which he declared to be the true essence of Being (the ousia of the on). This fact is nearly all we know about the mat- ter, perhaps it is nearly all that is to be known. No complex philosophic system must be expected at this early stage of thinking, in fact no distinct idea ; the first mention of such a word is sur- prising enough, having such a mighty progeny and procreative power. We can, however, v/ork out the thought a 84 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPB Y. little and say that Anaximander must have con- ceived along with his Infinite its counterpart, the Finite, and have gotten a glimpse of the negative nature of the latter. The term Infinite as well as its idea imply the negative of the Finite, of the Limited, of the Sensuous. A germ of idealism, yes, of the dialectic of finitude we may trace here, though certainly the germ is not developed. Truly a main path of all future Philosophy leads out of this Infinite of the old Milesian thinker. Still it would be a mistake to hold that Anax- mander seized the idea of the Infinite purely; there was in it a material substrate belonging to his period and to the infancy of Thought. What this material substrate was no one has ever been able to tell exactly. It was not a definite element like water or earth or even air, though it had its resemblance to the latter. The best view of it is to consider it the circumambient ether or atmos- phere surrounding the earth, quite invisible and unbounded. So this early Infinite hovers between the material object and meutal concept somewhat doubtful of itself. Still it will free itself of its corporeal shell in time ; even Anaximander is re- ported to have declared it " immortal and inde- structible," according to Aristotle. A kind of immaterial materiality it has, this first chrysalis of thinking, not easy to understand till we see what it becomes. One other important term in Philosophy is THE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 85 ascribed to Anaximander, the Greek word arche, the beginning. That is, he first used the begin- ning not as purely physical but as metaphysical also, not merely as an object but likewise as a thought. The Latin word principium has the same double meaning, literal and metaphorical; it signifies both a sensuous beginning and a principle, which latter in English is mental. Thus Anaximander elaborated a new category to fix all future thinking, aware that it must have a first principle or arclie (also called cause, element, essence) in which it definitely cate- gorizes itself. From these two categories of his (the Infinite and the First Principle) we may conclude that Anaximander was the first abstract categorizer of Greek Philosophy, recognizing that it must express itself in a series of cate- gories. Herein he is seemingly an advance upon Thales, whose chief term, water, is not pri- marily a category of Thought, such as are the Infinite and the Finite. Anaximander, like Thales, was a famous physicist, writing on Nature, theorizing about the sun, moon, and stars, which were larger and smaller apertures in an encompassing Heaven, and let through a proportionate light from the exterior sphere of fire which enveloped the Cos- mos, ^lore practical was his invention of the first map, doubtless giving in outline the coun- tries around the Mediterraueau visited by the 86 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL 080PHY. Milesian navigator. To him is also ascribed the construction of the sun-dial, which, however, he may have borrowed from the Orient. Some say, too, that the first map belongs to Egypt. But wc can well understand how the attempt to make a map at that time brought impressively l)efore the mind of Anaximandcr the bounded territory and the boundless Beyond of the earth's surface, in correspondence with the Finite and Infinite of his Thought. Nor must we omit to mention that remarkable gleam of Evolution far back in Miletus: num is descended from a fish, which with the lower animals arose first from the primitive slime of the earth, so Anaxi- mandcr said accordinjj to Plutarch. But the great philosophic fact in the career of Anaximander is that he categorized the Infinite and handed it down to the future. Compared to the simple element of Thales (water) his is a kind of double principle, a kind of universal matter, that is, both material and universal. An advance of the sensuous element toward the supersensible we can see in this second stage of the Milesian movement. But now a third philosopher is to appear, with a new principle, yet connected with the two before him in one process of Thought. 3. Anaximenes. This philosopher, also a Milesian, was the friend and pupil of Anaxi- mander, and his career belonged to the second THE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 87 half of the sixth century B. C He seems to have been less important than either of the two preceding thinkers, still he has his definite place in the Milesian movement. Anaximenes held that the essence of the All was air, but not the continuous atmosphere of Anaximander, but air as breath, spirit, or soul (psj^che); that is, air individualized, made defi- nite by and in a living organism. Here rises some faint conception of the World-soul, after- wards rendered famous by Plato in his Tu)i(eus; but the idea of the Cosmos being a huge animal with its own peculiar life was common to many Greek philosophers. Anaximenes makes or begins to make the transition from the material sub- strate of Being to the psychical ; yet this psychical element is still regarded as the air or a material element. It is, however, invisible, a cause unseen producing effects which are seen; hence it has its suggestion of spirit. The air as the breath of the cosmic animal has in it a process, that of inspiration and expiration; it is, as above said, individualized — which fact forms the conclusion of the JVIilesian movement, which has lasted about one hundred years, between 600 and 500 B, C. This is the period of the greatest glory of Miletus, which, thcmgh subjugated by the Persians for a part of the time, enjoyed a certain degree of independence. But the city took a leading part in the great Ionic revolt about 88 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 500 B. C. The Persians cai)tured Miletus, slew its male inhabitants, and sold its women and children into slavery (494 B. C.)- This blow crushed it completely, it had no further prestige in Greek Historj', Science, or Philosophy, whose first great movement it contributed to Occiden- tal civilization. Its three famous philosophers spanned the century of its honor, and the last of them probabl}' did not live to see his country's degradation. Observations on the preceding Movement . — We term it Milesian because it belongs to Miletus and nowhere else. 1. This group of philosophers is often called the Ionic school, but such a name is wrong when the right one is just at hand. It it true that Miletus was an Ionic city but there were many other Ionic cities besides this, and many other Ionic philosophers besides these. Pythagoras, for instance, and Anaxagoras were lonians; butchiefly Socrates and Plato were lonians, for they were born Athenians, and Athens was an Ionic city. In fact, when we look into the matter we find that it was the Ionic Greek who philosophized not the Dorian, not the Aeolian. The Spartans, the typical Dorian people, never produced a phi- losopher worthy of note. Some Dorian colonies had schools of Philosophy, but these were founded by Ionic settlers, as we see in the case of Pythagoras of Samos and of Xenophaues of THE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 89 Colophon. It may be affirmed that substantially all the Philosophy of the Hellenic Period from Thales to Aristotle, its creative epoch, was Ionic. Rightly designated, the Milesian is simply the first stage of the total Ionic movement of Thought. 2. We call these three persons philosophers because they were seeking the essence of Being {theousia of the ow) and expressed the same in a special category. This is the process common to every Philosophy, the earliest as well as the latest. Accordingly the Milesian movement w411 show three essential categories, water, the infinite as atmosphere, and air as soul, or individualized. Now the point must be emphasized that these three principles form a single process by them- selves ; in other words they constitute a Psycho- sis. The first stage is the simple, immediate one, in which an individual material element is taken as first principle — the water of Thales; the second stage brings twofoldness, since the at- mosphere of Anaximander has distinctly both sides, that of a mental concept and that of a ma- terial object, and shows the incipient interplay of all Philosophy between the Infinite and the Finite ; the third stage indicates a return to the individual element of the first stage, yet through the second — the air of Anaximenes, even though the same, is not immediately taken (as by Anaxi- mander) but is the result of a process, even the world's process, being its breath or soul, 90 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 3. Here, then, we have the first philosophic triiid, implicit to be sure, but soon becoming ex- plicit and growing more and more concrete down to the present time. Philosophy will never lose this triune movement started in the old Greek city, though it was declared long before in the Asiatic religions. Moreover it incarnated itself at Miletus in three persons distinctively, each of whom was an P^go, a Self which was seeking to find itself in the world. When it asks what is the real essence of Being, the true answer is the Self, but such an answer lies far in the future. Still the student, tracing the inner connection of all Philosophy, is to see that just this is what lay iu the fermenting souls of these ancient Mile- sian philosophers. 4. Accordingly the significance of this early movement lies chiefly in the fact that it is the first Psychosis of the Philosophy of Europe. As Thought it is very rude and primitive ; but it is the germinal starting-point for what may be called the highest European Discipline. Let us term it the primordial cell out of which the total organism of Philosophy is to develop; this Milesian Psychosis is such an embryonic cell begetting a vast progeny of philosophic Psychoses, the chief line of which we shall try to follow out in the present book. And to con- tinue our illustration, that water of Thales may be regarded as the nucleus, or even nucleolus. THE MILESIAN MOVEMENT. 91 of the cell out of which is to develop all future Philosophy. So we see that Thales announced a truth in his categor}^ though with a different sense from what he intended : Water has been the first principle, if not of all things, at least of many Philosophies. 5. So much we can affirm lookino; hack through a vista of twenty-five centuries. No man could tell beforehand what lay in that little nucleus of Thales, just as in human embryol- ogy the germ must be interpreted by its evolu- tion. And that embryonic Psychosis, as we may name it, of the three Milesian thinkers will be more fully explained by the Philosophy of the Twentieth Century than by that of any previous period. 6. The city of the sea-coast of Hellas will differ much from the city of the river-valley of the Orient, such as are the cities of the Euphrates and Nile. The sea uniting Peoples and producing a new life by commerce and intercourse suo-o-ests the creative import of water (Thales). Then the sea is boundless and hints the Infinite (An- aximander), which is nevertheless to be grasped and possessed. The sea, too, in its movements seems a living thing, a huge body of ani- mated matter, or hylozoism incorporate. The Hellenic sea-city makes an epoch in the history of the World, and forms the transition out of Asia to Europe in thought and institutions. 92 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 7. We are not to forget, however, that the principle of each of these Milesian Philosophers goes back to and reposes upon a special element of Nature existing for the senses. Hence the movement is elemental in a particular and even material form ; thus the Infinite of Anaximander has its material substrate, as we have seen. To this fact we must not fail to give due weight, since it shows the Milesian Psychosis as the first or immediate stage of the total elemental move- ment. 8. There were more Philosophers belonging to the Milesian Movement than those above men- tioned. One has been specially brought into prominence, Diogenes of Apollonia, a contem- porary of Anaxagoras and also a resident of Athens, though probably a Cretan by birth. He is interesting as relapse to an earlier stage, but is not an integral part of the original Milesian Movement. B. The Eleatic Movement. Already in Anaximander, the second of the Mi- lesian philosophers, we find a decided effort to rise out of the particular, sensuous element as the es- sence of Being. His Infinite (apeiron), however, is simply another particular sensuous element , from which the rest spring, and so does not get beyond Milesiauism in spite of its struggle. But the THE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 93 Eleatic Movement now follows, affirming the es- sence of Being to be Pure Being, and therein negating all particularity. Still this Pure Being too will be found to have an elemental substrate, and hence belongs to Elementalism, in whose total process it is the second stage. The name is derived from a small city in Magna GrjBcia (Southern Italy), Elea, where dwelt the three leading spirits of this second important phase of Greek Philosophy. A quiet, retired spot it was in contrast with the large, active, throbbing world-city, Miletus; almost its sole fame comes from its being a philosophic town. Such a place comports in character with Eleati- cism, which is an abstraction and inuer withdrawal from all concrete and variegated existence into the colorless realm of Pure Being. Like the Milesian, the Eleatic movement lasted about a hundred years, beginning somewhere in the latter half of the sixth century B. C, toward its end probably. Again a single city gives name to a great philo- sophic movement, as was the case also with Mile- tus. But from the eastern borderland of the Hellenic world we pass by a sudden leap to the western. In this fact we may see something in the nature of a reaction from the Milesian Move- ment, especially since the founder of the Eleatic School was born and grew to manhood at Colo- phon, an Ionic city of Asia Minor not far from Miletus, whence he migrated to Italy. Elea 04 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPSf. seems to have had, in part at least, a Doric population, and in the Eleatic Philosophy a Doric character has been detected, though its founder was an Ionian. Yet we trace also among the Eleatics an Oriental Pantheistic tend- ency, so that the reaction from Miletus, like most reactions and reformations, may have been back- ward as well as forward. Still Eleaticism is an emphatic separation from Ionia and the domi- nant Milesian thought there ; this separation is not onl}^ in space but also in doctrine. The Eleatic principle of Being is Pure Being, Being as such and alone, not an}' form or material element of Being, such as water or air. Here lies the emphatic separation and opposition of Elea to Miletus. One must abstract from all mul- tiplicity of Beings, from all sensuous appearances, and grasp the one Being, veritably the One which is. That mobile, material, particularized Ionic world dominated by Miletus we must flee from, taking a long hazardous voj'age across the sea to the free West not yet occupied by any Philosophy. The Eleatics are, accordingl}', seeking the essence of Being (the ousia of the o?i), and will declare its category. This essence they will find not in an}' elemental substance, but in Being itself as substance, and nothing else. Pure Being thus is their category, which in spite of its oneness will show a process, as it unfolds itself in three leading forms through three lead- Tee ELEATic Movement. 9o ing minds. For the Eleatic Movement, like the Milesian in this respect, incorporates itself in three transcendent philosophers, though there are many mediocre and partial Eleatics. In other words we shall have an Eleatic Psychosis, personal indeed, but also of ideas. It will be seen that the Eleatic doctrine rests upon abstraction, negation, in fact just the nega- tion of the finite world. Pure Being is siuiply this universal abstraction seized as a concept by itself and uttered in a category. From beginning to end it has a decided negative element running through it ; from this point of view Eleaticism may be deemed the birth of the Negative in Philosophy. Still its immediate purpose is posi- tive; Pure Being, in spite of its negative source, is regarded by the Eleatics as a positive principle. This inherent negativity of the Eleatic Move- ment will come to the surface in Zeno with his negation of Non-Being. But his pupil Gorgias will put the negative i)rinciple inside of Being and destroy it, blowing it to pieces with its own petard. Gorgias is, therefore, not strictly an Eleatic, but we may consider him the Eleatic destroyer of Eleaticism. Pure Being, as Eleatic, has an elemental sub- strate, namely Space. Not any particular form of a material element is this ; otherwise the Eleatic would not differ from the Milesian Move- ment. But a total element is taken which in- 96 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. eludes all particular elements, the element of elements. Thus the Eleatics rise from the par- ticular to the general, but the latter is still an element with them; that is, the general as element (Eleatic) rises out of the particular as element (Milesian). Of course this is not the general or the universal in its purity, which does not appear before the time of Socrates. It is, however, an important mile-stone on the way thither. Thus we see that Eleaticism is still elemental, and belongs to the elemental phase of the Hel- lenic Period of Greek philosophy. Moreover, it is the second or separative stage thereof, which is manifested by the fact above given, that it is fundamentally a separation or abstrac- tion from the particular Elementalisni of the Milcsitms, which was the first stage, this separa- tion being also local as well as spiritual. The idea of Pure Being now becomes incarnate (so to speak) in three philosophers, each of Avhom manifests a phase of its movement. And Philosophy, passing from East to West to a Greek colony, shows what we may call its West- colonial Movement, which took a strong hold of the Greek mind in Southern Italy and Sicily. 1. Xenophaiies. The outward life of this phi- losopher was that of a rover, first from East to West, then through various places of the West in Sicily and Italy. His youth reaches back to Anax- TEE ELEATIG MOVEMENT. 97 imander whose pupil he is suid to have been, and possibly to Thales, whose thought he assailed. He was born at Colophon, from which he was driven away, possibly on account of his religious opinions which attacked the existent polytheism. He was an Ionian, and must have known the Milesian Philosophy in all its phases at first hand, of which, however, he became the most decided opponent. In some lines written at 92 preserved by Diogenes Laertes, he says he has been roam- ing around in Greek lands for 67 years, since he was 25. He composed verses setting forth his views, which he recited in the towns he visited. He was an old Greek Johnny Appleseed, and is reported to have lived till he was more than a hundred years of age, dying in extreme poverty. Many kinds of poetry were ascribed to him — Epics, Elegiacs and Satires; he wrote a poem on the founding of Elea in 2000 hexameters. His philosophic ideas were given in a didactic poem, of which some fragments remain. In these he asserts "the one supreme God" who is not " like mortals in body or thought," as were the popular deities of Greek religion and art. He severely blames the poets, naming Homer and Hesiod, who show the Gods guilty of " the most unjust things— lying, theft and adultery." In a famous line he says God is "all eye, all ear and all thought," or as we might translate it. He is the " All seeing, hearing, thinking." 7 98 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. It is plain from these citations that Xeno- phanes was a preacher of Monotheism against the prevailing Polytheism. Probably this repre- sents but a phase of the philosopher who says, •' everything is one," and is declared by Aristotle to be the first promulgator .of the unity of all things. That is, Xenophanes seems to pass from Monotheism to Monism, and to conceive the true essence to be " the One and All," and not necessarily a person. Thus he moves out of religion to ontology, and becomes the founder of a philosophic sect. He is reported as saying: " Wherever I turn my mind, everything dissolves into the one substance." Xenophanes has 'an ethical strand in him, as we see by his attack on the immoralities of the Greek Gods, wherein he will have many a suc- cessor among the philosophers. As to his reac- tion from lonism to Dorism, it may lie just in this absorption of the indi^'idual into an all-ruling Being, and he will not be the last Ionic philoso- pher who will lean to Doric institutions, since Socrates and Plato show the same tendency. We should conceive Xenophanes as uniting in his thought of the Supreme One both a monothe- istic and a monistic element ; the two principles, the personal and impersonal, are not yet fully differ- entiated in his mind. Thus he represented the first or irnplicit stage of Eleaticism. Further- more he occupied himself with phjsical theories, THE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 99 showing that he naively took for granted a phe- nomenal world alongside of his one Being. Nor did he engage in the deeper discussions of the later Eleatics, whose fight was against Non- Being, Becoming, and the Multiplicity of things. These divisions lay in him implicit, not yet de- veloped; but now we are to consider the man who developed them, and thus made Eleaticism a distinctive philosophic doctrine. 2. Farmenides. The philosophic career of Parmenides lay within the first half of the fifth century B. C. The exact years of birth and death cannot be fixed in his case, as inmost cases of these early philosophers. He was born at Elea of a wealthy and important family, and re- mained a citizen of the place during life ; in fact, he is said to have given laws to his native city. He was not a wanderer like Xenophanes,but had a fixed abode. Still he traveled; Plato gives an account of the visit of two Eleatic philosophers, Parmenides and Zeno, at Athens, where Socra- tes, then very young, heard them. This indi- cates that even the contemplative and remote philosophers of Elea went abroad to impart their own doctrine and to learn that of others. The common voice of antiquity celebrates the lofty character, the profound thought, and even the personal beauty of Parmenides. In early years he was attached to the Pythagoreans of Southern Italv, and their strict and somewhat 100 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ascetic life he seems to have followed to the last. But their philosophic doctrine he renounced for that of Xenophanes, whom he may have heard chanting hexameters in some market-place. For this statement indeed there is no historic evidence ; but it is certain that the high-born Doric aris- tocrat adopted the philosophic message brought by the poor Ionic wanderer: an event which has often had its parallel in the world. Nor can we help adding to the picture the probable but unverified touch that the rich, highly respected citizen established his homeless fellow-thinker at Elea where they started the world-famous Eleatic School (as is similarly reported of two New England philosophers at Concord). As already stated, the doctrine of Parmenides shows a philosophical development beyond that of Xenophanes, since the former has freed himself of the latter' s theological element and has become distinctly ontological. That is, he seizes Pure Beinof as the One, havintr little or nothing to say of the one God. Then he elaborates the category of Non-Being, under which he places all Becoming, all Multiplicity, as well as Motion and Chano;e. Beinoj cannot besin to be or cease to be; it cannot be divided and so be many, but is One, just the One, ever-present, eternal, un- changeable. What about Thought, especially this Thought of Being? It is one with Being, cannot be separated from it, for Being allows no TEE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 101 separation within itself. From this point of view Parmenides must deny the world as distinct from Thought, and so may be considered an acosmist like Spinoza, whose so-called pantheistic idealism has this Greek forerunner. Still Parmenides, true to the instinct of this early stage of Hellenic Philosophjs has a sub- strate which may be called physical. He con- ceives his Being as space-filling, as extended through all space, if not just the divisionless ex- tension of Pure Space. This fact is also implied in his immediate oneness of Thought and Being;, The distinction between subject and object is not his, nor has he yet clearly discriminated between the immaterial and material, both are one in Be- ing. In fact, any distinction is non-existent, his Being is pure identity, it is all fullness and there is no void to break the One and the Same. But Parmenides did not allow his Being to be unlimited or without bound; that would make it formless, chaotic, and would violate his Greek plastic sense. Hence he compared it to a sphere, giving to it completeness of form. It could be eternal and unchangeable, but not strictly infinite. Already the keen reader has not failed to find inconsistencies in this Being of Parmenides. But his chief inconsistency, one which cracks his philosophy wide open and leaves it a gaping dualism, is next to be mentioned. He wrote a poem setting forth his doctrine in hexameters, 102 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of which some fragments remain. The first part of his work treated of Being or Truth, whose leading points have been given in the preceding account. But, strangely, he added a second part, which treats of that which is not, never was and never will be — a most remarkable somersault. So his Non-Being after all has a kind of Being, at least in his own mind, which, however, was supposed to be one with Being. Parmenides also occupied himself extensively with physical investigations and theories, which decidedly implied the Being of his Non-Being. Many attempts have been made in ancient and modern times to explain this contradiction, but it lies deep in the mind of the philosopher and in the principle itself — Parmenides would not be Parmenides without this dualism, and Eleat- icism would not be Eleaticism without it. His service to culture is to have taught man- kind to make the mighty abstraction from all change and multiplicity, and to seize the change- less One, Pure Being. To be sure, he did not reach the Concept through his abstraction, this was reserved for Socrates, who may have received his hint when he saw and heard in his youth Parmenides at Athens. Thus the dualism inherent in the Eleatic doc- trine becomes explicit, though perchance unac- knowledged, in Parmenides. With all his assertion of Being and his denial of Non-Being, he ends THE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 103 with taking for granted the Being of Non-Being. This gives the starting-point of the third great Eleatic philosopher who will make a new hercu- lean attempt to rescue his school from its self- devouring dualism by showing that Being alone is and Non-Being is not at all. 3. Ztno. The intimate friend, the companion in travel, and, according to one author, the adopted son of Parmenides, was this Zeno, born at Elea. He was twenty-five years younger than Parmenides, in the account of Plato, but an- other reckoning puts this difference of age at forty years. We can say, in general, that Zeno is not only the third great person, but represents the third generation of the Eleatic School, and substantially completes its movement. He, like Parmenides, shared in the Pythagorean life, and he evidently had something of a political career in his native city. But his chief public action was his part in deposing or even slaying a tyrant, who put him to torture in order to wring from him some confession. But Zeno bit off his own tono-ue and contemptuousl}^ spit it into the tyrant's face as if to show his philosophic defiance of suffering as well his determination to be silent. Of course this was a legend w^iich trans- formed Zeno into a tyrant-slayer, w^ho was always a popular Greek hero in story and song. It is not at all improbable that Zeno did have a hand in some such work, since quite every Greek 104 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. town had similar occurrences taking place in the natural order of its history. Still to-day the joy of the Greek ballad-singer is the bold youth who slays a Turk, his country's oppressor, Aristotle makes Zeno the founder of the Dialectic, others say he invented the Dialogue, but he was probably not the first Greek prose- writer, as is sometimes declared. As his life was one long attachment to Parmenides, so his work had the one object of defending his mas- ter, though the indirect results of that work reached far beyond Eleaticism. Parmenides, as well as Xenophanes, had simpl}'^ asserted that apjiearance, multiplicity, change did not exist, and had bolstered their statement with some grounds more or less external ; but Zeno's pro- cedure is different, he shows that Multiplicity is self-contradictory in its nature and negates itself through its inner ^movement. Now, this inner movement of self -negation is the first appearance of the Dialectic in Philosophy, and it is still working at the present day. Let us take another illustration: I, as Eleatic, may deny Motion, and seek to refute it by certain arguments ; now Zeno too denied Motion, but his method was to make it deny itself ; he did not care to refute Motion from the outside, but he set it goins and let it refute itself, of course under his su])tle guidance. Such is the emphatic point in Zeno's philosophizing, and a great contribution TEE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 105 it was to the intellectual treasures of man to render him conscious of this process of his thinking. If we with Parmenides embrace Multiplicity, Becoming, Change, Motion, Appearance in the one category of Non-Being, then the labor of Zeno may be summed up in the statement that all Non-Being is internally self -negative. Here too we may see his advance upon the doctrine of Parmenides, who, as we have already noted, had been compelled practically to admit the Being of Non-Being after stoutly denying it, and so fell into dualism. Zeno will seek to vindicate his master by eliminating this dualism, which he does by making Non-Being annihilate itself through itself, that is, through its own inner Dialectic. So, if Non-Being destroys itself, there is left Pure Being in all its original glory, as first as- serted by Parmenides and Xenophanes. Herein we see that Zeno is a return to the purity of the Eleatic One out of the twofoldness into which it had lapsed, which fact shows him to be the third stage of the Eleatic Movement (or Psychosis). In general, the argument of Zeno turns against all separation, division, twoness or dualism. To be sure, he does not universalize his doctrine, but applies it to three main spheres, all of them belonging to external Nature: (1) to Multiplic- ity or Matter in order to assert its opposite or the 106 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. oneness of Being ; (2) to Motion, in order to assert its opposite or the unchangeableness of Being ; (3) to Space as limited in order to assert Space undivided as the substrate of Being. All these concepts he shows to be self-negating specially, but the general concept of the negation of the negation he does not consciously reach, though it is certainly implied in his examples. Zeno lil^e all these early phil()soi)hers, required a physical elemental substrate — Motion, Matter, Space — for his thinking. Still the Dialectic of all divis- ion, separation, negation is born in his work, though later hands must rear this Zciioiiian infant to manhood. Zeno of course does not grasp his own Ego as the source of this dialectical movement, still less does his own Ego consciously grasp itself as just this movement, which he has projected into that of Being and Non-Being. Still Zeno has given the ps3'chical process of the Ego or Self, not in its own form or psychologically, butontologically, in an alien or external form, namely that of im- mediate Being, Non-Being, and the return to Be- insr throuirh the sclf-neijation of Non-Being. It is the eternal merit of Zeno that he overcomes the second stage, that of division, separation, negation, and makes the grand return to the posi- tive, which is here Being. All this takes place within Eleaticism, but Zeno' s work cuts yet deeper, since it drives Eleaticism THE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 107 beyond itself. For this is also a second stage in a still larger movement (or Psychosis), which Zeno's Dialectic has caused to negate itself and to pass over to a third stage of this larger move- ment, which we have already named the Elemental Psychosis, and which, taken as a whole, is the first great movement of the Hellenic Period of Greek Philosophy. Let it then be noted that Zeno has given the inner dialectic process of every second stage, the separative or negative stage, which is in every movement of philosophic Thought. To be sure, he is not conscious of any such far-reaching result of his Dialectic; indeed modern Philosophy has not fully developed the significance of this Zenonian procedure. It suggests the inherent, eternallj^ recurring contra- diction in Nature herself, who has always lurking in her activity the self-opposition and the final self-undoing which Zeno pointed out in the phenomenal world of Change, Motion, Multi- plicity. Greek Philosophy, striving mainly for the ^essence of Nature or of the Cosmos, will unfailingly bring to the surface its inner self- negation first indicated by Zeno, and go to pieces on it without fully knowing why. Not till the thought of man can put Nature into its true place as a stage of the total Process of the Universe, and grasp its function in such a totality, can he master its negative power over his thinking. The Zenonian Dialectic is 108 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL OSOPB T. profoundly working in the Natural Science of to-day. Observations on the Eleatic Movement. It is not to be understood that there were no other Eleatic philosophers except these three. But the rest were of lower rank, and are not neces- sary to the movement as a whole. 1. Of these lesser Eleatics the first place is usually assigned to Mclissus of Samos, who, besides being a philosopher, was a famous gene- ral. He re-affirmed the Pure Being of Parmen- ides, from whom he differed in one respect: he declared Being to be infinite in space, thereby doino- away with its spherical form, which Par- menidcs gave to it. Thus the spatial substrate of Pure Being is without any limit, just as Pure Being has no limit in time, being eternal ac- cordinsr to the Eleatics. 2. A pupil of Zeno, Gorgias of Leontini in Sicil}', may be mentioned in this connection, though he properly belongs to the Sophists. He carries out the negative procedure of his master to the point of negating Pure Being itself. Zeno, as above indicated, simply negatives Non-Being in the form Motion, Change, Multiplicity, and thereby returns to Pure Being. But Gorgias directs the destructive might of the Dialectic against just this result, and destroys Eleaticism with its own weapon. He wrote a famous book On Non-Being in which he elaborates this triple negative : — THE ELEATIC MOVEMENT. 109 (1) Nothing exists; (2) And if something did exist, we could not know it; (3) And if we knew it, we could not impart such knowledge. So Gorgias is the first theoretical nihilist, hay- ing pushed the negative principle inEleaticism to the point of absolute self-negation. We have already noted that Pure Being is a product of ab- straction, of mentally doing away with all partic- ularity, and holding fast to the One, or Pure Being. But this One just in such a process becomes particular, and has its own negative nature turned back upon itself through Gorgias, who is, there- fore, an Eleatic undoing Eleaticism, the demon of the system. Still the reader will note that Gorgias is at the same time undoing himself in a truly comic fash- ion. He says we cannot know anything, and yet he claims to know something about nothing, to the extent of writing a book upon the subject. So he must know a good deal about what cannot be know^n, and is ready to impart that knowledge which he says cannot be imparted Thus the nihilism of Gorgias, hke all nihilism, annihilates it- self, after making some noise ; the demon is burnt up in the hell-fire of his own negation. Goro-ias, who was sophist and rhetorician, rep- resents the negative phase of Sophisticism (it has other phases) better than any one else, employ- 1 1 ANCIENT E UB OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. ing speech, according to his principle, not to impart knowledge or truth, but seemingly the op- posite. But from this point of view he belongs to a later stage of Hellenic Philosophy, which will be developed in its proper place. 3. Though Eleaticism seems to have vanished as a school after Zeuo, it has remained an influ- ence through the whole course of Philosophy. The attempt to get the One, the true Being or the Real Object underhung all phenomenaUty has always been and probably always will be a fasci- nation for the philosophic mind. We see it working in Plato and Plotinus, in Spinoza and Heo'el, in the modern movement from Monothe- ism to Monism. The eternal, unchangeable, im- perturbable, self-identical Being, without the caprices of a Person, even of a Divine Person, works with a mighty spell at times over every human soul. The influence of Eleaticism goes out directly upon the succeeding Greek thinkers and helps determine their various systems, which, however, will seek to avoid its pitfall, namely, the asser- tion of the non-existence of the phenomenal world. At the same time the Eleatic concept of Being eternal, immutable, ever the One and the Same, will not be lost, but will be taken as the essence of all things changeful and finite. In other words, the negative side of Eleaticism, hav- ing undone itself, will be dropped, but its posi- THE ELBA TIO MO YEMEN T. Ill tive principle will persist, and will show itself in the systems of Empedocles and the Atomists, and thence will pass into Attic Philosophy. 4. We are to keep in mind that Eleaticism still belongs to the elemental stage of Hellenic Thought. It has a phj'sical substrate and is not free of a material suggestion. Parmenides conceives his Pure Being as existent in space, as a sphere extended on all sides from a center. Indeed his Pure Being would seem to find its best physical counterpart in Pure Space, which is itself the abstraction from all physical deter- minations, and is still considered physical. In fact all this early Greek thinkmg, which we have called elemental, could not stand alone, as it were ; it had to have a support or prop in Matter ; this material hypostasis is doubtless etherealized in Pure Being, still is never quite absent. 5. Eleaticism is the complete reaction against the caprice of an all-controlling Will, in favor of the immutable, eternal, impersonal Law which is the essence of the Universe. So absolute and autocratic is it that it does not allow change to exist ; external mutation and inner caprice are swallowed up and disappear in this all-de- vouring Eleatic One, which alone is. Herein philosophic Europe affirms its entire separation from theistic Asia on the one hand, and on the other makes the complete abstraction from the particular, phenomenal world. The changeless 1 1 2 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PBIL O SOPHY. Eleatic character is in strong contrast to the vohitile Ionic Milesian, who, indeed, as Greek called for the one essence of all things, but deemed it to be a particular, changeful element, like water or air, thus falling back into the opposite of what his question demanded. 6. The fact should also be noted that Elea in Italy is half way across Europe, far from the Asiatic border, and is thus emphatically Euro- pean in location. Still further, Elea is a neigh- boring city to Rome, which had been founded some three hundred years when the Eleatic Phi- losophy was in bloom, and which had already felt a Greek influence from the cities of South- ern Italy. In 450 B. C. Rome is said to have sent three embassadors to Greece for the purpose of studying its laws. The Ronum in these early days seems to have had a premonition of his his- toric vocation as lawgiver to the world. The Eleatic Philosophy with its immutable and im- personal One as the Law ot the Universe is a kind of prophes}^ of the universal Roman Law, which makes practical this Greek thought. Yet both are Italic, — the Eleatic Philosophy and the Roman Law — and suif^est the character and the work of ancient Italy in its two aspects, theoreti- cal and practical, or its Intellect and its Will. Thus we observe again that Philosophy is always found in an institutional setting, which it ex- presses for the present or for the future. Elea THE INTER-CONNECTING MOVEMENT. HS formulated the already existent aspiration of Eoman Italy. 7. But the Eleatic One, as the fixed and changeless, is separated from the Manifold, and excludes from itself all Change, whereby it shows itself incomplete, and so a part of a process which is higher and more complete. C. The Inter-connecting (or the Inter- colonial) Movement. The previous Eleatic Movement denies all Movement, denies itself to be a Movement, and so goes to pieces of its own inner contradiction. It is followed by a Movement whose fundamental principle is to assert Movement, or the Process, or more abstractly, the Becoming. But here a new question comes up : What is the cause or essence of the Becoming? Three different an- swers will be given to this question in the present Movement, which answers will in themselves show a process, which we name as above. We employ the second adjective in the fore- going caption in order to suggest a designation which corresponds with the title of the two pre- ceding Movements (Milesian and Eleatic, or East-colonial and West-colonial), both of which are named according to their locality. So the term Inter-colonialis intended to call to mind that this third Movement unites within itself Greek 114 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. colonies both East and West, Ionic, Italic and Sicilian. The term Inter-connecting is employed to sug- gest in a general way the inner character of the present movement, in contrast to the two preced- inor ones, which were single and isolated, each taking place in one city substantially by itself. But now we shall find three different Philoso- phies, each in its own locality forming a Move- ment under the lead of three different Philoso- phers, so that we behold a trinity both of persons and their doctrines as well as of places. These are in order the doctrine of Heraclitus, who was born in Ephesus, Asia Minor; the doctrine of Pythagoras who was ])oru in Samos but migrated to Italy ; the doctrine of Empedocles whose life was passed at Agrigentum in Sicily. If we notice these localities in relation to one another, we find that they lie on the border in a peripheral line drawn around and inclosing the Hellenic world- All of these are colonies (as were likewise Miletus and Elea), and thus show what is called an Inter-colonial Movement. Moreover we observe a repetition of the transfer of Philosophy from the extreme East of the Greek frontier to the extreme West, such as was noted in the transition from Miletus to Elea. The same change from lonism to Dorism, but more emphatic, takes place. So we go back again to Asia Minor, for our starting-point, THE INTER- CONNECTING MOVEMENT. 1 1 •> which is a single city ; next the migration of Pjlhagoras draws a line from East to West, in- dicating their separation ; finally the Movement comes to a close in a single city, Sicilian Agrigen- tum. In these outer local facts the reader will find a hint of what takes place spiritually. This Inter-connecting Movement will show its character in three different ways. First its dif- ferent doctrines svill be found to be related to those of the two previous Schools; secondly, its three Philosophies will be joined together in one pyschical process (Psychosis) ; thirdly, this pro- cess will show itself to be the third stage of a still greater process which embraces the Milesian and the Eleatic Schools. This is the process of Elementalism, that is, of Being as elemental, which has been already designated as the first stage of the Hellenic Period of Greek Philoso- The problem which chiefly calls forth the phi- losophizing of this Movement may be general- ized as the Becoming. TheEleatics worked over Being which was the unchangeable essence, while Non-Being, as Muliplicity, Change, Matter did not exist for them. Still they had always to pre-suppose this Non-Being in order to reach their Being by some form of abstraction. If they attained Being by negating Non-Being, surely the latter had to be in order to be negated. Hence the next step in thinking was to aiSrm 116 ANCIENT E UliOPEAN PHIL OSOPEY. explicitly the Being of Non-Being. Therewith the Eleatic stage was definitely transcended, and a new Movement of Thought opened. This is the present Inter-connecting Move- ment, in which we find three different Philoso- phies connected together as follows : — 1. That of Heraditus. The Becoming is immediate; all is in a state of flux, or change. 2. That of the Pythagoreans. The Becoming or Change is mediated or controlled by Number, which is the essence of all Being. But Number in its turn becomes, or changes, hence there are two Becomings, the mathematical and the ma- terial. 3. That of Empedodes. The Becoming exists immediately as change or the flux, but has within it as cause or essence, not Number, but the four elements, fire, air, earth and water (not fire or air or water singly, as other philosophers before Empedocles had said). These four ele- ments, themselves unchangeal)le, produce all Change or Becoming by separation and com- bination. In these three Philosophies we are to catch the psychical movement which not only inter-con- nects them, but joints them into the total move- ment of Phihvsophy. Empedocles seeing or feeling that there was just as much Change or Becoming in number as in matter, renounced the Pvthagorean explanation of Nature, and went THE IN TEB- C ONNE C TIN G MO VEMENT. 1 1 7 back to pure Becoming (that of Heraclitus), and sought to explain it with all its qualitative trans- mutations by means of the four primary ele- ments already noted. 1. Heraclitus. He was of Ionic Ephesus, on the eastern border of Hellas, opposite to Italic Elea, to whose philosophers he was in like man- ner opposite. For they affirmed that Being alone is and that Non-Being is not. But Heraclitus emphatically declares the Being of Non-Being against Parmenides, though the latter had implied it in his very denial, as was noted above. Then Heraclitus also affirmed the counterpart to the foregoiuo; declaration when he proclaimed the Non-Being of Being, which is really the outcome of Zeno's Dialectic. For Zeno, when he showed the Non-Being of the Many, showed implicitly the Non-Being of Being, since the Many is. Heraclitus, therefore, undoes Eleaticism from two sides, through its two chief representatives, showing 1. The Being of Non-Being against Parmen- ides. 2. The Non-Being of Being against Zeno. 3. Their union in the Becoming, which gives the doctrine of Heraclitus. Of the life of Heraclitus very little is known ; he is said to have flourished at Ephesus 500 B. C. This date makes him a contemporary of the later Milesians as well as of the Eleatics, 1 18 ANCIENT EUROPEAN miLOSOPHY. though older than Zeno. He withdrew from the public life of his city, iu contempt of its people. Tie believed in fire a.s the First Principle and evi- dently had some of it in his tongue and in his heart; he has been called the pessimist among these old philosophers. From antiquity he received the title "the obscure;" he wrote a book on his Philosophy which Socrates read but could not understand fully. Cicero, who evi- dently did not comprehend him, says he com- posed obscurely on purpose, so that he might seem deep to the vulgar mind; a similar charge is heard still to-day from those who expect to read philosophic works as they do uewspapei's. The book of Ilcraclitus has come down to us only in a number of separate fragments wiiich have produced a strong imi)ression upon some distinguished thinkers of modern times, for in- stance Schleiermacher and Hegel and Lassalle the SociaUst, the latter writing a special work in two yolumes upon the ancient Greek philosopher. So Heraclitus still has a constituency of students, if not followers. His chief proposition runs thus: All flows, is in a flux or perpetual movement; nothing stays the same. Directly opposed is this to the Eleatic statement that All is the One and the Same — no multiplicity and no motion. He declares that a man cannot descend into the same stream, indeed the same man cannot descend into a stream, for THE INTEB CONNECTING MOVEMENT. 119 both stream and man are in the universal flux of the world. More abstractly stated, the thought is here that of the Becoming, as the continual unity and interflow of Being and Non-Being. For Being is unceasingly passing into Non-Being, and Non- Beinof is unceasingly passing into Being. The first is always separating froin itself and going over into the second, which in its turn is always separating from itself and returning to the first. From this we see that Ilcraclitus has seized the very process of Being which is in fact Being as a process. It is evident that this process is one yet threefold : first, is immediate unity ; second, is the separation; third, is the returning ])hasc. There is no stop in this whirl or double whirl of the universe; all is arising yet all is ceasing ; all is being born yet all is dying ; all is negative, yet this negative is i)erj)ctually negating itself. Both Being and Non-Being have this process within themselves ; hence we can have a conception of what Ilcraclitus meant when he said that Beinr/ and Non-Beinrj areone — a statement reiterated by Hegel in the beginning of his Logic. Thatis, they are really stages or phases of one process ; held apart from that process or from each other, each becomes contradictory or negative of itself and passes into the other. Hence the reality of Be- ing and Non-Being can only be their unity, their process, which is otherwise called the Becoming. 120 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Through such a hazy dance of abstruse catego- ries the old Ephesian philosopher leads us ; no wonder he was named " the obscure," the reader will now probably understand the epithet. Still let it be affirmed that this thought of Heraclitus has been oug of the most prolific in ancient Phi- losophy. It asserts the primal process of Being, or that Being nuist be seized as a process, with which conception Philoso})hy makes a fresh be- ginning. Zeno had this process indeed, but not fully explicit and so denied it in his conclusion. Heraclitus affirms unity too, not as dead or at rest, but as a process ; Being is not simply the One, but the one process, or the process of the One, which is the Becoming, which again is both neorative and self-neo;ative. But Heraclitus has also his implicit, uncon- scious side. Reall}'^ it is the process of his own thinkinor which has beheld itself in this external process of Being or the Becoming. His Ego has caught a glimpse of the divinely creative Ego creating the Cosmos, and has uttered the same to men. His process is thus the Psychosis in the form of Being ; from this point of view we may call it the first or immediate Psychosis of Be- ing with its triune movement. Of any such inner movement Heraclitus was not conscious, nor was any ancient philosopher fully so. Still Heracli- tus uncovered the primal psychical process of all Being, and so he has a lofty place in the TEE INTEE.CONNECTINQ MOVEMENT. 121 unfolding of the Pampsychosis, the universal creative principle which develops itself through all Philosophy, indeed through all Science and Religion. Heraclitus was, however, an early Greek phi- losopher, yes an Ionian, and like his class he had to have a material substrate to his thinking, indeed one of the elements, of which two at least had already been taken by the Milesians. This ele- ment is Fire, which may be regarded as a visible manifestation of his Becoming, which both arises and ceases to be, is both negative and self -nega- tive, and leaves behind a new beginning which may again take fire. A still more subtle phj^sical principle, that of Time, Heraclitus brought into connection with his Becoming. For we can say of Time that while it is, it is not, the Being of it is its Non-Being or Vanishing, and its Vanish- ing is the return back into itself as the Now. Thus the ever-vanishing and the ever-returnino; Now is Nature's pure act of Becoming without any material substrate, her primal form of the process corresponding to the thought-form of it, which was termed the unity of Being and Non- Being. Moreover Heraclitus imaged to himself a process of the elements in which they were meta- morphosed into one another in a cycle : Fire was condensed to Water, Water to Earth, which was " the way down;" then there was " the way up," showing apparently the return. Again he 122 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPHT. connected Fire with the soul, even with the world- soul ; the universe is burning, so is man ; both are in the process, in the same process. In such fashion Ilcraclitus seeths and ferments darkly, darkly, like the Cosmos being born out of Chaos; he is his own Becoming, an incessant maelstrom of arising and departing, whose Being is forever in a whirl into Non-Being, and whoso Nou-Beins: is forever in a whirl back to Being. No wonder ho was a pessimist, for he seems to have been about the most harassed, writhing restless soul of all anti(|uity, if we may judge by those turbid and turbulent fragments of his al- ways becoming and never become: he seems the abolute denial and annihilation of that Greek serenity which we behold in the art, in the Gods, and in many great characters of Hellas. But where now is the ataraxia of Philosophy? Not in the Becoming of Heraclitus who declares that " War (polemos) is the father of things," here of course the War of all Creaticm. Thus we must put the stress upon the strifeful, negative phase of Heraclitus, both in doctrine and in character. Still we are not to think that he had not the return and reconciliation. Through his war and strife of the universe come harmony, peace, friendship, which after such violent birth-pangs ought to be appreciated. Heraclitus has the process, he knows that in all the hurly-burly of Becoming must lurk the Be- THE IN TER - C ONKE C TIN a MO VEMEX T. 123 come, the One and Eternal. This he names va- riously Necessity, Law and Order, Reason (logos) . This Reason is for him the divine process in all Becoming, which process we must participate in if we would know. Says he : We act and think ever^'thing rightly according to our participation in the Divine Reason ; if we act and think simply of ourselves, we are as in a dream. Already Parmenides had said that Thinking and Being: are one; Heraclitus utters the same thought. But neither of them has yet separated the'self-reflect- iug Ego with its process from that of Being; sul)- ject and object are still one in their philosophiz- ing, though we may well suppose that a faint rift of separation is beginning to make itself felt. 2. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Chro- nologically Pythagoras himself as distinct from his School belongs to the latter half of the sixth century B. C. He must have been an old man in 500 B. C, how many years after that time he lived is uncertain. He was contem- porary with the Milesian Anaximander and also with the Eleatic Xenophanes; Heraclitus, though doubtless younger, could have known him per- sonally. But the doctrines of all these philoso- phers belong in thought before Pj^thagoreanism in its developed form. Here we must make a distinction between Pythagoras and his School. This philosopher wa3 able to raise up a set of disciples who 124 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. unfolded his ideas to full maturity. The master has become so intergrowu with his pupils that it is quite impossible to separate their respective contributions to the common body of doctrine except in a very few cases. Aristotle who has much to say of Pythagoreanism very rarely speaks of Pythagoras by name but of the Pythagoreans. This is so different from his ordinary usage in citing previous philosophers that modern historians of Philosophy have very generally followed his example. This trait of Pythagoras is quite uu-Greok, at least un-Toiiic. For Greece specially developed the individual standing apart and by himself, like the statue of their distinctive art, sculpture. The Greek character has an inner plastic form, within its limits well-rounded and self-sufficing, the incarnation of individu- ality as such. Herein lies the source of its transcendent merits as well as of its transcendent shortcomings. Pythagoras, however, sank his individuality into his School, imparted it to his disciples, by whom it was preserved as an imme- diate influence and presence for a thousand years. To-day we read Plato and Aristotle and catch their personal message; not so Pythagoras, not so Christ; we have to receive their tidings through the fragmentary utterances of their disciples, who, as it were, breathe the breath of the master laden with his word down the ages. Pythagoras was born in the Ionic island of THE INTER-CONKECTING MOVEMENT. 125 Samos, which lies not far from the coast of Asia Minor. Thus he belonged in time and place to the great upspring of the human spirit, which we have already noted as centering in Miletus. It was also a time of great commercial enterprise and distant voyaging on the part of the lonians. There is every reason to believe that Pythagoras traveled extensively in the East, and especially in Egypt; his later life shows the influence of such a journey, and it was a very easy and nat- ural thing to do in those days, particularly from Samos, w^hicli had a large ~navy and cultivated navigation during the time of its great ruler, Polycrates, who established the first historical Thalassocracy (ruleof the sea) in Greece. Of this Samian monarch, who was connected by friendly ties with Amasis, the king of Egj'^pt, Pythagoras was a prominent subject, and would certainly have crossed the sea to the Nile in a Samian ship bearing letters to king Amasis, unless we regard the young philosopher as not feeling the least thirst for knowledge. Very improbable, therefore, is the skepticism of Zeller in this matter. The next great fact of Pythagoras is his migra- tion to Italy. He returned to Samos, and like many another traveler who has stayed away from home too long, he found his country uncongenial. From his Oriental experience he had acquired new ideas of life which were not altogether consonant with his Greek, and par- 126 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. ticularly not with his Ionic, environment. So in his case, too, as in that of Xcnophanes, we may see a reaction against his surroundings which sends him over the sea to the now West wliere was offered a free licld for realizing his now ideas. This is the outer local separation of Pythagoras corresponding to his inner separation, the former of which we can imagine as a line drawn from the eastern circumference of the Hellenic world to the western. "We may now discern the outlines of the three periods, undated yet visible, in the life of Pytha- goras. First is his earl}' work at Samos, doubt- less that of a teacher, who had clarified into his fundamental doctrine and had announced it in its simplest clomentiiry form : Number is the essence of all things. This is a Greek answer to a Greek problem ; it is the response of Pytha- goras to the primal Milesian question: What is ousia of the on? Such is, then, his first or pure Greek stage, or we may deem it his Ionic stage. Second is the period of his travels to the Orient, accompanied with increased knowledge and with now views of life and new plans; but his fundamental i)rinciple of Number remains and correlates all his added stores of learning and wisdom from the Orient. Third is his return home and migration thence to the Greek Occi- dent, in which he performs the great work of his life. The Greek cities of Southern Italy THE INTEE-CONNEGTING MOVEMENT. 127 constituted his chief field of propagandism, where his society acquired great authority, even to the extent of obtaining supreme pohtical rule in certain localities. The fundamental tenet of Pythagoras, then, is that Number is the essence of all things. The authorities, headed by Aristotle, are agreed upon this point. It is a simple statement, almost triv- ial; but on examination, difficulties arise. Num- ber is affirmed to be not a property or a relation of objects; it is their essence. Nor is it a sym- bol or archetypal pattern after which things are created; it is one with them, it is their essence. Number is the true genus, the creative principle of the universe, to which it imparts order and harmony. Sensible objects are numbers made manifest, which, however, must be at last ab- stracted from such objects and seized in their purity. Thus, Number is another step on the philo- sophic path to a supersensible world, as was also the Pure Being of the Eleatics. It is likewise one in essence ; in fact Number starts with the essential One (Monas), which is now a distinct and actual concept. With the Eleatics the One as a whole was not yet differentiated from Beingr as a whole. Hence the Pythagorean One as Number is more developed and later in thought than the Eleatic One which is hardly yet a num- ber. This fact is important as it helps us clas- 128 ANCIENT E UR OPE AN PHIL OSOPH T. sify the two systems aright -^ the Pythagoreans being usually placed before the Eleatics in the histories of Philosophy. We shall further see that the Monas of the Pythagoreans has a pro- cess within it, while the Eleatic One has not, be- ing simple unbroken identity from eternity to eternity. But whence did it get this process? From Heraclitus ; at least such is its relation to the Be- coming of Heraclitus, which we have already seen to be the process of Being as immediate. Hence Heraclitus in thought is to go before the Pytiia- goreans, even if he be younger in age than Py- thagoras himself ; also he is to be placed after the Eleatics, since he has the process in his Being, which makes it the Becoming. Thus we order genetically these early Greek Philosophies, each according to its first principle, as they grow more and more concrete, that is, as they become more and more an expression of the fundamental move- ment of the All (the Pampsychosis). The Pythagoreans, accordingly, made the ab- straction of the essence from the sensuous world, and called it Number. In fact they abstracted the essence from Becoming and made it a kind of ideal Becoming, or the numerical process, which is, in general, the Trias. It may be said that the Pythagoreans were the first to declare that the process of all things or of the Universe is three- fold, though this threefoldness of theirs is com- THE IXTER- CONNECTING MOVEMENT. 129 posed simply of numbers, and hence is an ex- ternal arithmetical triplicity. To be sure the number three was held sacred long before Py- thagoras, and in parts of the Orient, especially in Egj'pt, was divinely embodied in many Trinities. But the Pythagorean view is not a religion, but a philosophy; not three persons, but three num- bers are the essence or the creative principle of all things. Number was called divine, not so much because Number was a God as because God was a Number, and if any creating was to be done by either. Number would create the God, rather than God the Number. Thus the Pythagoreans split the Becoming of Heraclitus in twain, making two processes out of it, an ideal or numerical one and a mate- rial or phenomenal one, which latter was con- trolled, and indeed produced by the former. Hence Pythagoreanism had a decided germ of ideahsm, and contributed an important element toward the Ideas of Plato. But mark well the distinction. A system of pure idealism like the Platonic it was not. Py- thao-oreanism still held to the elemental substrate for the abstraction of Number. Herein Aristotle gives us help. " Numbers are the things them- selves," and do not stand apart from the phe- nomena like the ideas of Plato. Nor are they the patterns or archetypes after which things are made. Number is a form which is one with its 130 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. matter. It is uudoubtedly conceived as an ab- straction, but this abstraction is still an element, an element of elements. The Pythagorean Num- ber is still immanent and elemental, not yet tran- scendent and spiritual, as was its later conception. The separation was present, but it was in the thing, which thus had two elements, a mathe- matical and a material. Or we may say that Py- thaj^oreanism had two Becomini^s, that of number and that of matter, yet both belonged to the one thing, or to the one Nature or Cosmos. This is the sense in which we are to grasp the formula : Number is the essence of all things. Thought has reached the essence, but is as yet unable to do without the thing. Herein we see that P^thagor- eanism can not yet do without the element, but has itsphysical substrate, and belongs to the iirst or ele- mental phase of Hellenic Philosophy. Moreover the twofoldness of the world, as mathematical on the one hand and phenomenal on the other, is the fundamental fact of Pythagoreanism, and places it in the second stage of the general movement of the Becoming, which we have above named the Inter-connecting Movement (or Inter-colonial). The greatness of Pythagoreanism and its im- portance for human culture lies chiefly in its pe- culiar doctrine of the twofoldness of all thingrs. One element is the numerical, which, though it has its process within itself and thus is a great advance upon the crystallized Eleatic One, is the THE INTER-OONNECTINQ MO VEMENT. 1 3 1 eternal and abiding process inherent in the phe- nomenal side of the universe. Mathematics still retain this characteristic, and as a discipline for first bringing the mind to see the fixed basis of the world and of itself, they can hardly be too highly estimated. From this general thought of Number and the numerical process as the essence of all things, the School will build a vast structure, of which only a l^rief outline can be here given. The de- tails are very diversified, often fantastic, and by no means consistent, still we can trace in them the lineaments of a great totality. The entire sweep of Pj^hagoreanism shows three stages or divisions, which, though interconnected, ramify and subdivide themselves in many directions. The three main divisions pertain to learning, to doing, and to living; we shall call them the Math- esis, the Praxis, and the Askesis of Pythagorean- ism. (1) yiathesis. The word is derived from a Greek verb, to learn, and means the process of learniusr or education. From the same word comes our term JMathemafics, which originally meant things to be learned. The School of Pythagoras is thus connected with the school of to-day which still retains as a primary dis- cipline the science of numbers. Indeed it looks as if the old Greek founded and organized the school proper with its essential branches (the 132 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. three K's), which school has gone through many obscurations in the ages since, but has really never lapsed in its continuity down to the present. In fact Pythagoreanisni may be deemed the first pedagogical pliilosoi)h\', and hence it occupies a very important phice in the history of pedagogy. The first element of this Mathesis is Number, which, as ah'cad}' said, is the fundamental prin- ciple of the Pythagorean School, and thus the science of Number is the fundamental science, which is Arithmetic. This begins with the con- ception of the One, the Monas, which is not simply an indifferent one, but is creative, divides within itself and produces the Two (Dyas) and with it all multiplicity (or many Ones). Under the Dyas or Twouess the Pythagoreans elab- orated a system of pairs or opposing categories, odd and even, finite and infinite, etc. Then came the Three (Trias), which was a very important number, being considered the completeness and reality of the One (Monas) which is now a return out of Twoness or separation (Dyas) and thereby becomes concrete and a process. Still the Pythagoreans did not stop with the Trias but went on with their numbers up to ten (Decas), whereby the numerical principle showed its externality and insufloiciency. The second element of the Pythagorean Ma- thesis is the science of Form (spatial), and un- folds into Geometry. This too sprang from THE IXTEB-COXXECTIXG MOVEMEXT. 133 numbers, as follows: the spatial One (Monas) was the Point, the spatial Two (D^^as) or separa- tion was the Line, while the spatial Three (Trias) was Surface inclosed in its simplest way, namely in the triangle. Out of the triangle as right- angled Pythagoras constructed the famous geo- metric proposition which still goes by his name, whereby Number can be applied to all Form, spatial or material, and the physical universe can be measured, and, as it were, handled by mind. This brings us to the third element of the Mathesis, measure, or what is often called Ap- plied Mathematics. By the aid of the sciences of Number and of spatial Form the Pythagoreans began the great work of measuring and weighing the Cosmos as a whole and in all its parts, of re- ducing Nature to a mathematical formula which shows the order of its working and the means of its control. Their most celebrated measurement was that of musical sounds between which they ascertained the quantitative proportions and thus laid the basis of the science of harmony. They also carried these numerical proportions into the heavenly bodies whose motions were supposed to produce sounds like a musical instrument. In general, the Pythagoreans laid the mathematical basis for Music and Astronomy. Such are the three leading sciences in the school of Pythagoras — Arithmetic, Geometry, Men- suration. It was a very solid course of study for 134 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. those early times iu spite of many fantastic ap- l)lications, to which numbers easily lent them- selves. This was the intellectual discipline, but Pythagoreanism had an equally important prac- tical side, which we must note : — (2) Praxis. Here the training of the Will has place, upon which the Pythagoreans j)ut great stress, some think tiie chief stress, as if regard- ing the ethical interests and needs of man greater than his intellectual. First of all, the disci[)line of the School as a social body was very important. In it was that primal order which sprang from Number; strict obedience was enforced, the authority of thePyth- agorean master has become proverbial iu the term ipse di.xit (aafos epJia ) ; silence was enjoined u])on that most unruly Greek member, the tongue. Ethical subordination, probably often with Doric severity, was bred into the pupil by the school. Secondly, the Pj'thagoreans formulated a sys- tem of Morals, and inculcated personal virtue, which, however, was coupled with Number. Aris- totle says that Pythagoras was the first who at- tempted " to tell about virtue," but damaged his theory on account of " his referring the vir- tues to numbers." For instance, justice was a number; according to some it was four, accord- ing to others an other number. In this capri- cious play with numbers lies the weakness of Pythagoreanism. THE IXTEE-COXXECTIXG MOVEMEXT. 135 Thirdly, there was an institutional training and participation among the Pythagoreans. They became political leaders, they ruled the State, they were law givers. They are reported to have favored aristocracy, which was in harmony with their Doric leanings. But the re- sult was that the party of democracy coming into power in various Greek cities of Southern Italy - banished them, so that they were scattered through the rest of Greece. Their School had also a religious side ; it was something in the na- ture of a church, to use our term. So they showed phases of the three leading institutions — School, State, and religious Institution. With the Family the Pythagorean order could not have very strong ties, though women belonged to it, and Pythagoras himself was married. Theano, his daughter (some say his wife), was the most famous of Pythagorean women. With the religious and ethical aspects of Py- thagoreanism is doubtless connected its doctrine of Metempsychosis. Why are we here? The soul on account of its former transgression is whelmed into flesh for punishment, and after death may enter Cosmos or Tartarus or be com- pelled to assume afresh some human or animal shape. This un-Greek view is probably a strand of Orientalism which Pythagoras picked up in his travels, and wove into his doctrine quite exter- nally, for it has no inherent connection with his 136 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. fundamental category of number, even if the soul be a number. (3) Askesis. By this somewhat unusual word we seek to designate the Pythagorean Life which was the result of both Mathesis and Praxis. It is possible for man both to learn and to act with- out living in a high sense. The school of P3lhag- oras sousrht to transform the life of its mem- bers ; in this respect it resembles a religious order, and its founder has been compared to the founder of a religion. One of its words was palingenesia, or the second birth of the soul, which may have orisinallv meant the return of the soul to the body after a period of transmigration ; but the word must have had also its deeper meaning, which we designate by the term regeneration. The end both of the Mathesis and of the Praxis was just this inward life or character which was to transfigure all thinking and doing, and thereby reach the Askesis. The school evidently required a probationary period in its membership ; not all who were highly capable of learning and acting, were capable of the Askesis. Thus there arose a continuous and vigorous apostolate which per- petuated the school and its doctrine far into the Christian Era. In this respect the work of Pj^thagoras is unique among these old Greek philosophers. A great schoolmaster was this first one, for he had a school and he was the master of it with- THE INTER- COXXECTIXa MOVEMENT. 137 out question. But his greatest deed was that he could rear other Pythagorases to succeed him and to keep eternally active his work ; still fur- ther, he trained teachers to teach teachers to be such as he was, and so propagated his actual presence and selfhood for so many generations through his school, which lived his life, and prac- ticed his Askesis. This was the eternal element in it, each member of it became a living Pythag- oras through the power of the Askesis which he received and transmitted. Very rarely have other schoolmasters shown this power. Pestalozzi had something of it. But the only modern who has approached Pj^thagoras in this respect is Froebel, who has also his Math- esis in his theroetical doctrine, and his Praxis in the manipulation of his instrumentalities for the training of the child. But the truly marvelous trainino- in this work is that of the teacher or the kindergardner herself. Through the Mathesis and the Praxis she — for the woman has occupied the present field — attains the Froebelian Askesis, which is not simply a vocation but a life ; she be- comes a kind of re-incarnation of the master, and a most devoted apostle of his cause, having carried it already quite around the world and kept it alive and active with consecrated energy. To external argumentation against her faith she pays little heed, having the witness of the spirit within ; she is well aware that she has something which the outsider 138 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHT. knows not of, and that she has gotten it through her Froebelian discipline, which has still in it much that comes down directly from the founder. So we seek to bring before ourselves the last- ing element of the Pythagorean school, the Askesis, not very easy to grasp and formulate to one's satisfaction, yet the essential fact of the whole movement. Still we are by no means to neglect the other two stages, the Mathesis and the Praxis. The significance of Number is very great, being the first mastery of Nature, or among the first; a kind of machine we may consider it for controlling the Cosmos, which machine Pythagoras had a large part in construct- ing, and which he set to running quite on the lines of its future development. Hence we may say that the Pythagoreans began with Physics and sought an explanation of Nature through Number ; in this sense they were physicists and belonged to the early Greek Phi- losophers. But they had also a metaphysical thread as well as an ethical one in their fabric. Thus we see the three branches of Greek thought as developed later — Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics — germinating in their system, though it cannot well be divided in this way. Still their Mathesis or Mathematics they carried over into practice, and joined to it previous religious con- ceptions, and so unfolded the Askesis or the Pythagorean Life. TEE INTER CONNECTmQ MOVEMENT. 139 It was possible to participate in the Pytha- gorean Askesis, without accepting the doctrine of Number. Parmenides the Eleatic is said to have received training in the School of Pythag- oras, but to have gone over to the philosophy of Xenophanes. Still more emphatic is the case of Empedocles, who, evidently discontented with ^he doctrine of Pythagoras, felt himself com- pelled to found anew Phih)sophy, through which the onward movement of Greek speculation passes beyond Pythagoreanism. 3. Empedocles. We have reached the third sta<^e of the Inter-connecting Movement, whose locality is Agrigentum in Sicily, also a Greek colony in the West. The representative of this stage is Empedocles. The exact dates of his birth and death are uncertain, as has been o1)- served already of so many of these old philoso- phers. But the generally received opinion now is that he lived about sixty years, which are placed between 494 and 434 B. C. He was of aristo- cratic lineage, yet had democratic leanings, taking a prominent part in the political movements of his city and his time. He is said to have refused the offer of kingship over his countrymen. Of his spiritual pedigree there are many diverse reports. The bloom of his activity quite co-in- cides with that of the Pythagorean School in Southern Italy, though he could not well have been a pupil of Pythagoras himself. His writ- HO ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ings certainly show an acquaintance with Pytha- gorean doctrine; they also indicate a reaction ao'ainst that doctrine and a return to Heraclitus and to the older philosophies, Eleatic and Milesian. But the prime fact in the ordering of the philos- ophy of Empedocles is that it is a reaction against the Pj^thagorean principle of number and a going back to the physical element as the principle of Beinsf in the form of the Becoming of Heraclitus. Thus we behold in the Inter-connecting (Inter- colonial) Movement a psychical process with its three stages. Still Empedocles is by no means the return to the simple, immediate Becoming of Heraclitus, else his would be no original philosophy, but a mere repetition. He carries along with himself the experience which he may have obtained, and doubtless did obtain, from his Pythagorean study : beneath the world of change and multi- plicity, or of Becoming, lies a principle unchang- ing, underived, and indestructible. The Py- thagorean number started with being such a principle, but did not hold out. It claimed to be the essence underlying all change, but it too changed and showed itself derivable, in part at least. At this point we may trace the dissatis- faction of Empedocles with Pythagoreanism, and of his turning back to the Becoming and seeking a new principle or new principles. The peculiarity of his principle is that it is not THE INTEB CONNECTING MOVEMENT. 141 one but four — the so-called four elements, which he names the roots (^rhizomata) of all Being, and of which the phenomenal world in all its diversity is composed through combination (mixture) or separation. Now these four ele- ments are always self -identical, qualitatively unchangeable, which, however, produce all qualitative change by mechanical union and division. Just here, it should be noted, is the primal conception of the Atom. The elements of Empedocles might be named the macrocosmic Atoms but for one difficulty: they are not claimed to be indivisible, nor are they infinitely small, as is the microcosmic Atom of Leucippus and Democritus, which is the very next develop- ment of Philosophy. So Empedocles still be- lono-s to the Elementalists and not to the Atomists ; indeed he is a decided reaction toward earlier stages of Elementalism, which he strives to recover and to harmonize with the new incoming idea, but his struggles are really the desith convulsions of the elemental epoch of Greek thinking. In this genesis of the thought of Empedocles we should further note that the multiplicity in his principle is a strain of his Pythagorean train- ing. Number is multiplex, and hence as a prin- ciple of Being has multiplicity. So it comes that Empedocles preserves numerical multiplicity in his elements, but excludes all changeability and U2 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PBILO SOPHY. derivability. His four elements have a certain resemblance to four i)riiuary numbers, out of whicli all other numbers may be obtained by ad- dition and subtraction. Of course the compari- son does not hold throughout, since the com- bination and separation of the four elements produce all qualitative changes, and not simply (juantitative. In fact, Empedocles doubtless quit Pythagoreanisni because he saw that its play of numbers could only show quantitative change, but could never account for qualitative change or the real Becoming. Some writers also point out that the number of the elements, four, allies him to the Pythagoreans, this number having a very important place in their system (the te- trad ijs). One other relation of Empedocles we may mention as it has been much emphasized, and in our judgment over-emphasized. Some ancient reports make him a pupil of Parmenides and call him an Eleatic. He posits an unchange- able principle as his pure Being, as do the Eleatics; but into this pure Being he in- jects multiplicity, which contradicts at once the Eleatic fundamental category, which is the One, or the oneness of Being. It cannot be said that he denies Becoming ; on the contrary he accepts it and seeks to explain the changeability through the changeless elements. He indeed denies in a weU-known passage the ordinary conception of THE IKTEB-GONNECTINQ MOVEMENT. 143 Death and Birth, "as it is called among men; " but this is not a denial of change, for it is just here explained as " a commingling and a separat- ing of things commingled." Much too great stress has been placed upon the Eleaticism of Empedocles by the historians of Greek Philoso- phy. The fact is, the entire Inter-connecting Movement was in opposition to Eleaticism and a going back to the physical Elementalism of the Milesian (or Ionic) School, from which Eleati- cism was a separation. K the reader fully studies the meaning: of the Inter-connecting Movement as the third stage of the total elemental process of the Hellenic Period, he will see that both Herachtus and Empedocles as well as the Pytha- goreans participate in a return to the first or Mile- sian stage as above set forth. Still we must not forget that this return is not a relapse, but shows that the third Movement has gone through the second (or Eleatic) in order to reach back and take up the first. Such is the general character of the Phi- losophy of Empedocles and his relation to his predecessors. But he has other doctrines, not all of which can be brought into organic con- nection with his fundamental thought. The general process of his thought may be seen in the following outline. I. The Becoming as such, or as immediate furnishes the problem of his system. In the 144 ANCIENT EUROPEAN rHILOSOPHY. technical languasre of the time he aflSrms that both Being and non-Being exist, with perpetual interchange into each other. But he also holds to a principle changeless underneath all change ; to discover and to categorize this principle con- stitutes the salient fact of his Philosophy. II. Tlie four elements, fire, air, earth, and water are the original principle (or principles) which are given, presupposed, hence uncreated and indestructible as well as unchangeable. They are, however, divisible and combinable, though an empty space between them, such as the Void, seems expressly denied. Still he has pores between his small particles which are like- wise invisible. In all these matters Empedocles is very uncertain and inconsistent, but it is astonishing how near he approaches to Atomism. He was a contemporary of Leucippus though less mature than the latter in his thought. There was apparently no attempt to reduce his four to one element. III. Finallv, the question must arise, what is the power commingling and separating these four elements, and thus producing the changeful phe- nomenal world? Here again Empedocles pre- supposes or picks up from the outside two new principles — Love and Hate. He hardly consid- ers them as dynamic, but rather as corporeal ; really they are for him two new, active elements, in addition to the previous four, which seem to ATOMISM. 161 every man has to have a capricious microcosm within himself, whereby every Ego becomes a world-swallowiug vortex which can only end by swallowing itself. This Caprice of Atomism is what the next stage of thinking (which we call Universalism) must transcend. Each atomistic Ego asserts its own subjective criterion as final, and so must sooner or kter get into conflict with its neighbor who is also a self-asserting atomistic Ego. This is indeed the picture of the Greek world at the present period (just before the Peloponnesian War) ; all Hellas shows the tendency to turn atomistic politically and socially, as well as in- tellectually. The counter-revolution, as we shall see later, was headed by Socrates, and is what constitutes mainly his epoch-making appearance in the philosophic world. We may now see that the process of Atomism is to individuate the All or the Universe in its three grand divisions — Nature, God and Man. To be sure, this is not done in the purest and highest fashion; still in a general way we can see that Cosmical Atomism deals with Nature, Noetic Atomism with the Divine Eeason {Nous) and Egoistic Atomism with Man. So we must come to the thought that Atomism in the three stages of its psychical process reflects, even if faintly, the triple movement of the whole Uni- verse (or the Pampsychosis). The details of 11 162 " ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. this process we may now look into more fully in the following exposition, which will illustrate the points briefl}'^ touched upon in the present gen- eral introduction to Atomism. A. Cosmic AL Atomism. As already noted, there are three kinds or rather stages of Atomism, each of which is to be desig- nated by an adjective characterizing it. Cosmi- cal Atomism connects directly with Empedocles whose four elements pass over into innumerable Atoms which compose the Cosmos. So now the essence of Being is affirmed to l)e the Atom as cosmical, which has to be tJiougJit, not sensed, as a material object. Hence it comes that this kind of Atomism is often called materialistic Atomism since it has been a chief source of what is known as a mate- rialistic view of the world. But it may be also designated as ideo-pliysical, since the Atom is ideal, purely a conception of the mind, though it is conceived to be physical. Thus it is the con- cept materialized, or rather the Ego itself put iuto a material form and made the fundamental constituent of the universe. One of the books of Democritus is said to have been entitled " Concerning Ideas," and by Ideas he must have meant Atoms, curiously paralleling Platonic Ideas with a material counterpart, which must have COSMIOAL ATOMISM. 163 been a horrible phantasm to the idealist Plato, who was a younger cotemporary of Democritus. It should also be added that Cosmical Atomism is essentially microcosmic (micros, small) in con- trast to the preceding elementary stage which is macrocosmic. Cosmical Atomism, however, looks at the large world also, but reduces it to the small, the Atom, which is the unit underlying all change. The endeavor is to get, down to the primal One out of which the universe is built, to find the pattern brick which enters into every construction of nature's architecture. Cosmical Atomism is chiefly connected with two names, Leucippus and Democritus. Of the former little is known, but he was probably the founder and first teacher of the system, while the latter was his pupil and chief expositor. Leucippus left few if any writings ; he was evi- dently the creative spirit and the oral teacher, Hke Socrates ; while Democritus was the scribe, the literary apostle of the atomistic doctrine, hav- ing written a vast number of books, all of which have perished except fragments. In later an- tiquity Leucippus seems to have been quite for- gotten, but our own time has restored him to his place as founder, as well as revived his Philoso- phy, making it the basis of Natural Science. Thus the Atom, brought into the world of thouo-ht through Leucippus, has shown itself very per- sistent. 164 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Democritus, the pupil, was born about 460 B. C. He asserted, according to Diogenes Laer- tius, that he was forty years 3'ounger than An- axaojoras who is likewise declared to have been a pupil of Leucippus ; from the latter, accordingly, proceeded two chief streams of Atomism. This fact puts Leucippus into a high rank as a mind- fcrtilizino; oenius. Doubtless the third stream of Atomism, the sophistic, was strongly influenced also by Leucippus in the person of Protagoras, who came from Abdera, where Democritus was born and where Leucippus taught. The historic facts about these men are hazy and uncertain, still they show a tendency to lead back to Leu- cippus as the fountain-head of all three stages of Atomism — the Cosmical, developed by Democ- ritus, the Noetic, developed by Anaxagoras, and the Egoistic, represented most prominently by the sophist Protagoras. The home of Leucip- pus is variously stated as Miletus in the east, Elea in the west, and Abdera in the north ; he was evidently a wandering teacher, a prototype of the later Greek sophist or of the medieval roving scholastic. His teacher, or one of his teachers, is said by Simplicius to have been Parmenides, and Atomism is distinctly a development out of Eleaticism, though connected with other early Greek philosophies. Very mistily but hugely the outlines of a great character loom up out of this early Greek age in the person of Leucippus, COSMICAL ATOMISM. 165 a kind of roaming Socrates ready to plant his thoughts in any congenial mind. The chief fact of Cosmical Atomism is that it puts the immediate or outer world through the process of individuation. It takes nature or matter, and subjects it to the principle of di- vision till it finds the undivided or the indivisible, which, however, it can find only as a concept or thought. This is the individual of nature — the Atom, being the ultimate unitary principle of the Cosmos. Hence we have Cosmical Atomism, which also has its process. 1. The Atom. The starting-point being ob- tained, the Atom may be given its predicates. It has no beginning or end, it becomes not but is, wherein we see the assertion of Eleaticism against Heraclitism. It is the absolutely given, the pre-supposed, not derived, not perishable, the one persistent identical thmg in the Cosmos. It is not divisible, has no space or pores within it, which would imply separation and division inside of it; it is unchangeable, self -identical, excludes all inner transformation ; also it is im- penetrable, for that would mean divisibility. Each is wholly separate, stays by itself, individ- ualized, yet all have the same common charac- teristic, hence they are simple, homogeneous. Such is the germ of all Atomism, or of Being as individual. la these numerous predicates there is one 166 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. effort and one purpose : all separation and vari- ety must be taken out of the Atom, so that no form of division can penetrate the same. Im- penetrable, indivisible, unchangeable, imperish- able — every one of these terms is a negation of the separated and manifold, and an assertion of the One which is the Atom. This is, accord- ingly, the denial of the elemental principle of previous Philosophies, which always became self -contradictory, since it claimed to ])e the one essence, yet turned out to be manifold in the end. Thus it is that all inner difference is sought to be eliminated from the atom. We have seen this same purpose in the Pure Being of the Ele- atics. But as the Atom is to constitute the world and all its variety (which is difference), the question rises: How does this difference get to be? It is on the Atom, not in it; hence the Atom has an infinite difference of form, and for this reason it was also called a Form or an Idea by Democritus, as already noted. Atoms were likewise said to be distinguished from each other by their size and weight: in which statement the theory begins to contradict itself, for difference is gettino; inside the Atom. Through the infinitely diverse combinations of these Forms (Atoms) there will be produced all qualitative differences in the world. Every phe- nomenon will be, from this point of view, caused by an arrangement of the Atoms peculiar to COSMIC AL ATOMISM. 167 itself; the Atoms do not change in themselves, but their order changes. Accordingly there must be conceived in addition a place for changes outside of the Atoms. 2. The Void. This is the second principle of Atomism, usually known by its dual name, the Full and the Void, or the Atom and the empty space around the Atom. Through the Void the Atoms are separated externally, and are preserved as individuals. Thus separation is put outside of them, yet they are given a field of movement and arrangement. Points of contact between Atoms seem to have been allowed, but there was no entrance to this Holy of Holies. The universe might crash to pieces, the Atom was safe in its citadel, guarded by an impassable barrier, the Void, which, we must remember, is also a conception, being in- visible on account of its smallness. Still the Void, though a conception, was con- ceived as real, just as real as the Atom. Accord- ingly the Atomists declare that Non-Being (which is the Void) is, or has Being — . wherein the doc- trine departs from the Eleatics (who affirm that Non-Being is not) and agrees with Heraclitus, whose Becoming the atomic principle seeks to explain. The possibility of change, being excluded from the Atom, is restored by the Void, in which the changeless Atoms can combine mechanically and 168 ANCIENT EUROPEAX PniLOSOPHT. produce all the manifold diversity of the world. Herein we see the fundamental purpose of Atom- ism : to reduce the varied multiplicity of Na- ture to Atoms for the purpose of knowing it. Science is, according to the Atomists, the reduc- tion of the qualitativo to the quantitative, v.'hereby it can be counted and measured. We have obtained the Atom and a place for it to move in ; now follows the question, what moves it? Plerewith we come to the third presupposi- tion of Atomism — Motion. 3. The Vortex. Each Atom is moving, is en- dowed with motion from all eternity, and cannot help moving, motion being itself eternal. Thus the changeless One of Nature is perpetually changing its place in the Void, making new com- binations and producing new phenomena. De- mocritus seems to have ascribed weight to his Atoms, so that they were moved by gravitation, thus there is a perpetual fall of the Atoms. In this fall they impinge upon one another, and from the collision and recoil arises the grand whirl of the Atoms (dinos, vortex), the circular movement in the macrocosm as well as in the microcosm. In this atomic maelstrom there was no design or end, for Democritus specially opposed the telism of Anaxagoras, of which we shall speak later. Hence there was an element of chance in this collision of the Atoms. Yet also an element of necessity, for their fortuitous meeting and COSMICAL ATOMISM. 169 clashing terminated in the whirl. Democritus uses even the word logos (Reason) to express this overruling necessity. Still the grand fact of the Cosmos is the masquerade of the Atoms, full of external caprice as regards movement, even if this everlasting mutual jostling turns into the universal gyration. The scheme of Cosmical Atomism would seem not to be well adapted for Ethics, still Democ- ritus had his ethical writings. But they could Hardly have been an integral part of his system ; he was the cotemporary of Socrates and Plato whose thought was so strongly ethical, and he naturally responded to a call of his time, even if this was not a call of his doctrine. He also speaks of the Gods, though they are quite abol- ished by his Philosophy. But he is not the only philosopher who injects unassimilated material into his system. The soul is composed of Atoms according to Democritus, of the fine, smooth and round Atoms, which adjectives pertain to no inner quality but only to externa} form and size. In fact the soul's Atoms are those of fire, are endowed with motion and hence able to produce motion by contact, for they have no power to originate motion in themselves. From this we can see the eround of his assertion tliat soul was innna- nent in all things, inasmuch as it was ultimately reducible to Atoms with their movement. 170 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Here we note the great difference between him and Anaxagoras, who placed a transcendent power {Xous) over his Atoms. In general, we observe that there are three pre-suppositions or postulates in Cosmical Atom- ism — the Atom, the Void, and Motion. All three are assumed as original, eternally existent, uncaused. Then the three together form a triple process, which is the atomic whirl, world- producing. Creation in all its variety is the mechanical concourse of Atoms; to see this supersensible mechanism is knowledge. Atom- ism in its [)resent sphere atomizes the Cosmos, reduces it to the irreducible unit, which is the cosmical individual (Atom). We are impelled to look into the origin and nature of this Cosmical Atom. The difficulty with the preceding elemental philosophies was that their essence or principle was always divis- ible, hence manifold and changeable, and there- fore no true essence or principle. But now the divisible, through division reaches the indivisible (individual), which is just the opposite of itself (as element), and is given only by thought. In Cosmical Atomism, therefore, the mind begins to create its own principle of nature, and not take it as already given, which we have seen to be the case in the previous elemental stage of Philosophy. This is a great step and marks a very important change in the movement of early thinking. COSMICAL ATOMISM. 1"! But the Atom is conceived as natural, hence as extended, though infinitely small. But if extended it must be divisible. Here lies the inner contradiction which will destroy the Cos- mical Atom. As a conception it has two differ- ent and indeed antagonistic predicates. Thus difference, which was supposed to be eliminated, lurks in the Atom and tears it in twain. After all it is twofold and self-opposed, and must cease to exist as Atom. Still the Atom has a sphere of existence, as we shall find hereafter, but this is not the material world. Only the Ego can be self -separated or self-opposed, and exist. Its very essence is to divide into two opposites, subject and object, and therein be one and a process. Such is the true individual, which is philosophically not yet born, though conceived. For the Cosmical Atom is the Ego materialized, externalized, thrown outside of itself into matter, or rather an imatre of matter. And the process of Atomism is the Psychosis made material. One of the peculiar facts about the atomic theory is its revival in modern times. Apparently in antiquity Leucippus and Democritus were not regarded with much favor, their system was dis- credited and their writings were allowed to per- ish. Certain it is that Plato and Aristotle occu- pied substantially the philosophic field through the ancient and medieval periods. But after 172 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PniLOSOPHT. more than two thousand 3'ears of neglect the old atomists come into favor and furnish a principle for the new science of the world. That is a long time to wait for recognition ; it may look as if they were nuuli farther in advance of their age than Plato and Aristotle. When the circling years brought man around to the study of nature once more, tlie Atom rose from its long sleep and began a new life of activity. The mind creating and ordering the Atoms is imi)licit in Leuci})pus and in Cosmical Atomism. But that mind is next to become expHcit, sepa- rate from the Cosmos, and recognized as the movinj? or arranginij ]irincii)lo in the Xous of Anaxagoras, which is thus the second stage of the atomistic movement. The fortuitous throw of the cosmical dice (Atoms) by Chance, Neces- sity, or even by the God of Democritus, is now transformed into a pre-ordering and purposeful act of the World's Reason {Xous). Before leaving his Little World, we gladly cast back a glance at ancient Leucippus, whom we must deem the original Atom (Individual) determining these Atoms, having separated them from the visible Cosmos, described them and de- clared them to be inseparable within. Yet mark what he has done : the atomic Leucippus has per- formed the act of ordering these Atoms, wherein he is already the N^ous of Anaxagoras ; still fur- ther, he has performed the act of separation, NOETIC ATOMISM. 173 which must finally get inside the Atom so that it will be self-separating, and so become the very Ego which now produces it — the atomic Ego. So Leucippus, in creating and positing the Cos- mical Atom, has to go through implicitly the whole process of Atomism, transcending his own principle in practice, though not in theory. After all, something mightier than he is, has hold of him. B. Noetic Atomism. If the soul of all Ilellas be philosophizing at this time, as has been affirmed, and uttering special phases of itself in these various systems of thought, then that total Hellenic soul must call forth out of itself a counterpart to the one- sided view of Cosmical Atomism. Having begot- ten the Atoms in their capricious whirl, it must beget next the Atom-compeller, the atomic Zeus, who will transform this realm of Cosmical Atom- ism into a Cosmos. Accordingly the stress is now to be placed upon the one controlling Atom, the Atom of Atoms which is in this relation called Reason {Nous, whose adjective is Noetikos). The important point is to find and to formulate the governing principle in the vast whirl of Atoms which must be something other than blind Chance or equally blind Necessity, one of which seems to be the final arbiter in the preceding Cosmical Atomism. 174 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PEILOSOPHY. Consequently a new form steps forth with great distinctness, still atomic, yet the orderer of Atoms according to an end (telos). This was the work of Anaxagoras of Clazomena?, which was one of the Ionic towns on the coast of Asia Minor, not far from Miletus. His birth is usually assigned to the year 500 B. C. Ilis country then lay under the absolute authority of Persia; his youth must have seen the great invasion of Greece by the Orient as well as the overwhelming defeat of the latter at Salamis and Platcnea}. When he was about forty years old he came to Athens, which was then in its bloom, and was the center of attraction for the aspiring souls throughout the Hellenic world. Empire as well as lutellect were collecting there, the Atoms from all Greece were moving in that direction. Among them was Anaxagoras, who arrived at Athens about 460 B. C. where he remained more than thirty years, giving instruc- tion and having intercourse with the distinguished men of the city, which at that time was full of artists, poets, philosophers. A sio-nificant fact in the life of Anaxaojoras is his friendship for Pericles, the great statesman of the epoch, and its typical character. As Athens was the center of all the city-states of Greece, so Pericles was the center of Athens, with its mighty whirl of democratic Atoms, each of whom was in a way self -controlling, yet also NOETIC ATOMISM. 175 controlled by the central Atom, by the Nous or Keason of Pericles. Particularly did this Eeason of Pericles have an end for his state, and in- stilled it into the Athenian people, or the atomic mass swirling around him. Such was the polit- ical phenomenon which Anaxagoras had before him for thirty years or more, and, as he stood in intimate relation to its central individual, he could hardly help mirroring the situation in his Philosophy. For the true philosopher is not simply blowing bubbles for the fun of the thing, but is the most earnest of men, seeking to for- mulate in thought the profoundest fact of his age and of his nation. We may now see why Anaxagoras could not remain satisfied with the Cosmical Atomism of Leucippus. It is reported that he was the pupil of Leucippus, and certainly his theory has its atomic side, as we shall see. On the border of Hellas at Abdera, the Atoms of the Greek world just after the Persian War might seem in an everlasting jostle and gyration ; but at the cen- tral city, Athens, there was an ordered movement consonant with a great purpose in all the bustle and strenuous activity of the democratic Atoms. In them was manifested particularly during this period the World's Reason, which was voiced by the eloquence of Pericles, and found a many- sided expression in art. It should be remem- bered that Socrates was a younger contemporary 1 V 6 ANCIENT E UB OPE AN PHIL OSOPE T. of Anaxagoras, and must have begun his philo- sophic career during the bloom of that of the latter. The two could hardly help meeting each other, and the junior philosopher may well have received his early stimulus from the senior. Anaxagoras was probably the first to bring Philosophy to Athens, where it was destined to celebrate its proudest triumph immediately after him, and in a line of succession with him. It was borne thither by him from the periphery of Hellas, on which we have seen it bursting forth, as it were all around the horizon. Toward the end of his life he was accused of impiety and compelled to leave Athens. He went to Lampsacus where he died about 428 B. C. at the age of seventy-two. The Atom had to flee from the center back to the border, whence it originally came ; the controlling J^ous (Pericles) had no longer the power to protect. It is a significant fact of the age, a change is takinsj place which is otherwise betokened by the Peloponnesian War. Anaxagoras had deliv- ered his message and taught his generation. And a great generation it was, having what we may call a 7ioetic character; its mighty individuals seemed to participate in a world-mastering Olympian N'ous, as if of Zeus himself, whereof we may still catch a breath in the Parthenon, in the statues of Phidias, in the dramas of Aeschy- lus and Sophocles. ATOMISM. 161 every man has to have a capricious microcosm within himself, whereby every Ego becomes a world-swallowing vortex which can only end by swallowing itself. This Caprice of Atomism is what the next stage of thinking (which we call Universalism) must transcend. Each atomistic Ego asserts its own subjective criterion as final, and so must sooner or later get into conflict with its neighbor who is also a self-asserting atomistic Ego. This is indeed the picture of the Greek world at the present period (just before the Peloponnesian War) ; all Hellas shows the tendency to turn atomistic politically and socially, as well as in- tellectually. The counter-revolution, as we shall see later, was headed by Socrates, and is what constitutes mainly his epoch-making appearance in the philosophic world. We may now see that the process of Atomism is to individuate the All or the Universe in its three grand divisions — Nature, God and Man. To be sure, this is not done in the purest and highest fashion; still in a general way we can see that Cosmical Atomism deals with Nature, Noetic Atomism with the Divine Keason {H^ous) and Egoistic Atomism with Man. So we must come to the thought that Atomism in the three stages of its psychical process reflects, even if faintly, the triple movement of the whole Uni- verse (or the Pampsychosis). The details of 11 162 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. this process we may now look into more fully in the following exposition, which will illustrate the points briefly touched upon in the present gen- eral introduction to Atomism. A. CosMicAL Atomism. As already noted, there arc three kinds or rather stages of Atomism, each of which is to be desig- nated by an adjective characterizing it. Cosmi- cal Atomism connects directly with Empedocles whose four elements pass over into innumerable Atoms which compose the Cosmos. So now the essence of Being is affirmed to be the Atom as cosmical, which has to bo thought, not sensed, as a material object. Hence it comes that this kind of Atomism is often called materialistic Atomism since it has been a chief source of what is known as a mate- rialistic view of the world. But it may be also designated as ideo-physical, since the Atom is ideal, purely a conception of the mind, though it is conceived to be phj^sical. Thus it is the con- cept materialized, or rather the Ego itself put into a material form and made the fundamental constituent of the universe. One of the books of Democritus is said to have been entitled " Concerning Ideas," and by Ideas he must have meant Atoms, curiously paralleling Platonic Ideas with a material counterpart, which must have COSMIC AL ATOMISM. Ifi3 been a horrible phantasm to the idealist Plato, who was a younger cotemporary of Democritus. It should also be added that Cosmical Atomism is essentially microcosniic (micros, small) in con- trast to the preceding elementary stage which is macrocosmic. Cosmical Atomism, however, looks at the large world also, but reduces it to the small, the Atom, which is the unit underlying all change. The endeavor is to get down to the })rimal One out of which the universe is built, to find the pattern brick which enters into every construction of nature's architecture. Cosmical Atomism is chiefly connected with two names, Leucippus and Democritus. Of the former little is known, but he was probablj^ the founder and first teacher of the system, while the latter was his pupil and chief expositor. Leucippus left few if any writings ; he was evi- dently the creative spirit and the oral teacher, like Socrates ; while Democritus was the scribe, the literary apostle of the atomistic doctrine, hav- ing written a vast number of books, all of which have perished except fragments. In later an- tiquity Leucippus seems to have been quite for- gotten, but our owu time has restored him to his place as founder, as well as revived his Philoso- phy, making it the basis of Natural Science. Thus the Atom, brought into the world of thought through Leucippus, has shown itself very per- sistent. 164 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHT. Democritus, the pupil, w:is bora about 4(50 B. C. He asserted, according to Diogenes Laer- tius, that he was forty years younger than An- axagoras who is likewise declared to have been a pupil of Loucippus; from the latter, accordingly, proceeded two chief streams of Atomism. This fact puts Leucippus into a high rank as a mind- fertilizing genius. Doubtless the third stream of Atomism, the sophistic, was strongly influenced also by Leucippus in the person of Protagoras, Avho came from Al)dera, where Democritus was born and where Leucippus taught. The historic facts about these men are hazy and uncertain, still they show a tendency to lead back to Leu- cippus as the fountain-head of all three stages of Atomism — the Cosmical, developed by Democ- ritus, the Noetic, developed by Anaxagoras, and the Egoistic, represented most prominently by the sophist Protagoras. The home of Leucip- pus is variously stated as Miletus in the east, Elea in the west, and Abdera in the north ; he was evidently a wandering teacher, a prototype of the later Greek sophist or of the medieval roving scholastic. His teacher, or one of his teachers, is said by Simplicius to have been Parmenides, and Atomism is distinctly a development out of Eleaticism, though connected with other early Greek philosophies. Very mistily but hugely the outlines of a great character loom up out of this early Greek age in the person of Leucippus, COSMIGAL ATOMISM. 165 a kind of roaming Socrates ready to plant his thoughts in any congenial mind. The chief fact of Cosmical Atomism is that it puts the immediate or outer world through the process of individuation. It takes nature or matter, and subjects it to the principle of di- vision till it finds the undivided or the indivisible, which, however, it can find only as a concept or thought. This is the individual of nature — the Atom, being the ultimate unitary principle of the Cosmos. Hence we have Cosmical Atomism, which also has its process. 1. The Atom. The starting-point being ob- tained, the Atom may be given its predicates. It has no beginning or end, it becomes not but is,' wherein we see the assertion of Eleaticism against Heraclitism. It is the absolutely given, the pre-supposed, not derived, not perishable, the one persistent identical thmg in the Cosmos. It is not divisible, has no space or pores within it, which would imply separation and division inside of it; it is unchangeable, self -identical, excludes all inner transformation; also it is im- penetrable, for that would mean divisibility. Each is wholly separate, stays by itself, individ- ualized, yet all have the same common charac- teristic, hence they are simple, homogeneous. Such is the germ of all Atomism, or of Being as individual. In these numerous predicates there is one 1 (i& ANCIEN T EUB OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. effort and one purpose : all separation and vari- ety must be taken out of the Atom, so that no form of division can penetrate the same. Im- penetrable, indivisible, unchangeable, imperish- able — every one of these terms is a negation of the separated and manifold, and an assertion of the One which is the Atom. This is, accord- ingly, the denial of the elemental principle of previous Philosophies, Avhich alwaj^s became self -contradictory, since it claimed to be the one essence, yet turned out to be manifold in the end. Thus it is that all inner difference is sought to be eliminated from the atom. We have seen this same purpose in the Pure Being of the Ele- atics. But as the Atom is to constitute the world and all its variety (which is difference), the question rises: How does this difference get to be? It is on the Atom, not in it; hence the Atom has an infinite difference of form, and for this reason it was also called a Form or an Idea by Democritus, as already noted. Atoms were likewise said to be distinguished from each other by their size and weight: in which statement the theory begins to contradict itself, for difference is gettino; inside the Atom. Through the infinitely diverse combinations of these Forms (Atoms) there will be produced all qualitative differences in the world. Every phe- nomenon will be, from this point of view, caused by an arrangement of the Atoms peculiar to COSMICAL ATOMISM. 167 itself; the Atoms do not change in themselves, bu* their order changes. Accordingly there must be conceived in addition a place for changes outside of the Atoms. 2. The Void. This is the second principle of Atomism, usually known by its dual name, the Full and the Void, or the Atom and the empty space around the Atom. Through the Void the Atoms are separated externally, and are preserved as individuals. Thus separation is put outside of them, yet they are given a field of movement and arrangement. Points of contact between Atoms seem to have been allowed, but there was no entrance to this Holy of Holies. The universe might crash to pieces, the Atom was safe in its citadel, guarded by an impassable barrier, the Void, which, we must remember, is also a conception, being in- visible on account of its smallness. Still the Void, though a conception, was con- ceived as real, just as real as the Atom. Accord- ingly the Atomists declare that Non-Being (which is the Void) is, or has Being — wherein the doc- trine departs from the Eleatics (who affirm that Non-Being is not) and agrees with Heraclitus, whose Becoming the atomic principle seeks to explain. The possibility of change, being excluded from the Atom, is restored by the Void, in which the changeless Atoms can combine mechanically and 168 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILO SOPHY. produce nil the manifold diversity of the world. Herein we see the fundamental purpose of Atom- ism: to reduce the varied multiplicity of Na- ture to Atoms for the purpose of knowing it. Science is, according to the Atomists, the reduc- tion of the quahtative to the quantitative, whereby it can be counted and measured. We have obtained the Atom and a place for it to move in ; now follows the question, what moves it? Herewith we come to the third presupposi- tion of Atomism — Motion. 3. The Vortex. Each Atom is moving, is en- dowed with motion from all eternity, and cannot help moving, motion being itself eternal. Thus the changeless One of Nature is perpetually changing its place in the Void, making new com- binations and producing new phenomena. De- mocritus seems to have ascribed weight to his Atoms, so that they were moved by gravitation, thus there is a perpetual fall of the Atoms. In this fall they impinge upon one another, and from the collision and recoil arises the grand whirl of the Atoms {dhios, vortex), the circular movement in the macrocosm as well as in the microcosm. In this atomic maelstrom there was no design or end, for Democritus specially opposed the telism of Anaxagoras, of which we shall speak later. Hence there was an element of chance in this collision of the Atoms. Yet also an element of necessitv, for their fortuitous meeting and ■ COSMIC AL ATOMISM. 169 clashing terminated in the whirl. Democritus uses even the word logos (Eeason) to express this overruling necessity. Still the grand fact of the Cosmos is the masquerade of the Atoms, full of external cai)rice as regards movement, even if this everlasting mutual jostling turns into the universal gyration. The scheme of Cosmical Atomism would seem not to be well adapted for Ethics, still Democ- ritus had his ethical writings. But they could liardly have been an integral part of his S3^stem ; he was the cotemporary of Socrates and Phito whose thought was so strongly ethical, and he naturally responded to a call of his time, even if this was not a call of his doctrine. He also speaks of the Gods, though they are quite abol- ished by his Philosophy. But he is not the only philosopher who injects unassimilated material into his system. The soul is composed of Atoms according to Democritus, of the fine, smooth and round Atoms, which adjectives pertain to no inner quality but only to external form and size. In fact the soul's Atoms are those of fire, are endowed with motion and hence able to produce motion by contact, for they have no power to originate motion in themselves. From this we can see the ground of his assertion that soul was imma- nent in all things, inasmuch as it was ultimately reducible to Atoms with their movement. 1 70 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Here we note the great difference between him and Anaxagoras, who phiced a transcendent power {JSfous) over his Atoms. In general, we observe that there are three pre-suppositions or postulates in Cosmical Atom- ism — the Atom, the Void, and Motion. All three are assumed as original, eternally existent, uncaused. Then the three together form a triple process, which is the atomic whirl, world- producing. Creation in all its variety is the mechanical concourse of Atoms; to see this supersensible mechanism is knowledge. Atom- ism in its present sphere atomizes the Cosmos, reduces it to the irreducible unit, which is the cosmical individual (Atom). We are impelled to look into the origin and nature of this Cosmical Atom. The difficulty with the preceding elemental philosophies was that their essence or principle was always divis- ible, hence manifold and changeable, and there- fore no true essence or principle. But now the divisible, through division reaches the indivisible (individual), which is just the opposite of itself (as element), and is given only by thought. In Cosmical Atomism, therefore, the mind begins to create its own principle of nature, and not take it as already given, which we have seen to be the case in tlie previous elemental stage of Philosophy. This is a great step and marks a very important phange in the movement of earlv thinking. COSMICAL ATOMISM. 171 But the Atom is conceived as natural, hence as extended, though infinitely small. But if extended it must be divisible. Here lies the inner contradiction which will destroy the Cos- mical Atom. As a conception it has two differ- ent and indeed antagonistic predicates. Thus difference, which was supposed to be eliminated, lurks in the Atom and tears it in twain. After all it is twofold and self-opposed, and must cease to exist as Atom. Still the Atom has a sphere of existence, as we shall find hereafter, but this is not the material world. Only the Ego can be self-separated or self-opposed, and exist. Its very essence is to divide into two opposites, subject and object, and therein be one and a process. Such is the true individual, which is philosophically not yet born, though conceived. For the Cosmical Atom is the Ego materialized, externalized, thrown outside of itself into matter, or rather an image of matter. And the process of Atomism is the Psychosis made material. One of the peculiar facts about the atomic theory is its revival in modern times. Ap[)areutly in antiquity Leucippus and Democritus were not regarded with much favor, their system was dis- credited and their writings were allowed to per- ish. Certain it is that Plato and Aristotle occu- pied substantially the philosophic field through the ancient and medieval periods. But after 172 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. more than two thousand years of neglect the old atomists come into favor and furnish a principle for the new science of the world. That is a long time to wait for recognition ; it may look as if they were much farther in advance of their age than PUito and Aristotle. When the circling years brought man around to the study of nature once more, the Atom rose from its long sleep and began a new life of activity. The mind creating and orderin": the Atoms is implicit in Leucippus and in Cosmical Atomism. But that mind is next to become explicit, sepa- rate from the Cosmos, and recognized as the moving or arranging principle in the Nous of Anaxa2;oras, which is thus the second staoje of the atomistic movement. The fortuitous throw of the cosmical dice (Atoms) by Chance, Neces- sity, or even by the God of Democritus, is now transformed into a pre-ordering and purposeful act of the World's Reason (iVb^.s). Before leaving his Little World, we gladly cast back a glance at ancient Leucippus, whom we must deem the original Atom (Individual) determining these Atoms, having separated them from the visible Cosmos, described them and de- clared them to be inseparable within. Yet mark what he has done : the atomic Leucippus has per- formed the act of ordering these Atoms, wherein he is already the JSfous of Auaxagoras ; still fur- ther, he has performed the act of separation, NOE TIC A TO MIS M. ■ 1 ?3 which must finally get inside the Atom so that it will be self-separating, and so become the very Ego which now produces it — the atomic Ego. So Leucippus, in creating and positing the Cos- mical Atom, has to go through implicitly the whole process of Atomism, transcending his own principle in practice, though not in theory. After all, something mightier than he is, has hold of him. B. Noetic Atomism. If the soul of all Hellas he philosophizing at this time, as has been afiirmed, and uttering special phases of itself in these various systems of thought, then that total Hellenic soul must call forth out of itself a counterpart to the one- sided view of Cosmical Atomism. Having begot- ten the Atoms in their capricious whirl, it must beget next the Atom-compeller, the atomic Zeus, who will transform this realm of Cosmical Atom- ism into a Cosmos. Accordingly the stress is now to be placed upon the one controlling Atom, the Atom of Atoms which is in this relation called Reason {Nous, whose adjective is JSfoetikos). The important point is to find and to formulate the governing principle in the vast whirl of Atoms which must be something other than blind Chance or equally blind Necessity, one of which seems to be the final arbiter in the preceding Cosmical Atomism. 1 74 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Consequently a new form steps forth with great distinctness, still atomic, yet the orderer of Atoms according to an end (telos). This was the work of Anaxagoras of ClazomentB, which was one of the Ionic towns on the coast of Asia Minor, not far from Miletus. His birth is usually assigned to the year 500 B. C. His country then lay under the absolute authority of Persia; his youth must have seen the great invasion of Greece by the Orient as well as the overwhelming defeat of the latter at Salamis and PlatseaB. When he was about forty years old he came to Athens, which was then in its bloom, and was the center of attraction for the aspiring souls throughout the Hellenic world. Empire as well as Intellect were collecting there, the Atoms from all Greece were moving in that direction. Among them was Anaxagoras, who arrived at Athens about 460 B. C. where he remained more than thirty years, giving instruc- tion and having intercourse with the distinguished men of the city, which at that time was full of artists, poets, philosophers. A significant fact in the life of Anaxagoras is his friendship for Pericles, the great statesman of the epoch, and its typical character. As Athens was the center of all the city-states of Greece, so Pericles was the center of Athens, with its mighty whirl of democratic Atoms, each of whom was in a way self -controlling, yet also NOETIC ATOMISM, 175 controlled by the central Atom, by the ISToiis or Eeason of Pericles. Particularly did this Eeason of Pericles have an end for his state, and in- stilled it into the Athenian people, or the atomic mass swirling around him. Such was the polit- ical phenomenon which Anaxagoras had before him for thirty years or more, and, as he stood in intimate relation to its central individual, he could hardly help mirroring the situation in his Philosophy. For the true philosopher is not simply blowing bubbles for the fun of the thing, but is the most earnest of men, seekinof to for- mulate in thought the profoundest fact of his age and of his nation. We may now see why Anaxagoras could not remain satisfied with the Cosmical Atomism of Leucippus. It is reported that he was the pupil of Leucippus, and certainly his theory has its atomic side, as we shall see. On the border of Hellas at Abdera, the Atoms of the Greek world just after the Persian War might seem in an everlasting jostle and gyration ; but at the cen- tral city, Athens, there was an ordered movement consonant with a great purpose in all the bustle and strenuous activity of the democratic Atoms. In them was manifested particularly during this period the World's Reason, which was voiced by the eloquence of Pericles, and found a many- sided expression in art. It should be remem- bered that Socrates was a younger contemporary 1 V 6 ANCIEKT E VBOPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. of Anaxagoras, and must have begun his philo- sophic career during the bloom of that of the latter. The two could hardly help meeting each other, and the junior philosopher may well have received his early stimulus from the senior, Anaxagoras was probably the first to bring Philosophy to Athens, where it was destined to celebrate its proudest triumph immediately after him, and in a line of succession with him. It was borne thither by him from the periphery of Hellas, on which we have seen it bursting forth, as it were all around the horizon. Toward the end of his life he was accused of impiety and compelled to leave Athens. He went to Lampsacus where he died about 428 B. C. at the age of seventy- two. The Atom had to flee from the center back to the border, whence it originally came ; the controlling J^ous (Pericles) had no longer the power to protect. It is a significant fact of the age, a change is takinc^ place which is otherwise betokened by the Peloponnesian War. Anaxagoras had deliv- ered his message and taught his generation. And a great generation it was, having what we may call a noetic character; its mighty individuals seemed to participate in a world-mastering Olympian ])^ous, as if of Zeus himself, whereof we may still catch a breath in the Parthenon, in the statues of Phidias, in the dramas of Aeschy- lus and Sophocles. NOETIC ATOMISM. 177 Anaxiifforas in bis doctrine shows connections with the preceding elemental philosophies — with the Milesians, with Paruienidcs, and with Em- pedocles. But his most immediate derivation is from Leucippus, from whom spring both De- mocritus and Anaxagoras. Both the latter are atomistic philosophers, each in his own way. The system of each has the same general outline, though the stages are differently defined and differently emphasized. This we may observe in the following sketch of the Philosophy of Anax- agoras . 1. The 8perm. Such is the name which Anaxagoras gives to his Atom and which we shall retain, as it is not the same as the Democ- ritean Atom (from sj^erma, germ or seed). These Sperms are infinitely small and infinite in number, uncretited, unchangeable, hence they cannot perish ; they are presupposed, taken for granted, existent from eternity to eternity ; they cannot be increased or diminished. All Becom- ing, all birth and decay is simply a new ordering of the Sperms. Dislocation, translocation, col- location of these S[)erms produce the phenomenal w^orld with all its qualitative differences. A well-known • f rao-ment of Anaxagoras declares : " The Greeks do not think aright about Birth and Death. Nothing ever becomes or perishes, but all is compounded on the one hand or is separated on the other, from things already ex- 12 178 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. istent (Sperms). The correct way would be to call Birth a commingling and Death a separating ' ' (Anax. Frag. 17, Ed. Mullach). The term "the Greeks" in the preceding extract doubt- less refers to former Greek philosophers, not including Lcucippus, and marks the distinction of the Atomists from the Elementalists, espe- cially the later ones. 2. The Different. So far, then, the Atom of Leucippus and the Sperm of Anaxagoras are quite alike. Now comes the difference. First of all, the Sperms are divisible to infinity, as is usually supposed ; division in their case does not reach the indivisible, it would seem. Anaxa- goras thus seeks to avoid that contradiction which we found in the Leucippian Atom, namely to be extended and yet to be indivisible. Still further, Sperms differ from one another quali- tatively, and hence are heterogeneous, while Atoms differ from one another quantita- tively (in size and form), and are homo- geneous. But not only in relation to one an- other are they of different kinds; likewise they have different qualities in their composition. Finally Anaxagoras has no Void. His principle of combination is a commingling of the quali- tatively different Sperms, whereby comes all the diversity of the world. It is manifest that Anaxagoras takes the ob- ject, such as a stone or bone, as the starting- NOE TIC A TOMISM. 179 point, and declares it to be infinitely divisible, but in such division it never loses the quality of the object. These infinitely small particles are the Sperms which simply require to be mixed in order to produce things as they are. The qual- ity is immanent, not a product of the form and arrangement of Atoms, as in Cosmical Atomism. On the other hand motion is not immanent in the Sperm (as it is in the Atom) and hence the ordering movement must come from the outside. An organic object like a tree determines the Sperm, while the Atom determines it. Accord- ingly we must regard the Sperm as essentially passive, while the Atom is active, being endowed originally with motion, indeed with a kind of self- motion. Very plainly do the Sperm and its Mixture call for an ordering principle from the outside, transcendent, world-controlling. So we pass to that which is altogether the main principle in the system of Anaxagoras. 3. JVous. This is one of the most important words in all Philosophy and runs through the whole history of it like a thread of light. It may be variously translated Reason, Mind, Intel- ligence, Spirit. With it is formulated for the first time a spiritual view of the Universe. The emphatic testimony of Aristotle is that the phi- losopher who first declared JVous to be " the cause of the Cosmos and of all its order appeared 180 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. like a sober man in comparison with those pre- viously talking at random" (Met. I. 3, ad fiuem). It is true that Anaxagoras did hardly more than speak the word, without applying his principle to the details of his system. But to speak the word was to start the conception, which has been unfolding ever since. JSTous is, then, the world-ordering principle which is given from the beginning; it finds the original confusion or chaos which it at once begins to order, and its work is not yet done by any means. The Sperms are separated from the mass, and the JSTous transforms them into the Cosmos, starting in them the whirling motion which we already saw in the Atoms. But this whirl is imparted to the Sperms by N'ous, whereas the Atoms generated it by their collisions. The power of knowing all things, past, present, and future, belongs to N'ous. It is also self- determined (au(okmtes), self -active while the Sperms are passive. Fate or Necessity has no meanino- for N'ous. It is conceived as transcend- ent, though it also exists immanently in all living creatures. At least Anaxagoras sometimes takes the latter view though sometimes he talks as if everything in the world was but an automaton mechanically moved by Nous, while this was the self-moved, self-determined, self-active One in the Universe ordering the Many. Still Anaxas^oras never succeeded in eliminating NOE TIC A TOMISM. 1 8 1 from N'ous its atomistic substrate. He reo-ards it as " the most refined of all things," a kind of etherealized matter ; he could not wholly get rid of the material hypostasis, which belongs to all the philosophers before him, in spite of the lofty spiritual predicates which he assigns to JSfous. It is indeed the most subtle of Atoms, veritably the Atom of Atoms, and thus is connected with Atomism, being therein the undivided One con- trolling all division in the universe. To his Rous Anaxagoras adds the conception of end (telos). This is a great thought and gives the fundamental characteristic of JVoks. As the world-forming energy it has a purpose which means order, harmony, the Cosmos. It is pure, unmixed, just the opposite of the com- mingled Chaos which it is to arrange. Still N'ous has to divide within itself and to place before itself its end, which it is to realize in the Cosmos. Anaxagoras has, therefore, distinctly uttered a telistic (often called teleologic) view of world, which will never p'lss away in the history of thought. The universe has an end through which and into which it is developino-; or as Anaxagoras would say, the JSTqus is still separat- ing and ordering the migma (mixture) according to its telos (end). Socrates, Plato and Aristotle will show the influence of this thought in man- ifold ways. The last and greatest instance of 182 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY the Nous formulating its end is seen in Darwin- ism. The fact is, in the whole movement of Philosoph}^ we seek the teJos which is working and developing throughout the many successive systems of thought. This book has a telistic object as already declared ; it is trying to unfold and to formulate the purpose which underlies and calls forth all philosophic thinking (the Pampsychosis). What the end is, Anaxagoras does not dis- tinctly declare ; but he does say that there is a Xoits building the Cosmos according to an end. He was criticised by Socrates, Plato, and Aris- totle because he did not consistently carry out his principle. Aristotle says that " Anaxagoras uses his Nous for world-making," but only "drags it in" when he is in straits about his causes; otherwise " he posits as causes of things arising all else but Nous." But a similar incon- sistency we shall find in Aristotle himself (see 3IetapJn/sics, I. 4.) It is this telistic principle which will hereafter develop ethically into the Good. We have to conceive of Nous choosing its end by its own prompting, and alsotakiug what means it pleases for fulfilling that end. The Noetic Atom is, therefore, capricious, autocratic, im- perial as Atom-controller. The hegemony of Notts is distinctly asserted, like that of Athens over the other cities of Greece, like that of Pericles NOETIC ATOMISM. 183 over Athens. Still Anaxagoras hardly conceived of Kous as person, though it was self-conscious and self -active, and had its own end. Why is this not a person? There was still a material sub- strate, ISfous was still an Atom not yet free of its Leucippian heritage of matter. JSfous is not called a God by Anaxagoras who was rather re- garded as atheistic ; still his Xous is a kind of Pallas Athena, the tutular deity of Athens, which was named after her, with her Intellect abstracted from its divine incarnation, and looked at philosophically, as it is in itself, as the essence of the world, specially of the Athenian Cosmos. So we see that Anaxagoras with his N'ous helped to transform the content of Athenian Religion into Philosophy. We cannot, then, affirm that Anaxagoras intro- duced the Ego into the history of thought, though he led the wa}^ to it, and, so to speak, compelled its presence. The principle of N'ous is the recog- nition that mind must grasp and order the unseen realm of Atoms, for Atoms are supersensible and demand a supersensible orderer — JSFous. Each of these categories (the Atom and Nous) has separately played a great part in human think- ing — the one more especially in Natural Science, the other in Philosophy proper. But now they are to come together. Each Atom (or Individual) is to be a Nous ordering the world according to its own particular end. 184 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Thus N'ous gets inside the Atom, going back to it specially and making it in itself a world-com- peller. This is the atomic Ego. C. Egoistic Atomism. Already the JSFo^is of Anaxagoras implies Ego or Person, but does not quite express it. When we say mind or reason, we can hardly conceive it apart from an individual Self. But Anaxagoras has not yet reached the point of making a sharp distinction between personal and impersonal, or between material and non-material, or between the immanence and the transcendence of his N'ous (Pantheism and Theism). His jSTous is the World-Reason, not distinctly personalized ; some- times it might be regarded as elemental from his language, but then it has an end, according to which it orders things. Thus it in a manner thinks, it is indeed the Cosmos thinking, the one vastCosmical Atom asthinkino:. The true Atom of Anaxagoras is the indivisible, impenetrable, indestructible N'ous, the one Atom or Atom of Atoms, which, however, are reduced by it to Sperms, these being passive and receiving motion and order from it, the thinking or Noetic Atom. But the epoch has arrived in the spiritual movement of total Hellas when this lof t}^ solitary Nous must descend into the Atoms below and incorporate itself in each of them, making the EGOISriG ATOMISM. 185 same an Ego with an inner world seeking to con- trol the outer. So we enter the realm of the Ego grasping itself as Atom with JVous inside of it — which realm we name Egoistic Atomism. This is the third stage in the process of win- ning the Individual (Atom), for the Individ- ual as such is now won. We have reached the ' Ego in this movement of Individuation, which started with Atomism proper, that of Leucippus. Or it might be better to say that Philosophy in its search for the essence of all things has reached the Ego. A very important stage of human develo})nient is this, since the Self (or Ego) has found itself and recognized itself to be the principle of the universe. The worth of man, the dignity of selfhood has now truly dawned upon the world, and will pass through a marvelous career in the future. The modern Ego begins to see its own outline in this its earliest protot3'pe. In Greek Philosophy the present sphere is known as Sophisticism wdiich is derived from the word Sophist, and this comes from sop)hos (wise). A great many people of very diverse kinds were anciently called sophists — teachers, orators, philosophers of all sorts. Still there was a wider and narrower usage of the tei-m. There was a distinctive sophistic Philosoph}^ though every philosopher might in a general way be named a sophist. Moreover an evil flavor was 180 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. givQii to the epithet sometimes, which we may- still hear in the English word sophistry. This taint in the expression is due particularly to Plato, who was the great enemy of the sophist, yet who was himself often designated as a sophist. Our preceding philosopher of the Xous, An- axgoras, was also called in a general way a sophist, as well as Socrates, who is our suc- ceeding philosopher. It is evident that Sophis- ticism (or the Sophists) is not a good designa- tion for the present philosophical ci)Och, though this desiirnation is the one currently used in the Histories of Greek Philosophy. Or if we em- ploy the general term, we may also use along with it a more special and definite expression for the philosophical phase of Sophisticism. Hence our rubric, as above given, is Egoistic Atomism, Avhich wording strives to connect the present stage with the total atomistic movement (of which we deem it a part and the concluding part), as well as to suggest the form of the Individual (or Atom) which is attained, namely, the Ego as subject. Already we found that the Cosmical Atom was a conception, was a purely mental product, being made by the Ego, and asserted to be an Individual, that is, indivisible and impenetrable. Now the Ego, the original Atom-maker, has found itself to be the indivisible and impene- trable, to be itself the true Individual or Atom EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 187 which is the producer of Atoms. The Ego is the undivided, yet capable of dividing itself, and hence capable of making all possible divisions in the universe. We have already noted that Leu- cippus strove to keep division out of his Atom (cosmical), and yet division entered and tore it in twain. But now the Atom is self -dividing, and also self -uniting ; it is the undivided One still, yet dividing itself from within and return- ing to unity out of its division. All of which is simply a description of the Ego in its self- conscious action, which separates itself into subject and object, and then makes itself one with itself just in that separation. Or, to use still another expression taken from Psychology, the Psychosis has here appeared in its earliest independent form, though we have found it working implicitly and fermenting m the pre- vious stages of Greek Philosophy. While thus the Sophists represent a philosophic tendency, and hence in the narrower meaning of the word maybe deemed a certain definite school of thought, in the wider sense they are a class including many persons of diverse ways of think- ing, particularly of diverse characters. Sophis- ticlsm becomes the culture of the age, and remains not merely a doctrine of a few; all Greece seems to desire the new enlightenment. European historians of Philosophy are continu- tdly comparing the sophistic period to their own 188 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 18th Century with its Ilhmiination (Aufklarung, Eclaircissement), and the Sophists are supposed to correspond with the Eucyclopodists of France, whoah)ng with their positive merits show a decided negative tendency cuhninating practically in the French Revolution, So the age of Sophisticism may be deemed to have reached its acme in and during the Peloponnesian War, in which the atomic Ego, specially as it was manifested in the Athenian Democrac}^ broke loose from all its institutional moorings, even from the control of the youK of Pericles and its great men, and gave itself up to a grand revel, till it was suppressed from the outside. For such a result the Sophists are often blamed, but the age produced them fully as much as they produced the age. They were the teachers of the time, but the time called tlicni, and indeed i)aid them beautiful money as tlieir reward, for which again they have been severel}' censured by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, not to speak of many lesser accusers. But the modern schoolmaster or professor, who works for pay and is unfailingly seeking an increase of salar}^ will defend the ancient schoolmaster on this point if on none other. In fact, the taking of pay for instruction is a part of the modernity of Sophisticism, which it shows in other ways, particularly in its assertion of the right of the Ego. The Sophists were in certain respects more modern than Plato and Aristotle, more EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 189 modern even than Rome or Medievalism. It really took two thousand years and more for the world to digest that Ego which Greek Sophisti- cism threw up to the surface, and the work is by no means yei done. The modern social In- stitution begins to show its early fermentation just in this struggle over w^orking for hire in spiritual matters. The social Whole which calls for and rewards labor, has taken a considerable step toward its coming function in this much- discussed fact pertaining to the remuneration of the Sophists. The Ego now performs its first great act of self-emancipation, which undoubtedly shows both positive and negative tendencies, both con- structive and destructive results. It questions everything that has been transmitted; all the past with its customs and institutions is to be subjected to this new scrutiny of the sul)jective Self. We must examine what has hitherto been taken for granted, and confirm it or reject it by our own criterion. Still the Ego must be trained to this business, the uncultivated man does not possess the intellectual means for such a work. Hence the Sophists w^ere teachers primarily, teachers of all branches, but specially of the art of speaking. They examined the nature of human speech and began to organize it in grammar, rhetoric, and even in logic. Their instruction had doubtless a practical end: the ability to 190 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. control men by means of the golden gift of eloquence. Still they turned the mind back upon the words it uses, and the way to use them ; that is, the Ego now begins to examine its own categories. We have already seen the philos- ophers employing philosophical categories, with little or no scrutiny of them ; the Sophists start this work which culminates in Aristotle. Not before the Ego begins to look at itself as the test of all things, will it look at the words with which it utters itself in the act of testing. Freedom of thought comes in with the Sophist and is taught to the people of culture, though unquestionably this freedom was exercised by previous philosophers in individual cases. But the distinctive right of the subjective Ego to judge the world for itself is now asserted. In fact it is the chief function of Sophisticism to make the whole Universe pass through the alem- bic of the subjective Self or the Egoistic Atom. Much will be gained by the operation, but also much will be lost. Destroving agencies will be let loose; selfish motives, ambition, money, fame, will seem to rule the time, since each Ego claims the privilege of reducing all to its particular end. It tears itself away from city, state, religion and often from law, from everything which is estab- lished and which it deems external authority. Hence it comes that Sophists were so often wan- derers, a vast horde of Atoms roving through EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 191 Hellas, whose general direction, however, was toward the center, toward Athens, where they found the widest and richest field for their en- deavors. Protagoras of Abdera, Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos, Hippias of Elis, were born aliens, but domiciled in Athens at least for a part of their lives, and they were the most famous Sophists whom Greece produced. The centripetal tendency which has been already desjcrnated as characteristic of the whole move- ment of Atomism is here specially observable. The Sophist greatest in name and loftiest in character was doubtless Protagoras, who was born about 480 B.C. and perished in a voyage to Sicily when he was not far from seventy years old. After practicing his profession in his native town of Abdera as well as in Sicily and in Italy, he gravitated toward the Athenian city where he is said to have enjoyed the society of Pericles and Euripides. He wrote a book about the Gods ; on account of it he was charged with atheism and had to leave Athens, after which he set sail on his fatal voyage to Sicily. Thus his departure was somewhat like that of Anaxagoras above described. Plato has named one of his dialogues after him, in which the o-eneral outline of his appearance and character, as well as of his doctrine, is given. It should also be added that the life of Protagoras largely coincides with that of Democritus, also of Ab- 192 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. dera, and it is highly probable that he was there a pupil of Leucippus, the founder of Cosmical Atomism. Again we should note that this third phase of Atomism is in a direct line of descent from the first, both phases being connected through Protagoras. The most famous sophistic maxim is *« Man is the measure of all things; " of this maxim Pro- to^oras was the author. Man is here the indi- vidual, the Egoistic Atom, or the subject. There is no truth for man except what he feels and experiences. And each man has his own feel- ings, and also standards of judgment; what is true for one man will not be true for another, or even for the same man at different times. This also holds of the Good. In other words there is nothing universally valid, only individu- ally or Egoistically. This view will again arise and become the characteristic phrase of a skep- tical age which will declare that " Man cannot know Truth." Culture has thus attained the standpoint of reo^ardino; the cultured Ego as the measure of all things, or, in philoso^^hic phrase, as the essence of Being. Man in his development has reached the stage — and it is an advanced one — in which he is to be put under the training of his own subjective caprice. The human world dissolves itself into its Egoistic Atoms, and starts on a new career. It will be found not to EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 193 be an easy disci[)line, though a necessary grade in the great university of civilization. Mankind at certain times has to be sent to school to its own caprice. Thus it finds out the meaning of the same as well as the meaning of the objective world of Law, of Institutions, in fine, of God himself. Likewise the individual in his per- sonal life has to pass through a similar schooling of subjective caprice, and sometimes he never gets out of it. Every person at some period in his development reaches the point of considering the inner movement of his own Ego to be the true movement of the Universe. Then he is in the school of the Sophists, who are training him toward freedom and self-determination, even though this freedom be at first capricious. In Greece proper Sophisticism finds the Greek determined more or less externally by omens, oracles, ancient habits, and the whole routine of social and religious ceremonial. It was a step in progress to liberate him from these outer fetters, and to prepare him for seeing the rationality of Law and Institution, which was a part of the great work of Plato and Aristotle, who will also assert that man is the measure of all things, yet not man as Individual (egoistic Atom) but man as Universal. The Sophists largely taught the Greek to be a reflective person, and not imaginative. The wan- dering rhapsode reciting the verses of Homer and 13 194 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHTLOSOPHY. other poets, had been hitherto the chief teacher of the people. But now comes the wandering Sophist, who transmutes images into thoughts, and passes from poetry to prose, which he cul- tivates with as much care and uses with as much skill as the poet does his verse. Of course the age was ready and the Spirit was calling. Still we may say that the Hellenic consciousness, being sent to and through the school of Sophisticism, came out reflective, the previous all-dominating imagination being curtailed though not by any means destroj^ed. That school prepared both the language and the audience for the coming Plato and Aristotle, who, notwithstanding, des- perately assailed their own generative source, as often happens. Just the Ego, whose nature is to turn back upon itself and assert itself as ab- solute, is this reflective or self-returning process, which was first distinctly called up and cultivated by the Sophists. In fact, egoistic Atomism deals with the Atom which has become self- reflectinoj or Eo;o ; it is the Cosmical Atom turn- ing back upon itself and seeing itself as the principle of all things. This makes the vortex internal, the Ego within itself has the circular whirl or its own inner movement eternally self- returning, into which it now precipitates all things existent, whereby it shows both a negative and a positive character. If it a?*sailed the old insti- tutional order established hy law and custom on EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 195 the one hand, on the other it began to affirm the lio-ht of the inner man as self-determined, and so started the science of Morals, which was still further developed by Socrates, Plato, and Aris- totle. Some of the Sophists were distinctively moral teachers, as Prodicus of Ceos, and it ac- cords with their subjective tendency to develop a moral view of the world, in w^hich the individual sets up his own insight or conscience as the guide of conduct. These general facts about the Sophists we shall put together in the following statement, which will also indicate their relation to the total movement of Atomism. 1. The Ego as Subject. Such is primarily the Ego's individual or atomic character: it is both self-dividing and self-unifying in conscious- ness, thus showing the total process w^ithin itself. Man as the atomic Ego, is the measure of all things, having within himself the final criterion, under which everything is to be sub- sumed directly. The individual as Self is this fundamental process without doubt ; but finding the objective world different from it, that is, from himself, he turns negative to the same and seeks its undoing. The Sophists as individuals will show very different characters, (a) Protagoras with his sensism regarded everything as true immediately. {b) Gorgias with his skepticism regarded 196 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY everything as false immediately, (c) Other Sophists hovered between these extremes, in manifold shades of earnestness, frivolity, and personal self -exploitation. 2. The Ego as Destroyer. That there is a deeply negative side to Sophisticism is indicated in the preceding statement and cannot be suc- cessfully denied. The atomic Ego had also its Void, which, however, it made. In its new-born consciousness of selfhood, the subject could not endure the object as different from itself. Such was the negative manifestation of a very impor- tant stage of human development. Sophisticism, accordingly, assails and under- mines the existent, the established, the transmit- ted in various forms, of which the following may be noted. («) Religion, the old foe of the philosophers, receives the deepest wound. Pro- tagroras affirmed his total ignorance of the Gods. (6) Institutions are attacked. Hippias the Sophist says (according to Plato) that Law is man's tj^rant, compelling him to do many things against Nature. Here rises the distinction of Nature versus Law, the latter being unnatural. Tc) Philosophy, as the science of objective truth, especially in its antecedent Greek forms, is rejected by the Sophists, notably by Protag- oras. 3. The Ego as Builder. To the foregoing negative side of Sophisticism there is a positive EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 197 constructive tendency. In general, the Sophists were the teachers of the time, giving instruction in those branches which were a necessary prepa- ration for life. Hippias, according to Plato, taught arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. But their special field was rhetoric, the art of speaking and writing. They were the in- troducers of the new education. Their positive work may be summarized as follows, (ff) Grammar and rhetoric they culti- vated with zeal, and made men conscious of the language they use. Protagoras distinguished himself by his grammatical investigations, (h) Logic goes back to the Sophists; but the Dialec- tic, with the double-dealing negative, was their special favorite, and became the chief source of their bad name, (c) Ethics they (or some of them) began to teach and the virtues; herein they were the forerunners of Socrates, as well as in the use of the Dialectic, which is the basis of the Socratic method. With the atomic Ego as subject, the process of Atomism has come to a conclusion, having won the Individual, which has manifested both its positive and its negative phases. It asserts itself against the object, not yet knowing that its pro- cess is essentially that of the object. Still it has a presentiment thereof, or a feeling which is to be purified into thought, whose supreme func- tion is to behold the process of the Ego in all VJS ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. objectivity. This transition to thought is what carries us out of Atomism to the next higher stage of the Hellenic Period. Ohservaiions on Atomism. If the preceding exposition has attained its purpose, the reader will feel that he must appropriate the atomistic movement as an integral part of the spiritual evolution of his race. It rose to the surface and uttered itself in ancient Greece and has ever since filled its niche in the development of the universal spirit which every individual has to make his own in order to be fully and consciously one with his kind. Indeed the individual (as reader) is to realize that Atomism is just the process of win- ning the Individual in thought, which fact is affirmed in the phrase, the essence of Being is the Individual. Herein he beholds the conscious getting of himself, the first assertion of the Self on principle and not at random. 1. Before going further, it may be well to take a retrospect of the three forms of Atomism, as they have unfolded themselves in the foregoing account. A brief diagram may bring out the interrelations of the different parts, as follows : — I. Cosmical: (1) Atom; (2) the Void; (3) Vortex. II. Noetic: (1) Sperm; (2) the Different; (3) Nous. III. Egoistic: (1) Subject; (2) the Nega- tive; (3) the Positive. EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 199 The movement of these various divisions runs crosswise as well as lengthwise. For instance iJie Atom is unconscious and indivisible, the Sperm is unconscious yet divisible, tlie Subject is conscious, self -dividing, and producer of division. In like manner the Void is the externally or spatially separated, the Different is the internally or qualitatively separated, the Negative as Ego is the active or the separating principle. Similarly we may follow out the relation between the Vortex or the immanent whirl of the Atoms, JSTous or the transcendent orderer of the Sperms (or Atoms), and the Positive as creative or con- structive Ego, which iutroduces the new order. And the reader who is alert in spying out funda- mental analogies in diverse systems of Thought will trace in the three stages of Atomism a monistic, a dualistic, and a triune tendency. 2. Moreover with Atomism the hypothesis enters as an explanation of Being. The Atom of Leucippus is a purely hypothetical principle, a principle which confessedly cannot be proved by its own method. The Atom is supposed to be material, and to be endowed with attributes of matter, yet there can be no direct experience of it as matter. The Atom is at first the ex- ternally posited, assumed,, hypothetical, but it must travel in its process till it finds the Atom which posits it, namely the Ego. 3. We have observed that Atomism did not 200 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. originally arise from the needs of Natural Science, which employs it especially to-da3^ Not so much a i)hysical as a metaphysical origin it had in its old Greek form. Atomism springs from the search for the essence of Being (tlie ousia of the on), and from this point of view it is as ontolog- ical as Parmenides or Plato. It deals with the supersensible, even if this is supposed to be material. Through Atomism Philosophy makes one of its most important transitions — from object to subject, or from the sense-world to the thought-world as the essence of all things. We may call it a bridge from the Real to the Ideal, partaking of both, indeed being on both sides as a bridge must be. Through Atomism Philosophy passes and has to pass in order to evolve out of its elemental (or elementary) condition into its universal stage. 4. In Elementalism we observe Greek Philoso- phy starting with the total Cosmos (Macrocosm) and specially regarding the heavenly world with Sun, Moon, Stars, in which it beholds motion as regular, orderly, and cyclical. This seems in marked contrast to the irregular, capricious, partial motion which is manifest everywhere on earth. The inner movement of all things the early Greek began to have a presentiment of in the self- returning bodies which make their daily, monthly, yearly revolutions in the skies . The conception of EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 201 a World-Soul producing this outward manifesta- tion of itself in the cycles of the heavenl}^ spheres goes back to Anaximander, if not to Thales. The old philosophers felt the working of the all- pyschical process (Pauipsychosis) in the Macro- cosm, and gradually developed it till it manifested itself in the microcosm through the movement of Atomism, whose final stage is the human soul or Ego, which will also be found to move cycli- cally or in a self -returning process. Again we note what a significant place in the unfolding of man's thought is occupied by Atomism, which at last internalizes the external movement of the visible universe. 5. Here we may add that Atomism, being the second stage of a Psychosis, has an inner relation to all preceding second stages, such as Eleati- cism, or the first principle of Anaximander. The student who is eager to master all these fine and somewhat intricate threads of organization, will be able to trace them by himself from the sug- gestions already given. Thus he will grasp more distinctly what may be called the homologies of this vast but subtle organism of Greek Phi- losoph}^ 6. We always come back to the question: What has the soul of total Hellas, philosophizing and seeking to find and to express the essence of all things for its own spiritual satisfaction, gotten out of this Atomism? It has at least set 202 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. free the Individual as subject from the trammels of Elemeutalism, and, starting with the Atom as thought or conceived, it has reached the Atom which thinks — thinks itself as atomic or indi- vidual. Thus man knows himself as free subjec- tively, and he shows in this stage all the positive as well as the destructive consequences of freedom. It is plain, however, that Hellas as atomic cannot last. The land is full of atomic cities which can be sot against one another; each city is full of atoin'u' persons who can be easily turned into mutual iiostility. Such a condition invites or rather demands the external conqueror, who will subject them all anew to the authority', not their own but alien. The people who once beat off the Persian will call in the Macedonian and the Roman, who will subordinate these ca- pricious recalcitrant Greek Atoms. Such is the political outcome of Atomism. On the other hand the soul of all Hellas cen- tering itself at Athens and still philosophizing, will rapidly think itself out of Atomism and will carry the Individual forward beyond Caprice into the realm of Reason or Thought, which is to be the universal inner ruler of man. Thus an em- pire of Mind will be erected which lasts down to this day. 7. In Cosmical Atomism the Atom has to be conceived — not sensed imjnediately as a material object, but conceived as a material object; hence EGOISTIC ATOMISM. 203 it is the conception which materializes the Atom or makes it. So it results that in Atomism the essence is really not the Atom as material, but the Atom as concept or thought. "When the mind becomes aware of this lurking concept, separates it from the Atom, and makes it ex- plicit, then we htive transcended Atomism, and the formula becomes the following: the essence of Being (tlie ou.-iin of the on) is the concept or the Universal. That is, Avhen the Ego beholds its own process as that of the object, it is no longer atomic and subjective merel}^ but it has also become objective and universal, seeing the process of the Universe in each part. This inducts us into the realm of Universalism. 204 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. III. Uniyersalism. By this designation we strive to suggest the third stage of the First or distinctive]}^ Hellenic Period of Greek Philosophy. If the previous or second stage took for its fundamental principle the Process of Being as individual^ the present stage rises to the point of beholding the Process of Being as universal^ and so concludes the Period, which is the greatest in Greek Thought, since it grasps and formulates just this Thought as the principle of all things. Atomism has unfolded the character of individ- uation or the getting of the Individual ; Univer- salism is to unfold the character of universalizing or the getting of the Universal, which is the creative principle or Thought of every object, hence of the Individual also. Atomism reached the undivided one (the Individual) through division, and its process was to control this division (as in Egoistic Atomism) and not be controlled by it (as in Cosmical Atomism). We have just seen the sophistic Ego regarding every distinction in the world as its own subjectively ; its opinion {doxa) of the object, and not the object itself, is the valid thing. But now in this third stage the object is to come to validity UNIVERSALISM. 205 and is to manifest the process of Thought which is universal; every individual has within itself Thought, and this Thought is what Philosophy is next going to take up and elaborate. We may here call to mind the topographical character of the present stage. It is central in contrast to the atomic stage, which was centripe- tal, and in contrast to the elemental stage, which was peripheral, if not centrifugal. We saw that Elementalism arose and flourished in the Greek cities of the border, east and west, which were colonies, or colonies of colonies, of central or continental Hellas. We also saw that Atomism started on this border in the north, but that its tendency as a whole was toward Athens, espe- cially in its noetic form (Anaxagoras) and in its sophistic form (Protagoras and many others). The flight of the Atoms or individual Atomists to the center, where they took part in the grand Athenian vortex, was one of the characteristic facts of that age. So there was first the peri- pheral vortex, or whirl (^dinos), which we have noted as the elemental Psychosis of Greek Phi- losophy ; then there was the vortex of the Atoms in their whirl from the periphery to the center of Hellas, also in the form of a Psychosis (the At- omic). But now we have reached the central vortex, the very heart of the maelstrom of Hel- lenic Philosophy, which will also be found to be a psychical process, but confined to one city 206 ANCIENT EUROPEAN TIULOSOPHY. which has shown itself imperial not only in In- tellect, but also in Will, in the deed. So we may apply the thought of the vortex, so dear to the early Greek philosophers, who saw in it the image of their own selves and their epoch. Thus Philosophy from the outside of Greece, from its border, has gotten to the inside, to its heart. The movement is not only of location but also of mind, passing from the elemental and sensuous to the intellectual and spiritual. Here- in we may observe the artistic character of every- thing Greek, which always has an outer material manifestation for its inner soul. The sweep of Greek Thought in space has its spiritual counter- part in that Thought itself. Moreover the Philosophy of Hellas is no longer colonial, but has come back to the starting-point of the colonies. It no lons^er tarries on the outskirts of the Hellenic world but has penetrated to the original source of that world's marvelous expan- sion. We have noticed that in orjo-in all Hellenic Philosophy seems to be Ionic ; even when it took a Doric bent (as in Eleaticism and Pythagorean- ism), its founders were lonians. The only Doric founder of a Philosophy in a Doric city was Empedocles of Agrigentum, yet his prin- ciple showed a decided reversion to Ionic elementalism. The creative spirit of Greek Philosophy may, therefore, be said to be Ionic, startins in Ionic Miletus of Asia Minor. Now UNIVEBSALI8M. 207 the mother city of lonism was Athens. Miletus was a colony of Athens. Hence comes the in- teresting fact : Philosophy is a return of the Greek spirit to its fountain-head, moving back from the colony to the original seat of coloniza- tion, back from Miletus the daughter to Athens the mother, back from the derived, external, peripheral, to the underived, internal, central. For Athens always claimed to be the underived, autochthonous, born of the Attic soil itself, even if we now know that she too, in her forgotten past, had a derivation from a Pelasgian, or at least from an Aryan, ancestry. Nor must we omit to notice the chronological aspect of the present stage, its movement in time. It shows three phases in succession, rep- resented by three colossal geniuses, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, following one another sub- stantially in the order of three succeeding gen- erations. From the birth of Socrates (469 B. C.) to the death of Aristotle (322 B. C), is a period of 147 years ; but when we recollect that Soc- rates did not begin his full philosophizing career before middle life, we have but little more than one hundred years for the present epoch. This succession in time is still further shown by the fact that Plato was about forty j^ears younger than his master Socrates, and Aristotle more than forty years younger than his master Plato. Very marked, then, is the chronological order of 208 ANCIENT E UR OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. the separate stages of the Athenian movement. Now note its difference in this respect from the whole preceding movement of Greek philosophy, which was, as already set forth, substantially contemporaneous, with the exception of the Milesian School. But the Schools of Pythagor- eanism, of Eleaticism, of Heraclitus, even of Empcdoclcs and the Atoniists developed quite simultaneously in the middle half of the lifth century B. C, even if their founders were not all born together. Thus the total Hellenic spirit was philoso[)liizing, and burst forth almost at once into different stages of its one great fundamental thought at different places on its territorial rim. But when this same Hellenic spirit concentrates itself at Athens, and unities itself in one uni- versal formulation (which, by the way, is just the formulation of the Universal) the stages are not the contemporaneous fragments of the one philosophic Whole struggling to express itself, but they are the explicit process of that philo- sophic Whole of all Hellenism, not now thrown out piecemeal at many different localities but gathered up into a single total movement in one place. While this Athenian movement was going on, it was all-comprehending, and no other philos- ophy of any importance arose, or could arise, in Hellas, though the other philosophies still had their followers. And after the great Athenian cycle every new philosophy seemed to spring out VNIVEBSALISM. 209 of it as the oeneratino- center of all future thinking. In such fashion we bring before ourselves the external local sweep of tlie Hellenic Period : first and outermost it is peripheral ; then it is centri- petal, moving from without to within; finally it is central, unified in a process which is no longer synchronous but successive in time, and localized in one point. The very soul of the Greek race, after a wonderful expansion outwards and mighty manifestation of Will, in the Persian War, re- turns into itself and becomes thereby self- conscious, not only thinking but knowing itself as thinking. Very suggestive is the imago of the movement, as it seems to break forth in fitful flashes around the edges of the Hellenic world ; then these flashes turn inward and unite at Athens into the one central sun of philosophy which is still to-day shining in its primal splen- dor. This Hellenic stage appears to pass actually out of Space into Time — out of Greece particu- larized in this and that Greek city into Greece universalized, l)elono:ing to all lands and to all ages. The very transition from Atomism to Universalism in its real significance is the transi- tion from individual Hellas to universal Hellas, from the capricious Greek to the eternal Greek, from a town's Philosophy to the world's Philoso- phy. We are also to see that this third stage of the 14 210 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Hellenic Period returns to and takes up the first stage, or the elemental, of course throuiih the second stage or the individual. The element as such was divisible, but the individual is now not simply divisible or indivisible, but self-divid- ing within itself, and also self-uniting. Thus it is elemental and objective on the one hand ; and on the other contains the process of the Ego as individual and subjective. This is primarily the Socratic Concept, which however is to receive a full discussion later on. Still we may here em- phasize the fact that this present stage, called Universalism, is not isolated but is a part (the third) in the total psychical movement of the Hellenic Period. How shall we organize and concretely formu- late this greatest of philosophical epochs? First, let us state in a brief summary the process of its Thought as manifested in its three supreme per- sonalities. I. Socrates: Thought as Concept or the con- ceptual stage, in which Thought is in its imme- diate form, is directly in unit}"^ with its object, yet is the essence thereof. II. Plato: Thought as Idea or the ideal stage, in which Thought separates itself from the object, and makes its own ideal world as distinct from the })henomenal world. III. Aristotle: Thought as Thought of Thought or Thought thinking Thought, which is tJNIVERSALIS\f. 211 the real stage, wherein Thought returns to itself in the object and unfolds itself as the essence of the same. These are very brief designations of the three summits of Greek thinking, which are neverthe- less to be seen united together in one process. Through Socrates the Ego rises out of its subjec- tive attitude in Sophisticism (Egoistic Atomism) and finds itself the inner creative principle of the objective world, and thereby truly conceives the same. This is the Concept, in which the Ego asserts itself to be objectively existent in the thing, asserts itself to be the universal principle thereof, orthe very universal itself both as knower and as known. Plato keeps the Concept but separates it from the object, whereby the Platonic dualism comes to light, which divides the universe into Idea and Appearance. Plato, therefore, belongs to the second or separative stage of this mighty Athenian Psychosis. But Aristotle returns to the real object and reunites with it the Platonic Idea, thereby reconciling the Platonic dualism and causing the world of Appearance to vanish. Aristotle is thus a return to Socrates through Plato, since he (Aristotle) takes the Concept of the former, which is the unfolding of the Individual into the Universal and restores the Universal to the Individual after the two had been divorced by Plato. Such is the psychical process with its three stages, each of which is 2 1 2 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH F. represented by oue of these great philosophical personages. Taking \\\) the common principle of Greek Philos()})hy, which is the essence of Being, we may apply it here. All three, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, affirm the essence of Being (the ousia of the on) to be Thought — not the ele- ment, not the atom, which are the fundamental categories of the two preceding movements re- spectively. Now Socrates affirms the essence of Being to be Thought as Concept, or as the Universal which determines and creates the objective world. Plato affirms the essence of Being to l)e Thought as the Idea separate from, the objective world which is thus reduced to an Appearance. Aristotle affirms the essence of Beinoj to be Thouijht as seif-thiukini' or Thought thinking Thought (N^oesis N'oeseos, or the specu- lative Reason). All three philosophers take for granted that Thought is, has Being or is one with Being as the essence thereof. That is, the Ego with its process is one with the process of Beiuif , is the Universal seizinor and formulatinor the Universal in Beinof. Thus the Eo^o knows, and comes into the possession of science which is here ontological or the science of Beingr. Such is the psychical movement of the pres- ent stage whose phases are embodied in the three philosophers. Next we come to the fact that each of these is doing fundamentally the same UNIVERSALISM. 2 1 3 thing, has fundamentally the same content in his philosophizing. In a general way this content is the All, the Universe, which, however, becomes now distinctly separated into its three grand divisions — the Absolute Being (God), Nature (the Cosmos or the World), and Man (the human Being, who is a natural Being sharing in and returning to the Absolute Being). And these three divisions constitute likewise a process, which is a Psychosis of the All, or the Universe, and which we name, accordingly, the Pampsy- chosis (the All-Psychosis) . Each of these stages, when formulated by Thought, has its own desig- nation, and they together form the sciences of Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics. That is, each of the philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aris- totle will reveal a common Norm which they more or less implicitly follow, and according to which their work divides itself, yet in such division preserves the unity of the process. The principle of each philosopher is distinct and peculiar to him, still it moves through the common Norm — Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics, though with different degrees of empha- sis and excellence. Socrates, as is well known, places his chief stress upon the ethical, though he is not without the metaphysical and even the physical side. Thus every one of them is seek- ing to grasp and to formulate in categories the Pampsychosis, or the inner psychical movement 214 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. of the Universe. God, Nature, and Man are the content of all philosophizing worthy of the name, and are seen by it to form a process to- gether, which is ultimately psychical, and which must at last be made explicit through Psychol- ogy. The same Universe of God, Nature, and Man is likewise the content of Religion, as well as that of Philosoi)liy and of Psychology, though the expression of it in each of these supreme Discii)liues be very different. (See preceding Introduction, pp. 10, 13, 16, etc.) This third stage we may derive from the state- ment of Protagoras, Man is the measure of all things. Here the meaning turns uj)ou the defin- ition of Man. Does the above statement mean, man as individual (feeling, opinion, subjective notion), or Man as universal, as Thought? In the first case it signifies Sophisticism, in the second case Uuiversalism. Hence Socrates right- fully puts such stress upon Definition, which is the Concept expressed in its proper category. The sentence of Protagoras has two meanings quite opposite to each other, involving, as it does, the Definition of Man in two diverse ways, as subjective and individual or as objective and universal. So we are now to consider the great concen- tration of Thought at Athens which expresses the highest height attained bv Greek Intellect. In this movement three supreme liien participate, UNIVEBSALISM. 215 each of whom is to be considered in himself first of all ; still even as a great individual he must be seen to be a \^^vt or member of a still greater process which concludes the Hellenic Period of Greek Philosophy. Accordingly we pass to study separately the three exalted personages who compose this Athenian Psychosis. 216 ANCIENT EUIiOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. I. Socrates. The mighty protagonist of the new epoch rep- reseuts the dawu of Thought ; in Socrates the human mind l)ursts fortli into knowing itself as thinking; from this time onward man is to be a Thinker in his highest spiritual manifestation, and also to know himself as Thinker. As al- ready stated, the philosophical principle of Socrates is the Conee[)t or Thought in its first or immediate form. More fully formulated it is this : Socrates holds that the essence of Being (the ousia of theo><) is Thought as Concept, or the Universal. The whole significance of the man, philosophical as well as ethical, we shall find tiowing out of this proposition. It is not to be denied that Thinking had been done before Socrates, though more or less im- plicitly. The first philosopher, Thales, when he had simply asked for the essence of Being, had begun to think. He was imiuiriug after the Thought, Principle, or Concept underlying the world. That is, his Thought had unconsciously asked for the Thought of all things; it was evi- dently in search of itself. But it did not find itself till Socrates discovered it and pointed it out. When the mind of Thales declared that SOCRATES, 217 the essence of Being was water, he was thinking, yet not thinking Thought as the essence of Be- ing but a sensuous element. Then Socrates arose, and his Thought affirmed that the essence of Being was not an element but Thought itself, and not simply his individual Thought but Thought as universal, as the immanent creative principle of every object in existence. Thus what Thales implicitly sought for, Socrates ex- plicitly stated, and Thought, going forth at the beginning of Greek Philosopliy in search of the essence of Being, has returned home after a long journey and found just there the object of its search. Thus not only Man but Philosophy be- comes self-conscious, and Thought not only thinks unconsciously but knows itself as think- ing, or as the creative essence of all objectivity. Such is the return of Greek thinking upon itself, which constitutes the fundamental psyclii- calfact of the present third stage (Universalism), which is opened by Socrates. This return upon itself is the deepest internal act of the present Hellenic Period, and rounds it out into a Psy- chosis or a spiritual cycle of the absolute Self (the Pampsychosis). Moreov^er we may again note the external correspondence in the movement of the Philosophy of this Period : it is a return from the rim of colonies, specially Ionic colo- nies, to the main center of their origination, which was just this Athens. The spirit which 218 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. these colonies priinordially took from their mother city in an unconscious form returns to it philosophizino;, that is, asking for the essence of Being, which question the mother will now pro- ceed to answer for all her children, yes, for all future generations. It has been sometimes doubted whether Socrates was a true philosopher ; was he not rather a moralist or preacher? Though he occupied himself in })ublic largely with ethical discussions, as we see by his picture in Xenophon's Memorabilia, the real underlying principle in all his endeavors was the formation of Concepts, which is, of course, a philosophi- cal act. Indeed with him the Concept (philo- sophical) is quite the same as the Good (ethical). "VVe are first to get the Concept, then we have knowledge, science; then, too, we can act virtu- ouslv. Socrates even Avent so far as to say that all virtue is knowledge, is the Concept, which if we once possess, virtuous conduct follows neces- sarily. Hence it comes that the primary occu- pation of Socrates even as a teacher of virtue was the clearing-up of Concepts by means of his famous Socratic method, or his Dialectic. On the other hand we are never to forget that the philosophizing of Socrates was a life fully as much as a doctrine, and that too an active life. His thinking was done not so much in his closet as in public; he unfolded his theoretical view in immediate practical contact with men by SOCRATES. 219 means of conversation. Thus his Concept was seldom if ever separated from the process which was forming it ; the Dialectic was in immediate unity with the Concept, though the latter was the end toward which it was moving, or was the soul of the dialectical procedure. Later the Concept, the Dialectic, and Ethics will all be sepa- rated, held apart and considered as they are in themselves. But Socrates had them all and all at once, they being immediately united in the living activity of his conversation. Thus we can see that Socrates belongs to the implicit or the first stage of this third movement of the Hellenic Period. He has the self -returning Thoug-ht or Thought grasping Thought as the essence of Being, which is the fundamental characteristic of this third movement ; but he has the Thought of it as immediate, not yet developed, as the Con- cept undifferentiated from its dialectical and ethical relations, both of which, however, are present and at work, soon to develop independ- enth^ in future Philosophies. I. The birth of Socrates is usually assigned to the year 469 B. C, his death to the year 399 B. C. ; thus he was 70 years when he died. In early life he was a sculptor; it is supposed that he did not begin his vocation of philosopher till somewhere about the begin- ning of the last half of his life. No doubt lie had been preparing a long time by meditation, 220 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. as he hiimmered and chiseled away at his marble, and gradually from it wroiiirht out his concep- tion. One may trace an analogy between de- fining a concept from the mass of chaotic opin- ion and defining a shape from a mass of stone. Wlien lie was ready, he must have quit his trade and l)egun his new career. Who it was that extended to him encouragement and possibly liiiancial lu'l[), lindiiig him i)hilosophizing in his worksliop, is hinted in a few brief words by Di- ogenes Laertius {Life of Socrafcs) citing a state- ment tiiat " it was Crito who made him leave his workshoj) and instruct men, out of the admiration which he conceived for his abilities." Let Crito then be honored, whose fidelity to Socrates at the last moment Plato has celebrated in a well- known Dialogue. Without claiming historical accuracy for the declaration, one may well suppose that Socrates began his public philosophizing a few years be- fore the Peloponnesian war. An important pre- lude of this war was the siege of Potidtea, a city in Thrace which had revolted from the Athenians. Socrates was present at the siege as a heavy- armed soldier (432 B. C), where he is said to have rescued Alcibiades — then or afterwards one of his pupils — from death at the hands of the enemy. Again in 424 B. C. Socrates marched out with the Athenians against the Thebans, and took part in the battle of Delium, in which his SOCBATES. 221 countrymen were badly whipped and quite lost their military prestige. In a third campaign two years later Socrates went to Amphi polls, where again he saw his city defeated. Thus he shared in the repeated humiliations of his native land, and must have felt her gradual decline. Such an experience could not help sharpening the eye to the need of a radical reform in the spirit of the Athenian citizens. They show only opinions about public affairs which they transact ; they must rise to knowledge, they must be trained to get the Concept of things, and this trainino'must become their habit, their character. Accordingly, Socrates has made himself the schoolmaster of Athens ; he is the self-appointed teacher of the whole Athenian people, seeking to save it from its coming fall, which he sees but too clearly, by a complete inner regeneration. As the citizens will not come to him, so he goes to them, and engages them in talk on the market-place, in the streets, shops, promenades, anywhere. He is considered a nuisance by many, and receives insult, buffetings, blows, it is said; but that does not swerve him from his purpose. His person is not attractive: bald-pated, snub- nosed, corpulent in body, with projecting goggle- eyes which roll around oddly when he speaks, he is compared to the arch satyr, Silenus, by both Xenophon and Plato, his most devoted friends and pupils. He dressed carelessly, like many an- 222 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. other philosopher, struck awkward attitudes hid- eous to the beauty-loving eyes of the sculpture- trained Greek; he "strutted proudly barefoot along the streets" among sandaled gentlemen who ridiculed him, and still " you hold your head above us." So, at least, Aristophanes com- plains, and satirizes him in a famous comedy, "The Clouds." And yet this man, the reverse of the beautiful form, possessed the power of rousing the strongest manifestations of love in many of the fair and high-born youths of Athens. How? By the inner beauty of his life and character; minds holdino: converse w^ith him had to turn from the outer shape of the man, and regard the perfection of the spirit. That meant a great change, indeed it meant ultimately the transition out of the art-world of Greece, which loved so intensely and created so profusely the sculptured shapes of beauty. But a new Love has dawned which Plato has celebrated in his Symposium as Eros Pliilosophus, and which turns from without to within for the object of its devotion. Thus the ugly body of Socrates has its place in his teaching, as it compelled his young Athenian followers to relieve their eye-pain by beholding him inwardly and there communing with his soul divested of its inadequate or rather lying cor- poreal counterpart. Above all, we can trace this influence in Plato, who fled to the pure Idea SOGBATES. 223 away from Appearance, and who most artistically reacted against the art of Hellas, Thus in the very person of Socrates lay the Platonic dualism in its unseparated or implicit form. And from the particular Socrates manifested in the pecu- liarities of his body and its actions, the pupil was forced to rise to the universal Socrates, to the inner Concept of him, in order to find the essence of the man, corresponding herein to his own philosophic doctrine. II. Socrates is more widely known than any other character in Greek History. His name has been heard or read oftener than that of Homer or Alexander, who are probably his nearest Greek competitors in popular fame. In general Soc- rates and his fate are known to the people of Christendom; this seems to spring from the fact that he is deemed the Greek Christ. Every thinking Christian will compare, secretly or openly, the two in life and in death. He will find striking differences, and also surprising parallelisms. The Greek and the Jew — both martyrs of the spirit — have come down time associated together not only in the minds of the learned, but to a degree in the popular imagi- nation. Twenty-three centuries have joined their voices in proclaiming the greatness of Socrates, and in placing him at an important turning-point in the march of humanity. Studious men to-day more 224 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ardently than ever are asking themselves the question : What did he do that he should take such an epoch-making position in our spiritual evolution? Especially every student of Philos- ophy grapples with that Concept called Socrates, which has in many cases been transmitted to him more or less vaguely from childhood. Sup- posing that he is imbued with the philosophic spirit, he has reached the stage of seeking to define, formulate, categorize Socrates, bringing the same out of a shadowy, semi-conscious, shifting mass of indefinite notions into a clear, well-rounded, and, as it were, plastic outline of a Concept, general indeed, but distinct and mentally employ-able. Now what if Socrates be just the person who first showed mankind how to extract this general Concept (or Universal) of an object out of the chaotic multitude of fleeting notions which encompass it or rather bur}^ it in the mind? What we here propose to do with him, he first taught the race to do ; his own procedure we shall seek to apph'^ to him who started it, bringing back to him his own deed, subsuming him under his own thought. Thus every thinker has to repeat and renew Socrates in himself in order to get Socrates. Nor is it merely the general Concept which lies implicit and unborn in a mass of indiscriminate images and opinions, from which it has to be un- 80GB ATE S. 225 folded and extricated. Processes also lie thus im- bedded, yea, the process of all processes, the Psy- chosis itself, which is fermenting in every Religion and in every Philosophy, is indeed the very principle of such fermentation. Now and then it breaks out of the secret abode in unexpected spots, and becomes explicit and visible for a time, when it passes again into an eclipse. Such is the ran- dom and uncertain manifestation of the Psycho- sis throughout European Philosophy, certainly alive and moving in the womb of time, and oc- casionally lustily struggling there, but still un- born. The day is coming (we hope) when the Psychosis will come forth out of its long, long period of gestation into light, definite, visible, actually existent in the world, being parallel in its way to the birth of the Socratic general Concept. Under the image just presented, Socrates conceived his vocation, comparing himself to his mother Phsenarete who was a midwife. In like manner he was to help to birth the general Con- cept conceived in the brain and struggling there, by his peculiar art of mental obstetrics. So Plato (in Theoetetus 149, A) and Xenophon {Me7n. IV, 7), make him talk about himself, wherein he shows himself conscious of his procedure. We may also draw the old calling of his father and of himself into the illustration of this his new profession. Socrates was in early life a sculptor, as was Sophroniscus his father. Thus 15 226 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PniLOSOPHT. both belonged to the great age of Greek plastic art, that of Phidias, and may have wrought in the latter's workshop or under his guidance, upon the mar})les of the Parthenon. Young Socrates, born in 4G9 B. C, must have seen this supreme temple of the world gradually rising up and taking on its beautiful form from the brain of Ictinus the architect and of Phidias the sculptor. The Parthenon was finished about 438 B. C, and its construction is said to have lasted some twelve years — a period of great artistic and intellectual stimulation at Athens, in which Socrates must have partaken. He, a receptive youth of nine- teen, sees the Parthenon with all its sculptur- esque decoration at the beginning of its birth into time, and also sees its completion when a man of thirtj'-one. This of itself would bo an education unparalleled, and, as before said, he may have had a hand in the work. At least he beheld day after day the rough blocks of marble transported from Pentelicus and changed into shapes which were called divine, and which made visible the creative powers of the universe. Truly at Athens in the time of Socrates there was a grand epiphany of the Gods appearing to the senses of men in the forms of Art. Phidias at this period made the chryselephantine statue of Oij'mpian Zeus, from all accounts the nearest visible embodiment of the Supreme God that has ever manifested itself upon our earth. Socrates S0CBATE8. 227 could well have been present in 438 B. C, at the dedication of the colossal standing figure of Pallas Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and the pro- tecting deity of Athens. Already the artist was expressing the divinely creative Idea in shapes of marble and bronze, and in that mighty epoch poetry sang of the same spirit which inspired the heroic deeds of Marathon and Salamis. Socrates, then, began life as an artist — his group of the Three Graces was pointed out in later times — but he found that it was not his calling to shape the Idea or Concept in the forms of sense. From an outer work he changed to an inner, transmuting the rough masses of human speech into clear-cut terms, which also gave ex- pression to the Idea. From a statuary working in stone he changed to a statuary working in mind, which he informed anew with his own art and that of his age. In the market-place he opened his new workshop among the people, whose words he began to trim and train till he made them expressive of distinct, well-defined Concepts, plastic, too, in their way. As he once chiseled off, chip by chip, the marble-block of rude nature till a beautiful shape came forth rep- resentmg the God, so he now by his new art, which is the so-called Socratic method, removes one after another the wild growths of man's un- trained thmking, till the clear shajDely thought appears uttered in kindred speech. 228 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Ill the age of Socrates sculpture unfolded its higlie.st bloom, attaining an excellence which it never reached before or since. He may rightly be connected with this art, because he belonged to it professionally, and from it received his earliest training, but especially because it was the most direct and lofty expression of the age, in which he as the child of his time profoundly participated. III. But Socrates must have had other teach- ers, those who taught him something of Philoso- phy directly. At that time, during the age of Pericles, Athens was the gathering point of all thinkers, sophists, philosophers. Among others Anaxagoras had come thither during the boyhood of Socrates, and is said to have remained in the cit}^ some thirty j^ears, giving instruction and imparting his doctrines. Here certainly was an opportunity for Socrates lasting through the whole period of his manhood. One may well trace in his work the influence of the jV^ous of Anaxagoras, or the principle of Mind as the fundamental principle of all things. The general Concept or Idea of Socrates is related to N'ous, of which it is a more highh' developed form. Socrates is, however, more closely connected with the Sophists than with Anaxagoras. Indeed he is a Sophist on one side, but on the other side he is their opposite, their declared foe. Of them, through them, beyond them, were steps SOCBA TES. 229 in the growth of Socrates. With the Sophists lie turned inward and began to find his oracle there; with them he passed from authority, from tradition, from the established to the realm of individual insight. But this individual insight is to be employed in attaining the Universal, the Concept, whereby the subject begins to know itself as objective. This is the line on which he moves out of the negative condition of the Sophists to a positive view of the world. In giving an account of the education of Soc- rates, we must not leave out his greatest teacher, Athens, the supreme Hellenic Commonwealth, which was in this period building itself externally into the most beautiful city that ever existed, and even more wonderfully was building a group of men, a set of human characters, the like of whom have not often a[)peared since or before on our planet. Prominent, and of the same general mould, among these stands Socrates himself, nur- tured to greatness by the same spirit in his own peculiar domain. The overshadowing power of Persia, which had threatened the Greek world for two generations, had been broken, chiefly by the might of Athens and her great man, Themistocles. This city could well say that she had saved Hellas from the Ori- ent, and we, looking back through a vista of more than twenty-three centuries, can say far more, namely, that she saved Europe from the Orient. 2;i0 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. The spirit which had done such a deed was cen- tered in the one small city and its citizens. Soc- rates was born ten years after the battle of Pla- tiea, his daily life was passed among the victors of Salamis and of the other great battles by sea and land during the Persian War; we may sup- pose that hundreds of the veterans of Marathon were still living, and w^ere among his neighbors, each one of whom had his own story to tell of the great conflict. On such memories the youth was nourished, and grew to manhood, which also saw his native city the acknowledged political leader of the Hellenic world. Socrates likewise witnessed the outer struggle of the Greek city-states with the foreigner be- comins: an internal conflict amonoj themselves, till they all took sides and began the long civil conflict known as the Pelo})onuesian war, w^hich lasted twenty-seven years (431-404 B. C), and ended in the complete humiliation of Athens. He lived through this slow painful undoing of his country, passing in it the meridian of his life (from his 38th to his 65th 3ear). Such a polit- ical struggle among those refractory units, the Greek city-states, lies in the background of his civil life and also of hispliilosophizing; the strug- gling mass of individuals, as atoms, notions, ca[)- rices or men he would bring under the Universal, and thus have a ruling ol)jective principle of order in the world. The subjective autonomy of SOCEATES. 231 the man and correspondingly of the city has its sphere, but also there must be an objective hege- mony of the Concept as well as of the State. The conflict and disintegration going on below among Greek men was also taking place above, among the Greek Gods, who now, even more than in Homer's time, formed a Pantheon of many recalcitrant units. Zeus, the chief ruler of the Olympians, if not exactly dethroned, had been placed in the background, especially at Athens, which worshipped Pallas Athena, the Goddess of the Mind, the divine embodiment of Nous. Her new beautitul temple, and her new colossal statue have been already noticed, both being erected in the prime of Socrates' man- hood, and both being situated high upon the hill of the Acropolis, overlooking the valley of the Ilissus below. Down there in that valley lay the unfinished temple of Zeus, begun by the tyrant Pisistratus, which the democratic Athe- nians never would complete even for the Monarch of Heaven. Finally the Monarch of the World, the Roman Emporer Hadrian, built it up anew, more than six hundred years after the laying of its first foundation. All of this is very significant of the religion of Athens during the present epoch : she led a revolt against the old auto- cratic God of Hellas, and set up in his stead the deity of Wisdom, of individual Insight, of Intelligence. 232 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPUY. There is no doubt that Socrates shared in this great spiritual change of his city and of his age. He did not deny the Gods, but he certainly transformed them, and indeed had to do so. This fact was so well known that his enemies could get hiiu ariaignod before the Athenian dicastery and condemned to death, chiefly on tlie ground of impiety. This last act is the most impressive and mem- orable one in his whole career, enrolling him among the martyrs of the race for the highest good of the race. And yet there are two sides to the question of the justification of his death. The real interest of it lies in the fact that over Socrates two world-views, the outgoing and the incoming, collided sharply, and thus gave a most striking manifestation of their existence. If he had perished through a brutal, violent exe- cution by the State (say at the hands of the thirty tyrants, whom he opposed), his death would have simply been a lamentable accident. But as it is recorded by Plato and Xenophon, it shows two spiritual powers grappling with full intensity, each in its own way and in its own right. Thus it becomes a spectacle for all time, a veritable drama enacted on the stage of the world. Both sides have to be present in full pan- oplj', assertmg their respective principles before the two arbiters, one of which is that trans- itory Athenian dicastery, the other is the tri- SOCRATES. 2o3 bunal of the ages. Before the former, Socrates lost his cause and perished ; before the hitter he has clearl}^ won it, and still lives. IV. We pass next to consider the basic maxim of Socrates, Know thyself. " Tell me, Euthydemus, did 3'ou ever go to Delphi? " asks Socrates (Xenophou's Mem. IV, 2.24). " Yes, twice." " Did you read that inscri})tion upon the tem- ple, Knoio thyself? " " Certainly." Whereupon Socrates proceeds to enforce the deeper signiticance of this maxim by various ex- amples. Self-knowledge is the key to all knowl- edge ; only by knowing yourself or the Self, can you know the world, and thereby pass from sub- ject to object. This maxim also is capable of a double construction. If I know mj'-self imme- diately, or as the individual, to be the essence of all Being, I take the sophistic standpoint of Protagoras. But if I know myself as thought to be the essence of all Being, my self-knowledge is that of Socrates. In thought I recognize the self -knowing Ego as the creative principle of the objective world. The Self knowing itself sees this process of self-knowledge to be the process of all things. Hence Aristotle will explicitly affirm that the Thought of Thought, or Thought thinking Thought (noesis noeseos) is the true 234 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PIIILOSOniY. realit>', the real essence of Being. So it conies tlijit we shall find in him from this point of view a return to Socrates, whose implicit Concept or Thouirht he develops to its full expression. Know tliijfidf may be considered the germinal starting-point of Socrates. The self-knowing Ego had already been announced by the Sophists who made it purely subjective, and hence nega- tive also, when they said that man is the measure of all things. But Socrates proclaimed that this self -knowing Ego knows itself likewise as object, as tlio principle of the world, in which man is to tind himself in order to know it. Thus Socrates reached the lofty point of seeing that Thought is objective, that the world is Thought which hia Thought must recognize in order to obtain true knowledge. In this sense Socrates still holds to the principle that man is the measure of all things, but with a vast new meaning different from that of the Sophists who made the particu- lar subjective Ego with all its caprices and opin- ions to be the measure of all things. Socrates saw the all-creating Nous, if not in the whole universe, at least in important parts of it ; his own Xous must recreate the same by thinking if he is to know the truth of it. This objective all-creating iVoM.s-is what the Sophists denied or left out; they were subjective, subjecting creation to their own Ego, from the outside, instead of identifying their own Eij;o in creation. SOCBATES. 2o5 To know thyself is not merely to know this individual Self with its ever-changing bubbles of notions, but to know thyself as man, as human- ity, as universal. Not simply an introspective act is this, but at the same time an extrospec- tive look into the creative soul of the world, whose process is that of truth itself. We may say, then, chat Socrates saw the fundamental Norm of the Universe, but he saw it immediately, and did not separate it fully from its particular em- bodiment, grasping and uttering it as it is m itself. This, however, makes him the beginner of the movement which unfolds the philosophic Norm of human Thinking to a full consciousness of itself. Now, this self-knowledge of Secrates has its own process, whose stages we shall glance at. 1. He starts with an act of faith, which is that every person, even the humblest Athenian laborer, has within himself implicitly the truth, the universal Concept. But it is covered up and intertwined with a mass of opinions and notions from which it must be sifted, and exposed as it is in itself. So he goes to the people, in whom he believes this original germ to be existent, though as yet potential and unconscious. He is one with them, and he puts every man, high and low, who will talk with him, through the same process which he has experienced within himself. 2. He separates the fleeting, untrue, insubstan- 236 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tial shreds of luiud from the eternal iiud uDiversul element, whereby the hitter becomes conscious and explicit. Tiiis he does by question and an- swer, by his peculiar method still known as So- cratic, which is the pedagogic method. He, too, wants to know somewhat, so he starts to interro- gate the bystander and interweaves him into a Socratic dialogue (dialor/os, whose end is the /070.S, or Ideaj. The general movement of it is to make the interlocutor contradict his own inad- equate opinions, to make him negate his own negative notions, and thereby to have him rise to the true C(mcept of the object. Tiie irony of Socrates is to assume ignorance himself in order to convict others of ignorance and thence lead them to knowledge. 3. This knowledge was the becoming con- scious of the general Concept, the advance from the particular to the universal or to the creative thought of the object. It is sometimes called the Dclinition of the thing under consideration, as of Justice or the Good. We may deem it also a criticism of the terms used by the people, and a finding of their essential meaning. Thus it becomes a category ; Socrates calls forth out of the vague notion, the detinite category — a great step in philosophy which now becomes a conscious categorizing of the universe. Un- doubtedly Philosophy has moved hitherto in categories, but such a movement has been largely SOCRATES. ^37 unconscious. In Socrates, however, Thought returns upon itself and formulates itself as Thought, wherein we behold the third or self- returning stage of this whole Hellenic Psychosis, or psychical movement of the Hellenic Period As Socrates w^orks up from the particular to the general, his method has likewise been called inductive (or epagogic). The Sophist took the particular subject with all its impulses, feelings, fancies, as tlic man who was to measure all things ; but Socrates purified this measuring man of his subjective caprices, aud elevated him into a rational or universal Self, which was Thought as reproductive of the Universe. Not simply man is the measure of all things, but man as thinker, as the maker of the Concept, is the measure of all things. Connecting the work of Socrates with the fundamental movement of Greek Philosophy (which is the grand search for true Being) w^e see that his message is that the Concept is true Being, or that the essence (oima) of Being is Thought, or that Thinking is also objective, not simply subjective. All these terms express the one supreme fact of Socrates as the founder of the third or Athenian stage of Hellenic Philosophy. V. A skeptical element Socrates had in con- nection with the preceding movement out of skepticism. He did not adopt the w^hole range 238 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PIJILOSOrHV of science like Plato and Aristotle; there were spheres of knowing into which he would not carry his general Concept. On this side he was not universal, but showed his limitation. This nega- tive phase of his connects him with the Sophists, from whom he inherited it; he, too, affirmed the right of the subjective Ego to criticise the Estab- lished, and even to deny its validity in certain cases. But his effort \vas to move forward out of denial to the new future order, not to relapse in terror to the old past, which seems to have the principle of Aristophanes, as far as he had any. 1. Socrates particularly eschewed the previous speculations of Greek philosophers on Nature. He would rule out the Ionic and the Atomistic Schools as unworthy of being known. 2. He shunned the mathematical views of the Pj'thagoreans. 3. The metaphysical subtleties of philoso- phers like the Eleatics had no fascination for him. He was, therefore, negative to the Philoso- phies before his time — physical, metaphysical and mathematical. And yet he stands in relation to all these, he is indeed their direct product and outcome. At times he seems to have felt this, and so is not wholly consistent in his attitude toward them. More will be said upon this topic in another connection. SOCRATES. 239 VI. But the field to which Socrates turned with singleness of purpose was the ethical. Hav- ing reached his general Concept by induction, he applies it to human conduct. Hence his investi- gations pertained almost wholly to Virtue and the Good. Savs Aristotle: " Socrates resrarded the problem of Philosophy to be the seeking for the essence of Virtue." But Aristotle also attribu- ted to Socrates the determining of general Con- cepts. These two views find their reconciliation in the fact that Socrates investigated the Concept in order to settle the nature of Virtue, which is a general Concept. That is, having gotten the universal Thought as such, he will not apply it universally to all objects, but simply to human actions. Under the head of Ethics we put together the most distinctive teachings of Socrates. 1. The best known of his ethical doctrines is that Virtue is knowledge, which he affirmed ap- parently with all its consequences. Hence no man does WTong knowingly ; goodness cannot be truly predicated of a person who acts instinc- tively; if a man could do a wrong knowingly, he would still be better than one who did it io-no- c rantly, since the former lacks only goodness, while the latter lacks both goodness and knowledge. Herein Ave see how emphatically Socrates asserted the self-conscious stage of spirit against tlie un- conscious. He had quite reached the view that 240 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPnT. good done instinctively is no good iit all. The old prescriptive morality of Greece was to be sup- planted by this new self-knowing ethical world. He seeks to chano;e the Athenian from a man de- terniined by his community with its transmitted beliefs to a man self-determined in conduct ; the inner Universal, the thinking Ego is to take the place of the outer Universal, the Law and Institutions. Socrates does his thinking in the greatest City-State of Greece, passing from the instinctively institutional condition to the moral. Socrates deserves credit for seeing that all knowledge has a moral side, and is followed bv responsibility. But he ignored the primacy of the AVill in Ethics, and assej'ted the primacy of Intellect ; to know was to be good in his view ; he did not understand how a man could know the good and not do it ; surely the evil-doer was igno- rant of what he was doing. Thus knowledge was one with Virtue, and could not be separated from it. To know the good was immediately the Will to do the good, he thought; he permitted no division of Will from knowledge. Such a view is inadequate, still it has been too much neglected by modern writers on Ethics, who put an overwhelming stress upon the motive, without a sufficient consideration of its basis in knowledge. Socrates rightly held that all knowledixe nmst be moralized; his mistake 80GB ATE S. 241 lies in maintaining that it will moralize itself without any special effort of Will. 2. Virtue, being a general Concept, was uni- versal, common to all men, hence impartable or teachable. This is also a most weighty doctrine of Socrates: the teachability of Virtue, so that it can be given to the rising generation by in- struction. Previously the Virtues, Temperance, Justice, Heroism, etc., existed in living exam- ples, connected with many other qualities of the concrete person ; Socrates separated or abstracted the single Virtue, defined it as a Concept, whereby it could be imi)arted to other minds. The value of this service to mankind can hardly be overrated ; it not only produced but planted moral science in the world, where it has never since ceased to grow. The vocation of Socrates was to be teacher of Ethics far more than of Philosophy, which with him was the handmaid of Ethics. All Athens was his School, truly a pub- lic School, starting anywhere or at any time, on the street or in the market place. Every man was subjected to a training by this self- chosen teacher, the end being first to know Justice, for example, and then to act justly. The whole citizenship of Athens was to pass from impulsive or prescriptive doing to self- conscious doing. Unquestionably this is what led him into collision with the old order of things — the old religion, the old state, the 16 242 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. conservatives generally — and at last brought on his fate. 3. With that fact is also connected his Demon or Genius, the inner Oracle of the man, which gave him warnings, presentiments, and signs of the future. Thus Socrates seems to fall back into a kind of superstition ; though internal it is a voice speaking to him with authority. The outer Delphic Oracle has gone inside, j^et remains oracular. Many explanations have been given of it — some calling it a devil and others conscience. To our mind it is the Greek counterpart to the Categorical Imperative which has such an impor- tant place in the Ethics of Kant. It is an inner power which commands imperatively, usually not to do, but sometimes to do. Socrates restores the Greek unity of Being, which he places in Virtue. The latter is one, or it is reducible to one by abstraction. Virtue is thus the true genus, the general, and genetic of character. If the Idea or Concept of Virtue be given, it will transform the person. General Concepts once entering the mind have a tendency to become generative, creative, making over the man in their image, making him just from his conceiving of justice, making" him good from his conceivino^ of the 2:ood. So Socrates sets out on his career, seeking to impart to all Athenians the conception of Virtue and the Virtues, with the hope of making them virtuous. Moral freedom SOCEATES. 243 he preached, and thus he heralded the dawn of a new epoch. But here lies his conflict with the old prescriptive morality of Athens, and out of this conflict resulted his tragedy. At his trial the eye which beholds the true reality of occur- rences, can see two principles in a death-grapple : the ancient prescribed order and the new con- sciousness of inner freedom. This tragedy of Socrates is truly Promethean in its mighty out- lines and in its suggestive prefiguring of the future. VII. That which we have called f/ie ]\rorm of philosophizing — the psychical process of Abso- lute Being (God), Nature (the Cosmos), and Man — is far from explicit in Socrates, yet im- portant phases or parts of it are present. Out of the preceding account we may put together the philosophy of Socrates from the point of view of the Norm, especially after the manner in which it showed itself in later Greek thinking. 1. 3Iefaphi/sics. The entire elaboration o/the Concept as well as the Socratic method of reach- ing it, may be placed under this head. Funda- mentally the work of Socrates has a metaphysical stamp, which we first observe in his favorite maxim know tliysdf. The passing from the Particular to the Universal as Concept is done by the power of abstraction and is a metaphys- ical act. Here we can find various phases ; — (a) An ontological strand in the investio-a- 244 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tions of Socrates is noticed even by Xenophon, who had little aptitude for this side of his mas- ter's instruction. We read in the Memora- bilia (IV. 6. 1) that "he never ceased to discuss with his companions what was the nature of each existent thing," or the essence of Being in every particular ol)jcct. More emphatic are the statements of Aristotle: "Socrates with right reason investigated the what is,'' true Being (or the ousia of the on, which is likewise an Aris- totelian phrase) {Met. XIII. 4; 1078, b). In the same passage we read: " two things may be justly ascribed to Socrates: inductive (epagogic) discourses and the definition of the Universal," the former leading up to the latter which is the Concept categorized. Herewith the second point is suo^orested. (b) The method of Socrates, which is the dialectical, and leads up to the logical, has been already considered. Xenophon says that " he made his companions more dialectical" (Me?n. IV. 6. 1). Socrates reaches the Concept by his Dialectic, by the development of the Universal through question and answer, which procedure is based upon the fact that all division and defi- nition will turn oat self-contradictory when ap- plied to the object from the outside. This is the true content and purpose underlying the play of Socratic irony. But when the object is seen to posit its own divisions and thus become the Con- SOCBATES. 245 cept or the Thought, it can escape from the neg- ative power of the Dialectic. We may say then that the Dialectic is the process of negating the Negative (as mere Opinion, Notion, or outside Reflection), and of attaining the positive genetic Thought of the thing, or, more completely ex- pressed, the creative principle of the Universe. (c) The Theology of Socrates has in the main been considered. In one sense he accepted the old Gods of his people, yet he certainly trans- formed them, he put into them the new Thought, though he called them still by their former names. Xenophon seeks to defend his master's piety ; his defense is both successful and unsuc- cessful. Socrates, like most of the Greek philosophers, seeking the one principle of the Universe, could not well admit a fundamental plurality of the Gods. We question even if old Homer is always a polytheist. In the Mernorahilia (I. 4) we find the doctrine of Socrates in regard to the world-order whose controlling principle is N^ous, Intelligence, Mind. " Do you think that you, by a stroke of luck, have gotten for yourself a mind which is nowhere else, and that the infinite world gets its order through a lack of mind? " asks Socrates of skep- tical Aristodemus, who seems inclined to fall back upon Chance (Democritus). It is manifest that Socrates affirms here the N'ous of Anaxago- ras and a teleological view of the world. But the 246 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. physical speculations of Anaxagoras he rejects and ridicules, according to the report of Xenophon. 2. Physics. Aristotle declares that Socrates turned from the investigation of Nature as a Whole, and herein was different from the early Greek philosophers. Xenophon emphasizes the same point in his master. Such, indeed, we may deem the reaction of Socrates against his prede- cessors in Philosophy. "With him, the essence of Being was no longer an element or an atom, but the Concept. The result was, he felt inclined to throw to one side all former speculations on the Cosmos and its origin. Still he did not and could not wholly desist from them, in which lay, indeed, his origin. Xenophon shows him looking into the end and purpose of all creation — man, animals and Cos- mos (Mtm. I. 4). Yet the same reporter de- clares elsewhere that "he did not converse on the nature of the All " (Mem. I. 1. 11). From these contradictory statements we may infer that the aversion of Socrates was not so much to Na- ture as a subject of discourse, but to the physical theories of the preceding Greek philosophers. In dislikino; Elementahsm and Atomism, he did not need to dislike Nature herself. He belongs to a new order of thinking, and is well aware of it; and so he turns away not only from the old meth- ods of treating a theme, but in a certain degree from the theme itself. SOCBATES. 247 Hence, a marked deficiency, though not a total absence, as regards Phj^sics, must be acknowl- edged in the philosophizing of Socrates. Herein he shows himself not all-sided, and the reason is his intense interest in the human, in man as an ethical being. Socrates recognizes the creator of the world and of man, and that he has mind {JSfous) and creates with an end in view (telos). He calls this creator a demiourgos (Mem. I. 4. 7), a word which plays an important part here- after. The double nature of man he assumes, the physical and the spiritual. The latter is specially developed by Ethics, whose function is to train the man out of the immediacy of Nature into universality of conduct. 3. Ethics. The general character of the ethical teaching of Socrates has been already given. Here we wish to bring it into connection with the philosophical Norm — Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics — of which Norm it is the third stage in Greek Philosophy. By means of Ethics man rises through himself to the Universal, or to true Being, or even to God. The soul as embodied belongs in part to Physics, but it also has reason, through which it ascends to the Concept, whereby it can become ethical. The individual Self has been reached and unfolded by the philosopher, and therewith the power of overcoming the lower side of itself, such as appetite and passion, has been attained. Through this new inner power 248 ANCIEN T E UR OPE AN PHIL O SOPHY. Socrates seeks to make man realize true Being, the Universal, in life and conduct. Of the ethical process we see three leading stages manifested in Socrates, though not in an equal degree of completeness. (rt) The conception of the Good he has; though not very distinctly stated in his utter- ances, it is substantially one with the Universal, and is the great object of ethical attainment and realization. Such a general end for man he declares to be happiness. (6) Far more definite and detailed anethe Vir- tues in the discussions of Socrates. Into these manifold Virtues, the Good specializes itself. His common topic of conversation is the defini- tion of some particular Virtue whose concept he endeavors to bring out through question and answer. (See the instances in Plato and Xeno- phon, passim.') But no ordering of the Virtues into a system can be found in Socrates, who dis- cussed whatever single Virtue might rise to sur- face on the occasion of meeting some man in the street. (c) What may be called Institutional Virtue is for Socrates the fundamental and all-inclusive Virtue, the ground of the other Virtues. He believes in the State, obeys the Laws, performs his duty as citizen. This does not hinder him from seeing defects in the existent State and its Laws, and trying to remedy them. Indeed his SOCRATES. 249 whole scheme of training in Virtue is to produce a man who can make good Laws, and so estab- lish a good State. What is piety? he asks. Not a blind worship of the Gods, but a worship of them according to their laws and customs, which one must know. That is, one must know the law of the thing, the time of mere instinctive action and obedience is past. Many matters at Athens Socrates did not like, for instance, the ballot by lot, the pure democ- racy. He had the idea of the philosophic ruler; an aristocracy of intellect he favored. Still Socrates did not apparently despise labor, as did Plato, and Aristotle, and Xenophon. In early life he was himself an artisan (or artist), as was his father before him. In fact he was in his phil- osophic career primarily an Athenian missionary to the humble mechanic, tradesman, and laborer. It is the chief object of Plato in his Crito to exhibit Socrates supremely as the institutional man. He could not be persuaded to escape from the prison to which the laws of his country had consigned him ; he would rather die than disobey them, even though innocent. Thus we may see that Socrates has the triple philosophic Norm — Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics — though in its iirst undeveloped, or rather unequally developed, stage. Hitherto this Norm had been seeking a partial expression among various philosophers ; now it is beginning to con- 250 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PniLOSOPBY. ceutnite itself iu one philosopher, and this con- ceutratiou is to grow more and more decided after Socrates, till the Norm becomes fully ex- pressed and consciously established. This com- plete recognition reaches beyond Plato and seemingly Aristotle also, being usually ascribed to Xeuocrates, a pupil of Plato. Out of Socrates flow many streauis of philosophic influence which become schools of more or less importance. The so-called Socratic Schools — Megaric, Cynic, Cyrenaic — we shall consider in another connec- tion. But the overtowering successor of the master and the chief developer of Socraticism is Plato. We must regard Socrates as a great mind-fertilizing genius — one of the greatest that the world has ever seen. Very diverse are these Schools, and of very diverse characters are their founders, Antisthcnes the ascetic, Aristippus the man of pleasure, Xenophon the limited, Plato the unlimited, were all fructified by Socrates and produced their individual work after his mould. Thus it is practically manifest that Socrates was himself his own Universal, his own all-embracing Concept, out of which went forth so many special f oruis and applications. He was the One which was creative of all Difference ; he could impregnate every soul with his Thought and make it jDroductive. Greek Philosophy seems to center itself in him, preparatory to a new evolution. SOCBATES. 251 The next great step is taken by Plato who sep- arates the Socratic Concept from its wrappage in the object, holds it apart and contemplates it by itself, calling it the Idea as opposed to the world of sense, which he reduces to a mere Appearance, a Show, a Lie, in fine, to non-existence. More- over Plato seeks to find whenoe came this Con- cept and how it got into us mortals. What he receives united in the Socratic Concept, he sep- arates and puts through a long process, which doubtless constitutes the most influential chapter in European Philosophy. 252 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, 2. ipiato. The total Plato is generally considered under three aspects: Iris Life, his Writings, and his Philosophy. The first gives the outer circum- stances of the man and shows him acting and reacting within his local and temporal environ- ment. The second indicates the form of his self- expression as well as the entire body of his liter- ary work, in which his thought manifests itself. The third is the system or scheme of thought which lies at the foundation of what he has written, and which has to be considered by itself. All of these phases of the total Plato have been transmitted to us with a relative degree of completeness. The philosophic life of Plato is doubtless not so original as that of Socrates, but it is far more comprehensive. The vein of gold is not so rich, but it is of much greater extent. Socrates rather turned away from all previous forms of philos- ophizing, genius that he was ; Plato went back to them, in a degree fraternized with them, and took them up into his own philosophic movement. Thus Plato is a resumption of nearly all the Philosophies before his time. He does not treat them historically, as Aristotle often does, but PLATO. 253 works them over after his own manner, puts them together and weaves them into his thought. Having gotten the Socratic Concept with its power of abstraction, he will proceed to get the Concept of other Philosophies, till he attain the supreme Concept, which, in his own Philosophy, is the Idea, as distinct from the sensuous world or Appearance. This shows the Platonic dual- ism, which, more than any other one thought, utters the essence of Europe. The Concept, as distinct from and independent of the phenomena, is the separation of Plato from Socrates, and gives essentially the Platonic Idea. I. Plato's Life. — This is first to be con- sidered, as it furnishes the harmonious and sug- gestive setting to the inner development of his Writings and of his Philosophy. The external career of Plato is a kind of index to his spiritual unfolding; his first stay at his Athenian home, his separation from home, and his final return home, are not simply outward epochs of his life, but have their correspondence in his soul's trans- formations. Since our philosopher lived to the age of eighty years and more, and as these years were full of activity, we may expect to behold a grand human development, which only a long life of highest endeavor combined with supreme genius can bring to fruitage. From his birth till his decease, we note distinctly three periods, a beginning, middle. 254 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and end, the hitter being a prolonged fulfillment, the plenteous harvest of what was sown in the early part of his career. He remained in his city from infancy to mature manhood, then came the separation, the de})arture from home and country for many years ; finally the return fol- lowed, and with it a kind of self-restoration which rounded out to completeness his life and his work. 1. Plato at home in Atlicns. This is the city in which he was born about 427 or 428 B. C. His lineage was aristocratic ; he is said to have been descended from King Codrus and from a kinsman of Solon, not to speak of his sup- posed divine ancestors, Apollo and Poseidon. The Athenian Democracy was tiien in authority; Plato by birth was plunged into a world from which he felt estranged at the start ; his family and his class wore hostile to the existing popular government, and he grew up in a state of separa- tion from the reality about Uini. His doctrine of the Idea as transcendent over the world of Appearance lay primarily in his aristocratic blood and training. High above the vulgar Demos he stood by birth, and he has always been the nour- isher of those who have withdrawn from the common herd, and dwelt in the realm of the ideal. In Plato we see Philosophy asserting strongly its aristocratic character. Still men of high family could become at Athens the leaders of the people. It seems that PLATO. 2^^ Plato in early life had political aspirations, pos- sibly to be the leader of his party. The govern- ment of the State formed a very important part of his speculations and called forth his masterpiece, the Rtpuhlic. Thus while estranged from the real political world, he was always endeavoring to return to it through the Idea. We should also note that Plato's youth was at a period of decline in the Athenian Democracy. The Pcloponnesian War had been going on for some four years when he was born, and it lasted twenty-three years longer. As a boy twelve years old he may have seen the Sicilian expedi- tion set out from the Piraeus with the highest hopes, after which came the great defeat and humiliation. As an Athenian youth he would have to perform military service at the age of eighteen ; thus he must have had the experience of the soldier. Finally came the destruction of the Athenian fleet at the battle of Aegospotami, followed by the capture of Athens itself, with which the Peloponnesian War closed in 404 B.C. Plato must have felt himself living on a sink- ing ship during all these years of ardent boyhood till he became a man, when the ship went down. A deep distrust of Democracy and of the People was thereby ground into his very soul, and was reinforced by the prejudices of birth. On the other hand, he saw the triumph of the Spartan 250 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. iiristocracy iu the long struggle with his country. The result was, he Dorized, becoming a friend of Doric institutions. Thus the dualism of the Greek race as a whole went into him ; he was Ionian in blood but Dorian in spirit, or largely so. This dualistic character will not fail to show itself in his Pliilosojjhy. After the close of the Pcloponucsian War the so-called Thirty Tyrants came into power at Athens. They belonged to the aristocratic party ; two near relatives of Plato, Critias and Char- mides, were of the number. In one of Plato's letters (if it be genuine) we read of his high hopes of the reform and restoration of the city under the new order. Bitter was his disappoint- ment; he found his own chiss to be more blood- thirsty and tyrannical than the iierce democracy, which was soon restored by Thrasybulus, against whom both of Plato's relatives marched out and were slain in battle. Particularly the name of Critias, on account of his violence and cruelty, was ever afterward abhorred at Athens, and cast a cloud over Plato's future, contril)uting also to the condemnation of Socrates, of whom he was declared to be a pupil. Plato was apparently not disturbed by the restored Democracy, though he saw that he had no hope of political preferment, since in his ^■eins ran the blood of the tyrant Critias on his mother's side. After the overthrow of the Thirty, in 403 B. C, we may suppose that he PLATO. 257 devoted himself to Philosophy with a renewed energy till the death of Socrates in 399 B. C. Such was the outer political environment in which Plato grew np to manhood and with which the ancient Athenian citizen was far more inti- mately ingrown than is the citizen of any modern city. Its training on the whole we can sec to be productive of a deep alienation from the real ^vorld — democratic and aristocratic — and a flight to the inner realm of the Idea. Of course he had not yet fornudatcd any such view, but the instinctive groundwork for it had been laid by life. The utterance of that which the social and institutional character of his age has deposited deep in his soul, will come with the ripening power of time. Parallel to this public strand of his life runs that of his private education. Of a robust physical frame, he passed through the regular training in gymnastics with distinction; but he also cultivated poetry, lyric, dithyraml)ic, tragic, elegiac ; a number of his epigrams have been preserved, the rest of his poems he is said to have burned when he became the follower of Socrates. A tetralogy of tragedies he is re- ported to have composed for competition at the Dionysiac festival, while Euripides and Sopho- cles were still composing dramas. The Platonic dialogue has its suggestion in the drama, though the one be in prose and the other in verse. 17 258 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. But the great event in the education of Plato was his acquaintance with Socrates, which took place in his twentieth year (407 B. C). After the fall of city and the defeat of the Thirty Tyrants, Plato, abandoning his political hopes, threw himself upon Philosophy without reserve and remained in intimate intercourse with Socrates till the latter's death in 399 B. C. This seems to have broken the last tie which connected him with his native city from which he now takes his flight. It is reasonably plain why Plato took so readily to the Socratic Philosophy. This rose to the Concept out of the external and real; with its keen Dialectic it cut to pieces the appearance of knowledge, the mere opinion of the unthinking masses. Socrates, though a man of the people, did not favor democracy, nor is his Philosophy democratic, nor is any Philosophy strictly. It is probable that Plato during this period looked into other Philosophies, in which Athens, as the center of Greek culture, abounded; he could easily read the book of Anaxagoras, which was common, and report states that he stud- ied for awhile with Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus. But not the phenomenal Becoming but the Universal, the Concept, with its suprem- acy over all particularity, was what appealed both to his innate character and his experience. 2. Plato abroad. So the separation takes PLATO. 259 place from his native city, which he had seen all his life slowly going down to final defeat and cap- ture. Then his own party, led by his own rela- tives made itself thoroughly detested, and it too was defeated and ruined. At last the restored Democracy brought about the death of his revered master, Socrates. Such was the troubled descent which Plato had to pass through in the first period of his life. He flees to the neighboring city of Megara, where he stays for a time with Eucleides, a for- mer pupil of Socrates and founder of the so- called Megaric School of Philosophy. Here it is supposed that his views began to widen and to transcend the limits of pure Socraticism, through the more sympathetic study of other lines of thought. Particularly he seems at Megara to have studied the Eleatics with their Pure Beino- and their developed Dialectic. From Megara he proceeds on his travels, which must have been quite extensive. He is supposed to have gone to Cyrene, where Theodorus, a celebrated mathemathician, was his teacher in Geometry, which has a Platonic character. The abstractions from the real object, namely, point, line, and surface, are purely ideal, and are the elements of geometrical science, which is thus a supersensible construction of forms. Perhajjs from Cyrene he passed to Egypt, which once was supposed to have been a chief fountain 260 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of his wisdom, but recent investigators have largely discredited the chiim. A far deeper and more enduring influence than that of Egjpt resulted from his visit to Lower Italy, where he l)ecanie acquainted with the society of Pythago- reans, particularly with Archytas, their greatest man after the founder. From them he may have acquired some additional mathematical knowledge, but his chief gain Avas the conception of the or- ganized school with its teacher, which conception he was to realize later at Athens. He witnessed the Pythagorean Askesis, or Life, and adopted it with such success that the Platonic Life with its philosophic school extended over five hundred 3^ears into the Christian Era. Thence he paid a visit to Sicily, where he became acquainted with young Dion, whose mind he deeply imbued with his idealism (see the latter' s life by Plutarch). Through Dion's influence Plato was induced to visit the elder Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, evidently with some hope of realizing through him the ideal State. But Plato used his Athenian freedom of speech to the tyrant, who drove him from court and gave him to the Spar- tan embassador Pollis,who sold him into slavery in Aegina — to what other use could a Spartan put a philosopher? A C^'renean by the name of Anniceris bought him, and so he returned to Athens, after having had quite a taste of Dorian experience at Syracuse, Aegina, and with the PLATO. 261 Spartan embassador. His Dorian sympathies were probably satisfied and he was again content to live in his native city, which, in spite of his well-known affiliations, made no objection ap- parently to his opening a school and teaching his Philosophy. Such was the period of Plato's separation from his city, in all some thirteen years, from 399 to 386 B. C. An outer wandering from place to place, to which corresponded an inner wandering from doctrine to doctrine, till he had quite com- passed the experience of the whole Greek world of that age, both in space and in thought, we may conceive it to have been. It is possible that he may have visited Athens several times during this period, for there was no public decree of banish- ment against him, but he did not and could not remain, for there was an inner decree of self- banishment which was coercive. Back now he comes, with forty years upon his head ; having tasted of Dorian slavery, he can at least endure Athenian freedom. But he never recants ; the dualism between the real and the ideal remains to the end. 3. Return to Athens. About the year 38() B. C, Plato formally opens his School in his native city, where he will remain the rest of his life, with the exception of a few temporary journeys. He chose a place outside the walls, on the road to Eleusis, somewhat less than a mile 2G2 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. from the citj^-gate called Dipyloii. It was a pub- lic garden adjoining the sacred precinct of a Hero, with shady walks and a gymnasium for ex- ercise. Near by, Plato owned a small dwelling- house and garden. Such was, in general, the locality of the famous Academy, which Plato unquestionably patterned after the Pythagoreans, though he probably improved the pattern. At once we see the difference from the manner of Socrates, whose instruction was public, upon the streets, in the market-place or in the shops. But Plato's School is esentially private, for the few, exclusive. It is intellectually aristocratic, it is again the Idea withdrawn into itself and sep- arated from the world. Now, we hold that Plato was rio-ht in this arrano^ement if he wished to attain his purpose. For the mastery of Plato's Philosophy a select company was necessary. A long training could not be dispensed with, both theoretically and practicall3\ Philosophy itself is mentally aristocratic, choosing its votaries by a Spiritual Selection far more remorseless than any Natural Selection. And the Philosophy of Plato is the most aristocratic of all Philosophies. In other respects there was a good deal of the Socratic method ; particularly instruction was carried on through question and answer, or through conversation. In the guidance and un- folding of such conversation lay a chief part of the teacher's skill. The Platonic Dialogues are PLATO, 263 essentially patterned after this way of instruc- tion. From Plato's repeated expression of dis- like for long speeches, such as those of the Public Assembly, we may suppose that he did not give formal lectures in the modern manner. Nor did he think highly of the written word as a means of imparting Thought, in spite of his own example to the contrar}^ The interchange of living speech was the method he preferred, of which he must have recollected many striking in- stances from his intercourse with Socrates. Still, when it was necessary, Plato could pro- long his discourse into a dissertation. Dis- courses of this sort seem to be mentioned by Aristotle and others. With advancing years the conversational tone of hisDialoo;ues changes, often dropping to a mere formalism in the RepuhliG and the Laws. Necessaril}^ as his system grew more explicit and dogmatic, his manner took the same character. Some of his early Dialogues are hardly more than a play of conversation for its own sake, the speakers being intoxicated with their own talk. Also he had the common meal and banquet for his pupils and disciples. His Phi- losophy was to be not simply a doctrine but a life, a training of the total individual in ethical practice as well as in intellectual theor}^ Thus the Pythagorean and Socratic methods were united in the School of Plato, doubtless tq 264 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the improvement of both, and were made the spiritual possession of all time. The School of to-day has come down through Plato, though it has been popularized. What was Plato's new relation to his native cit}'? It should be noted that Athens itself, as well as Plato had undergone a considerable change during the thirteen years of his absence. Wlion lie left it for Megara after it had i)ut to death Socrates, he deemed it to be at the very bottom, with prestige lost in the Peloponnesian war, with possessions gone, with Long Walls destroyed, with Democracy again in the saddle. But there had been a new rise and restoration of Athens, and a corresponding decline and defeat of Sparta. In 395 B. C. Lysander, the great enemy and conqueror of Athens, is defeated and slain by the Athenians at Ilaliartus. In 394 Conon, the Athenian admiral, aided by the Persians, overwhelms the Spartan fleet at the battle of Cnidus and kills its commander. In 393 Conon besius to restore the Lonu^ AValls of Athens, within Avliich the city again feels her old strength and freedom. A great step forward is this, which is during the next year followed by the surpris- ing victory of Iphicrates, an Athenian general, who with his light-armed soldiei's cut to pieces a Spartan division, to the amazement of all Hellas. This broke the prestige of Sparta, whose harmosts or governors were generally expelled from the PLATO. 265 Greek cities. At last in 387 came the peace of Antalcidas, with Dorism and its institutions sunk to the lowest ebb. The next year Pkito is back in Athens to stay for the rest of his life, doubt- less with some degree of restored pride and love for his native city after his and her intervening experiences. Plato had a strong desire to realize his political Ideal, which could not take place at Athens. After the death of the elder Dionysius, he was induced to make the voyage to Sicily for the purpose of winning the 3'ounger Dionysius to his scheme of government, which was that of the philosophic State. But he was unable to trans- form the young tyrant into the philosopher as ruler, and he came into such straits that he was glad to get back to democratic Athens once more, and to his Academic groves. This second visit to Sicily took place 367 B. C, when Plato was sixty years old. Still in spite of these ex- periences he was persuaded some six years after- wards to make a third visit to Sicily for the osten- sible purpose of reconciling Dionysius and Dion, but also with the design of realizing there some new hope for the philosophic State. But again he had to flee for his life from the tyrant back to the shelter of that hated Athenian Demos, which had not only tolerated but protected him so long, though well knowing that he was its bitterest enemy. In fiiet it is said that Plato ^vould have 266 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. surely perished this time, but for the intervention of powerful friends, the Pythagoreans who were in power at Tarentum. From this time on he stayed at Athens, occupying himself with his du- ties as teacher, till about the year 347, when he died at the age of eighty, while he was present at a wedding feast, it is said. Thus Plato separated thrice from Athens and thrice returned. To ontablish his Ideal he may be said to have thrice exposed his life and failed, having to hurry back to the Keal for cover. His career suggests that the Ideal is already in the Eeal and nmst be sought there. This, how- ever, means the transition from Plato to Aris- totle, who in these last years did separate from Plato and founded an independent school. Plato's life in its periods and their general outlines, has found expression in his Writings, which are one of the chief literary treasures of the world. II. Plato's Writings. — Though Plato dis- paraged the written in comparison with the spoken word, he owes his fame and his influence to his writings. No human being has wielded the pen with greater power, very few with as great. He has been and still is the favorite philosopher of Europe, whose dual character he has most adequately represented and portrayed. The Platonic dualism is essentially that of European PLATO. 2G7 Spirit, which has not failed to respond to the best picture of itself. Moreover, Plato may be considered the father of Romanticism with its flight from the Real to the Ideal. Epochs, nations, and individuals fall out with the present, with the world as it is, and betake themselves to Atlantis, to Utopia, even to Heaven. For such souls Plato furnishes the most delightful and soothing refuge. In recent times it was the Romantic Movement of Germany that rejuvenated Plato through Schleiermacher. The discussion is still going on. Though Plato belongs to the classic world and touches the age of Phidias and Sophocles, the deep scission in his soul is essentially romantic. In the School of Plato we have found that he united a Socratic and a Pythagorean element. But to these he adds now a contribution of his own, namely his writings. Socrates did not write; the Pythagoreans composed books but these seem to have been chiefly read by their own pupils. At least they had no books like those of Plato, for a great public and for all time. The unique product of the Platonic School is the Platonic writ. The teacher Plato could not help appearing in person, but the writer Plato sets aside his own personality for that of another, Socrates. He sacrifices as writer his individual Self for what he deems the universal Self, and thus eternizes his own instructiou,. 268 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Plato teaching existed in a small bit of time, but Plato writing exists for all time. There can be little doubt that most of his works sprang from his conversation with pupils, and were written down to make permanent his work. The word as spoken is transitory and phenomenal, the word as written is the voice made eternal. It was Plato's deepest need to write, he could not help himself; he had to turn away from the momentary Appearance of speech to its everlasting Form in writ. He would not have been Plato if he had not done this. Still with his peculiar inconsistency he puts the spoken before the written word, and seems unaware of his chief glory and his most unique gift. Nevertheless he wrote and kept at writing through life so that Cicero says of him, scrihens mortuus est. The large mass of Platonic Compositions is the product of his whole mature life, and reflects its various stages. The number is usually put at 36, including the letters as a single work. One of the chief problems which has busied Plato's com- mentators is. What is the order of these works? In antiquity already the same question was raised. Two arrangements were given by Thrasyllus, the dramatic, composed of nine Tetralogies, and the thematic, which divided the Dialogues into those of Search and those of Exposition. In recent times, especially during the last century, many PLATO. 209 writers have tried their hand at a new order- ing of the Platonic material, from which has sprung an extensive literature, particularly in Germany. In this respect there is a striking similarity between Shakespeare's Dramas and Plato's Dia- logues. The number of compositions in each case is about the same ; there are several spurious pro- ductions attached to the genuine — productions generally acknowledged to be spurious. Then recent critics, proceeding from internal evidence, have endeavored to prove tlie spuriousness of certain productions (both of the dramatist and of the philosopher) hitherto accepted as genuine. With these questions are coupled those of ar- rangement, of inner meaning and of outer rela- tions, not to speak of philological and historical details in both cases. This phase of Platonism we shall, however, have to dismiss, stating simply what we believe to be the net result. Plato's Writings show a grand development of the philosopher through quite sixty years. This being accepted, we wish to see the main stages of this development. There is a very general consensus of judgment that these stages are three, though there is a great differ- ence of opinion among critics in regard to the Dia- logues which are to be included in each of these stages. Still even here we may note a kind of 270 AKCIEKT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. undulatory line of agreement, fluctuating up and down and around the following scheme. 1. The First Period of Platonic Composition is dominated directly and immediately by the doc- trine and person of Socrates, of whose conver- sations they seem to be ideal transcripts. There is the attempt to reach the Concept, but this Concept is usually some particular virtue, as tem- perance (Charmides), friendship (Lysis). There is a predominance of dramatic effect with a lack of philosophic content in these early pieces; often the whole affair ends in smoke. One is tempted to call such productions the first sketches of the reporter trying to put into writing that marvelous personality, Socrates. The Protagoras may be taken as the best sam- ple of this First Period. The Gorgias seems to be a Dialogue of transition, since in it the Good as real and objective, makes its appearance, being distinguished from the particular virtues on the one hand and from pleasure on the other. The conception of the Good, however, is still Socratic. 2. The Second Period corresponds with Plato's expatriation, which also must utter itself in writ- ino-. This group of Dialogues is sometimes called the Megaric, but such a designation is too nar- row. It shows Plato passing beyond the horizon of Socrates and appropriating other Philosophies, movinof out of his strict Athenian limits and becoming truly Hellenic, by taking up the PLATO. 271 thought of all Hellas, east and west. The Ele- atic doctrines (Being and Non-Being) the Hera- clitic category (Becoming) and particularly Pythagoreanism he studied largely on their own original ground, and from their own best exposi- tors, as far as possible. Thereby he was broad- ened out into universality ; the Universalism still implicit in Socrates, becomes explicit in Plato. The inner necessity of appropriating and sub- suming particular Philosophies, will give a nega- tive, dialectical cast to this second set of Platonic Dialogues. Chiefly by means of Eleaticisni he learned the play of the Negative, which runs through all particularity, and it never left him. Here the characteristic work is the Parmenides, though this Dialogue has been placed in each of the other periods, and has even been suspected of being spurious by some modern German critics. Still the consensus of the best holds to its genuineness and puts it into the present place. The great dispute over the position of the Phaedrus in the total scheme cannot be entered into here. This peculiar Dialogue has marks of all three epochs — youth, middle life, and old age. We once heard a distinguished philosopher say that a recent book of his had passages in suc- cession which were written fifty years apart. Only an old man could put together such a work, and it may be that the diversities of Phaedrus, both in style and thought, are explicable in some 272 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. such way. So it would in a manner represent all three periods. 3. The greatest single work of Plato is gener- ally considered to be the Bejyuhlic, and this is the culmination of the Third Period which began with his return to Athens when he was a little over forty years old, and lasted nearly forty years longer, till his death. The question comes up, What works shall we specially assign to this long Academic Period? And the larger question rises. What was his literary relation during this time to all of his writings, includ- ing those which belong to the two previous Pe- riods? There are almost no faets or dates to guide us in such an investigation, there are only the works themselves ; the evidence is essentially internal, and so it comes that the two extremes, unreasonable skepticism on the one side and ar- bitrary conjecture on the other, show themselves in the treatment of Plato's writings. Inner grounds of connection are for the most denied by Grote, but are employed with unmeasured caprice by Schleiermacher and many of his Ger- man successors. The law of internal evidence for inter-relating the Platonic compositions has seemingly not been discovered. This long Third Period necessarily has its sub- ordinate stages, to the last of which probably belongs the Laws. The effect of the journey to Sicily may be detected in Plato's political spec- PLATO. 273 Illations. During the Third Period he probably edited and published what he had written in the former periods. Such a return upon his earlier Self in his later years'is not only likely in his in- dividual case, but may be deemed generally a psychical necessity. The parallel case of Goethe suggests the fact; Faust, for instance, is made up of many periods in the life of the poet. It is highly characteristic of Plato that he concludes his career b}^ being lawgiver. This fact is in deep correspondence with the philosopher Plato, who prescribes obedience on the part of the People to his enactments. Herein we see the opponent of everything like civic or national self-government. The philosopher is to make institutions, all that the rest of the world has to do is simply to accept them. Thus Plato pushes the autocracy of Philosophy to its highest point at the very end of his life, and in' his last written production probably (the Laws). Before him Greece had had practical lawgivers like Solon and Lycurgus, but the philosopher now appears and puts himself theoretically into their place asserting his right to make laws for the world. "We hold that in this colossal assumption Plato is true to the ahsolutistic character of all Phi- losophy as the chief European Discipline. III. Plato's Philosophy. — In Plato's Writ- ings as a Whole there is no completely developed formulation of his Philosophy, which is essen- 18 2 74 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. tially a growth. And jet this growth is more and more toward an organized system. This is one of the instructive facts in Phito's Philoso- phy : it shows the unfolding of a johilosophic system, indeed of all philosophic systema- tization. The most striking instance herein is the Repuhlic with its psjchological, ethical and political ordering. Philosophy learns to systema- tize itself in Plato, it becomes conscious that it must be a system, though our philosopher does not fully realize this consciousness. But those who come after him will study his thought systematically, and can only reach it in that way. Accordingly, in the mass of Platonic Writings there is a germ unfolding, and seeking to come forth into tiie light. The philosophic Norm it is (see preceding pp. 1(3-25) which is struggling in this seething multitude of Dialogues to be born. Yet how often does Plato fall back into the relig- ious Norm, particularly as expressed in the M}'- thus ! We are to see that he is making the grand separation of Philoso[)hy from Eeligion, and cannot easily maintain himself on the pure phi- losophic heights of his Thought, but must return for support and recuperation to the mythical view of the Universe. In this respect Aristotle will make an advance upon Plato, and quite eliminate the mythical element. Still Plato is the philosopher and is seeking to grasp and utter the philosophic Norm of the PLATO. 275' Universe in his way. His fundamental statement is that the essence of Being (the ousia of the on) is the Idea, or more precisely, is the Universal as Idea, and that this is opposed to non-essence or non-being (appearance). Thus he posits the one supreme autocratic [Principle or Cause as over all things, and shows the philosophic Norm ac- cording to his formulation. It is highly characteristic that in his own Dia- logues Plato never appears in person as one of the speakers. Socrates is the center, is the philosophic autocrat of the conversation from start to finish. At least such is the case in most of the Dialogues. Here is the picture of the sovereign Philosopher, whom Plato makes the actual ruler in his JRejiub/lc. Still we must not forget that it is really Plato projecting himself as the world-governing JSTous, even though he hides himself behind the colossal figure which he makes of Socrates. That is a true image of all Philosophy, in fact of the philo- sophic Norm in itself, for it is inherently autocratic or perchance aristocratic. We must note too, that the Dialogue has its select group of persons around Socrates ; it is not the vulgar crowd upon the street and marketplace, such as the real Soc- rates sought. It is a chosen, aristocratic set in the main, and Socrates himself is aristocratized not only in doctrine but also in practice. The Dialogue brings before us a small social Whole 276 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. (as was Plato's School) with its own monarch and select members. The talk is not at random but is secretly governed by the Thought or Con- cept, the accidental element being subordi- nated. Each interlocutor is a thinking Self, who is presupposed to be capable of reaching the Concept through training. Herein lies one of the chief differences l)etween Plato and Xenophon, both of whom in their writings show Socrates at the head of groups of persons, but the one group is select and the other popu- lar for the most part. Diogenes Laertius says that Plato and Xenophon did not like each other, though both were contemporaries and followers of Socrates. Hence it comes that they make no mention of each other's work pertaining to their common master. Phito's use of the Mythus is conscious and purposed; it is not, therefore, the first naive mvth-makiug which uncultivated peoples mani- fest. The story of the Gods has usually with Plato passed through the alembic of Philosophy, and is intentionally made to illustrate some doc- trine. Thus we may call Plato's Mythus by the name of Paramyth, having been constructed or often reconstructed for the sake of the new philosophic meaning. Still Plato's soul has in it an original mvthical strain after the Hellenic pattern, though Philosophy dominates this strain, as it does all else. PLATO. 277 Our object iio\y is to extract Plato's Philoso- phy oat of his mtmifold writings. To this end we must find and unfold in them the Norm which underlies and indeed creates all Philosoph^^ This Norm manifests itself in a variety of ways, but ancient Thought usually expressed it (when- ever it came to expression) in the threefold division : — I. Metaphysics. II. Physics. III. Ethics. In this triple movement we shall see the sec- ond fundamental Discipline ( which is Philosophy) formulating the process of the Universe. Plato will show his own peculiar method of handliucr and unfolding this Discipline. Such is the sub- ject of our present study, which is not only to reach up and grasp the philosophic Norm as just stated, but this Norm is finally to be seen hold- ing the second place in the process with the two other supreme Disciplines, Religion and Psychol- ogy. (See Introduction, p. 10, et seq.) A. Metaphysics. The word Metaphysics is not found in Plato nor in Aristotle, but makes its appearance amono- the philosophers succeeding the great Athenian Period. It designates in a geuf^ral way the first stage of the philosophic Norm, which seeks 278 ANCIENT EUROPEAN rillLOSOPIlY. to foriiiulato directl}^ in categories the csseuce of Being as such, in distinction from Nature and Man. In this special sense it is the primal ut- terance of Philosophy, is that which starts the same into existence. In the religious Norm its place is taken by the Supreme Person creating all things. But Greek Philosophy, as we have already set forth, begins hy making the abstrac- tion of Principle, Cause, Essence, which deter- mines the All apart from the caprice of personal Will. So Metaphysics is the science of this first Principle or Cause. But such is the diversity of the Platonic system that we are compelled to see three divisions, or rather a process in its Metaphysics. The first division shows the genesis of the Platonic dual- ism, that of Essence or Idea on the one hand, and of Appearance or the Phenomenon on the other, which dualism underlies all Plato. Then these two sides divide and become as the One and Many, negative and self-negative, which fact brings out Plato's Dialectic. Finally all the multiplicity of Ideas unites into a S3'stem which we may call Plato's Ideology, whose final out- come is the Idea of Ideas, or the Good. 1. J7ie Platonic Dualism Generated. Already we have noted what the dualism is : Idea and Ap- pearance. The Essence of all Being according to Plato is the Idea as opposed to the phenomenal, transitory, changeful. This is the dual or sepa- PLATO'S METxiPHYSICS. 279 rative principle, to which we always come back, and from which we always go out in Plato. The Socratic concept is the given starting-point which Plato first attained as a pupil of Socrates. But the pupil^viU come to ask : Whence this con- cept, this universal, which we reach through our thinking? Such a question the master Socrates hardly asked, being satisfied with the ethical ap- plications of his concept and avoiding metaphys- ical inquiries, which he deemed futile. Plato's Dialogues of what may be in general called his second period show him going back and studying the older philosophers. A very important thought may have come to him from the Pythagorean school, which cultivated speci- ally the nrnthematical field. Geometry became a favorite study with him and it remained a lead- ing discipline in his school. Its fundamental elements, such as surface, line and point, to- gether with their combinations in geometric fig- ures, showed him the pure abstractions of mind from the material world, and their movement in a realm of forms, entirely apart from any sen- suous embodiment. Here was certainly a sug- gestion of the supersensible realm of Ideas. In a certain degree it maybe said that the method of Plato is geometric or derived from geometry and applied to all Being. Still further, he could have found that these ideal geometric forms are the means for controlling the kingdom of matter. 280 ANCIENT EUROPEAN rillLOSOPnT. The iiiiiul deals with such forms as existent, as })ure inluitious of Beinji; in its essence; we be- hold them directly, intuitively, by an inner vision. iSo Plato must liave seen Philosophy to be (leometr}' universalized. The eounterpart to these ideal shapes of pure Being, eternal and unchanijeable, is found in the doctrine of the Becoming which afKrins that all things are in a flux, nothing is permanent or sub- stantial. Thus a plicnoiiu'iial, changeful world rises u}) in oi)position to the realm of Ideas, and Avill be a perpetual harassing i)reseuce to the j)liilos()i)lu«r of Idealism. It is, in fact, Plato's devil, as far as he hail any. Such was the con- tribution of Ileraclitus, which is now made to take its plaee in the general system of Plato, plaving a negative part there, continually denied vet undenial)le, always being jiut out of the uni- verse yet forever pop})iug up again, not without a touch of Meiihistophelean irony. But what a labor does this Satanie fiend, Appearance, impose upon our philosopher I Plato also goes back and studies the doctrine of Pure Being at its fountain-head inEleaticism. Here he works out the dialectical relation be- tween the One and the ]\Iany, Being and Non- Being, which relation is substantially identified with that of the actual (ideal) and phenomenal worlds. Still Plato affirms that the One is not conceivable without the Many, or the Manv with- PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 281 out the One (in the Parmenidts), thus making both spheres dialectical. In a general way we may now see the origin of the Platonic dualism. The Socratic concept transformed into a real entity in its own realm he could get from the Pythagorean geometry; the significance of the phenomenal realm he could receive from the Heraclitic Becomino;: the dialectical character of each side probabW dawned \\\)m\ him from the study of the Eleatics, Parmcnidcs and Zeno. Herewith the dialectieal j)roccdure becomes universal with him, he applies it to every object of speculation, and for awhile at least it becomes his method, yea, he calls it his Pliilosophv. 2. The Dialect ic. This term is used in several senses by Plato. He sometimes regards it as the science of Being, of the true and abiding, the science of sciences, which would make it one with Philosophy. Yet more often is it considered a branch of Philosophy, and employed somewhat like Logic. It is what brings the many to unity, what brings the particular to the universal, what rescues the soul from Appear- ance and conducts the same to true Beins:. We find it occupying an important place in the educational system of the Rejmhlic. The Overseers or Guardians are to be trained in the Dialectic at the proper period in order that they may know "the nature of Beinir." 2S2 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Such instruction is declared to be fundamental upon whatever subject it may take place. " The chief test is of dialectical capacity; the person capable of becoming an Overseer must be dialec- tical." {EepuhUc 537 C.) At the same time Plato does not conceal the abuses to which the Dialectic may be perverted in improper hands. It leads to logomachy, to love of controversy, especially in youths, who go about the city exploiting their argumentative skill on every one who will listen. Here is a picture taken from life: " Young fellows who have for the first time tasted of the Dialectic, run a])()ut with it as with a toy, always em})loyiug it for contradiction, refuting others as they have been refuted, with a delight like whelps in tearing and pulling at whoever may come near." {EepuhUc Book VII, chap. 17, near the end.) This sounds very nuu-li as if old Plato were criticising the faults of voung Plato. For those early Dialogues of his are mainly a display of dialectical acuteness without any positive conclusion whatever. The whole thing has become a nuisance, and in this ideal State of his, he will not permit its continuance. We can see that even Socrates is henceforth impossible with his public disputa- tions in shops and on the streets. The Dialectic is no longer for all; those alone are allowed to participate iu it who are " orderly and settled PLATO'S ?IETAPIIYSIC'S. 283 hy nature." Still it is uckuowledgcd to be a great means for him "who wishes to behold the truth " and to attain unto real Being. In general, therefore, the Dialectic must be re- garded as a method, as a way by which the mind is to rise to the Idea, rather than the Idea itself. Already we have noted that geometry moves in pure forms of the mind, which are seized directly and intuitively, and which may have been the iirst hint to Plato concerning his realm of Ideas. But these geometric forms are relatively imperfect, as they stand too near to the material object from which their elements, such as line, point, surface, figure are immediate abstractions. Hence Plato makes the striking transition from the geometric method to the Dia- lectic, which we find developed in the Republic (Book VI, chaps. 20 and 21). He;gives his two divisions of the world, ideal and phenomenal; the former he calls the cogitable {noeton) , t\iG latter the visible {Jioraton). Each of these di- visions he subdivides; the cogitable realm of thought {Xous) is either mathematical or dia- lectical, the first of which employs figures or images, the second thoughts or ideas. But now for the main point, namely, the method in each case. In geometry " the soul is compelled to make use of hypotheses and does not go back to the beo-inning, being unable to transcend these hypotheses" with which it starts. But Thought 284 ANCIENT E U ROPE AN PHIL OSOPII Y. ill its realm proceeds differently : tliouoli it starts with an hypothesis, it marches up, step by step, to that which is without hypothesis, thus " com- ing to the source of the All, and hn'ing hold of it;" then from this height Thought follows out what proceeds from the source of the All, "de- ceuding to the end without having employed any- thiug from the sensible world, but simply Ideas, which arc through themselves for themselves." Evidently the geometric method has but the one movement, descendiug from its primal as- sumption to what is derived from the same. But the Dialectic is conceiv^ed as having a double move- ment, the ascending as well as the descending ; in fact, its movement may well be deemed circular if the Idea be considered as producing the phe- nomenal world (which is a contested point in Plato), for with this world the rise to the Idea bcoins. Thus the Dialectic Avould return to its starting-point through the Idea ascending and descending. At any rate, the difference between the two methods is manifest ; geometry assumes its beginning or principle (arche), and demon- strates only what is derived therefrom, while the Dialectic demonstrates its beginning or principle which then becomes the source of derivation. So Plato in passing from the mathematical to the dialectical method moved forward from an im- mediate vision of the Idea to the mediated thought of it, froui his Pythagorean to his truly Platonic PLATO'S METAFHYSIGS. 285 period. He saw the Idea immediately in the geo- metric form, which was, however, something assumed and derived; l)ut through the Dialectic he is to mediate the Idea and hehold it not only as derived but also as the fountain head of all derivation, not only originated but originating, as the acorn originates the oak and then the oak originates the acorn. The Dialectic, accordingly, shows the inner process of all things; still it too must rest ultimately upon an insight, a presupposition, even though this in the end proves itself. The ground of the Dialectic is the inherent self- contradiction in all finitude. The sensuous world, opinion, and often the concept have in themselves the limit, and hence the negative, which, when put to the test of Thought, will show itself negating itself. For Thought is universal, and so when the particular, the sen- suous, in general the finite is truly thought, that is, universalized, it must reveal its own limitation and insuificiency. Now this process of the finite world when subjected to Thought is the Dialectic. It is thus a process of negation, of undoing, yea of self-undoing, in part at least. It has however a positive end, which is the Idea as explicit, or as the underlying Thought made manifest in its own form. In fact the secret moving principle of the 28fi ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Dialectic from the start has been the Idea which finally becomes real. Thns the Dialectic l)y making the transitory vani^-h, by compelling the fool to show his follv, by forcing the finite to end itself, has an inherent cast of humor which flavors most of the dialogues of Plato. Such is the native literary qualit}^ of the Dialectic, which springs from what we may call the play of the Negative, dramatic and often comic in its descent to nothingness. We shall note the leading stages in the employment of the Dialectic by Plato, since he handles it variously at various times. (1) First is the pure play of the Negative for its own sake apparently. We have already observed that Plato shows the influence of his master in his earlier works, which through question and answer unfold the general out of the particular. Socrates left no writings, it is said, but now the writer has appeared who reproduces his method, his irony, and probably many actual details of his conversation. The dialectical procedure here is largely negative, or we might say the undoing of the negative. The finite, inadequate opinion is made to contra- dict itself. But not always after the negation of the negative does the positive appear in the form of the Concept, or Universal; hence manv of these Socratic dialogues seem to have PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 287 no meaning and leave the reader dissatisfied, with a sense of having thrown his time away in reading them. Some of them end in an intended confusion, and, if they are genuine, show that Pkito must have had not only his Socratic but even his Sophistic period — Sophistic in the lower sense of the word. Plato himself learned to reprobate this kind of Dialec- tic, as we see by the above-cited passages from the Republic. (2) The second kind of Platonic Dialectic is altoofether more serious and fundamental. The play of the Negative still continues, but for a positive end, yea, for the most positive of all ends, namely. Truth or the Idea. The finite opinion, doctrine, concept, is still made to cancel itself through its own inherent negativity, but no longer just for the fun of the thing, or as a juggling sophistical sport. The Dialectic is now employed for the purpose of reaching the Uni- versal, the highest Concept, in fine the Idea, and then to fasten the same in the right word or cat- egory. For the Dialectic cannot leave out the element of language; in fact the Dialogue, with its pros and cons, with its undulatory sweep from this side to the other and back again is the true linguistic setting for the movement of the Dia- lectic, whose finality is Thought categorized, whereby the mind can handle it as its own. In illustration of this second kind of Dialectic 288 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PIIILOSOPH Y. we may take an exaini)le from the Protagoras, a Dialogue which Phito named after a sophist (whom he may have heard at Athens in his youth), whose doctrine was that all knowledge consisted in sense-perception. Man was the meas- ure of all things, and each individual man at each moment was such a measure, and there was no other kind of knowing. Hence there could be no Universal, no Idea; only the immediate sensation or impression exists. To such a doc- trine Plato applies his Dialectic: Protagoras asserts the truth of his doctrine, yet his doctrine asserts that there is no such thing as truth . He ar- gues with me against the validity of my impression, yet his argument affirms that my impression must be just as valid as his own. In fact he, though an arguer by profession, as a Sophist, is o-uilty of self-contradiction in the very act of ar- guing for his doctrine. The negation of knowing he declares, yet he somehow knows this negation and tries to make me know it too. Protagoras repeats the statement of Heraclitus that all is in a flux, or all changes; if so, then change is per- manent and must be the opposite of itself, or self- negative. The denial of truth implies the truth of denial, and thus is self-denying. Such is an example of this kind of the Platonic Dialectic, which seizes the finite, inadequate neg- ative thought or doctrine, and turns it inside out, making it undo itself through its own inner move- PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 289 ment. Often this Dialectic is mingled with ex- ternal arguments and reflective repetitions which render it impure, disturb the clear direct flow of its otherwise transparent stream. Then inter- twined with it are the innumerable excursions and amplifications in the form of myth, story, descrip- tion, seasoned through and through with the excessive palaver of Attic etiquette. Just a little too much urbanity, for one reader at least, who has often to exclaim. Our Plato is a wordy fellow, why can't he come to the point? Out of such an exuberance of speech, we have often to extract the pure process of the Dialectic, whose essence we have sought to give in the foregoing state- ment. Thus the Platonic Dialogues give in their di- versity, multiplicity and changefulness a picture of the outer world of Appearance, which has, nevertheless, an inner compelling principle which brings forth the abiding, the eternal, and which is manifested in this Dialectic of Appearance pre- cipitating the pure forms of Thought. (3) But these pure forms of Thought are manifold and contradictory, so that they too be- come dialectical among themselves. This shows us the third kind of the Platonic Dialectic, that of abstract concepts, or indeed of Ideas. Cer- tain Dialogues mingle this kind with the pre- ceding. An instance is the Philehus which begins with treating of pleasure, and hence deals 19 290 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. with a sensation like the Protagoras. But from the individual fact of sense it rises to a consider- ation of the Infinite and Finite, wherein lies the universal nature of the Dialectic itself. For the self-negating character of all fiuitude is just the province of the Dialectic, as already said. But now it must be seen that not only matters of sen- sation, but also concepts are limited against one another, and hence finite and dialectical. In the Sophist es we may note the same general proced- ure ; Plato aims to refute the sophistic doctrine which holds that all is feeling or individual opin- ion, and that there is no objective standard of truth, nothing which may be called Keason (^jSfous) among men. But from this stage of the discussion Plato advances to the consideration of Being and Non-Being, which constitute indeed the underlying principle of the argument. These are abstract concepts in a dialectical movement with each other. But the c"hief Dialogue in the present sphere is the Parmenides^ named after the Eleatic philosopher whose work has been already considered (p. 99). Here Plato enters primarily the field of Eleati- cism with its two main categories. Being and Non- Beins:, to which he unites a dialectical discussion of the One and the Many. The main point now made is that the One cannot be conceived without the Many, nor the Many without the One; each taken by itself and thought contradicts itself, PL A TO' S ME TA PH YSICS. 291 and pusses over into the other to complete itself. Ill different words, each alone is finite and self- annulling, in which fact we behold the internally working Dialectic which compels the one-sided, finite concept to move out of its limitation and be- come universal orthe Idea. This of course annuls Eleaticism proper, with its exclusive concept of Being (the One) and its denial of Non-Being (the iSIanv); or rather it unfolds the Eleatic doctrine bv adding the complementary side. In the Pannenides, however, the positive result is not given except by im[)lication. - In fact, the deepest consequence of this Dialectic of the One and the Many is hardly implied by Plato. The One is also self-separating, or it is the self-division into the many, which self-division returns and makes itself One. Such is the process underlying all this dialectical play of the One and the Man}, which process Plato does not clearly indicate ; still less does he indicate that this process is just that of Ego w^ith its three stages of inner unity, self -separation, and return. Thus Plato has an intimation of the Psychosis as implicit in Being ; we shall find that the later Neo-Platonist will make it consciously explicit in Being ; modern Europe will recognize it as subject, but from this last European stage it is still to be unfolded as the universal process of science both subjective and objective. Such a marvelous germ we 292 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. may sco hudding iii this Platonic Dialectic of the One and the Man3^ Unfolding the metaphysical Plato, we have now reached the result of his dialectical proced- ure, and we have no longer to deal with his Method, but with the outcome or the product of his Method. The Dialectic as the play of the Negative deals with separation, division, in gen- eral with the tinitude of the world and of think- ing. But the Dialectic is not to end in a result merely negative (which was largely though not wholly the casein 8()i»liisticisni) ; it is likewise to negate its own negation and to rise to a posi- tive realm. 3. Ideoloriy. AVe have now reached the Idea as mediated by the Dialectic, which as Method has made it a conscious possession. Previously in the first stage of Platonic Metaphysics we looked at it (the Idea) as immediately given, as it is in the forms of geometrj^ which may be deemed the simple, intuitive state of the Idea. But out of this undeveloped implicit condition the Idea has become explicit with its process through the Dialectic. We are, then, to return to the Idea as it is in itself, separated from the material world. AVe take up again the Platonic dualism — the cleav- age of the universe into the ideal and material worlds. The former is conceived as the pattern of the latter, as a supersensible realm of forms PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 293 with its own life. These Phito conceives to be derived not inductively from sense-perception (us did Socrates), but to be pre-existent in the mind, though latent till roused by some external stimulation of the senses. This process of recall- incr the Idea throusfh the outward stimulus is named Eeminiscence bj Plato. Through it the soul returns upon its essence which is the Idea. For the Idea is the priuiary original endowmeut of the Soul, the essential principle of its Being. The external world simply rouses the Soul to look upon its own essence, the Idea, and this activity is the Platonic Reminiscence. Of course the question arises, How did these Ideas originally get into the Soul? Plato's the- ory (in the Phaedrus) is that before its earthly life the Soul beheld these ideal forms in their native incorporeal world where it could see them by some kind of ideal sense-perception. Then when the embodied Soul perceives the corporeal shapes of these Ideas in the Sense- world, it remembers them in their purity, as they existed in the other world, and is seized with a longing to dwell with them continually in the present life. This is philosophic love (eros), love of the Idea, whereby we may here and now return to the ideal pre-existent world out of which we were plunged into flesh. The relation of this thought to Christian eschatology will be evident to the reader. 294 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. To this conception of the Idea Phito seems to have come through mathematics. In the Meno he shows that the knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem is evolved not out of sensc-pcrceiDtion, but that the latter stirs the mind to recall what is already existent within it implicitly, and causes it to recognize an essential content of itself. Here again Ave may note the influence of geometry in leading Plato to his doctrine of the Ideas. It is well known that the Pythagoreans generally claimed him as a disciple of their master. Having now our world of Ideas, we ask what is its organization, what is its process within itself? Such is the central question of Platonic Ideology. It must be understood at the start that we are not to expect a thorough- going detailed system, consistent and finished in every part. On the contrary we come upon big gaps, great uncertainties, and not a few inner contradictions. Still we can see a general out- line which will show tlie Idea as Essence, the Idea as Hierarchy, and the Idea as the Good. A few words upon each of these points. (1) The Idea as the essence of Being in Plato has been already often declared and im- plied. Here we may emphasize it as wholly dis- tinct and separated from the phenomenal world, and as having its own inherent process (or Psy- chosis) within itself. It is [)rimarily the univer- PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 295 sal, the genus or class; as distinct from the individual object it is the general concept; on the one hand it is innate, intuitive, regulative of our sensuous knowledge, but not derived from it; on the other hand it is objective, existent in its own right, the eternal and imnmtable essense of all Being:, dwellin"' in a world all its own. It is the common principle, the universal Eeason in us and in the universe outside of us — the princi- ple by which our mind cognizes or rather recog- nizes the mind (or Nous) in all things. Every object is what it is by virtue of the Idea, which is thus its Idea. If we can truly think anything, it must be an Idea in order to be thought. The result is a vast multi- plicity of the Idea which thus reveals itself as a world of Ideas. Whatever can be designated by name, as bed, table, dirt, has its corre- sponding Idea, its supersensible counterpart. Sometimes Plato seems inclined to put a limit upon this universal a]e[)lication and consequent degradation of his ideal world, for it would have tocontain all ugliness, meanness, wickedness, and even his great enemy, the lying Appearance, in fine, the opposites of the True, the Beautiful and the Good. But this negative Element he naturally shuns, though now and then it unpleas- antly pops up its head and puts in a word from the mouth of one of his characters. (2) So we come to a division of the Idea 296 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. into a very numerous multitude, about wliich we at once ask: Is there any order here? This brings us to what may be called the Hierarchy of Ideas, for Plato, true to his aristocratic feelings, has not permitted his Ideas to have democratic equality. That would be too much like the Athenian Demos for hun. As it is the universal element in the Ideas which distin- guishes them from the phenomenal world, there will be a gradation in them according to the degree of their universality, for this we may conceive as having degrees. Or we may say that in proportion as they share in the universal, they are ranked in an ascending order toward the highest Being, or, on the contrary, in a descending scale to the lowest. Higher than the Idea of the piece of marble is the Idea of the statue made from it, higher than the statue is the Idea of the Beautiful embodied in it, higher seemingly than the Beautiful is the supreme Idea, the Good. But now appears a great difficulty. By what criterion shall we test this enormous mass of heterogeneous Ideas for the purpose of grading them? How shall we discover their relative values? They can not be ordered after the manner of the Aristotelian logic, for that implies that the lower concept be explicitly contained in the hioher, whereas the Platonic Idea in its self-contained separation re-acts against any PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 297 such sul)sumpti()n. For the same reason thej are not to be conceived as evolving themselves one out of the other through an inner trans- formation ; surely that would introduce change into the unchanging Idea. Plato passingly speaks of the lower sharing in the higher, but such a conception makes their impassable limits pass- able. Hence only one way is possible : the Hierarchy of Ideas must be ordered somehow from the outside, by a power lying back of them. So we have projected behind our phenomenal world a world of Ideas, but behind this world of Ideas with its order we have to project an orderer, for certainly these eternal, changeless, self-subsistent units (like atoms) will not order themselves through themselves. Plato has not undertaken to give anything re- sembling a detailed system in his Hierarchy of Ideas. He has no consistent ground of their inter-connection; passages here and there maybe found which seem to impW a dynamic activity in them, and once he attributes to them creative power. But in general they are shown as static, separate from one another, and from the phe- nomenal realm, the atoms of the inmiaterial world. i\Iany commentators have tried to relieve them of this lonely and inactive condition, but on the whole without success. They have been made sulijective as the Ideas of our mind ; they have been made objective as the Ideas of the 2"J8 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Divine Mind. But Plato insists upon tlieir self- subsistent distinct Being, solitary and homeless, all in an ideal home of their own. Still Plato places them in a Hierarchy, and thus demands an orderer from the outside. The result is we have one Idea as supreme and autocratic, the only Idea gifted with causal energy, herein dis- tinct from and even opposite to all other Ideas, but still an Idea. This brings us to the third stage in the process of the ontology of the Idea, in which the separative charactor of the second stage just given is overcome, and the grand mul- tiplicity of Ideas subjected to a principle of uni- fication. (3) Such is the Good, the Idea of all Ideas, placed at the head of their hierarchical order, the Pope of this ideal world. The first fact to be emphasized is that the Good is here metaphysi- cal rather than moral (the latter is to appear later in Ethics), it is still regarded as an Idea in the sense of the essence of Being, hardly as a norm of human conduct. In the Bepithlic (517 C.) we read: " In the realm of the known, the Idea of the Good is ulti- mate, though difficult to be seen; but l)eing seen it compels us to think it the cause of all things right and beautiful, for all." Here the Idea of the Good is directly called the cause (aifia) of what is often put with it, namely, the beautifu' and the right, which are also Ideas in Plato. PLATO'S METAPHYSICS. 299 Still further in the same passage : "In tne visible world it (the Idea of the Good) is the Light and the begetter of the ruler of Light," which at least ascribes a creative power (teJcousa) to this Idea. Again: "In the thought-world it (the Idea of the Good,) is itself the ruler and the pro- vider of truth and thought " to the one thinking. Finally we have a touch which indicates its eth- ical connection: "It behooves the man who intends to act wisely in private or in public to behold this Idea of the Good." The position, character and function of the Idea of Good are thus briefly but distinctly outlined : It is supreme, it is cause, it has a sphere of creativity, and it furnishes Truth and Thought (as objective) to the thinker. This last item we may expand a little by the aid of another passage: "The Idea of the Good is what gives Truth to things known, and fur- nishes the capacity to know them to the knower," hence it is the source both of the knower and the known, " being the cause of both Truth ( o))jcctive) and Knowledge (subjective) . Though both these are excellent, you will consider their cause (the Idea of the Good) as 3'et more excel- lent," indeed the most excellent of all. The present thought of the Idea of the Good lacing Ixy ond Truth and Kuowledge Phito ilhis- trtites by an example taken from the Sun: " Just as we rightly connidcr the light (object) 300 ANCIENT EUltOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and the vision (subject) to be of the Sun, though not the Sun itself, so we rightly con- sider Truth and Knowledge to be of the Good though not the Good itself." {Republic 508, E.) Still again: " The Sun, you will say, also imparts genesis, growth, increase (to the mate- rial world) without being itself agenesis." So it is with the Good: " The essence of all things comes from it, without its being that essence; " which thought we shall find reappearing in Aris- totle's Moving Not Moved. But now consider the following sentence: "The Good is not es- sence, but still beyond essence, surpassing the latter in dignity and power." (^Repuhlic 509, E. ) A mighty future lies in this expression, for it gives the germ of Neo-Platonism and there- with of Christian Mysticism. Indeed, a marvel- ous fecundity in coming philosophies character- izes all these passages. The Idea of the Good is thus the grand unifier and ruler of the ideal world, transcendent, auto- cratic, of it, yet over it. This supreme Idea is endowed with power, will, and with an intelligence that is above intelligence \JSfous) subjective and objective. Seemingly it is a person, but the very notion of personality Plato shuns, at least for his pure Ideas. Can this Good be other than God himself? It is said that only once has he been found to identify the Good with the Divine Mind. Some commentators explain his silence PL A TO' S 3IE TA PII YSICS. 30 1 by saying that the distinction between the per- sonal and the impersonal was not definitely pres- ent to his thinking. Plato then has no outolog}^ of God, which was such a dominating thougiit in the Middle Ages. Plato's faith may have had a God, but not his philosophy. Thus faith was not a very exalted mental activity with him. He often speaks of God and of the Gods, but it is a transmitted mythological matter. Such is in outline Plato's grand message to the future — the doctrine of Ideas, which has been the nourisher of all romanticism, ideahsm, other- worldliness, autocratism, both personal and po- litical. We may call it the Platonic Pauideon, in striking contrast to the Greek Pantheon, from which the philosopher re-acted, evidently seeking to get rid of the caprice of the Gods of popular mythology, and to find an eternal, unchangeable principle in the Universe.. In like manner Plato trains us away from the phenomenal world with its mutability, and also from the subjective Ego which is likewise capricious, enticing us to dwell in his Panideon or extra-mundane temple of Ideas. It may be rightly said that to his call a greater mass of humanity has responded than to that of an}^ other philosopher. Such is, then, the metaphysical (or ontological) portion of Plato's Philosoph}-. It treats of the essence of Being as the Idea in its own separate realm, which shows a triple process: The Idea 302 ANCIENT EUROPEAN FHILOSOPHY. as immediate or conceptual (unfolding out of the Socratic concept); the Idea as dialectical; the Idea of the Good, or the Idea of Ideas. But now the Good, in order to be the Good, must some- how impart itself and get out of its seclusion ; or the Idea, if it be truly universal, must be made creative, if not through itself then from the out- side. The latter is what happens; anew power enters the Panideon, bearing forth its ideal con- tents and through them constructing the Cosmos. This brings us to a new stage of Plato's philo- sophical Norm. B. Physics. This portion of Plato's Philosophy has been possibly more influential than the metaphysical portion, though it be much less in quantity, and chiefly confined to one composition (the Timceus). In it Plato shows that he has become to a certain extent conscious of the difficulty with his theory of the Idea in its total separation from the phe- nomenal world, and in its lack of creative power. Still he will not abandon it, but will introduce a third principle, which has to make the Idea ap- pear, and assign to it a place in the Cosmos. This new principle is known as the Demiurge, or in- deed the God, who now is given something to do in Plato's Universe. The present sphere is the second main division PLATO'S PHYSICS. 303 of Platonic Philosophy as a whole. We name it Physics, following precedent, though in a num- ber of ways the word conveys a wrong impression to the modern mind. It is very different in pro- cedure and in content from what is called Physics at the present time. It must be regarded as the Philosophy of Nature, but it includes the soul, in fact we shall find a soul at work through all its stages. Thus it is really physio-psychical; the physical world is shown as created or con- trolled by the physical. Also the title of it is sometimes given as Cosmology, but the distinc- tion between Cosmology and Psychology is not definitely drawn by Plato. Nature is regarded as having a soul, as being a living thing, and its pro- cesses are essentially manifestations of the soul in various gradations. Here we may note that each of the subdivi- sions has its own special soul, so that there are witnessed three souls in a descending order : the demiurgic Soul (God), the cosmical Soul (World- Soul), and the human Soul (man). Each of the three is always a mediating (or third) power be- tween the two extremes of the Platonic dualism : the Idea or Archetype on the one hand, and the Matter or Body on the other. Here lies the great difference between the present (physio- psychical) and the former (metaphj'sical) portion of Plato's Philosoph}'; the world of Ideas is no longer allowed to be apart by itself, but has to be 304 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. phenomenalized, has to enter into the material realm and there build another empire after its own ideal pattern. Thus Phenomenality, Appearance, the World of Manifestation, which was former]}^ cast aside as quite nothing, is now compounded with the Idea on one side and Matter on the other. This twofoldness we shall find running through the entire sphere of Platonic Phj^sics, and making it truly the second stage in the total process of Plato's Philosophy. It ^vas probably not a very congenial task for our philosopher to make this transition out of his pure ideal realm into that of the senses, and he hardly attempted it till late in life (in his TimcBus), and then not very completely. It could not have been altogether pleasant to him to phenomenalize the Idea. It was making the perfect imperfect, it was contaminating the pure with the impure, it was reducing the self-subsis- teiit to a kind of dependence. A fall, a lapse he cannot help regarding it, and we shall find him making the movement of it a descending one from the original archetype down to the hu- man soul incarnate. In fact what need of an imperfect real world when there is already a per- fect ideal world? Why should the good make the bad with the certainty of its damnation? Moreover the original unity of idealism is now dualized, it recognizes the material principle, compromises with it, goes into partnership with PLATO'S PHYSICS. 305 it; verily the sons of the Gods now intennarrj with the children of mortals. So much from the standpoint of a strict ex- clusive idealism ; but from another view this en- tire sphere of Physics must be regarded as greatly broadening Plato's Philosophy. In fact it furnishes us with the middle link of the sys- tem and makes the same a philosophic totality which will dominate the coming ages. From pure ontology he now passes to the ontology of Na- ture including the soul. He makes his ideal real and thus truly universal; at least such is his effort in a marvelous new stretch of his spirit. There is a striking symmetry in the develop- ment of the various movements of this Platonic Physio-psychology. Already we have alluded to the three souls in its three stages (or sub-di- visions) ; each of these three stages begins with a primal noumenal principle (or Idea) which is followed by its opposite, namely a material or corporeal element, and these two antagonistic principles are mediated by a third which is a soul. The whole we shall consider as three processes. First is the creative process considered in and by itself, with its three interacting principles — the Archetype, Matter, and the Demiurge. Second is the cosmical process, by which creation manifests itself in the total physical Cosmos. Third is the human process, which deals with the origin 20 306 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of nian, ending in the rise of the soul incor- porate. 1. The Creative (Formative) Process. Plato's pure ontology, which we have unfolded hith- erto, is essentially uncreative ; the Idea does not create the phenomenon, nor does the supreme Idea create the other lesser Ideas. On the whole creativity was excluded from the Idea, for thus it would be moved within itself and separated inside, which would destroy its fixed and changeless character. But now we must have a creative ontology, the Idea must be made somehow to produce the phenomenon or Nature. This is accomplished by the introduc- tion of a specially self-active creative principle, namely God. We iiave already noted the fact that God with his creation of the world is banished from the pure realm of Platonic Ideas. Here, however, he appears, yet with decided limits to his creative power; he is properly the demiurge or world-former who finds already at hand both the ideal and the material for his work, not having to create them, but to mould them into his cosmical product. Thus we have in this creative process three principles brought in from the outside, presup- posed and taken for granted. These are the Archetype, Matter, and the Demiurge. They should be placed in this order, for thus we see their inter-relation as a threefold psychical move- PLATO'S PHYSICS. 307 ment (Psychosis). There is the primal Idea as immediately given; then there is its absolute opposite, Matter, which is also a thought, yea an Idea on its reverse side ; thirdly is the divine maker who returns to the primal Idea and incor- porates it in Matter. Such is the creative pro- cess of the present sphere, the whole of it noumenal or ideal, being the process antecedent to and creative of the cosmical reality or the vis- ible universe. (1) The Archetype is the term by which we may designate the Idea in its present creative relation to the phenomenal world, though it is not of itself creative. With the Archetype, then, we make the connection with the pure ideal realm of Plato; it is the highest Idea, the Idea of the Good itself as pattern {paradeigma) for the creation of the Cosmos. It was to this pattern that the divine artificer looked when he made the world. He did not take a created, changeful, finite pattern, but the eternal, unchangeable one, namely the Idea and the Highest Idea, which is the Good. So his work, which is the world, is likewise good. " For the work of the artist who always looks to the eternal and unchangeable, and who designs and moulds his work after such a pattern, nmst of necessity be beautiful and perfect " ( Timaeus 28, A). The Archetype, then, after which the Cosmos 308 ANCIEN T E UBOPEAN PHIL OSOPHY. is copied, is the Good, which we have ah*eady found to be for Plato the supreme essence of Being. Evidence of the fact is seen not only in the excellence of the created world but also in the excellence of the creator who is "the best of causes," and who must have, therefore, " looked to the eternal for his copy and original." Hence this Archetype was in the mind of God, "for he was good," and this is the reason why he made the universe. Such, then, is the first stage in the primordial creative process of the world — the Archetype which is the Idea of the Good. But this Idea is not creative, it cannot realize itself without a material, which is the very opposite and counterpart of itself. (2) Here we come to Matter which must be thought as pure Matter and not any particular form thereof. Plato himself confesses this sub- ject to be dark and difficult. For Matter in itself is the embodiment of self-contradictory predi- cates ; it is the non -Being which is, but especially it is the Idea which is the opposite of the Idea, for it is declared to be non-material. So we have to put together the conception that Matter is immaterial, indeed ideal, though the opposite of the Idea. Matter as such is bodiless, though it may be made to take on body through the form- ing activity of the Demiurge working after his pattern. It is the source of all separation and PLATO'S PIJYSICS. 309 change, though it is itself eterual — Matter is eternal in Plato, not created. It is the ground of all Appearance, though it docs not appear, being an invisible thing. It is the unde- termined, the unlimited (apeiron), the formless (^amorphon) which is to be determined, limited, formed. In one passage Plato calls it space, " providing a home for all created things " (Timceus 52 B). But in other passages of the same dialogue (see 49,50) he regards Matter as the mother or maternal principle of the Cosmos, " in which the begotten becomes," she being the universal recipient of the seeds of all forms. " Eeceiving all things, she never ceases from her own nature, and never in anyway or at any time adopts a form like the things which enter into her, " being the unformed, the eternal and un- changeable as pure Matter. " We may compare the receiving principle (Matter) to a mother, the source (Demiurge) to a father, and the middle nature to a child" which is the Cosmos (^Timceus 56). So we have here a gleam of the domestic trinity applied to the creation of the world, which thought is to be developed later. Thus Matter is the Idea as the complete other of itself, its own negation, yet still as itself. Aristotle also will deal with this conception of Matter, and will call it h>/Ie, whose essence he designates as separation or deprivation (fiftresis). On account of this dual and contradictory^^ na- ;^10 ANCIF.NT EUROPE \N PHILOSOPHY. ture of Matter historians of philosophy divide into two opposite camps in describing it. The one set say that Phito's Matter is corporeal, tlio other that it is incorporeal. (See the two sides partially listed in Zeller, Phil, der Griechen II. s. 609, Di^iffe Aitjlage.) Of course this refers to pure Matter, that out of which the world was created by the Demiurge. There is no doubt that this conception of Matter seems absurd, and one seeks the ground of such a contradictory view. The Ego is self- separating, and becomes twofold within itself in the second stage of its process which is just that of self-consciousness. The fact is Matter is the second stage of the Idea in its world-creating process, and thus corresponds to the movement of the Ego. But for Plato the Idea is not Ego, not a Self, not creative, and still the world must somehow be gotten out of it, or patterned after it. Hence he has to take Matter for granted, as something entirely separate from the Idea, though really it be the second stage of the process of the Idea as creative Ego. So Matter stands divorced from its proper place in the process to which it belongs and can give no ac- count of itself except the self-contradictory and absurd one: I am Matter which is immaterial, a bodiless Body, a Being which is non-Being, an Idea which is the opposite of the Idea. Plato's Matter, thus thrown outside of the process of PLATO'S PHYSICS. 311 the objective, world-creating Keason, can only ap- pear irrational to our Reason. Still we are not to forget that Plato is seeking to set forth the spiritual movement of the world. But he separates the spiritually connected stages of this movement. And yet Plato has intima- tions of something beyond his view. He speaks of the Idea communicating itself to its other, to Matter, whereby the phenomenal world may take part in true existence, which is the Idea. . These are momentary exceptions which contra- dict his permanent conception of the Demiurge, whose function is to make the world by patterning it in Matter after the archetypal Idea. But the Demiurge too is picked up from the outside and so pre-supposed, being the third assumption in Plato's creative process. (3) Of this Demiurge we have already had a good deal to say in the preceeding exposition, as it is difficult to separate him from the Matter in which he works and the Archetj^pe which he copies. Moreover he is the Platonic God, who now first distinctly appears and performs his part in the universe; previously in the realm of Ideas his presence was very questionable. He is conceived rather as the artist or artificer than the creator; we feel like calling him the divine sculptor in his workshop shaping his given block of marble which is pure Matter, after an ideal pattern of the Good which is in 312 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. his soul on the one hand and is the essence of all Beinff on the other. The Cosmos itself is a work of art and God is the artist. Plato univer- salized Phidias, and transformed the whole world into a sculptor's atelier; Phidias, the shaper of the God, is now supplanted by the God himself who is shaper of Phidias and all men and things. Why is it that Plato will have nothing to do with a divine Creator of the Universe? It is his reaction against the Greek religion as portrayed by the Greek poets (specially Homer and Hesiod), who make the Gods the authors of evil, and ascribe to them human passions and weaknesses. Particularly does this fact come out in certain passages of the Republic (379, 380). "God, if he be good, is not the author of all things as many declare, but only of a few things in men's lives." So God must be dethroned from his universal creativity, for " the Good is to be attributed to God alone, the cause of evil is to be sought elsewhere and not in Him." Such is the emphatic duahsm like Zoroastrianism, here declared. Hence, too. Homer and the poets must be put out of the ideal State. Plato will also probe down to the reason why God made the world : because ' ' He was good and without envy." Being artist he must produce, and being good he must produce PLATO'S PHYSICS 313 the good work and beautiful, and ])eing free from envy " he wishes that all things should be like himself." (Timoeifs 29 E). Herodotus and other Greeks held that the Gods were envious of mortals, if the latter became sfreat and successful. Hence Nemesis, the divine leveller, goes forth and abases the exalted, as she did Xerxes the Great King in his invasion of Greece. Every such God Plato would fling out of his Pantheon, for his God is only good and the author only of good. 2. The Oosmical Process. The product of the preceding creative Process is the Cosmos, which also has its Process. The Demiuro;e or God puts the world into its existent shape, which is an appearance in Space and Time. It manifests the twofoldness which we already noticed in the conception of Matter: it is the Idea showing itself through the opposite of the Idea, or the Idea in its creative process made real. It is, therefore, the primal artistic product which reveals the spiritual in a sensuous form on the grandest scale possible, unrolling before us the whole physical universe as a work of art, or rather as the one work of art, prototype of all others. And the Demiurge, as already suggested, is the one artist with his one work, truly a panorama all-including. The Greek was essentially an artist and took an artistic view of life 5 Plato is also an artist, 314 ANCIENT EUUnp::,AN PIIILOSorHY thouol) llic i)hil()soplier and uiiiversaiizer, and so he brings before us the artist as world- creating, truly universal, and hence the pattern of all artists. For art at its best always creates a new world, in which its shapes arise and abide, copied after some ideal exemplar — the world of Shakespeare, of Michel Angelo, of Phidias. Containing these and far greater than them all is the world of the Demiurge, the Cosmos, Avhich, if we are to see with Plato's eyes, we must look at artistically. We may here add that this thought want deep into Schelling, from whom it passed to Hegel, who has elaborated it so fully in his AestJieiilt. On another side Plato contemplates the ))iith of the world. The Demiurge he calls the fatlier as well as the maker; Matter is the mother prin- ciple, and their son is the Cosmos. This Sou of God with prophetic suggestiveness is called the only-begotten (^monogenes), the God that is to be (^esomenos), the visible God who is image of the invisible God (Tlmceus 29, 31, 34). Very surprising do these words seem com- ing from a heathen philosopher nearly four cen- turies before Christ. Repeatedly Plato declares that the Cosmos is a God, " a blessed God," yet also the Son of a God. Divine fatherhood invisible and divine sonship visible are, then, Platonic conceptions. Accordingly, Plato endowed his Cosmos with FL A TO' S PIl YSICS. 3 1 5 a soul, though he hardly conceived it as a per- son. A huge living thing, an animal (zoon) he calls it, with life in it from center to circumfer- ence. Such a world must indeed have a world- soul, a thought which other philosophers before him had broached. Putting these statements together, we grasp Phito's Cosmos as a work of art which is divine and alive or is a living God. From this point of view we may regard Plato as reconstructing Homer's Olympus. Rejecting Homer, he be- comes his own Homer, for he is truly a poet (Poiefes, Maker), and he is here building the world as it ought to be built. So Plato is really the God-making Demiurge in this whole work, he makes the God who makes the Cosmos and man too, including Plato the maker. To be sure he seems not conscious of the part which he plays in this business of world-creating, nor is any European philosopher apparently. Indeed all Philosophy is inclined to leave out the philos- opher constructing it. In the present portion of Platonic Physics which we have above called the Cosmical Pro- cess, are to be found three special phases which we shall first consider separately and then in their united movement. (1) Here again we begin with the archetypal Idea, but as working in and through the God or Demiurge, who is now distinctively called 3 1 6 ANCIENT E UROrEAN rillL SOPHY. the Creator (in the Timoeus). He is thus the active principle of the Good, which he seeks to reaHze in the creation of the Cosmos. Hence he has an end (felos) which is his own self-reaHza- tion in the workl, which world he will make like to himself. Thus the principle of teleology, which we have already found in the JVous of Anaxagoras, enters and subjects to itself all other ends or causes. The living embodiment of the Idea of the Good is the ultimate end, or, as it is often called, the final cause of the Cosmos ac- cording to Plato. The world-creatino; God, with his Idea of the Good which ho is to realize in his creation, is the all-dominatino; fio-ure in Plato's account of this creation (in the Tiniceus). " Such was the scheme of the eternal God" (34), that is, he had a pre-conceived plan, or as we still sa}'^ an Idea. ^^He iu/ended that the animal (Cosmos) should be as near as possible perfect; " thus his intention is repeatedly emphasized. " God de- sired that all thino's should be o-ood and nothinij bad; " the Idea of the Good is in many pas- sages, one with God, who is one and alone till he creates some other gods, such as the stars. So Plato represents his creative God or Demi- urge as creating immediately, by fiat, out of Matter, and incorporating the Good in the Cos- mos. But Plato also represents this same Creator shaping certain things mediately, by means of PLATO'S PHYSICS. 317 given or fore-ordained patterns, namely, mathe- matical elements such as numbers and geometric figures. This fact, notable in the Timceus, would seem to indicate a change towards Pythagoreanism in Plato, since he relegates mathematical Ideas de- cidedly to a second place in the Republic. But now they seem to determine the Demiurge more de- cidedly than the Pure Ideas which have become almost a part of him, he himself being the Good (in the Timceus). As Plato grew old, his pref- erence for Pythagoreanism appears to have re- turned, or rather to have fully developed itself, so that in the Laws (usually supposed to be his last book), Mathematics quite supplant Philos- ophy as the chief discipline for the ruler. (2) We come next to consider the Cosmical Body as the product and counterpart of the Cos- mical Archetype just considered, or as the ex- ternal manifestation of this Archetype in matter. What, then, will be the Appearance of the Cos- mos? In the first place God " made the world round and smooth as from a lathe, in every direction equally distant from the center to the extremes, the sphere being the most perfect and the most like unto itself of all figures." It also " compre- hends within itself all other fio-ures ' ' which can be unfolded out of it. It needs no senses, no eyes, ears, hands, members, as it has all that it re- quires within itself. " For the Creator conceived 318 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PlIILOSOPnY. that a being which was self-sufficient would be more excelleut than one which lacked some- thing" which would have to be supplied outside of itself ( Timceus 33.) But, secondly, into this one Cosmos difference enters through creation. Primarily the God cre- ates Time, the absolutely separative and divis- ible, yet eternally continuous, hence "the image of eternity," though not eternity itself which " rests in unity " and is uncreative as the Pure Idea. The Heavens with Sun and Moon and Stars were created along with Time which they measure by day, month and year. Yet here, too, the God makes a division into Fixed-Stars and Planets, according to their motion. Still further Plato considers all the Fixed-Stars and Planets (to these he reckons Sun and Moon) to be dei- ties, and thus he returns to a kind of Greek Polytheism, with its divinization of nature, spec- ially of the heavenly bodies. Moreover they are the highest and best of all created beings; the Fixed-Stars especially " are divine and eternal, ever remaining and revolving on the same spot," while the Planets being wanderers (so they seemed to Plato) are less excellent. A new Olympian world dawns on us from the skies, and it is also represented as determining man to a more stable and natural life, but chiefly " from this source (the vision of the Cosmos) we obtain Philosophy, than which no greater good has been PLATO'S niYSICS. 319 or will be given by the Gods to mortal men" ( Timceus 47). Here Plato brings into his cosmical process the four elements, which have such an important })lace in early Greek philosophy, especially that of Empedocles. " God placed water and air in the middle between fire and earth, since solid bodies must be united by two middle terms, not by one alone," Moreover the Creator forms material objects out of the elements according to mathematical patterns — numbers and geometric figures. God fashioned them (the four elements) by form and number. Moreover " all solids must be contained in surfaces" which consist ulti- mately of triangles, and " these triangles are originally of two kinds, the right-scalene capa- ble of infinite forms and the right-isosceles capa- ble of only one form ' ' ( Timceus 53-54) . Plato, like a true Greek, proceeds to select the most beautiful of all these triangular forms, which he maintains to be " that which, being doubled makes the equilateral triangle." The reason for this Avould be " long to tell " and so he does not tell it. But what is strange, an atom appears in Plato's cosmical Process, an atom not of an irregular shape, but geometric, chiefly triangular. Out of these atomic forms the four elements are composed — =the Earth of Cubes, Fire of Tetra- hedrons, Air of Octahedrons, Water of Icosa- 320 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PIIILOSOPH Y. hedrons. Here the stress is upon the primal geometric form of the atoms out of which the manifold geometric shapes of the Cosmos are produced. Thus Plato on this side wheels into the line of his cosmical construction another antecedent philosopher, Democritus, not a little changed it is true, but very perceptible in outline. He, too, along with Empedocles and Pythagoras, as well as Parmenides and Herac- litus must take his place in the system which is a resumption- of all previous philosophies. (3) The third principle in the cosmical Pro- cess is the Cosmical Soul, better known as the "World-Soul, or the animate principle of the World, the Soul of the Cosmical Body. Already the fact has been noted that Plato believed the whole universe to be alive, and he often calls it a living animal. Evidently this Cosmical Soul is the mediating element, which unites the Cosmical Archetype with tho Cosmical Body, returning to the former and harmonizing it with the latter, in fact being itself the harmony of the inner and outer, of the spiritual and material, of the Idea and the Appearance in the Cosmos. Such is in general, the function of the Soul in Plato: it partakes of the two opposites. Idea or Reason (N'ous) on the one hand, and of the Body or the Phenomenon on the other; it communicates between the two, mediates them and thus over- PLATO'S riTYSIClS. 321 coines tho Plntoiiic dualism (or dissonance) ])\' a world-hanuoiiy. Very signiticant there- fore, is the position of the World-Soul in Plato's s}stcni. The Demiurge is the Creator of this World- Soul, and his method was to "put Reason into Soul, and then to put Soul into Body," wherel^y he "framed the Cosmos to be the fairest work in the order of Nature." So the whole World is more beautiful than an}' part of it, and the AVorld-Soul is more excellent than that of any individual (^Timoeus 30). In this creative work of the Demiurge, we behold the triple process : the Idea or Reason, Matter, and the Soul which is made to inform Matter and to produce the living Body of the Cosmos. The World-Soul is incorporeal like the Idea, yet is a created thing, like the corporeal; it shares in the multiplicity of the latter and in the unitv of the former, showing itself the permanent in the transitory, the law in all change. In Plato's language it unites the Same and the Other, or identity and difference, whereby it maintains uniformity of motion (in the Fixed-Stars) and di^■ersity of motion (in the Planets), thus transferring its inner nature to the outermost sphere of the Cosmos. The World-Soul, though created by the fiat of the Demiurge (whom Plato in this connection calls (lod), has its own function, which is chiefly 21 322 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. regulative ; it keeps iu order and under law all the diverse movements of the Cosmos. It goes of itself within its sphere after being created and started; it is self -moved yet not capricious, obey- ing the Idea or Reason, which, in connection with it as united with Matten, becomes mathe- matical. For Mathematics is the mediating principle between the sensuous and the ideal realms, participating in both. Now this is just the position and character which are assigned to the World-Soul in Plato ; it mediates between the Cosmical Archetype and the Cosmical Body. Accordingly the most immediate fact of the World-Soul is that it is mathematical, employ- ing number and form (arithmetic and geometry) to regulate the Cosmos. Mathematics is not simply the means of the World-Soul, but the very Self of it, its primal original Self as imme- diate. This Self is expressed from the center of the Cosmos to the circumference in the harmo- nious proportion of things, which is especially heard in terrestrial music, and is seen most com- pletely in the movements of the heavenly bodies. Both Pythagoras (from whom this thought is derived) and Plato had the conception that Mathematics rule the material world, that all Nature must be reduced to number and form, and thereby controlled by Reason. In their way they are the precursors of modern Natural Science, giving a forecast of it in an imaginative PLATO'S PHYSICS. 323 flight, without, however, any demonstration. On this side of demonstrated Science the present age is far in advance of these old philosophers, many of whose statements are so wildly fantas- tic ; but in another respect the future has still to realize their thought. For they believed in and tried to outline a Cosmical Psychology, a sci- ence which exists not to-day but which is yet to be. Their doctrine is that Nature is primarily psychical, having a Soul, yea a World-Soul for its order and government, while the Psychology of the present time is getting to doubt that even man has a soul, not to speak of the Cosmos. To be sure, Cosmical Psychology, when its period arrives again, must be scientific in the best sense, and not imaginative, though science does and must employ the imagination in its search for truth, as a famous scientist has told us. But this first, immediate phase of the World- Soul, the mathematical, is not the only one; on the contrary Plato shows the element of separa- tion in it, whereby it becomes a process within itself having three stages which are grasped by Plato as the Indivisible and the Original (One), the Divisible and the Derived (Manj^), and their unity as one movement (World-Soul). In this labor the procedure of the Demiurge is given as follows: "He creates her (the World-Soul) out of the unchangea])le and indivisible, and also out of the divisible and corporeal principles. 324 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. constituting hor u third intermediate prlnci{)le, which partakes of the Same and of the Other or Different" (Tinueus' 35 A). What is darkly fermenting in Phito's mind? He sees the psychi- cal process of the World-Soul in its three stages and formulates them after his metaphysical fashion. It is indeed a ^reat thought, nothing less than the thought of the Cosmos as a Psv- chosis. But Plato does not conceive the World- Soul as person, still less as self-conscious Eg). Such a conception belongs not to him, nor to Greek Philosophy, though it is unconsciously struo-ffliiiS I'll both, and often breaks out irregu- larly to the surface. The Ego is not yet defi- nitely separated from Being, and seized as it is in itself, in its own self -knowing process. It is still ontological supremely, though psj'cholog}^ is working within and underneath all this ontol- ogy. For instance, the formula (the Undivided, the Divided, and the One) is not the self-ex- pression of the Soul, but is alien, having been derived from ontology. It is a Psychosis, but not recognized as such. The Soul in Greek is Being, but Being is not Soul, at least not completely. Still further, Plato represents the World-Soul as self-returning; "it turns within itself" and from this produces the self-returning motion of the Cosmos, the circular. The circular move- ment of the heavenly bodies comes from the PLATO'S PHYSICS. 325 inner self-returning process of the World-Soul, which brings us to its next characteristic, the final and highest one of it, the self -moved. The third phase of the World-Soul is then that it moves itself from within, it is a self-de- termined entity inside its sphere. This is, in a general way, involved in the fact already stated that the Cosmos is alive, is an animal, and so has a soul. But the definite grasping of the World-Soul as self-moved is a decided step in the development of its thought. In the P!t(e- di'iis (245 D) the declaration is made that " the beginning (or the principle) of all motion is what moves itself;" the corporeal or the Cosmi- cal Body can be moved only by the self-mover, and " this self-mover is nothing else but the Soul." Here again we have the thought of the self-return as the essence of the Soul's move- ment. For Body is the moved, but when the moved turns back and takes up within itself its mover, it is the self-moved and the self-moving too. This self-moving principle as distinct from the moved is the Soul. 3. 3Ian (The Human Process). We have reached the third stage or principle of Plato's Physics, or rather Cosmical Psychology, to which the human being also belongs by virtue of his Body and his Soul. In fact the whole sweep of the Cosmos from its befrinnino- to its end is to brino- forth Man, in whom is the conclusion of the de- 326 ANCIENT EUROPEAN FIlILOSOrilY. scent from above and the starting-point of the ascent, or return upward. Man is regarded as an epitome of the Cosmos, a Microcosm in him- self; implicitly he contains the entire creation of the world. From this point of view we may see that he is a going back and a taking up of the total creative process, as hitherto set fortli ; he is the Archetype, the Matter and the Dem- iurge in small; he is the little Demiurge who really creates the big one, for, after all, it is a man, the philosopher, who has produced this whole scheme of creation, or at least repro- duced it. The great function of the Demiurge is to make whatever is immortal, but he hands over the making of mortality to the Gods whom he has made. For Plato will not have the perfect make the imperfect immediately, but through another; the Creator will not create the mortal but creates the creator of it. Plato's scruple in this matter transferred itself to Christian theologians, to whom it gave no end of trouble, since the creat- ive nature of God the Father as distinct from that of the Son seems to be chiefly derived from the heathen philosopher. So it comes that in the creation of Man two sorts of creators participate, the uncreated and the created. The latter produces the perishable part, the former the imperishable, which is the Soul. Of these Souls the number corresponded PLATO'S PHYSICS. 327 to the Stiir.s, on each of which there was pUiced a Soul as on a chariot, iu order that it mijiht watch from such a lofty station the heavenly order and make the same its own ere the time came for it to be born into the flesh. Still while in this corporeal existence the Soul has a memory (reminiscence) of what it beheld in its former existence, namely the Pure Ideas. (1) From this view of Man's creation spring Plato's three leadins; doctrines in regard to the Soul. First is its pre-exist e7ice , its Star-life ere it became incorporate, which has apparently given rise to the conception that the Soul has also still a sidereal body. Second is post-existence, or immortality proper, which Plato has dwelt upon with peculiar fondness in several dialogues, spe- cially in the PhcBdo. But the entire discussion always goes back to one fundamental statement, which in dogmatic form is, that God created the Soul immortal. This proposition you must be- lieve, for Plato himself did not think that he has proved immortality, which he declared to be only probable, as something which is reached by faith. This principle of faith occupies a far lower place in Plato's scheme than in the Chris- tian. That which is truly immortal according to Plato, is the Reason (Nous) in Man, or the Idea; he who cultivates the Idea, the philosopher, is the surely immortal one, and will return to his star-life of contemplation forever. Truly Plato 328 ANCIENT EUBOFEAN PIIlLOSOniY. is the aristocrat of Philosophy, which soiciicj is by its very nature aristocratic ; a member of the Athenian Demos can hardly possess immor- tality. Of greater interest to the ordinary mass of humanity (the Demos) is the doctrine of rc/iiu- iscence, as it pertains not so much to Man pro- existent or post-existent as present here and now. The thought arose probably in con- nection with the Socratic question: Can virlua be taught to anybody? No, it can ouly bo recalled, for it is already something given in the Soul, though implicit there till it be roused and made explicit. For the soul is not a blank sheet of paper (tabula rasa) on which the external world writes itself, but it is potentially this world. The object of sensation provokes or stimulates the Soul to call up out of itself the Idaa of which the object is the material copy. For the Soul is the microcosm in which there is a part corre- sponding to ever}^ part of the macrocosm. Thinking (eiinoesis) is still higher, since through it the Soul rc]n'oduces the Idea creating the object instead of the image. Roally this is the process of all intellection: tha Soul reproduces out of itself the object which is and thus knows it, hav- ino- identified it with itself. It is inept however to deem sui-h an act to 1)3 one of memory and to connect it with pre-existcnce. (2) After the creation of the human Soul PLATO'S niYSICS. 329 Plato takes u}) the huiuau Body upon whose pro- ductiou and })urpose he spends a good deal of effort. His physiology is far removed from that of to-da}' and seems largely a fantastic sport which he himself deems ouh' proha])le. The head is round as it is the seat of Eeason and so it is of the most perfect form, the circular or self- returning, which is also the form of the Cosmos. The nobler passions are located in the breast, being placed under the head or Eeason. In the abdominal region lie the sensuous appetites ; lower in place and hence under the control of the nobler passions and the Eeason above. In the liver is the seat of divination, and he gives a ground why the intestines are so long and lie in a coil : food must not pass through the bod}^ too rapidh', otherwise man would be entirely occupied with eating and evacuating, and " the whole race would become an enemy to music and philosophy." And nuich more of the same sort in the later portions of the Tinueus. Of course this is Phito just about at his worst; it is enough to cast a passing glance at him in this aspect. ■ Though, we grant that the end of nature be to produce a com})lcte man wlio would be the philosopher in Plato's opinion, the structure of the human being does show such an end immedi- atdij. A te]eoh)gy of tiiis sort ])ecomes purely fantastic. (o) The human Soul is endowed by Plato 330 ANGIKNT EUROPEAN PIJILOiSUI'IIY. with three main activities, each of which he evi- dently regards as an activity by itself, yet also as a stage or phase of the total activity of the Soul. First and highest is the rational principle, in correspondence with the Reason (Nous or Idea) in the physical and metaphysical realms; second is Desire or the material sensuous prin- ciple, which is the man determined by his Body; third is the tltymos, variously translated as pas- sion or impulse, but it means properly the ele- ment of Will, the activity of the Soul whereby the individual externalizes himself, or puts that which is within him outside of himself. This third element (fhi/mos), returns to the preceding for its content, which hence may be sensuous Desire or ideal Reason. Herein we observe the fact with which Platonic Ethics begins, the orig- inal dualism which it seeks to overcome in Man. Thus Plato sees the threefoldness of the hu- man Soul, its three stages or activities which make one — one Soul. This triple movement has been at work all along, though often unex- pressed ; it lies in every attempt to mediate the Idea and the Appearance by some third princi- ple sharing in both. How many times this has occurred in the preceding exposition, the reader himself can count. Note the primal division of the philosophical process into Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics; the triplicate of ideal, material and mathematical realms, which, being PLATO'S PHYSICS. 331 taken up bj the Intellect, correspond to Reason (noesis), Understanding (^dianoia) and Sense- perception (aist/iesis), producing Science (ejns- teme), mathematical Knowledge, and Opinion (doxa). In the Republic we shall lind this psychical triplicate to be the ordering principle of the virtues, of the classes, and of the State generally. We have now reached the foot of the ladder of descent, which ladder starts from the very apex of the upper world with the Idea of the Good, and passes down through the Cosmos to the human Soul, which is the bottom of the movement of Physics, or better, of Cosmical Psychology. And then lurking in this Soul we have found a Psychosis, which is not only the bottom of the preceding descent, but also is the basis for a new superstructure, for the rise of the future ethical world. That which we have above called the descent of the human Soul was somewhat differently stated bv Plato durino; his lono- life. In an earlier work (PhcBdrus) the birth into flesh is regarded as a lapse which must have happened while the Soul was a star. But this fall of Man from his heavenly sphere is softened in the Timceus (42) to a kind of ])robation; if the born Soul stands the test, it returns to its star ; if not, it has to come back to earth in the form of a woman — evidently a degradation in the 332 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. eyes of Plato. But if the Soul fails on this second trial, it is compelled to become a brute " which resembles him in his evil ways." Nor would these transformations cease till he changed to the pursuit of the Idea, which seems to be Platonic repentance. But with this repentance, which results through Will, leadino- to a chano:e of life, we come into a new field, the ethical, which is the third of the grand divisions of Plato's Philoso[)hy. Before leaving the present field, however, we may observe tliat the preceding cosmical con- struction of the Universe with its Demiurge has a great future before it. Here is the point at which the Greek and the Jew begin to come together. The cosmogonies of the Timceus and of the book of Genesis were harmonized ; Plato was declared to have derived his thought of the creation from the Hel)rew Bible; it was said he was "Moses atticising." The Demiurge, wholly separate from the world which he created, and transcendent, was easil}^ identified with Jahveh, while the lesser created Gods might be the ousted pagan deities of the Greek Pantheon. In this work of Hebraizing Plato the Jewish exegete Aristoboulus ( 150 B.C.) became famous. Thus the Timceus was a kind of bridge from Polvtheism into Monotheism, and a means of uniting Oriental Eeligion with Euro- pean Philosophy. But the mighty fact of this PLATO'S ETHICS. 333 movement was its influence upon Christianity, into which flowed both these streams, Jewish and Greek, which had been ah-eady united at Alex- andria long before the birth of Christ. C. Ethics. In general, the purpose of the Ethics of Plato is to show the return of man out of his separation through Nature to his origiual spiritual home in the Idea. The soul is to get back and repossess its lost heritage by means of an ethical life. Through birth and the dip into flesh it has be- come alienated from its primal high estate, and the science of Ethics makes the path back to restoration. For this reason. Ethics forms the third stage in the total philosophic Norm in which the soul returns to the essence of Being, to the first stage of the Norm, or the Platonic Idea. In Ethics, therefore, the fundamental concep- tion is that of a rise and restoration after a descent and lapse. The rise to wdiat? To the Idea, which now is regarded as definitely the (lood, the great end to be attained. The essence of Being is this Idea, according to Plato; man is, therefore, to realize in himself True Being, or the essence of Being; thus through Ethics he first gets to be in truth. In this way we can see that all Philosophy, particularly the Philos- ophy of Plato, finds its culmination and 334 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. final purpose iu Ethics, which is man's way of salvation in the scheme of our philosopher. Greek Philosophy hitherto has sought for the essence of Being rather through the Intellect and has found it to be some form of the Univer- sal . But now man is to be transformed into this Universal in his life and conduct by Ethics, whereby Philosophy reaches its true end and be- comes practical. If Ethics shows something of the nature of a restoration, a previous state is supposed which existed before the descent or separation. Plato seeks in various ways to formulate this pre-existent condition. The Ideas were pre-existent ere they manifested themselves in the world of Appear- ance ; the soul was pre-existent before it descended into flesh; metempsychosis is a pre-existent fact or state which is intended to account for such a descent of the soul. Ethics is the practical counterpart to these theoretic views; the ethical ascent of man through himself or his Will over- comes the antecedent descent. 1. The Good as Idea. We have already con- sidered the metaphysical Good under its appro- priate head. Butthe present Good is in a different relation, it is the ethical Good, toward and through which is the rise, and which is to possess and transform the man inwardly. The metaphysical Good is in one sense the same as the ethical ; yet on the other hand, it is that from which the de- PLATO'S ETHICS. 335 scent has taken place. Thus the ethical Good, even if still the essence of Being taken by itself or metaphysically, is to be re-embodied by man through his Will ; by means of it he is to be born anew, and this second birth is of his own effort, if not creation. We saw in Physics the Demi- uro^e creating the world and causing the descent till man was made flesh. But in Ethics man wheels about and transforms his nature through attaining the Good as Idea. (1) The Good in itself is declared by Plato to be existent and indeed visible ; the sight of it is all-persuasive, compelling pursuit, when the soul is sufficiently puriQed to have such vision, or knowledge. Here lies the rational part of man, whose content is the Good. (2) But the Good has an opposite, which in the world is Matter, and in man is appetite, passion, the descending or degrading portion of himself. Thus rises a conflict between the Reason and Appetite or the lower and higher forms of the soul. (3) The Good as Idea may become reconciled with Matter and embody itself therein. Where such a union takes place we have the Beautiful. Plato was too much of a Greek not to show many indications of his love for sensuous beauty. Still it tends with him to become non-material and to vanish into the Good. The sensuous manifest- ations of the Beautiful both in poetry and art 336 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. he subjects to ;i rigid censoi*slii[) in the ReiiuhJic. But he is not at one with himself on this subject. Sometimes he would l)anish pleasure (artistic as well as other kinds) as the great incumbrance to attaining the Good; sometimes he regards it as one of the constituents of the highest Good. The general trend, however, of the Platonic Philosophy is a reaction against Greek Art. But the Good as Idea is to be realized in the living man, and is to irradiate his actions and his life. Thus we come to Plato's conception of Virtue which is the most universal theme of his Dialogues. 2. The Good as Virtue. The Good realized in the human soul and made the mainspring of every human activity, is the general notion of Virtue, which is the cause of all real happiness. Vice calls forth misery ; to follow appetite and passion is to return to aniniality. He who pur- sues the Good and fills his life with it has the only true satisfaction. Virtue is an end in it- self. We should cultivate it for its own sake, not for some ulterior advantage ; it is with Plato its own reward. Virtue is also a habit or dis- position whereby the soul unceasingly subordi- nates its lower nature. The Good as Idea indi- vidualized and made active is Virtue ; the Good by itself is general, but man filkul with it in his doing has the ]:)articular Virtues. (1) Plato inherited directly from Socrates PLATO'S ETHICS. 337 this search for Virtue as Avell as for some adequate detinition of it. In his earlier Dialogues the con- versation turns largely upon fixing the meaning of some particular Virtue. So there was the per- sistent effort to grasp and formulate the essence of Virtue, to separate it from its concrete mani- festations and to seize it as it is in itself. Thus the special Virtues were abstracted and discussed in various waj's, and finally their number began to require some kind of order among themselves. This process of separating the abstract Virtue from its embodiment in the manifold activities of life was a great step in moral education, and was what rendered Virtues as such teachable. The old instinctive morality is thus transformed, and man becomes conscious of his conduct when Virtue can be defined. Plato, having done a good deal in the way of defining single Virtues in his earlier writings, will in his Republic move forward to a new stage. (2) This is the organization of the many Vir- tues into a system, which has had a marvelous life and currency. The first and most elevated single Virtue is Wisdom according to Plato, and has its corresponding faculty in the Soul (Reason) and its corresponding Class in the State (Guard- ians). The second Virtue is Courage which has also its parallel in the Soul ((hf/inos, will) and in the State (the Warriors). The third Virtue is Temperance corresponding to Desire in the Soul 22 338 ANCIEN T EUE O PE A V PIIILO SOPHY. and to the Workmen in the State. Pkito deems that these Virtues underlie and indeed produce the social and political order ; on the other hand the State is to look out for them and produce them in turn. Hence the importance of educa- tion in the training to Virtue, upon whose teach- ability the social structure reposes. (3) There is the fourth Virtue belonging to Plato's system, Justice; yet he regards it in a different light from the other three, hence it is to be classified apart. Justice in Plato is the universal, all-pervasive Virtue; a man cannot be just without being at the same time wise, cour- ageous, and temperate. But the just man is more than this : he is the one who has most ad- equately realized in his own soul as well as in his own life the Idea or the Universal. He is the living embodiment of the essence of Being, or the Truth in its highest character; he is the philosopher who is to be ruler. The just man is really the only man who is tit to administer In- stitutions, specially the State ; through him alone can Justice become sovereign and govern the world. Virtue thus rises to its institutional sphere; Justice indeed may be called the institutional Virtue. Courage, Temperance and Wisdom are the moral or more directly the individual Virtues, though they, too, have their social side; Justice, while individual also, must be exalted into its in- PLATO' ii ETHICS. 339 stitutional sphere. These two very different significations of Justice are noticed by Plato — the one pertaining more to the individual and moral life, the other to the universal and insti- tutional. Hence we come to the fact that every man is to realize in his spirit the idea of Justice, whose content is Institutions, specially the State and its Laws. This brings us to the last great effort of Plato : he will build a Commonwealth and estab- lish Laws whose end is to realize Justice in the class and in the individual. Such is the object of the two great works of the later period of his life, the JRepnbh'c and the Laws, which indicate an important transition in his philosophizing. 3. The Good as Institution. Plato saw that man alone cannot realize the Good or True Being even in himself ; he must have Institutions for that purpose. Now the great Institution devel- oped in Plato's time was the State, particularly in its two forms at Athens and Sparta. The State is accordingly the third and highest mani- festation of the Good, whose object is to make men virtuous or to realize the Good in the soul. Yet Plato conceives the State itself to be a Good, or capable of becoming such. The State is the Good made actual as an existent entity in the world, whose end is to realize the Good in man. Plato deems the State to be the individual "writ large;" it is the big individual whose 340 ANCIENT EVROrEAN PHILOSOPnY. function is to make the little individual (man) virtuous. But it does not perform this function at pres- ent (so thought Plato), hence it must be recon- structed. What is the essential point which has to be met in such a reconstruction? The indi- vidual had broken with the existent prescriptive order; he had largely fallen out with his State, and for good reasons. Both individual and State must be built up anew; in fact, they must be both built up together, since the State is the great means of making the individual virtuous. Plato himself had o;one through each of these stages of alienation ; liis studies of the Virtues in his earlier Dialoijues had given him the moral Idea. But he was also deeply estranged from his own State, Athens ; hence this too he must make over, at least for himself and his followers. The problem, as grasped by Plato, was to sub- ordinate, and, if possble, extirpate the individual- ism which was most distinctively represented by the Sophists. Chiefly for such a purpose he organizes his State, which is thus a return or perchance a relapse to the old instinctive mor- ality of the Greeks. A very brief outline of this political organism we may hero present : — (1) The division of the people into three separate classes is fundamental in the Platonic State. The first and lowest class is that of the Laborers, composed chiefly of artisans and agri- PLATO'S ETHICS. 341 culturists, who are to supply the physical Avants of the inhabitants of the commonwealth. These are nearly without rights, and are to work at the behest of others. The second class is that of the Warriors, for the defense of the State. The third class is that of Guardians or Rulers, who have absolute authority in their hands and who are to receive special training for their vocation through Philosophy. Thus the aristocratic Plato, evidently more proud of his Intellect than of his Birth — his family having produced such detested specimens as Critias and Charmides — transfers his aristocracy from Birth to Intellect, and in })articular deems his own class or indeed himself to be the right ruler of the State. In fact, what else could he do? Certainly the maker of the new State ought to be its director. These classes of Plato are still realities in Europe, which seemed to develop them specially in the medieval period. Plato is supremely the Philosopher of Europe, and Philosophy here again shows itself aristocratic. (2) The Platonic State has a very decided negative element, directing its destructive blows particularly against the individual, who is, first of all, to be put into his Class by the Guardians without any choice of his own. The Family is set aside ; the individual relation of love between man and wife is regarded as antagonistic to their devotion to the State, which furthermore takes 342 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. charge of the children who are to have no rec- ognized parents. Thus the whole emotional nature of the individual is to be absorbed into the State, which still further takes away all in- dividual ownership of property, wherein the social Institution is made to vanish into the polit- ical. Thus Plato sought to cut up by the roots the destroj'ing influences which he saw at work in the Greek world about him. (3) The object of Plato is to get back to the old condition of things, to that immediate, in- stinctive oneness of the individual with his State, with which he lived in an unbroken unity. But that time is gone, never to return. The breach is made, the separation has taken place, man can- not restore his unconscious Paradise when he has become conscious. This is the ideal or rather chimerical element in Plato's Republic. He will negate progress, destroy evolution, turn the stream of time backward and try to make it run up hill. For Plato's ideal commonwealth is really the village community which Greece has trans- cended; it is therefore a relapse to the past instead of a forecast of the future. Still the coming time will suiprisingly adopt some of its provisions, especially the Christian Church will show numerous simihirities to Plato's State. The Village Community, particularly of the less advanced pco[)lcs, has been investigated exten- sively in the last tifty years, and it would furnish PLATO'S ETHICS. 343 one of the best coiiiinentaries upon the Platonic Commonwealth. In the matter of government, Plato had before himself the two chief political tendencies of the Greeks manifested in Athens and Sparta, whose excellence he would combine in a new arrang-e- ment. The great product of Athens was the philosopher, namely Plato himself, and he was the only fit ruler, though he could not rule in a democracy. But Sparta produced no philoso- phers, it generated rude might and a strict obedi- ence to formal law, which law was supposed to have been once introduced by Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, whose part Plato is to re- enact in the new Commonwealth. So we witness the Athenian philosopher made the ruler over Spartan institutions, though with important changes in order to make them more rational. Plato had seen the failure of the Spartan gov- ernors (harmosts) who were placed over many Greek cities after the Peloponnesian War. The caprice and self-will of democracy had likewise caused the defeat of Athens. So Plato en- deavors to make a new synthesis derived from the experience of his time. Of Spartan tyranny and of Athenian individualism he will set the Greek world free, and so back he goes to the long-past age of the Village Community with its absorption of the individual into the com- munal life. 344 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Such is the third stage of the philosophic NorminPkito, showing the ethical return of man, out of his descent through Nature, to the Idea which he is to appropriate anew and thereby at- tain the Good. Thus we may conceive the cycle to 1)0 completed when the soul has gotten back to the beginning and re-possesses the primal Idea which man realizes in himself. It is a process of self -restoration on the one hand, through Will, and on the other through Institutions, specially the State. Herein a former, pre-existent con- dition of the soul is assumed, to which the ethical return has to be made after the descent or lapse. But this Platonic State, as the cuhninatiou of Ethics, makes the individual a good man by sup- pressing if not destrojdng his individuality. Such is the deep contradiction in it, splitting it to the very bottom. Plato expects man through freedom to annihilate freedom; man is to reach by his Free-Will (Boulesis) the Good, which is the undoing of his Free-Will. That the State is itself Free-Will actualized whose end is to secure Free-Will through the Law is a concep- tion of the State far removed from Plato. He grants that the individual can become good only through Free-Will, yet his State must substan- tially eliminate this Free-Will of the individual. Atleastit can be exercised only by a few Guard- ians, and by them only in a circumscribed way. So the Platonic dualism asserts itself ; or rather it PLATO'S ETHICS. 345 is the duiilism of all Philosophy which is sure to break asunder on the question of freedom, since it is inherently aristocratic or even autocratic, de- manding of the free individual to give up his freedom and follow its behest or formula. The movement of History will reverse the Platonic State in this respect — transforming all Institu- tions into safeguards of freedom. There is no doubt that Plato has a noble end in view: he will cast out of the State of his time caprice and tyranny. But in his effort to get rid of capricious Will, he cuts up Will itself by the roots. Hence his Eepublic, from this point of view, is not a return, which is the way of evolution, but is a relapse, which is the way of retrogression. In fact, with Plato generally, the pre-existent is the excellent — the pre-exist- ent soul, the pre-existent realm of Ideas, the pre- existent State as Village Community. So it comes that his ethical cry is. Back to the pre- existent Good, let us get out of this present sensuous world, if need be, by destruction. Thus Plato concludes his Ethics in a separation, if not opposition between the moral and the in- stitutional. Morally man can use his freedom to rise to True Being, putting down appetite and his lower nature generally. But all this moral freedom he nuist subject to an Institution which does not secure his Free-Will whereby he has become moral, but which suppresses 316 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. if not destrcn's it. Such opposition between the moral and institutional is a phase of the European dualism, for Europe has never been able to reconcile the moral law with the law of the institution. Many of her best thinkers say that the two are irreconcilable, and it must be confessed that Philosophy as such cannot harmonize this ethical dualism, for it labors under the same dualistic difficulty. Not till the Self, which is the source of the moral sphere, be also made the source and the end of Law and Institution, can the outer behest be brought to correspond with the inner. But this is a step far beyond Plato, beyond all Greek Philosophy, even beyond Modern Euro- pean Philosophy in its very latest manifestation, though such a step with its thought is the inner lurking motive power which is propelling Philosophy toward its end from its beginning in ancient Miletus. Yet Philosophy, as such, cannot harmonize this deep scission and separation in Human Spirit which it has begotten, or at least unfolded: a new Discipline is necessary with a new Norm. But now we are to consider the next philosopher who comes just after Plato and in a direct line Avith him, who, conscious of the Platonic dualism, at least iu part, will seek to over- come it by bringing the Idea l)ack to Reality, by restoring the Universal to the Individual. A PLATO'S ETHICS. 347 mighty, herculean, world-encompassing effort it is on the part of one of the greatest intel- lectual giants that the ages have brought forth, wielding anew the philosophic Norm with the miofht of a Titan in order to win the loftiest Olympian peak of abstract Thought. Wherein he succeeded in his colossal attempt, and wherein he failed must now be recorded in a chapter of culminating importance for Greek Philosophy. 348 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 3, Hristotle. There are many similarities between Plato and Aristotle, not only in the matter of doctrine, but also in the development of their lives. Equally manifest is it that the differences between them are numerous and striking. They belong to- gether in one great historic period, in one su- preme philosophic movement, in one mighty manifestation of national genius. We must dis- tinguish them carefully, but we must unite them with equal care. First of all, we make the same divisions of the total Aristotle as we did of the total Plato, since each of them passed through an outer temporal career, wrote many books in which is contained a system of Thought. Accord- ingly, we shall look at Aristotle also under three leading heads: his Life, his Writings, and his Philosophy. I. Aristotle's Life. — It is generally accepted that our philosopher was born in 384 B. C. at Stagira, a town of the Thracian Chalcidice, and died in 322 B. C. at the city of Chalcis in Eu- boea. Father and mother were both Greeks, so that he was not a half-Greek, as some have called him ; but his birthplace was a Greek col- AtilSTOTLE. 349 onv, in what may be considered the Hellenic borderland on the North. Still the center of his philosophic discipline was Athens, in which he first obtained his universal culture, from which he separated for a time, and to which he returned for his crowning work in his School. From this statement it will be seen that the Life of Aristotle falls into three main periods, all of which turn upon his relation to Athens, the cen- tral philosophic light-point of the Hellenic world. He is first drawn thither for a long preparation and instruction; he is next driven thence, inter- nally, if not externally, and betakes himself to his Northern borderland, where he obtains sig- nificant new experiences very needful for his complete self-realization ; finally he must go back thither to bring to fruitage, in teaching and writing, the work of all his years. The reader will be interested and instructed by comparing the life of Plato with that of Aris- totle. There it> the same general outline in both, though the fillino-in be different as to the events and the number of years. Both have to get their first training at and through Athens, both have to quit Athens after a time of such training, both have to return to Athens for the last har- vest. These three periods w^e may set down as follows : — 1. The young man and his years of prepara- tory discipline — the Apprenticeship(iye//;7c//^/•e). 350 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 2. The middle period of separation from Athens with travel and experience in other lands ( Wander j alire) . 3. The last period, which embraces the return to Athens, and which shows the perfect mastery of philosophy and the grand fulfillment of his 1 i f e ' s work ( Meiaterjahre ) . Goethe's great novel, Wilhelm Meister, which shadows forth the movement of human life in its universal outlines, suggests by its titles these three divisions (^Apprenticeship, Travels, Mas- ter), they being stages in the life of the German artisan. The same mighty sweep we may observe in the two epics which herald the birth of the Greek world, for the Iliad shows the long separation from home and country with the multifarious experiences of foreign war, while the Odyssey has as its all-comprehensive theme the return to home and country, which name it especially gives itself («os/os), being thus con- scious of its own purpose. Particularly in the latter poem it is the return of the one Greek hero, Ulysses, who, however, may be said to represent typically all the others. Thus the great poets and artists have not failed to see and to set forth the universal movement of a completed human life which we may trace in both Plato and Aristotle. The Litter's career we shall now designate briefly iu accord with the preceding outline. ABISTOTLE. 351 1. Aristotle's First Period. He was the son of Nicomachus, a surgeon in the employ of the Macedonian king Amjntas, The father's pro- fession was hereditary, and we may well suppose that the son was both trained in Natural Science and inherited a taste and aptitude for it from his ancestors. There is a statement by Galen that the so-called Asclepiad families, or those belongiug to the medical profession, trained their boys in reading, writing, and dissection (anatemnein). Thus we catch a glimpse of the early source of Aristotle's scientific attainments. Moreover this dissection or analysis will be also a mental characteristic of his to the end. We may also suppose that young Aristotle made some acquaintance with tiic Macedonian court and people through his father, which will not be without important results in his later life. But the great fact of this early period is what we read in Diogenes Laertius ( Vita Arist.), namely that Aristotle came to Athens at the age of seventeen and joined the School of Plato, where he stayed twenty years, till Plato's death, being then thirty-seven j^cars old and more (347-G B. C). With what did he occupy himself during all these years? Plato, it is supposed, at the time of the arrival of Aristotle (367-6 B. C.) was absent in Sicily, seeking to realize the ideal ruler of his Republic 352 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ill the tyrant Dionysius. It is known that Aristotle studied rhetoric under Isocrates, which he may have combined with his first lessons in Philosophy. The attractions of rhetorical study for a young man at this time must have been very strong ; it was the period of the great Attic orators, whom our j^outh, though he was a foreigner, might have heard addressing the people assembled in the Pnyx with brilliant displav of eloquence. Demosthenes was there, whose life ran quite parallel in years with that of Aristotle. However this may be, Aristotle never lost his theoretical interest in rhetoric, which Plato was inclined to despise, though the writings of the latter are splendidly rhetorical, while those of Aristotle are not. It is likely, however, that with the return of Phito, Aristotle quite exclusively devoted himself to Philosophy, since there is evidence that the rhetorical school of Isocrates afterwards regarded him as a kind of apostate. He pro])ably found enough to do in mastering former Greek philos- ophers, and specially in grasping the develop- ment of Plato, who was at this time over sixty years old. Doubtless he saw his true vocation to be Philosophy, which was the universal Disci- pline, or which was to become such in his hands. But he must have made extensive studies in art and poetry, for which Athens offered specially good opportunities, though the period of ARISTOTLE. 353 their greatest originality bad passed. Athens had become critical, reflective, philosophical, a citj of culture, no longer creative except in ora- tory and philosophy. Very necessary were these refined linguistic studies for the alien youth, who came to Athens with bis provincial, if not rude dialect, a shade of which seems to have remained to the end in the lisp which is noted by Timo- theus the Athenian (Diog. La. V. A.), as the Athenian was very sensitive to any mispronunci- ation of his Attic Greek. It was well that be should study rhetoric first; even if bis parents were educated, he could bardl}^ help bringing to Athens a colonial accent. But what was the institutional background of Hellas during these twenty years? We have the right to suppose, from his many works pertain- ing to the State, that the political interest of Aristotle was always strong. He saw the decline of the third Hegemony of the Greek City-State, the Theban, after the battle of Mantinea in 362 B. C. Athens had risen to a second supremacy, l)ut her power was undermined afresh by the re- volt of her dependencies in 357 B. C. Thus Aris- totle, looking out upon the Greek cities from the central one, could see them all in a condition of mutual separation, hostility, weakness ; there was no doubt of their decadence, the Greek City- State had run its course. Still he had hopes ; as we see by his later work on Politics, he was 354 ANCIENT EVBOPEAK PHILOSOPHY. not ready to draw the full conclusion of the time, though he drew it in part. But let us look to the North, in the direction of Aristotle's home. In Macedon a man of power had arisen and was king, Philip, who as- cended the throne in 359 B. C. He forms the Macedonian phalanx, conquers the neighboring- nations and in 355 B. C. he begins to interfere in Greece, arraying one city against the other. In 348 B. C. he captures Olynthus, the ally of Athens. The eloquence of Demosthenes was exerted to rouse the Athenians against the man of destiny who had evidently appeared. These must have been warm days for Aristotle, whose connection with Macedon Avas known ; at last it must have gotten too warm for him, so he quits Athens in 347-6 B. C. and goes northward to Atarneus, whither he had been invited by the tyrant Hermias, a philosophical friend of his. At this time another cause co-operated. Plato had just died and his nephew Speusippus had been appointed his successor in the school. Other reasons for his departure are mentioned, but are more doubtful. At any rate, Aristotle leaves Athens, his long apprenticeship ends, and a period of change of places with varied new experiences begins. He was thirty-seven years old when he was thus shaken loose from Athens, in preparation for a greater work to be accom- plished when he returned. ARISTOTLE. 355 2. Aristotle Abroad. Two tendencies had ap- peared in Hellas : one was the complete lack of unity among its cities, and the other was the rise of a new united autocratic power in the North, with which power Aristotle was connected by various ties. It is said that during his stay at Athens (in 348 B. C.) he had sufficient influ- ence with Philip to cause the latter to restore his native town, Stagira, after its capture, appar- entW during the Olynthian war. The Athenians would hardly look with favor upon such a great influence with their enemy, though Aristotle is said to have interceded for them too. The death of Plato may have been one ground for Aristotle's quitting Athens, but the deeper reason lay in the Macedonian attitude toward Greece. He must have seen the struofgle rising; between Philip and Athens, and have heard the sound of danger, if in no other way, at least in the thunder of Demosthenes. Aristotle's pru- dence is seen in the fact that the whole time of his absence was a continued conflict between Macedon and Athens. When this conflict was over, Aristotle returned to Athens. Meanwhile we must glance at his career during the present period. With Hermias at Atarneus he remained three years, evidently in philosophic quiet and study, as Hermias had been once a member of Plato's school. But Hermias was slain by treachery, and Aristotle went to Mi- 35G ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tylene. About this time he seems to have taken a wife, Pytheas, the sister or niece of Ilermias. A good many variations on this love affair of the philosopher have been handed down, some of them mal-odorous ; but let them be dropped, and let us hasten to the next important event, when Aristotle went to Macedon by invitation and became the instructor of the son of Philip, young Alexander, in 343-2 B. C, then thirteen years old. Three years later the youthful prince was appointed regent by his father and took an active part in military campaigns. Of these we shall here notice only the one terminating in the battle of Chseroneia (338 B. C), in which the Macedonians utterly defeated Athens and Thebes. All'Greece now lay at the feat of Philip. Athens made peace with him and became submissive. In 335 B. C. the Greeks appoint Alexander their general-in- chief, and the next year he starts on his conquest of Asia. At this time and under such protection Aristotle returns to Athens, after an absence of some twelve years. With what had he occupied himself during these years, making quite a large slice out of the best part of human life? Externally he had swept around the North-eastern horizon of Greece from Mitylene to Pella, the Macedonian capital ; he had loved and o:otten married — somethino' of an experience for a philosopher or any other ARISTOTLE. 357 man ; he had helped mould the mind of the future conqueror of the world ; he had become an edu- cator of vast outlook ; he must have acquainted himself with the policy, purposes and resources of the Macedonian kings. Internally he had much leisure to digest his mental stores acquired at Athens, and to order his thought. We may fairly conclude that he substantially completed his system during this period. 3. Return to Athens. Aristotle was now forty- nine years old, with the central principle of his Philosophy matured and gathering about it all his accumulated knowledge. He felt the need of formulating his work and of propagating it in other minds. Indeed he must have known that unless he planted his work in the rising generation, it would be likely to perish. Macedon was no place for such an enterprise; intel- lectually its people were backward, and its rulers were too much occupied with their grand plans of conquest. Macedon was full of Will, Athens was full of Intellect; to Athens, Aristotle had to return from Macedon, if he would fulfill his philosophic destiny. That city was the intel- lectual center of the civilized world, which could be moved from it and from it alone. Political conquest might proceed from the outlying uncor- rupted, but rude Macedon ; philosophic conquest must proceed from Athens, Moreover Aristotle could feel a personal 358 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PBILOSOPET. security there which he never felt before, even in his first period. Athens was at this time controlled by leaders, such as Demades and Phocion, in the interest of Macedon, under whose protecting supremacy the philosopher could freely do his work. Had not Alexander, his pupil, been chosen generalissimo of all the Greeks? Antipater, the regent during the absence of Alexander in the East, was the friend of Aristotle, as we see by the latter' s will (in Diogenes Laertius Vita Ar.). Antipater's son, Cassander, was a pupil in the School of Aristotle, who was the State philosopher, some- what as Hegel was regarded at Berlin as the State philosopher of Prussia. So Aristotle opens his school in the Lyceum, which was a gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceios in the suburbs of the city. It had shady walks (peripatoi) where our philos- opher was in the habit of conversing with his followers, who were hence called the peripatetics. Besides these walks and talks he probably had a fixed place forgiving lectures to a larger audience. During a dozen years and more he continued his School. Suddenly the news comes that Alexan- der is dead. All Greece begins stirring to throw off the Macedonian yoke. Athens again became too hot for Ail.totlc, he fled to Chalcis (323 B. C.) where the next year he died. The great op- ARISTOTLE. 359 ponent of Macedon, Demosthenes, ended his life shortly afterwards. Aristotle left his School in the hands of Theo- phastus, who transmitted it to the later schol- archs. The master had imparted to it so much of his spirit that it remained a great philosoph- ical influence for many generations. II. Aristotle's Writings. — The need of ex- pressing himself by the written word was quite as strong in Aristotle as in Plato, though he never disparaged it, as Plato did. On the contrary, Aristotle studied language in all its forms, and made the linguistic side of science — such as Ehetoric and Poetic, along with Grammar and Logic — an integral part of his encyclopedic knowledge. Doubtless, as a provincial, he had to cultivate specially the Attic style of Hellenic speech. This turned the philosopher's attention to the nature and forms of language in general, which necessity was never felt by Plato, a born Athenian, and a born stylist in addition. Thus there is a reflective and studied element in Aris- totle's use of words, different from the native and spontaneous flow of Plato, who artistically scouts the artist, and poetically rejects the poets. Aristotle on the other hand very unpoetically treats of poetry, and very undramiJtically shows his love for the drama. It is the grand function of Aristotle to strip the mythus and the image froiu Homer and 360 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PUILOSOFHY. Plato, and to present Greek spirit in the pure forms of thought, or in abstract categories. Often he seems to phiy at making categories, for the mere pleasure of the exercise, so easy it is for him, and so hard for the reader. He refines and divides and distinguishes, and then he may say that some of these distinctions are of little ac- count. He starts (in the Metaphysics) with four causes, then reduces them to two, and still later he uses three. We feel in him often the very riot of abstraction, which is by no means favor- able to clear exposition. So Aristotle likewise has his Greek exuberance, that of colorless cate- gorizing, while Plato luxuriates in imagery and dialectical fireworks of many hues. Still Aristotle, just through this characteristic, has been one of the great educators of the hu- man race. The pure movement of Thought, or Thought grasping Thought as the creative prin- ciple of the Universe, is what he has brought most distinctively to the consciousness of man. Moreover in him the great movement of Hellenic Philosophy has become explicit, and formulated, and partly organized; the essence of Being (the ousia of the on) has reached the Universal in conscious statement, having been hitherto im- plicit. He sees the genetic Thought, the Uni- versal, in the oliject, and proceeds at once to pre- cipitate it into a category, whereby others, in fact all the future, may think it too. For with ARISTOTLE. 361 the category we think; it is a Thought which compels us to re-thiiik the Thought which made it as the expression of the essence of Being. Thus every true category contains Thought thinking Thought. The world is Thought pri- mordially, but this must be categorized, or made over into speech whioh compels Thought to think 'Thought as the essence of the creative principle of the world. In this respect Aristotle is the counterpart to Homer. We have already noted that Pliiloso- phy began in a reaction against a personal capri- cious Will as the creative essence of the world, which it affirmed to be principle, element, law, in fine some category posited l)y Thought. Hence arises the realm of the Categories in contrast with the realm of the Gods — a Pancatagoreou of Philosophy over against a Pantheon of Greek Poetry and Religion. And if we call Homer a Polytheist, Aristotle can well be named a Poly- categorist. Marvelous is this Hellenic mctamor- pilosis of deities into principles, of images into abstractions, which we have been tracing under the name of Philosophy till the process reaches its culmination in Aristotle. Before us passes a vast and intricate play of Gods in the Poet, and an equally vast and intricate play of Categories in thePhilosopher. Butthereis one supreme God, Zeus, in Homer, and there is one supreme Cate- gory, Thought thinking Thought, in Aristotle. 362 ANCIEXT EUROPEAN' PHILOSOPHY. Both sIlo^Y an Upper World ruling a Lower; but Homer's world is the epos of the Gods, interfer- ing, capricious, partisan ; while Aristotle's work is the epos of the Categories eternally the same, motionless and emotionless. It is not our purpose here to undertake the huge task of listing and ordering all the writings of Aristotle. A general outline of his literary labors may, however, be traced. Many of his works have perished, wherein again there is a contrast to Plato, all of whose compositions seem to have come down to us, even those which were left unfinished. This difference in the literary fate of the two philosophers is very significant. Moreover we possess writings of Plato belonging to all three of his periods, which cover his entire philosophic life, while of Aristotle we have com- plete treatises of only one of his periods, the last, though there are fragments belonging to his first period, and possibly to his second. A brief summary of these three periods may be here given. 1. During Aristotle's first stay at Athens (lasting twenty years, till he was thirty-seven) he had to learn to speak and write correctly first, and then wnth precision and elegance. Undoubt- edly he, a boy of seventeen, brought from home a fair primary education, but this was by no means sufficient at Athens, particularly if he was going to speak and write for an Athenian public. ABI8T0TLE. 363 which w:is hideed just his ambition. Hence his earl}^ rhetorical studies with Isocrates probably ; but he soon must have become wholly absorbed in Plato, for reasons which we can easily see if we but compare the writings still extant of the rhetor with those of the philosopher. Then came a long period of study and imitation and appropriation of Plato, as must be expected from the circumstances — Aristotle a young man just passing into the twenties (let us say) and Plato moving through the early sixties, in the very plenitude of his personal power and literary achievement. From the fragments and titles of works still remaining we can tind some traces of his hibor during this period. (1) Dialogues he wrote, evidently copying Plato both in matter and manner. They have perished except a few fragments. A surprising fact about them is the praise lavished upon them by ancient critics for the richness and sweetness of their style — qualities which certainly cannot be predicated of any of Aristotle's Writings now extant. (2) Popular essays seem to be indicated by some titles, as " On Kingship," " On the States- man," " On Education," " On the Good," etc. This sounds somewhat like Emerson, wdio also studied Plato and transformed him into the essay. (3) Studies on antecedent })hilosophers (Dem- ocritus, the Eleatics, etc.); also on cotemporaries 3G4 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. (Spcusippus, Xenocrates). Here wc may see that he has already begun to look back upon the History of Greek Philosophy. (4) There is evidence of his making excerpts from Plato's Works, especially from the Timceus and the Laws. (5) Orations were ascribed to him, some of which, doubtless, fell into this first period when he was trying his hand at rhetoric and at differ- ent kiuds of st3de. Poems and letters of his were known anciently, of which there are still a few remains. Such were some of his works during his years of learning and preparation, in which we see a great activity not only in acquiring knowledge but also in testing himself in many kinds of composition, particularly of the popular (exo- teric) sort. Did he discover his true bent in all these ex- periments? There is evidence that, toward the latter part of his stay, he began to branch off from the School of Plato, and to differ from the master, especially in regard to the doctrine of Ideas. His development from imitation to independence has been traced in the difference between two of his Dialogues — \]iq Eudemus, which was mainly a copy of Plato's Phcedo, and a later Dialogue on PJiUosoplnj, in which he assailed Plato's theor}'' of Ideas, and affirmed the world to be without beginning as well as ARISTOTLE. 365 without end. Anecdote and fable have also handed down in their way the separation of Aris- totle from Plato before the death of the latter. So the inference is that Aristotle had broken through Platonism and had entered his phil- osophic world at the time he left the School. To this inner change were added important external changes which determined the future course of Aristotle. Plato died and gave by will to Speusippus, his nephew, the headship of the School, though all must have known — Plato certainly knew — that the intellectual supremacy belonged to Aristotle. The latter might indeed have started another School. But this was pre- vented by the political situation which was already of menacing proportions. The struggle between Philip of Macedon and Athens had reached the acute stage, and the Macedonian connection of Aristotle made it prudent for him to withdraw from the city. So the Aristotelian School cannot open now ; a new and significant period of discipline must be passed through ere the final philosophic fruit can mature. 2. We have already spoken of Aristotle abroad, and of what he did during the dozen years of his absence from Athens. "What he wrote during this period is not known, but there is no doubt that he was active. Self-expression in writing had become a prime inner necessity to him. We may also suppose that he could look 366 ANCIENT EUROPEAN- PHILOSOPHY. forward to his return to Greece, considering the strong, vigorous power of Macedon on the one hand and on the other the dissension and wealv- ness of the opposing Greek cities. It was not hard for him to forecast the result. But in Macedon, the realm of Will, was little chance for philosophizing ; he must wait till he can get back to Athens, which, quite paralyzed in Will, has become the city of the Intellect. When the segis of Macedon is once held firmly over all Hellas, which event is now in process of fulfill- ment, the philosopher will place himself under it, and live and labor with security on that spot where lies the hope of his heart. In a certain degree we can conjecture the spiritual effect of this separation from Athens with all its advantages and stimulations. He was thrown back upon himself and found there his fresh task. He could not have had in his new situation the same opportunity for reading books, for conversing with learned men, for hearing discourses of all kinds, from the popular address of Demosthenes in the Assembly or Dicastery to the lecture of Plato at the Academy. The Destinies, though seemingly harsh, were really propitious to him in forcing his flight from the home of learning. He, with his om- nivorous tendency in acquiring knowledge, would probably have become, if he had remained, a mere puff-ball of erudition, an enormous en- ABISTOTLE. 3G7 cyclopedia on two legs, such as is mau}^ a learned Professor still in these days. But would he have digested and ordered his stores? At any rate the Destinies banish him, or rather scourge him forth to a changeful career from place to place, with little or no access to books, to philosophic conversation, or external means of culture. He could not help turning inward and setting in order his manifold accumulations. Now he has to commune w^th himself, he is forced to think. Such, we conceive, was the general trend of Aristotle's inner life during this second period embracing his absence from Athens. Undoubt- edly he had many other experiences connected with Atarneus and Macedon, and the North sen- erally. But he had much solitary leisure; he could look inward and sj^stematize all his acqui- sitions more or less separated hitherto, turn them over and over many times in his mind, and finally co-ordinate them under a central thought. Now he is ready and so is Time, which strikes the hour for his return to Athens. 3. All of the writings of Aristotle which we possess in anything like a state of completion, belong to the third period, lasting some thirteen years (335-322 B. C). These works are great in variety as well as in quantity, not to speak of their profundity. A peculiar fact about them is that no evolution can be traced in them, they are 368 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. finished and inter-related, no succession of one treatise after another can be distinctly made out. In Plato's writings there is a development from beginning to end through all his periods. But in Aristotle's books no such development can be found, except possibly m the fragments of his first period, in which he seems to unfold out of Platonism by degrees. We have to infer that he brought with him back to Athens his system quite fully wrought out, though perhaps not fully written out. Accordingly, Aristotle's Philos- ophy gives us a sense of completeness very differ- ent from Plato's; it can not be chronologized into epochs but is all at once, everywhere and all the tmie. The whole philosopher utters himself in every part, the Universal particularizes itself in every thought quite without regard to the when. All of Aristotle's treatises seem, therefore, syn- chronous, and this impression is still further heightened by the fact of the cross references found in them. That is, the various books often refer to one another, backward and forward; for instance, the AnaJi/tics repeatedly cites the Topics, and the Topics repeatedly cites the Ana- lytics. Which was written first? As a whole neither; they doubtless grew to their present shape together, like all the members of a plant or any organism. In like manner there are cross references between the Politics on the one side and the Rhetoric and the Poetics on the other, ABISTOTLE. 369 and also between the Metaphysics and some of the treatises on PJiysics. Aristotle, teaching in his School, and giving several courses each year on different branches of his total system for a dozen years and more, gradually wrote out the whole, perhaps as we now have it. In like manner the literary style of these writings of the Third Period is surprisingly the same. Abstract, colorless, it is the reflective style supremely, and it undoubtedly corresponds to Thought thinking Thought, the very expres- sion thereof in fact. We find scarceh' a reminder of that sweetness and grace which are said to belong to the works of his First Period, when he so successfully imitated Plato and the rheto- ricians. This reflective cast of style he must have brought back with him from the deep med- itations of his Second Period, when he was far away from the temptations of Attic eloquence, and when his Pure Thouoht sloui^hed off all the external ornament of diction. We hold also that this reflective style was more native to him than the ornate, more easily a product of his deepest mental character when he had found himself out. Still further, it is less difiicult for the cultivated foreigner to acquire the reflective part of a lan- guage than the immediate, idiomatic, sensuous part. Aristotle speaking and writing Attic was not Attic-born, ho came a young man to Athens from a provincial Greek town, and then in mid- 24 370 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPnY. die age a second long separation from Athenian speech took phice. So when he again came back to Athens it was easier and more natural for him t© use reflective Greek, as well as altogether more consonant with his Thought which is now to be told in its unrobed purity, categorically. In all the various works of Aristotle, then, we find essentially one and the same system, world-view and style. It is the whole man now complete in his development uttering his whole work in its wholeness as far as possible. Herein lies a striking similarity to the first general movement of Hellenic Philosophy, whose unfold- ing and expression in its numerous systems wc have already found to be mostly contemporane- ous. A little more than fifty years gave us all the Philosophies originating between the Milesian and the Athenian Schools. (See preceding pp. 72, 73.) As entire Greece was then philoso- phizing so now the total philosopher, Aristotle, is philosophizing, he being the concentration in one individual of all those previous philosophers. The various extant treatises of Aristotle can be thrown into three main groups which corre- spond to the general movement of his Philosophy. (1) Metaphysical and logical works, which we classify together under the general head of Metaphysics. (2) Physical and psychological works which ABISTOTLE. 371 are placed in close relation by Aristotle in his scheme of Natural Science. (3) Ethical and political works, with which are joined the Rhetoric and the Poetics. It is manifest that in this division lurks the philosophical Norm as already often given — Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. Aristotle, himself, has no working division of his writings, one which he clings to throughout. In his Topics he has a division which is nearly the same as the preceding, but he makes no further use of it. Then he gives several other divisions in the course of his works. We have, therefore, to think that Aristotle was not yet fully con- scious of the best way of dividing his own writings, the way which came into use soon after his time and which has continued down to the present. Though he wrought after the philosophical Norm it was not yet fully explicit in his mind. Probably his most frequent division of Philosophy is into theoretical and practical (to which he appends the artistic or i\\Q jjoiefic). His library along with his School was left to Theophrastus, evidently his favorite pupil. There is a famous story told by Strabo and by Plutarch about the loss and the recovery of Aristotle's writings. At the death of Theo- phrastus they passed to his heir, Neleus of Scep- sis, whose desceudants stowed them away in a damp cellar where they remained nearly 200 372 AXCIENT EVBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. years, till they were discovered by Apelicoii of Teos,aud brouglit back to Athens. Soon after- ward (86 B. C.) Athens was captured by the Romans under Sulla, who carried them to Eome as spoils of war. There they passed into the hands of Tyrannion and Andronicus who pre- pared a new edition. This story has been sub- jected to a good deal of criticism, and has met with only a partial credence. III. Aristotle's Philosophy. — It is evident from the preceding that the threefold philosophic Norm is more easy to extract out of Aristotle's works than out of Phito's, which are stretched along a chronological line of development quite through the author's literary life. But the writings which contain Aristotle's Philosophy belong in their present state to one period of the author's life, the last and ripest. The result is, they appear to be composed almost at one heat, mutually related and self-consistent. They can- not well be ordered according to the time of origin ; as this is not known we are forced to order them according to their thought, which unfolds on all sides into one system. To be sure such a sj'stem could not spring up in a day, nor ill a year, nor in ten years. It is really the fruit of his whole philosophic life, of all his periods. Still the growth of this fruit in its various stages we do not behold, particularly in its last period. It appears before us fully ripe and ready to pluck. ARISTOTLE. 373 The whole philosopher utters himself as a whole, in one mighty outpour, after having gathered himself up for forty-nine j^ears. Herein he is the Hellenic spirit concentrating itself in its philosophizing. Previously this spirit shot forth into individual philosophies, or rather into indi- vidual phases of one great Hellenic Philosophy, which we have already noticed raying out on the border and at the center of the Greek world. But now the same total Hellenic spirit, after struggling so often and in so many places for expression, has expressed itself in the Athenian philosopher, and especially in Aristotle. His is the universal Philosophy since it is distinctively and consciously the Philosophy of the Universal. It is true that Socrates already sought for the Concept or the Universal, and often formulated it in a category or definition. Now the object of Socrates was to apply his result to the particular case, usually ethical. But Aristotle elaborates the Universal in itself, in its own right, and thus elevates it into the knowino; of itself. The Concept as creative (the genus, the Universal) is in Socrates, but it is notyet conscious of itself as the actual essence of all things, such as we find it in Aristotle. Socrates makes the abstrac- tion of the Universal ; Aristotle not only makes it but is conscious of making it, and formulates the process. All Philosophy must have categories from its 374 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PniLOSOPHY. beginning, though at first they bo tal^en at r;m- dom and unconsciously. Socrates through his Concept showed the method of making categories, though he did not sift and orderthem when made. It is Aristotle who is not only thecategorizer, but the categorizer of categories, criticizing and ar- ranging quite all of those which had been em- ployed before him in the antecedent Philosophies. This is what he largely puts into his First Philos- ophy, being really an organized Pancategoreon, or Temple of all the categories, with the supreme one placed over the rest on its Olympian height. Of course we do not mean by the categories of Aristotle merely the ten w^hich he names in his treatise on the Categories, or even the thirty terms which he defines in his Metaphysics (Book IV". ) Any concept expressing the Universal in the Particular by an abstract word may in a gen- eral way be deemed a category. Aristotle himself is not very consistent in his use of this term, and yet he is the grand categorizer. Though he makes essence a category, and being too, he ap- parently does not see that category is itself a cat- egory. Aristotle's Philosophy, from the very fact of its being a Philosophy, must show itself dividing according to the philosophic Norm into Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics, which we may freely render as the sciences of God, Nature, and Man, constituting the scientific encyclopedia ARTSTOTLE. 375 of the Universe. Aristotle has this encjclopedio character both in his mind and in his works. The All in its fundamental process is distinctly working in him and through him, the Parapsy- chosis is what he sees and voices, in his way and for his time. Yet with such truth and com- pleteness has he done this task that he belongs to all time; he, the individual thinker, has spoken to men the thought of the Universal, and so upon the temporal has stamped the impress of the eternal. It is Aristotle who has ffiven us more explicitly than any former philosopher the concept and the vocable called the Universal, which can only be derived from a vision of the process of the Universe. Of this process the philosophic Norm, with its threefold division before mentioned, is the fundamental ors^anic expression. We" may add here that Aristotle puts far more stress upon the process in general, than Plato who sought to remove his Idea from all connection with the material world. Accord- ingly, this fact should be strongly emphasized in the exposition and comprehension of Aristotle, being a deeper insight into and derivation from the soul moving in all things. His philosophic Norm, both in itself and in its sub-divisions, l)egins to reveal more decidedly the common underlying process which the whole History 376 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of Philosophy is seeking to make explicit in its end. This Norm of Aristotle we shall now elaborate in its general outlines. A. Metaphysics. It has been already noted that this word is not of Aristotle's own coinage, as far as is now known, but bclono;s to the time after him. His term for the present sphere is The First Philosophy or the Philosophy of what is First ( To Proto7i) of Principles, Beginnings, Causes. The corre- sponding Second Philosophy is Physics, which philosophizes Nature, the world, the realm of the sensible, this being regarded by Aristotle as well as Plato as the secondary, the derived (in part at least). Thus Metaphysics gives the first stage or division of the philosophic Norm, which stage is called variously God, the Absolute Being or Essence or Cause. We may note that Aristotle has the habit of designating several of his most important categories as first and second, for instance he has a first and second Essence (^ousia), and a first and second Matter (ht/Ie), which terms suggest the relation of original and derived — also he has a first and second Entelechy . Philosophy is called by Aristotle the universal science, which is the science of the universe as such. His First Philosophy (Metaphysics) seeks to think and express the universe in its ARISTO TLB' S ME TA PH YSICS. 377 pure process, and this process is what hovers continually before him as the Universal, which is the abstract form of it given by thought and formulated in a category. We may repeat that the unfolding of the Universal is the work of Hellenic Philosophy in general ; in Aristotle it has developed to the point of being separated and grasped in itself as a Thought, yea as a Thought which thinks itself. The essense of Be- ing is still the Universal, as it was at the start, but it is now the Universal as Thought thinking Thought. Still there are various stages of this metaphys- ical process. These are also to be conceived as processes which we name (1) the ontological, (2) the logical, and (3) the theological. All these together form the distinctively metaphys- ical movement in Aristotle, yet each of them will be found to have its own special movement. It is worth while for the reader to note that in the names of these divisions the faci of the pro- cess is to be strongly emphasized. I. The Ontological Process. — This deals directly with the essence of Being (the ousia of 07i) which has now become explicit and formu- lated. Hitherto we have found this phrase with its thought implicitly lurking in the preceding l)hilosophies. When Thales said that the prin- ciple of all things was water, he was in search of the ousia of the on, or the essence of Being. 378 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. The same is true of the manifold principles of all things (air, fire, the atom, etc.), which have been promulgated between Thales and Aristotle. It is evident that here is a line of categfories, each of which is affirmed to be the essence of Being. What is their value? This can only be ascertained through having a criterion by which we may judge them. Such a criterion is the final category which must order all the others and itself too. Now this order of philosophical categories will be a science which will be designated after its fundamental principle — the essence of Being — as ontology, literally the science of Being. Hence Aristotle at the start (in his first Book of Metaphysics) gives a brief account of preceding systems of thought, to a certain extent arranged and adjudged according to his principle. Ontology is, therefore, the science of "Being as Being," or of the essence of Being. Now what will this science consist of? Sub- stantially of an examination of the categories which may claim to express the essence of Being. Here, however, Aristotle overwhelms us, and it is not always easy to find his arrange- ment. The following is the way in which we shall construe the somewhat chaotic mass of his categories : — i. The Heal Thing. The starting-point of ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 379 Aristotle is his assertion of the immanence of the Universal or genus in the individual object. Plato had separated the Idea from the Appearance, the Universal from the Particular ; Aristotle returns to the Particular with the Idea, and, so to speak, inserts the same in the latter. Thus that which is phenomenal or unreal in Plato becomes real in Aristotle, or the Real Thing. This is a significant point in the Philosophy of Aristotle. It shows his turn to the individual object, and toward the study of Nature, away from the pure Ideas of his master Plato which were abstractions from the reality. It is the reality to which Aristotle will return, yet with the Idea, not as separate from it but immanent in it. This is a going back to the World, from which Plato had estranged Greek Philosophy by insisting upon the pure Universal apart from aU manifestation. Aristotle reconciles Thought with the physiocentric starting-point of the Hellenic Period. He will not leave out Nature, the Particular, the Appearance, but gives to this side of the Universe its due validity. Hence the debt of Natural Science to him is great. It is, therefore, no wonder that Aristotle be- gins in his first Book of the Metaphijsics his po- lemic against Plato's Ideas, and ends it only with the end of the whole work. So it may be said that this work commences and concludes with the 380 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. refutation of the Ideal Theory, accom})anied by numerous iuterveuhig thrusts. For this reason it has often been declared that a personal feeling of hostility existed in the pupil against the mas- ter. Possibly ; still the difference in the point of view is sufficient to explain the warmth and the persistence of Aristotle's attack. The general objection of Aristotle to Plato's Ideas is their separative, isolated character. They are in fact but abstractions of the mind from par- ticular objects and hence are particular and mani- fold themselves. They are called Archetypes, Syecies, Ideas, etc. ; yet they are hardly more than another set of particular objects. Plato has not given any clear or consistent account of the relation between Ideas and their real counter- parts. The two sides are generally held in com- plete separation, though sometimes things are said to participate in their Archetypes. Now Aristotle evidently deems it his prime philosophical task to unite these two sides, to overcome this separation which he finds in Plato. So he brings back to the particular thing the Universal or the Idea from which Plato had di- vorced it, reducing it merely to a shadow or an appearance. Also he returns to Socrates who always started with the individual object and sought to find in it the essence, the concept or the Universal. Still further, he returns to the reality of Nature with which Greek Philosophy ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 381 started. Hence his strong statement is of the Real Thing. Still Aristotle does not at all propose to do away with the Idea or the Genus, only it does -not exist apart from the particular thing. In fact the onh' object of science is the Universal, the true essence of the thing is the Genus which is just what we know. The ousia of the o)i is with him also the Universal, the Concept or Idea. But what now about the particular thin o- in which the Universal or the Concept was im- manent? Strictly it cannot be known in itself, for only the Universalis the object of knowledge. Thus again a separative dualism enters the object itself in spite of all of Aristotle's attempts to get rid of it. The result is a doubling of certain cat- egories peculiar to Aristotle. 2. Pairs of Categories. At this point we have to consider the trend in our philosopher to duplicate his terms in reference to the object which he has found to have both a particular and a universal element. He spends a good deal of effort in this attempt, and it must be confessed that some of it seems superfluous. It has its an- alogy to earlier Greek philosophers, for instance to the Pythagoreans, who arranged principles in pairs of opposites. Still we may regard it as a stage of the total ontological process, which is first the unity of the Idea and the Appearance in the Real Thing; but the latter is now dualized 382 AXCIEKT E UR OPE AN' PltlL OSOPH Y. into various forms of the Universal and the Particuhir. (a) The first pair may be placed under the head of Cause and Effect. The thing (the Real Thing) is the effect of which the cause is sought [arche, aitia). Here again we observe that Aristotle, having united Plato's Idea and Phenom- enon into his Real Thing tries to get back of the latter and find its cause or source, which he will also call sometimes Idea, by its Platonic name. Thus he cannot altogether shai^e off the spell of his master in spite of his struggles. Accordingly, the doctrine of Causes is to be considered of which Aristotle mentions four {Met. 1.1, 8). For instance a statue has a material Cause in the stone of which it is made, a formal Cause in the pattern or conception after which it is made, an efficient Cause in its maker, a final Cause (or End) in the actual statue when made. Aristotle uses these four Causes in his criticism of former Philosophies all of which sought the Cause (or Essence) of Being in common, but found for it different kinds of Causes. For example, Thales had a material Cause (water) which in the foregoing account we have called elemental. The grand instance of the final Cause is in the Nous of Anaxagoras. But these four Causes Aristotle reduces to two: the final Cause or End, and the material ARISTOTLE' S METAPHYSICS. 383 Cause; thus we come to the second pair of categories which he names Form and Matter. The four Causes above mentioned plaj^ed a great part in Schohistic Philosophy and have appeared in modern writers as a basis of philosophic exposition. But with Aristotle we may pass on to what he has evolved out of them. The material Cause suggests matter; but matter itself, especially in this particular form of a material Cause, must be determined by something else behind it. Hence the followins:. (6) Form and Matter may, then, be taken as the next pair, being directly suggestive of Plato's Idea and Appearance. Form (eidos or morphe) is inherent in the thing, inseparable from it except by the abstraction of thought. Form is the essence or the Idea, yet this Idea is not like Plato's, existing apart from the individual object. The latter is determined by it, receiving from it not simply the outward shape, but all other qualities. What is then left for Matter {hyU), which also belongs to the individual object? It cannot do without the Idea or Form, as the latter cannot do without it. It is, therefore, the absolutely formable, and so it too can have no existence outside of the mind. Thus the Real Thing of Aristotle is made up of two abstract elements which are not real, except in their unity. Through the conception of 384 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPUW Matter, however, he is led to form iinother })air of categories. (c) These are llie Potential and the Actual. As ah-eady stated, Matter is supremely the Formablc, the capacity for Form, but neither Form itself nor the Formed. Matter is not ]Non-Being, as Plato and the Eleatics declared, it is the Being which is not yet but may be. Thus it is not merelj^ the Negative, but the seed, the germ, the Potential. For example, the wood is the potential table, the possibility of it, while the table is the poten- tial made actual. Yet it can be said that the wood or the tree is the potential seed made actual. So the particular thing may be both potential and actual according to the way it is regarded by the mind. The thing as formed Matter becomeis sim[)le Matter to a higher Form ; it is both potential and actual. Still in both directions there is an extr'^me; in one way lies the first (or })ure) Matter, in the other the first (or jnire) Form, though these two likewise seem upon anal- ysis to coincide. This first Matter Aristotle conceives as the substrate of every determinate object, being without determination or predicate itself. It is eternal, the changeless in all change, the abiding element which underlies all becom- ing. Matter, therefore, corresponds to the Po- ential, yet the latter is something more, since it ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 385 implies the process of which the Actual is the completion. But what makes the Potential move into Actual- ity? Here Aristotle iutrockices a third assumed element: Motion, which mediates the Potential and Actual. But if the two latter are simply held asunder, or even used as correlated opposites, they are quite the same as Matter and Form. The two, however, the Potential and the Actual, are now conceived as constituting a process through the mediating third ; this process must therefore have a name of its own, as it shows a new stage of the present thought. With this process, also, w^e have moved out of the forego- ing twofoldness which expressed itself in pairs of categories. Of these pairs three have been given, showing a connection between themselves. Aristotle hav- ing asserted the Real Thing, seeks next to find its Cause ; but this Cause is found to have a ma- terial form, in which a new pair appears (Form and Matter) ; to bring these two together a third pair (Potential and Actual) is introduced which pass finally into the process of Entelechy. In all this we see Aristotle's desperate struggle with the Platonic dualism, transcending it, yet always fall- ing back or forward into it again. 3. Entelechy. The object is grasped as having the total process within itself, and is no longer either twofold or simple. Entelechy is the true 25 386 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. actuality, in which the Actual is not held in opposition to the Potential but takes it up into itself and unites with it in the process of true Being. The sculptor not working is potential, but makino; a statue he is continually actualizing; his potentiality, which constitutes him an actual sculptor (^actus). It is the process which makes him actual; without it he is not, but may be. Very important is this thought of Entelechy. With it Aristotle grasps and formulates the onto- logical process or the inner movement which is the essence of all Being. Form is not now at rest, as is the Idea of Plato, but is perpetually becom- ing Form out of Matter which is the Formable ; it is an eternal energy or rather energizing. Entelechy is the Universal as the process of Being. Aristotle's ontology has as it were gone back to the Real Thing with which it began, and has unfolded in the same its process of Entelechy. The etymology of the word would seem to have some such purport, suggesting that which has its own end (telos) working within it and making it actual. It is the Becoming of Herac- litus not as external change or the flux of all things, but it is the Becoming as Entelechy or the inner process of Being. This we may also consider the Psychosis as purely ontological, not yet as psychological. It is indeed the Ego of Aristotle which projects out of itself this ABIS TO TLE' S ME TA PHYSICS. 387 Entelechy, but does not recognize in the same its own threefold process, which is, as it were, stamped upon Entelechy. Entelechy, however, is the process of sub- sumption, not that of creation. For the first stage (Matter, the Potential) is something given, yea eternal; the last stage (Form or the Actual) is also given; so is Motion or the mediating stage. Thus the pr©cess of Entelechy is the subsumption of the Potential under the Actual through the mean or middle term. Entelechy is not the positing of the Potential through its own act, whereby the whole is a creative process. We may call Entelechy imperial, the commanding and sub- ordinating principle which brings a disordered world into a universal system. It is the empire of Alexander which puts all the scattered nations (as potentialities) into the one process with itself. Thus the world remains no longer in its potential stage, but the lowest is mediated with all in an ordered whole. The next step in the movement of Aristotle's thought is to make this inner process of Entelechy external in speech, to express its movement in categories, which show the forms of all Thinking. These forms were implicit in Entelechy, but are now to be made explicit and shown in their outer relations to one another. Here we pass from the ontological to the logical Process 388 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of Aristotle. lu the latter the outolosical Process of Being, which was immanent in the object, is separated from the same, and is taken bj itself, being developed in its own sphere and expressed in its own terms. II. The Logical Process. — This is usually placed first in expositions of the Aristotelian Philosophy, of which it is supposed to be the instrument (^organon). The implication here is that the Logical Process prepares the terms and the method which are to be applied in all the other sciences. According to this we should expect to find in Logic the categories already unfolded and the procedure already set forth in which Ontology, for instance, develops into a system. But such an expectation is completely groundless, the fact is altogether different. Aristotle does not use his Logic in his exposition of Ontology, which on the whole has its own set of categories and its own pro- cedure. And when we look into the other scientific expositions of Aristotle, for instance, the Ph3^sics, we find that it is rather the onto- loo'ical Process than the logical which furnishes the terms and the method. This fact alone is sufficient to call up a decided doubt in regard to the propriety of putting Logic first in the Aristotelian system wntli the express or implied doctrine that it is the ordering principle of the whole Philosophy. ABISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. -389 Still further, in the work on Metaphysics as it lies before us, we find that the discussions are mainly ontological, but in the Fourth Book there is an exposition of categories among which are the main ones set forth in the logical treatise " On the Categories." Without putting too much stress upon this fact, we can regard it as suggesting that Logic interlinks with Ontology and that the point of such inter- linking is hinted, especially as both are made to start with the same Category of Essence (^ousia). We may, therefore, reasonably infer that Aristotle himself did not consider his Logic as an instrument — he nowhere calls it his Organon — for ordering the sciences, but rather he regarded it as an integral co-ordinate part of his system with its own scientific right in its own sphere. How then has the misconception about it arisen? We learn from Waitz (Org. IL 293) that no Greek commentator till the sixth century A. D. applies the term Organon to the logical treatises of Aristotle, though they were previously called organic in the sense of being an organic part of the Avhole sjstem of Philosophy. This is in our judgment the right view of them — not an instrument of the other parts but an organic part of the whole. Not till Theology got hold of Aristotle's Logic and made this an instrument for its purposes, 390 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. makiug at the same time all Philosophy a handmaid (ana'Ua) or an instrument, did the name and idea of Loo;ic as an Oro^auon become current. From this medieval usage the term has descended to our own time. I have given these details, since in the above ordering of the Logical Process, I felt myself compelled to run counter to the chief historians of Greek Philosophy, as well as to the leading expositors of Aristotle. The function of Logic is to show Thought pass- ing over into Speech, or the process of mind uttering itself in the process of language. The Entelechy now clothes itself in words which show its movement. Logic seeks for and expresses the connecting process between Thought and Speech. It is not Grammar which proceeds from the side of language, taking up the same as a fact and classifying it in parts of Speech and their rela- tion. But Logic proceeds from the side of Thought (or from the Ontological Process), which it unfolds into lano;uaoe. Can we see Thought moving into and though Speech and revealing therein its forms? Or can the ontological Pro- cess be made to externalize itself into a kind of skeleton of words, and thus bring out what are often called the Pure Forms of Thought? These are said to constitute the content of logical science. Here, too, we have to begin with the essence ABISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 391 of Being, which is the Universal as the supreme category of the Logical Process, often named its summiim genus. Now this Universal in Logic subsumes the Particular, quite as we found the Entelechj in Ontology subsuming Matter or the Potential. Still further, this subsumption is made through a Mean or Middle Term in Logic (corresponding to Motion in the process of En- telechy). Thus we reach the kernel of the Logical Process: the Particular is subsumed under the Universal through a mediating term. Such is the hierarchical order of Log-ic in which can be seen the spiritual character of the Middle Ages. On the other hand Aristotle has also the counterpart to this deductive movement, namely the inductive or epagogic movement from the Particular to the Universal, which he inherited from Socrates, whose rise to the Concept or Universal has been already given. Medieval Scholasticism, however, naturally put its stress upon the hierarchical side of Loofic, makino- the same largely its mental discipline, till Bacon in the Eenascence restored the inductive prin- ciple, which was really a restoration of the total Aristotelian process of Logic. It was also a restoration of the right of the Particular to help make the Universal which subsumes it. Nor should we omit to note that this same movement is correlated with the right of the 31)2 ANCIENT EUIiOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. human iudividual, which likewise asserted itself anew at the Renascence. Still there is no doubt that the deductive side of Aristotle's Logic is the more emphatic, and is what has made its great fame, as well as given to it its importance as a pedagogical discipline. It shows w^hat is complete demon- stration, formally at least; it is the t3q)ical movement of all proof through its process of subsumption. Thus it gives a basic form for all classification of details; it runs a thread of unity through the infinite mass of particulars that always keeps flowing in upon us from the outside world. Undoubtedly the mind sub- sumes and classifies instinctively, but it was Aristotle's great merit to make the mind con- scious of its own method in this regard, which method thereby becomes a scientific acquisition for us all. While Logic may be called the science of the Forms of Thought, we must not consider this Thought to be merely subjective. With Aris- totle as with the Greeks generally. Thought and Being were so completely one that there is little or no separate elaboration of the subjective side of Thinking. Hence the Forms of Thought are just as well the Forms of Being, separated in- deed from immediate Being whose process we have found to be Entelechy. The stages of the ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 393 latter fall asunder and find verbal expression in this separation through the Logical Process. The central facts of this Process are three, Concept, Judgment, Syllogism. Each of which again has its stages. 1. The Concept. This is expressed in a cate- gory, in which the ontological and logical pro- cesses are immediately united. This primal cate- gory is the essence of Being (^ousia of the ow) in both cases. Moreover, the fundamental statement of Logic must be the same as that of all Philos- ophy: the essence of Being is the L^niversal. But Logic begins when we think of this essence (oM.sv'rt) as subsumed under the Universal, whereby the former becomes subject ''and the latter predicate. Or we may say the Particular is (sub- sumed under) the Universal. The part in paren- theses is present but as yet implicit. The move- ment of Logic is to make it (the subsumption) explicit. For instance, in the sentence John is a man, John, the subject or the particular one, is explicitly subsumed under the Universal, man. The Concept man, however, has the subject still implicit, yet present and seeking to become ex- plicit in a sentence — which event has now taken place. 2. Judgment. So is named the second stage of the Logical Process, which shows tlie subject Of the Particular as explicitly placed under the Universal by the Copula. But there is a vast 394 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. multiplicity of judgments, the world is full of them — the world without as well as within. Logic proceeds to harmonize this div^ersity and separation, by developing the Copula, which was an immediate joining together of the Subject and Predicate, into a Middle Term mediating the extremes. Thus three terms appear, and with •them three judgments, which now take the name of Premises, Major, Minor and the Con- clusion. So the act of subsumption which was implicit in the simple Judgment becomes explicit itself in a Judgment uniting two separate Judg- ments by a Middle Term which is both Subject and Predicate. 3. Sj/JJogism. This is the name of the scheme of the three Judgments just mentioned, which are seen to form a process together. This process (the syllogistic) is the completely actualized Logical Process, which started with the Concept in which both Subject and Copula were implicit (or potential) ; then it unfolded into Judgment, which made the Subject explicit, the Copula being stilt implicit; finally in the Syllogism all three are explicit and uttered in words. Thus the movement of subsumption has completed itself. Still of this explicit subsumption there are various methods which are called the Figures of the Syllogism, properly three, though a fourth has been unnecessarily added. The first ABISTOTLL'S 31ETAPHYSWS. 395 Figure is so ordered that the conclusion is both affirmative and universal, the second can have only a negative conclusion, the third a particular conclusion. The first Figure gives the perfect form of Demonstration, hence Aristotle shows the ways of converting the other Figures of the S3'llogism into the first, which process of conversion thus indicates the return of the negative and particular into the positive and universal. These matters our philosopher has wrought into numerous details which we shall here omit. It should be observed, however, that Aristotle by no means subjects all knowledge to the Log- ical Process. There is a realm above it, jSTous or the Intellect proper ; also there is a realm be- low it. Sense-perception, which is immediate and can not be proved. Logic is the realm of medi- ate knowledge or science (ejnsfeme). According to Aristotle there can be no Lowic of Sense-perception ; also the intuitive Intellect (jV^ous) gives a kind of knowledge which tran- scends the Logical Process, yet upon which this Process depends, for instance, the summum genus. Thus Logic lies between two unprovable realms of knowledge which it has to take for granted. The Syllogism is, therefore, the subsumption of all particularity of the world under the Uni- versal or the Supreme Genus. But what or who 396 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. performs this act of subsumption? I, perchance, for one, am performing it now. But this sub- sumption is, has Being, is objective, and existed long before me and without me. Who, then, is the universal subsumer behind this subsumption of Being? The Universe is a Syllogism, let us say; but who is its syllogizer? With these questions we begin to rise to Aristotle's conception of God, and to see that over or behind his Logical Pro- cess, there must be the Theological Process upon which it really depends. God syllogizes the Universe, and I re-syllogize it after Him, think- ing his creative thought of it syllogistically. Loo;ic is the externalized Form of Divine Think- ino- — the machine as it were of the Universal Eeason (hence often called Eeasoningor Eatioci- nation). But the machine is not the machine- maker or the machine-mover. The formal Syllogism must take its premises from the outside, and so is unable to prove them within itself, and above all, is not able to prove itself internally or externally. Given its supreme premise, it can subsume every premise less than itself under itself ; but whence this supreme premise? Given this logical or hierarchical order of the world, how does it ofet to be? Here ao;ain Aristotle shows that his Phitonic training is really the deepest fact of his philosophizing. The dualism of Plato ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 3'J7 comes to Yisht in his need of finding; the Idea which lies behind and determines this outer h)o;ical realm. But such an Idea, having come u}) for ex[)ositiou, will not be wholly set off by itself, in the Platonic fashion, but will be treated in Aristotle's manner, which is to give it some power in the world, if not all. Accordingly we find the theological element more developed in Aristotle than in Plato in spite of the hitter's mythical tendencies, and also in spite of the suggestion of Proclus (who calls one of his treatises a Platonic Theology). Perhaps we may say that Aristotle has more Theology, and Plato more Religion. We must not fail to observe also that Aristotle has a Theol- ogy which is not fixed in one category, but which shows an inner process through three of them. III. The Theological Process. — The Aris- totelian Philosophy rises to Theology or the science of the Supreme Being. This we maj' well deem its highest point as well as its greatest service to mankind. Greek Philosophy started in an anti-theistic tendency, seeking for a fixed principle of all things as against a creative arbi- trary Will. But it has reached Theism in its on- going development through Aristotle, who does not fail back, as Plato often does, into a mythical view of the world. On the coutrarj^ Philosoph}'' in Aristotle becomes thcistic by evolution and not by relapse. Hence it has a great future be- 398 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. fore it in forming the rational foundation of Christian Theology. Herein, too, the pupil Ar- istotle makes his most distinctive and original step beyond his master Plato, even if lie often drops back into the latter, and in some cases deepens the Platonic dualism. When the medieval period used Aristotle's Logic to rise to Theology, it was giving the best interpretation of the philosopher's Logic, and was putting it into its right place in his system. This is the place to which we have assigned it in the preceding exposition, differing from the modern commentators generally. But time is, after all, the best expositor, and to its voice the individual student or teacher may well pay some heed. Aristotle's Theology is chiefly contained in the same book — the Metaphysics — as the Ontology, to which it is a return and of which it is a fulfill- ment. The ontological Process externalized itself in the logical Process, whose final form was the Svllogism. But the Syllogism in its turn callsfor the Syllogizer, as the real essence of itself as well as of all Being, which has become syllogized. Thus the process of Being is no longer imme- diate as in Ontology, but is mediated through the Divine Process. Ontology may treat of the es- sence of Motion — but what starts this motion? who is the First Mover? Again, it is Ontology which unfolds the Entelechy in Being ; but there is something behind this Entelechy — what is ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 399 the Entelechy of Entelechy? As before un- folded, this Entelechy is the pure process of Being (potentiality, energy cand actuality) ; but whence this process and how did it get to be? Only through another process (or Entelechy) which is the process of all processes — Absolute Being, God. Aristotle's Theology is, accordingly, a return to his Ontology, whose categories it elaborates anew, whereby they are transformed and applied to Absolute Being or God. These we shall glance at in this new conception. 1. The First Mover. Or we can say also, the First Cause. Eunning back through the chain of causation, we find the primeval cause is de- rived from motion. The world before us is full of motion, which comes from another motion or moving object, and this from another still ; what is the source of it? The First Mover, is Aris- totle's answer, for a chain has to hang on some- thing. But mark, this First iMover is not moved, else it would be involved in the finitude of Mo- tion, and become a part or a link in the chain, and not its source or cause, since it too would l)e caused. Hence there is the following process in the thought of the First ]\Iover : — (a) It is the unmoved and uncaused, within itself the undivided. {h) It moves the world, determinos the same to all motion. 400 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. (c) It is, then, the moving not moved {kinoun oil Mnoumcnon, movens non mofiim). This last becomes a very important thought for the future, running throuo;h all the later Greek and Medieval Philosophy as well as Theology. Undoubtedly at this point a question comes up : How can the First Mover move anything without being moved itself (or himself)? Aris- totle has his answer ready: The thing imperfect desires God, but He, the perfect, does not de- sire it for his perfection. The First Mover affects us and moves us like a work of art, which is itself not affected or moved. The statue of Zeus stirs the beholder, but it is not stirred itself. It shows me the Divine Ideal toward which I strive and move, but it moves not toward me. All the world seeks the perfection of the First Mover, who cannot change or move without be- coming imperfect. The First Mover can have no Feeling or Will, since both Unitize him through Motion. Aristotle's God is the ideal statue of the Supreme Being of the Universe, immovable and causeless, yet moving and causing all; we may consider Him the Phidian Zeus philosophized and made into a category. Thus in that Greek Avorld the act of worship is becoming an act of thought, and Religion is turning to Theology. The unmoved Mover suggests a mechanical re- lation to the world as moved, the latter being determined to Motion from the outside. But ATtlSTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 401 now arises the fnct that it is also determined to its Motion from the inside ; the work!, in order to respond to the first Mover has to be prepared, pre-disposed, pre-formed to such a movement; it has to move, though He does not, it has to de- sire, though He does not. Whence does it get this peculiar character, and who formed such a world? 2. Pure Form. The Absolute Being is Pure Form, conceived as separate from the formed world, whose Idea or Archetype it is, independent, self- existent, immaterial, since it is the negative of all matter. Here the Platonic Idea makes itself de- cidedly felt again. Moreover it is the Highest Good, the end toward which all things aim ; their Form in itself strives toward the Pure Form, the Idea, God, who is thus in the things of the world (immanent) and also above them, dis- tinct from them and in Himself (transcend- ent). He is their order and their orderer, just as the character of the school must be in the mind of the schoolmaster and in his school. God as Pure Form reflects the principle of organiza- tion in the Cosmos, which is the real ground of its moving through itself toward the First Mover. God as Pure Form is both immanent and transcendent, or rather the unity of the two in a process — the one Infinite Form and Form of all Forms. Here rises the fact that there are also many 26 402 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Forms, indicating something opposite to Pure Form which enters into it — Matter. This is the absence of Form, which is nevertheless to be formed; it is privation (sferms), the Nega- tive. Yet only through it can the individual object be obtained from Pure Form, whose op- posite or counterpart Aristotle seems to consider as Pure Matter {eschate hyU). Now Pure Form is the unformed or formless (as the First Mover is moveless) ; also Pure Matter is unformed or formless ; thus the two opposites or extremes are one and the same according to Aristotle, {Met. 1045 h. 18,) who also speaks of a First Matter. But this unity of Pure Form, and Pure Matter is not a negative result as might seem, but a process with new categories, namely. Form as the actual and Matter as the Potential, and their unity as the complete process (Potentiality, Energy, Actuality) which is Entelechy. This category, which we have also met with in On- tology, is next to be theologized, as we have already seen in the two cases of Cause (or the First Mover) and of Form (the Pure Form as Idea or the Good), both of which have been ele- vated into categories of God. 3. Pure Entelechy. The Absolute Being is Pure Entelechy, the Divine Process of all exist- ent Processes, the Entelechy of all Entelechies, which now divides within itself and beholds itself J ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 40.1 as the absolute Process or Pure Entelechy (called also Pure Actuality). This brings before us the most perfect Being, God, whose thought must be of himself, namely of the most perfect object. God cannot be the thought of the world which is imperfect. He can only be the thought of Him- self, if He be perfect. He can pay no attention to the world or to man who loves Him ; if He loves in return. He has a finite content to His love and is in so far imperfect. In like manner His thought can be a))out nothing finite, other- wise He finitizes Himself in his thinking. Still less can He be the creator of a realm of finitude without reducing Himself to imperfection. He has perfect blessedness, which can only come from His occupying Himself wholly and exclus- ively with what is perfect, namely, with Him- self. God is never-ceasing self-contemplation {theoria). He divides into subject and object, the seeing and the seen, but is one and the same in both. Thus He is self-consciousness as di- vine ; not only does he think but He is Thought thinking Thought, and can be nothing else. An- axagoras had N'ous (Thought, Eeason), which ordered the world ; but here N'ous is doubled and turned back upon itself {Noesis JVoeseos). The dualism of Form and Matter is overcome in the fact that the Form is now its own IMatter or Con- tent, and the immanency of Form in Matter has become complete transcendency. 404 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. From this point of view God is called often Pure Actuality or Pure Entelcchy, or the most YQixl^QiVL^ (^eiis realissimum^. He is the abso- lute Process beholding itself as absolute. This Process we can trace in Him as the self-conscious act of the Universe, eternally self -separating and self-returning in thinking itself. It may be doubted if Aristotle conceives of God as Person, as Ego, even though He be self-conscious, for He is without Will and without Love or Feeling. He is still Being whose essence is now Thought thinking Thought; that is, all Being, the Uni- verse is just this Noetic Process. Aristotle is not dealing with the individual subject like you and me. With him the All is self -consciousness, Thought thinking Thought. We may see that the Syllogism, reaching up to the summum gemis, which subsumes all else, yet is itself the unsubsumed, corresponds to the First Mover, the unmoved one who moves all else, and likewise to the Thought thinking Thought as the process of all processes. Logic thus is the counterpart of Theology which by its very nature expresses itself syllogistically, sub- suming the world under itself in a hierarchic fashion. The medieval union of Logic and The- ology lies in the character of both and goes back to Aristotle. It is not too much to say that God syllogizes, in the Aristotelian conception of Him. In this connection it is significant to note the ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 405 inherently triune movement which runs through the Syllogism. It has three Terms, three Prop- ositions (Premises and Conclusion) three Fig- ures, each of which has three subsumptions. As seen by Aristotle, God syllogizes in trinities, which make up all Being, and which man has to re-construe after Him, in order to think His Thought in His way. So we put together the three categories — the Fn-st Mover, Pure Form, and pure Entelechy — and seek to order them into a Process, naniino- it the Theological Process. This order, however, is not to be found in the extant works of Aristotle. He has the three mentioned cate- gories and elaborates them more or less fully, but his elaboration of them is not consecutive and not connected together and not always con- sistent. This may be owing to the imperfect condition in which his writings have come down to us. Still we can see in them that psychical movement (the Psj'chosis) which we have so often found secretly determining the thought and the development of all Greek Philosophy-, and which is ultimately to evolve its own com- plete self-conscious expression. As this Theological Process has been the most effective and influential part of Aristotle's philos- oi)hy, reaching down through Europe to the present tiuie in ([uite every form of Ghristian 400 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Theology, we can well afford to look back at it and giasp it in a summaiy. The First Mover is transcendent immediately, quite mechanically, over the physical world, and is the source or cause of all Motion, which is the essence of Nature, according to Aristotle (see his Physics, passim). The First Mover has also his inner Process : (1) the unmoved, (2) the mover, (3) the unmoved mover. Pare Form is immanent in the material world, yet also is conceived.as in itself, separated, trans- cendent. Hence the twofolduess of this stage of thought. The necessity of the immanence is seen in the fact that the First Mover could not move the world unless the latter had the capacity or immanent power (desire) of moving toward Him. This power is of God, or is God as Pure Form. But ao;ain Form cannot be manifested without Matter, which is given and unformed. So here also we have an inner process: (1) Pure Form, (2) Pure Matter, (3) their unity, which has to be conceived as the immanence of Pure Form or God in the world which desires Him as transcendent. Pure Eiitelechy (or Pare Actuality) is again transcendent, not now immediately ( as the First Mover) but mediately through the Process, ultimatcl}^ through the Process of the Thought which thinks Thought, The total sweep may be seen iii the following movement: (1) The im- ABISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS 407 mediate or outologicjil Process: («) Potenthil- ity, {h) Energy, (c) Actuality. (2) The Process separating within itself and making itself the object of itself, the second stage of self- conscious Being. (3) The unity of the two sides, in which the Process returns into itself through itself : which fact may be fully formu- lated as follows: Thought (the Process) thinks (the Process) Thought (the Process). Such is the explicit derivation of the oft-cited formula : Thought thinking Thought. This is the highest point reached by Hellenic Philosophy and is the touchstone by which it is to be tested. It de- clares that Being is ultimately self -knowing, that the essence of Being (the ousia of the on) is self-conscious Thought. Science can now be seen to be possible, the Universe can be known, and even man through vision (as shall be set forth later) can share in the Divine Pro- cess. Such is the completed movement of Aristotle's Metaphysics, with its three main Processes — ontological, logical and theological. How these are intimately connected together, we need not further repeat. Having thus developed the first stage of the philosophical Norm of Aristotle we may proceed to the second which pertains to the World, to the Cosmical Order. 408 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. B. Physics. Of Aristotle's writings, the Physics or the Philosophy of Nature forms the largest part, while in Plato this division is the smallest. Such a fact is highly characteristic of the ten- dencies of the two men : the one turning away from the phenomenal world and the other turn- ing towards it. Yet Aristotle carried over into this world the Concept or Idea, and so, while he does not neglect experience by any means, his construction of Nature is on the whole a-priori. This presupposes Metaphysics and its categories, which are to be applied to Physics, which science goes back to the metaphysical concept of God as the unmoved Mover. For that which he moves, though motionless himself, is the phys- ical world ; hence Motion arises and the Aris- totelian Physics may be called, in the last analysis, the science of Motion, including all bodies which are subject to Motion. On the other hand, Metaphysics is the science of the unmoved, culminating in Theology which treats of the unmoved who is the Mover (see Met. V. 1, 1026, a. 19), and so the Divine, whose science is the highest and most worthy. We must consider it a great advance of Aris- totle beyond Plato, that the latter elevates the conception of God from the physical sphere (in which the former makes Him the world-shaping ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 409 Demiurge) to the metaphysical sphere, in which He is expressly Thought as uuiversal. In Plato the Idea seems to be apart from and above God, the creator of the world. Still Aristotle does not hold God to be the creator of the world through His Will. Nothing can be made of nothing. Matter exists primordially for Aristotle as well as for Plato ; and just this is one of the points at which the former passes again into the Platonic dualism after all his struo-o-les to rise out of it, Aristotle, however, has strongly asserted his deity to be a self-conscious Being, and thereby has started Theology as a science. The transition from Metaphysics to Physics lies in the fact that God, being desired by the material world, produces Motion. This takes many forms as birth and decay, qualitative and quantitative change, finally change of place, the latter being regarded as the universal form of Motion. The physical works of Aristotle constitute a vast mass of dissertations which are not con- nected together by their author. Their scattered, disorganized condition seems to repel all attempts at ordering them, still a principle of organization is soon found running through them and putting each i)art into its place. The whole is a Philos- ophy of Nature or of the physical world; that is, the philosophic Norm is to ))e applied to that part or element of the Universe which we call 410 AN CI EN T EUR OPE AN PHIL OSOPIl Y. nature or the world, and is to reduce the same to science. But in this science all three elements of the Universe — God, World, and Man — have each a share, constituting the basis of its three divisions, which here follow. First is the Formative Process taken by itself, in which the World, separated from God and hence material, longs for the First Mover and so produces Motion, the active forming principle. Second is the Cosmical Process, which deals in general with the formed world and its move- ments — the physical Cosmos as such. Third is the Human Process, which treats of the rise of the soul of man, which is the returning principle of the Cosmos out of the primal separation of matter. It will be seen that this formulary of Physics has much in common with that of Plato whose general outhne is followed. Still there are im- portant differences. Both of course connect their physical science with the antecedent Meta- physics, though Plato's point of connection is the archetypal Idea after which the Demiurge pat- terns the Cosmos, while Aristotle's point of con- nection is the First Mover whose perfection Matter (which is given from the start) desires and so produces the movements of the Cos- mical Order. The one Process of Physics dis- rupting itself into three divisions which are also AJtIS TO TL £" S PII YSI CS. 4 1 1 Processes we ui:ij see in the following ex[)ljina- tions. 1. The Formative Process. This can hardly be called the Creative Process (as it may be in the corresponding place of Plato's Physics) since there is here no world-forniino- Demi- urge as person patterning Matter after the Idea. Of him Aristotle has gotten rid in the physical realm, which, however, longs for the perfection of God as the unmoved IMover, and so moves toward Him, really in order to get rid of Motion (or external determination). The Cosmos longs to be God, the moveless Mover, or better still. Thought thinking Thought, self-conscious Be- ing. But there is the alienation or separation, (steresis) pure Matter (hi/Ie), which is eternal and thus eternally persists in producing Motion. (1) Already we have considered the Supreme Being as He (or It) is in Himself, that is, metaphysically. But He has also a physical relation as the source of Motion. (2) Matter is that which is moved in Aristotle, not directly that which is formed by the Demiurge as in Plato. It is the potential whose essence it is to become actual, whereby we again come to Motion as (3) Entelechy or the poten- tiality of matter realized. Hence Aristotle in his technical way considers Motion to be the Entelechy of Matter or the process of Matter manifested. Accordingly, in Phj^sics we have 412 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. to keep in miud the first Mover, the first Moved, and that which partakes of both the Mover and the Moved — the Cosmos, Nature. God, the unmoved, does not seem to mean that He is not moved from within, but that He is not determined from without. If He be self-conscious and thinks Himself, He has to have so much inner movement. But He deter- mines what is outside of Him, the material world which desires Him, yet is itself eternally separated from Him. This is the dualism of Nature which shows itself just in Motion — the world externally determined yet seeking to be self-determined or self-conscious. The forma- tive Process, be it of generation and destruction, of qualitative or quantitative change, is the Entel- echy or the potential becoming actual, and there- fore lies in the object, in its nature or character. Motion is the desire of the outer to be inner, and forms the world in the effort. 2. The Cosmical Process. We have just seen the Cosmos produced, but as a thing produced it also must have its Process, which keeps it going. Its essence is still Motion. But it is Motion embodied in its own distinct world, which is not controlled directly by the will of the Demiurge, but through material objects themselves in their desire for the First Mover. But here enter secondary relations, name]}', those of the mov- ing objects to one another, for they both im- AEIS TO TL E' S PIl YSICS. 4 1 3 part to others and receive from others the original Motion coming from the First IMover. Thus a principle of conflict enters, since the Motion sprung of their desire may collide with the INIotion of some other object. Still out of these conflicting materials the cosmical Process brings forth order, the Cosmos. A brief outline of this varied field mav be mven. (1) The cosmical Process as embodied has certain underlying ideal elements, which, how- ever, Aristotle conceives with a sensuous sul>- strate. He defines space as " the limit of the surrounding body " {PJiys. TV . 6) which body is thus conceived as containing a space which is always the same. Space is not regarded as in- finite by Aristotle ; it does not circumscribe the world, but the world circumscril>es it, limits it to itself. Time is, however, infinite in Aristotle, but potentially so, as the infinite can only be potential, not actual. Time is the measure or number of Motion, which is Time actualized in Space. But the infinity of Time can be fully actualized only in the Cycle, which is the self- returning movement; thus the total Cosmos revolves upon itself forever. Nature in the day, the month and the year, suggests these ever-returning; cvcles of Time in bodies movinoj through Space. (2) These moving bodies form the visible Cosmos, which may be called real, in contrast to 414 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PBILOSOniY. the previous ideal or abstract elemeDts — Space, Time, the Cycle — which, however, are not con- ceived by Aristotle in their pure abstraction (the modern way) but with a material substrate. The real or embodied Cosmos consists of the First Heaven, which supports the Fixed Stars and revolves as a solid vault on its axis, being attracted immediately by the First Mover. This sphere of the Fixed Stars communicates its motion to the lower Spheres, hence it is double, both moving and moved. But these lower or planetary Spheres (the Second Heaven) are many, each having its own Sphere and Motion, and they revolve about the Earth as their center, which is the center of the Cosmos. Still they also have their own movement in opposition to the o-eneral movement. Here enters the fact of individuality, or special capacity of each body, which it asserts ao;ainst being moved from with- out by the moved Mover, the sphere of the Fixed Stars. Finally is the central sphere, the Earth, which is declared not to revolve on its own axis, and to be the realm of finite Motion in contrast with the infinite cyclical Motion above. This fanciful scheme, though supplanted by the Co- pernican theory, we still have to study when we read Dante, especially his Paradiso. (3) The cosmical Process has an End (feJos) or goal toward which it is moving and which is the inner cause of Motion, or the Final Cause* ARISTOTLE' S niYSICS. 415 so-called. Though Aristotle combats Plato's conception of a World-Soul, he puts into the World something very similar. All Nature is regulated by an order, which has a purpose. Aristotle refuses to call the Cosmos an animal (with Plato), still it is animated by a design which it strives to realize, namely perfection. In a famous saying he declares that God and Nature do nothing in vain; the study of Natural Science is to penetrate this universal end. So Aristotle also has the conception of a World- Soul, which is a truly Greek conception, going back apparently to the Milesians with their hylozoism, but is quite fully elaborated by Plato (see preceding p. 320) who makes the Demiurge create it, and assigns to it a mathematical character. In these respects Aristotle is differ- ent; still, he too, has a living soul in the World with an End which is the source of all activit}'. So it comes that the chief function of Natural Science is to discover the laws of the movement toward the End or the Final Cause. We must indeed carefully investigate the individual ob- ject, but such investigation is not science till it be correlated with the universal End of total Nature. All this may sound as if Nature proceeds with conscious deliberation in formino; the world after her design, like the artist who makes a statue. But Aristotle declares that even thouoh the 4 1 G A NCIENT E UR OPE A N PHIL SOPHY. artist should proceed unconsciously, he still has the End outside of himself, in his work, while Nature has her End inside herself. She is the maker and the made, she has the End but it is immanent in her own form or forms. Still, owing to the resistance of the material in which she works, she may produce a monstrosity — she fails to realize her End. Nay, she produces a line of imperfect shapes in her ascent toward per- fection. Here enters the conception of arise of Nature unfolding herself through a series of forms more and more perfect towards the supreme End, which can only be God. This rise seems to begin with the inora^anic, ascending through the organic up to the conception of Nature with her End. Reviewing the Cosmical Process as a whole, we find in it primarily the Cosmical Elements (Space, Time, the Cycle) ; then comes the Cos- mical Body (the First Heaven, the Intermediate or Planetary World, and the Earth) ; third is the Cosmical End which is manifested in the Cos- mical Body showing the ascent of Nature (the Inorganic, then the Organic, which reaches up to man with his Soul). Aristotle has a descent in the Cosmos whose lowest stage is Matter, which resists the End with its moving and shaping power. But at the extreme point begins the ascent which is the movement of Nature through and toward its End. ABISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 417 Plato owing to his repugnance to the phj'sical world as a whole, seems to make the descent deeper, and so places the rise and return at a different point. 3. Man — The Human Process. This is essen- tially psychical ; Nature produces a body having a soul, which soul is, in Aristotelian phrase, " the body's first Entelechy," is the living body as potential made actual in the soul's Process. (De Anima II. 1). Or the essence of the body (the ousia of the on') is the soul. Or in stiU different categories, the body is Matter of which the soul is Form. To Aristotle belongs the credit of having first grasped Psychology as a distinct science (the treatise De Anima). To be sure, psychical phases had been noticed by previous philosophers and partially ordered, especially by Plato. But to separate the science of the soul from its immediate adjuncts, and to look at it as it is in itself, begins with Aristotle. On the one hand he connects it with the body and so gives to it a physical side ; on the other he defines it w^ith his metaphnsical categories (Entelechy, etc.). That it is ultimately the soul which makes these cate- gories does not enter his head. The supreme creativity of the soul, the Creative or Formative Reason (N^ous poietikos) comes to man from the outside, and departs from him with his decease, apparently lent to him for a lifetime. 27 418 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PniLOSOPHT. A fully ordered and connected sj^steni of Psychology is not to be found in Aristotle. His book is composed of shreds of organization, but it is not organized as whole. Still he emphat- ically suggests that there is such an organic Whole, but it is to be developed by time. The most that can be done b}'^ us is to present some of these fragments as ordered by him here and there. 1. First is the division of the soul into three fundamental forms or stages in ascendino; order ."^ the vegetative or nutrient, the animal, and the rational. The vegetative function belongs pri- marily to the plants, but is" taken up also into animal life, which has feeling, sense-perception, and locomotion. Those again are all found in man, who has in addition Reason (JSTous). 2. In the lower stages of intellection Aristotle has made some important distinctions. What he calls Phantasy is the soul's power of retaining the image after the perception of the object. This image may rise involuntarily in memory mneme), or voluntarily in Recollection {anam- nesis). All these furnish materials for the still higher activity of JSFous. 3. In general Aristotle sees and affirms not only in his book on the soul but also in his Meta- physics, the supremacy of J^ous, Reason, Intel- ligence, Thought. The dominating purport of his Philosophy is that Thought is essentially AUTSTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 419 creative of the object, which conception we found already in Socrates. It indeed underlies the whole Athenian movement. "We saw the Metaphysics of Aristotle culminating in Thouo-ht thmking Thought; the Phvsics we now behold ascending to man whose distinctive trait is de- clared to be this Eeason or Thought (N^ons). But here arises a great difficulty. Aristotle makes a distinction in this Eeason which h:is probably given more trouble to his readers and commentators than any other passage in his works, being aggravated by the fact that it involves a religious question, the belief in the immortality of the soul. There are two kinds of N'ous. First is the Passive B-eason (jVous pathetil^os), the receptive element of the soul, under which term Aristotle would include sensation, memory, and imagination, and even reflection. Still the Passive Eeason has to respond to the external object, in so far as to take its impression, and thereby to reproduce it as copy. In this con- nection our philosopher uses the famous com- parison of the mind to a tabula rasa, or to the white sheet of paper upon which the outer world inscribes itself. Here also can be applied an- other well-known philosophic expression : Xihil in intellectu, quod nonfueritinsensu. The Pas- sive Eeason thus represents the mind as deter- mined by the outside sensuous world, and is declared by Aristotle to be perishable. 420 ANCIENT EUBOTEAN PHILOSOPHY. Then comes the second kind of JSfous, called the Active or Formative Reason (N'ous poietikos) . To it Aristotle applies a distinctive set of predi- cates. First, it is separate (choriston) from the soul; vrhile other activities are not separable. It comes from without [fhurathen) , and " it is divine alone." This seems to mean that it comes from God or the Absolute Being. Moreover it is impassive, immaterial, immortal. How it individualizes itself and co-operates with, the Pas- sive Reason, from which it always remains separate, and what becomes of it after the disso- lution of the mortal Passive Reason, is not told by the philosopher. Yet the mind " can think nothing^ " without this Formative or Creative Reason. We can well understand why many commenta- tors have interpreted this view of the soul pan- theistically, that is, as inconsistent with individ- ual immortality. So in ancient times the Stoics, and the later exegete Alexander of Aphrodisias ; so in the Middle Ages the Arabian Peripatetics, followed by many expositors of the modern period down to the present day. And yet there are strong grounds for thinking that Aristotle could not have regarded his supreme God, the immovable and indivisible, in this way. How could a divinity, whose character is to be eter- nally by himself alone, impart himself to many individuals? From the outside ( whence Aristo- ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 421 « tic does not say) the Creative Soul enters the body or rather the individual, being pre-existent; then it departs unsullied after the death of the body, being post- existent, very much like the Platonic Idea. And here again we note that Aristotle, with certain changes, chiefly in his nomenclature, falls back upon his master Plato. In regard to the Passive Eeason, it can take and preserve impressions of the external object ; whence does it get this power? On the other hand, the external object has the power of stim- ulatinof the iniaoje in the Passive Reason — whence does the object get such a power? Thus both sides, the mind and the object, or the im- pressed and the impressing, call for a common creative principle which is over both and unites both. Also the two kinds of JVotis have a com- mon principle indicated in the name. Repeat- edly Aristotle declares that the thinking act and the object thought are one, or that the mind thinking the object, thinks itself in the object. Now this is the essential function of the Creative or Formative Reason: it sees itself as the generative principle of the world, which world is what images itself in the Passive Reason, while this in turn stimulates the Creative Reason to think, that is, to repro- duce the stimulating world. We can only say that such seems to be the process whereby Aris- totle connects together his two kinds of JVouf} 422 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. with the Noximenon. Furthermore the state- ment may be allowed that the Passive Reason can attain to knowledge or the cognition of the object (^ejnsteme) , but that Creative Reason at- tains to the recognition of the object (fheoria) as itself, as its own self -reproduction. In other words, all coo;nition becomes recoo-nition throuo;h the Creative (or Speculative) Reason. We find a third kind of JSTous mentioned in Aristotle, the Practical Reason, which considers thought as antecedent to action. This kind of N^ous also has a creative power, being able to transform and regenerate the entire nature of man. At this point, however, we begin to enter the sphere of Ethics. Accordingly we ma}' consider the Psychology of Aristotle as round- ing itself out with three kinds of Nous or Reason: (1) The Passive Reason which repro- duces the impress of the object, from image to cognition; (2) The Creative or Formative Reason, which reproduces the object making such impress; (3) The Practical Reason which repro- duces and makes over the entire soul of man, bringing him to lead a life in accord with the supreme End, or with true Being. The JSTous Poietikos which we translate Forma- tive or Creative Reason has a decided resem- blance to the Domiurge of Plato both by its name and character. Its name is applied by Aristotle to artistic production [poiesis) in which ABISTOTLE' 8 PHYSICS. 423 the arti.st tran.sforms the given material into his work. So the Demiurge uses Matter as his given material for world-forming. The Formative Eeason of Aristotle enters the soul from without and enables it to think, that is, to re-create the, world as Thought . But the Formative Reason is as distinct from the soul as such, as is the Demiurge from the Cosmos. Aristotle, however, seeks to get rid of the Platonic Demiurge by his doctrine of Motion, which is the potentiality of Matter becoming actual. Having thus banned the demiurgic soul out of the Cosmos apparently forever, Aristotle nevertheless lets him in at the last corner of it w hen the human soul has to be endowed with an original world-forming power. Thus our philosopher, after getting out of Plato, docs not get rid of him really, but has to drop back (or perchance forward) into him in the final outcome. So Aristotle shows himself again unable to transcend the Platonic dualism, which, if he fully succeeded in doing, would be to transcend Philosophy itself. But he remains the philosopher still. At this point, then, the Physics of Aristotle concludes with its three Processes — Formative, Cosmical, and Human. In the latter the soul rises out of nature and becomes ethical, where- with the transition to the third stage of the philosophical Norm has taken place. The fore- going Philosophy of Nature has shown God's 424 ANCIENT EUEOPE^AN PHILOSOPHY. part, the World's part, and Man's part in the total process of the Cosmos, which process involves the separation from God and the over- coming of this separation in the soul's return to God. Through this return man and vrith him the Universe become ethical, and the phi losophic Norm rounds itself out with being ethical also by means of its third stage, which is now to be set forth. C. Ethics. Under this title are included several different treatises by Aristotle — three works on Ethics, the Politics, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics. These various productions are loosely joined to- gether, and it is not easy to find their connecting links. The three ethical treatises taken by themselves, will not cohere; nay, the main one, the Nicomachean Ethics, does not form a self- consistent whole. Aristotle sometimes seems to regard Ethics as an adjunct or branch of Politics; then again the two are treated as co- ordinate divisions of a higher science, which has to do with the entire sphere of human action, namely Practical Science. It should be tiddcd that two of the treatises on Ethics — the Eudcmian and the Great Ethics — have been suspected to be not genuine works of Aristotle. Still there is in Aristotle the outhne, even if ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 425 vjigue in places, of a sphere which nmy be called ethical in the wider sense, embracing Morals and Politics, and possibly Poetics. Thus there ap- pears an order in this sphere, not fully explicit in the philoso})her, but which an expositor, look- ing back at it in the ]io;ht of its succeedins^ evo- lution, can see and unfold in a more definite shape. The ethical sweep of Aristotle shows in a gen- eral way the return of man to True Being which is Thouo;ht thinking Thcnioht, or God. The same return essentially we find in Plato's Ethics, though the outcome is different, since True Beinij in Plato is the Idea, or the abstract Good. The supreme ethical attainment in Aristotle is the vision of the Divine (^theoria). Says he: " Such an activity is the best though it is ours but for a short time." (See the well-known passage in Met. XL 7, 1072 h.). Man cannot continuously have this theoria, as God has, but he can rise to it through an ethical discipline. Thus he shares temporarily in the eternal nature of God, attaining therein blessedness throuo;h the vision of perfection. " Theoria is the most delightful and the most excellent" of all things, the supreme attainment. Here again we have to see that Aristotle moves on the great general lines which Plato laid down, though with significant differences. Even Aris- totle cannot help having a return and restoration 426 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of luaa, after some kind of desccut, for the ground-work of his Ethics. He may avoid the couception of a lapse through Nature, or a pri- mordial fall; still there is a descent from the First Mover down through the First Heaven and the Second Heaven to the Earth and Matter. When he comes to man, he puts both tendencies into the human soul, the lower and the higher, the irrational and the rational. At this point begins or may begin the ethical rise, for the soul has also Will, which is the power of subordinating its lower elements to its higher, or to Reason, who is finally to be enthroned in man somewhat like the First Mover, toward whom all the imperfect and finite elements of the soul move as toward the perfect and the infinite. In fact, this movement of the separated, imper- fect soul unto the perf ect Reason is the Will of Aristotle, corresponding to that Desire in the Cosmos for the First Mover, whereby resulted all Motion in the physical world. Ari stotle denies the pre-existent soul of Plato. Yet we have seen on a previous page how closely he brushes to it in his conception of the Forma- tive or Creative Reason {^N^ous j^oietlkos) , which enters the human soul from without sonie- whence and survives the death of the body and the evanishment of the Passive Soul. Thus it is something separate (chorision), existent in and throui>;h itself. Now this Formative or ABISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 427 Creative Eeason i,< the essential ethical prin- ciple in man, which is to unite him with the Divine, ' even for a httle Avhile " in this life. Plere there seems to be a pre-existent element in Aristotle's conception of the soul, and it is this element which makes it ethical. From these statements we can see that Ethics in Aristotle also constitutes the third stase of the philosophical Norm whose two previous stages were Metaphysics and Physics. The cul- mination of Metaphysics was the theological Pro- cess, to whose highest principle Ethicsis the return of the soul from its extreme alienation in the irra- tional Body, through its rise to the Divine, whose Process is given in Metaphysics. Herein we find that san)e ultimate underlying psj^chical move- ment which we found in Plato, and which we shall find in all Philosophy. At the same time Ethics will have its own Process, showing a comj^lete psychical movement within itself, whose stages are the following : — First is Avhat we may call Personal Ethics, which shows the Good inmiediately real- ized in the conduct and life of the individual through the Will. Second is the Good in con- duct (or possibly its opposite) represented in a work of art, particularly in the drama, whereby the good character is separated from its imme- diate doing (praxis) and is made to manifest itself through a new form of production (j^oiesis). 428 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. which is the fickl of Poelics. Third is Institu- tional EtJiics, showing the Good realized iu In- stitutions, especiallj the State, whose object is to reinforce the Will of the Individual in realizing the Good in his conduct and life, wherein we see the return to Personal Ethics. Such is the pro- cess within the ethical sphere which is itself a return of man to the metaphysical sphere, partic- ularly to the Divine part thereof, whose essence he is to make his own. Such is Aristotle's ethical scheme as a whole, though some portions of it are by no means so adequately wrought out as others. 1. Personal EtJiics. Aristotle seeks not so much the G(jod in itself as the Good in man and what is good for him. The Idea (here of the Good) must bo realized in the individual. In this respect he contrasts with Plato, w^ho begins with the Good as Idea, while Aristotle must have from the start the Good individualized in man. Still he keeps the Good as the ultimate end in which all other and lower ends culminate and which is, therefore, the means for ethicizing human con- duct. Now what is the Good, or the end wdiich all individuals strive for? Aristotle's answer to this question is Happiness (eudmmonia). But such a term is still indefinite and the phi- losopher proceeds to limit it and to explain it. It is not pleasure, for he declares that pleasure cannot be the motive of right conduct, though it AniSTOTLE*S ETHICS. 429 be the result. To complete Happiness belong external goods, wealth, health, even good-luck ; still these are not the essence of it. True Hap- piness lies in man's noblest activity, that of Reason; self-realization of his highest manhood is the happy state. The man doing his best in the best thing that he can do best, may be deemed the happy man. The work must be done for its own sake on the one hand, yet also for the sake of the doing, which is the highest activity and which is Happiness. This highest activity producing Happiness is the activity which is distinctively man's: namely. Reason. Such rational activity must have its own name and is called Virtue. But there are mimerous forms and stages of rational activity, hence at this point comes the division of Virtue into the Virtues. At the start this division is twofold in Aristotle — the diauoetic and the moral (Eth. JSfic. I. 13, 15. ) The first is the development of the rational element in itself, the second is the proper sub- ordination of feeling and appetite to this rational element. A double moral discipline is here sug- gested: that of the higher (Reason) within itself, and that of the lower which is to obey the higher. Besides these two kinds of Virtue, Aristotle suggests the third kind, natural or physical Vir- tue. For Nature of herself longs for the Good, though obstructed by IMatter, and the lower or 430 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. appetitive soul tends of itself to Reason and so possesses its own peculiar Virtue, which is thus the normal or natural product of human instinct and desire. So when we put his divisions to- gether, he seems to have three kinds of Virtues — the immediate or physical, the subordinated or ethical, the self-determined or theoretic (dianoctic). After these three general divisions Aristotle proceeds to consider the single Virtues. Each is a mean between two vices which are its extremes; thus true courage lies between cowardice and rashness. Virtue is a process of the soul which unites and reconciles its own opposites, being really a continual return out of its own separa- tion. As this continual activity or process, it is emphasized by Aristotle as a habit (hexis). To regard Virtue as a mean between two extremes is open to objection, since it is likely to be misconceived. It suggests as man's supreme action the conduct of the trimmer and the tem- porizer. Still the deed of Virtue is not to strike the balance between two opposing principles, but to realize the best self, the highest conviction of what is the Good. Aristotle's mean must finally be regarded not as an end in itself, but as a means for attaining this supreme ethical end. In the ultimate Virtue (fheoria) we cannot seek the mean, there is no too-much, even if there be a too-little. Virtue as mean is determined by ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 431 reason as arbiter, and thus presupposes knowl- edge. We have to know the two extremes as vices in order to establish the mean as Virtue. The supreme ethical attainment in Aristotle is the theoria (vision, contemplation of the Divine as habit). This brings with it the highest hap- piness, or blessedness. It is a participation in the perfection of the Absolute Being, in the pure self- conscious One of the Universe. It is the highest dianoetic Virtue, sometimes called theoretic Virtue in the rather unstable nomenclature of Aris- totle. The ultimate end (felos) of man is to make himself Thought thinking Thought {noesis noeseos). Such a man is verily the philosopher, is just this Aristotle, to produce whom his ethi- cal and metaphysical doctrines unite. This is the sweep of his whole philosophy, its innermost method, which is not found in his logical Or- ganon. The supreme principle of Aristotle's Philosophy is thus the intellectual vision of the process of the All, and is grounded in his per- sonal charater, in his very selfhood, whose hio-h- est delight or blessedness is to see in everything this Thought thinking Thought. Hence comes all true knowledge, or science itself. The scien- tific man is thus the moral man in the supreme sense. This does not mean (with Socrates) that knowledge is virtue, but rather that virtue is knowledge ; man is not good in proportion as he knows, but rather he knows in proportion as he 432 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PIIILOSOPIIY. is good. Nature, Aristotle often asserts, has as its end the good; so man is naturally good, though by his own will he can become bad. A certain order we may, therefore, find in Aristotle's ethical writings, though not without uncertainties. (1) He has the natural or instinc- tive Virtue in which Nature is considered good. (2) But he has also the subordination of this instinctive natural element, in which Nature is not considered good. Here is the realm of the rational versus the irrational, with Reason deter- mining Virtues by the mean between two ex- tremes or vices, which are natural. (3) But the highest Reason and the highest Virtue come to- gether in the tJieoria already defined, for now Reason is what Virtue is and Virtue is what Rea- son is. Thus the cycle is complete : Aristo'Je's Philosophy has unfolded the Ethics out of the Metaphysics, and then the former back into the latter. 2. Artistic E tides — The Poetics. Aristotle elaborated a doctrine of the Fine Arts, but to find its place in tlie system is not easy. Only a single fragment (the Poetics) belonging here, has come down to us, and this leaves in doubt many important matters. It would seem that Aristotle conceived of a sphere embracing all the artistic products of man's intelligence, including the useful as well as the fine Arts, which were the result of construction (jwiesis), in contrast ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 433 with action (praxis). The science of the latter would be Ethics, of the former Poetics in a wide sense. From the existing treatise called the Poetics (in a narrow sense), we see that Aristotle (like Plato) regards the essence of Art to be imita- tion. Still the object imitated is not merely this particular thing, but is the universal, the genus. Herein is that characteristic which we observed at the start in Aristotle : the essence or idea is not to be separated from the manifestation (which is particular) but is one with it, constituting the reality (see preceding, p. 378-9). Thus Art is to manifest the universal as immanent in the in- dividual object, and this is the artistic imitation of it mentioned by Aristotle. But Plato would cast away all Art as the imitation of the Appear- ance, or the Appearance of Appearance. This is his general trend, though he is not always consistent. But in this sphere Aristotle's most famous dictum is that poetry is truer (more phi- losophical) than history, since the particulars of the former are so chosen and set forth as to reflect the universal more adequately than do the events of the latter. Still Aristotle does not deny that there is a philosoph}^ of history, and he specially indicates that there is a history of philosophy. We have a right to say that Aristotle's concep- tion of Art is ethical, since the artistic individual 28 434 ANCIENT E UB OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. is to represent what is rational and universal. The tragic catharsis or purification is certainly ethical in some form or degree. There has been much discussion about the exact meaning of this catharsis. Tragedy must show in the death of its hero the law of his deed, or the universal consequence of his act ; he does not perish merely through an accident. The catharsis comes to the spectator by beholding the universal law in the particular career of the tragic character. Art and specially tragedy, according to Aristotle, ethicizes the individual through its catharsis. For this reason we would place the Poetics and Art generally, according to its Aristotelian con- ception, as an element or stage in the total ethi- cal Process, which shows man's discipline unto the Good. Already our philosopher sees that Art is fundamentally ethical, though it may turn to the opposite of its true purpose. The expos- itors of Aristotle have had great difficulty in finding the right position of the Poetics in his total system. Usually it is put last, which means that it is thrown outside and cannot be co-ordinated with the whole. Such an act of de- spair is not to be_ thought of. We cannot doubt that Aristotle held that Art, by its repre- sentation both of Gods and Men in their action and character, was a great ethical trainer of the race . Moreover, in ordering it, we can well place it ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 435 in the second stage of the entire ethical Process, since the artist separates the individual from his immediate world of action and projects him into a new world of art in which his action and char- acter are represented. The spectator thus be- holds an ideal ethical discipline, even the Divine itself manifested in visible shape, whereby he re- ceives or may receive for his own life and con- duct purification. While the Art- World thus works upon the Eeal World, and helps to make it ethical, there is a third World, that of Institu- tions, which according to Aristotle has the same purpose of rendering man ethical, of bringino- about his return to a participation in tlie Divine. 3. Insfitutional Ethics. Aristotle, in harmony Avith Plato, is convinced that the individual alone cannot become truly virtuous ; he must have in- stitutions to assist him. All virtue is, therefore, primarily political, is determined by the State which for the Greek is the chief institution. The Family is considered at some length by Aristotle in his Politics, also the Social or Eco- nomic Order; but the all-comprehending institu- tion for him is the State, which is an ethical entity likewise, higher and more perfect than the individual, who is not ethically self-sufficient without the State. It is true that Aristotle has treated of Personal Ethics as a sphere quite by itself, in which the individual is shown rising to virtue through his own inner development and 436 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. effort. This, however, is but one side or stage of the total process ; an outer institutional counterpart must co-operate for his training, practice, and persistence in virtuous conduct. Thus we see a sphere of Institutional Ethics turning back to the sphere of Personal Ethics, confirming it and even reproducing it in the in- dividual by education. Also right conduct is enforced in the State by law. The object of the State according to Aristotle is not simply the protection of person and property, not simply to secure internal welfare and to ward off external foes, but is likewise to produce the highest virtue in the citizens, who are to obtain happiness through the State. As already set forth, their happiness can only be produced by rational ac- tivity of the individual, who is, therefore, by reason of the State to attain his supreme self- realization, which is Virtue. But this Virtue we have seen differentiating itself into three main Virtues — phj^sical, moral, and dianoetic. But how do these arise in the individual citizen? Only through the State which thereby gets the benefit of them in turn. Already we have seen the individual in possession of these three kiuds of Virtues (under the head of Personal EtJilcs) ; we have also heard that the individual obtains them through the co- operation of the State. Next is the question: Whence comes this State? ABISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 437 Man is a State-making animal (poUtikon zoon) says Aristotle. The State evolves bv nature, man builds it instinctively, as the bird builds its nest. Aristotle regards the State as before the individual, it is the total organism of which the individuals are parts or members ; it is the ethical Whole from which these parts or members derive then- ethical character. Aristotle shows his State as a growth, which unfolds through the Family and the Village Community ; it is a natural product. Plato's State is, on the contrarv, an ideal projection, and yet manifests a relapse to the past, to something like the Village Com- munity, in a number of its features. Aristotle's State unfolds into many forms, such as Aristocracy, Democracy, Monarchy, each with a good and a bad representative. These forms he discusses in some detail. On the whole Aristotle manifests aristocratic and autocratic leanings. Barbarians are to be enslaved, the rulers are the citizens with equal rights and with nothing to do except to govern, unless a super- eminent man ni^pears, who is to be the absolute monarch. Education is to be deemed the chief duty of the State in Aristotle. If the end of existence is to unfold the supreme rational activity of man, and if this end can only be attained through the' State, then the Litter's main function is "educa- tion of the citizen who is so to administer the 438 ANCIENT EUBOFEAN PHILOSOPHY. State that it may perform its work, namely, reproduce himself. The highest product of the State must be the philosopher, the man who is capable of Theoria, or Thought thinking Thought. It ma}^ therefore, be said that in Aristotle the State exists for the philosopher, while in Plato the philosopher exists for the State. It is true that Plato also holds that the State is necessary to make men virtuous,' to train them into the idea of the Good. But when indi- viduals are so trained, the}' are rulers, guardians (in the Republic) , the highest class in the State. The philosopher, by virtue of his training, has to be a ruler in Plato's State, but no such ne- cessity hangs over him in Aristotle's State. Even the philosophic individual Plato would not permit to run free, but remands him to his institutional place. But with Aristotle he may be a ruler or not. Plato's School has its end in the State, or indeed is the State; per contra, the State has its end in Aristotle's School, and exists supremely to make Aristotelian philos- ophers. Aristotle's State interferes with the individual from the beginning ; it tries to say whether he shall be born, and if born, whether he shall live. The supply of individuals is to be regulated by the State. The child, once granted the right to exist, is to bo educated according to the ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 439 scheme of the State, which seeks to cull forth in it the three great divisions of virtues, phj^s- ical, moral, and dianoetic. Gymnastic training is the chief means for the first, upon which Aristotle in his Politics gives us a number of observations. Music in the narrower sense (not including poetry) is the chief ethical dis- cipline for the youth — an unusually high place for it according to modern notions. At this point Aristotle's scheme of education, as set forth in his Politics, is brought to a sudden close, possibly owing to the fragmentary char- acter of the work. What we most miss is Aristotle's views on education is the dianoetic virtue, or the supreme training to rational activity. To make his scheme complete, he should have shown how the individual is to be educated into participa- tion in the highest philosophic principle, which is Thought thinking Thought [iioesis iioeseos). Thus the State through education would have mediated the return of every born (or rather saved) individual to the Tlieoria, to that exalted virtue of Contemplation through which man shares in the Divine. But when we look into the matter more closely, we begin to spy certain reasons which may have stopped the philosopher from carrying out his scheme to its last conclusion. If the State edu- cated the man upwards into the pure realm of 440 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHIL080PBY. theoretic (dianoetic) Virtue, he Avas beyond all practical activity, beyond the State itself. The great end of education is the contemplative life, in which the Will is quiescent. The State is to produce the philosopher at its best, but the philosopher at his best is not to produce or to administer the State. That would be a descent from the lofty pinnacle of the Theoria. Aris- totle's State has as its supreme end to bring forth an Aristotle, but such an Aristotle cannot bring forth his own State, which, however, he has brought forth seemingly in spite of his doctrine. He is the lofty movens non motum ; the State is to move toward him, but he cannot move toward the State, at least not without degradino; himself. Such is the deep separation between the in- dividual and the State in the last outcome of Aristotle's political Philosophy. Really it is a phase of that dualism inherent not only in Aris- totle' s but in all Philosophy. It is the First Principle controlling not controlled, moving not moved, the autocrat of the Universe who is desired but desires not, who is loved but loves not. The State must long for Aristotle, the philoso- pher, and seek to reproduce him as the quin- tessence of its activity ; but Aristotle, the philoso- pher, is not to long for the State, as it is some- thing finite and lower than himself. And yet he is just the man who has constructed this State, ABISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 441 and so must have longed for it with the serious- ness of a man seeking to help his country, since it is no mere bubble blown for the pleasure or the dexterity of the thing. Still it is a great and fruitful thought of Aris- totle that the chief function of education is to reproduce in every soul the institutional W'Orld. For this reason the State must support education, which supports the State far more than armies. It would be well for modern thinkers on educa- tion who are apt to dwell so exclusively upon the individual element of it, to go back to Aristotle and learn the institutional element which is its deepest ground of existence. Looking at Aristotle's conception of the State we find in it a movement embracing the follow- ing stages: (1) The State grows by nature, evolves immediately out of the natural man, through various grades of institutional life. (2) Its end is to produce the highest virtue in its citizens. (3) This end is to be attained by edu- cation, which is to reproduce in the individual the entire realm of institutions. Thus the ethical process as conceived by Aris- totle has completed itself. What we call Insti- tutional Ethics has returned to and reproduced Personal Ethics, making the individual ethical. Still further, this whole sphere of Ethics we liave seen going l)ack to Metaphysics, especially to its highest activity, which is Thought thinking 442 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PIIILOSOFIIY. Thought, aud making the same live in the con- duct of the individual. The philosophic Norm — Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics — has rounded itself out to that form and degree of complete- ness which we find in Aristotle, and which constitutes the distinctive character of his Phi- losoplw. Already we have seen this same Norm in Plato, but realized so differently as to consti- tute the Platonic Philosophy with its distinctive character. And with many diversities this same Norm will run through all Philosophy, and will everywhere show the like excellence and the like limitation. The philosopher enounces the prin- ciple, the law, the universal freed from all caprice and change ; but he leaves himself out as the determiner of this law or principle which determines everything. The autocracy of Phi- loso})hy is sublimated in Aristotle's God who is himself motionless and emotionless, though the cause of all motion in nature, and of the highest emotion in man, namel}^ blessedness. Still we are to see how A^ast a step Aristotle has taken in this formulation of the one supreme Deity, which is verily the capstone of the Hel- lenic Period of Greek Philosophy. He has seen and asserted the essence of the Universe to be self-conscious Being, which signiifies at least that the basic principle of all things or of the All is self-consciousness. This hardly means a Person in our sense, as it is without Will and Feeling. PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 443 But this very abstraction and deification of the Intellect as the central principle of the Universe makes it more simple and impressive. God is henceforth never to lose the self-conscious In- tellect which Aristotle vindicated for Him, thouo-h He is a^ain to be endowed with Will and Feeling (or Power and Love) which the early Greek thinker took from Him, when He mani- fested them in the form of Oriental caprice and ar- bitrariness. But it is strange ! Hellenic thought seeking the law of Being and looking for it away from the Divine has come back to the God- consciousness through Aristotle. In fact he has affirmed that this return of the man to God is the innermost movement of the ethical process, as we have noted in studying his Ethics. From this point of view Hellenic Philosophy, starting in the separation observed in the Milesian Move- ment may be considered an unfolding of human Thought into Divine Thought as the principle of all things. With man thinking the Thought of God, the Science of God (Theology) becomes possible. Plato and Aristotle. These men are connected together by an indissoluble tie, and have been for twenty-three centuries, and probably will be as long as civilization lasts. They present many points in common and many strong contrasts. It may be said that one cannot be ade(|uately understood without the other. Their lives have 444 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. fundamentally the same general outline or norm, though there is much diversity in incident and content. Paralellisms might be drawn indefi- nitely in reference to their careers, their writ- ings and their doctrines. The basic fact in all these likenesses and dif- ferences is found in the statement already often made : they belong to the same great movement of Athenian Universalism, and therein show sameness; but they also belong to different stages of that movement, and therein show di- versity. Nothing is i)lainer than that the special effort of Aristotle is to unify the separation or dualism which is in Plato. Equally certain is it that Aristotle is bound up with Plato in the one great thought which finds its most general ex- pression in the proposition that the essence of Beinsr is the Universal. But now we have reached the significant and surprising outcome of Aristotle's philosophizing, which is, that at last he too drops backward or rather downward into dualism. After all his polemics against Plato, after all his struggles to unite the separation of the Universal and the Individual, of the Idea and the Phenomenon, he finally divides them, and leaves his Philoso- phy still wrestling with or rather writhing in their contradiction. This point we shall trace out more fully. 1. The most decisive note in Aristotle s Meta- PLATO AND ABI8T0TLE. 445 phi/sics is his opposition to Plato's separation of the Idea from the Phenomenon, of the Universal from the Particnlar. He affirms the immanence of the Universal in the Particular and their union in the Real Thino; ao-ain and as-aiu. From this we might infer that his doctrine is that the essence of Being; is the Particular or the Individ- ual. But he with equal emphasis affirms that knowledge is of the Universal and not of the Particular, that science has to do with general concepts, not with individual things. So after he has put Plato's Idea back into the Appear- ance, and made it the Eeality, this Reality cannot be known as such but only the Idea of it, the Genus, the Universal. Thus he returns in this first point of his Philosophy to dualism (not Plato's exactly), after having united its two sides. 2. When we come to Aristotle's supreme con- ception, that of God, a like difficulty presents itself. Deity with him is self-conscious Being, transcendent, outside the world and its process, essentially uncreative and staying with Himself alone. Such separation of the Divine from all manifestation is even deeper than Plato's supreme Idea, for this is not self-conscious. Nothing can be more isolated than Aristotle's God, eternally contemplating Himself and doing nothing else, whom the world desires, though He does not desire the world. Could there be a more com- plete expression of autocratic haughtiness? 446 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PniLOSOPHY. Yet this is what the philosopher is to appropriate in order to become ethical in the highest sense, in order to attain to the supreme theoretic virtue, that is, in order to be truly the philosopher, who is to make himself a hermit, after having made God a hermit and put him on top of the Universe. 3. The Aristotelian conception of Nature which is developed in his Physics shows a similar contradiction. Aristotle says that the material world has a desire for God, which can only cause it to move toward Him, yet it is certain that it also moves from Him. This latter power Aris- totle seems to place in Matter, which is an energy also, and draws the world. Thus there are two antagonistic powers exerted over Nature from opposite directions. It would not be far out of the way to consider him as imaging two Gods contending for the mastery of Nature, first the one prevailing and then the other. So there seem to be in Aristotle's Physics two Motions coming from two opposite sources and wrestling in a kind of conflict over the total Cosmos as their arena. 4. Already we have considered the dualism in Aristotle's conception of the soul, whose immor- tal principle — the Creative Reason — he repre- sents as coming from the outside and co-operat- ing with the soul during life, and then at the death of the individual departing unsullied and PLATO AND ABISTOTLE. 447 apparently unchanged liy its mortal companion- ship. Thus he brings together two souls, or, to use his own expression, two kinds of ISfous and harnesses them as yoke-fellows, till one of them dies, when the other goes his way, no one knows exactly whither. For like the fabled Dioscuri, one of them is mortal and the other immortal, the latter somehow preferring to spend a part of his time with his mortal brother on earth, out of some unknown pre-existeut affection or af- finity, which our philosopher does not explain. 5. In the final movement of Aristotle's philos- ophy, the ethical, we have found a deep separa- tion of the individual, when he has attained the supreme Virtue (theoretic), from the reality b}' w^hich he has attained such highest end. This reality is the State, which he is to make (he being defined a State-making animal) in order to become virtuous. Still when he has become virtuous supremel}", he can no longer have any- thing to do with State, but is 'to occupy himself with TJieoria, to participate in divine self-contem- plation. Thus the individual as virtuous or as philosopher (for both are the same in this highest sphere) is isolated from the world which produced him, and is as transcendent as the Aristotelian God. These points are sufficient to show the funda- mentally dual and contradictory character of Aristotle's philosophizing. Primarily his move- 448 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. ment is toward unifying the Platonic dualism into a new reality, but secondarily this reality develops in his hands into a fresh dualism and a deeper one than Plato's. Inevitably the question forces itself to the front, What is the signiticance of this peculiar philosophic evolution? Sharp critics have not failed to jDoint out the above difficulties, often with all due appreciation of the greatness of the man whom they criticise. Usually, however, they regard this relapse to Platonism (so they mostly deem it) as the grand weakness, if not failure of the Aristotelian system. We have already intimated that our solution of the present problem is altogether different. Aristotle in his completeness has to be conceived iu this double and contradictory relation: on the one side he is unitary, on the other dualistic. As the third stage of the movement of Univers- alism he unifies the twofoldness of Plato, who is the second stas^e of the same movement which finds its highest expression iu Aristotle's doc- trine that the essence of all Being is self-conscious Being or Thought thinking Thought. But, as we have seen, this self-conscious Being at once separates itself from the Whole, from the Uni- verse as it were, and the dualism again appears, another dualism after Plato's and more profound. It is at this point that Aristotle winds up the PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 449 Hellenic Period aud gives a glimpse of the com- ing Hellenistic Period. We hold, therefore, that Aristotle even in his contradiction is deeper than Plato, and hence more difficult to reach, with meaning darker and more veiled. Plato's dualism is open, frank, confessed with a sort of defiance ; he scorns the Particular, and despises it as a mere appearance, a vain show, a lie, which is to be throttled at the start by the Idea. For this reason he is the philosopher of Europe, not so hard to under- stand, at least in his general trend, though some of his lateral excursions are mysterious enough . His aristocracy of the Idea is so pronounced as to be ready to wipe out the Demos called the Phenomenon or the Particular. Aristocracy with Plato is a world-principle, and not simply a political creed ; the Universe is aristocratic, and is to be exploited by and for a select set of the best. Such is Plato's message whose good side is not to be forgotten : he puts supreme stress upon the excellent, and gives himself great trouble to find it, to utter it, and even to produce it in man. But, O Plato, be not so exclusive in thy pursuit and recognition of the excellent, and then we shall take quite a slice of thy aristocracy and incorporate it in our democracy, which is really the whole thing, and through which we all can participate in the excellent, all mankind becoming one great school of Platonic philosophers. But, 29 450 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. in such an event, what becomes of our aristocratic Plato, when everybody is an aristocrat? Aristotle felt the inadequacy of the Platonic view and sought at first to resist it, putting the Idea into the Phenomenon, and the Universal into the Particular. But, as we have seen, this unity he at last dualizes, and he cannot help himself. He has to remain a philosopher, though he probes to the very heart the philosophic dualism, reaching it, but not transcending it. In order to transcend it he would have to get out of Europe which had in his age barely begun its historic career, he would have to sliip more than twenty centuries of time, he would have to rise above Philosophy itself and ascend into an entirely new Discipline of the World's Spirit. It is, therefore, the supreme greatness of Aristotle that he feels and unconsciously struggles against the dualism inherent in all Philosophy, nay in the European consciousness itself, which had been so powerfully and so fascinatingly championed by Plato with his unsurpassed literary power. When we see Aristotle's effort to put that lofty, all-dominating, transcendent Idea into every common thing, into every little "nasty" particular of the sensuous world, we have to call him prophetic of the far-off coming time, yea of another continent with its new institutional order, which not only exists in every individual but of which every individual has to be con- PLATO AND ABISTOTLE. 451 sciously creative. These thoughts of his stir us as does the thought of that ancient statesman of Miletus who sought to introduce a Federal Union among the Ionic cities of Asia Minor more than twenty-five centuries before it could be realized, which realization could only take place bej'ond the limits of the European territory and bej^ond the limits of the European consciousness. Plato on the whole (though not always consistent herein) disdains to make his Idea creative of the Individual ; Aristotle seeks to do just this on one side of him and yet on another side does quite the opposite. But the final outcome of both philoso- phers and of all philosophy is the new and com- plete thought in which not only the Idea or the Universal determines and creates the Individual, but also the Individual wheeling about, in his turn determines and creates the Universal. Man is not simply to be controlled by Law and Institu- tion, but is to make the Law and Institution which control him. Very suggestive, therefore, is Aristotle's attempt to solve the philosophic dualism so im- pressively set forth by Plato, even more sug- gestive is the failure of this attempt, whereby the Stagirite is landed in a still deeper abyss of the Spirit, which the coming time will endeavor to close or at least to overarch. Such limitations we may see in these great Athenian philosophers, looking back at them and 452 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL OSOPHT. judging them from the standpoint of a new order in whose evolution they themselves are among the mightiest factors. Heti'ospeci. We have now concluded the originating epoch of all Philosophy. The pre- ceding Hellenic Period has its chief significance in being the genesis of Philosophy itself, which has expressly unfolded into its Norm. Primarily there is the line of individual philosophers, each with his doctrine. Then comes the tendency of these philosophers to group themselves into schools, which further arrange themselves into still higher groups, and these ultimately form a Period. But this is not the end; for we find that the Period also is only a member of a group of Periods, which constitute the total sweep of Greek Philosophy, which last again shows itself to be a member in still larger totality. Thus the Hellenic period is composed of Elementalism, Atomism, and Universalism, which together re- veal the process of Hellenism as such (as dis- tinct from the following Hellenisticism). Yet each of these members of the Hellenic process is in itself a process similar, though not the same, having its own members or stages, which finally reach back to the individual philosopher whose Ego is a process grasping and formulating in its own way the process of the All. On the one hand a power seemingly external is directing and arranging the single philoso- PLATO AND ABISTOTLE. 453 phers into groups, and then forming these groups into larger wholes in some mighty struggle to express or manifest itself as the supreme Whole, the Universe. Yet, on the other hand, all these subordinate groups, smaller and greater, show fundamentally one and the same process or method ; they have a common impress by which we see them to be members of the Universe through a process which is their own as well as that of the All. Now the philosopher is a philosopher because his entire effort is to seize and to formulate in abstract terms just this process of the All or of the Universe, which, when he has abstracted, he calls the Universal. Hence the first philo- sophic Period, the Hellenic, has to grasp this abstraction, to make it conscious, and to state it for all time. Such we have seen to be the per- sistent struggle of Hellenism in the preceding exposition. The power which apparently determines man's philosophic Thinking and drives it forward to an ever-continued repetition of itself in successive cycles, little and large, we have called the Pam- psychosis. Yet, if it determines him on the one hand, on the other he determines it, putting it into his thought, into his own inner process. He has to order it in his philosophizing, for just that is his philosophy ; still it orders him in its development, putting him into his place in a 454 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. group, a movement, a period, and finally in the total philosophical Discipline of all ages. The philosopher, in seeking to utter the law of the Universe, utters the law of himself, indeed, of the Self as universal, which is the Pampsychosis. Such utterance is the spontaneous expression of his own deepest nature, of his spirit's freedom; yet the process of his spirit's freedom is deter- mined by the process of the Universe, which is the Pampsychosis. The philosopher is a kind of legislator, making a code of the All ; yet this code is just what he is obeying in his legislation. Thus in every particular Philosophy are united the two extremes : the Ego of the philosopher and the movement of the Universe. Each is a process, yes, a psychical process; hence we may say in technical terms that the Psychosis of the philosopher determines in its formula the Pam- psychosis which in turn determines the Psychosis in its content, and also determines its particular place in the order of philosophic evolution. In Philosophy as such the Universe is seeking to think itself, to become conscious of its own process, and to express the same; but it can do this only through the individual philosopher who belongs to a certain time, city, nation, and who, therefore, stamps ui)on Philosophy his own indi- vidual limits and those of his period and race. So it comes that Philosoi)hy the one divides into Philosophies the many, whose varied forms nev- PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 455 ertheless reveal singly and iu groups the one process of the All, seeking but not attaining its adequate self-expression in an historic line of systems down the ages. It has been already stated (see pp. 74, 75) that in the Hellenic Period the total soul of Hellas was philosophizing, breaking forth into single Philosophies and then into cycles of these single Philosophies, which must have been determined by some Power, Energy, or Spirit beyond the individual philosopher. His thought or system was taken up into a larger process of which he could not have been conscious ; Xenophanes the Eleatic, could hardly have been aware of the place of his principle in the total movement of Eleaticism, still less of its place in the much wider and longer sweep of Elementalism. And yet it has its place not only in these two move- ments, but also in the yet vaster movements of Hellenism and of all Greek Philosophy. What is the ordering principle of these ever-widening cycles of philosophic processes, extending farther and farther beyond the consciousness of the in- dividual philosopher, yet making him always a stage of the movement somewhere, and even giv- ing to him the ultimate purpose and content of his thinking? It can only be the psychical pro- cess of the Universe itself which we have so often pointed out and named the Pampsychosis, inti- mating thereby that it must be grasped as the 456 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. process of the Absolute Self, triune, self-con- scious, creative of all selfhood, and hence the process of Processes, or the Psychosis of all Psychoses, just the Pampsychosis. But not alone the Hellenic soul was at work during the present Period, for this too was a stage in the greater totality of Greek Philosophy, whose process again is a stage of the entire move- ment of European Philosophy. So there is a power above all these philosophical stages, indeed above the philosophical Norm itself after whose pattern Philosophy fashions itself, or is fash- ioned spontaneously by the thinking mind of the philosopher. For that man is the philosopher who has spiritual possession of this philosophic Norm, and employs it, not as an external instru- ment whose use he has learned, but through the native bent of his genius as the most direct and natural expression of his very selfhood. Such a man cannot help himself : he has to follow the philosophic Norm, both in its grandeur and in its limitation, whenever he utters what is deepest within him. Still the Pampsychosis as the process of the Universe is not confined to the philosophical Norm, but is evolving it into another and higher Norm, which Ave have called the psychological (see Introduction, pp. 24, 29, 31, etc.). Lying underneath all Philosophies, and lurking quite unconsciously in the thought of all philosophers PLATO AND ABISTOTLE. 457 is this unborn Norm, yet struggling to be born whenever the time is ripe and the environment is calling for its achievement. Already we have noticed that Aristotle sending down the plummet to the deepest depth of his thought, came upon the limit of the philosophical Norm with its dualism, and lay there helplessly stranded, though his keen eye had seen and had sought to remedy the same difficulty in Plato. But such is the struggle of all Philosophy, whose whole historic movement shows the effort to evolve itself out of its own Norm continually becoming inadequate and demanding a new and more com- plete formuhition, which, however, will at last develop the same old trouble. The Pampsychosis, emplo3^ing the philosophic Norm, has now unfolded through the Hellenic Period to the point of formulating the essence of Being as Thought thinking Thought, of declar- ing the Universe to be self-thinking or self-con- scious. Such is the lofty attainment of Hellenic Intellect in Aristotle. But the Will is left out of this supreme principle called God by the phi- losopher, who, however, vindicates for man the Will to attain such a height and to participate in the Divine. Aristotle, therefore, rises to Thought thinking Thought, but does not reach Will willing Will; he has a world of Free Thought as absolute and autocratic, but not a world of Frce-Will asserting freedom for the 458 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. individual. Aristotle's God does not and can- not love man, so occupied is He vrith the con- templation of His own perfection ; the Universal as divine cannot humanize itself or really indi- vidualize itself. But just this is what must next take place, is the coming chief philosophical labor. It is true that Aristotle begins with putting the Universal into the Particular, bringing Plato's Idea down into reality, and making it the Real Thing. And this strand will run through his whole philosophic career. But then there is the other and deeper strand above mentioned, quite the opposite, in which he is seen separat- ing his first principle and holding it aloof from all reality, whereby he passes into a dualism bej^ond Plato's. We have, therefore, to say that the process of the Universal as Will enter- ing into, transforming and even becoming the individual, belongs not to Aristotle, not to the Hellenic Period, but is the supreme philosophic task of the Hellenistic Period, which is to take up the Universal inherited from Plelleuism, and to make it individual in the World, in Man, and in God. This is the task to which we have now to address ourselves. CHAPTER SECOJVD.— THE HELLEN- ISTIC PERIOD. From a mighty movement of concentration we pass to a movement of expansion still mightier, longer, more extended. From one city there is a going forth of its great spiritual acquisitions to many cities ; from one people and race to many peoples and races ; from essentially one Philosophy to many Philosophies with their Schools ; from one individual to many individuals if not to all; from the one supreme activity of the man through the Intellect to the total man in all his activities through the Will also. Such is the marvelous overflow of Philosophy from its one center, and its fertilization of the whole civ- (459) 4G0 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PIIILOSOrHY. ilized world as well as of the whole individual within. From these facts we may catch the gen- eral thought of the transition from Hellenism to Hellenisticism. Still we shall find not a few indications of the counter movement, which seeks to bring together this expanding multiplicity into unity. The in- dividual unfolds and exploits himself with vast diversity, still this diversity we shall see encom- passed and subordinated to law — to the outer law in the Roman Empire, and to the moral law which is at first subjective in Ethics but which becomes realized in the Christian Eeligion. I. In Hellenisticism we behold the Universal which has been attained in the Hellenic Period passing into the Individual, parting itself from the one and imparting itself to many ones, thus individualizing itself. So we shall employ a brief formula for the Hellenistic Period : the Univer- sal individualized, specially in man, since the Universal is to enter into, transform, and so ethicize his very Self. Accordingly we may fol- low the line of previous formulations with the statement: the essence of Being (the oiisia of the 071^ is now the Universal individualized, or if we put the stress upon the process, the Univer- sal individualizing itself. This thought, quite abstract and possibly not very intelligible at the start, will run through and counect together all Hellenisticism, as well as suggest its relation to TEE EELLENISTIC PERIOD. 461 the previous Hellenism. It may be added (as will be later unfolded more fully) that if the Uni- versal makes itself individual, it follows that this individual in turn must make itself Universal. If the Whole divides psychically, each division must have the process of the Whole. Such is the in- ner germ of the entire Period, which, however, it is well to look at discursively from several points of view before entering upon the detailed organic movement. II. This second Period in the total sweep of Greek Philosophy is called the Hellenistic, its thought is no longer purely national and Hellenic, but the world outside of Greece is Hellenizing {hellenizein, from which verb the above term is derived). The conquests of Alexander who was a pupil of Aristotle, broke through the purely Hellenic boundary and brought not only Greek armies but the Greek spirit into the Orient, which soon began to show its influence in various ways, especially in the cultivation of Philoso- phy. Afterwards world-conquering Rome stud- ied and appropriated certain phases of Greek Philosophy, which thereby passed from its national to its universal supremacy, being the universal discipline of the civilized world both in the East and in the West. The nations and the tribes which the Greeks deemed barbarous, being non-Greek, have neces- sarily changed this pure Hellenic culture in 462 ANCIENT E UR GPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. adopting it and in passing it through their own mental alembic; they have made it their oivn, have barbarized it by the very act of assimila- tion; thus they have to a degree transformed their spiritual conqueror while accepting his sway. So Hellenic spirit in all its forms, push- ing beyond its original bounds, becomes Hellen- istic ; separating from its primal creative sources it coalesces with foreign elements, which in time return and transform it in its native seats. A re- ciprocal influence between the two sides can be traced throughout the present Period, so that if Hellas hellenizes Barbary, similarly though by no means so profoundly Barbary barbarizes Hel- las. Or, we may say, Hellenism is now to vanish into Hellenisticism, with which are connected many changes. In the first place, what we designated as the topographical movement of Greek Philosophy, its outermost spatial presentation, whirls about as it were on its Athenian center, and sweeps from within outwards in all directions. This is in the sharpest contrast with the topographical move- ment of the previous Hellenic Period, in which we saw Philosophy bursting forth on the peri- phery of the Greek world at divers places, and thence gathering itself into the central city of that world, where it had its grand culmination in its three greatest individuals, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But now this centripetal tendency is THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 463 changed into a centrifugal, which will radiate Philosophy from its central Sun not simply back again to its Hellenic borders, whence it started, but far beyond them, to the very rim of civilization in Orient and Occident. So, after concentrating at Athens, it must separate from it, becoming emanative through Space and down Time. Athens will, however, continue to be for along period the center of philosophic culture, though it will have to share its honors with other rising centers, inEhodes, in Pergamus, in Tarsus, inAn- tioch, in Rome. Finally the supremacy will dis- tinctly pass to Alexandria, with its unparalleled library said to have contained 700,000 volumes in the first centuries of the Christian era ; it also had a zoological collection, and a botanical gar- den, both of vast proportions, for the study of biological science; mathematicians, astronomers, geographers were gathered there through the unrivaled facilities afforded by the Ptolemies ; we even hear that scholars were entertained at public expense without regard to nationality. Nothinof like that in the modern world ; no University of to-day would think of such a programme. But the chief significance of Alex- andria lies in the fact that it was the point in which Oriental Religion and Greek Philosophy met, clashed, and then coalesced, laying the foundations for a new European Religion, and with it a new European "World. 464 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOiSOPHY. III. Thus we observe the second Period of Greek Philosophy as a whole to be separative, emanative, decentralizing both in locality and in thought. The same fact may be noted in the political sphere. Athens, the imperial City- State of Greece after the Persian War, had not only lost its supremacy, but also its freedom ; this was likewise true of every other Greek City- State. Hellas was no longer ruled from within but from without ; each community had to give up its Greek civic virtue of being self-centered and to acknowledge a master. The individual citizen was thereby thrown back upon himself, and all Hellas was dissolved into its atoms, since the political bond which held them together was broken. The Greek, living hitherto an institu- tional life prescribed by the laws and customs of his country, is now to pass to his moral epoch in which he becomes self -legislative; he is to find the law within, and to establish that in the coming centuries. The Athenian, though dwell- ing at Athens and callino; himself a citizen, was in reality a subject of Alexander's empire and then of Rome; he could live an autonomous life in his community no more, he must become autonomous in himself if he wishes to be free henceforth ; he has to pass from his un- consciously institutional freedom into a moral and subjective freedom. Hence the Hellenistic Period will develop and practice the science TBE IIELLEXISTIC PERIOD. 465 of Ethics with an empliasis previously un- known. In this stage we again come upon the atomic Ego wliich we found first appearing in the time and work of the Sophists, and wliich Socrates specially grappled v.'ith and subjected to an ethical discipline, whereby it lost its distinctively atomic character. As already set forth, the great Athenian movement of Philosophy rose to the point of declaring through Aristotle that the self-conscious act was the essence of all things, was the first principle of the Universe (or, to use the Greek terms again, the ousia of the on, was the noesis noeseos). But this one ol)ject- ive self-consciousness, perched on the height of Hellenic speculation, has to descend into ever}' Greek Ego and even into the non-Greek, and thus become Hellenistic. In such a transition it will lose its originality, its sublimity, and no small ptirt of its interest ; but it will become human, universal, for all mankind. Here the pedagogic element in the Greek peo- ple comes prominently to the surface. What the few have won in the supreme discipline of Philosophy, must now be imparted to the world. The mighty inner concentration of the act of production is henceforth to be turned outward and scattered among the nations by a kind of philosophical apostolate. Paul had his Greek prototypes for being an apostle to the Gentiles. 30 466 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. In fact the Greeks are supremely the educational nation of the human race. Their deepest in- stinct is to impart what they have spiritually won, be it science, art, poetry, or philosophy. Very different seem the Orientals in this regard ; the Egyptians sought to conceal their science, while the Greeks had to reveal theirs by an inner need of utterance. The Greeks have been the educators of the educators of the world's peoples, and are largely so still, at least in the European sphere. Their work as universal educators begins decisively in the Hellenistic Period before us, which will have many schools, and scholars, and scholarchs, radiating from the Athenian center to other Greek cities, then over the border to the East and to the West. It will not be a great creative epoch, like the one just preceding; that epoch is past and must now be understood, and appropriated. It will be a time of vast erudition, and special investigation into different fields — literary, his- torical, scientific, philosophical; a time of commentators and learned interpreters of all sorts of ancient books ; translators and expositors of Oriental lore will appear particularly at Alexandria — Egyptian, Jewish, Persian, Baby- lonian, and even Hindoo. The main lines of the schools will be laid down and followed with a certain fixity and obedience to transmitted authority; but within these lines a vast speciali- THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 467 zation will take place, as well as instruction. The Hellenistic Period with its schools has a certain resemblance to the German University of to-day. Indeed this term (University) is often applied by writers of the present time to those ancient centers of learning, especially to Athens and Alexandria. IV. The Hellenistic Period lasted fully 550 years, if we reckon it from the death of Aristo- tle to the development of Neo-Platonism in the school of Ammonius Saccas. To be sure, it was already putting forth its early germs in the So- cratic schools, before the birth of Aristotle; the great Athenian movement was continuously throwing off lateral branches, which fore- shadowed the breaking-up of that mighty con- centrated activity into many channels which were to become independent Philosophies. And those colossal thinkers in whom the Universal had, as it were, individualized itself, will send forth many streams of influence in accord with their character and principle; the}', too, as universal individualize themselves in a multiplicity of phi- losophers, who as teachers will still further prop- agate that Athenian thought-world till it becomes the possession of all civilization in the East and West, the possession of all individuals of culture. For the philosophic formula of Hellenisticism, as already stated, is the Universal individualized, made the spiritual property of the individual 468 ANCIENT E UEOPEAN PHIL OSOPH T. universally. Man is to be made over, trans- formed out of his narrow, selfish particularity into the universal man, and this can only be done by the Universal itself, as manifested in Attic Philosophy, entering into him and there per- formins: its work of palinseuesis. The outcome of the previous Hellenic Period we have called Universalism or the getting of the Universal in Thought. But the Hellenistic Period is to put this into man's Will also, into human conduct, whereby the world becomes ethical ; nay, is to put this into God, whereby the world can again become religious. So w^e see that Hellenism in Philosophy is a vast preparation for Hellenisti- cisni, whose outcome is the Univorsal individual- ized, not only in man but also in God, in the Christ. Far slower is this second process than the first; the Hellenistic movement is at least twice as long as the Hellenic, which we have followed as it concentrated itself from the rim of Hellas inward with steady yet rapid progress. That whirl of systems, of ten suggested in Greek Phi- losophy under the image of a cosmical vortex, gathers itself up and rises mightily at the center into the supreme philosophic movement of all ages and lands, and thence breaks forth into many streams and streamlets which subdivide and ramify themselves far beyond the Greek borderland where Philosophy starts into the non- THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 469 Greek world, spreading among all civilized Aryan peoples from Bactria and India in the Orient to Gaul and Spain in the Occident, penetrating into the spiritual recesses of even non- Aryan peoples, particularly of the Semites and Egyptians. Nat- urally such a process had to be slower, overcom- ing, as it must, the deepest racial and religious prejudices of the human soul, than the original Hellenic Movement, confined as it was to the relatively small and homogeneous Greek world. V. If we glance at the historic events of this Hellenistic Period, we find that institutions political and social are passing through essen- tially the same process which is uttered in thought by Philosophy. Alexander the Great, the politi- cal incarnation of the Spirit of the Age, the pupil of Aristotle, who may be deemed his philosophic counterpart, is supremely the Univer- sal individualized, and actively showing himself just such an individual by subordinating and then as it were absorbing into his all-comprehending universal selfhood the whole of Hellas and of Western Asia. After his death his one central authority breaks up into many authorities or individual Greek rulers with their empires, between whom rises incessant struggle of the individual for universal sway. In like manner after the death of Aristotle, the central Athenian Movement, whoso principle is the Universal, splits into many schools with their individual 470 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. leaders and followers, among whom rises an incessant warfare of words and arguments, cor- responding to the political wars among the suc- cessors of Alexander. But in the West a new power has appeared above the political horizon, with its sword in one hand and its law in the other, first subjecting to its sway Occidental Hellas in Italy and Sicily, then passing over to the mainland of Greece and reducing it to obedi- ence, then finally conquering the Orient and thereby putting the whole Hellenistic world under its Universal which is the Roman State with its Law. But even here in Eome the Universal again individualizes itself in the one man, the emperor, and the old separative conflict among individuals, now emperors of Rome, breaks out afresh. In the meantime, however, Hollenisti- cism has found out that no Philosophy within and no State without can solve its problem or heal the deep inner scission of its soul. Accordingly it has brought forth a new Religion whose great consolatory promise is individual salvation both here and hereafter. Man cannot rest satisfied with himself deified within, or with an emperor deified without; the Universal must be individu- alized in God Hiuiself , but it will be God in a wholly new part: He makes Himself individual in an onlv-bcgotten Sou, whereby is revealed in a religious form the absolute Process of the Universe. THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 471 VI. Hellenic Philosophy (by which we mean the preceding First Period) is the child of Greek communal freedom, of the autonomy of the Greek City-State, with its independent life. We have seen all the early Hellenic Philosophies springing up in separate communities along with and out of the civic spirit of the time. Each of these Philosophies has an air of independence and originality peculiarly its own, though united unconsciously in the total philosophic movement of the Period. And each of these philosophers has a unique and original character in himself and in his thinking, he is a product of the soil directly, or rather a product of the soul of his community. But when the autonomy of these communities is gone, their independent philoso- phizing ceases. Subjected first to Macedon and then to Rome in the Hellenistic Period, they lose their inborn creative power and sink back exhausted into both political and intellectual submission to external authority. Not only Greek Philosophy loses its generative energy, but also Greek Art and Poetry. It is most sur- prising, and even painful, to witness this sudden and universal eclipse of Greek originality; the great Sculptors, Poets, Historians, as well as Philosophers, belong without exception to the Hellenic Period. One cannot help delving with sympathetic interest into the sources of such a rapid and 472 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PIIIL OSOPIl Y. complete decay of the njitioiial spirit. The Greek at first took for granted the oneness of Thought and Being; his life was a unity, quite unconscious of the inner and outer worlds, and his work manifested that unity. His song re- vealed Nature, but for him her forms had alwajs a spontaneous soul ; his Art expressed naively the harmony of the Cosmos with the Si)irit ; his early Philosophy showed the same character. What he thinks, is, and the essence of being is his thought. Whatever he shapes has life and speaks, telling outward Avhat is inward. He cannot help being the artist. An artless objec- tivity is his art, yea his very existence; if he does anything, he has to create the Beautiful. But the time comes, and has to come in the natural order of evolution, when this instinctive unquestioning unity of the inner and the outer, of Thought and Being, is broken in twain, and that artistic creative Greek world vanishes as a fair dream, becoming only a reminiscence and an imitation. Plato began this separation by his breach between the Idea and Reality. Aristotle, well knowing the fatal result of such a breach for Greek s})iiit, souglit to heal it, but only deepened the Platonic dualism to the very bot- tom. Then comes Hellenisticism in which the abysmal separation in life, the divorce of the Idea from the AVorld, is the ever-present actual fact; behold this corrupt, tyrannical, alien State THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 473 over us which dominates everywhere from the outside without any relief. The individual Greek now sees and feels with all the intensity of his nature the utter worthlessness of the Re- ality, and this is what hamstrings his original artistic productivity. For the artist must seize the Reality in its first immediate bloom, but what if this Reality, in his conviction and also in fact, has become utterly damnable and infernal? He has no longer an harmonious beautiful exist- ence before him as the model for his work; if he pours out his artistic soul at all, or if he has any to pour out, it will show its writhing agony in the same consuming fire which is destroying his world. Hence it comes that the greatest artistic product of all Hellenisticism, in that art which is peculiarly Greek, namely sculpture, is the Laocoon, representing by its tortures the dying struggles of the universal Greek soul in the coils of the Destroyer. The consequence is that the Greek turns to the Idea within, uncontaminated by the Reality, and makes it his own, so that he becomes the Platonic dualism incorporate. Thus that naive unity of Hellenism between Thought and Being is torn asunder, that spontaneous fountain of his creative power no longer wells up to sunlight in Art, Poetry, and Philosophy; the original charm of the Greek world has departed, though its echoes may still be heard repeating them- 474 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. selves with numerous variations down through the long journey of the Hellenistic centuries. Accordingly, for the origination of Hellenic Philosophy, communal freedom is seen to be necessary. When that freedom perishes, there perishes with it the creative po^r of Philos- ophy. Long before the Hellenistic Period this fact was foreshadowed in the history of Miletus, which began Greek Thinking. It philosophized while free, but after its conquest by the Per- sians, it was struck philosophically dumb forever, thouo-h inhabited at a later time. The Democ- racy of Athens developed its undemocratic Phi- losophy, which became almost as centralized and autocratic as the Macedonian State. The author- ity of the Schools may have helped to quench Greek Intellect, but it had really spent itself, and Greece had passed into another stage in which the individual must through Will realize in life and conduct the thought which his Intel- lect has formulated. VII. In the Athenian movement, so prolific of greatness, the individual as philosopher could and did say that the essence of Being is the Universal, and he realized the same in his thought. Thus he, the individual, made himself the image and the voice of the Universal in his thinking. This Universal ultimately can only be derived from the Universe with its threefold process, >yhich becomes the innermost process of the THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 475 Intellect. The Hellenic Period evolved the Athenian philosopher, who is the individual with the Universal or the process of the All in his thouo-ht. Thus Athens produced the individual universalized in Intellect — doubtless the highest form which the mind of man had yet taken. For he had reached universality, which signifies that the process of his thinking was one with the process of the Universe. In the Hellenistic Period, a further step must be,taken. The individual as philosopher now says that the essence of Being is not simply the Uni- versal, but the Universal individualized^ not simply the Universal in Intellect or theoretical, but the Universal in Will or practical. It must enter into and determine the actions of the indi- vidual, it must ray itself out into all the par- ticulars of life and conduct ; thus it is to be individualized, made the inner possession of every individual in all his activities. We have noticed the centrifugal movement of Philosophy from Athens during the Hellenistic Period, over the whole civilized world ; in like manner this central thought of the Universal is to specialize itself into all the details of human conduct. In the Athenian Epoch man thinks universally ; in the Hellenistic he must both think and act univer- sally in his own person ; then he must reach up to the conception of a Divine Person who thinks and acts universally, not capriciously. Thus 476 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Hellenisticism comes to Keligion as its final goal, passing through Philosophy proper or Meta- physics, and also Ethics. From the preceding general statements it is evident that the Hellenistic Period will show three stages which constitute its fundamental process. The first we name the Theoretic Movement; the preceding philosophical Schools determine di- rectly this movement, in which we shall find an acceptance (Dogmatism), denial (Skepticism) and selection (Syncretism) of transmitted doc- trines. The philosophic Norm is repeated, but usually with more stress upon one part than upon the rest, according to the bent of the philosopher. The second will be called the Practical Move- ment ; the thinking man (theoretic) is to turn to action in the sense of realizing the Universal of Thought in conduct and in law, thereby becom- ing ethical in the wide meaning of the term ( including both moral and institutional) . Under this general head we shall place Stoicism, Epi- cureanism, and Legalism, each of which will be discussed later on. The third is the Iteligious Movement; this shows that neither Metaphysics nor Ethics can fully realize the Hellenistic man, who turns to seek the Divine in Person. But this search will also have its process, in which Philosophy and Religion will struggle together till they unite in a new Faith. The Hellenistic Period leads out of the philo- THE THEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 477 sophical Norm into the religious Norm through Ethics. Thus we seem to return to the first Dis- cipline, Religion, from which Philosophy origi- nally separated, through which separation some- thing is lost which the human spirit has to recover. The struggles for this recovery, which is also to be a regeneration, are manifested in the present Period. These struggles are very multi- farious, and produce a vast mass of material which it is not easy to organize. Usually the Hellenistic Period is deemed purely ethical, but it is also metaphysical and religious. In it the Universal individuahzes itself in the world and its objects, in man and his deeds, finally in God who becomes man in his Son Christ. It philosophizes, ethicizes, and theologizes, in distinct movements, which, however, form one characteristic epoch. All these movements must be set forth not merely in their isolated doctrines but in their mutual rela- tions and processes. I. The Theoretic Movement. The final attainment of man in the preceding Hellenic Period was Aristotle's TAeorm, whereby the individual participates in the vision of God or the Absolute Truth, even if briefly and par- tially. Thus the Universal has individualized itself theoretically, has entered into man's intel- lect and made its human home there. The indi- 478 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PmLOSOPlIY. vidua! has now primarily the conviction that he can know the essence of Being through his thought, that he can grasp Truth through his intelligence. With such a conviction he goes forth into the world and starts to using and appljnng his principle, wherewith a new epoch begins. This principle is already won and pre- pared for employment, being formulated and, as it were, learned by heart. It is evident that the present Movement has a distinct connection with the preceding third stage of the Hellenic Period, which has been designated as Athenian Universal ism. In it the essence of all things has been found to be the Universal as Thought; but nowthis first principle or Thought is to be applied primarily to the various fields of knowledge. Such a procedure orders them ac- cording to Thought, which thus gives the special sciences, and brings to light the scientific strand in this Movement. It is first to be observed that such a Movement is no longer in the Hellenic Period, but belongs to the Hellenistic Period, of which the gen- eral purport is the Universal individualized, separated within itself, whose first phase appears in the present theoretic activit}'. Here we have not the work or the process of unfolding and creating the fundamental principle of Philosophy, but of specializing and applying THE TEEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 479 the principle already found. It is a time of systematizing and classifying, even if largely in an external way. The labor is to make the universal principle valid in all particulars, to have philosophy, hitherto limited to one spot and posscHsed by a few, branch out into every im- portant line of knowledge and enter into the soul of every person capable of approf)riating it. Amid all these developments and specializa- tions there will be found the one essential Norm, to which allusion has already been often made. This philosophical Norm will now become more explicit than ever, indeed it will be directly formulated, and thus become a conscious prod- uct of the time. To be sure, this Norm will manifest a good deal of variability according to the philosopher who is emploj^ing it and through it making his system. Each philosopher will put a special stress upon some phase of the total Norm, following his bent, his ability, and his attainments. One prefers the ethical, another the physical, still another the metaphysical province of the Norm. And the three provinces will be still further divided and specialized. But in these particular manifestations we are to see the philosophic Norm working itself out toward completeness, even to the point of transcending itself and reaching forth to the rehgious Norm from which it once re-acted. Thus the individual of the Hellenistic Period, 480 ANCIEN T E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. being in his very essence the Universal individual- ized, will carry out his own innermost principle, which is also that of his age, putting it into all the details of his investigation and thought ; he will seek to make the Universal individual every- where theoretically, through the Intellect. But this Intellect has the power of denying as well as affirming, hence the theoretic movement will have its negative as well as its positive stage, and even a mingling of the two . So it comes that a process shows itself, in which we note the follow- ing stages : ( 1 ) there is the dogmatic acceptance and assertion of the doctrines of the preceding Schools, connected with the further unfolding and application of these transmitted doctrines; (2) there is a denial of the fundamental princi- ple underlying these and all philosophic doc- trines, namely, tiiat man can know Truth or the essence of Being, which denial, however, im- plies the theoretic knowledge of the Truth; (3) the individual, seeing that he is both what affirms and what denies, selects from each side, attempt- ing to compromise or to harmonize extreme views. It is to be noted that all these stages are theoretic and pertain to intellectual knowing ; the individual knows that his thought is one with the object, or he knows that he does not know any such thing, or finally he knows both that he does know in part, and does not know in part, what is true. THE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 481 Of the Theoretic Movement we may name the stages as follows : First is the Dogmatism of the Schools — scholastic Dogmatism ; second is Skep- ticism, which is negative to the dogmatic posi- tion; third is Syncretism, which is eclectic, a a selecting and putting together of doctrines from dogmatic and skeptical sources. Three streams we may deem them, arising aud develop- ing in succession, yet running parallel and interacting quite through the whole Period of Hellenisticism. I. Dogmatism (scholastic). — A time of authority in philosophy begins, the doctrines of the great masters are transmitted to Schools which continue to exist in one form or other for nearly a thousand years. The Thought is given in its essential formulation which remains pretty much the same. Philosophy is a thing settled, established, and handed down to the future in the shape of a fixed dogma; it is no longer to be determined by thinking but rather determines thinking. Such is the sudden prodigious change after Aristotle, the change from a bold originality to an almost servile acceptance and imitation, the change from Hellenism to Hellenisticism. Erudition, particu- larization, analysis thrives ; the Thought is taken for granted from the founders and is applied in a more or less external way to many new details and departments of information. We see 31 482 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Universal individualized immediately, sepa- rated and broken up into a thousand particulars, which are nevertheless controlled from the outside by a transmitted doctrine or principle. This corresponds to the political condition of the Hellenistic Period. Free Greece was at an end, subjected first hy the outside power of Macedon and then of Rome. An external absolutism arose both in Thought and in the State; the inner creative self-activity of Hellas, which kept rising higher and higher in the Hellenic Period till it culminated at Athens in Aristotle, now sinks far more suddenly than it rose. Activity by no means ceased, still the Greek mind cut no new grooves, but ran in the old. This philosophical Scholasticism or doctrine of the Schools transmitted from generation to generation — we ask its source? It springs from the three great Athenian philosophers directly — Socrates, Plato and Aristotle — sending forth three streams of influence, which is marked by a line of Schools. Yet we must not underrate the work of these Schools. They transcended the narrow Hellenic or Athenian limit and made Philosophy the property of every individual, Greek or non-Greek, who would choose it. From this point of view Hellenisticism is a humanizing process, and breaks through the old exclusive Greek world, moving from the center TBE TBEORETIC MOVEMENT. 483 to the periphery and over it into Orient and Occident. Only a brief survey can be given of its three lines of Schools — Socratic, Platonic and Aris- totelian — all starting from the Athenian foun- tain-head, which is the Universal as Thouo-ht. 1. Socraiic Schools. The great stream of phi- losophic evolution passes from Socrates through Plato to Aristotle, as has been already unfolded. Still Socrates sends off several lateral branches, as it were, partial developments of certain phases of the total man whose marvelous manj^-sided personality would throw out a shoot anywhere. Three of these Schools may be mentioned, each representing a part of the total Socrates or of the Socratic process — the Megaric School founded by Euclid, the Cynic School founded by Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaic School founded by Aristippus. These three are the main ones, though there were others arising and departing for many years after the death of Socrates. The Megaric School must have existed already during the life-time of Socrates with some degree of eminence, since Plato is reported to have fled thither after the death of the master, and there first to have studied the Eleatic doctrine of Being which Euclid combined with the Socratic Concept of the Good. The Megaric School, however, put its main stress upon the dialectical side of Socrates which 484 AN CIEN T E UBO PEA N PHIL SOPHY. is the movement toward the Concept through question and answer, rather than the Concept itself. Hence this School has the name of being disputatious and fault-finding, and even quarrel- some. Its chief fame to-day comes from the influence of it seen in a group of Plato's Dia- logues — often called the Megaric or Dialectical group, of which the Parmenides with its discus- sion of Beino; and Non-Beino: showino; their dia- lectical interplay, may be taken as an example. The Cynic School seems to have sprung up at Athens in direct contact with Socrates and to have imitated his personal peculiarities, some- times even to the verge of caricature, as in the case of Diogenes. The endurance, the indiffer- ence to the luxuries or even the necessaries of life, the personal independence of the master they appropriated in conduct; unlike hira, how- ever, they cut themselves off from all institutional and social relations, yet lived as beggars and parasites upon society in their pursuit of wisdom and virtue. In doctrine Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynic School, concentrated himself upon the attainment of virtue, which was with him hardly a positive but a negative activity, an abstraction from all public interests, from all needs, from riches, honor, pleasure. Moreover he dispensed with the dialectical process for reaching the con- cept of virtue, which is such an important part THE THEOBETIG MOVEMENT. 485 of Socrates' training. Antisthenes deemed that he could lay hold of virtue immediately, or at least by simply leaving out all the relations of life, or reducing them to the lowest possible terms. Thus he asserts the individual against all the world Avhich seeks to determine him. This ultimate affirmation of the Self, though wholly abstract and empty, has its place in the history of the time, since even the tyrannical State with its absolute rulers could not crush it. Such a personal defiance of all externality seems to have reached its culmination in a disci- ple of Antisthenes, the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope. His direct individual challenge of the w^orld and all its cohorts to determine his Ego made a mighty impression upon all succeeding antiquity, if we may judge by the many allusions to him in the writings of those who came after him. Still to-day we know well his name and catch some- thing of his character in the word Cynicism. Such a man could only arise and become a typi- cal character when the age was what he was, when the World-Spirit itself had become cynical. Tlie Cyrenaic School develops a third phase of the Socratic doctrine or perchance of the So- cratic personality. For Socrates was not an ascetic and never renounced pleasure if kept in due sub- ordination. A most remarkable capacity for wine he must have had, being judged by Plato's Symposium. Aristippus of Cyrene,the founder 486 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN rHILOSOrHY. of this School, develops the idea, which is also Socratic, that virtue is a means of happiness, producing great benefits to the individual who practices it. From this point of view it is but a step to affirm with Aristippus that pleasure is the end of life, virtue itself being chiefly useful for that end. Hedonism, with all its various forms, Utilitarianisn, Eudemonism, etc., finds here its germinal doctrine, which will be still further developed in the later School of Epicurus. Aris- tippus dees not eschew knowledge, temperance, culture, but he considers them not as ends but as means for heightening the sensation of pleas- ure. The fact may also be noted that a Greek colony of the South, African Cyrene, now enters the philosophic periphery of Hellas with its small derived light, not to be compared with the original Philosophies which we have seen shoot- ing up on the border at other points of the com- pass — East, West and North. Thus each of these three Schools takes a part or phase of the total Socratic process and holds fast to it alone — the Dialectic, the pure Concept, and the application of the Concept as universal to the individual case, this being the final end of the process. In such fashion is Socrates, doubt- less during his life, divided, anatomized, dis- membered; already in these pupils of his the Hellenistic movement has begun, or the universal Socrates with his Universal is specialized, being TEE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 487 reduced to particulars. The stress of this mighty unification is too great for Greek Spirit, which, when the all-compelling man is removed flies into a thousand pieces, and each piece now becomes the object of consideration. Thus we observe that the Hellenistic Period overlaps backward the Athenian movement, each of whose philoso- phers sends forth successive streams of influence thitherward. 2. The Platonic School — The Academy. Plato gathered his pupils into one spot, held them together to one fundamental doctrine, which was still further fixed in books, and he transmitted the headship of his School to one person, his nephew Speusippus, making of his scholarchy a kind of monarchy to be kept in the family, though such a plan after his death did not hold out very long. This unity of the School shows itself in a long line of Scholarchs, who, amid many variations, cling to the general Platonic traditions. Here we see the difference in development between the Platonic and the Socratic Schools. The latter sprang up contemporaneously and became many at once, while the former remained one, though passing in time through many chanses. The orio-inal School of Socrates had no fixed locality in Athens ; it was opened any- where at any time, and anybody could be a pupil. The exclusive, aristocratic Plato changed 488 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. this, and sought to establish an aristocracy of philosophers with a ruler at their head, some- what as we see in his RepuhJic. But Socrates founded no distinctive School of his own; he let his followers do that, of whom the chief one was Plato. The latter, however, developed his own philosophical principle as the basis of his School, which was, therefore, Platonic and not Socratic. The divisions of the Platonic School are, ac- cordingly, successive and not contemporaneous ; the whole does not split up into parts, but un- folds into differences. The history of the Academy is usually divided into three periods, and sometimes into five, extending down to the Christian Era and beyond. The three divi- sions bear the names of Old, Middle and New Academies, each of which will be briefly designated. The Old Academy lasted about one hundred years after the death of Plato, and continued to propagate his Philosophy though in its later and less pure form. It began to revert to the doc- trine of Pythagoras, and to pass from the Idea to Numbers as the essence of things — a distinct relapse, whose source we may observe in the last works of Plato — the Laws 2i\\d the £Jpinomis. The grand Platonic chasm these later Platonists soutjht to bridije over — the chasm between the sensible and supersensible realms ; so they THE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 489 turned back to the Numbers of Pytliagoras as the intermediate entity between Idea and Matter. Xenocrates succeeded Speusippus; he divided philosophy into Dialectics, Physics and Ethics, which, though not explicitly stated by Plato or even by Aristotle, is present in their writings taken as a whole, The philosophic Norm is now formulated, though not completely formulated, and will remain as a kind of center for all systems. A popular moralizing is found in the Old Academy rather than a scientific development of Ethics ; also there is a tendency to religion or religionizing ; both are significant signs of the coming time. The Old Academy transmitted the doctrines of the master in a somewhat formal academic manner (whence conies the secondary mean- ing of this term). But outside of the Acad- emy new forces are at work which it cannot ignore, its assumptions are assailed by a keen foe, and its dogmatic certainty is undermined. Skepticism enters it, and questions the validity of the principle upon which Plato had founded his Philosophy. Herewith begins a decided change, introducing a new period of the Acad- emy. The Middle Academy begins with Arcesilaus of Pitane as scholarch. He makes the transition out of the Old Academy into the Middle Acad- emy, which is the transition from prescription to 490 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. doiil^t, from dogniatism to skepticism. He taught his people to think for themselves, to test the transmitted doctrine. One main dogma he had : take nothing for granted. Thus he too could not help being dogmatic in his hostility to dogmatism; his one assumption is: have no as- sumption. He affirmed the skeptical suspension of judgment (epoche), because of the contradic- tions of reason. Hence, if he spoke, he must speak on both sides ; Diogenes Laertius says of him '* he was the first to argue on both sides of a question;" such was his principle as both were for him equally valid. Thus he shows strikingly the dualism which has come into the Platonic School. The same Diogenes reports further of him that some say he never wrote a book, be- cause of his suspension of judgment on every point, while others say that he wrote a book *'but threw it into the tire." He must have discovered that it contradicted his principle of suspension of judgment even to write a book, and so he concluded to suspend judgment on his doctrine of suspension of judgment by burning his production. Arcesilaus (born about 315 B. C, died about 241 ) was succeeded by a number of unimportant Scholarchs, till a greater than he appeared. This was Carneades (215-130 B. C.) who wrought out the system of Academic skepticism to completion. First of all he assailed the cri- THE THEOBETIG MOVEMENT. 491 terion of Truth, as maintained by the Stoics, who claimed an immediate intuition of it by the Ego. But Carneades shows how this Ego varies, and thus he returns to the standpoint of Protagoras and Sophisticism. He denies the validity of logic by pointing out that the major premise is itself an assumption requiring proof. He argues that the idea of God is a contradiction, and so are right, duty, responsibilit}' ; in general, all re- ligious and ethical concepts are really inconceiv- able. The fact is, all thought is a denial of thought; still man thinks and acts from thought. Hence, as a kind of compromise between Intel- lect and Will, Carneades developed the doctrine of Probabilism. Though there is no certainty, no objective Truth for us, we still can judge of probabilities which have their degrees of Truth. This thought, after all, may probably be true. Thus skepticism acknowledges a criterion of Truth (even if this be merely probable Truth), and gives up its fundamental principle. It has come to an end, has really ended itself as it ulti- mately must. Carneades, in fighting the dogma- tism of the Stoics, brought into clear light his own dogmatism ; he even makes a system with a principle which denies the possibility of any such principle. In his case, too, the negation has negated itself. The Middle Academy lasted about one hundred and fifty years. A significant picture is that of 492 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Carneades at Rome (155 B. C), as an embas- sador from conquered Greece to her conqueror. The philosopher is reported to have given two discourses on two successive days, the first for and the second against justice. This philosophy Roman Cato did not think a good thing for Rome, v^hose destiny was to be the great or- ganizer of justice for all the world. So we behold in this act Carneades the philosopher undoing Carneades the embassador, who must have been sent to get justice for his countrymen. Having given this display of itself in its greatest representative, the Middle Academy can now be allowed to retire. Tlie N'eiu Academy shows the Platonic School gradually developing out of Skepticism into Eclecticism, that principle which became the characteristic of the Roman world in the second century B. C, when it had conquered many nations and had to govern them from some gen- eral policy. An adoption and amalgamation of the best ideas of all for all became the ruling spirit of the age. Each people of importance was found to have something important to give and also to receive. A universal liberalism of mind and mutual appreciation began to weaken all limits, and particularly the limits of the phi- losophical Schools against one another. The pupils of Carneades began to show this relaxation of doctrine, and when Philo of Larissa THE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 493 (in the early part of the first century B. C.) was Schohirch, the renunciation of Skepticism was openly avowed. The same attitude was taken by his successor Antiochus of Ascalon, whom Cicero heard at Athens in 79-78 B. C, and who supported the view that Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics gave the same thing from differ- ent standpoints. This eclectic attitude main- tained itself with some variations in the School till the rise of Neo-Platonism. With this return to the great founders of the Schools was con- nected a renewed study of their works, with a preference for Ethics. Looking back at the three Academies, Old, Middle, and New, we observe that they form a process together, which rounds them out with a certain degree of completeness. The Old Academy, most of whose Scholarchs lived amid the memories of the personal Plato, was dom- inated prescriptively by his doctrine. But the Middle Academy shows the separation from Plato and also within itself, while the New Academy indicates a return to the first stage. All three likewise reflect the historical character of their respective periods, from the absolute personal authority of the great conqueror like Alexander, through a time of reaction and revolt under his successors, to the universal Roman domination which has in its character a kind of Electicism. 494 ANCIENT EUROPE An PHILOSOPSY. 3 . The Aristotelian Schools — The Peripatetics. The philosophic movement springing from Aris- totle has a continuous development at Athens, like the Platonic Academy, whose counterpart is there the Aristotelian Lyceum. But Aristo- telianism sends forth many branches elsewhere ; it scatters itself over the Greek world and forms not a few Schools outside of Athens. Thus it works like Socraticism also, dividing up into special tendencies, and throwing itself out spatially; but it, like Phitonism, keeps its central locality too, and unfokis in time through a long list of Scholarchs. Hence it shows itself more universal, capable of assimilating a greater diversity of minds and of peoples. Plato is still an Athenian and his School remains essen- tially Athenian; Aristotle is a Greek as well as an Athenian, and is spiritually a world-con- queror, such as Alexander is politically. The creative spirit of Aristotle manifested it self more powerfully at Alexandria than it did amono" his successors at Athens, where the Platonic School seems on the whole to have drawn the abler men. Specially the departments of Natural Science, Literature, and History were cultivated at Alexandria, and later it became the center of the great religious movement which agitated both Orient and Occident. Still the pure philosophy of Aristotle as well as its physical and humanistic departments, was kept THE THEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 495 alive by the School of Athens with great zeal and persistency for more than five hundred years, till the time of Neo-Platouism. That is, the entire Aristotelian Norm — Metaphysics with Logic, Physics, and Ethics — was preserved in the teaching of the Lyceum as a whole, though each Scholarch may have had his individual preference for certain branches or portions of the Norm. Another point may be here noted in advance: the movement of the Peripatetic School in time shows the same general stages as the Academy, indicating the similar response of each to the spirit of the age. These stages, which are three, we shall briefly designate. The first or prescriptive stage was represented by the first Scholarch after Aristotle, Theophrastus, who assisted the master in founding the Lyceum (335 B. C), and after the flight and death of Aristotle (323-2 B. C.) took charge of the School. His bent was toward Natural Science, in which two of his botanical works have been preserved as well some fragments pertaining to the History of Physics. But he did not neglect Metaphysics or Ethics, to the latter of which belongs his well-known book on Ethical Characters. Others are named (Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, Dicsearchus of Messene) who may be said to represent this first or prescriptive stage along with Theo- 4y6 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. phrastus, each one, however, having his own special tendency. All of these maintain in o-eneral the Aristotelian tradition in its more immediate ^form. But necessarily the breach with external authority will set in, especially when such a spirit belongs to the time. The second or separative stage begins with decided emphasis in Strato, who was head of the Peripatetic School for eighteen years (287- 269 B. C), and so was an early contemporary of the Middle Academy, which reacted from Plato to Skepticism. The dualism of Aristotle has been already noticed : the transcendence of the Supreme Being, Thought of Thought, God on the one hand, yet the immanence of this high- est principle in the world and man on the other. Strato working at this dualism of the master, rejected the transcendent part both in Man and God. The human JSToiis or Thought is one with perception; the divine N'oiis is one with the world. Thus he reacts from the supreme prin- ciple of his master to pantheism or immanence. His attack is against an external absolute power or authority, hence it would turn against an absolute political ruler like Alexander, and also asainst an absolute intellectual ruler like Aris- to tie. This, at bottom, shows the same spiritual tendency as the reaction of Arcesilaus of the Mid- dle Academy against the Platonic doctrine. Both are moving in opposition to a prescribed authority TEE TnEORETIC MOVEMENT. 497 in philosophy, which ought to develop the free activity of the spirit. Both are revolts against the domination of an external autocratic prin- ciple of mind, and correspond to the contem- porary political revolts against the autocratic authority capriciousl}^ exercised by the successors of Alexander. But again the mighty genius of the master after a period of protest and partial obscuration makes itself valid in his School, and the result is a new period in its history. The third stage of the Peripateticism is a period of commentators, zealous expositors, who have returned to the fountain head and occupy themselves with an erudite and detailed study of the Aristotelian writings. The first important Scholarch to be mentioned in this connection is Andronicus of Rhodes, belono-inff to the first half of the last century B. C, and hence quite cotemporaneous with the beginning of the New Academy, which likewise sought to get back to Plato oat of skepticism. Androni- cus edited and interpreted the works of Aristotle afresh, and his pupil Boethus continued the task. At the same time the spirit of the Roman age in the form of eclecticism made itself felt in the Peripatetic School as well as in the Platonic, as is seen in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise De Mundo written in the first century B. C. The line of commentators continues in the 32 498 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. school at Athens for quite 300 years, teaching, interpreting, and writing without much origi- nality, maintaining themselves on pretty much the same dead level of mediocrity. Finally the line concludes in the greatest of them all, Alex- ander of Aphodisias, called the exegete par excellence^ even proclaimed a second Aristotle by some extravagant admirers. His time in the School was from the year 198 A. D. to 211 A. D., the Roman Emperor during this period being Septimus Severus. He may have had some successors in the School, but they are not known with any definiteness, and certainly were of small importance. The Neo-Hellenic movement was already set- ting in, which was a far deeper and grander return to Hellenism than that of either the Platonic or Aristotelian Schools, which had chiefly gone back to the dogmas of the two masters. It is no wonder then that both Schools were gradually absorbed into this new philo- sophical movement, which sought not merely to restore formal Aristotelianism and Platonism (hence the term Neo-Platonism is not a good one) but the entire Hellenic Philosophy, and to make it the fundamental principle of the great religious regeneration which was expressing itself in Christianity. This, however, brings us to the end of the distinctively scholastic (or dogmatic) Movement THE THEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 499 of Greek Philosophy in the Hellenistic Period. The Athenian Schools have run their course, which we have seen to correspond in a general way to the social and institutional changes of the ancient world to which they belonged. Still amid all their ups and downs these Schools clung to the doctrines of their respective founders, even if they had at times to contradict them- selves in doing so. The Middle Academy still called itself Platonic and apparently taught Plato's principles in conjunction with its skepticism, Strato still considered himself an Aristotelian though he renounced Aristotle's transcendent Thought of Thought. Thus the philosophical Schools remained essentially prescriptive, holding fast to the transmitted doctrine, even when in partial reaction from it; in other words they never fully renounced their dogmatic attitude. Hence they naturally beget a deeper opposition than any that lies inside their Schools, an oppo- sition which denies wholly their prescriptive basis as well as their inherited doctrines. This is then an assault upon the very principle of the School as the preserver and propagator of philo- sophic dogmas, which in one way or other, affirm the validity of oar knowledge of the object. Skepticism breaks the unity of Thought and Being which underlies the whole Hellenic Period. It denies that what we think necessarily is ; the 500 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHT. truth of the thing known we cannot know, it is a mere appearance. Yet somehow we do know that it is an appearance, and so the skeptical atti- tude has its Dogmatism also, and asserts it against all Dogmatism, which thus divides within itself into two opposite forms, positive and nega- tive. Hence the following is the second or sep- arative stage in the total sweep of the present (Theoretic) Movement. II. Skepticism (^negative). This is the nega- tive counterpart and indeed product of philoso- phical Dogmatism, which we have just considered. Skepticism is primarily a reaction against the im- perialistic tendency of Philosophy. Especially the system dominated externally by a first princi- ple and ordering everything according to its behest begins to be questioned by Skepticism in the interest of freedom. The inherent Dogma- tism of European spirit as expressed in its supreme Discipline is now brought to light by itself in one of its manifestations, the skeptical. Philosophy, being imperial in its law or principle commands the individual, who has nothing to do but obey or revolt. In Dogmatism he obeys, in Skepticism he revolts. But that the individual is to make the law which commands him, is a height to which Skepticism with its negative never reaches in spite of its protest against external authority. Nor has European philosophy reached it consciousl}' to this day. Only the Occidental Discipline as the THE THEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 501 expression of ii free institutional world can bring to light completely and positively that thought which shows its first blind and helpless struggle in Greek Skepticism. Thus we may catch here an early premonition of the coming science of Psychology, as the successor of Philosophy. The skeptical affirmation is that the essence of Being is Appearance. Things have no essence, no truth in themselves ; they are simply what they seem to us. We cannot, therefore, know them as they are, but as they affect us. There is no thought in this thing as far as we can tell, no genus, no universal. Thus Skepti- cism is a philosophy which negatives philosophy declaring that the essence of Being is no essenc® at all, but its opposite, an appearance, a lie. The general formula of Helleuisticism is that the essence of Being is the Universal individual- ized, that is, divided, made particular. Dog- matism affirms this Universal individualized to be reality, truth; Skepticism affirms this Universal individualized to be unreality, appearance, a contradiction in terms. For the individual is just the opposite of the Universal, which vanishes into the individual when held off against it. So the Universal individualized is the complete evanishment of the Universal; that is, the skep- tical Ego posits the Universal individualized to be merely individual (or wliat appears to me), while tho dogmatic or scholastic Ego posits the 502 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Universal individualized to be still universal. Such is the inner dialectical movement of these two spheres of Hellenisticism, in which the Uni- versal is seeking to be the complete psychical process of itself, Avhich process is to separate itself into individuals and then to return to itself out of this self-separation. The inadequacy of Dog- matism is that the Universal is not made to evolve internally its own difference (or its indi- viduals), but is clapped upon the same from the outside by the dogmatic Ego. The inadequacy of Skepticism is that the difference (or the indi- vidual) is not made to evolve out of itself and return to the Universal, in other words, that the Negative is not made to overcome itself and so become positive, but remains fixed in its own self-assertion. Thus Skepticism may and does usually become as dogmatic as Dogmatism itself. The contradiction which it points out in the dogmatic schools becomes its own, particularly when it too makes itself a dogmatic school, which it will not fail to do. The germ of Skepticism may be traced in the very birth of Philosophy, which sprang from a reaction against the absolutism of an Oriental Will divine and huuian. Zeno, the Eleatic, showed it in his negative Dialectic, and particu- larly the Sophists in their maxim that man is the measure of all things. Socrates cannot be left out with his " I know that I do not know." THE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 503 But as already said, iDhilosophical Skepticism cannot arise till there is a Philosophy with a system. For Skepticism must have some kind of system in refuting system, some kind of knowledge in denying knowledge. Thus Philosophy as affirmative casts this pe- culiar negative image of itself as a kind of Me- phistophelean companion to itself, which never fails to appear with it through all ages. The most important of these Hellenistic skeptics and their work we may briefly glance at. 1. Pyrrho. Distinctly the first philosophical skeptic, since philosophy had to develop to the point of affirming truth to be objective and uni- versal, before such a proposition could be denied. The Athenian Movement (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) had declared, in general, the universal validity of Thought; this is what Pyrrho assails, he is the primal antagonist of Athenian Univer- salism. He is not of Athens, but an Elean, and may have felt that Olympia, seat of Zeus, de- served pre-eminence instead of the city of Pallas Athena. He also went with Alexander's army as far as India in the company of Anaxarchus, a follower of Democritus ; both of which facts may have had an influence upon his negative attitude toward Athenian domination in philosophy. He is supposed to have had some connection with two Socratic offshoots, that of Megara and that of Elis, in which latter province he lived; both of 504 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. these offshoots were dialectical and critical rather than creative. His life hcs between 365 B. C. and 275 B. C, so that he was a j^ounger contem- porary of Aristotle, 43 years old when the latter died, and also was a witness of the rise of the Stoic and Epicurean Schools in addition to the Academy and Lyceum. Thus the Athenian empire was transferred from the political to the intellectual world , and another Peloponnesian War broke out, the two chief hostile protagonists against Athens being Pyrrho and Timon (of Phlius), both Peloponnesians, but not Spartans, since the latter did not philosophize, and were averse even to talking. We shall see that a doctrinal point of Timon was aphasia, talklessness, and also of Pyrrho (though Timon seems to have first used the word) b}^ which they proposed to put down or refute Attic volubility. It was consistent in Pyrrho not to leave any writinos, and indeed not to converse at all; still he had to talk a little just for the purpose of fightino- the Athenian devil with his own fire. The starting-point of Pyrrho was, Man cannot know the essence of things, or the essence of Beino" is to have no essence, at least for us. AYliat then are we to do? As we cannot know the object, the best is to withhold judgment (epoche) ; surely from this follows also that we should hold our tongue {apliasia). Nothing ought to paralyze the talking member more com- THE THEOBETIG MOVEMENT. 605 pletely than the knowledge that we can know nothing. Here we observe the contradiction in- herent in all Skepticism, it is dogmatic in deny- ing Dogmatism, it knows all about the unknowa- ble, it covertly reaffirms what it is refuting. Though this difficulty lies in Pyrrho's general principle, there is no doubt that he did good work in pointing out and criticising the formal and inadequate views of the Schools. Already philosophy had begun to transmit categories and maxims externally, its divisions were accepted as final, authority began to rule in the very cita- del of freedom, in the self-active mind. After a great original movement like the Athenian, formalism sets in and really destroys the very purpose of philosophizing. Now Pyrrho wins his eternal fame because he was the first philos- opher who made philosophy itself assail its own formalism, made it batter down its own external autocratic authority and assert freedom, though this was as yet only a negative freedom. When the soul has gone out of the philosophic body Skepticism first proclaims the fact of death, though it has no power in itself of bringing back life. Pyrrho, therefore, belongs to all times, and represents a typical fact not only in Phi- losophy, but also in Religion, in Literature, in Art, and in Institutions. His part is a negative part, as far as he is concerned, but in the total process of \h.Q All (the Pampsychosis) he is ne- 506 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. gating a negative, he is destroying what has ah'eady become destructive, and must be burnt up to prepare for the new positive era. Pyrrho, as a result of his philosophical Skep- ticism, enforced the mental attitude which he called ataraxia, impassiveness, which has its ethical side and connects him with the Stoics and Epicureans. But his ataraxia springs from his skeptical philosophy and is not primarily ethical. Already we have mentioned Timon, the friend and follower of Pyrrho, who, in spite of the doctrine of suspension of judgment and of aphasia, wrote books which very decisively pro- nounced judgment upon the philosophers. In those biting epigrams of his (called silloi) some of which have come down to us, he shows an unbridled touojue and damns Doo^matism in a most doo-matic and discourteous manner. Strictly speaking there could be no system of Skepticism, since that would imply a funda- mental principle, which the skeptics denied. Nor could there well be a School holdino^ the followers together by a common thought, for it was just that common thought of which they were skeptical. Hence we need not be sur- prised to find that this early Skepticism was taken up by the Middle Academy which united it with a dogmatic principle, and maintained both in spite f)f the contradiction. Herewith Skepticism as THE TIIEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 507 an active original force quite vanishes for more than two centuries. But when tlie Middle Academy abandoned Skepticism, and, adopting Eclecticism, became the New Academy, the skeptical consciousness began to awaken and after a time started a fresh movement in its own right and under its own name. 2. Aenesidemus. This is the name of the chief reviver of the Pyrrhonian Skepticism. He is supposed to have lived a little before the Chris- tian Era, though his exact period is uncertain. He came from Gnossus in Crete, taught in Alex- andria, and wrote a book in which are given the so-called ten tropes of Skepticism, or reasons for discreditino; all our knowledge of things. These reasons are founded upon the nature of the sub- ject perceiving, the object perceived, and the relation between the two. Aenesidemus herein goes back to the general standpoint of Sophisti- cism. Yet we see that he has started to system- atize Skepticism, which we may suppose is his chief advance upon Pyrrho. Thus his dogmatic procedure becomes pronounced, and his tropes are means of knowing that things cannot be known, and therefore of imparting quite a little bit of knowledge about those unknowable things. Another skeptic, Agrippa, added five tropes, which are more profound as well as more general. 608 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. than those of Aenesidemus. Finally these tropes are reduced to two. In such changes we see an attempt to order Skepticism into a system, but this Skepticism seems to be somewhat skeptical of its own system. Still the old contradiction grows more explicit: in denying that he can know truth, the skeptic implies the truth of his denial. He was aware of this dogmatic implica- tion in his Skepticism, and sought to get rid of it by a new denial, which could only mean the de- nial of his denial. Where then was his Skep- ticism? 3. SextusEmpiricus. This is the only ancient skeptic whose writings have been preserved with any degree of completeness. He lived about 200 A. D., and is supposed to have resided at Alexandria and also at Athens. Very distinctly does the fact come out in Sextus that the skeptics form a school with its history, its body of doc- trines, also with its great names, and its inher- ited enemies. It is a system similar to the other dogmatic systems which it is assailing for their Dogmatism. It has its regular tenets, its pre- scribed lines of procedure, its assumptions which require proof. In Sextus Skepticism has become quite as scholastic as the Schools which it com- bats for this very reason. He brings his skep- tical principle against the truth of all the sciences, metaphysical, physical and ethical. Thus Skep- ticism which is to permit no self-assertion, asserts THE TIIEOitETIC MOVEMENT. 509 itself very emphaticallv and profuseh" iu these writings of Scxtus. Of this inner contradiction in himself and in his books Sextus is aware ; keen antagonists had made it only too evident. So he declares him- self opposed to both sorts of Dogmatism, to that of the Peripatetics and Stoics, who affirm the knowability of things, and to that of the Aca- demics who affirm the unknowability of things. The skeptical objection is to the positive affirma- tion in each case. Sextus the skeptic affirms very positively that one is not to affirm positively. It must be confessed that he shows little suspen- sion of judgment in his argument for suspension of judgment, and his aphasia has talked itself out in two (some say three) considerable books, in which his imperturbability (^ataraxia^ often shows a state of perturbation at the dogged dogmatists. It is manifest that the inherent negative nature of Skepticism has negated itself and has shown the underlying affirmation in its denial. There are many details in Sextus which we here pass over. His general place in the sweep of philosophical Skepticism is to have made its inner contradiction evident to his age, which, restless as it was spiritually, cannot find peace in such a doctrine. Still Skepticism performed a great function in the movement of ancient Philosophy, by exposing its assumption, its 510 ANCIENT EUBOPE AN PHILOSOPHY. authoritative and dogmatic character, which, in form at least, sought to dominate the free spirit from the outside. The philosopliic system posits tlie essence of being as this all-ruling principle; the Skeptic demands, why should it rule me, and proceeds to deny its supremacy. Thus Skepticism is always a step in spiritual freedom, though its freedom be but negative. Moreover it winds up in a system also, with a dogmatic principle denying all dogmas. Thus it anciently rounded itself out to a kind of negative completeness. Still Skepticism is not going to die ; it has an abiding principle as the critique of all philo- sophic systematizing, which never fails to have the same old dang-er of becoming; an external dogmatic authority over the free self. In fact, Skepticism lays bare, though it cannot remedy, the inherent defect in all Philosophy as the European world-discipline. Philosophy becomes imperial, absolute, autocratic, laying down its principle as the final law governing spirit, which is expected to acquiesce. Still in Siiepticism spirit revolts, and may overturn the prevailing philosophy by a revolution, which revolution, however, is likely to end in a new dogmatism or a new despotism. Sextus Empiricus belonged to the age of Roman imperialism, which the world could not yet shake off; though it protested and revolted and fought, it always fell back into the TEE TEE OBE TIC MO VEMENT. 5 1 1 arms of a new imperial tyrant. The Skepticism of Sextus voices in its way the time's protest, and also shows the time's impotence. The reader will observe that Skepticism has a humorous if not comic strain in its very character which comes to the surface in any complete statement of it. Seen in its depths it is always affirming what it denies, being through its negative nature self -annulling, nuga- tory, absurd, comic in itself. It is a fire which burns itself up while burning up something else which is combustible. Hence it often takes a bitter satirical form, which, however, is always a boomerang. The damnation which it hurls against Dogmatism (often very effectively) is equally or even more deeply true of itself, so that the charitable reader is frequently com- pelled to cry out: O, my brother, you are another. But let such an undignified comedy be at once banished from the presence of divine Philosophy. Thus we have traced down through the Hellenistic Period two philosophical threads, the dogmatic and the skeptical, or the positive and the negative. Both arose in Greece and were born of Greek conditions belonging to the age of Alexander. Then a new world-conqueror appears, not a Greek, but one coming out of the West! What will he do with Greek thought? He will take possession of it, but far more 512 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. deeply it will take possession of him, and overlay his native bent with a philosophical training. The Roman is developing his imperial- istic character and moving toward universal domination, when Greek philosophy meets him in its two leading forms — Dogmatism and Skep- ticism. He will not become a partisan of either, but will assume the attitude of a judge over both, and even in Philosophy enact the dispenser of justice. He will choose some doctrines from each side, making his Ego the lord over all these Greek Schools of Philosophy, as becomes the ruler of the Avorld. For he, the monarch over the monarchs of all nations, must assert himself as autocrat over autocratic Philosophy, which is nationally a Greek. The path for choosing has been already made by Skepticism, which has assailed the authority of the dogmatic Philoso- phies, asserting the right of the individual to reject and consequently to select, according to insight and needs. The chooser must, there- fore, know what is true, in order to make his selection out of the materials which lie before him. Thus we reach the third stage of the present Theoretic Movement. HI. Syncretism or Eclecticism. — After a great struggle of parties, political or philosoph- ical, there rises in many minds a tendency to compromise, to select the good in each and make a new party. Such a bent is always present in THE TREOBETIC MOVEMENT. 513 some individuals, but at given periods it becomes national, or indeed universal. In the matter of Philosophy, a period of this sort began to appear in the second century B. C, and its germs can be found sprouting in the third century B. C. In fact some such Syncretism, by which name Eclecticism is also called, we may trace already in the early Hellenic Period during which many Philosophies rose to the surface almost simul- taneously. Even Plato, at one time of his life, might be termed an eclectic. But, on the whole, the great Athenian thinkers assimulated the pre- ceding Philosophies into their own, making the same an organic part of a greater philosophic totality. Such a power of assimilation is, however, largely wanting in the Hellenistic Period, for no great original thinker arises with a thought capa- ble of taking up and organizing into a new sys- tem the previous Philosophies in which antiquity had expressed itself. Plato and Aristotle remain the two canonical books of the philosophical Bible, with exeo;esis piled mountain high down the ages, and with many small single rivulets running in various directions out of the great fountain-head . Four leadinsf Schools at Athens, with many lesser Schools at different places de- velop various sides of the one great Thought which underlies Athenian Universalism as ex- pressed by its three supreme philosophies. Each 33 514 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY*. of these Schools antagonized the rest and they filled all Greece with disputes, subtleties, and negations, which in the course of time made even the disputants long for a truce. Eclecticism was the result which we can hardly consider a definite school, but rather a tendency or even a fashion of time, in which everybody may indulge accord- ing to insight, taste, fanc}^ or associations. It is impossible to regard Eclecticism as a very profound thing, or its followers as very profound men. It had its chief harvest in the Roman mind and in the Roman world during the century before and after the Christian Era. Eclecticism was old Rome's first attempt to think and just about its last. The Roman had an enor- mous will-power, but small thought-power; left to his native bent he expressed his thinking by doing. Really Thought had no meaning for him except as directly leading to action. Science he might condescendingly call useful if he could put it into practice without too much delay. Herein he was quite the opposite of the intellectual Greek who possessed the faculty of pursuing science for its own sake. Especially did he delight in thinking Thought, which act Socrates, Plato and Aristotle enthrone at the summit of human attainment. Not so the Roman, who would say : My Intellect must be useful to my Will ; but the Greek would say : My Will must be useful to my Intellect. So the THE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 515 one put all of his thinking into action and the other all of his action into thinking. " Will 3^our philosophy help conquer this world before me and rule the nations? " asked the Roman of the Greek, who replied: "It will help you to conquer the world within you and to rule your self." "I'll take some of it," replied the Roman after a while, for he was in no hurry to begin thinking ; but finally he started to select this and that doctrine from the various Greek Schools, whatever he might find useful for his Roman ends. Quite like the Anglo-Saxon of to-day, English or American, adoring his God Utility, mighty in doing, weak in thinking. To Cicero, the silver-tongued Roman spokesman of Eclecticism, even God is useful, otherwise not much, if He exists at all. Thus the one divine attribute is utility, which however undoes all true divinity. Still Eclecticism arose in Greece before it reached Rome. It is a part of a process which presupposes both Dogmatism and Skepticism. First is the separation and strife of the dogmas of the Schools ; second is the dogma denying the validity of all dogmas — a new separation and strife ; then comes peace and also partnership among the dogmas, since that negative dogma of Skepticism has negated all dogmas, itself included, as isolated dogmas. So they are no 516 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPSY. longer hostile to one another but come together and fraternize under a new power. Eclecticism takes for granted a multiplicity of doctrines, from which the choice is to be made; the Ego is the chooser, independent, possibly capricious, who is to take what pleases him or is useful for his ends. Here again we may note the Roman conqueror with the world at his feet ; in the present case Greek Philosophy is spread out before him for his choice. Knowing his wants, he selects what is useful for meeting them, and lets the rest go. Every individual is thus a kind of master over Philosophy, which is likely in turn to become master over him and lead him to self-mastery, or make him ethical, to which end all later Greek Philosophy chiefly directed itself. Moreover, we see in Eclecticism a return to the positive or dogmatic princij)le (first stage) through the negative or skeptical (second stage), which fact shows it to be the third stao^e of a psychical movement, here named the Theoretic Movement of the Hellenistic Period. In other words. Eclecticism is a return to Dogmatism through Skepticism, and shows a commingling of its two antecedents in the doctrine of Prob- abilism, which is not altogether skeptical nor altogether certain or dos^matic, but both of them in one. Looking back at the general formula of the THE THEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 517 Hellenistic Period we find now that the Universal individualizes itself in a new way, namely in the individual who selects and adopts certain doc- trines which he has taken from the various Schools of Philosophy. Over the multiplicity of dogmas stands the individual who has appro- priated them all and judges them bj'his criterion of value. This tendency doubtless shows itself in the time of the earh^ Greek Schools, but its culmination belongs emphatically to the Roman epoch of universal conquest and rule, of which it is more nearly the theoretic side than any other kind of Philosophy. 1. Greek Eclecticism. The first Eclecticism properly belongs to Greece and the Middle Academy. Thus its origin is philosophical. When Arcesilaus could unite the Platonic dogma with the Pyrrhonic denial of dogma, he had started Eclecticism (or Syncretism, which term emphasises the combining rather than the choosing).- Still further, when Carneades had elaborated his doctrine of Probabilism, he made a new synthesis of the positive and the negative in Thought, a union of the is and of the is- not in the may-be, in which secretly lurks the may- noi-be. Probabilism is a thinking which is simply a preparation for action. It puts together certain facts and from these casts up the probability of a future event which calls for the deed. To 518 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. speculate upon past probabilities is au idle busi- ness. It once seemed probable that Hannibal would take Eome, but he did not, and that is the end of the probability. What might have hap- pened if Hannibal had taken Rome, the Roman did not trouble himself about, but he did con- sider the probabilities of victory in an impend- ing battle by taking every means to secure it. A purely speculative probabihty, that of thought, is not worth the thought. But a reckoning of probability as a preparation for the deed is what the practical man must perform, or act blindly. The doctrine of Probabilism is thus a philos- ophy of action, and appealed strongly to the Roman, and doubtless gave him much real help. Here, then, Greek thinking and Roman doing begin to join hands and co-operate. Still this first Eclecticism of the Middle Acad- emy, culminating in the Probabilism of Car- neades, was a direct outgrowth of Greek philos- ophy and not at all an intentional acfJlptation to Roman ends. It suited the time, however, and the intellectual need of the new world-people. For the Greeks, who were once the world-people, were so no longer, their place had been taken by the Romans, who were at this time (second and first century B. C.) toiling at their mighty his- torical task. Of course when we speak of the Greeks in the present connection, we mean the contemporaries of the Romans, not the Mara- THE THEOBETIC MOVEMENT. 519 thonian Greeks, who also had shown colossal will-power, which, however, seems to have ex- hausted itself in the desperate struggles, outer and inner, of the fifth century B.C. Then that and the next century brought forth the great Athenian philosophers, the most gigantic and deepest-reaching minds that Greece ever pro- duced (with the single exception of Homer), who had the power of turning the whole Greek national character from Will to Intellect, and of making themselves the thinkers of their race. Still there w^ere Greek philosophers who more or less consciously adapted their doctrine to the Eonian character. These we may briefly desig- nate. 2. Romanizi7ig Greek Eclecticism. We have already noted that the Middle Academy after Carneades substantially threw its Skepticism aside and became eclectic in a postitive fashion (under Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon), And something of the same sort occurred at about the same time in the Peripatetic School. It may be said that these Greek Schools were Eomanizino; on the one hand and on the other were being Romanized. Hardly different could be the situation in the first century B. C. During this period the two other Athenian Schools, Stoic and Epicurean (^hereafter to be con- sidered in the Ethical Movement of Hellenisti- cism), Romanized with great success, especially 520 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHT. the Stoic School. Pansvtius of Bhodes (180-112 B. C.) was the first important man to introduce Stoicism into Rome, winning the friendship of Scipio and L»lius. More popuhir and influen- tial his pupil, Posidonius, seems to have been in the matter of instruction, whoso activity belongs to the first half of the first century B. C, and extends over the whole Roman Empire from Cadiz in Spain to Rhodes and Athens in the East. The missionary and popular writer (a journalist he would have been to-day) of his cause he may be regarded, though less original than his master, PanjBtius. Thus Eclectic Stoicism becomes uni- versally known to the Roman educated world, whose members begin to choose for themseves from the various branches of the Greek uni- versity. 3. Roman Hellenizing Eclecticism. Very nat- urally this Roman Eclecticism begins to express itself in the native tongue of Rome, which could find a grammatical pattern for itself in the fully developed Greek language. The retro-active in- fluence must have shown itself from the start : as the Hellenes Romanized, so the Romans Hellen- ized. The appropriation of Greek art, literature and philosophy had to become finally the work of the Romans themselves. The empire of Rome must be intellectual as well as political; she must seek to rule the philosophies as well as the na- tions, the word as well as the deed. THE THEORETIC MOVEMENT. 521 Here we can place the aspiratiou and to a cer- tain degree the achievement of Cicero. Greek oratory, reborn in him, speaks at Rome upon Roman affairs ; but he makes Greek philosophy talk Latin to all future ages with such elegance and charm of style that its propagation and its perpetuity are in no small degree due to him. Even at the present time the number is not small who derive their sole idea of philosophy from reading Cicero at College or the High School. In fact the general popular conception of the philosophic discipline is largely Ciceronian to- day. The deeper-digging specialists in philos- ophy are apt to despise Cicero because he is not what they are, but they will hardly do as much, all of them put together, for the sacred cause as he did. It is not hard now to point out his mistakes, his superficial views, his lack of originality and . all the other defects ; in spite of our regard for the man, we cannot help taking a little furtive laugh at him, when he starts on one of his grandiose rhetorical flights, which of themselves constitute a unique species of philosophical spread-eagleism, always dear to the popular heart. Cicero is the - greatest of all phil-Hellenes ; not only Rome but all civilization he has helped to Hellenize, having in this line done more than any other mention- able person. During the Middle Ages his light did not go out, and in the Renascence he was the 522 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. central literary luminary and chief trainer of the new-born spirit. Cicero proclaims himself an Eclectic with Stoic preferences; he selects, arranges and utters his favorite doctrines of the Greek Schools, which have to pass through him on their way down time. Cicero's Eclecticism is still a working power. Other Romans such as Varro and the Sextii, famous in their day, belonged to the same general tendency, but their works are lost, and probably would not add much to those of Cicero. The spirit of the time showed itself in rehgion, as the Roman practiced his Eclecticism upon the Gods of the nations, making himself in his choice a kind of God over them all. In politics the eclectic tendency manifested itself in the Roman State of this period, with its peculiar comming- ling of Aristocracy, Democracy, and Monarchy. But the philosopher of Eclecticism took the en- tire philosophic Norm — Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics — which he subjected to his selection, taking what parts he wanted and putting them together without regard to their inner principle of order. In this way his individual Ego as think- ing asserts itself over the Norm, determining it from the outside. Thus the Theoretic Movement of Hellenisticism completes itself by the Universal individualizing itself in the thinking individual who determines his own philosophic Norm, and is not determined THE PBACTICAL MOVEMENT. 523 by it, as was the case in Dogmatism. He has passed through three stages as this thinking Self — that of accepting, denying, and finally determining the philosophic Norm for himself. We have now shown the individual as tliiiiking ; next this thinking individual is to be seen acting^ or realizinaj himself in deed and conduct. From Intellect we go to Will, which makes outside what is inside, passing from Thought to Action, from the Theoretical to the Practical Movement of the Hellenistic Period. This Movement like- wise we shall find beginning far back in the Hellenic Period, and is notably prominent in Plato and Aristotle; still it does not separate itself from the total Norm and start out for itself till the epoch of Hellenisticism, in which it is the central and most voluminous stream. II. TiiE Practical Movement. We place the present Movement as second in the Hellenistic Period, since its general character is that the individual now makes external in act what he had theoretically taken up in thought. Thus the Movement is psychically separative, as is the Will generally; what the Ego has in- ternalized through Intellect, it separates from itself and realizes in conduct. From this psychical point of view we have to order the present and the preceding movements. 524 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. In the meanwhile it must not be forgotten that their evolution is not simply successive, but also synchronous; the main streams run parallel, and to a certain extent also their subdivisions, the streamlets. For instance, the Theoretical and the Practical Movements start quite abreast in the same place (Athens), and at about the same time (a little before 300 B. C). The first successors in the Schools of [^lato and Aristotle, and the founders of Stoicism and Epicureanism, belong essentially to the same o-eneration and are the product of the epoch of transition from the Hellenic to the Hellenistic Period. And these two primary divisions (Theoretic and Practical) as well as their leading subdivisions maintain their separation and their individuality while Hellenisticism lasts. The Practical Movement involves a change in the sweep of the philosophic Norm, which now becomes dominantly ethical. Metaphysics and Physics are still studied, but their purpose is Ethics. The Good in Plato and Aristotle is the intellectual Good, whose object is to produce the Philosopher in thought. But the Good in Hel- lenisticism is the practical Good whose object is to produce the Wise Man in conduct. Ethics in the first case is the means, in the second ease it is the end. The total philosophical Norm is pres- ent in both cases, but we see how different is the stress or the ideal point of striving. The scien- TEE PHACTICAL MOVEMENT. 525 tific interest is subordinated to the ethical. This corresponds deeply to a need of the age, which had to be made moral, internally self-deter- mined through the moral law. The institutional law of the Greek City-State was lost forever, and the institutional law of the Eoman World- State had not yet arisen. Society would have gone to pieces in sheer lawlessness, but for this cultivation of the inner moral spirit of its best men. Hence the stress of the Age falls upon Ethics for salvation. Moreover, not only man in general but all knowledge is to be moralized. It has been made only too clear that science itself can become ut- terly depraved, diabolic, destructive of the so- cial order and of and hence of man, unless it undergo a transformation in the individual and be subjected to an ethical end. The moraliza- tion of knowledo;e is one of the chief functions of Hellenisticism, wherein the Stoics play a very important part. Whatever we learn is in itself of small worth till it be turned to account in making us virtuous. The philosophical Norm thus becomes ethical. It may well be repeated that the Greek City- State, subjected first to Macedon and then to Eome, has lost its autonomous character, through which both Plato and Aristotle made the individ- ual ethical. Autonomy must, accordingly, go inside the man, and be cultivated there, while the 526 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. civil authority, having become alien and external, can only be regarded with indifference. Hence the rise of incivism in this epoch of pure Ethics, or, more exactly stated, the moral has become indifferent, if not hostile, to the institutional. Moreover, the doctrine of apathy or impassive- ness, which has such an important place in all the systems of Hellenisticism, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, andevenDogmatic, is at bottom the Greek steeling himself to the separation from his com- munal life, weaning himself from the breast of his institutional mother. Only with difficulty can we moderns think ourselves back into such a situation, to which the Greek was peculiarly sen- sitive. Endure, endure, is the painful cry of Hellenistic Ethics, painful from its very suppres- sion of pain. We can hear or even see that cry in the fragments of Greek art, especially in the sculpture of this period. An external power like Fate has swooped down upon our beautiful Hel- lenic world and wiped out its free public life ; but this inner world of ours, the moral life. Fate cannot reach, at least not without our consent. Let us cultivate it, and suppress our sorrows — and so the Greek with an agonizing world-pain slowly moved from Civics to Ethics, from a com- munal to a moral manhood, and with that Greek tongue of his expressed the same for all coming ages. In each individual, therefore, the Universal in THE PRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 527 the form of the inner or moral hiw is realized. This, however, can only lead to a struggle of in- dividuals, to meet which a new outer law grad- ually appears, for all and over all. The phe- nomenon of Roman Law is intimately connected with the movement of Hellenistic Ethics, especially with Stoicism, whose moral cosmo- politanism is made legal and authoritative by the jurisprudence of Rome. Thus the moral spirit has not only put down nature in the form of physical appetite and passion (Naturism), but has also gone far toward doing away with the in- equalities of birth and race (Nativism). In general, we see the following process in this Practical Movement : The moral element (sub- jective) in the individual separates itself from the institutional element (objective) in the Greek City-State, first asserting (Stoic) and then denying (Epicurean) its own universality, which is then reaffirmed by the Roman World- State with its law. Thus the moral principle after being estranged from the institutional, and even from itself, returns to the same and shapes the external law governinof the world. Accordingly this second or Practical Move- ment of the Hellenistic Period will show three stages : First is Stoicism in which the Univer- sal as the Good is affirmed, and is taken as the immediate end of the individual by himself, commanding him to obey its behests. Second is 528 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Epicure a7iism, in which the Universal as the Good is denied to be the end, but is reduced to a means for the individual and his gratification. Third is Legalism in which the Universal as the Good is again affirmed, not merely as a subjec- tive behest, but as an objective Law, whose command is over all. Such are the three stages of the present sphere, of which the last is, in certain respects, an outgrowth of the two former. But, when once started, it runs parallel with them for sev- eral hundred years, down through the Hellenistic Period. I. Stoicism — The Moral Law. — One of the chief acquisitions given by the Hellenistic Period to the race was the distinct affirmation and prac • tical realization in conduct of the Moral Law. This was particularly the great contribution of the Stoics. Undoubtedly the Athenian philoso- phers (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) had devel- oped the moral element of man, but this was never completely separated from the communal life of the City-State with its laws and customs. Hence there always remained a tie or thread which bound up the individual immediately with his native Athenian institutions. Thus he was not fully freed of the prescribed, the estab- lished ; he was not altogether thrown back upon himself and made a law unto himself. The umbilical cord of nativism was not completely THE TBACTICAL MOVEMENT. 529 severed even in thought by the greatest Greek thinkers. But the time has come when the separation must take phice, and the man has appeared who is to perform the operation. This was Zeno of Citium in Cyprus, on the borderland between the Greelc and Semitic peo- ples, both of which commingled in many Cyprian towns. Citium is said by Diogenes Laertius to have had Phoenician immigrants, and Zeno is called a Phoenician. He is supposed to have reached Athens about 320 B. C, having come thither for trade. But he found the philosophers and studied in several Schools. Finally about 300 B. C. he began teaching in the Stoa Poekile, from which fact his followers were called Stoics, though at first they took the name of Zenonians. But this School did not continue to bear the in- dividual name of its founder, which was in con- trast to most of the other great Schools. Thus a man of a different race, a non-Aryan seemingly, has the power to interweave himself and his doctrine into the spiritual development of Athens, of Greece, and finally of the whole civi- lized world. The Semitic type of mind is best revealed in the Hebrew Scripture, and Stoicism has a Jewish cast, as has often been observed. Zeno himself may have been of Jewish blood, for by the Greeks of this age, all who came from the Syrian coast were called Phoenicians. Moreover this same character is preserved in 630 ANCIENT E UB OPE AN PHIL O SOPHY. the School after the time of Zeuo. Some of his most famous pupils came from the Greco-Semitic borderland in Asia Minor, Syria and the eastern islands of the Mediterranean. Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno as Scholarch, was a native of Assus; Chrysippus, the main writer andthought- oro-anizer of the school and third Scholarch, was from Soli in Cilicia (others say Tarsus, which city furnished several distinguished Stoics). The other Schools of Athens had at first the tendency to be manned by Greelvs, if not by Athenians. But here is distinctly a disregarding and a transcending of Hellenic nativism; Bar- barians have actually intruded themselves into Athens, have taken possession of its beautiful Pictured Porch, and are philosophizing with great success. Shocking it must have appeared to the hide-bound autochthonous Athenian, but his time is past, even in his own city. We may therefore consider Stoicism the first important philosophical meeting of Greek and Oriental. They had indeed met before in re- ligion, in mythology, in literature and art; but above all they had met in battle. The Oriental, conquered by arms, had become a part of the greater Greek political empire. But now he has reached out to the center of Hellenic culture, and is to become a part of the greater Greek intellectual empire. Not Hellenic but Hellenistic Stoicism is, and so is mediatorial in its character, THE riiACTICAL MOVEMENT. 531 reconciling the Greek and the non-Greek spirit. In this function it will travel westward to Koms, and there show itself as one of the chief mediat- ing influences between the new world-conqueror and conquered Hellas. Many of the great Romans will embrace Stoicism, which will in and through them bring forth new fruit, which is hereafter to be considered. The Eoman, it may here be said, cannot be- come Hellenic, but he can Hellcnize, if taught arisht, and his chief teacher was the Stoa. The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, with its pure Hellenism, and especially with its small exclusive City-State of a few thousand citizens, must be transformed in order to meet the needs of Kome, the World-City, all-mclusive. We have already noted that it was the Greek philosopher Panaetius who first introduced Stoicism into Rome, about 150 B. C. He was followed by Posidonius, who made himself a kind of missionary to the whole Roman Empire. After the Christian Era Stoi- cism produced the writers who have made it best known to future ages — Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. The eclectic Cicero leaned mainly to Stoicism in the matter of Ethics. The Stoics expressed the triple philosophical Norm as Logic, Physics and Ethics. Their Logic sought specially for the criterion of knowledge. All knowing of the thing was an impression from within, like that of a seal upon wax: so said 532 ANCIENT EUBOPE AN PHILOSOPHTt. Cleanthes, though hiter Stoics modified this statement. Sensation is the source of ideas, the outside world is the determinant of the Ego's knowing. Thus in their pure Philosophy they were materialistic. In their Physics they re- garded the cosmos as an animal or living being of which God is the soul. Yet there is a Reason or Intelligence governing the Avorld, which is the law, and is also called the spirit or breath (pneuma). The Stoics ascribe to God provi- dence, love of mankind, as well as unitary su- premacy; herein they are very different from Epicureans, and even from Aristotle, whose deity was "moving not moved." The Stoical con- ception of God is on one side pantheistic, on the other theistic ; it did not distinguish between immanence and transcendence, but employed somewhat of both. In these religious views we see that Zeno was a Semite who was Hellenizing ; he was a monotheist, yet compromised with polytheism by allowing lesser Gods who were mortal, the one only God being immortal. Man is a little copy of the great world-animal, the Cosmos, with a spark of the divine Spirit or fire in him, which is finally to be united with its source in the great conflagration at the last day. Many of these Stoical doctrines sound like stray thoughts coming from afar without much inner connection. There is no doubt, however, that the Stoics clung to the conception of a Divine TEE TEA OTIC AL MOVEMENT. 533 Reason {Nous, Logos) which permeates every thing and especially man, who was to live according to its behest, or according to Nature, as they stated it generally . This brings us to the Ethics of the Stoics, their great field. They cared little about knowledge for its own sake; logic, the sciences, philosophy itself are only a means for Virtue, for the Good. Whatever does not make man better is indifferent or bad ; moral conduct is the sole end, and in proportion as they conduce to that end, do things have true value. Hence the Stoics moralized all knowledge and indeed everything else; the function of man was to moralize himself and the world. What was their method of bringino; about such a result? The Person or Self was the center — the ideal Wise Man whose supreme wisdom consisted in the pursuit of virtue for its own sake. Such was the command, not an external one but his own; really it was the command of his higher Self to his lower, to his appetites, desires, temptations, in fine to every sort of external determination, which flowed in upon him from the world. Thus the Stoic as- serted the colossal power of Selfhood; it could cut loose from and throw away the entire outer world of splendor, wealth, ambition, as well as of gratification. The Stoic proclaimed the freedom of the Ego, as such; his was a dcclara- 534 ANCIENT E UROPEAN FllIL OSOPH 1\ tion of independence of the Self. To be sure, this was the inner, subjective moral independence. Macedon and Rome might establish an external empire over and around him, he had an un- conquered and unconquerable empire within, of which he was the sole emperor. Moreover while he can command, he knows at the same time how to obey ; in fact his is the only true obedience — the obedience to Duty, which includes all other kinds. It is throuo;h the Stoics that the three central categories of morality, Duty, Conscience and Responsibility, were exemplified in life as well as taught to the world. The whole is indeed an inner process : Duty is the voice of the Impera- tive commanding that the Good be done, which is to subject all passion, desire, in fine all ex- ternality; Conscience is the Self knowing such command to come from within, from the Self as inspired with the divine spirit {^pneuma) whereby Conscience becomes the supreme judge sitting within and demanding rigid Responsibility. Such is the inner judicial process practiced and taught by the Stoics, which process, we may here remark, has to be within before it can be ex- ternalized in Roman Law. But now it is the Moral Law which has risen in the souls of men and is uttering itself through the Stoics. Limitations they showed, which however were profoundly inwoven with their THE FliACTICAL MOVEMENT, 535 excellences. Only one virtue and only one vice at first existed for them, but from this narrow- ness they afterwards relaxed somewhat. Their virtue of impassiveness (apa(heia) was an ex- treme, so was their withdrawal from the world as well as their exclusive occupation with the Self. Still it may be affirmed that without just such intense and pointed concentration, the worth of the Self with its inner freedom could never have been established as a spiritual pos- session of the race. Morality, theoretical and practical, certainly existed before the Stoics, but they by example and precept confined themselves to the one great object of moralizing the Self through rousing the sense of Duty and Kespon- sibility, as well as the negative counterpart there- of, the sense of Sin. The Stoic in his one-sided moralism was indif- ferent or hostile to institutions. This was his greatest defect ; though he realized the supreme universal law in himself, he could not actualize it in the world. He proclaimed the equality of men before the inner tribunal; he asserted a common humanity, he maintained the wrong- fulness of slavery, he broke down tribal and national limits in determining human rights. It may be justly said of the Stoic that he was the first to declare : All men are created free and equal. Moreover we are to live accord- ing to Nature, which is what determines the con- 536 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tent of Virtue, and hence is the Universal Law, the World-Law, which the wise man grasps and realizes in his individual life, and which Rome will raise to a positive universality in her Juris- prudence. Furthermore the Stoic renouncing all ties of city and nation and race, declared him- self to be cosmopolitan, whereby a vague ideal of a World-State of which he was a citizen floated before his imagination. This ideal will bear fruit iu the Roman future, indeed it has evidently yet to bear fruit iu the future of our modern age. With many modifications we find the philoso- phic Norm — Metaphysics, Phj^sics, and Ethics — runninof through the whole course of Stoic philosophizing. This had little theoretic interest, and showed small philosophic originality. Its meaning is practical, ethical; its intensity lies in putting the Universal into the individual acting rather than thinlving. In Stoicism Athenian Thought showed signs of satiety, of intellectual disgust and exhaustion. To the metaphysical and physical spheres of the Norm, Stoicism con- tributed almost nothing in their scientific aspect, but treated them perfunctorily as a means for Ethics. Thus it reverses quite the movement of the Norm as indicated in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Still we must not fail to notice that the Stoics are in conscious possession of this THE PRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 537 Norm and are moving on its lines after their own fashion. II. Epicureanism ( Hedonism ) . — That which the Stoic regarded as the universal End (the Good, Virtue) is by the Epicureans reduced to a means for a particular End. I am indeed to cultivate Virtue, yet not for its own sake but for my pleasure. And if it does not conduce to my pleasure it has no right to be. The Stoic af- firmed the inner Law as the determinant of the individual in all his particularity ; the Epicurean affirms the inner Law to be determined by the individual in all his particularity; that is, what- ever will make him happy is his inner Law, which is indeed to have no law at all but Caprice. The doctrine of Epicurus, therefore, declares the negation of the Moral Law to be moral. It proclaims an universal End, which, however, is some particular end, whatever pleases me. Epicureanism is, accordingly, from this point of view, a separation from and opposition to Stoicism. Pleasure and Virtue were completely one for the Stoic, but they are emphatically two for the follower of Epicurus, who separates Pleasure from Virtue and makes it the goal even for Virtue. As Skepticism is a dogmatic denial of dogmatism, so Epicureanism is a moral denial of morality; that is, the universal end is to have no universal end, but your particular pleasure. Both sides, however, assert the right of the 538 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Ego — the one to set up the Moral Law and the other to knock it down. Herein both are equally subjective, capricious, insufficient; each is equally impotent against the other, each assertins the absolute risiht of asserting itself absolutely. The Epicurean Ego shows to the Stoic Ego its weakness, which is, in general, the weakness of the purely subjective, moral stand- point. The Epicurean claims the moral right to destroy morality, and the Stoic cannot deny such a right without denying his own right to establish morality. Something must be appealed to above both, some Law ruling both their laws. Moralism and Hedonism by themselves will keep the universe in an eternal see-saw between two equally one-sided and contradictory principles. Without doubt Stoicism has the advantage of baing a positive moral doctrine, though dog- matically and arbitrarily such. On the other hand. Epicureanism has the advantage of the negative side in the argument, and so can easily call in question, deny and even burn up in its dialectic the dogmatism of the Stoic. Epicureanism is named after its founder, Epi- curus, who w^as probably born at Samos, of Athenian parents, who had gone out to that island as settlers. The date of his birth is 341 B. C, and of his death 270 B. C. His father was a schoolmaster, and he seems to have taken lessons (doubtless very elementary) from some THE rRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 539 philosophers at Samos ; then, in his eighteenth year, he came to Athens, and probably heard the Aristotelian Xenocrates. But the philosopher who gave him his bent was undoubtedly the At- omist, Democritus, one of whose disciples is re- ported to have instructed him in early youth. After trying at Mitylene and Lampsacus, he re- turned to Athens and founded his School, Avhich was located in a garden, where he philosophized on his own private ground and not in public places, as did most of the philosophers. This is in accord with the doctrine of Hedonism, which cannot well be a missionary Philosophy. If a man's pleasure is in being a Stoic or a Pla- tonist, Epicurus cannot properly have anything to say to him. A garden is a quiet, retired spot to which friends can withdraw and have a good time. At most the Hedonist can laugh at the folly of the Stoic for taking such a rough road to pleasure, the road of Duty for its own sake. Ensconced in his beautiful garden, why should he care for the outside world? The great object is to get rid of care and fear and even responsi- bility, so that you can really enjoy yourself. If you seek to convert others, you give yourself care instead of ridding yourself of it ; hence any propagandism of Epicurus was a contradiction of his doctrine. Still Epicurus was an industri- ous propagator of his Philosoph}' , writing more than three hundred volumes according to Diog- 540 ANCIENT E UR OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. enes Laertius, who adds that there is not one citation in them from another author. We have to infer that the great end of Epicurus was the pleasure, not of eating and drinking, but of writing books. Epicurus has the philosophical Norm which he calls Canonic (Logic), Physics, and Ethics. The first was hardly more than a superficial ap- plication of the Sophistic formula that Man is the measure of all things — that is, Man as this sensuous individual. The Physics of Epicurus are almost wholly based upon the atomistic theory of Democritus. But science, physical or philosophical, is to be studied not for its own sake, but for relieving man of fear, specially the fear of Gods, the fear of future punishment in Tartarus, the fear of any kind of responsibility. In general Epicurus never stops raising his bulwarks against fear, which seems to have been his devil. From that life of his, written by the friendly hand of Diogenes Laertius, we cannot help taking away the impression that of all mortals Epicurus was the one most afraid of fear, the one most anxious about not being anxious. The state of the political world, especially the political outlook of Athens and Hellas, was indeed dark under the successors of Alexander. Sensitive Ei)icurus and many others doubtless were afflicted with the world-pain (Weltschmerz) of the time, and their leading THE PRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 541 question was, How can I deaden this consuming intolerable anxiety which creeps in upon me from the whole external universe? The Epi- curean answer is, ataraxy, imperturbility ; the Wise Man is not to be moved by any care or fear or hope ; the whole universe has indeed turned into one colossal threatening demon, but we shall flee from him into our little garden of pleasure and there cultivate ataraxy. The thought will, however, come up that the fiend still pursues Epicurus and gets into his garden, creeping in unawares perchance, as that other fiend crept once into that other garden of much greater fame. Else why this prodigious effort, lasting a whole life-time and piling up " more than three hundred volumes, all his own" in order to live without anxiety? Though Epicurus connects with the Cyrenaic School of Aristippus, he modified the grossness of the latter, and inculcated Virtue as the best means for happiness. We may well believe his biographer Diogenes Laertius, who defends him against the charges of debauchery and licentious- ness with which his name has been generallv associated. Epicureanism still to-day popu- larly means unrestrained sensual indulgence, and not an ethical doctrine. Such a reproach we may not cast upon Epicurus personally, but time has doubtless drawn the right inference from his teachings. He does not deny the existence of 542 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Gods, but he makes them Epicureans, wholly without any care or love for mortals, existing apart by themselves, happy Homeric deities in an eternal round of enjoyment. The God of Epicurus is selfishness immortalized, gratification deified, the very apotheosis of the sensuous nature of man. Thus in the present sphere is the Uni- versal made individual in an Ego which denies it (the Universal), affirming it to be only an indi- vidual affair and to exist perchance (as Virtue) for the gratification of the individual. So Epicureanism hands man over to his own Pleasure, to be followed or restrained according to his Pleasure. Epicurus acknowledges that Pleasure pursued to excess may turn to its oppo- site, to Pain ; hence there is to be em})loyed in its pursuit some judgment or calculation, and this is the only use of Philosophy or Logic (Canonic). It is evident that the individual, having reached the utter denial of any law except his own pleasure, must have the law placed over him externally. Such is what next appears. Epicureanism is not only destructive, but through it man has become self -destructive. Hence if he continues to exist, his own principle must be put down from the outside. Again the Eoman appears, and asserts himself practically as the arbiter over both doctrines. He will not be satisfied with the principle of the Stoic's virtue as the merely subjective end — on TEE PRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 543 this side he denies it Avith the Epicureans ; still he agrees with the Stoics in having a controlling law, but it must be objective and institutional^ the authority over all. Thus Greek Stoicism finds its external counterpart in Roman Law, and, externally at least, puts a limit upon its antag- onist, Greek Epicureanism. III. Legalism — The Institutional Law\ — The third stage of the Practical or Ethical Move- ment of the Hellenistic Period is that the Moral Law, hitherto internal and subjective, becomes external and actual, the positive Law of the World, specially of the Eoman World. In Stoicism the Universal in the form of the Good, determines the individual through himself,' through his own particular Will in ""consequence of his own particular insight. But in Legalism the Universal in the form of the enacted Law determines the individual not particularly but universally, being placed over all individuals alike and recognizing their equality as well as their right. Thus the inner Moral Law of the Stoics is now made actual and objective, being enthroned the true ruler of men, whose end is to secure to them equal and impartial justice. So we pass from Moralism to Institutionalism, being forced thereto by the caprices of the Moral Ego which has manifested its own self- negation, particularly in Hedonism. Though the Stoics, by their withdrawal from 544 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. all externality into themselves, were in the main indifferent to Institutions (Family, Society, State), still they conceived of man as a member of the great cosmic Whole imbreathed with the spirit of the one God. It was but a step from such a conception to that of a World- State of which every human being was or could be a citizen (cosmopolite). So it comes that we hear of a Polity or ideal State written by Zeno, in evident contrast to the Polities of Plato and Aristotle, which were narrowly Greek and which limited themselves to the transmitted City-State of Greece. In Zeno's State there were "no divisions into cities and peoples ; ' ' every political limit which separated man from man on account of city, tribe, nation, race, was broken down, so that " we may consider all men our countrymen and our fellow-citizens " who are to be provided with Law and Justice, not local but universal. Another Stoic, Mu- sonius,is reported by Stobaeus as saying: the good man is a citizen of the city of Zeus (Aug- ustine's Civitas Dei), which city is composed of ' ' Men and Gods . ' ' And Stoic Epictetus could go yet further and say that all men are brothers as havino; God for their father. Such were the far-reaching flights of Stoic idealism, fore- shadowing not only the coming secular World- State of Rome, but also the coming religious " City of God," the Church. 2HE PRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 545 The Stoic nioralitj, as we have seen, very strongly insisted upon Law as controlling the individual, though the Law was internal. Still it was that which all men had in common, and by which they lived or might live. Such a life the Stoics called a life according to Nature, and its Law could only be the Law of Nature. That inner judicial act wherein the Self judges the Self, absolvinof or condemninoj the same accord- ing to this Law of Nature, was the great prepara- tion for an external jurisprudence corresponding to it and actualizing it through the universal Institution, the Roman World-State. To this development there was an historical side. Each nation or tribe had its own customs and laws ; the Roman City-State had its special body of Laws (^thejus civile). But now arose over the whole the conception of the one Law of Nations (jus gentium) which the necessities of the Roman Empire elaborated for securing justice to all its diverse peoples along with its own authority. The Roman lawyers who were deeply imbued with the principles of Stoicism found it their chief practical vocation to trans- form the Stoic ideal AVorld-State into the Roman actual World-State. Rome could not adopt pure Hellenism with its narrowness and nativism; it must also lay aside pure Romism, which was also nativistic. It is the merit of Stoicism that it trained the Roman to universality and con- 546 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. stituted him the workl's perpetual hiwgiver, who makes actual the supreme ethical transition from Moralism to Institutionalism. Legalism restores a missing element in the ethics of both the Stoics and the Epicureans — the institutional element, which we have already found to be an integral part in the total ethical movement of Plato (p. 339) and of Aristotle (p. 435). Both Stoics and Epicureans were so narrowly moralistic that they can justly be charged with incivism. What may be called institutional Virtue, they had not, in spite of Zeno's cosmopolitanism. So the Sti?te with its Law, which was an inner evolution in the ethical systems of both Plato and Aristotle, has to be clapped on externally to these ethical systems of Hellenisticism, in order to complete the Practical Movement of which they are stages. It will be noticed that these three stao;es of the Practical Movement have a decided correspondence to the three stages of the preceding Theoretic Movement, Stoicism is dogmatic, affirming the Universal immedi- ately, or that Virtue is the end for the individual ; Epicureanism is skeptical, denying the Universal, declaring that Virtue is not the end but the means for the individual. Legalism is a kind of Roman Eclecticism which places itself above both sides and chooses, making its choice the law. Thus the Universal has individualized itself in 4 THE PRACTICAL MOVEMENT. 547 the law-giver, who, however, is not merely the- oretic, but also practical, making rather his Intellect subserve his Will, than his Will sub- serve his Intellect, producing a legal rather than a philosophical world. In this way the Practical Movement of Hellen- istic Ethics completes itself. But now a new fact appears : Hellenistic Ethics though appar- ently completed in separate systems, begins to show itself again as a means for bringing back man to participation in the Divine, such as we saw the Ethical process to be in Plato and Aris- totle. Once more the philosophic Norm asserts itself, and Ethics is seen to be at bottom the third stage of its movement, which is the return to Absolute Being in some form. Particularly Aristotle's ethical end as the vision of God be- gins to realize itself in every thinking individual. Indeed, Roman Law, with its universal authority, as a phase of institutional Ethics, led in the same direction, moving back to the one supreme Au- thority of the Universe. Greek Philosophy, though born of a reaction against Religion, is in a process of returning to Religion, to an abso- lute Will with its moral Law willing man's moral Law. Necessarily the Universal has to be indi- vidualized in the universal individual as its ulti- mate ground. We have now reached that movement, long and fluctuating, in which divinity is to be humanized and man is to be divinized — 548 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the son of God is to become a man and man is to become the son of God. Thus we attain to the Religious Movement, which is the outcome and inner significance of the Hellenistic Period from the start. It is not simply an ethical return to the Good (Plato) or even to the vision of God (Aristotle), both of which are essentially philosophical. But now Philosophy itself is to move back (or rather for- ward) to Religion from which it was once es- tranged ; the philosophical Norm as a whole is in some way to become reconciled with the re- lio;ious Norm, which has risen to be the most urgent need of the civilized world. III. The Religious Movement. In the sweep of the practical movement just given, we passed from Moralism, which de- veloped in Man the inner Moral Law, to Legal- ism, which developed the outer Positive Law in the political Institution, the Roman World- State. It was found that Moralism terminates in Individualism, though this be moral — each man is a law unto himself. Thus we have my- riads of law-makers, each with his own code; the result could only be an incessant conflict of laws. This conflict the Roman State solved ex- ttrnoXlij with its positive jurisprudence, which affects chiefly the outer relations of life (in the THE RELIGIOUS 310 VE. ME NT. 549 matter of property, contract, business, personal rights, etc.). But there must be an infernal solution of the great conflict called up by Moral- ism ; there must be a universal inner law and law-giver corresponding to the individual inner law and law-Sfiver. In other words, there must be an Absolute Being, who is himself a Moral Ego, governed by his own inner Moral Law, which thus becomes also objective and universal. Throush the Ethical Movement God is born or rather re-born in the soul of the Greco-Roman world. Those profound ethical categories, Duty, Conscience, Responsibilty, must be actually deified, made divine, elevated into the univer- sality of God's Self, whereby they are no longer individual and subjected to each man's insight or caprice. Thus the inner Law has its corre- s})ondence and confirmation only in God Himself, who also has the Ethical Process in His spirit as the ruler of the Universe. The Roman Law could, then, construct simply an outer order, very important for that time and for all time. But, on the whole, Legalism pre- supposes wrong, violation, negation on part of the individual, who thus has the initiative; the Law is in some way to meet his wrong and undo it as far as possible; in other words, positive Law is chiefly a negation of a negative, actual or possible. Hence, the question arises. Cannot this neij;ation which lies in the will of the indi- 550 ANCIENT E UU OPE AN PHIL O SOPH Y. vidual be reiiched and internally transformed be- fore it becomes negative? The universal outer Latv can only seize hold of the deed already done ; it must be supplemented by an universal inner Law which on the one hand rules the human soul by authority, which authority is, on the other hand, the soul's own, its own command to itself. So Religion becomes the true realization of Ethics, making the inner Moral Law as well as the outer Positive L:iw over into a single supreme authoritative Person who is both the moral and legal legislator in one, is God moralized and in- stitutionalized. The Wise Man of Moralism with his inner Law and Order ascends into Divin- ity; the Roman formulator of Legalism with his outer Law and Order also ascends into Divinity; there is now a wise and moral God "with his Law and Order which are both inner and outer. But here we must interweave an historical and evolutionary element, since it interweaves itself into the age we are considering. Religion is not made now for the first time, but is something given by the past, transmitted from antecedent peoples. The Orient is the creative home of Religions, which just in the present conjuncture come streaming into the Hellenic world, as it were in response to the fervent call of the spirit. As already observed, all Greek Philosophy is a reaction against Religion in its immediate phase ; but that very Greek Philosophy has brought men THE HELIGIOUH MOVEMENT. 551 l);ick to the need of Relioioii. The result is a grand gathering of Religions into one center, where they are to be wrought over by Greek spirit which they in turn are to work over for themselves. This geographical center is Alexandria in Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great and nurtured for business and science by the Ptolomies. Hellas comes to the Orient, and this is a sign of her present Orientalizing spirit. The Greek has conquered and unified the Oriental nations polit- ically, at least he did so for a short time ; but his chief feat is that he brings the many sepa- rate and recalcitrant Oriental Religions mto one spot under the inspection of Greek Philosophy. In Alexandria, then, a religious process begins to manifest itself which in its total sweep consti- tutes the greatest epoch in the history of Relig- ion, at least as far as the Occident is concerned. The Orientals flock to the Greek City with their Gods, all of them tribal or national, none of them universal or as yet having the principle of universality, whereat through mutual friction the general swirl commences. Thus tlie spiritual center of the age begins to pass from Athens to Alexandria somewhere in the third century B. C. Zeno, an Oriental of Semitic birth and cast of mind, had already pen- etrated Athens and had assailed and in part broken through Greek civic nativism, proclaini- 552 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ing in substance that all men are free and equal. But in Alexandria a deeper and more desperate conflict was taking place : the mutual interaction and gradual transformation or abolition of nativ- istic Religions. The tribal and national Gods of Hellas and the Orient were whirled into that seething cauldron of peoples in order to free them of religious nativism (something far more profound and stubborn than even political nativ- ism), wherefrom the coming world-religion was to spring forth, which was just now in the pro- cess of evolution. The present Religious Move- ment-is, therefore, to bring to light Christianity ; in fact it may be said that this whole Hellenistic Period has as its outcome the one underlying thought and purpose : to bring forth, to propa- gate and to formulate the Christian Religion. The Hellenistic Period is characterized by an original and widespread development of Ethics. But it is more deeply characterized by its longing for a Personal God. Ethical culture did not and could not satisfy it; man will not rest content with making himself a subjective deity governed internally by his own moral Law. Deity and Law must be made objective, world-ruling through a personal Will. We have seen Greek Philoso- phy going East already during the ethical period for its teachers, especially in case of the Stoics. But with far prof ounder aspiration it turns to the Orient to still its religious yearnings. At the THE EELIQIOUS MOVEMENT. 553 yame time the Orient comes to it, having on its side a philosophical need. Philosophy has etlii- cized man ; can it ethicize God, freeing Him from His Oriental caprice (against which Philosophy was originall}^ a protest), and putting Him too under the Moral Law? So Philosophy will religionize and Eeligion will philosophize. In the one we see man making God, in the other God mak- ing man, in both cases after some philosophic pattern. Each of these efforts show the all- dominatino; religious struggle of the age in seek- ing God who will at last be found in a revealed Religion. Meanwhile Rome is ethicized by Greek Thought, which her practical sjiirit makes the Law of the State for governing the world. Thus she pre- pares civilization by an obedience to universal external Law for an obedience to the Divine Person, who has the universal Moral Law within. Rome herself with her secular emperor will sub- mit to this imperial Divine Person and become Christian. Moreover the Church will arise to make objective and institutional the Moral Law of God and to enforce the same in its own name and right. So Greek Philosophy and Oriental Religion are now to pass before us in their mutual inter- action, opposition and final union. The one pri- marily seeks to get God through Thought, the other seeeks to get Thought through God. Both 554 ANCIENT EUROPEAN FIIILOSOFIIY. ways will show themselves inadequate and one- sided; each, however, is a contribution, in fact, a necessary stage to the revelation of the Abso- lute Self as the Divine Process of the Universe, or the Pampsychosis in religious form. Hence we classify the stages of the Religious Movement of the Hellenistic Period as follows : ( 1 ) Philos- ophy religionzes; (2) Religion philosophizes; (3) Religion reveals. Castino; a glance back at our Hellenistic for- inula (the Universal individualized), we observe that its outcome has been reached. That is, the Universal individualizes itself in the Individual who is universal, having in Himself the process of the Universe as his own individual or personal process in triune form. And the inner Moral Law has become truly universal in the universal Person (objective) ; not alone in the individual Person (subjective) can it be such. Thus Ethics has become religious and Religion has become ethical. And God both moves and is moved, both is loved and loves in return, wherein we see the great change from Aristotle and Hellenism. Of this important Movement we shall note some of the details. I. Philosophy Religionizes. — The great effort now is to evolve Religion out of Philos- ophy ; the philosopher is somehow to make God and reveal Him with His worship. Such is the time ; Ethics can no longer satisfy the total THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. 555 mail, and Philosophy, the great creative discipline of the Greco-Eoman world, is invoked to create a Eeligion suited to the needs and responsive to the ]onoino;s of the age. The result is an untold variety of attempts to formulate the coming Ee- ligion. The most prolific period of God-making in the history of the world starts with Alex- andria, as center. Every philosopher begins to call his first i)rinciple a God or divine, and every Philosophy is going to establish its Eeligion. To be sure, Aristotle had already, in a very circumspect way, defined a philosophic God. Plato often mythologizes, introducing deit}^ and deities. The Stoics conceived their God as the soul or breath (jmei'.ma) immanent in the cosmos. Nor must we forget that the Epicurean also had his Gods dwelling " in the intermundane spaces," free of all care, regardless of mortals, and devoted to the pursuit of their owm happiness. Thus every system made its own God, who was certainly not the most important part of it, being rather a supernumerary or a double of the abstract First Principle. And Ave must remem- ber that Hellenic Philosophy set out as a reaction against Eeligion. But Hellenistic Philosophy has ver}^ decidedly moved forward to a return and recovery of Ee- ligion, and the first stage of such a tendency is to make Eeligion after a ]:)hil<)sophic formula. At least Philosophy can select what it needs 556 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. from the vast repertory of Eeligions which poured into Alexandria, and later into Eome; thus people can have an eclectic Eeligion as well as eclectic Philosophy. The man-made God is a characteristic of the age. Even Skepticism has its deities; Cicero who hardly believes in the Gods, believes them to be useful to the State and so philosophizes them into a system. But of course this does not represent the deep and earnest long-ino; of the time for God and for a revelation of Him. Of all these God-creating Philosophies which were called into activity at the present period, that of Plato comes first. And the sect or school which used Plato's thought most successfully in this movement were named Neo-Pythagoreans, though they were more properly Neo-Platonists. The Platonic Ideas are, however, no longer inde- pendent entities, as they appear in Plato, but are thoughts of the Divine Ego. Thus God is posited as transcendent, being the Absolute Self over Hellenic Philosophy and thinking ail its thoughts. This conception will remain and be- come a leading principle of the Neo-Hellenic Period, to be treated of later. Moreover, as the Absolute Self is the Supreme Thinker, it must speak and be able to utter itself. Thus with the thinking God, whose essential content is the thought of Greek Philosophy, comes the belief that he must give a Revelation of Himself. The THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. 557 Neo-Pythagoreans claimed for themselves a Di- vine Revelation, wliich, however, was voiced by their teachers, heroes, God-favored disciples, to whom the pure doctrine was imparted imme- diately from its primal source. One of these disciples, Apollonius of Tyana, became cele- brated in the iirst century A. D. as a worker of miracles and the founder of a new religion — a kind of Neo-Pythagorean Christ. The Neo-Pythagoreans had also their world- forming Demiurge (as in Plato's Timceits), for God is not to touch matter, otherwise he would be polluted by it. This Demiurge plays a some- what uncertain and variable part, being regarded as a sort of mediator or at least intermediary be- tween God and the World, to the latter of which man belono;s. But this sect seems never to have coupled the idea of divine sonship with the Demiurge, at least in its pre-Christian phases. Man, sunk in the flesh, is to be restored to communion with God through the complete sub- ordination of passion and ajopetite by means of prayer, rites, and purification. The moral prob- lem of subjecting the senses to the reason is ele- vated into a religious duty with elaborate forms of expiation which introduces demons and lesser deities with supernatural agencies of many kinds. Here lay the weakest side of this sect; along with its Greek philosophical training it let in all the superstitions of Hellas and the Orient. All 558 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the crudities of popular religion it coupled with the ideal thinking of Plato. It did not employ the Philosophy of Pythagoras to any great ex- tent, though it played with his sacred numbers as archetypal forms, as Plato himself had done in the last period of his philosophizing. The sect seems to have taken the name of Pythagoras since he was the founder of a school of ascetic practice and religious mysticism. Thus the time religionizes, seeking through Philosophy to make or at least formulate God. This is religionism rather than relio-ion. Still this Neo-Platonism puts a God back of Plato, and wants a revelation from Him directly as authority. In Ethics every man makes his own law, makes, so to speak, his own God. But the reflection will come : man cannot make God unless God has already made man, yea made man the God-maker. Hence He is really the authority of all authority. Thus the subjective ethical Ego comes to demand an objective ethical Ego as the one law-giver, who is to reveal his law as authoritative and universal. Very dis- tinctly does the ethical, through its inner process, call forth the religious. But Greek Ethics is the product of the great creative discipline of the Greeks, Philosophy, which must now be invoked to create this supreme authority. The call is answered in many ways, but Neo-Pythagoreanism, THE RELIGIOUS 3I0VEMENT. 559 founded mainly u]wn Plato's thought, is the most characteristic. So Philosophy religionizes, seeking to utter after its formula the process of the absolute Self unto man. But man, making his God, will come at last to ask : Who then made me? Which is first, the maker or the made? Herein we beo-in to see the transition to an entirely new move- ment : from the ready-made Philosophy religion- izing to the ready-made Religion philosophizino-. II. Eeligion Philosophizes. — It is evident that Religion is now the given thing and the determinant, such as Philosophy was in the foregoing movement. Religion, though the au- thoritative and the transmitted, is neverthe- less called upon, in this philosophical world of Helleuisticism, to justify itself by Philos- ophy. So Ave are to see for the first time a Philosophy of Religion, of course from the standpoint of Religion, while just before we have had more a Religion of Philosophy. Again, the center of such a movement can only be Alexandria, the grand arena of Oriental Re- ligions, which are battling with one another, seeking to justify themselves externally as well as internally before Greek Philosophy, which is in- voked, not only as judge, but as defender of the Religions of the East. The Egj^ptians, the Par- sees, the far-off Brahmins and Buddhists are there with the extraordinary claim that more or 560 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. less directly the Greek thinkers drew their doc- trines from these Oriental Religions. The Ori- entals still to-day declare that the West has derived its chief wisdom from their ancestors. Indeed some modern German philosophers have written learned books in support of the same declaration. Religion is now not the man-made, but the God-made, and is divinely transmitted to man. Still at Alexandria even the ardent devotees feel that it must be philosophized, Hellenized, cate- gorized into the concepts made universally cur- rent by Greek Thinking. This undoubtedly pro- duces a change in the Religion, it is made rational through interpretation, it is no longer the work of Divine Caprice, but of Divine Reason. Greek Philosophy, we'may repeat, was born of a reaction against Greek and Oriental Religions, chiefly because of their capricious deities, who seemed to have no law, moral or otherwise. Religion is philosophizing — what? The process of the Absolute Self, which now lurks in all human thinking. The Universe is in- dividualized in the universal Ego or Person who is to be vindicated bv thouo:ht. Relisjion determines Philosophy, not Philosophy Religion. Indeed it is said that Relio;ion determined the philosopher originally, for instance, Plato, who THE liELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. 561 could only have obtained such wisdom as his from Moses. Doubtless many Oriental Religions were thus philosophizing at Alexandria and elsewhere in the p]ast, but the one that outstripped all the rest in this movement w^as the Jewish, with its all-sur- passing Holy Books, which now become the spir- itual treasure of the race. The Hel)rew Bible was translated into Greek (Septuagint) at Alex- andria, and thereby passed from being a national or tribal possession into its marvelous career as a chief world-book of Western civilization. Now this world-book opens wnth God who is creating man and the cosmos, and then delivering the law to his people. Very impressive is the ap- pearance of the man-creating God of the Hebrews in contrast to the man-created God of the Neo- Pythagoreans Avith their theurgic rites and invo- cations. It is no wonder that man creatingf his God becomes dissatisfied and seeks after a God who creates man. Ethically man has subjected himself to his higher Self within, but religiously he is next to subject himself to the supreme cre- ative Self of the Universe, who is the true reali- zation of the Moral Law. So the Jews have returned to Egypt in great numbers and live under the Ptolomies, as they once before went to Egypt and lived under the Pharaohs. According to Philo there were a mil- lion Jews in Egypt during his time (about the 3(J 562 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. beginning of the Christian Era), and it would seem from his account tliat quite one-third of the inhabitants of Alexandria were Jews. But ag-ain persecution followed them as of old, and as of to-day; under the Romans, especially in the time of Caligula, they seem to have been substantially extirpated from Egypt. Judaism, then, philosophizes in Alexandria and interprets its Holy Books through Greek Philosophy. The outer events of scriptural history were supposed to have an inner philo- sophical meaning; thus the interpretation be- came a system of allegorizing. The Jewish claim was that Greek wisdom was derived from the Hebrew Bible primarilj^ so that the ex- positors were simply bringing the Philosophy of Greece to its fountain-head. Of course the Bible was first, the authority, the divine revela- tion and perfect; then came Philosophy, the handmaid, the servant. This was a situation afterwards repeated in the Middle Ages. The most famous name in the history of phil- osophizing Judaism is that of Philo (born about 25 B. C, died about 50 A. D.), whose life spanned the Christian Era. His philosophy is primarily religious, seeking to conceive the nature of God, and determining Him to be essentially indeterminate. The Absolute Being is affirmed with negative predicates only ; He is beyond any idea of human perfection, beyond THE ItELIGlOUS MOVEMENT. 5G3 our conception of goodness and wisdom. This l)egins to resemble Plotinus, though for Philo God is already given, is the Hebrew Jehovah, and is not merely a philosophic projection beyond Plato's Ideas. But since God cannot be con- nected with impure matter. He sends forth the Potencies which culminate in the Loijos. Here we come to the most interestino; doctrine in Philo. The Logos is the grand mediator be- tween God and the world. Here the original, immediately creative act of the Hebrew God is changed, or is at least explained, in accord with Platonism. The Logos is the Idea (or Power) which emln-aces all other Ideas, and, while being a property of God, seems at the same time to be an individual entity alongside God. Does Philo conceive the Logos to be a person? Sometimes and sometimes not ; he uses such contradictory predicates concerning the Logos that the easiest way out is to consider that the question did not present itself to him consciousl3^ To us, indeed, with the Gospel of John in mind it is the ques- tion of questions. Philo can call the Logos an angel, a priest, a second God, yet also regard the same as a quality or power of the one God. Another important doctrine of Philo is that the Highest God is supra-rational, bej^ond Thought or Reason. This doctrine will be trans- mitted to the Neo-Platonists and furnish them with their supreme principle. Philo has also 564 ANCIENT ETITtOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the conception of ecstas}^ or the immediate union of tlie soul with God, which is with him the prophetic condition. Plotinus hereafter will employ this Philonic ecstasy as the highest ethi- cal act of the soul in its return to the Supreme One. But the world cannot become Jewish, nor can it worship the Jewish God, who is after all a tribal deity and not universal, in spite of Philo's Philosophy. In fact his attempt to force what is universal into what is purely national and par- ticular, has driven the Jewish Religion into a decided contradiction with itself. Pliilo, the Jew, has unconsciously though very decidedly, shown the insufBciency of the old Jewish Revela- tion by thrusting into it with a kind of externa] violence too large a content just through his phi- losophical interpretation. A new Revelation, which will again be of Jewish origin, will answer the importunate call of the age. III. Religion Reveals. — Naturally one asks : What docs religion now reveal? In general terms the answer is the process of the Absolute Self. The divinely creative Ego is explicitlj^ manifested in the individual, proclaims itself to the world in Christ and is finally categorized in the Christian dogma. What Philosophy religionized in Nco- Pythagorianism and in kindred movements, what Religion philosophized in Philo and others of his tendency, is revealed in the Christian Relig- THE BELIGIO US MO VEMENT. 5 65 ion, whose birth is the end toward which all Ilcllenisticism has been moving. If we ghmcc back at the Hellenistic formula as the Universal individualized, we find that this resulting individ- ual is the universal Self grasped in its triune process. Or, the Universal as Hellenic Thought is now individualized in the universal individual as the Son of God, who thereby has revealed not merely the implicit, indeterminate Oriental God, but the total divine process of the Universe, of which he is a part or stage, yet which is in him in its entirety. He is a member of the whole and just for this reason has the whole within him. Thus that which the Hellenistic world has been seeking for in manifold tortuous ways has come to light — a Revelation of the process of the Absolute Self, which calls for and calls forth a new Holy Book. The greatest written product of Hellenisticism is the New Testament, just as the greatest written product of Hellenism is the works of Plato and Aristotle. Strong indeed is the contrast. Originally, however, the chief contents of the New Testament were spoken in Aramaic, or probal)ly in a local dialect of the Aramaic. Then they were written down in Hellenistic Greek, the universal tongue of the age, whereby they became the property of all civilization. So we may see that even in the matter of language, tlie Universal as the thouajht 566 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the age, iudividuulizes itself first iu a petty rustic patois, from which it elevates itself iuto the dominating speech of the world at that time. Thus there is an immediate present Revelation of the present, as well as the Revelation coming down from the past through Moses and the Prophets, which is being bolstered up so labor- iously through Greek philosophy by the learned Jews of Alexandria. Good is the intention, and by no means is such work thrown away ; but can we not have a new Revelation? is the voice of the time crying out of the depths of its doubt and despair. Yes, is the answer, and here it is just now being uttered in the rude dialect of a rural district of Judea cotemperaneously with the erudite philosophizing Judaism of Philo at Alex- andria. If we look into the doctrine thus announced and trace its relation to what has gone before, we find that the two previous stages of the Hel- lenistic Religious Movement are united in a third, which gives the new Revelation. The man-cre- ating God (Jewish) begets the man (Christ) who re-creates God in life and thought (Greek) ; that is, reveals Him creatively, in His own Divine Process. Thus Christ is here the mediator, me- diating the two sides, Greek and Hebrew, both of which were deeply fermenting in the spirit of the age. Thereby it is not said that Christ was conscious of any such purpose. Probably not. THE llELIGIO US MO VEMENT. 567 But that spirit of the age was working within him and all others; he possessed the power (we may call it genius) to give it adequate utterance for the people, he being of the people. We must recollect that for more than three centuries be- fore Christ the Greeks had ruled in Palestine and had established Greek cities there which had their share of Greek philosophic schools. Greek civ- ilization had entered deeply into the world-view of the Jews, and was transforming it, in a part of them at least. Then came the other ciuestion, Can the Jewish spirit transform the Greek spirit into a new world-^iew, or indeed into a new re- ligion? Such is the process now starting from Galilee, destined to embrace all Europe and to continue more than five hundred years, till the final close of the Schools of Athens. Evidently there will be many stages of this process and stages of those stages. Here, how- ever, it is in place to give only a brief outline of the main sweep, which we shall characterize by the Greek terms generally used in this connec- tion — Pistis, Gnosis, Dogma. 1. Pistis. The stage of Faith is first, which comes from the immediate personal appearance of Christ proclaiming himself to be the Son of God, embodying in conduct and in simple speech the supreme INIoral Law, and manifesting the })roccss of man in his life, death and resurrec- tion. The Pistis is primarily based upon the 568 ANCIENT E UR OPE AN PHIL O SOPHY. immediate, visible, we may say, sensuous mani- festation of the actual Person, who thus is a direct Revelation from God, as well as utters a Revelation, and whose human career is a Revela- tion. We may note three processes here inter- woven in one Personality: the Religious (the Son of God), the ethical (the Moral Self with its law), and the human-divine (the Son of Man). Thus, the Religious Movement of Hellenisticism has revealed not merely the Absolute Self but especially the process thereof in an Ego or Per- son. This doctrine is now to be imparted by those who have it in the form of Faith (^Pisiis) to those who have it not. Hence rises the Apostolate of Christianity, bringing the new Evangel to the Jews first (through the twelve Apostles) and also to the Gentiles ( through Paul ) . But another stream sets in, an age of cidture and philosophy demands to know. To believe is well, yea is fundamental ; but cannot this new Faith be explained, interpreted, categorized for the under- standing? 2. Gnosis. This general term may include several important movements, heretical, semi- heretical and orthodox, which sought to base upon reason and philosophy the Christian Re- ligion. The original stream of Faith (Pistis) remains and develops, at first inopj:)osition to the Gnosis (Science), and then in harmony with it. THE BELIQIOUS MOVEMENT. 560 lu the New Testament the first heresy appears in Simon Magus. But the Christian communi- ties show an early tendency to split up into sects under the guidance of leaders who give some new turn to the doctrine of Christians. Very early in the history of Christianity appeared the Gnostics proper, who were named from the Gnosis. They too had many divisions among themselves. But they showed a common tendency in the fact that they regarded Christi- anity as evolved out of antecedent Religions, Jewish and Heathen, whose conflict they por- trayed as the battle of the old Gods. These were conquered by the true God through the Revelation of Jesus, which is thus the final pur- pose of the historic movement of Religion. This was a significant thought and it remained a valid contribution for the future. But the warlike form of the Greek Mythus of Homer, in which their doctrine clothed itself, was not consonant with the New Testament, which was thereby heathenized. The struffo-le between Gods be- comes the conflict between good and evil and begets in the Orient Manichaeism. But Christian- ity could not well take the Gnostic attitude to- ward the Jewish Jehovah of the old Testament. Nor could the mythical element in Gnosticism satisfy the philosophical mind. Accordingly the Apologists arise who seek to make Revelation rational, and to bring it into 570 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHTLOSOPHY. harmonj with Greek thought. Thus began the tendency to philosophize Christianity. Socrates and Plato had flashes of inspiration, moreover they were supposed to have received somehow the teachings of Moses and the Prophets. But the perfect Revelation of the Divine Logos is in Jesus who is to redeem man fallen in sin. The chief Apologists are Justin Martyr and Athena- goras. But they as rationalists found opposition in the followers of the pure Faith (Pistis) who did not wish for any philosophical interpretation of the Christian Religion (Tatian and Tertul- lian ) . Still the Gnosis is indispensable, and begins to take a new shape in the so-called Catechists of Alexandria, among whom Clement and Origen stand pre-eminent. The various doc- trines are now brought too-ether and ordered into a s}stcm by reason, so that we begin to see the total Christian edifice, constructed, to be sure, by Greek thought. Christianity now becomes a science, it has a theology which is chiefly the work of Origen, the great constructive thinker of early Christendom. He starts at the top by conceiving God as pure creativity, as Supreme Will, who eternally creates the Logos as Person or second God. The created spirits are endowed with Free Will and have fallen, but can be saved thiough Failli in the Mediator. The "icat strui>i>le of the Gnosis in all its forms, THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. 571 heretical, orthodox and semi-orthodox, is to evolve the conception and formulation of the Trinity out of the Pistis. The process of the Absolute Self has now to be known and categorized as the act of Will which creates the Universe. This is ex- plicitly the work of Origen, who declares the world to be the product of God's Will . The world is and is what it is because God has willed it to be such. Tlius Origen is the most direct and emphatic de- nial of the whole sweep of Greek Philosophy ; he has postulated an universal arbitrary Will as the source of all things. Now Greek Philosophy came into existence by way of protest against the divinely creative Will of the Oriental and Greek Religion as arbitrary. Is this view of Origen a relapse to the Orient? Not exactly, for he seeks to make the Divine Will permanent, essential, eternal as Law and Cause. But this element is Greek and philosophical, and seems to determine the Divine Will. Creation is not a single act m time, but is the very essence of God manifesting itself from eternity to eternity, according to Origen . lie, therefore, has still a refractory Greek ele- ment in him, which has not permitted him to overcome wholly the dualism between Eeligiou and Philosophy'. Hence, in the view of the Church, he is still tainted with heresy. On one side he is still aCinostic. But he has jiroclaimed the Will of God as the central creative principle 572 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the universe, which doctrine will reniain as Christian, and against which the mighty Greek protest, Neo-Platonism, will rise and struggle with a new-born energy lasting hundreds of years. Origen was a contemporary of Plotinus, and both probably attended at Alexandria the School of Ammonius Saccas, from which the two chief spir- itual tendencies of the future gush forth, as two opposite streams from a single fountain-head. But the separative, unregulated condition of Religion, which is the character of the Gnosis, is now to be united, formulated and organized, whereby a universal creed is established and a universal church becomes possible. 3. Dogma. The general principle of Dog- matism has already appeared in the preceding Theoretic Movement of Hellenisticism, in which the doctrines of the antecedent philoso- phers (especially Plato and Aristotle) were still further unfolded, applied, and formulated. In the present epoch the Christain doctrine will de- velop for a century from Origen (185-254 A. D.) in whom the Dogma becomes explicit and organic till Athanasius (298-373) through whom chiefly the Dogma becomes authoritative, the universal creed of Christendom, mainly by means of the Council of Nice (325). It was this Council which defined the doctrine of the Trinity for the Christian world, which doc- trine turned chiefly upon the nature of the Son, THE TiELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. 573 declaring it to be of like essence {homoousios) to that of the Father. The Logos (or Son) is not the Demiurge, not an intermediate being, who is inferior, who is not eternal, not able to com- municate an adequate knowledge of God : so Athanasius contended against Arius, whose tend- ency was to relapse to Platonic Heathenism. On the other hand, Sabellius had the tendency to relapse to purely monotheistic Hebraism, but the creative power of the world was no longer to be the Father immediately. There is a very im- portant distinction between genesis and creation ; the Father generates the Son of like essence, but the Son creates the world of different essence. Eeally the Son is both created and creating, recreating the Father who would not be Father without the Son ; the latter is thereby the total process in Himself. This process, taken by itself and formulated, becomes the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which is dogmatically enounced, though not yet fully defined, at Nice. Herewith the Religious Movement of Hellenis- ticisni has revealed itself as the process of the Absolute Self, which has finall}^ formulated itself in the Christain Dogma. Thus it has become the Law of Faith, enforced by authority, first of the Religious Institution (Church), and then of the political Institution (State). From subjec- tive Faith (Pistis) it has unfolded through science (Gnosis) till it has become objective in its own 574 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. formulated Law and Institution. So we recollect that subjective Ethics (in the preceding Prac- tical Movement) rose to objective authority in the Roman Law and State. Both the latter are novv to re-enforce and support the Religious Movement as established by the Dogma. At this point, then, one epoch of Religion ends and another begins. Moreover, looking back at the total sweep of the Hellenistic Period, we find that its three Movements (Theoretic, Practical, and Religious) have brought forth and made explicit the inner creative movement of the Universe expressed in the form of the Christian Trinity. Thus the triune process manifests itself as three Divine Persons, each of which is a stage of the total process, yet is also this process in itself. That which we have called the Pampsychosis, the threefold psychical movement of the All, has assumed its religious form and has become an object of Faith, the basic formula of Christendom. At the same time it is established as externally authoritative in Church and State, dogmatic, autocratic, hence dominating the free Ego from the outside. That is, the Pampsychosis in the shape of Dogma determines and subjects to its outer authority the Psychosis as individual, which is its essence and which must also deter- mine it, as well as be determined by it. Here- with a new Religious Movement opens, wdiich THE liELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. 575 cannot be here set forth. But we may reraark that this imperial Dogma of Trinity is destined to be the great educator of Europe for a thousand years. The progressive movement of the Hellenic Period has produced the Hellenistic Period, and the latter has now produced the Christian Trinity as a formulated doctrine. This Trinity has shown itself as three Persons and one Process, the absolute Process of the Universe. Not three Persons and one Substance is the present formulation; we must see and express the Pro- cess of the All as personal. Now this fact is what has been brought into the foreground of the whole preceding exposition of Greek Phi- losophy. Every stage of it has shown a process which three persons constitute, beginning far back in old Miletus, and culminating in the three great Attic philosophers. The conclusion is that the Trinity is the true outcome of the progres- sive movement of Greek Philosophy, and must have been implicit in the same from the start. Hence it is the principle by which this Philoso- phy is to be interpreted and organized. The Pampsychosis is now conceived as personal, and as the creative ground of all philosophic Thought. But next comes the reaction against this expHcit personal principle w'hich is indeed the undoing of the Greek world-view as such. A new Period begins, which shows the attcm})t to 576 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. return to the first Hellenic Philosophy, and to restore it as the vital power of a new era. This is our next task. CHAPTER THIRD. — THE NEO-HEL- LENIG PERIOD. Such is the name we give to the new Period instead of calling it Neo-Platonism, which is its ordinary designation. For it is not simply an attempt lo rejuvenate Plato, or to go back to the study of his works, but it is a return to the total Hellenic Period from beginning to end, and includes all the great Greek philosophers. Aristotle has quite as much influence as Plato upon Neo-Hellenism ; Pythagoras and the Stoics are very important factors. But this is not all : the present movement reaches back, as we shall see, to the very starting-point of Greek Think- ing, which it in its final effort tries to recover. 37 (577) 578 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPEY. It will seek to return to that primal unity of Thought and Being, of the individual and the universal, from v^hich Hellenic Philosophy sets out. Neo-Platonism we have had all along, especially at Alexandria during the Hellenistic Period. The early Christian Thinkers were Neo- Platonists ; so were the learned Jews of Alex- andria, where seemingly all Oriental religions had a tendency to Plato nize. The inadequacy of the term Neo-Platonism for the present movement has been very gene- rally recognized by modern Historians of Philos- ophy. Even ancient Porphyry, who was the friend and pupil of Plotinus, and who edited the latter's writings, acknowledged in them Stoical elements, and particularly emphasized the influ- ence of Aristotle's Metaphysics (see his life of Plotinus c. 14). It is true, however, that Plo- tinus is devoted to Plato, and evidently regards him as master. But that Plotinus transcended the Master, and in the deepest matter ran coun- ter to him, becomes evident in studying the Plo- tinian Philosophy. Neo-Hellenism is not then an imitation or reproduction of Plato; if such were the case, it would not be an original system of Thought. Nor is it an imitation or reproduc- tion of the total Hellenic Period, for the same reason. It is, indeed, a return to Hellenism, yet is also its opposite. In general, Hellenism is a forward movement, Neo-Hellenism a backward THE NEO-RELLENIC PERIOD. 579 movement; their movements are, therefore, con- tradictory at bottom. Hence we shall see that Neo-Hellenism on its negative side counteracts and neutralizes in principle all that Hellenism has done. But just this is the winding up and completion of Greek Philosophy, whereby it be- comes a well-rounded, finished totality, unique of its kind in the spiritual achievements of the race. The cycle of Greek Philosophy is fulfilled by Neo-Hellenism, which has, therefore, to join together the last and the first, to push forward to a conclusion which goes back and interlinks with the starting-point. Thus the movement of the Thought of Hellas with its three Periods completes itself. So we shall here persist in using the term Neo-Hellenic for the present Period as far more definite and far more suggestive of its true pur- port. To be sure we have already employed the word JS'eo-Platonic in a general way, as the one in common use and therefore more intelli- gible on the spot. But now we must employ more accurate terms for the sake of the more precise thought which is at present our object. There need be no confusion if both words are used in the right place and in the right way. 1. If we wish to grasp, as nearly as possible, the definite time and place at which Neo- Hellenism shows itself a distinct Movement as against Hellenisticism, we must turn to Alexan- 580 ANCIENT ETJBOFE AN PHILOSOPHY. dria in the second quarter of the third century A. D. In fact we may well point to the School of Ammonius Saccas as the very source from which proceeds the grand bifurcation of the Hellenistic Period into two streams, the Chris- tian and the Neo-Hellenic, each of them being represented by a great, epoch-making thinker — Origen the Christian, and Plotinus the Neo- Hellenist. Both were pupils of Ammonius, not indeed at the same time, for Origen quit Alexan- dria in 232 A. D., the year Plotinus entered the School of Ammonius. Of this Ammonius very little is known. Por- phyry (in his Life of Plotinus) gives some facts about him which are significant. He seems not to have left any writings, and he made his pupils promise not to publish his opinions, though evi- dently they had the right of teaching these opinions orally. After several pupils had broken their promise, Plotinus broke his too, or at least broke his silence, and began to write, but not until many years had elapsed. Then he started to compose his Enneads, for which act Philosophy will always be thankful. It is strange that Plotinus seldom if ever mentions his master by name ; very different is Plato's treatment of Socrates. Still Ave may note in Plotinus a dis- inclination to speak of persons, even when he is discussing their doctrines. We find that Plato, upon whose writings he so often falls back, is THE NEO- HELLENIC PERIOD. 58 1 not always cited by name. The individual was worthless in the eyes of Plotinus, he was to be re-absorbed, was to get rid of himself by return- ing to the One, even in this life. So Plotinus, in accord with his doctrine, " seemed to be ashamed of his being in a body," and more deeply still contemned his own Self. Hence he appears to shun any glorification of the indi- vidual, of his individual teacher Ammonius, and even of his master, the divine Plato. Not in- gratitude but conviction we may see in his scant mention of his great predecessors in Philosophy. It is further stated of Ammonius that he was born of Christian parents in humble life, but that he, studying Greek Philosophy, renounced his faith and returned to the Hellenic Gods. This fact is characteristic, as is the further state- ment that in his teachins; he souo-ht to show the fundamental unity of doctrine in both Plato and Aristotle. In his school he seems to have adopted something similar to the Pythagorean Askesis. From these hints we see that Ammo- nius sought to return to Hellenism, especially to Hellenic Philosophy' . But long before him, the same movement was fermenting in the spirit of the time. We catch its struggles in Philo, in the Gnostics, especially in Numenius, from whom cavilers said that Plotinus had plagiar- ized his Philosophy. This is, of course, false, since Plotinus is as original as any philosopher 582 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. that ever lived ; still the charge indicates that he came forth only i n the fullness of a long preced- ing evolution, which had given many signs of the new thought. So we may conclude that in the little school of master Ammonius Saccas, seemingly insignifi- cant in the great bustling city of Alexandria, full of commercial life, and particularly full of religious and philosophical feuds, began distinct- ly that prophetic Parting of the Ways, the one leading forward through Christian Origen to the future of Europe, the other leading backward through heathen Plotinus to the past of Hellas, the one being essentially a progressive and the other a regressive movement. II. In this manner we bring before ourselves the bifurcation of Hellenisticism, which is also its conclusion. Seeking for the deeper ground of these movements, we find that Origen first decisively formulates the Will, the divinely creative Will, as the source of the world and man, though this creative activity he posits as eternal. Secondly, he proclaims Christ as the only begotten Son of God, generated not pro- duced or emanated. Thus the Universal individ- ualizes itself in a Person who is the universal indi- vidual. Thirdly, Origen proclaims the Trinity as personal; the absolute process of the Universe is triune and is composed of three Divine Persons. Thus Origen organizes Christianity, and lays the TEE NEO-HELLENIQ PEBIOD. 583 foundation of Christian Theology, and with it of the Church. Every one of these three doctrines Neo-Hellen- isiu controverted, reacting against them prima- rily by a return to philosophic Hellenism, which, however, it transcended. It sought to conceive God as supra-personal, as the pure Universal which swallows up the individual. It w^ould not think of God begetting a Son like unto Himself, that were the deepest divine degradation for those who were ashamed of their bodies and of their selfhood. The great ethical function of the individual in Neo-Platonism is to get rid of himself by becoming one with the One, and van- ishing as a self-conscious individual or person. But to make God a person, whose first duty is to cancel personality, could only be for the Neo- Hellenist unphilosophical or even blasphemous. On the contrary, Christianity is fundamentally personal, making God a person and the father of a person. The infinite stress is upon the salvation of the individual and not his absorption. Plotinus has left a considerable record of this early separation and antagonism between the Christians and Neo-Platonists, in a treatise (^Ennead II., Book 9) which Porphyry entities "Against the Gnostics," though the Gnostics are not mentioned in it, nor is any sect named, as is the custom of Plotinus. But a careful reading of the treatise shows clearly that it is 584 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. directed ao-ainst the leadiuo; doctrines of the Christians, both Gnostic and Catholic. There is a decided polemic poured forth upon the idea of the Christ. Pk)tinus with an aristocratic disdain reprobates the custom of saying to every common man " Thou art the son of God." Who could have spoken such a sentence, but a Christian? And " thou art better than the Heaven itself " with its sun and stars. Plotinus deems it not proper to say that the soul of the vilest man is immortal and divine. Who could have asserted that? Many other passages show the philosopher's protest against the worth of the individual, especially if he be of the common herd. In theae statements, some of which still retain the heat of discussion, Ave can doubtless hear an echo of the controversies in the Alexan- drian School of Ammonius. In the same treatise Plotinus reveals his ten- dency to go back to " the doctrines of those ancient and divine men," the old Hellenic phi- losophers. Again he grows warm in reproving the arrogance of those who claim to have a new light surpassing that of the Wise Men of all heathendom, and " who defame and insolently assail the opinions of the Greeks." Great is the philosopher's indignation, though he men- tions no names ; over and over again his aristo- cratic coiitein[)t breaks out against those " wiio are willing to call the lowest of mankind their THE NEO-HELLENIC PEEIOD. 685 brethren." Just here indeed lies the great dis- tinction which causes the open split in the Hel- lenistic Period. Shall the return to God save the individual or destroy him? Neo-Hellenisui de- clares that he must go back and be re-absorbed in the source whence he came. Hellenisticism, with its doctrine of individualizing the Universal, has unfolded to the point of individualizing, that is, humanizing even God, having made Him a man. But at this point Neo-Hellenism separates from the Hellenistic stream, rising up in a mighty swell and rolling back to the fountain-head of Greek Philosophy. It will continue this return- ing current with a surprising vitality, seeking a restoration of Hellenic Thought, but in reality accomplishing something very different. HI. The Neo-Hellenic Period lasted about 300 years, if we reckon from its beginning in Alexandria to the close of the School of Athens (529 A. D.). This is nearly the same in length of time as the Hellenic Period to which it is a re- turn. All these years it was engaged in a life- and-death struggle with Christianity, gradually losing its hold upon the world till at last it suc- - cumbed, or rather was knocked in the head by the emperor Justinian. It was indeed a sad time, in which all men, both Christian and Heathen, were overwhelmed with a feeling of decadence, which sprang from a civilization going to pieces. In this decline and 586 ANCIENT E UEOPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. fall of a world man felt himself utterly helpless, and in a kind of terror turned for external aid to the higher powers, being ready to believe almost anything, if it promised assistance. Even intel- ligence was no bulwark against the superstitious dread of the grand collapse which everybody felt to be coming. The philosopher, who ought to be the last person to be terrorized, though caught in thecatacly ?m of the Universe, yielded and be- came panicky along with the common mass. For the Neo-Hellenic Period was one long panic of the whole Greco-Eoman wo rid fleeing for shelter with prayers, incantations, ceremonies, invoca- tions to every imaginable sort of supernatural beings against the impending Crack of Doom. In this universal scare Christian and Heathen equally participated, being equally threatened when the whole edifice of antiquity, in which they all were still living, was toppling over their heads. In this way we account for a peculiar element in Neo-Hellenism : the crass superstition which weaves through it from beginning to end, in the shape of demons and devils and spirits and spooks in infinite quantity and gradation up to the gods, who are likewise of all conditions and tribes and nations. Now such a tendency is directly the opposite of the Hellenic Period, which starts in the clear sunrise of Intelligence and grows brighter and brighter till the noon of Athenian Universal- ism. But the Neo-Hellenic Period moves the THE NEO-HELLENIC PEBIOD. 587 other way ; tlie night-side of human spirit grows darker and darker from Plotinus to Jamblichus and Proclus, till at last the philosophic hght of Hellas sinks down forever. Thus the return to Hellenism in this as in so many other cases is not progressive, but regressive ; the day of Greek Philosophy is indeed advancing, yet not from dawn to noon, but from afternoon to darkness. Still we must admire the desperate valor of those thinkers who refused to give up their old world, but sought to get back to it again through a rejuvenation of its Philosophy. They were the romanticists of their age, and have nourished the romanticism of all times, which generally is seek- ing to restore some lost ideal. We recollect that Schelling, the philosopher of the last centurj^'s German romanticism, received no small part of his intellectual food from Neo-Hellenism. Though the old heathen life of Hellas w^as felt to be giving away, many of the choicest spirits of this period made a strong, fresh endeavor to re- store that antique power, originality and happi- ness which still irradiated the clouds that overcast their heaven. At iirst, indeed, the State was on their side, but gradually it went over to their enemies, and finally gave them the fatal blow. IV. The outer topographical movement of Neo- Hellenism is seen again to be essentially centri- petal, as was the first Hellenic Period, whose 588 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. sweep we have already noted, starting from the Greek borderhiud and concentrating finally at Athens. In a similar manner the Neo-Hellenic idea begins at Alexandria in the south, then comes to Rome in the west in the person of Plotinus, then leaps to Syria in the east to the school of Jamblichus, and finally reaches the cen- ter, Athens, for the last years of activity, dying in the same city where Philosophy first concen- trated itself for its highest effort nearly a thou- sand years before. In one sense, however, Neo- Hellenism did not die, and is not yet dead, for it is still an influence, a spirit which stirs to-day kindred souls to adopt its doctrines. On the contrary, the Hellenistic movement was centrifugal, going forth from Athens to the borders of the civilized world east, west, north and south. Hellenisticism had a missionary function, it carried Greek Philosophy far beyond the periphery of Hellas to the very rim of the Roman Empire where it touched outlying bar- barism. In this work it had spent several cen- turies, seeking to give itself to all men of all nations, But its chief product was the new uni- versal Religion, Christianity, But now to this vast outward sweep of expan- sion succeeds a fresh concentration, in which Greek Philosophy seeks to return to its first cen- tralizing, unifying tendency, and to save itself from its own child. Indeed, as Hellenism un- THE NEO-IIELLEmC PERIOD. 589 folded itself into this expansion, Neo-Hellenism must get back of it and negate just the preceding evolution which has been revealed as its very nature. Such a principle we shall find in the One of Plotinus, which is beyond Reason, beyond Plato and Aristotle, even if it can be shown to be implicitly in them at times. But really it is an Oriental religious inheritance, which Neo- Hellenism probably received from Philo the Jew. The philosophic Norm has gone outside of itself for its highest principle, having no longer the controlhng power over itself within itself. Phi- losophy is not autonomous, not truly self-deter- mined in Neo-Hellenism, but invokes a supra- rational, indeed supra-philosophical energy to come down and rule its world. In other words Neo-Hellenism is autocratic, absolutistic, im- perial like its age. The fact that the Neo-Hellenic movement, even in its outward topographical sweep, is cen- tripetal, can now be seen to be deeply consonant with the social and institutional character of the time. The Roman Emperor was likewise the absolute One in whom all was concentrated; he was, too, a God, in whom all lesser deities of tribe and nation vanished, before whom all indi- viduals were as stubble in the fire. Verily he was the Universal individualized in a being whose universality was all-absorbing. The negative might of Neo-Hellenism against the individual 590 ANCIENT E UliOPEAN PHIL OSOPHi*. received its living, practical illustration in such a supreme ruler. Indeed the Roman Emperor as individual was liable to be destroyed by another stronger individual during the whole Neo-Hellenic Period. Some mio-htier beins: seemed to hover above every Emperor as person, often swooping down and devourins; him after a little brief authority. The One of the Neo-Hellenic world would appear to tolerate no individual, not even an Emperor. Thus it swallowed its own personal representatives one after another with great rapidity. Think of what passed before the eyes of Plotinus at Rome. Gallienus the Roman Emperor was his friend ; he saw that friend, after having reached the throne by destroying other pretenders, destroyed in turn by Claudius who succeeded him, but who was soon followed by Aurelian, in the year of the death of Plotinus. So the time reveals an all-devouring One above the individual, even the highest, above Emperors, who seem to be its choicest food. Thus Greek Philosophy returns to Athens for its last years, after making the circuit of the Roman Empire lying around Hellas. We are again reminded of the vortex, of the peripheral movement of the First Period and the final flight to the Athenian center. But Athens was in a very different condition at that former time. Then it was independent, autonomous, the center of the Will and also of the Intellect THE NE - HELLENIC rERIOD. 5 9 1 of the Hellenic world. But now its power and its freedom as well as its spirit are gone; it receives its law not from itself but from an external authority. Thus Neo-Hellenism does not return to Hellenic Athens, to the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These were the marvelous product of the Athenian City-State, the children of its free comiiumal life. Athens then could give birth to its own philosophers. But the Neo-Hellenists come to it from the out- side, they are not its mighty progeny. Athens is now but a tomb out of which they seek to raise the dead. But their philosophic fate is to die on that tomb themselves, and they only bring Philosophy back to expire in its own birthplace. Thus the return of Neo-Hellenism to Athens is just the opposite of the first, in which the city was determined from within, while in this it is determined from without, by an external power. Neo-Hellenism was philosophically the bearer of that supernal One, which was already over it politically, and which had absorbed its essence, its individuality. Such a doctrine do these late philosophers bring to Athens — a doctrine which heralds its own dissolution as well as that of its disciples. V. But who were these ardent disciples seek- ing to restore that primal Hellenic Philosophy, and even to bring it back to its first home? The curious fact comes to light that the most impor- 592 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tantof them were not Athenians, not even Greeks, jes, not even Aryans apparently. Ammonius Saccas the founder of Neo-Phitonism was an Egyptian, judging by his name; so wasPlotinus. Jamblichus and Porphyry, coming next in time and importance, were Syrians. Proclus, the last great light of Neo-Hellenism, was born of parents who came from Lycian Xanthus in Asia Minor. These are the greatest names — all of them Orientals, though Hellenized. As Greek culture once went to the Orient with Alexander and deeply transformed it, so now the Orient will return to the Greco-Roman world, seeking to restore that original Hellenic spirit which has given so freely of itself to the East. Still this is not a Greek love of Greece, but an Oriental love of Greece ; it is not an Hellenic return to Hellas, but an Oriental return. And just in this last fact lies the originality of Neo- Hellenism, which will have in it a new strand coming from the Orient, and so will not be and cannot be a more repetition or imitation of Hel- lenism. The Supreme One above Reason, which is the highest principle of Neo-Hellenism, is distinctly non-Hellenic, we may say, anti-Hel- lenic. Without doubt it developed in the Hel- lenistic Period, but from Orientals. For instance, the dj'uamic pantheism of the One is derived from the Stoics, whose founder Zeuo and whose chief Scholarchs came from the Orient. On the THE NEO-HELLEmC PERIOD. 593 other hand, the Oue as supra-rational is found in the Jew Philo, who also has the idea of ecstasy whereby the individual returns to an unconscious unity with the One. Neo-Hellenism will com- bine these doctrines with Hellenic Philosophy, making a new and distinct Philosophy, far more original than that of the purely Platonic or Peri- patetic Schools, more original than any system of Thought that arose durino; the Hellenistic Period. Creative Thinking shows itself once more and celebrates a second birth. Plotinus is properly to be placed with Plato and Aristotle as the third among the greatest Greek philoso- phers, who have organized their Thought and set it down in writing. So it was not the Greek personally who was the bearer of Greek Philosophy in its final stage of return upon itself, but the Oriental. The Greek philosopher proper had done his work in the Hellenic Period, which through him had advanced into Hellenisticism. He seemingly could not reverse himself ; he might repeat his progressive movement in the Schools, but he could not become regressive and run counter to his own philosophic evolution. Yet this is what a return meant, what it had to do. Greek thought had, therefore, to take possession of an Oriental mind in order to fulfill itself, and com- plete its cycle. Having gone forth to the 38 594 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Orient, it could not get back except through Orient. VI. There is a strong negative element in Neo- Platonism, which places the One, the grand ob- ject of attainment, above all reason, all know- ing, all consciousness. This, of course, denies not only science, but even the possibility of the same ; it denies the scientific results of Plato and Aristotle, while going back to them and treating them as a kind of Bible. Hellenistic skepticism lurks in the very fiber of Neo-Hellen- ism ; though there is the return to the Hellenic Period, Plotinus and his followers must carry back with themselves the knowledge of its de- cline. Plato and Aristotle did not save Greece, or the Greco-Roman life ; there was some power over them which made them instruments in the evanishment of their own world. The Neo- Hellenist, therefore, even while studying his philosophical Bible, cannot help having the con- sciousness of an energy mightier than the mightiest philosoj)hers — an energy transcending their science and all science. Yet this potency unknown (for it is above knowledge), indeter- minate, but all-powerful, he must somehow reach and participate in, otherwise he loses the whole purpose of his return. The latter must lead him to what lies beyond it and determines it — to the Supreme One beyond Thought, and hence be- THE NEO-HELLENIC PERIOD. o9o yond Hellenism, yet the secret power producing the same. Thus the skeptical element of Hellenisticism will not be wantini? to the Neo-Hellenic move- ment. Still this is not the bitter Pyrrhonic skepticism which denies all authority and all truth. Nco-IIelleni.sm will have its authoritative canonical books, its Bible, as already stated. Such a characteristic it could also have derived from religious Hellenisticism, especially from Philo who took the Hebrew Bible as supreme authority even for Philosophy. But in the pres- ent case Philosophy furnishes its own Bible, the Hellenic one, made up of the writings of the old Greek philosophers, especially of Plato and Aris- totle. From these statements we see that Neo-Hel- lenism bears in it both a positive, preservative principle, and also a negative, destructive prin- ciple toward the world to which it returns. In the first case it appropriates and affirms, in the second case it transcends and so denies as ulti- mate, the Ideas of Plato and the Thought-think- ing-Thought of Aristotle. In like manner it shows both a positive and negative attitude toward the world from which it departs, the Hellenistic. With the Christian the Neo-Hellen- ist affirms the supra-rational One, and accepts a biblical authority; but in opposition to the Christian he denies the personality of the One 596 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and its process, and scouts the biblical authority of the New Testament. VII. The absolute autocracy of Neo-Platon- ism has been already touched upon and c©nsti- tutes one of its most striking characteristics, and one which is decidedly anti- Athenian, in fact anti-Greek. In this respect, too, the Neo- Hellenic return runs counter to Hellenism. Still the autocratic Philosophy is deeply harmonious with the institutional environment of the whole Neo-Hellenic Period. The imperial, irresponsible, supra-rational One has its unquestioned represent- ative in the political head of Rome, in whose presence the individual can have no substantial being. The Roman State was still heathen when Neo- Hellenism began in Alexandria, and it became a persecutor of Christianity ; but it changed com- pletely at the time of Constantine's conversion (usually dated 312 A. D.) Not Plotinus but Jamblichus saw the civilized world becoming Christian in its political authority. Finally, in the last stage of Neo-Hellenism, persecution had faced about, and the philosophers in their turn felt its blow coming from the Christian State. The fact is, then, that Christianity with- stood persecution and even thrived on it, while it destroyed Neo-Hellenism as an active existing school, though the hitter's doctrines were still studied, and privately taught and believed. THE NEO-HELLENIG PEBIOD. 597 But its power as an independent movement was broken with the ckjsing of the School of Athens by Justinian. Its teachers were scattered, though they did not fail to produce an important influence upon the dominant Christianity, con- tributing largely to its element of mysticism. The fact is, the Neo-Hellenists never sought to improve the condition of the Eoman State when the latter was at its worst. They held aloof from pohtical affairs, no reform for the betterment of social conditions is attributed to them, no ideal polity like that of Plato and Aris- totle did they try to construct. It is true that Plotinus is reported by Porphyry to have con- ceived a City of Philosophers, a Platouopolis ; this, however, could not have been a State, but a School, a Monastery, a Mount Athos full of celi- bates, vegetarians and ecstatics. Neo-Hellenism is not institutional, has no institutional Ethics, except perchance the shadow of a pohtical virtue, the very lowest virtue in its opinion. It must shun the real world of sense, and so it eschewed politics; it could not reach the people with its abstract, impersonal One as God. In Neo-Hellenism, accordingly, we cannot help finding the belief that the Roman State and in- deed that the State as an Institution was a failure. The time gave only too nnich confirmation to such a belief. But still dce[)er runs the Neo- Hellenic criticism of the age, proclaiming that 508 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. Europe has failed. What has the Greco-Roman civilization produced? Look around everywhere and behold a kind of Inferno. How shall we get out of it? Back, back to old Hellas, and then beyond it to the Orient. Such is their regressive cry, on the one side a gospel of de- spair, on the other the deep necessity of the time. The Neo-Hellenic Orientals have come into Europe, acquired its language, culture and civilization, and are now subjecting the whole European world to their fierce criticism, indirect, to be sure, but very real. Their work reveals the disease and must be regarded as a condition of future health. From this point of view Neo-Hellenism has a prominent place in Thought. It will become the nourishment of ideal spirits who are in a state of protest against their age and its civiliza- tion. Hence it exiots to-day. In Neo-Hellenism European Philosophy is made, by its own act, to reach entirely through itself and to get out of itself. The Supreme One is to be attained by the complete cancell'ition of the European dual- ism, which dualism is what Philosophy at bottom expresses, and by the very nature of its Norm it can ultimately express nothing else. Hence Neo- Hellenism becomes extremely interesting and valuable as a judgment of Europe seen in its very essence. Still this judgment is fundamentally negative. THE NEO-HELLENIC PEBIOD. ^^^ and that is its weakness. Spirit must go for- ward for its highest fruition, not backward — forward to the Occident, not backward to the Orient. It must advance to a new Discipline, not retreat to an old Discipline. Hence Neo- Platonism will remain good as a critique of the old, but not as a construction of the new. Moreover it is a Philosophy which retires to the shelter of Keligion and still remains philo- sophical. It seeks to transcend Philosophy, and yet it remains Philosophy in the act of trans- cendence. Thus it will show the very malady which it points out and strives to remedy. It to© labors under the European dualism of which it seeks to get rid. It will run into the same trouble from which it is a flight. Some writers call it a religion, but it remains a philosophy in spite of its strong religious element, which, indeed, varies a. good deal among its different philosophers. VIII. The Neo-Hellenists will preserve the philosophic Norm in their Thinking, and hence must be called philosophers even when they put the greatest stress upon religion, as does Jam- blichus. Still further the Neo-Hellenists will have their own form of the philosophic Norm, wherein lies the distinctive characteristic of their School. It is Plotinus who elaborates the Neo- Hellenic edition of the philosophic Norm, and 600 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. therefore he is the great original thinker and founder of Neo-Hellenism. Tlie movement of this Tliird Period of Greek Philosophy groups itself around three central personages, quite as we saw in the Athenian movement of the First Period. Moreover these three central personages form together a psy- chical process which is the total sweep of the Period. Likewise each philosopher has his own individual process which is revealed in his Philosophy. To be sure there are many other Neo-Hellenists of distinction besides these three, but in one way or other they range themselves with or between these loftiest summits of specu- lation, which alone can be regarded in the present exposition. ( 1 ) Plotinus seeks primarily to restore Hel- lenic Philosophy as such, though he does not leave out Religion. He is therefore the pure Neo-Hellenist, and constructs the philosophical Norm of his School. In Plotinus man is to re- turn to the supra-rational One essentially through Philosophy. The Eoman School. (2) Jamblich us seeks really to restore Poly- theism, but formally he makes this a means for his Philosophy. Thus he is twofold, dualistic, hovering between the abstract (philosophical) and concrete (religious) elements of his system. The Syrian School. (3) Proclus goes back to Plotinus and seeks THE NEO-HELLENIC FEUIOD. 601 to restore Hellenic Philosophy, yet unites with it the religious tendency of Jamblichiis. The for- mal element dominates him, so that he has been called the scholastic of Neo-Hellenism. The Athenian School. All three formulate the descent of the soul into body, and then its ethical rise to the supra- rational One in some form. Inside of this gen- eral formula, we are now to consider their individual diversities — Ploiinus being more the complete Neo-Hellenist, lamblichus more the Neo-Pythogoreau, Proclus more the Neo-Aris- totelian. 602 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. II. JMotinus. The greatest name in Greek Philosophy after the great Athenians — Socrates, Phito and Aris- totle — is Plotinus. Neo-Hellenism as a perma- nent system of Thought, which is still an intellectual force, having its followers and propagators even to-day, is his work. Though not a Greek, his keynote is the restoration of the Hellenic world. It is true that he more or less unconsciously reaches back of Hellenism, and employs a first principle quite unknown to it and inconsistent with it ; still his avowed object is a return to the old Philosophy of Hellas, that of her First Period. A good deal has been handed down about Plotinus ; we are able to gain a pretty fair survey of the man and his doctrines, putting him in line with Plato and Aristotle, whom he sought to re-establish in their spiritual supremacy with so much devotion and genius. Accordingly, we shall give an outline of him in three fundamental aspects: his Life, his Writings, and his Philos- ophy. I. His Life. — We are fortunate in possessing a considerable biography of Plotinus written by his friend and pupil Porphyry, who narrates PLOTINUS. G03 that his master would not speak of his birth- place or of his origin, as if he " were ashamed of being in his body." But a later writer, Euna- pius, has told us that Plotinus was born at Ly- copolis in Egypt, whether of Greek, Semitic or Egyptian parentage is not said. As this Ly- copolis was probably a city of the upper country in the Thebaid according to Creuzer, it is likely that Plotinus was of Egyptian blood and lan- guage. According to what Porphyry says of him, he never fully mastered the Greek tongue in speech or in writing. The date of his birth is usually assigned to 204 A. D., though sometimes it is placed a year later. ( 1 ) Nothing is told of his youth in the matter of education, till he is brought before us wandering about in Alexandria in search of a philosopher who could speak to him the satisfying word. Evidently he has come to that great center of learning and of disputation, impelled by his spiritual needs . He passes from one school to another "full of sorrow," because of disap- pointment; finally a friend, to whom he has im- parted his unhappy state of mind, directs him to Ammonius Saccas. Entering and listening he says to his companion, "this is the man I have been hunting for." Some eleven years he remained with Ammonius, beginning when he was 28 years old (in 232 A. D.), studying philosophy, and 604 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. doubtless discussing the Ijurning questions of the time. What was going on at Alexandria during this period? It was the time of Origcn (185-254) who was the founder of Christian Theology, who sought to unite Christian Faith (Pis(is) with Greek Science (Gnosis), making the latter the means for organizing and upbuilding the super- structure of Christianity. Origen was born in Alexandria and remained there till 232, when he was compelled by religious strife to leave the city. But he had already (before 228) written his great work on Fundamental Principles (peri archon) in which Dogmatic Theology first became a sys- tem. An interesting fact is that Orio;en attended the school of Ammonius Saccas, though there was another person by the name of Origen who belonged to the same school and continued to be a heathen. To the last there remained in the thought of Orio;en the Christian a Neo-Platonic strain, especially in his mystic union of the soul with God through contemplation. But on the other hand he emphasized the personality of God, whose Will was the source of the world, even though the latter be eternal. Now Plotinus, thrown into this seething mass of controversies, religious and philosophical, the very year in which Origen quit Alexandria, was at the heart of the epoch about to be born, and felt its thfoesduringthe whole time of his school- PLOTINUS 605 training. He may be said to have been present at the birth of Christianity as the European Re- ligion, with its personal Trinity theologically for- mulated. Just this constitutes the germinal starting-point of his career of reaction against the new order, and of his return to Hellenism. That school of Ammonius must have had many memories of the great Origen, wdiich Plotinus, coming after him, heard and appropriated in his own fashion. In some such way we may conceive the years of instruction (Lehiy'ahre) of Plotinus. But the time comes when he must quit school, and go forth into the wide world. It is probable, as in so many other cases, that the pupil of genius had learned all that the master had to give him, and had begun to feel the limits of his situation. (2) Accordingly he breaks loose from Alexan- dria and starts on his travels. He is thirty-eight years of age, a year older than Aristotle when the latter quit the school of Plato, having out- grown the master, or at least having attained his own independent standpoint. But whither will Plotinus bend his steps? Toward the East whose wisdom he lono;s to drink from its native fountains. This fact is highly characteristic of the man ; he turns away from the Occident, which he deems corrupt and lost, as it is slowly becoming Christian, and he will go back to the dis- 606 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tant Orient, to Persia and India, beyond the in- fluence of Christianity, for his truth undefiled. The Emperor Gordian was making an expedi- tion against the Persians; to this our philosopher attached himself. But the campaign turned out unfortunate and the Emperor perished. Why Plotinus did not endeavor to reach the peaceful wisdom of the East through peaceful channels, we do not know. At last he had to flee from the Orient for life, and with difiiculty reached Anti- och in safety. He continued his journey back to the Occident till he reached Rome, this time not staying even at Alexandria. Such was his violent rebound, externally at least, from his Oriental search for wisdom. Somewhat simi- larly the last Neo-Hellenists, nearly 300 years afterwards, went to Persia when their school at Athens had been closed by the order of Justinian, and there sought to realize their ideal. But after a brief experience they were glad to get back to the Occident and live again in the Empire. This episode, though not lasting two full years, must have made quite an epoch in the life of Plotinus. He, a born Oriental, and evidently dissatisfied with the Occident and its tendencies, sought to Orientalize himself still more pro- foundly. Behold the result: he is thrown back upon the west, and never stops till he comes to Pome, its central seat of authority. Without this Oriental experience he would probably have PLOTINVS. 607 never devoted himself to the restoration and fur- therance of Greek wisdom, instead of that of the Orient. Be this as it may, he returns to the Hellenic lines of the school of Ammenius, and starts out for himself in the capital of the world. ( 3 ) Plotinus at Rome gives instruction to a few private listeners, which evidently becomes more and more public, though Ammonius, in Egyptian fashion, had forbidden any publication of his doctrines. Plotinus, however, may well have thought that he was teaching his own philosophy, and not that of another man. He was forty years old when he began his Eoman career (in 244 A. D.), which lasted some twenty-six years, till his death. His method of teaching, as indicated by Por- phyry, was mainly through the reading of the old philosophers and their commentators, accom- panied by interpretation and discussion. In this way his own thoughts unfolded till they formed an independent j)hilosophy. He possessed the power of inspiring his pupils and of forming them into an apostolate for perpetuating and propagating his doctrines. He not only imparted knowledge, but the askesis or the philosophic life, for which he had the example of Pythagoras and Plato. He abstained from animal food, and practiced a stern purity tinged with a sort of monasticism. Still he had women as hearers and disciples, among them the empress Salonina. 608 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PIIILOSOPnY. Plotiniis kept aloof from iiistitutious, family, society, state. He was the individual Ego that must get back to God at all hazards, and do nothino; else in this terrestrial existence. His way leads not through the institutional, but through the ethico-philosophical life ; that is, through himself, through his own subjective dis- cipline culminating in ecstasy. Herein he is dif- ferent from both Plato and Aristotle, leaning: more to the Stoics. Still the influence of Plato led him to the idea of establishing a philosophic city in Campania, to be called Platonopolis, and to be organized and governed after the manner of Plato's Republic. The plan was favored at first by the emperor and empress, but came to naught. It must have given a great shock to Plotinus when his patron and friend, the Emperor Galli- enus (260-8) was slain by Claudius who seized the imperial throne. The philosopher might truly think in such an age that the world below was falling to pieces, that the reality was a show and delusion, from which the wise man had to flee to the supra-mundane, immutable one above all consciousness. The absolutism of Plotinus rises beyond that of imperial Rome with its ever changing rulers, though these be absolute too. At the center of the wor.ld's unity, he felt still all its uncertainty, and longed for the unity above this conscious, purposed unity of man's . PLOTINUS. 609 intelligence. His doctrine lay in his time, and his environment might well drive him into a divine nirvana as a relief from his world-pain. So Plotiuus continued to philosophize at Rome till his last illness came on, when he went to the country- seat of a friend where he died in 270 A. D. at the age of QQ. II. His Writings. — Not till he was about fifty 3^ears old did Plotinus begin to set down his doctrines in writing. These must have been pretty thoroughly thought out during his long period of instruction at Rome. His philosophy w^as, therefore, the fruit of his teaching, as it usually is. One result was a certain uniformity of thought and style, as we found to be the case with Aristotle. Consequently there can be dis- covered no inner development of the man Plo- tinus in his works, such as we noted in Plato, whose Writings run through and reflect his whole life. But the Writings of Plotinus are essen- tially of one period, though some critics have endeavored to re-arrange them in chronological order. It is true that Porphyry {Life PI. c. 4) throws them into three successive groups, and thinks he sees a rise, culmination, and decline of power in these groups.^ Other readers have not been able to discern any such distinctions. Porphyry was the first editor of Plotinus and was the one who took the fifty-four books of the author and divided them into six Enneads of nine 39 610 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. books each, under which name the work is still known. An ancient authority states that there was another edition of Plotmus by a different editor, Eustochius, also a pupil of the philos- opher. The style is abstract, with little ornament, often oracular. It is not like that of Plato, it calls to mind Aristotle. There is no Platonic dialogue, but a series of dissertations, not always connected. Plotinus had a master, Ammonius, who must have possessed considerable philo- sophic originality ; but he plays no personal part in the JEnneads, as dees Socrates in the Platonic Writings. Herein again Plotinus is like Aristotle. Though he often refers to Plato as his teacher, the thought will come that he owes more to Aristotle than to Plato. The total mass or body of his Avork resembles Aristotle's and not Plato's. Then the distinctive Plotinian doctrine, that of ecstasy, is more Aristotelian than Platonic. In style, in thought, and in exposition, Plotinus is the child of the Stagirite, though with many Platonic connections. Animonuis Saccas, his teacher, declared that Plato and Aristotle had the same fundamental doctrine ; but the pupil, Plotinus, shows the desire of referring his thought wholly to Plato. Why is this? Plato had been almost • christianized at Alexandria ; Plotinus would wrench him from the Christian Platonists, PLOTINUS. Cll and restore him to Heathendom in this Neo- Hellenic renascence. It seems strange, but this ardent Hcllenizer did not speak Greek correctly, often transposing tlie syallables of a word, of which Porphyry gives an instance. The same editor comphiins of his bad spelhng, and of his faulty composition. He would not even re-read what he had once hastily written. Such trifles as style, orthography, grammar, belong to the outer appearance, and evidently seemed despicable to Plotinus. In this again he was not like Plato the stylist. Still he was a genius, even if he could not spell; he was a great philosopher even if he spluttered Attic Greek with an Egyptian accent. No native Grecian of that age approached him in the zeal and ability with which he sought to restore the old Hellenic world, at least in its Philosophy. There is only the one work of Plotinus, the Enneads, but it is a large one, and requires effort for its mastery. One of the greatest spiritual treasures of antiquity it must be re- garded, and has a very important place in the evolution of human Thinking, of which it is a unique specimen. III. His Philosophy. — Out of the Enneads the Philosophy of Plotinus is to be extracted and organized. Its diversity is considerable and its doctrines are manifold ; still we see the great 6 1 2 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. effort to be one iu the attainment of the One. Plotinus, iu order to get rid of the vast conflict- ing multiplicity of the individual self-conscious ones, projected the Absolute One above all self- consciousness, wherein the Greek mind vanished into its own boundlessness. Seeking the imper- sonal One, it undid itself as person, and thus concluded i^s thinking activity. The Self pro- jects itself through its own inner self -transcend- ence into the One above all selfhood, and there- Avith ends, must end. But this requires a long process of thought, indeed an extensive scheme of Philosophy, which is what we are now to con- sider. As already indicated, the work of Plotinus is thrown together into the form of essays or disser- tations on different topics without any direct systematic connection. Still there is a system underlying all these different expositions ; there is not only a series of subjects, but an order moves in them and controls them, though such an order never becomes fully explicit. To the mind of Plotinus, his manifold discussions, his explanations, his fantastic flights (for he has these too) hover about a scheme which is the ultimate deposit and outc®me of his philoso- phizing, and which is the overflowing center whence all comes and whither all returns . It is not long before the reader of Plotinus begins to get glimpses of this pervasive scheme, PLOTINUS. G13 and finds himself continually carried buck to it as to the source of liajlit. Still it i.-5 never eltib- orated in detail as the total plan of his book. What, then, is this scheme, ever present but never fully schematized? The answer can be given directly : it is that philosophical Norm which we have seen working itself out and ex- pressing itself in one way or other through all Greek Philosophy, both Hellenic and Hellenis- tic. Plotinus, like a true philosopher, has before him the Universe, and is seeking to grasp and to express its fundamental process to his age ; such is the depth and the worth of the man. But this philosophical Norm has its Greek mould and its Greek utterance, given to it already by the greatest Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, in accord with the inner behest of the universal Greek spirit. Plotinus is seeking to recover and to restore this philosophical Norm after the pattern of it in its great creative Hellenic Period. Undoubtedly he changes it, has to change it, though partly unconscious of the act, for he lives in a new epoch, in a new order of the world which moulds his thinking even against his will. There will be, accordingly, the Plotiuian or Neo-Hellenic formulation of this philosophical Norm, keeping its great general outline, but marvelously transforming its contents. We shall behold in the scheme of Plotinus the three main divisions so often noted already — God, 614 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Nature, and Man, the three grand elements in the triune process of the All. The Greek philosophers unfolded these into science and called them Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics, which division is explicit but not yet fully expressed in Aristotle. Plotinus subdivides each of these divisions in his own way, using, old terms in new relations and old material in a new fashion. Our eye meets the categories and the language of the ancient Greek world, but they are not the same in meaning, nor are they in the same order in which we once knew them, but strangely translocated and transfigured. And, as above stated, the same general Norm is there, but the whole matter has to be re-thought, and explained anew. Here we shallj set down in advance the Ploti- nian Norm which is the more or less concealed framework of these discursive Enneads: — I. Metaphysics, dealing with the supra-sen- sible, invisible world. Three stages. 1. Tlie 0?ie, above consciousness, above Per- son or Self, the supra-rational One, often called the Good by Plotinus, and also God, whence all overflows or emanates. 2. Nous or Reason, Intelligence. The first emanation from the supra-rational One into the rational world, which is now twofold — subject and object {Nous and noetos kosmos). Nous is also the realm of Ideas as supra-sensible. PLOTINUS. 615 3. Psyche — the Soul. This is an emanation from the Nous, as the latter is from the first (the One). The Soul has no longer pure Ideas, as the Nous, but sees them by reflection. Not the Idea in itself (or Thought) but the image of the Idea is the Soul's content. 11. Physics, which in Plotinus does not mean the Science of Nature in the ordinary sense, but which pertains to the visible, sensible, phenome- nal world, as distinct from that of Ideas. The Soul is the bridge between these two worlds supra- sensible and sensible, partaking of both. 1. The Body or Soul embodied, which em- braces Nature with its Soul. The Body human, telluric, or cosmic, is the manifestation of the indwelling Soul which in Plotinus is double, according to its corporeal or incorporeal relation. 2. Matter, the purely formless, hence without Body and without Soul. It is the negative as such or non-Being which j^et is, the self-opposed as the opposite of the One. Called by Plotinus the Privation (steresis). 3. Evil; here the ethical substrate which un- derlies the Plotinian Physics begins to show itself. Matter is the original evil of the Uni- verse, being the opposite pole of the supra-rational One or of the Good (or God). Yet the Body participates in this Matter or Evil, and through the Body the Soul also. Thus we htive reached the bottom of the Plotinian world : the Supreme Gl(3 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Good has overflowed itself into Evil, has ema- nated the bad Soul, with the accompaniment, however, of Free-Will, or the power of self- overcoming. At this point, then, the rise and return of the Soul is possible (or the negation shows itself to be self-negative). There are two Souls in Plotinus or two rela- tions of the Soul-prmciple : supra-sensible, the emanation of JSTous, and sensible, the embodi- ment in Matter. The former is more in the descending line, the latter is the starting-point for the ethical ascent. III. Ethics; this is the third stage or the restoration of the estranged, materialized Soul to its primordial source in the Supreme One at the summit of the Universe. Here again we can dis- tinguish three stages, or perhaps methods of attainino; the highest. 1. Praxis, or the virtues; man can realize the good in many forms through his personal con- duct, and thus manifest in life the Virtues, which were specially unfolded by the old philosophers. 2. Theoria. Three theoretic ways or dis- ciplines — Art, Eeligion, and Philosophj^ — were employed by Plotinus for the ascent of the Soul to God. , 3. Ecstasis. The entrance of the Soul into immediate communion with the supra-rational, supra-conscious, and also supra-beautiful One • — the Being of all Being. PLOTINUS. 617 Such is the philosophical Norm of Plotinus. While the outline or skeleton remains the same as before, we can see that it has been internally transformed from beginning to end. That supra- rational One lies beyond the Ideas of Plato and the.Thought-Chinking-Thought of Aristotle, and really determines them and everything else. The Hellenistic principle is thus carried back to Hellenism and placed over it. One cannot help thinking of the Roman Empire of the time of Plotinus, which had made the individual the universal ruler, establishing him over Hellas and the whole civilized world with absolute authority . Or, to put it abstractly, Neo-Hellenism affirms the essence of being to be the universal individ- ualized in the Universal above all individuality. The exposition of the philosophy of Plotinus is simply the development of the precedmg Norm into completeness, the unfolding of the bud into the perfect flower. Still it should be noted that Plotinus by no means works out this Norm with the same degree of fullness or of clearness in all of its parts. His book is not a systematically constructed edifice with all its architecture laid out in due proportion and order. There are gaps, some portions are hastily sketched, while others are dwelt upon with evident delight and often repeated. One can see that Plotinus loved the supra-sensible world far better than the sensible, the latter being indeed for him but a 6 1 8 ANCIENT E UB OPE AN PHIL OSOPHY. lapse or degradation of the former. Still the exposition of his system must proceed on the lines above given and unfold the Norm. I. Metaphysics. This embraces what may be called the supra-sensible world, and suggests the sepa- ration of the latter from the sensible world. Such a separation goes back to Plato with whose name it is particularly connected. Plotinus, however, bridges the chasm between these two worlds (which Plato does not) by mak- ino" the one arise or overflow out of the other. The visible realm is but a deeper lapse of the soul from its invisible sphere. Very distinctly, however, Plotinus divides his supra-sensible world into three stages or grades of descent. This descending stairway from the height of the Supreme One to the lower spheres is often referred to by the philosopher and may be given in some detail. T. The Supra-rational One. — In some such way it is necessary to designate the first principle of Plotinus, though it does not permit positive predicates. A main fact of it is that it trans- cends Reason, Thought, the Rational, rising above Aristotle's Though t-thinking-Thought, and so we call it the supra-rational. Plotinus often names it God, as the supreme source of PLO TINUS. — METAPHYSICS. 619 all things, but it is not a Person or a Self, as it is supra-personal also, above self -consciousness. Hence in the supra-sensible world it is that stage which is supra-rational. Moreover, Plotinus has emphasized it as the One, from which all multiplicity has to be ex- cluded, since it is the One above many ones, 3'et the source or essence of them all. Hence the One is not merely One arithmetically, but the unifying principle which keeps the universe from flviug to pieces. This conception of the Supreme One took the deepest hold of Plotinus, without its almighty grip he deemed that the All Avould go asunder in a general crash. It is, therefore, the Good, or rather the supernal Good to which all things tend, and to which man must assimilate himself in his ethical ascent and purification. To be good, man must get rid of all division, inner and outer, even of the separation of the Self and the not-Self, as well as of the internal separation of the Self into subject and object. The effort of the philosopher is to extirpate the separative stage in God and Man, and to get back to that of immediate unity. God is not self- conscious, for this implies the Ego's twofoldness. Nor can the Supreme One be Will which is like- wise an act of self-separation, hence it is not nuiker or creator. Will is a finitizing, a deter- mming of the undetermined Self, while the One G20 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. is the Undetermined, l)eing the negation of every determinate predicate. It is, accordingly, the unthinkable, for Thought would determine its content. In general, the distinction between the thinking and that which is thought must be obliterated in the One, which, therefore, does not think. If neither wills nor thinks, yet it is the unity of willing and thinking, over both and the source of both. Nevertheless both are lapses, and the world, having deteriorated into Intellect (Greece) and Will (Eome), must return to the One in which such a differenced world overcomes all its septiration, strife, and wrong in a nirvana of eternal rest. To such a doctrine had the Greco-Roman time driven the last great philoso- pher ; the prodigious outlay of its Thought and Action is to end in the negation of all Thought and Action, Here is without question an Oriental strain in the system of Plotinus, who, we must not forget, was an Egyptian, bora not in the Greek city of Alexandria, but at Lycopolis. At any rate this doctrine of the Supreme One recalls the unspeak- able, almighty, absolute Power, personal or impersonal, whom the Orientals name God. Plotinus has, therefore, in him not merely the return to old Hellenic philosophy, but to the Oriental conception of the divine order. He thought he was going back to Plato, but uncon- sciously he went back still further, out of Europe PLOTINUS —METAPHYSICS. 621 into Asia. For in the time and in his own nature lay this flight to an antecedent and probably an- cestral world, in. which the present decadent and utterly corrupted Greco-Roman world with its Thought and Action might be swallowed up and lost in unconsciousness. Was it not evident on every hand that Europe had utterly failed in civilization? Externally it could no longer defend itself; behold the in- breaking barbarians ; internally it was rotten at the heart, a condition most manifest in the line of emperors. Their conduct and fate would seem to declare : let no person be put at the head of the Universe. Such was a voice of the age which our philosopher heard, but there was another voice which he did not hear or to which he shut his ears. Plainly his remedy is negative, really destructive as the barbarians themselves ; but the positive remedy already w^orkiug with might, the Christian remedy for this world- malady he re-acted against with intensity. Still he IS supremely interesting, being the grand romanticist of these ages, in certain respects the greatest one that ever lived. The doctrine of Plotinus is therefore a form of Pantheism, in which the one is not simply immanent, but distinctly transcendent. Still the Self is absorbed into this one only One, and loses consciousness of selfhood, and that in which it is lost is the supremely unconscious 622 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. One, which can have no virtue, being above it, can have no wisdom, being above it, can have no beauty, being above it. Nor can it be categor- ized except with the category above all categoriz- ing. Hellenic philosophy affirms the essence of Being to he, Neo-Hellenic philosophy affirms the essence of Being to be above Being. And still it is: wherein lies the inherent, necessary con- tradiction of the Plotinian doctrine. This form of Pantheism has been called dynamic Pantheism, since it overflows from its own fullness and even communicates its power. But it does not generate, that is, it does not communicate its substance or itself. Thus, how- ever, very manifestly difference has entered, cover it up as we may; emanation takes place, which cannot be conceived without some sort of separation. Somehow thus we strive to comprehend the supernal One, the distinctive tenet of Plotinus and of all Neo-Platonism, though it be above comprehension. Its characteristic is supra — supra-rational, supra-personal, supra-beautiful, in fact, supra-everything. Plotinus struggles to name it, and well he may, for it is the un- nameable. Still he will use certain terms for it: the metaphysical (the One), the ethical (the Good) and also the religious (God). The un- speakable One which still must be spoken — such is the germinal point of Medieval Eoman- PLOriNUS.—METAniYSlOS. 623 ticism in Art, and of Medieval Mysticism in Religion. Distinctly can these be traced to the present doctrine of Plotinus, the creative ro- manticist. But the One overflows through its own power, dynamically ; this brings us to the second stage of the supra-sensible world. II. Nous. — The primal fact of Nous (Intel- lect) in Plotinus is the self-conscious or the self- reflecting act of mind: the seeing and the seen, the knowing and the known, the thinking and the thought. This is the original separative stage of the Ego or Self, wherein it is divided within itself and becomes subject and object. By Plotinus this was regarded as a descent or lapse from the Highest One which has no such div- sion within itself, being unconscious or properly supra-conscious. But in its first overflow or emanation there arises the second One which is, however, twofold (dyas), or the twain which is One, this second One being not the original One but the derived One w^hich comes from the Two. Thus Plotinus in a kind of numerical play, which hints the Pythagorean side of his doctrine, seeks to adumbrate the primordial act of self- consciousness or the Self knowing itself. He tells in some detail how this is brought about. The second or the separated (the overflow) turns back to the First One of its own inherent nature G24 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. (this is the epistrophei, a very important word inPlotinus), and images the same, whereby it gets a content, and thus thinks. Such is the simple Nous with its twofoldness, thinking on the one hand, and having a thought on the other; the latter is the First One, as yet unthought, till it becomes the content of Nous. Manifestly Plotinus is seeking to bring before himself the origin of the Ego with its self-separating yet self -returning power. It is the only thing in all the universe which has any such power, the power of cutting itself in two (becoming the clijas) and remaining itself in that operation, that is, remaining in complete unity while sundering itself. This is the real mystery which Plotinus has before him in all vividness, the mystery of the self-con- scious Self which, however, is no mystery at all, being the most transparent matter in the world, since it is just the self -manifested, or that which is perfectly clear to itself. Plotinus endeavors to account for this fundamental act of the Ego and of the Universe too, by projecting back of it the primal undivided One, from which somehow this separation was to be derived, yet from which it was also to be kept away by all means. Behind that which is thought must be the unthought, whose destiny is, however, to be thought. So it overflows by its own inner necessity or emanates, as the sun overflows with light. Really it sep- PL TIN VS. — ME TAPHYSICS. 625 anitcs within itself and becomes JSFous and the JSFoumenon. Plotiiius knows the diffi<'iilty of this transition from the First One to the Two and the Many — from the Infinite to the Finite, from the Perfect to the Imperfect. Why did God create the world, create negation, separation, sin? Or, as Plotinus puts it, " AVhy did not the One stay with itself," and not overflow? So impressed is he that he would have us open the consideration of this subject with prayer, " in- voking God himself not with words but with the soul, extending ourselves in supplication to Him, the alone to the Alone.'' {Enn. V. 1. 6.) Thus we may behold Nous emanating from the One, then turning back to it and reflecting it, whereby this Nous is the image of the One, yet also is that which images it as content. " But it is not the One," as Plotinus is careful to say, this does not transfer its own essence, or its absolute Oneness to the derived Nous. " How then does it produce the same? Because the latter (Nous) by turning around to it (^epistrophe) saw it — this seeing is Nous." (^Enn.Y. 1, 7.) But also the Nous in beholdino; the One beholds itself, or is subject-object in grasping the object. Very often does Plotinus say that this descent of the Nous into itself is the means of all knowing, which is at bottom self-knowing. He is himself Nous in seeins^ and settino; forth all these characteristics of Nous. It is Plotinus 40 626 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. himself as Nous, who turns back and looks at the primal undivided One which he projects back of his looking. It is only the conscious man who can think his unconsciousness and talk about it and describe it, sett i no; aside even that separation which makes him conscious. Thus Plotinus as philosopher is conscious of the unconscious, which is just the trouble that he seeks to remove by Ecstasy. Such is the essential fact of the Nous of Plotinus, who next seeks to put into it things more or less alien. He makes it the realm of Ideas taken from Plato. From the latter also he derives the notion of the Good (or the One) as the cause of knowing and being, which are essentially the twofoldness of Nous already considered. Then too Plotinus has his doctrine of the categories, which he reduces to five. Finnally he combines all these forms, ideas spirits, intelligences into a grand totality which he names the world of Nous (cosmos noefos), which has an extended description in his book. Plotinus emploj^s his Nous as a kind of receptacle for the many Gods — a phase which later Neo- Hellenism will devlop enormously. In general we see that Plotinus grasps the realm of Nous as that of self-conscious Being, substantially that of Aristotle's Thought- thinking-Thought, which, however, has over- flowed from a higher principle tlian Aristoile's PL TIN US. — ME TAPHYSW8. 627 highest. But iu this realm ulso an overflow takes place, which brings us to the next. III. Soul. — Of the supra-sensible world the Soul is distinctly the third stage in the process of emanation, as set forth by Plotinus. As the One overflows and becomes Nous (self-conscious mind), so now Nous overflows and becomes soul. As Nous had essentially the first great separation into Thinking and Thought, or subject and o])ject, so Soul has the second great Sisparation between the spiritual and material, the supra- sensible and sensible, or the Self and the not-Self. That is, the Soul is the bridge from mind to matter, partaking of both ; it is the conclusion of the supra-sensible (or noetic) movement, as well as the transition to the sensible world. As Nous revealed the inner dualism of self -consciousness, so the Soul reveals the outer dualism between spirit and sense. Still the Soul does not of itself belono; to the sensible world, though overflowing into it and causing it. The Soul, therefore, is double, divid- ing primarily into two parts or tendencies. As intelligible (or noetic) it remains in its own supra- sensible realm, or rather it turns back and re- unites itself with the same (ejnsd^oj^he), fleeing from the sensil^le. Equally certain is the oppo- site tendency of the soul ; it moves forward to the sensible, enters it, and produces bod}', cor- poreality. For in strict speech, there can be no 628 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH V. Botly without its Soul, they are counterparts, two yet one. Now this One of the Body, every- where in it yet in no particular part or member, indivisible yet in the divided, is the Soul, while the divisible, spatial, extended, is Body, which, however, is Body through the presence of the One, the indivisible Soul. The primal characteristic of the Soul, then, as it comes down out of Nous is this bifurcation of itself into two tendencies, the one rolling back eternally into the Nous or indeed to the One, and thereby maintaining the unceasing process of the supra-sensible world, the other tendency moving forward or downward (in the view of Plotinus), and incorporating itself in the ex- tended and divisible world. The Soul has, there- fore, as its inheritance from Nous, the primal separation or bifurcation, also the return out of separation on the one side, yet the persistence in the separation on the other side, whereby it be- comes corporeal, and sensible, without, however, losing even then its unity as Soul in Body. But in this way it has thrown off the sensible world which now appears. The first Soul is naturally the All-Soul, or, as it is often called by Plotinus and Plato, the cosmical Soul, the World-Soul. The total Cosmos has its own Soul, and is alive, a very animal (^autozoon) . It seems to be a kind of Person too, and has self -consciousness, yet with- PL TIN US. — ME TAPHYSICS. 629 out memory, since it has never had any relation to the sensible world ; also it is without reason- ing power {logizcsthai),t\i[s being something un- necessary to its working. Still into the World- Soul must come the dualism above noted ; it has a double relation, to the supra-sensible and to tiie sensible, which bifurcates it into two op- posite tendencies, both of which become in Plotinian speech two World-Souls, higher and lower, the heavenly and the earthly Venus the former turning back to the Nous, the latter entering the visible Cosmos and manifesting itself in the same as Nature (physis). This World-Soul as universal is the holder and indeed producer of all individual Souls. Here again we have the One overflowing into the Many— the One Soul into the Many Souls. Each individual Soul has in it the same duality which we have observed in the World-Soul, which, however, is as different from individual Souls as the One is from Nous. It is the Soul, as 't were, in itself, in the descent from Nous, without choice, acting by necessity in the line of the lapse, hence it has no ethical char- acter. But the individual soul, man, is very different in this regard, as we shall see, having Will and hence belonging to the ethical sphere also. k5uch are the throe distinctive forms or phases of the supra-sensible world of Plotinus. They are 630 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ill a descending order, yet they are not wliolly without a psj^chical process among themselves. Certainly there is the primal unseparated One, unconscious, yes, undeveloped, unemanated. Then there a separative act in Nous, that of self- consiousness ; finally in the lapse of the Soul, there is the conception of the return, however incomplete. Still the general SAveep here is not the evolution to the Higher, but the devolution to the Lower, which does not stop with the supra-sensible Soul, but lapses still further into Body — wherewith we have entered a new realm. II. Physics. By means of the Soul the transition is made out of the supra-sensible (or noetic) world to the sensible, which distinction is decidedly em- phasized in Plotinus. How does he construct the bridge? In general by means of the various categories of Separation and its opposite, for just here (in Mind and Matter) the Universe is cleft in twain, and still it must be one. It is a characteristic of sensible magnitudes that they are in themselves separable, divisible, opposed to unity, given up to multiplicity. Such is the fundamental fact of the sensible or phenomenal world : it is the INIany versus the One, this One always becoming Many, or infin- itely divisible; it is, therefore, the realm of PL TINUS. — PHYSICS. 631 change, of appearance, of Time versus Eternity; it is the arising and the departing, the flux of Heraclitus, the fleeting show of the external world. Still further it is the false, the bad, in fine it is evil. Such does the Soul produce, or rather become ; the divided Soul becomes the Soul of all division. Dividing itself within itself (bifur- cating) and not recovering itself and returning to the One, it drops to the Many in all its separa- tion and manifests itself as the outer material phenomenon, as the sensible "World. As endless self-division the Soul is materialized, which is its lapse into complete self -externality. There are, however, stages in this physical realm, not so distinctly set forth as in the pre- ceding supra-sensible world, nevertheless obtain- able by a little search. I. Body. — This is primarily the embodied Soul, the immediate unity of the Soul and its opposite, or of the indivisible and the divisible. The Soul, being without division, gives itself to Body or makes itself Body and thus becomes divided, passing into all parts of the Body . Still in all these parts of the body it shows itself to be one, for instance, through sensation. The Body, taken simply by itself, has continuity, one part or particle outside of the other and in a different place. But the Body ensouled has a unity in all its multiplicity, has a center raying put into all its mcuibers, which are the periphery 632 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the Soul's corporeal sphere. So Plotinus speaks of "that Nature both divisible and indi- visible which we call Soul;" really it is Soul embodied, or Body ensouled; " it is divisible be- cause it is in all the parts of that Body in which it subsists; it is indivisible, because it is the Whole of itself in all the parts, and in each part. ' ' {Enn. IV, 2. 1.) Still further in the same place : " Not having magnitude, the Soul is pres- ent in all magnitude ; just here it is, yet not here ; it is determined not by another but by itself, so as not to be divided in its very divisions." With such a dialectical play of contradictories does Plotinus seek to express this union of oppo- sites — Body and Soul, the non-extended and the extended, the undivided which divides itself and yet is one in all its divisions. The entire physical universe is the Body into which the All-Soul has poured itself, or over- flowed; it manifests itself in the beauty and order of the Heavens with their Bodies. " Soul has made the Sun, has made the stars, and keeps them in order; Soul has made all living things, breathing into them the breath of life; whatever the land, the sea, and the air nourishes, is the product of Soul." {Enn. V. 1. 2.) Plotinus tells us to behold the cosmical Soul entering " the Body of Heaven as the rays of the Sun dart into a black cloud, illuminating it and making it golden," Thus the Body of Heaven is PL TINUS. — PHYSICS. 633 endowed with immortal life, and " becomes a happy animal." It has many different parts or members, but it is " One through the power of Soul." It is at this point we may see Plotinus adjusting his scheme to Greek polytheism, though there be for him " the one only One " above all division and multiplicity. *' The Sun is a God, because it is ensouled, also the Stars are Gods, and the total Cosmos is a God." Here is an element which later Neo-Hellenism will develop with a luxuriant imagination. In the same chapter is the following thought: "The Soul does not, by cutting up itself into small particles, impart life to individuals, but all these it vivifies through the Whole of itself; it is present everywhere (i.e. in each part and par- ticle) as Whole, assimilating itself therein to the creative parent, both in respect to its unity and multiplicity (or ubiquity)." A very significant insight is this, showing that Plotinus had glimpses of the fundamental fact of the Soul as Ego or Self, which we have already named the Psychosis. For every separate act of the Soul is to be grasped as the total process of the Soul ; in every division or stage of it exists the whole Soul in threefold movement. Still Plotinus does not distinctly seize and formulate the Soul as process, though there arc many intimations and adumbrations thereof in these J^iiiicnds. Nor must we leave out the further hint that Soul 634 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. is, in the above-mentioned activity, truly creative, like unto "its creative parent," who is an Ego or Person. So our philosopher struggles ^\i\\ his conception of the All-Soul, seeking to explain its embodiment in .the Cosmos as well as in the individual, by the dividing of the Whole which in its divisions still remains Whole. All this is a faint and far-off image of the Pampsychosis, which is here expressed abstractly, without the inner process of the Self. Still the latter too is suggested in this same chapter: " Our own Soul is similar in form (^homoeides) to the elder God," who is the All-Soul, and is the cause of the later Gods above mentioned. And if the cosmical Body is an object of pursuit for our thoughts, be- cause it is ensouled, " why dost thou neglect thine own Soul, running after another? Admir- ing the Soul in another, admire thyself." Such a subjective psychical turn we can often find in Plotinus, but rather as a premonition than as a principle. He has at least directed the Soul inwards, with the possibility of seeing something there corresponding to the All-Soul. Of course if he would push this insight to its conclusion, he would have to reconstruct his whole system by it, and become psychological instead of phi- losophical. Any such mighty stride at that period and in his environment is impossil)le, for the greatest thinker can only philosophize his own world. Plotiiuis having caught just a PL TIN' US. — PHYSICS. 635 glimpse of the Pampsycnosis, must drop it, for if it once rose to his supra-rational One and be- gan ordering the same, astonishing would be the metamorphosis of the Plotinian universe. But what was the Cosmos before the Soul en- tered it and transfigured it in a living Whole? " It was a dead body, earth and water, or rather the darkness of matter and non-Being, hateful to the Gods, as some one says." Here, then, we have come upon the antecedent element, that which the World-Soul found before itself ready for its formative breath. II. Matter. — The tirst necessity of Matter lies in the fact that the Soul must form something absolutely, which something is, therefore, pre- existent and formless. This is the substrate {hi/- pokeimenon) of all material bodies, which never changes amid the manifold changes of form in physical objects. Water, for instance, has the three forms, vapor, liquid, and solid, yet its sub- strate is one and indestructible. This substrate is the Plotinian conception of Matter, which he describes at considerable length and with no small labor, since he declares it to be without qualities . Still he has somehow to qualify with predicates that which properly has no predicates. Herein we shall follow him, endeavoring to think a con- tradiction, which is just the profoundest fact of Matter, as it is the self-opposed, the self-nega- tive, the self -contradictory, fluug down by 636 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Plotinus to the bottom of his Universe, where all is dark {shoteinon), the gloomy abysm (hythos). The first determination of Matter, then, is that it is the undetermined, chaotic, without form. It is the infinite as such (apeiron) which the Greek plastic spirit shunned as the Ugly and damned as the Bad. Yet the Greek philosophic spirit had to recognize it as the primordial stuff out of which all forms are produced. So Plotinus as thinker philosophizes Matter, but with the feeling of the artist he sends it down below into the Erebos of monstrosities where dwell Gorgons, Hydras and Chimceras dire — the poetic shapes of the shape- less. It is the other side of the Universe, the other pole of it, opposite to the Supreme One on the top of the All. Another predicate (negative, to be sure) which is applied to Matter is that it is without Body, being that out of which Body is produced by the Soul. " Corporeity is a certain form or a cer- tain reason which, getting to be in Matter, makes Body." (Unn. II. 7, 3.) Herein we see that Body is divided into its two constituents. Form and Matter; when the Form is taken away Body drops down to Matter, which is thus a separation, really a separation of the Soul from its unity with the Body. In this comes to view another important predicate which Plotinus applies to Matter; it is Privation (^aieresus), the World's PL O TINVS. — PHYSICS. 637 orand deprivation of its Soul, Such a condition he likewise calls absolute Poverty (penia pan- teles), also the desert, the solitude, the shadow of existence, w^hich is not, and the non-Being which nevertheless is. In such fashion Plotinus seeks to brinar before our minds the conception of pure negativity, which runs through all his stages of descent. Hence Nous as the primal separation from the One has a material element (hi/Ie noeic). In like manner the Soul in its manifold divisions shows that which is at bottom Matter, which is thus the ver}^ principle of multiplicity and of all distinction. In this sense we can truly say that without Matter there would be no Nous, no Intellect, no self-consciousness. There w^ould never be any separation from the Primal One, whose characteristic is to be the unseparated, the completely immaterial. No Bodj^ no Soul, no Eeason without Matter ; indeed that first over- flow of the Supernal One secretly implies Mat- ter, w^hich gradually purifies itself into pure Negation or pure Privation and Separation which is Matter. The separative stage in man and in the world is thus abstracted, taken by itself, and looked at in its purity. Hence Matter is a very important concept in the scheme of Plotinus; without it indeed there w^ould be no scheme. It is the opposite of the undifferenced One, and so is the One containing: all difference. 638 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. We place Matter under Physics since it reaches its complete abstraction as Body deprived of Soul. Still Plotinus indicates a material prin- ciple in the noetic world also, where it appears in the image (^eidolon) but not in the form (morphe) as sensible. Being in itself separation, it belongs to the separative stage of the physical realm, which is likewise the second or separative stage of the total Norm of Plotinus (see this Norm outlined on p. 614-6). Thus pure Matter is not simply separation, but the separation in all separation. It remains not merely passive, but becomes active. As nega- tive it has two phases; one is only absence, a mere nothing; the other is a working power. Poverty is the absence of wealth, but this ab- sence is also an active negative presence — is an evil. "Whatever lacks anything but can get what it lacks, may become a mean between good and evil, if perchance it be equally related to both sides; but whatever has nothing at all, as being in poverty, or rather as being Poverty itself, is of necessity evil " (^Enn. II. 4. 16). That is. Matter as simple privation may be indifferent, intermediate between good and evil; but Matter virulent, as the active privation, may de^Drive the Soul of wisdom, of virtue, of beauty. At this point the physical world shows a new stage. Matter is deemed by Plotinus as the Soul in complete estrangement from itself, which is man- PL TIN US. — PHYSICS. 639 ifested iu the lapse to Evil. Matter has a more important place in his system than in that of either Plato or Aristotle, from whom he derives his thought of it primarily. Plato makes it chiefly the passive material for the Demiurge ; with Aristotle it is potential Being. But Ploti- nus gives it an active negative power as Priva- tion, which drags the Soul down to its antipodes in the grand descent. III. Evil. — The negative, destructive element, which has unfolded out of Nature, turns back upon Nature and assails it. Thus Body becomes Evil, since it as virulent Matter is hostile to the Soul united with itself. The great struo-gle between the supersensible and the sensible worlds has its source here ; Soul and Matter wedded in the Body have made the Universe resound with their quarrel, and it is not done yet. The pre-existence of the Soul before entering the Body, and thus causing Evil, is a doctrine strongly maintained by Plotinus. The Soul after death migrates ; if it is worthy it ascends into the supersensible world and d\vells among spirits; if unworthy, it enters a new bodj^ according as inclination leads it ; it may becom? an animal if its propensities are bestial; or it may sink down into pure Matter as a mere cipher or as a destructive fiend. Plotinus was a fol- lower of Plato, who also holds the doctrine of 640 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. transmigration, wliicli probably came to both Pythagoras and Plato from Egypt. ButPlotiuus who was a born Egyptian may have had in him- self an ancestral strand of belief in metempsy- chosis deeper than his Platonism. However this may be, the Soul by its own destiny, not by choice or calculation, slips into a Body and the wrestle begins. Not consciously does the great event transpire, still it lies in the Soul's own nature to do just this, unconstrained from with- out. Evil is, accordingly, the division which assails the One or the Good by dividing it and so un- doing it. Separation separates unity, and there- by tears the Universe to pieces, which rending of the Supreme One is Evil. Such is, however, the result of the primal overflow of the Supreme One, with which the grand descent started, ending in the very opposite of the One or of the Good. The question comes up with Plotinus, What is the purpose of Evil? Why must the Soul take this dip into material existence, which it is to get out of with all speed? An interesting passage runs thus : ' ' Experience of Evil is a more manifest knowledge of the Good for weaker natures than the knowledge of Evil by information without experience." (Enn. IV. 8. 7.) Such is then the argument: The Soul is to come to the knowledge of the Good consciously PL TINUS. — PHYSICS. 64 1 through the experience of Evil. For the sake of knowledge is the colossal lapse of the Uni- verse into Evil ; man can now know the Good and return to it throuo;h wisdom. The Soul, accordingl}^, becomes conscious of its own division into Soul and Matter. Body had the same division, but unconscious, imme- diate. Thus the Soul has become a self-con- scious individual knowing the Self and the not- Self, or that which is its other or opposite. It is different from Nous as previously set forth, for Nous is inner self-consciousness, is the sepa- ration into subject and object, while Soul is now the deeper separation into the Ego and Non-Ego, having gone through the process of the Negative or of Evil. Plainly the Soul has at last attained the knowl- edge which makes it a moral Ego. As simply one with the Body, it was an animal, unaware of the deepest fact of itself and hence not responsi- ble. But the separation takes place. Matter by itself gets to be destructive, yea soul-destructive ; the Soul becomes conscious of havmg a destroyer bound up Avith itself, which destroj^cr it must subordinate or perish. The bottom of the de- scent is reached in the self-conscious Ego, and therewith the whirl upwards begins. Evil lies implicitly in all emanation, or other- ing of the One or the Good, and really reaches back to the first overflow as its source. This 41 642 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. unconscious One above lapses till it reaches the self-conscious one below which is the individual Soul as ethical. Evil, therefore, concludes what we have called the physical or phenomenal stage, since the Soul goes back to itself in Body and becomes aware of itself as different from Body, Nature, or the World. This is the great turning point in the Plotinian system ; the Universe has descended till it reaches the self-conscious Ego, which is the pivot, being able to turn around on itself, and to know its past, its descent, and to rise out of the same. This rise is, accordingly, what comes next. III. Ethics. The Soul, having reached the bottom of its descent, is now to return to the top, overcoming the various stages of separation which it has passed through in the lapse. In a general way the line of return is that of descent, though an exact co-incidence must not be expected. The Eo;o havinoj won consciousness, the knowledo;e of good and evil, is to flee from the sense-life and strive to get back to the primal One, union with which is blessedness. This return is eth- ical in the widest sense of the term, not simply moral, but also religious and contemplative. It is the journey of the Soul back to its source, the PL TIKUS — E THICS. 643 restoration to God out of separatioD, the grand epish'ojjhe of the whole Plotinian system. The ethical rise has its starting-point in the AVill of the individual which can now choose be- tween the two courses, the Descent and the Ascent. Hitherto there was no such choice ; necessity ruled the Descent from the top to the bottom, but at this bottom is found freedom. The lapse is therefore to freedom which is the true Evil of the Universe. God overflows " with- out any motion of will." Plotinus intimates that the origfin of the Bad is " man's wish to do as he pleases." Capricious liberty is, indeed, not good, but institutional liberty is unknown to Plotinus. There is only one way out: man is to travel back the long line of his lapse, and reach the essence beyond essence (epekeina ousias), the supra-essential One. This is in gen- eral the ethical movement of our philosopher. Plotinus seems to say in a well-known passage {Enn. I. 3. 1) that Music (or Art), Love and Philosophy are the three ways to the attainment of the One or the Supreme Good. Now what he really declares is that the musician, the lover and the philosopher are naturally adapted for such elevation. But he does not affirm that the ways of these three are the only ways upward. On the contrary he gives quite a number of other waj^s in his work, though they are not systematically arranged and co-ordinated. Plo- 6 4 4 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tiiius shows a certain impatience in staying below; he makes his start in the lower spheres and then rushes upward without elaborating the stages of his flight. These have to be put together out of the different parts of his book. It seems to us that we have been able to find in Plotiuus three leading paths of ethical ascent, and that these three paths are capable of minor subdivisions. It must be repeated than any such precise formulation is not found in Plo- tinus, who is not easily detained below by a system, since in his case the essence of Being is above essence (or supra-essential). We name the three paths as follows: (1) Praxis, the moral life, or the practice of the Virtues; (2) Theoria, which embraces all forms of contem- plative life; (3) Ecsfasis, the final union of the Soul with the One, which, is, therefore, the ultimate purpose and realization of this phi- losophy. I. Praxis. — This pertains, in general, to the moral life, to the training of the individual to Virtue. It is, therefore, but a phase or stage of the total ethical process, dealing with outer con- duct more than inner, with the Soul (Psyclte) more than with JSTous. But to Plotinus morality has not the all-absorbino; sionificance which we have seen it to have in certain phases of Hellen- isticism. Nor has it the same prominent place in Neo- Hellenism that it has in the great Hel- PLOTINUS.— ETHICS. 045 lenic philosophers, Phito and Aristotle. Their hiy;he.st Virtue was institutional, which with Plotinus is the lowest, since institutions have little or no meaning for him. One may well ask, How could he believe in them, living in such a State as the Roman Empire of his time? If the State determined the moral individual (as both Plato and Aristotle maintain), that Roman State could only make man immoral. So Plotinus really throws overboard the institutional world, but out of respect for his great masters assigns a little corner in his scheme to political Virtue. The general character of Virtue in the account of Plotinus is negative more than positive; it consists chiefly in the suppression of the sensuous nature of man, when the Soul will of itself begin the ethical ascent. The universal form of Virtue is the indifference to the blows of fate and to external fortune ; its end is the inner discipline of the Ego, which quite corresponds to the Stoic apathy. By moral practice the Ego is not de- termined by the sense-world in which it has to dwell temporarily. All virtues are purificatory (^Enn. I. 2. 7) in character or at least have a purificatory stage ; their object is to free the Soul of its sensuous determination. " Virtue pertains to the Soul, not to the N'ous or to the One beyond the JSfous.''' Enn. II. 2. 3.) The moral act is " to separate the Soul from the Body ' ' and to restore it to 646 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. its original uncontaminated purity from Matter. This is "to gather itself up from different places," from its separated, scattered condition in its Body and so to become entirely impassive (I. 2. 5) having regained its original unity. Though virtue as such properly pertains to the Soul, still the idea or pattern {paradeigina) lies back in the Nous, or Intellect, which, there- fore, determines and orders the virtues. Indeed this pattern may itself be deemed a higher vir- tue, while the lower corresponding virtue is that of the Soul. For instance, temperance is a political (or social) virtue m Plato; yet the truly good man will not live the life which such a virtue demands, but " fleeing from it he will choose the life of the Gods," who belong to Nous. "For the assimilation should be to these and not to good men " who are themselves but an image of the Gods. Hence Virtue must rise above the Soul into JSFous, copying the original itself, and not staying with the image of an image. (See Enn. I. 2. 7.) Thus before Plotinus hover three sorts of virtues, or perchance each virtue may have three stages — the political, the purificatory (cathartic), and the paradeigmatic. It is mani- fest that these stages are an adjustment to his philosophical Korm — the Sense-world, the Soul- world, and the Nous-world. He is not altogether consistent in his account of the relation of virtue PL TIN US. — E THICS. 647 to these stages, as the reader will note. Of course virtue cannot be predicated of the supra- natural One, since this is also supra-moral. So we see in the present as in other cases that the end of morality is to transcend morality, or that the Plotinian morality is transcendental. Even the essence of Being has now became supra- essential ( hyperousion ) . Later Neo-Platonists added other divisions of the virtues, but these three are the fundi' mental ones. It will be seen that the new Platonic Eepublic of Plotinus, the Platonopolis, was not for embodying the cardinal virtues — justice, temperance, fortitude, wisdom, as political, but as paradeigmatic. The philosophers there were not to rule a city with people in it, but were to devote themselves to the cultivation of the para- deigmatic virtues, dictated or determined by the Nous. Thus virtue as practical {praxis) rises to intellect, in which there must be vision (^theoria) of the pattern or idea. The practice of the virtues becomes their contemplation also, with which we have entered a new phase of the ethical ascent to the Supreme One. II. Theoria — The Contemplative World. The present subject (or World) occupies a very important place in the scheme of Plotinus. With him the Soul is to rise out of the sensible to the supra-sensible realm through Contempla- 648 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tiou or Vision. This is really the inner self- activity of the Ego which is now to retrace its steps, to ascend toward the first source, the One along the general path by which it descended. The Soul when it has sunk to the bottom of the Universe and is materialized, or rather completely individualized, has as its prime function to undo its fall, and to regain its first unity with the All. The ultimate duty of the individual is to get rid of his individuahty. The one only One over- flowed somehow and produced him ; he is now to compel that Supreme One to take him back into the orio-inal Oneness from which there is, theo- retically at least, no separation. Theoria or Contemplation shows always an ascent of the Soul from the sense-world to the pure forms of the nous-world, which is just below the supra-rational One, the great object of attainment. Between these ^vorlds run three roads. Art, Kehgion, and Philosophy, each of which is a Theoria with a sensuous, psychic, and noetic stage. That is, the Soul is to behold the Beautiful, Godhood and Science, iu its complete ascent to the Supreme One, who is, however, supra-beautiful, supra-religious, and supra-philo- sophical. Thus Theoria, after having disciplined itself in all the stages of Art, Eeligion and Phi- losophy, must rise above itself in order to reach its purpose. All of which will be briefly outlined in the following details. PL O TINUS. — E Tines. G4 9 1. Art. Through the contemplation of the Beautiful we rise out of the sensible realm to the supra-sensible, since even the material world Plotinus holds to be l)eautiful. Still it is Form and not Matter which is the Beautiful as object of sense, and it is this Form which we are to separate from its material part and contemplate. In this way art becomes an ethical trainer of the Soul to the su[)ra-scnsiljle. Of the Beautiful Plotinus seems to have three different phases before him, corresponding to the descendiug series — Nous (Intellect), Psyche (Soul), and Matter (Hyle). The ascent through the contemplation of Beauty may be conceived as follows : — (a) Sensuous Beauty; in spite of his depre- ciation of the sense-world, Plotinus is too much of a classic Greek not to enjoy and praise its beauty. His return to Hellenism is too complete, he cannot leave out one of its most distinctive characteristics. Herein also he differs from his Christian antagonists, who despise the beautiful world both of Nature and Art (see Ennead II. 9, which is directed particularly against the Christians). Still Plotinus regards sensuous Beauty as something to be transcended ; the Form or Idea finds no fitting home for itself in Matter, which is, after all, the bad, the negative, the damnable. Hence the Beautiful must rise out of it to the supra-sensible realm, 6oO ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. (Jj) Psychic Beauty, or the Beauty of the Soul in itself ; this is seen when the Soul mani- fests itself in the virtues, in all noble activities, in worthy deeds. Here is likewise a contempla- tion of the Beautiful by which we ascend to the higher sphere of Soul. Art we still call it, being a manifestion, though not a material one. Hence the Form may be deemed purer, even if it needs still an act for its appearance. Hence we ascend a step beyond, to JSfous. (c) Noetic Beauty; the Forms of things which have made the material world beautiful, and also the moral world of action, are now seen in a world of their o\ni\ (^cosmos iioeios). Not an outward appearance have they here, but as they are in themselves they exist, indeed as Gods. This is the realm of primal Beauty, from which all other sorts of Beauty flow. Contemplation now beholds the beautiful Gods, not their statues or images, or even their deeds. Such is truly the vision of the artist ; for Phidias fashioned the statue of Zeus not after some perceived object, but from the sight of the God himself (^Enn. V. 8. 1). Only as a copy of the Idea in the noetic world is the sensuous object beautiful, whose true effect is to carry the beholder back to its source in the Nous. But even this is not the highest attainment ; be- yond the Nous is still the One in which the many Ideas or Forms are to vanish. Here lies the PL TINUS. — E TIIICS. 65 1 supra-be«autiful realm, out of which is the pri- mordial overflow into all these beautiful worlds above designated — noetic, psychic and material. Thus the complete movement of Beauty is to get rid of itself and pass beyond ; its ethical purport is its evanishment. Art is a kind of beholding or vision ; as such , it ceases when it has served its purpose, since all vision is a separation into subject and object which the Supreme One can- not admit into itself. So the final view of Art is to see it leading beyond Art; the final view of the Beautiful is its form disappearing into the supra-l)eautiful. "\A'hen through the Beautiful the Soul is borne up to the noetic or intelligible world, it finds there the realm of the Gods, the archetj^pal Forms which the artist is to copy. But this realm of the Gods exists in its own right and can be reached in another w^a}', which Plotinus does not neglect — Religion. This is also res^arded as a form of Contemplation by which the Soul is brought into communion with the One. 2. Religion. The great end of the scheme of Plotinus as of all Neo-Hellenists may be deemed religious, being the unity of the soul with God, or with the Supreme One. Plotinus is ready to employ the transmitted Religion, especially of Greece, as a means of ascent to the Divine ; still he emploj's it as philosopher rather than as a l^elicver. In other words he philosophizes 652 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Eelitrion far more than he religionizes Phik)so- ph}^ this hitter being rather the attitude of Jani- blichus. Herein he follows the Neo-Pythago- reans, and differs from the Platonizing Jews of Pliilo's pattern, both of whom we have already found in the religious movement of Hellenisti- cism. It may be questioned if Plotinus had much direct spontaneous faith in the Greek or any Gods, in the plural, but he certainly had an immediate faith in the one God above all Gods. His manifold deities and demons are hardly more than forms for his concepts, though their names be taken from the popular Keligion. His poly- theism is an inferior thing, an overflow and de- scent from his monotheism or monism. So the One emanates the whole Pantheon intoa descend- ino- system. But beside its deities Eeligion has my thus and worship, all of which Plotinus brings into line with his thought. (a) As to his Gods, the first grade is to be assio-ned to jSFoas, being the first emanation, as we have previously seen. In this fact we may well read that Thought is the highest derived God, who, however, is divided up into many Thoughts or Ideas, or into many forms of Nous. Another grade of divine Beings is the heavenly bodies, then the class of demons follows. (6) Plotinus has an extensive interpretation of the stories of the Gods, of their Mythology in which he finds philosophical concepts. The PL TINUS. — E Tines. G53 mythical form is translated into the thought of the Ph)tinian system. Homer in particular en- tices him to an explanation of the inner meaning of poetic shapes and occurrences. Of course, Plotinus was not the first to employ this sort of interpretation. Really it is as old as Homer himself, who can be detected in places allegori- zing his deities, and also personifying his abstrac- tions. (c) To Religion also belongs worship with rites, prayers, images, etc. The worship of idols, to which the old Greek philosophers ob- jected, Plotinus defends by his doctrine of sym- pathy {Enn. IV. 3, 11). The image of the God, patterned after his Idea in the realm of Nous, has the power of mediating the worshipper with the God. In like manner the God hears the prayers of the supplicant, since all things above and below are connected in a sympathetic or magic relation, which the individual through worship may be able to set in motion. Thus Plotinus philosophizes Religion, which he received in its estabhshed form. Herein Neo- Hellenism can be seen running counter to the general movement of the early Hellenic Period, which turned away from the popular Religion. Plato indeed, as a born poet and myth-maker, often mythologizes his philosophy, moulding the myth anew according to his conception. But Plotinus does the converse : he philosophizes 664 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. mythology, which is the given, accepted thing, to be transformed as it is into philosophic thousrht. Such a treatment means an outer con- formity to the positive Religion of the time, even if it does not mean an inner acceptance thereof. The trend of the age was religious, the world was seeking God. So Plotinus wheels into line Religion as a means of the Soul's rise to the one God, through the vision of and communion with the many Gods of the received polytheism. The preceding account of Religion as em- ployed by Plotinus gives its descent from the One. But its true ethical conception must pro- ceed the other way, which is the rise of the Soul or Self to the One through Religion. This will have its sensuous or immediate stage in the external rites and worship; thence it will show a psychic (or imaginative) stage in the history of the Gods, or Mythology ; finally the noetic stage shows the Gods as they are in themselves, and demands some kind of Theology. In this field, then, Philosophy begins to take hold of Religion and to transform the same into itself, philosophizing all religious forms and stages. But Philosophy has its own forms or categories, its own process and history. Plo- tinus is, after all, the philosopher; so he will not fail to give an account of his own science in this connection. 3. Philoso2:)1ii/. This term has been already PL TINUS — E TIIICS. 655 used for the entire movement of the system of Plotinus — Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics. But here we employ the word in a narrower sense, designating the ethical effect of the study of Philosophy as a means for the Soul's ascent to the Supreme One. Philosophy deals with the knowing of the truth in its present form, the truth stripped of its artistic and religious wrappage. The metaphysical movement, more or less hidden in the shapes of Art and Eeligion, is now to be grasped as it is in itself and made the discipline of the Soul (or Self) unto the attainment of the Highest One. INIan through knowing or science also is to return to God. Indeed, Plotinus as philosopher must deem this the best way, and the foundation of all the other ways to the same end. He discusses the many forms of mental activity in knowing, which we shall omit except the following main ones : — (a) Sensuous knowing or sense-perception is naturally placed lowest by Plotinus, who regards it as a faint shadowy indication of the Idea or the Truth lying in the supra-sensible realm. The senses, as determined by the outer, material world, belong to the impure part of our nature and are to be transcended by the training of Philosophy, not only for the sake of our morals but also for the sake of our knowledge. (6) Representative (or psj'chic) knowing is higher, since the Soul now reaches the supra- 656 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. sensible, and deals with its own forms, as in memory, imagination, and also reflection. Yet these forms are derived from the sense-world, as images, judgments, inferences. Thus the Soul (Psyche) works over the shapes of sensation into its own manifold combinations. But whence comes this its power? From a higher source than itself, to which we may next look. (c) Dialectic (or noetic) knowing is the true science, whose ultimate ground or principles must be sought for in the JVous. We have the advantage of a special dissertation on the Dialectic by Plotinus (^Enn. I. 3). It enables us "to say rationally what each thing is, wherein it differs from other things, and what is the common principle of those things in which it is." It deals "with science and not with opinion ; it causes the Soul to cease from wan- dering about in the Sense-world and to take its position in the Nous-world " (c. 4). Moreover the Dialectic is the ordering principle, being not a mere " collection of propositions and rules, but deals with things ", with the objective fact (ch. 5). It is indeed " the most honorable part of Philosophy," the highest stage thereof, and Plotinus revolts at its being called "the in- strument (organon) of the philosopher," as if the latter employed it like a tool, when rather it employs him. In the Dialectic, as Plotinus re- FL O TIXUS. — E THICS. 657 gartis it, Thought is grasped as the reality, and orders itself and all else. Thus we see that Philosophy here reaches the highest point of Aristotle, which is Thought- thinking-Thought as the fundamental prin- ciple of the Universe. This is the realm of Nous, to which there has been a rise of the individual up through the sensuous and psychic spheres by means of Pliil()SO[)hv. Looking back at this whole movement of TJieoria, we find that the same end (the noetic) has been attained tlirough its two other waj's, those of Art and of Religion. The grand theoretic attainment is, therefore, the realm of the Nous, where are the highest forms of Beauty, the highest Gods and the highest Thoughts, even that Thouo;ht thinkinsf the Thought of all Art, of all Religion, and of all Philosophy. This is essentialh' the supreme Thought of the Hellenic Period. But Plotinus is no longer sat- isfied with it, and so he proceeds to that princi- ple which is the chief characteristic of the Neo- Hellenic Period, making this something more than a mere return to and repetition of Hellenism. He will transcend the separation which lies in self-consciousness, in Thought thinkino; Thought, and reach back to the One in which all distinc- tion and Reason itself vanish — to the supra- rational One from which the rational (noetic), 42 658 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. psychical, and physical realms overflowed in a de- scending order. The Soul, however, is to ascend through these same grades to the supra-rational One, with which it is to become one, and thus bring to a final consummation its ethical process, to whose third stage we have now come. III. EcsTASis. — The Soul or the individual Self is now to rise beyond all kinds of knowing, beyond Nous, beyond TJieoria or Vision, since it must obliterate the difference between subject and object, between the seeing and the seen. Hence beyond Art, Religion (as positive) and Philosophy (as Hellenic), is to be the ascension, and Plotinus, the individual, through his indi- vidual effort is to break over the bounds of individuality and to become united with the One and the All. Thus the final stage of his Philos- ophy is to mount above all Philosophy, and the height of his Reason transcends all Reason. In this act our philosopher does not know God but is God ; he is divine as much as the Divinity Himself. For he, the philosopher, is no longer a separate entity, is no longer a Self properly or a Soul. He has still experi- ences, but he has them in God, and as God ; these he may remember if he ever is ema- nated again as an individual Soul. Such is the Ecstasy (^Ekstasis) of Plotinus, in which the Self gets rid of Selfhood, and becomes one with PL TINU8. — E Tm as. Co 1) the One, with the Supreme God of Plotmus, as distinct from the many Gods of his jVous. In this Ecstasy we shall also find a process if we carefully trace and put together the discon- nected hints of our philosopher. (1) We must begin with the Soul abstracting from all difference and separation in the world and in itself. As self-conscious intellio-ence, as N'ous it must rid itself of that selfhood wdiich knows itself, and rise to the ' Unconscious. Such a negative power over itself and its own process the Ego has : the sei)arative stage (as subject-object) which makes it what it is, it must take away. Then it is ready. (2) Keacly for what? For the grand over- flow of the One which can now reach out, take it up, and make it one with the One. When the Soul is thus free of all knowledge, then comes to it " a Presence better than knowledge, inasmuch as the Soul suffers a separation from the One when it knows anything. It must therefore transcend knowledge, and hold aloof from every beautiful view, since the Beautiful comes after and from it, as all light of the day comes from the Sun." (Enn. VI. 9. 4.) The great illustra- tion of the One for Plotiuus is the sun with its light. He is a sun-worshiper witn the sun in- ternalized. Into the soul which has liberated itself from division, the light suddenly enters ; " this light is from Him and is He ; then we must OnO ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPHY. consider Him to be present. So the Soul without light is without God, and having light, has what it seeks. Such is the true end of the Soul: to receive that light, and to see that through which it was illuminated." (Enn.Y. 3. 17, adfinem.) Strictly there can be no vision of the One, as that implies the very dualism which is to be gotten rid of. Such inconsistencies, however, are very frequent in Plotinus and often confusing. So the illumination comes from without when the Soul is prepared within. And yet even these terms are not applicable. It does not come at all, but is already there, and everywhere; *'we are not to ask whence, for it neither comes nor goes away, it appears and does not appear." {Enn. V. 5. 8.) Such is the struggle of Plo- tinus to express the inexpressible, to see the invisible, to point out the way when there is no way; " for the soul hastening to another simply runs to itself, and getting to be in another, is in itself alone." For the One is what truly it-i, and when the Soul also truly is, it has found the Divine Presence, which likewise finds it. Thus all "privation," separation, indeed the Will it- self vanishes into the transcendental One. (3) Going back to the individual Soul we see that it is swallowed up, is no longer §elf-consci- ous, or a distinct individual at least in Thought or Will. The primordial outflow of the One or of God which produced it in a descent down to PL TIXUS. — E THICS. 661 man, has been counteracted or overcome by a corresponding inflow which has borne the Soul back to its original source. The individual through his own Will refuses to be individual, to be separated from the One ; his whole effort, after becoming an individual by a divine act, is to undo this divine act through its entire course down to his making. From this point of view, the supreme ethical end of man is to negate God's work in producing him. If he can do that which is God's undoing, he is cer- tainly divine. Mighty indeed is that individual who refuses to be an individual, but will be God in spite of God, and so returns out of his emanated state and compels the Supreme One to take him back, after having thrown him out. In this return of the Soul to the Supreme One and its unification with the same lies the princi- ple of mysticism as it has manifested itself in Religion, and even in Philosophy. The Soul as God-comiDcller gets back to its Divine Source and becomes one with it again. This is the con- dition of blessedness, as the mystics conceive, the supernal rapture and ecstasv, the complete get- tina: rid of Self, of that Self which is the cause of all suffering, limitation and fate. It would seem, therefore, that the Soul as individual is not wholly lost, not wholly absorbed, but has still Feeling, which indeed is the potentiality of Self, 662 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and indicates the possibility of its becoming again an individual. And this is what happens, at least during the present life. Only for a short time here can the state of ecstasy be enjoyed. For in the midst of its unconscious rapture there steals u[)on the soul a fear of passing into pure nothingness, and of losing utterly that individuality whose Will and Intellect have been obliterated, and whose Feel- ino; alone remains in the boundlessness of the One. " When the Soul passes into the realm of formless One, being unable to comprehend it on account of its being unlimited, then the Soul weakens and is afraid, terrified lest it may get nothino;. Wherefore it labors in such a state." What now has become of our ecstas}^? And our vanished Self seems to have returned and to be claiminor its rio;ht against the All. Still further in the same passage: "Thence the Soul descends ivifh joy, often falling away from all, until it gets back to the sense- world, breathing freely as it were upon solid ground." (^;i«. VI. 9. 3.) In this connection what Porphyry says in his Life of Plotinus (c. 43) should be cited. The biographer states that Plotinus attained this ecstatic unification with " the God above all Gods four times while I was with him," and then had to descend again into his body. Porph^'ry himself rather plaintively confesses that he " once for all in my sixty-eighth PL TIXUS. — E THICS. 663 year " succeeded in ascending into the Ecstasis, from which he came back again and wrote the Life of Plotinus. So it seems that the individual, having made himself one with God, cannot stay there, in this life at least, on account of a creeping fear lest he may lose his individuality. Accordingly he is emanated again, unable to dwell harmoniously with the One, and returns to his noetic, psychic, and sensuous life, with the marvelous account of his supernal experience. Herewith the ethical movement of the Ploti- nian Philosophy is concluded, having shown its three stages of Praxis, Theoria, and Ecstasis. And the philosophical Norm — Metaphysics, Phys- ics, and Ethics — in its Plotinian form has ex- pressed itself with a fair degree of fullness. This Norm is that of Plato and Aristotle, though each philosopher fills it out after his own fashion, wherein lies the difference between these three greatest thinkers of Hellas. The horizon of Greek Philosophy widens in accord with the nativity of the three. Plato was an Athenian, Aristotle was colonial (Hellenic) by birth, Ploti- nus was an Oriental. It is the last one (Ploti- nus) who pushes Greek Philosophy beyond itself and thus leads the way to its evanishment in the Supreme One from whom it originally started as a reaction in the Milesian Movement. Plotinus has told us a good deal about the One 664 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. which cannot be known, yet which he knows pretty well. Also he has described a state of consciousness, of which he must have been un- conscious. His God is not a Self but is above all selfhood, yet it is the Self of Plotinus which has to reach Him, conceive and formulate Him. He is placed above all Thought, and still this very statement must be the way to think Him. The Ego of Plotinus is the product of the overflowing God, but this Ego of his must go back and re- produce the God overflowing into himself, the individual. This individual, however, must van- ish back into the God who produced him — wherein lies the chief vocation of man according to Neo-Hellenism. JAMBLICHUS. 665 2. 3aml)licbu0, After Plotinus (204-270) is usually placed his pupil Porphyiy, a good man and important in a number of ways. But in philosophical signifi- cance, and as giving expression to the age, he is far outstripped by his scholar Jamblichus, the dates of whose birth and death are not known with exactness. But the best authorities place his death at about 330 A. D., after a long and active hfe. Thus the period of his work nearly coincides with that of the Emperor Constantine the Great, in whose reign the supremacy of Christianity began to be recognized by the Roman State. The old Greco-Roman world with its religion or its religions felt itself to be sinking before a new and mightier power. Jamblichus sought to stay this result and preserve the ancient order. Such was his general relation to the trend of his time, which accounts for much in his thousfht and in his career. An overwhelmino- need of help fi-om above, an almost crushing sense of God as the Supernal One comes over man here below, which state of mind finds a voice in Jamblichus, who thereby adds a trans- forming principle to Plotinus. So we have reached a new stage in the total Q66 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. sweep of Neo-Hellenism. The general character of this stage is indicated by the first fact of it : over and apart from the supra-rational One of Plotinus appears another and even higher One, to which attaches no predicate or quality ; it can- not even be called the Good, or be said to have Being. Thus Jamblichus shows the strugffle to reach out beyond Plotinus, and produces a new separation in the latter' s unseparated First Prin- ciple, the One. In such fashion the very thing guarded against has taken place in the master's own School; the undivided is divided, and at the first glance is dualized. Still it is not the intention of Jamblichus to introduce a dual principle as ultimate ; if that were so, he would have to be ruled out of the Neo-Hellenic movement. On the contrary, his object is to keep off by a new bulwark the dual- ism which threatens the undivided One of Plotinus ; it overflowed and so in a manner im- parted itself in a kind of generation ; hence we must have two Ones up somewhere above, the first of which is not impartible, Avhile the other is. Moreover we may well deem that the Plotinian One might be disturbed by the individual who succeeds in rising to it and becoming united with it through ecstasy. So Jamblichus must insist u})on the idea that the Absolute One cannot be comniumcsiicd (a methekfos). To be sure, this is •d predicate of the One, though nothing was to JAMBLICEUS. 667 be predicuted of it, being allowed not even a negative predicate. Still " the altogether un- speakable principle " has been at least spoken. Such is the desperate struggle of Jamblichus to preserve the original One of Neo- Hellenism, and we ask why? Undoubtedly keen antagonists, especially the Christians, had pointed out that the act of emanation in the One implies separa- tion, and that Plotinus himself saj'S that it generates what lies below it. Thus division has crept into the primal undivided One, which division must be banished by a new effort. Moreover there lay another and deeper reason in the time. Christianity was becoming more and more the prevailing religion ; even the Emperor Constantine had begun to favor it during the life of Jamblichus. Now the Christian God was supremely a creative God, who freely imparted Himself to His creatures through divine grace. The grand act of the Christian God was His begotten Son, Christ, who, according to the formulated dogma, was of like nature with the Father. Such was the doctrine of the Church established at the Council of Nice (325 A. D.), toward the close of the life of Jamblichus, who was surrounded everywhere with the din of the Arian controversy. His ineffable and incommunicable One is the direct opposite of Christian Homoousianism. His First Principle or God cannot descend or impart itself, or 668 ANCIENT EUBOTEAN PHILOSOPHY. generate a Son of like substance (homoousios) with Himself ; that were His greatest degradation. We can hardly now conceive how shocking it was to these Neo-Hellenic idealists that the one only God should perpetrate an act of generation, bringing His only Son into the world of Matter, which even to Plotinus was the First Evil (^proton JcaJvon). Hence Jamblichus, in his sheer repulsion against the fundamental doctrine of the Nicene Creed, hoists over the highest One of Plotinus, which was still emanative, another and higher One which has no emanation. Thus he sought to keep at least the Supreme One pure, uncontaminated with the world, unsullied with the thought of any physical process. This was a genuine feeling of the time and was one main reason why Neo-Hellenism held out so many centuries against its mighty rival. The second important fact in connection with the work of Jamblichus was his remarkable religious tendencies. He retained the metaphy- sical outline orskeleton of the system of Plotinus, but filled up this outline with a vast multitude of deities. That which is Nous in Plotinus becomes in Jamblichus a God or rather several orders of Gods connected together mostly in Triads. Every abstract concept of mind seems to be struggling for the personal shape in his supra-sensible world. What a multiplication of divinities ! He wheels into line the polytheistic JAMBLICHUS. 669 religions of the Orient and of Hellas, making them fit somewhere into his Divine Order. The unity of Philosophy passes over into the diversity of Religion : this we may consider the general transition from Plotinus to Jamblichus ; the former is indeed religious, but he philoso- phizes Religion, while the latter, though still a philosopher, religionizes Philosophy. The Neo- Hcllcnic philosophical Norm is preserved b}^ Janil)lichus but is made over into the holder of all the Gods of all the religions except one, the Christian. This characteristic, too, we can see, springs from hostility to the popular sweep toward Christianity. Plotinus, living many years be- fore the time of Constantine, was still the Greek philosopher, opposed to superstition and to the crude Greek religion of the people. We have seen that he was essentially aristocratic and his Philosophy was imperialistic, being favored by at least one Roman emperor. The same is true, though doubtless in a less degree, of Porphjay. It is plain from the treatise De Mysteriis Egyptiorum that a rift had occurred in the Neo- Hellenic School, caused by just this change of tendency in Jamblichus who probably did not write the aforesaid treatise, though it must have come from one of his followers. It censures Porphjay for his attitude toward the new move- 670 AXCIEXT EUROPEAN PillLOSOPHt. meut of the School, but the reproof would be quite as strong against Plotinus himself. Very striking indeed is the change. Of a sud- den Philosophy, in the Neo-Hellenic stage of it represented by Jamblichus, takes up the old Greek religion and the Gods into its bosom, and becomes their warm defender and devotee. Polytheism is patronized, paganism is re- affirmed with its rites and beliefs. Yet this is not all. There is a resort to sorcery, magic, exorcism of spirits ; the world of delusion seems to pour itself out into these Neo-Hellenic meta- physical formulas and to make them overflow with Gods, demons, angels, spirits, produc- ing a phantasmagoria which has hardly been equaled since. The great word is Theurgv, a making of the Gods, or at least a producing of their activity through prayers, incantations, and many ceremonies. Yet all this is kept in the general framework of Plotinian metaphysics. "What does it mean? It is the desperate attempt to recover religious Hellenism, from which Philosophy hitherto had been in the main a re-action. It is the merit of Jamblichus that he saw the deepest problem of the age to be religious and not merely philosophical; he saw that the civilized world would no longer be satisfied with Philosophy alone, but must have also Religion. He recognized that the Christian Faith could only be met by another Faith. So JAMBLICHUS. C71 he proposes to construct ii universal Religion bv throwing together into one seething cauldron all the cults of the Roman Empire, and after due process moulding them into one system of* belief after the Neo-Hellenic scheme. Thus Philosophy in a sense faces about at this point, for it was really Philosophy which had under- mined Greek polytheism, having assailed it since the time of old Xenophaues, the Eleatic; but now Philosophy undertakes to restore not merely Greek but to construct a universal polytheism. Another profound insight of Jamblichus into the needs of his age is that he would make his Religion popular. He saw that the lofty ideal Philosophy of Plotmus could never win in the form given to it by its founder; it could not be understood generally, it was exclusive, for the select few, not truly universal. Hence Jam- bUchus, while preserving the Neo-Helleuic thought, would till it with the folk-soul of faith in the Gods. Great and noble was his idea of winning all peoples by their religions and uniting them into one religious Institution correspoudino- to their secular union in the political Institution of the Roman Empire. One thinks that a kind of Church hovered before his mind, whereof he could see the Christian counterpart already build- ing around him. Another Semite (he was from Syria) would found a new Religion, all-inclusive, embracing all peoples under its imperial sway, 672 ANGIEKT E UBOPEAK PHIL SOPHY. being set in the frame-work of an imperial Phi- losophy such as ^Yas that of Plotinus. In like manner we have seen that the Christian Eeligion had been already organized by Greek Philosophy in the hands of Orio-en. Nor must we forget to emphasize still an- other weighty matter in Jambliclms : his em- ployment of the triadal movement in his arrangement of the Gods. This indeed he could have picked up directly from his con- tact with Oriental religions, especially the Egyptian, which has a peculiar fondness for Triads in its manifold systems of deities. Nor is the Triad by any means absent from the Greek religion in the earliest stages of it known to us. The religious instinct of Jamblichus, his deep sympathy w^ith the universal form of all religions, not even excepting those called mono- theistic, made him a trinitarian, to be sure not after the Christian pattern, which was just what he scouted and sought to supplant. Moreover each stage or person of these Triads is made to form a new Triad ; each part has in it the whole triadal movement, and often manifests the same in a genetic fashion. This we hold to be a very important thought universally, and it is one that specially pervades later Neo-Hellenism. Already we have noticed a triadal tendency in Plotinus, not so much religious as metaphysical. When we come to Proclus who substantially closes the JAMBLICHU8. 673 Neo-Hellenic niovcmeut, we shall find the Triad all-dominating both in Philosophy and in Relig- ion. We need hardly remind the reader that the Triad more or less implicitly controls the whole line of Greek Thought from its beo;inninoc in Thales. Undoubtedly there is a great differ- ence in the formal completeness and develop- ment of these Triads ; this present book of ours may well be called a book of Triads, which have to be seen finally as psychological, not simply as philosophical or religious. In this grand triadal process of the thought of the ages, Jaml)lichus has his place, his special niche, whom it is easy to scoff at and nickname, but whom it is better to appreciate. We do not know many facts about the life of Jamblichus, though it has been written by Euna- pius, a devoted admirer and follower. He came from Chalcis in Coelesyria, and belonged to a rich and influential family. He is said to have visited Rome, and there to have met Porphyry, who was his teacher for a time, Rome being still the cen- ter of Neo-Hellenism. After a period of instruc- tion Jamblichus went back to Syria and opened a school of his own which became flourishino; and powerful. In fact it transferred the seat of Nc.p- Hellenic Philosophy from Rome to the East, and to a degree orientalized it with the religions of Western Asia. Hence it is called the Syrian or Oriental stage of Neo-Hellenism in contrast with 43 674 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the earlier Roman and the Liter Athenian stagfes. The name of Jambhchus eclipsed that of his teacher Porphyry who was also a Syrian, and even that of the great founder Plotinus. The most extravagant titles were given him by his pupils, and the wildest stories were current about his miraculous powers. Rumor had it that dur- ing prayer he hovered above the earth surrounded by an aureole oi light. Among the later Neo- Hellenic writers his standing designation is " the divine Jamblichus. ' ' There is an agreement that his personality was very impressive. Eunapius praises his noble character, his readiness to im- part his knowledge, and his friendly intercourse with his pupils, who in great numbers flocked to his school and became deeply attached to him personally as well as animated with a fervent discipleship. Living some three hundred years after Christ, he wrought in the same general territory, and to a certain extent emploj'ed the same means. His influence must have been a personal one largeh% for his writings, as far as they have come down to us, must be regarded as poor both in form and content. A heavy turgid style, and an exposition obscure, full of repetition, and ever wandering from the point, a love of the occult and the miraculous are some of the literary sins laid at his door, which must, however, have been far more than counterbalanced by the charm and power of his personal presence. JAMBLWHUS. 675 Jambliclius read with his pupils and wrote com- mentaries upon Plato and Aristotle, whom he sought to bring into agreement, following a fun- damental canon of the Neo-Hellenic School. The inheritance of Greek culture had been for six hundred years in Syria, ever since the time of its conquest by Alexander the Great ; that culture too he proposed to retain, though fillino- it and supplementing it with the native religions of his Oriental home. In contrast with Hellenisticism, which spread out into the Orient from Hellas, we now see the Orient re- turning to Hellas, cherishing and safe-guardino- her spiritual treasures. Nevertheless Jamblichus was essentially religious, his deepest conscious- ness lay in the belief that man needed help from above in working out the purification of his sen- suous nature. So he oi-ganizes a divine world which is to give life to the philosophic skeleton of abstract thought, and at the same time be a means of the grand catharsis of mortality. Still along with this interference of the Gods, Jamblichus asserts the freedom of man. Thouo-h the soul descends into flesh and becomes laden with appetites and passions, it has nevertheless the power to rise out of its low condition, which fact constitutes its ethical turning-point in its return to the Upper World. Yet it must have the continued help of the Gods from above. Herein Jamblichus has a spirit different from 676 ANCIENT EUMOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. that of Plotinus who in his ethical return to the Good and the One sives the o;reater rano;e to Morality and to Art and Philosophy. This tendency of Jamblichus shows a decided lean- ing toward Neo-Pythagoreanism which had long been known as a cult embracino; doctrines from various religions. This cult he threw into the philosophic formula of Neo-Hellenism. It is not possible to put together in any great detail the system of Jamblichus from the docu- ments pertaining to it which have come down to us. And learned historians of Philosophy, read- ing and weighing these documents, give a vary- ing report of their meaning and contents. Nev- ertheless it is manifest that Jamblichus must have had in his mind the philosophical Norm of Greek thought, especially in its Plotinian form. The three divisions. Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics must have been known to him from his studies of Plato and Aristotle, as well as of the Stoics and later philosophers. Little use can he have for the study of Natural Science, since Nature is controlled by Magic, by Theurgy. All the more does he expand his metaphysical outline and fill it up with orders of deities. I. Metaphysics. That which Jamblichus starts with are the first three principles of the Plotinian scheme — JAMBLICIIUS —METAPHYSICS. 677 the One, Nous, and the Soul. (See the scheme, p. 614.) lie makes some changes, still they re- main the three notes upon which he plays his variations. These three metaphysical elements of Plotinus are to be transformed into deities by Jamblichus, which fact becomes evident in the following plan : — A. The First One, above all Being, above the Good, without predicates ; it has no emana- tion, and cannot be imparted, neither moving nor moved. (More about it on a previous page, as well as the probable reasons which led Jambli- chus to posit such a principle over the One of Plotinus.) B. The Second One, which is the source of the lower intelligences, and which is endowed with the power of emanation, and even of gener- ation. This Second One is to stand between the First or Absolute One, and the multiplicity of both the supersensible and sensible worlds below. Here the creative power of the Plotinian One is explicitly stated, while its unemanative phase is relegated to the First One above mentioned. C. Many Ones, which are next in the order of creative descent. Jamblichus had not merely one but many of these Gods above all Being {lii/ptrousioi), "a multitude of them" says Damascius. These were probably the Henads, which have an important part in the later system of Proclus, 678 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. There is no doubt that here lies a difficulty in the ordering of Jamblichus. Fairly distinct are the three preceding stages. But he now passes to another part of his scheme, and it is hard to see how he makes his transition. Of a sudden his divisions, the Nous and the Soul (after Plo- tinus) are endowed with divinities. We ask our- selves : Where is the antecedent of these two, the One? 1. It is probable that Jamblichus took the three preceding stages (the First One, the Second One, and the Henads) as his exposition of the Plotinian Supreme One. At least in our emer- gency we shall have to conjecture this to be the case, and so pass on to the next in schematic order. 2. The Nous-Gods or Gods of Intellect, which are of two kinds (some say three)* Note that Jamblichus is following Plotinus, but is transforming the latter 's metaphysical entities into deities. The first kind of these Nous-Gods is the in- telligible (^noe(os), which appear in a Triad of Father, Power, and Energy. Each of these ao:ain forms a Triad, so that there are at least three intellis^ible Triads. The second kind of Nous-Gods is the intel- lectual («oero.s). Here again is a Triad of Gods, each of which forms a new Triad of its own, which new Triad becomes a Hebdomad (seven) JAMBLICUUS. — ME TAniYSICS. 679 in a peculiar way. For each God of this new Triad begets a still newer Triad of his own ex- cept the last God who remains unproductive; thus the Triad is made up of seven, a sacred number which Jamblichus, in his universal adop- tion of all religious, had to take somehow into his system. 3. Soul-Gods we have next to consider, in accord with the Plotinian Scheme which Jam- blichus still follows in outline. Here again he introduces his triadal principle, and the meta- physical Soul breaks forth into systems of Gods. Primarily he places above all others the one Soul, supernal, evidently corresponding to his absolute One, Then comes his series of supra-mundane Souls which are Gods. Finally are the mundane deities (also Souls), those which are placed just over man's world, namely the common Gods, the Angels, the Demons and the Heroes. At this point we come upon the deities of the popular re- ligions, among whom we find the twelve Great Gods of Greece arranged in Triads ; each of these again has his own Triad, making thirty-six Gods, who are still further increased to three hundred and sixty. Every people and every tribe have their guardian Gods and guardian Spirits, who must be taken into the universal system. For, as there is a universal State exist- ent, so there must also be a universal Religion 680 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. with its law and organization. Some such aspiration underlies the fantastic scheme of Jamblichus. II. Physics. The Neo-IIellenic School regards the phenom- enal world as a descent from the supra-sensible, which descent is not the fiat of a single will but has been going on from all eternity. Herein Jamblichus accords with his School. He has before his mind the physical Norm of Plotinus — Body, Matter, Evil. The Powers or Gods who, in the supersensible world, act for themselves, become embodied in the phenomenal world, and are, as it were, borne down by a foreign element, which is in general called Nature. It is through this Nature that Evil arises, which requires for its avoidance the continued interposition of the Gods above. Of course there could be no investigation of Nature and her laws in such a doctrine as that of Jamblichus. She was determined primarily by the world of spirits above; man, if he wished to con- trol her, or to use her for his ends, must appeal to them as her masters. Still Nature was en- dowed with a kind of independent material ele- ment, which was in opposition to the spirit-world, and which was united with the Soul in Body. Hence Nature from this side became a sort of JAMBLICnUS. — ETHICS. 681 Fate to man, a new hostile power or possibly demon over him, which it was his great duty to cast out. So we see that the phj^sical calls for the ethi- cal, which fact we noted in Plotinus as well as in Plato and Aristotle. The metaphysical part of the system with all its manifold organization is ultimately for the sake of man with his dual nature, which produces the final struggle between good and evil. So Jamblichus must also have his process of purification which is fundamentally ethical, though this includes his vast religious procedure on its practical side. III. Ethics. The return from the world and from evil to the Gods and the Good is the scope of the ethical process. Here as elsewhere Jamblichus holds to the general scheme of Plotinus, but he carries it out in a somewhat different way, and with a dif- ferent spirit. Plotinus was still the philosopher and laid stress upon the abstract virtues ; Jam- blichus retains these abstract virtues, but has a decided tendency to make them religious, and to put them into a cult connected with Gods. Plo- tinus has not lost the Greek love of Art and of the Beautiful, the latter being properly a part of his ethical process ; Jamblichus the Semite shows little or no tendency of the kind. G82 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. 1. As to the Virtues Jambliclius has given us five classes, adding a new chiss to those of his teacher Porphyry. First are the political Virtues, secular, institutional, worldly, and so lowest in the scale. It may be here noted that Jamblichus shows probably less regard for the political Virtues than even Plotinus (who has lit- tle enough), owing to the changed attitude of the Eoman State toward Christanity. For in the reign of Constantine all the ethnic deities were being slowly deprived of their author- ity by the political institution — which fact could not be regarded in a friendly light by Jamblichus with his universal Pantheon of heathen Gods. Still he keeps the political Vir- tues, probably more as a reminiscence of Plato's Eei^ublic than any love of them or belief in them . The second class of Virtues is the purificatory, in which spirit turns back into itself for the catharsis of the Self. The third class is the theoretic Virtues, in which the spirit contem- plates what is above itself, in the supersensible world. The fourth class is the paradeigmatic, which indicate not only a rise to the Nous, but a participation and union with it. To these Jam- blichus adds the hieratic or sacerdotal Virtues, in which the spirit rises yet above the Nous, to the Supreme One with which there is the final mystic union. This would seem to correspond JAMBLICHUS. — E TRIGS. 683 to the ecstas}' of Plotinus, though the name has the suggestion of a speeial caste or set of initiates "who practice these Virtues. 2. The distinctively religious element in the scheme of Jamblichus far overbalances the practice of the Virtues as such. The rites and worship of all Gods of all religions are a very important part of his plan; his generous spirit included every manifestation of human belief. He was a thorough-going idolater, maintaining, in a special treatise on the subject, that images of the Gods have a divine efficacy. Miracles he performed; he believed in magic and prac- ticed it; prophecy, praj'er, sacrifice in the crassest forms were defended b}' him. Appar- ently he accepted as truth what the most ignorant soul regarded as divine. 3. The conception of ecstasy is not of so great significance with Jamblichus as with Plotinus, who had the tendency to have the Soul carry itself up from quite any point in the system and to unite itself with the Highest Oneimmediatelj' . But Jamblichus would evidently have the Soul pass through the intermediate stages of Gods and their Triads, partially, at least. Divine mediation is in fact very strongly developed in Jamblichus, and belongs to his age more pro- foundly, on account of the increased influence of Christianit}^ than to the age of Plotinus. This mediatorial tendency we may note in his par- 684 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tiality for Triads, and we can also trace it in his highest abstract principles. His Absolute One does not immediately pass over into the Many Ones, but there must be a mediating principle between them, the Second One, which becomes Many. In response to the spirit of the time, he seeks to evolve a Mediator, in a kind of rivalry (one cannot help thinking) with the Christian Mediator. He employs Neo-Hellenic Philosophy, whose metaphysical scheme he fills up with his ordered system of divinities taken from the posi- tive religions of the world. Mighty was the re- sponse of his age to this attempt of Janiblichus, and we can see the reason why : he felt the pulse- beat of a sick world, recognized the disease and tried to supply what it most needed — a Mediator, a Savior. For that Greco-Roman heathen world knew itself to be sinking, to be lost, unless there came from some quarter a God to save them. It was an epoch that seemed in one continued prayer for divine help, and was ready to grasp at anything that offered assistance. Hence it could swallow the grossest superstitions and ask for more. In the light of his period we must see what Jamblichus endeavored to do, and appreciate his effort though it was fore- doomed to failure. Still to a large portion of the people of the Roman Empire — many of them the best souls of the age — it furnished spiritual food for fully two centuries. TBOCL US. 685 3. iproclus. The third great philosopher of Neo-Hellenism is Proclus, who was born at Constantinople in 410 and died at Athens in 485. He was called the Lycian, since his ancestors came from Lycia in Asia Minor. Already the fact has been emphasized that all of the leading Neo-Hellenic philosophers were Oriental in origin. Proclus studied at Alexandria in early life, then he went to Athens where he received instruction from Plutarch the Neo-Hellenist, and then from Syrianus, whom he succeeded in the school which had been established at Athens by the Neo- Hellenic philosophers. These still taught Plato and Aristotle, the latter was regarded as a prep- aration for the former. According to Proclus, Aristotle was demonic, but Plato was divine. In the coming Medieval Theology Aristotle will keep his place as a preliminary discipline, but Plato will be supplanted by the Christian Bible and doctrine. It is not known exactly how or when this Athenian movement of Neo-Hellenism began, but it is conjectured that some pupil or pupils of Jam- blichus may have made the start. The Christians obtained the upper hand in Alexandria and drove 686 ANCIENT ETTROPEAN PmLOSOPItr. out the Heathen Schools of Philosophy. During these troubles the most famous woman philoso- pher of antiquity, Hypatia, was murdered by a Christian mob (415 A. D.). She was a sup- porter of Neo-Hellenism, which began to look to Athens as its future home. Proclus was already in Athens durmg his twenty-second year, accord- ing to his biographer Marinus, though he had previously studied at Alexandria. Plutarch, the above-mentioned Scholarch, dying in 432, had left the School prosperous and famous, so that from this time forward it is the center of Neo- Hellenism. We are then to see a second Athenian move- ment in philosophy, the first being Hellenic and this being Neo-Hellenic. Each lasts about the same length of time, a century more or less (see p. 207), and their beginnings are not far from eight centuries and a half apart. Both are the result of a centripetal tendency ; the first sweeps inward from the periphery of Hellas, the second from the Greco-Roman world. Thus both Hel- lenism and Neo-Hellenism cencentrate in Athens for their last philosophic movements. We see that Neo-Hellenism is outwardly a return to Athens, as well as inwardly a return to her great thinkers. Particularly Proclus who is the real spatial returner of this Neo-Hellenic return (the grand episti^ophe) will make explicit the total process of it in his famous Triad. PB0CLU8. 687 A brief reaction to Heathendom took posses- sion of the throne of the Cassars in Julian the Apostate, who became emperor (361-3), and sought to restore the old Hellenic Religion. This is the most important philosophic fact in the century between the School of Jamblichus and the School of Athens. Such was the last attempt to re-establish the ancient Gods by authority. Still they did not yet perish. Their worship was kept up in many an unobserved corner of the Roman Empire; particularly the learned Neo-Hellenists preserved in secret the faith of the fathers. Proclus once had to retire from Athens to escape from Christian persecu- tion, though he returned after a year's absence, and remained in the city till his death. He took up his abode not far from an old Greek temple to which he might betake himself to worship without attracting attention. The School of Athens shows a development out of the exclusive religious tendency of Jam- blichus, to which it added the study of pure philosophy, specially of Metaphysics and Dialec- tics. It made the attempt to reduce to a philo- sophic form all heathen religions. It restored Aristotle to his place as the organizer of thought. Jamblichus had undoubtedly kept to the Nco- Hellenic Norm, but in a loose way ; his vast polytheistic material, derived from many cults, was not a well-arranged Whole. The School of 688 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Athens, ou the contrary, has a tendency to order- ing and categorizing the Universe anew, especially its accumulated religious stores. This order, it is true, remains more or less external, formal, without inner development. The movement be- gins before Proclus, who, however, inherited tiie work and carried it forward to its highest point. Herein we observe the strugo-le between the two Norms, philosophical and religious, the former at present subordinating the latter. Proclus retains an exceedingly diversified religious con- tent in the shape of rites, ceremonies, theurgy, even magic; sacred books he has, such as the Orphic Sayings, the Chaldean Oracles, even the poems of Homer; this recalcitrant mass he will compel into philosophic form, chiefly by means of Plato and Aristotle. Certainly a catholic taste ho sliows ; he seems to have tlie idea of an universal religion, the Christians alone being kept out of his scheme. Also a philosophy of religion lies fermenting in his thought; in fact his whole plan is largely a philosophizing of re- ligion. As Proclus had predecessors in the School of Athens, so he will have successors. But none will approach him in importance, none will be able to form with him a great movement. Hence he rises up from the lesser mountains about hiui a lofty solitary peak. For this reason the second Athenian period of Philosophy will rnocLUS. 689 not be like the first in having a personal trinity of three great philosophers in a process with one another, as we see in the case of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Proclus, however, will form the third stage of the total Neo-Hellenic process, which is likewise personal. Still this personal Triad of individual philosophers will have as the ultimate principle the evanishment of the indi- vidual in the One. The essence of Being with them is indeed the Universal, but the Universal as negative to the individual. In Hellenisticism we saw the Universal realized in the individual as such, but in Neo-Hellenism we see it realized in the Supreme One which is the negation of in- dividuality. Hellenism unfolds the Universal as such, Hellenisticism puts the Universal into the individual, and thus makes him universal, Neo-Hellenism puts the individual into the Uni- versal which undoes him. Proclus, indeed, did not live in the autonomous Athens which pro- duced the great individuals whose very character was that of universality. His time went rather the opposite way, and he moved with it. The Universal no longer passed over into the indi- vidual and made the latter, but the individual passed over into the Universal and was lost as a self-conscious, self-active being. Such, then, is the outcome of Neo-Hellenism. Jamblichus sought to divinize the metaphysical stages of Plotinus, turning the hitter's Nous and 44 690 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Soul into Threes of Gods. But Proclus will go back to Plotinus, making metaphysical Triads out of the personal Trinities of Jamblichus, whose work is thus retained but philosophized by Pro- clus. Tlie deities adopted by Jamblichus and put into the Plotinian Norm, were those of es- tablished systems of religion, Greek and Oriental. Proclus will keep them, but subordinate them to his metaphysical principle, which is the abstract Triad. Thus it is Jamblichus who furnishes the religious content to Proclus, while the latter brings to it his Philosophy. Proclus has, therefore, in mind the philosoph- ical Norm of Plotinus as modified by Jamblichus ; the latter he modifies in turn. We must also connect Proclus with the total movement of Greek Philosophy primarily through this Norm, which seeks to comprehend and to categorize the Ab- solute One (God), the World (Nature), andMan. These three constituents of the Universe we have found most fully developed and expressed by the great Athenian Philosophers, Plato and Aris- totle, of whom Proclus may be deemed a worthy successor in their own home. He was probably the most important philosopher that had taught in the city of Athens since Aristotle, with the possible exception of Zeno the Stoic. We shall look at the three usual divisions in order. PROCL US. — ME TAPHYS1C8. 691 I. Metaphysics. Especially in tli€ metaphysical sphere Proclus is a return to Plotinus, whose three staares of it — the One, Nous, and Soul — form the core of the Proclian exposition. Still there are im- portant changes from both Plotinus and Jam- blichus. Indeed these two philosophers are on weighty points combined in Proclus, who shows the abstract philosophical tendency of the one and the concrete religious tendency of the other. The trend of Plotinus is to categories, the trend of Jamblichus is to Gods, both meaning pretty much the same thing. Proclus keeps the two forms of expression, though with him it is the Category determining the God (as in case of Plotinus) rather than the God determininsf the Category (as in case of Jaml)lichus). Still both the philosophical and the religious sides are vigorously present in his scheme. A. The Supra-eational Oxe. — At the top of his system Proclus places the One which is above Nous (Reason or Intelligence). It is the supreme Good above all kinds of Good, the primordial cause before all Being, the First One before the Many, in any shape. Yet after giv- ing these predicates he struggles to deny them all ; it is not even One, but above One, it is above all negation or affirmation; ineffable, incommunica- ble, incomprehensible; it can have no thought, 692 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PIULOSOPIIY. no consciousness, no will. Herein Proclus has reproduced the Supreme One of Plotinus who banished from his first principle all separation, and therewith the self-conscious Person. No Neo-Hellenist could let the Highest be a Self, an Ego ; that would introduce the division which it was the object of Philosophy to drive out of the Universe. B. TiieHenads. — With some surprise we now find Proclus deviating from Plotinus by intro- ducing at this point the Henads (the Many Ones), which we also found in Jamblichus, but far more obscurely, and in a somewhat different position. For they take the place of the Second One of Jamblichus, which is not divided into multiplicity. These Henads are still above Being, above Life, above Nous; yet they are distinct from the Supreme One undivided, for these are divided, and also they are distinct from one another. Just in this fact lies their mean- ing : they are the principle of separation in the Universe, theirs is the primal realm of divine differentiation, for each of these Henads Proclus specially calls a God. The Henads are a group of Gods individualized. Says Proclus in a cardinal passage: "The First One is sim- ply the Good, and simply the One; but each of those succeeding the First One (the Henads) is a particular goodness or a particular Henad. For divine individuality has so differ- TBOCL VS. — ME TAPHYSIC8. 693 cnced the Henads that each has its own kind of Sfoodness * * * Each of these is a certain good, but not the total Good." (Ins(itutio Theologica, 133). This tells distinctly the general character of the Henads as well as suggests their place in the system. They represent the stage of difference, of separation over against the undivided First One. Herein Proclus has made a decided advance upon Plotinus who has no such distinct stage of separation, and also an advance upon Jam- blichus, who has apparently a second stage, but it is still the One, undivided though impartible. The Henads, being Gods, are the source of divine influence extending from above to below, and are also the seat of divine providence. Thus they have a mediatorial character. Here we see Proclus theologizing his metaphysical cate- gories. The Henads are primarily a product of our philosopher's thinking, but he is not satis- fied with these abstract thoughts, till he has projected them into Gods. This procedure is characteristic of Proclus in contrast both with Plotinus, who keeps more closely to philosophy, and with Jamblichus, who keeps more closely to religion. We may also note a relation to the age. The Henads give a ground for polytheism, about which Proclus, as a foe of triumphing Chris- tianity, must have been deeply concerned. 694 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Plotinus, two hundred years before, could have felt no such anxiety to enthrone the many Gods so high in his system. C. The Fundamental Triad. — This is the greatest insight of Proclus. He distinctly de- clares that the basic principle of the Universe is triadal, and that it is a process, not a fixed single concept. This process has in it the three stages, which may be here simply expressed as the Stay {mom), the Going-forth ( proodos) and the Coming-back (epistropJie). Such is the movement which Proclus declares to be in all things, and he proclaims it to be the true method of all science, wdiich has to seek out and formulate this triadal process. Undoubtedly this Triad has been more or less in evidence from the beginning of Greek Philoso- phy. It rises to the surface repeatedly in Plato and Aristotle, but does not stay there. Particu- larly it has w^ovcn itself through the Neo-Hellenic stage, since this is the third stage of the grand triadal movement of Greek philosophic thought, and, as we have already seen, is the Return {ejnsfropJie) to the first or Hellenic Period. It is the chief merit of Proclus that he has completely abstracted the fundamental Triad which has been implicit in Greek thinking, but which be- gins to become ex[)licit in Plotinus, and still more so in Jaml)lichus. Neo-Hellenic thought is Greek Philosophy turning back upon itself and PROCL US — ME TAPE YSICS. 695 becoming conscious of itself in its own inner process. Proclus, having torn the metaphysical Triad from all its former wrappage, and held it forth to the light, as it in itself, in all its naked- ness, has wound up not only Neo-Hellenic but all Greek philosophy. To be sure, its inside is now outside, its soul is separated from its body and will animate it no more. Still that soul, though deprived of its own Greek body, is im- mortal, and begins (in Neo-Hellenic phrase) its career of transmigration into other future philos- ophies, wherein it is, one sometimes thinks, more lively than ever. In the ordering of his philosophic scheme we shall take Proclus at his word, and arrange its divisions under the present head. According to him the above triadal movement is the genera- tive principle of the true philosophical method. It really transforms the fixed, indivisible, supra- rational One of Neo-Hellenism into a process, which is indeed the process of all things. That is, the Absolute One, the many Henads, and the fundamental Triad are themselves converted into the stages of the Triad through the Triad, which thus returns upon its starting-point, the First One, and wheels it into the universal movement of itself. Very important is this development of the Plotinian Norm, which hitherto has been so inactive and solitary, even if Proclus did not in- tend to disturb the impassive and unimpartibls) 696 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Supreme One of his School. At any rate we have gotten a genetic, unfolding principle launched from above, and we shall see first how it organ- izes itself and then proceeds to organize other things. I. The Triad organized. In the organism of the Triad Proclus emphasizes primarily its three elements. First is the Stay with itself, or the immediate, implicit stage of anything, the undi- vided and undeveloped condition (>f it, in which it is " asleep." Second is the Separation within itself, which Proclus calls the Procession, or the moving forth into multiplicity and externality. Third is the Eeturn or the going back to the first stage, which attracts the object and draws it out of its second stage of separation or procession. Mighty is the stress which Proclus puts upon this Eeturn. " All that goes forth from anything, by its inherent nature turns itself back to that from which it comes forth . " ( Inst. Tlieol. 31 e^ 'pas- sim'). It is said by Proclus to desire its source which is the Cause, the Good, the One which heals it of all difference and separation. Is not this the Psychosis? asks our alert reader. Yes, it is, but not yet complete, as we shall see later. (ff) Looking at the organic movement of the Triad as it is within itself, we observe that it is a cycle. It rounds itself out in a circular process. Says Proclus: "All that goes forth from any- thing and conies back has an energy which is PBOCL US. — METAPHYSICS. 6'J7 cyclical. Thus the end connects with the be- ginning, and the movement is single and con- tinued, starting from the staying one and return- ing to the same. All things move in a cycle from their causes to their causes." (Inst. TJieol. 33). Of course this idea is not original with Proclus, it is found in the religions of the Orient as well as in Greek philosophy, and is the basic fact of human consciousness, which is just what it is through its self-separating and its self-re- turning movements, or itscj^cle. But this is not the end of the matter. Out of the one cycle are generated many cycles or circular processes, which constitute the essence of things. (&) The organic Triad, having unfolded itself, proceeds to realize its genetic nature by devel- oping into many Triads. Each stage of the first Triadbecomes itself triadic in energy, as it were by inheritance. Thus there is a Triad of Triads, and cycles within cycles. In the same passage Pro- clus says : ' ' There are greater and lesser cycles ; the return may be to the beginning which lies immediately above, or to the one still higher, or up to the beginning of all things. From this primal beginning all comes and to it all returns." This thought has been already pointed out in Plotinus and Jamblichus, and it was common in the Neo-Hellenic School. That is, each stage of the one total process participates in that process and shows in itself the three stages — the simple 698 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Unity, the Separation, and the Return. Thus the fundamental triadal process shows itself cre- ative in all its parts, reproducing itself in all its differences, as their uniting principle. (c) The line of cycles is conceived by Proclus to be made up of " lesser or greater cycles," in succession ; but this line is not a straight line on which the cycles are strung, but is itself circular, and returns into itself. The earth turning on its axis performs its daily cycle, while it is at the same time going forth and returning in its yearly cycle, which is itself probably but a stage of a still vaster cycle spatial and temporal. The meta- physical counterpart to this physical illustration was present to Proclus, and we find it hovering vaguely before the minds of other Greek think- ers, who may have derived it from Egypt, that land of cycles both in nature and spirit. Such is, in general, the triadal system of Pro- clus, which one cannot study in its vast bearings without being impressed with the greatness of the thought. Its suggestiveness ^carries us back to the beginning of Neo-Hellenism and compels us to see this as a Triad. Indeed we are borne back to the beginning of the total sweep of Greek philosophy which we now have to see also as a Triad. Nay, the philosophical Norm seems to have separated its very shape and movement from itself and to be holding the same up before lis through Proclus. Instinctively he leads to a PEOCL rs. — ME TAPHYSICS. 699 view of the lesser jind o;reater Triads ever circlinof and unfolding, even to a glimpse of the greatest, all-inclusive Triad. The inner moving principle of Greek philosoph}^, that which produced all its divisions, large and small, with tbeir separations and returns, the secret thinkino; Demiurge who has been lurking and working in this world of Hellenic thought for a thousand years and more, has now been exorcized and been made to appear in his own naked form and in his own pure ac- tivity. Surely the end of this world is at hand. Still we must consider the limitation. This Triad is formal, metaphysical, producing a kind of shadowy multiplication of shadows, a disem- bodied soul triplicating itself in round after round to infinity. Just here lies the diificulty. The Triad of Proclus is not the concrete spirit, not the self-conscious Ego with its power of self- verification, but abstract, unreal, producing the impression of a dance of phantoms. Over and over again he describes the triadal process care- fully and rightly, yet he never identifies it with the Self, which is just this process in fact. For it is really the Self of Proclus describing its (nvn inner movement, and affirming such a movement of the Self to be the process of the All that produces the Triad. But the Triad be- comes metaphj^sical and indeed unreal when divorced from the Self which is just it (the Triad^ in the making of it, and which i^ 700 ANGIEN2' EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. its reality. In other words, Proclus lius the Psychosis without the Psyche, which he put down far below the Triad as one of its inferior products, whereas the Triad is really its product or rather it itself. The worth of the Self in its own right as the self-conscious principle of the All is not recognized by Pro- clus ; he extracts its inner process and projects it outwards as the creative essence of his system, whereby it is emptied of its true content. So the Triad in his hands appears a kind of machine or gimcrack which, being external, he applies ex- ternally to man and also to the Gods who are whipped into order by this contrivance. Pro- clus is truly a God-compeller by means of his Triad, leaving out of the account, all uncon- scious, the user of the Triad, the Self who with it is manipulating with such ease apparently the vast multitude of Hellenic and Oriental deities. All this is only saying that Proclus is meta- physical and not psychological, that he lived Ions ago at an earlier stao;e than ours in the evolution of human Thinking. Let not our different and possibly higher criterion blind us to his deep insight and his greatness. Like all the past he has much to tell us by way of instruc- tion. I hold that the Proclian Triad has still a message for the thinker of to-day. 2. N'ous. We are fir,st to observe that Proclus has his Nous follow from the triadal process PliOCLUS. — METAPHYSICS. 701 which determines it throughout as threefold in its movement. This is diferent from Plotinus whose Supreme One simply overflows and lapses (enumates) into Nous. At first glance it would seem that Proclus makes his Nous evolve out of the antecedent stage, from which it is an advance. But he breaks just at this point, his Nous is still an emanation or descent, not an evolution or ascent ; Proclus now turns back from Proclus to Plotinus, not proceeding to the higher but to the lower; his return becomes a relapse. His Triad is still retained, but is externally applied rather than internall}^ developed. The Going-forth (proodos) is really a going down to Nous; our philosopher dualizes himself, his Janus-face on one side looks toward the rising and on the other toward the setting sun. The divisions of Nous will show in all fullness the f ormalistic strain in the philosophic character of Proclus. He first separates the sphere of Nous into three leading departments or classes, which are still further divided triadally into Orders, 'and these again are subdivided into fresh Triads. The Classes of Proclus start from Jamblichus who had two Classes of Nous, the Intellegible (noefos), and Intellectual (noeros). Proclus interjects an intermediate Class between these two, in accord with his triadal principle, which Class he names Intelligible-Intellectual (noetos ^02 ANCIENT EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Tcai noeros) being compoimded of the two extreme classes. At the same time he gives the essential attributes of these three Classes respec- tively as Being, Life, Thinking (Nous in the narrower sense). Even a second set of attributes appears which need not be mentioned. The relation of these attributes he describes as follows. "Being is before Life, and Life is before Thinking. * * * All things are in all, and peculiarly in each ; in Being are Life and Thinking, in Life are Being and Thinking, and in Thinking are Being and Life." (^Inst. Theol. 101, 103.) The triadal organization is not clear in all its details, but a general outline can be given about as follows : — (I.) Litelligible Class (noetos). Object, Be- ing, Actuality, even Goodness. But the main point is its three Triads. (1) The Triad pertaining to the Limit: (a) the Limit as such, (b) the Unlimited, (c) the Composite (^mixton) of the two, which he calls also essence (ousia). Moreover out of this last composite springs a notable Triad: Symmetry, Truth, and Beauty; notable as one little gleam that Proclus may not have wholly left out of his philosophy some consideration of Art and Beauty. Still this remote Triad may only have been a faint suggestion from Plotinus. (2) The second Intelligible Triad is called the Litelligible Life, or Eternity. It is a Triad as PBOCL US. — ME TAPHYSICS. 703 follows : (a) the One or the Limit, (b) the Force' or the Unlimited, (c) Life. It will be observed that each of the categorise of this Triad has been used before in other connections by Proclus, who thus lays bare his chief sin in exposition. He has no hesitation in appl3ing the same term to members of w4iolly different Triads, so that the reader is often confused utterly about the no- menclature. In lilve manner be puts the same God into different Triads w^hereby his Pantheon becomes a veritable jumble of the fiends. Pa- tience-provoking is this " damnable iteration" of Proclus, so that one feels at times like flinging his whole scheme out of the window. Still the much-endurino; investigator of human Thouo;ht must know Proclus. So, havinsj reoained our composure, let us glance at the next Triad. (3) The third Intelligible Triad embraces the world of Ideas, originally transmitted from Plato, who (with Aristotle) wTote the Neo- Hellenic Bible. Here then we have (a) unity which creates (b) multiplicity with all its Ideas inclosed (c) in a new or mediated unity. (II.) The Intelligible-Intellectual Class. Its main predicate is Life, which is alwaj^s creating and multiplying; as the second stage, it is the Procession or the Separation specially. This too furnishes a set of three Triads. (1) The original numerical elements which underlie this double Class: («) One as number 704 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. "(b) the Other (heteron) (c) Being, seemingly as rehited to number. (2) The connected elements which are joined in pairs: («) The One and Many, (5) the Whole and the Parts, (c) the Limited and the Unlimited. These are called combining Gods. (3) The completing elements, also made into Gods. These show a return to the three Orders of Nous, which are set forth again in three Triads. (III.) The Intellectual Class. Here a new principle is added : to the three a four is joined, making a seven (Hebdomad). This is derived from Jamblichus directly, but the sacredness of the number seven is old, hinting probably of the ancient worship of the seven planets. Still in the Hebdomad the underlying Triad is preserved by making the first two members treble while the latter remains single. Thus the seven keeps the triadal form. But now comes another result. Instead of the Class beino; divided into three Triads as hereto- fore, we now see it divided into seven Hebdo- mads. The development of these are given by Proclus in his Platonic Theology, where the ab- stract categories may usually be found along with the corresponding deities. Such is, in brief outline, the organization of Nous in Proclus, whose procedure here seems external and capricious, quite different from his treatment of the preceding stage, the triadal PliOCL VS. — ME TAPE YSICS. 705 One. We cannot help thinking that they belong to different periods of the philosopher's own development, though these periods can hardly be studied so fully in Proclus as they have been in Plato, whose writings reflect so completely his spiritual unfolding. 3. The S021I. In general Proclus follows Plotinus in his view of the Soul, which as dis- tinct from the sensible world has the power of turning back into itself, or self -consciousness. Thus it makes itself One through the return. It is the bridge from the material to the immate- rial, though bodiless in itself and immortal. There are three classes of Souls — divine, demonic, and human. (I.) The first class is composed of divine Souls, specially the Gods of Greek mythology. These again fall into a Triad, composed as follows : — (1) The leading Gods (kegemonikoi), or the Great Gods, who are still further divided iuto four Triads, of which the first has Zeus, Posei- don and Pluto, but the rest we shall omit. (2) The separative Gods [apolutoi), inter- mediate, separating upper or supramundane Gods and the lower or mundane Gods. Also four Triads embracing familiar names of the Greek Pantheon. (3) The mundane Gods (egkos7nioi) , which can have a body, and which seem to have but 45 706 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. two divisions, the stellar and the sublunary Gods. (II.) The second Class is made up of demons, which word does not mean in Proclus bad spirits, as he directly denies that they are bad, probably in answer to the Christian belief which after- wards has such a tremendous expression in Dante's Inferno. These, too, are in three sets. (1) Angels, whom we are surprised to meet here in this heathen company of ghosts. But it is not the only interpolation which Proclus has taken from his Christian environment. (2) Demons in the special sense, intermediate beings of varied rank and power who have played a great part in popular superstition, and who have furnished materials for a special science, demonology. (3) Last are the souls of Heroes, who also have their worship and their influence over the world from which they have departed. This is decidedly a Greek cult. (III.) The third Class of souls are human, or like the human soul, which shares in a thinking and an unthinking principle. These too can be divided into various kinds, but it is manifest that the soul with its unthinking part has a body of some sort. Thus we have before us in brief outline the supersensible or metaphysical sphere of Proclus. We see that it is a highly organized system which PB0CLU8 —METAPHYSICS. 707 tries to put into order the vast multitude of the divinities of the Greco-Roman world according to the philosophical categories of the Plotinian scheme. Still Proclus has gotten behind even this scheme and evolved out of it the Triad as the governing principle of the categories and through them of the Gods. This grovernino- principle is, however, applied externally, clapped on from the outside; only the original Triad seems to be self-unfolding, and so is truly the topmost part of Proclus who makes a descent from it both in his method as well as in the value of his work. This descent gives Proclus no little trouble, for his generative Triad has to be linked into the emanative principle of Neo-Platouism. So he employs (in his Insf. Theol. particularly) two categories for explanation: similaritj^ and dissimilarity. It is similarity which makes the One stay with itself {mom), but it is dissimilar- ity which causes it to move forth and to produce separation and multiplicity. Now this second stage is alwaj^s a descent with Proclus, because it has something dissimilar to the First One. Still it has also something similar, therefore it desires to return to what is purely similar or simple. Hence the simplest beings are the most perfect, while the composite or differenced ones are lower. Also the more perfect a being is, the more power it has, and the more productive 708 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. it is, that is, the more it goes over into multi- plicity (Lisf. Theol. 25) or imperfection, from which, however, it longs to get back. Still another category which Proclus employs to explain his triadal procedure is Cause. Every effect has in itself its Cause, yet also a separa- tion from its Cause, otherwise it would not be effect. Hence this effect is something derived, inferior, baser, wherefore it too strives to return to its Cause. Such is the struggle of Proclus to get back of his abstract triadal process, for he feels that something lies behind it, something deeper than it is. And in this feelmg he is right. But he is unable to help himself. He feels the in- adequacy of his metaphysical Triad; but in order to explain it he can only project behind it another set of metaphysical categories, which are in precisely the same need of explanation. So he rolls from this abstraction to that, in a kind of philosophical fever. Still we cannot help admiring the genuine instinct of the man, which will not be satisfied with his own formu- lation. No wonder that he at last throws the whole business up into the realm of the One where there is no consciousness, no reason, and especially no categories, being just the realm of the Ineffable. To our mind that which Proclus feels from afar, in a kind of distant presentiment, is the PBOCL US. — FJIYSICS. 70'J fundamental Triad of the Self as the principle of all things, the Psychosis. But his philo- sophical Norm of Neo-Hellenism cannot express it, in spite of iteration and reiteration of triple ternaries in eternal succession. Thus all Phi- losophy gets empty, reverberating its own hollowness in a long line of fantastic Triads without real connection or content. Still that first organic or perchance genetic Triad of his must be deemed a very significant step in Phi- losophy. II. Physics. The search for the laws of Nature as a pursuit in itself is hardly known to Proclus, since in his thought Nature was determined by Spirits from above, and is a lapse. Yet he assigns the origin of this lapse to a being far above the Demiurge of Plotinus, so that the regular gradation of descent is broken into by Proclus. In other words, a form of Nous creates the material world directly, without passing through the intervening third stage of the Soul. This may have been influenced by the Christian doctrine which makes God the creator of all things. Nature included. Still Proclus follows in the main the Neo-Hellenic ladder of descent, and combats openly the Christian idea of creation by fiat. He holds with the Greek thinkers in general, that the creation 710 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the world did not take place in time, nor was it the act of a conscious will. 1. Body. The primal corporeal shape is the Cosmos, which is a living animal, and has the union of soul and body. Proclus considers even Space to have a body with a soul in it. Still the soul is apart from the body. Says he : " Every soul isincorporeal, and distinct from the body. What- ever knows itself (self-conscious) turns back to itself, which is not possible with the body." Here Procius has come upon the Ego " which knows itself," and therefore cannot be cor- poreal; for this self-knowing "is the turn- ing back into itself." He sees the triadal form of the Soul (or the Ego) and declares: if it knows the things above itself, so much the more by its nature must it kuow itself, since it knows itself apart from the cause before itself. Thus Proclus has really identified with his self- returning Triad the self-conscious Ego, and says or seems to say that the latter or the Soul can only know what is above itself through knowing itself. If he could have carried out this thought he would have had the Psychosis fifteen hundred years ago. But he proceeds at once to imply that the Triad above causes this self-conscious act — which is to put the cart before the horse. Like all Greek p!iil()S()[)hcrs, Aristotle included, when he had the real self-returning process before his eyes and had formulated it, he could nwcL us. — niYSics. 7 1 1 not conceive of it as Ego or Self, but projected out of all selfhood into an abstract metaplij^sical entit}' , and so could not rise to a psychological view of the Universe. Thus Body separates, the Soul within it turn- ing back into itself and thereby showing itself to be bodiless. The self-conscious act is the self- assertion of the Soul as incorporeal. " Every- thing which turns back into itself cannot have a body" (Insf. Theol. 15. 16. Also 186 for the identification of the self -returning Triad with the self -knowing act.) The soul may be said to roll back from the body and curl over into itself, though it be united with the body. Still the body without soul is strictly no longer body but drops down to the next element. 2. Matter. Something already existent must be given to the soul for its embodiment. This is Matter which according to Proclus (wherein he differs from Plotinus) is a product of the Unlimited, a God whose seat is in the first Triad of Nous far over it (see the Intelligible Class above). Matter is not, therefore, the First Evil, being neither good nor bad. Herein Proclus makes a step outside the entire Platonic School, and goes over to Aristotle who certainly found no ethical character in Matter taken by itself. To be sure, Matter is in Proclus still nearly at the bottom of the ladder, far removed from the 712 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Oue and the Good. Still that does not neces- sarily make it bad, since it has no will or consciousness, and cannot help itself from getting to be. This brings us face to face with the question: Whence does Evil come and what is it? 3. Evil. It springs from the Free-Will of the individual, which is much more strongly empha- sized by Proclus than by Plotinus. In this ao-ain we may well see a Christian influence coming particularly from Origen. Everything as sent forth from the Higher Powers is in itself good, the Evil in the world is the fault of man and his freedom. Proclus considers external ills not to be evil, but to be the course of nature, wherein lies often the punishment of some former offense. As Proclus also believes in pre-existence, he has that to fall back upon in accounting for the afliictions of this -present life. Moreover he, with Plotinus, regards Evil as a great means of instruction through expe- rience. But man, being endowed with Free- Will, becomes more distinctively an ethical being whose rise we may next consider. V III. Ethics. This sphere embraces the complete return of the Soul (or Ego) to the One, to the Good, or to God, the creative source of all Being. It PR OCLUS.—E THIC S. 713 IS the third stage of the philosophical Norm, which we have found to be the inner frame- work of Greek philosophy. It is Proclus who is more conscious of this return than any philosopher of Hellas, since he has made it the third stage of his metaphysical Triad which is really the genetic source of all things. But the ethical return had long been known, since it appears distinctly in the great Athenian thinkers and may be traced in some of their pre- decessors. In fact, the idea of some sort of restoration to God lies more or less explicitly in every kind of religion. The ethical in the present case includes the religicnis and every other method of rising to the supra-sensible out of the sensible world. This rise or ascent proceeds, in general, by the same steps which we saw in the descent. Proclus, being the formalist of his school, naturally insists more strongly upon a methodical procedure than Plotinus or Jamblichus. " The road upward is through the same stages as the road downward " (In Timaeum 325. E, apud Zeller). " All that proceeds from several causes, returns through just what it has proceeded. Every Going-back is through the same stages as the Coming-f orth ' ' (lusf. Theo. 38). " Through whatever (course) Being arises to the individual, through the same arises his Well-being" or the Good. By the same stages he gets to be in descent, by the same 7 1 4 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. stages does he get to be good in ascent. Still Pro- clus holds to an immediate union with God as the end of this mediational scheme, though it receives much less emphasis with him than with Plotinus. It is from Plotinus, however, that Proclus has his general outline of ethical ascent to the Hish- est Good, to which lead three main ways. I. The practice of the Virtues is one of these ways. This we may specially call the moral sphere to distinguish it from the broader ethical sphere which includes it. The classes of Virtues are not altogether certain in Proclus, but they seem to be nearly as follows : — 1. The political Virtues, which are the four cardinal Virtues of Plato's Republic. But Pro- clus, like most of the Neo-Hellenic philosophers, will have little or nothing to do with the State or with other Institutions. 2. The theoretic Virtues are often placed next, but they properly belong to a different sphere. 3. The paradeigmatic Virtues are still higher, drawing the soul into communion with the pure Ideas above the sensible world. 4. The hieratic Virtue is essentially religious, bringing into the soul the divine illuminaion II. Contemplation (^llieoria) is the second gen- eral way to rise to the Highest. Some of the Virtues seem to overlaj) into the present sphere, such as the theoretic and dialectic Virtues. Still PEOCL US —E THICS. 715 it is better to consider this sphere by itself under the heads of Art, Religion, and Philosophy. 1. Art has little hold of Proclus compared with Plotinus. Indeed he seems to think that the ugly and repulsive element in many myths of the Gods is what brings the Soul to the realm above, the Beautiful. The more unnatural the outer form, the more elevating. Herein Proclus has become wholly non-Greek. 2. Religion is all the more important with Pro- clus, who believes in religious rites, symbols, prayers, fastings, and most emphatically believes in belief, which he puts above all thought in attaining the Highest. Hence he is ready to accept every sort of superstition ; theurgy is better than virtue, and has a greater power to call down the Gods to human assistance. He deals in magic, miracles, signs, following in this respect the footsteps of Jamblichus, whose religious phase he joins to the more philosophical tendency of Plotinus. 3. Philosophy has an important place in the ethical discipline of Proclus who shows how we are to rise from the sensuous percept *or image to the mathematical concept and thence to dialectical thinking. Herein he is essentially like Plato and the Neo-Hellenic School generall}'. In particular he values the Dialectic, as his mental bent is largely dialectical ; a fact which shows itself everywhere in his works. For this 716 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. reason he has been called by somebody the first scholastic philosopher. Still Proclus seems to hold that all thought finally moves between two contradictious which it does not solve, and that the Divine Unity lies beyond it, unattainable except by illumination from above. III. So it comes that Faith is elevated above all knowing and thinking by Proclus. This Faith has, in general, the place corresponding to the Ecstasy of Plotinus, but it is not so immediate, not so ready for a flight, far more quiet and much less certain of itself. In this upper sphere we also learn of the three paths, apparently the final ethical Triad, Love, Truth, Faith, of which the last is best and highest. Possibly this is an echo of the three Christian Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Love (Charity). In this mj^stic union with the Supreme One the ethical process of Proclus ends, and also his total triune process of the Norm, metaphysical, physical and ethical, which we have sought to make plain to eye as well as to mind by the fore- going somewhat formally tabulated statement. This does not do injustice to the manner of his exposition which has in it a decidedly methodical movement, even if he throws down his dialectical ladder after he has climbed upon it to God. Hence he calls his two main works by the name of Theologi/, the end of Philosophy being no longer in itself but in God. Herein we see that PBOCL US. — E TJTICS. 7 1 7 Proclus has the same general trend as Christian scholasticism. When the Philosopher vanishes into the Divine Essence, he has nothing further to say ; the purpose of philosophy is to get rid of itself. But as long as Proclus has anything to say, philosophy is really first, since he uses phi- losophical categories for ordering all religions into his scheme. Proclus stands in manifold relations to Chris- tianity as well as to Medieval Philosophy which is his successor, and of which he is in numerous ways the teacher. In him we find both mysti- cism and scholasticism which run through all Christian Theology down to the present time. Proclus, however, subordinates Religion to his philosophical Triad ; but Medieval Philosophy will subordinate the philosophical Triad to Eeligion, whereby the abstract Triad is made to explain the concrete personal Trinity. Thus Philosophy goes into the service of Religion, where she remains a thousand years, the ancilla, no longer the mistress of the house as she was in old Greek times. In Proclus, then, we find the end of Greek Philos- ophy as an independent discipline. On a number of lines, we see that Proclus has broken through Neo-Hellenism in spirit if not in form. His fundamental Triad is really creative, a divinity producing divinities, though dressed in abstract categories. Then he declares that the origin of evil lies in the will of man, where the 718 ANCIENT EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Christian Theologians had already put it, and thus it is not the necessitated overflow of the One. Matter with him is not the "First Evil " as it is with Plotinus. The Soul by its Free- Will is to overcome its determination through Matter as emanated, and indeed through the whole line of emanation from the Supreme One, which is thus to be negated by the ethical pro- cess of freedom. So the Free-Will of the indi- vidual in Proclus has as its function to destroy emanation, that is to destroy the Neo-Hellenic principle. This self-negation of Neo-Hellenism lurked originally in it, but Proclus makes it explicit. The emanative principle of Proclus is in a continual struggle with the developmental ; the second stage, the going-forth, is really an un- folding of the One, but Proclus insists upon makinsf it a descent ; with a kind of violence he turns evolution or progress (proodos) into de- cadence. This is only another form of the in- herent dualism of Neo-Platonism, which Proclus in his very resistance has made more pronounced. But the Return (epistrophe) is openly the nega- tion of the whole emanative descent. Still the great fact of the work of Proclus remains his explicit triadal process, which has been more or less blindly working itself out through all Greek Philosophy from the be- ginning. To be sure this process in Proclus is PnOOLUS —ETHICS. 7 19 external, formal, a mere skeleton, but a skele- ton ought not to be despised in these days of palaeontology. It is said that the skillful nat- uralist can construct the living animal from a few bones of its skeleton, and therewith also its manner of life and its environment. Proclus, then, has extracted the triadal skeleton of the total body of Greek Thought and set it up before us. And this is his trouble, for most people do not like bones, even their own, but want life. There is no denying that Proclus is a fearful formalist, and often rattles his abstract cate- gories in a manner which dazes the wearied brain. Dialectician he is usually called with a shade of contempt in the word ; but his is not the true Dialectic, which is always concrete. Still we may call him by this name in a second- ary sense, though his procedure is logical rather than dialectical. Many other designations have been applied to Proclus and the Neo-Platonists generally, with an ironical cast in them, such as mysto- gogue, hierophant, theurge, gymnosophist — words which they once used to characterize themselves. It must be confessed that these terms represent not the best side of Neo- Hellenism. Here mav be one reason, thousfh it is not the only one, why the Neo-Hellenic 720 ANCIENT E UBOPEAN PHIL OSOPHY. movement has never been assigned its true place in the total development of Greek Philosophy. ' After the death of Proclus the School of Athens continued under the guidance of its Scholarchs, of whom the most famous was Damas- cius and also the last. Boethius (470-525) in the West, though a professed Christian, was strongly tinged with Neo-Platonism. With the close of the School of Athens the History of Ancient Philosophy as an independent discipline is brought to a conclusion, though its light flick- ered long afterwards in various places and per- sons. We may apply to Neo-Hellenism its own doc- trine and movement: it has returned to the One from which it came, and has vanished as an in- dividual Philosophy. As Ilellenisticism was the overflow which produced it, so it is the going back to the source of its own emanation. Neo- Hellenism regards its descent from the Supernal One as an unconscious lapse, as a kind of dream, till it reaches Evil which wakes up the self-con- scious individual hitherto asleep. Thus the dream ends, and man is to undo consciously his consciousness, his very individuality, and be- come one with the one only One. From this point of view Neo-Hellenism as a Philosophy has fultilled its own principle in its evanishment, its waking existence it has put to eternal sleep. PROCL US. — E THIC8. 72 1 Herewith Greek Philosophy in its three great Periods has completed its career. Two immediate results lie before us. The one is the abstract metaphjsical Triad of Pro- clus, which the philosopher has posited as the fundamental principle of the Universe. The other is the Christian Trinity or the divine tri- personal Triad, which the theologian has posited as the fundamental principle of the Universe. Both belong to the future. Both are different utterances or formulations of the one deepest process of the All, which we have sought to bring to light in the development of Ancient Philosophy, and which has been emphasized bv giving to it a name peculiarly its own — the Pampsychosis. 46 722 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. NOTES. P. 32. There are some Historians of Pliilosopliy who do not adopt these three divisions. One is Ueberweg who makes two, Greek and Christian. Windelband (ia his Hist, of Phil.) has no less than seven divisions, apparently co- ordinate, of European Philosophy. Lewes (in his Biogr. Hist, of Phil.) gives two periods, ancient and modern, throwing out the medieval as unphilosopliical. P. 47. The leading Historians of Greek Philosophy, have for the most part divided it into three main periods. But when these Historians come to consider what shall be in- cluded in the three periods, there is a good deal of difference among them. The following is a comparative view of six of them upon this point. Tennemann (Kantian) has three periods arranged as fol- lows: (1) Pre-Socratic; (2) from Socrates to the conclusion of the conflict of the Schools during Roman sway; (3) from Roman philosophy, chiefly eclectic and skeptical, to John of Damascus (700 A. D.). This last division of Tennemann has not found many supporters. Eitter (influenced by Schleiermaclier) has three periods: (1) Pre-Socratic — the rise; (2) Socrates and tlie Socratic Schools, including the earlier Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics — the bloom of Greek Philosophy; (3) the later Schools down to end of Neo-Platonism — decadence. Hegel. (1) From Thales to Aristotle. (2) The Greek School (dogmatic, skeptical, eclectic) till about the begin- ning of the Christian Era. (8) Tiie Neo-Platonic period, which extends from Philo to Proclus and to the end of the School of Athens. The first period is correct, but the otlier two need revision. Zeller. (1) Pre-Socratic. (2) Socrates, Plato, and Aris- totle. (3) Post-Aristotelian Philosophy The famous author of the Philosophie der Griechen, to whom we are specially indebted, is always to be reckoned with We have, in spite of his great and deserved authority, felt ourselves NOTES. 723 compelled to change all three of his divisions. For in- stance, the Pre-Socratic period, in our view, is not a divi- sion of the Avhole, but contains two sub-divisions of the first division (the Hellenic) of the whole. (See general scheme pp. 66-8.) Zeller's second division has the merit of singling out the three greatest Greek philosophers and putting them together in a striking position. But this advantage, we think, can be retained without separating them so completely from the great Hellenic or National movement to which they essentially belong. But we find our chief objection to Zeller's scheme in his third division, in which all the philos- ophy after Aristotle is throw^n together in a mass, though it is of great diversity and lasts more than 8.50 years. Zel- ler himself seems not to be fully satisfied with this last division. Erclmann. (1) From Thales to the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus — immaturity; (2) fi'om Auaxagoras to Aristotle — maturity; (3) from the Dogmatists and Skeptics to the lioman time of Cicero and Philo (Christian Era) — • decay. Erdmaun throws the Neo-Hellenists (Plotinus and Proclus) out of Greek Philosophy, and puts them into the medieval period. Uebenoeg. (1) Pre-Sophistic; (2) from the Sophists to the Stoics, Epicureans and Skeptics, ending with the Eclec- tics (Cicero and the Sextians); (3) From Jewish-Alex- andrian Philosophy and the Neo-Pythagoreans to the Neo- Hellenists. It is plain, however, from his exposition that Ueberweg does not place much sti'ess upon these divisions or their principle; wherein one may see a tendency to the more recent treatment of the History of Philosophy, repre- sented by Windelband, for instance. We have selected the above six Historians of Philosophy as those whom the consen.'us of the best judges has pro- nounced to be the best of their kind. All of them are Ger- mans and belong to the middle half of the 19th century. This period may well be considered the bloom of the written History of European Philosophy. Before it were other Histo- rians of Philosophy, industrious and voluminous (Brucker, Tiedemann, Buhle), also there were many co-temporaries of 724 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. these sis, laboring in the same liekl aud doing meritorious worii (the names of the most of them can be read iu Zel- ler's notes and in Ueberweg's lists). Of course in recent years Histories of Philosophy have not been wanting. Still this peculiar form of literature seems to have had its cul- mination during the period just designated, doubtless in response to a spiritual need of the time, which desired to look back and take a complete survey of the movement of philosophic thought from its beginning, in order to find out what it really was Avortli, and whether it deserved to be con- tinued. European Pliilosophy, making such a laborious in- ventory of itself during its long career, seems to suggest that it is on the point of taking a new step or of going out of business. Of the preceding six, Hegel is the only original, con- structive philosopher. This fact alone gives him a unique and indeed commanding position. Those coming after him, antagonists as well as followers, introduce his views as their starting-point, either by way of acceptance or rejection or partial adhesion. In philosophical originality he is unques- tionally the greatest of the six and of all Historians of Philosophy. Zeller, usually classed as an independent follower of Hegel, is doubtless to be placed next to him, though surpassing him in erudition, in completeness of treatment, and (let it not be forgotten) in courtesy. It is first of all to be noted that the preceding six without exception see a threefold movement in Greek Philosophy. Still they disagree about the limits of these three stages. Tet even here we may note tliat they hover around certain com- mon boundary lines, thoi:gh tliese be estimated differently. For instance, Ueberweg makes his first division of the whole the Pre-Sophistic period; Hegel makes the same a sub- division of the first division of the whole. But both agree in emphasizing the same boundary line, though this emphasis is stronger in the one than in the other. For this threefold division each of the six assigns a differ- ent reason, and none the right one, in our judgment. Still they seem to agree that there should be a reason. Undoubt- edly there should: the deeper the better. And if this reason NOTES. 725 for the threefold movement of all Greek Philosophy be a universal principle, as it must, then it ■vvill control and organize the whole of this Philosophy in detail. A true principle is to be applied universally in its sphere, it is not to be omitted sometimes and sometimes employed. The six, therefore, have borne witness, more or less unconsciously, it is true, to the triadism of the History of Gi'eeli Philosophy. Not alone Hegel and his school are triadists, as is often asserted. Indeed Hegel in his History of Philosophy by no means follows out the threefold division, but often violates it, sometimes in cases of deepest consequence. Here we may briefly notice a common raisapprelieusion. The number tliree does not determine the process of mind, as some objectors seem to thiuli ; on the contrary, it is the process of mind which determines and indeed malces the number three. The most external manifestation of tlie movement of mind is this number; still it is a manifestation and cannot be left away without formal incompleteness, which shows a lack of order At the same time it must be confessed that in tlie name of the number three the greatest follies have been committed, as they have also in tlie name of freedom and even in the name of God. In the future History of Philosophy the question of order, hitherto in the background, must become paramount. A principle of structure must be found which not only organ- izes the whole subject, but makes the entire organism trans- parent from its largest part to its least. In our view the epoch of the great Historians of European Philosophy has suggested and partially applied such a principle, but has not adequately realized it. P. 69. The movement here called Elementalism has been generally recognized by the Historians of Greek Pliilosophy under the name of the Cosmologists or the Physiologists, since the chief content of philosophizing is taken from Nature. Zeller and others make it a full division of Greek Philosophy — the Pre-Socratic; we make it the first sub- division of the Hellenic Period, which, to our mind, should be held together in a common development. P. 79. With the three Milesian philosophers begins tlie tri- 72G ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. personal movement which runs through all Greek Philosophy (as we see it), being especially pronounced in its two greatest Periods, the Hellenic and Neo-Hellenic. Particularly at this point occurs the break with the European Historians of Philosophy, not one of whom makes their triadal principle personal, except in Religion when they recognize the Trinity. But the threefold personal Psychosis, according to our view, is just the basic principle of the whole philosophical develop- ment of Europe. In it we reach down to the Self with its process, which is really the source of all philosophizing. Tlie triad remains abstract unless it has the personal prin- ciple as its content. It is significant that the European His- torian of Philosophy seems to shun making his threefold movement personal and concrete. Thus, however, he is true to Philosophy, which was originally an abstraction from a personal Creator of the World. From this point of view he holds to the philosophic tradition. P. 92. We put the Eleatics next after the Milesians in- stead of the Pythagoreans, wherein we agaiii run counter to the order of the preceding Historians of Philosophy. But we notice that some of i he more recent writers are changing the old order. See Weber, Hist, of Phil, trans, by Prof. Thilly; also the First Philosophers of Greece by Prof. Fairbanks ; and Windelband, History of Ancient Philosophy, traus. by Prof. Cushman. Windelband, however, overdoes the mat- ter by putting the Pythagoreans after the Atomists and by placing Pythagoras himself before Thales apparently. In his later work (^Ilist. of Phil. 2nd ed. 1900, trans, by Prof. Tufts), Windelband seems to recede somewhat from his ex- treme position on this subject. The same Historian of Philosophy employs anew way (which is, however, very old) of ordering the movement of Philosophy by topics, Avhicli has its advantages, but also great drawbacks, especially in the matter of preserving the thread of philosophic evolution. He is the modern doxographer (influenced by Diels?) col- lecting anew the placita philosophorun, and putting them together under certain rubrics, in a suggestive manner. P. 113. What we here call the Inter-connecting Movement has been a source of great difficulty with the Historians of NOTES. 727 early Greek Philosophy. First of all, what shall be done with Heraclitus? Many tack him to the Milesians — a wrong place for him, in our judgment. He must somehow come after the Eleatics, aud so be seen as a return to the Milesian Movement. Then Empedocles has been very recalcitrant to any principle of order. Even Hegel, certainly a man of many philosophical resources, gives him up and throws him out as "of no great account, of whose philosophy not much is to be made " (^Gesch. Phil. I. s. 337). Still Empedocles has kept his place and must be ordered with the rest. P. 151. The group of Atomists as here designated is not recognized by any Historian of Greek Philosophy within our knowledge. And yet several approach it. That with the conception of the Atom, Philosophy has gone out of its elemental or purely physiologic stage seems not to be per- ceived, or if perceived, is disregarded in the arrangement. The first general division of Greek Philosopliy usually embraces all before Socrates (Pre-Socratic) tliough some draw the line at Anasagoras (Erdmann) and others at the Sophists (Ueberweg). Of this first division the sub-division is often triadal (Zeller, Erdmann), though some give to it four parts (Ritter, Ueberweg). It is noteworthy that Hegel, the supposed triadist through thick and thin, makes six sub- divisions in his first (Pre-Sophistic) stage, P. 192. This view of the Homo Mensura of Protagoras is the one usually accepted. It is, however, strongly contested by a recent writer. Prof. Gomperz, in his Griechische Denker. (See his remarks on Protagoras; in his notes he mentions some who agree with him.) P, 2 10. The most important movement of Greek Philosophy, here named Universalism, and embracing Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, has been variously ordered. We hold that any division is inadequate which does not put these three greatest ancient philosophers together, and show them as one supreme process. Still they are not to be separated from the great national movement of Hellas and made the second division (Zeller) of the entire Greek epoch. Nor are they to be placed with Hellenistic philosopliies (Ritter, Ueberweg), from which they are so wholly different. They 728 ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. must be kept in the Hellenic Period, of which they are the third stage. Hegel does this, but he strangely cuts Socrates off from Plato and Aristotle, and places him in the move- ment with the Sophists. Thus Hegel (the great triadist) really destroys the chief personal triad of Greek Philosophy. One cannot help querying at times : Is not this perhaps the work of editor Michelet? In the world's literature Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are classed together as constituting the grand Athenian philo- sophical triad, which is indeed a kind of norm for tiie order- ing of all Greek Philosophy. Three colossal individuals, yet one process which is psychical: so we have to regard them. Here, then, the tri-personal movement of Philoso- phy becomes not only explicit, but the most striking fact It is the culmination of the Hellenic Series which is made up of these threefold Psychoses of philosophic persons with their doctrines. Thus the line of Hellenic philosophers of this Period is not merely a succession of individuals, but they form processes with one another. Yet eacli has within him- self, more or less pi'onounced, the total process of which he is externally but a part. So the process which determines him, he determines in turn, and his free activity is one with his environing world of necessity. The connection of the formula of Universalism with the great Athenian characters of their epoch, is to be noted. They all said in one way or other that the essence of Being is universal, not merely individual, such as I am in^my little particularity. It was the Sophist who said that the essence of Being is the individual merely. Not so Pericles, Thu- cydides, and Phidias; not so Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. All these characters, though individuals, rise to universality in thought and action, and tliereby show in their case that the essence of Being is universal. This principle with the philosophers has become conscious, and is the formulated thought of the epoch. P. 459. For the diversities in ordering the Second Period of Greek Philosophy (here called Hellenisticism) among the si^ leading historians, the reader can consult the abstract already given. There is a vast mass of material NOTES. 729 here which is not easy to organize. When it comes to the sub-divisions of this Period, the difficulty increases, particu- larly from the fact that Ileligion Ijegins to enter the Philo- sophic movement, from which it was substantially excluded during the Hellenic Period. Moreover a necessary change in the exposition takes place. There are in the Hellenistic Period no great domi- nating individuals such as we saw in the Hellenic Period. The result is the tri-personal movement recedes into the back- ground. Undoubtedly important philosophers appear, the most original ones being near to the Hellenic time, as Zeno the Stoic, Epicurus and Pyrrho. But on the whole the function of Hellenisticism is not to originate Philosophy, but to propagate it, to impart it to all individuals who will receive it. Hence its formula is, to make the Universal individual, which is to scatter it, not to concentrate it. Thus Hellenisticism is a time of apostleship in philosophy, not of creativity, till it reaches religion, when it becomes grandly creative. So the personal movement in the present Period has not and cannot have the stress, such as we must give it in the Hellenic and Neo-Hellenic Periods. P. 577. Again our arrangement breaks away from that of the six great Historians of Philosophy in placing the Neo- Hellenic movement as the third in the total sweep of Greek Philosophy (see the previous abstract of their divisions). The reasons for this change are given in the main text of our exposition. It follows from the universal principle of order, and is not the result of a mere subjective guessing. In general Neo-Hellenism is a return, in particular it is a return to the tri-personal movement which was so emjihatic in Hellenism. Here we may cite Zeller to whom we are un- der special obligations in the present part of our work. He also finds in the historic development of Neo-Platouic (Neo- Hellenic) philosophy three stages represented by Plotiuus, Jamblichus, and Proclus. Thus he indicates at the start the tri-personal movement of this Period. But when he comes to the full exposition of these three stages, he gives more space to Porphyry than to Jamblichus (the central stage), and Proclus is not distinctly marked off as the third stage in 730 ANCIENT E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. the Neo-Hellenic process. In general, however, Zeller's ac- count of Neo-Hellenism is much the best that we have been able to find. In the preceding treatment of Greek Philosophy, wf have sought to put special stress upon the ordering, which has not been given its due place hitherto; also there has been the attempt to establish a universal principle of order, and to relieve the History of Philosophy, as far as possible, from a merely capricious arrangement; then this principle of order is to be evolved out of philosophy itself, so that the latter can be seen to be self-ordering ultimately. WORKS BY DENTON J. SNIDER PUBLISHED BY SIGMA PUBLISHINa COMPA^r, 10 Van Buren Street, Chicago, III. I- Commentary on the Literary Bibles, in 9 vols. 1. Shakespeare's Dramas, 3 vols. Tragedies (new edition), .... $1,50 Comedies (new edition), .... 1.50 Histories (new edition), . . . . 1.50 2. Goethe's Faust. First Part (new edition), .... 1.50 Second Part (new edition), . . . 1.50 3. Homer's Iliad (new edition), , . . 1.50 " Odyssey, 1.50 4. Dante's Inferno, 1 50 " Purgatory and Paradise, . . 1.50 II. Poems — in 5 vols. 1. 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