UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY BY JAMES LINDSAY, D.D. AUTHOR OF RECENT ADVANCES IN THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,' AND OTHER WORKS William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1909 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 7 BENERAL TO a(,v6[jLva). Thus it comes about that Plato's ' ideas ' 16 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. may be viewed as substances, since they were to him not only the real existents, but the causes of all things, and eternal. In the Timczus, Plato speaks of an element or substance that underlies all things, but this primitive matter has no substantiality of its own, reality being reserved for the Ideas. He separates the form or quality from matter, and hypostatises it in the Idea. But these hypostatised or metaphysical entities seem only to afford another instance of the principle that " entia multipli- cantur praeter necessitatem." Still, the pertinent fact remains that this substantial existence of the ideas is postulated in the Timcem (51 D). The one substance for Plato is, therefore, the Idea, which is sole reality. Matter is for him the fjurj ov or non-being, yet he has for it a method of participating in Ideas. His conception is not free from difficulties of dualistic character, since matter exerts a limiting influence on the Idea, as though it were something external to it. His explication is not free from halting insight and obscurity, and the mistake of Platonism was to identify the negative or non-being with matter, or, at any rate, space. Such non-being is really the negation of substance, since it has no positive principle of existence in itself. The impersonal character of the Supreme Idea the Idea of Good in Plato is to be kept in view. But this is in keeping with his original assumption of some sort of primordial matter, as sub- stratum of all motion and all becoming in fact, nurse and mother of all becoming. This substratum Plato treats as seat of everything, yet no proper account of it is given ; it seems to mean, with him, being conditioned by space, yet mere space cannot be conceived as a PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SUBSTANCE. I/ substance. Substance, to Plato, must be a perfectly determinate object of knowledge, and yet the substratum is less known than its changeful states or aspects, and so his phenomenal world is left, as to its reality, in some- what ambiguous and not very real state. And yet, Being in the full sense of the word is declared in the Sophist (248 E) to be inconceivable without motion, life, soul, mind, while reality is claimed in the Republic (477 A) only for such objects as bear the essential charac- teristics of mind. Reality or substantiality belongs to things, in the end, only as it is imparted to them by mind creative. To this result the Parmenides largely contributes. This substantial interpretation of Platonic idea has not been followed by Lotze, who took the notion of " Law " to be equivalent to that of " Idea," and who acutely represented Plato's ideas as no supra-sensible realities or substances, but universal laws, which have not existence like things, but which, nevertheless, as externally self-identical in significance, rule the operation of things. Natorp follows Lotze in taking the Idea to be a law, not a thing, though he has a position not quite that of Lotze. Passages in Philebus (16 D, 64 B), Par- menides, and the/ Thecztetus, are taken in support of this view. But it seems scarcely necessary to read into Plato the clearness and consistency of the modern mind, and his treatment of the Ideas must remain susceptible to easy attack. It is really with Aristotle that the substance concept begins. Substance is, to Aristotle, Being in the full sense of the term. From substance in general he passes to the study of sensible substance and substance super- B 18 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. sensible. But Aristotle's simplest conception of sub- stance is ToSe TI ov that which simply exists, as existing by itself, and without other things. This roSe TI is simply the individual of the concrete world, and such things as its figure, quality, quantity, &c., which are inherent in it, are termed its accidents. But Aristotle calls the substance TI ICTTIV, just that it may stand out against 71-00-09, TTOLOS eVrtz/. [See Categ., iii. 16 ; Meta., v. and vii.] Aristotle's first substance being, as we have just seen, the individual subsisting in itself ToSe Ti or that which neither exists in a subject nor is affirmed of a subject, Aristotle takes for his second substance that which, not being in a subject (vTrorceifjievov), may be affirmed of different subjects, to indicate their species or kind. The difficulty of defin- ing substance Aristotle discusses in the seventh book of the Metaphysics, showing how its elements cannot be substances, and yet how, on the other hand, they cannot be anything but substances (Meta., vii. 13). He deter- mines only with difficulty that substance should be defined only as to its form, and not its matter [Meta., vii. n]. He, in fact, leaves the subject inadequately defined, here or elsewhere, though he is not without inclination to take as highest substance that which is most simple, not real- ising that our ultimate must be the most complex and concrete, as that into which all else runs back for expli- cation. Aristotle speaks of vTro/cei/jLevrj v\ij, as conveying his conception of what was true of the material world, but not of the ultimate ovaia, or Deity. But what marks the v7TOKeifj,evov as substance is, in Aristotle, its independ- ence (TT/OCOTT/ ovo-ia) as a composite formed of the union of PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SUBSTANCE. 19 essence or form with matter or v\rj. Aristotle is unhap- pily perplexing in his use of the term ovcria, even when attention is restricted to the nature of things alone, without regard to their existence. Substance to him was equivalent to TO elvcu\ first of the categories, it was distinguished from all attributes or properties (o-v/jLfiepy- KOTO) [Meta., i.] In his divergence from Plato, Aristotle makes ovcria not universal, but something individual and concrete. Sometimes it signifies the mixture of matter and form, at other times it is, as the substrate, taken to be pure indeterminate matter. He strongly condemns Plato's making the ' idea/ as substance, exist apart from that of which it is the substance and essence. Plato's * ideas ' are not, to Aristotle, real substances or ovaicu, taking ovcria to mean that which exists by itself. But for Aristotle, no less than for Plato, the general idea was essence of the particular, and was ovcria so far as that meant essence. What Aristotle did reject was, any Platonic claim of right for ideas as existent apart from things, in which, as their form, they were immanent or inherent. If the relation of form to matter was, in Plato, that of reality to non-being, these two were, to Aristotle, correlative terms, whose union constituted Being. But his precise fault here was in not seeing how fully they were correlative with each other, so that the world of experience cannot be cleft by making so essential a division as he did between form and matter. In the metaphysics of Aristotle, matter does not exist of itself or independently of form ; it is in itself unknowable, and can be separated from form only through mental abstraction. Form is 20 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Mpytta which brings forth the real out of indeter- minate potentiality. Matter is not non-being, as with Plato : it has a tendency towards that whereof form is the reality : motion is that which connects form and matter as moments of one existence. The great gift of Aristotle to the discussion of the substance problem was the doctrine of substance as a self-active principle the assertion of absolute reality, that is, absolute self-activity, as for him the absolute, which is primal presupposition of all knowledge. Essence, thing, or substance is, to Aristotle, that which admits of all change, in which respect he is closely followed by Lotze (Lotze's Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 74, Eng. edn.) Such essence is designated TO ri eV by Aristotle, and is defined by form in its most complete sense. Having so dealt with Being or substance, Aristotle is ready to deal with the subject of Cause. We therefore pass to the treatment by Plato and Aristotle of the problem of efficient causation. In the reasonings of Plato and Aristotle there is an underlying assumption of causality. Existence is energy to Aristotle ; to Plato it is intel- lect (z/ou?), but intellect which holds in itself all the ideas of the universe in their causal significance. Plato and Aristotle alike placed being beyond thought beyond knowledge. Plato, however, reaches a more practical result, when, feeling the inadequateness of the concept of substantiality or existence, he lays it down in the Sophist that the being of things is nothing but their power (8iW/u9). Plato saw, before Aristotle, that, in the regress of movements, there must be a first term. The intellect (z/ou?), which is existence to Plato, PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SUBSTANCE. 21 is something which holds in itself all the ideas of the universe in their causal significance. The psychology of Plato presupposed mind wherever there was motion, and so he was led to postulate Deity as Prime Mover of the universe, with subordinate or deputed deities. (See the Timceus, 41 B and 42.) Between the Primal Cause and ordinary mortals Plato set these inferior or subordinate deities, apparently, as a way of accounting for the short- comings of the world. (See the Timcem, 41 C.) But a more important consideration, in the present connection, is that Plato expressly recognises the dependence of the world upon a cause beyond itself Travrl yap aSvvarov %a>pl? alriov plv(n,<; an interest so different from that of Plato in final Cause in a quite astonishing search after the attainment of Causes, and the maintenance of a scientific conception of the world. In his Physics, Aris- totle argues, in a deep and basal fashion, that movement cannot be self-caused, in the case of extended substance, and further, that motion must be without beginning and quite continuous. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle makes movement consist of possibility passing into actuality, and takes the source of movement to be completely real- ised actuality. In other words, it is form pure and without admixture of matter. But efficient cause, in his Metaphysics, often means a substance prior in time to the effect, whereas he elsewhere uses efficient cause as merely conditioning the effect, and not precedent to it in respect of time. It should be observed how important was Aristotle's distinction between self - act ivity />wws actus and potency. It opens the way for distinguishing between the Primal Ground of things complete in itself PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON SUBSTANCE. 27 and not moved and the nature of things themselves, as conditioned in character and evolutional in law. So far as it goes, Aristotle's insight was great, but it was, of course, halting in its issue. For his system was un- doubtedly statical in character, and he neither felt the need nor saw the mode of relating the Primal Ground to the world of imperfection that is. No doubt, he may have meant to improve upon Platonic Idea by such external Cause as he invoked to convert possibility into actuality, but, however his hold on the facts of experience may have been greater, his method was yet too external to produce satisfactory results. So that, although Aris- totle did so much for the subject of Causation, the influence of Plato's ideas overbore much of the effect properly to have been expected. For, too much was allowed to formal cause, so that efficient as well as material and final causes were left in the shade. And, of course, the imperfection of his idea of causation is to be noted, no less than his meritorious treatment, since he is even prepared to drop the notion of sequence, and does not regard cause as an antecedent with determining power. Causality only throws the explanation back upon an antecedent that continually flees us, and the only escape is by taking causality itself up into some form of self-activity, as the only category that explains itself. Aristotle has not dealt with the problem of efficient Cause or Principle as satisfactorily related to the world, but at least he gave invaluable aid and such a noteworthy contribution towards the solution of the problem as to be of imperishable memory. 28 CHAPTER III. GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. RECOGNISING the religio-philosophical developments of ancient India, we yet find the beginnings of philosophy of religion first most truly laid in Greece. Here the separateness and systematised character of philosophi- cal reflection are, no doubt, observable as never before. Religion attained to new self- consciousness in Greece, so that philosophical religion, in deeper, more reflec- tive sense, appears. The Greek mind has greater mobility and constructive energy in the systematising of thought than was possessed by the Eastern mind, with its inactive, quietistic tendencies. Its free, creative spirit is finely seen in the construction of Greek religious conceptions and beliefs. But this is not to say that the Greek development was free from a stage of vague and unreflecting Spiritism. The ex- ternal cast of the popular religion of Greece roused philosophical thought only by the antagonism it pro- voked to the absurdities contained in its legends of the gods. For here that which was first was not even though it concerned the gods that which was heavenly, but very much the reverse. A higher philo- sophic influence seems to have been exerted on early GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 2Q Greek thought by the Orphic songs or legends, with their blendings of the earthly and the heavenly and their cosmogonic character. Greek search for a single principle, whence the cosmic order had been derived or evolved, was henceforth natural and intelligible. Nature to the Greek more than half revealed the soul within. The thought of an absolute principle of unity first took clearly defined form in Xenophanes, who repre- sents Eleatic Monism, naming his One Being God, and viewing Him as rational. He combats prevailing Polytheism, and the anthropomorphic conceptions of Homer and Hesiod. A striking feature of Greek re- ligious development is its lack of organised unity, its absence of anything like unified tradition of funda- mentally religious type. The sensuous forms and im- aginative symbols of Greek mythology, as found in the poets, presented a naturalism so gross and crude that it could not but prove an easy prey to the critical shafts of developing reflection. In the polytheism of Greek religion the gods were not only humanised, but were terribly human capricious, jealous, lawless, partial, and immoral. The religion of the Greek was mainly a religion of this world, for it was here he sought, for the most part, his compensations. And the gods must have been very troublesome to him, for so jealous were they of human success or prosperity that they must needs be avenging themselves on human vjSpis. But in this connection the great trouble is that things were left by Greek thought in so impersonal a condition that the sense of personality was so 30 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ill -defined. Perhaps the best feature in the crude anthropomorphism of Greek mythology is the fact that their gods were social and happy. In fact, the entire humanity of the Greeks seemed to be reflected in their gods. The deities of their pantheon seem con- structed after human patterns of beauty, intelligence, and strength. Their gods are men, in fact; super- human they are, only they are superior in courage or virtue to men. Free from dread and joyous was Greek life ; for a Homer the divine lay in the human ; in Homer and Hesiod faith in Justice survives. The idealisation of man played a large part in the religious thought of Homer. As pointing toward monotheistic unity, we have, even in Homeric times, the conception of Zeus as Father of gods and men. But syncretism was already well on its way, and Homeric religion is that of the cultured few rather than that of the people. Its outlook on the future life was one of gloom. In ^schylus there is realised no conscious antagonism to the popular belief in the order of the gods above. He has his plea for Zeus as pattern and protector of righteousness. Sophocles admits a more humanly operative rational element. Euripides is staggered before the difficulty of recon- ciling divine justice with human deed and doom. His pessimistic thought - world opened out on the whole life of his time, and he stands strongly marked by his rejection of the polytheistic religion, his recognition of the possibility and necessity of a scientific conception of the world, and his adherence to a moral ideal. The strife between pvOos and \6yos assumes in Euripides GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 31 its sharpest form. But Euripides not only helped to destroy the fair world of mythology, but was also, in some real sense, pathfinder for man's free personality over against the weight of authority. Beyond all naive conditions Euripides calls to the life of reflection, to whose rational ideal of life he remains true, recognis- ing, with fine cosmopolite sense, that thus the race moves out of darkness into light. The Greek tragedians, in fact, raised the conception of the gods towards the ideal of perfect ethical Spirit in their efforts to purge of anthropomorphic defect. Taking all that has now been advanced, it becomes evident how inevitable was the antagonism that should follow philosophical reflec- tion on such mythologic crudities and errors as have been adverted to. Coming back to Xenophanes, we may remark that his sole Deity is raised above multiplicity and change, and is perfectly self-sufficing. The abstract monism of the Eleatics concerned itself, metaphysically, with the being rather than the origin of things. But it was on the origin of things that the Ionic philosophers fixed their attention, and Heraclitus voiced their origin, flux, change, and decay. Hylozoistic in principle as his theory was, Heraclitus emphasises the ceaseless flux of things the restless activity of nature the passing of things or their universal movement (iravra pel). A subtle, all -pervasive motion underlies this change the exhaustless energy of the Divine Reason itself. But the goal of Heraclitus could not but prove a sceptical one, since the only criterion of being lay in the momentary sensible apprehension of the individual, and 32 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. fixed knowledge was not to be thought of. Heraclitus was, however, really complementary, not antagonistic, to Xenophanes, as Plato was swift to see. But the teleological reasonings of Socrates helped Plato to this synthesis; for Socrates held that what exists for a use- ful end must be product of intelligence, in which, as in organic structure, parts serve the whole. Anax- agoras, no doubt, had already suggested mind as mover of matter, holding that all things were in chaos till reason came to arrange them, but the ideal- istic character of his suggestion was not sustained in his too mechanical mode of explication. Thus the pre-eminence he postulated for Mind became lost in the physical working; still, the idealistic or immaterial principle had been brought into view, which was to prove ultimate gain. To Socrates there was a Divine Wisdom or Reason that fashioned and upheld the universal or cosmic order, and by him and his fol- lowers the rational element in Greek mythology was apprehended. The rational system of truth at which Socrates aimed was sought to be educed in psycho- logical manner, the principle of this system being to him generically active within the human consciousness. Plato passed beyond this psychological state into the ontologic, the idea becoming to him an ontological archetype. The defect here was that Platonism tended to make these archetypes external and independent entities, lying apart from the creative mind. Plato, noblest of pioneers in the sphere of the philosophy of religion, vindicates the character of the gods as ab- solutely good, and maintains the Divine nature to be GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 33 ultimate source of all goodness, truth, and beauty. In his later works the leading religious thought is just that of the Divine Mind, of which the human mind is taken to be, in some sort, a reflection. The gods of mythology were, to Plato, creatures of imagin- ation, and ethically mischievous ; and it was his firm belief in the ontological and necessary priority of reason to matter that made him hold to the soul as immortal. The Divine nature he takes to transcend the sensible, and in his philosophy of religion he postulates such a transcendence for Deity as makes a certain spiritual monotheism. His was the pregnant conception that in the goodness of God was to be found the reason for the creation of the world. But he failed to carry out this conception as due to self- manifesting Deity, not Deity manifested as something without, and so he missed bridging over the chasm between the real and the phenomenal. The dignity of the soul, the idea of the good, the conception of the ideal society, also received treatment of abiding worth at Plato's hands, for the sweep of his vision claimed for itself all time and all existence. In the same line of conception as to Deity, Aristotle, with certain features of his own, follows ; God being to him self-sufficient, contemplative, and alone. His positing a Deity who lives a life of such pure con- templation is no more free from criticism than Plato's position, which he criticised. Such pure thought does not get beyond itself to determine anything else. God is to Aristotle an eternal activity complete in itself, and contemplation is to him " the best and happiest c 34 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of activities." The obvious trouble in God's whole activity being thus contemplation, is to understand how He has to do with this changing and finite world. Aristotle conceives the world as really de- pendent upon God, and in need of Him, who is to Aristotle its Prime Mover, the original cause of all existence. But this Prime Mover turns out on ex- amination to be so rather in respect of logical priority than as first in time in His unbeginning beginning. Aristotle endeavours, not very satisfactorily, to combine immanent and transcendent views in his conception of Deity, as a reaction from the transcendent universal- ism of Plato. But it was a great achievement that Aristotle not only made pure self -activity actus purus the primal ground, but also took things to be a dual synthesis of self- activity and potence. Following Anaxagoras, Aristotle transformed his purus actus into reason or abstract intelligence, which could not offer any satisfactory basis of mediation between the world and its Ultimate Ground. His recognition of the immanent end of every object raised his doctrine of finality far above the utilitarian teleology of later philosophers. What Aristotle had to say as to the union of the individual and the universal, and as to the function of the living soul in educing philosophy and science from experience within a social order, is of enduring interest. Now, it will readily be seen that the point to which we have been brought by the thought of Aristotle is one which leaves a breach, to the healing of which the efforts of later Greek speculation were directed. Hence we GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 35 have Philo's hierarchy of beings bridging the dualism between God and matter, and those emanational at- tempts to mediate between the One and the many which are characteristic of the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Before these endeavours we have, of course, the attempts of Stoicism to find unity in self-conscious thought itself, which took itself to be in perfect harmony or oneness with God as the principle of the universe, and troubled itself nothing about the world of matter or par- ticular objects and events. Hardly are we called to follow out here these later systems of Greek thought, wherein speculative thought became subordinated to practical ethics, and the rendering of the individual sufficient unto himself became accounted a thing of fun- damental value, in spite of the fact that such strength was too isolated for general result. We are only con- cerned now with the religious ideal of the Greeks in the most characteristically Greek forms and periods. That religious ideal we have seen to be the outcome of the highest type of polytheistic thought the result of de- velopment that tended to an always greater unity. Never was the persistent Greek belief in Fate, as that to which gods, no less than men, are subject, without some under- lying feeling of protest. And, indeed, Fate itself became less conceived as hard external necessity and assumed more the character of rational law. The elements of a perfectly assured world-order lay behind the impersonal guise of what seemed only blind and irrational Fate. The Furies turned at last to graciousness. The worlds of men and of gods were personal. It is a pleasing religious development in some ways 36 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. inspiring even we have before us, from the beginnings of incisive criticism of the popular religious thought by Xenophanes up to the new philosophy of religion pro- pounded by Plato, with the humanity, beauty, purity, truth, and freedom by which that religion was marked. For it should be noted what a growing conception marked all this Greek development of the human soul as Divine alike in nature and in destiny, and as of peerless worth in its rational and spiritual life. Highest to Plato was the idea of the Good this all-ruling idea was to him absolute reality. Plato's conception of life is, no doubt, shot through with religion, for his is an entirely religious one, but his conception is yet a characteristically Greek one. It imports a high sense of man's connection with the All an exalted union of the human with the Divine. But it obviously is not a religion of restoration, of renewal, of consolatory power, lacking, as it does, real personal relation. It falls far short of being revelational in any historic sense. Plato is not a physician to the sick ; his philosophy is that of the whole, sound man. But be- tween God and man there is no real communion. On a metaphysical view, religion is to him speculation and nothing else in God is pure and immutable essence found. On a moral view, God is to him the ideal of moral perfection the good and righteous Spirit. Plato's moral kingdom is concerned with justice rather than love, but the justice is tempered with mildness and mercy. Matter is to him that which resists the action of God, and causes evil to be present in the world. Such a view of matter as non-pliant and impenetrable before the Divine Mind we can, of course, by no means accept. GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 37 Plotinus was able later to affirm the unreality of matter, in spite of the part it plays among real things. Aristotle, like Plato, thought our understanding of life must depend oaour insight into the great world of reality, for the content of human existence is gained through its connection with the All. Like Plato, he highly esteems form, and indeed he makes of the relation of form and matter something which rules all reality and constitutes the core of all life. But whereas Plato rent the world in twain by his severance of essence and reality, this sever- ance was to Aristotle an intolerable schism, and he sought to steer his philosophic course toward apprehen- sion of the unity of reality. Reality is for him the essence found in the actual phenomena. Aristotle does not, like Plato, set out from the idea, and work to the data of experience. Starting from the data of experience, Aristotle rises from the actual or empirical to the ulti- mate or universal. The synthetic and progressive pro- cedure of Plato is in Aristotle replaced by analytic and regressive tendencies. Plato excels by the richness of his ideas and the spiritualistic character of his thought. Aristotle excels in his combined hold on the rational form-elements and the empirical data that fill these out. For Aristotle, with his monistic tendency, there is a Divine Oversoul, which is the source of the world as a realm of reason, and which is the originating cause of the eternal world movement. Thus the world does not wear to thought so contrastive and opposed a look as on the Platonic view. But it is, for all that, a very weak position Aristotle takes in assigning to God only the place of Prime Mover of the world, sustaining to it relations only 38 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. in virtue of the motion He communicates. We miss those Ideas in the divine mind which are archetypes of created things ; we are certainly not brought near to God, since God is here separated from the world, to which He communicates movement. Nevertheless, his cosmology must be allowed to have more consistency than that of Plato. In Philo, the Logos mediates between transcendent Deity and man. But the Logos conception is in Philo a vacillating and imperfect one, not reaching up to real personal result. But the merit must be freely accorded^ to Philo of having linked the best of Old Testament thought to the best of Greek philosophical thinking, in his conception of God, who is not only One, but the Good. The profound expression given to the Platonic philosophy by Plotinus meant, of course, a great gain in elevation. This is saying much, if we remember how great had been the elevation of Plato's teaching how (in the Republic) he had taught the idea of the good to be regarded as cause of all science and truth, and had insisted on the good as far exceeding essence in dignity and power. But the transcendence of his Deity, the inapprehensibleness of His nature, kept his omnipresence from being so felt that men could partake in the wealth of spiritual life. This despite the stimulating and elevating effect of his conception of the One, the Ineffable. No doubt his affirmation of mystical ecstasy meant a certain unity of man with God, as in- volved in emotional response. But the lack remained in respect of the process being one amenable to the scrutin- ising view of reason. Reason was a too transitional GREEK PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 39 term in the process of return to God by ecstatic eleva- tion, and the mysticism involved was a turning of the back upon experience. The thought of Plotinus has the merit, of course, of ridding us of anthropomorphism, but the price paid is a dear one the dethronement of reason : dear, because a God unknowable can be of no service or interest either to faith or to philosophy. If philosophy could be content thus, it would have learnt and gained nothing. While the conception of God remained in Greek philosophy, as it culminated in Plotinus, very much of an abstraction, or limiting concept, it became in Philo a living reality. Thus we are now in a position to mark the character of that development which constitutes the Greek philosophy of religion. We have seen the character of their early gods, their humanised or anthropomorphic deities, whose worship was yet the precursor of the worship of spiritual principle. We have noted the growth of sub- jective reflection from the philosophy of Anaxagoras onward. Very noticeable in Socrates is this emphasis on moral reason. In Plato the pre-eminence of ideas or reason we have observed to be conspicuous. His religion is ethical and mystical rather than metaphysical. Aristotle's stress on pure reason, after our own particular fashion, we have also pointed out. We have taken account, also, of the developing idea of unity as early conceived under the notion of Fate, which cast its dark impersonal shadow over the throne of Zeus himself. Be- sides which, monotheistic tendency was seen in the more or less conscious gropings after more spiritual principle. Nor have we failed to make some passing recognition 40 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of their religion as that of beauty the Divine being to them the eternally beautiful. We have seen the purifica- tion of Greek mythology by their poets and philosophers. Add to all these things that we have reckoned with the meditation and systematisation which they gave to eternal truths, principles, and ideas through their great philo- sophic thinkers, and it will be evident how extraordinarily great was the contribution of Greek philosophy of religion to the world's religious development. The greatness of that contribution has been enhanced by the persistent influence exerted by Greek systems and ideas on all subsequent generations. But this is said without sharing the defective and one-sided views of those among whom are distinguished philosophical names who treat early Christian Theology as only a weak reflex of Greek Philo- sophy, and quite fail to realise the nobly creative and independent power of early spiritual thinkers like Aris- tides, Justin, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement, and Origen. When we are called to deal with the relations of Greek Philosophy to early Christian Theology, Suum Cuique must be our motto, if we have insight enough to perceive how real and great were the power and portion of that Theology in itself, as they are revealed in its historical development. CHAPTER IV. THE ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS. A SIGNIFICANT circumstance was the fact that the Stoic philosophy, in the eventide of its existence, produced three men of such nobility of mind as Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. In their more developed type of thought, Stoicism was best represented. In their hands, indeed, Stoicism became the noblest of imperfect ethical theories. Marcus Aurelius was the last of the significant Stoics one, too, in whom pagan ethical philosophy reached its greatest depth, and its finest flowering. The Stoicism of the time had become an eclectic religious movement, and the old pantheism of the school had given way, it seems not too much to say, to thought of more theistic tendency. Abandonment to the Will of Deity, and impregnable concentration or entrenchment in one's self, despite the moral and intellectual loneliness which such individuality may involve, are the assiduous inculcations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In him the Stoical synthesis of pantheism and individualism reaches its highest. His Meditations the last great product of Stoicism had a certain inner and mystical affinity with the Neo-Platonism that should follow a result not to be wondered at when philosophy became, in 42 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Emperor's mystic speculation, so largely concerned with the affairs of practical life. The enforcement of virtuous life has precedence, with him, over subtle specu- lation as to the origin of things. For interest had been transferred from metaphysical speculation to practical ethics. For all that, his system is not without meta- physical foundation: this is found in its theory of Nature, as moral support and guide. His discussions of ethical problems are neither systematic nor exhaustive there is no attempt to make them so. His work is not an intel- lectual system of the Universe : the ethical philosophy it presents does not derive from being part of a philosoph- ical system which offers itself as an organic whole. There is, however, this fundamental conception underlying all his teaching, namely, that all things form one whole, and constitute a unity. This is in accord with the essen- tially monistic character of Stoicism. He teaches that this whole is so wisely ordered that the wisdom of each part lies, after the Stoic teleology, in seeking the good of the whole. Hence the Emperor can say " All parts of the Universe are interwoven and tied together with a sacred bond. And no one thing is foreign or unrelated to another. This general connection gives unity and ornament to the world. For the world, take it altogether, is but one." 1 The unity and the ideal significance of things he grasps, after the Stoical fashion, which was impelled to these under the demands of reason. But, of course, this universal reason in things is still too much an abstract potentiality. Again he says " If thou didst ever see a hand cut off, or a foot, or a head lying any- 1 vii. 9. ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 43 where apart from the rest of the body, such does a man make himself, as far as he can, who is not content with what happens, and separates himself from others, or does anything selfish. If you have detached yourself from the natural unity for you were made by Nature a part, but now you have cut yourself off yet, in your case, there is this beautiful provision, that it is in your power again to unite yourself." * Of course, the trouble is, that Stoical thought leaves this organic unity of mankind a thing too abstract, subjective, and purely ideal. Once more says Aurelius " He that frets himself because things do not happen just as he would have them, and secedes and separates himself from the law of universal nature, is but a sort of ulcer of the world, never considering that the same cause which produced the displeasing accident made him too. And lastly, he that is selfish, and cuts off his own soul from the universal soul of all rational beings, is a kind of voluntary outlaw." 2 We thus see the world to be objectively conceived by Aurelius as a unified thing a cosmos to which all belong. But the unifying power remains too mysterious in his thought, and we are not shown how man, as part, may become reconciled with the whole. Still, this unity of the world was strik- ingly conceived by him as giving unity to man's life, all the parts or members of the one body being most closely connected. The alternative is always present to him " either Providence or atoms rule the Universe." 3 He has his own position clearly defined, however, in his pref- erence for Providence, with its boundless possibilities and hopes, rather than chance, with its attendant resig- 1 viii. 34. 2 iv. 29. 3 iv. 3. 44 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. nation. He shares the Stoical belief in Divine Power as having given us all we need. Very beautiful is the com- pleteness of his contentment with all things " All things are harmonious to me which are harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing is for me too early or too late which is in due time for thee. All is fruit to me which thy seasons, O Nature, bear. From thee are all things, and in thee all, and all return to thee. The poet says, ' Dear City of Cecrops ! " Shall I not say, ' Dear City of God ' ? " * His view of man's duty, therefore, is to live agreeably to the course of Nature, and harmoniously with other men. His individualism, so virtuous and strongly marked, takes a prevailing optimism for granted, and puts itself into harmony with the ethical cosmos. For all that, he keenly feels the impotence of man, borne along on the world's current. But, of course, the fact of evil is a trouble in face of the Providence to which reference has been made. But Stoical courage simply refused to admit the fact, and took the world for perfect. Such evil as there might be must be for the general good. This is precisely one of the defects of the moral philo- sophy of Aurelius, that the reality of the antagonism of evil to the good is not more decisively felt, and so, too, with respect to the reality of righteousness. A heart that should beat more violently in sympathy with practical triumphs of righteousness, than the philosophy of Aure- lius compelled, was something that could come only by that teaching being transcended. Sincere as Stoical thought always remained, it seems lacking in thorough- ness here. It could not, and did not, feel, in any adequate 1 iv. 23. ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 45 manner, the difficulty of reconciling the pessimistic aspects of the world with its faith in the perfection of the universe. Hence hope springs not eternal in its breast. Resignation is to it the whole of virtue, be it to goodness or to necessity. The Deity that, for the Emperor, rules and pervades all things is one that might very well suggest the Deity of monotheism. Only, acquiescence in the Divine will here partakes too much of indifference to what may occur, and acceptance of what must, as though it were some fate which neither divinity nor humanity can change. For, though Marcus Aurelius, like Epictetus and Seneca, attains some sense of the personality of Deity, yet it is by no means uniform or persistent. To the ethical philosophy of Aurelius, the soul was indestructible the dominant and guiding principle of life. In its principle of reason, he found the secret of man's relationship to man, no less than to God, the universal reason. Hence he can say, " Though we are not just of the same flesh and blood, yet our minds are nearly related." l This brotherhood of man, says Aure- lius, will lead us not only to strive for the common good, but to pity and forgive. Man is to him the crown of nature. Yet the nature of man is to him social, but his social eagerness to serve mankind is not such as to make him break unrestrainedly with the cosmic claims which are so central in his thought. Here, too, there is a prominent element of resignation before the injustice of men. Man's relation to the Deity is, in Stoical ethics, of fundamental importance. They make God and reason 1 ii. I.' 46 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. finely identical, and our true good, therefore, lies in conformity with the mind and will of Deity. The life of reason is, therefore, that whereon Aurelius insists. Reason is to him the judgment-forming power, and can subject all passion. " Hold in honour your opinionative faculty, for this alone is able to prevent any opinion from originating in your guiding principle that is contrary to Nature, or the proper constitution of a rational crea- ture." 1 For, in Stoical thought, a rational nature is subjectively conceived to belong to all. Not only that, but as a rational being, man is expected to rise above himself beyond his own individuality. Tis in keeping with such a nature the Emperor says, " If any man is able to convince me, and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change, for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance." Such, then, is the Emperor's firmly enounced doctrine of humanity, with the dignity and duty that pertain to every man, and every man's work. Dutiful and sincere we must be, and there must be no acting a part, in our going beyond the self. And if, according to Stoic fatalism, everything is neces- sarily determined, the determination is along lines that must be optimistically conceived. So the nobility of the Emperor, in keeping with this, says, " It is not seemly that I, who willingly have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad." When we turn to the Stoic theory of virtue, as represented in Aurelius, we find the inwardness of virtue remarkable, and it is absolutely self-sufficing. 1 iii. 9. ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 47 Virtue is to him primarily cosmic : it is something due to the universe or God. We are free to be moved only from within : the calm which is conse- quent on just and virtuous action makes just, righteous action that in which our inner reasoning alone finds rest. The good man is lord of his own life : he is such a king among men, by reason of virtue, as had never before been dreamed. Virtue is to him superior to life's varying fortunes. Thus arose the conception of the impossible wise man of Stoical thought. And the impossibility of the realisation led to its becoming tempered, in the later developments, with practical and practicable forms and insistences. The Emperor's inculcations contain very much that is undoubtedly excellent, as to the wisdom of life. Powerless were the darts of destiny against the inner refuge of Aurelius, with his lofty tranquillity of mind, and deep quickening of soul. Such an ethical view of the world as his need not be opposed to an intel- lectual one, but the ethical one was more deeply satisfying. The good will, in its detached exercise, was for him supreme virtue, but with the formal self- consistency of this will he was too well content. The chief fault I should find with it is that it leads too much to passive and quietistic excellences, and has too few insistences on the active forth - puttings of heroic virtue. I mean, we can easily fear disturbance too much, and carry the limits of prudence too far. It seems to us more important to have the soul cul- tivate the plenitude of its own energy and power for the performance of actively and generously heroic 48 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. virtue. We need not too readily fear the world -city and its claims. The good will is the great thing, but not as a mere internal state, rather as something which goes forth in labour for the whole, from morning until evening. When the soul is too exclusively thrown back upon itself, there are attendant dangers of pride and self-confidence. Still, quietistic excesses apart, the insistence on the importance of being, rather than knowing or doing, has its own value. Those petty and untoward things, towards which Stoicism fosters a contemptuous disregard, may, under higher and more positive ethical law, become sources of joy, strength, and worth. But it is only just to the Stoical view to remember that its indifference to outward things was only a relative indifference as compared with the ab- solute renunciation of ideal moral life and was even essentially religious, since the outward things were taken to be at the disposal of Deity, in whose wisdom we must confide. The Stoical theory of good and evil both alike ab- solute came to be modified, and room and place found for things as human and actually existent. The egoistic and altruistic tendencies were not perfectly harmonised, the stress remaining mainly on the former, and the essentially social character of virtue being imperfectly drawn, even though a certain utilitarian interest and tendency are far from wanting in the teaching of Aurelius. The future life is left in uncertainty by the Emperor, though he seems not without some sense of the con- tinuance of life after death. He scarcely ever touches ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 49 on the question. He prefers to centre attention on the life of the present. Every day may be his last, yet other-worldliness he has none. "Though you were to live three thousand, or, if you please, thirty thousand years, yet remember that no man can lose any other life than that which he now lives, neither is he pos- sessed of any other than that which he loses." 1 But his reasoning is as noble as it is peculiar, in this con- nection, for, just because we have but this all too brief life, we must the more be careful to live it well. " Hark ye, friend; you have been a burgher of this great city, what matter though you have lived in it five years or three ; if you have observed the laws < of the corporation, the length or shortness of the time makes no difference." 2 It will be seen, from all that has now been advanced, that the ethical philosophy of Stoics, like the Emperor, came short in this, that it set out from the formal principle of ethical law, and never got the length of- the real principle on which goodness, right, and duty must depend. Its whole conception of the principle remains too abstractly conceived : the right, the good, the ideal, must be chosen for their own sakes, but still it is not brought out wherein the right, the good, the ideal do actually consist. The clearest we can gain is its emphasis on the good will, as a state in itself, and apart from all things outside of it which is certainly a noble ideal. Its theory of virtue never transcends itself. The virtue remains defective, in that it consists too much in outward action, to the 1 ii. 14. 2 xii. 36. D 50 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. neglect or disparagement of such interior dispositions as charity, beneficence, tenderness, and spontaneous love. And, when it is introspective, its self-questioning is too persistent, and lacks inspiration from without. It forgets how exterior and universal in its aims moral effort must be, no man living for himself, or being complete in himself. In this way of thinking, there is the tendency, too, to retire too readily from the world, and to sacrifice too little to save and improve it. True individuality comes not of the soul's repression, but by its advance in the service of thought and life. The soul grows cosmic, not by abstraction of itself from the world, but by claiming all things as its own. At any rate, 'tis but a cold and soul - desolating ideal to which it can attain, by dint of proud and self- reliant will. Virtue thus becomes easily too personal and subjective. In Marcus Aureliua, however, appears at times a tenderness which transcends Stoicism proper. The ethical philosophy of Stoicism, at its highest, had need to be lifted into the sphere of personality, and the realm of ends rational ends for which alone self- denial or renunciation is necessary. But then it will have passed out of the twilight of abstraction into the sphere of noonday the light of real principles, prin- ciples of love that concern persons, human and divine. We are not now concerned to follow it thither. It is enough now to note how far Stoic speculation can carry us. With Aurelius, as with Epictetus, man's own self- development is that with which nothing in the shape of outward circumstance must be allowed to interfere. ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 51 But he overlooks too largely the warfare within, no less than without. Man's inner world is more than Stoical calm, and there are higher things to be said than the Emperor has known. Nor is destiny, from a higher view -point, merely the cross-grained thing it seemed to these Stoic philosophers. Still, high credit must be given to Stoical thought for the way in which it advanced on Aristotle, and anticipated later and higher thought, in teaching the will of man to con- form in virtue of its free internal dispositions to the outer limitations imposed on man's power. Its modified determinism made strength of will the prime requisite of man's adjustment to the world's order, and of his control of passion. The unique triumph of the will's perfect self-mastery before all exterior issues, and the priceless worth of the will's inward or inherent goodness, were great and valid ideals to set before men. But they must not be so conceived that the isolated inner life shall be loosened from the effort after universality. A graver and more severe law is required than the Stoical obedience to the law of nature and reason, even though we admit the value of the sacrifice of desire to this Stoical subordination to Nature's law. The life of pure reason is, to Stoical thought, the true life, for the rational is, for it, as we have seen, the real. But such life of pure reason can never be the true, the ideal, life; for not apathy or indifference is our need, but always more and fuller life. This false attitude to life is a grave defect of Stoicism : its aloof- ness and contempt were a default of life. Life is the OF THE UNIVERSITY 52 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. one thing needful ; life laughs to scorn oppositions, troubles, losses, failures, and makes them minister to its own progress and development. Life must be at once intense and expansive, so shall it be generous and fruitful. Of such life the law is, to him that hath shall be given. But it is sad to see so noble a soul as that of the Emperor unable to project his own serene rationality into the system of the world as a universal principle, and to behold him equally unable to carry forward his own sublime adherence to moral ideal into faith in eternal moral ideal at the core and centre of a world that seemed to be its contradiction. To the Emperor Marcus Aurelius must be accorded high, though discriminating, praise for his contribution towards the imperishable glory of Stoical ethics, in his setting forth of the intrinsic worth of moral personality, the triumph of man's self -conquest, the actualism of energetic fulfilment of duty in midst of his scheme of lofty idealism, the fundamental place of Divine order or law; for these, and such like insistences, made the Emperor the important connecting-link he was between pagan and Christian thought. The emphasis of an Aurelius on the inwardness of self, and the interior certitude of moral virtue, was a foreshadowing of the teachings of an Augustine. 53 CHAPTER V. THE PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. EQUALLY in philosophy and in theology the doctrine of the Logos has been of prime importance. Yet that importance is still found, frequently, appreciated in very inadequate manner. It is usually said that, as matter of history, the doctrine took ontological rise in the idealism of Plato, forming the mediating principle between the transcendent world and the world of phenomena. This is true, only if we remember that it had already been employed by Heraclitus and Anaxagoras, as a principle of reason or law, to explain the order of the world. It gradually worked its way into a central position in philo- sophical thinking. The philosophical Logos was essen- tially cosmological and metaphysical. The Stoics took all activity to imply a Logos or spiritual principle. As operative principle of the world, the Logos was to them anima mundi. Philo, again, adopted this Stoic use of the word Logos, whereby it denoted a rational principle immanent in nature and in man, although he derived the contents of the term more from Plato. Philo's Logos is, in fact, like the early Greek z/oO?; "the constitutions of all other things " are supposed to be found in the Logos. Thus the philosophical Logos is reason absolutely, or 54 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. absolute idea, a strong enough Idealism. In the same way, the term Logos became the constructive norm of theological thinking. It is evident that the Logos prin- ciple had a history in Greek philosophy ere it came to be Christologised in the Church. The application of the term Logos to the interpretation of the Person of Jesus, in the Gospel of St John, does not at all carry with it that the doctrine was in any full or adequate fashion realised, even where this Gospel might be known. Had it been so fully grasped, it would have sufficed to dis- sipate all notions of external being or imperfect deity or separate nature, in respect of the Logos. It is easy to see how thought tended quite readily to associate the title Logos, so suggestive of reason ruling in the universe, with the idea of Christ as a cosmic force, and to come short of apprehending the real personality of the Logos. St John's Gospel opposes certain positions of Gnosticism by its identification of the Jesus of history with the mediating Logos of Greek philosophy. For the Logos figured in the Gnostic writings, where it appeared as an aeon distinct from Christ. The philosophical Logos meant the Reason, St John's Logos was the Word, and to him it meant a distinct hypostasis or personality. Subsisting in God, as being or hypostasis, was the In- finite Thought reflection and counterpart of God which is, in fact, the Logos. The Logos was to Philo, however, distinct from God, and subordinate to him, being, in fact, placed by Philo outside the Divine sphere. St John is again distinctive in identifying the Logos with the Mes- sianic idea. Furthermore, St John lays his main stress on the incarnation of the Logos, an idea wholly wanting PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 55 to Philo. Philo is dualistic, John is not ; matter is to Philo evil, to John divine. While the creation of the world was all that Philo sought through the Logos, St John claimed, in addition, its redemption. From all which it is evident that the doctrine of the Logos what- ever may have been the case as to the term itself was not derived by St John from Philo, being so essentially different from his. It is matter for some surprise, no doubt, that the Logos doctrine is not more in evidence in post-Apostolic Fathers anterior to Justin Martyr, and for some regret that not more material is available for the guidance of our conclu- sions. Justin makes evident the influence of Plato, and says he wishes to be Christian, " not because the teach- ings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but be- cause they are not in all points like." x Justin shows, no doubt, the influence of Platonic and Stoic modes of thinking in connection with his Logos ideas, but not so much can be drawn from this as has frequently been done. It would be easy to name recent philosophical writers who have shown no real insight into the creative intelligence that led men like Justin to take the Stoic idea of the Logos, and find the Divine reason, immanent in nature and in man, to be incarnated in Jesus Christ, in the manner of the great Apologists. What insight is there in supposing, as these philosophic writers have been well content to do, that the Christian thought of these Apologists was but a pale reflection of Greek philosophic thought, without independent and creative power? As Justin says, when blaming Plato for lack of spiritual 1 Second Apology of Justin, xiii. $6 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. understanding, " It is not, then, that we hold the same opinions as others, but that all speak in imitation of ours." x The Apologists really set out to prove Christian- ity a reasonable religion, and God's reason they found revealed in the Logos. Greek thinkers they certainly were, and not lacking in independent power. The cosmological aspect of the problem holds Justin at the outset, but the ethical or mediatorial interest of the Logos principle also attracted him. The function of the Logos was mediatorial, and, in its revealings of the Father ,to men, it linked the two worlds human and Divine. To Justin, indeed, the Logos had been revealed in creation, in humanity, in history, in Greek philosophy, in Old Testament revelation, and, most perfectly, in Christ. In the Logos are the unity and harmony of the world guaranteed. Writers like Justin are sometimes quoted as suggesting the view that the Logos was but an "aspect" of the Divine. No doubt, the Son is often spoken of by Justin in terms that suggest an emanation or product of the Father's essence: he holds the Son to be " numerically distinct" from the Father; 2 but the word " aspect " might easily obscure the fact that Justin, nevertheless, holds Him to be God ; 3 in power "indivisible and inseparable from the Father"; 4 "in will " not distinct from Him. 5 Justin does not, however, make the Logos a personal totality in Himself, and apart from the Father. The whole Logos having become in- carnate in Christ, there is a superiority in Him over all previous teachers, to Justin, in respect of completeness 1 First Apology of Justin, Ix. 2 Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 129. 5 Ibid., 126. 4 Ibid., 128. 5 Ibid., 56. PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 57 and finality. Christianity is to Justin the true philosophy as well as the perfect religion. As a Platonic trans- cendentalist, Justin carried his idea of the Logos as reason far out into sympathetic relation towards pagan philosophy and faith. In such discussion, it is to be remembered that the doctrine of the Logos is meta- physical rather than historical. Not Jesus pre-exists before His advent, but the Logos the Christ or Eternal Son. This metaphysical and speculative character of Greek Christian thought ran up into the transcendental metaphysics of the Councils of Nice and Chalcedon. 'Tis a common mistake of our time to suppose that this philosophical conception of the Logos drew thought off from the historic Jesus, and gave an alien development to His religion. But this is to fail to see that the Logos idea as a principle or means of revelation was the very idea which made the Christian religion reasonable to minds that had been steeped in the wisdom of Greek philosophy. Athenagoras brought into clearer view the personal existence of the Logos prior to the Creation. He says, " God's Son is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation," and further that the Logos is "the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence," but because " He came forth to be the idea and energising power of all material things." 1 Athena- goras thus repels the idea that the Logos first acquires personal existence in connection with the Creation. This, of course, while he recognises His operation therein. . l Apology, x. 58 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. When we come to Clement, we find the doctrine of the Logos centre and support of his whole system. He held that the Logos equal with, but distinct from, the Father was manifested throughout the history of the world, and finally incarnated in Jesus Christ. Greek philosophy to him " purges the soul and prepares it beforehand for the reception of faith." The Lord Himself is to Clement the living Logos the " Hortatory Word," in the high theological sense of the term " Word." The inner mind of God is revealed in the Word, according to Clement, for He is the full revelation of the Father. Clement does not follow Justin and others who founding on the ambiguity of the term Logos, as meaning both reason and speech had distinguished the "immanent Word" the Reason which is in God from the "exterior Word," which meant the Word as Revealer. To Clement, thought and word are, in God, one. Clement held to the immanence of the Divine Word in the universe a doctrine which became typical of Greek theology. The Pre-incarnate Word, in his view, prepared the world for the teaching of the Logos. This view of Deity as the secret force of Creation has been found strongly ac- cordant with the advances of science. In the strong hands of Origen, the Logos doctrine became marked by his teaching as to the eternal genera- tion of the Son who was regarded as eternally a distinct personal Being. This added strength to the Logos doc- trine, putting it on firmer metaphysical basis by taking the Son more completely out of the category of created beings, and rejecting all Sabellian theories of a temporal evolution. Origen also opposed all emanation theories, PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 59 and held a difference of essence in the Son from the Father. The Son was not, however, of any created essence. 'Twas thus Origen subordinated the Son to the Father, who alone had absoluteness and self-exist- ence. The Logos doctrine was central in the Christology of Athanasius, and, in its Origenistic form, became the mainstay of the Nicene Christology. In Athanasius the cosmological idea of Christ, as eternal and necessary principle of mediation between God and all created things, outruns the soteriological aspect of Christ as Saviour of men. To him the Logos mediator must be essentially Divine "very God of very God," else the cleft between finite and infinite could not be removed. It must be evident, from what has already been advanced, and without carrying out our statement into further detail, that the unique triumph of Christian specu- lative genius was to make the Logos no mere external and subordinate, but an immanent personal principle in the very nature of the Absolute. For, as Hatch properly enough remarks, a transcendent Deity became incom- municable the more the conception of His transcendence was developed ; hence the need of such intermediate Logos. As such, it could mediate between God and the world. The discovery of Christian reflection was thus the great one that reason is rooted in personality. Personality, that is to say, was seen to be an immanent category of the Divine Logos or the primal Being. Identical in essence with God, the Logos becomes thus distinct from God. For He has thus an origin, as God has not. The Logos principle was incarnated in the personality of Jesus. The unity between the 60 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Divine Spirit and the human was thus from the outset assured, and is due to the Logos being the immanent principle of the soul of man. But, of course, it was still imperfectly apprehended, and had to fight against counter-dualistic influences issuing from Neo-Platonism. It is this ideal principle of the Logos that overcomes the dualism of actual life. It makes a knowledge of the Absolute possible. It gives a rational mediation to the world process. Only through the ideal Mediator, in whom it centres, can a sinful race be ushered upon a spiritual life that is infinite. The emanational and mediational features of later Greek speculation signifi- cantly wore a quasi -personal aspect, which fact makes it the more necessary to realise the significance, in the new Christianity, of the category of personality. Of course, earlier impersonal and abstract elements could still less yield advance. So we see this importance of the Divine Word or Logos felt in theological reflection in the manner already set out from Justin onwards, so that from this time the eternal immanent self- evolution of the Logos comes into view as capable of offering resistance to Greek ideas of dualism. Sympa- thetic as men like Clement and Origen were towards Greek philosophy, it still remained to them more a propaedeutic than a dominating influence. It sought to make the moral faith of religion rational, to satisfy the intellect as religion satisfied the heart and will. In modern philosophy the Logos principle still has place, being none other than the principle of self- consciousness the principle of innermost life and consciousness or, as increasingly conceived, of living PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 6l spirit. The Logos is the immanent principle of our spiritual being. And it is the principle which makes possible to us a rational conception of the nature of absolute Being. By it absolute and relative are brought together. The Logos of God has come down to men as ideal Mediator and Redeemer of the race. The historic Logos has thus become the medium of the highest spiritual revelation to men. The Logos was the Crown of antecedent religious evolution, and, as the Divine Logos, formed the living bond of union between the first Creation and the second. We have now followed the development of the Logos doctrine from the dim apprehension of it by Heraclitus, as the reason of the world, up to its modern significance. It was this Logos doctrine of Heraclitus which the Stoics chose to make central. After them Justin Martyr is found speaking of the " Spermatic Word." This \6