n> of EDITED BY J. H. MUIRHEAD, M.A. E RDMA NN'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL. I. THE LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY. THE LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY is in the first in- stance a contribution to the History of Thought. While much has been done in England in tracing the course of evo- lution in nature, history, religion, and morality, comparatively little has been done in tracing the development of thought upon these and kindred subjects, and yet " the evolution of opinion is part of the whole evolution." This Library will deal mainly with Modern Philosophy, partly because Ancient Philosophy has already had a fair share of attention in this country through the labours of Grote, Ferrier, and others, and more recently through translations from Zeller ; partly because the Library does not profess to give a complete history of thought. By the co-operation of different writers in carrying out this plan, it is hoped that a completeness and thoroughness of treat- ment otherwise unattainable will be secured. It is believed, also, that from writers mainly English and American fuller consideration of English Philosophy than it has hitherto re- ceived from the great German Histories of Philosophy may be looked for. In the departments of Ethics, Economics, and Politics, for instance, the contributions of English writers to the common stock of theoretic discussion have been especially valuable, and these subjects will accordingly have special pro- minence in this undertaking. Another feature in the plan of the Library is its arrange- ment according to subjects rather than authors and dates, enabling the writers to follow out and exhibit in a way hitherto unattempted the results of the logical development of particular lines of thought. The historical portion of the Library is divided into two sections, of which the first contains works upon the develop- ment of particular schools of Philosophy, while the second ex- hibits the history of theory in particular departments. There will also be a third series, which will contain original and independent contributions to Philosophy. To these has been added, by way of Introduction to the whole Library, an English translation of Erdmann's " History of Philosophy," long since recognised in Germany as the best. J. H. MUIRHEAD, General Editor. SRLF URL (Jusx PUBLISHED.) INTR OP UCT10N. THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By DR. J. E. ERDMANN. English Translation. Edited by PROFESSOR W. S. HOUGH, Minneapolis, U.S.A., in 3 vols. Vol. i. and ii., each 155.; vol. iii., i2s. LIST OF WORKS IN PREPARATION. FIRST SERIES: EARLY IDEALISM : Descartes to Leibnitz. By W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., Hon. LL.D. (St. Andrew's), Fellow of New College, Oxford. GERMAN IDEALISTS : Kant to Hegel. By WM. WALLACE, M.A., WLyte Pro- fessor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford. MODERN REALISTS : Herbart, Lotze, &c. By ANDREW SETH, M.A., Pro- fessor of Logic and English Literature, University of St. Andrew's. SENSATIONALISTS : Locke to Mill. By W. S. HOUGH, Ph.M., Assistant Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, University of Minnesota, U.S.A. THE ETHICS OF IDEALISM : Kant and Hegel. By HENRY JONES, M.A., Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, University College, Bangor. THE UTILITARIANS : Hume to Contemporary Writers. By W. R. SORLEY, M. A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Professor ot Philosophy in University College, Cardiff. MORAL SENSE WRITERS : Shaftesbury to Martineau. By WILLIAM KNIGHT, M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy, St. Andrew's, N.B. PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION IN ITS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS : By JOHN WATSON, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Queen's College, Kingston, Canada. SECOND SERIES. THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY : Empirical and Rational. By ROBERT ADAMSON, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Logic and Political Economy, Owen's College, Manchester. THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. By D. G. RITCHIE, M.A., Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMICS IN THEIR HISTORICAL RELATIONS. By J. BONAR, M.A., LL.D. THE HISTORY OF ^ESTHETICS. By BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A., late Fellow of University College, Oxford. THE DEVELOPMENT OF RATIONAL THEOLOGY since Kant. By PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER, of Berlin. THIRD SERIES. THE THEORY OF ETHICS. By EDWARD CAIRD, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. EPISTEMOLOGY, OR THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. By JAMES WARD, D.Sc., LL.D., Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co., LONDON. MACMILLAN & Co., NEW YORK. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. BY JOHANN EDUARD ERDMANN, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Halle. ENGLISH TRANSLATION, EDITED BY WILLISTON S. HOUGH, Pn.M., Assistant Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in the University of Minnesota. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO, NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 1890. BUTLER & TANNER, THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS, FKOME, AND LONDON. EDITOR'S PREFACE. THE present translation of Erdmann's Grundriss der Ge- schichte der Philosophic has been made from the third and last edition (Berlin, 1878), and executed by different hands, as follows: The Ancient Philosophy (vol. i., pp. 1-222), by Mr. Canning Schiller, B.A., late Exhibitioner of Baliol Col- lege, Oxford ; The Patristic and Scholastic periods of Medi- aeval Philosophy (vol. i., pp. 225-542), by the Rev. Arthur C. McGiffert, Ph.D., of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincin- nati ; The Period of Transition of Mediaeval Philosophy (vol. i., pp. 543-723), by the Rev. Andrew Rutherford, M.A., of Dundee ; Modern Philosophy down to Kant (vol. ii., pp. 1-358), by Mr. George Macdonald, M.A., Master in Kel- vinside Academy, Glasgow ; Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel's death (vol. ii., pp. 359-707), by Mr. B. C. Burt, M.A., formerly Fellow of Johji Hopkins' University, Balti- more ; German Philosophy since Hegel's death (vol. iii., pp. 1-330), by the Rev. E. B. Spiers, M.A., of Glendevon, Dollar. The Editor has revised and is responsible for the entire translation. But the rendering given to technical terms and phrases, and the literary form of the whole, are more par- ticularly his work, while the general phraseology is, in the main, the unaltered work of the several translators. For the translation of the Author's prefaces, the tables of contents and the indexes, the Editor is alone responsible. The attention of the reader is directed to what the Author says in his prefaces which have been reprinted largely on that account in explanation of two characteristics of his work the relatively full treatment of the Middle Ages, and the principle on which the bibliography has been given. Con- cerning the latter, no attempt has been made to supplement the Author's citations, in order to furnish something approach- ing a systematic and complete bibliography. In some re- spects, such a plan undoubtedly would have been desirable ; but on the whole it seemed better to preserve the Author's Vlll EDITORS PREFACE. principle intact. As it stands, the literature given has a special significance in reference to the exposition ; and it is believed that all scholars will appreciate the fact that ex- traneous additions have not been made. The Editor has sought, however, to add information about all works cited as in progress at the time of publication. For obvious reasons of convenience, it has been thought advisable to publish the very lengthy " Appendix " to vol. ii. as a third volume. But in consideration of the fact that the Author does not regard this part of his work as strictly con- tinuous with the whole (as is explained in vol. ii., 330, 2), the designation of "Appendix" has been retained, although it now forms a separate volume. Dr. Erdmann's statements about the history of the " Appendix " are of course to be found in his prefaces to vol. ii. As this account of the German philosophy of this century is the only one of note extant, it is believed that it will be very welcome, notwith- standing the Author's conviction that he has here supplied, not a history, but only a contribution of material towards a history. The Editor has undertaken to bring the necrology of this part down to date, and to add the important works of Lotze and Eduard von Hartmann that have appeared since its publication. He has also supplied vol. iii. with a General Index to the entire work. In conclusion, the Editor desires to acknowledge his in- debtedness to Professor J. H. Muirhead, M.A., of London, for reading the sheets on Plato and Aristotle, and for correct- ing the second proof of the entire third volume after page 96 ; to Miss Arlisle M. Young, B.A., for assistance with portions of the proof; and to many others whom he cannot mention by name for information and assistance of the most varied kind. As manifestly more appropriate to the English version in three volumes, it has been decided to omit the designation of "Outlines" from the title-page, although the work is re- ferred to by that name in the Author's prefaces and in the text, particularly of the third volume. It should perhaps be added that Professor Erdmann gave his ready assent to the translation of his work, and has kindly communicated with the Editor on any points of unusual difficulty. W. S. H. PREFACE TO VOLUME FIRST. A FEW words respecting the origin of these Oittlines may perhaps prevent them from receiving unwarranted criticisms in addition to the numerous ones which will doubtless be deserved. As it seems to me that Schleiermacher's remark, " A pro- fessor who dictates sentences for his students to take down, in reality claims for himself the privilege of ignoring the dis- covery of printing," although likely to be forgotten by many, is in danger of being discredited by no one, I have, where it appeared desirable that my students should carry home notes approved, not only by them but by me, had Outlines printed for my lectures. But I thought such outlines unneces- sary for the History of Philosophy. For a long time, in answer to the oft-recurring question, what compend I pre- ferred, I was able to recommend only Reinhold's, much as his book leaves to be desired, since Tennemann's Manual was out of print, Marbuch's seemed never likely to be completed, and, finally, Ueberweg's learned work was not yet expected. As I saw, however, that (what would have horrified the author himself) Schwegler's Outline, and at length even pitiable imi- tations of this cursory work, were the only sources from which students, especially those preparing for examinations, gained their knowledge, I attempted to sketch an Outline which should give my students in concise form what I had said in my lectures, and which at the same time should indi- cate throughout where the materials for a more thorough study were to be found. For Ancient Philosophy, inasmuch as we possess the excellent works by Brandis and Zeller, and the valued collection of citations by Ritter and Preller, this method could be followed, as indeed it likewise could for the Gnostics X PREFACE TO VOLUME FIRST. and Church Fathers ; and hence the first fifteen sheets of these Outlines contain only in very few parts more extended expositions than I was accustomed to give in my lectures. Had I been able to follow this plan to the end of the work, the further designation " For Lectures " would have been added to the title of " Outlines," and it would have appeared in one volume instead of in two. That, however, this would not be possible, was clear to me as soon as I came to the treatment of the Schoolmen. However great my respect for the labours of Tiedemann on the earlier Schoolmen, and of H. Ritter and Haureau on the later ; however much, further, I am indebted to monographs upon individual Schoolmen ; with whatever appreciation and wonder, finally, I regard the gigantic labour which Prantl undertook in behalf of the Mediaeval Logic, I nevertheless found so much in the philosophers since the ninth century, of which the existing expositions of their doc- trines said nothing, and I saw myself so often obliged to deviate from the traditional order and arrangement, that, espe- cially as I desired in this book to keep myself free from all controversy, I regarded greater fulness essential to the establishment of my views. The introduction of citations into the text of this part was furthermore obligatory, since we do not possess a chrestomathy of Mediaeval Philosophy, such as Ritter and Preller have prepared for the Ancient. The limitation " For Lectures" had to be omitted ; for I am able to compress only a very condensed summary of what the last twenty-four sheets of this volume contain into the few weeks which I can devote to the Middle Ages in my lectures. On ac- count of the difference of character which thus falls to the first and to the two other thirds of this volume, it has come about (what may strike many readers as strange), that Mediaeval Philosophy here occupies more than twice the space devoted to the Ancient. Whoever would make out of this a charge of disproportion, and refer me to many of the recent expositions of the history of philosophy as models worthy of imitation, should first consider that where Brandis, Zeller, and others, had PREFACE TO VOLUME FIRST. XI convinced me of the correctness of their views, I naturally did not need to introduce also the reasons for them. On the contrary, every assertion of mine which conflicted with the customary view had to be substantiated. In the second place, however, I wish to say, that I am not moved to imitate the example of those who begin by asserting that the Middle Ages brought forth no healthy thoughts, and then proceed to give themselves no further trouble about them, except perhaps to relate some curiosity or other from Tennemann, in order after all to say something. It may be a very antiquated notion, but I hold it to be better, not to speak of the dogmatism of proceeding otherwise, first to study the doctrines of these men, and then to ask whether they, who among other things have given us our entire philo- sophical terminology, are to be counted as nothing. I know very well that what we have ourselves produced, and not learned from another, is wont on that account to seem more important to us than to others, perhaps indeed than it is ; and so I will not dispute with my critic who would bring the charge, perhaps, that because I myself was obliged to pore so long over Raymond Lully, I now burden my reader with such a lengthy description of his famous Art. But I shall be ready to declare this exhaustiveness to be wholly useless only when the critic tells me that he (more fortunate than I) has been able easily to gather from the previous expositions of Lully's doctrines how it happened that Lully's disciples at one time nearly equalled in number the followers of Thomas Aquinas, that Giordano Bruno became enthusiastic over him, that Leibnitz had such a high opinion of him and got so much from him, etc. What I mean to say, is this : To the reproach of disproportion, I answer by way of apology, that where I only said what was to be found elsewhere, I could be brief ; but where I differed from others, I was obliged to be explicit. J. E. ERDMANN. HALLE, 1865. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. INASMUCH as the Preface to the first edition fixes the point of view from which I desire that this work should be judged and it is on that account that I have had it reprinted it only remains here to speak of the points wherein this second edition differs from the first. With the single exception that the earlier exposition of Weigel's doctrines was exchanged for quite another (partly because I took into consideration Sebastian Franck, omitted before, but also for other reasons), I have altered nothing, but only made additions. A some- what larger size nevertheless made it possible to meet the wish of the publishers not to increase the number of sheets. I was brought to make most of these additions by various reviews, of which my book has received a gratifying num- ber, among them undeservedly laudatory ones. Most of my critics will find that I have followed their suggestions. Where that is not the case, let them not at once suppose that their suggestions passed unheeded. When, however, the grounds given in my book for separating Anaxagoras from the earlier philosophers are only met with the question whether this is really necessary, when my separation of Neo-Platonism from ancient philosophy, supported by reasons, is treated as an un- heard-of innovation, although Marbuch in his Text-book, and Brandis in his Lectures, as I know from his own lips, have made precisely the same division, when, finally, my pointing out that the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and those of Duns Scotus form different phases of scholasticism, meets only with the peremptory assertion that both stand upon the same level (to be sure, with the immediately added declaration that Duns is related to Thomas as Kant is to Leibnitz), I am only able, inasmuch as once for all I will not enter into contro- versy, to pass over such unsubstantiated, or self-destroying criticisms in silence. Other suggestions I should perhaps PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xiii have followed, had not those who gave them made it them- selves impossible. Thus, an anonymous critic in the Allg. Augsb. Zeit., whom one cannot otherwise charge with not being perfectly explicit, has omitted to indicate the passages where my book seeks to force applause by " exits from the stage," and thus deprived me of the opportunity of proving to him by expunging the same, that a ranting actor is at least as offensive to me as to him. It was not through criticisms that the alteration was occa- sioned by which the second edition contains a considerable amount of bibliography wanting in the first. This has not been added in order to make my work into a serviceable re- ference book ; even w r ere I prepared to write such a work, I should certainly have forborne doing so now that we possess such a good one in Ueberweg's Outlines. But what I had declared in the Preface to the first edition as my purpose : at every point to indicate where advice and instruction for a pro- founder acquaintance with any philosopher was to be found, was not adequately executed, so long as the titles of books were unmentioned from which I myself had gathered infor- mation, and which I thus knew from experience to contain it. The list of these has been completed, and in addition those books are indicated which I have read with profit since the appearance of the first edition. The limitation solely to such books as have been of value to myself, rests upon a wholly subjective principle, and must result in a great disproportion in the literature given. But if I had abandoned this method, my book would have lost its character, and therewith its chief, perhaps only, worth. My entire work, indeed, is based upon a principle which on my behalf may be called a subjective one, and shows, just as the bibliography it contains, no proportion whatever in its several parts. Had my exposition of the history of philosophy sought to be like the great panoramas which one surveys by following round a circular gallery, and hence by constantly changing the point of view, but which, precisely on that ac- XIV PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. count, can be executed only by several artists working upon them at the same time, I should have looked about me for coadjutors, and should have followed the example shown by famous works of the day in pathology and therapeutics. This, however, since I belong to the old school, I would not do, but adopted as my model, not the painter of a panorama, but the landscape painter, who delineates a scene as it appears from a single, unalterably fixed point of view. Be it, now, that the subject chosen was too large for me ; be it that I did not set about the work soon enough ; be it that I did not apply myself to it assiduously enough ; be it, finally, that all these causes were combined together, no one knows better than I, that what I have exhibited before the world is no painting on which the artist has put the finishing touches. Let it there- fore be regarded as a sketch in which only certain parts have been executed in detail, namely those in which light and colour effects never to recur were involved ; while other por- tions have remained in sketch-like touches, since here the work could be completed at leisure in the studio, after earlier studies or the paintings of others. To drop the figure I have sought before everything so to represent such systems as have been treated in a step-motherly fashion by others, that a complete view of them might be obtained, and perhaps the desire aroused to know them better. And this because, in particu- lar, my chief aim has after all always been to show that, not chance and planlessness, but strict coherence, rules the history of philosophy. For this end, however, philosophers not of the first rank (just as for Zoology, the Amphibians, and other intermediate species) are often almost more important than the greatest. More than all else, however, this my aim de- mands an unswerving adherence to a single point of view. Since this cannot be occupied by two at the same time, I might treat in my exposition only of what I myself had, if not discovered, then at any rate seen. The gratifying con- sciousness that I have not deviated from this singleness of view will be felt, if I mistake not, by the attentive reader. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XV This open, I might almost say innocent, character would have lost its physiognomy, or only been able to assume it again artificially, if I had copied from others without verification, even were it only in the matter of the iron inventory of the customary bibliography. " If I mistake not," I said. With- out this reservation I declare that now, but only now, I am certain, that everything that I have made an author say, often perhaps through a misinterpretation, the possibility of which I of course do not deny, has nevertheless always been found in him with my own eyes. In the case of many a remark, it would now be very difficult for me to find among my excerpts the passage where it stands ; in the case of others, it would be impossible without indeed reading through the entire author, as the exposition was made direct from the text without ex- tracts. Now, however, I am in the fortunate position of one who, when a promissory note is presented to him written in his own hand, dated at his place of residence, without referring to his diary to convince himself that he was not at home on that day, refuses acceptance, because he never gives promissory notes. It is unpleasant for any one when his critic exclaims : " What thou assertest is said, is nowhere to be found," and so, where I feared that, I have given citations ; and I am accustomed, when this fate nevertheless befalls me, to search first among my extracts, then in the books themselves from which the extracts were taken, to see whether I cannot find a quotation. If I do not find it, I relinquish the pleasure of having convinced my critics. For myself, the matter no longer disquiets me, which, did I otherwise, might give me a sleepless night. This my certainty, resting upon subjective ground, I cannot of course communicate to others ; and they will, where they find assertions without citations, consult other expositions. So much the better ; for, as I have no love for the homines unius libri, I have not wished by my book to in- crease their number. J. E. ERDMANN. HALLE, 1869. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. SINCE on the appearance of a new edition of a book it is usually important for the reviewer, often also for the reader, speedily to ascertain the deviations from the last edition, I give the additions which have enriched or otherwise altered the present work. I shall confine myself, of course, to the more extended ones. For although the result of the reading of an entire work has been frequently condensed into a few short sen- tences, I nevertheless would not venture to call attention to these cases, as I will not offer the reading public the history of my " Outlines," instead of my " Outlines of History." Accord- ingly, I note first that in 113, instead of the mere mention of the name, Hermes Trismegistus has received a full exposi- tion. As I am unfortunately unacquainted with Arabic, the reference of his Holiness, the Bishop of Speyer, in a letter to me of the 8th November, 1873, to the "Youthful editor of the Arabic Trismegistus," remained unnoticed. I can only concur in the wish of his Reverence, expressed in the same letter, that some one would edit, together with Hermes, the Theologia Aristotelis and the Liber de causis. The additions in 135 on the Latin Apologists, are at the same time an ex- pression of indebtedness to Ebert for the information which his excellent book on the Christian Latin Literature affords. 147 is designed to bring Isidore of Seville, previously only mentioned by name, to merited recognition ; likewise 155, at Prantl's suggestion, William of Hirschau. In 182, the previously unmentioned Theologia Aristotelis is noticed. Averroes occasioned me the greatest trouble in the entirely PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. XV'ii rewritten 187, about whose doctrines I believe I have said some things hitherto nowhere to be found. In the following sections Joel's thorough investigations have occasioned addi- tions, as likewise in 237 has Fr. Schultze's Philosophie der Renaissance. 232, which treats of the German Reformation and its influence on philosophy, is wanting in the earlier editions. In accordance with my previously-mentioned plan, I have added the titles of books from which I have learnt anvthino- * O worthy of note. On the other hand, it seemed to me, inas- much as I state exactly where all the citations are to be found in Ritter and Preller, and in Mullach, a waste of space should I particularly specify some of them besides. So I have struck out the references of the earlier editions. What I have fur- ther to say to the reader, he will find, be he so disposed, in the prefaces to the earlier editions, which for that reason I have had reprinted. J. E. ERDMANN. HALLE, 1876. VOL. I. CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST. PAGE INTRODUCTION, 1-14 i PART FIRST. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTION, 15. . . . . . . . . . 13 SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES, 16. . . . . . . 14 FIRST PERIOD. IMMATURITY ........ 17 I. The Pure Physiologers, 21-27 . 18 A. Thales, 22. . . . . . . . . 19 B. Anaximander, 24 ....... 20 C. Anaximenes, 26 . . . . . . . . 23 D. Diogenes of Apollonia, 28 . . . . . 24 II. The Pure Metaphysicians, 30-41 . . . . . 27 A. The Pythagoreans, 31-33 . .... 28 B. The Eleatics, 34-41 ....... 38 a. Xenophanes, 34 . . . . . . . 38 b. Parmenides, 36 ... ... 40 f. Melissus, 38 . 43 d. Zeno ; 40 . . . . . . . 44 III. The Metaphysical Physiologers, 42-48 .... A. Heraclitus, 43 B. Empedocles, 45 . C. The Atomists, 47 SECOND PERIOD. THE ATTIC PHILOSOPHY ..... 63 I. Anaxagoras, 52 . . . . . . . . . 65 II. The Sophists, 54-62 ........ 69 III. Socrates, 63-66 ... .... 78 IV. The Socratic Schools, 67-73 ...... 86 V. Plato, 74-82 . . . 95 VI. Aristotle, 83-91 . . . . . . . .130 CONTENTS. XIX I'AUE THIRD PERIOD. DECAY 179 I. The Dogmatists, 95-98 181 II. The Sceptics, 99-104 193 III. The Syncretists, 105-114 .... . 200 CONCLUSION. Siis . . . .221 PART SECOND. MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTION, 116-120 . . . 225 FIRST PERIOD. PATRISTICS . I. The Gnostics, 122-125 . 230 II. The Neo-Platonists, 126-130 . . 235 III. The Church Fathers . 253 SECOND PERIOD. SCHOLASTICISM . 1. The Rise of Scholasticism, 152-177 . A. Scholasticism as a Fusion of Religion and Reason, 154-162 . B. Scholasticism as Mere Rational Science, 163-164 . 327 C. Scholasticism as Mere Religious Science, 165-173 . 33' II. Scholasticism at its Height, 178-209 A. Mohammedans and Jews, 181-190 B. Christian Aristotelians, 191-208 a. Alexander, 195 . b. Bonaventura, 197 c. Albert, 199-202 . d. Thomas and the Thomists, 203, 204 . e. Lully, 206 . / Dante, 208 III. The Decay of Scholasticism, 210-225 a. Roger Bacon, 212 b. Duns Scotus, 214 c. Occam, 216 d. Pierre d'Ailly, 219 e. Gerson, 220 / Raymond of Sabunde, 222 . o; Nicolaus of Cusa, 224 XX CONTENTS. PAGE THIRD PERIOD. TRANSITION 543 I. Philosophy as Divine Wisdom, 229 234 .... 547 A. Speculative Mysticism, 230 . . . . . . 548 B. Practical Mysticism, 231. . . . . . 556 C. Theosophical Mysticism, 234 . . . . .578 II. Philosophy as Secular Wisdom, 235-256 .... 595 A. The Renaissance, 236-239 ..... 595 B. The Natural Philosophers, 241-250 .... 612 a. Paracelsus, 241 . . . . . .612 b. Cardanus, 242 . . ... 624 c. Telesius, 243 ... . 630 d. Patritius, 244 . . . . . 634 e. Campanella, 246. ...... 639 / Bruno, 247 . . . . . . . .652 g. Bacon, 249 ........ 668 C. The Political Philosophers, 251-256 .... 684 a. Ecclesiastical Political Philosophers, 252 . . 685 b. Anti-ecclesiastical Political Philosophy, 253 . . 689 c. Non-ecclesiastical Political Philosophy, 255 . . 694 d. Naturalistic Political Philosophy, Hobbes, 256 . 706 CONCLUSION. 257 721 ERRATA. Vol. I. p. 181, line 16 from above : for Stoics read Cynics. Vol. II. p. 96, line 1 1 from above : insert not after arc. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTION. IF the History of Philosophy admitted of no other modes of treatment than either the simply learned, which regards all systems as equally true, as being alike mere opinions ; or the sceptical, which sees equal error in all ; or lastly, the eclectic, which discovers fragments of the truth in all, we should have to agree that those are right who, in the interests of philo- sophy warn all, or at least beginners, against studying its history. But whether a better method exists, and which is the right one, can only be decided by a consideration of the conception of a history of philosophy. Philosophy arises when, not content with the facts of exist- ence (that is, of the world), men proceed to the inquiry into their reasons, and ultimately into their unconditioned reason, i.e. their necessity or rationality. It is not, however, on this account, merely the work of an individual thinker ; rather, there are laid down in it the practical and theoretical convic- tions of mankind, just as the wisdom and the experience of individuals is laid down in their maxims and principles, and that of nations in their proverbs and laws. Just as a people or a country utters its wisdom and its will through the mouth of its sages and lawgivers, so the world-spirit (i.e. collective humanity) utters its (or the world its) wisdom and its will through the philosophers. If, therefore, we substitute " world- wisdom " for philosophy, " the world " here stands as at once the subjective and objective genitive. VOL. i. B HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. [3,4,5. And just as the individual passes through the various stages of life without detriment to his unity, so the world-spirit is in succession the spirit of the various times and centuries. Man in the eighteenth century is not the same as in the seven- teenth. If by the same substitution by which we say " world " instead of " world-spirit," we say " times " instead of " spirit of the age," and " century " instead of " spirit of the century," then every time has its own wisdom, every century its own philosophy. And those who are the first to utter it, are the philosophers of these various times. They have the true knowledge of their time, and the philosophy, in which the time arrives at knowledge of itself, does nothing but formulate the unconscious life, the instinctive tendencies of that time, and utter its secret, utter what " one " feels to be true and right. This dependence upon a particular time, into which every philosophy is driven by the fact that it is final truth only for that time, impairs its absoluteness just as little as duty ceases to be unconditional because duties are different at different times of life. Nor does duty thereby become transitory ; for the boy's function of obedience is preserved in the man who learnt by obedience to command in the form of having obeyed. Moreover, since philosophy ever follows like the fruit upon the flower of an age, it has often appeared to be as the cause of a decay, which, however, it never calls forth, but only betrays. In particular, it is not philosophy that destroys naive piety, but rather this must have ceased before philosophic move- ments can appear. Just as the world-spirit passes through the different spirits of the ages that make up the history of the world, so its con- sciousness, the wisdom of the world, passes through the dif- ferent consciousnesses of the times, and it is just in this that the history of philosophy consists. In the one case, as in the other, there is nothing lost ; but the results of one age and one philosophy afford the material and the starting-point for 6, 7, 8.] INTRODUCTION. their successors. Hence the distinctness and even the conflict of philosophic systems is no disproof of the assertion that all systems of philosophy are only the development of a single philosophy, but rather speaks in favour of this same assertion. 6. Every philosophic system is the outcome of that or those put forward before it, and contains the germs of its successor. The first part of this assertion is not overthrown by exceptions in the shape of philosophers apparently, and as a rule only apparently, self-taught, nor by the fact that such intellectual descent is generally protested against ; for the connection need not be one of direct discipleship, and opposition also is a form of dependence. Just as little is the second disposed of by the fact that no philosopher wishes to be the father of the system which goes beyond him. That this should be so is inevitable by reason of the limitations, without which nothing great is achieved, and without which, therefore, no system is con- structed. This phenomenon therefore recurs everywhere ; but it proves nothing, because the full and proper significance of a system cannot be rightly appreciated by its founder, but only by posterity, which in this respect also stands on a higher eminence than the former. S 7- The history of philosophy can be represented rightly, i.e. in its true nature, only with the help of philosophy, since it alone enables us to trace in the sequence of systems, not random change, but progress, i.e. necessity, and since also it is impossible, without a consciousness of the course of the human spirit, to show what has been the course of its wisdom, and the recognition of such necessity and such consciousness is, as we saw in 2, philosophy. The objection that a philosophic representation of the history of philosophy must not be called history, but rather philosophy of the history of philosophy, is distinguished neither by its novelty nor by its insight ; it forgets that even an unphilosophic representation is not the history itself, but only a representation of the history. 8. A philosophic treatment of the history of philosophy takes 4 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. [ 9, 10 an interest like the merely learned, in the finest differences of systems, admits, with the sceptics, that they conflict with one another, and concedes to the eclectics that there is truth in all. Hence it neither loses sight of the thread of growing know- ledge, like the first, nor regards the result as nil, like the second, nor, like the third, recognises in every system only pieces of developed truth, but the whole truth only in an un- developed form. And thus it does not, like the first, beguile us into regarding philosophic doctrines as mere fancies and opinions, nor does it, like the second, shake the confidence in reason necessary to philosophy, nor lastly does it, like the eclectic method, make us indifferent towards dependence on a principle, i.e. towards systematic form. And this method not only avoids these dangers to philo- sophy, but, by teaching us to philosophize about the history of philosophy, it is so far from seducing us from philosophic activity, that it is even a practical introduction to it. And indeed, where the interest in philosophy has given way to that in its history, and especially where a shrinking from strictly philosophic, i.e. metaphysical, inquiries manifests itself, a philosophic representation of the history of philosophy is per- haps the best means to induce those who merely wish to hear the tale, to join in philosophizing, and to show to those who doubt the importance of metaphysical definitions, how utterly different views of the world and of life often depended only on the difference of a couple of categories. In some circum- stances, the history of philosophy, though in the system of science it forms the conclusion, may be the subject of which the study is to be recommended most of all to beginners. 10. Since every attempt at philosophy must have a definite character, and it is impossible to represent a development as rational unless it leads up to some end, every philosophic re- presentation of the history of philosophy must be coloured by the philosophy which the author regards as the completion of the previous development. To require the contrary of this under the name of dispassionateness and impartiality is to make a preposterous demand. It is true that fairness must be H,I2.J INTRODUCTION. required of every historian, and it is the duty also of the philo- sophic historian. And if, in the case of the former, fairness consists in his narrating, not how he himself, but how history has judged this or that phenomenon, it is the duty of the lattef to display the rationality of this judgment, i.e. to justify it. And in that alone does the criticism consist which he not only may, but should apply. ii. Philosophic criticism, then, must display the necessity, both of the appearance of a philosophic system in history, and of its supersession by another which went beyond it, and there must therefore be distinguished in it a positive and a negative element. Now this necessity is twofold : the appearing and the superseding of a system is necessary to the history of the world, in that the former was conditioned by the character of the time of which the system was the right understanding, and the latter, again, in that the time changed (vid. 4). And again the necessity, in the history of philosophy, of each of these processes is exhibited, when there is shown in a system the conclusion to which previous systems formed the premises, and on the other hand, that it was necessary to advance in order not to stand still half-way. Hence we can note it as a defect of a system only if it fails to go on to what follows imme- diately from it, but we must not take, as the standard, whereby to judge it, a system separated from it by intermediate stages. And just as history has corrected Cartesianism by Spinozism, but not by the Kantian doctrine, so it is only by Spinoza and not by Kant that the philosophic critic may estimate Descartes. The observance of this rule secures a philosophic historian of philosophy against committing himself to a single system in a narrow-minded way, without requiring him to disavow his own. 12. The epochs of the history of philosophy, i.e. the points at which a new principle is asserted, as well as the periods which they dominate, the spaces of time required to set free the new doctrine from its revolutionary and despotic character, run parallel to the epochs and periods of the world's history, but in such a way that they succeed them at a greater or less dis- tance, but never precede them. Epoch-making systems them- 6 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. [ 13. selves can have no appreciative understanding for the past, which, however, will be shown all the more by those that conclude a period. Hence the adherents of the former type of philosophy will, in their treatment of its history, run greater danger than those of the latter of disregarding historical justice. 13. LITERATURE, Until the end of the i8th century all expositions of the history of philosophy only sought to satisfy the interest of the learned, 1 of sceptics, 2 or of eclectics. 3 After that there is not one that is not coloured more or less by philosophy. And in most cases we must censure not so much that each author regards his own system as the conclusion of the previous development, as that his views are continually making themselves heard before the narrative has reached its end. This holds good already of the first writer who regards the history of philosophy from a philosophic point of view, viz. the Frenchman Degerando. 4 And the Germans who followed his example can just as little be acquitted of his fault. Kant, who himself had left only hints as to how the history of philosophy was to be philosophi- cally treated, left the development of his idea to his disciples. But his system was too much of an epoch-making one to be able to lead to a just estimation of the past. Hence, in the historians of the Kantian school, the comparison, censured above in n, of even the oldest systems, with doctrines that could only be propounded in the i8th century a procedure which so 1 Stanley: History of Philosophy ; 1655, 2nd ed. 1687 : also as : Historia philosophica auctore Thoma Stanlejo. Lips., 1712. 2 vols. small fol. 2 P. Bayle : Dictionnaire historique et critique. 1695-97, 2 vols.; 1702, 2 vols. ; 1740, 4 vols. fol. The sceptical tendency less pronounced in Dietrich Tiedemann : Geist der speculat. Philosophic. Marburg, 1791-97, 6 vols. 8vo. 3 J. J. Brucker : Historia critica philosophic a mundi incnnabulis. Lips., 1766. 6 vols. 4to. J. G. Buhle's : Lelirbuch der GescJiicJite der Philosophic imd kritische Literatur derselben; Gottingen, 1796-1804, 8 Pts. 8vo, is also eclectic. 4 J. M. Degerando : Plistoire compares de Vhistoire de la Philosophic. Paris, 1804, 3 vols. 2nd ed. 1822, 4 vols. In German as : V ergleichende Gcschichte^ der Systeme der Philosophic mit Riicksicht auf die Grundsatze der menschlichen Erkenntniss, iibers. Ton IV. G. Tennemann. Marburg, 1806. 2 vols. Svo. (The Anglo-French empiricism and sensualism is taken as the standard of judgment.) I3-] INTRODUCTION. disfigures the otherwise valuable works of Tennemann. 1 Fichte's doctrine could neither rule long nor stimulate to historical studies ; and thus it had at the most this result for the treatment of history, that the canon was established even more firmly than in Kant, that progress consisted in the com- pensation of one-sided oppositions. Far more lasting was the effect of Schelling's philosophy ; 2 what could alone be re- gretted was, that the individual differences of the subject- matter were obliterated by the ready-made scheme applied to it. The peculiar views on the history of philosophy, and of ancient philosophy in particular, which Schleiermacher de- veloped in his lectures, had already long been made known to the reading public through others, 3 when they were published after his death. 4 To some extent this was also the case with Hegel, with whose way of regarding isolated portions of the history of philosophy and of its course, disciples 6 and readers of his works 6 familiarized the world, long before his lectures on the history of philosophy 7 were placed before it. The greater part, however, of the historical works proceeding from the Hegelian school treat only of isolated periods, although some 8 also attempt to narrate the history of philosophy as a whole. Connected with these are the surveys attempted from 1 W. G. Tennemann: Geschichte der Philosophic. Leipzig, 1794, 12 vols. (unfinished). The same : Grundriss der Philosophic, 1812. 5th ed. by Wendt, 1829. (Distinguished by its copious bibliography. Often translated.) ~ J. G. Steck : die Geschichte der Philosophic. Part I. Riga, 1805. F. Ast : Grundriss einer Geschichte der Philosophic. Landshut, 1807, 2nd ed., 1825. T. A. Rixner : Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic. 3 vols. Sulzbach, 1822. A supplementary 4th vol. to the 2nd ed. in 1850, by V. P., Gumposch. 3 E.g. in H. Ritter's Geschichte der ionischen Philosophie. Berlin, 1821. 4 F. Schleiermacher : Geschichte der Philosophie, edited by H. Ritter. Berlin, 1839. (Schleiermacher's works, 3rd Div., 4th vol., ist part.) 5 As Rotscher, in his : Aristophanes und sein Zeitalter, 1827, where Hegel's views about Socrates are developed. 6 Windischmann : Kritische Betrachtungen iiber die Schicksale der Philosophie in der neueren Zeit, etc. Frankfurt a. M., 1825, The same : Die Philosophie im Fortgange der Weltgeschichte. Bonn, 1827. Part I. ; the principles of philo- sophy in the East. Book I., China; Book II., India. 7 G. W. Hegel's : Vorlesungen iiber Geschichte der Philosophie, edited by Michelet (Works : vols. 13-15). Berlin, 1833. 8 G. O. Marbach : Lehrlntch des Geschichte der Philosophie (Part I. Anti- quity, II. Middle Ages, III. [wanting]). Leipsic, 1838-41. A. Schwegler : Geschichte der Philosophie im Umriss. Stuttgart, 1848. i4th ed., 1887. 8 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. [ J 4- different but yet kindred points of view. 1 Speculative eclec- ticism has greatly increased the interest in historical works both in France, 2 and also in Germany ; and we owe to it accounts of the development both of philosophy as a whole 3 and of separate philosophic problems, 4 in which the effect of the ideas of Schelling and Hegel is perceptible. From their influence not even those have been able wholly to withdraw themselves, who in their account take up a different position, more akin to that of Kant, or quite peculiar to themselves, 5 or protest against every philosophic treatment of history as an a priori construction. 6 Just as the history of the world is divided into three main periods by the entrance of Christianity and the Reformation, so in the history of philosophy, on the one hand those systems 1 C. J. Braniss : Uebersicht des Entwickelungsganges der Philosophic in der alien ttnd mittleren Zeit. Breslau, 1842. 2 V. Cousin : Cours de philosophic (Introduction). Paris, 1828. The same: Cours de rhistoire de philosophic, land II. Paris, 1829. The same : Histoire generate de la philosophic. Paris, 1863. ythed., 1867. 3 H. C. W. Sigwart : Geschichtc der Philosophic vom allgemeinen wissen- schaftlichen und geschichtlichen Standpunkt. Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1884. 3 vols. 4 A. Trendelenburg : Geschichte der Kategorienlehre. Berlin, 1846. 5 E. Reinhold : Handbuch der allgemeinen Geschichte der Philosophic fur alle wissenschaftlich Gebildete. Gotha, 1828-30, 3 vols. The same : Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic, 1837 (5th ed., 1858 in 3 vols). J. J. Fries : die Geschichte der Philosophic, dargestellt nac/i den Fortscliritten ihrer Entwickelung. Halle, 1837-40. 2 vols. F. Michelis : Geschichte der Philosophic von 7 hales bis auf unsere Zeit. Braunsberg, 1865. C. Hermann: Geschichte der Philoso- phic in pragmatischer Behandlung. Leipz., 1867. E. Diihring : Kritischc Geschichte der Philosophic von ihren Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin, 1869. 2nd ed., 1873. 6 H. Ritter : Geschichte der Philosophic. Hamburg, 1829, 12 vols. (I. -IV., Ancient Philosophy, V.-XII. Christian, V. and VII. Patristic, VII. and VIII. Scholastic, IX.-XII. Modern, extending only as far as Kant, excl. ; a further narrative did not form part of the author's plan.) F. Ueberweg : Grnndriss der Geschichte der Philosophic von TJiales bis auf die Gegenwart. Part I. (Antiquity). Berlin, 1863. 5th ed., 1876. Part II., Div. i and 2 (Patristic and Scholastic times), 5th ed., 1876. Part III. (Modern Times), 1866. 4th ed., 1874. [Parts I. and II. of Ueberweg's History appeared in a 7th ed. in 1886; Part III., 7th ed., has just appeared (1888). English Trans, from the 4th ed., 2 vols. New York and London. -En.] A. Stockl : Lelirbuch der GescliicJite der Philosophic. Mainz, 1870. G. H. Lewes : History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte, 4th ed. X 4-] INTRODUCTION. which have arisen as yet wholly uninfluenced by Christian ideas, and on the other,, those which developed under the influence of the ideas called forth by the Reformation, stand apart from the intermediate systems, because of them neither of these assertions holds good. These three main periods we shall denominate the Ancient, the Mediaeval, and the Modern. PART FIRST. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTION. IS- THE task of apprehending its own nature in thought can only tempt the human mind, and indeed it is only then equal to it, when it is conscious of its intrinsic dignity. And as in the East, except among the Jews, this point is not reached, we must not be induced to talk of a pre-Hellenic philosophy, or worse still, of pre-Hellenic systems, either by the rules of propriety and external decorum enunciated by the Chinese sages, 1 or by the pantheistic and atheistic doctrines which the Indian spirit attains in the Mimansa, and in Kapila's teaching in the Sankhya, or by the intellectual exercises to which it rises in the Nyaja, 2 or finally by the confused semi-religious and semi-physical doctrines of the ancient Persians 3 and of Egypt. 4 For, since it is the Greek ear that first catches the Qi. creavrov, philosophizing, i.e., the attempt to comprehend the nature of the human mind, in Western or at least in Greek parlance, is called thinking ; and the history of philosophy begins with the philosophy of the Greeks. 1 Windischmann's, Schmidt's, and other idealizing panegyrics on Chinese wisdom have been successfully opposed, especially by Stuhr. 2 The reports of Colebrooke, Balentyne, Roer, and Max Miiller supply the data of an estimate which avoids the extremes of the earlier adoration and the subsequent contempt. 3 The fancies of Rohde and others have long been forgotten, and the later origin of many of the doctrines of the Zendavesta has been proved. 4 Aristotle, though he calls the Egyptian priests the first philosophers, is yet unable to mention any philosophic doctrine of theirs. Roth, who more recently has been foremost in insisting on the Egyptian origin of all philo- sophy, nevertheless throughout calls their doctrine a faith, and himself denies the scientific importance of Pherecydes, whom he asserts to have deviated least from it. 14 ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 16. 16. SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES. As the whole or the greater part of the writings of the older Greek philosophers have been lost, we are compelled to draw upon the accounts of those to whom they were still accessible. And although historical works on individual philosophers were composed even before the time of Socrates, and since his time there has been no school that failed to produce several such works, and hardly one from which there have not issued treatises on the different tendencies of philo- sophy, this avails us but little, as the majority of these works, a list of the authors and titles of which has been compiled by Jonsius l and Fabricius 2 with unwearying industry, have also been lost. For us the oldest authorities are Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, all of whom only quote the opinions of others by the way, in order to develop their own, and from whom therefore we can hardly expect fidelity, and much less require completeness. Were the treatise of Plutarch on the doctrines of the philosophers 3 really genuine, it would certainly be the oldest account we possess of the different systems. But it has now been shown that it is only an excerpt from the genuine work of Plutarch, which Stobaeus 4 still had before him, and from which he made extracts. Thus the nearly contemporaneous works of Sextus Empiricus 5 and Diogenes Laertius 6 may perhaps be older than this work of 1 Joannis Jonsii Holsati : De scriptoribus histories philosophies. Libb. II. Francof. 1659. 2 J. A. Fabric! i : Bibliotheca gr&ca. Hamb., 1705. 3 UXovrdpxov Trepi rwv apeo-KovTwv rots v TWV eV ^lAoo-o^ua fv8oKi/jLT] 2I - Hellenic nations rendered possible the growth of philosophies that (vid. 17) should answer the question of the riddle of existence in the pre-Hellenic spirit. For many reasons, there- fore, the Ionic colonies in Asia Minor and the Archipelago became the cradle of philosophy ; from there went forth even those who kindled in other quarters the spark that grew into the flame of a philosophy very different from that of the three Milesians who first taught men to philosophize. 2O - In the presence of the splendour of the East, the Ionic spirit can produce only a realistic philosophy of nature in its philo- sophy, just as in its poetry it found its satisfaction in the objective epic, and in religion in the mysteries connected with the worship of nature. According to the content of their doc- trine, we shall call the first Greek philosophers, physiologers pure and simple, and understand thereby, in agreement with Aristotle, those who considered the riddle of existence solved when the original material had been stated, out of the modifi- cations of which all things consist. Thus the answer to the questions, What the world is, and, What man is, here is, that they are material substance ; an answer, it is true, spoken rather in the spirit of a primitive race than adequately expres- sive of the Hellenic mind. But it cannot be called material istic so long as the antitheses of Matter and Spirit and Matter and Force are still unknown. It is naive Hylozoism. FIRST DIVISION. pure jpbpsiologers,* H. Ritter: Geschichte der ionischen Philosophic. Berlin, 1821. 21. When the inquiring mind identifies the reality it seeks with the material substratum, modifications of which all things are * It has been thought preferable to translate the Greek ?. 2. Seeing, as Aristotle remarks, that everything definite is relative to something else, Anaximander took as his principle what he called the aTreipov, or according to others, the aopta-rov, and always opposed to the ei$oTreTroit]/u.ei>ov. It is the unchangeable in all changes and therefore the immortal. It must certainly be conceived as material, only we must not yet admit the idea of dead matter. Because it, like Hesiod's Chaos, is only the ground of all things qualitatively definite, and contains them potentially (seminaliter\ Aristotle and Theophrastus are entitled to call it a mixture, with a reference to Anaxagoras and Empedocles. That the passages in Aristotle in which he speaks of those who take for their principle a substance intermediate between air and water, and which many commentators apply to Anaximander, really refer to him, has been made very improbable by Schleier- macher. 3. In the case of an original substance devoid of qualities, it is impossible to derive all qualitative differences from differences of quantity and degree. Hence the doctrine of Anaximander is, that qualitative oppositions separate out from the Indefinite (ei/ai/rtor^ra? eKKpivecrOai}. The opposition of the Cold and the Warm, which appears first, is followed only at a later stage by that of the Dry and the Moist. Schleiermacher ingeniously suggests, that before this last antithesis the un- differentiated Warmth (Fire Air), which may be what Aris- totle means when he speaks of a substance intermediate between Air and Fire, is opposed to the undifferentiated Cold (Earth Water) which may be the Trpwr*] vypa&ia, of which Anaximander is said to have called the sea the remnant (after the earth had separated from it). And this theory is ren- dered still more probable by the manner in which he con- ceived the further development. For while the earth, shaped like a (flat) cylinder, separates itself off from the rest of the universe, there is formed opposite to it a warm sphere. And the condensations of this fiery air are the constellations, which are called the gods that have come into being, or the gods of the heavens, as opposed to the eternal atreipov. (According to other accounts, the flat disc of the earth is said to be 22 FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [2$. encompassed by the stream of Ocean, the further shore of which is formed by the edge of the heavenly hemisphere. This hemisphere consists of opaque layers, like the bark of a tree, and through their apertures the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars passes, when they do not, as in the eclipses, obstruct one another.) The influence of this warm environment produces bubbles in the earthy slime, out of which the organic creatures are generated, and at last, in their further development, men, who therefore have originally lived in the form of fishes. As all things have issued from the Indefinite, so they also pass back into it, " paying the penalty after the order of time " ; an assertion which it is certainly very natural to explain with Schleiermacher as re- ferring to a periodic compensation of the one-sided predomi- nance of one of the contraries. Anaximander, however, seems to have assumed many such periods of egression and return, so that the plurality of worlds which he is said to have taught was perhaps one of succession. Each of these worlds was a transitory deity compared with the a., capable of definition. Opposed to it is the Limiting as the spatially extended substance which fills the void, which is often comprehended under the word Heaven (i.e. the universe). Hence the expression which seems at first surprising, that the heaven by drawing or breathing in the void thereby produces VOL. i. D 34 FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 32, 4- , and thus plurality. This expression we could repro- duce in the abstract modern speech without changing the idea, by saying that opposition enters into the Unity and thereby produces plurality, all plurality, and therefore also that of moments following one another, and hence Time. The more prominent this spatial way of regarding things becomes, the nearer does this metaphysic approach to a physical theory, and thus it may come about, that Aristotle can make it a reproach to the Pythagoreans that their numbers were not povaSiKol, i.e., not out of space, and that one of the younger Pythagoreans, Ecphantus, conceived them so materially that he came very near to the atomistic doctrine of the Void and the Plenum. If, moreover, numbers are things and at the same time form a system, it is intelligible that the Pythagoreans were the first to think and to call the imiverse an order (KOOT/O?). And if the inexplicit number or the One was identical with the Deity, it ceases to be strange that the world is said to be ruled by one akin to it, or that it should be called an unfolding (evepyeia) of God. But Ritter's conclusion from this expression, and the dictum of a Pythagorean, that not the first was the most perfect, but the later, that the world was the evolution of the Deity, seems too bold ; all the more so that this dictum perhaps only referred to the relation of larger and smaller numbers. The system is consistent in regarding the world as correlated to the Deity, and therefore as eternal and in- destructible. 4. As regards the details of the derivation, there is gener- ated by the first meeting of the ev and the 7r\rj9os, i.e., by the first multiplying of unity, the number two, 3vds (different from Suas aopia-Tos), which at the same time is the line or the first Dimension, just as the point coincides with unity, from which it is only distinguished by its Oecns, i.e. spatiality. The one and the two together produce the Tpids, the first complete number, which is at the same time the number of the plane, as being the iyf\ Siaa-rarov. The most perfect number, however, is the number four (rerpaKTv?}, not only because it is the number of perfect spatiality ("rp^ Siaa-rarov), but also because the series 1:2:3:4 gives the essential harmonic relations, the ap/j.ovla or Sta TraiTwv, Sia Trevre or ciV o<~ei(av, $ia Tecr(rapu>v or a~v\\a(Ba, But if the number four is space with all its relations of har- mony, the veneration thereof, i.e., of the harmoniously ordered universe, is very intelligible. Moreover, since 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 32, 5-J THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE. 35 10, the &?'/ca? is only a further development of the Tetraktys, and, like it, not only a symbol but the most exact expression of the world. The world itself is represented, at least in the later development of the Pythagorean doctrine, as ten divine spheres, of which the outermost is the sphere of fire or of the fixed stars, within which move the seven spheres of the planets (including the sun and the moon), the circle of the earth's orbit, and lastly that of the counter-earth, which conceals from us the direct sight of the Central Fire, the hearth of Zeus, which we see only in the reflected light of the sun and the moon. At an earlier period, when the earth was regarded as the stationary centre of the universe, the idea that the seven moving and therefore vibrating planets formed a heptachord, was quite natural, but it cannot be reconciled with the moving spheres, and hence Philolaus knows nothing about the music of the spheres, which we were said not to notice only because we always heard it. As a heavenly body the Earth, like the whole Cosmos, is subject to the law of Necessity, but on the other hand it is the centre of the sublunary world, the ovpavos, the world of change, in which chance also shows its power. The totally different character of the Pythagorean and Ionian physics is at once evident in their account of the earth's sphere in their doctrine of the elements. The antithesis of Earth and Fire is not derived from the physical antithesis of Cold and Warmth, but from the arithmetical one of the Straight and Curved, and water as containing both is called the first curved and straight substance (in the mathematical sense). Others give geometrical reasons for assigning to each element one of the five regular solids as its primary form (i.e., of its particles) so that the tetrahedron is ascribed to. Fire, the cube to Earth, the icosahedron to Water, octahedron to Air, and the dode- cahedron to the all-embracing Ether. They also wish to trace the number four in physiological functions, and Eurytus, a pupil of Philolaus, is said to have gone into such detail that he even attempted to refer every thing to the number that expressed its essence. 5. Connected with the Pythagorean physics is their doctrine of the soul, i.e., of the principle of life. They begin by ascribing a soul even to the world, which from the centre of the universe is said to penetrate all things as the harmony that rules them. Hence it, and sometimes even the centre of gravity of the universe, is called One instead of the 36 FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [& 32, 5 principle of union. Whether it is to be conceived of as the substance of the individual souls, or as their archetype, or as the whole out of which they are developed as its parts, it would be possible to decide only if we possessed more of the third book of the work of Philolaus. The conception of the human soul as the harmony of the body, and that moreover it was, like the world itself, the number ten, and hence capable of knowing the world, evidently contains the germs of the later doctrine of the macrocosm and the microcosm, and agrees with the other doctrines of the Pythagoreans ; but the asser- tion that the body is the prison of the soul, and that of metempsychosis connected with it, has a more foreign appear- ance. Both of these assertions, as well as the doctrine of the daemons and spirits of the air, seem to be unconnected with the theory of Numbers. All the clearer, however, is its connection with the fragments of their theory of knowledge and their ethics that have come down to us. The psycholo- gical foundation of both is the distinction of a rational and an irrational part, in addition to which Qv/j.6? was probably already assumed in order to mediate between them. And as the different functions of the soul are attributed to different bodily organs, this doctrine has also a physiological basis. It goes without saying that knowledge is ascribed to the rational part of the soul. It is brought about by Number, which is imper- vious to deception ; hence what is not susceptible of definition by mathematics is unknowable, because it lies beneath know r - ledge. The distinction of the four degrees of knowledge, and their comparison with the first four numbers, is probably a later one : the vov? is related singly to its object, while know- ledge is represented by two, opinion by three, and perception by four. The moral spirit which the whole character and also the doctrine of Pythagoras breathes, has induced some to assert that his philosophy was chiefly ethics. This, however, is erroneous, for only slender efforts are made, not to recommend moral action merely, but also to grasp its nature. That the Pythagoreans proposed a mathematical formula for justice, which is censured by Aristotle, is rather to be praised for its consistency ; even that it is designated as apiOfjios ;, Ao-yo?, etc. The fact that the handmaids of this force, which he calls the seed of all that happens and the measure of all order, are entitled the " tongues," has probably been rightly ascribed to the influence of the Persian Magi. On the other hand, he connects himself with his country's mythology, not indeed with- out a change of exegesis, when he places Apollo and Dionysus beside Zeus, i.e. the ultimate Fire, as the two aspects of his nature. In this twofold tendency or scale, the rigid earth forms the lower, and the mobile fire the upper extreme, since the latter as an element (Hephaestus) is distinguished from the ultimate fire or Zeus. This last is the permanent factor in the circulation of the elements, and therefore never appears as such. Fire, as the extreme contrary of rigid corporeality, is conceived as the moving and animating principle. Midway between it and the earth is situated the sea, consisting half of 43.5-] HERACLITUS. 51 earth and half of fiery air, and hence precipitating the former and exhaling the latter, and often called the seed of the world. Hence the transition to rigid corporeality is called a quenching or moistening, while the increase of the fiery nature is also an increase of liveliness. Hence, even if the expression eKTn'pwa-is, found in the writings of the Stoics, were due to Heraclitus, it would be wrong to understand by it a destruction of the world, rather than the eternal circular motion of all things, the expira- tion of which may have been the "great year " of Heraclitus, the one turning-point, to which would be opposed as its dia- metrical opposite the transition into earthy slime. 5. Heraclitus found his views confirmed by the phenomena of the air, amongst which he includes the constellations. They are in his opinion collections of shining vapours in the boat- shaped hollows of the heavens, or, conglomerations of fire, but in any case generated and nourished by the evaporations of the earth and the sea. Especially is this the case with the sun, which radiates forth and loses its light daily, and daily renews itself by this nourishment. And since the evaporation is of two kinds, one dark and damp, another dry and bright, it serves to explain day and night, eclipses and meteoric appear- ances of light, although at the same time stress is laid on their strict subjection to laws. The two contrary tendencies con- flict still more in organic beings, than in the forces of nature which compose them. Perhaps because it is more difficult to recognise it in them, Heraclitus says that the hidden har- mony is better than the visible. Isolated utterances indicate that he assumed a gradation of beings. Thus, because nothing in the world is entirely devoid of the principle of life, he regards all things as full of gods and daemons, and says a god is only an immortal man, and man a mortal god. But man also is a worthless being on the purely bodily side, and is hence called the naturally reasonless. Life and soul, and, since the latter is still regarded as identical with consciousness and cognition, these also, man acquires only by participation in the all-anima- ting fire, and in its purest appearance, the enveloping. It is this which is alone rational, and the soul partakes of it the more fully, the warmer and drier it is, and hence more easily in warm and dry countries. As consistency requires, the soul's entrance into the body is to man a moistening, and hence an extinguishing and dying. The death of the body, on the other hand, is the true return to life of the soul. 52 FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 43, 6. 6. As the enveloping fire is the truly rational existence, reason is that which is common to all (KOIVOV}, and the indi- vidual partakes of it only when he allows himself to be pene- trated by it through all the channels, especially of the senses, and is permeated by its glow, like a coal which remains close to the fire. Thus sleep is the half-way house to death, because in it the gates of the senses are closed, and man has part in the enveloping reason only by breathing, and lives in other respects in an isolated world of his own. And no less does he shut himself off by his merely subjective opinion, which Heraclitus calls a disease from which no one is quite free, since every one pursues the childish play of opinion, and cherishes the illusion that the reason within him is his own. Laying the stress he did on the common element, as against isolating subjective contemplation, it is intelligible that he should regard language as the proper means of cognition, and should be the first to subject it to philosophical examination. His ethical doctrines also quite agree with the rest : the transition to fieriness becomes identical with the good, that to rigidity and death with evil. And just as those two processes belong together, so good and evil form a harmony, even as in the form of the bow or the lyre contrary tensions are harmoniously united. (The fact that in another passage the arrow is men- tioned instead of the bow, leads Lassalle to the supposition that here also we have an allusion to the double activity of Apollo.) Hence in ethics also, conflict and not rest is the ideal. The position held by opinion in theoretical matters, is here taken by insolent self-will. Nevertheless it must be suppressed, hard as that may be, for the law stands highest, just as above the /coti/o9 Xo-yo? did. The citizen should fight more strenuously for the laws than for the walls of his city. Hence what Heraclitus demands of man is submission to necessity, as the result of the recognition of the fact that the alternating predominance of good and evil is far better than what is desired by the self- ish wishes of man. And because this submission rests upon such insight into the nature of things, it is free, and its re- quirement does not conflict with his polemical attacks upon astrology and other fatalistic notions. Fragments collected by H. Stephanus, I.e. pp. 129-155. Schleiermacher, I.e. Bernays, I.e. Lassalle, I.e. Ritter and Preller, I.e. 35-50. Mullach, I.e. 315-329. 44-] HERACLITUS. 53 44- Heraclitus' polemics against the Eleatics lower the superi- ority of his point of view and render it one-sided in its turn, though in a contrary way. This is still more markedly the case with his disciples. When Cratylus outdid his master, and declared it impossible to enter the same river not only twice but even once, he thereby made Heraclitus a denier of all Being. Thus it could come about that the sceptics, who only assume Non-Being, counted him among their number, and that Aristotle classed him, the opponent of the anti-physical doc- trines, among the mere physiologers. In this an injustice is indeed done to Heraclitus, but there was some ground for it. Hence the problem of philosophy is to retain the Eleatic Being by the side of the Becoming exalted by Heraclitus, without, in so doing, relapsing into abstract metaphysics. Hence it is necessary to assume, in agreement with the Eleatics but in opposition to Heraclitus, an unchangeable Being. But it must be conceived, in opposition to the Eleatics, as a physi- cal substance, and, in the spirit of Heraclitus, as a plurality, i.e. a plurality of unchangeable substances or elements. Further, it will be necessary to assume, in agreement with Heraclitus, and in opposition to the assertions of the Eleatics, a real pro- cess. But this process will not be, like that of Heraclitus, a burning without a substratum, but one which the substrata undergo. It will differ from that of the pure physiologers, in that it will consciously rest upon metaphysical principles. Empedocles is the man who was enabled by his nationality and the course of his development to make this advance, and to combine in his doctrine, not eclectically, but in an organic whole, what previous philosophers had taught. Thus there is not a single school among which he has not been counted with an appearance of justification. For he recognises the chaotic primeval mixture of Anaximander, the spherical form of Xenophanes, the water of Thales, the air of Anaximenes, the earth and the fire of Parmenides and Heraclitus, the love of the Eleatics, the strife of Heraclitus, the condensation and rarefaction of Thales and Anaximenes, the mixture and sepa- ration of Anaximander, and finally even the domination of numerical relations in the mixtures, like the Pythagoreans. 54 FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 45. i| 2 - B. EMPEDOCLES. F. W. Sturz : Empedocles Agrigentinus. Lips. 1805. Karsten, I.e. Vol. ii. Amst. 1838. Lommatsch : Die Weisheit des Empedokles. Berl. 1830. Panzerbieter : Beitrdge zur Kritik und Erkldrung des Empedokles. Mein- ingen, 1854. Steinhart : Empedokles, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclo- pedia. 45- i. EMPEDOCLES, the son of Meton, born at Akragas (Agri- gentum) in Sicily as the descendant of a noble family, lived probably from Ol. 72-O1. 87. Famous for his patriotism, eloquence and medical skill, he was indebted to the last, together with many peculiarities in his mode of life, for his reputation as a magician. His death was adorned with fabulous details at an early period, in the interest of different views. There is considerable authority for his familiarity with Pytha- gorean doctrines ; and even if chronology does not admit of his being a disciple of Pythagoras personally, he has been called a Pythagorean even by modern writers. Others, in reliance on the reports which make him a disciple of Par- menides, call him an Eleatic. Finally, the majority follow the example of Aristotle (who had really no right to do so, according to his own statements ; vid. sub. 2.), and account him one of the physiologers. But it is Plato's mention of him together with Heraclitus, which is justified also by the influence of the Ephesian upon him, that assigns to him his proper position. Of the writings of Empedocles, the titles of which are stated variously, there have been preserved fragments of two, the Trepi (pva-eco? and the KaQap[j.oi. Some modern writers regard the latter, and also the larpiKa, as subdivisions of the former. 2. Empedocles agrees with the Eleatics in retaining un- changeable Being, in opposition to the coming into existence, which he declares impossible. But by admitting the factor of plurality and materiality, which the Eleatics had denied, his Being becomes a plurality of unchangeable elements, of which he was the first to assert that they were four in number, while he denied that they passed into one another. In this doctrine, one is reminded of the Pythagoreans by the occurrence of the number four, and of Heraclitus by his calling them daemons and giving them the names of the popular deities, and by the preference for Zeus or Fire. In addition to these unchange- able substrata (pify/uara, v\iKoi ap-^aij, he regarded as principles 45.3-] EMPEDOCLES. 55 two forces or formative principles, Friendship and Strife, the attraction and repulsion of different substances, conceived as yet only physically. This avoids the rigid Rest of the Eleatics, and substitutes for the Heraclitean process without a substra- tum, a process of the substrata, i.e. change with its two Anaxi- mandrean forms of mixture and separation. These two active principles are inseparably united, and their combina- tion is called sometimes necessity, sometimes chance. But to infer from isolated expressions of Empedocles that he con- sidered friendship identical with fire, strife with the re- maining elements, would disturb the clearness of his doctrine. This would reduce him to a mere physiologer, and it is more correct to recognise with Aristotle, that he regarded these active principles as efficient causes by the side of the material substrata. 3. The primitive condition of matter is described as a yw/7/a, which is often designated the One, in Pythagorean fashion, or, Eleatically, Being, and also the universe or the eternal world, but generally the a(paipos in virtue of its figure. Natur- ally it does not admit of any definite quality, and hence as being CLTTOIOV, corresponds to the indefinite Chaos of Anaximander. And as such a state of intermixture, which is so intimate as to admit of no void, suggests the idea of very small particles, Empedocles has been by some identified with the Atomists, and has had attributed to him by others the views of Anax- agoras, and even the very expressions which are generally ascribed to the latter. But Empedocles cannot assume any existence beside the a-cfiaipo? or the whole, and all conceptions of a transcendent deity are either falsely ascribed to his doc- trine, or inconsistencies in it. Just as little may we conclude, as many ancient and modern authorities have done, from the fact that not the separate senses (which are set apart for the perception of the separate elements), but the vow perceives the arcf)a~ipo$, that Empedocles taught the existence of a KOO-^O? vorjTos in the sense of Plato. In the original state of mixture Friendship is of course alone active, or at least Strife is reduced to a minimum. This so easily suggests the confusion of the unity with the cause of union, that we must not be surprised to find the One and Love used as synonymous. In virtue of the action of Strife upon this mixture, the heterogeneous substances are separated ; and it has been unreasonably called an inconsistency, that he makes Hatred a cause of union, i.e. 56 FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 45, 4- of the homogeneous. At this point similar particles unite, and there ensues the separation of the elements. As to the order of this separation our authorities differ. And since it is a separation of the heterogeneous, the heavens have become void of Love and the elements of the world are ruled by Hatred. But it is only part of the whole that enters into this severance, and only in it, the 007x09, does Strife bear sway, but not in the rest of the universe. The unseparated chaotic part of the uj.a, i.e. of the sum of all perceptions. Cognition by the senses is deceptive because it depends on a single object, and one element, and can only grasp the elements in their separation, and not the a-i, and because they can have none, are aSiaiperd, aro/xa. The void, on the other hand, by forming the intervals between the ultimate particles, supplies the (^acm/yuara or iropoi ; by enveloping them all, it is the void properly speaking, or the a-ireipov, the name given to it already by the Pythagoreans. In this infinite void there exist an innumerable number of worlds, perhaps separated from one another by membranous partitions, but all consisting of similar atoms, as different books consist of the same letters. These atoms do not display any qualitative differences at all, they are aVota, and differ only in size and shape. For this reason, the assertion that different weights were attributed to the atoms is more credible than that this was not done. 3. The Atomists think that multiplicity and change can be explained only on the assumption of a real Void, without which things would form a continuous mass. Change, again, is reduced to motion, which either implies an enveloping void or, if it consists in condensation or rarefaction, void spaces or pores within bodies. The Atomists, just like Empedocles, therefore, teach the existence of Becoming, only with an un- changeable Being for its substratum, and their agreement be- comes a verbal one, when they deny the possibility of coming into being, and substitute for this, mixture and separation. They agree further with Empedocles, that necessity (ara-y/cj;, SiKtj, elfj.apij.evri) regulates these minglings and separations. This, too, may have been the fiery world-soul which, accord- 6O FIRST PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 47, 4, 5. ing to an old account, Democritus is said to have declared to be the Deity. But since this power which regulates the atoms is not immanent, and, according to Aristotle, acts not naturally but by force, it has not unjustly been called chance ; for Democritus' protest against this word merely amounts to say- ing, that nothing falls outside of the bond of cause and effect, and everything has a reason. But those who attribute to him a teleological point of view as well, forget that in opposition to the vov? of Anaxagoras (vid. 52, 3) he expressly maintains a d>v(Ti9 aXoyos. 4. The atoms, though themselves devoid of qualities, give rise to qualitative differences, in that a greater or less number of them produces a greater or less density, and therefore weight, which is also supposed to account for differences of heat. Moreover, they also have different shapes and sizes, and can combine in different positions and in different order. Thus the elements consist of atoms of different sizes, fire, e.g. of the smallest and roundest. Similar to it, and consisting of atoms like the motes in a sunbeam, Democritus imagines the soul to be, which permeates the whole body, and renews itself in breathing by continually taking up similar atoms. And because of the general diffusion of such atoms, no body can be declared quite inanimate and devoid of soul. The outward manifestations of the soul depend on the different organs : thus it manifests itself as thought in the head, as eagerness in the heart, and as desire in the liver. And as animation and the principle of cognition are not distinguished from each other, his theory of knowledge is purely physical ; the images propelled from the objects immediately or mediately strike the organ of sense, and thereby arouse sensation. But since many of these sensations, especially those of sight, indicate not so much what is the nature of the object in itself (erep), but rather how they affect us or are for us (I/O/AW), it becomes necessary to distinguish between deceptive (ovco-m/), and true (yvtjo-lij) cognition. The latter, rational cognition or hdvoia, is related to the underlying (ev ftvQw) truth, i.e. the atoms ; but, like the first, it depends on material action, and is concerned with phenomena (6pa)7ros, as in Protagoras, but o dvQpunros is regarded by Socrates as the measure of all things ; and he identifies the former with n vs, and the latter with o Ge'o?. Compared there- fore with the point of view of the Sophists, that of Socrates is 64, 2, 3-] SOCRATES. 8 1 objective ; measured by the pre-sophistic standard, it empha- sizes the rights of the subject. Cf. Siebeck : Ueber Sokrates Verhaltniss zur Sophistik. Halle, 1873. (In his Untersuchungen zur Philosophic der Griec/ien.} 2. These two determinations, that all truth is contained in the subject, but only in so far as it is universal, are expressed in the method of Socrates in this way, that on the one hand all learning is regarded as mere recollection, all teaching as the delivering of the learner, or as eliciting knowledge from him, while, on the other, it is maintained that it is only in thinking in common, i.e. in conversing, in which the merely individual views neutralize one another, that truth is found. Hence the ignorance of Socrates, which continually induces him to put questions, is not a jest (repeated, too, for fifty years !), but perfectly serious. The dialogue is as necessarily the form of his philosophizing, as the monologue was that of the Sophists, who idolized opinion and denied the possibility of mutual explanations. The 7, and can be taught in so far as anything at all can be taught. His Ka\oKaya9ov, which coincides with happiness, is the Good willed and recognised as such. He no more regards a happy natural disposition as virtue, than he is satisfied with the discipline and morality which is based upon custom. On the contrary, he requires a morality which is conscious of the grounds of its action and can impart them to others ; nor has any foreign 64, 4- SOCRATES. 8 ^ \J authority, or anything but a man's own insight, the right to determine what is good. The virtuous man has, as it were, made a contract with the laws of the State, and does not break it. And though the emphasis thus laid on the insight of the individual has induced many to speak of the subjec- tivism of the Socratic ethics, and even of their sophistic character, it must yet not be overlooked that he always maintains with the same energy, as against the Sophists, who placed inclination above everything, that the Good consists in obedience to law, and in agreement not only with the written enactments but also with custom and usage. And he showed how seriously he interpreted his own precepts by dying in obedience to his country's laws. These two determinations are so completely united in his mind, that it is possible to say without any real contradiction, that Socrates, like the Sophists, only followed his own inclination ; and again, that, in opposition to them, he made his country's laws his standard of conduct. For he never inclines to anything else than what they enjoin. Their voice is heard in the most subjective of all sensations, as a tingling in his ears. 4. If this subjective feeling filled with an objective content be called conscience, Socrates was the first to assert the principle of conscience. For conscience is that god or '' daemon " which every man hears within him, and which is the true measure of all things. But in Socrates it took such a form, that it connected itself with a warning presentiment, which kept him back by a peculiar " sign " from injurious but morally indifferent actions. The secure abandon which makes him so attractive, consists in his giving himself up wholly to his natural and moral crenius : when Socrates consults Socrates, he o * obtains the best advice. It is true that, because his virtue is natural genius, he displays it more perfectly than he can describe it. When he does so, he always extols mastery of one's self (called sometimes eyKpdreia, sometimes o-axp/joo-w;/), whether he defines it quite formally as the being by and with oneself, or calls it divine to have no wants, with a refer- ence to the natural instincts, and requires of the sage that he should be the master and not the slave of pleasure. But because all these are only various manifestations of a-uxppoa-wi], he emphasizes the fact that there is only one Good and one Virtue, and a single opposite of these, viz., ignorance, under which he includes both unconsciousness and uncertainty. 84 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [65. 65. SOCRATES' FATE. F. W. Forchhammer : Die Athencr und Sokrates. Berl., 1837. That a man's own conscience is to decide what is right and what is wrong, is an innovation from the point of view of ancient morality. But so long as it stands unshaken its representatives will not with nervous dread regard every new movement as dangerous. And again, so long as it is only stray foreigners who preach egotism, it does not much mat- ter. But the case is different when discipline and morals are everywhere shaken, and at this very time the noblest son of one's own city announces a new wisdom. This elicits a reaction on the part of those who long for the good old times. Aristophanes shares these feelings to the extent of Philistin- ism ; and hence, though he seems to have esteemed Socrates personally, he attacks his principle in the most violent way, and represents him to the people as the worst of the Sophists, teaching the worship of new gods (the clouds), and generally destroying the proper respect for parents, and more particu- larly as having made Alcibiades an ungrateful son of Athens. Upon this accusation, which was very seriously intended in spite of its comic form, there followed the legal accusation, and very characteristically it took place during the brief period of reaction under Thrasybulus, which brought forward precisely the same charges. It is difficult to decide whether all the three accusers, Meletus the poetaster, Lycon the rhetorician, and Anytus the leather- worker, were merely prompted by feelings of personal vindictiveness, or whether the last was impelled by his zeal for the old times, which is known also from other sources. But we may be sure that the fact that his political opponents sat in judgment on him con- tributed to his condemnation. But it may also be explained on other grounds. For his defence on the charge of religious innovation, by putting his " daemonic " sign on the same level with the oracles recognised by the State, really proves the correctness of the accusation ; to say nothing of the fact, that many of his judges may have thought of what might not be mentioned, viz., that Socrates had disdained to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and thus not displayed the rever- ence for them cherished by every good Athenian ; and that 66.] SOCRATES. 85 it might perhaps be something more than an accident, that persons so closely connected with him as Euripides and Alcibiades, should respectively have indiscreetly profaned and even desecrated the mysteries. The second charge also is really admitted, when Socrates confesses, that where he recognised the proper vocation of the children better than their parents, he has instructed them accordingly. And lastly, however great and sublime Socrates may appear in claiming to be sup- ported at the Prytaneum as the punishment he had deserved, it is sublimity in the modern sense, and explains the exasper- ation of the judges and the people. That this continued after his death, is proved by the fact that five years afterwards Xenophon found it necessary to oppose it by the defence con- tained in his Memorabilia. The behaviour of Socrates after his condemnation, the constancy with which he refused the flight which his friends had made secure, and lastly his death, the most sublime that any mere man has ever died, all this has been preserved for all time in the wondrously beautiful description of Plato. Socrates drank the hemlock in April 399 B.C., Ol. 95. i. His is a tragic figure because he perishes in the conflict between a new and higher principle with one that is obsolete, but supported by the right of long existence. His is a prophetic nature because his principle is that des- tined to sway the future. Ritter and Preller, 194-200. 66 - Socrates put Knowledge and the Idea in the place of the subjective Opinion and the finite End idolized by the Sophists ; his philosophy, being subjectivism as well as objec- tivism, is precisely, Idealism. But the Idea appears with him in its immediacy, as life, and idealism as Socrates himself, its incarnation. For this reason, the question of what is good, reduces itself to questioning his genius, knowledge of truth to the knowledge of self ; and his opponents, like himself, identi- fied him with his opinions. It was only possible to refute his philosophy by killing him. But it is only in his person that the two factors, the combination of which constitutes the Idea, interpenetrate each other : as soon as they leave the individuality of this genius in virtue, they fall apart. This happens also when he attempts to express his own internal 86 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 67. life. Then he sometimes speaks exactly like a Sophist, and says, e.g., that in some circumstances stealing, etc., is good for us, and therefore not to be censured ; and at another time, just like an honest citizen of the good old times, who regards the laws and customs of his forefathers as sufficient to decide what is right and wrong. But the contradiction exists only outside himself, when he expresses himself, not within him ; for since only that is advantageous for him which is de- manded by law and custom, he can without danger seek his own advantage. And just as the elements combined within him are liberated when he utters them, so too they are liber- ated when he bequeaths the doctrines to his disciples and dies. When his individuality is taken away, the bond is gone which united the opposite sides, and the Socratic teaching falls apart into one-sided Socratic tendencies. FOURTH DIVISION. be Socratic Scbools, 67. THE lesser Socratic schools attempt to conceive consciously what Socrates had been, and to answer the questions as to what the Good is, and what knowledge is, not merely as he did by a, " Come and see ! Philosophize with me, and you shall find out ! " They wish to formulate an answer in which the guiding principle is always, as the most important of this class of philosophers continually confesses to learn from Socrates. This was necessary, and therefore it was an advance, all the more because Socrates himself had demanded that knowledge based upon reasons was everywhere to take the place of the immedi- ate voice of genius (the sacred madness of the artist) ; and hence inspired Socratism also had to give way to the clearly conscious form it received after the process of reflection. It is true, indeed, that none of the schools succeed in grasping more than a single side of the Socratic character. But even this one-sidedness is the indispensable condition, and pro- motes the progress, of philosophy. For it brings to light a thing which also belongs to the self-knowledge of Socratism, viz., the extent to which it surpasses the content of previous points of view. Its author, the innovator, only knows that he 68, i, 2.] THE MEGARIANS. 87 agrees with none of these, and that none satisfy him. But that his own point of view is not only different from, but higher than theirs, is shown by the demonstration that it attains to all they achieved, and still more. Thus the lesser Socratic schools show how much of the pre-Sophistic metaphysics and physics, and how many of the Sophistic doctrines, may be derived from the theoretic side of Socratism, and further illustrate how the Good of Socrates may be interpreted logi- cally and physically, just as well as ethically. Their labours enabled the fully self-conscious Socratism to boast that it com- bined everything hitherto taught as to the reasons of existence,, and to set up a system of ethics which can find room for logical,, physical, and ethical virtues. Or, to put it more concretely ; without the Megarians, Cyrenaics, and Cynics, no Plato was possible, and without Plato no Aristotle. A. THE MEGARIANS G. L. Spalding : Vindicics philosophorum Megaricorum tent ant ur, 1792. Deycks : De Megaricorum doctrina. Bonn, 1827. H. Ritter : Bemer- kungen iiber die Megarische Schule. Rhein. Mus. ii., No. 3. \ 68. 1. The founder of this school, Euclides, of Megara, or ac- cording to others, of Gela, had been initiated into the Eleatic doctrines before he attached himself devotedly to Socrates. When he began to teach at Megara, still in the life-time of Socrates, he not only zealously practised the dialectic of Zeno, but combined the Parmenidean doctrine of the One in a pecu- liar way with the ethics of Socrates. He was a friend of Plato, and is said to have written dialogues, some of which bore the same titles as those of Plato. They have not, however, come down to us. His successors seem to have used their dialectic in a very one-sided fashion, in order to confuse the ordinary conceptions, and were hence called dialecticians and eristics. Eubulides and Alexinus are mentioned as the inventors of new fallacies, Diodorus Cronus as having disputed the possibility of motion with novel arguments. Stilpo, however, seems to have devoted more attention to ethical questions. The doc- trine of Phaedo the Elean, whose school was called the Eretrian from the time of Menedemus, and died out about the same time as the Megarian, seems to have been closely akin to it. 2. The fact that Euclides made the Good his proper subject 88 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 69. of inquiry, and regards Virtue, insight, god, vov?, etc., as being merely different names for it, shows that he was a decided disciple of Socrates. When, however, he calls the Good the One, because its essence consists in its unity with itself, or in its unchangeableness, or also Being, because its opposite does not exist at all ; when he himself probably, his followers certainly, try to prove its reality by polemics against the possibility of Becoming and of motion, we cannot blame Cicero for calling the Eleatics the original authors of the Megarian doctrine. Moreover, such a fusion of Socratism with the doctrine of the One is rendered possible by Socrates' assertion that Virtue is One and excludes all plurality, and by the fact that he often described it as consisting in agreement with one's self, especially if we consider that motion and plurality were re- garded as equivalent conceptions. This does justice indeed only to the formal side of the Socratic conception of virtue, and more and more overlooks the fact that, even if virtue is knowledge, it does not follow that all knowledge is virtue. The inquiries into the nature of knowledge, the opposition between rational cognition and opinion, because the former is concerned with the One and the universal, all this is quite in the spirit of Socrates. On the other hand, the Megarians display all the Eleatic fear of particularity, when they fail to penetrate to the conception containing its specific difference, but are contented with the abstract universal, excluding all particularity. This is the reason why reality is not attributed to the cabbage that is washed, but only to its generic concep- tion ; and why validity is only ascribed to the identical propo- sition : this is the ground, further, of Plato's rejection of the transcendent ideas of the Megarians in the Parmcnides, as there was no third thing to mediate between them and reality. As to the further report respecting the Megarians, that they denied the antithesis of possibility and reality, this has been a favourite dictum of nearly all Pantheism. They also put it in the following way ; that there could be no such thing as possibility this middle term between Being and Non-being. This doctrine, afterwards, became important in their views as to the nature of the hypothetical judgment. Diog. Laert. ii. 10 and n. Ritter and Preller, I.e. 228-243. 69- The reproach which Aristotle subsequently made to the 70, I, 2.] THE CYRENAICS. 89 Pythagoreans, that in their conception of virtue they took no account of the material basis of all virtue, viz. the natural in- stincts, is perfectly applicable to the ethics of the Megarians. Their moral philosophy is formalistic, like that of Wolff and Kant in later times, because it has no consideration for in- dividual divergences and natural capacities. It seems as if the undoubtedly important discovery of the Sophists, that the individual being is the standard of everything, had never been made at all. Similarly, when the Megarians cling to the Eleatic One, they quite forget that Heraclitus vindicated the claims of Becoming, and the Atomists the reality of plurality, and that because perception is concerned with both of these, it must nevertheless not be simply rejected as illusion and deceptive opinion. This one-sided interpretation of Socra- tism, which draws it down from its superiority to these earlier points of view because it is opposed to them, must be met by a supplementary interpretation which lays special stress on the very things the Megarians had excluded from Socratism. Hence the antithesis to the Megarians is formed by the Cyrenaic School. . THE CYRENAICS. F. Mentzius : Vita Aristippi. Halle, 1719. A. Wendt : De philosophia Cyrenaica. Leips., 1835. 70. 1. ARISTIPPUS, brought up in the luxurious city of Cyrene as the son of a rich merchant, came to Athens as a highly culti- vated man of the world. He had been attracted by the fame of Socrates, and was so captivated by him that he did not again leave him. Even when, after the death of Socrates, he came forward as a teacher, he always wished to pass for a Socratic, although most of the others who called themselves followers O of Socrates classed him among the Sophists, and not only because he received payment for his lectures. Nor was he altogether wrong, for it is really an aspect of the Socratic character which he makes his principle ; and though it is a travesty, there is a Socratic element even in the e\(a OVK eypfi. o IT of the senses, the Trow?, as the true Good, in conscious oppo- sition to Aristippus, and defines pleasure as an evil, which the wise man should shun in order to be self-sufficient, and to associate with himself. This anti-Aristippean formula Antisthenes was certain to enunciate, since he regarded social life as arising simply out of the fact that man is not sufficient for himself. The same holds good also of moral associations ; hence marriage, family, and country become things indifferent to the sage ; and there results a moral egoism, ill compatible with his master's passionate attach- ment to his city. And he is even put to shame by hedonism, when Aristippus connects with the proposition accepted by both, viz. that all laws are valid only by enactment, the assur- ance that the sage always acts in accordance with them, while 94 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 73. Antisthenes opposed virtue to obedience to the laws of the State. And reason he opposed not only to the natural instincts, but also to the ordinary opinions of men. Hence Antisthenes occupies a negative position with regard to all prophetic and divine influences, often in conscious opposition to Socrates ; and this has induced him to regard the myths of popular reli- gion as mere allegories, and probably, like many of the Sophists, as allegories with a moral meaning. This refers especially to his moralizing commentaries on the Odyssey and on Theognis. Diog. Laert. vi. i, 2. Ritter and Preller, I.e. 220-227. Mullach ii. 261- 395- The universal objective reason which Anaxagoras had meant (or at least included) in his vovs, has by the moral genius of Socrates become subjective in him (the avOpanros of Protagoras) ; so that when he consults his own genius, the deity answers in it, when he follows his own pleasure, reason is followed. Thus he stands above Anaxagoras and Protagoras as their higher unity. But when his genius is withdrawn, the two factors fall apart in such a way that the Megarians emphasize the first (vow, 0eo?, eV), i.e. the content of the will of Socrates, the Cyre- naics the second, and therefore put pleasure above everything (jSovi'i, xj), which, in the case of Socrates, always accompanied his willing what was rational. Antisthenes could censure their one-sidedness, and hold fast the rights of subjectivity in opposition to the Megarians, and the objective content of the Good in opposition to the Cyrenaics. But as he was unable quite to comprehend the two as one, he also could not con- sciously reproduce the whole, but only one aspect of Socrates. But these attempts to comprehend more definitely single aspects of Socrates are only preludes to the achievement of combining them all, and of thus representing the idealism, in which Socrates had lived, as conscious and fully-comprehended Socratism. And comprehended also in this respect, that its connection with the past is recognised. The Megarians had shown how much room there was for Eleatic metaphysics in the Socratic doctrine ; Aristippus had indicated its points of contact with Protagoras, and hence with the physics of Heraclitus and the Atomists ; finally, Antisthenes had proved the possibility of being an adherent of Socrates, and yet re- maining a dialectician after the fashion of a Gorgias trained 74, i.] PLATO'S LIFE. 95 by Zeno and Empedocles. None of these facts were forgot- ten, and at the same time the last of the pre-Sophistic views of the world, that of the Pythagoreans, is consciously incorporated with Socratism. The representative of this Socratism, thus apprehended from every side, is Plato ; and it is no accident that he connects all his inquiries with the person of Socrates, in whom philosophy had become personal. FIFTH DIVISION. flMato, 74- PLATO'S LIFE. Diog. Laert. : Lib. iii. Olympiodori et Anonymi : Vittz Flatonis. (Also in Didot's ed. of Diog. Laert. etc., Appendix, pp. 1-14.) K. Steinhart : Plato's Leben, Leipzig, 1873. i. ARISTOCLES, afterwards surnamed PLATO, was the son of Ariston and Perictione, and born at Athens in Ol. 87, 3 (429) or 88, i (427 B.C.), and, as was asserted by his admirers in later days, on the 2ist of May, the day on which the Thar- gelia were celebrated in honour of Apollo. With this they connected all sorts of fables ; and they used also to celebrate the birthday of Socrates on the day before, which was the feast of Artemis. Growing up in the midst of the artistic and scientific glory to which the forty years of the activity of Pericles had raised his native city, and a continual eye-witness of the abuses following in the train of a degenerate democracy, Plato would probably have become an aristocrat, even if he had not been a descendant of the noblest families through both his parents, and if his nearest relations had not belonged to the oligarchical party. The men also who had the greatest influence on his development, and above all Socrates, were not favourably disposed to the democracy. His Dorism is just as little a proof of lack of patriotism, as Niebuhr asserted, as the Anglo-mania of Montesquieu and other Frenchmen in the 1 8th century. That Plato, when he had attained military age, took part, like the rest, in the campaigns that happened at 96 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 74, 2. the time, can hardly be doubted, although the direct assertion of Aristoxenus and ^Elian loses its value with regard to the third campaign, because in regard to the first two it contains an im- possibility. Whether Draco, his teacher in music, and especially Epicharmus, who had been trained by the Pythagoreans, con- tributed to the development of his philosophic ideas, or whether they merely stimulated him to poetical efforts, is difficult to de- cide. But it is certain that when, in his 2Oth year, he came to Socrates, he burnt his poems and henceforth devoted him- self to philosophy alone. He seems to hint in the Ph 2 > 3-1 PLATO'S WRITINGS. 97- 8 75- PLATO'S WRITINGS. 1. All Plato's writings are exoteric dialogues, intended for the public of cultivated readers rather than for his school, elaborated more or less carefully, and of mimetic and dramatic beauty, each forming a whole in itself, and yet also a member of a larger whole. It has always been the aim of the critics' efforts to separate the spurious from the genuine ; but because they formed either too ideal or too low a conception of Plato's point of view, they have not always avoided one-sided judg- ments, so that in many cases doubts have been cast even on writings which Aristotle quotes or indicates as Platonic. Besides these writings, we have also some, although im- perfect, information, especially from Aristotle, as to the esoteric lectures, of which the form, though not the content, was confined to the school ; and these also must be taken into account. 2. The attempts to arrange the Platonic dialogues in s systematic order date back to ancient times. The curious idea of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristophanes, to com- bine them in trilogies from a theatrical point of view, was not entirely carried out, and only deserves mention, because some editions follow this order (e.g., the Aldine, the Basel, and Tauchnitz stereotype edition). In favour of the arrangement in tetralogies made in the time of Tiberius by the Thrasyllus who also affixed the alternative titles to the dialogues, it mav be o * * urged that at least two such tetralogies were undoubtedly intended by Plato himself. This order is adopted by some of the earlier manuscripts and editions, and more recently by C. F. Hermann. Lastly, the arrangement of Serranus ac- cording to syzygies must be mentioned, as it passed into the edition of Henricus Stephanus, which was for a long time the only one quoted, and thence into the Bipontine. 3. In more modern times, it has been felt that an arrange- ment of the Platonic writings was valuable only if it was based on investigations into the genesis and the connection of his doctrines, and the honour of beginning these belongs to Ten- nemann (System der Platonischen Philosophic, 4 vols. Leipz. , 1792-95), although his undertaking was bound to fail in con- sequence of his attempting to base everything on the chrono- VOL. I. H 98 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 75, 3. logical data given by Plato himself. The translation of Plato by Schleiermacher (Platoris Werke. Berlin, 1804-28, 6 vols.) marks an epoch in the history of the question of the order of the Platonic writings, as well as in their appreciation : for in the introductions that accompanied it, he justified the order he gave them, as well as their arrangement in three groups, the introductory, the dialectical, and the expository. (This order is followed in J. Bekker's edition.) The work of Ast (Platoris Leben und Schriften, 1816), and the much more sober, but often hypercritical work of Socher ( Ueber Plato s Schriften. Munich, 1820), were composed with a reference to Schleiermacher. Socher's attempt to determine fixed points which might serve to distinguish the dialogues of different periods, was repeated far more successfully by C. F. Her- mann (Geschichte der Platonischen Philosophic. The first and only volume, Heidelberg, 1839), who fixed upon Plato's voyage to Megara, and the beginning of his activity as a teacher, as such points. Hermann's arrangement, although it sets out from an entirely different principle than Schlei- ermacher's, since the latter tries to trace in the sequence of the dialogues the course of Plato's teaching, and the former that of Plato's learning, nevertheless displays many points of contact with Schleiermacher. The most important differ- ences concern the Parmenides and the Phcedrits. The first of these, Hermann puts in the same position that Zeller had pre- viously assigned to it in his Platonische Studien, whereas the second was, according to him, written as a programme at the outset of Plato's career as a teacher, as before him Socher, Stallbaum, and others had already asserted. (In fact, Hermann has in general many points of contact with the contents of the introductions accompanying Stallbaum's critical edition of all the Platonic Dialogues [3rd ed., Erfurt and Leipzig, 1846]). The order given by Hermann is in part approved and in part rejected by the valuable introductions with which Steinhart furnished H. M tiller's translation of Plato, which, appearing from 1850 onwards, is at length completed (8 vols. 1856-66). All these different opinions are carefully considered and modi- fied in some points in F. Susemihl's : Genetische Entwicke- lung der Platonischen Philosophic (2 vols. 1855-60). Munk, starting from quite other points of view, arrives at partially different conclusions (Die natilrliche Ordnung der Pla- tonischen Schriften. Berlin, 1857). The same remark holds 76, i, 2.] PLATO'S DOCTRINE. 99 good also of Ueberweg's : Untersuchungen iiber die Aechtheit und Zeitfolge Platonischer Schriften. Vienna, 1861. The writings also of Michelis and Ribbing, mentioned at the beginning of the next , discuss more fully the question of the order of the Dialogues. The second volume, especially, of Ribbing's book is entirely devoted to it ; and by his often very severe criticism of the works that follow Hermann, he tries to do justice once more to Schleiermacher. 7 6 - PLATO'S DOCTRINE. Van Heusde : Initia philosophies Platonicce. Lugd. Bat, 1825 ; 2nd ed., 1842. Zeller : Platonische Studien. Tubingen, 1839. F. Michelis: Die Philoso- phic Plato's. 2 vols., Miinster, 1859-60. H. v. Stein : Sieben Biicherzur Geschichte des Platonismus. Getting, 1862, 64, 75. S. Ribbing (Prof, at Upsala) : Genetische Darstdlung der Platonischcn Ideenlehrc. 2 vols., Leipzig, 1863-64. Ritter and Preller, 244-280. 1. Before giving an account of the dialectics, physics, and ethics, into which Plato's inquiries are divided so naturally that this division of his system must be called the Platonic one (whether he expressly maintained it as the true one, or whether he only indicated it), it is necessary to consider the investigations scattered over the different dialogues, which have merely the propaedeutic aim of raising the reader to the level of the Platonic standpoint. Their negative task is, to prove the untenableness of his readers' point of view, which thereby becomes as it were the starting-point which makes the jump possible (Rep. 511 B). Plato, like every philosophical writer, assumes in all his readers familiarity with the generally prevalent conceptions, and in those trained in philosophy an acquaintance also with the philosophy of the time. And since, in the case of the majority, the doctrine of the So- phists was esteemed such a philosophy, and that of Socrates and the Socratics was current only in a small circle, with which Plato was connected by bonds of reverence for his master, and of grateful respect for many of his disciples, the negative side of his propaedeutic inquiries consists in open attacks on the ordinary conceptions and the doctrines of the Sophists, combined with more concealed polemics against the point of view of Socrates. 2. The inadequacy of the ordinary conceptions in their IOO SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, ?6,2. theoretical aspect, is made evident by shaking the faith in sense-perception (the ala-Otja-is of the Thecetetus and the Par- menides), and by showing that its object is continually chang- ing, and that hence it cannot afford any firm certainty, but at the most probability (the eiicacria of the Republic). The case is not much better when the memory of several perceptions (Phcedrzis) produces that which Plato sometimes includes, together with sense-perception, under the common name of &>' o indeed this should be effected by a continuously increasing Pythagorizing, bears a resemblance, at least, to retrogression. But however this may be, we shall hardly be entitled to assert that everything that Aristotle reports concerning the Platonic doctrine of number, agrees wholly with what is found in his Dialogues. 8. In view of the identity of existence and knowledge mentioned above ( 77, i), the certainty of knowledge also must be rendered possible by the Ideas, as being the 6Vrw <)vra. For the objects of perception did not provide certainty ; for, being themselves intermediate between Being and Non- Being, they could produce only appearances, and at the most belief in the latter (cf. 76 2). Hence the knowledge of the Ideas and of their concentrated form, the Good, can alone give full certainty. And since they were the voq-d, such knowledge is called vou? or votjTts. Its object, therefore, is only that which has part in the Good, and in so far as it so partakes, and hence too the Idea of the Good is called the sun which makes things visible, i.e., knowable. It follows as 112 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 77, 9. a matter of course, that philosophical contemplation must be teleological. Between this knowledge and the two degrees of 86%a, lies what is sometimes coupled with the higher vovs under the common name of emcm/^, and then distinguished from it as Sidvota, and sometimes called eTncm//^ in opposition to the t'ovs, viz., discursive thought, as it shows itself especi- ally in mathematical knowledge, but also in cases where a theory makes it possible to give a reason for phenomena. In the Gorgias, Plato, like Aristotle later on, calls it Ttyyn. Its object, the permanent, stands midway between the eternal and the changeable, with which the yoV? and the $oa are re- spectively concerned. In the famous allegory in the yth book of the Republic, which however may contain other references besides, this gradation is illustrated by the seeing of the sha- dows of the statues cast by the sun, of the statues illumined by the sun, of the illumined originals of the statues, and finally by the view of the all-illumining sun itself. 9. But the Good is to be regarded not only as the highest and all-inclusive Being and object of knowledge, but also as that by the participation in which the thinking human mind can alone perceive it and all else. The sun is said to pro- duce, not only the growth and visibility of things, but also the eye's power of sight, which being called the highest ov, the highest voyrov, and lastly also the VO^TIKOV, and in the Philebus the vovs comes very near to the well-known Aristo- telian definition. That the same name (you?) should de- signate the object of our knowledge and our knowledge itself, is intelligible, because Plato regards our knowledge as partaking in the object of all knowledge, precisely as our soul is part of the world-soul and our body of the world- body (Philcb.\ And as the One is the crown and essence of the Ideas, it goes without saying that our recognition of the Ideas is derived from ourselves. Hence it is not necessary to ex- plain this fact, as the Phadrus does, by the pre-existence of the soul and its contemplation of the Ideas previously to its earth-life, of which it is again reminded by every sight of beauty. But for this very reason, and because pre-existence is very often brought into causal connection with the post- existence which Plato regarded as indubitable, and finally because, in a passage which does not at all deal with the doctrine of reminiscence, he asserts decidedly that the number of souls existing neither increases nor decreases, it is hardly 78,1.] PLATO'S PHYSICS. 113 possible to assert that the whole content of that splendid myth of the Phadrus is merely ornamental setting. A great deal of it may be proved to be Pythagorean. What Egyptian,, Phoenician, and perhaps even Indian elements have been in- termingled with it, it would be difficult to decide. The sub- stance of the Platonic Dialectic may thus be briefly stated by saying, that the Ideas give a support to the changing pheno- mena, and certainty to knowledge. They are arrived at by the balancing of fundamental antitheses. They culminate . and are also rooted in the highest Idea, the Good, which is- the true principle of all being and all knowledge, from which they can be systematically derived only by means of numbers. They live in the spirit of man ; and his true attainment of, knowledge consists in his becoming conscious of them. 7 8 - PLATO'S PHYSICS. Bockh : De Platonica carports mundani fabrica. Heidelb., 1809. The same :: Ueber die Bildung der Weltseele, in Daub and Creuzer's Studien iii., i ff H. Martin : Etudes sur le Times de Platon. Paris, 1841. 2 vols. I. When Dialectic has shown that the Good is the only object of knowledge, the only task left to Physics must be to consider the Good in its sensible manifestations. But since phenomena are known by perception, we cannot expect as strict a deduction as in the case of Dialectic. Hence the express declaration that we must often content ourselves with probabilities, and admit myths instead of proofs. The first question then is, What must be added to the Good, or the body of Ideas, in order that it may become Nature, i.e., the Good manifested to sense ? Of course it must acquire predi- cates which are opposed to those of the Good, and therefore it is described as the mere means, as the many which never is, as devoid of order and restlessly moving, as utterly empty of Ideas, and capable only of being imagined, not of being known; and as standing towards the Idea, as the eV, in the relation of the iJiiKpov KOI /ueya, and opposed to the always Identical as- that which is always "other." This principle has been quite generally called, since Aristotle's time, v\ij, or matter ; and to judge by the use Plato himself makes of this word in the VOL. i. i 114 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 78, I Philebus, it may be conjectured that this was also the name given to it by Plato in his lectures. It is called the a-watTiov of the world, but must not be understood as a definite sub- stance, as is proved by the negative predicates, of the void of quality, and form, and visibility which are ascribed to it. What then was it ? According to Aristotle's assertion, which agrees with Plato's own explanation in the Timceiis, it was Space. Or perhaps it may be still more accurately described as the form of outwardness ; so that it would denote not only the form of co-existence but also of sequence, but not by any means time or measured sequence. Thus, if one bears in mind that the co-existence and sequence must not be conceived as ordered, one can understand how the Ideas which are pure unities can be transformed by the v\>j into a thing, i.e. into a chaotic congeries of many ideas. But the chief point is, that we must not by any means understand by this eK^ayelov, which takes real shape when the Idea enters into it, in any way a definite substance, but only a mere form awaiting a content. Hence it is nothing taken in itself, and onlya forcible abstraction from reality (yoQw \oyia- fji.u> airrov). Although, therefore, the dual- ism of Plato is not as crude as that of Anaxagoras, he is never- theless unable to transcend dualism for lack of the conception of concrete creation. He remains a dualist because he cannot show why the Ideas enter into the world of sensible appear- ance. That, however, he assumes a connection between the reason which divides the one Idea (of the Good) into a plurality of Ideas, and that which causes each Idea to mani- fest itself in its turn in a plurality of things, is clearly shown by the fact that in both cases he uses the expressions a-n-eipov, fjuKpov KOI /xeya, 7rX?/Oo9, /jLeOefys, fiifjujo'is, etc., and is also quite intelligible. For if there were not many Ideas, sensible things participating in many Ideas would be impossible. But it cannot be admitted without question, that together with the plurality of Ideas the plurality also of the copies of each Idea has been deduced, and that hence the sensible world has already been constructed in the Parmenides, SopJiist, and Philebus, although important authorities assert this with reference to the two former, and almost all with regard to the Philebus. The more correct view perhaps would be to regard the aireipov of the Philcbus as the ideal basis merely of the ev > 2.] PLATO'S PHYSICS. 1 1 5 intended to state in what extension a quality is intensified, a concept enlarged, or a space increased. Cf. Siebeck, op. dt. 64, i. Pt. 2, Plato's doctrine of matter. 2. It is the point we have just brought out that displays the defect of the Platonic doctrine, which in the Phtedrus removed the Ideas into a supra-cosmic place (v-jrepovpavios, cf. 77, 4). For because of this transcendence they cannot of themselves interfere in our world; they are devoid of energy, mere objects of contemplation that do not realize themselves. And what they cannot in themselves do can only be effected, if at all, by an extraneous power, i.e. the Deity, who is thus the artificer of things. The assertion, therefore, that in Plato the Idea of the Good coincides with the Deity, is only in so far correct, that in his Dialectic he really does not require a deity beside that Idea. The ultimate end of the universe is a sufficient reason for the existence of the Ideas, even though it was not shown why there should be any particular number of Ideas, since the end was found to be a reason. And for the same reason the a'tnov also of the Philebus is not distin- guished from the Idea of the Good, and its description by the term vow is adopted from Socrates and the Megarians. But an entirely different face is put upon the matter when Plato passes over into physics. The more glaring the antithesis between the Good as the ov 6W?, and matter as the erepov and therefore M 6V, the more requisite, the less pronounced the antithesis, the less requisite, is a third factor, in order to explain the infusion of the Idea into matter. Hence Aristotle (v. 87, 9), and also the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation, no longer requires a Deus ex machina, whereas Plato's physics does. The difference, moreover, between saying that the Deity in Plato is a being different from the Good, and that he is only another aspect of the Idea of the Good, is important only to those who approach Plato with questions like that e.g. of the personality of God, the under- standing and still more the answering of which required the lapse of centuries. God contemplates the Ideas, the eternal archetypes of things, but contemplates them as a poet does his ideals, i.e. generating them himself (Rep.'], and then implants them into matter. Thus we can understand the appellation of God as the S6ev fyverai, and of matter as the e^ $ jiyverai TO v, and that the part of the father is ascribed to the Il6 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 78, 3. former, that of the mother or the maternal nurse to the latter, and that God is the reason, matter the (ruvairtov or condition of the world. For, according to Plato, the beginning of the world, both in time and in thought, takes place when the mediation of the Deity, itself good and free from envy, and desirous of making all things as like as possible to itself, implants or generates the Good in matter, and thus produces the world. Hence the world is the wo? /uowyewjs of the Deity and etKtw TOV Oeou, because, like the former, it is good : before its genesis it may be called the future, after its genesis the visible and created second God ; but in any case a blessed deity. And just as the whole system of Ideas had been called a ^SoovdtSiov or vorjTov, an eternal or ''intelligible" organism, so now that rational adaptation (you?) has been implanted into matter, which is as such void of order and hence aXoyov, dominated only by external necessity, and as it were incorporated in it, the world, as the ima^e of the former organism, must be called a O C5 tyov ewovv. Everywhere therefore in this organism we must distinguish two factors : the divine element of adaptation on the one hand, and the merely necessary on the other, which serves the former as an indispensable condition. 3. To explain the first entering in of purposive connection into the disorder, Plato required a deity who should establish that order. But even the maintenance of this connection seems to him to require, not indeed the continuous intervention of the Deity, for this he denies, but an intermediate link. And in addition to the fact that the similarity of the two problems, indicated in the identity of the terminology, suggested the thought of appealing to the aid of number, in order to explain how each of the many Ideas in its turn existed in plurality, just as in the former case it had served to deduce the plurality of the Ideas themselves, and moreover that numbers had been repeatedly declared intermediate between the votirdv and the aifrOqrov, Plato was probably determined also by the fact that, like all men, he took pleasure in mathematical regularity, which is closely akin to that produced by purposive order. In short, he made harmony, swayed by number, the mediating bond which connects the i ; oD?, or purposive order, with the a-w/u.a, or external world. We can understand too how the name given to that which holds this intermediate position is the same as that which combines body and reason in the human individual, viz. " soul," and can hardly understand anything else by the 78,4,5-] PLATO'S PHYSICS. 117 " world-soul," than the mathematical order that sways the All, or the harmonic relations prevailing in it. Thus it becomes quite intelligible why Plato describes the world-soul as com- bined out of a twofold nature, and represents it as a numerical series, formed when the powers of the first even (2) and un- even (3) numbers are put together into a series, to which the root of all numbers (i) is prefixed. This series, as explained by Bockh, presents a diatonic scale of a little more than four octaves, when the intercalations supplied by Plato himself have been effected. 4. The further account also, that the world-soul thus created received the form of two circles with a common centre, but not in the same plane, of which the inner one, divided into seven circles, moves in the opposite direction to the outer and undivided one, is also quite intelligible, if one refers it to the heaven of the fixed stars, the seven circles of the planets, and the earth fastened to the axis of the world. (Gruppe's attempt to vindicate Plato's far more developed astronomical concep- tions, has been successfully combated by Bockh.) By means of this mathematical order it is possible that the sensible world is a manifestation of the absolute conformity to end, i.e. of the Good, and thereby similar to the Deity; and hence, in virtue of this similarity to God, that it partakes of the divine attributes, as far as its nature permits. Thus, though the world cannot partake of true eternity, it yet acquires the moving copy of eternity, i.e. time, in which the motionless " is," of eternity is drawn out into "was" and "shall be." But in order that time may exist, the heavenly bodies are attached to the circles of the planets, especially the sun and the moon, which for this reason are called the organs of time par excellence. But the world has other attributes also in virtue of its kinship to the divine. Its unity and the perfection of its form and motion are such. For the spherical form is the highest of all. Thus the all-embracing universe feeds upon itself by the circular motion of all things, and breathing in nothing foreign from without, maintains itself in a beautiful self-sufficiency. Lastly, the circular motion returning upon itself is the most perfect, because an image of thought in its identity with itself. 5. And just as these last assertions display Plato's accord with the Eleatics, so, when he treats no longer of the whole world but only one side thereof, the o-oj/xa, his treatment shows his dependence not only on the Pythagoreans, but also on the Il8 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [78,5- Physiologers. In fact, there is hardly any important point of doctrine in the earlier philosophies that Plato does not include in his own system. But what distinguishes him from them, and at the same time keeps him in harmony with his own attacks on the fundamental conceptions of the earlier phi- losophers of nature (e.g. in the Parmenides], is the thoroughly teleological foundation of his whole physics. And of that teleology man is the aim, as being the bearer of the moral order. Thus, though in form the Tim&us is a continuation of the Republic, the real relation is, as Plato himself explains, that the Timaus shows how man is called into existence, and the Republic, how he is fully developed. The Timaus tries to show how the world, or the unconscious manifestation of the Good, finally arrives at man who consciously accomplishes it. At the very outset the derivation of the elements is teleo- logical. Fire and Earth are necessary as means to visibility and tangibility ; but two require a third to mediate between them, indeed two more, since Three forms only a plane, and it is Four alone that has complete corporeality (cf. 32, 4). The best and most harmonious relation of the elements possible, is a continuous proportion, such that in the all-embracing world Fire is to Air as Air is to Water, and as Water is to Earth. And since Plato's primitive matter is nothing more than the form of spatiality, he must derive the differences of the elements from the configurations of spaces. Like the Pytha- goreans, he ascribes to each of the elements its own atomic form ; but he differs from them in regarding ether as being merely a finer kind of air, and hence has the dodecahedron remaining over, which is sometimes stated to be the form of the stars, but above all, by introducing his three-dimensional construc- tion of the elements by one in two dimensions upon which it is founded. For since the side surfaces of the regular solids either are triangles or may be divided into them, he re- gards space as being primarily divisible into nothing but triangles. This two-dimensional atomism reduces the atoms of the Pythagoreans to molecules of secondary rank, and makes it possible not only to assume the transition of one element into another, in opposition to Empedocles, but even to make it clear to perception. On the other hand, he agrees with Empedocles in his denial of the void ; and he so often uses its impossibility in order to explain certain phenomena, that he may be called the author of the theory of the horror 78,6.] PLATO'S PHYSICS. 119 vac^l^. It reminds us too of Empedocles, that friendship is said to combine the smallest particles, while it seems a reminiscence of Anaxagoras and the Atomists that the parts so united are of the same nature. This attraction of like to like serves at the same time for deducing the properties of weight and lightness, which he identifies with density and rareness ; for since the heavens envelop the earth, they are just as much below as above it, so that this distinction of the earlier Physiologers becomes to him unmeaning. The various substances arise out of the combination of the four elements, and are considered especially with reference to the effects they produce on the organs of sense. 6. What has just been said is in itself a proof that Plato takes less interest in the inorganic than in the living. And o i from that of the eTrtdvfitjrtKov, as opposed to ttKoXacria. The fourth virtue, Succuoarvv)], consists in the right relation between these constituents, and may there- fore be called the formal and also the all-inclusive virtue. Hence, in the Republic, Justice is called the health of the soul, and ethics are described as the inquiry into justice. And in 122 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [79,3- view of the identification of Justice and Holiness, it is no con- tradiction that elsewhere, e.g. in the The&tetus, and \hzPhcedrus, and even in the Republic itself, in the discussion of education, and most of all in the Laws, the greatest stress is laid on holiness and the likeness to God which coincides with it. And as, according to Plato, virtue consists in putting into activity man's own nature, or the functions which a man is alone or best fitted to exercise, it is the activity of that which constitutes humanity, viz. the \oyurriKov, which produces virtue. Hence virtue is i}, is to be explained by the wild demoralization Plato noticed among the frequenters of the theatre. He had shown in the Republic how a State in which the philosophers rule, flourishes in times of peace, and com- bines justice and happiness ; the fragmentary Critias was intended to show how it approved itself also in war, by an example taken from the history of Athens in an imaginary antiquity, when it conquered the far larger State of Atlantis, dominated by Oriental magnificence and sensuousness. 5. Plato very well perceives that aristocracy is possible only when the extent of the State is small. Hence he requires that the guardians, by their superintendence of the conclu- sions of marriage, should regulate not only the excellence of the births, but their numbers also, by prohibitions of marriage and in other ways. And apart from mathematical reasons indicated by the Platonic numbers, the difficulties of which have become proverbial (cf. Fries in his earlier treatise : Platons Zahl,, Heidelb., 1823, and his Gesckichte der Philo- sophic, i. 375 ff.), he regards (in the Laws] 5040 as the best number of households. Thirty-five of these would form a (pparpia, and twelve (pparpiai a irepi crotjttfrrutwif eXe'y^wi' a' (dc Sophisticis elenchis), p. 164-184. The physical writings come next (2), and contain : (frva-iK-rj ttKpoacris & (Physica auscnltatio, or Physica VIII.}, p. 184-267 ; Trept ovpavov 8' (de Ctxlo IV.}, p. 268-313 ; Trept yeveVews /cat <#opus ft' {de genet", et corrupt. II.}, p. 314-338 ; MerewpoAoyt/cu 8' (Metcorologica IV.}, p. 338-390, Trept Koo-fj-ov (de Mundff), p. 391-401 ; Trepl ^vxfjs y' (de aniina ///.), p. 402- 435 j 7re P' atV$//creajs KO.L aicr^rwr, Trept /JH'^fj.r)? KCU ara/zi'iycrews, Trept VTTVOV KOL creaj?, Trept IvwrvifDV, Trept /xaKpu/JtorT/ros KOL /3pa^v/3tor^Tos, Trept veor^ros KOL ?, Trept MT}S KOI Oavdrov, Trept avaTrvor/s (Pit?~va natura //tf), p. 436-486 ; Trept ra 85, i.] ARISTOTLE'S DOCTRINES. the Berlin Academy (1831-35, 4 vols. 4-to). The value of the last has been doubled by the excellent Index Aristotelicus of Bonitz (Berl. 1870). ARISTOTLE'S DOCTRINES. F. Biese : Die Philosophic des Aristotehs. Berlin, 1835-43. 2 vols. H. Bonitz : Aristotetische Studien, i.-v. Wien., 1862-66. 8 5 . INTRODUCTORY. THE ARTICULATION OF THE SYSTEM. i. ALTHOUGH those who reduce the difference between the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle to a merely formal one, and thus regard the latter as a mere re-modelling of the former, go much too far, this one-sided view must not be neglected in opposition to the contrary extreme, which sets them over against each other as the representatives of Idealism and Realism, of Rationalism and Empiricism. And it does not impair the respect due to Aristotle, while it facilitates the understanding of his doctrines, if it is shown in a greater number of points than is commonly done, that the philoso- pher, not the least of whose glory consists in having learnt much, should have learnt much from none other than Plato. Hence it will be necessary at the outset to refer to Plato's delimitation of philosophy ( 76, i), in order to appreciate uja icrroptat i' (Historia animaliujn X.), p. 486-638 ; Trepl ^oW popitav 8' (de partibus aniinalium IV '.), p. 639-697 ; Trept oW /aircrew? (de motu aniina- liuw), p. 698-704; Trepl Tj-opeias wv (de iiicessu aniinaliuin\ p. 704-714 ; Trepl fwwv yeveo-ews e' (de generatione animalium F.), p. 715-789. In the second volume there follow first some smaller physical treatises (-n-fpl xp^/xarwi', TTf.pl UKOUCTTCOV, (^WtOyi'to/AlKCl, TTfpL avous. Zryvcoj/o? Kat Topylov (de Xenophane Zenone et Gorgia), p. 974-980, there come (3)Ta.p:Ttt TO. (jivo-iKa v (Afetaphysica XIV ".), p. 980-1093. Then follow (4) his ethical writings, p. 1094-1353, i.e., 'H$iKa NtKo/Aa^ettt K (Ethica ad Niconiachuin A'.), p. 1094-1181; 'H#iKa /^eyaAa ft' (Magtia mo ratio, //.), p. 1181-1213; 'H&A-d EvSr'j/j.La T]' (Ethica, ad Eudemum VII.\ p. 1214-1249 (the 4th, 5th, and 6th books are wanting) ; vrept aperwv KCU K.O.K.MV (de virtittibus et 7'///w), p. 1249-1251 ; HO\LTLKO. & (Politica VI1I.\ p. 1252-1342 ; Ot/coj/o/uKa /3' (CEconomica II. ), p. 1343-1353- Finally (5) the writings on rhetoric and poetics; r^x^l p^Topi/a/ y (Rhetorica ///.), p. 1354-1420; 'PyropiKrj Trpo? 'AAc'av8poi' ( Rhetorica ad Alexandnini], p. 1420-1447 ; Trept Trot^TCK-ijs (Poelica\ p. 1447-1462. I 34 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 85, I properly the procedure of Aristotle in this matter. In con- nection with the fact that the instinct to know is naturally inherent in man, Aristotle shows (p. 980 f.) that perception (cuo-0;o-i9) is the first grade of knowledge, and that it is con- cerned with the particular(raO' e/cacrrov,the TOUTO or roSe of Plato). In consequence of repeated perceptions, and the re-cognition based on memory, this becomes experience (e/wreipa, a term already found in Plato). Experience is already concerned with the universal (/caOoXou, p. 100), although the object of ex- perience may in its turn be called particular, in comparison with the higher universal of knowledge proper. The defect of experience, which it shares with perception, is, that it deals only with the actual fact (OT*), not with its reasons (Siu TI). Hence both are surpassed by theoretical understanding (re^i"?), which includes a knowledge of the reason, and hence already the possibility of instruction. (In dealing with this third degree of knowledge, Plato had always thought of the mathe- matician, whereas Aristotle thinks rather of the theoretically trained physician ; in other respects his Te-^vrj corresponds pretty well to Plato's Siavoia.} If, however, one does not rest content with the first reasons reached, but seeks and finds the principles (a/>x a O underlying them, there arises knowledge proper, or philosophy. For Aristotle does not, like Plato, dis- tinguish between a-o9 and Kevw as synonyms. Thus Aristotle, adopt- ing towards dialectic almost the same attitude that Plato had adopted towards the Sophists, or at least towards the Socra- tists, regards philosophy as the science of first principles, ?'.. of universals, proceeding, not by the way of hypotheses, but by that of proof. 3. With respect to the articulation of his system, both the tradition that he divided his doctrines into theoretical and practical, and also the one that he divided them into logic, physics, and ethics, can claim the support of dicta of his own. The two, however, are reconciled by extending the first, so as to include a third science, that of production (Trow/crzy) (pp. 145, 1025), and by supposing that in the case of the theoretic science, which perhaps was alone called philosophy, and which was to include QeoXoynct] (in later times called Ao-yt*?;) as the Trpwrr], and (pvariKtj as the SevTepa (pi\o after defining a word as 86,i.] ARISTOTLE'S ANALYTICAL INVESTIGATIONS. 137 a fywn o-fj/uLavTiK^ KUTU a-wOi'iKr/v, and thus distinguishing it from sounds merely expressive of feeling, Aristotle defines the sen- tence (Xo'yo?), in verbal agreement with Plato, as a combina- tion of words (crv/ATrAoK*/ <$>MVW>V). He proceeds however at once to distinguish sentences which contain no assertion, such as requests, from those that do, and in which, consequently, the question of truth and falseness can arise. The latter he calls judgments (\6yoi a-n-o^avriKol, or aTro^xWef?, or in the Analytics TrpoTacrei?, judicia) and proves of them, as Plato had done be- fore him, that they necessarily consist of a name (6Vo,ua) and a verb (ptj/jLo), of which the former expresses the v-TroKei/mevov (siibstans, subjectum} the latter the KartjjopoviJievov {pradica- tum). It is shown at the same time, that a real connection between them only takes place when the verb has a Trr&xn?, i.e. is inflected ; but that which is indicated by the inflexion may be effected also by a separate word (en/at), which in that case indicates merely that the subject and predicate belong to- gether ((TvjKela-Qai, hence afterwards a-wfiev ev and ultimately cop2ila\ and hence belongs equally to the ovofj.a and to the pnna (hence, afterwards, verbum sub slant ivwii}. If, then, the judgment consists of three words by the separation of the copula, the predicate may either include the subject as a part of itself, and is then asserted of the subject as something it embraces (KO.& vTroKet/mevov}, or conversely it may state some- thing which is found in the subject, and inheres in it as its substratum (eV y-7ro/<:emeW>). It is clear that in the former class of subsuming judgments, Aristotle is thinking of cases where the predicate is a substantive, in the latter, indicating ( inherence, of cases where it is an adjective. And according as in a judgment the predicate is asserted or denied of the subject, and a KaTt]y6ptj/ui.u /card or avro TWO? takes place, it is a KarcHpacrts or cnrocfracris. The former is also called Trporao? ea\vTiKa va-repa (pp. 71-100) display a degree of finish far inferior to that of the investigations so far men- tioned, and were probably collected after Aristotle's death from his literary remains. They contain what has been aptly called his contributions to the methodology of science. Thus, since all scientific knowledge is demonstrative, i.e., as we have seen, proved by .syllogism, it must be pre- ceded by one which is of acknowledged certainty, and on which it is based. In order to arrive at such knowledge, two methods are possible ; one, when the starting-point is a datum of perception, from which an universal is inferred, which is the essence of inductive procedure, the other when the universal is the starting-point, from which a descent is made to the par- ticular, which is what Aristotle designates as the syllogistic procedure. The two are opposed, in that the one starts from the TTjoo? >'i/ma? Trpwrov, that which is the first and most certain thing for the subject, and passes on to that which is the first in itself ((pua-ei or Xoyw or aTrXw? Trporepof^, whereas in the other, the reverse order is adopted. (Where Trporepov and va-repov are found without qualification, the irpo? >;M? not the rt] fyiXovofyia, the science of First Principles ; and while this name corresponds best to its relation to the other sciences, its content is best described by the term Ontology. And in consequence of the importance which Aristotle attributes to this part of philosophy, he often calls it simply philosophy, which is just as intelligible as that Plato should often have applied the term to the dialectical part of his system. Trendelenburg : Geschichte dcr Kategorienlehre. Berlin, 1846. Bonitz : Die Kategorien des Aristoteles in the Wiener Akad. Schr. 1853. 87. ARISTOTLE'S FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCE. A. Schwegler : Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles. 4 vols. Tubingen, 1847-48. (Text, translation, and commentary.) H. Bonitz : Aristotelis metaphy- sica. Bonn, 1838-49. I. The writing of Aristotle, which received the name of Ta (/3//3Aia) /xera ra (pva-uc a (p. 980-1093), because it was put after his physical treatises in the first edition of his works, and thus brought it about that the science of first principles it discussed was afterwards called metaphysics, contains in the VOL. I. L 146 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [87,2. first book (A. pp. 980-993) a critical historical introduction. The second book (A eAarroi/) is apparently interpolated ; the third (B. pp. 995-1003) proceeds to enumerate the perplexities in which thought finds itself involved in thinking on this subject. Among them is the question, whether it can be the task of one and the same science to state the more formal principles of demonstration, of which every science must admit the validity, and, more materially, to determine what holds good of everything existent. This question is answered in the affirm- ative in the fo2irtk book (F. pp. 1004-1012), and there is established as the supreme principle of all demonstration, and hence as the formal principle of all science, the axiom that contrary things must not be predicated of the same thing, because this would destroy all definite substance. For this axiom holds good only of such substance, i.e. of everything that is really existent, as does similarly, that of excluded middle. This does not however involve a denial of the fact that the determinations of being and non-being are combined in the possible : it was by applying to actuality what is true of possibility that Heraclitus was led to assert the continual flux of all reality. The fifth book (A. pp. 1012-1025) contains a discussion of synonyms which interrupts the course of the inquiry, and may be put aside for the present if one wishes to get a view of Aristotle's metaphysic, together with the eleventh (K. pp. 1059-1069), which seems to belong to a different ver- sion of the whole metaphysics, as may the two last books (M. pp. 1076-1087, and N. pp. 1087-1093), which contain a criticism of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. ' With the sixth book the inquiry reaches ontology proper, inasmuch as it attempts to solve the question as to what the really existent is, quite in the same manner in which Plato had considered this problem in his Dialectic. F. N. Titze : .De Aristotelis operitm serie et distinctione. Leipz., 1826. Brandis : Ueber dcs Aristoteles Metaphysik. Akad. Abh., 1834. Michelet : Exanieu critique de Vouvrage d 1 Aristote intitule Metaphy- sique. Paris, 1836. Krische : Die theologiscJien Lehren der griecliisclien Denker. Gott., 1840, pp. 246 ff. J. C. Glaser : Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles nach Composition, Inhalt und Methods. Berlin, 1841. 2. If ontology is to be a scientific inquiry, it must derive the existent as such from principles (cf. supra, \ 85, i). Accord- ingly the first, and one may say, initiatory, question is, as to what is meant by a principle. The answer which the usage 87,30 ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 147 of language gives in the fourfold significance of the word atria and apx>'i (causci), Aristotle finds confirmed in history. For the Physiologers attempted to explain Being by means of matter, the Pythagoreans by form, Empedocles by the efficient cause, and Anaxagoras by the end or final cause (pp. 984, 985). Aristotle understands by v\tj (materia) or matter every e ou, or that out of which a thing becomes, while in Plato it had only been that in which it becomes. Hence not only is the bronze the matter of the statue, but the seed, of the tree, the premis- ses, of the conclusion, the natural impulses, of virtue, the tones, of the octave, the lyre even, of the tones it produces, the letters which compose and the sounds which generate it, of the word. For the same reason matter in Aristotle coin- cides with the indeterminate (awetpov, aopHrrov) capable of being determined, and hence in definition the genus, which has to be defined more closely, is the v\i. Similarly, matter is identical with that out of w r hich purposive order becomes only, but which does not yet display it. It follows that mere matter cannot be an object of knowledge, that it does not lie above but beneath the knowable, so that it can be understood only by means of analogy (p. 207). And just as the last of these assertions reminds us of Plato's voOo? Xo-yto-^oV (p. 78, i), so we are reminded of other Platonic utterances when Aristotle calls matter the ground of all plurality, the concomit- ant cause, and the feminine principle. And also when, exactly like Plato, he distinguishes between the ground or reason and the indispensable condition, he uses the same expression to denote the latter : airtourOat w? Si vXrjv (p. 200). On the other hand, it is peculiar to Aristotle and contrary to the Platonic con- ception, that he always assumes matter as the Suva/uus (potential), i.e. as the possibility and capacity of becoming formed, and points out the difference between it and mere a-repiia-i?, the Platonic MOV, inasmuch as it is that which only relatively is not (p. 192), i.e. that which is not yet, which is incomplete Hence there is conceded to it far more reality than in Plato, and unlike Plato's treatment it has assigned to it a place among the principles of true being, in the science of first principles. 3. But if in his treatment of matter the divergence from Plato is especially prominent, the same may be said of his agreement with Plato, when Aristotle passes to the second principle. This agreement extends even to the phraseology, for instead of /u.op(f'i (forma, causa formalis], he as often uses 148 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [87,4. \dyos and eiSos (pp. 198, 335), and even irapaSwy/Aa is found. The Form is related to the Matter, the principle of passivity, as that which determines it. The shape of the statue which the metal receives, the ratio i : 2 into which the tones of an octave are fitted, the dominating mean to which the impulses are subjected, the whole into which the parts are combined, the law which regulates the arrangement, the specific differ- ence which supplements the genus in definition, are all instanced by Aristotle as examples of the principle of form. Thus it bears towards the matter the relation of the 7repa$ to the aireipov, of the V o to the ?> to designate the third principle, is sometimes varied by TO ULTLOV T^? /u.eTa(3o\>j$, as his attempts to distinguish strictly between /c/i^o-iy and /xeT/3oA?/ fail. It is also called more briefly <*px*> or """'" KIVOVCTO. (p. 1044), and KIVOVV, also up\n T^? -yej/eVeco? or /QX'7 Klvt]TlKt] KUI yevi't-jTiKt] (p. 742) and />X^ T ^ ? Troi Bereft) ? (^192): TTOIOVV airiov also occurs and explains the well-known translation of causa ejficicns. In the case where the figure of a Hermes is imparted to a mass of metal, the sculptor is the cause of this transformation. But as he received the impulse to do so from the form he had beheld in his mind's eye, the latter is the true KIV^TIKOV, and thus the causa efficient coincides with the causa formalis. This is the case especially in living organisms ; for that which impels the plant to grow is its Xo'yo?. We can moreover, already at this point, understand why Aristotle called the soul, 8?, 5> 6 -] ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 149 the principle of motion in the living, its form (p. 414), and why he says of it that it is Kara Tpo-rrovs Tpeis aiTid (p. 415). 5. For the fourth cause also, the o5 eWa or reXo?, the causa finalis, may be seen to coincide with the last two, when one considers that the sculptor aims at nothing else than the figure of the Hermes. For this reason, chopping may be defined as the T'L T]v elvai of the axe, so that the form and the end or aim become one, just as we also still consider aim and motive as synonymous. Hence also the conceptions of the indeterminate and the aimless coincide, and a-n-eipov and areXe? become synonyms ; while similarly it becomes self-evident that everything perfect is determinate and limited. Thus the four original principles reduce themselves to two, Swapis and evepyeia, the last of which is henceforth called eVreXe'^em, on the ground of the element of determination by an end which has entered into it (p. 1115), and the antithesis of faculty and exercise of activity, of potentiality and actuality, of pre- supposition and perfection is the true result of the prelim- inary inquiries into the principles. But inasmuch as they are correlative, these conceptions acquire a certain amount of fluidity : thus one and the same thing may be an actuality in one respect, as e.g. the tree of the seed, and again a potentiality in another, as e.g. of a statue. Hence the distinction of first and second actualities is introduced, and the soul, e.g. is called the entelechy of the body, because it is the body in activity ; but also the first entelechy, because its own activity is thought. Accordingly, first or pure matter would be something entirely devoid of form, something not yet at all actualized ; and again, ultimate matter would be something to such a degree identical with form as no longer to afford the matter of a fresh actuali- zation (pp. 1015, 1045). And just as the distinction is here made between primary and secondary matter, there is else- where found a parallel distinction between immediate and ulterior possibility (p. 735). 6. The foregoing explanations supply the data for an answer to the question of ontology ; in the first place, in the negative result that neither mere matter nor mere form is substance or true being. This is maintained most decidedly with regard to the i/X7, and the position of the physiologers is thus rejected. Mere matter is intermediate between Being and Non-Being, is merely susceptible of actuality, merely its germ. If it happens once that it is calleil substance (p. 192), 150 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [87,6. a limiting eyyvs is added. But the form also possesses no- substantial being, and a great part of Aristotle's polemics against Plato hinge on the point that the latter assumed the reality of mere &/, and placed them beyond and outside of the many individual existences, separated from everything material, whereby it became inconceivable how the gulf between them and matter could be bridged, inasmuch as they were unable to acquire sensible existence for themselves (pp. 990, ff. Met. M. and N.). In spite of these polemics, however, it happens far more frequently than in the case of matter that he himself calls the mere form ova-ia, a fact to be explained partly by the higher position he also concedes to the form ; partly by the circumstance that ova-ia means essentia as well as sttbstantia, and that this, as was shown, really appeared identical with the form (p. 1032). If, however, the conception of ova-ia as real substance be strictly adhered to, it must be con- ceived as the union of matter and form, and as it were com- posed of them, as being materialized form or formed matter. Hence too the definition which is to express the whole essence of a thing, is equally composed of two factors, the genus and the differentia, corresponding to matter and form. But this union (, and that our term " motion," properly speaking corresponds only to the single kind of Kivtjo-is, which Aristotle calls (popd. To Aristotle, there is nothing real but that which is passing into actuality, and in opposition alike to the flux of Heraclitus and the unprogressive rest of the Eleatics, he regards development alone as real ; for this is the conception which in Aristotle takes the place of an absolute Becoming. There is no transi- tion from nothingness into Being, but only from that which is not yet, the matter or potentiality. (Cf. our phrase, li There's the making of a poet in him.") Thus he substitutes for the mere forms and genera of Plato the entelechies, i.e., forms which no longer exist unchangeably beyond the sensible world, but active forces, universals which particu- larize themselves. And in this exercise of its inherent activities, which thus constitutes the essential nature of reality. it is possible to distinguish the two factors of the moving and the moved, the active and the passive. The latter is matter which moves towards its end like the iron towards the magnet ; 87,7,8.] ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS. 151 the former, the end or form, moves it by attraction. Hence the real principle of all motion is always the end and the form ; it posits the motion which the matter undergoes (p, 202). 7. And what is true of every real substance, of course holds also of the sum total of all things real, the universe. In this also there is no cessation, there are Kivov^eva and Kivovvra, i.e. purposive activity. But inasmuch as everything moved in its turn imparts its motion, there must be inferred a prin- ciple which only moves without being itself moved, a -n-pwrov KLVOVV, which, being itself CIKIVJJTOV, naturally excludes all matter or passivity, and hence is pure evepyeia (pitrus actus\ avev v\w ; for otherwise it would be necessary to commit the ab- surdity of assuming the reality of an endless regress (p. 256). Hence in the last resort the reason of a transition into actuality always resides in something formed or actually existent. The objection that something unmoved cannot cause motion, overlooks the fact that this is refuted by every case of an end aimed at, and that the first Mover of the world is just the final end of the world, the Best (pp. 1072, 292). This does not however mean that Aristotle denies the causality of the end, for it had turned out to be the real efficient cause (p. 198). The dictum that the end is above all the Principle, is one that occurs more than once in Aristotle. Thus all reality is intermediate between the first matter after which nothing, and the first Mover after whom everything, strives. The latter on his part is free from all striving and all movement, and excludes all mere potentiality, and thus represents that which cannot be otherwise, devoid of plurality and imperish- able, one and eternal (pp. 1072, 1074, 258). For, after all, it is only because it is all this, that it can become the object of scientific cognition. But if this aim of all striving is eternal, the activity of the endeavour must be the same : the motion of the world is as eternal as the world itself. 8. But from the position hitherto developed, it further follows, that if the principle of motion in everything real was the Aoj d K p 6 a a- 1 9 have been aptly called, begin with an enumeration of difficulties, and attempts 1 54 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. t 88 > * at their solution. Then he passes on to determine the ideas of nature and the natural. This is effected by its antithesis to that which is produced artificially or forcibly, and leads to the result that only that is natural which takes place of itself, or contains the principle of change in itself ; and similarly, the principle of crracn? or ^p/ui.etv, as well as that of Kivrjcris or KivelcrQai (p. 192 6, 1025 6). Since, however, the end which coincides with the form had been recognised in the Metaphysics as the true principle of change, the true nature of a thing will lie less in its matter than in its conception and aim, for which the matter forms the material and the presupposition (pp. 194-200) : agreeably to the practice of naming things after their form and aim. And like the nature of the individual beings, so nature, as a whole, is above all a system of ends, of which the efficient causes serve as conditions. This at once excludes the possibility that there can exist in nature anything without a purpose, and hence whatever is aimless is also unnatural. Nature acts not, indeed, with a consciousness of purpose, but in accordance with purpose, not like a god, but nevertheless divinely, like the instinctive genius of an artist (p. 463). And as the end in its operation has been found to be motion, both the Eleatics, who deny motion, and the Pythagoreans, who, as mathematicians, ignore the conception of an end, are incapable of establishing a true science of nature. For the true mode of contemplating nature is teleological, but does not in any way exclude consideration of causal connections ; only it does not regard them as the chief thing, but as contributory causes and a conditio sine qua non. Although Aristotle's agreement with Plato in this extends even to the words he uses, it is diminished by the facts that in Plato the purpose of things is outside them, either in the transcendent archetypes, or even in the advantage of man ; whereas Aristotle searches for the purpose immanent in them, and tries to conceive them as entelechies, and directly censures their reference to human purposes. This internal justification of sensible things which he concedes to them, is connected with the higher position he concedes to the iv\.>/, and as the v\i] coincides with the avayKaiov, and the eu with the purpose, just as in Plato, it is self-evident that Aristotle must pay much more regard to the efficient causes, and approximate much more to the Physiologers than his predecessor. To the i"X>/ accordingly, as the mere O-WUITIOV, he refers all the phenomena in which the natural purpose 88,i.] ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 155 failed of attainment, such as monstrous births and miracles, which are irrational phenomena displaying the power of chance. When, therefore, he requires that the physicist should pass over such things and hold fast to cases in which nature attains her intentions, he anticipates the contempt which, two thousand years later, Bacon expressed for the freaks of nature (cf. 249, 7). Aristotle, however, so often joins the conceptions of TV-XII and TO avro/jLarov, the contraries of purposive order, with that of human will, that it is impossible not to suppose that the resistance of material would have supplied him with the basis of an answer, if the question of the origin of evil had been put to him. As purpose and form were found to be identical, nature of course avoids everything formless and indeter- minate. Hence the more a thing is determinate, the better it is (p. 259). The axiom already laid down in the ontology, that infinity does not exist actually, is continually utilized in his physics, and it is everywhere maintained, e.g., when infinite divisibility causes difficulties, that infinity is only possible and not actual (p. 204). And because of this impossibility of any- thing devoid of aim and measure, nature nowhere exhibits extremes without intermediaries : wherever anything tends to become immoderate, it is opposed by its contrary (p. 652). The inquiries which follow that into the infinite, are concerned with Space, the Void, and Time. The impossibility of a void is inferred from the most various reasons, while it is shown with respect to space and time that they are utterly unthink- able without motion. For every space must be conceived as the unmoved enclosing limit of something moving ; and space itself, therefore, as the unmoved limit of all things in motion, z.e., of the universe. Time, on the other hand, is the number and measure of motion, and thus mediately also of rest. He concludes from this that there would be no time without a mind to count it, and that the circular motions of the planets supply the best unit for such counting of time, because of their constancy; and moreover, that everything unaffected by motion and rest, the absolutely immovable, cannot be in time. This forms the transition to the books on physics, which Aristotle himself, and also his earlier commentators, used to oppose to the four books on the principles of science, under the name of the books on motion. If one ignores, as Aristotle himself often does, the distinction between change and transition and xlvrja-is, there must be assumed four kinds of 1 56 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 88, 2. motion, i.e., (relative) generation and corruption, 7^0-49 and (frdopd, which affect the substance ; change, X\o/axriy, which affects the quality ; increase and decrease, aufya-i? and 0l is not genuine : there are only isolated remarks about them in the discussion of their distinc- tion from the animals. To this lowest grade of life, which is also sometimes called the first soul, there is added, in the case of animals, sense-perception ; and together with this, since feeling, which forms the foundation of all perception, produces sensations of pleasure and pain, an instinct to get rid of the latter ; so that the aia-OqriKov and openriKov must be found in all, and the KIV^TIKOV KUTU TOTTOV in most animals. With 88,5-] ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 161 the first of these factors, the distinction of the front, i.e., the perceiving side, and the back, with the second, that of the right and chief, and the left side, acquires a meaning. In the case of man, who is the most perfect of beings, his upper and lower coincides with that of the world, in virtue of his upright posture. The single senses are thereupon discussed in great detail, and the finer development of the sense of touch in man is connected with his greater reasonableness. For this, the irepi cuVO?/crea>9 KCU ai(rOr]T 9, (pp. 715-789), as well as a few other treatises in the Parva naturalia. Pro- creation is regarded as the means whereby plants and animals, which individually are subject to death, partake of immortality at least in their kind. There is also assumed a gradation in the means of generation, in which the univocal form is preferred to the equivocal, and the highest place assigned to generation by means of separate sexes. In this, the altogether more im- perfect female supplies the matter in the menses and the male the form in the seed, which contains an ether-like breath. And as in the act of generation, so in its product also, the corporeal element is to be derived from the maternal, and the psychical from the paternal element. In connection with this doctrine of generation, which is different according to the different classes of animals, there follow inquiries into the development of the fetus and the growth and maturing of the young. The treatises on the length and brevity of life, on youth and old age, on life and death, are so closely connected with these, that one need not be surprised that Aristotle should describe these small treatises in the Parva 88,6.] ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS. 163 naturalia as completing what was to be said about animals (p. 467). Cf. F. N. Titze : Aristoteles iiber die wissensch. Behandlung der Naturkunde. Prague, 1819. Wiegmann : Observations zoologicce critics in Aristot. histor. anim. Berol., 1826. J. Bona Meyer : DC principiis Aristotelis in distributions animalium adhibitis. Berol., 1854. Also: Aristotehs Thierkunde. Berl., 1855. 6. Anthropology proper, i.e. the specific difference be- tween men and all animals, is treated in the third book of the DeAnima (pp. 424-435). The difference consists in the Now, which is not merely an intensified form of the vital principle, which is combined with the bodily organs, but which may be called a divine principle, because it is superadded to the mere activities of the soul and initiates an entirely new series of phenomena. Hence the expression OupaOev (p. 736). It modi- fies everything in man which he has in common with the animals, in a peculiar manner. Thus its movements are prompted by purpose and rational deliberation, its perceptions and conceptions are accompanied by judgments as to their truth and certainty, etc. The vovs alone, being something more than a function of the body, is separable from it (x&yHo-To?), imperishable and eternal. This remark, however, requires qualification. For there must be distinguished in the spirit also, as in everything else, the potentiality and the activity; and as the former has been found to be the principle of passivity, it is accordingly necessary to distinguish between a passive and an active vov?, the latter being exempt from suffering any- thing. The former, the vovs TraOyTiKos, which includes also that portion of thought which is dependent upon presentations and hence ultimately upon perceptions, i.e. empirical thought, is not independent of its organs ; hence it and its memories, etc., are as perishable as the organs. The vov? TroitrrtKo? stands related to it like a kingly master who, as he is in a way what he knows, is determined by nothing, but is perfectly free, immortal and eternal. Nor can we doubt that it is this active spirit that is called into play in the moments of man's absorp- tion in speculative thought. But there is room for much doubt as to the limits between the active and the passive vov?, and still more as to the relation of the former to the divine. For the view that only the divine spirit is quite free from all suffering, and hence the only pure exercise of activity and immortal, that it is combined with a single individual only 164 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [88,7. for the space of the latter's earthly life, and on his death combines with another, and that hence there can only be a question of its immortality, not of that of the individual person- ality for all this it is possible to appeal to the older Aristo- telians. On the other hand, many authorities in recent times, e.g. Schelling, Brandis, etc., have laid stress on the expres- sions of Aristotle which seem to conceive the active spirit as personally determinate, from which personal immortality would follow as a matter of course. And if one compares the point of view of Aristotle with that of Plato, and reflects that the latter was certainly in earnest in maintaining personal immortal- ity, the presumption in favour of this view must be still greater in Aristotle, in proportion as he conceded more to the claims of the individual than Plato did. To decide, indeed, how he conceived of immortality is impossible, seeing that he expressly declares memories, presentations, etc., to be dependent on the body and perishable : we can only assert that he conceived the theoretic and speculative nature of the spirit as its proper and therefore inalienable character. Cf. L. Schneider : Unsterblichkeitslehre des Aristoteles. Passau, 1867. Fr. Brentano : Die Psychologic des Aristoteles. Mainz, 1867. 7. That Aristotle, if he had given a detailed account of Mathematics, would have placed it after his ontology, goes with- out saying. But physics also, as is indicated in the name of the second, and not third, philosophy, has been put before mathematics, of which it would form the natural presupposi- tion. For not only is the fundamental idea of mathematics, viz., space, fully treated in his Physics, but all mathematical ideas are not, according to Aristotle, generated by an a priori construction, as the modern view holds, but by abstraction from the sensible, e acpai pea-eta?, so that in his view they do not, like the conceptions of ontology, denote anything really distinct from the corporeal, but only something which the mathema- ticians regard as such. Of course, therefore, Aristotle combats those who would substitute mathematics for metaphysics. The object of mathematics is the quantitative, which is number or magnitude according as it is to be counted or to be measur- ed, and in this consists the distinction of arithmetic and geo- metry. The former is concerned with that which is not, the latter with that which is, in space. For this reason, too, the first element of each, the point and unity, are respectively defined 89,1.] ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 165 as f*.ovai aOero?, definitions suggested by the connection of geometrical and arithmetical methods so habitual in antiquity. Among the many differences between TrXriOos and /meyeOo?, he mentions together with others, that in numbers there is no greatest number, but only a smallest, viz.> unity, while among magnitudes, there is no minimum or atom, but only a maximum, viz., space. Thorough researches into continuous and discrete quantities, undertaken it is true in the interest of physics rather than of mathematics, are found in the seventh book of the Physics. In addition to the pas- sages concerning pure mathematics, his writings also contain hints about its applied parts, e.g., optics, mechanics, the art of overcoming natural difficulties, etc. 89. ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. C. Garve : Die EtJiik des Aristoteles ubersetzt und erldutert. 2 vols. Breslau, 1798-1801. Michelet : Die Ethik des Aristoteles in ihrem Verhdltniss zum System der Moral. Berlin, 1827. J. Walter: Die Lehre -von der praktischen Vernunft in der griechischen Philosophic. Jena, 1874. i. Just like Plato, who for this reason had treated of ethics under the names of the Statesman and the State, Aris- totle also is convinced that man can realize his moral destiny only in the State, which he cannot dispense with because he is not a god, and in separation from which he becomes the most malignant and dangerous of beasts. Hence he often calls all inquiries into virtue political (p. 1094). This however does not prevent him from beginning by inquiries into the destiny of individual men, which cannot indeed be fully realized except in the State, and into the subjective conditions required for such realization. These are laid down in the ten books which he himself repeatedly quotes as his 'H 1 K d (pp. 1 094- 1 1 8 1 ). Their relation to politics in the narrower sense is that of the general to the applied portion. In the first book, he begins by determining the problem in such a way, that it is not so much a question of setting up the idea of an absolute good, as of giving an account of the good which is attainable, and that hence regard should be paid to casual cir- cumstances and changeable elements, involving a renunciation of scientific precision. And as ethics, regarded as a science, aims only at discovering the reason for a fact, it goes without 1 66 SECOND PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [89,1. saying, that the subjective experience that this or that is good, forms a precondition of its proper understanding. It is necessary in the first place to answer the question as to what is the highest good attainable by action. Universal agreement, together with the ambiguity of the expression e5 irparreiv, induces Aristotle to admit without further doubt, that happiness, evSai/novia, is this good. The further difficulty, that some understand thereby pleasure, others practical political activity, and yet others wisdom, is put aside for the moment by the remark that these alternatives do not exclude one another. The second book investigates what activity leads to this end, i.e., in what Virtue consists. And as this end is an end for man, it can consist only in a specifically human ac- tivity, and therefore not in mere vegetating or living, but in the exercise of the activity of a rational being as such. If, however, it is necessary to distinguish in man two elements, that of the TraOr], akin to the nature of the beasts, i.e., the practical affections which are accompanied by pleasure and pain, and that of the reason, there result two classes of virtues ; first the ethical or practical virtues, which consist in the supremacy of the reason over the sensual impulses, and secondly those which consist in the vivifying and intensifying of the reason. The latter, the dianoetic, or logical virtues, are put aside for the time being, and it is shown, in agreement with Plato, who had conceived the good as a-v/m/m-erpoi', that if virtue is produced by applying to the material of the natural impulses an 6p06s Xo'yoy, as the form to determine them, a mean between two extremes must result. This mean is not given by nature, but issues from deliberate purpose, nor yet is it one that occurs only once, but one that has by repetition become a permanent con- dition and habit. In short, virtue is e i.] ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY OF ART. 173 actual conditions. Neither unreflecting routine nor Utopian projects of doctrinaires will find any support in Aristotle. . Cf. Hildenbrandt : Geschichte und System der Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie. Leipzig, 1860. 90. ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY OF ART. G. Teichmiiller : Aristotdische Forschungen. 3 vols. Halle, 1867, 69, 73 J. H. Reinkens : Aristoteles tiber die Kunst. Vienna, 1870. i. The third main division of the Aristotelian system (cf. 85, 3) is formed by his reflections upon artistic pro- ducts and art itself. And since the IIo^Tt/cj/ ( 1447-1462), which comes chiefly under consideration from this point of view, remained a fragment, it must be supplemented by the isolated remarks which are found chiefly in the Ethics and Politics, but also in the Metaphysics, Rhetoric, etc. \\oielv or productive activity (factio) is distinguished from action (the TrpuTTeiv or actio] by the fact that in the latter the act itself is the chief thing, and for this reason the " how " of the action, or the feeling that produced it, gives it its value, while in the former the work or the result (epyov) alone matters, so that it is indifferent with what feelings a house was built or a picture painted, so long as they turn out well and beautiful. And as rational action, become a habit, resulted in virtue, so rational production, become a /\p-et9, which are also said to be connected with the designations of words, vividly remind one of " experience " in Plato and Aristotle, arising with the help of recollection. Whatever agrees with sensation and these anticipations may be regarded as certain, and forms the subject of an dpOrj $6a or V7r6\ir^i?, and hence all precipitancy must be avoided, in order that this previous anticipation may have time to become something really acceptable, So^aa-Tov, when it has received its confirmation. Epicurus does not seem to have entered upon any other logical inquiries. He seems to have rejected definitions and to have said nothing about divisions and inferences, all of which is severely criticized by Cicero (De Finib., /., 7). 3. The avowed aim of his Physics is to afford protection against the terrors of superstition. And as he regards religion as coinciding completely with superstition, and as every teleological method, certainly, and every reference of phenomena to a few similar laws, very easily, leads to a religious view of phenomena, he ridicules the first, language, e.g., is the effect and not the purpose of the tongue, and advises us to remember, in the case of every phenomenon, that it may be explained in the most various ways a sunset, e.g., either by the sun's circular motion or by its extinction. Hence he regards the atomistic theory of Democritus, which makes all things arise out of the accidental meetings of atoms moving in the void, as the most sensible. He modifies it, however, by attributing also weight to the atoms, in addition to shape and size (cf. 47, 4), and by letting them deviate from the straight line ; the former in order to explain their motion, the latter because it alone explains their conglomera- tion, and in order to acquire a basis already at this point for 184 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [96,4. the free caprice that would else be inexplicable. It is also in the interests of freedom that the Epicureans will not hear of the providence of the Stoics. In this manner there arise innumerable worlds differing in size and form, while in the spaces between them dwell the gods, caring nothing for the worlds nor interfering with them. They are assumed to exist partly because of the consensus gentium, partly in order to supply ideals of the life of mere enjoyment. With regard to the myths of the popular religion, it appears that the Epicureans, where they did not deny them outright, followed the example of Euemerus (vid. 70, 3), who accordingly is said to have belonged to the school. Man, like everything else, is an aggregate of atoms ; both the breath-like and fire-like soul are composed of fine atoms, and its envelope, the body, composed of coarser particles. Both body and soul are dissoluble, like all else, and although only fools seek death, it is also folly to fear it, since he upon whom it comes has ceased to exist. The part of the soul which has its seat in the chest is the noblest, as being the rational part, in which the euta>Aa emitted by things, produce sensation, after hitting the organs of sense. 4. The reduction of affections to pleasure and pain gives the transition to Ethics. It is assumed as self-evident that pleasure is the only true good, and that all the virtues praised by the Peripatetics, are valuable only as leading on to pleasure. Pleasure, however, is sometimes defined negatively as freedom from pain, in opposition to the Cyrenaics, and also as the product of reflection, consisting as it does of the greatest possible sum of enjoyments, which may, if necessary, be purchased even by suffering. The eudaemonism of Epicurus is not the reckless hedonism of Aristippus, but sober and premeditated. And because the pleasure he seeks is found by calculation, he calls it spiritual pleasure or pleasure of the soul ; but when one considers everything that is included under this spiritual pleasure, it is possible to doubt whether the Cyrenaics, with all their preference for sensual pleasure, do not after all occupy a higher moral position than the Epicureans. Virtue is practised by the sage only as a means to pleasure, and not for its own sake ; if the indulgence of all lusts liberated him from fear and disquiet, he would give himself up to it. Similarly it is only the consideration for his safety which leads the sage to live in a State, and by choice in a monarchy, and induces him to respect the contract which is called law. 96, 5 ; 97, i.] THE STOICS. 185 Marriage is treated with considerable indifference, and the highest place assigned to friendship, the most subjective and accidental of all bonds ; but to this also there is attributed a basis in advantage. The practice of Epicurus was better than his theory, and his successors attempted to tone down the latter also. 5. Among his disciples may be mentioned, his favourite Metrodorus, whom he survived, and Hermarchus his successor. At Rome, Amafanius and Rabirius are mentioned by Cicero as the first Epicureans. After them may be mentioned Cicero's teacher Zeno, and Phsedrus, to whom a writing found at Herculaneum was at first attributed. It is now, however, regarded as the work of another Epicurean, Philodemus. But the most important among Roman Epicureans, not only for us, because of the preservation of his work, but probably also intrinsically, is Titus Lucretius Carus (95-52 B.C.), who in his famous didactic poem (De rerum nattira, Libb. VI.) aims chiefly at freeing the world from the terror with which superstition, i.e., religion, fills it. He attempts with all the fire of poetic force, to transform the dry matter of atomist physics ; and hence Nature, his only goddess, often appears as an all but personal being, while the deviation of the atoms almost seems like the effect of a vital principle within each of them. On the other hand, he lays more stress than Epicurus on the strict subjection of phenomena to laws. In ethical matters, he, like the Romans generally, shows greater ear- nestness, often at the expense of consistency, although he does not, it is true, diverge so far from the spirit of the Epicurean doctrine as others, who are said by Cicero to have counted disinterested joy in virtue also among the pleasures. Diog. Laert. X., Ritter and Preller, I., c. 354-372. B. THE STOICS. Tiedemann : System der stoischen Philosophic. 3 Pts. Leipz., 1776. Petersen : Philosophies Chrysippea fundamenta, Altonse, 1824. M. Heinze : Die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischcn Philosophic. Oldenburg, 1872. 97- i. ZEXO, born at Citium in Cyprus, in 340 B.C., and hence a Hellenized Phenician, is said first to have become acquainted with the Socratic doctrines and writings, and then to have 1 86 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [97,2. been a pupil of the Cynic Crates, the Megarian Stilpo, and the Academic Polemo, and after twenty years to have come forward as a teacher of philosophy in the crroa iroiKiX^ from which the school derives its name. After actively teaching for more than fifty years, he is said to have ended a life distinguished by its temperance, by suicide. Of his writings hardly anything has been preserved. It is probable that his disciples departed farther from the doctrines of the Cynics than he had done himself: this appears to have been least of all the case with the Chian Aristo. Among his disciples should be mentioned Cleanthes of Assus in the Troad, who was distinguished by his zeal and became his successor. There followed him the most eminent of the Stoics, especially in the matter of logical keenness, Chrysippus of Soli, 282-209 B.C., called " the knife of the Academic knots," an extremely fertile writer. His fragments were collected by Baguet in 1821 and supplemented by Petersen with the help of papyrus rolls that had been discovered. They occupy the same position in our knowledge of Stoicism that those of Philolaus do in our knowledge of Pythagoreanism (vid. 31). The seventh book of Diogenes Laertius also gives detailed accounts about these and some other Stoics. The first know- ledge of Stoic philosophy was brought to Rome by a disciple of Chrysippus, Diogenes, who, together with Critolaus (91) and Carneades ( 100, 2) was a member of the famous Athenian embassy. But it was first really transplanted to Rome by Pansetius ( 1 75-1 1 2 B.C.), who was a pupil of Antipater of Tarsus and inclined to eclecticism. His pupil was the learned Posidonius (135-51 B.C.), one of Cicero's instructors. There follow the Roman Stoics, L. Annseus Cornutus (20-48 A.D.), C. Musonius Rufus, his friend the satirist A. Persius Flaccus ; also the pupil of Musonius, the freedman Epictetus, whose lectures, delivered at Nicopolis after his expulsion from Rome, were much frequented. We are acquainted with his doctrines by the dissertations (Atarp/Sat) taken down by Arrian, and also by the far more concise ''EtyxeipiSiov. Lastly, there is the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius (121-180 B.C.), with whose views we are rendered familiar by the writings he left behind. 2. In complete antithesis to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the Stoics so subordinate theory to practice that they not only define philosophy as the art of virtue, or the effort to 97,2.] THE STOICS. 187 attain it, but give as the reason of its division into logic, physics, and ethics, the fact that there are logical, physical, and ethical virtues. And in their desire to arrive as quickly as possible at ethics and the soul of their system, they, like the Epicureans, avoided the labour of original invention, and de- pended on Aristotle for their logic, and on him and Heraclitus for their physics. This last selection, as well as their attrac- tion towards the pantheism of the Eleatics, quite corresponds to their antithesis to the Epicureans and their atomism. Some of them indeed, like Aristo, entirely rejected logic and physics, on the ground that the former did not concern us, while the latter transcended our powers. The first part of the system, to which the Stoics, in agreement with the later Peripatetics, gave the name of Logic, because it treats of the Xo-yo?, i.e., thought or the word, together with the production of both, is divided into Rhetoric and Dialectic, the arts of monologue and dialogue respectively, because it is possible to speak either for oneself, for others, and with others. It is, however, a science subsidiary to ethics, as teaching how to avoid errors. This is effected in the first place by the theory of knowledge, in which the soul is conceived as a blank tablet in the first in- stance, upon w.hich the object produces a conception (?\|/t? must be renounced, even in the mathematics, and we must content ourselves with probability (TriQavoTw), which has different degrees, since it is possible to dis- tinguish probable and indubitable conceptions, and again those which have been tested in every way. The contradictions arrived at, if one requires more than probability, are exempli- fied by the Stoics, especially in the conclusion of their Physics, 196 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.[ 101, 3 ; 102, I. in their teaching about the Deity. The assumption of an imperishable and unchangeable being is said to contradict not only the other Stoic doctrines, but also itself. And it is just as little possible to assert of a practical maxim that it possesses absolute truth as of a theoretic dogma. Nothing is good by nature or for all men, but everything by enactment, and ac- cording to the differences of the subject. Although, therefore, the sage will everywhere be guided by the existing custom, he will yet abstain from expressing any opinion upon all practi- cal as upon all theoretical questions ; he will consider nothing certain, not even that everything is uncertain. This reticence, which results in imperturbability, Carneades is said to have himself practised to such an extent that Clitomachus asserted that he had never been able to discover to which of two con- tradictory assertions his master inclined. Cf. Geffers : De Arcesilce successoribus. Getting. 1845. 3. PHILO of Larissa, who taught at Rome, is often men- tioned together with Charmidas as the founder of a fourth Academy. In Antiochus of Askalon, whose lectures were attended by Cicero at Athens, and who is regarded as the founder of a fifth Academy, the continuous polemics against Stoicism produce the natural result, that scepticism becomes mixed with Stoic elements. This approximation to Stoicism, he justifies by denying the difference between the original and the later Academy, and makes the Stoics agree with the former to a greater extent than their change of terminology would appear to permit. This fusion, which, it should be said, was very favourably received, provoked the stricter scepticism as a reaction. Cf. C. F. Hermann: De Philone Larissao. Getting. 1851. d'Allemand : De Antiocho Ascalonita, Marburg. 1856. Diogen. Laert. IV. 6. Ritter and Preller, I.e. 414-428. C RETURN TO THE PYRRHONIC SCEPTICISM. 102. ^NESIDEMUS. i. /ENESIDEMUS of Cnossus, a younger contemporary of Cicero, who taught at Alexandria, was led back to the more 102,2.] ^ENESIDEMUS. 197 consistent Scepticism of Pyrrho by the manner in which Antiochus combated the Stoics, as it seemed to him perfectly dogmatic. Hence he called the eight books of his inquiries Pyrrhonean. They have been lost, and the only reliable in- formation about him we owe to Photius, for Sextus does not always distinguish between what was said by ^Enesidemus and what by his pupils and successors. Thus his statement that scepticism served as a preparation for Heracliteanismcan be true only of the latter, if indeed the whole assertion did not arise out of a misunderstanding. yEnesidemus, on the con- trary, regarded strict scepticism as the aim, and the academic doubt as a mere preliminary exercise for this. The true sceptic does not permit himself to assert with the Academics, that there exists only probability and no certainty ; for this already would be a Soy /ma. He neither affirms, nor denies, nor doubts, but merely investigates ; and o-/ce\[^? is not denial but inquiry. The essential point is, that he asserts nothing whatever, so that the expressions, " perhaps, " " I determine nothing, " etc., are the only ones he permits himself. Now this cautious reticence is most readily reached, if one considers all things from certain points of view (TOTTOI, or rpoVoi T?9 ovrexj/-- <>?), of ten of which ynesidemus or his school made use, and which are enumerated by Sextus. Thus the difference of the same sense-organs in different subjects, the conflict be- tween the perceptions of different senses, the relativity of most of the predicates we attribute to things, etc., are said to be reasons why there can be no objectively certain assertions, and why every one has really only a right to describe and to make assertions about his own condition, and as to how something appeared to him. Among these common-places, which are theoretical, practical, and religious in character, there is found also that of the untenableness of the conception of cause, a point of attack also for more than one form of scepti- cism in much later times. Some of the reasons against this conception appear rather weak, but others, e.g., the assertion of the simultaneity of cause and effect, go more deeply into the matter. 2. A successor of /Enesidemus, Agrippa, is said to have re- duced the ten modes of scepticism to five, and to have stated them as, the variety in the meanings of words, the progression of all reasoning to infinity, the relativity of all things, and their dependence on disputable assumptions, and lastly, the 198 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 103, I, 2. fact that all reasoning is circular. Diogenes Laertius gives a list of names which are said to fill up the gap of nearly two centuries between yEnesidemus and Sextus. 103. SEXTUS EMPIRICUS. 1. SEXTUS the physician, called Empiricus because he was an adherent of the method initiated by Philinus, lived towards the end of the second century after Christ, probably at Athens and afterwards at Alexandria. He is certainly the most import- ant of the Sceptics for us, because his writings have been preserved, and probably was so also intrinsically. The three books of his Pyrrhonic vTroruTrwo-e/?, contain an account of the characteristics of the sceptical point of view, and discuss the chief philosophical conceptions from this basis. His main work is more important only for the history of philosophy generally, and not for a knowledge of the sceptical standpoint in particular. It consists of the eleven books Against the Mathe- maticians, i.e., against all dogmatists : the first book criticizes grammar and represents it as uncertain, the second does the same to rhetoric, the third to geometry, the fourth to arithme- tic, the fifth to astronomy, the sixth to music, the seventh and eighth to logic, the ninth and tenth to physics, and the eleventh to ethics. The last five books are also frequently quoted as the discourse against the philosophers ; and J. Bekker in his edition of Sextus (Berlin, 1842), put them before the rest with the title of -rrpos Aoy/za-n/cou?. The writings of Sextus are gen- erally quoted according to Fabricius' edition of 1718 (Leips. Fol., with a Latin translation). A good reprint of this edition was published by Kiihn, at Leips., in 1842, in 2 vols. 8vo. 2. Sextus begins by fixing the idea of scepticism in such a way as to oppose to the dogmatists who, like Aristotle and the Stoics, maintain the knowableness of things, Academics who assert their unknowableness. Distinguished from both of these are those who assert nothing at all, and may be called Ephectics, because of this suspense of judgment, or Sceptics and Zetetics, because they neither think they have found truth nor despair of doing so, but seek it, or Aporetics, because they search out the difficulties in every inquiry. The true sceptic does not assert that to every assertion a contrary 103,3.] SEXTUS EMPIRICUS. 199 assertion may be opposed, but looks to see whether this can- not be done. And in this testing investigation the different modes of scepticism are subsidiary means ; they may be re- duced to three, according as they concern either the relation of a conception to its object, or to its subject, or lastly to both, or they may all be considered as varieties of the mode of re- lativity. The subject of inquiry is both the (paivo/meva and the voov/m.va ; and since in the course of investigation it appears that in respect to both it is necessary to admit the equal force (tVoo-OeWm) of contrary assertions, scepticism leads to suspension of judgment, and this to imperturbability. The true sceptic regards everything as undecided, even this, that everything is undecided. Elsewhere, indeed, this assertion is qualified, and the dictum that everything is uncertain, is compared with the one that Zeus is the father of all the gods ; since the latter also contains in itself one, and only one, exception. In- stead therefore of asserting anything whatever about ob- jects, the true sceptic describes only how he is affected by them, and says nothing about phenomena, but only a little about how they appear. And he shows the same sus- pense in practical matters. Thus, although he will every- where do what is required by the usage of the country, he will yet take great heed not to say that anything is intrinsically good or bad. The usual sceptical answers, " perhaps", " not more than the contrary," "I know not," etc., are discussed very thoroughly, and it is shown that if they are taken seriously complete unassailableness must result. 3. In the larger work of Sextus his attacks on logic, physics, and ethics are especially important for the proper appreciation of his scepticism. The first of these is reproached with the untenableness of all criteria of truth and the uncer- tainty of the syllogistic method, the second with the difficul- ties and contradictions in the conceptions of space and time. Ethics finally have to endure an enumeration of the differences of moral precepts in different nations, from which the result is said to be, that there is nothing good or bad by nature and for all. In short, the result arrived at is complete subjectivism in theory and practice. Diog. Laert., IX. 12. Ritterand Preller, Lc. 467-476. 2OO THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 104, 105. 104- Scepticism, by attacking both forms of Dogmatism at one and the same time, was certain to bring them nearer to each other and to render them conscious of how numerous their points of agreement were. Hence the longer this con- test lasted, the more pronounced did the eclectic colouring of the doctrines of the Epicureans and Stoics become. And it has already been shown how the conflict with the Stoic dogmatism impelled the Academics to syncretism ( 101, 3). The later Peripatetics too had betrayed a similar tendency ( 91). And this tendency was certain to show itself still more strongly among the Romans than among the Greeks. The fact that the Roman mind, on its introduction to philo- sophy, comes to know scepticism at the same time, so that philosophy is not generated by the Romans themselves, but put before them in the shape of complete systems, systems moreover of foreign origin ; and that, further, their whole nature impels them to pursue speculation, not for its own sake but for the sake of practical aims, such as oratory or enlightenment, and hence to regard as acceptable whatever can be utilized for those aims, makes it intelligible that there arises in the Roman world a syncretism in which scepticism has to exhibit itself as the sole cement that can combine the different elements, all the more because of their disparity. All those who philosophized at Rome have been more or less syncretists ; only in some there predominated the Stoic element, as e.g. in Lucullus, Brutus, and Cato; in others the Epicurean, as in Pomponius Atticus and C. Cassius ; in others the Platonic, as in Varro, or the Peripatetic, as in Crassus and M. P. Piso. But syncretism is dogmatism as well as scepticism, and it is just in this that the chief weakness of the system, and its formal inconsistency, consists. THIRD DIVISION. be Spncretists. I0 5- The rise of syncretism, however, is not only explicable, as indeed even morbid phenomena are, but it is also a necessity in I05-] THE SYNCRETISTS. 2OI the Roman world, and this is the reason why syncretism in Roman times produced such great and lasting effect. The prin- ciple of the Roman mind (cf. 93) compels it, in its aspirations after greatness, to aim at making the Roman people the sum of many and, if possible, of all nations. But a nation which boasts of its origin from a colluvies and never wearies of growing by the absorption of neighbouring peoples, which regards the whole globe as its promised inheritance, of which the temple is a pantheon, such a nation can regard as its own and its true philosophy only one that finds room for all doctrines, however different. It is only under a rule like the all-embracing empire of Rome that philosophical syncretism is the secret of all thinking men, that it has a justification in the world's history, that it is a great and therefore a permanent phenomenon. But this syncretism makes its appearance in two substantially different forms. In the one case it may be called the Roman syncretism, after its chief abode, or the Ciceronian, after its chief representative, or the classical, after the elements which are mingled in it. And since it only mingles ideas already possessed by philosophy, its merit does not consist in the novelty of its ideas, but in the good taste of its manner and in the beauty of the form of its philosophizing ; and it is in consequence of these qualities that Cicero could be pointed out as the true anti-barbarian ( 239, 2), at a time when the later Middle Ages had reduced philosophy to the extreme of tastelessness. In its second form the position of syncret- ism is widely different ; it may be called Alexandrian, after its chief seat, Philonian, after its chief representative, and Hellenistic, after its contents. The inclusion of religious ideas, and especially of Oriental ideas, in philosophy so enriches it that the doctrine of Cicero may often appear shallow in com- parison with the frequently profound content of the Alex- andrian Syncretists. But as these ideas grew up in an entirely different soil from that of those with which they were to be afterward fused, the combination becomes formless and tasteless, and often monstrous, and Cicero is far superior to Philo in matters of form. For this reason, when, also at the end of the Middle Ages, philosophy had almost completely lost its content, and revelled in merely formal trifling, a remedy was found in the recollection of the Alexandrian and other kindred doctrines (vid. 237). 2O2 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 106, I, 2. A. CLASSICAL SYNCRETISM. 1 06. CICERO. 1. M. TULLIUS CICERO, born at Arpinum 106 B.C., and murdered in 43 B.C., owed, as he has frequently admitted, his culture to Greece, in which he resided for several years in his youth. He became famous above all as an orator, but also as a statesman and philosopher ; in respect of the last, with posterity more than with his contemporaries. He was intro- duced to philosophy by the Epicurean Phsedrus, and after- wards enjoyed the instruction of the Epicurean Zeno, the Academics Philo and Antiochus, and the Stoics Diodotus and Posidonius, and in addition, was a prodigious reader. His philosophic activity, to which he continually recurred whenever he was driven away from the public service, chiefly aimed at making known to his countrymen in their own language and in a form freed from exaggerations, the results searched out by the Greek philosophers. Hence he often merely translates. At the same time he never conceals the orator in the form of his writings nor the practical Roman in their tendency. The public to which he imagines himself as appealing, consists of the educated and sensible men of the upper classes, together with whom he indulges in ingenious discussions. Thus, even as the Athenian Sophists prepared the ground for the seed of true philosophy, so Cicero accomplished a similar task for a larger public and for different times. His works have been schoolbooks for thousands of years ; and even in the darkest ages they kept alive a knowledge of and an interest in the subjects that had occupied the philosophers of Greece. 2. As the Hortensius, in which Cicero discussed the value of philosophy generally, has been lost, his most important philosophical works are : (i) As to his whole standpoint, the Academica, which were combined out of two versions into but two books of the original four, and which have not been preserved entire ; (2) as regards theoretical philosophy, the De natura Deoriim in three, and the De divinatione in two books ; (3) as regards practical philosophy, the De finibus bonorum et malorum in five, the Tusculance qucestiones in five, and the De officiis in three books, and also the fragments of the De republica. His other writings of a practical character are to io6, 3.] CICERO. 203 be called popular declamations rather than treatises. There are, as is well known, very many editions of his works. In the same way he himself and his importance have formed the subject of much discussion, as is proved by the copious bibliography found in Ueberweg, etc. The right mean between the over-estimation of many older judgments and the depreciation which is fashionable in these days, is preserved by the detailed and excellent account of Ritter. Herbart also appreciates Cicero's services to philosophy as they deserve. 3. A moderate scepticism was most consonant with Cicero's whole temper and also with the task he had imposed upon himself, for it is always wont to be the theory of men of the world. This is the reason why he calls his philosophy that of the New Academy, and says it enables him to enter into isolated inquiries and to accept whatever seems most probable without committing himself to any system. Hence the method of the new Academy, viz., that of inquiring for the reasons for and against everything, meets with his complete approval ; it permits urging one point or another according to circumstances, a licence especially valuable to an orator (cf. DC fato, I.; Tiisc., II. 3). Finally, and this is not the least of its excellences, it tends to modesty, and is a .protection against the absurd exaggerations in which the other systems revel, because they pay no heed to common sense. Among these exaggerations Cicero includes the declamatory descrip- tions of the sage among the Epicureans and Stoics, the final result of which is, that no sage ever existed. And in such a sense he himself neither is a sage nor wishes to be one. Nor does he wish to describe all that the complete sage knows and is capable of, but only what is probable to a reasonable man, and how such a one has to bear himself. His task is, not that of setting up a new system, but, by embarking on logical, physical, and above all ethical inquiries, of helping to bring it about that the supremacy in the sciences also, and especially in philosophy, should be added to the many crowns of victory which Rome had wrested from the Greeks (int. a/., Tnsc., II. 2). Next to Plato and the Academics, Cicero esteems Aristotle and the Stoics most highly, while he has the lowest opinion of the doctrine of Epicurus. He regards it as so frivolous, and hence as so un- Roman, that he asserts that the Epicureans did not at all dare to speak openly in Roman 2O4 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 106, 4, 5. society. Their real instructor, Democritus, he places far above them. 4. If one considers separately what Cicero has said about the several branches of philosophy, one finds that his state- ments about Logic are mostly negative. He blames the Epicureans for neglecting definition, division, and the art of syllogizing, and praises the Peripatetics by way of contrast. He combats the opinion both of the Epicureans and of the Stoics, in that they imagine themselves to possess a certain criterion of truth : such a criterion does not exist, although the senses, and especially sound common sense, afford a sufficient degree of probability in order to be able to act with certainty. 5. With regard to Physics, Cicero is fond of pointing to the gaps in the science, and to the fact that there is hardly any point in it that is not disputed. But this is the very reason why he wishes the subject to be studied, in order that it may dampen the conceit of knowledge and produce modesty. Besides, one must admit that even the Epicureans are right on this one point, that the study of the science of nature is the best means of liberating men from superstition. Only the effect of the study must not be limited to this, for it also elevates and improves. In this respect the Stoics have fallen far short of what Cicero expects from sensible men, to say nothing of philosophers. For greatly as he himself approves of sparing the religious conceptions of the people, because they are necessary for the masses in the interest of the State's welfare, he yet has no idea of regarding as truths the stories of the many gods, the trustworthiness of the auguries and all the other oracles : hence the Stoics, with their philosophic justi- fication of polytheism, appear to him the patrons of bigotry and the enemies of enlightenment. Similarly, even more ethical reasons induce him to regard the fate of the Stoics as o a delusion, seeing that it is incompatible with freedom. He himself arrives at a belief in a Deity by means of a teleologi- cal contemplation of the world, although the occurrence of purposeless phenomena causes him the gravest scruples with regard to this point. He conceives the Deity as one, like in nature to our own spirit, and dwelling in the world just as our spirit does in our body. This similarity is often emphasized to such an extent as to sound almost pantheistic. The fact that the Deity is sometimes described as an immaterial being, 106, 6.] CICERO. 205 and sometimes identified with a fire-like substance, or even with the ether of Aristotle, is explained by a precisely parallel indecision with regard to the human spirit. Cicero, however, does not at all wish to refer every particular to divine action : for there is much that is effected by nature, or that happens of itself. Besides the Deity, Cicero finds nothing in physics so important as the human spirit. He is convinced that it is something more than the coarse material particles of the world, and he is equally certain about its freedom. Im- mortality also he regards as probable in the highest degree, although he gives a warning against attaching too much credence to its philosophic proofs. With regard to the character of the future life, he considers it as happy ; all the tales of punishments and tortures he declares to be super- stitions. 6. But his favourite study is Ethics : every inquiry sooner or later leads him on to ethical questions ; and he repeatedly declares that philosophy is the art of life, and that the inquiry into the highest good is the cardinal problem of philosophy. The attitude he takes up in so doing closely approximates to the view of the Stoics. Thus in his paradoxes he comments on their pet formulas, as if he quite belonged to them. At the same time, however, he tones down their harshnesses by the inclusion of Peripatetic elements, and hence often appears to be undecided. He is consistent in one thing alone, and that is in his attacks upon the Epicurean doctrine, to the repre- sentation and refutation of which he has devoted the first two books of the De finibus. For, says he, even in the case of the sub-human beings, it is possible to prove the existence of something higher than mere pleasure, how much more then in man, who even in eating requires something more than pleasure. His censure of the Peripatetics, for having placed virtue in the moderation rather than in the suppression of the instincts, the assertion that all passions are morbid, that with one virtue all the others are given, that virtue has its reward in itself, that the truly happy man could descend even into the bull of Phalaris, etc., all this reminds one of the Stoics and their declamations. Afterwards, however, Cicero comes to him- self again : all this is said to be applicable only to the true sage, who is nowhere found, and of whom alone the recte factum (/caro'yoO^au) can be predicated, while with ordinary men it is sufficient if they do not fall short of the officiiim (/c0>>oi>) ; in 2O6 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 106, 7. life as it is, happiness is not conceivable without the addition of luck ; moderate pleasure is by no means to be despised ; at bottom pain is an evil after all, etc. In short, one fancies one is listening to a Peripatetic. He himself does not regard this as inconsistent, for he considers the difference between Peripatetics and Stoics to be chiefly a question of words. What, however, he marks out for special censure in the Stoics is, that they do not direct their attention towards the whole of man, but only towards a single part, viz., his intellectual nature ; and thereby impair the highest good, which can only then be fully conceived, when it includes the life agreeable to (the whole of) one's nature. 7. It is characteristic, moreover, how the Roman translator translates all the doctrines of the Greek philosophers, not only into the language but also in the spirit of his nation. Thus where the artistic Greek used to say, "the beautiful," the "honourable" and "decorous" (konestum, decorum} are in- variably found in Cicero. He does, indeed, protest against the subordination, in this phraseology, of the value of an action to the estimate others form of it, seeing that what is praiseworthy remains praiseworthy though it is not praised ; but a proof of the prominence of the civic point of view and the element of public recognition, is to be found not only in the use of the term turpe for wrong-doing, but also in the way in which he finds the first traces of virtue in boyish love of honour, and ascribes to fame a similarity to virtue. The inclusion of this civic point of view also modifies the distinction between what is legally and what is morally reprehensible, as is exemplified, e.g., in his calling literal obedience of the lex Voconia a shame- ful action, while elsewhere excuses are made for those who interpret the laws in a quibbling manner in the interest of friends. For the one is contrary to conswtudo, the other is not : it is not decent to act like the former, it is noble to act like the latter. The perfectly pure subjectivity of the modern conscience is here still wanting, and the proverbial phrase he applies to a man of honour, that one could play dice with him in the dark, remains a mere phrase. Ritter and Preller, I.e. 436-447. 107, I, 2.] SENECA. 207 SENECA. 107. Bohm: Seneca und sein Werth. Berlin, 1856. Holzherr: Der Philosoph L. Annceus Seneca, Rastatt, 1858. 1. Lucius ANN/EUS SENECA, also, who was born at Cor- duba in 5 A.D. and put to death in 65 A.D., is, as he repeatedly confesses, a Syncretist ; for although the Stoic element is the prevalent one in him, he yet borrows much from others, especially from the Platonists, and he expressly boasts that he derived instruction even from Epicurus. The great reputa- tion he enjoyed in the first centuries of the Christian epoch originated the legend of his conversion by the Apostle Paul ; and this in its turn was the support of his authority in the Middle Ages, in which he, together with Pliny, was the chief instructor in physics. On the awakening of the interest in classical studies, towards the end of the Middle Ages, Seneca was cultivated almost as much as Cicero. And, as upon Cicero, there came upon him an epoch of exaggerated con- tempt, which to some extent still continues. Among the numerous editions of his works, the older one of Lipsius (Ant- werp, 1605), and the most recent one of Haase (Leips., 1852), may be mentioned. Most of his writings are popular treatises on ethical questions (De ira, De consolatione, De animi tranquillitate, De constantia sapientis, De dementia], others are concerned with physics (Qiiczstiones nahirales], and yet others with religious problems (De providentia]. But he displays the greatest versatility in his chief work, the 1 24 letters Ad'L^lciliunl. 2. The supremacy of the reason over the senses, the similitude to God to be reached by moral action, which is displayed in the equanimity in enduring all circumstances, so that the characteristics of the sage are the l&ta paupertas and the pati posse divitias, the self-sufficiency which can exist even without friends, these are the qualities he is continually recommending, and in favour of which he appeals almost as often to the authority of Epicurus as to that of the Stoics. Above all, philosophy is practical ; facere docet, non diccre, he says ; it is the studium virtutis ; while virtue or wisdom lies above all in consistency ; sapientis est semper idem velle atque idem nolle. This, as well as his frequent assertions that pain matters not, and that suicide is the ultima ratio, is purely 2O8 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.[ 107, 3; 108. Stoic, as is also the one, that there is one point in which the sage is superior to the Deity, viz. that he is wise not by his nature but by his effort. Then again, however, he frequently decides against the Stoics, and his practical temper leads him to blame their hair-splitting inquiries, and, in the theoreti- cal part of his philosophy especially, he shows a tendency towards the scepticism of the new Academy. 3. But what characterizes him most of all, is his separation of morality from the naturalistic basis it had among the Stoics, and its connection with religious motives, with an innate moral sense, and with indignation at the corruption of the world. All this produces, in his view of the world, a colouring that reminds one of Christianity, which surprises all and dazzles many. The way in which Seneca rises above the limitations of nationality to the idea of a purely human virtue, nullifying differences of rank and setting up none between foes and friends ; his recognition of the weakness of human nature, which he sometimes calls caro, and of the necessity of divine assistance in virtue ; his doctrine that perfect sub- mission to God constitutes true freedom, etc. ; all this has induced not a few, especially in France, to call him a man stimulated by Christianity. We should, however, prefer to assign to him the position of a fore-runner, which accords with his calling the Christians a gens sceleratissima. The remark of Erasmus ; si leg-as eum lit paganum scrip sit christiane, si ut christianum scripsit paganice, is very much to the point. Ritter and Preller, 452-453. B. HELLENISTIC SYNCRETISM. J. A. B. Lutterbeck : Die neutestamentlichen Lthrbegriffe. Mainz, 1852. 2 vols. 108. Alexander's brief dominion over the world was out-lived by the eternal achievement, of which his espousal of an Ori- ental woman has become the symbol. By founding Alex- andria, a foundation which has become almost as important as that of Rome, he created a neutral ground on which Hellenism could meet Orientalism, and meet it especially in the shape in which it forms the harshest antithesis to Hellenism. For while log.] HELLENISTIC SYNCRETISTS. 209 the beauty of the Greek character is rooted in the delight irr the sensible, and is inseparable from the belief that whatever may happen, happens of itself, and in the course of nature, the sublimity of Judaism consists in the fact that it regards a non-sensible Deity as creating all things as he pleases, so that there does not exist any nature properly speaking, and the world and everything within it is only a single and ever renewed work of the Almighty. This antithesis, which leads the Greek to aim at conformity to nature, the Jew at super- (i.e. non-) natural holiness, must render each a stumbling block and an absurdity to the other. But under the pro- tection of the Ptolemies, upon whom Alexander's partiality for the Jews had descended, there is developed in the Jews a desire to assimilate all the conclusions the Greek spirit had arrived at, which was called forth especially by the fact that they had begun to speak, and therefore to think, in Greek. And the Greeks, on the other hand, deprived by the two great Macedonians of the glory of being alone unconquered, and alone cultured, whose wisdom had in the Sceptics declared itself bankrupt, now seek to relieve this poverty by the appro- priation of Oriental ideas. This reciprocal desire generates an entirely new spirit, which, by a slight extension of the common meaning of the word, may be called Hellenistic : it is the con- sciousness of the impulse which drove Alexander to found his world-empire, and cannot but find fresh nourishment when the mission of Alexander is inherited by Rome 109. When the Greek exchanges the Hellenic and the Jew the Oriental ideas for the Hellenistic ideas commingled out of Hellenism and Orientalism, the former acquires an interest in that which seems to interrupt the course of nature, in miracles and prophecies. This conflicts just as much with the genuine Hellenic spirit, in which Aristotle put miracles on the same footing with abortions, and Plato assigned prophetic powers to the lower part of man, as it is contrary to the old Jewish spirit, that the ablest intellects among the Jews commence to concern themselves with natural science and medicine, that they develop a tendency towards fatalism, and that the Apo- crypha, which arose about this time, contain panegyrics on beauty. And as in every mixture, there is here also a possi- VOL. i. p .2IO THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [no. bility of the predominance of one of the two elements, and hence orientalizing Greeks as well as hellenizing Jews must be reckoned among the phenomena of the Hellenistic spirit. And it results from the nature of things, that in the case of the former it should be philosophy, in that of the latter, religion which forms the basis ; that in the one philosophic doctrines should acquire a religious colouring, while in the other speculation should attach itself to religious dogma. It is natural too, that in either tendency the adventitious element only gradually becomes visible and prominent. ORIENTALIZING HELLENES. no. The name of NEO-PYTHAGOREANS, by which the orientalizing Greeks of this period are usually denoted, is only correct within the limits that one may call Cicero an Academic. For, in addition to that which they really derive from Pythagoras, one finds in them Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and even Epi- curean elements. There were also Oriental elements, especially in the display of dualism, with which it was easy to combine both the Pythagorean doctrine of number and Platonism. For indeed Persian, and above all Egyptian, doctrines were bound to recommend themselves to men most of whom were educated at Alexandria. If Roth's opinion (vid. 31) were correct, this would be the time when the genuine doctrine of Py- thagoras first began to preponderate over that of his spurious disciples, which had hitherto been alone active. Cicero gives us a scanty account of Nigidius Figulas, Seneca of Sextius, and of his disciple Sotion. Both seem to have received their inspi- ration from Alexandria, where Pythagoreanism had sprung up in great vigour, and where the writings attributed to Archytas, Ocellus Lucanus, etc., arose. At the same time, the move- ment seems soon to have separated into two different ten- dencies, of which, it is true, those representatives whom we know belong to a later period. Moderatus of Gades and Nicomachus of Gerasa in Arabia laid more stress on the doc- trine of number, while Apollonius of Tyana seems to have developed rather the ethical and religious elements of Pytha- goreanism. Of the latter we know little ; for the romance of Philostratus, of which he is the subject, is a source rather of our knowledge of the later Neo- Pythagoreanism of the 111,1,2.] PLUTARCH. 211 second and third centuries after Christ, in its reaction against Christianity. The greater part of the Orphic writings also probably arose about this time, or even later. Baur : Apollonius von Tyana und Chrisius. Tubingen, 1852. III. 1. But the most definite conception of an orientalizing Hellenic philosopher is afforded us by the writings of PLUTARCH of Chaeronea (50-120 A.D.), which, in spite of the loss of a large part of them, distinctly show us how there mingle with his Platonic, Pythagorean, Peripatetic, and, in spite of his polemics against them, also Stoic doctrines, religious con- ceptions which betray a Persian and Egyptian origin. And as Plutarch does not even know the Jews accurately enough to distinguish their religion from that of the Syrians, and could still less take notice of Christian doctrines, he must be sepa- rated from many men in other respects resembling him in temper, like, e.g., Numenius, and be counted wholly among the ancients. He stands, however, on the border line of antiquity ; and this position explains the fact that, just as some were impelled towards a living Christianity by the study of Seneca, Plutarch affected a still larger number. His works have frequently been edited. The editions of H. Stephanus, in 13 vols., 1572, of Reiske, 12 vols., 1774-82, and of Hullen, 14 vols., 1791-1804, are the most famous. 2. Although Plutarch counts himself among the Acade- mics, and, like his teacher Atticus, whose philosophizing seems to have been rather a philological commentary on Plato, often shows an almost slavish dread of departing from Plato, he nevertheless deviates from him, partly by re-interpreting his doctrines in an Aristotelian sense, partly by subordinating theory to practice in the spirit of Post-Aristotelian philo< sophy, and finally, in part by his dualism, the connection o/ which with Persian and Egyptian doctrines he himself con- fesses. According to this, the Deity is opposed to matter, which by its irregular motion makes evil possible, and acts on it as a forming principle. Or again, he regards a good and an evil original being as acting upon neutral matter. The principle of motion which is contrary to the divine he calls soul. Hence the evil world-soul which Plato had spoken of in the Laws ( 79, 6), is very welcome to him. The power of the good original 212 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [III, 3 ; 112. being, which, it follows, is not so much a motive power as a guidance of the lawless motion, is the greater, and hence it is the highest god. His forming power consists in implanting into matter the ideas which he also conceives in Pythagorean fashion as numbers, or in Stoic fashion as cnrepnara, and his rule is providence. Below him there stands, as it were, as a second providence, the dominion of the subordinate gods, the constellations ; below these again, the activities of the good and evil daemons, to which Plutarch concedes a great deal in spite of his polemics against all superstitions, especially in the way of oracles and prophecies. Spirit, soul, and body, the three con- stituents of man, show how he is the product of all the powers ruling above him. At the same time, he distinguishes a higher and a lower principle in the soul, to the latter of which is ascribed the irregular motion of the passions ; for virtue is conceived in an Aristotelian rather than in a Stoic fashion. A double death converts man out of his threefold state, first into a twofold being, and finally into a single spirit. As all the constellations must from time to time return to their po- sitions, there follows from their influence the periodical return of all occurrences, which Plutarch asserts in agreement with the Stoics. And the same thing happens to him with regard to the Epicureans and Sceptics ; he combats them, and yet borrows from them a great deal. 3. Kindred spirits of Plutarch's, though far from being his intellectual peers, were the philosophizing rhetoricians living in the reigns of the Antonines, Maximus of Tyre, and Apuleius of Madaura, with whom may be classed Celsus, the assailant of Christianity in later times. The latter's Truth about the Christians, was gathered together by Keim from fragments in 1873, translated and commented upon. Epi- curean elements are very prominent in him. Ritter and Preller, 496-500. H ELLEN IZING JEWS. Gfrorer : Philo imd die alexandrinische Theosophie. Stuttgart, 1831. Dahne : Geschichtliche Darstellung der jildisch-alexandr. Religionsphilos. Halle, 1834. Cf. the review of Baur in the Jahrb.filr ivissensch, Kritik, 1835 (Nov.), and Georgiiin Illgen's Zdtschr. fiir histor. Theolog. 1839, 3rd No. I 12. The Hellenizing Judaism has become more important, not only for the development of Christian dogma, but also for the 113,1-] HELLENIZING JEWS. 213 further development of philosophy. The educated Jews assimilated many ideas of Greek philosophers, especially of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, which they derived at first from the general culture, and afterwards, in consequence of the interest thus generated, out of books. And as at the same time they hold firmly to the belief that the Jews are in exclusive possession of revealed truth, this produces a contra- diction in their consciousness, the solution of which is found in the idea, arising not out of reflection, but naturally and concurrently with their interest in philosophy, that the Greeks derived their wisdom out of the Old Testament, though, it O ' might be, by a round-about way. And similarly the doctrine derived from Plato as to the worthlessness of everything material, that of Aristotle as to the exclusion of all matter from the Deity, that of the Stoics as to the value of mere in- ward feeling and the indifference of every external action, all these contradict many of the stories in the Old Testament as to appearances of the Deity, etc., and also the value which it attributes to many entirely external acts. And here again it is not reflection but instinct that discovers an escape : for the allegorical method of exegesis, according to which the Biblical stories are supposed to contain a deeper and particu- larly an ethical, in addition to their literal sense, is not a piece of disingenuousness, but a perfectly natural way of connecting Greek philosophic doctrines with the traditional religion. i. Traces of Hellenizing are found already in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint because it was probably undertaken at the command of the council of the seventy. The Septuagint in its turn becomes the starting point of further Hellenizing, which has gone very far already in the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, especially in the Wisdom of (pseudo-) Solomon. Aristobulus, the tutor of the seventh Ptolemy, from whose 'EVy>/T{/ca Clement and Euse- bius have handed fragments down to us, was animated by- very similar opinions, even if he was not the author of the above book. It appears that he did not shrink even from interpolations in order to prove that Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato derived their doctrines from the Old Testament, and further that he read many Platonic, Peripatetic, and above 214 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [113,2. all Stoic doctrines into his sacred writings by means of alle- gories. And perhaps because the physical re-interpretations of the Stoics had shown him the way, he expresses the allegorical method by " (f)va-iKu>$." It can also be regarded as proved, that the Egyptian Therapeutae appropriated many elements out of the Hellenizing Theosophy, especially in its Pythagorean tendencies. But this is doubtful with regard to the Essenes, since weighty voices have been raised on behalf of the view that their standpoint displays only a consistent carrying out of a purely Jewish idea, or at the most only a combination with other forms of Orientalism. But in their later fusion with the Therapeutse they also will have to be regarded as the bearers of the Hellenistic spirit. Productions of the same spirit are the book of Enoch, the greater part of the Sibylline prophecies that have come down to us, and perhaps also the very oldest elements of the Cabalah, which was not however completely developed until more than 1000 years later. 2. In part at least it is necessary to class among these the writings of an alleged contemporary of Moses, HERMES, named TRISMEGISTUS, as being the greatest philosopher, priest, and king all in one. But only in part, for they belong to different authors and times. Their point of view is also in so far the same that they all show a mixture of Greek and Oriental ideas. But not only does the proportion of the elements vary, but they do not all display the influence of the same forms of Orientalism. Thus the TLoi/m-avSpo?, with which all the editions begin, and after which the whole collection is generally, but quite groundlessly, called, first by the avdvea-0e KOI 7r\}]6vve(T9e, derived from the Septuagint of Gen. i. 22, further by its constitution of man, regarded like his creator as androgynous because he is a union of soul and spirit, just as the latter is of life and light, and lastly by many other points, so greatly reminds one of the method of Philo (yid. infra, p. 1 1 4), that the supposition that the name of " shepherd of men" for the rrj? avOevTias vov? (Xoyo?), w T as sug- gested by one of Philo's expressions, deserves consideration. Similarly in the following piece, the Ao'yo? KaOoXtKo?, the tone in which it is emphasized that father means nothing but creator, and the exhortation added, that the production of children is a duty to be fulfilled on pain of damnation, originated entirely from Jewish ways of thinking. But far different is the re- 113,2.] HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 215, markable essay called the /cXa?, in which God is always called the Good, which wishes to be known by all, yea and to be all, while to know it is equivalent to goodness and blessed- ness, whereas not knowing it is equivalent to wickedness and misery, etc. With continual reminiscences of what one reads. in the Timaus, the Gorgias, etc., the world is designated the son of God, and man as its offspring, who through his (spherical) head is also its image ; punishment is regarded as expiatory, and godlessness as a punishment ; and finally, with truly Stoical pride, the true man is exalted above the gods, and the saying of Heraclitus, that man is a mortal god, and the gods immortal men, is quoted as the word of a good daemon. In a kindred and wholly Greek spirit, it is assumed in two Other pieces (on ovSev aTroXXurcu and trepl ^or/crew? /cat aia-Q ?/o- &>?), that in the world, the second god, there is. only perfection, while imperfection exists only on earth, and while lastly, there is attributed to the third, viz., man, the won- drous power of converting even evil into good. Quite different again does it sound when, instead of the former denial of any intermediate being, there is interpolated, in the N o v 9 7T|009 'E^^i/, between the creator and world the a!a>v, who bestows eternity upon it, or, in the ire p\ r ov KOI v ov, the vovs, the first-born of God, related to the latter as the light to. the sun, who in man becomes his spirit and the impelling force in the remaining beings. What, finally, is one to say to this, when, in the M o v a ?, it is asserted that not all possess voi/?, but only those who hate the body, and in the faith (Trio-rev - oi/re?) of their return to God dive down into the basin of the spirit (/8cwrr/i/); when the better choice and the heavenly way are praised, on which the invisible is preferred to the visible and unity is attained, unity which is the root of all things ? Or again, What shall we say when the curious ev o p e t \6y o ? teaches the doctrine that no one can be saved without a new birth, in which silence is the mother that conceives and the good the seed that begets, and the will of God that whereby the birth takes place in the spirit, and the instrument of this birth is even called Oeov irals e!V avQpao-n-os ? Compared with this agreement with the expressions of the New Testament,. it almost seems a trifle, that in other pieces the Xo'yo? is called 6/uLoova-ios with the Deity, and the KapSla of men and their eyes are often spoken of, etc. And yet it would be hasty to con- clude that the author was a member of the Christian com- 2l6 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 113, 2. munity. For in this very Sermon on the Mount we find trifling plays with the numbers twelve, ten, and eight that would cause no surprise in a Neo- Pythagorean, and at the end a panegyric on the All and One such as would befit a pagan pantheist. In the Asclepius we listen to a vegetarian like Porphyry, who at the same time praises men for constructing wonder-working images of gods and therefore agrees with Jam- blichus (infra, 129). If, then, these writings, in addition to containing elements akin to the Therapeutae and Neo-Pytha- goreans, contain also points of correspondence with Gnostic ( 122), Neo-Platonic ( 126), Patristic ( 131), and Caba- listic ideas etc., we can understand their lasting authority in the most various circles. Thus Lactantius esteems them very highly, and Stobaeus has included extensive extracts from them in his collection. The veneration they enjoyed in later times is shown by the pains taken about them in the times of the Renaissance ( 236), and above all, that as recently as 1610 it was possible to print a commentary of the extent of that of the Franciscan Hannibal Rossel. Besides the writings which have been preserved in Greek, for it is a fiction that their author composed them in Egyptian, which are gener- ally included under the name of Poimander, Pcemander, Py- mander, Pimander, etc., there has come down to us a Latin translation of the Asclepius, falsely ascribed to Apuleius. The others were first translated into Latin by Marsilius Ficinus ( 237), and hence appeared in the Bale edition of his works in 1576, together with the Asclepius. The Greek text appeared first in Paris in 1554 (Turnebus, 4-to), then to- gether with a Latin translation in the edition of Franc. Flussus Candulla, Bardig. 1574, which was reprinted in the six fol. volumes : Divinus Pymandcr Hermetis Mercurii Trisme- gisti cum commentariis, R.P.F. Hannibalis Rosselii. Cologne, 1630. The merit of having brought to light the quotations in Stobceus from the Koptj KOCT/U.OV (lepa /3//3Ao?), in which Oriental- ism is displayed more plainly than anywhere else, belongs to Francisco Patrizi (vid. 244). He further improved the earlier translations and showed that there was no justification for extending the title of the first piece to the following thirteen. Accordingly his collection, which he published two years before his death as an appendix to his N^ova de imivcrsis philosophia, was inscribed Hermetis Trismegisti libelli et frag- menta quotcunq^le repcriuntur. It included also the old trans- 114,2.] PHILO JUD/EUS. 217 lation of the Asclepius. This edition, which in some specimens is dated Roma 1591, in others Venetice 1793, seems soon to have become scarce. At least Tiedemann complains, in the German translation of these writings undertaken in 1781, that he does not possess it, and translates according to Marsilius Ficinus, retaining also as the title of the whole : Hermes Trismegists Pcemander. Berlin, 1781. The newest and most correct edition, also, that has appeared in Germany, that of G. Parthey: Hermes Trismegisti Posmander. Berl., 1854, betrays already in its title that it contains neither the frag- ments from Stobaeus nor the Asclepius. On the other hand, there is to be found a French translation of all the Hermetic writings, together with a valuable introduction originally published in the Revue de deux monctes, in Louis Menard : Hermes Trismegiste, tradziction complete prtcedte d'une ttude sur forigine des livres Herme'tiques. ime. 3d. Paris, 1867. Ir 4- PHILO JUD^US. Grossmann : Qucestiones Philonetz. Leipz., 1829. Steinhart : Art. Fhilo in Pauly's Real-encydopddie. Vid. p. 1449. Joel : Beitrcige zur Ge- schichte der Philosophic. Breslau, 1876. 2 vols. [J. Drummond : Philo Judczus ; or, The Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy in its Develop- ment and Completion. London, 1888. ED.] 1. The Jew PHILO is not only the main authority for our knowledge of this tendency, but probably was also its most important representative, a position for which he was adapted by the fact that his mind was of a collecting and compiling bent, rather than inventive. He was born at Alexandria a few years B.C. Although many of his writings have been lost, the larger and probably more important portion has never- theless come down to us. The Paris edition of 1525, by Turnebus, was reprinted in 1691 at Frankfort. The best are the London edition by Mangey, 2 vols., 1742, the Erlan- gen by Pfeiffer, 5 vols., 1785, and the Leipsic by Richter, 8 vols., 1828. 2. Generally in allegorizing commentaries on the Old Testament, Philo develops the following doctrines. As the senses are deceptive, and as rational grounds also do not afford complete security, the certainty of knowledge rests in the last resort on the illumination that will be received 2l8 THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 114, 3. together with faith, a divine gift of grace to which the attitude of man is purely receptive. The instrument whereby God has given this revelation was above all Moses, and hence the Jewish priests can most easily attain to true philosophy. The Greeks also, however, attained to it through Moses, only in- directly, as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest derived their doctrines from Moses. The content of revelation, and hence also of philosophy, is concerned above all with the divine nature. It must be conceived as absolutely unchangeable, since every change involves an imperfection, and hence also as in a state of absolute Being and not Becoming, the One that excludes all plurality. Hence *Ei>, oi/, or better still o u>v, are the best appellations of God. And as the absence of differences in His unity excludes all quantitative, so he excludes all qualitative determinations also from the Divine nature ; God is a7ro/o?, and it follows from this that the contemplative spirit also can distinguish nothing in Him, i.e., cannot know Him. The prohibition against naming God by His true Name is justified by the plea that His true inrapQs ever remains concealed. The fourth Aristotelian category also, like the second and the third, does not apply to God : as the absolute as such, God stands in no relation of any sort ; hence things do not exist Si avrov, for this would bring Him, the Holy One, into a polluting proximity to matter. 3. The apparent contradiction, that Philo nevertheless infers the existence of God ideologically from the order in the world, and for this reason calls the world the gate of entry into the heaven of truth, is solved, in the first place, by his avoiding the inference from the existence of matter to its cause, and rather inferring from the order in matter a cause of that order, and thus making God only the orderer of the world ; in the second place, moreover, by the fact that he does not permit the order- ing activity of God to act directly upon matter, but interposes an intermediate being between them as the instrument through (Sid) which the order posited by (VTTO) God enters into matter. This intermediate being is the Logos, the sum of all the Ideas or archetypes of things, which as the Ao'-yo? yevncwraTos contains all conceptions within itself, and in which, therefore, things pre-exist immaterially. According as this plan of the world is conceived as thought by God or as already declared, Philo calls the Logos either the Wisdom or the Word (a-o(pia or a], a distinction corresponding to that of the Stoics between 114,4-] PHILO JUD^EUS. 219 Xo''yo9 evdidOeros and Trpotyopitcos. The relation of the Logos to God is often described as a radiating out and emanation ; and the world, which is formed after the image of that archetypal AToVywof ua-wfj-aTOf, is more that once called the singly-born son of God, as in Plato. The agreement with Plato, however, ceases, when Philo personifies all the pre-suppositions of real things and puts them into connection with the angelology, which had reached a high degree of development in his time. Thus it is requisite, in addition to the archetypes of things themselves, that God should have the power and the will to create them, etc. These qualities of God, His aperal, wd/u.eis, eow/cu, are thereupon at once hypostasized, and combined with the Essene conceptions of angels and angelic beings, in the gradation which is mentioned also in the New Testament. And thereby Plato's doctrine finds room not only for the conceptions of Hellenizing Jews, but equally well for those of orientalizing Hellenes : the constellations become god-like beings, the daemons become spirits of the air, the heroes become demi-gods; and he explains idolatry as an exaggerated esteem for things really deserving of veneration. And as this whole gradation forms part of the conditions anterior to the world, the word Logos, i.e., the regular name denoting this instrument, acquires sometimes a wider, sometimes a narrower meaning. The Philonian doctrine is, however, essentially dis- tinct from the later Christian doctrine of the Logos in that its Logos is only the idea of the world ; and he therefore ex- pressly declares that this shadow of the Deity must not be called God. 4. The degrees of Being Philo represents as diminishing like the intensity of light radiating into ever larger circles, until at length it finds its limit in matter, which he conceives sometimes in the spirit of Plato and Aristotle as merely M oi>, at others, more in agreement with the later physiologers and the Stoics, as a mixture of the inert and inanimate principles , which the orderer of things subsequently brings into con - formity with law and form by separation. According to th e predominance of matter or of form there results the hierarch y of beings, which had been already established by the Stoic s ( 97> 3)- He combines with this the biological doctrines of Aristotle in such a way as to ascribe to the plants not only ?*?, but also ('o-i?, and also the Ope-n-riK^, /Aera/3X;-n/o/ and av^tjriKrj (sc. Suva/mi?*), and while the e/*\J/-yp(a are in addition said to have 22O THIRD PERIOD OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. [ 114, 5. also aio-Otja-i?, regarded as coloured with this spirit, or designated as Christian. The same thing must be said of philosophy, when the idea of reconciliation wins a place in it, and when the conception of sin at the same time gains importance, a conception which points back on its part to that of creation. Every philosophy in which this takes place is an expression of the Christian age, and can no longer be reckoned among the systems of anti- quity. At the same time it is not only possible, but ante- cedently probable, that the first who philosophize in this new spirit will be not at all, or at least not very closely, connected with the Christian community. Those members of the com- H9-] INTRODUCTION. 227 munity who possess mental endowments great enough to become philosophers, are busied with the proclamation of salvation. And again, the cool reflection, without which a philosophical system cannot be produced, is a proof of luke- warmness in a time when only reckless and fiery zeal (divine foolishness) is considered a sign of the true Christian. In its early days a congregation must be hostile to philosophy ; and apostolic natures always will be. Therefore Paul and Luther were its antagonists, and the opinion, originally Jewish, that philosophy is a work of evil demons, found favour in the early Church even among the most highly educated, as, for instance, the "Satire" of Hermias proves. Centuries later, Descartes and Spinoza (vid. 266, 267, 271), that is, a Catholic and a Jew, were the first to introduce the spirit of Protestantism into philosophy. For the same reason, heretics and heathen were the first whose philosophy betrays the influence of the Christian spirit. Cf. Mussmann : Grundriss der allgemdnen Geschichte der christlichen Philo- sophic. Halle, 1830. H. Ritter : Die christliche Philosophic nach ihrem Begriff und ihren dusseren Verhaltnissen und in ihrer Geschichte bis auf die neueste Zeit. 2 vols. Gottingen, 1858. IJ 9- Christianity, the greatest of all innovations, like every epoch-making principle, assumes at its appearance a negative attitude toward that which has hitherto existed (Christ brings not peace but a sword). If the complex of all that exists be called the world, the new (the Christian) spirit will thus reveal itself as the world's antagonist, and therefore must be an object of hatred to those who are conscious of being children of the (natural and ethical) world. It is easy to explain the hatred of a Seneca, a Tacitus, a Trajan, a Marcus Aurelius, a Julian toward a religion which boasts that its founder was born in opposition to the course of nature, and died the most ignominious death known to the State. The demand to be (this new) spirit by means of the denial of the world coincides with the demand to be clerical. It appears as the highest in the first period of Christianity, the Middle Ages. The following period, the modern age, first recognises the higher command, to transfigure the world through the spirit, that is, the command to be, not clerical, but spiritual 228 MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [ 120. (vid. \ 258). To those with mediaeval ideas, to whom alien- ation from the world was the highest thing, this spiritualization of the world appeared as a retrogression to the position of antiquity, as a secularization. It unites, in truth, that which the ancient and the Middle Ages aimed at and should have attained. I2 - The philosophy of the Middle Ages cannot make its principal divisions physics and politics, as had been done by the philosophy of antiquity, which was throughout secular. These subjects lose their importance, while all those investi- gations which have to do with the relation of the individual o to the Godhead, or with the Godhead itself, come into the foreground. Religion and theology become the chief thing. In addition to these, ethics comes into prominence. It is marked very early with an ascetic colouring, which, in oppos- ing the ideas of antiquity, allows, at most, links of connection with that which had made its appearance during the decline of Greek speculation. It is likewise one of the important differences between ancient and mediaeval philosophy that the philosophizing is no longer done, as in antiquity, by men experienced in worldly affairs, but by unpractical students, and, especially later, by the clergy. FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. PATRISTICS. (Cf. 148.) E. W. M oiler : Geschichte der Kosmologie in der griechischen Kir die bis auj Origenes. Halle, 1860. 121. THIS negative attitude which the Christian spirit assumes toward the world shows itself first as flight from the world. From this arises the tendency to supernatural (or rather unnatural) monastic holiness, as well as the disposition to stand without the bounds of all civil communities. In this position, so secluded from the world, the little flame, grown from the kindling spark, must increase in order to be able later to set the world on fire. The first Christians are like homeless strangers in the world. Their fundamental prin- ciples do not accord with existing conditions, and therefore, when they come into contact with those conditions, they attack them and experience their vengeful reaction. To this con- trast between the new principle arid the existing state of the world corresponds in the realm of philosophy a similar con- trast between the new ideas and the wisdom of the past. Where they first come into contact a mighty fermentation must result. This fermentation, arising from the contact of the new ideas with the old world of thought is, in respect to its form, a strife between history and philosophical pro- positions, since these new ideas become manifest at first only as history. It is thus clear why this standpoint in the history of philosophy should be represented by two diametrically opposite tendencies, in which, on the one side, the philoso- phical form is sacrificed to the new ideas, and logical pro- cesses are transformed into history, and, on the other side, the respect for the form of philosophical propositions causes the 230 FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [ 122. merely historical to be despised and thus undervalued in comparison with the new ideas. Doubt may therefore arise whether the exponents of the first, the Gnostics, are to be classed among philosophers, and whether the others, the Neo-Platonists, are to be regarded as belonging to the Christian age. These two lines of thought, with that of the Church Fathers who go beyond them both, and in whom the turbid fermentation clarifies itself, form the content of the first period. FIRST DIVISION. <5nosttc0. Massuet : Dissertatt. praria in Irencei libros. Paris, 1710. Beausobre : Histoire critique de Manichce et die. Manicheisnie. 2 vols. Amst, 1734-39. Mosheim : Institution's histories ecclesice christiance. Helmst, 1748. Neander : Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme. Berlin, 1818. Matter: Histoire critique du gnosticisme. 1828. 2nd ed. 1843. v. Baur : Die christliche Gnosis. Tubing., 1835. Lipsius : Der Gnosticisimis, sein Wesen, Ur sprung und Entwicke lungs gang. Leipz., 1860. 122. The desire to justify to the reason that which faith accepts must give rise to reflection upon the relations of the different religions, since even those who are, not Christians are not devoid of understanding. The elements which have been pointed out by various scholars as the most essential in Gnos- ticism thus belong of necessity together. These elements are the relation of TT/O-T/? and yvwa-is, and the relation of Christianity to heathenism and Judaism. The Gnostics are, therefore, the originators not only of a rational theology, but also of a doc- trine of comparative religion, and they may therefore, since both of these fall within the province of the philosophy of religion, be called religious philosophers. It may be regarded as unphilosophical, and as such blameworthy, that the content of belief should everywhere be made the norm, and accord- ingly, that content being history, historical accounts (genealo- gies of the eeons and the like) should take the place of mental deductions, and theology be made a history of the develop- ment of the Godhead. But while Gnosticism, in the opinion 123, I.] THE GNOSTICS. of the philosopher, does too little, that little appears to the believer altogether too much. It is an offence to the Christian community that there should be philosophical speculation, even in the form of history ; and at a time when philosophizing about belief is considered heretical, as calling faith into question, the Church rightly sees in every religious philosopher a heretic. The earliest traces of Gnostic heresies make their appearance in the apostolic age, not, however, in their later scholastic form, but rather in the garb of esoteric doctrines, since their antinomian tendency causes them to shun the light. Here belong the erroneous teachings of the Simonians, who were connected with Simon Magus, as well as the false doctrines which Paul combats in Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus and Colossse. Cerinthus also belongs to this class, and many of the positions which the early Church comprehended under the name Ebionism come under this head. They are all dis- tinguished from the Jewish teachings of the Essenes and of Philo by the doctrine of the Incarnation, whether it be of the Godhead, of the Logos, or of the Holy Spirit a doctrine peculiar to Christianity and irreconcilable with Judaism. 123. i. As a public sect demanding a place in the Church, Gnos- ticism first makes its appearance in the second century, and at about the same time in Egypt and Syria. Egyptian Gnos- ticism which develops in Alexandria, not without dependence upon Hellenizing Orientalism ( 112), is the most interesting from a philosophical point of view. It accords Judaism a comparatively high position, and may, with Neander, be called Jitdaizing Gnosticism. Basilides, the first to be mentioned in this connection, reminds us of Philo, not only by his unnamed God whom he places at the summit, but also by the various personified powers, every seven of which constitute one of the Sonships emanating from the supreme God. The Holy Spirit also, who here forms the bridge from the divine 7rX//jow,ua to its opposite, had already occupied a place in Philo's system ( 114, 4). The doctrine, however, that matter considered as a chaos is disposed by God, is peculiar, and goes beyond the standpoint of Philo. It is true, that this procession of the seed of all things from the (because not existing, hence also) 232 FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [123,2. Unnamed is not to be identified with conscious creative activity. Nor can it be called emanation, for Basilides conceived of the process as a progress, and thus teaches a doctrine of evolution whose end is redemption, pictured, to be sure, in a very physi- cal manner. That an a/ox w " subordinate to God, is ordained to form this chaotic mass, is not to be looked upon as an in- novation. It had already been taught by Cerinthus that such an (ipxav unconsciously carries out the plans of the highest God, and is considered by the Jews (with a few exceptions) as identical with Him. Below the Archon stand the subordi- nate beings, likewise divided into sevens, and forming with him the number 365 (afipafa), by means of which providence (vpovoiaj carries out its designs. It is probable that there is a connection here with theological doctrines of Egypt which Basilides learned from Egyptian priests, either directly or through the medium of the teachings of Pherecydes, from whom he borrowed a great deal. Jesus, also, is a work of the Archon. At His baptism, however, to the astonishment of His Creator, the first emanation from the highest God, the vovs or SIUKOVOS, joins itself to Him, and having accomplished the work of redemption, afterwards deserts the man Jesus and leaves Him to suffer. Man applies the work of redemp- tion to himself by means of belief, which Basilides conceives of in a purely theoretical way, while his son and pupil Isidore attempts to add the practical element. Cf. Uhlhorn : Das Basilidianische System. Gottingen, 1855. 2. A much greater reputation was gained by Basilides' contemporary, VALENTINUS, perhaps because he taught in Rome as well as in Alexandria, and was there excluded from the Church as a heretic. He teaches that the powers which proceed from the Original Father or the Deep (^poir droop, (3v6os) and which he calls. a!wve that ls > the general life-prin- ciple or world-soul, a faded out copy of the vovs, working on that very account rationally but without reason, that is, in the way which Aristotle had called demoniacal (vid. 88, i). As thoughtless children work more outwardly than those who are absorbed in themselves, in the same way things fall as it were out of the general soul, which does not retain them for itself, but puts them to work at once (iii. 8, 3). In all natural occurrences there is therefore thought (dewpia], that is, the ideas which the soul receives from the vow, and which she sows or plants in matter, as \6yovs cnrep^ariKovs. The inter- mediate position which is thus assigned to the soul causes Plotinus to speak often of an upper soul related to the vovs and of a lower one approaching matter, to which he gives the names of the heavenly and earthly Aphrodite, in accordance with his custom of employing myths. To the earthly Aphro- dite he gives also the special name ' eavrou), and only he who has taken the vou? as his divinity (i. 2, 3 ; iii. 4, 6). Not in the fact that man lives in accordance with nature, for plants also do that, but in the fact that the vovs rules in him, consists his true blessedness (i. 4, 1-4). With Plotinus, however, the theoretical side of blessedness is much more prominent than the practical. It is not conduct which makes blessed, but possession, thought and inner activity. The last end is and remains the contem- plation of the eternal. All practice is for the sake of theory (iii. 8), and the wise man is blessed in his self-proficiency, even if no one should see his blessedness. He has grasped the eternal, and in that satisfies himself, and no loss nor pain touches him. Whoever still fears anything is not yet complete in true virtue (i. 4). Of the three ways which lead to this end those of the erotic poet and musician need a sign-post, that of the dialectician or philosopher is surer (i. 3), leading as it does from the external and material to the inner and spiritual, namely to the contemplation of ideas. But since the vovs, which embraces the ideas, is not the highest, there goes beyond vodv and philosophy love for the One and the Good, in comparison with which even dominion over the world is to be thrown away as nothing (vi. 7 ; i. 6). Retire- ment from the whole external world is necessary for the attainment of this standpoint. We must wait quietly until God comes, or rather until He shows that He does not need to come, since He has always been in us (v. 5, 8). We must believe in this illumination, in which, daring as it sounds, the contemplated and the contemplating become one, so that ecstasy, devotion, actual union take the place of contemplation of another (v. 3, 14 ; vi. 9, 10). In this union consists true blessedness, which cannot be interrupted by death. As think- ing of the material makes the soul material, so that the one o who can think only of vegetation condemns himself to the life of the plant (iii. 4, 2), in the same way the one who forgets 128, 6.] PORPHYRY. 245 the earthly and attains to complete inwardness, being raised, as more than an individual man, above all change, will live to the All and to the One (v. 8, 7). As already here below, the more perfect a man is the more does he forget fatherland, friends, etc., in that condition he will still more have forgotten all, yea, even himself (iv. 4, i ; i. 5, 8). There nothing will dis- turb or interrupt the contemplation of the One ; time will vanish in eternity, and blessedness become pure presence (vi. 9; i. 5). 6. Among those who, with Plotinus, represent Roman Neo-Platonism, Aurelius, Eustochius, and others sink into insignificance when compared with Malchus, who was born in Phoenicia (in Tyre or Batanea), in the year 232. While he was in attendance upon the school of Longinus, he had changed his name, into the Greek form PORPHYRY. In his thirtieth year he became a pupil of Plotinus, later his bio- grapher and the editor of his works, and after his death taught in Rome until the year 304. Besides his Life of Plotinus, with which he accompanied his edition of the works of his master, we have from his pen a Life of Pythagoras, which is perhaps a fragment of a lost history of philosophy. It has been often printed, among others by Didot in his edition of Diogenes Laertes. His critical spirit, which had been still more sharpened in the school of Longinus, caused him to differ with his master whenever the latter appeared to be uncritical. He therefore came to the defence of the categories of Aristotle, and wrote (perhaps before he came to Plotinus), his EtVa-ywyr/ irepl rwv Trevre fywvwv (reprinted in many editions of Aristotle's Organon], in which are treated the five conceptions (later called Prcedicabilia and also Universalid), 7eVo?, Sia(popd, e??ro?, and from which par- ticularly two points are brought into especial prominence in the following age : first, the so-called Arbor Porphyrii, that is the gradation from the most general (yew/con-aro?) conception of the ova-la, through the subordinate conceptions orayza, e-axL-^o^, etc., down to the e/^/ccorarov (OU^WTTO?), and finally to the arofjiov (ITAarcoj/), since which it has been the custom of logic to repeat, that ens is the highest of all conceptions. The second point referred to is the fact that at the outset of the work it is mentioned, as a very important problem, not however to be solved here, whether species and genera are something actual outside of ourselves or are mere ideas ; further, if something actual, whether corporeal or incorporeal ; finally, if 246 FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [ 128, 6. incorporeal whether ^capia-ra, or existing only in things. The answer to the first question would have shown the relation of Porphyry to the Epicurean sensualists, to the second his rela- tion to the Stoics, to the third his relation to Plato and to Aristotle. The way in which he answered the first and second can be gathered from the climax which the three form. The problem stated by him plays a very important part in subsequent ages (vid. infra 158 ff.). Though Porphyry in this introduction shows himself more closely related to Aris- totle than his master was, he nevertheless agrees entirely with the latter in his A/ Trpos TO. vor]Ta a 2.] JAMBLICHUS. 247 B. JAMBLICHUS AND THE SYRIAN NEO-PLATONISM. I2 9- i. JAMBLICHUS, of Chalcis in Ccelesyria, distinguished alike for his learning and his genius, is connected not so much with the more philological Platonists, such as Plutarch, as with the mathematically educated Neo- Pythagoreans. He introduced into Neo-Platonism, not without the influence of oriental ideas, a speculation in which mathematics and mystics are mingled in a peculiar manner, and which led him to a bitter criticism of Aurelius and Porphyry. On this account many ascribe to him a work which was first noticed by Marsilio Ficino in a Latin report : De mysteriis sEgyptiorum, and afterwards published in the Greek original by Gale. In this work a priest Abamon, espoused the cause of his pupil Anebon, to whom Porphyry had written. Jamblichus is hardly the author. Of his numerous undoubted works the most are lost ; thus his commentaries on the Platonic Dialogues, of which we know only through Proclus, and likewise his com- mentary on the Analytics of Aristotle. All that is extant seems to belong to one larger work, the first book of which, Trep\ jSiov TlvOayopiKov, was first edited in 1598 by Arcenius Theodoretus. This was followed by a second book, the Ao'^oi irpoTpeTTTiKol ? , which contains a mixture of Pla- tonic and Pythagorean doctrines. It was also edited by the same man, and later and much better by Kiessling. The third book, -n-epl KOMI? /uaO^/ttaTt/c^ eTao-n//^?, has been edited by Fries (Copenhagen), as well as by others ; the fourth, Trep] r>7? Nf/co/Aa^of api9/u.>]TiK>js etVccyavyr/?, by Tennulius, 1668 ; and the seventh GeoXoyo^Vej/a T?/? apiO/uuiTiKij?, best of all by Ast, Leipsic, 1817. 2. The unlimited respect with which Jamblichus is called master, not only by less weighty men, such as Chrysanthius and Maximus, the teachers and friends of the emperor Julian, and by the emperor himself, but also by Proclus, testifies to the importance of the man. In fact, the greater part of that which appears in Proclus as an addition to the teachings of Plotinus, was learned from Jamblichus; and this has been overlooked merely because it could be discovered, in the ab- sence of Jamblichus' works, only by close attention to every 248 FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [ 129, 3- hint of Proclus. (Kirchner has bestowed upon the subject the attention required.) As the most important innovations of Jamblichus, must be regarded the detailed execution of a logical process moving in triads, which will be noticed in connection with Proclus ( 130), and in the second place, his theory of the orders of gods, which has made him especially famous, and which for a long time was a favourite doctrine, particularly with those who fought Christianity on philosophical grounds. When, according to Plotinus, the soul had participated in the vovs, and this in the One or the Good, Jamblichus believed that this participation itself disturbed the unity, and he raised himself, therefore, to the thought of the still more abstract <* a/u.e6eKTov, and assumed still further such an absolute supra- mundane (vTrepovcno?) unity (evaSes). These unities are in the highest sense his gods. Inasmuch, however, as he then always distinguishes the individual elements of a conception according to the scheme of trinity, he is led to discriminate, in correspondence with the three conceptions vovs, "^x'/, an< ^ &&<$, between OeoL voepoi, v-TrepKoa-fjuoi, and eyKoa-fjiioi, which stand, as actual gods, below the em? a/ueOe/cro?. This entire series of gods is so placed above the series fixed by Plotinus (One, Spirit, Soul, Nature), that everything is really thought twice, once in the reality of the present, and again in the supra- reality of the future. 3. Among the successors of Jamblichus, Theodorus seems to have gone still further in the threefold division, and to have given offence to the others by an altered terminology. The most of Jamblichus' followers seem, however, to have been won much less by his scientific importance than by the fact that he attempted, in his work on the statues of the gods, as well as elsewhere, to furnish a philosophical basis for the belief in magical influences, in the power of theurgy, etc., which then ruled everywhere, even among the Christians. The modern age also has often noticed and blamed in Jam- blichus only this weakness, which was common to the whole period in which he lived. 130, i.] PROCLUS. 249 C. NEO-PLATONISM IN ATHENS. PROCLUS. I 3- i. IN Athens, where, since the time of Hadrian and Mar- cus Aurelius, the various schools of Greek philosophy had been continued under teachers paid by the State, Plutarch, the son of Nestorius, founded, in addition to the State schools, a private institute, where he commented upon both Plato and Aristotle, according to the method of Ammonius and of the more philological Neo-Platonists. His successor, Syrianus, leaned more toward the Neo- Pythagoreans, treating both philosophers, particularly Aristotle, as a mere preparation for the true wisdom, which is especially proclaimed in the Or- phica. PROCLUS, or Proculus, a pupil of the former, though only for a short time, and a member and very soon an assistant in the school of the latter, was the man through whom Neo- Platonism received its highest formal development, a work for which his entire training had fitted him. Born in Byzan- tium, in the year 412, he was brought at an early age to Lycia, and there prepared for the rhetorical profession. He then continued his studies in Alexandria, and won great fame as a rhe- torician and a master of style. The Aristotelian Olympiodorus induced him to give up this calling and mathematics and philo- sophical studies then became his sole pursuit. The analytical investigations of Aristotle, whose Organon he is said to have known by heart, especially fascinated him. As long as he lived he called Aristotle, as well as Plato, "the divine." With the latter he first became acquainted in Athens, where, as remarked above, he first had Plutarch as his teacher, and Syrianus as assistant in his studies. He became the succes- sor of the latter, to whom, according to some, is to be referred his cognomen Ata^o^o?, while others refer it to Plato. In addition to Plato, whose exegete and paraphrast he remained until his death, he assigned to the Orphica, and to the other productions of the Neo- Pythagorean spirit, a very high rank. At the same time he was initiated into all sorts of mysteries, and fostered his glowing piety by the celebration of festivals of all kinds, so that he boasts himself a hierophant of the whole world. This has reference only to pre-Christian reli- gions, for Christianity he hated and fought. An excuse for 25O FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [130,2, this may be found in the fact that in his day Christianity had assumed the role of persecutor, and it was perhaps due only to the monophysitic controversies that he himself was left in peace. Before the death of this Oeoo-e/SeWaro? a^p (as the bombastic biography of Marinus calls him), which took place in his seventy-third year, it is said to have been revealed to him that he belonged to the hermetic chain of bearers of mystical wisdom. In addition to his hymns in honour of various gods, and his mathematical and grammatical works (the latter of disputed authenticity), Proclus produced much of a philosophical character, for the most part in the form of commentaries upon Plato, where he shows himself most of a philosopher when his interpretation is worst. Cousin's Prodi pkilosophi Platonici opera (Paris, 1820) contain his commentaries upon Timcsus^ Alcidiades, and Parmenides, also his (youthful) works upon Fate and Providence in the Latin translation of Wilhelm von Moerbecka. Entirely independent works are his Srci^e/ams 1 9eo\ojiK^, and the six books ei$ TIJV IJAarftH/o? 6eo\oyiai>, which have been edited by yEmilius Portus (Harnb., 1618). The former work (In- stitutio tJieologica] contains an outline of Neo-Platonism as represented by Plotinus, and is therefore given quite suit- ably in Didot's edition of Creuzer's Plotinus. On the other hand, the second work (Theologia Platonica] contains the changes made by Jamblichus which Proclus adopts. In these two works, therefore, the elements appear sundered which Proclus was destined to combine, and on that very account, in spite of his dependence upon both, he represents a third tendency in Neo-Platonism. 2. That Proclus calls science theology cannot be looked upon as a departure from Plotinus ; and his frequent use of eV in- stead of eWrt? is only a verbal difference, and that all the more since ov, ayaOov likewise occur. On the other hand, it is an actual variation when, with Jamblichus, he takes the first principle itself as a trinity, representing, in agreement with the Philebus of Plato, the aTreipov and Trepas as bound in concrete union, by means of which concretion absolute unity becomes the content of all unities, Deity the content of the gods. These three elements, of course, do not stand toward one another in a relation of deterioration, but show rather an evolution, since the third is the highest. On the other hand, according to Proclus as well as Plotinus, that, in consequence 130, 2.] PROCLUS. 251 of which the second proceeds from the first (trinitarian) prin- ciple, is a deterioration (i!?. The content of the unities is therefore brought into connection with the gods, the content of the life-principles with the de- mons, and finally the system of the vow with the spirit world. As Jamblichus had united the number four with the trinities, for the purpose of bringing out the number seven, Proclus does the same, and thereby the twelve gods obtain their rights, although they remain always subordinate gods. If we compare the teaching of Proclus, as we did ( 128, 3) that of Plotinus, with the Christian doctrine of the trinity, the greater resemblance will be seen to lie, not in the fact that Proclus assigns to the spirit the third place, but in the fact that he is at the point of dropping emanation (i/