A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

BOOK I

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (625 B. C.–476 A. D.)

The Divisions of Ancient Philosophy. The history of ancient philosophy falls naturally into two large divisions: pure Greek philosophy and Hellenic-Roman philosophy (or Greek philosophy in the Roman world). The date, 322 B. C., the death of Aristotle, which marks the line between these two periods, is one of the milestones of history. Alexander the Great had died in 323 B. C. The coincidence of the deaths of Aristotle and Alexander not only suggests their intimate relations as teacher and pupil during their lives, but it throws into contrast Greek civilization before and after them. Before Aristotle and Alexander culture was the product entirely of the pure Greek spirit; after them ancient culture was the complex product of many factors—of Greek and Roman civilizations, and many Oriental religions, including Christianity. Before Aristotle and Alexander, ancient culture was characterized by a love of knowledge for its own sake, by freedom from ulterior ends either of service or of use; after these great makers of history, culture became attenuated to work in the special sciences and enslaved to practical questions. Before Aristotle and Alexander, the Greek city-states had arisen to political power; after Aristotle and Alexander, Greece declined politically and was absorbed into the Roman empire.

The Literary Sources of Ancient Philosophy.2 The literary sources of ancient philosophy are three: (1) the primary sources, or original writings; (2) the secondary sources, or reports of the original writers obtained indirectly, or through other writers; (3) the interpretations of reliable modern historians of philosophy. The specialist in philosophy will, of course, go to the first two sources for his information. Other students will find many accurate modern histories of ancient philosophy. The student should have at hand the translations of the histories of Zeller, Windelband, Weber, Eucken, Ueberweg; those of the Englishmen, Burnet and Fairbanks; of the Americans, Rogers and Turner.

“The writings of the early Greek philosophers of the pre-Socratic period exist now only in fragments. The complete works of Plato are still extant; so also are the most important works of Aristotle, and certain others which belong to the Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and neo-Platonic schools. We possess the principal works of most of the philosophers of the Christian period in sufficient completeness.”3 The secondary sources include quotations and comments upon earlier philosophers found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Skeptics, neo-Platonists, and the so-called doxographers. Doxography—the commentating upon and collating of the works of former times—developed enormously in Alexandria, Pergamos, and Rhodes just after Aristotle. The founder of this work was Theophrastus, who was a disciple of Aristotle and his successor in the Lyceum. Among the important doxographers were Plutarch, Stobæus, and Aetios.

The Environment of the Early Greek. The biologist seeks to explain a living creature by its previous environment and inherited instincts. So if we know the environment and inherited instincts of the early Greek, we shall be able to understand better firstly, why European philosophy began with the Greeks and not with some other people; and secondly, why Greek philosophy took certain lines that it did take.

(1). His Geographical Environment. The Greece into which philosophy was born was much larger than the Greece of to-day. Ancient Greece consisted of all the coasts and islands which were washed by the Mediterranean Sea from Asia Minor to Sicily and southern Italy, and from Cyrene to Thrace. The motherland, the peninsula of Greece, at first played an insignificant rôle. The leadership was in the hands of the Ionians, who had colonized the coasts of Asia Minor. In the seventh century B. C., when the first Greek philosophy appears, these Ionians commanded the world’s commerce among the three continents. Over the coasts of the entire Mediterranean they had extended their trade and established their colonies. Miletus became the wealthiest of these colonies and the cradle of Greek science. Its wealth afforded leisure to its people and therefore the opportunity for reflection.

(2). His Political Environment. An understanding of the Greek political world, in which its first philosophy appeared, requires an historical explanation of its rise. It takes us back four centuries to the age of the Epic (1000–750 B. C.). During more than two centuries of the age of the Epic two changes occurred which were to influence future Greek civilization: (1) The oligarchy which had supplanted the ancient patriarchal monarchy became firmly established; and (2) the Epic was formed. The importance of the Epic of Homer lies not so much in the fact that a great poem was constructed, as that it was the formulation of the Greek religion, the Greek æsthetic polytheism. Its writing indicates that the earlier unorganized, primitive, and savage forms of religion had given way, among the ruling classes at least, to an æsthetic polytheism, which in a general way was fixed by the Epic itself.

The period of more than a century, from 750 to 625 B. C., lying between the age of the Epic and Greek philosophy, may be called an age of political disturbances. The oligarchy had become oppressive to the rich and poor alike. There had grown up in Greece, especially in the colonies, a class of citizens who had become wealthy through commerce. The result of the misgovernment by the oligarchy was that (1) migrations took place, and (2) many revolutions occurred. This was particularly true of the colonies where the proletariat was powerful and the cities were full of adventurers. Plutocracy was at war with aristocracy, and this was the opportunity for bold men. These political troubles took form from 650 B. C. on, and the history of the Greek cities consists of the endeavor to establish popular government. About the time of the first Greek philosophers there arose here and there from the ruins of these civil struggles the so-called tyrants, of whom Thrasybulus at Miletus, Pittacus at Lesbos, Periander at Corinth, and Pisistratus at Athens are examples. The courts of these tyrants became centres of intellectual life. They patronized poets, writers, and artists. The universalism of the Epic had vanished, and in its place came the individualism of the lyric and the satire. In many places the aristocrat went into gloomy retirement, and often cultivated poetry, science, and philosophy.

The Native Tendencies of the Early Greek. Why were the Greeks the first philosophers of Europe? Their geographical surroundings of sea and land had something to do with it. The passionate party strife between the old, ruling families of nobles and the newly rich trading-class, which took place during the seventh century B. C., no doubt cultivated an early independence of opinion and strength of personality. But, after all, genius was in the blood of the race, and who can say that the true cause was not in the mixing of the blood of the virile Aryan invaders with that of the aboriginal inhabitants? Whatever may be the answer to that question, the Greek race in the seventh century B. C. had an extraordinary curiosity about the world of nature. It loved the concrete fact as no other race of the time loved it, and it loved to give a clear and articulate expression to the concrete fact that it saw. It had an artistic nature that was hostile to all confusion. Let us point out three ways in which the Greek was even in this early time organizing his experiences, reflecting upon the workings of social and nature forces, and thus preparing the way for consideration of the more ultimate questions of philosophy.

(1) This can be seen first in the development of his religion. The first step in the organization of his religion we have already seen, for the Homeric epic was the expression of a well-defined, poetic, and æsthetic polytheism developed out of a primitive savage naturalism. The Greek’s sense of measure was shown in the way both gods and men were placed as a part of the world of nature. He could accomplish this the more freely because he had no hierarchy of priests and no dogma of belief to cramp his imagination. The Greek priests did not penetrate into the private life nor teach religion. “They were not theologians but sacristans and liturgical functionaries.” In the fifty years before philosophy appeared, this tendency toward scientific religious organizing showed the beginning of another advance. Monistic belief, of which signs may be found even in the earlier Greek writings, came to the surface. This monism4 was expressed or implied by the Gnomic poets, “wise poets,” so called, because they made sententious utterances upon the principles of morality.

(2) The early genius of the Greek is shown in his reflections upon physical events. The Greek had been accumulating for a long time many kinds of information, but, what is more important, he had been reflecting upon this information. The Ionian was a sea-faring man. He had had much practical experience and had made many true observations about the things he had seen. In his travels he had come in contact with the Orientals and the Egyptians, and although his scientific conceptions were probably in the main his own, his knowledge was undoubtedly increased by his travels. In the seventh century B. C., the Greeks had a respectable body of physical science. It was mostly inorganic science, however,—astronomy, geography, and meteorology. The early Greek knowledge of organic phenomena was very meagre, as, for example, medical and physiological knowledge. They also showed little genuine research in the field of mathematics, although they had picked up mathematical information here and there. Many of the first philosophers were scientists.

(3) Not only did the Greek early bring a religious system out of the chaos of his naturalism, not only did he early throw his physical information into scientific form; but also early did he show an especial interest in human conduct. This can be seen first in Homer (800 B. C.), in a more developed form in Hesiod (700 B. C.), and with still deeper reflection in the Gnomic poets. Although the Iliad is a descriptive poem, it abounds in ethical observations. For example, Hector says, “The best omen is to fight for one’s country”; and Nestor in council says, “A wretch without the tie of kin, a lawless man without a home, is he who delights in civil strife.” The poem by Hesiod (Works and Days) is intended to teach morals. It is distinctly a didactic poem. Hesiod stands at the beginning of a long line of Greek ethical teachers. His moral observations are, however, incoherently expressed. They are not wide generalizations, but are only comments upon single experiences. The Gnomic poets appeared at the end of the seventh century B. C., as the moral reformers in the age of political disturbances. This period was called by the Greeks the age of the Seven Wise Men; for among the men who were then exhorting the age to come back to its senses, tradition early selected seven of the most notable.5 The spirit of Gnomic poetry was prominent in their reported sayings. They were fearful because of the common disregard of the conventions of the previous age, and because of the present excesses. Their watchword was “moderation,” and they were ever repeating “nothing too much.” By apothegm, riddle, epigram, and catchwords they tried to reform society. The names of all seven are not certain, and only four of them are known,—Thales, Solon, Pittacus, and Bias. Their ethical reflections are not concerned, as in Hesiod, with the home, the village, and the rules of convention, but with the individual’s general relation to society. Their knowledge of ethical matters is remarkable for their time. Some of their sayings are as follows:—

“No man is happy; all are full of trouble.” “Each thinks to do the right, yet no one knows what will be the result of his doings, and no one can escape his destiny.” “The people by their own injustice destroy the city, which the gods would have protected.” “As opposed to these evils the first necessity is law and order for the state, contentment and moderation for the individual.” “Not wealth, but moderation, is the highest good.” “Superfluity of possessions begets self-exaltation.”

The Three Periods of Greek Philosophy, 625–322 B. C. These are

1. The Cosmological Period, 625–480 B. C.

2. The Anthropological Period, 480–399 B. C.

3. The Systematic Period, 399–322 B. C.

1. The Cosmological Period begins with the birth of Greek philosophical reflection (625 B. C.) and has a nominal ending with the Persian wars (480 B. C.). This does not mean that the interest of the Greeks in cosmology stopped in 480 B. C., but that it was no longer their prominent interest. Cosmology is the study of the reality of the physical universe (the cosmos). The particular cosmological question occupying the minds of the Greeks in this period may be stated thus: What, amid the changes of the physical world, is permanent? This will be seen to be a philosophical question and not the same as a question in natural science. The theatre of philosophical activity was the colonies and not the motherland. Two important aspects of this period must be considered besides the philosophical,—the political situation and the religious mysteries.

2. The Anthropological Period begins in the motherland before the cosmological movement ended in the colonies. It starts with a great social impulse just after the victories of the Persian wars (480 B. C.) and ends with the death of Socrates (399 B. C.). Athens is the centre. This period includes the most productive intellectual epoch of Greece as a whole, although not its greatest philosophers. Socrates is the most striking personality in the period. The period is called anthropological, because its interest is in the study of man and not of the physical universe. The word anthropology means the study of man.

3. The Systematic Period begins with the death of Socrates (399 B. C.) and ends with the death of Aristotle (322 B. C.). Alexander the Great died 323 B. C. The period is called systematic because it contains the three great organizers or systematizers of Greek philosophy. These were Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. The spread of Greek culture beyond its own limits through the conquests of Alexander is of great importance for the history of thought in the Hellenic-Roman Period, which follows this period.

When we enter upon the one hundred and fifty years of philosophical beginnings of Greece, which are called the Cosmological Period, we find ourselves confronted with an extremely interesting social situation, which has been brought about partly by the political and geographical environment of the Greek, partly by his inherited genius. On the one hand, during this century and a half, the political troubles of the Greeks became increasingly aggravated by the growth of Persia on the east and of Carthage on the west. On the other hand, we find that the Greek religion took a sudden turn to mysticism, and by its side a slow but increasing interest in philosophical questions. All through this period Greek politics and Greek religion were a constant peril to Greek life. Greek philosophy proved to be its safety.

The Peril in the Greek Political Situation: Persia and Carthage. It must be remembered that the Greek cities never united into a nation. They were always fighting among themselves. We have already pointed out the civil disturbances between the oligarchy and the democracy throughout the land. These internal troubles continued to the end of Greek history. In this period there was added to these internal troubles a critical external situation which threatened the existence of Greece itself. The sixth century was a momentous one for Greece. In both the east and the west there arose mighty empires that threatened to wipe out its civilization. “The expansion of the Persian power (on the one hand) had suspended a stone of Tantalus over Hellas, and it seemed likely that Greek civilization might be submerged in an Oriental monarchy.”6 Cyrus had laid the foundation of Persia by taking Media in 550 B. C., Lydia in 546 B. C., Babylonia in 538 B. C.; Egypt was added by Cambyses in 528 B. C.; and Darius organized the great Persian possessions in his long reign from 528 to 486 B. C. On the west, Carthage was threatening the Greek cities of Sicily, and at the close of this period was acting in conjunction with Persia to obtain possession of the Mediterranean.

The Peril in the New Religion: The Mysteries and Pythagoras. Already in the seventh century B. C. the political society of Greece felt that it was under the wrath of the gods because of some unatoned guilt. “The earth is full of ills, of ills the sea,” sang the poet. Religious depression became universal. Dissatisfied with the old polytheism, especially as expressed in the theogony of Hesiod, the Greek in the sixth century B. C. began to interpret it according to his present need. Among the masses there appeared the craving for immortality and for personal knowledge of the supernatural. The desire to solve the mystery of life by a short road became universal. Men looked to rites to purify them from the guilt of the world and for gaining personal contact with the world of shades. This new religion became pan-Hellenic. It is called the Mysteries or the Orgia. By Mysteries is not meant societies founded on some occult intellectual belief, as the name might suggest. The Mysteries were based on cult (ceremony), and not on dogma. The special ceremonies were those of initiation and purification. They were supposed to purify the participant and put him in a new frame of mind. The soul would then be protected from the malicious spirits to which it was constantly exposed. The ceremonies are reported to have been attended sometimes by more than thirty thousand people. They consisted of processions, songs, dances, and dramatic spectacles. The most important of the Mysteries were the Orphic and the Eleusinian.

The Mysteries were the basis of the society of Pythagoreans. Pythagoras of Samos was a remarkable man, who went to Italy and settled at Crotona. His sect is of double importance to us because in later times it developed a philosophy on its mathematical and astronomical sides. Pythagoras and his immediate following must be distinguished from the later Pythagoreans. Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans were not philosophers, but a sect like the Orphic society of Mysteries, yet the sect of Pythagoreans embraced much more in its scope. It tried to control the public and private life of its members and to evolve a common method of education.7 Pythagoras was an exiled aristocrat, and his sect was an aristocratic religious body in reaction against the democratic excesses. The only doctrine upon which Pythagoras placed any emphasis was that of immortality in the form of metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul from one bodily form into another). The sect was dispersed as a religious body about 450 B. C. The scattered members formed a school of philosophy at Thebes until about 350 B. C. Of these later philosophical Pythagoreans and their number theory, we shall speak in the proper place.

At the time of the dispersion of the Pythagoreans there existed no longer any peril from the new religion. The craze of the new religion was passing away. During the sixth century B. C. it was a great peril to the future intellectual life of Greece. Had it then gained a little more power it would probably have been admitted by the priesthood to the temples. In the exercise of such enormous sacerdotal power, the priests would have enslaved the Greek mind to superstition, and the priesthood in turn would have become an easy tool for tyrants. There would then have been no Socrates, no Plato, and no Aristotle. The Mysteries were a reaction toward asceticism as a religious salvation from the political peril, but they were, however, equally as great a peril to Greece. The medium course along the line of a rational philosophy, which the Greek genius actually took, proved its salvation.

Characteristics of the Cosmologists. There are certain characteristics of this early philosophy that should be noted at the beginning.

(1) All the Cosmologists were physical scientists, and with few exceptions their scientific views were noteworthy. Aristotle calls them physicists in distinction from their predecessors, whom he calls theologians.

(2) They often worked together in schools. Tradition has been common since Bacon that philosophy centres in individuals; but history shows that frequently the Greeks worked in corporate bodies. These philosophical scientists worked in schools; just as the Homeridæ developed the epic; the Dædalidæ, a group of the earliest artists, the secret of art; the Mysteries, religion. Philosophy now is in the cloister, and the intellect of the time speaks from its retreat from public life. While the Milesian school was undisturbed, owing to the long peace that Miletus enjoyed, we shall find that most of the philosophers of the Cosmological period were in retirement on account of political persecution.

We must remember that by “school” is not necessarily meant a group of pupils under the established instruction of a teacher. A school at this early period is a group of learned men at work on the same problems. Later on in history we shall find that one of the group more learned than the others stands in the position of teacher: for example, Plato in the Academy.

(3) All the Cosmologists were hylozoists. The etymological meaning of hylozoism is its true one—matter is alive. This is the fundamental characteristic of these pre-Socratics from Thales down to Anaxagoras, although some authorities contend that those from the time of Empedocles were not hylozoists. The meaning of hylozoism is simple enough, but the conception is a difficult one for the modern mind; for to-day we are accustomed to think of an impersonal nature under mechanical laws. To the Greek of the Cosmological period the substantial constitution of the universe is impersonal living matter; to us it is impersonal dead matter. Both these views are to be contrasted with the religious belief involved in Greek polytheism, in which the cosmos is conceived to be living personal spirits; this Homeric polytheism is again to be contrasted with the animism of the tribal period, in that it had organized into an æsthetic unity the early savage animism. These hylozoistic philosophers did not, however, give up the Homeric gods, but they treated their existence in a poetic way. They usually believed in their existence, but they always subordinated them to the one living world-ground.

(4) In common with all ancient peoples these Greek philosophers did not believe that the universe had unlimited space. On the contrary, they believed that it was limited and in the shape of an egg.

Table of Cosmologists. The Cosmologists are divided into two classes: (1) the earlier were monists—those who believe that the reality of the universe is a simple, undifferentiated unity; (2) the later were pluralists—those who believe that the reality of the universe consists of several elements equally real. They are enumerated as follows:—

The Monists

1. The Milesian school Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes at Miletus.

2. Xenophanes at Colophon and Elea.

3. The Eleatic school Parmenides
Zeno at Elea.

4. Heracleitus at Ephesus.

The Pluralists

5. Empedocles at Agrigentum.

6. Anaxagoras at Clazomenæ.

7. The later Pythagoreans mainly at Thebes.

8. Leucippus at Abdera.

How the Philosophical Question Arose. The interests of these philosophical scientists sharply differentiate them from the preceding theogonists, like Hesiod and Epimenides, as well as from the masses who were absorbed in the religion of the Mysteries. They were, moreover, the men of Greece to whom the emotional excitement of a religious revival would not appeal as a refuge from the troubles of the time. Their own experience in the political troubles had made paramount the question as to the permanence of things. Nevertheless, its answer must be found in nature and in an intellectual way. When they turned to the traditional theogonies they found no answer to their question, for there was only a mythical chronicle of a succession of gods beginning with the unknown. The question of the Cosmologists was not, therefore, what was the original form of this changing world, but what is fundamental in the world always. The time factor is no longer important. Not the temporal prius but the real prius is what they seek. The idea of a temporal origin of things gives place to that of eternal being, and the question finally emerges, What is the real substance that constitutes the universe?

The Greek Monistic Philosophies. Turning back to our classification on page 20, we see that the earliest Greek philosophers emphasized the monistic tendency, which had become so prominent in Greek religion. This group of monists was composed of the Milesians, Xenophanes, the Eleatic School, and Heracleitus. The course of reasoning of these early thinkers is naïvely simple, and like all naïve thought, it contains such contradictions that the modern reader is likely to become impatient with it. The value of the study of the philosophy of these early Greeks is entirely historical. Its historical value, however, is very great, for it is a revelation of the culture of the Greece of that time, it throws light on many of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, and most of all it contains the germs of modern metaphysical problems. These first Greek philosophers raised the question, What is the constitution of the substance of the universe? Their answers are naïve solutions to the historical metaphysical “riddle.”

The Milesians, who form the earliest philosophical school in European history, seem to have assumed two facts as self-evident about the substance of the universe: (1) There is a single cosmic substance identical with itself, which is the basis of all the changes in nature; (2) Moving matter is the same as life. The Milesians were quite unconscious that these two assumptions were contradictory, but the contradiction impressed their successors—Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and the Eleatics; and divided them in their development of philosophy. Matter which keeps identical with itself is the Unchanging8 and is brought into opposition with Life, the Changing, or matter which moves. The question for Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and the Eleatics—and indeed for all future philosophy—was: How can the changing processes of life be explained by an unchanging substance?

Xenophanes, who was more of a religious reformer than a philosopher, was so absorbed in the first of these assumptions that he developed it for his purpose in his practical social reformation to the entire neglect of the second assumption. The Eleatics, however, to whose city Xenophanes had come, could not leave his doctrine in its one-sided and undeveloped form. They accepted his teaching of the divine Unchangingness of the universe, but this compelled these profounder thinkers to offer some explanation of the natural processes of change. Change to them cannot really exist. Heracleitus, on the other hand, was impressed with the aspect of life that is expressed in the second assumption of the Milesians—living matter is moving matter. He therefore maintained in direct opposition to the Eleatics, that the changing, living processes of nature alone are real. The two contradictory assumptions that lay so mutually indifferent in the Milesian doctrine thus became the basis of a sharp metaphysical controversy between Heracleitus and the Eleatics. The substance of the world is permanent, change is an illusion, said the Eleatics. The substance of the world changes, permanence is an illusion, said Heracleitus. Either all things are permanent or all things change. These early philosophers had no wealth of empirical knowledge nor of psychological reflection upon which to draw, and it is not strange that they should take extreme positions and be blind to their practical consequences.

1. The Milesian School. Of all the Greek cities in the sixth century B. C. Miletus was the wealthiest and most prosperous. It was one of the Ionian colonies and was situated on the coast of Asia Minor, and it alone was able to preserve its autonomy as neighbor of the warring eastern empires. Not until the battle of Lade was it captured and destroyed (494 B. C.). From two generations of philosophers history has preserved three names,—Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. The school is called indifferently the Milesian or the Ionic school. The proximity of Miletus to Ephesus, Colophon, and Clazomenæ (as a glance at the map will show) explains the influence of the Milesian school upon the doctrines of Heracleitus, Xenophanes, and Anaxagoras. Undoubtedly the contact of the Milesians with the Orient and Egypt had brought to them knowledge and correct scientific observations of many sorts, especially astronomical.

Thales (b. 640 B. C.) was a member of one of the leading families of Miletus, and lived during the flourishing period of the city under the tyranny of Thrasybulus. He is counted among the seven Wise Men, and belonged to the rich commercial class. He probably engaged in commerce and traveled in Egypt. He was versed in the current learning, predicted an eclipse, and was acute in mathematics and physics. Probably he never committed anything to writing. Aristotle’s comments are the only data about him.

Anaximander (611–545 B. C.?) was an astronomer and geographer; he made an astronomical globe, a sundial, and a geographical map. He was an intimate disciple of Thales and wrote Concerning Nature, which is referred to as the first Greek philosophical treatise. Nothing is known of his life.

Anaximenes (560–500 B. C.?) was the disciple of Anaximander. One sentence is preserved of his writings.9

The Milesian Philosophy. The Milesians lived upon the seacoast, and the changes of the sea and air must have deeply impressed them. They had an intellectual curiosity to find the cosmic matter which remained identical with itself and at the same time moved. (See p. 22.) They were not, therefore, interested to discover the chemical composition of matter, but to find what matter was most moving and therefore most alive. Thales said that it was water; Anaximenes, air; and Anaximander, the Apeiron, or the Unlimited. Their respective choices were determined by what seemed to possess the most mobility and the greatest inner vitality. Thales thought water possessed this quality. Water is always moving. Thales saw it moving. It therefore has life in itself. Anaximander felt that no object in our perceptual experience would fully explain the ceaseless mobility of nature, and he called it the Unlimited or the Indeterminate—the Apeiron. It is a mixture in which all qualities are lost. The changes in nature are endless, and therefore the single cosmic substance, from which they come, must be endless as well, for “from whatever source things come, in that they have their end.” We learn that this is just the reason for Anaximenes choosing the air for the single underlying cosmic substance. The air is the most changeable thing and is Unlimited.9

Both Thales and Anaximenes still held to the traditional polytheism of the Greek Epic. Anaximander rises above them in this respect. This conception of the Unlimited, to which his scientific search led him, is regarded by him as Deity. He calls it “the divine” (τὸ θεῖον); although he speaks of it in the neuter gender it is, nevertheless, the first European philosophical conception of God. It is the first attempt to conceive of God as purely physical and yet without any mythical dress. In Anaximander the Milesian monism has a religious aspect.

2. Xenophanes, the Religious Philosopher (570 B. C.). The scientific monism of Anaximander was after all only expressive of that religious dissatisfaction, first voiced by the Wise Men, against the Hesiod cosmogony and the immorality of the Homeric myths. Now for the first time a positive conflict between religion and philosophy arose through Xenophanes, the rhapsodist of Colophon. Colophon, an Ionian city near Miletus, was noted for its obscene and cruel religious practices, and when his native city capitulated to the Persians, Xenophanes charged its feebleness to its immoral religion. He went to Magna Græcia, and, disguised as a musician, he wandered about for sixty-seven years through its length and breadth declaiming in song against the anthropomorphism, the mystic ecstasies, and the general social practices of the Greeks. He finally settled in Elea, southern Italy (see map), and on this account he is sometimes called the founder of the Eleatic school.

Xenophanes’ influence upon the thought of Greece was threefold: (1) He preached the Milesian philosophical monism to the people of Greece in the form of a religious monism; (2) He carried this doctrine from eastern Greece (Asia Minor) to Western Greece (Magna Græcia); (3) He was the connecting link between the Milesian and the following Eleatic school.

The Philosophy of Xenophanes. Based on one of the Milesian assumptions, viz., a single cosmic substance remains identical with itself in nature, Xenophanes felt that he had a right to set down two principles about nature.

1. The single primordial substance below the changes of nature is God. The reality below nature which Thales conceived to be water, Anaximander to be unlimited substance without a name, Anaximenes to be air, was said by Xenophanes to be God. The important point here is that Xenophanes has not given the Greeks a spiritualistic conception of God; but that he has positively stated that the substance of the universe is an object of religious devotion. He calls the cosmic substance God instead of calling it water, Apeiron, or air. It is a material thing, and yet it is an object of reverence. He ascribes to this God a spherical form, and yet also mental power of omniscience. God is “one and all” ἓν καὶ πᾶν, and yet he is “one god, the greatest among gods and men, neither in form and thought like unto mortals.” The positive conception of God hangs confused in the mind of Xenophanes. He is scarcely a monotheist, nor yet a pantheist. He is a hylozoist, who conceives the underlying cosmic substance to be an object of religious reverence.

2. The single cosmic substance below the changes of nature is unchangeable. To the Milesians the more moving is matter, the more alive is it. Life and activity are the same thing. To Xenophanes this is not the case, but, on the contrary, the opposite is true. He conceives God to be a definite sphere that is unchangeable and homogeneous. The material substance, God, always remains the same. “He has no need of going about, now hither, now thither, in order to carry out his wishes; but he governs all men without toil.” Xenophanes thus becomes the forerunner of the Eleatic school.

3. Heracleitus, “the Misanthropist” and “the Obscure” (about 563–470 B. C.). Heracleitus was a native of Ephesus, belonged to the aristocracy, and suffered at the hands of the democracy. He wrote a treatise that was difficult to understand even by the ancients, some fragments of which are preserved. He was called the “weeping philosopher” because of his misanthropy, and also the “dark philosopher” because of the obscurity of his writings. He was a theorist rather than a physicist, and his doctrines foreshadow our modern physical theories. His name is coupled with that of Parmenides in the deep impression he made upon Greek thought. From his complacent and gloomy retirement he looked forth upon the world around him with profound contempt, as did the Stoics after him.

a. Heracleitus’ Doctrine of Absolute and Universal Change. The wonder which the Ionians felt, that nature phenomena change into one another, found its liveliest expression in Heracleitus. He not only found that mutability was the primal aspect of nature phenomena, but he also pointed out that human experiences also had their rapid and complete transitions. Especially was he fond of citing the changes of opposites into each other. But what shows his development over the early Milesian doctrine was his isolation of the aspect of change from the Milesian conception of the cosmic matter, thereby affirming that abiding permanence is an illusion. It is one thing to affirm that reality is essentially change; it is another to universalize change by affirming that the permanent has no existence. The Milesian doctrine was too naïve to go as far as that. Heracleitus piles up figures of speech to show that there is no permanence whatever. All existing things are only “becoming”-things, passing-away things. Being is always becoming, about-to-be. The only unchanging thing is change. “You cannot step into the same rivers, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.” “God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger.” “All things flow” (πάντα ῥεῖ). What abides and deserves the name of Deity is not thing, but motion—Becoming.

b. Fire is the Cosmic Substance. Here we come to a difficulty in explaining the doctrine of Heracleitus because of the confusion in his own mind. He evidently goes a long way toward conceiving the cosmic substance as an abstraction—as the process of change. But he could not be wholly abstract. He stops and tells us that the cosmic substance is fire, and he probably means by fire just the same sort of thing as Anaximenes meant by air. Fire is the cosmic substance. It is the essence of all material things because it is the most mobile. But, after all, the fire of which Heracleitus is thinking is not a localized thing, like the fire on the hearth. For the hearth fire in a sense is ever identical with itself. The fire which Heracleitus means is ever darting, ever transforming material. To sum up: Heracleitus does not mean by fire an abstraction like the law of change; he does not mean, on the other hand, a material ever remaining like itself: he does mean a material, but a transforming material.

c. The Definite Changes of Fire. Heracleitus makes some acute observations about the characteristics of the changing fire. The Milesians had been content to observe atmospheric changes and to name condensation and rarefaction as the forms of cosmic change. Heracleitus goes farther and emphasizes definite relations of change. The succession of changes always remains the same. Their definite relation is the only permanence in the world, and Heracleitus’ conception foreshadows the modern conception of the uniformity of the law of nature. The changes are (1) fateful, (2) rational, and (3) just. They show that the world is a destiny, a reason, and a justice. This identification of ethical and logical qualities with the physical betrays the undeveloped condition of the thought of Heracleitus.

In general, there are two characteristics to be noted with reference to Heracleitus’ conception of a definite succession of changes: (1) the changes are always a harmony of opposites; (2) and the changes are in a closed circuit. The process of change is not a flow in one direction like a river over its bed, but it is a movement in two opposite directions. By change Heracleitus means not only a passing into something else but a passing into the opposite. Everything is the union of opposites, and everything is the transition point of opposites about to separate. The flux of things is thus poetically conceived as a war of things, and this war is “the father of all things.” This unity of opposites has an equilibrium that illudes us into thinking it is permanent. The universe is an invisible harmony, divided into itself and again united. Investigate life and there are antitheses everywhere. War is life. The second general characteristic of the succession of changes is their closed circuit. Fire changes into all things, and all things are changing back into fire. These two movements are called the “Upward Way” and the “Downward Way.” Downward, fire changes through air and water into earth. Upward, earth changes back to water, air, and fire. With every change, there is counter-change, action is accompanied by a reaction. “Men do not know how that which is drawn in opposite directions harmonizes with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.”

d. The Practical Philosophy of Heracleitus. Heracleitus was more of a metaphysician than a physicist, and his chief concern was in the formation and the practical application of his theory of change. He looked upon man as a bit of cosmic fire struck off and imprisoned in a body of earth, water, and air. After death this fiery soul is released and absorbed in the cosmic fire. In his present state man has a divided existence: the life of the soul, or the fire of the reason; and the life of the senses of the imprisoning body. The reason retires from the illusions of sense, and sees in its aristocratic isolation how illusory the sensations are. For the senses tell us that their objects are permanent, while the reason sees through this deception to the changingness of the world. Thus the beginning is made by Heracleitus in distinguishing the reflections of the reason from sensations. Truth is for the first time systematically set over against opinion. The reasonable Wise Man resigns himself to whatever happens because he knows that it is fateful, wise, and just. The Wise Man recognizes that all is change, and he is happy because he sees providence in the vicissitudes of his own life. Thus in the aristocratic hate, which Heracleitus holds against democracies, he makes conformity to law the only way to happiness. The reason of Wise Men, and not the senses of the multitude, must be the true guide of society.

Heracleitus was a profound observer and theorist. His physical theory foreshadowed the modern theories of natural law and of relativity; his practical theories reappear in the psychology of Protagoras and the ethics of the Stoics.

4. The Eleatic School. The town of Elea to which Xenophanes came in the course of his wanderings had been recently settled by the Ionian refugees from Phocæa, a great maritime city in Asia Minor, which had been conquered by the Persians (543 B. C.). Elea is now Castellamare on the west coast of Italy. It is celebrated as the birthplace of Parmenides and Zeno, who founded the so-called Eleatic school.

a. Parmenides (b. 515 B. C.).

Parmenides wrote about 470 B. C. He is represented as a serious and influential man, with a high moral character. He exercised strong influence upon such philosophers as Plato and Democritus, and was a political power in the city of Elea, of which he was a native. He was not a stranger to the Pythagoreans. The large fragment of his poem is the most ancient monument extant of metaphysical speculation among the Greeks.

Parmenides takes the doctrine of Xenophanes with great seriousness, and what Xenophanes says about the Godhead, Parmenides says about all things. Xenophanes’ religious weapon of an unchanging cosmic substance becomes in the hands of Parmenides an academic doctrine of science and the basis of logical controversy. Parmenides used the conception of Xenophanes in his great didactic poem, The Way of Truth and the Way of Opinion, with the evident purpose of refuting the theory of Heracleitus. The fragment of the poem reveals the driest abstractions dressed in rich poetry. As a thinker Parmenides is the most important in this period. Zeno was the friend and pupil of Parmenides.

(1) The Cosmic Substance is Being. The first assumption in the Milesian doctrine—that there is a single matter that ever remains identical with itself—was so self-evident to Parmenides that he does not attempt to prove it. He assumes it, as if it were cogent to everybody. However, he explains what he means by Being in a negative statement: Not-Being, or what is not, cannot be thought. Being and thought are so correlated that they are the same. Thinking always has Being as its content, and there is no Being that is not thought. Being ＝ Thought. This explanation of Parmenides’ identification of thought and Being may be put in this logical form:—

All thinking refers to something thought, and therefore has Being for its content;

Thinking that refers to nothing, and is therefore contentless, cannot be;

Therefore, not-Being cannot be thought, much less can it be.

These propositions look very abstract, and make us believe that we are to plunge immediately into a kind of German idealism. But Parmenides leaves us in no doubt that he is one of the hylozoists of his time. Being is indeed thought, but Being is also matter. We may therefore amend our equation to Being ＝ Thought ＝ Matter. Being is what fills space, and all Being has this and only this property. All Being is therefore exactly alike, and there is only one, single Being. There are no distinctions in Being. By not-Being Parmenides means empty space or that which is not material. So that Parmenides’ assumption of Being as the cosmic substance means this: all that exists, including thought, fills space; and all that does not exist does not fill space.

Being, the cosmic substance, is one, eternal, imperishable, homogeneous, unchangeable, and material. When men see the world as it really is, when they see its cosmic substance, they see it to be one continuous material block. The world is not made up of parts with intervals of nothing between them, but it is a solid, homogeneous whole. The cosmic Being is a timeless, spaceless Being with no distinctions. The form of Being is spherical. It is cosmic-body and cosmic-thought. This is the assumption of Parmenides, which is so self-evident and so cogent to him that he does not attempt to prove but only to explain it.

(2) Other Things than the Cosmic Substance (Being) have no Real Existence. If Being is space that is filled, not-Being is empty space. However, empty space has no existence. But the existence of a plural number of things depends upon the existence of empty spaces between them. Furthermore, the motion of things and the change of things depend upon the existence of empty spaces in which they can move and change. Since empty space is not-Being and has no existence, the plurality of things and the motion and change of things have also no existence. They are illusions. The nature-world, with its richness of qualities and variety of motions, before the logic of Parmenides “folds up its tents like the Arabs and silently steals away.”

This logical drawing out of one of the aspects of the Milesian conception of the cosmic matter has a curious result. The Milesians and Xenophanes sought to explain by the cosmic substance the many nature changes. But when in the hands of Parmenides the cosmic substance is all of reality, then there is no reality to the changes. Consequently the concept formed for the explanation of change has so developed as to deny the existence of change. The cosmic substance excludes all origination and decay, all space and time differences, all divisibility, diversity, and movement. There is only one real, all else is illusion.

But what can we say of the varied world of nature as it appears to us? Do we see, hear, and touch many things and motions? In Part II of his poem he raises the question, Suppose man takes the world of change as real how must he explain it? He answers by using the explanation of Heracleitus. But these changes of eye and ear belong to the world of sense, and Parmenides is talking, in Part I of his poem, about the real world or that world known to thought. Parmenides insists as strongly as did Heracleitus that the reason and not the sense shall be our guide to what is real. Yet he arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion from Heracleitus as to what the reason sees as real. The senses show us only the many and the changing. The reason shows us nothing of the sort, but only permanence and unchangingness.

b. Zeno (b. 490–430 B. C.).

Zeno was born in Elea. He was contemporary with those who tried to reconcile the two sides of the metaphysical controversy,—Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. He wrote in prose in the form of question and answer. This is the beginning of the dialogue literature, which in the time of the Sophists, Socrates and Plato, was richly developed and became known as dialectic. On the Greek stage during the time of Pericles it came forth in dramatic form through Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

The Philosophy of Zeno. Zeno was the active controversialist of the school of Elea, and he was not a constructive philosopher. He offered no contribution to advance the thought of Parmenides. He appeared rather as the master of logical argument in defense of his predecessor, by tearing to pieces the arguments of his opponents. The opponents that Zeno is attacking are the Atomists of Abdera, who were his contemporaries, rather than Heracleitus. His contribution was negative and formal, but it was nevertheless effective and searching. His arguments and paradoxes will, however, lose their cogency unless it be kept in mind that he is trying to show how absurd magnitude, multiplicity, and change would be in discontinuous space such as the Atomists describe. While his paradoxes have been attacked again and again, they still have effectiveness against atomic theories.

His arguments are against magnitude, multiplicity, and motion. There can be no magnitude, because a thing would then be both infinitely small and infinitely great. There can be no multiplicity of things, since they would be both limited and unlimited in number. There can be no motion, because (1) it is impossible to go through a fixed space; (2) it is impossible to go though a space that has movable limits; and (3) because of the relativity of motion. The dilemmas which he proposed of Achilles and the tortoise, the flying arrow at rest, and the bushel of corn are classic.10

The Results of the Conflict between Heracleitus and Parmenides. 1. One important result of this final conflict between the inconsistent motives in the Milesian teaching was that reason was contrasted with sense, reflection with experience. The more fully the philosophers developed their doctrines, the more their doctrines became contrasted with the opinions of unreflecting people. At first the contrast appeared in this naïve form: that what they thought was right, and what others thought must be wrong, if others differed from them. Then the contrast came in this form: that reflection gives the true and sensations the false. Thus reflection came to have such conclusiveness that it gained independence. The philosopher began to feel the supremacy of reason, to assert that he has truth, to call unreasoned belief by the opprobrious name of “opinion.” This is curiously illustrated in the case of Heracleitus and Parmenides. Their opposing conceptions of the cosmic substance are claimed to be the result of reason, while each calls the other’s theory “opinion.”

2. Another result was that in the Greek thought the monistic theory was found to be useless in the study of nature. These early monistic views led up as necessary steps to pluralism, but they were not in themselves serviceable. The imperfection in the Milesian teaching appeared in the impassable gulf between Heracleitus and Parmenides. It now remained for the last Cosmologists to see if, on the basis of pluralism, they could not reconcile the preceding views and at the same time obtain a satisfactory metaphysics of nature.

3. The third result of the controversy between the Eleatics and Heracleitus was that the peril from the Orphic Mysteries was averted,—not immediately, nor in a year’s time, but after many years. Philosophy became established. The Greek reason now had an object of interest, in a sharp scientific issue. Mystery was not crushed, but subdued. The mental life of the future Greek had a topic for its reflection which supplanted, when the time came, its emotional interest in the supernatural.

Efforts toward Reconciliation. The theories of Heracleitus and Parmenides were in part fantastic and in part abstract. They were the two motives of the Milesian school that had been developed so far as to reveal their inherent inconsistencies.

Physical theories now began to spring up which modified the metaphysical theories; and these produced results which while not so logical, were less distant from the facts of life. The Eleatics had so conceived Being as to deny the existence of changing phenomena perceived in the world of nature. On the other hand, Heracleitus had so emphasized the universality of change that there was little reality left in the particular changes. The later Heracleitans were Heracleitus gone mad. “We not only cannot step into the same river twice, but we cannot do it once.” All the preceding philosophers had been monists. The time had therefore come for thinkers to abandon monism if thought were to have any usefulness. Monism, whether in the form of Heracleitus’ doctrine of universal change or of Parmenides’ doctrine of universal permanence, had merely set aside the problem about the Many. Of course, a more satisfactory solution of this problem could come only when human life had become riper and had more experiences upon which to draw. It was natural for the Greek philosopher to look now to pluralism for his solution, when he turned away from monism. At the outset pluralism tried to reconcile the two extremes to which the Milesian motifs had gone. Its later development in the doctrine of Protagoras was as extreme as that of the monists.

The New Conception of Change of the Pluralists. Facing the fact that change has to be explained and cannot be denied, change is conceived by the pluralists to be not a transformation but a transposition. It is an alteration in position of the parts of a mass. Birth, growth, death, are only such changes of transposition. Empedocles, to whom the origin of the doctrine is attributed, says, “There is no coming into Being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in baneful death, but only a mingling and a separation of what has been mingled. Just as when painters are elaborating temple offerings,—they, when they have taken the pigments of many colors in their hands, mix them in a harmony,—so let not the error prevail in thy mind that there is any other source of all the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers.” All origination, then, is a new combination, and every destruction only a separation of the original parts. The Pluralists thus make Heracleitus’ conception useful in the explanation of nature.

The New Conception of the Unchanging of the Pluralists—The Element. But there must be a permanence in order that there be change. This can only be conceived by assuming that there are many original units that in themselves do not change. The mass of the world is ever the same; there is no new creation. Being consists in many elements, and not in a single block. So to Empedocles in particular is accredited the priority of forming the conception of the element, which has occupied an important place in science. The element is conceived by the Pluralists as unoriginated, imperishable, and unchanging. It has all the qualities that Parmenides attributed to his single Being, only the elements may change their place and suffer mechanical division. The Pluralists thus make the Eleatic conception useful in the explanation of nature.

The Introduction of the Conception of the Efficient Cause. The Eleatics had detached the quality of motion from Being. The Pluralists, in reintroducing it, were obliged to make it a separate force in order to get movement into their universe. The elements are changeless. How can they move? They cannot move themselves. They are moved from without. Here in Empedocles is made a differentiation of great importance—the concept of the moving or efficient cause. However, this does not appear in this early time in conceptual but in mythical-poetic and undefined form. With this differentiated efficient cause, can Pluralism be considered to be hylozoism? Authorities differ. Certainly this new concept shows the beginning of the breaking up of hylozoism and the beginning of the formation of a mechanistic conception of the universe. But probably the Pluralists were as much hylozoists as their predecessors, the monists. Their efficient causes are material like the elements, and they are poetically and indefinitely described. They are in every case conceived as the material which has a lively or an originating motion. We must keep in mind that all the Cosmologists except the Eleatics believed movement to be life.

Summary of Similarities and Differences in the Theories of the Reconcilers.

The general common characteristics of the theories of the Reconcilers:—

1. A plurality of the elements.

2. An efficient cause which explains the shifting of the elements in causing the origin, growth, and decay of the world of nature.

The general differences between the theories of the Reconcilers:—

1. In the number and quality of the elements.

2. In the number and quality of the causes.

The Pluralistic Philosophers: Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and the Later Pythagoreans. With the Pluralists we pass completely out of the sixth century B. C. The lives of the hylozoistic Pluralists span the fifth century, and cosmological interest extends later. Even the Eleatic Zeno lived from 490 to 430 B. C. Empedocles lived from 490 to 430 B. C., Anaxagoras from 500 to 425 B. C., and the Pythagoreans and Leucippus later. When the cosmological movement was still virile in the Grecian colonies, and even before it had reached its systematic form in Democritus of Abdera, the anthropological movement had begun in the motherland, in Athens. The Persian Wars are the dividing line between the two periods, but only because they denote the beginning of the new movement in Athens, not the end of the old movement in Asia Minor and Magna Græcia. Contemporaneous with the Pluralists was the brilliant Age of Pericles, when the Sophists were carrying education to the people and Socrates was teaching in the Athenian market-place. By the middle of the fifth century B. C. there was the liveliest interchange of scientific ideas throughout Greek society, and the contemporaneousness of the Pluralists with one another and with the Athenian philosophers shows this in many similarities in their doctrines and in many polemical references. There are four schools of Reconcilers, of which Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and the later Pythagoreans are the representatives.

Empedocles11 (490 to 430 B. C.) was the first Dorian philosopher, a partisan of the democracy, and belonged to a rich family of Agrigentum. He became a distinguished statesman, but he later fell from popular favor. Then, in the garb of a magician, he traveled as physician and priest through Magna Græcia. His political affiliations would prevent his direct connection with the Pythagoreans, but he showed that the Pythagoreans influenced him, and his career is an imitation of that of Pythagoras. He was acquainted with the theory of Heracleitus, and he knew Parmenides personally. He was one of the first rhetoricians, and was probably connected with a large literary circle. He is the first and most imperfect representative of the reconciliation. The story of his suicide by leaping into Mt. Ætna is supposed to be a myth.

Anaxagoras (500–425 B. C.), a man of wealthy antecedents, was much esteemed, was born in Clazomenæ in a circle rich in Ionian culture, but was isolated from practical life. He declared the heaven to be his fatherland and the study of the heavenly bodies to be his life’s task. He went to Athens about 450 B. C., where he formed one of a circle of notable men of culture. He lived in Athens under the patronage of Pericles, but in 434 B. C. he was expelled. In Athens he was intimate with such men as Euripides, Thucydides, and Protagoras. He represents the first appearance of philosophy in Athens.

The life of Leucippus is almost unknown. He was probably born in Miletus, visited Elea, and settled in Abdera.

The Later Pythagoreans. After the Pythagoreans as a religious and political body had been defeated at Crotona, they lost their prestige and were scattered to the four winds. They were beaten in the battle of Crotona (510 B. C.) and dispersed about 450 B. C. Pythagoras died 504 B. C. His scattered followers, these later Pythagoreans, formed a school of philosophy which had its centre at Thebes. Destroyed as a religious body the members lost their superstitions and turned their attention to philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and physics. As mathematicians and as astronomers they are the most notable among the ancients. Philolaus is the probable originator of their philosophy of numbers. This school disappeared about 350 B. C. Pythagoreanism reappeared later under the name of neo-Pythagoreanism.

The Philosophy of Empedocles. Empedocles conceived the number of elements to be four,—earth, air, fire, and water,—an arbitrary enumeration, which nevertheless persisted in the popular imagination throughout the Middle Ages. He chose this number of elements because they included all the elements in his predecessors’ theories. By the transposition and new arrangement of these elements he could account for the variety of the world. The efficient causes that make these different separations and mixtures are Love and Hate, two mythical and sensuous entities. Love is the cause of the union of things, Hate of their separation.

This is the general metaphysical theory that Empedocles uses to explain the physical world and especially physiological phenomena; and he is probably best known as the author of the aphorism, “Like attracts Like.” For example, he conceives the physical world as continuously repeating itself through four cosmic stages, each centuries long. The world moves therefore in cyclical evolution, in which Love is bringing like elements together only to be followed by stages of the separation of the like elements by Hate,—an endless cosmic procession.

But Empedocles’ interest in cosmology was only a part of his dominating interest in the organic world. He held some interesting evolution theories. His special interest in human physiology led him to frame the first theory of perception. Man is composed of the four elements, and he can know the universe around himself because Like in him attracts Like in the external world. The earth forms our solid parts, water the liquid parts, air is the vital breath, and fire is the soul. The blood contains the four elements, and is therefore the real carrier of life. If we perceive anything, it is because we have qualities similar to that thing. The element in us attracts the like element outside. He fancifully explained how parts of each element pressed upon parts of like elements—earth upon earth, air upon air; and how these clung together until sundered by Hate. The senses have only a partial number of elements, while the reason has them all; therefore sense knowledge is partial when compared with rational knowledge.

The Philosophy of Anaxagoras. The pluralistic conception of the nature-substance, that was originated by Empedocles in this crude form, got a more complete character in the hands of Anaxagoras. For Anaxagoras took exception to the arbitrary assumption of Empedocles that the elements were only four in number. How could this world of infinite variety be derived from only four elements? We must postulate as many elements as there are qualities, if by merely shuffling them—by various combinings and separatings of them—their infinite number is to be explained. There are a plural number of elements qualitatively distinct. Every perceptual thing is composed of these heterogeneous parts or qualities or elements. But how do you know an element when you find one? Always by the fact that when you divide it, its parts are homogeneous. The elements are, therefore, those substances that divide into parts that are like one another; while the perceptual objects of nature can be divided into parts that are unlike one another. They are called “seeds” by Anaxagoras, and designated as “homoiomeriai” by Aristotle and later philosophy. This was a time, it must be remembered, when chemical analysis had not developed, and when mechanical division and change of temperature were the only means of investigation. Form, color, and taste were the characteristics that differentiated elements. So Anaxagoras was content to name as elements such things as bones, muscles, flesh, marrow, metals, etc. The countless elements or qualities are present in a finely divided state throughout the universe. Every perceptual object has present in it all elements, even opposite elements. It is, however, known and named by the element that prevails in it at any particular instant. For example, fire contains an element of cold but the fire element prevails. Opposites attract, and the qualitative change in a thing consists in the predominance of some other quality already present in it.

For the efficient cause of the combining and separating of the elements Anaxagoras selected one of the elements. He called it the Nous, the Greek word for mind or reason. Many historians have therefore concluded that Anaxagoras is the author of an idealistic philosophy. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras that he “stood out like a sober man among the random talkers that had preceded him.” But both Plato12 and Aristotle are disappointed with the way in which Anaxagoras handles the conception of Nous and, as a matter of fact, the Nous, as Anaxagoras uses it, is not less hylozoistic than the Love and Hate of Empedocles. In the Nous Anaxagoras threw out a thought that was too big for him. Its introduction, however, marks the breaking up of pre-Socratic hylozoism. Anaxagoras wrote down the word, Nous, from which comes the contrast with matter. He stripped the mythical dress from the efficient cause of Empedocles and substituted Nous, because he wished to emphasize the unity of the cosmic process. The Nous is one of the elements; it is “thought-stuff,” it is a corporeal substance. It differs from all the other elements in that it is the finest, the most mobile, and has the power of self-motion. If among the early schools motion is life, here we find the new conception of self-motion as most alive. Instead of a departure from hylozoism, this is a rehabilitation of hylozoism in more perfect form. The Nous is the cause of the harmony and order of the cosmos.

The Philosophy of the Atomists—Leucippus and the School at Abdera. Only circumstantial evidence is left to testify to the early beginnings of the school of atomists at Abdera. About 450 B. C., owing to the rise of Athens and the great victory of Cimon over the Persians, the Ionian civilization on the coasts of Asia Minor had a new lease of life, and there was a renewal of scientific activity in the cities. The influence of the Milesians appeared and Anaxagoras’ doctrine, which had been widely disseminated, began to have great vigor. Among the philosophers of this section was one about whom we know very little, except that his name was Leucippus and that he was the father of atomism. Miletus was probably his native place, and after visiting Elea he settled in Abdera in Thrace. We know that the polemic of Zeno was directed against contemporary atomism; and we know the theories of the pupils of Leucippus, of Protagoras, and of Democritus, in whom the doctrine of atomism culminated. Probably the theory of Leucippus was that the cosmic substance is composed of an infinite number of elements quantitatively distinct, in opposition to Empedocles’ theory of a fourfold division as well as against Anaxagoras’ theory of an infinite number of qualities. Atomism in this early form represents one of the ways that Greek thought took in reconciling the conflicting claims of Heracleitus and Parmenides. The doctrine of atomism will be presented fully in its greatest representative, Democritus.

The Later Pythagoreans. Had the Pythagorean band remained what Pythagoras had designed it, had it not had its political aspirations crushed at the battle of Crotona and the members scattered far and wide, it would probably have for the historian of to-day only the importance of a local band of political and religious reformers. The adversity at Crotona was, however, a blessing in disguise for the Pythagoreans and for Greece, for it turned the Pythagoreans from religious politics to science and metaphysics. In the first place, they became the authors of an important metaphysical theory. This was the theory of numbers, which influenced Plato, became the foundation of a vigorous school in Alexandria in the Hellenic-Roman Period, flourished during the Middle Ages, and united with the doctrines of the Jews in what is called the Cabala. To-day the magic numbers persist in our superstitions. In the second place, the Pythagoreans turned to science,—especially to mathematics and astronomy,—and in these two branches became very celebrated in ancient times. Their astronomical theory had a most extraordinary history. With modifications it was preserved by Plato and Aristotle, and later became the basis of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. This system was the scientifically accepted system for fifteen hundred years, when it was supplanted by the Newtonian theory. It is a most singular fact that the cosmological background of the Epics of Dante and Milton is the astronomical system of the Pythagoreans as expressed in the Ptolemaic system.

The Pythagoreans, be it remarked, were “Reconcilers,” but they were more. The original ethical motive of Pythagoras influenced them as scientists. They did not attempt to formulate a science of ethics, but the ethical motive was always back of their mathematics and astronomy.

1. The Pythagorean Conception of Being. The Pythagorean conception of reality is the most advanced of any cosmological theory in this period. The Pythagoreans were hylozoists, but they come the nearest to transcending the hylozoism of their time. The influence of the later Pythagoreans, whom Plato met in Italy, upon Plato shows that Pythagorean philosophy forms a link between the cosmology of the colonies and the following comprehensive systems of thought.

The important position in the evolution of Greek thought occupied by the Pythagoreans depends upon their conception of that Being that abides amid all change. Pythagoreanism is usually spoken of as “the number theory.” This is, however, only a suggestion of its import. For numbers are not to the Pythagoreans what the different kinds of cosmic matter were to the early monists, or what the several elements were to the pluralists,—Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists. Neither are they abstractions merely, such as we use in scientific reckoning. The Pythagoreans were pluralists and hylozoists whose plural numbers look beyond hylozoism.

There are two kinds of reality in the Pythagorean teaching: (1) numbers, and (2) unlimited space. The essential nature of things, the Being that abides, consists in the shaping of this unlimited space into mathematical forms. The numbers or the forms are the limited aspect of Being; space is the unlimited aspect of Being. Actual Being consists in the union of the two aspects. Being therefore has two roots, each being necessary to the other. The later Pythagoreans, indeed, called attention to the fact that their numbers were not the same as the different kinds of matter out of which the other Cosmologists conceived the world to be fashioned. Numbers are not the stuff out of which the world of nature-objects have arisen, but rather are forms of nature-objects. Numbers are the patterns or models of things; things are the copies or imitations of numbers. Unlimited space furnishes the material; numbers or mathematical forms furnish the mould; the result is a material thing. Here we find the early basis of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, and the correlation in Aristotle of Form and matter. If we were to draw an analogy between the Pythagorean conception of numbers and any part of the preceding cosmological teaching, we should find the similarity between the numbers and the earlier efficient causes and not between the numbers and the elements. For example, Pythagorean numbers have a function more nearly like Love and Hate than like the four elements in Empedocles’ teaching. On the other hand, Pythagorean unlimited space is analogous to the Empedoclean elements.

2. The Pythagorean Dualistic World.13 The Pythagoreans carried out their conception of this twofold reality both in their mathematical studies and in their conceptions of natural objects. It was from such investigations that they were impressed by the dualism in everything and so reached their principle. They observed in mathematics that the number-series consists of alternate odd and even numbers. The odd numbers are limited and the even unlimited (because they could be divided). They explained the elements as determined by mathematical forms: fire has the form of a tetrahedron; earth, of the cube; air, of the octohedron; water, of the icosahedron; and an additional fifth element, the æther, of the dodecahedron. They carried this dualism further by identifying the limited form with the odd, with the perfect, and with the good; while the unlimited was identified with the even, the imperfect, and the bad. Some of the Pythagoreans even sought to trace out this dualism in the many realms of experience, and they originated a table of ten pairs of opposites: limited and unlimited; odd and even; one and many; right and left; male and female; rest and motion; straight and crooked; light and dark; good and bad; square and oblong.

There is a system in the Pythagorean theory not to be found in the teaching of the other reconcilers. Although all the numbers, and with them all the world, are divided into two opposing classes, these are, nevertheless, united in a harmony. The harmony of a dualism reminds us of Heracleitus’ harmony of antitheses. All series of numbers have their unity and harmony in the odd-even number, One. To the Pythagorean the opposites of life—the good and the bad, the limited and unlimited, the perfect and imperfect, the odd and even—exist in an harmonious whole.

As the Pythagorean school grew in years, the realms to which it applied its theory increased. While we have stated its metaphysical theory first in order to give it prominence, the school came to the formulation of its theory through its investigations in mathematics, music, and astronomy. Then it applied the theory to geometrical structures and to other fields with a procedure that was arbitrary and unmethodical. Yet so universal was the application of the theory that it lived to have superstitious authority for the human mind in the Middle Ages.

3. Pythagorean Astronomy. The formation of the world-all began from the One, or central fire, which attracted and limited the nearest portions of the unlimited. This fire became the centre of the world-all, which had the shape of a hollow globe. Around the central fire the celestial bodies move in globular transparent shells. Their movements are concentric to the fire. This is the beginning of the astronomical theory of the crystalline spheres. The world-all is divided into three concentric portions. The periphery or outer rim is Olympus, where all is perfection and where the gods dwell. Between Olympus and the moon is Cosmos, where all is orderly and all movements are in circles. Between the moon and the central fire is the region called Uranus, where all is disorderly and the movements are up and down. The earth is in this lower section of disorder, and moves in a transparent globular shell like the celestial bodies around the central fire. The number of the heavenly bodies is the perfect number, ten. The world-all is conceived as a heavenly heptachord, with the orbits of the seven planets as the sounding strings. Upon this notion was founded the harmony of the spheres, which harmony is not heard by man because it is constant. In modifying this astronomical theory and then accepting it, the most important change that Aristotle made was to conceive the earth as at the centre of the world-all with the sun revolving about it. This was the form in which the Ptolemaic astronomers received it.

Historical Retrospect. In these many searchings of the Cosmologists for a reality amid the changes of nature, what result can be found significant for the Cosmological Period and valuable as a bequest for the following periods? Are these crude scientific speculations of the early Greeks to be looked upon as out of connection with their own age and the age to come? The Cosmological philosophy had two definite results. In the first place, with reference to its own century and a half, it saved the intellectual world of Greece from the slavery of a mystic religion. When we started with Thales in 625 B. C., we saw Greece confronted with two perils. One was political, and consisted of internecine troubles and of danger from its warlike neighbors. This peril grew still greater, until at the very end of the period it was averted at the battle of Salamis. Greek arms banished this political peril. But the other peril was subjective and therefore more menacing. The mysteries of the Orphic religion would have quenched the Greek genius had not its rational philosophy given the Greek intellectual life new conceptions. In the next place, it bequeathed to the succeeding period a fairly well-drawn contrast between a world of intellectual order and a world of sensuous disorder. The thought of an order in nature in conformity to law was developed into clearness in the Cosmological Period. The order was obtained from the astronomical studies of these scientists. Reasoning from the order that they saw, to an ordering principle, Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans almost, but not quite, gave to that principle a teleological meaning. The principle of permanence that these nature scientists sought was found in the great and simple relations of the stars, whose revolutions are the expression of order and constancy. Impregnated as they were with their elemental hylozoism, the Greek Cosmologists were as yet not quite able to find an orderly permanence in the terrestrial world with its manifold and intersecting motions. Yet Greek thought was looking forward. The Cosmologist had already contrasted the terrestrial as the imperfect with the celestial as the perfect peace and permanence. The step was but a short one from the contrast of the two realms to the effort to bring them into a unity. Thus in this astronomical and concrete form a distinction of value was obtained that had lasting ethical and æsthetical significance, not only upon Plato and Aristotle, but upon modern thought.

An Historical Summary of the Anthropological Period. The Anthropological Period begins with the Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C. After the battle of Marathon there sprang up a distinct impulse toward knowledge all over Greece; and detailed investigations were begun in mathematics, astronomy, biology, medicine, history, and physics. Science, which had up to this time been unorganized and undifferentiated, now became sharply divided into the special sciences. But what makes the Persian Wars of particular importance is that they are the starting-point in the motherland of the movement in the study of man and human relations. The battle of Marathon does not therefore mark the end of the Cosmological movement and the waning of the Greeks’ interest in science; but it marks rather the beginning in Athens of the Anthropological movement. The Cosmological and the Anthropological Periods overlap.

The Anthropological Period easily divides itself into three epochs from the point of view of its political affairs:—

1. The Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C.

2. The Age of Pericles, 467–428 B. C.

3. The Peloponnesian Wars, 432–403 B. C.

The first epoch is the birth and the last epoch the decadence of pure Greek civilization, while the thirty-nine years of the supremacy of Pericles cover the ripest period of Greek life. In this connection it is well to mention Hegel’s thought that nations do not ripen intellectually until they begin to decay politically (“The owl of Minerva does not start upon its flight until the evening twilight has begun to fall”). Plato and Aristotle do not come until after this period, when Greek political life had begun to wane.

The following table is a partial list of the notable men of the period, with the date of their birth:—

Æschylus, 525 (dramatist before Pericles).

Sophocles, 495 (dramatist during Age of Pericles).

Phidias, 490.

Euripides, 480 (dramatist of the Sophistic and the new learning).

Herodotus, 475.

Thucydides, 471.

Xenophon, 430?

Aristophanes, 444.

Anaxagoras, 500.

Empedocles, 495.

Protagoras, 480.

Democritus, 470.

Sophists (many), 450–350.

Socrates, 469.

Antisthenes, 440.

Aristippus, 435.

Plato, 427.

The Persian Wars and the Rise of Athens. The blow that had been impending over Greece during the sixth century had been struck, but had been averted in the Persian Wars of 490 B. C. and 480 B. C. The powerful and splendidly organized “barbaric neighbor,” who had threatened the civilization of the Greek cities of Asia Minor for so many years, had swept over the Hellespont into Greece and had been turned back. It has been pointed out14 that the Persian Wars were only one of a series of conflicts between Oriental and Occidental civilizations; and that the strip of Asia Minor along the Mediterranean has always been a disputed borderland between irreconcilable hemispheres. First was the mythical invasion of Troy; then the Persian Wars; then came the arms of Alexander conquering Persia; then the invasion of the Mohammedans to the very walls of Tours; then the Crusades; and to-day we still have the eternal Eastern question with us. While each of these conflicts was momentous for Europe, none was more important in its issues for the world than the Persian Wars. For through those wars did Greece first come to a consciousness of herself. Never before did she realize her united strength,—the greatness of her inherited instincts. The fifth century B. C. was the most clearly conscious moment of Greece, if not of the world. Classic Greece—the Greece whose thought became fundamental to western civilization—was born from the Persian Wars.

The centre of gravity of the Greek world was shifted after the Persian Wars from Miletus to Athens, from the colonies to the motherland. Indeed, the history of classic Greece is almost entirely the history of Athens. Of the large cities of Greece,—Corinth, Ægina, Sparta, and Thebes,—Athens was naturally the locality where Grecian civilization would centre when the commercial and maritime colonies fell. The Ionian race, by whom it had been settled, was a mixed race, and by nature very versatile. Before the Persian Wars it had been under the wise tyranny of Pisistratus, who took the first steps toward the founding of an Athenian empire. In the period between the two wars, Themistocles had built the Athenian fleet and thereby made Athens the great maritime and naval centre of Greece. There was, indeed, every reason why Athens and not some other Grecian city should become the new centre of classic Greece. The Spartans were oligarchical, stern, unintellectual, and offensive to strangers; the people of Thebes were held under a strict aristocratic government, the people of Thessaly were aristocratic, luxurious, and stagnant; but the Athenians were democratic, social to strangers, literary, liberal, frugal, and alert. After the Persian Wars the power of the Delian confederacy became more and more centralized in the city of Athens. Controlling the fleet of the Confederacy for her own defense and using the rich treasury of the Confederacy for her own municipal improvements, Athens under the brilliant rule of Pericles, who summoned scholars and artists from all Greece, was the only city of Greece where the Renaissance of Greece was possible. Athens had become the eye of Greece, and the following description of the Greek Renaissance is especially significant in regard to her.

The Greek Enlightenment. Following the Persian Wars there arose throughout Greece a great national intellectual movement. The years mark the Greek Renaissance, the Age of Pericles, and the time when the Greek masterpieces in literature and plastic art were produced. Perhaps the greatest Greek production was Athens itself, whose cultural influence was personified in the scholar-politician, Pericles.

1. The Impulse for Learning. In the first place there was a general impulse throughout Greece for education. Everybody seemed to want to know what the schools of Cosmologists had had to say about science. The Greeks now had wealth and therefore leisure; they had come into contact with the Oriental peoples and therefore they had their curiosity excited. Learning, which had been confined in the Cosmological Period to a few scholars in the schools, now came forth into the market place. Learning in the fifth century B. C. was drawn from the schools into publicity. The objects of interest had greatly widened and the learning of the scholars began to filter into the general consciousness. Whereas in the sixth century philosophy was a matter between learned men, in the fifth century we find Socrates and the Sophists teaching whosoever would listen.

2. The Practical Need of Knowledge. But mere curiosity will not entirely explain the Greek intellectual movement. There had grown up an imperative practical need for knowledge. In Athens and other Greek cities the democracy of the fifth century B. C. had supplanted the tyranny of the sixth century. Duty and inclination together forced the citizen into active participation in public affairs. In these democratic cities family tradition and character were no longer sufficient for success; but it became generally recognized that the most useful and successful man was the educated man. The complex relations existing between states and between the citizens in the states made education absolutely necessary for the politician. Nowhere was the need of an education more imperative than in Athens; nowhere was the need more easily filled. In a very short time after the Persian Wars the social position of science changed to one of power; and the inner character of science changed from the study of nature to the study of ethical and political problems. Scientists became teachers of eloquence, for the citizen now needed to be an orator and a rhetorician. Statesmen and generals must know how to persuade. Courts of law were public, their proceeding oral, and personal attendance was therefore required. There was no man in Athens who might not be condemned, if he could not personally in court refute falsehoods and disentangle sophistries. Besides, to be beaten in debate was as disgraceful in the eyes of the public as to lose one’s cause.

Two classes of men, with an importance hitherto unknown, appear in Greek history,—the rhetoricians and the dialecticians. Rhetoric was public oratory, necessary for the public defense of one’s rights, or for the maintenance of one’s dignity, or for the gratification of one’s ambition. The dialectic was, on the other hand, argument employed in private between two persons, usually friends, to unravel an obscurity, to reduce an opponent to silence, to exercise one’s self in the mastery of a subject, or to sift evidence. The dialectic, therefore, became a distinct mental pursuit for men who had a natural defect in public speaking or rhetoric. Besides rhetoric and dialectic, there grew up somewhat later what was called the eristic. Eristic was polemical argument consisting of catch-phrases and logical subtleties. It was taught as an art of adroit argument.

The great Greek tragedies occupy a place in the development of the dialectic and the satisfying of the need of knowledge. Science, through the drama, transformed the old religious views and brought its new interpretation to the common people. The development of the fifth-century drama out of the epic of the sixth century was not merely a change in architectonic, but a transformation of its ethical and religious spirit. The germ was in the previous ethics, lyrics, and gnomics, yet it was fully amplified in the drama. Instead of a summary of deeds the tragic poet makes his characters talk, defend, refute, accuse, lament, etc. This gives rise to exigencies that require the dialectic. In the conflicting duties and in the justification of the wrong done by the wrong suffered, dialectical skill is called for in the drama to weigh the ethical motives in a manner that the epic does not demand. Thus the drama of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides was a link between the lyric and gnomic poetry of the sixth century B. C. and the dialogue literature of Plato.15

3. The Critical Attitude of Mind. The most important characteristic of this period is neither the intensified social curiosity nor the increased social needs. It is rather ethical in its character. It is the “critical” or “individualistic” attitude of mind. This began with the “free city feeling”—the consciousness of the free man in a free state—in the first half of the fifth century B. C., and developed rapidly into individualism and critical skepticism toward the end of that century.

If one were to compare in a single word the history of Greece before the Persian Wars with that after the Persian Wars, he would say that the former was traditional and the latter was critical. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the Cosmological Period Greek traditional customs were being weakened by attacks upon them. Religious ideas were threatened by the Cosmologists. The subordination of the gods to the cosmic substance was an attack upon the established polytheism of the Epic, and the attack became direct in the hands of Xenophanes. It was “the divestiture of Nature of its gods by science.” The Mysteries were a part of this departure from the traditional religion. But the new and more critical scientific attitude toward traditional religion was only incidental to the growing criticism of law. In the days of the oligarchy there were two self-evident political assumptions: (1) that law has validity because it is law; (2) that obedience to law is for one’s advantage. When, however, the political disturbances began, a self-conscious individualism developed among the Greeks. The Gnomic Poets had been the first to appeal to the individual consciousness of the people. All through the sixth century B. C. Greece had stern experiences, and the individual found himself questioning the sanctity of tradition and of time-honored laws. There was no longer a tacit acquiescence in established order, and the claims of authority were no longer, as formerly, unchallenged. Confidence in political assumptions began to waver, and a critical attitude was taken toward laws which changed from year to year. The appearance everywhere of the tyrant, the vigorous personality who could set up his will against the will of a traditional aristocracy, impressed the age with the power of individual egoism. The seat of authority was shifted from tradition to the individual reason, and all institutions were brought under individual criticism.

The Persian Wars mark the point of transition from the traditional attitude to the critical attitude of the Greek mind. In themselves the Persian Wars were a great moral uplift, and were a return for a time to the traditional institutions. The changes long since begun were suspended for a time in the united effort of the Greek nation. But the tendencies became more insistent when the danger was past. The Persian Wars had cleared the atmosphere of its pessimism and had given freedom to the intellectual movement. Then later, in the heat of that intellectual movement, individualism and criticism came to fullest fruitage. Doubt grew into positive skepticism.

In the last part of the fifth century B. C., critical skepticism became universal. In religion the anthropomorphism of the Epic passes under ridicule. Critias declares that the gods are the invention of shrewd statecraft. In literature the Epic, in which the gods interfere in all human details, yields to the naturalistic descriptions of Herodotus and Thucydides, and to the personal note of lyric and satirical poetry. More important than all was the change of attitude toward the laws. Instead of the law having a divine authority, the individual placed himself above it and sat in judgment upon it. The tribal conception of guilt, that when a member of a tribe sinned the whole tribe would suffer at the hands of the gods, had given way at the time of the Persian Wars to that of personal responsibility and retribution. It was noted that laws change in the same state, that they differ in different states, and that moral customs have a great variety. All laws seem therefore to be made by man, and the question then arose, Is there any law which has universal validity? Is there any real prius or “Nature” of laws? In the Anthropological Period, the important question was about the real prius or “Nature” of human institutions, just as in the Cosmological Period the question was about the real prius or “Nature” of the world of physical phenomena. Yet the question of the Anthropologists was a part of the Cosmological problem. The Cosmologists had called the real prius or “Nature” (φύσις), that which ever remains like itself, and it is now asked if “Nature” in itself contains any unchanging and eternal politico-moral law. The contrast is thus drawn for all time between natural law and statute law, and the distinction dominates this period. Human legal institutions were regarded as only makeshifts, and often even as contradicting the divine law. The conflict between natural or divine law and human law appears worked out in the Antigone of Sophocles.

The same interest in the foundations of morality and moral relations opened up the whole subject of the power of human consciousness to discern such relations. It was a logical necessity that turned thought from a review of man’s relations with his fellows to a criticism of his own constitution. What is man? What are his faculties? Has he any that give him the truth and the reality? Or do they all deceive him so that he cannot detect the real from the sham of life? What are the mental faculties used in disputation, and how are they to be trained so that man may rise to an eminence of culture among his fellows? The Greek thus turned to a criticism of his knowing faculties, and the positive social and moral demands made such a criticism necessary to his well-being. Greek science took a strong anthropological direction, and logic, ethics, psychology, rhetoric, etc., took the place of natural science subjects. The Greek in the fifth century B. C. was interested in man—in his inner activities, his ideations and volitions. Of this critical and individualistic attitude Euripides is the literary exponent; Pericles is the political personification; Socrates and the Sophists are its philosophical expression.

The Significance of the Sophists. The Sophists were the direct means of bringing this intellectual change into Greek life. They were the bearers of this Greek Enlightenment, and they were the missionaries that spread its influence far and wide. This significance of the Sophists to the culture of Greece was never understood by the historian until Hegel set them in their true light. The dark side of their character has been painted in blackest colors, so that the word “Sophist” has carried an opprobrium with it. They were, however, the exponents of the Greek illumination, and not the cause of it. They therefore share all its weaknesses and its excellencies; and any judgment upon them is a judgment upon the time itself. The most accurate description of them is that they were the exponents of Greek culture in the age of Pericles; the worst that can be said of them is that they stimulated the Greek spirit in directions in which it should have been controlled. Their true work was to carry the gospel of Greek individualism everywhere; their fault lay in the fact that too frequently they confused individualism with hypocrisy, and led their hearers to believe that appearance knowledge is the same as true knowledge.

The word “Sophist” had a development among the Greeks. It first meant a wise man (the Cosmologists, from Thales to Anaxagoras, were Sophists); then a teacher of wisdom; then a paid teacher of wisdom. Moreover, among the Sophists there is a difference between the early Sophists, who were inspired by a distinct desire to spread culture, and the later Sophists, who were mercenary teachers, and had on that account degenerated into mere quibblers. In general, the ground of the contemporary hostility to the Sophists was the hatred of the conservative and reactionary party, to which belonged Aristophanes the satirist, Æschylus “the father of tragedy,” and the exponent of institutional morals, and Xenophon, who stood for a complete return to a patriarchal state. This party was very bitter against the exponents of the new and radical spirit springing up in Greece. All the philosophers of the new learning, including Socrates, suffered at the hands of those who would conserve the old traditions. In particular, the accusations against the Sophists of this period were: they were cavilers; they taught for pay; they represented the universalizing of education against the old aristocracy; they menaced institutions.

The Sophists were then primarily and, on the whole, the transmitters to the people of the culture of the time. They were the teachers of the humanities to that age. They were not technically philosophers, but were interested in philosophical questions. Protagoras was the only Sophist who was the author of any fruitful philosophical conceptions. Gorgias made occasional essays into philosophy. But besides Protagoras and Gorgias no other Sophists can be classed as philosophers, except possibly Hippias and Prodicus.

The Sophists introduced a profusion of knowledge among the people. They made investigations in language, logic, and the theory of cognition. They taught literature, history, grammar, the principles of the dialectic, the eristic, and rhetoric—all subjects concerned with the art of human expression. They studied and taught the special subjects concerned with human relations, like ethics, the theory of knowledge, psychology, and politics. Anything that had a place in Greek culture was systematically and skillfully presented by such men as Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus, who were men of encyclopædic erudition. The Sophist took the education of the Greek child at the age of sixteen, after he had received his elementary training, first at home and then at the hands of the teacher at school. The Greek boy’s education was naturally divided into two parts: gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. Under music was included geometry, performance on the lyre, pronunciation, the chorus and poetry, astronomy, physics, and geography. At the age of sixteen he got his instruction by meeting public men, such as the Sophists, in the street, in the Agora, and other public places. It was at this period of his life that the Sophist took his education into those higher branches which were necessary for his success in politics, society, and law. Thus the instruction of the Sophist was usually for a specific purpose, and thus rhetoric, dialectic, and the mental sciences were in great demand.

The Prominent Sophists. The list of Sophists is a long one. The first to call himself a Sophist and a teacher of public virtue was, according to Plato, Protagoras of Abdera. He was also probably the most eminent of the number. He was born about 480 B. C. Polus and Thrasymachus were the last; and Aristotle mentions the Sophists as in the past. So that we may conclude that as a band they existed only one hundred years (450–350 B. C.). Already at the beginning of the fourth century (400 B. C.) their importance had greatly diminished. In this hundred years we find some fourteen or fifteen prominent Sophists. There is, first, Protagoras, whose theory of knowledge is not only in itself a contribution to thought, but also of importance as a factor in forming the materialist atomistic doctrine of the school of Abdera,—the school of Leucippus and Democritus; Gorgias of Leontini, the head of an embassy to Athens, a man of eloquence, whose style was imitated by Thucydides and whom we might have studied in connection with the Eleatic school, for he carried out still further the doctrines of Zeno; Prodicus, the pupil of Protagoras and Gorgias, a brilliant man and a traveler, whose method of instruction was used by Socrates; Hippias, contemporary of Prodicus, remarkable for his mathematical, physical, and historical erudition, and a man full of vanity; the brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysiodorus, teachers of eristic; the rhetorician Thrasymachus and the rhetoricians of the school of Gorgias, viz., Polus, Lycophron, Protarchus, and Alcidamus; Evenus, rhetorician, moralist, and poet; Critias, the leader of the thirty; Callicles and Hippodamus.

Many of these men were reformers. Some (as Alcidamus) were opposed to the institution of slavery in Greece; some to marriage; some (as Lycophron) to the nobility; some to the inequality of property; while Hippodamus was the first to propose an ideal state.

The method of argumentation employed by the Sophists was first to perplex and confuse their opponents as to what had been taken in the past as valid. Then they made their opponents ridiculous by drawing out consequences from their statements. Their conclusions were often verbal and their witticisms vulgar.16

The Philosophy of the Sophists. The philosophy of the Sophists was only the logical following out of the general attitude of the time toward all traditions. The more the old physical theories fell into disrepute, the more the changes of the world of politics seemed to indicate instability everywhere, the more opinions differed on the same subject,—so much the more did the possibility present itself to the Sophists of taking two contradictories as equally true, and so much the faster did the whole Greek world lose faith in any valid truth and in any certain knowledge. The dogmatism of the Cosmological Period is thus naturally followed by the skepticism of the Anthropological. Beginning with the cautious and enlightened relativism of Protagoras, there grew up a volume of criticism, until the later Sophists applied destructive doctrines to everything. The best representatives of the philosophical aspect of the Sophistic movement were Protagoras and Gorgias.

1. The Relativism of Protagoras. Although theoretically skepticism is the centre and logical result of the Sophistic movement, the teaching of the greatest Sophist, Protagoras, cannot be strictly called skepticism. Philosophically, skepticism is not the denial of this or that particular belief as true, but the denial of the existence of any truth whatever. Protagoras refused to make any positive statements—either in denial or affirmation—about ultimate truth, because, as he said, we have no insight whatever into the nature of absolute truth. Our knowledge is confined to motions and the phenomena of motion. His teaching would be called in modern times relativism or phenomenalism. The fundamental principle beneath such a doctrine is that knowledge is human—never absolute, but always relative.

The relativism of Protagoras was based on two principles: the first is that of universal change, which he borrowed from Heracleitus; the second is, so far as we know, original with Protagoras,—that sense-perception is the only source and only kind of knowledge. In Heracleitus’ doctrine change is universal, each term of a series of changes passing into another. The senses are a part of this flux, and since they are, according to Protagoras, the only source of knowledge, knowledge is ephemeral and unreal. Reason is extended and continued sensation. A movement external to the organism stimulates an organ of the body and is met by a reacting movement of the organ. The result is perception. Perception being itself a process, each present moment of perception is the only knowledge. We cannot know things as they are in themselves; there is no insight into the Being of things over and above our perceptions. On the contrary, reality is not only what it perceptually appears for each individual, but also what it appears at each individual momentary perception.

What is the result of such a theory of knowledge? Protagoras expresses it well in his famous words, “Man is the measure of all things.” It is absolute sensationalism. There is no truth except that of the present moment. Each man sees the truth for himself at the moment of his perception. It does not matter if another has a different perception. It does not matter if at the next moment his perception differs. Each perception exists at the moment, is true, and at that moment is the only perception. There are as many truths as there are individuals, as many as there are moments in an individual’s life. Each individual is the measure of the true, the beautiful, and the good; for a thing that is good or true to one man may be harmful or false to another. Metaphysical discussions are vain, for the only reality to prove is the content of the present moment. All causes and ultimate criteria are impossible to be known.

2. The Nihilism of Gorgias. As the philosophy of Protagoras teaches that everything is equally true, that of Gorgias teaches that everything is equally false. Gorgias declared that Being, knowledge, and the communication of knowledge are impossible. Starting from the dialectic of the Eleatic, Zeno (as Protagoras started from that of Heracleitus), Gorgias maintained: (1) Nothing is; (2) If anything is, it cannot be thought; (3) Even if it can be thought, it cannot be communicated. The knowledge of the thing is different from the thing; the expression of the thought in words is different from the thought itself.

The Ethics of the Sophists.—The Application of their Critical Theory to Political Life. The ethical-political life was of paramount importance to the Greek. When the later Sophists began to scrutinize it from the point of view of the individual, their skepticism became a direct menace to Greek political institutions. The individual became a law unto himself, and the citizen set himself up as superior to society. Since the time of the Gnomic poets the content of both moral and political laws had become more and more a subject of reflection; and at the time of the Sophists the whole foundation of law was called in question. When the individual man is declared to be the measure of all things, all legal and moral institutions hang in the balance. All rules of conduct and all laws become then artificial and merely conventional products; and just as there is no standard of truth or error in knowledge, so there is no standard of good citizenship or morality. The good man is the prudent man; the good citizen is the successful and powerful man. Might is right.

Thus the Sophists came to teach such doctrines as these: Laws are made by the strongest, represent their will, and must be obeyed if they cannot be disobeyed; it takes a strong man to make a law, but a stronger to break it; the laws are only conventions invented either by the many to restrain the powerful few, or by the few to enslave the many. Even religions are devices of the crafty to enchain the people. Obedience to law is therefore a matter of personal interest. Happiness is the most important consideration of the individual. Sometimes personal interest conflicts with law and law does not then bring happiness, for criminals are often the most happy. It is not obedience to law that brings happiness but (Polus) a shrewd calculation of ends with no regard to right or law. The Sophists made no attempt to put their theories into execution. They expressed the sentiments of the Greek people, and Greek public opinion then pointed to segregation and individualism. Plato said that, after all, the Greek public was the great Sophist.

It was thus that the distinction arose between positive law and natural law. Reflecting upon the differences among the constitutions of the Greek states and upon the constant alterations in these constitutions, the Sophist concluded that the greater part of them were of human invention. They were positive laws and were to be contrasted with natural law, which was such law as is binding on all men equally. Natural law is therefore of greater worth than positive law, and is set in antithesis to it. Sir Henry Maine says in his Ancient Law that the Greeks did not found any system of jurisprudence, because natural law was always referred to by them in arguing any question. The only way to find natural law is to strip it of the mass of conventional laws. The word “nature” has been in its history one of the most ambiguous of words; and Protagoras’ teaching that “nature” consists of primary ethical feelings is hardly a complete and satisfactory definition. The more the theory of the Sophists limited “nature” to human nature, and to human nature in its capricious and individual aspects, so much the more did statute laws appear antagonistic to natural law and seem to be detrimental to it.

Summary.

1. Although a skepticism and a criticism, Sophistry was a relative advance over the traditionalism and dogmatism of the Cosmologists.

2. Sophistry turned the attention to man and his interests as the principal object of inquiry.

3. The Sophists stood for freedom of thought by pointing to individual consciousness as the final court of appeal.

4. Although the Sophists differed very much in their teaching, they had a mutual dependence and common presuppositions.

5. The Sophists disregarded the likenesses and emphasized the differences among men.

6. The Sophists built up their doctrines upon the basis of a sensationalist psychology.

Socrates and Aristophanes. There were two ways in which the other elements in Greek society tried to meet the Sophists. One was led by Aristophanes, the other by Socrates. Aristophanes was a rich nobleman who looked back with pride upon the good old times. He would have a government of the best rather than of the many. He would destroy the Sophistic movement, and he wrote many satires upon Greek life with that end in view. His satire, The Clouds, is of especial interest in this connection. Socrates represents the other way in which the Sophistic movement was met. He accepted the Sophistic movement, but he read more deeply into it than the Sophists themselves, and he tried to find its truth.

The extraordinary personality of Socrates is the central figure in this age of critical inquiry. For the first time do we find philosophy centred in a great personality, and there is no more picturesque figure in history. The exposition of his doctrines is essentially a biography. He wrote nothing himself, and the literary sources of his life and teaching are found in Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Symposium, in the writings of Plato, and in those of Aristotle. They throw different lights upon his character, and together give a fairly complete picture. Xenophon records the sober, practical, and popular side of Socrates, caught in casual conversation. Plato idealizes Socrates, especially in his later writings, and he reveals Socrates’ character on its imaginative and spiritual sides. Aristotle is more discriminating and less sympathetic, but always reliable because he is a generation removed.17

The Personality and Life of Socrates. Alcibiades described Socrates as like the little cases sold upon the streets of Athens, which were made in the shape of Silenus and contained a carved image. The description was apt, for Socrates had a fine spiritual nature within an astonishing shell. He was short, stout, and thick-set, with his head set upon his shoulders. His eyes were bulging, his nose flat with upturned nostrils, his mouth big and grinning, and his beard disordered. His protruding belly was set upon slender legs, and his dress was slovenly. Nevertheless his geniality, his fine humor, the unselfishness which he manifested unstintedly toward his friends, exercised an irresistible charm upon all the remarkable personalities of his time. Over the Athenian youth his influence was very great, and he surrounded himself with a large circle of admirers, to the neglect of his home cares and his wife Xantippe. While the habit of the Sophists was to talk in private and for pay, Socrates was distinguished from all his contemporaries by the fact that he would talk in the public places with any one, rich or poor, and without remuneration.

His life had its ascetic side. He was frugal in his needs. He went barefoot, summer and winter, and his clothing was the scantiest. He was abstemious in food and drink. While on occasion at the feast he would drink more wine than any one else, yet he never was seen intoxicated. The ascetic side of his nature is seen in his refusal to cultivate gymnastics, because such training required much food. He tried to limit his wants. He was a model of hardiness, self-denial, and self-mastery, as many an anecdote will show. “No one ever saw or heard anything wicked in Socrates,” said Xenophon. “So pious was he that he never did anything without first consulting the Gods, so master of himself as never to prefer pleasure to goodness, so sensible as never to err in the choice between the better and the worse. In a word, he was the best and the most happy of men.”

At times Socrates seems intellectually stiff and prosaic. This may have been incidental to his asceticism, or the result of it. He was indifferent to the sensuous, and he explained the beautiful in terms of the useful. He refused to walk out because trees and flowers could teach him nothing. Art offered no suggestions to him, for it is useless even if it is inspired. His unpoetic and prosy nature was perhaps not due so much to his lack of taste as to his original mind overflowing with ideas. He was not perceptive, but reflective. He said that astronomy is a mystery, geometry is land measuring, which any man can do, arithmetic is merely permissible, and physics something to be neglected. “Ye may judge how unprofitable these studies are by seeing how men differ among themselves.” He was once found dancing at home by himself when he was expected to be at a dance with others, and his practical nature is also revealed in the fact that at the feast he was reminded of its utility.

The influence of Socrates’ dæmon or divine voice upon him is very interesting. He felt himself divinely called by his dæmon (Apology, 29, 33 f.) to unremitting labor in the moral perfecting of society through an examination of himself and his fellows. Socrates was moved by a deep religious feeling in all that he undertook. This divine leading is what he designates as his dæmon. He speaks of it as “the God” or “the gods” which speaks to other men through the oracles. This divine voice was ever with him, but as to specific actions it only warned him against the injudicious action, never incited him to the correct action. Specifically it did not tell him what to do so much as what not to do. When he was about to prepare a defense beforehand that he should make to the judges, his dæmon interposed, and so he relied upon the inspiration of the moment. On one of his campaigns he was observed to stand in communion with the dæmon the whole day, unmindful of the weather.

As to the education and intellectual training of Socrates, one must say that it formed a factor of less importance in his life. The uniqueness of Socrates’ character is only in small measure to be accounted for by his environment. He was one of those men who would have been great in any time. He got but little from his father, who was a sculptor, or from his mother, who was a midwife. He was not strictly an educated man, although he had the early education of an Athenian youth, and of course no one could grow up a citizen of Athens in the time of Pericles without absorbing its culture. His formal education probably consisted of music and gymnastics, and he was certainly familiar with the preceding schools of philosophy. Socrates lived a long life of contented poverty, and he dedicated his life to the public. Two inherited instincts were strong within him, which alone will account for his career: (1) his strong religious persuasion that he was acting under a mission from the gods; (2) his great intellectual originality, as shown in his teaching and in his power over others.

There are few striking events in Socrates’ career, except his death. He was born in Athens in 469 B. C. He began his divinely appointed work of redeeming Athens from the dangerous tendencies of the Sophists at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War. He served in three campaigns as a soldier. He also acted, when called upon, as prytanis, or lawgiver, although he stood aloof from political activity. At the advanced age of seventy he was accused of corrupting the youth and denying the gods. His life thus far would have seemed to be one of unimpeachable moral and brilliant intellectual monotony. But his death illuminates his life and makes it heroic, because his death shows what in reality his life was,—the tragic epitome of the Athenian social situation. His death was not due to himself, although he could have escaped, nor to his judges, although they could have acquitted him. It represents the inevitable conflict between the Greek ideal of universalism and Greek individualism. Its value is therefore historic. His particular accusers were actuated by personal animosity. Behind them were many others whom his efforts at reform and his bitter irony had made hostile. Behind all was the voice of Athenian conservatism against the Athenian culture movement. The charges against Socrates were in part true, and besides as a moral reformer he had been a public nuisance. Yet his death was a judicial murder. He was found guilty by his judges. To the sentence of death proposed by Meletus, one of his accusers, Socrates had the right to propose an alternative sentence, and the judges must choose between the two. Had Socrates proposed a small fine, it would probably have been accepted by the judges. He proposed, however, that Athens provide for him at the public expense, arrogant as he was in his complacent sense of virtue. The judges then could do nothing else than pronounce the sentence of death. This was delayed thirty days on account of the sacrifice at Delos. Even then Socrates could have easily escaped from jail. But he refused to do the law a wrong, and drank the hemlock in May, 399 B. C.

Professor G. H. Palmer points out the irony that characterizes the life and death of Socrates. He stands for the harmony of opposite qualities. He devoted himself to the good of Athens, and yet Athens put him to death. In the service of the eternal was he sacrificed. His own personality is an exemplification of this irony. In appearance his un-Greek physical ugliness is in contrast with his beautiful Greek soul; he was the most austere and yet the most sensitive of men; he was always a serious moralist and yet always a jester; he was scarcely out of Athens and yet he was a world’s man; he was the world’s philosopher and yet he had no system of thought and left no writings.

Socrates and the Sophists. In his point of departure Socrates is in entire agreement with the Sophists. He is a critical philosopher. Criticism is the starting-point of his philosophy as a whole, and he begins each particular argument afresh with a critical examination of its grounds. This means that he, like the Sophists, turns to the individual reason as the final court of appeal. Like them he refused to accept any traditional dogma unexamined, and he commenced a critical inquiry into all kinds of conceptions. Socrates and the Sophists are one in the spirit of the Greek illumination in their critical attack upon intellectual problems. Socrates’ famous saying that “virtue is knowledge” could equally well be put into the mouth of Protagoras; and the doctrine of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things” could be ascribed to Socrates without inconsistency.

In his conclusions in one respect Socrates arrives at the same point as the Sophists,—but in only one respect. He agrees with them as to the worthlessness of the results of natural science. Natural science cannot be worth while, because it does not lead to moral excellence. The meagre results of the Cosmologists show the worthlessness of natural science to man. In this one respect Socrates’ criticism leads him to skepticism like the Sophists,—to a skepticism of natural science.

But in his conclusions as to the value of human nature, Socrates set himself entirely against the outcome of the reflections of the Sophists, and indeed of his time. In the absorbing anthropological topics of his time, he laid the foundations of a constructive philosophy against the skeptical conclusions of the Sophists. In human matters he maintained that there is a validity to truth and a possibility of absolute knowledge. He admitted with the Sophists that there are obscurities in human thought, and that obviously the standard of truth does not belong to any one man. But while the Sophists emphasized these contradictions and reasoned therefore that no valid truth existed, Socrates cut his way through such contradictions and obscurities, emphasized the identity in men, and maintained that the truth is in all men together,—in humanity. It exists as an ideal to be striven for by men together. When Protagoras says that “man is the measure of all things,” he means by “man” the individual man; while Socrates, if he had used that expression, would have meant “humanity.” And Socrates means by his principle “virtue is knowledge” that the knowledge of that same humanity (i. e. insight, reason) is virtue; while Protagoras, agreeing as he did formally with the maxim that “virtue is knowledge,” would always define “knowledge” as the individual feelings. “The individual man is the measure of all things,” Protagoras would say; “Humanity is the measure of all things,” Socrates would reply. “Virtue is knowledge gained by the feelings,” Protagoras would say; “Virtue is knowledge gained by the reason,” Socrates would reply. Beneath the changing capricious individual, beneath the variety of men, Socrates believed that there was a common humanity, one unchanging man, who contained the ultimate truth. There are many opinions, ideas, and feelings, but only one knowledge. This knowledge is rational; and human nature is a unity in the possession of this knowledge.

This is the principle that distinguishes Socrates from the other leaders of the Greek Illumination. While he was imbued with the motives of the Greek culture of his time,—curious about its results, feeling its usefulness, and critical of all tradition,—he nevertheless withheld himself from its skeptical conclusions. Any culture illumination runs the danger of defeating itself and becoming skeptical of its own powers. This is what actually happened in the Sophistic philosophy. But when Socrates set himself against this superficial and self-destructive outcome of his age, he became in his constructive philosophy the clearest and most comprehensive expression of that age. Because he grasped the principle of the Greek Enlightenment deeply and formulated it constructively, his intellectual reign became historically established. The fundamental principle of the philosophy of Socrates was therefore the real principle of classic Greek civilization, and by saving that principle he saved Greek civilization for modern Europe.

The Unsystematic Character of the Socratic Philosophy. The casual reader is often troubled to know for what precisely Socrates is searching. The vagueness of the Socratic quest is partly due to the fact that he had no system. Indeed, he had no groundwork for a system of thought. His psychology or theory of the human mind was undefined. He speaks of sensations and perceptions, but they, with the feelings and the will, are considered by him to be unimportant factors in the conscious life. On the whole, the mind was thought by him to be an aggregation of conceptions or ideas. The feelings cloud the activity of these conceptions, and the only feeling to which Socrates attached any importance was his dæmon or divine voice. This grew to be his mentor as he grew older. Socrates never made a scientific psychological analysis. He began rather with three assumptions which amounted to convictions. They were these: that only by acquiring conceptions is true knowledge to be found; that virtue consists in acting according to conceptions; that the world has been designed according to conceptions. Conceptions were, so to speak, an obsession with Socrates.18 They were his postulates, his instruments, and his goal. The other factors of the mind were neglected by him.

The Ideal of Socrates. The goal of the quest of Socrates is an ideal, and in the nature of things had the vagueness of any ideal. The content of an ideal has to remain undefined until it has been gained by experience, and then of course it is no longer an ideal. Any ideal, however, can be stated formally, and the formal and deductive side of knowledge has had an important place both in practical conduct and in the history of science. Socrates could state his ideal formally and to some extent he could give it content; but it always remained for him an object to be sought. He believed that the ideal lay in conceptions and could be found if he got the truth of any one conception. So he undertook to define such conceptions as friendship, courage, prudence, etc., but his search was never satisfied. Nevertheless, the search itself was scarcely less important to him than its accomplishment.

The ideal of Socrates was Knowledge or Wisdom, and his formal statement of the ideal was Knowledge is Virtue. The primal end to be striven for is wisdom, that is, in conceptions and by conceptions. But where are these conceptions to be found but in one’s own mind? Therefore the region of the quest of Socrates was his own mind, and his motto was, “Know thyself.” And what is this Virtue of which knowledge or wisdom is the equivalent? It does not mean virtue in the narrow modern meaning of the term, nor yet in the narrow original meaning, of warlike prowess or valor. The Greek word which Socrates used was ἀρετή, and is best translated excellence or ability. In the history of the word it had a variety of meanings, like the Latin word virtus, whose equivalent it is. It is derived from the same root as the word Ἄρης, Ares (or Mars), the name of the god of war. While therefore originally it meant military valor, it came to mean any kind of excellence. In modern times there appeared a book called The Greatest Thing in the World, which had as its aim to show that Christian love is the “greatest thing in the world.” To Socrates not “Love” but “Wisdom” is the “greatest thing in the world,” and Greek civilization is thus contrasted with that of Christianity.

But now the question comes, What kind of knowledge or wisdom does Socrates mean as the greatest excellence? In contrast to the Sophists, who relied upon the sensations and impulses as wisdom, Socrates turned to that element which had been the decisive factor of the culture of the time. This was insight. The greatest excellence is insight. He who acts according to his feelings is not sure of his knowledge, but he who acts according to insight has the greatest excellence in the world. But Socrates restricts the meaning of knowledge still further. Not only is knowledge to Socrates insight, but it is moral insight. For the problems in which he was interested were the problems of human life and principally the problem of self-examination. Thus we can translate the conventional formal statement of Socrates, viz., Knowledge is virtue, into this rather longer sentence, Moral insight is the most excellent thing in the world. For the first time in the history of thought philosophy is founded upon a moral postulate.

What the Socratic Ideal involves. We have now examined the meaning of the formal statement of the Socratic ideal. A further question along this same line concerns what that ideal involves.

1. In the first place, to possess knowledge is to act righteously. Knowledge ＝ righteous conduct. Socrates does not mean that knowledge is merely the condition of right conduct; he means that knowledge actually constitutes moral conduct. The development of the reason is actually the same as the development of the will. Knowledge is virtue and virtue is knowledge. Vice is ignorance and ignorance is vice. To have an insight into the truth is the principle of living. Not only is deficient insight the cause of evil, but it is itself the greatest evil. Not only does a man act wrongly because he does not know the good, but not to know the good is the greatest wrong that can happen to him.

2. Not only is moral insight the same as virtuous activity, but this insight is always accompanied by happiness. The will follows the recognition of the good, and the appropriate action makes man happy. Happiness is the necessary result of moral excellence. The Wise Man knows what is good for him and does it; thus in his performance he becomes happy. Socrates would subscribe to the proverb “Be good and you will be happy.” Such teaching on the part of Socrates implies that he believed two things: (1) that man by unremitting earnest examination of himself and others could gain such perfect happiness; and (2) that the world is under providential guidance. Socrates never expressly denied the existence of the Homeric gods and never expressly declared himself a monotheist. He is, however, always referring to one over-ruling wisdom. He had a personal conviction of immortality, but he never attempted its proof. Although Socrates had little confidence in human knowledge about the world of physical nature, he was animated by a belief that amounted to a conviction in the providential arrangement of the world. In such a divinely ordered world the good must be happy. Only a perfect wisdom can, however, be certain that always the results of his actions will gain happiness in the environment in which he lives; but still man can be sure that happiness increases proportionately with knowledge. Greek philosophy did go beyond this point in ethics, and this is called, in technical language, eudæmonism. Eudæmonism and hedonism are pleasure theories that are similar. Eudæmonism is the theory that active well-being is the highest good in life and that that good is always accompanied by pleasure. In hedonism pleasure is the good to be aimed at. In history eudæmonism has easily degenerated into hedonism.

3. Socrates makes moral insight the same as virtuous activity, and he says that its inevitable accompaniment is happiness. Does he also make moral insight the same as utility? According to Xenophon, Socrates regards moral excellence as that which is most useful. Indeed, in some of the Platonic dialogues Socrates seems to define insight as the art of measuring or prudence, and it is pointed out that Socrates developed no virtue so fully as self-control. In the exigencies of the argument Socrates also often resorted to the useful to define the good. The question, What is the good? often resolves itself into the other question, What is the thing good for? Indeed, the form of the argument often assumes the vicious circle: Why is the act just? Because it is useful? Why is it useful? Because it is just. For the purposes of disputation, in which Socrates was always shrewd and not always scrupulous, he so frequently refers the good to what is suitable to men’s happiness and profit that his philosophy does not seem to rise above the relativism of the Sophists. But it is certain that Socrates strove to transcend this relativism, although not with full success and although his formulated teaching does not always go beyond it. However, that he believed in an absolute rather than a relative good appears in many ways: in his doctrine that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it; in his strict conformity to law rather than to save himself from death by breaking the law; in his constant interpretation of life as right-doing, ethical improvement, and participation in the good. The utility that is always in the background of his thought is the usefulness for the soul. We may conclude, therefore, that it was only superficially for the purposes of argumentation that Socrates made the useful an equivalent of moral insight.

The purpose of Socrates was, after all, not to teach men to think correctly nor to become cultured but to become happy and useful Athenians. Moral excellence is the Socratic goal; and knowledge, happiness, and usefulness are only aspects of that goal. Knowledge is the essential means, happiness the essential result, and usefulness the essential sign of moral excellence. It follows as a corollary from Socrates’ philosophical ideal that he should also teach: (1) that virtue is teachable, and (2) that the virtues are one. Virtue is obviously teachable if it is knowledge. It follows also, although not so obviously, that all the virtues are fundamentally the same, and that a man cannot be virtuous in one thing without being virtuous in all. The really temperate man is also courageous, wise, and just.

The Two Steps of the Method of Socrates. The external form of the method of Socrates was conversation. Thinking was to him an inner conversation. The result of a conversation, external or internal, was evolvement,—the implicit in thought made explicit. This was quite opposed to the method of the Sophists, which was the supplying of knowledge. Socrates did not propose to start from any kind of knowledge except the ideal to be striven for. Starting with the presupposition that man contained knowledge, the end which Socrates attempted to reach by his method was a practical one. With so much in summary, let us examine the two steps of the method of Socrates.

The first step that Socrates deems necessary for man in attaining this ideal of moral excellence is negative. Indeed, it is more,—it is complete abnegation on the part of the seeker for truth. One must confess that he himself knows nothing, and come to a realization that his untested individual opinions are not the truth. He must approach the subject as a seeker and not as a teacher. This attitude of mind is the beginning of wisdom. Plato relates how the Delphic oracle amazed Socrates by announcing that he was the wisest of the Greeks. In reflecting upon the statement of the oracle he came to agree with the oracle because, as he said, he was ignorant and he knew it, while the other Greeks were ignorant and did not know it. Before Socrates began to examine any conception, he professed or assumed to profess absolute ignorance of it. He is the modest inquirer. He is always described in the rôle of the questioner who is seeking information and light.

He laid the same requirement upon others that he did upon himself. The dialectic conversation could not be successfully carried on unless his interlocutors had the same recognition of self-ignorance,—the same measure of self-knowledge. The Sophists with whom he often carried on his discussions laid claim to knowledge on every known subject under the Greek sun and were ready to teach anything to the Greek youth. To Socrates’ mind nothing could more impede his undertakings than such an affectation of wisdom; to the Sophists nothing could be more repugnant than such a confession which Socrates always obliged them to make. Although professing to be only a seeker for knowledge, he tried first by his questions to scrutinize and to break down with his exasperating logic the half-formed conceptions of the egotist. This clear-cut analysis for purely destructive purposes, which he used in preparation for his later constructive conversation, is called the Socratic irony. As he proved himself superior to any of his companions in the use of the dialectic, he could begin his conversations in the most destructive fashion. His method was destructive of all prejudice and preconceived opinion that would in any way stand athwart perfectly free inquiry into the truth. His wish was to begin de novo with every one, so that all traditional beliefs having been given up and the investigators having confessed their ignorance, constructive study of the concept in hand could be begun.

The second step in Socrates’ method of dialectical inquiry follows upon the initial destructive criticism. It is in this part of the conversation that we find his own constructive theory. The dialogue is, of course, its necessary condition; for the truth is not in me nor in thee, but in us all. It is latent in the mind and not on the surface of any opinion. Let us rub our minds together. Let us sift our varied concepts, unfold our real selves, and bring the unborn truth to the light. Our ideas supplement one another and have a common ground. Intellectual intercourse is an intellectual and a personal need, for it reveals common sympathies and a oneness of life. Common love of knowledge makes friends, and this mutual intellectual helpfulness he calls by the mythical term Eros. Inquiry is indefinite in duration; the quest of truth is endless; and Socrates acknowledges by his fresh beginnings again and again his failure to reach the ideal. Thus the theoretical self-abnegation of Socrates had a twofold significance in his constructive philosophy. On the one hand, it was an invitation to his countrymen to help him in his search for the universal truth; on the other, it was an acknowledgment that he had failed to attain that universal truth.

Socrates and Athens. Socrates had a religious reverence for his own mission in the Athenian community. He was the “gad-fly of the Athenian public”; he was the educator of the time; he was divinely appointed to the Athenian people. He felt himself so necessary to the Athenian State that at his trial he proudly suggested that instead of punishing him the State keep him at the public expense in the Prytaneum. But the educator creates nothing; he only awakens and develops the germs of knowledge that lie latent. The human Athenian nature is big with truth; Socrates was divinely appointed to bring it forth. He called his method, after the profession of midwifery of his mother, the maieutic method. It was intellectual midwifery, and he was the intellectual midwife of Athens. Although he failed to find any concrete form of ultimate truth, he never had any doubt about the correctness of his method and of undertaking the problem afresh. He believed that his failure was due to the inherent weakness of human discernment; and so far as man’s discernment or insight is clear, so far will he know the true significance of things.

Socrates believed in man, and he believed that in man were contained all those elements that make up a firm, rational, and moral society. Since he failed to justify this belief in a theoretical way, his belief became largely a matter of faith. Humanity is something to be won, something to be developed. He was personally the embodiment of his faith, and his large influence was due to his unswerving confidence in ethical ideals that did not allow the least paltering.

The Logical Expedients of Socrates. The examination of concepts by Socrates was an attempt to find a logical “Nature,” just as the Cosmologists had searched physical phenomena to find a physical “Nature.” This makes Socrates the first to teach by induction and one of the first to use definition effectively. In contrast to the Sophists, he tried to give words exact meanings; for the Sophists fixed artificial meanings to words with reference to particular objects. In seeking for the exact meaning, Socrates was looking below the changing particulars to the “Nature” of the fact and the universal principle. Thus he was making his hearers conscious of the logical dependence of the particular upon the universal. The universal is that which is common to all particular conceptions or opinions. It lies beneath them and binds them together. Thus, by logical analysis, Socrates is taking steps in the educational process of gaining the universal. Provisional definition would be given by him in some dialogue; this definition would be tried by many facts; thus an advance would be made toward a true definition and a universal principle. This process is that of induction. It leads to generic concepts by comparison of particular views and individual perceptions, by bringing together analogous cases and allied relations. The subordination of the particular under the universal thus became a principle of science. However imperfect and childlike was Socrates’ method of procedure, whatever lack of caution in generalization and in the collection of material, however hasty oftentimes his judgments, he nevertheless made the subordination of the particular to the universal a principle of logical procedure. Xenophon says that Socrates was untiring in his efforts to examine and define goodness and wickedness, justice and injustice, wisdom and folly, courage and cowardice, the state and the citizen.

Socrates and the Lesser Socratics. The death of Socrates proved to be his transfiguration. His influence, widespread and profound, came more from his personality than from his formulated theory. He was a revelator without a revelation. An absolutely true end of life, the Good, he firmly believed to exist; but it was an ideal to be won by each and all. After him, therefore, there was opportunity for various interpretations of his doctrine, and several schools were founded by his disciples. His truest and most discriminating pupil was Plato, who is in a class by himself as developing the philosophy of Socrates to a systematic perfectness. The philosophy of Plato stands with that of Democritus and Aristotle as one of the three systematic philosophies that Greek civilization produced. Besides Plato there were the Lesser Socratics: Euclid (not the mathematician), Phædo, Aristippus, and Antisthenes. Each of these was respectively the founder of a school. These four Lesser-Socratic schools were that at Megara founded by Euclid, the Elean-Eretrian founded by Phædo, the Cynic founded by Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaic founded by Aristippus. The influence of the Megarian and Elean-Eretrian schools was unimportant. It may suffice to dismiss them by saying that Phædo was the favorite pupil of Socrates, and that Plato was a member of the Megarian school for a short time after the death of Socrates. The two other Lesser-Socratic schools had an important influence upon contemporary and later civilization and will be mentioned here. These are the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools. In these two schools two great types of ethical theory that have since existed were formulated. All four of the Lesser Socratics pretended to be the true development of the teaching of Socrates; and these two, as well as the other two, differ in the accentuation that they place on some phase of the master’s doctrine.

Socrates’ own definition of ideal excellence being incomplete, the Cynics and Cyrenaics tried to define it, to give it content and to show a practical way of reaching it. They attempted

(1) to answer affirmatively that there is a universal validity;

(2) to show in what it consists;

(3) to show how man must prepare himself in order to reach it.

Both schools are individualistic and eudæmonistic. They maintained that to affirm that the Good is good for its own sake is to leave the Good contentless; and to affirm that the Good is insight into the Good is to go in a circle. The one unambiguous answer to the question of Socrates, What is ideal excellence or the Good? is this: Goodness is happiness. This gives a content to the otherwise contentless ideal of Socrates. The difference between the two schools consists in the ethical way in which this happiness may be obtained.

It will appear, therefore, that the Lesser Socratics were more Sophistic than Socratic. They were diametrically opposed to Socrates’ theory of the universality of truth. The excellent Good must be sought by each in his own way. This is individualistic virtue, and not that of humanity. Civilization was valued by them only as it satisfied individual needs. The common problem of individualistic happiness limited the efforts of both schools, while the results that they reached in solving it were quite different.

There are two ways of achieving happiness; one is by satisfying the desires, the other is by cutting off the desires. For happiness is the perfect proportion of desire and satisfaction. A living creature is happy if his desires are satisfied, whether those desires be few or many. In the theory of the Cyrenaic school, happiness is gained by increasing the satisfactions; in the theory of the Cynic school, happiness is gained by decreasing the desires.

The Cynic School was founded by Antisthenes, and numbered among its adherents Diogenes, about whom so many curious stories have been told, Crates of Thebes, his wife Hipparchia, and her brother, Metrocles. Virtue in the eudæmonistic sense is the only end, and this school agreed with Socrates that this end is to be attained by knowledge. That is to say, virtue or knowledge is only a means of gaining happiness, and all other possessions the Cynics affected to despise. Virtue as knowledge is therefore to be sought; ignorance is to be shunned; all else is a matter of indifference. Riches, luxury, fame, honor, sense-pleasure and pain, and later with logical consistency all shame, convention, family, and country were objects of contempt. Man must make himself independent by cutting off the desires which he cannot satisfy or the desires that seem superfluous. He should keep alive only such desires as are necessary to existence. In independence of all outward circumstance the Cynic conceives himself to be the Wise Man, in contrast to whom the mass of men are fools. The Cynic is, therefore, the equal of the undesiring gods. He has independent lordship and does not need the artificialities of civilization. Natural law was contrasted by him in a Sophistic way with statutory law, and in the midst of the refinements of society he preached a return to a state of nature.

The Cyrenaic School was founded by Aristippus, who lived in Cyrene, a luxurious city of northern Africa. Aristippus was a man of the world. He was first a Sophist and later a disciple of Socrates. After Socrates’ death he returned to Cyrene. Here he founded his school, which included three generations of his own family. The prominent members of it were Arete, his daughter; Aristippus, his grandson; Theodorus, Hegesias, Anniceris, and Euhemerus, the author of so-called Euhemerism, which taught that the gods were originally only great men. In opposition to the brutal bareness of the Cynic school, the Cyrenaics saw the true end of life in the pleasures of sense. Following Protagoras, Aristippus said that the sensations are always true and can be defined in terms of motion. The school developed an elaborate psychology of sensation which summarizes its doctrine. It is as follows: (1) The intensity and not the duration of a sensation determines its value; (2) Bodily pleasures are of greater value than mental because they are more intense; (3) I can know only my own sensations, and therefore they are of greater value than another’s; (4) Man has a reasonable insight which determines him in the choice of his sensations.

The practical problem of life for this, as it was for the Cynic school, was how to become individually independent of the world. But the Cyrenaic taught independence by enjoyment, in opposition to the Cynic’s independence by renunciation. The Cyrenaic Wise Man knows all the pleasures of life thoroughly, from animal satisfactions to spiritual ecstasies. He uses them all, but never forgets himself. He is lord of his appetites, never wishes the impossible, and has perfect and serene peace.

It is an interesting fact that this pleasure-loving school drew pessimism as the consequence of its theory. If life fails to give enjoyment, it is a failure. That life alone is reprehensible that has more pain than pleasure. It is on this ground that man should submit to law and custom rather than give up his pleasures. Yet some members of the school maintained that man is bound to be unhappy. While he should have pleasure, he is so constituted that he cannot gain it. The body of man is an inevitable sufferer. The highest that we can hope is painlessness.

The Cynic and Cyrenaic schools occupy an important position in the history of philosophy. The Cynic doctrine was the basis of the teaching of the Stoic school, and the Cyrenaic was the legitimate predecessor of the Epicurean school. These great schools were founded in Athens seventy-five years later, and will be discussed under the Hellenic-Roman Period.

The Waning of the Greek National Spirit. The Systematic Period extends from the death of Socrates to the death of Aristotle. It is only seventy-seven years long—about the same length as the Anthropological and half as long as the Cosmological Period. It begins with those sorry days after the Peloponnesian War and ends with the supremacy of Macedonian power. The period was filled with ferocious wars among the Grecian cities. First came the supremacy of Sparta, then of Thebes (371–362 B. C.), then the invasion by Philip of Macedon and the battle of Chæronea, 338 B. C. In 334 B. C. Alexander the Great began the conquest of the Orient, which he accomplished in two years. He thought by this that he could reunite the Greeks in a common cause. He failed for two reasons. In the first place, as a Macedonian the Greeks would not take him as a national representative. In the second place, the Greek spirit was waning. The people had lost their glorious ideals. Decay had set in. The worm was at the root of Greek life. Greek art, literature, and statesmanship had passed.

The Place of the Three Systematic Philosophers in Greek History. Nevertheless, when Greek national life was approaching dissolution, science ripened its richest fruits and created its most comprehensive systems of philosophy. These are connected with the names of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. These great systems evidently cannot be accounted for by the social conditions in which they appear. Neither the need nor the demand of the disrupted Greece of these years would be a sufficient cause to explain the appearance of a Plato or an Aristotle. The interests of the Greek people became narrower as the interests of the Greek philosophers became more broadly human. The intellectual tendency of this short period was utilitarian and practical. The problems that now interested the Athenians were the details of mechanics, physiology, rhetoric, and politics. The field of science was now for the first time systematized to logic, ethics, and physics—a classification which, we shall find, will exist for many centuries. Sparta and Macedonia, not Athens and Abdera, represent the spirit of the period.

If then Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle do not reflect the time in which they live, what relation do they bear to Greek civilization? They are not isolated and out of all relation to the life of the Greek people. On the contrary, they are the most comprehensive and the most profound expression of Greek life. One turns to them as the most perfect representation of Greek culture. They are the intimate expression of Greek thought, even if not of contemporaneous Greek thought. They are the final statements of the two preceding periods, projected into a time that had other interests. Democritus brought the Cosmological movement to a close, was its final expression, and gave it systematic form. Plato did the same for the Anthropological Period. In Aristotle the systematic cosmology of Democritus and the systematic ethics of Plato find a new meaning, in a closer union, under a more coördinating principle. Aristotle was the last possible word of Greek philosophy, for he systematized every branch known to the Greeks. He not only evolved a speculative theory of the whole, but he organized the special sciences. It must be further said that no one of these three great Greeks could have produced the results each did produce, if each had not been the leader of a school of many workers. Within each school there must have been vigorous coöperation along lines according to the inclination of the individual members. Thus each school collected a vast amount of material which was worked over according to the method and purpose of the leader.

The Fundamental Principle of the Systematic Period. At the beginning of this book attention was called to the difference between Greek, Mediæval, and Modern thought. Greek thought was characterized as objective. It is important to reiterate this objective significance of Greek thought at this point, when we are about to discuss the teachings of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. Plato’s theory is often called an idealism and Democritus’ theory materialism, but they are not the idealism and materialism of modern times. No terms have fluctuated in their meanings more than such philosophical terms as these, as can be judged from the fact that in the Middle Ages Plato’s doctrine was called realism. The Greeks were not idealists in the sense that Berkeley and Hegel were idealists. In general, it should be remembered that when we speak of Greek art, Greek politics, Greek philosophy as idealistic, they are not idealistic in the modern sense.19

The open-minded Greek sought to picture, to ascertain, to present. He was not dominated by the wish to show how things should be. To know and to understand, to explain by understanding the abiding reason in things, to find out the fundamental principle in things rather than to adjust it to the personal desires—this was the objective attitude of mind of the Greeks. The Greek saw before he reasoned; he visualized his thought in form before he subjected the form to rational analysis. The cosmos was a harmony and an art before which he stood in contemplation rather than in criticism. Human elements were found in it everywhere, but only as parts of that cosmos. “The unity of the spiritual and the natural, which Greek thought demands and presupposes, is the direct unbroken unity of the classic theory of the world.”20

By whatever names the great theories of the Systematic Period are called, we must remember that they did not depart from this objective Greek point of view. At certain times the moorings of Greek thought seem about to be shifted, as when Plato passes beyond the ancient Greek attitude and anticipates Christian morality by flight from the world of sense, and when Aristotle elaborates his doctrine of a transcendent god. But the tie never breaks, and the Systematic philosophers remain Greek and not modern. They have the Greek objective attitude of mind. The inner consciousness does not stand with its attestations over against all other things. The greatest of these philosophers never thought of himself but as “bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh” of the world surrounding him. In art the classic Greek “could obey but not surpass nature”; in religion he worshiped beings that were only superior human beings; in politics he was a member of a social whole. To Æschylus, Pericles, Socrates, Protagoras, Aristophanes, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle alike, human nature is a part of the world and not vice versa. The Greek mind interpreted nature rather than recreated it.

What, then, is the nature of the development of Greek thought, and in what respect does the Greek Systematic philosophy differ from the philosophy of the Greek Cosmologists? Greek philosophy in the Cosmological Period starts with a conception of an objective harmony of nature and spirit which is called hylozoism. Step by step in the Anthropological and Systematic Periods that harmony becomes broken into a dualism of mind and matter. The philosophy of this Systematic Period is a dualism of the parts of one objective world, not a subjective-objective antithesis. The realm of spirit lies side by side with that of nature, and the separation and alienation never reached the complete form that it did in the Middle Ages. The great Greek Systematizers in part represent this dualistic tendency, in part are a scientific effort to overcome it. “In spite of this tendency [to a dualism] the original presupposition [a harmony between nature and spirit] asserts itself in decisive traits; and we shall find that the true cause of its incapacity to reconcile these contradictions satisfactorily lies in its refusal to abandon that presupposition. When that [unity] is canceled, there remains to it no possible way of filling up a chasm which, according to its own standpoint, cannot exist.”21

A Summary of Greek Philosophy. At this point a summary of Greek objective philosophy will be helpful. The philosophical problem that had been working itself out since Thales had been this: How may we think the Being that abides amid the changes of phenomena? The Cosmologists scrutinized physical nature and, without differentiating nature and spirit, conceived abiding Being to be living matter. The Anthropologists (except Socrates) doubted if there is any abiding Being. Among the Systematic Philosophers a dualism for the first time appears. Nature and spirit are differentiated, but both remain entirely objective. Democritus regarded the material universe as abiding Being, but in so large a way as to be able to construct upon it a psychology and an ethics. Plato found abiding Being in the realm of the spirit, in a group of moral and æsthetic entities. Aristotle attempts to overcome the opposition between materialism and Platonism. To him abiding Being is neither physical nature nor the spirit apart from physical nature. Abiding Being to Aristotle is the spirit in nature.

Greek Philosophy (objective).

1. The Cosmologists—Hylozoism.
Abiding Being is living nature—some form of living matter.

2. The Anthropologists—Relativism (except Socrates).
Being is not abiding, but consists of transitory mental states. This is a form of what was called by the schoolmen Nominalism, and summed up by the phrase Universalia post rem.

3. The Systematic Philosophers.

Democritus—Materialism.

Being consists in material atoms, but regarded in so large a way as to furnish a basis for a psychology and an ethics.

Plato—Objective Idealism.

Being consists of permanent moral and æsthetic concepts or types. In mediæval philosophy Platonism was called realism and was summed up by the phrase Universalia ante rem.

Aristotle—Conceptualism.

The abiding Being does not consist of material atoms nor in spiritual types apart from matter, but is an unfolding essence in matter. This was usually called conceptualism by the Schoolmen, and was summed up by the phrase Universalia in re. Aristotle’s conception was as difficult as it was important. He was not always clearly a conceptualist, but sometimes appeared in the rôle of an “objective realist.”

Democritus and Plato—Their Similarities and Differences. The materialism of Democritus and the idealism of Plato were as opposed as was possible within the realm of Greek thought. We must not exaggerate their similarities, but they had at least four common characteristics.

Their Similarities.

1. Both develop an outspoken rationalism,22 which starts as a reaction from the perception theory of Protagoras. They agree with Protagoras that perception cannot yield truth, and so they turn away from perception to the reason to find true knowledge.

2. Both develop a world of twofold reality. Perceptions are not regarded by them as illusions, although perceptions are transitory. Both make a new estimate of perceptions, and give to the world of perceptions a relative value. There are therefore two kinds of reality: the relative reality of the world of perceptions and the absolute reality of the world of reason. The result in both is a broad theory of knowledge.

3. In both, reality consists in a plural number of objective norms. Both reach their conception of these norms in the same way. The changing qualities of things are stripped away and the true reality is discovered beneath. Both designate this true form by the same word, idea (ἰδέα). To both, the forms are objective entities.

4. Both are attempts to overcome scientifically the dualism which had emerged from the former hylozoism of Greek thought.

Their Differences—The Development of the Meaning of Idea. 1. But the forms or ideas are so vitally different in the doctrines of these two philosophers that they have nothing in common save the name. On the one hand, Democritus took the word “idea” just as he found it in popular speech. It is the shape of a visible thing, the geometrical form of physical objects. It gets no new content in his hands, but is merely the physical atom. With Plato, however, the word gets a new meaning. He fills the form or idea with an ethical content. The idea as a quantity becomes now a quality. The idea becomes an Idea. The forms of Plato are logical species and teleological causes, while the forms of Democritus are atom-complexes.23 In both philosophers they are the norms of reality. But while Democritus still keeps his forms as the realities of physical nature, Plato conceives his forms to be true realities of objective human nature.

2. This vital difference between the two philosophers may get some explanation from the difference in the philosophical inheritance of each. To be sure, they were contemporaries, both being born in the Anthropological Period and both doing their most mature work in the Systematic Period. Both, too, were acquainted with the philosophy of the preceding time. But the ethical teaching of Socrates dominated Plato, and through it he became the legitimate perfecter of the Greek enlightenment and the anthropological movement. But what was the influence of Socrates upon Democritus? It seems to have been nothing. Why is Plato absolutely silent about Democritus when he mentions other Greek philosophers? No one has yet been able to say. Democritus stands at Abdera isolated from the ethical movement at Athens. The only influence upon him from that movement came from Protagoras, who was a member of the school at Abdera. Democritus is the finisher of the Cosmological movement.

The Life of Democritus (460–370 B. C.). Democritus was twenty years younger than Protagoras, about ten years younger than Socrates, and a generation older than Plato. He was outlived by Plato; and Aristotle was a young man when Democritus died. He was therefore contemporary with the intellectual movement going on in Greece, with Athens as a centre. While he does not appear to have come under the influence of Socrates, he was well acquainted with the destructive epistemology of the Sophists. Abdera, where he lived, is in Thrace, and seems to have been outside the Anthropological movement at Athens. The school of Leucippus was at Abdera; and Democritus was instructed in the Sophistic doctrine directly from Protagoras, who was a member of the Atomistic school before going to Athens. The three Systematic philosophers were wide travelers, Democritus not less than Plato and Aristotle. He traveled extensively through Greece, Egypt, and the Orient. He then returned to Abdera and began his scientific activity. He remained five years in Egypt, and came to know the greater part of western Asia. He returned to Abdera about 420 B. C., and therefore did not begin his teaching before he was forty years old. The length of time that Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle took for their apprenticeship, and the advanced age before they began their mastership, is remarkable. Democritus was the greatest investigator of nature in antiquity, and Aristotle used much of Democritus’ work for his own scientific writings. The ancients admired the writings of Democritus, and the loss of them in the fourth century after Christ is one of the most lamentable that has happened to the literary documents of antiquity. His works were extraordinary in number, and upon every known subject.

Democritus was the real exponent of the Atomistic school. The founder, Leucippus, belonged to the Cosmological Period; Protagoras, the Sophist, belonged to the Anthropological Period, and had great influence in the development of the school at Abdera; but Democritus, in systematizing the doctrines of Leucippus and in accepting the perception theory of Protagoras, became its most notable representative. He was the great systematizer of the Cosmologists, and yet he differed from all the Cosmologists in embodying in his theory the results of the Sophistic movement.

The Comprehensiveness of the Aim of Democritus. The reconstruction of the philosophy of Democritus has always been difficult for the historian because, from the originally great mass of his writings, only fragments remain. The fragments show, however, many interesting things: that he covered the entire range of experience in his investigations; that he was quite as much interested in psychical as in physical problems; that his contribution to epistemology was even greater than to physics; and that he was interested in the atomic theory because he believed that it was a working hypothesis for the explanation of experience of every kind. This last characteristic shows the systematic nature of his work and his right to stand with Plato and Aristotle. Democritus fully realized that the task of science was to explain experiences through a conception of reality. So he constructed his conception of the atom in order that he might explain phenomena intelligibly. He saw that no conception strange to experience or against experience, like the Eleatic Being, would answer scientific demands. A rational conception of absolute reality will have value only as experience testifies to it and, on the other hand, as it explains experience. Democritus valued his theory of the atoms because it seemed to explain all phenomena. This construction of a single fundamental rational principle for all kinds of phenomena shows how much more of a systematic scientist he was than the Cosmologists.

The Enriched Physics of Democritus—Hylozoism becomes Materialism. There is so great enrichment in elaboration and generalization in the physical doctrine of Democritus over that of Leucippus that it amounts to a change in principle. In all probability Leucippus, like other Cosmologists, was a hylozoist, and did not differentiate matter and life. He is to be grouped with the Reconcilers, or even with the Eleatics, rather than with Democritus. Democritus was a materialist. The period of forty years between himself and Leucippus had been the rich period of the introduction of psychological investigation and of the discrimination of psychical from physical processes. Materialism or spiritualism is not possible in the historical development of the human mind until it passes through just such a period of differentiation as the Sophistic Enlightenment. Before such a period there is animism and hylozoism; after such a period there is materialism and spiritualism of various sorts. Matter must be discriminated from spirit before one of the terms can be reduced to the other. So the hylozoistic pluralism of Leucippus became in the hands of Democritus a realistic materialism, pluralistic as well.

The reduction of all phenomena by Democritus to a mechanics of atoms was theoretically an enrichment of physics, for it anticipated the underlying principle of modern physics. The apparent qualities of things and the qualitative changes of things are conceived by Democritus to be in truth only a quantitative relation of atoms. He set before himself the task of explaining in detail how this or that quality consists of atoms in mechanical motion. The mental life of man must be explained in the same way. So too, wherever he could, he emphasized more sharply than his predecessors the mechanical necessity of the movement of atoms. Impact caused by contact of the atoms was the cause of every occurrence and change. No event is to be explained as the manifestation of some spirit, or referred to some spiritual agency. Mechanical cause is behind every event; mechanical cause is the unifying principle of the doctrine of Democritus; mechanical cause is the reason for the chasm between the philosophy of Plato, of Aristotle, and that of Democritus. It is the reason, too, why the theory of Democritus was obscured until modern times. All teleological conceptions and all hylozoistic and animistic ideas are expelled from the theory of Democritus, on the assumption that spatial form and motion are simpler and more comprehensible terms of explanation. Thus for the first time we have a conscious outspoken materialism, and for the first time the world is conceived to be a universal reign of mechanical law.

The physical theory of Democritus also yielded a rich scientific explanation of the historical evolution of the universe. The universe, according to Democritus,—following the teaching of Leucippus,—consists of two parts: the Plenum or self-moving, qualitatively similar atoms; and the Void or empty space, in which the atoms move. The Plenum, or the atoms, is Being; the Void is not-Being. The atoms differ only in form and size;24 they are infinite in number and therefore are of an infinite number of forms and sizes; they are imperceptibly small. The perceptible qualities do not belong to them, but to their motions. Motion is an irreducible function of atoms, and each atom, lawless in itself, is in flight through space. An aggregation of atoms arises when the atoms meet in their cosmic flight. The shock causes a vortex which draws more atoms into itself. Like atoms are drawn together, and the heavy atoms press the fine fire-atoms to the periphery. Thus innumerable worlds are formed, for any place of the meeting of several atoms can be the beginning of a new world. Sometimes small worlds are drawn into the vortices of large worlds, and sometimes large worlds disintegrate in fatal collisions. The worlds are therefore endless and in endless succession. The whole swings in space like a ball; the rim of the whole consists of compact atoms; the centre is filled with air. To much further length than we can go here Democritus developed a theoretical description of cosmic evolution upon the principle of mechanical necessity—and the description is almost modern.

The Materialistic Psychology of Democritus. It is easy to understand an explanation of the physical universe as atoms in motion; for our modern scientific theories of nature are set in these terms, even if we have transformed the Democritan static atom into a dynamic entity. It is rather more interesting to follow such a materialist as Democritus in his extension of the materialistic principle over upon the realm of the mental life.

In the first place, Democritus conceives man to be part and parcel of the world of atoms. Man is composed of all kinds of atoms. His body consists of earth, water, and air atoms. His mind is made up of fire atoms, which differ from the others in being the finest, smoothest, and most mobile. On this account the fire atoms are the most perfect of all. Psychical activity is the motion of fire atoms. They are scattered throughout the universe, and wherever they are, there is life. They are in plants and animals as well as in man. There is a larger collection of them in man, and this shows his superiority over other living things. In man there is a fire atom between every two other atoms, and the whole is held together by breathing. The different forms of mental activity are simply different forms of atomic motion.

In the next place, our atomic make-up involves the presence of other atomic complexes, if we are to have any psychical activity. External things must stimulate us. But these external things are atoms in action. They can, however, influence us only by coming into contact with our bodies. Only by impact on our bodies can they set in motion the fire atoms which are scattered through our bodies. Every kind of knowledge or mental life involves the participation of the fire atoms in us. Thus mental activity involves two factors; the fire atoms within us and an external group of atoms without us.

How did Democritus explain the varied mental life as the resultant of these two factors? He employed the theory of effluxes, belief in which he shared with his time. This is a purely physiological assumption, originated by such Cosmologists as Empedocles, that somehow external bodies send off emanations from themselves which strike upon our bodies. Most objects in the world influence us at a distance and only through the emission of these effluxes. Democritus conceived these emanations to be little copies or “eidola” of the thing that sends them off. To illustrate Democritus’ meaning: a tree is seen by me because little trees, thrown off by it, hit my eye. This theory retained its position in philosophical circles until after Locke. It persists in the popular mind to-day. It is a general belief that a thought is a copy, photograph, or image of the thing. The words “image” and “imagination” betray their origin. It was believed by Democritus that such copies set in motion the sense organs and through them the fire atoms. The effluxes can, however, affect only those organs of the body that have similar formation and similar atomic motions.

But the effluxes vary very much in the degree of fineness of their atomic structure. There are all sorts, from very fine to very coarse. Since the efflux must correspond to a particular sense if that sense is to be affected by it, the effluxes that can affect the senses vary respectively as to their fineness. Democritus was particularly interested in the sensations of sight and hearing as examples of this. None of the effluxes affecting the senses are as fine as those that stimulate the reason. Unless they were the finest of all the effluxes, they could not affect the fine motions of the fire atoms of the reason. These finest “eidola” or effluxes are the true copies of things, and the reason therefore alone knows things truly. Thought, on the one hand, is precisely the atomic motion of the direct impact of the finest effluxes upon the fine fire-atoms of the soul. Sensation, on the other hand, is atomic motion from the indirect impact of the coarser grades of effluxes upon the fire atoms. The reason knows reality directly. Sensations are aroused in a roundabout way by the coarse effluxes setting in motion the corresponding sense organ, which in turn sets in motion the fire atoms. Thus does Democritus make the distinction between thought and sensation in quantitative terms. Thus does he reduce his psychology to a consistency with his metaphysical principle of materialism.

Democritus’ Theory of Knowledge—The World of Twofold Reality. Democritus would have been only one of the great Cosmologists, and he would not have his place by the side of Plato and Aristotle, if his materialism had illuminated no other subject than physics. Indeed, it is doubtful if his physics would have been so grandly comprehensive and unqualified had it not been strengthened by his discriminating theory of twofold knowledge. He might have extended and systematized his materialism so that it explained to the satisfaction of his time both physical and psychical phenomena, and still have been a hylozoist, like Leucippus, the founder of the Atomistic school. The problem of knowledge—the problem of estimating our mental states—was as incomprehensible to Leucippus as to the Eleatics. Democritus, however, was a rationalist and realist like Plato and Aristotle. He recognized, as did they, that there is a difference in epistemological values. His universalized materialism did not prevent him from evaluating our experiences from the same general point of view as the leader of the Academy and the Stagirite. He felt that a twofold reality is as consistent with materialistic principles as with idealism. So he reduced all qualities to quantities, and then as quantities re-valued and classified them. His chief contribution was to the subject of epistemology and not to physics, and that is why he is treated among the Greek Systematizers and not among the Cosmologists. Probably his chief interest lay where he did his chief work.

The perception theory of Protagoras was the starting-point of both Democritus and Plato. Both adopted it in order to transcend it and make it of real significance. Democritus, upon the basis of his materialistic psychology, admitted that sense-perception is only a transitory process, and its knowledge must be as transitory. But he did not agree with Protagoras that all knowledge is perceptual. Sense-perception does yield only relative knowledge; but there is another kind of knowledge that is not relative but absolute. This is knowledge of the reason. Human beings have reason as well as sense-perception. Thus is Democritus a rationalist, although a materialist.

The contribution of Democritus to the theory of knowledge consists in just this turn which he gave to Protagoras’ doctrine of perception. The relativity of perception becomes in the Democritan theory a different thing from what it was in the doctrine of the great Sophist. To Protagoras perceptual knowledge is relative, and therefore of no value in determining what is real. To Democritus perceptual knowledge is relative, but it has a value,—a relative value. It gets this relative value from the fact that the reason can determine absolute reality. Perception is the contributor to the reason, and also in turn is illuminated by the reason. In the same breath we may say that Protagoras was a contributor to the theory of Democritus, and in turn that the Protagorean relativism was illuminated by the Democritan rationalism. The result was a twofold knowledge—in the language of Democritus, “genuine knowledge” and “obscure insight.”

The objects corresponding to these two kinds of knowledge must be of two kinds. On the one hand, the objects of the reason, or “genuine knowledge,” are the genuine, primary, or real properties of the atoms—for the atoms are reality to Democritus. These are form, size, inertia, density, and hardness.25 A study of these properties of things is, therefore, a study of real objects. On the other hand, the objects of perception or “obscure insight” are the properties of atoms as perceived obscurely by the senses. These are color, sound, taste, smell. They are the qualities or relative properties of things. A study of these is a study of only what is relatively real. When materialism was revived by the Renaissance, the former group of objects were called “primary qualities” and the latter “secondary qualities.” These terms have become classic, and have rendered permanent Democritus’ evaluation of the objects of the two kinds of knowledge. Out of the fragments of the teaching of the Cosmologists and the one-sided epistemology of the Sophists, Democritus constructed contemporaneously with Plato, perhaps antecedently to him, a theory of twofold knowledge.

The Ethical Theory of Democritus. The ethics of Democritus is another example of his general principle of a mechanism of atoms. His attempt to reduce all qualitative to quantitative relations, which gives his theory a unique place in Greek thought, reaches its highest distinction in his ethics. The influence of his ethical doctrine upon the Epicureans, and possibly upon the Cyrenaics, shows its importance in history. Furthermore, its high quality proves that a materialism can offer inspiring ethical doctrines. Some have placed the ethics of Democritus upon a level with the ethics of Socrates because, as it is pointed out, he placed it upon an intellectual basis. The basal ethical principle of Democritus may be stated thus: As true knowledge is the ideal object of the intellect, so true happiness is the ideal object of our conduct. The ethics of Democritus is eudæmonistic, like that of Socrates.

Pleasures have fundamental differences. They are in every case the results of atomic motions; but the atomic motions of the intellect differ from those of the senses, and those of the senses differ from one another. The fire atoms of the intellect are small, and have a gentle, peaceful motion; the atomic motions of the senses are coarse and violent, caused by the coarse effluxes of the objects that excite them. Sense-pleasures are relative, like the perceptions. As perception is obscure insight and gains the appearance and not the true reality, so the pleasures of sense are transitory, uncertain, violent, and deceitful. Intellectual pleasures are, like the intellect, real, true, permanent, gentle, and peaceful. True happiness, the goal of human activity, attends upon that right insight—upon the gentle atomic motions of the intellectual life. On the other hand, the coarse atomic motions of the senses disturb the intellectual calm, and are often violent explosions. Democritus believed that knowledge of the atoms, as the true explanation of the world, will give to the soul a measure and a harmony, will guard it from excitement and make it possessor of a peace which—to use his happy simile—is like the ocean calm. Two ideals seem to stand before Democritus, which he did not try to reconcile. Sometimes before his mind’s eye the ideal happiness is purely intellectual pleasure and points toward asceticism. Sometimes he speaks of happiness as the life of perfect self-control and temperance. He never positively denies all value to sense-pleasure, but he gives to sense-pleasure the relative value that he gives to the senses themselves. In every case the ground of happiness is intellectual refinement, and the ground of unhappiness the lack of it. The majority of men are sensualists and are to be contrasted with the Wise Man, who finds his happiness either in his individual life or in his friendship with other Wise Men.

Abdera and Athens. The materialism of Democritus was the natural consummation of the thought of the Cosmological Period. The influence of the Sophistic psychology only enriched it, widened it, and brought its materialism into a systematic formulation. The Democritan system from the isolated centre of Abdera points only to the past. Upon the death of Democritus the school quickly disappeared. Its materialistic doctrine reappeared from time to time in one form and another,—in the Skeptics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics. It was reintroduced as a system into Europe during the Renaissance. So far as Greece was concerned, the school of Abdera was an early ripening and an early dying branch.

The school of Athenian immaterialism, the principal tendency of Greek thought, arose from the centre of Attic civilization and pointed to the future. It drew its materials from practically the same sources as the philosophy of Abdera, but the materials were polarized about the ethical teaching of Socrates. The life of Plato coincides with the unhappy history of Athens after the death of Pericles (429 B. C.). The Peloponnesian War began in 431 B. C., two years before the death of Pericles and four years before the birth of Plato; and it did not end until 403 B. C. The event most disastrous to the Athenians during this war was the Sicilian expedition in 413 B. C. Athens was captured by the Spartans in 403 B. C., and the great walls of the city were destroyed. The remainder of Plato’s life was contemporaneous with the devastating wars among the Greek cities, for there was no city strong enough to hold the balance of power after it left the hands of the Athenians. In 359 B. C. Macedon began to loom up as a power in the north. The life of Plato, the formulator of Athenian immaterialism, may be easily remembered as covering that period between the rise of Sparta and the rise of Macedon.

The Difficulties in Understanding the Teaching of Plato. The theory of Plato is one of the most involved and one of the most difficult to understand in the whole history of philosophy. This difficulty of interpreting Plato as a philosopher depends upon many factors: upon the artistic literary form of the dialogue in which his philosophy is presented; upon the conflicting tendencies of thought in Plato himself; upon the fact that the composition of his dialogues extended over a period of more than half a century; upon the constant reshaping of the content as well as the form of his thought; and upon the uncertainty of the chronological order of his writings. This chronological order of Plato’s dialogues is an important factor in determining his teaching. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century a vast amount of literature has been published on the subject, and many theories of the dialogue-chronology have been proposed. There are three principal groups of theories: (1) those based upon purely a priori hypotheses, as, for example, that of Hermann, that each dialogue is a stage in the development of Plato’s thought; or that of Schleiermacher, that Plato had a systematic plan from the beginning; (2) those based upon an empirical study of the historical allusions in the dialogues themselves (Zeller, Windelband, et als.); (3) those recent theories based upon the “stylometric test,” i. e. by an examination of the peculiarities of the style of Plato. Lutoslawski is a prominent representative of this method.

The result to the student is bewildering, on account of the differing conclusions. But since some choice must be made, we shall follow the order laid down by Windelband,26 because it is fairly orthodox and conservative. For convenience to the memory, the writings will be grouped in the periods of Plato’s life. Our interpretation will therefore follow Windelband in respect to the character of Plato’s theory itself.

The Life and Writings of Plato. Two important events divide Plato’s long life of eighty years into three periods. These events were the death of his master, Socrates, in 399 B. C., and Plato’s return from Sicily in 387 B. C., after having there come under the influence of the Pythagoreans. His first period may be called his student life, and was twenty-eight years long; the second period was that of the traveler, and was twelve years long; the third period was that of teacher of the Academy, and was forty years long. The first half of his life therefore covers the first two periods, and the second half covers his period as teacher. Probably he was engaged in the composition of the dialogues during all these periods, and Cicero reports him to have died “pen in hand” (scribens est mortuus).

1. Plato’s Student Life (427–399 B. C.). This period closes with the death of Socrates. His acquaintance with Socrates began when he was twenty years old, and therefore lasted eight years.

The dialogues written during this period are presentations of the doctrine of Socrates and do not contain the constructive theory of Plato. They are concerned either with Socratic subjects or with Socrates personally, and were written in part during Socrates’ life, in part directly after his death.

(a) Dialogues written under the influence of Socrates:

Lysis, concerning friendship;

Laches, concerning courage;

Charmides, concerning moderation.

(b) Dialogues written in defense of Socrates:

Crito, concerning Socrates’ fidelity to law;

Apology, a general defense of Socrates;

Euthryphro, concerning Socrates’ true piety.

2. Plato as Traveler (399–387 B. C.). During this period Plato made one short and two long journeys, and after each he returned to Athens. Upon the death of Socrates he went to Megara, where a former pupil of Socrates had a school. Upon this journey he was accompanied by other pupils of Socrates, who, as tradition has it, feared violence to themselves after the death of their master. Plato remained in Megara but a short time, and soon returned to Athens. Immediately upon his return to Athens he went to Cyrene and Egypt, and was away from Athens about four years (until 395 B. C.). The Egyptian journey had little influence upon his thought, but must have stimulated his imagination. He then remained at Athens four years (395–391 B. C.), and during this time he taught a small circle and wrote his polemics against the Sophists.

In 391 B. C. Plato made his first Italian journey—to Sicily and southern Italy. This marks the second critical point in his mental development. For at this time (1) he came under the influence of the Italian Pythagoreans, and (2) he attempted and failed in connection with Dion27 and Dionysius to erect his ideal state in Syracuse. He was sold as a slave by Dionysius, redeemed by a friend, and returned to Athens in 387 B. C., having been away about four years.

It is to be noted that Democritus and Plato were wide travelers, considering the difficulties of locomotion of the time. Both Democritus and Plato went to Egypt, and Democritus spent several years in Asia Minor (see p. 107).

The dialogues written during this period may be divided into (a) the group of polemics against the Sophists, and (b) the Meno.

(a) The polemics against the Sophists (written between his return from Egypt in 395 B. C. and his first Italian journey in 391 B. C.).

They are an attempt to present a solid front against the Sophists, and to show the weakness of the Sophistic doctrines. These polemical dialogues are:

Protagoras, a criticism of the Sophistic assumption that virtue is teachable, because that assumption is incompatible with the Sophistic fundamental principle;

Gorgias, showing how superficial the Sophistic rhetoric is when compared with true culture, which is the foundation of real statecraft;

Euthydemus, an exposition of the fallacies in the Sophistic eristic;

Cratylus, a criticism of the philological attempts of the Sophists;

Theætetus, a criticism of the Sophistic theories of knowledge;

The First Book of the Republic (the “Dialogue concerning Justice”), a criticism of the Sophistic naturalistic theory of the state.

(b) Meno, which contains the first positive statement by Plato of his own constructive theory. It is the first intimation of development beyond the simple Socratic theory of knowledge. Plato states this, however, rather timidly, by suggestions and after the manner of a mathematician.

3. Plato as Teacher of the Academy (387–347 B. C.). These forty years were spent by Plato in Athens as master and teacher of his school, the Academy, with the exception of two journeys to Italy. He undertook these journeys in the hope of realizing in a practical way his political ideals. He made his second Italian journey upon the invitation of Dion, in the hope of influencing the younger Dionysius, and the third Italian journey in order to reconcile Dion and Dionysius. This last journey brought him again into great personal danger.

What was the Academy? It was a public grove or garden in the suburbs of Athens (see map, p. 219) that had been left to the city for gymnastics by a public-spirited man named Academus. It had been surrounded by a wall and had been adorned by olive trees, statues, and temples. Near this inclosure Plato possessed by inheritance a small estate. It was here that he opened his school, and few places could be more favorable for the study of philosophy. Plato bequeathed this estate to the school, which held the property in a corporate capacity for several centuries. The leader of the school was called scholarch, and he appointed his own successor. The school was a kind of religious brotherhood based upon the worship of the Muses.

Note that Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle finished their education at an age much beyond what is supposed to be the limit in modern time. They were, in fact, mature men before they began their life work. Plato was 32 before he began to teach in Athens and 40 before he set himself about his real life task in the founding of the Academy. Democritus was 40 before he returned to Abdera from his travels in Asia Minor. Aristotle was 41 when he undertook to act as tutor of Alexander, and 49 when he began his administration of the Lyceum.

The dialogues of the third period of Plato’s life contain his constructive theory, and are his masterpieces of art. The topics with which they deal show the advance of his thought over the dialogues of his first period. The purely Socratic dialogues were ethical discussions; these are ethical, metaphysical, and physical.

Phædrus, Plato’s delivery of his programme upon his entrance into active teaching in the Academy, in 386 B. C.

Symposium, an exposition of his entire doctrine in “love speeches.” It is the most artistic of his writings, and represents the climax of his intellectual power (385 or 384 B. C.).

Republic (major portion). The composition of the Republic extended over a long period. It is a discussion: (1) concerning justice (written in the second period, see above); (2) concerning the ideal state which shall realize justice; (3) concerning the Idea of the Good and in criticism of the constitutions of states. It is Plato’s masterpiece and his life work.

Parmenides and Sophist, written to express the objections to the theory of Ideas, and to discuss such objections. (Windelband holds these dialogues were not written by Plato, but by some member of his school. This is, however, not the consensus of opinion.)

Politicus, a discussion of the field of knowledge and of action for a statesman.

Phædo, Plato’s final will and testament to the school, written shortly before his third Sicilian journey, in 361 B. C. It is his completed conception of the Idea of the Good and of the relation of other Ideas to it. It contains Anaxagorean and Pythagorean elements.

Philebus, concerning the ingredients of the Idea of the Good.

Timæus, Plato’s conception of physical nature, expressed in mythical form.

Laws, the work of Plato’s old age, his revision of the ideal State.

Concerning the Dialogues28 of Plato. The early philosophers presented their philosophy in metrical form as poems “concerning nature”; Socrates perpetuated his teachings through conversations with men; Plato made his influence permanent by written dialogues; Aristotle’s philosophy, in the works that have been preserved, stands in the form of treatises whose sole purpose is that of exposition. Plato’s dialogues therefore have a twofold place in the history of literature. On the one hand, in the history of literature proper we have already mentioned them as standing after the Greek drama in the development of Greek dialectics; on the other hand, in the development of philosophical instruction they stand between the conversations of Socrates and the scientific expositions of Aristotle.

Plato was the first child of Fortune, and the complete preservation of his works was the most remarkable proof of it. Æschylus was the author of at least 70 writings, of which 7 are preserved; Euripides was the author of 95 writings, of which 18 are preserved; Sophocles had 123 writings, aside from his lyric works, of which 7 are preserved. Shakespeare wrote 36 plays, Plato wrote 35 dialogues that are genuine. All of Plato’s writings have come down to us. Why were the writings of Plato preserved from the destroying hand of time? There are at least three causes of their preservation: (1) they had intrinsic beauty; (2) there was contemporary public interest in them; (3) the chief cause, Plato’s school kept close guard over them.

By the dialogue Plato could employ the Socratic method, give dramatic effect, and idealize Socrates. The Republic is his crowning literary effort, and the most complete statement of his mature political views. Perhaps the Philebus is the best expression of his idea of goodness, and presents his most complete organization of the sciences. All Plato’s dialogues have a transparent beauty and a purity of diction; and they may be taken as a revelation of himself. All are dialogues save the Apology, but the dialogue element grows less and less in his later works. Socrates is usually the spokesman in them, and to him is usually given the deciding word. Only a few have a fixed plan of argument. One thread and then another is followed, and in many no decision whatever is reached; for the dialogues must always be taken as artistic products in which philosophical experiences are idealized. Plato often employs myths or parables to illuminate his arguments. The situations and the literary adornments show the human touch, and the conversation often moves to a dramatic close.

In the Republic Plato sought to formulate theoretically certain political conceptions of the ideal State that were then in the air. It is interesting to note that his conception influenced the political idealism of later time, as, for example, Cicero’s De Republica, Augustine’s City of God, More’s Utopia, Campanella’s State of the Sun, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Macchiavelli’s Il Principe.

The Factors in the Construction of Plato’s Doctrine.

1. His Inherited Tendencies. (a) In the first place Plato was by instinct an aristocrat. His family was one of the most distinguished in Athens, and traced its descent from Solon and Codrus. In making an estimate of his philosophy one must take account of the caste of society in which he was born. His metaphysical theory of Ideas is aristocratic, and in it he turns from all that is of the earth earthy to what is above the life of “opinion.” His four cardinal virtues are possible only to the few. His political attitude was peculiar. He was hostile to the democracy, and yet his political idealism diverged so far from the practical politics of Athenian aristocracy that he completely abstained from public life. With Plato, philosophy once more retires to the school. Here we have the strange juxtaposition of Socrates, the teacher, who had been engaged in a practical reformation, whose father was an artisan and whose mother a midwife, and Plato, his adoring pupil and truest interpreter,—Plato, the idealist, “whose speculation is not like the Philistine, whose life is spent in the market place or the workshop, and whose world is measured by the narrow boundaries of his native town; it is the lord of the manor, who retires to his mansion, after having seen the world, and turns his gaze towards the distant horizon; disdaining the noise of the cross-roads, he mingles only in the best society, where is heard the most elegant, the noblest, and the loftiest language that has ever been spoken in the home of the Muses.”29

(b) In the next place Plato had an instinctive love for the beautiful, and in this he was great, even in his time. Every Periclean Greek was artistic, but Plato was more than this. He is to be ranked among the great creators of the art of his day,—with Phidias and Sophocles. He represented in his person everything ideally Greek. He was a man of great beauty, a human Apollo, a man endowed with every physical and mental talent, and his moral character was almost ideal in its purposes. His real name was Aristocles, and he got his name Plato from his broad frame. The artistic development of the time appealed to him in his youth, and he was early interested in the writing of epic and dramatic poetry. This artistic instinct determined in no small measure not only the form of the presentation of his thought, but also the content of the thought itself. It determined his principle of conceiving the Ideas, the constitution of his State, his theory of pleasure, and his conception of the highest Good. The artistic form of the presentation of his writings was as important to him as the matter presented.

2. His Philosophical Sources. Plato had received a careful education that made him familiar with all the scientific theories of current interest to the Athenians. The elements of the earlier philosophies, that were fundamental to the mechanical atomism of Democritus, were recombined in a different way by Plato under the influence of Socrates’ ethical principle. Even Plato’s political and artistic ideals are subordinate to his entire absorption in the personality and teaching of Socrates. Heracleitus, Protagoras, Parmenides, and, later, Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans, furnished him with his philosophical materials. We may point out three of the preceding philosophies that had an especially powerful influence upon him: those of (1) Socrates; (2) Parmenides; and (3) the Pythagoreans. His revered master, Socrates, furnished Plato throughout with the conceptual principle, by which he worked over all his material into his daring system. The influence of Parmenides upon him was also very great. He speaks of the Eleatic as “Parmenides, my father.” Plato betook himself to the Eleatic school at Megara upon the death of Socrates, and this shows that he must already have been hospitable to the philosophy which taught the conception of an absolute and eternal essence of things known by the human reason. The influence of the Pythagoreans was felt by Plato on his first visit to Italy. This influence grew with him, and seems to dominate the dialogue of his old age, the Laws. The Eleatic Oneness was a single, immutable block. In the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers he found the conceptual divisions of that Oneness, and he also found that such conceptions would give a content to Socrates’ conception of the Good. Indeed, the numbers seemed to be the conceptual models for which Socrates was searching. Mathematical truths are independent of perception. They are innate ideas. They are eternal and immutable Forms. They were the weapons needed against the Protagorean doctrine of perception. While Plato agreed with Heracleitus that the visible world is a changing world, and with Protagoras that our sense-perceptions of that world can yield only relative truth, he developed his philosophy almost entirely on its conceptual side; and this is due to the influence first of Socrates, second of Parmenides, and third of the Pythagoreans. Plato’s completed philosophy was the theory of Ideas, worked over in his mind a half-century or more, and is in itself a history of the development of pure concepts.

The Divisions of Plato’s Philosophy. Plato himself had no clear conception of an exact division of science, and did not confine himself in a single dialogue to a single science. Aristotle, however, distinguished in the philosophy of his master dialectic, ethics, and physics, and these divisions of Plato’s teaching have been traditionally adopted. The dialectic, as commonly used in his time, meant “the dialogue or conversation employed as a means of scientific investigation.” It was transformed by Plato to mean not logical but metaphysical discussion. Plato was concerned with the laws of Being rather than the laws of logic, and, as Being to him consisted of Ideas, his dialectic interest was to reduce experience by division and induction to some unity. Plato’s dialectic was not logical but methodological,—logical operations taken as a whole,—by means of which the Ideas and their relations to one another were to be found. The physics of Plato is of little value. It was an afterthought to satisfy the demands of his school. The world of nature phenomena could never be for Plato the object of true knowledge. Unfortunately, the teleological physics of Plato was regarded by the Hellenistic time and the Middle Ages as Plato’s most important achievement. Plato wrote entirely in the spirit of the Enlightenment, and his works show a great interest in man as a moral being, but little interest in physical nature.

Summary of Plato’s Doctrine. The interpretation of Plato as set forth in what follows may be thus summarized: Plato began with the conceptual form of idealism, suggested by the logical method of Socrates, with the purpose of solving logical and ethical problems. He advanced to a teleological idealism, conditioned by the doctrines of Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans, with the purpose of applying his doctrine to physical problems.

The Formation of Plato’s Metaphysics. In his earliest period Plato made these very clear statements: (1) virtue is knowledge; (2) by knowledge is not meant sense-perceptions. In his final statement of his philosophy, as he bequeathed it to posterity, he only gave a new evaluation of these two early principles, although he expressed them in a highly complex form. “Virtue is knowledge” is the basis of agreement between Socrates and the Sophists; and “by knowledge is not meant sense-perceptions” is the basis of their opposition. During Plato’s early period he was acting as a faithful transcriber of Socrates in the presentation of this first principle: virtue is knowledge, is teachable, is one. During Plato’s second period he was called on to defend the second statement against the Sophists. Plato’s formation of his own theory begins at this point,—at the point where his defense of his master was keenest. From this time, for a full half-century, Plato developed the Socratic principles in a theory that went far beyond Socrates, but that was never untrue to him.

The simplest way of stating Plato’s formation of his own doctrine is this: he accepted the Protagorean doctrine of a perceptual world of relative knowledge; he placed it beside the Socratic theory of conceptual reality; and as a result he conceived the world to be twofold. Both Being and Becoming share in reality. There are, on the one side, the immutable concepts that compose true reality; there are, on the other side, the changing perceptions that come and go. The world of true reality is, but never becomes; the world of relative reality becomes, but never is. These two worlds are by nature separate; one is the object of the reason, the other is the object of the senses; one is incorporeal, the other is corporeal. The first world is the immutable One of the Eleatics presented by Plato as a plural number of Socratic concepts; the other world is the Heracleitan flux presented as perceivable things. There is true knowledge, but Protagoras is right in saying that it cannot be found in the perception of the material world. It is knowledge of an incorporeal world, and that is precisely the world of Socratic concepts which now in Plato’s hands become Ideas.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that Plato’s conception of the world was an artificial eclecticism, obtained by putting two worlds side by side. To be sure, he never was able to bring them into an organic unity, and the dualism between them is often very marked. But they do not lie like two drawers in a desk, each having no vital influence on the character of the other. In the juxtaposition of the two worlds each gets a new meaning, and the value of each becomes greater.

In the first place, perception30 gets a new value. The logic of the Sophistic doctrine of perception was that perceptions are the only form of knowledge, and even perceptions have no share of truthfulness. Protagoras himself did not go so far as this absolute skepticism, but this is the logic of his position. Perceptions can have no value, because each is a standard to itself. Plato incorporates the perception theory into his own, and immediately gives it a new value. Perceptions do not, to be sure, yield true knowledge, but they have a relative value. They have a value for the practical world, although the highest they can give is Right Opinion. When we remember that the world of that day was weary of its own speculations leading to nihilism, it is remarkable that Plato did not turn away entirely from the doctrine of the Sophists. On the contrary, he took up the Sophistic doctrine into his own and gave to it a value which it had not possessed by itself.

In the second place, conception gets a new value. What was conception to Socrates? It was the common content of opinions and perceptions; it was the universal that was developed inductively out of many particulars. Socrates brought many particulars together in order to reveal their common qualities. The abode of conceptions was to Socrates the half-formed individual opinions and experiences in which conception lay, as in an envelope; and the conversation was needed to bring it forth. The concept to Socrates was the logical “nature” of perceptions. But now since Plato admitted the relative reality of all perceptions, he was obliged to look elsewhere to account for conceptions. If the conceptions are true reality, they cannot be the common quality in opinions, nor the logical “nature” of changing perceptions. The true conception cannot be contained in the perception. Accordingly the conception must exist in an incorporeal world and possess an independent reality. The concepts are hypostasized by Plato. They become Ideas. Thus the Socratic concept became the Platonic Idea, and for the first time in European thought, reality is conceived as immaterial. The conceptual world grows under Plato’s hands to be “other than” the perceptual world, and this was his first step beyond Socrates. The conceptual world is the perfect reality that cannot be contained in any material thing nor in the sum of all material things. The immaterial Ideas are the object of thought, as nature phenomena are the objects of perception. Ideas are not the abstractions of perceptions, for the process of thought is not an analysis nor an abstraction, but an intuition of reality presented in single instances. Ideas are the reality of which perceptions are the copies or shadows. Perceptions do not contain the truth. They are only the suggestions or promptings by which the soul bethinks itself of the Ideas. Material things merely hint to the soul of the existence of the Ideas.

It is important in this connection to point out that Plato’s conception of immateriality is not to be taken as what we mean in modern times by the spiritual or psychical; for, according to Plato, our psychical functions belong to the world of Becoming, just as the functions of our body and other perceptual things belong to it. Besides, even the Ideas of sense qualities have reality. Plato does not identify the human mind with the incorporeal world of Ideas, nor does he make the modern dualistic division of the world into mind and matter. The immaterial world is “other than” the world of perception, and bears the relation to the material world of the unchanging to the changing, of the simple to the manifold, of Being to Becoming.

The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics—The Development of Plato’s Ideas in the Two Drafts. The twofold world with its new evaluation of the Socratic conception and of the Protagorean perception was, after all, only Plato’s point of departure for his constructive work. It was his first and undeveloped apprehension of a theory of Ideas. It appeared first in the Meno in his doctrine of recollection and immortality, which was written in his second period just after his series of splendid polemics against the Sophists. From this time for a full half-century Plato developed the conception of a twofold world into a Theory of Ideas. In the course of time he found himself confronted with three problems: (1) How many Ideas are there? (2) What is the relation between Ideas and physical things? (3) What is the relation of the Ideas to one another? Plato’s answers to these three questions compose what is known as his Theory of Ideas. However, he answers these three questions differently when he first considered them than later, when his grasp upon the significance of his problem became more mature. Plato’s Theory of Ideas, therefore, may be said to have had a development in two stages. These two stages are called his “two drafts” (Windelband) of the Ideas. We shall now present, first in summary form and then in more detail, his answers to these three questions in the two drafts, and thereby show how his theory developed to its final formulation.

Brief Comparison of the Two Drafts of the Ideas.

1. The Earlier Draft of Ideas.

(a) The Number of Ideas is infinite.

(b) The Relation of Ideas to Physical Things is similarity. The Ideas on their side are spoken of as having a “presence” in physical things, but never fully appearing in them; the physical phenomena on their side are spoken of as “participating” in the Ideas.

(c) The Ideas are Related to One Another logically, as genera to species, but they are only roughly classified by Plato.

2. The Later Draft of Ideas—Plato’s Final Statement.

(a) The Number of Ideas is limited to those of worth, mathematical relations, and nature-products, but Plato never arrived at any definite selection.

(b) The Relation of Ideas to Physical Things is teleological. The Ideas are the ideal or purposeful ends of physical objects.

(c) The Ideas are Related to One Another teleologically. The Idea of the Good stands at the head, and is the purposeful end of all the other Ideas.

Comparison of the Two Drafts of Ideas in More Detail.

1. The Number of Ideas in the Earlier and Later Drafts compared. When Plato first presented the Theory of Ideas to himself, he conceived their number to be infinite. There are Ideas of everything that is thinkable. There are as many as there are class concepts, as there are qualities of things in the universe, as there are common nouns in the language. But it was pointed out to Plato that he had only reproduced and paralleled in the immaterial world what exists in the material world; that such a theory did not solve, but only doubled our difficulties. Then there were technical difficulties in the conception of the Ideas of everything—of things, qualities, relations,—good, bad, and indifferent. But what probably appealed to him most cogently was the raillery to which he found his theory subjected (see Parmenides), that he as a Greek could think of ugly Ideas, like hair and filth, as real. The result was that in the later drafting of his theory the number of qualities worthy to be called Ideas becomes very much limited. Plato makes the elimination from no avowed principle except that of worth, because as a Greek it was absolutely repellent to him to regard anything as real except worth. Consequently in his later dialogues he speaks of (1) Ideas having an inherent value, like the Good and the Beautiful, (2) Ideas corresponding to nature products, (3) Ideas of mathematical relations. Norms of value thus take the place of class-concepts, and in his selection of Ideas his choice is determined more and more by their moral worth.

2. The Relation of Ideas and the World of Nature in the Two Drafts compared. Plato did not construct his world of Ideas in order to explain the world of physical nature. His original purpose was to find an object for knowledge; and his Ideas were born out of his striving to give a reality to the conceptions of Socrates. In his evaluation of the doctrine of his master he had drawn a distinction between the two worlds, but he had not thought of explaining one by the other. They were related and distinguished, but one threw no light upon the other. In Plato’s first draft of the Ideas he speaks of this relation as imitation. The phenomena are an imitation of reality. The Ideas are the originals and physical objects are copies. To state the relation in modern terms, the laws of the growth of a tree are permanent, while the tree changes. The lower world of Becoming has a similarity to the higher world of Being. As the Pythagoreans had conceived things as imitations of numbers, Plato, strongly influenced by the Pythagoreans, thought that concrete things correspond to their class concepts only in a degree. On the one hand, the individual thing partakes of the universal of the Idea, and this is called “participation” in the Idea. On the other hand, the word “presence” describes the way the Idea exists in the thing, which means that the Idea is present in the thing so long as the thing possesses the quality of the Idea. The Ideas are present and then withdraw, and thus the perception changes.

In the second drafting of the Ideas, Plato has become conscious of the need of explaining physical nature by the Ideas. He did not at first think of explaining the nature of the physical world by his metaphysical reality. It was an afterthought, and arose out of the compulsion of having a systematic theory. His conception of the world of Ideas as the world of true Being ultimately demanded that the world of physical nature should be not merely “other than” but dependent upon the Ideas. The Ideas are unchanging; the phenomena are changing. If the Ideas are the reality of the changing world, in what other sense can they be its reality than as its cause? The Meno, Theætetus, Symposium, and Phædrus do not discuss this problem. The Sophist proposes it, and in the Phædo the thought is first expressed that the Ideas are the causes of physical phenomena appearing as they do appear. But how can the Ideas be causes, when the very conception of them as pure and immaterial realities denies to them all qualities of motion and change? The Platonic theory reached its zenith in its solution of this problem. The Ideas must be conceived as the causes of nature phenomena, and still as not moving nor suffering change. They are teleological causes. They are the realized ends of the phenomenal world. The world of Ideas is the actual goal of perfection for physical nature. The world of Ideas is not only the truth of all knowledge; it is also the perfect teleological cause of all actual change. This thought is developed in the Philebus and the Republic, where the Ideas as a whole, and in particular the Idea of the Good,—to which all the other Ideas are means,—stand as the final cause of all occurrence. The physical phenomena stand therefore in a teleological relation to the Idea of the Good. From the Good all things get their meaning. It permeates and explains all.

3. The Relation among the Ideas in the Two Drafts compared. It was natural that the conception of a pluralism of Ideas should lead Plato to a consideration of the law of their relationship. A systematic theory of a multiplicity of reals involves their orderly relationship. They cannot exist independently in the same world. What is the relationship among the Ideas? In the earlier drafting of his theory Plato was principally attentive to the relations of coördination and subordination among the Ideas; in the possibility of the division of class concepts into genera and species. The relationship that he sought was logical relationship, the relationship that the scientist seeks to find in the classification of plants or rocks. Just what result Plato tried to reach by such a logical classification of his realities, it is difficult to say. He was not successful. His attempt to erect a logically arranged pyramid of conceptions with the most abstract at the apex was not carried out.

In his second drafting of the Ideas, Plato felt the inadequacy of a mere logical relationship among them, and conceived them to be teleologically related. His reduction of the number of Ideas had naturally brought about a new conception of their relationship. There must be some principle for their elimination, for the rejecting of some and the keeping of others. That principle was the principle of their ethical worth. That is to say, the Idea of the Good, which had been the standard for eliminating some concepts from the list of Ideas and for retaining others, now became for him the principle of the relationship of the Ideas among themselves. Plato turned from the logical to the teleological relation among Ideas. The Idea of the Good embraces and realizes all the others. It is therefore the absolute end of all the other Ideas, and they bear the relation to it, not of particulars to a general term, but of means to an end. The principle in their selection becomes the principle of their arrangement.

Plato’s Conception of God. The above sketch of the formation and development of Plato’s theory of Ideas shows how difficult it would be to frame a short definition of them that would at the same time be adequate. As he finally defined them, they are immaterial archetypes or ideals, dominated by a moral purpose. This dominating moral purpose in the Ideas is the highest Idea of all, the Idea of the Good, which stands above all the others and gives to them and to everything else their value and indeed their actuality.

Is this Idea of the Good the same as God? Plato calls the Good “Deity” and the “World Reason,” and ascribes to it the name of Nous. Nevertheless the Idea of the Good is not the same as the Christian God, and Plato is only showing here the influence of Anaxagoras’ conception upon him. (See p. 47.) The Idea of the Good is not a person or a spiritual being. It is merely the absolute ethical end and purpose of the world. Plato did not attempt to give it a content, any more than did his master, Socrates; but Plato presupposed it, because it was in itself the simplest and most comprehensible thing in the world.

Plato’s Conception of Physical Nature. Plato constructed a rough sketch of the philosophy of nature in his later years, in compliance with the needs of his School, and perhaps with the urging of his pupil, Aristotle. In his earlier period, he would have nothing of physics, and was in this respect quite in accord with the spirit of Socrates. To the end of his life he maintained that there can be no true knowledge of the physical world; for it is a world of change, and therefore all scientific conclusions about it could be only probable. In a mythical account in the Timæus he drew a picture of the constitution of the world. He conceived a Demiurge or world-forming God to exist, and he thought that this God made the world out of not-Being or empty space “with regard to the Ideas.” The world thus constructed is conceived by Plato as a huge living thing, composed of a visible body and an invisible soul. The world-soul sets the world-body in a circular motion, which motion was considered by antiquity to be the most perfect of all motions. In sharp opposition to the mechanical theory of the world, Plato conceived the world to be endowed with knowledge, of which the spherical motion in its return upon itself is the symbol. The world is unitary and unique, the most perfect and most beautiful world, and its origin can be traced only to a reason working toward ends. Plato’s physics, of which the above is an abbreviated account, will be seen to be of little importance; but it was unfortunately, as we have said, this side of his doctrine that was emphasized in the Middle Ages.

This mythical account shows, however, the inherent dualism in Plato’s doctrine. The Idea never fully realizes itself in corporeal things, and Plato was called on to explain the cause of the evil and imperfection of the physical world. Moreover, the imperfection of the physical world got new emphasis in the influence upon him of the Pythagorean doctrine, which had set the perfect and imperfect worlds in opposition. What prevents the Idea from fully appearing in phenomena? The more Plato conceived the world of Ideas as ethical Ideals and a kingdom of pure worth, and the more teleological the Ideas became, the less could he regard the Ideas as the cause of imperfection in nature. Ideas are Being, and the essence of perfection. The cause of imperfection must therefore be that which has no being whatsoever. The physical world as “becoming” has participation, not only in that which has Being (Ideas), but in that which has no Being (empty space). The physical world has a composite character. It has sprung from the union of the Ideas and an absolutely negative factor, which Plato calls empty space. This eternal negative is formless and unfashioned, but it is capable of taking on all possible forms. The physical universe is therefore neither Ideas simply, nor matter simply, but a composition of the two. This non-Being is not like the matter, “unformed stuff,” of Aristotle, from which all sensible things are made; but it is that in which Ideas have to appear. The Ideas are plunged into this empty non-Being, which they take on as a veil. And just this is the origin of imperfection; non-Being withholds the Ideas from perfect expression. Non-Being, or empty space, is an indispensable auxiliary to the Ideas, for without it no physical universe would be possible. But at the same time it is the eternal foe and obstruction of the Ideas. Its coöperation with the Ideas is at the same time a resistance to them. It is the perpetual negation of Being, and the primary cause of imperfection, change, and instability. On this account the universe can never be like the Ideas, but it can approximate them. The soul of the world, for example,—which was regarded by Plato in Pythagorean fashion as number subjecting chaotic space to harmony,—is the most perfect reproduction of the Idea of the Good. The existence of matter detracts from the perfection of the world, but it does not detract from the majesty of the Ideas.

Plato’s Conception of Man. Plato needed a psychology of another sort from that developed by the Cosmologists. His analysis of the mental life of man stands or falls with his metaphysical theory of Ideas, but it has this importance: it is the first attempt to understand the psychical life from within.

The dualism of the two worlds appears in sharp outlines in the narrower field of the life of man. The soul of man belongs to both worlds. On the one hand, it belongs to the world of Becoming and partakes of that world through its sense-perceptions, desires, and their pleasures. In this lower world it is the principle of life and motion; it is that which moves itself and other things. On the other hand, it shares in the world of Being through its intuitive reason or knowledge. It shares in the instability and change of psychical phenomena; it also possesses the immutability of reality. Through its perceptions it constructs its “opinions” or inferences of changing phenomena; through its reason it has true knowledge of the eternal Ideas. Therefore the soul must bear in itself traits that correspond to the two worlds. Plato conceives man to have an irrational and a rational nature; and he divides the irrational nature into two parts,—the noble irrational part and the ignoble irrational part. The rational part of man is the reason, the noble irrational part is the will, the ignoble irrational part is the sensuous appetites.

This is the celebrated doctrine of the “three parts” of the soul. Are they three parts or three functions of the soul? Plato is not clear as to this point. He sometimes speaks of them as three divisions, and treats them as separable in such a way that only the reason is immortal and the other two parts are mortal. Again, he speaks of the soul as a unity, which carries with it in the next life all three functions. In this latter meaning the three parts are three natures or three different degrees of worth of the unitary soul.

Plato’s Doctrine of Immortality. Beginning with this conception of the dual nature of the human soul, Plato reasons both backward and forward from it: backward to its pre-existence, and forward from its post-existence,—its existence after death. In the Phædo, Plato has put into the mouth of what has become his Platonized Socrates his final thought concerning the relation of this present life to its past and its future. It is plainly the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which he got from the Pythagoreans. The soul has a reality that is imperishable, and the soul is rewarded or punished for its conduct in one existence by the kind of existence into which it is metamorphosed. In prison, on that fatal day when he drank the poison, Socrates explained to those around him why he was so cheerful at the thought of death. Is not our present existence a kind of death? Is not the soul in the present life deterred from true knowledge by the trammels of the bodily desires? The true philosopher is he who turns away from his body’s passions,—dies to them, and tries to live the reality of the world of Ideas. We shall have full knowledge when we pass beyond the grave and then we shall be rewarded, if we have striven truly. But at present our body hampers and misleads us with its perceptions of changing mortality around us, and with its transitory desires. This life itself is the reward or punishment for our conduct in our preceding state.

1. The Immortality of Pre-existence. What proof does Plato offer for our existence before this life? The Ideas, these testimonies of reality, form a part of the human soul. They are eternal, and have not been created by the soul. Knowledge is not the origination of a new truth, but is the recognition of Ideas, whose presence the mind merely records. Greek psychology never got much farther than this. The modern psychological conception of the soul as a dynamic something, which creates its own content, was quite foreign to the Greeks. To Plato, as to all other Greeks, the soul is as passive as the wax that receives the impress of the seal. All Greek psychology was under this general limitation: all ideas must be “given” to the soul. Therefore if the Ideas are not “given” by perception, because perception is of the changing; if nevertheless the soul finds itself in possession of the Ideas on the occasion of perception; if the soul did not create the Ideas, because the soul is by nature passive; the logical and only conclusion is that the soul was already in possession of the Ideas in a pre-existent state. Pre-existence is the only way of accounting for the full-born knowledge of the soul, and it is interesting to note how important was the pre-existent state to the imagination of the ancient world.

Plato therefore advanced the doctrine of reminiscence, or as he called it, Anamnesis, as proof of our pre-existence. Knowledge is recollection. The Ideas have always been present in the mind, and when we recognize them we have knowledge. The Ideas have no past or future, but they always exist. It is the mind that undergoes awakening—an awakening to their existence in itself. When the mind sees the objects of physical nature, it awakens in painful astonishment at the contrast between the sense world and the Ideas of its native world of immateriality. In a mythical representation in the Phædrus, Plato supposes that before the present life our souls have beheld the pure Ideas in their full reality, that the Ideas had been forgotten in our birth into the present life, but that the perception of similar corporeal things calls the soul back to the Ideas themselves. Then the “Eros” is awakened—the native philosophical impulse or inborn love for the Ideas, by which the soul is raised again to the knowledge of that true reality. Only the pure Ideas themselves will satisfy this longing; the embodiment of the Ideas in art or personalities is not adequate. The Eros ties us to the Ideas. God does not have this longing, for He fully knows the Good. The ignorant man does not have this longing, for he does not suspect the existence of the Ideas in himself. The Eros is the homesickness that the lover of the truth feels.

When, in the Meno, the Sophistic dilemma was proposed to Socrates, “How can inquiry be made into what we know or into what we don’t know?” Socrates pointed out that the only escape from the dilemma was the process of recollecting, and that knowledge is the thing recalled. Socrates then called a slave to him, and by skillfully questioning him found that the slave recognized the mathematical relationship between the square on the hypothenuse of a right triangle and the sums of the squares on the other two sides. “The ignorant slave can only have been recollecting,” says Socrates. Mathematical knowledge is extracted from the sense-perception of the slave only because the slave has through such perception the opportunity of recollecting Ideas present in himself and not hitherto suspected by himself. In Plato’s system, mathematical forms have an important place. They are the links by means of which the Idea shapes space teleologically into the sense world.

2. The Immortality of Post-Existence. Plato’s ground for belief in the existence of soul after death is practically the same as that for its previous existence. Its destiny hereafter depends upon how far it has freed itself in this earthly life from the sensuous appetite. As proofs for future existence Plato mentions the soul’s possession of the Ideas, the simplicity and unity of the soul, the soul as the principle of life, and the goodness of God. However weak Plato’s arguments may be for the existence of future immortality, his absolute belief in it is one of the chief points in his teaching. It is interesting to note that the modern western world seems to have no concern in the previous state of the soul, but through the influence of the Christian religion has focused its attention upon the future life. Oriental religions contain the doctrine of pre-existence and the transmigration of souls, but not in the same sense as Plato. In Plato the soul possesses an identity that persists. It has all the qualities of the Ideas, but is also an entity possessing these qualities. It has non-origination, indestructibility, unity, and changelessness. The doctrine of the immortality of post-existence had appeared in the Greek religion, but this is the first time that we have found it as a part of philosophic teaching. The student will, of course, feel the difficulties in Plato’s conception as he has presented it. For how can the soul preserve its individuality as a unity, when the soul belongs in part to a world which is temporal?

The Two Tendencies in Plato. From the doctrine of the two worlds there are two distinct tendencies running through the entire teaching of Plato. These are (1) the tendency to glorify nature, and (2) the tendency to turn away from nature to ascetic contemplation. On the one hand, Plato felt within himself the light heart-beat of the artist, and the Hellenic love of life was strong within him. He felt that the Idea of the Good was realized even in the world of sense, that there was pleasure in the sensuous imitation of the Idea, in practical artistic skill, and in an intelligent understanding of mathematical orderings. These were at least preparations for the highest Good, which consisted in knowledge of the Ideas. On the other hand, one finds beside this the ascetic tendency to be repelled by nature, a negative ethics that would leave the world of sense and would spiritualize the life. The Theætetus sets up an ideal of retirement for the philosopher, and points out that he should find refuge as soon as possible from the evils of the world in the divine presence. The Phædo pictures the whole life of the philosopher as a dying, a purification of the soul, an existence in prison, from which escape is only by virtue and knowledge. This ascetic tendency seems very anti-Greek; and yet is it foreign to Greek life? In Greek history do we not find, by the side of the Epic and the glorification of nature, the Mysteries and the withdrawal of the individual from the world? Both these historic tendencies appear in Plato, and on the whole the ascetic tendency is stronger. The Ideas are contrasted with the nature world more often than they transfigure it. The dualism of Heaven and earth is emphasized, and the contrast is strongly drawn between the reality of the Ideas and the temporality of sense.

Platonic Love. Described in technical terms, in both Socrates and Plato, Love (Eros) is the philosophic and not a purely intellectual impulse. Its rather more didactic character in Socrates of an attempt to engender knowledge and virtue in others appears in Plato in a larger way as the personal and practical realization of the truth. Reduced to its simplest terms, Platonic Love is the longing of the human being in his imperfectness for perfectness and completeness. It is the innate desire for immortality.

True love, according to Plato, takes its beginning in the astonishment or pain at the presentment of the Ideas through remembrance, and the starting-point of Love in an individual is the principle fundamental in pre-existence. The philosophic impulse for the Ideas takes the form of Love, because visible beauty has a special brightness and makes a strong impression on the mind. Love belongs only to mortal natures; for they, since they do not possess the divine unchangeableness, have to propagate themselves continually. Love may be described therefore as the propagative impulse. On the one side it may be viewed as an inspiration from above, springing from the higher, divinely-related nature in man; on the other hand it may be viewed as an aspiration from below of the sensuous and human in man. On this side it is a yearning and not a possession; and it presupposes a want. Analyzed in this way, Love is the middle term between having and not having. It is the union of the higher and lower natures in man, and throughout the universe there stirs this longing for the eternal and imperishable.

What is the object of this Love,—of this desire of the finite to fill itself with the eternal and to generate something enduring? That object is the possession of the Good, which is happiness. The possession of the Good is immortality. What is the external condition of Love’s existence? The presence of Beauty; for this alone, by its harmonious form, corresponds to our desire and awakens it. Does this Love appear first in its complete realization? No; there are many kinds of beauty, and Love is as various in degree and kind as beautiful objects. Love rises step by step, and is realized in a graduated series of forms. There is Love for beautiful shapes, sexual love; Love for beautiful souls, and this appears in works of art, education, and legislation; Love for beautiful sciences, the seeking of beauty wherever found; and finally Love for the pure, shapeless, eternal, and unchangeable—the Idea, which is immortality. All else is preliminary to the dialectical knowledge of the Ideas. In all this, man is reaching out from his sense of want for satisfaction, from his poverty to the completed riches of life. Love bears him on from height to height until, in religion and Love of the Good, man gains his immortality. In Platonic Love all kinds of Love have place in pointing the soul onward to the divinely perfect. Yet this Love for the divinely perfect is the soul’s aspiration from the beginning, and all the preliminary stages are only the uncertain attempts to seize the Idea in the copies. Love, therefore, is this universal struggle of the finite to inform itself with the Idea; and delight in any one object of beauty is a stage in the development of this impulse.32

Plato’s Theory of Ethics. Plato’s Theory of Ideas is, after all, fundamentally only an outspoken ethical metaphysics, and his Ethics is his most fruitful accomplishment. Plato’s ethical teaching is therefore involved in all that we have said about him up to this point. An understanding of his ethics includes an understanding of the formation and growth of his dialectic, an insight into his physical theory, knowledge of the two tendencies which run through his teaching, and especially an understanding of his doctrine of Love. If some of the previous exposition is repeated, it will be only to bring out more fully his ethical teaching as a special science. We shall speak of three topics under this general subject of his ethics: (1) his development of his theory of the Good; (2) the four cardinal virtues; (3) his theory of political society.

1. Development of Plato’s Theory of the Good. Plato betrays his ascetic tendency in his first drafting of the Ideas and, as we have said, the double-world theory is the cause of this. Only one of the two worlds is real and will appeal to the Wise Man. The soul belongs to the supersensible world, and the knowledge, of which virtue consists, takes man away from the sensible world. Since earthly life is full of evil, the soul should die to it and turn away as soon as possible to the divine presence. This ascetic aspect of morality is set forth in the Phædo and the Theætetus.

In the general development of his metaphysics in the second drafting of his Ideas, Plato’s ethical theory developed also. He not only went beyond the abstract statement of Socrates, but beyond his own original asceticism. When he brought his two worlds into teleological relationship, he was logically compelled to abandon his conception of ascetic morals. The physical world has now a relative reality, and by the same sign sense-life has a relative moral value. It was Plato’s firm conviction that moral conduct makes man truly blessed, in this and another world. He still held, too, that this blessedness, this complete perfection of the soul, this sharing in the divine world of the Ideas, is the Highest Good. Yet he now came to recognize other kinds of happiness as steps toward the ideal Good. There are varieties of Goods, as appeared in his doctrine of Love. Besides the intuition of knowledge and its pleasures, there are physical Goods and their pleasures. Intellectual pleasure may be unmixed with pain, but there are also sensuous pleasures unmixed with pain. Here is indeed Plato, the Greek, speaking; Plato, the Greek artist, impelled by the charm of the Greek world around him. Strongly as he combated the Cyrenaic hedonism, and closely as he was allied to Socrates, his Greek nature gave way before the manifestations of the Idea of the Good in the physical world. The pleasure in nature objects, in educational development, in the practical and plastic arts, in mathematical sciences, and in the orderliness of life—all these became for him preliminary stages in the full participation in the ethical Good. They came to have for him a relative value, as expressed in the Philebus, Republic, and Symposium.

2. The Four Cardinal Virtues. But Plato went farther, and was not content merely to point out the place of human conduct in the twofold world. He developed his theory of ethics systematically. He classified the virtues on the basis of his threefold division of the soul. Naturally enough, in his first draft of his theory, Plato followed Socrates in reducing the single virtues to one, viz., the virtue of knowledge. In his second drafting, however, in the later dialogues, he assumed their distinct independence, and he reflected upon their respective spheres. A virtue corresponds to each part of the soul. Each part has its own perfection, which is its virtue. Moreover, in so far as one or another part of the soul preponderates in different men, so far are they suited to developing the corresponding virtue.

From the above scheme it will be observed that the rational nature has the brain as its organ and reaches its perfection or virtue in Wisdom; that the ignoble irrational nature has the liver as its organ, and reaches its virtue in self-control or Temperance. Finally, since the perfection of the whole soul consists in the orderly relation of its single parts, so subordinated and regulated that the soul can reach its highest perfection, the fourth and highest virtue is Justice. The four cardinal virtues are Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, and Justice.

3. Plato’s Theory of Political Society. The virtue, Justice, has little meaning in individual ethics, and as an ethical perfection can only be attained in society. There is no English word that is quite the equivalent for the Greek term, but Justice is the usual translation. Justice, however, does not contain the moral spirit of the Greek word. Consistent with his conception of the Ideas in his metaphysics, Plato’s ideal of moral perfection is to be found, not in the individual, but in the species. Plato pictures less the perfect man than the perfect society. Perfect happiness is rather that of the social whole than of the individual, and this ideal of happiness can be reached only in the ideal State. That is why the dialogue, the Republic, occupies so important a place in Plato’s writings. It is an attempt to show how the fourth and last virtue, Justice, can be attained. The first book was written in Plato’s early period, and was perhaps called a “dialogue concerning Justice.” Justice is distinctly the social virtue found only in a perfect society, and it will make possible the fulfillment of Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance. The individual man is a vital being whose heart is the central organ, whose characteristic virtue is courage. His courage is indeed a combination of wisdom and temperance. The picture is of the individual man, not amenable to society, but in “a state of warfare.” In such isolation Justice would not exist as a virtue.

The political state is necessary if the Idea of the Good is to be manifested in human life. The state is the true educator in Justice, and at the same time the ideal state will be the realization of Justice. The task of the state everywhere is the same, to wit, to direct the common life of man so that every one may be happy through virtue. The result may be attained only by so ordering the relations of society that Justice may prevail. Plato’s Republic is a carefully worked-out plan of such an ideal society. The author made several attempts at Syracuse with the aid of Dion to get first the elder and then the younger Dionysius to transform the tyranny into an ideal state. These attempts resulted disastrously. In the disappointment of his old age that his ideal scheme had never succeeded, he wrote the Laws, which is a revised version of the Republic with the Pythagorean number theory as a basis.

The Spartan state is his model. The Platonic Republic is aristocratic. There is paternal government in everything, censorship of everything. Each individual’s course is marked out for him. When Greek political life was undergoing dissolution, Plato raised the ideal of political unity as necessary to individual happiness as against the anarchism of segregation. Yet even in this he was reflecting the current distrust of political institutions. The comparison of existing political conditions with his own political ideal reinforced his aristocratic leanings, and made him the more distrustful of the political possibilities of a democracy. He believed that an intelligently worked out scheme of government was practicable, and should be forced upon people, if necessary. In no other way was political salvation possible.

Since the State is the man “writ large,” it has three parts, corresponding to the three parts of the human soul. There is (1) the working or peasant class, which corresponds to the appetitive part of man; the only object of such a class is to furnish food for the State, and the highest virtue of this class is temperance. The peasant can only work, eat, and drink, and the highest praise of him is that he controls his appetites. (2) The warrior class guards the State within and without; and its characteristic virtue is courage. The will must show its highest efficiency in guidance of the emotions. (3) Highest of all is the cultured class of philosophers or rulers, who determine by their insight the laws that should rule the State. The virtue of this class is wisdom, for is this class not the brain of the State? The perfection of the entire State exists when the three classes have their proper distribution of power. Then does justice exist. The duty of the rulers is therefore to have the highest wisdom possible, of the warriors to be unflinching in their devotion to duty, of the peasants to exercise self-control. Thus Plato’s Republic is an aristocracy in the hands of the carefully cultured, which consists of the two upper classes. By means of community of wives, the exposure of deformed infants, and the State’s education of the children of the two upper classes, a continuous selection can be made, the two upper classes can be renewed, and all private ends can be renounced in favor of the State. Thus the sole end of a community is moral education, and Plato arranges his ideal community with reference to that. The two upper classes are a great family, to whom this is intrusted. They have dedicated their lives to the furthering of science and to its administration.

A SELECTION OF PASSAGES FROM PLATO FOR ENGLISH READERS.

By Professor Benjamin Jowett, late Principal of Balliol College, Oxford.

The figures refer to the pages in the margin of Professor Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues; the letters (A, B, C, D, E) to the subdivisions of these pages.

FIRST VOLUME.

Charmides.

Socrates prescribes for Charmides’ headache.

156 D (... ‘Such, Charmides, is the nature of the charm’....)
–157 C (... ‘my dear Charmides.’)

Lysis.

We only trust those who appear to know more than ourselves.

206 D (‘Upon entering’ ...)
–210 B (‘He assented.’)

Laches.

(1) The art of fighting in armour is useless to the soldier.

182 E (‘I should not like to maintain’ ...)
–184 C (... ‘his opinion of the matter.’)

(2) The harmony of words and deeds.

188 C (‘I have but one feeling’ ...)
–189 B (... ‘the difference of our ages.’)

Protagoras.

(1) The Sophists at the house of Callias.

314 B (... ‘And now let us go’ ...)
–316 A (... ‘rendered his words inaudible.’)

(2) Protagoras tells the story of Prometheus and Epimetheus.

320 D (‘Once upon a time’ ...)
–322 D (... ‘a plague of the state.’)

(3) The education of a Greek child.

325 D (‘Education and admonition’ ...)
–326 E (... ‘would be far more surprising.’)

Euthydemus.

The doctrinaire politician and the true philosopher.

304 B (‘Such was the discussion, Crito’ ...)
–to end (... ‘and be of good cheer.’)

Cratylus.

The significations of the various letters.

426 B (‘My first notions’ ...)
–427 C (... ‘and out of them by imitation compounding other signs.’ ...)

Phaedrus.

(1) The philosopher must study the nature of man.

229 A (‘Let us turn aside,’ ...)
–230 A (... ‘a diviner and lowlier destiny?’ ...)

(2) The banks of the Ilissus.

230 B (... ‘But let me ask you, friend,’ ...)
–E (... ‘in which you can read best.’)

(3) The soul in a figure and her transmigrations.

245 C (‘The soul through all her being’ ...)
–257 A (... ‘leave you a fool in the world below.’)

(4) The true orator.

269 E (‘I conceive Pericles’ ...)
–272 C (... ‘and yet the creation of such an art is not easy.’)

(5) The tale of Thamus and Theuth.

274 C (‘I have heard a tradition of the ancients’ ...)
–275 C (... ‘that the Theban is right in his view about letters.’)

(6) Speech better than writing.

275 C (‘I cannot help feeling’ ...)
–277 A (... ‘to the utmost extent of human happiness.’)

(7) The true art of composition.

277 B (‘Until a man knows the truth’ ...)
–278 D (... ‘poet or speech-maker or law-maker.’)

Ion.

The inspiration of the poet.

533 C (‘I perceive, Ion,’ ...)
–536 C (... ‘not by art, but by divine inspiration.’)

Symposium.

The Character of Socrates.

(1) His fit of abstraction in the porch.

174 A (‘He said that he met Socrates’ ...)
–175 C (... ‘Socrates entered.’ ...)

(2) His strange appearance and marvellous power of influencing others.

215 A (‘And now, my boys,’ ...)
–216 G (... ‘so that I am at my wit’s end.’)

(3) His endurance, eccentricity, and bravery.

219 E (... ‘All this happened’ ...)
–222 A (... ‘a good and honourable man.’)

SECOND VOLUME.

Meno.

Learning is only Recollection (ἀνάμνησις): The Immortality of the Soul proved out of Pindar.

81 A (‘I will tell you why’ ...)
–E (... ‘active and inquisitive.’ ...)

Apology, or the Defence of Socrates.

The whole.

Crito, or Socrates in prison.

The whole.

Phaedo, or the last day of Socrates’ life.

(1) Socrates in prison.

57–60 C (... ‘pleasure appears to succeed.’)

(2) Why the philosopher is willing to die, although he will not take his own life.

60 C (‘Upon this Cebes said’ ...)
–69 E (... ‘it will be well.’)

(3) The Description of the Other Life.

107 C (‘But then, O my friends,’ ...)
–115 A (... ‘after I am dead.’)

(4) The Death of Socrates.

115 A (‘When he had done speaking’ ...)
–to end.

Gorgias.

(1) The good man desires, not a long, but a virtuous, life.

511 A (‘You always contrive’ ...)
–513 A (... ‘their own perdition.’ ...)

(2) The Judgment of the Dead.

523 A (‘Listen, then,’ ...)
–527 A (... ‘any sort of insult.’)

(3) The Moral of the Tale.

527 A (‘Perhaps this may appear’ ...)
–to end.

[Appendix.]

I Alcibiades.

Socrates humiliates Alcibiades by shewing him his inferiority to the Kings of Lacedaemon and of Persia.

120 A (‘Why, you surely know’ ...)
–124 B (... ‘ever desired anything.’)

II Alcibiades.

The Gods approve of simple worship.

148 C (‘The Lacedaemonians, too,’ ...)
–150 B (... ‘for me to oppose.’)

Eryxias.

The nature of money.

399 E (‘Then now we have to consider’ ...)
–400 E (... ‘of no use to us ... True.’)

THIRD VOLUME.

Republic.

Book i.

The commencement of the Dialogue: Cephalus on Old Age.

327–331 B (... ‘is, in my opinion, the greatest.’)

Book ii.

(1) The argument of Adeimantus.

362 E (... ‘But let me add something more’ ...)
–367 E (... ‘seen or unseen by Gods and men.’)

(2) The true nature of God.

376 D (‘Come, then, and let us pass’ ...)
–383 A (‘Your thoughts ... my own.’)

Book iii.

(1) Grace and beauty in art and education.

400 D (‘But there is no difficulty’ ...)
–402 A (... ‘made him long familiar.’)

(2) The good physician and the good judge.

408 C (‘All that, Socrates, is excellent,’ ...)
–409 E (‘And in mine also.’)

(3) The true use of music and gymnastic.

409 E (‘This is the sort of medicine’ ...)
–412 A (‘You are quite right, Socrates.’)

Book iv.

Virtue the health, Vice the disease, of the Soul.

443 C (‘Then our dream has been realized’ ...)
–444 E (‘Assuredly.’)

Book v.

(1) The right treatment of enemies.

469 A (‘Next, how shall our soldiers’ ...)
–471 C (... ‘like all our previous enactments, are very good.’)

(2) The last wave:—The Government of Philosophers.

471 C (‘But still I must say, Socrates.’ ...)
–473 E (... ‘is indeed a hard thing.’)

Book vi.

(1) The Parable of the Pilot.

487 A (‘Here Adeimantus interposed’ ...)
–489 D (‘Precisely so, he said.’)

(2) The low estimation in which Philosophy is held by the World.

493 E (‘You recognize the truth of what I have been saying?’ ...)
–497 A (... ‘as well as of himself.’)

Book vii.

The Allegory of the Cave.

514 A–520 E (... ‘present rulers of the State.’)

Book viii.

Democracy and the Democratic Man.

555 B (‘Next comes democracy’ ...)
–562 A ( ... ‘the democratic man.’)

Book ix.

The Many-headed Monster.
The City of which the Pattern is laid up in Heaven.

588 A (‘Well, I said, and now’ ...)
–to the end of the book.

Book x.

The Vision of Er.

614 B (‘Well, I said, I will tell you a tale;’ ...)
–to the end of the book.

Timaeus.

(1) The Tale of Solon.

20 E (‘Then listen, Socrates’ ...)
–26 D ( ... ‘these ancient Athenians.’ ...)

(2) The Balance of Mind and Body.

87 C (‘There is a corresponding enquiry’ ...)
–90 D ( ... ‘the present and the future.’)

Critias, or the Island of Atlantis.

The entire Dialogue.

FOURTH VOLUME.

Parmenides.

The meeting of Socrates and Parmenides at Athens. Criticism of the Ideas.

126 A (‘We had come from our home’ ...)
–136 C ( ... ‘and see the real truth.’)

Theaetetus.

(1) Socrates, a midwife, and the son of a midwife.

148 E (‘These are the pangs of labour’ ...)
–151 E ( ... ‘by the help of God you will be able to tell.’)

(2) The Lawyer and the Philosopher.

172 B ( ... ‘Here arises a new question’ ...)
–177 C ( ... ‘Let us go back to the argument.’)

Sophist.

The Pre-Socratic Philosophers and their puzzles.

241 D (‘Will you then forgive me’ ...)
–246 D ( ... ‘but seekers after truth.’)

Statesman.

The Reign of Cronos.

269 A (‘Again, we have been often told’ ...)
–274 E (... ‘and at another time in another.’ ...)

Philebus.

The first Taste of Logic.
The Art of Dialectic.

15 C (‘Good; and where shall we begin’ ...)
–17 A (... ‘and true dialectic.’)

FIFTH VOLUME.

Laws.

Book i.

(1) The true nature of Education.

643 A (‘You seem to be quite ready to listen’ ...)
–644 B (... ‘of every man while he lives.’)

(2) Man a puppet of the Gods.

644 E (‘Let us look at the matter thus’ ...)
–645 B (... ‘more clearly distinguished by us.’ ...)

Book iii.

The Origin of Government.

676 A (‘Enough of this’ ...)
–679 E (‘Very true.’)

Book iv.

(1) The virtuous Tyrant.

709 C (‘And does not a like principle’ ...)
–712 A (... ‘granting our supposition.’)

(2) The life of Virtue.

715 E (‘And now what is to be the next step?’ ...)
–718 A (... ‘for the most part in good hope.’ ...)

Book v.

(1) The honour of the Soul.
Precepts for a virtuous life.

726 A–732 D (... ‘both in jest and earnest.’)

(2) The best and second-best state.

739 A (‘The next move’ ...)
–741 A (... ‘to fight against necessity.’)

(3) Riches and Godliness.

742 D (... ‘The intention, as we affirm’ ...)
–744 A (... ‘the work of legislation.’)

Book vii.

(1) The good citizen must not lead an inactive life.

806 D (‘What will be the manner of life’ ...)
–808 C (... ‘to the whole state.’)

(2) The education of the young.

808 D (... ‘When the day breaks’ ...)
 –809 A (... ‘according to the law.’)
810 A (... ‘A fair time’...)
 –812 A (... ‘come to an end.’)

Book viii.

The evils of licentiousness.

835 C (... ‘There is, however, another matter’ ...)
–841 E (... ‘wrongly indulged.’)

Book x.

(1) The three classes of unbelievers.
Advice to the young.

885 B (... ‘For we have already said’ ...)
–888 D (... ‘the truth of these matters.’)

(2) God is not an idle ruler of the Universe; but orders all, even the smallest things, for our good.

899 D (... ‘And now we are to address him’ ...)
–905 D (... ‘any understanding whatsoever’ ...)

(3) God cannot be propitiated by the gifts of the wicked.

905 D (... ‘For I think that we have sufficiently proved’ ...)
–907 D (... ‘will not discredit the lawgiver.’)

Book xi.

(1) The evils of retail trade, and the cure of them.

918 A (‘After the practices of adulteration’ ...)
–919 C (... ‘shamelessness and meanness.’)

(2) The honour of parents.

930 E (‘Neither God, nor a man’ ...)
–932 A (... ‘to what has now been said.’...)

Book xii.

(1) The good state in its intercourse with the world.

949 E (‘Now a state’ ...)
–951 C (... ‘is ill-conducted.’)

(2) The Burial of the Dead.

958 C (‘Thus a man is born’ ...)
–960 A (... ‘a fitting penalty.’...)

Aristotle in the Academy and Lyceum. Many notable pupils gathered around Plato during his mastership of more than forty years. Plato’s nephew, Speusippus, succeeded him as leader of the Academy, and for the next three hundred and fifty years the Academy is called by various names. It is the Older Academy under Speusippus and later; then it is known as the Middle Academy; and then, about 120 B. C., it is known as the New Academy. The history of the Academy is, however, a part of the Hellenic-Roman Period. It is sufficient to say here that the leaders succeeding Plato in the Academy added but little to philosophical speculation, although much to empirical research. The important fact is that the sceptre in philosophy passed from the Academy when Plato died and his greatest pupil Aristotle left it. Just as Plato stood among the pupils of Socrates as Socrates’ most discriminating interpreter, so among the pupils of Plato there was one preëminent pupil,—Aristotle. Aristotle was too great a man to be subordinated to the leadership of Speusippus. Upon the death of Plato he left the Academy, and fourteen years later he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, which became under his mastership the most influential Athenian school. The Lyceum was an inclosed space of ground, like the Academy. It was situated just outside the walls of Athens, on the right bank of the Ilissus. It was dedicated to Apollo, decorated with fountains, gardens, and buildings, and contained one of the great gymnasia of Athens. It was frequented by philosophers, and is known to have been the favorite walk of Aristotle and his pupils, whence they got their name of Peripatetics. Theophrastus, the most eminent pupil of Aristotle, bought a property near the grove and bequeathed it to the school. It was a religious foundation, like the Academy. The method of choosing the scholarchs varied at different times. The name Lyceum is from the same root as Lycian, and was given to Aristotle’s school from the fact that the grove was dedicated to the Lycian Apollo.

Here, in the Lyceum, Greek philosophy was brought to its most complete expression. Here all the threads of Greek cosmological and anthropological undertakings were finally woven together. Here an adjustment was accomplished between Aristotle’s two great predecessors, Plato and Democritus; and materialistic and idealistic realism crystallized in a theory of development. The great form of Aristotle rises to speak the final word of pure Greek civilization, at a time when the custody of Greece had passed from the hands of the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans in succession to the Macedonians. He was the most influential thinker that history had seen. In his formative power upon human thought he has scarcely a peer. Dante called him “the master of those who know.” “In my opinion,” said Cicero, “Aristotle stands almost alone in philosophy.” Eusebius said of him, “Aristotle, nature’s private secretary, dipped his pen in thought.” Goethe remarked, “If now in my quiet days I had youthful faculties at my command, I should devote myself to Greek, in spite of all the difficulties I know. Nature and Aristotle should be my sole study. It is beyond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked, observed.”

The portrait that we draw of Aristotle is very different from that of Plato. Instead of the deeply poetic temper, the man who sees all things in an ideal unity of infiniteness and vastness, we have before us now the scientist in search of facts, the accurate man of good sense, whose imagination does not soar above the clouds, but at the same time has extraordinary fertility in historical and scientific theoretical explanations. His was a life filled with the love of truth. His learning took up into itself the entire range of human knowledge in such a way as to include its earlier development. And what is more, he showed an equal interest in all departments. Aristotle was more of a scientist than Plato, for the theoretical rather than the ethical interest was fundamental in his work. He is the personification and completion of pure Greek learning.

Biography of Aristotle, 384–322 B. C.

Brief Chronological Sketch of Aristotle’s Life.

Aristotle’s Biography in Detail.

1. First Period, 384–347 B. C.—Early Influences. Aristotle was born in Stagira in Macedonia. His father was court physician to King Amyntas, the founder of the Macedonian power and the father of King Philip. He came from a long line of physicians (the caste, Asclepiad) who traced their origin to Asclepius. Little is known about the early years of Aristotle except that his father and mother died, leaving him in the guardianship of Proxenus of Atarneus. (Atarneus is the state in Asia Minor which he later visited.) It can scarcely be doubted that he was destined by his family to be a physician, and that the empirical works of Hippocrates and Democritus were the first elements of his early education. Aristotle grew up in this atmosphere of medicine of Macedonia, which explains his respect for the results of experience and his accuracy in details,—all of which contrasts him with the Attic philosophers.

He was sent by Proxenus to the Academy in 367 B. C., at the age of eighteen, and he remained there for nineteen years, or until he was thirty-seven. He was not merely a pupil in the school, but his brilliancy won for him immediately a prominent position there. He became a teacher, an attractive writer, and champion of the literary spirit of the school. Even while he was a member of the Academy he became a famous man. It is difficult to say just how much influence the Academy had upon the casting of his thought. His scientific inclinations were formed before he went to the Academy; he got his immense scientific erudition in Asia Minor and in Stagira later, after he left the Academy. Probably the spirit of the Platonic school turned his attention to ethical and metaphysical theories, and probably it was due to his stay in the Academy that he became interested in rhetorical and purely cultural studies. At the same time his own influence must have been very great in forming the policy of the Academy, and he was probably responsible for its turning its attention to scientific matters.

The sources from which Aristotle drew the material of his philosophical science were therefore (1) his inherited taste for medicine and empirical science; and (2) the influence of the Academy in ethical, metaphysical, and cultural subjects. Both these factors appear throughout the philosophical development of Aristotle. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that probably Aristotle’s influence upon the Academy was as great as that of the Academy upon him. His own persistence along the line of empirical science shows itself in his period at Atarneus, Mitylene, and on his return to Stagira. Much has been said about an estrangement between Aristotle and his teacher, Plato. This is probably idle gossip. Aristotle held his master in great esteem, as he himself testifies in his Ethics. Aristotle was an independent and original mind, and probably even in the school he would point out defects in Plato’s thought, when his aged teacher would lead his theories upon mistaken lines. Plato said that his pupil Xenocrates needed the spur, while Aristotle needed the bridle. Aristotle was called the brain of the Academy.

2. Second Period, 347–335 B. C.—Traveler and Collector. When Plato died, and his nephew Speusippus became scholarch of the Academy, Aristotle, in company with Xenocrates, went to the court of Hermeias, ruler of Atarneus and Mitylene. Hermeias was another pupil of Plato at the Academy. Here Aristotle married twice, and here he resided for six years. In 343 B. C. he obeyed the summons of King Philip to come to Pella and become the tutor of Alexander. He acted in this capacity for four years, and seems to have been more fortunate than Plato as instructor of a king. His influence upon Alexander was very great. Without losing himself in the impracticable, Aristotle seems to have impressed high philosophical ideals upon the noble spirit of his kingly ward. Alexander says of Aristotle, “To my father I owe my life, to Aristotle the knowledge how to live worthily.” During the tedium of the protracted campaign in Bactria, Alexander sent for the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Æschylus. The Ethics of his teacher was always with him. The ideals of statesmanship, the wide purposes in political control, the greatness of the aims of the young conqueror, as well as his self-control, his aversion to meanness and petty things, and his sublime moderation were due in part to the teachings of Aristotle. Never was there a more fortunate conjunction of two great minds than here.

In 340 B. C., when Alexander entered upon his administrative and military duties, Aristotle became independent of the Macedonian court. He spent the most of these four years (340–335 B. C.) in scientific work at Stagira, in intimate companionship with his young friend Theophrastus, who later succeeded him as scholarch of the Lyceum. “Among the special subjects of study in the school of Mieza and Stagira, natural history formed a part.... Alexander at one time contributed eight hundred talents to forward his former teacher’s investigations in zoölogy, placed at his disposal a thousand men throughout Asia and Greece, with instructions to follow out Aristotle’s directions in collecting and reporting details concerning the life, conditions, and habits of animals, and in every way made his campaigns serve the purpose of scientific investigation.”33 The reports of the ancients concerning the vast sums placed at Aristotle’s disposal for use in scientific investigation are of course exaggerated. That he made large collections during this period, as well as later, is certain. This was possible to him, first, because he was a rich man himself, and second, because of his relations to the courts at Atarneus and Macedonia.

3. Third Period, 335–322 B. C.—Administrator of the Lyceum. When Alexander entered upon his campaigns in Asia, and Aristotle felt himself free from immediate duty to him, he went to Athens and founded the Lyceum. This school very soon arose above the Academy, and became the model of later societies of scholars of antiquity. Its greatness partook of the greatness of Aristotle,—in the universality of its interests, in the orderliness of its administration, and in methodical coöperation. For twelve years he was the executive, teacher, administrator, and inspiration of this school—developing his philosophy, accumulating materials, and instructing his pupils. The enormous product of the school could not have been the work of one pair of hands. Nevertheless the writings, the immense collections, the ethical and political treatises, show a unity that speaks of one master-mind that had them under direction. When the Athenians began to rise against the Macedonian rule, Aristotle’s position in Athens as a friend of Alexander became unsafe. He fled to Chalcis, excusing himself, so the tradition goes, because he wished to spare the Athenians a second crime against philosophy. He died in Chalcis the next year (322 B. C.).

A comparison of these three periods of Aristotle’s life discloses the uniformity of that life, from beginning to end. He was, from the time he entered the Academy to the founding of the Lyceum, a teacher. Even as pupil of Plato his original mind was influencing the Platonic teaching into new channels. During his second period he was a traveler, to be sure; but he was more,—a collector and a king’s tutor. He was always Aristotle, the philosophical teacher. Hence the periods of his life cannot be so sharply marked as Plato’s, and the lines that are drawn point only to phases of a life that had unity, like his doctrine. His life is a regular development from sources in his first period, and with no later deviating influence.

The Writings of Aristotle. On every page of Plato’s dialogues you meet Plato; in Aristotle’s writings the personality of the author is subordinated to his science. The collections of writings transmitted under the name of Aristotle do not give even an approximately complete picture of the immense activity of the man. They form, indeed, a stately memorial, even after the spurious writings have been omitted, but their bulk is small compared with what we know was the product of his literary workshop. Forty treatises have been preserved. A catalogue of the library of Alexandria in 220 B. C. includes a list of one hundred and forty-six others, which have since been lost. Aristotle was writer, lecturer, teacher, and the administrator of the Lyceum. His leadership of that school, his careful direction of his coöperators in research and study, was not only an instruction but an impulsion to independent scientific study for all time. His great collections of scientific data can be explained only by their being the combined efforts of many different forces, guided and schooled by a common master. The world was ready to take an account of stock, and Aristotle was the first encyclopædic philosopher.

1. The Popular Writings, published by Aristotle himself. These were intended for a circle of readers wider than his own school. No one of these works is extant in complete form. They were written by Aristotle during his life in the Academy. They were dialogues in form; in content they were discussions of justice, wealth, wisdom, rhetoric, politics, love, conduct, prayer, generosity, education, government, etc. They were less artistic than Plato’s dialogues, but more original and striking; and they were full of happy inventions and rich thought, expressed in florid diction. The ancients spoke often of Aristotle’s “golden flow of thought,” but this cannot truthfully apply to any save these lost writings.

2. The Compilations. These were excerpts from scientific works, collections of zoölogical, literary, historical, and antiquarian data, which Aristotle and his pupils had gathered together. Only a few fragments of the total remain. There were critical notes upon the Pythagoreans, reports of extracts of Plato’s dialogues, a descriptive basis for zoölogy with illustrations, collections of previous rhetorical theories and models, histories of tragedies and comedies, discussions about Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Euripides, and other poets; there were historical miscellanies and reports concerning one hundred fifty-eight Greek state constitutions.

3. The Didactic Writings. These have in part been preserved, and they make up the collection of what we have of Aristotle’s writings. They have a consistently developed terminology, but they are wanting in grace and beauty of presentation. The plan of the books is generally the same: the problem is precisely stated; then follows a criticism of various attempted solutions; then a discussion of the salient points of the problem; then a marshaling of the facts; and, finally, an attempt to get a conclusive result. The method is modern in its scientific procedure and the contrast with Plato is striking. Yet it must not be inferred that these books of Aristotle are orderly. There are repetitions, haste, unequal development of parts, and unfulfilled promises. These books were nothing else than the written notes which he had made the basis of his lectures and had intended to form into text-books in some future time. Only parts of the Logic seem to have been completed for text-book purposes.

These didactic writings are simply arranged as follows (Wallace):

1. The treatise on Logic called Organon.

2. Speculative Philosophy.

First Philosophy or Theology or Metaphysics.

Mathematics (writings not extant).

Physics (including the history of animals and the psychology).

3. Practical Philosophy.

Ethics.

Economics.

Politics.

4. Poetic Philosophy.

Art.

Poetry.

Rhetoric.

Aristotle’s Starting-Point. The two early influences in Aristotle’s mental development offer an explanation for his philosophical point of view. These influences were his empirical training in medicine and his conceptual training in the moral ideals of the Academy. Plato had convinced him that if there were to be any true science, it must be founded on concepts that are unchanging. His own scientific training, however, reinforced by the influence of Democritus, made him respect the value of empirical facts. While the philosophical problem for Aristotle was the same as that for Plato, the difference between them was in the main a matter of emphasis due to their different starting-points. Plato started with the refutation of the Protagorean theory of perception, and consequently he emphasized the value of the conceptual world; Aristotle, however, felt that Plato had overestimated the conceptual world, and he emphasized the importance of empirical facts. Both when a member of the Academy and later, he strongly contended against Plato’s evaluation of the world of Ideas, because they so transcended the sense world that they neither explained nor illuminated it. Aristotle’s reaction against Plato’s theory furthermore gives us a more correct notion of what Plato really taught. If conceptions are to enter into knowledge, they must not exist in the clouds of abstraction. He maintained that Plato had increased the difficulty of the problem by adding a second world of entities quite distinct from the world of nature. The same problem that Plato confronted still exists unanswered, said Aristotle. It is the problem of the twofold world. If Ideas are apart from things, we could not know that they existed, we should not be able to know anything about them, nor should we be able to explain the world through them. It is true that Plato, in his later draft, had conceived Ideas to be teleologically related to the physical things, but how could this be if they were apart from things? Thus in his reaction from Plato’s theory of Ideas, Aristotle reëstablished the world of perceptual fact. This is the starting-point of Aristotle.

The Fundamental Principle in Aristotle’s Philosophy. The first question then is, How did Aristotle reëstablish the perceptual fact? What means did he employ to give the perceptual fact a reality? The answer to this question will be the statement of Aristotle’s fundamental principle. It will show his advance over Plato by showing his new estimate of the perceptual world. Plato accepted the Protagorean doctrine of perception, but also gave it a new value by placing perceptions beside conceptions in the world of reality; Aristotle developed Plato’s teaching about perceptions by linking them inseparably with conceptions. Aristotle felt that Plato’s difficulties arose from the lack of close relationship between conceptual Being and perceptual fact. What is that linkage? What binds abiding reality and changing phenomena so closely? The linkage is development. Development is the relation between conception and perception. It is the fundamental principle in the philosophy of Aristotle throughout and places a new estimate upon the value of perception. Perceptual facts apart from conceptions have no reality; conceptions apart from perceptions are mere abstractions. In the world of reality conceptual Being resides in the perceptual facts, and the perceptual facts express conceptions. They always exist together in a linkage or relationship that is teleological, purposeful—the linkage of development. An abstract statement of this relationship is, “Aristotle felt the conceptual necessity of the empirically actual.” Perhaps the clearest statement of this fundamental principle can be made in the terms of evolution. It is this: true reality is the essence which unfolds in phenomena. Notice that this sentence has two parts equally freighted: reality is an unfolding essence; reality is in phenomena. The true universal must be thought as realizing itself through its development in particulars; the true concept as realizing itself through its development in percepts; the true abiding Being as realizing itself in its development through change. On the one hand, reality is the essence of things; on the other, reality has existence only in things.

True reality is the individual.

The individual consists of two aspects: (1) conceptual being, and (2) perceptual change.

These two aspects always stand in a relationship.

That relationship is developing purpose.

Here is the key to the teaching of Aristotle that seems to open the doors of its many chambers. In his metaphysics reality is the individual developing from possibility to actuality. In physics individual phenomena get a reality through their development from lower to higher types. In psychology the individual person is real when the particulars, the physiological and psychological states, develop toward the soul, which is their truth. So, too, in the great system of logic in which Aristotle was pioneer, he is simply trying to give the particular judgment a meaning by showing its linkage to the universal judgment. Everywhere the starting-point of Aristotle is the perceptual fact. Everywhere his purpose is to reëstablish it by showing its relation to abiding conception in the individual.

It may be well to remark, however, that Aristotle does not altogether succeed in constructing a consistent theory. In spite of his criticism of Plato’s transcendent Ideas, in many places Aristotle does not overcome Plato’s dualism. Frequently he differs from Plato more in words than in meaning. We shall observe some of his inconsistencies in their place. We shall see that Aristotle as he meant to be was different from Aristotle as he was. Aristotle as he meant to be—Aristotle as the opponent of Plato’s dualism—develops a philosophy from a single fundamental principle. Aristotle as he was, reverts at many critical points to Plato’s dualism.

Aristotle’s principle of development may appear at first blush very much like the modern principle of evolution. As a matter of fact it was very different. In all Greek philosophy after Socrates the study of morals was fundamental. The ideal of Socrates, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, and the later Schools was a moral ideal. Being moral it was fixed, and it fixed all the changes of life to it as a centre. Nature was to the Greek a museum of types oscillating around a perfect form. There was no evolution in the sense of progress. There was development within the individual—the boy becomes a man, the seed becomes a flower; but there was no evolution from genus to genus. Indeed, any variation of the individual from its type was considered a defect.

Aristotle’s Logic. Aristotle felt that there must be a science of the methods of science; and so successful was he in its formulation that it has practically remained as he transmitted it. We are struck by the way in which he divided science into the special sciences, each with its well-defined field. It was perfectly natural that he should also, with his great power of abstract reasoning, discuss the body of rules for legitimate thinking. In science there must be an art of investigation, just as in rhetoric there is an art of persuasion. At an early period these logical writings were collected under the name Organon, because the Lyceum regarded them so intimately connected with scientific procedure as to be the instrument or “organ” of all knowledge. Certain parts of Aristotle’s Organon are of doubtful genuineness. The important sections are the Analytics, a masterly logical groundwork of the conclusion and proof, and the Topics, which treats of the inductive methods of probability. Aristotle therefore made logic a preliminary and separate study, as it should be. It became the preface to his scientific work.

We shall briefly discuss Aristotle’s logic, because it is an exemplification of his general philosophical principle. Among the subjects in the history of philosophy, logic is perhaps the only one that has had no internal history. Aristotle was the pioneer in the subject. He left it so finished that scarcely any changes of consequence could be made in it. The external history of the Aristotelian logic has, however, been notable. A portion of the Categories and De Interpretatione was most influential in the history of the Middle Ages. The Logic had been misunderstood and misapplied by Aristotle’s own School, so that when it came into the hands of the Schoolmen it had acquired the reputation of being only an abstract formal logic. As thus interpreted it was used by the Schoolmen and attacked by the philosophers of the Renaissance. Such a view of Aristotle’s logic is unjust to the author. He had conceived logic in its wholeness to be the true method to be used in investigating practical scientific problems.

The Sophists had proposed rules of practical value in the study of individual cases; Socrates had tried to fix upon some universal principle as the basis of knowledge; Aristotle made a comprehensive study of the regular forms of thought and the rules that govern the arrangement of these forms in right thinking. In true Platonic fashion he conceived physical events in nature to be due to some universal cause. If, therefore, logical procedure be scientific, it must follow the ways of nature: logic must deduce particular perceptions from some universal idea. The necessary thought-relations in which the particular stands will then appear. Deduction of the particular from the universal is the true scientific method, used in the explanation of nature-phenomena; so in proof the same deductive reasoning should be used. In scientific study we are trying to show the conceptual necessity of an empirical fact; in proof we are showing the conceptual necessity of the particular term. Whether we are explaining an event or proving a conclusion, we are employing the same logical process. Aristotle thus regarded his logic as the true scientific method for practical service, not as a merely abstract discipline in verbal hair-splitting.

Socrates and Plato confined themselves to the study of the concept or simple term. Aristotle also studied the concept. Indeed, he tried to find out what concepts are fundamental in our thinking, so fundamental that they are our thought reduced to its lowest terms. He names ten of these fundamental concepts and calls them categories. But Aristotle goes farther than Socrates and Plato, and makes his real point of departure the judgment. A single term does not express truth. For truth we must have two terms connected by the verb “is,” i. e. some relation must be shown between them. This is a judgment. Reasoning is still more complex. It is the putting together or showing the relation between two judgments. This process takes the form of the syllogism. The first task of deduction is to present the laws of the syllogism. These will then be the laws of scientific investigation. According to these, particulars can be derived with certainty from universal propositions, provided such universals are established. The syllogism is in the form of two premises and a derived conclusion. It contains three terms. The problem is to infer, from the relation that one of these terms bears to the two other terms, what the two bear to each other. The principle employed is that of subordination; and the differentiations of the syllogism can be many, depending on the quality and quantity of the premises and the distribution of the middle term. The working of the syllogism in inference has a certainty so great that Aristotle called it apodictic.

But there is another side to the syllogistic besides the deduction of proof or the explanation of empirical fact. This is the establishment of the premises. All deduction presupposes absolute premises. All deduction is grounded on something not deduced; all proof on something not proved; all explanation on something that has not been explained. These presuppositions are universal propositions that can be known only immediately through intuitions. Aristotle is not altogether clear as to what these intuitions are. He names such axioms as the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle, and some special propositions which apply only to particular sciences. Since the premises which we actually use are not open to proof, but only strengthened as to the validity of their application, we must use the method of induction in our search for them. We accumulate data from opinions and varied experiences, and then we ascend to a generalization which we take as a premise. The results of induction cannot therefore be in themselves certain. The results are only probable, and can have the character of knowledge only as they explain phenomena. Aristotle means by induction something different from the present use of the term. Induction in modern times means a kind of proof; Aristotle means a method of discovery of relatively universal terms where the absolutely universal cannot be obtained.