Volume I Part 19 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Its continuation by Plato, and its end by the Sceptics.]
But man cannot live without some guiding rule. If his speculations in Nature will yield him nothing on which he may rely, he will seek some other aid. If there be no criterion of truth for him in philosophy, he will lean on implicit, unquestioning faith. If he cannot prove by physical arguments the existence of G.o.d, he will, with Socrates, accept that great fact as self evident and needing no demonstration. He will, in like manner, take his stand upon the undeniable advantages of virtue and good morals, defending the doctrine that pleasure should be the object of life--pleasure of that pure kind which flows from a cultivation of enn.o.bling pursuits, or instinctive, as exhibited in the life of brutes. But when he has thus cast aside demonstration as needless for his purposes, and put his reliance in this manner on faith, he has lost the restraining, the guiding principle that can set bounds to his conduct. If he considers, with Socrates, who opens the third age of Greek development--its age of faith--the existence of G.o.d as not needing any proof, he may, in like manner, add thereto the existence of matter and ideas. To faith there will be no difficulty in such doctrines as those of Reminiscence, the double immortality of the soul, the actual existence of universals; and, if such faith, unrestrained and unrestricted, be directed to the regulation of personal life, there is nothing to prevent a falling into excess and base egoism. For ethics, in such an application, ends either in the attempt at the procurement of extreme personal sanct.i.ty or the obtaining of individual pleasure--the foundation of patriotism is sapped, the sentiment of friends.h.i.+p is destroyed. So it was with the period of Grecian faith inaugurated by Socrates, developed by Plato, and closed by the Sceptics. Antisthenes and Diogenes of Sinope, in their outrages on society and their self-mortifications, show to what end a period of faith, unrestrained by reason, will come; and Epicurus demonstrated its tendency when guided by self.
Thus closes the third period of Greek philosophical development.
[Sidenote: Age of Reason--its solutions.]
In introducing us to a fourth, Aristotle insists that, though we must rely on reason, Reason itself must submit to be guided by Experience; and Zeno, taking up the same thought, teaches us that we must appeal to the decisions of common sense. He disposes of all doubt respecting the criterion of truth by proclaiming that the distinctness of our sensuous impressions is a sufficient guide. In all this, the essential condition involved is altogether different from that of the speculative ages, and also of the age of faith. Yet, though under the ostensible guidance of reason, the human mind ever seeks to burst through such self-imposed restraints, attempting to ascertain things for which it possesses no suitable data. Even in the age of Aristotle, the age of Reason in Greece, philosophy resumed such questions as those of the creation of the world, the emanation of matter from G.o.d, the existence and nature of evil, the immortality, or, alas! it might perhaps be more truly said, judging from its conclusions, the death of the soul, and this even after the Sceptics had, with increased force, denied that we have any criterion of truth, and showed to their own satisfaction that man, at the best, can do nothing but doubt; and, in view of his condition here upon earth, since it has not been permitted him to know what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, his wisest course is to give himself no concern about the matter, but tranquilly sink into a state of complete indifference and quietism.
How uniformly do we see that through such variations of opinion individual man approaches his end. For Greek philosophy, what other prospect was there but decrepitude, with its contempt for the present, its attachment to the past, its distrust of man, its reliance on the mysterious--the unknown? And this imbecility how plainly we witness before the scene finally is closed.
[Sidenote: Duration of these ages.]
If now we look back upon this career of the Grecian mind, we find that after the legendary prehistoric period--the age of credulity--there came in succession an age of speculative inquiry, an age of faith, an age of reason, an age of decrepitude--the first, the age of credulity, was closed by geographical discovery; the second by the criticism of the Sophists; the third by the doubts of the Sceptics; the fourth, eminently distinguished by the greatness of its results, gradually declined into the fifth, an age of decrepitude, to which the hand of the Roman put an end. In the mental progress of this people we therefore discern the foreshadowing of a course like that of individual life, its epochs answering to Infancy, Childhood Youth, Manhood, Old Age; and which, on a still grander scale, as we shall hereafter find, has been repeated by all Europe in its intellectual development.
[Sidenote: Boundaries of these ages.]
In a s.p.a.ce of 1150 years, ending about A.D. 529, the Greek mind had completed its philosophical career. The ages into which we have divided that course pa.s.s by insensible gradations into each other. They overlap and intermingle, like a gradation of colours, but the characteristics of each are perfectly distinct.
[Sidenote: Determination of the law of variations of opinions.]
[Sidenote: Philosophical conclusions finally arrived at by the Greeks.]
2nd. Having thus determined the general law of the variation of opinions, that it is the same in this nation as in an individual, I shall next endeavour to disentangle the final results attained, considering Greek philosophy as a whole. To return to the ill.u.s.tration, to us more than an empty metaphor, though in individual life there is a successive pa.s.sage through infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood to old age, a pa.s.sage in which the characteristics of each period in their turn disappear, yet, nevertheless, there are certain results in another sense permanent, giving to the whole progress its proper individuality.
A critical eye may discern in the successive stages of Greek philosophical development decisive and enduring results. These it is for which we have been searching in this long and tedious discussion.
There are four grand topics in Greek philosophy: 1st, the existence and attributes of G.o.d; 2nd, the origin and destiny of the world; 3rd, the nature of the human soul; 4th, the possibility of a criterion of truth.
I shall now present what appear to me to be the results at which the Greek mind arrived on each of these points.
[Sidenote: As to G.o.d--His unity.]
(1.) Of the existence and attributes of G.o.d. On this point the decision of the Greek mind was the absolute rejection of all anthropomorphic conceptions, even at the risk of encountering the pressure of the national superst.i.tion. Of the all-powerful, all-perfect, and eternal there can be but one, for such attributes are absolutely opposed to anything like a partic.i.p.ation, whether of a spiritual or material nature; and hence the conclusion that the universe itself is G.o.d, and that all animate and inanimate things belong to his essence. In him they live, and move, and have their being. It is conceivable that G.o.d may exist without the world, but it is inconceivable that the world should exist without G.o.d. We must not, however, permit ourselves to be deluded by the varied aspect of things; for, though the universe is thus G.o.d, we know it not as it really is, but only as it appears. G.o.d has no relations to s.p.a.ce and time. They are only the fictions of our finite imagination.
[Sidenote: But their solution is Pantheism.]
But this ultimate effort of the Greek mind is Pantheism. It is the same result which the more aged branch of the Indo-European family had long before reached. ”There is no G.o.d independent of Nature; no other has been revealed by tradition, perceived by the sense, or demonstrated by argument.”
Yet never will man be satisfied with such a conclusion. It offers him none of that aspect of personality which his yearnings demand. This infinite, and eternal, and universal is no intellect at all. It is pa.s.sionless, without motive, without design. It does not answer to those lineaments of which he catches a glimpse when he considers the attributes of his own soul. He shudderingly turns from Pantheism, this final result of human philosophy, and, voluntarily retracing his steps, subordinates his reason to his instinctive feelings; declines the impersonal as having nothing in unison with him, and a.s.serts a personal G.o.d, the Maker of the universe and the Father of men.
[Sidenote: As to the world--a manifestation of G.o.d.]
(2.) Of the origin and destiny of the world. In an examination of the results at which the Greek mind arrived on this topic, our labour is rendered much lighter by the a.s.sistance we receive from the decision of the preceding inquiry. The origin of all things is in G.o.d, of whom the world is only a visible manifestation. It is evolved by and from him, perhaps, as the Stoics delighted to say, as the plant is evolved by and from the vital germ in the seed. It is an emanation of him. On this point we may therefore accept as correct the general impression entertained by philosophers, Greek, Alexandrian, and Roman after the Christian era, that, at the bottom, the Greek and Oriental philosophies were alike, not only as respects the questions they proposed for solution, but also in the decisions they arrived at. As we have said, this impression led to the belief that there must have been in the remote past a revelation common to both, though subsequently obscured and vitiated by the infirmities and wickedness of man. This doctrine of emanation, reposing on the a.s.sertion that the world existed eternally in G.o.d, that it came forth into visibility from him, and will be hereafter absorbed into him, is one of the most striking features of Veda theology. It is developed with singular ability by the Indian philosophers as well as by the Greeks, and is ill.u.s.trated by their poets.
[Sidenote: This solution identical with the Oriental.]
The following extract from the Inst.i.tutes of Menu will convey the Oriental conclusion: ”This universe existed only in the first divine idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness; imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. Then the sole self-existing power, himself undiscerned, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding his idea, or dispelling the gloom. He whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity--even He, the soul of all beings, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters. The waters are so called (nara) because they were the production of _Nara_, or the spirit of G.o.d; and, since they were his first _ayana_ or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana, or moving on the waters. From that which is the first cause, not the object of sense existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male. He framed the heaven above, the earth beneath, and in the midst placed the subtle ether, the light regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters. He framed all creatures. He gave being to time and the divisions of time--to the stars also and the planets. For the sake of distinguis.h.i.+ng actions, he made a total difference between right and wrong. He whose powers are incomprehensible, having created this universe, was again absorbed in the spirit, changing the time of energy for the time of repose.”
[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.trations of the origins, duration, and absorption of the world.]
From such extracts from the sacred writings of the Hindus we might turn to their poets, and find the same conceptions of the emanation, manifestation, and absorption of the world ill.u.s.trated. ”The Infinite being is like the clear crystal, which receives into itself all the colours and emits them again, yet its transparency or purity is not thereby injured or impaired.” ”He is like the diamond, which absorbs the light surrounding it, and glows in the dark from the emanation thereof.”