A Short History of Greek Philosophy

J >> John Marshall >> A Short History of Greek Philosophy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes. So far as the
few known facts reveal him, we can hardly say that except as supplying
a step towards the completer development of the _motive_ [22] idea in
being, he greatly adds to the chain of progressive thought.

IV. HERACLITUS.--Although not a native of Miletus, but of Ephesus,
Heraclitus, both by his nationality as an Ionian and by his position in
the development of philosophic conceptions, falls naturally to be
classed with the philosophers of Miletus. His period may be given
approximately as from about 560 to 500 B.C., though others place him a
generation later. Few authentic particulars have been preserved of
him. We hear of extensive travels, of his return to his native city
only to refuse a share in its activities, of his retirement to a
hermit's life. He seems to have formed a contrast to the preceding
philosophers in his greater detachment from the ordinary interests of
civic existence; and much in his teaching suggests the ascetic if not
the misanthrope. He received the nickname of 'The Obscure,' from the
studied mystery in which he was supposed to involve his {16} [23]
teaching. He wrote not for the vulgar, but for the gifted few. 'Much
learning makes not wise' was the motto of his work; the man of gift, of
insight, that man is better than ten thousand. He was savage in his
criticism of other writers, even the greatest. Homer, he said, and
Archilochus too, deserved to be hooted from the platform and thrashed.
Even the main purport of his writings was differently interpreted.
Some named his work 'The Muses,' as though it were chiefly a poetic
vision; others named it 'The sure Steersman to the Goal of Life';
others, more prosaically, 'A Treatise of Nature.'

[26]

The fundamental principle or fact of being Heraclitus formulated in the
famous dictum, 'All things pass.' In the eternal flux or flow of being
consisted its reality; even as in a river the water is ever changing,
and the river exists as a river only in virtue of this continual
change; or as in a living body, wherein while there is life there is no
stability or fixedness; stability and fixedness are the attributes of
the unreal image of life, not of life itself. Thus, as will be
observed, from the _material_ basis of being as conceived by Thales,
with only a very vague conception of the counter-principle of movement,
philosophy has wheeled round in Heraclitus to the other extreme; he
finds his permanent element in the negation of permanence; being or
reality consists in never 'being' but always 'becoming,' not in
stability but in change.

{17}

[27]

This eternal movement he pictures elsewhere as an eternal strife of
opposites, whose differences nevertheless consummate themselves in
finest harmony. Thus oneness emerges out of multiplicity, multiplicity
out of oneness; and the harmony of the universe is of contraries, as of
the lyre and the bow. _War_ is the father and king and lord of all
things. Neither god nor man presided at the creation of anything that
is; that which was, is that which is, and that which ever shall be;
even an ever-living Fire, ever kindling and ever being extinguished.

[28]

Thus in _Fire_, as an image or symbol of the underlying reality of
existence, Heraclitus advanced to the furthest limit attainable on
physical lines, for the expression of its essentially _motive_
character. That this Fire was no more than a symbol, suggested by the
special characteristics of fire in nature,--its subtlety, its mobility,
its power of penetrating all things and devouring all things, its
powers for beneficence in the warmth of living bodies and the
life-giving power of the sun,--is seen in the fact that he readily
varies his expression for this principle, calling it at times the
Thunderbolt, at others the eternal Reason, [29] or Law, or Fate. To
his mental view creation was a process eternally in action, the fiery
element descending by the law of its being into the cruder [30] forms
of water and earth, only to be resolved again by upward process into
fire; even as one sees the {18} vapour from the sea ascending and
melting into the [32] aether. As a kindred vapour or exhalation he
recognised the Soul or Breath for a manifestation of the essential
element. It is formless, ever changing with every breath we take, yet
it is the constructive and unifying force which keeps the body
together, and conditions its life and growth. At this point [33]
Heraclitus comes into touch with Anaximenes. In the act of breathing
we draw into our own being a portion of the all-pervading vital element
of all being; in this universal being we thereby live and move and have
our consciousness; the eternal and omnipresent wisdom becomes, through
the channels of our senses, and especially through the eyes, in
fragments at least our wisdom. In sleep we are not indeed cut off
wholly from this wisdom; through our breathing we hold as it were to
its root; but of its flower we are then deprived. On awaking again we
begin once more to partake according to our full measure of the living
thought; even as coals when brought near the fire are themselves made
partakers of it, but when taken away again become quenched.

[34]

Hence, in so far as man is wise, it is because his spirit is kindled by
union with the universal spirit; but there is a baser, or, as
Heraclitus termed it, a moister element also in him, which is the
element of unreason, as in a drunken man. And thus the trustworthiness
or otherwise of the senses, as the {19} channels of communication with
the divine, depends on the _dryness_ or _moistness_,--or, as we should
express it, using, after all, only another metaphor,--on the
_elevation_ or _baseness_ of the spirit that is within. To those whose
souls are base and barbarous, the eternal movement, the living fire, is
invisible; and thus what they do see is nothing but death. Immersed in
the mere appearances of things and their supposed stability, they,
whether sleeping or waking, behold only dead forms; their spirits are
dead.

[35]

For the guidance of life there is no law but the common sense, which is
the union of those fragmentary perceptions of eternal law, which
individual men [37] attain, in so far as their spirits are dry and
pure. Of absolute knowledge human nature is not capable, but only the
Divine. To the Eternal, therefore, alone all things are good and
beautiful and just, because to Him alone do things appear in their
totality. To the human partial reason some things are unjust and
others just. Hence life, by reason of the limitations [38] involved in
it, he sometimes spoke of as the death of the soul, and death as the
renewal of its life. And so, [39] in the great events of man's life
and in the small, as in the mighty circle of the heavens, good and
evil, life and death, growth and decay, are but the systole and
diastole, the outward and inward pulsation, of an eternal good, an
eternal harmony. Day and {20} night, winter and summer, war and peace,
satiety and hunger--each conditions the other, all are part of God. It
is sickness that makes health good and sweet, hunger that gives its
pleasure to feeding, weariness that makes sleep a good.

[39]

This vision of existence in its eternal flux and interchange, seems to
have inspired Heraclitus with a contemplative melancholy. In the
traditions of later times he was known as the _weeping_ philosopher.
Lucian represents him as saying, "To me it is a sorrow that there is
nothing fixed or secure, and that all things are thrown confusedly
together, so that pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, the great
and the small, are the same, ever circling round and passing one into
the other in the sport of time." "Time," he says elsewhere, "is like a
child that plays with the dice." The highest good, therefore, for
mortals is that clarity of perception in respect of oneself and all
that is, whereby we shall learn to apprehend somewhat of the eternal
unity and harmony, that underlies the good and evil of time, the shock
and stress of circumstance and place. The highest virtue for man is a
placid and a quiet constancy, whatever the changes and chances of life
may bring. It is the pantheistic apathy.

The sadder note of humanity, the note of Euripides and at times of
Sophocles, the note of Dante and of the _Tempest_ of Shakespeare, of
Shelley and Arnold {21} and Carlyle,--this note we hear thus early and
thus clear, in the dim and distant utterances of Heraclitus. The
mystery of existence, the unreality of what seems most real, the
intangibility and evanescence of all things earthly,--these thoughts
obscurely echoing to us across the ages from Heraclitus, have remained,
and always will remain, among the deepest and most insistent of the
world's thoughts, in its sincerest moments and in its greatest thinkers.

{22}

CHAPTER III

PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS

_The Pythagorean Brotherhood--Number the master--God the soul of the
world--Music and morals_

[41]

The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called the
Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that
island, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] of
Polycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels of
Pythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Others
tell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete,
and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain is
that at some date towards the end of the sixth century B.C. he removed
to Southern Italy, which was then extensively colonised by Greeks, and
that there he became a great philosophic teacher, and ultimately even a
predominating political influence.

[46]

He instituted a school in the strictest sense, with its various grades
of learners, subject for years to a vow of silence, holding all things
in common, and admitted, according to their approved fitness, to {23}
[47] successive revelations of the true doctrine of the Master. Those
in the lower grades were called Listeners; those in the higher,
Mathematicians or Students; those in the most advanced stage,
Physicists or Philosophers. With the political relations of the school
we need not here concern ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greek
cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who,
having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had
learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for
some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and
Pythagoreanism as a political power was violently rooted out.

Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras, in its relation to the
general development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, that
it is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory of
Pythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others.
The teaching was largely oral, and was developed by successive leaders
of the school. The doctrine, therefore, is generally spoken of as
that, not of Pythagoras, but of the Pythagoreans. Nor can we fix for
certain on one fundamental conception, upon which the whole structure
of their doctrine was built.

[52]

One dictum we may start with because of its analogies with what has
been said of the earlier {24} philosophies. The universe, said the
Pythagoreans, was constituted of _indefinites_ and _definers_, _i.e._
of that which has no character, but has infinite capacities of taking a
character; and secondly, of things or forces which impose a character
upon this. Out of the combination of these two elements or principles
all knowable [53] existences come into being. "All things," they said,
"as known have _Number_; and this number has two natures, the Odd and
the Even; the known thing is the Odd-Even or union of the two."

[66]

By a curious and somewhat fanciful development of this conception the
Pythagoreans drew up two parallel columns of antithetical principles in
nature, ten in each, thus:--

Definite Indefinite
Odd Even
One Many
Right Left
Male Female
Steadfast Moving
Straight Bent
Light Dark
Good Evil
Four Square Irregular

Looking down these two lists we shall see that the first covers various
aspects of what is conceived as the ordering, defining, formative
principle in nature; and that the second in like manner comprises
various {25} aspects of the unordered, neutral, passive, or
disorganised element or principle; the first, to adopt a later method
of expression, is _Form_, the second _Matter_. How this antithesis was
worked out by Plato and Aristotle we shall see later on.

[54]

While, in a sense, then, even the indefinite has number, inasmuch as it
is capable of having number or order imposed upon it (and only in so
far as it has this imposed upon it, does it become knowable or
intelligible), yet, as a positive factor, Number belongs only to the
first class; as such it is the source of all knowledge and of all good.
In reality the Pythagoreans had not got any further by this
representation of nature than was reached, for example, by Anaximander,
and still more definitely by Heraclitus, when they posited an
Indefinite or Infinite principle in nature which by the clash of innate
antagonisms developed into a knowable universe (see above, pp. 12, 16).
But one can easily imagine that once the idea of Number became
associated with that of the knowable in things, a wide field of
detailed development and experiment, so to speak, in the arcana of
nature, seemed to be opened. Every arithmetical or geometrical theorem
became in this view another window giving light into the secret heart
of things. Number became a kind of god, a revealer; and the philosophy
of number a kind of religion or mystery. And this is why the {26}
second grade of disciples were called Mathematicians; mathematics was
the essential preparation for and initiation into philosophy.

Whether that which truly exists was actually identical with Number or
Numbers, or whether it was something different from Number, but had a
certain relation to Number; whether if there were such a relation, this
was merely a relation of analogy or of conformability, or whether
Number were something actually embodied in that which truly
exists--these were speculative questions which were variously answered
by various teachers, and which probably interested the later more than
the earlier leaders of the school.

[56]

A further question arose: Assuming that ultimately the elements of
knowable existence are but two, the One or Definite, and the Manifold
or Indefinite, it was argued by some that there must be some third or
higher principle governing the relations of these; there must be some
law or harmony which shall render their intelligible union [57]
possible. This principle of union was God, ever-living, ever One,
eternal, immovable, self-identical. [58] This was the supreme reality,
the Odd-Even or Many in One, One in Many, in whom was gathered up, as
in an eternal harmony, all the contrarieties of lower [61] existence.
Through the interchange and intergrowth of these contrarieties God
realises Himself; the {27} universe in its evolution is the
self-picturing of God. [62] God is diffused as the seminal principle
throughout [68] the universe; He is the Soul of the world, and the
world itself is God in process. The world, therefore, is in a sense a
living creature. At its heart and circumference are purest fire;
between these circle the sun, the moon, and the five planets, whose
ordered movements, as of seven chords, produce an eternal music, the
'Music of the Spheres.' Earth, too, like the planets, is a celestial
body, moving like them around the central fire.

[71]

By analogy with this conception of the universe as the realisation of
God, so also the body, whether [72] of man or of any creature, is the
realisation for the time being of a soul. Without the body and the
life of the body, that soul were a blind and fleeting ghost. Of such
unrealised souls there are many in various degrees and states; the
whole air indeed is full of spirits, who are the causes of dreams and
omens.

[73]

Thus the change and flux that are visible in all else are visible also
in the relations of soul and body. Multitudes of fleeting ghosts or
spirits are continually seeking realisation through union with bodies,
passing at birth into this one and that, and at death issuing forth
again into the void. Like wax which takes now one impression now
another, yet remains in itself ever the same, so souls vary in the
outward {28} [74] form that envelops and realises them. In this bodily
life, the Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying, we are as it
were in bonds or in a prison, whence we may not justly go forth till
the Lord calls us. This idea Cicero mistranslated with a truly Roman
fitness: according to him they taught that in this life we are as
sentinels at our post, who may not quit it till our Commander orders.

On the one hand, therefore, the union of soul with body was necessary
for the realisation of the former ((Greek) _soma, body_, being as it
were (Greek) _sema, expression_), even as the reality of God was not in
the Odd or Eternal Unity, but in the Odd-Even, the Unity in
Multiplicity. On the other hand this union implied a certain loss or
degradation. In other words, in so far as the soul became realised it
also became corporealised, subject to the influence of passion and [75]
change. In a sense therefore the soul as realised was double; in
itself it partook of the eternal reason, as associated with body it
belonged to the realm of unreason.

This disruption of the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturally
developed in time into a threefold division, _pure thought_,
_perception_, and _desire_; or even more nearly approaching the
Platonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into _reason_,
_passion_, and _desire_. But the later developments were largely
influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be further
followed here.

{29} [78] Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for its
soothing and refining effects, but for the intellectual interest of its
numerical relations. Reference has already been made (see above, p.
27) to their quaint doctrine of the music of the spheres; and the same
idea of rhythmic harmony pervaded the whole system. The life of the
soul was a harmony; the virtues were perfect numbers; and the influence
of music on the soul was only one instance among many of the harmonious
relations of things throughout the universe. Thus we have Pythagoras
described as soothing mental afflictions, and bodily ones also, by
rhythmic measure and by song. With the morning's dawn he would be
astir, harmonising his own spirit to his lyre, and chanting ancient
hymns of the Cretan Thales, of Homer, and of Hesiod, till all the
tremors of his soul were calmed and still.

Night and morning also he prescribed for himself and his followers an
examination, as it were a _tuning_ and testing of oneself. At these
times especially was it meet for us to take account of our soul and its
doings; in the evening to ask, "Wherein have I transgressed? What
done? What failed to do?" In the morning, "What must I do? Wherein
repair past days' forgetfulness?"

But the first duty of all was truth,--truth to one's own highest, truth
to the highest beyond us. Through truth alone could the soul approach
the divine. {30} Falsehood was of the earth; the real life of the soul
must be in harmony with the heavenly and eternal verities.

Pythagoreanism remained a power for centuries throughout the Greek
world and beyond. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it
in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them
it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet
more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence.

{31}

CHAPTER IV

THE ELEATICS

_God and nature--Knowledge and opinion--Being and evolution--Love the
creator--The modern egotism_

[79]

I. XENOPHANES.--Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, one of the Ionian
cities of Asia Minor, but having been forced at the age of twenty-five
to leave his native city owing to some political revolution, he
wandered to various cities of Greece, and ultimately to Zancle and
Catana, Ionian colonies in Sicily, and thence to Elea or Velia, a Greek
city on the coast of Italy. This city had, like Miletus, reached a
high pitch of commercial prosperity, and like it also became a centre
of philosophic teaching. For there Xenophanes remained and founded a
school, so that he and his successors received the name of Eleatics.
His date is uncertain; but he seems to have been contemporary with
Anaximander [80] and Pythagoras, and to have had some knowledge of the
doctrine of both. He wrote in various poetic measures, using against
the poets, and especially against Homer and Hesiod, their own weapons,
to [83] denounce their anthropomorphic theology. If oxen {32} or lions
had hands, he said, they would have fashioned gods after their likeness
which would have been as [85] authentic as Homer's. As against these
poets, and the popular mythology, he insisted that God must be one,
eternal, incorporeal, without beginning or ending. [87] As Aristotle
strikingly expresses it, "He looked forth over the whole heavens and
said that God is one, [88] that that which is one is God." The
favourite antitheses of his time, the definite and the indefinite,
movable and immovable, change-producing and by change produced--these
and such as these, he maintained, were inapplicable to the eternally
and [86] essentially existent. In this there was no partition of
organs or faculties, no variation or shadow of turning; the Eternal
Being was like a sphere, everywhere equal; everywhere self-identical.

[84]

His proof of this was a logical one; the absolutely self-existent could
not be thought in conjunction with attributes which either admitted any
external influencing Him, or any external influenced by Him. The
prevailing dualism he considered to be, as an ultimate theory of the
universe, unthinkable and therefore false. Outside the Self-existent
there could be no second self-existent, otherwise each would be
conditioned by the existence of the other, and the Self-existent would
be gone. Anything different from the Self-existent must be of the
non-existent, _i.e._ must be nothing.

{33}

One can easily see in these discussions some adumbration of many
theological or metaphysical difficulties of later times, as of the
origin of evil, of freewill in man, of the relation of the created
world to its Creator. If these problems cannot be said to be solved
yet, we need not be surprised that Xenophanes did not solve them. He
was content to emphasise that which seemed to him to be necessary and
true, that God was God, and not either a partner with, or a function
of, matter.

[89]

At the same time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as he
expressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) _doxa_). As to
the origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow
[90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water are
the sources from which we spring; and he imagined a time when there was
neither sea nor land, but an all-pervading slough and slime; nay, many
such periods of inundation and emergence had been, hence the sea-shells
on the tops of mountains and the fossils in the rocks. Air and fire
also as agencies of change are sometimes referred to by him;
anticipations in fact are visible of the fourfold classification of the
elements which was formally made by some of his successors.

[91]

II. PARMENIDES.--The pupil and successor of Xenophanes was PARMENIDES,
a native of Elea. In a celebrated dialogue of Plato bearing the name
of {34} this philosopher he is described as visiting Socrates when the
latter was very young. "He was then already advanced in years, very
hoary, yet noble to look upon, in years some sixty and five." Socrates
was born about 479 B.C. The birth of Parmenides might therefore, if
this indication be authentic, be about 520. He was of a wealthy and
noble family, and able therefore to devote himself to a learned
leisure. Like his master he expounded his views in verse, and
fragments of his poem of considerable length and importance have been
preserved. The title of the work was _Peri Phueos_--_Of Nature_.

[93]

The exordium of the poem is one of some grandeur. The poet describes
himself as soaring aloft to the sanctuary of wisdom where it is set in
highest aether, the daughters of the Sun being his guides; under whose
leading having traversed the path of perpetual day and at length
attained the temple of the goddess, he from her lips received
instruction in the eternal verities, and had shown to him the deceptive
guesses of mortals. "'Tis for thee," she says, "to hear of both,--to
have disclosed to thee on the one hand the sure heart of convincing
verity, on the other hand the guesses of mortals wherein is no
ascertainment. Nevertheless thou shalt learn of these also, that
having gone through them all thou may'st see by what unsureness of path
must he go who goeth the way of opinion. From such a way of searching
{35} restrain thou thy thought, and let not the much-experimenting
habit force thee along the path wherein thou must use thine eye, yet
being sightless, and the ear with its clamorous buzzings, and the
chattering tongue. 'Tis by Reason that thou must in lengthened trial
judge what I shall say to thee."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15