A Short History of Greek Philosophy

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"But when I go and have a quiet talk with any man who really is a known
master of some craft or skill, about that craft or skill, I find no
doubt whatever existing in his mind about there being a law, a
something absolutely real and beautiful and true in connection with it.
He, on the contrary, lives with no other purpose or hope or desire but
as far as he can to realise in what he works at something of this real
and beautiful and true, which was before him, will be after him, is the
only valuable thing in him, but yet which honours him with the function
of, in his day and generation, expressing it before the eyes of men."

{112} "Have we not here a key to the great secret? If each man, in
respect of that which he knows best because he lives by it and for it,
knows with intimate knowledge and certainty that there at least there
is a Law working, not himself, but higher and greater than he,--have we
not here a hint of the truth for the universe as a whole; that there
also and in all its operations, great as well as small, there must be a
Law, a great Idea or Ideal working, which was before all things, works
in and gives value to all things, will be the consummation of all
things? Is not this what we mean by the Divine?"

Thus Socrates, despising not the meaner things of life, but bending
from the airy speculations of the proud to the realities which true
labour showed him, laid his ear, so to speak, close to the breast of
nature, and caught there the sound of her very heart-beats.

"Virtue is knowledge," thus he formulated his new vision of things.
Knowledge, yes; but _real_ knowledge; not mere head-knowledge or
lip-knowledge, but the knowledge of the skilled man, the man who by
obedience and teachableness and self-restraint has come to a knowledge
evidencing itself in _works_ expressive of the law that is in him, as
he is in it. _Virtue is knowledge_; on the one hand, therefore, not
something in the air, unreal, intangible; but something in me, in you,
in each man, something which you cannot handle except as individual and
{113} in individuals; on the other hand, something more than individual
or capricious or uncertain,--something which is absolute, over-ruling,
eternal.

_Virtue is knowledge_. And so if a man is virtuous, he is realising
what is best and truest in himself, he is fulfilling also what is best
and truest without himself. He is free, for only the truth makes free;
he is obedient to law, but it is at once a law eternally valid, and a
law which he dictates to himself. And therefore virtue is teachable,
inasmuch as the law in the teacher, perfected in him, is also the law
in the taught, latent in him, by both individually possessed, but
possessed by both in virtue of its being greater than both, of its
being something more than individual.

_Virtue is knowledge_. And therefore the law of virtuous growth is
expressed in the maxim engraved on the Delphic temple, 'Know thyself.'
Know thyself, that is, realise thyself; by obedience and self-control
come to your full stature; be in fact what you are in possibility;
satisfy yourself, in the only way in which true self-satisfaction is
possible, by realising in yourself the law which constitutes your real
being.

_Virtue is knowledge_. And therefore all the manifold relations of
life,--the home, the market, the city, the state; all the multiform
activities of life,--labour and speech and art and literature and {114}
law; all the sentiments of life,--friendship and love and reverence and
courage and hope,--all these are parts of a knowable whole; they are
expressions of law; they are Reason realising itself through
individuals, and in the same process realising them.

{115}

CHAPTER XII

SOCRATES (_concluded_)

_The dialectic method--Instruction through humiliation--Justice and
utility--Righteousness transcending rule_

It must not be imagined that anywhere in the recorded conversations of
Socrates can we find thus in so many words expounded his fundamental
doctrine. Socrates was not an expositor but a questioner; he
disclaimed the position of a teacher, he refused to admit that any were
his pupils or disciples. But his questioning had two sides, each in
its way leading people on to an apprehension of the ideal in existence.
The first side may be called the negative or destructive, the second,
the positive or constructive. In the first, whose object was to break
down all formalism, all mere regard for rules or traditions or
unreasoned maxims, his method had considerable resemblance to that of
the Sophists; like them he descended not infrequently to what looked
very like quibbling and word-play. As Aristotle observes, the
dialectic method differed from that of the Sophists not so much in its
form, as in the purpose for which it was employed. The end of the
{116} Sophists was to confuse, the end of Socrates was through
confusion to reach a more real, because a more reasoned certainty; the
Sophists sought to leave the impression that there was no such thing as
truth; he wished to lead people to the conviction that there was a far
deeper truth than they were as yet possessed of.

A specimen of his manner of conversation preserved for us by Xenophon
(_Memor_. IV. ii.) will make the difference clearer. Euthydemus was a
young man who had shown great industry in forming a collection of wise
sayings from poets and others, and who prided himself on his superior
wisdom because of his knowledge of these. Socrates skilfully manages
to get the ear of this young man by commending him for his collection,
and asks him what he expects his learning to help him to become? A
physician? No, Euthydemus answers. An architect? No. And so in like
manner with other practical skills,--the geometrician's, astronomer's,
professional reciter's. None of these he discovers is what Euthydemus
aims at. He hopes to become a great politician and statesman. Then of
course he hopes to be a just man himself? Euthydemus flatters himself
he is that already. "But," says Socrates, "there must be certain acts
which are the proper products of justice, as of other functions or
skills?"--"No doubt."--"Then of course you can tell us what {117} those
acts or products are?"--"Of course I can, and the products of injustice
as well."--"Very good; then suppose we write down in two opposite
columns what acts are products of justice and what of injustice."--"I
agree," says Euthydemus.--"Well now, what of falsehood? In which
column shall we put it?"--"Why, of course in the unjust column."--"And
cheating?"--"In the same column."--"And stealing?"--"In it too."--"And
enslaving?"--"Yes."--"Not one of these can go to the just
column?"--"Why, that would be an unheard-of thing."

"Well but," says Socrates, "suppose a general has to deal with some
enemy of his country that has done it great wrong; if he conquer and
enslave this enemy, is that wrong?"--"Certainly not."--"If he carries
off the enemy's goods or cheats him in his strategy, what about these
acts?"--"Oh, of course they are quite right. But I thought you were
talking about deceiving or ill-treating friends."--"Then in some cases
we shall have to put these very same acts in both columns?"--"I suppose
so."

"Well, now, suppose we confine ourselves to friends. Imagine a general
with an army under him discouraged and disorganised. Suppose he tells
them that reserves are coming up, and by cheating them into this belief
he saves them from their discouragement, and enables them to win a
victory. What about this cheating of one's friends?"--"Why, I {118}
suppose we shall have to put this too on the just side."--"Or suppose a
lad needs medicine, but refuses to take it, and his father cheats him
into the belief that it is something nice, and getting him to take it,
saves his life; what about that cheat?"--"That will have to go to the
just side too."--"Or suppose you find a friend in a desperate frenzy,
and steal his sword from him, for fear he should kill himself; what do
you say to that theft?"--"That will have to go there too."--"But I
thought you said there must be no cheating of friends?"--"Well, I must
take it all back, if you please."--"Very good. But now there is
another point I should like to ask you. Whether do you think the man
more unjust who is a voluntary violator of justice, or he who is an
involuntary violator of it?"--"Upon my word, Socrates, I no longer have
any confidence in my answers. For the whole thing has turned out to be
exactly the contrary of what I previously imagined. However, suppose I
say that the voluntary deceiver is the more unjust."--"Do you consider
that justice is a matter of knowledge just as much (say) as
writing?"--"Yes, I do."--"Well now, which do you consider the better
skilled as a writer, the man who makes a mistake in writing or in
reading what is written, because he chooses to do so, or the man who
does so because he can't help it?"--"Oh, the first; because he can put
it right whenever he likes."--"Very {119} well, if a man in the same
way breaks the rule of right, knowing what he is doing, while another
breaks the same rule because he can't help it, which by analogy must be
the better versed in justice?"--"The first, I suppose."--"And the man
who is better versed in justice must be the juster man?"--"Apparently
so; but really, Socrates, I don't know where I am. I have been
flattering myself that I was in possession of a philosophy which could
make a good and able man of me. But how great, think you, must now be
my disappointment, when I find myself unable to answer the simplest
question on the subject?"

Many other questions are put to him, tending to probe his
self-knowledge, and in the end he is brought to the conclusion that
perhaps he had better hold his tongue, for it seems he knows nothing at
all. And so he went away deeply despondent, despising himself as an
absolute dolt. "Now many," adds Xenophon, "when brought into this
condition by Socrates, never came near him again. But Euthydemus
concluded that his only hope of ever being worth anything was in seeing
as much of Socrates as he could, and so he never quitted his side as
long as he had a chance, but tried to follow his mode of living. And
Socrates, when he perceived this to be his temper, no longer tormented
him, but sought with all simplicity and clearness to {120} show him
what he deemed it best for him to do and think."

Was this cross-examination mere 'tormenting' with a purpose, or can we
discover underlying it any hint of what Socrates deemed to be the truth
about justice?

Let us note that throughout he is in search of a _definition_, but that
as soon as any attempt is made to define or classify any particular
type of action as just or unjust, _special circumstances_ are suggested
which overturn the classification. Let us note further that while the
immediate result is apparently only to confuse, the remoter but more
permanent result is to raise a suspicion of any hard and fast
definitions, and to suggest that there is something deeper in life than
language is adequate to express, a 'law in the members,' a living
principle for good, which transcends forms and maxims, and which alone
gives real value to acts. Note further the suggestion that this living
principle has a character analogous to the knowledge or skill of an
accomplished artificer; it has relation on the one hand to law, as a
principle binding on the individual, it has relation on the other hand
to _utility_, as expressing itself, not in words, but in acts
beneficial to those concerned. Hence the Socratic formula, Justice is
equivalent to the _Lawful_ on the one hand, to the _Useful_ on the
other.

{121}

Socrates had thus solved by anticipation the apparently never-ending
controversy about morality. Is it a matter imposed by God upon the
heart and conscience of each individual? Is it dictated by the general
sense of the community? Is it the product of Utility? The Socratic
answer would be that it is all three, and that all three mean
ultimately the same thing. What God prescribes is what man when he is
truly man desires; and what God prescribes and man desires is that
which is good and useful for man. It is not a matter for verbal
definition but for vital realisation; the true morality is that which
_works_; the ideally desirable, is ultimately the only possible, course
of action, for all violations of it are ultimately suicidal.

Note finally the suggestion that the man who _knows_ (in Socrates'
sense of knowledge) what is right, shows only more fully his
righteousness when he voluntarily sins; it is the 'unwilling sinner'
who is the wrongdoer. When we consider this strange doctrine in
relation to the instances given,--the general with his army, the father
with his son, the prudent friend with his friend in desperate
straits,--we see that what is meant is that 'sin' in the real sense is
not to be measured or defined by conformity or otherwise to some formal
standard, at least in the case of those who _know_, that is, in the
case of men who have realised goodness in its true nature in {122}
their characters and lives. As St. Paul expressed it (Rom. xiii. 10),
"Love is the fulfilling of the law." Or again (Gal. v. 23), after
enumerating the 'fruits of the spirit'--love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance--he
adds, "Against such there is no law."

In the domain of life, not less than in that of the arts, the highest
activity does not always or necessarily take the form of conformity to
rule. There are critical moments when rules fail, when, in fact,
obedience to rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of which
rules and formulae are at best only an adumbration. The originality of
the great musician or painter consists in just such transcendence of
accepted formulae; this is why he invariably encounters opposition and
obloquy from the learned conventional pedants of his time. And in the
domain of morals the martyrs, reformers, prophets are in like manner
'willing sinners.' They are denounced, persecuted, crucified; for are
they not disturbers of society; do they not unsettle young men; do they
not come, as Christ came, not to bring peace into the world, but a
sword? And thus it is that the willing sinners of one generation are
the martyrs and heroes of the next. Through their life and death a
richer meaning has been given to the law of beauty or of rectitude,
only, alas! in its turn to be translated into new conventions, new
{123} formulae, which shall in due time require new martyrs to
transcend them. And thus, on the other hand, the perfectly honest
sticklers for the old and common-place, unwilling sinners all
unconscious of their sin, are fated to bear in history the brand of men
who have persecuted the righteous without cause. To each, according to
the strange sad law of life, time brings its revenges.

{124}

CHAPTER XIII

THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS

_A philosopher at ease--The sensual sty--Citizens of the world--The tub
of Diogenes--A philosophy of abstracts_

[204]

I. ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS.--Aristippus was a native of Cyrene, a
Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to
Athens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices of
him which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been from
the first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially from
the poverty and self-denial of the master's mode of life. [205] He in
course of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic from
his own place of birth, and from the fact that many subsequent leaders
of the school also belonged to Cyrene. Among his notable disciples
were his daughter Arete, her son named Aristippus after his
grandfather, Ptolemaeus the Aethiopian, Antipater of Cyrene, and a long
succession of others.

Aristippus was a man of considerable subtlety of mind, a ready speaker,
clever in adapting himself to persons and circumstances. On one
occasion, being {125} asked what benefit he considered philosophy had
conferred upon him, he answered, "The capacity of associating with
every one without embarrassment." Philosophy, in fact, was to
Aristippus a method of social culture, a means of making the best of
life as he found it. As Horace observes of him (_Epp_. i. 17. 23)--

Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res
Tentantem majora, fere praesentibus aequum.

"Every aspect and manner of life and fortune fitted Aristippus; he
aimed at what was greater, yet kept an even, mind whatever his present
condition."

[206]

As we have already said, this school was _incompletely_ Socratic,
inasmuch as philosophy was not an end in itself, knowledge whether of
oneself or of other matters had no intrinsic interest for them;
philosophy was only a means towards pleasurable living, enabling them
so to analyse and classify the several experiences of life as to render
a theory of satisfactory [207] existence possible. With them first
came into prominence a phrase which held a large place in all
subsequent Greek philosophy, the _End_ of existence, by which was meant
that which summed up the good in existence, that which made life worth
living, that which was good and desirable in and for itself, and not
merely as a means to something else. What then according to the
Cyrenaics was the End of life? {126} Their answer was that life had at
each moment its own End, in the pleasure of that moment. The past was
gone, the future not yet with us; remembrance of the one, fear or hope
of the other, might contribute to affect the purity of the present
pleasure, but such as it was the present pleasure was a thing apart,
complete in and for itself. Nor was its perfection qualified by any
question of the means by which it was procured; the moment's pleasure
was pleasurable, whatever men might say as to the manner of its [208]
procuring. This pleasure was a tranquil activity of the being, like
the gently heaving sea, midway between violent motion which was pain,
and absolute calm which was insensibility. As a state of activity it
was something positive, not a mere release from [209] pain, not a
simple filling up of a vacuum. Nothing was in its essential nature
either just or noble or base; custom and convention pronounced them one
or other. The wise man made the best he could of his conditions;
valuing mental activity and friendship and wealth and bodily exercise,
and avoiding envy and excessive indulgence of passion and superstition,
not because the first were in themselves good or the second evil, but
because they were respectively helpers or hinderers of pleasure. He is
the master and possessor of pleasure not who abstains from it, but who
uses it and keeps his self-command in the using. Moderate
indulgence--this is wisdom.

{127}

[210]

The one criterion, whether of good or of truth, is the feeling of the
moment for the man who feels it; all question of causes of feelings is
delusive. We can say with truth and certainty, I have the sensation of
white or the sensation of sweet. But that there is a white or a sweet
thing which is the cause of the sensation, that we cannot say for
certain. A man may very well have the sensation white or sweet from
something which has no such quality, as men in delusion or madness have
impressions that are true and real inasmuch as they have them, although
other people do not admit their reality. There is, therefore, no
criterion of truth as between man and man; we may employ the same
words, but each has his own impressions and his own individual
experiences.

One can easily understand this as the doctrine of such a man as
Aristippus, the easy-going man of the world, the courtier and the wit,
the favourite of the tyrant Dionysius; it fits in well enough with a
life of genial self-indulgence; it always reappears whenever a man has
reconciled himself 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' But life
is not always, nor for most persons at any time, a thing of ease and
soft enchantments, and the Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for the
general work-a-day world a stale exotic. 'Every man for himself and
the devil take the hindmost,' is a maxim which comes as a rule {128}
only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they think themselves
strong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of selfishness neither
works nor lasts; every man at some time becomes 'the hindmost,' if not
before, at least in the hour of death for him or his; at that hour he
is hardly disposed, for himself or those he loves, to repeat his maxim.

II. ANTISTHENES AND THE CYNICS.--Aristippus, in his praises of pleasure
as the one good for man (see above, p. 126), remarks that there were
some who [209] refused pleasure "from perversity of mind," taking
pleasure, so to speak, in the denial of pleasure. The school of the
Cynics made this perverse mood, as Aristippus deemed it, the maxim of
their philosophy. As the Cyrenaic school was the school of the rich,
the courtly, the self-indulgent, so the Cynic was the school of the
poor, the exiles, the ascetics. Each was an extreme expression of a
phase of Greek life and thought, though there was this point of union
[215] between them, that _liberty_ of a kind was sought by both. The
Cyrenaics claimed liberty to please themselves in the choice of their
enjoyments; the Cynics sought liberty through denial of enjoyments.
[219] Both, moreover, were cosmopolitan; they mark the decay of the
Greek patriotism, which was essentially civic, and the rise of the
wider but less intense conception of humanity. Aristippus, in a
conversation with Socrates (Xenoph. _Memor_. II. i.) on the {129}
qualifications of those who are fitted to be magistrates, disclaims all
desire to hold such a position himself. "There is," he says, "to my
thinking, a middle way, neither of rule nor of slavery, but of freedom,
which leads most surely to true happiness. So to avoid all the evils
of partisanship and faction I nowhere take upon me the position of a
citizen, but in every city remain a sojourner and a stranger." And in
like manner Antisthenes the Cynic, being asked how a man should
approach politics, answered, "He will approach it as he will fire, not
too near, lest he be burnt; not too far away, lest he starve of cold."
And Diogenes, being asked of what city he was, answered, "I am a
citizen of the world." The Cynic ideal, in fact, was summed up in
these four words--wisdom, independence, free speech, liberty.

[214]

Antisthenes, founder of the school, was a native of Athens, but being
of mixed blood (his mother was a Thracian) he was not recognised as an
Athenian citizen. He was a student first under Gorgias, and acquired
from him a considerable elegance of literary style; subsequently he
became a devoted hearer of Socrates, and became prominent among his
followers for an asceticism surpassing his master's. One day, we are
told, he showed a great rent in the thread-bare cloak which was his
only garment, whereupon Socrates slily remarked, "I can see through
your cloak your love of glory." He carried a leathern {130} scrip and
a staff, and the 'scrip and staff' became distinctive marks of his
school. The name Cynic, derived from the Greek word for a dog, is
variously accounted for, some attributing it to the 'doglike' habits of
the school, others to their love of 'barking' criticism, others to the
fact that a certain gymnasium in the outskirts of Athens, called
Cynosarges, sacred to Hercules the patron-divinity of men in the
political position of Antisthenes, was a favourite resort of his. He
was a voluminous, some thought a too voluminous, [216] expounder of his
tenets. Like the other Incomplete Socratics, his teaching was mainly
on ethical questions.

[215]

His chief pupil and successor was the famous Diogenes, a native of
Sinope, a Greek colony on the Euxine Sea. He even bettered the
instructions of his master in the matter of extreme frugality of
living, claiming that he was a true follower of Hercules in preferring
independence to every other good. The tale of his living in a cask or
tub is well known. His theory was that the peculiar privilege of the
gods consisted in their need of nothing; men approached nearest the
life of the gods in needing as little as possible.

[217]

Many other sayings of one or other teacher are quoted, all tending to
the same conclusion. For example, "I had rather be mad than enjoying
myself!" "Follow the pleasures that come after pains, not those which
bring pains in their train." "There {131} are pains that are useless,
there are pains that are natural: the wise choose the latter, and thus
find happiness even through pain. For the very contempt of pleasure
comes with practice to be the highest pleasure." "When I wish a
treat," says Antisthenes, "I do not go and buy it at great cost in the
marketplace; I find my storehouse of pleasures in the soul."

[218]

The life of the wise man, therefore, was a training of mind and body to
despise pleasure and attain independence. In this way virtue was
teachable, and could be so acquired as to become an inseparable
possession. The man who had thus attained to wisdom, not of words, but
of deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that could
neither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And so
Antisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning,
answered, "To unlearn what is evil." That is to say, to the Cynic
conception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love of
pleasure; the path of wisdom was a weaning of soul and body by practice
from the allurements of pleasure, until both were so perfectly
accustomed to its denial as to find an unalloyed pleasure in the very
act of [219] refusing it. In this way virtue became absolutely
sufficient for happiness, and so far was it from being necessary to
have wealth or the admiration of men in addition, that the true kingly
life was "to do well, {132} and be ill spoken of." All else but virtue
was a matter of indifference.

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