A Critical History of Greek Philosophy Part 17

Lack of originality is a second consequence of the subjectivism of the age. Since metaphysics, physics, and logic are not cultivated, except in a purely practical interest, they do not flourish. Instead of advancing in these arenas of thought, the philosophies of the age go backwards. Older systems, long discredited, are revived, and their dead bones triumphantly paraded abroad. The Stoics return to Heracleitus for their physics, Epicurus resurrects the atomism of Democritus. Even in ethics, on which they concentrate all their thought, these post-Aristotelian systems have nothing essentially new to say. Stoicism borrows its princ.i.p.al ideas from the Cynics, Epicureanism from the Cyrenaics. The post-Aristotelians rearrange old thoughts in a new order. They take up the ideas of the past and exaggerate this or that aspect of them. They twist and turn them in all directions, and squeeze them dry for a drop of new life. {343} But in the end nothing new eventuates. Greek thought is finished, and there is nothing new to be got out of it, torture it how they will.

From the first Stoic to the last Neo-Platonist, there is no essentially new principle added to philosophy, unless we count as such the sad and jaded ideas which the Neo-Platonists introduced from the East.

Lastly, subjectivism ends naturally in scepticism, the denial of all knowledge, the rejection of all philosophy. We have already seen, in the Sophists, the phenomenon of subjectivism leading to scepticism.

The Sophists made the individual subject the measure of truth and morals, and in the end this meant the denial of truth and morality altogether. So it is now. The subjectivism of the Stoics and Epicureans is followed by the scepticism of Pyrrho and his successors.

With them, as with the Sophists, nothing is true or good in itself, but only opinion makes it so.

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CHAPTER XV

THE STOICS

Zeno of Cyprus, the founder of the Stoic School, a Greek of Phoenician descent, was born about 342 B.C., and died in 270. He is said to have followed philosophy; because he lost all his property in a s.h.i.+p-wreck--a motive characteristic of the age. He came to Athens, and learned philosophy under Crates the Cynic, Stilpo the Megaric, and Polemo the Academic. About 300 B.C. he founded his school at the Stoa Poecile (many-coloured portico) whence the name Stoic. He died by his own hand. He was followed by Cleanthes, and then by Chrysippus, as leaders of the school. Chrysippus was a man of immense productivity and laborious scholars.h.i.+p. He composed over seven hundred books, but all are lost. Though not the founder, he was the chief pillar of Stoicism. The school attracted many adherents, and flourished for many centuries, not only in Greece, but later in Rome, where the most thoughtful writers, such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, counted themselves among its followers.

We know little for certain as to what share particular Stoics, Zeno, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus, had in the formation of the doctrines of the school. But after Chrysippus the main lines of the doctrine were complete. {345} We shall deal, therefore, with Stoicism as a whole, and not with the special teaching of particular Stoics. The system is divided into three parts, Logic, Physics, and Ethics, of which the first two are entirely subservient to the last. Stoicism is essentially a system of ethics which, however, is guided by a logic as theory of method, and rests upon physics as foundation.

Logic.

We may pa.s.s over the formal logic of the Stoics, which is, in all essentials, the logic of Aristotle. To this, however, they added a theory, peculiar to themselves, of the origin of knowledge and the criterion of truth. All knowledge, they said, enters the mind through the senses. The mind is a _tabula rasa_, upon which sense-impressions are inscribed. It may have a certain activity of its own, but this activity is confined exclusively to materials supplied by the physical organs of sense. This theory stands, of course, in sheer opposition to the idealism of Plato, for whom the mind alone was the source of knowledge, the senses being the sources of all illusion and error. The Stoics denied the metaphysical reality of concepts. Concepts are merely ideas in the mind, abstracted from particulars, and have no reality outside consciousness.

Since all knowledge is a knowledge of sense-objects, truth is simply the correspondence of our impressions to things. How are we to know whether our ideas are correct copies of things? How distinguish between reality and imagination, dreams, or illusions? What is the criterion of truth? It cannot lie in concepts, since these are of our own making. Nothing is true save {346} sense-impressions, and therefore the criterion of truth must lie in sensation itself. It cannot be in thought, but must be in feeling. Real objects, said the Stoics, produce in us an intense feeling, or conviction, of their reality. The strength and vividness of the image distinguish these real perceptions from a dream or fancy. Hence the sole criterion of truth is this striking conviction, whereby the real forces itself upon our consciousness, and will not be denied. The relapse into complete subjectivity will here be noted. There is no universally grounded criterion of truth. It is based, not on reason, but on feeling. All depends on the subjective convictions of the individual.

Physics.

The fundamental proposition of the Stoic physics is that "nothing incorporeal exists." This materialism coheres with the sensationalism of their doctrine of knowledge. Plato placed knowledge in thought, and reality, therefore, in the Idea. The Stoics, however, place knowledge in physical sensation, and reality, therefore, in what is known by the senses, matter. All things, they said, even the soul, even G.o.d himself, are material and nothing more than material. This belief they based upon two main considerations. Firstly, the unity of the world demands it. The world is one, and must issue from one principle. We must have a monism. The idealism of Plato and Aristotle had resolved itself into a futile struggle against the dualism of matter and thought. Since the gulf cannot be bridged from the side of the Idea, we must take our stand on matter, and reduce mind to it. Secondly, body and soul, G.o.d and {347} the world, are pairs which act and react upon one another. The body, for example, produces thoughts (sense-impressions) in the soul, the soul produces movements in the body. This would be impossible if both were not of the same substance.

The corporeal cannot act on the incorporeal, nor the incorporeal on the corporeal. There is no point of contact. Hence all must be equally corporeal.

All things being material, what is the original kind of matter, or stuff, out of which the world is made? The Stoics turned to Heracleitus for an answer. Fire is the primordial kind of being, and all things are composed of fire. With this materialism the Stoics combined pantheism. The primal fire is G.o.d. G.o.d is related to the world exactly as the soul to the body. The human soul is likewise fire, and comes from the divine fire. It permeates and penetrates the entire body, and, in order that its interpenetration might be regarded as complete, the Stoics denied the impenetrability of matter. Just as the soul-fire permeates the whole body, so G.o.d, the primal fire, pervades the entire world. He is the soul of the world. The world is His body.

But in spite of this materialism, the Stoics averred that G.o.d is absolute reason. This is not a return to idealism. It does not imply the incorporeality of G.o.d. For reason, like all else, is material. It means simply that the divine fire is a rational element. Since G.o.d is reason, it follows that the world is governed by reason, and this means two things. It means, firstly, that there is purpose in the world, and therefore, order, harmony, beauty, and design. Secondly, since reason is law as opposed to the lawless, it means that the universe is {348} subject to the absolute sway of law, is governed by the rigorous necessity of cause and effect.

Hence the individual is not free. There can be no true freedom of the will in a world governed by necessity. We may, without harm, say that we choose to do this or that, that our acts are voluntary. But such phrases merely mean that we a.s.sent to what we do. What we do is none the less governed by causes, and therefore by necessity.

The world-process is circular. G.o.d changes the fiery substance of himself first into air, then water, then earth. So the world arises.

But it will be ended by a conflagration in which all things will return into the primal fire. Thereafter, at a pre-ordained time, G.o.d will again trans.m.u.te himself into a world. It follows from the law of necessity that the course taken by this second, and every subsequent, world, will be identical in every way with the course taken by the first world. The process goes on for ever, and nothing new ever happens. The history of each successive world is the same as that of all the others down to the minutest details.

The human soul is part of the divine fire, and proceeds into man from G.o.d. Hence it is a rational soul, and this is a point of cardinal importance in connexion with the Stoic ethics. But the soul of each individual does not come direct from G.o.d. The divine fire was breathed into the first man, and thereafter pa.s.ses from parent to child in the act of procreation. After death, all souls, according to some, but only the souls of the good, according to others, continue in individual existence until the general conflagration in which they, and all else, return to G.o.d.

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Ethics.

The Stoic ethical teaching is based upon two principles already developed in their physics; first, that the universe is governed by absolute law, which admits of no exceptions; and second, that the essential nature of man is reason. Both are summed up in the famous Stoic maxim, "Live according to nature." For this maxim has two aspects. It means, in the first place, that men should conform themselves to nature in the wider sense, that is, to the laws of the universe, and secondly, that they should conform their actions to nature in the narrower sense, to their own essential nature, reason.

These two expressions mean, for the Stoics, the same thing. For the universe is governed not only by law, but by the law of reason, and man in following his own rational nature is _ipso facto_ conforming himself to the laws of the larger world. In a sense, of course, there is no possibility of man's disobeying the laws of nature, for he, like all else in the world, acts of necessity. And it might be asked, what is the use of exhorting a man to obey the laws of the universe, when, as part of the great mechanism of the world, he cannot by any possibility do anything else? It is not to be supposed that a genuine solution of this difficulty is to be found in Stoic philosophy. They urged, however, that, though man will in any case do as the necessity of the world compels him, it is given to him alone, not merely to obey the law, but to a.s.sent to his own obedience, to follow the law consciously and deliberately, as only a rational being can.

Virtue, then, is the life according to reason. Morality is simply rational action. It is the universal reason which is to govern our lives, not the caprice and self-will {350} of the individual. The wise man consciously subordinates his life to the life of the whole universe, and recognises himself as merely a cog in the great machine.

Now the definition of morality as the life according to reason is not a principle peculiar to the Stoics. Both Plato and Aristotle taught the same. In fact, as we have already seen, to found morality upon reason, and not upon the particular foibles, feelings, or intuitions, of the individual self, is the basis of every genuine ethic. But what was peculiar to the Stoics was the narrow and one-sided interpretation which they gave to this principle. Aristotle had taught that the essential nature of man is reason, and that morality consists in following this, his essential nature. But he recognized that the pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes have their place in the human organism. He did not demand their suppression, but merely their control by reason. But the Stoics looked upon the pa.s.sions as essentially irrational, and demanded their complete extirpation. They envisaged life as a battle against the pa.s.sions, in which the latter had to be completely annihilated. Hence their ethical views end in a rigorous and unbalanced asceticism.

Aristotle, in his broad and moderate way, though he believed virtue alone to possess intrinsic value, yet allowed to external goods and circ.u.mstances a place in the scheme of life. The Stoics a.s.serted that virtue alone is good, vice alone evil, and that all else is absolutely indifferent. Poverty, sickness, pain, and death, are not evils.

Riches, health, pleasure, and life, are not goods. A man may commit suicide, for in destroying his life he destroys nothing of value.

Above all, pleasure is not a good. One ought not to seek pleasure.

Virtue is {351} the only happiness. And man must be virtuous, not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of duty. And since virtue alone is good, vice alone evil, there followed the further paradox that all virtues are equally good, and all vices equally evil. There are no degrees.

Virtue is founded upon reason, and so upon knowledge. Hence the importance of science, physics, logic, which are valued not for themselves, but because they are the foundations of morality. The prime virtue, and the root of all other virtues, is therefore wisdom.

The wise man is synonymous with the good man. From the root-virtue, wisdom, spring the four cardinal virtues, insight, bravery, self-control, justice. But since all virtues have one root, he who possesses wisdom possesses all virtue, he who lacks it lacks all. A man is either wholly virtuous, or wholly vicious. The world is divided into wise men and fools, the former perfectly good, the latter absolutely evil. There is nothing between the two. There is no such thing as a gradual transition from one to the other. Conversion must be instantaneous. The wise man is perfect, has all happiness, freedom, riches, beauty. He alone is the perfect king, statesman, poet, prophet, orator, critic, physician. The fool has all vice, all misery, all ugliness, all poverty. And every man is one or the other. Asked where such a wise man was to be found, the Stoics pointed doubtfully at Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic. The number of the wise, they thought, is small, and is continually growing smaller. The world, which they painted in the blackest colours as a sea of vice and misery, grows steadily worse.

In all this we easily recognize the features of a resuscitated Cynicism. But the Stoics modified and softened {352} the harsh outlines of Cynicism, and rounded off its angles. To do this meant inconsistency. It meant that they first laid down harsh principles, and then proceeded to tone them down, to explain them away, to admit exceptions. Such inconsistency the Stoics accepted with their habitual cheerfulness. This process of toning down their first harsh utterances took place mainly in three ways. In the first place, they modified their principle of the complete extirpation of the pa.s.sions. Since this is impossible, and, if possible, could only lead to immovable inactivity, they admitted that the wise man might exhibit certain mild and rational emotions, and that the roots of the pa.s.sions might be found in him, though he never allowed them to grow. In the second place, they modified their principle that all else, save virtue and vice, is indifferent. Such a view is unreal, and out of accord with life. Hence the Stoics, with a masterly disregard of consistency, stuck to the principle, and yet declared that among things indifferent some are preferable to others. If the wise man has the choice between health and sickness, he will choose the former. Indifferent things were divided into three cla.s.ses, those to be preferred, those to be avoided, and those which are absolutely indifferent. In the third place, the Stoics toned down the principle that men are either wholly good, or wholly evil. The famous heroes and statesmen of history, though fools, are yet polluted with the common vices of mankind less than others. Moreover, what were the Stoics to say about themselves?

Were they wise men or fools? They hesitated to claim perfection, to put themselves on a level with Socrates and Diogenes. Yet they could not bring themselves to admit that there was {353} no difference between themselves and the common herd. They were "proficients," and, if not absolutely wise, approximated to wisdom.

If the Stoics were thus merely less consistent Cynics, and originated nothing in the doctrines of physics and ethics so far considered, yet of one idea at least they can claim to be the inventors. This was the idea of cosmopolitanism. This they deduced from two grounds. Firstly, the universe is one, proceeds from one G.o.d, is ordered by one law, and forms one system. Secondly, however much men may differ in unessentials, they share their essential nature, their reason, in common. Hence all men are of one stock, as rational beings, and should form one State. The division of mankind into warring States is irrational and absurd. The wise man is not a citizen of this or that State. He is a citizen of the world.

This is, however, only an application of principles already a.s.serted.

The Stoics produced no essentially new thought, in physics, or in ethics. Their entire stock of ideas is but a new combination of ideas already developed by their predecessors. They were narrow, extreme, over-rigorous, and one-sided. Their truths are all half-truths. And they regarded philosophy too subjectively. What alone interested them was the question, how am I to live? Yet in spite of these defects, there is undoubtedly something grand and n.o.ble about their zeal for duty, their exaltation above all that is petty and paltry, their uncompromising contempt for all lower ends. Their merit, says Schwegler, was that "in an age of ruin they held fast by the moral idea."

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CHAPTER XVI

THE EPICUREANS

Epicurus was born at Samos in 342 B.C. He founded his school a year or two before Zeno founded the Stoa, so that the two schools from the first ran parallel in time. The school of Epicurus lasted over six centuries. Epicurus early became acquainted with the atomism of Democritus, but his learning in earlier systems of philosophy does not appear to have been extensive. He was a man of estimable life and character. He founded his school in 306 B.C. The Epicurean philosophy was both founded and completed by him. No subsequent Epicurean to any appreciable extent added to or altered the doctrines laid down by the founder.

The Epicurean system is even more purely practical in tendency than the Stoic. In spite of the fact that Stoicism subordinates logic and physics to ethics, yet the diligence and care which the Stoics bestowed upon such doctrines as those of the criterion of truth, the nature of the world, the soul, and so on, afford evidence of a genuine, if subordinate, interest in these subjects. Epicurus likewise divided his system into logic (which he called canonic), physics, and ethics, yet the two former branches of thought are pursued with an obvious carelessness and absence of interest. It is evident that learned {355} discussions bored Epicurus. His system is amiable and shallow. Knowledge for its own sake is not desired. Mathematics, he said, are useless, because they have no connexion with life. The logic, or canonic, we may pa.s.s over completely, as possessing no elements of interest, and come at once to the physics.

Physics.

Physics interests Epicurus only from one point of view--its power to banish superst.i.tious fear from the minds of men. All supernatural religion, he thought, operates for the most part upon mankind by means of fear. Men are afraid of the G.o.ds, afraid of retribution, afraid of death because of the stories of what comes after death. This incessant fear and anxiety is one of the chief causes of the unhappiness of men.

Destroy it, and we have at least got rid of the prime hindrance to human happiness. We can only do this by means of a suitable doctrine of physics. What is necessary is to be able to regard the world as a piece of mechanism, governed solely by natural causes, without any interference by supernatural beings, in which man is free to find his happiness how and when he will, without being frightened by the bogeys of popular religion. For though the world is ruled mechanically, man, thought Epicurus in opposition to the Stoics, possesses free will, and the problem of philosophy is to ascertain how he can best use this gift in a world otherwise mechanically governed. What he required, therefore, was a purely mechanical philosophy. To invent such a philosophy for himself was a task not suited to his indolence, and for which he could not pretend to possess the necessary {356} qualifications. Therefore he searched the past, and soon found what he wanted in the atomism of Democritus. This, as an entirely mechanical philosophy, perfectly suited his ends, and the pragmatic spirit in which he chose his beliefs, not on any abstract grounds of their objective truth, but on the basis of his subjective needs and personal wishes, will be noted. It is a sign of the times. When truth comes to be regarded as something that men may construct in accordance with their real or imagined needs, and not in accordance with any objective standard, we are well advanced upon the downward path of decay.

Epicurus, therefore, adopted the atomism of Democritus _en bloc_, or with trifling modifications. All things are composed of atoms and the void. Atoms differ only in shape and weight, not in quality. They fall eternally through the void. By virtue of free will, they deviate infinitesimally from the perpendicular in their fall, and so clash against one another. This, of course, is an invention of Epicurus, and formed no part of the doctrine of Democritus. It might be expected of Epicurus that his modifications would not be improvements. In the present case, the attribution of free will to the atoms adversely affects the logical consistency of the mechanical theory. From the collision of atoms arises a whirling movement out of which the world emerges. Not only the world, but all individual phenomena, are to be explained mechanically. Teleology is rigorously excluded. In any particular case, however, Epicurus is not interested to know what particular causes determine a phenomenon. It is enough for him to be sure that it is wholly determined by mechanical causes, and that supernatural agencies are excluded.

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The soul being composed of atoms which are scattered at death, a future life is not to be thought of. But this is to be regarded as the greatest blessing. It frees us from the fear of death, and the fear of a hereafter. Death is not an evil. For if death is, we are not; if we are, death is not. When death comes we shall not feel it, for is it not the end of all feeling and consciousness? And there is no reason to fear now what we know that we shall not feel when it comes.

Having thus disposed of the fear of retribution in a future life, Epicurus proceeds to dispose of the fear of the interference of the G.o.ds in this life. One might have expected that Epicurus would for this purpose have embraced atheism. But he does not deny the existence of the G.o.ds. On the contrary, he believed that there are innumerable G.o.ds. They have the form of men, because that is the most beautiful of all forms. They have distinctions in s.e.x. They eat, drink, and talk Greek. Their bodies are composed of a substance like light. But though Epicurus allows them to exist, he is careful to disarm them, and to rob them of their fears. They live in the interstellar s.p.a.ces, an immortal, calm, and blessed existence. They do not intervene in the affairs of the world, because they are perfectly happy. Why should they burden themselves with the control of that which nowise concerns them? Theirs is the beat.i.tude of a wholly untroubled joy.