A Critical History of Greek Philosophy Part 18

"Immortal are they, clothed with powers, Not to be comforted at all, Lords over all the fruitless hours, Too great to appease, too high to appal, Too far to call." [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: A. C. Swinburne's _Felise_.]

{358}

Man, therefore, freed from the fear of death and the fear of the G.o.ds, has no duty save to live as happily as he can during his brief s.p.a.ce upon earth. We can quit the realm of physics with a light heart, and turn to what alone truly matters, ethics, the consideration of how man ought to conduct his life.

Ethics.

If the Stoics were the intellectual successors of the Cynics, the Epicureans bear the same relation to the Cyrenaics. Like Aristippus, they founded morality upon pleasure, but they differ because they developed a purer and n.o.bler conception of pleasure than the Cyrenaics had known. Pleasure alone is an end in itself. It is the only good.

Pain is the only evil. Morality, therefore, is an activity which yields pleasure. Virtue has no value on its own account, but derives its value from the pleasure which accompanies it.

This is the only foundation which Epicurus could find, or desired to find, for moral activity. This is his only ethical principle. The rest of the Epicurean ethics consists in the interpretation of the idea of pleasure. And, firstly, by pleasure Epicurus did not mean, as the Cyrenaics did, merely the pleasure of the moment, whether physical or mental. He meant the pleasure that endures throughout a lifetime, a happy life. Hence we are not to allow ourselves to be enslaved by any particular pleasure or desire. We must master our appet.i.tes. We must often forego a pleasure if it leads in the end to greater pain. We must be ready to undergo pain for the sake of a greater pleasure to come.

And it was just for this reason, secondly, that the {359} Epicureans regarded spiritual and mental pleasures as far more important than those of the body. For the body feels pleasure and pain only while they last. The body has in itself neither memory nor fore-knowledge.

It is the mind which remembers and foresees. And by far the most potent pleasures and pains are those of remembrance and antic.i.p.ation.

A physical pleasure is a pleasure to the body only now. But the antic.i.p.ation of a future pain is mental anxiety, the remembrance of a past joy is a present delight. Hence what is to be aimed at above all is a calm untroubled mind, for the pleasures of the body are ephemeral, those of the spirit enduring. The Epicureans, like the Stoics, preached the necessity of superiority to bodily pains and external circ.u.mstances. So a man must not depend for his happiness upon externals; he must have his blessedness in his own self. The wise man can be happy even in bodily torment, for in the inner tranquillity of his soul he possesses a happiness which far outweighs any bodily pain. Yet innocent pleasures of sense are neither forbidden, nor to be despised. The wise man will enjoy whatever he can without harm. Of all mental pleasures the Epicureans laid, perhaps, most stress upon friends.h.i.+p. The school was not merely a collection of fellow-philosophers, but above all a society of friends.

Thirdly, the Epicurean ideal of pleasure tended rather towards a negative than a positive conception of it. It was not the state of enjoyment that they aimed at, much less the excitement of the feelings. Not the feverish pleasures of the world const.i.tuted their ideal. They aimed rather at a negative absence of pain, at tranquillity, quiet calm, repose of spirit, undisturbed by fears and {360} anxieties. As so often with men whose ideal is pleasure, their view of the world was tinged with a gentle and even luxurious pessimism. Positive happiness is beyond the reach of mortals. All that man can hope for is to avoid pain, and to live in quiet contentment.

Fourthly, pleasure does not consist in the multiplication of needs and their subsequent satisfaction. The multiplication of wants only renders it more difficult to satisfy them. It complicates life without adding to happiness. We should have as few needs as possible. Epicurus himself lived a simple life, and advised his followers to do the same.

The wise man, he said, living on bread and water, could vie with Zeus himself in happiness. Simplicity, cheerfulness, moderation, temperance, are the best means to happiness. The majority of human wants, and the example of the thirst for fame is quoted, are entirely unnecessary and useless.

Lastly, the Epicurean ideal, though containing no possibility of an exalted n.o.bility, was yet by no means entirely selfish. A kindly, benevolent temper appeared in these men. It is pleasanter, they said, to do a kindness than to receive one. There is little of the stern stuff of heroes, but there is much that is gentle and lovable, in the amiable moralizings of these b.u.t.terfly-philosophers.

{361}

CHAPTER XVII

THE SCEPTICS

Scepticism is a semi-technical term in philosophy, and means the doctrine which doubts or denies the possibility of knowledge. It is thus destructive of philosophy, since philosophy purports to be a form of knowledge. Scepticism appears and reappears at intervals in the history of thought. We have already met with it among the Sophists.

When Gorgias said that, if anything exists, it cannot be known, this was a direct expression of the sceptical spirit. And the Protagorean "Man is the measure of all things" amounts to the same thing, for it implies that man can only know things as they appear to him, and not as they are in themselves. In modern times the most noted sceptic was David Hume, who attempted to show that the most fundamental categories of thought, such as substance and causality, are illusory, and thereby to undermine the fabric of knowledge. Subjectivism usually ends in scepticism. For knowledge is the relation of subject and object, and to lay exclusive emphasis upon one of its terms, the subject, ignoring the object, leads to the denial of the reality of everything except that which appears to the subject. This was so with the Sophists. And now we have the reappearance of a similar {362} phenomenon. The Sceptics, of whom we are about to treat, made their appearance at about the same time as the Stoics and Epicureans. The subjective tendencies of these latter schools find their logical conclusion in the Sceptics. Scepticism makes its appearance usually, but not always, when the spiritual forces of a race are in decay. When its spiritual and intellectual impulses are spent, the spirit flags, grows weary, loses confidence, begins to doubt its power of finding truth; and the despair of truth is scepticism.

Pyrrho.

The first to introduce a thorough-going scepticism among the Greeks was Pyrrho. He was born about 360 B.C., and was originally a painter.

He took part in the Indian expedition of Alexander the Great. He left no writings, and we owe our knowledge of his thoughts chiefly to his disciple Timon of Phlius. His philosophy, in common with all post-Aristotelian systems, is purely practical in its outlook.

Scepticism, the denial of knowledge, is not posited on account of its speculative interest, but only because Pyrrho sees in it the road to happiness, and the escape from the calamities of life.

The proper course of the sage, said Pyrrho, is to ask himself three questions. Firstly, he must ask what things are and how they are const.i.tuted; secondly, how we are related to these things; thirdly, what ought to be our att.i.tude towards them. As to what things are, we can only answer that we know nothing. We only know how things appear to us, but of their inner substance we are ignorant. The same thing appears differently to different people, and therefore it is {363} impossible to know which opinion is right. The diversity of opinion among the wise, as well as among the vulgar, proves this. To every a.s.sertion the contradictory a.s.sertion can be opposed with equally good grounds, and whatever my opinion, the contrary opinion is believed by somebody else who is quite as clever and competent to judge as I am.

Opinion we may have, but certainty and knowledge are impossible. Hence our att.i.tude to things (the third question), ought to be complete suspense of judgment. We can be certain of nothing, not even of the most trivial a.s.sertions. Therefore we ought never to make any positive statements on any subject. And the Pyrrhonists were careful to import an element of doubt even into the most trifling a.s.sertions which they might make in the course of their daily life. They did not say, "it is so," but "it seems so," or "it appears so to me." Every observation would be prefixed with a "perhaps," or "it may be."

This absence of certainty applies as much to practical as to theoretical matters. Nothing is in itself true or false. It only appears so. In the same way, nothing is in itself good or evil. It is only opinion, custom, law, which makes it so. When the sage realizes this, he will cease to prefer one course of action to another, and the result will be apathy, _"ataraxia."_ All action is the result of preference, and preference is the belief that one thing is better than another. If I go to the north, it is because, for one reason or another, I believe that it is better than going to the south. Suppress this belief, learn that the one is not in reality better than the other, but only appears so, and one would go in no direction at all.

Complete suppression of opinion would mean complete {364} suppression of action, and it was at this that Pyrrho aimed. To have no opinions was the sceptical maxim, because in practice it meant apathy, total quietism. All action is founded on belief, and all belief is delusion, hence the absence of all activity is the ideal of the sage. In this apathy he will renounce all desires, for desire is the opinion that one thing is better than another. He will live in complete repose, in undisturbed tranquillity of soul, free from all delusions. Unhappiness is the result of not attaining what one desires, or of losing it when attained. The wise man, being free from desires, is free from unhappiness. He knows that, though men struggle and fight for what they desire, vainly supposing some things better than others, such activity is but a futile struggle about nothing, for all things are equally indifferent, and nothing matters. Between health and sickness, life and death, difference there is none. Yet in so far as the sage is compelled to act, he will follow probability, opinion, custom, and law, but without any belief in the essential validity or truth of these criteria.

The New Academy.

The scepticism founded by Pyrrho soon became extinct, but an essentially similar doctrine began to be taught in the school of Plato. After the death of Plato, the Academy continued, under various leaders, to follow in the path marked out by the founder. But, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Arcesilaus, scepticism was introduced into the school, and from that time, therefore, it is usually known as the New Academy, for though its historical continuity as a school was not broken, its essential character underwent change. What especially {365} characterized the New Academy was its fierce opposition to the Stoics, whom its members attacked as the chief dogmatists of the time.

Dogmatism, for us, usually means making a.s.sertions without proper grounds. But since scepticism regards all a.s.sertions as equally ill-grounded, the holding of any positive opinion whatever is by it regarded as dogmatism. The Stoics were the most powerful, influential, and forceful of all those who at that time held any positive philosophical opinions. Hence they were singled out for attack by the New Academy as the greatest of dogmatists. Arcesilaus attacked especially their doctrine of the criterion of truth. The striking conviction which, according to the Stoics, accompanies truth, equally accompanies error. There is no criterion of truth, either in sense or in reason. "I am certain of nothing," said Arcesilaus; "I am not even certain that I am certain of nothing."

But the Academics did not draw from their scepticism, as Pyrrho had done, the full logical conclusion as regards action. Men, they thought, must act. And, although certainty and knowledge are impossible, probability is a sufficient guide for action.

Carneades is usually considered the greatest of the Academic Sceptics.

Yet he added nothing essentially new to their conclusions. He appears, however, to have been a man of singularly acute and powerful mind, whose destructive criticism acted like a battering-ram not only upon Stoicism, but upon all established philosophies. As examples of his thoughts may be mentioned the two following. Firstly, nothing can ever be proved. For the conclusion must be proved by premises, which in turn require proof, and so _ad infinitum_. Secondly, {366} it is impossible to know whether our ideas of an object are true, i.e., whether they resemble the object, because we cannot compare our idea with the object itself. To do so would involve getting outside our own minds. We know nothing of the object except our idea of it, and therefore we cannot compare the original and the copy, since we can see only the copy.

Later Scepticism.

After a period of obliteration, Scepticism again revived in the Academy. Of this last phase of Greek scepticism, Aenesidemus, a contemporary of Cicero, is the earliest example, and later we have the well-known names of Simplicius and s.e.xtus Empiricus. The distinctive character of later scepticism is its return to the position of Pyrrho.

The New Academy, in its eagerness to overthrow the Stoic dogmatism, had fallen into a dogmatism of its own. If the Stoics dogmatically a.s.serted, the Academics equally dogmatically denied. But wisdom lies neither in a.s.sertion nor denial, but in doubt. Hence the later Sceptics returned to the att.i.tude of complete suspense of judgment.

Moreover, the Academics had allowed the possibility of probable knowledge. And even this is now regarded as dogmatism. Aenesidemus was the author of the ten well-known arguments to show the impossibility of knowledge. They contain in reality, not ten, but only two or three distinct ideas, several being merely different expressions of the same line of reasoning. They are as follows. (1) The feelings and perceptions of all living beings differ. (2) Men have physical and mental differences, which make things appear different to them. (3) The different senses give different {367} impressions of things. (4) Our perceptions depend on our physical and intellectual conditions at the time of perception. (5) Things appear different in different positions, and at different distances. (6) Perception is never direct, but always through a medium. For example, we see things through the air. (7) Things appear different according to variations in their quant.i.ty, colour, motion, and temperature. (8) A thing impresses us differently when it is familiar and when it is unfamiliar. (9) All supposed knowledge is predication. All predicates give us only the relation of things to other things or to ourselves; they never tell us what the thing in itself is. (10) The opinions and customs of men are different in different countries.

{368}

CHAPTER XVIII

TRANSITION TO NEO-PLATONISM

It has been doubted whether Neo-Platonism ought to be included in Greek philosophy at all, and Erdmann, in his "History of Philosophy,"

places it in the medieval division. For, firstly, an interval of no less than five centuries separates the foundation of Neo-Platonism from the foundation of the preceding Greek schools, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. How long a period this is will be seen if we remember that the entire development of Greek thought from Thales to the Sceptics occupied only about three centuries. Plotinus, the real founder of Neo-Platonism, was born in 205 A.D., so that it is, as far as historical time is concerned, a product of the Christian era.

Secondly, its character is largely un-Greek and un-European. The Greek elements are largely swamped by oriental mysticism. Its seat was not in Greece, but at Alexandria, which was not a Greek, but a cosmopolitan, city. Men of all races met here, and, in particular, it was here that East and West joined hands, and the fusion of thought which resulted was Neo-Platonism. But, on the other hand, it seems wrong to include the thought of Plotinus and his successors in medieval philosophy. The whole character of what is usually called medieval philosophy was determined by its growth upon a distinctively Christian soil. It was {369} Christian philosophy. It was the product of the new era which Christianity had subst.i.tuted for paganism.

Neo-Platonism, on the other hand, is not only unchristian, but even anti-christian. The only Christian influence to be detected in it is that of opposition. It is a survival of the pagan spirit in Christian times. In it the old pagan spirit struggles desperately against its younger antagonist, and finally succ.u.mbs. In it we see the last gasp and final expiry of the ancient culture of the Greeks. So far as it is not Asiatic in its elements, it draws its inspiration wholly from the philosophies of the past, from the thought and culture of Greece. On the whole, therefore, it is properly cla.s.sified as the last school of Greek philosophy.

The long interval of time which elapsed between the rise of the preceding Greek schools, whose history we have traced, and the foundation of Neo-Platonism, was filled up by the continued existence, in more or less fossilized form, of the main Greek schools, the Academic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean, scattered and harried at times by the inroads of scepticism. It would be wearisome to follow in detail the development in these schools, and the more or less trifling disputes of which it consists. No new thought, no original principle, supervened. It is sufficient to say that, as time went on, the differences between the schools became softened, and their agreements became more prominent. As intellectual vigour wanes, there is always the tendency to forget differences, to rest, as the orientals do, in the good-natured and comfortable delusion that all religions and all philosophies really mean much the same thing. Hence eclecticism became characteristic of the schools. {370} They did not keep themselves distinct. We find Stoic doctrines taught by Academics, Academic doctrines by Stoics. Only the Epicureans kept their race pure, and stood aloof from the general eclecticism of the time.

Certain other tendencies also made their appearance. There was a recrudescence of Pythagoreanism, with its attendant symbolism and mysticism. There grew up a tendency to exalt the conception of G.o.d so high above the world, to widen so greatly the gulf which divides them, that it was felt that there could be no community between the two, that G.o.d could not act upon matter, nor matter upon G.o.d. Such interaction would contaminate the purity of the Absolute. Hence all kinds of beings were invented, demons, spirits, and angels, intended to fill up the gap, and to act as intermediaries between G.o.d and the world.

As an example of these latter tendencies, and as precursor of Neo-Platonism proper, Philo the Jew deserves a brief mention. He lived at Alexandria between 30 B.C. and 50 A.D. A staunch upholder of the religion and scriptures of the Hebrew race, he believed in the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament. But he was learned in Greek studies, and thought that Greek philosophy was a dimmer revelation of those truths which were more perfectly manifested in the sacred books of his own race. And just as Egyptian priests, out of national vanity, made out that Greek philosophy came from Egypt, just as orientals now pretend that it came from India, so Philo declared that the origin of all that was great in Greek philosophy was to be found in Judea. Plato and Aristotle, he was certain, were followers of Moses, used the Old Testament, and gained their wisdom therefrom! {371} Philo's own ideas were governed by the attempt to fuse Jewish theology and Greek philosophy into a h.o.m.ogeneous system. It was Philo, therefore, who was largely responsible for contaminating the pure clear air of Greek thought with the enervating fogs of oriental mysticism.

Philo taught that G.o.d, as the absolutely infinite, must be elevated completely above all that is finite. No name, no thought, can correspond to the infinity of G.o.d. He is the unthinkable and the ineffable, and His nature is beyond the reach of reason. The human soul reaches up to G.o.d, not through thought, but by means of a mystical inner illumination and revelation that transcends thought.

G.o.d cannot act directly upon the world, for this would involve His defilement by matter and the limitation of His infinity. There are therefore intermediate spiritual beings, who, as the ministers of G.o.d, created and control the world. All these intermediaries are included in the Logos, which is the rational thought which governs the world.

The relation of G.o.d to the Logos, and of the Logos to the world, is one of progressive emanation. Clearly the idea of emanation is a mere metaphor which explains nothing, and this becomes more evident when Philo compares the emanations to rays of light issuing from an effulgent centre and growing less and less bright as they radiate outwards. When we hear this, we know in what direction we are moving.

This has the characteristic ring of Asiatic pseudo-philosophy. It reminds us forcibly of the Upanishads. We are pa.s.sing out of the realm of thought, reason, and philosophy, into the dream-and-shadow-land of oriental mysticism, where the heavy scents of beautiful poison flowers drug the intellect and obliterate thought in a blissful and languorous repose.

{372}

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEO-PLATONISTS