Christianity and Greek Philosophy Part 26

He also totally misrepresents Plato's doctrine of "Ideas." "Plato's Ideas," he says, "are substantial existences--real beings"

("Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. ix.). Whereas, as we shall subsequently show, "they are objects of pure conception for human reason, and they are attributes of the Divine Reason. It is there they substantially exist."

(Cousin, "History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 415). It is also pertinent to inquire, what is the difference between the "formal cause" of Aristotle and the archetypal ideas of Plato? and is not Plato's t?

??a??? the "final cause?" Yet Aristotle is forever congratulating himself that he alone has properly treated the "formal" and the "final cause!"]

[Footnote 434: This, however, was not the doctrine of Plato. He does not say "forms are numbers." He says: "G.o.d formed things as they first arose according to forms _and_ numbers." See "Timaeus," ch. xiv. and xxvii.]

[Footnote 435: Aristotle's "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. vi.]

Now the writings of Plato are all extant to-day, and accessible in an excellent English translation to any of our readers. Cousin has shown,[436] most conclusively (and we can verify his conclusions for ourselves), that Aristotle has totally misrepresented Plato. And if, in the same connection, and in the course of the same argument, and in regard to the same subjects, he misrepresents Plato, it is most probable he also misrepresents Pythagoras.

[Footnote 436: "The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," pp. 77-81.]

It is, however, a matter of the deepest interest for us to find the evidence gleaming out here and there, on the pages of Aristotle, that he had some knowledge of the fact that the Pythagorean numbers were regarded as _symbols_. The "numbers" of Pythagoras are, in the mind of Aristotle, clearly identified with the "forms" of Plato. Now, in Chapter VI. of the First Book he says that Plato taught that these "forms" were pa?ade??ata--models, patterns, exemplars after which created things were framed. The numbers of Pythagoras, then, are also models and exemplars. This also is admitted by Aristotle. The Pythagoreans indeed affirm that ent.i.ties subsist by an _imitation_ (??s??) of numbers.[437] Now if ideas, forms, numbers, were the models or paradigms after which "the Operator" formed all things, surely it can not be logical to say they were the "material" out of which all things were framed, much less the "efficient cause" of things. The most legitimate conclusion we can draw, even from the statements of Aristotle, is that the Pythagoreans regarded numbers as the best expression or representation of those laws of proportion, and order, and harmony, which seemed, to their eyes, to pervade the universe. Their doctrine was a faint glimpse of that grand discovery of modern science--that all the higher laws of nature a.s.sume the form of a precise quant.i.tative statement.

[Footnote 437: Aristotle's "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. vi.]

The fact seems to be this, the Pythagoreans busied themselves chiefly with what Aristotle designates "the _formal_ cause," and gave little attention to the inquiry concerning "the _material_ cause." This is admitted by Aristotle. Concerning fire, or earth, or the other bodies of such kind, they have declared nothing whatsoever, inasmuch as affirming, in my opinion, nothing that is peculiar concerning _sensible_ natures.[438] They looked, as we have previously remarked, to the relations of phenomena, and having discovered certain "numerical similitudes," they imagined they had attained an universal principle, or law. "If all the essential properties and attributes of things were fully represented by the relations of numbers, the philosophy which supplied such an explanation of the universe might well be excused from explaining, also, that existence of objects, which is distinct from the existence of all their qualities and properties. The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers might have been combined with the doctrine of atoms, and the combination might have led to results worthy of notice. But, so far as we are aware, no such combination was attempted, and perhaps we of the present day are only just beginning to perceive, through the disclosures of chemistry and crystallography, the importance of such an inquiry."[439]

[Footnote 4398: Id., ib., bk. i. ch. ix.]

[Footnote 439: Whewell's "History of Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p.

78.]

These preliminary considerations will have cleared and prepared the way for a fuller presentation of the philosophic system of Pythagoras. The most comprehensive and satisfactory exposition of his "method" is that given by Wm Archer Butler in his "_Lectures on Ancient Philosophy_," and we feel we can not do better than condense his pages.[440]

[Footnote 440: Lecture VI. vol. i.]

Pythagoras had long devoted his intellectual adoration to the lofty idea of _order_, which seemed to reveal itself to his mind, as the presiding genius of the serene and silent world. He had, from his youth, dwelt with delight upon the eternal relations of s.p.a.ce, and determinate form, and number, in which the very idea of _proportion_ seems to find its first and immediate development, and without the latter of which (number), all proportion is absolutely inconceivable. To this ardent genius, whose inventive energies were daily adding new and surprising contributions to the sum of discoverable relations, it at length began to appear as if the whole secret of the universe was hidden in these mysterious correspondences.

In making this extensive generalization, Pythagoras may, on his known principles, be supposed to have reasoned as follows: The mind of man perceives the relations of an eternal _order_ in the proportions of s.p.a.ce, and form, and number. That mind is, no doubt, a portion of the soul which animates and governs the universe; for on what other supposition shall we account for its internal principle of activity--the very principle which characterizes the prime mover, and can scarce be ascribed to an inferior nature? And on what other supposition are we to explain the ident.i.ty which subsists between the principles of order, authenticated by the reason and the facts of order which are found to exist in the forms and multiplicities around us, and independent of us?

Can this sameness be other than the sameness of the internal and external principles of a common nature? The proportions of the universe inhere in its divine soul; they are indeed its very essence, or at least, its attributes. The ideas or principles of Order which are implanted in the human reason, must inhere in the Divine Reason, and must be reflected in the visible world, which is its product. Man, then, can boldly affirm the necessary harmony of the world, because he has in his own mind a revelation which declares that the world, in its real structure, must be the image and copy of that divine _proportion_ which he inwardly adores.[441]

[Footnote 441: It is an opinion which goes as far back as the time of Plato, and even Pythagoras, and has ever since been widely entertained, that beauty of _form_ consists in some sort of _proportion_ or _harmony_ which may admit of a mathematical expression; and later and more scientific research is altogether in its favor. It is now established that complementary colors, that is, colors which when combined make up the full beam, are felt to be beautiful when seen simultaneously; that is, the mind is made to delight in the unities of nature. At the basis of music there are certain fixed ratios; and in poetry, of every description, there are measures, and correspondencies. Pythagoras has often been ridiculed for his doctrine of "the music of the spheres;" and probably his doctrine was somewhat fanciful, but later science shows that there is a harmony in all nature--in its forms, in its forces, and in its motions. The highest unorganized and all organized objects take definite forms which are regulated by mathematical laws. The forces of nature can be estimated in numbers, and light and heat go in undulations, whilst the movements of the great bodies in nature admit of a precise quant.i.tative expression. The harmonies of nature in respect of color, of number, of form, and of time are forcibly exhibited in "Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation," by M'Cosh.]

Again, the world is a.s.suredly _perfect_, as being the sensible image and copy of the Divinity, the outward and multiple development of the Eternal Unity. It must, therefore, when thoroughly known and properly interpreted, answer to all which we can conceive as perfect; that is, it must be regulated by laws, of which we have the highest principles in those first and elementary properties of numbers which stand next to _unity_. "The world is then, through all its departments, _a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose_." It is a ??s?? (for the word is purely Pythagorean)--the expression of _harmony_, the manifestation, to sense, of everlasting _order_.

Though Pythagoras found in geometry the fitting initiative for abstract speculation, it is remarkable that he himself preferred to const.i.tute the science of Numbers as the true representative of the laws of the universe. The reason appears to be this: that though geometry speaks indeed of eternal truths, yet when the notion of symmetry and proportion is introduced, it is often necessary to insist, in preference, upon the properties of numbers. Hence, though the universe displays the geometry of its Constructor or Animator, yet nature was eminently defined as the ??s?? t?? ??????--the imitation of numbers.

The key to all the Pythagorean dogmas, then, seems to be the general formula of _unity in multiplicity_:--unity either evolving itself into multiplicity, or unity discovered as pervading multiplicity. The principle of all things, the same principle which in this philosophy, as in others, was customarily called _Deity_, is the primitive unit from which all proceeds in the accordant relations of the universal scheme.

Into the sensible world of mult.i.tude, the all-pervading Unity has infused his own ineffable nature; he has impressed his own image upon that world which is to represent him in the sphere of sense and man.

What, then, is that which is at once single and multiple, identical and diversified--which we perceive as the combination of a thousand elements, yet as the expression of a single spirit--which is a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason? What is it but harmony--proportion--the one governing the many, the many lost in the one? The world is therefore a _harmony_ in innumerable degrees, from the most complicated to the most simple: it is now a Triad, combining the Monad and the Duad, and partaking of the nature of both; now a Tetrad, the form of perfection; now a Decad, which, in combining the four former, involves, in its mystic nature, all the possible accordances of the universe.[442]

The psychology of the Pythagoreans was greatly modified by their physical, and still more, by their moral tenets. The soul was ??????

?a?t?? ?????--a self-moving number or Monad, the copy (as we have seen) of that Infinite Monad which unfolds from its own incomprehensible essence all the relations of the universe. This soul has three elements, Reason (????), Intelligence (f???), and Pa.s.sion (????). The two last, man has in common with brutes, the first is his grand and peculiar characteristic. It has, hence, been argued that Pythagoras could not have held the doctrine of "transmigration." This clear separation of man from the brute, by this signal endowment of reason, which is sempiternal, seems a refutation of those who charge him with the doctrine.

In the department of morals, the legislator of Crotona found his appropriate sphere. In his use of numerical notation, moral good was essential unity--evil, essential plurality and division. In the fixed truths of mathematical abstractions he found the exemplars of social and personal virtue. The rule or law of all morality is resemblance to G.o.d; that is, the return of number to its root, to unity,[443] and virtue is thus a harmony.

[Footnote 442: That is, 1+2+3+4=10. There are intimations that the Pythagoreans regarded the Monad as G.o.d, the Duad as matter, the Triad as the complex phenomena of the world, the Tetrad as the completeness of all its relations, the Decad as the cosmos, or harmonious whole.]

[Footnote 443: Aristotle, "Nichomachian Ethics," bk. i. ch. vi.]

Thus have we, in Pythagoras, the dawn of an _Idealist_ school; for mathematics are founded upon abstractions, and there is consequently an intimate connection between mathematics and idealism. The relations of s.p.a.ce, and number, and determinate form, are, like the relations of cause and effect, of phenomena and substance, perceptible _only in thought_; and the mind which has been disciplined to abstract thought by the study of mathematics, is prepared and disposed for purely metaphysical studies. "The looking into mathematical learning is a kind of prelude to the contemplation of real being."[444] Therefore Plato inscribed over the door of his academy, "Let none but Geometricians enter here." To the mind thus disciplined in abstract thinking, the conceptions and ideas of reason have equal authority, sometimes even superior authority, to the perceptions of sense.

[Footnote 444: Alcinous, "Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato," ch.

vii.]

Now if the testimony of both reason and sense, as given in consciousness, is accepted as of equal authority, and each faculty is regarded as, within its own sphere, a source of real, valid knowledge, then a consistent and harmonious system of _Natural Realism_ or _Natural Dualism_ will be the result. If the testimony of sense is questioned and distrusted, and the mind is denied any immediate knowledge of the sensible world, and yet the existence of an external world is maintained by various hypotheses and reasonings, the consequence will be a species of _Hypothetical Dualism_ or _Cosmothetic Idealism_. But if the affirmations of reason, as to the unity of the cosmos, are alone accepted, and the evidence of the senses, as to the variety and multiplicity of the world, is entirely disregarded, then we have a system of _Absolute Idealism_. Pythagoras regarded the harmony which pervades the diversified phenomena of the outer world as a manifestation of the unity of its eternal principle, or as the perpetual evolution of that unity, and the consequent _tendency_ of his system was to depreciate the _sensible_. Following out this tendency, the Eleatics first neglected, and finally denied the variety of the universe--denied the real existence of the external world, and a.s.serted an absolute _metaphysical_ unity.

_Xenophanes of Colophon_, in Ionia (B.C. 616-516), was the founder of this celebrated school of Elea. He left Ionia, and arrived in Italy about the same time as Pythagoras, bringing with him to Italy his Ionian tendencies; he there amalgamated them with Pythagorean speculations.

Pythagoras had succeeded in fixing the attention of his countrymen on the harmony which pervades the material world, and had taught them to regard that harmony as the manifestation of the intelligence, and unity, and perfection of its eternal principle. Struck with this idea of harmony and of unity, Xenophanes, who was a poet, a rhapsodist, and therefore by native tendency, rather than by intellectual discipline, an Idealist, begins already to attach more importance to _unity_ than multiplicity in his philosophy of nature. He regards the testimony of reason as of more authority than the testimony of sense; "and he holds badly enough the balance between the unity of the Pythagoreans and the variety which Herac.l.i.tus and the Ionians had alone considered."[445]

We are not, however, to suppose that Xenophanes denied entirely the existence of _plurality_. "The great Rhapsodist of Truth" was guided by the spontaneous intuitions of his mind (which seemed to partake of the character of an inspiration), to a clearer vision of the truth than were his successors of the same school by their discursive reasonings. "The One" of Xenophanes was clearly distinguished from the outward universe (t? p????) on the one hand, and from the "_non-ens_" on the other. It was his disciple, Parmenides, who imagined the logical necessity of identifying plurality with the "_non-ens_" and thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world. The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Parmenides seems to have had a peculiar charm for the Grecian mind, and to have diverted the eyes of antiquity from the views of the more earnest and devout Xenophanes, whose opinions were too often confounded with those of his successors of the Eleatic school.

"Accordingly we find that Xenophanes has obtained credit for much that is, exclusively, the property of Parmenides and Zeno, in particular for denying plurality, and for identifying G.o.d with the universe."[446]

[Footnote 445: Cousin, "History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 440.]

[Footnote 446: See note by editor, W.H. Thompson, M.A., on pages 331, 332 of Butler's "Lectures," vol. i. His authorities are "Fragments of Xenophanes" and the treatise "De Melisso, Xenophane, et Gorgia," by Aristotle.]

In theology, Xenophanes was unquestionably a _Theist_. He had a profound and earnest conviction of the existence of a G.o.d, and he ridiculed with sarcastic force, the anthropomorphic absurdities of the popular religion. This one G.o.d, he taught, was self-existent, eternal, and infinite; supreme in power, in goodness, and intelligence.[447] These characteristics are ascribed to the Deity in the sublime words with which he opens his philosophic poem--

"There is one G.o.d, of all beings, divine and human, the greatest: Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in mind."

He has no parts, no organs, as men have, being

"All sight, all ear, all intelligence; Wholly exempt from toil, he sways all things by _thought_ and _will_."[448]

Xenophanes also taught that G.o.d is "uncreated" or "uncaused," and that he is "excellent" as well as "all-powerful."[449] And yet, regardless of these explicit utterances, Lewes cautions his readers against supposing that, by the "one G.o.d," Xenophanes meant a Personal G.o.d; and he a.s.serts that his Monotheism was Pantheism. A doctrine, however, which ascribes to the Divine Being moral as well as intellectual supremacy, which acknowledges an outward world distinct from Him, and which represents Him as causing the changes in that universe by the acts of an intelligent volition, can only by a strange perversion of language be called pantheism.

[Footnote 447: Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 38; Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 428, 429.]

[Footnote 448: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp.

432, 434.]

[Footnote 449: Butler's "Lectures," vol. i. p. 331, note; Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. p. 428.]

_Parmenides of Elea_ (born B.C. 536) was the philosopher who framed the psychological opinions of the Idealist school into a precise and comprehensive system. He was the first carefully to distinguish between _Truth_ (????e?a?) and _Opinion_ (d??a?)--between ideas obtained through the reason and the simple perceptions of sense. a.s.suming that reason and sense are the only sources of knowledge, he held that they furnish the mind with two distinct cla.s.ses of cognitions--one variable, fleeting, and uncertain; the other immutable, necessary, and eternal. Sense is dependent on the variable organization of the individual, and therefore its evidence is changeable, uncertain, and nothing but a mere "_seeming_." Reason is the same in all individuals, and therefore its evidence is constant, real, and true. Philosophy is, therefore, divided into two branches--_Physics_ and _Metaphysics_; one, a science of absolute knowledge; the other, a science of mere appearances. The first science, Physics, is p.r.o.nounced illusory and uncertain; the latter, Metaphysics, is infallible and immutable.[450]

Proceeding on these principles, he rejects the dualistic system of the universe, and boldly declared that all essences are fundamentally _one_--that, in fact, there is no real plurality, and that all the diversity which "appears" is merely presented under a peculiar aesthetic or sensible law. The senses, it is true, teach us that there are "many things," but reason affirms that, at bottom, there exists only "the one." Whatever, therefore, manifests itself in the field of sense is merely illusory--the mental representation of a phenomenal world, which to experience seems diversified, but which reason can not possibly admit to be other than "immovable" and "one." There is but one Being in the universe, eternal, immovable, absolute; and of this unconditioned being all phenomenal existences, whether material or mental, are but the attributes and modes. Hence the two great maxims of the Eleatic school, derived from Parmenides--t? p??ta ??, "_The All is One_" and t? a?t?

??e?? te ?a? e??a? (Idem est cogitare atque esse), "_Thought and Being are identical._" The last remarkable dictum is the fundamental principle of the modern pantheistic doctrine of "absolute ident.i.ty" as taught by Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel.[451]

[Footnote 450: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp.

447, 451.]

[Footnote 451: Id., ib., vol. i. pp. 450, 455.]

Lewes a.s.serts that "Parmenides did not, with Xenophanes, call 'the One'

G.o.d; he called it Being.[452] In support of this statement he, however, cites no ancient authorities. We are therefore justified in rejecting his opinion, and receiving the testimony of Simplicius, "the only authority for the fragments of the Eleatics,"[453] and who had a copy of the philosophic poems of Parmenides. He a.s.sures us that Parmenides and Xenophanes "affirmed that '_the One,_' or unity, was the first Principle of all,....they meaning by this One _that highest or supreme G.o.d_, as being the cause of unity to all things.... It remaineth, therefore, that that _Intelligence_ which is the cause of all things, and therefore of mind and understanding also, in which all things are comprehended in unity, was Parmenides' one Ens or Being.[454] Parmenides was, therefore, a spiritualistic or idealistic Pantheist.