The Academic Questions.
by M. T. Cicero.
A SKETCH OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS MENTIONED BY CICERO.
In the works translated in the present volume, Cicero makes such constant references to the doctrines and systems of the ancient Greek Philosophers, that it seems desirable to give a brief account of the most remarkable of those mentioned by him; not entering at length into the history of their lives, but indicating the princ.i.p.al theories which they maintained, and the main points in which they agreed with, or differed from, each other.
The earliest of them was _Thales_, who was born at Miletus, about 640 B.C.
He was a man of great political sagacity and influence; but we have to consider him here as the earliest philosopher who appears to have been convinced of the necessity of scientific proof of whatever was put forward to be believed, and as the originator of mathematics and geometry. He was also a great astronomer; for we read in Herodotus (i. 74) that he predicted the eclipse of the sun which happened in the reign of Alyattes, king of Lydia, B.C. 609. He a.s.serted that water is the origin of all things; that everything is produced out of it, and everything is resolved into it. He also a.s.serted that it is the soul which originates all motion, so much so, that he attributes a soul to the magnet. Aristotle also represents him as saying that everything is full of G.o.ds. He does not appear to have left any written treatises behind him: we are uncertain when or where he died, but he is said to have lived to a great age-to 78, or, according to some writers, to 90 years of age.
_Anaximander_, a countryman of Thales, was also born at Miletus, about 30 years later; he is said to have been a pupil of the former, and deserves especial mention as the oldest philosophical writer among the Greeks. He did not devote himself to the mathematical studies of Thales, but rather to speculations concerning the generation and origin of the world; as to which his opinions are involved in some obscurity. He appears, however, to have considered that all things were formed of a sort of matter, which he called t? ?pe????, or The Infinite; which was something everlasting and divine, though not invested with any spiritual or intelligent nature. His own works have not come down to us; but, according to Aristotle, he considered this "Infinite" as consisting of a mixture of simple, unchangeable elements, from which all things were produced by the concurrence of h.o.m.ogeneous particles already existing in it,-a process which he attributed to the constant conflict between heat and cold, and to affinities of the particles: in this he was opposed to the doctrine of Thales, Anaximenes, and Diogenes of Apollonia, who agreed in deriving all things from a single, not _changeable_, principle.
Anaximander further held that the earth was of a cylindrical form, suspended in the middle of the universe, and surrounded by water, air, and fire, like the coats of an onion; but that the interior stratum of fire was broken up and collected into ma.s.ses, from which originated the sun, moon, and stars; which he thought were carried round by the three spheres in which they were respectively fixed. He believed that the moon had a light of her own, not a borrowed light; that she was nineteen times as large as the earth, and the sun twenty-eight. He thought that all animals, including man, were originally produced in water, and proceeded gradually to become land animals. According to Diogenes Laertius, he was the inventor of the gnomon, and of geographical maps; at all events, he was the first person who introduced the use of the gnomon into Greece. He died about 547 B.C.
_Anaximenes_ was also a Milesian, and a contemporary of Thales and Anaximander. We do not exactly know when he was born, or when he died; but he must have lived to a very great age, for he was in high repute as early as B.C. 544, and he was the tutor of Anaxagoras, B.C. 480. His theory was, that air was the first cause of all things, and that the other elements of the universe were resolvable into it. From this infinite air, he imagined that all finite things were formed by compression and rarefaction, produced by motion, which had existed from all eternity; so that the earth was generated out of condensed air, and the sun and other heavenly bodies from the earth. He thought also that heat and cold were produced by different degrees of density of this primal element, air; that the clouds were formed by the condensing of the air; and that it was the air which supported the earth, and kept it in its place. Even the human soul he believed to be, like the body, formed of air. He believed in the eternity of matter, and denied the existence of anything immaterial.
_Anaxagoras_, who, as has been already stated, was a pupil of Anaximenes, was born at Clazomenae, in Ionia, about B.C. 499. He removed to Athens at the time of the Persian war, where he became intimate with Pericles, who defended him, though unsuccessfully, when he was prosecuted for impiety: he was fined five talents, and banished from the city; on which he retired to Lampsacus, where he died at the age of 72. He differed from his predecessors of the Ionic School, and sought for a higher cause of all things than matter: this cause he considered to be ????, _intelligence_, or _mind_. Not that he thought this ???? to be the creator of the world, but only that principle which arranged it, and gave it motion; for his idea was, that matter had existed from all eternity, but that, before the ???? arranged it, it was all in a state of chaotic confusion, and full of an infinite number of h.o.m.ogeneous and heterogeneous parts; then the ????
separated the h.o.m.ogeneous parts from the heterogeneous, and in this manner the world was produced. This separation, however, he taught, was made in such a manner that everything contains in itself parts of other things, or heterogeneous elements; and is what it is only on account of certain h.o.m.ogeneous parts which const.i.tute its predominant and real character.
_Pythagoras_ was earlier than Anaxagoras, though this latter has been mentioned before him to avoid breaking the continuity of the Ionic School.
His father"s name was Mnesarchus, and he was born at Samos about 570 B.C., though some accounts make him earlier. He is said by some writers to have been a pupil of Thales, by others of Anaximander, or of Pherecydes of Scyros. He was a man of great learning, as a geometrician, mathematician, astronomer, and musician; a great traveller, having visited Egypt and Babylon, and, according to some accounts, penetrated as far as India.
Many of his peculiar tenets are believed to have been derived from the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, with whom he is said to have been connected. His contemporaries at Crotona in South Italy, where he lived, looked upon him as a man peculiarly connected with the G.o.ds; and some of them even identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, a.n.a.logous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the G.o.ds." (Hist. of Greece, iv. p. 529.)
On his arrival at Crotona, he formed a school, consisting at first of three hundred of the richest of the citizens, who bound themselves by a sort of vow to himself and to each other, for the purpose of cultivating the ascetic observances which he enjoined, and of studying his religious and philosophical theories. All that took place in this school was kept a profound secret; and there were gradations among the pupils themselves, who were not all admitted, or at all events not at first, to a full acquaintance with their master"s doctrines. They were also required to submit to a period of probation. The statement of his forbidding his pupils the use of animal food is denied by many of the best authorities, and that of his insisting on their maintaining an unbroken silence for five years, rests on no sufficient authority, and is incredible. It is beyond our purpose at present to enter into the question of how far the views of Pythagoras in founding his school or club of three hundred, tended towards uniting in this body the idea of "at once a philosophical school, a religious brotherhood, and a political a.s.sociation," all which characters the Bishop of St. David"s (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 148) thinks were inseparably united in his mind; while Mr. Grote"s view of his object (Hist. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 544) is very different. In a political riot at Crotona, a temple, in which many of his disciples were a.s.sembled, was burnt, and they perished, and some say that Pythagoras himself was among them; though according to other accounts he fled to Tarentum, and afterwards to Metapontum, where he starved himself to death.
His tomb (see Cic. de Fin. v. 2) was shown at Metapontum down to Cicero"s time. Soon after his death his school was suppressed, and did not revive, though the Pythagoreans continued to exist as a sect, the members of which kept up the religious and scientific pursuits of their founder.
Pythagoras is said to have been the first who a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of f???s?f??; but there is great uncertainty as to the most material of his philosophical and religious opinions. It is believed that he wrote nothing himself, and that the earliest Pythagorean treatises were the work of Philolaus, a contemporary of Socrates. It appears, however, that he undertook to solve by reference to one single primary principle the problem of the origin and const.i.tution of the universe. His predilection for mathematics led him to trace the origin of all things to _number_; for "in _numbers_ he thought that they perceived many a.n.a.logies of things that exist and are produced, more than in fire, earth, or water: as, for instance, they thought that a certain condition of numbers was justice; another, soul and intellect, ... And moreover, seeing the conditions and ratios of what pertains to harmony to consist in numbers, since other things seemed in their entire nature to be formed in the likeness of numbers, and in all nature numbers are the first, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things." (Arist. Met. i. 5.)
Music and harmony too, played almost as important a part in the Pythagorean system as mathematics, or numbers. His idea appears to be, that order or harmony of relation is the regulating principle of the whole universe. He drew out a list of ten pairs of antagonistic elements, and in the octave and its different harmonic relations, he believed that he found the ground of the connexion between them. In his system of the universe _fire_ was the important element, occupying both the centre and the remotest point of it; and being the vivifying principle of the whole.
Round the central fire the heavenly bodies he believed to move in a regular circle; furthest off were the fixed stars; and then, in order, the planets, the moon, the sun, the earth, and what he called ??t?????, a sort of other half of the earth, which was a distinct body from it, but moving parallel to it.
The most distant region he called Olympus; the s.p.a.ce between the fixed stars and the moon he called ??s??; the s.p.a.ce between the moon and the earth ???a???. He, or at least his disciples, taught that the earth revolved on its axis, (though Philolaus taught that its revolutions were not round its axis but round the central fire). The universe itself they considered as a large sphere, and the intervals between the heavenly bodies they thought were determined according to the laws and relations of musical harmony. And from this theory arose the doctrine of the Music of the Spheres; as the heavenly bodies in their motion occasioned a sort of sound depending on their distances and velocities; and as these were determined by the laws of harmonic intervals, the sounds, or notes, formed a regular musical scale.
The light and heat of the central fire he believed that we received through the sun, which he considered a kind of lens: and perfection, he conceived to exist in direct ratio to the distance from the central fire.
The universe, itself, they looked upon as having subsisted from all eternity, controlled by an eternal supreme Deity; who established both limits and infinity; and whom they often speak of as the absolute ????, or unity. He pervaded (though he was distinct from) and presided over the universe. Sometimes, too, he is called the absolute _Good_,-while the origin of evil is attributed not to him, but to matter which prevented him from conducting everything to the best end.
With respect to man, the doctrine of Pythagoras was that known by the name of the Metempsychosis,-that the soul after death rested a certain time till it was purified, and had acquired a forgetfulness of what had previously happened to it; and then reanimated some other body. The ethics of the Pythagoreans consisted more in ascetic practice and maxims for the restraint of the pa.s.sions, than in any scientific theories. Wisdom they considered as superior to virtue, as being connected with the contemplation of the upper and purer regions, while virtue was conversant only with the sublunary part of the world. Happiness, they thought, consisted in the science of the perfection of the soul; or in the perfect science of numbers; and the main object of all the endeavours of man was to be, to resemble the Deity as far as possible.
_Alcmaeon_ of Crotona was a pupil of Pythagoras; but that is all that is known of his history. He was a great natural philosopher; and is said to have been the first who introduced the practice of dissection. He is said, also, to have been the first who wrote on natural philosophy. Aristotle, however, distinguishes between the principles of Alcmaeon and Pythagoras, though without explaining in what the difference consisted. He a.s.serted the immortality of the soul, and said that it partook of the divine nature, because, like the heavenly bodies themselves, it contained in itself the principle of motion.
_Xenophanes_, the founder of the Eleatic school, was a native of Colophon; and flourished probably about the time of Pisistratus. Being banished from his own country, he fled to the Ionian colonies in Sicily, and at last settled in Elea, or Velia. His writings were chiefly poetical. He was universally regarded by the ancients as the originator of the doctrine of the oneness of the universe: he also maintained, it is said, the unity of the Deity; and also his immortality and eternity; denounced the transference of him into human form; and reproached Homer and Hesiod for attributing to him human weaknesses. He represented him as endowed with unwearied activity, and as the animating power of the universe.
_Herac.l.i.tus_ was an Ephesian, and is said to have been a pupil of Xenophanes, though this statement is much doubted; others call him a pupil of Hippasus the Pythagorean. He wrote a treatise on Nature; declaring that the principle of all things was fire, from which he saw the world was evolved by a natural operation; he further said that this fire was the human life and soul, and therefore a rational intelligence guiding the whole universe. In this primary fire he considered that there was a perpetual longing to manifest itself in different forms: in its perfectly pure state it is in heaven; but in order to gratify this longing it descends, gradually losing the rapidity of its motion till it settles in the earth. The earth, however, is not immovable, but only the slowest of all moving bodies; while the soul of man, though dwelling in the lowest of all regions, namely, in the earth, he considered a migrated portion of fire in its pure state; which, in spite of its descent, had lost none of its original purity. The _summum bonum_ he considered to be a contented acquiescence in the decrees of the Deity. None of his writings are extant; and he does not appear to have had many followers.
_Diogenes_ of Apollonia, (who must not be confounded with his Stoic or Cynic namesake,) was a pupil of Anaximenes, and wrote a treatise on Nature, of which Diogenes Laertius gives the following account: "He maintained that air was the primary element of all things; that there was an infinite number of worlds and an infinite vacuum; that air condensed and rarefied produced the different members of the universe; that nothing was generated from nothing, or resolved into nothing; that the earth was round, supported in the centre, having received its shape from the whirling round it of warm vapours, and its concrete nature and hardness from cold." He also imputed to air an intellectual energy, though he did not recognise any difference between mind and matter.
_Parmenides_ was a native of Elea or Velia, and flourished about 460 B.C., soon after which time he came to Athens, and became acquainted with Socrates, who was then very young. Theophrastus and Aristotle speak doubtfully of his having been a pupil of Xenophanes. Some authors, however, reckon him as one of the Pythagorean school; Plato and Aristotle speak of him as the greatest of the Eleatics; and it is said that his fellow-countrymen bound their magistrates every year to abide by the laws which he had laid down. He, like Xenophanes, explained his philosophical tenets in a didactic poem, in which he speaks of two primary forms, one the fine uniform etherial fire of flame (f????? p??), the other the cold body of night, out of the intermingling of which everything in the world is formed by the Deity who reigns in the midst. His cosmogony was carried into minute detail, of which we possess only a few obscure fragments; he somewhat resembled the Pythagoreans in believing in a spherical system of the world, surrounded by a circle of pure light; in the centre of which was the earth; and between the earth and the light was the circle of the Milky Way, of the morning and evening star, of the sun, the planets, and the moon. And the differences in perfection of organization, he attributed to the different proportions in which the primary principles were intermingled. The ultimate principle of the world was, in his view, necessity, in which Empedocles appears to have followed him; he seems to have been the only philosopher who recognised with distinctness and precision that the Existent, t? ??, as such, is unconnected with all separation or juxtaposition, as well as with all succession, all relation to s.p.a.ce or time, all coming into existence, and all change. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that he recognised it as a Deity.
_Democritus_ was born at Abdera, B.C. 460. His father Hegesistratus had been so rich as to be able to entertain Xerxes, when on his march against Greece. He spent his inheritance in travelling into distant countries, visiting the greater part of Asia, and, according to some authors, extending his travels as far as India and aethiopia. Egypt he certainly was acquainted with. He lived to beyond the age of 100 years, and is said to have died B.C. 357.
He was a man of vast and varied learning, and a most voluminous author, though none of his works have come down to us;-in them he carried out the theory of atoms which he had derived from Leucippus; insisting on the reality of a vacuum and of motion, which he held was the eternal and necessary consequence of the original variety of atoms in this vacuum.
These atoms, according to this theory, being in constant motion and impenetrable, offer resistance to one another, and so create a whirling motion which gives birth to worlds. Moreover, from this arise combinations of distinct atoms which become real things and beings. The first cause of all existence he called _chance_ (t???), in opposition to the ???? of Anaxagoras. But Democritus went further; for he directed his investigations especially to the discovery of causes.
Besides the infinite number of atoms, he likewise supposed the existence of an infinite number of worlds, each being kept together by a sort of sh.e.l.l or skin. He derived the four elements from the form, quality, and proportionate magnitude of the atoms predominating in each; and in deriving individual things from atoms, he mainly considered the qualities of warm and cold; the soul he considered as derived from fire atoms; and he did not consider mind as anything peculiar, or as a power distinct from the soul or sensuous perception; but he considered knowledge derived from reason to be a sensuous perception.
In his ethical philosophy, he considered (as we may see from the _de Finibus_) the acquisition of peace of mind as the end and ultimate object of all our actions, and as the last and best fruit of philosophical inquiry. Temperance and moderation in prosperity and adversity were, in his eyes, the princ.i.p.al means of acquiring this peace of mind. And he called those men alone pious and beloved by the G.o.ds who hate whatever is wrong.
_Empedocles_ was a Sicilian, who flourished about the time when Thrasydaeus, the son of Theron, was expelled from Agrigentum, to the tyranny of which he had succeeded; in which revolution he took an active part: it is even said that the sovereignty of his native city was offered to and declined by him.
He was a man of great genius and extensive learning; it is not known whose pupil he was, nor are any of his disciples mentioned except Gorgias. He was well versed in the tenets of the Eleatic and Pythagorean schools; but he did not adopt the fundamental principles of either; though he agreed with Pythagoras in his belief in the metempsychosis, in the influence of numbers, and in one or two other points; and with the Eleatics in disbelieving that anything could be generated out of nothing. Aristotle speaks of him as very much resembling in his opinions Democritus and Anaxagoras. He was the first who established the number of four elements, which had been previously pointed out one by one, partly as fundamental substances, and partly as transitive changes of things coming into existence. He first suggested the idea of two opposite directions of the moving power, an attractive and a repelling one: and he believed that originally these two coexisted in a state of repose and inactivity. He also a.s.sumed a periodical change of the formation of the world; or perhaps, like the philosophers of the pure Ionic school, a perpetual continuance of pure fundamental substances; to which the parts of the world that are tired of change return, and prepare the formation of the sphere for the next period of the world. Like the Eleatics, he strove to purify the notion of the Deity, saying that he, "being a holy infinite spirit, not enc.u.mbered with limbs, pa.s.ses through the world with rapid thoughts." At the same time he speaks of the eternal power of Necessity as an ancient decree of the G.o.ds, though it is not quite clear what he understood by this term.
_Diagoras_ was a native of Melos, and a pupil of Democritus, and flourished about B.C. 435. He is remarkable as having been regarded by all antiquity as an Atheist. In his youth he had some reputation as a lyric poet; so that he is sometimes cla.s.sed with Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides. Aristophanes, in the Clouds, alludes to him where he calls Socrates "the Melian;" not that he was so, but he means to hint that Socrates was an atheist as well as the Melian Diagoras. He lived at Athens for many years till B.C. 411, when he fled from a prosecution inst.i.tuted against him for impiety, according to Diodorus, but probably for some offence of a political nature; perhaps connected with the mutilation of the Hermae.
That he was an atheist, however, appears to have been quite untrue. Like Socrates, he took new and peculiar views respecting the G.o.ds and their worship; and seems to have ridiculed the honours paid to their statues, and the common notions which were entertained of their actions and conduct. (See De Nat. Deor. iii. 37.) He is said also to have attacked objects held in the greatest veneration at Athens, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, and to have dissuaded people from being initiated into them. He appears also, in his theories on the divine nature, to have subst.i.tuted in some degree the active powers of nature for the activity of the G.o.ds. In his own conduct he was a man of strict morality and virtue. He died at Corinth before the end of the century.
_Protagoras_ was a native of Abdera; the exact time of his birth is unknown, but he was a little older than Socrates. He was the first person who gave himself the t.i.tle of s?f?st??, and taught for pay. He came to Athens early in life, and gave to the settlers who left it for Thurium, B.C. 445, a code of laws, or perhaps adapted the old laws of Charondas to their use. He was a friend of Pericles. After some time he was impeached for impiety in saying, That respecting the G.o.ds he did not know whether they existed or not; and banished from Athens (see De Nat. Deor. i. 23).
He was a very prolific author: his most peculiar doctrines excited Plato to write the Theaetetus to oppose them.
His fundamental principle was, that everything is motion, and that that is the efficient cause of everything; that nothing _exists_, but that everything is continually _coming into existence_. He divided motion (besides numerous subordinate divisions) into active and pa.s.sive; though he did not consider either of these characteristics as permanent. From the concurrence of two such motions he taught that sensations and perceptions arose, according to the rapidity of the motion. Therefore he said that there is or exists for each individual, only that of which he has a sensation or perception; and that as sensation, like its objects, is engaged in a perpetual change of motion, opposite a.s.sertions might exist according to the difference of the perception respecting such object.
Moral worth he attributed to taking pleasure in the beautiful; and virtue he referred to a certain sense of shame implanted in man by nature; and to a certain conscious feeling of justice, which secures the bonds of connexion in private and political life.
_Socrates_, the son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, and Phaenarete, a midwife, was born B.C. 468. He lived all his life at Athens, serving indeed as a soldier at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and in the battle of Delium; but with these exceptions he never left the city; where he lived as a teacher of philosophy; not, however, founding a school or giving lectures, but frequenting the market-place and all other places of public resort, talking with every one who chose to address him, and putting questions to every one of every rank and profession, so that Grote calls him "a public talker for instruction." He believed himself to have a special religious mission from the G.o.ds to bring his countrymen to knowledge and virtue. He was at last impeached before the legal tribunals, on the ground of "corrupting the youth of the city, and not worshipping the G.o.ds whom the city worshipped;" and disdaining to defend himself, or rather making a justificatory defence of such a character as to exasperate the judges, he was condemned to death, and executed by having hemlock administered to him, B.C. 399.
From his disciples Plato and Xenophon we have a very full account of his habits and doctrines; though it has been much disputed which of the two is to be considered as giving the most accurate description of his opinions.
As a young man he had been to a certain extent a pupil of Archelaus (the disciple of Anaxagoras), and derived his fondness for the dialectic style of argument from Zeno the Eleatic, the favourite Pupil of Parmenides. He differed, however, from all preceding philosophers in discarding and excluding wholly from his studies all the abstruse sciences, and limiting his philosophy to those practical points which could have influence on human conduct. "He himself was always conversing about the affairs of men," is the description given of him by Xenophon. Astronomy he p.r.o.nounced to be one of the divine mysteries which it was impossible to understand and madness to investigate; all that man wanted was to know enough of the heavenly bodies to serve as an index to the change of seasons and as guides for voyages, etc.; and that knowledge might, he said, easily be obtained from pilots and watchmen. Geometry he reduced to its literal meaning of land-measuring, useful to enable one to act with judgment in the purchase or sale of land; but he looked with great contempt on the study of complicated diagrams and mathematical problems. As to general natural philosophy, he wholly discarded it; asking whether those who professed to apply themselves to that study knew _human_ affairs so well as to have time to spare for _divine_; was it that they thought that they could influence the winds, rain, and seasons, or did they desire nothing but the gratification of an idle curiosity? Men should recollect how much the wisest of them who have attempted to prosecute these investigations differ from one another, and how totally opposite and contradictory their opinions are.
Socrates, then, looked at all knowledge from the point of view of human practice. He first, as Cicero says, (Tusc. Dis. v. 4,) "called philosophy down from heaven and established it in the cities, introduced it even into private houses, and compelled it to investigate life, and manners, and what was good and evil among men." He was the first man who turned his thoughts and discussions distinctly to the subject of Ethics. Deeply imbued with sincere religious feeling, and believing himself to be under the peculiar guidance of the G.o.ds, who at all times admonished him by a divine warning voice when he was in danger of doing anything unwise, inexpedient, or improper, he believed that the G.o.ds constantly manifested their love of and care for all men in the most essential manner, in replying through oracles, and sending them information by sacrificial signs or prodigies, in cases of great difficulty; and he had no doubt that if a man were diligent in learning all that the G.o.ds permitted to be learnt, and if besides he was a.s.siduous in paying pious court to them and in soliciting special information by way of prophecy, they would be gracious to him and signify their purposes to him.
Such then being the capacity of man for wisdom and virtue, his object was to impart that wisdom to them; and the first step necessary, he considered to be eradicating one great fault which was a barrier to all improvement.
This fault he described as "the conceit of knowledge without the reality."
His friend and admirer Chaerephon had consulted the oracle at Delphi as to whether any man was wiser than Socrates; to which the priestess replied that no other man was wiser. Socrates affirms that he was greatly disturbed at hearing this declaration from so infallible an authority; till after conversing with politicians, and orators, and poets, and men of all cla.s.ses, he discovered not only that they were dest.i.tute of wisdom, but that they believed themselves to be possessed of it; so that he was wiser than they, though wholly ignorant, inasmuch as he was conscious of his own ignorance. He therefore considered his most important duty to be to convince men of their ignorance, and to excite them to remedy it, as the indispensable preliminary to virtue; for virtue he defined as doing a thing well, after having learnt it and practised it by the rational and proper means; and whoever performed his duties best, whether he was a ruler of a state or a husbandman, was the best and most useful man and the most beloved by the G.o.ds.
And if his objects were new, his method was no less so. He was the parent of dialectics and logic. Aristotle says, "To Socrates we may unquestionably a.s.sign two novelties-inductive discourses, and the definitions of general terms." Without any predecessor to copy, Socrates fell as it were instinctively into that which Aristotle describes as the double tract of the dialectic process, breaking up the one into the many, and recombining the many into the one; though the latter or synthetical process he did not often perform himself, but strove to stimulate his hearer"s mind so as to enable him to do it for himself.
The fault of the Socratic theory is well remarked by Grote to be, that while he resolved all virtue into knowledge or wisdom, and all vice into ignorance or folly, he omitted to notice what is not less essential to virtue, the proper condition of the pa.s.sions, desires, &c., and limited his views too exclusively to the intellect; still while laying down a theory which is too narrow, he escaped the erroneous consequences of it by a partial inconsistency. For no one ever insisted more emphatically on the necessity of control over the pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes, of enforcing good habits, and on the value of that state of the sentiments and emotions which such a course tended to form. He constantly pointed out that the chief pleasures were such as inevitably arise from the performance of one"s duty, and that as to happiness, a very moderate degree of good fortune is sufficient as to external things, provided the internal man be properly disciplined.
Grote remarks further, (and this remark is particularly worth remembering in the reading of Cicero"s philosophical works,) that "Arcesilaus and the New Academy thought that they were following the example of Socrates, (and Cicero appears to have thought so too,) when they reasoned against everything, and laid it down as a system, that against every affirmative position an equal force of negative argument could be brought as a counterpoise: now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment, not only partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such doubts of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. About physics he thought man could know nothing; but respecting the topics which concern man and society, this was the field which the G.o.ds had expressly a.s.signed, not merely to human practice, but to human study and knowledge; and he thought that every man, not only might know these things, but ought to know them; that he could not possibly act well unless he did know them; and that it was his imperative duty to learn them as he would learn a profession, otherwise he was nothing better than a slave, unfit to be trusted as a free and accountable being. He was possessed by the truly Baconian idea, that the power of steady moral action depended upon, and was limited by, the rational comprehension of moral ends and means."
The system, then, of Socrates was animated by the truest spirit of positive science, and formed an indispensable precursor to its attainment.
And we may form some estimate of his worth and genius if we recollect, that while the systems and speculations of other ancient philosophers serve only as curiosities to make us wonder, or as beacons to warn us into what absurdities the ablest men may fall, the principles and the system of Socrates and his followers, and of that school alone, exercise to this day an important influence on all human argument and speculation.
_Aristippus_ (whom we will consider before Plato, that Aristotle may follow Plato more immediately) came when a young man to Athens, for the express purpose of becoming acquainted with Socrates, with whom he remained almost till his death. He was, however, very different from his master, being a person of most luxurious and sensual habits. He was also the first of Socrates" disciples who took money for teaching. He was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, which followed Socrates in limiting all philosophical inquiries to ethics; though under this name they comprehended a more varied range of subjects than Socrates did, inasmuch as one of the parts into which they divided philosophy, referred to the feelings; another to causes, which is rather a branch of physics; and a third to proofs, which is clearly connected with logic.
He p.r.o.nounced pleasure to be the chief good, and pain the chief evil; but he denied that either of these was a mere negative inactive state, considering them, on the contrary, both to be motions of the soul,-pain a violent, and pleasure a moderate one.