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GREEK PHILOSOPHY,
OR, THE RELATION BETWEEN
SPONTANEOUS AND REFLECTIVE THOUGHT IN GREECE
AND THE POSITIVE TEACHING OF
CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
~) ºf . . . .
By B. F. çOCKER, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND MENTAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICH IGAN.
“Plato made me know the true God, Jesus Christ showed me the way to him.”
ST. AUGUSTINE.
N E W Y O R K :
C A R L T O N & L A N A. H. A. N.
SAN FRANCISCO : E. THOMAS,
C IN CIN N AT I : HIT C H CO C K & WALD EN.
I 8 7 o.









Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
HARPER & BROTHERS, *
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
TO
D. D. W H ED ON, D.D.,
MY EARLIEST LITERARY FRIEND, WHOSE VIGOROUS WRITINGS HAVE
STIMULATED MY INQUIRIES, WHOSE COUNSELS HAVE GUIDED
MY STUDIES, AND WHOSE KIND AND GENEROUS worDS
HAVE ENCOURAGED ME TO PERSEVERANCE
AMID NUMEROUS I).IFFICULTIES,
I DEDICATE THIS volumE As A TOKEN OF MY MORE THAN
ORDINARY AFFECTION.
7"HAE AUTHOR.
T R E F A C E.
N preparing the present volume, the writer has been act.
uated by a conscientious desire to deepen and vivify ourſ
faith in the Christian system of truth, by showing that it does
not rest solely on a special class of facts, but upon all the facts
of nature and humanity; that its authority does not repose
alone on the peculiar and supernatural events which transpired
in Palestine, but also on the still broader foundations of the
ideas and laws of the reason, and the common wants and in-
stinctive yearnings of the human heart. It is his conviction
that the course and constitution of nature, the whole current
of history, and the entire development of human thought in
the ages anterior to the advent of the Redeemer centre in, and
can only be interpreted by, the purpose of redemption.
The method hitherto most prevalent, of treating the history
of human thought as a series of isolated, disconnected, and
lawless movements, without unity and purpose; and the prac-
tice of denouncing the religions and philosophies of the ancient
world as inventions of satanic mischief, or as the capricious
and wicked efforts of humanity to relegate itself from the bonds
of allegiance to the One Supreme Lord and Lawgiver, have, in
his judgment, been prejudicial to the interests of all truth, and
especially injurious to the cause of Christianity. They betray
an utter insensibility to the grand unities of nature and of
thought, and a strange forgetfulness of that universal Provi-
dence which comprehends all nature and all history, and is
yet so minute in its regards that it numbers the hairs on every
vi P_R E FA CE.
human head, and takes note of every sparrow's fall. A juster
method will lead us to regard the entire history of human
thought as a development towards a specific end, and the provi-
dence of God as an all-embracing plan, which Sweeps over all
ages and all nations, and which, in its final Consummation, will,
through Christ, “gather together all things in One, both things
which are in heaven and things which are on earth.”
The central and unifying thought of this volume is that the
necessary ideas and laws of the reason, and the native instincts
of the human hearſ, originally implanted by God, are the prima/
and germinal forces of history; and that these have been developed
Zºnder conditions which Zwere first ordained, and have been continu-
a/ly supervised by the providence of God. God is the Father of
humanity, and he is also the Guide and Educator of our race.
As “the offspring of God,” humanity is not a bare, indetermi-
nate potentiality, but a living energy, an active reason, having
definite qualities, and inheriting fundamental principles and
necessary ideas which constitute it “the image and likeness of
God.” And though it has suffered a moral lapse, and, in the
exercise of its freedom, has become alienated from the life of
God, yet God has never abandoned the human race. He still
“magnifies man, and sets his heart upon him.” “He visits
him every morning, and tries him every moment.” “The in-
spiration of the Almighty still gives him understanding.” The
illumination of the Divine Logos still “teacheth man knowl-
edge.” The Spirit of God still comes near to and touches
with strong emotion every human heart. “God has never left
himself without a witness” in any nation, or in any age. The
providence of God has always guided the dispersions and mi-
grations of the families of the earth, and presided over and
directed the education of the race. “He has foreordained the
times of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical
boundaries of their habitations, in order that they should seek
the Zord, and feel after and find Him who is not far from any
one of us.” The religions of the ancient world were the pain-
ful effort of the human spirit to return to its true rest and
PAE E FA C E. vii
centre—the struggle to “find Him” who is so intimately near
to every human heart, and who has never ceased to be the
want of the human race. The philosophies of the ancient
world were the earnest effort of human reason to reconcile the
finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine, the subject
and God. An overruling Providence, which makes even the
wrath of man to praise Him, took up all these sincere, though
often mistaken, efforts into his own plan, and made them sub-
serve the purpose of redemption. They aided in developing
among the nations “the desire of Salvation,” and in preparing
the world for the advent of the Son of God. The entire course
and history of Divine providence, in every nation, and in every
age, has been directed towards the one grand purpose of “rec-
onciling all things to Himself.” Christianity, as a compre-
hensive Scheme of reconciliation, embracing “all things,” can
not, therefore, be properly studied apart from the ages of ear-
nest thought, of profound inquiry, and of intense religious feel-
ing which preceded it. To despise the religions of the ancient
world, to sneer at the efforts and achievements of the old phi-
losophers, or even to cut them off in thought from all relation
to the plans and movements of that Providence which has
cared for, and watched over, and pitied, and guided all the
nations of the earth, is to refuse to comprehend Christianity
itself.
The author is not indifferent to the possibility that his pur-
pose may be misconceived. The effort may be regarded by
many conscientious and esteemed theologians with suspicion
and mistrust. They can not easily emancipate themselves
from the ancient prejudice against speculative thought. Phi-
losophy has always been regarded by them as antagonistic to
Christian faith. They are inspired by a commendable zeal for
the honor of dogmatic theology. Every essay towards a pro-
founder conviction, a broader faith in the unity of all truth, is
branded with the opprobrious name of “rationalism.” Let us
not be terrified by a harmless word. Surely religion and right
reason must be found in harmony. The author believes, with
viii PEJ; FA C E.
Bacon, that “the foundation of all religion is right reason.”
The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but the
confession of despair. Sustained by these convictions, he
submits this humble contribution to theological science to the
thoughtful consideration of all lovers of Truth, and of Christ,
the fountain of Truth. He can sincerely ask upon it the
blessing of Him in whose fear it has been written, and whose
cause it is the purpose of his life to serve.
The second series, on “Christianity and Modern Thought,”
is in an advanced State of preparation for the press.
NOTE.—It has been the aim of the writer, as far as the nature of the
subject would permit, to adapt this work to general readers. The refer-
ences to classic authors are, therefore, in all cases made to accessible Eng-
lish translations (in Bohn's Classical Library); such changes, however, have
been made in the rendering as shall present the doctrine of the writers in a
clearer and more forcible manner. For valuable services rendered in this
department of the work, by Martin L. D'Ooge, M.A., Acting Professor of
Greek Language and Literature in the University of Michigan, the author
would here express his grateful acknowledgment.
C O N T E N T S.
CHAPTER I.
IPAGE
ATHENS, AND THE MEN OF ATHENS . . . . . . . . . . . I3
CHAPTER II.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS. . . . . . . . . . . . 98
, CHAPTER IV.
THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANs: ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND SYM-
BOLICAL ASPECTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I28
CHAPTER V.
THE UNIKNOWN GOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I65
CHAPTER VI.
THE UNKNOWN GOD (continued). . . . . . . . . . . . . I93
IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON? ar
CHAPTER VII.
THE UNKNOWN GOD (continued) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON ? (continued).
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOL.
Sensational : THALES-ANAxIMENEs—HERAcLITUS—ANAxIMANDER—
LEUCIPPUs—DEMocritus.
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
PAGE
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued) . . . . . . . . . 295
PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
Idealist: PythaGORAS–KENOPHANES–PARMENIDES-ZENO, AVatural
Jęealist : ANAXAGORAS.
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL.
SoCRATES.
CHAPTER X.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued) . . . . . . . . . 326
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
PLATO.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued) . . . . . . . . . .353
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
PLATO.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATIIENS (continued) . . . . . . . . . .388
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
ARISTOTLE.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATIIENS (continued) . . . . . . . . . 422
POST-SOCRATIC SCHOOL.
EPICURUs AND ZENO.
CHAPTER XIV.
TIIE PROPAEDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . 457
CHAPTER XV. -
TIIE PROPAEDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (continued). . 495
“We men of Athens, all things which I behold bear witness to your care-
fulness in religion; for, as I passed through your city and beheld the ob-
jects of your worship, I found amongst them an altar with this inscription,
To THE UNKNowN GOD ; whom, therefore, ye worship, though ye know
Him not, Him declare I unto you. God who made the world and all things
therein, seeing He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples
made with hands; neither is He served by the hands of men, as though he
needed any thing; for He giveth unto all life, and breath, and all things.
And He made of one blood all the nations of mankind to dwell upon the face
of the whole earth; and ordained to each the appointed seasons of their ex-
istence, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek God, if
haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though he be not far from
every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as cer-
tain of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring. Forasmuch,
then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the God-
head is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of
man. Howbeit, those past times of ignorance God hath overlooked; but now
He commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed
a day wherein He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom
He hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance unto all, in that He
hath raised Him from the dead.”—Acts xvii. 22–31.
CHRISTIANITY
AND
G R E E K P H I L O S O PHY.
CHAPTER I.
ATHENS, AND THE MEN OF ATHENS.
“Is it not worth while, for the sake of the history of men and nations, to
study the surface of the globe in its relation to the inhabitants thereof.”—
GOETHE.
HERE is no event recorded in the annals of the early
church so replete with interest to the Christian student,
or which takes so deep a hold on the imagination, and the sym-
pathies of him who is at all familiar with the history of An-
cient Greece, as the one recited above. Here we see the Apos-
tle Paul Standing on the Areopagus at Athens, surrounded by
the temples, statues, and altars, which Grecian art had conse-
Crated to Pagan worship, and proclaiming to the inquisitive
Athenians, “the strangers ” who had come to Athens for busi-
ness or for pleasure, and the philosophers and students of the
Lyceum, the Academy, the Stoa, and the Garden, “the un-
Áſtozyſz God.”
Whether we dwell in our imagination on the artistic grand-
eur and imposing magnificence of the city in which Paul
found himself a solitary stranger, or recall the illustrious
names which by their achievements in arts and philosophy
have shed around the city of Athens an immortal glory, or
whether, fixing our attention on the lonely wanderer amid the
porticoes, and groves, and temples of this classic city, we at-
I4. C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. A ND
tempt to conceive the emotion which stirred his heart as he
beheld it “wholly given to idolatry;” or whether we contrast
the sublime, majestic theism proclaimed by Paul with the de-
grading polytheism and degenerate philosophy which then pre-
vailed in Athens, or consider the prudent and Sagacious man-
ner in which the apostle conducts his argument in view of the
religious opinions and prejudices of his audience, we can not
|but feel that this event is fraught with lessons of instruction to
the Church in every age. -
That the objects which met the eye of Paul on every hand,
and the opinions he heard everywhere expressed in Athens,
must have exerted a powerful influence upon the current of his
thoughts, as well as upon the state of his emotions, is a legiti-
mate and natural presumption. Not only was “his spirit
stirred within him " — his heart deeply moved and agitated
when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry—but his thought-
ful, philosophic mind would be engaged in pondering those
deeply interesting questions which underlie the whole system
of Grecian polytheism. The circumstances of the hour would,
no doubt, in a large degree determine the line of argument,
the form of his discourse, and the peculiarities of his phrase-
ology. The more vividly, therefore, we can represent the
scenes and realize the surrounding incidents; the more thor-
oughly we can enter into sympathy with the modes of thought
and feeling peculiar to the Athenians; the more perfectly we
can comprehend the spirit and tendency of the age ; the more
immediate our acquaintance with the religious opinions and
philosophical ideas then prevalent in Athens, the more perfect
will be our comprehension of the apostle's argument, the deep-
er our interest in his theme. Some preliminary notices of
Athens, and “the Men of Athens,” will therefore be appropri-
ate as introductory to a Series of discourses on Paul's sermon
On Mars’ Hill.
The peculiar connection that subsists between Geography
and History, between a people and the country they inhabit,
will justify the extension of our survey beyond the mere topog-
G R E E R PEIIL OS OPEI Y I5
raphy of Athens. The people of the entire province of Attica
were called Athenians (A0mvátov) in their relation to the state,
and Attics (Arrikoi) in regard to their manners, customs, and
dialect.” The climate and the scenery, the forms of contour
and relief, the geographical position and relations of Attica,
and, indeed, of the whole peninsula of Greece, must be taken
into our account if we would form a comprehensive judgment
of the character of the Athenian people.
The soil on which a people dwell, the air they breathe, the
mountains and seas by which they are surrounded, the skies
that overshadow them,-all these exert a powerful influence on
their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their Sentiments,
and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully
grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, Configu-
ration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with
tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of
the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the
physical geography of any country will therefore aid us mate-
rially in elucidating the natural history, and, to Some extent,
the moral history of its population. “History does not stand
outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian
only grasps a people's character with true precision when he
keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences
which its surroundings have wrought upon it.” +
It is, however, of the utmost consequence the reader should
understand that there are two widely different methods of treat-
ing this deeply interesting subject—methods which proceed on
fundamentally opposite views of man and of nature. One
method is that pursued by Buckle in his “History of Civiliza-
tion in England.” The tendency of his work is the assertion
of the supremacy of material conditions over the development
of human history, and indeed of every individual mind. Here
man is purely passive in the hands of nature. Exterior con-
ditions are the chief, if not the only causes of man’s intellectual
* Niebuhr's “Lectures on Ethnography and Geography,” p. 91.
* Ritter’s “Geographical Studies,” p. 34.
?
* = &
:*-*~
I6 C EIRISTIANITY AND
and social development. So that, such a climate and Soil,
such aspects of nature and local circumstances being given,
such a nation necessarily follows." The other method is that
of Carl Ritter, Arnold Guyot, and Cousin.” These take ac-
count of the freedom of the human will, and the power of man
to control and modify the forces of nature. They also take ac-
count of the original constitution of man, and the primitive type
of nations; and they allow for results arising from the mutual
conflict of geographical conditions. And they, especially, rec-
ognize the agency of a Divine Providence controlling those
forces in nature by which the configuration of the earth's sur-
face is determined, and the distribution of its oceans, conti-
nents, and islands is secured ; and a providence, also, directing
the dispersions and migrations of nations—determining the
times of each nation's existence, and fixing the geographical
bounds of their habitation, all in view of the moral history and
spiritual development of the race,—“that they may feel after,
and find the living God.” The relation of man and nature is
not, in their estimation, a relation of cause and effect. It is a
relation of adjustment, of harmony, and of reciprocal action
and reaction. “Man is not”—says Cousin—“an effect, and
| nature the cause, but there is between man and nature a man-
'iſest harmony of general laws.”.... “Man and nature are two
great effects which, coming from the same cause, bear the same
characteristics ; SO that the earth, and he who inhabits it, man
and nature, are in perfect harmony.” God has created both
man and the universe, and he has established between them a
striking harmony. The earth was made for man; not simply
to supply his physical wants, but also to minister to his intel-
'lectual and moral development. The earth is not a mere
dwelling-place of nations, but a school-house, in which God
himself is Superintending the education of the race. Hence
* See chap. ii. “History of Civilization.”
* Ritter’s “Geographical Studies;” Guyot's “Earth and Man;” Cousin's
“History of Philosophy,” lec. vii., viii., ix.
* Lectures, vol. I. pp. 162, 169.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. I7
we must not only study the events of history in their chronolog-
ical order, but we must study the earth itself as the theatre of
history. A knowledge of all the circumstances, both physical
and moral, in the midst of which events take place, is absolute-
ly necessary to a right judgment of the events themselves.
And we can only elucidate properly the character of the actors
by a careful study of all their geographical and ethological con-
ditions.
It will be readily perceived that, in attempting to estimate
the influence which exterior conditions exert in the determina-
tion of national character, we encounter peculiar difficulties.
We can not in these studies expect the precision and accura-
cy which is attained in the mathematical, or the purely physical
sciences. We possess no control over the “materiel ” of our
inquiry ; we have no power of placing it in new conditions, and
Submitting it to the test of new experiments, as in the physical
Sciences. National character is a complex result—a product
of the action and reaction of primary and Secondary causes.
It is a conjoint effect of the action of the primitive elements
and laws originally implanted in humanity by the Creator, of
the free causality and self-determining power of man, and of
all the conditions, permanent and accidental, within which the
national life has been developed. And in cases where physical
and mora! causes are blended, and reciprocally conditioned
and modified in their operation ;-where primary results un-
dergo endless modifications from the influence of Surrounding
circumstances, and the reaction of social and political institu-
tions; — and where each individual of the great aggregate
wields a causal power that obeys no specific law, and by his
own inherent power sets in motion new trains of causes which
can not be reduced to statistics, we grant that we are in pos-
Session of no instrument of exact analysis by which the Com-
plex phenomena of national character may be reduced to prim-
itive elements. All that we can hope is, to ascertain, by
psychological analysis, what are the fundamental ideas and
laws of humanity ; to grasp the exterior conditions which are,
I8 C EIR IS TIANITY AND
on all hands, recognized as exerting a powerful influence upon
national character; to watch, under these lights, the manifesta-
tions of human nature on the theatre of history, and then apply
the principles of a sound historic criticism to the recorded
opinions of contemporaneous historians and their immediate
successors. In this manner we may expect, at least, to approx-
imate to a true judgment of history.
There are unquestionably fundamental powers and laws in
human nature which have their development in the course of
history. There are certain primitive ideas, imbedded in the
constitution of each individual mind, which are revealed in the
universal consciousness of our race, under the conditions of
experience—the exterior conditions of physical nature and hu-
man society. Such are the ideas of cause and substance ; of
unity and infinity, which govern all the processes of discursive
thought, and lead us to the recognition of Being in se –such
the ideas of right, of duty, of accountability, and of retribution,
which regulate all the conceptions we form of our relations to
all other moral beings, and constitute morality;-such the ideas
of order, of proportion, and of harmony, which preside in the
realms of art, and constitute the beau-ideal of esthetics;–such
the ideas of God, the soul, and immortality, which rule in the
domains of religion, and determine man a religious being.
These constitute the identity of human nature under all cir-
cumstances ; these characterize humanity in all conditions.
Like permanent germs in vegetable life, always producing the
same species of plants; or like fundamental types in the ani-
mal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all
classes and Orders; so these fundamental ideas in human na-
ture constitute its Sameness and unity, under all the varying
conditions of life and Society. The acorn must produce an
oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always pro-
duce its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his
image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteris-
tics, not only in his Corporeal nature, but also in his mental
constitution.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, I9
But the germination of every seed depends on conditions ab
extra, and all germs are modified, in their development, by ge-
.ographical and climatal surroundings. The development of
the acorn into a mature and perfect oak greatly depends on the
exterior conditions of soil, and moisture, light, and heat. By
these it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be
stunted in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of
conditions, or it may perish under another. The Brassica ole-
racea, in its native habitat on the shore of the sea, is a bitter
plant with wavy sea-green leaves; in the cultivated garden it
is the cauliflower. The single rose, under altered conditions,
becomes a double rose ; and creepers rear their stalks and
stand erect. Plants, which in a cold climate are annuals, be-
come perennial when transported to the torrid zone.” And so
human nature, fundamentally the same under all circumstances,
may be greatly modified, both physically and mentally, by geo-
graphical, social, and political conditions. The corporeal na-
ture of man—his complexion, his physiognomy, his stature ;
the intellectual nature of man—his religious, ethical, and es-
thetical ideas are all modified by his surroundings. These
modifications, of which all men dwelling in the same geograph-
ical regions, and under the same social and political institu-
tions, partake, constitute the individuality of nations. Thus,
whilst there is a fundamental basis of unity in the corporeal
and spiritual nature of man, the causes of diversity are to be
sought in the circumstances in which tribes and nations are
placed in the overruling providence of God.
The power which man exerts over material conditions, by
virtue of his intelligence and freedom, is also an important ele-
ment which, in these studies, we should not depreciate or ig-
more. We must accept, with all its consequences, the dictum
of universal consciousness that man is free. He is not abso-
lutely subject to, and moulded by nature. He has the power
to control the circumstances by which he is surrounded—to
* See Carpenter’s “Compar. Physiology,” p. 625; Lyell’s “Principles of
Geology,” pp. 588, 589.
2O C EIRISTIA WTT Y. A ND
originate new social and physical conditions—to determine his
own individual and responsible character—and he can wield a
mighty influence over the character of his fellow-men. Indi-
vidual men, as Lycurgus, Solon, Pericles, Alexander, Caesar,
and Napoleon have left the impress of their own mind and
character upon the political institutions of nations, and, in an
indirect manner, upon the character of Succeeding generations
of men. Homer, Plato, Cicero, Bacon, Kant, Locke, Newton,
Shakspeare, Milton have left a deep and permanent impres-
sion upon the forms of thought and speech, the language and
literature, the Science and philosophy of nations. And inas-
much as a nation is the aggregate of individual beings endowed
with spontaneity and freedom, we must grant that exterior con-
ditions are not omnipotent in the formation of national char-
acter. Still the free causality of man is exercised within a nar-
row field. “There is a strictly necessitative limitation drawing
an impassable boundary-line around the area of volitional free-
dom.” The human will “however subjectively free” is often
“objectively unfree;” thus a large “uniformity of volitions” is
the natural consequence." The child born in the heart of Chi-
na, whilst he may, in his personal freedom, develop such traits
of character as constitute his individuality, must necessarily be
conformed in his language, habits, modes of thought, and re-
ligious sentiments to the spirit of his country and age. We no
more expect a development of Christian thought and character
in the centre of Africa, unvisited by Christian teaching, than
we expect to find the climate and vegetation of New England.
And we no more expect that a New England child shall be a
Mohammedan, a Parsee, or a Buddhist, than that he shall have
an Oriental physiognomy, and Speak an Oriental language.
Indeed it is impossible for a man to exist in human society
without partaking in the spirit and manners of his country and
his age. Thus all the individuals of a nation represent, in a
greater or less degree, the spirit of the nation. They who
do this most perfectly are the great men of that nation, because
* See Dr. Wheedon’s “Freedom of the Will,” pp. 164, 165.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 2 I
they are at once both the product and the impersonation of
their country and their age. “We allow ourselves to think of
Shakspeare, or of Raphael, or of Phidias as having accom-
plished their work by the power of their individual genius, but
greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree of
perfection which prevails widely around it, and forms the en-
environment in which it grows. No Such single mind in Sin-
gle contact with the facts of nature could have created a Pal-
las, a Madonna, or a Lear; such vast conceptions are the
growth of ages, the creation of a nation's spirit; and the artist
and poet, filled full with the power of that spirit, but gave it
form, and nothing but form. Nor would the form itself have
been attained by any isolated talent. No genius can dispense
with experience. ... Noble conceptions already existing, and a
noble school of execution which will launch mind and hand
upon their true courses, are indispensable to transcendent ex-
cellence. Shakspeare's plays were as much the offspring of
the long generations who had pioneered the road for him, as
the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those of Coper-
nicus.” The principles here enounced apply with equal force
to philosophers and men of science. The philosophy of Plato
was but the ripened fruit of the pregnant thoughts and Seminal
utterances of his predecessors, Socrates, Anaxagoras, and
Pythagoras; whilst all of them do but represent the general
tendency and spirit of their country and their times. The
principles of Lord Bacon’s “Instauratio Magna" were incipient
in the “Opus Majus ” of Roger Bacon, the Franciscan friar.
The sixteenth century matured the thought of the thirteenth
century. The inductive method in scientific inquiry was imma-
ment in the British mind, and the latter Bacon only gave to it
a permanent form. It is true that great men have occasionally
appeared on the stage of history who, like the reformers Luther
and Wesley, have seemed to be in conflict with the prevailing
Spirit of their age and nation, but these men were the creations
of a providence—that providence which, from time to time, has
* Froude, “Hist. of England,” pp. 73, 74.
22 CII RISTIANITY AND
supernaturally interposed in the moral history of our race by
corrective and remedial measures. These men were inspired
and led by a spirit which descended from on high. And yet
even they had their precursors and harbingers. Wyckliffe and
John Huss, and Jerome of Prague are but the representatives
of numbers whose names do not grace the historic page, who
pioneered the way for Luther and the Reformation. And no
one can read the history of that great movement of the six-
teenth century without being persuaded there were thousands
of Luther's predecessors and contemporaries who, like Stau-
pitz and Erasmus, lamented the corruptions of the Church of
Rome, and only needed the heroic courage of Luther to make
them reformers also. Whilst, therefore, we recognize a free
causal power in man, by which he determines his individual
and responsible character, we are compelled to recognize the
general law, that national character is mainly the result of those
geographical and etiological, and political and religious con-
ditions in which the nations have been placed in the providence
of God.
Nations, like persons, have an Individuality. They present
certain characteristic marks which constitute their proper iden-
tity, and separate them from the Surrounding nations of the
earth ; such, for example, as Complexion, physiognomy, lan-
guage, pursuits, customs, institutions, sentiments, ideas. The
individuality of a nation is determined mainly from without, and
not, like human individuality, from within. The laws of a
man's personal character have their home in the soul ; and the
peculiarities and habits, and that conduct of life, which consti-
tute his responsible character are, in a great degree, the conse-
quence of his own free choice. But dwelling, as he does, in so-
ciety, where he is continually influenced by the example and
opinions of his neighbors; subject, as he is, to the ceaseless
influence of climate, scenery, and other terrestrial conditions,
the characteristics which result from these relations, and which
are common to all who dwell in the same regions, and under
the same institutions, constitute a national individuality. In-
G R EE K PHILOSOPHY, 23
dividual character is variable under the same general con-
ditions, national character is uniform, because it results from
causes which operate alike upon all individuals.
Now, that man's complexion, his pursuits, his habits, his
ideas are greatly modified by his geographical surroundings, is
the most obvious of truths. No one doubts that the complex-
ion of man is greatly affected by climatic conditions. The ap-
pearance, habits, pursuits of the man who lives within the trop-
ics must, necessarily, differ from those of the man who dwells.
within the temperate zone. No one expects that the dweller
on the mountain will have the same characteristics as the man
who resides on the plains ; or that he whose home is in the in-
terior of a continent will have the same habits as the man
whose home is on the islands of the sea. The denizen of the
primeval forest will most naturally become a huntsman. The
dweller on the extended plain, or fertile mountain slope, will
lead a pastoral, or an agricultural life. Those who live on the
margin of great rivers, or the borders of the sea, will “do busi-
ness on the great waters.” Commerce and navigation will be
their chief pursuits. The people whose home is on the margin
of the lake, or bay, or inland Sea, or the thickly studded archi-
pelago, are mostly fishermen. And then it is a no less obvi-
ous truth that men's pursuits exert a moulding influence on
their habits, their forms of speech, their sentiments, and their
ideas. Let any one take pains to observe the peculiarities
which characterize the huntsman, the shepherd, the agricultur-
ist, or the fisherman, and he will be convinced that their occu-
pations stamp the whole of their thoughts and feelings; color
all their conceptions of things outside their own peculiar field;
direct their simple philosophy of life ; and give a tone, even, to
their religious emotions.
The general aspects of nature, the climate and the scenery,
exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the
mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vi-
vacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility
of the Russ, the rugged Sternness of the Scot, the repose and
24. C EIRISTIANITY AND
dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in
which they dwell, the air they breathe, the food they eat, and
the landscapes and skies they daily look upon. The nomadic
Arab is not only indebted to the country in which he dwells for
his habit of hunting for daily food, but ſor that love of a free,
untrammelled life, and for those soaring dreams of fancy in
which he so ardently delights. Not only is the Swiss deter-
mined by the peculiarities of his geographical position to lead
a pastoral life, but the climate, and mountain scenery, and
bracing atmosphere inspire him with the love of liberty. The
reserved and meditative Hindoo, accustomed to the profuse
luxuriance of nature, borrows the fantastic ideas of his mythol-
ogy from plants, and flowers, and trees. The vastness and in-
finite diversity of nature, the colossal magnitude of all the
forms of animal and vegetable life, the broad and massive fea-
tures of the landscape, the aspects of beauty and of terror which
surround him; and daily pour their silent influences upon his
soul, give vividness, grotesqueness, even, to his imagination,
and repress his active powers. His mental character bears a
peculiar and obvious relation to his geographical Surroundings."
The influence of external nature on the imagination—the
creaſive faculty in man—is obvious and remarkable. It reveals
itself in all the productions of man — his architecture, his
sculpture, his painting, and his poetry. Oriental architecture
is characterized by the boldness and massiveness of all its
parts, and the monotonous uniformity of all its features. This
is but the expression, in a material form, of that shadowy feel-
ing of infinity, and unity, and immobility which an unbroken
continent of vast deserts and continuous lofty mountain chains
would naturally inspire. The simple grandeur and perfect har-
mony and graceful blending of light and shade so peculiar to
Grecian architecture are the product of a country whose area
is diversified by the harmonious blending of land and water,
mountain and plain, all bathed in purest light, and canopied
with skies of Serenest blue. And they are also the product of
* Ritter, “Geograph. Studies,” p. 287.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHTY. 25
a country where man is released from the imprisonment within
the magic circle of Surrounding nature, and made conscious of
his power and freedom. In Grecian architecture, therefore,
there is less of the massiveness and immobility of nature, and
more of the grace and dignity of man. It adds to the idea of
permanence a vital expression. “The Doric column,” says
Vitruvius, “has the proportion, strength, and beauty of man.”
The Gothic architecture had its birthplace among a people who
had lived and worshipped for ages amidst the dense forests of
the north, and was no doubt an imitation of the interlacing of
the Overshadowing trees. The clustered shaft, and lancet
arch, and flowing tracery, reflect the impression which the sur-
rounding scenery had woven into the texture of the Teutonic
mind.
The history of painting and of sculpture will also show that
the varied “styles of art” are largely the result of the aspects
which external nature presented to the eye of man. Oriental
sculpture, like its architecture, was characterized by massive-
ness of form and tranquillity of expression ; and its painting
was, at best, but colored sculpture. The most striking objects
are colossal figures, in which the human form is strangely com-
bined with the brute, as in the winged bulls of Nineveh and
the sphinxes of Egypt. Man is regarded simply as a part of
nature, he does not rise above the plane of animal life. The
soul has its immortality only in an eternal metempsychosis—a
cycle of life which sweeps through all the brute creation. But
in Grecian sculpture we have less of nature, more of man; less
of massiveness, more of grace and elegance ; less repose, and
more of action. Now the connection between these styles of
art, and the countries in which they were developed, is at once
suggested to the thoughtful mind.
And then, finally, the literature of a people equally reveals
the impress of surrounding cosmical conditions. “The poems
of Ossian are but the echo of the wild, rough, cloudy highlands
of his Scottish home.” The forest songs of the wild Indian,
the negro's plaintive melodies in the rice-fields of Carolina, the
26 C EIRISTIANITY AND
refrains in which the hunter of Kamtchatka relates his adven-
tures with the polar bear, and in which the South Sea Islander
celebrates his feats and dangers on the deep, all betoken the
influence which the scenes of daily life exert upon the thoughts
and feelings of our race. “To what an extent nature can ex-
press herself in, and modify the culture of the individual, as
well as of an entire people, can be seen on Ionian Soil in the
verse of Homer, which, called forth under the most favorable
sky, and on the most luxuriant shore of the Grecian archipel-
ago, not only charms us to-day, but bearing this impress, has
determined what shall be the classic form throughout all coming
time.”
In seeking, therefore, to determine correctly what are the
characteristics of a nation, we must endeavor to trace how far
the physical constitution of that people, their temperament,
their habits, their sentiments, and their ideas have been formed,
or modified, under the surrounding geographical conditions,
which, as we have seen, greatly determine a nation's individ-
uality. Guided by these lights, let us approach the study of
“the men of Athens.” *
Affica, of which Athens was the capital, and whose entire
populations were called “Athenians,” was the most important
of all the Hellenic states. It is a triangular peninsula, the
base of which is defined by the high mountain ranges of Cithae-
* See Ritter, pp. 288, 289. Poetic art has unquestionably its geographical
distributions like the fauna and flora of the globe. “If you love the images,
not merely of a rich, but of a luxuriant fancy; if you are pleased with the
most daring flights; if you would see a poetic creation full of wonders, then
turn your eye to the poetry of the orient, where all forms appear in purple;
where each flower glows like the morning ray resting on the earth. But if,
on the contrary, you prefer depth of thought, and earnestness of reflection;
if you delight in the colossal, yet pale forms, which float about in mist, and
whisper of the mysteries of the spirit-land, and of the vanity of all things, ex-
cept honor, then I must point you to the hoary nort/....... Or if you sympathize
with that deep feeling, that longing of the soul, which does not linger on the
carth, but evermore looks up to the azure tent of the stars, where happiness
dwells, where the unquiet of the beating heart is still, then you must resort to
the romantic poetry of the west.”—“Study of Greek Ziterature,” Bishop
Esaias Tegnér, p. 38.
G B E E R PEIILO S O PET Y. 27
ron and Parnes, whilst the two other sides are washed by the
sea, having their vertex at the promontory of Sunium, or Cape
Colonna. The prolongation of the South-western line towards
the north until it reaches the base at the foot of Mount Cithae-
ron, served as the line of demarkation between the Athenian
territory and the State of Megara. Thus Attica may be gen-
erally described as bounded on the north-east by the channel
of the Negropont; on the South-west by the gulf of AEgina and
part of Megara ; and on the north-west by the territory which
formed the ancient Boeotia, including within its limits an area
of about 750 miles.”
Hills of inferior elevation connect the mountain ranges of
Cithaeron and Parnes with the mountainous surface of the south-
east of the peninsula. These hills, commencing with the prom-
ontory of Sunium itself, which forms the vertex of the triangle,
rise gradually on the South-east to the round summit of Hymet-
tus, and onward to the higher peak of Pentelicus, near Mara-
thon, on the east. The rest of Attica is all a plain, one reach
of which comes down to the sea on the south, at the very base
of Hymettus. Here, about five miles from the shore, an abrupt
rock rises from the plain, about 200 feet high, bordered on the
south by lower eminences. That rock is the Acropolis. Those
lower eminences are the Areopagus, the Prmyx, and the Muse-
um. In the valley formed by these four hills we have the Ago-
ra, and the varied undulations of these hills determine the fea-
tures of the city of Athens.”
Nearly all writers on the topography of Athens derive their
materials from Pausanias, who visited the city in the early part
of the second century, and whose “Itinerary of Greece’ is
still extant.” He entered the city by the Peiraic gate, the same
gate at which Paul entered some sixty years before. We shall
place ourselves under his guidance, and, so far as we are able,
* See art. “Attica,” Ancyc. Brit.
* See Conybeare and Howson’s “Life and Epistles of St. Paul,” vol. i.
p. 346.
* The account here given of the topography of Athens is derived mainly
from the article on “Athens” in the Eucyc. Brit.
28 CII ſº ISTIANITY AND
follow the same course, supplying Some Omissions, as we go
along, from other sources. On entering the city, the first build-
ing which arrested the attention of Pausanias was the Pompei-
um, so called because it was the depository of the sacred ves-
sels, and also of the garments used in the annual procession
in honor of Athena (Minerva), the tutelary deity of Athens,
from whom the city derived its name. Near this edifice stood
a temple of Demeter (Ceres), containing statues of that goddess,
of her daughter Persephone, and of Iacchus, all executed by
Praxiteles; and beyond were several porticoes leading from
the city gates to the outer Ceramicus, while the intervening
space was occupied by various temples, the Gymnasium of
Hermes, and the house of Polytion, the most magnificent pri-
vate residence in Athens.
There were two places in Athens known by the name of
Ceramicus, one without the walls, forming part of the suburbs;
and the other within the walls, embracing a very important
section of the city. The outer Ceramicus was covered with
the sepulchres of the Athenians who had been slain in battle,
and buried at the public expense ; it communicated with the
inner Ceramicus by the gate Dipylum. The Ceramicus within
the city probably included the Agora, the Stoa Basileios, and
the Stoa Poecile, besides various other temples and public
buildings.
Having fairly passed the city gates, a long street is before
us with a colonnade or cloister on either hand; and at the end
of this street, by turning to the left, we might go through the
whole Ceramicus to the open country, and the groves of the
Academy. But we turn to the right, and enter the Agora,_
“the market-place,” as it is called in the English translation of
the sacred narrative.
We are not, however, to conceive of the market-place at
Athens as bearing any resemblance to the bare, undecorated
Spaces appropriated to business in our modern towns; but
rather as a magnificent public Square, closed in by grand his-
toric buildings, of the highest style of architecture; planted
G. E. E. E. K. PEIIL OS O PET Y. 29
with palm-trees in graceful distribution, and adorned with
statues of the great men of Athens and the deified heroes of
her mythology, from the hands of the immortal masters of the
plastic art. This “market-place ’’ was the great centre of the
public life of the Athenians,—the meeting-place of poets, ora-
tors, statesmen, warriors, and philosophers, a grand resort for
leisure, for conversation, for business, and for news. Standing
in the Agora, and looking towards the South, is the Museum,
so called because it was believed that Musales, the father of
poetry, was buried there. Towards the north-west is the Pnyx,
a sloping hill, partially levelled into an open area for political
assemblies. To the north is seen the craggy eminence of the
Areopagus, and on the north-east is the Acropolis towering high
above the scene, “the crown and glory of the whole.”
The most important buildings of the Agora are the Porti-
coes or cloisters, the most remarkable of which are the Stoa
Basileios, or Portico of the king; the Stoa Eleutherius, or Por-
tico of the Jupiter of Freedom ; and the Stoa Poecile, or Paint-
ed Porch. These Porticoes were covered walks, the roof being
Supported by columns, at least on one side, and by Solid ma-
sonry on the other. Such shaded walks are almost indispen-
sable in the south of Europe, where the people live much in the
open air, and they afford a grateful protection from the heat of
the sun, as well as a shelter from the rain. Seats were also
provided where the loungers might rest, and the philosophers
and rhetoricians sit down for intellectual conversation. The
“Stoic” school of philosophy derived its name from the cir-
cumstance that its founder, Zeno, Iused to meet and Converse
with his disciples under one of these porticoes, the Stoa Poe-
cile. These porticoes were not only built in the most magnif-
icent style of architecture, but adorned with paintings and
statuary by the best masters. On the roof of the Stoa Basileios
were statues of Theseus and the Day. In front of the Stoa
Eleutherius was placed the divinity to whom it was dedicated;
and within were allegorical paintings, celebrating the rise of
“the fierce democracy.” The Stoa Poecile derived its name
3O OFIBIST T.4 VIT Y AND
from the celebrated paintings, which adorned its walls, and
which were almost exclusively devoted to the representation of
national subjects, as the contest of Theseus with the Amazons,
the more glorious struggle at Marathon, and the other achieve-
ments of the Athenians ; here also were suspended the shields
of the Scionaºans of Thrace, together with those of the Lace-
demonians, taken at the island of Sphacteria.
It is beyond our purpose to describe all the public edifices,
the temples, gymnasia, and theatres which crowd the Ceramic
area, and that portion of the city lying to the west and south
of the Acropolis. Our object is, if possible, to convey to the
reader some conception of the ancient splendor and magnifi-
cence of Athens; to revive the scenes amidst which the Athe-
nians daily moved, and which may be presumed to have exerted
a powerful influence upon the manners, the taste, the habits of
thought, and the entire character of the Athenian people. To
secure this object we need only direct attention to the Acrop-
olis, which was crowded with the monuments of Athenian
glory, and exhibited an amazing concentration of all that
was most perfect in art, unsurpassed in excellence, and unrival-
led in richness and splendor. It was “the peerless gem of
Greece, the glory and pride of art, the wonder and envy of the
World.”
The western side of the Acropolis, which furnished the only
access to the summit of the hill, was about 168 feet in breadth ;
an opening So narrow that, to the artists of Pericles, it appeared
practicable to fill up the space with a single building, which, in
Serving the purpose of a gateway to the Acropolis, should also
contribute to adorn, as well as fortify the citadel. This work,
the greatest achievement of civil architecture in Athens, which
rivalled the Parthenon in felicity of execution, and surpassed it
in boldness and originality of design, consisted of a grand cen-
tral colonnade closed by projecting wings. This incomparable
edifice, built of Pentelic marble, received the name of Propylaea
from its forming the vestibule to the five-fold gates by which the
citadel was entered. In front of the right wing there stood a
G R E E K PHILOSOPH Y. 3 I
small Ionic temple of pure white marble, dedicated to Niké
Apteros (Wingless Victory).
A gigantic flight of steps conducted from the five-fold gates
to the platform of the Acropolis, which was, in fact, one vast
composition of architecture and sculpture dedicated to the na-
tional glory. Here stood the Parthenon, or temple of the Vir-
gin Goddess, the glorious temple which rose in the proudest
period of Athenian history to the honor of Minerva, and which
ages have only partially effaced. This magnificent temple, “by
its united excellences of materials, design, and decoration, in-
ternal as well as external, has been universally considered the
most perfect which human genius ever planned and executed.
Its dimensions were sufficiently large to produce an impression
of grandeur and sublimity, which was not disturbed by any ob-
trusive subdivision of parts ; and, whether viewed at a small or
greater distance, there was nothing to divert the mind of the
spectator from contemplating the unity as well as majesty of
mass and outline ; circumstances which form the first and most
remarkable characteristic of every Greek temple erected during
the purer ages of Grecian taste and genius.”
It would be impossible to convey any just and adequate
conception of the artistic decorations of this wonderful edifice.
The two pediments of the temple were decorated with magnifi-
cent compositions of statuary, each consisting of about twenty
entire figures of colossal size ; the one on the western pediment
representing the birth of Minerva, and the other, on the eastern
pediment, the contest between that goddess and Neptune for
the possession of Attica. Under the outer cornice were ninety-
two groups, raised in high relief from tablets about four feet
square, representing the victories achieved by her companions.
Round the inner frieze was presented the procession of the Par-
thenon on the grand quinquennial festival of the Panathenaea.
The procession is represented as advancing in two parallel col-
umns from west to east; one proceeding along the northern,
the other along the Southern side of the temple ; part ſacing
* Leake’s “Topography of Athens,” p. 209 et seq.
32 OFIA IS TIA WITY AND
inward after turning the angle of the eastern front, and part
meeting towards the centre of that front.
The statue of the virgin goddess, the work of Phidias, stood
in the eastern chamber of the cella, and was composed of ivory
and gold. It had but one rival in the world, the Jupiter Olym-
pus of the same famous artist. On the Summit or apex of the
helmet was placed a sphinx, with griffins on either side. The
figure of the goddess was represented in an erect martial atti-
tude, and clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. On the breast
was a head of Medusa, wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory
about four cubits high. The goddess held a spear in her hand,
and an aegis lay at her feet, while on her right, and near the
spear, was a figure of a serpent, believed to represent that of
Erichthonius. -
According to Pliny, the entire height of the statue was twen-
ty-six cubits (about forty feet), and the artist, Phidias, had in-
geniously contrived that the gold with which the statue was en-
crusted might be removed at pleasure. The battle of the Cen-
taurs and Lapithae was carved upon the sandals; the battle of
the Amazons was represented on the aegis which lay at her feet,
and on the pedestal was sculptured the birth of Pandora.
The temple of Erechtheus, the most ancient structure in
Athens, stood on the northern side of the Acropolis. The
statue of Zeus Polieus stood between the Propylaea and the
Parthenon. The brazen colossus of Minerva, cast from the
Spoils of Marathon, appears to have occupied the space between
the Erechtheium and the Propylaea, near the Pelasgic or north-
ern wall. This statue of the tutelary divinity of Athens and
Attica rose in gigantic proportions above all the buildings of
the Acropolis, the flashing of whose helmet plumes met the
Sailor's eye as he approached from the Sunian promontory.
And the remaining space of the wide area was literally crowd-
ed with Statuary, amongst which were Theseus contending with
the Minotaur; Hercules strangling the serpents; the Earth
imploring showers from Jupiter; and Minerva causing the olive
to sprout, while Neptune raises the waves. After these works
G R E E R PEIIL OS O PET Y. 33
*
of art, it is needless to speak of others. It may be sufficient to
state that Pausanias mentions by name towards three hundred
remarkable statues which adorned this part of the city even
after it had been robbed and despoiled by its several conquer-
OTS.
The Areopagus, or hill of Ares (Mars), so called, it is said,
in consequence of that god having been the first person tried
there for the crime of murder, was, beyond all doubt, the rocky
height which is separated from the western end of the Acropo-
lis by a hollow, forming a communication between the northern
and southern divisions of the city. The court of the Areopagus
was simply an open space on the highest Summit of the hill,
| the judges sitting in the open air, on rude seats of Stone, hewn
out of the solid rock. Near to the spot on which the court was
held was the sanctuary of the Furies, the avenging deities of
Grecian mythology, whose presence gave additional Solemnity
to the scene. The place and the court were regarded by the
people with superstitious reverence.
This completes our survey of the principal buildings, monu-
ments, and localities within the city of Athens. We do not im-
agine we have succeeded in conveying any adequate idea of the
ancient splendor and glory of this city, which was not only the
capital of Attica, but also
“The eye of Greece, mother of art and eloquence.”
We trust, however, that we have contributed somewhat towards
awakening in the reader's mind a deeper interest in these classic
scenes, and enabling him to appreciate, more vividly, the allu-
sions we may hereafter make to them.
The mere dry recital of geographical details, and topograph-
ical notices is, however, of little interest in itself, and by itself.
A tract of Country derives its chief interest from its historic as-
sociations—its immediate relations to man. The events which
have transpired therein, the noble or ignoble deeds, the grand
achievements, or the great disasters of which it has been the
theatre, these constitute the living heart of its geography. Pal-
3
34 CEIRISTIANITY AND
estine has been rendered forever memorable, not by any re-
markable peculiarities in its climate or scenery, but by the fact
that it was the home of God's ancient people—the Hebrews;
and still more, because the ardent imagination of the modern
traveller still sees upon its mountains and plains the lingering
footprints of the Son of God. And so Attica will always be
regarded as a classic land, because it was the theatre of the
most illustrious period of ancient history—f/ie ſeriod of youth-
fu/zigor in the life of humanity, when viewed as a grand organic
z0/ho/e. -
Here on a narrow spot of less superficies than the little
State of Rhode Island there flourished a republic which, in the
grandeur of her military and naval achievements, at Marathon,
Thermopylae, Plataea, and Salamis, in the sublime creations of
her painters, sculptors, and architects, and the unrivalled pro-
ductions of her poets, orators, and philosophers, has left a lin-
gering glory on the historic page, which twenty centuries have
not been able to eclipse or dim. The names of Solon and
Pericles; of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; of Isocrates and
Demosthenes; of Myron, Phidias, and Praxiteles; of Herodo-
tus, Xenophon, and Thucydides; of Sophocles and Euripides,
have shed an undying lustre on Athens and Attica.
How much of this universal renown, this imperishable glory
attained by the Athenian people, is to be ascribed to their geo-
graphical position and surroundings, and to the elastic, bracing
air, the enchanting scenery, the glorious skies, which poured
their daily inspiration on the Athenian mind, is a problem we
may scarcely hope to solve.
- Of this, at least, we may be sure, that all these geographical
and cosmical conditions were ordained by God, and ordained,
also, for some noble and worthy end. That God, “the Father
of all the families of the earth,” cared for the Athenian people
as much as for Jewish and Christian nations, we can not doubt.
That they were the subjects of a Providence, and that, in God's
great plan of human history, they had an important part to
fulfill, we must believe. That God “determined the time of
GIB E E R PIIILO S O PETY. 35
each nation’s existence, and fixed the geographical bounds of
its habitation,” is affirmed by Paul. And that the specific end
for which the nation had its existence was fulfilled, we have the
fullest confidence. So far, therefore, as we can frace the relation
that subsists between the geographical position and surroundings
of that nation, and its national characteristics and actual history,
so far are we able to solve the problem of its destiny; and by so
ſmuch do Zºe enlarge our comprehension of the plan of God in the
/history of our race. sº
The geographical position of Greece was favorable to the
freest commercial and maritime intercourse with the great his-
toric nations—those nations most advanced in science, litera-
ture, and art. Bounded on the west by the Adriatic and Ionian
seas, by the Mediterranean on the South, and on the east by the
AEgean Sea, her populations enjoyed a free intercommunication
with the Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, Phoenicians, Romans,
and Carthaginians. This peculiarity in the geographical po-
sition of the Grecian peninsula could not fail to awaken in its
people a taste for navigation, and lead them to active commer-
cial intercourse with foreign nations." The boundless oceans
on the south and east, the almost impassable mountains on the
west and north of Asia, presented insurmountable obstacles to
commercial intercourse. But the extended border-lands and
narrow inland seas of Southern Europe allured man, in presence
of their opposite shores, to the perpetual exchange of his pro-
ductions. An arm of the sea is not a barrier, but rather a tie
between the nations. Appearing to separate, it in reality draws
them together without conſounding them.” On such a theatre
we may expect that commerce will be developed on an exten-
sive scale.” And, along with commerce, there will be increased
* Humboldt’s “Cosmos,” vol. ii. p. 143.
* Cousin, vol. i. pp. 169, 170.
* The advantageous situation of Britain for commerce, and the nature of
the climate have powerfully contributed to the perſection of industry among
her population. Had she occupied a central, internal station, like that of
Switzerland, the facilities of her people for dealing with others being so
much the less, their progress would have been comparatively slow, and, in-
36 GIIRISTIANITY AND
activity in all departments of productive industry, and an en-
larged diffusion of knowledge. “Commerce,” says Ritter, “is
the great mover and combiner of the world's activities.” And
it also furnishes the channels through which flow the world’s
ideas. Commerce, both in a material and moral point of view,
is the life of nations. Along with the ivory and ebony, the fab-
rics and purple dyes, the wines and Spices of the Syrian mer-
chant, there flowed into Greece the Science of numbers and
of navigation, and the art of alphabetical writing from Phoenicia.
Along with the fine wheat, and embroidered linen, and riches
of the farther Indias which came from Egypt, there came, also,
into Greece some knowledge of the Sciences of astronomy and
geometry, of architecture and mechanics, of medicine and
chemistry; together with the mystic wisdom of the distant
Orient. The scattered rays of light which gleamed in the east-
ern skies were thus converged in Greece, as on a focal point,
to be rendered more brilliant by contact with the powerful Gre-
cian intellect, and then diffused throughout the western world.
Thus intercourse with Surrounding nations, by commerce and
travel, contact therewith by immigrations and colonizations,
even Collisions and invasions also, became, in the hands of a
presiding Providence, the means of diffusing knowledge, of
quickening and enlarging the active powers of man, and thus,
ultimately, of a higher civilization.
Then further, the peculiar configuration of Greece, the won-
derful complexity of its coast-line, its peninsular forms, the num-
ber of its islands, and the singular distribution of its mount-
ains, all seem to mark it as the theatre of activity, oſ move-
ment, of individuality, and of freedom. An extensive conti-
stead of being highly improved, their manufactures would have been still in
infancy. But being surrounded on all sides by the sea, that “great highway
of nations,” they have been able to maintain an intercourse with the most re-
mote as well as the nearest countries, to supply them on the easiest terms
with their manufactures, and to profit by the peculiar products and capaci-
ties of production possessed by other nations. To the geographical position
and climate of Great Britain, her people are mainly indebted for their posi-
tion as the first commercial nation on earth.-See art. “Manufactrues,” p.
277, Encyc. Brit.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHY, 37
nent, unbroken by lakes and inland Seas, as Asia, where vast
deserts and high mountain chains separate the populations, is
the seat of immobility.” Commerce is limited to the bare ne-
cessities of life, and there are no inducements to movement, to
travel, and to enterprise. There are no conditions prompting
man to attempt the conquest of nature. Society is therefore
stationary as in China and India. Enfolded and imprisoned
within the overpowering vastness and illimitable sweep of na-
ture, man is almost unconscious of his freedom and his person-
ality. He surrenders himself to the disposal of a mysterious
“ſafe,” and yields readily to the despotic sway of superhuman
powers. The State is consequently the reign of a single des-
potic will. The laws of the Medes and Persians are unaltera-
ble. But in Greece we have extended border-lands on the
coast of navigable seas; peninsulas elaborately articulated, and
easy of access. We have mountains sufficiently elevated to
shade the land and diversify the Scenery, and yet of such a
form as not to impede communication. . They are usually
placed neither in parallel chains nor in massive groups, but
are so disposed as to inclose extensive tracts of land admira-
bly adapted to become the seats of small and independent
communities, separated by natural boundaries, sometimes im-
possible to overleap. The face of the interior country, its
forms of relief, seemed as though Providence designed, from
the beginning, to keep its populations Socially and politically
disunited. These difficulties of internal transit by land were,
however, counteracted by the large proportion of coast, and the
accessibility of the country by sea. The promontories and in-
dentations in the line of the Grecian coast are hardly less re-
markable than the peculiar elevations and depressions of the
surface. “The shape of Peloponnesus, with its three southern
gulfs, the Argolic, Laconian, and Messenian, was compared by
the ancient geographers to the leaf of a plane-tree: the Pa- .
gasaean gulf on the eastern side of Greece, and the Ambrakian
gulf on the western, with their narrow entrances and consider-
* Cousin, vol. i. pp. I51, 170.
38 C EIRISTIANITY" A ND
able area, are equivalent to internal lakes : Xenophon boasts
of the double sea which embraces so large a portion of Attica;
Ephorus, of the triple sea by which Boeotia was accessible from
west, north, and South—the Euboean strait, opening a long line
of country on both sides to coasting navigation. But the most
important of all Grecian, gulfs are the Corinthian and Saronic,
washing the northern and north-eastern shores of Peloponne-
sus, and separated by the narrow barrier of the Isthmus of
Corinth. The former, especially, lays open Ætolia, Phokis, and
Boeotia, as the whole northern Coast of Peloponnesus, to water
approach. . . . It will thus appear that there was no part of
Greece proper which could be considered as out of the reach
of the Sea, whilst most parts of it were easy of access. The sea
was thus the sole channel for transmitting improvements and
ideas as well as for maintaining sympathies” between the Hel-
lenic tribes." The Sea is not only the grand highway of com-
mercial intercourse, but the empire of movement, of progress,
and of freedom. Here man is set free from the bondage im-
posed by the Overpowering magnitude and vastness of continen-
tal and Oceanic forms. The boisterous and, apparently, lawless
winds are made to obey his will. He mounts the sea as on a
fiery steed and “lays his hand upon her mane.” And whilst
thus he succeeds, in any measure, to triumph over nature, he
wakes to conscious power and freedom. It is in this region of
contact and commingling of Sea and land where man attains
the highest superiority. Refreshing our historic recollections,
and casting our eyes upon the map of the world, we can not
fail to see that all the most highly civilized nations have lived,
or still live, on the margin of the sea.
The peculiar configuration of the territory of Greece, its
forms of relief, “so like, in many respects, to Switzerland,” could
not fail to exert a powerful influence on the character and des-
tiny of its people. Its inclosing mountains materially in-
creased their defensive power, and, at the same time, inspired
them with the love of liberty. Those mountains, as we have
* Grote’s “Hist. of Grecce,” vol. ii. pp. 221, 225.
G RE EX PHILOSOPHI Y. 39
seen, so unique in their distribution, were natural barriers
against the invasion of foreign nations, and they rendered each
separate community secure against the encroachments of the
rest. The pass of Thermopylae, between Thessaly and Phocis.;
that of Cithaeron, between Boeotia and Attica ; and the mount-
ain ranges of Oneion and Geraneia, along the Isthmus of Cor-
inth, were positions which could be defended against any force
of invaders. This signal peculiarity in the forms of relief pro-
tected each section of the Greeks from being conquered, and
at the same time maintained their separate autonomy. The
separate states of Greece lived, as it were, in the presence of
each other, and at the same time resisted all influences and
all efforts towards a coalescence with each other, until the time
of Alexander. Their country, a word of indefinite meaning to
the Asiatic, conveyed to them as definite an idea as that of their
own homes. Its whole landscape, with all its historic associa-
tions, its glorious monuments of heroic deeds, were perpetually
present to their eyes. Thus their patriotism, concentrated
within a narrow sphere, and kept alive by the sense of their in-
dividual importance, their democratic spirit, and their struggles
with surrounding communities to maintain their independence,
became a strong and ruling passion. Their geographical sur-
roundings had, therefore, a powerful influence upon their polit-
ical institutions. Conquest, which forces nations of different
habits, characters, and languages into unity, is at last the par-
ent of degrading servitude. These nations are only held to-
gether, as in the Roman empire, by the iron hand of military
power. The despot, surrounded by a foreign soldiery, appears
in the conquered provinces, simply to enforce tribute, and com- .
pel obedience to his arbitrary will. But the small Greek com-
munities, protected by the barriers of their seas and gulfs and
mountains, escaped, for centuries, this evil destiny. The peo-
ple, united by identity of language and manners and religion,
by common interest and facile intercommunication, could read-
ily combine to resist the invasions of foreign nations, as well as
the encroachments of their own rulers. And they were able to
4O CEIRISTIANITY AND
easily model their own government according to their own ne-
cessities and circumstances and common interests, and to make
the end for which it existed the sole measure of the powers it
was permitted to wield."
The soil of Attica was not the most favorable to agricultural
pursuits. In many places it was stony and uneven, and a con-
siderable proportion was bare rock, on which nothing could be
grown. Not half the surface was capable of cultivation. In
this respect it may be fitly compared to some of the New Eng-
land States. The light, dry soil produced excellent barley, but
not enough of wheat for their own consumption. Demosthenes
informs us that Athens brought every year, from Byzantium,
four hundred thousand medimni of wheat. The alluvial plains,
under industrious cultivation, would furnish a frugal subsistence
for a large population, and the mildness of the climate allowed
all the more valuable products to ripen early, and go Out of
season last. Such conditions, of course, would furnish motives
for skill and industry, and demand of the people frugal and
temperate habits. The luxuriance of a tropical climate tends
to improvidence and indolence. Where nature pours her full-
ness into the lap of ease, forethought and providence are little
needed. There is none of that struggle for existence which
awakens sagacity, and calls into exercise the active powers of
man. But in a country where nature only yields her fruits as
the reward of toil, and yet enough to the intelligent culture of
the soil, there habits of patient industry must be formed. The
alternations of summer and winter excite to forethought and
providence, and the comparative poverty of the soil will prompt
to frugality. Man naturally aspires to improve his condition
by all the means within his power. He becomes a careful ob-
server of nature, he treasures up the results of observation, he
compares one fact with another and notes their relations, and
he makes new experiments to test his conclusions, and thus he
awakes to the vigorous exercise of all his powers. These phys-
ical Conditions must develop a hardy, vigorous, prudent, and
* Zncyc. Brit., art. “Greece.”
G R E E K PHILOSOPET Y. 4. I
temperate race; and such, unquestionably, were the Greeks.
“Theophrastus, and other authors, amply attest the observant
and industrious agriculture prevalent in Greece. The culture
of the vine and olive appears to have been particularly elabo-
rate ; and the many different accidents of soil, level, and expo-
sure which were to be found, afforded to observant planters
materials for study and comparison.” The Greeks were fru-
gal in their habits and simple in their modes of life. The bar-
ley loaf seems to have been more generally eaten than the
wheaten loaf ; this, with Salt fish and vegetables, was the com-
mon food of the population. Economy in domestic life was
universal. In their manners, their dress, their private dwell-
ings, they were little disposed to ostentation or display.
The climate of Attica is what, in physical geography, would
be called maritime. “Here are allied the continental vigor
and Oceanic softness, in a fortunate union, mutually tempering
each other.” The climate of the whole peninsula of Greece
seems to be distinguished from that of Spain and Italy, by
having more of the character of an inland region. The diver-
sity of local temperature is greater; the extremes of Summer
and winter more severe. In Arcadia the snow has been found
eighteen inches thick in January, with the thermometer at 16°
Fahrenheit, and it sometimes lies on the ground for six weeks.
The summits of the central chains of Pindus and most of the
Albanian mountains are covered with Snow from the beginning
of November to the end of March. In Attica, which, being
freely exposed to the sea, has in some measure an insular cli-
mate, the winter sets in about the beginning of January.
About the middle of that month the snow begins to fall, but
seldom remains upon the plain for more than a few days, though
it lies on the summit of the mountain for a month." And then,
whilst Boeotia, which joins to Attica, is higher and colder, and
often covered with dense fogs, Attica is remarkable for the
* Grote, “Hist. of Greece,” vol. ii. p. 230.
* Guyot, “Earth and Man,” p. 181.
* AEncyc. Brit., art. “Greece.”
42 C EIRISTIANITY AND
wonderful transparency, dryness, and elasticity of its atmos-
phere. All these climatal conditions exerted, no doubt, a mod-
ifying influence upon the character of the inhabitants.” In a
tropical climate man is enfeebled by excessive heat. His nat-
ural tendency is to inaction and repose. . His life is passed in
a “strenuous idleness.” His intellectual, his reflective faculties
are overmastered by his physical instincts. Passion, Sentiment,
imagination prevail over the Sober exercises of his reasoning
powers. Poetry universally predominates over philosophy.
The whole character of Oriental language, religion, literature
is intensely imaginative. In the frozen regions of the frigid
zone, where a perpetual winter reigns, and where lichens and
mosses are the only forms of vegetable life, man is condemned
to the life of a huntsman, and depends mainly for his subsist-
ence on the precarious chances of the chase. He is conse-
quently nomadic in his habits, and barbarous withal. His
whole life is spent in the bare process of procuring a living.
He consumes a large amount of oleaginous food, and breathes
a damp heavy atmosphere, and is, consequently, of a dull
phlegmatic temperament. Notwithstanding his uncertain sup-
plies of food, he is recklessly improvident, and indifferent to all
the lessons of experience. Intellectual pursuits are all pre-
cluded. There is no motive, no opportunity, and indeed no
disposition for mental culture. But in a temperate climate
man is stimulated to high mental activity. The alternations
of heat and cold, of summer and of winter, an elastic, fresh,
and bracing atmosphere, a diversity in the aspects of nature,
these develop a vivacity of temperament, a quickness of sen-
sibility as well as apprehension, and a versatility of feeling as
* The influence of climatic conditions did not escape the attention of
the Greeks. Herodotus, Hippocrates, and Aristotle speak of the climate
of Asia as more enervating than that of Greece. They regarded the change-
ful character and diversity of local temperature in Greece as highly stimu-
lating to the energies of the populations. The marked contrast between
the Athenians and the Boeotians was supposed to be represented in the
light and heavy atmosphere which they respectively breathed,—Grote, vol.
ii. pp. 232-3.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 43
well as genius. History marks out the temperate zone as the
seat of the refined and cultivated nations.
The natural scenery of Greece was of unrivalled grandeur—
surpassing Italy, perhaps every country in the world. It com-
bined in the highest degree every feature essential to the high-
est beauty of a landscape except, perhaps, large rivers. But
this was more than compensated for by the proximity of the
sea, which, by its numerous arms, seemed to embrace the land
on nearly every side. Its mountains, encircled with zones of
wood, and capped with Snow, though much lower than the Alps,
are as imposing by the suddenness of their elevation—“pillars
of heaven, the fosterers of enduring snows.” Rich sheltered
plains lie at their feet, covered with an unequally woven mantle
of trees, and shrubs, and flowers, “the verdant gloom of the
thickly-mantling ivy, the narcissus steeped in heavenly dew,
the golden-beaming crocus, the hardy and ever-fresh-sprouting
olive-tree,” and the luxuriant palm, which nourishes amid its
branches the grape swelling with juice. But it is the combi-
nation of these features, in the most diversified manner, with
beautiful inland bays and seas, broken by headlands, inclosed
by mountains, and studded with islands of every form and
magnitude, which gives to the scenery of Greece its proud pre-
eminence. “Greek scenery,” says Humboldt, “presents the
peculiar charm of an intimate blending of sea and land, of
Shores adorned with vegetation, or picturesquely girt with rocks
gleaming in the light of ačrial tints, and an ocean beautiful in
the play of the ever-changing brightness of its deep-toned
wave.” And over all the serene, deep azure skies, occasion-
ally veiled by light fleecy clouds, with vapory purple mists rest-
ing on the distant mountain tops. This glorious scenery of
Greece is evermore the admiration of the modern traveller.
“In wandering about Athens on a sunny day in March, when
the asphodels are blooming on Colones, when the immortal
mountains are folded in a transparent haze, and the AEgean
1 Pindar. * Sophocles, “CEdipus at Colonna.”
* “Cosmos,” vol. ii. p. 25.
44 C EIRISTIANITY A. WD
slumbers afar among his isles,” he is reminded of the lines of
Byron penned amid these scenes—
“Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olives ripe as when Minerva Smiled,
And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,'
The freeborn wanderer of the mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beams Mendeli's marbles glare ;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but nature still is fair.”
The effect of this scenery upon the character, the imagina-
tion, the taste of the Athenians must have been immense.
Under the influence of such sublime objects, the human mind
becomes gifted as with inspiration, and is by nature filled with
poetic images. “Greece became the birth-place of taste, of
art, and eloquence, the chosen sanctuary of the muses, the pro-
totype of all that is graceful, and dignified, and grand in senti-
ment and action.”
And now, if we have succeeded in clearly presenting and
properly grouping the facts, and in estimating the influence of
geographical position and Surroundings on national character,
we have secured the natural criteria by which we examine, and
even correct the portraiture of the Athenian character usually
presented by the historian. -
The character of the Athenians has been sketched by Plu-
tarch” with considerable minuteness, and his representations
have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged.
He has described them as at once passionate and placable,
easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased ; fond of pleas-
antry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh ; pleased to
hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and
censure ; naturally generous towards those who were poor and
in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their ene-
mies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even their rulers
in awe. In regard to their intellectual traits, he affirms their
* Canto ii., v. lxxxvi., “Childe Harold.” * “I)e Praecept.”
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 45
minds were not formed for laborious research, and though they
seized a subject as it were by intuition, yet wanted patience and
perseverance for a thorough examination of all its bearings.
“An observation,” says the writer of the article on “Attica,”
in the Encyclopædia Britannica, “ more superficial in itself, and
arguing a greater ignorance of the Athenians, can not easily be
imagined.” Plutarch lived more than three hundred years
after the palmy days of the Athenian Demos had passed away.
He was a Boeotian by birth, not an Attic, and more of a Roman
than a Greek in all his sympathies. We are tempted to regard
him as writing under the influence of prejudice, if not of envy.
He was scarcely reliable as a biographer, and as materials for
history his “Parallel Lives” have been pronounced “not alto-
gether trustworthy."
That the Athenians were remarkable for the ardor and vi-
vacity of their temperament, that they were liable to sudden
gusts of passion,--that they were inconstant in their affections,
intolerant of dictation, impatient of control, and hasty to resent
every assumption of superiority,+that they were pleased with
flattery, and too ready to lend a willing ear to the adulation of
the demagogue, and that they were impetuous and brave,
yet liable to be excessively elated by success, and depressed
by misfortune, we may readily believe, because such traits of
character are in perfect harmony with all the facts and conclu-
sions already presented. Such characteristics were the natural
product of the warm and genial sunlight, the elastic bracing air,
the ethereal skies, the glorious mountain scenery, and the elab-
orate blending of sea and land, so peculiar to Greece and the
whole of Southern Europe.” These characteristics were shared
* AEncyc. of Biography, art. “Plutarch.”
* “As the skies of Hellas surpassed nearly all other climates in bright-
ness and elasticity, so, also, had nature dealt most lovingly with the inhab-
itants of this land. Throughout the whole being of the Greek there reigned
Supreme a quick susceptibility, out of which sprang a gladsome Serenity of
temper, and a keen enjoyment of life; acute sense, and nimbleness of ap-
prehension; a guileless and 'child-like feeling, full of trust and faith, com-
bined with prudence and forecast. These peculiarities lay so deeply imbed-
ded in the inmost nature of the Greeks that no revolutions of time and cir-
46 CHRISTIANITY AND
in a greater or less degree by all the nations of Southern Eu-
rope in ancient times, and they are still distinctive traits in the
Frenchman, the Italian, and the modern Greek.’
The consciousness of power, the feeling of independence,
the ardent love of freedom induced in the Athenian mind by
the objective freedom of movement which his geographical po-
sition afforded, and that subordination and subserviency of
physical nature to man so peculiar to Greece, determined the
democratic character of all their political institutions. And
these institutions reacted upon the character of the people and
intensified their love of liberty. This passionate love of per-
Sonal freedom, amounting almost to disease, excited them to a
constant and almost distressing vigilance. And it is not to be
wondered at if it displayed itself in an extreme jealousy of their
rulers, an incessant Supervision and criticism of all their pro-
ceedings, and an intense and passionate hatred of tyrants and
of tyranny. The popular legislator or the successful soldier
might dare to encroach upon their liberties in the moment
when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius,
their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular
feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would over-
turn the one, and Ostracism expel the other. Thus while in-
Constancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been in-
separable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were cer-
tainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection
for their country,” and invariable in their sympathy and admi-
cumstances have yet been able to destroy them ; nay, it may be asserted
that even now, after centuries of degradation, they have not been wholly ex-
tinguished in the inhabitants of ancient Hellas.”—“Aducation of the Moral
Sentiment amongst the Ancient Greeks.” By FREDERICK JACOBs, p. 320.
* These are described by the modern historian and traveller as lively, ver-
satile, and witty. “The love of liberty and independence does not seem to
be rooted out of the national character by centuries of subjugation. They
love to command ; but though they are loyal to a good government, they
are apt readily to rise when their rights and liberties are infringed. As
there is little love of obedience among them, so neither is there any tolera-
tion of aristocratic pretensions.”—Zncyc. Brit., art. “Greece.”
* When immense bribes were offered by the king of Persia to induce the
Athenians to detach themselves from the alliance with the rest of the Hel-
G R E E K PEIILOSOPHI Y. 47
ration for that genius which shed glory upon their native land.
And then they were ever ready to repair the errors, and make
amends for the injustice committed under the influence of pas-
sionate excitement, or the headlong impetuosity of their too ar-
dent temperament. The history of Greece Supplies numerous
illustrations of this spirit. The sentence of death which had
been hastily passed on the inhabitants of Mytilene was, on so-
ber reflection, revoked the following day. The immediate re-
pentance and general Sorrow which followed the condemnation
of the ten generals, as also of Socrates, are notable instances.
In their private life the Athenians were courteous, generous,
and humane. Whilst bold and free in the expression of their
opinions, they paid the greatest attention to rules of politeness,
and were nicely delicate on points of decorum. They had a
natural sense of what was becoming and appropriate, and an
innate aversion to all extravagance. A graceful demeanor and
a quiet dignity were distinguishing traits of Athenian character.
They were temperate and frugal' in their habits, and little ad-
dicted to ostentation and display. Even after their victories had
brought them into contact with Oriental luxury and extrava-
gance, and their wealth enabled them to rival, in costliness and
splendor, the nations they had conquered, they still maintained
a republican simplicity. The private dwellings of the principal
citizens were small, and usually built of clay; their interior em-
bellishments also were insignificant—the house of Polytion alone
formed an exception.” All their sumptuousness and magnifi-
cence were reserved for and lavished on their public edifices
lenic States, she answered by the mouth of Aristides “that it was impossi-
ble for all the gold in the world to tempt the Republic of Athens, or prevail
with it to sell its liberty and that of Greece "
* These are still characteristics of the Greeks. “They are an exceed-
ingly temperate people ; drunkenness is a vice remarkably rare amongst
them ; their food also is spare and simple ; even the richest are content
with a dish of vegetables for each meal, and the poor with a handful of olives
or a piece of Salt fish...... All other pleasures are indulged with similar pro-
priety ; their passions are moderate, and insanity is almost unknown amongst
them.”—Byzcyc. Brit., art. “Greece.”
* Niebuhr's Lectures, vol. i. p. IoI.
48 C EIRISTIANITY AND
and monuments of art, which made Athens the pride of Greece
and the wonder of the world. Intellectually, the Athenians
were remarkable for their quickness of apprehension, their nice
and delicate perception, their intuitional power, and their ver-
satile genius. Nor were they at all incapable of pursuing labo-
rious researches, or wanting in persevering application and in-
dustry, notwithstanding Plutarch's assertion to the contrary.
The circumstances of every-day life in Attica, the conditions
which surrounded the Athenian from childhood to age, were
such as to call for the exercise of these qualities of mind in the
highest degree. Habits of patient industry were induced in
the Athenian character by the poverty and comparative barren-
ness of the soil, demanding greater exertion to Supply their
natural wants. And an annual period of dormancy, though un-
accompanied by the rigors of a northern winter, called for pru-
dence in husbanding, and forethought and skill in endeavoring
to increase their natural resources. The aspects of nature
were less massive and awe-inspiring, her features more subdued,
and her areas more circumscribed and broken, inviting and
emboldening man to attempt her conquest. The whole tend-
ency of natural phenomena in Greece was to restrain the im-
agination, and discipline the observing and reasoning faculties
in man. Thus was man inspired with confidence in his own
resources, and allured to cherish an inquisitive, analytic, and
scientific spirit. “The French, in point of national character,
hold nearly the same relative place amongst the nations of Eu-
rope that the Athenians held amongst the States of Ancient
Greece.” And whilst it is admitted the French are quick,
Sprightly, vivacious, perhaps sometimes light even to frivolity, it
must be conceded they have cultivated the natural and exact
Sciences with a patience, and perseverance, and success un-
Surpassed by any of the nations of Europe. And so the Athe-
nians were the Frenchmen of Greece. Whilst they spent their
“leisure time ’” in the place of public resort, the porticoes and
groves, “hearing and telling the latest news” (no undignified
* Eükquočw corresponds exactly to the Latin vacare, “to be at leisure.”
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 49
or improper mode of recreation in a city where newspapers
were unknown), whilst they are condemned as “garrulous,”
“frivolous,” “full of curiosity,” and “restlessly fond of novel-
ties,” we must insist that a love of study, of patient thought
and profound research, was congenial to their natural temper-
ament, and that an inquisitive and analytic Spirit, as well as a
taste for subtile and abstract speculation, were inherent in the
national character. The affluence, and fullness, and flexibility,
and sculpture-like finish of the language of the Attics, which
leaves far behind not only the languages of antiquity, but also
the most cultivated of modern times, is an enduring monument
of the patient industry of the Athenians." Language is un-
questionably the highest creation of reason, and in the language
of a nation we can see reflected as in a mirror the amount of
culture to which it has attained. The rare balance of the im-
agination and the reasoning powers, in which the perfection of
the human intellect is regarded as consisting, the exact corre-
spondence between the thought and the expression, “the free
music of prosaic numbers in the most diversified forms of style,”
the calmness, and perspicuity, and Order, even in the stormiest
moments of inspiration, revealed in every department of Greek
literature, were not a mere happy stroke of chance, but a prod-
uct of unwearied effort—and effort too which was directed by
the criteria which reason supplied. The plastic art of Greece,
which after the lapse of ages still stands forth in unrivalled
beauty, so that, in presence of the eternal models it created,
the modern artist feels the painful lack of progress was not
a spontaneous outburst of genius, but the result of intense
application and unwearied discipline. The achievements of
the philosophic spirit, the ethical and political systems of the
Academy, the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the Garden, the anticipa-
tions, scattered here and there like prophetic hints, of some of
the profoundest discoveries of “inductive science” in more
modern days, all these are an enduring protest against the
Strange misrepresentations of Plutarch.
* Frederick Jacobs, on “Study of Classic Antiquity,” p. 57,
4
5o CIHI. ISTIANITY AND
In Athens there existed a providential collocation of the
most favorable conditions in which humanity can be placed for
securing its highest natural development. Athenian civiliza.
tion is the solution, on the theatre of history, of the problem—
What degree of perfection can humanity, under the most ſavor-
able conditions, attain, without the Supernatural light, and
guidance, and grace of Christianity?’ “Like their own god-
* It has been asserted by some theological writers, Watson for example,
that no society of civilized men has been, or can be constituted without the
aid of a religion directly communicated by revelation, and transmitted by
oral tradition;–“ that it is possible to raise a body of men into that degree
of civil improvement which would excite the passion for philosophic inves-
tigation, without the aid of religion...... can have no proof, and is contradict-
ed by every fact and analogy with which we are acquainted” (Institutes, vol.
i. p. 271 ; see also Archbishop Whately, “Dissertation,” etc., vol. i. Zncyc.
Arit., p. 449-455).
The fallacy of the reasoning by which this doctrine is sought to be sus-
tained is found in the assumption “that to all our race the existence of a
First Cause is a question of philosophy,” and that the idea of God lics at
the end of “a gradual process of inquiry” and induction, for which a high
degree of “scientific culture” is needed. Whereas the idea of a First Cause
lies at the beginning, not at the end of philosophy; and philosophy is sim-
ply the analysis of our natural consciousness of God, and the presentation of
the idea in a logical form. Faith in the existence of God is not the result
of a conscious process of reflection; it is the spontaneous and instinctive
logic of the human mind, which, in vicw of phenomena presented to sense,
by a necessary law of thought immediately and intuitively affirms a personal
Power, an intelligent Mind as the author. In this regard, thcre is no diſſer-
ence between men except the clearness with which they apprehend, and the
logical account they can render to themselves, of this instinctive belieſ.
Spontaneous intuition, says Cousin, is the genius of all men; reſlection the
genius of few men. “But Leibnitz had no more confidence in the principle
of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient reason, than the
most ignorant of men;” the latter have this principle within them, as a law
of thought, controlling their conception of the universe, and doing this al-
most unconsciously; the former, by an analysis of thought, succeeded in de-
fining and formulating the ideas and laws which necessitate the cognition of
a God. The ſunction of philosophy is simply to transform ā%)0), Ö6ša into
&Tatſum—right opinion into science,—to elucidate and logically present the
immanent thought which lies in the universal consciousness of man.
That the possession of the idea of God is essential to the social and moral
elevation of man,—that is, to the civilization of our race, is most checrſully
conceded. That humanity has an end and destination which can only be
Secured by the true knowledge of God, and by a participation of the nature
of God, is equally the doctrine of Plato and of Christ. Now, iſ humanity
has a special end and destination, it must have Some instinctive tendings,
G B E E R PEIILOSOPEI Y. 5 I
dess Athene, the people of Athens seem to spring full-armed
into the arena of history, and we look in vain to Egypt, Syria,
and India, for more than a few seeds that burst into such mar-
vellous growth on the soil of Attica.”
Here the most perfect ideals of beauty and excellence in
physical development, in manners, in plastic art, in literary
creations, were realized. The songs of Homer, the dialogues
of Plato, the speeches of Demosthenes, and the statues of Phid-
ias, if not unrivalled, are at least unsurpassed by any thing that
has been achieved by their successors. Literature in its most
flourishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art
has looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models.
Here the ideas of personal liberty, of individual rights, of free-
dom in thought and action, had a wonderful expansion. Here
the lasting foundations of the principal arts and scienees were
laid, and in some of them triumphs were achieved which have
not been eclipsed. Here the sun of human reason attained a
meridian splendor, and illuminated every field in the domain
of moral truth. And here humanity reached the highest degree
of civilization of which it is capable under purely natural con-
ditions.
And now, the question with which we are more immediately
concerned is, what were the specific and valuable results at-
tained by the Athenian mind in religion and philosophy, the two
momenta of the human mind? This will be the subject of dis-
cussion in Subsequent chapters.
The Order in which the discussion shall proceed is deter-
mined ſor us by the natural development of thought. The two
fundamental momenta of thought and its development are spon-
Some spermatic ideas, some original forces or laws, which determine it to-
wards that cnd. All development supposes some original elements to be
unfolded or developed. Civilization is but the development of humanity ac-
cording to its primal idea and law, and under the best exterior conditions.
That the original elements of humanity were unfolded in some noble degree
under the influence of philosophy is clear ſrom the history of Greece; there
the most favorable natural conditions for that development existed, and
Christianity alone was needed to crown the result with ideal perfection.
* Max Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 404, 2d series.
52 CIIRISTIANITY AND
O
taneity and reflection, and the two essential forms they assume
are religion and philosophy. In the natural Order of thought
spontaneity is first, and reflection succeeds spontaneous thought.
And so religion is first developed, and Subsequently comes phi-
losophy. As religion supposes Spontaneous intuition, So phi-
losophy has religion for its basis, but upon this basis it is devel-
oped in an original manner. “Turn your attention to history,
that living image of thought: everywhere you perceive religions
and philosophies: everywhere you see them produced in an in-
variable order. Everywhere religion appears with new socie-
ties, and everywhere, just So far as Societies advance, from re-
ligion springs philosophy.” This was pre-eminently the case
in Athens, and we shall therefore direct our attention first to
the Religion of the Athenians. e
* Cousin, “Hist, of Philos.,” vol. i. p. 302.
G R EER PEIIL OS OPII Y. 53
CHAPTER II.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
“All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion
(Öelotóatuoved Tépovg.—ST. PAUL.
S a prelude and preparation for the study of the religion
A of the Athenians, it may be well to consider religion in its
more abstract and universal form ; and inquire in what does
religion essentially consist ; how far is it grounded in the na-
ture of man ; and especially, what is there in the mental con-
stitution of man, or in his exterior conditions, which determines
bim to a mode of life which may be denominated religious 2
As a preliminary inquiry, this may materially aid us in under-
standing the nature, and estimating the value of the religious
conceptions and sentiments which were developed by the Greek
mind.
Religion, in its most generic Conception, may be defined as
a form of thought, feeling, and action, which has the ZXivine for
its object, basis, and end. Or, in other words, it is a mode of
life determined by the recognition of some relation to, and con-
Sciousness of dependence upon, a Supreme Being. This gen-
eral conception of religion underlies all the specific forms of
religion which have appeared in the world, whether heathen,
Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian.
That a religious destination appertains to man as man,
whether he has been raised to a full religious consciousness, or
is simply Corisidered as capable of being so raised, can not be
denied. In all ages man has revealed an instinctive tendency,
or natural aptitude for religion, and he has developed feelings
and emotions which have always characterized him as a re-
ligious being. Religious ideas and sentiments have prevailed
among all nations, and have exerted a powerful influence on
54 C EIRISTIANITY AND
the entire course of human history. Religious worship, ad-
dressed to a Supreme Being believed to control the destiny of
man, has been coeval and coextensive with the race. Every
nation has had its mythology, and each mythologic System has
been simply an effort of humanity to realize and embody in
some visible form the relations in which it feels itself to be
connected with an external, overshadowing, and all-controlling
Power and Presence. The voice of all ancient, and all con-
temporaneous history, clearly attests that the religious principle
is deeply seated in the nature of man; and that it has occupied
the thought, and stirred the feelings of every rational man, in
every age. It has interwoven itself with the entire framework
of human society, and ramified into all the relations of human
life. By its agency, nations have been revolutionized, and em-
pires have been overthrown ; and it has formed a mighty ele-
ment in all the changes which have marked the history of man.
This universality of religious sentiment and religious wor-
ship must be conceded as a fact of human nature, and, as a
universal fact, it demands an explanation. Every event must
have a cause. Every phenomenon must have its ground, and
reason, and law. The facts of religious history, the past and
present religious phenomena of the world can be no exception
to this fundamental principle ; they press their imperious de-
mand to be studied and explained, as much as the phenomena
of the material or the events of the moral world. The phe-
nomena of religion, being universally revealed wherever man
is found, must be grounded in some universal principle, on
Some original law, which is connate with, and natural to man.
At any rate, there must be something in the nature of man, or
in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably leads
man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of
an original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to
recognize and bow down before a Superior Power. The full
recognition and adequate explanation of the facts of religious
history will constitute a philosophy of religion.
The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of
G RE EX PHIL OS O PET Y. 55
the religious phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and
most of them are, in Our judgment, eminently inadequate and
unsatisfactory. The following enumeration may be regarded
as embracing all that are deemed worthy of consideration.
I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in SUPER-
STITION, that is, in a fear of invisible and Supernatural powers,
generated by ignorance of nature.
II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that PROCESS or
Evolution OF THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity), which gradually
unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to
perfect Self-consciousness in philosophy.
III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEEL-
ING—#/ae feeling of defendence and of obligation ; and that to
which the mind, by spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith,
traces this dependence and obligation we call God.
IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the
spontaneous apperceptions of REASON, that is, the necessary d
priori ideas of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause,
the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in pres-
ence of the changeful and contingent phenomena of the world.
V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in ExTERNAL
REVELATION, to which reason is related as a purely passive or-
gan, and heathemism as a feeble relic.
As a philosophy of religion—an attempt to Supply the ra-
tionale of the religious phenomena of the world, the first hy-
pothesis is a skeptical philosophy, which necessarily leads to
Atheism. The second is an idealistic philosophy (absolute
idealism), which inevitably lands in Pantheism. The third is
an intuitional or “faith-philosophy,” which finally ends in Mys-
ticism. The fourth is a rationalistic or “spiritualistic” philos-
ophy, which yields pure 7%éism. The last is an empirical phi-
losophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culmi-
nates in ZXagmatic Zheology.
In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the ques-
tion which now presents itself for our consideration is, does
any one of these hypotheses meet and satisfy the demands of
56 C EIR IS TIANITY AND
the problem? does it fully account for and adequately explain
all the facts of religious history : The answer to this question
must not be hastily or dogmatically given. The arbitrary re-
jection of any theory that may be offered, without a fair and
candid examination, will leave our minds in uncertainty and
doubt as to the validity of our own position. A blind faith is
only one remove from a pusillanimous skepticism. We can
not render our own position Secure except by comprehending,
assaulting, and capturing the position of our foe. It is, there-
fore, due to ourselves and to the cause of truth, that we shall
examine the evidence upon which each separate theory is based,
and the arguments which are marshalled in its support, be-
fore we pronounce it inadequate and unphilosophical. Such
a criticism of opposite theories will prepare the way for the
presentation of a philosophy of religion which we flatter our-
selves will be found most in harmony with all the facts of the
CºlSC.
I. It is affirmed that ſhe religious phenomena of the zworld had
their origin in SUPERSTITION, that is, in a fear of unseen and stº
Žernatura/?ozvers, generated from ignorance of nature.
This explanation was first offered by Epicurus. He felt
that the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which
demands a cause ; and he found it, or presumed he found it,
not in a spiritual God, which he claims can not exist, nor in a
corporeal god which no one has seen, but in “phantoms of the
mind generated by fear.” When man has been unable to ex-
plain any natural phenomenon, to assign a cause within the
sphere of nature, he has had recourse to supernatural powers,
or living personalities behind nature, which move and control
nature in an arbitrary and capricious manner. These imagina-
ry powers are supposed to be continually interfering in the af.
fairs of individuals and nations. They bestow blessings or in-
flict calamities. They reward virtue and punish vice. They
are, therefore, the objects of “sacred awe.” and “superstitious
fear.”
G. REE K PHILOSOPHY. 57
“Whate'er in heaven,
In earth, man sees mysterious, shakes his mind,
With sacred awe o'erwhelms him, and his soul
Bows to the dust; the cause of things concealed
Once from his vision, instant to the gods
All empire he transfers, all rule supreme,
And doubtful whence they spring, with headlong haste
Calls them the workmanship of power divine.
For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live
Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind
How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned
In heaven sublime—to SUPERSTITION back
Lapses, and rears a tyrant host, and then
Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do,
While yet himself nor knows what may be done,
Nor what may never, nature powers defined
Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass:
Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks.”
In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, conse-
quently, of all religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that “na-
ture” alone is adequate to the production of all things, and
there is no need to drag in a “divine power” to explain the
phenomena of the world.
This theory has been wrought into a somewhat plausible
form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug.
Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one
stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the in-
dividual or the race. He claims to have been the first to dis-
cover the great law of the three successive stages or phases of
human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the
individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in
dealing with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a
Z%éological, second, a Metaphysical, and finally reaches a third,
or Positive stage.
In attempting an explanation of the universe, human
thought, in its earliest stages of development, resorts to the
idea of living personal agents enshrined in and moving every
object, whether organic or inorganic, natural or artificial. In
an advanced stage, it conceives a number of personal beings
* Lucretius, “De Natura Rerum,” book vi. vs. 50–70.
58 CEIRISTIANITY AND
distinct from, and superior to nature, which preside over the
different provinces of nature—the sea, the air, the winds, the
rivers, the heavenly bodies, and assume the guardianship of in-
dividuals, tribes, and nations. As a further, and still higher
stage, it asserts the unity of the Supreme Power which moves
and vitalizes the universe, and guides and governs in the affairs
of men and nations. The 77.eological stage is thus subdivided
into three epochs, and represented as commencing in Fefèchism,
then advancing to Polytheism, and, finally, consummating in
Monoſheism.
The next stage, the Metaphysical, is a transitional stage, in
which man Substitutes abstract entities, as substance, force,
Being in se, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theologi-
cal conceptions. During this period all theological opinions
undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on
the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful sol-
vent, which decomposes and dissipates theology.
It is only in the last—the Positive stage—that man becomes
willing to relinquish all theological ideas and metaphysical no-
tions, and confine his attention to the study of phenomena in
their relation to time and space ; discarding all inquiries as to
causes, whether efficient or final, and denying the existence of
all entities and powers beyond nature.
The first stage, in its religious phase, is 77.cistic, the second
is A-antheistic, the last is Atheistic.
The proofs offered by Comte in support of this theory are
derived,
1. From Cerebral Organization. There are three grand di-
visions of the Brain, the Medulla Oblongata, the Cerebellum,
and the Cerebrum ; the first represents the merely animal in-
stincts ; the second, the more elevated sentiments ; the third,
the intellectual powers. Human nature must, therefore, both
in the individual and in the race, be developed in the following
order: (I.) in animal instincts; (2.) in social affections and
communal tendencies; (3.) in intellectual pursuits. Infant life
is a merely animal existence, shared in common with the brute;
G RE EX PHILOSOPEI Y. 59
in childhood the individual being realizes his relation to exter-
nal nature and human Society ; in youth and manhood he com-
pares, generalizes, and classifies the objects of knowledge, and
attains to science. And so the infancy of our race was a mere
animal or savage state, the childhood of our race the organiza-
tion of society, the youth and manhood of our race the devel-
opment of science.
Now, without offering any opinion as to the merits of the
phrenological theories of Gall and Spurzheim, we may ask,
what relation has this order to the law of development present-
ed by Comte 2 Is there any imaginable connection between
animal propensities and theological ideas; between social af.
fections and metaphysical speculations 2 Are not the intellect-
ual powers as much concerned with theological ideas and met-
aphysical speculations as with positive science? And is it not
more probable, more in accordance with facts, that all the pow-
ers of the mind, instinct, feeling, and thought, enter into action
simultaneously, and condition each other? The very first act
of perception, the first distinct cognition of an object, involves
thought as much as the last generalization of science. We
know nothing of mind except as the development of thought,
and the first unfolding, even of the infant mind, reveals an in-
tellectual act, a discrimination between a self and an object
which is not self, and a recognition of resemblance, or differ-
ence between this object and that. And what does Positive
Science, in its most mature and perfect form, claim to do more
than “to study actual phenomena in their orders of resem-
blance, coexistence, and succession.”
Cerebral organization may furnish plausible analogies in fa-
vor of Some theory of human development, but certainly not
the one proposed by Aug. Comte. The attempt, however, to
Construct a chart of human history on such an d priori meth-
Od,—to construct an ideal framework into which human na-
ture must necessarily grow, is a violation of the first and most
fundamental principle of the Positive science, which demands
that we shall confine ourselves strictly to the study of actual
Óo C EIRISTIANITY AND
phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and
succession. The history of the human race must be based on
facts, not on hypotheses, and the facts must be ascertained by
the study of ancient records and existing monuments of the
past. Mere plausible analogies and d £riori theories based
upon them, are only fitted to mislead the mind; they insert a
prism between the perceiving mind and the course of events
which decomposes the pure white light of fact, and throws a
false light over the entire field of history.
2. 7%a second order of proof is attempted to be drawn from the
analogies of individual experience.
It is claimed that the history of the race is the same as that
of each individual mind ; and it is affirmed that man is re/igious
in infancy, metaphysica/ in youth, and positive, that is, Scientific
without being religious, in mature manhood ; the history of the
race must therefore have followed the same order.
We are under no necessity of denying that there is some
analogy between the development of mind in the individual
man, and in humanity as a whole, in order to refute the theory
of Comte. Still, it must not be overlooked that the develop-
ment of mind, in all cases and in all ages, is materially affected
by exterior conditions. The influence of geographical and cli-
matic conditions, of Social and national institutions, and espe-
cially of education, however difficult to be estimated, can not be
utterly disregarded. And whether all these influences have
not been controlled, and collocated, and adjusted by a Supreme
Mind in the education of humanity, is also a question which
can not be pushed aside as of no consequence. Now, unless it
can be shown that the same outward conditions which have ac-
companied the individual and modified his mental development,
have been repeated in the history of the race, and repeated in
the same Order of Succession, the argument has no value.
But, even Supposing it could be shown that the development
of mind in humanity has followed the same order as that of the
individual, we confidently affirm that Comte has not given the
true history of the development of the individual mind. The
G R E E R PEſ II, OS O PHY. 6I
account he has given may perhaps be the history of his own
mental progress, but it certainly is not the history of every in
dividual mind, nor indeed, of a majority even, of educated
minds that have arrived at maturity. It would be much more
in harmony with facts to say childhood is the period of pure
receptivity, youth of doubt and skepticism, and maturity of well-
grounded and rational belief. In the ripeness and maturity of
the nineteenth century the number of scientific men of the
Comtean model is exceedingly small compared with the num-
ber of religious men. There are minds in every part of Europe
and America as thoroughly scientific as that of Comte, and as
deeply imbued with the spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, which
are not conscious of any discordance between the facts of sci-
ence and the fundamental principles of theology. It may be
that, in his own immediate circle at Paris there may be a tend-
ency to Atheism, but certainly no such tendency exists in the
most scientific minds of Europe and America. The faith of Ba-
con, and Newton, and Boyle, of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Pascal,
in regard to the fundamental principles of theology, is still the
faith of Sedgwick, Whewell, Herschel, Brewster, Owen, Agassiz,
Silliman, Mitchell, Hitchcock, Dana, and, indeed of the lead-
ing scientific minds of the world — the men who, as Comte
would say, “belong to the élite of humanity.” The mature
mind, whether of the individual or the race, is not Atheistical.
3. 7%e third proof is drawn from a survey of the Žistory of cer-
tain fortions of our race.
Comte is far from being assured that the progress of hu-
manity, under the operation of his grand law of development,
has been uniform and invariable. The majority of the human
race, the vast populations of India, China, and Japan, have re-
mained stationary; they are still in the Theological stage, and
consequently furnish no evidence in support of his theory. For
this reason he confines himself to the “Ölite” or advance-guard
of humanity, and in this way makes the history of humanity a
very “abstract history" indeed. Starting with Greece as the
representative of ancient civilization, passing thence to Roman
62 C EIR IS TI A NITY AND
civilization, and onward to Western Europe, he attempts to
show that the actual progress of humanity has been, on the
whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even
this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his
hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Pro-
crustes treated his victims, he must stretch Some, and muti-
late others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The
natural organization of European civilization is distorted and
torn asunder. “As the third or positive stage had accom-
plished its advent in his own person, it was necessary to find
the metaphysical period just before ; and so the whole liſe of
the Reformed Christianity, in embryo and in manifest exist-
ence, is stripped of its garb of faith, and turned out of view as
a naked metaphysical phenomenon. But metaphysics, again,
have to be ushered in by theology; and of the three stages of
theology Monotheism is the last, necessarily following on Poly-
theism, as that, again, on Fetichism. There is nothing for it,
therefore, but to let the mediaeval Catholic Christianity stand
as the world's first monotheism, and to treat it as the legitimate
offspring and necessary development of the Greek and Roman
polytheism. This, accordingly, Comte actually does. Prot-
estantism he illegitimates, and outlaws from religion altogether,
and the genuine Christianity he fathers upon the faith of Ho-
mer and the Scipios Once or twice, indeed, it seems to cross
him that there was such a people as the Hebrews, and that
they were not the polytheists they ought to have been. He
sees the fact, but pushes it out of his way with the remark that
the Jewish monotheism was ‘premature.’”
The signal deſect of Comte's historical survey, however, is,
that it furnishes no evidence of the general prevalence of Fet-
ichism in primitive times. The writings of Moses are certainly
entitled to as much consideration and credence as the writings
of Berosus, Manetho, and Herodotus; and, it will not be denied,
they teach that the faith of the earliest families and races of
men was monotheistic. The early Vedas, the Institutes of Menu,
* Martineau's Essays, pp. 61, 62.
G R EER PIIII, OS O PITY. 63
A.
the writings of Conſucius, the Zendavesta, all bear testimony
that the ancient faith of India, China, and Persia, was, at any
rate, pantheistic ; and learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic
as well as European, confidently affirm that the ground of the
Brahminical, Buddhist, and Parsist faith is monotheistic; and
that one Being is assumed, in the earliest books, to be the
origin of all things." Without evidence, Comte assumes that
the savage state is the original condition of man ; and instead
of going to Asia, the Cradle of the race, for Some light as to the
early condition and opinions of the remotest families of men,
he turns to Africa, the soudan of the earth, for his illustration
of the habit of man, in the infancy of our race, to endow every
object in nature, whether organic or inorganic, with life and in-
telligence. The theory of a primitive state of ignorance and
barbarism is a mere assumption—an hypothesis in conflict with
the traditionary legends of all nations, the earliest records of
Our race, and the unanimous voice of antiquity, which attest the
general belief in a primitive state of light and innocence.
The three stages of development which Comte describes as
necessarily successive, have, for centuries past, been simultane-
ous. The theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific ele-
ments coexist now, and there is no real, radical, or necessary
conflict between them. Theological and metaphysical ideas
hold their ground as securely under the influence of enlarged
scientific discovery as before ; and there is no reason to sup-
pose they ever had more power over the mind of man than they
have to-day. The notion that God is dethroned by the wonder-
ful discoveries of modern science, and theology is dead, is the
dream of the “profond orage cérébral ” which interrupted the
course of Comte's lectures in 1826. As easily may the hand
of Positivism arrest the course of the sun, as prevent the in-
Stinctive thought of human reason recognizing and affirming
the existence of a God. And so long as ever the human mind
is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it scek
* “The Religions of the World in their Relation to Christianity” (Mau-
rice, ch. ii., iii., iv.).
64 C E RISTIANITY AND
to pass beyond the limits of mere phenomena, and inquire after
the real Being which is the ground, and reason, and cause of
all that appears. The heart of man, also, demands a religion.
Its longings can never be satisfied by the generalizations of
science, however grand and imposing. Even Comte felt the
unutterable yearnings of the religious sentiments, and the ne-
cessity that his philosophy should afford them some satisfac-
tion. He suddenly discovers that his mission is to re-organize
entirely the whole of human Society, on the principle of giv-
ing ascendency to the heart over the understanding. He pro-
claims himself as the founder of a new, final, and universal
worship, and “the High-Priest of the Religion of Humanity.”
This new religion he develops in his “Catechism of Aositive A’e-
ligion.” Having superseded “monotheism,” he finds it neces-
sary to invent a “new Supreme Being;” and such a being he
has accordingly provided, and ordered to be represented in
statuary by “a woman of thirty, with a child in her arms.” This
“Grand-Fåre” is the sum-total of the civilized or progressive
part of our race. Thus the worship of humanity is to displace
the worship of God. The deification of mortals is to supply the
place of “the King immortal, eternal, invisible.” This new re-
ligion “ has its cultus, private and public ; its organization of
dogma, its discipline penetrating the whole of life; its altars,
its temples, its symbolism, its prescribed gestures and times;
its ratios and length of prayers; its rules for opening or shutting
the eyes; its ecclesiastical courts and canonizations; its orders
of priesthood and scale of benefices ; its novitiate and conse-
cration ; its nine Sacraments, its angels, its last judgment, its
paradise ; in Short, all imaginable requisites of a religion—ex-
cept a God.”
This first hypothesis is clearly inadequate. To secure any
appearance of plausibility, it is compelled to pervert and misin-
terpret the facts of religious history. And, whilst constrained
to do homage to the religious sentiment, and provide for its
gratification, it fails to comprehend its true import and grand-
* Martineau's Essays, p. 20.
G. R. E.J. K. PHILOSOPEI Y. 65
eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its fun-
damental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is con-
fined to the observation and classification of sensible phenom-
ena—that is, to changes perceptible by the Senses. Psychology,
based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a
“ mere illusion ; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built
upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless.” Spiritual
entities, forces, causes, efficient or final, are unknown and un-
knowable; all inquiry regarding them must be inhibited, “for
Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes at
all.”
II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts
of religious history is, that religion is part of that PROCESS OR EV-
OLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (i. e., the Deity) which, gradually un-
folding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the
fullest self-consciousness in Žižosophy.
This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy
the subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of
“Absolute Zdentity.” Its fundamental position is that thought
and being, subject and object, the perceiving mind and the
thing perceived, are ultimately and essentially one, and that the
& only actual reality is that which results from their mutual rela-
tion. The outward thing is nothing, the inward perception is
nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only reality is the
relation, or rather synthesis of the two ; the essence or nature
of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two
contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two
opposites, are therefore the concrete realities of Hegel; and the
process of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the proc-
ess of all existence—the Absolute /dea.
7%e Absolute (die Idée) thus ſorms the beginning, middle, and
end of the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or
thought, of which nature, mind, history, religion, and philoso-
phy, are the manifestation. “The absolute is, with him, not the
infinite substance, as with Spinoza ; nor the infinite suffect, as
5
66 CHRISTIANITY AND
with Fichte ; nor the infinite mind, as with Schelling ; it is a
perpetual process, an eternal thinking, without beginning and
without end.” . This living, eterma/Arocess of absolute existence,
7s the God of Hegel.
It will thus be seen that the Absolute is, with Hegel, the sum
of all actual and possible existence ; “nothing is true and real
except so far as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit.”
“What kind of an Absolute Being,” he asks, “is that which
does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included ?”
The Absolute, therefore, in Hegel's conception, does not allow
of any existence out of itself. It is the unity of the finite and
the infinite, the eternal and the temporal, the ideal and the real,
the subject and the object. And it is not only the unity of
these opposites so as to exclude all difference, but it contains,
in itself, all the differences and opposites as elements of its be-
ing; otherwise the distinctions would stand over against the
absolute as a limit, and the absolute would cease to be abso-
lute.
God is, therefore, according to Hegel, “no motionless, eter-
nally self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal
process of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the
eternal Self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconcilia-
tion or Synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary
elements, into the constitution of the Divine Being. This self.
evolution, whereby the absolute enters into antithesis, and re-
turns to itself again, is the eternal self-actualization of its being,
. . . . and which at once constitutes the beginning, middle, and
end, as in the circle, where the beginning is at the same time the
end, and the end the beginning.”
The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development’
of this idea of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method,
which reflects the objective life-process of the Absolute, and is,
in fact, identical with it ; for God, says he, “is only the Abso-
* Morell, “Hist. of Philos., p. 461.”
* “Philos. of Religion,” p. 204. “Ibid., chap. xi. p. 24.
* Herzog's Real-Zncyc., art. “Hegelian Philos,” by Ulrici.
G R E E R PITILOSOPHY, 67
lute Intelligence in so far as he knows himself to be the Abso.
lute Intelligence, and this he knows only in science [dialectics],
and this Ánowledge alone constitutes his true existence.” This
life-process of the Absolute has three “moments.” . It may be
considered as the idea in itseff—bare, naked, undetermined, un-
conscious idea ; as the idea out of itseff, in its objective form,
or in its differentiation ; and, finally, as the idea in itseff, and for
itseff, in its regressive or reflective form. This movement of
thought gives, first, bare, naked, indeterminate thought, or
thought in the mere antithesis of Being and non-Being ; second-
Ży, thought externalizing itself in nature ; and, thirdly, thought
returning to itself, and knowing itself in mind, or consciousness.
Philosophy has, accordingly, three corresponding divisions —
I. LOGIC, which here is identical with metaphysics; 2. PHILOS-
OPHY OF NATURE ; 3. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the
entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world
a new logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features
as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion.
The fundamental law of his logic is the identity of contraries or
contradictions. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or oppo-
sites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but consti-
tutes them. In every idea we form, there must be two things
opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear concep-
tion. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of dark-
ness; good can not be thought except in opposition to evil.
All life, all reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements,
which, together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each
other.
The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequen-
ces of this law.
I. 7%e Absolute is the Being (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and
“the Being” is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract,
undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea.
2. The Absolute is the Wothing (das Absolute ist das Nichts).
* “Hist, of Philos.,” iii. p. 309.
68 C. H.R IS TIAA IT Y. A ND
“Pure being is pure abstraction, and consequently the abso-
lute-negative, which in like manner, directly taken, is nothing.”
Being and Nothing are the positive and negative poles of the
Idea, that is, the Absolute. They both alike exist, they are
both pure abstractions, both absolutely unconditioned, without
attributes, and without consciousness. Hence follows the con-
clusion— - -
3. Being and AVoffing are identical (das Seyn und das Nichts
ist dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being is Being—the An-
ders-seyn—which becomes as Being to the Seyn. Nothing is,
in some sense, an actual thing.
Aeing and AVožing are thus the two elements which enter
into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both togeth-
er combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or
the becoming of something out of nothing, the unfolding of real
existence in its lowest form, that is, of nature.
The “A”hilosophy of Nature” exhibits a series of necessary
movements which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale
of sensible existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and
physiology are resolved into a series of oppositions. . But the
law which governs this development requires the self-reconcilia-
tion of these opposites. The idea, therefore, which in nature
was unconscious and ignorant of itself, returns upon itself, and
becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes mind. The science
of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is the “A”hilosophy
of Mind.”
The “Philosophy of Mind" is subdivided by Hegel into
three parts. There is, first, the subjective or individual mind
(?sychology); then the objective or universal mind, as represent-
ed in Society, the State, and in history (effics, politica/ ?/hi/oso-
A/ºy, or jurisprudence, and Žilosophy of history); and, finally, the
union of the Subjective and objective mind, or the absolute mind.
This last manifests itself again under three forms, representing
the three degrees of the self-consciousness of the Spirit, as the
eternal truth. These are, first, art, or the representation of
beauty (assthetics); Secondly, religion, in the general acceptation
G B E E K PHILOSOPHI Y. 69
of the term (philosophy of religion); and, thirdly, Žhilosophy it.
self, as the purest and most perfect form of the scientific knowl-
edge of truth. All historical religions, the Oriental, the Jew-
ish, the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, are the successive
stages in the development or self-actualization of God."
It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philoso-
phy of Hegel is essentially pantheistic. “God is not a person,
but personality itself, i.e., the universal personality, which real-
izes itself in every human consciousness, as so many separate
thoughts of one eternal mind. The idea we form of the abso-
lute is, to Hegel, the absolute itself, its essential existence be-
ing identical with our conception of it. Apart from, and out
of the world, there is no God ; and so also, apart from the uni-
versal consciousness of man, there is no Divine consciousness
or personality.”
This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and con-
flicts with the actual facts of man's religious nature and relig-
ious history. If the word “religion ” has any meaning at all,
it is “a mode of life determined by the consciousness of de-
pendence upon, and obligation to God.” It is reverence for,
gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from hu-
manity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of
God—a stage in the development or self-actualization of God.
Viewed under one aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God
—the worship of God by God; under another aspect it is the
worship of humanity, since God only becomes conscious of
himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is that upon
which his entire method proceeds, viz., “the identity of subject
and object, being and thought.” Against this false position the
consciousness of each individual man, and the universal con-
Sciousness of our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If
thought and being are identical, then whatever is true of ideas
is also true of objects, and then, as Kant had before remarked,
* See art. “Hegelian Philosophy,” in Herzog's Real-Encyc., from whence
our materials are chiefly drawn.
* Morell, “Hist. of Philos.,” p. 473.
7o C! HRISTIANITY AND
there is no difference between thinking we possess a hundred
dollars, and actually possessing them. Such absurdities may be
rendered plausible by a logic which asserts the “identity of
contradictions,” but against Such logic Common Sense rebels.
“The law of non-contradiction ” has been accepted by all logi-
cians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of
thought. “Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not
A=O, or A–A=O.” Non-existence can not exist. Being
can not be nothing.
III. The third hypothesis affirms that the phenomenon of re-
Zgion / as its foundation in FEELING—the feeling of dependence and
of obligation; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous in-
tuition or instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obliga-
tion we call God.
This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent
upon the differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory
of Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Ham-
ilton. Its fundamental position is, that we can not gain truth
with absolute certainty either from sense or reason, and, con-
sequently, the only valid source of real knowledge is feeling—
faith, intuition, or, as it is called by Some, inspiration.
There have been those, in all ages, who have made all
knowledge of invisible, superSensuous, divine things, to rest
upon an internal feeling, or immediate, inward vision. The
Oriental Mystics, the Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek
and Latin Church, the German Mystics of the 14th century, the
Theosophists of the Reformation, the Quietists of France, the
Quakers, have all appealed to some special faculty, distinct
from the understanding and reason, for the immediate cogni-
tion of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that
special faculty was regarded as an “interior eye” which was
illuminated by the “Universal Light ;” by others, as a peculiar
sensibility of the soul—a feeling in whose perfect calm and ut-
ter quiescence the Divinity was mirrored ; or which, in an ec-
* IIamilton's Logic, p. 58.
G JR EJ} K. PEIII, OS O PET Y. 71
static State, rose to a communion with, and final absorption in
the Infinite. *
Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the “faith-
philosophy,” as it is now designated, a definite form. He as-
sumes the position that all knowledge, of whatever kind, must
ultimately rest upon intuition or faith. As it regards sensible
objects, the understanding finds the impression from which all
our knowledge of the external flows, ready formed. The proc-
ess of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it until it is
past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge of
matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can
not doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act
of perception there is something actual and present, which can
not be referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are
also conscious of another class of feelings which correlate us
with a supersensuous world, and these feelings, also, must have
their cause in some objective reality. Just as Sensation gives
us an immediate knowledge of an external world, so there is an
internal sense which gives us an immediate knowledge of a spir-
itual world—God, the Soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowl-
edge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible
world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosoph-
ic knowledge is thus based upon belief, which Jacobi regards as
a fact of our inward sensibility—a sort of knowledge produced
by an immediate feeling of the Soul — a direct apprehension,
without proof, of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal.
Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the
deservedly greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental
position was that truth in Theology could not be obtained by rea-
son, but by a feeling, insight, or intuition, which in its lowest form
he called God-consciousness, and in its highest form, Christian-
consciousness. The God-consciousness, in its original form, is
the feeling of defendence on the Infinite. The Christian con-
Sciousness is the perfect union of the human consciousness with
the Divine, through the mediation of Christ, or what we would
call a Christian experience of communion with God.
72 CHRISTIANITY AND
Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we
must take account of his doctrine of self-consciousness. “In
all self-consciousness,” says he, “there are two elements, a Be-
ing (ein Seyn) and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendwéige-
wordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self-
consciousness, besides the ego, yet Something else from whence
the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and with-
out which self-consciousness would not be just this.” Every
determinate mode of the Sensibility Supposes an object, and a re-
Žation between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling
deriving its determinations from the object. External sensa-
tion, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world-
consciousness. Internal Sensation, the feeling of dependence,
gives God-consciousness. And it is only by the presence of
world-consciousness and God-Consciousness that self-conscious-
ness can be what it is.
We have, then, in our self-consciousness a feeling of direct de-
fendence, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that
dependence we call God. “By means of the religious feeling,
the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things
[external] are revealed in us.” The felt, therefore, is not only
the first religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form
of the religious spirit ; whatever lays any claim to religion must
maintain its ground and principle in feeling, upon which it de-
pends for its development; and the sum-total of the forces con-
stituting religious life, inasmuch as it is a life, is based upon
immediate self-consciousness.”
The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by
Mansel, in his “J.imits of Religious 7%ought.” He maintains,
with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in feeling, and
that the felt is the first intimation or presentiment Of the Di-
vine. Man “feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme
Being, and the instinct to worship, before he can argue from
effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevo-
* Glaubenslehre, ch. i. § 4. * Dialectic, p. 430.
* Nitzsch, “System of Doctrine,” p. 23.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY. 73
lence scattered through the creation.” He also agrees with
Schleiermacher in regarding the feeling of dependence as a state
of the sensibility, out of which reflection builds up the edifice
of Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleier-
macher, regard it as pre-eminently the basis of religious con-
sciousness. “The mere consciousness of dependence does
not, of itself, exhibit the character of the Being on whom we
depend. It is as consistent with Superstition as with religion;
with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity.”
To the feeling of dependence he has added the consciousness
of moral obligation, which he imagines supplies the deficiency.
By this consciousness of moral obligation “we are compelled
to assume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the
absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the
nature of that Deity.” “To these two facts of the inner con-
sciousness (the feeling of dependence, and consciousness of
moral obligation) may be traced, as to their sources, the two
great outward acts by which religion, in its various forms, has
been manifested among men—Prayer, by which they seek to
win God’s blessing upon the future, and Expiation, by which
they strive to atone for the offenses of the past. The feeling
of dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the
feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a su-
perior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law;
but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality
that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent
upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope
and fear, and reverence and gratitude.” The feeling of moral
obligation—“the law written in the heart”—leads man to rec-
ognize a Lawgiver. “Man can be a law unto himself only on
the supposition flat he reflects in himself the law of God.”
The conclusion from the whole is, there must be an object an-
swering to this consciousness: there must be a God to explain
these facts of the soul.
* Mansel, “Limits of Religious Thought,” p. 115. * Id., ib., p. I2O.
* Id., ib., p. 122. * Id., ib., pp. I 19, I2O. * Id, ib., p. I22.
74 CIIRISTIANITY AND
This “philosophy of feeling,” or of faith generated by feel-
ing, has an interest and a significance which has not been ad-
equately recognized by writers on natural theology. Feeling,
sentiment, enthusiasm, have always played an important part in
the history of religion. Indeed it must be conceded that religion
is a right state offeeling toward's God—religion is piety. A philos-
ophy of the religious emotion is, therefore, demanded in order
to the full interpretation of the religious phenomena of the world.
But the notion that internal feeling, a peculiar determination
of the sensibility, is the source of religious ideas —that God
can be known immediately by feeling without the mediation of
the truth that manifests God ; that he can be felt as the quali-
ties of matter can be felt ; and that this affection of the inward
sense can reveal the character and perfections of God, is an
unphilosophical and groundless assumption. To assert, with
Nitzsch, that “feeling has reason, and is reason, and that the
ensible and felt God-consciousness generates out of itself fun-
damental conceptions,” is to confound the most fundamental
psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized
classifications of mental science to the necessities of a theory.
Indeed, we are informed that it is “by means of an independent
psychology, and conformably to it,” that Schleiermacher illus-
trates his “philosophy of feeling.” But all psychology must
be based upon the observation and classification of mental
phenomena, as revealed in consciousness, and not constructed
in an “independent” and a priori method. The most careful
psychological analysis has resolved the whole complex phenom-
ena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.” These orders
of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They dif-
fer not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter
disregard of the facts of consciousness that they can be con-
founded. Feeling is not reason, nor can it by any logical dex-
terity be transformed into reason.
* Nitzsch, “System of Doctrine,” p. 21.
* Kant, “Critique of Judg.,” ch. xxii. ; Cousin, “Hist. of Philos.,” vol. ii.
p. 399; Hamilton, vol. i. p. 183, Eng, ed.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPET Y. 75
The question as to the relative order of cognition and feel-
ing, that is, as to whether feeling is the first or original form of
the religious consciousness, or whether feeling be not conse-
quent upon some idea or cognition of God, is one which can
not be determined on empirical grounds. We are precluded
from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of mental development
in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If we at-
tempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are
lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny
of memory or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the
wider field of universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of
mind in humanity are lost in the border-land of mystery, of
which history furnishes no authentic records. All dogmatic af.
firmation must, therefore, be unjustifiable. The assertion that
religious feeling precedes all Cognition,-that “the conscious-
ness of dependence on a Supreme Being, and the instinct of
worship ’’ are developed first in the mind, before the reason is
exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable doctrine
is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action
simultaneous/y—the reason with the Senses, the feelings with
the reason, the judgment with both the Senses and the reason,
and that from their primary and simultaneous action arises
the complex result, called consciousness, or conjoint knowl-
edge.” There can be no clear and distinct consciousness with-
out the cognition of a self and a ſlot-self in mutual relation and
opposition. Now the knowledge of the self—the personal ego
—is an intuition of reason ; the knowledge of the not-self is an
intuition of sense. All knowledge is possible only under con-
dition of plurality, difference, and relation.” Now the judgment
is “the Faculty of Relations,” or of comparison; and the af.
firmation “this is not that ” is an act of judgment; to know is,
consequently, to judge.” Self-consciousness must, therefore, be
regarded as a synthesis of Sense, reason, and judgment, and
not a mere self-feeling (coenaesthesis).
* Cousin, “Hist. of Philos.,” vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p. 337.
* Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88. * Hamilton, “Metaphys,” p. 277.
76 C EIRISTIANITY AND
A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that
if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to Sensa-
tion, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition.
The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of body
without the a priori idea of space. The feeling of movement,
of change, can not give the cognition of event without the ra-
tional idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not
generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the ration-
al idea of identity or unity. And so the mere “feeling of de-
pendence,” of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea
of God, without the rational à priori idea of the Infinite, the
Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowl-
edge, and never can bécome knowledge, without the interven-
tion of reason; and a concentrated self-ſeeling can not rise es-
sentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation
of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being
ruling over nature and man.
Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its pathological form, it
may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appe-
tency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the
feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the
character and fitness, of any ſood. An undefinable fear, a mys-
terious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the
Soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to
the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the
imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively
apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any
significance.
Regarded in its moral form, as “the feeling of obligation,” it
can have no real meaning unless a “law of duty” be known
and recognized. Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty
is. When that which is right, and just, and good is revealed
to the mind, then the sense of obligation may urge man to
the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the good,
are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, conse-
quently, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmoni-
G R E E R PIIII, OS O PITY. 77
ous and living relation between the reason and the sensibili-
ties.
Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's
“feeling of dependence” to reveal the character of the Being
on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doc-
trine by the “feeling of moral obligation,” which he thinks
“compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity.” We
think his “fact of religious intuition’’ is as inadequate as
Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of religion.
In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge
of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is
a Power or Being upon whom we depend for existence and
well-being, and which Power or Being “we call God.” The
feeling of obligation certainly indicates the existence of a Being
to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr. Mansel
calls a “moral Deity.” But in both instances the character,
and even the existence of God is “assumed,” and we are enti-
tled to ask on what ground it is assumed. It will not be as-
serted that feeling alone generates the idea, or that the feeling
is transformed into idea without the intervention of thought
and reflection. Is there, then, a logical connection between the
feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the idea of the
Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous Gov-
ernor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-rela-
tion between the feeling and the idea, so that when the feeling
is present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This
latter opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept
it as the Statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not
regard it as an account of the genesis of the idea of God in
the human mind. The idea of God as the First Cause, the In-
finite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Law-
giver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a
simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a com-
plex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in con-
Sciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in
a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous ope-
78 CII RISTIA WITY A. N.D
ration of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from
the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the rea-
son, a logical inference from the facts of Sense, consciousness,
and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feel-
ings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of reason as
uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates into
mysticism—a mysticism “which pretends to elevate man di-
rectly to God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its
power, it really deprives man of that which enables him to know
God, and puts him in a just communication with God by the in-
termediary of eternal and infinite truth.”
The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have
resulted from the union of though/ and feeling—the living and
harmonious relation of reason and sensibility; and a philoso-
phy which disregards cither is inadequate to the cxplanation of
the phenomena.
IV. The fourth hypothesis is, that religion has had its ouſ-
bir//, in ſhe sponſaneous apperceptions of REASON ; that is, in the
necessary, à priori ideas of the infinite, the perſect, the uncon-
ditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into con-
Sciousness in presence of the changeful, contingent phenomena
of the world.'
This will at once be recognized by the intelligent reader as
the doctrine of Cousin, by whom Žure ſeason is regarded as the
grand faculty or organ of religion.
Religion, in the estimation of Cousin, is grounded on cog/liſion
rather than upon ſceling. It is the knowledge of God, and the
knowledge of duty in its relation to God and to human happi-
ncSS ; and as reason is the general faculty of all knowing, it must
be the faculty of religion. “In its most clevated point of view,
religion is the relation of absolute truth to absolute Being,” and
as absolute truth is apprehended by the reason alone, reason
“is the veridical and religious part of the nature of man.” By
* Cousin, “True, Beautiful, and Good,” p. 110.
* Henry's Cousin, p. 510.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHI Y. 79
“reason,” however, as we shall see presently, Cousin does not
mean the discursive or reflective reason, but the spontaneous
or intuitive reason. That act of the mind by which we attain
to religious knowledge is not a process of reasoning, but a pure
appreciation, an instinctive and involuntary movement of the
Soul.
The especial function of reason, thereſore, is to reveal to us
the invisible, the SuperSensuous, the Divine. “It was bestowed
upon us for this very purpose of going, without any circuit of
reasoning, from the visible to the invisible, ſrom the finite to the
infinite, from the imperſect to the perſect, and from necessary
and eternal truths, to the eternal and necessary principle” that
is God." Reason is thus, as it were, the bridge between con-
sciousness and being; it rests, at the same time, on both ; it de-
Scends from God, and approaches man ; it makes its appear-
ance in consciousness as a guest which brings intelligence of
another world of real Being which lies beyond the world of
SCI)SC.
Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being di-
rectly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To
assert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the
Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of God, a ray
of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with God.
Beason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the in-
terposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a man-
iſestation of God. “Truth is incomprehensible without God,
and God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed
between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence alS 2.
kind of mediator.” Incapable of contemplating God ſace to
ſace, reason adores God in the truth which represents and
manifests Him.
Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to
the reason of man, and as it is a light which illuminates every
man, and is perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal
and perpetual revelation of God to man. The mind of man is
* Cousin, “True, Beautiſul, and Good,” p. 103. * Id, ib., p. 99.
8o C EIRISTIANITY AND
“the offspring of God,” and, as such, must have some resem-
blance to, and some correlation with God. Now that which
constitutes the image of God in man must be found in the rea-
son which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the
truth which manifests God, just as the eye is correlated to the
light which manifests the external world. Absolute truth is,
therefore, the sole medium of bringing the human mind into
communion with God; and human reason, in becoming united
to absolute truth, becomes united to God in his manifestation
in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest destina-
tion of man, is to become united to God by seeking a full con-
sciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.'
It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions
by which this philosophy of religion is to be tested are–
Ist. How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in Ž0s-
session of universal and necessary principles or absolute truths 2 and,
2d. How are these principles shozwn to be absolute 2 /*070 far do
ſhese principles of reason possess absolute authority ?
The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove
reason to be in possession of universal and necessary princi-
ples by the analysis of the contents of consciousness, that is, by
psychological analysis. The phenomena of consciousness, in
their primitive condition, are necessarily complex, concrete, and
particular. All Our primary ideas are complex ideas, for the
evident reason that all, or nearly all, our faculties enter at once
into exercise ; their simultaneous action giving us, at the same
time, a certain number of ideas connected with each other, and
forming a whole. For example, the idea of the exterior world,
which is given us So quickly, is a complex idea, which contains
a number of ideas. There is the idea of the secondary quali-
ties of exterior objects; there is the idea of the primary quali-
ties; there is the idea of the permanent reality of something to
which you refer these qualities, to wit, matter ; there is the idea
of space which contains bodies; there is the idea of time in
which movements are effected. All these ideas are acquired
* Henry's Cousin, p. 5 II, 512.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 8I
simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, and together form
one complex idea.
The application of analysis to this complex phenomenon
clearly reveals that there are simple ideas, beliefs, principles in
the mind which can not have been derived from sense and ex-
perience, which sense and experience do not account for, and
which are the suggestions of reason alone : the idea of the In-
finite, the Perfect, the Æternal; the true, the beautiful, the good ;
the principle of causality, of substance, of unity, of intentional-
ity; the principle of duty, of obligation, of accountability, of
retribution. These principles, in their natural and regular de-
velopment, carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and re-
veal to us a world of real being beyond the world of sense.
They carry us up to an absolute Being, the fountain of all ex-
istence—a living, personal, righteous God—the author, the Sus-
tainer, and ruler of the universe.
The proof that these principles are absolute, and possessed
of absolute authority, is drawn, first, from the impersonality of
reason, or, rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or
truths of reason.
It is not we who create these ideas, neither can we change
them at our pleasure. We are conscious that the will, in all
its various efforts, is enstamped with the impress of Our person-
ality. Our volitions are our own. So, also, our desires are our
own, our emotions are our own. But this is not the same with
our rational ideas or principles. The ideas of substance, of
cause, of unity, of intentionality do not belong to one person
any more than to another ; they belong to mind as mind, they
are revealed in the universal intelligence of the race. Abso-
lute truth has no element of personality about it. Man may
say “my reason,” but give him credit for never having dared to
say “my truth.” So far from rational ideas being individual,
their peculiar characteristic is that they are opposed to individ-
uality, that is, they are universal and necessary. Instead of
being circumscribed within the limits of experience, they sur-
pass and govern it ; they are universal in the midst of particu-
6
82 CHRISTIANITY AND
lar phenomena; necessary, although mingled with things con-
tingent; and absolute, even when appearing within us the rela-
tive and finite beings that we are." Necessary, universal, abso-
lute truth is a direct emanation from God, “Such being the
case, the decision of reason within its own peculiar province
possesses an authority almost divine. If we are led astray by
it, we must be led astray by a light from heaven.”
The second proof is derived from the distinction between the
spontaneous and reflective movements of reason.
Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary ; reflec-
tion is personal, Spontaneity is impersonal ; reflection is analyt-
ic, spontaneity is synthetic ; reflection begins with doubt, spon-
taneity with affirmation ; reflection belongs to certain ones,
spontaneity belongs to all ; reflection produces science, spon-
taneity gives truth. Reflection is a process, more or less tardy,
in the individual and in the race. It sometimes engenders er-
ror and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, from being ra-
tional, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it
creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use
by the force of habit, as if they were natural to us. But spon-
taneous intuition is the true logic of nature, Linstant, direct,
and infallible. It is a primitive affirmation which implies no
negation, and therefore yields positive knowledge. To reflect
is to return to that which was. It is, by the aid of memory, to
return to the past, and to render it present to the eye of con-
sciousness. Reflection, therefore, creates nothing ; it supposes
an anterior operation of the mind in which there necessarily
must be as many terms as are discovered by reflection. Before
all reflection there comes spontaneity—a spontaneity of the in-
tellect, which seizes truth at once, without traversing doubt and
error. “We thus attain to a judgment free from all reflection,
to an affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an imme-
diate intuition, the legitimate daughter of the natural energy of
thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero,
* Cousin, “True, Beautiful, and Good,” p. 40.
* Id., “Lectures,” vol. ii. p. 32.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHY, 83
the enthusiasm of the prophet.” Such is the first act of know-
ing, and in this first act the mind passes from idea to being with-
out ever Suspecting the depth of the chasm it has passed. It
passes by means of the power which is in it, and is not aston-
ished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished when
by reflection it returns to the analysis of the results, and, by the
aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite
of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. “Hence
comes the strife between Sophism and common sense, between
false science and natural truth, between good and bad philoso-
phy, both of which come from free reflection.”
It is this spontaneity of thought which gives birth to religion.
The instinctive thought which darts through the world, even to
God, is natural religion. “All thought implies a spontaneous
faith in God, and there is no such thing as natural atheism.
Doubt and skepticism may mingle with reflective thought, but
beneath reflection there is still spontaneity. When the scholar
has denied the existence of God, listen to the man, interrogate
him, take him unawares, and you will see that all his words en-
velop the idea of God, and that faith in God is, without his
recognition, at the bottom, in his heart.”
Religion, then, in the system of Cousin, does not begin with
reflection, with science, but with faith. There is, however, this
difference to be noted between the theory of the “faith-philoso-
phers” (Jacobi, Schleiermacher, etc.) and the theory of Cousin.
With them, faith is grounded on sensation or feeling; with him,
it is grounded on reason. “Faith, whatever may be its form,
whatever may be its object, common or sublime, can be noth-
ing else than the consent of reason. That is the foundation of
faith.” &
Religion is, therefore, with Cousin, at bottom, pure Theism.
He thinks, however, that “true theism is not a dead religion
that forgets precisely the fundamental attributes of God.” It
recognizes God as creator, preserver, and governor; it cele-
* Cousin, “True, Beautiful, and Good,” p. Ioč.
* “Hist. of Philos.,” vol. i.p. 137. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 90.
84 C EIRISTIANITY AND
brates a providence; it adores a perfect, holy, righteous, be-
nevolent God. It holds the principle of duty, of obligation, of
moral desert. It not only perceives the divine character, but
feels its relation to God. The revelation of the Infinite, by rea-
son, moves the feelings, and passes into sentiment, producing
reverence, and love, and gratitude. And it creates worship,
which recalls man to God a thousand times more forcibly than
the order, harmony, and beauty of the universe can do.
The spontaneous action of reason, in its greatest energy, is
inspiration. “Inspiration, daughter of the Soul and heaven,
speaks from on high with an absolute authority. It commands
faith ; so all its words are hymns, and its natural language is
poetry.” “Thus, in the cradle of civilization, he who possessed
in a higher degree than his fellows the gift of inspiration,
passed for the confidant and the interpreter of God. He is so
for others, because he is so for himself; and he is So, in ſact, in
a philosophic sense. Behold the sacred origin of prophecies,
of pontificates, and of modes of worship.”
As an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the hu-
man intelligence, the doctrine of Cousin must be regarded as
eminently logical, adequate, and Satisfactory. As a theory of
the origin of religion, as a philosophy which shall explain all
the phenomena of religion, it must be pronounced deſective,
and, in some of its aspects, erroneous.
First, it does not take proper account of that Živing force
which has in all ages developed so much energy, and wrought
such vast results in the history of religion, viz., the power of the
/cart. Cousin discourses eloquently on the spontaneous, in-
stinctive movements of the reason, but he overlooks, in a great
measure, the instinctive movements of the heart. He does not
duly estimate the feeling of reverence and awe which rises spon-
taneously in presence of the vastness and grandeur of the uni-
verse, and of the power and glory of which the created universe
is a symbol and shadow. He disregards that sense of an over-
shadowing Presence which, at least in seasons of tenderness
* “Hist, of Philos.,” vol. i. p. 129.
G RE E R PEIIL OS O PET Y. 85
and deep sensibility, seems to compass us about, and lay its
hand upon us. He scarcely recognizes the deep consciousness
of imperfection and weakness, and utter dependence, which
prompts man to seek for and implore the aid of a Superior Be-
ing ; and, above all, he takes no proper account of the sense of
guilt and the conscious need of expiation. His theory, there-
fore, can not adequately explain the universal prevalence of
Sacrifices, penances, and prayers. In short, it does not meet
and answer to the deep longings of the human heart, the wants,
sufferings, fears, and hopes of man.
Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illumina-
ted by the light of God. It is quite pertinent to ask, Why may
not the universal heart of humanity be touched and moved by
the spirit of God? If the ideas of reason be a revelation from
God, may not the instinctive feelings of the heart be an inspira-
tion of God? May not God come near to the heart of man and
awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible Presence, and
an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him? May he not
draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and
raise man to a conscious fellowship 2 Is not God indeed the
great want of the human heart?
Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influ-
ence of revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and
of the positive institutions of religion, as a divine economy, su-
pernaturally originated in the world. He grants, indeed, that
“a primitive revelation throws light upon the cradle of human
civilization,” and that “all antique traditions refer to an age in
which man, at his departure from the hand of God, received
from him immediately all lights, and all truths.” He also be-
lieves that “the Mosaic religion, by its developments, is mingled
with the history of all the surrounding people of Egypt, of AS-
syria, of Persia, and of Greece and Rome.” Christianity, how-
ever, is regarded as “the Summing and crown of the two great
religious systems which reigned by turn in the East and in
Greece’—the maturity of Ethnicism and Judaism ; a develop-
” “Hist, of Philos,” vol. i. p. 148. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 216.
86 CEIRISTIANITY AND
ment rather than a new creation. The explanation which he
offers of the phenomena of inspiration opens the door to relig-
ious skepticism. Those who were termed Seers, prophets, in-
spired teachers of ancient times, were simply men who resigned
themselves wholly to their intellectual instincts, and thus gazed
upon truth in its pure and perſect ſorm. They did not reason,
they did not reflect, they made no pretensions to philosophy;
they received truth spontaneously as it flowed in upon them
from heaven.” This immediate reception of Divine light was
nothing more than the ſlatural play of Spontaneous reason;
nothing more than what has existed to a greater or less de-
gree in every man of great genius ; nothing more than may
now exist in any mind which resigns itself to its own unreflec-
tive apperceptions. Thus revelation, in its proper sense, loses
all its peculiar value, and Christianity is robbed of its pre-emi-
nent authority. The extremes of Mysticism and Rationalism
here meet on the same ground, and Plotinus and Cousin are at
Ol] C.
V. The fiſth hypothesis offered in explanation of the relig-
ious phenomena of the world is that they had their origin in Ex-
TERNAL REVELATION, ſo 70/ic/, reason is relaled as a ſurely ſas-
sive organ, and /º///licism as a ſeclºſe relic.
This is the theory of the school of “dogmatic theologians,”
of which the ablest and most familiar prescutation is ſound in
the “Theological Institutes” of R. Watson.” He claims that
all our religious knowledge is derived from oral reve/a/ſon, alone,
and that all the forms of religion and modes of worship which
have prevailed in the heathen world have been perversions and
Corruptions of the one true religion first taught to the earliest
* Morell, “Hist, of Philos,” p. 661.
* We might have referred the reader to Ellis's “Knowledge of Divine
Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature;” Leland’s “Necessity
of Revelation ;” and Horsley's “IDissertations,” ctc.; but as we are not aware
of their having been reprintcd in this country, we select the “Institutes”
of Watson as the best presentation of the views of “the dogmatic theolo-
gians” accessible to American readers.
G R E]E K. PEIILOSOPET Y. 87
families of men by God himself. All the ideas of God, duty,
immortality, and ſuture retribution which are now possessed, or
have ever been possessed by the heathen nations, are only
broken and scattered rays of the primitive traditions descend-
ing ſrom the family of Noah, and revived by subsequent in-
tercourses with the Hebrew race ; and all the modes of re-
ligious worship—prayers, lustrations, sacrifices—that have ob-
tained in the world, are but feeble relics, ſaint reminiscences of
the primitive worship divinely instituted among the first families
of men. “The first man received the knowledge of God by
sensible converse with him, and that doctrine was transmitted,
with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early
ancestors of all nations.” This belief in the existence of a
Supreme Being was preserved among the Jews by continual
maniſestations of the presence of Jehovah. “The intercourses
between the Jews and the states of Syria and Babylon, on the
one hand, and Egypt on the other, powers which rose to great
eminence and influence in the ancient world, was maintained
for ages. Their ſrequent dispersions and captivities would tend
to preserve in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the
once common and universal ſaith.” And the Greek sages who
resorted for instruction to the Chaldean philosophic schools
derived ſrom thence their knowledge of the theological system
of the Jews." Among the heathen nations this primitive reve-
lation was corrupted by philosophic speculation, as in India and
China, Greece and Rome; and in some cases it was entirely
obliterated by ignorance, Superstition, and vice, as among the
Hottentots of Aſrica and the aboriginal tribes of New South
Wales, who “ have no idea of one Supreme Creator.”
The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the
idea of duty, and the knowledge of right and wrong. “A di-
rect communication of the Divine Will was made to the primo-
* Watson, “Theol. Inst.,” vol. i. p. 270. * Id. ib., vol. i. p. 31.
* See ch. v. and vi., “On the Origin of those Truths which are found in
the Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathem.”
“Ibid., vol. i. p. 274.
88 CIIRISTIANITY AND
genitors of our race,” and to this source alone we are indebted
for all correct ideas of right and wrong. “Whatever is ſound
pure in morals, in ancient or modern writers, may be traced to
indirect revelation.” Verbal instruction—tradition or scripture
—thus becomes the source of all our moral ideas. The doc-
trine of immortality, and of a future retribution,” the practice of
sacrifice—precatory and expiatory, are also ascribed to the
same source.” Thus the only medium by which religious truth
can possibly become known to the masses of mankind is fra-
diffon. The ultimate foundation on which the religious faith
and the religious practices of universal humanity have rested,
with the exception of the Jews, and the favored few to whom
the Gospel has come, is uncertain, precarious, and easily cor-
rupted tradition.
The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this
theory will be obvious from the following considerations:
I. It is highly improbable that truths so important and vital
to man, so essential to the well-being of the human race, so
necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the
ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precari-
ous and uncertain a basis as tradition is admitted, even by Mr.
Watson, to be.
The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep
moral necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The per-
ſection of humanity can never be secured, the destination of
humanity can never be achieved, the purpose of God in the ex-
istence of humanity can never be accomplished, without the idea
of God, and of the relation of man to God, being present to
the human mind. Society needs the idea of a Supreme Ruler
as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis of
social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved.
Intellectual creatureship, Social order, human progress, are in-
conceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of ac-
countability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should,
* Watson, “Theol. Inst.,” vol. ii. p. 470. * Id. ib., vol. i. p. II.
* Id. ib., vol. i. p. 26.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 89
to the masses of men, rest on tradition alone, is incredible. Is
there no known and accessible God to the outlying millions of
our race who, in consequence of the circumstances of birth and
education, which are beyond their control, have had no access
to an oral revelation, and among whom the dim shadowy rays
of an ancient tradition have long ago expired 2 Are the eight
hundred millions of our race upon whom the light of Christian-
ity has not shone unvisited by the common Father of our race 2
Has the universal Father left his “own offspring” without a
single native power of recognizing the existence of the Divine
Parent, and abandoned them to Solitary and dreary orphanage 2
Could not he who gave to matter its properties and laws, the
properties and laws through whose operation he is working out
his own purposes in the realm of nature, could not he have
also given to mind ideas and principles which, logically devel-
oped, would lead to recognition of a God, and of our duty to
God, and, by these ideas and principles, have wrought out his
sublime purposes in the realm of mind? Could not he who
gave to man the appetency for food, and implanted in his na-
ture the social instincts to preserve his physical being, have im-
planted in his heart a “feeling aſter God,” and an instinct to
worship God in order to the conservation of his spiritual being 2
How otherwise can we affirm the responsibility and accounta-
bility of all the race before God? Those theologians who are
so earnest in the assertion that God has not endowed man with
the native power of attaining the knowledge of God can not,
on any principle of equity, show how the heathen are “without
excuse” when, in involuntary ignorance of God, they “worship
the creature instead of the Creator,” and violate a law of duty
of which they have no possible means to attain the barest
knowledge.
2. This theory is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the
7//liversa/ity of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas.
Take, for example, the idea of God. As a matter of fact we
affirm, in opposition to Watson, the universality of this idea.
The idea of God is connatural to the human mind. Wherever
90 CHRISTIANITY AND
human reason has had its normal and healthy development,
this idea has arisen spontaneously and necessarily. There has
not been found a race of men who were utterly destitute of
some knowledge of a Supreme Being. All the instances al-
leged have, on further and more accurate inquiry, been found
incorrect. The tendency of the last century, arbitrarily to quad-
rate all the facts of religious history with the prevalent sensa-
tional philosophy, had its influence upon the minds of the first
missionaries to India, China, Africa, Australia, and the islands
of the Pacific. They expected to find that the heathen had no
knowledge of a Supreme Being, and before they had mastered
the idioms of their language, or become familiar with their my-
thological and cosmological Systems, they reported them as utter-
Zy ignorant of God, destitute of the idea and even the name of
a Supreme Being. These mistaken and hasty conclusions
have, however, been corrected by a more intimate acquaintance
with the people, their languages and religions. Even in the
absence of any better information, we should be constrained to
doubt the accuracy of the authorities quoted by Mr. Watson in
relation to Hindooism, when by one (Ward) we are told that
the Hindoo “believes in a God destitute of infe/ligence,” and by
another (Moore) that “Drahm is the one eternal Mind, the self-
existent, incomprehensible Spirit.” Learned and trustworthy
Critics, Asiatic as well as European, however, confidently affirm
that “the ground of the Brahminical faith is Monotheistic;” it
recognizes “an Absolute and Supreme Being as the source of
all that exists.” Eugène Burnouſ, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire,
Koeppen, and indeed nearly all who have written on the subject
of Buddhism, have shown that the metaphysical doctrines of
Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of the Brahmin-
ic philosophy. “Buddha,” we are told, is “Żure inte//gence,”
“clear light,” “Żeyfect wisdom,” the same as Brahm. This is
* Watson, “Theol. Inst.,” vol. i. p. 46.
* Maurice, “Religions of the World,” p. 59 : Edin. Review, 1862, art.
“Recent Researches on Buddhism.” Sce also Müller’s “Chips from a Ger-
man Workshop,” vol. i. ch. i. to vi.
G JR E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 9I
surely Theism in its highest conception.” In regard to the
peoples of South Africa, Dr. Livingstone assures us “there is
no need for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these
people of the existence of a God, or of a future state—the facts
being universally admitted. ... On questioning intelligent men
among the Backwains as to their former knowledge of good
and evil, of God, and of a future state, they have scouted the
idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear
conception on all these subjects.” And so far from the New
Hollanders having no idea of a Supreme Being, we are assured
by E. Stone Parker, the protector of the aborigines of New Hol-
land, they have a clear and well-defined idea of a “Great Spirit,”
the maker of all things.
f
Now had the idea of God rested solely on tradition, it were
the most natural probability that it might be lost, nay, must be
lost, amongst those races of men who were geographically and
chronologically far removed from the primitive cradle of hu-
manity in the East. The people who, in their migrations, had
wandered to the remotest parts of the earth, and had become
isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after the lapse of ages,
be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontane-
ous and native intuition of the mind,-a necessity of thought.
A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with
much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no
visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to
* “It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and
that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefi-
nite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian
philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the pop-
ulace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme Being. 13ut
all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans admit, in some
form or another, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme Being, the source
of all that exists, or seems to exist.”—Müller, “Chips from a German Work-
shop,” vol. i. pp. 224, 5.
Buddha, which means “intelligence,” “clear light,” “perfect wisdom,”
was not only the name of the founder of the religion of Eastern Asia, but
Adi Buddha was the name of the Absolute, Eternal Intelligence.—Maurice,
“Religions of the World,” p. 102.
* “Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa,” p. 158.
92 - C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. AND
the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tra-
dition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders know
not from whence, or at what time, their ancestors came. There
are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the present inhab-
itants can give no account. How, then, can a pure, abstract
idea which can have no sensible representation, no visible
image, retain its hold upon the memory of humanity for thou-
sands of years 2 The Fijian may not remember whence his im-
mediate ancestors came, but he knows that the race came orig-
inally from the hands of the Creator. He can not tell who
built the monuments of solid masonry which are found in his
island-home, but he can tell who reared the everlasting hills
and built the universe. He may not know who reigned in
Vewa a hundred years ago, but he knows who now reigns, and
has always reigned, over the whole earth. “The idea of a God
is familiar to the Fijian, and the existence of an invisible su-
perhuman power controlling and influencing nature, and all
earthly things, is fully recognized by him.” The idea of God
is a common fact of human consciousness, and tradition alone
is manifestly inadequate to account for its universality.
3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the
knowledge of God to an intelligence “purely passive,” and ut-
terly unfurnished with any d priori ideas or necessary laws of
cognition and thought. -
Of course it is not denied that important verbal communica-
tions relating to the character of God, and the duties we owe
to God, were given to the first human pair, more clear and defi-
nite, it may be, than any knowledge attained by Socrates and
Plato through their dialectic processes, and that these oral
revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to the pa-
triarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And fur-
thermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure
fountain of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among
the heathen nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny.
All this, however, Supposes, at least, a natural power and
* “Fiji and the Fijians,” p. 215.
G R EER PETII, OS O PET Y. 93
aptitude for the knowledge of God, and some configuration and
correlation of the human intelligence to the Divine. “We
have no knowledge of a dynamic influence, spiritual or natural,
without a dynamic reaction.” Matter can not be moved and
controlled by forces and laws, unless it have properties which
Correlate it with those forces and laws. And mind can not be
determined from without to any specific form of cognition, un-
less it have active powers of apprehension and conception
which are governed by uniform laws. . The “material” of
thought may be supplied from without, but the “form * is de-
termined by the necessary laws of our inward being. All our
cognition of the external world is conditioned by the d priori
ideas of time and space, and all our thinking is governed by
the principles of causality and substance, and the law of “suf.
ficient reason.” The mind itself supplies an element of knowl-
edge in all our cognitions. Man can not be taught the knowl-
edge of God if he be not naturally possessed of a presentiment,
or an apperception of a God, as the cause and reason of the
universe. “If education be not already preceded by an innate
Consciousness of God, as an operative predisposition, there
would be nothing for education and culture to act upon.” A
mere verbal revelation can not communicate the knowledge of
God, if man have not already the idea of a God in his mind.
A name is a mere empty sign, a meaningless symbol, without a
mental image of the object which it represents, or an innate
perception, or an abstract conception of the mind, of which the
word is the sign. . The mental image or the abstract concep-
tion must, therefore, precede the name; cognition must be an-
terior to, and give the meaning of language.” The child knows
a thing even before it can speak its name. And, universally,
we must know the thing in itself, or image it by analogies and
resemblances to Some other thing we do know, before the name
can have any meaning for us. As to purely rational ideas and
* Nitzsch, “System of Christian Doctrine,” p. 10.
* “Ideas must pre-exist their sensible signs.” See De Boismont on
“Hallucination,” etc., p. iii.
94. O HEISTIA WTT Y. A ND
abstract conceptions, – as space, cause, the infinite, the per-
fect-language can never convey these to the mind, nor can
the mind ever attain them by experience if they are not an orig-
inal, connate part of our mental equipment and furniture. The
mere verbal affirmation “there is a God” made to one who has
no idea of a God, would be meaningless and unintelligible.
What notion can a man form of “the First Cause * if the prin-
ciple of causality is not inherent in his mind? What concep-
tion can he form of “the Infinite Mind ’’ if the infinite be not
a primitive intuition ? How can he conceive of “a Righteous
Governor’ if he have no idea of right, no sense of obligation,
no apprehension of a retribution? Words are empty sounds
without ideas, and God is a mere name if the mind has no ap-
perception of a God.
It may be affirmed that, preceding or accompanying the an-
nouncement of the Divine Name, there was given to the first
human pair, and to the early fathers of our race, some visible
manifestation of the presence of God, and some supernatural
display of divine power. What, then, was the character of
these early manifestations, and were they adequate to convey
the proper idea of God? Did God first reveal himself in hu-
man form, and if so, how could their conception of God ad-
vance beyond a rude anthropomorphism 2 Did he reveal his
presence in a vast columnar cloud or a pillar of fire? How
could such an image convey any conception of the intelligence,
the omnipresence, the eternity of God? Nay, can the infinite
and eternal Mind be represented by any visible manifestation ?
Can the human mind conceive an image of God? The knowl-
edge of God, it is clear, can not be conveyed by any sensible
sign or symbol if man has no prior rational idea of God as the
Infinite and the Perfect Being.
If the facts of Order, and design, and special adaptation
which crowd the universe, and the d priori ideas of an uncon-
ditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the
mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the
logical conviction that it is the work of an intelligent mind, how
G R E E K PHILOSOPHY. 95
can any preternatural display of power produce a rational Con-
viction that God exists? “If the universe could come by
chance or fate, surely all the lesser phenomena, termed mirac-
ulous, might occur so too.” If we find ourselves standing
amid an eternal series of events, may not miracles be a part of
that series? Or if all things are the result of necessary and
unchangeable laws, may not miracles also result from Some nat-
ural or psychological law of which we are yet in ignorance 2
Let it be granted that man is not so constituted that, by the
necessary laws of his intelligence, he must affirm that facts of
order having a commencement in time prove mind; let it be
granted that man has no intuitive belief in the Infinite and Per-
fect—in short, no idea of God ; how, then, could a marvellous
display of power, a new, peculiar, and startling phenomenon
which even seemed to transcend nature, prove to him the ex-
istence of an infinite intelligence—a personal God? The proof
would be simply inadequate, because not the right kind of
proof. Power does not indicate intelligence, force does not
imply personality.
Miracles, in short, were never intended to prove the exist-
ence of God. The foundation of this truth had already been
laid in the constitution and laws of the human mind, and mira-
cles were designed to convince us that He of whose existence
we had a prior certainty, spoke to us by His Messenger, and
in this way attested his credentials. To the man who has a
rational belief in the existence of God this evidence of a divine
mission is at once appropriate and conclusive. “Master, we
know thou art a teacher sent from God ; for no man can do the
works whichthou doest, except God be with him.” The Chris-
tian missionary does not commence his instruction to the
heathen, who have an imperfect, or even erroneous conception
of “the Great Spirit,” by narrating the miracles of Christ, or
quoting the testimony of the Divine Book he carries along with
him. He points to the heavens and the earth, and says,
“There is a Being who made all these things, and Jehovah is
* Morell, “Hist. of Philos.” p. 737.
96 C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. A ND
17,
his name ; I have come to you with a message from Him
Or he need scarce do even so much ; for already the heathen,
in view of the order and beauty which pervades the universe,
has been constrained, by the laws of his own intelligence, to be-
lieve in and offer worship to the “”Ayvoorog 966c ’’-the unseen
and incomprehensible God; and pointing to their altars, he
may announce with Paul, “this God whom ye worshift, though
ignorantly, him declare I unto you!”
The results of our study of the various hypotheses which
have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of
the world may be summed up as follows: The first and second
theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being
faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert,
and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The
last three each contain a precious element of truth which must
not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an ex-
planation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory,
taken by itself, is incomplete and inadequate. The third hy-
pothesis overrates feeling; the fourth, reason ; the fifth, verba/
instruction. The first extreme is Mysticism, the second is Ra-
tionalism, the last is Dogmatism. Reason, feeling, and faith
in testimony must be combined, and mutually condition each
other. No purely rationalistic hypothesis will meet and satisfy
the wants and yearnings of the heart. No theory based on
feeling alone can satisfy the demands of the human intellect.
And, finally, an hypothesis which bases all religion upon his-
torical testimony and outward fact, and despises and tramples
upon the intuitions of the reason and the instincts of the heart
can never command the general faith of mankind. Religion
embraces and conditionates the whole sphere of life—thought,
feeling, faith, and action ; it must therefore be grounded in the
entire spiritual nature of man.
Our criticism of opposite theories has thus prepared the way
for, and obviated the necessity of an extended discussion of the
hypothesis we now advance.
G R E E K PETII, OS O PET Y. 97
Z%e universa/ ?/enomenon of religion has originated in the d
priori afterceptions of reason, and the natural instinctive feelings
of Żhe heará, Z0/kich, from age to age, have been vitalized, unfolded,
and Žerſected by suffernatura/ communications and festamentary
reve/ations.
There are universal facts of religious history which can only
be explained on the first principle of this hypothesis; there are
special facts which can only be explained on the latter princi-
ple. The universal prevalence of the idea of God, and the feel-
ing of obligation to obey and worship God, belong to the first
Order of facts ; the general prevalence of expiatory sacrifices,
of the rite of circumcision, and the observance of sacred and
holy days, belong to the latter. To the last class of facts the
observance of the Christian Sabbath, and the rites of Baptism
and the Lord's Supper may be added. - \
The history of all religions clearly attests that there are two
orders of principles—the natural and the positive, and, in some
measure, two authorities of religious life which are intimately
related without negativing each other. The characteristic of
the natural is that it is intrinsic, of the positive, that it is extrin-
sic. In all ages men have sought the authority of the positive
in that which is immediately beyond and above man—in some
“voice of the Divinity” toning down the stream of ages, or
speaking through a prophet or Oracle, or written in Some in-
spired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority
of the natural in that which is immediately within man—the
voice of the Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of
man. A careful study of the history of religion will show a re-
ciprocal relation between the two, and indicate their common
SOUll"C62.
We expect to find that our hypothesis will be abundantly
sustained by the study of the Æeligion of the Athenians.
7
98 CLIR IS TI A NIT Y. A NIO
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS.
“All things which i behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion
(Cetotôalpoveatégovg). For as I passed through your city, and beheld the ob-
jects of your worship, I found amongst them an altar with this inscription—
‘To TIIE UNKNowN GOD.’ Whom therefore ye worship. . . . . ”—ST. PAUL.
HROUGH one of those remarkable counter-strokes of
Divine Providence by which the evil designs of men are
overruled, and made to subserve the purposes of God, the Apos-
tle Paul was brought to Athens. He walked beneath its stately
porticoes, he entered its solemn temples, he stood before its
glorious statuary, he viewed its beautiful altars—all devoted to
pagan worship. And “his spirit was stirred within him ;” he
was moved with indignation “when he saw the city full of im-
ages of the gods.” At the very entrance of the city he met the
evidence of this peculiar tendency of the Athenians to multiply
the objects of their devotion ; for here at the gateway stands
an image of Neptune, seated on horseback, and brandishing
the trident. Passing through the gate, his attention would be
immediately arrested by the sculptured forms of Minerva, Jupi-
ter, Apollo, Mercury, and the Muses, standing near a sanctuary
of Bacchus. A long street is now before him, with temples,
statues, and altars crowded on either hand. Walking to the
end of this street, and turning to the right, he entered the Agora,
a public Square surrounded with porticoes and temples, which
were adorned with statuary and paintings in honor of the
gods of Grecian mythology. Amid the plane-trees planted by
the hand of Cimon are the statues of the deified heroes of
Athens, Hercules and Theseus, and the whole series of the
Eponymi, tàgether with the memorials of the older divinities;
* Lange's Commentary, Acts xvii. 16.
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G R E E R PEIILOSOPET Y. 99Wº
Mercuries which gave the name to the streets on which they
were placed; statues dedicated to Apollo as patron of the
city and her deliverer from the plague ; and in the centre of all
the altar of the Twelve Gods.
Standing in the market-place, and looking up to the Areop-
agus, Paul would see the temple of Mars, ſrom whom the hill
derived its name. And turning toward the Acropolis, he
would behold, closing the long perspective, a series of little
sanctuaries on the very ledges of the rocks, shrines of Bacchus
and AEsculapius, Venus, Earth, and Ceres, ending with the
lovely form of the Temple of Unwinged Victory, which glit-
tered in front of the Propylaea. t
If the apostle entered the “fivefold gates,” and ascended the
flight of stone steps to the platform of the Acropolis, he would
find the whole area one grand composition of architecture and
statuary dedicated to the worship of the gods. Here stood the
Parthenon, the Virgin House, the glorious temple which was
erected during the proudest days of Athenian glory, an entire
offering to Minerva, the tutelary divinity of Athens. Within
was the colossal statue of the goddess wrought in ivory and
gold. Outside the temple there stood another statue of
Minerva, cast from the brazen spoils of Marathon; and near
by yet another brazen Pallas, which was called by pre-emi-
nence “the Beautiful.”
Indeed, to whatever part of Athens the apostle wandered,
he would meet the evidences of their “carefulness in religion,”
for every public place and every public building was a sanctu-
ary of Some god. The Metroum, or record-house, was a temple
to the mother of the gods. The council-house held statues of
Apollo and Jupiter, with an altar to Vesta. The theatre at
the base of the Acropolis was consecrated to Bacchus. The
Pnyx was dedicated to Jupiter on high. And as if, in this di-
rection, the Attic imagination knew no bounds, abstractions
were deified ; altars were erected to Fame, to Energy, to Mod-
esty, and even to Pity, and these abstractions were honored
and worshipped as gods.






IOO C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. AND
The impression made upon the mind of Paul was, that the
city was literally “full of idols,” or images of the gods. This
impression is sustained by the testimony of numerous Greek
and Roman writers. Pausanias declares that Athens “had
more images than all the rest of Greece ;” and Petronius, the
Roman satirist, says, “it was easier to find a god in Athens
than a man.” -
No wonder, then, that as Paul wandered amid these scenes
“his spirit was stirred in him.” He burned with holy zeal
to maintain the honor of the true and only God, whom now he
saw dishonored on every side. He was filled with compassion
for those Athenians who, notwithstanding their intellectual
greatness, had changed the glory of God into an image made
in the likeness of corruptible man, and who really worshipped
the creature more than the Creator. The images intended to
symbolize the invisible perfections of God were usurping the
place of God, and receiving the worship due alone to him.
We may presume the apostle was not insensible to the beau-
ties of Grecian art. The sublime architecture of the Propylaea
and the Parthenon, the magnificent sculpture of Phidias and
Praxiteles, could not fail to excite his wonder. But he remem-
bered that those superb temples and this glorious statuary
were the creation of the pagan spirit, and devoted to polythe-
istic worship. The glory of the Supreme God was obscured
by all this symbolism. The creatures formed by God, the
symbols of his power and presence in nature, the ministers of
his providence and moral government, were receiving the hon-
or due to him. Over all this scene of material beauty and
asthetic perfection there rose in dark and hideous proportions
the errors and delusions and sins against the living God which
Polytheism nurtured, and unable any longer to restrain him-
self, he commenced to “reason " with the crowds of Athenians
who stood beneath the shadows of the plane-trees, or lounged
* See Conybeare and Howson’s “Life and Epistles of St. Paul ;” also,
art. “Athens,” in Encyclopædia Britannica, whence our account of the “sa-
cred objects” in Athens is chiefly gathered,
G R EER PEIILOSOPHY, IOI
beneath the porticoes that surrounded the Agora. Among
these groups of idlers were mingled the disciples of Zeno and
Epicurus, who “encountered” Paul. The nature of these
“disputations "may be easily conjectured. The opinions of
these philosophers are even now familiarly known : they are,
in one form or another, current in the literature of modern
times. Materialism and Pantheism still “encounter” Chris-
tianity. The apostle asserted the personal being and spiritual-
ity of one supreme and only God, who has in divers ways re-
vealed himself to man, and therefore may be “known.” He
proclaimed that Jesus is the fullest and most perfect revelation
of God—the only “manifestation of God in the flesh.” He
pointed to his “resurrection” as the proof of his superhuman
character and mission to the world. Some of his hearers were
disposed to treat him with contempt; they represented him as
an ignorant “babbler,” who had picked up a few scraps of
learning, and who now sought to palm them off as a “new”
philosophy. But most of them regarded him with that pecu-
liar Attic curiosity which was always anxious to be hearing
some “new thing.” So they led him away from the tumult
of the market-place to the top of Mars’ Hill, where, in its se-
rene atmosphere, they might hear him more carefully, and
said, “May we hear what this new doctrine is whereof thou
speakest?”
Surrounded by these men of thoughtful, philosophic mind—
men who had deeply pondered the great problem of existence,
who had earnestly inquired after the “first principles of
things;” men who had reasoned high of creation, fate, and
providence ; of right and wrong; of conscience, law, and ret-
ribution; and had formed strong and decided opinions on all
these questions—he delivered his discourse on the being, the
providence, the spirituality, and the moral government of God.
This grand theme was suggested by an inscription he had
observed on one of the altars of the city, which was dedicated
“To the Unknown God.” “Ye men of Athens ! every thing
which I behold bears witness to your carefulness in religion.
I O2 . CEIRISTIANITY AND
For as I passed by and beheld your sacred objects I found an
altar with this inscription, ‘To the Unknown God ; whom,
therefore, ye worship, though ye know him not [adequately],
Him declare I unto you.” Starting from this point, the mani-
fest carefulness of the Athenians in religion, and accepting
this inscription as the evidence that they had some presenti-
ment, some native intuition, Some dim conception of the one
true and living God, he strives to lead them to a deeper knowl-
edge of Him. It is here conceded by the apostle that the
Athenians were a religious feoffſe. The observations he had
made during his short stay in Athens enabled him to bear
witness that the Athenians were “a God-fearing people,” and
he felt that fairness and candor demanded that this trait should
receive from him an ample recognition and a full acknowledg-
ment. Accordingly he commences by saying in gentle terms,
well fitted to conciliate his audience, “All things which I be-
hold bear witness to your carefulness in religion.” I recognize
you as most devout ; ye appear to me to be a God-fearing peo-
ple,” for as I passed by and beheld your sacred objects I found
an altar with this inscription, “To the Unknown God,” whom
therefore ye worship.
The assertion that the Athenians were “a religious people”
will, to many of our readers, appear a strange and startling
utterance, which has in it more of novelty than truth. Nay,
some will be shocked to hear the Apostle Paul described as
complimenting these Athenians—these pagan worshippers—
on their “carefulness in religion.” We have been so long ac-
customed to use the word “heathen "as an opprobrious epithet
—expressing, indeed, the utmost extremes of ignorance, and
barbarism, and cruelty, that it has become difficult for us to be.
lieve that in a heathen there can be any good.
From our childhood we have read in our English Bibles,
“Ye men of Athens, I perceive in all things ye are too super-
* Lange's Commentary, in loco. -
* “‘Qg before detold,—so imports. I recognize you as such.”—Lange's
Commentary.
G REER PHILOSOPHY, IO3
słitious,” and we can scarcely tolerate another version, even if
it can be shown that it approaches nearer to the actual lan-
guage employed by Paul. We must, therefore, ask the patience
and candor of the reader, while we endeavor to show, on the
authority of Paul's words, that the Athenians were a “religious
people,” and that all our notions to the contrary are founded
on prejudice and misapprehension.
First, then, let us commence even with our English version :
“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstițious.” And what now is the meaning of the word
“superstition ?” It is true, we now use it only in an evil sense,
to express a belief in the agency of invisible, capricious, malig-
nant powers, which fills the mind with fear and terror, and sees
in every unexplained phenomenon of nature an omen, or prog-
nostic, of some future evil. But this is not its proper and orig-
inal meaning. Superstition is from the Latin superstitio, which
means a superabundance of religion, an extreme exactitude
in religious observance. And this is precisely, the sense in
which the corresponding Greek term is used by the Apostle
Paul. Aetolàauptovía properly means “reverence for the gods.”
“It is used,” says Barnes, “in the classic writers, in a good
sense, to denote piety towards the gods, or suitable fear and
reverence for them.” “The word,” says Lechler, “is, without
doubt, to be understood here in a good sense ; although it
seems to have been intentionally chosen, in order to indicate
the conception of fear (ěčíðw), which predominated in the relig-
ion of the apostle's hearers.” This reading is sustained by
the ablest critics and scholars of modern times. Bengel reads
the sentence, “I perceive that ye are very religious.” Cudworth
translates it thus: “Ye are every way more than ordinarily re-
Jigious.” Conybeare and Howson read the text as we have
already given it, “All things which I behold bear witness to
* Nitzsch, “System of Christ. Doctrine,” p. 33.
* Lange's Commentary, in loco.
* “Gnomon of the New Testament.”
* “Intellectual System,” vol. i. p. 626.
IO4. C. ETR IS TIA WTT Y. AND
your carefulness in religion.” Lechler reads “very devout;”
Alford, “carrying your religious reverence very far,” and Albert
Barnes,” “I perceive ye are greatly devoted to reverence for re-
Jigion.” Whoever, therefore, will give attention to the actual
words of the apostle, and search for their real meaning, must
be convinced he opens his address by complimenting the
Athenians on their being more than ordinarily religious.
Nor are we for a moment to suppose the apostle is here
dealing in hollow compliments, or having recourse to a “pious
fraud.” Such a course would have been altogether out of
character with Paul, and to suppose him capable of pursuing
such a course is to do him great injustice. If “to the Jews he
became as a Jew,” it was because he recognized in Judaism
the same fundamental truths which underlie the Christian sys-
tem. And if here he seems to become, in any sense, at one
with “heathenism,” that he might gain the heathen to the faith
of Christ, it was because he found in heathenism some elements
of truth akin to Christianity, and a state of feeling favorable
to an inquiry into the truths he had to present. He beheld in
Athens an altar reared to the God he worshipped, and it afford-
ed him some pleasure to find that God was not totally forgot-
ten, and his worship totally neglected, by the Athenians. The
God whom they knew imperfectly, “AZim,” said he, “I declare
unto you;” I now desire to make him more fully known. The
worship of “the Unknown God” was a recognition of the being
of a God whose nature transcends all human thought, a God,
who is ineffable ; who, as Plato said, “is hard to be discovered,
and having discovered him, to make him known to all, impos-
sible.” It is the confession of a want of knowledge, the ex-
pression of a desire to know, the acknowledgment of the duty
of worshipping him. Underlying all the forms of idol-worship
the eye of Paul recognized an influential Theism. Deep down
in the pagan heart he discovered a “feeling after God”—a
* “Life and Epistles of St. Paul,” vol. i. p. 378.
* Lange's Commentary. * Greek Test. * Notes on Acts.
* Also Clarke's Comment., in loco. * Timaeus, ch. ix.
G R E E R PITILOSOPII Y. Io5
yearning ſor a deeper knowledge of the “unknown,” the invisi-
ble, the incomprehensible, which he could not despise or disre-
gard. The mysterious sentiments of fear, of reverence, of con-
scious dependence on a supernatural power and presence
overshadowing man, which were expressed in the symbolism
of the “sacred objects” which Paul saw everywhere in Athens,
commanded his respect. And he alludes to their “devotions,”
not in the language of reproach or censure, but as furnishing
to his own mind the evidence of the strength of their religious
instincts, and the proof of the existence in their hearts of that
native apprehension of the supernatural, the divine, which dwells
alike in all human souls.
The case of the Athenians has, therefore, a peculiar interest
to every thoughtful mind. It confirms the belief that religion
is a necessity to every human mind, a want of every human
heart.” Without religion, the nature of man can never be prop-
erly developed; the noblest part of man—the divine, the spir-
itual element which dwells in man, as “the offspring of God”
—must remain utterly dwarfed. The spirit, the personal be-
ing, the rational nature, is religious, and Atheism is the vain
and the wicked attempt to be something less than man. If
the spiritual nature of man has its normal and healthy devel-
opment, he must become a worshipper. This is attested by
the universal history of man. We look down the long-drawn
aisles of antiquity, and everywhere we behold the smoking altar,
the ascending incense, the prostrate form, the attitude of devo-
tion. Athens, with her four thousand deities—Rome, with her
crowded Pantheon of gods—Egypt, with her degrading super-
stitions — Hindostan, with her horrid and revolting rites—all
attest that the religious principle is deeply seated in the nature
of man. And we are sure religion can never be robbed of her
Supremacy, she can never be dethroned in the hearts of men.
It were easier to satisfy the cravings of hunger by logical syllo-
* The indispensable necessity for a religion of some kind to satisfy the
emotional nature of man is tacitly confessed by the atheist Comte in the
publication of his “Catechism of Positive Religion.”
Ioé CITRISTIANITY AND
gisms, than to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart with-
out religion. The attempt of Xerxes to bind the rushing floods
of the Hellespont in chains was not more futile nor more im-
potent than the attempt of skepticism to repress the universal
tendency to worship, SO peculiar and So natural to man in
every age and clime.
The unwillingness of many to recognize a religious element
in the Athenian mind is further accounted for by their miscon-
ception of the meaning of the word “religion.” We are all
too much accustomed to regard religion as a mere system of
dogmatic teaching. We use the terms “Christian religion,”
“Jewish religion,” “Mohammedan religion,” as comprehend-
ing simply the characteristic doctrines by which each is distin-
guished ; whereas religion is a mode of thought, and feeling,
and action, determined by the consciousness of our relation to
and our dependence upon God. It does not appropriate to
itself any specific department of our mental powers and sus-
ceptibilities, but it conditions the entire functions and circle
of our spiritual life. It is not simply a mode of conceiving
God in thought, nor simply a mode of venerating God in the
affections, nor yet simply a mode of worshipping God in out-
ward and formal acts, but it comprehends the whole. Religion
(religere, respect, awe, reverence) regulates our thoughts, feel-
ings, and acts towards God. “It is a reference and a relation-
ship of our finite consciousness to the Creator and Sustainer
and Governor of the universe.” It is such a consciousness of
the Divine as shall awaken in the heart of man the sentiments
of reverence, fear, and gratitude towards God; such a sense of
dependence as shall prompt man to pray, and lead him to per-
form external acts of worship.
Religion does not, therefore, consist exclusively in knowl-
edge, however correct; and yet it must be preceded and ac-
companied by some intuitive cognition of a Supreme Being,
and some conception of him as a free moral personality. But
the religious sentiments, which belong rather to the heart than
to the understanding of man—the consciousness of depend-
G REE K. PITILOSOPHY, Io'7
ence, the sense of obligation, the feeling of reverence, the in-
stinct to pray, the appetency to worship—these may all exist
and be largely developed in a human mind even when, as in
the case of the Athenians, there is a very imperfect knowledge
of the real character of God.
Regarding this, then, as the generic conception of religion,
namely, that it is a mode of thought and feeling and action deter-
Żmined by our consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being,
we claim that the apostle was perfectly right in compliment-
ing the Athenians on their “more than ordinary religiousness,”
for,
1. They had, in some degree at least, that faith in the being
and providence of God which precedes and accompanies all re-
ligion.
They had erected an altar to the unseen, the unsearchable,
the incomprehensible, the unknown God. And this “unknown
God” whom the Athenians “worshipped ” was the true God,
the God whom Paul worshipped, and whom he desired more
fully to reveal to them ; “Aſim declare I unto you.” The
Athenians had, therefore, some knowledge of the true God,
some dim recognition, at least, of his being, and some concep-
tion, however imperfect, of his character. The Deity to whom
the Athenians reared this altar is called “the unknown God,”
because he is unseen by all human eyes and incomprehensible
to human thought. There is a sense in which to Paul, as well
as to the Athenians—to the Christian as well as to the pa-
gan—to the philosopher as well as to the peasant—God is
“ the unknown,” and in which he must forever remain the
incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thought-
ful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his
mind God is “the ineffable,” the unspeakable. Zophar, the
friend of Job, asks, “Canst thou by searching find out God?
Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ?” This knowl-
edge is “high as heaven ; what canst thou do? deeper than
hell; what canst thou know?”. Does not Wesley teach us to
Sling,
Io8 C EIR IS TIA VIT Y. A. WD
“Hail, Father, whose creating call
Unnumbered worlds attend ;
Jehovah, comprehending all,
Whom none can comprehend ?”
To his mind, as well as to the mind of the Athenian, God was
“the great unseen, unknown.” “Beyond the universe and
man,” says Cousin, “there remains in God something unknown,
impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence, in the immeasurable
späces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the
human soul, God escapes us in this inexhaustible infinitude,
whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new be-
ings, new manifestations. God is therefore to us incomprehensi-
ble.” And without making ourselves in the least responsible
for Hamilton’s “negative” doctrine of the Infinite, or even re-
sponsible for the full import of his words, we may quote his re-
markable utterances on this subject: “The Divinity is in part
concealed and in part revealed. He is at once known and un-
known. But the last and highest consecration of all true relig-
ion must be an altar * to the unknown God.' . In this consum-
mation nature and religion, Paganism and Christianity, are at
One.”
When, therefore, the apostle affirms that while the Athenians
worshipped the God whom he proclaimed they “knew him not,”
we can not understand him as saying they were destitute of all
faith in the being of God, and of all ideas of his real character.
Because for him to have asserted they had no knowledge of
God would not only have been contrary to all the facts of the
Case, but also an utter contradiction of all his settled convic-
tions and his recorded opinions. There is not in modern
times a more earnest asserter of the doctrine that the human
mind has an intuitive cognition of God, and that the external
world reveals God to man. There is a passage in his letter to
the Romans which is justly entitled to stand at the head of all
discourses on “natural theology,” Rom. i. 19–21. Speaking of
the heathen world, who had not been favored, as the Jews, with
* “Lectures,” vol. i. p. 104. * “Discussions on Philosophy,” p. 23.
G. R. E. E. K. PEIII, OS O PET Y. Io9
a verbal revelation, he says, “That which may be known of God
is manifest in them,” that is, in the constitution and laws of
their spiritual nature, “for God hath showed it unto them ’’ in
the voice of reason and of conscience, so that in the instincts
of our hearts, in the elements of our moral nature, in the ideas
and laws of our reason, we are taught the being of a God.
These are the subjective teachings of the human soul.
Not only is the being of God revealed to man in the consti-
tution and laws of his rational and moral nature, but God is
also manifested to us objectively in the realm of things around
us; therefore Paul adds, “The invisible things of him, even his
eternal power and Godhead, from the creation are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made.” The world of
sense, therefore, discloses the being and perfections of God.
The invisible attributes of God are made apparent by the things
that are visible. Forth out of nature, as the product of the Di-
vine Mind, the supernatural Shines. The forces, laws, and har-
monies of the universe are indices of the presence of a presid-
ing and informing Intelligence. The creation itself is an exam-
ple of God’s coming forth out of the mysterious depths of his
own eternal and invisible being, and making himself apparent
to man. There, on the pages of the volume of nature, we may
read, in the marvellous language of symbol, the grand concep-
tions, the glorious thoughts, the ideals of beauty which dwell in
the uncreated Mind. These two sources of knowledge—the sub-
jective teachings of God in the human soul, and the objective
manifestations of God in the visible universe—harmonize, and,
together, fill up the complement of our natural idea of God.
They are two hemispheres of thought, which together form one
full-orbed fountain of light, and Ought never to be separated in
our philosophy. And, inasmuch as this divine light Shines on
all human minds, and these works of God are seen by all hu-
man eyes, the apostle argues that the heathen world “is with-
out excuse, because, knowing God (ywówrec rôv 0861), they did
not glorify him as God, neither were thankful; but in their rea-
Sonings they went astray after vanities, and their hearts, being
I IO C EIR IS TIA WITY AND
void of wisdom, were filled with darkness. Calling themselves
wise, they were turned into fools, and changed the glory of the
imperishable God for idols graven in the likeness of perishable
man, or of birds, and beasts, and creeping things, . . . and
they bartered the truth of God for lies, and reverenced and .
worshipped the things made rather than the Maker, who is bless-
ed forever. Amen.” -
The brief and elliptical report of Paul's address on Mars’
Hill must therefore, in all fairness, be interpreted in the light
of his more carefully elaborated statements in the Epistle to
the Romans. And when Paul intimates that the Athenians
“knew not God,” we can not understand him as saying they
had no knowledge, but that their knowledge was imperfect.
They did not know God as Creator, Father, and Ruler; above
all, they did not know him as a pardoning God and a sanctify-
ing Spirit. They had not that knowledge of God which purifies
the heart, and changes the character, and gives its possessor
eternal life.
The apostle clearly and unequivocally recognizes this truth,
that the idea of God is connatural to the human mind ; that
in fact there is not to be found a race of men upon the face of
the globe utterly destitute of some idea of a Supreme Being.
Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthful de-
velopment, it has spontaneously and necessarily led the human
mind to the recognition of a God. The Athenians were no ex-
ception to this general law. They believed in the existence of
One Supreme and eternal Mind, invisible, incomprehensible, in-
effable—“the unknown God.”
2. The Athenians had also that consciousness of dependence
upon God which is the foundation of all the primary religious
emotions.
When the apostle affirmed that “in God we live, and move,
and have our being,” he uttered the sentiments of many, if not
all, of his hearers, and in support of that affirmatidn he could
quote the words of their own poets, “for we are also his off-
* Rom. i. 21–25, Conybeare and Howson's translation.
G R E E K PHILOSO PET Y. III
spring;” and, as his offspring, we have a derived and a depend-
ent being. Indeed, this consciousness of dependence is anal-
ogous to the feeling which is awakened in the heart of a child
when its parent is first manifested to its opening mind as the
giver of those things which it immediately needs, as its continu-
al protector, and as the preserver of its life. The moment a
man becomes conscious of his own personality, that moment he
becomes conscious of some relation to another personality, to
which he is subject, and on which he depends.”
A little reflection will convince us that this is the necessary
order in which human consciousness is developed.
There are at least two fundamental and radical tendencies
l “Jove's presence fills all space, upholds this ball ;
All need his aid; his power sustains us all,
Aſor we his offspring are.”
Aratus, “The Phaenomena,” book v. p. 5.
Aratus was a poet of Cilicia, Paul's native province. He flourished B.C. 277.
“Great and divine Father, whose names are many,
But who art one and the same unchangeable, almighty power;
O thou supreme Author of nature
That governest by a single unerring law
Hail King !
For thou art able to enforce obedience from all frail mortals,
Aecause we are all thine offspring,
The image and the echo only of thy eternal voice.”
Cleanthes, “Hymn to Jupiter.”
Cleanthes was the pupil of Zeno, and his successor as chief of the Stoic
philosophers.
* “As soon as a man becomes conscious of himself, as soon as he per-
ceives himself as distinct ſrom other persons and things, he at the same mo-
ment becomes conscious of a higher self, a higher power, without which he
feels that neither he nor any thing else would have any life or reality. We
are so fashioned that as soon as we awake we feel on all sides our depend-
ence on something else; and all nations join in some way or another in the
words of the Psalmist, ‘It is He that made us, not we ourselves.” This is
the first sense of the Godhead, the sensus numinis, as it has well been called;
for it is a sensus, an immediate perception, not the result of reasoning or
generalization, but an intuition as irresistible as the impressions of our
senses. . . . This sensus numinis, or, as we may call it in more homely lan-
guage, faith, is the Source of all religion; it is that without which no religion,
whether true or false, is possible.”—Max Müller, “Science of Language,”
Second Series, p. 455.
II 2 C EIR IS TIA NITY AND
in human personality, namely, to know and to act. If we would
conceive of them as they exist in the innermost sphere of self-
hood, we must distinguish the first as self-consciousness, and the
second as self-determination. These are unquestionably the two
factors of human personality.
If we consider the first of these factors more closely, we shall
discover that self-consciousness exists under limitations and
conditions. Man can not become clearly conscious of seſſ with-
out distinguishing himself from the Outer world of sensation, nor
without distinguishing self and the world from another being
upon whom they depend as the ultimate Substance and cause.
Mere canasthesis is not consciousness. Common feeling is, un-
questionably found among the lowest forms of animal life, the
protozoa, but it can never rise to a clear consciousness of per-
sonality until it can distinguish itself from Sensation, and acquire
a presentiment of a divine power, on which self and the Outer
world depend. The Ego does not exist for itself, can not per-
ceive itself, but by distinguishing itself from the ceaseless flow
and change of Sensation, and by this act of distinguishing, the
A.go takes place in consciousness. And the Ego can not per-
ceive itself, nor cognize sensation as a state or affection of the
Fgo except by the intervention of the reason, which supplies
the two great fundamental laws of causality and substance.
The facts of consciousness thus comprehend three elements—
self, nature, and God. The determinate being, the Ego, is never
an absolutely independent being, but is always in Some way or
other codetermined by another; it can not, therefore, be an ab-
solutely original and independent, but must in Some way or
another be a derived and conditioned existence.
Now that which limits and conditions human self-conscious-
ness can not be mere nature, because nature can not give what
it does not possess ; it can not produce what is foto genere dif-
ferent from itself. Self-consciousness can not arise out of un-
consciousness. This new beginning is beyond the power of
nature. Personal power, the creative principle of all new be-
ginnings, is alone adequate to its production. If, then, self-
G F# E E K PHILOSOPHTY. II.3
consciousness exists in man, it necessarily presupposes an ab-
solutely original, therefore unconditioned, self-consciousness. Hu-
man self-consciousness, in its temporal actualization, of course
presupposes a nature-basis upon which it elevates itself; but
it is only possible on the ground that an eternal Self-conscious
Mind ordained and rules over all the processes of nature, and
implants the divine Spark of the personal spirit with the corpo-
real frame, to realize itself in the light-flame of human self-con-
scioushess. The original light of the divine self-consciousness
is eternally and absolutely first and before all. “Thus, in the
depths of our own self-consciousness, as its concealed back-
ground, the God-consciousness reveals itself to us. This de-
scent into our inmost being is at the same time an ascent to God.
Every deep reflection on ourselves breaks through the mere
crust of world-consciousness, which separates us from the in-
most truth of our existence, and leads us up to Him in whom
we live and move and are.”
Self-determination, equally with self-consciousness, exists in
us under manifold limitations. Self-determination is limited
by physical, Corporeal, and mental conditions, so that there is
“an impassable boundary line drawn around the area of voli-
tional freedom.” But the most fundamental and original lim-
itation is that of duty. The self-determining power of man is
not only circumscribed by necessary conditions, but also by
the mora/ Zazy in the consciousness of man. Self-determination
alone does not suffice for the full conception of responsible
freedom ; it only becomes, will, properly by its being an intel-
ligent and conscious determination ; that is, the rational subject
is able previously to recognize “the right,” and present before
his mind that which he ought to do, that which he is morally
bound to realize and actualize by his own self-determination
and choice. Accordingly we find in our inmost being a sense
of obligation to obey the moral law as revealed in the con-
science. As we can not become conscious of self without also
becoming conscious of God, so we can not become properly
* Müller, “Christian Doctrine of Sin,” vol. i. p. 81.
8
II.4. CHRISTIANITY AND
conscious of self-determination until we have recognized in the
conscience a law for the movements of the will.
Now this moral law, as revealed in the conscience, is not a
mere autonomy—a simple subjective law having no relation to
a personal lawgiver out of and above man. Every admonition
of conscience directly excites the consciousness of a God to
whom man is accountable. The universal consciousness of
our race, as revealed in history, has always associated the phe-
nomena of conscience with the idea of a personal Power above
man, to whom he is subject and upon whom he depends. In
every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the
voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty appre-
hensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices, and penances, and
prayers to expatiate his wrath.
It is clear, then, that if man has duties there must be a
self-conscious Will by whom these duties are imposed, for only
a real will can be legislative. If man has a sense of obligation,
there must be a supreme authority by which he is obliged. If
he is responsible, there must be a being to whom he is account-
able.” It can not be said that he is accountable to himself, for
by that supposition the idea of duty is obliterated, and “right"
becomes identical with mere interest or pleasure. It can not
be said that he is simply responsible to society—to mere con-
ventions of human opinions and human governments—for then
“ right" becomes a mere creature of human legislation, and
“justice" is nothing but the arbitrary will of the strong who
tyrannize over the weak. Might constitutes right. Against
Such hypotheses the human mind, however, instinctively revolts.
Mankind feel, universally, that there is an authority beyond all
human governments, and a higher law above all human laws,
from whence all their powers are derived. That higher law is
the Law of God, that supreme authority is the God of Justice.
To this eternally just God, innocence, under oppression and
wrong, has made its proud appeal, like that of Prometheus to
* “The thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor whose name is
Judge.”—Kant.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPEI Y. II.5
the elements, to the witnessing clouds, to coming ages, and has
been sustained and comforted. And to that higher law the
weak have confidently appealed against the unrighteous enact-
ments of the strong, and have finally conquered. The last and
inmost ground of all obligation is thus the conscious relation
of the moral creature to God. The sense of absolute depend-
ence upon a Supreme Being compels man, even while conscious
of subjective freedom, to recognize at the same time his obli-
gation to determine himself in harmony with the will of Him
“in whom we live, and move, and are.”
This feeling of dependence, and this consequent sense of
obligation, lie at the very foundation of all religion. They lead
the mind towards God, and anchor it in the Divine. They
prompt man to pray, and inspire him with an instinctive con-
fidence in the efficacy of prayer. So that prayer is natural to
man, and necessary to man. Never yet has the traveller found
a people on earth without prayer. Races of men have been
found without houses, without raiment, without arts and sci-
ences, but never without prayer any more than without speech.
Plutarch wrote, eighteen centuries ago, “If you go through all
the world, you may find cities without walls, without letters,
without rulers, without money, without theatres, but never with-
out temples and gods, or without £rayers, oaths, prophecies,
and sacrifices, used to obtain blessings and benefits, or to avert
curses and calamities." The naturalness of prayer is admitted
even by the modern unbeliever. Gerrit Smith says, “Let us
who believe that the religion of reason calls for the religion of
nature, remember that the flow of prayer is just as natural as
the flow of water ; the prayerless man has become an unnat-
ural man.” Is man in sorrow or in danger, his most natural
and spontaneous refuge is in prayer. The suffering, bewilder-
ed, terror-stricken soul turns towards God. “Nature in an
agony is no atheist; the soul that knows not where to fly, flies
to God.” And in the hour of deliverance and joy, a feeling of
gratitude pervades the soul—and gratitude, too, not to Some
* “Against Kalotes,” ch. xxxi. * “Religion of Reason.”
II6 C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. A N D
blind nature-force, to some unconscious and impersonal power,
but gratitude to God. The soul's natural and appropriate lan-
guage in the hour of deliverance is thanksgiving and praise.
This universal tendency to recognize a Superior Power upon
whom we are dependent, and by whose hand Our well-being
and our destinies are absolutely controlled, has revealed itself
even amid the most complicated forms of polytheistic worship.
Amid the even and undisturbed flow of every-day life they
might be satisfied with the worship of subordinate deities, but in
the midst of sudden and unexpected calamities, and of terrible
catastrophes, then they cried to the Supreme God.” “When
alarmed by an earthquake,” says Aulus Gellius, “the ancient
Romans were accustomed to pray, not to some one of the gods
individually, but to God in general, as to the Onknown.”
“Thus also Minutius Felix says, “When they stretch out
their hands to heaven they mention only God; and these forms
of speech, He is great, and God is true, and If God grant (which
are the natural language of the vulgar), are a plain confession
of the truth of Christianity.’ And also Lactantius testifies,
“When they swear, and when they wish, and when they give
thanks, they name not many gods, but God only ; the truth, by
a secret force of nature, thus breaking forth from them whether
they will or no;' and again he says, “They fly to God; aid is
desired of God ; they pray that God would help them ; and
when one is reduced to extreme necessity, he begs for God’s
sake, and by his divine power alone implores the mercy of
mem.’” The account which is given by Diogenes Laertius' of
the erection of altars bearing the inscription “to the unknown
God,” clearly shows that they had their origin in this general
sentiment of dependence on a higher Power. “The Athenians
* “At critical moments, when the deepest feelings of the human heart are
stirred, the old Greeks and Romans seem suddenly to have dropped all
mythological ideas, and to have fallen back on the universal language of true
religion.”—Max Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 436.
* Tholuck, “Nature and Influence of Heathenism,” p. 23.
* Cudworth, vol. i. p. 300.
* “Lives of Philosophers,” book i., Epimenides.
G R E E R PEIIL O S O PEI Y. II 7
being afflicted with pestilence invited Epimenides to lustrate
their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several
sheep to the Areopagus, whence they were left to wander as
they pleased, under the observation of persons sent to attend
them. As each sheep lay down it was sacrificed to the propſ-
tious God. By this ceremony it is said the city was relieved ;
but as it was still unknown what deity was propitious, an altar
was erected ſo the unknown God on every spot where a sheep
had been sacrificed.”
“The unknown God” was their deliverer from the plague.
And the erection of an altar to him was a confession of their
absolute dependence upon him, of their obligation to worship
him, as well as of their need of a deeper knowledge of him.
The gods who were known and named were not able to deliver
them in times of calamity, and they were compelled to look be-
yond the existing forms of Grecian mythology for relief. Be-
yond all the gods of the Olympus there was “one God over .
all,” the Father of gods and men, the Creator of all the subor-
dinate local deities, upon whom even these created gods were
dependent, upon whom man was absolutely dependent, and
therefore in times of deepest need, of severest suffering, of ex-
tremest peril, then they cried to the living, supreme, eternal
God.” -
3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious
emotions which always accompany the consciousness of de-
pendence on a Supreme Being.
The first emotional element of all religion is fear. This is
unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a
* See Townsend’s “Chronological Arrangement of New Testament,” note
19, part xii.; Doddridge’s “Exposition;” and Barnes's “Notes on Acts.”
* “The men and women of the Iliad and Odyssey are habitually religious.
The language of religion is often on their tongues, as it is ever on the lips of
every body in the East at this day. The thought of the gods, and of their
providence and government of the world, is a familiar thought. They seem
to have an abiding conviction of their dependence on the gods. The results
of all actions depend on the will of the gods; it lies on their Anees (6eóv Šv
Yotvaal Keital, Od. i. 267), is the often repeated and significant expression of
their feeling of dependence.”—Tyler, “Theology of Greek Poets,” p. 165.
II.8 C ETRISTIANITY AND
Christian or a heathen stand-point. “The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom.” Associated with, perhaps preced-
ing, all definite ideas of God, there exists in the human mind
certain feelings of awe, and reverence, and fear which arise
spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and
magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of
which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow.
There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the
visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which
is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all
with its light and life; that “the universe is the living vesture
in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness.”
There is the feeling of an overshadowing Presence which “com-
passeth man behind and before, and lays its hand upon him.”
This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and pres-
ence pervading and informing all nature is beautifully described
by Wordsworth in his history of the development of the Scottish
herdsman’s mind:
“So the foundations of his mind were laid
In such communion, not from terror free.
While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects, that they lay
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense.
© º & º & In the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked Crags,
IHe sat, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind. . . . .
Such was the Boy, but for the growing Youth,
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the Sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light ! He looked:
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay
Beneath him ; far and wide the clouds were touched.
G R E E K PETIT, OS O PET Y. II9
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle: sensation, Soul, and form
All melted into him ; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life,
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God.”
But it may be said this is all mere poetry; to which we an:
swer, in the words of Aristotle, “Poetry is a thing more phil-
osophical and weightier than history.” The true poet is the
interpreter of nature. His soul is in the fullest sympathy with
the grand ideas which nature symbolizes, and he “ deciphers
the universe as the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit.”
Spontaneous feeling is a kind of inspiration.
It is true that all minds may not be developed in precisely
the same manner as Wordsworth’s herdsman's, because the
development of every individual mind is modified in some
measure by exterior conditions. Men may contemplate nature
from different points of view. Some may be impressed with one
aspect of nature, Some with another. But none will fail to rec-
ognize a mysterious presence and invisible power beneath all
the fleeting and changeful phenomena of the universe. “And
Sometimes there are moments of tenderness, of sorrow, and of
vague mystery which bring the feeling of the Infinite Presence
close to the human heart.” i. \ .
Now we hold that this feeling and sentiment of the ZXivine—
the Supernatural—exists in every mind. It may be, it undoubt-
edly is, Somewhat modified in its manifestations by the circum-
stances in which men are placed, and the degree of culture they
have enjoyed. The African Fetichist, in his moral and intel-
lectual debasement, conceives a supernatural power enshrined
in every object of nature. The rude Fijian regards with dread,
and even terror, the Being who darts the lightnings and wields
the thunderbolts. The Indian “sees God in clouds, and hears
him in the wind.” The Scottish “herdsman’’ on the lonely
* “The Wanderer.” * Poet, ch. ix. * Robertson.
I2O OHRISTIANITY AND
mountain-top “feels the presence and the power of greatness,”
and “in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and
a flowing mind.” The philosopher' lifts his eyes to “the starry
heavens” in all the depth of their concave, and with all their con-
stellations of glory moving on in Solemn grandeur, and, to his
mind, these immeasurable regions seem “filled with the Splen-
dors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his
power;” or he turns his eye to “the Moral Law within,” and he
hears the voice of an intelligent and a righteous God. In all
these cases we have a revelation of the Sentiment of the Divine,
which dwells alike in all human minds. . In the Athenians this
sentiment was developed in a high degree. The Serene heaven
which Greece enjoyed, and which was the best-loved roof of its
inhabitants, the brilliant Sun, the mountain scenery of unsur-
passed grandeur, the deep blue sea, an image of the infinite,
these poured all their fullness on the Athenian mind, and fur-
nished the most favorable conditions for the development of the
religious sentiments. The people of Athens spent most of their
time in the open air in communion with nature, and in the
cheerful and temperate enjoyment of existence. To recognize
the Deity in the living powers of nature, and especially in man,
as the highest sensible manifestation of the Divine, was the pe-
culiar prerogative of the Grecian mind. And here in Athens,
art also vied with nature to deepen the religious sentiments.
It raised the mind to ideal conceptions of a beauty and a sub-
limity which transcended all mere nature-forms, and by images
of supernatural grandeur and loveliness presented to the Athe-
nians symbolic representations of the separate attributes and op-
erations of the invisible God. The plastic art of Greece was
designed to express religious ideas, and was consecrated by re-
ligious feeling. Thus the facts of the case are strikingly in har-
mony with the words of the Apostle: “All things which I behold
bear witness to your carefulness in religion,” your “reverence
for the Deity,” your “fear of God.” “The sacred objects” in
* Kant, in “Critique of Practical Reason.”
* See Parkhurst's Lexicon, under Aetolòalplovia, which Suidas explains by
G R E E R PETILOSOPHY, I2 I
Athens, and especially “the altar to the Unknown God,” were
all regarded by Paul as evidences of their instinctive faith in
the invisible, the supernatural, the divine.
Along with this sentiment of the Divine there is also associ-
ated, in all human minds, an instinctive yearning after the Invisi-
ble; not a mere feeling of curiosity to pierce the mystery of be-
ing and of life, but what Paul designates “a feeling after God,”
which prompts man to seek after a deeper knowledge, and a
more immediate consciousness. To attain this deeper knowl-
edge—this more conscious realization of the being and the pres-
ence of God, has been the effort of all philosophy and all relig-
ion in all ages. The Hindoo Yogis proposes to withdraw into
his inmost Self, and by a complete suspension of all his active
powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite."
Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to
apprehend “the unchangeable and permanent Being,” and, by
a loving contemplation, to become “assimilated to the Deity,”
and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God.
The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortifi-
cation to prepare himself for divine communings. He would
contemplate the divine perfections in himself; and in an ecstatic
state, wherein all individuality vanishes, he would realize a un-
ion, or identity, with the Divine Essence.” While the universal
Church of God, indeed, has in her purest days always taught
that man may, by inward purity and a believing love, be render-
ed capable of spiritually apprehending, and consciously feeling,
the presence of God. Some may be disposed to pronounce
this as all mere mysticism. We answer, The living internal
energy of religion is always mystical, it is grounded in feeling—a
“sensus numinis” common to humanity. It is the mysterious
evåågeta Tepi Tô 9eiov—reverence for the Divine, and Hesychius by jogofféia
—fear of God. Also, Josephus, Antiq., book x. ch. iii. § 2 : “Manasseh, af-
ter his repentance and reformation, strove to behave himself (Tºi decadaluovía
Aſp700at) in the most religious manner towards God.” Also see A. Clarke on
Acts xvii.
* Vaughan, “Hours with the Mystics,” vol. i. p. 44.
* Id. ib., vol. i. p. 65.
I 2.2 C EIRISTIANITY AND
\
sentiment of the Divine; it is the prolepsis of the human Spirit
reaching out towards the Infinite; the living susceptibility of our
spiritual nature stretching after the powers and influences of
the higher world. “It is upon this inner instinct of the Super-
natural that all religion rests. I do not say every religious idea,
but whatever is positive, practical, powerful, durable, and popu-
lar. Everywhere, in all climates, in all epochs of history, and
in all degrees of civilization, man is animated by the sentiment
—I would rather say, the presentiment—that the world in which
he lives, the order of things in the midst of which he moves,
the facts which regularly and constantly succeed each other, are
not al. In vain he daily makes discoveries and conquests in
this vast universe; in vain he observes and learnedly verifies
the general laws which govern it; his thought is not inclosed in
the world surrendered to his science; the spectacle of it does not
suffice his soul, it is raised beyond it ; it searches after and
catches glimpses of something beyond it; it aspires higher both
for the universe and itself; it aims at another destiny, another
ImaSter.
“‘Par delà tous ces cieux le Dieu des cieux réside.’”
So Voltaire has said, and the God who is beyond the skies is
not nature personified, but a Supernatural Personality. It is to
this highest Personality that all religions address themselves.
It is to bring man into communion with Him that they exist.”
4. The Athenians had that deep consciousness of sin and
guilt, and of Consequent liability to punishment, which confesses
the need of expiation by piacular sacrifices.
Every man feels himself to be an accountable being, and he
is conscious that in wrong-doing he is deserving of blame and
of punishment. Deep within the soul of the transgressor is the
consciousness that he is a guilty man, and he is haunted with
the perpetual apprehension of a retribution which, like the
Spectre of evil Omen, crosses his every path, and meets him at
every turn.
* “Beyond all these heavens the God of the heavens resides.”
* Guizot, “L’Eglise et la Societé Chretiennes” en 1861.
G RE E R PEIIL O S O PET Y. I23
“”Tis guilt alone,
Like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mode,
Fills the light air with visionary terrors,
And shapeless forms of fear.”
Man does not possess this consciousness of guilt so much
as it holds possession of him. It pursues the fugitive from
justice, and it lays hold on the man who has resisted or es-
caped the hand of the executioner. The sense of guilt is a
power over and above man ; a power so wonderful that it often
compels the most reckless criminal to deliver himself up, with
the confession of his deed, to the Sword of justice, when a false-
hood would have easily protected him. Man is only able by
persevering, ever-repeated efforts at self-induration, against the
remonstrances of conscience, to withdraw himself from its pow-
er. His success is, however, but very partial ; for sometimes,
in the moments of his greatest security, the reproaches of con-
science break in upon him like a flood, and Sweep away all his
refuge of lies. “The evil conscience is the divine bond which
binds the created spirit, even in deep apostasy, to its Original.
In the consciousness of guilt there is revealed the essential re-
lation of our spirit to God, although misunderstood by man un-
til he has something higher than his evil conscience. The
trouble and anguish which the remonstrances of this conscious-
ness excite—the inward unrest which sometimes seizes the
slave of sin—are proofs that he has not quite broken away
from God.”
In Grecian mythology there was a very distinct recognition
of the power of conscience, and a reference of its authority to
the Divinity, together with the idea of retribution. Nemesis
was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraidings of cén-
Science, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in
the human heart after the commission of sin. And as the
feeling of remorse may be considered as the consequence of
the displeasure and vengeance of an offended God, Nemesis
came to be regarded as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly
pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable
* Müller, “Christian Doctrine of Sin,” vol. i. pp. 225, 226.
I 24 O EIIR IS TIA WIT Y. A N D
woe and ruin. The Erinyes or Eumenides are the deities
whose business it is to punish, in hades, the crimes committed
upon earth. When an aggravated crime has excited their dis-
pleasure they manifest their greatest power in the disquietude
of conscience.
Along with this deep consciousness of guilt, and this fear of
retribution which haunts the guilty mind, there has also rest-
ed upon the heart of universal humanity a deep and abiding
conviction that something mºst be done to expiate the guilt of
sin—some restitution must be made, some suffering must be
endured," Some Sacrifice offered to atone for past misdeeds.
Hence it is that men in all ages have had recourse to penances
and prayers, to self-inflicted tortures and costly sacrifices to
appease a righteous anger which their sins had excited, and
avert an impending punishment. That sacrifice to atone for
sin has prevailed universally—that it has been practised “sem-
Žer, ubique, et ab omnibus,” always, in all places, and by all men
—will not be denied by the candid and competent inquirer.
The evidence which has been collected from ancient history by
Grotius and Magee, and the additional evidence from contem-
poraneous history, which is being now furnished by the re-
searches of ethnologists and Christian missionaries, is conclu-
sive. No intelligent man can doubt the fact. Sacrificial offer-
ings have prevailed in every nation and in every age. “Al-
most the entire worship of the pagan nations consisted in rites
of deprecation. Fear of the Divine displeasure seems to have
been the leading feature of their religious impressions; and in
the diversity, the costliness, the cruelty of their sacrifices they
* “Punishment is the penalty due to sin; or, to use the favorite expres-
sion of Homer, not unusual in the Scriptures also, it is the payment of a
debt incurred by sin. When he is punished, the criminal is said to pay off
or pay back (äTotively) his crimes; in other words, to expiate or atone for
them (Iliad, iv. I61, 162),
otn, Te utyá%) ātrértoav
oiv og jotv kepazijot yuval; Te Kai tekécootv.
that is, they shall pay off, pay back, atone, etc., for their treachery with a
great price, with their lives, and their wives and children.”—Tyler, “The-
ology of Greek Poets,” p. 194.
G R EER PEIILOSOPEI Y. I25
sought to appease gods to whose wrath they felt themselves
exposed, from a consciousness of Sin, unrelieved by any in-
formation as to the means of escaping its effects.”
It must be known to every one at all acquainted with Greek
mythology that the idea of expiation—atonement—was a funda-
mental idea of their religion. Independent of any historical
research, a very slight glance at the Greek and Roman classics,
especially the poets, who were the theologians of that age, can
leave little doubt upon this head.” Their language everywhere
announces the notion of Żropitiation, and, particularly the Latin,
furnishes the terms which are still employed in theology. We
need only mention the words iNagpuðc, i\áokopual, \rpov, Teptiºn-
pua, as examples from the Greek, and Ž/acare, Žrofiliare, expiare,
piaculum, from the Latin. All these indicate that the notion of
expiation was interwoven into the very modes of thought and
framework of the language of the ancient Greeks.
We do not deem it needful to discuss at length the ques-
tion which has been so earnestly debated among theologians,
as to whether the idea of expiation be a primitive and necessary
idea of the human mind, or whether the practice of piacular
sacrifices came into the post-diluvian world with Noah, as a
* Magee, “On the Atonement,” No. V. p. 30.
* In Homer the doctrine is expressly taught that the gods may, and some-
times do, remit the penalty, when duly propitiated by prayers and sacrifices
accompanied by suitable reparations (“Iliad,” ix. 497 sqq.). “We have a
practical illustration of this doctrine in the first book of the Iliad, where
Apollo averts the pestilence from the army, when the daughter of his priest
is returned without ransom, and a sacrifice (Škatón;3m) is sent to the altar of
the god at Sacred Chrysa. . . . Apollo hearkens to the intercession of his
priest, accepts the sacred hecatomb, is delighted with the accompanying
songs and libations, and sends back the embassy with a favoring breeze,
and a favorable answer to the army, who meanwhile had been purifying
(äTeWvuałvovro) themselves, and offering unblemished hecatombs of bulls
and goats on the shore of the sea which washes the place of their encamp-
ment.”
“The object of the propitiatory embassy to Apollo is thus stated by
Ulysses: Agamemnon, king of men, has sent me to bring back thy daughter
Chryses, and to offer a sacred hecatomb for (iTép) the Greeks, that we may
£ropitiate (%agó/leotia) the king, who now sends woes and many groans upon
the Argives” (44.2 sqq.).--Tyler, “Theology of Greek Poets,” pp. 196, 197.
I26 C EIR IS TIANITY AND
positive institution of a primitive religion then first directly in-
stituted by God. On either hypothesis the practice of expia-
tory rites derives its authority from God ; in the latter case, by
an outward and verbal revelation, in the former by an inward
and intuitive revelation.
This much, however, must be conceded on all hands, that
there are certain fundamental intuitions, universal and neces-
sary, which underlie the almost universal practice of expiatory
sacrifice, namely, the universal consciousness of guilt, and Že
amiversal conviction that something must be done to expiate guilt,
to compensate for wrong, and to atone for past misdeeds. But
how that expiation can be effected, how that atonement can be
made, is a question which reason does not seem competent to
answer. That personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious
suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national pun-
ishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacri-
fices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural rea-
son. There exists no discernible connection between the one
and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential,
and even deprecatory sacrifices may have 'originated in the
light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for
the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement,
on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own
sins are not transferable either in their guilt or punishment, is
so obviously just that we feel it must have been as clear to the
mind of the Greek who brought his victim to be offered to Zeus,
as it is to the philosophic mind of to-day." The knowledge
that the Divine displeasure can be averted by sacrifice is not,
by Plato, grounded upon any intuition of reason, as is the ex-
istence of God, the idea of the true, the just, and good, but on
“tradition,” and the “interpretations” of Apollo. “To the
Delphian Apollo there remains the greatest, noblest, and most
important of legal institutions—the erection of temples, sacrifi.
* “He that hath done the deed, to suffer for it—thus cries a proverb thrice
hallowed by age.”—AEschylus, “Choēph,” 311.
* “Laws,” book vi. ch. xv.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHI Y. I27
ces, and other services to the gods, . . . and what other services
should be gone through with a view to their propitiation. Such
things as these, indeed, we neither know ourselves, nor in found.
ing the State would we intrust them to others, if we be wise; . . .
the god of the country is the natural interpreter to all men
about such matters.”
The origin of expiatory Sacrifices can not, we think, be ex-
plained except on the principle of a primitive revelation and
a positive appointment of God. They can not be understood
except as a divinely-appointed symbolism, in which there is
exhibited a confession of personal guilt and desert of punish-
ment; an intimation and a hope that God will be propitious
and merciful ; and a typical promise and prophecy of a future
Redeemer from sin, who shall “put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself.” This sacred rite was instituted in connection with
the profevangelium given to our first parents; it was diffused
among the nations by tradition, and has been kept alive as a
general, and, indeed, almost universal observance, by that deep
sense of sin, and consciousness of guilt, and personal urgency
of the need of a reconciliation, which are so clearly displayed
in Grecian mythology.
The legitimate inference we find ourselves entitled to draw
from the words of Paul, when fairly interpreted in the light of
the past religious history of the world, is, that the Athenians
were a religious people ; that is, they were, however unknozy-
ing, believers in and worshifters of the One Supreme God.
* “Republic,” book iv. ch. v.
I28 C EIRISTIANITY AND
CHAPTER IV.
THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS : ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND
SYMBOLICAL ASPECTS.
“That there is one Supreme Deity, both philosophers and poets, and even
the vulgar worshippers of the gods themselves frequently acknowledge;
which because the assertors of gods well understood, they affirm these gods
of theirs to preside over the several parts of the world, yet so that there is
only one chief governor. Whence it follows, that all their other gods can be
no other than ministers and officers which one greatest God, who is omnipo-
tent, hath variously appointed, and constituted, so as to serve his command.”
—LACTANTIUS.
HE conclusion reached in the previous chapter that the
Athenians were believers in and worshippers of the One
Supreme God, has been challenged with some considerable
show of reason and force, on the ground that they were Polythe-
isis and Zalolaters.
An objection which presents itself so immediately on the
very face of the sacred narrative, and which is sustained by the
unanimous voice of history, is entitled to the fullest considera-
tion. And as the interests of truth are infinitely more precious
than the maintenance of any theory, however plausible, we are
constrained to accord to this objection the fullest weight, and
give to it the most impartial consideration. We can not do
Otherwise than at once admit that the Athenians were Polythe-
ists—they worshipped “many gods” besides “the unknown
God.” It is equally true that they were Zdolaters—they wor-
Shipped images or statues of the gods, which images were also,
by an easy metonymy, called “gods.”
But Surely no one supposes that this is all that can be said
upon the subject, and that, after such admissions, the discussion
must be closed. On the contrary, we have, as yet, scarce
caught a glimpse of the real character and genius of Grecian
G R E E K PHILOSOPEI Y. I29
polytheistic worship, and we have not made the first approach
towards a philosophy of Grecian mythology.
The 'assumption that the heathen regarded the images
“graven by art and device of man’’ as the real creators of the
world and man, or as having any control over the destinies of
men, sinks at once under the weight of its own absurdity. Such
hypothesis is repudiated with scorn and indignation by the hea-
thens themselves. Cotta, in Cicero, declares explicitly: “though
it be common and familiar language amongst us to call Corn
Ceres, and wine Bacchus, yet who can think any one so mad
as to take that to be really a god that he feeds upon P’” And
Plutarch condemns the whole practice of giving the names of
gods and goddesses to inanimate objects, as absurd, impious,
and atheistical: “they who give the names of gods to sense-
less matter and inanimate things, and such as are destroyed by
men in the using, beget most wicked and atheistical opinions
in the minds of men, since it can not be conceived how these
things should be gods, for nothing that is inanimate is a god.”
And so also the Hindoo, the Buddhist, the American Indian, the
Fijian of to-day, repel the notion that their visible images are
real gods, or that they worship them instead of the unseen God.
And furthermore, that even the invisible divinities which
these images were designed to represent, were each independ-
ent, self-existent beings, and that the stories which are told
concerning them by Homer and Hesiod were received in a
literal Sense, is equally improbable. The earliest philosophers
knew as well as we know, that the Deity, in order to be Deity,
must be either £erſect or nothing—that he must be one, not
many—without parts and passions; and they were scandalized
and shocked by the religious fables of the ancient mythology
as much as we are. Xenophanes, who lived, as we know, before
Pythagoras, accuses Homer and Hesiod of having ascribed to
the gods every thing that is disgraceful amongst men, as steal-
ing, adultery, and deceit. He remarks “that men seem to have
* Cudworth’s “Intell. System,” vol. ii. p. 257, Eng. ed.
* Quoted in Cudworth’s “Intell. System,” vol. ii. p. 258, Eng. ed.
9
I3O C EIR IS TIA WIT Y. A ND
created their gods, and to have given them their own mind, and
voice, and figure.” He himself declares that “God is one, the
greatest amongst gods and men, neither in form nor in thought
like unto men.” He calls the battles of the Titans and the
Giants, and the Centaurs, “the inventions of former genera-
tions,” and he demands that God shall be praised in holy
songs and nobler strains.” Diogenes Laertius relates the fol-
lowing of Zºyſ/agoras, “that when he descended to the shades
below, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound to a pillar of brass,
and gnashing his teeth ; and that of Homer, as suspended on
a tree, and surrounded by Serpents ; as a punishment for the
things they had said of the gods.” These poets, who had cor-
rupted theology, Plato proposes to exclude from his ideal Re-
public; or if permitted at all, they must be subjected to a rigid
expurgation. “We shall,” says he, “have to repudiate a large
part of those fables which are now in vogue; and, especially,
of what I call the greater fables, the stories which Hesiod and
Homer tell us. In these stories there is a fault which deserves
the gravest condemnation ; namely, when an author gives a
bad representation of gods and heroes. We must condemn such
a poet, as we should condemn a painter, whose pictures bear no
resemblance to the objects which he tries to imitate. For in-
stance, the poet Hesiod related an ugly story when he told how
Uranus acted, and how Kronos had his revenge upon him.
They are offensive stories, and must not be repeated in our
cities. Not yet is it proper to say, in any case,_what is indeed
untrue—that gods wage war against gods, and intrigue and
fight among themselves. Stories like the chaining of Juno
by her son Vulcan, and the flinging of Vulcan out of heaven
for trying to take his mother's part when his father was beating
her, and all other battles of the gods which are found in Homer,
must be refused admission into our state, z0/ether they are alle-
gorical or not. For a child can not discriminate between what
is allegorical and what is not ; and whatever is adopted, as a
* Max Müller, “Science of Language,” pp. 405, 406.
* “I.ives,” blº. viii. ch. xix. p. 347.
G R E E R PI/II, OS O PFI Y. I3 I
matter of belief, in childhood, has a tendency to become fixed
and indelible ; and therefore we ought to esteem it as of the
greatest importance that the fables which children first hear
should be adapted, as far as possible, to promote virtue.”
If, then, poetic and allegorical representations of divine
things are to be permitted in the ideal republic, then the found-
ers of the state are to prescribe “the moulds in which the poets
are to cast their fictions.”
“Now what are these moulds to be in the case of 7%eology 2
They may be described as follows: It is right always to rep-
resent God as he really is, whether the poet describe him in an
epic, or a lyric, or a dramatic poem. Now God is, beyond all
else, good in reality, and therefore so to be represented. But
nothing that is good is hurtful. That which is good hurts not ;
does no evil; is the cause of no evil. That which is good is
beneficial ; is the cause of good. And, therefore, that which
is good is not the cause of a/Z which is and happens, but only
of that which is as it should be. . . . . The good things we must
ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and not in him,
the causes of eyil things.”
“We must, then, express our disapprobation of Homer, or any
other poet, who is guilty of Such a ſoolish blunder as to tell us
(Iliad, xxiv. 660) that -
“‘Fast by the threshold of Jove's court are placed
Two casks—one stored with evil, one with good :'
and that he ſor whom the Thunderer mingles both—
“‘He leads a life checkered with good and ill.”
But as for the man to whom he gives the bitter cup unmixed—
“‘ He walks
The blessed earth unbless'd, go where he will.”
And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties
by the act of Pandarus was brought about by Athené and Zeus
(Iliad, ii. 60), we should refuse our approbation. Nor can
we allow it to be said that the strife and trial of strength be-
* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xvii.
I32 C EIRISTIANITY AND
tween the gods (Iliad, xx.) was instigated by Themis and
Zeus..... Such language can not be used without irrever-
ence; it is both injurious to us, and contradictory in itself.”
“Inasmuch as God is perſect to the utmost in beauty and
goodness, he abides ever the same, and without any variation in
his form. Then let no poet tell us that (Odyss. xvii. 582)
“‘In similitude of strangers oft
The Gods, who can with ease all shapes assume,
Repair to populous cities.’
And let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, or introduce in
tragedies, or any other poems, Hera transformed into the guise
of a princess collecting
“‘Alms for the life-giving children of Inachus, river of Argos,”
not to mention many other falsehoods which we must inter-
dict.”
“When a poet holds such language concerning the gods, we
shall be angry with him, and refuse him a chorus. Neither shall
we allow our teachers to use his writings for the instruction of
the young, if we would have our guards grow up to be as god-
like and god-fearing as it is possible for men to be.”
We are thus constrained by the statements of the heathens
themselves, as well as by the dictates of common sense, to look
beyond the external drapery and the material forms of Poly-
theism for some deeper and truer meaning that shall be more
in harmony with the facts of the universal religious conscious-
ness of our race. The religion of ancient Greece consisted in
Something more than the fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo
and Minerva, of Venus and Bacchus. “Through the rank and
poisonous vegetation of mythic phraseology, we may always
Catch a glimpse of an original stem round which it creeps and
winds itself, and without which it can not enjoy that parasitical
existence which has been mistaken for independent vitality.”
* “Republic,” bk, ii. ch. xix.
* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xx. Much more to the same cffect may be seen
in ch. ii.
* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xxi.
* Max Müller, “Science of Language,” 2d series, p. 433.
G R EER PEIII, OS O PET Y. I33
It is an obvious truth, attested by the voice of universal
consciousness as revealed in history, that the human mind can
never rest satisfied within the sphere of sensible phenomena.
Man is impelled by an inward necessity to pass, in thought,
beyond the boundary-line of sense, and inquire after causes
and entities which his reason assures him must lie beneath all
Sensible appearances. He must and will interpret nature ac-
cording to the forms of his own personality, or according to the
fundamental ideas of his own reason. In the childlike sub-
jectivity of the undisciplined mind he will either transfer to na-
ture the phenomena of his own personality, regarding the world
as a living Organism which has within it an informing soul, and
thus attain a Žand/ºeistic conception of the universe; or else he
will fix upon Some extraordinary and inexplicable phenomenon
of nature, and, investing it with suffernatural significance, will
rise from thence to a religious and theocratic conception of na-
ture as a whole. An intelligence—a mind within nature, and
inseparable from nature, or else above nature and governing
* nature, is, for man, an inevitable thought.
It is equally obvious that humanity can never relegate itself
from a supernatural origin, neither can it ever absolve itself
from a permanent correlation with the Divine. Man feels
within him an instinctive nobility. He did not arise out of the
bosom of nature ; in some mysterious way he has descended
from an eternal mind, he is “the offspring of God.” And fur-
thermore, a theocratic conception of nature, associated with a
pre-eminent regard for certain apparently Supernatural experi-
ences in the history of humanity, becomes the foundation of
governments, of civil authority, and of laws. Society can not
be founded without the aid of the Deity, and a commonwealth
can only be organized by Divine interposition. “A Ceres
must appear and sow the fields with corn.” And a Numa or
a Lycurgus must be heralded by the Oracle as
“Dear to Jove, and all who sit in the halls of the Olympus.”
He must be a “ descendant of Zeus,” appointed by the gods
I34 C EIAE IS TIA WIT Y. A. WD
to rule, and one who will “prove himself a god.” These di.
vinely-appointed rulers were regarded as the ministers of God,
the visible representatives of the unseen Power which really
governs all. The divine government must also have its invisi-
ble agents—its Nemesis, and Themis, and Diké, the ministers
of law, of justice, and of retribution ; and its Jupiter, and Juno,
and Neptune, and Pluto, ruling, with delegated powers, in the
heavens, the air, the sea, and the nethermost regions. So that,
in fact, there exists no nation, no commonwealth, no history
without a Theophany, and along with it certain Sacred legends
detailing the origin of the people, the government, the country
itself, and the world at large. This is especially true of India,
Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Their primitive history is eminent-
ly mythological. i
Grecian polytheism can not be otherwise regarded than as
a poetico-historical religion of myth and symbol which is under-
laid by a natural Theism ; a parasitical growth which winds
itself around the original stem of instinctive faith in a super-
natural Power and Presence which pervades the universe.
The myths are oral traditions, floating down from that dim
twilight of poetic history, which separates real history, with its
fixed chronology, from the unmeasured and unrecorded eter-
nity—faint echoes from that mystic border-land which divides
the natural from the supernatural, and in which they seem to
have been marvellously commingled. They are the lingering
memories of those manifestations of God to men, in which he
or his celestial ministers came into visible intercourse with our
race; the reality of which is attested by sacred history. In
all these myths there is a theogonic and cosmogonic element.
They tell of the generation of the celestial and ačrial divinities
—the subordinate agents and ministers of the Divine govern-
ment. They attempt an explanation of the genesis of the visi-
ble universe, the origin of humanity, and the development of
human Society. In the presence of history, the substance of
these myths is preserved by symbols, that is, by means of nat-
ural or artificial, real or striking objects, which, by some analo-
G R E E K PHILOSOPHY. - I35
gy or arbitrary association, shall, suggest the idea to the mind.
These symbols were designed to represent the invisible attri-
butes and operations of the Deity; the powers that vitalize
nature, that control the elements, that preside over cities, that
protect the nations: indeed, all the agencies of the physical
and moral government of God. Beneath all the pagan legends
of gods, and underlying all the elaborate mechanism of pagan
worship, there are unquestionably philosophical ideas, and the-
ological Conceptions, and religious Sentiments, which give a
meaning, and even a mournful grandeur to the whole.
Whilst the pagan polytheistic worship is, under one aspect,
to be regarded as a departure from God, inasmuch as it takes
away the honor due to God alone, and transfers it to the crea-
ture ; still, under another aspect, we can not fail to recognize
in it the effort of the human mind to fill up the chasm that
Seemed, to the undisciplined mind, to separate God and man—
and to bridge the gulf between the visible and the invisible,
the finite and the infinite. It was unquestionably an attempt
to bring God nearer to the sense and comprehension of man.
It had its origin in that instinctive yearning after the super-
natural, the Divine, which dwells in all human hearts, and
which has revealed itself in all philosophies, mysticisms, and
religions." This longing was stimulated by the contemplation
of the living beauty and grandeur of the visible universe, which,
to the lively fancy and deep feeling of the Greeks, seemed as
the living vesture of the Infinite Mind,-the temple of the eter-
nal Deity. In this visible universe the Divinity was partly re-
vealed, and partly concealed. The unity of the all-pervading
Intelligence was veiled beneath an apparent diversity of power,
and a manifoldness of operations. They caught Some glimpses
of this universal presence in nature, but were more immediately
and vividly impressed by the several manifestations of the di-
vine perfections and divine operations, as so many separate
rays of the Divinity, or so many subordinate agents and func-
* The original constitution of man is such that he “seeks after ’’ God
(Acts xvii. 27). “All men yearn after the gods” (Homer, “Odyss.” iii. 48).
136 CEIRISTIANITY AND.
tionaries employed to execute the will and carry out the pur-
poses of the Supreme Mind.' That unseen, incomprehensible
Power and Presence was perceived in the Sublimity of the deep
blue sky, the energy of the vitalizing Sun, the Surging of the
sea, the rushing wind, the roaring thunder, the ripening corn,
and the clustering vine. To these Separate manifestations of
the Deity they gave personal names, as Jupiter to the heavens,
Juno to the air, Neptune to the Sea, Ceres to the corn, and
Bacchus to the vine. These personals denoted, not the things
themselves, but the invisible, divine powers supposed to pre-
side over those several departments of nature. By a kind of
prosopopoeia “they spake of the things in nature, and parts of
the world, as persons—and consequently as so many gods and
goddesses—yet so as the intelligent might easily understand
their meaning, that these ZUere in reality nothing else but so many
names and notions of that one AWºmen, divine force and ŻozJer
z0/hich runs through all the zworld, multiformly displaying itself.”
“Their various deities were but different names, different con-
ceptions, of that Incomprehensible Being which no thought can
reach, and no language express.” Having given to these sev-
eral manifestations of the Divinity personal names, they now
sought to represent them to the eye of sense by visible forms,
as the symbols or images of the perfections of the unseen, the
incomprehensible, the unknown God. And as the Greeks re-
garded man as the first and noblest among the phenomena of
nature, they selected the human form as the highest Sensible
manifestation of God, the purest symbol of the Divinity. Gre-
* “Heathenism springs directly from this, that the mind lays undue stress
upon the bare letter in the book of creation; that it separates and individu-
alizes its objects as far as possible; that it places the sense of the individual
part, in opposition to the sense of the whole,_to the analogia ſide; or spiritus
which alone gives unity to the book of nature, while it dilutes and renders as
transitory as possible the sense of the universal in the whole. . . . And as it
laid great stress upon the letter in the book of nature, it fell into polytheism.
The particular symbol of the divine, or of the Godhead, became a myth of
some special deity.”—Lange’s “Bible-work,” Genesis, p. 23.
* Cudworth, “Intellect. System,” vol. i. p. 308.
* Max Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 431.
GREER PEIILOSOPHY. . . I37
$
cian polytheism was thus a species of mythica/ anthropomor-
f/hism. -
A philosophy of Grecian mythology, such as we have out-
lined in the preceding paragraphs, is, in our judgment, perfectly
consistent with the views announced by Paul in his address to
the Athenians. He intimates that the Athenians “thought that
the Godhead was like unto (siva èpotov)—to be imaged or repre-
sented by human art—by gold, and silver, and precious stone
graven by art, and device of man;” that is, they thought the
perfections of God could be represented to the eye by an im-
age, or symbol. The views of Paul are still more articulately
expressed in Romans, i. 23, 25 : “They changed the glory of
the incorruptible God into the similitude of an image of corrup-
tible man, . . . . and they worshipped and served the thing made,
Tapá—rather than, or more than the Creator.” Here, then, the
apostle intimates, first, that the heathen Ánezy God,” and that
they worshipped God. They worshipped the creature besides or
even more than God, but still they also worshipped God. And,
secondly, they represented the perfections of God by an image,
and under this, as a “likeness” or symbol, they indirectly wor-
shipped God. Their religious system was, then, even to the
eye of Paul, a symbolic worship—that is, the objects of their de-
votion were the épotópara—the similitudes, the likenesses, the
images of the perfections of the invisible God.
It is at once conceded by us, that the “sensus numinis,” the
natural intuition of a Supreme Mind, whose power and pres-
ence are revealed in nature, can not maintain itself, as an influ-
ential, and vivifying, and regulative belief amongst men, with-
out the continual Supernatural interposition of God ; that is,
without a succession of Divine revelations. And further, we
grant that, instead of this symbolic mode of worship deepening
and vitalizing the Sense of God as a living power and presence,
there is great danger that the symbol shall at length uncon-
sciously take the place of God, and be worshipped instead of
Him. From the purest form of symbolism which prevailed in
* Verse 2 I.
138 C EIRISTIANITY AND
the earliest ages, there may be an inevitable descent to the
rudest form of false worship, with its accompanying darkness,
and abominations, and crimes; but, at the same time, let us
do justice to the religions of the ancient world—the childhood
stammerings of religious life—which were something more than
the inventions of designing men, or the mere creations of hu-
man fancy; they were, in the words of Paul, “a seeking after
God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, who is
not far from any one of us.” It can not be denied that the
more thoughtful and intelligent Greeks regarded the visible
objects of their devotion as mere symbols of the perfections
and operations of the unseen God, and of the invisible powers
and subordinate agencies which are employed by him in his
providential and moral government of the world. And what-
ever there was of misapprehension and of “ignorance ’’ in the .
popular mind, we have the assurance of Paul that it was “over-
looked” by God.
The views here presented will, we venture to believe, be
found most in harmony with a true philosophy of the human
mind; with the religious phenomena of the world ; and, as we
shall subsequently see, with the writings of those poets and
philosophers who may be fairly regarded as representing the
sentiments and opinions of the ancient world. At the same
time, we have no desire to conceal the fact that this whole
question as to the Origin, and character, and philosophy of the
mythology and symbolism of the religions of the ancient world
has been a subject of earnest controversy from Patristic times
down to the present hour, and that even to-day there exists a
wide diversity of opinion among philosophers, as well as theo-
logians.
The principal theories offered may be classed as the effical,
the physical, and the historical, according to the different objects
the framers of the myths are supposed to have had in view."
Some have regarded the myths as invented by the priests and
wise men of old for the improvement and government of socie-
* Müller, “Science of Language,” 2d series, p. 4II.
G R EE K PHID OS O PETY. I39
ty, as designed to give authority to laws, and maintain social
order." Others have regarded them as intended to be allegor-
ical interpretations of physical phenomena—the poetic embodi-
ment of the natural philosophy of the primitive races of men;"
whilst others have looked upon them as historical legends,
having a substratum of fact, and, when stripped of the super-
natural and miraculous drapery which accompanies fable, as
containing the history of primitive times.” Some of the latter
class have imagined they could recognize in Grecian mythol-
ogy traces of Sacred personages, as well as profane; in fact,
a dimmed image of the patriarchal traditions which are pre-
served in the Old Testament scriptures."
It is beyond our design to discuss all the various theories
presented, or even to give a history of opinions entertained."
We are fully convinced that the hypothesis we have presented in
the preceding pages, viz., that Grecian mythology ZUas a grand
symbolic representation of the Divine as manifested in nature and
frozidence, is the only hypothesis which meets and harmonizes
all the facts of the case. This is the theory of Plato, of Cud-
worth, Baumgarten, Max Müller, and many other distinguished
scholars.
There are two fundamental propositions laid down by Cud-
worth which constitute the basis of this hypothesis.
I. AVo weſ/-authenficated instance can be furnished from among
the Greek Polytheists of one who taught the existence of a multiplicity
of independent, uncreaſed, self-existent deities; they almost universa/y
* Empedocles, Metrodorus. * Aristotle.
* IIecataeus, Herodotus, some of the early Fathers, Niebuhr, J. H. Voss,
Arnold. -
* Bochart, G. J. Vossius, Faber, Gladstone.
* To the English reader who desires an extended and accurate acquaint-
ance with the classic and patristic literature of this deeply interesting sub-
ject, we commend the careful study of Cudworth’s “Intellectual System
of the Universe,” especially ch. iv. The style of Cudworth is perplexingly
involved, and his great work is unmethodical in its arrangement and discus-
sion. Nevertheless, the patient and persevering student will be amply re-
warded for his pains. A work of more profound research into the doctrine
of antiquity concerning God, and into the real import of the religious systems
of the ancient world, is, probably, not extant in any language.
I4O CHRISTIANITY AND
believed in the existence of ONE SUPREME, UNCREATED, ETERNAL
GoD, “Z%e Maker of a/things,”—“the Father of gods and men,”
—“ the sole Monarch and AEuler of the 2007/7.”
2. The Greek Zºo/y/leis#s faught a plurality of “GENERATED
DEITIES,” who owe their existence to the power and will of the
Supreme God, who are by Him invested with delegated powers,
and who, as the agents of his universal providence, preside over
different departments of the created universe.
The evidence presented by Cudworth in Support of his theses
is so varied and so voluminous, that it defies all attempts at
condensation. His volumes exhibit an extent of reading, of
patient research, and of varied learning, which is truly amazing.
The discussion of these propositions involves, in fact, nothing
less than a complete and exhaustive survey of the entire field
of ancient literature, a careful study of the Greek and Latin
poets, of the Oriental, Greek, and Alexandrian philosophers, and
a review of the statements and criticisms of Rabbinical, and
Patristic writers in regard to the religions of the pagan world.
An adequate conception of the varied and weighty evidence
which is collected by our author from these fields, in support
of his views, could only be conveyed by transcribing to our
pages the larger portion of his memorable fourtſ, chapter. But
inasmuch as Grecian polytheism is, in fact, the culmination of
all the mythological systems of the ancient world, the fully-de-
veloped flower and ripened fruit of the cosmical and theologi-
cal conceptions of the childhood-condition of humanity, we pro-
pose to epitomize the results of his inquiry as to the theological
opinions of the Greeks, supplying additional confirmation of his
views from other sources.
And first, he proves most conclusively that Orpheus, Homer,
and Hesiod,' who are usually designated “the theologians”
* We do not concern ourselves with the chronological antecedence of
these ancient Greek poets. It is of little consequence to us whether Homer
preceded Orpheus, or Orpheus Homer. They were not the real creators of
the mythology of ancient Greece. The myths were a spontaneous growth
of the earliest human thought even beſore the separation of the Aryan family
into its varied branches.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. I4 I
of Greece, but who were in fact the depravers and corrupters of
pagan theology, do not teach the existence of a multitude of
wnmade, self-existent, and independent deities. Even they believed
in the existence of one uncreated and eternal mind, one Supreme
God, anterior and Superior to all the gods of their mythology.
They had some intuition, some apperception of the ZXivine, even
before they had attached to it a sacred name. The gods of
their mythology had all, save one, a temporal origin; they were
generated of Chaos and Night, by an active principle called
Move. “One might suspect,” says Aristotle, “that Hesiod, and
if there be any other who made love or desire a principle of
things, aimed at these very things (viz., the designation of the
efficient cause of the world); for Parmenides, describing the
generation of the universe, says:
“‘First of all the gods planned he love ;’
and further, Hesiod :
“‘First of all was Chaos, afterwards Earth,
With her spacious bosom,
And Love, who is pre-eminent among all the immortals;”
as intimating here that in entities there should exist some cause
that will impart motion, and hold bodies in union together.
But how, in regard to these, one ought to distribute them, as
to the order of priority, can be decided afterwards.”
Now whether this “first principle,” called “Zove,” “the
cause of motion and of union ” in the universe, was regarded as
a personal Being, and whether, as the ancient scholiast taught,
Hesiod's love was “the heavenly Love, which is also God, that
other love that was born of Venus being junior,” is just now of
no moment to the argument. The more important inference is,
The study of Comparative Mythology, as well as of Comparative Lan-
guage, assures us that the myths had an origin much earlier than the times
of Homer and Orpheus. They floated down from ages on the tide of oral
tradition before they were systematized, embellished, and committed to writing
by Homer, and Orpheus, and Hesiod. And between the systems of these
three poets a perceptible difference is recognizable, which reflects the changes
that verbal recitations necessarily and imperceptibly undergo.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. iv.
I42 CFIRISTIA WITY AND
that amongst the gods of Pagan theology but one is self-existent,
or else none are. Because the Hesiodian gods, which are, in fact,
all the gods of the Greek mythology, “were either all of them
derived from chaos, love itself likewise being generated out of
it; or else love was supposed to be distinct from chaos, and
the active principle of the universe, from whence, together with
chaos, all the theogony and cosmogony was derived.” Hence
it is evident the poets did not teach the existence of a multi-
plicity of unmade, self-existent, independent deities.
The careful reader of Cudworth will also learn another truth
of the utmost importance in this connection, viz., that the ſhe-
ogony of the Greek poets was, in fact, a cosmogony, the generation
of the göds being, in reality, the generation of the heavens, the
Sun, the moon, the stars, and all the various powers and phe-
nomena of nature. This is dimly shadowed forth in the very
names which are given to some of these divinities. Thus He-
lios is the sun, Selena is the moon, Zeus the sky—the deep
blue heaven, Eos the dawn, and Ersé the dew. It is rendered
still more evident by the opening lines of Hesiod’s “Theogonia,”
in which he invokes the muses:
“Hail ye daughters of Jupiter Grant a delightsome song.
Tell of the race of immortal gods, always existing,
Who are the offspring of the earth, of the starry sky,
And of the gloomy night, whom also the ocean nourisheth.
Tell how the gods and the earth at first were made,
And the rivers, and the mighty deep, boiling with waves,
And the glowing stars, and the broad heavens above,
And the gods, givers of good, born of these.”
Where we see plainly that the generation of the gods is the
generation of the earth, the heaven, the stars, the seas, the riv-
ers, and other things produced by them. “But immediately
after invocation of the Muses the poet begins with Chaos, and
Tartara, and Love, as the first principles, and then proceeds to
the production of the earth and of night out of chaos ; of the
ether and of day, from night; of the starry heavens, mountains,
and seas. All which generation of gods is really nothing but
* “Cudworth,” vol. i. p. 287.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. I43
a poetic description of the cosmogonia; as through the sequel
of the poem all seems to be physiology veiled under fiction
and allegory. . . . Hesiod's gods are thus not only the ani-
mated parts of the world, but also the other things of nature
personified and deified, or abusively called gods and goddess-
es.” The same is true both of the Orphic and Homeric gods.
“Their generation of the gods is the same with the generation
or creation of the world, both of them having, in all probability,
derived it from the Mosaic cabala, or tradition.”
But in spite of all this mythological obscuration, the belief
in one Supreme God is here and there most clearly recogniza-
ble. “That Zeus was originally to the Greeks the Supreme
God, the true God—nay, at some time their only God—can be
perceived in spite of the haze which mythology has raised
around his name.” True, they sometimes used the word
“Zeus” in a physical sense to denote the deep expanse of heav-
en, and sometimes in a historic Sense, to designate a hero or
deified man said to...have been born in Crete. It is also true
that the Homeric Zeus is full of contradictions. He is “all-see-
ing,” yet he is cheated ; he is “omnipotent,” yet he is defied;
he is “eternal,” yet he has a father ; he is “just,” yet he is
guilty of crime. Now, as Müller very justly remarks, these con-
tradictions may teach us a lesson. If all the conceptions of
Zeus had sprung from one origin, these contradictions could
not have existed. If Zeus had simply and only meant the Su-
preme God, he could not have been the son of Kronos (Time).
If, on the other hand, Zeus had been a mere mythological per-
sonage, as Eos, the dawn, and Helios, the Sun, he could never
have been addressed as he is addressed in the famous prayer
of Achilles (Iliad, bk. xxi.)."
In Homer there is a perpetual blending of the natural and
the Supernatural, the human and divine. The ZZiad is an in-
congruous medley of theology, physics, and history. In its
gorgeous scenic representations, nature, humanity, and deity are
* Cudworth, vol. i. pp. 321, 332. * Id., ib., vol. i. p. 478.
* Max Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 457. “Id., ib., p. 458.
I 44 CHRISTIANITY AND
mingled in inextricable confusion. The gods are sometimes
supernatural and superhuman personages; Sometimes the
things and powers of nature personified; and Sometimes they
are deified men. And yet there are passages, even in Homer,
which clearly distinguish Zeus from all the other divinities,
and mark him out as the Supreme. He is “the highest, first
of Gods” (bk. xix. 284); “most great, most glorious Jove”
(bk. ii. 474). He is “the universal Lord” (bk. xi. 229); “of
mortals and immortals king Supreme,” (bk. xii. 263); “over
all the immortal gods he reigns in unapproached pre-eminence
of power” (bk. xv. 125). He is “the King of kings” (bk. viii.
35), whose “will is Sovereign” (bk. iv. 65), and his “power
invincible” (bk. viii. 35). He is the “eternal Father” (bk.
viii. 77). He “excels in wisdom gods and men; all human
things from him proceed” (bk. xiii. 708–Io); “the Lord of
counsel” (bk. i. 208), “the all-seeing Jove” (bk. xiii. 824). In-
deed the mere expression “Father of gods and men” (bk. i.
639), So often applied to Zeus, and him alone, is proof Sufficient
that, in spite of all the legendary stories of gods and heroes, the
idea of Zeus as the Supreme God, the maker of the world, the
Father of gods and men, the monarch and ruler of the world,
was not obliterated from the Greek mind.”
“When Homer introduces Eumaios, the swineherd, speak-
ing of this life and the higher powers that rule it, he knows
* “In the Order of legendary chronology Zeus comes aſter Kronos and
Uranos, but in the order of Grecian conception Zeus is the prominent per-
Son, and Kronos and Uranos are inferior and introductory precursors, set up
in order to be overthrown, and to serve as mementos of the powers of their
conqueror. To Homer and Hesiod, as well as to the Greeks universally,
Zeus is the great, the predominant God, ‘the Father of gods and men,”
whose power none of the gods can hope to resist, or even deliberately think
of questioning. All the other gods have their specific potency, and peculiar
sphere of action and duty, with which Zeus does not usually interfere; but
it is he who maintains the lineaments of a providential government, as well
over the phenomena of Olympus as over the earth.”—Grote, “Hist. of
Greece,” vol. i. p. 3.
“Zeus is not only lord of heaven but likewise the ruler of the lower world,
and the master of the sea.”—Welcher, “Griechische Götterlehre,” vol. i. p.
164. The Zeus of the Greek poets is unquestionably the god of whom Paul
G. R. E. E. K. PHIL O S OPEI Y. I45
only of just gods ‘who hate cruel deeds, but honor justice and
the righteous works of men' (Od. xiv. 83). His whole life is
built up on a complete trust in the divine government of the
world without any artificial helps, as the Erinys, the Nemesis,
or Moira. ‘Eat,’ says the swineherd, ‘and enjoy what is here,
for God" will grant one thing, but another he will refuse, what-
ever he will in his mind, for he can do all things” (Od. xiv.
444; x. 306). This Surely is religion, and it is religion un-
tainted by mythology. Again, the prayer of the female slave,
grinding corn in the house of Ulysses is religious in the truest
sense— Father Zeus, thou who rulest over gods and men, sure-
ly thou hast just thundered in the 'starry sky, and there is no
cloud anywhere. Thou showest this as a sign to some one.
Fulfill now, even to me, miserable wretch, the prayer which I
now offer'” (Od. xx. 141–150).” *
The Greek tragedians were the great religious instructors of
the Athenian people. “Greek tragedy grew up in connection
with religious worship, and constituted not only a popular but
a sacred element in the festivals of the gods. . . . In short,
declared, “In him we live and move, and have our being, as certain of your
own poets have also said—
“‘For we are his offspring.
Now whether this be a quotation from Aratus or Cleanthes, the language of
the poets is, “We are the offspring of Zeus;” consequently the Zeus of the
poets and the God of Christianity are the same God.
“The father of gods and men in Homer is, of course, the Universal Fa-
ther of the Scriptures.”—Tyler, “Theology of Greek Poets,” p. 171.
* No sound reason can be assigned for translating Geóg by “a god” as
some have proposed, rather than “God.” But even if it were translated
“a god,” this god must certainly be understood as Zeus. Plato tells us
that Zeus is the most appropriate name for God. “For in reality the name
Zeus is, as it were, a sentence; and persons dividing it in two parts, some
of us make use of one part, and some of another ; for some call him Zāv, and
some Atç. But these parts, collected together into one, exhibit the nature of
the God; . . . for there is no one who is more the cause of living, both to
us and everything else, than he who is the ruler and king of all. It follows,
therefore, that this god is rightly named, through whom life is present in all
living beings.”—Cratylus, $28.
6eóc was usually employed, says Cudworth, to designate God by way of
pre-eminence, 6eot to designate inferior divinities.
* Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 434.
3 33
| 0
I46 CEIRISTIANITY AND
strange as it may sound to modern ears, the Greek stage was,
more nearly than any thing else, the Greek pulpit.” With a
priesthood that offered sacrifice, but did not preach, with few
books of any kind, the people were, in a great measure, de-
pendent on oral instruction for knowledge ; and as they learn-
ed their rights and duties as citizens from their orators, so
they hung on the lips of the ‘lofty, grave tragedians’ for in-
struction touching their origin, duty, and destiny as mortal and
immortal beings. . . . Greek tragedy is essentially didactic,
ethical, mythological, and religious.”
Now it is unquestionable that, with the tragedians, Zeus is
the Supreme God. AEschylus is pre-eminently the theological
poet of Greece. The great problems which lie at the founda-
tion of religious faith and practice are the main staple of near-
ly all his tragedies. Homer, Hesiod, the Sacred poets, had
looked at these questions in their purely poetic aspects. The
subsequent philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, developed them
more fully by their didactic method. AEschylus stands on the
dividing-line between them, no less poetic than the former,
scarcely less philosophical than the latter, but more intensely
practical, personal, and theological than either. The character
of the Supreme Divinity, as represented in his tragedies, ap-
proaches more nearly to the Christian idea of God. “He is
the Universal Father—Father of gods and men ; the Universal
Cause (Tavairwoc, Agamem. T485); the All-Seer and All-doer
(Tavröttmc, travepyérmc, ibid. and Sup. 139); the All-wise and
All-controlling (Taykpatic, Sup. 813); the Just and the Execu-
tor of justice (öuknq6poc, Agamem. 525); true and incapable of
falsehood (Prom. Io91);
bevºmyopeiv yā0 oilk Štío Tata, GT6Aa
tö diov, diž%d Tāv čTog Te?87,-
holy (&ºyvöc, Sup. 650); merciful (Tpewpévnç, ibid. 139); the God
especially of the Suppliant and the stranger (Supplices, pas-
sim); the most high and perfect One (réAetov iſ parov, Eumen.
* Pulpitum, a stage.
* Tyler, “Theology of Greek Poets,” pp. 205, 206.
G R E E R PHIL OS O PETY. I47
28); King of kings, of the happy, most happy, of the perfect,
most perfect power, blessed Zeus (Sup. 522).” Such are some
of the titles by which Zeus is most frequently addressed; such
the attributes commonly ascribed to him in AEschylus.
Sophocles was the great master who carried Greek tragedy
to its highest perfection. Only seven out of more than a hun-
dred of his tragedies have come down to us. There are passa-
ges cited by Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, and others
which are not found in those tragedies now extant. The most
famous and extensively quoted passage is given by Cudworth.”
Elg raig âAntleſalow, eig &otiv 080g,
"Og oilpavów tº Števče kai yatav Hakpāv,
IIóvtov Te Wagotöv ológa, kāvépov 6tav, K. T. W.”
This “one only God” is Zeus, who is the God of justice, and
reigns Supreme :
“Still in yon starry heaven supreme,
Jove, all-beholding, all-directing, dwells—
To him commit thy vengeance.”—“Electra,” p. 174 sqq.
This description of the unsleeping, undecaying power and do-
minion of Zeus is worthy of some Hebrew prophet—
“Spurning the power of age, enthroned in might,
Thou dwell'st mid heaven's broad light;
This was in ages past thy firm decree,
Is now, and shall forever be :
That none of mortal race on earth shall know
A life of joy Serene, a course unmarked by woe.”
“Antigone,” pp. 606–61.4.”
Whether we regard the poets as the principal theological
teachers of the ancient Greeks, or as the compilers, systemati-
zers, and artistic embellishers of the theological traditions and
myths which were afloat in the primitive Hellenic families, we
can not resist the conclusion that, for the masses of the people
Zeus was the Supreme God, “the God of gods” as Plato calls
* Tyler, “Theology of Greek Poets,” pp. 213, 214. -
* “Intellectual Syst.,” vol. i. p. 483. * *
* “There is, in truth, one only God, who made heaven and earth, the sea,
air, and winds,” etc.
4 &
“Theology of Greek Poets,” p. 322.
I48 C FIRISTIANITY AND
him. Whilst all other deities in Greece are more or less local
and tribal gods, Zeus was known in every village and to every
clan. “He is at home on Ida,’ on Olympus, at Dodona.”
While Poseidon drew to himself the AEolian family, Apollo the
Dorian, Athene the Ionian, there was one powerful God for all
the sons of Hellen—Dorians, AEolians, Ionians, Achaeans, viz.,
the Panhellenic Zeus.” Zeus was the name invoked in their
Solemn nuncupations of vows—
“O Zeus, father, O Zeus, king.”
In moments of deepest Sorrow, of immediate urgency and need,
of greatest stress and danger, they had recourse to Zeus.
“Courage, courage, my child !
There is still in heaven the great Zeus;
He watches over all things, and he rules.
Commit thy exceeding bitter griefs to him,
And be not angry against thine enemies,
Nor forget them.”
He was supplicated, as the God who reigns on high, in the
prayer of the Athenian—
“Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians and on their
fields.”
It has been urged that, as Zeus means the sky, therefore he
is no more than the deep concave of heaven personified and
deified, and that consequently Zeus is not the true, the only
God. This argument is only equalled in feebleness by that of
the materialist, who argues that “spiritus” means simply breath,
therefore the breath is the soul. Even if the Greeks remember-
ed that, originally, Zeus meant the sky, that would have no more
perplexed their minds than the remembrance that “thymos”—
mind—meant originally blast. “The fathers of Greek theology
gave to that Supreme Intelligence, which they instinctively rec-
Ognized as above and ruling over the universe, the name of
Zeus; but in doing so, they knew well that by Zeus they meant
more than the sky. The unfathomable depth, the everlasting
* “Iliad,” bk. iii. 324. * Bla. xvi. 268.
* Müller, p. 452. * Sophocles, “Electra,” v. 188.
G R E E K PEIII, OS O PHY. I49
calm of the ethereal sky was to their minds an image of that In-
finite Presence which overshadows all, and looks down on all.
As the question perpetually recurred to their minds, “Where is
he who abideth forever ?’ they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as
they thought, beyond Sun, and moon, and Stars, and all which
changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless fir-
mament of heaven. That never changed, that was always the
same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the
bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright
and calm as ever. The Almighty Father must be there, un-
changeable in the unchangeable heaven; bright, and pure, and
boundless like the heavens, and like the heavens, too, afar off.”
So they named him after the sky, Zeus, the God who lives in the
clear heaven—the heavenly Father.
The high and brilliant sky has, in many languages and many
religions, been regarded as the dwelling-place of God. Indeed,
to all of us in Christian times “God is above ;” he is “the God
of heaven ;” “his throne is in the heavens ;” “he reigns on
high.” Now, without doing any violence to thought, the name
of the abode might be transferred to him who dwells in heaven.
So that in our own language “heaven” may still be used as a
synonym for “God.” The prodigal son is still represented as
saying, I have sinned against “heaven.” And a Christian poet
has taught us to sing—
“High heaven, that heard my solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,” etc. .
Whenever, therefore, we find the name of heaven thus used to
designate also the Deity, we must bear in mind that those by
whom it was originally employed were simply transferring that
name from an object visible to the eye of sense to another object
perceived by the eye of reason. They who at first called God
“Aeaven " had some conception within them they wished to
name—the growing image of a God, and they fixed upon the
vastest, grandest, purest object in nature, the deep blue con-
Cave of heaven, overshadowing all, and embracing all, as the
* Kingsley, “Good News from God,” p. 237, Am. ed.
I5O CEIRISTIANITY AND
symbol of the Deity. Those who at a later period called heaven
“God” had forgotten that they were predicating of heaven some-
thing more which was vastly higher than the heaven."
Notwithstanding, then, that the instinctive, native faith of
humanity in the existence of one supreme God was overlaid
and almost buried beneath the rank and luxuriant vegetation
of Grecian mythology, we can still catch glimpses here and
there of the solid trunk of native faith, around which this para-
Sitic growth of fancy is entwined. Above all the phantasmata
of gods and goddesses who descended to the plains of Troy,
and mingled in the din and strife of battle, we can recognize
an overshadowing, all-embracing Power and Providence that
dwells on high, which never descends into the battle-field, and
is never seen by mortal eyes—the Universal King and Father,
—the “God of gods.”
Besides the direct evidence, which is furnished by the poets
and mythologists, of the presence of this universal faith in “the
/leavenly Father,” there is also a large amount of collateral tes-
timony that this idea of one Supreme God was generally enter-
tained by the Greek pagans, whether learned or unlearned.”
Dio Chrysostomus says that “all the poets call the first and
greatest God the Father, universally, of all rational kind, as
also the King thereof. Agreeably with which doctrine of the
poets do mankind erect altars to Jupiter-King (Atóc (3agiXéwc)
and hesitate not to call him Father in their devotions” (Orat.
xxxvi.). And Maximus Tyrius declares that both the learned
and the unlearned throughout the pagan world universally
agree in this ; that there is one Supreme God, the Father of
gods and men. “If,” says he, “there were a meeting called
of all the several trades and professions, .... and all were re-
quired to declare their sense concerning God, do you think
that the painter would say one thing, the sculptor another, the
poet another, and the philosopher another? No; nor the
Scythian neither, nor the Greek, nor the hyperborean. In re-
* See “Science of Language,” p. 457.
* Cudworth, vol. i. pp. 593, 594.
G R EJ} K. PEIIL OS O.P.E.I. Y. I5 I
gard to other things, we find men speaking discordantly one to
another, all men, as it were, differing from all men. ... Never-
theless, on this subject, you may find universally throughout
the world one agreeing law and opinion ; that there is one God,
the Åing and Father of a/Z, and many gods, the sons of God, co-
neigners together with God!” (Diss. i. p. 450).
From the poets we now pass to the philosophers. The
former we have regarded as reflecting the traditional beliefs of
the unreasoning multitude. The philosophers unquestionably
represent the reflective spirit, the speculative thought, of the
educated classes of Greek society. Turning to the writings of
the philosophers, we may therefore reasonably expect that, in-
stead of the dim, undefined, and nebulous form in which the
religious sentiment revealed itself amongst the unreflecting
portions of the Greek populations, we shall find their theologi-
cal ideas distinctly and articulately expressed, and that we shall
consequently be able to determine their religious opinions with
considerable accuracy. -
Now that Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras,
Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all believers
in the existence of one supreme, uncreated, eternal God, has
been, we think, clearly shown by Cudworth.”
In subsequent chapters on “the Philosophers of Athens,” we
shall enter more fully into the discussion of this question.
Meantime we assume that, with few exceptions, the Greek phi-
losophers were “genuine Theists.”
The point, however, with which we are now concerned is,
that whilst they believed in one supreme, uncreated, eternal God,
they at the same time recognized the existence of a plurality of gen-
eraſed deities who owe their existence to the pozwer and zwill of the
Supreme God, and who, as the agents and ministers of His univer.
sa/ ?rovidence, preside over different departments of the creaſed
wniverse. They are at once Monotheists and Polytheists—be-
lievers in “one God” and “many gods.” This is a peculiari-
* Vol. i. pp. 491–554.
I52 C EIRISTIANITY AND
ty, an anomaly which challenges our attention, and demands
an explanation, if we would vindicate for these philosophers a
rational Theism. -
Now that there can be but one infinite and absolutely perfect
Being—one supreme, uncreated, eternal God—is self-evident;
therefore a multiplicity of such gods is a contradiction and an
impossibility. The early philosophers knew this as well as the
modern. The Deity, in order to be Deity, must be one and
not many: must be perfect or nothing. If, therefore, we would
do justice to these old Greeks, we must inquire what explana-
tions they have offered in regard to “the many gods” of which
they speak. We must ascertain whether they regarded these
“gods” as created or uncreated beings, dependent or indepen-
dent, temporal or eternal. We must inquire in what sense the
term “god" is applied to these lesser divinities, whether it is
not applied in an accommodated and therefore allowable
Sense, as in the sacred Scriptures it is applied to kings and
magistrates, and those who are appointed by God as the teach-
ers and rulers of men. “They are called gods to whom the word
of God came.” And if it shall be found that all the gods of
which they speak, save one, are “generated deities”—depend-
ent beings — creatures and subjects of the one eternal King
and Father, and that the name of “god” is applied to them in
an accommodated sense, then we have vindicated for the old
Greek philosophers a consistent and rational Theism. In what
relation, then, do the philosophers place “the gods” to the one
Supreme Being? &
7%aſes, one of the most ancient of the Greek philosophers,
taught the existence of a plurality of gods, as is evident from
that Saying of his, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, “The world
has life, and is full of gods.” At the same time he asserts his
belief in one supreme, uncreated Deity ; “God is the oldest of
all things, because he is unmade, or ungenerated.” All the
* See John x. 35.
* “Lives,” blº. i. ; see also Aristotle’s “De Anima,” bk. i. ch. viii. Távra
6&ſju Tàjp7. * “Lives,” bk. i.
G B E E R PEI II, OS O PEI Y. I53
other gods must therefore have been “generated deities,” since
there is but one unmade God, one only that had “no begin-
ning.”
Aenoſ/ames was also an assertor of many gods, and one God;
but his one God is unquestionably Supreme. “There is one
God, the greatest amongst gods and men;” Or, “God is one, the
greatest amongst gods and men.”
Ampedocles also believed in one Supreme God, who “is
wholly and perfectly mind, ineffable, holy, with rapid and swift-
glancing thought pervading the whole world,” and from whom
all things else are derived,—“all things that are upon the earth,
and in the air and water, may be truly called the works of God,
who ruleth over the world, out of whom, according to Em-
pedocles, proceed all things, plants, men, beasts, and gods.”
The minor deities are therefore made by God. It will not be
denied that Socrates was a devout and earnest Theist. He
taught that “there is a Being whose eye pierces throughout all
nature, and whose ear is open to every Sound ; extending through
all time, extended to all places; and whose bounty and care can
know no other bounds than those fixed by his own creation.”
And yet he also recognized the existence of a plurality of gods,
and in his last moments expressed his belief that “it is lawful
and right to pray to the gods that his departure hence may be
happy.” We see, however, in his words addressed to Euthy-
demus, a marked distinction between these subordinate deities
and “Him who raised this whole universe, and still upholds
the mighty frame, who perfected every part of it in beauty and
in goodness, suffering none of these parts to decay through age,
but renewing them daily with unfading vigor ; . . . . even he,
the Supreme God, still holds himself invisible, and it is only
in his works that we are capable of admiring him.”
It were needless to attempt the proof that Plato believed in
One Supreme God, and only one. This one Being is, with him,
* “Lives,” blº. i. * Clem. Alex., “Stromat.” blº. v.
* Aristotle, “De Mundo,” ch. vi. * Xenophon’s “Memorabilia,” i. 4.
* “Phaedo,” $ 152. * “Memorabilia,” iv. 3.
I54 C EIRISTIANITY AND
“the first God;” “the greatest of the gods;” “the God over
all ;” “the sole Principle of the universe.” He is “the Immu-
table;” “the All-perfect;” “the eternal Being.” He is “the
Architect of the world ;” “the Maker of the universe ;” “the Fa-
ther of gods and men ;” “the sovereign Mind which orders all
things, and passes through all things;” “the sole Monarch and
IRuler of the world.”
And yet remarkable as these expressions are, Sounding, as
they do, so like the language of inspiration,” there can be no
doubt that Plato was also a sincere believer in a plurality of
gods, of which, indeed, any one may assure himself by reading
the ſenth book of “the Laws.”
And, now that we have in Plato the culmination of Grecian
speculative thought, we may learn from him the mature and
final judgment of the ancients in regard to the gods of pagan
mythology. We open the Złmaus, and here we find his views
most definitely expressed. After giving an account of the
“generation ” of the sun, and moon, and planets, which are by
him designated as “visible gods,” he then proceeds “to speak
concerning the other divinities:” “We must on this subject as-
sent to those who in former times have spoken thereon ; who
were, as they said, the offspring of the gods, and who doubtless
were well acquainted with their own ancestors. . . . . Let then
the genealogy of the gods be, and be acknowledged to be, that
which they deliver. Of Earth and Heaven the children were
Oceanus and Tethys; and of these the children were Phorcys,
and Kronos, and Rhea, and all that followed these ; and from
these were born Zeus and Hera, and those who are regarded as
brothers and sisters of these, and others their offspring.
“When, then, all the gods were brought into existence, both those
which move around in manifest courses [the stars and planets],
and those which appear when it pleases them [the mythological
deities], the Creator of the Universe thus addressed them :
* See chap. xi.
* Some writers have supposed that Plato must have had access through
some medium to “the Oracles of God.” See Butler, vol. ii. p. 4I.
G R.E.E. K. PEIII, OSOPHY, I55
‘Gods, and sons of gods, of whom I am the father and the au-
thor, produced by me, ye are indestructible because I will. . . .
Now inasmuch as you have been generated, you are hence nożim-
mortal, nor wholly indissoluble ; yet you shall never be dissolved
nor become subject to the fatality of death, because so Z have
zvilled. . . . Learn, therefore, my commands. Three races of
mortals yet remain to be created. Unless these be created, the
universe will be imperfect, for it will not contain within it every
kind of animal. . . . In order that these mortal creatures may
be, and that this world may be really a cosmos, do you apply
yourselves to the creation of animals, imitating the exercises of
my power in creaſing you.’”
Here, then, we see that Plato carefully distinguishes between
the sole Eternal Author of the universe, on one hand, and the
“souls,” vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the heavenly
orbs, and diffuses through all nature, on the other. These sub-
ordinate powers or agents are all created, “generated deities,”
who owe their continued existence to the zwiſ/ of God ; and
though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, and a subse-
quent direction and government of created things, they are still
only the servants and the deputies of the Supreme Creator, and
Director, and Ruler of all things. These subordinate agents
and ministers employed in the creation and providential gov-
ernment of the world appear, in the estimation of Plato, to have
been needed—
I. To satisfy the demands of the popular faith, which presented
its facts to be explained no less than those of external nature.
Plato had evidently a great veneration for antiquity, a peculiar
regard for “tradition venerable through ancient report,” and
“doctrines hoary with years.” He aspired after supernatural
light and guidance ; he longed for some intercourse with, some
communication from, the Deity. And whilst he found many
things in the ancient legends which revolted his moral sense,
and which his reason rejected, yet the sentiment and the lesson
which pervades the whole of Grecian mythology, viz., that the
* “Timaeus,” ch. xv. *Ibid., ch. v.
I 56 C FIRISTIA WITY AND
gods are in ceaseless intercourse with the human race, and if
men will do right the gods will protect and help them,” was
one which commended itself to his heart.
2. These intermediate agents seem to have been demanded
to satisfy the disposition and fendency z0/ic/, /as revealed itseff in
a/Z systems, of interposing some scale of ascent between the materia/
creation and the infinite Creator.
The mechanical theory of the universe. has interposed its
long series of Secondary causes—the qualities, properties, laws,
forces of nature; the vital theory which attaches a separate
“soul” to the various parts of nature as the cause and intelli-
gent' director of its movements. Of these “souls” or gods,
there were different orders and degrees—deified men or heroes,
aërial, terrestrial, and celestial divinities, ascending from na-
ture up to God. And this tendency to supply some scale of
ascent towards the Deity, or at least to people the vast territory
which seems to swell between the world and God, finds some
countenance in “the angels and archangels,” “the thrones, and
dominions, and principalities, and powers ” of the Christian
Scriptures."
3. These inferior ministers also seemed to Plato to increase
Žhe state/y grandeur and imperial majesty of the ZXvine govern-
ment. They swell the retinue of the Deity in his grand “cir-
cuit through the highest arch of heaven.” They wait to exe-
cute the Divine commands. They are the agents of Divine
providence, “the messengers of God” to men. ,
4. And, finally, the host of inferior deities interposed be-
tween the material sensible world and God seemed to Plato as
needful in order to explain the apparent defects and disorders of
sub/unary affairs. Plato was jealous of the Divine honor.
“All good must be ascribed to God, and nothing but good.
We must find evil, disorder, suffering, in some other cause.”
He therefore commits to the junior deities the task of creating
* “The gods of the Platonic system answer, in office and conception, to
the angels of Christian Theology.”—Butler, vol. i. p. 225.
* “Phaedrus,” $56, 7. * “Republic,” bk. ii. p. 18.
G. R. E. E. K. PHIL OS O PET Y. I57
animals, and of forming “ the mortal part of man,” because the
..mortal part is “possessed of certain dire and necessary pas-
sions.” --
Aristotle seems to have regarded the popular polytheism of
Greece as a perverted relic of a deeper and purer “Theology”
which he conceives to have been, in all probability, perfected
in the distant past, and then comparatively lost. He says—
“The tradition has come down from very ancient times, being
left in a mythical garb to succeeding generations, that these
(the heavenly bodies) are gods, and that the Divinity encom-
passes the whole of nature. There have been made, however,
to these certain fabulous additions for the purpose of winning
the belief of the multitude, and thus securing their obedience
to the laws, and their co-operation towards advancing the gen-
eral welfare of the state. These additions have been to the
effect that these gods were of the same form as men, and even
that some of them were in appearance similar to certain others
amongst the rest of the animal creation. The wise course,
however, would be for the philosopher to disengage from these
traditions the false element, and to embrace that which is true;
and the truth lies in that portion of this ancient doctrine which
regards the first and deepest ground of all existence to be the
Pivine, and this he may regard as a divine utterance. In all
probability, every art, and Science, and philosophy has been
over and over again discovered to the farthest extent possible,
and then again lost; and we may conceive these opinions to
have been preserved to us as a sort of fragment of these lost
philosophers. We see, then, to some extent the relation of the
popular belief to these ancient opinions.” This conception of
a deep Divine ground of all existence (for the immateriality and
unity of which he elsewhere earnestly contends)" is thus regard-
ed by Aristotle as underlying the popular polytheism of Greece.
The views of the educated and philosophic mind of Greece
in regard to the mythological deities may, in conclusion, be
thus briefly stated—
* “Timaeus,” xliv, * “Metaph.,” xi. 8. * Bk. xi. ch. ii. § 4.
3 y
I58 C EIRISTIANITY AND
I. ZViey are a/Z created beings—“GENERATED DEITIES,” who are
dependent on, and subject to, the will of one supreme God. g
II. ZViey are the AGENTS employed by God in the creation of, at
ſeas; some parts of, the 2//liverse, and in Že movement and direction
of the entire cosmos; and they are also the MINISTERS and MES-
SENGERS of that universal ſºrovidence which he exercises over the
/human race. *
These subordinate deities are, I. the greater parts of the
visible mundane system animated by intelligent souls, and call-
ed “sensible gods”—the sun, the moon, the stars, and even the
earth itself, and known by the names Helios, Selena, Kronos,
Hermes, etc.
2. Some are invisible flowers, having peculiar offices and
functions, and presiding over special places, provinces, and de-
partments of the universe ;-one ruling in the heavens (Zeus),
another in the air (Juno), another in the sea (Neptune), another
in the subterranean regions (Pluto); one god presiding over
learning and wisdom (Minerva), another over poetry, music,
and religion (Apollo), another over justice and political order
(Themis), another over war (Mars), another over corn (Ceres),
and another the vine (Bacchus).
3. Others, again, are etherea/ and ačrial beings, who have
the guardianship of individual persons and things, and are call-
ed demons, genii, and ſares; Superior indeed to men, but inferior
to the gods above named.
“Wherefore, since there were no other gods among the
Pagans besides those above enumerated, unless their images,
statues, and symbols should be accounted such (because they
were also sometimes abusively called “gods’), which could
not be supposed by them to have been unmade or without be-
ginning, they being the workmanship of their own hands, we
conclude, universally, that all that multiplicity of Pagan gods
which make so great a show and noise was really either noth-
ing but several names and notions of one Supreme Deity, ac-
cording to his different manifestations, gifts, and effects upon
the world personated, or else many inferior understanding be-
G R E E R PEIIL OSOPHTY. I59
ings, generated or created by one supreme: So that one un-
made, self-existent Deity, and no more, was acknowledged by
the more intelligent Pagans, and, consequently, the Pagan Pol-
ytheism (or idolatry) consisted not in worshipping a multiplici-
ty of unmade minds, deities, and creators, self-existent from
eternity, and independent upon one Supreme, but in mingling
and blending some way or other, unduly, creature-worship with
the worship of the Creator.”
That the heathen regard the one Supreme Being as the first
and chief object of worship is evident from the apologies which
they offered for worshipping, besides Him, many inferior di-
vinities. -
I. They claimed to worship them only as inferior beings,
and that therefore they were not guilty of giving them that
honor which belonged to the Supreme. They claimed to wor-
ship the supreme God incomparably above all. 2. That this
honor which is bestowed upon the inferior divinities does ulti-
mately redound to the Supreme God, and aggrandize his state
and majesty, they being all his ministers and attendants. 3.
That as demons are mediators between the celestial gods and
men, so those celestial gods are also mediators between iflen
and the Supreme God, and, as it were, convenient steps by
which we ought with reverence to approach him. 4. That
demons or angels being appointed to preside over kingdoms,
cities, and persons, and being many ways benefactors to us,
thanks ought to be returned to them by sacrifice. 5. Lastly,
that it can not be thought that the Supreme Being will envy
those inferior beings that worship or honor which is bestowed
upon them; nor suspect that any of these inferior deities will
factiously go about to set up themselves against the Supreme,
God. - g
The Pagans, furthermore, apologized for worshipping God
in images, statues, and symbols, on the ground that these were
Only schetically worshipped by them, the honor passing from
them to the prototype. And since we live in bodies, and can
I Cudworth, “Intellectual System,” vol. i. p. 311.
I6o C EIRISTIANITY AND
scarcely conceive of any thing without having Some image or
phantasm, we may therefore be indulged in this infirmity of
human nature (at least in the vulgar) to worship God under a
corporeal image, as a means of preventing men from falling into
Atheism. -
To the Christian conscience the above reasons assigned
furnish no real justification of Polytheism and Idolatry; but
they are certainly a tacit conſession of their belief in the one
Supreme God, and their conviction that, notwithstanding their
idolatry, He only ought to be worshipped. The heathen poly-
theists are therefore justly condemned in Scripture, and pro-
nounced to be “inexcusable.” They had the knowledge of the
true God—“they knew God,” and yet “they glorified him not
as God.” “They changed the glory of the incorruptible God
into a likeness of corruptible man.” And, finally, they ended
in “worshipping and serving the creature more than the Cre-
ator.”
It can not, then, with justice be denied that the Athenians
had some knowledge of the true God, and Some just and wor-
thy conceptions of his character. It is equally certain that a
powerful and influential religious sentiment pervaded the Athe-
nian mind. Their extreme “carefulness in religion ” must be
conceded by us, and, in Some Sense, commended by us, as it
was by Paul in his address on Mars’ Hill. At the same time
it must also be admitted and deplored that the purer theology
of primitive times was corrupted by offensive legends, and en-
crusted by polluting myths, though not utterly defaced.” The
Homeric gods were for the most part idealized, human person-
alities, with all the passions and weaknesses of humanity.
They had their favorites and their enemies; sometimes they
fought in one camp, sometimes in another. They were suscep-
tible of hatred, jealousy, sensual passion. It would be strange
indeed if their worshippers were not like unto them. The
* Romans i. 21, 25.
* “There was always a double current of religious ideas in Greece; one
spiritualist, the other tainted with impure legends.”—Pressensé.
G B E E R PEIII, O S O PHY. I61
conduct of the Homeric heroes was, however, better than their
creed. And there is this strange incongruity and inconsistency
in the conduct of the Homeric gods,--they punish mortals for
crimes of which they themselves are guilty, and reward virtues
in men which they do not themselves always practise. “They
punish with especial severity Social and political crimes, such
as perjury (Iliad, iii. 279), oppression of the poor (Od. xvii.
475), and unjust judgment in Courts of justice (Iliad, xvi. 386).”
Jupiter is the god of justice, and of the domestic hearth; he is
the protector of the exile, the avenger of the poor, and the vig-
ilant guardian of hospitality. “And with all the imperfections
of Society, government, and religion, the poem presents a re-
markable picture of primitive simplicity, chastity, justice, and
practical piety, under the threefold influence of moral feeling,
mutual respect, and fear of the divine displeasure ; such, at
least, are the motives to which Telemachus makes his appeal
when he endeavors to rouse the assembled people of Ithaca to
the performance of their duty (Od. ii. 64).”
The influence of the religious dramas of AEschylus and
Sophocles on the Athenian mind must not be overlooked.
No writer of pagan antiquity made the voice of conscience
Speak with the same power and authority that AEschylus did.
“Crime,” he says, “never dies without posterity.” “Blood
that has been shed congeals on the ground, crying out for an
avenger.” The old poet made himself the echo of what he
called “the lyreless hymn of the Furies,” who, with him, repre-
sented Severe Justice striking the guilty when his hour comes,
and giving warning beforehand by the terrors which haunt him.
His dramas are characterized by deep religious feeling. Rev-
erence for the gods, the recognition of an inflexible moral
order, resignation to the decisions of Heaven, an abiding pre-
Sentiment of a future state of reward and punishment, are strik-
ingly predominant.
Whilst AEschylus reveals to us the sombre, terror-stricken
* Tyler, “ Theology of Greek Poets,” pp. 167, 168; Pressensé, “Religion
before Christ,” p. 77.
1 I
I62 C EIRISTIA WITY AWD
side of conscience, Sophocles shows us the divine and lumi-
nous side. No one has ever spoken with nobler eloquence than
he of moral obligation — of this immortal, inflexible law, in
which dwells a God that never grows old—
“Oh be the lot forever mine
Unsullied to maintain,
In act and word, with awe divine,
What potent laws ordain.
“Laws spring from purer realms above:
Their father is the Olympian Jove.
Ne'er shall oblivion veil their front sublime,
Th’ indwelling god is great, nor fears the wastes of time.”
The religious inspiration that animates Sophocles breaks
out with incomparable beauty in the last words of CEdipus,
when the old banished king sees through the darkness of death
a mysterious light dawn, which illumines his blind eyes, and
which brings to him the assurance of a blessed immortality.”
Such a theology could not have been utterly powerless. The
influence of truth, in every measure and degree, must be salu-
tary, and especially of truth in relation to God, to duty, and to
immortality. The religion of the Athenians must have had
some wholesome and conserving influence of the social and
political life of Athens.” Those who resign the government of
* “CEdipus Tyran.,” pp. 863–872.
* Pressensé, “Religion before Christ,” pp. 85–87.
* The practice, so common with some theological writers, of drawing dark
pictures of heathenism, in which not one luminous spot is visible, in order
to exalt the revelations given to the Jews, is exceedingly unfortunate, and
highly reprehensible. It is unfortunate, because the skeptical scholar knows
that there were some elements of truth and excellence, and even of grandeur,
in the religion and civilization of the republics of Greece and Rome; and
it is reprehensible, because it is a one-sided and unjust procedure, in so far
as it withholds part of the truth. This species of argument is a two-edged
sword which cuts both ways. The prevalence of murder, and slavery, and
treachery, and polygamy, in Greece and Rome, is no more a proof that “the
religions of the pagan nations were destructive of morality” (Watson, vol.
i. p. 59), than the polygamy of the Hebrews, the falsehoods and impositions
of Mediaeval Christianity, the persecutions and martyrdoms of Catholic
Christianity, the oppressions and wrongs of Christian England, and the slav-
ery of Protestant America, are proofs that the Christian religion is “de-
structive of morality.” What a fearful picture of the history of Christian
G R E E K PEIII, OS OPFTY. I63
this lower world almost exclusively to Satan, may see, in the re-
ligion of the Greeks, a simple creation of Satanic powers. But
he who believes that the entire progress of humanity has been
under the control and direction of a benignant Providence,
must suppose that, in the purposes of God, even Ethnicism has
fulfilled some end, or it would not have been permitted to live.
God has “never left himself without a witness” in any nation
under heaven. And some preparatory office has been fulfilled
by Heathenism which, at least, revealed the want, and prepared
the mind for, the advent of Christianity.
The religion of the Athenians was unable to deliver them
from the guilt of Sin, redeem them from its power, and make
them pure and holy. It gave the Athenian no victory over
himself, and, practically, brought him no nearer to the living
God. But it awakened and educated the conscience, it devel-
oped more fully the Sense of sin and guilt, and it made man
conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt;
and “the day that humanity awakens to the want of something
more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the
need of being saved and restored from the consequences of
sin” by a higher power. Aºsthetic taste had found its fullest
gratification in Athens; poetry, Sculpture, architecture, had
been carried to the highest perfection; a noble civilization had
been reached; but “the need of something deeper and truer
was written on the very stones.” The highest consummation of
Paganism was an altar to “the unknown God,” the knowledge
of whom it needed, as the source of purity and peace. *
The strength and the weakness of Grecian mythology con-
nations might be drawn to-day, if all the lines of light, and goodness, and
charity were left out, and the crimes, and wrongs, and Cruelties of the Chris-
tian nations were alone exhibited
How much more convincing a proof of the truth of Christianity to find in
the religions of the ancient world a latent sympathy with, and an uncon-
scious preparation for, the religion of Christ. “The history of religions of
human origin is the most striking evidence of the agreement of revealed re.
ligion with the soul of man—for each of these forms of worship is the ex-
pression of the wants of conscience, its eternal thirst for pardon and restora.
tion—rather let us say, its thirst for God.”—Pressensé, p. 6.
I64 C EIRISTIANITY AND
sisted in the contradictory character of its divinities. There is
a strange blending of the natural and the Supernatural, the hu-
man and the divine. Zeus, the eternal Father, the immortal
King, whose will is sovereign, and whose power is invincible,_
the All-seeing Jove, has some of the weaknesses and passions
of humanity. God and man are thus, in Some mysterious way,
united. And here that deepest longing of the human heart is
met—the unconquerable desire to bring God nearer to the hu-
man apprehension, and closer to the human heart. Hence the
hold which Polytheism had upon the Grecian mind. But in this
human aspect was also found its weakness, for when philo-
sophic thought is brought into contact with, and permitted crit-
ically to test mythology, it dethrones the false gods. The age
of spontaneous religious sentiment must necessarily be suc-
ceeded by the age of reflective thought. Popular theological
faiths must be placed in the hot crucible of dialectic analysis,
that the false and the frivolous may be separated from the pure
and the true. The reason of man demands to be satisfied, as
well as the heart. Faith in God must have a logical basis, it
must be grounded on demonstration and proof. Or, at any
rate, the question must be answered, whether God is cognizable
by human reason 2 If this can be achieved, then a deeper
foundation is laid in the mind of humanity, upon which Chris-
tianity can rear its higher and nobler truths.
G B E E K PHIL OS O PHY. I65
CHAPTER V.
THE UNIKNOWN GOD.
“As I passed by, and beheld your sacred objects, I found an altar with
this inscription, Zo the Unknown God.”—ST. PAUL.
“That which can be Ánown of God is manifested in their hearts, God
himself having shown it to them ’’ [the heathen nations].-ST. PAUL.
AVING now reached our first landing-place, from whence
we may survey the fields that we have traversed, it may
be well to set down in definite propositions the results we have
attained. We may then carry them forward, as torches, to il.
luminate the path of future and still profounder inquiries.
The principles we have assumed as the only adequate and
legitimate interpretation of the facts of religious history, and
which an extended study of the most fully-developed religious
system of the ancient world confirms, may be thus announced :
I. A religious nature and destination appertain to man, so
that the purposes of his existence and the perfection of his
being can only be secured in and through religion.
II. The idea of God as the unconditioned Cause, the infi-
nite Mind, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, and the conscious-
ness of dependence upon and obligation to God, are the funda-
mental principles of all religion.
III. Inasmuch as man is a religious being, the instincts and
emotions of his nature constraining him to worship, there must
also be implanted in his rational nature Some original d priori
ideas or laws of thought which furnish the necessary cognition
of the object of worship ; that is, some native, spontaneous
cognition of God. .
A mere blind impulse would not be adequate to guide man
to the true end and perfection of his being without rational
ideas ; a tendency or appetency, without a revealed object,
I66 CFTR IS TIA WTTY AWD
would be the mockery and misery of his nature—an “ignis
fatuus.” perpetually alluring and forever deceiving man.
That man has a native, spontaneous apperception of a God,
in the true import of that sacred name, has been denied by
men of totally opposite schools and tendencies of thought—by
the Idealist and the Materialist; by the Theologian and the
Atheist. Though differing essentially in their general princi-
ples and method, they are agreed in asserting that God is ab-
solutely “the unknown,” and that, so far as reason and logic
are concerned, man can not attain to any knowledge of the first
principles and causes of the universe, and, consequently, can
not determine whether the first principle or principles be in-
telligent or unintelligent, personal or impersonal, finite or in-
finite, one or many, righteous or non-righteous, evil or good.
The various opponents of the doctrine that God can be
cognized by human reason may be classified as follows:
I. Zhose who assert that al/ /iuman Ánozwledge is necessarily
confined to the observation and classification of Żhenomena in their
orders of co-existence, succession, and resemblance. Man has no
faculty for cognizing substances, causes, forces, reasons, first
principles—no power by which he can Ánow God. This class
may be again subdivided into— ->
I. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and
classification of mental phenomena (e. g., Idealists like J. S.
Mill).
2. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and
classification of material phenomena (e. g., Materialists like
Comte).
II. 7%e second class comprises aſ who admit that philosophic
Ánoz0/edge is the Azzozeledge of effects as dependent on causes, and of
qualifies as inherent in substances; but aſ the same time asserſ that
“a/Z knowledge is of the phenomenal.” Philosophy can never
attain to a positive knowledge of the First Cause. Of exist-
ence, absolutely and in itself, we know nothing. The infinite
G B E E K. PHIL O S O PET Y. I67
can not by us be comprehended, conceived, or thought. jºząż/.
is the organ by which we apprehend what is beyond knowledge.
We believe in the existence of God, but we can not know God.
This class, also, may be again subdivided into—
I. Those who affirm that our idea of the Infinite First
Cause is grounded on an intuitional or subjective faith, ne-
cessitated by an “impotence of thought”—that is, by a
mental inability to conceive an absolute limitation or an
infinite illimitation, an absolute commencement or an infi-
nite non-commencement. Both contradictory opposites are
equally incomprehensible and inconceivable to us; and yet,
though unable to view either as possible, we are forced by a
higher law—the “Law of Excluded Middle”—to admit that
one, and only one, is necessary (e.g., Hamilton and Mansel).
2. Those who assert that our idea of God rests solely on
an historica/ or objective faith in testimony—the testimony
of Scripture, which assures us that, in the course of history,
God has manifested his existence in an objective manner. to
the senses, and given verbal communications of his character
and will to men; human reason being utterly incapacitated
by the fall, and the consequent depravity of man, to attain
any knowledge of the unity, spirituality, and righteousness
of God (e.g., Watson, and Dogmatic Theologians generally).
It will thus be manifest that the great question, the central
and vital question which demands a thorough and searching
consideration, is the following, to wit: Zs God cognizable by hu-
man reason 3 Can man attain to a positive cognition of God—
can he know God; or is all our supposed knowledge “a learned
ignorance,” an unreasoning faith? We venture to answer this
question in the affirmative. Human reason is now adequate
to the cognition of God; it is able, with the fullest confidence,
to affirm the being of a God, and, in some degree, to determine
his character. The parties and schools above referred to an-
Swer this question in the negative form. Whether Theologians
* Hamilton’s “Philosophy,” p. 512.
I68 C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. A. WD
or Atheists, they are singularly agreed in denying to human
reason all possibility of Knowing God.
Before entering upon the discussion of the negative positions
enumerated in the above classification, it may be important we
should state our own position explicitly, and exhibit what we
regard as the true doctrine of the genesis of the idea of God in
the human intelligence. The real question at issue will then
stand out in clear relief, and precision will be given to the en-
tire discussion.
(i) We hold that the idea of God is a common phenomenon of
ſhe universal human intelligence. It is found in all minds where
reason has had its normal and healthy development; and no
race of men has ever been found utterly destitute of the idea
of God. The proof of this position has already been furnished
in chap. ii., and needs not be re-stated here. We have simply
to remark that the appeal which is made by Locke and others
of the sensational school to the experiences of infants, idiots,
the deaf and dumb, or, indeed, any cases wherein the proper
conditions for the normal development of reason are wanting,
are utterly irrelevant to the question. The acorn contains
within itself the rudimental germ of the future oak, but its ma-
ture and perfect development depends on the exterior condi-
tions of moisture, light, and heat. By these exterior conditions
it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be stunted
in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of condi-
tions; it may be distorted and perverted, or it may perish ut-
terly under another. And so in the idiotic mind the ideas of
reason may be wanting, or they may be imprisoned by impervi-
ous walls of cerebral malformation. In the infant mind the de-
velopment of reason is yet in an incipient stage. The idea of
God is immanent to the infant thought, but the infant thought
is not yet matured. The deaf and dumb are certainly not in
that full and normal correlation to the world of sense which is a
necessary condition of the development of reason. Language,
the great vehiculum and instrument of thought, is wanting, and
* Pp. 89, 90.
G R E E K PEIII, OS OPFTY. I69
reason can not develop itself without words. “Words with-
out thought are dead sounds, thoughts without words are noth-
ing. The word is the thought incarnate.” Under proper and
normal conditions, the idea of God is the natural and necessary
form in which human thought must be developed. And, with
these explanations, we repeat our affirmation that the idea of
God is a common phenomenon of the universal human intelli-
gence.
(ii.) We do not hold that the idea of God, in its completeness, is a
simple, direct, and immediate intuition of the reason alone, independ.
ent of all experience, and al/?nowledge of the external world. The
idea of God is a complex idea, and not a simple idea. The af.
firmation, “God exists,” is a synthetic and primitive judgment
Spontaneously developed in the mind, and developed, too, inde-
pendent of all reflective reasoning. It is a necessary deduction
from the facts of the outer world of nature and the primary in-
tuitions of the inner world of reason—a logical deduction from
the self-evident truths given in sense, consciousness, and reason.
“We do not perceive God, but we conceive Him upon the faith
of this admirable world exposed to view, and upon the other
world, more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves.”
Therefore we do not say that man is born with an “innate
idea " of God, nor with the definite proposition, “there is a
God,” written upon his soul; but we do say that the mind is
pregnant with certain natural principles, and governed, in its
development, by certain necessary laws of thought, which de-
termine it, by a spontaneous logic, to affirm the being of a God;
and, furthermore, that this judgment may be called inſtate in
the Sense, that it is the primitive, universal, and necessary de-
velopment of the human understanding which “is innate to it-
Self and equal to itself in all men.”
As the vital and rudimentary germ of the oak is contained
in the acorn; as it is quickened and excited to activity by the
external conditions of moisture, light, and heat, and is fully de-
* Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 384.
* Cousin, “True, Beautiful, and Good,” p. 102. * Leibnitz.
.
I7o CET ſº ISTIANITY AND
veloped under the fixed and determinative laws of vegetable
life—so the germs of the idea of God are present in the human
mind as the intuitions of pure reason (Æational Psychology);
these intuitions are excited to energy by Our experiential and
historical knowledge of the facts and laws of the universe (Phe-
momenology); and these facts and intuitions are developed into
form by the necessary laws of the intellect (Womology, or Pri-
mordia/ Zogic).
The Jogical demonstration of the being of God commences
with the analysis of thought. It asks, What are the ideas which
exist in the human intelligence 2 What are their actual charac-
teristics, and what their primitive characteristics 2 What is
their origin, and what their validity ? Having, by this process,
found that some of our ideas are subjective, and some objec-
tive; that some are derived from experience, and that some can
not be derived from experience, but are inherent in the very con-
stitution of the mind itself, as d ??iori ideas of reason ; that
these are characterized as self-evident, universal, and neces-
sary; and that, as laws of thought, they govern the mind in all
its conceptions of the universe ; it has formulated these neces-
sary judgments, and presented them as distinct and articulate
propositions. These d ?riori, necessary judgments constitute
the major premise of the Theistic syllogism, and, in view of the
facts of the universe, necessitate the affirmation of the existence
of a God as the only valid explanation of the ſacts..
The ſlatura/ or chronological order in which the idea of God
is developed in the human intelligence, is the reverse process
of the Scientific or logical order, in which the demonstration
of the being of God is presented by philosophy; the latter is
7&ſective and analytic, the former is spontaneous and synthetic.
The natural order commences with the knowledge of the facts
of the universe, material and mental, as revealed by sensation
and experience. In presence of these facts of the universe,
the d ??iori ideas of power, cause, reason, and end are evoked
into consciousness with greater or less distinctness; and the
judgment, by a natural and spontaneous logic, free from all
G R E E R PEIII, O S O PEI Y. I7 I
reflection, and consequently from all possibility of error, affirms
a necessary relation between the facts of experience and the
d priori ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary
and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cog-
nition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and defi-
niteness, in all rational minds. The d fosteriori, or empirical,
knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations
to time and space, Constitute the minor premise of the Theistic
syllogism.
The Theistic argument is, therefore, necessarily composed
of both experiential and d ?riori elements. An & Żosterior;
element exists as a condition of the logical demonstration.
The rational dº ſºriori element is, however, the logical basis, the
only valid foundation of the Theistic demonstration. The facts
of the universe alone would never lead man to the recognition
of a God, if the reason, in presence of these facts, did not
enounce certain necessary and universal principles which are
the logical antecedents, and adequate explanation of the facts.
Of what use would it be to point to the events and changes of
the material universe as proofs of the existence of a First Cause,
unless we take account of the universal and necessary truth
that “every change must have an efficient cause ;” that all
phenomena are an indication of flower; and that “there is an
ultimate and Sufficient reason why all things exist, and are as
they are, and not otherwise.” There would be no logical force
in enumerating the facts of order and special adaptation which
literally crowd the universe, as proofs of the existence of an
Intelligent Creator, if the mind did not affirm the necessary prin-
ciple that “facts of order, having a commencement in time,
suppose mind as their source and exponent.” There is no
logical conclusiveness in the assertion of Paley, “that experi-
ence teaches us that a designer must be a person ;” because, as
Hume justly remarks, our “experience” is narrowed down to
a mere point, “ and can not be a rule for a universe ;” but
there is an infinitude of ſorce in that dictum of reason, that
“intelligence, self-consciousness, and self-determination neces-
- -- \
I72 CFIRISTIA WIT Y. AND
Sarily constitute personality.” A multiplicity of different effects,
of which experience does not always reveal the connection,
would not conduct to a single cause and to one God, but rather
to a plurality of causes and a plurality of gods, did not reason
teach us that “all plurality implies an ultimate indivisible
unity,” and therefore there must be a First Cause of all causes,
a First AErinciple of all principles, the Suðstance of all substances,
the Being of all beings — a God “ of whom, in whom, and to
whom are all things” (Távra ék Toij 0800, #y tº 0s), sic Töy 0sóv).
The conclusion, therefore, is, that, as the idea of God is a
complex idea, So there are necessarily a number of simple d
Żrior: principles, and a variety of experiential facts conspiring
to its development in the human intelligence.
(iii.) 7%e universe presents to the human mind an aggregation
and history of Żhenomena which demands the idea of a God—a
seff-existent, inte//gent, Zersonal, righteous First Cause—as its ade-
quale explanation.
The attempt of Positivism to confine all human knowledge
to the observation and classification of phenomena, and arrest
and foreclose all inquiry as to causes, efficient, final, and ulti-
mate, is simply futile and absurd. It were just as easy to arrest
the course of the sun in mid-heaven as to prevent the human
mind from seeking to pass beyond phenomena, and ascertain
the ground, and reason, and cause of all phenomena. The his-
tory of speculative thought clearly attests that, in all ages, the
inquiry after the Ultimate Cause and Reason of all existence—
the épxft, or First Principle of all things—has been the inevita-
ble and necessary tendency of the human mind; to resist which,
skepticism and positivism have been utterly impotent. The
first philosophers, of the Ionian school, had just as strong a
faith in the existence of a Supreme Reality—an Ultimate Cause
—as Leibnitz and Cousin. But when, by reflective thought,
they attempted to render an account to themselves of this in-
stinctive faith, they imagined that its object must be in some
way appreciable to sense, and they sought it in some physical
element, or under some visible and tangible shrine. Still, how-
G R E E K PHIL OS OPEI Y. I73
ever imperfect and inadequate the method, and however unsat-
isfactory the results, humanity has never lost its positive and
ineradicable confidence that the problem of existence could be
solved. The resistless tide of spontaneous and necessary
thought has always borne the race onward towards the recog-
nition of a great First Cause ; and though philosophy may have
erred, again and again, in tracing the logical order of this inev-
itable thought, and exhibiting the necessary nexus between the
premises and conclusion, yet the human mind has never wa-
vered in the confidence which it has reposed in the natural
logic of thought, and man has never ceased to believe in a God.
We readily grant that all our empirical knowledge is con-
fined to phenomena in their orders of co-existence, succession,
and resemblance. “To our objective perception and compar-
ison nothing is given but qualities and changes; to our induc-
tive generalization nothing but the shifting and grouping of
these in time and space.” Were it, however, our immediate
concern to discuss the question, we could easily show that sen-
sationalism has never succeeded in tracing the genetic origin
of our ideas of space and time to observation and experience;
and, without the d £riori idea of space, as the place of bodies,
and of time, as the condition of succession, we can not conceive
of phenomena at all. If, therefore, we know any thing beyond
phenomena and their mutual relations; if we have any cog-
nition of realities underlying phenomena, and of the relations
of phenomena to their objective ground, it must be given by
some faculty distinct from sense-perception, and in some proc-
ess distinct from inductive generalization. The knowledge of
real Being and real Power, of an ultimate Reason and a per-
sonal Will, is derived from the apperception of pure reason,
which affirms the necessary existence of a Supreme Reality—
an Uncreated Being beyond all phenomena, which is the ground
and reason of the existence—the contemporaneousness and
succession—the likeness and unlikeness, of all phenomena.
The immediate presentation of phenomena to sensation is
the occasion of the development in consciousness of these dº
I74 C HIR IS TI A NIT Y. A N D
Ariori ideas of reason : the possession of these ideas, or the im-
manence of these ideas, in the human intellect, constitutes the
original power to know external phenomena. The ideas of
space, time, power, law, reason, and end, are the logical antece-
dents of the ideas of body, succession, event, Consecution, Order,
and adaptation. The latter can not be conceived as distinct
notions without the former. . The former will not be revealed
in thought without the presentation to Sense, of resistance,
movement, change, uniformity, etc. All actual knowledge must,
thereſore, be impure ; that is, it must involve both d ?riori and
& Żosſeriori elements ; and between these elements there must
be a necessary relation.
This necessary relation between the d ?riori and d fosteriori
elements of knowledge is not a mere subjective law of thought.
It is both a law of thought and a law of things. Between the
d posteriori facts of the universe and the d priori ideas of the .
reason there is an absolute nexus, a universal and necessary
correlation; so that the cognition of the latter is possible only
on the cognition of the former ; and the objective existence of
the realities, represented by the ideas of reason, is the condi-
tion, sine gua ſton, of the existence of the phenomena presented
to sense. If, in one indivisible act of consciousness, we im-
mediately perceive extended matter exterior to our percipient
mind, then Extension exists objectively; and if Extension exists
Objectively, then Space, its conditio sine gua alon, also exists ob-
jectively. And if a definite body reveals to us the Space in
which it is contained, if a succession of pulsations or move-
ments exhibit the uniform Time beneath, so do the changeſul
phenomena of the universe demand a living Power behind,
and the existing order and regular evolution of the universe
presuppose 77,019//–prevision, and predetermination, by an
intelligent mind.
If, then, the universe is a created effect, it must furnish some
indications of the character of its cause. If, as Plato taught,
the world is a “created image" of the eternal archetypes which
dwell in the uncreated Mind, and if the subjective ideas which
G B E E R PEI II, OSO I2EI Y. I75
dwell in the human reason, as the offspring of God, are “cop-
ies” of the ideas of the Infinite Reason—if the universe be
“the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit which has also repeat-
editself in miniature within our finite spirit,” then may we deci.
pher its symbols, and read its lessons straight off. Then every
approach towards a Scientific comprehension and generaliza-
tion of the facts of the universe must carry us upward towards
the higher realities of reason. The more we can understand
of Nature—of her comprehensive laws, of her archetypal forms,
of her ſar-reaching plan spread through the almost infinite ages,
and stretching through illimitable space—the more do we com-
prehend the divine Thought. The inductive generalization of
Science gradually ascends towards the universal; the pure, essen-
tial, d ?riori reason, with its universal and necessary ideas, de-
scends from above to meet it. The general conceptions of sci-
ence are thus a kind of idea umbrafiles—shadowy assimilations
to those immutable ideas which dwell in essential reason, as
possessed by the Supreme Intelligence, and which are partici-
pated in by rational man as the Offspring and image of God.
Without making any pretension to profound Scientific accu-
racy, we offer the following tentative classification of the facts
of the universe, material and mental, which may be regarded
as hints and adumbrations of the ultimate ground, and reason,
and cause, of the universe. We shall venture to classify these
facts as indicative of some fundamental relation ; (i.) to Per-
manent Being or Reality; (ii.) to Reason and Thought; (iii.) to
Moral Ideas and Ends.
(i.) /acts of ſhe universe which indicate some fundamental re-
ſation fo Permanent Being or Æea/İy.
1. Qualitative Phenomena (properties, attributes, qualities)
—the predicates of a subject; which phenomena, being charac-
terized by likeness and unlikeness, are capable of compari-
Son and classification, and thus of revealing something as to
the nature of the subject.
2. Dynamical Phenomena (protension, movement, succes-
176 C EIRISTIANITY AND
sion)—events transpiring in time, having beginning, succes-
sion, and end, which present themselves to us as the expres-
sion of power, and throw back their distinctive characteristics
on their dynamic source.
3. Quantitative Phenomena (totality, multiplicity, relative
unity)—a multiplicity of objects having relative and compo-
site unity, which suggests Some relation to an absolute and
indivisible unity.
4. Statical Phenomena (extension, magnitude, divisibility)
—bodies co-existing in space which are limited, conditioned,
relative, dependent, and indicate Some relation to that which
is self-existent, unconditioned, and absolute.
(ii.) Facts of the universe which indicate some fundamental re-
/ation to Æeason or 77tought.
1. Numerica/ and Geometrical Proportion.—Definite pro-
portion of elements (Chemistry), symmetrical arrangement of
parts (Crystallography), numerical and geometrical relation of
the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies (Spherical
Astronomy), all of which are capable of exact mathematical
expression.
2. Archeſſy/a/ Aorms.—The uniform succession of new ex-
istences, and the progressive evolution of new orders and
species, conformable to fixed and definite ideal archetypes,
the indication of a comprehensive plan (Morphological Bot-
any, Comparative Anatomy).
3. Zeleology of Organs.—The adaptation of organs to the
fulfillment of Special functions, indicating design (Compara-
tive Physiology).
4. Combination of Æomotypes and Analogues.—Diversified
homologous forms made to fulfill analogous functions, or
Special purposes fulfilled whilst maintaining a general plan,
indicating choice and alternativity.
(iii.) Facts of the universe z0/ic/ indicate some fundamenta/
relation to Mora/ /deas and Eyed's.
G R EER PEIII, OS O PET Y. I77
1. AEthical Distinctions.—The universal tendency to dis-
criminate between voluntary acts as right or wrong, indicating
some relation to an immutable moral standard of right.
2. Sense of Obligation.—The universal consciousness of
dependence and obligation, indicating Some relation to a
Supreme Power, an Absolute Authority.
3. Feeling of Æesponsibility.—The universal consciousness
of liability to be required to give account for, and endure the
Consequences of our action, indicating Some relation to a
Supreme ºudge.
4. Actributive Zssues.—The pleasure and pain resulting
from moral action in this liſe, and the universal anticipation
of pleasure or pain in the future, as the consequence of pres-
ent conduct, indicate an absolute ºustice ruling the world
and man.
Now, if the universe be a created effect, it must, in some de-
gree at least, reveal the character of its Author and cause. We
are entitled to regard it as a created symbol and image of the
Deity; it must bear the impress of his pozwer; it must reveal
his infinite presence; it must express his thoughās; it must em-
body and realize his ideals, so far, at least, as material symbols
will permit. Just as we see the power and thought of man re-
vealed in his works, his energy and skill, his ideal and his taste
expressed in his mechanical, artistic, and literary creations, so
we may see the mind and character of God displayed in his
works. The skill and contrivance of Watts, and Fulton, and
Stephenson were exhibited in their mechanical productions.
The pure, the intense, the visionary impersonation of the soul
which the artist had conjured in his own imagination was wrought
out in Psyché. The colossal grandeur of Michael Angelo's
ideals, the ethereal and saintly elegance of Raphael's were real-
ized upon the canvas. So he who is familiar with the ideal of
the sculptor or the painter can identify his creations even when
the author’s name is not affixed. And so the “eternal Power”
of God is “clearly seen * in the mighty orbs which float in the
I 2
178 C EIRISTIANITY AND
|
!
illimitable space. The vastness of the universe shadows forth
the infinity of God. The indivisible unity of space and the
ideal unity of the universe reflect the unity of God. The mate-
rial forms around us are symbols of divine ideas, and the suc-
cessive history of the universe is an expression of the divine
thought; whilst the ethical ideas and sentiments inherent in the
human mind are a reflection of the moral character of God.
The reader can not have failed to observe the form in which
the Theistic argument is stated ; “if the finite universe is a
created effect, it must reveal something as to the nature of its
cause: if the existing order and arrangement of the universe
had a commencement in time, it must have an ultimate and
adequate cause.” The question, therefore, presents itself in a
definite form : “As the universe finite or infinite, had the order
of the universe a beginning, or is iſ efferna/?”
It will be seen at a glance that this is the central and vital
question in the Theistic argument. If the order and arrange-
ment of the universe is eternal, then that order is an inherent
law of nature, and, as eternal, does not imply a cause aſ extra ;
if it is not eternal, then the ultimate cause of that order must
be a power above and beyond nature. In the former case the
minor premise of the Theistic syllogism is utterly invalidated ;
in the latter case it is abundantly sustained. -
Some Theistic writers—as Descartes, Pascal, Leibnitz, and
Saisset—have made the fatal admission that the universe is, in
some sense, infinite and eternal. In making this admission they
have unwittingly surrendered the citadel of strength, and de-
prived the argument by which they would prove the being of a
God of all its logical force. That argument is thus presented by
Saisset: “The finite supposes the infinite. Extension supposes
first space, then immensity: duration supposes first time, then
eternity. A sudden and irresistible judgment refers this to the
necessary, infinite, perfect being.” But if “the world is in-
finite and eternal,” may not nature, or the totality of all exist.
ence (rö Tāv), be the necessary, infinite, and perfect Being? An
* “Modern Pantheism,” vol. ii. p. 205. * Ibid., p. 123.
G R E E K PEI II, OS OPFT Y. I79
infinite and eternal universe has the reason of its existence in
itself, and the existence of such a universe can never prove to
us the existence of an infinite and eternal God.
A closer examination of the statements and reasonings of Des-
cartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz, as furnished by Saisset, will show
that these distinguished mathematicans were misled by the false
notion of “maſhematica/ infinitude.” Their infinite universe,
after all, is not an “absolute,” but a “relative” infinite; that is,
the indefinite. “The universe must extend indefinitely in time
and space, in the infinite greatness, and in the infinite littleness
of its parts—in the infinite variety of its species, of its forms,
and of its degrees of existence. The finite can not express the
infinite but by being multiplied infinitely. The finite, so far as
it is finite, is not in any reasonable relation, or in any intelligi-
ble proportion to the infinite. . But the finite, as multiplied infi-
nitely,' ages upon ages, Spaces upon Spaces, Stars beyond stars,
worlds beyond worlds, is a true expression of the Infinite Being.
Does it follow, because the universe has no limits, that it
must therefore be eternal, immense, infinite as God himself?
No ; that is but a vain scruple, which springs from the imagi-
nation, and not from the reason. The imagination is always
confounding what reason should ever distinguish, eternity and
time, immensity and space, relative infinity and absolute infinity.
The Creator alone is eternal, immense, absolutely infinite.”
The introduction of the idea of “the mathematical infinite ”
into metaphysical speculation, especially by Kant and Hamil-
ton, with the design, it would seem, of transforming the idea of
infinity into a sensuous conception, has generated innumerable
paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical
writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy
of Supposing that inſºnify and quantity are compatible attributes,
and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and
* “The infinite is distinct from the finite, and consequently from the mul-
tiplication of the finite by itself; that is, from the indefinite. That which is
not infinite, added as many times as you please to itself, will not become in-
finite.”—Cousin, “Hist, of Philos.,” vol. ii. p. 231.
* Saisset, “Modern Pantheism,” vol. ii. pp. 127, 128.
I8o CFIRISTIANIT Y. A ND
plausible error is ably refuted by a writer in the “North Ameri-
can Review.” We can not do better than transfer his argu-
ment to our pages in an abridged form.
“Mathematics is conversant with quantities and quantitative
relations. The conception of quantity, therefore, if rigorously
analyzed, will indicate d ?riori the natural and impassable
boundaries of the science ; while a Subsequent examination of
the quantities called infinite in the mathematical sense, and of
the algebraic symbol of infinity, will be seen to verify the re-
sults of this 4 priori analysis.
« Quantity is that attribute of things in virtue of which they
are susceptible of exact mensuration. The question how much,
or how many (guantus), implies the answer, so much, or so many
(fantus); but the answer is possible only through reference to
some standard of magnitude or multitude arbitrarily assumed.
Every object, therefore, of which quantity, in the mathematical
sense, is predicable, must be by its essential nature mensurable.
Now mensurability implies the existence of actual, definite lim-
its, since without them there could be no fixed relation between
the given object and the standard of measurement, and, con-
sequently, no possibility of exact mensuration. In fact, since
quantification is the object of all mathematical operations,
mathematics may be not inaptly defined as the science of the de-
ferminations of limits. It is evident, therefore, that the terms
quantity and finitude express the same attribute, namely, Zimita-
tion—the former relatively, the latter absolutely; for quantity is
limitation considered with relation to some standard of meas-
urement, and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself.
The sphere of quantity, therefore, is absolutely identical with
the sphere of the finite ; and the phrase infinite quantity, if
Strictly construed, is a contradiction in terms.
“The result thus attained by considering abstract quantity
is corroborated by considering concrete and discrete quantities.
Such expressions as infinite sphere, radius, Žara/e/ogram, Zine,
and so forth, are self-contradictory. A sphere is limited by its
* “The Conditioned and the Unconditioned,” No. CCV, art. iii. (i 864).
G R E E K PHIL, O.S. O.P. H. Y. I8I
own periphery, and a radius by the centre and circumference
of its circle. A parallelogram of infinite altitude is impossible,
because the limit of its altitude is assigned in the side which
must be parallel to its base in order to constitute it a parallelo-
gram. In brief, all figuration is limitation. The contradiction
in the term infinite line is not quite so obvious, but can readily
be made apparent. Objectively, a line is only the termination
of a surface, and a surface the termination of a solid; hence a
line can not exist apart from an extended quantity, nor an infi-
nite line apart from an infinite quantity. But as this term has
just been shown to be self-contradictory, an infinite line can
not exist objectively at all. Again, every line is extension in
one dimension; hence a mathematical quantity, hence mensura-
ble, hence finite ; you must, therefore, deny that a line is a
quantity, or else affirm that it is finite. *
“The same conclusion is forced upon us, if from geometry
we turn to arithmetic. The phrases infinite number, inſinife se-
ries, infinite process, and so forth, are all contradictory when
literally construed. Number is a relation among separate uni-
ties or integers, which, considered objectively as independent
of our cognitive powers, must Constitute an exact sum ; and
this exactitude, or synthetic totality, is limitation. If consider-
ed subjectively in the mode of its cognition, a number is infi-
nite only in the sense that it is beyond the power of our im-
agination or conception, which is an abuse of the term. In
either case the totality is fixed ; that is, finite. So, too, of series
and process. Since every series involves a succession of terms
or numbers, and every process a succession of steps or stages,
the notion of series and process plainly involves that of num-
ber, and must be rigorously dissociated from the idea of infinity.
At any one step, at any one term, the number attained is de-
terminate, hence finite. The fact that, by the law of the series
or of the process, we may continue the operation as ſong as we
f/ease, does not justify the application of the term infinite to
the operation itself; if any thing is infinite, it is the will which
continues the operation, which is absurd if said of human wills.
I82 C FIRISTIANITY AND
Consequently, the attribute of infinity is not predicable either
of “diminution without limit,” “augmentation without limit,” or
‘endless approximation to a fixed limit, for these mathemat-
ical processes continue only as we continue them, consist of
steps successively accomplished, and are limited by the very
fact of this serial incompletion.
“We can not forbear pointing out an important application
of these results to the Critical Philosophy. Kant bases each
of his famous four antinomies on the demand of pure reason
for unconditioned totality in a regressive series of conditions.
This, he says, must be realized either in an absolute first of the
series, conditioning all the other members, but itself uncondi-
tioned, or else in the absolute infinity of the series without a
first ; but reason is utterly unable, on account of mutual Con-
tradiction, to decide in which of the two alternatives the uncon-
ditioned is found. By the principles we have laid down, how-
ever, the problem is solved. The absolute infinity of a series
is a contradiction in adjecto. As every number, although im-
measurably and inconceivably great, is impossible unless unity
is given as its basis, So every series, being itself a number, is
impossible unless a first term is given as a commencement.
Through a first term alone is the unconditioned possible; that
is, if it does not exist in a first term, it can not exist at all ; of
the two alternatives, therefore, one altogether disappears, and
reason is freed from the dilemma of a compulsory yet impossi-
ble decision. Even if it should be allowed that the series has
no first term, but has originated aſ aferno, it must always at
each instant have a Zasł żerm ; the series, as a whole, can not
be infinite, and hence can not, as Kant claims it can, realize in
its wholeness unconditioned totality. Since countless terms
forever remain unreached, the series is forever limited by them.
Kant himself admits that it can never be completed, and is only
potentially infinite ; actually, therefore, by his own admission, it
is finite. But a last term implies a first, as absolutely as one end
of a string implies the other; the only possibility of an uncon-
ditioned lies in Kant's first alternative, and if, as he maintains,
G R EE K PHIL OS OPEI Y. I83
Reason must demand it, she can not hesitate in her decisions.
That number is a limitation is no new truth, and that every se-
ries involves number is self-evident ; and it is surprising that so
radical a criticism on Kant's system should never have Sug-
gested itself to his opponents. Even the so-called moments
of time can not be regarded as constituting a real Series, for a
series can not be real except through its divisibility into mem-
bers; whereas time is indivisible, and its partition into mo-
ments is a conventional fiction. Exterior limitability and inte-
rior divisibility result equally from the possibility of discontinu-
ity. Exterior illimitability and interior indivisibility are simple
phases of the same attribute of necessary continuity contemplated
under different aspects. From this principle flows another
upon which it is impossible to lay too much stress, namely,
7//imitability and indivisibility, ºftnäy and unity, reciproca/ly ºne-
cessitate each offer. Hence the Quantitative Infinites must be
also Units, and the division of space and time, implying absolute
contradiction, is not even cogitable as an hypothesis."
“The word infiniſe, therefore, in mathematical usage, as ap-
plied to process and to quantity, has a two-fold signification.
An infinite process is one which we can continue as long as we
please, but which exists solely in our continuance of it.” An
infinite quantity is one which exceeds our powers of mensura-
tion or of conception, but which, nevertheless, has bounds and
limits in itself.” Hence the possibility of relation among infinite
quantities, and of different orders of infinities. If the words
infinite, inſinity, inſºnitesimal, should be banished from mathe-
matical treatises and replaced by the words indefinite, indefinity,
and indefinitesimal, mathematics would suffer no loss, while, by
removing a perpetual Source of Confusion, metaphysics would
get great gain.” -
The above must be regarded as a complete refutation of the
* By the application of these principles the writer in the “North American
Review” completely dissolves the antinomies by which Hamilton seeks to
sustain his “Philosophy of the Conditioned.” See “North American Re-
view,” 1864, pp. 432–437.
* De Morgan, “Diff and Integ. Calc.” p. 9. “Id., ib., p. 25.
I84 C EII? IS TIA NITY". A ND
position taken by Hume, to wit, that the idea of nature eternally
existing in a state of order, without a cause other than the
eternally inherent laws of nature, is no more self-contradictory
than the idea of an eternally-existing and infinite mind, who
originated this order—a God existing without a cause. The
eternal and infinite Mind is indivisible and illimitable; nature,
in its totality, as well as in its individual parts, has interior di-
visibility, and exterior limitability. The infinity of God is not
a quantitative, but a qualitative infinity. The miscalled eternity
and infinity of nature is an indeftlife extension and protension
in time and space, and, as 77tantitative, must necessarily be lim-
ited and measurable, therefore ſºnife. -
The universe of sense-perception and sensuous imagination
is a phenomenal universe, a genesis, a perpetual becoming—an
entrance into existence, and an exit thence ; the Theist is,
therefore, perfectly justified in regarding it as disqualified for
self-existence, and in passing behind it for the Supreme Entity
that needs no cause. Phenomena demand causation, entities
dispense with it. No one asks for a cause of the space which
contains the universe, or of the Eternity on the bosom of which
it floats. Everywhere the line is necessarily drawn upon the
same principle ; that entities may have self-existence, phenom-
ena must have a cause."
IV. Psychological analysis clearly affesſs that in the phenomena
of consciousness there are ſound elements or ???ncift/es z0/ic/a, in
their regular and normal development, transcend the limits of con-
sciousness, and affain ſo f/he Azºozeſſedge of Absolute Aſſeing, Absolute
Zeason, Absolute Good, i. e., GOD.
The analysis of thought clearly reveals that the mind of man
is in possession of ideas, notions, beliefs, principles (as e.g., the
idea of space, duration, cause, substance, unity, infinity), which
are not derived from sensation and experience, and which can
not be drawn out of sensation and experience by any process
of generalization. These ideas have this incontestable peculiar-
* “Science, Nescience, and Faith,” in Martineau’s “Essays,” p. 206.
G R E E K PHILOSOPHY, I85
ity, as distinguished from all the phenomena of Sensation, that,
whilst the latter are particular, contingent, and relative, the
former are universal, mecessary, and absolute. As an example,
and a proof of the reality and validity of this distinction, take
the ideas of body and of space, the former unquestionably derived
from experience, the latter supplied by reason alone. “I ask
you, can not you conceive this book to be destroyed Without
doubt you can. And can not you conceive the whole world to
be destroyed, and no matter whatever in existence? You can.
For you, constituted as you are, the Supposition of the non-ex-
istence of bodies implies no contradiction. And what do we
call the idea of a thing which we can conceive of as non-exist-
ing? We call it a contingent and relative idea. But if you can
conceive this book to be destroyed, all bodies destroyed, can
you suppose space to be destroyed 2 You can not. It is in the
power of man's thought to conceive the non-existence of bod-
ies; it is not in the power of man’s thought to conceive the
non-existence of space. The idea of space is thus a ſuccessary
and absolute idea.”
Take, again, the ideas of event and cause. The idea of an
event is a contingent idea ; it is the idea of something which
might or might not have happened. There is no impossibility
or contradiction in either supposition. The idea of cause is a
necessary idea. An event being given, the idea of cause is nec-
essarily implied. An uncaused event is an impossible concep-
tion. The idea of cause is also a universal idea extending to
all events, actual or conceivable, and affirmed by all minds.
It is a rational fact, attested by universal consciousness, that
we can not think of an event transpiring without a cause ; of a
thing being the author of its own existence; of something gen-
erated by and out of nothing. Æx nihilo nihiſ is a universal
law of thought and of things. This universal “ law of caus-
ality" is clearly distinguishable from a general truth reached by
induction. For example, it is a very general truth that, during
twenty-four hours, day is succeeded by night. But this is not
* Cousin’s “Hist. of Philos.,” vol. ii. p. 214.
I86 . OFIRISTIANITY AND
a necessary truth, neither is it a universal truth. It does not
extend to all known lands, as, for example, to Nova Zembla.
It does not hold true of the other planets. Nor does it extend
to all possible lands. We can easily conceive of lands plunged
in eternal night, or rolling in eternal day. With another sys-
tem of worlds, one can conceive other physics, but one can not
conceive other metaphysics. It is impossible to imagine a
world in which the law of causality does not reign. Here,
then, we have one absolute principle (among others which may
be enumerated), the existence and reality of which is revealed,
not by sensation, but by reason—a principle which transcends
the limits of experience, and which, in its regular and logical
development, attains the knowledge of the Absolute Cause—
the First Cause of all causes—God.
Thus it is evident that the human mind is in possession of
two distinct orders of primitive cognitions,—one, contingent,
relative, and phenomenal; the other universal, necessary, and
absolute. These two distinct orders of cognition presuppose
the existence in man of two distinct faculties or organs of
knowledge — sensation, external and internal, which perceives
the contingent, relative, and phenomenal, and reason, which ap-
prehends the universal, necessary, and absolute. The knowl-
edge which is derived from Sensation and experience is called
empirical knowledge, or knowledge & Żosteriori, because subse-
quent to, and consequent upon, the exercise of the faculties of
observation. The knowledge derived from reason is called
transcendental knowledge, or knowledge d ?riori, because it fur-
nishes laws to, and governs the exercise of the faculties of ob-
servation and thought, and is not the result of their exercise.
The sensibility brings the mind into relation with the physical
world, the reason puts mind in communication with the in-
ſelligible world—the sphere of d ?riori principles, of necessary
and absolute truths, which depend upon neither the world nor
the conscious self, and which reveal to man the existence of
the Soul, nature, and God. Every distinct fact of consciousness
is thus at Once Asychologica/ and ontological, and contains these
G B E E K PHIL, OSO PETY. 187
three fundamental ideas, which we can not go beyond, or can-
cel by any possible analysis—the soul, with its faculties; maſter,
with its qualities ; God, with his perfections. -
We do not profess to be able to give a clear explication and
Complete enumeration of all the ideas of reason, and of the nec-
essary and universal principles or axioms which are grounded
on these ideas. This is still the grand desideratum of meta-
physióal Science. Its achievement will give us a primordial
logic, which shall be as exact in its procedure and as certain
in its cºnclusions as the mathematical sciences. Meantime,
it may be affirmed that philosophic analysis, in the person
of Plato,\Aristotle, Kant, and Cousin, has succeeded in dis-
engaging|Such d ??ior: ideas, and formulating such principles
and laws of thought, as lead infallibly to the cognition of the
Absolute Aeing, the Absolute A'eason, the Absolute Good, that is,
GOD.
It would carry us too far beyond our present design were
we to exhibit, in each, instance, the process of immediate ab-
straction by which the contingent and relative element of knowl-
edge is eliminated, and the necessary and absolute principle
is, disengaged. We shall simply state the method, and show
its application by a single illustration.
There are unquestionably two sorts of abstraction: 1. “Com-
farative abstraction, operating upon several real objects, and
seizing their resemblances in order to form an abstract idea,
which is collective and mediate ; collective, because different
individuals concur in its formation ; mediate, because it re-
quires several intermediate operations.” This is the method
of the physical sciences, which comprises comparison, abstrac-
tion, and generalization. The result in this process is the at-
tainment of a general truth. 2. “ ſm/mediate abstraction, not
comparative ; operating not upon several concretes, but upon a
single one, eliminating and neglecting its individual and varia-
ble part, and disengaging the absolute part, which it raises at
once to its pure form.” The parts to be eliminated in a con-
crete cognition are, first, the quality of the object, and the cir-

I88 CEIRISTIANITY AND
cumstances under which the absolute unfolds itself; and Sec-
ondly, the quality of the subject, which perceives but does not
constitute it. The phenomena of the me and the not-me, běing
eliminated, the absolute remains. This is the process of ra-
tional psychology, and the result obtained is a universal and
7iecessary truth. -
“Let us take, as an example, the principle of cause. To be
able to say that the event I see must have a cause, it is not
indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other.
The principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment
is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can not
change in respect to its object, it can not change in itself; it
neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less num-
ber of applications. The only difference that it is subject to
in regard to us is that we apply it, whether we remark it or not,
whether we disengage it or not from its particular application.
The question is not to eliminate the particularity of the phe-
nomenon wherein it appears to us, whether it be the fall of a
leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to conceive,
in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for
every event that begins to exist. Here it is not because I am
the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several
different cases, that I have come to this general and abstract
conception. A leaf falls ; at the same moment I think, I be-
lieve, I declare that this falling of the leaf must have a cause.
A man has been killed ; at the same instant I believe, I pro-
claim that this death must have a cause. Each one of these
facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and some-
thing universal and necessary, to wit, both of them can not but
have a cause. Now I am perfectly able to disengage the uni-
versal from the particular in regard to the first fact as well as
in regard to the second fact, for the universal is in the first
quite as well as in the second. In fact, if the principle of
causality is not universal in the first fact, neither will it be in
the second, nor in the third, nor in the thousandth ; for a thou-
sandth is not nearer than the first to the infinite—to absolute
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. - I89
universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with
necessity. . Pay particular attention to this point ; if necessity is
not in the first fact, it can not be in any ; for necessity can not
be formed little by little, and by successive increments. If, on
the first murder I see, I do not exclaim that this murder had
necessarily a cause, at the thousandth murder, although it shall
be proved that all the others had causes, I shall have the right
to think that this murder has, very probably, also a cause, but
I shall never have the right to say that it necessarily had a
cause. But when universality and necessity are already in a
single case, that case is sufficient to entitle me to deduce them
from it,” and we may add, also, to affirm them of every other
event that may transpire. -
The following schema will exhibit the generally accepted re-
Sults of this method of analysis applied to the phenomena of .
thought:
(i.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgmenits
from 20/ience is derived the cognition of Absolute Being.
I. Zhe principle of Substance; thus enounced—“every
quality Supposes a subject or real being.”
2. The principle of Causality; “every thing that begins to
be supposes a power adequate to its production, i. e., an effi-
cient cause.” - - :*
3. 77.6 principle of Únity; “all differentiation and plurality
Supposes an incomposite unity; all diversity, an ultimate and
indivisible identity.” -- -
4. Zhe principle of the Unconditioned; “the finite supposes
the infinite, the dependent supposes the self-existent, the
temporal supposes the eternal.”
(ii.) Oniversal and necessary Żrinciples, or primitive judgments,
from 70/ic/, is derived the cognition of the Absolute Zºeason.
I. Zhe principle of Zaled/ity; thus enounced, “facts of order
—definite proportion, symmetrical arrangement, numerical
* Cousin, “True, Beautiful, and Good,” pp. 57, 58.
I90 cIIRISTIANITY AND
relation, geometrical form—having a commencement in time,
present themselves to us as the expression of Zdeas, and refer
us to Mind as their analogon, and exponent, and Source.”
2. The principle of Consecution ; “the uniform succession
and progressive evolution of new existences, according to fix-
ed definite archetypes, Suppose a unity of thought—a compre-
hensive plan embracing all existence.” -
3. Zhe principle of /ntentionality or Fina/ Cause, “every
means Supposes an end Contemplated, and a choice and
adaptation of means to secure the end.”
4. Zhe principle of Personality; “intelligent purpose and
voluntary choice imply a personal agent.”
(iii.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments,
from z0/ience is derived the cognition of the Absolute Good.
1. The principle of Moral Zaw; thus enounced, “the ac-
tion of a voluntary agent necessarily characterized as right or
wrong, supposes an immutable and universal standard of
right—an absolute moral Law.”
2. The principle of Moral Obligation; “the feeling of obli-
gation to obey a law of duty supposes a Zawgiver by whose
authority we are obliged.” 3.
3. The principle of Moral Desert; “the feeling of personal
accountability and of moral desert Supposes a judge to whom
we must give account, and who shall determine our award.”
4. The principle of Æetribution ; “retributive issues in this
life, and the existence in all minds of an impersonal justice
which demands that, in the final issue, every being shall re-
ceive his just deserts, suppose a being of absolute justice
who shall render to every man according to his works.”
A more profound and exhaustive analysis may perhaps re-
Solve all these primitive judgments into one universal principle
or law, which Leibnitz has designated “7%e principle or Zazy
of sufficient reason,” and which is thus enounced—there must
be an ultimate and sufficient reason why any thing exists, and
GREER PITILOSOPHY, - I9 I
why it is as it is, rather than otherwise ; that is, if any thing
begins to be, something else must be supposed as the adequate
ground, and reason, and cause of its existence ;” or again, to
state the law in view of our present discussion, “if the finite
wniverse, with its existing order and arrangement, had a beginning, l
there must be an ultimate and sufficient reason why it exists, and i
why it is as it is, rather than otherwise.” In view of one partic-
ular class of phenomena, or special order of facts, this “princi-
ple of sufficient reason ’’ may be varied in the form of its state-
ment, and denominated “the principle of substance,” “the
principle of causality,” “the principle of intentionality,” etc.;
and, it may be, these are but specific judgments under the one
fundamental and generic law of thought which constitutes the
major premise of every Theistic syllogism.
These fundamental principles, primitive judgments, axioms,
or necessary and determinate forms of thought, exist poten-
tially or germinally in all human minds; they are spontane-
ously developed in presence of the phenomena of the universe,
material and mental; they govern the original movement of the
mind, even when not appearing in consciousness in their pure
and abstract form ; and they compel us to affirm a permanent
being or reality behind all phenomena—a power adequate to
the production of change, back of all events; a personal Mind,
as the explanation of all the facts of order, and uniform suc-
cession, and regular evolution ; and a personal Zazygiver and
Alighteous jºudge as the ultimate ground and reason of all the
phenomena of the moral world ; in short, to affirm an Uncon-
diffioned Cause of al/ſºnife and secondary causes; a First AErinci- i
f/e of a/Z £7-inciples; an Ü/timate A’eason of a/Z 7.easons ; an im- |
mutable Oncreaſed ºustice, f/he Ziving /*g/if of conscience; a Aïng
Żmmorta/, eternal, invisible, the only zvise God, the ruler of ſ/he |
z007/a/ and ſnazz.
Our position, then, is, that the idea of God is revealed to
man in the natural and spontaneous development of his intelli- .
gence, and that the existence of a Supreme Reality correspond-
ing to, and represented by this idea, is rationally and logically,
I92 C EII? IS TIA WIT Y. A ND
demonstrable, and therefore justly entitled to take rank as part
of our legitimate, valid, and positive &noz0/edge. *
And now from this position, which we regard as impregna-
ble, we shall be prepared more deliberately and intelligibly to
contemplate the various assaults which are openly or covertly
made upon the doctrine that God is cognizable by /iuman reason.
G R E E R PEIIL OS O PET Y. I93
CHAPTER VI.
THE UNKNOWN GOD (continued).
IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON ?
“The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but the confession
of despair.”—LIGHTFOOT.
T the outset of this inquiry we attempted a hasty group-
ing of the various parties and Schools which are arrayed
against the doctrine that God is cognizable by human reason,
and in general terms we sought to indicate the ground they
Occupy.
Viewed from a philosophical stand-point, we found one party
marshalled under the standard of Idealism ; another of Mate-
rialism ; and, again, another of Natural Realism. Regarded
in their theological aspects, Some are positive Atheists; others,
strange to say, are earnest Theists; whilst others occupy a posi-
tion of mere Indifferentism. Yet, notwithstanding the remark-
able diversity, and even antagonism of their philosophical and
theological opinions, they are all agreed in denying to reason
any valid cognition of God.
The survey of Natural Theism we have completed in the
previous chapter will enable us still further to indicate the
exact points against which their attacks are directed, and also
to estimate the character and ſorce of the weapons employed.
With or without design, they are, each in their way, assailing .
one or other of the principles upon which we rest our demon-
stration of the being of God. As we proceed, we shall find
that Mill and the Constructive Idealists are really engaged in
undermining “the principle of substance;” their doctrine is a
virtual denial of all objective realities answering to our subjec-
tive ideas of matter, mind, and God. The assaults of Comte
I 3
I94 CHRISTIANITY AND
and the Materialists of his school are mainly directed against
“ the principle of causality” and “the principle of intentionality;”
they would deny to man all knowledge of causes, efficient and
final. The attacks of Hamilton and his school are directed
against “the principle of the unconditioned,” his philosophy of
the conditioned is a plausible attempt to deprive man of all
power to think the Infinite and Perfect, to conceive the Uncon-
ditioned and Ultimate Cause; whilst the Dogmatic Theologians
are borrowing, and recklessly brandishing, the weapons of all
these antagonists, and, in addition to all this, are endeavoring
to show the insufficiency of “the principle of unity’ and the
weakness and invalidity of “the moral principles,” which are re-
garded by us as relating man to a Moral Personality, and as
indicating to him the existence of a righteous God, the ruler of
the world. It is necessary, therefore, that we should concentrate
our attention yet more specifically on these separate lines of at-
tack, and attempt a minuter examination of the positions as-
sumed by each, and of the arguments by which they are seek-
ing, directly or indirectly, to invalidate the fundamental princi-
ples of Natural Theism. g
(i.) We commence with the /dealistic School, of which John Stu-
art Mill must be regarded as the ablest living representative.
The doctrine of this school is that all our knowledge is nec-
essarily confined to mental phenomena; that is, “to feelings or
states of consciousness,” and “the succession and co-existence,
the likeness and unlikeness between these feelings or states of .
consciousness.” All our general notions, all our abstract
ideas, are generated out of these feelings” by “inseparable asso-
ciatioſ,” which registers their inter-relations of recurrence, co-
existence, and resemblance. The results of this inseparable
association constitute at once the sum total and the absolute
limit of all possible cognition.
* J. S. Mill, “Logic,” vol. i. p. 83 (English edition).
* In the language of Mill, every thing of which we are conscious is called
“feeling.” “Feeling, in the proper sense of the term, is a genus of which
Sensation, Emotion, and Thought are the subordinate species.”—“ Logic,”
bk. i. ch. iii. § 3.
G R E E K PEIII, OS OPEI Y. I95
It is admitted by Mill that one aftarent element in this to-
tal result is the general conviction that our own existence is
really distinct from the external world, and that the personal ego
has an essential identity distinct from the fleeting phenomena
of sensation. But this persuasion is treated by him as a mere
illusion—a leap beyond the original datum for which we have
no authority. Of a real substance or substratum called Mind,
of a real substance or substratum called Matter, underlying the
series of feelings—“the thread of consciousness”—we do know
and can know nothing ; and in affirming the existence of such
substrata we are making a supposition we can not possibly
verify. The ultimate datum of speculative philosophy is not
“I think,” but simply “Thoughts or feelings are.” The belief
in a permanent subject or substance, called matter, as the
ground and plexus of physical phenomena, and of a permanent
subject or substance, called mind, as the ground and plexus of
mental phenomena, is not a primitive and Original intuition of
reason. It is simply through the action of the principle of as-
sociation among the ultimate phenomena, called feelings, that
this (erroneous) separation of the phenomena into two orders
or aggregates—one called mind or self; the other matter, or
not self—takes place ; and without this curdling or associating
process no such notion or belief could have been generated.
“The principle of substance,” as an ultimate law of thought, is,
therefore, to be regarded as a transcendental dream.
But now that the notion of mind or seſſ, and of matter or
not self, do exist as common convictions of our race, what is
philosophy to make of them : After a great many qualifications
and explanations, Mr. Mill has, in his “Logic,” Summed up his
doctrine of Constructive Idealism in the following words: “As
body is the mysterious something which excites the mind to feel,
so mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks.”
But what is this “mysterious something?” Is it a reality, an
entity, a subject ; or is it a shadow, an illusion, a dream In
his “Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy,” where,
“Logic,” bk. i ch. iii. $8.
196 C EIR IS TIA NITY AND
it may be presumed, we have his maturest opinions, Mr. Mill,
in still more abstract and idealistic phraseology, attempts an
answer. Here he defines matter as “a permanent possibility
of sensation,” and mind as “a permanent possibility of feeling.”
And “the belief in these permanent possibilities,” he assures
us, “includes all that is essential or characteristic in the belief
in substance.” “If I am asked,” says he, “whether I believe
in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition
of it. If he does, I believe in matter; and so do all Berkeleians.
In any other sense than this, I do not. But I affirm with con-
fidence that this conception of matter includes the whole
meaning attached to it by the Common world, apart from philo-
sophical, and sometimes from theological theories. The reli-
ance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible
objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of pos-
sibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no sensations
are actually experienced.” “Sensations,” however, let it be
borne in mind, are but a subordinate species of the genus feel-
ing.” They are “states of consciousness”— phenomena of
mind, not of matter; and we are still within the impassable
boundary of ideal phenomena; we have yet no cognition of an
external world. The sole cosmical conception, for us, is still a
succession of sensations, or states of consciousness. This is
the one phenomenon which we can not transcend in knowl-
edge, do what we will; all else is hypothesis and illusion. The
non-ego, after all, then, may be but a mode in which the mind
represents to itself the possible modifications of the ego.
And now that matter, as a real existence, has disappeared
under Mr. Mill's analysis, what shall be said of mind or self?
Is there any permanent subject or real entity underlying the
phenomena of feeling In feeling, is there a personal self that
feels, thinks, and wills It would seem not. Mind, as well as
matter, resolves itself into a “series of feelings,” varying and
fugitive from moment to moment, in a sea of possibilities of
* Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 243. tº
* Ibid., vol. i. p. 253. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 246.
“Ibid., vol. i. pp. 243, 244. - * “Logic,” bk. i. ch. iii. § 3.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY. I97
feeling. “My mind,” says Mill, “is but a series of feelings,
or, as it has been called, a thread of consciousness, however
Supplemented by believed possibilities of consciousness, which
are not, though they might be, realized.” º
The ultimate fact of the phenomenal world, then, in the
philosophy of Mill, is neither matter nor mind, but feelings or
states of consciousness associated together by the relations,
amongst themselves, of recurrence, co-existence, and resem-
blance. The existence of self, except as “a series of feel-
ings;” the existence of any thing other than self, except as a
feigned unknown cause of sensation, is rigorously denied. Mr.
Mill does not content himself with saying that we are ignorant
of the nature of matter and mind, but he asserts we are igno-
rant of the existence of matter and mind as real entities.
The bearing of this doctrine of Idealism upon Theism and
Theology will be instantly apparent to the reader. If I am nec-
essarily ignorant of the existence of the external world, and of
the personal ego, or real self, I must be equally ignorant of the
existence of God. If one is a mere supposition, an illusion, so
the other must be. Mr. Mill, however, is one of those courteous
and affable writers who are always conscious, as it were, of the
presence of their readers, and extremely careful not to shock
their feelings or prejudices ; besides, he has too much con-
scious self-respect to avow himself an atheist. As a specula-
tive philosopher, he would rather regard Theism and Theology
as “open questions,” and he satisfies himself with saying, if you
believe in the existence of God, or in Christianity, I do not in-
terfere with you. “As a theory,” he tells us that his doctrine
“leaves the evidence of the existence of God exactly as it was
before. Supposing me to believe that the Divine mind is sim-
ply the series of the Divine thoughts and feelings prolonged
through eternity, that would be, at any rate, believing God’s ex-
istence to be as real as my own [!]. And as for evidence, the
argument of Paley's ‘Natural Theology,” or, for that matter, of
his ‘Evidences of Christianity,’ would stand exactly as it does.
* “Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 254.
198 C EIR IS TIA WTT Y. A WID
The design argument is drawn from the analogies of human ex-
perience. From the relation which human works bear to hu-
man thoughts and feelings, it infers a corresponding relation
between works more or less similar, but Superhuman, and Su-
perhuman thoughts and feelings. If it prove these, nobody
but a metaphysician needs care whether or not it proves a
mysterious substratum for them.” The argument from design,
it seems to us, however, would have no validity if there be no
external world offering marks of design. If the external world
is only a mode of feeling, a Series of mental States, then our
notion of the Divine Existence may be only “an association
of feelings” — a mode of Self. And if we have no positive
knowledge of a real self as existing, and God's existence is no
more “real than our own,” then the Divine existence stands on
a very dubious and uncertain foundation. It can have no very
secure hold upon the human mind, and certainly has no claim
to be regarded as a fundamental and necessary belief. That
it has a very precarious hold upon the mind of Mr. Mill, is evi-
dent from the following passage in his article on “Zafer Specu-
Jations of A. Comte.” “We venture to think that a religion
may exist without a belief in a God, and that a religion without
a God may be, even to Christians, an instructive and profitable
object of contemplation.”
And now let us close Mr. Mill's book, and, introverting our
mental gaze, interrogate consciousness, the verdict of which, even
Mr. Mill assures us, is admitted on all hands to be a decision
without appeal.”
I. We have an ineradicable, and, as it would seem, an in-
tuitive faith in the real existence of an external world distinct
from Our Sensations, and also of a personal self, which we call
“I,” “myself,” as distinct from “my sensations,” and “my
feelings.” We find, also, that this is confessedly the common
belief of mankind. There have been a few philosophers who
* “Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 259.
2 Westminster Review, July, 1835 (American edition), p. 3.
* “Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 161.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. I99
5 J
have affected to treat this belief as a “mere prejudice,” an
“illusion ;” but they have never been able, practically, so to
regard and treat it. Their language, just as plainly as the lan-
guage of the common people, betrays their instinctive faith in
an outer world, and proves their utter inability to emancipate
themselves from this “prejudice,” if such it may please them to
call it. In view of this acknowledged fact, we ask—Does the
term “Żermanent possibility of sensations' exhaust all that is
contained in this conception of an external world 2 This even-
ing I remember that at noonday I beheld the sun, and experi-
enced a sensation of warmth whilst exposing myself to his rays;
and I expect that to-morrow, under the same conditions, I shall
experience the same sensations. I now 2-emember that last
evening I extinguished my light and attempted to leave my
study, but, coming in contact with the closed door, experienced
a sense of resistance to my muscular effort, by a solid and ex-
tended body exterior to myself; and I expect that this evening,
under the same circumstances, I shall experience the same
sensations. Now, does a belief in “a permanent possibility of
sensations” explain all these experiences 2 does it account for
that immediate knowledge of an external object which I had
on looking at the sun, or that presentative knowledge of resis#.
ance and extension, and of an extended, resisting substance, I had
when in contact with the door of my study ? Mr. Mill very
confidently affirms that this belief includes all ; and this phrase
expresses all the meaning attached to extended “matter” and
resisting “substance” by the common world.' We as confi-
dently affirm that it does no such thing; and as “the common
world’’ must be supposed to understand the language of con-
sciousness as well as the philosopher, we are perfectly willing
to leave the decision of that question to the common conscious-
mess of our race. If all men do not believe in a permanent
zeality—a substance which is external to themselves, a sub-
stance which offers resistance to their muscular effort, and
which produces in them the Sensations of Solidity, extension,
* “Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 243.
2 OO C EIRISTIA WITY AND
resistance, etc.—they believe nothing and know nothing at all
about the matter.
Still less does the phrase “a permanent possibility offeelings”
exhaust all our conception of a personal Self. Recurring to the
experiences of yesterday, I remember the feelings I experienced
on beholding the sun, and also on pressing against the closed
door, and I confidently expect the recurrence, under the same
circumstances, of the same feelings. Does the belief in “a
permanent possibility of feelings” explain the act of memory
by which I recall the past event, and the act of prevision by
which I anticipate the recurrence of the like experience in the
future ? Who or what is the “I” that remembers and the “I”
that anticipates ? The “ego,” the personal mind, is, according
to Mill, a mere “series of feelings,” or, more correctly, a flash
of “present feelings” on “a background of possibilities of pres-
ent feelings.” If, then, there be no permanent substance or
reality which is the subject of the present feeling, which re-
ceives and retains the impress of the past feeling, and which
anticipates the recurrence of like feelings in the future, how can
the past be recalled, how distinguished from the present? and
how, without a knowledge of the past as distinguished from the
present, can the future be forecast 2 Mr. Mill feels the press-
ure of this difficulty, and frankly acknowledges it. He admits
that, on the hypothesis that mind is simply “a series of feel-
ings,” the phenomena of memory and expectation are “inex-
plicable " and “incomprehensible.” He is, therefore, under
the necessity of completing his definition of mind by adding
that it is a series of feelings which “is aware of itseff as a series;”
and, still further, of supplementing this definition by the conjec-
ture that “ something which has ceased to exist, or is not yet in ex-
isſence, can still, in a manner, be present.” Now he who can un-
derstand how a series of feelings can flow on in time, and from
moment to moment drop out of the present into non-existence,
and yet be present and conscious of itself as a series, may be ac-
* “Exam. of Hamilton,” vol. i. p. 260. * Ibid., p. 262.
* Ibid.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 2OI
corded the honor of understanding Mr. Mill's definition of
mind or self, and may be permitted to rank himself as a dis-
tinguished disciple of the Idealist school; for ourselves, we ac-
knowledge we are destitute of the capacity to do the one, and
of all ambition to be the other. And he who can conceive how
the past feeling of yesterday and the possible feeling of to-mor-
row can be in any manner £resent to-day; or, in other words,
how any thing which has ceased to exist, or which never had an
existence, can now exist, may be permitted to believe that a
thing can be and not be at the same moment, that a part is
greater than the whole, and that, two and two make five ; but
we are not ashamed to confess our inability to believe a contra-
diction. To our understanding, “possibilities of feeling ” are
not actualities. They may or may not be realized, and until
realized in consciousness, they have no real being. If there be
no other background of mental phenomena Save mere “possi-
bilities of feeling,” then present feelings are the only existences,
the only reality, and a loss of immediate consciousness, as in
narcosis and coma, is the loss of all personality, all Self-hood,
and of all real being.
2. What, then, is the verdict of consciousness as to the exist-
ence of a permanent substance, an abiding existence which is
the subject of all the varying phenomena? Of what are we
really conscious when we say “I think,” “I feel,” “I will?” Are
we simply conscious of thought, feeling, and volition, or of a
self, a person, which thinks, feels, and wills? The man who
honestly and unreservedly accepts the testimony of conscious-
ness in all its integrity must answer at once, we haze an imme-
diate consciousness, not merely of the Ahenomena of mind, but of a
persona/se/fas passively or actively related to the phenomena. We
are conscious not merely of the act of volition, but of a self, a
power, producing the volition. We are conscious not merely
of feeling, but of a being who is the subject of the feeling. We
are conscious not simply of thought, but of a real entity that
thinks. “It is clearly a flat contradiction to maintain that I
am not immediately conscious of myself, but only of my sensa-
2O2 C EIRISTIANIT Y. AND
tions or volitions. Who, then, is that Z that is conscious, and
how can I be conscious of such states as mine º’”
The testimony of consciousness, then, is indubitable that we
have a direct, immediate cognition of Seff—I know myself as a
distinctly existing being. This permanent self, to which I refer
the earlier and later Stages of consciousness, the past as well as
the present feeling, and which I know abides the same under.
all phenomenal changes, constitutes my personal identity. It
is this abiding self which unites the past and the present, and,
from the present stretches onward to the future. We know
'self immediately, as existing, as in active operation, and as hav-
ing permanence—or, in other words, as a “substance.” This
one immediately presented substance, myself, may be regarded.
as furnishing a positive basis for that other notion of Substance,
which is representatively thought, as the subject of all sensible
qualities. - - -
3. We may now inquire what is the testimony of conscious-
ness as to the existence of the extra-mental world 2 Are we
conscious of perceiving external objects immediately and in
themselves, or only mediately through some vicarious image or
representative idea to which we fictitiously ascribe an objective
reality?
The answer of common sense is that we are immediately
conscious, in perception, of an ego and a non-ego known together,
and known in contrast to each other ; we are conscious of a
perceiving subject, and of an external reality, as the object per-
ceived.” To state this doctrine of natural realism still more ex-
plicitly we add, that we are conscious of the immediate per-
ception of certain essential attributes of matter objectively ex-
isting. Of these primary qualities, which are immediately per-
ceived as real and objectively existing, we mention extension in
space and resistance to muscular effort, with which is indissolu-
bly associated the idea of externality. It is true that extension
and resistance are only qualities, but it is equally true that they
* Mansel, “Prolegomena Logica,” p. 122, and note E, p. 281.
* Hamilton, “Lectures,” vol. 1. p. 288.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 2O3
are qualities of something, and of Something which is exter-
nal to ourselves. Let any one attempt to conceive of extension
without something which is extended, or of resistance apart from
something which offers resistance, and he will be convinced that
we can never know qualities without knowing Substance, just as
we can not know substance without knowing qualities. This,
indeed, is admitted by Mr. Mill.’ And if this be admitted, it
must certainly be absurd to speak of Substance as Something
“unknown.” Substance is known just as much as quality is
known, no less and no more.
We remark, in conclusion, that if the testimony of conscious-
ness is not accepted in all its integrity, we are necessarily in-
volved in the Nihilism of Hume and Fichte ; the phenomena
of mind and matter are, on analysis, resolved into an absolute
nothingness—“a play of phantasms in a void.” - : ,
(ii) We turn, secondly, to the Materialistic School as repre-
sented by Aug. Comte.
The doctrine of this school is that all knowledge is limited
to material phenomena—that is, to appearances perceptible to
sense. We do not know the essence of any object, nor the real
mode of procedure of any event, but simply its relations to other
events, as similar or dissimilar, co-existent or successive. These
relations are constant; under the same conditions, they are
always the same. The constant resemblances which link phe-
nomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them,
as antecedent and consequent, are termed Zazus. The laws of
phenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential
nature and their ultimate causes, efficient or final, are unknown
and inscrutable to us.”
It is not our intention to review the system of philosophy
propounded by Aug. Comte ; we are now chiefly concerned
with his denial of all causation. . -
* “Logic,” bk. i. ch. iii. § 6.
* Masson, “Recent British Philos.,” p. 62.
* See art. “Positive Philos. of A. Comte,” Westminster Review, April, 1865,
p. 162, Am. ed.
2O4. C EIR IS TI A NIT Y. A ND
I. As to Efficient Causes.—Had Comte contented himself with
the assertion that causes lie beyond the field of Sensible Ob-
servation, and that inductive science can not carry us beyond
the relations of co-existence and succession among phenomena,
he would have stated an important truth, but certainly not a
new truth. It had already been announced by distinguished
mental philosophers, as, for example, M. de Biran and Victor
Cousirt." The senses give us only the succession of One phe-
nomenon to another. I hold a piece of wax to the fire and it
melts. Here my senses inform me of two successive phenomena
—the proximity of fire and the melting of wax. It is now agreed
among all schools of philosophy that this is all the knowledge
the senses can possibly supply. The observation of a great
number of like cases assures us that this relation is uniform.
The highest Scientific generalization does not carry us one step
beyond this fact. Induction, therefore, gives us no access to
causes beyond phenomena. Still, this does not justify Comte
in the assertion that causes are to us absolutely unknown. The
question would still arise whether we have not some faculty of
knowledge, distinct from sensation, which is adequate to fur-
nish a valid cognition of cause. It does not by any means fol-
low that, because the idea of causation is not given as a “phys-
ical quaesitum ” at the end of a process of scientific generaliza-
tion, it should not be a “metaphysical datum ” posited at the
very beginning of scientific inquiry, as the indispensable con-
dition of our being able to cognize phenomena at all, and as the
law under which all thought, and all conception of the system
of nature, is alone possible.
Now we affirm that the human mind has just as direct, im-
mediate, and positive knowledge of cause as it has of effect.
The idea of cause, the intuition of power, is given in the imme-
diate consciousness of mind as determining its own operations.
Our first, and, in fact, our only presentation of power or cause,
is that of self as willing. In every act of volition I am fully
* “It is now universally admitted that we have no perception of the causal
nexus in the material world.”—Hamilton, “Discussions,” p. 522.
G R E E K PHILOSOPETY. 2O5
conscious that it is in my power to form a resolution or to re-
frain from it, to determine on this course of action or that ; and
this constitutes the immediate presentative knowledge of pow-
er." The will is a power, a power in action, a productive power,
and, consequently, a cause. This doctrine is stated with re-
markable clearness and accuracy by Cousin: “If we seek the
motion of cause in the action of one ball upon another, as was
previously done by Hume, or in the action of the hand upon
the ball, or the primary muscles upon the extremities, or even
in the action of the will upon the muscles, as was done by M.
Maine de Biran, we shall find it in none of these cases, not even
in the last ; for it is possible there should be a paralysis of the
muscles which deprives the will of power over them, makes
it unproductive, incapable of being a cause, and, consequently,
of suggesting the notion of one. But what no paralysis can
prevent is the action of the will upon itself, the production of a
resolution ; that is to say, the act of causation entirely mental,
the primitive type of all causality, of which all external move-
ments . . . . are only symbols more or less imperfect. The
first cause for us, is, therefore, the will, of which the first effect
is volition. This is at once the highest and the purest source
of the notion of cause, which thus becomes identical with that
of personality. And it is the taking possession, so to speak,
of the cause, as revealed in will and personality, which is the
condition for us of the ulterior or simultaneous conception of
external, impersonal causes.” -
Thus much for the origin of the idea of cause. We have
the same direct intuitive knowledge of cause that we have of
effect ; but we have not yet rendered a full and adequate ac-
* “It is our immediate consciousness of effort, when we exert force to put mat-
ter in motion, or to oppose and neutralize force, which gives us this internal
conviction of Żower and causation, so far as it refers to the material world,
and compels us to believe that whenever we see material objects put in mo-
tion from a state of rest, or deflected from their rectilinear paths and changed
in their velocities if already in motion, it is in consequence of such an effort
somehow exerted.”—Herschel’s “Outlines of Astronomy,” p. 234; see Man-
sel’s “Prolegomena,” p. 133. -
* “Philosophical Fragments,” Preface to first edition.
2O6 C II RISTIANITY AND
count of the principle of causality. We have simply attained
the notion of our personal causality, and we can not arbitrarily
substitute our personal causality for all the causes of the uni-
verse, and erect our own experience as a law of the entire uni-
verse. We have, however, already seen (Chap. V.) that the
belief in exterior causation is necessary and universal. When a
change takes place, when a new phenomenon presents itself to
our senses, we can not avoid the conviction that it must have a
cause. We can not even express in language the relations of
phenomena in time and space, without speaking of causes. And
there is not a rational being on the face of the globe—a child,
a savage, or a philosopher—who does not instinctively and
spontaneously affirm that every movement, every change, every
new existence, must have a cause. Now what account can
philosophy render of this universal belief? One answer, and
only one, is possible. The reason of man (that power of which
Comte takes no account) is in fixed and changeless relation to
the principle of causation, just as sense is in fixed and change-
less relation to exterior phenomena, so that we can not know
the external world, can not think or speak of phenomenal ex-
istence, except as effects. In the expressive and forcible lan-
guage of Jas. Martineau : “By an irresistible law of thought al/
//enomena Żresent themselves to us as the expression of power, and
refer us to a causal ground whence they issue. This dynamic
source we neither See, nor hear, nor ſeel; it is given in thought,
supplied by the spontaneous activity of mind as the correlative
prefix to the phenomena observed.” Unless, then, we are pre-
pared to deny the validity of all our rational intuitions, we can
not avoid accepting “this subjective postulate as a valid law
for objective nature.” If the intuitions of our reason are pro-
nounced deceptive and mendacious, so also must the intuitions
of the senses be pronounced illusory and false. Our whole in-
tellectual constitution is built up on false and erroneous prin-
ciples, and all knowledge of whatever kind must perish by “the
contagion of uncertainty.”
* “Essays,” p. 47.
G R EEA PHILOSOPHY. - 2O7
Comte, however, is determined to treat the idea of causation
as an illusion, whether under its psychological form, as will,
or under its scientific form, as force. He feels that Theology
is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes; and he is
more anxious that theology should perish than that truth should
prevail. The human will must, therefore, be robbed of all sem-
blance of freedom, lest it should suggest the idea of a Supreme
Will governing nature ; and human action, like all other phe-
nomena, must be reduced to uniform and necessary law. All
feelings, ideas, and principles guaranteed to us by conscious-
ness are to be cast out of the account. Psychology, resting on
self-observation, is pronounced a delusion. The immediate
consciousness of freedom is a dream. Such a procedure, to
say the least of it, is highly unphilosophical ; to say the truth
about it, it is obviously dishonest. Every fact of human na-
ture, just as much as every fact of physical nature, must be ac-
cepted in all its integrity, or all must be alike rejected. The
phenomena of mind can no more be disregarded than the phe-
nomena of matter. Rational intuitions, necessary and univer-
sal beliefs, can no more be ignored than the uniform facts of .
sense - perception, without rendering a system of knowledge
necessarily incomplete, and a system of truth utterly impossi-
ble. Every one truth is connected with every other truth in
the universe. And yet Comte demands that a large class of
facts, the most immediate and direct of all our cognitions, shall
be rejected because they are not in harmony with the funda-
mental assumption of the positive philosophy that all knowl-w
edge is confined to phenomena Żerceptible to sense. Now it were
just as easy to cast the Alps into the Mediterranean as to ob-
literate from the human intelligence the primary cognitions of
immediate consciousness, or to relegate the human reason from
the necessary laws of thought. Comte himself can not eman-
cipate his own mind from a belief in the validity of the testi-
* “The inevitable tendency of our intelligence is towards a philosophy rad-
ically theological, so often as we seek to penetrate, on whatever pretext, into
the intimate nature of phenomena” (vol. iv. p. 664).
208 CHRISTIANITY AND
mony of consciousness. How can he know himself as distinct
from nature, as a living person, as the same being he was ten
years ago, or even yesterday, except by an appeal to conscious-
ness? Despite his earnestly-avowed opinions as to the inutility
and fallaciousness of all psychological inquiries, he is com-
pelled to admit that “the phenomena of life” are “Anown by
Żmmediate consciousness.” Now the knowledge of our personal
freedom rests on precisely the same grounds as the knowledge
of our personal existence. The same “immediate conscious-
ness” which attests that I exist, attests also, with equal dis-
tinctness and directness, that I am self-determined and free.
In common with most atheistical writers, Comte is involved
in the fatal contradiction of at One time assuming, and at an-
other of denying, the freedom of the will, to serve the exigencies
of his theory. To prove that the order of the universe can not
be the product of a Supreme Intelligence, he assumes that the
products of mind must be characterized by freedom and variety
—the phenomena of mind must not be subject to uniform and
necessary laws; and inasmuch as the phenomena presented
by external nature are subject to uniform and changeless laws,
they can not be the product of mind. “Look at the whole
frame of things,” says he ; “how can it be the product of mind
—of a supernatural Will 2 Is it not subject to regular laws,
and do, we not actually obtain Żrezision of its phenomena 2 If
it were the product of mind, its order would be variable and
free.” Here, then, it is admitted that freedom is an essential
characteristic of mind. And this admission is no doubt a thought-
less, unconscious betrayal of the innate belief of all minds in
the freedom of the will. But when Comte comes to deal with
this freedom as an objective question of philosophy, when he
directs his attention to the only will of which we have a direct
and immediate knowledge, he denies freedom and variety, and
asserts in the most arbitrary manner that the movements of the
mind, like all the phenomena of nature, must be subject to
uniform, changeless, and necessary laws. And if we have not
* “Positive Philos,” vol. ii. p. 648.
G R EE K PHILOSOPLI Y. 209
yet been able to reduce the movements of mind, like the move-
ments of the planets, to statistics, and have not already obtain-
ed accurate prevision of its successions or Sequences as we
have of physical phenomena, it is simply the Consequence of our
inattention to, or ignorance of, all the facts. We answer, there
are no facts so directly and intuitively known as the facts of
consciousness; and, therefore, an argument based upon our
supposed ignorance of these facts is not likely to have much
weight against our immediate consciousness of personal free-
dom. There is not any thing we know SO immediately, so cer-
tainly, so positively, as this fact—we are free.
The word “force,” representing as it does a subtile mental
conception, and not a phenomenon of Sense, must also be ban-
ished from the domains of Positive Science as an intruder, lest
its presence should lend any countenance to the idea of causa-
tion. “Forces in mechanics are only movements, produced, or
tending to be produced.” In order to “cancel altogether the
old metaphysical notion of force,” another form of expression
is demanded. It is claimed that all we do know or can possi-
bly know is the successions of phenomena in time. What,
then, is the term which henceforth, in our dynamics, shall take
the place of “force 7" Is it “Time-succession ?” Then let any
one attempt to express the various forms and intensities of
movement and change presented to the senses (as e.g., the
phenomena of heat, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, muscu-
lar and nervous action, etc.) in terms of Time-succession, and
he will at once become conscious of the utter hopelessness
of physics, without the hyperphysical idea of force, to render
itself intelligible.” What account can be rendered of planetary
motion if the terms “centrifugal force” and “centripetal force”
are abandoned “From the two great conditions of every
Newtonian Solution, viz., projectile impulse and centripetal ten-
dency, eject the idea of force, and what remains 2 The entire
conception is simply made up of this, and has not the faintest
* Sec Grote’s “Essay on Correlation of Physical Forces,” pp. 18–20 ; and
Martineau’s “Essays,” p. 135.
14
2 IO C. H. RISTIA NITY AND
existence without it. It is useless to give it notice to quit, and
pretend that it is gone when you have only put a new name
upon the door. We must not call it “attraction, lest there
should seem to be a power within ; we are to Speak of it only
as ‘gravitation,’ because that is only ‘weight,’ which is noth-
ing but a ‘fact,' as if it were not a fact that holds a power, a
true dynamic affair, which ro imagination can chop into inco-
herent successions." Nor is the evasion more successful when
we try the phrase, “tendency of bodies to mutual approach.”
The approach itself may be called a phenomenon ; but the
“tendency’ is no phenomenon, and can not be attributed by
us to the bodies without regarding them as the residence of
force. And what are we to say of the projectile impulse in the
case of the planets 2 Is that also a phenomenon 2 Who wit-
nessed and reported it 2 Is it not evident that the whole
scheme of physical astronomy is a resolution of observed facts
into dynamic equivalents, and that the hypothesis posits for its
calculations not phenomena, but proper forces? Its logic is
this: If an impulse of certain intensity were given, and if such
and such mutual attractions were constantly present, then the
sort of motions which we observe in the bodies of our system
would follow. So, however, they also would if willed by an
Omnipotent Intelligence.” It is thus clearly evident that
human science is unable to offer any explanation of the exist-
ing order of the universe except in terms expressive of Power
or Force ; that, in fact, all explanations are utterly unintel-
ligible without the idea of causation. The language of uni-
versal rational intuition is, “all phenomena are the expression
of power;” the language of science is, “every law implies a
force.”
It is furthermore worthy of being noted that, in the modern
doctrine of the Correlation and Conservation of Forces, science
is inevitably approaching the idea that all kinds of force are
* “Gravity is a real power of whose agency we have daily experience.”—
Herschel, “Outlines of Astronomy,” p. 236.
* Martineau’s “Essays,” p. 56.
G. R. E. E. K. PEIILOSOPHY, 2 II
but forms or manifestations of some one central ſorce issuing
from some one fountain-head of power. Dr. Carpenter, perhaps
the greatest living physiologist, teaches that “the form of force
z0/kich may be taken as the type of a/Z ſhe rest * is the conscious-
ness of living effort in volition." All force, then, is of one type,
and that type is mind ; in its last analysis external causation
may be resolved into Divine energy. Sir John Herschel does
not hesitate to say that “it is reasonable to regard the force of
gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness
or will exerted somewhere.” The humble Christian may,
therefore, feel himself amply justified in still believing that
“power belongs to God ;” that it is through the Divine energy
“all things are, and are upheld ;” and that “in God we live,
and move, and have our being;” he is the Great First Cause,
the Fountain-head of all power.
2. As to Final Causes—that is, reasons, purposes, or ends
for which things exist—these, we are told by Comte, are all
“disproved” by Positive Science, which rigidly limits us to
“the history of what is,” and forbids all inquiry into reasons
z0/y it is. The question whether there be any intelligent pur-
pose in the order and arrangement of the universe, is not a
subject of scientific inquiry at all; and whenever it has been
permitted to obtrude itself, it has thrown a false light over the
facts, and led the inquirer astray.
The discoveries of modern astronomy are specially in-
stanced by Comte as completely overthrowing the notion of
any conscious design or intelligent purpose in the universe.
The order and stability of the solar system are found to be the
necessary consequences of gravitation, and are adequately ex-
plained without any reference to purposes or ends to be ful-
filled in the disposition and arrangement of the heavenly
bodies. “With persons unused to the study of the celestial
bodies, though very likely informed on other parts of natural
philosophy, astronomy has still the reputation of being a sci-
ence eminently religious, as if the famous words, “The heavens
* “Human Physiology,” p. 542. * “Outlines of Astronomy,” p. 234.
2 I 2 CITE IS TIA, NITY AND
declare the glory of God,” had lost none of their truth. . . . No
science has given more terrible shocks to the doctrine oſſina/
causes than astronomy.” The simple knowledge of the move-
ment of the earth must have destroyed the original and real
foundation of this doctrine—the idea of the universe subordi-
nated to the earth, and consequently to man. Besides, the ac-
curate exploration of the Solar System could not fail to dispel
that blind and unlimited admiration which the general order of
nature inspires, by showing in the most Sensible manner, and
in a great number of different respects, that the orbs were cer-
tainly not disposed in the most advantageous manner, and that
science permits us easily to conceive a better arrangement, by
the development of true celestial mechanism, since Newton.
All the theological philosophy, even the most perſect, has been
henceforth deprived of its principal intellectual function, the
most regular order being thus consigned as necessarily estab-
lished and maintained in our world, and even in the whole
universe, by the simple mutual gravity of its several parts.”
The task of “conceiving a better arrangement” of the celes-
tial orbs, and improving the system of the universe generally,
we shall leave to those who imagine themselves possessed of
that omniscience which comprehends all the facts and relations
of the actual universe, and ſoreknows all the details and rela-
tions of all possible universes so accurately as to be able to
* In a ſoot-note Comte adds: “Nowadays, to minds familiarized betimes
with the true astronomical philosophy, the heavens declare no other glory
than that of Hipparchus, Kepler, Newton, and all those who have contrib-
uted to the ascertainment of their laws.” It secms remarkable that the
great men who ascertained these laws did not see that the saying of the
Psalmist was emptied of all meaning by their discoveries. No persons
seem to have been more willing than these very men named to ascribe all
the glory to IIim who established these laws. Kepler says: “The astrono-
mer, to whom God has given to see more clearly with his inward eye, from
what he has discovered, both can and will glorify God;” and Newton says:
“This beautiful system of sun, planets, comets could have its origin in no
other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful
Being. We admire him on account of his perfections, we venerate and
worship him on account of his government.”—Whewell's “Astronomy and
Physics,” pp. 197, 198.
* “Positive Philosophy,” vol. ii. pp. 36–38; Tulloch, “Theism,” p. 115.
G RE E R PIIILOSOPHI Y. 2 I 3
pronounce upon their relative “advantages.” The arrogance
of these critics is certainly in startling and ludicrous contrast
with the affected modesty which, on other occasions, restrains
them from “imputing any intentions to nature.” It is quite
enough ſor our purpose to know that the tracing of evidences
of design in those parts of nature accessible to our observation
is an essentially different thing from the construction of a
scheme of optimism on d ?riori grounds which shall embrace
a universe the larger portion of which is virtually beyond the
field of observation. We are conscious of possessing some ra-
tional data and some mental equipment for the former task,
but for the latter we feel utterly incompetent.”
The only plausible argument in the above quotation from
Comte is, that the whole phenomena of the solar system are
adequately explained by the law of gravitation, without the in-
tervention of any intelligent purpose. Let it be borne in mind
that it is a ſundamental principle of the Positive philosophy
that all human knowledge is necessarily confined to phenomena
perceptible to sense, and that the last and highest achievement
of human science is to observe and record “the invariable
relations of resemblance and succession among phenomena.”
We can not possibly know any thing of even the existence of
“causes” or “forces” lying back of phenomena, not of “rea-
sons” or “purposes” determining the relations of phenomena.
The “law of gravitation” must, therefore, be simply the state-
ment of a fact, the expression of an observed order of phenom-
ena. But the simple statement of a fact is no explanation of
the fact. The formal expression of an observed order of Suc-
cession among phenomena is no explanation of that Order.
For what do we mean by an explanation ? Is it not a “making
plain” to the understanding? It is, in short, a complete an-
swer to the questions Žow is it so? and why is it so 2 Now, if
Comte denies to himself and to us all knowledge of efficient
and final causation, iſ we are in utter ignorance of “forces”
operating in nature, and of “reasons” for which things exist in
* Chalmers’s “Institutes of Theology,” vol. i. pp. I 17, I 18.
2I4. CHIRISTIANITY AND
nature, he can not answer either question, and consequently
nothing is explained.
Practically, however, Comte regards gravitation as a force.
The order of the solar system has been established and is still
maintained by the mutual gravity of its several parts. We
shall not stop here to note the inconsistency of his denying to
us the knowledge of, even the existence of, force, and yet at the
same time assuming to treat gravitation as a force really ade-
quate to the explanation of the how and why of the phenomena
of the universe, without any reference to a supernatural will or
an intelligent mind. The question with which we are imme-
diately concerned is whether gravitation alone is adequate to
the explanation of the phenomena of the heavens 2 A review
in extenso of Comte's answer to this question would lead us into
all the inextricable mazes of the nebular hypothesis, and in-
volve us in a more extended discussion than our space permits
and our limited scientific knowledge justifies. For the masses
of the people the whole question of cosmical development re-
solves itself into “a balancing of authorities;” they are not in
a position to verify the reasonings for and against this theory
by actual observation of astral phenomena, and the application
of mathematical calculus; they are, therefore, guided by bal-
ancing in their own minds the statements of the distinguished
astronomers who, by the united suffrages of the scientific
world, are regarded as “authorities.” For us, at present, it is
enough that the nebular hypothesis is rejected by some of the
greatest astronomers that have lived. We need only mention
the names of Sir William Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Prof.
Nichol, Earl Rosse, Sir David Brewster, and Prof. Whewell.
But if we grant that the nebular hypothesis is entitled to
take rank as an established theory of the development of the
Solar System, it by no means proves that the Solar system was
formed without the intervention of intelligence and design. On
this point we shall content ourselves with quoting the words of
one whose encyclopædian knowledge was confessedly equal to
that of Comte, and who in candor and accuracy was certainly
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 2 I5
his superior. Prof. Whewell, in his “Astronomy and Physics,”
says: “This hypothesis by no means proves that the solar sys-
tem was formed without the intervention of intelligence and
design. It only transfers our view of the skill exercised and
the means employed to another part of the work; for how
came the Sun and its atmosphere to have such materials, such
motions, such a constitution, and these consequences followed
from their primordial condition ? How came the parent vapor
thus to be capable of coherence, separation, contraction, solidi-
fication? How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repul-
Sion, Condensation, to be so fixed as to lead to a "beautiful and
harmonious system in the end ? How came it to be neither
too fluid nor too tenacious, to contract neither too quickly nor
too slowly for the successive formation of the several planetary
bodies : How came that substance, which at one time was a
luminous vapor, to be at a subsequent period solids and fluids
of many various kinds : What but design and intelligence pre-
pared and tempered this previously-existing element, so that it
should, by its natural changes, produce Such an Orderly sys-
tem?” “The laws of motion alone will not produce the regu-
/arity z0/ich we admire in the motion of the heavenly bodies.
There must be an original adjustment of the system on which
these laws are to act; a selection of the arbitrary quantities
which they are to involve ; a primitive cause which shall dis-
pose the elements in due relation to each other, in order that
regular recurrence may accompany constant change, and that
perpetual motion may be combined with perpetual stability.”
The harmony of the Solar system in all its phenomena does
not depend upon the operation of any one law, but from the
special adjustment of several laws. There are certain agents
operating throughout the entire system which have different
properties, and which require special adjustment to each other,
in order to their beneficial operation. Ist. There is Gravita-
tion, prevailing apparently through all space. But it does not
* “Astronomy and Physics,” p. 109.
* Chalmers’s “Institutes of Theology,” vol. i. p. I 19.
2 I6 CFIRISTIANITY AND
prevail alone. It is a force whose function is to balance other
forces of which we know little, except that these, again, are
needed to balance the force of gravitation. Each force, if left
to itself, would be the destruction of the universe. Were it not
for the force of gravitation, the centrifugal forces which impel
the planets would fling them off into space. Were it not ſor
these centrifugal forces, the force of gravitation would dash
them against the sun. The ultimate fact of astronomical sci-
ence, therefore, is not the law of gravitation, but the adjustment
between this law and other laws, so as to produce and main-
tain the existing order. 2d. There is Zight, flowing from num-
berless luminaries; and Heat, radiating everywhere from the
warmer to the colder regions; and there are a number of ad-
justments needed in order to the beneficial operation of these
agents. Suppose we grant that by merely mechanical causes
the sun became the centre of our system, how did it become
also the source of its vivifying influences 2 “How was the fire
deposited on this hearth? How was the candle placed on this
candlestick?” 3d. There is an all-pervading Æther, through
which light is transmitted, which offers resistance to the move-
ment of the planetary and cometary bodies, and tends to a dis-
sipation of mechanical energy, and which needs to be counter-
balanced by well-adjusted arrangements to secure the stability
of the solar system. All this balancing of opposite properties
and forces carries our minds upward towards Him who holds
the balances in his hands, and to a Supreme Intelligence on
whose adjustments and collocations the harmony and stability
of the universe depends.”
The recognition of all teleology of organs in vegetable and
animal physiology is also persistently repudiated by this school.
When Cuvier speaks of the combination of organs in such
order as to adapt the animal to the part which it has to play in
nature, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire replies, “I know nothing of ani-
mals which have to play a part in nature.” “I have read, con-
* Duke of Argyll, “Reign of Law,” pp. 91, 92. te
*M*Cosh, “Typical Forms and Special Ends,” ch, xiii.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHY. 217
cerning fishes, that, because they live in a medium which re-
sists more than air, their motive forces are calculated So as to
give them the power of progression-under these circumstances.
By this mode of reasoning, you would say of a man who makes
use of crutches, that he was originally destined to the misfor-
tune of having a leg paralyzed or amputated.” With a mod-
esty which savors of affectation, he says, “I ascribe no inten-
tions to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my reason. I
observe facts merely, and go no farther. I Only pretend to the
character of the historian of z0/aſſ is.” “I can not make Nature
an intelligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts by the
shortest mode, who does all for the best.” All the supposed
consorting of means to ends which has hitherto been regarded
as evidencing Intelligence is simply the result of “the elective
affinities of organic elements” and “the differentiation of or-
gans’ consequent mainly upon exterior conditions. “A”/mc-
tions are a result, not an end. The animal undergoes the kind
of life that his organs impose, and submits to the imperfections
of his organization. The naturalist studies the play of his ap-
paratus, and if he has the right of admiring most of its parts,
he has likewise that of showing the imperfection of other parts,
and the practical uselessness of those which fulfill no func-
tions.” And it is further claimed that there are a great many
structures which are clearly useless; that is, they fulfill no pur-
pose at all. Thus there are monkeys, which have no thumbs
for use, but only rudimental thumb-bones hid beneath the
skin; the wingless bird of New Zealand (Apteryx) has wing-
bones similarly developed, which serve no purpose; young
whalebone whales are born with teeth that never cut the gums,
and are afterwards absorbed ; and some sheep have horns
turned about their ears which ſulfill no end. And inasmuch as
there are some organisms in nature which serve no purpose of
* Whewell, “History of Inductive Sciences,” vol. ii. p. 486.
* Id, ib., vol. ii. p. 490.
* Martin’s “Organic Unity in Animals and Vegetables,” in M. Q. Review,
January, I863.
2 I 8 CIIPISTIANITY A ND
utility, it is argued there is no design in nature ; things are used
because there are antecedent conditions favorable for use, but
that use is not the end for which the Organ exists. The true
naturalist will never say, “Birds have wings given them in order
to fly;” he will rather say, “Birds fly because they have wings.”
The doctrine of final causes must, therefore, be abandoned.
It is hardly worth while to reply to the lame argument of
Geoffroy, which needs a “crutch" for its support. The very
illustration, undignified and irrelevant as it is, tells altogether
against its author. For, first, the crutch is certainly a con-
frivance designed for locomotion ; Secondly, the length and
strength and lightness of the Crutch are all matters of calcula-
tion and adjustment; and, thirdly, all the adaptations of the
crutch are well considered, in order to enable the lame man to
walk ; the ſunction of the crutch is the final cause of its crea-
tion. This crutch is clearly out of place in Geoffroy's argu-
ment, and utterly breaks down. It is in its place in the teleo-
logical argument, and stands well, though it may not behave as
well as the living limb. The understanding of a child can per-
ceive that the design-argument does not assert that men were
intended to have amputated limbs, but that crutches are de-
signed for those whose limbs are paralyzed or amputated.
The existence of useless members, of rudimentary and abor-
tive limbs, does seem, at first sight, to be unfavorable to the
idea of Supremacy of purpose and all-pervading design. It
should be remarked, however, that this is an argument based
upon Our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. It does
not by any means follow that because we have discovered no
reasons for their existence, therefore there are no reasons.
Science, in chlarging its conquests of nature, is perpetually dis-
covering the usefulness of arrangements of which our fathers
were ignorant, and the reasons of things which to their minds
were concealed ; and it ill becomes the men who so far “mis-
trust their own feeble powers” as to be afraid of ascribing any
intention to God or nature, to dogmatically affirm there is no
purpose in the existence of any thing. And then we may ask,
G R E E R PITILOSOPHY, 2 I9
what right have these men to set up the idea of “utility” as the
only standard to which the Creator must conform 2 How came
they to know that God is a mere “utilitarian ;” or, if they do
not believe in God, that nature is a miserable “Benthamite?”
Why may not the idea of beauty, of symmetry, of order, be a
standard for the universe, as much as the idea of utility, or mere
subordination to some practical end? May not conformity to
One grand and comprehensive plan, Sweeping over all nature,
be perfectly compatible with the adaptation of individual exist-
ences to the fulfillment of special ends? In civil architecture
we have Conformity to a general plan ; we have embellishment
and ornament, and we have adaptation to a special purpose,
all combined ; why may not these all be combined in the archi-
tecture of the universe? The presence of any one of these is
sufficient to prove design, for mere ornament or beauty is itself
a purpose, an object, and an end. The concurrence of all
these is an overwhelming evidence of design. Wherever
found, they are universally recognized as the product of intelli-
gence; they address themselves at once to the intelligence of
man, and they place him in immediate relation to and in deep-
est sympathy with the Intelligence which gave them birth. He
that formed the eye of man to see, and the heart of man to
admire beauty, shall He not delight in it? He that gave the
hand of man its cunning to create beauty, shall He not himself
work for it 2 And if man can and does combine both “ orna-
ment” and “use” in one and the same implement or machine,
why should not the Creator of the world do the same? “When
the savage carves the handle of his war-club, the immediate
purpose of his carving is to give his own hand a firmer hold.
But any shapeless scratches would be enough for this. When
he carves it in an elaborate pattern, he does so for the love of
ornament, and to satisfy the sense of beauty.” And so “the
harmonies, on which all beauty depends, are so connected in
nature that use and ornament may often both arise out of the
same conditions.”
* Duke of Argyll, “Reign of Law,” p. 203.
22 O C III? IS TIA WIT Y. A ND
The “true naturalist,” therefore, recognizes two great prin-
ciples pervading the universe — a principle of order— a unity
of plan, and a principle of special adaptation, by which each
object, though constructed upon a general plan, is at the same
time accommodated to the place it has to Occupy and the pur-
pose it has to serve. In other words, there is homology of
structure and analogy of fuzzction, conformity to archeſ/a/ formis
and Zeleology of organs, in wonderful combination. Now, in
the Materialistic school, it has been the prevalent practice to
set up the unity of plan in animal Structures, in Opposition to
the principle of Final Causes: Morphology has been opposed
to Teleology. But in nature there is no such opposition; on
the contrary, there is a beautiful co-ordination. The same
bones, in different animals, are made subservient to the widest
possible diversity of functions. The same limbs are converted
into fins, paddles, wings, legs, and arms. “No comparative
anatomist has the slightest hesitation in admitting that the
pectoral fin of a fish, the wing of a bird, the paddle of the dol-
phin, the fore-leg of a deer, the wing of a bat, and the arm of a
man, are the same organs, notwithstanding that their forms are
So varied, and the uses to which they are applied so unlike
each other.” All these are homologous in structure—they are
formed after an ideal archetype or model, but that model or
type is variously modified to adapt the animal to the sphere of
life in which it is destined to move, and the organ itself to the
functions it has to perform, whether swimming, flying, walking,
or burrowing, or that varied manipulation of which the human
hand is capable. These varied modifications of the vertebrated
type, for Special purposes, are unmistakable examples of final
Causation. Whilst the silent members, the rudimental imbs
instanced by Oken, Martins, and others—as fulfilling no pur-
pose, and Serving no end, exist in conformity to an ideal arche-
type on which the bony skeletons of all vertebrated animals
are formed,” and which has never been departed from since
* Carpenter’s “Comparative Physiology,” p. 37.
* Agassiz, “Essay on Classification,” p. Io.
G REEK PHILOSOPHY, 22 I
time began. This type, or model, or plan, is, however, itself
an evidence of design as much as the plan of a house. For to
what standard are we referring when we say that two limbs
are morphologically the same 2 Is it not an idea! plan, a men-
Žal pattern, a metaphysical conception ? Now an ideaſ implies
a mind which preconceived the idea, and in which alone it
really exists. It is only as “an order of Divine thought” that
the doctrine of animal homologies is at all intelligible ; and
Homology is, therefore, the science which traces the outward
embodiment of a Divine Idea." The principle of intentionality
or final causation, then, is not in any sense invalidated by the
discovery of “a unity of plan" Sweeping through the entire
universe.
We conclude that we are justly entitled to regard “the
principle of intentionality” as a primary and necessary law of
thought, under which we can not avoid conceiving and describ-
ing the facts of the universe—the special adaptation of means to
ends necessarily implies mind. Whenever and wherever we ob-
serve the adaptation of an organism to the fulfillment of a spe-
cial end, we can not avoid conceiving of that end as foreseen and
premeditated, the means as selected and adjusted with a view
to that end, and creative energy put forth to secure the end—
all which is the work of intelligence and will.” And we can
not describe these facts of nature, so as to render that account
intelligible to other minds, without using such terms as “con-
trivance,” “purpose,” “adaptation,” “design.” A striking il-
lustration of this may be found in Darwin's volume “On the
Fertilization of Orchids.” We select from his volume with all
the more pleasure because he is one of the writers who enjoins
“caution in ascribing intentions to nature.” In one sentence
he says: “The Zabel/um is developed into a long nectary, in
order to attract Zeffidoptera; and we shall presently give rea-
Sons for Suspecting the nectaris Žužosely so lodged that it can
* Whewell’s “History of Inductive Sciences,” vol. i. p. 644; “The Reign
of Law,” p. 208; Agassiz, “Essay on Classification,” pp. 9-II.
* Carpenter’s “Principles of Comparative Physiology,” p. 723.
222 CII RISTIANITY AND
be sucked only slowly, in order to give time for the curious
chemical quality of the viscid matter settling hard and dry”
(p. 29). Of one particular structure he says: “This contriv-
ance of the guiding ridges may be compared to the little instru-
ment sometimes used for guiding a thread into the eye of a
needle.” The notion that every organism has a use or pur-
pose seems to have guided him in his discoveries. “The
strange position of the Zabel/um, perched on the summit of the
column, ought to have shown me that here was the place for
experiment. I Ought to have Scorned the notion that the Za-
bel/um was thus placed for no good purpose. I neglected this
plain guide, and for a long time completely failed to understand
the flower” (p. 262)."
So that the assumption of final causes has not, as Bacon
affirms, “led men astray” and “prejudiced further discovery ;”
on the contrary, it has had a large share in cvery discovery in
anatomy and physiology, zoology and botany. The use of
every organ has been discovered by starting from the assump-
tion that it must have some use. The belief in a creative pur-
pose led Harvey to discover the circulation of the blood. He
says: “When I took notice that the valves in the veins of so
many parts of the body were so placed that they gave a free
passage to the blood towards the heart, but Opposed the pas-
Sage of the venal blood the contrary way, I was incited to im-
agine that so provident a cause as Nature has not placed so
many valves without design, and no design seemed more proba-
ble than the circulation of the blood.” The wonderful discov-
eries in Zoology which have immortalized the name of Cuvier
were made under the guidance of this principle. He proceeds
On the Supposition not only that animal forms have some plan,
some purpose, but that they have an intelligible plan, a discov-
erable purpose. At the outset of his “A”gne Animal,” he says:
“Zoology has a principle of reasoning which is peculiar to it,
and which it employs to advantage on many occasions; that is,
* Edinburgh Review, October, 1862; article, “The Supernatural.”
* “History of Inductive Science,” vol. ii. p. 449.
G R EE K PIIILOSOPFTY. 223
the principle of the conditions of existence, commonly called
final causes.” The application of this principle enabled him
to understand and arrange the structures of animals with as-
tonishing clearness and completeness of Order; and to restore
the forms of extinct animals which are found in the rocks, in a
manner which excited universal admiration, and has command-
ed universal assent. Indeed, as Professor Whewell remarks,
at the conclusion of his “History of the Inductive Sciences,”
“those who have been discoverers in Science have generally
had minds, the disposition of which was to believe in an intelli-
gent Maker of the universe, and that the scientific speculations
which produced an opposite tendency were generally those
which, though they might deal familiarly with known physical
truths, and conjecture boldly with regard to unknown, do not
add to the number of solid generalizations.”
* “History of Inductive Science,” vol. ii. p. 2, Eng. ed.
* Ibid., vol. ii. p. 491. A list of the “great discoverers” is given in his
“Astronomy and Physics,” bk, iii, ch. v.
224 C III; IS TIANITY A ND
CHAPTER VII.
THE UNKNOWN GOD (continued).
IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON ? (continued).
“The faith which can not stand unless buttressed by contradictions is
built upon the sand. The profoundest faith is ſaith in the unity of truth.
If there is found any conflict in the results of a right reason, no appeal to
practical interests, or traditionary authority, or intuitional or theological
faith, can stay the flood of skepticism.”—ABBOT.
N the previous chapter we have considered the answers to
this question which are given by the Idealistic and Material-
istic schools; it devolves upon us now to review (iii.) the posi-
tion of the school of AWatura/ /&ealism or AWałura/ ZXualism, at
the head of which stands Sir William Hamilton.
It is admitted by this school that philosophic knowledge is
“the knowledge of effects as dependent on their causes,” and
“of qualities as inherent in substances.”
I. As ſo Ævents and Causes.—“Events do not occur isolated,
apart, by themselves; they occur and are conceived by us only
in Connection. Our observation affords us no example of a
phenomenon which is not an effect; nay, our thought can not
even realize to itself the possibility of a phenomenon without a
cause. By the necessity we are under of thinking some cause
for every phenomenon, and by our original ignorance of what
particular causes belong to what particular effects, it is ren-
dered impossible for us to acquiesce in the mere knowledge
of the fact of the phenomenon; on the contrary, we are deter-
mined, we are necessitated to regard each phenomenon as only
Żartia/y Anozem until zwe discover ſhe causes on which it depends
for its existence.” Philosophic knowledge is thus, in its widest
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 58. *Ibid., vol. i. p. 138.
“Ibid., vol. i. p. 56.
G R E E K. PEIII, OS O PET Y. 225
acceptation, the knowledge of effects as dependent on causes.
Now what does this imply In the first place, as every cause
to which we can ascend is only an effect, it follows that it is
the scope, that is, the aim, of philosophy to trace up the series
of effects and causes until we arrive at causes z0/hich are no# in
themselves effects,”—that is, to ultimate and final causes. And
then, finally, “Philosophy, as the knowledge of effects in their
causes, necessarily tends, not towards a plurality of ultimate or
final causes, but towards one alone.”
2. As to Qualities and Substance, or Phenomena and Reality.—
“As phenomena appear only in conjunction, we are compelled,
by the constitution of our nature, to think them conjoined in
and by Something ; and as they are phenomena, we can not
think them phenomena of nothing, but must regard them as
properties or qualities of something.” “Now that which mani-
fests its qualities—in other words, that in which the appearing
causes inhere, that to which they belong—is called their subject,
or substance, or substratum.” The subject of one grand series
of phenomena (as, e.g., extension, Solidity, figure, etc.) is called
maſter, or material substance. The subject of the other grand
Series of phenomena (as, e.g., thought, feeling, volition, etc.) is
termed mind, or mental substance. “We may, therefore, lay it
down as an undisputed truth that consciousness gives, as an
ultimate fact, a primitive duality—a knowledge of the ego in re-
lation and contrast to the non-ego, and a knowledge of the non-
ego in relation and contrast to the ego.” Natural Dualism thus
“establishes the existence of two worlds of mind and maſter on
the immediate knowledge we possess of both series of phenom-
ena;” whilst the Cosmothetic Idealists discredit the veracity
of consciousness as to our immediate, knowledge of material
phenomena, and, Consequently, our immediate Ánowledge of the
existence of matter.”
The obvious doctrine of the above quotations is, that we
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 58. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 60.
“Ibid., vol. i. p. 137. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 137.
“Ibid., vol. i. p. 292. "Ibid., vol. i. pp. 292, 295.
15
226 C EIRISTIA NITY AND
have an immediate knowledge of the “existence of matter” as
well as of “the phenomena of matter;” that is, we know “sub-
stance” as immediately and directly as we know “grealities.”
Phenomena are known only as inherent in Substance ; Sub-
stance is known only as manifesting its qualities. We never
know qualities without knowing substance, and we can never
know substance without knowing qualities. Both are known
in one concrete act; substance is known quite as much as
quality; quality is known no more than Substance. That we
have a direct, immediate, presentative “face to face” knowl-
edge of matter and mind in every act of consciousness is as-
serted again and again by Hamilton, in his “Philosophy of
Perception.” In the course of the discussion he starts the
question, “Zs the Knowledge of mind and matter equally imme-
diate 2° His answer to this question may be condensed in the
following sentences. In regard to the immediate knowledge
of mind there is no difficulty; it is admitted to be direct and
immediate. The problem, therefore, exclusively regards the
intuitive perception of the qualities of matter. Now, says Ham-
ilton, “if we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in
question, the response is categorical and clear. In the sim-
plest act of perception I am conscious of myself as a perceiv-
ing subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived;
and I am conscious of both existences in the same indivisible
amount of intuition.” Again he says, “I have frequently as-
Serted that in perception we are conscious of the external ob-
ject, immediately and in itself.” “If, then, the veracity of con-
Sciousness be unconditionally admitted—if the intuitive Ånow/.
edge of matter and mind, and the consequent reality of their an-
tithesis, be taken as truths,” the doctrine of Natural Realism is
established, and, “without any hypothesis or demonstration,
the reality of mind and the reality of matter.”
Now, after these explicit statements that we have an intui-
tive knowledge of matter and mind—a direct and immediate
* Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, part ii.
* Ibid., p. 181. “Ibid., pp. 34, 182.
G R E E K PHIL OS OPII Y. 227
consciousness of self as a real, “self-subsisting entity,” and a
knowledge of “an external reality, immediately and in itself.”
it seems unaccountably strange that Hamilton should assert
“ that all human knowledge, consequently al/ /ē1/man Żhilosophy, is
only of the Relative or Phenomena/;” and that “of existence abso-
Jutely and in itself we know nothing.” Whilst teaching that the
proper sphere, and aim of philosophy is to trace secondary
causes up to ultimate or first causes, and that it necessarily tends
towards one First and Ultimate Cause, he at the same time as-
Serts that “first causes do not lie within the reach of philoso-
phy,” and that it can never attain to the knowledge of the
First Cause.” “The Infinite God can not, by us, be compre-
hended, conceived, or thought.” God, as First Cause, as in-
finite, as unconditioned, as eternal, is to us absolutely “The
OnAmozom.” The science of Real Being—of Being in se—of
self-subsisting entities, is declared to be impossible. All sci-
ence is only of the phenomenal, the conditioned, the relative.
Ontology is a delusive dream. Thus, after pages of explana-
tions and qualifications, of affirmations and denials, we find
Hamilton virtually assuming the same position as Comte and
Mill—all human Ánowledge is necessarily confined to f/henomena.
It has been supposed that the chief glory of Sir William
Hamilton rested upon his able exposition and defense of the
doctrine of Natural Realism. There are, however, indications
in his writings that he regarded “the Philosophy of the Con-
ditioned” as his grand achievement. The Law of the Condi-
tioned had “not been generalized by any previous philoso-
pher;” and, in laying down that law, he felt that he had made
a new and important contribution to speculative thought.
The principles upon which this philosophy is based are :
I. ZWhe A’e/afez'i') of a////uman Azzozwledge.—Existence is not
cognized absolutely and in itself, but only under special modes
which are related to our faculties, and, in fact, determined by
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 136. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 138.
“Ibid., vol. i. p. 58. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 60.
“Ibid., vol. ii. p. 375.
228 . C. H.R IS TIA WITY AND
these faculties themselves. All knowledge, therefore, is rela-
five—that is, it is of phenomena only, and of phenomena “un-
der modifications determined by Our Own faculties.” Now, as
the Absolute is that which exists out of all relation either to
phenomena or to our faculties of knowledge, it can not possi-
bly be known.
2. The Conditionality of al/ 7%inking.—Thought necessarily
supposes conditions. “To think is to condition; and condi-
tional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of
thought. As the eagle can not out-Soar the atmosphere in
which he floats, and by which alone he is supported, so the
mind can not transcend the sphere of limitation within and
through which the possibility of thought is realized. Thought
is only of the conditioned, because, as we have said, to think is
to condition.” Now the Infinite is the unlimited, the uncon-
ditioned, and as such can not possibly be thought.
3. The motion of the Infinite—the Absolute, as entertained by
man, is a mere “negation of thought.”—By this Hamilton does
not mean that the idea of the Infinite is a negative idea. “The
Infinite and the Absolute are only the names of two counter
imbecilities of the human mind”—that is, a mental inability to
conceive an absolute limitation, or an infinite illimitation ; an
absolute commencement, or an infinite non-commencement.
In other words, of the absolute and infinite we have no concep-
tion at all, and, consequently, no knowledge.”
The grand law which Hamilton generalizes from the above
is, “ that ſhe conceivable is in every yelation bounded by the incon-
ceivable.” Or, again, “The conditioned or the thinkable lies
between two extremes or poles; and these extremes or poles
are each of them unconditioned, each of them inconceivable,
each of them exclusive or contradictory of the other.” This
is the celebrated “Law of the Conditioned.”
In attempting a brief criticism of “the Philosophy of the
Conditioned,” we may commence by inquiring:
* “Discussions,” p. 21. *Ibid., p. 28.
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. ii. pp. 368, 373. “Ibid., vol. ii. p. 373.
G. R. E. E. K. PEIII, O S O PHY. 229
I. What is the real import and significance of the doctrine “that
a///human Ánowledge is only of the relative or phenomena/?”
Hamilton calls this “the great axiom.” of philosophy. That
we may distinctly comprehend its meaning, and understand its
bearing on the subject under discussion, we must ascertain the
sense in which he uses the words “Ż/enomena/’’ and “relative.”
The importance of an exact terminology is fully appreciated by
our author; and accordingly, in three Lectures (VIII., IX, X.),
he has given a full explication of the terms most commonly em-
ployed in philosophic discussions. Here the word “Żhenome-
mon " is set down as the necessary “correlative” of the word
“subject” or “substance.” “These terms can not be explained
apart, for each is correlative of the other, each can be compre-
hended only in and through its correlative. The term ‘sub-
ſect’ is used to denote the unknown (?) basis which lies under
the various //enomena or properties of which we become aware,
whether in our external or internal experience.” “The term
“relative’ is opposed to the term “absolute;’ therefore, in saying
that we know only the relative, I virtually assert that we know
nothing absolutely, that is, in and for itseff, and without relation
to us and our faculties.” Now, in the philosophy of Sir William
Hamilton, “the absolute” is defined as “that which is aloof
from relation”—“that which is out of all relation.” The aff-
solute can not, therefore, be “the correlative ’’ of the conditioned
—can not stand in any relation to the phenomenal. The sub-
ſect, however, is the necessary correlative of the phenomenal,
and, consequently, the subject and the absolute are not identi-
cal. Furthermore, Hamilton tells us the subject may be com-
prehended in and through its correlative—the phenomenon; but
the absolute, being aloof from all relation, can not be compre-
hended or conceived at all. “The subject” and “the abso-
lute” are, therefore, not synonymous terms; and, if they are
not synonymous, then their antithetical terms, “phenomenal”
and “relative,” can not be synonymous.
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 148. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 137.
* “Discussions,” p. 21.
23o CAIR IS TIA WITY A. WD
It is manifest, however, that Hamilton does employ these
terms as synonymous, and this we apprehend is the first false
step in his philosophy of the conditioned. “All our knowledge
is of the relative or phenomenal.” Throughout the whole of
Lectures VIII. and IX., in which he explains the doctrine of
the relativity of human knowledge, these terms are used as pre-
cisely analogous. Now, in opposition to this, we maintain that
the relative is not always the phenomenal. A thing may be
“in relation” and yet not be a phenomenon. “The subject or
substance” may be, and really is, on the admission of Hamil-
ton himself, correlated to the phenomenon. The ego, “the con-
scious subject” as a “seff-subsisting entity,” is necessarily re-
lated to the phenomena of thought, feeling, etc.; but no one
would repudiate the idea that the conscious Subject is a mere
phenomenon, or “series of phenomena,” with more indignation
than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion,
“that the subject is unknown,” he still teaches, with equal posi-
tiveness, “that in every act of perception I am conscious of
self, as a perceiving subject.” And still more explicitly he
says: “As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am
I conscious, at every moment of my existence, that the Con-
Scious Ego is not itself a mere modification [a phenomenon],
nor a series of modifications [phenomena], but that it is itself
different from all its modifications, and a self-subsisting entity.”
Again: “Thought is possible only in and through the con-
sciousness of Self. The Self, the I, is recognized in every act
of intelligence as the subject to which the act belongs. It is I
that perceive, I that imagine, I that remember, etc.; these spec-
ial modes are all only the phenomena of the I.” We are,
therefore, conscious of the subject in the most immediate, and
direct, and intuitive manner, and the subject of which we are
conscious can not be “unknown.” We regret that so distin-
guished a philosophy should deal in such palpable contradic-
tions; but it is the inevitable consequence of violating that
* Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton (edited by O. W. Wight), p. 181.
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 373. “Ibid., vol. i. p. 166.
G R EER PETIL OS O PHY, 23 I
fundamental principle of philosophy on which Hamilton so fre-
quently and earnestly insists, viz., “that the testimony of con-
sciousness must be accepted in all its integrity.”
It is thus obvious that, with proper qualifications, we may
admit the relativity of human Knowledge, and yet at the same
time reject the doctrine of Hamilton, that all human Ånowledge
is only of the //enomena/. ---
“The relativity of human knowledge,” like most other
phrases into which the word “relative” enters, is vague, and
admits of a variety of meanings. If by this phrase is meant
“that we can not know objects except as related to our facul-
ties, or as Our faculties are related to them,” we accept the
Statement, but regard it as a mere truism leading to no conse-
quences, and hardly worth stating in words. It is simply
another way of Saying that, in order to an object’s being known,
it must come within the range of our intellectual vision, and
that we can only know as much as we are capable of knowing.
Or, if by this phrase is meant “that we can only know things
by and through the phenomena they present,” we admit this
also, for we can no more, know substances apart from their
properties, than we can know qualities apart from the substan-
ces in which they inhere. Substances can be known only in
and through their phenomena. Take away the properties, and
the thing has no longer any existence. Eliminate extension,
form, density, etc., from matter, and what have you left? “The
thing in itself,” apart from its qualities, is nothing. Or, again,
if by the relativity of knowledge is meant “that all conscious-
ness, all thought are relative,” we accept this statement also.
To conceive, to reflect, to know, is to deal with difference and
relation; the relation of subject and object; the relation of
objects among themselves ; the relation of phenomena to re-
ality, of becoming to being. The reason of man is unquestion-
ably correlated to that which is beyond phenomena; it is able
to apprehend the necessary relation between phenomena and
being, extension and space, succession and time, event and
cause, the finite and the infinite. We may thus admit the rela-
232 CIIRISTIANITY AND
five character of human thought, and at the same time deny
that it is an ontological disqualification.”
It is not, however, in any of these precise forms that Ham-
ilton holds the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. He
assumes a middle place between Reid and Kant, and endeav-
ors to blend the subjective idealism of the latter with the re-
alism of the former. “He identifies the f/henomenon of the
German with the quality of the British philosophy,” and as-
serts, as a regulative law of thought, that the quality implies
the substance, and the phenomenon the noumenon, but makes
the substratum or noumenon (the object in itself) unknown
and unknowable. The “phenomenon” of Kant was, however,
something essentially different from the “quality” of Reid.
In the philosophy of Kant, ſhenomenon means an object as we
envisage or represent it to ourselves, in opposition to the
noumenon, or a thing as it is in itself. The phenomenon is
composed, in part, of subjective elements supplied by the mind
itself; as regards intuition, the forms of space and time ; as
regards thought, the categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation,
and Modality. To perceive a thing in itself would be to per-
ceive it neither in 'space nor in time. To think a thing in it-
self would be not to think it under any of the categories. The
phenomenal is thus the product of the inherent laws of our
Own Constitution, and, as such, is the sum and limit of all our
knowledge.”
This, in its main features, is evidently the doctrine pro-
pounded by Hamilton. The special modes in which existence
is cognizable “are presented to, and known by, the mind under
modifications determined by the faculties themselves.” This doc-
trine he illustrates by the following supposition: “Suppose the
total object of consciousness in perception is-12; and suppose
that the external reality contributes 6, the material sense 3,
* Martineau’s “Essays,” p. 234.
*M*Cosh’s “Defense of Fundamental Truth,” p. 106.
* Mansel’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant,” pp. 21, 22.
* Hamilton’s “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 148.
G R E E K PII II, OS O PEI Y. 233
and the mind 3; this may enable you to form some rude con-
jecture of the nature of the object of perception.” The con-
clusion at which Hamilton arrives, therefore, is that things are
not known to us as they exist, but simply as they appear, and
as our minds are capable of perceiving them.
Let us test the validity of this majestic deliverance. No
man is justified in making this assertion unless, I. He knows
things as they exist; 2. He knows things not only as they exist
but as they appear; 3. He is able to compare things as they
exist with the same things as they appear. Now, inasmuch as
Sir William Hamilton affirms we do not know things as they
exist, but only as they appear, how can he know that there is
any difference between things as they exist and as they appear?
What is this “thing in itself” about which Hamilton has so
much to say, and yet about which he professes to know nothing?
We readily understand what is meant by the thing; it is the
object as existing—a substance manifesting certain characteris-
tic qualities. But what is meant by in itself? There can be
no in itself besides or beyond the thing. If Hamilton means
that “the thing itself” is the thing apart from all relation, and
devoid of all properties or qualities, we do not acknowledge
any such thing. A thing apart from all relation, and devoid
of all qualities, is simply pure nothing, if such a Solecism may
be permitted. With such a definition of Being in se, the logic
of Hegel is invincible, “Being and Nothing are identical.”
And now, if “the thing in itself” be, as Hamilton says it is,
absolutely unknown, how can he affirm or deny any thing in
regard to it? By what right does he prejudge a hidden reality,
and give or refuse its predicates; as, for example, that it is
conditioned or unconditioned, in relation or aloof from relation,
finite or infinite 2 Is it not plain that, in declaring a thing in
its inmost nature or essence to be inscrutable, it is assumed to
be partially known 2 And it is obvious, notwithstanding some
unguarded expressions to the contrary, that Hamilton does
* Hamilton’s “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. ii. p. 129; and also vol. i.
D. I.47.
234 CIIRISTIA WITY AND
regard “the thing in itself” as partially known. “The external
reality” is, at least, six elements out of twelve in the “total ob-
ject of consciousness.” The primary qualities of matter are
known as in the things themselves; “they develop themselves
with rigid necessity out of the simple datum of substance occupy-
ing space.” “The Primary Qualities are apprehended as they
are in bodies”—“they are the attributes of body as body,” and
as such “are known immediately in themselves,” as well as
mediately by their effects upon us. So that we not only know
by direct consciousness certain properties of things as they exist
in things themselves, but we can also deduce them in an d ?ri-
ori manner. “The bare notion of matter being given, the Pri-
mary Qualities may be deduced d ?riori; they being, in fact,
only evolutions of the conditions which that notion necessarily
implies.” Iſ, then, we know the qualities of things as “in the
things themselves,” “the things themselves” must also be, at
least, partially known; and Hamilton can not consistently as-
sert the relativity of all knowledge. Even if it be granted that
our cognitions of objects are only in part dependent on the
objects themselves, and in part on elements superadded by our
organism, or by our minds, it can not warrant the assertion
that all our knowledge, but only the part so added, is relative.
“The admixture of the relative element not only does not take
away the absolute character of the remainder, but does not
even (if our author is right) prevent us from recognizing it.
The confusion, according to him, is not inextricable. It is
for us ‘to analyze and distinguish what elements,’ in an ‘act
of knowledge,’ are contributed by the object, and what by the
organs or by the mind.”
Admitting the relative character of human thought as a psy-
chological fact, Mr. Martineau has conclusively shown that this
law, instead of visiting us with disability to transcend phenom-
ena, operates as a revelation of what exists beyond. “The finite
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. ii. p. 129.
* Philosophy of Sir Wm. Hamilton, p. 357. “Ibid., pp. 377, 378.
* Mill’s “Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 44.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 235
body cut out before our visual perception, or embraced by the
hands, lies as an island in the emptiness around, and without
comparative reference to this can not be represented: the same
experience which gives us the definite object gives us also the
infinite space; and both terms—the limited appearance and
the unlimited ground—are apprehended with equal certitude
and clearness, and furnished with names equally susceptible of
distinct use in predication and reasoning. The transient suc-
cessions, for instance, the strokes of a clock, which we count,
present themselves to us as dotted out upon a line of permanent
duration ; of which, without them, we should have no appre-
hension, but which as their condition, is unreservedly known.”
“What we have said with regard to space, and time applies
equally to the case of Causation. Here, too, the finite offered
to perception introduces to an Infinite Supplied by thought.
As a definite body reveals also the space around, and an inter-
rupted succession exhibits the uniform time beneath, so does
the passing phenomenon demand for itself a power beneath.
The space, and time, and power, not being part of the thing
perceived, but its conditions, are guaranteed to us, therefore,
on the warrant, not of sense, but of intellect.”
“We conclude, then, on reviewing these examples of Space,
and Time, and Causation, that ontological ideas introducing us
to certain fixed entities belong no less to our knowledge than
Scientific ideas of phenomenal disposition and succession.”
In these instances of relation between a phenomenon given in
perception and an entity as a logical condition, the correlatives
are on a perfect equality of intellectual validity, and the relative
character of human thought is not an ontological disqualifica-
tion, but a cognitive power.
There is a thread of fallacy running through the whole of
Hamilton's reasonings, consequent upon a false definition of
the Absolute at the outset. The Absolute is defined as that
which exists in and by itseff, aloof from and out of all relation.
An absolute, as thus defined, does not and can not exist; it is
* “Essays,” pp. 193, 194. *Ibid., p. 197. * Ibid., p. 195.
236 C EIRISTIANITY AND
a pure abstraction, and, in fact, a pure non-entity. “The Ab-
solute expresses perfect independence both in being and in
action, and is applicable to God as Self-existent.” It may
mean the absence of all necessary relation, but it does not mean
the absence of a/Z relation. If God can not voluntari/y call a
finite existence into being, and thus stand in the relation of
cause, He is certainly under the severest limitation. But Surely
that is not a limit which substitutes choice for necessity. To
be unable to know God out of all relation—that is, apart from
his attributes, apart from his created universe, is not felt by us
to be any privation at all. A God without attributes, and out
of all relations, is for us no God at all. God as a being of un-
limited perfection, as infinitely wise and good, as the uncondi-
tioned cause of all finite being, and, consequently, as voluntarily
related to nature and humanity, we can and do know ; this is
the living and true God. The God of a false philosophy is not
'the true God; the pure abstractions of Hegel and Hamilton
are negations, and not realities.
2. We proceed to consider the second fundamental principle
of Hamilton's philosophy of the conditioned, viz., that “con-
ditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of
thought,” and that thought necessarily imposes conditions on
its object.
“Thought,” says Hamilton, “can not transcend conscious-
ness: consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a
Subject and an object known only in correlation, and mutually
âmiting each other.” Thought necessarily supposes conditions;
“to think is simply to condition,” that is, to predicate limits;
and as the infinite is the unlimited, it can not be thought.
The very attempt to think the infinite renders it finite; there-
fore there can be no infinite in thought, and, consequently, the
infinite can not be known.
If by “the infinite in thought” is here meant the infinite
compassed or contained in thought, we readily grant that the
* Calderwood’s “Philosophy of the Infinite,” p. 179.
* “Discussions,” p. 21.
G. R. E. E. K. PHIL OS O PET Y. 237
finite can not contain the infinite ; it is a simple truism which no
one has ever been so foolish as to deny. Even Cousin is not
so unwise as to assert the absolutely comprehensibility of God.
“In order absolutely to comprehend the Infinite, it is neces-
sary to have an infinite power of comprehension, and this is
not granted to us.” A finite mind can not have “an infinite
thought.” But it by no means follows that, because we can
not have infinite thought, we can have no clear and definite
thought of or concerning the Infinite. We have a precise and
definite idea of infinitude ; we can define the idea ; we can set
it apart without danger of being confounded with another, and
we can reason concerning it. There is nothing we more cer-
tainly and intuitively know than that space is infinite, and yet
we can not comprehend or grasp within the compass of our
thought the infinite space. We can not form an image of in-
finite space, can not traverse it in perception, or represent it
by any combination of numbers; but we can have the thought
of it as an idea of Reason, and can argue concerning it with
precision and accuracy.” Hamilton has an idea of the Infinite;
he defines it ; he reasons concerning it; he says “we must be-
lieve in the infinity of God.” But how can he define the In-
finite unless he possesses some knowledge, however limited, of
the infinite Being How can he believe in the infinity of God
if he has no definite idea of infinitude : He can not reason
about, can not affirm or deny any thing concerning, that of
which he knows absolutely nothing.
The grand logical barrier which Hamilton perpetually inter-
poses to all possible cognition of God as infinite is, that to
think is to condition—to limit; and as the Infinite is the un-
conditioned, the unlimited, therefore “the Infinite can not be
* “Lectures on History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 104.
* “To form an image of any infinitude—be it of time or space [or power];
to go mentally through it by successive steps of representation—is indeed
impossible; not less so than to traverse it in our finite perception and ex-
perience. But to have the thought of it as an idea of the reason, not of the
phantasy, and assign that thought a constituent place in valid beliefs and
consistent reasonings, appears to us as not only possible, but inevitable.”—
Martineau’s “Essays,” p. 205.
238 CFTRISTIANITY AND
thought.” We grant at once that all human thought is limited.
and finite, but, at the same time, we emphatically deny that the
limitation of our thought imposes any conditions or limits upon
the object of thought. No such affirmation can be consistently
made, except on the Hegelian hypothesis that “Thought and
Being are identical;” and this is a maxim which Hamilton
himself repudiates. Our thought does not create, neither does
it impose conditions upon, any thing.
There is a lurking sophism in the whole phraseology of
Hamilton in regard to this subject. He is perpetually talking
about “thinking a thing”—“thinking the Infinite.” Now we
do not think a thing, but we think of or concerning a thing. We
do not think a man, neither does our thought impose any con-
ditions upon the man, so that he must be as our thought con-
ceives or represents him ; but our thought is of the man, con-
cerning or about the man, and is only so far true and valid as
it conforms to the objective reality. And so we do not “think
the Infinite ;” that is, our thought neither contains nor con-
ditions the Infinite Being, but our thoughts are about the Infi-
nite One ; and if we do not think of Him as a being of infinite
perfection, our thought is neither worthy, nor just, nor true."
But we are told the law of all thought and of all being is
determination; consequently, negation of some quality or some
potentiality; whereas the Infinite is “ the One and the AZZ”
Tö"Ev kai IIāv),” or, as Dr. Mansel, the disciple and annotator
of Hamilton, affirms, “the sum of all reality,” and “the sum of
all possible modes of being.” The Infinite, as thus defined,
must include in itself all being, and all modes of being, actual
and possible, not even excepting evil. And this, let it be ob-
Served, Dr. Mansel has the hardihood to affirm. “If the Ab-
Solute and the Infinite is an object of human conception at all,
this, and none other, is the conception required.” “The In-
finite Whole,” as thus defined, can not be thought, and there-
* Calderwood’s “Philosophy of the Infinite,” pp. 255, 256.
* Hamilton’s “Lectures on Metaphysics,” Appendix, vol. ii. p. 531.
* “Limits of Religious Thought,” p. 76. * Ibid.
G R E E R PETITI, OSO IPFTY. 239
fore it is argued the Infinite God can not be known. Such a
doctrine shocks our moral sense, and we shrink from the thought
of an Infinite which includes evil. There is certainly a moral
impropriety, if not a logical impossibility, in such a conception
of God.
The fallacy of this reasoning consists in confounding a suff-
Žosed Quantitative Infinite with the Qualitative Infinite—the to-
tality of existence with the infinitely perfect One. “Qualitative
infinity is a secondary predicate; that is, the attribute of an at-
tribute, and is expressed by the adverb infinitely rather than
the adjective infinite. For instance, it is a strict use of lan-
guage to say, that space is infinite, but it is an elliptical use of
language to say, God is infinite. Precision of language would
require us to say, God is infinitely good, wise, and great; or
God is good, and his goodness is infinite. The distinction may
seem trivial, but it is based upon an important difference be-
tween the infinity of space and time on the one hand, and the
infinity.of God on the other. Neither philosophy nor theology
can afford to disregard the difference. Quantitative Infinity is
illimitation by quantity. Qualitative Infinity is illimitation by
degree. Quantity and degree alike imply finitude, and are cate-
gories of the finite alone. The danger of arguing from the for-
mer kind of infinitude to the latter can not be overstated. God
alone possesses Qualitative Infinity, which is strictly synony-
mous with absolute perfection ; and the neglect of the distinction
between this and Quantitative Infinity, leads irresistibly to pan-
theistic and materialistic notions. Spinozism is possible only
by the elevation of “infinite extension' to the dignity of a di-
vine attribute. Dr. Samuel Clarke's identification of God’s im-
mensity with space has been shown by Martin to ultimate in
Pantheism. From ratiocinations concerning the incomprehen-
sibility of infinite space and time, Hamilton and Mansel pass
at once to conclusions concerning the incomprehensibility of
God. The inconsequence of all such arguments is absolute;
and if philosophy tolerates the transference of spatial or tem-
poral analogies to the nature of God, she must reconcile her-
24O CHRISTIANITY AND
self to the negation of his personality and spirituality.” An
Infinite Being, quite remote from the notion of quantity, may
and does exist; which, on the One hand, does not include finite
existence, and, on the other hand, does not render the finite
impossible to thought. Without contradiction they may co-
exist, and be correlated.
The thought will have already suggested itself to the mind
of the reader that for Hamilton to assert that the Infinite, as
thus defined (the One and the All), is absolutely unknown, is
certainly the greatest absurdity, for in that case nothing can
be known. This Infinite must be at least partially known, or
all human knowledge is reduced to zero. To the all-inclusive
Infinite every thing affirmative belongs, not only to be, but to
be known. To claim it for being, yet deny it to thought, is
thus impossible. The Infinite, which includes all real exist-
ence, is certainly possible to cognition.
The whole argument as regards the conditionating nature of
all thought is condensed into four words by Spinoza—“Omnis
determinatio es; negatio;” all determination is negation. Noth-
ing can be more arbitrary or more fallacious than this princi-
ple. It arises from the confusion of two things essentially dif-
ferent—the limits of a being, and its determinate and distinguishing
characteristics. The limit of a being is its imperfection ; the
determination of a being is its perfection. The less a thing is
determined, the more it sinks in the scale of being ; the most
determinate being is the most perfect being. “In this sense
God is the only being absolutely determined. For there must
be something indetermined in all finite beings, since they have
all imperfect powers which tend towards their development
after an indefinite manner. God alone, the complete Being in
whom all powers are actualized, escapes by His own perfection
from all progress, and development, and indetermination.”
* North American Review, October, 1864, article, “The Conditioned and
the Unconditioned,” pp. 422,423. See also Young’s “Province of Reason,”
p. 72; and Calderwood’s “Philosophy of the Infinite,” p. 183.
* Saisset, “Modern Pantheism,” vol. ii. p. 71.
t
G R E E K PHIL OS OPETY. 24I
All real being must be determined ; only pure Nothing can be
undetermined. Determination is, however, one thing; and lim-
itation is essentially another thing. “Even space and time,
though cognized solely by negative characteristics, are deter-
mined in so far as differentiated from the existences they con-
tain ; but this differentiation involves no limitation of their
infinity.” If all distinction is determination, and if all deter-
mination is negation, that is (as here used), limitation, then the
infinite, as distinguished from the finite, loses its own infinity,
and either becomes identical with the finite, or else vanishes
into pure nothing. If Hamilton will persist in affirming that
all determination is limitation, he has no other alternatives but
to accept the doctrine of Absolute Nihilism, or of Absolute
Identity. If the Absolute is the indeterminate — that is, no
attributes, no consciousness, no relations—it is pure non-being.
If the Infinite is “ the One and All,” then there is but one
substance, one absolute entity. -
Herbert Spencer professes to be carrying out, a step farther,
the doctrine put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel, viz., “the
philosophy of the Unconditioned.” In other words, he carries
that doctrine forward to its rigidly logical consequences, and ut-
ters the last word which Hamilton and Mansel dare not utter
—“Apprehensible by us there is no God.” The Ultimate
Reality is absolutely unknown ; it can not be apprehended by
the human intellect, and it can not present itself to the intellect
at all. This Ultimate Reality can not be intelligent, because
to think is to condition, and the Absolute is the unconditioned ;
can not be conscious, because all consciousness is of plurality
and difference, and the Absolute is one ; can not be personal,
because personality is determination or limitation, and the Infi-
nite is the illimitable. It is “audacious,” “irreverent,” “impi-
ous,” to apply any of these predicates to it; to regard it as
Mind, or speak of it as Righteous." The ultimate goal of the
philosophy of the Unconditioned is a purely subjective Atheism.
And yet of this Primary Existence—inscrutable, and abso-
* “First Principles,” pp. III, 112.
16
242 O H. RISTIA NIT Y. A ND
lutely unknown—Spencer knows something; knows as much
as he pleases to know. He knows that this “ultimate of ul-
timates is Aorce,” an “Omnipresent Power,” is “One” and
“Fternal.” He knows also that it can not be intelligent,
self-conscious, and a personality." This is a great deal to
affirm and deny of an existence “absolutely unknown.” May
we not be permitted to affirm of this hidden and unknown
something that it is conscious Mind, especially as Mind is ad-
mitted to be the only analogon of Power; and “the force by
which we produce change, and which serves to symbolize the
causes of changes in general, is the final disclosure of analysis.”
3. We advance to the review of the third fundamental prin-
ciple of Hamilton's philosophy of the Unconditioned, viz., that
the terms infinite and absolute are names for a “mere negation
of thought”— a “mental impotence” to think, or, in other
words, the absence of all the conditions under which thought is
possible. 4. -
This principle is based upon a distinction between “posi-
tive” and “negative” thought, which is made with an air of
wonderful precision and accuracy in “the Alphabet of Human
Thought.” “Thinking is positive when existence is predicated
of an object.” “Thinking is negative when existence is not at-
tributed to an object.” “Negative thinking,” therefore, is not
the thinking of an object as devoid of this or that particular
attribute, but as devoid of all attributes, and thus of all exist-
ence; that is, it is “the negation of all thought”—nothing.
“When we think a thing, that is done by conceiving it as pos-
Sessed of certain modes of being or qualities, and the sum of
these qualities constitutes its concept or motion.” “When we per-
form an act of negative thought, this is done by thinking some-
Żing as not existing in this or that determinate mode; and
when we think it as existing in no determinate mode, we cease
to think at al/—it becomes a nothing.” Now the Infinite, ac-
* “First Principles,” p. 235. *Ibid., p. 99. “Ibid., p. 81.
4 Ibid., pp. IOS-II2. .* * Ibid., p. 235.
* “Discussions,” Appendix I. p. 567. "“Logic,” pp. 54, 55.
G RE E K PHILOSOPHY. 243
cording to Hamilton, can not be thought in any determinate
mode ; therefore we do not think it at all, and therefore it is
for us “a logical Non-entity.” - -
It is barely conceivable that Hamilton might imagine him-
self possessed of this singular power of “performing an act of
negative thought”—that is, of thinking and not thinking at
once, or of “thinking something” that “becomes nothing;”
we are not conscious of any such power. To think without an
object of thought, or to think of something without any quali-
ties, or to think “something” which in the act of thought melts
away into “nothing,” is an absurdity and a contradiction. We
can not think about nothing. All thought must have an ob-
ject, and every object must have some predicate. Even space
has some predicates — as receptivity, unity, and infinity.
Thought can only be realized by thinking something existing,
and existing in a determinate manner; and when we cease to
think something having predicates, we cease to think at all.
This is emphatically asserted by Hamilton himself.” “Nega-
tive thinking” is, therefore, a meaningless phrase, a contradic-
tion in terms; it is no thought at all. We are cautioned, how-
ever, against regarding “the negation of thought” as “a nega-
tion of all mental ability.” It is, we are told, “an attempt to
think, and a failure in the attempt.” An attempt to think
about what? Surely it must be about some object, and an ob-
ject which is known by some sign, else there can be no thought.
Let any one make the attempt to think without something to
think about, and he will find that both the process and the re-
sult are blank nothingness. All thought, therefore, as Calder-
wood has amply shown, is, must be, positive. “Thought is
nothing else than the comparison of objects known; and as
knowledge is always positive, so must our thought be. All
knowledge implies an object known; and so all thought in-
volves an object about which we think, and must, therefore, be
positive—that is, it must embrace within itself the conception
of certain qualities as belonging to the object.” .
* “Logic,” p. 55. 2 & 4 Philosophy of the Infinite,” p. 272.
244 CHRISTIANITY AND .
The conclusion of Hamilton’s reasoning in regard to “nega-
tive thinking” is, that we can form no notion of the Infinite
Being. We have no positive idea of such a Being. We can
think of him only by “the thinking away of every characteris-
tic” which can be conceived, and thus “ceasing to think at
all.” We can only form a “negative concept,” which, we are
told, “is in fact no concept at all.” We can form only a “neg-
ative notion,” which, we are informed, “is only the negation of
a notion.” This is the impenetrable abyss of total gloom and
emptiness into which the philosophy of the conditions leads us
at last.” .
Still we have the word infinite, and we have the notion which
the word expresses. This, at least, is spared to us by Sir Wil-
liam Hamilton. He who says we have no such notion asks
the question how we have it 2 “Here it may be asked, how
have we, then, the word infinite? How have we the notion
which this word expresses? The answer to this question is
contained in the distinction of positive and negative thought.
* Whilst Spencer accepts the general doctrine of Hamilton, that the Ulti-
mate Reality is inscrutable, he argues earnestly against his assertion that
the Absolute is a “mere negation of thought.”
“Every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is
demonstrated distinctly postulates the positive existence of something beyond
the relative. To say we can not know the Absolute is, by implication, to
affirm there is an Absolute. In the very denial of our power to learn what
the Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption that it is ; and the making
of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been present to the mind,
not as nothing, but as something. And so with every step in the reasoning
by which the doctrine is upheld, the Noumenon, everywhere named as the
antithesis of the Phenomenon, is throughout thought as actuality. It is
rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of
appearances only, without, at the same time, conceiving a Reality of which
these are appearances, for appearances without reality are unthinkable.
“Truly to represent or realize in thought any one of the propositions of
which the argument consists, the unconditioned must be represented as posi-
tive, and not negative. How, then, can it be a legitimate conclusion from
the argument that our consciousness of it is negative P An argument, the
very construction of which assigns to a certain term a certain meaning, but
which ends in showing that this term has no meaning, is simply an elaborate
suicide. Clearly, then, the very demonstration that a definite consciousness
[comprehension] of the Absolute is impossible, unavoidably presupposes an
indefinite consciousness of it [an apprehension].”—“First Principles,” p. 88.
G R E E R PHIL OS OPEI Y. 245
We have a positive concept of a thing when we think of it by
the qualities of which it is the complement. But as the attri-
bution of qualities is an affirmation, as affirmation and negation
are relatives, and as relatives are Ánozwn on/y in and through
each other, we can not, therefore, have a consciousness of the
affirmation of any quality without having, at the same time, the
correlative consciousness of its negation. Now the one conscious-
ness is a positive, the other consciousness is a negative notion;
and as all language is the reflex of thought, the positive and
negative notions are expressed by positive and negative names.
Thus it is with the Infinite.” Now let us carefully scrutinize
the above deliverance. We are told that “relatives are known
only in and through each other;” that is, such relatives as
finite and infinite are known necessarily in the same act of
thought. The knowledge of one is as necessary as the knowl-
edge of the other. We can not have a consciousness of the
one without the correlative consciousness of the other. “For,”
says Hamilton, “a relation is, in truth, a thought, one and in-
divisible; and while the thinking a relation necessarily involves
the thought of its two terms, so it is, with equal necessity, itself
involved in the thought of either.” If, then, we are conscious
of the two terms of the relation in the same “one and indivisi-
ble” mental act—if we can not have “the consciousness of the
one without the consciousness of the other ”—if space and posi-
tion, time and succession, Substance and quality, infinite and
finite, are given to us in pairs, then ‘the Knowledge of one is as
necessary as the Knowledge of the other,’ and they must stand or
fall together. The finite is known no more positively than the
infinite; the infinite is known as positively as the finite. The
one can not be taken and the other left. The infinite, dis-
charged from all relation to the finite, could never come into
apprehension; and the finite, discharged of all relation to the
infinite, is incognizable too. “There can be no objection to
call the one ‘positive’ and the other “negative,’ provided it
be understood that each is so with regard to the other, and that
‘‘Logic,” p. 73.
246 CHR IS TIANITY AND
the relation is convertible ; the finite, for instance, being the
negative of the infinite, not less than the infinite of the finite.”
To say that the finite is comprehensible in and by itself, and
the infinite is incomprehensible in and by itself, is to make an
assertion utterly at variance both with psychology and logic.
The finite is no more comprehensible in itself than the infinite.
“Relatives are known only in and through each other.” “The
conception of one term of a relation necessarily implies that of
the other, it being the very nature of a relative to be thinkable
only through the conjunct thought of its correlative.” We
comprehend nothing more completely than the infinite; “for
the idea of illimitation is as clear, precise, and intelligible as
the idea of limitability, which is its basis. The propositions
“A is X,” “A is not X,” are equally comprehensible; the con-
ceptions A and X are in both cases positive data of experience,
while the affirmation and negation consist solely in the copula-
tive or disjunctive nature of the predication. Consequently,
if X is comprehensible, so is not —X; iſ the finite is compre-
hensible, so is the infinite.”
Whilst denying that the infinite can by us be known, Hamil-
ton tells us he is “far from denying that it is, must, and Ought
to be believed.” “We must believe in the infinity of God.”
“Faith—belief—is the organ by which we apprehend what is
beyond knowledge.” We heartily assent to the doctrine that
the Infinite Being is the object of faith, but we earnestly deny
that the Infinite Being is not an object of knowledge. May
not knowledge be grounded upon faith, and does not faith im-
ply knowledge Can we not obtain knowledge through faith?
Is not the belief in the Infinite Being implied in our knowledge
of finite existence 2 If so, then God as the infinite and perfect,
God as the unconditioned Cause, is not absolutely “the un-
known.”
* Martineau’s “Essays,” p. 237. * Hamilton’s “Logic,” p. 73.
° North American Review, October, 1864, article “Conditioned and the
Unconditioned,” pp. 441, 442.
* Letter to Calderwood, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 530.
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. ii. p. 374,
G R E E K P HTI, OS O PHY. 247
A full exposition of Sir William Hamilton's views of Faith
in its connection with Philosophy would have been deeply in-
teresting to us, and it would have filled up a gap in the inter-
pretation of his system. The question naturally presents itself,
how would he have discriminated between faith and knowledge,
so as to assign to each its province 2 If our notion of the In-
finite Being rests entirely upon faith, then upon what ultimate
ground does faith itself rest? On the authority of Scripture,
of the Church, or of reason The only explicit statement of
his view which has fallen in our way is a note in his edition of
Beid.” “We Know what rests upon reason ; we believe what
rests upon authority. But reason itself must rest at last upon
authority; for the original data of reason do not rest upon
reason, but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority
of what is beyond itself. These data are, therefore, in rigid
propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is that, in the last resort,
we must, per force, philosophically admit that belief is the pri-
mary condition of reason, and not reason the ultimate ground
of belief.”
Here we have, first, an attempted distinction between faith
and knowledge. “We Know what rests upon reason;” that is,
whatever we obtain by deduction or induction, whatever is capa-
ble of explication and proof, is Ánowledge. “We believe what
rests upon authority;” that is, whatever we obtain by intellec-
tual intuition or pure apperception, and is incapable of expli-
cation and of proof, is “a belief or trust.” These instinctive
beliefs, which are, as it were, the first principles upon which all
knowledge rests, are, however, indiscriminately called by Ham-
ilton “cognitions,” “beliefs,” “judgments.” He declares most
explicitly “that the principles of our knowledge must them-
selves be knowledges,” and these first principles, which are
“the primary condition of reason,” are elsewhere called “d
Ariori cognitions,” also “native, pure, or transcendental Amozy/.
edge,” in contradistinction to “d fosteriori cognitions,” or that
* P. 760; also Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, p. 61.
* Ibid., p. 69.
248 CFIRISTIA NIT Y. AND
knowledge which is obtained in the exercise of reason." All
this confusion results from an attempt to put asunder what
God has joined together. As Clemens of Alexandria has said,
“Neither is faith without knowledge, nor knowledge without
faith.” All faith implies knowledge, and all knowledge implies
faith. They are mingled in the one operation of the human
mind, by which we apprehend first principles or ultimate truths.
These have their light and dark side, as Hamilton has re-
marked. They afford enough light to show that they are and
must be, and thus communicate knowledge ; they furnish no
light to show how they are and why they are, and under that
aspect demand the exercise of faith. There must, therefore,
first be something Ánown before there can be any faith.”
And now we seem to have penetrated to the centre of Ham-
ilton's philosophy, and the vital point may be touched by one
crucial question, Upon what ultimate ground does faith itself rest 2
Hamilton says, “we believe what rests upon authority.” But
what is that authority ? I. It is not the authority of Divine
Revelation, because beliefs are called “instinctive,” “native,”
“innate,” “common,” “catholic,” all which terms secnn to in-
dicate that this “authority” lies within the sphere of the human
mind; at any rate, this faith does not rest on the authority of
Scripture. Neither is it the authority of Reason. “The orig-
inal data of reason [the first principles of knowledge] do not
rest upon the authority of reason, but on the authority of 70/af is
beyond itself.” The question thus recurs, what is this ultimate
ground beyond reason upon which faith rests 2 Does it rest
upon any thing, or nothing?
The answer to this question is given in the so-called “Law
of the Conditioned,” which is thus laid down : “A// ?/af is con-
ceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, as contradic-
tory of each of her, can not both be true, but of which, as mutual
contradictories, one midst.” For example, we conceive space, but
3) (g
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. ii. p. 26.
*M*Cosh, “Intuitions,” pp. 197, 198; Calderwood, “ Philosophy of the
Infinite,” p. 24. * Philosophy of Sir Wm. Hamilton, pp. 68, 69.
GREEK PHILosopſ. Y. 249
we can not conceive it as absolutely bounded or infinitely un-
bounded. We can conceive time, but we can not conceive it
as having an absolute commencement or an infinite non-com-
mencement. We can conceive of degree, but we can not con-
ceive it as absolutely limited or as infinitely unlimited. We
can conceive of existence, but not as an absolute part or an infi-
nite, whole. Therefore, “the Conditioned is that which is
alone conceivable or cogitable ; the Unconditioned, that which
is inconceivable or incogitable. The conditioned, or the think-
able, lies between two extremes or poles; and each of these
extremes or poles are unconditioned, each of them inconceiva-
ble, each of them exclusive or contradictory of the other. Of
these two repugnant opposites, the one is that of Unconditional
or Absolute Limitation ; the other that of Unconditional or In-
finite Illimitation, or, more simply, the Absolute and the Infi-
nite ; the term absolute expressing that which is finished or
complete, the term infinite that which can not be terminated or
concluded.”
“The conditioned is the mean between two extremes—two
inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be
conceived as fossible, but of which, on the principle of Contradic-
tion, and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary.
We are thus warned from recognizing the domain of our knowl-
edge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith.
And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very con-
sciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative
and the finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of some-
thing unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible
reality.” Here, then, we have found the ultimate ground of
our faith in the Infinite God. It is built upon a “mental im-
becility,” and buttressed up by “contradictions !”
* “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. ii. pp. 368, 374. With Hamilton, the
Unconditioned is a genus, of which the Infinite and Absolute are species.
* “Discussions on Philosophy,” p. 22.
* The warmest admirers of Sir William Hamilton hesitate to apply the
doctrine of the unconditioned to Cause and Free-will. See “Mansel's Pro-
legom,” Note C, p. 265.
25o CFIRISTIANITY AND
Such a faith, however, is built upon the clouds, and the whole
structure of this philosophy is “a castle in the air”—an attempt
to organize Nescience into Science, and evoke something out
of nothing. To pretend to believe in that respecting which
I can form no notion is in reality not to believe at all. The
nature which compels me to believe in the Infinite must Supply
me some object upon which my belief can take hold. We can
not believe in contradictions. Our faith must be a rational
belief—a faith in the ultimate harmony and unity of all truth,
in the veracity and integrity of human reason as the Organ of
truth; and, above all, a faith in the veracity of God, who is the
author and illuminator of our mental constitution. “We can
not suppose that we are created capable of intelligence in Order
to be made victims of delusion—that God is a deceiver, and
the root of our nature a lie.” We close our review of Hamilton
by remarking:
I. “The Law of the Conditioned,” as enounced by Hamil-
ton, is contradictory. It predicates contradiction of two ex-
tremes, which are asserted to be equally incomprehensible and
incognizable. If they are utterly incognizable, how does Ham-
ilton Anow that they are contradictory The mutual relation
of two objects is said to be known, but the objects themselves
are absolutely unknown. But how can we know any relation
except by an act of comparison, and how can we compare two
objects so as to affirm their relation, if the objects are absolutely
unknown “The Infinite is defined as Unconditional Illimi-
tation; the Absolute as Conditional Limitation. Yet almost in
the same breath we are told that each is utterly inconceivable,
each the mere negation of thought. On the one hand, we are
told they differ; on the other, we are told they do not differ.
Now which does Hamilton mean? If he insist upon the defini-
tions as yielding a ground of conceivable difference, he must
abandon the inconceivability; but if he insist upon the incon-
ceivability, he must abandon the definition as sheer verbiage,
devoid of all conceivable meaning. There is no possible es-
* Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, p. 21.
G R E E K PHII, OS O PETY. 25 I
cape from this dilemma. Further, two negations can never
contradict; for contradiction is the asserting and the denying
of the same proposition ; two denials can not conflict. If Il-
limitation is negative, Limitation, its Contradictory, is positive,
whether conditional or unconditional. In brief, if the Infinite
and Absolute are wholly incomprehensible, they are not dis-
tinguishable; but if they are distinguishable, they are not
wholly incomprehensible. If they are indistinguishable, they
are to us identical ; and identity precludes contradiction. But
if they are distinguishable, distinction is made by difference,
which involves positive cognition ; hence one, at least, must be
conceivable. It follows, therefore, by inexorable logic, that
either the contradiction or the inconceivability must be aban-
doned.”
2. “The Law of the Conditioned,” as a ground of faith in
the Infinite Being, is utterly void, meaningless, and ineffectual.
Let us re-state it in Hamilton’s own words: “The conditioned
is the mean between two extremes, two inconditionates exclusive
of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of
which, on the principle of Contradiction and Excluded Middle,
one must be admitted as necessary.” It is scarcely needful to ex-
plain to the intelligent reader the above logical principles; that
they may, however, be clearly before the mind in this connec-
tion, we state that the principle of Contradiction is this: “A
thing can not at the same time be and not be ; A is, A is not,
are propositions which can not both be true at once.” The
principle of Excluded Middle is this: “A thing either is or is
not—A either is or is not B ; there is no medium.” Now, to
mention the law of Excluded Middle and two contradictories
with a mean between them, in the same sentence, is really as-
tounding. “If the two contradictory extremes are equally in-
Cogitable, yet include a cogitable mean, why insist upon the
necessity of accepting either extreme * This necessity of ac-
cepting one of the contradictories is wholly based upon the
* North American Review, October, 1864, pp. 407, 408.
* Hamilton’s “Logic,” pp. 58, 59; “Metaphysics,” vol. ii. p. 368.
252 CIIRISTIANITY AND
supposed impossibility of a mean ; if a mean exists, that may
be true, and both contradictories together false. But if a mean
between two contradictories be both impossible and absurd,
Hamilton’s ‘conditioned ’ entirely vanishes.” If both contra-
dictories are equally unknown and equally unthinkable, we can
not discover why, on his principles, we are bound to believe
either.
3. The whole of this confusion in thought and expression
results from the habit of confounding the sensuous imagination
with the non-sensuous reason, and the consequent co-ordina-
tion of an imageable conception with an abstract idea. The
objects of Sense and the sensuous imagination may be charac-
terized as extension, limitation, figure, position, etc.; the objects
of the non-sensuous reason may be characterized as universal-
ity, eternity, infinity. I can form an image of an extended and
figured object, but I can not form an image of space, time, or
God; neither, indeed, can I form an image of Goodness, Jus-
tice, or Truth. But I can have a clear and precise idea of
space, and time, and God, as I can of Justice, Goodness, and
Truth. There are many things which I can most surely Know
that I can not possibly comprehend, if to comprehend is to form
a mental image of a thing. There is nothing which I more
certainly know than that space is infinite, and eternity unbegin-
ning and endless; but I can not comprehend the infinity of
space or the illimitability of eternity. I know that God is, that
he is a being of infinite perſection, but I can not throw my
thoughts around and comprehend the infinity of God.
(iv.) We come, lastly, to consider the position of the Dogmatic
7%eologians.” In their zeal to demonstrate the necessity of Di-
vine Revelation, and to vindicate for it the honor of supplying
to us all our knowledge of God, they assail every fundamental
principle of reason, often by the very weapons which are Sup-
* North British Review, October, 1864, pp. 415, 416.
* Ellis, Leland, Locke, and Horsley, whose writings are extensively
quoted in Watson’s “Institutes of Theology” (reprinted by Carlton & Lan-
ahan, New York).
G B E E R T LIII, OS OPII Y. 253
plied by an Atheistical philosophy. As a Succinct presentation
of the views of this school, we select the “7%éologica/ Znstitutes”
Of R. Watson.
1st. The invalidity of “the principle of causality” is asserted
by this author. “We allow that the argument which proves
that the effects with which we are surrounded have been caused,
and thus leads us up through a chain of Subordinate causes to
one First Cause, has a simplicity, an obviousness, and a force
which, when we are previously furnished with the idea of God,
makes it, at first sight, difficult to conceive that men, under any
degree of cultivation, should be inadequate to it; yet if ever
the human mind commenced such an inquiry at all, it is highly
probable that it would rest in the notion of an eternal succession
of causes and effects, rather than acquire the ideas of creation, in
the proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator.” “We feel that
our reason rests with full satisfaction in the doctrine that all
things are created by one eternal and Self-existent Being; but
the Greek philosophers held that matter was eternally co-exist-
ent with God. This was the opinion of Plato, who has been
called the Moses of philosophy.”
For a defense of “the principle of causality” we must refer
the reader to our remarks on the philosophy of Comte. We
shall now only remark on one or two peculiarities in the above
statement which betray an utter misapprehension of the nature
of the argument. We need scarcely direct attention to the un-
fortunate and, indeed, absurd phrase, “an eternal succession of
causes and effects.” An “eternal succession” is a contradictio
Žn adjecio, and as such inconceivable and unthinkable. No
human mind can “rest” in any such thing, because an eternal
succession is no rest at all. All “succession * is finite and
temporal, capable of numeration, and therefore can not be eter-
nal.” Again, in attaining the conception of a First Cause the
human mind does not pass up “through a chain of subordinate
causes,” either definite or indefinite, “to one First Cause.”
* Watson’s “Institutes of Theology,” vol. i. p. 273.
* Id., ib., vol. i. p. 21. * See ante, pp. 181, 182, ch. v.
!
254 CITRISTIANITY AND
Let us re-state the principle of causality as a universal and
necessary law of thought. “A////enomena Żresent themselves to
us as the expression of Power, and refer us to a causal ground
whence they issue.” That “power” is intuitively and spontane-
ously apprehended by the human mind as Supreme and Ulti-
mate—“the causal ground” is a personal God. All the phe-
nomena of nature present themselves to us as “effects,” and we
know nothing of “subordinate causes” except as modes of the
Divine Efficiency.’ The principle of causality compels us to
think causation behind nature, and under causation to think of
Volition. “Other forces we have no sort of ground for believ-
ing; or, except by artifices of abstraction, even power of con-
ceiving. The dynamic idea is either this or nothing; and the
logical alternative assuredly is, that nature is either a mere
Time-march of phenomena or an expression of Mind.” The
true doctrine of philosophy, of Science, and of revelation is not
simply that God did create “in the beginning,” but that he
still creates. All the operations of Nature are the operations
of the Divine Mind. “Thou takest away their breath, they
die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit,
they are created ; and thou renewest the face of the earth.”
The assertion that Plato taught “the eternity of matter,”
and that consequently he did not arrive at the idea of a Su-
preme and Ultimate Cause, is incapable of proof. The term
#Am=matter does not occur in the writings of Plato, or, indeed,
of any of his predecessors, and is peculiarly Aristotelian. The
ground of the world of sense is called by Plato “the recepta-
cle” (iročoxft), “the nurse” (riðhym) of all that is produced,
and was apparently identified, in his mind, with Žure space—a
logical rather than a physical entity—the mere negative con-
dition and medium of Divine manifestation. He never regards
it as a “cause,” or ascribes to it any efficiency. We grant that
* The modern doctrine of the Correlation and Homogenity of all Forces
clearly proves that they are not many, but one—“a dynamic self-identity
masked by transmigration.”—Martineau’s “Essays,” pp. 134–144.
* Martineau’s “Essays,” pp. 140, 141. - * Psalm civ.
G R EE K PHIL OS OPEI Y. 255
he places this very indefinite something (śrotovoúv Tl) out of the
sphere of temporal origination ; but it must be borne in mind
that he speaks of “creation in eternity” as well as of “creation
in time;” and of time itself, though created, as “an eternal
image of the generating Father.” This one thing, at any rate,
can not be denied, that Plato recognizes creation in its fullest
sense as the act of God.
The admission that something has always existed besides the
Deity, as a mere logical condition of the exercise of divine pow-
er (e.g., space), would not invalidate the argument for the exist-
ence of God. The proof of the Divine Existence, as Chalmers
has shown, does not rest on the existence of matter, but on the
orderly arrangement of matter; and the grand question of The-
ism is not whether the matter of the world, but whether the pres-
end order of the world had a commencement.”
2d. Doubt is cast by our author upon the validity of “the
principle of the Unconditioned or the ſºftnife.” “Supposing it
were conceded that some faint glimmering of this great truth
[the existence of a First Cause] might, by induction, have been
discovered by contemplative minds, by what means could they
have demonstrated to themselves that he is eternal, Self-existent,
immortal, and independent * “Between things visible and in-
visible, time and eternity, beings finite and beings infinite, ob-
jects of sense and objects of faith, the connection is not percepti-
Žſe to human observation. Though we push our researches,
therefore, to the extreme point whither the light of nature can
carry us, they will in the end be abruptly terminated, and we
must stop short at an immeasurable distance between the
creature and the Creator.”
To this assertion that the connection of things visible and
things invisible, finite and infinite, objects of sense and objects
of faith, is utterly imperceptible to human thought, we might re-
* Plato, “Timaeus,” $ xiv.
* Chalmers's “Natural Theology,” bk. i. ch. v.; also Mahan’s “Natural
Theology,” pp. 21–23.
* Watson’s “Institutes of Theol.,” vol. i. p. 274. “Id., ib., vol. i. p. 273.
256 . C. H. RISTIANITY AND
ply by quoting the words of that Sacred Book whose supreme
authority our author is seeking, by this argument, to establish.
“The invisible things of God, even his eterial power and god-
head, from the creation, are clearly seen, being understood by the
things which are made.” We may also point to the fact that in
every age and in every land the human mind has spontaneously
and instinctively recognized the existence of an invisible Power
and Presence pervading nature and controlling the destinies of
man, and that religious worship—prayer, and praise, and Sacri-
fice—offered to that unseen yet Omnipresent Power is an uni-
versal fact of human nature. The recognition of an immediate
and a necessary “connection” between the visible and the in-
visible, the objects of sense and the objects of faith, is one of
the most obvious facts of consciousness—of universal con-
sciousness as revealed in history, and of individual conscious-
ness as developed in every rational mind.
That this connection is “not perceptible to human observa-
tion,” if by this our author means “not perceptible to sense,”
we readily admit. No one ever asserted it was perceptible to
human observation. We say that this connection is percepti-
ble to human reason, and is revealed in every attempt to think
about, and seek an explanation of, the phenomenal world.
The Phenomenal and the Real, Genesis and Being, Space and
Extension, Succession and Duration, Time and Eternity, the
Finite and the Infinite, are correlatives which are given in one
and the same indivisible act of thought. “The conception of
one term of a relation necessarily implies that of the other ; it
being the very nature of a correlative to be thinkable only
through the conjunct thought of its correlative ; for a relation
is, in truth, a thought one and indivisible; and whilst the
thinking of one relation necessarily involves the thought of its
two terms, so it is, with equal necessity, itself involved in the
thought of either.” Finite, dependent, contingent, temporal
existence, therefore, necessarily supposes infinite, self-existent,
'independent, eternal Being; the Conditioned and Relative im-
* Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” vol. ii. pp. 536, 537.
G R E E K PEIII, OS O PHY. 257
plies the Unconditioned and Absolute—one is known only in
and through the other. But inasmuch as the unconditioned is
cognized solely d ?riori, and the conditioned solely d fosteriori,
the recognition by the human mind of their necessary correla-
tion becomes the bridge whereby the chasm, between the sub-
jective and the objective may be spanned, and whereby Thought
may be brought face to face with Existence.
The reverence which, from boyhood, we have entertained
for the distinguished author of the “Institutes” restrains us
from speaking in adequate terms of reprobation of the state-
ment that “the First Cause” may be known, and yet not con-
ceived “as eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent.”
Surely that which is the ground and reason of all existence
must have the ground and reason of its own existence in itself.
That which is first in the order of existence, and in the logical
order of thought, can have nothing prior to itself. If the sup-
posed First Cause is not necessarily self-existent and independ-
ent, it is not the first, if it has a dependent existence, there
must be a prior being on which it depends. If the First Cause
is not eternal, then prior to this Ultimate Cause there was
nothingness and vacuity, and pure nothing, by its own act, be-
came something. But “AEx ſtihilo mi/hi/’’ is a universal law of
thought. To ask the question whether the First Cause be self.
existent and eternal, is, in effect, to ask the question “who
made God?” and this is not the question of an adult theo-
logian, but of a little child. Surely Mr. Watson must have
penned the above passage without any reflection on its real
import."
* In an article on “the Impending Revolution in Anglo-Saxon Theology”
(Methodist Quarterly Review, July, 1863), Dr. Warren seems to take it for
granted that the “aitedlogical” and “teleological” arguments for the exist-
ence of God are utterly invalidated by the Dynamical theory of matter.
“Once admit that real power can and does reside in matter, and all these
reasonings fail. If inherent forces of matter are competent to the produc-
tion of all the innumerable miracles of movement in the natural world, what
is there in the natural world which they can not produce. If all the exer-
tions of Żower in the universe can be accounted for without resort to some-
thing back of, and superior to, nature, what is there which can force the mind
17
258 C EIRISTIANITY A ND
3d. The validity of “the principle of unity” is also discredited
by Watson. “If, however, it were conceded that some glim-
merings of this great truth, the existence of a First Cause,
to such a resort P’’ (p. 463). “Having granted that power, or self-activity, is
a natural attribute of all matter, what right have we to deny it inſelligence 2"
(p. 465). “Self-moving matter must have thought and design” (p. 469).
It is not our intention to offer an extended criticism of the above posi-
tions in this note. We shall discuss “the Dynamical theory” more fully in
a subsequent work. If the theory apparently accepted by Dr. Warren be
true, that “the ultimate atoms of matter are as uniformly efficient as minds,
and that we have the same ground to regard the force exerted by the one
inſtate and natural as that exerted by the other” (p. 464), then we grant that
the conclusions of Dr. Warren, as above stated, are unavoidable. We pro-
ceed one step farther, and boldly assert that the existence of God is, on this
hypothesis, incapable of prooſ, and the only logical position Dr. Warren can
occupy is that of spiritualistic Pantheism.
Dr. Warren asserts that “the Dynamical theory of matter” is now gene-
rally accepted by “Anglo-Saxon naturalists.” “One can scarcely open a sci-
entific treatise without observing the altered stand-point” (p. 160). We con-
ſess that we are disappointed with Dr. Warren's treatment of this simple ques-
tion of fact. On so fundamental an issue, the Doctor ought to have given
the name of at least one “naturalist” who asserts that “the ultimate atoms
of matter are as uniformly efficient as minds.” Leibnitz, Morrell, Ulrici,
Hickok, the authorities quoted by him, are metaphysicians and idealists of
the extremest school. At present we shall, therefore, content ourselves with
a general denial of this wholesale statement of Dr. Warren ; and we shall
sustain that denial by a selection from the many authorities we shall here-
after present. “No particle of matter possesses within itself the power of
changing its existing state of motion or of rest. Matter has no spontaneous
power either of rest or motion, but is equally susceptible to each as it may
be acted on by external causes” (Silliman’s “Principles of Physics,” p. 13).
The above proposition is “a truth on which the whole science of mechanical
philosophy ultimately depends” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. “Dynamics,”
vol. viii. p. 326). “A material substance existing alone in the universe could
not produce any effects. 7%ere is not, so far as we &low, a self-acting mate-
rial substance in the zºnizerse” (M*Cosh, “Divine Government, Physical and
Moral,” p. 78). “Perhaps the only true indication of matter is inertia.”
“The cause of gravitation is anot resident in the particles of matter merely,”
but also “in all space” (Dr. Faraday on “Conservation of Force,” in “Cor-
relation and Conservation of Force,” p. 368). He also quotes with appro-
bation the words of Newton, “That gravity should be innate, inherent, and
essential to matter, is so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has
in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.”
(p. 368). “The ‘force of gravity’ is an improper expression” (p. 340).
“Forces are transformable, indestructible, and, in contradistinction from
maſter, imponderable” (p. 346). “The first cause of things is Deity” (Dr.
Mayer, in “Correlation and Conservation of Force,” p. 341). “Although
G B E E R PEIIL OS O PET Y. 259
might, by induction, have been discovered, by what means
could they have demonstrated to themselves that the great col-
lection of bodies which we call the world had but one Creator.”
We might answer directly, and at once, that the oneness or
unity of God is necessarily contained in “the very notion of a
First Cause”—a first cause is not many causes, but one. By
a First Cause we do not, however, understand the first of a nu-
merical Series, but an āpxī-a principle, itself unbeginning,
which is the source of all beginning. Our categorical answer,
therefore, must be that the unity of God is a sublime deliver-
ance of reason—God is one God. It is a first principle of
reason that all differentiation and plurality Supposes an incom-
posite unity, all diversity implies an indivisible identity. The
sensuous perception of a plurality of parts Supposes the rational
idea of an absolute unity, which has no parts, as its necessary
correlative. For example, extension is a congeries of indefini-
tesimal parts; the continuity of matter, as empirica/Zy known
by us, is never absolute. Space is absolutely continuous, in-
capable of division into integral parts, illimitable, and, as ra-
Žionally known by us, an absolute unity. The cognition of
limited extension, which is the subject of quantitative measure-
ment, involves the conception of unlimited space, which is the
negation of all plurality and complexity of parts. And so the
cognition of a phenomenal universe in which we see only differ.
º
the word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as mean-
ing antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we
can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of
another” (p. 15). “Causation is the zwill,” “creation is the act, of God”
(Grove on “Correlation of Physical Forces,” p. 199). “Between gravity
and motion it is impossible to establish the equation required for a rightly-
conceived causal relation” (“Correlation and Conservation of Force,” p.
253). See also Herschel’s “Outlines of Astronomy,” p. 234.
It certainly must have required a wonderful effort of imagination on the
part of Dr. Warren to transform “weight” and “density,” mere passive
affections of matter, into self-activity, intelligence, thought, and design.
Weight or density are merely relative terms. Supposing one particle or
mass of matter to exist alone, and there can be no attractive or gravitating
force. There must be a cause of gravity which is distinct from matter.
* “Institutes of Theology,” Vol. i. p. 275.
26o C EIRISTIANITY AND
ence, plurality, and change, implies the existence of a Being
who is absolutely unchangeable, identical, and one.
This law of thought lies at the basis of that universal desire
of unity, and that universal effort to reduce all our knowledge
to unity, which has revealed itself in the history of philosophy,
and also of inductive science. “Reason, intellect, voic, con-
catenating thoughts and objects into System, and tending up-
ward from particular facts to general laws, from general laws
to universal principles, is never satisfied in its ascent till it
comprehends all laws in a single formula, and consummates all
conditional knowledge in the unity of unconditional existence.”
“The history of philosophy is only the history of this tendency,
and philosophers have borne ample testimony to its reality.
‘The mind,” says Anaxagoras, “only knows when it subdues its
objects, when it reduces the many to the one.’ ‘The end of
philosophy,’ says Plato, ‘is the intuition of unity.” “All knowl-
edge,’ say the Platonists, ‘is the gathering up into one, and the
indivisible apprehension of this unity by the knowing mind.’”
This law has been the guiding principle of the Inductive
Sciences, and has led to Some of its most important discoveries.
The unity which has been attained in physical science is not,
however, the absolute unity of a material substratum, but a
unity of Wil/ and of 77.0%ght. The late discovery of the mon-
ogenesis, reciprocal convertibility, and indestructibility of all
Forces in nature, leads us upward towards the recognition of
one Omnipresent and Omnipotent Will, which, like a mighty
tide, sweeps through the universe and effects all its changes.
The universal prevalence of the same physical laws and numer-
ical relations throughout all space, and of the same archetypal
forms and teleology of organs throughout all past time, reveals
to us a Unity of Thought which grasps the entire details of the
universe in one comprehensive plan.” The positive d ?riori
* Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” vol. i. pp. 68, 69.
* We refer with pleasure to the articles of Dr. Winchell, in the North-
western Christian Advocate, in which the a posteriori proof of “the Unity
of God” is forcibly exhibited, and take occasion to express the hope they
will soon be presented to the public in a more permanent form.
G. R. E. E. K. PHIL OS OPEI Y. 261
intuitions of reason and the d ?osteriori inductions of science
equally attest that God is one.
4th. By denying that man has any intuitive cognitions of
right and wrong, or any native and original feeling of obliga-
tion, Mr. Watson invalidates “the moral argument” for the ex-
istence of a Righteous God.
“As far as man's reason has applied itself to the discovery
of truth or duty it has generally gone astray.” “Questions of
morals do not, for the most part, lie level to the minds of the
populace.” “Their conclusions have no authority, and place
them under no ob/gation.” And, indeed, man without a rev-
elation “is without moral control, without principles of justice,
except such as may be slowly elaborated from those relations
which concern the grosser interests of life, without conscience,
without hope or fear in another life.”
Now we shall not occupy our space in the elaboration of the
..proposition that the universal consciousness of our race, as re-
vealed in human history, languages, legislations, and Sentiments,
bears testimony to the fact that the ideas of right, duty, and re-
sponsibility are native to the human mind; we shall simply
make our appeal to those Sacred Writings whose verdict must
be final with all theologians. That the fundamental principles
of the moral law do exist, subjectively, in all human minds is
distinctly affirmed by Paul, in a passage which deserves to be
regarded as the chief corner-stone of moral science. “The
Gentiles (36/m, heathen), which have not the written law, do by
the guidance of nature (reason or conscience) the works en-
joined by the revealed law ; these, having no written law, are
a law unto themselves; who show plainly the works of the law
written on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and
also their reasonings one with another, when they accuse, or
else excuse, each other.” To deny this is to relegate the hea-
then from all responsibility. For Mr. Watson admits “that the
* “Institutes of Theology,” vol. ii. p. 470. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 15.
* Ibid., vol. i. p. 228. f * Ibid., vol. ii. p. 27 I.
* Romans, ch. ii. ver. I4–13.
\
262 C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. A ND
will of a superior is not in justice binding unless it be in some
mode sufficiently declared.” Now in the righteous adjudg-
ments of revelation the heathen are “without excuse.” The will
of God must, therefore, be “sufficiently declared" to constitute
them accountable. Who will presume to say that the shadowy,
uncertain, variable, easily and unavoidably corrupted medium
of tradition running through forty muddy centuries is a “suffi-
Cient declaration of the will of God?” The law is “written on
‘ſhe heart” of every man, or all men are not accountable.
Now this “law written within the heart” immediately and
naturally suggests the idea of a Lawgiver who is over us.
This felt presence of Conscience, approving or condemning our
conduct, suggests, as with the speed of the lightning-flash, the
notion of a Judge who will finally call us to account. This
“accusing or excusing of each other,” this recognition of good
or ill desert, points us to, and constrains us to recognize, a fu-
ture Retribution; so that some hope or fear of another life has,
been in all ages a universal phenomenon of humanity.
It is affirmed, however, that whilst this capacity to know
God may have been an original endowment of human nature,
yet, in Consequence of the fall, “the understanding and reason
are weakened by the deterioration of his whole intellectual na-
ture.” “Without some degree of education, man is wholly the
Creature of appetite. Labor, feasting, and sleeping divide his
time, and wholly occupy his thoughts.”
We reverently and believingly accept the teaching of Scrip-
ture as to the depravity of man. We acknowledge that “the
understanding is darkened ’’ by sin. At the same time, we
earnestly maintain that the Scriptures do not teach that the
fundamental laws of mind, the first principles of reason, are
utterly traversed and obliterated by sin, so that man is not able
to recognize the existence of God, and feel his obligation to
Him. “Though they (the heathen) Knew God (8tóri yuávrec),
they did not glorify him as God, neither were thankful, but be-
came vain in their imagination, and their foolish hearts were
* “Institutes of Theology,” vol. i. p. 15. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 271.
G R E E R PEIIL O S O PET Y. 263
darkened. They changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor-
shipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” “And
as they did not approve of holding God with acknowledgment, God
delivered them over to an unapproving mind, to work those
things which are not suitable.” After drawing a fearful picture
of the darkness and depravity of the heathen, the Apostle adds,
“Who, though they KNow the law of God, that they who practise
such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but even are
well pleased with those who practise them.” The obvious and
direct teaching of this passage is that the heathen, in the midst
of their depravity and idolatry, are not utterly ignorant of God;
“they know God”—“they know the law of God”—“they wor-
ship Him,” though they worship the creature more than Him.
They know God, and are unwilling to “acknowledge God.”
“They know the righteousness of God,” and are “haters of
God” on account of his purity; and their worshipping of idols
does not proceed from ignorance of God, from an intellectual
inability to know God, but from “corruption of heart,” and a
voluntary choice of, and a “pleasure * in, the sinful practices
accompanying idol worship. Therefore, argues the Apostle,
they are “without excuse.” The whole drift and aim of the
argument of Paul is, not to show that the heathen were, by
their depravity, incapacitated to know God, but that because
they knew God and knew his righteous law, therefore their de-
pravity and licentiousness was “inexcusable.”
We conclude our review of opposing schools by the re-affir-
mation of our position, that God is cognizable by Žuman reason.
The human mind, under the guidance of necessary laws of
thought, is able, from the facts of the universe, to affirm the ex-
istence of God, and to attain some valid knowledge of his char-
acter and will. Every attempt to solve the great problem of
existence, to offer an explanation of the phenomenal world, or
to explore the fundamental idea of reason, when fairly and
fully conducted, has resulted in the recognition of a Supreme
* Romans, ch. i. ver, 23–32.
264 C EIRISTIANITY AND
Intelligence, a personal Mind and Will, as the ground, and rea-
son, and cause of all existence. A survey of the history of
Greek Philosophy will abundantly sustain this position, and to
this we shall, in Subsequent chapters, invite the reader's at-
tention.
G B E E K PHIL OS O PETY. 265
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS.
PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOL,
SENSATIONAL : TIIALES — ANAXIMENES — IIERACLITUS — ANAXIMANDER —
LEUCIPPUS — DEMOCRITUS.
“Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encoun-
tered Paul.”—Acts xvii. I8.
“Plato affirms that this is the most just cause of the creation of the world,
that works which are good should be wrought by the God who is good;
whether he had read these things in the Bible, or whether by his penetrating
genius he beheld the invisible things of God as understood by the things which
are made.”—ST. AUGUSTINE, “De Civ. Dei,” lib. xi. Ch. 21.
F all the monuments of the greatness of Athens which
have survived the changes and the wastes of time, the
most perfect and the most enduring is her philosophy. The
Propylaea, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheum, those peerless
gems of Grecian architecture, are now in ruins. The magnifi-
cent sculpture of Phidias, which adorned the pediment, and
outer cornice, and inner frieze of these temples, and the unri-
valled statuary of gods and heroes which crowded the platform
of the Acropolis, making it an earthly Olympus, are now no
more, save a few broken fragments which have been carried to
other lands, and, in their exile, tell the mournful story of the
departed grandeur of their ancient home. The brazen statue
of Minerva, cast from the spoils of Marathon, which rose in
giant grandeur above the buildings of the Acropolis, and the
flashing of whose helmet plumes was seen by the mariner as
soon as he had rounded the Sunian promontory; and that other
brazen Pallas, called, by pre-eminence, “the Beautiful;” and
the enormous Colossus of ivory and of gold, “the Immortal
Maid”—the protecting goddess of the Parthenon—these have
266 C II/3 IS TIL'ſ VIT Y. A ND
perished. But whilst the fingers of time have crumbled the
Pentelic marble, and the glorious statuary has been broken to
pieces by vandal hands, and the gold and brass have been
melted in the crucibles of needy monarchs and converted into
vulgar money, the philosophic thought of Athens, which culmi-
nated in the dialectic of Plato, still survives. Not one of all
the vessels, freighted with immortal thought, which Plato
launched upon the stream of time, has foundered. And after
the vast critical movement of European thought during the
past two centuries, in which all philosophic systems have been
subjected to the severest scrutiny, the method of Plato still pre-
serves, if not its exclusive authority unquestioned, at least its
intellectual pre-eminence unshaken. “Platonism is immortal,
because its principles are immortal in the human intellect and
heart.”
Philosophy is, then, the world-enduring monument of the
greatness and the glory of Athens. Whilst Greece will be ſor-
cver memorable as “the country of wisdom and of wise men,”
Athens will always be pre-eminently memorable as the Univer-
sity of Greece. This was the home of Socrates, and Plato, and
Aristotle—the three imperial names which, for twenty centuries,
reigned supreme in the world of philosophic thought. Here
schools of philosophy were founded to which students were at-
tracted from every part of the civilized world, and by which an
impulse and a direction was given to human thought in every
land and in every age. Standing on the Acropolis at Athens,
and looking over the city and the open country, the Apostle
would see these places which are inseparably associated with the
names of the men who have always been recognized as the great
teachers of the pagan world, and who have also exerted a pow-
erful influence upon Christian minds of every age. “In opposite
directions he would see the suburbs where Plato and Aristotle,
the two pupils of Socrates, held their illustrious schools. The
streamless bed of the Ilissus passes between the Acropolis and
Hymettus in a south-westerly direction, until it vanishes in the
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 9.
G /ē E. E. K. P.IIII, OS O PET Y. 267
low ground which separates the city from the Piraeus.” Look-
ing towards the upper part of this channel, Paul would see
gardens of plane-trees and thickets of angus-castus, “with other
torrent-loving shrubs of Greece.” Near the base of Lycabettus
was a sacred inclosure which Pericles had ornamented with
fountains. Here stood a statue of Apollo Lycius, which gave
the name to the Zyceum. Here, among the plane-trees, Aris-
totle walked, and, as he walked, taught his disciples. Hence
the name Peripatetics (the Walkers), which has always desig-
nated the disciples of the Stagirite philosopher.
On the opposite side of the city, the most beautiful of the
Athenian suburbs, we have the scene of Plato's teaching. Be-
yond the outer Ceramicus, which was crowded with the sepul-
chres of those Athenians who had fallen in battle, and were
buried at the public expense, the eye of Paul would rest on the
favored stream of the Cephisus, flowing towards the west. On
the banks of this stream the Academy was situated. A wall,
built at great expense by Hipparchus, Surrounded it, and Cimon
planted long avenues of trees and erected ſountains. Beneath
the plane-trees which shaded the numerous walks there assem-
bled the master-spirits of the age. This was the favorite resort
of poets and philosophers. Here the divine spirit of Plato
poured ſorth its sublimest speculations in streams of matchless
eloquence ; and here he founded a school which was destined
to exert a powerful and perennial influence on human minds
and hearts in all coming time.
Looking down from the Acropolis upon the Agora, Paul
would distinguish a cloister or colonnade. This is the Stoa
Poecile, or “Painted Porch,” so called because its walls were
decorated with fresco paintings of the legendary wars of Greece,
and the more glorious struggle at Marathon. It was here that
Zeno first opened that celebrated school which thence received
the name of Stoic. The site of the garden where Epicurus
taught is now unknown. It was no doubt within the city walls,
and not far distant from the Agora. It was well known in the
time of Cicero, who visited Athens as a student little more than
268 C III: IS TIA NIT Y. A VD
a century before the Apostle. It could not have been forgotten
in the time of Paul. In this “tranquil garden,” in the Society
of his friends, Epicurus passed a life of speculation and of pleas-
ure. His disciples were called, after him, the Epicureans."
Here, then, in Athens the Apostle was brought into imme-
diate contact with all the phases of philosophic thought which
had appeared in the ancient world. “Amongst those who
sauntered beneath the cool shadows of the plane-trees in the
Agora, and gathered in knots under the porticoes, eagerly dis-
cussing the questions of the day, were the philosophers, in the
garb of their several sects, ready for any new question on which
they might exercise their subtlety or display their rhetoric.”
If there were any in that motley group who cherished the prin-
ciples and retained the spirit of the true Platonic school, we
may presume they felt an inward intellectual sympathy with the
doctrine enounced by Paul. With Plato, “ philosophy was only
another name for religion : philosophy is the love of perfect
Wisdom ; perfect Wisdom and perfect Goodness are identical :
the perfect Good is God himself; philosophy is the love of
God.” He confessed the need of divine assistance to attain
“the good,” and of divine interposition to deliver men from
moral ruin.” Like Socrates, he longed for a supernatural—a
divine light to guide him, and he acknowledged his need there-
of continually." He was one of those who, in heathen lands,
waited for “the desire of nations;” and, had he lived in Chris-
tian times, no doubt his “spirit of ſaith ” would have joyfully
“embraced the Saviour in all the completeness.of his revelation
and advent.” And in so far as the spirit of Plato survived
among his disciples, we may be sure they were not among the
* See Conybeare and Howson’s “Life and Epistles of St. Paul,” vol. i. ;
Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy;” and Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica, article, “Athens,” from whence our materials for the description of
these “places” are mainly derived.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 61.
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. vi. vii. “Butler’s “Lectures,” vol. i. p. 362.
* Wheedon on “The Will,” p. 352 ; also Butler’s “Lectures,” vol. ii. p.
252.
G R E E R PITIL, O.S OPII Y. 269
number who “mocked,” and ridiculed, and opposed the “new
doctrine * proclaimed by Paul. It was “the philosophers of
the Epicureans and of the Stoics who encountered Paul.” The
leading tenets of both these sects were diametrically opposed
to the doctrines of Christianity. The ruling spirit of each was
alien from the spirit of Christ. The haughty pride of the Stoic,
the Epicurean abandonment to pleasure, placed them in direct
antagonism to him who proclaimed the crucified and risen
Christ to be “the zwisdom of God.”
If, however, we would justly appreciate the relation of pagan
philosophy to Christian truth, we must note that, when Paul ar-
rived in Athens, the age of Athenian glory had passed away.
Not only had her national greatness waned, and her national
spirit degenerated, but her intellectual power exhibited unmis-
takable signs of exhaustion, and weakness, and decay. If phi-
losophy had borne any fruit, of course that fruit remained. If,
in the palmy days of Athenian greatness, any field of human
inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had
achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been
obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time;
and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and
of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no
results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat re-
mained for the instruction of future generations. Either the
problems they sought to solve were proved to be insoluble, or
their methods of solution were found to be inadequate ; for
here the mightiest minds had grappled with the great problems
of being and of destiny. Here vigorous intellects had strug-
gled to pierce the darkness which hangs alike over the begin-
ning and the end of human existence. Here profoundly ear-
nest men had questioned nature, reason, antiquity, oracles, in the
hope they might learn something of that invisible world of rea/
being which they instinctively felt must lie beneath the world
of fleeting forms and ever-changing appearances. Here phi-
losophy had directed her course towards every point in the
Compass of thought, and touched every accessible point. The
27,o C EIR IS TIA WITY. A ND
sun of human reason had reached its zenith, and illuminated
every field that lay within the reach of human. ken. And this
sublime era of Greek philosophy is of inestimable value to us
who live in Christian times, because it is an exhaustive effort of
human reason to solve the problem of being, and in its history we
have a record of the power and weakness of the human mind,
at once on the grandest scale and in the fairest characters."
These preliminary considerations will have prepared the way
for, and awakened in our minds a profound interest in, the in-
quiry—Ist. What permanent results has Greek philosophy be-
queathed to the world? 2d. In what manner did Greek philos-
ophy fulfill for Christianity a propa-deutic office
It will at once be obvious, even to those who are least con-
versant with our theme, that it would be fruitless to attempt
the answer to these important questions before we have made
a careful survey of the entire history of philosophic thought in
Greece. We must have a clear and definite conception of the
problems they sought to solve, and we must comprehend their
methods of inquiry, before we can hope to appreciate the re-
sults they reached, or determine whether they did arrive at any
definite and valuable conclusions. It will, therefore, devolve
upon us to present a brief and yet comprehensive epitome of
the history of Grecian speculative thought.
“Philosophy,” says Cousin, “is reflection, and nothing else
than reflection, in a vast form *—“Reflection elevated to the
rank and authority of a method.” It is the mind looking back
upon its own Sensations, perceptions, cognitions, ideas, and
from thence to the causes of these sensations, cognitions, and
ideas. It is thought passing beyond the simple perceptions of
things, beyond the mere spontaneous operations of the mind in
the Cognition of things, to seek the ground, and reason, and Zazº,
of things. It is the effort of reason to solve the great problem
of “Being and Becoming,” of appearance and reality, of the
changeful and the permanent. Beneath the endless diversity
of the universe, of existence and action, there must be a princi-
* See article “Philosophy,” in Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible.”
G. R. E. E. K. PHILOSOPHTY. 27I
*
ple of unity; below all fleeting appearances there must be a
permanent substance; beyond this everlasting flow and change,
this beginning and ending of finite existence, there must be an
efferna/ being, the source and cause of all we see and know,
What is that principle of unity, that Žermanent substance, or prin-
ciple, or being :
This fundamental question has assumed three separate
forms or aspects in the history of philosophy. These forms
have been determined by the objective phenomena which In OSt
immediately arrested and engaged the attention of men. If
external nature has been the chief object of attention, then the
problem of philosophy has been, What is the épxi — ſhe begin-
ning; what are the first principles—the elements from zwhich, the
ideas or Zazys according to which, the efficient cause or energy by
z0/hich, and the reason or end for z0/hich the universe exisis 2 Dur-
ing this period reflective thought was a PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.
If the phenomena of mind—the opinions, beliefs, judgments of
men—are the chief object of attention, then the problem of
philosophy has been, What are the fundamental Ideas z0/ich are
aunchangeable and Žermanent amid all the diversities of human
opinions, connecting aſpearance with reality, and constituting a
ground of certain knowledge or absolute truth 2 Reflective
thought is now a PHILOSOPHY OF IDEAS. Then, lastly, if the prac-
tical activities of life and the means of well-being be the grand
object of attention, then the problem of philosophy has been,
Wał is the ultimate standard by which, amid al/ the diversities
of /u/man conduct, Zve may defermine what is right and good in in-
dividual, social, and political life 2 And now reflective thought
is a PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. These are the grand problems with
which philosophy has grappled ever since the dawn of reflec-
tion. They all appear in Greek philosophy, and have a marked
chronology. AS Systems they succeed each other, just as rig-
orously as the phenomena of Greek civilization.
The Greek Schools of philosophy have been classified from
various points of view. In view of their geographical relations,
272 'CITIRISTIANITY AND
they have been divided into the Ionian, the ſalian, the Eleafic,
the Athenian, and the Alexandrian. In view of their prevailing
spirit and tendency, they have been classified by Cousin as the
Sensational, the Idealistic, the Skeptical, and the Mystical.
The most natural and obvious method is that which (regarding
Socrates as the father of Greek philosophy in the truest sense)
arranges all schools from the Socratic stand-point, and there-
ſore in the chronological order of development:
I. THE PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS.
II. THE SocRATIC ScHools.
III. THE POST-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS.
The history of philosophy is thus divided into three grand
epochs. The first reaching from Thales to the time of Socrates
(B.C. 639–469); the second from the birth of Socrates to the
death of Aristotle (B.C. 469-322); the third from the death of
Aristotle to the Christian era (B.C. 322, A.D. I.). Greek philos-
ophy during the first period was almost exclusively a philoso-
phy of nature; during the second period, a philosophy of mind;
during the last period, a philosophy of life. Nature, man, and
society complete the circle of thought. Successive systems, of
course, overlap each other, both in the order of time and as
subjects of human speculation ; and the results of one epoch
of thought are transmitted to and appropriated by another ;
but, in a general sense, the order of succession has been very
much as here indicated. Setting aside minor schools and
merely incidental discussions, and fixing our attention on the
general aspects of each historic period, we shall discover that
the first period was eminently Physical, the second Psychologi-
ca/, the last AE?/hical. Every stage of progress which reason, on
d Ariori grounds, would suggest as the natural order of thought,
or of which the development of an individual mind would ſur-
nish an analogy, had a corresponding realization in the devel-
opment of Grecian thought from the time of Thales to the
Christian era. “Thought,” says Cousin, “in the first trial of
its strength is drawn without.” The first object which engages
the attention of the child is the outer World. He asks the
G B E E R PHII, OS O PHY. 273
“how” and “why” of all he sees. His reason urges him to
seek an explanation of the universe. So it was in the child-
hood of philosophy. The first essays of human thought were,
almost without exception, discourses rept bögewg (De rerum na-
tura), of the nature of things. Then the rebound of baffled
reason from the impenetrable bulwarks of the universe drove
the mind back upon itself. If the youth can not interpret
nature, he can at least “know himself,” and find within him-
self the ground and reason of all existence. There are “ideas”
in the human mind which are copies of those “archetypal ideas”
which dwell in the Creative Mind, and after which the universe
was built. If by “analysis” and “definition” these universal
notions can be distinguished from that which is particular and
contingent in the aggregate of human knowledge, then so much
of eternal truth has been attained. The achievements of phil-
OSophic thought in this direction, during the Socratic age, have
marked it as the most brilliant period in the history of philos-
ophy—the period of its youthful vigor. Deeply immersed in
the practical concerns and conflicts of public life, manhood is
mainly occupied with questions of personal duty, and indivi-
dual and social well-being. And so, during the hopeless tur-
moil of civil disturbance which marked the decline of national
greatness in Grecian history, philosophy was chiefly occupied
with questions of personal interest and personal happiness.
The poetic enthusiasm with which a nobler age had longed for
truth, and sought it as the highest good, has all disappeared,
and now one sect seeks refuge from the storms and agitations
of the age in Stoical indifference, the other in Epicurean ef-
feminacy.
If now we have succeeded in presenting the real problem
of philosophy, it will at once be obvious that the inquiry was
not, in any proper sense, ſ/heological. Speculative thought, dur-
ing the period we have marked as the era of Greek philosophy,
was not an inquiry concerning the existence or nature of God,
or concerning the relations of man to God, or the duties which
man owes to God. These questions were all remitted to the
IS
274. C EIF3J STIANITY AND
theologian. There was a clear line of demarkation separat-
ing the domains of religion and philosophy. Religion rested
solely on authority, and appealed to the instinctive faith of the
human heart. She permitted no encroachment upon her set-
tled usages, and no questioning of her ancient beliefs. Philos-
ophy rested on reason alone. It was an independent effort of
thought to interpret nature, and attain the fundamental grounds
of human knowledge—to find an àpxft—a first principle, which,
being assumed, should furnish a rational explanation of all ex-
istence. If philosophy reach the conclusion that the épxft was
water, or air, or fire, or a chaotic mixture of all the elements or
atoms, extended and self-moved, or monads, or Tô Tây, or un-
created mind, and that conclusion harmonized with the ancient
standards of religious faith—well ; if not, philosophy must pre-
sent some method of conciliation. The conflicts of faith and
reason ; the strugglings of traditional authority to maintain
Supremacy; the accommodations and conciliations attempted
in those primitive times, would furnish a chapter of peculiar
interest, could it now be written.
The poets who appeared in the dim twilight of Grecian civil-
ization—Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Hesiod—seem to have oc-
cupied the same relation to the popular mind in Greece which
the Bible now sustains to Christian communities.” Not that
we regard them as standing on equal ground of authority, or
in any sense a revelation. But, in the eye of the wondering
Greek, they were invested with the highest sacredness and the
Supremest authority. The high poetic inspiration which per-
vaded them was a supernatural gift. Their sublime utterances
were accepted as proceeding from a divine afflatus. They were
the product of an age in which it was believed by all that the gods
assumed a human form,” and held a real intercourse with gifted
* “Homer was, in a certain sense, the Bible of the Greeks.”—Whewell,
“Platonic Dialogues,” p. 283.
* The universality of this belief is asserted by Cicero: “Vetus opinio est,
iam usque ab heroicis ducta temporibus, eague et populi Romani et omnium
gentium firmata consensu, versari quandem inter homines divinationem.”—
Cicero, “De Divin.” bk. i. ch. i.
G R E E K PEIIL OS O PET Y. 275
men. This universal faith is regarded by some as being a
relic of still more distant times, a faint remembrance of the
glory of patriarchal days. The more natural opinion is, that it
was begotten of that universal longing of the human heart for
some knowledge of that unseen world of real being, which man
instinctively felt must lie beyond the world of fleeting change
and delusive appearances. It was a prolepsis of the soul,
reaching upward towards its source and goal. The poet felt
within him some native affinities therewith, and longed for some
stirring breath of heaven to sweep the harp-strings of the soul.
He invoked the inspiration of the Goddess of Song, and waited
for, no doubt believed in, some “deific impulse” descending on
him. And the people eagerly accepted his utterance as the
teaching of the gods. They were too eager for some knowl-
edge from that unseen world to question their credentials.
Orpheus, Hesiod, Homer, were the 080Aóyot—the theologians
of that age.” w -
These ancient poems, then, were the public documents of
the religion of Greece—the repositories of the national faith.
And it is deserving of especial note that the philosopher was
just as anxious to Sustain his speculations by quoting the high
traditional authority of the ancient theologian, as the pro-
pounder of modern novelties is to sustain his notions by the
authority of the Sacred Scriptures. Numerous examples of
this solicitude will recur at once to the remembrance of the
student of Plato. All encroachments of philosophy upon the
domains of religion were watched as jealously in Athens in the
sixth century before Christ, as the encroachments of science
upon the fields of theology were watched in Rome in the seven-
teenth century after Christ. The court of the Areopagus was
as earnest, though not as fanatical and cruel, in the defense of
the ancient faith, as the court of the Inquisition was in the de-
fense of the dogmas of the Romish Church. The people, also,
as “the sacred wars” of Greece attest, were ready quickly to
repel every assault upon the majesty of their religion. And so
* Cicero.
276 CITRISTIANITY AND
philosophy even had its martyrs. The tears of Pericles were
needed to save Aspasia, because she was suspected of philoso-
phy. But neither his eloquence nor his tears could save his
friend Anaxagoras, and he was ostracized. Aristotle had the
greatest difficulty to save his life. And Plato was twice im-
prisoned, and once sold into slavery.'
It is unnecessary that we should, in this place, again at-
tempt the delineation of the theological opinions of the earlier
periods of Grecian civilization. That the ancient Greeks be-
lieved in one Supreme God has been conclusively proved by
Cudworth. The argument of his fourth chapter is incontro-
vertible.” However great the number of “generated gods”
who crowded the Olympus, and composed the ghostly array
of Greek mythology, they were all subordinate agents, “demi-
urges,” employed in the framing of the world and all material
things, or else the ministers of the moral and providential gov-
ernment of the £ic 060c &yávnToc—the one uncreated God. Be-
neath, or beyond the whole system of pagan polytheism, we
recognize a faith in an Uncreated Mind, the Source of all the in-
telligence, and order, and harmony which pervades the uni-
verse ; the Fountain of law and justice; the Ruler of the world;
the Avenger of injured innocence; and the final Judge of men.
The immortality of the soul and a state of ſuture retribution
were necessary corollaries of this sublime faith. This primitive
theology was unquestionably the people's faith ; the faith, also,
of the philosopher, in his inmost heart, however far he might
wander in speculative thought. The instinctive feeling of the
human heart, the spontaneous intuitions of the human reason,
have led man, in every age, to recognize a God. It is within
the fields of speculative thought that skepticism has had its
birth. Any thing like atheism has only made its appearance
amid the cfforts of human reason to explain the universe. The
native Sentiments of the heart and the spontaneous movements
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 305.
* “Intellectual System of the Universe ;” see also ch. iii., “On the Re-
ligion of the Athenians.”
G R E E R PLIII, OS O PIT Y. 277
of the reason have always been towards faith, that is, towards
“a religious movement of the soul.” Unbridled speculative
thought, which turns towards the outer world alone, and disre-
gards “the voices of the soul,” tends towards doubt and irre-
ligion. But, as Cousin has said, “a complete extravagance, a
total delusion (except in case of real derangement), is impossi-
ble.” “Beneath reflection there is still spontaneity, when the
scholar has denied the existence of a God; listen to the man,
interrogate him unawares, and you will see that all his words
betray the idea of a God, and that faith in a God is, without
his recognition, at the bottom of his heart.”
Let us not, therefore, be too hasty in representing the early
philosophers as destitute of the idea of a God, because in the
imperfect and fragmentary representations which are given us
of the philosophical opinions of Thales, and Anaximenes, and
Heraclitus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, we find no explicit allu-
sions to the Uncreated Mind as the first principle and cause of
all. A few sentences will comprehend the whole of what re-
mains of the opinions of the earliest philosophers, and these
were transmitted for ages by oral tradition. To Plato and
Aristotle we are chiefly indebted for a stereotype of those scat-
tered, fragmentary sentences which came to their hands through
the dim and distorting medium of more than two centuries.
Surely no one imagines these few sentences contain and sum
up the results of a liſetime of earnest thought, or represent all
the opinions and beliefs of the earliest philosophers And
should we find therein no recognition of a personal God,
would it not be most unfair and illogical to assert that they
were utterly ignorant of a God, or wickedly denied his being 2
If they say “there is no God,” then they are foolish Atheists;
if they are silent on that subject, we have a right to assume
they were Theists, ſor it is most natural to believe in God.
And yet it has been quite customary for Christian teachers,
after the manner of some Patristic writers, to deny to those
early sages the smallest glimpse of underived and independent
* Cousin’s “IIist, of Philos.,” vol. i. p. 22. * Id, ib., vol. i. p. 137.
278 *
C EIRISTIANITY AND
knowledge of a Divine Being, in their zeal to assert for the
Sacred Scriptures the exclusive prerogative of revealing Him.
Now in regard to the theological opinions of the Greek phi-
losophers, we shall venture this general lemma—the majority of
them recognized an “incorporeal substance,” an uncreated Intelli-
gence, an ordering, governing Mind. Leucippus, Democritus,
and Epicurus, who were Materialists, are perhaps the only ex-
ceptions. Many of them were Pantheists, in the higher form
of Pantheism, which, though it associates the universe with its
framer and mover, still makes “the moving principle” superior
to that which is moved. The world was a living Organism,
“Whose body nature is, and God the soul.” -
Unquestionably most of them recognized the existence of two
first principles, substances essentially distinct, which had co-
existed from eternity—an incorporeal Deity and matter.” We
grant that the free production of a universe by a creative fiat—
the calling of matter into being by a simple act of omnipotence
—is not elementary to human reason. The famous physical
axiom of antiquity, “Ze nihilo nihil, in nihilum posse reverti,”
under one aspect, may be regarded as the expression of the
universal consciousness of a mental inability to conceive a
creation out of nothing, or an annihilation.” “We can not con-
ceive, either, on the one hand, nothing becoming something, or
Something becoming nothing, on the other hand. When God
is said to create the universe out of nothing, we think this by
Supposing that he evolves the universe out of himself; and in
like manner, we conceive annihilation only by conceiving the
Creator to withdraw his creation from actuality into power.”
“It is by faith we understand the worlds were framed by the
word of God, So that things which are were not made from
things which do appear”—that is, from pre-existent matter.
* “Oüotav Čačuarov.”—Plato. - -
* Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” vol. i. p. 269.
* Mansell’s “Limits of Religious Thought,” p. 100.
“Sir William Hamilton’s “Discussions on Philosophy,” p. 575.
G R E E K PHIL OS O PHY. 279
Those writers' are, therefore, clearly in error who assert that
the earliest question of Greek philosophy was, What is God?
and that various and discordant answers were given, Thales
saying, water is God, Anaximenes, air; Heraclitus, fire ; Py-
thagoras, numbers; and so on. The idea of God is a native
intuition of the mind. It springs up spontaneously from the
depths of the human soul. The human mind naturally recog-
nizes God as an uncreated Mind, and recognizes itself as “the
offspring of God.” And, therefore, it is simply impossible for
it to acknowledge water, or air, or fire, or any material thing to
be its God. Now they who reject this fundamental principle
evidently misapprehend the real problem of early Grecian phil-
OSophic thought. The external world, the material universe,
was the first object of their inquiry, and the method of their in-
quiry was, at the first stage, purely physical. Every object of
sense had a beginning and an end ; it rose out of something,
and it fell back into something. Beneath this ceaseless flow
and change there must be some permanent principle. What
is that a totysiov—that first element? The changes in the uni-
verse seem to obey some principle of law—they have an orderly
Succession. What is that popph—that form, or ideal, or arche-
type, proper to each thing, and according to which all things
are produced These changes must be produced by some
efficient cause, some power or being which is itself immobile,
and permanent, and eternal, and adequate to their production.
What is that àpx?) Tijg kiváaewc-that first principle of move-
ment? Then, lastly, there must be an end for which all things
exist—a good reason why things are as they are, and not other-
wise. What is that Tô où #vekev kai Tô &ya6ów—that reason and
good of all things? Now these are all épxat or first principles
of the universe. “Common to all first principles,” says Aris-
totle, “is the being, the original, from which a thing is, or is pro-
duced, or is known.” First principles, therefore, include both
elements and causes, and, under certain aspects, elements are
* As the writer of the article “Attica,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. iv. ch. i. p. 112 (Bohn's edition).
28o C II RISTIANITY AND
also causes, in so far as they are that without which a thing can
not be produced. Hence that highest generalization by Aris-
totle of all first principles; as–I. The Material Cause ; 2. The
Formal Cause; 3. The Efficient Cause ; 4. The Final Cause.
The grand subject of inquiry in ancient philosophy was not
alone what is the final element from which all things have been
produced? nor yet what is the efficient cause of the movement
and the order of the universe 2 but what are those First A’rinci.
Ales which, being assumed, shall furnish a rational explanation
of all phenomena, of all becoming 2
So much being premised, we proceed to consider the efforts
and the results of philosophic thought in
THE PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS.
“The first act in the drama of Grecian speculation was per-
formed on the varied theatre of the Grecian Colonies—Asiatic,
insular, and Italian, verging at length (in Anaxagoras) towards
Athens.” During the progress of this drama two distinct
schools of philosophy were developed, having distinct geo-
graphical provinces, one on the east, the other on the west, of
the peninsula of Greece, and deriving their names from the
localities in which they flourished. The earliest was the ſonian;
the latter was the /ſa/ian school.
It would be extremely difficult, at this remote period, to es-
timate the influence which geographical conditions and ethnical
relations exerted in determining the course of philosophic
thought in these schools. Unquestionably those conditions
contributed somewhat towards fixing their individuality. At
the same time, it must be granted that the distinction in these
two schools of philosophy is of a deeper character than can be
represented or explained by geographical surroundings; it is a
distinction reaching to the very foundation of their habits of
thought. These schools represent two distinct aspects of phil-
osophic thought, two distinct methods in which the human
mind has essayed to solve the problem of the universe.
The ante-Socratic schools were chiefly occupied with the
G R E E R PHII, OSO I? II Y. 28I
study of external nature. “Greek philosophy was, at its first
appearance, a philosophy of nature.” It was an effort of the
reason to reach a “first principle” which should explain the
universe. This early attempt was purely speculative. It
sought to interpret all phenomena by hypotheses, that is, by
suppositions, more or less plausible, Suggested by physical an-
alogies or by d £riori rational conceptions.
Now there are two distinct aspects under which nature pre-
sents itself to the observant mind. The first and most obvious
is the simple //enomena as perceived by the senses. The sec-
ond is the relations of £henomena, cognized by the reason alone.
Let phenomena, which are indeed the first objects of perception,
continue to be the chief and almost exclusive object of thought,
and philosophy is on the highway of pure physics. On the
other hand, instead of stopping at phenomena, let their rela-
tions become the sole object of thought, and philosophy is now
on the road of purely mathematical or metaphysical abstraction.
Thus two schools of philosophy are developed, the one SENSA-
TIONAL, the other IDEALIST. Now these, it will be found, are
the leading and characteristic tendencies of the two grand di-
visions of the pre-Socratic Schools; the Ionian is sensational,
the Italian is idea/ist.
These two schools have again been the subject of a further
sub-division based upon diverse habits of thought. The Ionian
School sought to explain the universe by physical analogies.
Of these there are two clear and obvious divisions—analogies
Suggested by living Organisms, and analogies suggested by me-
chanical arrangements. One class of philosophers in the Ioni-
an School laid hold on the first analogy. They regarded the
world as a living being, spontaneously evolving itself—a vital
Organism whose successive developments and transformations
Constitute all visible phenomena. A second class laid hold
On the analogy Suggested by mechanical arrangements. For
them the universe was a grand superstructure, built up from
elemental particles, arranged and united by some ab-extra
power or force, or else aggregated by some inherent mutual
282 CII RISTIA NIT Y. A ND
affinity. Thus we have two sects of the Ionian school; the
first, Dynamical, or vital; the second, Mechanical."
The Italian school sought to explain the universe by rational
conceptions and d priori ideas. Now to those who seek, by
simple reflection, to investigate the relations of the external
world this marked distinction will present itself: some are re-
lations between sensible phenomena—relations of time, of place,
of number, of proportion, and of harmony; others are relations
of phenomena to essential being—relations of qualities to sub-
stance, of becoming to being, of the finite to the infinite. The
former constituted the field of Pythagorean the latter of Eleatic
contemplation. The Pythagoreans sought to explain the uni-
verse by numbers, forms, and harmonies ; the Eleatics by the
d priori ideas of unity, substance, Being in se, the Infinite.
Thus were constituted a Mathematical and a Metaphysical sect
in the Italian school. The pre-Socratic schools may, therefore,
be tabulated in the following order:
I. IONIAN (Sensational), (I.) PIIYSICAL . . . . . . } Dynamical or Vital.
Mechanical.
(2.) MATIIEMATICAL... Pythagoreans.
II. ITALIAN (Idealist), } (3.) METAPIIYSICAL.... Eleatics.
I. ZVie Zonian or AEhysical School.—We have premised that
the philosophers of this school attempted the explanation of
the universe by physical analogies.
One class of these early speculators, the Zynamical, or vital
theorists, proceeded on the supposition of a living energy in-
folded in nature, which in its spontaneous development contin-
uously undergoes alteration both of quality and form. This
imperfect analogy is the first hypothesis of childhood. The
child personifies the stone that hurts him, and his first impulse
is to resent the injury as though he imagined it to be endowed
with consciousness, and to be acting with design. The child-
hood of superstition (whose genius is multiplicity) personifies
each individual existence—a rude Fetichism, which imagines a
supernatural power and presence enshrined in every object of
* Ritter’s “Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 191, 192.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PIT Y. 283
nature, in every plant, and stock, and stone. The childhood
of philosophy (whose genius is unity) personifies the universe.
It regards the earth as one vast organism, animated by one
soul, and this soul of the world as a “created god.” The first
efforts of philosophy were, therefore, simply an attempt to ex-
plain the universe in harmony with the popular theological be-
liefs. The cosmogonies of the early speculators in the Ionian
school were an elaboration of the ancient theogonies, but still
an elaboration conducted under the guidance of that law of
thought which constrains man to seek for unity, and reduce the
many to the one.
Therefore, in attempting to construct a theory of the universe
they commenced by postulating an āpxiſ–a first principle or
element out of which, by a vital process, all else should be pro-
duced. “Accordingly, whatever seemed the most subtle or pli-
able, as well as universal element in the mass of the visible
world, was marked as the Seminal principle whose successive
developments and transformations produced all the rest.”
With this seminal principle the living, animating principle
seems to have been associated—in some instances perhaps
confounded, and in most instances called by the same name.
And having pursued this analogy so far, we shall find the
most decided and conclusive evidence of a tendency to regard
the Soul of man as similar, in its nature, to the soul which ani-
mates the world.
Thales of Miletus (B.C. 636–542) was the first to lead the way
in the perilous inquiry after an àpxh, or first principle, which
should furnish a rational explanation of the universe. Follow-
ing, as it would seem, the genealogy of Hesiod, he supposed
water to be the primal element out of which all material things
were produced. Aristotle supposes he was impressed with this
idea from observing that all things are nourished by moisture;
warmth itself, he declared, proceeded from moisture ; the seeds
of all things are moist ; water, when condensed, becomes earth.
* Plato’s “Laws,” bk. x. ch. i. ; “Timaeus,” ch. xii.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 292.
284 CIII: IS TIANITY AND
Thus convinced of the universal presence of water, he declared
it to be the first principle of things.”
And now, from this brief statement of the Thalean physics,
are we to conclude that he recognized only a material cause of
the universe 2 Such is the impression we receive from the
reading of the First Book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. His evi-
dent purpose is to prove that the first philosophers of the Ionian
school did not recognize an efficient cause. In his opinion, they
were decidedly materialistic. Now to question the authority of
Aristotle may appear to many an act of presumption. But
Aristotle was not infallible ; and nothing is more certain than
that in more than one instance he does great injustice to his
predecessors.” To him, unquestionably, belongs the honor of
having made a complete and exhaustive classification of causes;
but there certainly does appear Something more than vanity in
the assumption that he, of all the Greek philosophers, was the
only one who recognized them all. His sagacious classification
was simply a resumé of the labors of his predecessors. His
“principles” or “causes” were incipient in the thought of the
first speculators in philosophy. Their accurate definition and
clearer presentation was the work of ages of analytic thought.
The phrases “efficient,” “formal,” “final” cause, are, we grant,
peculiar to Aristotle; the ideas were equally the possession of
his predecessors.
The evidence, we think, is conclusive that, with this primal
element (water), Thales associated a formative principle of mo-
tion; to the “material” he added the “efficient” cause. A
strong presumption in favor of this opinion is grounded on the
psychological views of Thales. The author of “De Placitis
Philosophorum ” associates him with Pythagoras and Plato, in
teaching that the soul is incorporeal, making it naturally self-
active, and an intelligent substance.” And it is admitted by
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. iii.
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 77; Cousin’s “The
True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” p. 77.
* Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” vol. i. p. 71.
G. R. E. E. K. PEIII, OS O PET Y. 285
Aristotle (rather unwillingly, we grant, but his testimony is all
the more valuable on that account) that, in his time, the opin-
ion that the Soul is a principle, distrivnrov—ever moving, or es-
sentially self-active, was currently ascribed to Thales. “If we
may rely on the notices of Thales, he too would seem to have
conceived the soul as a moving principle.” Extending this
idea, that the Soul is a moving principle, he held that all mo-
tion in the universe was due to the presence of a living soul.
“He is reported to have said that the loadstone possessed a
soul because it could move iron.” And he taught that “the
world itself is animated, and full of gods.” “Some think that
soul and Åſe is mingled with the whole universe ; and thence,
perhaps, was that [opinion] of Thales that all things are full of
gods,” portions, as Aristotle said, of the universal soul. These
views are quite in harmony with the theology which makes
the Deity the moving energy of the universe—the energy
which wrought the successive transformations of the primitive
aqueous element. They also ſurnish a strong corroboration of
the positive statement of Cicero—“Aquam, dixit Thales, esse
initium rerum, Deum autem eam mentem quae ex aqua cuncta
fingeret.” Thales said that water is the first principle of things,
but God was that mind which formed all things out of water ;"
as also that still more remarkable saying of Thales, recorded
by Diogenes Laertius; “God is the most ancient of all things,
for he had no birth ; the world is the most beautiful of all
things, for it is the workmanship of God.” We are aware that
some historians of philosophy reject the statement of Cicero,
because, say they, “it does violence to the chronology of specu-
lation.” Following Hegel, they assert that Thales could have
no conception of God as Intelligence, since that is a conception
of a more advanced philosophy. Such an opinion may be
naturally expected from the philosopher who places God, not
* Aristotle, “De Anima,” i. 2, 17. * Id., ib., i. 2, 17.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” p. 18 (Bohn's ed.).
* Aristotle, “De Anima,” i. 17. * “IDe Natura Deor.,” blº. i. ch. x.
* “Lives,” etc., p. 19. " Lewes's “Hist. Philos.,” p. 4.
286 CIIRISTIANITY AND
at the commencement, but at the end of things, God becoming
conscious and intelligent in humanity. If, then, Hegel teaches
that God himself has had a progressive development, it is no
wonder he should assert that the idea of God has also had an
historic development, the last term of which is an intelligent
God. But he who believes that the idea of God as the infinite
and the perfect is native to the human mind, and that God
stands at the beginning of the entire system of things, will feel
there is a strong & priori ground for the belief that Thales rec-
ognized the existence of an intelligent God who fashioned the
1/????Jerse.
Anaximenes of Miletus (B.C. 529–480) we place next to
Thales in the consecutive history of thought. It has been
usual to rank Anaximander next to the founder of the Ionian
School. The entire complexion of his system is, however, un-
like that of a pupil of Thales. And we think a careful consid-
eration of his views will justify our placing him at the head
of the Mechanical or Atomic division of the Ionian School.
Anaximenes is the historical successor of Thales; he was un-
questionably a vitalist. He took up the speculation where
Thales had left it, and he carried it a step forward in its de-
velopment.”
Pursuing the same method as Thales, he was not, however,
satisfied with the conclusion he had reached. Water was not
to Anaximenes the most significant, neither was it the most
universal element. But air seemed universally present. “The
earth was a broad leaf resting upon it. All things were pro-
duced from it; all things were resolved into it. When he
breathed he drew in a part of this universal life. All things
are nourished by air.” Was not, therefore, air the épxft, or pri-
mal element of things
This brief notice of the physical speculations of Anaximenes
is all that has survived of his opinions. We search in vain for
Some intimations of his theological views. On this merely
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 203.
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 7.
G R E E R. PH II, OS OPEI Y. 287
negative ground, some writers have unjustly charged him with
Atheism. Were we to venture a conjecture, we would rather
say that there are indications of a tendency to Pantheism in
that form of it which associates God necessarily with the uni-
verse, but does not utterly confound them. His fixing upon
“air” as the primal element, seems an effort to reconcile, in
some apparently intermediate substance, the opposite qualities
of corporeal and spiritual natures. Air is invisible, impalpable,
all-penetrating, and yet in some manner appreciable to sense.
May not the vital transformations of this element have pro-
duced all the rest ? The writer of the Article on Anaximenes
in the Encyclopædia Britannica tells us (on what ancient au-
thorities he saith not) that “he asserted this air was God, since
the divine power resides invit and agitates it.”
Some indications of the views of Anaximenes may perhaps
be gathered from the teachings of Diogenes of Apollonia (B.C.
520–490,) who was the disciple, and is generally regarded as
the commentator and expounder of the views of Anaximenes.
The air of Diogenes was a soul; therefore it was living, and not
only living, but conscious and intelligent. “It knows much,”
says he ; “for without reason it would be impossible for all to
be arranged duly and proportionately; and whatever objects
we consider will be found to be so arranged and ordered in the
best and most beautiful manner.” Here we have a distinct
recognition of the fundamental axiom that mind is the only va/.
id explanation of the order and harmony which ſervades the uni-
verse. With Diogenes the first principle is a “divine air,”
which is vital, conscious, and intelligent, which spontaneously
evolves itself, and which, by its ceaseless transformations, pro-
duces all phenomena. The soul of man is a detached portion
of this divine element ; his body is developed or evolved there-
from. The theology of Diogenes, and, as we believe, of his
master, Anaximenes also, was a species of Materialistic Pan-
theism.
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 8; Ritter’s “Iſistory
of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 214.
288 C EIRIS TIA WTT Y. A. WD
Jºſeraclitus of Æff/esus (B.C. 503–420) comes next in the order
of speculative thought. In his philosophy, fire is the épxft, or
first principle ; but not fire in the usual acceptation of that
term. The Heraclitean “fire * is not flame, which is only an
intensity of fire, but a warm, dry vapor—an effler, which may
be illustrated, perhaps, by the “caloric” of modern chemistry.
This “effier” was the primal element out of which the universe
was formed ; it was also a vital power or principle which ani-
mated the universe, and, in fact, the cause of all its successive
phenomenal changes. “The world,” he said, “was neither
made by the gods nor men, and it was, and is, and ever shall
be, an ever-living fire, in due proportion self-enkindled, and in
due measure self-extinguished.” The universe is thus reduced
to “an eternal fire,” whose ceaseless energy is manifested
openly in the work of dissolution, and yet secretly, but univer-
sally, in the work of renovation. The phenomena of the uni-
verse are explained by Heraclitus as “the concurrence of oppo-
site tendencies and efforts in the motions of this ever-living fire,
out of which results the most beautiful harmony. This harmo-
ny of the world is one of conflicting impulses, like the lyre and
the bow. The strife between opposite tendencies is the parent
of all things. All life is change, and change is strife.”
Heraclitus was the first to proclaim the doctrine of the per-
petual fluxion of the universe (Tö 6éoy, Tô yuyvöplewoy—Unrest
and Development), the endless changes of matter, and the mu-
tability and perishability of all individual things. This restless,
changing flow of things, which never are, but always are becom-
ſing, he pronounced to be the One and the All.
From this statement of the physical theory of Heraclitus we
might naturally infer that he was a Hylopathean Atheist. Such
an hypothesis would not, however, be truthful or legitimate. On
a more careful examination, his system will be ſound to stand
half-way between the materialistic and the spiritual conception
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 235.
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 70; Ritter’s “Iſis-
tory of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 244.
G R E E R PLIII, OS O PET Y. 289
of the Author of the universe, and marks, indeed, a transition \
from the one to the other. Heraclitus unquestionably held
that all substance is material, for a philosopher who proclaims,
as he did, that the senses are the only source of knowledge,
must necessarily attach himself to a material element as the
primary one. And yet he seems to have spiritualized matter.
“The moving unit of Heraclitus—the Becoming—is as immate-
rial as the resting unit of the Eleatics—the Being.” The
Heraclitean “fre’’ is endowed with spiritual attributes. “Ar-
istotle calls it livXà—soul, and says that it is dowpatóTarov, or
absolutely incorporeal (“De Anima,” i. 2. I6). It is, in effect,
the common ground of the phenomena both of mind and mat-
ter; it is not only the animating, but also the intelligent and
regulating principle of the universe ; the Evvoc Affyoc, or uni-
versal Word or Reason, which it behooves all men to follow.”
The psychology of Heraclitus throws additional light upon his
theological opinions. With him human intelligence is a de-
tached portion of the Universal Reason. “Inhaling,” said he,
“through the breath the Universal Ether, which is Divine Rea-
son, we become conscious.” The errors and imperfections of
humanity are consequently to be ascribed to a deficiency of the
Divine Reason in man. Whilst, therefore, the theory of Herac-
litus seems to materialize mind, it may, with equal fairness, be
said to spiritualize matter.
The general inference, therefore, from all that remains of
the doctrine of Heraclitus is that he was a Materialistic Pan-
theist. His God was a living, rational, intelligent Ether—a
Soul pervading the universe. The form of the universe, its
ever-changing phenomena, were a necessary emanation from, or
a perpetual transformation of, this universal Soul.
With Heraclitus we close our survey of that sect of the phys-
ical school which regarded the world as a living organism.
The second subdivision of the physical school, the Mechani-
* Zeller’s “History of Greek Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 57.
* Butler’s “Lectures,” vol. i. p. 297, note.
19
290 CFIRISTIA WITY AND
cal or Atomist theorists, attempted the explanation of the uni-
VerSe by analogies derived from mechanical collocations, ar-
rangements, and movements. The universe was regarded by
them as a vast superstructure built up from elemental particles,
aggregated by some inherent force or mutual affinity.
Anaximander of Miletus (born B.C. 610) we place at the head
of the Mechanical sect of the Ionian school ; first, on the au-
thority of Aristotle, who intimates that the philosophic dogmata
of Anaximander “resemble those of Democritus,” who was cer-
tainly an Atomist; and, Secondly, because we can clearly trace
a genetic connection between the opinions of Democritus and
Leucippus and those of Anaximander.
The āpxft, or first principle of Anaximander, was Tó & Teipov,
the bound/ess, the 2//imitable, ſhe ſºft/life. Some historians of
philosophy have imagined that the infinite of Anaximander was
the “unlimited all,” and have therefore placed him at the head
of the Italian or “idealistic school.” These writers are mani-
festly in error. Anaximander was unquestionably a sensation-
alist. Whatever his “infinite” may be found to be, one thing
is clear, it was not a “metaphysical infinite”—it did not in-
clude infinite power, much less infinite mind.
The testimony of Aristotle is conclusive that by “the infi-
nite” Anaximander understood the multitude of primary, mate-
rial particles. He calls it “a piypia, or mixture of elements.”
It was, in fact, a chaos—an original state in which the primary
elements existed in a chaotic combination without Zimitation or
division. He assumed a certain “prima materia,” which was
neither air, nor water, nor fire, but a “mixture” of all, to be
the first principle of the universe. The account of the opinions
of Anaximander which is given by Plutarch (“De Placita,” etc.)
is a further confirmation of our interpretation of his infinite.
“Anaximander, the Milesian, affirmed the infinite to be the
first principle, and that all things are generated out of it, and
Corrupted again into it. His infinite is nothing else but mater.”
“Whence,” says Cudworth, “we conclude that Anaximander's
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. xi. ch. ii.
G R E E R PEIILOSOPHY. 29I
infinite was nothing else but an infinite chaos of matter, in
which were actually or potentially contained all manner of
qualities, by the fortuitous secretion and segregation of which
he supposed infinite worlds to be successively generated and
corrupted. So that we may easily guess whence Leucippus
and Democritus had their infinite worlds, and perceive how
near akin these two Atheistic hypotheses were.” The reader,
whose curiosity may lead him to consult the authorities col-
lected by Cudworth (pp. 185–188), will find in the doctrine of
Anaximander a rude anticipation of the modern theories of
“spontaneous generation” and “the transmutation of species.”
In the fragments of Anaximander that remain we find no rec-
ognition of an ordering Mind, and his philosophy is the dawn
of a Materialistic school.
Aleucippus of Miletus (B.C. 500–400) appears, in the order of
speculation, as the successor of Anaximander. Atoms and
space are, in his philosophy, the épxai, or first principles of all
things. “Leucippus (and his companion, Democritus) assert
that the plenum and the vacuum [i. e., body and space] are the
first principles, whereof one is the Ens, the other Non-ens; the
differences of the body, which are only figure, order, and posi-
tion, are the causes of all others.”
He also taught that the elements, and the worlds derived
from them, are inſºnife. He describes the manner in which
the worlds are produced as follows: “Many bodies of various
kinds and shapes are borne by amputation from the infinite
[i. e., the chaotic piypia of Anaximander] into a vast vacuum,
and then they, being collected together, produce a vortex;
according to which, they, dashing against each other, and
whirling about in every direction, are separated in such a way
that like attaches itself to like ; bodies are thus, without ceas-
ing, united according to the impulse given by the vortex, and
in this way the earth was produced.” Thus, through a bound-
* Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” vol. i. pp. 186, 187.
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” p. 21 (Bohn's edition).
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” p. 389.
292 O'HRISTIA WITY A. WD
less void, atoms infinite in number and endlessly diversified in
form are eternally wandering; and, by their aggregation, infi-
nite worlds are successively produced. These atoms are gov-
erned in their movements by a dark negation of intelligence,
designated “Fate,” and all traces of a Supreme Mind disap-
pear in his philosophy. It is a system of pure materialism,
which, in fact, is Atheism. -
Pemocritus of Abdera (B.C. 460–357), the companion of Leu-
cippus, also taught “that atoms and the vacuum were the begin-
ning of the universe.” These atoms, he taught, were infinite
in number, homogeneous, extended, and possessed of those pri-
mary qualities of matter which are necessarily involved in ex-
tension in space—as size, figure, situation, divisibility, and mo-
bility. From the combination of these atoms all other exist-
ences are produced ; fire, air, earth, and water; Sun, moon, and
stars; plants, animals, and men; the Soul itself is an aggrega-
tion of round, moving atoms. And “motion, which is the
cause of the production of every thing, he calls necessity.”
Atoms are thus the only real existences; these, without any
pre-existent mind, or intelligence, were the original of all
things. • . .
The psychological opinions of Democritus were as decidedly
materialistic as his physical theories. All knowledge is de-
rived from sensation. It is only by material impact that we
can know the external world, and every sense is, in reality, a
kind of touch. Material images are being continually thrown
off from the surface of external objects which come into actual
contact with the organs of sense. The primary qualities of
matter, that is, those which are involved in extension in space,
are the only objects of real knowledge; the secondary quali-
ties of matter, as softness, hardness, sweetness, bitterness, and
the like, are but modifications of the human sensibilities.
“The sweet exists only in form — the bitter in form, hot in
form, color in form ; but in causal reality only atoms and
space exist. The sensible things which are supposed by opin-
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” p. 395. *Id, ib., p. 394.
G R E E K PEIII, OS O PET Y. 293
ion to exist have no real existence, but atoms and space alone
exist.” . . . . - -
Thus by Democritus was laid the basis of a system of abso-
lute materialism, which was elaborated and completed by Epi-
curus, and has been transmitted to our times. It has under-
gone some slight modifications, adapting it to the progress of
physical science; but it is to-day substantially the theory of
Democritus. In Democritus we have the culmination of the
mechanical theory of the Ionian or Physical school. In physics
and psychology it terminated in pure materialism. In theology
it ends in positive Atheism.
The fundamental error of all the philosophers of the physical
school was the assumption, tacitly or avowedly, that sense-per-
ception is the only source of knowledge. This was the fruitful
source of all their erroneous conclusions, the parent of all their
materialistic tendencies. This led them continually to seek
an àpxi, or first principle of the universe, which should, under
some form, be appreciable to sense; and consequently the
course of thought tended naturally towards materialism.
Thales was unquestionably a dualist. Instructed by tradi-
tional intimations, or more probably guided by the spontaneous
apperceptions of reason, he recognized, with more or less dis-
tinctness, an incorporeal Deity as the moving, animating, and
organizing cause of the universe. The idea of God is a truth
so self-evident as to need no demonstration. The human mind
does not attain to the idea of a God as the last consequence of
a series of antecedent principles. It comes at once, by an in-
herent and necessary movement of thought, to the recognition
of God as the First Principle of all principles. But when, in-
stead of hearkening to the simple and spontaneous intuitions
of the mind, man turns to the world of sense, and loses himself
in discursive thought, the conviction of a personal God becomes
obscured. Then, amid the endlessly diversified phenomena of
the universe, he seeks for a cause or origin which in some form
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 96. The words of
Democritus, as reported by Sextus Empiricus.
294 CHRISTIANITY AND
shall be appreciable to sense. The mere study of material
phenomena, scientifically or unscientifically conducted, will
never yield the sense of the living God. Nature must be in-
terpreted, can only be interpreted in the light of certain d pri-
ori principles of reason, or we can never “ascend from nature
up to nature's God.” Within the circle of mere sense-percep-
tion, the dim and undeveloped consciousness of God will be
confounded with the universe. Thus, in Anaximenes, God is
partially confounded with “air,” which becomes a symbol; then
a vehicle of the informing mind ; and the result is a semi-pan-
theism. In Heraclitus, the “ether” is, at first, a semi-symbol
of the Deity; at length, God is utterly confounded with this
ether, or “rational fire,” and the result is a definite materialistic
pantheism. And, finally, when this feeling or dim conscious-
ness of God, which dwells in all human souls, is not only dis-
regarded, but pronounced to be an illusion—a phantasy; when
all the analogies which intelligence suggests are disregarded,
and a purely mechanical theory of the universe is adopted, the
result is the utter negation of an Intelligent Cause, that is, aā-
solute Atheism, as in Leucippus and Democritus.
G B E E K PEIIL O S O PHY. 295
CHAPTER IX.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).
PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
IDEALIST : PYTHAGORAS — XENOPHANES — PARMENIDES — ZENO. NATURAL
REALIST : ANAXAGORAS.
SOCRATIC SCHOOL,
SOCRATES.
N the previous chapter we commenced our inquiry with the
assumption that, in the absence of the true inductive method
of philosophy which observes, and classifies, and generalizes
facts, and thence attains a general principle or law, two only
methods were possible to the early speculators who sought an
explanation of the universe—Ist, That of reasoning from physi-
cal analogies; or, 2d, That of deduction from rational concep-
tions, or d ?riori ideas.
Accordingly we found that one class of speculators fixed
their attention solely on the mere phenomena of nature, and
endeavored, amid sensible things, to find a single element
which, being more subtile, and pliable, and universally dif-
fused, could be regarded as the ground and original of all the
rest, and from which, by a vital transformation, or by a me-
chanical combination and arrangement of parts, all the rest
should be evolved. The other class passed beyond the simple
phenomena, and considered only the abstract relations of phe-
nomena among themselves, or the relations of phenomena to
the necessary and universal ideas of the reason, and supposed
that, in these relations, they had found an explanation of the
universe. The former was the Ionian or Sensation school ;
the latter was the Italian or Idealist school.
We have traced the method according to which the Ionian
296 CIIPISTIANITY AND
school proceeded, and estimated the results attained. We
now come to consider the method and results of
THE ITALIAN OR II).EALIST SCHOOL.
This school we have found to be naturally subdivided into
—Ist, The Mathematical Sect, which attempted the explanation
of the universe by the abstract conceptions of number, propor-
tion, order, and harmony; and, 2d, The Metaphysical school,
which attempted the interpretation of the universe according
to the d ?riori ideas of unity, of Being in se, of the Infinite, and
the Absolute.
Aythagoras of Samos (born B.C. 605) was the founder of the
Mathematical school.
We are conscious of the difficulties which are to be encoun-
tered by the student who seeks to attain a definite comprehen-
sion of the real opinions of Pythagoras. The genuineness of
many of those writings which were once supposed to represent
his views, is now questioned. “Modern criticism has clearly
shown that the works ascribed to Timaeus and Archytas are
spurious; and the treatise of Ocellus Lucanus on ‘The Nature
of the All’ can not have been written by a Pythagorean.”
The only writers who can be regarded as at all reliable are
Plato and Aristotle; and the opinions they represent are not
So much those of Pythagoras as “the Pythagoreans.” This is
at once accounted for by the fact that Pythagoras taught in
Secret, and did not commit his opinions to writing. His disci-
ples, therefore, represent the fendency rather than the actual
tenets of his system; these were no doubt modified by the
mental habits and tastes of his successors.
We may safely assume that the proposition from which
Pythagoras started was the fundamental idea of all Greek
Speculation—that beneath the fleeting forms and successive changes
of the universe there is some permanent principle of unity.” The
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 24.
* See Plato, “Timaeus,” ch. ix. p. 331 (Bohn's Cdition); Aristotle’s “Met-
aphysics,” bk. V. ch. iii.
G. R. E. E. K. PLIII, OS O PITY. 297
Ionian school sought that principle in Some common physical
element; Pythagoras sought, not for “elements,” but for “rela-
tions,” and through these relations for ultimate laws indicating
primal forces.
Aristotle affirms that Pythagoras taught “that numbers are
the first principles of all entities,” and, “as it were, a material
cause of things,” or, in other words, “that numbers are sub-
stances that involve a separate subsistence, and are primary
causes of entities.”
Are we then required to accept the dictum of Aristotle as
final and decisive * Did Pythagoras really teach that numbers
are real entities—the substance and cause of all other exist-
ences : The reader may be aware that this is a point upon
which the historians of philosophy are not agreed. Ritter is
decidedly of opinion that the Pythagorean formula “can only
be taken symbolically.” Lewes insists it must be understood
literally." On a careful review of all the arguments, we are
constrained to regard the conclusion of Ritter as most reason-
able. The hypothesis “that numbers are real entities” does
violence to every principle of common sense. This alone con-
stitutes a strong d ?riori presumption that Pythagoras did not
entertain so glaring an absurdity. The man who contributed
so much towards perfecting the mathematical Sciences, who
played so conspicuous a part in the development of ancient
philosophy, and who exerted so powerful a determining influ-
ence on the entire current of speculative thought, did not ob-
tain his ascendency over the intellectual manhood of Greece
by the utterance of such enigmas. And further, in interpret-
ing the philosophic opinions of the ancients, we must be guided
by this fundamental canon—“The human mind has, under the
necessary operation of its own laws, been compelled to enter-
tain the same fundamental ideas, and the human heart to cher-
ish the same feelings in all ages.” Now if a careful philo-
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. v. * Id., ib., bk. xii. ch. vi.
* “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 359.
* “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 38.
298 C EIR IS TIA WITY AND
sophic criticism can not render the reported opinions of an an-
cient teacher into the universal language of the reason and
heart of humanity, we must conclude either that his opinions
were misunderstood and misrepresented by some of his suc-
cessors, or else that he stands in utter isolation, both from the
present and the past. His doctrine has, then, no relation to
the successions of thought, and no place in the history of phi-
losophy. Nay, more, such a doctrine has in it no element of
vitality, no germ of eternal truth, and must speedily perish.
Now it is well known that the teaching of Pythagoras awaken-
ed the deepest intellectual sympathy of his age ; that his doc-
trine exerted a powerful influence on the mind of Plato, and,
through him, upon succeeding ages; and that, in some of its
aspects, it now survives, and is more influential to-day than in
any previous age ; but this element of immutable and eternal
truth was certainly not contained in the inane and empty for-
mula, “that numbers are real existences, the causes of all other
existences !” If the fame of Pythagoras had rested on such
“airy nothings,” it would have melted away before the time of
IPlato.
We grant there is considerable ſorce in the argument of
Lewes. He urges, with some pertinence, the unquestionable
fact that Aristotle asserts, again and again, that the Pythago-
reans taught “that numbers are the principles and substance
of things as well as the causes of their modifications;” and he
argues that we are not justified in rejecting the authority of
Aristotle, unless better evidence can be produced.
So far, however, as the authority of Aristotle is concerned,
even Lewes himself charges him, in more than one instance,
with Strangely misrepresenting the opinions of his predeces-
Sors." Aristotle is evidently wanting in that impartiality which
* “Aristotle uniformly speaks disparagingly of Anaxagoras” (Lewes's
“Biographical History of Philosophy”). He represents him as employ-
ing mind (vövg) simply as “a machine” for the production of the world;—
“when he finds himself in perplexity as to the cause of its being necessarily
an orderly system, he then drags it (mind) in by force to his assistance”
(“Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. iv.). But he is evidently inconsistent with himself,
G B E E R PITTL OS OPEI Y. 299
ought to characterize the historian of philosophy, and, some-
times, we are compelled to question his integrity. Indeed,
throughout his “Metaphysics” he exhibits the egotism and
vanity of one who imagines that he alone, of all men, has the
full vision of the truth. In Books I. and XII. he uniformly as-
sociates the “numbers” of Pythagoras with the “forms” and
“zaleas” of Plato. He asserts that Plato identifies “forms”
and “numbers,” and regards them as real entities—substances,
and causes of all other things. “Arorms are numbers". . . . so
Plato affirmed, similar with the Pythagoreans; and the dogma
that numbers are causes to other things—of their substance—
/le, in like manner, asserted with them.” And then, finally, he
employs the same arguments in refuting the doctrines of both.
Now the writings of Plato are all extant to-day, and accessi-
ble in an excellent English translation to any of our readers.
Cousin has shown,” most conclusively (and we can verify his
conclusions for ourselves), that Aristotle has totally misrepre-
sented 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.
for in “De Anima” (bk. i. ch. ii.) he tells us that “Anaxagoras saith that
mind is at once a cause of motion in the whole universe, and also of weſ/ and
ſit.” We may further ask, is not the idea of fitness—of the good and the
befitting—the final cause, even according to Aristotle 2
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 Philos-
ophy,” vol. i. p. 415). It is also pertinent to inquire, what is the diſſerence
between the “formal cause” of Aristotle and the archetypal ideas of Plato P
and is not Plato's to Öyaſ)ów the “final cause P” Yet Aristotle is forever
congratulating himself that he alone has properly treated the “formal” and
the “final cause !”
* This, however, was not the doctrine of Plato. He does not say “forms
are numbers.” He says: “God formed things as they first arose according
to forms and numbers.” See “Timaeus,” ch. xiv. and xxvii.
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. vi.
* “The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” pp. 77–81.
3Oo C EIR IS TIANITY AND
It is, however, a matter of the deepest interest for us to find
the evidence gleaming out here and there, on the pages of Ar-
istotle, that he had some knowledge of the fact that the Pytha-
gorean 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
Tapačetypara—models, patterns, exemplars after which created
things were framed. The numbers of Pythagoras, then, are
also models and exemplars. This also is admitted by Aris-
totle. “The Pythagoreans indeed affirm that entities subsist by
an imitation (uipmaug) of numbers.' Now if ideas, forms, num-
bers, were the models or paradigms after which “the Opera-
tor” 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 con-
clusion we can draw, even from the statements of Aristotle, is
that the Pythagoreans regarded numbers as the best expres-
sion or representation of those laws of proportion, and order,
and harmony, which seemed, to their eyes, to pervade the uni-
verse. Their doctrine was a faint glimpse of that grand dis-
covery of modern science—that all the higher laws of nature
assume the form of a precise quantitative statement.
The fact seems to be this, the Pythagoreans busied them-
selves 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 de-
clared nothing whatsoever, inasmuch as affirming, in my opin-
ion, nothing that is peculiar concerning sensible natures.” They
looked, as we have previously remarked, to the relations of
phenomena, and having discovered certain “numerical simili-
tudes,” 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 philoso-
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. vi. * Id., ib., bk. i. ch. ix.
G RE EX PHILOSOPHTY. 3OI
phy 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.”
These preliminary considerations will have cleared and pre-
pared the way for a fuller presentation of the philosophic sys-
tem of Pythagoras. The most comprehensive and satisfactory
exposition of his “method” is that given by Wm. Archer But-
ler in his “Zectures on Ancient Philosophy,” and we feel we can
not do better than condense his pages.”
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 re-
lations of space, and determinate form, and number, in which
the very idea of proportion seems to find its first and immedi-
ate 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 hid-
den 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 space, 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
* Whewell’s “History of Inductive Sciences,” vol. i. p. 78.
* Lecture VI. vol. i.
3O2 CIIRISTIANITY AND
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 identity 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.”
Again, the world is assuredly perfect, as being the sensible
image and copy of the Divinity, the outward and multiple de-
velopment of the Eternal Unity. It must, therefore, when
thoroughly known and properly interpreted, answer to all which
* 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 math-
ematical 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 move-
ments of the great bodies in nature admit of a precise quantitative expres-
sion. 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 Cre-
ation,” by M'Cosh.
G. E. E. E. K. PHIL OS O PET Y. 3O3
we can conceive as perfect; that is, it must be regulated by laws,
of which we have the highest principles in those first and ele-
mentary properties of numbers which stand next to unity.
“The world is then, through all its departments, a living ariſh-ſ
metic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose.” It is
a Kóopog (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 pre-
ferred to constitute the Science of Numbers as the true repre-
sentative 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 de-
fined as the pipino ic Töv ćpt01.jv—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
Peity, is the primitive unit from which all proceeds in the ac-
cordant relations of the universal scheme. Into the sensible
world of multitude, 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 combina-
tion of a thousand elements, yet as the expression of a single
Spirit—which is a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason 2
What is it but harmony—proportion—the one governing the
many, the many lost in the one 2 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 Tet-
3O4 CITE IS TIA WTT Y. AND
rad, 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.”
The psychology of the Pythagoreans was greatly modified
by their physical, and still more, by their moral tenets. The
soul was āpt010c Śavröv kivāv-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 (voic), Intelli-
gence (ppäv), and Passion (9upég). The two last, man has in
common with brutes, the first is his grand and peculiar charac-
teristic. It has, hence, been argued that Pythagoras could not
have held the doctrine of “transmigration.” This clear separa-
tion of man from the brute, by this signal endowment of rea-
son, 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 God ; that is, the return of num-
ber to its root, to unity,” and virtue is thus a harmony.
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 space, and number, and determinate
form, are, like the relations of cause and effect, of phenomena
and Substance, perceptible only in thoughſ; 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
* That is, I +2+3+4= I0. There are intimations that the Pythagoreans
regarded the Monad as God, 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.
* Aristotle, “Nichomachian Ethics,” bk. i. ch. vi.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY, 3O5.
of prelude to the contemplation of real being.” Therefore
Blato 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 per-
ceptions of Sense. -
Now if the testimony of both reason and sense, as given in
consciousness, is accepted as of equal authority, and each facul-
ty is regarded as, within its own sphere, a source of real, valid
knowledge, then a consistent and harmonious system of Matu-
7-a/A’ea/İsm or AWatura/ ZXualism will be the result. If the tes-
timony 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
Aſſypothetical Dualism or Cosmothetic Idealism. But if the affir-
mations of reason, as to the unity of the cosmos, are alone ac-
cepted, 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 /dealism. Pythagoras regarded the har-
mony 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. Follow-
ing out this tendency, the Eleatics first neglected, and finally
denied the variety of the universe—denied the real existence
of the external world, and asserted 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,
* Alcinous, “Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato,” ch. vii.
20
306 O EIRISTIANITY AND
and had taught them to regard that harmony as the manifesta-
tion 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 Ideal-
ist, begins already to attach more importance to unity than
multiplicity in his philosophy of nature. He regards the testi-
mony 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 Heraclitus
and the Ionians had alone considered.”
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 uni-
verse (tº troXXá) 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-ems,” and
thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world.
The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Par-
menides 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 God with the universe.” &
In theology, Xenophanes was unquestionably a 7%eist. He
* Cousin, “History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 440.
* See note by editor, W. H. Thompson, M.A., on pages 331, 332 of But-
ler’s “Lectures,” vol. i. His authorities are “Fragments of Xenophanes”
and the treatise “De Mclisso, Xenophane, et Gorgia,” by Aristotle.
G R E E R PIIILOSO PITY. 3O7
had a profound and earnest conviction of the existence of a
God, and he ridiculed with sarcastic force, the anthropomorphic
absurdities of the popular religion. This one God, he taught,
was self-existent, eternal, and infinite ; Supreme in power, in
goodness, and intelligence.” These characteristics are ascribed
to the Deity in the sublime words with which he opens his
philosophic poem—
“There is one God, 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.”
Xenophanes also taught that God is “uncreated” or “un-
caused,” and that he is “excellent” as well as “all-powerful.”
And yet, regardless of these explicit utterances, Lewes cautions
his readers against supposing that, by the “one God,” Xeno-
phanes meant a Personal God; and he asserts that his Mono-
theism 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 per-
version of language be called pantheism.
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 Zyuth (&\#0sway) and Opinion (86%ay)—
between ideas obtained through the reason and the simple per-
ceptions of Sense. Assuming that reason and sense are the
only sources of knowledge, he held that they furnish the mind
with two distinct classes of cognitions—one variable, fleeting,
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 38; Ritter's “His-
tory of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 428, 429.
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 432, 434.
* Butler’s “Lectures,” vol. i. p. 331, note; Ritter’s “History of Ancient
Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 428.
308 CHIRISTIANITY AND
and uncertain; the other immutable, necessary, and eternal.
Sense is dependent on the variable organization of the individ-
ual, and therefore its evidence is changeable, uncertain, and
nothing but a mere “seeming.” Reason is the same in all in-
dividuals, 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, Phys-
ics, is pronounced illusory and uncertain; the latter, Meta-
physics, is infallible and immutable.”
Proceeding on these principles, he rejects the dualistic sys-
tem 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, there-
fore, manifests itself in the field of sense is merely illusory—
the mental representation of a phenomenal world, which to ex-
perience 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& Trávra év, “The A/Z is One,” and rô airó
votiv Te Kai givat (Idem est cogitare atque esse), “Zhought and
Aeing are identical.” The last remarkable dictum is the fun-
damental principle of the modern pantheistic doctrine of “ab-
Solute identity” as taught by Schelling and Hegel.”
Lewes asserts that “Parmenides did not, with Xenophanes,
call ‘the One’ God; he called it Being.” In support of this
Statement he, however, cites no ancient authorities. We are
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 447, 451.
*Id, ib., vol. i. pp. 450,455.
* “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 50.
G. R. E. E. K. PETILOSOPH Y. 3O9
therefore justified in rejecting his opinion, and receiving the
testimóny of Simplicius, “the only authority for the fragments
of the Eleatics,” and who had a copy of the philosophic poems
of Parmenides. He assures us that Parmenides and Xeno-
phanes “affirmed that ‘the One,” or unity, was the first Princi-
ple of all, . . . . they meaning by this One that highest or supreme
God, as being the cause of unity to all things.” . . . . “It re-
maineth, therefore, that that Znte/Zigence 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.” Parmenides was, therefore, a spiritualistic
or idealistic Pantheist.
Zeno of Elea (born B.C. 5oo) was the logician of the Eleatic
school. He was, says Diogenes Laertius, “the inventor of Di-
alectics.” Logic henceforth becomes the Öpyavov'—organon
of the Eleatics.
This organon, however, Zeno used very imperfectly. In his
hands it was simply the “reductio ad absurdum” of opposing
opinions as the means of sustaining the tenets of his own sect.
Parmenides had asserted, on d ?riori grounds, the existence of
“the One.” Zeno would prove by his dialectic the non-exist-
ence of “the many.” His grand position was that all phe-
nomena, all that appears to sense, is but a modification of the
absolute One. And he displays a vast amount of dialectic
subtilty in the effort to prove that all “appearances” are un-
real, and that all movement and change is a mere “seeming”
—not a reality. What men call motion is only a name given
to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately,
is rest. “Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant.”
The famous puzzle of “Achilles and the Tortoise,” by which
he endeavored to prove the unreality of motion, has been ren-
dered familiar to the English reader."
* Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Simplicius.”
* Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” vol. i. p. 511.
* “Lives,” p. 387 (Bohn's edition). * Plato in “Parmen.”
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 60.
" Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 475, 476.
3IO O HRISTIANITY AND
Aristotle assures us that Zeno, “by his one Ens, which nei-
ther was moved nor movable, meaneth God.” And he also in-
forms us that “Zeno endeavored to demonstrate that there is
but one God, from the idea which all men have of him, as that
which is the best, Supremest, most powerful of all, or an abso-
lutely perfect being” (“De Xenophane, Zenone, et Gorgia”)."
With Zeno we close our survey of the second grand line of
independent inquiry by which philosophy sought to Solve the
problem of the universe. The reader will be struck with the
resemblance which subsists between the history of its develop-
ment and that of the modern Idealist School. Pythagoras was
the Descartes, Parmenides the Spinoza, and Zeno the Hegel
of the Italian school.
In this survey of the speculations of the pre-Socratic schools
of philosophy, we have followed the course of two opposite
streams of thought which had their common origin in one fun-
damental principle or law of the human mind—the intuition of
zenity—“ or the desire to comprehend all the facts of the uni-
verse in a single formula, and consummate all conditional
knowledge in the unity of unconditioned existence.” The his-
tory of this tendency is, in fact, the history of all philosophy.
“The end of all philosophy,” says Plato, “is the intuition of
unity.” “All knowledge,” said the Platonists, “is the gather-
ing up into one.”
Starting from this fundamental idea, ſhat, beneath the endless
ſºuz and change of the visible universe, there must be a permanent
Arinciple of unity, we have seen developed two opposite schools
of Speculative thought. As the traveller, standing on the ridges
of the Andes, may see the head-waters of the great South
American rivers mingling in one, so the student of philosophy,
standing on the elevated plane of analytic thought, may dis-
cover, in this fundamental principle, the common source of the
two great systems of speculative thought which divided the
* Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” vol. i. p. 518.
* Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” vol. i. pp. 67–70 (English edition),
G R El ER PHILOSOPH Y. 3 II
ancient world. Here are the head-waters of the sensational
and the idealist schools. The Ionian School started its course
of inquiry in the direction of sense; it occupied itself solely
with the phenomena of the external world, and it sought this
principle of unity in a physical element. The Italian School
started its course of inquiry in the direction of reason, it occu-
pied itself chiefly with rational conceptions or d £riori ideas,
and it sought this principle of unity in purely metaphysical
being. And just as the Amazon and La Plata Sweep On, in
opposite directions, until they reach the extremities of the con-
tinent, so these two opposite streams of thought rush onward,
by the force of a logical necessity, until they terminate in the
two Unitarian systems of Absolute Materialism and Absolute
Adealism; and, in their theological aspects, in a pantheism
which, on the one hand, identifies God with matter, or, on the
other hand, Swallows up the universe in God.
The radical error of both these systems is at once apparent.
The testimony of the primary faculties of the mind was not
regarded as each, within its sphere, final and decisive. The
duality of consciousness was not accepted in all its integrity;
one school rejected the testimony of reason, the other denied
the veracity of the senses, and both prepared the way for the
skepticism of the Sophists.
We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that there were
Some philosophers of the pre-Socratic school, as Anaxagoras
and Empedocles, who recognized the partial and exclusive
character of both these systems, and sought, by a method
which Cousin would designate as Eclecticism, to combine the
element of truth contained in each.
Anaxagoras of Clazomena (B.C. 500–428) added to the Ioni-
an philosophy of a material element or elements the Italian
idea of a spirit distinct from, and independent of the world,
which has within itself the principle of a spontaneous activity
—Noüc airosparſic, and which is the first cause of motion in the
universe—ápxi) Tig kivia’soc.”
* Cousin, “History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 4II.
3I2 O HAIS TIAA TT Y. A WD
In his physical theory, Anaxagoras was an Atomist. Instead
of one element, he declared that the elements or first principles
were numerous, or even infinite. No point in space is unoccu-
pied by these atoms, which are infinitely divisible. He imag-
ined that, in nature, there are as many kinds of principles as
there are species of compound bodies, and that the peculiar
form of the primary particles of which any body is composed
is the same with the qualities of the compound body itself.
This was the celebrated doctrine of Homatomeria, of which Lu-
cretius furnishes a luminous account in his philosophic poem
“De Natura Rerum”—
“That bone from bones
Minute, and embryon; nerve from nerves arise;
And blood from blood, by countless drops increased.
Gold, too, from golden atoms, earths concrete,
From earths extreme ; from fiery matters, fire;
And lymph from limpen dews. And thus throughout
From primal kinds that kinds perpetual spring.”
These primary particles were regarded by Anaxagoras as eter-
nal ; because he held the dogma, peculiar to all the Ionians,
that nothing can be really created or annihilated (de nihilo ni-
hil, in nihilum nil posse reverti). But he saw, nevertheless,
that the simple existence of “inert” matter, even from eternity,
could not explain the motion and the harmony of the material
world. Hence he saw the necessity of another power—the
fower of Inte//gence. “All things were in chaos; then came
Intelligence and introduced Order.”
Anaxagoras, unlike the pantheistic speculators of the Ionian
school, rigidly separated the Supreme Intelligence from the
material universe. “The Noüc of Anaxagoras is a principle,
infinite, independent (airokparéc), omnipresent (Év Tavri Tavröc
plotpg £vov), the subtilest and purest of things (Agirröratov távrov
xpmplérov Kai kaðapóTarov); and incapable of mixture with aught
besides ; it is also omniscient (Trávra Éyvø), and unchangeable
(Tác Špoióc art).-Simplicius, in “Arist. Phys.” i. 33.”
* Good's translation, bk. i. p. 325. * Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” p. 59.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 305, note.
G R E E K PHII, OSO PET Y. 3I3
Thus did Anaxagoras bridge the chasm between the Ionian
and the Italian schools. He accepted both doctrines with
some modifications. He believed in the real existence of the
phenomenal world, and he also believed in the real existence
of “The Infinite Mind,” whose Intelligence and Omnipotence
were manifested in the laws and relations which pervade the
world. He proclaimed the existence of the Infinite Intelligence
(“the ONE”), who was the Architect and Governor of the
Infinite Matter (“the MANy”).
On the question as to the origin and certainty of human
knowledge, Anaxagoras differed both from the Ionians and the
Eleatics. Neither the sense alone, nor the reason alone, were
for him a ground of certitude. He held that reason (Aóyoc)
was the regulative faculty of the mind, as the Noüc, or Supreme
Intelligence, was the regulative power of the universe. And
he admitted that the senses were veracious in their reports;
but they reported only in regard to phenomena. The senses,
then, perceive phenomena, but it is the reason alone which rec-
ognizes noumena, that is, the reason perceives being in and
through phenomena, Substance in and through qualities; an
anticipation of the fundamental principle of modern psychology
—“that every power or substance in existence is knowable to us,
so far only, as we know its £henomena.” Thus, again, does he
bridge the chasm that separates between the Sensationalist
and the Idealist. The Ionians relied solely on the intuitions
of sense ; the Eleatics accepted only the apperceptions of pure
reason ; he accepted the testimony of both, and in the synthe-
sis of Subject and object—the union of an element supplied by
Sensation, and an element supplied by reason, he found real,
certain knowledge.
The harmony which the doctrine of Anaxagoras introduced
into the philosophy of Athens, soon attracted attention and
multiplied disciples. He was teaching when Socrates arrived
in Athens, and the latter attended his school. The influence
which the doctrine of Anaxagoras exerted upon the mind of
Socrates (leading him to recognize Intelligence as the cause
3I4 CHRISTIANITY AND
of order and special adaptation in the universe), and also upon
the course of philosophy in the Socratic Schools, is the most
enduring memorial of his name.”
We have devoted a much larger space than we originally
designed to the ante-Socratic Schools—quite out of proportion,
indeed, with that we shall be able to appropriate to their suc-
cessors. But inasmuch as all the great primary problems of
thought, which are subsequently discussed by Plato and Aris-
totle, were started, and received, at least, typical answers in
those schools, we can not hope to understand Plato, or Aris-
totle, or even Epicurus, or Zeno of Cittium, unless we have first
mastered the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides,
and Anaxagoras.” The attention we have bestowed on these
early thinkers will, therefore, have been a valuable preparatory
discipline for the study of
II. THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL.
The first cycle of philosophy was now complete. That form
of Grecian speculative thought which, during the first period of
its development, was a philosophy of nature, had reached its
maturity; it had sought “the first principles of all things” in the
study of external nature, and had signally failed. In this pur-
suit of first principles as the basis of a true and certain knowl-
edge of the system of the universe, the two leading schools had
been carried to opposite poles of thought. One had asserted
that experience alone, the other, that reason alone was the
Sole Criterion of truth. As the last consequence of this im-
perfect method, Leucippus had denied the existence of “the
one,” and Zeno had denied the existence of “the many.”
The Ionian school, in Democritus, had landed in Materialism ;
the Italian, in Parmenides, had ended in Pantheism ; and, as
the necessary result of this partial and defective method of in-
quiry, which ended in doubt and contradiction, a spirit of gen-
* “Phaedo,” $ 105. * Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. iii.
* Maurice’s “Ancient Philosophy,” p. 114; Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient
Philosophy,” vol. ii. pp. 87,88. -
G R E E K PEIILOSOPHI Y. 3I5
eral skepticism was generated in the Athenian mind. If doubt
be cast upon the veracity of the primary cognitive faculties of
|
the mind, the flood-gates of universal skepticism are opened.
If the senses are pronounced to be mendacious and illusory in
their reports regarding external phenomena, and if the intui-
tions of the reason, in regard to the ground and cause of phe-
nomena, are delusive, then we have no ground of certitude. If
One faculty is unveracious and unreliable, how can we deter-
mine that the other is not equally so There is, then, no such
thing as universal and necessary truth. Truth is variable and
uncertain, as the variable opinion of each individual.
The Sophists, who belonged to no particular school, laid
hold on the elements of skepticism contained in both the pre-
Socratic schools of philosophy, and they declared that “the
copia” was not only unattainable, but that no relative degree
of it was possible for the human faculties.” Protagoras of Ab-
dera accepted the doctrine of Heraclitus, that thought is iden-
tical with sensation, and limited by it ; he therefore declared
that there is no criterion of truth, and “Man is the measure of
al/ things.” Sextus Empiricus gives the psychological opinions
of Protagoras with remarkable explicitness. “Matter is in a
perpetual flux, whilst it undergoes augmentations and losses;
the senses also are modified according to the age and dispo-
sition of the body. He said, also, that the reason of all phe-
nomena resides in matter as substrata, so that matter, in itself,
might be whatever it appeared to each. But men have differ-
ent perceptions at different periods, according to the changes
in the things perceived. ... Man is, therefore, the criterion
of that which exists; all that is perceived by him exists; that
which is perceived by no man does not exist.” These conclusions
were rigidly and fearlessly applied to ethics and political sci-
ence. If there is no Eternal Truth, there can be no Immutable
* Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Sophist.”
* Plato’s “Theaetetus” (äv0pa,Tog—“the individual is the measure of all
things”), vol. i. p. 381 (Bohn's edition). -
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. #17.
316 C EIRISTIANITY AND
Right. The distinction of right and wrong is solely a matter
of human opinion and conventional usage.” “That which aft-
pears just and honorable to each city, is so for that city, so long
as the opinion prevails. º &
There were others who laid hold on the weapons which Zeno
had prepared to their hands. He had asserted that all the ob-
jects of sense were mere phantoms—delusive and transitory.
By the subtilties of dialectic quibbling, he had attempted to
prove that “change” meant “permanence,” and “motion”
meant “rest.” Words may, therefore, have the most opposite
and contradictory meanings; and all language and all opinion
may, by such a process, be rendered uncertain. One opinion
is, consequently, for the individual, just as good as another; and
all opinions are equally true and untrue. It was nevertheless
desirable, for the good of society, that there should be some
agreement, and that, for a time at least, certain opinions should
prevail; and if philosophy had failed to secure this agree-
ment, rhetoric, at least, was effectual ; and, with the Sophist,
rhetoric was “the art of making the worst appear the better
reason.” All wisdom was now confined to a species of “word
jugglery,” which in Athens was dignified as “the art of dispu-
tation.”
SOCRATES (B.C. 469-399), the grand central figure in the
group of ancient philosophers, arrived in Athens in the midst
of this general skepticism. He had an invincible faith in truth.
“He made her the mistress of his soul, and with patient labor,
and unwearied energy, did his great and noble soul toil after
perfect communion with her.” He was disappointed and dis-
satisfied with the results that had been reached by the methods
of his predecessors, and he was convinced that by these meth-
Ods the problem of the universe could not be solved. He
therefore turned away from physical inquiries, and devoted his
532
* “Gorgias,” $85–89. * Plato’s “Theaetetus,” $ 65–75.
* “And do we not know that the Eleatic Palamedes (Zeno) spoke by art
in such a manner that the same things appeared to be similar and dissimilar,
One and many, at rest and in motion P’’—“Phaedrus,” $ 97.
G R E E K PETII, OSO PET Y. 3I7
whole attention to the study of the human mind, its funda-
mental beliefs, ideas, and laws. If he can not penetrate the
mysteries of the outer world, he will turn his attention to the
world within. He will “know himself,” and find within him-
self the reason, and ground, and law of all existence. There
he discovered certain truths which can not possibly be ques-
tioned. He felt he had within his own heart a faithful monitor
—a conscience, which he regarded as the voice of God.” He
believed “he had a divine teacher with him at all times.
Though he did not possess wisdom, this teacher could put him
on the road to seek it, could preserve him from delusions
which might turn him out of the way, could keep his mind
fixed upon the end for which he ought to act and live.” In
himself, therefore, he sought that ground of certitude which
should save him from the prevailing skepticism of his times.
The Delphic inscription, Tvä0 orgavrów, “Anow thyself,” becomes
henceforth the fundamental maxim of philosophy.
Truth has a rational, d ?riori foundation in the constitution
of the human mind. There are ideas connatural to the human
reason which are the copies of those archetypal ideas which
belong to the Eternal Reason. The grand problem of philoso-
phy, therefore, now is—What are these fundamental IDEAs which
are unchangeable and Žermanent, amid all the diversities of human
opinion, connecting aftedrance with reality, and constituting a
ground of certain knowledge or absolute truth A Socrates may
* The Daemon of Socrates has been the subject of much discussion among
learned men. The notion, once generally received, that his datuov was “a
familiar genius,” is now regarded as an exploded error. “Nowhere does
Socrates, in Plato or Xenophon, speak of a genius or demon, but always of
a domoniac something (Tó Öalpóvtov, or Öatuðvøv Tl), or of a sign, a voice, a
divine sign, a divine voice” (Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,”
p. 166). “Socrates always speaks of a divine or supernatural somewhat
(‘divinum quiddam,’ as Cicero has it), the nature of which he does not at-
tempt to divine, and to which he never attributes personality” (Butler's
“Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 357). The scholar need not to
be informed that Tö Öatuóvov, in classic literature, means the divine Essence
(Lat. 7aument), to which are attributed events beyond man’s power, yet not
to be assigned to any special god.
* Maurice’s “Ancient Philosophy,” p. 124.
318 CHRISTIANITY AND
not have held the doctrine of ideas as exhibited by Plato, but
he certainly believed that there were germs of truth latent in
the human mind—principles which governed, unconsciously,
the processes of thought, and that these could be developed by
reflection and by questioning. These were embryonate in the
womb of reason, coming to the birth, but needing the “maieu-
tic” or “obstetric” art, that they might be brought forth." He
would, therefore, become the accoucheur of ideas, and deliver
minds of that Secret truth which lay in their mental constitu-
tion. And thus Psychology becomes the basis of all legitimate
metaphysics.
By the general consent of antiquity, as well as by the con-
current judgment of all modern historians of philosophy, Soc-
rates is regarded as having effected a complete revolution in
philosophic thought, and, by universal consent, he is placed at
the commencement of a new era in philosophy. Schleier-
macher has said, “the service which Socrates rendered to phi-
losophy consisted not so much in the truths arrrived at as in
Žhe METHOD by which fruff, is sought.” As Bacon inaugurated
a new method in physical inquiry, So Socrates inaugurated a
new method in metaphysical inquiry.
What, then, was this new method 2 It was no other than the
inductive method applied to the facts of consciousness. This
method is thus defined by Aristotle: “Induction is the proc-
ess from particulars to generals;” that is, it is the process of
discovering laws from facts, causes from effects, being from
phenomena. But how is this process of induction conducted 2
By observing and enumerating the real facts which are present-
ed in consciousness, by noting their relations of resemblance
or difference, and by classifying these facts by the aid of these
relations. In other words, it is analysis applied to the phe-
nomena of mind.” Now Socrates gave this method of psycho-
logical analysis to Greek philosophy. “There are two things
of which Socrates must justly be regarded as the author, the
* Plato's “Theaetetus,” $22.
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 30.
G. R. E. E. K. PEIILOSOPH Y. - 3I9
inductive reasoning and abstract definition.” We readily grant
that Socrates employed this method Imperfectly, for methods
are the last things perfected in science ; but still, the Socratic
movement was a vast movement in the right direction.
In what are usually regarded as the purely Socratic dia-
logues," Plato evidently designs to exhibit this method of Soc-
rates. They proceed continually on the firm conviction that
there is a standard or criterion of truth in the reason of man,
and that, by reflection, man can apprehend and recognize the
truth. To awaken this power of reflection ; to compel men to
analyze their language and their thoughts ; to lead them from
the particular and the contingent, to the universal and the nec-
essary ; and to teach them to test their opinions by the inward
standard of truth, was the aim of Socrates. These dialogues
are a picture of the conversations of Socrates. They are liter-
ally an education of the thinking faculty. Their purpose is to
discipline men to think for themselves, rather than to furnish
opinions for them. In many of these dialogues Socrates affirms
nothing. After producing many arguments, and examining a
question on all sides, he leaves it undetermined. At the close
of the dialogue he is as far from a declaration of opinions as at
the commencement. His grand effort, like that of Bacon's, is
to furnish men a correct method of inquiry, rather than to apply
that method and give them results. - *.
We must not, however, from thence conclude that Socrates
did not himself attain any definite conclusions, or reach any
specific and valuable results. When, in reply to his friends who
reported the answer of the oracle of Delphi, that “Socrates was
the wisest of men,” he said, “he supposed the oracle declared
him wise because /ie Änezeſ nothing,” he did not mean that true
knowledge was unattainable, for his whole life had been spent
in efforts to attain it. He simply indicates the disposition of
mind which is most befitting and most helpful to the seeker
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” vol. xii, ch. iv. p. 359 (Bohn's edition).
* “Laches,” “Charmides,” “Lysis,” “The Rivals,” “First and Second
Alcibiades,” “Theages,” “Clitophon.” See Whewell's translation, vol. i.
--~~~"
32O C EIRISTIANITY AND
after truth. He must be conscious of his own ignorance. He
must not exalt himself. He must not put his own conceits in
the way of the thing he would know. He must have an open
eye, a single purpose, an honest mind, to prepare him to receive
light when it comes. And that there is light, that there is a
source whence light comes, he avowed in every word and act.
Socrates unquestionably believed in one Supreme God, the
immaterial, infinite Governor of all. He cherished that in-
stinctive, spontaneous faith in God and his Providence which
is the universal faith of the human heart. He saw this faith
revealed in the religious sentiments of all nations, and in the
tendency to worship so universally characteristic of humanity."
He appealed to the consciousness of absolute dependence—
the persuasion, wrought by God in the minds of all men, that
“He is able to make men happy or miserable,” and the conse-
quent sense of obligation which teaches man he ought to obey
God. And he regarded with some degree of affectionate ten-
derness the common sentiment of his countrymen, that the Di-
vine Government was conducted through the ministry of subor-
dinate deities or generated gods. But he sought earnestly to
prevent the presence of these subordinate agents from inter-
cepting the clear view of the Supreme God.
The faith of Socrates was not, however, grounded on mere
feeling and sentiment. He endeavored to place the knowledge
of God on a rational basis. We can not read the arguments
he employed without being convinced that he anticipated all
the subsequent writers on Natural Theology in his treatment
of the argument from special ends or final causes. We venture
to abridge the account which is given by Xenophon of the con-
versation with Aristodemus:" -
“I will now relate the manner in which I once heard Socra-
tes discoursing with Aristodemus concerning the Deity; for,
observing that he never prayed nor sacrificed to the gods, but,
on the contrary, ridiculed those who did, he said to him :
“‘Tell me, Aristodemus, is there any man you admire on
* “Memorabilia,” bk. i. ch. iv. § 16. *Ibid., bk. i. ch. iv.
G R E E R PETILOSOPHY, 321
account of his merits?’ Aristodemus having answered, “Many,’
—‘Name some of them, I pray you,' said Socrates. “I admire,’
said Aristodemus, “Homer for his Epic poetry, Melanippides
for his dithyrambics, Sophocles for his tragedy, Polycletus for
statuary, and Zeuxis for painting.’ -
“‘But which seemed to you most worthy of admiration,
Aristodemus—the artist who forms images void of motion and
intelligence, or one who has skill to produce animals that are
endued, not only with activity, but understanding’
“‘The latter, there can be no doubt, replied Aristodemus,
‘provided the production was not the effect of chance, but of
wisdom and contrivance.” .
“‘But since there are many things, some of which we can
easily see the use of, while we can not say of others to what
purpose they are produced, which of these, Aristodemus, do
you suppose the work of wisdom * -
“‘It would seem the most reasonable to affirm it of those
whose fitness and utility are so evidently apparent,’ answered
Aristodemus.
“‘But it is evidently apparent that He who, at the beginning,
made man, endued him with senses because they were good for
him ; eyes wherewith to behold what is visible, and ears to hear
whatever was heard ; for, say, Aristodemus, to what purpose
should odor be prepared, if the sense of smelling had been de-
nied ? or why the distinction of bitter or sweet, of savory or un-
savory, unless a palate had been likewise given, conveniently
placed to arbitrate between them and proclaim the difference?
Is not that Providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner
conspicuous, which, because the eye of a man is so delicate
in its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors
whereby to secure it, which extend of themselves whenever it
is needful, and again close when sleep approaches 2 Are not
these eyelids provided, as it were, with a fence on the edge of
them to keep off the wind and guard the eye? Even the eye-
brow itself is not without its office, but, as a penthouse, is pre-
pared to turn off the sweat, which falling from the forehead
21
322 C EIRISTIANITY AWD
might enter and annoy that no less tender than astonishing
part of us. Is it not to be admired that the ears should take
in sounds of every sort, and yet are not too much filled with
them 2 That the fore teeth of the animal should be formed in
such a manner as is evidently best for cutting, and those on the
side for grinding it to pieces? . That the mouth, through which
this food is conveyed, should be placed so near the nose and
eyes as to prevent the passing unnoticed whatever is unfit for
nourishment?.... And canst thou still doubt, Aristodemus,
whether a disposition of parts like this should be a work of chance,
or of wisdom and contrivance 3’ -
“‘I have no longer any doubt,’ replied Aristodemus ; “and,
indeed, the more I consider it, the more evident it appears to
me that man must be the masterpiece of some great Artificer,
carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favor of
Him who hath thus formed it.’
“‘But, further (unless thou desirest to ask me questions),
seeing, Aristodemus, thou thyself art conscious of reason and
intelligence, supposest thou there is no intelligence elsewhere?
Thou knowest thy body to be a small part of that wide-extended
earth thou everywhere beholdest; the moisture contained in it
thou also knowest to be a portion of that mighty mass of waters
whereof seas themselves are but a part, while the rest of the
elements contribute out of their abundance to thy formation.
It is the soul, then, alone, that intellectual part of us, which is
come to thee by Some lucky chance, from I know not where. If
So, there is no intelligence elsewhere; and we must be forced to
Confess that this stupendous universe, with all the various bod-
ies contained therein—equally amazing, whether we consider
their magnitude or number, whatever their use, whatever their
Order—all have been produced by chance, not by intelligence p
“‘It is with difficulty that I can suppose otherwise,’ returned
Aristodemus ; ‘for I behold none of those gods whom you
Speak of as framing and governing the world; whereas I see
the artists when at their work here among us.”
“‘Neither yet seest thou thy soul, Aristodemus, which, how-
G R JEER PIIILOSOPHY. 323
ever, most assuredly governs thy body; although it may well
seem, by thy manner of talking, that it is chance and not rea-
son which governs thee.’
“‘I do not despise the gods,” said Aristodemus ; ‘ on the
contrary, I conceive so highly of their excellency, as to suppose
they stand in no need of me or of my services.’
“‘Thou mistakest the matter,’ Aristodemus ; ‘the great mag-
nificence they have shown in their care of thee, so much the
more honor and service thou owest them.”
“‘Be assured,” said Aristodemus, ‘if I once could persuade
myself the gods take care of man, I should want no monitor to
remind me of my duty.’
“‘And canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, if the gods take care
of man Hath not the glorious privilege of walking upright
been alone bestowed on him, whereby he may with the better
advantage survey what is around him, contemplate with more
ease those splendid objects which are above, and avoid the nu-
merous ills and inconveniences which would otherwise befall.
him Other animals, indeed, they have provided with feet;
but to man they have also given hands, with which he can form
many things for use, and make himself happier than creatures
of any other kind. A tongue hath been bestowed on every
other animal; but what animal, except man, hath the power of
forming words with it whereby to explain his thoughts and
make them intelligible to others? But it is not with respect to
the body alone that the gods have shown themselves bountiful
to man. Their most excellent gift is that of a soul they have
infused into him, which so far surpasses what is elsewhere to be
found ; for by what animal except man is even the existence
of the gods discovered, who have produced and still uphold in
such regular order this beautiful and stupendous frame of the
universe 2 What other creature is to be found that can serve
and adore them . . . . In thee, Aristodemus, has been joined
to a wonderful soul a body no less wonderful ; and Sayest thou,
after this, the gods take no thought for me? What wouldst
thou, then, more to convince thee of their care *
324 CHRISTIA WITY AND
“‘I would they should send and inform me,’ said Aristode-
mus, ‘what things I ought or ought not to do, in like manner
as thou sayest they frequently do to thee.’”
In reply, Socrates shows that the revelations of God which
are made in nature, in history, in consciousness, and by oracles,
are made for all men and to all men. He then concludes
with these remarkable words: “As, therefore, amongst men we
make best trial of the affection and gratitude of our neighbor
by showing him kindness, and make discovery of his wisdom
by consulting him in our distress, do thou, in like manner, be-
have towards the gods; and if thou wouldst experience what
their wisdom and their love, render thyself deserving of some
of those divine secrets which may not be penetrated by man,
and are imparted to those alone who consult, who adore, and
who obey the Deity. Then shalt thou, my Aristodemus, under-
Stand there is a Being whose eye passes through all nature, and
z0/hose ear is often to every sound; extended to a////aces, extending
through al/ time; and whose bounty and care can Ánow no other
bounds than those fixed by his own creation.”
Socrates was no less earnest in his belief in the immortality
of the soul, and a state of future retribution. He had reve-
rently listened to the intuitions of his own soul—the instinctive
longings and aspirations of his own heart, as a revelation from
God. He felt that all the powers and susceptibilities of his in-
ward nature were in conscious adaptation to the idea of im-
mortality, and that its realization was the appropriate destiny
of man. He was convinced that a future life was needed to
avenge the wrongs and reverse the unjust judgments of the
present life; needed that virtue may receive its meet reward,
and the course of Providence may have its amplest vindication.
He saw this faith reflected in the universal convictions of man-
kind, and the “common traditions” of all ages.” No One re-
ſers more frequently than Socrates to the grand old mythologic
stories which express this faith; to Minos, and Rhadamanthus,
* Lewes's translation, in “Biog. History of Philosophy,” pp. 160–165.
* “Apology,” $32, p. 329 (Whewell’s edition). * Ibid.
G R E E R PEIII, OS OPEI Y. 325
and AEacus, and Triptolemus, who are “real judges,” and who,
in “the Place of Departed Spirits, administer justice.” He
believed that in that future state the pursuit of wisdom would
be his chief employment, and he anticipated the pleasure of
mingling in the society of the wise, and good, and great of
every age.
Whilst, then, Socrates was not the first to teach the doctrine
of immortality, because no one could be said to have first dis-
covered it any more than to have first discovered the existence
of a God, he was certainly the first to place it upon a philo-
sophic basis. The Phaedo presents the doctrine and the rea-
soming by which Socrates had elevated his mind above the fear
of death. Some of the arguments may be purely Platonic, the
argument especially grounded on “ideas;” still, as a whole, it
must be regarded as a tolerably correct presentation of the
manner in which Socrates would prove the immortality of the
Soul. - -
In Fthics, Socrates was pre-eminently himself. The system-
atic resolution of the whole theory of society into the element-
ary principle of natural law, was peculiar to him. Justice was
the cardinal principle which must lie at the foundation of all
good government. The word gopia—wisdom—included all
excellency in personal morals, whether as manifested (reflect-
ively) in the conduct of one's self, or (socially) towards others.
And Haftiness, in its purity and perfection, can only be found
in virtuous action.”
Socrates left nothing behind him that could with propriety
be called a school. His chief glory is that he inaugurated a
new method of inquiry, which, in Plato and Aristotle, we shall
See applied. He gave a new and vital impulse to human
thought, which endured for ages; “and he left, as an inherit-
ance for humanity, the example of a heroic life devoted wholly
to the pursuit of truth, and crowned with martyrdom.”
* “Apology,” p. 330.
*Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 360, 361.
- 326 CEIRISTIA WTT Y. A WD
CHAPTER X.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
| PLATO. -
X 7 E have seen that the advent of Socrates marks a new
era in the history of speculative thought. Greek pú-
losophy, which at first was a philosophy of nature, now changes
its direction, its character, and its method, and becomes a phi-
losophy of mind. This, of course, does not mean that now it
had mind alone for its object; on the contrary, it tended, as
indeed philosophy must always tend, to the conception of a
rational ideal or intellectual system of the universe. It started
from the phenomena of mind, began with the study of human
thought, and it made the knowledge of mind, of its ideas and
laws, the basis of a higher philosophy, which should interpret
all nature. In other words, it proceeded from psychology,
through dialectics, to ontology." *
This new movement we have designated in general terms
as the Socratic School. Not that we are to suppose that, in any
technical sense, Socrates founded a school. The Academy,
the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the Garden, were each the chosen
resort of distinct philosophic sects, the locality of separate
Schools; but Athens itself, the whole city, was the scene of
the studies, the conversations, and the labors of Socrates. He
wandered through the streets absorbed in thought. Sometimes
he stood still for hours lost in profoundest meditation; at other
times he might be seen in the market-place, surrounded by a
Crowd of Athenians, eagerly discussing the great questions of
the day.
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 413.
G R E E K PHILOSOPHY. - 327
Socrates, then, was not, in the usual sense of the word, a
teacher. He is not to be found in the Stoa or the Grove, with
official aspect, expounding a system of doctrine. He is “the
garrulous oddity” of the streets, putting the most searching
and perplexing questions to every bystander, and making every
man conscious of his ignorance. He delivered no lectures;
he simply talked. He wrote no books; he only argued: and
what is usually styled his School must be understood as em-
bracing those who attended him in public as listeners and
admirers, and who caught his spirit, adopted his philosophic
method, and, in after life, elaborated and systematized the ideas
they had gathered from him.
Among the regular or the occasional hearers of Socrates
were many who were little addicted to philosophic speculation.
Some were warriors, as Nicias and Laches; some statesmen,
as Critias and Critobulus; some were politicians, in the worst
sense of that word, as Glaucon ; and some were young men of
fashion, as Euthydemus and Alcibiades. These were all alike
delighted with his inimitable irony, his versatility of genius, his
charming modes of conversation, his adroitness of reply; and
they were compelled to confess the wisdom and justness of his
opinions, and to admire the purity and goodness of his life.
The magic power which he wielded, even over men of dissolute
character, is strikingly depicted by Alcibiades in his speech at
“the Banquet.” Of these listeners, however, we can not now
speak. Our business is with those only who imbibed his phil-
osophic spirit, and became the future teachers of philosophy.
And even of those who, as Euclid of Megara, and Antisthenes
the Cynic, and Aristippus of Cyrenaica, borrowed somewhat
from the dialectic of Socrates, we shall say nothing. They left
no lasting impression upon the current of philosophic thought,
because their systems were too partial, and narrow, and frag-
mentary. It is in Plato and Aristotle that the true develop-
ment of the Socratic philosophy is to be sought, and in Plato
chiefly, as the disciple and friend of Socrates.
* “Banquet,” $$ 39, 40.
328 CFTRISTIANITY AND
PLATO (B.C. 430–347) was pre-eminently the pupil of Socra-
tes. He came to Socrates when he was but twenty years of
age, and remained with him to the day of his death. *
Diogenes Laertius reports the story of Socrates having
dreamed he found an unfledged cygnet on his knee. In a few
moments it became winged and flew away, uttering a Sweet
sound. The next day a young man came to him who was said
to reckon Solon among his near ancestors, and who looked,
through him, to Codrus and the god Poseidon. That young
man was Plato, and Socrates pronounced him to be the bird
he had seen in his dream."
Some have supposed that this old tradition intimates that
Plato departed from the method of his master—he became
fledged, and flew away into the air. But we know that Plato
did not desert his master whilst he was living, and there is no
evidence that he abandoned his method after he was dead.
He was the best expounder and the most rigid observer of the
Socratic “organon.” The influence of Socrates upon the phi-
losophy of Plato is everywhere discernible. Plato had been
taught by Socrates, that beyond the world of sense there is a
world of eternal truth, seen by the eye of reason alone. He
had also learned from him that the eye of reason is purified
and strengthened by reflection, and that to reflect is to observe,
and analyze, and define, and classify the facts of consciousness.
'Self-reflection, then, he had been taught to regard as the key
of real knowledge. By a completer induction, a more careful
and exact analysis, and a more accurate definition, he carried
this philosophic method forward towards maturity. He sought
to solve the problem of being by the principles revealed in his
own consciousness, and in the ultimate ideas of the reason to
find the foundation of all real knowledge, of all truth, and of
all certitude.
Plato was admirably fitted for these sublime investigations .
by the possession of those moral qualities which were so promi
nent in the character of his master. He had that same deep
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. iii. ch. vii.
G. R. E. E. K. PHILOSOP/I Y. 329
seriousness of spirit, that earnestness and rectitude of purpose,
that longing after truth, that inward sympathy with, and reve-
rence for justice, and purity, and goodness, which dwelt in the
heart of Socrates, and which constrained him to believe in their
reality and permanence. He could not endure the thought
that all ideas of right were arbitrary and factitious, that all
knowledge was unreal, that truth was a delusion, and certainty
a dream. The world of sense might be fleeting and delusive,
but the voice of reason and conscience would not mislead the
upright man. The opinions of individual men might vary, but
the universal consciousness of the race could not prevaricate.
However conflicting the opinions of men concerning beautiful
things, right actions, and good sentiments, Plato was persuaded
there are ideas of Order, and Right, and Good, which are uni-
versal, unchangeable, and eternal. Untruth, injustice, and
wrong may endure for a day or two, perhaps for a century or
two, but they can not always last ; they must perish. The just
thing and the true thing are the only enduring things; these
are eternal. Plato had a sublime conviction that his mission
was to draw the Athenian mind away from the fleeting, the
transitory, and the uncertain, and lead them to the contempla-
tion of an Eternal Truth, an Eternal Justice, an Eternal Beauty,
all proceeding from and united in an Eternal Being—the ulti-
mate &ya6ów — the Supremely Good. The knowledge of this
“Supreme Good” he regarded as the highest science."
Added to these moral qualifications, Plato had the further
qualification of a comprehensive knowledge of all that had
been achieved by his predecessors. In this regard he had
enjoyed advantages superior to those of Socrates. Socrates
was deficient in erudition, properly so called. He had studied
men rather than books. His wisdom consisted in an extensive
observation, the results of which he had generalized with more
or less accuracy. A complete philosophic method demands
not only a knowledge of contemporaneous opinions and modes
of thought, but also a knowledge of the succession and devel-
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xvi. p. 193.
33O CITE IS TIANITY AND
opment of thought in past ages. Its instrument is not simply
psychological analysis, but also historical analysis as a counter-
proof." And this erudition Plato supplied. He studied care-
fully the doctrines of the Ionian, Italian, and Eleatic schools.
Cratylus gave him special instruction in the theories of Herac-
litus.” He secured an intimate acquaintance with the lofty
speculations of Pythagoras, under Archytas of Tarentum, and
in the writings of Philolaus, whose books he is said to have
purchased. He studied the principles of Parmenides under
Hermogenes,” and he more than once speaks of Parmenides in
terms of admiration, as one whom he had early learned to rev-
erence." He studied mathematics under Theodorus, the most
eminent geometrician of his day. He travelled in Southern
Italy, in Sicily, and, in Search of a deeper wisdom, he pursued
his course to Egypt." Enriched by the fruits of all previous
Speculations, he returned to Athens, and devoted the remainder
of his life to the development of a comprehensive system
“which was to combine, to conciliate, and to supersede them
all.” The knowledge he had derived from travel, from books,
from oral instruction, he fused and blended with his own spec-
ulations, whilst the Socratic spirit mellowed the whole, and
gave to it a unity and Scientific completeness which has excited
the admiration and wonder of succeeding ages."
The question as to the nature, the sources, and the validity of
human knowledge had attracted general attention previous to
the time of Socrates and Plato. As the results of this pro-
tracted controversy, the opinions of philosophers had finally
crystallized in two well-defined and opposite theories of knowl-
edge.
I. That which reduced all knowledge to the accidental and
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 31.
* Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. vi.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. iii, ch. viii. p. 115.
* See especially “Theaetetus,” $ IoI.
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 147.
"Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 22.
" Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Plato.”
G. REE K PHII, OS O PHY. 33I
passively receptive quality of the organs of sense, and which
asserted, as its fundamental maxim, that “Science consists in
atoffmaic–sensation.”
This doctrine had its foundation in the physical philosophy
of Heraclitus. He had taught that all things are in a perpetual
flux and change. “Motion gives the appearance of existence
and of generation.” “Nothing is, but is always a becoming.”
Material substances are perpetually losing their identity, and
there is no permanent essence or being to be found. Hence
Protagoras inferred that truth must vary with the ever-varying
sensations of the individual. “Man (the individual) is the
measure of all things.” Knowledge is a purely relative thing,
and every man's opinion is truth for him.” The law of right,
as exemplified in the dominion of a party, is the law of the
strongest; fluctuating with the accidents of power, and never
attaining a permanent being. “Whatever a city enacts as ap-
pearing just to itself, this also is just to the city that enacts it,
so long as it continues in force.” “The just, then, is nothing
else but that which is expedient for the strongest.”
2. The second theory is that which denies the existence (ex-
cept as phantasms, images, or mere illusions of the mind) of
the whole of sensible phenomena, and refers all knowledge to
the rational afterception of unity (tò £v) or the One.
This was the doctrine of the later Eleatics. The world of
Sense was, to Parmenides and Zeno, a blank negation, the mon
ens. The identity of thought and existence was the funda-
mental principle of their philosophy.
“Thought is the same thing as the cause of thought;
For without the thing in which it is announced,
You can not find the thought; for there is nothing, nor shall be,
Except the existing.”
This theory, therefore, denied to man any valid knowledge of
the external world.
* “Theaetetus,” $23. *Ibid., §§ 25, 26. * Ibid., §§ 39, 87.
“Ibid., § 87. * “Republic,” bk. i. ch. xii.
* Parmenides, quoted in Lewes's “Biog. History of Philosophy,” p. 54.
332 CHRISTIA NIT Y. AND
It will at once be apparent to the intelligent reader that the
direct and natural result of both these theories' of knowledge
was a tendency to universal skepticism. A spirit of utter in-
difference to truth and righteousness was the prevailing spirit
of Athenian society. That spirit is strikingly exhibited in the
speech of Callicles, “the shrewd man of the world,” in “Gor-
gias” (§§ 85, 86). Is this new to our ears? “My dear Socra-
tes, you talk of law. Now the laws, in my judgment, are just
the work of the weakest and most numerous ; in framing them
they never thought but of themselves and their own interests;
they never approve or censure except in reference to this.
Hence it is that the cant arises that tyranny is improper and
unjust, and to struggle for eminence, guilt. Unable to rise
themselves, of course they would wish to preach liberty and
equality. But nature proclaims the law of the stronger. . . .
We surround our children from their infancy with preposterous
prejudices about liberty and justice. The man of sense tram-
ples on such impositions, and shows what Nature's justice
is. . . . I confess, Socrates, philosophy is a highly amusing
study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long,
it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete
novice in the life comme iſ faut. . . . I like very well to see a
child babble and stammer ; there is even a grace about it when
it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of
the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy.” The con-
sequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a
* Between these two extreme theories there were offered two, apparently
less extravagant, accounts of the nature and limits of human knowledge—
one declaring that “Science (real knowledge) consists in right opinion ” (Öóša
â270%), but having no further basis in the reason of man (“Theaetetus,”
§ 108); and the other affirming that “Science is right opinion with logical ex-
plication or definition” (ueTā Wáyov), (“Theaetetus,” $139). A close exam-
ination will, however, convince us that these are but modifications of the
sensational theory. The latter forcibly remind us of the system of Locke,
who adds “reflection” to “sensation,” but still maintains that all our “sim-
ple ideas” are obtained from without, and that these are the only material
upon which reflection can be exercised. Thus the human mind has no cri-
terion of truth within itself, no elements of knowledge which are connatural
and inborn.
G B E E K PEIIL OS O PHY. 333
general laxity of morals. The Alcibiades, of the “Symposium,”
is the ideal representative of the young aristocracy of Athens.
Such was the condition of Society generally, and such the de-
generacy of even the Government itself, that Plato impressively
declares “that God alone could save the young men of his age
from ruin.”
Therefore the grand, the vital, the most urgent question for
his times, as indeed for all times, was, Właż is Zºruſ/ 2 What
is Ā’ight # In the midst of all this variableness and uncertainty
of human opinion, is there no ground of certainty P Amid all
the fluctuations and changes around us and within us, is there
nothing that is immutable and permanent? Have we no ulti-
mate standard of Right? Is there no criterion of Truth?
R’lato believed most confidently there was such a criterion and
standard. He had learned from Socrates, his master, to cherish
an unwavering faith in the existence of an Eternal Truth, an
Eternal Order, an Eternal Good, the knowledge of which is
essential to the perfection and happiness of man, and which
knowledge must therefore be presumed to be attainable by
man. Henceforth, therefore, the ceaseless effort of Plato's life
is to attain a standard (kptriptov)"—a CRITERION OF TRUTH.
At the outset of his philosophic studies, Plato had derived
from Socrates an important principle, which became the guide
of all his subsequent inquiries. He had learned from him that
the criterion of truth must be no longer sought amid the ever-
changing phenomena of the “sensible world.” This had been
attempted by the philosophers of the Ionian School, and ended
in failure and defeat. It must therefore be sought in the meta-
phenomenal—the “intelligible world;” that is, it must be sought
in the apperceptions of the reason, and not in opinions founded
on sensation. In other words, he must look within. Here, by
reflection, he could recognize, dimly and imperfectly at first,
but increasing gradually in clearness and distinctness, two
classes of cognitions, having essentially distinct and opposite
characteristics. He found one class that was complex (ovyke-
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. vii. * “Theaetetus,” $89.
334 * C EIRISTIANITY AND
ºxupévov), changeable (0árepov), contingent and relative (ra Tpóc
rt axéguy Éxovra); the other, simple (keywptopévov), unchange-
able (ärtvmrov), constant (rairóv), permanent (Tó by &ei), and
absolute (āvviróðerov = itàojīv). One class that may be ques-
tioned, the other admitting of no question, because Self-evident
and necessary, and therefore compelling belief. One class
grounded on sense-perception, the other conceived by reason
alone. But whilst the reason recognizes, it does not create
them. They are not particular and individual, but universal.
They belong not to the man, but to the race. -
He found, then, that there are in all minds certain “princi-
ples” which are fundamental—principles which lie at the basis
of all our cognitions of the objective world, and which, as
“mental laws,” determine all our forms of thought; and prin-
ciples, too, which have this marvellous and undeniable charac-
ter, that they are encountered in the most common experiences,
and, at the same time, instead of being circumscribed within
the limits of experience, transcend and govern it—principles
which are universal in the midst of particular phenomena—
necessary, though mingled with things contingent—to our eyes
infinite and absolute, even when appearing in us the relative and
finite beings that we are.’ These first or fundamental princi-
ples Plato called IDEAS (ićéal).
• In attempting to present to the reader an adequate repre-
sentation of the Platonic Ideas, we shall be under the necessity
of anticipating some of the results of his Dialectical method
before we have expounded that method. And, further, in
order that it may be properly appreciated by the modern stu-
dent, we shall avail ourselves of the lights which modern psy-
chology, faithful to the method of Plato, has thrown upon the
subject. Whilst, however, we admit that modern psychology
has succeeded in giving more definiteness and precision to the
“doctrine of Ideas,” we shall find that all that is fundamentally
valuable and true was present to the mind of Plato. Whatever
superiority the “Spiritual” philosophy of to-day may have over
* Cousin’s “The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” p. 40.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY. 335
the philosophy of past ages, it has attained that superiority by
its adherence to the principles and method of Plato. -
In order to the completeness of our preliminary exposition
of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, we shall conditionally as-
sume, as a natural and legitimate hypothesis, the doctrine so
earnestly asserted by Plato, that the visible universe, at least
in its present form, is an effect which must have had a cause,'
and that the Order, and Beauty, and Excellence of the universe
are the result of the presence and operation of a “ regulating
Intelligence”—a Supreme Mind.” Now that, anterior to the
creation of the universe, there must have existed in the Eternal
Mind certain fundamental principles of Order, Right, and Good,
will not be denied. Every conceivable form, every possible
zelation, every principle of right, must have been eternally pres-
..ent to the Divine thought. As pure intelligence, the Deity
must have always been self-conscious—must have known him-
self as substance and cause, as the Infinite and Perfect. If
then the Divine Energy is put forth in creative acts, that energy
must obey those eternal principles of Order, Right, and Good.
If the Deity operate at all, he must operate rightly, wisely, and
well. The created universe must be an image, in the sphere
of sense, of the ideas which inhere in the reason of the great
First Cause. -
“Let us declare,” says Plato, “with what motive the Creator
hath formed nature and the universe. He was good, and in
the good no manner of envy can, on any subject, possibly sub-
sist. Exempt from envy, he had wished that all things should,
as far as possible, resemble himself. . . . . It was not, and is not
to be allowed for the Supremely Good to do any thing except
what is most excellent (káX\torov)—most fair, most beautiful.”
Therefore, argues Plato, “inasmuch as the world is the most
beautiful of things, and its artificer the best of causes, it is evi-
dent that the Creator and Father of the universe looked to the
Aternal Model (Tapáðetypa), pattern, or plan,” which lay in his
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix. * “Phaedo,” $ 105.
* “Timaeus,” ch. x. * Ibid., ch. ix.
336 C EIRISTIANITY AND
i
own mind. And thus this one, only-generated universe, is the
image (eików) of that God who is the object of the intellect, the
greatest, the best, and the most perfect Being.”
And then, furthermore, if this Supreme Intelligence, this
Eternal Mind, shall create another mind, it must, in a still
higher degree, resemble him. Inasmuch as it is a rational
nature, it must, in a peculiar Sense, partake of the Divine char-
acteristics. “The soul,” says Plato, “is that which most par-
takes of the Divine.” The soul must, therefore, have native
ideas and sentiments which correlate it with the Divine orig-
inal. The ideas of substance and cause, of unity and identity,
of the infinite and perfect, must be mirrored there. As it is
the “offspring of God,” it must bear some traces and linea-
ments of its Divine parentage. That Soul must be configured
and correlated to those principles of Order, Right, and Good,
which dwell in the Eternal Mind. And because it has within
itself the same ideas and laws, according to which the great
Architect built the universe, therefore it is capable of knowing,
and, in Some degree, of comprehending, the intellectual system
of the universe. It apprehends the external world by a light
which the reason supplies. It interprets nature according to
principles and laws which God has inwrought within the very
essence of the soul. “That which imparts truth to knowable
things, and gives the knower his power of knowing truth, is the
idea of the good, and you are to conceive of this as the source
of knowledge and of truth.” -
And now we are prepared to form a clear conception of the
Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Viewed in their relation to the
Eternal Reason, as giving the primordial thought and law of
all being, these principles are simply ºn aira ka0' airá–ideas
in themselves—the essential qualities or attributes of Him who
is the supreme and ultimate Cause of all existence. When re-
garded as before the Divine imagination, giving definite forms
and relations, they are the TüTou, the Tapačetypata—the types,
* “Timaeus,” ch. lxxiii. * “Laws,” bk. v. ch. i.
* Ibid., bk. x. - * “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xviii.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY. 337
models, patterns, ideals according to which the universe was
fashioned. Contemplated in their actual embodiment in the
laws, and typical forms of the material world, they are elkóveg—
Żmages of the eternal perfections of God. The world of sense
pictures the world of reason by a participation (ué0sétc) of the
ideas. And viewed as interwoven in the very texture and
framework of the Soul, they are piouſ para—copies of the Divine
Ideas which are the primordial laws of knowing, thinking, and
reasoning. Ideas are thus the nexus of relation between God
and the visible universe, and between the human and the
Divine reason.' There is something divine in the world, and
in the human soul, namely, the eternal laws and reasons of
things, mingled with the endless diversity and change of sensi-
ble phenomena. These ideas are “the light of the intelligible
world;” they render the invisible world of real Being percepti-
ble to the reason of man. “Light is the offspring of the Good,
which the Good has produced in his own likeness. Light in
the visible world is what the idea of the Good is in the intelli-
gible world. And this offspring of the Good—light—has the
same relation to vision and visible things which the Good has
to intellect and intelligible things.” -
Science is, then, according to Plato, the Knowledge of universal,
necessary, unchangeable, and eternal ideas. The simple cognition
of the concrete phenomena of the universe is not regarded by
him as rea/ knowledge. “Science, or real knowledge, belongs
to Being, and ignorance to non-Being.” Whilst that which is
conversant only “with that which partakes of both—of being
* “Now, Idea is, as regards God, a mental operation by him (the notions
of God, eternal and perfect in themselves); as regards us, the first things
perceptible by mind; as regards Matter, a standard; but as regards the
world, perceptible by sense, a pattern ; but as considered with reference to
itself, an existence.”—Alcinous, “Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato,”
p. 26I.
“What general notions are to our minds, he (Plato) held, ideas are to
the Supreme Reason (voic ſaat?&vç); they are the eternal thoughts of the
Divine Intellect, and we attain truth when our thoughts conform with His
—when our general notions are in conformity with the ideas.”—Thompson,
“Laws of Thought,” p. 119. - *
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xix.
22
338 C EIR IS TIA WIT Y. A ND
and non-being—and which can not be said either to be or not
to be”—that which is perpetually “becoming,” but never
“really is,” is “simply opinion, and not real knowledge.”
And those only are “philosophers” who have a knowledge of
the rea/y-existing, in opposition to the mere seeming ; of the
a/ways-existing, in opposition to the transitory; and of that
which exists permanently, in opposition to that which waxes and
wanes—is developed and destroyed alternately. “Those who
recognize many beautiful things, but who can not see the Beau-
tiful itself, and can not even follow those who would lead them
to it, they opine, but do not Know. And the same may be said
of those who recognize right actions, but do not recognize an
absolute righteousness. And so of other ideas. But they who
look at these ideas—permanent and unchangeable ideas—these
men really Ånow.” Those are the true philosophers alone who
love the sight of truth, and who have attained to the vision of
the eternal Order, and righteousness, and beauty, and goodness
in the Eternal Being. And the means by which the soul is
raised to this vision of real Being (Töövroc &v) is THE SCIENCE
of REAL KNowLEDGE. - - -
Plato, in the “Theaetetus,” puts this question by the in-
terlocutor Socrates, “What is Science (Erigrhum) or positive
knowledge?” Theaetetus essays a variety of answers, such as,
“Science is sensation,” “Science is right judgment or opin-
ion,” “Science is right opinion with logical definition.” These,
in the estimation of the Platonic Socrates, are all unsatisfac-
tory and inadequate. But after you have toiled to the end of
this remarkable discussion, in which Socrates demolishes all
the then received theories of knowledge, he gives you no an-
Swer of his own. He abruptly closes the discussion by naïvely
remarking that, at any rate, Theaetetus will learn that he does
not understand the subject; and the ground is now cleared for
an original investigation.
This investigation is resumed in the “Republic.” This
* “Republic,” bk. v. ch. xx. - * Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.
* “Theaetetus,” $ 10.
GRE ER PHILOSOPHY. 339
greatest work of Plato's was designed not only to exhibit a
scheme of Polity, and present a system of Ethics, but also, at
least in its digressions, to propound a system of Metaphysics .
more complete and Solid than had yet appeared. The discus-
sion as to the powers or faculties by which we obtain knowledge,
the method or process by which real knowledge is attained, and
the ultimate objects or ontological grounds of all real knowledge,
commences at $ 18, book v., and extends to the end of book vii.
That we may reach a comprehensive view of this “sublimest
of sciences,” we shall find it necessary to consider—
1st. What are the Žozwers or faculties by z0/hich zee obtain
Ánowledge, and what are the Zimits and degrees of human Ánozeſ-
edge 2 - -
2d. What is the method in which, or the processes and laws ac-
cording to which, the mind operates in obtaining knowledge 2
3d. What are the ultimate results attained by this method 2
what are the objective and ontological grounds of all real Ánow/.
edge 2 - -
The answer to the first question will give the PLATONIC
Psychology ; the answer to the second will exhibit the PLA-
TONIC DIALECTIC ; the answer to the last will reveal the PLA-
TONIC ONTOLOGY.
I. PLATONIC PSYCHOLOGY.
Every successful inquiry as to the reality and validity of
human knowledge must commence by clearly determining, by
rigid analysis, what are the actual phenomena presented in
consciousness, what are the powers or faculties supposed by
these phenomena, and what reliance are we to place upon the
testimony of these faculties? And, especially, if it be asserted
that there is a science of absolute Reality, of ultimate and es-
sential Being, then the most important and vital question is,
By what power do we cognize real Being? through what faculty
do we obtain the knowledge of that which absolutely is 2 If
by sensation we only obtain the knowledge of the fleeting and
the transitory, “ the becoming,” how do we attain to the knowl.
34O C EIR IS TI A NIT Y. A ND
edge of the unchangeable and permanent, “the Being * Have
we a faculty of universal, necessary, and eternal principles 2
Have we a faculty, an interior eye which beholds “the intelligi-
&le,” ideal, spiritual world, as the eye of sense beholds the visi-
ble or “sensible zworld?” - -
Plato commences this inquiry by first defining his under-
standing of the word āūvapuc-power or faculty. “We will say
that faculties (8vvápletc) are a certain kind of real existences by
which we can do whatever we are able (e.g., to know), as there
are powers by which every thing does what it does : the eye
has a power of seeing ; the ear has a power of hearing. But
these powers (of which I now speak) have no color or figure to
which I can so refer that I can distinguish one power from
another. In order to make such distinction, Z must look at the
power itseff, and see what it is, and what it does. In thał zway
A discern the power of each thing, and that is the same power
which produces the same effect, and that is a different power which
produces a different effect.” That which is employed about,
and accomplishes one and the same purpose, this Plato calls
a faculty.
We have seen that our first conceptions (i. e., first in the
order of time) are of the mingled, the concrete (rö avykeyvač-
vov), “the multiplicity of things to which the multitude ascribe
beauty,” etc.” The mind “contemplates what is great and
Small, not as distinct from each other, but as confused.”
Prior to the discipline of reſection, “men are curious about
mere sights and sounds, love beautiful voices, beautiful colors,
beautiful forms, but their intelligence can not see, can not em-
brace, the essential nature of the Beautiful itself.” Man's con-
dition previous to the education of philosophy is vividly pre-
sented in Plato's simile of the cave." He beholds only the im-
ages and shadows of the ectypal world, which are but dim and
distant adumbrations of the real and archetypal world. Pri-
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xviii, *Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxi.
* Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii. “Ibid., bk. vii. ch. viii.
* Ibid., bk. V. ch. xx. - “Ibid., bk. vii, ch. i., ii.
G F# E E R PEIIL OS OPEI Y. 34. I
marily nothing is given in the abstract (ró keywptopévov), but
every thing in the concrete. The primary faculties of the
mind enter into action spontaneously and simultaneously; all
our primary notions are consequently synthetic. When reflec-
tion is applied to this primary totality of consciousness, that
is, when we analyze our notions, we find them composed of
diverse and opposite elements, some of which are variable,
contingent, individual, and relative, others are permanent, un-
changeable, universal, necessary, and absolute. Now these
elements, so diverse, so opposite, can not have been obtained
from the same source; they must be supplied by separate
powers. “Can any man with common sense reduce under
one what is infal/ible, and what is not infal/ible 3’” Can that
which is “ſenſefud//y becoming” be apprehended by the same
faculty as that which “always is 2° Most assuredly not. . .
These primitive intuitions—the simple perceptions of sense,
and the d ?riori intuitions of the reason, which constitute the
elements of all our complex notions, have essentially diverse
objects—the sensible or ectypal world, seen by the eye and
touched by the hand, which Plato calls 80%aatáv-#/he subject of
opinion; and the noetic or archetypal world, perceived by rea-
son, and which he calls ötavontukňv—the subject of rational inſul-
tion or science. “It is plain,” therefore, argues Plato, “that
opinion is a different thing from science. T hey must, therefore,
have a different faculty in reference to a different object—sci
ence as regards that which is, so as to know the nature of real
Öeing—opinion as regards that which can not be said abso-
lutely to be, or not to be. That which is known and that
which is opined can not possibly be the same, . . . . since they
are naturally faculties of different things, and both of them are
faculties—opinion and science, and each of them different from
the other.” Here then are two grand divisions of the mental
powers—a faculty of apprehending universal and necessary
* “Republic,” bk. v. ch. xxi.
*Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.; also “Timaeus,” $ 9.
“Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxi., xxii.
342 CHRISTIANITY AND
Truth, of intuitively beholding absolute Reality, and a faculty
of perceiving sensible objects, and of judging according to ap-
pearance. • * *
According to the scheme of Plato, these two general divis-
ions of the mental powers are capable of a further subdivision.
He says: “Consider that there are two kinds of things, the in-
telligible and the visible; two different regions, the intelligible
world and the sensible world. Now take a line divided into
two equal segments to represent these two regions, and again
divide each segment in the same ratio—both that of the visible
and that of the intelligible species. The parts of each segment
are to represent differences of clearness and indistinctness. In
the visible world the parts are things and images. By images
I mean shadows,' reflections in water and in polished bodies,
and all such like representations; and by things I mean that
of which images are resemblances, as animals, plants, and
things made by man.
“You allow that this difference corresponds to the differ-
ence of Azzozy/edge and offinion ; and the opinionable is to the
Ánowable as the image to the reality.” - -
“Now we have to divide the segment which represents intel-
* As in the simile of the cave (“Republic,” bk. vii. ch. i. and ii.).
* The analogy between the “images produced by reflections in water
and on polished surfaces” and “the images of external objects produced in
the mind by sensation” is more fully presented in the “Timaeus,” ch. 19.
The eye is a light-bearer, “made of that part of elemental fire which
does not burn, but sheds a mild light, like the light of day. . . . When the
light of the day meets the light which beams from the eye, then light meets
like, and make a homogeneous body; the external light meeting the inter-
nal light, in the direction in which the eye looks. And by this homogeneity.
like feels like; and if this beam touches any object, or any object touches it,
it transmits the motions through the body to the soul, and produces that
sensation which we call seeing. . . . And if (in sleep) some of the strong
motions remain in some part of the frame, they produce within us likenesses
of external objects, . . . and thus give rise to dreams. . . . As to the images
produced by mirrors and by smooth surfaces, they are now easily explained,
for all such phenomena result from the mutual affinity of the external and
internal fires. The light that proceeds from the face (as an object of vision),
and the light that proceeds from the eye, become one continuous ray on the
Smooth surface.” - -
G R El EIK PITIL OS OPEI Y. 343
ligible things in this way: The one part represents the knowl-
edge which the mind gets by using things as images—the other,
that which it has by dealing with the ideas themselves; the
one part that which it gets by reasoning downward from prin-
ciples—the other, the principles themselves; the One part,
truth which depends on hypotheses—the other, unhypothetical
or absolute truth.
“Thus, to explain a problem in geometry, the geometers
make certain hypotheses (namely, definitions and postulates)
about numbers and angles, and the like, and reason from them
—giving no reason for their assumptions, but taking them as
evident to all ; and, reasoning from them, they prove the prop-
ositions which they have in view. And in Such reasonings,
they use visible figures or diagrams—to reason about a Square,
for instance, with its diagonals; but these reasonings are not
really about these visible figures, but about the mental figures,
and which they conceive in thought.
“The diagrams which they draw, being visible, are the im-
ages of thoughts which the geometer has in his mind, and these
images he uses in his reasoning. There may be images of
these images—shadows and reflections in water, as of other
visible things; but still these diagrams are only images of con-
ceptions. *
“This, then, is one kind of intelligible things: conceptions—for
instance, geometrical conceptions of figures. But in dealing
with these the mind depends upon assumptions, and does not
ascend to first principles. It does not ascend above these as-
Sumptions, but uses images borrowed from a lower region (the
visible world), these images being chosen so as to be as dis-
tinct as may be.
“Now the other kind of intelligible things is this: that which
the A’eason includes, in virtue of its power of reasoning, when
it regards the assumptions of the sciences as (what they are)
assumptions only, and uses them as occasions and starting-
points, that from these it may ascend to the Absolute, which
does not depend upon assumption, the origin of Scientific truth.
344 C EIR IS TIA NITY AND
The reason fakes hold of this first principle of fruth, and availing
itself of all the connections and relations of this principle, it
proceeds to the conclusion—using no sensible image in doing
this, but contemplates the idea alone; and with these ideas the
process begins, goes on, and terminates.”
“I apprehend,” said Glaucon, “but not very clearly, for the
matter is somewhat abstruse. You wish to prove that the Ánoz0/-
edge which by the reason, in an intuitive manner, we may acquire
of real existence and intelligible things is of a higher degree of cer-
fainty f/lan the Knowledge which belongs to what are commonly
ca/ed ſhe Sciences. Such sciences, you say, have certain as-
sumptions for their basis; and these assumptions are by the
student of such sciences apprehended not by Sense, but by a
mental operation—by conception.
“But inasmuch as such students ascend no higher than as-
sumptions, and do not go to the first principles of truth, they
do not seem to have true knowledge, intellectual insight, intui-
tive reason, on the subjects of their reasonings, though the sub-
jects are intelligible things. And you call this habit and prac-
tice of the geometers and others by the name of JUDGMENT
(3távota), not reason, or insight, or intuition—taking judgment
to be something between opinion, on the one side, and intuitive
reason, on the other. *-
“You have explained it well,” said I. “And now consider
these four kinds of things we have spoken of, as corresponding
to four affections (or faculties) of the mind. INTUITIVE REA-
SON (vómatc), the highest; JUDGMENT (6távota) (or discursive rea-
son), the next; the third, BELIEF (triotic); and the fourth, CON-
JECTURE, or guess (eikaria); and arrange them in order, so that
they may be held to have more or less certainty, as their ob-
jects have more or less truth.” The completeness, and even
accuracy of this classification of all the objects of human cog-
nition, and of the corresponding mental powers, will be seen
at once by Studying the diagram proposed by Plato, as figured
on the opposite page. g
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xx, and xxi.
;


. s. *
PLATONIC SCHEME OF THE OBJECTS OF COGNITION, AND THE RELATIVE MENTAL POWERS.
VISIBLE WORLD,
(the object of Opinion—365a).
INTELLIGIBLE WORLD,
(the object of Knowledge or Science—éttaråum).
Things. Images. Intuitions. Conceptions.
And may be thus further expanded:
VISIBILE WORLD. INTELLIGIBLE WORLD.
Things. Images. Ideas. Conceptions.
OBJECTg tº g tº e º £ tº * * y * * * - z
Čája. K. T. A. •etkóveg. idéat. Ölavoffplata.
Belief. Conjecture. Intuition. Demonstration.
PROCESS. . . . . . . - a * a e z
7tto Taç. 8&KO.G LCL. vómouc. 87tta Tmply.
SENSATION. PHANTASY. INTUITIVE REASON. DISCURSIVE REASON.
FACULTY . . . . . . •p & & ,
aioffmalg. gavtagia. 1909ſ. Żóyog.
MODERN SENSE. IMAGINATION. REASON. JUDGMENT.
NOMENCLATURE. ) Presentative Faculty. Representative Faculty. |. Regulative Faculty. Logical Faculty.
*.
MEMORY. REMINISCENCE.
plvåum. ăvăuvnotg.
The Cozzºerzaſzze Faczélèy—
- & e 2 e Af
“the preserver of sensation” (Gormgia ataffaeog)."
1 “Philebus,” $ 67.
7%e Reproductive A'aculty—
“the recollection of those things which the soul
saw (in Eternity) when journeying in the train of
the Deity.” 2 “Phaedrus,” $62.
346 CHRISTIANITY AND
The foregoing diagram, borrowed from Whewell, with some
modifications and additions we have ventured to make, exhibits
a perfect view of the Platonic scheme of the cognitive powers—
the faculties by which the mind attains to different degrees of
knowledge, “having more or less certainty, as their objects
have more or less truth.” g .
1st. SENSATION (atoffmaic).-This term is employed by Plato
to denote the passive mental states or affections which are pro-
duced within us by external objects through the medium of the
vital organization, and also the cognition or vital perception or
consciousness” which the mind has of these mental states.
2d. PHANTASY (payraata),—This term is employed to de-
scribe the power which the mind possesses of imagining or
representing whatever has once been the object of sensation.
This may be done involuntarily as “in dreams, disease, and
hallucination,” or voluntarily, as in reminiscence. Davráapata
are the images, the life-pictures (ºwypáºmpa) of sensible things
which are present to the mind, even when no external object
is present to the sense.
The conjoint action of these two powers results in what Plato
calls opinion (6684). “Opinion is the complication of memory
and sensation. For when we meet for the first time with a
thing perceptible by a sense, and a sensation is produced by it,
and from this sensation a memory, and we subsequently meet
again with the same thing perceived by a sense, we combine
the memory previously brought into action with the sensation
produced a second time, and we say within ourselves [this is]
Socrates, or a horse, or fire, or whatever thing there may be of
* “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. xix. - e
* “In Greek philosophy there was no term for ‘consciousness’ until the
decline of philosophy, and in the latter ages of the language. Plato and
Aristotle, to say nothing of other philosophers, had no special term to ex-
press the knowledge which the mind has of the operation of its own facul-
ties, though this, of course, was necessarily a frequent matter of considera-
tion. Intellect was supposed by them to be cognizant of its own opera-
tions. ... In his ‘Theaetetus’ Plato accords to sense the power of perceiv-
ing that it perceives.”—Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” vol. i. p. 198 (Eng. ed.).
* “Theaetetus,” $ 39.
G R E E K PEIII, OS O PETY. 347.
such a kind. Now this is called offinion, through our combin-
ing the recollection brought previously into action with the sen-
sation recently produced. And when these, placed along each
other, agree, a true opinion is produced ; but when they swerve
from each other, a false one.” The 36% of Plato, therefore,
answers to the experience, or the empirica/Amozwledge of modern
philosophy, which is concerned only with appearances (phe-
nomena), and not with absolute realities, and can not be ele-
vated to the dignity of science or real knowledge.
We are not from hence to infer that Plato intended to deny
all reality whatever to the objects of sensible experience. These
transitory phenomena were not real existences, but they were
images of real existences. The world itself is but the image,
in the sphere of sense, of those ideas of Order, and Proportion,
and Harmony, which dwell in the Divine Intellect, and are
mirrored in the soul of man. “Time itself is a moving image
of Eternity.” But inasmuch as the immediate object of sense-
perception is a representative image generated in the vital or-
ganism, and all empirical cognitions are mere “conjectures”
(sikagia) founded on representative images, they need to be
certified by a higher faculty, which immediately apprehends
real Being (40 &v). Of things, as they are in themselves, the
senses give us no knowledge; all that in sensation we are con-
scious of is certain affections of the mind (Tá00c); the exist-
ence of self, or the perceiving subject, and a something external
to self, a perceived object, are revealed to us, not by the senses,
but by the reason. - -
3d. JUDGMENT (6távota, Aóyoc), the ZXiscursive Faculty, or the
Araculty of Æelations.—According to Plato, this faculty proceeds
on the assumption of certain principles as true, without inquir-
ing into their validity, and reasons, by deduction, to the conclu-
Sions which necessarily flow from these principles. These as-
Sumptions Plato calls hypotheses (irofféo etc). But by hypotheses
he does not mean baseless assumptions—mere theories—but
* Alcinous, “Introduction to the Doctrine of Plato,” p. 247.
* “Timaeus,” $ 14.
348 C ETRISTIANITY AND
things self-evident and “obvious to all;” as for example, the
postulates and definitions of Geometry. “After laying down
hypotheses of the odd and even, and three kinds of angles
[right, acute, and obtuse], and figures [as the triangle, square,
circle, and the like], he proceeds on them as Áſtown, and gives no
further reason about them, and reasons downward from these
principles,” affirming certain judgments as consequences de-
ducible therefrom.
All judgments are therefore founded on relations. To judge
is to compare two terms. “Every judgment has three parts:
the subject, or notion about which the judgment is ; the predi-
cate, or notion with which the subject is compared ; and the
copula, or nexus, which expresses the connection or relation be-
tween them.” Every act of affirmative judgment asserts the
agreement of the predicate and subject; every act of negative
judgment asserts the predicate and subject do not agree. All
judgment is thus an attempt to reduce to unity two cognitions,
and reasoning (Aoyićeoffat) is simply the extension of this process.
When we look at two straight lines of equal length, we do not
merely think of them separately as #his straight line, and ſhaf
straight line, but they are immediately connected together by a
comparison which takes place in the mind. We perceive that
these two lines are alike ; they are of equal length, and they
are both straight; and the connection which is perceived as
existing between them is a relation of sameness or identity."
When we observe any change occurring in nature, as, for ex-
ample, the melting of wax in the presence of heat, the mind
recognizes a causal efficiency in the fire to produce that change,
and the relation now apprehended is a relation of cause and eſ:
ſect." But the fundamental principles, the necessary ideas
which lie at the basis of all the judgments (as the ideas of
Space and time, of unity and identity, of substance and cause,
of the infinite and perfect) are not given by the judgment, but
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xx. * Ibid., blº. vi. ch. xx.
* Thompson’s “Laws of Thought,” p. 134.
* “Phaedo,” $$ 50–57, 62. * “Timaeus,” ch. ix.; “Sophocles,” $ 109.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 349
by the “highest faculty”—the Intuitive A'eason," which is, for
us, the source of all unhypothetical and absolute knowledge.
The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discur-
sive Reason, Plato does not regard as “real Science.” “It is
something between Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on
the other.”
4th. REASON (voic)—/ntuitive ſeason, is the organ of Self-
evident, necessary, and universal Truth. In an immediate,
direct, and intuitive manner, it takes hold on truth with abso-
lute certainty. The reason, through the medium of ideas, holds
communion with the world of real Being. These ideas are the
/ight which reveals the world of unseen realities, as the sun re-
veals the world of sensible forms. “ZWhe idea of the good is the
sun of the Intelligible World ; it sheds on objects the light of
truth, and gives to the soul that knows, the power of knowing.”
Under this light, the eye of reason apprehends the eternal
world of being as truly, yes more truly, than the eye of sense
apprehends the world of phenomena. This power the rational
Soul possesses by virtue of its having a nature kindred, or even
homogeneous with the Divinity. It was “generated by the Di-
vine Father,” and, like him, it is in a certain sense “eternal.”
Not that we are to understand Plato as teaching that the ra-
tional Soul had an independent and underived existence ; it
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xxi. *Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xxi.
“Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xix. ; see also ch. xviii.
* The reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic notion of “efferini-
£y,” as a fixed state out of time existing contemporaneous zwith one in time, to ap-
preciate the doctrine of Plato as stated above. If we regard his idea of
eternity as merely an indefinite extension of time, with a past, a present,
and a future, we can offer no rational interpretation of his doctrine of the
eternal nature of the rational essence of the soul. An eternal nature “gen-
erated” in a “past” or “present” time is a contradiction. But that was
not Plato's conception of “eternity,” as the reader will discover on perusing
the “Timaeus” (ch. xiv.). “God resolved to create a moving image of eter-
nity, .... and out of that eternity which reposes in its own unchangeable unity
he framed an eternal image moving according to numerical succession,
which we call Time. Nothing can be more inaccurate than to apply the
terms, past, present, future, to real Being, which is immovable. Past and
future are expressions only suitable to generation which proceeds through
time.” Time reposes on the bosom of eternity, as all bodies are in space.
35o C EIR IS TIANITY AND
was created or “generated" in eternity,” and even now, in its
incorporate state, is not amenable to the conditions of time
and space, but, in a peculiar sense, dwells in eternity; and
therefore is capable of beholding eternal realities, and coming
into communion with absolute beauty, and goodness, and truth
—that is, with God, the Absolute Being.
Thus the soul (livXà) as a composite nature is on one side
linked to the eternal world, its essence being generated of that
ineffable element which constitutes the real, the immutable,
and the permanent. It is a beam of the eternal Sun, a spark
of the Divinity, an emanation from God. On the other side it
is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its emotive part”
being formed of that which is relative and phenomenal. The
Soul of man thus stands midway between the eternal and the
contingent, the real and the phenomenal, and as such, it is the
mediator between, and the interpreter of, both.
In the allegory of the “Chariot and Winged Steeds” Plato
represents the lower or inferior part of man's nature as drag-
ging the Soul down to the earth, and subjecting it to the slavery
and debasement of corporeal conditions. Out of these con-
ditions there arise numerous evils that disorder the mind and
becloud the reason, for evil is inherent to the condition of finite
and multiform being into which we have “fallen by our own
fault.” The present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The
Soul is now dwelling in “the grave we call the body.” In its
incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education,
the rational element is “asleep.” “Life is more of a dream
than a reality.” Men are utterly the slaves of sense, the sport
of phantoms and illusions. We now resemble those “captives
chained in a subterraneous cave,” so poetically described in the
seventh book of the “Republic;” their backs are turned to the
light, and consequently they see but the shadows of the objects
* “Timaeus,” ch. xvi., and “Phaedrus,” where the soul is pronounced
āpy?, 68 &yévmTow.
* evuoetóég, the seat of the nobler—&Tuffvumruków, the seat of the baser
passions.
* “Phaedrus,” $ 54—62.
G. R. E. E. K. PHII, OS O PIT Y. 35 I
which pass behind them, and they “attribute to these shadows
a perfect reality.” Their sojourn upon earth is thus a dark
imprisonment in the body, a dreamy exile from their proper
home. “Nevertheless these pale fugitive shadows suffice to
revive in us the reminiscence of that higher world we once in-
habited, if we have not absolutely given the reins to the im-
petuous untamed horse which in Platonic symbolism represents
the emotive sensuous nature of man.” The soul has some dim
and shadowy recollection of its ante-natal state of bliss, and
Some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar,
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
JFrom God, who is our home.”
Exiled from the true home of the spirit, imprisoned in the
body, disordered by passion, and beclouded by sense, the soul
has yet longings after that state of perfect knowledge, and
purity, and bliss, in which it was first created. Its affinities
are still on high. It yearns for a higher and nobler form of
life. It essays to rise, but its eye is darkened by sense, its
wings are besmeared by passion and lust; it is “borne down-
ward, until at length it falls upon and attaches itself to that
which is material and sensual,” and it flounders and grovels
still amid the objects of sense.
And now, with all that seriousness and earnestness of spirit
which is peculiarly Christian, Plato asks how the soul may be
delivered from the illusions of sense, the distempering influ-
ence of the body, and the disturbances of passion, which be-
cloud its vision of the real, the good, and the true?
Plato believed and hoped this could be accomplished by
philosophy. This he regarded as a grand intellectual discipline
for the purification of the soul. By this it was to be disen-
* Wordsworth, “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” vol. v.
352 CHRISTIANITY AND
thralled from the bondage of sense" and raised into the em-
pyrean of pure thought “where truth and reality shine forth.”
All souls have the faculty of knowing, but it is only by reflec-
tion, and self-knowledge, and intellectual discipline, that the
soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and
beauty—that is, to the vision of God. And this intellectual dis-
cipline was the Platonic Dialectic.
* Not, however, fully in this life. The consummation of the intellectual
struggle into “the intelligible world” is death. The intellectual discipline
was therefore ple%éT) 0avátov, a preparation for death.
G 73 E. E. K. PEIII, O S O PET Y. 353
CHAPTER XI.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).
THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
IPLATO.
II. THE PLATONIC IDIALECTIC.
HE Platonic Dialectic is the Science of Eternal and Im-
mutable Principles, and the method (&pyavov) by which
these first principles are brought forward into the clear light
of consciousness. The student of Plato will have discovered
that he makes no distinction between logic and metaphysics.
These are closely united in the one science to which he gives
the name of “Z)ialectic,” and which was at once the science of
the ideas and laws of the Reason, and of the mental process
by which the knowledge of Real Being is attained, and a
ground of absolute certainty is found. This science has, in
modern times, been called Primordia/ or Zºranscendenſa/ Zogic.
We have seen that Plato taught that the human reason is
originally in possession of fundamental and necessary ideas—
the copies of the archetypal ideas which dwell in the eternal
Reason; and that these ideas are the primordial laws of
thought—that is, they are the laws under which we conceive
of all objective things, and reason concerning all existence.
These ideas, he held, are not derived from sensation, neither
are they generalizations from experience, but they are inborn
and connatural. And, further, he entertained the belief, more,
however, as a reasonable hypothesis' than as a demonstrable
truth, that these standard principles were acquired by the Soul
* Within “the eikótov učdov ióéa — the category of probability.”—
“ Phaedo.”
23
354 C EIRISTIANITY AND
in a pre-existent state in which it stood face to face with ideas
of eternal order, beauty, goodness, and truth.” “Journeying
with the Deity,” the soul contemplated justice, wisdom, sci-
ence—not that science which is concerned with change, and
which appears under a different manifestation in different ob-
jects, which we choose to call beings; but such science as is
in that which alone is indeed being.” Ideas, therefore, belong
to, and inhere in, that portion of the Soul which is properly
oùata—essence or being; which had an existence anterior to
time, and even now has no relation to time, because it is now
in eternity—that is, in a sphere of being to which past, prescht,
and future can have no relation.”
All knowledge of truth and reality is, therefore, according
to Plato, a REMINISCENCE (āvápaymatc)—a recovery of partially
forgotten ideas which the soul possessed in another state of
existence ; and the dialectic of Plato is simply the effort, by apt
interrogation, to lead the mind to “reco/lect” the truth which has
been formerly perceived by it, and is even now in the memory
though not in consciousness. An illustration of this method
is attempted in the “Meno,” where Plato introduces Socrates
as making an experiment on the mind of an uneducated per-
son. Socrates puts a series of questions to a slave of Meno,
and at length elicits from the youth a right enunciation of a
geometrical truth. Socrates then points triumphantly to this
instance, and bids Meno observe that he had not taught the
youth any thing, but simply interrogated him as to his opinions,
whilst the youth had recalled the knowledge previously existing
in his own mind."
Now whilst we readily grant that the instance given in the
“Memo” does not sustain the inference of Plato that “the boy”
had learnt these geometrical truths “in eternity,” and that they
had simply been brought forward into the view of his con-
* “Phaedo,” $ 50–56. * “Phaedrus,” $ 58. * See note on p. 349.
* “To learn is to recover our own previous knowledge, and this is prop-
erly to recollect.”—“Phaedo,” $ 55. &
* “Meno,” $ 16–20. “Now for a person to recover knowledge himself
through himself, is not this to recollect.”
G R E E K PHIL OS OPII Y. 355
sciousness by the “questioning” of Socrates, yet it certainly
does prove that there are ideas or principles in the human reason
which are no# derived from withouſ—which are anterior to al/
experience, and for the development of which, experience furnishes
Že occasion, but is not ſhe origin and source. By a kind of lofty
inspiration, he caught sight of that most important doctrine of
modern philosophy, so clearly and logically presented by Kant,
that the Reason is the source of a pure à priori knowledge—a
knowledge native to, and potentially in the mind, antecedent
to all experience, and which is simply brought out into the field
of consciousness by experience conditions. Around this great-
est of all metaphysical truths Plato threw a gorgeous mythic
dress, and presented it under the most picturesque imagery."
But, when divested of the rich coloring which the glowing im-
agination of Plato threw over it, it is but a vivid presentation
of the cardinal truth that there are ideas in the mind zchich have
not been derived from zwithout, and which, therefore, the mind
brought with it into the present sphere of being. The validity
and value of this fundamental doctrine, even as presented by
Plato, is unaffected by any speculations in which he may have
indulged, as to the pre-existence of the soul. He simply re-
garded this doctrine of pre-existence as highly probable — a
plausible explanation of the ſacts. That there are ideas, in-
mate and connatural to the human mind, he clung to as the
most vital, most precious, most certain of all truths; and to
lead man to the recognitions of these ideas, to bring them with-
in the field of consciousness, was, in his judgment, the great
business of philosophy.
And this was the grand aim of his Dialectic—to elicit, to
bring to light the truths which are already in the mind— “a
plaievac,” a kind of intellectual midwifery"—a delivering of the
mind of the ideas with which it was pregnant.
It is thus, at first sight, obvious that it was a higher and
more comprehensive science than the art of deduction. For it
* As in the “Phaedo,” $$48–57; “Phaedrus,” $$ 52–64; “Republic,” bk. x.
* “Theaetetus,” $$ 17–20.
356 CIIRISTIANITY AND
was directed to the discovery and establishment of First Princi-
ples. Its sole object was the discovery of truth. His dialectic
was an analytical and inductive method. “In Dialectic Sci-
ence,” says Alcinous, “there is a dividing and a defining, and
an analyzing, and, moreover, that which is inductive and Syllo-
gistic.” Even Bacon, who is usually styled “the Father of
the Inductive method,” and who, too often, speaks dispara-
gingly of Plato, is constrained to admit that he followed the
inductive method. “An induction such as will be of advan-
tage for the invention and demonstration of Arts and Sciences
must distinguish the essential nature of things (naturam) by
proper rejections and exclusions, and then after as many of
these negatives as are Sufficient, by comprising, above all (su-
per), the positives. Up to this time this has not been done,
nor even attempted, except by Plato alone, who, in order to aff-
tain his definitions and ideas, has used, to a certain extent, the
method of Induction.”
The process of investigation adopted by Plato thus corre-
sponds with the inductive method of modern times, with this
simple difference, that Bacon conducted science into the world
of maſter, whilst Plato directed it to the world of mind. The
dialectic of Plato aimed at the discovery of the “laws of
thought;” the modern inductive philosophy aims at the dis-
covery of the “laws of nature.” The latter concerns itself
chiefly with the inquiry after the “causes” of material phenom-
ena ; the former concerned itself with the inquiry after the
“first principles” of all knowledge and of all existence. Both
processes are, therefore, carried on by interrogation. The anal-
ysis which seeks for a law of nature proceeds by the interro-
gation of nature. The analysis of Plato proceeds by the in-
terrogation of mind, in order to discover the fundamental ideas
which lie at the basis of all cognition, which determine all our
* “Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato,” vol. vi. p. 249. “The Pla-
tonic Method was the method of induction.”—Cousin’s “History of Philos-
ophy,” vol. i. p. 307.
* “Novum Organum,” vol. i. p. 105.
G R EEI PIIII, OS O PETY. 357
processes of thought, and which, in their final analysis, reveal
the REAL BEING, which is the ground and explanation of all
existence.
Now the fact that such an inquiry has originated in the
Human mind, and that it can not rest satisfied without some
solution, is conclusive evidence that the mind has an instinct-
ive belief, a proleptic anticipation, that such knowledge can be
attained. There must unquestionably be some mental initia-
tive which is the motive and guide to all philosophical inquiry.
We must have some well-grounded conviction, some d ?riori
belief, some pre-cognition “ad intentionem ejus quod quaeri-
tur,” which determines the direction of our thinking. The
mind does not go to work aimlessly; it asks a specific ques-
tion; it demands the “whence” and the “why” of that which
is. Neither does it go to work unfurnished with any guiding
principles. That which impels the mind to a determinate act
of thinking is the possession of a Knowledge which is different
from, and independent of, the process of thinking itself. “A
rational anticipation is, then, the ground of the fºrudens quasio
—the forethought query, which, in fact, is the prior half of the
knowledge sought.” If the mind inquire after “laws,” and
“causes,” and “reasons,” and “grounds,”—the first principles
of all knowledge and of all existence,—it must have the d ?riori
ideas of “law,” and “cause,” and “reason,” and “being in se,”
which, though dimly revealed to the mind previous to the dis-
cipline of reflection, are yet unconsciously governing its spon-
taneous modes of thought. The whole process of induction
has, then, Some rational ground to proceed upon—Some prin-
ciples deeper than Science, and more certain than demonstra-
tion, which reason contains within itself, and which induction
“draws out” into clearer light. &
Now this mental initiative of every process of induction is
the intuitive and necessary conviction ſhał żhere must be a suff-
cient reason z0/ky every ſhing exists, and zwhy it is as it is, and Zloč
offierzwise," or in other words, if any thing begins to be, some-
* Bacon. * Coleridge, vol. ii. p. 413. * “Phaedo,” $ 103.
358 - CHRISTIANITY AND
thing else must be supposed' as the ground, and reason, and
cause, and law of its existence. This “law of sufficient (or de-
terminant) reason” is the fundamental principle of all meta-
physical inquiry. It is contained, at least in a negative form,
in that famous maxim of ancient philosophy, “ZXe nihilo nihil”—
“’Aöðvarov yivsoffat Tv čk plmöevög Tpointápxovroc.” “It is impos-
sible for a real entity to be made or generated from nothing
pre-existing;” or in other words, “nothing can be made or
produced without an efficient cause.” This principle is also
distinctly announced by Plato: “Whatever is generated, is
necessarily generated from a certain airíav”—ground, reason,
or cause; “for it is wholly impossible that any thing should be
generated without a cause.”
The first business of Plato's dialectic is to demonstrate that
the ground and reason of all existence can not be found in the
mere objects of sense, nor in any opinions or judgments found-
ed upon sensation. Principles are only so far “first princi-
ples” as they are permanent and unchangeable, depending on
neither time, nor place, nor circumstances. But the objects
of sense are in ceaseless flux and change ; they are “always
becoming,” they can not be said to have any “real being.”
They are not to-day what they were yesterday, and they will
never again be what they are now ; consequently all opinions
founded on mere phenomena are equally fluctuating and uncer-
tain. Setting out, therefore, from the assumption of the falla-
ciousness of “opinion,” it examined the various hypotheses
* Suffono, to place under as a support, to take as a ground.
* This generic principle, viewed under different relations, gives— --
Ist. The frinciple of Substance—every quality supposes a subject or real
being. - .
2d. Z%e principle of Causality—every thing which begins to be must have
21 CºlllSČ. -
3d. The principle of Zaw—every phenomenon must obey some uniform law.
4th. Zhe principle of Final Cause—every means supposes an end, every
existence has a purpose or reason why. - -
5th. The principle of Unity—all plurality supposes a unity as its basis and
ground.
* Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” vol. ii. p. 161.
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix.
G R EE K PHILOSOPEI Y. - g 359
which had been bequeathed by previous schools of philosophy,
or were now offered by contemporaneous speculators, and
showed they were utterly inadequate to the solution of the
problem. This scrutiny consisted in Searching for the ground
of “contradiction” with regard to each opinion founded on
sensation, and showing that opposite views were equally ten-
able. It inquired on what ground these opinions were main-
tained, and what consequences flowed therefrom, and it showed
that the grounds upon which “opinion” was founded, and the
conclusions which were drawn from it, were contradictory, and
consequently untrue.” “They,” the Dialecticians, “examined
the opinions of men as if they were error; and bringing them
together by a reasoning process to the same point, they placed
them by the side of each other ; and by so placing, they show-
ed that the opinions are at one and the same time contrary to them-
selves, about the same things, ZUith reference to the same circum-
stances, and according to the same premises.” And inasmuch as
the same attribute can not, at the same time, be affirmed and
denied of the same subject," therefore a thing can not be at
once “changeable” and “unchangeable,” “movable” and “im-
movable,” “generated” and “eternal.” The objects of sense,
however generalized and classified, can only give the contin-
gent, the relative, and the finite ; therefore the permanent
ground and sufficient reason of all phenomenal existence can
not be found in opinions and judgments founded upon sen-
sation. - - -
The dialectic process thus consisted almost entirely of reſu-
fation," or what both he and Aristotle denominated elemchus
(Aeyxoc)—a process of reasoning by which the contradictory
* “The Dialectitian is one who syllogistically infers the contradictions
implied in popular opinions.”—Aristotle, “Sophist,” $$ I, 2.
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xiii.
* “Sophist,” $33; “Republic,” blº. iv. ch. xii.
* See the “Phaedo,” $ 119, and “Republic,” bk. iv. ch. xiii., where the
Law of Non-contradiction is announced.
* “Parmenides,” $3.
* “Confutation is the greatest and chiefest of purification.”—“Sophist,”
§ 34.
360 * cHRISTIANITY AND
of a given proposition is inferred. “When refutation had done
its utmost, and all the points of difficulty and objection had
been fully brought out, the dialectic method had accomplished
its purpose ; and the affirmation which remained, after this dis-
cussion, might be regarded as setting forth the truth of the
question under consideration ;” or in other words, when a sys-
fem of error is destroyed by refutation, the contradictory opposite
principle, with its logical developments, must be accepted as an es-
fab/s/ted fruſ/. -
By the application of this method, Plato had not only ex-
posed the insufficiency and self-contradiction of all results ob-
tained by a mere d fosteriori generalization of the simple facts
of experience, but he demonstrated, as a consequence, that we
are in possession of some elements of knowledge which have
not been derived from sensation ; that there are, in all minds,
certain notions, principles, or ideas, which have been furnished
by a higher faculty than sense; and that these notions, princi-
ples, or ideas, transcend the limits of experience, and reveal
the knowledge of real being—to Öyroc by—Being in se.
To determine what these principles or ideas are, Plato now
addresses himself to the analysis of thought. “It is the glory
of Plato to have borne the light of analysis into the most ob-
scure and inmost region ; he searched out what, in this totality
which forms consciousness, is the province of reason ; what
comes from it, and not from the imagination and the senses—
from within, and not from without.” Now to analyze is to de-
compose, that is, to divide, and to define, in order to see better
that which really is. The chief logical instruments of the dia-
lectic method are, therefore, Division and ZOeffnition. “The
being able to divide according to genera, and not to consider
the same species as different, nor a different as the same,” and
“to see under one aspect, and bring together under one general
idea, many things Scattered in various places, that, by defining
* Article “Plato,” Encyclopædia Britannica.
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the Iſistory of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 328.
* “Sophist,” $83.
G R EER PHILOSOPHTY. 361
each, a person may make it clear what the subject is,” is, ac-
cording to Plato, “ dialectical.” - * ~,
We have already seen that, in his first efforts at applying
reflection to the concrete phenomena of consciousness, Plato
had recognized two distinct classes of cognitions, marked by
characteristics essentially opposite;—one of “sensible” objects
having a definite outline, limit, and figure, and capable of being
imaged and represented to the mind in a determinate form—
the other of “intelligible” objects, which can not be outlined
or represented in the memory or the imagination by any figures
or images, and are, therefore, the objects of purely rational
conception. He found, also, that we arrive at one class of cog-
nitions “mediately ’’ through images generated in the vital or-
ganism, or by some testimony, definition, or explication of
others; whilst we arrive at the other class “immediately,” by
simple intuition, or rational apperception. The mind stands
face to face with the object, and gazes directly upon it. The
reality of that object is revealed in its own light, and we find it
impossible to refuse our assent—that is, it is self-evident. One
class consisted of contingent ideas—that is, their objects are
conceived as existing, with the possibility, without any contra-
diction, of conceiving of their non-existence ; the other consisted
of necessary ideas—their objects are conceived as existing with
the absolute impossibility of conceiving of their non-existence.
Thus we can conceive of this book, this table, this earth, as not
existing, but we can not conceive the non-existence of space.
We can conceive of succession in time as not existing, but we
can not, in thought, annihilate duration. We can imagine this
or that particular thing not to have been, but we can not con-
ceive of the extinction of Being in itself. He further observed,
that one class of our cognitions are conditional ideas; the ex-
istence of their objects is conceived only on the supposition of
Some antecedent existence, as for example, the idea of qualities,
phenomena, events; whilst the other class of cognitions are
zz/lconditional and absolute—we can conceive of their objects as
* “Phaedrus,” $$ 109, III.
362. CEIRISTIANITY AND
existing independently and unconditionally—existing whether
any thing else does or does not exist, as Space, duration, the
infinite, Being in se. And, finally, whilst Some ideas appear in
us as particular and individual, determined and modified by
our own personality and liberty, there are others which are, in
the fullest sense, universal. They are not the creations of our
own minds, and they can not be changed by our own volitions.
They depend upon neither times, nor places, nor circumstances;
they are common to all minds, in all times, and in all places.
These ideas are the witnesses in our inmost being that there
is something beyond us, and above us ; and beyond and above
all the contingent and fugitive phenomena around us. Beneath
all changes there is a permanent being. Beyond all finite and
conditional existence there is something unconditional and abso-
Jute. Having determined that there are truths which are inde-
pendent of our own minds—truths which are not individual,
but universal—truths which would be truths even if our minds
did not perceive them, we are led onward to a suffersensual
and suffernatural ground, on which they rest.
To reach this objective reality on which the ideas of reason
repose, is the grand effort of Plato's dialectic. He seeks, by a
rigid analysis, clearly to separate, and accurately to define the d .
priori conceptions of reason. And it was only when he had
eliminated every element which is particular, contingent, and
relative, and had defined the results in precise and accurate
language, that he regarded the process as complete. The
ideas which are self-evident, universal, and necessary, were then
clearly disengaged, and raised to their pure and absolute form,
“You call the man dialectical who requires a reason of the
essence or being of each thing. As the dialectical man can
define the essence of every thing, so can he of the good. He
can define the idea of the good, separating it from all others—
follow it through all windings, as in a battle, resolved to mark
it, not according to opinion, but according to science.”
Abstraction is thus the process, the instrument of the Platon-
* “Republic,” bk. vii, ch. xiv.
G B E E R PITIL, O.S O PET Y. 363
ic dialectic. It is important, however, that we should distin-
guish between the method of comparative abstraction, as em-
ployed in physical inquiry, and that immediate abstraction,
which is the special instrument of philosophy. The former
proceeds by comparison and generalization, the latter by sim-
ple separation. The one yields a contingent general principle
as the result of the comparison of a number of individual cases,
the other gives an universal and necessary principle by the
analysis of a single concrete fact. As an illustration we may
instance “the principle of causality.” To enable us to affirm
“that every event must have a cause,” we do not need to com-
pare and generalize a great number of events. “The principle
which compels us to pronounce the judgment is already com-
plete in the first as in the last event; it can change in regard
to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases
nor decreases with the greater or less number of applications.”
In the presence of a single event, the universality and necessi-
ty of this principle of causality is recognized with just as much
clearness and certainty as in the presence of a million events,
however carefully generalized.
Abstraction, then, it will be seen, creates nothing; neither
does it add any new element to the store of actual cognitions
already possessed by all human minds. It simply brings for-
ward into a clearer and more definite recognition, that which
necessarily belongs to the mind as part of its latent furniture,
and which, as a law of thought, has always unconsciously gov-
ermed all its spontaneous movements. As a process of rational
inquiry, it was needful to bring the mind into intelligible and
conscious communion with the world of Jaleas. These ideas
are partially revealed in the sensible world, all things being
formed, as Plato believed, according to ideas as models and
exemplars, of which sensible objects are the copies. They are
more fuſly manifested in the constitution of the human mind
which, by virtue of its kindred nature with the original essence
or being, must know them intuitively and immediately. And
* Cousin’s “The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” pp. 57, 58.
364 C. H. RISTIA WTT Y. AND
they are brought out fully by the dialectic process, which dis-
engages them from all that is individual and phenomenal, and
sets them forth in their pure and absolute form.
But whilst Plato has certainly exhibited the true method of
investigation by which the ideas of reason are to be separated
from all concrete phenomena and set clearly before the mind,
he has not attempted a complete enumeration of the ideas of
reason; indeed, such an enumeration is still the grand desid-
eratum of philosophy. We can not fail, however, in the care-
ful study of his writings, to recognize the grand Triad of Abso-
lute Ideas—ideas which Cousin, after Plato, has so fully exhib-
ited, viz., the Zºue, the Aeautiful, and the Good.
PLATONIC SCHEME OF IDEAS.
I. 7%e idea of ABSOLUTE TRUTH or REALITY (Tö &\m0éc—to by)
—the ground and efficient cause of all existence, and by par-
ticipating in which all phenomenal existence has only So far a
reality, sensible things being merely shadows and resemblances
of ideas. This idea is developed in the human intelligence in
its relation with the phenomenal world ; as,
I. The idea of SUBSTANCE (ovoia)—the ground of all phe-
momena, “the being or essence of all things,” the permanent
reality.—“Timaeus,” ch. ix. and xii.; “Republic,” bk. vii. ch.
xiv.; “Phaedo,” $$ 63–67, 73.
2. Zhe idea of CAUSE (airta)—the power or efficiency by
which things that “become,” or begin to be, are generated
or produced.—“Timaeus,” ch. ix. ; “Sophist,” $ Io9 ; “Phi-
lebus,” $$ 45, 46.
3. The idea of IDENTITY (airo to toov)—that which “does
not change,” “is always the same, simple and uniform, in-
composite and indissoluble,”—that which constitutes per-
sonality or self-hood.—“Phaedo,” $$ 61–75; “Timaeus,” ch.
ix. ; “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xix. and xx.
4. Zhe idea of UNITY (ro £v)—one mind or intelligence
pervading the universe, the comprehensive conscious thought
or plan which binds all parts of the universe in one great
G B E E K PEIII, OS O PHY. 365
whole (ro Tāv)—the principle of order—“Timaeus,” ch. xi.
and xv.; “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xiii.; “Philebus,” $$ 50–51.
5. The idea of the INFINITE (rö &Telpow)—that which is un-
limited and unconditioned, “has no parts, bounds, no be-
ginning, nor middle, nor end.”—“Parmenides,” $$ 22, 23.
II. The idea of ABSOLUTE BEAUTY (r) ka)\ów)—the formal
cause of the universe, and by participation in which all created
things have only so far a real beauty.—“Timaeus,” ch. xi.;
“Greater Hippias,” $$ 17, 18; “Republic,” bk. v. ch. 22.
This idea is developed in the human intelligence in its re-
lation to the Organic world ; as,
I. Zhe idea of PROPORTION or SYMMETRY (auppierpia)—the
proper relation of parts to an organic whole resulting in a
harmony (kóaplog), and which relation admits of mathemat-
ical expression.—“Timaeus,” ch. lxix. ; “Philebus,” $ 155
(“Timaeus,” ch. xi. and xii., where the relation of numerical
proportions to material elements is expounded).
2. Zhe idea of DETERMINATE FORM (Tapáčetypa pyérvirog)
—the eternal models or archetypes according to which all
things are framed, and which admit of geometrical represen-
tation.—“Timaeus,” ch. ix. ; “Phaedo,” $ 112 (“Timaeus,” ch.
xxviii.-xxxi., where the relation of geometrical forms to ma-
terial elements is exhibited).
3. Zhe idea of RHYTHM (Övöpióc)—measured movement in
time and Space, resulting in melody and grace.—“Repub-
lic,” bk. iii. ch. xi. and xii. ; “Philebus,” $ 21.
4. Zhe idea of FITNESS or ADAPTATION (xpialpov)—effect-
iveness to Some purpose or end.—“Greater Hippias,” $35.
5. 7%e idea of PERFECTION (rexévôrmc)—that which is com-
plete, “a structure which is whole and finished—of whole
and perfect parts.”—“Timaeus,” ch. xi., xii., and xliii.
III. Zhe idea of ABSOLUTE GOOD (r3 &yaôów)—the final cause
Or reason of all existence, the sun of the invisible world, that
pours upon all things the revealing light of truth.
366 C EIRISTIANITY AND
The first Good" (summum bonum) is God the highest, and
Mind or Intelligence (voic), which renders man capable of
knowing and resembling God. The second flows from the
first, and are virtues of mind. They are good by a participa-
tion of the chief good, and constitute in man a likeness or re-
semiſſance to God.—“Phaedo,” $$ IIo–II4 ; “Laws,” bk. i. ch. vi.,
bk. iv. ch. viii.; “Theaetetus,” $$ 84,85; “Republic,” bk. vi. ch.
xix., bk. vii. ch. iii., bk. x. ch. xii.”
This idea is developed in the human intelligence in its rela-
tion to the world of moral order; as,
I. Zhe idea of WISDOM or PRUDENCE (ppóvmatc)—thought-
fulness, rightness of intention, following the guidance of rea-
son, the right direction of the energy or will.—“Republic,”
bk. iv. ch. vii., blº. vi. ch. ii.
2. 7%e idea of COURAGE or FORTITUDE (&vöpia)—zeal, en-
ergy, firmness in the maintenance of honor and right, virtu-
ous indignation against wrong.—“Republic,” bk. iv. ch. viii.;
“Laches;” “Meno,” $ 24.
3. The idea of SELF-CONTROL or TEMPERANCE (goſpportivn)
—sound-mindedness, moderation, dignity.—“Republic,” bk.
iv. ch. ix. ; “Meno,” $ 24; “Phaedo,” $35.
4. 7%e idea of JUSTICE (3tratogópm)—the harmony or per-
fect proportional action of all the powers of the soul.—“Re-
public,” bk. i. ch. vi., bk. iv. ch. x.-xii., bk. vi. ch. ii. and xvi. ;
“Philebus,” $ 155; “Phaedo,” $54; “Theaetetus,” $$84, 85.
Plato's idea of Justice comprehends—
(I.) EQUITY (loºrne)—the rendering to every man his
due.—“Republic,” bk. i. ch. vi.
* “Let us declare, then, on what account the framing Artificer settled the
formation of the universe. He was GOOD ;” and being good, “he desired
that all things should as much as possible resemble /timself.”—“Timaeus,” ch. x.
* “At the utmost bounds of the intellectual world is the idea of the Good,
perceived with difficulty, but which, once seen, makes itself known as the
cause of all that is beautiful and good; which in the visible world produces
light, and the orb that gives it; and which in the invisible world directly
produces Truth and Intelligence.”—“Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PHY. 367
(2.) VERACITY (&\#6eta)—the utterance of what is true.
—“Republic,” bk. i. ch. v., bk. ii. ch. xx., bk. vi. ch. ii.
(3.) FAITHFULNESS (Tugrórmc)—the strict performance
of a trust.—“Republic,” bk. i. ch. v., bk. vi. ch. ii.
(4.) USEFULNESS (ºpéApow)—the answering of Some
valuable end. —“Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xviii., bk. iv. ch.
xviii.; “Meno,” $ 22.
(5.) BENEVOLENCE (eivota)—seeking the well-being of
others.—“Republic,” bk. i. ch. xvii., bk. ii. ch. xviii.
(6.) HOLINESS (Öatórmc)—purity of mind, piety.—“Pro-
tagoras,” $$ 52–54; “Phaedo,” $ 32 ; “Theaetetus,” $84.
The final effort of Plato's Dialectic was to ascend from these
ideas of Absolute Truth, and Absolute Beauty, and Absolute
Goodness to the Absolute Being, in whom they are all united,
and from whom they all proceed. “He who possesses the true
love of science is naturally carried in his aspirations to the
zeal Being; and his love, so far from suffering itself to be re-
tarded by the multitude of things whose reality is only appar-
ent, knows no repose until it have arrived at union with the
essence of each object, by the part of the soul which is akin to
the permanent and essential ; so that this divine conjunction
having produced intelligence and truth, the knowledge of being
is won.” #
To the mind of Plato, there was in every thing, even the
Smallest and most insignificant of sensible objects, a reality just
in So far as it participates in some archetypal form or idea.
These archetypal forms or ideas are the “thoughts of God”—
they are the plan according to which he framed the universe.
“The Creator and Father of the universe looked to an efferna/
ſnode/. . . . Being thus generated, the universe is framed ac-
cording to principles that can be comprehended by reason and
reflection.” Plato, also, regarded all individual conceptions
of the mind as hypothetical notions which have in them an dº
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. v. * Alcinous, “Doctrines of Plato,” p. 262.
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix.
368 C EIR IS TIA WITY AND
friori element—an idea which is unchangeable, universal, and
necessary. These unchangeable, universal, and necessary ideas
are copies of the Divine Ideas, which are, for man, the primor-
dial laws of all cognition, and all reasoning. They are pos-
sessed by the soul “in virtue of its kindred nature to that
which is permanent, unchangeable, and eternal.” He also be-
lieved that every archetypal form, and every d ?riori idea, has
its ground and root in a higher idea, which is unhypothetical
and absolute—an idea which needs no other supposition for
its explanation, and which is, itself, needful to the explanation
of all existence—even the idea of an absolute and Žerfect Being,
in whose mind the ideas of absolute truth, and beauty, and
goodness inhere, and in whose eternity they can only be re-
garded as eternal." Thus do the “ideas of reason’’ not only
cast a bridge across the abyss that separates the sensible and
the ideal world, but they also carry us beyond the limits of our
personal consciousness, and discover to us a realm of real Be-
ing, which is the foundation, and cause, and explanation of the
phenomenal world that appears around us and within us.
This passage from psychology to ontology is not achieved
Žer salium, or effected by any arbitrary or unwarrantable as-
Sumption. There are principles revealed in the centre of our
consciousness, whose regular development carry us beyond the
limits of consciousness, and attain to the knowledge of actual
being. The absolute principles of causality and substance, of
intentionality and unity, unquestionably give us the absolute Be-
ing. Indeed the absolute truth that every idea supposes a being
Žn 70/hich it resides, and which is but another form of the law or
principle of Substance, viz., that every quality supposes a sub-
stance or being in which it inheres, is adequate to carry us from
Idea to Being. “There is not a single cognition which does
not suggest to us the notion of existence, and there is not an
unconditional and absolute truth which does not necessarily
imply an absolute and unconditional Being.”
* Maurice's “Ancient Philosophy,” p. 149.
* Cousin’s “Elements of Psychology,” p. 506.
G R E E K PIIII, OS O PEI Y. 369
This, then, is the dialectic of Plato. Instead of losing him-
self amid the endless variety of particular phenomena, he would
search for principles and laws, and from thence ascend to the
great Legislator, the Aºirs? Arinciple of a/Z Arinciples. Instead
of stopping at the relations of sensible objects to the general
ideas with which they are commingled, he will pass to their
effernal Paradigms—from the just thing to the idea of absolute
justice, from the particular good to the absolute good, from
beautiful things to the absolute beauty, and thence to the ulti-
mate reality—the absolute Being. By the realization of the
lower idea, embodied in the forms of the visible universe and
in the necessary laws of thought, he sought to rise to the higher
idea, in its pure and abstract form—the Supreme Idea, contain-
ing in itself all other ideas—the One Zntelligence which unites
the universe in a harmonious whole. “The Dialectic faculty
proceeds from hypothesis to an unhypothetical principle. . . . .
It uses hypotheses as steps, and starting-points, in order to
proceed from thence to the absolute. The Intuitive Reason
takes hold of the First Principle of the Universe, and avails it-
self of all the connections and relations of that principle. It
ascends from idea to idea, until it has reached the Supreme
Idea”—the Absolute Good—that is, God.”
We are thus brought, in the course of our examination of the
Platonic method, to the results obtained by this method—or, in
other words, to
III. THE PLATONIC ONTOLOGY.
The grand object of all philosophic inquiry in ancient
Greece was to attain to the knowledge of real Being—that Be-
ing which is permanent, unchangeable, and eternal. It had
proceeded on the intuitive conviction, that beneath all the end-
less diversity of the universe there must be a principle of unity
—below all fleeting appearances there must be a permanent
substance—beyond all this everlasting flow and change, this
beginning and end of finite existence, there must be an eternal
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xx. and xxi.
24
37o CEIRISTIANITY AND
Being, which is the cause, and which contains, in itself, the
reason of the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency
which pervades the universe. And it had perpetually asked
what is this permanent, unchangeable, and eternal Substance
or being 2
Plato had assiduously labored at the solution of this prob-
lem. The object of his dialectic was “to lead upward the
soul to the knowledge of real being,” and the conclusions to
which he attained may be summed up as follows:
1st. Beneath al/ SENSIBLE%henomena there is an unchangeable
subject-matter, the mysterious substratum of the world of sense,
which he calls the receptacle (infoboxã) the nurse (tiôňvm) of al/ that
is £7 oduced.”
It is this “substratum or physical groundwork” which gives
a reality and definiteness to the evanescent phantoms of Sense,
for, in their ceaseless change, they can not justify any title what-
ever. It alone can be styled “this ’’ or “that ” (róēs or roãro);
they rise no higher than “of such kind” or “of what Æind or
quality” (rotoirov or brotoyoſy Tl).” It is not earth, or air, or fire,
or water, but “an invisible species and formless universal re-
ceiver, which, in the most obscure way, receives the immanence
of the intelligible.” And in relation to the other two principles
(i. e., ideas and objects of sense), “it is the mother” to the fa-
ther and the offspring." But perhaps the most remarkable pas-
sage is that in which he seems to identify it with pure space,
which, “itself imperishable, furnishes a seat (£8pav) to all that is
produced, not apprehensible by direct perception, but caught
by a certain Spurious reasoning, scarcely admissible, but which
we see as in a dream; gaining it by that judgment which pro-
nounces it necessary that all which is, be somewhere, and occu-
py a certain space.” This, it will be seen, approaches the Car-
tesian doctrine, which resolves matter into simple extension.”
* “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. xii. and xiii. * “Timaeus,” ch. xxii.
* “Timaeus,” ch. xxiii. * Ibid., ch. xxiv.
* Ibid., ch. xxiv. * Ibid., ch. xxvi.
" Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 171.
G R E E K PIIII, OS OPEI Y. 37 I
It should, however, be distinctly noted that Plato does not
use the word WXm—matter. This term is first employed by
Aristotle to express “the substance which is the subject of all
changes.” The subject or substratum of which Plato speaks,
would seem to be rather a logical than a material entity. It
is the condition or supposition necessary for the production of a
world of phenomena. It is thus the transition-element between
the real and the apparent, the eternal and the contingent; and,
lying thus on the border of both territories, we must not be sur-
prised that it can hardly be characterized by any definite at-
tribute.” Still, this unknown recipient of forms or ideas has
a reality; it has “an abiding nature,” “a constancy of exist-
ence;” and we are forbidden to call it by any name denoting
quality, but permitted to style it “this.” and “that’ (Tööe kai
rôvro).” Beneath the perpetual changes of sensible phenomena
there is, then, an unchangeable subject, which yet is neither
the Deity, nor ideas, nor the soul of man, which exists as the
means and occasion of the manifestation of Divine Intelligence
in the organization of the world."
There has been much discussion as to whether Plato held
that this “A’eceptacle” and “AWurse” of forms and ideas was
eternal, or generated in time. Perhaps no one has more care-
fully studied the writings of Plato than William Archer Butler,
and his conclusions in regard to this subject are presented in
the following words: “As, on the one hand, he maintained a
strict system of dualism, and avoided, without a single devia-
tion, that seduction of pantheism to which so many abstract
speculators of his own school have fallen victims; so, on the
other hand, it appears to me that he did not scruple to place
this principle, the opposite of the Divine intelligence, in a
sphere independent of temporal origination. ... But we can
scarcely enter into his views, unless we ascertain his notions
of the nature of Złme itself. This was considered to have been
* “Metaphysics,” bk. vii. ch. i.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 178.
* “Timaeus,” ch. xxiii. “Ibid., ch. xliii.
37.2 - CEIRISTIANITY AND
created with the rest of the sensible world, to finish with it, if
it ever finished—to be altogether related to this phenomenal
scene.’ ‘The generating Father determined to create a mov-
ing image of eternity (aid)voc); and in disposing the heavens,
he framed of this eternity, reposing in its own unchangeable
unity, an eternal image, moving according to numerical succes-
sion, which he called Złme. With the world arose days, nights,
months, years, which all had no previous existence. The past
and future are but forms of time, which we most erroneously
transfer to the eternal substance (&#8tov obotay); we say it was,
and is, and will be, whereas we can only fitly say it is. Past
and future are appropriate to the successive nature of generated
beings, for they bespeak motion; but the Being eternally and
immovably the same is subject neither to youth nor age, nor
to any accident of time ; it neither was, nor hath been, nor will
be, which are the attributes of fleeting sense—the circum-
stances of time, imitating eternity in the shape of number and
motion. Nor can any thing be more inaccurate than to apply
the term real being to past, or present, or future, or even to
non-existence. Of this, however, we can not now speak fully.
7%me, then, was formed with the heavens, that, together created,
they may together end, if indeed an end be in the Žužose of the
Creator; and it is designed as closely as possible to resemble
the eternal nature, its exemplar. The model exists through all
eternity; the world has been, is, and will be through all fime.”
. . . . In this ineffable eternity Plato places the Supreme Being,
and the archetypal ideas of which the sensible world of time
partakes. Whether he also includes under the same mode of
existence the subject-matter of the sensible world, it is not easy
to pronounce; and it appears to me evident that he did not
himself undertake to speak with assurance on this obscure
problem.” The creation of matter “out of nothing” is an
idea which, in all probability, did not occur to the mind of
Plato. But that he regarded it as, in some sense, a dependent
* See ante, note 4, p. 349. * “Timaeus,” ch. xiv.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 171–175.
G 73 EEK PEIILOSOPEI Y. 373
existence—as existing, like time, by “the purpose or will of the
Creator”—perhaps as an eternal “generation” from the “eter-
nal substance,” is also highly probable ; for in the last analysis
he evidently desires to embrace all things in some ultimate
wnity—a tendency which it seems impossible for human reason.
to avoid. - &
2d. Aeneath al/ menia/A/henomena there is a Żermanent subject
or substratum which he designates THE IDENTICAL (to airó)—the
rational element of the soul—“ the principle of seſſ-activity,” or seſſ:
determination.” - -
There are three principles into which Plato analyzes the
soul—the principle of the Zalentical, the ZXiverse, and the /nter-
mediate AEssence.” The first is indivisible and eternal, always
existing in sameness, the very substance of Intelligence itself, and
of the same nature with the Divine.” The second is divisible
and corporeal, answering to our notion of the passive sensibili-
ties, and placing the soul in relation with the visible world.
The third is an intermediate essence, partaking of the natures
of both, and constituting a medium between the eternal and
the mutable—the conscious energy of the soul developed in the
contingent world of time. Thus the soul is, on one side, linked
to the unchangeable and the eternal, being formed of that in-
effable element which constitutes the real or immutable Being,
and on the other side, linked to the sensible and the contin-
gent, being formed of that element which is purely relative and
contingent. This last element of the soul is regarded by Plato
as “mortal” and “corruptible,” the former element as “im-
mortal” and “indestructible,” having its foundations laid in
eternity. * *
This doctrine of the eternity of the free and rational element
of the soul must, of course, appear strange and even repulsive
to those who are unacquainted with the Platonic notion of
eternity as a fixed state out of time, which has no past, present,
* “Laws,” bk. x. ch. vi. and vii.; “Phaedrus,” $ 51; “à947) Klvñoeoſ.”
* “Timaeus,” ch. xii.; Tairóv, 0árepov, and ovata or Tô avppuayóuevov,
* “Laws,” bk. v. ch. i.
374 CII RISTIANITY AND
or future, and is simply that which “always is "–an everlasting
now. The soul, in its elements of rationality and freedom, has
existed anterior to time, because it now exists in eternity." In
its actual manifestations and personal history it is to be con-
templated as a “generated being,” having a commencement in
time.
Now, that the human soul, like the uncreated Deity, has al-
ways had a distinct, conscious, personal, independent being,
does not appear to be the doctrine of Plato. He teaches, most
distinctly, that the “divine,” the immortal part, was created, or
rather “generated,” in eternity. “The Deity himself formed
the divine, and he delivered over to his celestial offspring [the
subordinate and generated gods] the task of forming the mortal.
These subordinate deities, copying the example of their par-
ent, and receiving from his hands the immortal principle of the
human soul, fashioned subsequently to this the mortal body,
which they consigned to the soul as a vehicle, and in which
they placed another kind of Soul, mortal, the seat of violent
and fatal affections.” He also regarded the soul as having a
derived and dependent existence. He draws a marked dis-
tinction between the divine and human forms of the “self-mov-
ing principle,” and makes its continuance dependent upon the
will and wisdom of the Almighty Disposer and Parent, of
whom it is “the first-born offspring.”
That portion of the soul which Plato regarded as “immor-
tal” and “to be entitled divine,” is thus the “offspring of God” .
—a ray of the Divinity “generated ” by, or emanating from, the
Deity. He seems to have conceived it as co-eternal with its
ideal objects, in some mysterious ultimate unity. “The true
foundation of the Platonic theory of the constitution of the soul
is this fundamental principle of his philosophy—the oneness of
fruſ/, and Knowledge." This led him naturally to derive the ra.
* See aute, note 4, p. 349, as to the Platonic notions of “Time” and
“Eternity.”
* “Timaeus,” ch. xliv.
* See the elaborate exposition in “Laws,” bk. x. ch. xii. and xiii.
* See Grant's “Aristotle,” vol. i. pp. 150, 151.
G R E E R PITII, OS O PET Y. 375
Žional element of the soul (that element that Knows, that pos.
sesses the power of vömatc) from the real element in things (the
element that is the vootpsyov); and in the original, the final,
and, though imperfectly, the present state of that rational ele-
ment, he, doubtless, conceived it united with its object in an
eternal conjunction, or even identity. But though intelligence
and its correlative intelligibles were and are thus combined,
the Soul is more than pure intelligence; it possesses an element
of personality and consciousness distinct to each individual, of
which we have no reason to suppose, from any thing his writ-
ings contain, Plato ever meant to deprive it.” On the contrary,
he not only regarded it as having now, under temporal condi-
tions, a distinct personal existence, but he also claimed for it a
conscious, personal existence after death. He is most earnest,
and unequivocal, and consistent in his assertion of the doctrine
of the immortality of the soul. The arguments which human
reason can supply are exhibited with peculiar force and beauty
in the “Phaedo,” the “Phaedrus,” and the tenth book of the
“Republic.” The most important of these arguments may be
presented in a few words.
I. The son// is immortal, because it is incorporeal. There are
two kinds of existences, one compounded, the other simple ;
the former subject to change, the latter unchangeable ; one
perceptible to sense, the other comprehended by mind alone.
The one is visible, the other is invisible. When the Soul em-
ploys the bodily senses, it wanders and is confused ; but when
it abstracts itself from the body, it attains to knowledge which
is stable, unchangeable, and immortal. The Soul, therefore,
being uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, must be indissolu-
ble—that is to say, immortal.”
2. Z%e sou/ is immortal, because it has an independent £070ér
of self-motion—that is, it has self-activity and self-determination.
No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be
conceived as the originator of free and voluntary movement.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 209, note.
* “Phaedo,” $$ 61–75.
376 C ETRISTIANITY AND
Now that which can not move itself, but derives its motion
from something else, may cease to move, and perish. “But
that which is self-moved, never ceases to be active, and is also
the cause of motion to all other things that are moved.” And
“whatever is continually active is immortal.” This “Self-ac-
tivity is,” says Plato, “the very essence and true notion of the
soul.” Being thus essentially causative, it therefore partakes
of the nature of a “principle,” and it is the nature of a principle
to exclude its contrary. That which is essentially Self-active
can never cease to be active ; that which is the cause of motion
and of change, can not be extinguished by the change called
death.”
3. The soul is immortal, because it possesses universal, neces-
sary, and absolute ideas, which transcend all material conditions,
and bespeak an origin immeasurably above the body. No mod-
ifications of matter, however refined, however elaborated, can
give the Absolute, the Necessary, the Eternal. But the Soul has
the ideas of absolute beauty, goodness, perfection, identity, and
duration, and it possesses these ideas in virtue of its having a
nature which is one, simple, identical, and in Some Sense, eter-
nal.” If the soul can conceive an immortality, it can not be
less than immortal. If, by its very nature, “it has hopes that
will not be bounded by the grave, and desires and longings
that grasp eternity,” its nature and its destiny must correspond.
In the concluding sections of the “Phaedo” he urges the
doctrine with earnestness and feeling as the grand motive to a
virtuous life, for “the reward is noble and the hope is great.”
And in the “Laws” he insists upon the doctrine of a future
state, in which men are to be rewarded or punished as the
most conclusive evidence that we are under the moral govern-
ment of God."
* “Phaedrus,” $$ 51–53. * “Phaedo,” $$ 112–128.
“Ibid., §§ 48–57, I IO-115. “Ibid., §§ 129-145.
* The doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, can scarce-
ly be regarded as part of the philosophic system of Plato. He seems to
have accepted it as a venerable tradition, coming within the range of proba-
bility, rather than as a philosophic truth, and it is always presented by him
G R EE K PHIL OS OPITY. 377
4. Beyond al/finite existences and secondary causes, al/ aws,
ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND, the First,
Principle of all Principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other
ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Zawgiver of the universe,
the ultimate Substance from which all other things derive their Öe-
ing and essence, the First and efficient Cause of all the order, and
harmony, and beauty, and excel/ency, and goodness, which Žervades
Žhe universe, z0/ho is called by 20ay of pre-eminence and exce//ence the
Supreme Good, THE GOD (60sóc), “the God over all,” (à éti Tâq,
6666). *
This SUPREME MIND, Plato taught, is incorporeal,” unchange-
able,” infinite,’ absolutely perfect," essentially good," unorigi-
nated," and eternal." He is “the Father, and Architect, and
Maker of the Universe,” “the efficient Cause of all things,”
“the Monarch and Ruler of the world,” “the sovereign Mind
that orders all things, and pervades all things,” “the sole
in a highly mythical dress. Now of these mythical representations he re-
marks in the “Phaedo ’’ (§ 145) that “no man in his senses would dream of
insisting that they correspond to the reality, but that, the soul having been
shown to be immortal, this, or Something like this, is true of individual souls
or their habitations.” If, as in the opinions of the ablest critics, “the Laws”
is to be placed amongst the last and maturest of Plato's writings, the evi-
dence is conclusive that whatever may have been his earlier opinions, he did
not entertain the doctrine of “Metempsychosis” in his riper years. “But
when, on the one hand, the Soul shall remain having an intercourse with di-
vine virtue, it becomes divine pre-eminently; and pre-eminently, after hav-
ing been conveyed to a place entirely holy, it is changed for the better; but
when it acts in a contrary manner, it has, under contrary circumstances,
placed its existence in some zºn/toly spot.
“‘This is the judgment of the gods, who hold Olympus.”
“O thou young man,” [know] “that the person who has become more
wicked, departs &o the more wicked souls ; but he who has become better, to
the better both in life and in all deaths, to do and suffer what is fitting for
the like.”—“Laws,” bk. x. ch. xii. and xiii.
* * “Phaedo,” $$ 105–107. * Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” bk. iii. ch. 77.
** “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xix. ; “Timaeus,” ch. ix.
* “Apeleius,” bk. i. ch. v. \* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xx.
* “Timaeus,” ch. x.; “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xviii.
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix.-x. * Ibid., ch. xii.
* Ibid., ch. ix. * “Phaedo,” $ 105.
* “Laws,” bk. x. ch. xii.; “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.; “Philebus,” $ 50.
* “Philebus,” $ 51.
378 C EIRISTIANITY AND
33 1
Principle of all things,” and “the Measure of all things,”
He is “the Beginning of all truth,” “the Fountain of all law
and justice,” “the Source of all order and beauty,” “the
Cause of all good;” in short, “he is the Beginning, the Middle,
and End of all things.”
Beyond the sensible world, Plato conceived another world
of intelligibles or ideas. These ideas are not, however, distinct
and independent existences. “What general motions are to
our own minds, ideas are to the Supreme Reason (voic GagiNetc);
they are the eternal thoughts of the Divine Intellect.” Ideas
are not substances, they are qualities, and there must, there-
fore, be Some ultimate substance or being to whom, as attri-
butes, they belong. “It must not be believed, as has been
taught, that Plato gave to ideas a substantial existence. When
they are not objects of pure conception for human reason, they
are attributes of the Divine Reason. It is there they substan-
tially exist.” These eternal laws and reasons of things indi-
cate to us the character of that Supreme Essence of essences,
the Being of beings. He is not the simple aggregate of all
laws, but he is the Author, and Sustainer, and Substance of all
laws. At the utmost summit of the intellectual world of Ideas
blazes, with an eternal splendor, the idea of the Supreme Good
from which all others emanate.” This Supreme Good is “far
beyond all existence in dignity and power, and it is that from
which all things else derive their being and essence.” The
Supreme Good is not the truth, nor the intelligence; “it is the
Father of it.” In the same manner as the sun, which is the
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xix. * “Laws,” blº. iv. ch. viii.
* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xxi. * “Laws,” bk. iv. ch. vii.
| 3. j
* “Philebus,” $ 51 ; “Timaeus,” ch. x.
* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xviii.; “Timaeus,” ch. x.
"“Lays,” bk. iv. ch. vii. * Thompson’s “Laws of Thought,” p. 119.
* Cousin, “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 415. “There
is no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against common sense,
and if such be the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle was right in opposing
it. But such a theory is only a chimera which Aristotle created for the pur-
pose of combating it.”—“The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” p. 77.
* “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii. * Ibid., blº. vi. ch. xviii. and xix.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 379
visible image of the good, reigns over the world, in that it il-
lumes and vivifies it ; So the Supreme Good, of which the sun
is only the work, reigns over the intelligible world, in that it
gives birth to it by virtue of its inexhaustible fruitfulness." The
Supreme Good is GoD himself, and he is designated “the good”
because this term seems most fittingly to express his essential
character and essence.” It is towards this superlative perfec-
tion that the reason lifts itself; it is towards this infinite beau-
ty the heart aspires. “Marvellous Beauty P’ exclaims Plato ;
“eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase
and diminution . . . . beauty which has nothing sensible, noth-
ing corporeal, as hands or face : which does not reside in any
being different from itself, in the earth, or the heavens, or in
any other thing, but which exists effernal/y and absolutely in if-
seff, and by itself; beauty of which every other beauty partakes,
without their birth or destruction bringing to it the least in-
crease or diminution.” The absolute being—God, is the last
reason, the ultimate foundation, the complete ideal of all beau-
ty. God is, far excellent, the Beautiful. &
God is therefore, with Plato, the First Principle of al/ Prin-
ciples; the Divine energy or power is the efficient cause, the Di-
vine beauty the formal cause, and the Divine goodness the
final cause of all existence.
The effernal unity of the principles of Order, Goodness, and
2%-už, in an ultimate reality—the ETERNAL MIND, is thus the
fundamental principle which pervades the whole of the Platon-
ic philosophy. And now, having attained this sublime eleva-
tion, he looks down from thence upon the sensible, the phenom-
enal world, and upon the temporal life of man ; and in the light
of this great principle he attempts to explain their meaning
and purpose. The results he attained in the former case con-
stitute the Platonic Physics, in the latter, the Platonic AEthics.
* “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 275.
* “Banquet,” $ 35. See Cousin, “The True, the Beautiful, and the
Good,” Lecture IV., also Lecture VII. pp. 150–153; Denis, “Histoire des
Théories et Idees Morales dans l’Antiquité,” vol. i. p. I49.
38o CHRISTIANITY AND
I. PLATONIC PHYSICS.
Firmly believing in the absolute excellence of the Deity,
and regarding the Divine Goodness as the Final Cause of the
universe, he pronounces the physical world to be an image of
the perfection of God. Anaxagoras, no doubt, prepared the
way for this theory. Every one who has read the “Phaedo,”
will remember the remarkable passage in which Socrates gives
utterance to the disappointment which he had experienced
when expecting from physical Science an explanation of the
universe. “When I was young,” he said—“it is not to be told
how eager I was about physical inquiries, and curious to know
Aozo, the universe came to be as it is ; and when I heard that
Anaxagoras was teaching that all was arranged by mind, I was
delighted with the prospect of hearing such a doctrine unfold-
ed; I thought to myself, if he teaches that mind made every
thing to be as it is, he will explain how it is BEST for it to be,
and show that so it is.” But Anaxagoras, it appears, lost sight
of this principle, and descended to the explanation of the uni-
verse by material causes. “Great was my hope,” says Socra-
tes, “and equally great my disappointment.” -
Plato accepted this, suggestion of Anaxagoras with all his
peculiar earnestness, and devoted himself to its fuller develop-
ment. It were a vain and profitless theory, which, whilst it
assumed the existence of a Supreme Mind, did not represent
that mind as operating in the universe by design, and as exhib-
iting his intelligence, and justice, and goodness, as well as his
power, in every thing. If it be granted that there is a Supreme
Mind, then, argued Plato, he must be regarded as “the measure
of all things,” and all things must have been framed accord-
ing to a plan or “model” which that mind supplied. Intelli-
gence must be regarded as having a puzºose, and as working
towards an end, for it is this alone which distinguishes reason
from unreason, and mind from mere unintelligent force. The
only proper model which could be presented to the Supreme
- - * “Phaedo,” $$ IoS, Io9.
G R EE K PHILOSOPHY. 381
Intelligence is “the eternal and unchangeable model” which
his own perfection supplies, “for he is the most excellent of
causes.” Thus God is not simply the maker of the universe,
but the model of the universe, because he designed that it
should be an IMAGE, in the sphere of sense, of his own perfec-
tions—a revelation of his eternal beauty, and wisdom, and
goodness, and truth. “God was good, and being good, he de- .
sired that the universe should, as far as possible, resemble him-
self. . . . . . Desiring that all things should be good, and, as far
as might be, nothing evil, he took the fluctuating mass of
things visible, which had been in orderless confusion, and re-
duced it to order, considering this to be the better state. Now
it was and is utterly impossible for the supremely good to form
any thing except that which is most excellent (káX\torov–most
fair, most beautiful”).” The object at which the supreme mind
aimed being that which is “best,” we must, in tracing his Op-
erations in the universe, always look for “the best" in every
thing." Starting out thus, upon the assumption that the good-
ness of God is the final cause of the universe, Plato evolved a
system of optimism. - .
The physical system of Plato being thus intended to illus-
trate a principle of optimism, the following results may be ex-
pected: - .
I. That it will mainly concern itself with final causes. The
universe being regarded chiefly, as indeed it is, an indication
of the Divine Intelligence—every phenomenon will be contem-
plated in that light. Nature is the volume in which the Deity
reveals his own perfections; it is therefore to be studied solely
with this motive, that we may learn from thence the perfec-
tion of God. “The Złmaus is a series of ingenious hypotheses
designed to deepen and vivify our sense of the harmony, and
Symmetry, and beauty of the universe, and, as a consequence,
of the wisdom, and excellence, and goodness, of its Author."
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix. * Ibid. * Ibid., ch. x. “Ibid., ch. xix.
* “Being is related to Becoming (the Absolute to the Contingent) as
Truth is to Belief; consequently we must not marvel should we find it im-
382 . CHRISTIANITY AND
Whatever physical truths were within the author's reach, took
their place in the general array: the vacancies were filled up
with the best suppositions admitted by the limited Science of
the time.” And it is worthy of remark that, whilst proceeding
by this “high d ?riori road,” he made some startling guesses
at the truth, and anticipated some of the discoveries of the
modern inductive method, which proceeds simply by the obser-
vation, comparison, and generalization of facts. Of these pro-
phetic anticipations we may instance that of the definite pro-
portions of chemistry,” the geometrical forms of crystallog-
raphy,” the doctrine of complementary colors," and that grand
principle that all the highest laws of nature assume the form of
a precise quantitative statement." -
2. It may be expected that a system of physics raised on
optimistic principles will be mathematical father than experi-
mental. “Intended to embody conceptions of proportion and
harmony, it will have recourse to that department of science
which deals with the proportions in space and number. Such
applications of mathematical truths, not being raised on ascer-
tained-facts, can only accidentally represent the real laws of
the physical system ; they will, however, vivify the student’s ap-
prehension of harmony in the same manner as a happy parable,
though not founded in real history, will enliven his perceptions
of moral truth.” -
3. Another peculiarity of such a system will be an impatience
of every merely mechanical theory of the operations of nature.
possible to arrive at any certain and conclusive results in our speculations
upon the creation of the visible universe and its authors; it should be
enough for us if the account we have to give be as probable as any other,
remembering that we are but men, and therefore bound to acquiesce in
merely probable results, without looking for a higher degree of certainty
than the subject admits of.”—“Timaeus,” ch. ix.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 157.
* “Timaeus,” ch. xxxi. *Ibid., ch. xxvii. * Ibid., ch. xlii.
* “It is Plato's merit to have discovered that the laws of the physical
universe are resolvable into numerical relations, and therefore capable of
being represented by mathematical formulae.”—Butler’s “Lectures on An-
cient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 163.
*Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 163.
G R EE K PEIIL OS O PETY. 383
“The psychology of Plato led him to recognize mind wherever
there was motion, and hence not only to require a Deity as first
mover of the universe, but also to conceive the propriety of
Separate and subordinate agents attached to each of its parts,
as principles of motion, no less than intelligent directors.
These agents were entitled “gods’ by an easy figure, discerni-
ble even in the sacred language,’ and which served, besides, to
accommodate philosophical hypotheses to the popular religion.
Plato, however, carefully distinguished between the sole, Eter-
nal Author of the Universe, on the one hand, and that “soul,’
vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the world, as well as
the spheral intelligences, on the other. These ‘subordinate
deities,’ though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, were
still only the deputies of the Supreme Framer and Director of
all.” The “gods” of the Platonic system are “subordinate
divinities,” “generated gods,” brought into existence by the
will and wisdom of the Eternal Father and Maker of the uni-
verse.” Even Jupiter, the governing divinity of the popular
mythology, is a descendant from powers which are included in
the creation." The offices they fulfill, and the relations they
sustain to the Supreme Being, correspond to those of the “an-
gels” of Christian theology. They are the ministers of his prov-
idential government of the world."
The application of this fundamental conception of the Pla-
tonic system—the effernal unity of the principles of Order, Good-
ness, and 7%-uń in an ultimate reality, the Æſerna/ Mind—to the
elucidation of the temporal life of man, yields, as a result—
II. THE PLATONIC ETHICS.
Believing firmly that there are unchangeable, necessary, and
absolute principles, which are the perfections of the Eternal
Mind, Plato must, of course, have been a believer in an immuta-
ble morality. He held that there is a rightness, a justice, an
* Psalm lxxxii. 1; John x. 34.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 164.
* “Timaeus,” ch. xv. * Ibid. * “Laws,” bk. x.
384 O EIRISTIANITY AND
equity, not arbitrarily constituted by the Divine will or legisla-
tion, but founded in the nature of God, and therefore eternal.
The independence of the principles of morality upon the mere
will of the Supreme Governor is proclaimed in all his writings.”
The Divine will is the fountain of efficiency, the Divine reason,
the fountain of law. God is no more the creator of virtue than
he is the creator of truth.
And inasmuch as man is a partaker of the Divine essence,
and as the ideas which dwell in the human reason are “copies”
of those which dwell in the Divine reason, man may rise to the
apprehension and recognition of the immutable and eternal
principles of righteousness, and “by communion with that
which is Divine, and subject to the law of order, may become
himself a subject of Order, and divine, so far as it is possible for
man.”
The attainment of this consummation is the grand purpose
of the Platonic philosophy. Its ultimate object is “the purifica-
tion of the soul,” and its pervading spirit is the aspiration after
perfection. The whole system of Plato has therefore an emi-
nently ethical character. It is a speculative philosophy directed
to a practical purpose.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Now wisdom (gopia) is
expressly declared by Plato to belong alone to the Supreme
Divinity,” who alone can contemplate reality in a direct and
immediate manner, and in whom, as Plato seems often to inti-
mate, knowledge and being coincide. Philosophy is the aspi-
ration of the soul after this wisdom, this perfect and immutable
truth, and in its realization it is a union with the Perfect Wis-
dom through the medium of a divine affection, the Zoze of which
Plato so often speaks. The eternal and unchangeable Essence
which is the proper object of philosophy is also endowed with
moral attributes. He is not only “the Being,” but “the Good”
(rö &yabóv), and all in the system of the universe which can be
the object of rational contemplation, is an emanation from that
* In “Euthyphron” especially. * “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xiii.
* “Phaedrus,” $145.
G R EEF PHIL OS O PHY. . 385
goodness. The love of truth is therefore the love of Good, and
the love of Good is the love of truth. Philosophy and morality
are thus coincident. “Philosophy is the love of Perfect Wis-
dom; Perfect Wisdom and Perfect Goodness are identical ; the
Perfect Good is God; philosophy is the Zove of God.” Ethic-
ally viewed, it is this one motive of love for the Supreme Wis-
dom and Goodness, predominating over and purifying and as-
similating every desire of the Soul, and governing every move-
ment of the man, raising man to a participation of and com-
munion with Divinity, and restoring him to “the likeness of
God.” “This flight,” says Plato, “consists in resembling God
(ópotooric 05.j), and this resemblance is the becoming just and
holy with wisdom.” “This assimilation to God is the enfran-
chisement of the divine element of the soul. To approach to
God as the substance of truth is Science; as the substance of
goodness in truth is Wisdom, and as the substance of Beauty
in goodness and truth is Zoze.”
The two great principles which can be clearly traced as per-
vading the ethical system of Plato are—
i. 7%at no man is willingly evil."
2. 7%at every man is endued with the Žover of producing
changes in his moral character."
The first of these principles is the counterpart ethical ex-
pression of his theory of immutable Being. The second is the
counterpart of his theory of phenomenal change, or mere Be-
coming.
The Soul of man is framed after the patterfi of the immutable
ideas of the fusā, and the true, and the good, which dwell in the
Eternal Mind—that is, it is made in the image of God. The
soul in its ultimate essence is formed of “the immutable” and
“the permanent.” The presence of the ideas of the just, and
the true, and the good in the reason of man, constitute him a
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 61.
* “Theaetetus,” $84.
* Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 277.
* “Timaeus,” ch. xlviii.
* “Laws,” bk. V. ch. i., bk. ix. ch. vi., bk. x, ch. xii.
25
386 C. ETRISTIANITY AND
moral nature; and it is impossible that he can cease to be a
moral being, for these ideas, having a permanent and immuta-
ble being, can not be changed. All the passions and affections
of the soul are merely phenomenal. They belong to the mor-
tal, the transitory life of man; they are in endless flow and
change, and they have no permanent reality. As phenomena,
they must, however, have some ground; and Plato found that
ground in the mysterious, instinctive longing for the good and
the true which dwells in the very essence of the soul. These
are the realities after which it strives, even when pursuing
pleasure, and honor, and wealth, and fame. All the restless-
ness of human life is prompted by a longing for the good. But
man does not clearly perceive what the good really is. The ra-
tional element of the Soul has become clouded by passion and
ignorance, and suffered an eclipse of its powers. Still, man
longs for the good, and bears witness, by his restlessness and
disquietude, that he instinctively desires it, and that he can find
no rest and no satisfaction in any thing apart from the knowl-
edge and the participation of the Supreme, the Absolute Good.
This, then, is the meaning of the oft-repeated assertion of
Plato “that no man is zwillingly evil,” viz., that no man deliber-
ately chooses evil as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, care-
ful to guard the doctrine from misconception. He readily
grants that acts of wrong are distinguished as voluntary and
involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor de-
merit, reward nor punishment.” But still he insists that no
man chooses evil in and by itself. He may choose it volun-
tarily as a means, but he does not choose it as an end. Every
volition, by its essential nature, pursues, at least, an apparent
good ; because the end of volition is not the immediate act,
but the object for the sake of which the act is undertaken.”
How is it, then, it may be asked, that men become evil?
The answer of Plato is, that the Soul has in it a principle of
change, in the power of regulating the desires—in indulging
them to excess, or moderating them according to the demands
* “Laws,” bk. ix, ch. vi. * “Gorgias,” $$ 52, 53.
G R E E K PHIL OS O PHY. 387
of reason. The circumstances in which the Soul is placed, as
connected with the sensible world by means of the body, pre-
sent an occasion for the exercise of that power, the end of this
temporal connection being to establish a state of moral disci-
pline and probation. The humors and distempers of the body
likewise deprave, disorder, and discompose the soul.” “Pleas-
ures and pains are unduly magnified; the democracy of the
passions prevails; and the ascendency of reason is cast down.”
Bad forms of civil government corrupt social manners, evil
education effects the ruin of the soul. Thus the soul is
changed—is fallen from what it was when first it came from
the Creator's hand. But the eternal Ideas are not utterly
effaced, the image of God is not entirely lost. The soul may
yet be restored by remedial measures. It may be purified
by knowledge, by truth, by expiations, by sufferings, and by
prayers. The utmost, however, that man can hope to do in
this life is insufficient to fully restore the image of God, and
death must complete the final emancipation of the rational ele-
ment from the bondage of the flesh. Life is thus a discipline
and a preparation for another state of being, and death the |
final entrance there.”
Independent of all other considerations, virtue is, therefore,
to be pursued as the true good of the soul. Wisdom, Forti-
tude, Temperance, Justice, the four cardinal virtues of the Pla-
tonic system, are to be cultivated as the means of securing the
purification and perfection of the inner man. And the ordi-
nary pleasures, “the lesser goods” of life, are only to be so far
pursued as they are subservient to, and compatible with, the
higher and holier duty of striving after “the resemblance to
God.”
* “Gorgias,” $$ 74–76. * “Phaedo,” $$ 130, 131.
388 C EIR IS TIA NITY AND
CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued).
| THE SOCRATIC SCHOOL (continued).
ARISTOTLE.
|RISTOTLE was born at Stagira, a Greek colony of
Thrace, B.C. 384. His father, Nicomachus, was a physi-
cian in the Court of Amyntas II., King of Macedonia, and is
reported to have written several works on Medicine and Natu-
ral History. From his father, Aristotle seems to have inherited
a love for the natural sciences, which was fostered by the cir-
cumstances which surrounded him in early life, and which ex-
erted a determining influence upon the studies of his riper years.
Impelled by an insatiate desire for knowledge, he, at seven-
teen years of age, repaired to Athens, the city of Plato and
the university of the world. Plato was then absent in Sicily;
on his return Aristotle entered his school, became an ardent
student of philosophy, and remained until the death of Plato,
B.C. 348. He therefore listened to the instructions of Plato
for twenty years.
The mental characteristics of the pupil and the teacher were
strikingly dissimilar. Plato was poetic, ideal, and in some de-
gree mystical. Aristotle was prosaic, systematic, and practi.
cal. Plato was intuitive and synthetical. Aristotle was logical
and analytical. It was therefore but natural that, to the mind
of Aristotle, there should appear something confused, irregular,
and incomplete in the discourses of his master. There was a
Strange Commingling of questions concerning the grounds of
morality, and Statements concerning the nature of science; of
inquiries concerning “real being,” and speculations on the or-
dering of a model Republic, in the same discourse. Ethics,
G REE K. PHILOSOPHY, 389
politics, ontology, and theology, are all comprised in his Dialec-
tic, which is, in fact, the one grand “science of the idea of the
good.” Now to the mind of Aristotle it seemed better, and
much more systematic, that these questions should be separa-
ted, and referred to particular heads; and, above all, that they
should be thoroughly discussed in an exact and settled termi-
nology. To arrange and classify all the objects of knowledge,
to discuss them systematically and, as far as possible, exhaust-
ively, was evidently the ambition, perhaps also the special
function, of Aristotle. He would survey the entire field of hu-
man knowledge ; he would study nature as well as humanity,
matter as well as mind, language as well as thought ; he would
define the proper limits of each department of study, and pre-
sent a regular statement of the facts and principles of each
science. And, in fact, he was the first who really separated
the different sciences and erected them into distinct systems,
each resting upon its own proper principſes. He distributed
philosophy into three branches: —(i.) Theoretic; (ii.) Ffficient;
(iii.) Practical. The Theoretic he divided into — 1. AEhysics;
2. Mathematics; 3. Theology, or the Prime Philosophy—the
science known in modern times as Metaphysics. The Efficient
embraces what we now term the arts, as-I. Zogic; 2. Rhetoric;
3. Poetics. The Practical comprises—1. AEthics; 2. Politics. On
all these subjects he wrote separate treatises. Thus, whilst
Plato is the genius of abstraction, Aristotle is eminently the
genius of classification.
Such being the mental characteristics of the two men—their
type of mind. So opposite—we are prepared to expect that, in
pursuing his inquiries, Aristotle would develop a different Or-
gamon from that of Plato, and that the teachings of Aristotle
will give a new direction to philosophic thought.
ARISTOTELIAN ORGANON.
Plato made use of psychological and logical analysis in order
to draw from the depth of consciousness certain fundamental
ideas which are inherent in the mind—born with it, and not
390 C EIAE IS TIA WITY AND
derived from sense or experience. These ideas he designates
“the intelligible species” (rù wootpaeva yévn) as opposed to “the
visible species”—the objects of sense. Such ideas or princi-
ples being found, he uses them as “starting-points" from
which he may pass beyond the Sensible world and ascend to
“the absolute,” that is, to God.” Having thus, by immediate
abstraction, attained to universal and necessary ideas, he de-
scends to the outer world, and attempts by these ideas to con-
struct an intellectual theory of the universe.”
Aristotle will reverse this process. He will commence with
sensation, and proceed, by induction, from the known to the un-
known.
The repetition of sensations produces recollection, recollec-
tion experience, and experience produces science.” “Science and
art result unto men by means of experience. . . .” “Art comes
into being when, from a number of experiences, one universal
opinion is evolved, which will embrace all similar cases. For
example, if you know that a certain remedy has cured Callias
of a certain disease, and that the same remedy has produced
the same effect on Socrates and on several other persons, that
is Experience; but to know that a certain remedy will cure all
persons attacked with that disease, is Art. Experience is a
knowledge of individual things (Töv kafféraara); art is that of
universals (Töv ka06\ov).”
Disregarding the Platonic notion of the unity of all Being
in the absolute idea, he fixed his immediate attention on the
manifoldness of the phenomenal, and by a classification of
all the objects of experience he sought to attain to “general
notions.” Concentrating all his attention on the individual,
the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from
the particular to the general, and then, by a strange paralo-
gism, “the universal’’ is confounded with “the general,” or, by
a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted
into the universal. Thus “induction is the pathway from par-
o
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xx. * “Timaeus,” ch. ix.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. i. * Ibid.
G R E E R PII II, OS OPII Y. 39 I
ticulars to universals.” But how universal and necessary
principles can be obtained by a generalization of limited expe-
riences is not explained by Aristotle. The experiences of a
lifetime, the experiences of the whole race, are finite and lim-
ited, and a generalization of these can only give the finite, the
limited, and at most, the general, but not the universal.
Aristotle admits, however, that there are ideas or principles
in the mind which can not be explained by experience, and we
are therefore entitled to an answer to the question—how are
these obtained: “Sensible experience gives us what is here,
there, now, in such and such a manner, but it is impossible for
it to give what is everywhere and at all times.” He tells us
further, that “science is a conception of the mind engaged in
universals, and in those things which exist of necessity, and
since there are principles of things demonstrable and of every sci-
ence (for science is joined with reason), it will be neither science,
nor art, nor prudence, which discovers the principles of science;
. . . . it must therefore be (voic) pure intellect,” or the intuitive
reason.” He also characterizes these principles as self-evident.
“First truths are those which obtain belief, not through others,
but through themselves, as there is no necessity to investigate
the ‘why’ in scientific principles, but each principle ought to
be credible by itself.” They are also necessary and etermal.
“Demonstrative Science is from necessary principles, and those
which are per se inherent, are necessarily so in things.” “We
have all a conception of that which can not subsist otherwise
than it does. . . . . The object of Science has a necessary exist-
ence, therefore it is effernal. For those things which exist in
themselves, by necessity, are all eternal.” But whilst Aristotle
admits that there are “immutable and first principles,” which
are not derived from sense and experience—“principles which
are the foundation of all science and demonstration, but which
* “Topics,” bk. i. ch. xii.; “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. iii.
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. xxxi. * “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. vi. &
“Topics,” bk. i ch, i. * “Post. Analytic,” blº. i. ch. vi.
* “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. iii. * Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xi.
t
392 C EIRISTIA WITY AND
are themselves indemonstrable,” because self-evident, neces-
sary, and eternal; yet he furnishes no proper account of their
genesis and development in the human mind, neither does he
attempt their enumeration. At one time he makes the intellect
itself their source, at another he' derives them from sense, expe-
rience, and induction. This is the defect, if not the inconsist-
ency, of his method.”
The human mind, he tells us, has two kinds of intelligence
—the passive intelligence (voic traffmrikóc), which is the receptacle
of forms (86FTucov Toi etēovg); and the active intelligence (voic
troumrukóc), which impresses the seal of thought upon the data
furnished by experience, and combines them into the unity of a
single judgment, thus attaining “general notions.” The pas-
sive intelligence (the “external perception ” of modern psy-
chology) perceives the individual forms which appear in the
external world, and the active intelligence (the intellect proper)
classifies and generalizes according to fixed laws or principles
inherent in itself; but of these fixed laws—Tpóra voipata—first
thoughts, or d ?riori ideas, he offers no proper account; they
are, at most, purely subjective. This, it would seem, was, in
effect, a return to the doctrine of Protagoras and his school,
“that man—the individual—is the measure of all things.” The
aspects under which objects present themselves in conscious-
ness, constitute our only ground of knowledge; we have no
direct, intuitive knowledge of Being in se. The noetic faculty
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. iii.
* Hamilton attempts the following mode of reconciling the contradictory
positions of Aristotle:
“On the supposition of the mind virtually containing, antecedent to all
experience, certain universal principles of knowledge, in the form of certain
necessities of thinking; still it is only by repeated and comparative experi-
ments that we compass the certainty; on the one hand, that such and such
cognitions can not but be thought as necessary, native generalities; and, on
the other, that such and such cognitions may or may not be thought, and
are, therefore, as contingent, factitious generalizations. To this process of
experiment, analysis, and classification, through which we attain to a scien-
tific knowledge of principles, it might be shown that Aristotle, not improp-
erly, applies the term Induction.”—“Philosophy,” p. 88.
* “On the Soul,” ch. vi.; “Ethics,” blº. vi. ch. i.
G REE K PHILOSOPHY, 393
-is si a regulative faculty; it furnishes the laws under which
we compare and judge, but it does not supply any original ele-
ments of knowledge. Individual things are the only real enti-
ties,' and “universals” have no separate existence apart from
individuals in which they inhere as attributes or properties.
They are Consequently pure mental conceptions, which are fixed
and recalled by general names. He thus substitutes a Species
of conceptual-nominalism in place of the realism of Plato. It is
true that “real being” (ro èv) is with Aristotle a subject of met-
aphysical inquiry, but the proper, if not the only subsistence, or
ovoia, is the form or abstract nature of things. “The essence
or very nature of a thing is inherent in the form and energy.”
The Science of Metaphysics is strictly conversant about these
abstract, intellectual forms, just as Natural Philosophy is con-
versant about external objects, of which the senses give us in-
formation. Our knowledge of these intellectual forms is, how-
ever, founded upon “beliefs” rather than upon immediate in-
tuition, and the objective certainty of Science, upon the subjec-
tive necessity of believing, and not upon direct apperception.
The points of contrast between the two méthods may now
be presented in a few sentences. Plato held that all our cog-
nitions are reducible to two elements—one derived from sense,
the other from pure reason ; one element particular, contingent,
and relative, the other universal, necessary, and absolute. By
an act of immediate abstraction Plato will eliminate the particu-
lar, contingent, and relative phenomena, and disengage the
universal, necessary, and absolute ideas which underlie and
determine all phenomena. These ideas are the thoughts of
the Divine Mind, according to which all particular and indi-
vidual existences are generated, and, as divine thoughts, they
are real and permanent existences. Thus by a process of im-
mediate abstraction, he will rise from particular and contingent
phenomena to universal and necessary principles, and from
these to the First Principle of all principles, the First Cause
of all causes—that is, to God.
* “Metaphysics,” bk, vi, ch. xiii. * Ibid., blº, vii. ch. iii.
394 C EIRISTIANITY AND
\
Aristotle, on the contrary, held that all our knowledge be-
gins with “the singular,” that is, with the particular and the
relative, and is derived from Sensation and experience. The
“sensible object,” taken as it is without any sifting and prob-
ing, is the basis of science, and reason is simply the architect
constructing science according to certain “forms” or laws in-
herent in mind. The object, then, of metaphysical science is
to investigate those “universal notions” under which the mind
conceives of and represents to itself external objects, and
speculates concerning them. Aristotle, therefore, agrees with
Plato in teaching “that science can only be a science of uni-
versals,” and “ that sensation alone can not furnish us with
scientific knowledge.” How, then, does he propose to attain
the knowledge of universal principles How will he perform
that feat which he calls “passing from the known to the un-
known 2" The answer is, by comparative abstraction. The uni-
versal being constituted by a relation of the object to the think-
ing Subject, that is, by a property recognized by the intelli-
gence alone, in virtue of which it can be retained as an object
of thought, and compared with other objects, he proposes to
compare, analyze, define, and classify the primary cognitions, and
thus evoke into energy, and clearly present those principles or
forms of the intelligence which he denominate “universals.”
As yet, however, he has only attained to “general notions,”
which are purely subjective, that is, to logical definitions, and
these logical definitions are subsequently elevated to the dig-
nity of “universal principles and causes” by a species of phil-
OSophic legerdemain. Philosophy is thus stripped of its meta-
physical character, and assumes a strictly logical aspect. The
key of the Aristotelian method is therefore the
ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC.
Pure Logic is the science of the ſormal laws of thought. Its
office is to ascertain the rules or conditions under which the
mind, by its own constitution, reasons and discourses. The
* “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. vi. * “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. xxxi.
G B E E R PETIT, OS O PET Y. 395
office of Applied Logic—of logic as an art—is “to form and
judge of conclusions, and, through conclusions, to establish
proof. The conclusions, however, arise from propositions, and
the propositions from conceptions.” It is chiefly under the
latter aspect that logic is treated by Aristotle. According to
this natural point of view he has divided the contents of the
logical and dialectic teaching in the different treatises of the
Organon.
The first treatise is the “Categories” or “Predicaments”—a
work which treats of the universal determinations of Being. It
is a classification of all our mental conceptions. As a matter
of fact, the mind forms notions or conceptions about those
natures and essences of things which present an outward image
to the senses, or those, equally real, which utter themselves to
the mind. These may be defined and classified ; there may
be general conceptions to which all particular conceptions are
referable. This classification has been attempted by Aristotle,
and as the result we have the ten “Categories” of Substance,
Quantity, Quality, A’elation, Złme, Place, Position, Possession,
Action, Passion. He does not pretend that this classification
is complete, but he held these “Predicaments” to be the most
universal expressions for the various relations of things, under
Some one of which every thing might be reduced.
The second treatise, “On Interpretation,” investigates lan-
guage as the expression of thought ; and inasmuch as a true
or false thought must be expressed by the union or separa-
tion of a subject and a predicate, he deems it necessary to dis-
cuss the parts of speech—the general term and the verb–and
the modes of affirmation and denial. In this treatise he de-
velops the nature and limitations of propositions, the mean-
ing of contraries and contradictions, and the force of affirma-
tions and denials in possible, conſingenſ, and necessary matter.
The third are the “Analytics,” which show how conclusions
are to be referred back to their principles, and arranged in the
order of their precedence.
The First or Prior Analytic presents the universal doctrine
396 C EIRISTIA WITY AND
of the Syllogism, its principles and forms, and teaches how we
must reason, if we would not violate the laws of our own mind.
The theory of reasoning, generally, with a view to accurate dem;
onstration, depends upon the construction of a perfect syllo-
gism, which is defined as “a discourse in which, certain things
being laid down, something else different from the premises
necessarily results, in consequence of their existence.” Con-
clusions are, according to their own contents and end, either
Apodeictic, which deal with necessary and demonstrable matter,
or ZDialectic, which deal with probable matter, or Soft/listical,
which are imperſect in matter or form, and announced, decep-
tively, as correct conclusions, when they are not. The doc-
trine of Apodeictic conclusions is given in the “Posterior Ana-
Zytic,” that of Dialectic conclusions in the “Zopics,” and that of
the Sophistical in the “Sophistica/A/enchi.”
Now, if Logic is of any value as an instrument for the dis-
covery of truth, the attainment of certitude, it must teach us
not only how to deduce conclusions from premises, but it must
certify to us the validity of the principles from whence we rea-
son; and this is attempted by Aristotle in the Posterior Ana-
lytic. This treatise opens with the following statement: “All
doctrine, and all intellectual discipline, arises from a prior or
pre-existent knowledge. This is evident, if we survey them
all; for both mathematical sciences, and also each of the arts,
are obtained in this manner. The same holds true in the case
of reasonings, whether through [deductive] Sy//ogism or through
Induction, for both accomplish the instruction they afford from
information previously known—the former (syllogistic reason-
ing) receiving it, as it were, from the traditions of the intelli-
gent, the latter (inductive reasoning) manifesting the universal
through the light of the singular.” Induction and Syllogism
are thus the grand instruments of logic.”
* “Prior Analytic,” bk. i. ch. i.; “Topics,” bk. i. ch. i.
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. i.
* “We believe all things through syllogism, or from induction.”—“Prior
Analytic,” bk. ii, ch. xxiii.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 397
Both these processes are based upon an anterior knowledge.
“Demonstrative science must be from things true, first, imme-
diate, more known than, prior to, and the causes of, the conclu-
sion, for thus there will be the appropriate first principles of
whatever is demonstrated.” The first principles of demon-
stration, the material of thought, must, consequently, be sup-
plied by some power or faculty of the mind other than that
which is engaged in generalization and deductive reasoning.
Whence, then, is this “anterior knowledge” derived, and what
tests or criteria have we of its validity?
I. In regard to deductive or syllogistic reasoning, the views
of Aristotle are very distinctly expressed.
Syllogistic reasoning “proceeds from generals to particu-
lars.” The general must therefore be supplied as the founda-
tion of the deductive reasoning. Whence, then, is this knowl-
edge of “the general” derived The answer of Aristotle is
that the universal major proposition, out of which the conclu-
sion of the syllogism is drawn, is itself necessarily the conclusion
of a £7 evious induction, and mediate/y or immediately an inference
—a collection from individual objects of sensation or of self.
consciousness. “Now,” says he, “demonstration is from uni-
versals, but induction from particulars. It is impossible, how-
ever, to investigate universals except through induction, since
things which are said to be from abstraction will be known
only by induction.” It is thus clear that Aristotle makes de-
duction necessarily defendent upon induction. He maintains that
the highest or most universal principles which constitute the
primary and immediate propositions of the former are furnish-
ed by the latter. $
2. General principles being thus furnished by induction, we
may now inquire whence, according to Aristotle, are the mate-
rials for induction derived 2 What is the character of that “an-
terior knowledge” which is the basis of the inductive process?
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. ii.
* Ibid., blº. i. ch. xviii.; “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. iii.
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. xviii.
398 C EIRISTIANITY AND
Induction, says Aristotle, is “the progression from singula
to universals.” It is an illation of the universal from the si
gular as legitimated by the laws of thought. All knowledg
therefore, begins with singulars—that is, with individual O
jects. And inasmuch as all knowledge begins with “indivi
ual objects,” and as the individual is constantly regarded 1
Aristotle as the “object of sense,” it is claimed that his do
trine is that all knowledge is derived from sensation, and th
science and art result to man (solely) by means of experien,
He is thus placed at the head of the empirical school of ph
losophy, as Plato is placed at the head of the ideal school.
This classification, however, is based upon a very superfici
acquaintance with the philosophy of Aristotle as a whole. Tl
practice, so commonly resorted to, of determining the charact
of the Aristotelian philosophy by the light of one or two pa
Sages quoted from his “Metaphysics,” is unjust both to Ari
totle and to the history of philosophic thought. We can n
expect to attain a correct understanding of the views of Ari
totle concerning the sources and grounds of all knowledg
without some attention to his psychology. A careful study (
his writings will show that the terms “sensation” (atoffmaic) an
“experience” (Épurelpía) are employed in a much more compr
hensive sense than is usual in modern philosophic writings.
“Sensation,” in its lowest form, is defined by Aristotle a
“an excitation of the soul through the body,” and, in its high,
form, as the excitation of the soul by any object of knowledg
In this latter form it is used by him as synonymous with “il
tuition,” and embraces all immediate intuitive perception
whether of Sense, consciousness, or reason. “The universe
derived from particulars, therefore we ought to have a sensibl
perception (a to 6matc) of these ; and this is intellect (voic).”
Intelligence proper, the faculty of first principles, is, in certai
respects, a Sense, because it is the source of a class of truth
which, like the perceptions of the senses, are immediately r
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. i. ch. xviii. * “IDe Somn.,” bk. i.
* “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. xi.; see also ch. vi.
G R E E K PEIII, OS O PET Y. 399
vealed as facts, to be received upon their own evidence. It
thus answers to the “sensus communis” of Cicero, and the
“Common Sense” of the Scottish school. Under this aspect,
“Sense is equal to or has the force of Science.” The term
“Experience” is also used to denote, not merely the perception
and remembrance of the impressions which external objects
make upon the mind, but as co-extensive with the whole con-
tents of consciousness—all that the mind does of its own native
energy, as well as all that it suffers from without. It is evi-
dently used in the Posterior Analytic (bk. ii. ch. xix.) to de-
scribe the whole process by which the knowledge of universals
is obtained. “From experience, or from every universal re-
maining in the soul, the principles of art and Science arise.”
The office of experience is “to furnish the principles of every
science”—that is, to evoke them into energy in the mind.
“Experience thus seems to be a thing almost similar to science
and art.” In the most general sense, “sensation” would thus
appear to be the immediate perception or intuition of facts and
principles, and “experience” the operation of the mind upon
these facts and principles, elaborating them into Scientific form
according to its own inherent laws. The “experience” of Aris-
totle is analogous to the “reflection” of Locke.
So much being premised, we proceed to remark that there
is a distinction perpetually recurring in the writings of Aristotle
between the elements or first principles of knowledge which
are “clearest in their own nature * and those which “are
clearest to our perception.” The causes or principles of
knowledge “are prior and more known to us in two ways, for
what is prior in nature is not the same as that which is prior to
us, nor that which is more known (simply in itself) the same as
that which is more known to us. Now I call things prior and
more known to us, those which are nearer to sense; and things
* “JDe Cen. Anim.” * “Prior Analytic,” bk. i. ch. xix.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. i.
* “Ethics,” bk. i. ch. iv.; “Metaphysics,” bk. ii. ch. i.; “Rhetoric,” bk. i.
ch. ii.; “Prior Analytic,” bk. ii. ch. xxiii.
4OO t- C EIRISTIANITY AND
prior and more known simply in themselves, those which are
remote from sense; and those things are most remote which are
especially universal, and those nearest which are singular; and
these are mutually opposed.” Here we have a distribution of
the first or prior elements of knowledge into two fundamentally
opposite classes.
(i.) The immediate or intuitive perceptions of sense.
(ii) 7%e immediate or intuitive apperceptions of Żure reason.
The objects of sense-perception are external, individual,
“nearest to sense,” and occasionally or contingently present to
sense. The objects of the intellect are inward, universal, and
the essential property of the soul. They are “remote from
sense,” “prior by nature;” they are “forms” essentially inher-
ent in the soul previous to experience; and it is the office of
experience to bring them forward into the light of conscious-
mess, or, in the language of Aristotle, “to evoke them from po-
tentiality into actuality.” And further, from the “prior” and
immediate intuitions of sense and intellect, all our secondary,
our Scientific and practical knowledge is drawn by logical
processes.
The Aristotelian distribution of the intellectual faculties
corresponds fully to this division of the objects of knowledge.
The human intellect is divided by Aristotle into,
I. ZVie Passive or Æeceptive Anſellect (vojc traffmrukóc).—Its
office is the reception of sensible impressions or images
(pavráopara) and their retention in the mind (pºvăpun).
These sensible forms or images are essentially immaterial.
“Each sensorium (aio 6 mTiptov) is receptive of the sensible
quality without the matter, and hence when the sensibles
themselves are absent, sensations and havragial remain.”
2. 77-e Active or Creative Zutellect (voic Townrikóc).—This is
the power or faculty which, by its own inherent power, im-
presses “form” upon the material of thought supplied by
sense-perception, exactly as the First Cause combines it, in
the universe, with the recipient matter.
* “Post, Analytic,” bk. i. ch. ii. * “IDe Anima,” blº. iii, ch. ii.
G REE K PHILOSOPEI Y. 4OI
“It is necessary,” says Aristotle, “that these two modes
should be opposed to each other, as matter is opposed to form,
and to all that gives form. The receptive reason, which is as
matter, becomes all things by receiving their forms. The cre-
ative reason gives existence to all things, as light calls color
into being. The creative reason transcends the body, being
capable of separation from it, and from all things; it is an
everlasting existence, incapable of being mingled with matter,
or affected by it; prior, and Subsequent to the individual mind.
The receptive reason is necessary to individual thought, but it
is perishable, and by its decay all memory, and therefore indi-
viduality, is lost to the higher and immortal reason.”
This “Active or Creative Intellect” is again further sub-
divided by Aristotle—
1. The Scientific (Éttormylovuków) part—the “virtue,” faculty,
or “habit of principles.” He also designates it as the “place
of principles,” and further defines it as the power “which
apprehends those existences whose principles can not be
otherwise than they are”—that is, self-evident, immutable,
and necessary truths”—the intuitive reason.
2. The ſeasoning (\oyiotików) part—the power by which
we draw conclusions from premises, and “contemplate con-
tingent matter”—the discursive reason.
The correlatives noetic and diamoetic, says Hamilton, would
afford the best philosophic designation of these two faculties;
the knowledge attained by the former is an “intuitive princi-
ple”—a truth at first hand; that obtained by the latter is a
“demonstrative proposition"—a truth at second hand.
The preceding notices of the psychology of Aristotle will
aid us materially in interpreting his remarks “Upon the Method
and Habits necessary to the ascertainment of Arinciples.”
“That it is impossible to have scientific knowledge through
demonstration without a knowledge of first immediate princi-
ples, has been elucidated before.” This being established, he
* “IDe Anima,” bk. iii. ch. v. * “Ethics,” bk. vi. ch. i. * Ibid.
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. ii. ch. xix., the concluding chapter of the Organon.
26
4O2 GIIRISTIANITY AND
proceeds to explain how that “knowledge of first, immediate
principles” is developed in the mind.
I. The knowledge of first principles is attained by the intui-
tion of sense—the immediate perception of external objects, as
the exciting or occasional cause of their development in the mind.
“Now there appears inherent in all animals an innate power
called sensible perception (atoffmotc); but sense being inherent,
in some animals a permanency of the sensible object is engen-
dered, but in others it is not engendered. Those, therefore,
wherein the sensible object does not remain have no knowl-
edge without sensible perception, but others, when they per-
ceive, retain one certain thing in the soul; . . . . with some, rea-
son is produced from the permanency (of the sensible impres-
sion), [as in man], but in others it is not [as in the brute].
From sense, therefore, as we say, memory is produced, and
from the repeated remembrance of the same thing we get ex-
perience. . . . From experience, or from every universal remain-
ing in ſhe soul—the one besides the many which in all of them
is one and the same—the principles of art and Science arise.
If experience is conversant with generation, the principles of
art; if with being, the principles of Science. . . . Let us again
explain : When one thing without difference abides, there is
then the first universal (notion) [developed] in the soul; for
the singular indeed is perceived by sense, but sense is [also] of
the universa/"—that is, the universal is immanent in the sensi-
ble object as a property giving it “form.” “It is manifest,
then, that primary things become necessarily known by induc-
tion, for thus sensible perception produces [develops or evokes]
the unizersa/.”
2. The knowledge of first principles is attained by the intui-
tion of pure intellect (vojc)—that is, “intellect itself is the principle
of science,” or, in other words, intellect is the efficient, essentia/
cause of the knowledge of first principles.
“Of those habits which are about intellect by which we as-
certain truth, some' are always true, but others" admit the false,
* The “noetic.” * The “dianoctic.”
G R E E R PITIL, O S O PET Y. 4O3
as opinion and reasoning. But science and (pure) intellect are
always true, and no other kind of knowledge, except intellect
[intellectual intuition], is more accurate than science. And
since the principles of demonstration are more known, and all
science is connected with reason, there could not be a science
Of principles. But since nothing can be more true than science,
except intellect, intellect will belong to principles. From these
[considerations] it is evident that, as demonstration is not the
principle of demonstration, so neither is science the principle
of science. If, then, we have no other true genus (of habit) be-
sides science, intellect will be the frinciple of science; it will also
be the principle (or cause of the knowledge) of the principle.”
The doctrine of Aristotle regarding “first principles” may
perhaps be summed up as follows: All demonstrative science
is based upon universal's “prior in nature”—that is, upon dº
priori, self-evident, necessary, and immutable principles. Our
knowledge of these “first and immediate principles” is depend-
ent primarily on intellect (voic) or intuitive reason, and second-
arily on sense, experience, and induction. Prior to experience,
the intellect contains these principles in itself potentially, as
“forms,” “laws,” “habitudes,” or “predicaments” of thought;
but they can not be “evoked into energy,” can not be revealed
in consciousness, except on condition of experience, and they
can only be scientifically developed by logical abstraction and
definition. The ultimate ground of all truth and certainty is
thus a mode of our own mind, a subjective necessity of think-
ing, and truth is not in things, but in our own minds.” “Ulti-
mate knowledge, as well as primary knowledge, the most per-
fect knowledge which the philosopher can attain, as well as the
point from which he starts, is still a proposition. All knowl-
edge seems to be included under two forms—knowledge that
it is so ; knowledge z0/y it is so. Neither of these can, of
course, include the knowledge at which Plato is aiming—knowl-
edge which is correlated with Being—a knowledge, not about
things or persons, but of them.”
* “Metaphysics,” blº. v. ch. iv. *Maurice’s “Ancient Philosophy,” p. 190.
4O4. CIIRISTIANITY AND
ARISTOTELIAN THEOLOGY.
Theoretical philosophy, “the Science which has truth for its
end,” is divided by Aristotle into Physics, Mathematics, and
Theology, or the First Philosophy, now commonly known as
“Metaphysics,” because it is beyond or above physics, and is
concerned with the primitive ground and cause of all things.”
In the former two we have now no immediate interest, but
with Theology, as “the science of the Divine,” the First Mov-
àng Cause, which is the source of all other causes, and the orig-
inal ground of all other things, we are specially concerned, in-
asmuch as our object is to determine, if possible, whether Greek
philosophy exerted any influence upon Christian thought, and
has bequeathed any valuable results to the Theology of modern
times.
“The Metaphysics” of Aristotle opens by an enumeration
of “the principles or causes” into which all existences can be
resolved by philosophical analysis. This enumeration is at
present to be regarded as provisional, and in part hypothetical
—a verbal generalization of the different principles which seem
to be demanded to explain the existence of a thing, or consti-
tute it what it is. These he sets down as–
I. Zhe Materia/ Cause (r) v WAmy Kai Tô intoksipewow)—the mat-
ter and subject—that out of which a given thing has been orig-
inated. “From the analogy which this principle has to wood
or Stone, or any actual matter out of which a work of nature
* “Physics are concerned with things which have a principle of motion
in themselves; mathematics speculate on permanent, but not transcenden-
tal and self-existent things; and there is another science separate from
these two, which treats of that which is immutable and transcendental, if
indeed there exists such a substance, as we shall endeavor to show that
there does. This transcendental and permanent substance, if it exist at all,
must surely be the sphere of the divine—it must be the first and highest
principle. Hence it follows that there are three kinds of speculative sci-
ence—Physics, Mathematics, and Theology.”—“Metaphysics,” bk. x, ch. vii.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. ii.
* Aittov—cause—is here used by Aristotle in the sense of “account of”
or “reason why.”
G R E E R PLIII, OS OPITY, 4O5
or of art is produced, the name ‘material' is assigned to this
class.” It does not always necessarily mean “matter” in the
now common use of the term, but “antecedents—that is, prin-
ciples whose inherence and priority is implied in any existing
thing, as, for example, the premises of a syllogism, which are
the material cause of the conclusion.” With Aristotle there
is, therefore, “matter as an object of sense,” and “matter as
an object of thought.”
2. ZVie Formal Cause (r) v obotav Kai Tô tº ºv gival)—the being
or abstract essence of a thing—that primary nature on which
all its properties depend. To this Aristotle gave the name of
eiðoc—the form or exemplar according to which a thing is pro-
duced.
3. 77te Moving or Efficient Cause (60sy &px) rijckwilaeoc)—
the origin and principle of motion—that by z0/ich a thing is
produced.
4. The Fina/ Cause (ró of £vekev Kai Tô &ya.0ów)—the good
end answered by the existence of any thing—that for the sake
of z0/hich any thing is produced—the évéra roi, or reason for it.”
Thus, for instance, in a house, the wood out of which it is pro-
duced is the matter (i)\m), the idea or conception according to
which it is produced is the form (sióoc—poppí), the builder who
erects the house is the efficient cause, and the reason for its pro-
duction, or the end of its existence is the final cause.
Causes are, therefore, the elements into which the mind re-
Solves its first rough conception of an object. That object
is what it is, by reason of the matter out of which it sprang,
the moving cause which gave it birth, the idea or form which
it realizes, and the end or object which it attains. The knowl-
edge of a thing implies knowing it from these four points of
view—that is, knowing its four causes or principles.
These four determinations of being are, on a further and
closer analysis, resolved into the fundamental antithesis of
MATTER and FORM.
* Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Aristotle;” “Post. Analytic,” bk. ii.
ch, xi. * “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. iii.
4O6 C EIR IS TIA NITY AND
}
“All things that are produced,” says Aristotle,” “are pro-
duced from something (that is, from matter), by something (that
is, form), and become something (the totality—to givoxov);” as,
for example, a statue, a plant, a man. To every subject there
belongs, therefore, first, matter (i)\m); secondly, form (uoppi).
The synthesis of these two produces and constitutes substance,
or obota. Matter and form are thus the two grand causes or
principles whence proceed all things. The formative cause is,
at the same time, the moving cause and the final cause ; for
it is evidently the element of determination which impresses
movement upon matter whilst determining it; and it is also
the end of being, since being only really exists when it has
passed from an indeterminate to a determinate state.
In proof that the eiðoc or form is an efficient principle operat-
ing in every object, which makes it, to our conception, what it
is, Aristotle brings forward the subject of generation or produc-
tion.” There are three modes of production—natural, artifi-
cial, and automatic. In natural production we discern at Once
a matter ; indeed Nature, in the largest sense, may be defined
as “that out of which things are produced.” Now the result
formed out of this matter or nature is a given substance—a
vegetable, a beast, or a man. But what is the producing cause
in each case ? Clearly something akin to the result. A man
generates a man, a plant produces another plant like to itself.
There is, therefore, implied in the resulting thing a productive
force distinct from matter, upon which it works. And this is
the eiðoc, or form. Let us now consider artificial production.
Here again the form is the producing power. And this is in
the soul. The art of the physician is the eiðoc, which produces
actual health ; the plan of the architect is the conception, which
produces an actual house. Here, however, a distinction arises.
In these artificial productions there is supposed a vömatc and a
Troimatc. The vömouc is the previous conception which the archi-
tect forms in his own mind ; the Trotmaic is the actual creation
of the house out of the given matter. In this case the concep-
* “Metaphysics,” bk, vi, ch. vii. * Ibid.
G R EEK PEIII, OSOPHY. 4O7
tion is the moving cause of the production. The form of the
statue in the mind of the artist is the motive or cause of the
movement by which the statue is produced ; and health must
be in the thought of the physician before it can become the
moving cause of the healing art. Moreover, that which is true
of artificial production or change is also true of spontaneous
production. For example, a cure may take place by the appli-
cation of warmth, and this result is accomplished by means of
friction. This warmth in the body is either itself a portion of
health, or something is consequent upon it which is like itself,
which is a portion of health. Evidently this implies the pre-
vious presence either of nature or of an artificer. It is also
clearly evident that this kind of generating influence (the auto-
matic) should combine with another. There must be a pro-
ductive power, and there must be something out of which it
is produced. In this case, then, there will be a ú)\m and an
eiðoc.”
From the above it appears that the efficient cause is regarded
by Aristotle as identical with the formal cause. So also the
final cause—the end for the sake of which any thing exists—
can hardly be separated from the perfection of that thing, that
is, from its conception or form. The desire for the end gives
the first impulse of motion ; thus the final cause of any thing
becomes identical with the good of that thing. “The moving
cause of the house is the builder, but the moving cause of the
builder is the end to be attained—that is, the house.” . From
such examples as these it would seem that the determinations
of form and end are considered by Aristotle as one, in so far
as both are merged in the conception of actuality; for he re-
garded the end of every thing to be its completed being—the
perfect realization of its idea or form. The only fundamental
determinations, therefore, which can not be wholly resolved
into each other are matter and form.”
The opposition of matter and form, with Aristotle, corre-
* Maurice’s “Ancient Philosophy,” pp. 205, 206.
* Schwegler’s “History of Philosophy,” pp. 120, 123.
408 C EIR IS TIA NIT Y. A NTD
|i
• *
sponds to the opposition between the element of generality and
ſ" the element of particularity. Matter is indeterminate; form is
determinate. Matter, abstracted from form, in thought, is en-
tirely without predicate and distinction ; form is that which
enters into the definition of every subject, and without which it
could not be defined. Matter is capable of the widest diver-
sity of forms, but is itself without form. Pure form is, in fact,
that which is without matter, or, in other words, it is the pure
conception of being. Matter is the necessary condition of the
existence of a thing; form is the essence of each thing, that in
virtue of which substance is possible, and without which it is
inconceivable. On the one side is passivity, possibility of ex-
istence, capacity of action ; on the other side is activity, actu-
ality, thought. The unity of these two in the realm of deter-
mined being constitutes every individual substance. The rela-
tion of matter and form, logically apprehended, is thus the rela-
tion of POTENTIALITY and ACTUALITY.
This is a further and indeed a most important step in the
Aristotelian theology. Matter, as we have seen, after all,
amounts to merely capacity for action, and if we can not dis-
cover some productive power to develop potentiality into actu-
ality, we look in vain for some explanation of the phenomena
around us. The discovery, however, of energy (êvépyeta), as a
principle of this description, is precisely what we wanted, and a
momentary glance at the actual phenomena will show its per-
fect identity with the eiðoc, or form.” “For instance, what is a
calm ? It is evenness in the surface of the sea. Here the Sea
is the subject, that is, the matter in capacity, but the evenness
is the energy or actuality; . . . . energy is thus as form.” The
, form (or idea) is thus an energy or actuality (trépysia); the
* “That which Aristotle calls ‘form' is not to be confounded with what
we may perhaps call shape [or figure]; a hand severed from the arm, for
instance, has still the outward shape of a hand, but, according to Aristo-
telian apprehension, it is only a hand now as to matter, and not as to form :
an actual hand, a hand as to form, is only that which can do the proper
work of a hand.”—Schwegler's “History of Philosophy,” p. 122.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. vii. ch. ii.
G B E E R PII II, OS O PIT Y. 4O9
\
\
matter is a capacity or potentiality (60 vapuc), requiring the co-
operation of the energy to produce a result.
These terms, which are first employed by Aristotle in their
philosophical signification, are characteristic of his whole sys-
tem. It is, therefore, importantawe should grasp their precise
philosophical import; and this can only be done by considering
them in the strictest relation to each other. It is in this rela-
tion they are defined by Aristotle. “Now évépyeta is the exist-
ence of a thing not in the sense of its potentially existing.
The term potentially we use, for instance, of the statue in the
block, and of the half in the whole (since it may be subtracted),
and of a person knowing a thing, even when he is not thinking
of it, but might be so ; whereas Évépyeta is the opposite. By
applying the various instances our meaning will be plain, and
one must not seek a definition in each case, but rather grasp
the conception of the analogy as a whole,_that it is as that
which builds to that which has a capacity for building; as the
waking to the sleeping; as that which sees to that which has
sight, but whose eyes are closed ; as the definite form to the
shapeless matter ; as the complete to the unaccomplished. In
this contrast, let the évépygia be set off as forming the one side,
and on the other let the potential stand. Things are said to
be in Évépygia not always in like manner (except so far as there
is an analogy, that as this thing is in this, and related to this,
So is that in that, or related to that); for sometimes it implies
motion as opposed to the capacity of motion, and sometimes com-
fleſe existence opposed to undeveloped maſſer.” As the term
80/apuc has the double meaning of “possibility of existence” as
well as “capacity of action,” so there is the double contrast of
“action’’ as opposed to the capacity of action; and “actual exist-
ence” opposed to possible existence or potentiality. To express
accurately this latter antithesis, Aristotle introduced the term
ëvréAéxsta"—entelechy, of which the most natural account is
that it is a compound of Év TéAét éxety—“being in a state of
* “Metaphysics,” bk. viii. ch. vi.
* “Entelechy indicates the perfected act, the completely actual.”—Schw.
4IO CIHIE IS TIANITY AND
perfection.” This term, however, rarely occurs in the “Meta-
physics,” whilst #vépysia is everywhere employed, not only to
express activity as opposed to passivity, but complete existence
as opposed to undeveloped matter.
“In Physics &vapuc answers to the necessary conditions for
the existence of any thing before that thing exists. It thus
corresponds to Öm, both to the TpóTm {\m—the first matter, or
matter devoid of all qualities, which is capable of becoming
any definite substance, as, for example, marble; and also to
the éoxárm iſ Am—or matter capable of receiving form, as marble
the form of the statue.” Marble then exists potentially in the
simple elements before it is marble. The statue exists poten-
tially in the marble before it is carved. All objects of thought
exist, either purely in potentiality, or purely in actuality, or
both in potentiality and in actuality. This division makes an
entire chain of all existence. At the one end is matter, the
Tpórm iſ Am which has a merely potential existence, which is
necessary as a condition, but which having no form and no
qualities, is totally incapable of being realized by the mind.
At the other end of the chain is pure form, which is not at all
matter, the absolute and the unconditioned, the eternal sub-
stance and energy without matter (ovoia &tówoc kai évépyeta ävév
êvváplewc), who can not be thought as non-existing—the self-
existent God. Between these two extremes is the whole row
of creatures, which out of potentiality evermore spring into
actual being.”
The relation of actuality to potentiality is the subject of an
extended and elaborate discussion in book viii., the general re-
Sults of which may be summed up in the ſollowing proposi-
tions:
I. Zhe relation of Actuality to Potentiality is as the Aerfect to
the Imperfect.—The progress from potentiality to actuality is
motion or production (kimotº or yévéatc). But this motion is
transitional, and in itself imperfect—it tends towards an end,
but does not include the end in itself. But actuality, if it implies
* Grant's Aristotle’s “Ethics,” vol. i. p. 184. * Id, ib., vol. i. p. 185.
G R EER PITILOSOPHY, 4 II
motion, has an end in itself and for itself; it is a motion desir-
able for its own sake." The relation of the potential to the
actual Aristotle exhibits by the relation of the unfinished to
the finished work, of the unemployed builder to the one at
work upon his building, of the seed-corn to the tree, of the man
who has the capacity to think, to the man actually engaged in
thought.” Potentially the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown-
up tree is the actuality; the potential philosopher is he who is
not at this moment in a philosophic condition; indeed, every
thing is potential which possesses a principle of development,
or of change. Actuality or entelechy, on the other hand, indi-
cates the perfect act, the end gained, the completed actual ; that
activity in which the act and the completeness of the act fall
together—as, for example, to see, to think, where the acting
and the completed act are one and the same.
2. The Zeelation of Actuality to Potentiality is a causal /čela-
tion.—A thing which is endued with a simple capacity of being
may nevertheless not actually exist, and a thing may have a
capacity of being and really exist. Since this is the case, there
must ensue between non-being and real being some such prin-
ciple as energy, in order to account for the transition or change.”
Energy has here some analogy to motion, though it must not
be confounded with motion. Now you can not predicate either
motion or energy of things which are not. The moment energy
is added to them they are. This transition from potentiality
to actuality must be through the medium of Such principles as
propension or free will, because propension or free will possess
in themselves the power of originating motion in other things."
3. 7%e Acelation of Actuality and Potentiality is a Relation of
Priority.—Actuality, says Aristotle, is prior to potentiality in
the order of reason, in the order of substance, and also (though
not invariably) in the order of time. The first of all capacities
is a capacity of energizing or assuming a state of activity; for
example, a man who has the capacity of building is one who is
“Metaphysics,” bk. wiii. ch. vi. * Ibid., blº. viii. ch. vi.
* Ibid., bk. viii, ch. iii. “Ibid., blº. viii. ch. v.
4 I2 C EIR IS TIA W IT Y. AND
:
skilled in building, and thus able to use his energy in the art
of building.” The primary energizing power must precede that
which receives the impression of it, Form being older than
Matter. But if you take the case of any particular person or
thing, we say that its capacity of being that particular person
or thing precedes its being so actually. Yet, though this is the
case in each particular thing, there is always a foregone energy
presumed in some other thing (as a prior Seed, plant, man) to
which it owes its existence. One pregnant thought presents
itself in the course of the discussion which has a direct bearing
upon our subject. At vapuc has been previously defined as “a
principle of motion or change in another thing in So far forth as
it is another thing”—that is, it is fitted by nature to have mo-
tion imparted to it, and to communicate motion to something
else. But this motion wants a resting-place. There can be
no infinite regression of causes. There is some primary 30yapuc
presupposed in all others, which is the beginning of change.
This is pūgic, or nature. But the first and original cause of all
motion and change still precedes and surpasses nature. The
final cause of all potentiality is energy or actuality. The one
proposed is prior to the means through which the end is ac-
complished. A process of actualization, a tendency towards
completeness or perfection (TéAoc) presupposes an absolute
actuality which is at once its beginning and end. “One ener-
gy is invariably antecedent to another in time, up to that which
is primarily and eternally the Moving Cause.”
And now having laid down these fundamental principles
of metaphysical Science, as preparatory to Theology, Aristotle
proceeds to establish the conception of the ABSOLUTE or DI-
VINE SPIRIT as the effernal, immutable Substance, the immateria/
2nergy, the unchangeable Form of Forms, the first moving Cause.
I. Zhe Ontological Form of Proof–It is necessary to con-
ceive an eternal and immutable substance—an actuality which
is absolute and prior, both logically and chronologically, to all
* “Metaphysics,” bk. viii, ch. viii. * Ibid., bk. iv. ch. xii.
* Ibid., bk. viii. ch. viii.
G. R. E. E. K. PEIILOSOPEI Y. 4IS
potentiality; for that which is potential is simply contingent,
it may just as easily not be as be ; that which exists only in
capacity is temporal and corruptible, and may cease to be.
Matter we know subsists merely in capacity and passivity, and
without the operation of Energy (Évépyeta), or the formative
cause, would be to us as nonentity. The phenomena of the
world exhibits to us the presence of Energy, and energy pre-
supposes the existence of an eternal substance. Furthermore,
matter and potentiality are convertible terms, therefore the pri-
mal Energy or Actuality must be immaterial.”
2. The Cosmological Form of Proof–It is impossible that
there should be motion, genesis, or a chain of causes, except on
the assumption of a first Moving Cause, since that which ex-
ists only in capacity can not, of itself energize, and conse-
quently without a principle of motion which is essentially ac-
tive, we have only a principle of immobility. The principle
“ex nihilo nihil” forbids us to assume that motion can arise
out of immobility, being out of non-being. “How can matter
be put in motion if nothing that subsists in energy exist, and
is its cause * All becoming, therefore, necessarily supposes
that which has not become, that which is eternally self-active
as the principle and cause of all motion. There is no refuge
from the notion that all things are “born of night and nothing-
ness” except in this belief.”
The existence of an eternal principle subsisting in energy
is also demanded to explain the order of the world. “For
how, let me ask, will there prevail order on the supposition
that there is no subsistence of that which is eternal, and which
involves a separable existence, and is permanent.” “All
things in nature are constituted in the best possible manner.”
All things strive after “the good.” “The appearance of ends
and means in nature is a proof of design.” Now an end or
final cause presupposes intelligence,—implies a mind to see
* “Metaphysics,” bk. xi. ch. vi. *Ibid., blº. xi. ch. vii., viii.
“Ibid., blº. X. ch. ii. * “Ethics,” bk. i. ch. ix.
* “Nat. Ausc.,” bk. ii. ch. viii.
4I4. C H RISTIA NITY AND
and desire it. That which is “fair,” “beautiful,” “good,” an
“object of desire,” can only be perceived by Mind. The
“final cause ’’ must therefore subsist in that which is prior and
immovable and eternal ; and Mind is “ that substance which
subsists absolutely, and according to energy.” “The First
Mover of all things, moves all things without being moved,
being an eternal substance and energy; and he moves all
things as the object of reason and of desire, or love.” -
3. The Moral Form of Proof–So far as the relation of po-
tentiality and actuality is identical with the relation of matter
and form, the argument for the existence of God may be thus
presented: The conception of an absolute matter without form,
involves the supposition of an absolute form without matter.
And since the conception of form resolves itself into motion,
conception, purpose or end, so the Eternal One is the absolute
principle of motion (the Tpórov Kuvojv), the absolute conception
or pure intelligence (the pure ti jv ćival), and the absolute
ground, reason, or end of all being. All the other predicates
of the First Cause follow from the above principles with logical
necessity. - à d
(i.) He is, of course, pure intellect, because he is absolutely
immaterial and free from nature. He is active intelligence,
because his essence is pure actuality. He is self-contempla-
ting and self-conscious intelligence, because the divine thought
can not attain its actuality in any thing extrinsic ; it would de-
pend on something else than self—some potential existence
for its actualization. Hence the famous definition of the ab-
solute as “the thought of thought” (vámaic voňaetoc).” “And
therefore the first and actual perception by mind of Mind it.
self, doth subsist in this way throughout all eternity.”
(ii.) He is also essential life. “The principle of life is inher-
ent in the Deity, for the energy or active exercise of mind
constitutes life, and God constitutes this energy; and essential
* “Metaphysics,” bk. xi. ch. vii. * Ibid.
* Schwegler’s “History of Philosophy,” p. 125.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. xi, ch. ix. .
G R E E K PHILOSOPHY. 4I5
energy belongs to God as his best and everlasting life. Now
our statement is this—that the Deity is a living being that is
everlasting and most excellent in nature, so that with the Deity
life and duration are uninterrupted and eternal ; for this con-
stitutes the essence of God.”
(iii.) Onity belongs to him, since multiplicity implies matter;
and the highest idea or form of the world must be absolutely
immaterial.” The Divine nature is “devoid of parts and indi-
visible, for magnitude can not in any way involve this Divine
nature ; for God imparts motion through infinite duration, and
nothing finite—as magnitude is—can be possessed of an infi-
nite capacity.” -
(iv.) He is immovable and ever abideth the same; since other-
wise he could not be the absolute mover, and the cause of all
becoming, if he were subject to change.” God is impassive
and unalterable (&Taô)c kai &va\\otorov); for all such notions
as are involved in passion or alteration are outside the sphere
of the Divine existence."
(v.) He is the ever-blessed God—“The life of God is of a
kind with those highest moods which, with us, last a brief space,
it being impossible they should be permanent; whereas, with
Him they are permanent, since His ever-present consciousness
is pleasure itself. And it is because they are vivid states of
consciousness, that waking, and perception, and thought, are
the sweetest of all things. Now essential perception is the
perception of that which is most excellent, .... and the mind
perceives itself by participating of its own object of perception;
but it is a sort of coalescence of both that, in the Divine Mind,
creates a regular identity between the two, so that with God
both (the thinker and the thought, the subject and object) are
the same. In possession of this prerogative, He subsists in
the exercise of energy; and the contemplation of his own per-
fections is what, to God, must be most agreeable and excellent.
This condition of existence, after so excellent a manner, is what
* “Metaphysics,” bk. xi. ch. vii. * Ibid. * Ibid.
“Ibid., bk. xi, ch. viii. * Ibid., bk. xi. ch. vii.
416 C EIRISTIANITY AND
is “so astonishing to us when we examine God's nature, and the
more we do so the more wonderful that nature appears to us.
The mood of the Divine existence is essential energy, and, as
such, it is a life that is most excellent, blessed, and everlasting.”
The theology of Aristotle may be summed up in the follow-
ing sentences selected from book xi. of his “Metaphysics:”
“This motionless cause of motion is a necessary being ; and,
by virtue of such necessity, is the all-perfect being. This all-
pervading principle penetrates heaven and all nature. It eter-
nally possesses perfect happiness; and its happiness is in
action. This primal mover is immaterial; for its essence is
in energy. It is pure thought—thought thinking itself—the
thought of thought. The activity of pure intelligence—such is
the perfect, eternal life of God. This primal cause of change,
this absolute perfection, moves the world by the universal de-
sire for the absolute good, by the attraction exercised upon it by
the Eternal Mind—the serene energy of Divine Intelligence.”
It can not be denied that, so far as it goes, this conception
of the Deity is admirable, worthy, and just. Viewed from a
Christian stand-point, we at once concede that it is essentially
defective. There is no clear and distinct recognition of God
as Creator and Governor of the universe; he is chiefly regarded
as the Life of the universe—the Intellect, the Energy—that
which gives excellence, and perfection, and gladness to the
whole system of things. The Theology of Aristotle is, in fact,
metaphysical rather than practical. He does not contemplate
the Deity as a moral Governor. Whilst Plato speaks of “be-
ing made like God through becoming just and holy,” Aristotle
asserts that “all moral virtues are totally unworthy of being
ascribed to God.” He is not the God of providence. He
dwells alone, Supremely indifferent to human cares, and inter-
ests, and Sorrows. He takes no cognizance of individual men,
and holds no intercourse with man. The God of Aristotle is
not a being that meets and satisfies the wants of the human
heart, however well it may meet the demands of the reason.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. xi. ch. vii. * “Ethics,” bk. x. ch. viii.
G R E E R PLIII, OS O PITY. 4I'7
Morality has no basis in the Divine nature, no eternal type in
the perfections and government of God, and no supports and
aids from above. The theology of Aristotle foreshadows the
character of the
ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS.
We do not find in Aristotle any distinct recognition of an
eternal and immutable morality, an absolute right, which has
its foundation in the nature of God. Plato had taught that
there was “an absolute Good, above and beyond all existence
in dignity and power;” which is, in fact, “the cause of all exist-
ence and all knowledge,” and which is God; that all other
things are good in proportion as they “partake of this absolute
Good ;” and that all men are so far good as they “resemble
God.” But with this position Aristotle joins issue. After
stating the doctrine of Plato in the following words—“Some
have thought that, besides all these manifold goods upon earth,
there is some absolute good, which is the cause to all these of
their being good”—he proceeds to criticise that idea, and
concludes his argument by saying—“we must dismiss the
idea at present, for if there is any one good, universal and
generic, or transcendental and absolute, it obviously can never
be realized nor possessed by man; whereas something of this
latter kind is what we are inquiring after.” He follows up
these remarks by saying that “Perhaps the knowledge of the
idea may be regarded by some as useful, as a pattern (trapá-
Östypa) by which to judge of relative good.” Against this he
argues that “There is no trace of the arts making use of any
such conception ; the cobbler, the carpenter, the physician, and
the general, all pursue their vocations without respect to the ab-
solute good, nor is it easy to see how they would be benefited by
apprehending it.” The good after which Aristotle would in-
quire is, therefore, a relative good, since the knowledge of the
absolute good can not possibly be realized.
Instead, therefore, of seeking to attain to “a transcendental
* “Ethics,” blº. i. ch. vi.
27
418 CITE IS TIA WITY AND
and absolute good”—a fundamental idea of right, which may
be useful as a paradigm by which we may judge of relative
good, he addresses himself solely to the question, “what is
good for man”—what is the good attainable in action ? And
having identified the Chief Good with the final and perfect end
of all action, the great question of the Ethics is, “What is the
end of human action ? (ri êort Tô Töv Tpakrów réNoc).”
Now an end or final cause implies an intelligence—implies
a mind to perceive and desire it. This is distinctly recognized
by Aristotle. The question, therefore, naturally arises—is that
end fixed for man by a higher intelligence, and does it exist for
man both as an idea and as an ideal Can man, first, intellec-
tually apprehend the idea, and then consciously strive after its
realization ? Is it the duty of man to aim at ſulfilling the pur-
poses of his Creator? To this it may be answered that Aris-
totle is not at all explicit as to God’s moral government of the
world. “Moral government,” in the now common acceptation
of the term, has no place in the system of Aristotle, and the
idea of “duty” is scarcely recognized. He considers “the
good” chiefly in relation to the constitution and natural con-
dition of man. “It is,” says he, “the end towards which naſure
fends.” As physical things strive unconsciously after the end
of their existence, so man strives after the good attainable in
liſe. Socrates had identified virtue and knowledge, he had
taught that “virtue is a Science.” Aristotle contended that
virtue is an art, like music and architecture, which must be at-
tained by exercise. It is not purely intellectual, it is the bloom
of the physical, which has become ethical. As the flower of
the field, obeying the laws of its organization, springs up,
blooms, and attains its own peculiar perfection, so there is an
instinctive desire (öpeśtc) in the soul which at first unconscious-
ly yearns after the good, and subsequently the good is sought
with full moral intent and insight. Aristotle assumes that the
desires or instincts of man are so framed as to imply the ex-
istence of this end (réNoc).” And he asserts that man can only
* “Ethics,” blº, i. ch. xiii. *Ibid., bl. i. ch. ii.
G B E E K PETII, OS O PETY. 4I9
realize it in the sphere of his own proper functions, and in ac-
cordance with the laws of his own proper nature and its har-
monious development." It is not, then, through instruction, or .
through the perfection of knowledge, that man is to attain the
good, but through exercise and habit (300c). By practice of
moral acts we become virtuous, just as by practice of building
and of music, we become architects and musicians; for the
habit, which is the ground of moral character, is only a fruit of
oft-repeated moral acts. Hence it is by these three things—
nature, habit, reason—that men become good.
Aristotle's question, therefore, is, What is the chief good for
man as man 2 not what is his chief good as a spiritual and an
immortal being 2 or what is his chief good as a being related to
and dependent upon God 2 And the conclusion at which he
arrives is, that it is the absolute satisfaction of our whoſe nature—
that which men are agreed in calling happiness. This happi-
ness, however, is not mere sensual pleasure. The brute shares
this in common with man, therefore it can not constitute the
happiness of man. Human happiness must express the com-
pleteness of rational existence. And inasmuch as intelligence
is essential activity, as the soul is the enſelechy of the body,
therefore the happiness of man can not consist in a mere pas-
sive condition. It must, therefore, consist in Žerfect activity in
well-doing, and especially in contemplative thought,” or as Ar-
istotle defines it—“ Zł is a perfect fractical activity in a perfect
life.” His conception of the chief good has thus two sides,
one internal, that which exists in and for the consciousness—a
“complete and perfect life,” the other external and practical.
The latter, however, is a means to the former. That complete

-*.*.*.* :-
* “Ethics,” bk. i. ch. vii.
* “If it be true to say that happiness consists in doing well, a life of ac-
tion must be best both for the state and the individual. But we need not,
as some do, suppose that a life of action implies relation to othcrs, or that
those only are active thoughts which are concerned with the results of ac-
tion; but ſar rathcr we must consider those speculations and thoughts to be
So which have their eyed in themselves, and which are for their own sake.”—“
“Politics,” bk. vii. ch. iii.
* “Ethics,” bk. i. ch. x.
42O C EIR IS TIA WIT Y. A WD
*
{
and perfect life is the complete satisfaction and perfection of
our rational nature. It is a state of peace which is the crown
of exertion. It is the realization of the divine in man, and con-
stitutes the absolute and all-sufficient happiness." A good ac-
tion is thus an End-in-itself (TéAstov TéAoc) inasmuch as it se-
cures the perfection of our nature; it is that for the sake of which
our moral faculties before existed, hence bringing an inward
pleasure and satisfaction with it; something in which the mind
can rest and fully acquiesce; Something which can be pro-
nounced beautiful, fitting, honorable, and perfect.
From what has been already stated, it will be seen that the
Aristotelian conception of Virtue is not conformity to an abso-
lute and immutable standard of right. It is defined by him as
the observation of the right mean (usgörmc) in action—that is, the
right mean relatively to ourselves. “Virtue is a habit delib-
erately choosing, existing as a mean (uégov) which refers to us,
and is defined by reason, and as a prudent man would define
it; and it is a mean between two evils, the one consisting in
excess, the other in defect; and further, it is a mean, in that
one of these falls short of, and the other exceeds, what is right
both in passions and actions; and that virtue both finds and
chooses the mean.” The perfection of an action thus consists
in its containing the right degree—the true mean between too
much, and too little. The law of the plea &rmc is illustrated by
the following examples: Man has a fixed relation to pleasure
and pain. In relation to pain, the true mean is found in nei-
ther fearing it nor courting it, and this is fortitude. In relation
to pleasure, the true mean stands between greediness and in-
difference ; this is femperance. The true mean between prodi-
gality and narrowness is liberality; between simplicity and cun-
ning is prudence; between suffering wrong and doing wrong is
justice. Extending this law to certain qualifications of temper,
Speech, and manners, you have the portrait of a graceful Gre-
cian gentleman. Virtue is thus froportion, grace, harmony,
beauty in action.
* “Ethics,” bk. x, ch. viii. * Ibid., blº. ii. ch. vi.
y
G R E E R PHILOSOPITY. 42 I
It will at once be seen that this classification has no stable
foundation. It furnishes no ultimate standard of right. The
mean is a wavering line. It differs under different circumstances
and relations, and in different times and places. That mean
which is sufficient for one individual is insufficient for another.
The virtue of a man, of a slave, and of a child, is respectively
different. There are as many virtues as there are circumstances
in life; and as men are ever entering into new relations, in
which it is difficult to determine the correct method of action,
the separate virtues can not be limited to any definite number.
Imperfect as the ethical system of Aristotle may appear to
us who live in Christian times, it must be admitted that his
writings abound with just and pure Sentiments. His science
of Ethics is a discipline of human character in order to human
happiness. And whilst it must be admitted that it is directed
solely to the improvement of man in the present life, he aims
to build that improvement on pure and noble principles, and
seeks to elevate man to the highest perfection of which he
could conceive. “And no greater praise can be given to a
work of heathen morality than to say, as may be said of the
ethical writings of Aristotle, that they contain nothing which a
Christian may dispense with, no precept of life which is not an
element of Christian character; and that they only fail in ele-
vating the heart and the mind to objects which it needed Di-
vine Wisdom to reveal.”
* Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Aristotle.”
422 C EII?ISTIANITY A ND
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ATHENS (continued). &
POST-SOCRATIC SCHOOL.
EPICURUS AND ZENO.
HILOSOPHY, after the time of Aristotle, takes a new
direction. In the pre-Socratic Schools, we have seen it
was mainly a philosophy of nature; in the Socratic school it
was characterized as a philosophy of mind; and now in the
post-Socratic schools it becomes a philosophy of life—a moral
philosophy. Instead of aiming at the knowledge of real Being
—of the permanent, unchangeable, eternal principles which
underlie all phenomena, it was now content to aim, chiefly, at
individual happiness. The primary question now discussed, as
of the most vital importance, is, What is the ultimate standard
by which, amid all the diversities of human conduct and opin-
ion, we may determine what is right and good in individual
and social life
This remarkable change in the course of philosophic in-
quiry was mainly due—
1st. To the altered circumstances of the times. An age of civil
disturbance and political intrigue succeeded the Alexandrian
period. The different states of Greece lost their independence,
and became gradually subject to a foreign yoke. Handed over
from one domination to another, in the struggles of Alexander's
lieutenants, they endeavored to reconquer their independence
by forming themselves into confederations, but were powerless
to unite in the defense of a common cause. The Achaean and
Etolian leagues were weakened by internal discords; and it
was in vain that Sparta tried to recover her ancient liberties.
G RE EX PHILOSOPHY. - 423
Divided amongst themselves, the smaller states invoked the
aid of dangerous allies—at one time appealing to Macedon, at
another to Egypt. In this way they prepared for the total
ruin of Greek liberty, which was destined to be extinguished by
|Rome.” *
During this period of hopeless turmoil and social disorder,
all lofty pursuits and all great principles were lost sight of and
abandoned. The philosophic movement followed the down-
ward course of Society, and men became chiefly concerned for
their personal interest and safety. The wars of the Succession
almost obliterated the idea of society, and philosophy was
mainly directed to the “securing of personal happiness; it be-
came, in fact, “the art of making one's self happy.” The sad
reverses to which the Grecian mind had been subjected pro-
duced a feeling of exhaustion and indifference, which soon re-
flected itself in the philosophy of the age. *
2d. In connection with the altered circumstances of the age,
we must also take account of the aftgrent failure of the Socratic
method to solve the problem of Being. -
The teaching of Aristotle had fostered the suspicion that
the dialectic method was a failure, and thus prepared the way
for a return to sensualism. He had taught that individuals
alone have a real existence, and that the “essence” of things
is not to be sought in the elements of unity and generality, or
in the idea, as Plato taught, but in the elements of diversity
and speciality. And furthermore, in opposition to Plato, he
had taught his disciples to attach themselves to sensation, as
the source of all knowledge. As the direct consequence of
this teaching, we find his immediate successors, Dicearchus
and Straton, deliberately setting aside “the god of philosophy,”
affirming “that a divinity was unnecessary to the explanation
of the existence and order of the universe.” Stimulated by the
Social degeneracy of the times, the characteristic skepticism of
the Greek intellect bursts forth anew. As the skepticism of
the Sophists marked the close of the first period of philoso-
* Pressensé, “Religions before Christ,” pp. 136–140.
424 C EIR IS TIA NITY AND
phy, so the skepticism of Pyrrhonism marked the close of the
second. The new skepticism arrayed Aristotle against Plato,
as the earlier skeptics arrayed atomism against the doctrine of
the Eleatics. They naturally said: “We have been seeking a
long time ; what have we, gained Have we obtained any
thing certain and determinate 2 Plato says we have. But
Aristotle and Plato do not agree. May not our opinion be as
good as theirs? What a diversity of opinions have been pre-
sented during the past three hundred years One may be as
good as another, or they may be all alike untrue !” Timon
and Pyrrhon declared that, of each thing, it might be said to
be, and not to be ; and that, consequently, we should cease tor-
menting ourselves, and seek to obtain an absolute calm, which
they dignified with the name of aſaraxie. Beholding the Over-
throw and disgrace of their country, surrounded by examples
of pusillanimity and corruption, and infected with the Spirit of
the times themselves, they wrote this maxim : “Nothing is in-
famous ; nothing is in itself just ; laws and customs alone Con-
stitute what is justice and what is iniquity.” Having reached
this extreme, nothing can be too absurd, and they cap the cli-
max by saying, “We assert nothing; no, not even that we as-
sert nothing !”
And yet there must some function, undoubtedly, remain for
the “wise man” (goſpóc). w
Reason was given for some purpose. Philosophy must have
Some end. And inasmuch as it is not to determine specula-
tive questions, it must be to determine practical questions.
May it not teach men to act rather than to think? The philos-
Opher, the Schools, the disciples, survive the darkening flood of
skepticism. - * ,
Three centuries before Christ, the Peripatetic and Platonic
Schools are succeeded by two other schools, which inherit their
importance, and which, in other forms, and by an under-cur-
rent, perpetuate the disputes of the Peripatetics and Platonists,
namely, the Epicureans and Stoics. With Aristotle and Plato,
philosophy embraced in, its circle nature, humanity, and God;
G B E E K PHILOSOPEI Y. 425
*
but now, in the systems of Epicurus and Zeno, moral philoso-
phy is placed in the foreground, and assumes the chief, the
overshadowing pre-eminence. The conduct of life—morality
—is now the grand subject of inquiry, and the great theme of
discourse. -
In dealing with morals two opposite methods of inquiry were
possible:
I. Zoſudge of the quality of actions by their RESULTS.
2. To search for the quality af actions in the actions them-
se/ves. -
Utility, which in its last analysis is Pleasure, is the test of
right, in the first method ; an assumed or discovered Zaw of
AWature, in the second. If the world were perfect, and the bal-
ance of the human faculties undisturbed, it is evident that both
systems would give identical results. As it is, there is a ten-
dency to error on each side, which is fully developed in the
rival schools of the Epicureans and Stoics, who practically
divided the suffrages of the mass of educated men until the
coming of Christ.
EPICUREANS.
EPICURUS was born B.C. 342, and died B.C. 270. He
purchased a Garden within the city, and commenced, at
thirty-six years of age, to teach philosophy. The Platonists
had their academic Grove : the Aristotelians walked in the
Lyceum : the Stoics occupied the Porch : the Epicureans had
their Garden, where they lived a tranquil life, and seem to
lave had a community of goods.
There is not one of all the various founders of the ancient
philosophical schools whose memory was cherished with So
much veneration by his disciples as that of Epicurus. For
several centuries after his death, his portrait was treated by
them with all the honors of a sacred relic: it was carried
about with them in their journeys, it was hung up in their
schools, it was preserved with reverence in their private cham-
bers; his birthday was celebrated with sacrifices and other re-
426 CHRISTIANITY AND
ligious observances, and a special festival in his honor was held
every month.
So much honor having been paid to the memory of Epicu-
rus, we naturally expect that his works would have been pre-
served with religious care. He was one of the most prolific of
the ancient Greek writers. Diogenes calls him “a most volu-
minous writer,” and estimates the number of works composed
by him at no less than three hundred, the principal of which
he enumerates.' But Out of all this prodigious collection, not
a single book has reached us in a complete, or at least an in-
dependent form. Three letters, which contain some outlines
of his philosophy, are preserved by Diogenes, who has also em-
bodied his “ Fundamental Maxims”—forty-four propositions,
containing a summary of his ethical system. These, with part
of his work “On Nature,” found during the last century among
the Greek MSS. recovered at Herculaneum, constitute all that
has survived the general wreck.
We are thus left to depend mainly on his disciples and suc-
cessors for any general account of his system. And of the
earliest and most immediate of these the writings have per-
ished.” Our sole original authority is Diogenes Laertius, who
was unquestionably an Epicurean. The sketch of Epicurus
which is given in his “Lives” is evidently a “labor of love.”
Among all the systems of ancient philosophy described by him,
there is none of whose general character he has given so skill-
ful and so elaborate an analysis. And even as regards the
particulars of the system, nothing could be more complete than
Taertius's account of his physical speculations. Additional
light is also furnished by the philosophic poem of Lucretius
“On the Nature of Things,” which was written to advocate the
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers, "bk. x. ch. xvi., xvii.
* Some fragments of the writings of Metrodorus, Phaedrus, Polystratus,
and Philodemus, have been found among the Herculanean Papyri, and pub-
lished in Europe, which are said to throw some additional light on the doc-
trines of Epicórus. See article on “Herculanean Papyri,” in Edinburgh Re-
view, October, 1862.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY. 427
physical theory of Epicurus. These are the chief sources of
our information.
It is said of Epicurus that he loved to hearken to the stories
of the indifference and apathy of Pyrrhon, and that, in these
qualities, he aspired to imitate him. But Epicurus was not,
like Pyrrhon, a skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most im-
perious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for
...the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his
own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own phi-
losophy—he was a “self-taught” man | Now “Epicurus might
be perfectly honest in saying he had read very little, and had
worked out the conclusions in his own mind ; but he was a
copyist, nevertheless; few men more entirely so.” His psy-
chology was certainly borrowed from the Ionian School. From
thence he had derived his fundamental maxim, that “sensation
is the source of all knowledge, and the standard of all truth.”
His physics were copied from Democritus. With both, “atoms
are the first principle of all things.” And in Ethics he had
learned from Aristotle, that if an absolute good is not the end
of a practical life, haftiness must be its end.” All that is fun-
damental in the system of Epicurus was borrowed from his pred-
ecessors, and there is little that can be called new in his teach-
ing. - -
The grand object of philosophy, according to Epicurus, is
the attainment of a hafty life. “Philosophy,” says he, “is the
power by which reason conducts men to happiness.” Truth is
a merely relative thing, a variable quantity; and therefore the
pursuit of truth for its own sake is superfluous and useless.
There is no such thing as absolute, unchangeable right: no ac-
tion is intrinsically right or wrong. “We choose the virtues, not
on their own account, but for the sake of pleasure, just as we
seek the skill of the physician for the sake of health.” That
which is nominally right in morals, that which is relatively good
* Maurice’s “Ancient Philosophy,” p. 226. * “Ethics,” bk. i. ch. vi.
y, 2
* “Fundamental Maxims,” preserved in Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of .
the Philosophers,” bk. x, ch. xxx. -
428 CHRISTIANITY AND
in human conduct, is, therefore, to be determined by the effects
upon ourselves; that which is agreeable—pleasurable, is right;
that which is disagreeable—painful, is wrong. “The virtues
are connate with living pleasantly.” Pleasure (jöová), then, is
the great end to be sought in human action. “Pleasure is the
chief good, the beginning and end of living happily.”
The proof which Epicurus offers in support of his doctrine,
“that pleasure is the chief good,” is truly characteristic. “All.
animals from the moment of their birth are delighted with
pleasure and offended with pain, by their natural instincts,
and without the employment of reason. Therefore we, also,
of our own inclination, flee from pain.” “All men like pleasure
and dislike pain; they naturally shun the latter and pursue the
former.” “If happiness is present, we have every thing, and
when it is absent, we do every thing with a view to possess it.”
Virtue thus consists in man's doing deliberately what the ani-
mals do instinctively—that is, choose pleasure and avoid pain.
“Every kind of pleasure” is, in the estimation of Epicurus,
“alike good,” and alike proper. “If those things which make
the pleasures of debauched men put an end to the fears of the
mind, and to those which arise about the heavenly bodies [su-
pernatural powers], and death and pain, . . . . we should have
no pretense for blaming those who wholly devote themselves
to pleasure, and who never feel any pain, or grief (which is the
chief evil) from any quarter.” Whilst, however, all pleasures
of the body, as well as the mind, are equal in dignity, and alike
good, they differ in intensity, in duration, and, especially, in
their consequences. He therefore divides pleasure into two
classes; and in this, as Cousin remarks, is found the only ele-
ment of originality in his philosophy. These two kinds of
pleasure are:
* “Epicurus to Menaeceus,” in Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philos-
ophers,” bk. x. ch. xxvii. * Id., ib.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxix.
* Id., ib., bk. x. ch. xxvii.
* “Fundamental Maxims,” No. 9, in Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the
Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxxi.
G R E E K PET II, OS O PET Y. 429
I. Z%e fleasure of movement, excitement, energy (jöov) #y
Kiväget). This is the most lively pleasure; it supposes the
greatest development of physical and mental power. “Joy
and cheerfulness are beheld in motion and energy.” But it is
not the most enduring pleasure, and it is not the most perfect.
It is accompanied by uneasiness ; it “brings with it many per-
turbations,” and it yields some bitter fruits.
2. Zhe second Kind of pleasure is the pleasure of repose, tram-
guil/ity, impassibility (śćovi) karaormuaruká). This is a state, a
“condition,” rather than a motion. It is “the freedom of the
body from pain, and the soul from confusion.” This is perfect
and unmixed happiness—the happiness of God; and he who
attains it “will be like a god among men.” “The storm of
the Soul is at an end, and body and soul are perfected.”
Now, whilst “no pleasure is intrinsically bad,” prudence
(ppóvnauc), or practical wisdom, would teach us to choose the
highest and most perfect happiness. Morality is therefore the
application of reason to the conduct of life, and virtue is wis-
dom. The office of reason is to “determine our choices”—to
take account of the duration of pleasures, to estimate their con-
sequences, and to regard the happiness of a whole lifetime, V
and not the enjoyment of a single hour. Without wisdom men
will choose the momentary excitements of passion, and follow
after agitating pleasures, which are succeeded by pain; they
will consequently lose “tranquillity of mind.” “It is not pos-
sible,” says Epicurus, “to live pleasantly without living pru-
dently and honorably and justly.” The difference, then, be-
tween the philosopher and the ordinary man is this—that while
both seek pleasure, the former knows how to forego certain
indulgences which cause pain and vexation hereafter, whereas
the ordinary man seeks only immediate enjoyment. Epicurus
does not dispense with virtue, but he simply employs it as a
means to an end, namely, the Securing of happiness."
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxviii.
* Id., ib. * “Fundamental Maxims,” No. 7. “Ibid., No. 5.
* Pressensé, “Religions beſore Christ,” p. 141.
43O C EIRISTIANITY AND
Social morality is, like private morality, founded upon utili-
ty. As nothing is intrinsically right or wrong in private life, So
nothing is intrinsically just or unjust in social life. “Justice
has no independent existence: it results from mutual contracts,
and establishes itself wherever there is a mutual engagement
to guard against doing or Sustaining any injury. Injustice is
not intrinsically bad ; it has this character only because there
is joined with it the fear of not escaping those who are appoint-
ed to punish actions marked with this character.” Society is
thus a contract—an agreement to promote each other's happi-
ness. And inasmuch as the happiness of the individual de-
pends in a great degree upon the general happiness, the es-
sence of his ethical system, in its political aspects, is contained
in inculcating “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”
If you ask Epicurus what a man shall do when it is clearly
His immediate interest to violate the social contract, he would
answer, that if your general interest is secured by always ob-
serving it, you must make momentary sacrifices for the sake of
future good. But “when, in consequence of new circumstan-
ces, a thing which has been pronounced just does not any long-
er appear to agree with utility, the thing which was just . . .
ceases to be just the moment it ceases to be useful.” So that
self-interest is still the basis of all virtue. And if, by the per-
formance of duty, you are exposed to great suffering, and es-
pecially to death, you are perfectly justified in the violation of
any and all contracts. Such is the social morality of Epicurus.
With coarse and energetic minds the doctrine of Epicurus
would inevitably lead to the grossest sensuality and crime;
with men whose temperament was more apathetic, or whose
tastes were more pure, it would develop a refined selfishness—
a perfect egoism, which Epicurus has adorned with the name
“tranquillity of mind—impassibility,” (ärapašía).”
* “Fundamental Maxims,” Nos. 35, 36. * Ibid., No. 41.
* It is scarcely necessary to discuss the question whether, by making
pleasure the standard of right, Epicurus intended to encourage what is
usually called sensuality. He earnestly protested against any such unfavor-
able interpretation of his doctrine :-" When we say that pleasure is a chief
G R EEK PHILOSOPII Y. 43 I
To secure this highest kind of happiness—this pure impas-
sivity, it was necessary to get rid of all “Superstitious fears”
of death, of Supernatural beings, and of a future retribution."
The chief causes of man's misery are his illusions, his super-
stitions, and his prejudices. “That which principally contrib-
utes to trouble the spirit of men, is the persuasion which they
cherish that the stars are beings imperishable and happy (i. e.,
that they are gods), and that then our thoughts and actions are
contrary to the will of those Superior beings; they also, being
deluded by these fables, apprehend an eternity of evils, they
fear the insensibility of death, as though that could affect
them. . . . . .” “The real freedom from this kind of trouble
consists in being emancipated from all these things.” And
this emancipation is to be secured by the study of philosophy—
good, we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those
which lie in Sensual enjoyment, as Some think who are ignorant, and who do
not entertain our opinions, or else interpret them perversely; but we mean
the freedom of the body from pain, and the soul from confusion” (“Epicurus
to Menaeceus,” in Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” bk. x. ch. xxvii.). The most
obvious tendency of this doctrine is to extreme selfishness, rather than ex-
treme sensuality—a selfishness which prefers one's own comfort and ease
to every other consideration.
As to the personal character of Epicurus, opinions have been divided
both in ancient and modern times. By some the garden has been called a
“sty.” Epicurus has been branded as a libertine, and the name “Epicurean”
has, in almost all languages, become the synonym of sensualism. Diogenes
Laertius repels all the imputations which are cast upon the moral character
of his favorite author, and ascribes them to the malignity and falsehood of
the Stoics. “The most modern criticism seems rather inclined to revert to
the vulgar opinion respecting him, rejecting, certainly with good reason, the
fanatical panegyrics of some French and English writers of the last century.
Upon the whole, we are inclined to believe that Epicurus was an apathetic,
decorous, formal man, who was able, without much difficulty, to cultivate a
measured and even habit of mind, who may have occasionally indulged in
sensual gratifications to prove that he thought them lawful, but who gener-
ally preſerred, as a matter of taste, the exercises of the intellect to the more
violent forms of self-indulgence. And this life, it seems to us, would be
most consistent with his opinions. To avoid commotion, to make the stream
of life flow on as easily as possible, was clearly the aim of his philosophy.”—
Maurice’s “Ancient Philosophy,” p. 236.
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” blº. i. 1. Ioo—I 18.
* Epicurus to Herodotus, in Diogenes Lacrtius, “Lives of the Philoso-
phers,” p. 453 (Bohn's edition).
432 C EIRISTIANITY AND
that is, of that philosophy which explains every thing on natu-
ral or physical principles, and excludes all Supernatural powers.
That ignorance which occasions man's misery is twofold.
(i.) Ignorance of the external world, which leads to sufferstition.
All unexplained phenomena are ascribed to unseen, Supernatu-
ral powers; often to malignant powers, which take pleasure
in tormenting man ; Sometimes to a Supreme and Righteous
Power, which rewards and punishes men for their good or evil
conduct. Hence a knowledge of Physics, particularly the
physics which Democritus taught, was needful to deliver men
from false hopes and false fears." (ii.) Ignorance of the nature
of man, of his faculties, ŽozJers, and the sources and limits of his
£nowledge, from whence arise illusions, prejudices, and errors.
Hence the need of Psychology to ascertain the real grounds
of human knowledge, to explain the origin of man's illusions,
to exhibit the groundlessness of his fears, and lead him to a
just conception of the nature and end of his existence.
Physics and Psychology are thus the only studies which
Epicurus would tolerate as “conducive to the happiness of
man.” The pursuit of truth for its own sake was useless.
Dialectics, which distinguish the true from the false, the good
from the bad, on d ?riori grounds, must be banished as an un-
necessary toil, which yields no enjoyment. Theology must be
cancelled entirely, because it fosters superstitious fears. The
idea of God’s taking knowledge of, disapproving, condemning,
punishing the evil conduct of men, is an unpleasant thought.
Physics and Psychology are the most useful, because the most
“agreeable,” the most “comfortable” sciences. \
* “The study of physics contributes more than any thing else to the tran-
quillity and happiness of life.”—Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” bk. x. ch. xxiv.
“For thus it is that fear restrains all men, because they observe many
things effected on the earth and in heaven, of which effects they can by no
means see the causes, and therefore think that they are wrought by a divine
power. For which reasons, when we have clearly seen that moſ/ºing can be
produced from 7zoffing, we shall have a more accurate perception of that
of which we are in search, and shall understand whence each individual
thing is generated, and how all things are done without the agency of the
gods.”—Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. 1. I45–150.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PITY, 433
EPICUREAN PHYSICS.
In his physical theories Epicurus followed Leucippus and
Democritus. He expounds these theories in his letters to
Herodotus and Pythocles, which are preserved in Diogenes
Laertius.' We shall be guided mainly by his own statements,
and when his meaning is obscure, or his exposition is incom-
plete, we shall avail ourselves of the more elaborate statements
of Lucretius,” who is uniformly faithful to the doctrine of Epi-
curus, and universally regarded as its best expounder.
The fundamental principle of his philosophy is the ancient
maxim—“de nihilo nihiſ, in 77%i/ie/, /ti/?osse reverti,” but in-
stead of employing this maxim in the sense in which it is used
by Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and others, to prove
there must be something self-existent and eternal, or in other
words, “that nothing which once was not can ever of itself
come into being,” he uses it to disprove a divine creation, and
even presents the maxim in an altered form—viz., “nothing is
ever divinely generated from nothing;” and he thence con-
cludes that the world was by no means made for us by divine
power.” Nature is eternal. “The universal whole always
was such as it now is, and always will be such.” “The uni-
verse also is infinite, for that which is finite has a limit, but the
universe has no limit.”
The two great principles of nature are a vacuum, and a pſe-
num. The plenum is body, or tangible nature ; the vacuum is
space, or intangible nature. “We know by the evidences of
the senses (which are our only rule of reasoning) that bodies
have a real existence, and we infer from the evidence of the
senses that the vacuum has a real existence; for if space have
no real existence, there would be nothing in which bodies can
move, as we see they really do move. Let us add to this re-
flection that one can not conceive, either in virtue of percep-
* “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. * “IDe Natura. Rerum.”
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. * Ibid. \
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxiv.
2S
434 CITE IS TIA WIT Y. A VD
tion, or of any analogy founded on perception, any general
quality peculiar to all beings, which is not either an attribute,
or an accident, of the body or of the vacuum.”
Of bodies some are “combinations”—concrète bodies—and
some are primordial “ elements,” out of which combinations
are formed. These primordial elements, out of which the uni-
verse is generated, are “aſoms” (äropol). These atoms are
“the first principles” and “seeds” of all things.” They are
“infinite in number,” and, as their name implies, they are
“infrangible,” “unchangeable,” and “indestructible.” Matter is,
therefore, not infinitely divisible; there must be a point at
which division ends."
The only qualities of atoms are form, magnitude, and density.
All the other sensible qualitics of matter—the secondary qual-
ities—as color, Odor, Sweetness, bitterness, etc.—are necessarily
inherent in form. All secondary qualities are changeable, but
the primary atoms are unchangeable; “for in the dissolution of
combined bodies there must be something solid and indestruc-
tible, of such a kind that it will not change, either into what
does not exist, or out of what does not exist, but the change
results from a simple displacement of parts, which is the most
usual case, or from an addition or subtraction of particles.”
The atoms are not all of one form, but of different forms
Suited to the production of different substances by combina-
tion ; Some are Square, Some triangular, Some Smooth and
spherical, some are hooked with points. They are also diver-
sified in magnitude and density. The number of original forms
is “incalculably varied,” but not infinite. “Every variety of
forms contains an infinitude of atoms, but there is not, ſor that
reason, an infinitude of ſorms; it is only the number of them
which is beyond computation.” To assert that atoms are of
every kind of form, magnitude, and density, would be “to con-
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x, ch. xxiv.
* Id., ib., blº. X. ch. xxv. * Id., ib., blº. x. ch. xxiv.
“Id., ib.; Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. 1. 616–62o.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxiv.
"Id., ib.
G B E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 435
tradict the phenomena;” for experience teaches us that objects
have a finite magnitude, and form necessarily supposes limi-
tation. •
A variety of these primordial forms enter into the composi-
tion of all sensible objects, because sensible objects possess
different qualities, and these diversified qualities can only re-
sult from the combination of different original forms. “The
earth has, in itself, primary atoms from which springs, rolling
forth cool water, incessantly recruit the immense sea; it has
also atoms from which ſire arises. . . . . Moreover, the earth
contains atoms from which it can raise up rich corn and cheer-
ful groves for the tribes of men. . . . . ” So that “no object in
nature is constituted of one kind of elements, and whatever
possesses in itself most numerous powers and energies, thus
demonstrates that it contains more numerous kinds of primar
particles,” or primordial “seeds of things.” -
“The atoms are in a continual state of motion,” and “have
moved with equal rapidity from all eternity, since it is evident
the vacuum can offer no resistance to the heaviest, any more
than the lightest.” The primary and original movement of all
atoms is in straight lines, by virtue of Zheir own weight.” The
vacuum separates all atoms one from another, at greater or less
distances, and they preserve their own peculiar motion in the
densest substances.” -
And now the grand crucial question arises—How do atoms
combine so as to form concrete bodies 2 If they move in straight
lines, and with equal rapidity from all eternity, then they can
never unite so as to form concrete substances. They can only
coalesce by deviating from a straight line.” How are they
made to deviate from a straight line 2 This deviation must be
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. l. 582–600.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxiv.; Lucre-
tius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. l. 80–92. -
* “At some time, though at no fixed and determinate time, and at some
point, though at no fixed and determinate point, they turn aside from the
right line, but only so far as you can call the least possible deviation.”—
Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” blº. ii. 1. 216–222.
436 CHRISTIANITY AND
introduced arbitrarily, or by some external cause. And inas-
much as Epicurus admits of no causes “but space and matter,”
and rejects all divine or supernatural interposition, the new
movement must be purely arbitrary. They deviate ºftontane-
ous/y, and of their own accord. “The system of nature imme-
diately appears as a free agent, released from tyrant masters, to
do every thing of itself spontaneously, without the help of the
gods.” The manner in which Lucretius proves this doctrine
is a good example of the petitio principii. He assumes, in
opposition to the whole spirit and tendency of the Epicurean
philosophy, that man has “a free will,” and then argues that
if man, who is nothing but an aggregation of atoms, can “turn
aside and alter his own movements,” the primary elements, of
which his soul is composed, must have Some Original Sponta-
neity. “If all motion is connected and dependent, and a new
movement perpetually arises from a former one in a certain
order, and if the primary elements do not produce any com-
mencement of motion by deviating from the straight line to
break the laws of fate, so that cause may not follow cause in
infinite succession, whence comes this freedom of will to all ani-
mals in the world? whence, I say, is this liberty of action
wrested from the fates, by means of which we go wheresoever
inclination leads each of us? whence is it that we ourselves
turn aside, and alter our motions, not at any fixed time, nor in
any fixed part of space, but just as our own minds prompt?. tº € 9.
Wherefore we must necessarily confess that the same is the
case with the seeds of matter, and there is some other cause
besides strokes and weight [resistance and density] from which
this power [of free movement] is innate in them, since we see
that moſ/ºing is produced from nothing.” Besides form, exten-
Sion, and density, Epicurus has found another inherent or es-
Sential quality of matter or atoms, namely, “spontaneous” motion.
By a slight “voluntary” deflection from the straight line,
atoms are now brought into contact with each other; “they
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things” bk. ii. 1. Io92–Io96.
* Id, ib., bk. ii. 1. 250–290. -
G R E E K PEIIL OS OPEI Y. 437
strike against each other, and by the percussion new move-
ments and new complications arise”—“movements from high
to low, from low to high, and horizontal movements to and fro,
in virtue of this reciprocal percussion.” The atoms “jostling
about, of their own accord, in infinite modes, were often brought
together confusedly, irregularly, and to no purpose, but at
length they successfully coalesced; at least, such of them as were
thrown together suddenly became, in succession, the beginnings
of great things—as earth, and air, and Sea, and heaven.”
And now Lucretius shall describe the formation of the dif-
ferent parts of the world according to the cosmogony of Epicu-
rus. We quote from Good's translation:
“But from this boundless mass of matter first
How heaven, and earth, and Ocean, Sun, and moon,
Rose in nice order, now the muse shall tell.
For never, doubtless, from result of thought,
Or mutual compact, could primordial seeds
First harmonize, or move with powers precise.
But countless crowds in countless manners urged,
From time eternal, by intrinsic weight
And ceaseless repercussion, to combine
In all the possibilities of forms,
Of actions, and connections, and exert
In every change some effort to create—
Reared the rude frame at length, abruptly reared,
Which, when once gendered, must the basis prove
Of things sublime; and whence eventual rose
Heaven, earth, and ocean, and the tribes of sense.
Yet now nor sun on fiery wheel was seen
Riding sublime, nor stars adorned the pole,
Nor heaven, nor earth, nor air, nor ocean lived,
Nor aught of prospect mortal sight surveyed;
But one vast chaos, boisterous and confused.
Yet order. hence began ; congenial parts
Parts joined congenial; and the rising world
Gradual evolved : its mighty members each
From each divided, and matured complete
From seeds appropriate ; whose wild discortderst,
Reared by their strange diversities of form,
With ruthless war so broke their proper paths,
Their motions, intervals, conjunctions, weights,
And repercussions, nought of genial act
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. ii. 1. Ios I-1065.
438
CEIRISTIANITY AND
Till now could follow, nor the seeds themselves,
E’en though conjoined in mutual bonds, cohere.
Thus air, secreted, rose o'er laboring earth;
Secreted ocean flowed; and the pure fire,
Secreted too, toward ether sprang sublime.
But first the seeds terrene, Since ponderous most
And most perplext, in close embraces clung,
And towards the centre conglobating sunk.
And as the bond grew firmer, ampler forth
Pressed they the fluid essences that reared
Sun, moon, and stars, and main, and heaven's high wall.
For those of atoms lighter far consist,
Subtiler, and more rotund than those of earth.
Whence, from the pores terrene, with foremost haste
Rushed the bright ether, towering high, and swift
Streams of fire attracting as it flowed.
Then mounted, next, the base of sun and moon,
*Twixt earth and ether, in the midway air
Rolling their orbs; for into neither these
Could blend harmonious, since too light with earth
To sink deprest, while yet too ponderous far
To fly with ether toward the realms extreme:
So 'twixt the two they hovered; vital there
Moving forever, parts of the vast whole;
As move forever in the frame of man
Some active organs, while some oft repose.”
After explaining the origin and causes of the varied celes-
tial phenomena, he proceeds to give an account of the produc-
tion of plants, animals, and man :
“Once more return we to the world’s pure prime,
Her fields yet liquid, and the tribes survey
First she put forth, and trusted to the winds.
And first the race she reared of verdant herbs,
Glistening o'er every hill; the fields at large
Shone with the verdant tincture, and the trees
Felt the deep impulse, and with outstretched arms
Broke from their bonds rejoicing. As the down
Shoots from the winged nations, or from beasts
Bristles or hair, so poured the new-born earth
Plants, fruits, and herbage. Then, in order next,
Raised she the sentient tribes, in various modes,
By various powers distinguished : for not heaven
Down dropped them, nor from ocean's briny waves
Sprang they, terrestrial sole; whence, justly Bart/.
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” b. v. 1. 431–498.
G R E E R PHILOSOPHY, 439
Claims the dear name of mother, since alone
Flowed from herself whate'er the sight surveys.
E’en now oft rears she many a sentient tribe
By showers and sunshine ushered into day.”
Whence less stupendous tribes should then have risen
More, and of ampler make, herself new-formed,
In flower of youth, and Ether all mature.”
Of these birds first, of wing and plume diverse,
Broke their light shells in Spring-time : as in Spring
Still breaks the grasshopper his Curious web,
And seeks, spontaneous, foods and vital air.
Then rushed the ranks of mortals; for the Soil,
Exuberant then, with warmth and moisture teemed.
So, o'er each scene appropriate, myriad wombs
Shot, and expanded, to the genial Sward
By fibres fixt; and as, in ripened hour,
Their liquid orbs the daring foetus broke
Of breath impatient, nature here transformed
Th’ assenting earth, and taught her opening veins
With juice to flow lacteal; as the fair
Now with sweet milk o'erflows, whose raptured breast
First hails the stranger-babe, since all absorbed
Of nurture, to the genial tide converts. .
Earth fed the nursling, the warm ether clothed,
And the soft downy grass his couch compressed.”
A state of pure Savagism, or rather of mere animalism, was
the primitive condition of man. He wandered naked in the
woods, feeding on acorns and wild fruits, and quenched his
thirst at the “echoing waterfalls,” in company with the wild
beast.
Through the remaining part of book v. Lucretius describes
how speech was invented; how society originated, and govern-
ments were instituted ; how civilization commenced ; and how
religion arose Out of ignorance of natural causes ; how the arts
* The doctrine of “spontaneous generations” is still more explicitly an-
nounced in book ii. “Manifest appearances compel us to believe that ani-
mals, though possessed of sense, are generated from senseless atoms. For
you may observe living worms proceed from foul dung, when the earth,
moistened with immoderate showers, has contracted a kind of putrescence ;
and you may see all other things change themselves, similarly, into other
things.”—Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. l. 867–880.
* Ether is the father, earth the mother of all organized being—Id., ib.,
bk. i. 1. 250–255.
* Id., ib., bk. v. 1.795–836.
44O CEIRISTIANITY AND
of life were discovered, and how science sprang up. And all
this, as he is careful to tell us, without any divine instruction,
or any assistance from the gods. -
Such are the physical theories of the Epicureans. The pri-
mordial elements of matter are infinite, eternal, and self-moved.
After ages upon ages of chaotic Strife, the universe at length
arose out of an infinite number of atoms, and a finite number
of forms, by a fortuitous combination. Plants, animals, and
In 12]]. WeIC spontaneously generated from ether and earth. Lan-
guages, society, governments, arts were gradually developed.
And all was achieved simply by blind, unconscious nature-
forces, without any designing, presiding, and governing Intelli-
gence—that is, without a God.
The evil genius which presided over the method of Epicurus,
and perverted all his processes of thought, is clearly apparent.
The end of his philosophy was not the discovery of truth. He
does not commence his inquiry into the principles or causes
which are adequate to the explanation of the universe, with an
unprejudiced mind. He everywhere develops a malignant
hostility to religion, and the avowed object of his physical theo-
ries is to rid the human mind of all fear of supernatural powers
—that is, of all fear. of God.” “The phenomena which men
observe to occur in the earth and the heavens, when, as often
happens, they are perplexed with fearful thoughts, overawe their
minds with a dread of the gods, and humble and depress
them to the earth. For ignorance of natural causes obliges
them to refer all things to the power of the divinities, and to
resign the dominion of the world to them ; because of those
effects they can by no means see the origin, and accordingly
Suppose that they are produced by divine influence.” -
To “expel these fancies from the mind ’’ as “inconsistent with
its tranquillity and opposed to human happiness,” is the end,
* “Let us trample religion underſoot, that the victory gained over it may
place us on an equality with heaven” (book i.). See Diogenes Laertius,
“Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch. xxiv. pp. 453, 454 (Bohn's edition);
Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. 1, 54–120.
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. vi. 1, 51–60.
G R E E R PEIII, OS OPEI Y. 44 I
and, as Lucretius believes, the glory of the Epicurean philoso-
phy. To accomplish this, God must be placed at an infinite
distance from the universe, and must be represented as indif.
ferent to every thing that transpires within it. We “must be-
ware of making the Deity interpose here, for that Being we
ought to suppose exempt from al/ occupation, and perfectly hap-
py,”—that is, absolutely impassible. God did not make the
world, and he does not govern the world. There is no evi-
dence of design or intelligence in its structure, and “such is
the faultiness with which it stands affected, that it can not be
the work of a Divine power.” - -
Epicurus is, then, an unmistakable Atheist. He did not ad-
mit a God in any rational sense. True, he professed to believe
in gods, but evidently in a very equivocal manner, and solely
to escape the popular condemnation. “They are not pure
Spirits, for there is no spirit in the atomic theory; they are not
bodies, for where are the bodies that we may call gods?. In
this embarrassment, Epicurus, compelled to acknowledge that
the human race believes in the existence of gods, addresses
himself to an old theory of Democritus—that is, he appeals to
dreams. As in dreams there are images that act upon and
determine in us agreeable or painful sensations, without pro-
ceeding from exterior bodies, so the gods are images similar to
those of dreams, but greater, having the human form; images
which are not precisely bodies, and yet not deprived of mate-
riality; which are whatever you please, but which, in short, must
be admitted, since the human race believes in gods, and since
the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which de-
mands a cause.”
It is needless to offer any criticism on the reasoning of Epi-
curus. One fact will have obviously presented itself to the
mind of the reflecting reader. He starts with atoms having
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x, ch. xxv.; Lucre-
tius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. l. 55–60.
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. v. l. 195–200.
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 431.
sº
442 C EIR ISTIANITY AND ^
form, magnitude, and density, and essays to Construct a uni-
verse ; but he is obliged to be continually introducing, in ad-
dition, a “nameless something” which “remains in secret,” to
help him out in the explanation of the phenomena." He makes
life to arise out of dead matter, Sense out of Senseless atoms,
consciousness out of unconsciousness, reason Out of unreason,
without an adequate cause, and thus violates the fundamental
principle from which he starts, “that nothing can arise from
nothing.”
EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY.
In the system of Epicurus, the Soul is regarded as corporeal
or material, like the body; they form, together, one nature or
substance. The soul is composed of atoms “exceedingly di-
minutive, smooth, and round, and connected with or diffused
through the veins, viscera, and nerves. The substance of the
Soul is not to be regarded as simple and uncompounded ; its
Constituent parts are aura, heat, and air. These are not suffi-
cient, however, even in the judgment of Epicurus, to account
for sensation ; “they are not adequate to generate sensible mo-
tives such as revolve any thoughts in the mind.” “A certain
fourth nature, or Substance, must, therefore, necessarily be add-
ed to these, f/a/ is z0/ho/y 707thout a 77ame; it is a substance,
however, than which nothing exists more active or more sub-
tile, nor is any thing more essentially composed of small and
smooth elementary particles; and it is this substance which
first distributes sensible motions through the members.”
Epicurus is at great pains to prove that the soul is material;
and it can not be denied that he marshals his arguments with
great skill. Modern materialism may have added additional
illustrations, but it has contributed no new lines of proof. The
weapons are borrowed from the old arsenal, and they are not
wielded with any greater skill than they were by Epicurus
himself. I. The Soul and the body act and react upon each
* As, e.g., Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. iii. 1. 260–290.
* Id., ib., blº. iii. 1. 237–250.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 443
other ; and mutual reaction can only take place between sub-
stances of similar nature. “Such effects can only be produced
by touch, and touch can not take place without body.” 2. The
mind is produced together with the body, it grows up along
with it, and waxes old at the same time with it.” 3. The mind
is diseased along with the body, “it loses its faculties by ma-
terial causes, as intoxication, or by severe blows; and is some-
times, by a heavy lethargy, borne down into a deep eternal
sleep.” 4. The mind, like the body, is healed by medicines,
which proves that it exists only as a mortal substance." 5.
The mind does not always, and at the same time, continue en-
tire and unimpaired, some faculties decay before the others,
“ the substance of the soul is therefore divided.” On all these
grounds the Soul must be deemed mortal; it is dissolved along
with the body, and has no conscious existence after death.
Such being the nature of the soul, inasmuch as it is mate-
rial, all its knowledge must be derived from sensation. The
famous doctrine of perception, as taught by Epicurus, is ground-
ed upon this pre-supposition that the soul is corporeal. “The
£iówWa &tróðjotat—imagines, simulacra rerum, etc., are, like pel-
licles, continually flying off from objects; and these material
‘likenesses,’ diffusing themselves everywhere in the air, are
propelled to the perceptive organs.” These images of things
coming in contact with the senses produce sensation (atoffmaic).
A sensation may be considered either as regards its object, or
as regards him who experiences it. As regards him who expe-
riences it, it is simply a passive affection, an agreeable or disa-
greeable feeling, passion, or sentiment (rö Tá00c). But along
with sensation there is inseparably associated some knowledge
of the object which excites sensation ; and it is for this reason
that Epicurus marked the intimate relation of these two phe-
nomena by giving them analogous names. Because the sec-
ond phenomenon is joined to the first, he calls it śirator0matc.—
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk, iii. 1, 138–168.
* Id., ib., bk. iii. l. 444–460. * Id, ib., blº. iii. 1. 438-490.
“Id, ib., blº. iii. l. 500–520.
444 GIIR IS TIA NIT Y. A ND
perception. It is sensation viewed especially in regard to its
object—representative sensation, or the “sensible idea” of mod-
ern philosophy. It is from perception that we draw our gen-
eral ideas by a kind of prolepsis (Tp(\mpic)—an anticipation or
laying hold by reason of that which is implied in sensation.
Now all sensations are alike true in so far as they are sensa-
tions, and error arises from false reasoning about the testimony
of Sense. All knowledge is purely relative and contingent,
and there is no such thing as necessary and absolute truth.
The system of Epicurus is thus a system of pure material-
ism, but not a system of materialism drawn, as a logical conse-
quence, from a careful and unprejudiced study of the whole
phenomena of mind. His openly avowed design is to deliver
men from the fear oſ death, and rid them of all apprehension
of a future retribution. “Did men but know that there was a
fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure,
to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but
now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is
no mode, no means of resisting them.” To emancipate men
from “these terrors of the mind,” they must be taught “that
the soul is mortal, and dissolves with the body’—that “death
is nothing to us, ſor that which is dissolved is devoid of Sensa-
tion, and that which is devoid of sensation is nothing to us.”
Starting with the fixed determination to prove that
“Death is nothing, and naught after death,”
he will not permit any mental phenomena to suggest to him
the idea of an incorporeal spiritual substance. Matter, under
any form known to Epicurus, is conſessedly insufficient to ex-
plain sensation and thought; a “nameless Something” must
be supposed. But may not “that principle which lies entirely
//d, and remains in secret”—and about which even Epicurus
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. i. 1. Ioo—I 18.
* Diogenes Laertius, Maxim 2, in “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. x. ch.
xxxi.
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. iii. 1. 275–280.
G R E E R PITTL OS O PITY. 445
does not know any thing—be a spiritual, an immaterial princi-
ple 2 For aught that he knows it may as properly be called
“spirit” as matter. May not sensation and cognition be the re-
sult of the union of matter and spirit ; and if so, may not their
mutual affections, their common sympathies, be the necessary
conditions of sensation and cognition in the present life? A
reciprocal relation between body and mind appears in all men-
tal phenomena. A certain proportion in this relation is called
mental health. A deviation from it is termed disease. This
proportion is by no means an equilibrium, but the perfect
adaptation of the body, without injury to its integrity, to the
purposes of the mind. And if this be SO, all the arguments of
materialism fall to the ground.
The concluding portion of the third book, in which Lucre-
tius discourses on death, is a mournful picture of the condition
of the heathen mind before Christianity “brought life and im-
mortality fully to light.” It comes to us, like a voice from the
grave of two thousand years, to prove they were “without
hope.” To be delivered from the fear of ſuture retribution,
they would sacrifice the hope of an immortal life. To extin-
tinguish guilt they would annihilate the soul. The only way
in which Lucretius can console man in prospect of death is,
by reminding him that he will escape the iſ/s of /ſe.
“‘But thy dear home shall never grect thce more
No more the best of wives —thy babes beloved,
Whose haste half-mct thee, cmulous to snatch
The dulcet kiss that roused thy secret soul,
Again shall never hasten —nor thine arm,
With deeds heroic, guard thy country's weal —
Oh mournful, mournful fate l’ thy friends exclaim :
‘One envious hour of these invalued joys
Robs thee forever !'—But they add not here,
‘It robs thee, too, of all desire of joy’—
A truth, once uttercq, that the mind would free
From cvery dread and trouble. ‘Thou art safe
The sleep of death protects thee, and secures
From all the unnumbered woes of mortal Z'ſ (
While we, alas ! the sacred urn around
That holds thine ashes, shall insatiate weep,
Nor time destroy the cternal grief we ſeel !’
446 C HEISTIANITY AND
What, then, has death, if death be mere repose,
And quiet only in a peaceful grave,
What has it thus to mar this life of man P’”
This is all the comfort that Epicureanism can offer; and if
“the wretch still laments the approach of death,” she addresses
him “with voice severe”—
“Vile coward dry thine eyes—
Hence with thy Snivelling sorrows, and depart 1"
It is evident that such a System of philosophy outrages the
purest and noblest sentiments of humanity, and, in fact, con-
demns itself. It was born of Selfishness and social degeneracy,
and could perpetuate itself only in an age of Corruption, because
it inculcated the lawfulness of sensuality and the impunity of
injustice. Its existence at this precise period in Grecian his-
tory forcibly illustrates the truth, that Atheism is a disease of
the heart rather than the head. It seeks to set man free to
follow his own inclinations, by ridding him of all faith in a
Divinity and in an immortal life, and thus exonerating him
from all accountability and all future retribution. But it failed
to perceive that, in the most effectual manner, it annihilated
all real liberty, all true nobleness, and made of man an abject
slave.
STOICISM.
The Stoical school was founded by Zeno of Citium, who
flourished B.C. 290. He taught in the Stoa Poecile, or Painted
Porch; and his disciples thence derived the name of Stoics.
Zeno was succeeded by Cleanthes (B.C. 260); and Cleanthes
by Chrysippus (B.C. 240), whose vigorous intellect gave unity
and completeness to the Stoical philosophy. He is reported
to have said to Cleanthes, “Give me your doctrines, and I
will find the demonstrations.”
None of the writings of the early Stoics, save a “Hymn to
Jupiter,” by Cleanthes, have survived. We are chiefly indebted
* Lucretius, “On the Nature of Things,” bk. iii. 1. 906–926.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. vii.
G R EE K PETIT, OS O PETY: 447
to Diogenes Laertius' and Cicero” for an insight into their
system. The Hymn of Cleanthes sheds some light on their
Theology, and their moral principles are exhibited in “The
Fragments” of Epictetus, and “The Life and Meditations” of
Marcus Aurelius.
The philosophy of the Stoics, like that of the Epicureans,
was mainly a philosophy of life—that is, a moral philosophy.
The manner in which they approached the study of morals, and
the principles upon which they grounded morality, were, how-
ever, essentially different.
The grand object of Epicurus was to make the current of
life flow on as comfortably as possible, without any distracting
thoughts of the past or any disturbing visions of the future.
He therefore starts with this fundamental principle, that the
true philosophy of life is to enjoy one's self—the aim of exist-
ence is to be happy. Whatever in a man’s beliefs or conduct
tends to secure happiness is right; whatever awakens uneasi-
ness, apprehension, or fear, is z0/zong. And inasmuch as the
idea of a Divine Creator and Governor of the universe, and
the belief in a future life and retribution, are uncomfortable
thoughts, exciting superstitious fears, they ought to be rejected.
The Physics and the Psychology of Epicurus are thus the nat-
ural outgrowth of his Morality. -
Zeno was evidently a more earnest, serious, and thoughtful
man. He cherished a nobler ideal of life than to suppose
“man must do voluntarily, what the brute does instinctively—
eschew pain, and seek pleasure.” He therefore seeks to ascer-
tain whether there be not some “principle of nature,” or some
law of nature, which determines what is right in human action
—whether there be not some light under which, on contem-
plating an action, we may at once pronounce upon its intrinsic
zightness, or otherwise. This he believes he has found in the
tuniversal reason which fashioned, and permeates, and vivifies
the universe, and is the light and life of the human soul. “The
* “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii.
* “De Fin.,” and “De Natura Deorum.”
448 C III: ISTIANITY AND
chief good is, confessedly, to live according to nature; which is
to live according to virtue, for nature leads us to that point....
For our individual natures are all part of the universal na-
ture; on which account, the chief good is to live in a manner
corresponding to one's own nature, and to universal nature ;
doing none of those things which the common law of mankind
(the universal conscience of our race) forbids. Zhat common
Zazº, is identical zwith RIGHT REASON z0/hich ſervades every thing,
Žeing the same with } upiter (Zgic), who is the regulator and chief
manager of al/ existing things.” The foundation of the ethical
system of the Stoics is thus laid in their philosophy of nature
—their Physiology and Psychology. If, therefore, we would
apprehend the logical connection and unity of Stoicism, we
must follow their order of thought—that is, we must commence
with their
PHYSIOLOGY.
Diogenes Laertius tells us that the Stoics held “ that there
are two general principles in the universe—the passive princi-
ple (tò Táoxov), which is matter, an existence without any dis-
tinctive quality, and the active principle (ro Totojv), which is
the reason existing in the passive, that is to say, God. For
that He, being eternal, and existing throughout all matter,
makes every thing.” This Divine Reason, acting upon mat-
ter, originates the necessary and unchangeable laws which gov-
ern matter—laws which the Stoics called Xóyot a Tepparikoł—
generating reasons or causes of things. The laws of the world
are, like eternal reason, necessary and immutable ; hence the
stuappléviſ—the ZX stiny of the Stoics, which is also one of the
names of the Deity.” But by Destiny the Stoics could not
understand a blind unconscious necessity; it is rather the
highest reason in the universe. “Destiny (sipappuévn) is a con-
* Diogenes Lacrtius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” blº. vii. ch. liii.
* Id., ib., blº. vii. ch. lxviii.
* “They teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind, and Fale,
and Jupiter.”—Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. lxviii.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PHY, 449
nected (eipopuévn) cause of things, or the reason according to
which the world is regulated.”
These two principles are not, however, regarded by the Sto-
ics as having a distinct, separate, and independent existence.
One is substance (ovoia); the other is quality (Totoc). The
primordial matter is the passive ground of all existence—the
original substratum for the Divine activity. The Divine Rea-
son is the active or formative energy which dwells within, and
is essentially united to, the primary substance. The Stoics,
therefore, regarded all existence as reducible, in its last analy-
sis, to one substance, which on the side of its passivity and ca-
pacity of change, they called hy/e (i)\m); and on the side of its
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. lxxiv.
* Or “matter.” A good deal of misapprehension has arisen from con-
founding the intellectual iºn of Aristotle and the Stoics with the gross phys-
ical “matter” of the modern physicist. By “matter” we now understand
that which is corporeal, tangible, sensible; whereas by WW), Aristotle and
the Stoics (who borrowed the term from him) understood that which is in-
corporeal, intangible, and inapprehensible to sense, an “unknown some-
thing” which must necessarily be supposed as the condition of the existence
of things. The formal cause of Aristotle is “the substance and essence”—
the primary nature of things, on which all their properties depend. The ma-
terial cause is “the matter or subject” through which the primary nature
manifests itself. Unfortunately the term “material” misleads the modern
thinker. He is in danger of supposing the Ayle of Aristotle to be something
sensible and physical, whereas it is an intellectual principle whose inherence
is implied in any physical thing. It is something distinct from body, and has
none of those properties we are now accustomed to ascribe to matter. Body,
corporeity, is the result of the union of “hyle” and “form.” Stobaeus thus
expounds the doctrine of Aristotle: Form alone, separate from matter (577)
is incorporea/; so matter alone, separated from form, is not body. But there
is need of the joint concurrence of both these—matter and form—to make
the substance of body.” Every individual substance is thus a totality of
matter and form—a divožov. - w
The Stoics taught that God is omeliness (Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the
Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. lxviii.); that he is effernal and immortal (bk. vii.
ch. lxxii.); he could not, therefore, be corporeal, for “body is finite, divisi-
ble, and perishable” (bk. vii. ch. lxxvii.). “All the parts of the world are per-
ishable, for they change one into another; therefore the world is perish-
able” (bk. vii. ch. lxx.). The Deity is not, therefore, absolutely identified
with the world by the Stoics. He permeates all things, creates and dis-
Solves all things, and is, therefore, more than all things. The world is finite;
God is infinite.
29
45o C EIRISTIANITY AND
changeless energy and immutable order, they called God. The
corporeal world—physical nature—is “a peculiar manifesta-
tion” of God, generated from his own substance, and, after cer-
tain periods, absorbed in himself. Thus God, considered in
the evolution of His power, is nature. And nature, as attached
to its immanent principle, is called God.” The fundamental
doctrine of the Stoics was a spiritual, ideal, intellectual panthe-
ism, of which the proper formula is, A/Z ſhings are God, but God
is not al/ things.
Schwegler affirms that, in physics, the Stoics, for the most
part, followed Heraclitus, and especially “carried out the prop-
osition that nothing incorporeal exists; every thing is essen-
tially com/oreal.” The pantheism of Zeno is therefore “maſe-
zialistic.” This is not a just representation of the views of the
early Stoics, and can not be sustained by a fair interpretation
of their teaching. “They say that principles and elements dif-
fer from each other. Principles have no generation or begin-
ning, and will have no end ; but elements may be destroyed.
Also, that elements have bodies, and have forms, but Žrinciples
have no bodies, and no forms.” Principles are, therefore, incor-
£oreal. Furthermore, Cicero tells us that they taught that the
universal harmony of the world resulted from all things being
“contained by one Divine SPIRIT ;” and also, that reason in
man is “nothing else but part of the ZXivine SPIRIT merged into
a human body.” It thus seems evident that the Stoics made
a distinction between corruptible elements (fire, air, earth, water)
and incorruptible principles, by which and out of which elements
were generated, and also between corporeal and incorporeal
Substances.
On a careful collation of the fragmentary remains of the
early Stoics, we fancy we catch glimpses of the theory held by .
Some modern pantheists, that the material elements, “having
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. lxx.
* Schwegler's “History of Philosophy,” p. 140.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. lxviii.
* “IDe Natura Deorum,” bk. ii. ch. xiii. “Ibid., blº. ii. ch. xxxi.
G R E E R PEIII, OS O PET Y. 45I
body and form,” are a vital transformation of the Divine sub-
stance; and that the forces of nature—“the generating causes
or reasons of things” (Aóyot a Tepparukot)—are a conscious trans-
mutation of the Divine energy. This theory is more than
hinted in the following passages, which we slightly transpose
from the order in which they stand in Diogenes Laertius, with-
out altering their meaning. “They teach that the Deity was
in the beginning by himself”.... that “first of all, he made
the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth.” “The fire is the
highest, and that is called aether, in which, first of all, the
sphere was generated in which the fixed stars are set. . . ;
after that the air ; then the water; and the sediment, as it were,
of all, is the earth, which is placed in the centre of the rest.”
“He turned into water the whole substance which pervaded
the air ; and as the seed is contained in the product, so, too,
He, being the seminal principle of the world, remained still in
moisture, making matter fit to be employed by himself in the
production of things which were to come after.” The Deity
thus draws the universe out of himself, transmuting the divine
substance into body and form. “God is a being of a certain
quality, having for his peculiar manifestation universal sub-
stance. He is a being imperishable, and who never had any
generation, being the maker of the arrangement and order that
we see ; and who at certain periods of time absorbs al/ sub-
stance in himself and then reproduces it from himself.” And
now, in the last analysis, it would seem as though every thing
is resolved into force. God and the world are power, and its
manifestation, and these are ultimately one. “This identifi-
cation of God and the world, according to which the Stoics
regarded the whole formation of the universe as but a period
in the development of God, renders their remaining doctrine
concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the world
seemed to be permeated by the Divine life, and was regarded
as the flowing out of this most perfect life through certain
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. lxviii., lxix.
* Id, ib., bk. vii. ch. lxx. - -
452 C EIR IS TIA WIT Y. A ND
channels, until it returns, in a necessary circle, back to
itself.”
The God of the Stoics is not, however, a mere principle of
life vitalizing nature, but an intelligent principle directing na-
ture ; and, above all, a moral principle, governing the human
race. “God is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect, and
intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil;
having a foreknowledge of the world, and of all that is in the
world.” He is also the gracious Providence which cares for
the individual as well as for the whole; and he is the author of
that natural law which commands the good and prohibits the
bad. “He made men to this end that they might be happy;
as becomes his fatherly care of us, he placed our good and
evil in those things which are in our own power.” The Provi-
dence and Fatherhood of God are strikingly presented in the
“Hymn of Cleanthes” to Jupiter—
“Most glorious of the immortal Powers above
O thou of many names mysterious Jove . te
For evermore almighty Nature's source
Thou governest all things in their order'd course !
All hail to thee since, innocent of blame,
E’en mortal creatures may address thy name;
For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,
Echo thy being with reflected birth—
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:
The universe, that rolls this globe around,
Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire ;
The double-forked and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hands they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw
To one immense, inevitable law :
And, with the various mass of breathing souls,
Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation 1 all things bow
To thee: the universal monarch thou !
* Schwegler’s “History of Philosophy,” p. 141.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. lxxii.
* Marcus Aurelius, blº. iii, ch. xxiv.
G R E. E. K. PEIII, OSO PHY. 453
Nor aught is done without thy wise control,
On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,
Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind,
Thou curb'st th’ excess; confusion, to thy sight,
Moves regular; th’ unlovely scene is bright.
Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul.
Wretches while still they course the glittering prize,
The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey;
But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray:
Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,
And the Sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,
And their whole souls are centred in their sin.
But, oh, great Jovel by whom all good is given
Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind
Father disperse these shadows of the mind
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;
Wherewith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honor to thyself repay;
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,
As well befits a mortal’s lips to sing:
More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers can be,
Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.”
PSYCHOLOGY.
As in the world there are two principles, the passive and
the active, so in the understanding there are two elements: a
passive element—sensation, and an active element—reason.
All knowledge commences with the phenomena of sensation
(aloffmaic). This produces in the Soul an image (pavragia),
which corresponds to the exterior object, and which Chrysip-
pus regarded as a modification of the mind (&\\otwatc).” Asso-
* Sir C. A. Elton's version, published in “Specimens of Ancient Poets,”
edited by William Peters, A. M., Christ Church, Oxford.
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. xxxiv.
454 C EIR IS TIA WIT Y. AND
ciate with sensibility is thought—the faculty of general ideas—
the 6900c Xóyoc, or right reason, as the Supreme power and the
guiding light of humanity. This active principle is of divine
origin, “a part or shred of the Divinity.”
This “right reason,” or “common reason,” is the source
and criterion of all truth ; “for our individual natures are all
parts of the universal nature,” and, therefore, all the dictates
of “common reason” are “identical with that right reason
which pervades every thing, being the same with Jupiter, who
is the regulator and chief manager of all things.”
The fundamental canon of the logic of the Stoics, therefore,
was that “what appears to all, that is to be believed, for it is
apprehended by the reason, which is common and Divine.”
It is needless to remark that the Stoics were compelled by
their physiological theory to deny the proper immortality of the
soul. Some of them seem to have supposed that it might, for
a season, survive the death of the body, but its ultimate desti-
nation was absorption into the Divine essence. It must re-
turn to its original Source.
ETHICS.
If reason be the great organizing and controlling law of the
universe, then, to live conformable to reason is the great prac-
tical law of life. Accordingly, the fundamental ethical maxim
of the Stoics is, “Live conformably with nature—that is, with
reason, or the will of the universal governor and manager of all
things.” Thus the chief good (sübatpuovía) is the conformity
of man’s actions to reason—that is, to the will of God, “for
nothing is well done without a reference to God.”
It is obvious that this doctrine must lead to a social moral-
ity and a jurisprudence the very opposite of the Epicurean.
If we must do that which is good—that is, that which is rea-
sonable, regardless of all consequences, then it is not for the
pleasurable or useful results which flow from it that justice
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii, ch. liii.
* Marcus Aurelius, blº. iii. § II.
*
G R EE K PHILOSOPHY. 455
should be practised, but because of its intrinsic excellence.
Justice is constituted good, not by the law of man, but by the
law of God. The highest pleasure is to do right; “this very
thing is the virtue of the happy man, and the perfect happiness
of life, when every thing is done according to a harmony of the
genius of each individual to the will of the Universal Governor
and Manager of all things.” Every thing which interferes
with a purely rational existence is to be eschewed ; the pleas-
ures and pains of the body are to be despised. To triumph
over emotion, over suffering, over passion ; to give the fullest
ascendency to reason ; to attain courage, moral energy, mag-
nanimity, constancy, was to realize true manhood, nay, “to be
godlike ; for they have something in them which is, as it were,
a god.”
The sublime heroism of the Stoic school is well expressed
in the manly precept, “’AvexoJ’—sustine—endure. “Endure
the sorrows engendered by the bitter struggle between the pas-
sions; support all the evils which fortune shall send thee—
calumny, betrayal, poverty, exile, irons, death itself.” In Epic-
tetus and Marcus Aurelius this spirit seems to rise almost to
the grandeur of Christian resignation. “Dare to lift up thine
eyes to God and say, ‘Use me hereafter to whatsoever thou
pleasest. I agree, and am of the same mind with thee, indif.
ferent to all things. Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me
act what part thou wilt, either of a public or a private person,
of a rich man or a beggar.’” “Show those qualities,” says
Marcus Aurelius, “which God hath put in thy power—sincerity,
gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment
with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness,
no love of Superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity.”
* Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Philosophers,” bk. vii. ch. liii.
* Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. xliv.
* Arrian, “Diss. Epict.,” bk. ii. ch. xviii.
* “I read to-day part of the ‘Meditations of Marcus Antonius’ [Aure-
lius]. What a strange emperor And what a strange heathen I Giving
thanks to God for all the good things he enjoyed In particular for his
good inspirations, and for twice revealing to him, in dreams, things where-
\,
456 - C EIRISTIANITY AND
Amid the fearful moral degeneracy of imperial Rome, Stoi-
cism became the refuge of all noble Spirits. But, in spite of its
severity, and its apparent triumph over the feelings, it brought
no real freedom and peace. “Stoical morality, strictly speak-
ing, is, at bottom, only a slavish morality, excellent in Epicte-
tus; admirable still, but useless to the world, in Marcus Aure-
lius.” Pride takes the place of real disinterestedness. It
stands alone in haughty grandeur and solitary isolation, tainted
with an incurable egoism. Disheartened by its metaphysical
impotence, which robs God of all personality, and man of all
hope of immortality; defeated in its struggle to obtain purity
of Soul, it sinks into despair, and often terminates, as in the
case of its two first leaders, Zeno and Cleanthes, and the two
Romans, Cato and Seneca, in self-murder. “Thus philosophy
is only an apprenticeship of death, and not of life; it tends to
death by its image, apathy and ataraxy.” -
by he was cured of (otherwise) incurable distempers. I make no doubt but
this is one of the ‘many’ who ‘shall come from the east and the west, and
sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” while the ‘children of the king-
dom’—nominal Christians—are “shut out.’”—Wesley's “Journal,” vol. i.
P. 353. 2
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 439.
G R EJ; K PEIII, OS OPEI Y. 457
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PROPAEDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
“Philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the
Greeks for righteousness, and it now proved useful for godliness, being in
some part a preliminary discipline (TQotalóeta Tug otoa) for those who reap
the fruits of faith through demonstration. Perhaps we may say it was given
to the Greeks with this special object; for philosophy was to the Greeks
what the Law was to the Jews, ‘a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ.’”
—CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.
HILOSOPHY, says Cousin, is the effort of reflection—the
attempt of the human mind to develop in Systematic and
logical form that which has dimly revealed itself in the sponta-
neous thought of ages, and to account to itself in some manner
for its native and instinctive beliefs. We may further add, it )
is the effort of the human mind to attain to truth and certitude
on purely rational grounds, uncontrolled by traditional au-
thorities. The sublime era of Greek philosophy was, in fact,
an independent effort of human reason to solve the great prob-
lems of existence, of knowledge, and of duty. It was an at-
tempt to explain the phenomenal history of the universe, to in-
terpret the fundamental ideas and laws of human reason, to
comprehend the utterances of conscience, and to ascertain
what Ultimate and Supreme Reality underlies the world of
phenomena, of thought, and of moral feeling.” And it is this
which, for us, constitutes its especial value ; that it was, as far
as possible, a result of simple reason; or, if at any time Faith
asserted its authority, the distinction is clearly marked. If
this inquiry was fully, and honestly, and logically conducted,
* Plato sought also to attain to the Ultimate Reality underlying all aesthet-
ic feeling—the Supreme Beauty as well as the Supreme Good.
458 C EIAE IS TIA WTT Y. A. WD
we are entitled to presume that the results attained by this
effort of speculative thought must harmonize with the positive
utterances of the Divine Logos—the Eternal Reason, whose
revelations are embalmed and transmitted to us in the Word
of God. If the great truth that man is “ the offspring of God,”
and as such “the image and glory of God,” which is asserted,
alike, by Paul and the poet-philosophers of Tarsus and Mysia,
be admitted, then we may expect that the reason of man shall
have some correlation with the Divine reason. The mind of
man is the chef-d'oeuvre of Divine art. It is fashioned after the
model which the Divine nature supplies. “Let us make man
in our image after our likeness.” That image consists in
#Tiyywatc.—knowledge ; Śikatoo’iyym—justice; and Öotórmc—öénévo-
ſence. It is not merely the capacity to know, to be just, and to
be beneficent; it is actual knowledge, justice, and benevolence.
It supposes, first, that the fundamental ideas of the true, the
just, and the good, are connate to the human mind ; Second,
that the native determination of the mind is towards the real-
ization of these ideas in every mental state and every form of
human activity; third, that there is a constitutional sympathy
of reason with the ideas of truth, and righteousness, and good-
ness, as they dwell in the reason of God. And though man be
now fallen, there is still within his heart some vestige of his
primal nature. There is still a sense of the divine, a religious
aptitude, “a feeling after God,” and some longing to return to
Him. There are still ideas in the reason, which, in their natu-
ral and logical development compel him to recognize a God.
There is within his conscience a sense of duty, of obligation,
and accountability to a Superior Power—“a law of the mind,”
thought opposed and antagonized by depraved passions and
appetites—“the law in the members.” There is yet a natural,
Constitutional sympathy of reason with the law of God—“it
delights in that law,” and consents “that it is good,” but it is
Overborne and obstructed by passion. Man, even as unregen-
erate, “wills to do that which is good,” but “how to perform
that which is good he finds not,” and in the agony of his soul
G R EE K PFTII, OS O PET Y. 459
he exclaims, “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me I” {
The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The
Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium
of all God’s direct communications to our race—the revealer
of God, is also “the Father of the spirits of all flesh.” That
divine inbreathing which first constituted man “a living soul”
—that “inspiration of the Almighty which giveth man under-
standing,” and still “teacheth him knowledge,” proceeds from
the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and seers
of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers
of the new. That “true light which lighteth every man that
Cometh into the world” shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and
Socrates, and Plato, as well as on the mind of Abraham and
Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician woman, and, in a
higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence, on the
mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be won-
dered at, then, if, in the teaching of Socrates and Plato, we
should find a striking harmony of sentiment, and even form of
expression, with some parts of the Christian revelation. No
short-sighted jealousy ought to impugn the honesty of Our judg-
ment, if, in the speculations of Plato, we catch glimpses of a
world of ideas not unlike that which Christianity discloses, and
hear words not unfamiliar to those who spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost.
If, then, there exists some correlation between Divine and
human reason, and if the light which illuminates all minds in
Christian and in heathen lands is the same “true light,” though
differing in degrees of brightness, it is most natural and rea-
Sonable to expect some connection and some correspondence
between the discoveries of philosophy and the revelations of
the Sacred Oracles.
Although Christianity is confessedly something which is
above reason and nature — something communicated from
above, and therefore in the fullest sense supernatural and
* Romans, ch. vii.
46o C EIRISTIANITY A N D
superhuman, yet it must stand in relation to reason and nature,
and to their historic development ; otherwise it could not ope-
rate on man at all. “We have no knowledge of a dynamic
influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction.”
Matter can only be moved by forces, and according to laws,
as it has properties which correlate it with these forces and
laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any
specific form of cognition, unless it have powers of apprehen-
sion and conception which are governed by uniform laws. If
man is to be instructed by a verbal revelation, he must, at least,
be capacitated for the reception of divine communication—
must have a power of forming Super-sensuous conceptions, and
there must be some original community of thought and idea
between the mind that teaches and the mind that is taught.
A revelation from an invisible God—a being “whom no man
has ever seen or ever can see" with the eye of sense—would
have no affinity for, and no power to affect and enlighten, a
being who had no presentiment of an invisible Power to which
he is in some way related. A revealed law promulgated from
an unseen and utterly unknown Power would have no con-
straining authority, if man had no idea of right, no sense of
duty, no feeling of obligation to a Supreme Being. If, there-
fore, religious instruction be not already preceded by an innate
consciousness of God, and of obligation to God, as an opera-
tive predisposition, there would be nothing for revelation to act
upon. Some relation between the reason which planned the
universe, and which has expressed its thoughts in the numerical
relations and archetypal forms which are displayed therein,
and the reason of man, with its ideas of form and number, pro-
portion and harmony, is necessarily supposed in the statement
of Paul that “the invisible things of God from the creation are
seen.” Nature to us could be no symbol of the Divine
Thought, if there were no correlation between the reason of
man and the reason of God. All revelation, indeed, supposes
Some community of nature, some affinities of thought, some
correlation of ideas, between the mind communicating spiritual
G R E E R PHILOSO PET Y. 461
knowledge, and the mind to which the communication is made.
In approaching man, it must traverse ground already occupied
by man ; it must employ phrases already employed, and as-
sume forms of thought already familiar to man. It must ad-
dress itself to some ideas, sentiments, and feelings already
possessed by man. If religion is the great end and destina-
tion of man, then the nature of man must be constituted for
religion. Now religion, in its inmost nature, is a communion,
a fellowship with God. But no creature can be brought into
this communion “save one that is constitutionally related to
God in terms that admit of correspondence.” There must be
intelligence offered to his intelligence, sentiment to his senti-
ment, reason to his reason, thought to his thought. There must
be implanted in the human mind some fundamental ideas and
determinations grounded upon this fact, that the real end and
destination of man is for religion, so that when that higher
sphere of life and action is presented to man, by an outward
verbal revelation, there shall be a recognized harmony between
the inner idea and determination, and the outer revelation.
We can not doubt that such a relation between human nature
and reason, and Christianity, exists. We see evidences of this
in the perpetual strivings of humanity to attain to some fuller
and clearer apprehension of that Supreme Power which is con-
Sciously near to human thought, and in the historic develop-
ment of humanity towards those higher forms of thought and
existence which demand a revelation in order to their comple-
tion. This original capacity, and this historical development,
have unquestionably prepared the way for the reception of
Christianity.
Christianity, then, must have some connection with the rea-
Son of man, and it must also have some relation to the pro-
gressive developments of human thought in the ages which
preceded the advent of Christ. Christianity did not break
Suddenly upon the world as a new commencement altogether
unconnected with the past, and wanting in all points of sym-
pathy and contact with the then present. It proceeded along
462 CEIRISTIANITY AND
lines of thought which had been laid through ages of prepara-
tion ; it clothed itself in forms of speech which had been
moulded by centuries of education, and it appropriated to it.
self a moral and intellectual culture which had been effected
by long periods of severest discipline. It was, in fact, the
consummation of the whole moral and religious history of the
world. !
A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms
of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, and,
practically, would have been no revelation at all. The divine
light, in passing through such a medium, would have been
darkened and obscured. The lens through which the heavenly
rays are to be transmitted must first be prepared and polished.
The intellectual eye itself must be gradually accustomed to
the light. Hence it is that all revelation has been progressive,
commencing, in the infancy of our race, with images and sym-
bols addressed to sense, and advancing, with the education of
the race, to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. The first
communications to the patriarchs were always accompanied by -
some external, sensible appearance ; they were often made
through some preternatural personage in human form. Subse-
quently, as human thought becomes assimilated to the Divine
idea, God uses man as his organ, and Communicates divine
knowledge as an internal and spiritual gift. The theistic con-
ception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthro-
pomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more
spiritual. The education of Hebraic, Mosaic, and prophetic
ages had gradually developed a purer theism, and prepared
the Jewish mind for that sublime announcement of Our Lord's
—“God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship
in spirit.” For ages the Jews had worshipped in Samaria
and Jerusalem, and the inevitable tendency of thought was to
localize the divine presence; but the gradual withdrawment
from these localities of all visible tokens of Jehovah's pres-
ence, prepared the way for the Saviour's explicit declaration
that “neither in this mountain of Samaria, nor yet at Jerusalem,
G. R. E. E. K. PEIII, OSOPHY, 463
shall men worship the Father,” to the exclusion of any other
spot on earth; the real temple of the living God is now the
heart of man. The Holiness of God was an idea too lofty for
human thought to grasp at once. The light of God's ineffable
purity was too bright and dazzling to burst at once on human
eyes. Therefore it was gradually displayed. The election of
a chosen seed in Abraham's race to a nearer approach to God
than the rest of pagan humanity; the announcement of the
Decalogue at Sinai amidst awe-inspiring wonders; the separa-
tion of a single tribe to the priestly office, who were dedicated
to, and purified in an especial manner for the service of the
tabernacle ; the sanctification of the High-priest by sacrifice
and lustration before he dared to enter “the holiest place"—
the presence-chamber of Jehovah; and then the direct and ex-
plicit teaching of the prophets—were all advancing steps by
which the Jewish mind was lifted up to the clearer apprehen-
sion of the holiness of God, the impurity of man, the distance
of man from God, and the need of Mediation.
The ideas of Redemption and Salvation—of atonement, ex-
piation, pardon, adoption, and regeneration—are unique and
sui-generis. Before these conceptions could be presented in
the fullness and maturity of the Christian system, there was
needed the culture and education of the ages of Mosaic ritual-
ism, with its sacrificial system, its rights of purification, its
priestly absolution, and its family of God." Redemption itself,
as an economy, is a development, and has consequently, a his-
tory—a history which had its commencement in the first Eden,
and which shall have its consummation in the second Eden of
a regenerated world. It was germinally infolded in the first
promise, gradually unfolded in successive types and prophecies,
more fully developed in the life, and sayings, and sufferings of
the Son of God, and its ripened fruit is presented to the eye of
faith in the closing scenic representations of the grand Apoca-
lypse of John. “Judaism was not given as a perfect religion.
Whatever may have been its superiority over surrounding forms
* Romans, ix.4–6.
464. C EIRISTIANITY AND
of worship, it was, notwithstanding, a provisional form only.
The consciousness that it was a preparatory, and not a definite
dispensation, is evident throughout. It points to an end be-
yond itself, suggests a grander thought than any in itself; its
glory precisely consists in its constant looking forward to a glo-
rious future destined to surpass it.” - -
Thus the determinations which, through Redemption, fall to
the lot of history, as Nitzsch justly remarks, obey the emanci-
pating law of gradual progress.” Christianity was preceded by
ages of preparation, in which we have a gradual development
of religious phrases and ideas, of forms of social life and intel-
lectual culture, and of national and political institutions most
favorable to its advent and its promulgation ; and “in the full-
ness of time ’—the maturity and fitness of the age—“God sent
his own Son into the world.”
This work of preparation was not confined alone to Judaism.
The divine plan of redemption comprehended all the race; its
provisions are made in view of the wants of all the race ; and
we must therefore believe that the entire history of the race,
previous to the coming of the Redeemer, was under a divine
supervision, and directed towards the grand centre of our
world's history. Greek philosophy and Grecian civilization
must therefore have a place in the divine plan of history, and
they must stand in an important relation to Christianity. He
who “ determined the time of each nation's existence, and fixed
the geographical boundaries of their habitation in order that
they may seek the Lord,” can not have been unmindful of the
Greek nation, and of its grandest age of philosophy. “The
Father of the spirits of all flesh” could not be unconcerned in
the moral and spiritual welfare of any of his children. He was
as deeply interested in the Athenian as in the Hebrew. He is
the God of the Gentile as well as the Jew. His tender mercies
are over all his works. If the Hebrew race was selected to be
the agent of his providence in one special field, and if the Jew-
* Pressensé, “Religions before Christ,” p. 202.
* “System of Doctrine,” p. 73.
G R E E K PHILOSOPETY. 465
ish theocracy was one grand instrument of preparatory disci-
pline, it was simply because, through these, God designed to
bless all the nations of the earth. And surely no one will pre-
sume to say that a civilization and an intellectual culture which
was second only to the Hebrew, and, in some of its aspects,
even in advance of the Hebrew, was not determined and Su-
pervised by Divine Providence, and made subservient to the
education and development of the whole race. The grand re-
sults of Hebrew civilization were appropriated and assimilated
by Christianity, and remain to this day. And no one can deny
that the same is true of Greek civilization. Through a kind
of historic preparation the heathen world was made ready for
Christ, as a Soil is prepared to receive the seed, and some pre-
cious fruits of knowledge, of truth, and of righteousness, even,
were largely matured, which have been reaped, and appropri-
ated, and vitalized by the heaven-descended life of Christianity.
The chief points of excellence in the civilization of the
Greeks are strikingly obvious, and may be readily presented.
High perfection of the intellect and the imagination displaying
itself in the various forms of art, poetry, literature, and philoso-
phy. A wonderſul freedom and activity of body and of mind,
developed in trade, and colonization, in military achievement,
and in subtile dialectics. A striking love of the beautiful, re-
vealing itself in their sculpture and architecture, in the free
music of prosaic numbers, and the graceful movement and
measure of their poetry. A quickness of perception, a dignity
of demeanor, a refinement of taste, a delicacy of moral sense,
and a high degree of reverence for the divine in nature and hu-
manity. And, in general, a ripe and all-pervading culture,
which has made Athens a synonym for all that is greatest and
best in the genius of man ; SO that literature, in its most flour-
ishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art has
looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models." All
* In Lord Brougham's celebrated letter to the father of the historian
Macaulay in regard to the education of the latter, we read: “If he would be
a great Orator, he must go at once to the fountain-head, and be familiar with
30
466 CITR IS TIA NITY AND
these enter into the very idea of Greek civilization. We can
not resist the conviction that, by a Divine Providence, it was
made subservient to the purpose of Redemption ; it prepared
the way for, and contributed to, the spread of the Gospel.
Its subserviency to this grand purpose is seen in the Greek
tendency to trade and colonization. Their mental activity was
accompanied by great physical freedom of movement. They
displayed an inherent disposition to extensive emigration.
“Without aiming at universal conquest, they developed (if we
may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a
singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barba-
rians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the
Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the
long valley which extended from the cataracts to the mouth of
the Nile. The Hellenic tribes, on the other hand, though they
despised the foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them
and to cultivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at
which history enables us to discover them, we see them mov-
ing about in their ships on the shores and among the islands
of their native seas; and, three or four centuries before the
Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not
been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek
colonies; and lower Italy, when the Roman Republic was just
becoming conscious of its strength, had received the name of
Greece itself. To all these places they carried their arts and
literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amuse-
ments. . . . They were gradually taking the place of the Phoe-
nicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, in-
deed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers.
every one of the great orations of Demosthenes.... I know from expe-
rience that nothing is half so successful in these times (bad though they be)
as what has been formed on the Greek models. I use poor illustrations in
giving my own experience, but I do assure you that both in courts and Par-
liament, and even to mobs, I have never made so much play (to use a very
modern phrase) as when I was almost translating from the Greek. I com-
posed the peroration of my speech for the Queen, in the Lords, after read-
ing and repeating Demosthenes for three or four weeks.”
G R E E R PIIII, OS O PIT Y. 467
Their voyages were not so long. But their influence on gen-
eral civilization was greater and more permanent. The ear-
liest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are due to
the Greeks. The later Greek travellers, Pausanias and Strabo,
are our best sources of information on the topography of St.
Paul's journeys.
“With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are
prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander's con-
quests. He took the meshes of the net of Greek civilization
which were lying in disorder on the edge of the Asiatic shore,
and spread them over all the countries he traversed in his
wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly
brought together. Separate tribes were united under a com-
mon government. New cities were built as the centres of
political life. New lines of communication were opened as
the channels of commercial activity. The new culture pene-
trated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The
Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of
Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia,
and a Grecian Babylon was built by the conqueror in Egypt,
and called by his name.
“The empire of Alexander was divided, but the effects of
his campaigns and policy did not cease. The influence of
these fresh elements of social life was rather increased by being
brought into independent action within the sphere of distinct
kingdoms. Our attention is particularly directed to two of the
monarchical lines which descended from Alexander's generals
—the Ptolemies, or the Greek kings of Egypt, and the Seleu-
cidae, or the Greek kings of Syria. Their respective capitals,
Alexandria and Antioch, became the metropolitan centres of
commercial and civilized life in the East.” Antioch was for
ages the home of science and philosophy. Here the religious
Opinions of the East and the West were blended and mutually
modified. Here it was discovered by the heathen mind that
a new religion had appeared, and a new revelation had been
* Conybcare and Howson, “Life and Epistles of St. Paul,” vol. i. pp. 8–IO.
468 C EIRISTIANITY AND
given." In Alexandria all nations were invited to exchange,
their commodities and, with equal freedom, their opinions.
The representatives of all religions met here. “Beside the
Temple of Jupiter there rose the white marble Temple of Sera-
pis, and close at hand stood the synagogue of the Jews.” The
Alexandrian library contained all the treasures of ancient cul-)
ture, and even a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The spread of the Greek /anguage was one of the most im-
portant services which the cities of Antioch and Alexandria
rendered to Christianity. The Greek tongue is intimately con-
nected with the whole system of Christian doctrine.
This language, which, in Symmetry of structure, in flexibility
and compass of expression, in exactness and precision, in grace
and elegance, exceeds every other language, became the lan-
guage of theology. Next in importance to the inspiration
which communicates the Super-human thought, must be the
gradual development of the language in which the thought can
clothe itself. That development by which the Greek language
became the adequate vehicle of Divine thought, the perfect
medium of the mature revelation of truth Contained in the
Christian Scriptures, must be regarded as the Subject of a
Divine providence. Christianity waited for that development,
and it awaited Christianity. “The Greek tongue became to
the Christian more than it had been to the Roman or the Jew.
The mother-tongue of Ignatius at Antioch was that in which
Philo composed his treatises at Alexandria, and which Cicero
spoke at Athens. It is difficult to state in a few words the im-
portant relation which Alexandria, more especially, was des-
tined to bear to the whole Christian Church.” In that city,
the Old Testament was translated into Greek ; there the writ-
ings of Plato were diligently studied; there Philo, the Plato-
nizing Jew, had sought to blend into one system the teachings
of the Old Testament theology and the dialectic speculations
of Plato. Numenius learns of Philo, and Plotinus of Nume-
nius, and the ecstasy of Plotinus is the development of Philo's
* Acts, xi. 26.
G R E E R PEIII, OS OPJHTY. 469
intuitions. A theological language by this means was developed,
rich in the phrases of various schools, and Suited to convey the
spiritual revelation of Christian ideas to all the world. “It
was not an accident that the New Testament was written in
Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts
and worthiest feelings of the intellect and heart, and which is
\ adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations; nor
was it an accident that the composition of these books and the
promulgation of the Gospels were delayed till the instruction
of our Lord, and the writings of his Apostles could be ex-
pressed in the dialect [of Athens and] of Alexandria.” This
must be ascribed to the foreordination of Him who, in the his-
tory of nations and of civilizations, “worketh all things accord-
ing to the counsel of his own will.”
Now it is the doctrine of the best philologists that language
is a growth. Gradually, and by combined efforts of successive
generations, it has been brought to the perfection which we so
much admire in the idioms of the Bible, the poetry of Homer,
Dante, and Shakspeare, and the prose compositions of Demos-
thenes, Cicero, Johnson, and Macaulay. The material or root-
element of language may have been the product of mental in-
stinct, or perhaps the immediate gift of God by revelation ;
but the formal element must have been the creation of thought,
and the result of rational combination. Language is really
the incarnation of thought ; consequently the growth of a lan-
guage, its affluence, comprehension, and fullness must de-
pend on the vigor and activity of thought, and the acquisition
of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellec-
tual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment
of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is ex-
ceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms
clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification
and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated
peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of
terms, especially such as are expressive of general notions and
* Conybeare and Howson, “Life and Epistles of St. Paul,” vol. i. p. 10.
47o CHRISTIANITY AND
|
abstract ideas. All grammar, all philology, all Scientific no-
menclature are thus, in fact, psychological deposits, which register
the progressive advancement of human thought and knowledge
in the world of mind, as the geological Strata bear testimony to
the progressive development of the material world. “Lan-
guage,” says Trench, “is fossil poetry, fossil history,” and, we
will add, fossil philosophy. Many a single word is a concen-
trated poem. The record of great Social and national revolu-
tions is embalmed in a single term.’ And the history of an
age of philosophic thought is sometimes Condensed and depos-
ited in one imperishable word.”
If, then, language is the creation of thought, the sensible
Westure with which it clothes itself, and becomes, as it were, in-
carnate—if the perfection and efficiency of language depends
on the maturity and clearness of thought, we conclude that the
wonderful adequacy and fitness of the Greek language to be
the vehicle of the Divine thought, the medium of the most per-
fect revelation of God to men, can only be explained on the
assumption that the ages of philosophic thought which, in
Greece, preceded the advent of Christianity, were under the
immediate Supervision of a providence, and, in Some degree,
illuminated by the Spirit of God.
Greek philosophy must therefore have fulfilled a propaedeu-
tic office for Christianity. “As it had been intrusted to the
Hebrews to preserve and transmit the heaven-derived element
of the Monotheistic religion, so it was ordained that, among the
Greeks, all seeds of human culture should unfold themselves
in beautiful harmony, and then Christianity, taking up the op-
position between the divine and human, was to unite both in
one, and show how it was necessary that both should co-oper-
ate to prepare for the appearance of itself and the unfolding of
what it contains.” During the period of Greek philosophy
* See Trench “On the Study of Words,” p. 20, where the word “frank”
is given as an illustration.
* For example, the Köoplog of the Pythagoreans, the eld” of the Platonists,
and the Čitaoašía of the Stoics.
* Neander’s “Church History,” vol. i. p. 4.
G R EE K PHILOSOPEI Y. 47 I
which preceded the coming of Christ, human reason, unfolding
itself from beneath, had aspired after that knowledge of divine
things which is from above. It had felt within itself the
deep-seated consciousness of God—the sporadic revelation of
Him “who is not far from any one of us.”—the immanent
thought of that Being “in whom we live and move and are,”
and it had striven by analysis and definition to attain a more
distinct and logical apprehension. The heart of man had been
stirred with “the feeling after God”—the longing for a clearer
sense of the divine, and had struggled to attain, by abstraction
or by ecstasy, a more immediate communion with God. Man
had been conscious of an imperative obligation to conform to
the will of the great Supreme, and he sought to interpret more
clearly the utterances of conscience as to what duty was. He
had felt the sense of sin and guilt, and had endeavored to ap-
pease his conscience by expiatory offerings, and to deliver him-
self from the power of sin by intellectual culture and moral
discipline. And Surely no one, at all familiar with the history
of that interesting epoch in the development of humanity, will
have the hardihood to assert that no steps were taken in the
right direction, and no progress made towards the distant goal
of human desire and hope. The language, the philosophy, the
ideals of moral beauty and excellence, the noble lives and no-
bler utterances of the men who stand forth in history as the
representatives of Greek civilization, all attest that their noble
\aspiration and effort did not end in ignominious failure and
utter defeat. It is true they fell greatly beneath the realization
of even their own moral ideals, and they became painfully con-
scious of their moral weakness, as men do even in Christian
times. They learned that, neither by intellectual abstraction,
nor by ecstasy of feeling, could they lift themselves to a living,
conscious fellowship with God. The sense of guilt was unre-
lieved by expiations, penances, and prayers. And whilst Some
\cultivated a proud indifference, a Stoical apathy, and others
'sank down to Epicurean ease and pleasure, there was a noble
few who longed and hoped with increasing ardor for a living
472 CITRISTIANITY AND
Redeemer, a personal Mediator, who should “stand between
God and man and lay his hand on both.” Christ became in
some dim consciousness “the Desire of Nations,” and the
Moral Law became even to the Greek as well as the Jew “a
school-master to lead them to Him.”
The arrival of Paul at Athens, in the close of this brilliant
period of Greek philosophy, now assumes an aspect of deeper
interest and profounder significance. It was a grand climac-
teric in the life of humanity—an epoch in the moral and re-
ligious history of the world. It marked the consummation of
a periodic dispensation, and it opened a new era in that won-
derful progression through which an overruling Providence is
carrying the human race. As the coming of the Son of God
to Judea in the ripeness of events—“the fullness of time”—
was the consummation of the Jewish dispensation, and the
event for which the Jewish age had been a preparatory disci-
pline, so the coming of a Christian teacher to Athens, in the
person of “the Apostle of the Gentiles,” was the terminus ad
quem towards which all the phases in the past history of philo-
sophic thought had looked, and for which they had prepared.
Christianity was brought to Athens—brought into contact with
Grecian philosophy at the moment of its exhaustion — at the
moment when, after ages of unwearied effort, it had become
conscious of its weakness, and its comparative failure, and had
abandoned many questions in despair. Greek philosophy had
therefore its place in the plan of Divine Providence.’ It had
a mission to the world ; that mission was now fulfilled. If it
had laid any foundation in the Athenian mind on which the
Christian system could plant its higher truths—if it had raised ſ
up into the clearer light of consciousness any of those ideas
imbedded in the human reason which are germane to Christian
truth—if it had revealed more fully the wants and instincts of
the human heart, or if it had attained the least knowledge of
eternal truth and immutable right, upon this Christianity placed
its imprimafur. And at those points where human reason had
been made conscious of its own inefficiency, and compelled to
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY s 473
own its weakness and its failure, Christianity shed an effulgent
and convincing light. ©
Therefore the preparatory office of Greek religion and Greek
philosophy is fully recognized by Paul in his address to the
Athenians. He begins by saying that the observations he had
made enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were in-
deed, in every respect, “a God-fearing people ;”—that the God
whom they knew so imperfectly as to designate Him “the Un-
known,” but whom “they worshipped,” was the God he wor-
shipped, and would now more fully declare to them. He as-
Sures them that their past history, and their present geographi-
cal position, had been the object of Divine foreknowledge and
determination. “He hath determined beforehand the times of
each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries
of their habitation,” all with this specific design, that they might
“seek after,” “feel aſter,” and “find the Lord,” who had never
been far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-phi-
losophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of “the Fatherhood
of God,” for they had taught that “we are all his offspring;” and
he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood
of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest
School of Gentile philosophy. He thus “recognized the Spirit
of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying
the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He
feels that in these human principles there were some faint ad-
umbrations of the divine, and he looked for their firmer delin-
eation to the figure of that gracious Master, higher and holier
than man, whom he contemplated in his own imagination, and
whom he was about to present to them.”
This function of ancient philosophy is distinctly recognized
by many of the greatest of the Fathers, as Justin, Clement,
Origen, Augustine, and Theodoret. Justin Martyr believed
that a ray of the Divine Logos shone on the mind of the hea-
then, and that the human Soul instinctively turned towards God
as the plant turns towards the sun. “Every race of men par.
* Merivale’s “Conversion of the Roman Empire,” p. 78.
474 O HARISTIANITY AND
\
ticipated in the Word. And they who lived with the Word
were Christians, even if they were held to be godless; as, for
example, among the Greeks; Socrates and Heraclitus, and those
like them.” Clement taught that “philosophy, before the com-
ing of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness;
and now it proved useful for godliness, being a sort of prelimi-
inary discipline for those who reap the fruits of faith through
demonstration. . . . Perhaps we may say that it was given to
the Greeks with this special object, for it brought the Greek
nation to Christ as the Law brought the Hebrews.” “Philoso-
phy was given as a peculiar testament to the Greeks, as forming
the basis of the Christian philosophy.” Referring to the words
of Paul, Origen says, the truths which philosophers taught were
from God, for “God manifested these to them, and all things
that have been nobly said.” And Augustine, whilst depreca-
ting the extravagant claims made for the great Gentile teach-
ers, allows “that some of them made great discoveries, so far
as they received help from heaven; whilst they erred as far as
they were hindered by human frailty.” They had, as he else-
where observes, “a distant vision of the truth, and learnt, from
the teaching of nature, what prophets learnt from the spirit.”
In addressing the Greeks, Theodoret says, “Obey your own
philosophers; let them be your initiators; for they announced
beforehand our doctrines.” He held that “in the depths of hu-
man nature there are characters inscribed by the hand of God.”
And that “if the race of Abraham received the divine law, and
the gift of prophecy, the God of the universe led other nations
| to piety by natural revelation, and the spectacle of nature.”
In attempting to account for this partial harmony between
Philosophy and Revelation, we find the Patristic writers adopt-
ing different theories. They are generally agreed in maintain-
|
|
©
* “First Apology,” ch. xlvi. * “Stromata,” blº. i. ch. v.
* “Stromata,” bk. vi. ch. viii. * “Contra Celsum,” bk. vi. ch. iii.
* “De Civitate Dei,” bk. ii. ch. vii. " Sermon lxviii. 3.
* See Smith’s “Bible Dictionary,” article “Philosophy;” Pressensé, “Re-
ligions before Christ,” p. II ; Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,”
vol. ii. pp. 28–40.
|
G R EE K PHIL OS O PETY. 475
ing some original connection, but they differ as to its immediate
source. Some of them maintained that the ancient philoso-
phers derived their purest light from the fountain of Divine
IRevelation. The doctrines of the Old Testament Scriptures
were traditionally diffused throughout the West before the rise
of philosophic speculation. If the theistic conceptions of
Plato are superior to those of Homer it is accounted for by his
'(hypothetical) tour of inquiry among the Hebrew nation, as
well as his Egyptian investigations. Others maintained that
(the similarity of views on the character of the Supreme Being
and the ultimate destination of humanity which is found in the " '
writings of Plato and the teachings of the Bible is the conse-
quence of immediate inspiration. ) Origen, Jerome, Eusebius,
^ Clement, do not hesitate to affirm that Christ himself revealed
his own high prerogatives to the gifted Grecian. From this
hypothesis, however, the facts of the case compel them to make
Some abatements. In the mid-current of this divine revelation
are found many acknowledged errors, which it is impossible to
ascribe to the celestial illuminator. Plato, then, was partially
inspired, and clouded the heavenly beam with the remaining
grossnesses of the natural sense.” Whilst a third, and more
reasonable, hypothesis was maintained by others. They re-
garded man as “the Offspring and image of the Deity,” and
maintained there must be a correlation of the human and divine
reason, and, consequently, of all discovered truth to God.
Therefore they expected to find some traces of connection and
correspondence between Divine and human thought, and some
kindred ideas in Philosophy and Revelation. “Ideas,” says
St. Augustine, “are the primordial forms, as it were, the immu-
table reason of things; they are not created, they are eternal,
and always the same : they are contained in the Divine intelli-
gence ; and without being subject to birth and death, they are
types according to which is formed every thing that is born and
dies.” The copies of these archetypes are seen in nature, and
are participated in by the reason of man ; and there may there-
l
* Dutler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 4I.
476 CITRISTIANITY AND
fore be some community of idea between man and God, and
some relation between Philosophy and Christianity.
The various attempts which have been made to trace the
elevated theism and morality of Socrates and Plato to º ~
sources have signally failed. Justin Martyr and Tertullian
claim that the ancient philosophers “borrowed from the Jewish
prophets.” Pythagoras and Plato are supposed to have trav
elled in the East in quest of knowledge.” The latter is imag-
ined to have had access to an existing Greek version of the
Old Testament in Egypt, and a strange oversight in chronology
brings him into personal intercourse with the prophet Jeremiah.
A Sober and enlightened criticism is compelled to pronounce
all these statements as mere exaggerations of later times.”
They are obviously mere suppositions by which over-zealous
Christians sought to maintain the supremacy and authority of
Scripture. The travels of Pythagoras are altogether mythical,
the mere invention of Alexandrian writers, who believed that
all wisdom flowed from the East.” That Plato visited Egypt
at all, rests on the single authority of Strabo, who lived at least
four centuries after Plato; there is no trace in his own works'
of Egyptian research. His pretended travels in Phoenicia,
where he gained from the Jews a knowledge of the true God,
are more unreliable still. Plato lived in the fourth century
before Christ (born B.C. 430), and there is no good evidence
of the existence of a Greek version of the Old Testament bel
fore that of “the Seventy’’ (Septuagint), made by order of
Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 270. Jeremiah, the prophet of T
Israel, lived two centuries before Plato ; consequently any
personal intercourse between the two was simply impossible,
Greek philosophy was unquestionably a development of Rea;
Son alone."
* Mr. Watson adopts this hypothesis to account for the theistic opinions
of the ancient philosophers of Greece. See “Institutes of Theology,” vol. i.
pp. 26-34.
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 147.
* Max Müller, “Science of Language,” p. 94.
* See on this subject, Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 477
Some of the ablest Christian scholars and, divines of modern
times, as Cudworth, Neander, Trench, Pressensé, Merivale,
Schaff, after the most careful and conscientious investigation,
have come to this conclusion, that Greek philosophy fulfilled
a preparatory mission for Christianity. The general conclu-
sions they reached are forcibly presented in the words of Pres-
sensé : -
“It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Greek
'philosophy when viewed as a preparation to Christianity. Dis-
interested pursuit of truth is always a great and noble task.
The imperishable want of the human mind to go back to first
principles, suffices to prove that this principle is divine. We
may abuse speculation ; we may turn it into one of the most
powerful dissolvents of moral truths; and the defenders of
positive creeds, alarmed by the attitude too often assumed by
speculation in the presence of religion, have condemned it as
mischievous in itself, confounding in their unjust prejudice its
use and its abuse. But, for all serious thinkers, philosophy is
one of the highest titles of nobility that humanity possesses:
and when we consider its mission previous to Christianity, we
feel convinced that it had its place in the Divine plan. It was,
not religion in itself that philosophy, through its noblest repre-
sentatives, combated, but polytheism. It dethroned the false
gods. Adopting what was best in paganism, philosophy em-
ployed it as an instrument to destroy paganism, and thus clear
the way for definite religion. Above all, it effectually contrib-
uted to purify the idea of Divinity, though this purification was
but an approximation. If at times it caught glimpses of the
highest spiritualism, yet it was unable to protect itself against
the return and reaction of Oriental dualism. In spite of this
imperfection, which in its way served the cause of Christianity
by demonstrating the necessity of revelation, men like Socrates
and Plato fulfilled amongst their people a really sublime mis-
pp. 147, 148; Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Plato,” vol. xvii. p. 787;
Smith’s “Bible Dictionary,” article “Philosophy;” and Thompson’s “Laws
of Thought,” p. 326.
478 C EIRISTIA WITY A. WD
sion. They were to the heathen world the great prophets of
the human conscience, which woke up at their call. And the
awakening of the moral sense was at once the glory and ruin
of philosophy; for conscience, once aroused, could only be
satisfied by One greater than they, and must necessarily reject
all systems which proved themselves insufficient to realize the
moral idea they had evoked.
“But to perish thus, and for such a cause, is a high honor
to a philosophy. It was this made the philosophy of Greece,
like the Hebrew laws, though in an inferior sense, a School-
master that led to Jesus Christ, according to the expression of
Clement of Alexandria. Viewed in this light, it was a true
gift of God, and had, too, the shadow of good things to come,
awakening the presentiment and desire of them, though it
could not communicate them. Nor can we conceive a better
way to prepare for the advent of Him who was to be “the De-
sire of Nations’ before becoming their Saviour.”
In previous chapters we have endeavored to sketch the
history of the development of metaphysical thought, of moral
feeling and idea, and of religious sentiment and want, which
characterized Grecian civilization. In now offering a brief
résumé of the history of that development, with the design of
more fully exhibiting the preparatory office it fulfilled for
Christianity, we shall assume that the mind of the reader has
already been furnished and disciplined by preparatory princi-
ples. He can scarce have failed to recognize that this devel-
opment obeyed a general law, however modified by exterior
and geographical conditions; the same law, in fact, which
governs the development of all individual finite minds, and
which law may be formulated thus:–A//finite mind develops
itseff, first, in instinctive determinations and spontaneous faiths;
then in rising doubt, and earnest questioning, and iſ/-directed in-
quiry; and, finally, in systematic philosophic thought, and rational
belief. These different stages succeed each other in the indi-
vidual mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of child-
* “Religions before Christ,” pp. Ior, Io2.
GREEK: PHILOSOPHY. 479
hood; secondly, the undirected and unsettled force of youth;
and, thirdly, the wisdom of mature age. And these different
stages have also succeeded each other in the universal mind of
humanity. There has been, 1st. Zhe era of spontaneous beliefs
—of popular and Semi-conscious theism, morality, and religion.
2d. 7%e transitional age—the age of doubt, of inquiry, and of
ill-directed mental effort, ending in fruitless sophism, or in
skepticism. 3d. Zhe philosophic or conscious age—the age of
reflective consciousness, in which, by the analysis of thought,
the first principles of knowledge are attained, the necessary
laws of thought are discovered, and man arrives at positive
convictions, and rational beliefs. In the history of Grecian
civilization, the first is the Homeric age ; the second is the
pre-Socratic age, ending with the Sophists; and the third is
the grand Socratic period. History is thus the development
of the fundamental elements of humanity, according to an es-
tablished law, and under conditions which are ordained and
supervised by the providence of God. “The unity of civiliza-
tion is in the unity of human nature; its varieties, in the vari-
ety of the elements of humanity,” which elements have been
successively developed in the course of history. All that is
fundamental in human nature passes into the movement of
civilization. “I say all that is fundamental; for it is the ex-
cellency of history to take out, and throw away all that is not
necessary and essential. That which is individual shines for
a day, and is extinguished forever, or stops at biography.”
Nothing endures, except that which is fundamental and true—
that which is vital, and organizes itself, develops, itself, and
arrives at an historical existence. “Therefore as human nature
is the matter and basis of history, history is, so to speak, the
judge of human nature, and historical analysis is the counter-
proof of psychological analysis.”
Nature, individual mind, and collective humanity, all obey
the law of progressive development; otherwise there could be
no history, for history is only of that which has movement and
* Cousin’s “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 31.
480 . OFIRISTIANITY AND
|
progress. Now, all progress is from the indefinite to the defi-
'nite, from the inorganic to the Organic and vital, from the in-
stinctive to the rational, from a dim, nebulous self-feeling to a
high reflective consciousness, from sensuous images to abstract
conceptions and Spiritual ideas. This progressive develop-
ment of nature and humanity has not been a series of crea-
tions de nozo, without any relation, in matter or form, to that
which preceded. All of the present was contained in embry-
onic infoldment in the past, and the past has contributed its
results to the present." The present, both in nature, and his-
tory, and civilization, is, So to Speak, the aggregate and sum-
total of the past. As the natural history of the earth may now
be read in the successive strata and deposits which form its
Crust, So the history of humanity may be read in the successive
deposits of thought and language, of philosophy and art, which
register its gradual progression. As the paleontological re-
mains imbedded in the rocks present a succession of organic
types which gradually improve in form and function, from the
first sea-weed to the palm-tree, and from the protozoa to the
highest vertebrate, so the history of ancient philosophy presents
a gradual progress in metaphysical, ethical, and theistic con-
ceptions, from the unreflective consciousness of the Homeric
age, to the high reflective consciousness of the Platonic period.
And as all the successive forms of life in pre-Adamic ages
were a preparation for and a prophecy of the coming of man,
so the advancing forms of philosophic thought, during the
grand ages of Grecian civilization, were a preparation and a
prophecy of the coming of the Son of God.
We shall now endeavor to trace this process of gradual
preparation for Christianity in the Greek mind—
* The writer would not be understood as favoring the idea that this de-
velopment is simply the result of “natural law.” The connection between
the past and the present is not a material, but a mental connection. It is
the bond of Creative Thought and Will giving to organic forces a forcsec.n
direction towards the working out of a grand plan. See Agassiz, “Contri-
butions to Natural History,” vol. i. pp. 9, Io; Duke of Argyll, “Reign of
Law,” ch. v.
G R E E K. PEIIL O S OPII Y. 481
(i.) In the field of THEISTIC conceptions.
(ii.) In the department of ETHICAL ideas and principles.
(iii.) In the region of RELIGIOUS sentiment.
In the field of theistic conception the propaedeutic office of
Grecian philosophy is seen—
I. Zia the release of the popular mind from A^2/yżheistic 7.0%ions,
and the purifying and spiritualizing of the Zheistic idea.
The idea of a Supreme Power, a living Personality, energiz-
ing in nature, and presiding over the affairs of men, is not the
product of philosophy. It is the immanent, spontaneous
thought of humanity. It has, therefore, existed in all ages,
and revealed itself in all minds, even when it has not been
presented to the understanding as a definite conception, and
expressed by human language in a logical form. It is the
thought which instinctively arises in the opening reason of
childhood, as the dim and shadowy consciousness of a living
mind behind all the movement and change of the universe.
Then comes the period of doubt, of anxious questioning, and
independent inquiry. The youth seeks to account to himself
for this peculiar sentiment. He turns his earnest gaze towards
nature, and through this living vesture of the infinite he seeks
to catch Some glimpses of the living Soul. In some fact ap-
preciable to sense, in some phenomenon he can see, or hear, or
touch, he would fain grasp the cause and reason of all that is.
But in this field of inquiry and by this method he finds only a
“receding God,” who falls back as he approaches, and is ever
still beyond ; and he sinks down in exhaustion and feebleness,
the victim of doubt, perhaps despair. Still the sentiment of
the Divine remains, a living force, in the centre of his moral
being. He turns his scrutinizing gaze within, and by self-re-
flection seeks for some rational ground for his instinctive faith.
There he finds some convictions he can not doubt, some ideas
he can not call in question, some thoughts he is compelled to
think, some necessary and universal principles which in their
natural and logical development ally him to an unseen world,
3]
482 C EIR IS TIANITY AND
and correlate and bind him fast to an invisible, but real God.
The more his mind is disciplined by abstract thought, the
clearer do these necessary and universal principles become, and
the purer and more spiritual his ideas of God. God is now for
him the First Principle of all principles, the First Truth of all
truths; the Eternal Reason, the Immutable Righteousness, the
Supreme Good. The normal and healthy development of
reason, the maturity of thought, conduct to the recognition of
the true God.
And so it has been in the universal consciousness of Our
race as revealed in history. There was first a period of Spon-
taneous and unreflective Theism, in which man felt the Con-
sciousness of God, but could not or did not attempt a rational
explanation of his instinctive faith. He saw God in clouds
and heard Him in the wind. His Smile nourished the corn,
and cheered the vine. The lightnings were the flashes of his
vengeful ire, and the thunder was his angry voice. But the
unity of God was feebly grasped, the rays of the Divinity
seemed divided and scattered amidst the separate manifesta-
tions of power, and wisdom, and goodness, and retribution,
which nature presented. Then plastic art, to aid and impress
the imagination, created its symbols of these separate powers
and principles, chiefly in human form, and gods were multi-
plied. But all this polytheism still rested on a dim monotheis-
tic background, and all the gods were subordinated to Zeus—
“the Father of gods and men.” Humanity had still the sense
of the dependence of all finite being on one great fountain-
head of Intelligence and Power, and all the “generated gods”
were the subjects and ministers of that One Supreme. This
was the childhood of humanity so vividly represented in Ho-
meric poetry.
Then came a period of incipient reflection, and speculative
thought, in which the attention of man is drawn outward to the
study of nature, of which he can yet only recognize himself as
an integral part. He searches for some &pxft—some first prin-
ciple, appreciable to sense, which in in its evolution shall fur-
G R E E K. PEIII, OS O PETY. 483
nish an explanation of the problem of existence. He tries the
hypothesis of “water,” then of “air,” then of “fire,” as the
primal element, which either is itself, or in some way infolds
within itself an informing Soul, and out of which, by vital
transformation, all things else are produced. But here he
failed to find an adequate explanation; his reason was not sat-
isfied. Then he sought his first principle in “numbers” as
Symbols, and, in Some sense, as the embodiment of the ra-
tional conceptions of Order, proportion, and harmony, God is
the original plovác-unity—One –or else he Sought it in pure-
ly abstract “ideas,” as unity, infinity, identity, and all things
are the evolution of an eternal thought, one and identical,
which is God. And here again he fails. Then he supposes
an unlimited piyſta—a chaotic mixture of elements existing
from eternity, which was separated, combined, and organized
by the energy of a Supreme Mind, the voic of Anaxagoras.
But he holds not firmly to this great principle ; “he recurs
again to air, and ether, and water, as causes for the ordering of
all things.” And after repeated attempts and failures, he is
disappointed in his inquiry, and falls a prey to doubt and skep-
ticism. This was the early youth of our humanity, the period
that opens with Thales and ends with the Sophists.
The problem of existence still waits for and demands a so-
lution. The heart of man, also, still cries out for the living
God. The Socratic maxim, “know thyself,” introverts the men-
tal gaze, and self-reflection now becomes the method of phi-
losophy. The Platonic analysis of thought reveals elements
of knowledge which are not derived from the outer world.
There are universal and necessary principles revealed in con-
Sciousness which, in their natural and logical development, tran-
Scend consciousness, and furnish the cognition of a world of
Real Being, beyond the world of sense. There are absolute
truths which bridge the chasm between the seen and the un-
seen, the fleeting and the permanent, the finite and the infinite,
the temporal and the eternal. There are necessary laws of
* Thus Socrates complains of Anaxagoras. See “Phaedo,” $ 108.
484 C EIRISTIANITY AND
thought which are also found to be laws of things, and which
correlate man to a living, personal, righteous Lord and Law-
giver. From absolute ideas Plato ascends to an absolute Be-
ing, the author of all finite existence. From absolute truths to
an absolute A'eason, the foundation and essence of all truth.
From the principle of immutable right to an absolutely righteous
Aeing. From the necessary idea of the good to a being of ab-
solute Goodness—that is, to God. This is the maturity of hu-
manity, the ripening manhood of Our race which was attained
in the Socratic age.
The inevitable tendency of this effort of speculative thought,
spread over ages, and of the intellectual culture which neces-
sarily resulted, was to undermine the old polytheistic religion,
and to purify and elevate the theistic conception. The school
of Elea rejected the gross anthropomorphism of the Homeric
theology. Xenophanes, the founder of the school, was a be-
liever in
“One God, of all beings divine and human the greatest,
Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in ideas.”
And he repels with indignation the anthropomorphic represen-
tations of the Deity.
“But men foolishly think that gods are born as men are,
And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice, and their figure:
But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers,
Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to OXen,
Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies
Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned.”
Empedocles also wages uncompromising war against all repre-
Sentations of the Deity in human form—
“For neither with head adjusted to limbs, like the human,
Nor yet with two branches down from the shoulders outstretching,
Neither with feet, nor swift-moving limbs, ....
He is, wholly and perfectly, mind, ineffable, holy,
With rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the world.”
When speaking of the mythology of the older Greeks, Socrates
maintains a becoming prudence; he is evidently desirous to
Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. pp. 431, 432.
“Ibid., vol. i. pp. 495, 496.
G R E E K PEIII, OSOPHY, 485
avoid everything which would tend to loosen the popular rever-
ence for divine things.' But he was opposed to all anthropo-
morphic conceptions of the Deity. His fundamental position
was that the Deity is the Supreme Reason, which is to be hon-
ored by men as the source of all existence and the end of all
human endeavor. Notwithstanding his recognition of a num-
ber of subordinate divinities, he held that the Divine is one,
because Reason is one. He taught that the Supreme Being is
the immaterial, infinite Governor of all ; that the world bears
the stamp of his intelligence, and attests it by irrefragable evi-
dence ; and that he is the author and vindicator of all moral
laws." So that, in reality, he did more to overthrow polytheism
than any of his predecessors, and on that account was doomed
to death.
It was, however, the matured dialectic of Plato which gave
the death-blow to polytheism. “Plato, the poet-philosopher,
sacrificed Homer himself to monotheism. We may measure
the energy of his conviction by the greatness of the sacrifice.
He could not pardon the Syren whose songs had fascinated
Greece, the fresh brilliant poetry that had inspired its religion.
He crowned it with flowers, but banished it, because it had
lowered the religious ideal of conscience.” He was sensible
of the beauty of the Homeric fables, but he was also keenly
alive to their religious falsehood, and therefore he excluded the
poets from his ideal republic. In the education of youth, he
would forbid parents and teachers repeating “the stories which
Hesiod and Homer and the other poets told us.” And after
instancing a number of these stories “which deserve the
gravest condemnation,” he enjoins that God must be repre-
Sented as he is in reality. “God,” says he, “is, beyond all else,
good in reality, and therefore so to be represented;” “he can
not do evil, or be the cause of evil;” “he is of simple essence,
* Xenophon, “Memorabilia,” bk. i. ch. iii. § 3.
* Id., ib., blº. i. ch. iv. §§ 17, 18. * Id., ib., bk. i. ch. i. § 19.
* Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 63; Butler’s “Leg-
tures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 359.
486 CFTRISTIANITY AND
º
and can not change, or be the subject of change;” “there is
no imperfection in the beauty or goodness of God;” “he is a
God of truth, and can not lie ;” “he is a being of perfect sim-
plicity and truth in deed and word.” The reader can not fail
to recognize the close resemblance between the language of
Plato and the language of inspiration. Jo
The theistic conception, in Plato, reaches the highest purity
and spirituality. God is “the Supreme Mind,” “incorporeal,”
“unchangeable,” “infinite,” “absolutely perfect,” “essentially
good,” “unoriginated and eternal.” He is “the Father and
Maker of the world,” “the efficient Cause of all things,” “the
Monarch and Ruler of the world,” “the Sovereign Mind that
orders all things,” and “pervades all things.” He is “the
sole principle of all things,” “the beginning of all truth,” “the
fountain of all law and justice,” “the source of all order and
beauty;” in short, He is “the beginning, middle, and end of
all things.”
Aristotle continued the work of undermining polytheism.
He defines God as “the Eternal Reason’” — the Supreme
Mind. “He is the immovable cause of all movement in the
universe, the all-perfect principle. This principle or essence
pervades all things. It eternally possesses perfect happiness,
and its happiness consists in energy. This primeval mover is
immaterial, for its essence is energy—it is pure thought, thought
thinking itself—the thought of thought.” Polytheism is thus
swept away from the higher regions of the intelligence. “For
several to command,” says he, “is not good, there should be
but one chief. A tradition, handed down from the remotest
antiquity, and transmitted under the veil of fable, says that all
the stars are gods, and that the Divinity embraces the whole of
nature. And round this idea other mythical statements have
been agglomerated, with a view to influencing the vulgar, and
for political and moral expediency; as for instance, they feigned
* “Republic,” bk. ii. §§ 18–21.
* See ante, ch. xi. pp. 377, 378, where the references to Plato's writings
are given. * “Metaphysics,” bk. xii.
G R EE K PEIII, OSO PET Y. 487
that these gods have human shape, and are like certain of the
animals; and other stories of the kind are added on. Now, if
any one will separate from all this the first point alone, namely,
that they thought the first and deepest grounds of existence to
be Divine, he may consider it a divine utterance.” The pop-
ular polytheism, then, was but a perverted fragment of a deeper
and purer “Theology.” This passage is a sort of obituary of
polytheism. The ancient glory of paganism had passed away.
Philosophy had exploded the old theology. Man had learned
enough to make him renounce the ancient religion, but not
enough to found a new faith that could satisfy both the intellect
and the heart. “Wherefore we are not to be surprised that
the grand philosophic period should be followed by one of in-
credulity and moral collapse, inaugurating the long and univer-
sal decadence which was, perhaps, as necessary to the work of
preparation, as was the period of religious and philosophic de-
velopment.” ºf
The preparatory office of Greek philosophy in the region of
speculative thought is seen—
2. In the development of the ZVieistic argument in a logical form.
—Every form of the theistic proof which is now employed by
writers on natural theology to demonstrate the being of God
was apprehended, and logically presented, by one or other of
the ancient philosophers, excepting, perhaps, the “moral argu-
ment” drawn from the facts of conscience.
(I.) 7%e AETIOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon
the principle of causality, which may be presented in the fol-
lowing form:
All genesis or becoming Supposes a permanent and un-
caused Being, adequate to the production of all phenomena.
The sensible universe is a perpetual genesis, a succession
of appearances: it is “always becoming, and never really is.”
Therefore, it must have its cause and origin in a perma-
ment and unoriginated Being, adequate to its production.
* “Metaphysics,” bk. xi. ch. viii. § 19.
488 C EIRISTIANITY AND
The major premise of this syllogism is a fundamental prin-
ciple of reason — a self-evident truth, an axiom of Common
sense, and as such has been recognized from the very dawn of
philosophy. 'A39 watov yiveróai Ti čk plmöévôc Tpointápxovroc-AEx
nihilo mihiſſ-Wothing which once was not, could ever of itself come
into being. Nothing can be made or produced without an effi-
cient cause, is the oldest maxim of philosophy. It is true that
this maxim was abusively employed by Democritus and Epi-
curus to disprove a Divine creation of any thing out of noth-
ing, yet the great body of ancient philosophers, as Pythago-
ras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Empedocles,
Plato, and Aristotle, regarded it as the announcement of an
universal conviction, that nothing can be produced without an
efficient cause;—order can not be generated out of chaos, life
out of dead matter, consciousness out of unconsciousness, rea-
son out of unreason. A first principle of life, of order, of rea-
son, must have existed anterior to all manifestions of order, of
life, of intelligence, in the visible universe. It was clearly in
this sense that Cicero understood this great maxim of the an-
cient philosophers of Greece. With him “De miſii/o miſii/ſit *
is equivalent to “AWhi/ sine causa "-nothing exists without a
cause. This is unquestionably the form in which that funda-
mental law of thought is stated by Plato: “Whatever is gener-
ated is necessarily generated from a certain cause, for it is
wholly impossible that any thing should be generated without
a cause.” And the efficient cause is defined as “a power
whereby that which did not previously exist was afterwards
made to be.” It is scarcely needful to remark that Aristotle,
the scholar of Plato, frequently lays it down as a postulate of
reason, “that we admit nothing without a cause.” By an irre-
sistible law of thought, “all phenomena Żresent themselves to us
as the expression of power, and refer us to a causal ground
whence they issue.”
Theºremise of this Syllogism is a fact of observation.
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix.; also “Philebus,” $45. * “Sophist,” $ 109.
* “Post. Analytic,” bk. ii. ch. xvi.; “Metaphysics,” bk. i. ch. i. § 3.
G R EAER PIIII, OS O PHY. 489
To the eye of sense and sensible observation, to scientific in-
duction even in its highest generalizations, the visible universe
presents nothing but a history and aggregation of phenomena
—a succession of appearances or effects having more or less
resemblance. It is a ceaseless flow and change, “a generation
and corruption,” “a becoming, but never really is,” it is never
in two successive moments the same." All our cognitions of
Sameness, uniformity, causal connection, permanent Being, real
Power, are purely rational conceptions given in thought, sup-
plied by the spontaneous intuition of reason as the correlative
prefix to the phenomena observed.”
Therefore the ancient philosophers concluded justly, there
must be something &yévvmtov–Something which was never
generated, Something airobvác and abóvirógratov–Self-origina-
ted and Self-existing, something rairów and aid viov—immuta-
ble and eternal, the object of rational apperception—which is
the real ground and efficient cause of all that appears.
(2.) The COSMOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon
the principle of order, and thus presented:
Order, proportion, harmony, are the product and expres-
sion of Mind.
The created universe reveals order, proportion, and har-
mony.
Therefore, the created universe is the product of Mind.
The fundamental law of thought which underlies this mode
of proof was clearly recognized by Pythagoras. All harmony
and proportion and symmetry is the result of unity evolving
itself in and pervading multiplicity. Mind or reason is unity
and indivisibility; matter is diverse and multiple. Mind is
the determinating principle ; matter is indeterminate and in-
definite. Confused matter receives form, and proportion, and
order, and symmetry, by the action and interpenetration of the
spiritual and indivisible element. In presence of facts of Or-
der, the human reason instinctively and necessarily affirms the
presence and action of Mind.
* “Timaeus,” ch. ix. * Ibid.
490 C EIRISTIANITY AND
“Pythagoras had long devoted his intellectual adoration to
the lofty idea of Order. To his mind it seemed as the presid-
ing genius of the serene and silent world. He had from his
youth dwelt with delight upon the eternal relations of space
and number, in which the very idea of proportion seems to find
its first and immediate development, until at length it seemed
as if the whole secret of the universe was hidden in these mys-
terious correspondences. The world, in all its departments,
moral and material, is a living arithmetic in its development,
a realized geometry in its repose ; it is a ‘cosmos’ (for the
word is Pythagorean), the expression of harmony, the manifes-
tation to sense of everlasting order ; and the Science of num-
àers is the truest representation of its eternal laws.” There-
fore, argued Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, as the reason
of man can perceive the relations of an eternal Order in the
proportions of extension and number, the laws of proportion,
and symmetry, and harmony must inhere in a Divine reason,
an intelligent Soul, which moves and animates the universe.
The harmonies of the world which address themselves to the
human mind must be the product of a Divine mind. The
world, in its real structure, must be the image and copy of that
divine proportion which the mind of man adores. It is the
sensible type of the Divinity, the outward and multiple devel-
opment of the Eternal Unity, the Eternal One—that is, God.
The same argument is elaborated by Plato in his philosophy
of beauty. God is with him the last reason, the ultimate foun-
dation, the perfect ideal of all beauty—of all the order, propor-
tion, harmony, Sublimity, and excellence which reigns in the
physical, the intellectual, and the moral world. He is the
“Eternal Beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from
all decay as well as increase—the perfect—the Divine Beauty”
which is beheld by the pure mind in the celestial world.
(3.) The TELEOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon
the principle of intentionality or Final Cause, and is presented
in the following form :
* “Banquet,” $35.
G R E E K PHILOSOPHY, 49 I
The choice and adaptation of means to the accomplish-
ment of Special ends supposes an intelligent purpose, a De-
signing Mind.
In the universe we see such choice and adaptation of
means to ends.
Therefore, the universe is the product of an intelligent,
personal Cause.
This is peculiarly the Socratic proof. He recognized the
necessity and the irresistibility of the conviction that the choice
and adaptation of means to ends is the effect of Purpose, the
expression of Will." There is an obviousness and a directness
in this mode of argument which is felt by every human mind.
In the “Memorabilia” Xenophon has preserved a conversation
of Socrates with Aristodemus in which he develops this proof
at great length. In reading the dialogue” in which Socrates
instances the adaptation of Our Organization to the external
world, and the examples of design in the human frame, we
are forcibly reminded of the chapters of Paley, Whewell, and
M'Cosh. Well might Aristodemus exclaim : “The more I
consider it, the more it is evident to me that man must be the
masterpiece of Some great Artificer, carrying along with it infi-
nite marks of the love and favor of Him who has thus formed
it.” The argument from Final Causes is pursued by Plato in
the “Timaeus ;” and in Aristotle, God is the Final Cause of all
things.”
(4.) The ONTOLOGICAL or IDEOLOGICAL proof, or the argu-
ment grounded on necessary and absolute ideas, which may be
thrown into the following syllogism:
Every attribute or quality implies a subject, and absolute.
modes necessarily suppose an Absolute Being.
* “Canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like
this (in the human body) should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and
contrivance P”—“Memorabilia,” bk. i. ch. iv.
* “Memorabilia,” bk. i. ch. iv.
* Aristotle clearly recognizes that an end or final cause implies Intelli-
gence. “The appearance of ends and means is a proof of Design.”—“Nat.
Ausc.,” bk. ii. ch. viii.
492 O HR IS TIA WITY AND
Necessary and absolute truths or ideas are revealed in
human reason as absolute modes.
Therefore universal, necessary, and absolute ideas are
modes of the absolute subject—that is, God, the foundation
and source of all truth.
This is the Platonic proof. Plato recognized the principle
of substance (ovoia—intokeipievou), and therefore he proceeds in
the “Timaeus” to inquire for the real ground of all existence;
and in the “Republic,” for the real ground of all truth and
certitude.
The universe consists of two parts, permanent existences
and transient phenomena—being and genesis; the one eter-
nally constant, the other mutable and subject to change; the
former apprehended by the reason, the latter perceived by
sense. For each of these there must be a principle, subject, or
Substratum—a principle or subject-matter, which is the ground
or condition of the sensible world, and a principle or substance,
which is the ground and reason of the intelligible world or
world of ideas. The subject-matter, or ground of the sensible
world, is “the receptacle” and “nurse” of forms, an “invisible
species and formless receiver (which is not earth, or air, or fire,
or water) which receives the immanence of the intelligible.”
The subject or ground of the intelligible world is that in which
ideal forms, or eternal archetypes inhere, and which impresses
form upon the transitional element, and fashions the world
after its own eternal models. This eternal and immutable sub-
stance is God, who created the universe as a copy of the eter-
nal archetypes—the everlasting thoughts which dwell in his
infinite mind.
These copies of the eternal archetypes or models are per-
ceived by the reason of man in virtue of its participation in the
Ultimate Reason. The reason of man is the organ of truth ;
by an innate and inalienable right, it grasps unseen and eter-
nal realities. The essence of the soul is akin to that which is
real, permanent, and eternal;-“Zł is the offspring and image of
* “Timaeus,” ch. xxiv.
G R EE K PHILOSOPEIY. 493
God,” therefore it has a true communion with the realities of
things, by virtue of this kindred and homogeneous nature. It
can, therefore, ascend from the universal and necessary ideas,
which are apprehended by the reason, to the absolute and
supreme Idea, which is the attribute and perfection of God.
When the human mind has contemplated any object of beauty,
any fact of order, proportion, harmony, and excellency, it may
rise to the notion of a quality common to all objects of beauty
—“from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others;
from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful
sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until, from thought to thought,
we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object
than the perfect, absolute, Divine Beauty.” When a man has,
from the contemplation of instances of virtue, risen to the no-
tion of a quality common to all these instances, this quality
becomes the representative of an ineffable something which,
in the sphere of immutable reality, answers to the conception
in his soul. “At the extreme limits of the intellectual world
is the Idea of the Good, which is perceived with difficulty, but,
in fine, can not be perceived without concluding that it is the
Source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible
world it produces light, and the star whence light directly
comes ; that in the invisible world it directly produces truth
and intelligence.” This absolute Good is God.
The order in which these several methods of proof were
developed, will at once present itself to the mind of the reader
as the natural Order of thought. The first and most obvious
aspect which nature presents to the opening mind is that of
movement and change—a succession of phenomena suggesting
the idea of Żozver. Secondly, a closer attention reveals a re-
Semblance of phenomena among themselves, a uniformity of
nature—an order, proportion, and harmony pervading the cos-
ſmos, which suggest an identity and unity of power and of reason,
pervading and controlling all things. Thirdly, a still closer
inspection of nature reveals a wonderful adaptation of means
sº
* “Banquet,” $34. * “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.
494 C II RISTIANITY AND
to the fulfillment of special ends, of organs designed to fulfill
specific functions, suggesting the idea of Žužose, contrivance,
and choice, and indicating that the power which moves and
determines the universe is a personal, thinking, and 20/i/zltary
agent. And fourthly, a profounder study of the nature of
thought, an analysis of personal consciousness, reveals that
there are necessary principles, ideas, and laws, which univer-
sally govern and determine thought to definite and immovable
conceptions—as, for example, the principles of causality, of
substance, of identity or unity, of Order, of intentionality; and
that it is only under these laws that we can conceive the uni-
verse. By the law of substance we are compelled to regard
these ideas, which are not only laws of thought but also of
things, as inherent in a subject, or Being, who made all things,
and whose ideas are reflected in the reason of man. Thus
from universal and necessary ideas we rise to the absolute Zºea,
from immutable principles to a First Principle of al/?rinciples,
a First Thought of all thoughts—that is, to God. This is the
history of the development of thought in the individual, and in
the race—cause, order, design, idea, being, GOD.
G R E E K. PEIII, OS OPITY. 495
CHAPTER XV.
THE PROPEDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (continued).
“If we regard this sublime philosophy as a preparation for Christianity
instead of secking in it a substitute for the Gospel, we shall not need to
overstate its grandeur in order to estimate its real value.”—PRESSENSE.
“Plato made me to know the true God. Jesus Christ showed me the
way to Him.”—ST. AUGUSTINE.
HE preparatory office of Grecian philosophy is also seen
in the department of morals.
I. In the azyakening and enthronement of Conscience as a law
of duty, and the elevation and purification of the Moral Idea.
The same law of evolution, which we have seen governing
the history of speculative thought, may also be traced as deter-
mining the progress of ethical inquiry. In this department
there are successive stages marked, both in the individual and
the national mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of
childhood, Submitting with unquestioning faith to prescribed
and arbitrary laws ; then the unsettled and ill-directed force
of youth, questioning the authority of laws, and asking reasons
why this or that is obligatory; then the philosophic wisdom of
riper years, recognizing an inherent law of duty, which has an
absolute rightness and an imperative obligation. There is
first a dim and shadowy apprehension of some lines of moral
distinction, and Some consciousness of obligation, but these
rest mainly upon an outward law—the observed practice of
others, or the command of the parent as, in some sense, the
command of God. Then, to attain to personal convictions,
man passes through a stage of doubt; he asks for a ground of
obligation, for an authority that shall approve itself to his own
judgment and reason. At last he arrives at Some ultimate
principles of right, some immutable standard of duty; he rec-
496 C FIRISTIANITY AND
ognizes an inward law of conscience, and it becomes to him as
the voice of God. He extends his analysis to history, and he
finds that the universal conscience of the race has, in all ages,
uttered the same behest. Should he live in Christian times,
he discovers a wondrous harmony between the voice of God
within the heart, and the voice of God within the pages of in-
spiration. And now the convention of public opinion, and the
laws of the state, are revered and upheld by him, just so far as
they bear the imprimatur of reason and of conscience—that is,
of God. -
This history of the normal development of the individual
mind has its counterpart in the history of humanity. There is
(I.) 7%e age of popular and unconscious morality; (2.) 7%e fran-
sitional, skeptical, or soft/listical age; and (3.) Zhe philosophic or
conscious age of morality." In the “Republic” of Plato, we
have these three eras represented by different persons, through
the course of the dialogue. The question is started—“what is
Justice? and an answer is given from the stand-point of popu-
lar morality, by Polemarchus, who quotes the words of the poet
Simonides,
“To give to each his due is just;”
that is, justice is paying your debts. This doctrine being
proved inadequate, an answer is given from the Sophistical
point of view by Thrasymachus, who defines justice as “the
advantage of the strongest”—that is, might is right, and right is
might.” This answer being sharply refuted, the way is opened
for a more philosophic account, which is gradually evolved in
book iv., Glaucon and Adimantus personifying the practical
understanding, which is gradually brought into harmony with
philosophy, and Socrates the higher reason, as the purely phil-
osophic conception. Justice is found to be the right proportion
and harmonious development of all the elements of the soul,
and the equal balance of all the interests of society, so as to
Secure a well-regulated and harmonious whole.
* Grant’s “Aristotle's Ethics,” vol. i. p. 46.
* “Republic,” bk. i. § 6. * Ibid., bk. i. § 12.
G B E E R PEIII, OSO PHY. 497
The era of popular and unconscious morality is represented
by the times of Homer, Hesiod, the Gnomic poets, and “the
Seven Wise Men of Greece.”
This was an age of instinctive action, rather than reflection
—of poetry and feeling, rather than analytic thought. The
rules of life were presented in maxims and proverbs, which do
not rise above prudential counsels or empirical deductions.
Morality was immediately associated with the religion of the
state, and the will of the gods was the highest law for men.
“Homer and Hesiod, and the Gnomic poets, constituted the
educational course,” to which may be added the saws and
aphorisms of the Seven Wise Men, and we have before us the
main sources of Greek views of duty. When the question was
asked—“What is right?” the answer was given by a quotation
from Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, and the like. The morality
of Homer “is concrete, not abstract; it expresses the concep-
tion of a heroic life, rather than a philosophic theory. It is
mixed up with a religion which really consists in a celebration
of the beauty of nature, and in a deification of the strong and
brilliant qualities of human nature. It is a morality uninflu-
enced by a regard for a future life. It clings with intense
enjoyment and love to the present world, and the state after
death looms up in the distance as a cold and repugnant shad-
ow. And yet it would often hold death preferable to disgrace.
The distinction between a noble and ignoble life is strongly
marked in Homer, and yet a sense of right and wrong about
particular actions seems fluctuating” and confused." A sen-
suous conception of happiness is the chief good, and mere
temporal advantage the principal reward of virtue. We hear
nothing of the approving smile of conscience, of inward self-
Satisfaction, and peace, and harmony, resulting from the prac-
tice of virtue. Justice, energy, temperance, chastity, are en-
joined, because they secure temporal good. And yet, with all
this imperfection, the poets present “a remarkable picture of
primitive simplicity, chastity, justice, and practical piety, under
* Grant’s “Aristotle's Ethics,” vol. i. p. 51.
32
498 CHRISTIANITY AND
the three-fold influence of right moral feeling, mutual respect,
and fear of the divine displeasure.”
The transitional, skeptical, or sophistical era begins with Pro-
tagoras. Poetry and proverbs had ceased to satisfy the reason
of man. The awakening intellect had begun to call in ques-
tion the old maxims and “wise saws,” to dispute the arbitrary
authority of the poets, and even to arraign the institutions of
society. It had already begun to seek for some reasonable
foundation of authority for the opinions, customs, laws, and in-
stitutions which had descended to them from the past, and to
ask why men were obliged to do this or that? The question
whether there is at bottom any real difference between truth
and error, right and wrong, was now fairly before the human
mind. The ultimate standard of all truth and all right was
now the grand object of pursuit. These inquiries were not,
however, conducted by the Sophists with the best motives.
They were not always prompted by an earnest desire to know
the truth, and an earnest purpose to embrace and do the right.
They talked and argued for mere effect—to display their dia-
lectic subtilty, or their rhetorical power. They taught virtue
for mere emolument and pay. They delighted, as Cicero tells
us, to plead the opposite sides of a cause with equal effect.
And they found exquisite pleasure in raising difficulties, main-
taining paradoxes, and passing off mere tricks of oratory for
solid proofs. This is the uniform representation of the sophis-
tical spirit which is given by all the best writers who lived
nearest to their times, and who are, therefore, to be presumed
to have known them best. Grote” has made an elaborate de-
fense of the Sophists; he charges Plato with gross misrepresen-
tation. His portraits of them are denounced as mere carica-
tures, prompted by a spirit of antagonism ; all antiquity is pre-
sumed to have been misled by him. No one, however, can
read Grant’s “Essay on the History of Moral Philosophy in
Greece’” without feeling that his vindication of Plato is com-
* Tyler, “ Theology of the Greek Poets,” p. 167.
* “History of Greece.” * Aristotle’s “Ethics,” vol. i. ch. ii.
G R E E R PEIIL O S OPEI Y. . 499
plete and unanswerable: “Plato never represents the Sophists
as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not
make sophistry to consist in holding wicked opinions; he rep-
resents them as only too orthodox in general,' but capable of
giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for the sake of vanity.
Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral convictions
than directly attacks them.” The Sophists were wanting in
deep conviction, in moral earnestness, in sincere love of truth,
in reverence for goodness and purity, and therefore their tri-
fling, insincere, and paradoxical teaching was unfavorable to
goodness of life. The tendency of their method is forcibly de-
picted in the words of Plato: “There are certain dogmas re-
lating to what is just and good in which we have been brought
up from childhood—obeying and reverencing them. Other
opinions recommending pleasure and license we resist, out of
respect for the old hereditary maxims. Well, then, a question
comes up concerning what is right He gives some answer
such as he has been taught, and straightway is refuted. He
tries again, and is again refuted. And, when this has hap-
pened pretty often, he is reduced to the opinion that nothing is
either right or zwrong; and in the same way it happens about
the just and the good, and all that before we have held in
reverence. On this, he naturally abandons his allegiance to
the old principles and takes up with those he before resisted,
and so, from being a good citizen, he becomes lawless.” And,
in point of fact, this was the theoretical landing-place of the
Sophists. We do not say they became practically “lawless”
and antinomian, but they did arrive at the settled opinion that
right and wrong, truth and error, are solely matter of private
opinion and conventional usage. Man's own fluctuating opin-
ion is the measure and standard of all things.” They who
“make the laws, make them for their own advantage.” There
* “His teachings will be good counsels about a man’s own affairs, how
best to govern his family; and also about the affairs of the state, how most
ably to administer and speak of state affairs.”—“Protag.,” $26.
* “Republic,” bk. vii, ch. xvii. * “Theaetetus,” $23.
* “Gorgias,” $$ 85–89.
5oo C EIR IS TIA WTT Y. A ND
is no such thing as Eternal Right. “That which aft/ears just
and honorable to each city is So for that city, as long as the
opinion prevails.”
The age of the Sophists was a transitional period—a neces-
sary, though, in itself considered, an unhappy stage in the prog-
ress of the human mind ; but it opened the way for, -
The Socratic, ſ/hi/osoft/lic, or conscious age of morals. It has
been said that “before Socrates there was no morality in
Greece, but only propriety of conduct.” If by this is meant
i that prior to Socrates men simply followed the maxims of
“the Theologians,” and obeyed the laws of the state, without
reflection and inquiry as to the intrinsic character of the acts,
and without any analysis and exact definition, so as to attain
to principles of ultimate and absolute right, it must be accepted
as true—there was no philosophy of morals. Socrates is there-
fore justly regarded as “the father of moral philosophy.” Aris-
totle says that he confined himself chiefly to ethical inquiries.
He sought a determinate conception and an exact definition of
virtue. As Xenophon has said of him, “he never ceased ask-
ing, What is piety what is impiety? what is noble? what is
base ? what is just? what is unjust? what is temperance what
is madness?” And these questions were not asked in the
Sophistic spirit, as a dialectic exercise, or from idle curiosity.
He was a perfect contrast to the Sophists. They had slighted
Truth, he made her the mistress of his soul. They had turned
away from her, he longed for more perfect communion with
her. They had deserted her for money and renown, he was
faithful to her in poverty." He wanted to know what piety
was, that he might be pious. He desired to know what jus-
tice, temperance, nobility, courage were, that he might cultivate
and practise them. He wrote no books, delivered no lectures;
he instituted no school; he simply conversed in the shop, the
market-place, the banquet-hall, and the prison. This philoso-
* “Theaetetus,” $$ 65–75. * Homer, Hesiod, etc.
* “Memorabilia,” bk. i. ch. i. p. 16.
* Lewes's “Biographical History of Philosophy,” p. 122.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 5O1
phy was not so much a doctrine as a life. “What is remarkable
in him is not the system but the man. The memory he left be-
hind him amongst his disciples, though idealized—the affec-
tion, blended with reverence, which they never ceased to feel
for his person, bear testimony to the elevation of his character
and his moral purity. We recognize in him a Greek of Athens
—one who had imbibed many dangerous errors, and on whom
the yoke of pagan custom still weighed; but his life was never-
theless a noble life; and it is to calumny we must have re-
course if we are to tarnish its beauty by odious insinuations, as
Lucian did, and as has been too frequently done, after him, by
unskillful defenders of Christianity," who imagine it is the
gainer by all that degrades human nature. Born in a hum-
ble position, destitute of all the temporal advantages which the
Greeks so passionately loved, Socrates exerted a kingship over
minds. His dominion was the more real for being less appar-
ent. . . . (His power consisted of three things: his devoted
affection for his disciples, his disinterested love of truth, and
the perfect harmony of his life and doctrine..…. If he recom-
mended temperance and sobriety, he also set the example;
poorly clad, satisfied with little, he disdained all the delicacies
of life. He possessed every species of courage. On the field
of battle he was intrepid, and still more intrepid when he re-,
sisted the caprices of the multitude who demanded of him,
when he was a senator, to commit the injustice of summoning
ten generals before the tribunals. He also infringed the in-
iquitous orders of the thirty tyrants of Athens. The satires of
Aristophanes neither moved nor irritated him. The same
dauntless firmness he displayed when brought before his
judges, charged with impiety. “If it is your wish to absolve
me on condition that I henceforth be silent, I reply I love and
honor you, but I ought rather to obey the gods than you. Nei-
ther in the presence of judges nor of the enemy is it permitted
me, or any other man, to use every sort of means to escape
death. It is not death but crime that it is difficult to avoid;
* Watson’s “Institutes of Theology,” vol. i. p. 374.
5O2 CHRISTIANITY AND
crime moves faster than death. So I, old and heavy as I am,
have allowed myself to be overtaken by death, while my ac-
cusers, light and vigorous, have allowed themselves to be over-
taken by the light-footed crime. I go, then, to suffer death;
they to suffer shame and iniquity. I abide by my punishment,
as they by theirs. All is according to order.” It was the same
fidelity to duty that made Socrates refuse to escape from prison,
in order not to violate the laws of his country, to which, eyen
though irritated, more respect is due than to a father. ‘Let us
walk in the path,’ he says ‘that God has traced for us.” These
last words show the profound religious sentiment which ani-
mated Socrates. . . . It is impossible not to feel that there was
something divine in such a life crowned with such a death.”
Socrates laid the foundation for conscious morality by
placing the ground of right and wrong in an eternal and un-
changeable reason which illuminates the reason and conscience
of every man. He often asserted that morality is a science
which can not be taught. It depends mainly upon principles
which are discovered by an inward light. Accordingly he re-
garded it as the main business of education to “draw out” into
the light of consciousness the principles of right and justice
which are infolded within the conscience of man—to deliver
the mind of the secret truth which was striving towards the
light of day. Therefore he called his method the “maieutic”
or “obstetric’’ art. He felt there was something divine in all
men (answering to his to 6alpóvoy or &alpóvióv Tu-a divine
and Supernatural Something—a warning “voice”—a gnomic
“sign"—a “law of God written on the heart”), which by a sys-
tem of skillful interrogations he sought to elicit, so that each
might hear for himself the voice of God, and, hearing, might
obey. Thus was he the “great prophet of the human con-
Science,” and a messenger of God to the heathen world, to pre-
pare the way of the Lord.
The morality of conscience was carried to its highest point
by Plato. From the moment he became the disciple of Soc-
* Pressensé, “Religions before Christ,” pp. 109–III.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 5Q3
rates he sympathized deeply with the spirit and the method of
his master. He had the same deep seriousness of spirit, that
Same earnestness of purpose, that same inward reverence for
justice, and purity, and goodness, which dwelt in the heart of
Socrates. A naturally noble nature, he loved truth with all
the glow and fervor of his young heart. He felt that if any
thing gave meaning and value to life, it must be the contem-
plation of absolute truth, absolute beauty, and absolute Good.
This absolute Good is God, who is the first principle of all
ideas, the fountain of all the order and proportion and beau-
ty of the universe, the source of all the good which exists in
nature and in man. To practise goodness—to conform the
character to the eternal models of order, proportion, and ex-
cellence, is to resemble God. To aspire after perfection of
moral being, to Secure assimilation to God (Öpologic 06%) is the
noble aspiration of Plato's soul. :
When we read the “Gorgias,” the “Philebus,” and especially
the “Republic,” with what noble joy are we filled on hearing the
voice of conscience, like a harp swept by a Seraph’s hand, utter-
ing such deep-toned melodies How does he drown the clam-
ors of passion, the calculations of mere expediency, the Sophism
of mere personal interest and utility. If he calls us to witness
the triumph of the wicked in the first part of the “Republic,” it
is in order that we may at the end of the book see the de-
ceitfulness of their triumph. “As to the wicked,” he says, “I
maintain that even if they succeed at first in concealing what
they are, most of them betray themselves at the end of their
career. They are covered with opprobrium, and present evils
are nothing compared with those that await them in the other
life. As to the just man, whether in sickness or in poverty,
these imaginary evils will turn to his advantage in this life, and
after his death ; because the providence of the gods is neces-
sarily attentive to the interests of him who labors to become
just, and to attain, by the practice of virtue, to the most per-
fect resemblance to God which is possible to man.” He rises
l tº Republic,” bk. x, ch. xii.
594 CHRISTIANITY AND
above all “greatest happiness principles,” and asserts distinct-
ly in the “Gorgias” that it is better to suffer wrong than to do
wrong.” “I maintain,” says he,” “that what is most shameful
is not to be struck unjustly on the cheek, or to be wounded in
the body; but that to strike and wound me unjustly, to rob
me, or reduce me to slavery—to commit, in a word, any kind
of injustice towards me, or what is mine—is a thing far worse
and more odious for him who commits the injustice, than for
me who suffer it.” It is a great combat, he says, greater than
we think, that wherein the issue is whether we shall be virtu-
ous or wicked. Neither glory, nor riches, nor dignities, nor
poetry, deserves that we should neglect justice for them. The
moral idea in Plato has such intense truth and force, that it
has at times a striking analogy with the language of the Holy
Scriptures.”
The obligation of moral rectitude is, by Plato, derived from
the authoritative utterances of conscience as the voice of God.
We must do right because reason and conscience say it is right.
In the “Euthyphron” he maintains that the moral quality of
actions is not dependent on the arbitrary will of a Supreme
Governor ;-“an act is not holy because the gods love it, but
the gods love it because it is holy.” The eternal law of right
dwells in the Eternal Reason of God, the idea of right in all
human minds is a ray of that Eternal Reason; and the require-
ment of the divine law that we shall do right is, and must be,
in harmony with both. -
The present life is regarded by Plato as a state of probation
and discipline, the future life as one of reward and punishment."
Plato was thus to the heathen world “the great apostle of
the moral idea;” he followed up and completed the work of
Socrates. “The voice of God, that still found a profound echo
in man's heart, possessed in him an organ to which all Greece
gave ear; and the austere revelation of conscience this time
* “Gorgias,” $$ 59–80. *Ibid., § 137.
* Pressensé, “Religions before Christ,” p. 129.
* “Republic,” bk. x, ch. xv., xvi.; “Laws,” bk. x, ch. xiii.
G R E E R PETITI, OS O PET Y. 5O5
embodied in language too harmonious not to entice by the
beauty of form, a nation of artists, they received it. The tables
of the eternal law, carved in purest marble and marvellously
sculptured, were read by them.”
In Plato both the theistic conception and the moral idea
seem to have touched the zenith. The philosophy of Aristotle,
considered as a whole, appears on one side to have passed the
line of the great Hellenic period. If it did not inaugurate, it
at least prepared the way for the decline. It perfected logic,
as the instrument of ratiocination, and gave it exactness and
precision. Yet taken all in all, it was greatly inferior to its
predecessor. From the moral point of view it is a decided re-
trogression. The god of Aristotle is indifferent to virtue. He
is pure thought rather than moral perfection. He takes no
cognizance of man. Morality has no eternal basis, no divine
type, and no future reward. Therefore Aristotle's philosophy
had little power over the conscience and heart.
During the grand Platonic period human reason made its
loftiest flight, it rose aloft and soared towards heaven, but alas !
its wings, like those of Icarus, melted in the sun and it fell to
earth again. Instead of wax it needed the strong “eagle pin-
ions of faith ” which revelation only can supply. The deca-
dence is strongly marked both in the Epicurean and Stoic
Schools. They both express the feeling of exhaustion, disap-
pointment, and despair. The popular theology had lost its
hold upon the public mind. The gods no longer visited the
earth. “The mysterious voice which, according to the poetic
legend related by Plutarch, was heard out at sea— Great Pan
is dead’—rose up from every heart; the voice of an incredu-
lous age proclaimed the coming end of paganism. The oracles
were dumb.” There was no vision in the land. All faith in a
beneficent overruling Providence was lost, and the hope of im-
mortality was well-nigh gone. The doctrines of a resurrection
and a judgment to come, were objects of derisive mockery."
Philosophy directed her attention solely to the problem of in-
* Acts xvii. 32.
506 - C EIR IS TIA WTT Y. A ND
dividual well-being on earth; it became simply a philosophy
of life, and not, as with Plato, “a preparation for death.” The
grosser minds sought refuge in the doctrines of Epicurus.
They said, “Pleasure is the chief good, the end of life is to en-
joy yourself;” to this end “dismiss the fear of gods, and, above
all, the fear of death.” The nobler souls found an asylum with
the Stoics. They said, “Fata nos ducunt—The Fates lead us!
Live conformable to reason. Endure and abstain l’” Not-
withstanding numerous and serious errors, the ethical system
of the Stoics was wonderfully pure. This must be confessed
by any one who reads the “Enchiridion” of Epictetus, and the
“Meditations” of Aurelius. “The highest end of life is to con-
template truth and to obey the Eternal Reason. God is to be
reverenced above all things, and universally submitted to. The
noblest office of reason is to subjugate passion and conduct to
virtue. Virtue is the Supreme good, which is to be pursued for
its own sake, and not from fear or hope. That is sufficient for
happiness which is seated only in the mind, and therefore inde-
pendent of external things. The consciousness of well-doing
is reward enough without the applause of others. And no fear
of loss, or pain, or even death, must be suffered to turn us aside
from truth and virtue.”
The preparatory office of Christianity in the field of ethics is
further seen, -
II. In the fact that, by an experiment conducted on the largest
scale, it demonstrated the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a £er-
fect ideal of moral excellence, and develof the moral forces necessary
to secure its realization.
We have seen that the moral idea in Socrates, Plato, Epicte-
tus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca rose to a sublime height, and
that, under its influence, they developed a noble and heroic
character. At the same time it must be conceded that their
ethical system was marked by signal blemishes and radical de-
fects. After all its excellence, it did not give roundness, com-
pleteness, and symmetry to moral life. The elements which
* Marcus Aurelius.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 507
really purify and ennoble man, and lend grace and beauty to
life, were utterly wanting. Their systems were rather a disci-
pline of the reason than a culture of the heart. The reason
held in check the lower passions and propensities of the nature,
but it did not evoke the softer, gentler, purer emotions of the
soul. The cardinal virtues of the ancient ethical systems are
Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Courage, all which are in
the last analysis reduced to Wisdom. Humility, Meekness,
Forgiveness of injuries, Love of even enemies, Universal Be-
nevolence, Real Philanthropy, the graces which give beauty to
character and bless society, are scarcely known. It is true
that in Epictetus and Seneca we have some counsels to hu-
mility, to forbearance, and forgiveness; but it must be borne in
mind that Christianity was now in the air, exerting an indirect
influence beyond the limits of the labors of the indefatigable
missionaries of the Cross.' By their predecessors, these quali-
ties were disparaged rather than upheld. Resentment of in-
juries was applauded as a virtue, and meekness was proclaimed
a defect and a weakness. They knew nothing of a forgiving
spirit, and were strangers to the charity “which endureth all
things, hopeth all things, and never fails.” The enlarged phi-
lanthrophy which overleaps the bounds of kindred and nation-
ality, and embraces a common humanity in its compassionate
regards and benevolent efforts, was unknown. Socrates, the
noblést of all the Grecians, was in no sense cosmopolitan in his
feeling. His whole nature and character wore a Greek impress.
He could scarce be tempted to go beyond the gates of Athens,
and his care was all for the Athenian people. He could not
conceive an universal philanthropy. Plato, in his solicitude ,
to reduce his ideal state to a harmonious whole, answering to
his idea of Justice, sacrificed the individual. He superseded
private property, broke up the sacred relations of family and
home, degraded woman, and tolerated slavery. Selfishness
was to be overcome, and political order maintained, by a rigid
* Seneca lived in the second century; Epictetus, in the latter part of the
first century.
508 OJIRISTIA WIT Y. A VD
communism. To harmonize individual rights and national in-
terests, was the wisdom reserved for the fishermen of Galilee.
The whole method of Plato's “Politeia,” breathes the spirit of
legalism in all its severity, untempered by the spirit of Love.
This was the living force which was wanting to give energy to
the ideals of the reason and conscience, to furnish high motive
to virtue, to prompt to deeds of heroic sacrifice and suffering
for the good of others; and this could not be inspired by phi-
losophy, nor constrained by legislation. This love must de-
scend from above. “The Platonic love º’ was a mere intellect-
ual appreciation of beauty, and Order, and proportion, and ex-
cellence. It was not the love of man as the offspring and
image of God, as the partaker of a common nature, and the
heir of a common immortality. Such love was first revealed
on earth by the incarnate Son of God, and can only be attained
by human hearts under the inspiration of his teaching and life,
and the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit. “Love is of
God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth
God.” To “love our neighbor as ourself” is the golden pre-
cept of the Son of God, who is incarnate Love. The equality
of all men as “the offspring of God” had been nominally rec-
ognized by the Stoic philosophers; its realization had been
rendered possible to the popular thought by Roman conquest,
law, and jurisprudence ; these had prepared the way for its
fullest announcement and practical recognition by the world.
At this providential juncture St. Paul appears on Mars’ Hill,
and in the presence of the assembled philosophers proclaims,
“God /ai/, made of one blood all nations of men.” A lofty ideal
of moral excellence had been attained by Plato—the concep-
tion of a high and inflexible morality, which contrasted most
vividly with the depravity which prevailed in Athenian society.
The education “of the public assemblies, the courts, the thea-
tres, or wherever the multitude gathered" was unfavorable to
virtue. And the inadequacy of all mere human teaching to re-
sist this current of evil, and save the young men of the age from
ruin, is touchingly and mournfully confessed by Plato. “There
G R E E R PEIIL OS OPEI Y. 5O9
is not, there never was, there never will be a moral education
possible that can countervail the education of which these are
the dispensers; that is, human education: I except, with the
proverb, that which is Divine. And, truly, any soul that in
such governments escapes the common wreck, can only escape
by the special favor of heaven.” He affirms again and again
that man can not by himself rise to purity and goodness. “Vir-
tue is not natural to man, neither is it to be learned, but it
comes to us by a divine influence. Virtue is the gift of God in
those who possess it.” That “gift of God” was about to be
bestowed, in all its fullness of power and blessing, “through
Şesus Christ our Zord.” *
In the department of religious feeling and sentiment, the
propaedeutic office of Greek philosophy is seen, in general, in
the revealing of the immediate spiritual wants of the soul, and
the distinct presentation of the problem which Christianity
alone can solve.
I. It awakened in man the sense of distance and estrangement
from God, and the need of a Mediator—“a daysman betwixt us,
that might ſay his hand upon us both.”
During the period of unconscious and unreflective theism,
the sentiment of the Divine was one of objective nearness and
personal intimacy. The gods interposed directly in the affairs
of men, and held frequent and familiar intercourse with our
race. They descend to the battle-field of Troy, and mingle in
the bloody strife. They grace the wedding-feast by their pres-
ence, and heighten the gladness with celestial music. They
visit the poor and the stranger, and sometimes clothe the old
and shrivelled beggar with celestial beauty. They inspire their
favorites with strength and courage, and fill their mouths with
wisdom and eloquence. They manifest their presence by signs
and wonders, by visions and dreams, by auguries and prophetic
voices. But more frequently than all, they are seen in the
Ordinary phenomena of nature, the Sunshine and storm, the
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. vi., vii. * “Meno;” see conclusion.
* Job ix. 33.
5 Io CEIRISTIANITY AND
winds and tempests, the hail and rain. The natural is, in fact,
the Supernatural, and all the changes of nature are the move-
ment and action of the Divine. The feeling of dependence is
immediate and universal, and worship is the natural and spon-
taneous act of man.
But the period of reflection is inevitable. Man turns his
inquiring gaze towards nature and desires, by an imperfect
effort of physical induction, to reach “the first principle and
cause of things.” Soon he discovers the prevalence of uni-
formity in nature, the actions of physical properties and agen-
cies, and he catches some glimpses of the reign of universal
law. The natural tendency of this discovery is obvious in the
weakening of his sense of dependence on the immediate agen-
cy of God. The Egyptians told Herodotus that, as their fields
were regularly irrigated by the waters of the Nile, they were
less dependent on God than the Greeks, whose lands were
watered by rains, and who must perish if Jupiter did not send
them showers.” As man advances in the field of mere physical
inquiry, God recedes; from the region of explained phenome-
na, he retires into the region of unexplained phenomena—the
border-land of mystery. The gods are driven from the woods
and streams, the winds and waves. Neptune does not abso-
lutely control the seas, nor AEolus the winds. The Divine
becomes, no more a physical épxft—a nature-power, but a Su-
preme Mind, an ineffable Spirit, an invisible God, the Supreme
Essence of Essences, the Supreme Idea of Ideas (sièoc airó
kaff airó) apprehended by human reason alone, but having an
independent, eternal, substantial, personal being. Through
the instrumentality of Platonism, the idea of God becomes
clearer and purer. Man had learned that communion with
the Divinity was something more than an apotheosis of hu-
manity, or a pantheistic absorption. He caught glimpses of a
higher and holier union. He had surrendered the ideal of a
national communion with God, and of personal protection
through a federal religion, and now was thrown back upon
* Herodotus, vol. ii. bk. ii, ch. xiii. p. 14 (Rawlinson's edition).
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 5 II
himself to find some channel of personal approach to God.
But alas ! he could not find it. A God so vastly elevated be-
yond human comprehension, who could only be apprehended
by the most painful effort of abstract thought; a God so infi-
nitely removed from man by the purity and rectitude of his
character; a God who was all pure reason, seemed alien to all
the yearnings and sympathies of the human heart; and such
a God, dwelling in pure light, seemed inapproachable and
inacessible to man." The purifying of the religious idea had
evoked a new ideal, and this ideal was painfully remote. By
the energy of abstract thought man had striven to pierce the
veil, and press into “the Holy of Holies,” to come into the
presence of God, and he had failed. And he had sought by
moral discipline, by self-mortification, by inward purification,
to raise himself to that lofty plane of purity, where he might
catch some glimpses of the vision of a holy God, and still he
failed. Nay, more, he had tried the power of prayer. Socra-
tes, and Plato, and Cleanthes had bowed the knee and moved
the lips in prayer. The emperor Aurelius, and the slave Epic-
tetus had prayed, and prayer, no doubt, intensified their long-
ing, and sharpened and agonized their desire, but it did not
raise them to a satisfying and holy Koinonia in the divine life.
“It seems to me”—said Plato—“as Homer says of Minerva,
that she removed the mist from before the eyes of Diomede,
“‘That he might clearly see 'twixt Gods and men.”
so must he, in the first place, remove from your soul the mist
that now dwells there, and then apply those things through
which you will be able to know * and rightly pray to God.
To develop this innate desire and “feeling after God” was
the grand design of providence in “fixing the times” of the
Greek nation, and “the boundaries of their habitation.” Man
was brought, through a period of discipline, to feel his need
* “To discover the Maker and Father of the universe is a hard task; ....
to make him known to all is impossible.”—“Timaeus,” ch. ix.
* “Second Alcibiades,” $ 23. * Acts xvii. 26, 27.
5I2 C EIRISTIANITY AWD.
of a personal relation to God. He was made to long for a
realizing sense of his presence—to desire above all things a
Father, a Counsellor, and a Friend—a living ear into which
he might groan his anguish, or hymn his joy; and a living
heart that could beat towards him in compassion, and prompt
immediate succor and aid. The idea of a pure Spiritual Es-
sence without form, and without emotion, pervading all, and
transcending all, is too vague and abstract to yield us comfort,
and to exert over us any persuasive power. “Our moral
weakness shrinks from it in trembling awe. The heart can
not feed on sublimities. We can not make a home of cold
magnificence; we can not take immensity by the hand.”
Hence the need and the desire that God shall condescend-
ingly approach to man, and by some manifestation of himself in
human form, and through the sensibilities of the human heart,
commend himself to the heart of man—in other words, the
need of an Incarnation. Thus did the education of our race,
by the dispensation of philosophy, prepare the way for him
who was consciously or unconsciously “the Desire of Mations,”
and the deepening earnestness and spiritual solicitude of the
heathen world heralded the near approach of Him who was not
only “the Hope of Israel” but “the Saviour of the world.”
The idea of an Incarnation was not unfamiliar to human
thought, it was no new or strange idea to the heathen mind.
The numberless metamorphoses of Grecian mythology, the in-
Carnations of Brahm, the avatars of Vishnu, and the human
form of Krishna had naturalized the thought.” So that when
the people of Lystra saw the apostles Paul and Barnabas exer-
cising Supernatural powers of healing, they said, “The gods
have come down to us in the likeness of men ſ” and they
called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul, Mercurius. The idea in
its more definite form may have been, and indeed was, com-
municated to the world through the agency of the dispersed
Jews. So that Virgil, the Roman poet, who was contempo-
rary with Christ, seems to re-echo the prophecy of Isaiah— .
* Caird. ' 2 Young’s “Christ of History,” p. 248.
G R E E K PHIL OS O PHY. 5 I3
“The last age decrečd by the Fates is come,
And a new frame of all things does begin;
A holy progeny from heaven descends
Auspicious in his birth, which puts an end
To the iron age, and from which shall arise
A golden age, most glorious to behold.”
II. Finally, Greek philosophy prepared the way for Christianity
by azwakening and deepening the consciousness of guilt, and the de-
sire for Æedemption.
The consciousness of sin, and the consequent need of expi-
ation for sin, were gradually unfolded in the Greek mind. The
idea of sin was at first revealed in a confused and indefinite
feeling of some external, Supernatural, and bewildering influence
which man can not successfully resist; but yet so in harmony
with the sinner's inclination, that he can not divest himself of
all responsibility. “Homer has no word answering in compre-
hensiveness or depth of meaning to the word sin, as it is used
in the Bible..... The noun &papria which is appropriated to
express this idea in the Greek of the New Testament, does not
occur in the Homeric poems. . . . . The word which is most
frequently employed to express wrong-doing of every kind is
ârm, with its corresponding verb..... The radical signification
of the word seems to be a befooling—a depriving one of his
Senses and his reason, as by unseasonable sleep, and excess
of wine, joined with the influence of evil companions, and the
power of destiny, or the deity. Hence, the Greek imagina-
tion, which impersonated every great power, very naturally
conceived of "Arm as a person, a sort of omnipresent and uni-
versal cause of folly and sin, of mischief and misery, who,
though the daughter of Jupiter, yet once fooled or misled Ju-
piter himself, and thenceforth, cast down from heaven to earth,
walks with light feet over the heads of men, and makes all
things go wrong. Hence, too, when men come to their senses,
and see what folly and wrong they have perpetrated, they cast
the blame on "Arm, and so, ultimately, on Jupiter and the
gods.”
* Tyler, “Theology of the Greek Poets,” pp. 174, 175.
33
5I4 C EIRISTIANITY AND
“Oft hath this matter been by Greeks discussed,
And I their frequent censure have incurred :
Yet was not I the cause ; but Jove, and Fate,
And gloomy Erinnys, who combined to throw
A strong delusion o'er my mind, that day
I robb’d Achilles of his lawful prize.
What could I do P a Goddess all o'erruled,
Daughter of Jove, dread Até, baleful power
Misleading all ; with light step she moves,
Not on the earth, but o'er the heads of men.
With blighting touch, and many hath caused to err.”
And yet, though Agamemnon here attempts to shuffle off the
guilt of his trangression upon Até, Jove, and Fate, yet at other
times he confesses his folly and wrong, and makes no attempt
to cast the responsibility on the gods.” Though misled by a
“baleful power,” he was not compelled. Though tempted by
an evil goddess, he yet followed his own sinful passions, and
therefore he owns himself responsible.
To satisfy the demands of divine justice, to show its hatred
of sin, and to deter others from transgression, sin is punished.
Punishment is the penalty due to sin; in the language of
Homer, it is the payment of a debt incurred by sin. When the
transgressor is punished he is said to “pay off,” or “pay back.”
his crimes; in other words, to expatiate or atone for them.
“If not at once,
Yet soon or late will Jove assert their claim,
And heavy penalty the perjured pay
"With their own blood, their children’s, and their wives'.”
At the same time the belief is expressed that the gods may be,
and often are, propitiated by prayers and Sacrifices, and thus
the penalty is remitted.
“The Gods themselves, in virtue, honor, strength,
Dxcelling thee, may yet be mollified;
For they when mortals have transgressed, or fail'd
To do aright, by sacrifice and pray’r,
Libations and burnt-off'rings, may be sooth'd.”
* “Iliad,” bk. xix. l. 91-101 (Lord Derby's translation).
*Ibid., bk. ix. l. 132-136. “Ibid., bk. iv. l. 185–188.
“Ibid., bk. ix. l. 581–585.
G R E E R PETILOSOPEI Y. 5I 5
Polytheism, then, as Dr. Schaff has remarked, had the voice
of conscience, and a sense, however obscure, of sin. It felt
the need of reconciliation with deity, and Sought that recon-
ciliation by prayer, penance, and Sacrifice."
The sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the abso-
lute need of expiation, is determined with increasing clearness
and definiteness in the tragic poets.
The first great law which the Tragedians recognize, as a law
written on the heart, is “ that the sinner must suffer for his
sins.” The connection between sin and suffering is constantly
recognized as a natural and necessary connection, like that be-
tween Sowing and reaping.
“A haughty spirit, blossoming, bears a crop
Of woe, and reaps a harvest of despair.”
“Lust and violence beget lust and violence, and vengeance
too, at the appointed time.” “Impiety multiplies and per-
petuates itself.” “The sinner pays the debt he contracted,
ends the career that he begins,” “and drinks to the dregs the
cup of cursing which he himself had filled.” Conscience is
the instrument in the hands of Justice and Vengeance by
which the Most High inflicts punishment. The retributions
of sin are “wrought out by God.”
The consequences of great crimes, especially in high places,
extend to every person and every thing connected with them.
“The country and the country's gods are polluted.” “The
army and the people share in the curse.” “The earth itself is
polluted with the shedding of blood,” “and even the innocent
and the virtuous who share the enterprises of the wicked may
be involved in their ruin, as the pious man must sink with the
ungodly when he embarks in the same ship.”
The pollution and curse of sin, when once contracted by an
individual, or entailed upon a family, will rest upon them and
* Tyler, “Theology of the Greck Poets,” p. 258.
* AEschylus, “Persae,” J. 821. * “Agamemnon,” l. 763.
“Ibid., 1.788. “Ibid., l. 1529. “Ibid., l. 1397.
" Ibid., l. 1645. . * “Persac,” passim, * “Sup.,” 265.
* “Theb.,” p. 602.
516 . OFIRISTIANITY AND
pursue them till the polluted individual or the hated and ac-
cursed race is extinct, unless in some way the sin can be ex-
piated, or some god interpose to arrest the penalty. The crim-
inal must die by the hand of justice, and even in Hades ven-
geance will still pursue him." Others may in time be washed
away by ablutions, worn away by exile and pilgrimage, and ex-
piated by offerings of blood.” But great crimes can not be
washed away; “For what expiation is there for blood when
once it has fallen on the ground.” Thus the law (vépoc)—for
so it is expressly called—as from an Attic Sinai, rolls its rever-
berating thunders, and pronounces its curses upon sin, from
act to act and from chorus to chorus of that grand trilogy—
the “Agamemnon,” the “Choephoroe,” and the “Eumenides.”
But after the law comes the gospel. First the controversy,
then the reconciliation. A dim consciousness of sin and retri-
bution as a fact, and of reconciliation as a want, seems to have
revealed itself even in the darkest periods of history. This
consciousness underlies not a few of the Greek tragedies.
“The ‘Prometheus Bound’ was followed by the ‘Prometheus
Unbound,’ reconciled and restored through the intervention of
Jove's son. The ‘CEdipus Tyrannus’ of Sophocles was com-
pleted by the ‘CEdipus Colonus,” where he dies in peace amid
tokens of divine favor. And so the ‘Agamemnon’ and “Choe-
phoroe’ reach their consummation only in the ‘Eumenides,'
where the Erinyes themselves are appeased, and the Furies be-
come the gracious ones. This is not, however, without a special
divine interposition, and then only after a severe struggle be-
tween the powers that cry for justice and those that plead for
mercy.” - -
The office and work which, in this trilogy, is assigned to
Jove's son, Apollo, must strike every reader as at least a re-
markable resemblance, if not a foreshadowing of the Christian
doctrine of reconciliation. “This becomes yet more striking
when we bring into view the relation in which this reconciling
work stands to Zeic Sørip, Jupiter Saviour—Zeºc ſpiroc, Jupiter
* “Sup.,” 1. 227. * “Eum.,” l. 445 seq. . . * “Choeph,” l. 47.
G R E E R PEIII, O S O PHY, - 5 I'7
the third, who, in connection with Apollo and Athena, consum-
mates the reconciliation. Not only is Apollo a Xarâp, a Sav-
iour, who, having himself been exiled from heaven among men,
will pity the poor and needy; not only does Athena sympa-
thize with the defendant at her tribunal, and, uniting the office
of advocate and judge, persuade the avenging deities to be ap-
peased ; but Zeus is the beginning and end of the whole proc-
ess. Apollo appears as the advocate of Orestes only at her
bidding; Athena inclines to the side of the accused, as the
offspring of the brain of Zeus, and of like mind with him.”
Orestes, after his acquittal, Says that he obtained it
“By means of Pallas and of Loxias . .
And the third Saviour who doth all things sway.”
Platonism reveals a still closer affinity with Christianity in its
doctrine of sin, and its sense of the need of salvation. Plato
is sacredly jealous for the honor and purity of the divine char-
acter, and rejects with indignation every hypothesis which would
make God the author of sin. “God, inasmuch as he is good,
can not be the cause of all things, as the common doctrine
represents him to be. On the contrary, he is the author of only
a small part of human affairs; of the larger part he is not the
author ; for our evil things far outnumber our good things.
The good things we must ascribe to God, whilst we must seek
elsewhere, and not in him, the causes of evil.” The doctrine
of the poets, which would in some way charge on the gods the
errors of men, he sternly resists. “We must express our dis-
approbation of Homer, or any other poet, if guilty of Such fool-
ish blunders about the gods as to tell us'
“‘Fast by the threshold of Jove's court are placed
Two casks, one stored with evil, one with good,”
And that he for whom the Thunderer mingles both
“‘He leads a life checker'd with good and ill.”
* “Sup.,” 1. 214. . * “Eum.,” l. 970. “Ibid., l. 616. “Ibid., l. 664, 737.
* Tyler’s “Theology of the Greek Poets,” especially ch. v., from which
the above materials are drawn. -
* “Republic,” bk. ii, ch. xviii. 7 “Iliad,” xxiv., l. 660.
518 CFIRISTIANITY A WI)
Nor can we let our young people know that, in the words of
AEschylus—
“‘When to destruction God will plague a house
He plants among the members guilt and sin.’”.
Whatever in the writings of Homer and the tragic poets gives
countenance to the notion that God is, in the remotest sense,
the author of sin, must be expunged. Here is clearly a great
advance in ethical conceptions. - -
The great defect in the ethical system of Plato was the
identification of evil with the inferior or corporeal nature of
man—“the irascible and concupiscible elements,” fashioned by
the junior divinities. The rational and immortal part of man's
nature, which is derived immediately from God—the Supreme
Good, naturally chooses the good as its supreme end and des-
timation. Hence he adopted the Socratic maxim “that no man
is willingly evil,” that is, no man deliberately chooses evil as
evil, but only as a seeming good—he does not choose evil as
an end, though he may choose it voluntarily as a means. Plato
manifests great solicitude to guard this maxim from miscon-
ception and abuse. Man has, in his judgment, the power to
act in harmony with his higher reason, or contrary to reason;
to obey the voice of conscience or the clamors of passion, and
consequently he is the object of praise or blame, reward or
punishment. “When a man does not consider himself, but
others, as the cause of his own sins, . . . . and even seeks to ex-
cuse himself from blame, he dishonors and injures his own
Soul; SO, also, when contrary to reason . . . he indulges in pleas-
ure, he dishonors it by filling it with vice and remorse.” The
work and effort of life, the end of this probationary economy,
is to make reason triumphant over passion, and discipline our-
selves to a purer and nobler life. -
The obstacles to a virtuous life are, however, confessedly
numberless, and, humanly speaking, insurmountable. To raise
one's self above the clamor of passion, the power of evil, the
bondage of the flesh, is acknowledged, in mournful language,
* “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xviii., xix. * “Ilaws,” bk. v. ch. i.
G R E E K PHIL OS O PETY. 5.I.9
to be a hopeless task. A cloud of sadness shades the brow of
Plato as he contemplates the fallen state of man. In the
“Phaedrus ” he describes, in gorgeous imagery, the purity, and
beauty, and felicity of the soul in its anterior and primeval
state, when, charioteering through the highest arch of heaven
in company with the Deity, it contemplated the divine justice
and beauty; but “this happy life,” says he, “we forfeited by
our transgression.” Allured by strange affections, our souls
forgot the sacred things that we were made to contemplate and
love—we fel/. And now, in our fallen State, the Soul has lost
its pristine beauty and excellence. It has become more dis-
figured than was Glaucus, the Seaman “whose primitive form
was not recognizable, so disfigured had he become by his long
dwelling in the sea.” To restore this lost image of the good,
—to regain “this primitive form,” is not the work of man, but
God. Man can not save himself. “Virtue is not natural to
man, neither is it to be learned, but it comes by a divine influ-
ence. Virtue is the gift of God.” He needs a discipline, “an
education which is divine.” If he is saved from the common
wreck, it must be “by the special favor of Heaven.” He must
be delivered from sin, if ever delivered, by the interposition of
God.
Plato was, in some way, able to discover the need of a
Saviour, to desire a Saviour, but he could not predict his
appearing. Hints are obscurely given of a Conqueror of sin,
an ASSuager of pain, an Averter of evil in this life, and of the
impending retributions of the future life; but they are exceed-
ingly indefinite and shadowy. In all instances they are rather
the language of desire, than of hope. Platonism awakened in
the heart of humanity a consciousness of sin and a profound
feeling of want—the want of a Redeemer from sin, a spiritual,
a divine Remedy for its moral malady—and it strove after
Some remedial power. But it was equally conscious of failure
and defeat. 'It could enlighten the reason, but it could only
* “Republic,” bk. x. ch. xi. * “Meno.”
* “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. vi., vii.
520 CHRISTIANITY AND
act imperfectly on the will. Platonic was a striking counter-
part to Pauline experience prior to the apostle's deliverance
by the power and grace of Christ. It discovered that “the
Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just, and
good.” It recognized that “it is spiritual, but man is carnal,
the slave of sin.” It could say, “What I do I approve not;
for I do not what I would, but what I hate. But if my will
[my better judgment] is against what I do, I consent unto the
Law that it is good. And now it is no more I that do it, but
sin, that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in
my flesh, good abideth not, for to will is present with me, but
the power to do the right is absent: the good that I would, I
do not ; but the evil that I would not, that I do. I consent
gladly to the law of God in my inner man [′ the rational and
immortal nature *|; but I behold a law in my members ['the
irascible and concupiscible nature”] warring against the law
of my mind (or reason), and bringing me into captivity to the
law of sin which is in my members. Oh wretched man that Y
am / who shal/ deliver me from the body of this death 2'3 Paul
was able to say, “I thank God (that he hath now delivered me),
through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Platonism could only desire,
and hope, and wait for the coming of a Deliverer.
This consciousness of the need of supernatural light and
help, and this aspiration after a light supernatural and divine,
which Plato inherited from Socrates, constrained him to regard
with toleration, and even reverence, every apparent approach,
every pretension, even, to a divine inspiration and guidance
in the age in which he lived. “The greatest blessings which
men receive come through the operation of Żhrensy (uavia—
inspired exaltation), when phrensy is the gift of God. The
prophetess of Delphi, and the priestess of Dodona, many are
the benefits which in their phrensies (moments of inspiration)
they have bestowed upon Greece; but in their hours of self-
possession, few or none. And too long were it to speak of
the Sibyl, and others, who, inspired and prophetic, have deliv-
* Plato. * Ibid. * Romans, vii.
G R E E K PETIT, OS O PET Y. 52 I
ered utterances beneficial to the hearers. Indeed, this word
phrenetic or maniac is no reproach ; it is identical with mantic
—prophetic." And often when diseases and plagues have
fallen upon men for the sins of their forefathers, some phrensy
too has broken forth, and in prophetic strain has pointed out
a remedy, showing how the sin might be expiated, and the gods
appeased (by prayers, and purifications, and atoning rites)....
So many and yet more great effects could I tell you of the
phrensy which comes from the gods.” Some have discerned
in all this merely the food for a feeble ridicule. They regard
these sentiments as simply an evidence of the power and prev-
alence of Superstition clouding the loftiest intellects in ancient
times. By the more thoughtful and philosophic mind, how-
ever, they will be accepted as an indication of the imperishable
and universal faith of humanity in a supernatural and super-
Sensuous world, and in the possibility of some communication
between heaven and earth.” And above all, it is a conclusive
proof that Plato believed that the knowledge of salvation—of
a remedy for sin, a method of expiation for sin, a means of
deliverance from the power and punishment of sin, must be
revealed from Heaven. -
Paul, then, found, even in that focus of Paganism, the city
of Athens, religious aspirations tending towards Jesus Christ.
A true philosophic method, notwithstanding its shortcomings
and imperfections, concluded by desiring and seeking “the
Unknown God,” by demanding him from all forms of worship,
from all schools of philosophy. The great work of preparation
in the heathen world consisted in the developing of the desire
for salvation. It proved that God is the great want of every
human soul; that there is a profound affinity between con-
science and the living God; and that Tertullian was right
' ' Mavía, phrensy; plávttg, a prophet—one who utters oracles in a state
of divine phrensy; pavrikſ, the prophetic art. *
* “Phaedrus,” $47–50 (Whewell's translation).
* “Vetus opinio est, jam usque ab heroicis ducta temporibus, eague et
populi Romani et omnium gentium firmata consensu, versari quandem inter
homines divinationem.”—Cicero, “De Divin,” i. I.
522 C EIR IS TIA WITY AND
when he wrote the “Testimonium Anima naturaliter Chris-
tianae.” And when it was sufficiently demonstrated that “the
world by philosophy knew not God (as a Redeeming God and
Saviour), then it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.” This was all a dispensation of
divine providence, which was determined by, or “in, the wis-
dom of God.”
The history of the religions and philosophies of human
origin thus becomes to us a striking confirmation of the truth
of Christianity. It shows there is a wondrous harmony be-
tween the instinctive wants and yearnings of the human heart,
as well as the necessary ideas and laws of the reason, and the
fundamental principles of revealed religion. There is “a law
written on the heart”—written by the finger of God, which
corresponds to the laws written by the same finger on “tables
of stone.” There are certain necessary and immutable prin-
ciples and ideas infolded in the reason of man, which harmo-
nize with the revelations of the Eternal Logos in the written
word." There are instinctive longings, mysterious yearnings
of the human heart, to which that unveiling of the heart of
God which is made in the teaching and life of the incarnate
God most satisfyingly answers. Within the depths of the hu-
man spirit there is an “oracle” which responds to the voice of
“the living oracles of God.”
Here, then, are two distinct and independent revelations—
the unwritten revelation which God has made to all men in
the constitution of the human mind, and the external written
revelation which he has made in the person and teaching of
his Son. And these two are perfectly harmonious. We have
here two great volumes—the volume of conscience, and the
* Pressensé, “Religions before Christ” (Introduction); Neander, “Church
History,” vol. i. (Introduction).
* I Corinthians, i. 21.
* “The surmise of Plato, that the world of appearance subsists in and by
a higher world of Divine Thought, is confirmed by Christianity when it tells
us of a Divine subsistence—that Eternal Word by whom and in whom all
things consist.”—Vaughan, “Hours with the Mystics,” vol. i. p. 213.
G R E E K PEIII, OS OPEI Y. 523
volume of the New Testament. We open them, and find they
announce the same truths—one in dim outline, the other in a
full portraiture. There are the same fundamental principles
underlying both revelations. They both bear the impress of
divinity. The history of philosophy may have been marked
by many errors of interpretation; so, also, has the history of
dogmatic theology. Men may have often misunderstood and
misinterpreted the dictates of conscience; so have theologians
misunderstood and misinterpreted the dictates of revelation.
The perversions of conscience and reason have been plead
in defense of error and sin; and so, for ages, have the per-
versions of Scripture been urged in defense of slavery, oppres-
sion, falsehood, and wrong. Sometimes the misunderstood
utterances of conscience, of philosophy, and of science have
been arrayed against the incorrect interpretations of the Word
of God. But when both are better understood, and more
justly conceived, they are found in wondrous harmony. When
the New Testament speaks to man of God, of duty, of immor-
tality, and of retribution, man feels that its teachings “ com-
mend themselves to his conscience” and reason. When it
speaks to him of redemption, of salvation, of eternal life and
blessedness, he feels that it meets and answers all the wants
and longings of his heart. Thus does Christianity throw light
upon the Original revelations of God in the human conscience,
and answers all the yearnings of the human soul. So it is
found in individual experiences, so it has been ſound in the
history of humanity. As Leverrier and Adams were enabled
to affirm, from purely mathematical reasoning, that another
planet must exist beyond Üranus which had never yet been
Seen by human eyes, and then, afterwards, that affirmation was
gloriously verified in the discovery of Meptune by the telescope
of Galle ; SO the reasonings of ancient philosophy, based on
certain necessary laws of mind, enabled man to affirm the ex-
istence of a God, of the soul, of a future retribution, and an
eternal life beyond the grave; and, then, subsequently, these
were brought fully into light, and verified by the Gospel.
*
ſ 524) CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY,
We conclude in the words of Pressensé : “To isolate it from
the past, would be to refuse to comprehend the nature of Chris-
tianity itself, and the extent of its triumphs. Although the
Gospel is not, as has been affirmed, the product of anterior civ-
ilizations—a mere compound of Greek and Oriental elements
—it is not the less certain that it brings to the human mind
the satisfaction vainly sought by it in the East as in the West.
Omnia subito is not its device, but that of the Gnostic heresy.
Better to say, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, that the
night of paganism had its stars to light it, but that they called
to the Morning-star which stood over Bethlehem.”
“If we regard philosophy as a preparation for Christianity,
instead of seeking in it a substitute for the Gospel, we shall not
need to overstate its grandeur in Order to estimate its real
value.”
C O N T E N T S.
A.
Abstraction, comparative and immediate,
187-189 ; 362–364.
AEschylus, his conception of the Supreme
Divinity, 146; his recognition of human
guilt, and need of expiation, 515–517.
AEtiological proof of the existence of God,
487–489.
Anaxagoras, an Eclectic, 311; in his phys-
ical theory an Atomist, 312; taught that
the Order of the universe can only be ex-
plained by Intelligence, 312; his psychol-
ogy, 313; the teacher of Socrates, 313.
Anaximander, his first principle the imji-
mite, 290; his infinite a chaos of primary
elements, 290.
Anaximenes, a vitalist, 286; his first prin-
ciple air, 287.
Aristotle, his opinion of the popular poly-
theism of Greece, 157; his classification
of causes, 280, 404, 405; his misrepresen-
tations of Pythagoras, 299; his classifica-
tion of the sciences, 389; his Organon,
389–394; his Logic, 394–403; his Theolo-
gy, 404–417 ; his Ethics, 417–421; his Cat-
egories, 395; his logical treatises, 396;
on induction and deduction, 396-39S ; his
psychology, 898, 401; on how the knowl-
edge of first principles is attained, 394,
402, 403; on Matter and Form, 405–408;
on Potentiality and Actuality, 408-412;
his proof of the Divine existence, 412–415:
on the chief good of man, 419, 420; his
doctrine of the Mean, 420, 421; defect of
his ethical system, 505.
'Apyat, or first principles, the grand object
of investigation in Greek Philosophy, 271,
274, 279, 280.
Athenians, criticism on Plutarch's sketch
of their character, 45; their vivacity, 45;
love of freedom, 46—and of country, 46;
private life of, 47 ; intellectual character
of, 48; inquisitive and analytic, 48; rare
combinations of imagination and reason-
ing powers, 49; religion of 98 ; the Athe-
nians a religious people, 102; their faith
in the being and providence of God, 107 ;
their consciousness of dependence on
God, 110, 116; their religious emotions,
117 ; their deep consciousness of sin and
guilt, 122–124; their sense of the need of
expiation, 124, 125; their religion exert-
ed some wholesome moral influence, 162,
163.
Athens, topography of, 27; the Agora, 28;
its porticoes, 29; the Acropolis, 30; its
temples, 31; the Areopagus, 33; sacred
objects in, 98, 99; images of the gods, 99;
localities of Schools of philosophy in,
266–268.
Attica, geographical boundaries of, 26; a
classic land, 34; its geographical and cos-
mical conditions providentially ordained
for great moral ends, 34, 35; Soil of, Inot
favorable to agriculture, 40—necessitated
industry and frugality, 41; the climate
of, 41—its influence on the mental char-
acter of the people, 42.
B.
Bacon, his assertion that the search after
final causes had misled Scientific in-
quirers, 222.
C.
Categories of Aristotle, 395.
Causality, principle of, 189; assailed by the
Materialists, 194—especially by Comte,
208–209; the intuition of power a fact
of immediate consciousness, 204; con-
sciousness of effort the type of all force,
526
CONTENT'S.
211; Aristotle on Causality, 413: aetiolog-
ical proof of existence of God, 487–489.
Cause, origin of the idea of 204, 205.
Causes, Aristotle's classification of, 280,
404, 405.
Chief good of man, Aristotle on, 419,420.
Cleanthes, his hymn to Jupiter, 452,453.
Comte, his theory of the origin of religion,
57–65; his doctrine that all knowledge
is confined to material phenomena, 203;
denies all causation, both efficient and
final, 203–214.
Conditioned, law of the, 227, 228; is contra-
dictory, 250; as a ground of faith, mean-
ingless and void, 251.
Cosmological proof of the existence of God,
489, 490.
Cousin, his theory that religion had its out-
birth in the spontaneous apperceptions
of reason, 78–84; criticism thereon,84–86.
Criterion of truth, Plato's search after, 333,
384.
Cudworth, his interpretation of Grecian
mythology, 139, 143.
Cuvier, on final causes, 216, 222.
D.
Darwin, his inability to explain the facts
of nature without recognizing design,
221, 222.
Democritus, taught that atoms and the
vacuum are the beginning of all things,
292; an absolute materialist, 293.
Dependence, consciousness of, the founda-
tion of primary religious emotions, 110–
113.
Development, law of mental, 478; three
Successive stages clearly marked, in the
individual, 478—in the universal mind of
humanity, 479, 480; (1) in the field of The-
istic conceptions, 481–494; (2) in the de-
partment of morals, 495–509; (3) in the
department of religious sentiment, 509–
522.
T)ialectic of Plato, 353–369.
Dogmatic Theologians, assert that all our
knowledge of God is derived from the
teaching of the Scriptures, 86, 167; cast
doubt upon the principle of causality,
253–255—upon the principle of the uncon-
ditioned, 255–257—upon the principle of
unity, 258–261—and upon the immutable
principles of morality, 261–263.
Dynamical or Vital school of ancient phi-
losophers, 2S2–280.
E.
Eclecticism of Anaxagoras, 311.
Emotions, the religious, 117–122; senti-
ment of the Divine exists in all minds,
119–121; also instinctive yearning after
the Invisible, 121, 122.
Empedocles, a believer in one Supreme
God, 153.
Epicurus, his theory of the origin of relig-
ion, 56, 57 ; his Ethics, 427–482; his Phys-
ics, 433–438 ; taught that pleasure is the
chief end of life, 428—that ignorance of
nature is the Sole cause of unhappiness,
432-—that Physics and Psychology are the
only studies conducive to happiness, 432
—that the universe is eternal and infinite,
433—that concrete bodies are combina-
tions of atoms, 434—that atoms have
Spontaneity, 436, and Some degree of free-
dom, 436,437 ; the parts of the world self-
formed, 437, 438; plants, animals, and
man are spontaneously generated, 488;
a state of savagism the primitive con-
dition of man, 439; his Atheism, 441: his
Psychology, 442—444; the Soul material
and mortal, 445, 446.
Eternity, Platonic notion of 349 (note), 372,
373.
Eternity of Matter, how taught by Plato,
371-373; distinctly affirmed by Epicurus,
433.
Eternity of the Soul, Plato's doctrine of,
373-875.
Ethical ideas and principles, gradual de-
velopment of, 495,496; (1) the age of pop-
ular and unconscious morals, 497,498; (2)
the transitional or Sophistical age, 498–
500; (3) the philosophic or conscious age,
500–506.
Ethics of Plato, 383–887, 502–505; of Aris-
totle, 417–421; of Epicurus, 427–432; of
the Stoics, 454–456.
Expiation for sin, the need of, 124; uni-
versally acknowledged, 124 — especially
in Grecian mythology, 125—and in the
language of Greece and Rome, 125.
F.
Facts of the universe, classification of, 175–
177.
Fathers, the carly, recognized the propae-
deutic office of Greek philosophy,473–475.
Feeling, theories which ground all religion
On, 70–74; its inadequacy, 74–78.
CO WT ENTS.
527
Final Causes, impossibility of interpreting
nature without recognizing, 221, 222; the
. SSumption of final causes a means of
discovery, 222, 223; Cuvier on, 216, 222;
argument of Socrates from, 320–324; Pla-
to on, 380–382; Aristotle on, 405, 413, 414;
teleological proof of the existence of
God, 490,491.
I'orce, the idea of, rejected by Comte, 207.
Forces, all of one type, and that type mind,
211.
I'reedom, human, 19; exists under limita-
tions, 20; both admitted and denied by
Comte, 208, 209; of Will, as taught by
Plato, 386, 387: admitted by Epicurus,
436.
G.
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, his pretense of not as-
cribing any intentions to nature, 216,
217.
Geography and IIistory, relations between,
14; opposite theories concerning, 15:
theory of Buckle, 16—of Ritter, Guyot,
and Cousin, 16; the relation one of ad-
justment and harmony, 16.
God, universality of idea of, 89 : Athenians
believed in one God, 107, 147, 148; idea
of God a common phenomenon of human
intelligence, 168, 169; the development
of this idea dependent on experience con-
ditions, 169–172; the phenomena of the
universe demand a God for their expla-
nation, 172–175; there are principles re-
vealed in consciousness which necessi-
tate the idea of God, 184–189; proofs of
the existence of God employed by Ar-
istotle, 412–416 — by Socrates, 320–324;
views of God entertained by the Stoics,
452, 453; logical proofs of the existence
of God developed by Greek philosophy,
487–494; gradual development of Theis-
tic conception, 481–487.
Gods of Grecian Mythology, how regarded
|by the philosophers, 151–157 ; views of
Plato regarding them, 383.
Great men, represent the spirit of their age,
20; the creation of a providence inter-
posing in history, 21.
Greece, its geographical relations favorable
to free intercourse with the great historic
nations, 35—to commerce, 36—to the dif-
fusion of knowledge, 36—and to a high
degree of civilization, 36; peculiar con-
figuration of Greece conducive to activity
and freedom, 36–38—and independence,
38; natural Scenery, 43—its influence on
imagination and taste, 44.
Greek Civilization, a preparation ſor Chris-
tianity, 465–468.
Greek Language, a providentially prepared
vehicle for the perſect revelation of Chris-
tianity, 468–470.
Greek Philosophy, first a philosophy of
Nature, 271, 281,282; next a philosophy
of Mind, 271, 316–318; lastly a philosophy
of Life, 271, 422; prepared the way for
Christianity, 457–522.
Greeks, the masses of the people believed
in one Supreme God, 147,148.
Guilt, consciousness of, a universal fact,
122, 123; recognized in Grecian mythol-
ogy, 123, 124; awakened and deepened
by philosophy, 518–518.
FI.
IIamilton, Sir W., teaches that philosophic
knowledge is the knowledge of effects as
dependent on causes, 224, 225; and of
qualities as inherent in substances, 225,
226; and yet asserts all human knowl-
edge is necessarily confined to phenome-
Ina, 227 ; his doctrine of the relativity of
all knowledge, 227, 229–236; his philos-
ophy of the conditioned, 228; conditional
limitation the law of all thought, 236–242;
the Infinite a mere negation of thought,
242–246; asserts we must believe in the
infinity of God, 246; takes refuge in faith,
247; faith grounded on the law of the
conditioned, 248, 249—that is, on contra-
diction, 249,250.
Hegel, his philosophy of religion, 65–70.
Heraclitus, his first principle ether, 288:
change, the universal law of all exist-
ence, 288 ; a Materialistic Pantheist,
289.
IIesiod, on the generation of the gods, 142.
Homer, his conception of Zeus, 144, 145.
IIomeric doctrine of sin, 513, 514.
IIomeric theology, 143–145, 509, 510.
IIumanity, fundamental ideas and laws of,
18; developed and modified by exterior
conditions, 19; the most favorable Con-
ditions existed in Athen
I.
Idealism, furnishes no adequate explana-
tion of the common belief in an external
world, 198, 199—and of a personal self,
528
C O N TENTS.
200–202; Cosmothetic Idealism, 305; ab-
solute Idealism, 305.
Ideas, Platonic doctrine of 334–337; Pla-
tonic scheme of, 364–367.
Images of the gods, how regarded by Cice-
ro, 129—by Plutarch, 129; the heathens
apologized for the use of images, 159.
Immortality of the Soul, taught by Socra-
tes, 324—and by Plato, 375, 376; denied
by Epicurus, 444–446.
Incarnation, the idea of, not unfamiliar to
heathen thought, 512.
Induction, the psychological method of Pla-
to, 356, 357.
Induction and Deduction, Aristotle on, 397,
39S.
Infinite, the, not a mere negation of
thought, 242–244; lºnown as the necessa-
ry correlative of the finite, 245; as com-
prehensible in itself, as the finite is com-
prehensible in itself, 246; in what sense
known, 252. -
Infinite Series, the phrase, when literally
construed, a contradiction, 181, 182.
Infinity, qualitative and quantitative, 239;
qualitative infinity possessed by God
alone, 184,239.
Intentionality, principle of, 190; denied by
Materialists, 194; a first law of thought,
221–223; recognized by Socrates, 320–324.
Ionian School of Philosophy, a physical
and sensational School, 2S1; subdivided
into Mechanical and Dynamical, 282,283.
Italian School of Philosophy, an Idealist
school, 281; subdivided into the Mathe-
matical and Metaphysical, 282,296.
J.
Jacobi, his faith-philosophy, 71.
K.
Knowledge, Hamilton's doctrine of rela-
tivity of, 229–236; opposite theories of
knowledge among ancient philosophers,
330, 331; the tendency of these theories,
332; Plato's theory of, 333, 334: Plato's
science of real knowledge, 337, 33S.
L.
Language, inadequate to convey the idea
of God, 92–94; Greek language the best
medium for the Christian revelation, 468–
470.
Leucippus, his first principles atoms and
Space, 291; a pure Materialist, 292.
Logic of Aristotle, 394–403. -
Logical Treatises of Aristotle, 395, 396.
Lucretius, the expounder of the doctrines
of Epicurus, 426,427 : his account of the
origin of worlds, 437, 438; of plants, ani-
mals, and man, 438.
M.
Mansel, bases religion on feeling of de-
pendence, 72—and sense of obligation,
73.
Materialists deny the principle of causality,
194, 203—and of intentionality or final
cause, 211-225; Anaximander, Leucip-
pus, and Democritus belong to the ma-
terialistic school, 286–293; Epicurus a
materialist, 442—446.
Mathematical Infinite, not absolute, 179,
180; capable of exact measurement,
therefore limited, 180; infinite sphere,
radius, line, etc., Self-contradictory, 180,
181.
Matter, did Plato teach the etermity of ?
371-373; the doctrine of the Stoics con-
cerning matter, 449 (note).
Matter and Form, Aristotle on, 405–408.
Mean, Aristotle's doctrine of the, 420.
Mediator, consciousness of the need of a,
awakened by Greek philosophy, 509–513.
Metaphysical thought, law of its develop-
ment, 478–480; three different stages in
the individual mind, 478,479 ; and in the
universal consciousness of our race, 479.
Metempsychosis, regarded by Plato as a
mere hypothesis, 376 (note).
Mill, J. S., his doctrine that all knowledge
is confined to mental phenomena, 193;
his definition of matter, 196; his views
of personal identity, 196, 197; his theo-
logical opinions, 197.
Miracles, not designed to prove the exist-
ence of God, 95.
Moral principles, universal and immuta-
bTe, which lead to the recognition of a
God, 190; the Dogmatic Theologians seek
to invalidate the argument therefrom,
261–263. -
Mystics, base all religious knowledge on
internal feeling, 70.
Mythology, philosophy of Greek, 134–139;
Cudworth's interpretation of, 139–143;.
recognized the consciousness of guilt and
need of expiation, 123–125.
C O N T ENTS,
529
N.
National Character, a complex result, 17 ;
conjoint cffect of moral and physical in-
ſluences, 17 ; human freedom not to be
disregardcd in the study of 20; influence
of geographical Surroundings, 23–of cli-
mate and natural Scenery, on the pursuits
and mental character of nations, 23—on
creative art, 24—and literature of nations,
25.
Nations, individuality of, 22; determined
mainly from without, 22.
Natural Realism, 305; Anaxagoras a natu-
ral realist, 311-313.
Nature, interpreted by man according to
fundamental laws of his reason, 133.
O.
Obligation, the sense of, lies at the founda-
tion of religion, 115.
Ontological proof of the existence of God,
491–493.
Ontology, of Plato, 369-379; the subject-
matter of the world of sense, 370–373; the
permanent substratum of mental phe-
nomena, 373–376; the first Principle of
all principles—God, 377–379, 491–493.
Optimism of Plato, 3S2.
Order of the Universe, had it a beginning,
or is it eternal 7 178–184.
Order, principle of, pervades the universe,
220, 221; recognized by Pythagoras, 301;
Cosmological prooſ of the existonce of
God, 489, 490.
P.
Parmenides, his theory of knowledge,
307-308; a spiritualistic Pantheist, 308,
300. *
Paul, St., at Athens, 14; his emotion when
he saw the city full of idols, 100; the sub-
ject of his discourse, 101 ; brought into
contact with all the phases of philosophic
thought, 268, 269 ; his arrival at Athens
an epoch in the moral history of the
world, 472; he recognized the prepara-
tory oſlice of Greek philosophy, 473.
Philosophers of Athons, 101; believed in
one supreme, uncreated, eternal God,
151–157; their vicvs of the mythological
deities, 158, 159; their apologies for im-
ages and image-worship, 159, 160.
Philosophic Schools, classification oſ, 271–
273; Pre-Socratic, 280–814; Socratic, 814-
421; Post-Socratic, 422–456.
Philosophy, the world-enduring monument
of the glory of Athens, 265,266; defined,
270, 271 ; an inquiry after first causes and
principles, 271, 457; Inot in any proper
sense a theological inquiry, 273–277,279;
the love of wisdom, 384, 385.
Philosophy in its relation to Christianity,
268-270; sympathy of Platonism, 268;
antagonism of Epicureanism and Stoi-
cism, 269; the Propaedeutic office of phi-
losophy, 457–524—recognized by St. Paul,
473—and many of the early Fathers, 473–
475; philosophy undermined Polytheism,
and purified the Theistic idea, 4S1–4S7;
developed the Theistic argument in a
logical form, 487–494; it awakened Con-
Science and purified the Ethical idea, 495–
506; demonstrated the insufficiency of
reason to elaborate a perſect ideal of
moral excellence, 500–509; awakened in
man the sense of distance from God, and
the need of a Mediator, 509–513; deep-
cned the consciousness of sin, and the de-
sire for a Redeemer, 513–522; the history
of philosophy a confirmation of the truth
of Christianity, 522–524.
Philosophy of Religion, 53; based on the
Correlation between Divine and human
reason, 458–462.
Plato, condemns the poets for their un-
worthy representations of the gods, 130–
132; his views of the gods of Grecian my-
thology, 154–157: the sympathy of his
philosophy with Christianity, 268; fol-
lowed the philosophic method of Socra-
tes, 328; his moral qualifications for the
study of philosophy, 328, 329; his lite-
rary qualifications, 329, 330; his search
after a criterion of truth, 333, 334; his
doctrine of Ideas, 334–337 ; his science of
real knowledge, 337, 338; his answer to
the question, What is Science? 338, 330;
his Psychology 339–352; his scheme of
the intellectual powers, 345; on the na-
ture of the soul, 350; his dialectic, 353–
369; his grand scheme of ideas, 364–367 ;
is Ontology, 369–379; on the creation
of time, 372; did he teach that matter is
eternal? 371, 372; on the eternity of the
rational element of the soul, 373–375; on
the immortality of the soul, 375, 376; on
God as the First Principle of all princi-
ples, 377–379; his Physics, 380–883; his
IEthics, 383–387, 502–505; deſects of his
34
530-~
CONT ENTS.
ethical system, 518; his philosophy not
derived from Jewish sources, 476; felt
the need of a superhuman deliverer from
sin and guilt, 519–521.
Plutarch, his sketches of Athenian charac-
ter, 44; criticism on, 45; on the univer-
sality of prayer and Sacrifice, 115.
Poets, the Greek, believed in the existence
of one uncreated Mind, 141 ; their the-
ogony was a cosmogony, 142; the theo-
logians of Greece, 274,275.
Polytheism, Greek, a poetico-historical re-
ligion of myth and symbol, 184; its im-
moralities, 160, 161; undermined by Phi-
losophy, 4S4–487.
Post-Socratic Schools, classification of,425;
a philosophy of life, 422–424.
Potentiality and Actuality, Aristotle on,
408–112.
Prayer, natural to man, 115. g
Treparation for Christianity, not confined
to Judaism alone, 464, 465; Greek civil-
ization also prepared the way for Christ,
465–468; Greek language a providential
development as the vehicle of a more per-
ſect revelation, 468–470; Greek philoso-
phy fulfilled a propaedeutic office, 470–
472.
Pre-Socratic Schools, classification of 280–
2S2; 295, 296.
Principles, whºversal and necessary, how at-
tained by the method of Plato, 361-364,
390; how, by the method of Aristotle,
390–394, 402,403.
Psychological analysis, logical demonstra-
tion of the existence of God begins with,
170; reveals principles which in their
logical development attain to the knowl-
edge of God, 184–189.
Tsychology of IIcraclitus, 289; of Pythag-
oras, 304; of Parmenides, 307, 308; of
Anaxagoras, 318; of Protagoras, 315; of
Socrates, 317, 318; of Plato, 389–352; of
Aristotle, 392, 398-401; of Epicurus, 442–
444; of the Stoics, 453, 454.
Pythagoras, his doctrine that numbers are
the first principles of things, 207 ; how to
be interpreted, 297-304; misrepresented
by Aristotle, 298–300; psychology of 304.
B.
Tècason, insufficiency of, to elaborate a per-
ſect ideal of moral excellcnce, 506–509.
Tedemption, desire of, awakened and de-
fined by Greek philosophy, 518–521.
Relativity of all knowledge, IIamilton's
doctrine of, 229–236.
Religion, the philosophy of, 53; defined,
53, 106; universality of religious phenom-
cma, 54; hypothesis offered in explana-
tion of, 55; hypothesis of Epicurus and
Comté, 56–65—of IIegel, 65–70—of Jacobi
and Schleiermacher, 70–78—of Cousin,
78–86—of Dogmatic Theologians, 86–96–
author's theory, 96, 97 ; religion of the
Athenians, 98—its mythological and sym-
bolic aspects, 128–exerted some whole-
some influences, 161–163.
Reminiscence, Plato on, 354, 355.
Revelation, progressive, 462–464; harmony
of the two revelations in the volume of
conscience and the volume of the New
Testament, 522–524.
S.
Sacrifice, universal prevalence of 115, 124;
prompted by the universal consciousness
of guilt, 126; expiatory Sacrifices ground-
ed on a primitive revelation, 127.
Schleiermacher, his theory that all religion
is grounded on the feeling of absolute
dependence, 71, 72.
Science, Plato's answer to the question,
What is Science? 338,339.
Self-determination, limited by idea of duty,
113; implies accountability, 114; recog-
Inizes a Lawgiver and Judge, 115.
Socrates, his desire for truth, 316; his dae-
mon, 317 (note); his philosophic method,
318, 319; a believer in one Supreme God,
820; his argument for the existence of
God from final causes, 320–324; his be-
lieſ in immortality and a future retribu-
tion, 324, 325; his Ethics, 325; the great
prophet of the human conscience, 500-
502.
Socratic School, 314.
Sophists, 315, 316; their skeptical tenden-
cy, 315; their defective ethics, 498, 499.
Sophocles, believed in one Supreme God,
147.
Soul, Plato on the nature of thc, 350, 373;
etermity of the rational element, 373–
375.
Spencer, II., carries the law of the Con-
ditioned forward to its logical conse-
quences, Atheism, 241, 242.
Stoical School, 446; its philosophy a moral
philosophy, 447.
Stoics, their Physiology, 448–453; their
CO WT ENTS.
53 I
Psychology, 453, 454; their Ethics, 454–
456; their Theology, 452, 453.
Substance, principle of, 189; Idealism seeks
to undermine it, 193; Reason aſſirms a
permanent substance as the ground of
all mental phenomena, 201—and of the
phenomena of the sensible world, 202,203.
Sufficient Reason, law of, recognized by
Plato, 359.
Superstition, meaning of the term as used
by Paul, 103.
T.
Teleological proof of the existence of God,
490, 491.
Thales, a believer in one uncreated God,
152; his first principles, 283; he regards
water as the material cause, 284; and God
as the efficient cause, 285.
Theistic argument, in its logical form, 487–
494.
Theistic conception, gradual development
of, 4S1–4S4.
Theological opinions of the early periods
of Greek civilization, 150, 151; 276-27S.
Theology of Aristotle, 404–417; identical
with Metaphysics, 404, 416.
Theology of the Greek poets, 143–151; pro-
posed reform of Poetry by Plato, 131, 132.
Thinking, conditionality of, 228; in what
sense to be understood, 237 ; thought
imposes no limits upon the object of
thought, 237, 23S.
Thought, negative and positive, 242, 243;
negative thought an impossibility, 243;
all thought must be positive, 243.
Time, Platonic notion of 871, 372.
Tragedians, the Greek, were the public re-
ligious teachers of the Athenians, 145;
their theology, 146, 147; influence of the
religious dramas on the Athenian mind,
161–163; guiltiness of man, and necd of
reconciliation confessed by, 515–517.
TJ.
ciency, 194, 258-261; recognized by Py-
thagoras, 296; his effort to reduce all the
phenomena of nature to a Unity, 303,
304.
Universal and necessary Principles, classi-
fication of, 189, 190: these the foundation
of our cognition of a God, 191; how at-
tained according to Plato, 360–364; how
by the method of Aristotle, 390–394, 402,
403.
Universe, the, is it finite or infinite? 178–
184; Epicurus teaches that it is infinite,
433.
Unknown God, the true God, 104; God not
absolutely unknown, 107–110; classifica-
tion of opponents to the doctrine that
God can be cognized by reason, 166–168;
Idealist School of Mill, 194–203; Materi-
alistic School of Comte, 203–223; Iſam-
iltonian School, 224–252; School of Dog-
matic Theologians, 252–263.
W.
Watson, Richard, represents the views of
Dogmatic Theologians, 86; asserts that
all our religious knowledge is derived
from oral revelation, 86–SS, 167; incom-
pleteness and inadequacy of this theory,
SS-96; in vindicating for the Scriptures
the honor of revealing all our knowledge
of God, he casts doubt upon the principle
of Causality, 253–255—on the principle of
the Unconditioned, 255–257—on the prin-
ciple of Unity, 258–261—and on the im-
mutable principles of Morality, 261-263.
Wordsworth, on the sentiment of the Di-
vine, 118.
X.
Xenophanes, his attack on Polytheism,
130; his faith in one God, 153,306, 307.
Z.
Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoical
School, 446; a Spiritualistic Pantheist,
450, 451.
Zeno of Elea, maintained the doctrine of
Absolute Identity, 309.
Zeus, originally the Supreme and only God
of the Greeks, 143; the IIomeric Zeus,
the Supreme God, 144, 145.
Unconditioned, principle of, 189; assailed
by IIamilton, 194.
Unity of God, 259; an affirmation of rea-
son, 259–201; Xenophanes taught the
unity of God, 307—also Parmenides, 309
—and Plato, 377—and Aristotle, 415.
|Unity, principle of, 189; attempt of Dog-
matic Theologians to prove its insufll-
THE END.
** * liſii
~...~ ;---
547.
*g.
§ 390.15065477948.
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