Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

But slightly differing is the hypothesis of Thales, who assigned to water the place which was occupied by air in the system of Anaximenes.

Three of the chief philosophers of the Eleatic school, composed respectively a work entitled (IIepì púσrews) De Natura. In those works two prominent tenets are assigned, in which the other most distinguished teacher of the same sect substantially concurred. Parmenides, Melissus, and Empedocles, agreed in the dogmas of a pure, ineffable, transcendental Being, in comparison with whom the universe which is cognisable by our senses is phenomenal and only apparent. According to Parmenides the existent is self-produced and unchanged. Melissus declares it to be incomprehensible and infinite, and Empedocles describes Deity as pure abstract intellect, and as at the same time an all-pervading Love.

The doctrine of Heraclitus, upon the existence of two opposing powers in nature, whose ceaseless struggle resulted in stability and order, was the second dogma of the Eleatic school. Parmenides, and Melissus, declare that the two great contending powers are love and discord, and of this antagonism, they conceived the division of the sexes to be symbolical.

From the brief retrospect we have taken of Greek philosophical opinion during the fifth and sixth centuries before our era, it has been shown that a few prominent tenets more or less generally divided the suffrages of the teachers of that period. These tenets were, 1st, that an abstract principle endowed with causal efficacy was diffused through the universe:-2nd, that the universe was subject to cyclic destructions and renovations:-3rd, that the sensible world was transitory and phenomenal; the one-existent Ens being 'the only reality:-and 4th, that unceasing struggle was maintained between two eternal, distinct, and opposing forces. No philosopher adopted all these dogmas, but all appertained with more or less universality to the Grecian system.

To these speculations should be added the disbelief in the evidence of sense, implied in the supposed phenomenal nature of the external world, and sustained by some menbers of the School of Elea.

During the sixth century, the idea of constantly recurring change was exhibited in the Doctrine of Metempsychosis, proposed by Pythagoras, but derived by him from

Pherecydes, whose peculiar views are merely a reproduction of the vague ideas of Hesiod and the Orphic bards.

The theory of Number, which formed so conspicuous a part of the Pythagorean teaching, reappeared in the more remarkable philosophy of Plato.

- With Xenophanes, we first meet the distinguishing conclusions of the Eleatic School, of which he was the founder, but according to Plato, those opinions existed previous to his time, and were by him borrowed from some earlier source.

The latter half of the fifth century witnessed a revolution in Greek philosophy, which, when we reflect on the practical and material character of the nation, cannot be looked upon as at variance with what might have been naturally expected.

Those countries in which a mystical and thoughtful spirit was shed over the entire religious worship, and had been at once evolved from the peculiar mental constitution of the people, and again had reacted in confirming and strengthening the primitive characteristics, would be far from the danger of such a recoil from mysticism as was presented during the dominance of the School of the Sophists. When the national, like the individual mind, is maintained in its normal state, or in that condition which has been made natural to it, sudden and decided change is in some sense impossible. But when its usual tendencies have been interfered with, and an attempt has for awhile, proved successful to draw it from its accustomed paths, a return, frequently sudden and violent, to its usual course becomes inevitable. The profligacy of the Restoration followed on the English period of Puritanism, just as at an earlier period a pedantic purism infected the Latin literature of Europe, which had been corrupted by the absence of refinement from the scholastic literature, and the intercourse of the learned.

Whatever may be thought of Mr. Grote's apology for the sophists, it may at least be alleged in their favour, that the fruitless effort to impose a highly developed form of dreamy Pantheism upon a nation in which the mystical element, though long existent, had a constant tendency to decrease and disappear, was one which must have strangely grated against the masculine prejudices of such a vigorous and practical people as the ancient Greeks.

At the very period when much of the imaginative

superstition of the national infancy had been forgotten, and a Pan-Hellenic society had begun to be consolidated, the poetical teachers of Ionia, and the still more contemplative thinkers of Magna Græcia, endeavoured to light again the almost extinguished ember. Their success was indeed considerable for a time, but their teaching was utterly out of keeping with the requirements and possibilities of the age and country. Whilst they undermined the national faith, they offered only contradictory and fanciful abstractions in its stead, and thus supplanting religion, they polluted the very core of society. Hence, when the Sophists uttered their indignant protest against the fruitless idealizing of the philosophers, they found themselves in a society diseased and licentious, to whose maladies they did not indeed apply a remedy, but of which they had not been the authors. Checked and disappointed in its aspiration after a higher knowledge, was it surprising that through them the mind of Greece should have expressed what it must have so deeply felt, its own impotence to achieve the intellectual conquests which its fallacious instructors had promised it? The same reflections must have then been made which the spectacle of the failure of the Grecian intellect excited in one of its most fervent worshippers:

"And other creeds

Will rise with other years, till man shall learn

Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds,

Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds."

The subsequent course of Greek philosophy proves that the interval of scepticism, or at least, the rather extended spread of that feeling in references to the philosophical doctrines, exercised a salutary influence on later speculation. The Socratic system bringing into beautiful relief the purifying doctrine of a divine Providence, and addressing itself to the morality of the nation, contrasted happily with the transcendental hypothesis of the former schools. The Cyrenaic school degenerated from the purity of the Socratic, but it still retained a practical character, and its leading principle, though carried to undue lengths, possessed something of a lofty and perfect character.

It is referred to by Horace in the well known lines: "Nunc in Aristippi furtim præcepta relabor,

Et mihi res, non me rebus subjungere conor."-Epist. i. 18.

The School of the Cynics, though directly antagonistic to that of Cyrene, was yet like it, almost entirely ethical, and was anxious to avoid the dangerous course which had proved so destructive to its predecessors; and even in the partly Eleatic school of Megara, the idealism was moderated and subordinated by dialectics and ethics.

We have already sufficiently examined the characteristics of Greek speculation, to enable us to determine whether it should be deemed of native or of foreign growth: one spontaneously rising from the soil of the Grecian mind, or only transplanted to, and naturalized in it, from climes better suited to its healthy development.

The speculation which was indulged in at a period subsequent to that at which we have arrived, though most important in its future influences, contained no essentially different element from those which composed the previous systems, and was only an eloquent summing up of the earlier conclusions.

That we may be able to judge on what grounds the claim to originality which has been advanced for the Greek Philosophy, reposes, we shall compendiously state the prominent doctrines contained in the contemporaneous or earlier systems of the great oriental nations.

Dr. Robertson, in his learned "disquisition concerning India," thus summarizes the ancient Brahminical doctrine.

"The Brahmins supposed the Deity to be a vivifying principle diffused through the whole creation, an universal soul, that animated each part of it. Every intelligent nature, particularly the souls of men, they conceived to be portions, separated from this great Spirit, to which, after fulfilling their destiny on earth, and attaining a proper degree of purity, they would be again reunited.

They taught that the human soul must pass in a long succession of migrations, through the bodies of different animals, until by what it suffers and what it learns in the various forms of its existence, it shall be so thoroughly refined from all pollution, as to be rendered meet for being absorbed into the divine essence, and return like a drop into that divine ocean from which it originally issued."

In addition to the idolatrous worship of the heavenly bodies practised by the ancient Persians, as is proved

[graphic]

against Dr. Hyde and Prideaux, from the acts of Persian martyrs, as given by Stephen Assemani, the most distinguishing article of their faith, was that of two eternal and hostile principles, of good and evil, to which were respectively due the good and evil of the universe.

There was probably no other dogma which attained such a wide diffusion as the dogma of Dualism. Expressed variously as the opposition of good and evil;spirit and matter;-light and darkness;-love and discord; it has associated itself with almost every form of belief. It belonged to Scandinavian mythology, in which the evil principle is designated by a name but slightly differing from that which is applied to it in the Persian creed; and Egyptian superstition fabled that darkness or night, was one of the first principles by which the world. had been produced. Indian mythology is crowded with legends of an almost triumphant opposition against the supreme Being, sustained by a being invested with an abiding or a temporary omnipotence for evil. English readers are familiar with the powerful elaboration of this conception in the Curse of Kehama." Early Grecian legend, restored in the poetry of Eschylus, displays to us the unsubdued spirit of the Titans, still defiant even after irreparable defeat. We have found the same antagonism repeated in the theories of the Eleatics, and when the edifice of Greek philosophy had been shattered, and other architects attempted, from the splendid fragments which remained, to build another temple, they chose the doctrine of the Eternal Struggle to be the chief corner-stone of the new structure.

66

Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, believed in the ceaseless contest that had to be maintained before the soul could be restored to the absolute Unity; and the errors of Manes, Marcion, and Bardesanes, continued through the Paulicians, and other sectaries of the middle ages, chiefly hinged upon this widely accepted explanation of the profoundest problem in philosophy.

In addition to the deification of the evil or material principle in the Egyptian worship, of which we are informed by Diogenes Laertius, Herodotus testifies to the prevalence of a belief in transmigration, with which indeed

*Proem. 10.

« ForrigeFortsæt »