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rare intellects is it given to possess an equally profound insight into various departments of knowledge, and the great majority of minds are rather weakened than improved by being obliged to extend their action over a wide extent of investigation. Separate excellence on a very high scale may be no doubt achieved by many, but the student of metaphysical philosophy was far more likely to be successful when his undivided attention was bestowed upon its abstruse inquiries, than when he is obliged, by the habits and ideas of the age, to view his subjects by the light of so many different studies, which are popularly supposed to affect his conclusions. We do not deny that an acquaintance with natural philosophy, and several other branches of knowledge, may prove of the highest utility to the metaphysician; on the contrary, we are assured that there are many metaphysical inquiries which cannot be successfully conducted without their aid; but we do deny that the fundamental problems of philosophy which constitute the primary matter of speculation, are in any wise assisted by acquired knowledge. The mystery which envelopes the origin of the universe, and the relations which subsist between the various beings which inhabit it, and their Creator, is too profound to be penetrated by the weak light which science affords; and as has been often observed, the simplest shell picked up from the sand, or the humblest field flower, contains for the reflecting mind as sublime and as convincing evidence of the attributes of the Creator as does the magnificent order of the heavens, or the most marvellous secret that science has unfolded. Since, therefore, the subtlest minds of antiquity have failed in their attempt to unriddle the enigmas of philosophy, it cannot be expected that success is reserved for later inquirers, who are at least not surrounded by greater advantages. Instructive as is the lesson thus taught, it has been misinterpreted by many. It has been inferred that therefore we are incapable of ever knowing with certainty the truth or falsehood of those opinions which so deeply concern us. It ought to have been only inferred that whilst reason can assure us concerning the primary dogmas, it is unable to teach us a complete system of religion, but that whilst we become. conscious of the imperfection of our faculties, we also learn the necessity of a higher guide in those regions of thought which lie beyond our range. The opposite

inference was made by the Sophists of antiquity, and by the Positivists of our own time. Akin to this erroneous theory is the opinion, generally rather implied than expressly asserted, that a system of religion grows out of the national mind, and derives its peculiar character from the nature of the influences to which the nation is subjected. We have already seen how the outward circumstances may materially affect the religion, but no proof has been furnished that the modifying power is the creative likewise, and that a people isolated from the influence of tradition will elaborate the same views in many of their principal details, which will be adopted by another people at a corresponding stage of civilization. In such a theory a refined kind of materialism is insinuated, which does not make allowance for the intrinsic activity of the mind, which although it will take a general impress from outward causes, will even in its passive relations, if we may so speak, exert a controlling and plastic power. The supposition that external circumstances constitute the mould from which the creations of intellect must necessarily take their shape, belongs rather to certain crude theories of indefinite progression, which have obtained too wide circulation, than to the doctrines of rational philosophy.

The philosophy of Greece has exercised great influence over the world. Since Grecian nationality ceased to have existence, the philosophy which had flourished contemporaneously with it, has found a home in every civilized and polished nation. Conveyed in the pure and melodious language of such writers as Anaxagoras and Plato, it was welcomed even by those who did not love philosophy for its own sake; and pervaded as it was by the very essence of poetry, it recommended itself equally to the susceptible imagination of youth, and to the matured judgment of the experienced scholar. It refined whilst it weakened the practical intellect of Rome, and it softened down the rough manner of the Gothic nations of medieval Europe. Some of the Christian Fathers have not hesitated to style Plato the Moses of the Pagan world, whose lofty mission it was to raise the mind from the grossness of material pursuits, to purer and nobler objects, which were prophetic of the future blessings. The difficulty of attempting to appreciate the nature and extent of an influence which has been so universal and so profound, is enhanced by the

impossibility of contracting within a narrow compass considerations of such deep import as are necessarily associated with the subject. Our object throughout the remaining portion of this Article will therefore be to contrast briefly in their general aspects the systems of Plato and of Aristotle; and to indicate the principal attempts which have been made to revive the other ancient systems.

Plato and Aristotle respectively represent the speculative and the practical aspects of the mind of Greece. They respectively sum up whatever had been brought forward in the preceding systems; the practical doctrines attain their highest development in the works of Aristotle,the speculative tenets reach to their greatest perfection in the writings of Plato.

"The whole philosophy of Plato," writes Professor Butler, "is one vast scheme of moral discipline, directed to the purification of the rational element in man; and its fundamental principle is the aspiration after perfection,-such perfection as competes to an unbodied spirit......... Without this idea perpetually preserved, you will read Plato in vain; the clue of the labyrinth will have been lost; the luminary that sheds impartial light on every object will have disappeared.

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If Professor Butler has not succeeded in supplying us with "a clue to the labyrinth" of Plato's system, the blame cannot be allowed to attach to the expounder. To furnish a correct test by which to determine the precise idea entertained by Plato, even on some of the cardinal points of every theory of philosophy, has hitherto baffled all the labours of his interpreters. It is impossible to assign any criterion by which to reconcile contradictions; and Plato's writings abound with contradictions. It is not possible in metaphysics, as in chemistry, to solidify the vaporous; and the philosophy of Plato is preeminently vaporous and ethereal. In the Timæus he describes the world as a divine animal; in the Philebus he advances opinions which identify matter with the evil principle. In the Laches he speaks of the divinity as a mere abstraction; in the Timæus he ascribes to Him the attributes of a personal Being.

His famous theory of ideas is so indeterminately stated that his commentators have maintained amongst them

* Vol. ii. P. 271.

selves an unceasing contest as to whether he intended to assign real objective existence to the Idea, or only referred to the eternal knowledge of the Divinity. What, therefore, has been the cause of Plato's immense influence? To this it can only be answered, that the influence of Plato has been rather emotional than intellectual; he has powerfully swayed the intellects of men, but it has been mainly through the medium of their emotional nature.

There probably never lived a man more keenly and more exquisitely sensitive to all the impressions which the good, the beautiful, the harmonious are capable of producing. Not even the marvellous delicacy of mental organization which belonged to Shelley could have exceeded the surpassing refinement of Plato. His soul seems to have been perpetually haunted by the most captivating forms of ideal beauty, and every outward object spoke to him of unutterable harmony and hidden perfection. His mind possessed in the highest conceivable degree the essential power of genius,-the power of refracting the plainest ray derived from 'external nature, into the most brilliant colours, and of thus beholding lit up with ideal charms the object from which it had been obtained.

The teaching of Socrates had replenished Plato with a belief in the supreme importance and perfect beauty of the highest morality. Whether his sublime conceptions were at all derived from the Jewish ethical code, we do not now inquire; once convinced of the excellence of virtue, his own sublime genius rapidly invested the ideal, not indeed with attractiveness equal to what it in reality possesses, but immeasurably greater than any which philosophy not inspired had hitherto communicated to it.

Thus, as has been so well stated by Professor Butler, a moral aim was the one which Plato chiefly proposed to himself; but we cannot concur in the further observation that the possession of this one idea explains the inconsistencies and contradictions which might have been perfectly well avoided, consistently with the most earnest intention of enforcing morality.

Those who have been most influenced by Plato have not reasoned upon him, or with him; they have been simply carried away by the gentle force of the rarest and the highest eloquence. He has been venerated by the Christian Fathers, not because they conceived his writing to be exempt from contradictions and fundamental

errors, but because they recognised in him an instrument of Divine Providence, and because they were aware that his unequalled sway over the emotional nature of man would divide between him and his great intellectual brother philosophers a vast dominion, so long as the loftiest flights of poetry and the most musical language in the one, or the most penetrating acuteness and the vastest range of intellect and erudition in the other, would command the admiration of mankind. The followers of Plato, those who have by their devotion to him, earned the name of Platonists, have invariably been men of poetical and susceptible minds, prone to mysticism and disposed to allegory. No systems but the most fanciful and poetical have been found capable of fusion with Platonism. Thus we find that in Neoplatonism the alliance is effected between it and the philosophy of Pythagoras, from which it had been in considerable part derived; and in the ideal writings of Picus, of Mirandula, to whose history such deep interest attaches, we find it blended with the fictions of the Cabbala.

It is a remarkable circumstance, for which we have the authority of Dr. Döllinger, that no commixture of mystical philosophy has been found practicable with Mahomedanism in its orthodox form; and the Sectarians who have endeavoured to effect the amalgamation, have been regarded as heretics in the Church of Islam. The Church has ever most sedulously guarded against influence being exerted upon her own pure dogmas by the system of Plato. Some of her most distinguished doctors have happily succeeded in choosing from his writings such ideas as harmonized with the Christian Faith, but this has been ever done with great caution, and as a proof of its great difficulty we may recollect, that where Augustine, Jerome, and Eusebius succeeded, such distinguished names as Origen and Rufinus, have not escaped the dangers attendant upon the effort.

The chief manner in which Platonism has acted, has been through the vehicle of mysticism. It first appeared in the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius, in the fifth century, and since then it has more or less commingled itself with the productions of other writers on the same subject. An imaginative and abstract character associated itself with the speculative efforts of Ficinus, and the other Florentine Platonists, as well as with those of Reuchlin, and Corne

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