Socrates.
by Maxwell Y. Maxwell, LL.B.
Volume 12, 1901, pgs. 342-353
III.
"And thus it came to pass that the Greek Philosophy co-operated in the formation of a new creation, of which it supplied the fair and shapely body, and of which Christianity became the living soul."
". . . individual items of information do not become real knowledge until they have first been chewed and digested, and thus made ready for assimilation with the understanding; and that isolated truths do not become Truth until they have been duly subordinated, co-ordinated, and correlated, and thus organised into a perfect whole."
Continued from Vol. XI., page 319
Read before the Lyndhurst Book Society, March 1901
Approaching now the third part of our subject, we have to ask ourselves, what was the "Message" of Socrates to humanity? or, in other words, what was the nature and effect of his special work in the world? And the answer is twofold. In the first place, he laid the foundations of the only scientific method for the attainment of a universally valid knowledge, both in respect to internal and external phenomena. And in the second place, he was the pioneer and the true founder of that combination of systematized thought and reasoning in connection with ethics, politics, logic, psychology, aesthetics, and metaphysics, which is comprehended under the generic term "Greek Philosophy," and of which the writings of Plato and Aristotle are the leading exponents. It is true that Socrates left no writings behind him, nor did either his immediate object or his method of teaching allow of his preparation of formal lectures or of written discourses. But in the writings of Plato, who was proud to be regarded as his disciple, Socrates is not only almost everywhere represented as the master and central figure, but also it is only in the latest of his dialogues (such as "The Laws," where Plato the Reasoner has sunk into Plato the Dogmatist) that Socrates is altogether omitted. And Aristotle, who was, as you will recollect, the pupil of Plato and who never saw Plato's great master, has expressly stated that, with Socrates, "dialectical and ethical enquiries began," and that to him the world was indebted for Induction, and for pointing out the absolute need for the formation of general concepts as the only true and proper basis for all knowledge. And, therefore, while we may regard the Greek Philosophy in its literary and perfected form as a gigantic tree which sprung up and attained its maturity within three generations of men, and of which Plato was, as it were, the rich foliage, and Aristotle the ripe fruit; yet on the other hand, we are bound to regard Socrates, logically as well as historically, as its pregnant germ, which contained potentially all the virtues and all the advantages more fully displayed in the rich bloom of the foliage, and which gave the strengthening and nourishing qualities to the ripened fruit.
Before, however, proceeding to deal in detail with the actual work of Socrates in connection with the Greek Philosophy, it will probably be considered that an enquiry into the advantages or otherwise of that Philosophy is itself a necessary preliminary. For as you will recollect, Aristotle is by Lord Bacon almost regarded as the enemy of mankind, or, at any rate, as one who for two thousand years detained the Chosen People in the wilderness of barren speculation, instead of allowing them to enjoy the material blessings of the land flowing with milk and honey. And to many others beside Lord Bacon--men of wisdom and intelligence, like the late Mr. Bright, for example--both Plato and Aristotle are regarded as mere idle dreamers; or as theorists, and "men of dogmas," to use Lord Bacon's simile, "resembling spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance." And it may therefore be considered as not wholly unnecessary that I should indicate, very briefly, some of the advantages which the Greek Philosophy has conferred upon humanity; and try to indicate, in part at least, the nature and extent of its civilizing influence.
In the first place, I should point out that it is to the Greek Philosophy mankind is indebted for the full and clear recognition of the distinction between mind and matter. That is to say, it was from the Greeks that it learned the fact of the existence of the deep chasm separating the subjective from the objective, the phenomena within us from the phenomena without, the intellectual from the corporeal, and the spiritual from the material. This distinction may perhaps seem to be a very obvious one, and, as being, in fact, assumed in every act of consciousness. And, as you will recollect, it is so regarded by Locke in his Essay on the Human Understanding and is even taken by him as a "postulate" in his examination of the origin of ideas. But as a matter of fact, it was not recognized or taught by any philosopher or teacher until about thirty years before the commencement of Socrates' career, when it was first enunciated by Anaxagoras in his theory of the Nous or Soul of the world pervading all matter, and causing its motion and its various modifications. And by a curious, and, to us, almost unnatural inversion of thought, it was from this universal Nous or Soul of the world that there flowed the idea of a particular Nous or Soul in man, inhabiting the individual body, but only as a part of the universal Soul.
But from this primitive idea, crude and puerile as it seems to be, there flowed the most momentous consequences to the mind and thought of man. For not only was there thus established the conception of the vital distinction between mind and matter, but also the further conception of the intrinsic and immeasurable superiority of the former over the latter. And hence, there also followed as an obvious corollary, the refining and spiritualizing of the ideas of humanity concerning the nature of God and the super-sensible world; and these, again, by a natural reaction, quickened and exalted the moral ideas as regards the duty and relationship of man to man. For men know, and can only know, the super-sensible by analogies drawn from their own experience, and just as in proportion as our ideas are derived from the fleshly or the spiritual part of our nature, so will be our ideas of religion and morality. To the Homeric Greeks there were lords many and gods many; personifications of the blind forces of nature and even of the desires of men. And over these there presided in a material heaven, Zeus, the father of gods and men--a muscular, eating and drinking, good-natured giant, easily offended, easily appeased, and easily cajoled; and who was possessed of all the caprices, the unbridled passions, and even the lusts of ordinary humanity. But what a contrast to this is presented by the Platonic Greeks, that is to say, by those who had imbibed the teaching of the Greek Philosophy as represented by Socrates and his great disciple. To them, the multitude of deities had become poetic myths, and in their stead there reigned the conception of an Eternal Mind, the direct object of, and known only by, the human mind; Zeus had been transformed into "Theos" (or rather "ho Theos"), the Highest Good; whilst Heaven, raised far beyond Olympus, was felt to consist in the perpetual contemplation of the Eternal Ideas which alone were the true realities, but which could only be realized by the cultured and disciplined mind, and perceived only by the soul purified from all fleshly lusts.
Nor was it only in the regions of religion and morality that the Greek Philosophy exercised its elevating influence. On the contrary, it pervaded almost every form of mental activity, province after province in the mental world being conquered, duly surveyed, and its intellectual boundaries clearly defined. To the study of the Good was soon joined the study of the Beautiful, or, rather, they were considered parts of one whole viewed under different aspects; and to the study of Ethics and Aesthetics were joined in their natural order and harmony Dialectics, Rhetoric, Politics, Psychology, and Ontology. And not only was the mental horizon of humanity thus widened and elevated, but also the intensity and force of the human mind itself was enormously increased, both as an instrument of research and as an organ of expression.
Nor was the influence of the Greek Philosophy confined only to the Hellenic race, but, on the contrary, by mentally subjugating and civilizing the ruder but stronger race that conquered and ruled its ancestral home, it finally became conterminous [sharing a common boundary] with the Roman world. To the choicer spirits among these--of whom Caesar, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius may be regarded as typical examples--it presented itself, both as a system of thought and as a rule of life, in the form of the Stoic Philosophy, which, although regarded by its teachers as derived from Socrates, had yet incorporated within itself some elements that were more congenial to the Roman mind and temperament than were the Platonic and the Aristotelean systems. But upon the great mass of the Roman people it operated, not so much as a system of thought as a rule or standard of practical morality, so far at least as the latter can be expressed in the requirements of positive law. For, as readers of Sir Henry Maine's profound and fascinating treatise on Ancient Law will recollect, not only were the wisest and best of the Praetors, whose varying Edicta laid the foundations of Roman Law throughout the provinces, strongly imbued with the Stoic Philosophy (as were also the five great Roman lawyers who flourished in the Antonine or Golden Age of Roman Jurisprudence), but there is also the fact that the fundamental conception on which the whole Corpus Juris Civilis is based had its origin in Greek Philosophy.
This is the conception of the existence of a Jus Naturale or Natural Law, having, it is true, its full and perfect existence only in the heavens, but to which, as being ideally holy and just and good, all human law ought to conform. And I need not remind you that this conception is one that finds its fullest expression in the Greek Philosophy, both in its Stoic and its Platonic forms. (Students of French History will also recollect Rousseau's theory of a "State of Nature" as an ideally perfect condition of Society to which all human institutions ought to conform; and its enormous influence in bringing about the French Revolution.)
Perhaps you will also allow me to glance at another most important illustration of the beneficial influence of Greek Philosophy, viz., its function in the preparation of the world for the reception of Christianity. In this, its action was two-fold, viz. (a) in its effect upon Judaism; (b) in its effect upon heathenism. As regards the first, it is no doubt true that the ethical teaching of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures is far superior to that of the best Greek writers; that the ideas of conscience, of sin, and of the possibility of deliverance from it, which pervade the former, are hardly recognized, and indeed would be scarcely understood, by the Hellenic mind; and that vitally important conception of monotheism was the common heritage of all members of the Hebrew race, whereas, in the Greek-speaking world, it was confined to the philosophic few. But on the other hand, it should be recollected that the teaching of the Old Testament was practically unknown to, and had little or no influence on, the world outside that little speck of territory called Palestine; until at Alexandria--the city founded by Alexander, himself a pupil of Aristotle--it came into contact with that phase of Greek Philosophy which is called Neo-Platonism. This formed a link between Jew and Greek which had previously been non-existent, a circumstance which had a most important influence upon the intellectual and religious development of mankind. It gave birth to a new mode of thought in the form of the Graeco-Jewish philosophy which had its centre in Alexandria; it broke up and set aside the old Jewish narrowness and tribal conception of the Almighty, and proclaimed aloud that the God of the Old Testament was not merely the God of the Jew, but of the Gentile also. "Moses speaking in Attic" was, as you will recollect, the description of the Platonic Philosophy given by the justly celebrated Philo the Jew; and the profound influence which this Alexandrian philosophy, as it is exhibited in the writings of Philo, came afterwards to exercise on early Christian Theology--such as the writings of Clement of Alexandria, and of Origen--clearly indicated that it must have had a great natural affinity with the spirit of Christianity. And a further illustration of this fact will be found in the New Testament itself, viz., in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is obviously written by an Alexandrian Jew converted to Christianity; and in which much of the force of the writer's argument can, I venture to think, be fully appreciated only by those who are familiar with the Platonic doctrine of Ideas.
With respect to the influence of the Greek Philosophy regarded as a factor in the preparation of the non-Jewish world for the reception of Christianity, I have already indicated some of its indirect modes of operation. Such, for example, as its spiritualization of the human mind or soul; its rejection of the many gods of paganism and its recognition of a Divine Unity above and beyond them; and its recognition also of Man as a Moral Being bound by the law of his nature to live a righteous and holy life. Now these ideas were, so to speak, postulated by Christianity when it came into the world, that is to say, it did not stoop to prove the fact of their existence or necessity, but rested upon the common consciousness of the whole human race as the witness of their importance and truth. To the Semitic branch of the race, these truths had been taught by special Divine Messages conveyed from without; first in the form of a highly ritualistic code of laws, and afterwards by men gifted with supreme spiritual insight to whom "the word of the Lord came." The Hellenic branch, on the other hand, had learned its lesson, not so much from the external messages, as from its being gifted with the genius and the special capacity for discovering the law within. And if to the one we owe the recognition of the conscience and of the absolute necessity of obedience to its dictates, to the other we owe also the development of the reason, by which alone conscience can be enlightened and guided aright.
Each of them, representing two totally distinct and radically different types of the human mind, had, in its own special and appropriate way, prepared humanity for the due reception of that central fact of the universe,--the Incarnation of the Eternal Logos in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and the consequent establishment of Christianity as the religion of the world.
But, to the ideas thus postulated by Christianity, there was immediately, and of necessity, the addition of several others; arising from the fact that Christianity was not only a new, but also a far more spiritual force than had previously existed in the world. Some of these ideas were altogether new, and of the others it may be said that, although previously existent, they had been so spiritualized and elevated by means of the forces and powers inherent in Christianity as to have become practically new. Such ideas may perhaps be indicated by the new, or almost new, terms found in the New Testament--such as grace, faith, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, abiding in Christ, filled with all the fullness of God, love of the brethren, love of mankind, long-suffering, meekness, humility--which we may say are practically Christian virtues and ideas; and scarcely, if at all, known to the pre-Christian world.
But, at the same time, it should be borne in mind--and this is the special point to which I wish to call attention--that before the force and meaning of these new ideas could be properly realized and understood by the human mind, there must of necessity have been a previous training of its capacity to receive and comprehend them. That is to say, there must have been formed the habit of inward reflection and of sustained thought; skill in the formation of abstract ideas or general notions, together with a trained subtlety in the discrimination of differences and agreements which could only be obtained by a long practice; the constant recognition of the distinction between the world of sense and the world of thought, and of the vast supremacy of the latter over the former. And there must also have existed a delicate and copious vocabulary in which these new ideas could find their adequate expression. Now, all these requisites were supplied, and could only be supplied, by the Greek language after it had been ennobled and enriched by philosophic writers like Plato and Aristotle.
And thus it came to pass that the Greek Philosophy co-operated in the formation of a new creation, of which it supplied the fair and shapely body, and of which Christianity became the living soul.
It is, however, a very open question as to whether the influence exerted by the Greek Philosophy on Christian Theology has been altogether beneficial; or whether it has not rather been--to use the language of the Roman law--a damnosa hereditas, and it is not one upon which I shall venture to give an opinion. But that it was an exceedingly powerful influence is a fact well known to all students of Ecclesiastical History and Literature, both in their early and their mediaeval periods; and to those who are interested in the subject, I will venture to strongly recommend the two most fascinating as well as able treatises of which I subjoin the full titles. (The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, by Edwin Hatch, D.D.; The Scholastic Philosophy considered with relation to Christian Theology, by R. H. Hampden, D.D.)
Nor shall I attempt to deal with the question as to the nature of the influence which the Greek Philosophy exercises upon modern thought. The opinion that it is highly beneficial may be assumed to be general from the fact that its study is regarded by almost all Universities everywhere (except perhaps in Birmingham) as an essential element in a liberal education; nor am I at all prepared or disposed to dispute the accuracy of the general opinion. But I will venture to say, that I cannot regard it as a perfect rule of life and practical conduct unless its teaching be at least supplemented by that of Jesus and of the New Testament; and also, that I regard the training in all the results of what I may term the "Baconian Philosophy" not only in the Experimental and Mathematical Sciences, but also in all forms of the Mental Sciences, as essentially necessary to the production of a well-balanced intellect.
For the full appreciation, however, of the work accomplished by Socrates, and of his merits as a philosophic reformer, there is the further necessity imposed upon us of enquiring into what may be termed the pre-Socratic Philosophy; and also into the state of the Hellenic mind and thought at the particular period in its history when Socrates first made his public appearance. This period comprises, as you will recollect, four Schools of thought, which are usually distinguished as the Ionic, the Pythagorean, the Eleatic, and the Sophistic. But to give an intelligible and a comprehensive summary of the teaching of these various schools is in itself a work of no small difficulty; partly owing to the fact that the writings of the earlier Greek thinkers which have come down to us are exceedingly fragmentary; and partly also to the fact that so alien is their reasoning to our modern habits of thought, that even with the materials before us, we can never be quite certain that we have thoroughly grasped their meaning. Fortunately, however, with regard to the first, my portion of the task has been largely simplified by the publication of that colossal monument of German erudition and German industry which is now before me, and which I think contains all that is really known of the theories and speculations in Greek Philosophy prior to the time of Socrates. (Zeller's History of Greek Philosophy from the Earliest Period to the time of Socrates. 2 vols.] And I am also glad to be able to assure you that, although I have, as in duty bound to you, most carefully read and re-read Dr. Zeller's great work, I do not propose to weary you with any lengthened details, if only for the reason that all that was of any permanent value in the pre-Socratic Philosophy has long since been practically winnowed out and incorporated into their own Systems by Plato and Aristotle. And yet the subject is one of singular fascination, even if we only regard it as a phase in the history of the growth of the human mind. Taking the period of Thales, who flourished in the seventh century before Christ, or about 200 years before the birth of Socrates, as the starting-point of philosophy,--that is to say, of the conscious speculations of the human mind respecting the phenomena of the universe by which it is surrounded,--we are so startled by the crudities and even absurdities of the various theories, both physical and metaphysical, that there is danger of our failing to perceive how eminently natural they were. To us, who have inherited a rational method of investigation, who have also not only inherited a method, but also a habit, and almost an instinct for reasoned knowledge, it is difficult to comprehend these first gropings of the speculative intellect in its endeavours to explain the mysteries of the universe.
Moreover, there is a danger greater far, to which we of the present generation are specially exposed by reason of the very fullness and the variety of the knowledge given to us by labours and exertions not our own. We are, as it were, so cradled and rocked and dandled in facts, so encircled by encyclopaedias of all the sciences, and so deluged by the scraps of information showered upon us by "Tit-bits" and the other similar blessings of our modern press, that we are liable to forget that knowledge which is not reasoned knowledge is practically useless to us; that individual items of information do not become real knowledge until they have first been chewed and digested, and thus made ready for assimilation with the understanding; and that isolated truths do not become Truth until they have been duly subordinated, co-ordinated, and correlated, and thus organised into a perfect whole.
It is, therefore, not at all unprofitable for us to study the various modes employed in the past for the acquisition of knowledge, even when they are crude in their premises and over-hasty in their conclusions. For it was only by multiplied failures that mankind was taught the unwelcome lesson that Nature cannot be conquered by "frontal attacks"; that it can only accomplish its purpose by a very circuitous route; that only by a regular siege and a series of small progressions can in occupy intermediate positions; and that the outworks must first be captured before it can hope for a successful onslaught on the citadel itself. This process human impatience was late in discovering, and slow in learning to endure. Over 2000 years had to elapse between the teaching of Thales and the publication of Bacon's Novum Organum, that true "Instrument" by means of which the massive gates of Nature have been unfolded, and its hidden mysteries disclosed.
But, great as is the interval of time between the philosophy of the pre-Socratic period on the one hand and that of Lord Bacon on the other, still wider is that which exists between the method for the interpretation of nature proclaimed in the Novum Organum and that taught by Thales and his immediate successors. This latter consisted almost entirely of what may be termed "physical dogmatism," there being no distinction made by its teachers between mind and matter, but, on the contrary, certain physical substances familiar to experience were assumed to be the elements out of which the entire universe was composed, and all the phenomena of Nature were supposed to be produced by the qualities of these elements, or by the operation of some mysterious forces residing in them. For example, Thales himself regarded this cosmic element as Water; whilst Anaximenes, his com-patriot, placed it in Air, by the condensation of which the Earth was produced; this latter being regarded by him as broad and flat, like the top of a table, and supported in position by the Air. On the other hand Heraclitus considered the primordial substance to be Fire; whilst Empedocles explained all things by the mixture of Four Elements--Earth, Air, Fire, and Water--and their mutual action and reaction upon one another.
But in addition to these earlier physicists, there also appeared at various intervals two or three distinct Schools of thought which, differing from each other in several particulars, had yet the common characteristic of basing their conceptions of the universe, not so much on physical agencies, as on intangible existences, or on the largest and vaguest abstractions; and which therefore may be termed the "semi-physical" or "metaphysical" group. (A distinguished scholar, to whom I am in many ways largely indebted, regards these primitive speculations as being essentially theological from the fact of their being strivings after the Unseen. There is no fundamental difference between us on the point, but I have preferred to retain the term "metaphysical" instead of "theological," as the latter seems to me to connote a greater element of personality than is really contained in the speculations.) Of the first of these, Pythagoras may be regarded as the leading type, he having, as you will recollect, found a solution of the mysteries of cosmic order in connection with the idea of Number, that is to say, the numerical and mathematical relations of things; and also in the harmony of musical tones, the dependence of which, on regular mathematical intervals, he was apparently the first to discover; and both ideas are combined in the famous theory of the "harmony of the spheres," the seven planets being the seven golden chords of the heavenly heptachord. And, of the others we have abundant illustrations in the fragmentary writings of the leading philosophers of the Eleatic School--Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus, and the first Zeno--whose special teaching seems to me, if I may venture to use the term, to be a kind of early Transcendentalism not unlike, in one respect at least, that very modern "theosophy" which has reached us from America, but which I believe is considered by its disciples to have had its origin amongst the "Mahatmas" of India and Thibet. That is to say, it appears to me to chiefly consist of vague generalities applied to the most indefinite abstractions, such as "the Same and the Different," the "Being and the Becoming," &c., of the intrinsic value of which I am unable to offer any opinion.
The close, however, of this long period of barren physical and metaphysical speculation was marked by the recognition of a principle which I have already indicated as being fraught with the most vital consequences to the development of the Greek Philosophy, viz., the conception of the existence of the Nous as a something distinct from and superior to matter. It is true that in its original form, as propounded by Anaxagoras, this Nous was not regarded as a spiritual force residing in man, but rather as a subtle but corporeal element of a far finer texture than the ordinary matter; which pervaded the entire universe, and acted upon it by motion or other mechanical means. But from this idea of world-force distinct from the inert formless and chaotic matter on which it operated, there soon arose the concomitant idea of the Human Soul, having a natural affinity to the Anima Mundi or Soul of the World, and equally distinct from and superior to the matter of which the rest of the universe was composed. And thus it came to pass, that whereas in the primitive stages of man's mental development, the mystery and the grandeur of Nature had so absorbed his attention that he became forgetful of himself, in this newer stage he discovered within himself a power and capacity distinct from everything corporeal; spirit revealed itself as something infinitely higher than the matter by which it is surrounded; and Man turns from the investigation of Nature in order that he may be occupied with himself. In a word, the philosophy of physical dogmatism has given place to a philosophy of general criticism.
(To be continued.)
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