Ancient Philosophy: A Treatise of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy Anterior ...

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Preface

TO THS BEOOKD SDITIOIT.

The article on Moral and Metaphysical Pliilosopby in tlie Encyclopeedia Meiropolitana was undertaken at the desire of the late Eev. Hugh James Bose, who became Editor of that work after the death of Mr. Smedley. Mr. Eose expressed his wish, that the form of the treatise should be historical, and not didactic. I thought that there were many histories of Philosophy already ; that the space allotted to a single article in an Encyclopedia was hardly sufficient to contain one ; and that I was very incompetent to write it. At the same time, the reasons which Mr. Eose gave for objecting to a dogmatical treatise seemed to me very weighty.

On consideration I believed that I should be acting in conformity with the wishes of the accomplished Editor, who had, I knew, a very hearty dislike to mere historical abridgments, if, leaving the student to seek for a formal and regular account of systems in the many French or German works which profess to furnish one, I contented myself with offering him a few hints which might help him in examining the purpose of the most conspicuous teachers ; in reading their books, when they had lef^. any ; in connecting them wifch the country or the age wherein they flourished. If I confined myself to this object, I hoped that the article, however short and imperfect, would not necessarily be superficial. The remarks in it could not be a substitute

Till PJIEITAOE.

for the reflections of the reader, or for an examination of the original sources : they might lead, I hoped, to both.

Nearly twelve years after the death of the kind-hearted and excellent man under whose auspices I began this essay, I have been requested to prepare it for separate publication. In looking over it after so long an interval, I have discovered that it accomplished very inadequately even the humble object which I had originally proposed to myself. I failed, as it now seems to me, in a clear apprehension of the word Philosophy, — in seeing what part different nations had taken in the inquiries which it denotes, — ^in tracing the workings of the "Wisdom which had guided these inquiries, — in noticing how one grew out of another. I found also I had indulged far too much in disquisition, and too little in biography. Some of these errors I have endeavoured to correct in the present volume, a great portion of which is entirely new. Some of them, I have no doubt, remain, and will be as offensive to the reader as they are to the writer. I wish him at least to understand what I have attempted, that he may be the more aware of my deficiencies, may suffer less from them, and may not judge me by the standard of learned and elaborate books, which I never pretended to imitate. I should have been glad to have expunged the disagreeable affectation of the plural pronoun; but I did not like to destroy altogether the connection between this volume and the Encyclopaedia, seeing that I have many personal reasons for being thankful that I had the honour of contributing to its pages.

The present volume treats only of Ancient Philosophy ; the second part of the original article will require to be entirely re- written.

London: July 1850.

CONTENTS rAdv

INTRODTJOTION 1-4

PAET I.— ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.

CTTAPTEB I.— THE HEBEEWS 6-31

Section 1. Grounds of Hebrew Philosophy ... ... ... 6

2. Hebrew Philosophy ... ... 19

CHAPTEE n.~EGYPTIANS, PHCENIOIANS, ASSTBIANS .. 32-36

CHAPTES m.— HINDOO PHILOSOPHY 37-63

Section 1. The Philosophy latent in the Beligion 37

2. The Philosophy developed— The Bhagarad Gita ... 40

3. The Philosopher separating himself from the Priest ... 62

CHAPTBE IV.— OHINBSE PHILOSOPHY ... ... 54-73

KHOUITGhPOir-TSBTT ... ... ... 54

GHjLPTEE v.— PEBSIAN philosophy 73-81 l\

X CONTEXTS.

Vknwi

CHAPTEE VI.— OEECIAN PHILOSOPHY 82-245

Division I. — Philosophy bepoee the Time op Socbates ...82-114

Section 1. Greek Wisdom in the Legendary Ages 82

2. The beginning of Philosophy ... ... ... 87

3. The First School 93

Anaximander 94

Heraclitus ... ... ... y5

Anaxagoras ... ... ... ... lOO

5. Zenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno... ... ... 109

Division II. — Gbbbe Philosophy pbom Soobates to Abis-

Section 1. Athens in the Time of SocratiCs — The Sophists

. . •

2. Socrates

...

3. The Socratics

...

•• . ...

...

•

The pyrenaic School

••• ••• ...

...

Anstippus

...

••• •••

•••

Theodorus

••• ••• ...

*••

Hegesias ...

. .•

Aniiiceris

• . •

The Cynic School

...

•• • ...

Antisthenes ...

...

Diogeucfi ...

...

••• ...

...

The Megarian School

... ... ...

...

Euclides ...

••• ...

...

EubuUdes

...

Diodorus ...

•

••• ...

...

Stilpo .,.

••• ••• ...

...

cowTBirrs. xi

Section 1. Aristotle the beginner of a New- Epoch .. ... 176

2. Eelation of Aristotle to Plato ... 179

3. The Logical Treatises of Aristotle ... ... 186

4. The Physics of Aristotle ... ... 192

6. The Metaphysics of Aristotle ... ... ... 197

6. Aristotelian Pyschology ... ... 218

7. The Aristotelian Ethics ... ... ... 221

8. Politics of Aristotle ... ... 230

DiyisionIV. — The Lateh Sects ... ... ... 231-245

Seoiionl. Greece after the Time of Alexander ... 231

CHAPTER Vn.— ROMAN PHILOSOPHY 245-254

Section 1. Roman History and Mythology ... ^,, ... 245

2. Origin of Latin Philosophy ... ... ... ... 246

3. The Roman Epicurean ... ... ... . . 248

4. The Roman Stoic ... ... .. 250

5. The Proper Roman Philosophy ... ... ... 251

CHAPTER Vni.— THE ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY ... 254

2. The Jewish Philosophy ... ... 256

INTRODTJOTION.

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I

Philosophy means literally the love of Wisdom. It is the PbUowpiiy, love of a hidden treasure. Therefore it comes to mean a search after "Wisdom.

II

That this hidden treasure is not something which can heTbyiiad seen or handled, weighed or measured, all have confessed. ^'''^^^' Yet it may be sought among the things that are seen and handled, weighed and measured, or, to use a more general expression stiU, among the things that are produced and grow — among Physical things.

III

The philosopher asks whether Wisdom is in these things ; Het^ihy. whether it is of the same kind with them ; or whether it is of pSioiopiir. adiiOPerent kind, whether it is fixed, constant, unproducedV He who seeks for an object which is not of the same kind with the things arouad him is called a Metaphysical philosopher.

2 ISTKOBVCnOJS*

IV

nSiolophT. -^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^® learned to dream of an object diflferent in kind from these things? Is he different from them? How comes he to desire this Wisdom, this hidden treasure ? Must it not have more to do with him than with them? If he knew himself, the ways, habits, manners, which belong to his race, might he not be nearer to the object which he seeks? These ways, habits, manners, occupy the Moral philosopher.

V

Deripi of It is the purpose of the present sketch to indicate how Treatise, men havc been led into these inquiries, how in different

countries and ages they hare been pursued, what have been

the issues of them.

VI

Subjecu— Moral inquiries are suggested by our daUy acts, our ordinected in it. nary spccch, our necessary relations. Metaphysical inquiries are suggested by the discovery of powers in ourselves which we do not find in other creatures. The former therefore concern us most, and in a history will present themselves first to our notice. But we shall find that they cannot be separated. Of physical inquiries, so far as they have been entered upon merely for the sake of ascertaining the order and constitution of the world around us, nothing wiQ be reported. So far as they have been suggested by the desire to find Wisdom, they are too much involved in moral inquiries, they are too evidently presumed in the word metaphysical to be passed over. The philosopher seeks for Wisdom everywhere that he may know where it is not.

UnCBOBITCTIOK.

VII. All nations liave been en£:afi:ed in this search for Wisdom, Umittticm

®^^ oftbesub-

those most actively which have left most recorcjs of themselves Ject. in the History of the World. Buildings, poems, pictures, mechanical arts, above all polities, have indicated the direction which different periods, countries, individuals have taken in the pursuit. But the name " Philosopher'^ has been generally and rightly confined to one who has engaged deliberately in the search, and has traced out a method in it. Such a man interprets the less conscious striving of his contemporaries.

VIII

It would, however, be a fatal mistake to make even the Not a

.... history of

most rapid and superficial sketch of philosophical investiga- gPi^JSJJf ^ut tions merely a record of the conclusions at which different Jj^ow?*" Schools have arrived. These conclusions are in general premature efforts to terminate the search for Wisdom, to confine the results of it within a few meagre propositions. To trace the thoughts which were working in the minds of those who founded Schools, to discover how they were affected by their characters, teachers, disciples, opponents, personal and pohtical conflicts, to watch the processes by which they were expanded, completed, narrowed, is a far more interesting work, and one which falls far more properly within the province of the historian of philosophy. Those who busy themselves with the speculations and contradictions of Schools are likely to begin with extravagant expectations and to end in despondency. Earnest sympathising meditations upon the actual efforts of men to discover the secret of their life, and the ends for which they live, contain equal encouragements to humility and to hope.

*

4 ISTBODTTOnOK*

IX

Division of This sketch' will consist of two parts. It will treat of the

the subject. ^ * ^ ^

Philosophy before and after the coming of Christ. The subjects considered in the first part will be — 1st. The Hebrew Philosophy; 2nd. The Hindoo; 3rd. The Chinese; 4th. The Persian ; 5th. The Greek ; 6th. The Roman; 7th. The Graeco-Hebraic or Alexandrian. In the second part the subjects wiU be — 1. The Philosophy of the first six centuries ; 2. The Philosophy of the Middle Agc» ; 3. The Philosophy of the centuries fix>m the thirteenth to our own time.

CHAPTBE L i

THE HEBREWS.

SECTION I.

OBOUKDS OF HSBBSW PHILOSOPHY.

1. Thb Hebrew Scriptures are commonly passed over hj the Whetiiertbe historian of j)hilosophy. Yet the took of Job describes philo- gJlriSrcB sophy in particularly exact language. " Where is wisdom found, recofnise and where is the place of understanding ?" this is said to be the phUMopfay. inquiry in which man is more interested than in finding the veins of silver or in bringing the gold out of the earth. The book of Proverbs sets forth the search for wisdom as its subject and purpose. M«i is to dig for it as for hid treasure. Such language is scarcely consistent with an opinion which has been eagerly maintained by persons holding the most opposite views Inspecting these books ; that they assume all knowledge to be communicated from above, and therefore not to be an object for the search or investigation of man. This opinion, however, could not have been entertained so generally il there had been no facts or reasons to justify it. The writers of the book of Job and of the book of Proverbs presume the existence of a revelation, nay, groimd their feeling of the possibility and the duty of a search for wisdom upon it. Evidently, then, this revelation, must have a different meaning in their minds from that which it bears in the minds of many modems. To know what sense it does bear, we must refer to those books which profess to record how G-od made himself known to man. In these we shall find not Hebrew philosophy itself, but the grounds and elements of it.

2. The book of Genesis opens with the creation of the World, Genesis. or Order, in which we are dwelling. Modem geological disco- ^Jcipiet . veries and speculations have done much to remove a veil which bad been thrown over the meaning of this record, and to bring forth the all-important principle, that the sacred historian is

6 THE HEBBEWfl.

speakins; of the world in its relation to Mait. The whole after history is incoherent aad unintelligible if this principle is forgotten ; if the words " G-od made Man in his own likeness," are What they not taken as the key to it ; if the course of the visible world is not contemplated as secondary and subordinate to the relation between God and our race, mente of ^* These data once assumed, it becomes not a strange excep-

human tional fact that the imseen Being should reveal or unveil himself history. ^^ Man, but the law and condition of man's being. That He after whose image the creature is made should not have given him the capacity for beholding his own archetype, that He should refuse him the power of being what he was made to be, this would be the contradiction. Accordingly it is taken throughout these Scriptures as a contradiction. God is everywhere said to be speaking to man ; man is intended to hear. God places the first man in a garden, calls forth in him the power by which he names the creatures, provides him with a helpmate, creates the marriage bond. He submits to a lower creature, denies the authority of the invisible Lord, wishes to hide himself from His presence. He is awakened to own that presence, and to feel that he has transgressed. He is driven from the garden : he is to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow ; but this labour is to teach him that he is not dependent upon the earth which he is to till and subdue ; that he is dependent upon au invisible Euler. The first murder is committed m the world : God asks Cain for his brother. His great punishment is that he goes out from the presence of God. His descendants are described as building cities and inventing mechanical arts. Another race, of which Seth is the head, is said to be called by the name of the Lord. The first is an irregular, disorderly condition. The second confesses itself to be under the Divine government. Though nothing is recorded of it but the succession of its families, it is trefited as being in the state intended for man at this stage of his growth. General violence and confusion afterwards overspread the earth. A flood is sent to punish the wickedness of those who dwell upon it : the race is preserved in one of the Seth family. A covenant of God with man is the foundation of the restored world. The sons of Noah are meant to people the earth according to their tongues, in their nations, in their families. A portion of them seeks to set at naught this purpose, and to build a tower on the plain of Shinar, that th^ may not be scattered abroad on the face of the earth. God, we are told, confounded the rebellious scheme. They left off to bmld that tower. But a mighty hunter established the kingdoms of Babel and of Nineveh. The Babel kingdom is throughout Scripture treated as the form of godless society.

THE HEBBEW HISTOBICAL BOOKS. 7

4. A Divine education, then, is assumed as tbe regular basis T^e gmsnd of human life and human fellowship. G-od teaches man what knowM^ he is. Man knows what he is ; he fulfils his appointed task *^^ li^^* just so far as he receives this instruction. The instruction proceeds from an invisible Being, and is addressed to something

else in man than that which connects him with the visible world. He is always ready to forget God, to bow down before visible things. So far as he does this, he becomes a slave and an animal. So far as he does this, the society in which he lives becomes corrupt and untenable.

5. Abram is called out by Gk)d from his father's house to go Tbe educainto a strange land. This calling is the foundation of his .life. SJJnJaiiu The Lord of all is speaking to him ; he heeds the voice and

obeys it. That Lord makes him know that He is one in whom he may trust. He believes in Him as a righteous Being. His faith is counted to him for righteousness ; he acknowlec^es the Being in whose likeness he is made ; he becomes like Him. His outward life is of the most commonplace kind. He is simply a shepherd, with many flocks and herds, dwelling in tents, surrounded by people who dwell in cities with whom he does not mix but with whom he has frequent dealings. Once he goes forth at the head of his servants to rescue a kinsman who had taken up his abode in the city of Sodom. As he returns, he finds a priest of the most high Ohod in Salem, to whom he gives a tenth of his spoil. He goes into Egypt : it is already an organized nation ; a Pharaoh is reigning there. He loses nis faith in God, and tells a lie to save himself: it almost costs him his wife. All his discipline is of the same practical kind. He finds that God overthrows cities which have become hatefiil and given up to beastly crimes : he is taught to intercede for the righteous in these cities. He is sure that the Judge of all the earth will not slay them with the wicked. He must do right. Abraham is livmg under the promise that in him and his seed all the families of the earth are to be blessed : but he has no seed. A child is bom to him by a bondwoman living in his house. Thus he hopes the promise will be fulfilled : but he is told that the child of his own wife must be his heir. She is barren : yet he believes. He waits long. When the child has been born, and is growing up, he is caUed to sacrifice it. He gives himself to God ; is ready to do what is commanded. Another oflering is provided, and Abraham is blessed for his trust. Thus the whole history, so far as he individually is concerned, is the history of a man taught to know himself by knowing in whom he has to believe. He has nothing whatever to aistinguish him from his kind: he learns that which he haa in common with all human beings : he learns the relations in which human beings stand to the world about them and to their Creator.

$ THE HISBBXWS.

tionoftS" ^' ^^^ ^^^^ * history cannot be merely anindi^dual one.

chosen That he may know what he is, Abraham is taught what it is to be

*^*^^' a master, a husband, a father. The discipline which has most to do with himself has to do with him in these characters. It is in his position as the head of a family, the founder of a race^ that Gl-od speaks to him. Thus he is educated to feel his connection with the past and the future. Hebrew history is grounded upon the belief that G-od made a covenant with the patriarchs fiti with their seed after them. They are circumcised : they are taught that they are separated and set apart by the Lord of all. The sign shows that what they are separated from is something in themselves. Their own flesh is cut off. The Hebrew has the same tendency to forget God as other men. Other men, again, are treated as subjects of Divine teaching as well as the chosen race, God speaks to Abimelech and to Pharaoh. The sign of the covenant itself is shared with the descendants of Ishmael. The patriarchs are shown to have all the evils of their neighbours, to have some which belong peculiarly to them from their sense of having peculiar privileges. Jacob is more deceitful and treacherous than Esau ; he who prizes his birth«* right than he who despises it. The one tries to get the rights of an heir of the covenant by trick ; the other thinks nothing of that inheritance, but much of the loss of com and wine which he believes are entailed upon it. Both are disappointed : the deceiver becomes a wanderer ; but in his wandermg learns that Q-od is with him, though he knew it not, and that there is a ladder between earth and heaven. He has put himself under a Divine education ; it does not leave him till it has punished him for his falsehood. The more frank and open-hearted hunter has his reward : he does not lose what he feared to lose ; he misses only that which he never cared for.

jMeph and 7. The rest of the book of Genesis is in harmony with these portions of it. The heads of the Jewish nation, the circumcised sons of Jacob, commit the crimes which might be looked for in a seb of wild shepherds and settlers. Their sins are especially family sins. The one who feels what it is to be in covenant with a righteous being is taught to imderstand his privilege by being an exile and a prisoner. He learns that God is with him, keeping him from evil, giving him wisdom. He believes that He cares for Pharaoh and Egypt, and is their Euler and Teacher as well as his.' He becomes an instructor to a king. But it is still with his family relations that the historian is chiefly occupied ; he cares more to tell how he behaved to his brethren, and was made known to them, than how he bought up the lands of the people of Egypt. The consciences and hearts of human beings have testified that he is right ; that such records do concern us more, and are really more wonder^ than the bit brethren

oth^r : tbey belong to hiunaniiy, to morality : they Bet forth the family relations of human beings as the first stage of their spiritual history ; that out of which all the other stages must gradually develope themselves.

8. The book of Exodus exhibits the Jewish people still as a i^eflimny collection of families: they have multiplied in Egjrpt, are re-Jj^J^* garded as a dangerous body of aliens, are reduced mto slavery.

The book gives the history of their deliverance from this condition. Gk>d sees the affliction of the people, and hears their cry ; He remembers his covenant, and calls a man out of one of their tribes to be their deliverer. Egypt is presented to us as a nation abounding in wise men : they practise magic and soothsaying i they are the advisers of the king. Moses is brought up in the court of the king, and is learned in this wisdom. While he is still young, he feels for his countrymen, tries to deliver them, and smites an Egyptian. He becomes an exile in the land of Midian, There, as he is keeping his father-in-law's flock at the back of the desert, the Lord God speaks to him, and tells him that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But He makes known to Moses another name—" Say to the Israelites that the I Am hath sent thee to them." In this name he speaks to his countrymen ; in this name he commands Pharaoh to let the people go. " The Lord God of the Hebrews** had sent him with that message. Pharaoh asks " Who is the Lord God ?" and increases the people's burdens. The river is smitten ; flies, Hce, locusts attack the I^ptians.; the magicians mimic the plagues. At last they and the people confess that a real hand is stretched out upon them. The first-bom are destroyed. The slaves go out with a high hand. A memorial feast is appointed them, which they are to keep from generation to generation ; a witness that the Lord was the protector of their households, and that He brought them out of the house of bondage.

9. In this stage of the history, the principles are evidently The new the same as in the first. The invisible Lord is still the great whau?^°* speaker and actor in it. Men are recognised as in their right "ignified. state when they hear His voice and confess His acting. It is

still the rule and not the exception that he should reveal himself. But the new revelation is evidently of a deeper kind than the former. The Egyptian priests and magicians had all kinds of thoughts and speculations about God; they had all plans of representing Him and propitiating Him. Hence superstitions, tricks, exaltation of men for their skill in these tricks, worship of the visible things in which they had discovered tokens of power, instruments of utility, causes of fear. The Lord of all comes forth declaring Himself as the true Being ; Himself tha

THE HEBBISWB.

Hebrew polity.

How distinguished from the £g^yptian.

teacher of wisdom to man, tbe ruler of the things to which he is doing homage. He makes the power felt which He is continuaUv exercising. The plagues were signal startHng specimens of judgments which He had exhibited before, and would exhibit again in that land. They are remarkable chiefly for this, that the reason of them is explained. Natural agents are shown to obey a moral law : a righteous Being sends them ; they are to punish the oppressor, and deliver the oppressed.

10. On this foundation the polity of the Israelites stands. The name of G-od is the ground of it : He is the deliverer of the people ; He calls out the leader who guides them through the wilaemess ; He gives them bread each morning, ajid causes the water to flow from the rock for them. He goes before them by night and by day; He casts the horse and the rider into the deep. He is the jud^e between man and man, the Teacher of their judges. He gives the law, He appoints the priest and the sacrifice ; He orders the host, and goes with it to battle. He is the head of the tribes ; He appoints the bounds of their habitation. The commonest arrangements have their sanction from His name. He inspires the artificer with his power of doing cunning works ; He himself dwells in the tabernacle, and meets the worshipper at the mercy-seat.

11. llie covenant of Q-od is at the root of the national as it was of the family society. There was for the most part no novelty in the mere Jewish institutions. A law, a priesthood, sacrifices, temples, existed in Egypt. The Jew did not bring these social forms with him, he found them established in the land to which he and his countrymen went as a band of shepherds. They might have been cast aside as mere portions of an idolatrous system. In that case, the Israelites would have retained a set of family or pastoral institutions after they had grown into the dimensions of a people ; in other words, they would have become an Arab horde. Had Moses stolen the tenet of the unity of Ghod from the Egyptian sages, and published it to his countrymen as a witness that they were no longer a degraded caste, and that they might worship the one Gk>d of nature instead of the multitudinous gods of their oppressors, this would have been their fate. If, after taking this course, he had, in accommodation to their prejudices, pretended that he had a mission from an actual, living Being, who had authorized him to establish a system in all its essentials like the Egyptian, with a hard, lazy tenet of the Divine unity appended to it, he would have framed the most incongruous scheme of falsehood ever palmed upon the world ; his name ought to be held accursed as that of the wickedest of all liars and blasphemers. Before we pronounce that sentence upon him, we should hear his own ao-

THS HEBBKlf HI8T0BICAL BOOKS. 11

count of the matter. He does not boast that he proclaimed anj tenet about the unitj of God at all. He sajs that the I Am, the living G-od, sent him to be the guide and deliverer of his countrymen. The Egyptians believed in a hidden god. He said that hidden God had come forth to declare himself. The Egyptians thought that he had delegated to a set of priests the power to interpret His mind. He said God was ever living and acting. The priest was the witness of his presence, and of His relation to men. The Egyptian held that sacrifices we^e the means of converting the Divme will to man's will. He said they were confessions of man's revolt from Gt)d's will, and could never be bribes to the Divine Beinff, who had himself appointed their kind and their amount. The Egyptian spoke of laws which were either irreversible or to be changed at the will of the monarch. He spoke of laws as the utterance of an unseen and eternal King, which no man could set aside, which were ever proceeding &om the mouth of God himself, enforced by thunders and lightnings, declaring to each IsraeHte that he was in the presence of God, warning him of tendencies which were hateful in God's eyes, and would destroy him. The Egyptian had statutes provided for the particular emergencies of the land, which must be enforced by some religious machinery. The law of Moses assumes that the Lord of all, who does not think it beneath Him to care for the growth of trees and the fall of sparrows, directed the arrangements which were suitable to an agricultural people dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Egyptians had temples where they worshipped beings whom they conceived 01 from the different phenomena of Nature in the places where these temples stood. Moses affirmed that God does not float in the air, or dwell in the hills, or in the clouds ; but that there, where it pleased him to dwell, might His glory be felt, there might the worshipper converse with him.