History of the Intellectual Development of Europe Volume I Part 11

I cannot dismiss this imperfect account of Xenophanes, who was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers, without an allusion to his denunciation of Homer, and other poets of his country, because they had aided in degrading the idea of the Divinity; and also to his faith in human nature, his rejection of the principle of concealing truth from the mult.i.tude, and his self-devotion in diffusing it among all at a risk of liberty and life. He wandered from country to country, withstanding polytheism to its face, and imparting wisdom in rhapsodies and hymns, the form, above all others, calculated most quickly in those times to spread knowledge abroad. To those who are disposed to depreciate his philosophical conclusions, it may be remarked that in some of their most striking features they have been reproduced in modern times, and I would offer to them a quotation from the General Scholium at the end of the third book of the Principia of Newton: "The Supreme G.o.d exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he exists _always_ and _everywhere_. Whence, also, he is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act, but in a manner not at all human, not at all corporeal; in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise G.o.d perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched, nor ought to be wors.h.i.+pped under the representation of any corporeal thing.

We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of anything is we know not."

[Sidenote: Parmenides on reason and opinion.]

[Sidenote: Philosophy becoming Pantheism.]

To the Eleatic system thus originating with Xenophanes is to be attributed the dialectic phase henceforward so prominently exhibited by Greek philosophy. It abandoned, for the most part, the pursuits which had occupied the Ionians--the investigation of visible nature, the phenomena of material things, and the laws presiding over them; conceiving such to be merely deceptive, and attaching itself to what seemed to be the only true knowledge--an investigation of Being and of G.o.d. By the Eleats, since all change appeared to be an impossibility, the phenomena of succession presented by the world were regarded as a pure illusion, and they a.s.serted that Time, and Motion, and s.p.a.ce are phantasms of the imagination, or vain deceptions of the senses. They therefore separated reason from opinion, attributing to the former conceptions of absolute truth, and to the latter imperfections arising from the fictions of sense. It was on this principle that Parmenides divided his work on "Nature" into two books, the first on Reason, the second on Opinion. Starting from the nature of Being, the uncreated and unchangeable, he denied altogether the idea of succession in time, and also the relations of s.p.a.ce, and p.r.o.nounced change and motion, of whatever kind they may be, mere illusions of opinion. His pantheism appears in the declaration that the All is thought and intelligence; and this, indeed, const.i.tutes the essential feature of his doctrine, for, by thus placing thought and being in parallelism with each other, and interconnecting them by the conception that it is for the sake of being that thought exists, he showed that they must necessarily be conceived of as one.

Such profound doctrines occupied the first book of the poem of Parmenides; in the second he treated of opinion, which, as we have said, is altogether dependent on the senses, and therefore untrustworthy, not, however, that it must necessarily be absolutely false. It is scarcely possible for us to reconstruct from the remains of his works the details of his theory, or to show his approach to the Ionian doctrines by the a.s.sumption of the existence in nature of two opposite species--ethereal fire and heavy night; of an equal proportion of which all things consist, fire being the true, and night the phenomenal. From such an unsubstantial and delusive basis it would not repay us, even if we had the means of accomplis.h.i.+ng it, to give an exposition of his physical system. In many respects it degenerated into a wild vagary; as, for example, when he placed an overruling daemon in the centre of the phenomenal world. Nor need we be detained by his extravagant reproduction of the old doctrine of the generation of animals from miry clay, nor follow his explanation of the nature of man, who, since he is composed of light and darkness, partic.i.p.ates in both, and can never ascertain absolute truth. By other routes, and upon far less fanciful principles, modern philosophy has at last come to the same melancholy conclusion.

[Sidenote: Doctrines of Parmenides carried out by Zeno;]

The doctrines of Parmenides were carried out by Zeno the Eleatic, who is said to have been his adopted son. He brought into use the method of refuting error by the _reductio ad absurdum_. His compositions were in prose, and not in poetry, as were those of his predecessors. As it had been the object of Parmenides to establish the existence of "the One,"

it was the object of Zeno to establish the non-existence of "the Many."

Agreeably to such principles, he started from the position that only one thing really exists, and that all others are mere modifications or appearances of it. He denied motion, but admitted the appearance of it; regarding it as a name given to a series of conditions, each of which is necessarily rest. This dogma against the possibility of motion he maintained by four arguments; the second of them is the celebrated Achilles puzzle. It is thus stated: "Suppose Achilles to run ten times as fast as a tortoise, yet, if the tortoise has the start, Achilles can never overtake him; for, if they are separated at first by an interval of a thousand feet, when Achilles has run these thousand feet the tortoise will have run a hundred, and when Achilles has run these hundred the tortoise will have got on ten, and so on for ever; therefore Achilles may run for ever without overtaking the tortoise." Such were his arguments against the existence of motion; his proof of the existence of One, the indivisible and infinite, may thus be stated: "To suppose that the one is divisible is to suppose it finite. If divisible, it must be infinitely divisible. But suppose two things to exist, then there must necessarily be an interval between those two--something separating and limiting them. What is that something? It is some _other_ thing. But then if not the _same_ thing, _it also_ must be separated and limited, and so on _ad infinitum_. Thus only one thing can exist as the substratum for all manifold appearances." Zeno furnishes us with an ill.u.s.tration of the fallibility of the indications of sense in his argument against Protagoras. It may be here introduced as a specimen of his method: "He asked if a grain of corn, or the ten thousandth part of a grain, would, when it fell to the ground, make a noise. Being answered in the negative, he further asked whether, then, would a measure of corn. This being necessarily affirmed, he then demanded whether the measure was not in some determinate ratio to the single grain; as this could not be denied, he was able to conclude, either, then, the bushel of corn makes no noise on falling, or else the very smallest portion of a grain does the same."

[Sidenote: and by Melissus of Samos.]

To the names already given as belonging to the Eleatic school may be added that of Melissus of Samos, who also founded his argument on the nature of Being, deducing its unity, unchangeability, and indivisibility. He denied, like the rest of his school, all change and motion, regarding them as mere illusions of the senses. From the indivisibility of being he inferred its incorporeality, and therefore denied all bodily existence.

[Sidenote: Biography of Empedocles.]

The list of Eleatic philosophers is doubtfully closed by the name of Empedocles of Agrigentum, who in legend almost rivals Pythagoras. In the East he learned medicine and magic, the art of working miracles, of producing rain and wind. He decked himself in priestly garments, a golden girdle, and a crown, proclaiming himself to be a G.o.d. It is said by some that he never died, but ascended to the skies in the midst of a supernatural glory. By some it is related that he leaped into the crater of Etna, that, the manner of his death being unknown, he might still continue to pa.s.s for a G.o.d--an expectation disappointed by an eruption which cast out one of his brazen sandals.

[Sidenote: He mingles mysticism with philosophy.]

Agreeably to the school to which he belonged, he relied on Reason and distrusted the Senses. From his fragments it has been inferred that he was sceptical of the guidance of the former as well as of the latter, founding his distrust on the imperfection the soul has contracted, and for which it has been condemned to existence in this world, and even to transmigration from body to body. Adopting the Eleatic doctrine that like can be only known by like, fire by fire, love by love, the recognition of the divine by man is sufficient proof that the Divine exists. His primary elements were four--Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; to these he added two principles, Love and Hate. The four elements he regarded as four G.o.ds, or divine eternal forces, since out of them all things are made. Love he regards as the creative power, the destroyer or modifier being Hate. It is obvious, therefore, that in him the strictly philosophical system of Xenophanes had degenerated into a mixed and mystical view, in which the physical, the metaphysical, and the moral were confounded together; and that, as the necessary consequence of such a state, the principles of knowledge were becoming unsettled, a suspicion arising that all philosophical systems were untrustworthy, and a general scepticism was already setting in.

To this result also, in no small degree, the labours of Democritus of Abdera tended. He had had the advantages derived from wealth in the procurement of knowledge, for it is said that his father was rich enough to be able to entertain the Persian King Xerxes, who was so gratified thereby that he left several Magi and Chaldaeans to complete the education of the youth. On his father's death, Democritus, dividing with his brothers the estate, took as his portion the share consisting of money, leaving to them the lands, that he might be better able to devote himself to travelling. He pa.s.sed into Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia, and India, gathering knowledge from all those sources.

[Sidenote: Democritus a.s.serts the untrustworthiness of knowledge.]

According to Democritus, "Nothing is true, or, if so, is not certain to us." Nevertheless, as, in his system sensation const.i.tutes thought, and, at the same time, is but a change in the sentient being, "sensations are of necessity true;" from which somewhat obscure pa.s.sage we may infer that, in the view of Democritus, though sensation is true subjectively, it is not true objectively. The sweet, the bitter, the hot, the cold, are simply creations of the mind; but in the outer object to which we append them, atoms and s.p.a.ce alone exist, and our opinion of the properties of such objects is founded upon images emitted by them falling upon the senses. Confounding in this manner sensation with thought, and making them identical, he, moreover, included Reflexion as necessary for true knowledge, Sensation by itself being untrustworthy.

Thus, though Sensation may indicate to us that sweet, bitter, hot, cold, occur in bodies, Reflexion teaches us that this is altogether an illusion, and that, in reality, atoms and s.p.a.ce alone exist.

[Sidenote: He introduces the atomic theory.]

[Sidenote: Destiny, Fate and resistless law.]

Devoting his attention, then, to the problem of perception--how the mind becomes aware of the existence of external things--he resorted to the hypothesis that they constantly throw off images of themselves, which are a.s.similated by the air through which they have to pa.s.s, and enter the soul by pores in its sensitive organs. Hence such images, being merely of the superficial form, are necessarily imperfect and untrue, and so, therefore, must be the knowledge yielded by them. Democritus rejected the one element of the Eleatics, affirming that there must be many; but he did not receive the four of Empedocles, nor his principles of Love and Hate, nor the h.o.m.oeomeriae of Anaxagoras. He also denied that the primary elements had any sensible qualities whatever. He conceived of all things as being composed of invisible, intangible, and indivisible particles or atoms, which, by reason of variation in their configuration, combination, or position, give rise to the varieties of forms: to the atom he imputed self-existence and eternal duration. His doctrine, therefore, explains how it is that the many can arise from the one, and in this particular he reconciled the apparent contradictions of the Ionians and Eleatics. The theory of chemistry, as it now exists, essentially includes his views. The general formative principle of Nature he regarded as being Destiny or Fate; but there are indications that by this he meant nothing more than irreversible law.

[Sidenote: Is led to atheism.]

A system thus based upon severe mathematical considerations, and taking as its starting-point a vacuum and atoms--the former actionless and pa.s.sionless; which considers the production of new things as only new aggregations, and the decay of the old as separations; which recognizes in compound bodies specific arrangements of atoms to one another; which can rise to the conception that even a single atom may const.i.tute a world--such a system may commend itself to our attention for its results, but surely not to our approval, when we find it carrying us to the conclusions that even mathematical cognition is a mere semblance; that the soul is only a finely-const.i.tuted form fitted into the grosser bodily frame; that even for reason itself there is an absolute impossibility of all certainty; that scepticism is to be indulged in to that degree that we may doubt whether, when a cone has been cut asunder, its two surfaces are alike; that the final result of human inquiry is the absolute demonstration that man is incapable of knowledge; that, even if the truth be in his possession, he can never be certain of it; that the world is an illusive phantasm, and that there is no G.o.d.

[Sidenote: Legends of Democritus.]

I need scarcely refer to the legendary stories related of Democritus, as that he put out his eyes with a burning-gla.s.s that he might no longer be deluded with their false indications, and more tranquilly exercise his reason--a fiction bearing upon its face the contemptuous accusation of his antagonists, but, by the stolidity of subsequent ages, received as an actual fact instead of a sarcasm. As to his habit of so constantly deriding the knowledge and follies of men that he universally acquired the epithet of the laughing philosopher, we may receive the opinion of the great physician Hippocrates, who being requested by the people of Abdera to cure him of his madness, after long discoursing with him, expressed himself penetrated with admiration, and even with the most profound veneration for him, and rebuked those who had sent him with the remark that they themselves were the more distempered of the two.

[Sidenote: Rise of philosophy in European Greece.]

[Sidenote: Commercial communities favourable to new ideas.]

Thus far European Greece had done but little in the cause of philosophy.

The chief schools were in Asia Minor, or among the Greek colonies of Italy. But the time had now arrived when the mother country was to enter upon a distinguished career, though, it must be confessed, from a most unfavourable beginning. This was by no means the only occasion on which the intellectual activity of the Greek colonies made itself felt in the destinies of Europe. The mercantile character in a community has ever been found conducive to mental activity and physical adventure; it holds in light esteem prescriptive opinion, and puts things at the actual value they at the time possess. If the Greek colonies thus discharged the important function of introducing and disseminating speculative philosophy, we shall find them again, five hundred years later, occupied with a similar task on the advent of that period in which philosophical speculation was about to be supplanted by religious faith. For there can be no doubt that, humanly speaking, the cause of the rapid propagation of Christianity, in its first ages, lay in the extraordinary facilities existing among the commercial communities scattered all around the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean Sea, from the ports of the Levant to those of France and Spain. An incessant intercourse was kept up among them during the five centuries before Christ; it became, under Roman influence, more and more active, and of increasing political importance. Such a state of things is in the highest degree conducive to the propagation of thought, and, indeed, to its origination, through the constant excitement it furnishes to intellectual activity. Commercial communities, in this respect, present a striking contrast to agricultural. By their aid speculative philosophy was rapidly disseminated everywhere, as was subsequently Christianity. But the agriculturists steadfastly adhered with marvellous stolidity to their ancestral traditions and polytheistic absurdities, until the very designation--paganism--under which their system pa.s.ses was given as a nickname derived from themselves.

[Sidenote: Philosophical influence of the Greek colonies.]

The intellectual condition of the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily has not attracted the attention of critics in the manner it deserves. For, though its political result may appear to those whose attention is fixed by mere material aggrandizement to have been totally eclipsed by the subsequent power of the Roman republic, to one who looks at things in a mere general way it may be a probable inquiry whether the philosophy cultivated in those towns has not, in the course of ages, produced as solid and lasting results as the military achievements of the Eternal City. The relations of the Italian peninsula to the career of European civilization are to be cla.s.sified under three epochs, the first corresponding to the philosophy generated in the southern Greek towns: this would have attained the elevation long before reached in the advanced systems of India had it not been prevented by the rapid development of Roman power; the second presents the military influence of republican and imperial Rome; to the third belongs the agency of ecclesiastical Rome--for the production of the last we shall find hereafter that the preceding two conspire. The Italian effect upon the whole has therefore been philosophical, material, and mixed. We are greatly in want of a history of the first, for which doubtless many facts still remain to a painstaking and enlightened inquirer.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Greek colonial system.]

It was on account of her small territory and her numerous population that Greece was obliged to colonize. To these motives must be added internal dissensions, and particularly the consequences of unequal marriages. So numerous did these colonies and their offshoots become, that a great Greek influence pervaded all the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es and many of the most important islands, attention more particularly being paid to the latter, from their supposed strategical value; thus, in the opinion of Alexander the Great, the command of the Mediterranean lay in the possession of Cyprus. The Greek colonists were filibusters; they seized by force the women wherever they settled, but their children were taught to speak the paternal language, as has been the case in more recent times with the descendants of the Spaniards in America. The wealth of some of these Greek colonial towns is said to have been incredible. Crotona was more than twelve miles in circ.u.mference; and Sybaris, another of the Italiot cities, was so luxurious and dissipated as even to give rise to a proverb. The prosperity of these places was due to two causes: they were not only the centres of great agricultural districts, but carried on also an active commerce in all directions, the dense population of the mother country offering them a steady and profitable market; they also maintained an active traffic with all the Mediterranean cities; thus, if they furnished Athens with corn, they also furnished Carthage with oil. In the Greek cities connected with this colonial system, especially in Athens, the business of s.h.i.+p-building and navigation was so extensively prosecuted as to give a special character to public life. In other parts of Greece, as in Sparta, it was altogether different. In that state the laws of Lycurgus had abolished private property; all things were held in common; savage life was reduced to a system, and therefore there was no object in commerce. But in Athens, commerce was regarded as being so far from dishonourable that some of the most ill.u.s.trious men, whose names have descended to us as philosophers, were occupied with mercantile pursuits.

Aristotle kept a druggist's shop in Athens, and Plato sold oil in Egypt.

[Sidenote: Carthaginian supremacy in the Mediterranean.]

It was the intention of Athens, had she succeeded in the conquest of Sicily, to make an attempt upon Carthage, foreseeing therein the dominion of the Mediterranean, as was actually realized subsequently by Rome. The destruction of that city const.i.tuted the point of ascendancy in the history of the Great Republic. Carthage stood upon a peninsula forty-five miles round, with a neck only three miles across. Her territory has been estimated as having a sea-line of not less than 1400 miles, and containing 300 towns; she had also possessions in Spain, in Sicily, and other Mediterranean islands, acquired, not by conquest, but by colonization. In the silver mines of Spain she employed not less than forty thousand men. In these respects she was guided by the maxims of her Phoenician ancestry, for the Tyrians had colonized for depots, and had forty stations of that kind in the Mediterranean. Indeed, Carthage herself originated in that way, owing her development to the position she held at the junction of the east and west basins. The Carthaginian merchants did not carry for hire, but dealt in their commodities. This implied an extensive system of depots and bonding. They had antic.i.p.ated many of the devices of modern commerce. They effected insurances, made loans on bottomry, and it has been supposed that their leathern money may have been of the nature of our bank notes.

[Sidenote: Attempts of the Persians at dominion in the Mediterranean.]

[Sidenote: Contest between them and the Greeks.]

[Sidenote: The fifty years' war, and eventual supremacy of Athens.]

In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the attempts of the Asiatics on Egypt and the south sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean; we have now to turn to their operations on the north sh.o.r.e, the consequences of which are of the utmost interest in the history of philosophy. It appears that the cities of Asia Minor, after their contest with the Lydian kings, had fallen an easy prey to the Persian power. It remained, therefore, only for that power to pa.s.s to the European continent. A pretext is easily found where the policy is so clear. So far as the internal condition of Greece was concerned, nothing could be more tempting to an invader.

There seemed to be no bond of union between the different towns, and, indeed, the more prominent ones might be regarded as in a state of chronic revolution. In Athens, since B.C. 622, the laws of Draco had been supplanted by those of Solon; and again and again the government had been seized by violence or gained through intrigue by one adventurer after another. Under these circ.u.mstances the Persian king pa.s.sed an army into Europe. The military events of both this and the succeeding invasion under Xerxes have been more than sufficiently ill.u.s.trated by the brilliant imagination of the lively Greeks. It was needless, however, to devise such fictions as the million of men who crossed into Europe, or the two hundred thousand who lay dead upon the field after the battle of Plataea. If there were not such stubborn facts as the capture and burning of Athens, the circ.u.mstance that these wars lasted for fifty years would be sufficient to inform us that all the advantages were not on one side. Wars do not last so long without bringing upon both parties disasters as well as conferring glories; and had these been as exterminating and overwhelming as cla.s.sical authors have supposed, our surprise may well be excited that the Persian annals have preserved so little memory of them. Greece did not perceive that, if posterity must take her accounts as true, it must give the palm of glory to Persia, who could, with unfaltering perseverance, persist in attacks ill.u.s.trated by such unparalleled catastrophes. She did not perceive that the annals of a nation may be more splendid from their exhibiting a courage which could bear up for half a century against continual disasters, and extract victory at last from defeat.

In pursuance of their policy, the Persians extended their dominion to Cyrene and Barca on the south, as well as to Thrace and Macedonia on the north. The Persian wars gave rise to that wonderful development in Greek art which has so worthily excited the admiration of subsequent ages. The a.s.sertion is quite true that after those wars the Greeks could form in sculpture living men. On the part of the Persians, these military undertakings were not of the base kind so common in antiquity; they were the carrying out of a policy conceived with great ability, their object being to obtain countries for tribute and not for devastation. The great critic Niebuhr, by whose opinions I am guided in the views I express of these events, admits that the Greek accounts, when examined, present little that was possible. The Persian empire does not seem to have suffered at all; and Plato, whose opinion must be considered as of very great authority, says that, on the whole, the Persian wars reflect extremely little honour on the Greeks. It was a.s.serted that only thirty-one towns, and most of them small ones, were faithful to Greece.

Treason to her seems for years in succession to have infected all her ablest men. It was not Pausanias alone who wanted to be king under the supremacy of Persia. Such a satrap would have borne about the same relation to the great king as the modern pacha does to the grand seignior. However, we must do justice to those able men. A king was what Greece in reality required; had she secured one at this time strong enough to hold her conflicting interests in check, she would have become the mistress of the world. Her leading men saw this.

[Sidenote: The consequence is her vast intellectual progress.]

[Sidenote: Her progress in art.]

The elevating effect of the Persian wars was chiefly felt in Athens. It was there that the grand development of pure art, literature, and science took place. As to Sparta, she remained barbarous as she had ever been; the Spartans continuing robbers and impostors, in their national life exhibiting not a single feature that can be commended. Mechanical art reached its perfection at Corinth; real art at Athens, finding a mult.i.tude not only of true, but also of new expressions. Before Pericles the only style of architecture was the Doric; his became at once the age of perfect beauty. It also became the age of freedom in thinking and departure from the national faith. In this respect the history of Pericles and of Aspasia is very significant. His, also, was the great age of oratory, but of oratory leading to delusion, the democratical forms of Athens being altogether deceptive, power ever remaining in the hands of a few leading men, who did everything. The true popular sentiment, as was almost always the case under those ancient republican inst.i.tutions, could find for itself no means of expression. The great men were only too p.r.o.ne to regard their fellow-citizens as a rabble, mere things to be played off against one another, and to consider that the objects of life are dominion and l.u.s.t, that love, self-sacrifice, and devotion are fictions; that oaths are only good for deception.

[Sidenote: The treaty with Persia.]

Though the standard of statesmans.h.i.+p, at the period of the Persian wars, was very low, there can be no doubt that among the Greek leaders were those who clearly understood the causes of the Asiatic attack; and hence, with an instinct of self-preservation, defensive alliances were continually maintained with Egypt. When their valour and endurance had given to the Greeks a glorious issue to the war, the articles contained in the final treaty manifest clearly the motives and understandings of both parties. No Persian vessel was to appear between the Cyanean Rocks and Chelidonian Islands; no Persian army to approach within three days'

journey of the Mediterranean Sea, B.C. 449.

[Sidenote: She becomes the centre of policy and philosophy.]

To Athens herself the war had given political supremacy. We need only look at her condition fifty years after the battle of Plataea. She was mistress of more than a thousand miles of the coast of Asia Minor; she held as dependencies more than forty islands; she controlled the straits between Europe and Asia; her fleets ranged the Mediterranean and the Black Seas; she had monopolized the trade of all the adjoining countries; her magazines were full of the most valuable objects of commerce. From the ashes of the Persian fire she had risen up so supremely beautiful that her temples, her statues, her works of art, in their exquisite perfection, have since had no parallel in the world. Her intellectual supremacy equalled her political. To her, as to a focal point, the rays of light from every direction converged. The philosophers of Italy and Asia Minor directed their steps to her as to the acknowledged centre of mental activity. As to Egypt, an utter ruin had befallen her since she was desolated by the Persian arms. Yet we must not therefore infer that though, as conquerors, the Persians had trodden out the most aged civilization on the globe, as sovereigns they were haters of knowledge, or merciless as kings. We must not forget that the Greeks of Asia Minor were satisfied with their rule, or, at all events, preferred rather to remain their subjects than to contract any permanent political connexions with the conquering Greeks of Europe.

In this condition of political glory, Athens became not only the birthplace of new and beautiful productions of art, founded on a more just appreciation of the true than had yet been attained to in any previous age of the world (which, it may be added, have never been surpa.s.sed, if, indeed, they have been equalled since), she also became the receptacle for every philosophical opinion, new and old. Ionian, Italian, Egyptian, Persian, all were brought to her, and contrasted and compared together. Indeed, the philosophical celebrity of Greece is altogether due to Athens. The rest of the country partic.i.p.ated but little in the cultivation of learning. It is a popular error that Greece, in the aggregate, was a learned country.

[Sidenote: State of philosophy at this juncture.]