The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization Part 21

[Sidenote: Ancient eloquence.]

There is another field of prose compositions in which the Greeks and Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any nation of modern times, and this was that of eloquence. It is true we have not a rich collection of ancient speeches. But we have every reason to believe that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and munificently rewarded. It commenced with democratic inst.i.tutions, and flourished as long as the people were a great power in the state. It declined whenever and as soon as tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty flourished together; nor can there be eloquence when there is not freedom of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the opportunity of defending himself against accusation, no man could hold an ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory to a general in the army, [Footnote: Xen. _Mem._, iii. 3, 11.] as well as to a leader in political life. In Athens the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained in the use of public speaking. Thus the lawyers arose, among whom eloquence has been more in demand, and more richly paid than in any other cla.s.s, certainly of ancient times. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily, and Italy, both were most extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and pa.s.sion, but in political a.s.semblies. These could only coexist with liberty; and a democracy was more favorable than an aristocracy to a large concourse of citizens. In the Grecian republics, eloquence as an art, may be said to have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitations; by the strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of power; and, when the people were not cultivated, it appealed chiefly to popular pa.s.sions and prejudices. When they were enlightened, it appealed to interests.

[Sidenote: Pericles.]

It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic inst.i.tutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular pa.s.sions. Pericles, the greatest statesman of Greece, was celebrated for his eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the ancient authors, that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the epithet of Olympian was given him as carrying the weapons of Zeus upon his tongue. [Footnote: Plutarch; Cic. _De Orat_., iii. 34; Quin., x. i. Section 82; Plat. _Phed_., p. 262.] His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and rapid. Pisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates [Footnote: Born 436 B.C.] was a professed rhetorician, and endeavored to base it upon sound moral principles, and rescue it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty- one of his orations have come down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they were written to be read; they were not extemporary. His language is the purest and most refined Attic dialect.

Lysias [Footnote: Born B.C. 458.] was a fertile writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as four hundred and twenty- five. Of these only thirty-five are extant. They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did not interfere with strength. So able were these orations, that only two were unsuccessful.

They were so pure that they were regarded as the best canon of the Attic idiom. [Footnote: Dion. _Lys_., ii. 3.]

[Sidenote: Demosthenes.]

But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave way to Demosthenes, born B.C. 385. He received a good education, and is said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato, and in eloquence by Isocrates. But it is more probable that he privately prepared himself for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his guardians for their waste of property, and was, after two years, successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public a.s.sembly on political matters, and he enjoyed universal respect, and became one of the leading statesmen of Athens, and henceforth he took an active part in every question that concerned the state. He especially distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian aggrandizements, and his Philippics are, perhaps, the most brilliant of his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate. The battle of Cheronea, B.C.

338, put an end to the independence of Greece, and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but his motives were pure and his patriotism lofty, and he retained the confidence of his countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the Crown. Afterwards, during the supremacy of Alexander, he was again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile, on the death of Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without success, and, hunted by his enemies, he took poison in the sixty-third year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his country,--one of the n.o.blest spirits of antiquity, spotless in his public career, and lofty in his private life. As an orator, he has not probably been equaled by any man of any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless as a public speaker, and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical difficulties which, in the early part of his career, would have utterly discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of the occasion. And all his orations exhibit him as a pure and n.o.ble patriot, and are full of the loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic, strange and yet familiar, solemn without being ornamented, grave and yet pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." [Footnote: Leonhard Schmitz.] His orations were most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries on them, but most of these criticisms are lost. Sixty, however, of these great productions of genius have come down to us, and are contained in the various collections of the Attic orators by Aldus, Stephens, Taylor, Reiske, Dukas, Bekker, Dobson, and Sauppe. Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of speeches for litigants; but his great fame was based on the orations he p.r.o.nounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, but he was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind, for two thousand years, have been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an orator of all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of him, "that, could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern audience." "It is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a continual stream of argument; so that, of all human productions, his orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection." [Footnote: _Dissertation of Lord Brougham on the Eloquence of the Ancients._]

[Sidenote: Roman orators.]

It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts of rhetoric; and yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose, called out by the practice of the law and political meetings. It was, in fact, in forensic eloquence that Latin prose first appears as a cultivated language; for the forum was to the Romans what libraries are to us. And the art of public speaking was very early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said to have been majestic and harmonious in speech. Their merits were eclipsed by Antonius, Cra.s.sus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very brilliant career as an orator, although his orations were too florid to be read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, the characteristics of which were force and purity. Caelius was noted for lofty sentiment; Brutus for philosophical wisdom; Callidus for a delicate and harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force.

[Sidenote: Cicero.]

But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is made to eloquence. They were preeminent in the ancient world, and have never been equaled in the modern.

Cicero was not probably equal to his great Grecian rival in vehemence, in force, in fiery argument, which swept every thing away before him; and he was not probably equal to him in original genius; but he was his superior in learning, in culture, and in breadth. [Footnote: Born B.C.

106.] He distinguished himself very early as an advocate; but his first great public effort was in the prosecution of Verres for corruption.

Although defended by Hortensius, and the whole influence of the Metelli and other powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who was also sustained by powerful interests and families. Burke also resembled Cicero in his peculiarities and in his fortunes more than any modern orator. His speech on the Manilian law, when he appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his popularity. I need not describe his memorable career; his successive election to all the highest offices of state, his detection of Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious partisans, his alienations and friends.h.i.+ps, his brilliant career as a statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his splendid services to the state, his greatness and his defects, his virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no man, by pure genius, ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in most of its departments. Next to Aristotle, he was the most learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than he, since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but as a statesman, and was the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his hands, and is divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage. He made the Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the various speculations. He may not have added to the science, but no Roman, after him, understood so well the practical bearing of all the various systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by pure genius that he rose to his exalted position and influence.

But it was in forensic eloquence that he was preeminent, and in which he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in him.

He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are preserved.

Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some in the Senate. Some were mere philippics, as savage in denunciation as those of Demosthenes. Some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism. "He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts it, ill.u.s.trates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good natured that it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or, when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the bitterness of irony and vehemence of pa.s.sion. But the appeal to the gentler emotions is reserved for the close of the oration, as in the defense of Cluentius, Caelius, Milo, and Flaccus; the most striking instances of which are the poetical bursts of feeling with which he addresses his client, Plaucius, and his picture of the desolate condition of the vestal Fonteia, should her brother be condemned. At other times his peroration contains more heroic and elevated sentiments, as in the invocation of the Alban Altars, and in his defense of s.e.xtius, and that on liberty at the close of the third Philippic." [Footnote: Newman, _Hist. Rom. Lit._, p. 305.]

Critics have uniformly admired his style as peculiarly suited to the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would make Latin composition bold and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and unphilosophical language, enriched it with circ.u.mlocutions and metaphors, while he formed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; and since he could not attain the elegance of the Greeks, he sought to excel them in vigor. He had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and not only unrivaled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the times. The courts of justice were the scene of his earliest triumphs; nor did he speak from the rostra until he was praetor on mere political questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in his political discourses that he rises to the highest ranks. In his speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony, he kindles in his countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.

Cicero held a very exalted position as a philosophical writer and critic; but we defer what we have to say on this point until we speak of the philosophy of the ancients. Upon eloquence his main efforts were, however, directed, and eloquence was the most perfect fruit of his talents. Nor can we here speak of Cicero as a man. He has his admirers and detractors. He had great faults and weaknesses as well as virtues.

He was egotistical, vain, and vacillating. But he was industrious, amiable, witty, and public spirited. In his official position he was incorruptible. He was no soldier, but he had a greater than a warrior's excellence. In spite of his faults, his name is one of the brightest of the ancients. His integrity was never impeached, even in an age of unparalleled corruption, and he was pure in morals. He was free from rancor and jealousy, was true in his friends.h.i.+ps, and indulgent to his dependents. [Footnote: Professor Ramsay, of Glasgow, has written a most admirable article on Cicero in Smith's _Dictionary_. It is very full and impartial. Cicero's own writings are the best commentary on his life. Plutarch has afforded much anecdote. Forsythe is the last work of erudition. The critics sneer at Middleton's _Life of Cicero_; but it has lasted one hundred years. It is, perhaps, too eulogistic. Drumann is said to have most completely exhausted his subject in his _Geschichte Roms_.]

Thus in oratory, as in history, the ancients can boast of most ill.u.s.trious examples, never even equaled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative merits of the great cla.s.sical orators of antiquity, with the more distinguished of our times. Only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Brougham, Webster, and Clay, can even be compared with them. In power of moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame when read.

[Sidenote: Varro.]

In philosophy, the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more than even in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained to the loftiest subjects which ever tasked the intellect of man. But this great department deserves a separate chapter. There were respectable writers, too, in various other departments of literature, but no very great names whose writings have descended to us.

Contemporaries had an exalted opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before Cicero, and he is highly commended by Augustine. [Footnote: Born B.C. 116; _Civ. Dei_., vi. 2.] He was entirely devoted to literature, took no interest in pa.s.sing events, and lived to a good old age. St. Augustine says of him, "that he wrote so much that one wonders how he had time to read; and that he read so much, we are astonished how he found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of these only one has descended to us entire--"De Re Rustica"--written at the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and we know of books which have entirely perished which, for their information, would be invaluable; especially his "Divine Antiquities," in sixteen books--his great work, from which St.

Augustine drew his materials for his "City of G.o.d." He wrote treatises on language, on the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and various other subjects. He wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him. It is singular that the truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences. No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to written composition, what delivery is to a public speaker. John Foster, one of the finest intellects of the last generation, preached to a "handful" of hearers, while "Satan" Montgomery drew ecstatic crowds. n.o.body goes to hear the man of thoughts, every body to hear the man of words, being repelled or attracted by _manner_.

[Sidenote: Seneca.]

Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given him immortality, as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus, although they are usually cla.s.sed among the philosophers. He was a Spaniard, and was born a few years before the Christian era, was a lawyer and a rhetorician, a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have acc.u.mulated, in four years, one of the largest fortunes in Rome, while serving such a master. But since he lived to experience his ingrat.i.tude, he is more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously on many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the superst.i.tions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion as a mere fas.h.i.+on; but his religion was a mere deism, and he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three. What is remarkable in his writings, which are clear but labored, is, that under pagan influences and imperial tyranny, he should have presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.

[Sidenote: Quintilian.]

Quintilian is a Latin cla.s.sic, and belonged to the cla.s.s of rhetoricians, and should have been mentioned among the orators, like Lysias the Greek, a teacher, however, of eloquence, rather than an orator. He was born A.D. 40, and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His great work is a complete system of rhetoric.

"_Inst.i.tutiones Oratoriae_" is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever written in any language, although, as a literary production, inferior to the "_De Oratore_" of Cicero. It is very practical and sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In systematic arrangement, it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle; but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination, showing great reading and reflection. He should be viewed as a critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero, or Demosthenes, or Plato, or Thucydides, or Tacitus, he would be a great man if he lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.

[Sidenote: Lucian.]

There are other writers of immense fame, who do not represent any particular cla.s.s in the field of literature, which can be compared with the modern. But I can only draw attention to Lucian, a witty and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances which have given hints to modern authors. But his fame rests on his "Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion, and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a writer of comedy, like MoliEre. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more than any other modern writers, and has their indignant wit, indecent jokes, and pungent sarcasms. He paints, like Juvenal, the vices and follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high places of fas.h.i.+on and power. His dialogues have been imitated by Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but they do not possess his humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself in ridiculing those who have proclaimed them; and, in his cold cynicism, depreciates human knowledge, and all the great moral teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates. But he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm, he may be compared with Voltaire, and his end was the same, to demolish and pull down, without subst.i.tuting any thing in its stead. His skepticism was universal, and extended to religion, to philosophy, and to every thing venerated and ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and he has been translated into most European languages. The best English version is rendered by Dr. Franklin, London, 2 vols. 4to. In strong contrast to the "Dialogues" is the "City of G.o.d," by Saint Augustine, in which he demolishes with keener ridicule all the G.o.ds of antiquity, but subst.i.tutes instead the knowledge of the true G.o.d.

Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of literature which will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or of modern nations, had not the great original writers of Athens and Rome been our schoolmasters? And when we further remember that their glorious literature was created by native genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement, and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. At least we are a.s.sured that literature as well as art may flourish under pagan influences, and that Christianity has a higher mission than the culture of the mind. Religious skepticism cannot be disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those which are adorned by pagan art. Nor have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these, our Christian times, than among that cla.s.s which is the least influenced by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. And then how many great works are written without the inspiration or the spirit of a living Christianity! How little Bulwer, or Byron, or Dumas, or Goethe owe, apparently, to Christian teachings! Is Emerson superior to Epictetus, in an ethical point of view? Was Franklin a great philosopher, or Jefferson a great statesman, because they were surrounded by Christian examples? May there not be the greatest practical infidelity, with the most artistic beauty and native reach of thought? Milton justly ascribes the most sublime intelligence to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled by the fires of discontent and ambition, which will quicken the intellectual faculties, even while they consume the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the homes and hopes of man.

RERERENCES.--There are no better authorities than the cla.s.sical authors themselves, and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely critics, like Drumann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure, Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of Roman literature in the English language. Yet nearly every great writer has occasional criticisms, ent.i.tled to respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals. As critics and commentators they are unrivaled.

CHAPTER VIII.

GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question, or even in the realm of literature, which can be questioned, there was one department which they carried to absolute perfection, and to which we have added nothing of consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our superiors; in philosophy they carried logical deductions to their utmost limit. They created the science. They advanced, from a few crude speculations on material phenomena, to an a.n.a.lysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not overturn. The progress of the science, from Thales to Plato, is the most stupendous triumph of the human understanding. The reason of man soared to the loftiest flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous intellects of the world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever raised. It originated and it carried out the boldest speculations respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It established most important psychological truths. It created a method for the solution of the most abstruse questions. It went on, from point to point, until all the faculties of the mind were severely a.n.a.lyzed, and all its operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced their ideas; and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years ago. It was Greek philosophy in which n.o.ble Roman youth were educated, and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans as it was of the Greeks themselves, after their political liberties were swept away, and the Grecian cities formed a part of the Roman empire. The Romans learned, or might have learned, what the Greeks created and taught, and philosophy became, as well as art, identified with the civilization which extended from the Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris. Grecian philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws of mind, or the nature of the soul, or the existence of G.o.d, or future rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin and development, it cannot be left out of the survey of the triumphs of the human mind when the Romans were masters of the world, and monopolized the fruits of all the arts and sciences. It became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman schools, one of the priceless possessions of the Roman conquerors. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil sung to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the n.o.blest triumph which the human mind, under pagan influences, ever achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like art, like literature, like science, arose, s.h.i.+ned, grew dim, and pa.s.sed away, and left the world in night.

Why was so bright a glory followed by so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and littleness of man!

[Sidenote: Commencement of Grecian speculations.]

The development of Greek philosophy is doubtless one commence-of the most interesting and instructive subjects Grecian in the whole history of mind. In all probability it originated with the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It is questionable whether the oriental nations had any philosophy distinct from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Herac.l.i.tic system, the influence of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. [Footnote: Lewes, _Biog. Hist. of Philos_., Introd.] But the Orientals had theogonies, not philosophies. The Indian speculations aim to an exposition of ancient revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal life--to arrive at eternal beat.i.tudes. But the state of perfectibility could only be reached by religious ceremonial observances and devout contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtlety of logical discussion; but these are directed to unattainable ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the supreme with nature. Nothing came out of these speculations but an occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. [Footnote: See Archer Butler's fine lecture on the Indian Philosophies.] The Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series of inquiries, until they elevated themselves above matter, above experience, even to the loftiest abstractions, and until they cla.s.sified the laws of thought. It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those who observed nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy and mathematics seem to have been allied with the wors.h.i.+p of art among the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished them, aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.

[Sidenote: Thales.]

[Sidenote: Water the vital principle of Nature.]

We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor, about the year B.C. 636, when Ancus Martius was king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings behind him, but he was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece.

He was numbered with the wise men on account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. [Footnote: Miller, Hist, of Grec. Lit., ch.

xvii.]

"And he, 't is said, did first compute the stars Which beam in Charles' wain, and guide the bark Of the Phoenician sailor o'er the sea."

He was the first who attempted a logical solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be answered relative to the _beginning of things_. "Philosophy," it has been well said, "may be a history of _errors_, but not of _follies_" It was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental principle of things. He looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above, and in the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water, and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or vital than water? It was the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae], the beginning of all things--the origin of the world. [Footnote: Aristotle, _Metaph._, 1. c. 3; Diog. Laertius, _Thales_.] I do not here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors--as the first to have divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. He is celebrated also for practical wisdom.

"Know thyself," is one of his remarkable sayings. But the foundation principle of his philosophy was that water is the first cause of all things--the explanation, of the origin of the universe. How so crude a speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult to conjecture. It is not, however, the _reason_ which he a.s.signs for the beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the _fact_ that his mind was directed to the solution of questions pertaining to the origin of the universe. It was these questions which marked the Ionian philosophers. It was these which showed the inquiring nature of their minds. What is the great first cause of all things?

Thales saw it in one of the four elements of nature, as the ancients divided them. And it is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of the world. It is an induction from the phenomena of animated nature--the nutrition and production of a seed. [Footnote: Bitter, b. iii. c. 3; Lewes, ch. 1.] He regarded the entire world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming itself from an imperfect seed state, which was of a moist nature. This moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was full of G.o.ds, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception of G.o.d as _Intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and inquiring mind, but he was a pagan, with no knowledge of a spiritual and controlling and personal deity.

[Sidenote: Anaximenes. Air the _animus mundi_.]

Anaximenes, his disciple, pursued his inquiries, and adopted his method.

He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is unknown, probably B.C.

529. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of any thing immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too, speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not water, was the primal cause.

[Footnote: Cicero, _De Nat. D_., i. 10.] This seemed to be universal. We breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life-- that is pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite trans.m.u.tations. All things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable principle of life. He thus advanced a step on Thales, since he regarded the world not after the a.n.a.logy of an imperfect seed-state, but that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. [Footnote: Ritter, b. iii. c. 3.] And he attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the first simple substance into its successive states, for the cause of change is the eternal motion of the air.

[Sidenote: Diogenes. Air and soul identical.]