Part 21 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: SOCRATES.]
Socrates was unfortunate in his domestic relations. Xanthippe, his wife, seems to have been of a practical turn of mind, and unable to sympathize with the abstracted ways of her husband.
This great philosopher believed that the proper study of mankind is man, his favorite maxim being ”Know Thyself”; hence he is said to have brought philosophy from the heavens and introduced it to the homes of men.
Socrates held the Sophists in aversion, and in opposition to their selfish expediency taught the purest system of morals that the world had yet known, and which has been surpa.s.sed only by the precepts of the Great Teacher. He thought himself to be restrained from entering upon what was inexpedient or wrong by a tutelary spirit. He believed in the immortality of the soul and in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, but sometimes spoke slightingly of the temples and the popular deities. This led to his prosecution on the double charge of blasphemy and of corrupting the Athenian youth. The fact that Alcibiades had been his pupil was used to prove the demoralizing tendency of his teachings. He was condemned to drink the fatal hemlock. The night before his death he spent with his disciples, discoursing on the immortality of the soul.
PLATO.--Plato (429-348 B.C.), ”the broad-browed,” was a philosopher of n.o.ble birth, before whom in youth a brilliant career in the world of Greek affairs opened; but, coming under the influence of Socrates, he resolved to give up all his prospects in politics and devote himself to philosophy.
Upon the condemnation and death of his master he went into voluntary exile. In many lands he gathered knowledge and met with varied experiences. He visited Sicily, where he was so unfortunate as to call upon himself the resentment of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, through having worsted him in an argument, and also by an uncourtly plainness of speech. The king caused him to be sold into slavery as a prisoner of war.
Being ransomed by a friend, he found his way to his native Athens, and established a school of philosophy in the Academy, a public garden close to Athens. Here amid the disciples that thronged to his lectures, he pa.s.sed the greater part of his long life,--he died 348 B.C., at the age of eighty-one years,--laboring incessantly upon the great works that bear his name.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATO.]
Plato imitated in his writings the method of Socrates in conversation. The discourse is carried on by questions and answers, hence the term _Dialogues_ that attaches to his works. He attributes to his master, Socrates, much of the philosophy that he teaches: yet his _Dialogues_ are all deeply tinged with his own genius and thought. In the _Republic_ Plato portrays his conception of an ideal state. He was opposed to the republic of Athens, and his system, in some of its main features, was singularly like the Feudal System of Mediaeval Europe.
The _Phaedo_ is a record of the last conversation of Socrates with his disciples--an immortal argument for the immortality of the soul.
Plato believed not only in a future life (post-existence), but also in pre-existence; teaching that the ideas of reason, or our intuitions, are reminiscences of a past experience. [Footnote: In the following lines from Wordsworth we catch a glimpse of Plato's doctrine of pre-existence:-- ”Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From G.o.d, who is our home.”--_Ode on Immortality_.] Plato's doctrines have exerted a profound influence upon all schools of thought and philosophies since his day. In some of his precepts he made a close approach to the teachings of Christianity. ”We ought to become like G.o.d,”
he said, ”as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise.”
ARISTOTLE.--As Socrates was surpa.s.sed by his pupil Plato, so in turn was Plato excelled in certain respects by his disciple Aristotle, ”the master of those who know.” In him the philosophical genius of the h.e.l.lenic intellect reached its culmination. He was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira (384 B.C.), and hence is frequently called the ”Stagirite.” As in the case of Socrates, his personal appearance gave no promise of the philosopher. His teacher, Plato, however, recognized the genius of his pupil, and called him the ”Mind of the school.”
After studying for twenty years in the school of Plato, Aristotle became the preceptor of Alexander the Great. When Philip invited him to become the tutor of his son, he gracefully complimented the philosopher by saying in his letter that he was grateful to the G.o.ds that the prince was born in the same age with him. Alexander became the liberal patron of his tutor, and aided him in his scientific studies by sending him large collections of plants and animals, gathered on his distant expeditions.
At Athens the great philosopher delivered his lectures while walking about beneath the trees and porticoes of the Lyceum; hence the term _peripatetic_ (from the Greek _peripatein_, ”to walk about”) applied to his philosophy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ARISTOTLE.]
Among the productions of his fertile intellect are works on rhetoric, logic, poetry, morals and politics, physics and metaphysics. For centuries his works were studied and copied and commented upon by both European and Asiatic scholars, in the schools of Athens and Rome, of Alexandria and Constantinople. Until the time of Bacon in England, for nearly two thousand years, Aristotle ruled over the realm of mind with a despotic sway. All teachers and philosophers acknowledged him as their guide and master.
ZENO AND THE STOICS.--We are now approaching the period when the political life of h.e.l.las was failing, and was being fast overshadowed by the greatness of Rome. But the intellectual life of the Greek race was by no means eclipsed by the calamity that ended its political existence. For centuries after that event the poets, scholars, and philosophers of this intellectual people led a brilliant career in the schools and universities of the Roman world.
From among all the philosophers of this long period, we can select for brief mention only a few. And first we shall speak of Zeno and Epicurus, who are noted as founders of schools of philosophy that exerted a vast influence upon both the thought and the conduct of many centuries.
Zeno, founder of the celebrated school of the Stoics, lived in the third century before our era (about 362-264). He taught at Athens in a public porch (in Greek, _stoa_), from which circ.u.mstance comes the name applied to his disciples.
The Stoical philosophy was the outgrowth, in part at least, of that of the Cynics, a sect of most rigid and austere morals. The typical representative of this sect is found in Diogenes, who lived, so the story goes, in a tub, and went about Athens by daylight with a lantern, in search, as he said, of a _man_. The Cynics were simply a race of pagan hermits.
The Stoics inculcated virtue for the sake of itself. They believed--and it would be very difficult to frame a better creed--that ”man's chief business here is to do his duty.” They schooled themselves to bear with perfect composure any lot that destiny might appoint. Any sign of emotion on account of calamity was considered unmanly and unphilosophical. Thus, when told of the sudden death of his son, the Stoic replied, ”Well, I never imagined that I had given life to an immortal.”
Stoicism became a favorite system of thought with certain cla.s.ses of the Romans, and under its teachings and doctrines were nourished some of the purest and loftiest characters produced by the pagan world. It numbered among its representatives, in later times, the ill.u.s.trious Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the scarcely less renowned and equally virtuous slave Epictetus. In many of its teachings it antic.i.p.ated Christian doctrines, and was, in the philosophical world, a very important preparation for Christianity.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EPICURUS.]
EPICURUS AND THE EPICUREANS.--Epicurus (342-270 B.C.), who was a contemporary of Zeno, taught, in opposition to the Stoics, that _pleasure_ is the highest good. He recommended virtue, indeed, but only as a means for the attainment of pleasure; whereas the Stoics made virtue an end in itself. In other words, Epicurus said, ”Be virtuous, because virtue will bring you the greatest amount of happiness”; Zeno said, ”Be virtuous, because you ought to be.”
Epicurus had many followers in Greece, and his doctrines were eagerly embraced by many among the Romans during the corrupt period of the Roman empire. Many of these disciples carried the doctrines of their master to an excess that he himself would have been the first to condemn. Allowing full indulgence to every appet.i.te and pa.s.sion, their whole philosophy was expressed in the proverb, ”Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” No pure or exalted life could be nourished in the unwholesome atmosphere of such a philosophy. Epicureanism never produced a single great character.