СНАР. A. Causes forming the postAristotelian philosophy. (1) Politi cal causes. CHAPTER II. CHARACTER AND CHIEF FORMS OF THE POST-ARISTO- THE circumstances which have been hastily sketched in the preceding chapter, were of the greatest influence as affecting the character of the post-Aristotelian philosophy. Greek philosophy, like Greek art, is the offspring of Greek political freedom. In the activity of political life, in which every one was thrown on himself and his own resources, in the rivalry of unlimited competition at every step in life, the Greeks had learned to bring all their powers into free use. The consciousness of dignity-which a Greek connected far more closely with the privilege of citizenship than we do-and the feeling of independence in the daily affairs of life, had engendered in his mind a freedom of thought which could boldly attack the problem of knowledge, reckless of ulterior results. With the decline of political independence, however, the mental powers of the nation received a fatal blow. No longer knit together by a powerful esprit de corps, the Greeks lost the habit of working for the common weal; and, for the most part, gave themselves up to the petty interests of home life and their own personal troubles. Even the better disposed were too much occupied in opposing the low tone and corruption of the times, to be able to devote themselves, in their moments of relaxation, to a free and speculative consideration of things. What could be expected in such an age, but that philosophy would take a decidedly practical turn, if indeed it were studied at all? And yet such were the political antecedents of the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy. An age like this did not require theoretical knowledge. What it did want was moral uprightness and moral strength. But these desiderata were no longer to be met with in the popular religion; and amongst all the cultivated circles the popular faith had been gradually superseded by philosophy. Hence it became necessary to look to philosophy to supply the pressing want; to enquire of philosophy what course it was alone possible for moral energy to take under the circumstances, and what course was then especially needed. Nor was it difficult for philosophy to reply. There was no need of creative ingenuity, but there was a need of resolute self-devotion; no demand for outward actions, but for inward feeling; no opportunity for public achievements, but for private reforms. So utterly hopeless had the public state of Greece become, that even the few who made it their business to provide a remedy, could only gain for themselves the honour of martyrdom. No other course seemed open for the bestintentioned, as matters then stood, but to withdraw с CHAP. II. CHAP. (2) Intellectual causes forming entirely within themselves, to entrench themselves behind the safe barrier of their own inner life, and, ignoring the troubles raging without, to make happiness dependent on their own inward state alone. Stoic apathy, Epicurean self-satisfaction, and Sceptic imperturbability, were the doctrines which responded to the political helplessness of the age. They were the doctrines, too, which met with the most general acceptance. The same political helplessness produced the sinking of national distinctions in the feeling of a common humanity, and the separation of morals from politics which characterise the philosophy of the Alexandrian and Roman period. The barriers between nations, together with national independence, had been swept away. East and West, Greeks and barbarians, were united in large empires, being thus thrown together, and brought into close contact on every possible point. Philosophy might teach that all men were of one blood, that all were equally citizens of one empire, that morality rested on the relation of man to his fellow men, independently of nationalities and of social ranks; but in so doing she was only explicitly stating truths which had been already realised in part, and which were in part corollaries, from the existing state of society. The same result was also involved in the course which philosophy had taken during the last century and a half. Socrates and the Sophists, in different ways no doubt, had each devoted themselves to the telian phi- practical side of philosophy; and more definitely losophy. the post Aristo still the Cynic School had paved the way for Stoicism, the Cyrenaic for Epicureanism, although it is true that these two Schools were of minor importance in the philosophy of the fourth century taken as a whole, and that sophistry by the close of the same century was already a thing of the past. Nor can Socrates be at all compared with the post-Aristotelian philosophers. The desire for knowledge was still strong in Socrates, although he turned away from physical enquiries; and although he professed to busy himself only with subjects which were of practical use in life, his theory of knowledge involved a reformation of the speculative as well as of the practical side of philosophy-a reformation which was accomplished on a grand scale by Plato and Aristotle. On the whole, then, the course of development taken by Greek philosophy during the fourth century was far from being the course of its subsequent development. And yet the speculations of Plato and Aristotle helped to prepare the way for the coming change. The chasm between the ideal and phenomenal worlds which Plato brought to light, and Aristotle vainly attempted to bridge over, leads ultimately to an opposition between thought and the object of thought, between what is within and what is without. generic conceptions or forms, which Plato and Aristotle regard as most truly real, are, after all, fabrications of the human mind. The conception of reason, even in its expanded form as the divine Reason, or reason of the world, is an idea formed by abstraction The CHAP. II. СНАР. B. Character of the postAristotelian philosophy. from our inner life. And what is really meant by identifying form in itself with what is, and matter with what is only possible, or even (as Plato does) with what is not, or by placing God over against and in contrast to the world, except that man finds in his own mind a higher and more real existence than any which he finds outside of it in the world, and that what is truly divine and unlimited must be in the mind in its ideal nature, apart from and independent of all impressions from without? Plato and Aristotle, in fact, declared that reason constitutes the real essence of man-reason coming from above and uniting itself with the body, but being in itself superior to the world of sense and life in time-and that man's highest activity is thought, turned away from all external things, and meditating only on the inner world of ideas. It was only one step further in the same direction for the post-Aristotelian phiLosophy to refer man back to himself, thus severing him most completely from the outer world, that he may find that peace within which he can find nowhere in the world besides. This step was taken by the Schools of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, which appeared in the first half of the third century before Christ. Asserting their supremacy over the older Schools, while in the main they preserved their teaching unaltered, these Schools continued to exist until the beginning of the first century; and, however else they may differ, they at least agree in two fundamental points—in subordinating theory to practice, |