FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Vol. I., pp. 78-83.
[2] Aristotle, Metaph., VIII., iii., 1043, b, 25.
[3] Zeller, Phil. d. Gr., II., a, 277.
[4] Diog. L., VI., 3.
[5] According to the very probable conjecture of Zeller, l. c.
[6] Zeller, l. c.; Diog. L., VI., 12.
[7] Diog., VI., 3.
[8] For the authorities, see Zeller, op. cit., p. 263.
[9] Diog., IX., 62.
[10] Metaph., IV., iv., 1008, b, 12 ff.
[11] Diss., III., xxii.
[12] Diog., VIII., i. ff.
[13] Diog., VI., 96.
[14] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, 29.
[15] Diog., VII., 5.
[16] Diog., VII., 183.
[17] Ibid., 179.
[18] Ibid., 25.
[19] Ibid., 180 L.
[20] Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., iii., 2.
[21] It is significant that the only Stoic who fell back on pure Cynicism should have been Aristo of Chios, a genuine Greek, while the only one who, like Aristotle, identified good with knowledge was Herillus, a Carthaginian.
[22] Op. cit., p. 18, cf. p. 362.
[23] Diog., VII., 144 ff.
[24] Posidonius estimated the sun’s distance from the earth at 500,000,000 stades, and the moon’s distance at 2,000,000 stades, which, counting the stade at 200 yards, gives about 57,000,000 and 227,000 miles respectively. The sun’s diameter he reckoned, according to one account, at 440,000 miles, about half the real amount; according to another account at a quarter less. Zeller, op. cit., p. 190, Note 2.
[25] For the authorities, see Zeller, op. cit., p. 139, Note 1.
[26] Zeller, p. 155.
[27] The Stoic necessarianism gave occasion to a repartee which has remained classical ever since, although its original authorship is known to few. A slave of Zeno’s, on receiving chastisement for a theft, tried to excuse himself by quoting his master’s principle that he was fated to steal. ‘And to be flogged for it,’ replied the philosopher, calmly continuing his predestined task. (Diog., VII., 23.)
[28] Soph., 247, D.
[29] Plutarch, De Comm. Notit., xxx., 2; Cicero, Acad., I., xi., 39; Diog., VII., 150; Zeller, p. 117.
[30] Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., xliii., 4.
[31] Zeller, p. 201, ff.
[32] Cicero, De Nat. Deor., II., xv., 39.
[33] Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., IX., 18.
[34] Cicero, De Nat. Deor., I., xiii., 32.
[35] Zeller, p. 309 ff.
[36] See Cicero, De Divinatione, I., passim.
[37] Plutarch, De Placit. Phil., IV., xi.
[38] This seems the best explanation of the various statements on the subject made by our authorities, for which see Zeller, pp. 71-86.
[39] Sextus Emp., Adv. Math., VIII., 375.
[40] Zeller, p. 109.
[41] Zeller, p. 93.
[42] Stobaeus, Eclog., II., p. 132, quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 394; Diog., VII., 89.
[43] ‘Quid est sapientia? Semper idem velle atque idem nolle. Licet illam exceptiunculam non adicias ut rectum sit quod velis. Non potest cuiquam semper idem placere nisi rectum.’ Seneca, Epist., xx., 4.
[44] Cicero, De Fin., I., ix., 30. In this he followed the Cyrenaics; see Diog., II., 87.
[45] Sextus Emp., Adv. Math., XI., 73.
[46] ‘Das platonische Gedicht vom himmlischen Gottesstaat hatte durch diestoische Auffassung der Welt als eines vom Göttlichen durchdrungenen und beseelten Körpers einen Leib bekommen, in dessen zwingenden Organismus der Einzelne als Glied beschlossen ist und sich fügen muss.’ Bruno Bauer, Christus u. d. Cäsaren, p. 328.
[47] Zeller, p. 168, Note 2.
[48] Diog., VII., vii., 85.
[49] Gellius, Noct. Att., XII., v., 7, quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 395.
[50] Dissert., I., xix., II.
[51] Ibid., xxii., 9, ff.
[52] Cicero, Tusc. Disput., IV., xix. ff.
[53] Cic., Tusc. Disput., IV., vi.
[54] Zeller, p. 229.
[55] See the Dissertations of Epictêtus throughout.
[56] Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis, cap. xxxiii., p. 1076 B.
[57] Cf. Zeller, p. 583.
[58] Zeller, pp. 260-1.
[59] Ibid., pp. 267-8.
[60] Ibid., p. 270.
[61] Cicero, De Fin., III., xvii., 58; Acad., I., x., 37; De Off., I., iii., 8.
[62] De Off., I., vi.
[63] I., viii.
[64] I., xviii-xxiii.
[65] Pyrrh. Hyp., III., 201.
[66] Cic., De Off., III., xxiii., 91.
[67] Cic., De Off., III., xii., 51.
[68] Ibid., xxiii., 89.
[69] Plutarch, De Comm. Notit., xi., 8.
[70] Cf. Zeller, pp. 263-4, 278-84.
[71] Diog., VII., 130; Cic., De Fin., III., xviii., 60; Zeller, pp. 305-9.
[72] Diog., VII., 31, 176.
[73] Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., xviii., 5.
[74] ‘Omnia scelera, etiam ante effectum operis, quantum culpae satis est, perfecta sunt.’—Seneca, De Const. Sap., vii., 4. Cf. Zeno apud Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., XI., 190.
[75] ‘Prope est a te Deus, tecum est, intus est ... sacer intra nos spiritus sedet bonorum malorumque nostrorum observator et custos.’—Seneca, Epp., xli., 1. Cf. Horace, Epp., I., i., 61; Lucan, IX., 573; Persius, III., 43; Juvenal, XIII., 192-235.
[76] It may be desirable to give some reasons in support of this opinion, as the contrary has been stated by scholars writing within a comparatively recent period. Thus Welcker says: ‘Das Gewissen ward bei den Griechen als ein göttliches Wesen, Erinys, gescheut und wie wir es sonst nicht finden, zur Gottheit erhoben’ (Griechische Götterlehre, I., 233); and again (p. 699) ‘Ἐρινύς ... ist das Gewissen.’ Similarly, M. Alfred Maury observes that, ‘les remords se personnifiaient sous la forme de déesses Erinnyies, chargées de punir tous les forfaits’ (Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, I., 342). And Preller, while entertaining sounder views respecting their origin, contents himself with the caution that, ‘Man sich hüten muss die Furien blos fur die subjectiven Mächte des menschlichen Gewissen zu halten’ (Griechische Mythologie, I., 686, 3rd ed.). Now, in the first place, the Erinyes did not punish all crime, as they ought to have done had they represented conscience. According to Aeschylus (Eumen., 604-5), they considered that the murder of her husband by Clytaemnestra was no affair of theirs, there being no blood relationship between the parties concerned. They did not persecute Electra, who, short of striking the fatal blow, had as much hand in her mother’s death as Orestes. And even when a father was killed by his son, they do not always seem to have taken up the matter; for in the Odyssey it is not by the Erinyes of Laius, but by those of Epicastê that Oedipus is pursued—a conception very unlike that of Sophocles, who makes him feel as much remorse for the parricide as for the incest and its consequences. In the next place, the Erinyes are let loose not by the action itself but by the curses of the injured or offended blood-relation, as we see by Homer, Il., IX., 454 and 566; which seems to show that if they personified anything human it was the imprecations of the victim, not the self-reproach of the aggressor. Thirdly, the Orestes of Aeschylus, so far from feeling conscience-smitten, disclaims all responsibility for his mother’s death, inflicted as it was in consequence of a direct command from the higher gods, accompanied by threats of heavy punishment in case of disobedience. (Eumen., 443 ff.). And, finally, the office assigned to the Erinyes of seeing that the laws of nature are not broken (vol. I., 67) shows that the Greeks conceived their existence as something altogether objective and physical. [There is a short but very sensible account of the Erinyes in Keightley’s Mythology, p. 175, 4th ed.]
[77] Cicero, De Off., I., xxxi.; Epictêtus, Man., 17, b., 30; Diss., I., ii., 33; xvi., 20; xxix., 39; II., v., 10; ib., 21; x., 4, xiv., 8; xxiii., 38; xxv., 22; Antoninus, Comm., VI., 39, 43; IX., 29; cf. Seneca, Epp., lxxxv., 34, and the saying of Marcus Aurelius quoted by Dion Cassius (Epit., LXXI., xxxiv., 4), that we cannot make men what we wish them to be; we can only turn what faculties they have to the best account in working for the public good.
[78] For the references to these and other similar passages, see the last note.
[79] Plutarch, De Alex. Virt., I., vi.; Diog., VII., 33.
[80] It need hardly be observed that here also the morality of natural law has attained its highest artistic development under the hand of George Eliot—sometimes even to the neglect of purely artistic effect, as in Daniel Deronda and the Spanish Gypsy.
[81] Zeller, p. 297, followed by Mr. Capes, in his excellent little work on Stoicism (p. 51).
[82] Seneca, De Irâ, I., v., 2 ff.; II., xxxi., 7; De Clem., I., iii., 2; De Benef., IV., xxvi., I, Epp., xcv., 51 ff.; Epictêtus, Diss., IV., v., 10; Antoninus, VII., 13; together with the additional references given by Zeller, p. 286 ff. It is to be observed that the mutual love attributed to human beings by the Stoic philosophers stands, not for an empirical characteristic, but for an unrealised idea of human nature. The actual feelings of men towards one another are described by Seneca in language recalling that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi. ‘Erras,’ he exclaims, ‘si istorum tibi qui occurrunt vultibus credis: hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum: nisi quod illarum perniciosior est primus incursus. Nunquam enim illas ad nocendum nisi necessitas inicit: aut fame aut timore coguntur ad pugnam: homini perdere hominem libet.’—Epp., ciii., 2.
[83] Plato, Protagoras, 337, D.
[84] ‘He [Charles Austin] presented the Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to any one’s preconceived feelings.’—Mill’s Autobiography, p. 78.
[85] Zeller, p. 281.
[86] ‘Homo sacra res homini jam per lusum et jocum occiditur ... satisque spectaculi ex homine mors est.’—Seneca, Epp., xcv., 33. ‘Servi sunt? Immo homines. Servi sunt? Immo contubernales. Servi sunt? Immo humiles amici. Servi sunt? Immo conservi.’—Ibid., xlvii., 1. Compare the treatise De Irâ, passim.
[87] Seneca once lets falls the words, ‘fortuna aequo jure genitos alium alii donavit.’—Consol. ad Marciam, xx, 2; but this is the only expression of the kind that we have been able to discover in a Stoic writer of the empire.
[88] Seneca, Epp., lxxx.
[89] ‘L’empereur avait pour principe de maintenir les anciennes maximes romaines dans leur intégrité.’ (Renan’s Marc-Aurèle, p. 54.) The authority given by M. Renan is Dion Cass., LXXI., xxxiv.; where, however, there is nothing of the kind stated. Capitolinus says (Anton. Phil., cap. xi.): ‘Jus autem magis vetus restituit quam novum fecit.’
[90] Renan, p. 30; Capitolinus, Anton. Phil., xii.; Dion Cass., Epit., LXXI., xxix., 3.
[91] Antoninus, Comm., VI., 46; X., 8.
[92] The expressions used by M. Ernest Renan when treating of this subject are somewhat conflicting. In reference to the penal enactments against Christianity under Marcus Aurelius, he first states that, however objectionable they may have been, ‘en tout cas dans l’application la mansuétude du bon empereur fut à l’abri de tout reproche’ (Marc-Aurèle, p. 58.) Further on, however we are told that when the martyrs of Lyons appealed to Rome, ‘la réponse impériale arriva en fin. Elle était dure et cruelle.’ (p. 329.) And subsequently M. Renan makes the Emperor personally responsible for the atrocities practised on that occasion by observing, ‘Si Marc-Aurèle, au lieu d’employer les lions et la chaise rougie,’ &c. (p. 345.) But perhaps such inconsistencies are to be expected in a writer who has elevated the necessity of perpetual self-contradiction into a principle.
[93] Epictêtus, Diss., III., xxiv.
[94] Seneca, De Irâ, I., xiv., 2; De Clement., I., vi., 2.
[95] Diog., VII., 91. Ziegler (Gesch. d. Ethik, Bonn, 1882, I., 174) holds, in opposition to Zeller, that originally every Stoic, as such, was assumed to be a perfect sage, and that the question was only whether the ideal had ever been realised outside the school. This, however, goes against the evidence of Plutarch, who tells as (De Stoic. Repug., xxxi., 5) that Chrysippus neither professed to be good himself nor supposed that any of his friends or teachers or disciples was good.
[96] Seneca, Epp., cxvi., 4. It must be borne in mind that Panaetius was speaking at a time when the object of passion would at best be either another man’s wife or a member of the demi-monde.
[97] Comm., VII., 26; XII., 16.
[98] See especially Antoninus, Comm., IX., 1.
[99] Friedländer, Römische Sittengeschichte, I., 463; Duruy, Histoire des Romains, V., 349 ff., 370; cf. Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine, II., 152 ff., 212 ff.
[100] This idea is most distinctly expressed by Marcus Aurelius, II., 1, and VII., 13.
[101] For the authorities, see Zeller, p. 176.
[102] See especially Seneca, Epp., lxiv., and the whole treatise De Providentiâ.
[103] See, inter alia, Comm., IV., 3; VI., 15, 37; VII., 21, 49; XI., 1; XII., 7, 21, 23, 24, 26, 31, 32.
[104] Comm., XI., 28, xii. 14. A modern disciple of Aurelius has expressed himself to the same purpose in slightly different language:—
‘Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn’st all simpler fare!
“Christ,” some one says, “was human as we are.
No judge eyes us from heaven our sin to scan;
We live no more, when we have done our span.”
“Well, then, for Christ,” thou answerest, “who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?
Live we, like brutes, our life without a plan!”
So answerest thou; but why not rather say:
“Hath man no second life?—Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us?—Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he!”’
—The Better Part, by Mr. Matthew Arnold. The italics are in the original.
[105] First Principles, § 177.
[106] See an article entitled ‘Pantheism and Cosmic Emotion,’ by Frederic Harrison, in the Nineteenth Century for August, 1881.
[107] From the Hymn of Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Francis Newman in The Soul, p. 73, fifth edition.
[108] Epicureanism, p. 1.
[109] Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 380.
[110] Op. cit., p. 72.
[111] Short Studies, III., p. 246.
[112] Gesch. des Mater., I., p. 92.
[113] Pollock’s Spinoza, p. 64.
[114] Epicuro e l’Epicurismo, Florence, 1877, p. 29.
[115] Lucretii Philosophia cum fontibus comparata, Groningen, 1877, p. 137.
[116] Dialogues Philosophiques, p. 54, quoted by Woltjer, loc. cit.
[117] Diog. L., X., 142.
[118] Ibid., 113.
[119] Diog. L., X., 134.
[120] Cicero, Acad., II., xxxiii., 106.
[121] Cicero, De Fin., II., xxx., 96; Diog., X., 22. Cicero translates the words διαλογισμῶν μνήμῃ, ‘memoria rationum inventorumque nostrorum.’ They may refer merely to the pleasure derived from intellectual conversation.
[122] The authorities for the life of Epicurus are given by Zeller, op. cit., p. 363 ff.
[123] Diog., II., 92.
[124] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., II., a, 294.
[125] Cf. Plato, Protag., 353, C, ff., with Epicurus in the letter to Menoeceus, quoted by Diog., X., 129.
[126] Morale d’Épicure, p. 20.
[127] Wallace’s Épicureanism, p. 154; Guyau, Morale d’Épicure, p. 34.
[128] Cicero, Tusc. Disput., III., xviii., 41; Zeller, III., a, p. 444.
[129] Zeller, p. 460.
[130] Ibid., p. 581.
[131] Diog., II., 72.
[132] Diog., X., 131.
[133] Guyau, Morale d’Épicure, p. 55.
[134] Diog., X., 118.
[135] Lucret., IV., 1057-66.
[136] Diog., X., 117, 118.
[137] Cicero, De Fin., V., xxvii., 80; Diog., X., 118.
[138] That is, if we assume what Aristotle says on the subject to be derived from common usage (Eth. Nic., III., ix., p. 1115, a, 33).
[139] Cicero, Tusc. Disp., II., xii., 28.
[140] Cicero, De Fin., I., xv.; Tusc., V., xxviii.
[141] Diog., X., 150 ff.
[142] Wallace, p. 162; Diog., X., 150.
[143] Epicureanism, pp. 162-3.
[144] Cicero, De Fin., II., vii., 20; De Nat. Deor., I., xvii., 45, xxx., 85.
[145] Diog., X., 150-1.
[146] V., 1145-59.
[147] Cicero, De Fin., II., xvii., 57.
[148] Op. cit., p. 163.
[149] The lamented Prof. T. H. Green may be mentioned as another example of a high-minded thinker who was also an ardent and active politician. With regard to antiquity, see the splendid roll of public-spirited philosophers enumerated by Plutarch, Adv. Col., xxxii.
[150] Op. cit., p. 164.
[151] J. S. Mill observed, in a conversation with Mr. John Morley, reported by the latter, that ‘in his youth mere negation of religion was a firm bond of union, social and otherwise, between men who agreed in nothing else.’—Fortnightly Review, vol. XIII., p. 675.
[152] Cicero, De Nat. Deor., L., 18-24.
[153] Woltjer, Lucret. Ph., p. 74.
[154] ‘Das Staatsgesetz oder das dem Gesetz gleichkommende väterliche Herkommen bildet einen Gegensatz gegen ein abgeschlossenes Priesterthum und dessen natürlichen Einfluss.’ Welcker, Gr. Götterlehre, II., p. 45. ‘La religion romaine, comme toutes celles où domine l’esprit laïque, diminue le rôle du prêtre.’ Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine, I., p. 16.
[155] This reminds one of the ‘pèlerinages,’ which figure along with ‘pigeon-shooting’ among the attractions offered by French country hotels to idle visitors.
[156] Republic, II., 364, C, ff; Jowett’s transl., III., 234-5. Elsewhere Plato proposes that these ‘bestial persons’ who persuade others that the gods can be induced by magical incantations to pardon crime, should be punished by imprisonment for life (Legg, X., 909, A, f.).
[157] Villemain, Life of Gregory VII., Engl, transl., I., p. 305. As a further illustration of the same subject, it may be mentioned that there is a cemetery near Innsbruck (and probably many more like it throughout the Tyrol) freely adorned with rude representations of souls in purgatory, stretching out their hands for help from amid the flames. The help is of course to be obtained by purchase from the priesthood.
[158] Lucret., I., 108-12.
[159] Agamemnon, 369 (Dindorf).
[160] Zeller, pp. 428-9.
[161] Prof. Sellar observes, as we think, with perfect truth, that ‘there is no necessary connexion between the atomic theory of philosophy and that view of the ends and objects of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus.’—Roman Poets of the Republic, p. 348, 2nd ed.
[162] Lucret., I., 1020 ff.; V., 835 ff; IV., 780 ff.; V., 1023; V., 1307 ff.
[163] That Democritus attributed weight to his atoms has been proved, in opposition to Lewes and others, by Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., I., p. 713 (3rd ed.)
[164] Woltjer, Lucr. Phil., p. 38.
[165] Arist., Phys., IV., viii., 216, a, 20.
[166] II., 257 ff.
[167] Lucret., IV., 875 ff.
[168] Lucret., V., 437 ff.
[169] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, pp. 397-8. Reichel’s transl., pp. 412-3 (1st ed.)
[170] Woltjer (Lucret. Ph., p. 126) charges Lucretius with having misunderstood his master on this point. As the sun and moon appear larger when near the horizon than at other times, Epicurus thought that we then see them either as they really are or a little larger. This, Lucretius, according to Woltjer, took to mean that their general apparent size may be a little over or under their real size.
[171] Zeller, p. 413.
[172] See, for instance, Woltjer, op. cit., p. 88.
[173] Zeller, p. 443, note 3.
[174] Zeller, pp. 417-8.
[175] Diog., X., 125.
[176] III., 922.
[177] Cicero, De Fin., I., ix., 30.
[178] ‘Aeque enim timent ne apud inferos sint, quam ne nusquam.’—Seneca, Epp., lxxxii., 16.
[179] Cf. Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi, cap. xxvii.
[180] Among other feelings consequent on the first experience of death among the posterity of Cain, the following are specified:—
‘It seemed the light was never loved before,
Now each man said, “‘Twill go and come no more.”
No budding branch, no pebble from the brook,
No form, no shadow but new dearness took
From the one thought that life must have an end;
And the last parting now began to send
Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss,
Thrilling them into finer tenderness.‘
[181] III., 59 ff.
[182] Ethic., Pars. IV., Prop. vii.
[183] Ethic. Nic., III., xii., 1117, b, 10 ff. Sir Alexander Grant, in his note on the passage, appositely compares the character of Wordsworth’s Happy Warrior, who is ‘More brave for this that he has much to love.’
[184] For the authorities, see Zeller, p. 388.
[185] Lucret., IV., 354, 728, 761.
[186] Such at least seems to be the theory rather obscurely set forth in Diog., X., 32.
[187] Diog., X., 33, Sextus Emp., Adv. Math., VII., 211-16; Zeller, p. 391.
[188] For additional authorities see Zeller, pp. 385-95, and Wallace’s Epicureanism, chap. x.
[189] See Woltjer, Lucr. Ph., p. 141 ff.
[190] Morale d’Épicure, p. 157.
[191] In a fragment quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., IX., 54.
[192] Fragmenta Tragicorum, Didot, p. 140.
[193] Zeller, p. 416, note 1.
[194] See the whole concluding portion of Lucr., bk. V.
[195] Chiefly by Ritter, Gesch. d. Phil., IV., p. 94, on which see the clear and convincing reply of Zeller, op. cit., p. 47.
[196] For details we must refer to the masterly treatise of Dr. Woltjer, already cited more than once in the course of this chapter.
[197] Cf. II., 18, with II., 172.
[198] The single exception to this rule that can be quoted is, we believe, the argument against impassioned love derived from its enslaving influence (quod alterius sub nutu degitur aetas, V., 1116). But to live under another’s nod is a condition eminently unfavourable to the mental tranquillity which an Epicurean prized before all things; nor, in any case, does it seem to have counted for so much with Lucretius as the ‘damnation of expenses’ which was no less formidable a deterrent to him than to the ‘unco guid’ of Burns’s satire.
[199] V., 1153-4.
[200] V., 1125.
[201] Ziegler (Gesch. a. Ethik, I., p. 203) quotes Lucret., III., 136, to prove that the poet recognised the existence of mental pleasures as such. But Lucretius only says that the mind has pleasures not derived from an immediate external stimulus. This would apply perfectly to the imagination of sensual pleasure.
[202] Woltjer, op. cit., p. 5.
[203] IV., 966.
[204] Woltjer, op. cit., pp. 178 ff.
[205] There is an unquestionable coincidence between Lucretius, II., 69 ff. and Plato, Legg., 776 B, pointed out by Teichmüller, Geschichte der Begriffe, p. 177. Both may have drawn from some older source.
[206] We think, however, that Prof. Sellar attributes more importance to this element in the Lucretian philosophy than it will bear. His words are: ‘The doctrine proclaimed by Lucretius was, that creation was no result of a capricious or benevolent exercise of power, but of certain processes extending through infinite time, by means of which the atoms have at length been able to combine and work together in accordance with their ultimate conditions. The conception of these ultimate conditions and of their relations to one another involves some more vital agency than that of blind chance or an iron fatalism. The foedera Naturai are opposed to the foedera fati. The idea of law in Nature as understood by Lucretius is not merely that of invariable sequence or concomitance of phenomena. It implies at least the further idea of a “secreta facultas” in the original elements.‘ (Roman Poets of the Republic, p. 335, 2nd ed.) The expression secreta facultas occurs, we believe, only once in the whole poem (I., 174), and is used on that single occasion without any reference to the atoms, which do not appear until a later stage of the exposition. Lucretius is proving that whatever begins to exist must have a cause, and in support of this principle he appeals to the fixed laws which govern the growth of plants. Each plant springs from a particular kind of seed, and so, he argues, each seed must have a distinct or specific virtue of its own, which virtue he expresses by the words secreta facultas. But, according to his subsequent teaching, this specific virtue depends on a particular combination of the atoms, not on any spontaneous power which they possess of grouping themselves together so as to form organic compounds. With regard to the properties of the atoms themselves, Lucretius enumerates them clearly enough. They are extension, figure, resistance, and motion; the last mentioned being divided into downward gravitation, lateral deflection, and the momenta produced by mutual impact. Here we have nothing more than the two elements of ‘iron fatalism’ and ‘blind chance’ which Prof. Sellar regards as insufficient to account for the Lucretian scheme of creation; gravitation and mutual impact give the one, lateral deflection gives the other. Any faculty over and above these could only be conceived under the form of conscious impulse, or of mutual attractions and repulsions exercised by the atoms on one another. The first hypothesis is expressly rejected by the poet, who tells us (I., 1020) that the primordial elements are destitute of consciousness, and have fallen into their present places through the agency of purely mechanical causes. The second hypothesis is nowhere alluded to in the most distant manner, it is contrary to the whole spirit of Epicurean physics, it never occurred to a single thinker of antiquity, and to have conceived it at that time would have needed more than the genius of a Newton. As a last escape it may be urged that Lucretius believed in ‘a sort of a something’ which, like the fourth element in the soul, he was not prepared to define. But besides the utter want of evidence for such a supposition, what necessity would there have been for the infinite chances which he postulates in order to explain how the actual system of things came to be evolved, had the elements been originally endowed with the disposition to fall into such a system rather than into any other? For Prof. Sellar’s vital agency must mean this disposition if it means anything at all.
While on this subject we must also express our surprise to find Prof. Sellar saying of Lucretius that ‘in no ancient writer’ is ‘the certainty and universality of law more emphatically and unmistakably expressed’ (p. 334). This would, we think, be much truer of the Stoics, who recognised in its absolute universality that law of causation on which all other laws depend, but which Lucretius expressly tells us (II., 255) is broken through by the clinamen. A more accurate statement of the case, we think, would be to say that the Epicurean poet believed unreservedly in uniformities of co-existence, but not, to the same extent, in uniformities of sequence; while apart from these two classes neither he nor modern science knows of any laws at all.
[207] V., 695-73, 730-49.
[208] Cicero, De Nat. Deor., I., xxiv., 66.
[209] Comm., IX., 28.
[210] Coleridge’s Friend, Section II., Essay II., sub in.
[211] ‘In the higher ranks of French society there are men who merit to be called professors of the art of happiness; who have analysed its ingredients with careful fingers and scrutinising eyes; who have consummated their experience of means and ends; who, like able doctors, can apply an immediate remedy to the daily difficulties of home-life; whose practice is worthy of their theory, and who prove it by maintaining in their wives’ hearts and in their own a perennial never-weakening sentiment of gratitude and love.‘ (French Home Life, p. 324.) Although Mr. Marshall’s observations are directly applicable to the happiness of married life only, they tend to prove that all happiness may be reduced to an art.
[212] Wallace’s Epicureanism, p. 37.
[213] Cicero, De Rep., III., vi.-xx.
[214] Plutarch, Cato Major, xxii. ff.
[215] Pindar, Pyth., III., 96.
[216] Vol. I., p. 46.
[217] It is said that the same ironical attitude continues to characterise the Greeks of our time. Col. Leake (quoted by Welcker, Gr. Götterl., II., p. 127) informs us that travellers in Greece are continually entertained with local fables which are everywhere repeated, but believed by nobody, least of all by the inhabitants of the district where they first originated. And Welcker adds, from his own experience, that the young Greeks who act as guides in the religious houses related the miraculous legends of the place with an enthusiasm and an eloquence which left him in doubt whether or not they themselves believed what they expected him to believe.
[218] Il., II., 80; XII., 238; XVI., 859; Od., I., 215; XI., 363; XXIII., 166; Agamem., 477 ff.
[219] Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., VII., 89 ff; Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., I., pp. 464, 652, 743, 828. (3rd ed.)
[220] For the theses of Gorgias see Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., VII., 65 ff.
[221] Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., VII., 170 ff.
[222] Xen., Mem., IV., iii., 14.
[223] Timaeus, 37, B, 43, D ff.
[224] Examples of these questions are: ‘Have you lost your horns?’ and, ‘Did Electra know that Orestes was her brother?’ Stated in words, she knew that he was; but she did not recognise him as her brother when he came to her in disguise.
[225] Plutarch, Adv. Col., xxii.-xxiii.; Seneca, Epp., ix.
[226] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, 481; Diog. L., IX., xi.
[227] Zeller, op. cit., p. 484; Ritter and Preller, Hist. Ph., p. 336.
[228] ὡς χαλεπὸν εἴη ὁλοσχερῶς ἐκδῦναι ἄνθρωπον. For this and the other stories, see Diog. L., IX., 66-8.
[229] Pyrrh. Hyp., I., 28 ff.
[230] Diog. L., VII., 171.
[231] Cicero, Acad., II., xxiv., 77; Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., VII., 150-7; Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, pp. 492 ff.
[232] Plutarch, De Comm. Notit., i., 4; Zeller, op. cit., p. 81 (where, however, the reference to Plutarch is wrongly given).
[233] Εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἦν Χρύσιππος οὐκ ἂν ἦν ἐγώ. (Diog. L., IV., 62.) The original line ran, εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἦν Χρύσιππος οὐκ ἂν ἦν στοά.
[234] Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., VII., 159-65.
[235] That Carneades was the first to start this difficulty cannot be directly proved, but is conjectured with great probability by Zeller (op. cit., p. 504).
[236] Sext. Pyrrh. Hyp., II., 186. Adv. Math., VIII., 463.
[237] Pyrrh. Hyp., II., 195, 204.
[238] Cicero, De Nat. Deor., I., xxiii., 62; III., iv., 11; xvi., 42; xxi., 53.
[239] Sext., Adv. Math., IX., 182-3.
[240] Cic., De Nat. Deor., III., xviii., 47.
[241] Cic., Acad., II., xxxviii., 120; Zeller, op. cit., p. 506.
[242] Cic., Acad., ibid., 121; Zeller, op. cit., p. 507.
[243] Cic., De Nat. Deor., III., x., 24.
[244] ibid., III., xi., 27.
[245] ibid., ix., 21.
[246] ibid., III., xii., 29; I., xxxix., 109.
[247] Sext. Adv. Math., IX., 139-47.
[248] ibid., 152-77.
[249] Cic., De Nat. Deor., III., vi.; De Divin., II., passim; De Nat. Deor., III., xxvi. ff.
[250] Le Christianisme et ses Origines, II., p. 3.
[251] Sext., Pyrrh. Hyp., III., 2.
[252] Sext., Adv. Math., VII., 166-89.
[253] Cic., De Fin., III., xii., 41; Zeller, op. cit., p. 519.
[254] According to Zeller’s interpretation of Cicero, Acad., II., xi., 34.
[255] Zeller, op. cit., p. 602.
[256] ibid., p. 603.
[257] For the authorities see Zeller, op. cit., pp. 599-601.
[258] Zeller, op. cit., pp. 603-8.
[259] Zeller, op. cit., pp. 554, 561 ff.
[260] Zeller, op. cit., p. 575.
[261] Zeller, op. cit., p. 621.
[262] Cic., Acad., II., xlv.
[263] The treatises entitled De Stoicorum Repugnantiâ and De Communibus Notiliis.
[264] Lucret., IV., 1154-64; Juven., VI., 186-95.
[265] Varro observes that for 170 years the ancient Romans worshipped their gods without images; ‘quod si adhuc,’ inquit, ‘mansisset castius Dii observarentur.’ And in the same passage, speaking of mythology, he says, ‘hoc omnia Diis attribuuntur quae non modo in hominem, sed etiam in contemtissimum hominem cadere possunt.’ Augustin., De Civit. Dei, IV., iii., and xxxi., quoted by Zeller, op. cit., p. 674.
[266] Ritter and Preller, Hist. Phil., p. 426; Woltjer, Lucretii Philosophia, p. 5.
[267] The services of Posidonius seem to have been overlooked by M. Gaston Boissier when he implies in his work on Roman Religion (vol. ii., p. 13) that Fabianus, a Roman declaimer under Augustus, was the first to give an eloquent expression to Stoicism.
[268] Zeller, op. cit., pp. 597-8.
[269] Acad., II., xxii., 69.
[270] ibid., xxxi., 99.
[271] De Fin., V., xxi., 59.
[272] Acad., II., xxxix.
[273] For the literary studies of Socrates, see Xenoph., Mem., I., vi., 14; those of Cicero are too manifest to need any special reference.
[274] See the passages quoted by Zeller, op. cit., pp. 659-60.
[275] Acad., I., x.
[276] De Fin., IV., viii.
[277] De Off., III., iii., 11.
[278] The passage occurs near the beginning of his Essay on Bacon.
[279] See the Somnium Scipionis, De Repub., VI., xvii.
[280] ibid., xxvi.
[281] De Divin., II., lxxii., 148; Zeller, op. cit., p. 667.
[282] l. 724 ff.
[283] l. 5-7, and 34-36.
[284] I., 231-51.
[285] The very passage (Georg., II., 475-92) which is supposed to refer to Lucretius contains a line (frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis) embodying the Stoic theory that the soul has its seat in the heart, and is nourished by a warm exhalation from the blood. See Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 197.
[286] Zeller does indeed call Seneca and Marcus Aurelius ‘Platonising Stoics’ (Ph. d. Gr., III., b, p. 236, 3rd. ed.); but the evidence adduced hardly seems to justify the epithet.
[287] Metamorph., XV., 60.
[288] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 681.
[289] Epp., I., i., 18.
[290] M. Gaston Boissier (Religion Romaine, I., p. 206), on the strength of a passage in one of Horace’s Satires (II., iii., 11), where the poet speaks of carrying Plato about with him on his travels, infers that the study of the Dialogues had a good deal to do with his conversion. It is, however, more than probable that the Plato mentioned is not the philosopher, but the comic poet, for we find that his companions in Horace’s trunk were Menander, Eupolis, and Archilochus.
[291] Zeller is inclined to place Aenesidêmus a hundred years earlier than the date here assigned to him (Ph. d. Gr., III., b, p. 9); but two pieces of evidence which he himself quotes seem to militate strongly against this view. One is a statement of Aristocles the Peripatetic, who flourished 160-190 A.D., that Scepticism had been revived not long before his time (ἐχθὲς καὶ πρώην; apud Euseb., Pr. Ev., XIV., xviii., 22; Zeller, op. cit., p. 9); the other is Seneca’s question, Quis est qui tradat praecepta Pyrrhonis? (Nat. Quaest., VII., xxxii. 2; Zeller, p. 11). On the other hand, Epictêtus, lecturing towards the end of the first century, alludes to Scepticism as something then living and active. The natural inference is that Aenesidêmus flourished before his time and after Seneca, that is about the period mentioned in the text; and we cannot make out that there are any satisfactory data pointing to a different conclusion.
[292] Zeller, III., b, p. 18.
[293] Zeller, III., a, pp. 495 and 514; Cic., Acad., I., xii., 45; ibid., II., ix., 28.
[294] With all deference to so great a scholar as Zeller, it seems to us that he has misinterpreted a passage in which Sextus Empiricus observes that a particular argument of his own against the possibility of reaching truth either by sense or by reason, is virtually (δυνάμει) contained in the difficulties raised by Aenesidêmus (Adv. Math., VIII., 40). Zeller (op. cit., III., b, p. 20, note 5) translates δυνάμει, ‘dem Sinne nach,’ ‘in substance,’ a meaning which it will hardly bear. What Sextus says is that the untrustworthiness of reason follows on the untrustworthiness of sense, for the notions supplied by the latter must either be common to all the senses—which is impossible, owing to their specialised character—or limited to some, and therefore equally liable with them to dispute and contradiction. Moreover, he argues, rational notions (τά νοητά) cannot all be true, as they conflict both with each other and with sensation. And the reference to Aenesidêmus means simply that this kind of argument amounts to a further extension of his attack on the credibility of the senses; it does not imply that Aenesidêmus had ever attacked reason himself. The whole passage is quite in the usual style of exhaustive alternation followed by Sextus, and its extreme awkwardness seems to show that he is forcing his arguments into parallelism with those of his predecessor. It is possible also that the different members of the argument have been transposed; for the part connecting reason with sense (44) ought logically to stand last, and that relating to the discrepancy of different notions with one another (45-7), second. Cf. Adv. Math., VII., 350, where Aenesidêmus is said to have identified the understanding with the senses, quite in the style of Protagoras and quite unlike the New Academy.
[295] Sext. Emp., Pyrrh. Hyp., I., 180 ff.
[296] Adv. Math., IX., 228.
[297] The ten Tropes were evidently suggested by the ten Categories of Aristotle. The five grounded on differences of disposition, place, quantity, relation, and
habits, show at once by their names that they are derived from κεῖσθαι, ποῦ,
ποσόν, πρός τι, and ἔχειν. The Trope of comparative frequency would be suggested by πότε; the disturbing influence of bodies on one another combines ποιεῖν and πάσχειν; the conflict of the special senses belongs, although somewhat more remotely, to ποιόν; and, in order to make up the number ten, οὐσία, which answers to the percipient in general, had to be divided into the two Tropes taken respectively from the differences among animals and among men,—an arrangement that would occur all the more readily as οὐσία included the two notions of Genus and Species, of which the one answers, in this instance, to animals, and the other to men.
[298] Zeller, III., b, p. 23.
[299] Zeller, op. cit. pp. 29-37.
[300] Sext. Emp., Pyrrh. Hyp., I., 164 and 178; Zeller, op. cit., pp. 37 and 38.
[301] Adv. Math., V., 1.
[302] ibid., IX., 208.
[303] These are the four principles enumerated by Sextus, Pyrrh. Hyp., I., 24.
[304] Diog. L., X., 9.
[305] The materials and, to a certain extent, the ideas of this chapter are chiefly derived from Zeller’s Philosophie der Griechen, Vol. III., Duruy’s Histoire des Romains, Vol. V., Gaston Boissier’s Religion Romaine, and above all from Friedländer’s Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Rom’s, Part III., chapters iv. and vi.
[306] Friedländer, Römische Sittengeschichte, III., pp, 483, 681.
[307] As a striking instance of the solidarity which now connects all forms of irrationalism, it may be mentioned that Livy’s fables are accepted, in avowed defiance of modern criticism, by the clericalising English students of archaeology in Rome.
[308] Using the word in its modern rather than in its ancient sense, so as to include the whole empire outside the city of Rome.
[309] Epp., II., i., 20 ff.
[310] Carm., I., xi., and III., xxiii.
[311] Carm., III., vi., and the Carmen Seculare.
[312] Boissier, Religion Romaine, I., p. 336.
[313] Friedländer, III., p. 510.
[314] See the note on Honestiores and Humiliores appended to the fifth volume of Duruy’s Histoire des Romains.
[315] Lucian, Adversus Indoctum.
[316] Juvenal, Satt., XVI., 14.
[317] Persius, Satt., III., 77.; cf. V., 189.
[318] Matth., viii., 9; Luke, vii., 8.
[319] Thucydides, II., iv. The other women alluded to are, the wife of Admêtus, who tells Themistocles how he is to proceed in order to conciliate her husband (I., cxxxvi.); Stratonice, the sister whom Perdiccas gives in marriage to Seuthes (II., ci.); and Brauro, the Edonian queen who murders her husband Pittacus (IV., cvii.). The wife and daughter of Hippias the Peisistratid and the sister of Harmodius are mentioned in bk. VI., lv. ff, but they take us back to an earlier period of Greek history than that of which Thucydides treats consecutively; while the names of Helen and Procne, which also occur, belong, of course, to a much remoter past (I., ix., and II., xxix.)
[320] It has even been maintained that the condition of the Roman matron was superior to that of the modern Frenchwoman. (Duruy, Histoire des Romains, V., p. 41.)
[321] Boissier, Religion Romaine, II. p. 200.
[322] Boissier, op. cit., II., pp. 214 ff.
[323] Friedländer, Romische Sittengeschichte, I., pp. 441 ff.
[324] Lucian, De Mercede Conductis, xxvi.; Friedländer, I., p. 447.
[325] Epict., Fragm., 53 Dübner.
[326] Juvenal, V., and Lucian, De Mercede Conductis.
[327] Friedländer, III., p. 502.
[328] Friedländer, ibid.
[329] Boissier, op. cit., I., p. 362.
[330] Havet, Le Christianisme et ses Origines, II., p. 150.
[331] Hor., Satt., I., ix., 67-72.
[332] Ibid., I., iv., 142.
[333] Opera, ed. Tauchnitz, V., p. 209.
[334] Philo, Vita Mos. p. 136, M.; Joseph., Contr. Ap., II., xxxix.; Friedländer, III., p. 583.
[335] Ovid., Ars Am., I., 415; Rem. Am., 219; Pers., V., 179; Juv., XIV., 97; Friedländer, loc. cit.
[336] Havet, II., p. 328.
[337] Friedländer, I., p. 451.
[338] Ars Am., I., 76.
[339] Friedländer, III., pp. 518, 539 ff, 553 ff.
[340] Xenophon, Mem., I., i., 9.
[341] Friedländer, III., p. 523.
[342] ibid., pp. 524 ff.
[343] Friedländer, III., pp. 527 ff.
[344] Plutarch, De Defect. Oracul., cap. xlv., p. 434.
[345] Lucian, Alexander, 25, 47.
[346] According to Friedländer (III., p. 531), this happened between 167 and 169.
[347] Friedländer, p. 532.
[348] Friedländer, III., p. 533.
[349] Ibid., p. 534.
[350] For details see Friedländer, loc. cit.
[351] Friedländer, pp. 535 ff. This form of superstition still flourishes in great force among at least the lower class of Italians at the present day; and the continual stimulation afforded to it by the public lottery is not the least mischievous consequence of that infamous institution.
[352] Aelian, Fragm., 98; Friedländer, p. 494.
[353] Friedländer, loc. cit.
[354] Friedländer, p. 549.
[355] For the whole subject of Aristeides see Friedländer, pp. 496 ff.
[356] ‘Et parum sane fuit quod illi honores divinos, omnis aetas, omnis sexus, omnis condicio ac dignitas dedit, nisi quod etiam sacrilegus judicatus est qui ejus imaginem in suo domo non habuit qui per fortunam vel potuit habere vel debuit. Denique hodieque in multis domibus M. Aurelii statuae consistunt inter deos penates. Nec defuerunt homines qui somniis eum multa praedixisse augurantes futura et vera concinnerunt.’—Vita M. Antonini Phil., cap. xviii.
[357] Friedländer, p. 513.
[358] Friedländer, III., p. 683. Cp. Clifford’s epitaph: ‘I was nothing and was conceived; I loved and did a little work; I am nothing and grieve not.’
[359] Comm., IV., 21; XII., 5, 26.
[360] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 798.
[361] Quoted by Friedländer, pp. 681 f.
[362] Ibid., p. 688.
[363] Ibid.
[364] Zeller, op. cit., p. 828.
[365] See in particular, Satt., II, 149.
[366] Friedländer, I., p. 465 f.
[367] Duruy, Hist. d. Rom., V., p. 463.
[368] III., p. 692.
[369] Friedländer, III., p. 701.
[370] A mesure que le temps s’avance les traits par lesquels se produit la croyance à une autre vie, d’abord vagues et confus, loin de s’effacer, se prononcent et se précisent. On se fait de la destinée des âmes des idées de plus en plus hautes; on rend aux morts des honneurs de plus en plus grands. En outre, ces idées, ces pratiques s’étendent de plus en plus au grand nombre. Au commencement il semble qu’on ne s’inquiète que du sort des rois et des héros, enfants ou descendants directs des dieux; avec le temps beaucoup d’autres ont part aux mêmes préoccupations, puis tous ou presque tous. La félicité est réservée a qui ressemble aux dieux; c’est une maxime antique qui subsiste immuable. Avec le temps on se fait de la ressemblance avec les dieux ou, ce qui revient au même, de la perfection, des idées qui permettent à tous d’y prétendre.’ Ravaisson, Le Monument de Myrrhine et les bas-reliefs funéraires, 1876, quoted by Duruy, op. cit., p. 463.
[371] See Vol. I., p. 68.
[372] For references see Friedländer, III., pp. 706 ff.
[373] Epod., xvii., 79.
[374] Friedländer, pp. 710 f.
[375] Sen., Epp., xvi., 5; xcv., 52; xli., 1 and 2.
[376] Perhaps, however, Zeller’s contention amounts to no more than that Seneca follows Posidonius in his adoption of the Platonic distinction between reason and passion, which were identified by the older Stoics. But the object of the latter was apparently to save the personality of man, which seemed to be threatened by Plato’s tripartite division of mind; and as Seneca achieves the same result by including the passions in the ἡγεμονικὸν[377] the difference between them and him is after all little more than verbal. For the general attitude of Seneca towards religion see Gaston Boissier, Religion Romaine, II., pp. 63-92.
[377] Epp., xcii., 1., (Zeller, by mistake refers to Epp., xciv., in Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 711.)
[378] As ψυχάριον, σωμάτιον, σαρκίδιον.
[379] Epict., Fragm., 175; Diss., I., xvi., 1-8; II., xvi., 42; III., xxii., 2; xxiv., 91-94. Zeller, III., a, p. 742.
[380] Zeller, p. 745.
[381] Friedländer, III., p. 493.
[382] Comm., VI., 30.
[383] Oratt., VI., p. 203.
[384] Diss., II., xxxvi.
[385] Ph. d. Gr., III., b, pp. 88 ff.
[386] Seneca, Epp., lxiv., 2; cviii., 17.
[387] Seneca, De Irâ, III., xxxvi., 1.
[388] Seneca, Epp., cviii., 22.
[389] For a detailed account of the Neo-Pythagorean school, see Zeller, op. cit., III., b, pp. 79-158, from which the above summary is entirely derived.
[390] De Defect. Orac., xvii., p. 419.
[391] Diss., I., xv., 2.
[392] Plutarch, De Is. et Osir., xxv. and xxvi; De Fac. in Orbe Lun., xxx.
[393] Op. et D., 120.
[394] Diss., I., xv., 7.
[395] Zeller, III., b, pp. 189 ff.
[396] De Superstit., viii., p. 169.
[397] Metamorph., XI., xxv.
[398] Zeller, III., b, pp. 257 ff.
[399] For references, see Ritter and Preller, Hist. Phil., pp. 467-73.
[400] For references, see Zeller, III., b, pp. 148 f.
[401] Suidas, quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 485.
[402] Vacherot, Histoire de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie, pp. 214-17; Zeller, III., b, pp. 387 ff. The original authority is Irenaeus.
[403] Politicus, p. 270 ff.
[404] Legg., X., pp. 896, D ff, 898, C, 904, A.
[405] De Isid. et Osir., xlv. f.; De Vir. Moral., iii.; De Anim. Procr., v., 5. Plutarch supposes that the irrational soul in man is derived from the evil world-soul which he regards rather as senseless than as Satanic. It would thus very closely resemble the delirious Demiurgus of Valentinus and the ‘absolut Dumme’ of Eduard v. Hartmann.
[406] Diss., III., xxiii.
[407] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, pp. 807 ff.
[408] Porph., Vita Plot., cap. iii.
[409] Ibid., cap. vii.
[410] Ibid., cap. xiii.
[411] Not, as is commonly stated, on the model of Plato’s Republic, which would have been a far more difficult enterprise, and one little in accordance with the practical good sense shown on other occasions by Plotinus.
[412] Porph., Vita, cap. xii.; Hegel, Gesch. d. Ph., III., p. 34.
[413] Porph., Vita, cap. ix.
[414] Ibid., xi. Leopardi has taken the incident referred to as the subject of one of his dialogues; Plotinus, the great champion of optimism, being chosen, with bitter irony, to represent the Italian poet’s own pessimistic views of life. The difficulty was to show how the Neo-Platonist philosopher could, consistently with the principles thus fathered on him, still continue to dissuade his pupil from committing suicide. Leopardi voluntarily faces the argumentum ad hominem by which common sense has in all ages summarily disposed of pessimism: ‘Then why don’t you kill yourself?’ (‘Your philosophy or your life,’ so to speak.) The answer is singularly lame. Porphyry is to think of the distress which his death would cause to his friends. He might have replied that if the general misery were so great as Plotinus had maintained, a little more or less affliction would not make any appreciable difference; that, considering the profound selfishness of mankind, an accepted article of faith with pessimism, his friends would in all probability easily resign themselves to his loss; that, at any rate, the suffering inflicted on them would be a mere trifle compared to what he would himself be getting rid of; and that, if the worst came to the worst, they had but to follow his example and ease themselves of all their troubles at a single stroke. A sincere pessimist would probably say: ‘I do not kill myself because I am afraid: and my very fear of death is a conclusive argument in favour of my creed. Nothing proves the deep-rooted necessity of pain more strongly than that we should refuse to profit by so obvious a means of escaping from it as that offered by suicide.’ Of course where pessimism is associated with a belief in metempsychosis, as among the Buddhists, there is the best of reasons for not seeking a violent death, namely, that it would in all probability transfer the suicide to another and inferior grade of existence; whereas, by using the opportunities of self-mortification which this world offers, he might succeed in extinguishing the vital principle for good and all. And Schopenhauer does, in fact, adopt the belief in metempsychosis just so far as is necessary to exclude the desirability of suicide from his philosophy. But the truth is, that while Asiatic pessimism is the logical consequence of a false metaphysical system, the analogous systems of European pessimists are simply an excuse for not pushing their disgust with life to its only rational issue.
[415] Porph., Vita, cap. xviii.
[416] Porphyry says six, but there must be a mistake somewhere, as Plotinus was fifty-nine when their friendship began, and died in his sixty-sixth year; while Porphyry’s departure for Sicily took place two years before that event, leaving, at most, five years during which their personal intercourse can have lasted, if the other dates are to be trusted.
[417] Enn., III., ii. and iii.
[418] Plotini Opera recognovit Adolphus Kirchhoff, Lipsiae, 1856, in Teubner’s series of Greek and Latin authors. H. F. Müller, the latest editor of Plotinus, has returned to the original arrangement by Enneads. His edition is accompanied by a very useful German translation, only half of which, however, has as yet appeared. (Berlin, 1878.)
[419] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., b, p. 472. (Third edition.)
[420] Porph., Vita, iv. ff., xxiv. ff.
[421] Ibid., cap. x.
[422] Ibid.
[423] Ibid., cap. xxii.
[424] Ibid., capp. i. and ii.
[425] Zeller, op. cit., pp. 451 ff.
[426] Porph., Vita, cap. xx.
[427] A single example will make our meaning clear. Plotinus is trying to prove that there can be no Form without Matter. He first argues that if the notes of a concept can be separated from one another, this proves the presence of Matter, since divisibility is an affection belonging only to it. He then goes on to say, εἰ δὲ πολλὰ ὂν ἀμέριστόν ἐστι, τὰ πολλὰ ἐν ἑνὶ ὂντα ἐν ὕλῃ ἐστὶ τῷ ἑνὶ αὐτὰ μορφαὶ αῦτου ὂντα. (Enn., II., iv., 4; Kirchhoff, I., p. 113, I. 7.) The meaning is, that if the notes are inseparable, the unity in which they inhere is related to them as Matter to Form.
[428] See the index to Kirchhoff’s edition.
[429] For references see Kirchner, Die Philosophie des Plotin, p. 185; Steinhart, Meletemata Plotiniana, pp. 9-23; Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., b, pp. 430 f.
[430] Steinhart, op. cit., pp. 30 ff.; Kirchner, op. cit., pp. 186 ff.
[431] Porph., Vita, cap. xv.
[432] Enn., I., vi.
[433] Meno, 86, A. Compare Vol. I., p. 212.
[434] Theaetêtus, 176, A. Phaedo, 67, B ff.
[435] Op. cit., p. 427.
[436] Enn., IV., vii.
[437] Enn., III., i., 3.
[438] Enn., III., i.
[439] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ δεῖ καὶ ἕκαστον εἶναι καὶ πράξεις ἡμετέρας καὶ διανοίας ὑπάρχειν. III., i., 4, Kirchh., I., p. 38, l. 22. So utterly incapable is M. Vacherot of placing himself at this point of view, that he actually reads into the words quoted an argument in favour of free-will based on the testimony of consciousness. His version runs as follows:—‘Nous savons et nous croyons fermement par le sentiment de ce qui se passe en nous que les individus (les âmes) vivent, agissent, pensent, d’une vie, d’une action, d’une pensée qui leur est propre.’—Histoire Critique de l’École d’Alexandrie, I., p. 514. So far as our knowledge goes, such an appeal to consciousness is not to be found in any ancient writer.
[440] See Legg., 861, A ff. for an attempt to prove that men may properly be punished for actions committed through ignorance of their real good. This passage is one of the grounds used by Teichmüller, in his Literarische Fehden, to establish the rather paradoxical thesis that Aristotle published his Ethics before Plato’s death.
[441] III., i., 10.
[442] Cap. 4, sub fin.
[443] Capp. 6 and 7. Cp. Enn., II., iii.; Zeller, op. cit., pp. 567 ff; Kirchner, Ph. d. Plot., p. 195.
[444] Plato, Phaedo, 79, A ff.; Aristot., De An., III., iv., sub fin.
[445] Phaedr., 245, C; Legg., 892, A.
[446] Adv. Col., ix., 3.
[447] Enn., IV., ii., i.
[448] Enn., IV., ii., sub fin.; Tim., 35, A.
[449] Enn., V., ix.
[450] Enn., IV., viii.
[451] Enn., V., ix., 2.
[452] Readers of Pope’s Essay on Man will recognise this argument. It was, in fact, borrowed from Plotinus by Leibnitz, and handed on through Bolingbroke to Pope. There is no better introduction to Neo-Platonism than this beautiful poem.
[453] Kirchner, Ph. d. Plot., p. 35. The triad of body, soul, and spirit is still to be met with in modern popular philosophy; but, contrary to the Greek order of priority, there is a noticeable tendency to rank soul, as the seat of emotion, higher than spirit or pure reason, particularly among persons whose opinions receive little countenance from the last-mentioned faculty.
[454] Rep., VI., 508, C ff.; VII., 517, C.
[455] Vol. I., p. 229.
[456] Ibid., p. 235.
[457] Aristot., Metaph., I., vi.
[458] Enn., V., iv., 2; Kirchh., I., p. 72, l. 8.
[459] This is the method of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, which seems to show that Fichte was acquainted with Neo-Platonism, probably at second-hand.
[460] Enn., IV., ix.
[461] Ibid., 3; Kirchh., I., p, 75, l. 24.
[462] Enn., VI., ix., 1.
[463] Enn., VI., ix., 3; Kirchh., I., pp. 81 ff.
[464] In the introductory essay prefixed to his work De l’École d’Alexandrie.
[465] οὕτω δὲ καλῶν ἀμφοτέρων ὄντων, γνώσεώς τε καὶ ἀληθείας, ἄλλο καὶ κάλλιον ἔτι τούτων.—Rep., 508, E. οὐκ οὐσίας ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἔτι ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος.—Ibid., 509, B. The first of these passages is bracketed by Stallbaum, but not the second.
[466] Symp., 211, E f.
[467] Enn., V., i.
[468] Enn., VI., ix., 3, sub fin.; ibid., 6, p. 764, E. (Kirchh., I., p. 87, l. 16); Enn., V., v., 6, p. 525, D. (Kirchh., II., p. 24, l. 24).
[469] Enn., VI., ix., 9, sub fin.
[470] Ibid., V., ii., I, p. 494, A. (Kirchh., I., p. 109, l. 7).
[471] Ibid., V., i., 5, p. 487, C. (Kirchh., I., p. 101, l. 32).
[472] Enn., V., i., 6, p. 487, B. (Kirchh., I., p. 101, l. 21).
[473] Enn., V., i., 4, p. 485, E (Kirchh., I., pp. 99 f.).
[474] Enn., V., ii., 1, p. 494, A; VI., ix., 2, p. 759, A; II., iv., 5, p. 162, A.
[475] Enn., IV., iv., 16, p. 409, C (Kirchh., I., p. 283, l. 31).
[476] Enn., V., ii., 2.
[477] Enn., II., iv.
[478] Aristot., Metaph., VII., x., sub fin.
[479] Tim., 48, E, ff.
[480] Ibid., 47, E.
[481] Enn., II., iv., 5, p. 161, E (Kirchh., I., p. 114, l. 1).
[482] Enn., II., iv., 11, sub fin.
[483] Enn., III., vi., 14 f.
[484] Enn., II., iv., 15, p. 169, A (Kirchh., I., p. 124, l. 17).
[485] Ibid., 5, p. 162, A (Kirchh., I., p. 114, l. 12).
[486] Ibid., III., ix., 3, p. 358, A (Kirchh., I., p. 128, l. 22).
[487] Enn., III., iv., i.
[488] Enn., II., iv., 15, p. 169, B (Kirchh., I., p. 124, l. 22).
[489] Enn., IV., iii,, 9, p. 379, A (Kirchh., I., p. 244, l. 17). In one of his latest essays (Enn., I., viii., 7) Plotinus for a moment accepts the Platonic theory that evil must necessarily coexist with good as its correlative opposite, but quickly returns to the alternative theory that evil results from the gradual diminution and extinction of good (cp. Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., b, p. 549).
[490] Enn., III., viii., 4 and 8.
[491] Our own word ‘paragon’ is a curious record of the theory in question. It is derived from the Greek participial substantive ὁ παράγων, the producer. Now, according to Neo-Platonism, in the hierarchic series of existences, the product always strives, or should strive, to model itself on the producer, hence παράγων came to be used in the double sense of a cause and an exemplar. As such, it is one of the technical terms employed throughout the Institutiones Theologicae of Proclus. But, in time, the second or derivative meaning became so much the more important as to gain exclusive possession of the word on its adoption into modern languages.
[492] Enn., III., iv., 2.
[493] Enn., I., ii., 1.
[494] Ibid., 3.
[495] Enn., I., ii., 6, sub fin.
[496] Ibid., 5.
[497] Ibid., ix.
[498] Enn., I., iii.
[499] Rep., VI., 511.
[500] See the conclusion of the Posterior Analytics.
[501] Enn., III., vii., 1, p. 325, C (Kirchh., II., p. 282, l. 13).
[502] Zeller’s last volume, giving a full account of the Neo-Platonic school, has recently reached a third edition, but it belongs to a connected work, and contains, in addition, a mass of information possessing special interest for theologians. It has not, however, been translated into English, nor apparently is there any intention of translating it. Our own literature on the subject is represented by a worthless book of Kingsley’s, entitled Alexandria and her Schools, and a novel by a lady, called the Wards of Plotinus.
[503] Enn., VI., ix., sub fin.
[504] Enn., III., ii., 15, p. 266, E (Kirchh., II., p. 336, l. 31). M. Renan talks of the period from 235 to 284 as ‘cet enfer d’un demi-siècle où sombre toute philosophie, toute civilité, toute délicatesse’ (Marc-Aurèle, p. 498). As, however, this epoch produced Neo-Platonism, the expression ‘toute philosophie’ is rather misplaced.
[505] Enn., IV., iv., 17, p. 410, B. (Kirchh., I., p. 285, l. 1).
[506] Ph. d. Gr., III., b, pp. 69 ff, 419 ff.
[507] Op. cit., pp. 419 ff.
[508] Zeller, p. 447.
[509] Enn., V., v., p. 520, A. (Kirchh., II., p. 18, l. 3). This is the only passage in the Enneads where the Sceptics seem to be alluded to.
[510] Loc. cit.
[511] Vita, x., sub fin.
[512] For specimens of his treatment, see Zeller, pp. 622 ff.
[513] For the theology of Plotinus see Zeller, pp. 619 ff, and for the daemons, p. 570. In our opinion, Zeller attributes a much stronger religious faith to Plotinus than can be proved from the passages to which he refers.
[514] Enn., V., vii.
[515] Enn., V., vii., I, p. 539, B. (Kirchh., I., p. 145, l. 23).
[516] For references, see Zeller, pp. 588 ff.
[517] Enn., VI., ii., 3, p. 598, A. (Kirchh., II., p. 227).
[518] Enn., II., ix.
[519] Ibid., cap. 6.
[520] Ibid., 14.
[521] Enn., II., ix., 15.
[522] Kirchner, Die Ph. d. Plot., pp. 1-24, 175-208. Cp. Steinhart, Meletemata Plotiniana, p. 4.
[523] Two other popular misconceptions may be traced back, in part at least, to the exclusively transcendental interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. By drawing away attention from the Socratic dialogues, it broke the connexion between Socrates and his chief disciple, thus leaving the former to be estimated exclusively from Xenophon’s view of his character as a moral and religious teacher. True, Xenophon himself supplies us with the data which prove that Socrates was, above all things, a dialectician, but only in the reflex light of Plato’s subsequent developments can their real significance be perceived. On the other hand, the attempt to combine Aristotle with Plato led to a serious misunderstanding of the actual relation between the two. When the whole ideal element of his philosophy had been drawn off and employed to heighten still further the transcendentalism of his master’s teaching, the Stagirite came to be judged entirely by the residual elements, by the logical, physical, and critical portions of his system. On the strength of these, he was represented as the type of whatever is most opposed to Plato, and, in particular, of a practical, prosaic turn of mind, which was quite alien from his true character.
[524] Χαλεπὸν μὲν γνωσθῆναι ... γιγνωσκόμενον δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ γεννήματι τῇ οὐσίᾳ. (Enn., VI., ix., 5, p. 763, B.) Πᾶν τὸ θεῖον αὐτὸ μὲν διὰ τὴν ὑπερούσιον ἕνωσιν ἄρρητόν ἐστι καὶ ἄγνωστον πᾶσι τοῖς δευτέροις· ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν μετεχόντων ληπτόν ἐστι καὶ γνωστόν. (Proclus, Institutiones Theologicae, cxxiii.), cp. Proclus, ibid., clxii.
[525] De Princip., ii., quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 536 f.
[526] Inst. Theol., lxxii., cp. Zeller, p. 808, where it is denied, wrongly, as we think, that Plotinus held the same view.
[527] The following sketch is based on the accounts given of the period to which it relates in the works of Zeller and Vacherot.
[528] De Civit. Dei, VIII., v., quoted by Kirchner, p. 208.
[529] Enn., II., ix., 18, p. 217, C; for Syrianus and Proclus, see Zeller, p. 738. The Emperor Constantine is said to have remained a sun-worshipper all his life (Vacherot, II., p. 153); and even Philo Judaeus speaks of the stars as visible gods (Zeller, p. 393).
[530] Quoted by Ritter and Preller, p. 539.
[531] Compare the report of Agathias with the series of questions put to Priscian, quoted in the Dissertation by M. Quicherat, prefixed to Dübner’s edition of Priscian’s Solutiones (printed after Plotinus in Didot’s edition, pp. 549 ff).
[532] M. Vacherot says (II., p. 400), without giving any authority for his statement, that the Neo-Platonists were driven from Persia by the persecution of the Magi; and that they returned home ‘furtivement,’ which is certainly incorrect. They returned openly, under the protection of a treaty between Persia and Rome.
[533] Repub., IX., sub fin.
[534] Hauréau, Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique, I., p. 372.
[535] For Gilbert de la Porrée see Hauréau, I., chap. xviii.
[536] Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur les Traductions latines d’Aristote.
[537] The term Nominalist is here used in the wide sense given to it by Hauréau. See the last chapter of his work on the Scholastic Philosophy.
[538] Works I., p. 405 in Ellis and Spedding’s edition.
[539] ‘Historia naturalis ... materia prima philosophiae.’ De Aug., II., iii.
[540] The ‘notions and conceptions’ of the Advancement of Learning (Works, III., p. 356) is rendered by ‘axiomata’ in the De Augmentis (I., p. 567), where in both instances the question is entirely about Forms. Cp. § 8 of Prof. Fowler’s Introduction to the Novum Organum.
[541] Analyt. Prior., II., xxx.
[542] Prof. Bain, after mentioning that the second book of the Topics ‘sets forth in a crude condition the principal canons of inductive logic,’ goes on to say that ‘these statements cannot be called germs for they never germinated’ (Grote’s Minor Works, p. 14). May they not have germinated in the Novum Organum?
[543] Descartes showed a much deeper insight into the scientific conditions of industrial progress than Bacon. His words are, ‘On peut trouver une philosophie pratique par laquelle connoissant la force et les actions du feu, de l’eau, de l’air, des astres, des cieux, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que nous connoissons les divers mestiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrions employer en même façon à tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maistres et possesseurs de la Nature.’ Discours de la Méthode, Sixième Partie. This passage has been recently quoted by Dr. Bridges (‘Comte’s Definition of Life,’ Fortnightly Review for June 1881, p. 684) to illustrate what seems a very questionable position. He says that the Copernican astronomy, by revealing the infinitude of the universe, made men despair of comprehending nature in her totality, and thus threw them back on enquiries of more directly human interest and practical applicability; particularly specifying ‘the lofty utilitarianism of the Novum Organum and of the Discours de la Méthode,’ as ‘one of the first concomitants’ ‘of this intellectual revolution.‘ There seems to be a double misconception here: for, in the first place, Bacon could hardly have been influenced by a theory which he persistently rejected; and, in the next place, neither Bacon nor Descartes showed a trace of the positivist tendency to despair of attaining absolute and universal knowledge. Both of them expected to discover the inmost essences of things; and neither of them imagined that a different set of conditions might come into play outside the boundaries of the visible universe. In fact they believed themselves to be enlarging instead of restricting the field of mental vision; and it was from this very enlargement that they anticipated the most momentous practical results. It was with Locke, as we shall see hereafter, that the sceptical or agnostic movement began. In this same article, Dr. Bridges repeats, probably on Comte’s authority, the incredible statement that ‘Thales taught the Egyptian priests those two or three elementary truths as to the laws of triangles, which enabled them to tell the height of the pyramid by measuring its shadow.’ Comte’s ignorance or carelessness in relating this story as a well-attested fact was long ago noticed with astonishment by Grote. (Life of George Grote, p. 204.)
[544] Whewell notices this ‘Stationary Interval’ (History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. XVI., chapter iii., sect. 3), but without determining either its just limits or its real cause.
[545] Compreso che sarà il moto di quest’ astro mondano in cui siamo ... s’aprirà la porta de l’intelligenza de li principi veri di cose naturali. De l’Infinito Universo e Mondi, p. 51, Wagner’s Ed.
[546] ‘Sono amputate radici che germogliano, son cose antiche che rivegnono. Ibid., p. 82.
[547] Principio Causa et Uno, p. 225. For David of Dinan, whose opinions are known only through the reports of Albertus and Aquinas, see Hauréau, II., iv.
[548] Galileo’s words are:—‘Il moto circulare è naturale del tutto e delle parti mentre sono in ottima disposizione.’ Dialoghi sui Massimi Sistemi. Opere, Vol. I., p. 265; see also p. 38.
[549] Dialoghi, p. 211.
[550] ‘Non posso trovar termine all’ammirazione mia come abbia possuto in Aristarco e nel Copernico far la ragione tanta violenza al senso che contro a questo ella si sia fatta padrona della loro credulità.’ Dialoghi, p. 358.
[551] Ibid., p. 370.
[552] ‘Kepler était persuadé de l’existence de ces lois en suivant cette pensée de Platon: que Dieu, en créant le monde, avait dû faire de la géometrie.’ Arago, Œuvres III., p. 212.
[553] De Aug., III., v. Works, I., p. 571.
[554] This is well brought out in a remarkable series of articles on the Philosophy of Hobbes recently published by Tönnies in the Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie.
[555] Leviathan, chap. xv., sub fin.
[556] Leviathan, chap. xi., sub fin.
[557] Leviathan, chap. vi.
[558] Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, sub in.
[559] Advancement of Learning, Ellis and Spedding, III., p. 428.
[560] Republic, VI., 511, Jowett’s Trans. III., p. 398.
[561] Plotinus himself expresses a doubt as to whether the One is, properly speaking, all things or not (Enn., V., ii., sub in.); but in his essay on Substance and Quality, he defines qualities as energies of the substance to which they belong (Enn., II., vi. 3). Now all things are, according to his philosophy, energies of the One. There would, therefore, be no difficulty in considering it as their substance.
—— Quia multimodis, multis, mutata, per omne
Ex infinito vexantur percita plagis,
Omne genus motus, et coetus experiundo,
Tandem deveniunt in taleis disposituras,
Qualibus haec rebus consistit summa creata. (I., 1023-7.)
[563] V., 853; IV., 780-800; V., 1025.
[564] Just the same remark applies to the monads of Leibnitz. Each monad reflects all the others, and infers that its reflections represent a reality from the infinite creative power of God. Descartes’ appeal to the divine veracity represents the same method in a less developed stage. The root-idea here is to be sought for, not in Greek thought but in the Christian doctrine of a supernatural revelation.
[565] The formal cause of a thing is its species, the concept under which it is immediately subsumed; the efficient cause is what brings it into existence. Thus the formal cause of a man is humanity, the efficient cause, his father.
[566] Eth., I., prop. xvi.; II., prop. iii.; prop. v.; prop. xviii., schol.; prop. xxviii.; prop. xl., schol. ii.; V., prop. xxix., schol.; prop. xl., schol. (The passage last referred to is the clearest and most decisive.)
[567] See the passage from the Republic quoted above.
[568] The tendency of logicians is now, contrariwise, to force reasoning into parallelism with mathematical physics by interpreting the proposition as an equation between subject and predicate.
[569] III., prop. ii., schol.
[570] II., vii., schol.
[571] III., ix. and xi.
[572] Greek tragedy is just the reverse—an expansion of the old patriarchal relations into a mould fitted to receive the highest thought and feeling of a civilised age.
[573] For the whole subject of Spinoza’s mathematical method, see Windelband’s paper on Spinoza in the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1877. Some points in the last paragraph were suggested by Mr. Pollock’s Spinoza (pp. 255, 264).
[574] Essay, Bk. iv., ch. 12.
[575] See the references to Epictêtus, supra, p. 21.
[576] What Aristotle has written on the subject is not ethics but natural history.
[577] ‘Ne remarque-t-on comment chaque recherche analytique de Laplace a fait ressortir dans notre globe et dans l’univers des conditions d’ordre et de durée?’—Arago, Œuvres, III., p. 496.