[Footnote 470: ][ (return) ] Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 117.
[Footnote 471: ][ (return) ] "Gorgias," § 85-89.
[Footnote 472: ][ (return) ] Plato's "Theætetus," § 65-75.
There were others who laid hold on the weapons which Zeno had prepared to their hands. He had asserted that all the objects of sense were mere phantoms--delusive and transitory. By the subtilties of dialectic quibbling, he had attempted to prove that "change" meant "permanence," and "motion" meant "rest." [473] Words may, therefore, have the most opposite and contradictory meanings; and all language and all opinion may, by such a process, be rendered uncertain. One opinion is, consequently, for the individual, just as good as another; and all opinions are equally true and untrue. It was nevertheless desirable, for the good of society, that there should be some agreement, and that, for a time at least, certain opinions should prevail; and if philosophy had failed to secure this agreement, rhetoric, at least, was effectual; and, with the Sophist, rhetoric was "the art of making the worst appear the better reason." All wisdom was now confined to a species of "word jugglery," which in Athens was dignified as "the art of disputation."
[Footnote 473: ][ (return) ] "And do we not know that the Eleatic Palamedes (Zeno) spoke by art in such a manner that the same things appeared to be similar and dissimilar, one and many, at rest and in motion?"--"Phædrus," § 97.
SOCRATES (B.C. 469-399), the grand central figure in the group of ancient philosophers, arrived in Athens in the midst of this general skepticism. He had an invincible faith in truth. "He made her the mistress of his soul, and with patient labor, and unwearied energy, did his great and noble soul toil after perfect communion with her." He was disappointed and dissatisfied with the results that had been reached by the methods of his predecessors, and he was convinced that by these methods the problem of the universe could not be solved. He therefore turned away from physical inquiries, and devoted his whole attention to the study of the human mind, its fundamental beliefs, ideas, and laws. If he can not penetrate the mysteries of the outer world, he will turn his attention to the world within. He will "know himself," and find within himself the reason, and ground, and law of all existence. There he discovered certain truths which can not possibly be questioned. He felt he had within his own heart a faithful monitor--a conscience, which he regarded as the voice of God. [474] He believed "he had a divine teacher with him at all times. Though he did not possess wisdom, this teacher could put him on the road to seek it, could preserve him from delusions which might turn him out of the way, could keep his mind fixed upon the end for which he ought to act and live." [475] In himself, therefore, he sought that ground of certitude which should save him from the prevailing skepticism of his times. The Delphic inscription, Γνῶθι σεαντόν, "know thyself" becomes henceforth the fundamental maxim of philosophy.
[Footnote 474: ][ (return) ] The Dæmon of Socrates has been the subject of much discussion among learned men. The notion, once generally received, that his δαίµων was "a familiar genius," is now regarded as an exploded error. "Nowhere does Socrates, in Plato or Xenophon, speak of a genius or demon, but always of a dœmoniac something (το δαιµόνιον, or δαιµόνιν τι), or of a sign, a voice, a divine sign, a divine voice" (Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 166). "Socrates always speaks of a divine or supernatural somewhat ('divinum quiddam,' as Cicero has it), the nature of which he does not attempt to divine, and to which he never attributes personality" (Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. p. 357). The scholar need not to be informed that το δαιµόνιον, in classic literature, means the divine Essence (Lat. numen), to which are attributed events beyond man's power, yet not to be assigned to any special god.
[Footnote 475: ][ (return) ] Maurice's "Ancient Philosophy," p. 124.
Truth has a rational, à priori foundation in the constitution of the human mind. There are ideas connatural to the human reason which are the copies of those archetypal ideas which belong to the Eternal Reason. The grand problem of philosophy, therefore, now is--What are these fundamental IDEAS which are unchangeable and permanent, amid all the diversifies of human opinion, connecting appearance with reality, and constituting a ground of certain knowledge or absolute truth? Socrates may not have held the doctrine of ideas as exhibited by Plato, but he certainly believed that there were germs of truth latent in the human mind--principles which governed, unconsciously, the processes of thought, and that these could be developed by reflection and by questioning. These were embryonate in the womb of reason, coming to the birth, but needing the "maieutic" or "obstetric" art, that they might be brought forth. [476] He would, therefore, become the accoucheur of ideas, and deliver minds of that secret truth which lay in their mental constitution. And thus Psychology becomes the basis of all legitimate metaphysics.
[Footnote 476: ][ (return) ] Plato's "Theætetus," § 22.