Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

[Footnote 587: ][ (return) ] "Timæus," ch. ix.

[Footnote 588: ][ (return) ] Maurice's "Ancient Philosophy," p. 149.

This passage from psychology to ontology is not achieved per saltum, or effected by any arbitrary or unwarrantable assumption. There are principles revealed in the centre of our consciousness, whose regular development carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and attain to the knowledge of actual being. The absolute principles of causality and substance, of intentionality and unity, unquestionably give us the absolute Being. Indeed the absolute truth that every idea supposes a being in which it resides, and which is but another form of the law or principle of substance, viz., that every quality supposes a substance or being in which it inheres, is adequate to carry us from Idea to Being. "There is not a single cognition which does not suggest to us the notion of existence, and there is not an unconditional and absolute truth which does not necessarily imply an absolute and unconditional Being." [⁵⁸⁹]

[Footnote 589: ][ (return) ] Cousin's "Elements of Psychology," p. 506.

This, then, is the dialectic of Plato. Instead of losing himself amid the endless variety of particular phenomena, he would search for principles and laws, and from thence ascend to the great Legislator, the First Principle of all Principles. Instead of stopping at the relations of sensible objects to the general ideas with which they are commingled, he will pass to their eternal Paradigms--from the just thing to the idea of absolute justice, from the particular good to the absolute good, from beautiful things to the absolute beauty, and thence to the ultimate reality--the absolute Being. By the realization of the lower idea, embodied in the forms of the visible universe and in the necessary laws of thought, he sought to rise to the higher idea, in its pure and abstract form--the Supreme Idea, containing in itself all other ideas--the One Intelligence which unites the universe in a harmonious whole. "The Dialectic faculty proceeds from hypothesis to an unhypothetical principle.... It uses hypotheses as steps, and starting-points, in order to proceed from thence to the absolute. The Intuitive Reason takes hold of the First Principle of the Universe, and avails itself of all the connections and relations of that principle. It ascends from idea to idea, until it has reached the Supreme Idea"--the Absolute Good--that is, God. [⁵⁹⁰]

[Footnote 590: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx. and xxi.

We are thus brought, in the course of our examination of the Platonic method, to the results obtained by this method--or, in other words, to

III. THE PLATONIC ONTOLOGY.

The grand object of all philosophic inquiry in ancient Greece was to attain to the knowledge of real Being--that Being which is permanent, unchangeable, and eternal. It had proceeded on the intuitive conviction, that beneath all the endless diversity of the universe there must be a principle of unity--below all fleeting appearances there must be a permanent substance--beyond all this everlasting flow and change, this beginning and end of finite existence, there must be an eternal Being, which is the cause, and which contains, in itself, the reason of the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency which pervades the universe. And it had perpetually asked what is this permanent, unchangeable, and eternal substance or being?