56. The school of Euclides of Megara swerved suddenly from these ethical interests and devoted itself mainly to the problems of dialectic. From the Socratic practice of classification it arrived at the doctrine of the One being, which alone it held to be truly existent, and which it identified with the One God proclaimed by Xenophanes and his followers of the Eleatic school. To the Megaric school we are therefore chiefly indebted for the assertion of the philosophical principle of monism; the same school drew the necessary logical consequence, that evil is not in any real sense existent. From the Eleatics the Megarians further derived an interest in logical speculation of all kinds, and they were greatly occupied with the solution of fallacies: amongst the followers of this school we first meet with the puzzles of ‘the heap’ (Sorites), ‘the liar’ (Pseudomenos), and others upon which in later times Chrysippus and other Stoics sharpened their wits[89]. Diodorus the Megarian set out certain propositions with regard to the relation of the possible and the necessary which are of critical importance in connexion with the problem of free-will[90]. Finally Stilpo, who taught in Athens about 320 B.C., and who made a violent attack upon Plato’s theory of ideas, adopted an ethical standpoint not unlike that of the Cynics[91], and counted amongst his pupils the future founder of Stoicism. Stilpo enjoyed amongst his contemporaries a boundless reputation; princes and peoples vied in doing him honour[92]; but we have scarcely any record of his teaching, and know him almost exclusively as one who contributed to form the mind of Zeno.
Advance of Philosophy.
57. With the school founded by Phaedo of Elis we are not concerned; the consideration of Plato and Aristotle and their respective followers we must leave to another chapter. We have already seen philosophy grow from being the interest of isolated theorists into a force which is gathering men in groups, and loosening the inherited bonds of city and class. So far its course has violently oscillated, both as regards its subject-matter and its principles. But its range is now becoming better defined, and in the period that is approaching we shall find determined attempts to reach a comprehensive solution of the problems presented to enquiring minds.
FOOTNOTES
[1] ‘Stoicism was the earliest offspring of the union between the religious consciousness of the East and the intellectual culture of the West’ Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 274.
[2] Amongst the most important of these are Th. Gomperz’ Greek Thinkers (transl. by L. Magnus and G. G. Berry, London, 1901-5), and J. Adam’s Religious teachers of Greece (Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1908).
[3] ‘Most clear air is spread about it cloudless, and the white light floats over it’ Hom. Od. 6, 46 (Butcher and Lang’s transl.). See also Adam, Religious Teachers, p. 31.
[4] ‘It is not possible for another god to go beyond, or make void, the purpose of Zeus’ Od. 5, 103.
[5] Il. 24, 308; Od. 14, 404.
[6] ib. 6, 188.