The various founders of the philosophic sects of Greece, imbibed that portion of the doctrines of Socrates which suited their own tastes and views, and sometimes perverted his high authority even to dogmatical or sophistical purposes. It is from Plato we have derived the fullest account of his system; but this illustrious disciple had also greatly extended his knowledge by his voyages to Egypt, Sicily, and Magna Græcia. Hence in the Academy which he founded, (while, as to morals, he continued to follow Socrates,) he superadded the metaphysical doctrines of Pythagoras; in physics, which Socrates had excluded from philosophy, he adopted the system of Heraclitus; and he borrowed his dialectics from Euclid of Megara. The recondite and eisoteric tenets of Pythagoras—the obscure principles of Heraclitus—the superhuman knowledge of Empedocles, and the sacred Arcana of Egyptian priests, have diffused over the page of Plato a majesty and mysticism very different from what we suppose to have been the familiar tone of instruction employed by his great master, of whose style at least, and manner, Xenophon probably presents us with a more faithful image.
In Greece, the heads of sects were succeeded in their schools or academies as in a domain or inheritance. Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, continued to deliver lectures in the Academy, as did also four other successive masters, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, and Crantor, all of whom retained the name of Academics, and taught the doctrines of their master without mixture or corruption. But on the appointment of Xenocrates to the chair of the Academy, Aristotle, the most eminent of Plato’s scholars, had betaken himself to another Gymnasium, called the Lyceum, which became the resort of the Peripatetics. The commanding genius of their founder enlarged the sphere of knowledge and intellect, devised the rules of logic, and traced out the principles of rhetorical and poetical criticism: But the sect which he exalted to unrivalled celebrity, though differing in name from the contemporary Academics, coincided with them generally in all the principal points of physical and moral philosophy, and particularly in those concerning which the Romans chiefly inquired. “Though they [pg 207]differed in terms,” says Cicero, “they agreed in things[361], and those persons are grossly mistaken who imagine that the old Academics, as they are called, are any other than the Peripatetics.” Accordingly, we find that both believed in the superintending care of Providence, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of reward and punishment. The supreme good they placed in virtue, with a sufficiency of the chief external advantages of nature, as health, riches, and reputation. Such enjoyments they taught, when united with virtue, make the felicity of man perfect; but if virtuous, he is capable of being happy, (though not entirely so,) without them.
Plato, in his mode of communicating instruction, and promulgating his opinions, had not strictly adhered to the method of his master Socrates. He held the concurrence of memory, with a recent impression, to be a criterion of truth, and he taught that opinions might be formed from the comparison of a present with a recollected perception. But his successors, both in the Academy and Lyceum, departed from the Socratic method still more widely. They renounced the maxim, of affirming nothing; and instead of explaining everything with a doubting reserve, they converted philosophy, as it were, into an art, and formed a system of opinions, which they delivered to their disciples as the peculiar tenets of their sect. They inculcated the belief, that our knowledge has its origin in the senses—that the senses themselves do not judge of truth, but the mind through them beholds things as they really are—that is, it perceives the ideas which always subsist in the same state, without change; so that the senses, through the medium of the mind, may be relied on for the ascertainment of truth. Such was the state of opinions and instruction in the Academy when Arcesilaus, who was the sixth master of that school from Plato, and in his youth had heard the lessons of Pyrrho the sceptic, resolved to reform the dogmatic system into which his predecessors had fallen, and to restore, as he conceived, in all its purity, the Socratic system of affirming nothing with certainty. This founder of the New, or Middle Academy as it is sometimes called, denied even the certain truth of the proposition that we know nothing, which Socrates had reserved as an exception to his general principle. While admitting that there is an actual certainty in the nature of things, he rejected the evidence both of the senses and reason as positive testimony; and as he denied that there existed any infallible criterion of truth or falsehood, he maintained that no wise man ought to [pg 208]give any proposition whatever the sanction of his assent. He differed from the Sceptics or Pyrrhonists only in this, that he admitted degrees of probability, whereas the Sceptics fluctuated in total uncertainty.
As Arcesilaus renounced all pretensions to the certain determination of any question, he was chiefly employed in examining and refuting the sentiments of others. His principal opponent was his contemporary, Zeno, the founder of the stoical philosophy, which ultimately became the chief of those systems which flourished at Rome. The main point in dispute between Zeno and Arcesilaus, was the evidence of the senses. Arcesilaus denied that truth could be ascertained by their assistance, because there is no criterion by which to distinguish false and delusive objects from such as are real. Zeno, on the other hand, maintained that the evidence of the senses is certain and clear, provided they be perfect in themselves, and without obstacle to prevent their effect. Thus, though on different principles, the founder of the Stoics agreed with the Peripatetics and old Academicians, that there existed certain means of ascertaining truth, and consequently that there was evident and certain knowledge. Arcesilaus, though he did not deny that truth existed, would neither give assent nor entertain opinions, because appearances could never warrant his pronouncing on any object or proposition whatever. Nor did the Stoics entertain opinions; but they refrained from this, because they thought that everything might be perceived with certainty.
Arcesilaus, while differing widely from the teachers of the old Platonic Academy in his ideas as to the certainty of knowledge, retained their system concerning the supreme good, which, like them, he placed in virtue, accompanied by external advantages. This was another subject of contest with Zeno, who, as is well known, placed the supreme good in virtue alone,—health, riches, and reputation, not being by him accounted essential, nor disease, poverty, and ignominy, injurious to happiness.
The systems promulgated in the old and new Academy, and the stoical Portico, were those which became most prevalent in Rome. But the Epicurean opinions were also fashionable there. The philosophy of Epicurus has been already mentioned while speaking of Lucretius. Moschus of Phœnicia, who lived before the Trojan war, is said to have been the inventor of the Atomic system, which was afterwards adopted and improved by Leucippus and Democritus, whose works, as Cicero expresses it, were the source from which flowed the [pg 209]streams that watered the gardens of Epicurus[362]. To the evidence of the senses this teacher attributed such weight, that he considered them as an infallible rule of truth. The supreme good he placed in pleasure, and the chief evil in pain. His scholars maintained, that by pleasure, or rather happiness, he meant a life of wisdom and temperance; but a want of clearness and explicitness in the definition of what constituted pleasure, has given room to his opponents for alleging that he placed consummate felicity in sensual gratification.
It was long before a knowledge of any portion of Greek philosophy was introduced at Rome. For 600 years after the building of the city, those circumstances did not arise in that capital which called forth and promoted philosophy in Greece. The ancient Romans were warriors and agriculturists. Their education was regulated with a view to an active life, and rearing citizens and heroes, not philosophers. The Campus Martius was their school; the tent their Lyceum, and the traditions of their ancestors, and religious rites, their science,—they were taught to act, to believe, and to obey, not to reason or discuss. Among them a class of men may indeed have existed not unlike the seven sages of Greece—men distinguished by wisdom, grave saws, and the services they had rendered to their country; but these were not philosophers in our sense of the term. The wisdom they inculcated was not sectarian, but resembled that species of philosophy cultivated by Solon and Lycurgus, which has been termed political by Brucker, and which was chiefly adapted to the improvement of states, and civilization of infant society. At length, however, in the year 586, when Perseus, King of Macedon, was finally vanquished, his conqueror brought with him to Rome the philosopher Metrodorus, to aid in the instruction of his children[363]. Several philosophers, who had been retained in the court of that unfortunate monarch, auguring well from this incident, followed Metrodorus to Italy; and about the same time a number of Achæans, of distinguished merit, who were suspected to have favoured the Macedonians, were summoned to Rome, in order to account for their conduct. The younger Scipio Africanus, in the course of the embassy to which he was appointed by the Senate, to the kings of the east, who were in alliance with the republic, having landed at Rhodes, took under his protection the Stoic philosopher Panætius[364], who was a native of that island, and carried him back to Rome, where [pg 210]he resided in the house of his patron. Panætius afterwards went to Athens, where he became one of the most distinguished teachers of the Portico[365], and composed a number of philosophical treatises, of which the chief was that on the Duties of Man.
But though the philosophers were encouraged and cherished by Scipio, Lælius, Scævola, and others of the more mild and enlightened Romans, they were viewed with an eye of suspicion by the grave Senators and stern Censors of the republic. Accordingly, in the year 592, only six years after their first arrival in Rome, the philosophers were banished from the city by a formal decree of the Senate[366]. The motives for issuing this rigorous edict are not very clearly ascertained. A notion may have been entertained by the severer members of the commonwealth, that the established religion and constitution of Rome might suffer by the discussion of speculative theories, and that the taste for science might withdraw the minds of youth from agriculture and arms. This dread, so natural to a rigid, laborious, and warlike people, would be increased by the degraded and slavish character of the Greeks, which, having been an accompaniment, might be readily mistaken for a consequence, of their progress in philosophy. As most of the philosophers, too, had come from the states of a hostile monarch, the Senate may have feared, lest they should inspire sentiments in the minds of youth, not altogether patriotic or purely republican.
“Sed vetuere patres quod non potuere vetare.”
Though driven from Rome, many of the Greek philosophers took up their residence in the municipal towns of Italy. By the intercession likewise of Scipio Africanus, an exception was made in favour of Panætius and the historian Polybius, who were permitted to remain in the capital. The spirit of inquiry, too, had been raised, and the mind had received an impulse which could not be arrested by any senatorial decree, and on which the slightest incident necessarily bestowed an accelerated progress.