Plato seizes his weapons and is imbued with his spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena. He does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things, but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and prepared for the future life he cannot solve, yet in which he believes. The sensible is an impenetrable empire, but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,—a great poetical rhapsodist like Xenophanes, severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty and goodness.
Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he, too, believes. But every thing in this world is fleeting and transitory, and, therefore, it is not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental mind of Aristotle with all his learning and all his logic.
The Epicureans arise. They place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They despair of truth. But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on virtue. But it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral governor, but subject to necessity.
Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who was revealed unto Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Isaiah. They solved nothing, since they did not know, even if they speculated on, the Great First Cause. And yet, with all their errors, they were the greatest benefactors of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while they set, by their lives, examples of a pure morality—not the morality of the gospel, but the severest virtue practiced by the old guides of mankind.
[Sidenote: Philosophy among the Romans.]
The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them. They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
[Sidenote: Followers of the Greeks.]
There were, doubtless, students of the Greek philosophy among the
Romans, perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two
persons of note who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,
Aurafanius and Rubinus, and these were Epicureans.
[Sidenote: Cicero.]
Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so greatly to his intellectual culture. But even he added nothing. He was only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. He regarded those subjects, which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools, to be beyond the power of human cognition, and, therefore, looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of moral good. He regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of human society preferable to the obligations of pursuing scientific researches. Although a great admirer of Plato and Aristotle, he regarded patriotic calls of duty as paramount to any study of science or philosophy, which he thought was involved in doubt. He had a great contempt for knowledge which could neither lead to the clear apprehension of certitude, nor to practical applications. He thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of the soul, or the origin of the world. And he thus was led to look upon the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.