General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

[Illustration: PLATO.]

Plato imitated in his writings the method of Socrates in conversation. The discourse is carried on by questions and answers, hence the term Dialogues that attaches to his works. He attributes to his master, Socrates, much of the philosophy that he teaches: yet his Dialogues are all deeply tinged with his own genius and thought. In the Republic Plato portrays his conception of an ideal state. He was opposed to the republic of Athens, and his system, in some of its main features, was singularly like the Feudal System of Mediæval Europe.

The Phædo is a record of the last conversation of Socrates with his disciples—an immortal argument for the immortality of the soul.

Plato believed not only in a future life (post-existence), but also in pre-existence; teaching that the ideas of reason, or our intuitions, are reminiscences of a past experience. [Footnote: In the following lines from Wordsworth we catch a glimpse of Plato's doctrine of pre-existence:— "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home."—Ode on Immortality.] Plato's doctrines have exerted a profound influence upon all schools of thought and philosophies since his day. In some of his precepts he made a close approach to the teachings of Christianity. "We ought to become like God," he said, "as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise."

ARISTOTLE.—As Socrates was surpassed by his pupil Plato, so in turn was Plato excelled in certain respects by his disciple Aristotle, "the master of those who know." In him the philosophical genius of the Hellenic intellect reached its culmination. He was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira (384 B.C.), and hence is frequently called the "Stagirite." As in the case of Socrates, his personal appearance gave no promise of the philosopher. His teacher, Plato, however, recognized the genius of his pupil, and called him the "Mind of the school."

After studying for twenty years in the school of Plato, Aristotle became the preceptor of Alexander the Great. When Philip invited him to become the tutor of his son, he gracefully complimented the philosopher by saying in his letter that he was grateful to the gods that the prince was born in the same age with him. Alexander became the liberal patron of his tutor, and aided him in his scientific studies by sending him large collections of plants and animals, gathered on his distant expeditions.

At Athens the great philosopher delivered his lectures while walking about beneath the trees and porticoes of the Lyceum; hence the term peripatetic (from the Greek peripatein, "to walk about") applied to his philosophy.

[Illustration: ARISTOTLE.]

Among the productions of his fertile intellect are works on rhetoric, logic, poetry, morals and politics, physics and metaphysics. For centuries his works were studied and copied and commented upon by both European and Asiatic scholars, in the schools of Athens and Rome, of Alexandria and Constantinople. Until the time of Bacon in England, for nearly two thousand years, Aristotle ruled over the realm of mind with a despotic sway. All teachers and philosophers acknowledged him as their guide and master.

ZENO AND THE STOICS.—We are now approaching the period when the political life of Hellas was failing, and was being fast overshadowed by the greatness of Rome. But the intellectual life of the Greek race was by no means eclipsed by the calamity that ended its political existence. For centuries after that event the poets, scholars, and philosophers of this intellectual people led a brilliant career in the schools and universities of the Roman world.