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CHAPTER V.

THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH.

RISE AND DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.

SOCRATES rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and asserts the Importance of Virtue and Morality, thereby inaugurating an Age of Faith.-His Life and Death.-The schools originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of Pleasure and Gratification of Self. PLATO founds the Academy.-His three primal Principles.-The Existence of a personal God.-Nature of the World and the Soul.—The ideal Theory, Generals or Types.-Reminiscence.-Transmigration.Plato's political Institutions. His Republic. His Proofs of the Immortality of the Soul.-Criticism on his Doctrines.

RISE OF THE SCEPTICS, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy.—Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge.Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, Quietude, and Irreligion. as recommended by Epicurus.-Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems in the later Academies.-Their Errors and Duplicities. -End of the Greek Age of Faith.

THE Sophists had brought on an intellectual anarchy. It is not in the nature of humanity to be contented Greek philowith such a state. Thwarted in its expectations sophy on the from physics, the Greek mind turned its atten- basis of ethics. tion to morals. In the progress of life, it is but a step from the age of Inquiry to the age of Faith.

Socrates, who led the way in this movement, was born B.C. 469. He exercised an influence in some respects felt to our times. Having experienced the unprofitable results arising from physical speculation, he set in contrast there with the solid advantages to be enjoyed from Socrates: his the cultivation of virtue and morality. His mode of life was a perpetual combat with the Sophists. His manner of instruction was by conversation, in which,

teaching,

according to the uniform testimony of all who heard him, he singularly excelled. He resorted to definitions, and therefrom drew deductions, conveying his argument under the form of a dialogue. Unlike his predecessors, who sought for truth in the investigation of outward things, he turned his attention inward, asserting the supremacy of virtue and its identity with knowledge, and the necessity of an adherence to the strict principles of justice. Considering the depraved condition to which the Sophists had reduced society, he insisted on a change in the manner of education of youth, so as to bring it in accordance with the principle that happiness is only to be found in the pursuit of virtue and goodness. Thus, therefore, he completely substituted the moral for the physical, and in this essentially consists the philosophical revolution he effected. He had no school, properly speaking, nor did he elaborate any special ethical system; for to those who inquired how they should know good from evil and right from wrong, he recommended the decisions of the laws of The doctrines their country. It does not appear that he ever of Socrates. entered on any inquiry respecting the nature of God, simply viewing his existence as a fact of which there was abundant and incontrovertible proof. Though rejecting the crude religious ideas of his nation, and totally opposed to anthropomorphism, he carefully avoided the giving of public offence by improper allusions to the prevailing superstition; nay, even as a good citizen, he set an example of conforming to its requirements. In his judgment, the fault of the Sophists consisted in this, that they had subverted useless speculation, but had substituted for it no scientific evidence. Nevertheless, if man did not know, he might believe, and demonstration might be profitably supplanted by faith. He therefore insisted on the great doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the government of the world by Providence; but it is not to be denied that there are plain indications, in some of his sentiments, of a conviction that the Supreme Being is the soul of the world. He professed that his own chief wisdom consisted in the knowledge of his own ignorance, and dissuaded his friends from the cultivation of mathematics and physics, since he affirmed

that the former leads to vain conclusions, the latter to atheism. In his system everything turns on Opposes mathe explanation of terms; but his processes of themathics reasoning are often imperfect, his conclusions, and physics. therefore, liable to be incorrect. In this way, he maintained that no one would knowingly commit a wrong act, because he that knew a thing to be good would do it; that it is only involuntarily that the bad are bad; that he who knowingly tells a lie is a better man than he who tells a lie in ignorance; and that it is right to injure one's enemies.

From such a statement of the philosophy of Socrates, we cannot fail to remark how superficial it must Superficiality have been; it perpetually mistakes differences of his views. of words for distinctions of things; it also possessed little novelty. The enforcement of morality cannot be regarded as anything new, since probably there has never been an age in which good men were not to be found, who observed, as their rule of life, the maxims taught by Socrates; and hence we may reasonably inquire what it was that has spread over the name of this great man such an unfading lustre, and why he stands out in such extraordinary prominence among the benefactors of his race.

Causes of the

Socrates.

Socrates was happy in two things: happy in those who recorded his life, and happy in the circumstances of his death. It is not given to every great man celebrity of to have Xenophon and Plato for his biographers; it is not given to every one who has overpassed the limit of life, and, in the natural course of events, has but a little longer to continue, to attain the crown of martyrdom in behalf of virtue and morality. In an evil hour for the glory of Athens, his countrymen put him to death. It was too late when they awoke and saw that they could give no answer to the voice of posterity, demanding why they had perpetrated this crime. With truth Socrates said, at the close of his noble speech to the judges who had condemned him, "It is now time that we depart I to die, you to live; but which has the better destiny is unknown to all except God." The future has resolved that doubt. For Socrates there was reserved the happier lot.

No little obscurity still remains as respects the true

VOL. I.

L

The ostensible

against him.

nature of this dark transaction. The articles of accusation were three he rejects the gods of his country; accusations he introduces new ones; he perverts the education of youth. With truth might his friends say it was wonderful that he should be accused of impiety, the whole tenor of whose life was reverence for God—a recognition not only of the divine existence, but of the divine superintendence. "It is only a madman," he would say, "who imputes success in life to human prudence;" and as to the necessity of a right education for the young, “It is only the wise who are fit to govern men." We must conclude that the accusations were only ostensible or fictitious, and that beneath them lay some reality which could reconcile the Athenians to the perpetration of so great a crime.

Shall we find in his private life any explanation of this mystery? Unfortunately, the details of it which have descended to us are few. To the investigations of classical criticism we can scarcely look with any hope, for classical criticism has hitherto been in a state of singular innocence, so far as the actual affairs of life are concerned. It regards Athenians and Romans not as men and women like ourselves, but as the personages presented by fictitious literature, whose lives are exceptions to the common laws of human nature; who live in the midst of scenes of endless surprises and occurrences ever bordering on the marvellous.

The character

If we examine the case according to everyday principles, we cannot fail to remark that the Socrates of our of Socrates in imagination is a very different man from the Athens. Socrates of contemporaneous Athenians. To us he appears a transcendent genius, to whom the great names of antiquity render their profound homage; a martyr in behalf of principles, of which, if society be devoid, life itself is scarcely of any worth, and for the defence of which it is the highest glory that a man should be called upon to die. To them Socrates was no more than an idle lounger in the public places and corners of the streets; grotesque, and even repulsive in his person; affecting in the oddities of his walking and in his appearance many of the manners of the mountebank. Neglecting the pursuit of an

honest calling, for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his lecherous countenance and satyr-like person could gather around him, leading them astray from the gods of his country, the flimsy veil of his hypocrisy being too transparent to conceal his infidelity. Nevertheless, he was a very brave soldier, as those who served with him testify. It does not appear that he was observant of those cares which by most men are probably considered as paramount, giving himself but little concern for the support of his children and wife. The good woman Xantippe is, to all appearance, one of those characters who are Xantippe his unfairly judged of by the world. Socrates wife. married her because of her singular conversational powers; and though he himself, according to universal testimony, possessed extraordinary merits in that respect, he found to his cost, when too late, so commanding were her excellencies, that he was altogether her inferior. Among the amusing instances related of his domestic difficulties were the consequences of his invitations to persons to dine with him when there was nothing in the house wherewith to entertain them, a proceeding severely trying to the temper of Xantippe, whose cause would unquestionably be defended by the matrons of any nation. It was nothing but the mortification of a high-spirited woman at the acts of a man who was too shiftless to have any concern for his domestic honour. He would not gratify her urgent entreaties by accepting from those upon whom he lavished his time the money that was so greatly needed at home. After his condemnation, she carried her children with her to his prison, and was dismissed by him, as he told his friends, from his apprehension of her deep distress. To the last we see her bearing herself in a manner honourable to a woman and a wife. There is surely something wrong in a man's life when the mother of his children is protesting against his conduct, and her complaints are countenanced by the community. In view of all the incidents of the history of Socrates, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Athenians regarded him as an unworthy, and perhaps troublesome member of society. There can be no doubt that his trial and condemnation were connected

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