The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

The doctrine here set forth is the highest ever reached by purely heathen Greek speculation; but we must remember that it is not thus collected into a head by Plato himself, still less is it put into such a relation to his physical, his logical, and his moral system as such a doctrine ought to bear. A man who had reached so lofty a conviction of the divine unity and moral perfection as this must, if he would make it effectual, give to it in his system the place which it really holds in the world. If there be indeed a Maker and Father of the universe by whom all things consist, all that Plato taught should have been subordinated to this its first principle, and the sum of his teaching to men should have been to set him forth. So far is this from the position which Plato really took, that in his ideal Republic no other religion but the traditional Greek religion was to subsist; he changes nothing in the very forms of the polytheistic worship; he refers the decision on many points to the Delphic Apollo.373 And when in his last book on the Laws374 he sets forth the notion of a second best state, one which can be realised under actual circumstances, wherein he gives a mass of practical directions for the needs of the lower classes, religion in its purely polytheistic dress is the soul of his teaching, the groundwork of his structure. Men are to worship first of all the Olympian gods, and the gods who are the patrons of the city; then the gods of the earth; then demons and heroes; and all these in the traditional way by offerings, prayers, and vows. All good in public life is their gift; everything is to be consecrated to them; to violate their shrines is the greatest of crimes. In fact, after all, but few of mankind are capable of understanding or receiving the philosophic God. However imperfect375 the popular belief in the gods may be, and however unsatisfactory to him the allegorical interpretations of it then so much in vogue, yet is it in Plato's conviction indispensable to all those who have not had a scientific education. Men must first be taught with lies, and then with the truth: the popular fables and the worship grounded on them is therefore for all the first, and for most the only form of religion.376 The philosopher, it is true, sees deeper and despises them in his heart. Thus the monotheist in speculation is a polytheist in practice: as Socrates, the model and exemplar of Greek philosophy, with his dying breath, so Plato, its most inspired teacher with all the voice of his authority, sacrificed the cock to Æsculapius.

But moreover, this supreme God, who has to be disinterred from the recesses of the Platonic teaching, and conciliated with the worship practically paid to a host of subordinate gods, is in Plato's conception neither absolutely personal nor free, and he is not the Creator but only the Former of the world. In Plato's theory there is coeternal with him a first matter, without form or quality, which exists independently of him; which moreover is inhabited and swayed to and fro in disorderly heavings by a sort of soul, the token of that dark Necessity377 which rises behind the figures of gods and men in Greek poetry. It is indeed the work of the divine reason to come down upon this shapeless mass and its inborn mover, and out of them to construct the world-soul, with which and with his own reason he forms and maintains and vivifies the ordered universe. As he is by this operation the Father of the universe, so this First Matter is “the Mother of all generation,” the condition of the existence of corporeal things. But in this original matter lies the origin of evil, which, perpetuated in the corporeal structure of man, can indeed be tamed and schooled, and in a certain degree subdued, but never can be exterminated by the divine reason. The power, the wisdom, and the providence of Plato's God are encountered by this check, which stands eternally over against the Demiurgos in his world-forming activity, which limits his freedom, and impairs his personality, while it excludes the whole idea of creation. Students of this philosophy378 attempt to associate together his highest Idea, that of the Good, with the supreme God, of whom he speaks with personal attributes, as the just, the wise, the true, the good, but admit that Plato has not attempted to solve the problem how the Idea, which by his hypothesis as it is the highest is also the most general, is at the same time the most individual, the one personal God. In fact, it is admitted that he fails – together with all the ancient Greek writers – in the strict conception of personality.379 As according to him individual beings are what they are only by participation of something higher, it is no wonder that in describing that one Reason, the Idea of the Good, the highest and most general of all, which forms and governs the world, his language oscillates between the personal and the impersonal. But if his philosophical reasons tend one way, it must be allowed that the heart and affections of the man, and the whole moral sense of the teacher, decide another.

The ethical system of Plato appears to be a strict deduction from his physical. As man in his view is a compound of matter, vivified by a portion of the world-soul, which the divine reason takes and unites with a portion of itself, so his virtues correspond to this threefold composition.380 For man has an immortal portion in his soul, the reason, the godlike, in him, but the divine reason, in joining a portion of the world-soul with matter, invests it with two mortal parts, one the courageous, or manly, the other, sensuous desire, or the female element, having their seat in the body's activity. To these answer respectively the virtues of prudence, of courage, and of temperance, while justice comes in afterwards as a right ordering of the three, or as prudence applied to practice. The seat of all irregular desires, of all evil, in fact, is to Plato in this union of the soul with matter. As this matter is primordial, evil in its origin does not indeed spring from God, but it is beyond his power: it springs from that state of things which existed before the action of God on chaos:381 it must stand over against the good: and of necessity encompasses this mortal nature and the place of its habitation: and to man it lies not in the perverted use of free-will, but in his original composition, wherein his body is its seat. But in this triple composition of man Plato does not seem to have clearly apprehended a human personality at all: he has not even attempted to explain382 in what the unity of the soul consists besides these its three portions, two of which, being tied to the body, drop off at death.

It is in the practice of Plato as a teacher that we can most fitly consider the conception which the Greek philosophers in general had concerning the method of studying and imparting philosophy altogether. It was about the fortieth year of his life, and twelve years after the death of his master Socrates, that Plato, having already travelled widely, settled at Athens.383 Here he purchased a fixed residence at the Academia, which became from that time a philosophical school for study, conversation, oral lectures, and friendly meetings. Here he drew around him an inner circle of scholars to whom he addressed his unwritten doctrines,384 especially his doctrine of Ideas, the key to his whole system, according as they were able, after preparation, to receive them: and here besides he gave lectures which might be attended not only by that inner circle of choice disciples but by studious persons in general. This residence of Plato served for three hundred years, from 387 before Christ until the siege of Athens by Sylla in 87, as the centre of Plato's philosophy viewed as a teaching power. Now in this Plato had before him the great example of Pythagoras, in the first age of Greek philosophy. Concerning the doctrines of that philosopher we know little with certainty,385 but all are agreed as to his manner of teaching them. His attempt was to establish a community which should carry in its bosom, propagate, and perpetuate a doctrine in morals, politics, religion, and philosophy. His whole procedure was by oral teaching, for he left not a word written. It was in fact a religious order of life which he first practised in his own person, and then endeavoured to communicate to others. Into this order trial for everyone preceded reception.386 His scholars were for a long period required to practise silent obedience and unconditional submission to the authority of the doctrine delivered to them. Severe daily examination was imposed upon all. The publishing of his doctrine, especially his speculation as to the nature of God, was strictly forbidden. The upright life, the learning which then could only be attained by personal inquiry, the persuasiveness of Pythagoras, were together so effective that he succeeded in establishing such a community both in Crotona and in other cities of Southern Italy. It was persecuted and suffered continual disasters, but still this Pythagorean community, bearing on its founder's doctrines and manner of life, existed for several generations after his death, during which many of the most distinguished Greeks belonged to it. Such was the poet Æschylus, whose mind was formed on Pythagorean principles. In Plato's time the Pythagorean Archytas was at the head of the state of Tarentum: and Plato himself was largely imbued with Pythagorean tenets.387

Now Plato, it is true, did not imitate the political part of the Pythagorean scheme. It was only upon paper that he set forth his ideal republic. But the same conception as to the manner of communicating a doctrine lay in his mind as in that of Pythagoras. He did not look to writing as a primary instrument of communicating thought. He places it himself in a relation of dependence upon oral dialectic instruction. It is only to serve as a reminder of what had been otherwise taught: and, moreover, it is quite subordinate to his first postulate, the earnestness of a life devoted to inquiry and education.388 These principles are set forth with great lucidity in his dialogue Phædrus, where he introduces by the mouth of Socrates the Egyptian god Thoth, the inventor of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, drafts and dice, and also of letters. With these inventions in his hand the god approached the then king of Egypt Thamous, recommending him to make them known to his subjects. But Thamous was by no means inclined to receive these inventions unconditionally: he praises or blames them, as he judges of them, and at last he comes to the letters.389 “This discovery,” says Thoth, “O king, will make the Egyptians wiser, and improve their memory. It is of sovereign effect in both things.” “Most ingenious Thoth,” replies the king, “one man is made to give birth to art, and another to judge what good or what harm it will do to those who use it. And now you, being the father of letters, out of natural affection assert of them that which is just the contrary to their real office. For they will breed forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn them, who will slight the faculty of memory, inasmuch as relying on what is written externally in the types of others they do not exercise remembrance by an inward act of their own. The spell you have found is good not for fixing in the mind, but for reminding. And as to wisdom, you offer to those who learn them not its reality but its appearance. For they will indeed hear much, but as this will be without teaching, they will seem to have many minds but generally no judgment, and be hard to comprehend, having become wiseacres instead of wise men. O Socrates, says Phædrus, you are one who can easily tell stories from Egypt or any other country. My dear Phædrus, it was in the temple of Dodonean Jupiter that they made the first oracular words to proceed from an oak. The men of that day, not being wise as you young men, were satisfied in their simplicity to listen to an oak or a rock, if they only spoke the truth. Perhaps it makes a difference to you who the speaker is, and from what country; for you do not look merely whether it is true or not. Your rebuke, says Phædrus, is just, and what the Theban says about letters seems to me to be right. Well then, says Socrates, the man who thinks to leave an art in writing, and he also who receives it as being, when written, something clear and certain, must be very simple, and be really ignorant of Ammon's oracle, when he thinks that written words are something more than a reminder to one who knows the subject of the matters about which they are written. Exactly so, Socrates. For surely, Phædrus, writing shares this troublesome characteristic with painting. The productions of painting stand there as if they were alive, but if you ask them a question, preserve a solemn silence. Just so it is with writing. You may think that they speak with some meaning, but if you ask what that meaning is, there they stand with just the same word in their mouth. When once a thing is written, it is tossed over and over by all who take it in, whether it concerns them or not, and is unable to speak, or to be silent with the proper persons. And if it is maltreated or slandered, it wants its father always to help it, for it can neither defend nor help itself. What you say now is also very true indeed. But, says Socrates, can we not find another word, this one's lawful brother, and see the process by which it arises, and how much better and abler than the former it is? What word is this, and how does it arise? The word which is written on the disciple's soul together with true knowledge, which is able to defend itself, and knows how to speak and to be silent with the proper persons. You mean the living and animated word of one who has knowledge, whereof the written word may justly be called the shadow.390 I mean that indeed. Tell me now; an intelligent gardener, who had seeds that he cared for, and wished to bear fruit, would he hurry with them in summer to the gardens of Adonis, plant them, and rejoice to see them springing up with a fair show in a week? or would he do this for amusement, and in festival-time, if he did it at all, but when he took pains would use his gardener's art, sow them at the fitting time, and be too glad if, seven months afterwards, he saw them coming to perfection? Certainly, Socrates, that would be the difference between his sport and his earnest. Shall we, then, say that he who possesses the science of justice, honour, and goodness, has less intelligence than the gardener for his own seeds? Surely not. He will not, then, hurry to write them with a pen in ink with words, which cannot on the one hand help themselves with speech, and on the other hand are incapable to teach the truth sufficiently. I should think he would not. He will not; but as for these written flower-borders, he will sow and write them, when he does write them, for amusement, storing up reminders for himself, should he come to a forgetful old age, and for every one who pursues the same footsteps, and he will take pleasure in seeing them springing up tenderly: so when other men fall to other amusements, lubricating themselves at the banquet, or other such things, he will take his amusement here. In this, Socrates, you would substitute a very seemly amusement for a bad one, when the man who can play with words sports upon the subject of justice and suchlike. So it is, my dear Phædrus, but it is, I take it, earnest in a far higher sense, when one, using the art of dialectics, takes hold of a fitting soul, and plants and sows with true knowledge words able to help both themselves and their planter, not fruitless, but having seed, whence growing up in a succession of minds they will from age to age produce an immortal line,391 and will make their possessor happy as far as man can be.”

In these words, put in his master's mouth, Plato, if I mistake not, has given us the whole purpose of his life, and the manner in which he hoped to accomplish it. It was in the Academia that he sought to establish that immortal line of living words, who should speak as the possessors of real knowledge upon justice, truth, and goodness. He is describing a living culture by living teachers, of whom he aspired to be himself the first; and the written dialogues which he has left are in his intention, and so far as they enter at all upon the higher points of his doctrine,392 reminders of that which he had set forth to chosen auditors by word of mouth, the word which was able, as he says, to explain and defend itself, and to answer a question put to it.

This, then, was the relation existing in the mind of the prince of Greek philosophers between the written and the spoken word as instruments in imparting true knowledge, or science. The written word he regarded as subsidiary, as presupposing instruction by question and answer, and still more the moral discipline of a life earnestly given up to the study of the subjects in question. Without this a writing by itself was like a figure in a picture, which makes an impression on the beholder, but when asked if it is the true impression keeps, as he says, a solemn face, and makes no reply; which is the same to all, the earnest and the indifferent, and cannot treat them according to their merits. He laughs at the notion of such a writing being by itself any more than sport. And let us remember that he who said this has enshrined his own philosophy in the most finished specimens of dramatic dialogues which the Greek mind produced. These are the statements of the man who wrote Greek in his countrymen's opinion as Jupiter would have spoken it. There are, then, in Plato's mind three constituents of teaching: first, the choice of fitting subjects for it, and what is therein implied, the imposition of a moral discipline upon them regulating their life to the end in view; secondly, the master's oral instruction conveying gradually and with authority to minds so prepared the doctrine to be received; and thirdly, the committing such doctrine to writing, which shall serve to remind the disciple of what he has been taught. And this was what he carried into effect.393 He fixed himself at the Academia, over which he presided for forty years: he was succeeded therein by his nephew Speusippus, who held his chair for eight years; Xenocrates followed in the same post during twenty-five years; and the line was continued afterwards by Polemon, Crantor, Crates, Arcesilaus, and others in uninterrupted series. Plato thus established the method of Greek philosophy, and his example herein was followed by Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus.

His great disciple Aristotle came to him at the age of seventeen, and studied under him during twenty years. At a later age, when, after completing the education of Alexander, he fixed himself in middle life at Athens, he set up there a second philosophical school at the Lyceum on its eastern side, and on the model of that of Plato. Attached to this museum were a portico, a hall with seats, one seat especially for the lecturing professor, a garden, and a walk, together with a residence, all permanently appropriated to the teacher and the process of instruction.394 When Aristotle died in the year 322 b. c., his friend Theophrastus presided over his school during five and thirty years, and the line continued on. We learn that there were periodical meetings, convivial and conversational, among the members both of the Academic and Peripatetic schools, and laws for their regulation established by Xenocrates and Aristotle. It was in the shady walks of his garden that this great philosopher taught by word of mouth the choicer circle of his disciples: for the more general hearers he gave lectures sitting.395 His instructions were divided into two classes, those which he gave on rhetoric, the art of discussion, knowledge of civil matters, and suchlike, which were exoteric, and those which touched the finer and more subtle points of philosophy, which were termed acroatic, as addressed to the ears.396 Again, his dialogues he called “public” or “issued” discourses, things made over to the general public, in distinction from what was not so disclosed, but reserved for the philosopher's own meditation, to be subsequently communicated either by oral lecture or by writing to the private circle of scholars who gave themselves up entirely to his philosophy. These Aristotle called “philosophical” or “teaching” discourses, proceeding, that is, from the principles proper to each branch of learning, and not from the opinions of the lecturer. These latter were termed “tentative,” as belonging to the exoteric. Simplicius, one of the latest writers on Greek philosophy, defines exoteric as “the common, and what concludes by arguments which are matter of opinion;” and Philoponus, as discourses “not of strict proof, and not directed to lawfully-begotten hearers,” that is, trained and prepared, “but to the public, and springing from probabilities.”397 Thus in Aristotle, the largest in grasp of mind, the most observant of facts, the most accurate in definition among Greek writers, the philosopher in fact and “master of those who know,”398 for all future ages, we find the same three constituents of teaching as in Plato, and in the same order of importance: first, hearers selected for their natural aptitude, and then submitted to a moral discipline and a common life; secondly, the instruction of such hearers by word of mouth, question and answer, discussion and cross-examination; and lastly, the committing of doctrines to writing. With him too his written philosophical discourses were reminders of his oral teaching, which they presupposed and required as a key to their full meaning, and especially for the comprehension of their harmony as a system.

The order of teaching which I have thus sketched as being followed in practice by the two most eminent Greek philosophers belonged to them all. They had no other conception respecting the method of communicating a doctrine efficiently to men. None of them considered philosophy merely or chiefly as a literature: none of them attributed to a book the power of teaching it. Their conception was, a master and his scholars, and the living together, the moral subordination and discipline which this involved. This school of education or training in knowledge399 was their primary thought: the committing of their doctrine to writing was both subsequent and secondary. Their writings were intended, as Plato says, to be recollections400 of their teaching, and failed to convey the real knowledge to those who had not the stamp of this teaching impressed on their minds.

As Plato made a local habitation for himself and his doctrine in the Academia, and Aristotle in the Lyceum, so Zeno, the founder of the third great philosophic school, took up his abode in the Portico at Athens, a court surrounded with pillars, and adorned with the paintings of Polygnotus. Here he began to teach about 308 b. c., and here he continued teaching as some say for fifty-eight years. It is said that the character of Socrates, as drawn by Xenophon and by Plato in his Apology, filled him with astonishment and admiration:401 and the Stoics afterwards drew their doctrine of the wise man, which they endeavoured to image out and realise, from that living example of it,402 an instance of the connection of doctrine with person which is full of interest and suggestion. Zeno was succeeded in his office of teaching by Cleanthes, and Cleanthes by Chrysippus and a long line of teachers, who for several hundred years continued, with variations, the same general doctrine of ethics.

Just in the same way and at the same time Zeno's great rival Epicurus fixed the seat of his school in the Garden at Athens, which thenceforth became for thirty-six years the central point of the teacher's activity. About him gathered a circle of friends whom similarity of principles and the enjoyment of cultivated intercourse bound together with unusual intimacy. It speaks for the special character of his philosophy that from the beginning women and even hetæræ formed a part of this society. But he succeeded during this long period of teaching in impressing upon his school so strong a character that it is recognised without essential change during hundreds of years.403

We should do injustice to the character and the work of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, the founders of the four great schools of Greek philosophy, if we did not take into account what was in their day no doubt of greater influence than their writings, that is, their function as teachers, their oral teaching itself, and those fundamental principles of philosophic education which lay at the bottom of it. Plato has left us very little of doctrine put out in his own name. He is not a speaker in his dialogues. He puts what he would say in the mouth of others, especially of Socrates. He tells us that he has purposely done this in order that men might not say, here is Plato's philosophy:404 and the reason of this was that he utterly distrusted his own or any man's power to disclose to others such a system in a set form of words. It is, then, the more remarkable that he has said in his own person what were his most settled convictions as to intercourse by word of mouth, and continuous written discourse, viewed as instruments for attaining and communicating truth. He expresses his absolute disbelief that men can reach true conceptions by their being set forth in the immutable form of writing. It is a far other and more difficult work which has to be accomplished. In a word, not even aptness for learning and memory will give the power to see the truth as to virtue and vice to one who is not kin to the subject; nor, again, this kinship without such aptitude and memory: but when both are joined, then out of living together, after much time,405 by the continual friction of name, definition, acts of sight and perception, by thought and meditation, the hearing and answering the objections of others, the process of mutual cross-examination discharged without envy or jealousy, and with sincere love of the truth, a sudden flash of fire kindles in the mind, and nourishes itself, disclosing the knowledge required. Thus it is that prudence and intelligence on each subject, shining out in this beam of light, go forward as far as man may reach. The view here propounded, if reflected upon, will convey to us what the living work first of Pythagoras, and then of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and their successors, was. Both the conception indeed and the realisation seem to have been most complete in Pythagoras. The philosophic living together was its basis. Instruction was oral. Learning was effected by the collision of mind with mind, by objection and answer. It was the Socratic principle inherited from these schools that nothing passed muster for knowledge which did not stand the test of cross-examination:406 but an unchangeable text was utterly unsuited, according to Plato, to debate the question under treatment in such fashion, while on the other hand the mind of the reader was passive in receiving the impression which it conveyed. On neither side therefore did the conditions of knowledge exist, but this was reached under the circumstances of personal intercourse above mentioned, and might be recalled in the written form to the minds of those who had thus first attained it.