BY BBRTRAND RU8SBLL
INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD
AN OUTLINE OP PHILOSOPHY
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIZ
AN INQUIRY INTO MEANING AND TRUTH
POWER
IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS
THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS
SCEPTICAL ESSAYS
THE SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK
MYSTICISM AND LOGIC
MARRIAGE AND MORALS
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL OKDLK
ON EDUCATION
FREEDOM AND ORGANIZATION, l8l4~I<M4
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
ROADS TO FREEDOM
JUSTICE IN WAR-FIMi:
FREE THOUGHT AND OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA
THE PROBLEM OF CHINA
With Scott NcarinK
BOLSHEVISM AND THE Wt*T
With Dora Russell
THE PROSPECTS Ol- INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION
BERTRAND RUSSELL
HISTORY OF
WESTERN
PHILOSOPHY
and its Connection with Political
and Social Circumstances from
the Earliest Times to
the Present Dav
GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN LTD
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1446
SFCOND IMPRESSION 1947
All rights resented
1'RINTI.D IV URI-AT BKMAIS
iff n-/'</tnf Imprint Type
\\\ UN WIN bHOJHfcHS J, » M m U
PREFACE
A FEW words of apology and explanation are called for if
this book is to escape even more severe censure than it
doubtless deserves.
Apology is due to the specialists on various schools and indi-
vidual philosophers. With the possible exception of Leibniz,
every philosopher of whom I treat is better known to some others
than to me. If, however, books covering a Wide field are to be
written at all, it is inevitable, since we are not immortal, that those
who write such books should spend less time on any one part
than can be spent by a man who concentrates on a single author
or a brief period. Some, whose scholarly austerity is unbending,
will conclude that books covering a wide field should not be
written at all, or, if written, should consist of monographs by a
multitude of authors. There is, however, something lost when
many authors co-operate. If there is any unity in the movement
of history, if there is any intimate relation between what goes
before and what comes later, it is necessary, for setting this forth,
that earlier and later periods should be synthesized in a single
mind. The student of Rousseau may have difficulty in doing
justice to his connection with the Sparta of Plato and Plutarch;
the historian of Sparta may not be prophetically conscious of
Hobbcs and Fichte and Lenin. To bring out such relations is
one of the purposes of this book, and it is a purpose which only
a wide survey can fulfil.
There are many histories of philosophy, but none of them, so
far as I know, has quite the purpose that I have set myself. Philo-
sophers are both effects and causes: effects of their social cir-
cumstances and of the politics and institutions of their time;
causes (if they are fortunate) of beliefs which mould the politics
and institutions of later ages. In most histories of philosophy,
each philosopher appears as in a vacuum; his opinions are set
forth unrelated except, at most, to those of earlier philosophers.
I have tried, on the contrary, to exhibit each philosopher, as far
as truth permits, as an outcome of his milieu, a man in whom
were crystallized and concentrated thoughts and feelings which,
in a vague ahd diffused form, were common to the community
of which he was a part.
5
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
This has required the insertion of certain chapters of purely
social history. No one can understand the Stoics and Epicureans
without some knowledge of the Hellenistic age, or the scholastics
without a modicum of understanding of the growth of the Church
from the fifth to 'the thirteenth centuries. I have therefore set
forth briefly those parts of the main historical outlines that seemed
to me to have had most influence on philosophical thought, and
I have done this with most fulness where the history may be
expected to be unfamiliar to some readers — for example, in regard
to the early Middle Ages. But in these historical chapters I have
rigidly excluded whatever seemed to have little or no bearing on
contemporary or subsequent philosophy.
The problem of selection, in such a book as the present, is
very difficult. Without detail, a book becomes jejune and un-
interesting; with detail, it is in danger of becoming intolerably
lengthy. I have sought a compromise, by treating only those
philosophers who seem to me to have considerable importance,
and mentioning, in connection with them, such details as, even
if not of fundamental importance, have value on account of some
iDustrative or vivifying quality.
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has been not merely an
affair of the schools, or of disputation between a handful of
learned men. It has been an integral part of the life of the com-
munity, and as such I have tried to consider it. If there is any
merit in this book, it is from this point of view that it is derived.
This book owes its existence to Dr. Albert C. Barnes, having
been originally designed and partly delivered as lectures at the
Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania.
As in most of my work during the years since 1932, I have
been greatly assisted in research and in many other ways by my
wife, Patricia Russell.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
txvm
XXIX
XXX
Introduction
BOOK ONE
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Part i
The Pre-Socratics
The Rise of Greek Civilization
The Milesian School
Pythagoras
Heraclitus
Pannenides
Empedocles
Athens in Relation to Culture
Anaxagoras
The Atornists
Protagoras
Part 2
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
Socrates
The Influence of Sparta
The Sources of Plato's Opinions
Plato's Utopia
The Theory of Ideas
Plato's Theory of Immortality
Plato's Cosmogony
Knowledge and Perception in Plato
Aristotle's Metaphysics
Aristotle's Ethics
Aristotle's Politics
Aristotle's Logic
Aristotle's Physics
Early Greek Mathematics and Astronomy
Part 3
Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle
The Hellenistic World
Cynics and Sceptics
The Epicureans
Stoitism
The Roman Empire in Relation to Culture
Plotinua
PAGE
10
21
8
57
6?
72
77
81
84
94
i oz
129
141
'54
165
171
182
'95
207
218
226
231
241
252
263
*75
294
308
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
CHAPTER PAGE
BOOK TWO
CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY
Introduction 322
Part i
The Fathers
I The Religious Development of the Jews 328
II Christianity During the First Four Centuries 344
III Three Doctors of the Church 354
IV St. Augustine's Philosophy and Theology 372
V The Fifth and Sixth Centuries ' 386
VI St. Benedict and Gregory the Great 395
Part 2
The Schoolmen
VII The Papacy in the Dark Apes 408
VIII John the Scot 421
IX Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Ccntuiv 428
X Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy 440
XI The Twelfth Century ' 450
XII The Thirteenth Century 4^3
XIII St. Thomas Aquinas 474
XIV Franciscan Schoolmen 48'*
XV The Eclipse of the Papacy 499
BOOK TIIRFh
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Part i
/'Vow the Renaissance tu Hume
I General Characteristics 51 1
11 The Italian Renaissance ^i(>
III Machiavelli 525
IV Erasmus and More 533
V The Reformation and Counter-Reformation 544
VI The Rise of Science 547
VII Francis Bacon 563
VIII Hobbca's Leviathan 568
IX Descartes 580
X Spinoza 592
XI Leibniz 604
b
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGB
XII Philosophical Liberalism 620
XIII Locke's Theory of Knowledge 628
XIV Locke's Political Philosophy 642
XV Locke's Influence 666
XVI Berkeley 673
XVII Hume 685
Part 2
From Rousseau to the Present Day
XVIII The Romantic Movement 701
XIX Rousseau 711
XX Kant 728
XXI Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 746
XXII Hegel 757
XXIII Byron 774
XXIV Schopenhauer 781
XXV Nietzsche 788
XXVI The Utilitarians 801
XXVII Karl Marx 810
XXVIII Bergson 819
XXIX William James 839
XXX JohnDewey 847
XXXI The Philosophy of Logical Analysis 857
INTRODUCTION
E I \HE conceptions of life and the world which we call
I "philosophical" are a product of two factors: one, inherited
JL religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of
investigation which may be called "scientific," using this word in
its broadest sense. Individual philosophers have differed widely
in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered
into their systems, but it is the presence of both, in some degree,
that characterizes philosophy.
"Philosophy" is a word which has been used in many ways,
some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide
sense, which I will now try to explain.
Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something inter-
mediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists
of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so
far, been unascertainable ; but like science, it appeals to human
reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that
of revelation. All definite knowledge — so I should contend —
belongs to science ; all dogma as to what surpasses definite know-
ledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there
is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No
Man's Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most
interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer,
and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so con-
vincing as they did in former centuries. Is the world divided into
mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind and what is matter? Is
mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers ?
Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards
some goal ? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in
them only because of our innate love of order ? Is man what he
seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water
impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet ? Or is he
what he appears to Hamlet ? Is he perhaps both at once ? Is there
a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all
ways of living merely futile? If there is a way of living that is
noble, in what does it consist, and how shall we achieve it? Must
the good be eternal in order to deserve to be valuc'd, or is it worth
seeking even if the universe is inexorably moving toward? death ?
10
INTRODUCTION
Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely
the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer
can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give
answers, all too definite; but their very definiteness causes modern
minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these
questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of
philosophy.
Why, then, you may ask, waste time on such insoluble problems ?
To this one may answer as a historian, or as an individual facing
the terror of cosmic loneliness.
The answer of the historian, in so far as I am capable of giving
it, will appear in the course of this work. Ever since men became
capable of free speculation, their actions, in innumerable impor-
tant respects, have depended upon their theories as to the world
and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This is as
true in the present day as at any former time. To understand an
age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to under-
stand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philo-
sophers. There is here a reciprocal causation: the circumstances
of men's lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, con-
versely, their philosophy does much to determine their circum-
stances. This interaction throughout the centuries will be the
topic of the following pages.
There is also, however, a more personal answer. Science tells
us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we
forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many
things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand,
induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact
we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent
insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of
vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish
to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not
good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to
persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to
them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without
being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that
philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
Philosophy^ as distinct from theology, began in Greece in the
sixth century B.C. After running its course in antiquity, it was
again submerged by theology as Christianity rose and Rome fell.
xx
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Its second great period, from the eleventh to the fourteenth cen-
turies, was dominated by the Catholic Church, except for a few
great rebels, such as the Emperor Frederick II (1195-1250). This
period was brought to an end by the confusions that culminated
in the Reformation. The third period, from the seventeenth
century to the present day, is dominated, more than either of its
predecessors, by science; traditional religious beliefs remain
important, but are felt to need justification, and are modified
wherever science seems to make this imperative. Few of the
philosophers of this period are orthodox from a Catholic stand-
point, and the secular State is more important in their speculations
than the Church.
Social cohesion and individual liberty, like religion and science,
are in a state of conflict or uneasy compromise throughout the
whole period. In Greece, social cohesion was secured by loyalty
to the City State; even Aristotle, though in his time Alexander
was making the City State obsolete, could see no merit in any
other kind of polity. The degree to which the individual's liberty
was curtailed by his duty to the City varied widely. In Sparta he
had as little liberty as in modern Germany or Russia; in Athens,
in spite of occasional persecutions, citizens had, in the best period,
a very extraordinary freedom from restrictions imposed by the
State. Greek thought down to Aristotle is dominated by religious
and patriotic devotion to the City ; its ethical systems arc adapted
to the lives of citizens and have a large political element. When
the Greeks became subject, first to the Macedonians, and then to
the Romans, the conceptions appropriate to their days of inde-
pendence were no longer applicable. This produced, on the one
hand, a loss of vigour through the breach with tradition, and, on
the other hand, a more individual and less social ethic. The
Stoics thought of the virtuous life as a relation of the soul to
God, rather than as a relation of the citizen to the State. They
thus prepared the way for Christianity, which, like Stoicism, was
originally unpolitical, since, during its first three centuries, its
adherents were devoid of influence on government. Social cohesion,
during the six and a half centuries from Alexander to Constantine,
was secured, not by philosophy and not by ancient loyalties, but
by force, first that of armies and then that of civil administration.
Roman armies, Roman roads, Roman law, and ifoman officials
first created and then preserved a powerful centralized. State.
12
INTRODUCTION
Nothing was attributable to Roman philosophy, since there was
none.
During this long period, the Greek ideas inherited from the age
of freedom underwent a gradual process of transformation. Some
of the old ideas, notably those which we should regard as speci-
fically religious, gained in relative importance; others, more
rationalistic, were discarded because they no longer suited the
spirit of the age. In this way the later pagans trimmed the Greek
tradition until it became suitable for incorporation in Christian
doctrine.
Christianity popularized an important opinion, already implicit
in the teaching of the Stoics, but foreign to the general spirit of
antiquity — I mean, the opinion that a man's duty to God is more
imperative than his duty to the State.1 This opinion — that "we
ought to obey God rather than Man/' as Socrates and the Apostles
said — survived the conversion of Constantine, because the early
Christian emperors were Arians or inclined to Arianism. When
the emperors became orthodox, it fell into abeyance. In the
Byzantine Empire it remained latent, as also in the subsequent
Russian Empire, which derived its Christianity from Constan-
tinople.2 But in the West, where the Catholic emperors were
almost immediately replaced (except in parts of Gaul) by heretical
barbarian conquerors, the superiority of religious to political
allegiance survived, and to some extent still survives.
The barbarian invasion put an end, for six centuries, to the
civilization of western Europe. It lingered in Ireland until the
Danes destroyed it in the ninth century; before its extinction
there it produced one notable figure, Scotus Erigena. In the
Eastern Empire, Greek civilization, in a desiccated form, survived,
as in a museum, till the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but nothing
of importance to the world came out of Constantinople except an
artistic tradition and Justinian's Codes of Roman law.
During the period of darkness, from the end of the fifth century
to the middle of the eleventh, the western Roman world under-
went some very interesting changes. The conflict between duty to
1 This opinion was not unknown in earlier times: it is stated, for
example, in the Antigone of Sophocles. But before the Stoics those who
held it were fei%.
* That is why the modem Russian does not think that we ought to
obey dialectical materialism rather than Stalin.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
God and duty to the State, which Christianity had introduced,
took the form of a conflict between Church and king. The eccle-
siastical jurisdiction of the Pope extended over Italy, France, and
Spain, Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, and
Poland. At first, outside Italy and southern France, his control
over bishops and abbots was very slight, but from the time of
Gregory VII (late eleventh century) it became real and effective.
From that time on, the clergy, throughout western Europe,
formed a single organization directed from Rome, seeking power
intelligently and relentlessly, and usually victorious, until after the
year 1300, in their conflicts with secular rulers. The conflict
between Church and State was not only a conflict between clergy
and laity ; it was also a renewal of the conflict between the Mediter-
ranean world and the northern barbarians. The unity of the
Church echoed the unity of the Roman Empire ; its liturgy was
Latin, and its dominant men were mostly Italian, Spanish, or
southern French. Their education, when education revived, was
classical; their conceptions of law and government would have
been more intelligible to Marcus Aurelius than they were to
contemporary monarchs. The Church represented at once
continuity with the past and what was most civilized in the
present.
The secular power, on the contrary, was in the hands of kings
and barons of Teutonic descent, who endeavoured to preserve
what they could of the institutions that they had brought out of
the forests of Germany. Absolute power was alien to those institu-
tions, and so was what appeared to these vigorous conquerors as
a dull and spiritless legality. The king had to share his power
with the feudal aristocracy, but all alike expected to be allowed
occasional outbursts of passion in the form of war, murder, pillage,
or rape. Monarchs might repent, for they were sincerely pious,
and, after all, repentance was itself a form of passion. But the
Church could never produce in them the quiet regularity of good
behaviour which a'modern employer demands, and usually obtains,
of his employees. What was the use of conquering the world if
they could not drink and murder and love as the spirit moved
them? And why should they, with their armies of proud knights,
submit to the orders of bookish men, vowed to celibacy and
destitute of armed force? In spite of ecclesiastic^ disapproval,
they preserved the duel and trial by battle, and they developed
INTRODUCTION
tournaments and courtly love. Occasionally, in a fit of rage, they
would even murder eminent churchmen.
All the armed force was on the side of the kings, and yet the
Church was victorious. The Church won, partly because it had
almost a monopoly of education, partly because the kings were
perpetually at war with each other, but mainly because, with very
few exceptions, rulers and people alike profoundly believed that
the Church possessed the power of the keys. The Church could
decide whether a king should spend eternity in heaven or in hell ;
the Church could absolve subjects from the duty of allegiance,
and so stimulate rebellion. The Church, moreover, represented
order in place of anarchy, and consequently won the support of
the rising mercantile class. In Italy, especially, this last con-
sideration was decisive.
The Teutonic attempt to preserve at least a partial independence
of the Church expressed itself not only in politics, but also in
art, romance, chivalry, and war. It expressed itself very little in
the intellectual world, because education was almost wholly con-
fined to the clergy. The explicit philosophy of the Middle Ages
is not an accurate mirror of the times, but only of what was
thought by one party. Among ecclesiastics, however— especially
among the Franciscan friars — a certain number, for various
reasons, were at variance with the Pope. In Italy, moreover,
culture spread to the laity some centuries sooner than it did
north of the Alps. Frederick II, who tried to found a new religion,
represents the extreme of anti-papal culture; Thomas Aquinas,
who was born in the kingdom of Naples where Frederick II was
supreme, remains to this day the classic exponent of papal philo-
sophy. Dante, some fifty years later, achieved a synthesis, and
gave the only balanced exposition of the complete medieval world
of ideas.
After Dante, both for political and for intellectual reasons, the
medieval philosophical synthesis broke down. It had, while it
lasted, a quality of tidiness and miniature completeness; whatever
the system took account of was placed with precision with relation
to the other contents of its very finite cosmos. But the Great
Schism, die conciliar movement, and the Renaissance papacy led
up to the Reformation, which destroyed the unity of Christendom
and the scholastic theory of government that centred round the
Pope. In the Renaissance period new knowledge, both of antiquity
•
15
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and of the earth's surface, made men tired of systems, which were
felt to be mental prisons. The Copernican astronomy assigned to
the earth and to man a humbler position than they had enjoyed
in the Ptolemaic theory. Pleasure in new facts took the place,
among intelligent men, of pleasure in reasoning, analysing, and
systematizing. Although in art the Renaissance is still orderly, in
thought it prefers a large and fruitful disorder. In this respect,
Montaigne is the most typical exponent of the age.
In the theory of politics, as in everything except art, there was
a collapse of order. The Middle Ages, though turbulent in prac-
tice, were dominated in thought by a passion for legality and by
a very precise theory of political power. All power is ultimately
from God ; He has delegated power to the Pope in sacred things
and to the Emperor in secular matters. But Pope and Emperor
alike lost their importance during the fifteenth century. The Pope
became merely one of the Italian princes, engaged in the incredibly
complicated and unscrupulous game of Italian power politics.
The new national monarchies in France, Spain, and England had,
in their own territories, a power with which neither Pope nor
Emperor could interfere. The national State, largely owing to
gunpowder, acquired an influence over men's thoughts and feelings
which it had not had before, and which progressively destroyed
what remained of the Roman belief in the unity of civilization.
This political disorder found expression in Machiavelli's Prince.
In the absence of any guiding principle, politics becomes a naked
struggle for power; The Prince gives shrewd advice as to how to
play this game successfully. What had happened in die great age
of Greece happened again in Renaissance Italy: traditional moral
restraints disappeared, because they were seen to be associated
with superstition; the liberation from fetters made individuals
energetic and creative, producing a rare florescence of genius ; but
the anarchy and treachery which inevitably resulted from the
decay of morals made Italians collectively impotent, and they fell,
like the Greeks, under the domination of nations less civilized
than themselves but not so destitute of social cohesion.
The result, however, was less disastrous than in the case of
Greece, because the newly powerful nations, with the exception
of Spain, showed themselves as capable of great achievement as
the Italians had been. •
From the sixteenth century onward, the history of European
,6
INTRODUCTION
thought is dominated by the Reformation. The Reformation was
a complex many-sided movement, and owed its success to a
variety of causes. In the main, it was a revolt of the northern
nations against the renewed dominion of Rome. Religion was the
force that had subdued the North, but religion in Italy had
decayed: the papacy remained as an institution, and extracted a
huge tribute from Germany and England, but these nations,
which were still pious, could feel no reverence for the Borgias and
Medicis, who professed to save souls from purgatory in return for
cash which they squandered on luxury and immorality. National
motives, economic motives, and moral motives all combined to
strengthen the revolt against Rome. Moreover the Princes soon
perceived that, if the Church in their territories became merely
national, they would be able to dominate it, and would thus
become much more powerful at home than they had been while
sharing dominion with the Pope. For all these reasons, Luther's
theological innovations were welcomed by rulers and peoples alike
throughout the greater part of northern Europe.
The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. Its sacred
history was Jewish, its theology was Greek, its government and
canon law were, at least indirectly, Roman. The Reformation
rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and
greatly strengthened the Judaic elements. It thus co-operated with
the nationalist forces which were undoing the work of social
cohesion which had been effected first by the Roman Empire and
then by the Roman Church. In Catholic doctrine, divine revelation
did not end with the scriptures, but continued from age to age
through the medium of the Church, to which, therefore, it was
the duty of the individual to submit his private opinions. Pro-
testants, on the contrary, rejected the Church as a vehicle of
revelation ; truth was to be sought only in the Bible, which each
man could interpret for himself. If men differed in their interpre-
tation, there was no divinely appointed authority to decide the
dispute. In practice, the State claimed the right that had formerly
belonged to the Church, but this was a usurpation. In Protestant
theory, there should be no earthly intermediary between the soul
and God.
The effects of this change were momentous. Truth was no
longer to be ascertained by consulting authority, but by inward
meditation, There was a tendency, quickly developed, towards
•
«7
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
anarchism in politics, and, in religion, towards mysticism, which
had always fitted with difficulty into the framework of Catholic
orthodoxy. There came to be not one Protestantism, but a multi-
tude of sects ; not one philosophy opposed to scholasticism, but as
many as there were philosophers ; not, as in the thirteenth century,
one Emperor opposed to the Pope, but a large number of heretical
kings. The result, in thought as in literature, was a continually
deepening subjectivism, operating at first as a wholesome liberation
from spiritual slavery, but advancing steadily towards a personal
isolation inimical to social sanity.
Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, whose fundamental
certainty is the existence of himself and his thoughts, from which
the external world is to be inferred. This was only the first stage
in a development, through Berkeley and Kant, to Fichte, for whom
everything is only an •„ rruiii..*!. :> oft!:? * so. This was insanity, and,
from this extreme, philosophy has been attempting, ever since, to
escape into the world of everyday common sense.
With subjectivism in philosophy, anarchism in politics goes
hand in hand. Already during Luther's lifetime, unwelcome and
unacknowledged disciples had developed the doctrine of Ana-
baptism, which, for a time, dominated the city of Miinster. The
Anabaptists repudiated all law, since they held that the good man
will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit, who cannot
be bound by formulas. From this premiss they arrive at com-
munism and sexual promiscuity ; they were therefore exterminated
after a heroic resistance. But their doctrine, in softened forms,
spread to Holland, England and America; historically, it is the
source of Quakerism. A fiercer form of anarchism, no longer con-
nected with religion, arose in the nineteenth century. In Russia,
in Spain, and to a lesser degree in Italy, it had considerable
success, and to this day it remains a bugbear of the American
immigration authorities. This modern form, though anti-religious,
has still much of the spirit of early Protestantism ; it differs mainly
in directing against secular governments the hostility that Luther
directed against popes.
Subjectivity, once let loose, could not be confined within limits
until it had run its course. In morals, the Protestant emphasis on
the individual conscience was essentially anarchic. Habit and
custom were so strong that, except in occasional outbreaks such
as that of Mtinstcr, the disciples of individualism in ethics con-
18
INTRODUCTION
tinued to act in a manner which was conventionally virtuous. But
this was a precarious equilibrium. The eighteenth-century cult of
"sensibility" began to break it down: an act was admired, not for
its good consequences, or for its conformity to a moral code, but
for die emotion that inspired it. Out of this attitude developed the
cult of the hero, as it is expressed by Carlyle and Nietzsche, and
the Byronic cult of violent passion of no matter what kind.
The romantic movement, in art, in literature, and in politics, is
hound up with this subjective way of judging men, not as members
of a community, but as aesthetically delightful objects of con-
templation. Tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer
them behind bars. The typical romantic removes the bars and
enjoys the magnificent leaps with which the tiger annihilates the
sheep. He exhorts men to imagine themselves tigers, and when he
succeeds the results are not wholly pleasant.
Against the more insane forms of subjectivism in modern times
there have been various reactions. First, a half-way compromise
philosophy, the doctrine of liberalism, which attempted to assign
the respective spheres of government and the individual. This
begins, in its modern form, with Locke, who is as much opposed
to "enthusiasm" — the individualism of the Anabaptists — as to
absolute authority and blind subservience to tradition. A more
thoroughgoing revolt leads to the doctrine of State worship,
which assigns to the State the position that Catholicism gave
to the Church, or even, sometimes, to God. Hobbes, Rousseau,
and Hegel represent different phases of this theory, and their
doctrines are embodied practically in Cromwell, Napoleon, and
modern Germany. Communism, in theory, is far removed from
such philosophies, but is driven, in practice, to a type of com-
munity very similar to that which results from State worship.
Throughout this long development, from 600 B.C. to the present
day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to
tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them. With
this difference others have been associated. The disciplinarians
have advocated some system of dogma, either old or new, and
have therefore been compelled to be, in a greater or less degree,
hostile to science, since their dogmas could not be proved empiri-
cally. They have almost invariably taught that happiness is not
the good, but that "nobility" or "heroism" is to be preferred.
'1 'hey .have had a sympathy with the irrational parts of human
19
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
nature, since they have felt reason to be inimical to social cohesion.
The libertarians, on the other hand, with the exception of the
extreme anarchists, have tended to be scientific, utilitarian,
rationalistic, hostile to violent passion, and enemies of all the
more profound forms of religion. This conflict existed in Greece
before the rise of what we recognize as philosophy, and is already
quite explicit in the earliest Greek thought. In changing forms,
it has persisted down to the present day, and no doubt will persist
for many ages to come.
It is clear that each party to this dispute — as to all that persist
through long periods of time — is partly right and partly wrong.
Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded
in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every com-
munity is exposed to two opposite dangers; ossification through
too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand;
on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest,
through the growth of an individualism and personal independence
that makes co-operation impossible. In general, important civili-
zations start with a rigid and superstitious system, gradually
relaxed, and leading, at a certain stage, to a period of brilliant
genius, while the good of the old tradition remains and the evil
inherent in its dissolution has not yet developed. But as the evil
unfolds, it leads to anarchy, thence, inevitably, to a new tyranny,
producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma.
The doctrine of liberalism is an attempt to escape from this
endless oscillation. The essence of liberalism is an attempt to
secure a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring
stability without involving more restraints than are necessary
for the preservation of the community. Whether this attempt
can succeed only the future can determine.
20
Book One ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Part i. — The Pre-Socratics
Chapter I
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
IN all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account
for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece. Much of what
makes civilization had already existed for thousands of years in
Egypt and in Mesopotamia, and had spread thence to neighbouring
countries. But certain elements had been lacking until the Greeks
supplied them. What they achieved in art and literature is familiar
to even-body, but what they did in the purely intellectual realm
is even more exceptional. They invented mathematics1 and
science and philosophy ; they first wrote history fcsx opposed to
mere annals; they speculated freely about the nature of the world
and the ends of life, without being bound in the fetters of any
inherited orthodoxy. What occurred was so astonishing that, until
very recent times, men were content to gape and talk mystically
about the Greek genius. It is possible, however, to understand
the development of Greece in scientific terms, and it is well worth
while to do so.
Philosophy begins with Thalcs, who, fortunately, can be dated
by the fact that he predicted an eclipse which, according to the
astronomers, occurred in the year 585 B.C. Philosophy and science
— which were not originally separate — were therefore born
together at the beginning of the sixth century. What had been
happening in Greece and neighbouring countries before this
lime? Any answer must be in part conjectural, but archaeology,
during the present century, has given us much more knowledge
than was possessed by our grandfathers.
1 Arithmetic* and some geometry existed among die Egyptians and
Babylonians, but mainly in the form of rules of thumb. Dqductive
reasoning from general premisses was a Greek innovation.
21
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The art of writing was invented in Egypt about the year
4000 B.C., and in Mesopotamia not much later. In each country
writing began with pictures of the objects intended. These
pictures quickly became conventionalized, so that words were
represented by ideograms, as they still are in China. In the course
of thousands of years, this cumbrous system developed into
alphabetic writing.
The early development of civilization in Egypt and Meso-
potamia was due to the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates,
which made agriculture very easy and very productive. The
civilization was in many ways similar to that which the Spaniards
found in Mexico and Peru. There was a divine king, with despotic
powers; in Egypt, he owned all the land. There was a polytheistic
religion, with a supreme god to whom the king had a specially
intimate relation. There was a military aristocracy, and also a
priestly aristocracy. The latter was often able to encroach on the
royal power, if the king was weak or if he was engaged in a
difficult war. The cultivators of the soil were serfs, belonging
to the king, the aristocracy, or the priesthood.
There was a considerable difference between Egyptian and
Babylonian theology. The Egyptians were preoccupied with
death, and believed that the souls of the dead descend into the
underworld, where they are judged by Osiris according to the
manner of their life on earth. They thought that the soul would
ultimately return to the body; this led to mummification and
to the construction of splendid tomks. The pyramids were built
by various kings at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. and
the beginning of the third. After this time, Egyptian civilization
became more and more stereotyped, and religious conservatism
made progress impossible. About 1800 B.C. Epypt was conquered
by Semites named Hyksos, who ruled the country for about
two centuries. They left no permanent mark on Epypt, but their
presence there must have helped to spread Egyptian civilization
in Syria ami Palestine.
Babylonia had a more warlike development than Egypt. At
first, the ruling race were not Semites, but "Sumcrtans," whose
origin is unknown. They invented cuneiform writing, which the
conquering Semites took over from them. There was a period
when there ucrc various independent cities whicfi fought with
each other, but in the end Babylon became supreme and <*n»tab*
THE RISE OP GREEK CIVILIZATION
lished an empire. The gods of other cities became subordinate,
and Marduk, the god of Babylon, acquired a position like that
later held by Zeus in the Greek pantheon. The same sort of
thing had happened in Egypt, but at a much earlier time.
The religions of Egypt and Babylonia, like other ancient
religions, were originally fertility cults. The earth was female,
the sun male. The bull was usually regarded as an embodiment
of male fertility, and bull-gods were common. In Babylon,
Ishtar, the earth-goddess, was supreme among female divinities.
Throughout western Asia, the Great Mother was worshipped
under various names. When Greek colonists in Asia Mjnor
found temples to her, they named her Artemis and took over
the existing cult. This is the origin of "Diana of the Ephesians."1
Christianity transformed her into the Virgin Mary, and it was a
Council at Ephesus that legitimated the title "Mother of God"
as applied to Our Lady.
Where a religion was bound up with the government of an
empire, political motives did much to transform its primitive
features. A god or goddess became associated with the State, and
had to give, not only an abundant harvest, but victory in war.
A rich priestly caste elaborated the ritual and the theology, and
fitted together into a pantheon the several divinities of the com-
ponent parts of the empire.
Through association with government, the gods also became
associated with morality. Lawgivers received their codes from a
god; thus a breach of the law became an impiety. The oldest
legal code still known is that of Hammurabi, king of Babylon,
about 2100 B.C. ; this code was asserted by the king to have been
delivered to him by Marduk. The connection between religion
and morality became continually closer throughout ancient times.
Babylonian religion, unlike that of Egypt, was more concerned
with prosperity in this world than with happiness in the next.
Magic, divination, and astrology, though not peculiar to Baby-
lonia, were more developed there than elsewhere, and it was
chiefly through Babylon that they acquired their hold on later
antiquity. From Babylon come some things that belong to science:
the division of the day into twenty-four hours, and of the circle
1 Diana wa* the I*atin equivalent of Artemis. It is Artemis who is
mentioned in the Greek Testament where^our translation speaks of
Diana*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
into 360 degrees ; also the discovery of a cycle in eclipses, which
enabled lunar eclipses to be predicted with certainty, and solar
eclipses with some probability. This Babylonian knowledge, as
we shall see, was acquired by Thales.
The civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were agricultural,
and those of surrounding nations, at first, were pastoral. A new
element came with the development of commerce, which was at
first almost entirely maritime. Weapons, until about 1000 B.C.,
were made of bronze, and nations which did not have the neces-
sary metals on their own territory were obliged to obtain them
by trade or piracy. Piracy was a temporary expedient, and where
social and political conditions were fairly stable, commerce was
found to be more profitable. In commerce, the island of Crete
seems to have been the pioneer. For about eleven centuries, say
from 2500 B.C. to 1400 B.C., an artistically advanced culture,
called the Minoan, existed in Crete. What survives of Cretan
art gives an impression of cheerfulness and almost decadent
luxury, very different from the terrifying gloom of Egyptian
temples.
Of this important civilization almost nothing was known until
the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans and others. It was a maritime
civilization, in close touch with Egypt (except during the time of
the Hyksos). From Egyptian pictures it is evident that the very
considerable commerce between Egypt and Crete was carried
on by Cretan sailors; this commerce reached its maximum
about 1500 B.C. The Cretan religion appears to have had some
affinities with the religions of Syria and Asia Minor, but in art
there was more affinity with Egypt, though Cretan art was very
original and amazingly full of life. The centre of the Cretan
civilization was the so-called "palace of Minos"at Knossos,of which
memories lingered in the traditions of classical Greece. The palaces
of Crete were very magnificent, but were destroyed about the
end of the fourteenth century B.C., probably by invaders from
Greece. The chronology of Cretan history is derived from Egyp-
tian objects found in Crete, and Cretan objects found in
Egypt ; throughout, our knowledge is dependent on archaeological
evidence.
The Cretans worshipped a goddess, or perhaps several goddesses.
The most indubitable goddess was the "Mistress of Animals,"
who was a huntress, and probably the source of the classical
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
Artemis.1 She apparently was also a mother; the only male deity,
apart from the "Master of Animals," is her young son. There is
some evidence of belief in an after life, in which, as in Egyptian
belief, deeds on earth receive reward or retribution. But on the
whole the Cretans appear, from their art, to have been cheerful
people, not much oppressed by gloomy superstitions. They were
fond of bull-fights, at which female as well as male toreadors
performed amazing acrobatic feats. Sir Arthur Evans thinks that
the bull-fights were religious celebrations, and that the performers
belonged to the highest nobility, but this view is not generally
accepted. The surviving pictures are full of movement and realism.
The Cretans had a linear script, but it has not been deciphered.
At home they were peaceful, and their cities were un walled;
no doubt they were defended by sea power.
Before the destruction of the Minoan culture, it spread, about
1600 B.C., to the mainland of Greece, where it survived, through
gradual stages of modification, until about 900 B.C. This mainland
civilization is called the Mycenaean; it is known through the
tombs of kings, and also through fortresses on hill-tops, which
show more fear of war than had existed in Crete. Both tombs
and fortresses remained to impress the imagination of classical
Greece. The older art products in the palaces are either actually
of Cretan workmanship, or closely akin to those of Crete. The
Mycenaean civilization, seen through a haze of legend, is that
which is depicted in Homer.
There is much uncertainty concerning the Mycenaeans. Did
they owe their civilization to being conquered by the Cretans?
Did they speak Greek, or were they an earlier indigenous race?
No certain answer to these questions is possible, but there is
evidence which makes it probable that they were conquerors
who spoke Greek, and that at least the aristocracy consisted of
fair-haired invaders from the North, who brought the Greek
language with them.8 The Greeks came to Greece in three
successive waves, first the lonians, then the Achaeans, and last
the Dorians. The lonians appear, though conquerors, to have
1 She has a male twin or consort, the "Master of Animals/' but he is
less prominent. It was at a later date that Artemis was identified with the
Great Mother %f Asia Minor.
1 See The Minoan- Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek
Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson, p. 1 1 M.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
adopted the Cretan civilization pretty completely, as, later, the
Romans adopted the civilization of Greece. But the lonians were
disturbed, and largely dispossessed, by their successors, the
Achaeans. The Achaeans are known, from the Hittite tablets
found at Boghaz-Keui, to have had a large organized empire
in the fourteenth century B.C. The Mycenaean civilization,
which had been weakened by the warfare of the lonians and
Achaeans, was practically destroyed by the Dorians, the last
Greek invaders. Whereas previous invaders had largely adopted
the Minoan religion, the Dorians retained the original Indo-
European religion of their ancestors. The religion of Mycenaean
times, however, lingered on, especially in the lower classes, and
the religion of classical Greece was a blend of the two. In fact
some of the classical goddesses were of Mycenaean origin.
Although the above account seems probable, it must be re-
membered that we do not know whether the Mycenaeans were
Greeks or not. What we do know is that their civilization decayed,
that about the time when it ended iron superseded bronze,
and that for some time sea supremacy passed to the Phoenicians.
Both during the later part of the Mycenaean age and after its
end, some of the invaders settled down and became agriculturists,
while some pushed on, first into the islands and Asia Minor,
then into Sicily and southern Italy, where they founded cities
that lived by maritime commerce. It was in these maritime cities
that the Greeks first made qualitatively new contributions to
civilization ; the supremacy of Athens came later, and was equally
associated, when it came, with naval power.
The mainland of Greece is mountainous and largely infertile.
There are, however, many fertile valleys, with easy accx*ss to the
sea, but cut off by the mountains from easy land communication
with each other. In these valleys little separate communities grew
up, living by agriculture, and centring round a town, generally
close to the sea. In such circumstances it was natural that, as
soon as the population of any community grew too great for its
internal resources, those who could not live on the land should
take to seafaring. The cities of the mainland founded colonies,
often in places where it was much easier to find subsistence than
it had been at home. Thus in the earliest historical period the
Greeks of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy were much richer than
those of the Greek mainland.
36
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
The social system was very different in different parts of
Greece. In Sparta, a small aristocracy subsisted on the labour of
oppressed serfs of a different race; in the poorer agricultural
regions, the population consisted mainly of fanners cultivating
their own land with the help of their families. But where commerce
and industry flourished, the free citizens grew rich by the em-
ployment of slaves — male in the mines, female in the textile
industry. These slaves were, in Ionia, of the surrounding bar-
barian population, and were, as a rule, first acquired in war.
With increasing wealth went increasing isolation of respectable
women, who in later times had little part in the civilized aspects
of Greek life except in Sparta and Lesbos.
There was a very general development, first from monarchy
to aristocracy, then to an alternation of tyranny and democracy.
The kings were not absolute, like those of Egypt and Babylonia;
they were advised by a Council of Elders, and could not transgress
custom with impunity. "Tyranny" did not mean necessarily
bad government, but only the rule of a man whose claim to
power was not hereditary. "Democracy" meant government
by all the citizens, among whom slaves and women were not
included. The early tyrants, like the Medici, acquired their
power through being the richest members of their respective
plutocracies. Often the source of their wealth was the ownership
of gold and silver mines, made the more profitable by the new
institution of coinage, which came from the kingdom of Lydia,
adjacent to Ionia.1 Coinage seems to have been invented shortly
before 700 B.C.
One of the most important results, to the Greeks, of commerce
or piracy — at first the two are scarcely distinct — was the acqui-
sition of the art of writing. Although writing had existed for
thousands of years in Egypt and Babylonia, and the Minonn
Cretans had a script (which has not been deciphered), there is
no conclusive evidence that the Greeks acquired alphabetic
writing until about the tenth century B.C. They learnt the art
from the Phoenicians, who, like the other inhabitants of Syria,
were exposed to both Egyptian and Babylonian influences, and
who held the supremacy in maritime commerce until the rise
of the Greek cities of Ionia, Italy, and Sicily. In the fourteenth
century, writirffc to Ikhnaton (the heretic king of Egypt), Syrians
1 Sec P. N. Ure, The Origin of Tyranny.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
still used the Babylonian cuneiform; but Hiram of Tyre (969-
936) used the Phoenician alphabet, which probably developed out
of the Egyptian script. The Egyptians used, at first, a pure picture
writing; gradually the pictures, much conventionalized, came to
represent syllables (the first syllables of the names of the things
pictured), and at last single letters, on the principle of "A was
an Archer who shot at a frog."1 This last step, which was not
taken with any completeness by the Egyptians themselves, but
by the Phoenicians, gave the alphabet with all its advantages.
The Greeks, borrowing from the Phoenicians, altered the alphabet
to suit their language, and made the important innovation of
adding vowels instead of having only consonants. There can be
no doubt that the acquisition of this convenient method of
writing greatly hastened the rise of Greek civilization.
The first notable product of the Hellenic civilization was
Homer. Even-thing about Homer is conjectural, but there is a
widely held opinion that he was a series of poets rather than an
individual. According to those who hold this opinion, the Iliad
and the Odyssey between them took about two hundred years
to complete, some say from 750 lo 550 B.r.,2 while others hold
that "Homer" was nearly complete at the end of the eighth
century.3 The Homeric poems, in their present form, were
brought to Athens by Peisistratus, who reigned (with inter-
missions) from 560 to 527 B.C. From his time onward, the Athe-
nian youth learnt Homer by heart, and this was the most important
part of their education. In some parts of Greece, notably in Sparta,
Homer had not the same prestige until a later date.
The Homeric poems, like the courtly romances of the later
Middle Ages, represent the point of view of a civilized aristocracy,
which ignores as plebeian various superstitions that arc still
rampant among the populace. In much later times, many of these
superstitions rose again to the light of day. Guided by anthropology,
many modern writers have come to the conclusion that Homer,
so far from being primitive, was an expurgator, a kind of eighteenth
century rationalizer of ancient myths, holding up an upper-class
1 For instance, "Gimel," the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
means "camel," and the iign for it is a conventionalized picture of a
camel.
1 Beloch, Gruchischf Ge$chithtet chap. xii.
§ Kottovtieflf, History of the Ancient World, Vol. I. p. 390..
THE RISK OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
ideal of urbane enlightenment. The Olympian gods, who represent
religion in Homer, were not the only objects of worship among the
Greeks, either in his time or later. There were other darker and
more savage elements in popular religion, which were kept at
bay by the Greek intellect at its best, but lay in wait to pounce
in moments of weakness or terror. In the time of decadence,
beliefs which Homer had discarded proved to have persisted,
half buried, throughout the classical period. This fact explains
many things that would otherwise seem inconsistent and sur-
prising.
Primitive religion, everywhere, was tribal rather than personal.
Certain rites were performed, which were intended, by sympa-
thetic magic, to further the interests of the tribe, especially in
respect of fertility, vegetable, animal, and human. The winter
solstice was a time when the sun had to be encouraged not to
kro on diminishing in strength; spring and harvest also called
for appropriate ceremonies. These were often such as to generate
a great collective excitement, in which individuals lost their
sense of separatcness and felt themselves at one with the whole
tribe. All over the world, at a certain stage of religious evolution,
sacred animals and human beings were ceremonially killed and
eaten. In different regions, this stage occurred at very different
dates. Human sacrifice usually lasted longer than the sacrificial
eating of human victims; in Greece it was not yet extinct at the
beginning of historical times. Fertility rites without such cruel
aspects were common throughout Greece; the Eleusinian mys-
teries, in particular, were essentially agricultural in their symbolism.
It must he admitted that religion, in Homer, is not very religious.
The gods are completely human, differing from men only in
being immortal and possessed of superhuman powers. Morally,
there is nothing to be said for them, and it is difficult to see how
they can have inspired much awe. In some passages, supposed
to be late, they are treated with Voltairean irreverence. Such
genuine religious feeling as is to be found in Homer is less con-
cerned with the gods of Olympus than with more shadowy
beings such as Fate or Necessity or Destiny, to whom even Zeus
is subject. Fate exercised a great influence on all Greek thought,
and perhaps was one of the sources from which science derived
the belief in natural law.
1 lomeric gods were the gods of a conquering aristocracy,
29
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
not the useful fertility gods of those who actually tilled the soil.
As Gilbert Murray says r1
"The gods of most nations claim to have created the world.
The Olympians make no such claim. The most they ever did was
to conquer it. ... And when they have conquered their kingdoms,
what do they do? Do they attend to the government? Do they
promote agriculture? Do they practise trades and industries?
Not a bit of it. Why should they do any honest work? They
find it easier to live on the revenues and blast with thunderbolts
the people who do not pay. They are conquering chieftains,
royal buccaneers. They fight, and feast, and play, and make
music; they drink deep, and roar with laughter at the lame smith
who waits on them. They are never afraid, except of their own
king. They never tell lies, except in love and war."
Homer's human heroes, equally, are not very well behaved.
The leading family is the House of Pelops, but it did not succeed
in setting a pattern of happy family life.
"Tantalos, the Asiatic founder of the dynasty, began its career
by a direct offence airainst the gods; some said, by trying to
cheat them into eating human flesh, that of his o\vn son Pelops.
Pelops, having been miraculously restored to life, offended in
his turn. He won his famous chariot-race against Oinomans,
king of Pisa, by the connivance of the latter's charioteer, Myrtibs,
and then got rid of his confederate, whom he had promised to
reward, by flinging him into the sea. The curse descended to
his sons, Atreus and Thyestes, in the form of what the Greeks
called ate, a strong if not actually irresistible impulse to crime.
Thyestes corrupted his brother's wife and thereby managed
to steal the Muck* of the family, the famous golden-fleeced ram.
Atreus in turn secured his brother's banishment, and recalling
him under pretext of a reconciliation, feasted him on the flesh
of his own children. The curse was now inherited by Atreus'
son Agamemnon, who offended Artemis by killing a sacred stag,
sacrificed his own daughter Iphigcnia to appease the goddess
and obtain a safe passage to Troy for his fleet, and was in turn
murdered by his faithless wife Klytaimnestra and her paramour
Aigisthos, a surviving son of Thyestes. Orestes, Agamemnon's son,
in turn avenged his father by killing his mother and Aigisthos. "8
1 Fh f Stages of Greek Religion, p. 67.
1 Primitive Culture in Greece, IJ. J. Rose, 1925, p. 193.
3°
THE RISE OP GREEK CIVILIZATION
Homer as a finished achievement was a product of Ionia, i.e. of
a part of Hellenic Asia Minor and the adjacent islands. Some time
during the sixth century at latest, the Homeric poems became
fixed in their present form. It was also during this century that
Greek science and philosophy and mathematics began. At the
same time events of fundamental importance were happening
in other parts of the world. Confucius, Buddha, and Zoroaster,
if they existed, probably belong to the same century.1 In the
middle of the century the Persian Empire was established by
Cyrus; towards its close the Greek cities of Ionia, to which the
Persians had allowed a limited autonomy, made a fruitless rebel-
lion, which was put down by Darius, and their best men became
exiles. Several of the philosophers of this period were refugees,
who wandered from city to city in the still unenslaved parts of
the Hellenic world, spreading the civilization that, until then,
had been mainly confined to Ionia. They were kindly treated
in their wanderings. Xcnophanes, who flourished in the later
part of the sixth century, and who was one of the refugees, says:
"This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the
winter-time, as we lie on soft couches, after a good meal, drinking
sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: 'Of what country are you,
and how old are you, good Sir? And how old were you when the
Mcde appeared?1 " The rest of Greece succeeded in preserving
its independence at the battles of Salamis and Plataea, after
which Ionia was liberated for a time.*
Greece \vas divided into a large number of small independent
states, each consisting of a city with some agricultural territory
surrounding it. The level of civilization was very different in
different parts of the Greek world, and only a minority of cities
contributed to the total of Hellenic achievement. Sparta, of which
I shall have much to say later, was important in a military sense,
but not culturally. Corinth was rich and prosperous, a great
commercial centre, but not prolific in great men.
Then there were purely agricultural rural communities, such
1 Zoroaster's date, however, is very conjectural. Some place it as early
as looo u.c. See Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. IV, p. 207.
1 As a result of the defeat of Athens by Sparta, the Persians regained
the whole coast of Asia Minor, to which their right was acknowledged in
the Peace oi Antalcidas (387-6 B.C.). About fifty years later, they were
«ncorportteti in Alexander's empire.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as the proverbial Arcadia, which townsmen imagined to be
idyllic, but which really was full of ancient barbaric horrors.
The inhabitants worshipped Hermes and Pan, and had a
multitude of fertility cults, in which, often, a mere square pillar
did duty in place of a statue of the god. The goat was the symbol
of fertility, because the peasants were too poor to possess bulls.
When food was scarce, the statue of Pan was beaten. (Similar
things are still done in remote Chinese villages.) There was a clan
of supposed were-wolves, associated, probably, with human
sacrifice and cannibalism. It was thought that whoever tasted the
flesh of a sacrificed human victim became a were-wolf. There
was a cave sacred to Zeus Lykaios (the wolf- Zeus); in this cave
no one had a shadow, and whoever entered it died within a year.
AH this superstition was still flourishing in classical times.1
Pan, whose original name (some say) was "Paon", meaning the
feeder or shepherd, acquired his better-known title, interpreted
as meaning the All-God, when his worship was adopted by
Athens in the fifth century, after the Persian war.-
There was, however, in ancient Greece, much that we can feel
to have been religion as we understand the term. This was con-
nected, not with the Olympians, but with Dionysus, or Bacchus,
whom we think of most naturally as the somewhat disreputable-
god of wine and drunkenness. The way in which, out of his
worship, there arose a profound mysticism, which greatly influ-
enced many of the philosophers, and even had a part in shaping
Christian theology, is very remarkable, and must be understood
by anyone who wishes to study the development of (ireck
thought.
Dionysus, or Bacchus, was originally a Thracian god. The
Thracians were very much less civilized than the Greeks, who
regarded them as barbarians. Like all primitive agriculturists,
they had fertility cults, and a god who promoted fertility. Mis
name was Bacchus. It was never quite clear whether Bacchus
had the shape of a man or of a bull. When they discovered how
to make beer, they thought intoxication divine, and gave honour
to Bacchus. When, later, they came to know the vine and to learn
to drink wine, they thought even better of him. His functions in
promoting fertility in general became somewhat subordinate
1 ROM, Primitive Greece, p. 65 (I.
1 J. £. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 651
3*
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
to his functions in relation to the grape and the divine madness
produced by wine.
At what date his worship migrated from Thrace to Greece is
not known, but it seems to have been just before the beginning
of historical times. The cult of Bacchus was met with hostility
by the orthodox, but nevertheless it established itself. It con-
tained many barbaric elements, such as tearing wild animals
to pieces and eating the whole of them raw. It had a curious
element of feminism. Respectable matrons and maids, in large
companies, would spend whole nights on the bare hills in dances
which stimulated ecstasy, and in an intoxication perhaps partly
alcoholic, but mainly mystical. Husbands found the practice an-
noying, but did not dare to oppose religion. Both the beauty and
the savagery of the cult are set forth in the Bacchae of Euripides.
The success of Dionysus in Greece is not surprising. Like all
communities that have been civilized quickly, the Greeks, or at
least a certain proportion of them, developed a love of the primi-
tive, and a hankering after a more instinctive and passionate
way of life than that sanctioned by current morals. To the man
or woman who, by compulsion, is more civilized in behaviour
than in feeling, rationality is irksome and virtue is felt as a burden
and a slavery. This leads to a reaction in thought, in feeling, and
in conduit. It is the reaction in thought that will specially concern
us, but something must first be said about the reaction in feeling
and conduct.
The civilized man is distinguished from the savage mainly by
prudence^ or, to use a slightly wider term, forethought. He is
willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures,
even if the future pleasures are rather distant. This habit began to
be important with the rise of agriculture; no animal and no
savage would work in the spring in order to have food next
winter, except for a few purely instinctive forms of action, such
as bees making honey or squirrels burying nuts. In these cases,
there is no forethought ; there is a direct impulse to an act which,
to the human spectator, is obviously going to prove useful later
on. True forethought only arises when a man does something
towards which no impulse urges him, because his reason tells
him that he will profit by it at some future date. Hunting requires
no forethought* because it is pleasurable ; but tilling the soil is
labour, and cannot be done from spontaneous impulse.
tf mary o/ Wnt** PAtfe***? 33 B
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Civilization checks impulse not only through forethought,
which is a self-administered check, but also through law, custom,
and religion. This check it inherits from barbarism, but it makes
it less instinctive and more systematic. Certain acts are labelled
criminal, and are punished ; certain others, though not punished
by law, are labelled wicked, and expose those who arc guilty of
them to social disapproval. The institution of private property
brings with it the subjection of women, and usually the creation
of a slave class. On the one hand the purposes of the community
are enforced upon the individual, and, on the other hand the
individual, having acquired the habit of viewing his life as a
whole, increasingly sacrifices his present to his future.
It is evident that this process can be carried too far, as it is, for
instance, by the miser. But without going to such extremes
prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things
in life. The worshipper of Dionysus reacts against prudence. In
intoxication, physical or spiritual, he recovers an intensity of
feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full
of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated
from the prison of every-day preoccupations. The Bacchic
ritual produce^ what was called "enthusiasm," which means,
etymologically, having the god enter into the worshipper, who
believed that he became one wilh the god. Much of what is
greatest in human achievement involves some element of intoxi-
cation,1 some sweeping away of prudence by pasbion. Without
the Bacchic element, life would be uninteresting; with it, it is
dangerous. Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through
history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly
with either party.
In the sphere of thought, sober civilization is roughly synony-
mous with science. But science, unadulterated, is not satisfying;
men need also passion and art and religion. Science may set
limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Among Greek philosophers, as among those of later times, there
were those who were primarily scientific and those who were
primarily religious; the latter owed much, directly or indirectly,
to the religion of Bacchus. This applies especially to Plato, and
through him to those later developments which were ultimately
embodied in Christian theology,
1 I mean mental intoxication, not intoxication by ilcohof.
34
THE RISE OP GREEK CIVILIZATION
The worship of Dionysus in its original form was savage, and
in many ways repulsive. It was not in this form that it influenced
the philosophers, but in the spiritualized form attributed to
Orpheus, which was ascetic, and substituted mental for physical
intoxication.
. Orpheus is a dim but interesting figure. Some hold that he was
an actual man, others that he was a god or an imaginary hero.
Traditionally, he came from Thrace, like Bacchus, but it seems
more probable that he (or the movement associated with his name)
came from Crete. It is certain that Orphic doctrines contain
much that seems to have its first source in Egypt, and it was
chiefly through Crete that Egypt influenced Greece. Orpheus is
said to have been a reformer who was torn to pieces by frenzied
Maenads actuated by Bacchic orthodoxy. His addiction u> music
is not so prominent in the older forms of the legend as it became
later. Primarily he was a priest and a philosopher.
Whatever may have been the teaching of Orpheus (if he existed),
the teaching of the Orphics is well known. They believed in the
transmigration of souls; they taught that the soul hereafter
might achieve eternal bliss or suffer eternal or temporary torment
according to its way of life here on earth. They aimed at becoming
"pure," partly by ceremonies of purification, partly by avoiding
certain kinds of contamination. The most orthodox among them
abstained from animal food, except on ritual occasions when
they ate it sacramentally. Man, they held, is partly of earth,
partly of heaven; by a pure life the heavenly part is increased
and the earthly part diminished. In the end a man may become
one with Bacchus, and is called "a Bacchus." There was an
elaborate theology, according to which Bacchus was twice born,
once of his mother Semele, and once from the thigh of his father
Zeus.
There are many forms of the Dionysus myth. In one of them,
Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Persephone; while still a boy,
he is torn to pieces by Titans, who eat his flesh, all but the heart.
Some say that the heart was given by Zeus to Semele, others
that Zeus swallowed it ; in either case, it gave rise to the second
birth of Dionysus. The tearing of a wild animal and the de-
vouring of its raw flesh by Bacchae was supposed to re-enact
the tearing and "eating of Dionysus by the Titans, and the animal,
in some* sense, was an incarnation of the god. The Titans were
35
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
earth-born, but after eating the god they had a spark of divinity.
So man is partly of earth, partly divine, and Bacchic rites sought
to make him more nearly completely divine.
Euripides puts a confession into the mouth of an Orphic priest,
which is instructive:1
Lord of Europa's Tyrian line,
Zeus-born, who holdest at thy feet
The hundred citadels of Crete,
I seek to Thee from that dim shrine,
Roofed by the Quick and Carven Beam,
By Chalyb steel and wild bull's blood.
In flawless joints of Cypress wood
Made steadfast. There is one pure stream
My days have run. The servant I,
Initiate, of Idaean Jove;2
Where midnight Zapreus3 roves, I rove;
I have endured his thunder-cry ;
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts ;
Held the Great Mother's mountain flume,
I am set free and named by name
A Bacchos of the Mailed Priests.
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lip alway
Touch of all meat where Life hath been.
Orphic tablets have been found in tombs, giving instructions to
the soul of the dead person as to how to find his way in the
next world, and whal to say in order to prove himself worthy of
salvation. They are broken and incomplete; the most nearly
complete (the Petelia tablet) is as follows :
Thou shah find on the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this well-spring approach not near.
1 The verse translations in thtt chapter arc by Prufcttur Gilbert
Murray.
* Mystically identified with DionyHu*.
1 One of the many name* of I )ionysm.
36
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,
Cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians before it,
Say: "I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves.
And lo, I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly
The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory."
And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy
well-spring,
And thereafter among the other heroes thou shalt have lordship. . . .
Another tablet says: — "Hail, Thou who hast suffered the suffer-
ing . . . Thou art become (Sod from Man." And yet in another: —
"Happy and Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal/'
The well-spring of which the soul is not to drink is Lethe, which
brings forgetfulness; the other well-spring is Mnemosyne, re-
membrance. The soul in the next world, if it is to achieve salva-
tion, is not to forget, but, on the contrary, to acquire a memory
surpassing what is natural.
The Orphics were an ascetic sect; wine, to them, was only a
symbol, as, later, in the Christian sacrament. The intoxication that
they sought was that of "enthusiasm," of union with the god. They
bt-lieved themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not
obtainable by ordinary means. This mystical element entered into
Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a reformer of Orphism
as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus. From
Pythagoras Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato,
and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree
religious.
Certain definitely Bacchic elements survived wherever Orphism
had influence. One of these was ferrriism, of which there was
much in Pythagoras, and which, in Plato, went so far as to claim
complete political equality for women. "Women as a sex," says
Pythagoras, "are more naturally akin to piety." Another Bacchic
element was respect for violent emotion. Greek tragedy grew out
of the rites of Dionysus. Euripides, especially, honoured the two
chief gods of Orphism, Dionysus and Eros. He has no respect for
the coldly self-righteous well-behaved man, who, in his tragedies,
is apt to be driven mad or otherwise brought to grief by the gods
in resentment of his blasphemy.
The conventional tradition concerning the Greeks is that they
exhibited an admirable serenity, which enabled them to contem-
37
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
plate passion from without, perceiving whatever beauty it exhibited
but themselves calm and Olympian. This is a very one-sided view.
It is true, perhaps, of Homer, Sophocles, and Aristotle, but it is
emphatically not true of those Greeks who were touched, directly
or indirectly, by Bacchic or Orphic influences. At Eleusis, where
the Eleusinian mysteries formed the most sacred part of Athenian
State religion, a hymn was sung, saying:
With Thy wine-cup waving high,
With Thy maddening revelry,
To Eleusis' flowery vale,
Comest Thou — Bacchus, Paean, hail!
In the Bacchae of Euripides, the chorus of Maenads displays a
combination of poetry and savagery which is the very reverse of
serene. They celebrate the delight in tearing a wild animal limb
from limb, and eating it raw then and there:
O glad, glad on the Mountains
To swoon in the race outworn.
When the holy fawn-skin clings
And all else sweeps away,
To the joy of the quick red fountains,
The blood of the hill-goat torn,
The glory of wild-beast ravenin^s
Where the hill-top catches the day,
To the Phrygian, Lydian mountains
*Tis Hromios leads the way.
(Bromtos was another of the many names of Dionysus.) The dance
of the Maenads on the mountain side was not only fierce; it was
an escape from the burdens and cares of civilization into the world
of non-human beauty and the freedom of wind and stars. In a les<
frenzied mood they sing:
Will they ever come to me, ever a^ain,
The long, long dances,
On through the dark till the dim stars wane ?
Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the stream
Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet j^lcam
In the dim expanses?
O feet of the fawn to the greenwood fled,
Alone in the grass and the loveliness ;
I^eap of the hunted, no more in dread,
Beyond the snares and the deadly press.
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
Yet a voice still in the distance sounds,
A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds,
O wildly labouring, fiercely fleet,
Onward yet by river and glen —
Is it joy or terror, ye storm-swift feet ?
To the dear lone lands untroubled of men,
Where no voice sounds, and amid the shadowy green
The little things of the woodland live unseen.
Before repeating that the Greeks were "serene," try to imagine
the matrons of Philadelphia behaving in this manner, even in a
play by Eugene O'Neill.
The Orphic is no more "serene" than the unreformed wor-
shipper of Dionysus. To the Orphic, life in this world is pain and
weariness. We are bound to a wheel which turns through endless
cycles of birth and death; our true life is the stars, but we are
tied to earth. Only by purification and renunciation and an ascetic
life can we escape from the wheel and attain at last to the ecstasy
of union with God. This is not the view of men to whom life is
easy and pleasant. It is more like the Negro spiritual:
I'm tfoing to tell God all of my troubles
When I get home.
Not all of the Greeks, but a large proportion of them, were
passionate, unhappy, at war with themselves, driven along one
road by the intellect and along another by the passions, with the
imagination to conceive heaven and the wilful self-assertion that
creates hell. They had a maxim "nothing too much," but they
were in fact excessive in everything — in pure thought, in poetry,
in religion, and in sin. It was the combination of passion and
intellect that made them great, while they were great. Neither
alone would have transformed the world for all future time as
they transformed it. Their prototype in mythology is not
Olympian Zeus, but Prometheus, who brought fire from heaven
and was rewarded with eternal torment.
If taken as characterizing the Greeks as a whole, however, what
has just been said would be as one-sided as the view that the
Greeks were characterized by "serenity." There were, in fact, two
tendencies in Greece, one passionate, religious, mystical, other-
worldly, the other cheerful, empirical, rationalistic, and interested
in acquiring knowledge of a diversity of facts. Herodotus represents
39
WESTERN PHILOSOPHTCAL THOUGHT
still used the Babylonian cuneiform; but Hiram of Tyre (969-
936) used the Phoenician alphabet, which probably developed out
of the Egyptian script. The Egyptians used, at first, a pure picture
writing; gradually the pictures, much conventionalized, came to
represent syllables (the first syllables of the names of the things
pictured), and at last single letters, on the principle of "A was
an Archer who shot at a frog."1 This last step, which was not
taken with any completeness by the Egyptians themselves, but
by the Phoenicians, gave the alphabet with all its advantages.
The Greeks, borrowing from the Phoenicians, altered the alphabet
to suit their language, and made the important innovation of
adding vowels instead of having only consonants. There can be
no doubt that the acquisition of this convenient method of
writing greatly hastened the rise of Greek civilization.
The first notable product of the Hellenic civilization was
Homer. Everything about Homer is conjectural, but there is a
widely held opinion that he was a series of poets rather than an
individual. According to those who hold this opinion, the Iliad
and the Odyssey between them took about two hundred years
to complete, some say from 750 to 550 B.C.,2 while others hold
that "Homer11 was nearly complete at the end of the eighth
century.3 The Homeric poems, in their present form, were
brought to Athens by Peisistratus, who reigned (with inter-
missions) from 560 to 527 B.C. From his time onward, the Athe-
- nian youth learnt Homer by heart, and this was the most important
part of their education. In some parts of Greece, notably in Sparta,
Homer had not the same prestige until a later date.
The Homeric poems, like the courtly romances of the later
Middle Ages, represent the point of view of a civilized aristocracy,
which ignores as plebeian various superstitions that arc still
rampant among the populace. In much later times, many of these
superstitions rose again to the light of day. Guided by anthropology,
many modern writers have come to the conclusion that Homer,
so far from being primitive, was an cxpurgator, a kind of eighteenth
century rationalizer of ancient myths, holding up an upper-class
1 For instance, "Gimel," the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
means "camel/* and the sign for it is a conventionalized picture of a
camel.
1 Oeloch, Grieclwcht Gttchichte, chap. xti.
* Rostovtseff, Hittury of tht Ancient World, Vol. I, p. 399.
28
THF RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
ideal of urbane enlightenment. The Olympian gods, who represent
religion in I tamer, were not the only objects of worship among the
Greeks, either in his time or later. There were other darker and
more savage elements in popular religion, which were kept at
bay by the Greek intellect at its best, but lay in wait to pounce
in moments of weakness or terror. In the time of decadence,
beliefs which Homer had discarded proved to have persisted,
half buried, throughout the classical period. This fact explains
many things that would otherwise seem inconsistent and sur-
prising.
Primitive religion, everywhere, was tribal rather than personal.
Certain rites were performed, which were intended, by sympa-
thetic magic, to further the interests of the tribe, especially in
respect of fertility, vegetable, animal, and human. The winter
solstice was a time when the sun had to be encouraged not to
go on diminishing in strength; spring and harvest also called
for appropriate ceremonies. These were often such as to generate
a great collective excitement, in which individuals lost their
sense of separateness and felt themselves at one with the whole
tribe. All over the world, at a certain stage of religious evolution,
sacred animals and human beings were ceremonially killed and
eaten. In different regions, this stage occurred at very different
dates. Human sacrifice usually lasted longer than the sacrificial
eating of human victims; in Greece it was not yet extinct at the
beginning of historical times. Fertility rites without such cruel
aspects \\ere common throughout Greece; the Eleusinian mys-
teries, in particular, were essentially agricultural in their symbolism.
It must be admitted that religion, in Homer, is not very religious.
The gods are completely human, differing from men only in
being immortal and possessed of superhuman powers. Morally,
there is nothing to be said for them, and it is difficult to see how
they can have inspired much awe. In some passages, supposed
to be late, they are treated with Voltairean irreverence. Such
genuine religious feeling as is to be found in Homer is less con-
cerned with the gods of Olympus than with more shadow)'
beings such as Fate or Necessity or Destiny, to whom even Zeus
is subject. Fate exercised a great influence on all Greek thought,
and perhaps was one of the sources from which science derived
the belief in nUtural law.
The Homeric gods were the gods of a conquering aristocracy,
29
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
not the useful fertility gods of those who actually tilled the soil.
As Gilbert Murray says:1
"The gods of most nations claim to have created the world.
The Olympians make no such claim. The most they ever did was
to conquer it. ... And when they have conquered their kingdoms,
what do they do? Do they attend to the government? Do they
promote agriculture? Do they practise trades and industries?
Not a bit of it. Why should they do any honest work? They
find it easier to live on the revenues and blast with thunderbolts
the people who do not pay. They are conquering chieftains,
royal buccaneers. They fight, and feast, and play, and make
music; they drink deep, and roar with laughter at the lame smith
who waits on them. They are never afraid, except of their own
king. They never tell lies, except in love and war."
Homer's human heroes, equally, are not very well behaved.
The leading family is the House of Pelops, but it did not succeed
in setting a pattern of happy family life.
"Tantalos, the Asiatic founder of the dynasty, began its career
by a direct offence against the gods; some said, by trying to
cheat them into eating human flesh, that of his own son Pelops.
Pelops, having been miraculously restored to life, offended in
his turn. He won his famous chariot-race against Oinomao*,
kinp of Pisa, by the connivance of the latter 's charioteer, Myrtilos.
and then got rid of his confederate, whom he had promised to
reward, by flinging him into the .sea. The curse descended to
his sons, Atreus and Thyestes, in the form of what the Greeks
called ate, a strong if not actually irresistible impulse to crime.
Thyestes corrupted his brother's wife and thereby managed
to steal the 'luck* of the family, the famous golden-fleeced ram.
Atreus in turn secured his brother's banishment, and recalling
him under pretext of a reconciliation, feasted him on the flesh
of his own children. The curse was now inherited by Atreus'
son Agamemnon, who offended Artemis by killing a sacred stag,
sacrificed his own daughter Iphigcnia to appease the goddess
and obtain a safe passage to Troy for his fleet, and was in turn
murdered by his faithless wife Klytairnnestra and her paramour
Aigisthos, a surviving son of Thyestes. Orestes, Agamemnon's son,
in turn avenped his father by killing his mother and Aigistlios."*
1 Fn c Stages of Greek Rtligitmt p. 67.
* Primitive Culture in Greece, II. J. Rose, 1925, p.
3°
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
Homer as a finished achievement was a product of Ionia, i.e. of
a part of Hellenic Asia Minor and the adjacent islands. Some time
during the sixth century at latest, the Homeric poems became
fixed in their present form. It was also during this century that
Greek science and philosophy and mathematics began. At the
same time events of fundamental importance were happening
in other parts of the world. Confucius, Buddha, and Zoroaster,
if they existed, probably belong to the same century.1 In the
middle of the century the Persian Empire was established by
Cyrus ; towards its close the Greek cities of Ionia, to which the
Persians had allowed a limited autonomy, made a fruitless rebel-
lion, which was put down by Darius, and their best men became
exiles. Several of the philosophers of this period were refugees,
who wandered from city to city in the still unenslaved parts of
the Hellenic world, spreading the civilization that, until then,
had been mainly contincd to Ionia. They were kindly treated
in their wanderings. Xenophanes, who flourished in the later
part of the sixth century, and who was one of the refugees, says:
"This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the
winter-time, as we lie on soft couches, after a good meal, drinking
sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: 'Of what country are you,
and how old are you, good Sir? And how old were you when the
Mede appeared?1 " The re*»t of Greece succeeded in preserving
its independence at the battles of Salamis and Plataea, after
which Ionia was liberated for a time.1
Greece was divided into a large number of small independent
states, each consisting of a city with some agricultural territory
surrounding it. The level of civilization was very different in
different parts of the Greek world, and only a minority of cities
contributed to the total of Hellenic achievement. Sparta, of which
1 shall have much to say later, was important in a military sense,
but not culturally. Corinth was rich and prosperous, a great
commercial centre, but not prolific in great men.
Then there were purely agricultural rural communities, such
1 Zoroaster's date, however, is very conjectural. Seine place it as early
at> 1000 B.C. Sec Cambridge Anritnt History, Vol. IV, p, 207.
1 As a result of the defeat of Athens by Sparta, the Persians regained
the whole coast of Asia Minor, to which their right was acknowledged in
the Peace of Antukidas (387-6 ii.c.). About fifty years later, they were
incorporated in Alexander's empire.
3'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as the proverbial Arcadia, which townsmen imagined to be
idyllic, but which really was full of ancient barbaric horrors.
The inhabitants worshipped Hermes and Pan, and had a
multitude of fertility cults, in which, often, a mere square pillar
did duty in place of a statue of the god. The goat was the symbol
of fertility, because the peasants were too poor to possess bulls.
When food was scarce, the statue of Pan was beaten. (Similar
things are still done in remote Chinese villages.) There was a clan
of supposed were-wolves, associated, probably, with human
sacrifice and cannibalism. It was thought that whoever tasted the
flesh of a sacrificed human victim became a were-wolf. There
was a cave sacred to Zeus Lykaios (the wolf- Zeus); in this cave
no one had a shadow, and whoever entered it died within a year.
All this superstition was still flourishing in classical times.1
Pan, whose original name (some say) was "Paon", meaning the
feeder or shepherd, acquired his better-known title, interpreted
as meaning the All-God, when his worship was adopted by
Athens in the fifth century, after the Persian war.2
There was, however, in ancient Greece, much that we can feel
to have been religion as we understand the term. This was con-
nected, not with the Olympians, but with Dionysus, or Bacchus,
whom we think of most naturally as the somewhat disreputable-
god of wine and drunkenness. The way in which, out of his
worship, there arose a profound mysticism, which greatly influ-
enced many of the philosophers, and even had a part in shaping
Christian theology, is very remarkable, and must be understood
by anyone who wishes to study the development of Greek
thought.
Dionysus, or Bacchus, was originally a Thracian god. The
Thracians were very much less civilized than the G reeks, who
regarded them as barbarians. Like all primitive agriculturists,
they had fertility cults, and a god who promoted fertility. His
name was Bacchus. It was never quite clear whether Bacchus
had the shape of a man or of a bull. When they discovered how
to make beer, they thought intoxication divine, and gave honour
to Bacchus. When, later, they came to know the vine and to learn
to drink wine, they thought even better of him* His functions in
promoting fertility in general became somewhat subordinate
1 Rose, Primitive Greece, p. 65 II.
1 J. £. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Helicon* p. 651
3*
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
to his functions in relation to the grape and the divine madness
produced by wine.
At what date his worship migrated from Thrace to Greece is
not known, but it seems to have been just before the beginning
of historical times. The cult of Bacchus was met with hostility
by the orthodox, but nevertheless it established itself. It con-
tained many barbaric elements, such as tearing wild animals
to pieces and eating the whole of them raw. It had a curious
clement of feminism. Respectable matrons and maids, in large
companies, would spend whole nights on the bare hills in dances
which stimulated ecstasy, and in an intoxication perhaps partly
alcoholic, but mainly mystical. Husbands found the practice an-
noying, but did not dare to oppose religion. Both the beauty and
the savagery of the cult are set forth in the Bacchae of Euripides.
The success of Dionysus in Greece is not surprising. Like all
communities that have been civilized quickly, the Greeks, or at
least a certain proportion of them, developed a love of the primi-
tive, and a hankering after a more instinctive and passionate
way of life than that sanctioned by current morals. To the man
or woman who, by compulsion, is more civilized in behaviour
than in feeling, rationality is irksome and virtue is felt as a burden
and a slavery. This leads to a reaction in thought, in feeling, and
in conduct. Jt is the reaction in thought that will specially concern
us, but something must first be said about the reaction in feeling
and conduct.
The civilized man is distinguished from the savage mainly by
prudence, or, to use a slightly wider term, forethought. He is
willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures,
even if the future pleasures are rather distant. This habit began to
be important with the rise of agriculture; no animal and no
savage would work in the spring in order to have food next
winter, except for a few purely instinctive forms of action, such
as bees making honey or squirrels burying nuts. In these cases,
there is no forethought; there is a direct impulse to an act which,
to the human spectator, is obviously going to prove useful later
on. True forethought only arises when a man does something
towards which no impulse urges him, because his reason tells
him that he will profit by it at some future date. Hunting requires
no forethought* because it is pleasurable ; but tilling the soil is
labour,4md cannot be done from spontaneous impulse.
uj H'Mfcm /»*****? 33 B
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Civilization checks impulse not only through forethought,
which is a self-administered check, but also through law, custom ,
and religion. This check it inherits from barbarism, but it makes
it less instinctive and more systematic. Certain acts arc labelled
criminal, and are punished ; certain others, though not punished
by law, are labelled wicked, and expose those who arc guilty of
them to social disapproval. The institution of private property
brings with it the subjection of women, and usually the creation
of a slave class. On the one hand the purposes of the community
are enforced upon the individual, and, on the other hand the
individual, having acquired the habit of viewing his life as a
whole, increasingly sacrifices his present to his future.
It is evident that this process can be carried too far, as it is, for
instance, by the miser. But without going to such extremes
prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things
in life. The worshipper of Dionysus reacts against prudence. In
intoxication, physical or spiritual, he recovers an intensity of
feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full
of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated
from the prison of every-day preoccupations. The Bacchic
ritual produced what was called "enthusiasm," which means,
etymologically, having the god enter into the worshipper, who
believed that he became one with the god. Much of what is
greatest in human achievement involves some element of intoxi-
cation,1 some sweeping away of prudence by passion. Without
the Bacchic element, life would be uninteresting; with it, it is
dangerous. Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through
history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly
with either party.
In the sphere of thought, sober civilization is roughly synony-
mous with science. But science, unadulterated, is not satisfying;
men need also passion and art and religion. Science may set
limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Among Greek philosophers, as among those of bter times, there
were those who were primarily scientific and those who were
primarily religious; the latter owed much, directly or indirectly,
to the religion of Bacchus. This applies especially to Plato, and
through him to those later developments which were ultimately
embodied in Christian theology.
1 I mean mental intoxication, not intoxication by alcohol.
34
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
The worship of Dionysus in its original form was savage, and
in many ways repulsive. It was not in this form that it influenced
the philosophers, but in the spiritualized form attributed to
Orpheus, which was ascetic, and substituted mental for physical
intoxication.
Orpheus is a dim but interesting figure. Some hold that he was
an actual man, others that he was a god or an imaginary hero.
Traditionally, he came from Thrace, like Bacchus, but it seems
more probable that he (or the movement associated with his name)
came from Crete. It is certain that Orphic doctrines contain
much that seems to have its first source in Egypt, and it was
chiefly through Crete that Egypt influenced Greece. Orpheus is
said to have l>een a reformer who was torn to pieces by frenzied
Maenads actuated by Bacchic orthodoxy. His addiction to music
is not so prominent in the older forms of the legend as it became
later. Primarily he was a priest and a philosopher.
Whatever may have been the teaching of Orpheus (if he existed),
the teaching of the Orphics is well known. They believed in the
transmigration of souls; they taught that the soul hereafter
might achieve eternal bliss or suffer eternal or temporary torment
according to its way of life here on earth. They aimed at becoming
"pure," partly by ceremonies of purification, partly by avoiding
certain kinds of contamination. The most orthodox among them
abstained from animal food, except on ritual occasions when
they ate it sacramentally. Man, they held, is partly of earth,
partly of heaven; by a pure life the heavenly part is increased
and the earthly part diminished. In the end a man may become
one with Bacchus, and is called **a Bacchus." There was an
elaborate theology, according to which Bacchus was twice born,
once of his mother Semele, and once from the thigh of his father
Zeus.
There are many forms of the Dionysus myth. In one of them,
Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Persephone; while still a boy,
he is torn to pieces by Titans, who eat his flesh, all but the heart.
Some say that the heart was given by Zeus to Semele, others
that Zeus swallowed it; in either case, it gave rise to the second
birth of Dionysus. The tearing of a wild animal and the de-
vouring of its raw flesh by Bacchae was supposed to re-enact
the tearing and eating of Dionysus by the Titans, and the animal,
in some* sense, was an incarnation of the god. The Titans were
35
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
earth-born, but after eating the god they had a spark of divinity.
So man is partly of earth, partly divine, and Bacchic rites sought
to make him more nearly completely divine.
Euripides puts a confession into the mouth of an Orphic priest,
which is instructive:1
Lord of Europa's Tynan line,
Zeus-born, who boldest at thy feet
The hundred citadels of Crete,
I seek to Thee from that dim shrine,
Roofed by the Quick and Can-en Beam,
By Chalyb steel and wild bull's blood.
In flawless joints of Cypress wood
Made steadfast. There is one pun- stream
My days have run. The sen ant I,
Initiate, of Idaean Jove;2
Where midnight Zagrcus8 rove?, 1 rove;
I have endured his thunder-cry ;
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts ;
Held the Great Mother's mountain flame,
I am set free and named by name
A Bacchos of the Mailed Priests.
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coihned clay,
And exiled from my lip ahvay
Touch of all meat where Life hath been.
Orphic tablets have been found in tombs, giving instructions to
the soul of the dead person as to how to find his way in the
next world, and what to say in order to prove himself \\orthy of
salvation. They are broken and incomplete; the most nearly
complete (the Petelia tablet) is as follows:
Thou shalt find on the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this well-spring approach not near.
1 The verse translations in thii chapter are by Profc-wor Gilbert
Murray.
1 Mystically idmtifad with Dionysu*,
* One of thr many narn* * of I )ionysu*.
in
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,
Cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians before it,
Say: "I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
Hut my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves.
And lo, I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly
The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory."
And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy
well-spring,
And thereafter among the other heroes thou shalt have lordship. . . .
Another tablet says: — "Hail, Thou who hast suffered the suffer-
ing . . . Thou art become (Jod from Man." And yet in another: —
"Happy and Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal."
The well-spring of which the soul is not to drink is Ix?the, which
brings forgetfulness; the other well-spring is Mnemosyne, re-
membrance. The soul in the next world, if it is to achieve salva-
tion, is not to forget, but, on the contrary, to acquire a memory
surpassing what is natural.
The Orphics were an ascetic sect; wine, to them, was only a
symbol, as, later, in the Christian sacrament. The intoxication that
they sought was that of "enthusiasm," of union with the god. They
believed themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not
obtainable by ordinary means. This mystical element entered into
( Jreek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a reformer of Orphism
as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus. From
Pythagoras Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato,
and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree
religious.
Certain definitely Bacchic elements survived wherever Orphism
had influence. One of these was frrrriism, of which there was
much in Pythagoras, and which, in Plato, went so far as to claim
complete political equality for women. "Women as a sex," says
Pythagoras, "are more naturally akin to piety." Another Bacchic
element was respect for violent emotion. Greek tragedy grew out
of the rites of Dionysus. Euripides, especially, honoured the two
chief gods of Orphism, Dionysus and Kros. He has no respect for
the coldly self-righteous well-behaved man, who, in his tragedies,
is apt to be driven mad or otherwise brought to grief by the gods
in resentment of his blasphemy.
'I 'he conventional tradition concerning the Greeks is that they
exhibited an admirable serenity, which enabled them to contcm-
37
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
plate passion from without, perceiving whatever beauty it exhibited
but themselves calm and Olympian. This is a very one-sided view.
It is true, perhaps, of Homer, Sophocles, and Aristotle, but it is
emphatically not true of those Greeks who were touched, directly
or indirectly, by Bacchic or Orphic influences. At Klcusis, where
the Eleusinian mysteries formed the most sacred part of Athenian
State religion, a hymn was sung, saying:
With Thy wine-cup waving high,
With Thy maddening revelry,
To Klcusis' flower}' vale,
Comest Thou— Bacchus, Paean, hail!
In the Bacchae of Euripides, the chorus of Maenads displays a
combination of poetry and savagery which is the very reverse of
serene. They celebrate the delight in tearing a wild anirnal limb
from limb, and eating it raw then and there:
O glad, glad on the Mountains
To swoon in the race outworn,
When the holy fawn-skin clings
And all else sweeps away,
To the joy of the quick red fountains,
The blood of the hill-goat torn,
The glory of wild-beast ravening*
Where the hill-top catches the day,
To the Phrygian, Lydian mountains
'Tis ISromios leads the way.
(Bromios was another of the many names of Dionysus.) The dance
of the Maenads on the mountain side was not only fierce; it was
an escape from the burdens and cares of civilization into the world
of non-human beauty and the freedom of wind and stars. In a less
frenzied mood they sing:
Will they ever come to me, ever again,
The long, long dances,
On through the dark till the dim stars wane ?
Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the stream
Of wind in my hair ? Shall our white feet gleam
In the dim expanses?
O feet of the fawn to the greenwood fled,
Alone in the grass and the loveliness ;
[>eap of the hunted, no more in dread,
Beyond the snares and the deadly press.
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
Yet a voice still in the distance sounds,
A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds,
O wildly labouring, fiercely fleet,
Onward yet by river and glen —
Is it joy or terror, ye storm-swift/eel?
To the dear lone lands untroubled of men,
Where no voice sounds, and amidfthe shadowy green
The little things of the woodland (live unseen.
Before repeating that the Greeks were "serene," try to imagine
the matrons of Philadelphia behaving in ti<js manner, even in a
play by Eugene O'Neill.
The Orphic is no more "serene" than tl» unrefr i«ed woift
shipper of Dionysus. To the Orphic, life in th* world is pain and
weariness. We are bound to a J -heel which t^rns through endless
cycles of birth and death; our true life is tfhe stars, but we are
tied to earth. Only by purification and renunciation and an ascetic
life can we escape from the wheel and attain at last to the ecstasy
of union with God. This is not the view of men to whom life is
easy and pleasant. It is more like the Negro spiritual:
I'm going to tell God all of my troubles
When I get home.
Not all of the Greeks, hut a large proportion of them, were
passionate, unhappy, at war with themselves, driven along one
road by the intellect and along another by the passions, with the
imagination to conceive heaven and the wilful self-assertion that
creates hell. They had a maxim "nothing too much," but they
were in fact excessive in everything — in pure thought, in poetry,
in religion, and in sin. It was the combination of passion and
intellect that made them great, while they were great. Neither
alone would have transformed the world for all future time as
they transformed it. Their prototype in mythology is not
Olympian Zeus, but Prometheus, who brought fire from heaven
and was rewarded with eternal torment.
If taken as characterizing the Greeks as a whole, however, what
has just been said would be as one-sided as the view that the
Greeks were characterized by "serenity." There were, in fact, two
tendencies in Greece, one passionate, religious, mystical, other-
worldly, the other cheerful, empirical, rationalistic, and interested
in acquiring knowledge of a diversity of facts. Herodotus represents
39
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
this latter tendency; so do the earliest Ionian philosophers; so,
up to a point, does Aristotle. Beloch (op. cit.f I, i, p. 434), after
describing Orphism, says:
"But the Greek nation was too full of youthful vigour for the
general acceptance of a belief which denies this world and transfers
real life to the Beyond. Accordingly the Orphic doctrine remained
confined to the relatively narrow circle of the initiate, without
acquiring the smallest influence on the State religion, not even in
communities which, like Athens, had taken up the celebration of
the mysteries into the State ritual and placed it under legal pro-
tection. A full millennium was to pass before these ideas— in a
quite different theological dress, it is true — achieved victory in
the Greek world/1
It would seem that this is an overstatement, particularly as
regards the Eleusinian mysteries, which were impregnated with
Orphism. Broadly speaking, those who were of a religious tem-
perament turned to Orphism, while rationalists despised it. One
might compare its status to that of Methodism in England in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
We know more or less what an educated Greek learnt from his
father, but we know very little of what, in his earliest years, he
learnt from his mother, who was, to a great extent, shut out from
the civilization in which the men took delight. It seems probable
that educated Athenians, even in the best period, however
rationalistic they may have been in their explicitly conscious
mental processes, retained from tradition and from childhood a
more primitive way of thinking and feeling, which was always
liable to prove victorious in times of stress. For this reason, no
simple analysis of the Greek outlook is likely to be adequate.
The influence of religion, more particularly of non-Olympian
religion, on Greek thought was not adequately recognized until
recent times. A revolutionary book, Jane Harrison's Prolegomena
to the Study of Greek Religion, emphasized both the primitive and
the Dionysiac elements in the religion of ordinary Greeks; F. M.
Cornford's From Religion to Philosophy tried to make students of
Greek philosophy aware of the influence of religion on the philo-
sophers, but cannot be wholly accepted as trustworthy in many
of its interpretations, or, for that matter, in its anthropology.1 The
1 On the other hand Cornford's books on various Platonic dialogues
seem to me wholly admirable.
THE RISE OF GREEK CIVILIZATION
most balanced statement known to me is in John Burnet's Early
Greek Philosophy, especially chapter ii, "Science and Religion." A
conflict between science and religion arose, he says, out of "the
religious revival which swept over Hellas in the sixth century B.C.,"
together with the shifting of the scene from Ionia to the West.
"The religion of continental Hellas," he ssi^s, "had developed in
a very different way from that of Ionia. In particular, the worship
of Dionysus, which came from Thrace, and is barely mentioned
in Homer, contained in germ a wholly new way of looking at man's
relation to the world. It would certainly b& wrong to credit the
Thracians themselves with any very exalted wews; but there can
be no doubt that, to the Greeks, the phenomenon of ecstasy
suggested that the soul was something more than a feeble double
of the self, and that it was only when 'out of the body* that it
could show its true nature. . . .
44 It looked as if Greek religion were about to enter on the same
stage as that already reached by the religions of the East; and, but
for the rise of science, it is hard to see what could have checked
this tendency. It is usual to say that the Greeks were saved from
a religion of the Oriental type by their having no priesthood; but
this is to mistake the effect for the cause. Priesthoods do not make
dogmas, though they preserve them once they are made; and in
the earlier stages of their development, the Oriental peoples had
no priesthoods either in the sense intended. It was not so much
the absence of a priesthood as the existence of the scientific
schools that saved Greece.
"The new religion— for in one sense it was new, though in
another as old as mankind — reached its highest point of develop-
ment with the foundation of the Orphic communities. So far as
\ve can see, the original home of these was Attica; but they spread
with extraordinary rapidity, especially in Southern Italy and Sicily.
They were first of dl associations for the worship of Dionysus;
but they were distinguished by two features which were new
among the Hellenes. They looked to a revelation as the source
of religious authority, and they were organized as artificial com-
munities. The poems which contained their theology were
ascribed to the Thracian Orpheus, who had himself descended
into Hades, and was therefore a safe guide through the perils
which beset the disembodied soul in the next world."
Hurried goes on to state that there is a striking similarity between
4*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Orphic beliefs and those prevalent in India at about the same time,
though he holds that there cannot have been any contact. He then
comes on to the original meaning of the word "orgy," which was
Mc*vUV *.tiA O*"hics to mean "sacrament," and was intended to
general acceptance o* Soul and enable it to escape from the wheel
reallifetotheBeyond.es, unlike the priests of Olympian cults,
confined to the relatmcall "churches/1 i.e. religious communities
acquiring the smallest ithout distinction of race or sex, could be
communities which, liHf and from their influence arose the con-
the mysteries into th^ as a way of life.
" - A full millc
*+ ther
Chapter II
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL
IN every history of philosophy for studenftf, the first thing men-
tioned is that philosophy began witWi hales, who said that
everything is made of water. Thi$ is discouraging to the
beginner, who is struggling — perhaps not very hard — to feel that
respect for philosophy which the curriculum seems to expect.
There is, however, ample reason to feel respkct for Thales, though
perhaps rather as a man of science than as 11 nhiloson' sitfrfws?*
modern sense of the word.
Thales was a native of Miletus, in Asia Minor, a flourishing
commercial city, in which there was a large slave population, and
a bitter class struggle between the rich and poor among the free
population. "At Miletus the people were at first victorious and
murdered the wives and children of the aristocrats; then the
aristocrats prevailed and burned their opponents alive, lighting
up the open spaces of the city with live torches/'1 Similar con-
ditions prevailed in most of the Greek cities of Asia Minor at the
time of Thales.
Miletus, like other commercial cities of Ionia, underwent im-
portant economic and political developments during the seventh
and sixth centuries. At first, political power belonged to a land-
owning aristocracy, but this was gradually replaced by a pluto-
cracy of merchants. They, in turn, were replaced by a tyrant,
who (as was usual) achieved power by the support of the demo-
cratic party. The kingdom of Lydia lay to the east of the Greek
coast towns, but remained on friendly terms with them until the
fall of Nineveh (6oO B.C.). This left Lydia free to turn its attention
to the West, but Miletus usually succeeded in preserving friendly
relations, especially with Croesus, the last Lydian king, who was
conquered by Cyrus in 546 B.C. There were also important rela-
tions with Egypt, where the king depended upon Greek mer-
cenaries, and had opened certain cities to Greek trade. The first
Greek settlement in Egypt was a fort occupied by a Milesian
garrison; but the most important, during the period 610-560 B.C.,
was Daphnac. Here Jeremiah and many other Jewish fugitives
v, History of the Ancient World, Vol. I, p. 204.
43
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
took refuge from Nebuchadrezzar (Jeremiah xliii. 5 If.); but while
Egypt undoubtedly influenced the Greeks, the Jews did not, nor
can we suppose that Jeremiah felt anything but horror towards
the sceptical lonians.
As regards the u2te of Thales, the best evidence, as we saw, is
that he was famous for predicting an eclipse which, according to
the astronomers, must have taken place in 585 B.C. Other evidence,
such as it is, agrees in placing his activities at about this time. It
is no proof of extraordinaiT genius on his part to have predicted
an eclipse. Miletus wao allied with Lydia, and Lydia had cultural
relations with Babylonia, and Babylonian astronomers had dis-
covered tV't eclipses recur in a cycle of about nineteen years.
They could predict eclipses of the moon with pretty complete
success, but as regards solar eclipses they were hampered by the
fact that an eclipse may be visible in one place and not in another.
Consequently they could only know that at such and such a date
it was worth while to look out for an eclipse, and this is probably
all that Thales knew. Neither he nor they knew why there is
this cycle.
Thales is said to have travelled in Kgypt, and to have thence
brought to the Greeks the science of geometry. What the Egyptians
knew of geometry was mainly rules of thumb, and there is no
reason to believe that Thales arrived at deductive proofs, such as
later Greeks discovered. He seems to have discovered how to
calculate the distance of a ship at sea from observations taken at
two points on land, and how to estimate the height of a pyramid
from the length of its shadow. Many other geometrical theorem*
are attributed to him, but probably wrongly.
He was one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, each of whom
was specially noted for one wise saying; his, it is a niiM.tke to
suppose, was "water is best."
According to Aristotle, he thought that water is the original
substance, out of which all others are funned ; and he maintained
that the earth rests on water. Aristotle also says of him that he
said the magnet has a soul in it, because it moves the iron ; further,
that all things arc full of gods.1
The statement that everything is made of water is to be regarded
as a scientific hypothesis, arid by no means a foolish one. Twenty
years ago, the received view was that everything is made of
1 Burnct (Early Gteck Philotophy, p. 51) questions tins last * tying.
44
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL
hydrogen, which is two thirds of water. The Greeks were rash
in their hypotheses, but the Milesian school, at least, was prepared
to test them empirically. Too little is known of Thales to make it
possible to reconstruct him at all satisfactorily, but of his successors
in Miletus much more is known, and it is re^n5^C5nTRM2flfe%^
that something of their outlook came from Jround table, and that
his philosophy were both crude, but they ifsoul, being air, holds
both thought and observation. /$ass the whole world."
There are many legends about him, 'ft
known than the few facts I have mentidquity than Anaximander,
are pleasant, for instance, the one told by like the opposite valua-
(1259*): "lie was reproached for his poverty, ^Koras and Sjyjftji0*1
to show that philosophy is of no use. According to fKe story, he
knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that there
would be a great harvest of olives in the corning year; so, having
a little money, he gave deposits for the use of all the olive-presses
in Chios and Miletus, which he hired at a low price because no
one bid against him. When the harvest time came, and many
were wanted all at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any
rate which he pleased, and made a quantity of money. Thus he
showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like,
but that their ambition is of another sort."
Anaximander, the second philosopher of the Milesian school,
is much more interesting than Thales. His dates are uncertain,
but he was said to have been sixty-four years old in 546 B.C., and
there is reason to suppose that this is somewhere near the truth.
He held that all things come from a single primal substance, but
that it is not water, as Thales held, or any other of the substances
that we know. It is infinite, eternal and ageless, and "it encom-
passes all the worlds" — for he thought our world only one of
many. The primal substance is transformed into the various sub-
stances witii which we are familiar, and these are transformed
into each other. As to this, he makes an important and remarkable
statement :
"Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once
more, as is ordained, for they make reparation and satisfaction to
one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time."
The idea of justice, both cosmic and human, played a part in
(irerk religion Und philosophy which is not altogether easy for a
modern to understand ; indeed our word "justice" hardly expresses
45
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
what is meant, but it is difficult to find any other word that would
be preferable. The thought which Anaximander is expressing
seems to be this: there should be a certain proportion of fire, of
earth, and of water in the world, but each element (conceived as a
^AsVegardslhe <j£ttcmPting to enlarge its empire. But there is
that he was famous itPatu1ral h* whfich Perpetually redresses the
the astronomers, must K* been fire, for example, there are ashes,
such as it is, agrees in pl:?cePtlon of justice-of not overstepping
is no proof of extraordinaif. one of the most Profound of Greek
an eclipse. Miletus wao "»ubJect to Justlce Just » much as men
relations with BabyJo* Power was not itself personal, and was
.. . a oUfr.i,.,, ec|j -
Anaximander had an argument to prove that the primal sub-
stance could not be water, or any other known element. If one of
these were primal, it would conquer the others. Aristotle reports
him as saying that these knovrn elements are in opposition to one
another. Air is cold, water is moist, and fire is hot. "And therefore,
if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be
by this time." The primal substance, therefore, must be neutral
in this cosmic strife.
There was an eternal motion, in the course of which was
brought about the origin of die worlds. The worlds were not
created, as in Jewish or Christian theology, but evolved. There
was evolution also in the animal kingdom. Living creatures arose
from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man,
like every other animal, was descended from fishes. He must be
derived from animals of a different sort, because, owing to his
long infancy, he could not have survived, originally, as he is now.
Anaximander was full of scientific curiosity. I !e is said to have
been the first man who made a map. He held tliat the earth is
shaped like a cylinder. He is variously reported as saying the sun
is as large as the earth, or twenty-seven times as large, or twenty-
eight times as large.
Wherever he is original, he is scientific and rationalistic.
Anaximenes, the last of the Milesian triad, is not quite so
interesting as Anaximander, but makes some important advances.
His dates are very uncertain. He was certainly subsequent to
Anaximander, and he certainly flourished before 494 B.C., since
in that year Miletus was destroyed by the Persians in the course
of their suppression of the Ionian revolt.
46
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL
The fundamental substance, he said, is air. The soul is air; fire
is rarefied air; when condensed, air becomes first water, then, if
further condensed, earth, and finally stone. This theory has the
merit of making all the differences between different substances
quantitative, depending entirely upon the
He thought that the earth is shaped like a j Ol c?? and t^at
air encompasses everything: "Just as oui|fPunc* . e*. ^olds
us together, so do breath and air encope3TsOU^ '3el^g1 ' rM"
It seems that the world breathes. |$ass the whole wor .
Anaximenes was more admired in ant*/ "mander,
though almost any modern world would hfluity than Anaxi yajua.
tion. He had an important influence on Pytfcte ^ °PP°j?lQn tnuch
subsequent speculation. The Pythagoreans Tdflporas *? oiat the
earth is spherical, but the atomists adhered to the view of Anaxi-
menes, that it is shaped like a disc.
The Milesian school is important,, not for what it achieved, but
for what it attempted. It was brought into existence by the contact
of the Greek mind with Babylonia and Egypt. Miletus was a rich
commercial city, in which primitive prejudices and superstitions
were softened by intercourse with many nations. Ionia, until its
subjugation by Darius at the beginning of the fifth century, was
culturally the most important part of the Hellenic world. It was
almost untouched by the religious movement connected with
Dionysus and Orpheus; its religion was Olympic, but seems to
have been not taken very seriously. The speculations of Thales,
Anaximander, and Anaximenes are to be regarded as scientific
hypotheses, and seldom show any undue intrusion of anthropo-
morphic desires and moral ideas. The questions they asked were
good questions, and their vigour inspired subsequent investigators.
The next stage in Greek philosophy, which is associated with
the Greek cities in southern Italy, is more religious, and, in
particular, more Orphic — in some ways more interesting, admir-
able in achievement, but in spirit less scientific than that of the
Milesians.
47
Chapter III
PYTHAGORAS
PYTHAGORAS, whose influence in ancient and modern times
is my subject ins^his chapter, was intellectually one of the
most important *J.sn that ever lived, both when he was
wise and when he was . mwise. Mathematics, in the sense of
demonstrative deductive argument, begins with him, and in him
is intimately connected with a peculiar form of mysticism.
The influence of mathematics on philosophy, partly owing
to him, has, ever since his time, been both profound and
unfortunate.
Let us begin with what little is known of his life. He was a
native of the island of Samos, and flourished about 532 B.C.
Some say he was the son of a substantial citizen named Mnesarchos,
others that he was the son of the «?od Apollo ; I leave the reader to
take his choice between these alternatives. In his time Samos was
ruled by the tyrant Polycrates, an old ruffian who became im-
mensely rich, and had a vast navy.
Samos was a commercial rival of Miletus; its traders went as
far afield as Tartessus in Spain, which was famous for its mines.
Polycrates became tyrant of Samos about 535 B.C., and reigned
until 515 B.C. He was not much troubled by moral scruples; he
got rid of his two brothers, who were at first associated with him
in the tyranny, and he used his navy largely for piracy. 1 le profited
by the fact that Miletus had recently submitted to Persia. In order
to obstruct any further westward expansion of the Persians, he
allied himself with Amasis, king of Egypt. But when Cambyses,
king of Persia, devoted his full energies to the conquest of Egypt,
Polycrates realized that he was likely to win, and changed sides.
He sent a fleet, composed of his political enemies, to attack Egypt ;
but the crews mutinied and returned to Samos to attack him.
He got the better of them, however, but fell at last by a treacherous
appeal to his avarice. The Persian satrap at Sardes represented
that he intended to rebel against the Great King, and would pay
vast sums for the help of Polycrates, who went to the mainland
for an interview, was captured and crucified. *
Polycrates was a patron of the arts, and beautified Samps with
48
PYTHAGORAS
remarkable public works. Anacreon was his court poet. Pythagoras,
however, disliked his government, and therefore left Samos. It is
said, and is not improbable, that Pythagoras visited Egypt, and
learnt much of his wisdom there; however that may be, it is
certain that he ultimately established himself at Croton, in
southern Italy.
The Greek cities of southern Italy, like Samos and Miletus,
were rich and prosperous; moreover they were not exposed to
danger from the Persians.1 The two greatest were Sybaris and
Croton. Sybaris has remained proverbial for luxury; its popula-
tion, in its greatest days, is said by Diodorus to have amounted to
300,000, though this is no doubt an exaggeration. Croton was
about equal in sixc to Sybaris. Both cities lived by importing
Ionian wares into Italy, partly for consumption in that country,
partly for re-export from the western coast to Gaul and Spain.
The various Greek cities of Italy fought each other fiercely; when
Pythatroras arrived in Croton, it had just been defeated by Locri.
Soon after his arrival, however, Croton was completely victorious
in a war against Sybaris, which was utterly destroyed (510 B.C.).
Sybaris had been closely linked in commerce with Miletus. Croton
was famous for medicine ; a certain Democedes of Croton became
physician to Polycrates and then to Darius.
At t'roton Pythagoras founded a society of disciples, which for
a time was influential in that city. But in the end the citizens
turned against him, and he moved to Metapontion (also in southern
Italy), where he died. He soon became a mythical figure, credited
with miracles and niapic powers, but he was also the founder of a
school of mathematicians." Thus two opposing traditions disputed
his memory, and the truth is hard to disentangle.
l*ythagoras is one of the most interesting and puzzling men in
history. Not only are the traditions concerning him an almost
inextricable mixture of truth and falsehood, but even in their
barest and least disputable form they present us with a very
curious psychology. He may be described, briefly, as a combina-
tion of Einstein and Mrs. Eddy. He founded a religion, of which
1 The (irrck cities of Sicily were in danger from the Carthaginians,
but in Italy this danger was not felt to be imminent.
* Aristotle ftays of him that he "first worked at mathematics and
arithmetic, and u&T\viirdH, at one time, condescended to the wonder-
working Qjroetised by I'herecydes."
49
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The changes in the meanings of words are often very instructive.
I spoke above about the word "orgy"; now I want to speak about
the word "theory." This was originally an Orphic word, which
Cornford interprets as "passionate sympathetic contemplation."
In this state, he says. "The spectator is identified with the suffering
Cod, dies in his death, and rises again in his new birth." For
Pythagoras, the "passionate sympathetic contemplation" was
intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge. In this way,
through Pythagoreanism, "theory" gradually acquired its modern
meaning; but for all who were inspired by Pythagoras it retained
an element of ecstatic revelation. To those who have reluctantly
learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but
to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden
understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those
who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural
<rven if untrue. It might seem that the empirical philosopher is
the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like
the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.
It is interesting to observe, in liurnct's account of the Pytha-
gorean ethic, the opposition to modern values. In connection with
a football match, modern-minded men think the players grander
than the mere spectators. Similarly as regards the State: they
admire more the politicians who are the contestants in the jrame
than those who are only onlookers. This change of values is con-
nected with a change in the social system — the warrior, the
gentleman, the plutocrat, and the dictator, each has his own
standard of the |?ood and the true. The gentleman has had a lonj:
inninps in philosophical theory, because he is associated with the
Greek genius, because the virtue of contemplation acquired
theological endorsement, and because the ideal of disinterested
truth dignified the academic life. The gentleman is to be defined
as one of a society of equals who live on slave labour, or at any
rate upon the labour of men whose inferiority is unquestioned.
It should be observed that this definition includes the saint and
the sage, insofar as these men's lives are contemplative rather
than active.
Modern definitions of truth, such as those of pragmatism and
instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative,
are inspired by industrialism as opposed to aristocracy.
Whatever may be thought of a social system which f tolerates
5*
PYTHAGORAS
slavery, it is to gentlemen in the above sense that we owe pure
mathematics. The contemplative ideal, since it led to the creation
of pure mathematics, was the source of a useful activity; this
increased its prestige, and gave it a success in theology, in
ethics, and in philosophy, which it might not otherwise have
enjoyed.
So much by way of explanation of the two aspects of Pythagoras :
as religious prophet and as pure mathematician. In both respects
he was immeasurably influential, and the two were not so separate
as they seem to a modern mind.
Most sciences, at their inception, have been connected with
some form of false belief, which gave them a fictitious value.
Astronomy was connected with astrology, chemistry with alchemy.
Mathematics was associated with a more refined type of error.
Mathematical knowledge appeared to be certain, exact, and appli-
cable to the real world; moreover it was obtained by mere thinking,
without the need of observation. Consequently, it was thought to
supply an ideal, from which every-day empirical knowledge fell
short. It was supposed, on the basis of mathematics, that thought
is superior to sense, intuition to observation. If the world of sense
does not fit mathematics, so much the worse for the world of
sense. In various ways, methods of approaching nearer to the
mathematician's ideal were sought, and the resulting suggestions
were the source of much that was mistaken in metaphysics and
theory of knowledge. This form of philosophy begins with
Pythagoras.
Pythagoras, as everyone knows, said that "all things are
numbers." This statement, interpreted in a modern way, is
logically nonsense, but what he meant was not exactly nonsense.
1 le discovered the importance of numbers in music, and the con-
nection which he established between music and arithmetic sur-
vives in the mathematical terms "harmonic mean*' and "harmonic
progression." He thought of numbers as shapes, as they appear
on dice or playing cards. We still speak of squares and cubes of
numbers, which are terms that we owe to him. He also spoke of
oblong numbers, triangular numbers, pyramidal numbers, and so
on. These were the numbers of pebbles (or, as we should more
naturally say, shot) required to make the shapes in question. He
presumably thotight of the world as atomic, and of bodies as built
up of lyolcculcs composed of atoms arranged in various shapes.
53
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
In this way he hoped to make arithmetic the fundamental study
in physics as in aesthetics.
The greatest discovery of Pythagoras, or of his immediate dis-
ciples, was the proposition about right-angled triangles, that the
sum of the squares on the sides adjoining the right angle is equal
to the square on the remaining side, the hypotenuse. The Egyptians
had known that a triangle whose sides are 3, 4, 5 has a right angle,
but apparently the Greeks were the first to observe that 3a -f 4'-
= 52, and, acting on this suggestion, to discover a proof of the
general proposition.
Unfortunately for Pythaponis, his theorem led at once to the
discovery of incommcnsurables, which appeared to disprove his
whole philosophy. In a rijjht-angled isosceles triangle, the square
on the hypotenuse is double of the square on either side. Let us
suppose each side an inch long ; then how long is the hypotenuse ?
Let us suppose its length is mfn inches. Then w2/;i2 ~ 2. If m
and n have a common factor, divide it out, then either tn or n
must be odd. Now w2 = 2«2, therefore m8 is even, therefore m is
even, therefore n is odd. Suppose m -•- 2p. Then 4/>2 = 2«2, there-
fore, »2 = 2/>2 and therefore ;/ is even, contra hyp. Therefore no
fraction m'n will measure the hypotenuse. The above proof is
substantially that in Euclid, Book X.1
This argument proved that, whatever unit of length we may
adopt, there are lengths which bear no exact numerical relation
to the unit, in the sense that there are no two integers iw, «, such
that m times the length in question is n times the unit. This con-
vinced the Greek mathematicians that geometry must be estab-
lished independently of arithmetic. There are passapcs in Plato's
dialogues which prove that the independent treatment of geo-
metry was well under way in his day; it is perfected in Euclid.
Euclid, in Book II, proves geometrically many things which we
should naturally prove by algebra, such as (a -{- bf -~~ a1 + zah
+ A2. It was because of the difficulty about incommensurable*
that he considered this course necessary. The same applies to his
treatment of proportion in Books V and VJ. The whole system
is logically delightful, and anticipates the rigour of nineteenth-
century mathematicians. So long as no adequate arithmetical theory
of incommensurable^ existed, the method of Euclid was the Inrst
* But not by Euclid. See Heath, Gftek Mathtirutlici. The above proof
was probably known to Plato.
54
PYTHAGORAS
that was possible in geometry. When Descartes introduced co-
ordinate geometry, thereby again making arithmetic supreme, he
assumed the possibility of a solution of the problem of incom-
mensurables, though in his day no such solution had been
found.
The influence of geometry upon philosophy and scientific
method has been profound. Geometry, as established by the
Greeks, starts with axioms which are (or are deemed to be) self-
evident, and proceeds, by deductive reasoning, to arrive at
theorems that are very far from self-evident. The axioms and
theorems arc held to be true of actual space, which is something
given in experience. It thus appeared to be possible to discover
things about the actual world by first noticing what is self-evident
and then using deduction. This view influenced Plato and Kant,
and most of the intermediate philosophers. When the Declaration
of Independence says "we hold these truths to be self-evident,"
it is modelling itself on Euclid. The eighteenth-century doctrine
of natural rights is a search for Euclidean axioms in politics.1
The form of Newton's Principia, in spite of its admittedly empirical
material, is entirely dominated by Euclid. Theology, in its exact
scholastic forms, takes its style from the same source. Personal
religion is derived from ecstasy, theology from mathematics; and
both arc to be found in Pythagoras.
Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in
eternal and exact truth, as well as in a super-sensible intelligible
\\orld. Geometry deals with exact circles, but no sensible object
is exactly circular; however carefully we may use our compasses,
there will be some imperfections and irregularities. This suggests
the view that all exact reasoning applies to ideal as opposed to
sensible objects; it is natural to go further, and to argue that
thought is nobler than sense, and the objects of thought more
real than those of sense-perception. Mystical doctrines as to the
relation of time to eternity are also reinforced by pure mathe-
matics, for mathematical objects, such as numbers, if real at all,
are eternal and not in time. Such eternal objects can be conceived
as God's thoughts. Hence Plato's doctrine that God is a geometer,
and Sir James Jeans' belief that He is addicted to arithmetic.
Rationalistic as opposed to apocalyptic religion has been, ever
1 "Self-evident** was substituted by Franklin for Jefferson's "sacred
and undeniable."
55
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
since Pythagoras, and notably ever since Plato, very completely
dominated by mathematics and mathematical method.
The combination of mathematics and theology, which began
with Pythagoras, characterized religious philosophy in Greece, in
the Middle Ages, and in modern times down to Kant. Orphism
before Pythagoras was analogous to Asiatic mystery religions. But
in Plato, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza,
and Leibniz there is an intimate blending of religion and reasoning,
of moral aspiration with logical admiration of what is timeless,
which comes from Pythagoras, and distinguishes the intellec-
tualized theology of Europe from the more straightforward
mysticism of Asia. It is only in quite recent times that it has been
possible to say clearly where Pythagoras was wrong. 1 do not
know of any other man who has been as influential as he was in
the sphere of thought. I say this because what appears as Platonism
is, when analysed, found to be in essence Pythagoreanism. The
whole conception of an eternal world, revealed to the intellect
but not to the senses, is derived from him. But for him, Christians
would not have thought of Christ as the Word; but for him,
theologians would not have sought logical proofs of Mod and
immortality. But in him all this is still implicit. I low it became
explicit will appear as we proceed.
Chapter IV
HERACLITUb
Two opposite attitudes towards the Greeks are common
at the present day. One, which was practically universal
from the Renaissance until very recent times, views the
Greeks with almost superstitious reverence, as the inventors of
all that is best, and as men of superhuman genius whom the
moderns cannot hope to equal. The other attitude, inspired by
the triumphs of science and by an optimistic belief in progress,
considers the authority of the ancients an incubus, and maintains
that most of their contributions to thought are now best forgotten.
1 cannot myself take either of these extreme views; each, I should
say, is partly right and partly wrong. Before entering upon any
detail, I shall try to say what sort of wisdom we can still derive
from the study of Greek thought.
As to the nature and structure of the world, various hypotheses
are possible. Progress in metaphysics, so far as it has existed, has
consisted in a gradual refinement of all these hypotheses, a develop-
ment of their implications, and a reformulation of each to meet
the objections urged by adherents of rival hypotheses. To learn
to conceive the universe according to each of these systems is an
imaginative delight and an antidote to dogmatism. Moreover,
even if no one of the hypotheses can be demonstrated, there is
genuine knowledge in the discovery of what is involved in making
each of them consistent with itself and with known facts. Now
almost all the hypotheses that have dominated modern philo-
sophy were first thought of by the Greeks; their imaginative
inventiveness in abstract matters can hardly be too highly praised.
What 1 shall have to say about the Greeks will be said mainly
from this point of view; I shall regard them as giving birth to
theories which have had an independent life and growth, and
which, though at first somewhat infantile, have proved capable
of surviving and developing throughout more than two thousand
years.
The Greeks contributed, it is true, something else which proved
of more permanent value to abstract thought: they discovered
mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, in
57
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
particular, is a Greek invention, without which modern science
would have been impossible. But in connection with mathematics
the one-sidedness of the Greek genius appears : it reasoned deduc-
tively from what appeared self-evident, not inductively from what
had been observed. Its amazing successes in the employment
of this method misled not only the ancient world, but the greater
part of the modern world also. It has only been very slowly that
scientific method, which seeks to reach principles inductively
from observation of particular facts, has replaced the Hellenic
belief in deduction from luminous axioms derived from the mind
of the philosopher. For this reason, apart from others, it is a
mistake to treat the Greeks with superstitious reverence. Scientific
method, though some few among them were the first men who
had an inkling of it, is, on the whole, alien to their temper of mind,
and the attempt to glorify them by belittling the intellectual
progress of the last four centuries has a cramping effect upon
modern thought.
There is, however, a more general argument against reverence,
whether for the Greeks or for anyone else. In studying a philo-
sopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but
first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know
what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival
of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible,
the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which hr has
hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this
process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be
remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth
studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but
that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth
on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses
a view which seems to us obviously absurd, \ve should not attempt
to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand
how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and
psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our
thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own
cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different
temper of mind.
Between Pythagoras and Heraclitus, with whom we shall be
concerned in this chapter, there was another philosopher, of less im-
portance, namely Xenophancs. His date is uncertain, and 's mainly
58
HERACLJTUS
determined by the fact that he alludes to Pythagoras and Hera-
clitus alludes to him. He was an Ionian by birth, but lived most
of his life in southern Italy. He believed all things to be made
out of earth and water. As regards the gods he was a very emphatic
free thinker. "Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all
things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings
and adulteries and deccivings of one another. . . . Mortals deem
that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs,
and voice and form . . . yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had
hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of
art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses,
and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their
several kinds. . . . The Ethiopians make their gods black and
snub-nosed ; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair."
He believed in one God, unlike men in form and thoupht, who
"without toil swayeth all things by the force of his mind." Xeno-
phanes made fun of the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration.
"Once, they say, he (Pythagoras) was passing by when a dog was
being ill-treated. *Stop,' he said, 'don't hit it! It is the soul of
a friend ! I knew it when I heard its voice/ " He believed it
impossible to ascertain the truth in matters of theology. "The
certain truth there is no man who knows, nor ever shall be, about
the pods and all the things whereof I speak. Yea, even if a man
should chance to say something utterly right, still he himself
knows it not — there is nowhere anything but guessing."1
Xenophanes has his place in the succession of rationalists, who
were opposed to the mystical tendencies of Pythagoras and others,
but as an independent thinker he is not in the first rank.
The doctrine of Pythagoras, as we saw, is very difficult to
disentangle from that of his disciples, and although Pythagoras
himself is very early, the influence of his school is mainly sub-
sequent to that of various other philosophers. The first of these
to invent a theory which is still influential was Heraclitus, who
flourished about 500 B.C. Of his life very little is known, except
that he was an aristocratic citizen of Ephesus. He was chiefly
famous in antiquity for his doctrine that everything is in a state
of flux, but this, as we shall see, is only one aspect of his meta-
physics.
iieraciitus, though an Ionian, was not in the scientific tradition
* (Juotnl from Kdwyn itevan, Stoic t an d Sceptics, Oxford, 1913, p. 121.
59
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of the Milesians.1 He was a mystic, but of a peculiar kind. He
regarded fire as the fundamental substance ; everything, like flame
in a fire, is born by the death of something else. "Mortals are
immortals, and immortals are mortals, the one living the other's
death and dying the other's life." There is unity in the world,
but it is a unity formed by the combination of opposite?. "All
things come out of the one, and the one out of all things'1; but
the many have less reality than the one, which is God.
From what survives of his writings he does not appear as an
amiable character. He was much addicted to contempt, and was
the reverse of a democrat. Concerning his fellow-citizens, he
says: "The Kphesians would do well to hane themselves, even-
grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they
have cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them, saying:
'We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such,
let him be so elsewhere and among others.' " He speaks ill of
all his eminent predecessors, with a single exception. "Homer
should be turned out of the lists and whipped." "Of all whose
discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to under-
standing that wisdom is apart from all." "The learning of many
things teachelh not understanding, else would it have taught
Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus."
"Pythagoras . . . claimed for his own wisdom what was but a
knowledge of many things and an art of mischief." The one
exception to his condemnations is Tcutamus, who is signalled
out as "of more account than the rest." When we inquire the
reason for this praise, we find that Tcutamus said "most men
are bad."
His contempt for mankind leads him to think that only force
will compel them to act for their own good. He says: "livery beast
is driven to the pasture with blows"; and again: "Asses would
rather have straw than gold."
As might be expected, Heraclitus believes in war. "War," he
says, "is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has
made gods and some men, some bond and some free." Again:
"Homer was wrong in saying: * Would that strife might perish
from among gods and men!' He did not see that he was praying
for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard,
1 Comfofd, op. rit. (p. 184), ernphasixrs this, I think rightly. Herat liru»
is often misunderstood through I>CWK aasimilatrd to other lonmns.
60
HERACLITUS
all things would pass away." And yet again: "We must know
that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things
come into being and pass away through strife."
His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche's,
lie regards the soul as a mixture of fire and water, the fire being
noble and the water ignoble. The soul that has most fire he
calls "dry." "The dry soul is the wisest and best." "It is pleasure
to souls to become moist." "A man, when he gets drunk, is led
by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having
his soul moist." "It is death to souls to become water." "It is
hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to
get, it purchases at the cost of soul." "It is not good for men to
get all that they wish to get." One may say that Heraclitus values
power obtained through self-mastery, and despises the passions
that distract men from their central ambitions.
The attitude of Heraclitus to the religions of his time, at any
rate the Bacchic religion, is largely hostile, but not with the
hostility of a scientific rationalist. He has his own religion, and
in part interprets current theology to fit his doctrine, in part
rejects it with considerable scorn. He has been called Bacchic
(by C'ornforti), and regarded as an interpreter of the mysteries
(by Pfieiderer). I do not think the relevant fragments bear out
this view. He says, for example: "The mysteries practised among
men arc unholy mysteries/' This suggests that he had in mind
possible mysteries that would not be "unholy," but would be
quite different from those that existed. He would have been a
religious reformer, if he had not been too scornful of the vulgar
to engage in propaganda.
The following are all the extant sayings of Heraclitus that bear
on his attitude to the theology of his day.
The Lord whose is the oracle of Delphi neither utters nor hides
his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, un-
bedi/cnetl and unpei fumed, reaches over a thousand years with
her \oice, thanks to the god in her.
Souls smell in Hades.
(Jieater deaths win greater portions. (Those who die them
become gods.)
Night-\valk(TS,*mairicians, priests of Bacchus, and priestesses of
the wine^val, mystery-mongers.
61
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries.
And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a
man's house, knowing not what gods or heroes are.
For if it were not to Dionysus that they made a procession and
sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most
shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysus in whose honour
they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat.
They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with
blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash
his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would
deem him mad.
Heraclitus believed fire to be the primordial element, out of
which everything else had arisen. Thales, the reader will remember,
thought everything was made of water; Anaximenes thought air
was the primitive element; Heraclitus preferred fire. At last
Empedocles suggested a statesmanlike compromise by allowing
four elements, earth, air, fire and water. The chemistry of the
ancients stopped dead at this point. No further progress was made
in this science until the Mohammedan alchemists embarked
upon their search for the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life,
and a method of transmuting base metals into gold.
The metaphysics of Heraclitus are sufficiently dynamic to
satisfy the most hustling of moderns :
"This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men
has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living
Fire, with measures kindling and measures going out.*'
"The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of
the sea is earth, half whirlwind."
In such a world, perpetual change was to be expected, ami
perpetual change was what Heraclitus believed in.
He had, however, another doctrine on which he set even more
store than on the perpetual flux; this was the doctrine of the
mingling of opposites. "Men do not know," he says, "how what
is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite
tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre." His belief in strife
is connected with this theory, for in strife opposites combine to
produce a motion which is a harmony. There is a unity in the
world, but it is a unity resulting from diversity:
"Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn
together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious an^I the dis-
62
HERACLITUS
cordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue
from the one."
Sometimes he speaks as if the unity were more fundamental
than the diversity :
"Good and ill are one/1
"To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold
some things wrong and some right."
"The way up and the way down is one and the same."
"God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace,
surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when
it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each."
Nevertheless, there would be no unity if there were not opposites
to combine: "it is the opposite which is good for us."
This doctrine contains the germ of Hegel's philosophy, which
proceeds by a synthcsi/ing of opposites.
The metaphysics of Ileraclitus, like that of Anaximander, is
dominated by a conception of cosmic justice, which prevents the
strife of opposites from ever issuing in the complete victory of
cither.
"All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things,
even as wares for gold and gold for wares."
"Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire; water
lives the death of earth, earth that of water."
"The sun will not overstep his measures ; if he does, the Erinyes,
the handmaids of Justice, will find him out."
"We must know that war is common to all, and strife is justice."
Ileraclitus repeatedly speaks of "God" as distinct from "the
gods." "The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has. . . .
Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man. . . . The
wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful
ape is ugly compared to man."
God, no doubt, is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
The doctrine that everything is in a state of flux is the most
famous of the opinions of Ileraclitus, and the one most emphasized
by his disciples, as described in Plato's Theaetetus.
"You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters
are ever flowing in upon you."1
"The sun is ne^w every day."
1 But cf. *'\Ve step and do not step into the same rivers: we are, and
are not/' *•
63
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
His belief in universal change is commonly supposed to have
been expressed in the phrase "all things are flowing/1 but this is
probably apocryphal, like Washington's "Father, I cannot tell a
lie" and Wellington's "Up Guards and at 'em." His words, like
those of all the philosophers before Plato, are only known through
quotations, largely made by Plato or Aristotle for the sake of
refutation. When one thinks what would become of any modern
philosopher if he were only known through the polemics of his
rivals, one can see how admirable the pre-Socratics must have
been, since even through the mist of malice spread by their
enemies they still appear great. However this may be, Plato and
Aristotle agree that Heraclitus taught that "nothing ever is,
everything is becoming" (Plato), and that "nothing steadfastly is"
(Aristotle).
I shall return to the consideration of this doctrine in connection
with Plato, who is much concerned to refute it. For the present, I
shall not investigate what philosophy has to say about it, but
only what the poets have felt and the men of science have taught.
The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of
the instincts leading men to philosophy. It is derived, no doubt,
from love of home and desire for a refuge from danger; we find,
accordingly, that it is most passionate in those whose lives are
most exposed to catastrophe. Religion seeks permanence in two
forms, God and immortality. In God is no variableness neither
shadow of turning; the life after death is eternal and unchanging.
The cheerfulness of the nineteenth century turned men against
these static conceptions, and modern liberal theology believes
that there is progress in heaven and evolution in the Godhead.
But even in this conception there is something permanent, namely
progress itself and its immanent goal. And a dose of disaster is
likely to bring men's hopes back to their older super-terrestrial
forms: if life on earth is despaired of, it is only in heaven that
peace can be sought.
The poets have lamented the power of Time to sweep away
every object of their love.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty 'a brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's trurn,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
HERACLITUS
They generally add that their own verses are indestructible:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand.
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
But this is only a conventional literary conceit.
Philosophically inclined mystics, unable to deny that whatever
is in time is transitory, have invented a conception of eternity as
not persistence through endless time, but existence outside the
whole temporal process. Eternal life, according to some theologians,
for example, Dean Inge, does not mean existence throughout
every moment of future time, but a mode of being wholly inde-
pendent of time, in which there is no before and after, and there-
fore no logical possibility of change. This view has been poetically
expressed by Vaughan :
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved ; in which the world
And all her train were hurled.
Several of the most famous systems of philosophy have tried
to state this conception in sober prose, as expressing what reason,
patiently pursued, will ultimately compel us to believe.
Heraclitus himself, for all his belief in change, allowed something
everlasting. The conception of eternity (as opposed to endless
duration), which comes from Parmenides, is not to be found in
Heraclitus, but in his philosophy the central fire never dies: the
world "was ever, is now, and ever shall be, an ever-living Fire/'
But fire is something continually changing, and its permanence is
rather that of a process than that of a substance — though this view
should not be attributed to Heraclitus.
Science, like philosophy, has sought to escape from the doctrine
of perpetual flux by finding some permanent substratum amid
changing phenomena. Chemistry seemed to satisfy this desire. It
was found that fire, which appears to destroy, only transmutes:
elements are recombined, but each atom that existed before com-
bustion still exists when the process is completed. Accordingly it
was supposed that atoms arc indestructible, and that all change
in the physical world consists merely in re-arrangement of per-
65 C
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
sistent elements. This view prevailed until the discovery of radio-
activity, when it was found that atoms could disintegrate.
Nothing daunted, the physicists invented new and smaller units
called electrons and protons, out of which atoms were composed ;
and these units were supposed, for a few years, to have the in-
destructibility formerly attributed to atoms. Unfortunately it
seemed that protons and electrons could meet and explode,
forming, not new matter, but a wave of energy spreading through
the universe with the velocity of light. Energy had to replace
matter as what is permanent. But energy, unlike matter, is not a
refinement of the common-sense notion of a "thing"; it is merely
a characteristic of physical processes. It might be fancifully
identified with the Heraclitean Fire, but it is the burning, not
what burns. "What burns" has disappeared from modern physics.
Passing from the small to the large, astronomy no longer allows
us to regard the heavenly bodies as everlasting. The planets came
out of the sun, and the sun came out of a nebula. It has lasted
some time, and will last some time longer; but sooner or later —
probably in about a million million years — it will explode, destroy-
ing all the planets. So at least the astronomers say; perhaps as
the fatal day draws nearer they will find some mistake in their
calculations.
The doctrine of the perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is
painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to refute it.
One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive
hopes that science seemed to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly,
have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to
the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenidcs.
Chapter V
PARMENIDES
THE Greeks were not addicted to moderation, cither in
their theories or in their practice. Heraclitus maintained
that everything changes; Parmenides retorted that nothing
changes.
Parmenides was a native of Elea, in the south of Italy, and
flourished in the first half of the fifth century B.C. According to
Plato, Socrates in his youth (say about the year 450 B.C.) had an
interview with Parmenides, then an old man, and learnt much
from him. Whether or not this interview is historical, we may at
least infer, what is otherwise evident, that Plato himself was
influenced by the doctrines of Parmenides. The south Italian and
Sicilian philosophers were more inclined to mysticism and religion
than those of Ionia, who were on the whole scientific and sceptical
in their tendencies. But mathematics, under the influence of
Pythagoras, flourished more in Magna Graecia than in Ionia;
mathematics at that time, however, was entangled with mysticism.
Parmenides was influenced by Pythagoras, but the extent of this
influence is conjectural. What makes Parmenides historically
important is that he invented a form of metaphysical argument
that, in one form or another, is to be found in most subsequent
metaphysicians down to and including Hegel. He is often said to
liave invented logic, but what he really invented was metaphysics
based on logic.
The doctrine of Parmenides was set forth in a poem On Nature.
He considered the senses deceptive, and condemned the multitude
of sensible things as mere illusion. The only true being is "the
One/' which is infinite and indivisible. It is not, as in Heraclitus,
a union of opposites, since there are no opposites. He apparently
thought, for instance, that "cold" means only "not hot," and
"dark" means only "not light." "The One" is not conceived by
Parmenides as we conceive God ; he seems to think of it as material
and extended, for he speaks of it as a sphere. But it cannot be
divided, because the whole of it is present everywhere.
Parmenides dk'ides his teaching into two parts, called respec-
tively "the way of truth" and "the way of opinion." We need not
67
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
sistent elements. This view prevailed until the discovery of radio-
activity, when it was found that atoms could disintegrate.
Nothing daunted, the physicists invented new and smaller units,
called electrons and protons, out of which atoms were composed ;
and these units were supposed, for a few years, to have die in-
destructibility formerly attributed to atoms. Unfortunately it
seemed that protons and electrons could meet and explode,
forming, not new matter, but a wave of energy spreading through
the universe with the velocity of light. Energy had to replace
matter as what is permanent. But energy, unlike matter, is not a
refinement of the common-sense notion of a "thing"; it is merely
a characteristic of physical processes. It might be fancifully
identified with the Heraclitean Fire, but it is the burning, not
what burns. "What burns" has disappeared from modern physics.
Passing from the small to the large, astronomy no longer allows
us to regard the heavenly bodies as everlasting. The planets came
out of the sun, and the sun came out of a nebula. It has lasted
some time, and will last some time longer; but sooner or later —
probably in about a million million years — it will explode, destroy-
ing all the planets. So at least the astronomers say; perhaps as
the fatal day draws nearer they will find some mistake in their
calculations.
The doctrine of the perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is
painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to refute it.
One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive
hopes that science seemed to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly,
have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to
the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenides.
66
Chapter V
PARMENIDES
THE Greeks were not addicted to moderation, either in
their theories or in their practice. Heraclitus maintained
that everything clianges; Parmenides retorted that nothing
changes.
Parmenides was a native of Elea, in the south of Italy, and
flourished in the first half of the fifth century B.C. According to
Plato, Socrates in his youth (say about the year 450 B.C.) had an
interview with Parmenides, then an old man, and learnt much
from him. Whether or not this interview is historical, we may at
least infer, what is otherwise evident, that Plato himself was
influenced by the doctrines of Parmenides. The south Italian and
Sicilian philosophers were more inclined to mysticism and religion
than those of Ionia, who were on the whole scientific and sceptical
in their tendencies. But mathematics, under the influence of
Pythagoras, flourished more in Magna Graecia than in Ionia;
mathematics at that time, however, was entangled with mysticism.
Parmenides was influenced by Pythagoras, but the extent of this
influence is conjectural. What makes Parmenides historically
important is that he invented a form of metaphysical argument
that, in one form or another, is to be found in most subsequent
metaphysicians down to and including Hegel. He is often said to
have invented logic, but what he really invented was metaphysics
based on logic.
The doctrine of Parmenides was set forth in a poem On Nature,
lie considered the senses deceptive, and condemned the multitude
of sensible things as mere illusion. The only true being is "the
One,1' which is infinite and indivisible. It is not, as in Heraclitus,
a union of opposites, since there are no opposites. He apparently
thought, for instance, that "cold" means only "not hot," and
"dark" means only "not light." "The One" is not conceived by
Parmenides as we conceive God ; he seems to think of it as material
and extended, for he speaks of it as a sphere. But it cannot be
divided, because the whole of it is present everywhere.
Parmenides divides his teaching into two parts, called respec-
tively "the way of truth19 and "the way of opinion." We need not
6?
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
concern ourselves with the latter. What he says about the way of
truth, so far as it has survived, is, in its essential points, as
follows:
"Thou canst not know what is not — that is impossible — nor
utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that
can be."
"How, then, can what is be going to be in the future? Or how
could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it
if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and
passing away not to be heard of.
"The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which
the thought exists is the same ; for you cannot find thought without
something that is, as to which it is uttered."1
The essence of this argument is: When you think, you think of
something; when you use a name, it must be the name of some-
thing. Therefore both thought and language require objects out-
side themselves. And since you can think of a thing or speak of it
at one time as well as at another, whatever can be thought of or
spoken of must exist at all times. Consequently there can be no
change, since change consists in things coming into being or
ceasing to be.
This is the first example in philosophy of an argument from
thought and language to the world at large. It cannot of course
be accepted as valid, but it is worth while to see what element of
truth it contains.
We can put the argument in this way: if language is not just
nonsense, words must mean something, and in general they must
not mean just other words, but something that is there whether
we talk of it or not. Suppose, for example, that you talk of George
Washington. Unless there were a historical person who had that
name, the name (it would seem) would be meaningless, and
sentences containing the name would be nonsense. Parmenides
maintains that not only must George Washington have existed in
the past, but in some sense he must still exist, since we can still
use his name significantly. This seems obviously untrue, but
how are we to get round the argument ?
Let us take an imaginary person, say Hamlet. Consider the
1 Burnet'i note : "The meaning, I think, it this. 4 . . There can be
no thought corresponding to a name that i» not the name of something
real." '
68
PARMENIDES
statement "Hamlet was Prince of Denmark." In some sense this
is true, but not in the plain historical sense. The true statement is
"Shakespeare says that Hamlet was Prince of Denmark," or, more
explicitly, "Shakespeare says there was a Princ'e of Denmark
called 'Hamlet.' " Here there is no longer anything imaginary.
Shakespeare and Denmark and the noise "Hamlet" are all real,
but the noise "Hamlet" is not really a name, since nobody is really
called "Hamlet." If you say " 'Hamlet* is the name of an imaginary
person," that is not strictly correct; you ought to say "It is ima-
gined that 'Hamlet' is the name of a real person."
Hamlet is an imagined individual; unicorns are an imagined
species. Some sentences in which the word "unicorn" occurs are
true, and some are false, but in each case not directly. Consider
"a unicorn has one horn" and "a cow has two horns." To prove
the latter, you have to lopk at a cow ; it is not enough to say that
in some book cows are said to have two horns. But the evidence
that unicorns have one horn is only to be found in books, and in
fact the correct statement is: "Certain books assert that there are
animals with one horn called 'unicorns/ " All statements about
unicorns are really about the word "unicorn," just as all statements
about Hamlet are really about the word "Hamlet."
But it is obvious that, in most cases, we are not speaking of
words, but of what the words mean. And this brings us back to
the argument of Parmenides, that if a word can be used signifi-
cantly it must mean something, not nothing, and therefore what
the word means must in some sense exist.
What, then, are we to say about George Washington ? It seems
we have only two alternatives: one is to say that he still exists; the
other is to say that, when we use the words "George Washington,"
we are not really speaking of the man who bore that name. Either
seems a paradox, but the latter is less of a paradox, and I shall
try to show a sense in which it is true.
Parmenides assumes that words have a constant meaning; this
is really the basis of his argument, which he supposes unquestion-
able. But although the dictionary or the encyclopaedia gives what
may be called the official and socially sanctioned meaning of a
word, no two people who use the same word have just the same
thought in their minds.
George Washington himself could use his name and the word
"I" as synonyms. He could perceive his own thoughts and the
69
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
movements of his body, and could therefore use his name with a
fuller meaning than was possible for any one else. His friends,
when in his presence, could perceive the movements of his body,
and could divine his thoughts; to them, the name "George
Washington" still denoted something concrete in their own
experience. After his death they had to substitute memories for
perceptions, which involved a change in the mental processes
taking place when they used his name. For us, who never knew
him, the mental processes are again different. We may think of
his picture, and say to ourselves "yes, that man." We may think
"the first President of the United States." If we are very ignorant,
he may be to us merely "The man who was called * George
Washington.' " Whatever the name suggests to us, it must be not
the man himself, since we never knew him, but something now
present to sense or memory or thought. This shows the fallacy of
the argument of Parmenides.
This perpetual change in the meanings of words is concealed
by the fact that, in general, the change nukes no difference to the
truth or falsehood of the propositions in which the words occur.
If you take any true sentence in which the name "George Washing-
ton" occurs, it will, as a rule, remain true if you substitute the
phrase "the first President of the United States." There are ex-
ceptions to this rule. Before Washington's election, a man might
say "I hope George Washington will be the first President of the
United States," but he would not say "I hope the first President
of the United States will be the first President of the United
States" unless he had an unusual passion for the law of identity.
But it is easy to make a rule for excluding these exceptional cases,
and in those that remain you may substitute for "George Washing-
ton" any descriptive phrase that applies to him alone. And it is
only by means of such phrases that we know what we know about
him.
Parmenides contends that, since we can now know what is com-
monly regarded as past, it cannot really be past, but must, in some
sense, exist now. Hence he infers that there is no such thing as
change. What we have been saying about George Washington
meets this argument. It may be said, in a sense, that we have no
knowledge of the past. When you recollect, the recollection occurs
now, and is not identical with the event recollected. But the re-
collection affords a description of the past event, and for most
PARMENIOES
practical purposes it is unnecessary to distinguish between the
description and what it describes.
This whole argument shows how easy it is to draw metaphysical
conclusions from language, and how the only way to avoid
fallacious arguments of this kind is to push the logical and psy-
chological study of language further than has been done by most
metaphysicians.
I think, however, that, if Parmenides could return from the dead
and read what I have been saying, he would regard it as very super-
ficial. "How do you know," he would ask, "that your statements
about George Washington refer to a past time? By your own
account, the direct reference is to things now present; your recol-
lections, for instance, happen now, not at the time that you think
you recollect. If memory is to be accepted as a source of knowledge,
the past must be before the mind now, and must therefore in some
sense still exist/'
I will not attempt to meet this argument now ; it requires a dis-
cussion of memory, which is a difficult subject. I have put the
argument here to remind the reader that philosophical theories,
if they are important, can generally be revived in a new form after
being refuted as originally stated. Refutations are seldom final;
in most cases, they are only a prelude to further refinements.
What subsequent philosophy, down to quite modern times,
accepted from Parmenides. was not the impossibility of all change,
which was too violent a paradox, but the indestructibility of sub-
it once. The word "substance" did not occur in his immediate
successors, but the concept is already present in their speculations.
A substance was supposed to be the persistent subject of varying
predicates. As such it became, and remained for more than two
thousand years, one of the fundamental concepts of philosophy,
psychology, physics, and theology. I shall have much to say about
it at a later stage. For the present, I am merely concerned to note
that it was introduced as a way of doing justice to the arguments
of Parmenides without denying obvious facts.
Chapter VI
EMPEDOCLES
E • IHE mixture of philosopher, prophet, man of science, and
I charlatan, which we found already in Pythagoras, was ex-
JL emplified very completely in Empedocles, who flourished
about 440 B.C., and was thus a younger contemporary of Par-
menides, though his doctrine had in some ways more affinity with
that of Heraclitus. He was a citizen of Acragas, on the south coast
of Sicily; he was a democratic politician, who at the same time
claimed to be a god. In most Greek cities, and especially in those
of Sicily, there was a constant conflict between democracy and
tyranny; the leaders of whichever party was at the moment
defeated were executed or exiled. Those who were exiled seldom
scrupled to enter into negotiations with the enemies of Greece —
Persia in the East, Carthage in the West. Empedocles, in due
course, was banished, but he appears, after his banishment, to
have preferred the career of a sage to that of an intriguing refugee.
It seems probable that in youth he was more or less Orphic ; that
before his exile he combined politics and science; and that it
was only in later life, as an exile, that he became a prophet.
Legend had much to say about Empedocles. He was supposed
to have worked miracles, or what seemed such, sometimes by
magic, sometimes by means of his scientific knowledge. He could
control the winds, we are told; he restored to life a woman who
had seemed dead for thirty days; finally, it is said, he died by
leaping into the crater of Etna to prove that he was a god. In the
words of the poet :
Great Empedocles, that ardent soul,
Leapt into Etna, and was roasted whole.
Matthew Arnold wrote a poem on this subject, but, although one
of his worst, it does not contain the above couplet.
Like Parmenides, Empedocles wrote in verse. Lucretius, who
was influenced by him, praised him highly as a poet, but on this
subject opinions were divided. Since only fragments of his writings
have survived, his poetic merit must remain in doubt.
It is necessary to deal separately with his science and his religion,
72
BMPEDOCLBS
as they are not consistent with each other. I shall consider first
his science, then his philosophy, and finally his religion.
His most important contribution to science was his discovery of
air as a separate substance. This he proved by the observation that
when a bucket or any similar vessel is put upside down into water,
the water does not enter into the bucket. He says:
"When a girl, playing with a water-clock of shining brass, puts
the orifice of the pipe upon her comely hand, and dips the water-
clock into the yielding mass of silvery water, the stream does not
then flow into the vessel, but the bulk of the air inside, pressing
upon the close-packed perforations, keeps it out till she uncovers
the compressed stream ; but then air escapes and an equal volume
of water runs in."
This passage occurs in an explanation of respiration.
He also discovered at least one example of centrifugal force:
that if a cup of water is whirled round at the end of a string, the
water does not come out.
He knew that there is sex in plants, and he had a theory (some-
what fantastic, it must be admitted) of evolution and the survival
of the fittest. Originally, "countless tribes of mortal creatures were
scattered abroad endowed with all manner of forms, a wonder to
behold." There were heads without necks, arms without shoulders,
eyes without foreheads, solitary limbs seeking for union. These
things joined together as each might chance ; there were shambling
creatures with countless hands, creatures with faces and breasts
looking in different directions, creatures with the bodies of oxen
and the faces of men, and others with the faces of oxen and the
bodies of men. There were hermaphrodites combining the natures
of men and women, but sterile. In the end, only certain forms
survived.
As regards astronomy: he knew that the moon shines by re-
flected light, and thought that this is also true of the sun; he said
that light takes time to travel, but so little time that we cannot
observe it; he knew that solar eclipses are caused by the inter-
position of the moon, a fact which he seems to have learnt from
Anaxagoras.
He was the founder of the Italian school of medicine, and the
medical school which sprang from him influenced both Plato and
Aristotle. According to Burnet (p. 234), it affected the whole
tendency pf scientific and philosophical thinking.
73
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
All this shows the scientific vigour of his time, which was not
equalled in the later ages of Greece.
I come now to his cosmology. It was he, as already mentioned,
who established earth, air, fire, and water as the four elements
(though the word "element" was not used by him). Each of these
was everlasting, but they could be mixed in different proportions
and thu» produce the changing complex substances that we find
in the world. They were combined by Love and separated by
Strife. Love and Strife were, for Empedocles, primitive substances
on a level with earth, air, fire, and water. There were periods when
Love was in the ascendant, and others when Strife was the stronger.
There had been a golden age when Love was completely vic-
torious. In that age, men worshipped only the Cyprian Aphrodite
(fr. 128). The changes in the world are not governed by any
purpose, but only by Chance and Necessity. There is a cycle:
when the elements have been thoroughly mixed by Love, Strife
gradually sorts them out again; when Strife has separated them,
Love gradually reunites them. Thus even- compound substance
is temporary; only the elements, together with Love and Strife,
are everlasting.
There is a similarity to Heraclitus, but a softening, since it is
not Strife alone, but Strife and Love together, that produce
change. Plato couples Heraclitus and Empedocles in the
Sophist (242):
There are Ionian, and in more recent time Sicilian, muses, who
have arrived at the conclusion that to unite the two principles (of
the One and the Many), is safer, and to say that being is one and
many, and that these are held together by enmity and friendship,
ever parting, ever meeting, as the severer Muses assert, while the
gentler ones do not insist on the perpetual strife and peace, but
admit a relaxation and alternation of them; peace and unity
sometimes prevailing under the sway of Aphrodite, and then
again plurality and war, by reason of a principle of strife.
Empedocles held that the material world is a sphere ; that in the
Golden Age Strife was outside and Love inside ; then, gradually,
Strife entered and Love was expelled, until, at the worst, Strife
will be wholly within and Love wholly without the sphere. Then
— though for what reason is not clear — an opposite movement
begins, until the Golden Age returns, but not for ever. The whole
cycle is then repeated. One might have supposed \hat either
74
EMPEDOCLES
extreme could be stable, but that is not the view of Empedocles.
He wished to explain motion while taking account of the argu-
ments of Parmenides, and he had no wish to arrive, at any stage,
at an unchanging universe.
The views of Empedocles on religion are, in the main, Pytha-
gorean. In a fragment which, in all likelihood, refers to Pythagoras,
he says: "There was among them a man of rare knowledge, most
skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the
utmost wealth of wisdom ; for whensoever he strained with all his
mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten,
yea twenty lifetimes of men." In the Golden Age, as already
mentioned, men worshipped only Aphrodite, "and the altar did
not reek with pure bull's blood, but this was held in the greatest
abomination among men, to eat the goodly limbs after tearing out
the life."
At one time he speaks of himself exuberantly as a god:
Friends, that inhabit the great city looking down on the yellow
rock of Acragas, up by the citadel, busy in goodly works, harbour
of honour for the stranger, men unskilled in meanness, all hail. I
go about among you an immortal god, no mortal now, honoured
among all as is meet, crowned with fillets and flowery garlands.
Straightway, whenever I enter with these in my train, both men
and women, into the flourishing towns, is reverence done me; they
go after me in countless throngs, asking of me what is the way to
gain; some desiring oracles, while some, who for many a weary
day have been pierced by the grievous pangs of all manner
of sickness, beg to hear from me the word of healing. . . . But why
do I harp on these things, as if it were any great matter that I
should surpass mortal, perishable men?"
At another time he feels himself a great sinner, undergoing
expiation for his impiety:
There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods,
eternal and sealed fast by broad oaths, that whenever one of the
daemons, whose portion is length of days, has sinfully polluted his
hands with blood, or followed strife and forsworn himself, he
must wander thrice ten thousand years from the abodes of the
blessed, being born throughout the time in all manners of mortal
forms, changing jme toilsome path of life for another. For the
mighty Air drives him into the Sea, and the Sea spews him forth
upon the. dry Earth; Earth tosses him into the beams of the
75
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
blazing Sun, and he flings him back to the eddies of Air. One takes
him from the other, and all reject him. One of these I now am,
an exile and a wanderer from the gods, for that I put my trust
in an insensate strife.
What his sin had been, we do not know; perhaps nothing that
we should think very grievous. For he says :
"Ah, woe is me that the pitiless day of death did not destroy
me ere ever I wrought evil deeds of devouring with my lips 1 ...
"Abstain wholly from laurel leaves . . .
"Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans!"
So perhaps he had done nothing worse than munching laurel
leaves or guzzling beans.
The most famous passage in Plato, in which he compares this
world to a cave, in which we sec only shadows of the realities in
the bright world above, is anticipated by Empedoclcs; its origin
is in the teaching of the Orphics.
There are some — presumably those who abstain from sin
through many incarnations— who at last achieve immortal bliss
in the company of the gods :
But at the last, they1 appear among mortal men as prophets,
song-writers, physicians, and princes ; and thence they rise up as
gods exalted in honour, sharing the hearth of the other gods and
the same table, free from human woes, safe from destiny, and in-
capable of hurt.
In all this, it would seem, there is very little that was not already
contained in the teaching of Orphism and Pythagoreanism.
The originality of Empedocies, outside science, consists in the
doctrine of the four elements, and in the use of the two principles
of Love and Strife to explain change.
He rejected monism, and regarded the course of nature as
regulated by chance and necessity rather than by purpose. In
these respects his philosophy was more scientific than those of
Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. In other respects, it is true, he
acquiesced in current superstitions; but in this he was no worse
than many more recent men of science.
1 It does not appear who "they" are, but one may assume that they are
those who have preserved purity.
Chapter VII
ATHENS IN RELATION TO CULTURE
E 1 1HE greatness of Athens begins at the time of the two
I Persian wars (490 B.C. and 480-79 B.C.). Before that time,
JL Ionia and Magna Graecia (the Greek cities of south Italy
and Sicily) produced the great men. The victory of Athens against
the Persian king Darius at Marathon (490), and of the combined
Greek fleets against his son and successor Xerxes (480) under
Athenian leadership, gave Athens great prestige. The lonians in
the islands and on part of the mainland of Asia Minor had rebelled
against Persia, and their liberation was effected by Athens after
the Persians had been driven from the mainland of Greece. In
this operation the Spartans, who cared only about their own
territory, took no part. Thus Athens became the predominant
partner in an alliance against Persia. By the constitution of the
alliance, any constituent State was bound to contribute either a
specified number of ships, or the cost of them. Most chose the
latter, and thus Athens acquired naval supremacy over the other
allies, and gradually transformed the alliance into an Athenian
Empire. Athens became rich, and prospered under the wise
leadership of Pericles, who governed, by the free choice of the
citizens, for about thirty years, until his fall in 430 B.C.
The age of Pericles was the happiest and most glorious time in
the history of Athens. Aeschylus, who had fought in the Persian
wars, inaugurated Greek tragedy; one of his tragedies, the Persae,
departing from the custom of choosing Homeric subjects, deals
with the defeat of Xerxes. He was quickly followed by Sophocles,
and Sophocles by Euripides. Both extend into the dark days of the
Peloponnesian War that followed the fall and death of Pericles*
and Euripides reflects in his plays the scepticism of the later
period. His contemporary Aristophanes, the comic poet, makes
fun of all isms from the standpoint of robust and limited common
sense; more particularly, he holds up Socrates to obloauv as one
who denies the existence of Zeus and dabbles in
scientific mysteries.
Athens had Mfen captured by Xerxes, ar
Acropoli^ had been destroyed by fire. Peric
77
'' WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
their reconstruction. The Parthenon and the other temples whose
ruins remain to impress our age were built by him. Pheidias the
sculptor was employed by the State to make colossal statues of
gods and goddesses. At the end of this period, Athens was the
most beautiful and splendid city of the Hellenic world.
Herodotus, the father of history, was a native of Halicarnassus,
in Asia Minor, but lived in Athens, was encouraged by the
Athenian State, and wrote his account of the Persian wars from
the Athenian point of view.
The achievements of Athens in the time of Pericles are perhaps
the most astonishing thing in all history. Until that time, Athens
had lagged behind many other Greek cities ; neither in art nor in
literature had it produced any great man (except Solon, who was
primarily a lawgiver). Suddenly, under the stimulus of victory
and wealth and the need of reconstruction, architects, sculptors,
and dramatists, who remain unsurpassed to the present day, pro-
duced works which dominated the future down to modern times.
This is the more surprising when we consider the smallness of
the population involved. Athens at its maximum, about 430 B.C.,
is estimated to have numbered about 230,000 (including slaves),
and the surrounding territory of rural Attica probably contained
a rather smaller population. Never before or since has anything
approaching the same proportion of the inhabitants of any area
shown itself capable of work of the highest excellence.
In philosophy, Athens contributes only two great names,
Socrates and Plato. Plato belongs to a somewhat later period, but
Socrates passed his youth and early manhood under Pericles. The
Athenians were sufficiently interested in philosophy to listen
eagerly to teachers from other cities. The Sophists were sought
after by young men who wished to torn the art of disputation;
in the Protagoras, the Platonic Socrates gives an amusing satirical
description of the ardent disciple** hanging on the words of the
eminent visitor. Pericles, as we shall see, imported Anaxagoras,
from whom Socrates professed to have learned the pre-eminence
of mind in creation.
Most of Plato's dialogues are supposed by him to take place
during the time of Pericles, and they give an agreeable picture of
life among the rich. Plato belonged to an aristocratic Athenian
family, and grew up in the tradition of the perioil before war and
democracy had destroyed the wealth and security of the upper
78
ATHENS IN RELATION TO CULTURE
classes. His young men, who have no need to work, spend most
of their leisure in the pursuit of science and mathematics and
philosophy; they know Homer almost by heart, and are critical
judges of the merits of professional reciters of poetry. The art
of deductive reasoning had been lately discovered, and afforded
the excitement of new theories, both true and false, over the whole
field of knowledge. It was possible in that age, as in few others,
to be both intelligent and happy, and happy through intelligence.
But the balance of forces which produced this golden age was
precarious. It was threatened both from within and from without
— from within by the democracy, and from without by Sparta.
To understand what happened after Pericles, we must consider
briefly the earlier history of Attica.
Attica, at the beginning of the historical period, was a self-
supporting little agricultural region; Athens, its capital, was not
large, but contained a growing population of artisans and skilled
artificers who desired to dispose of their produce abroad. Gradually
it was found more profitable to cultivate vines and olives rather
than grain, and to import grain, chiefly from the coast of the
Black Sea. This form of cultivation required more capital than
the cultivation of grain, and the small farmers got into debt.
Attica, like other Greek states, had been a monarchy in the
Homeric age, but the king became a merely religious official
without political power. The government fell into the hands of
the aristocracy, who oppressed both the country farmers and the
urban artisans. A compromise in the direction of democracy was
effected by Solon early in the sixth century, and much of his work
survived through a subsequent period of tyranny under Peisistratus
and his sons. When this period came to an end, the aristocrats,
as the opponents of tyranny, were able to recommend themselves
to the democracy. Until the fall of Pericles, democratic processes
gave power to the aristocracy, as in nineteenth-century England.
But towards the end of his life the leaders of the Athenian demo-
cracy began to demand a larger share of political power. At the
same time, his imperialist policy, with which the economic pros-
perity of Athens was bound up, caused increasing friction with
Sparta, leading at last to the Peloponnesian War (431-404), in
which Athens was completely defeated.
In spile of political collapse, the prestige of Athens survived,
and throughout almost a millennium philosophy was centred there.
»
79
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Alexandria eclipsed Athens in mathematics and science, but Plato
and Aristotle had made Athens philosophically supreme. The
Academy, where Plato had taught, survived all other schools, and
persisted, as an island of paganism, for two centuries after the
conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. At last, in
A.D. 529, it was closed by Justinian because of his religious bigotry,
and the Dark Ages descended upon Europe.
80
Chapter VIII
ANAXAGORAS
P | IHE philosopher Anaxagoras, though not the equal of
I Pythagoras, Heraclitus, or Parmenides, has nevertheless
JL a considerable historical importance. He was an Ionian,
and carried on the scientific, rationalist tradition of Ionia. He was
the first to introduce philosophy to the Athenians, and the first
to suggest mind as the primary cause of physical changes.
He was born at Clazomenae, in Ionia, about the year 500 B.C.,
but he spent about thirty years of his life in Athens, approximately
from 462 to 432 B.C. He was probably induced to come by Pericles,
who was bent on civilizing his fellow-townsmen. Perhaps Aspasia,
who came from Miletus, introduced him to Pericles. Plato, in the
Phaedrus, says :
Pericles "fell in, it seems with Anaxagoras, who was a scientific
man ; and satiating himself with the theory of things on high, and
having attained to a knowledge of the true nature of intellect and
folly, which were just what the discourses of Anaxagoras were
mainly about, he drew from that source whatever was of a nature
to further him in the art of speech."
It is said that Anaxagoras also influenced Euripides, but this
is more doubtful.
'l*hc citizens of Athens, like those of other cities in other ages
and continents, showed a certain hostility to those who attempted
to introduce a higher level of culture than that to which they were
accustomed. When Pericles was growing old, his opponents began
a campaign against him by attacking his friends. They accused
Phcidias of embezzling some of the gold that was to be employed
on his statues. They passed a law permitting impeachment of
those who did not practise religion and taught theories about "the
things on high." Under this law, they prosecuted Anaxagoras,
who was accused of teaching that the sun was a red-hot stone
and the moon was earth. (The same accusation was repeated by
the prosecutors of Socrates, who made fun of them for being out
of date.) What happened is not certain, except that Anaxagoras
had to leave Athens. It seems probable that Pericles got him out
81
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of prison and managed to get him away. He returned to Ionia,
where he founded a school. In accordance with his will, the
anniversary of his death was kept as a schoolchildren 's holiday.
Anaxagoras held that everything is infinitely divisible, and that
even the smallest portion of matter contains some of each element.
Things appear to be that of which they contain most. Thus, for
example, everything contains some fire, but we only call it fire if
that element preponderates. Like Empedocles, he argues against
the void, saying that the clepsydra or an inflated skin shows that
there is air where there seems to be nothing.
He differed from his predecessors in regarding mind (nous) as a
substance which enters into the composition of living things, and
distinguishes them from dead matter. In everything, he says, there
is a portion of everything except mind, and some things contain
mind also. Mind has power over all things that have life; it is
infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing. Except as
regards mind, everything, however small, contains portions of all
opposites, such as hot and cold, white and black. He maintained
that snow is black (in pan).
Mind is the source of all motion. It causes a rotation, which is
gradually spreading throughout the world, and is causing the
lightest things to go to the circumference, and the heaviest to fall
towards the centre. Mind is uniform, and is just as good in animals
as in man. Man's apparent superiority is due to the fact that he
has hands; all seeming differences of intelligence are really due
to bodily differences.
Both Aristotle and the Platonic Socrates complain that Anaxa-
goras, after introducing mind, makes very little use of it. Aristotle
points out that he only introduces mind as a cause when he knows
no other. Whenever he can, he gives a mechanical explanation.
He rejected necessity and chance as giving the origins of things ;
nevertheless, there was no "Providence" in his cosmology. He does
not seem to have thought much about ethics or religion ; probably
he was an atheist, as his prosecutors maintained. All his pre-
decessors influenced him, except Pythagoras. The influence of
Parmenides was the same in his case as in that of Empedocles.
In science he had great merit. It was he who first explained that
the moon shines by reflected light, though there is a cryptic frag-
ment in Parmenides suggesting that he also knew this. Anaxagoras
gave the correct theory of eclipses, and knew that the moon is
82
ANAXAGORAS
below the sun. The suri and stars, he said, are fiery stones, but we
do not feel the heat of the stars because they are too distant. The
sun is larger than the Peloponnesus. The moon has mountains,
and (he thought) inhabitants.
Anaxagoras is said to have been of the school of Anaximenes ;
certainly he kept alive the rationalist and scientific tradition of the
lonians. One does not find in him the ethical and religious pre-
occupations which, passing from the Pythagoreans to Socrates
and from Socrates to Plato, brought an obscurantist bias into
Greek philosophy. He is not quite in the first rank, but he is
important as the first to bring philosophy to Athens, and as one
of the influences that helped to form Socrates.
Chapter IX
THE ATOMISTS
} • IHE founders of atomism were two, Leucippus and Demo-
I critus. It is difficult to disentangle them, because they are
JL generally mentioned together, and apparently some of the
works of Leucippus were subsequently attributed to Democritus.
Leucippus, who seems to have flourished about 440 B.C.,1 came
from Miletus, and carried on the scientific rationalist philosophy
associated with that city. He was much influenced by Parmenides
and Zeno. So little is known of him that Epicurus (a later follower
of Democritus) was thought to have denied his existence altogether,
and some moderns have revived this theory. There are, however,
a number of allusions to him in Aristotle, and it seems incredible
that these (which include textual quotations) would have occurred
if he had been merely a myth.
Democritus is a much more definite figure. He was a native of
Abdera in Thrace; as for his date, he stated that he was young
when Anaxagoras was old, say about 432 B.C., and he is taken to
have flourished about 420 B.C. He travelled widely in southern
and eastern lands in search of knowledge ; he perhaps spent a con-
siderable time in Egypt, and he certainly visited Persia. He then
returned to Abdera, where he remained. Zeller calls him "superior
to all earlier and contemporary philosophers in wealth of know-
ledge, and to most in acuteness and logical correctness of thinking."
Democritus was a contemporary of Socrates and the Sophists,
and should, on purely chronological grounds, be treated some-
what later in our history. The difficulty is that he is so hard to
separate from Leucippus. On this ground, I am considering him
before Socrates and the Sophists, although part of his philosophy
was intended as an answer to Protagoras, his fellow-townsman
and the most eminent of the Sophists. Protagoras, when he visited
Athens, was received enthusiastically; Democritus, on the other
hand, says: "I went to Athens, and no one knew me." For a long
time, his philosophy was ignored in Athens; "It is not clear," says
Burnet, "that Plato knew anything about Democritus Aristotle,
1 Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomitt* and Epicurus, estimates that he
flourished about 430 B.C. or a link earlier.
84
THE ATOMISTS
on the other hand, knows Democritus well; for he too was an
Ionian from the North."1 Plato never mentions him in the Dia-
logues, but is said by Diogenes Laertius to have disliked him so
much that he wished all his books burnt. Heath esteems him
highly as a mathematician.2
The fundamental ideas of the common philosophy of Leucippus
and Democritus were due to the former, but as regards the
working out it is hardly possible to disentangle them, nor is it,
for our purposes, important to make the attempt. Leucippus,
if not Democritus, was led to atomism in the attempt to mediate
between monism and pluralism, as represented by Parmenides
and Empedocles respectively. Their point of view was remark-
ably like that of modern science, and avoided most of the faults
to which Greek speculation was prone. They believed that
everything is composed of atoms, which are physically, but
not geometrically, indivisible; that between the atoms there is
empty space; that atoms are indestructible; that they always have
been, and always will be, in motion; that there are an infinite
number of atoms, and even of kinds of atoms, the differences being
as regards shape and size. Aristotle3 asserts that, according to the
atomists, atoms also differ as regards heat, the spherical atoms,
which compose fire, being the hottest; and as regards weight, he
quotes Democritus as saying "The more any indivisible exceeds,
the heavier it is." But the question whether atoms are originally
possessed of weight in the theories of the atomists is a controversial
one.
The atoms were always in motion, but there is disagreement
among commentators as to the character of the original motion.
Some, especially Zeller, hold that the atoms were thought to be
always falling, and that the heavier ones fell faster; they thus
caught up the lighter ones, there were impacts, and the atoms
were deflected like billiard balls. This was certainly the view of
Epicurus, who in most respects based his theories on those of
Democritus, while trying, rather unintelligently, to take account
of Aristotle's criticisms. But there is considerable reason to think
that weight was not an original property of the atoms of Leucippus
and Democritus. It seems more probable that, on their view,
atoms were originally moving at random, as in the modern kinetic
1 /•'ram ThaUt to Plato, p. 193- f G™*k Mathematics, Vol. I, p. 176.
9 On Generation and Corruption, 316*.
85
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
theory of gases. Democritus said there was neither up nor down
in the infinite void, and compared the movement of atoms in the
soul to that of motes in a sunbeam when there is no wind. This is
a much more intelligent view than that of Epicurus, and I think
we may assume it to have been that of Leucippus and Democritus.1
As a result of collisions, collections of atoms came to form
vortices. The rest proceeded much as in Anaxagoras, but it was
an advance to explain the vortices mechanically rather than as
due to the action of mind.
It was common in antiquity to reproach the atomists with attri-
buting everything to chance. They were, on the contrary, strict
determinists, who believed that everything happens in accordance
with natural laws. Democritus explicitly denied that anything can
happen by chance.8 Leucippus, though his existence is questioned,
is known to have said one thing: "Naught happens for nothing,
but everything from a ground and of necessity/' It is true that
he gave no reason why the world should originally have been as
it was; this, perhaps, might have been attributed to chance*. Hut
when once the world existed, its further development was un-
alterably fixed by mechanical principles. -Aristotle and others
reproached him and Democritus for not accounting for the
original motion of the atoms, but in thi* the atomists were more
scientific than their critics. Causation must start from something,
and wherever it starts no cause can be assigned for the initial
datum. The world may be attributed to a Creator, but even then
the Creator Himself is unaccounted for. The theory of the atomists,
in fact, was more nearly that of modern science than any other
theory propounded in antiquity.
The atomists, unlike Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, sought to
explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or
Jmal cause. The "final cause" of an occurrence is an event in the
future for the sake of which the occurrence takes place. In human
affairs, this conception is applicable. Why does the baker make
bread? Because people will be hungry. Why are railways built?
Because people will wish to travel In such cases, things are ex-
plained by the purpose they serve. When we ask "why?" con-
cerning an event, we may mean either of two things. We may
1 This interpretation is adopted by Bumct, and alsfy at leant as regard*
Leucippus, by Uaiiey (op. nV., p. 83).
* See Bailey, op. a/., p. 121, on the detenniruttn of Uetnocqtu*.
86
THE ATOMIST8
mean: "What purpose did this event serve?" or we may mean:
"What earlier circumstances caused this event?" The answer to
the former question is a teleological explanation, or an explanation
by final causes ; the answer to the latter question is a mechanistic
explanation. I do not see how it could have been known in advance
which of these two questions science ought to ask, or whether it
ought to ask both. But experience has shown that the mechanistic
question leads to scientific knowledge, while the teleological
question does not. The atomists asked the mechanistic question,
and gave a mechanistic answer. Their successors, until the Re-
naissance, were more interested in the teleological question, and
thus led science up a blind alley.
In regard to both questions alike, there is a limitation which is
often ignored, both in popular thought and in philosophy. Neither
question can be asked intelligibly about reality as a whole (including
God), but only about parts of it. As regards the teleological
explanation, it usually arrives, before long, at a Creator, or at least
an Artificer, whose purposes are realized in the course of nature.
But if a man is so obstinately teleological as to continue to ask
what purpose is served by the Creator, it becomes obvious that
his question is impious. It is, moreover, unmeaning, since, to
make it significant, we should have to suppose the Creator created
by some super-Creator whose purposes He served. The conception
of purpose, therefore, is only applicable within reality, not to
reality as a whole.
A not dissimilar argument applies to mechanistic explanations.
One event is caused by another, the other by a third, and so on.
But if we ask for a cause of the whole, we are driven again to the
Creator, who must Himself be uncaused. All causal explanations,
therefore must have an arbitrary beginning. That is why it is no
defect in the theory of the atomists to have left the original move-
ments of the atoms unaccounted for.
It must not be supposed that their reasons for their theories
were wholly empirical. The atomic theory was revived in modern
times to explain the facts of chemistry, but these facts were not
known to the Greeks. There was no very sharp distinction, in
ancient times, between empirical observation and logical argu-
ment. Parmcnides, it is true, treated observed facts with contempt,
but Empedocles*and Anaxagoras would combine much of their
metaphysics with observations on water-clocks and whirling
87
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
buckets. Until the Sophists, no philosopher seems to have doubted
that a complete metaphysic and cosmology could be established
by a combination of much reasoning and some observation. By
good luck, the atomists hit on a hypothesis for which, more than
two thousand years later, some evidence was found, but their
belief, in their day, was none the less destitute of any solid
foundation.1
Like the other philosophers of his time, Leucippus was con-
cerned to find a way of reconciling the arguments of Parmenides
with the obvious fact of motion and change. As Aristotle says:2
" Although these opinions [those of Parmenides] appear to follow
logically in a dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems
next door to madness when one considers the facts. For indeed no
lunatic seems to be so far out of his senses as to suppose that fire
and ice are "one": it is only between what is right and what seems
right from habit that some people are mad enough to see no
difference."
Leucippus, however, thought he had a theory which harmonized
with sense-perception and would not abolish either coming-to-be
and passing-away or motion and the multiplicity of things. He
made these concessions to the facts of perception: on the other
hand, he conceded to the Monists that there could be no motion
without a void. The result is a theory which he states as follows :
"The void is a not-being, and no part of what is is a not-being; for
what is in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This
plenum, however, is not one; on the contrary, it is a many infinite
in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk. The
many move in the void (for there is a void): and by coming to-
gether they produce coming-to-be, while by separating they pro-
duce passing-away. Moreover, they act and suffer action whenever
they chance to be in contact (for there they are not one), and they
generate by being put together and become intertwined. From
the genuinely one, on the other hand, there could never have come
to be a multiplicity, nor from the genuinely many a one: that is
impossible."
It will be seen that there was one point on which even-body 50
far was agreed, namely that there could be no motion in a plenum.
1 On the logical and mathematical grounds for the theories of the
•tomists, tee Gaston Mtthaud, Let Phifaiophn Gfometw de la Greet,
chap. sv.
* On Generation and Corruption, 325*.
88
THE ATOMISTS
In this, all alike were mistaken. There can be cyclic motion in a
plenum, provided it has always existed. The idea was that a thing
could only move into an empty place, and that, in a plenum, there
are no empty places. It might be contended, perhaps validly, that
motion could never begin in a plenum, but it cannot be validly
maintained that it could not occur at all. To the Greeks, however,
it seemed that one must either acquiesce in the unchanging world
of Parmcnides, or admit the void.
Now the arguments of Parmenides against not-being seemed
logically irrefutable against the void, and they were reinforced by
the discovery that where there seems to be nothing there is air.
(This is an example of the confused mixture of logic and observa-
tion that was common.) We may put the Parmenidean position
in this way: "You say there is the void; therefore the void is not
nothing; therefore it is not the void." It cannot be said that the
atomists answered this argument; they merely proclaimed that
they proposed to ignore it, on the ground that motion is a fact of
experience, and therefore there must be a void, however difficult
it may be to conceive.1
Let us consider the subsequent history of this problem. The
first and most obvious way of avoiding the logical difficulty is to
distinguish between matter and space. According to this view,
space is not nothing, but is of the nature of a receptacle, which
may or may not have any given part filled with matter. Aristotle
says (Physics, 208 b): 'The theory that the void exists involves
the existence of place: for one would define void as place bereft
of body/' This view is set forth with the utmost explicitness by
Newton, who asserts the existence of absolute space, and accor-
dingly distinguishes absolute from relative motion. In the
C'opernican controversy, both sides (however little they may
have realized it) were committed to this view, since they thought
there was a difference between saying "the heavens revolve from
cast to west" and saying "the earth rotates from west to east/'
If all motion is relative, these two statements are merely different
1 Bailey (op. «/., p. 75) maintains, on the contrary, that Leucippus had
an answer, which was "extremely subtle." It consisted essentially in
admitting the existence of something (the void) which was not corporeal.
Similarly Burnet sa>«; "It is a curious fact that the Atomists, who are
commonly regarded as the great materialists of antiquity, were actually
the first to wy distinctly that a thing might be real without being a body."
89
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
ways of saying the same thing, like "John is the father of James"
and "James is the son of John." But if all motion is relative, and
space is not substantial, we are left with the Parmenidean argu-
ments against the void on our hands.
Descartes, whose arguments are of just the same sort as those
of early Greek philosophers, said that extension is the essence of
matter, and therefore there is matter everywhere. For him,
extension is an adjective, not a substantive; its substantive is
matter, and without its substantive it cannot exist. Empty space,
to him, is as absurd as happiness without a sentient being who is
happy. Leibniz, on somewhat different grounds, also believed in
the plenum, but he maintained that space is merely a system of
relations. On this subject there was a famous controversy between
him and Newton, the latter represented by Clarke. The con-
troversy remained undecided until the time of Einstein, whose
theory conclusively gave the victory to Leibniz.
The modern physicist, while he still believes that matter is in
some sense atomic, does not believe in empty space. Where there
is not matter, there is still something, notably light-waves. Matter
no longer has the lofty status that it acquired in philosophy through
the arguments of Parmenides. It is not unchanging substance, but
merely a way of grouping events. Some events belong to groups
that can be regarded as material things; others, such as light-
waves, do not. It is the events that are the stuff of the world, and
each of them is of brief duration. In this respect, modern physics
is on the side of Heraclitus as against Parmenides. But it was on
the side of Parmenides until Einstein and quantum theory.
As regards space, the modern view is that it is neither a sub-
stance, as Newton maintained, and as Leucippus and Democritus
ought to have said, nor an adjective of extended bodies, as Des-
cartes thought, but a system of relations, as Leibniz held. It is
not by any means clear whether this view is compatible with the
existence of the void. Perhaps, as a matter of abstract logic, it can
be reconciled with the void. We might say that, between any two
things, there is a certain greater or smaller distance, and that
distance does not imply the existence of intermediate things.
Such a point of view, however, would be impossible to utilize
in modern physics. Since Einstein, distance ^is between events,
not between things, and involves time as well as space. It is
essentially a causal conception, and in modern physra there is
THE ATOMI3TB
no action at a distance. All this, however, is based upon empirical
rather than logical grounds. Moreover the modern view cannot be
stated except in terms of differential equations, and would therefore
be unintelligible to the philosophers of antiquity.
It would seem, accordingly, that the logical development of the
views of the atomists is the Newtonian theory of absolute space,
which meets the difficulty of attributing reality to not-being. To
this theory there are no logical objections. The chief objection is
that absolute space is absolutely unknowable, and cannot therefore
be a necessary hypothesis in an empirical science. The more
practical objection is that physics can get on without it. But the
world of the atomists remains logically possible, and is more akin
to the actual world than is the world of any other of the ancient
philosophers.
Democritus worked out his theories in considerable detail, and
some of the working-out is interesting. Each atom, he said, was
impenetrable and indivisible because it contained no void. When
you use a knife to cut an apple, the knife has to find empty places
where it can penetrate ; if the apple contained no void, it would
be infinitely hard and therefore physically indivisible. Each atom
is internally unchanging, and in fact a Parmenidean One. The only
things that atoms do are to move and hit each other, and some-
times to combine when they happen to have shapes that are
capable of interlocking. They are of all sorts of shapes; fire is
composed of small spherical atoms, and so is the soul. Atoms, by
collision, produce vortices, which generate bodies and ultimately
worlds.1 There are many worlds, some growing, some decaying;
some may have no sun or moon, some several. Every world has a
Ixrtfinning and an end. A world may be destroyed by collision
with a larger world. This cosmology may be summarized in
Shelley's words:
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling bursting, borne away.
Life developed out of the primeval slime. There is some fire every-
where in a living body, but most in the brain or in the breast. (On
1 On the way in wfiich this was supposed to happen, sec Bailey, op. «'!.,
p. 138 ff.
91
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
this, authorities differ.) Thought is a kind of motion, and is thus
able to cause motion elsewhere. Perception and thought are phy-
sical processes. Perception is of two sorts, one of the senses, one
of the understanding. Perceptions of the latter sort depend only
on the things perceived, while those of the former sort depend
also on our senses, and are therefore apt to be deceptive. Like
Locke, Democritus held that such qualities as warmth, taste, and
colour are not really in the object, but are due to our sense-organs,
while such qualities as weight, density, and hardness are really in
the object.
Democritus was a thorough-going materialist; for him, as we
have seen, the soul was composed of atoms, and thought was a
physical process. There was no purpose in the universe; there
were only atoms governed by mechanical laws. He disbelieved in
popular religion, and he argued against the nous of Anaxagoras.
In ethics he considered cheerfulness the goal of life, and regarded
moderation and culture as the best means to it. He disliked every-
thing violent and passionate; he disapproved of sex, because, he
said, it involved the overwhelming of consciousness by pleasure.
He valued friendship, but thought ill of women, and did not desire
children, because their education interferes with philosophy. In
all this, he was very like Jeremy Bentham ; he was equally so in
his love of what the Greeks called democracy.1
Democritus — such, at least, is my opinion — is the last of the
Greek philosophers to be free from a certain fault which vitiated
all later ancient and medieval thought. All the philosophers we
have been considering so far were engaged in a disinterested effort
to understand the world. They thought it easier to understand
than it is, but without this optimism they would not have had the
courage to make a beginning. Their attitude, in the main, was
genuinely scientific whenever it did not merely embody the pre-
judices of their age. But it was not only scientific ; it was imaginative
and vigorous and filled with the delight of adventure. They were
interested in everything — meteors and eclipses, fishes and whirl-
winds, religion and morality; with a penetrating intellect they
combined the zest of children.
From this point onwards, there are first certain seeds of decay,
in spite of previously unmatched achievement, and then a gradual
1 "Poverty in a democracy t* •• much to be preferred to what is called
prosperity under despots •* freedom is to slavery/' he tayt.
9*
THE ATOMIBT8
decadence. What is amiss, even in the best philosophy after Demo-
critus, is an undue emphasis on man as compared with the universe.
First comes scepticism, with the Sophists, leading to a study of
how we know rather than to the attempt to acquire fresh knowledge.
Then comes, with Socrates, the emphasis on ethics; with Plato,
the rejection of the world of sense in favour of the self-created
world of pure thought; with Aristotle, the belief in purpose as
the fundamental concept in science. In spite of the genius of Plato
and Aristotle, their thought has vices which proved infinitely
harmful. After their time, there was a decay of vigour, and a
gradual recrudescence of popular superstition. A partially new
outlook arose as a result of the victory of Catholic orthodoxy; but
it was not until the Renaissance that philosophy regained the
vigour and independence that characterize the predecessors of
Socrates.
Chapter X
PROTAGORAS
E • IHE great pre-Socratic systems that we have been consider-
I ing were confronted, in the latter half of the fifth century,
JL by a sceptical movement, in which the most important
figure was Protagoras, chief of the Sophists. The word "Sophist"
had originally no bad connotation; it meant, as nearly as may be,
what we mean by "professor." A Sophist was a man who made
his living by teaching young men certain things that, it was
thought, would be useful to them in practical life. As there was
no public provision for such education, the Sophists taught only
those who had private means, or whose parents had. This tended
to give them a certain class bias, which was increased by the
political circumstances of the time. In Athens and many other
cities, democracy was politically triumphant, but nothing had
been done to diminish the wealth of those who belonged to the
old aristocratic families. It was, in the main, the rich who em-
bodied what appears to us as Hellenic culture: they had education
and leisure, travel had taken the edge off their traditional pre-
judices, and the time that they spent in discussion sharpened their
wits. What was called democracy did not touch the institution of
slavery, which enabled the rich to enjoy their wealth without
oppressing free citizens.
In many cities, however, and especially in Athens, the poorer
citizens had towards the rich a double hostility, that of envy, and
that of traditionalism. The rich were supposed — often with justice
— to be impious and immoral; they were subverting ancient
beliefs, and probably trying to destroy democracy'. It thus hap-
pened that political democracy, was associated with cultural
conservatism, while those who were cultural innovators tended to
be political reactionaries. Somewhat the same situation exists in
modern America, where Tammany, as a mainly Catholic organiza-
tion, is engaged in defending traditional theological and ethical
dogmas against the assaults of enlightenment. But the enlightened
are politically weaker in America than they were in Athens,
because they have failed to make common cav*e with the pluto-
cracy. There is, however, one important and highly intellectual
94
PROTAGORAS
class which is concerned with the defence of the plutocracy,
namely the class of corporation lawyers. In same respects, their
functions are similar to those that were performed in Athens by
the Sophists.
Athenian democracy, though it had the grave limitation of not
including slaves or women, was in some respects more democratic
than any modern system. Judges and most executive officers were
chosen by lot, and served for short periods; they were thus average
citizens, like our jurymen, with the prejudices and lack of pro-
fessionalism characteristic of average citizens. In general, there
were a large number of judges to hear each case. The plaintiff
and defendant, or prosecutor and accused, appeared in person,
not through professional lawyers. Naturally, success or failure
depended largely on oratorical skill in appealing to popular pre-
judices. Although a man had to deliver his own speech, he could
hire an expert to write the speech for him, or, as many preferred,
he could pay for instruction in the arts required for success in the
law courts. These arts the Sophists were supposed to teach.
The aye of Pericles is analogous, in Athenian history, to the
Victorian age in the history of England. Athens was rich and
powerful, not much troubled by wars, and possessed of a demo-
cratic constitution administered by aristocrats. As we have seen,
in connection with Anaxagoras, a democratic opposition to
Pericles gradually gathered strength, and attacked his friends one
by one. The Pcloponnesian War broke out in 43 1 B.C. ;J Athens
(in common with many other places) was ravaged by the plague;
the population, which had been about 230,000, was greatly
reduced, and never rose again to its former level (Bury, History of
Greece, I, p. 444). Pericles himself, in 430 B.C., was deposed from
the office of general and fined for misappropriation of public
money, but soon reinstated. His two legitimate sons died
of the plague, and he himself died in the following year (429).
Pheidias and Anaxagoras were condemned; Aspasia was prose-
cuted for impiety and for keeping a disorderly house, but
acquitted.
In such a community, it was natural that men who were likely
to incur the hostility of democratic politicians should wish to
acquire forensic skill. For Athens, though much addicted to per-
secution, was in one respect less illiberal than modern America,
1 It ended in 404 ii.C. with the complete overthrow of Athens.
95
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
since those accused of impiety and corrupting the young were
allowed to plead in their own defence.
This explains the popularity of the Sophists with one class and
their unpopularity with another. But in their own minds they
served more impersonal purposes, and it is clear that many of
them were genuinely concerned with philosophy. Plato devoted
himself to caricaturing and vilifying them, but they must not be
judged by his polemics. In his lighter vein, take the following
passage from the Eutkydemus, in which two Sophists, Dionyso-
dorus and Euthydemus, set to work to puzzle a simple-minded
person named Clesippus. Dionysodorus begins:
You say that you have a dog ?
Yes, a villain of a one, said Clesippus.
And he has puppies ?
Yes, and they are very like himself.
And the dog is the father of them ?
Yes, he said, I certainly saw him and the mother of the
puppies come together.
And is he not yours ?
To be sure he is.
Then he is a father, and he is yours; ergo, he is your
father, and the puppies are your brothers.
In a more serious vein, take the dialogue called The Sophist.
This is a logical discussion of definition, which uses the sophist
as an illustration. With its logic we are not at present concerned ;
the only thing I wish to mention at the moment as regards this
dialogue is the final conclusion :
"The ait of contradiction-making, descended from an insincere
kind of conceited mimicry, of the semblance- making breed,
derived from image-making, distinguished as a portion, not divine
but human, of production, that presents a shadow-play of words
— such is the blood and lineage which can, with perfect truth, be
assigned to the authentic Sophist/' (Corn ford's translation.)
There is a story about Protagoras, no doubt apocryphal, which
illustrates the connection of the Sophists with the law-courts in
the popular mind. It is said that he taught a young man on the
terms that he should be paid his fee if the young man won
his first law-suit, but not otherwise, and that the young man's
first law-suit was one brought by Protagoras for recovery of
his fee.
96
PROTAGORAS
However, it is time to leave these preliminaries and see what is
really known about Protagoras.
Protagoras was born about 500 B.C., at Abdera, the city from
which Democritus came. He twice visited Athens, his second visit
being not later than 432 B.C. He made a code of laws for the city
of Thurii in 444-3 B.C. There is a tradition that he was prosecuted
for impiety, but this seems to be untrue, in spite of the fact that
he wrote a book On the Gods, which began: "With regard to the
gods, I cannot feel sure either that they are or that they are not,
nor what they are like in figure; for there are many things that
hinder sure knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the
shortness of human life."
His second visit to Athens is described somewhat satirically in
Plato's Protagoras, and his doctrines are discussed seriously in
the Theaetetus. He is chiefly noted for his doctrine that "Man is
the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of
things that are not that they are not." This is interpreted as
meaning that each man is the measure of all things, and that,
when men differ, there is no objective truth in virtue of which
one is right and the other wrong. The doctrine is essentially
sceptical, and is presumably based on the "deceitfulness" of the
senses.
One of the three founders of pragmatism, F. C. S. Schiller, was
in the halm of calling himself a disciple of Protagoras. This was,
I think, because Plato, in the Thcaetetus, suggests, as an interpre-
tation of Protagoras, that one opinion can be better than another,
though it cannot be truer. For example, when a man has jaundice
everything looks yellow. There is no sense in saying that things
are really not yellow, but the colour they look to a man in health;
we can say, however, that, since health is better than sickness,
the opinion of the man in health is better than that of the man
who has jaundice. This point of view, obviously, is akin to
pragmatism.
The disbelief in objective truth makes the majority, for practical
puqxiscs, the arbiters as to what to believe. Hence Protagoras was
led to a defence of law and convention and traditional morality.
While, as we saw, he did not know whether the gods existed, he
was sure they ought to be worshipped. This point of view is
obviously the right one for a man whose theoretical scepticism is
thoroughgoing and logical.
97 D
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Protagoras spent his adult life in a sort of perpetual lecture tour
through the cities of Greece, teaching, for a fee, "any one who
desired practical efficiency and higher mental culture" (Zeller,
p. 1299). Plato objects — somewhat snobbishly, according to modern
notions — to the Sophists' practice of charging money for instruc-
tion. Plato himself had adequate private means, and was unable,
apparently, to realize the necessities of those who had not his good
fortune. It is odd that modern professors, who see no reason to
refuse a salary, have so frequently repeated Plato's strictures.
There was, however, another point in which the Sophists differed
from most contemporary philosophers. It was usual, except among
the Sophists, for a teacher to found a school, which had some of
the properties of a brotherhood; there was a greater or smaller
amount of common life, there was often something analogous to
a monastic rule, and there was usually an esoteric doctrine not
proclaimed to the public. All this was natural wherever philosophy
had arisen out of Orphism. Among the Sophists there was none
of this. What they had to teach was not, in their minds, connected
with religion or virtue. They taught the art of arguing, and as
much knowledge as would help in this an. Broadly speaking, they
were prepared, like modern lawyers, to show how to ar^ue for
or against any opinion, and were not concerned to advocate con-
clusions of their own. Those to whom philosophy was a way of
life, closely bound up with religion, were naturally shocked; to
them, the Sophists appeared frivolous and immoral.
To some extent — though it is impossible to say how far— the
odium which the Sophists incurred, not only with the general
public, but with Plato and subsequent philosophers, was due to
their intellectual merit. The pursuit of truth, when it is whole-
hearted, must ignore moral considerations; we cannot know in
advance that the truth will turn out to be what is thought edifying
in a given society. The Sophists were prepared to follow an argu-
ment wherever it might lead them. Often it led them to scepticism.
One of them, Gorgias, maintained that nothing exists; that if
anything exists, it is unknowable; and granting it even to exist
and la be knowable by any one man, he could never communicate
it to others. We do not know what hLs arguments were, but I can
well imagine that they had a logical force which compelled his
opponents to take refuge in edification. Plato u? always concerned
to advocate views that \\ill make people wliat he thinks virtuous;
98
PROTAGORAS
he is hardly ever intellectually honest, because he allows himself
to judge doctrines by their social consequences. Even about this,
he is not honest; he pretends to follow the argument and to be
judging by purely theoretical standards, when in fact he is twist-
ing the discussion so as to lead to a virtuous result. He introduced
this vice into philosophy, where it has persisted ever since. It
was probably largely hostility to the Sophists that gave this,
character to his dialogues. One of the defects of all philosophers
since Plato is that their inquiries into ethics proceed on the
assumption that they already know the conclusions to be reached.
It seems that there were men, in the Athens of the late fifth
century, who taught political doctrines which seemed immoral to
their contemporaries, and seem so to the democratic nations of
the present day. Thrasymachus, in the first book of the Republic,
argues that there is no justice except the interest of the stronger;
that laws are made by governments for their own advantage; and
that there is no impersonal standard to which to appeal in contests
for power, Callicles, according to Plato (in the Gorgtas), maintained
a similar doctrine. The law of nature, he said, is the law of the
stronger; but for convenience men have established institutions
and moral precepts to restrain the strong. Such doctrines have
won much wider assent in our day than they did in antiquity.
And whatever may be thought of them, they are not characteristic
of the Sophists.
During the fifth century — whatever part the Sophists may have
had in the change- — there was in Athens a transformation from a
certain stiff Puritan simplicity to a quick-witted and rather cruel
cynicism in conflict with a slow-witted and equally cruel defence
of crumbling orthodoxy. At the beginning of the century comes
the Athenian championship of the cities of Ionia against the
Persians, and the victory of Marathon in 490 B.C. At the end
comes the defeat of Athens by Sparta in 404 B.C., and the execu-
tion of Socrates in 3^9 B.C. After this time Athens ceased to be
politically important, but acquired undoubted cultural supremacy,
which it retained until the victory of Christianity.
Something of the history of fifth-century
the understanding of Plato and of all subsec
In the first Persian war, the chief glory
owing to the decisfvc victor}' at Marathor
years later^ the Athenians still were the
99
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
but on land victory was mainly due to the Spartans, who were the
acknowledged leaders of the Hellenic world. The Spartans, how-
ever, were narrowly provincial in their outlook, and ceased to
oppose the Persians when they had been chased out of European
Greece. The championship of the Asiatic Greeks, and the libera-
tion of the islands that had been conquered by the Persians, was
undertaken, with great success, by Athens. Athens became the
leading sea power, and acquired a considerable imperialist control
over the Ionian islands. Under the leadership of Pericles, who was
a moderate democrat and a moderate imperialist, Athens prospered.
The great temples, whose ruins are still the glory of Athens, were
built by his initiative, to replace those destroyed by Xerxes. The
city increased very rapidly in wealth, and also in culture, and, as
invariably happens at such times, particularly when wealth is due
to foreign commerce, traditional morality and traditional beliefs
decayed.
There was at this time in Athens an extraordinarily large
number of men of genius. The three great dramatists, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides, all belong to the fifth century. Aeschylus
fought at Marathon and saw the battle of Salamis. Sophocles was
still religiously orthodox. But Euripides was influenced by Prota-
goras and by the free-thinking spirit of the time, and his treatment
of the myths is sceptical and subversive. Aristophanes, the comic
poet, made fun of Socrates, Sophists, and philosophers, but,
nevertheless, belonged to their circle; in the Symposium Plato
represents him as on very friendly terms with Socrates. Pheidias
the sculptor, as we have seen, belonged to the circle of Pericles.
The excellence of Athens, at this period, was artistic rather
than intellectual. None of the great mathematicians or philosophers
of the fifth century were Athenians, with the exception of Socrates ;
and Socrates was not a writer, but a man who confined himself
to oral discussion.
The outbreak of the Pcloponncsian War in 431 B.C. and t he-
death of Pericles in 429 B.C. introduced a darker period in Athenian
history. The Athenians were superior at sea, but the Spartans
had supremacy on land, and repeatedly occupied Attica (except
Athens) during the summer. The result was that Athens was over-
crowded, and suffered severely from the plague. In 414 B.C. the
Athenians sent a large expedition to Sicily, in the hope of capturing
Syracuse, which was aljied with Sparta; but the attempt was a
100
PROTAGORAS
failure. War made the Athenians fierce and persecuting. In 416 B.C.
they conquered the island of Melos, put to death all men of
military age and enslaved the other inhabitants. The Trojan
Women of Euripides is a protest against such barbarism. The
conflict had an ideological aspect, since Sparta was the champion
of oligarchy and Athens of democracy. The Athenians had reason
to suspect some of their own aristocrats of treachery, which was
generally thought to have had a part in the final naval defeat at
the battle of Acgospotami in 405 B.C.
At the end of the war, the Spartans established in Athens an
oligarchical government, known as the Thirty Tyrants. Some of
the Thirty, including Critias, their chief, had been pupils of
Socrates. They were deservedly unpopular, and were overthrown
within a year. With the compliance of Sparta, democracy was
restored, but it was an embittered democracy, precluded by an
amnesty from direct vengeance against its internal enemies, but
glad of any pretext, not covered by the amnesty, for prosecuting
them. It was in this atmosphere that the trial and death of Socrates
took place- (3W n.r.).
101
Part 2. — Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
Chapter XI
SOCRATES
SOCRATES is a very difficult subject for the historian. There
are many men concerning whom it is certain that very little
is known, and other men concerning whom it is certain that
a great deal is known; but in the case of Socrates the uncertainty
is as to whether we kno\v very little or a great deal. He was un-
doubtedly an Athenian citizen of moderate means, who spent his
time in disputation, and taught philosophy to the young, but not
for money, like the Sophists. lie was certainly tried, condemned
to death, and executed in 399 B.C., at about the ape of seventy.
He was unquestionably a well-known figure in Athens, since
Aristophanes caricatured him in The Clouds. But beyond this
point we become involved in controversy. Two of his pupils,
Xenophon and Plato, wrote voluminously about him, but they
said very different things. Even when they agree, it has been
suggested by Burnet that Xenophon is copying Plato. Where they
disagree, some believe the one, some the other, some neither. In
such a dangerous dispute, I shall not venture to take sides, but I
will set out briefly the various points of view.
Let us begin with Xenophon, a military man, not very lilnrrally
endowed with brains, and on the whole conventional in his out-
look. Xenophon is pained that Socrates should have been accused
of impiety and of corrupting the youth; he contends that, on the
cont ran\ Socrates was eminently pious and had a thoroughly
wholesome effect upon those who came under his influence. His
ideas, it appears, so far from being subversive, were rather dull
and commonplace. This defence goes too far, since it leaves the
hostility to Socrates unexplained. As Burnet says (Tliaks to Plato.
p. 149): "Xenophon *8 defence of .Socrates is too successful. He
would never have been put to death if he had been like that."
There has been a tendency to think that everything Xenophon
gays must be true, because he had not the wits to think/if anything
102
SOCRATES
untrue. This is a very invalid line of argument. A stupid man's
report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he un-
consciously translates what he hears into something that he can
understand. I would rather be reported by my bitterest enemy
among philosophers than by a friend innocent of philosophy. We
cannot therefore accept what Xenophon says if it either involves
any difficult point in philosophy or is part of an argument to prove
that Socrates was unjustly condemned.
Nevertheless, some of Xenophon 's reminiscences are very con-
vincing. He tells (as Plato also does) how Socrates was continually
occupied with the problem of getting competent men into positions
of power. He would ask such questions as: "If I wanted a shoe
mended, whom should I employ?" To which some ingenuous
youth would answer: "A shoemaker, O Socrates." He would go
on to carpenters, coppersmiths, etc., and finally ask some such
question as "who should mend the Ship of State?" When he fell
into conflict with the Thirty Tyrants, Critias, their chief, who
knew his ways from having studied under him, forbade him to
continue teaching the young, and added: "You had better be
done with your shoemakers, carpenters, and coppersmiths. These
must be pretty well trodden out at heel by this time, considering
the circulation you have given them" (Xenophon, Memorabilia,
Ilk. I, chap. ii). This happened during the brief oligarchic
government established by the Spartans at the end of the Pelo-
ponnesian War. But at most times Athens was democratic, so
much so that even generals were elected or chosen by lot. Socrates
came across a young man who wished to become a general, and
persuaded him that it would be well to know something of the
art of war. The young man accordingly went away and took a
brief course in tactics. When he returned, Socrates, after some
satirical praise, sent him back for further instruction (ibid., Bk. Ill,
chap. i). Another young man he set to learning the principles of
finance. He tried the same sort of plan on many people, including
the war minister; but it was decided that it was easier to silence
him by means of the hemlock than to cure the evils of which he
complained.
With Plato's account of Socrates, the difficulty is quite a different
one from what it is in the case of Xenophon, namely, that it is
very hard to judgc'how far Plato means to portray the historical
Socrates, a'jd how far he intends the person called "Socrates" in
•03
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
his dialogues to be merely the mouthpiece of his own opinions.
Plato, in addition to being a philosopher, is an imaginative writer
of great genius and charm. No one supposes, and he himself does
not seriously pretend, that the conversations in his dialogues took
place just as he records them. Nevertheless, at any rate in the
earlier dialogues, the conversation is completely natural and the
characters quite convincing. It is the excellence of Plato as a
writer of fiction that throws doubt on him as a historian. His
Socrates is a consistent and extraordinarily interesting character,
far beyond the power of most men to invent ; but I think Plato
could have invented him. Whether he did so is of course another
question.
The dialogue which is most generally regarded as historical is
the Apology. This professes to be the speech that Socrates made in
his own defence at his trial — not, of course, a stenographic report,
but what remained in Plato's memory some years after the event,
put together and elaborated with literary art. Plato was present
at the trial, and it certainly seems fairly clear that what is set
down is the sort of thing that Plato remembered Socrates as
saying, and that the intention is, broadly speaking, historical.
This, with all its limitations, is enough to give a fairly definite
picture of the character of Socrates.
The main facts of the trial of Socrates are not open to doubt.
The prosecution was based upon the charge that " Socrates is an
evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under the
earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the
better cause, and teaching all this to others." The real ground of
hostility to him was, almost certainly, that he was supposed to
be connected with the aristocratic party; most of his pupils
belonged to this faction, and some, in positions of power, had
proved themselves very pernicious. But this ground could not be
made evident, on account of the amnesty. He was found guilty
by a majority, and it was then open to him, by Athenian law, to
propose some lesser penalty than death. The judges had to choose,
if they had found the accused guilty, between the penalty de-
manded by the prosecution and that suggested by the defence.
It was therefore to the interest of Socrates to suggest a substantial
penalty, which the court might have accepted as adequate. He,
however, proposed a fine of thirty minae, for 'which some of his
friends (including Plato) were willing to go surety. 'Vhis was so
104
SOCRATES
small a punishment that the court was annoyed, and condemned
him to death by a larger majority than that which had found him
guilty. Undoubtedly he foresaw this result. It is clear that he had
no wish to avoid the death penalty by concessions which might
seem to acknowledge his guilt.
The prosecutors were Anytus, a democratic politician; Meletus,
a tragic poet, "youthful and unknown, with lanky hair, and scanty
beard, and a hooked nose"; and Lykon, an obscure rhetorician.
(See Burnet, Thales to Plato, p. 180.) They maintained that
Socrates was guilty of not worshipping the gods the State wor-
shipped but introducing other new divinities, and further that
he was guilty of corrupting the young by teaching them accordingly.
Without further troubling ourselves with the insoluble question
of the relation of the Platonic Socrates to the real man, let us see
what Plato makes him say in answer to this charge.
Socrates begins by accusing his prosecutors of eloquence, and
rebutting the charge of eloquence as applied to himself. The only
eloquence of which he is capable, he says, is that of truth. And
they must not be angry with him if he speaks in his accustomed
manner, not in "a set oration, duly ornamented with words and
phrases/*1 He is over seventy, and has never appeared in a court
of law until now; they must therefore pardon his un-forensic way
of speaking.
lie goes on to say that, in addition to his formal accusers, he has
a large body of informal accusers, who, ever since the judges were
children, have gone about "telling of one Socrates, a wise man,
who speculated about the heavens above, and searched into the
earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause." Such
men, he says, are supposed not to believe in the existence of the
Htnls. This old accihsation by public opinion is more dangerous
than the formal indictment, the more so as he does not know
who are the men from whom it comes, except in the case of
Aristophanes.2 He points out, in reply to these older grounds of
hostility, that he is not a man of science — "I have nothing to do
with physical speculations" — that he is not a teacher, and does
not take money for teaching. He goes on to make fun of the
Sophist*, and to disclaim the knowledge that they profess to have.
1 In quotations frapi Plato, I have generally used Jowett's translation.
• In Tkf Clouds, Socrates is represented as denying the existence of
Zeus. ,
105
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
What, then, is "the reason why I am called wise and have such
an evil fame?1'
The oracle of Delphi, it appears, was once asked if there were
any man wiser than Socrates, and replied that there was not.
Socrates professes to have been completely puz/led, since he knew
nothing, and yet a god cannot lie. He therefore went about among
men reputed wise, to see whether he could convict the god of
error. First he went to a politician, who "was thought wise by
many, and still wiser by himself.*' He soon found that the man
was not wise, and explained this to him, kindly but firmly, "and
the consequence was that he hated me." He then went to the
poets, and asked them to explain passages in their writings, but
they were unable to do so. "Then I knew that not by wisdom do
poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration.1' Then
he went to the artisans, but found them equally disappointing.
In the process, he says, he made many dangerous enemies. Finally
he concluded that "God only is wise; and by his answer he intends
to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is
not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way of
illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like
Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing." This
business of shoeing up pretenders to wisdom takes up all his time,
and has left him in utter poverty, but he feels it a duty to vindicate
the oracle.
Young men of the richer classes, he says, having not much to
do, enjoy listening to him exposing people, and proceed to do
likewise, thus increasing the number of his enemies. ''For they
do not like to confess that their pretence of knowledge has been
detected."
So much for the first class of accusers.
Socrates now proceeds to examine his prosecutor Mektus. "that
good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself." He
asks who are the people who improve the young. Mclctus first
mentions the judges; then, under pressure, is driven, step by step,
to say that every Athenian except Socrates improves the young;
whereupon Socrates congratulates the city on its good fortune.
Next, he points out that good men are better to live among than
bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his
fellow-citizens intentionally ; but if unintentionally, then Mclctus
should instruct him, not prosecute him.
106
SOCRATES
The indictment had said that Socrates not only denied the gods
of the State, but introduced other gods of his own ; Meletus, how-
ever, says that Socrates is a complete atheist, and adds: "He says
that the sun is stone and the moon earth." Socrates replies that
Meletus seems to think he is prosecuting Anaxagoras, whose
views may be heard in the theatre for one drachma (presumably
in the plays of Euripides). Socrates of course points out that this
new accusation of complete atheism contradicts the indictment,
and then passes on to more general considerations.
The rest of the Apology is essentially religious in tone. He has
been a soldier, and has remained at his post, as he was ordered
to do. Now "God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of
searching into myself and other men," and it would be as shameful
to desert his post now as in time of battle. Fear of death is not
wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater
good. If he were offered his life on condition of ceasing to speculate
as he has done hitherto, he would reply: "Men of Athens, I
honour and love you ; but I shall obey God rather than you,1 and
while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice
and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet. . . .
For know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no
greater good has ever happened in the State than my service to
the God." He goes on:
I have something more to say, at which you may be inclined
to cry cnit; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you,
and therefore I beg that you will not cry out. I would have you
know, that if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure your-
selves more than you will injure me. Nothing will injure me,
not Meletus nor yet Anytus — they cannot, for a bad man is not
permitted to injure a belter than himself. I do not deny that
Anytus may perhaps kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive
him of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine,
that he is intlicting a great injury upon him: but there I do not
agree. For the evil of doing as he is doing — the evil of unjustly
taking away the life of another — is greater far.
It is for the sake of his judges, he says, not for his own sake,
that he is pleading. He is a gad-fly, given to the State by God, and
it will not be easy to find another like him. "I dare say you may
feel out of temper»(like a person who is suddenly awakened from
1 Cf. Acts, v, 29.
107
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
sleep), and you think that you might easily strike me dead as
Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the remainder
of your lives, unless God in his care of you sent you another
gad-fly."
Why has he only gone about in private, and not given advice
on public affairs? "You have heard me speak at sundry times and
in diverse places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is
the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign,
which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a
child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything
which I am going to do. This is what deters me from being a
politician." He goes on to say that in politics no honest man can
live long. He gives two instances in which he was unavoidably
mixed up in public affairs: in the first, he resisted the democracy;
in the second, the Thirty Tyrants, in each case when the authorities
were acting illegally.
He points out that among those present are many former pupils
of his, and fathers and brothers of pupils ; not one of these has
been produced by the prosecution to testify that he corrupts the
young. (This is almost the only argument in the Apology that a
lawyer for the defence would sanction.) He refuses to follow the
custom of producing his weeping children in court, to soften the
hearts of the judges; such scenes, he says, make the accused and
the city alike ridiculous. It is his business to convince the judges,
not to ask a favour of them.
After the verdict, and the rejection of the alternative penalty of
thirty minae (in connection with which Socrates names Plato as
one among his sureties, and present in court), he makes OIK- final
speech.
And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain
prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of death
men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you,
who are my murderers, that immediately after my departure
punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely
await you. ... If you think that by killing men you can prevent
some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that
is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable;
the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but
to be improving yourselves.
He then turns to those of his judges w..^ .«ave ^voted for
108
SOCRATES
acquittal, and tells them that, in all that he has done that day, his
oracle has never opposed him, though on other occasions it has
often stopped him in the middle of a speech. This, he says, "is an
intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those
of us who think death is an evil are in error." For either death is
a dreamless sleep — which is plainly good — or the soul migrates to
another world. And "what would not a man give if he might
converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?
Nay, if this be true, let me die and die again." In the next world,
he will converse with others who have suffered death unjustly,
and, above all, lie will continue his search after knowledge. "In
another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions:
assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will
be immortal, if what is said is true. . . .
"The hour of departure has arrived, and \ve go our ways — I
to die, ami you to live. Which is better God only knows."
The Apology gives a clear picture of a man of a certain type: a
man very sure of himself, high-minded, indifferent to worldly
success, believing that he is guided by a divine voice, and per-
suaded that clear thinking is the most important requisite for right
living. Lxcept in this last point, he resembles a Christian martyr
or a Puritan. In the final passage, where he considers what happens
after death, it is impossible not to feel that he firmly believes in
immortality, and that his professed uncertainty is only assumed.
He is not troubled, like the Christians, by fears of eternal torment:
he has no doubt that his life in the next world will be a happy
one. In the PhaeJo, the Platonic Socrates gives reasons for the
belief in immortality; whether these were the reasons that in-
fluenced the historical Socrates, it is impossible to say.
There seems hardly any doubt that the historical Socrates
claimed to be guided by an oracle or daimon. Whether this was
analogous to what a Christian would call the voice of conscience,
or whether it appeared to him as an actual voice, it is impossible
to know. Joan of Arc was inspired by voices, which are a common
symptom of insanity. Socrates was liable to cataleptic trances; at
least, that seems the natural explanation of such an incident as
occurred once when he was on military service:
One morning he was thinking about something which he could
not resolve; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from
early dawn until noon —there he stood fixed in thought; and at
109
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran through
the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking
about something ever since the break of day. At last, in the
evening after supper, some lonians out of curiosity (I should
explain that this occurred not in winter but in summer), brought
out their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch
him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood
until the following morning; and with the return of light he
offered up a prayer to the sun, and went his way (Symposium, 220).
This sort of thing, in a lesser degree, was a common occurrence
with Socrates. At the beginning of the Symposium, Socrates and
Aristodemus go together to the banquet, but Socrates drops behind
in a fit of abstraction. When Aristodemus arrives, Agathon, the
host, says "what have you done with Socrates?" Aristodemus is
astonished to find Socrates not with him; a slave is sent to look
for him, and finds him in the portico of a neighbouring house.
"There he is fixed," says the slave on his return, "ami when I
call to him he will not stir." Those who know him well explain
that "he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himself
without any reason." They leave him alone, and he enters when
the feast is half over.
Every one is agreed that Socrates was very uply; he had a snub
nose and a considerable paunch ; he was "uglier than all the
Silenuses in the Satyric drama" (Xenophon, Symposium). He was
always dressed in shabby old clothes, and went barefoot every-
where. His indifference to heat and cold, hunger and thirst,
amazed every one. Alcihiades in the Symposium, describing
Socrates on military sen-ice, says:
His endurance was simply marvellous when, beins; cut off from
our supplies, we were compelled to go without food -on such
occasions, which often happen in time of war, he was superior
not only to me but to everybody: there was no one to be com-
pared to him. ... His fortitude in enduring cold was also
surprising. There was a severe frost, for the winter in that region
is really tremendous, and everybody else cither remained indoors
or if they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and
were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces:
in the midst of this, Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in
his ordinary dress marched better than the other soldiers who
had shoes and they looked daggers at him because he seemed
to despise them.
no
SOCRATES
His mastery over all bodily passions is constantly stressed. He
seldom drank wine, but when he did, he could out-drink anybody;
no one had ever seen him drunk. In love, even under the strongest
temptations, he remained "Platonic," if Plato is speaking the truth.
He was the perfect Orphic saint: in the dualism of heavenly soul
and earthly body, he had achieved the complete mastery of the
soul over the body. His indifference to death at the last is the
final proof of this mastery. At the same time, he is not an orthodox
Orphic; it is only the fundamental doctrines that he accepts, not
the superstitions and ceremonies of purification.
The Platonic Socrates anticipates both the Stoics and the Cynics.
The Stoics held that the supreme good is virtue, and that a man
cannot be deprived of virtue by outside causes ; this doctrine is
implicit in the contention of Socrates that his judges cannot harm
him. The Cynics despised worldly goods, and showed their con-
tempt by eschewing the comforts of civilization; this is the same
point of view that led Socrates to go barefoot and ill-clad.
It seems fairly certain that the preoccupations of Socrates were
ethical rather than scientific. In the Apology, as we saw, he says:
*4I have nothing to do with physical speculations." The earliest
of the Platonic dialogues, which are generally supposed to be the
most Socratic, are mainly occupied with the search for definitions
of ethical terms. The Charmides is concerned with the definition
of temj>erance or moderation ; the Lysis with friendship ; the Laches
with courage. In all of these, no conclusion is arrived at, but
Socrates makes it clear that he thinks it important to examine
such questions. The Platonic Socrates consistently maintains that
fie knows nothing, and is only wiser than others in knowing that
he knows nothing ; but he does not think knowledge unobtainable.
On the contrary, he thinks the search for knowledge of the utmost
importance. He maintains that no man sins wittingly, and there-
fore only knowledge is needed to make all men perfectly virtuous.
The close connection between virtue and knowledge is charac-
teristic of Socrates and Plato. To some degree, it exists in all
Greek thought, as opposed to that of Christianity. In Christian
ethics, a pure heart is the essential, and is at least as likely to be
found among the ignorant as among the learned. This difference
between Greek and Christian ethics has persisted down to the
present day, *
Dialectic, that is to say, the method of seeking knowledge by
in
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
question and answer, was not invented by Socrates. It seems to
have been first practised systematically by Zeno, the disciple of
Parmenides ; in Plato's dialogue Parmenides, Zeno subjects Socrates
to the same kind of treatment to which, elsewhere in Plato,
Socrates subjects others. But there is every reason to suppose that
Socrates practised and developed the method. As we saw, when
Socrates is condemned to death he reflects happily that in the
next world he can go on asking questions for ever, and cannot be
put to death, as he will be immortal. Certainly, if he practised
dialectic in the way described in the Apology, the hostility to him
is easily explained: all the humbugs in Athens would combine
against him.
The dialectic method is suitable for some questions, and un-
suitable for others. Perhaps this helped to determine the character
of Plato's inquiries, which were, for the most part, such as could
be dealt with in this way. And through Plato's influence, most
subsequent philosophy has been bounded by the limitations
resulting from his method.
Some matters are obviously unsuitable for treatment in this way
— empirical science, for example. It is true that Galileo used dia-
logues to advocate his theories, but that was only in order to
overcome prejudice — the positive grounds for his discoveries
could not be inserted in a dialogue without great artificiality.
Socrates, in Plato's works, always pretends that he is only eliciting
knowledge already possessed by the man he is questioning; on
this ground, he compares himself to a midwife. When, in the
Phaedo and the Afeno, he applies his method to geometrical
problems, he has to ask leading questions which any judge would
disallow. The method is in harmony with the doctrine of reminis-
cence, according to which we learn by remembering what we knew
in a former existence. As against this view, consider any discovery
that has been made by means of the microscope, say the spread
of diseases by bacteria; it can hardly be maintained that such
knowledge can be elicited from a previously ignorant person by
the method of question and answer.
The matters that are suitable for treatment by the Socrattc
method are those as to which we have already enough knowledge
to come to a right conclusion, but have failed, through confusion
of thought or lack of analysis, to make the best logical use of what
we know. A question such as "what is justice?'' is eminently suited
112
SOCRATES
for discussion in a Platonic dialogue. We all freely use the words
"just" and "unjust," and, by examining the ways in which we
use them, we can arrive inductively at the definition that will best
suit with usage. All that is needed is knowledge of how the words
in question are used. But when our inquiry is concluded, we have
made only a linguistic discovery, not a discovery in ethics.
We can, however, apply the method profitably to a somewhat
larger class of cases. Wherever what is being debated is logical
rather than factual, discussion is a good method of eliciting truth.
Suppose someone maintains, for example, that democracy is good,
hut persons holding certain opinions should not be allowed to
vote, we may convict him of inconsistency, and prove to him that
at least one of his two assertions must be more or less erroneous.
Logical errors are, I think, of greater practical importance than
many people believe; they enable their perpetrators to hold the
comfortable opinion on every subject in turn. Any logically
coherent body of doctrine is sure to be in part painful and con-
trary to current prejudices. The dialectic method — or, more
generally, the habit of unfettered discussion — tends to promote
logical consistency, and is in this way useful. But it is quite un-
availing when the object is to discover new facts. Perhaps "philo-
sophy*1 might he defined as the sum-total of those inquiries that
can he pursued by Plato's methods. But if this definition is
appropriate, that is because of Plato's influence upon subsequent
philosophers.
Chapter XII
THE INFLUENCE OF SPARTA
E • 1O understand Plato, and indeed many later philosophers,
I it is necessary to know something of Sparta. Sparta had
JL a double effect on Greek thought: through the reality, and
through the myth. Each is important. The reality enabled the
Spartans to defeat Athens in war; the myth influenced Plato's
political theory, and that of countless subsequent writers. The
myth, fully developed, is to be found in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus\
the ideals that it favours have had a great part in framing the
doctrines of Rousseau, Nietzsche, and National Socialism.1 The
myth is of even more importance, historically, than the reality ;
nevertheless, we will begin with the latter. For the reality was the
source of the myth.
Laconia, of which Sparta, or Lacedacmon was the capital,
occupied the south-east of the Peloponnesus. The Spartans, who
were the ruling race, had conquered the country at the time of the
Dorian invasion from the north, and had reduced the population
that they found there to the condition of serfs. These serfs were
called helots. In historical times, all the land belonged to the
Spartans, who, however, were forbidden by law and custom to
cultivate it themselves, both on the ground that such labour was
degrading, and in order that they might always be free for military
service. The serfs were not bought and sold, but remained attached
to the land, which was divided into lots, one or more for each
adult male Spartan. These lots, like the helots, could not be
bought or sold, and passed, by law, from father to son. (They
could, however, be bequeathed.) The landowner received from
the helot who cultivated the lot seventy medirnni (about 105
bushels) of grain for himself, twelve for his wife, and a stated
portion of wine and fruit annually * Anything beyond this amount
was the property of the helot. The helots were Greeks, like the
Spartans, and bitterly resented their servile condition. When they
could, they rebelled. The Spartans had a body of secret police to
1 Not to mention Dr. Thomas Arnold and the English public schools.
f Bury, History of Greece, Vol. I, p. 138. It wen is that Spartan men ate
nearly six times as much as their wive*.
"4
THE INFLUENCE OF SPARTA
deal with this danger, but to supplement this precaution they had
another: once a year, they declared war on the helots, so that their
young men could kill any who seemed insubordinate without
incurring the legal guilt of homicide. Helots could be emancipated
by the State, but not by their masters; they were emancipated,
rather rarely, for exceptional bravery in battle.
At some time during the eighth century B.C. the Spartans con-
quered the neighbouring country of Messenia, and reduced most
of its inhabitants to the condition of helots. There had been a
lack of Lebensraum in Sparta, but the new territory, for a time,
removed this source of discontent.
Lois were for the common run of Spartans; the aristocracy had
estates of their own, whereas the lots were portions of common
land assigned by the State.
The free inhabitants of other parts of Laconia, called "p^rioeci,"
had no share of political power.
The sole business of a Spartan citizen was war, to which he was
trained from birth. Sickly children were exposed after inspection
by the heads of the tribe; only those judged vigorous were allowed
to be reared. Up to the age of twenty, all the boys were trained in
one big school; the purpose of the training was to make them
hardy, indifferent to pain, and submissive to discipline. There
was no nonsense about cultural or scientific education; the sole
aim was to produce good soldiers, wholly devoted to the State.
At the age of twenty, actual military service began. Marriage
uas permitted to anyone over the age of twenty, but until the
age of thirty a man had to live in the "men's house," and had to
manage his marriage as if it were an illicit and secret affair. After
thirty, he was a full-fledged citizen. Every citizen belonged to a
mess, and dined with the other members; he had to make a
contribution in kind from the produce of his lot. It was the theory
of the State that no Spartan citizen should be destitute, and none
should be rich. Each was expected to live on the produce of his
lot, which lie could not alienate except by free gift. None was
allowed to own gold or silver, and the money was made of iron.
Spartan simplicity became proverbial.
The position of women in Sparta was peculiar. They were not
secluded, like respectable women elsewhere in Greece. Girls went
through the same 'physical training as was given to boys; what is
more remarkable, boys and girls did their gymnastics together,
"5
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
all being naked. It was desired (I quote Plutarch's Lycurgus in
North's translation):
that the maidens should harden their bodies with exercise of
running, wrestling, throwing the bar, and casting the dart, to the
end that the fruit wherewith they might be afterwards con-
ceived, taking nourishment of a strong and lusty body, should
shoot out and spread the better: and that they by gathering
strength thus by exercises, should more easily away with the
pains of child bearing. . . . And though the maidens did show
themselves thus naked openly, yet was there no dishonesty seen
nor offered, but all this sport was full of play and toys, without
any youthful part or wantonness.
Men who would not marry were made "infamous by law/* and
compelled, even in the coldest weather, to walk up and down
naked outside the place where the young people were doing their
exercises and dances.
Women were not allowed to exhibit any emotion not profitable
to the State. They might display contempt for a coward, and
would be praised if he were their son; but they might not show
grief if their new-born child was condemned to death as a weakling,
or if their sons were killed in battle. They were considered, by
other Greeks, exceptionally chaste; at the same time, a childless
married woman would raise no objection if the State ordered her
to find out whether some other man would be more successful
than her husband in begetting citizens. Children were encouraged
by legislation. According to Aristotle, the father of three sons was
exempt from military service, and the father of four from all the
burdens of the State.
The constitution of Sparta was complicated. There were two
kings, belonging to two different families, and succeeding by
heredity. One or other of the kings commanded the army in time
of war, but in time of peace their powers were limited. At com-
munal feasts they got twice as much to eat as any one else, and
there was general mourning when one of them died. They were
members of the Council of Klders, a body consisting of thirty
men (including the kings); the other twenty-eight must be over
sixty, and were chosen for life by the whole body of the citizens,
but only from aristocratic families. The Council tried criminal
cases, and prepared matters which were to 'come before the
Assembly. This body (the Assembly) consisted of all the citizens ;
116
THE INFLUENCE OF SPARTA
it could not initiate anything, but could vote yes or no to any
proposal brought before it. No law could be enacted without
its consent. But its consent, though necessary, was not sufficient ;
the elders and magistrates must proclaim the decision before it
became valid.
In addition to the kings, the Council of Elders, and the
Assembly, there was a fourth branch of the government, peculiar
to Sparta. This was the five ephors. These were chosen out of the
whole body of the citizens, by a method which Aristotle says was
"too childish," and which Bury says was virtually by lot. They
were a "democratic11 element in the constitution,1 apparently
intended to balance the kings. Every month the kings swore to
uphold the constitution, and the ephors then swore to uphold the
kings so long as they remained true to their oath. When either
king went on a warlike expedition, two ephors accompanied him
to watch over his behaviour. The ephors were the supreme civil
court, but over the kings they had criminal jurisdiction.
The Spartan constitution was supposed, in later antiquity, to
have been due to a legislator named Lycurgus, who was said to
have promulgated his laws in 885 B.C. In fact, the Spartan system
grew up gradually, and Lycurgus was a mythical person, originally
a god. His name meant "wolf-repcller," and his origin was
Arcadian.
Sparta aroused among the other Greeks an admiration which
is to us somewhat surprising. Originally, it had been much less
different from other Greek cities than it became later; in early
days it produced ports and artists as good as those elsewhere.
But about the seventh century B.C., or perhaps even later, its con-
stitution (falsely attributed to Lycurgus) crystallized into the form
we have been considering; everything else was sacrificed to success
in war, and Sparta ceased to have any part whatever in what
Greece contributed to the civilization of the world. To us, the
Spartan State appears as a model, in miniature, of the State that
the Nazis would establish if victorious. To the Greeks it seemed
otherwise. As Bury says:
A stranger from Athens or Miletus in the fifth century visiting
the straggling villages which formed her unwalled unpretentious
1 In speaking of " Jemocratie" elements in the Spartan constitution, one
must of course remember that the citizens as a whole were a ruling class
fiercely tyrannizing over the helots, and allowing no power to die perioeci.
117
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
city must have bad a feeling of being transported into an age
long past, when men were braver, better and simpler, unspoiled
by wealth,. undisturbed by ideas. To a philosopher, like Plato,
speculating in political science, the Spartan State seemed the
nearest approach to the ideal. The ordinary Greek looked upon
it as a structure of severe and simple beauty, a Dorian city stately
as a Dorian temple, far nobler than his own abode but not so
comfortable to dwell in.1
One reason for the admiration felt for Sparta by other Greeks
was its stability. All other Greek cities had revolutions, but the
Spartan constitution remained unchanged for centuries, except
for a gradual increase in the powers of the ephors, which occurred
by legal means, without violence.
It cannot be denied that, for a long period, the Spartans were
successful in their main purpose, the creation of a race of invincible
warriors. The battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.), though technically
a defeat, is perhaps the best example of their valour. Thermopylae
was a narrow pass through the mountains, where it was hoped
that the Persian army could be held. Three hundred Spartans,
with auxiliaries, repulsed all frontal attacks. Hut at last the Persians
discovered a detour through the hills, and succeeded in attacking
the Greeks on both sides at once. Every single Spartan was killed
at his post. Two men had been absent on sick leave, suffering
from a disease of the eyes amounting almost to ternporar} blind-
ness. One of them insisted on being led by his helot to the battle,
where he perished; the other, Aristodemus, decided that lie was
too ill to fight, and remained absent. When he returned to Sparta,
no one would speak to him; he was called "the coward ArLsto-
demus." A year later, he wiped out his disgrace by dying bravely
at the battle of Plataea, where the Spartans were victorious.
After the war, the Spartans erected a memorial on the battlefield
of Thermopylae, saying only: "Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians
that we lie here, in obedience to their orders/'
For a long time, the Spartans proved themselves invincible on
land. They retained their supremacy until the year 371 B.C., when
they were defeated by the Thebans at the battle of Lcuctra. This
was the end of their military greatness.
Apart from war, the reality of Sparta was never quite the same
as the theory. Herodotus, who lived at its great period, remarks,
1 History of Greece t Vol. I, p. 141.
THE INFLUENCE OF SPARTA
surprisingly, that no Spartan could resist a bribe. This was in spite
of the fact that contempt for riches and love of the simple life was
one of the main things inculcated in Spartan education. We are
told that the Spartan women were chaste, yet it happened several
times that a reputed heir to the kingship was set aside on the
ground of not being the son of his mother's husband. We are told
that the Spartans were inflexibly patriotic, yet the king Pausanias,
the victor of Plataea, ended as a traitor in the pay of Xerxes.
Apart from such flagrant matters, the policy of Sparta was always
petty and provincial. When Athens liberated the Greeks of Asia
Minor and the adjacent islands from the Persians, Sparta held
aloof; so long as the Peloponnesus was deemed safe, the fate of
other (ireeks was a matter of indifference. Every attempt at a
confederation of the Hellenic world was defeated by Spartan
particularism.
Aristotle, who lived after the downfall of Sparta, gives a very
hostile account of its constitution.1 What he says is so different
from what other people say that it is difficult to believe he is
speaking of the same place, e.g. "The legislator wanted to make
the whole State hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his
intention in the case of men, but he has neglected the women,
who live in even* sort of intemperance and luxury. The conse-
quence is that in such a State wealth is too highly valued, especially
if the citixcns fall under the dominion of their wives, after the
manner of most warlike races. . . . Even in regard to courage,
which is of no use in daily life, and is needed only in war, the
influence of the I^iccdaemonian women has been most mischievous.
. . . This license of the Lacedaemonian women existed from the
earliest times, and was only what might be expected. For . . .
when I.vcurgus, as tradition says, wanted to bring the women
under his laws, they resisted, and he gave up the attempt."
1 le goes on to accuse Spartans of avarice, which he attributes
to the unequal distribution of property. Although lots cannot be
sold, he says, they can be given or bequeathed. Two-fifths of all
the land, he adds, belongs to women. The consequence is a great
diminution in the number of citizens: it is said that once there
were ten thousand, but at the time of the defeat by Thebes there
were less than one thousand.
Aristotle criticfccs every point of the Spartan constitution. He
, Vol. II, Q ( 126911- 1 270A).
IK)
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
says that the ephors are often very poor, and therefore easy to
bribe ; and their power is so great that even kings are compelled
to court them, so that the constitution has been turned into a
democracy. The ephor?, we are told, have too much licence, and
live in a manner contrary to the spirit of the constitution, while
the strictness in relation to ordinary citizens is so intolerable that
they take refuge in the secret illegal indulgence of sensual pleasures.
Aristotle wrote when Sparta was decadent, but on some points
he expressly says that the evil he is mentioning has existed from
early times. His tone is so dry and realistic that it is difficult to
disbelieve him, and it is in line with all modern experience of the
results of excessive severity in the laws. But it was not Aristotle's
Sparta that persisted in men's imagination; it was the mythical
Sparta of Plutarch and the philosophic idealization of Sparta in
Plato's Republic. Century after century, young men read these
works, and were fired with the ambition to become Lycurguses
or philosopher-kings. The resulting union of idealism and love of
power has led men astray over and over again, and is still doing so
in the present day.
The myth of Sparta, for medieval and modern readers, was
mainly fixed by Plutarch. When he wrote, Sparta belonged to the
romantic past ; its great period was as far removed from his time
as Columbus is from ours. What he says must IK* treated with
great caution by the historian of institutions, but to the historian
of myth it is of the utmost importance. Greece has influenced the
world, always, through its effect on men's imaginations, ideals,
and hopes, not directly through political power. Rome made roads
which largely still survive, and la\v> which are the source of many
modern legal codes, but it was the armies of Rome that made these
things important. The Greeks, though admirable fighters, made
few conquests, because they expended their military fury mainly
on each other. It was left to the semi-barbarian Alexander to spread
Hellenism throughout the Near Kast, and to make Greek the
literary language in Kgypt and Syria and the inland parts of Asia
Minor. The Greeks could never have accomplished this task, not
for lack of military force, but owing to their incapacity for
political cohesion. The political vehicles of Hellenism have always
been non-Hellenic; but it was the Greek genius that so inspired
alien nations as to cause them to spread the* culture of those
whom they had conquered.
120
THE INFLUENCE OF SPARTA
What is important to the historian of the world is not the petty
wars between Greek cities, or the sordid squabbles for party
ascendancy, but the memories retained by mankind when the
brief episode was ended— like the recollection of a brilliant sunrise
in the Alps, while the mountaineer struggles through an arduous
day of wind and snow. These memories, as they gradually faded,
left in men's minds the images of certain peaks that had shone
with peculiar brightness in the early light, keeping alive the
knowledge that behind the clouds a splendour still survived, and
might at any moment become manifest. Of these, Plato was the
most important in early Christianity, Aristotle in the medieval
Church; hut when, after the Renaissance, men began to value
political freedom, it was above all to Plutarch that they turned.
I le influenced profoundly the English and French liberals of the
eighteenth century, and the founders of the United States; he
influenced the romantic movement in Germany, and has con-
tinued, mainly by indirect channels, to influence German thought
down to the present day. In some ways his influence was good,
in some bad; as regards Lycurgus and Sparta, it was bad. What
he has to say about Lycurgus is important, and I shall give a brief
account of it, even at the cost of some repetition.
Lycurgus — so Plutarch says — having resolved to give laws to
Sparta, travelled widely in order to study different institutions.
He liked the laws of Crete, which were "very straight and severe,"1
but disliked tho.se of Ionia, where there were "superfluities and
vanities.*' In Kgypt he learned the advantage of separating the
soldiers from the rest of the people, and afterwards, having
returned from his travels, "brought the practice of it into Sparta:
where setting the merchants, artificers, and labourers every one
a part by themselves, he did establish a noble Commonwealth."
He nude an equal division of hinds among all the citizens of Sparta
in order to "banish out of the city all insolvency, envy, covetous-
ness, and dcliciousness, and also all riches and poverty." He for-
bade gold and silver money, allowing only iron coinage, of so
little value that "to lay up thereof the value often minas, it would
have occupied a whole cellar in a house." By this means he
banished "all superfluous and unprofitable sciences," since there
was not enough money to pay their practitioners; and by the
same law he made'all external commerce impossible. Rhetoricians,
N ' In quoting Plutarch I use North's translation.
121
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
panders, and jewellers, not liking the iron money, avoided Sparta.
He next ordained that all the citizens should eat together, and all
should have the same food.
Lycurgus, like other reformers, thought the education of children
"the chiefest and greatest matter, that a reformer of laws should
establish"; and like all who aim chiefly nt military power, he was
anxious to keep up the birth rate. The M plays, sports, and dances
the maids did naked before young men, were provocations to draw
and allure the young men to marry: not as persuaded by geo-
metrical reasons, as saith Plato, but brought to it by liking, and of
very love." The habit of treating a marriage, for the first few years,
as if it were a clandestine affair, "continued in both parties a still
burning love, and a new desire of the one to the other" — such, at
least, is the opinion of Plutarch. He goes on to explain that a man
was not thought ill of if, being old and having a young wife, he
allowed a younger man to have children by her. "It was lawful
also for an honest man that loved another man's wife ... to intreat
her husband to suffer him to lie with her, and that he might also
plough in that lusty ground, anj e^t abroad the seed of well-
favoured children." There was to be no foolish jealousy, for
"Lycurgus did not like that children should be private to any
men, but that they should be common to the common weal: by
which reason he would also, that such as should become citizens
should not be begotten of every man, but of the most honest
men only." He goes on to explain that this is the principle that
farmers apply to their live-stock.
When a child was born, the father brought him before the
elders of his family to be examined: if he was healthy, he was
given back to the father to he reared; if not, he was thrown into
a deep pit of water. Children, from the first, were subjected to a
severe hardening process, in some respects good — for example,
they were not put in swaddling clothes. At the age of seven, boys
were taken away from home and put in a boarding school, where
they were divided into companies, each under the orders of one
of their number, chosen for sense and courage. "Touching learning,
they had as much as served their turn: for the rest of their time
they spent in learning how to obey, to away with pain, to endure
labour, to overcome still in fight." They played naked together
most of the time; after twelve years old, they wf>re no coals; they
were always "nasty and sluttish," and they never bathed except
122
THE INFLUENCE OF SPARTA
on certain days in the year. They slept on beds of straw, which
in winter they mixed with thistle. They were taught to steal, and
were punished if caught— not for stealing, but for stupidity.
Homosexual love, male if not female, was a recognized
custom in Sparta, and had an acknowledged part in the education
of adolescent boys. A boy's lover suffered credit or discredit by
the boy's actions; Plutarch states that once, when a boy cried out
because he was hurt in fighting, his lover was fined for the boy's
cowardice.
There was little liberty at any stape in the life of a Spartan.
Their discipline and order of life continued still, after they
were full grown men, For it was not lawful for any man to live
as he listed, but they were within tlieir city, as if they had been in
a camp, where every man knoweth what allowance he hath to live
withal, and what business he hath else to do in his calling. To be
short, they were all of this mind, that they were not born to serve
themselves, but to serve their country. . . . One of the best and
happit-st things which Lycurpus ever brought into his city, was
the preat rest and leisure which he made his citizens to have, only
forhiddini; them that they should not profess any vile or base
occupation: and they needed not also to be careful to get great
riches, in a place where goods were nothing profitable nor esteemed.
For the 1 lelots, which were bond men made by the wars, did till
their grounds, and yielded them a certain revenue every year.
Plutarch goes on to tell a story of an Athenian condemned for
idleness, upon hearing of which a Spartan exclaimed: "show me
the man condemned for living nobly and like a gentleman."
Lycurijus (Plutarch continues) "did accustom his citizens so,
that they neither would nor could live alone, but were in manner
as men incorporated one with another, and were always in company
together, as the bees be about their master bee."
Spartans were not allowed to travel, nor were foreigners admitted
to Sparta, except on business; for it was feared that alien customs
uould corrupt Lacedaemonian virtue.
Plutarch relates the law that allowed Spartans to kill helots
whenever they felt so disposed, but refuses to believe that any-
thing so abominable can have been due to Lycurgus. "For I
cannot be persuaded, that ever Lycurgus invented, or instituted
so wicked and mischievous an act, as that kind of ordinance was:
because I imagine his nature was gentle and merciful, by the
123
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
clemency and justice we see he used in- all his other doings/*
Except in this matter Plutarch has nothing but praise for the
constitution of Sparta.
The effect of Sparta on Plato, with whom, at the moment, we
shall be specially concerned, will be e\ident from the account of
his Utopia, which will occupy the next chapter.
124
Chapter XIII
THE SOURCES OF PLATO'S OPINIONS
PLATO and Aristotle were the most influential of all philo-
sophers, ancient, medieval, or modern; and of the two, it
was Plato who had the greater effect upon subsequent ages.
I say this for two reasons: first, that Aristotle himself is an out-
come of Plato; second, that Christian theology and philosophy, at
any rate until the thirteenth century, was much more Platonic
than Aristotelian. It is necessary therefore, in a history of philo-
sophic thought, to treat Plato, and to a lesser degree Aristotle,
more fully than any of their predecessors or successors.
The most important matters in Plato's philosophy are: fast, his
Utopia, which was the earliest of a long series; second, his theory
of ideas, which was a pioneer attempt to deal with the still unsolved
problem of universal*; third, his arguments in favour of immor-
tality; fourth, his cosmogony; fifth, his conception of knowledge
as reminiscence rather than perception. But before dealing with
any of these topics, I shall say a few words about the circumstances
of his life and the influences which determined his political and
philosophical opinions.
Plato was born in 428-7 B.C., in the early years of the Pelo-
ponncsian War. He was a well-to-do aristocrat, related to various
people who were concerned in the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. He
was a young man when Athens was defeated, and he could attribute
the defeat to democracy, which his social position and his family
connections were likely to make him despise. He was a pupil of
Socrates, for whom he had a profound affection and respect; and
Socrates was put to death by the democracy. It is not, therefore,
surprising that he should turn to Sparta for an adumbration of
his ideal commonwealth. Plato possessed the an to dress up
illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages,
which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what
was involved in its proposals. It has always been correct to praise
Plato, but not to understand him. This is the common fate of
great men. My object is the opposite. I wish to understand hiiiL
but to treat him vrith as little reverence as if he were a corirern-
porary Knclish or American advocate of totalitarianism. ,*y? Or
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The purely philosophical influences on Plato were also such as
to predispose him in favour of Sparta. These influences, speaking
broadly, were: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Socrates.
From Pythagoras (whether by way of Socrates or not) Plato
derived the Orphic elements in his philosophy: the religious trend,
the belief in immortality, the other-worldliness, the priestly tone,
and all that is involved in the simile of the cave; also his respect
for mathematics, and his intimate intermingling of intellect and
mysticism.
From Parmenides he derived the belief that reality is eternal
and timeless, and that, on logical grounds, all change* must be
illusory.
From Heraclitus he derived the negative doctine that there is
nothing permanent in the sensible world. This, combined with the
doctrine of Parmenides, led to the conclusion that knowledge is
not to be derived from the senses, but is only to be achieved by
the intellect. This, in turn, fitted in well with Pythagoreanism.
From Socrates he probably learnt his preoccupation with
ethical problems, and his tendency to seek teleological rather than
mechanical explanations of the world. "The Good" dominated his
thought more than that of the pre-Socratics, and it is difficult not
to attribute this fact to the influence of Socrates.
How is all this connected with authoritarianism in politics ?
In the first place: Goodness and Reality being timeless, the best
State will be the one which most nearly copies the heavenly model,
by having a minimum of change and a maximum of static perfec-
tion, and its rulers should be those who best understand the
eternal Good.
In the second place: Plato, like all mystics, has, in his beliefs,
a core of certainty which is essentially incommunicable except by
a way of life. The Pythagoreans had endeavoured to set up a rule
of the initiate, and this is, at bottom, what Plato desires. If a man
is to be a good statesman, he must know the Good; this he can
only do by a combination of intellectual and moral discipline.
If those who have not gone through this discipline are allowed a
share in the government, they will inevitably corrupt it.
In the third place: much education is needed to make a good
''er on Plato's principles. It seems to us unwise to have insisted
chtng geometry to the younger Dion VMusJ tyrant of Syracuse,
r to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view
126
THE SOURCES OF PLATO'S OPINIONS
it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that
without mathematics no true wisdom is possible. This view implies
an oligarchy.
In the fourth place: Plato, in common with most Greek philo-
sophers, took the view that leisure is essential to wisdom, which
will therefore not be found among those who have to work for
their living, but only among those who have independent means
or who are relieved by the State from anxieties as to their sub-
sistence. This point of view is essentially aristocratic.
Two general questions arise in confronting Plato with modern
ideas. The first is: is there such a thing as "wisdom"? The second
is: granted that there is such a thing, can any constitution be
devised that will give it political power?
"Wisdom," in the sense supposed, would not be any kind of
specialized skill, such as is possessed by the shoemake- or the
physician or the military tactician. It must be something more
generali/cd than this, since its possession is supposed to make a
man capable of governing wisely. I think Plato would have said
that it consists in knowledge of the good, and would have supple-
mented this definition with the Socratic doctrine that no man
Mns wittingly, from which it follows that whoever knows what is
good does what is right. To us, such a view seems remote from
reality. We should more naturally say that there are divergent
interests, and that the statesman should arrive at the best available
compromise. The members of a class or a nation may have a
common interest, but it will usually conflict with the interests of
other classes or other nations. There are, no doubt, some interests
of mankind as a whole, but they do not suffice to determine political
action. Perhaps they will do so at some future date, but certainly
not so long as there are many sovereign States. And even then the
most difficult part of the pursuit of the general interest would
consist in arriving at compromises among mutually hostile special
interests.
But even if we suppose that there is such a thing as "wisdom,"
is there any form of constitution which will give the government
to the wise? It is clear that majorities, like general councils, may
err, and in fact have erred. Aristocracies are not always wise; kings
are often foolish ; Popes, in spite of infallibility, have committed
grievous errors. Wduld anybody advocate entrusting the govern-
ment to university graduates, or even to doctors of divinity? Or
127
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
to men who, having been born poor, have made great fortunes?
It is clear that no legally definable selection of citizens is likely to
be wiser, in practice, than the whole body.
It might be suggested that men could be given political wisdom
by a suitable training. But the question would arise: what is a
suitable training? And this would turn out to be a party question.
The problem of finding a collection of "wise" men and leaving
the government to them is thus an insoluble one. That is the
ultimate reason for democracy.
128
Chapter XIV
PLATO'S UTOPIA
PLATO'S most important dialogue, the Republic, consists,
broadly, of three parts. The first (to near the end of Book V)
consists in the construction of an ideal commonwealth ; it is
the earliest of Utopias.
One of the conclusions arrived at is that the rulers must be philo-
sophers. Books VI and VII are concerned to define the word
" philosopher." This discussion constitutes the second section.
The third section consists mainly of a discussion of various
kinds of actual constitutions and of their merits and defects.
The nominal purpose of the Republic is to define "justice." But
at an early stage it is decided that, since everything is easier to see
in the large than in the small, it will be better to inquire what
makes a just State than what makes a just individual. And since
justice must be among the attributes of the best imaginable State,
such a State is first delineated, and then it is decided which of its
perfections is to be called "justice."
Let us first describe Plato's Utopia in its broad outlines, and
then consider points that arise by the way.
Plato begins by deciding that the citizens are to be divided into
three classes: the common people, the soldiers, and the guardians.
'I 'he last, alone, are to have political power. There are to be much
fewer of them than of the other two classes. In the first instance,
it seems, they are to be chosen by the legislator; after that, they
will usually succeed by heredity, but in exceptional cases a pro-
mising child may be promoted from one of the inferior classes,
while among the children of guardians a child or young man who
is unsatisfactory may be degraded.
The main problem, as Plato perceives, is to insure that the
guardians shall carry out the intentions of the legislator. For this
purpose he has various proposals, educational, economic, biological,
and religious. It is not always clear how far these proposals apply
to other classes than the guardians; it is clear that some of them
apply to the soldiers, but in the main Plato is concerned only
with the guardians? who are to be a class apart, like the Jesuits in
old Paraguay, the ecclesiastics in the States of the Church until
1 19 *
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
1870, and the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R. at the present day.
The first thing to consider is education. This is divided into
two parts, music and gymnastics. Each has a wider meaning than
at present: "music" means everything that is in the province of
the muses, and "gymnastics" means everything concerned with
physical training and fitness. "Music" is almost as wide as what
we should call "culture/9 and "gymnastics" is somewhat wider
than what we call "athletics."
Culture is to be devoted to making men gentlemen, in the sense
which, largely owing to Plato, is familiar in England. The Athens
of his day was, in one respect, analogous to England in the nine-
teenth century: there was in each an aristocracy enjoying wealth
and social prestige, but having no monopoly of political power;
and in each the aristocracy had to secure as much power as it
could by means of impressive behaviour. In Plato's Utopia,
however, the aristocracy rules unchecked.
Gravity, decorum and courage seem to be the qualities mainly
to be cultivated in education. There is to be a rigid censorship
from very early years over the literature to which the young have
access and the music they are allowed to hear. Mothers and nurses
are to tell their children only authorized stories. Homer and
Hesiod are not to be allowed, for a number of reasons. First they
represent the gods as behaving badly on occasion, which is un-
edifying; the young must be taught that evils never come from
the gods, for God is not the author of all things, but only of good
things. Second, there are things in Homer and Hesiod which art-
calculated to make their readers fear death, whereas everything
ought to he done in education to make young people willing to
die in battle. Our boys must be taught to consider slavery worse
than death, and therefore they must have no stories of good men
weeping and wailing, even for the death of friends. Third, decorum
demands that there should never be loud laughter, and yet Homer
speaks of "inextinguishable laughter among the blessed gods/'
How is a schoolmaster to reprove mirth effectively, if boys can
quote this passage? Fourth, there are passages in Homer praising
rich feasts, and others describing the lusts of the gods; such
passages discourage temperance. (Dean Inge, a true Platonist,
objected to a line in a well-known hymn: "The shout of them
thai triumph, the song of them that feast/' which occurs in a
description of die joys of heaven.) Then there must be no stories
130
PLATO'S UTOPIA
in which the wicked are happy or the good unhappy; the moral
effect on tender minds might be most unfortunate. On all these
counts, the poets are to be condemned.
Plato passes on to a curious argument about the drama. The
good man, he says, ought to be unwilling to imitate a bad man;
now most plays contain villains; therefore the dramatist, and the
actor who plays the villain's part, have to imitate people guilty of
various crimes. Not only criminals, but women, slaves, and
inferiors generally, ought not to be imitated by superior men.
(In Greece, as in Elizabethan England, women's parts were acted
by men.) Plays, therefore, if permissible at all, must contain no
characters except faultless male heroes of good birth. The im-
possibility of this is so evident that Plato decides to banish all
dramatists from his city:
When any of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever
that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal
to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship
him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must
also inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to
exist ; the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed
him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall
send him away to another city.
Next we come to the censorship of music (in the modern sense).
The Lydian and Ionian harmonies are to be forbidden, the first
because it expresses sorrow, the second because it is relaxed. Only
the Dorian (for courage) and the Phrygian (for temperance) are
to be allowed. Permissible rhythms must be simple, and such as
are expressive of a courageous and harmonious life.
The training of the body is to be very austere. No one is to eat
fish, or meat cooked otherwise than roasted, and there must be
no sauces or confectionery. People brought up on his regimen,
he says, will have no need of doctors.
Up to a certain age, the young are to sec no ugliness or vice.
But at a suitable moment, they must be exposed to "enchant-
ments/* both in the shape of terrors that must not terrify, and of
bad pleasures that must not seduce the will. Only after they have
withstood these tests will they be judged fit to be guardians.
Young boys, before they are grown up, should see war, though
they should not themselves fight.
As for economics: Plato proposes a thoroughgoing communism
'31
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
for the guardians, and (I think) also for the soldiers, though this
is not very clear. The guardians are to have small houses and
simple food ; they are to live as in a camp, dining together in com-
panies; they are to have no private property beyond what is
absolutely necessary. Gold and silver are to be forbidden. Though
not rich, there is no reason why they should not be happy; but
the purpose of the city is the good of the whole, not the happiness
of one class. Both wealth and poverty are harmful, and in Plato's
city neither will exist. There is a curious argument about war,
that it will be easy to purchase allies, since our city will not want
any share in the spoils of victory.
With feigned unwillingness, the Platonic Socrates proceeds to
apply his communism to the family. Friends, he says, should
have all things in common, including women and children. He
admits that this presents difficulties, but thinks them not insuper-
able. First of all, girls are to have exactly the same education as
boys, learning music, gymnastics, and the art of war along with
the boys. Women are to have complete equality with men in all
respects. "The same education which makes a man a good guardian
will make a woman a good guardian ; for their original nature is
the same." No doubt there are differences between men and
women, but they have nothing to do with politics. Some women
are philosophic, and suitable as guardians; some are warlike, and
could make good soldiers.
The legislator, having selected the guardians, some men and
some women, will ordain that they shall all share common houses
and common meals. Marriage, as we know it, will be radically
transformed.1 At certain festivals, brides and bridegrooms, in
such numbers as are required to keep the population constant,
mil be brought together, by lot, as they will be taught to believe;
but in fact the rulers of the city will manipulate the lots on eugenic
principles. They will arrange that the best sires shall have the
most children. All children will be taken away from their parents
at birth, and great care will be taken that no parents shall know
who are their children, and no children shall know who are their
parents. Deformed children, and children of inferior parents, "will
be put away in some mysterious unknown place, as they ought to
be." Children arising from unions not sanctioned by the State
1 "These women ahull be, without exception, the common wives of
these men, and no one shall have a wife of hit own."
'3*
PLATO'S UTOPIA
are to be considered illegitimate. Mothers are to be between
twenty and forty, fathers between twenty-five and fifty-five. Out-
side these ages, intercourse is to be free, but abortion or infanticide
is to be compulsory. In the "marriages" arranged by the State,
the people concerned have no voice; they are to be actuated by
the thought of their duty to the State, not by any of those common
emotions that the banished poets used to celebrate.
Since no one knows who his parents are, he is to call every one
"father" whose age is such that he might be his father, and
similarly as regards "mother" and "brother" and "sister." (This
sort of thing happens among some savages, and used to puzzle
missionaries.) There is to be no marriage between a "father" and
"daughter" or "mother" and "son" ; in general, but not absolutely,
marriages of "brother" and "sister" are to be prevented. (I think
if Plato had thought this out more carefully he would have found
that he had prohibited all marriages, except the "brother-sister"
marriages which he regards as rare exceptions.)
It is supposed that the sentiments at present attached to the
words "father," "mother," "son," and "daughter" will still attach
to them under Plato's new arrangements; a young man, for
instance, will not strike an old man, because he might be striking
his father.
The advantage sought is, of course, to minimize private pos-
sessive emotions, and so remove obstacles to the domination of
public spirit, as well as to acquiescence in the absence of private
property. It was largely motives of a similar kind that led to the
celibacy of the clergy.1
I come last to the theological aspect of the system. I am not
thinking of the accepted Greek gods, but of certain myths which
the government is to inculcate. Lying, Plato says explicitly, is to
be a prerogative of the government, just as giving medicine is of
physicians. The government, as we have already seen, is to
deceive people in pretending to arrange marriages by lot, but this
is not a religious matter.
There is to be "one royal lie," which, Plato hopes, may deceive
the rulers, but will at any rate deceive the rest of the city. This
"lie" is set forth in considerable detail. The most important part
of it is the dogma that God has created men of three kinds, the
best made of gold/ the second best of silver, and the common
1 Se^ Henry C. 1-ca, A History of Sacerdotal Celibacy.
133
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
herd of brass and iron. Those made of gold are fit to be guardians ;
those made of silver should be soldiers; the others should do the
manual work. Usually, but by no means always, children will
belong to the same grade as their parents ; when they do not, they
must be promoted or degraded accordingly. It is thought hardly
possible to make the present generation believe this myth, but the
next, and all subsequent generations, can be so educated as not
to doubt it
Plato is right in thinking that belief in this myth could be
generated in two generations. The Japanese have been taught
since 1868 that the Mikado is descended from the sun-goddess,
and that Japan was created earlier than the rest of the world. Any
university professor, who, even in a learned work, throws doubt
on these dogmas, is dismissed for un-Japanese activities. What
Plato does not seem to realize is that the compulsory acceptance
of such myths is incompatible with philosophy, and involves a
kind of education which stunts intelligence.
The definition of "justice/1 which is the nominal goal of the
whole discussion, is reached in Book IV. It consists, we are told,
in everybody doing his own work and not being a busybody: the
city is /urt when trader, auxiliary, and guardian, each does his
own job without interfering with that of other classes.
That everybody should mind his own business is no doubt an
admirable precept, but it hardly corresponds to what a modern
would naturally call "justice." The Greek word so translated
corresponded to a concept which was very important in Greek
thought, but for which we have no exact equivalent. It is worth
while to recall what Anaximander said:
Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once
more, as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to
one another for their injustice according to the appointed time.
Before philosophy began, the Greeks had a theory or feeling
about the universe, which may be called religious or ethical.
According to this theory, every person and every thing has his
or its appointed place and appointed function. This does not
depend upon the fiat of Zeus, for Zeus himself is subject to the
same kind of law as governs others. The theory is connected with
the idea of fate or necessity. It applies emphatitally to the heavenly
bodies. But where there is vigour, there is a tendency to overstep
'34
PLATO'S UTOPIA
just bounds; hence arises strife. Some kind of impersonal super-
Olympian law punishes hubris, and restores the eternal order
which the aggressor sought to violate. This whole outlook, ori-
ginally, perhaps, scarcely conscious, passed over into philosophy;
it is to be found alike in cosmologies of strife, such as those of
Heraclitus and Empedoclea, and in monistic doctrines such as
that of Parmenides. It is the source of the belief both in natural
and in human law, and it clearly underlies Plato's conception of
justice.
The word "justice," as still used in the law, is more similar to
Plato's conception than it is as used in political speculation. Under
the influence of democratic theory, we have come to associate
justice with equality: while for Plato it has no such implication.
"Justice," in the sense in which it is almost synonymous with
"law" — as when we speak of "courts of justice" — is concerned
mainly with property rights, which have nothing to do with
equality. The first suggested definition of "justice," at the be-
ginning of the Republic, is that it consists in paying debts. This
definition is soon abandoned as inadequate, but something of it
remains at the end.
There are several points to be noted about Plato's definition.
First, it makes it possible to have inequalities of power and
privilege without injustice. The guardians are to have all the power,
because they are the wisest members of the community; injustice
would only occur, on Plato's definition, if there were men in the
other classes who were wiser than some of the guardians. That is
why Plato provides for promotion and degradation of citizens,
although he thinks that the double advantage of birth and edu-
cation will, in most cases, make the children of guardians superior
to the children of others. If there were a more exact science of
government, and more certainty of men following its precepts,
there would be much to be said for Plato's system. No one thinks
it unjust to put the best men into a football team, although they
acquire thereby a great superiority. If football were managed as
democratically as the Athenian government the students to play
for their university would be chosen by lot. But in matters of
government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and
very far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the
public interest rather than in his own or in that of his class or
party or crcfd.
135
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The next point is that Plato's definition of "justice" presup-
poses a State organized either on traditional lines, or, like his own,
so as to realize, in its totality, some ethical ideal. Justice, we are
told, consists in every man doing his own job. But what is a man's
job? In a State which, like ancient Egypt or the kingdom of the
Incas, remains unchanged generation after generation, a man's
job is his father's job, and no question arises. But in Plato's State
no man has any legal father. His job, therefore, must be decided
either by his own tastes or by the State's judgment as to his
aptitudes. The latter is obviously what Plato would desire. But
some kinds of work, though highly skilled, may be deemed
pernicious ; Plato takes this view of poetry, and I should take it
of the work of Napoleon. The purposes of the Government,
therefore, are essential in determining what is a man's job. Al-
though all the rulers are to be philosophers, there are to be no
innovations: a philosopher is to be, for all time, a man who
understands and agrees with Plato.
When we ask: what will Plato's Republic achieve ? the answer
is rather humdrum. It will achieve success in wars against roughly
equal populations, and it will secure a livelihood for a certain
small number of people. It will almost certainly produce no art
or science, because of its rigidity; in this respect, as in others,
it will be like Sparta. In spite of all the fine talk, skill in war and
enough to eat is all that will be achieved. Plato had lived through
famine and defeat in Athens; perhaps, subconsciously, he thought
the avoidance of these evils the best that statesmanship could
accomplish.
A Utopia, if seriously intended, obviously must embody the
ideals of its creator. Let us consider, for a moment, what we can
mean by "ideals." In the first place, they are desired by those
who believe in them; but they are not desired quite in the same-
way as a man desires personal comforts, such as food and shelter.
What makes the difference between an "ideal" and an ordinary
object of desire is that the former is impersonal ; it is something
having (at least ostensibly) no special reference to the ego of the
man who feels the desire, and therefore capable, theoretically,
of being desired by everybody. Thus we might define an "ideal"
as something desired, not egocentric, and such that the person
desiring it wishes that every one else also deiircd it. I may wish
that everybody had enough to eat, that everybody felt kindly
•36
PLATO'S UTOPIA
towards everybody, and so on, and if I wish anything of this
kind I shall also wish others to wish it. In this way, I can build
up what looks like an impersonal ethic, although in fact it rests
upon the personal basis of my own desires — for the desire remains
mine, even when what is desired has no reference to myself.
For example, one man may wish that everybody understood
science, and another that everybody appreciated an; it is a per-
sonal difference between the two men that produces this difference
in their desires.
The personal element becomes apparent as soon as controversy
is involved. Suppose some man says: "You are wrong to wish
everybody to be happy; you ought to desire the happiness of
Germans and the unhappiness of everyone else." Here "ought"
may be taken to mean that that is what the speaker wishes me
to desire. I might retort that, not being German, it is psychologi-
cally impossible for me to desire the unhappiness of all non-
Germans ; but this answer seems inadequate.
Again, there may be a conflict of purely impersonal ideals.
Nietzsche's hero differs from a Christian saint, yet both are
impersonally admired, the one by Nietzscheans, the other by
Christians. How are we to decide between the two except by
means of our own desires? Yet, if there is nothing further, an
ethical disagreement can only be decided by emotional appeals,
or by force — in the ultimate resort, by war. On questions of
fact, we can appeal to science and scientific methods of obser-
vation; but on ultimate questions of ethics there seems to be
nothing analogous. Yet, if this is really the case, ethical disputes
resolve themselves into contests for power — including propaganda
power.
This point of view, in a crude form, is put forth in the first
book of the Republic by Thrasymachus, who, like almost all the
characters in Plato's dialogues, was a real person. He was a
Sophist from Chalcedon. and a famous teacher of rhetoric; he
appeared in the first comedy of Aristophanes, 427 B.C. After
Socrates has, for some time, been amiably discussing justice with
an old man named Cephalus, and with Plato's elder brothers
Glaucon and Adeimantus, Thrasymachus, who has been listening
with growing impatience, breaks in with a vehement protest
against such childish nonsense. He proclaims emphatically that
"justice is lathing else than the interest of the stronger."
'37
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
This point of view is refuted by Socrates with quibbles; it is
never fairly faced. It raises the fundamental question in ethics
and politics, namely: Is there any standard of "good" and "bad,"
except what the man using these words desires ? If there is not,
many of the consequences drawn by Thrasymachus seem unes-
capable. Yet how are we to say that there is ?
At this point, religion has, at first sight, a simple answer. God
determines what is good and what bad ; the man whose will is in
harmony with the will of God is a good man. Yet this answer is
not quite orthodox. Theologians say that God is good, and this
implies that there is a standard of goodness which is independent
of God's will. We are thus forced to face the question: Is there
objective truth or falsehood in such a statement as "pleasure
is good/' in the same sense as in such a statement as "snow is
white"?
To answer this question, a very long discussion would be
necessary. Some may think that we can, for practical purposes,
evade the fundamental issue, and say: "I do not know what is
meant by 'objective truth,' but I shall consider a statement 'true*
if all, or virtually all, of those who have investigated it are agreed
in upholding it." In this sense, it is "true" that snow is white.
that Caesar was assassinated, that water is composed of hydrogen
and oxygen, and so on. \Ve are then faced with a question of fact:
are there any similarly agreed statements in ethics? If there arc,
they can be made the basis both for rules of private conduct,
and for a theory of politics. If there are not, we are driven in
practice, whatever may be the philosophic truth, to a contest by
force or propaganda or both, whenever an irreconcilable ethical
difference exists between powerful groups.
For Plato, this question does not really exist. Although his
dramatic sense leads him to state the position of Thrasymachus
forcibly, he is quite unaware of its strength, and allows himself
to be grossly unfair in arguing against it. Plato is convinced that
there is "the Good," and that its nature can be ascertained;
when people disagree about it, one, at least, is making an intel-
lectual, error just as much as if the disagreement were a scientific
one on some matter of fact.
The difference between Plato and Thrasymachus is very impor-
tant, but for the historian of philosophy it is one to be only noted,
not decided. Plato thinks he can prove that his ideal ^Republic is
138
PLATO'S UTOPIA
good ; a democrat who accepts the objectivity of ethics may think
that he can prove the Republic bad; but anyone who agrees with
Thrasymachus will say: "There is no question of proving or
disproving; the only question is whether you like the kind of State
that Plato desires. If you do, it is good for you ; if you do not,
it is bad for you. If many do and many do not, the decision cannot
be made by reason, but only by force, actual or concealed." This
is one of the issues in philosophy that are still open ; on each side
there are men who command respect. But for a very long time
the opinion that Plato advocated remained almost undisputed.
It should be observed, further, that the view which substi-
tutes the consensus of opinion for an objective standard has
certain consequences that few would accept. What are we to say
of scientific innovators like Galileo, who advocate an opinion
with which few agree, but finally win the support of almost
everybody? They do so by means of arguments, not by emotional
appeals or state propaganda or the use of force. This implies
a criterion other than the general opinion. In ethical matters,
there is something analogous in the case of the great religious
teachers. Christ taught that it is not wrong to pluck ears of corn
on the Sabbath, but that it is wrong to hate your enemies. Such
ethical innovations obviously imply some standard other than
majority opinion, but the standard, whatever it is, is not objective
fact, as in a scientific question. This problem is a difficult one,
and I do not profess to be able to solve it. For the present, let us
be content to note it.
Plato's Republic, unlike modern Utopias, was perhaps intended
to be actually founded. This was not so fantastic or impossible as
it might naturally seem to us. Many of its provisions, including
some that we should have thought quite impracticable, were
actually realized at Sparta. The rule of philosophers had been
attempted by Pythagoras, and in Plato's time Archytas the
Pythagorean was politically influential in Taras (the modern
Taranto) when Plato visited Sicily and southern Italy. It was
a common practice for cities to employ a sage to draw up their
laws; Solon had done this for Athens, and Protagoras for Thurii.
Colonies, in those days, were completely free from control by
their parent cities, and it would have been quite feasible for a
band of Platonists to establish the Republic on the shores of Spain
or Gaul. Unfortunately chance led Plato to Syracuse, a great
139
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
commercial city engaged in desperate wars with Cartilage; in
such an atmosphere, no philosopher could have achieved much.
In the next generation, the rise of Macedonia had made all small
States antiquated, and had brought about the futility of all
political experiments in miniature.
140
Chapter XV
THE THEORY OF IDEAS
E I 1HE middle of the Republic, from the later part of Book V
I to the end of Book VII, is occupied mainly with questions
JL of pure philosophy, as opposed to politics. These questions
are introduced by a somewhat abrupt statement:
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this .
world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political great-
ness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who
pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand
aside, cities will never have rest from these evils — no, nor the
human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have
a possibility of life and behold the light of day.
If this is true, we must decide what constitutes a philosopher,
and what we mean by "philosophy." The consequent discussion
is the most famous part of the Republic, and has perhaps been the
most influential. It has, in parts, extraordinary literary beauty;
the reader may disagree (as 1 do) with what is said, but cannot
help being moved by it.
Plato's philosophy rests on the distinction between reality and
appearance, which was first set forth by Parmenides; throughout
the discussion with which we are now concerned, Parmenidean
phrases and arguments are constantly recurring. There is, however,
a religious tone about reality, which is rather Pythagorean than
Parmenidean ; and there is much about mathematics and music
which is directly traceable to the disciples of Pythagoras. This
combination of the logic of Parmenides with the other- worldliness
of Pythagoras and the Orphics produced a doctrine which was
felt to be satisfying to both the intellect and the religious emo-
tions ; the result was a very powerful synthesis, which, with various
modifications, influenced most of the great philosophers, down
to and including Hegel. But not only philosophers were influenced
by Plato. Why did the Puritans object to the music ag^^fiSUl
and gorgeous ritual of the Catholic Church ? Yoy^ff3u|VnSh<M)|
M^r \ ^^'*^*4^
answer in the tenth book of the Republic. \V\\wG*p> pMtoren 11
school compelled no learn arithmetic? The re^gnf/fire given ii
the seventh book.
141
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The following paragraphs summarize Plato's theory of ideas.
Our question is: What is a philosopher? The first answer is in
accordance with the etymology : a philosopher is a lover of wisdom.
But this is not the same thing as a lover of knowledge, in the sense
in which an inquisitive man may be said to love knowledge ; vulgar
curiosity does not make a philosopher. The definition is therefore
amended : the philosopher is a man who loves the " vision of truth."
But what is this vision ?
Consider a man who loves beautiful things, who makes a point
of being present at new tragedies, seeing new pictures, and hearing
new music. Such a man is not a philosopher, because he loves
only beautiful things, whereas the philosopher loves beauty in
itself. The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming,
whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
The former has only opinion ; the latter has knowledge.
What is the difference between "knowledge" and ''opinion"?
The man who has knowledge has knowledge of sometliing, that
is to say, of something that exists, for what does not exist is
nothing. (This is reminiscent of Parmenides.) Thus knowledge
is infallible, since it is logically impossible for it to be mistaken.
But opinion can be mistaken. How can this be? Opinion cannot
be of what is not, for that is impossible ; nor of what is, for then
it would be knowledge. Therefore opinion must be of what both
is and is not.
But how is this possible ? The answer is that particular things
always partake of opposite characters: what is beautiful is also,
in some respects, ugly; what is just is, in some respects, unjust;
and so on. All particular sensible objects, so Plato contends, have
this contradictory character; they are thus intermediate between
being and not-being, and are suitable as objects of opinion, but
not of knowledge. "But those who see the absolute and eternal
and immutable may be said to know, and not to have opinion only."
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that opinion is of the world
presented to the senses, whereas knowledge is of a super-sensible
eternal world; for instance, opinion is concerned with particular
beautiful things, but knowledge is concerned with beauty in
itself.
The only argument advanced is that it is self-contradictory to
suppose that a thing can be both beautiful and not beautiful, or
both just and not just, and that nevertheless particular things
f
142
THE THEORY OF IDEAS
seem to combine such contradictory characters. Therefore par-
ticular things are not real. Heraclitus had said "We step and do
not step into the same rivers; we are and are not." By combining
this with Parmenides we arrive at Plato's result.
There is, however, something of great importance in Plato's
doctrine which is not traceable to his predecessors, and that is
the theory of "ideas" or "forms." This theory is partly logical,
partly metaphysical. The logical part has to do with the meaning
of general words. There are many individual animals of whom we
can truly say "this is a cat." What do we mean by the word "cat" ?
Obviously something different from each particular cat. An
animal is a cat, it would seem, because it participates in a general
nature common to all cats. Language cannot get on without
general words such as "cat," and such words are evidently not
meaningless. But if the word "cat" means anything, it means
something which is not this or that cat, but some kind of universal
cattiness. This is not born when a particular cat is born, and
does not die when it dies. In fact, it has no position in space or
time; it is "eternal." This is the logical part of the doctrine.
The arguments in its favour, whether ultimately valid or not, are
strong, and quite independent of the metaphysical part of the
doctrine.
According to the metaphysical part of the doctrine, the word
"cat" means a certain ideal cat, "the cat," created by God, and
unique. Particular cats partake of the nature of the cat, but more
or less imperfectly; it is only owing to this imperfection that
there can be many of them. The cat is real ; particular cats are
only apparent.
In the last book of the Republic, as a preliminary to a condemna-
tion of painters, there is a very clear exposition of the doctrine of
ideas or forms.
Here Plato explains that, whenever a number of individuals
have a common name, they have also a common "idea" or "form."
For instance, though there are many beds, there is only one
"idea" or. "form" of a bed. Just as a reflection of a bed in a mirror
is only apparent and not "real," so the various particular beds
are unreal, being only copies of the "idea," which is the one real
bed, and is made by God. Of this one bed, made by God, there
cm be knowledge, but in respect of the many beds made by
carpenters there can be only opinion. The philosopher, as such,
'43
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
will be interested only in the one ideal bed, not in the many beds
found in the sensible world. He will have a certain indifference
to ordinary mundane affairs: "how can he who has magnificence
of mind and is the spectator of all time and all existence, think
much of human life?" The youth who is capable of becoming
a philosopher will be distinguished among his fellows as just and
gentle, fond of learning, possessed of a good memory and a
naturally harmonious mind. Such a one shall be educated into
a philosopher and a guardian.
At this point Adeimantus breaks in with a protest. When he tries
to argue with Socrates, he says, he feels himself led a little astray
at each step, until, in the end, all his former notions are turned
upside down. But whatever Socrates may say, it remains the case,
as any one can see, that people who stick to philosophy become
strange monsters, not to say utter rogues ; even the best of them
are made useless by philosophy.
Socrates admits that this is true in the world as it is, but main-
tains that it is the other people who are to blame, not the philo-
sophers; in a wise community the philosophers would not seem
foolish; it is only among fools that the wise are judged to be
destitute of wisdom.
What are we to do in this dilemma ? There were to have been
two ways of inaugurating our Republic: by philosophers becoming
rulers, or by rulers becoming philosophers. The first way seems
impossible as a beginning, because in a city not already philo-
sophic the philosophers are unpopular. But a born prince might
be a philosopher, and "one is enough; let there be one man who
has a city obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence
the ideal polity about which the world is so incredulous." Plato
hoped that he had found such a prince in the younger Dionysius,
tyrant of Syracuse, but the young man turned out disappointingly.
In the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, Plato is concerned
with two questions: First, what is philosophy? Second, how can a
young man or woman, of suitable temperament, be so educated
as to become a philosopher ?
Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the "vision of truth."
It is not purely intellectual ; it is not merely wisdom, but low of
wisdom. Spinoza's "intellectual love of God" is much the same
intimate union of thought and feeling. Every 6ne who has done
any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less
144
THE THEORY OP IDEAS
degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or
beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory — it may
be only about some small matter, or it may be about the universe.
The experience is, at the moment, very convincing; doubt may
come later, but at the time there is utter certainty. I think most
of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in
philosophy, has been the result of such a moment. Whether it
comes to others as to me, I cannot say. For my pan, I have found
that, when I wish to write a book on some subject, I must first
soak myself in detail, until all the separate parts of the subject-
matter are familiar; then, some day, if I am fortunate, I perceive
the whole, with all its parts duly interrelated. After that, I only
have to write down what I have seen. The nearest analogy is
first walking all over a mountain in a mist, until every path and
ridge and valley is separately familiar, and then, from a distance,
seeing the mountain whole and clear in bright sunshine.
This experience, I believe, is necessary to good creative work,
but it is not sufficient; indeed the subjective certainty that it
brings with it may be fatally misleading. William James describes
a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he
was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but
when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense
effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded.
When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written.
It was: "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout." What seems
like sudden insight may be misleading, and must be tested soberly,
when the divine intoxication has passed.
Plato's vision, which he completely trusted at the time when he
wrote the Republic, needs ultimately the help of a parable,
the parable of the cave, in order to convey its nature to the
reader. Rut it is led up to by various preliminary discussions,
designed to make the reader see the necessity of the world of
ideas.
First, the world of the intellect is distinguished from the world
of the senses ; then intellect and sense-perception are in turn each
divided into two kinds. The two kinds of sense-perception need
not concern us ; the two kinds of intellect are called, respectively,
"reason" and "understanding." Of these, reason is the higher
kind ; it is concerned with pure ideas, and its method is dialectic.
Understanding is the kind of intellect that is used in mathematics;
»45
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
it is inferior to reason in that it uses hypotheses which it cannot
test. In geometry, for example, we say: "Let ABC be a rectilinear
triangle." It is against the rules to ask whether ABC really is
a rectilinear triangle, although, if it is a figure that we have drawn,
we may be sure that it is not, because we can't draw absolutely
straight lines. Accordingly, mathematics can never tell us what u,
but only what would be if. ... There are no straight lines in the
sensible world; therefore, if mathematics is to have more than
hypothetical truth, we must find evidence for the existence of
super-sensible straight lines in a super-sensible world. This
cannot be done by the understanding, but according to Plato
it can be done by reason, which shows that there is a rectilinear
triangle in heaven, of which geometrical propositions can be
affirmed categorically, not hypothetically.
There is, at this point, a difficulty which did not escape Plato's
notice, and was evident to modern idealistic philosophers.
We saw that God made only one bed, and it would he natural
to suppose that he made only one straight line. But if there is a
heavenly triangle, he must have made at least three straight lines.
Theobjects of geometry, though ideal, must exist in manycxamples ;
we need the possibility of two intersecting circles , and so on.
This suggests that geometry, on Plato's theory, should not be
capable of ultimate truth, but should be condemned as part of
the study of appearance. We will, however, ignore this point,
as to which Plato's answer is somewhat obscure.
Plato seeks to explain the difference between clear intellectual
vision and the confused vision of sense-perception by an analogy
from the sense of sight. Sight, he says, differs from the other senses,
since it requires not only the eye and the object, hut also light.
We see clearly objects on which the sun shines: in twilight we
see confusedly, and in pitch-darkness not at all. Now the world
of ideas is what we see when the object is illumined by the sun,
while the world of passing things is a confused twilight world.
The eye is compared to the soul, and the sun, as the source of
light, to truth or goodness.
The soul is like an eye: when resting upon that on which truth
and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant
with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of be-
coming and perishing, then she has opinion onfy, and goes blinking
about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to
146
THE THEORY OP IDEAS
have no intelligence. . . . Now what imparts truth to the known
and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have
you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause
of science.
This leads up to the famous simile of the cave or den, according
to which those who are destitute of philosophy may be compared
to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction
because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and
a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing;
all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind
them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they
regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects
to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping
from the cave to the light of the sun ; for the first time he sees
real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived
by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become
a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly
his fellow-prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct
them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have
difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight,
he will sec shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to
them stupider than before his escape.
"And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is
enlightened or unenlightened : — Behold! human beings living in
an underground den, which has a mouth open toward the light
and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their
childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they
cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by
the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind
them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the
prisoners there is a raised way ; and you will see, if you look, a low
wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players
have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
"I see.
"And do you sec, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all
sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood
and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall ? Some
of them arc talking, others silent.
"You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange
prisoners.
14 Like ourselves, I replied ; and they see only their own shadows,
147
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the
opposite wall of the cave."
The position of the good in Plato's philosophy is peculiar.
Science and truth, he says, are like the good, but the good has
a higher place. "The good is not essence, but far exceeds essence
in dignity and power." Dialectic leads to the end of the intellectual
world in the perception of the absolute good. It is by means of
the good that dialectic is able to dispense with the hypotheses of
the mathematician. The underlying assumption is that reality,
as opposed to appearance, is completely and perfectly good;
to perceive the good, therefore, is to perceive reality. Throughout
Plato's philosophy there is the same fusion of intellect and mysti-
cism as in Pythagoreanism, but at this final culmination mysticism
clearly has the upper hand.
Plato's doctrine of ideas contains a number of obvious errors.
But in spite of these it marks a very important advance in philo-
sophy, since it is the first theory to emphasize the problem of
universal, which, in varying forms, has persisted to the present
day. Beginnings are apt to be crude, but their originality should
not be overlooked on this account. Something remains of what
Plato had to say, even after all necessary corrections have been
made. The absolute minimum of what remains, even in the view
of those most hostile to Plato, is this: that we cannot express
ourselves in a language composed wholly of proper names, but
must have also general words such as "man," "dog," "cat";
or, if not these, then relational words such as "similar," "before,"
and so on. Such words are not meaningless noises, and it is
difficult to see how they can have meaning if the world consists en-
tirely of particular things, such as are designated by proper
names. There may be ways of getting round this argument, but
at any rate it affords a prima facie case in favour of universal*.
I shall provisionally accept it as in some degree valid. But when
so much is granted, the rest of what Plato says by no means
follows.
In the first place, Plato has no understanding of philosophical
syntax. I can say "Socrates is human," "Plato is human," and
so on. In all these statements, it may be assumed that the word
"human" has exactly the same meaning. But whatever it means,
it means something which is not of the same kind as Socrates,
-48
THE THEORY OF IDEAS
Plato, and the rest of the individuals who compose the human
race. "Human" is an adjective; it would be nonsense to say
"human is human." Plato makes a mistake analogous to saying
"human is human." He thinks that beauty is beautiful; he thinks
that the universal "man" is the name of a pattern man created
by God, of whom actual men are imperfect and somewhat unreal
copies. He fails altogether to realize how great is the gap between
universals and particulars; his "ideas" are really just other par-
ticulars, ethically and aesthetically superior to the ordinary kind*
He himself, at a later date, began to see this difficulty, as appears
in the Parmenides, which contains one of the most remarkable
cases in history of self-criticism by a philosopher.
The Parmenides is supposed to be related by Antiphon (Plato's
half-brother), who alone remembers the conversation, but is
now only interested in horses. They find him carrying a bridle,
and with difficulty persuade him to relate the famous discussion
between Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates. This, we are told, took
place when Parmenides was old (about sixty-five), Zeno in middle
life (about forty), and Socrates quite a young man. Socrates
expounds the theory of ideas; he is sure that there are ideas of
likeness, justices beauty, and goodness; he is not sure that there
is an idea of man ; and he rejects with indignation the suggestion
that there could be ideas of such things as hair and mud and
dirt — though, he adds, there are times when he thinks that there
is nothing without an idea. He runs away from this view because
he is afraid of falling into a bottomless pit of nonsense.
"Yes, Socrates, said Parmenides; that is because you are still
young ; the time will come, if I am not mistaken, when philosophy
will have a firmer grasp of you, and then you will not despise
even the meanest things/'
Socrates agrees that, in his view, "There are certain ideas of
which ail other things partake, and from which they derive their
names; that similars, for example, become similar, because they
partake of similarity; and great things become great, because
they partake of greatness; and that just and beautiful things
become just and beautiful, because they partake of justice and
beauty."
Parmenides proceeds to raise difficulties, (a) Does the individual
partake of the wh<fle idea, or only of a part ? To either view there
are objections. If the former, one thing is in many places at once;
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
if the latter, the idea is divisible, and a thing which has a part of
smallness will be smaller than absolute smallness, which is absurd.
(b) When an individual partakes of an idea, the individual and
the idea are similar; therefore there will have to be another idea,
embracing both the particulars and the original idea. And there
will have to be yet another, embracing the particulars and the
two ideas, and so on ad mfintium. Thus every idea, instead of
being one, becomes an infinite series of ideas. (This is the same
as Aristotle's argument of the "third man.") (c) Socrates suggests
that perhaps ideas are only thoughts, but Parmenides points
out that thoughts must be of something, (d) Ideas cannot resemble
the particulars that partake of them, for the reason given in (b)
above. (*) Ideas, if there are any, must be unknown to us, because
our knowledge is not absolute. (/) If God's knowledge is absolute,
He will not know us, and therefore cannot rule us.
Nevertheless, the theory of ideas is not wholly abandoned.
Without ideas, Socrates says, there will be nothing on which the
mind can rest, and therefore reasoning will be destroyed. Par*
menides tells him that his troubles come of lack of previous
training, but no definite conclusion is reached.
I do not think that Plato's logical objections to the reality of
sensible particulars will bear examination. He says, for example,
that whatever is beautiful is also in some respects ugly; what is
double is also half; and so on. But when we say of some work of
art that it is beautiful in some respects and ugly in others, analysis
will always (at least theoretically) enable us to say "this part or
aspect is beautiful, while that part or aspect is ugly." And as
regards "double" and "half," these are relative terms; there is
no contradiction in the fact that 2 is double of i and half of 4.
Plato is perpetually getting into trouble through not understanding
relative terms. He thinks that if A is greater than B and less than
C, then A is at once great and small, which seems to him a contra-
diction. Such troubles are among the infantile diseases of philo-
sophy.
The distinction between reality and appearance cannot have
the consequences attributed to it by Parmenides and Plato and
Hegel. If appearance really appears, it is not nothing, and is
therefore pan of reality; this is an argument of the correct Par-
menidean sort. If appearance does not really appear, why trouble
our heads about it? But perhaps some one will say: "Appearance
150
THE THEORY OF IDEAS
does not really appear, but it appears to appear." This will not
help, for we shall ask again: "Does it really appear to appear,
or only apparently appear to appear?" Sooner or later, if appear-
ance is even to appear to appear, we must reach something that
really appears, and is therefore part of reality. Plato would not
dream of denying that there appear to be many beds, although
there is only one real bed, namely the one made by God. But
he does not seem to have faced the implications of the fact that
there are many appearances, and that this many-ness is part of
reality. Any attempt to divide the world into portions, of which
one is more "real" than the other, is doomed to failure.
Connected with this is another curious view of Plato's, that
knowledge and opinion must be concerned with different subject-
matters. We should say: If I think it is going to snow, that is
opinion; if later I see it snowing, that is knowledge; but the
subject-matter is the same on both occasions. Plato, however,
thinks that what can at any time be a matter ot opinion can never
be a matter of knowledge. Knowledge is certain and infallible;
opinion is not merely fallible, but is necessarily mistaken, since it
assumes the reality of what is only appearance. All this repeats
what had been said by Parmenides.
There is one respect in which Plato's metaphysic is apparently
different from that of Parmenides. For Parmenides there is only
the One; for Plato, there are many ideas. There are not only
beauty, truth, and goodness, but, as we saw, there is the heavenly
bed, created by God; there is a heavenly man, a heavenly dog,
a heavenly cat, and so on through a whole Noah's ark. All this
however, seems, in the Republic , to have been not adequately
thought out. A Platonic idea or form is not a thought, thougk it
may be the object of a thought. It is difficult to see how God
can have created it, since its being is timeless, and he could not
have decided to create a bed unless his thought, when he decided,
had had for its object that very Platonic bed which we are told
he brought into existence. What is timeless must be uncreated.
We come here to a difficulty which has troubled many philosophic
theologians. Only the contingent world, the world in space and
time, can have been created; but this is the everyday world which
has been condemned as illusory and also bad. Therefore the
Creator, it would* seem, created only illusion and evil. Some
Gnostics \vere so consistent as to adopt this view; but in Plato
'5*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the difficulty is still below the surface, and he seems, in the Repub-
lic, to have never become aware of it.
The philosopher who is to be a guardian must, according to
Plato, return into the cave, and live among those who have never
seen the sun of truth. It would seem that God Himself, if He
wishes to amend His creation, must do likewise; a Christian
Platonist might so interpret the Incarnation. But it remains
completely impossible to explain why God was not content
with the world of ideas. The philosopher finds the cave in existence,
and is actuated by benevolence in returning to it ; but the Creator,
if He created everything, might, one would think, have avoided
the cave altogether.
Perhaps this difficulty arises only from the Christian notion
of a Creator, and is not chargeable to Plato, who says that God
did not create everything, but only what is good. The multiplicity
of the sensible world, on this view, would have some other source
than God. And the ideas would, perhaps, be not so much created
by God as constituents of His essence. The apparent pluralism
involved in the multiplicity of ideas would thus not be ultimate.
Ultimately there is only God, or the Good, to whom the ideas are
adjectival. This, at any rate, is a possible interpretation of Plato.
Plato proceeds to an interesting sketch of the education proper
to a young man who is to be a guardian. We saw that the young
man is selected for this honour on the ground of a combination of
intellectual and moral qualities; he must be just and gentle, fond
of learning, with a good memory and a harmonious mind. The
young man who has been chosen for these merits will spend the
years from twenty to thirty on the four Pythagorean studies:
arithmetic, geometry (plane and solid), astronomy, and harmony.
These studies are not to be pursued in any utilitarian spirit, but
in order to prepare his mind for the vision of eternal things. In
astronomy, for example, he is not to trouble himself too much
about the actual heavenly bodies, but rather with the mathematics
of the motion of ideal heavenly bodies. This may sound absurd to
modern ears, but, strange to say, it proved to be a fruitful point
of view in connection with empirical astronomy. The way this
came about is curious, and worth considering.
The apparent motions of the planets, until they have been
very profoundly analysed, appear to be irregular and complicated,
and not at all such &* a Pythagorean Creator would tyvc chosen.
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THE THEORY OF IDEAS
It was obvious to every Greek that the heavens ought to exemplify
mathematical beauty, which would only be the case if the planets
moved in circles. This would be especially evident to Plato,
owing to his emphasis on the good. The problem thus arose: is
there any hypothesis which will reduce the apparent disorderliness
of planetary motions to order and beauty and simplicity? If
there is, the idea of the good will justify us in asserting this
hypothesis. Aristarchus of Samos found such a hypothesis: that
all the planets, including the earth, go round the sun in circles.
This view was rejected for two thousand years, partly on the
authority of Aristotle, who attributes a rather similar hypothesis
to "the Pythagoreans" (De Coelo, 293 a). It was revived by
Copernicus, and its success might seem to justify Plato's aesthetic
bias in astronomy. Unfortunately, however, Kepler discovered
that the planets move in ellipses, not in circles, with the sun
at a focus, not at the centre; then Newton discovered that they
do not move even in exact ellipses. And so the geometrical sim-
plicity sought by Plato, and apparently found by Aristarchus of
Samos, proved in the end illusory.
This piece of scientific history illustrates a general maxim : that
any hypothesis, however absurd, may be useful in science, if it
enables a discoverer to conceive things in a new way; but that,
when it has served this purpose by luck, it is likely to become an
obstacle to further advance. The belief in the good as the key to
the scientific understanding of the world was useful, at a certain
stage, in astronomy, but at every later stage it was harmful. The
ethical and aesthetic bias of Plato, and still more of Aristotle,
did much to kill Greek science.
It is noteworthy that modern Platonists, with few exceptions,
are ignorant of mathematics, in spite of the immense importance
that Plato attached to arithmetic and geometry, and the immense
influence that they had on his philosophy. This is an example
of the evils of specialization: a man must not write on Plato unless
he has spent so much of his youth on Greek as to have had no
time for the things that Plato thought important.
'53
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the
dead, some far better thing for the good than for the evil."
Death, says Socrates, is the separation of soul and body. Here
we come under Plato's dualism: between reality and appearance,
ideas and sensible objects, reason and sense-perception, soul and
body. These pairs are connected: the first in each pair is superior
to the second both in reality and in goodness. An ascetic morality
was the natural consequence of this dualism. Christianity adopted
this doctrine in part, but never wholly. There were two obstacles.
The first was that the creation of the visible world, if Plato was
right, might seem to have been an evil deed, and therefore the
Creator could not be good. The second was that orthodox Christi-
anity could never bring itself to condemn marriage, though it
held celibacy to be nobler. The Manichaeans were more consistent
in both respects.
The distinction between mind and matter, which has become
a commonplace in philosophy and science and popular thought,
has a religious origin, and began as the distinction of soul and body.
The Orphic, as we saw, proclaims himself the child of earth and
of the starry heaven ; from earth comes the body, from heaven the
soul. It is this theory that Plato seeks to express in the language
of philosophy.
Socrates, in the Phaedo, proceeds at once to develop the ascetic
implications of his doctrine, but his asceticism is of a moderate and
gentlemanly sort. He does not say that the philosopher should
wholly abstain from ordinary pleasures, but only that he should
not be a slave to them. The philosopher should not care about
eating and drinking, but of coune he should eat as much as is
necessary; there is no suggestion of fasting. And we are told that
Socrates, though indifferent to wine, could, on occasion, drink
more than anybody else, without ever becoming intoxicated.
It was not drinking that he condemned, but pleasure in drinking.
In like manner, the philosopher must not care for the pleasures
of love, or for costly raiment, or sandals, or other adornments
of the person. He must be entirely concerned with the soul,
and not with the body. "He would like, as far as he can, to get
away from the body and to turn to the soul."
It is obvious that this doctrine, popularized, would become
ascetic, but in intention it is not, properly' speaking, ascetic.
The philosopher will not abstain with an effort from the pleasures
PLATO'S THEORY OF IMMORTALITY
of sense, but will be thinking of other things. I have known many
philosophers who forgot their meals, and read a book when at
last they did eat. These men were acting as Plato says they should:
they were not abstaining from gluttony by means of a moral
effort, but were more interested in other matters. Apparently
the philosopher should marry, and beget and rear children, in
the same absent-minded way, but since the emancipation of
women this has become more difficult. No wonder Xanthippe
was a shrew.
Philosophers, Socrates continues, try to dissever the soul from
communion with thfe body, whereas other people think that life is
not worth living for a man who has "no sense of pleasure and no
part in bodily pleasure." In this phrase, Plato seems — perhaps
inadvertently — to countenance the view of a certain class of
moralists, that bodily pleasures are the only ones that count.
These moralists hold that the man who does not seek the pleasures
of sense must be eschewing pleasure altogether, and living virtu-
ously. This is an error which has done untold harm. In so far as
the division of mind and body can be accepted, the worst pleasures,
as well as the best, are mental — for example, envy, and many
forms of cruelty and love of power. Milton's Satan rises superior
to physical torment, and devotes himself to a work of destruction
from which he derives a pleasure that is wholly of the mind.
Many eminent ecclesiastics, having renounced the pleasures of
sense, and not being on their guard against others, become
dominated by love of power, which led them to appalling cruelties
and persecutions, nominally for the sake of religion. In our own
day, Hitler belongs to this type; by all accounts, the pleasures of
sense are of very little importance to him. Liberation from the
tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to
greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.
This, however, is a digression, from which we must return to
Socrates.
We come now to the intellectual aspect of the religion which
Plato (rightly or wrongly) attributes to Socrates. We are told
that the body is a hindrance in the acquisition of knowledge, and
that sight and hearing are inaccurate witnesses: true existence,
if revealed to the soul at all, is revealed in thought, not in sense.
Ixrt us consider, for* a moment, the implications of this doctrine.
It involves a complete rejection of empirical knowledge, including
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
all history and geography. We cannot know that there was such
a place as Athens, or such a man as Socrates; his death, and his
courage in dying, belong to the world of appearance. It is only
through sight and hearing that we know anything about all this,
and the true philosopher ignores sight and hearing. What, then,
is left to him? First, logic and mathematics; but these are hypo-
thetical, and do not justify any categorical assertion about the real
world. The next step— and this is the crucial one— depends upon
the idea of the good. Having arrived at this idea, the philosopher
is supposed to know that the good is the real, and thus to be able
to infer that the world of ideas is the real world. Later philosophers
had arguments to prove the identity of the real and the good, but
Plato seems to have assumed it as self-evident. If we wish to
understand him, we must, hypothetically, suppose this assumption
justified.
Thought is best, Socrates says, when the mind is gathered into
itself, and is not troubled by sounds or sights or pain or pleasure
but takes leave of the body and aspires after true being; "and in
this the philosopher dishonours the body/' From this point,
Socrates goes on to the ideas or forms or essences. There is
absolute justice, absolute beauty, and absolute good, but they are
not visible to the eye. "And I speak not of these alone, but of
absolute greatness, and health, and strength, and of the essence
or true nature of everything." All these are only to be seen by
intellectual vision. Therefore while we are in the body, and while
the soul is infected with the evils of the body, our desire for truth
Mill not be satisfied.
This point of view excludes scientific observation and experi-
ment as methods for the attainment of knowledge. The experi-
menter's mind is not "gathered into itself," and docs not aim at
avoiding sounds or sights. The two kinds of mental activity that
can be pursued by the method that Plato recommends are mathe-
matics and mystic insight. This explains how these two come to
be so intimately combined in Plato and the Pythagoreans.
To the empiricist, the body is what brings us into touch with
the world of external reality, bat to Plato it is doubly evil, as a
distorting medium, causing us to see as through a glass darkly,
and as a source of lusts which distract us from the pursuit of
knowledge and the vision of truth. Some Quotations will mike
this dear.
PLATO'S THEORY OF IMMORTALITY
The body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of
the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which
overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us
full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and end-
less foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power
of thinking at all. Whence come wars, and fightings and factions?
Whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? Wars are
occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired
for the sake and in the service of the body; and by reason of all
these impediments we have no time to give to philosophy; and,
last and worst of all, even if we are at leisure to betake ourselves
to some speculation, the body is always breaking in upon us,
causing turmoil and confusion in our inquiries, and so amazing us
that we are prevented from seeing the truth. It has been proved
to us by experience that if we would have true knowledge of
anything we must be quit of the body — the soul in herself must
behold things in themselves: and then we shall attain the wisdom
which we desire, and of which we say we are lovers; not while we
live, but after death ; for if while in company with the body the
soul cannot have pure knowledge, knowledge must be attained
after death, if at all.
And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body we shall
he pure and have converse with the pure, and know of ourselves
the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of
tnith. For the impure are not permitted to approach the pure. . . .
And what is purification but the separation of the soul from the
body ? . . . And this separation and release of the soul from the
body is termed death. . . . And the true philosophers, and they
only, arc ever seeking to release the soul.
There is one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged,
and that is wisdom.
The founders of the mysteries would appear to have had a real
meaning, and were not talking nonsense when they intimated in
a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated
into the world below will lie on a slough, but that he who arrives
there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods.
For many, as they say in the mysteries, are the thyrsus-bearers, but
few are the mystics, meaning, as 1 interpret the words, the true
philosophers.
All this language is mystical, and is derived from the mysteries.
"Purity" is an Orphic conception, having primarily a ritual
meaning, but for Pilto it means freedom from slavery to the body
and its needs. It it interesting to find him saying that wars are
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
caused by love of money, and that money is only needed for the
service of the body. The first half of this opinion is the same as
that held by Marx, but the second belongs to a very different out-
look. Plato thinks that a man could live on very little money if his
wants were reduced to a minimum, and this no doubt is true. But
he also thinks that a philosopher should be exempt from manual
labour; he must therefore live on wealth created by others. In a
very poor State there are likely to be no philosophers. It was the
imperialism of Athens in the age of Pericles that made it possible
for Athenians to study philosophy. Speaking broadly, intellectual
goods are just as expensive as more material commodities, and
just as little independent of economic conditions. Science requires
libraries, laboratories, telescopes, microscopes, and so on, and
men of science have to be supported by the labour of others. But
to the mystic all this is foolishness. A holy man in India or Tibet
needs no apparatus, wears only a loin cloth, eats only rice, and is
supported by very meagre charity because he is thought wise.
This is the logical development of Plato's point of view.
To return to the Phaedo: Cehcs expresses doubt as to the
survival of the soul after death, and urges Socrates to offer argu-
ments. This he proceeds to do, but it must be said that the argu-
ments are very poor.
Tlit first argument is that all things which have opposites arc
generated from their opposites — a statement which reminds us of
Anaximander's views on cosmic justice. Now life and death are
opposites, and therefore each must generate the other. It follows
that the souk of the dead exist somewhere, and come back to
earth in due course. St. Paul's statement, "the seed is not
quickened except it die," seems to belong to some such theory as
this.
The second argument is that knowledge is recollection, and
therefore the soul must have existed before birth. The theory that
knowledge is recollection is supported chiefly by the fact that we
have ideas, such as exact equality, which cannot be derived from
experience. We have experience of approximate equality, but
absolute equality is never found among sensible objects, and yet
we know what we mean by "absolute equality." Since we have
not learnt this from experience, we must have brought the know-
ledge with us from a previous existence. A similar argument, he
says, applies to all other ideas. Thus the existence of essences,
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PLATO'S THEORY OF IMMORTALITY
and our capacity to apprehend them, proves the pre-existence of
the soul with knowledge.
The contention that all knowledge is reminiscence is developed
at greater length in the Meno (82 ff.). Here Socrates says "there is
no teaching, but only recollection." He professes to prove his point
by having Meno call in a slave-boy whom Socrates proceeds to
question on geometrical problems. The boy's answers are supposed
to show that he really knows geometry, although he has hitherto
been unaware of possessing this knowledge. The same conclusion
is drawn in the Meno as in the Phaedo, that knowledge is brought
by the soul from a previous existence.
As to this, one may observe, in the first place, that the argument
is wholly inapplicable to empirical knowledge. The slave-boy
could not have been led to "remember" when the Pyramids were
built, or whether the siege of Troy really occurred, unless he had
happened to be present at these events. Only the sort of knowledge
that is called a priori — especially logic and mathematics— can be
possibly supposed to exist in every one independently of experience.
In fact, this is the only sort of knowledge (apart from mystic
insight) that Plato admits to be really knowledge. Let us see how
the argument can be met in regard to mathematics.
Take the concept of equality. We must admit that we have no
experience, among sensible objects, of exact equality ; we see only
approximate equality. How, then, do we arrive at the idea of
absolute equality? Or do we, perhaps, have no such idea?
Let us take a concrete case. The metre is defined as the length
of a certain rod in Paris at a certain temperature. What should we
mean if we said, of some other rod, that its length was exactly
one metre? I don't think \ve should mean anything. We could
say: The most accurate processes of measurement known to
science at the present day fail to show that our rod is either longer
or shorter than the standard metre in Paris. We might, if we were
sufficiently rash, add a prophecy that no subsequent refinements
in the technique of measurement will alter this result. But this
is still an empirical statement, in the sense that empirical evidence
may at any moment disprove it. I do not think we really possess
the idea of absolute equality that Plato supposes us to possess.
But even if we do, it is clear that no child possesses it until it
reaches a certain afce, and that the idea is elidttd by experience,
although not directly derived from experience. Moreover, unless
1 6l F
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
our existence before birth was not one of sense-perception, it
would have been as incapable of generating the idea as this life
is; and if our previous existence is supposed to have been partly
super-sensible, why not make the same supposition concerning
our present existence? On all these grounds, the argument fails.
The doctrine of reminiscence being considered established,
Cebes says: "About half of what was required has been proven;
to wit, that our souls existed before we were born: — that the
soul will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half
of which the proof is still wanting." Socrates accordingly applies
himself to this. He says that it follows from what was said about
everything being generated from its opposite, according to which
death must generate life just as much as life generates death. But
he adds another argument, which had a longer history in philo-
sophy: that only what is complex can be dissolved, and that the
soul, like the ideas, is simple and not compounded of parts. What
is simple, it is thought, cannot begin or end or change. Now
essences are unchanging: absolute beauty, for example, is always
the same, whereas beautiful things continually change. Thus
things seen are temporal, but things unseen are eternal. The body
is seen, but the soul is unseen ; therefore the soul is to be classified
in the group of things that are eternal.
The soul, being eternal, is at home in the contemplation of
eternal things, that is, essences, but is lost and confused when,
as in sense-perception, it contemplates the world of changing
things.
The soul, when using the body as an instrument of perception,
that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hearing or some
other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is
perceiving through the senses) ... is then dragged by the body
into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused ;
the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when she
touches change. . . . But when returning into herself she reflects,
then she passes into the other world, the region of purity, and
eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which arc her
kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself, and
is not let or hindered ; then she ceases from her erring ways, and
being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this
state of the soul is called wisdom.
The soul of the true philosopher, which has, in life, been
162
PLATO'S THEORY OP IMMORTALITY
liberated from thraldom to the flesh, will, after death, depart to
the invisible world, to live in bliss in the company of the gods.
But the impure soul, which has loved the body, will become a
ghost haunting the sepulchre, or will enter into the body of an
animal, such as an ass or wolf or hawk, according to its character.
A man who has been virtuous without being a philosopher will
become a bee or wasp or ant, or some other animal of a gregarious
and social sort.
Only the true philosopher goes to heaven when he dies. "No
one who has not studied philosophy and who is not entirely pure
at the time of his departure is allowed to enter the company of
the Gods, but the lover of knowledge only." That is why the true
votaries of philosophy abstain from fleshly lusts: not that they
fear poverty or disgrace, but because they "are conscious that the
soul was simply fastened or glued to the body — until philosophy
received her, she could only view real existence through the bars
of a prison, not in and through herself, . . . and by reason of lust
had become the principal accomplice in her own captivity." The
philosopher will be temperate because "each pleasure and pain
is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until
si ie becomes like the body, and believes that to be true which the
body affirms to be true."
At this point, Simmias brings up the Pythagorean opinion that
the soul is a harmony, and urges: if the lyre is broken, can the
harmony survive? Socrates replies that the soul is not a harmony,
for a harmony is complex, but the soul is simple. Moreover, he
says, the view that the soul is a harmony is incompatible with its
pre-existcnce, which was proved by the doctrine of reminiscence;
for the harmony does not exist before the lyre.
Socrates proceeds to give an account of his own philosophical
development, which is very interesting, but not germane to the
main argument. He goes on to expound the doctrine of ideas,
leading to the conclusion "that ideas exist, and that other things
participate in them and derive their names from them.*' At last
lie describes the fate of souls after death: the good go to heaven,
the bad to hell, the intermediate to purgatory.
His end, and his farewells, are described. His last words are:
"Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the
debt?" Men paid A cock to Asclepius when they recovered from
tn illness, and Socrates has recovered from life's fitful fever.
163
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
"Of aU the men of his time/* Phaedo concludes, "he was the
wisest and justest and best."
The Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent philosophers
for many ages. What are we to think of him ethically? (I am con-
cerned only with the man as Plato portrays him.) His merits are
obvious. He is indifferent to worldly success, so devoid of fear that
he remains calm and urbane and humorous to the last moment,
caring more for what he believes to be truth than for anything
else whatever. He has, however, some very grave defects. He is
dishonest and sophistical in argument, and in his private thinking
he uses intellect to prove conclusions that are to him agreeable,
rather than in a disinterested search for knowledge. There is
something smug and unctuous about him, which reminds one of
a bad type of cleric. His courage in the face of death would have
been more remarkable if he had not believed that he was going
to enjoy eternal bliss in the company of the gods. Unlike some of
his predecessors, he was not scientific in his thinking, but was
determined to prove the universe agreeable to his ethical standards.
This is treachery to truth, and the worst of philosophic sin*. As
a man, we may believe him admitted to the communion of saints;
but as a philosopher he needs a long residence in ;» scientific
purgatory.
Chapter XVII
PLATO'S COSMOGONY
PLATO'S cosmogony is set forth in the Timaeus,1 which was
translated into Latin by Cicero, and was, moreover, the
only one of the dialogues that was known in the West in
the Middle Ages. Both then, and earlier in Neoplatonism, it
had more influence than anything else in Plato, which is curious,
as it certainly contains more that is simply silly than is to be found
in his other writings. As philosophy, it is unimportant, but his-
torically it was so influential that it must be considered in some
detail.
The place occupied by Socrates in the earlier dialogues i* taken,
in the Timaeus, by a Pythagorean, and the doctrines of that school
are in the main adopted, including (up to a point) the view that
number-is the explanation of the world. There is first a summary
of the first five books of the Republic, then the myth of Atlantis,
which is said to have been an island off the Pillars of Hercules,
larger than Libya and Asia put together. Then Timaeus, who is a
Pythagorean astronomer, proceeds to tell the history of the world
down to the creation of man. What he says is, in outline, as follows.
What is unchanging is apprehended by intelligence and reason ;
what is changing is apprehended by opinion. The world, being
sensible, cannot be eternal, and must have been created by God.
Since God is good, He made the world after the pattern of the
eternal; being without jealousy, He wanted everything as like
Himself as possible. "God desired that all things should be good,
and nothing bad, as far as possible." "Finding the whole visible
sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly
fashion, out of disorder he brought order." (Thus it appears that
Plato's God, unlike the Jewish and Christian God, did not create
the world out of nothing, but rearranged pre-existing material.)
He put intelligence in the soul, and the soul in the body. He made
the world as a whole a living creature having soul and intelligence.
There is only one world, not many, as various pre-Socratics had
1 This dialogue contains much that is obscure and has given rise to
controversies among commentators. On the whole, I find myself in most
agreement with Comford's admirable book, Plato's Cosmology.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
taught; there cannot be more than one, since it is a created copy
designed to accord as closely as possible with the eternal original
apprehended by God. The world in its entirety is one visible
animal, comprehending within itself all other animals. It is a
globe, because like is fairer than unlike, and only a globe is alike
everywhere. It rotates, because circular motion is the most perfect ;
and since this is its only motion it needs no feet or hands.
The four elements, fire, air, water, and earth, each of which
apparently is represented by a number, are in continued propor-
tion, i.e. fire is to air as air is to water and as water is to earth. God
used all the elements in making the world, and therefore it is
perfect, and not liable to old age or disease. It is harmonized by
proportion, which causes it to have the spirit of friendship, and
therefore to be indissoluble except by God.
God made first the soul, then the body. The soul is compounded
of the indivisible-unchangeable and the divisible-changeable; it
is a third and intermediate kind of essence.
Here follows a Pythagorean account of the planets, leading to
an explanation of the origin of time:
When the father and creator saw the creature which he had
made moving and living, the created image of the eternal gods, he
rejoiced, and in his joy determined to make the copy still more like
the original ; and as this was eternal, he sought to make the universe
eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was
everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fulness upon a
creature was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to have a moving
image of eternity, and when be set in order the heaven, he made this
image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity
itself rests in unity; and this image we call Time.1
Before this, there were no days or nights. Of the eternal essence
we must not say that it tvas or will be ; only is is correct. It is implied
that of the "moving image of eternity*1 it is correct to say that it
was and will be.
Time and the heavens came into existence at the same instant.
God made the sun so that animals could learn arithmetic — without
the succession of days and nights, one supposes, we should not
have thought of numbers. The sight of day and night, months
and years, has created knowledge of number and given u* the
1 Vaughcn mutt have been reading this pasngc when he wrote the
poem beginning "I saw eternity the other night."
166
PLATO'S COSMOGONY
conception of time, and hence came philosophy. This is the
greatest boon we owe to sight.
There are (apart from the world as a whole) four kinds of
animals: gods, birds, fishes, and land animals. The gods are
mainly fire; the fixed stars are divine and eternal animals. The
Creator told the gods that he could destroy them, but would not
do so. He left it to them to make the mortal part of all other
animals, after he had made the immortal and divine part. (This,
like other passages about the gods in Plato, is perhaps not to be
taken very seriously. At the beginning, Timaeus says he seeks
only probability, and cannot be sure. Many details are obviously
imaginative, and not meant literally.)
The Creator, Timaeus says, made one soul for each star. Souls
have sensation, love, fear, and anger; if they overcome these, they
live righteously, but if not, not. If a man lives well, he goes, after
death, to live happily for ever in his star. But if he lives badly, he
will, in the next life, be a woman ; if he (or she) persists in evil-
doing, he (or she) will become a brute, and go on through trans-
migrations until at last reason conquers. God put some souls on
earth, some on the moon, some on other planets and stars, and
left it to the gods to fashion their bodies.
There are two kinds of causes, those that are intelligent, and
those that, being moved by others, are, in turn, compelled to
move others. The former are endowed with mind, and are the
workers of things fair and good, while the latter produce chance
effects without order or design. Both sorts ought to be studied,
for the creation is mixed, being made up of necessity and mind.
(It will be observed that necessity is not subject to God's power.)
Timaeus now proceeds to deal with the part contributed by
necessity.1
Earth, air, tire, and water are not the first principles or letters
or elements; they are not even syllables or first compounds. Fire,
for instance, should not be called this, but such — that is to say, it
is not a substance, but rather a state of substance. At this point,
the question is raised: are intelligible essences only names? The
answer turns, we are told, on whether mind is or is not the same
1 Cornford (op. cit.) points out that "necessity" is not to be con-
founded with the modern conception of a deterministic reign of law. The
things that happen through "necessity" are those not brought about by
a purpose : they are chaotic and not subject to laws.
167
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
thing as true opinion. If it is not, knowledge must be knowledge
of essences, and therefore essences cannot be mere names. Now
mind and true opinion certainly differ, for the one is implanted
by instruction, the other by persuasion; one is accompanied by
true reason, the other is not; all men share in true opinion,
but mind is the attribute of the gods and of a very few among
men.
This leads to a somewhat curious theory of space, as something
intermediate between the world of essence and the world of
transient sensible things.
There is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated
and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from with-
out, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imper-
ceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted
to intelligence only. And there is another nature of the same name
with it, and like to it, perceived by sense, created, always in motion,
becoming in place and again vanishing out of place, which is appre-
hended by opinion and sense. And there is a third nature, which
is space, and is eternal, and admits not of destruction and provides
a home for all created things, and is apprehended without the help
of sense, by a kind of spurious reason, and is hardly real ; which \vc
beholding as in a dream, say of all existence that it must of necessity
be in some place and occupy a space, but that what is neither in
heaven nor on earth has no existence.
This is a very difficult passage, which I do not pretend to under-
stand at all fully. The theory expressed must, I think, have arisen
from reflection on geometry, which appeared to be a matter of
pure reason, like arithmetic, and yet had to do with space, which
was an aspect of the sensible world. In general it is fanciful to
find analogies with later philosophers, but I cannot help thinking
that Kant must have liked this view of space, as one having an
affinity with his own.
The true elements of the material world, Timaeus says, are not
earth, air, fire, and water, but two sorts of right-angled triangles,
the one which is half a square and the one which is half an equi-
lateral triangle. Originally everything was in confusion, and "the
various elements had different places before they were arranged
so as to form the universe/' But then God fashioned them by
form and number, and "made them as far as'possible the fairest
and best, out of things which were not fair and good." The above
168
PLATO'S COSMOGONY
two sorts of triangles, we are told, are the most beautiful forms
and therefore God used them in constructing matter. By means of
these two triangles, it is possible to construct four of the five
regular solids, and each atom of one of the four elements is a
regular solid. Atoms of earth are cubes; of fire, tetrahedra; of air,
octahedra ; and of water, icosahedra. (I shall come to the dode-
cahedron presently.)
The theory of the regular solids, which is set forth in the
thirteenth book of Euclid, was, in Plato's day, a recent discovery;
it was completed by Theaetetus, who appears as a very young
man in the dialogue that bears his name. It was, according to
tradition, he who first proved that there are only five kinds of
regular solids, and discovered the octahedron and the icosahedron.1
The regular tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron, have
equilateral triangles for their faces; the dodecahedron has regular
pentagons, and cannot therefore be constructed out of Plato's two
triangles. For this reason he does not use it in connection with the
four elements.
As for the dodecahedron, Plato says only "there was yet a fifth
combination which God used in the delineation of the universe."
This is obscure, and suggests that the universe is a dodecahedron;
but elsewhere it is said to be a sphere.1 The pentagram has always
been prominent in magic, and apparently owes this position to the
Pythagoreans, who called it '"Health" and used it as a symbol of
recognition of members of the brotherhood.8 It seems that it owed
its properties to the fact that the dodecahedron has pentagons for
its faces, and is, in some sense, a symbol of the universe. This
topic is attractive, but it is difficult to ascertain much that is
definite about it.
After a discussion of sensation, Timaeus proceeds to explain
the two souls in man, one immortal, the other mortal, one created
by God, the other by the gods. The mortal soul is "subject to
terrible and irresistible affections — first of all, pleasure, the
greatest incitement to evil; then pain, which deters from good;
also rashness and fear, two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be
appeased, and hope easily led astray; these they (the gods) mingled
1 Sec Heath, Greek Mathcmalic*, Vol. 1, pp. 159, 162, 294-296.
1 For a reconciliation of the two statements, see Cornford, op. «/.,
p. 219.
9 Heath, of. ri/., p. 161.
169
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
with irrational sense and with all-daring love according to
necessary laws, and so framed men."
The immortal soul is in the head, the mortal in the breast.
There is some curious physiology, as, that the purpose of the
intestines is to prevent gluttony by keeping the food in, and then
there is another account of transmigration. Cowardly or un-
righteous men will, in the next life, be women. Innocent light-
minded men, who think that astronomy can be learnt by looking
at the stars without knowledge of mathematics, will become birds ;
those who have no philosophy will become wild land-animals;
the very stupidest will become fishes.
The last paragraph of the dialogue sums it up :
We may now say that our discourse about the nature of the
universe has an end. The world has received animals, mortal and
immortal, and is fulfilled with them, and has become a visible
animal containing the visible — the sensible God who is the image
of the intellectual, the greatest, best, fairest, most perfect- the
one only-begotten heaven.
It is difficult to know what to take seriously in the Tiwacus,
and what to regard as play of fancy. I think the account of the
creation as bringing order out of chaos is to be taken quite
seriously; so also is the proportion between the four elements, and
their relation to the regular solids and their constituent triangles.
The accounts of time and space are obviously what Plato believes,
and so is the view of the created world as a copy of an eternal
archetype. The mixture of necessity and purpose in the world is
a belief common to practically all Greeks, long antedating the rise
of philosophy; Plato accepted it, and thus avoided the problem
of evil, which troubles Christian theology. I think his world-
animal is seriously meant. But the details about transmigration,
and the pan attributed to the gods, and other inessentials, are, I
think, only put in to give a possible concreteness.
The whole dialogue, as I said before, deserves to he studied
because of its great influence on ancient and medieval thought;
and this influence is not confined to what is least fantastic.
170
Chapter XVIII
KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION IN PLATO
MOST modern men take it for granted that empirical know-
ledge is dependent upon, or derived from, perception.
There is however in Plato and among philosophers of
certain other schools a very different doctrine, to the effect that
there is nothing worthy to be called "knowledge" to be derived
from the senses, and that the only real knowledge has to do with
concepts. In this view, "2 + 2 = 4" is genuine knowledge, but
such a statement as "snow is white" is so full of ambiguity and
uncertainty that it cannot find a place in the philosopher's corpus
of truths.
This view is perhaps traceable to Panne nides, but in its explicit
form the philosophic world owes it to Plato. I propose, in this
chapter, to deal with Plato's criticism of the view that know-
ledge is the same thing as perception, which occupies the first
half of the Theaetetus.
This dialogue is concerned to find a definition of "knowledge,"
but ends without arriving at any but a negative conclusion;
several definitions are proposed and rejected, but no definition
that is considered satisfactory is suggested.
The first of the suggested definitions, and the only one that I
shall consider, is set forth by Theaetetus in the words:
"It seems to me that one who knows something is perceiving
the thing that he knows, and, so far as I can see at present,
knowledge is nothing but perception."
Socrates identifies this doctrine with that of Protagoras, that
"man is the measure of all thini;sv" i.e.*that any given thing "is
to me such as it appears to me, and is to you such as it appears
10 you." Socrates adds: "Perception, then, is always something
that w, and, as being knowledge, it is infallible."
A large part of the argument that follows is concerned with the
characterization of perception; when once this is completed, it
does not take long to prove that such a thing as perception has
turned out to be cannot be knowledge.
Socrates adds to* the doctrine of Protagoras the doctrine of
Heraclitus, jhat everything is always changing, i.e. that "all the
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
things we are pleased to say 'are' really are in process of becoming. "
Plato believes this to be true of objects of sense, but not of the
objects of real knowledge. Throughout the dialogue, however,
his positive doctrines remain in the background.
From the doctrine of Heraclitus, even if it be only applicable
to objects of sense, together with the definition of knowledge as
perception, it follows that knowledge is of what becomes, not of
what is.
There are, at this point, some puzzles of a very elementary
character. We are told that, since 6 is greater than 4 but less than
12, 6 is both great and small, which is a contradiction. Again,
Socrates is now taller than Theaetetus, who is a youth not yet
full grown; but in a few years Socrates will be shorter than
Theaetetus. Therefore Socrates is both tall and short. The idea
of a relational proposition seems to have puzzled Plato, as it did
most of the great philosophers down to Hegel (inclusive). These
puzzles, however, are not very germane to the argument, and
may be ignored.
Returning to perception, it is regarded as due to an interaction
between the object and the sense-organ, both of which, according
to the doctrine of Heraclitus, are always changing, and both of
which, in changing, change the percept. Socrates remarks that
when he is well he finds wine sweet, but when ill, sour. Here it
is a change in the percipient that causes the change in the percept.
Certain objections to the doctrine of Protagoras arc advanced,
and some of these are subsequently withdrawn. It is urged that
Protagoras ought equally to have admitted pigs and baboons as
measures of all things, since they also are percipients. Questions
are raised as to the validity of perception in dreams and in madness.
It is suggested that, if Protagoras is right, one man knows no
more than another: not only is Protagoras as wise as the gods,
but, what is more serious, he is no wiser than a fool. Further, if
one man's judgments are as correct as another's, the people who
judge that Protagoras is mistaken have the same reason to be
thought right as he has.
Socrates undertakes to find an answer to many of these objec-
tions, putting himself, for the moment, in the place of Protagoras.
As for dreams, the percepu are true as percept*. As for the argu-
ment about pigs and baboons, this is dismissed as vulgar abuse.
As for the argument that, if each man U the measure pf all things,
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KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION IN PLATO
one man is as wise as another, Socrates suggests, on behalf of
Protagoras, a very interesting answer, namely that, while one
judgment cannot be truer than another, it can be better, in the
sense of having better consequences. This suggests pragmatism.1
This answer, however, though Socrates has invented it, does
not satisfy him. He urges, for example, that when a doctor fore-
tells the course of my illness, he actually knows more of my future
than I do. And when men differ as to what it is wise for the State
to decree, the issue shows that some men had a greater knowledge
as to the future than others had. Thus we cannot escape the
conclusion that a wise man is a better measure of things than a fool.
All these are objections to the doctrine that each man is the
measure of all things, and only indirectly to the doctrine that
"knowledge" means "perception," in so far as this doctrine leads
to the other. There is, however, a direct argument, namely that
memory must be allowed as well as perception. This is admitted,
and to this extent the proposed definition is amended.
We come next to criticisms of the doctrine of Heraclitus. This
is first pushed to extremes, in accordance, we are told, with the
practice of his disciples among the bright youths of Ephesus. A
thing may change in two ways, by locomotion, and by a change of
quality, and the doctrine of flux is held to state that everything
is always changing in both respects.2 And not only is everything
always undergoing some qualitative change, but everything is
always changing all its qualities — so, we are told, clever people
think at Ephesus. This has awkward consequences. We cannot
say "this is white," for if it was white when we began speaking it
will have ceased to be white before we end our sentence. We
cannot be right in saying we are seeing a thing, for seeing is
perpetually changing into not-seeing.* If everything is changing
1 It was presumably thit passage that first suggested to F. C. S. Schiller
his admiration of Protagoras.
1 It seems that neither Plato nor the dynamic youths of Ephesus had
noticed that locomotion is impossible on the extreme Heraclitean doctrine.
Motion demands that a given thing A should be now here, now there : it
must remain the tame thing while it moves. In the doctrine that Plato
examines there is change of quality and change of place, but not change
of substance. In this respect, modern quantum physics goes further than
the most extreme di^iples of Heraclitus went in Plato's time. Plato \\ould
have thought this fatal to science, but it has not proved so.
* Compaq* the advertisement: "That's Shell, that was.9
173
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
in every kind of way, seeing has no right to be called seeing rather
than not-seeing, or perception to be called perception rather than
not-perception. And when we say "perception is knowledge," we
might just as well say "perception is not-knowledge."
What the above argument amounts to is that, whatever else
may be in perpetual flux, the meanings of words must be fixed,
at least for a time, since otherwise no assertion is definite, and no
assertion is true rather than false. There must be something more
or less constant, if discourse and knowledge are to be possible.
This, I think, should be admitted. But a great deal of flux is
compatible with this admission.
There is, at this point, a refusal to discuss Parmenides, on the
ground that he is too great and grand. He is a "reverend and
awfiil figure." "There was a sort of depth in him that was alto-
gether noble." He is "one being whom I respect above all." In
these remarks Plato shows his love for a static universe, and his
dislike of the Heraclitean flux which he has been admitting for
the sake of argument. But after this expression of reverence he
abstains from developing the Parmenidean alternative to I leraclitus.
We now reach Plato's final argument against the identification
of knowledge with perception. He begins by pointing out that we
perceive through eyes and ears, rather than with them, and he goes
on to point out that some of our knowledge is not connected with
any sense-organ. We can know, for instance, that sounds and
colours are unlike, though no organ of sense can perceive both.
There is no special organ for "existence and non-existence, like-
ness and unlikeness, sameness and differences, and also unity and
numbers in general." The same applies to honourable and dis-
honourable, and good and bad. "The mind contemplates some
things through its own instrumentality, others through the bodily
faculties." We perceive hard and soft through touch, but it is the
mind that judges that they exist and that they are contraries. Only
the mind can reach existence, and we cannot reach truth if we do
not reach existence. It follows that we cannot know things through
the senses alone, since through the senses alone we cannot know
that things exist. Therefore knowledge consists in reflection, not
in impressions, and perception is not knowledge, because it "has
no part in apprehending truth, since it has none in apprehending
existence." •
7*o disentangle what can be accepted from what must be rejected
*74
KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION IN PLATO
in this argument against the identification of knowledge with
perception is by no means easy. There are three inter-connected
theses that Plato discusses, namely:
(1) Knowledge is perception;
(2) Man is the measure of all things;
(3) Everything is in a state of flux.
(i) The first of these, with which alone the argument is pri-
marily concerned, is hardly discussed on its own account except
in the final passage with which we have just been concerned.
Here it is argued that comparison, knowledge of existence, and
understanding of number, are essential to knowledge, but cannot
be included in perception since they are not effected through
any sense-organ. The things to be said about these are different.
Let us begin with likeness and unlikeness.
That two shades of colour, both of which I am seeing, are
similar or dissimilar as the case may be, is something which I,
for my part, should accept, not indeed as a "percept," but as a
"judgment of perception.11 A percept, I should say, is not know-
ledge, but merely something that happens, and that belongs
equally to the world of physics and to the world of psychology.
We naturally think of perception, as Plato does, as a relation
between a percipient and an object: we say "I see a table." But
here "I" and "table" are logical constructions. The core of crude
occurrence is merely certain patches of colour. These are asso-
ciated with images of touch, they may cause words, and they may
become a source of memories. The percept as filled out with
images of touch becomes an "object," which is supposed physical;
the percept as filled out with words and memories becomes a
"perception," which is part of a "subject" and is considered
mental. The percept is just an occurrence, and neither true nor
false; the percept as filled out with words is a judgment, and
capable of truth or falsehood. This judgment I call a "judgment
of perception." The proposition "knowledge is perception" must
be interpreted as meaning "knowledge is judgments of perception."
It is only in this form that it is grammatically capable of being
correct.
To return to likeness and unlikeness, it is quite possible, when
I perceive two colours simultaneously, for their likeness or unlike-
ness to be part of the datum, and to be asserted in a judgment of
175
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
perception. Plato's argument that we have no sense-organ for
perceiving likeness and unlikeness ignores the cortex, and assumes
that all sense-organs must be at the surface of the body.
The argument for including likeness and unlikeness as possible
perceptive data is as follows. Let us assume that we see two shades
of colour A and B, and that we judge "A is like B." Let us assume
further, as Plato does, that such a judgment is in general correct,
and, in particular, is correct in the case we are considering. There
is, then, a relation of likeness between A and B, and not merely
a judgment on our part asserting likeness. If there were only our
judgment, it would be an arbitrary judgment, incapable of truth
or falsehood. Since it obviously is capable of truth or falsehood,
the likeness can subsist between A and B, and cannot be merely
something "mental." The judgment "A is like B" is true (if it is
true) in virtue of a "fact," just as much as the judgment "A is
red" or "A is round." The mind is no wore involved in the per-
ception of likeness than in the perception of colour.
I come now to existence^ on which Plato lays great stress. We
have, he says, as regards sound and colour, a thought which
includes both at once, namely that they exist. Existence belongs
to everything, and is among the things that the mind apprehends
by itself; without reaching existence, it is impossible to reach
truth.
The argument against Plato here is quite different from that
in the case of likeness and unlikeness. The argument here is that
all that Plato says about existence is bad grammar, or rather bad
syntax. This point is important, not only in connection with
Plato, but also with other matters such as the ontological argument
for the existence of the Deity.
Suppose you say to a child "lions exist, but unicorns don't,"
you can prove your point so far as lions are concerned by taking
him to the Zoo and saying "look, that's a lion." You will not,
unless you are a philosopher, add: "And you can sec that that
exists." If, being a philosopher, you do add this, you are uttering
nonsense. To say "lions exist" means "there are lions," i.e. " 'x
is a lion' is true for a suitable #." But we cannot say of the suitable
x that it "exists"; we can only apply this verb to a description,
complete or incomplete. "Lion" is an incomplete description,
because it applies to many objects: "The largbst lion in the Zoo"
is complete, because it applies to only one object.
176
KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION IN PLATO
Now suppose that I am looking at a bright red patch. I may
say "this is my present percept"; I may also say "my present
percept exists"; but I must not say "this exists/' because the
word "exists" is only significant when applied to a description
as opposed to a name.1 This disposes of existence as one of the
things that the mind is aware of in objects.
I come now to understanding of numbers. Here there are two
very different things to be considered : on the one hand, the pro-
positions of arithmetic, and on the other hand, empirical pro-
positions of enumeration. "2 + 2 = 4" is of the former kind; "I
have ten fingers" is of the latter.
I should agree with Plato that arithmetic, and pure mathematics
generally, is not derived from perception. Pure mathematics con-
sists of tautologies, analogous to "men are men," but usually
more complicated. To know that a mathematical proposition is
correct, we do not have to study the world, but only the meanings
of the symbols ; and the symbols, when we dispense with definitions
(of which the purpose is merely abbreviation), are found to be
such words as "or" and "not," and "all" and "some," which do
not, like "Socrates," denote anything in the actual world. A
mathematical equation asserts that two groups of symbols have
the same meaning; and so long as we confine ourselves to pure
mathematics, this meaning must be one that can be understood
without knowing anything about what can be perceived. Mathe-
matical truth, therefore, is, as Plato contends, independent of
perception ; but it is truth of a very peculiar sort, and is concerned
only with symbols.
Propositions of enumeration, such as "I have ten fingers," are
in quite a different category, and are obviously, at least in part,
dependent on perception. Clearly the concept "finger" is abstracted
from perception; but how about the concept "ten"? Here we
may seem to have arrived at a true universal or Platonic idea. We
cannot say that "ten" is abstracted from perception, for any
percept which can be viewed as ten of some kind of thing can
equally well be viewed otherwise. Suppose I give the name
"digitary" to all the fingers of one hand taken together; then I
can say "I have two digitaries," and this describes the same fact
of perception as I formerly described by the help of the number
ten. Thus in the statement "I have ten fingers" perception plays
1 On this subject see the last chapter of the present work.
177
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
a smaller part, and conception a larger part, than in such a
statement as "this is red." The matter, however, is only one of
degree.
The complete answer, as regards propositions in which the
word "ten" occurs, is that, when these propositions are correctly
analysed, they are found to contain no constituent corresponding
to the word "ten." To explain this in the case of such a large
number as ten would be complicated ; let us, therefore, substitute
"I have two hands." This means:
"There is an a such that there is a b such that a and b are not
identical and whatever x may be, lx is a hand of mine* is true
when, and only when, x is a or x is 6."
Here the word "two" does not occur. It is true that two letters
a and b occur, but we do not need to know that they are two, any
more than we need to know that they are black, or white, or
whatever colour they may happen to be.
Thus numbers are, in a certain precise sense, formal. The facts
which verify various propositions asserting that various collections
each have two members, have in common, not a constituent, but
a form. In this they differ from propositions about the Statue of
Liberty, or the moon, or George Washington. Such propositions
refer to a particular portion of space-time; it is this that is in
common between all the statements that can be made about the
Statue of Liberty. But there is nothing in common among pro-
positions "there are two so-and-so's" except a common form.
The relation of the symbol "two" to the meaning of a proposition
in which it occurs is far more complicated than the relation of the
symbol "red" to the meaning of a proposition in which it occurs.
We may say, in a certain sense, that the symbol "two" means
nothing, for, when it occurs in a true statement, there is no
corresponding constituent in the meaning of the statement. We
may continue, if we like, to say that numbers are eternal, im-
mutable, and so on, but we must add that they are logical fictions.
There is a further point. Concerning sound and colour, Plato
says "both together are two, and each of them is erne." We have
considered the two\ now we must consider the one. There is here
a mistake very analogous to that concerning existence. The pre-
dicate "one" is not applicable to things, but only to unit classes.
We can say "the earth has one satellite," bdt it is a syntactical
error to say "the moon is one." For what can such an assertion
KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION IN PLATO
mean ? You may just as well say "the moon is many/' since it
has many parts. To say "the earth has one satellite*' is to give a
property of the concept "earth's satellite," namely the following
property:
"There is a c such that '* is a satellite of the earth' is true when,
and only when, x is £."
This is an astronomical truth; but if, for "a satellite of the
earth/' you substitute "the moon" or any other proper name, the
result is either meaningless or a mere tautology. "One," therefore,
is a property of certain concepts, just as "ten" is a property of the
concept "my finger." But to argue "the earth has one satellite,
namely the moon, therefore the moon is one" is as bad as to
argue "The Apostles were twelve; Peter was an apostle; therefore
Peter was twelve/1 which would be valid if for "twelve" we
substituted "white."
The above considerations have shown that, while there is a
formal kind of knowledge, namely logic and mathematics, which
is not derived from perception, Plato's arguments as regards all
other knowledge are fallacious. This does not, of course, prove
that his conclusion is false; it proves only that he has given no
valid reason for supposing it true.
(2) I come now to the position of Protagoras, that man is the
measure of all things, or, as it is interpreted, that each man is the
measure of all things. Mere it is essential to decide the level upon
which the discussion is to proceed. It is obvious that, to begin
with, we must distinguish between percepts and inferences. Among
percepts, each man is inevitably confined to his own; what he
knows of the percepts of others he knows by inference from his
own percepts in hearing and reading. The percepts of dreamers
and madmen, as percepts, arc just as good as those of others; the
only objection to them is that, as their context is unusual, they
are apt to give rise to fallacious inferences.
But how about inferences? Are they equally personal and
private? In a sense, we must admit that they are. What I am to
believe, 1 must believe because of some reason that appeals to
me. It is true that my reason may be some one else's assertion,
but that may be a perfectly adequate reason — for instance, if I am
a judge listening to evidence. And however Protagorean I may
be, it is reasonable to accept the opinion of an accountant about
a set of figures in preference to my own, for 1 may have repeatedly
'79
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
found that if, at first, I disagree with him, a little more care shows
me that he was right. In this sense I may admit that another man
is wiser than I am. The Protagorean position, rightly interpreted,
does not involve the view that I never make mistakes, but only
that the evidence of my mistakes must appear to me. My past self
can be judged just as another person can be judged. But all this
presupposes that, as regards inferences as opposed to percepts,
there is some impersonal standard of correctness. If any inference
that I happen to draw is just as good as any other, then the in-
tellectual anarchy that Plato deduces from Protagoras does in
fact follow. On this point, therefore, which is an important one,
Plato seems to be in the right. But the empiricist would say that
perceptions are the test of correctness in inference in empirical
material.
(3) The doctrine of universal flux is caricatured by Plato, and
it is difficult to suppose that any one ever held it in the extreme
form that he gives to it. Let us suppose, for example, that the
colours we see are continually changing. Such a word as "red"
applies to many shades of colour, and if we say "I see red," there
is no reason why this should not remain true throughout the time
that it takes to say it. Plato gets his results by applying to pro-
cesses of continuous change such logical oppositions as perceiving
and not-perceiving, knowing and not-knowing. Such oppositions,
however, are not suitable for describing such processes. Suppose,
on a foggy day, you watch a man walking away from you along a
road: he grows dimmer and dimmer, and there comes a moment
when you are sure that you no longer see him, but there is an
intermediate period of doubt. Logical oppositions have been
invented for our convenience, but continuous change requires a
quantitative apparatus, the possibility of which Plato ignores.
What he says on this subject, therefore, is largely beside the mark.
At the same time, it must be admitted that, unless words, to
some extent, had fixed meanings, discourse would be impossible.
Here again, however, it is easy to be too absolute. Words do change
their meanings; take, for example, the word "idea," It i* only
by a considerable process of education that we learn to give to
this word something like the meaning which Plato gave to it. It
is necessary that the changes in the meanings of words should he
slower than the changes that the words d&cribe; but it is not
necessary that there should be no changes in the meanings of
180
KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION IN PLATO
words. Perhaps this does not apply to the abstract words of logic
and mathematics, but these words, as we have seen, apply only
to the form, not to the matter, of propositions. Here, again, we
find that logic and mathematics are peculiar. Plato, under the
influence of the Pythagoreans, assimilated other knowledge too
much to mathematics. He shared this mistake with many of the
greatest philosophers, but it was a mistake none the less.
181
Chapter XIX
ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
IN reading any important philosopher, but most of all in reading
Aristotle, it is necessary to study him in two ways: with refer-
ence to his predecessors, and with reference to his successors.
In the former aspect, Aristotle's merits are enormous ; in the latter,
his demerits are equally enormous. For his demerits, however, his
successors are more responsible than he is. He came at the end of
the creative period in Greek thought, and after his death it was
two thousand years before the world produced any philosopher
who could be regarded as approximately his equal. Towards the
end of this long period his authority had become almost as un-
questioned as that of the Church, and in science, as well as in
philosophy, had become a serious obstacle to progress. Ever since
the beginning of the seventeenth century, almost every serious
intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some
Aristotelian doctrine; in logic, this is still true at the present day.
But it would have been at least as disastrous if any of his pre-
decessors (except perhaps Democritus) had acquired equal
authority. To do him justice, we must, to bejrin with, forget his
excessive posthumous fame, and the equally excessive posthumous
condemnation to which it led.
Aristotle was born, probably in 384 B.C., at Stagira in Thrace.
His father had inherited the position of family physician to the
king of Macedonia. At about the age of eighteen Aristotle came
to Athens and became a pupil of Plato ; he remained in the Aca-
demy for nearly twenty years, until the death of Plato in 348-7 B.C.
I le then travelled for a time, and married either the sister or the
niece of a tyrant named Hermias. (Scandal said she was the
daughter or concubine of Hermias, but both stories are disproved
by the fact that he was a eunuch.) In 343 B.C. he became tutor to
Alexander, then thirteen years old, and continued in that position
until, at the age of sixteen, Alexander was pronounced by his
father to be of age, and was appointed regent during Philip's
absence. Everything one would wish to know of the relations of
Aristotle and Alexander is unascertainable, the more so as legends
were soon invented on the subject. There are letters between them
182
ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
which are generally regarded as forgeries. People who admire
both men suppose that the tutor influenced the pupil. Hegel
thinks that Alexander's career shows the practical usefulness of
philosophy. As to this, A. W. Benn says: "It would be unfortunate
if philosophy had no better testimonial to show for herself than
the character of Alexander. . . . Arrogant, drunken, cruel,
vindictive, and grossly superstitious, he united the vices of a
Highland chieftain to the frenzy of an Oriental despot."1
For my part, while I agree with Benn about the character of
Alexander, I nevertheless think that his work was enormously
important and enormously beneficial, since, but for him, the whole
tradition of Hellenic civilization might well have perished. As
to Aristotle's influence on him, we are left free to conjecture
whatever seems to us most plausible. For my part, I should
suppose it nil. Alexander was an ambitious and passionate boy,
on bad terms with his father, and presumably impatient of
schooling. Aristotle thought no State should have as many as one
hundred thousand citizens,2 and preached the doctrine of the
golden mean. I cannot imagine his pupil regarding him as any-
thing but a prosy old pedant, set over him by his father to keep
him out of mischief. Alexander, it is true, had a certain snobbish
respect for Athenian civilization, but this was common to his
whole dynasty, who wished to prove that they were not barbarians.
It was analogous to the feeline; of nineteenth-century Russian
aristocrats for Paris. This, therefore, was not attributable to
Aristotle's influence. And I do not see anything else in Alexander
that could possibly have come from this source.
It is more surprising that Alexander had so little influence on
Aristotle, whose speculations on politics were blandly oblivious
of the fact that the era of City States had given \vay to the era of
empires. I suspect that Aristotle, to the end, thought of him as
"that idle and headstrong' boy, who never could understand any-
thing of philosophy/* On the whole, the contacts of these two
great men seem to have been as unfruitful as if they had lived in
different worlds.
From 335 B.C. to 323 B.C. (in which latter year Alexander died),
Aristotle lived at Athens. It was during these twelve years that he
founded his school and wrote most of his books. At the death of
Alexander, the Athenians rebelled, and turned on his friends,
1 Tht Cree^ Philosophers, Vol. I, p. 285. * Ethics, 11708.
183
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
including Aristotle, who was indicted for impiety, but, unlike
Socrates, fled to avoid punishment. In the next year (322) he died.
Aristotle, as a philosopher, is in many ways very different from
all his predecessors. He is the first to write like a professor: his
treatises are systematic, his discussions are divided into heads,
he is a professional teacher, not an inspired prophet. His work is
critical, careful, pedestrian, without any trace of Bacchic en-
thusiasm. The Orphic elements in Plato are watered down in
Aristotle, and mixed with a strong dose of common sense; where
he is Platonic, one feels that his natural temperament has been
overpowered by the teaching to which he has been subjected. He
is not passionate, or in any profound sense religious. The errors
of his predecessors were the glorious errors of youth attempting
the impossible ; his errors are those of age which cannot free itself
of habitual prejudices. He is best in detail and in criticism; he
fails in large construction, for lack of fundamental clarity and
Titanic fire.
It is difficult to decide at what point to begin an account of
Aristotle's metaphysics, but perhaps the best place is his criticism
of the theory of ideas and his own alternative doctrine of uni-
versals. He advances against the theory of ideas a number of very
good arguments, most of which are already to be found in Plato's
Parmenides. The strongest argument is that of the "third man":
if a man is a man because he resembles the ideal man, there must
be a still more ideal man to whom both ordinary men and the
ideal man are similar. Again, Socrates is both a man and an animal,
and the question arises whether the ideal man is an ideal animal ;
if he is, there must be as many ideal animals as there are species
of animals. It is needless to pursue the matter; Aristotle makes it
obvious that, when a number of individuals share a predicate,
this cannot be because of relation to something of the same kind
as themselves, but more ideal. This much may be taken as proved,
but Aristotle's own doctrine is far from clear. It was this lack of
clarity that made possible the medieval controversy between
nominalists and realists.
Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as
Plato diluted by common sense, lie is difficult because Plato and
common sense do not mix easily. When one tries to understand
him, one thinks part of the time that he is expressing the ordinary
views of a person innocent of philosophy and the rest of the time
184
ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
that he is setting forth Platonism with a new vocabulary. It does
not do to lay too much stress on any single passage, because there
is liable to be a correction or modification of it in some later
passage. On the whole, the easiest way to understand both his
theory of universals and his theory of matter and form is to set
forth first the common-sense doctrine which is half of his view,
and then to consider the Platonic modifications to which he
subjects it.
Up to a certain point, the theory of universals is quite simple.
In language, there are proper names, and there are adjectives.
The proper names apply to "things" or "persons," each of which
is the only thing or person to which the name in question applies.
The sun, the moon, France, Napoleon, are unique; there are not
a number of instances of things to which these names apply. On
the other hand, words like "cat," "dog," "man" apply to many
different things. The problem of universals is concerned with
the meanings of such words, and also of adjectives, such as
"white," "hard," "round," and so on. He says:1 "By the term
'universal' I mean that which is of such a nature as to be pre-
dicated of many subjects, by 'individual' that which is not thus
predicated."
What is signified by a proper name is a "substance/* while
what is signified by an adjective or class-name, such as "human"
or "man," is called a "universal." A substance is a "this," but a
universal is a "such" — it indicates the sort of thing, not the actual
particular thing. A universal is not a substance, because it is not
a "this." (Plato's heavenly bed would be a "this" to those who
could perceive it ; this is a matter as to which Aristotle disagrees
with Plato.) "It seems impossible," Aristotle says, "that any uni-
versal term should be the name of a substance. For . . . the
substance of each thing is that which is peculiar to it, which does
not belong to anything else; but the universal is common, since
that is called universal which is sUch as to belong to more than
one thing." The gist of the matter, so far, is that a universal
cannot exist by itself, but only in particular things.
Superficially, Aristotle's doctrine is plain enough. Suppose I
say "there is such a thing as the game of football," most people
would regard the remark as a truism. But if I were to infer that
football could exist without football-players, I should be rightly
1 'to Interpretation, 17*.
185
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
held to be talking nonsense. Similarly, it would be held, there is
such a thing as parenthood, but only because there are parents;
there is such a thing as sweetness, but only because there are
sweet things; and there is redness, but only because there are
red things. And this dependence is thought to be not reciprocal :
the men who play football would still exist even if they never
played football; things which are usually sweet may turn sour;
and my face, which is usually red, may turn pale without ceasing
to be my face. In this way we are led to conclude that what is
meant by an adjective is dependent for its being on what is meant
by a proper name, but not vice versa. This is, I think, what
Aristotle means. His doctrine on this point, as on many others,
is a common-sense prejudice pedantically expressed.
But it is not easy to give precision to the theory. Granted that
football could not exist without football-players, it could perfectly
well exist without this or that football-player. And granted that a
person can exist without playing football, he nevertheless cannot
exist without doing something. The quality redness cannot exist
without some subject, but it can exist without this or that subject ;
similarly a subject cannot exist without some quality, but can
exist without this or that quality. The supposed ground for the
distinction between things and qualities thus seems to be illusory.
The true ground of the distinction is, in fact, linguistic; it is
derived from syntax. There are proper names, adjectives, and
relation- words ; we may say "John is wise, James is foolish, John
is taller than James," Here "John" and "James" are proper
names, "wise" and "foolish" are adjectives, and "taller" is a
relation-word. Metaphysicians, ever since Aristotle, have inter-
preted these syntactical differences metaphysically: John and
James are substances, wisdom and folly are universal*. (Relation-
words were ignored or misinterpreted.) It may be that, given
sufficient care, metaphysical differences can be found that have
some relation to these syntactical differences, but, if so, it will be
only by means of a long process, involving, incidentally, the
creation of an artificial philosophical language. And this language
will contain no such names as "John" and "James/* and no such
adjectives as "wise" and "foolish"; all the words of ordinary
languages will have yielded to analysis, and been replaced by
words having a less complex significance. Until this labour has
been performed, the question of particulars and universals cannot
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ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
be adequately discussed. And when we reach the point at which
we can at last discuss it, we shall find that the question we are
discussing is quite different from what we supposed it to be at
the outset.
If, therefore, I have failed to make Aristotle's theory of uni-
versals clear, that is (I maintain) because it is not clear. But it is
certainly an advance on the theory of ideas, and is certainly con-
cerned with a genuine and very important problem.
There is another term which is important in Aristotle and in
his scholastic followers, and that is the term "essence." This is
by no means synonymous with "universal." Your "essence" is
"what you are by your very nature." It is, one may say, those of
your properties which you cannot lose without ceasing to be your-
self. Not only an individual thing, but a species, has an essence.
The definition of a species should consist in mentioning its essence.
I shall return to the conception of "essence" in connection with
Aristotle's logic. For the present I will merely observe that it
seems to me a muddle-headed notion, incapable of precision.
The next point in Aristotle's metaphysics is the distinction of
"form" and "matter. f> (It must be understood that "matter," in
the sense in which it is opposed to "form," is different from
"matter" as opposed to "mind.")
Here, again, there is a common-sense basis for Aristotle's theory,
but here, more than in the case of universals, the Platonic modifi-
cations are very important. We may start with a marble statue;
here marble is the matter, while the shape conferred by the
sculptor is the form. Or, to take Aristotle's examples, if a man
makes a bronze sphere, bronze is the matter, and sphericity is the
form; while in the case of a calm sea, water is the matter and
smoothness is the form. So far, all is simple.
He goes on to say that it is in virtue of the form that the matter
is some one definite thing, and this is the substance of the thing.
What Aristotle means seems to be plain common sense: a "thing"
must be bounded, and the boundary constitutes its form. Take,
say, a volume of water: any part of it can be marked off from the
rest by being enclosed in a vessel, and then this part becomes a
* thing," but so long as the part is in no way marked out from the
rest of the homogeneous mass it is not a "thing." A statue is a
"thing," and the marble of which it is composed is, in a sense,
unchanged from what it was as part of a lump or as part of the
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
provided it is so used that we can translate our statements into
a form in which the concept is absent. "A block of marble is a
potential statue" means "from a block of marble, by suitable acts,
a statue is produced." But when potentiality is used as a funda-
mental and irreducible concept, it always conceals confusion of
thought. Aristotle's use of it is one of the bad points in his
system.
Aristotle's theology is interesting, and closely connected with
the rest of his metaphysics — indeed, "theology" is one of his
names for what we call "metaphysics." (The book which we know
under that name was not so called by him.)
There are, he says, three kinds of substances: those that are
sensible and perishable, those that are sensible but not perishable,
and those that are neither sensible nor perishable. The first class
includes plants and animals, the second includes the heavenly
bodies (which Aristotle believed to undergo no change except
motion), the third includes the rational soul in man, and also
God.
The main argument for God is the First Cause: there must be
something which originates motion, and this something must itself
be unmoved, and must be eternal, substance, and actuality. The
object of desire and the object of thought, Aristotle says, cause
movement in this way, without themselves being in motion. So
God produces motion by being loved, whereas every other cause
of motion works by being itself in motion (like a billiard ball).
God is pure thought ; for thought is what is best. "Life also belongs
to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that
actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good
and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal,
most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong
to God; for this is God" (1072*).
"It is clear then from what has been said that there is a sub-
stance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible
things. It has been shown that this substance cannot have any
magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible. . . . But it has
also been shown that it is impassive and unalterable; for all the
other changes are posterior to change of place" (1073*).
God does not have the attributes of a Christian Providence, for
it would derogate from His perfection to think about anything
except what is perfect, i.e. Himself "It must be of itself that the
190
ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things),
and its thinking is a thinking on thinking." (1074*). We must infer
that God does not know of the existence of our sublunary world.
Aristotle, like Spinoza, holds that, while men must love God,
it is impossible that God should love men.
God is not definable as "the unmoved mover." On the contrary,
astronomical considerations lead to the conclusion that there are
either forty-seven or fifty-five unmoved movers (1074*). The
relation of these to God is not made clear; indeed the natural
interpretation would be that there are forty-seven or fifty-five
gods. For after one of the above passages on God Aristotle pro-
ceeds: "We must not ignore the question whether we are to
suppose one such substance or more than one," and at once
embarks upon the argument that leads to the forty-seven or
fifty-five unmoved movers.
The conception of an unmoved mover is a difficult one. To a
modern mind, it would seem that the cause of a change must be a
previous change, and that, if the universe were ever wholly static,
it would remain so eternally. To understand what Aristotle means,
we must take account of what he says about causes. There are,
according to him, four kinds of causes, which were called, respec-
tively, material, formal, efficient, and final. Let us take again the
man who is making a statue. The material cause of the statue is
the marble, the formal cause is the essence of the statue to be
produced, the efficient cause is the contact of the chisel with the
marble, and the final cause is the end that the sculptor has in
view. In modern terminology, the word "cause" would be con-
fined to the efficient cause. The unmoved mover may be regarded
as a final cause : it supplies a purpose for change, which is essentially
an evolution towards likeness with God.
I said that Aristotle was not by temperament deeply religious,
but this is only partly true. One could, perhaps, interpret one
aspect of his religion, somewhat freely, as follows:
God exists eternally, as pure thought, happiness, complete self-
fulfilment, without any unrealized purposes. The sensible world,
oo the contrary, is imperfect, but it has life, desire, thought of an
imperfect kind, and aspiration. All living things are in a greater
or less degree aware of God, and are moved to action by admira-
tion and love of God. Thus God is the final cause of all activity.
Change consists in giving form to matter, but, where sensible
191
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
things are concerned, a substratum of matter always remains.
Only God consists of form without matter. The world is con-
tinually evolving towards a greater degree of form, and thus
becoming progressively more like God. But the process cannot
be completed, because matter cannot be wholly eliminated. This
is a religion of progress and evolution, for God's static perfection
moves the world only through the love that finite beings feel for
Him. Plato was mathematical, Aristotle was biological; this
accounts for the differences in their religions.
This would, however, be a one-sided view of Aristotle's religion ;
he has also the Greek love of static perfection and preference for
contemplation rather than action. His doctrine of the soul
illustrates this aspect of his philosophy.
Whether Aristotle taught immortality in any form, or not, was
a vexed question among commentators. Avenoes, who held that
he did not, had followers in Christian countries, of whom the
more extreme were called Epicureans, and whom Dante found in
hell. In fact, Aristotle's doctrine is complex, and easily lends itself
to misunderstandings. In his book On the Soul, he regards the
soul as bound up with the body, and ridicules the Pythagorean
doctrine of transmigration (407*). The soul, it seems, perishes
with the body: "it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable
from its body" (4x3*); but he immediately adds: "or at any rate
certain parts of it are." Body and soul are related as matter and
form: "the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of
a material body having life potentially within it. But substance is
actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above charac-
terized" (412*). Soul "is substance in the sense which corresponds
to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means that it
is the 'essential whatness' of a body of the character just assigned1'
(i.e. having Hfe) (412*). The soul is the first grade of actuality of
a natural body having life potentially in it. The body so described
is a body which is organized (412*). To ask whether soul and body
are one is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape
given it by the stamp are one (412*). Self •nutrition is the only
psychic power possessed by plants (413'). The soul is the final
cause of the body (414").
In this book, he distinguishes between "soul" and "mind,"
making mind higher than soul, and less bound to the body. After
•peaking of the relation of soul and body, he says: "The case of
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ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance im-
planted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed"
(408*). Again: "We have no evidence as yet about mind or the
power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul,
differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is
capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers.
All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said,
are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of
separate existence** (413*). The mind is the part of us that under-
stands mathematics and philosophy; its objects are timeless, and
therefore it is regarded as itself timeless. The soul is what moves
the body and perceives sensible objects ; it is characterized by self-
nutrition, sensation, feeling, and motivity (413*); but the mind
has the higher function of thinking, which has no relation to the
body or to the senses. Hence the mind can be immortal, though
the rest of the soul cannot.
To understand Aristotle's doctrine of the soul, we must re-
member that the soul is the "form" of the body, and that spatial
shape is one kind of "form." What is there in common between
soul and shape? I think what is in common is the conferring of
unity upon a certain amount of matter. The part of a block of
marble which afterwards becomes a statue is, as yet, not separated
from the rest of the marble; it is not yet a "thing," and has not
yet any unity. After the sculptor has made the statue, it has unity,
which it derives from its shape. Now the essential feature of the
soul, in virtue of which it is the "form" of the body, is that it
makes the body an organic whole, having purposes as a unit. A
single organ has purposes lying outside itself; the eye, in isolation,
cannot see. Thus many things can be said in which an animal or
plant as a whole is the subject, which cannot be said about any
part of it. It is in this sense that organization, or form, confers
substantiality. That which confers substantiality upon a plant or
animal is what Aristotle calls its "soul/1 But "mind" is some-
thing different, less intimately bound up with the body; perhaps
it is a part of the soul, but it is possessed by only a small minority
of living beings (415"). Mind as speculation cannot be the cause
of movement, for it never thinks about what is practicable, and
never says what is to be avoided or what pursued (432*).
A similar doctrine, though with a slight change of terminology,
is set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics. There is in the soul one
Hukiry »/ H'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
element that is rational, and one that is irrational. The irrational
part is two-fold: the vegetative, which is found in everything
living, even in plants, and the appetitive, which exists in all
animals (1102*). The life of the rational soul consists in contem-
plation, which is the complete happiness of man though not fully
attainable. "Such a life would be too high for man; for it is not
in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something
divine is present in him ; and by so much as this is superior to our
composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the
exercise of the other kind of virtue (the practical kind). If reason
is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life in accordance
with it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not
follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things,
and being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can,
make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accord-
ance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk,
much more does it in power and worth surpass everything" ( 1 177').
It seems, from these passages, that individuality — what distin-
guishes one man from another — is connected with the body and
the irrational soul, while the rational soul or mind is divine and
impersonal. One man likes oysters, and another likes pineapples;
this distinguishes between them. But when they think about the
multiplication table, provided they think correctly, there is no
difference between them. The irrational separates us, the rational
unites us. Thus the immortality of mind or reason is not a personal
immortality of separate men, but a share in God's immortality.
It does not appear that Aristotle believed in personal immortality,
in the sense in which it was taught by Plato and afterwards by
Christianity. He believed only that, in so far as men are rational,
they partake of the divine, which is immortal. It is open to man
to increase the element of the divine in his nature, and to do so
is the highest virtue. But if he succeeded completely, he would
have ceased to exist as a separate person. This is perhaps not the
only possible interpretation of Aristotle's words, but I think it is
the most natural.
'94
Chapter XX
ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS
IN the corpus of Aristotle's works, three treatises on ethics have
a place, but two of these are now generally held to be by dis-
ciples. The third, the Nicomachean Ethics, remains for the most
part unquestioned as to authenticity, but even in this book there
is a portion (Books V, VI, and VII) which is held by many to have
been incorporated from one of the works of disciples. I shall,
however, ignore this controversial question, and treat the book as
a whole and as Aristotle's.
The views of Aristotle on ethics represent, in the main, the pre-
vailing opinions of educated and experienced men of his day.
They are not, like Plato's, impregnated with mystical religion; nor
do they countenance such unorthodox theories as are to be found
in the Republic concerning property and the family. Those who
neither fall below nor rise above the level of decent, well-behaved
citizens mil find in the Ethics a systematic account of the prin-
ciples by which they hold that their conduct should be regulated.
Those who demand anything more will be disappointed. The
book appeals to the respectable middle-aged, and has been used
by them, especially since the seventeenth century, to repress the
ardours and enthusiasms of the young. But to a man with any
depth of feeling it is likely to be repulsive.
The good, we are told, is happiness, which is an activity of the
soul. Aristotle says that Plato was right in dividing the soul into
two parts, one rational, the other irrational. The irrational part
itself he divides into the vegetative (which is found even in plants)
and the appetitive (which is found in all animals). The appetitive
part may be in some degree rational, when the goods that it seeks
arc such as reason approves of. This is essential to the account of
virtue, for reason alone, in Aristotle, is purely contemplative, and
docs not, without the help of appetite, lead to any practical
activity.
There are two kinds of virtues, intellectual and moral, corre-
sponding to the two parts of the soul. Intellectual virtues result
from teaching, moral virtues from habit. It is the business of the
legislator to make the citizens good by forming good habits. We
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
become just by performing just acts, and similarly as regards
other virtues. By being compelled to acquire good habits, we shall
in time, Aristotle thinks, come to find pleasure in performing good
actions. One is reminded of Hamlet's speech to his mother:
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel, yet in this
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on.
We now come to the famous doctrine of the golden mean.
Every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a
vice. This is proved by an examination of the various virtues.
Courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness; liberality,
between prodigality and meanness ; proper pride, between vanity
and humility; ready wit, between buffoonery and boorishness;
modesty, between bashfulness and shamelessness. Some virtues
do not seem to fit into this scheme; for instance, truthfulness.
Aristotle says that this is a mean between boastfulness and mock-
modesty (1108*), but this only applies to truthfulness about one-
self. I do not see how truthfulness in any wider sense can be fitted
into the scheme. There was once a mayor who had adopted
Aristotle's doctrine ; at the end of his term of office he made a
speech saying that he had endeavoured to steer the narrow line
between partiality on the one hand and impartiality on the other.
The view of truthfulness as a mean seems scarcely less absurd.
Aristotle's opinions on moral questions are always such as were
conventional in his day. On some points they differ from those of
our time, chiefly where some form of aristocracy comes in. We
think that human beings, at least in ethical theory, all have equal
rights, and that justice involves equality; Aristotle thinks that
justice involves, not equality, but right proportion, which is only
sometimes equality (1131*).
The justice of a master or a father is a different thing from that
of a citizen, for a son or slave is property, and there can be no
injustice to one's own property (i 134*). As regards stoves, however,
there is a slight modification of this doctrine in connection with
the question whether it is possible for a man to be a friend of his
slave: "There is nothing in common between the two parties; the
slave is a living tool. . . . Qua slave, then, one cannot be friends
196
ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS
with him. But qua man one can ; for there seems to be some justice
between any man and any other who can share in a system of
law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also be
friendship with him in so far as he is a man" (n6i6).
A father can repudiate his son if he is wicked, but a son cannot
repudiate his father, because he owes him more than he can pos-
sibly repay, especially existence (n636). In unequal relations, it is
right, since everybody should be loved in proportion to his worth,
that the inferior should love the superior more than the superior
loves the inferior: wives, children, subjects, should have more love
for husbands, parents, and monarchs than the latter have for
them. In a good marriage, "the man rules in accordance with
his worth, and in those matters in which a man should rule, but
the matters that befit a woman he hands over to her" (1160*).
He should not rule in her province; still less should she rule in
his, as sometimes happens when she is an heiress.
The best individual, as conceived by Aristotle, is a very different
person from the Christian saint. He should have proper pride, and
not underestimate his own merits. He should despise whoever
deserves to be despised (1124*). The description of the proud or
magnanimous man1 is very interesting as showing the difference
between pagan and Christian ethics, and the sense in which
Nietzsche was justified in regarding Christianity as a slave-
morality.
The magnanimous man, since he deserves most, must be good,
in the highest degree; for the better man always deserves more,
and the best man most. Therefore the truly magnanimous man
must be good. And greatness in every virtue would seem to be
characteristic of the magnanimous man. And it would be most
unbecoming for the magnanimous man to fly from danger,
swinging his arms by his sides, or to wrong another; for to what
end should he do disgraceful acts, he to whom nothing is great ?
. . . magnanimity, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the
virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without
them. Therefore it is hard to be truly magnanimous; for it is
1 The Greek word means, literally, "great-souled," and is usually
translated "magnanimous, " but the Oxford translation renders it "proud.*'
Neither word, in its modern usage, quite expresses Aristotle's meaning,
but 1 prefrr"magnaninu>us," and have therefore substituted it for'* proud"
in the above qtyotation from the Oxford translation.
"97
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
impossible without nobility and goodness of character. It is
chiefly with honours and dishonours, then, that the magnanimous
man is concerned; and at honours that are great and conferred
by good men he will be moderately pleased, thinking that he is
coming by his own or even less than his own; for there can be
no honour that is worthy of perfect virtue, yet he will at any rate
accept it since they have nothing greater to bestow on him ; but
honour from casual people and on trifling grounds he will utterly
despise, since it is not this that he deserves, and dishonour too,
since in his case it cannot be just. . . . Power and wealth arc
desirable for the sake of honour; and to him for whom even
honour is a little thing the others must be so too. Hence magnani-
mous men are thought to be disdainful. . . . The magnanimous
man does not run into trifling dangers, . . . but he will face great
dangers, and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life,
knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth
having. And he is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is
ashamed of receiving them; for the one is the mark of a superior,
the other of an inferior. And he is apt to confer greater benefits
in return; for thus the original benefactor besides being repaid
will incur a debt to him. ... It is the mark of the magnanimous
man to ask for nothing or scarcely anything, but to give help
readily, and to be dignified towards people who enjoy a hiuh
position but unassuming towards those of the middle class; for
it is a difficult and lofty thing to be superior to the former, but
easy to be so to the latter, and a lofty bearing over the former is
no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble people it is as vulgar
as a display of strength against the weak. ... lie must also be
open in his hate and in his love, for to conceal one's feelings,
i.e. to care less for truth than for what people think, is a coward's
part. . . . He is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and
he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony
to the vulgar. . . . Nor is he given to admiration, for to him nothing
is great. . . . Nor is he a gossip; for he will speak neither about
himself nor about another, since he cares not to be praised nor
for others to be blamed. ... He is one who will possess beautiful
and profitless things rather than profitable and useful ones, . . .
Further, a slow step is thought proper to the magnanimous man,
a deep voice, and a level utterance. . . . Such, then, is the magnani-
mous man; the man who falls short of him is unduly humble
and the man who goes beyond him is vain" (1123*-! 125*).
One shudders to think what a vain man would b? like.
Whatc/er may be thought of the magnanimous pun, one thing
ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS
is clear: there cannot be very many of him in a community. I do
not mean merely in the general sense in which there are not likely
to be many virtuous men, on the ground that virtue is difficult;
what I mean is that the virtues of the magnanimous man largely
depend upon his having an exceptional social position. Aristotle
considers ethics a branch of politics, and it is not surprising, after
his praise of pride, to find that he considers monarchy the best
form of government, and aristocracy the next best. Monarchs and
aristocrats can be "magnanimous," but ordinary citizens would
be laughable if they attempted to live up to such a pattern.
This brings up a question which is half ethical, half political.
Can we regard as morally satisfactory a community which, by its
essential constitution, confines the best things to a few, and
requires the majority to be content with the second-best? Plato
and Aristotle say yes, and Nietzsche agrees with them. Stoics,
Christians, and democrats say no. But there are great differences
in their ways of saying no. Stoics and early Christians consider
that the greatest pood is virtue, and that external circumstances
cannot prevent a man from being virtuous; there is therefore no
need to seek a just social system, since social injustice affects only
unimportant matters. The democrat, on the contrary, usually
holds that, at least so far as politics are concerned, the most
important goods are power and property; he cannot, therefore,
acquiesce in a social system which is unjust in these respects.
The Stoic-Christian view requires a conception of virtue very
different from Aristotle's, since it must hold that virtue is as
possible for the slave as for his master. Christian ethics dis-
approves of pride, which Aristotle thinks a virtue, and praises
humility, which he thinks a vice. The intellectual virtues, which
Plato and Aristotle value above all others, have to be thrust out
of the list altogether, in order that the poor and humble may be
able to be as virtuous as any one else. Pope Gregory the Great
solemnly reproved a bishop for teaching grammar.
The Aristotelian view, that the highest virtue is for the few, is
logically connected with the subordination of ethics to politics,
if the aim is the good community rather than the good individual,
it i« possible that the good community may be one in which there
is subordination. In an orchestra, the first violin is more important
than the oboe, though both arc necessary for the excellence of the
whole. It is impossible to organize an orchestra on the principle
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of giving to each man what would be best lor him as an isolated
individual. The same sort of thing applies to the government of a
large modern State, however democratic. A modern democracy
— unlike those of antiquity— confers great power upon certain
chosen individuals, Presidents or Prime Ministers, and must expect
of them kinds of merit which are not expected of the ordinary
citizen. When people are not thinking in terms of religion or
political controversy, they are likely to hold that a good President
is more to be honoured than a good bricklayer. In a democracy
a President is not expected to be quite like Aristotle's magnani-
mous man, but still he is expected to be rather different from the
average citizen, and to have certain merits connected with his
station. These peculiar merits would perhaps not be considered
"ethical,*1 but that is because we use this adjective in a narrower
sense than that in which it is used by Aristotle.
As a result of Christian dogma, the distinction between moral
and other merits has become much sharper than it was in Greek
times. It is a merit in a man to be a great poet or composer or
painter, but not a moral merit; we do not consider him the more
virtuous for possessing such aptitudes, or the more likely to go
to heaven. Moral merit is concerned solely with acts of will, i.e.
with choosing rightly among possible courses of action.1 I am not
to blame for not composing an opera, because I don't know how
to do it. The orthodox view is that, wherever two courses of action
are possible, conscience tells me which is right, and to choose the
other is sin. Virtue consists mainly in the avoidance of sin, rather
than in anything positive. There is no reason to expect an educated
man to be morally better than an uneducated man, or a clever
man than a stupid man. In this way, a number of merits of great
social importance are shut out from the realm of ethics. The
adjective "unethical," in modern usage, has a much narrower
range than the adjective "undesirable.11 It is undesirable to be
feeble-minded, but not unethical.
Many modern philosophers, however, have not accepted this
view of ethics. They have thought that one should first define the
good, and then say that our actions ought to be such as tend to
realize the good. This point of view is more like that of Aristotle,
who holds that happiness is the good. The highest happiness, it
1 It i* true that Aristotle also say* this (i 105'), but as he means it the
consequences are not so far-reaching as in the Christian interpretation.
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ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS
is true, is only open to the philosopher, but to Aristotle that is no
objection to the theory.
Ethical theories may be divided into two classes, according as
they regard virtue as an end or a means. Aristotle, on the whole,
takes the view that virtues are means to an end, namely happiness.
"The end, then, being what we wish for, the means what we
deliberate about and choose, actions concerning means must be
according to choice and voluntary. Now the exercise of the virtues
is concerned with means" (iii36). But there is another sense of
virtue in which it is included in the ends of action: "Human good
is activity of soul in accordance with virtue in a complete life"
(1098*). I think he would say that the intellectual virtues are ends,
but the practical virtues are only means. Christian moralists hold
that, while the consequences of virtuous actions are in general
good, they are not as good as the virtuous actions themselves,
which are to be valued on their own account, and not on account
of their effects. On the other hand, those who consider pleasure
the good regard virtues solely as means. Any other definition of
the good, except the definition as virtue, will have the same conse-
quence, that virtues are means to goods other than themselves.
On this question, Aristotle, as already said, agrees mainly, though
not wholly, with those who think the first business of ethics is to
define the good, and that virtue is to be defined as action tending
to produce the good.
The relation of ethics to politics raises another ethical question
of considerable importance. Granted that the good at which right
action should aim is the good of the whole community, or, ulti-
mately, of the whole human race, is this social good a sum of
goods enjoyed by individuals, or is it something belonging
essentially to the whole, not to the parts ? We may illustrate the
problem by the analogy of the human body. Pleasures are largely
associated with different parts of the body, but we consider them
as belonging to a person as a whole; we may enjoy a pleasant
smell, but we know that the nose alone could not enjoy it. Some
contend that, in a closely organized community, there are, analo-
gously, excellences belonging to the whole, but not to any part.
If they are metaphysicians, they may hold, like Hegel, that what-
ever quality is good is an attribute of the universe as a whole;
but they will generally add that it is less mistaken to attribute good
to a State thap to an individual. logically, the view may be put
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as follows. We can attribute to a State various predicates that
cannot be attributed to its separate members — that it is populous,
extensive, powerful, etc. The view we are considering puts ethical
predicates in this class, and says that they only derivatively belong
to individuals. A man may belong to a populous State, or to a
good State; but he, they say, is no more good than he is populous.
This view, which has been widely held by German philosophers,
is not Aristotle's, except possibly, in some degree, in his conception
of justice.
A considerable part of the Ethics is occupied with the discussion
of friendship, including all relations that involve affection. Perfect
friendship is only possible between the good, and it is impossible
to be friends with many people. One should not be friends with a
person of higher station than one's own, unless he is also of higher
virtue, which will justify the respect shown to him. \Ve have seen
that, in unequal relations, such as those of man and wife or father
and son, the superior should be the more loved. It is impossible
to be friends with God, because He cannot love us. Aristotle
discusses whether a man can be a friend to himself, and decides
that this is only possible if he is a good man; wicked men, he
asserts, often hate themselves. The good man should love himself,
but nobly (1169*). Friends are a comfort in misfortune, but one
should not make them unhappy by seeking their sympathy, as is
done by women and womanish men (1171*). It is not only in
misfortune that friends are desirable, for the happy man needs
friends with whom to share his happiness. "No one would choose
the whole world on condition of being alone, since man is a
political creature and one whose nature is to live with others"
(1169*). All that is said about friendship is sensible, but there is
not a word that rises above common sense.
Aristotle again shows his good sense in the discussion of pleasure,
which Plato had regarded somewhat ascetically. Pleasure, as
Aristotle uses the word, is distinct from happiness, though there
can be no happiness without pleasure. There are, he says, three
views of pleasure: (i) that it is never good; (2) that some pleasure-
is good, but most is bad; (3) that pleasure is good, but not the
best. He rejects the first of these on the ground that pain is cer-
tainly bad, and therefore pleasure must be good. He says, very
justly, that it is nonsense to say a man can be happy on the rack :
some degree of external good fortune is necessary for happiness.
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ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS
tie also disposes of the view that all pleasures are bodily ; all things
have something divine, and therefore some capacity for higher
pleasures. Good men have pleasure unless they are unfortunate,
and God always enjoys a single and simple pleasure (1152-1154).
There is another discussion of pleasure, in a later pan of the
book, which is not wholly consistent with the above. Here it is
argued that there are bad pleasures, which, however, are not
pleasures to pood people (1173*); that perhaps pleasures differ in
kind (ibid.) ; and that pleasures are good or bad according as they
are connected with good or bad activities (1175*). There are things
that are valued more than pleasure; no one would be content to
go through life with a child's intellect, even if it were pleasant to
do so. Each animal has its proper pleasure, and the proper pleasure
of man is connected with reason.
This leads on to the only doctrine in the book which is not mere
common sense. Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect
happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative. Con-
templation is preferable to war or politics or any other practical
career, because it allows leisure, and leisure is essential to happi-
ness. Practical virtue brings only a secondary kind of happiness;
the supreme happiness is in the exercise of reason, for reason,
more than anything else, is man. Man cannot be wholly contem-
plative, but in so far as he is so he shares in the divine life. "The
activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must
be contemplative." Of all human beings, the philosopher is the
most godlike in his activity, and therefore the happiest and best:
I Ic who exercises his reason and cultivates it seems to be both
in the be*»t state of mind and most dear to the gods. For if the gods
have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it
would be reasonable both that they should delight in that which
was best and most akin to them (i.e. reason) and that they should
reward those who love and honour this most, as caring for the
things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly.
And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher
is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who
is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way
too the philosopher will more than any other be happy (1179*).
This passage is virtually the peroration of the Ethics-, the few
paragraphs that follow are concerned with the transition to politics.
Let us now try to decide what we are to think of the merits and
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
demerits of the Ethics. Unlike many other subjects treated by
Greek philosophers, ethics has not made any definite advances,
in the sense of ascertained discoveries ; nothing in ethics is known
in a scientific sense. There is therefore no reason why an ancient
treatise on it should be in any respect inferior to a modern one.
When Aristotle talks about astronomy, we can say definitely that
he is wrong; but when he talks about ethics we cannot say, in
the same sense, either that he is wrong or that he is right. Broadly
speaking, there are three questions that we can ask about the
ethics of Aristotle, or of any other philosopher: (i) Is it internally
self-consistent? (2) Is it consistent with the remainder of the
author's views ? (3) Does it give answers to ethical problems that
are consonant to our own ethical feelings ? If the answer to cither
the first or second question is in the negative, the philosopher in
question has been guilty of some intellectual error. But if the
answer to the third question is in the negative, we have no right
to say that he is mistaken ; we have only the right to say that we
do not like him.
Let us examine these three questions in turn, as regards the
ethical theory set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics.
(1) On the whole, the book is self-consistent, except in a few
not very important respects. The doctrine that the good is happi-
ness, and that happiness consists in successful activity, is well
worked out. The doctrine that every virtue is a mean between
two extremes, though very ingeniously developed, is less successful,
since it does not apply to intellectual contemplation, which, we
are told, is the best of all activities. It can, however, be maintained
that the doctrine of the mean is only intended to apply to the
practical virtues, not to, those of the intellect. Perhaps, to take
another point, the position of the legislator is somewhat ambiguous.
He is to cause children and young people to acquire the habit of
performing good actions, which mil, in the end, lead them to find
pleasure in virtue, and to act virtuously without the need of legal
compulsion. It is obvious that the legislator might equally well
cause the young to acquire bad habits; if this is to be avoided, he
must have all the wisdom of a Platonic guardian ; and if it is not
avoided, the argument that a virtuous life is pleasant will fail.
This problem, however, belongs perhaps more to politics than
to ethics.
(2) Aristotle's ethics is, at all points, consistent with his meta-
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ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS
physics. Indeed, his metaphysical theories are themselves the
expression of an ethical optimism. He believes in the scientific
importance of final causes, and this implies the belief that purpose
governs the course of development in the universe. He thinks
that changes are, in the main, such as embody an increase of
organization or "form," and at bottom virtuous actions are those
that favour this tendency. It is true that a great deal of his practical
ethics is not particularly philosophical, but merely the result of
observation of human affairs ; but this part of his doctrine, though
it may be independent of his metaphysics, is not inconsistent
with it.
(3) When we come to compare Aristotle's ethical tastes with
our own, we find, in the first place, as already noted, an acceptance
of inequality which is repugnant to much modern sentiment.
Not only is there no objection to slavery, or to the superiority
of husbands and fathers over wives and children, but it is held
that what is best is essentially only for the few — magnanimous
men and philosophers. Most men, it would seem to follow, are
mainly means for the production of a few rulers and sages. Kant
maintained that every human being is an end in himself, and this
may be taken as an expression of the view introduced by Christi-
anity. There is, however, a logical difficulty in Kant's view, since
it gives no means of reaching a decision when two men's interests
clash. If each is an end in himself, how are we to arrive at a prin-
ciple for determining which shall give way? Such a principle
must have to do with the community rather than with the indi-
vidual. In the broadest sense of the word, it will have to be a
principle of "justice." Benthum and the utilitarians interpret
"justice" as "equality": when two men's interests clash, the right
course is that which produces the greatest total of happiness,
regardless of which of the two enjoys it, or how it is shared among
them. If more is given to the better man than to the worse, that
is because, in the long run, the general happiness is increased by
rewarding virtue and punishing vice, not because of an ultimate
ethical doctrine that the good deserve more than the bad. "Justice,"
in this view, consists in considering only the amount of happiness
involved, without favour to one individual or class as against
another. Greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, had
a different conception of justice, and it is one which is still widely
prevalent. They thought — originally on grounds derived from
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
religion — that each thing or person had its or his proper sphere,
to overstep which is "unjust." Some men, in virtue of their
character and aptitudes, have a wider sphere than others, and
there is no injustice if they enjoy a greater share of happiness.
This view is taken for granted in Aristotle, but its basis in primitive
religion, which is evident in the earliest philosophers, is no longer
apparent in his writings.
There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may
be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind,
in so far as he is aware of them do not move him emotionally;
he holds them, intellectually, to be an evil, but there is no evidence
that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen
to be his friends.
More generally, there is an emotional poverty in the Ethics,
which is not found in the earlier philosophers. There is something
unduly smug and comfortable about Aristotle's speculations on
human affairs; everything that makes men feel a passionate interest
in each other seems to be forgotten. Even his account of friend-
ship is tepid. He shows no sign of having had any of those experi-
ences which make it difficult to preserve sanity; all the more
profound aspects of the moral life are apparently unknown to him.
He leaves out, one may say, the whole sphere of human experi-
ence with which religion is concerned. What he ha,s to say is
what will be useful to comfortable men of weak passions; but he
has nothing to say to those who are possessed by a god or a devil,
or whom outward misfortune drives to despair. For these reasons,
in my judgment, his Ethics, in spite of its fame, is lacking in
intrinsic importance.
206
Chapter XXI
ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
ARISTOTLE'S Politics is both interesting and important —
interesting, as showing the common prejudices of educated
Greeks in his time, and important as a source of many prin-
ciples which remained influential until the end of the Middle
Ages. I do not think there is much in it that could be of any practical
use to a statesman of the present day, but there is a great deal
that throws light on the conflicts of parties in different parts of
the Hellenic world. There is not very much awareness of methods
of government in non-Hellenic States. There are, it is true,
allusions to Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and Carthage, but except in
the case of Carthage they are somewhat perfunctory. There is
no mention of Alexander, and not even the faintest awareness of
the complete transformation that he was effecting in the world.
The whole discussion is concerned with City States, and there is
no prevision of their obsolescence. Greece, owing to its division
into independent cities, was a laboratory of political experiment;
but nothing to which these experiments were relevant existed
from Aristotle's time until the rise of the Italian cities in the Middle
Ages. In many ways, the experience to which Aristotle appeals is
more relevant to the comparatively modern world than to any
that existed for fifteen hundred years after the book was written.
There are many pleasant incidental remarks, some of which
may be noted before we embark upon political theory. We are
told that Euripides, when he was staying at the court of Archelaus,
King of Macedon, was accused of halitosis by a certain Decam-
nichus. To soothe his fury, the king gave him permission to
scourge Decarnnichus, which he did. Decamnichus, after waiting
many years, joined in a successful plot to kill the king; but by
this time Euripides was dead. We are told that children should
be conceived in winter, when the wind is in the north ; that there
must be a careful avoidance of indecency, because "shameful
words lead to shameful acts," and that obscenity is never to be
tolerated except in temples, where the law permits even ribaldry.
People should not marry too young, because, if they do, the
children will be weak and female, the wives will become wanton,
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and the husbands stunted in their growth. The right age for
marriage is thirty-seven in men, eighteen in women.
We learn how Thales, being taunted with his poverty, bought up
all the olive-presses on the instalment plan, and was then able to
charge monopoly rates for their use. This he did to show that
philosophers can make money, and, if they remain poor, it is
because they have something more important than wealth to
think about. All this, however, is by the way ; it is time to come to
more serious matters.
The book begins by pointing out the importance of the State ;
it is the highest kind of community, and aims at the highest good.
In order of time, the family comes first ; it is built on the two
fundamental relations of man and woman, master and slave, both
of which are natural. Several families combined make a village ;
several villages, a State, provided the combination is nearly large
enough to be self-sufficing. The State, though later in time than
the family, is prior to it, and even to the individual, by nature;
for "what each thing is when fully developed we call its nature/'
and human society, fully developed, is a State, and the whole
is prior to the part. The conception involved here is that of
organism: a hand, when the body is destroyed, is, we are told, no
longer a hand. The implication is that a hand is to be defined by
its purpose — that of grasping — which it can only perform when
joined to a living body. In like manner an individual cannot fulfil
his purpose unless he is part of a State. He who founded the
State, Aristotle says, was the greatest of benefactors; for without
law man is the worst of animals, and law depends for its existence
on the State. The State is not a mere society for exchange and the
prevention of crime: "The end of the State is the good life.
. . . And the State is the union of families and villages in a
perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and
honourable life" (1280*). "A political society exists for the sake
of noble actions, not of mere companionship" (1281°).
A State being composed of households, each of which consists
of one family, the discussion of politics should begin with the
family. The bulk of this discussion is concerned with slavery —
for in antiquity the slaves were always reckoned as pan of the
family. Slavery is expedient and right, but the slave should be
naturally inferior to the master. From birth, some are marked out
for subjection, others for rule; the man who is by nature not his
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ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
own but another man's is by nature a slave. Slaves should not be
Greeks, but of an inferior race with less spirit (1255* and 1330*).
Tame animals are better off when ruled by man, and so are those
who are naturally inferior when ruled by their superiors. It may
be questioned whether the practice of making slaves out of
prisoners of war is justified ; power, such as leads to victory in
war, seems to imply superior virtue, but this is not always the
case. War, however, is just when waged against men who, though
intended by nature to be governed, will not submit (1256*); and
in this case, it is implied, it would be right to make slaves of the
conquered. This would seem enough to justify any conqueror who
ever lived ; for no nation will admit that it is intended by nature to
be governed, and the only evidence as to nature's intentions
must be derived from the outcome of war. In every war, therefore,
the victors are in the right and the vanquished in the wrong.
Very satisfactory !
Next comes a discussion of trade, which profoundly influenced
scholastic casuistry. There are two uses of a thing, one proper,
the other improper; a shoe, for instance, may be worn, which is
its proper use, or exchanged, which is its improper use. It follows
that there is something degraded about a shoemaker, who must
exchange his shoes in order to live. Retail trade, we are told, is
not a natural part of the art of getting wealth (1257*). The natural
way to get wealth is by skilful management of house and land.
To the wealth that can be made in this way there is a limit, but
to what can be made by trade there is none. Trade has to do with
money, but wealth is not the acquisition of coin. Wealth derived
from trade is justly hated, because it is unnatural. "The most
hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes
a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it.
For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase
at interest. ... Of all modes of getting wealth this is the most
unnatural" (1258).
What came of this dictum you may read in Tawney's Religion
and the Rise oj Capitalism. But while his history is reliable, his
comment has a bias in favour of what is pre-capitalistic.
44 Usury" means all lending money at interest, not only, as now,
lending at an exorbitant rate. From Greek times to the present
day, mankind, or at least the economically more developed
portion of them, have been divided into debtors and creditors;
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
debtors have disapproved of interest, and creditors have approved
of it. At most times, landowners have been debtors, while men
engaged in commerce have been creditors. The views of philo-
sophers, with few exceptions, have coincided with the pecuniary
interests of their class. Greek philosophers belonged to, or were
employed by, the landowning class; they therefore disapproved
of interest. Medieval philosophers were churchmen, and the
property of the Church was mainly in land ; they therefore saw
no reason to revise Aristotle's opinion. Their objection to usury
was reinforced by anti-Semitism, for most fluid capital was
Jewish. Ecclesiastics and barons had their quarrels, sometimes
very bitter; but they could combine against the wicked Jew who
had tided them over a bad harvest by means of a loan, and con-
sidered that he deserved some reward for his thrift.
With the Reformation, the situation changed. Many of the
most earnest Protestants were business men, to whom lending
money at interest was essential. Consequently first Calvin, and
then other Protestant divines, sanctioned interest. At last the
Catholic Church was compelled to follow suit, because the old
prohibitions did not suit the modern world. Philosophers, whose
incomes are derived from the investments of universities, have
favoured interest ever since they ceased to be ecclesiastics and
therefore connected with landowning. At every stage, theie has
been a wealth of theoretical argument to support the economically
convenient opinion.
Plato's Utopia is criticized by Aristotle on various grounds.
There is first the very interesting comment that it gives too much
unity to the State, and would make it into an individual. Next
comes the kind of argument against the proposed abolition of the
family that naturally occurs to every reader. Plato thinks that, by
merely giving the title of "son'* to all who are of an age that makes
their sonship possible, a man will acquire towards the whole
multitude the sentiments that men have at present towards their
actual sons, and correlatively as regards the title "father/* Aristotle,
on the contrary, says that what is common to the greatest number
receives the least care, and that if "sons'1 are common to many
"fathers" they will be neglected in common; it is better to be
a cousin in reality than a "son" in Plato's sense ; Plato's plan would
make love watery. Then there is a curious argument that, since
abstinence from adultery is a virtue, it would be a pity to have
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ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
a social system which abolishes this virtue and the correlative
vice (1263*). Then we are asked: if women are common, who
will manage the house ? I wrote an essay once, called "Architecture
and the Social System," in which I pointed out that all who
combine communism with abolition of the family also advocate
communal houses for large numbers, with communal kitchens,
dining-rooms, and nurseries. This system may be described as
monasteries without celibacy. It is essential to the carrying out of
Plato's plans, but it is certainly not more impossible than many
other things that he recommends.
Plato's communism annoys Aristotle. It would lead, he says,
to anger against lazy people, and to the sort of quarrels that are
common between fellow-travellers. It is better if each minds his
own business. Property should be private, but people should be
so trained in benevolence as to allow the use of it to be largely
common. Benevolence and generosity are virtues, and without
pr vate property they are impossible. Finally we are told that, if
Plato's plans were good, someone would have thought of them
sooner.1 I do not agree with Plato, but if anything could make
me do so, it would be Aristotle's arguments against him.
As we have seen in connection with slavery, Aristotle is no
Miever in equality. Granted, however, the subjection of slaves
and women, it still remains a question whether all citizens should
be politically equal. Some men, he says, think this desirable, on
the ground that all revolutions turn on the regulation of property,
lie rejects this argument, maintaining that the greatest crimes
are due to excess rather than want ; no man becomes a tyrant in
order to avoid feeling the cold.
A government is good when it aims at the good of the whole
community, bad when it cares only for itself. There are three kinds
of government that are good: monarchy, aristocracy, and consti-
tutional government (or polity); there are three that are bad:
tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. There are also many mixed
intermediate forms. It will be observed that the good and bad
governments are defined by the ethical qualities of the holders of
power, not by the form of the constitution. This, however, is
1 Ct. Tlit Noodle's Oration in Sydney Smith; "If the proposal be
bound, would the Saxon have passed it by ? Would the Dane have ignored
it? Would it have escaped the wisdom of the Norman?" (I quote from
memory. )
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
only partly true. An aristocracy is a rule of men of virtue, an
oligarchy is a rule of the rich, and Aristotle does not consider
virtue and wealth strictly synonymous. What he holds, in accord-
ance with the doctrine of the golden mean, is that a moderate
competence is most likely to be associated with virtue: "Mankind
do not acquire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods,
but external goods by the help of virtue, and happiness, whether
consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found
with those who are most highly cultivated in their mind and in
their character, and have only a moderate share of external poods,
than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent
but are deficient in higher qualities*' (1323* and ')- There is
therefore a difference between the rule of the best (aristocracy)
and of the richest (oligarchy), since the best are likely to have
only moderate fortunes. There is also a difference between demo-
cracy and polity, in addition to the ethical difference in the govern-
ment, for what Aristotle calls "polity" retains some oligarchic
elements (1293*). But between monarchy and tyranny the only
difference is ethical.
He is emphatic in distinguishing oligarchy and democracy by
the economic status of the governing party: there is oligarchy
when the rich govern without consideration for the poor, demo-
cracy when power is in the hands of the needy and they disregard
the interest of the rich.
Monarchy is better than aristocracy, aristocracy is better than
polity. But the corruption of the best is worst ; therefore tyranny
is worse than oligarchy, and oligarchy than democracy. In this
way Aristotle arrives at a qualified defence of democracy; for
most Actual governments are bad, and therefore, among actual
governments, democracies tend to be best.
The Greek conception of democracy was in many ways more
extreme than ours; for instance, Aristotle says that to elect magis-
trates is oligarchic, while it is democratic to appoint them by lot.
In extreme democracies, the assembly of the citizens was above the
law, and decided each question independently. The Athenian
law-courts were composed of a large number of citizens chosen
by lot, unaided by any jurist ; they were, of course, liable to be
swayed by eloquence or party passion. When democracy is
criticized, it must be understood that this sort of thing is
meant.
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ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
There is a long discussion of causes of revolution. In Greece,
revolutions were as frequent as formerly in Latin America, and
therefore Aristotle had a copious experience from which to draw
inferences. The main cause was the conflict of oligarchs and
democrats. Democracy, Aristotle says, arises from the belief that
men who are equally free should be equal in all respects; oligarchy,
from the fact that men who are superior in some respect claim
too much. Both have a kind of justice, but not the best kind.
"Therefore both parties, whenever their share in the government
does not accord with their preconceived ideas, stir up revolution"
(1301*). Democratic governments are less liable to revolutions
than oligarchies, because oligarchs may fall out with each other.
The oligarchs seem to have been vigorous fellows. In some cities,
we are told, they swore an oath : "I will be an enemy to the people,
and will devise all the harm against them which I can." Nowadays
reactionaries are not so frank.
The three things needed to prevent revolution are government
propaganda in education, respect for law, even in small things,
and justice in law and administration, i.e., "equality according
to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own" (1307*,
I3°7b^ *310*)' Aristotle never seems to have realized the difficulty
of "equality according to proportion." If this is to be true justice,
the proportion must be of virtue. Now virtue is difficult to measure,
and is a matter of party controversy. In political practice, therefore,
virtue tends to be measured by income; the distinction between
aristocracy and oligarchy, which Aristotle attempts to make, is
only possible where there is a very well-established hereditary
nobility. Even then, as soon as there exists a large class of rich
men who are not noble, they have to be admitted to power for
fear of their making a revolution. Hereditary aristocracies cannot
long retain their power except where land is almost the only
source of wealth. All social inequality, in the long run, is inequality
of income. That is part of the argument for democracy: that the
attempt to have a "proportionate justice" based on any merit
other than wealth is sure to break down. Defenders of oligarchy
pretend that income is proportional to virtue; the prophet said
he had never seen a righteous man begging his bread, and Aristotle
thinks that good men acquire just about his own income, neither
very large nor very small. But such views are absurd. Eveiy kind
of 4 'justice" other than absolute equality will, in practice, reward
"3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
some quality quite other than virtue, and is therefore to be
condemned.
There is an interesting section on tyranny. A tyrant desires
riches, whereas a king desires honour. The tyrant has guards who
are mercenaries, whereas the king has guards who are citizens.
Tyrants are mostly demagogues, who acquire power by promising
to protect the people against the notables. In an ironically Machia-
vellian tone, Aristotle explains what a tyrant must do to retain
power. He must prevent the rise of any person of exceptional
merit, by execution or assassination if necessary. He must prohibit
common meals, clubs, and any education likely to produce hostile
sentiment. There must be no literary assemblies or discussions.
He must prevent people from knowing each other well, and
compel them to live in public at his gates. He should employ
spies, like the female detectives at Syracuse. He must sow quarrels,
and impoverish his subjects. He should keep them occupied in
great works, as the king of Egypt did in getting the pyramids
built. He should give power to women and slaves, to make them
informers. He should make war, in order that his subjects may
have something to do and be always in want of a leader (131 3'
and *).
It is a melancholy reflection that this passage is, of the whole
book, the one most appropriate to the present day. Aristotle
concludes that there is no wickedness too great for a tyrant. There-
is, however, he says, another method of preserving a tyranny,
namely by moderation and by seeming religious. There is no
decision as to which method is likely to prove the more successful.
There is a long argument to prove that foreign conquest is not
the end of the State, showing that many people took the imperialist
view. There is, it is true, an exception: conquest of "natural
slaves" is right and just. This would, in Aristotle's view, justify
wars against barbarians, but not against Greeks, for no Greeks
are '"natural slaves." In general, war is only a means, not an end;
a city in an isolated situation, where conquest is not possible,
may be happy; States that live in isolation need not be inactive.
God and the universe are active, though foreign conquest is
impossible for them. The happiness that a State should seek,
therefore, though war may sometimes be a necessary means to it,
should not be war, but the activities of peace.
This leads to the question : how large should a State be ? Large
ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
cities, we are told, are never well governed, because a great multi-
tude cannot be orderly. A State ought to be large enough to be
more or less self-sufficing, but not too large for constitutional
government. It ought to be small enough for the citizens to know
each other's characters, otherwise right will not be done in elections
and law-suits. The territory should be small enough to be surveyed
in its entirety from a hill-top. We are told both that it should be
self-sufficient (1326*) and that it should have an export and
import trade (1327*), which seems an inconsistency.
Men who work for their living should not be admitted to citizen-
ship. " Citizens should not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen,
for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue." Nor should they
be husbandmen, because they need leisure. The citizens should
own the property, but the husbandmen should be slaves of a
different race (1330°). Northern races, we are told, are spirited;
southern races, intelligent ; therefore slaves should be of southern
races, since it is inconvenient if they are spirited. The Greeks
alone are both spirited and intelligent ; they are better governed
than barbarians, and if united could rule the world (1327*). One
might have expected at this point some allusion to Alexander,
but there is none.
With regard to the size of States, Aristotle makes, on a different
scale, the same mistake that is made by many modern liberals.
A State must be able to defend itself in war, and even, if any
liberal culture is to survive, to defend itself without very great
difficulty. I low large this requires a State to be, depends upon the
technique of war and industry. In Aristotle's day, the City State
was obsolete because it could not defend itself against Macedonia.
In our day, Greece as a whole, including Macedonia, is obsolete
in this sense, as has been recently proved.1 To advocate complete
independence for Greece, or any other small country, is now as
futile as to advocate complete independence for a single city,
whose territory can be seen entire from an eminence. There can
be no true independence except for a State or alliance strong
enough, by its own efforts, to repel all attempts at foreign conquest.
Nothing smaller than America and the British Empire combined
will satisfy this requirement; and perhaps even this would be
too small a unit.
The book, which, in the form in which we have it, appears to
1 Thh was written in May, 194".
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
be unfinished, ends with a discussion of education. Education,
of course, is only for children who are going to be citizens ; slaves
may be taught useful arts, such as cooking, but these are no part
of education. The citizen should be moulded to the form of
government under which he lives, and there should therefore be
differences according as the city in question is oligarchic or
democratic. In the discussion, however, Aristotle assumes that
the citizens will all have a share of political power. Children
should learn what is useful to them, but not vulgarizing; for
instance, they should not be taught any skill that deforms the
body, or that would enable them to earn money. They should
practise athletics in moderation, but not to the point of acquiring
professional skill; the boys who train for the Olympic games
suffer in health, as is shown by the fact that those who have been
victors as boys are hardly ever victors as men. Children should
learn drawing, in order to appreciate the beauty of the human
form; and they should be taught to appreciate such painting and
sculpture as expresses moral ideas. They may learn to sing and to
play musical instruments enough to be able to enjoy music
critically, but not enough to be skilled performers ; for no freeman
would play or sing unless drunk. They must of course, learn to
read and write, in spite of the usefulness of these arts. But the
purpose of education is "virtue," not usefulness. What Aristotle
means by "virtue" he has told us in the Ethics, to which this book
frequently refers.
Aristotle's fundamental assumptions, in his Politics, are very
different from those of any modern writer. The aim of the State,
in his view, is to produce cultured gentlemen — men who combine
the aristocratic mentality with love of learning and the arts
This combination existed, in its highest perfection, in the Athens
of Pericles, not in the population at large, but among the well-
to-do. It began to break down in the last years of Pericles. The
populace, who had no culture, turned against the friends of
Pericles, who were driven to defend the privileges of the rich,
by treachery, assassination, illegal despotism, and other such
not very gentlemanly methods. After the death of Socrates,
the bigotry of the Athenian democracy diminished, and Athens
remained the centre of ancient culture, but political power went
elsewhere. Throughout later antiquity, power and culture were
usually separate: power was in the hands of rough soldiers,
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ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
culture belonged to powerless Greeks, often slaves. This is only
partially true of Rome in its great days, but it is emphatically
true before Cicero and after Marcus Aurelius. After the barbarian
invasion, the "gentlemen" were northern barbarians, the men
of culture subtle southern ecclesiastics. This state of affairs
continued, more or less, until the Renaissance, when the laity
began to acquire culture. From the Renaissance onwards, the
Creek conception of government by cultured gentlemen gradually
prevailed more and more, reaching its acme in the eighteenth
century.
Various forces have put an end to this state of affairs. First,
democracy, as embodied in the French Revolution and its after-
math. The cultured gentlemen, as after the age of Pericles, had
to defend their privileges against the populace, and in the process
ceased to he either gentlemen or cultured. A second cause was
the rise of industrialism, with a scientific technique very different
from traditional culture. A third cause was popular education,
which conferred the power to read and write, but did not confer
culture; this enabled a new type of demagogue to practise a new
type of propaganda, as seen in the dictatorships.
Both for good and evil, therefore, the day of the cultured
gentleman is past.
-21"
Chapter XXII
ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC
ARISTOTLE'S influence, which was very great in many
different fields, was greatest of all in logic. In late antiquity,
when Plato was still supreme in metaphysics, Aristotle was
the recognized authority in logic, and he retained this position
throughout the Middle Ages. It was not till the thirteenth century
that Christian philosophers accorded him supremacy in the field
of metaphysics. This supremacy was largely lost after the Renais-
sance, but his supremacy in logic survived. Even at the present
day, all Catholic teachers of philosophy and many others still
obstinately reject the discoveries of modern logic, and adhere
with a strange tenacity to a system which is as definitely antiquated
as Ptolemaic astronomy. This makes it difficult to do historical
justice to Aristotle. His present-day influence is so inimical to
clear thinking that it is hard to remember how great an advance
he made upon all his predecessors (including Plato), or how
admirable his logical work would still seem if it had been a stage
in a continual progress, instead of being (as in fact it was) a dead
end, followed by over two thousand years of stagnation. In dealing
with the predecessors of Aristotle, it is not necessary to remind
the reader that they are not verbally inspired; one can therefore
praise them for their ability without being supposed to subscrilxr
to all their doctrines. Aristotle, on the contrary, is still, especially
in logic, a battle-ground, and cannot be treated in a purely his-
torical spirit.
Aristotle's most important work in logic is the doctrine of the
syllogism. A syllogism is an argument consisting of three parts, a
major premiss, a minor premiss, and a conclusion. Syllogisms
are of a number of different kinds, each of which has a name,
given by the scholastics. The most familiar ts the kind called
"Barbara":
All men are mortal (Major premiss).
Socrates is a man (Minor premiss).
Therefore: Socrates is mortal (Conclusion)
21*
ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC
Or: all men are mortal.
AH Greeks are men.
Therefore: All Greeks are mortal.
(Aristotle docs not distinguish between these two forms; this, as
we shall sec later, is a mistake.)
Other forms are: No fishes are rational, oil sharks are fishes,
therefore no sharks are rational. (This is called "Celarent.")
All men are rational, some animals are men, therefore some
animals are rational. (This is called "Darii.")
No Greeks are black, some men are Greeks, therefore some men
are not black. (This is called "Ferio.") x
These four make up the "first figure"; Aristotle adds a second
and third figure, and the schoolmen added a fourth. It is *hown
that the three later figures can be reduced to the first by various
devices.
There are some inferences that can be made from a single
premiss. From "some men are mortal" we can infer that "some
mortals are men." According to Aristotle, this can be also inferred
from "all men are mortal." From "no gods are mortal" we can
infer "no mortals are gods," but from "some men are not Greeks"
it does not follow that "some Greeks are not men."
Apart from such inferences as the above, Aristotle and his
followers thought that all deductive inference, when strictly
stated, is syllogistic. By setting forth all the valid kinds of syllogism,
and setting out any suggested argument in syllogistic form, it
should therefore be possible to avoid all fallacies.
This system was the beginning of formal logic, and, as such, was
both important and admirable. But considered as the end, not the
beginning, of formal logic, it is open to three kinds of criticism:
(1) Formal defects within the system itself.
(2) Over-estimation of the syllogism, as compared to other
forms of deductive argument.
(3) Over-estimation of deduction as a- form of argument.
On each of these three, something must be said.
(i) Formal defect*. Ix?t us begin with the two statements
"Socrates is a man" and "all Greeks are men." It is necessary to
make a sharp distinction between these two, which is not done
in Aristotelian logic. The statement "all Greeks arc men" is
commonly interpreted ss implying that there are Greeks: without
219
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
this implication, some of Aristotle's syllogisms are not valid.
Take for instance:
"All Greeks are men, All Greeks are white, therefore some
men are white." This is valid if there are Greeks, but not otherwise.
If I were to say :
"All golden mountains are mountains, all golden mountains
are golden, therefore some mountains are golden," my conclusion
would be false, though in some sense my premisses would be
true. If we are to be explicit, we must therefore divide the one
statement "all Greeks are men" into two, one saying "there are
Greeks," and the other saying "if anything is a Greek it is a man."
The latter statement is purely hypothetical, and does not imply
that there are Greeks.
The statement "all Greeks are men" is thus much more
complex in form than the statement "Socrates is a man."
"Socrates is a man" has "Socrates" for its subject, but "all
Greeks are men" does not have "all Greeks" for its subject,
for there is nothing about "all Greeks" either in the statement
"there are Greeks," or in the statement "if anything is a Greek it
is a man."
This purely formal error was a source of errors in metaphysics
and theory of knowledge. Consider the state of our knowledge in
regard to the two propositions "Socrates is mortal" and "all men
are mortal." In order to know the truth of "Socrates is mortal,"
most of us are content to rely upon testimony ; but if testimony
is to be reliable, it must lead us back to some one who knew
Socrates and saw him dead. The one perceived fact — the dead
body of Socrates — together with the knowledge that this was
called "Socrates," was enough to assure us of the mortality
of Socrates. But when it comes to "all men are mortal," the
matter is different. The question of our knowledge of such
general propositions is a very difficult one. Sometimes they are
merely verbal: "all Greeks are men" is known because nothing
is called "a Greek" unless it is a man. Such general statements
can be ascertained from the dictionary ; they tell us nothing about
the world except how words are used. But "all men are mortal"
is not of this sort; there is nothing logically self-contradictory
about an immortal man. We believe the proposition on the basis
of induction, because there is no well-authenticated case of a
man living more than (say) 150 years; but this only makes the
220
ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC
proposition probable, not certain. It cannot be certain so long as
living men exist.
Metaphysical errors arose through supposing that "all men" is
the subject of "all men are mortal" in the same sense as that in
which "Socrates" is the subject of "Socrates is mortal." It made
it possible to hold that, in some sense, "all men" denotes an entity
of the same sort as that denoted by "Socrates." This led Aristotle
to say that in a sense a species is a substance. He is careful to
qualify this statement, but his followers, especially Porphyry,
showed less caution.
Another error into which Aristotle falls through this mistake
is to think that a predicate of a predicate can be a predicate of
the original subject. If I say "Socrates is Greek, all Greeks are
human," Aristotle thinks that "human" is a predicate of "Greek,"
while "Greek" is a predicate of "Socrates," and obviously "human"
is a predicate of "Socrates." But in fact "human" is not a predicate
of "Greek." The distinction between names and predicates, or
in metaphysical language, between particulars and universals,
is thus blurred, with disastrous consequences to philosophy. One
of the resulting confusions was to suppose that a class with only
one member is identical with that one member. This made it
impossible to have a correct theory of the number one, and led
to endless bad metaphysics about unity.
(2) Over-estimation of tlie syllogism. The syllogism is only one
kind of deductive argument. In mathematics, which is wholly
deductive, syllogisms hardly ever occur. Of course, it would be
possible to re-write mathematical arguments in syllogistic form,
but this would he very artificial and would not make them any
more cogent. Take arithmetic, for example. If I buy goods worth
1 6s. 3d., and tender a £1 note in payment, how much change
is due to me ? To put this simple sum in the form of a syllogism
would be absurd, and would tend to conceal the real nature of
the argument. Again, within logic there are non-syllogistic
inferences such as: "A horse is an animal, therefore a horse's
head is an animal's head." Valid syllogisms, in fact, are only
some among valid deductions, and have no logical priority over
others. The attempt to give pre-eminence to the syllogism in
deduction misled philosophers as to the nature of mathematical
reasoning. Kant, who perceived that mathematics is not syllogistic,
inferred that it uses extra-logical principles, which, however, he
221
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
supposed to be as certain as those of logic. He, like his predecessors,
though in a different way, was misled by respect for Aristotle.
(3) Over -estimation of deduction. The Greeks in general attached
more importance to deduction as a source of knowledge than
modern philosophers do. In this respect, Aristotle was less at
fault than Plato ; he repeatedly admitted the importance of induc-
tion, and he devoted considerable attention to the question : how
do we know the first premisses from which deduction must start ?
Nevertheless, he, like other Greeks, gave undue prominence to
deduction in his theory of knowledge. We shall agree that Mr.
Smith (say) is mortal, and we may, loosely, say that we know this
because we know that all men are mortal. But what we really
know is not "all men are mortal"; we know mther something
like "all men born more than one hundred and fifty years ago are
mortal, and so are almost all men born more than one hundred
years ago." This is our reason for thinking that Mr. Smith will
die. But this argument is an induction, not a deduction. It has
less cogency than a deduction, and yields only a probability, not
a certainty; but on the other hand it gives new knowledge, which
deduction does not. All the important inferences outside logic and
pure mathematics are inductive, not deductive; the only excep-
tions are law and theology, each of which derives its first prin-
ciples from an unquestionable text, viz. the statute hooks 01 the
scriptures.
Apart from The Prior Analytics, which deals with the syllogism
there are other logical writings of Aristotle which have con-
siderable importance in the history of philosophy. One of these
is the short work on The Categories. Porphyry the Neoplatonist
wrote a commentary on this book, which had a very notable
influence on medieval philosophy; but for the present let us
ignore Porphyry and confine ourselves to Aristotle.
What, exactly, is meant by the word "category/* whether in
Aristotle or in Kant and Hegel, I must confess that I have never
been able to understand. I do not myself believe that the term
"category" is in any way useful in philosophy, as representing
any clear idea. There are, in Aristotle, ten categories: substance,
quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action,
and affection. The only definition offered of the term "category "
is: "expressions which are in no way composite signify" — and
then follows the above list. This seems to mean that every word
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ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC
of which the meaning is not compounded of the meanings of
other words signifies a substance or a quantity or etc. There is
no suggestion of any principle on which the list of ten categories
has been compiled.
"Substance" is primarily what is not predicable of a subject nor
present in a subject. A thing is said to be "present in a subject"
when, though not a part of the subject, it cannot exist without
the subject. The instances given are a piece of grammatical
knowledge which is present in a mind, and a certain whiteness
which may be present in a body. A substance in the above primary
sense is an individual thing or person or animal. But in a secondary
sense a species or a genus — e.g. "man" or "animal" — may be
called a substance. This secondary sense seems indefensible,
and opened the door, in later writers, to much bad metaphysics.
The Posterior Analytics is a work largely concerned with a
question which must trouble any deductive theory, namely: How
are first premisses obtained? Since deduction must start from
somewhere, we must begin with something unproved, which
must be known otherwise than by demonstration. I shall not give
Aristotle's theory in detail, since it depends upon the notion of
essence. A definition, he says, is a statement of a thing's essential
nature. The notion of essence is an intimate part of every philo-
sophy subsequent to Aristotle, until we come to modern times.
It is, in my opinion, a hopelessly muddle-headed notion, but its
historical importance requires us to say something about it.
The "essence" of a thing appears to have meant "those of its
properties which it cannot change without losing its identity."
Socrates may be sometimes happy, sometimes sad; sometimes
well, sometimes ill. Since he can change these properties without
ceasing to be Socrates, they are no part of his essence. But it is
supposed to be of the essence of Socrates that he is a man, though
a Pythagorean, who believes in transmigration, will not admit
this. In fact, the question of "essence" is one as to the use of
words. We apply the same name, on different occasions, to
somewhat different occurrences, which .we regard as manifesta-
tions of a single "thing" or "person." In fact, however, this is
only a verbal convenience. The "essence" of Socrates thus consists
of those properties in the absence of which we should not use the
name "Socrates." The question is purely linguistic: a word may
have an essence, but a thing cannot.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The conception of "substance," like that of "essence,11 is a
transference to metaphysics of what is only a linguistic convenience.
We find it convenient, in describing the world, to describe a
certain number of occurrences as events in the life of "Socrates,"
and a certain number of others as events in the life of "Mr. Smith."
This leads us to think of "Socrates" or "Mr. Smith" as denoting
something that persists through a certain number of years, and
as in some way more "solid" and "real" than the events that
happen to him. If Socrates is ill, we think that Socrates, at other
times, is well, and therefore the being of Socrates is independent
of his illness; illness, on the other hand, requires somebody to
be ill. But although Socrates need not be ill, something must be
occurring to him if he is to be considered to exist. He is not,
therefore, really any more "solid" than the things that happen
to him.
"Substance," when taken seriously, is a concept impossible to
free from difficulties. A substance is supposed to be the subject
of properties, and to be something distinct from all its properties.
But when we take away the properties, and try to imagine the
substance by itself, we find that there is nothing left. To put the
matter in another way: What distinguishes one substance from
another? Not difference of properties, for, according to the logic
of substance, difference of properties presupposes numerical
diversity between the substances concerned. Two substances,
therefore, must be just two, without being, in themselves, in any
way distinguishable. How, then, are we ever to find out that
they are two ?
"Substance," in fact, is merely a convenient way of collecting
events into bundles. What can we know about Mr. Smith? When
we look at him, we see a pattern of colours ; when we listen to him
talking, we hear a series of sounds. We believe that, like us, he has
thoughts and feelings. But what is Mr. Smith apart from all these
occurrences? A mere imaginary hook, from which the occurrences
are supposed to hang. They have in fact no need of a hook, any
more than the earth needs an elephant to rest upon. Any one
can see, in the analogous case of a geographical region, that such
a word as "France" (say) is only a linguistic convenience, and that
there is not a thing called "France" over and above its various
parts. The same holds of "Mr. Smith"; it is a collective name
for a number of occurrences. If we take it as anything more, it
224
ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC
denotes something completely unknowable, and therefore not
needed for the expression of what we know.
"Substance," in a word, is a metaphysical mistake, due to
transference to the world-structure of the structure of sentences
composed of a subject and a predicate.
I conclude that the Aristotelian doctrines with which we have
been concerned in this chapter are wholly false, with the exception
of the formal theory of the syllogism, which is unimportant.
Any person in the present day who wishes to learn logic will be
wasting his time if he reads Aristotle or any of his disciples.
None the less, Aristotle's logical writings show great ability, and
would have been useful to mankind if they had appeared at a
time when intellectual originality was still active. Unfortunately,
they appeared at the very end of the creative period of Greek
thought, and therefore came to be accepted as authoritative.
By the time that logical originality revived, a reign of two thousand
years had made Aristotle very difficult to dethrone. Throughout
modern times, practically every advance in science, in logic, or
in philosophy has had to be made in the teeth of opposition from
Aristotle's disciples.
H
Chapter XXIII
ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS
IN tiiis chapter I propose to consider two of Aristotle's books,
the one called Physics and the one called On the Heavens.
These two books are closely connected; the second takes up
the argument at the point at which the first has left it. Both were
extremely influential, and dominated science until the time of
Galileo. Words such as "quintessence" and "sublunary" are
derived from the theories expressed in these books. The historian
of philosophy, accordingly, must study them, in spite of the fact
that hardly a sentence in either can be accepted in the light of
modern science.
To understand the views of Aristotle, as of most Greeks, on
physics, it is necessary to apprehend their imaginative back-
ground. Every philosopher, in addition to the formal system which
he offers to the world, has another, much simpler, of which he
may be quite unaware. If he is aware of it, he probably realizes
that it won't quite do; he therefore conceals it, and sets forth
something more sophisticated, which he believes because it is
like his crude system, but which he asks others to accept because
he thinks he has made it such as cannot be disproved. The
sophistication comes in by way of refutation of refutations, but
this alone will never give a positive result: it shows, at best,
that a theory may be true, not that it must be. The positive result,
however little the philosopher may realize it, is due to his imagina-
tive preconceptions, or to what Santayana calls "animal faith."
In relation to physics, Aristotle's imaginative background was
very different from that of a modern student. Nowadays, a boy
begins with mechanics, which, by its very name, suggests machines.
He is accustomed to motor-cars and aeroplanes; he docs not,
even in the dimmest recesses of his subconscious imagination,
think that a motor-car contains some sort of horse in its inside,
or that an aeroplane flies because its wings are those of a bird
possessing magical powers. Animals have lost their importance
in our imaginative pictures of the world, in which man stands
comparatively alone as master of a mainly lifeless and largely
subservient material environment.
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ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS
To the Greek, attempting to give a scientific account of motion,
the purely mechanical view hardly suggested itself, except in the
case of a few men of genius such as Democritus and Archimedes.
Two sets of phenomena seemed important: the movements of
animals, and the movements of the heavenly bodies. To the
modern man of science, the body of an animal is a very elaborate
machine, with an enormously complex physico-chemical structure;
every new discovery consists in diminishing the apparent gulf
between animals and machines. To the Greek, it seemed more
natural to assimilate apparently lifeless motions to those of animals.
A child still distinguishes live animals from other things by the
fact that they can move of themselves; to many Greeks, and
especially to Aristotle, this peculiarity suggested itself as the basis
of a general theory of physics.
But how about the heavenly bodies? They differ from animals
by the regularity of their movements, but this may be only due
to their superior perfection. Every Greek philosopher, whatever
he may have come to think in adult life, had been taught in child-
hood to regard the sun and moon as gods; Anaxagoras was
prosecuted for impiety because he thought that they were not
alive. It was natural that a philosopher who could no longer
regard the heavenly bodies themselves as divine should think of
them as moved by the will of a Divine Being who had a Hellenic
love of order and geometrical simplicity. Thus the ultimate
source of all movement is Will: on earth the capricious Will of
human beings and animals, but in heaven the unchanging Will
of the Supreme Artificer.
I do not suggest that this applies to every detail of what Aristotle
has to say. What I do suggest is that it gives his imaginative back-
ground, and represents the sort of thing which, in embarking on
liis investigations, he would expect to find true.
After these preliminaries, let us examine what it is that he
actually says.
Physics, in Aristotle, is the science of what the Greeks called
"phusis" (or Mphysis")t a word which is translated 'nature,"
but has not exactly the meaning which we attach to that word.
We still speak of "natural science" and "natural history," but
"nature" by itself, though it is a very ambiguous word, seldom
means just what "phusis" meant. "Phusis" had to do with growth ;
one might sav it is the "nature" of an acorn to grow into an oak,
227
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and in that case one would be using the word in the Aristotelian
sense. The "nature" of .a thing, Aristotle says, is its end, that for
the sake of which it exists. Thus the word has a ideological
implication. Some things exist by nature, some from other causes.
Animals, plants, and simple bodies (elements) exist by nature;
they have an internal principle of motion (the word translated
"motion" or "movement" has a wider meaning than "loco-
motion" ; in addition to locomotion it includes change of quality
or of size.) Nature is a source of being moved or at rest. Things
"have a nature" if they have an internal principle of this kind.
The phrase "according to nature" applies to these things and their
essential attributes. (It was through this point of view that
"unnatural" came to express blame.) Nature is in form rather
than in matter; what is potentially flesh or bone has not
yet acquired its own nature, and a thing is more what it is
when it has attained to fulfilment. This whole point of view
seems to be suggested by biology: the acorn is "potentially"
an oak.
Nature belongs to the class of causes which operate for the sake
of something. This leads to a discussion of the view that nature
works of necessity, without purpose, in connection with which
Aristotle discusses the survival of the fittest, in the form taught
by Empedocles. This cannot be right, he says, because things
happen in fixed ways, and when a series has a completion, all
preceding steps are for its sake. Those things are "natural" which
"by a continuous movement, originated from an internal principle,
arrive at some completion" (199*).
This whole conception of "nature," though it might well seem
admirably suited to explain the growth of animals and plants,
became, in the event, a great obstacle to the progress of science,
and a source of much that was bad in ethics. In the latter respect,
it is still harmful.
Motion, we are told, is the fulfilling of what exists potentially.
This view, apart from other defects, is incompatible with the
relativity of locomotion. When A moves relatively to B, B moves
relatively to A, and there is no sense in saying that one of the two
is in motion while the other is at rest. When a dog seizes a bone,
it seems to common sense that the dog moves while the bone
remains at rest (until seized), and that the motion has a purpose,
namely to fulfil the dog's "nature." But it has turned out that this
228
ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS
point of view cannot be applied to dead matter, and that, for the
purposes of scientific physics, no conception of an "end" is useful,
nor can any motion, in scientific strictness, be treated as other
than relative.
Aristotle rejects the void, as maintained by Leucippus and
Democritus. He then passes on to a rather curious discussion of
time. It might, he says, be maintained that time does not exist,
since it is composed of past and future, of which one no longer
exists while the other does not yet exist. This view, however, he
rejects. Time, he says, is motion that admits of numeration. (It is
not clear why he thinks numeration essential.) We may fairly ask,
he continues, whether time could exist without the soul, since there
cannot be anything to count unless there is someone to count,
and time involves numeration. It seems that he thinks of time as
so many hours or days or years. Some things, he adds, are eternal,
in the sense of not being in time ; presumably he is thinking of
such things as numbers.
There always has been motion, and there always will be; for
there cannot be time without motion, and all are agreed that time
is uncreated, except Plato. On this point, Christian followers of
Aristotle were obliged to dissent from him, since the Bible tells
us that the universe had a beginning.
The Physics ends with the argument for an unmoved mover,
which we considered in connection with the Metaphysics. There
is one unmoved mover, which directly causes a circular motion.
Circular motion is the primary kind, and the only kind which
can be continuous and infinite. The first mover has no parts or
magnitude and is at the circumference of the world.
Having reached this conclusion, we pass on to the heavens.
The treatise On tlit Heavens sets forth a pleasant and simple
theory. Things below the moon are subject to generation and
decay; from the moon upwards, everything is ungenerated and
indestnictible.The earth, which is spherical, is at the centre of the
universe. In the sublunary sphere, everything is composed of the
four elements, earth, water, air, and fire; but there is a fifth ele-
ment, of which the heavenly bodies are composed. The natural
movement of the terrestrial elements is rectilinear, but that of the
fifth clement is circular. The heavens are perfectly spherical, and
the upper regions are more divine than the lower. The stars and
planets are not composed of fire, hut of the fifth element; their
229
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
motion is due to that of spheres to which they are attached.
(All this appears in poetical form in Dante's Paradiso.)
The four terrestrial elements are not eternal, but are generated
out of each other — fire is absolutely light, in the sense that its
natural motion is upward ; earth is absolutely heavy. Air is relatively
light, and water is relatively heavy.
This theory provided many difficulties for later ages. Comets,
which were recognized as destructible, had to be assigned to the
sublunary sphere, but in the seventeenth century it was found
that they describe orbits round the sun, and are very seldom as
near as the moon. Since the natural motion of terrestrial bodies
is rectilinear, it was held that a projectile fired horizontally will
move horizontally for a time, and then suddenly begin to fall
vertically. Galileo's discovery that a projectile moves in a parabola
shocked his Aristotelian colleagues. Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo had to combat Aristotle as well as the Bible in establishing
the view that the earth is not the centre of the universe, but rotates
once a day and goes round the sun once a year.
To come to a more general matter: Aristotelian physics is in-
compatible with Newton's "First Law of Motion," originally
enunciated by Galileo. This law states that every body, left to
itself, mil, if already in motion, continue to move in a straight
line with uniform velocity. Thus outside causes are required, not
to account for motion, but to account for change of motion, either
in velocity or in direction. Circular motion, which Aristotle
thought "natural" for the heavenly bodies, involves a continual
change in the direction of motion, and therefore requires a force
directed towards the centre of the circle, as in Newton's law of
gravitation.
Finally: The view that the heavenly bodies are eternal and in-
corruptible has had to be abandoned. The sun and stars have long
lives, but do not live for ever. They are born from a nebula, and
in the end they either explode or die of cold. Nothing in the visible
world is exempt from change and decay; the Aristotelian belief
to the contrary, though accepted by medieval Christians, is a
product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets.
230
Chapter XXIV
EARLY GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
I AM concerned in this chapter with mathematics, not on its
own account, but as it was related to Greek philosophy — a
relation which, especially in Plato, was very close. The pre-
eminence of the Greeks appears more clearly in mathematics and
astronomy than in anything else. What they did in art, in literature,
and in philosophy, may be judged better or worse according to
taste, but what they accomplished in geometry is wholly beyond
question. They derived something from Egypt, and rather less
from Babylonia; but what they obtained from these sources was,
in mathematics, mainly simple rules, and in astronomy records
of observations extended over very long periods. The art of
mathematical demonstration was, almost wholly, Greek in origin.
There are many pleasant stories, probably unhistorical, showing
what practical problems stimulated mathematical investigations.
The earliest and simplest relates to Thales, who, when in Egypt,
was asked by the king to find out the height of a pyramid. He
waited for the time of day when his shadow was as long as he was
tall ; he then measured the shadow of the pyramid, which was of
course equal to its height. It is said that the laws of perspective
were first studied by the geometer Agatharcus, in order to paint
scenery for the plays of Aeschylus. The problem of finding the
distance of a ship at sea, which was said to have been studied by
Thales, was correctly solved at an early stage. One of the great
problems that occupied Greek geometers, that of the duplication
of the cube, originated, we are told, with the priests of a certain
temple, who were informed by the oracle that the god wanted a
statue twice as large as the one they had. At first they thought
simply of doubling all the dimensions of the statue, but then they
realized that the result would be eight times as large as the ori-
ginal, which would involve more expense than the god had
demanded. So they sent a deputation to Plato to ask whether any-
body in the Academy could solve their problem. The geometers
took it up, and worked at it for centuries, producing, incidentally,
much admirable work. The problem is, of course, that of deter-
mining the cube root of a.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The square root of 2, which was the first irrational to be dis-
covered, was known to the early Pythagoreans, and ingenious
methods of approximating to its value were discovered. The best
was as follows: Form two columns of numbers, which we will
call the <z's and the 6's; each starts with i. The next a, at each
stage, is formed by adding the last a and b already obtained ; the
next b is formed by adding twice the previous a to the previous b.
The first 6 pairs so obtained are (i ,i), (2, 3), (5, 7), (12, 17), (29, 41),
(70, 99). In each pair, 20* — - 6a is i or — i. Thus - is nearly the
square root of two, and at each fresh step it gets nearer. For
instance, the reader may satisfy himself that the square of 99/70
is very nearly equal to 2.
Pythagoras — always a rather misty figure — is described by
Proclus as the first who made geometry a liberal education. Many
authorities, including Sir Thomas Heath,1 believe that he probably
discovered the theorem that bears his name, to the effect that, in
a right-angled triangle, the square on the side opposite the right
angle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
In any case, this theorem was known to the Pythagoreans at a
very early date. They knew also that the sum of the angles of a
triangle is two right angles.
Irrationals other than the square root of two were studied, in
particular cases, by Theodorus, a contemporary of Socrates, and
in a more general way by Theaetetus, who was roughly contem-
porary with Plato, but somewhat older. Democritus wrote a
treatise on irrationals, but very little is known as to its contents.
Plato was profoundly interested in the subject; he mentions the
work of Thcodorus and Theaetetus in the dialogue called after
the latter. In the Laws (819-820), he says that the general ignorance
on this subject is disgraceful, and implies .that he himself began
to know about it rather late in life. It had of course an important
bearing on the Pythagorean philosophy.
One of the most important consequences of the discovery of
irrationals was the invention of the geometrical theory of propor-
tion by Eudoxus (ca. 408 — ca. 355 B.C.). Before him, there was
only the arithmetical theory of proportion. According to this
theory*, the ratio of a to b is equal to the ratio of c to d if a times d
' (jreek Mathtmatia, Vol. I, p. 145
23*
FARI'Y GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
is equal to b times c. This definition, in the absence of an arith-
metical theory of irrationals, is only applicable to rationals.
Eudoxus, however, gave a new definition not subject to this
restriction, framed in a manner which suggests the methods of
modern analysis. The theory is developed in Euclid, and has
great logical beauty.
Eudoxus also either invented or perfected the "method of ex-
haustion," which was subsequently used with great success by
Archimedes. This method is an anticipation of the integral cal-
culus. Take, for example, the question of the area of a circle. You
can inscribe in a circle a regular hexagon, or a regular dodecagon,
or a regular polygon of a thousand or a million sides. The area
of such a polygon, however many sides it has, is proportional to
the square on the diameter of the circle. The more sides the
polygon has, the more nearly it becomes equal to the circle. You
can prove that, if you give the polygon enough sides, its area can
be got to differ from that of the circle by less than any previously
assigned area, however small. For this purpose, the "axiom of
Archimedes" is used. This states (when somewhat simplified)
that if the greater of two quantities is halved, and then the half
is halved, and so on, a quantity will be reached, at last, which is
less than the smaller of the original two quantities. In other words,
if a is greater than A, there is some whole number n such that 2n
times b is greater than a.
The method of exhaustion sometimes leads to an exact result,
as in squaring the parabola, which was done by Archimedes ; some-
times, as in the attempt to square the circle, it can only lead to
successive approximations. The problem of squaring the circle is
the problem of determining the ratio of the circumference of a
circle to the diameter, which is called 77. Archimedes used the
approximation *f in calculations ; by inscribing and circumscribing
a regular polygon of 96 sides, he proved that TT is less than 3^ and
greater than 3^ J. The method could be carried to any required
degree of approximation, and that is all that any method can do
in this problem. The use of inscribed and circumscribed polygons
for approximations to n goes back to Antiphon, who was a
contemporary of Socrates.
Euclid, who was still, when I was young, the sole acknowledged
text-book of geometry for boys, lived at Alexandria, about 300 B.C.,
a few years after the death of Alexander and Aristotle. Most of
233
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
his Elements was not original, but the order of propositions, and
the logical structure, were largely his. The more one studies geo-
metry, the more admirable these are seen to be. The treatment of
parallels by means of the famous postulate of parallels has the
twofold merit of rigour in deduction and of not concealing the
dubiousness of the initial assumption. The theory of proportion,
which follows Eudoxus, avoids all the difficulties connected with
irrationals, by methods essentially similar to those introduced by
Weierstrass into nineteenth-century analysis. Euclid then passes
on to a kind of geometrical algebra, and deals, in Book X, with the
subject of irrationals. After this he proceeds to solid geometry,
ending with the construction of the regular solids, which had
been perfected by Theaetetus and assumed in Plato's Timaeus.
Euclid's Elements is certainly one of the greatest books ever
written, and one of the most perfect monuments of the Greek
intellect. It has, of course, the typical Greek limitations: the
method is purely deductive, and there is no way, within it, of
testing the initial assumptions. These assumptions were supposed
to be unquestionable, but in the nineteenth century non-Euclidean
geometry showed that they might be in part mistaken, and that
only observation could decide whether they were so.
There is in Euclid the contempt for practical utility which had
been inculcated by Plato. It is said that a pupil, after listening to
a demonstration, asked what he would gain by learning geometry,
whereupon Euclid called a slave and said "Give the young man
threepence, since he must needs make a gain out of what he
learns." The contempt for practice was, however, pragmatically
justified. No one, in Greek times, supposed that conic sections
had any utility; at last, in the seventeenth century, Galileo dis-
covered that projectiles move in parabolas, and Kepler discovered
that planets move in ellipses. Suddenly the work that the Greeks
had done from pure love of theory became the key to warfare and
astronomy.
The Romans were too practical-minded to appreciate Euclid;
the first of them to mention him is Cicero, in whose time there was
probably no Latin translation ; indeed there is no record of any
Latin translation before Boethius (ca. A.D. 480). The Arabs were
more appreciative : a copy was given to the caliph by the Byzantine
emperor about A.D. 760, and a translation into Arabic was made
under Harun al Rashid, about A.D. 800. The first still extant
234
EARLY GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
Latin translation was made from the Arabic by Adelard of
Bath in A.D. 1120. From that time on, the study of geometry
gradually revived in the West; but it was not until the late Re-
naissance that important advances were made.
I come now to astronomy, where Greek achievements were as
remarkable as in geometry. Before their time, among the Baby-
lonians and Egyptians, many centuries of observation had laid a
foundation. The apparent motions of the planets had been re-
corded, but it was not known that the morning and evening star
were the same. A cycle of eclipses had been discovered, certainly
in Babylonia and probably in Egypt, which made the prediction
of lunar eclipses fairly reliable, but not of solar eclipses, since
those were not always visible at a given spot. We owe to the
Babylonians the division of the right angle into ninety degrees,
and of the degree into sixty minutes; they had a liking for the
number sixty, and even a system of numeration based upon it.
The Greeks were fond of attributing the wisdom of their pioneers
to travels in Egypt, but what had really been achieved before the
Greeks was very little. The prediction of an eclipse by Thales
was, however, an example of foreign influence; there is no reason
to suppose that he added anything to what he learnt from Egyptian
or Babylonian sources, and it was a stroke of luck that his prediction
was verified.
Let us begin with some of the earliest discoveries and correct
hypotheses. Ariaximander thought that the earth floats freely, and
is not supported on anything. Aristotle,1 who often rejected the
hcst hypotheses of his time, objected to the theory of Anaxi-
inander, that the earth, being at the centre, remained immovable
because there was no reason for moving in one direction rather
than another. If this were valid, he said, a man placed at the
centre of a circle with food at various points of the circumference
would starve to death for lack of reason to choose one portion of
food rather than another. This argument reappears in scholastic
philosophy, not in connection with astronomy, but with free will.
It reappears in the form of "Buridan's ass," which was unable to
choose between two bundles of hay placed at equal distances to
right and left, and therefore died of hunger.
Pythagoras, in all probability, was the first to think the earth
spherical, but his reasons were (one must suppose) aesthetic
1 De Cacto, 295*-
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
rather than scientific. Scientific reasons, however, were soon found.
Anaxagoras discovered that the moon shines by reflected light,
and gave the right theory of eclipses. He himself still thought the
earth flat, but the shape of the earth's shadow in lunar eclipses
gave the Pythagoreans conclusive arguments in favour of its being
spherical. They went further, and regarded the earth as one of the
planets. They knew — from Pythagoras himself, it is said — that
the morning star and the evening star are identical, and they
thought that ail the planets, including the earth, move in circles,
not round the sun, but round the "central fire." They had dis-
covered that the moon always turns the same face to the earth,
and they thought that the earth always turns the same face to the
"central fire." The Mediterranean regions were on the side turned
away from the central fire, which was therefore always invisible.
The central fire was called "the house of Zeus," or "the Mother
of the gods." The sun was supposed to shine by light reflected
from the central fire. In addition to the earth, there was another
body, the counter-earth, at the same distance from the central
fire. For this, they had two reasons, one scientific, one derived
from their arithmetical mysticism. The scientific reason was the
correct observation that an eclipse of the moon sometimes occurs
when both sun and moon are above the horizon. Refraction,
which is the cause of this phenomenon, was unknown to them,
and they thought that, in such cases, the eclipse must be due to
the shadow of a body other than the earth. The other reason was
that the sun and moon, the five planets, the earth and counter-
earth, and the central fire, made ten heavenly bodies, and ten was
the mystic number of the Pythagoreans.
This Pythagorean theory is attributed to Philolatis, a Theban,
who lived at the end of the fifth century B.C. Although it is fanciful
and in part quite unscientific, it is very important, since it involves
the greater part of the imaginative effort required for conceiving
the Copernican hypothesis. To conceive of the earth, not as the
centre of the universe, but as one among the planets, not as
eternally fixed, but as wandering through space, showed an extra-
ordinary emancipation from anthropoctntric thinking. When once
this jolt had been given to men's natural picture of the universe,
it was not so very difficult to be led by scientific arguments to a
more accurate theory.
To this various observations contributed. Oenopidcs, who was
EARLY GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
slightly later than Anaxagoras, discovered the obliquity of the
ecliptic. It soon became clear that the sun must be much larger
than the earth, which fact supported those who denied that the
earth is the centre of the universe. The central fire and the counter-
earth were dropped by the Pythagoreans soon after the time of
Plato. Heraclides of Pontus (whose dates are about 388 to 315 B.C.,
contemporary with Aristotle) discovered that Venus and Mercury
revolve about the sun, and adopted the view that the earth rotates
on its own axis once every twenty-four hours. This last was a
very important step, which no predecessor had taken. Heraclides
was of Plato's school, and must have been a great man, but was
not as much respected as one would expect ; he is described as a
fat dandy.
Aristarchus of Samos, who lived approximately from 310 to
230 B.C., and was thus about twenty-five years older than Archi-
medes, is the most interesting of all ancient astronomers, because
he advanced the complete Copernican hypothesis, that all the
planets, including the earth, revolve in circles round the sun, and
that the earth rotates on its axis once in twenty-four hours. It is
a little disappointing to find that the only extant work of Aristar-
chus, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon, adheres
to the geocentric view. It is true that, for the problems with which
this book deals, it makes no difference which theory is adopted,
and he may therefore have thought it unwise to burden his cal-
culations with an unnecessary opposition to the general opinion
of astronomers ; or he may have only arrived at the Copernican
hypothesis after writing this book. Sir Thomas Heath, in his
work on Aristarchus,1 which contains the text of this book with
a translation, inclines to the latter view. The evidence that
Aristarchus suggested the Copernican view is, in any case, quite
conclusive.
The first and best evidence is that of Archimedes, who, as we
have seen, was a younger contemporary of Aristarchus. Writing
to Gelon, King of Syracuse, he says that Aristarchus brought out
"a book consisting of certain hypotheses," and continues: "His
hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved,
that the earth revolves about the sun in the circumference of a
circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit." There is a
1 Aristurchut of Samos, the Ancient Copernicus. By Sir Thomas Heath.
Oxford, 1913. What follows is bused on this book.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
passage in Plutarch saying that Cleanthes "thought it was the
duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus of Samos on the charge
of impiety for putting in motion the Hearth of the Universe (i.e.
the earth), this being the effect of his attempt to save the pheno-
mena by supposing the heaven to remain at rest and the earth to
revolve in an oblique circle, while it rotates, at the same time,
about its own axis." Cleanthes was a contemporary of Aristarchus,
and died about 232 B.C. In another passage, Plutarch says that
Aristarchus advanced this view only as a hypothesis, but that
his successor Seleucus maintained it as a definite opinion. (Seleucus
flourished about 250 B.C.). Aetius and Sextus Empiricus also assert
that Aristarchus advanced the heliocentric hypothesis, but do not
say that it was set forth by him only as a hypothesis. Even if he
did so, it seems not unlikely that he, like Galileo two thousand
years later, was influenced by the fear of offending religious pre-
judices, a fear which the attitude of Cleanthes (mentioned above)
shows to have been well grounded.
The Copernican hypothesis, after being advanced, whether posi-
tively or tentatively, by Aristarchus, was definitely adopted by
Seleucus, but by no other ancient astronomer. This general
rejection was mainly due to Hip parch us, who flourished from 161
to 126 B.C. He is described by Heath as "the greatest astronomer
of antiquity."1 He was the first to write systematically on trigono-
metry ; he discovered the precession of the equinoxes ; he estimated
the length of the lunar month with an error of less than one
second; he improved Aristarchus's estimates of the sizes and
distances of the sun and moon; he made a catalogue of eight
hundred and fifty fixed stars, giving their latitude and longitude.
As against the heliocentric hypothesis of Aristarchus, he adopted
and improved the theory of epicycles which had been invented by
Apollonius, who flourished about 220 B.C. ; it was a development
of this theory that came to be known, later, as the Ptolemaic
system, after the astronomer Ptolemy, who flourished in the middle
of the second century A.D.
Copernicus perhaps came to know something, though not
much, of the almost forgotten hypothesis of Aristarchus, and was
encouraged by finding ancient authority for his innovation. Other-
wise, the effect of this hypothesis on subsequent astronomy was
practically nil.
1 Greek Mathematics, Vol. II, p. 253.
EARLY GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
Ancient astronomers, in estimating the sizes of the earth, moon,
and sun, and the distances of the moon and sun, used methods
which were theoretically valid, but they were hampered by the
lack of instruments of precision. Many of their results, in view
of this lack, were surprisingly good. Eratosthenes estimated the
earth's diameter at 7,850 miles, which is only about fifty miles
short of the truth. Ptolemy estimated the mean distance of the
moon at 29 J times the earth's diameter; the correct figure is
about 30.2. None of them got anywhere near the size and distance
of the sun, which all under-estimated. Their estimates, in terms
of the earth's diameter, were:
Aristarchus, 180;
Hipparchus, 1,245;
Posidonius, 6,545.
The correct figure is 1 1 ,726. It will be seen that these estimates
continually improved (that of Ptolemy, however, showed a retro-
gression) ; that of Posidonius1 is about half the correct figure. On
the whole, their picture of the solar system was not so very far
from the truth.
Creek astronomy was geometrical, not dynamic. The ancients
thought of the motions of the heavenly bodies as uniform and
circular, or compounded of circular motions. They had not the
conception of force. There were spheres which moved as a whole,
and on which the various heavenly bodies were fixed. With Newton
and gravitation a new point of view, less geometrical, was intro-
duced. It is curious to observe that there is a reversion to the
geometrical point of view in Einstein's General Theory of
Relativity, from which the conception of force, in the Newtonian
sense, has been banished.
The problem for the astronomer is this: given the apparent
motions of the heavenly bodies on the celestial sphere, to introduce,
by hypothesis, a third co-ordinate, depth, in such a way as to
make the description of the phenomena as simple as possible.
The merit of the Coperntcan hypothesis is not truth, but simplicity;
in view of the relativity of motion, no question of truth is involved.
The Greeks, in their search for hypotheses which would "save
the phenomena," were in effect, though not altogether in intention,
tackling the problem in the scientifically correct way. A com-
1 Posidonius was Cicero's teacher. He flourished in the latter half of
the second century u.c
239
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
parison with their predecessors, and with their successors until
Copernicus, must convince every student of their truly astonishing
genius.
Two very great men, Archimedes and Apollonius, in the third
century B.C., complete the list of first-class Greek mathematicians.
Archimedes was a friend, probably a cousin, of the king of
Syracuse, and was killed when that city was captured by the
Romans in 212 B.C. Apollonius, from his youth, lived at Alexandria.
Archimedes was not only a mathematician, but also a physicist
and student of hydrostatics. Apollonius is chiefly noted for his
work on conic sections. I shall say no more about them, as they
came too late to influence philosophy.
After these two men, though respectable work continued to be
done in Alexandria, the great age was ended. Under the Roman
domination, the Greeks lost the self-confidence that belongs to
political liberty, and in losing it acquired a paralysing respect for
their predecessors. The Roman soldier who killed Archimedes
was a symbol of the death of original thought that Rome caused
throughout the Hellenic world.
040
Part 3. — Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle
Chapter XXV
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
^ I WE history of the Greek-speaking world in antiquity may
I be divided into three periods: that of the free City States,
JL which was brought to an end by Philip and Alexander;
that of the Macedonian domination, of which the last remnant
was extinguished by the Roman annexation of Egypt after the
death of Cleopatra; and finally that of the Roman Empire. Of
these three periods, the first is characterized by freedom and
disorder, and second by subjection and disorder, the third by
subjection and order.
The second of these periods is known as the Hellenistic age.
In science and mathematics, the work done during this period is
the best ever achieved by the Greeks. In philosophy, it includes
the foundation of the Epicurean and Stoic schools, and also of
scepticism as a definitely formulated doctrine; it is therefore still
important philosophically, though less so than the period of Plato
and Aristotle. After the third century B.C., there is nothing really
new in Greek philosophy until the Neoplatonists in the third
century A.D. But meanwhile the Roman world was being prepared
for the victory of Christianity.
The brief career of Alexander suddenly transformed the Greek
world. In the ten years from 334 to 324 B.C., he conquered Asia
Minor, Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Samarcand, Bactria, and
the Punjab. The Persian Empire, the greatest that the world had
known, was destroyed by three battles. The ancient lore of the
Babylonians, along with their ancient superstitions, became
familiar to Greek curiosity; so did the Zoroastrian dualism and
(in a lesser degree) die religions of India, where Buddhism was
moving towards supremacy. Wherever Alexander penetrated, even
in the mountains of Afghanistan, on the banks of the Jaxattes,
and on the tributaries of the Indus, he founded Greek cities, in
which he tried to reproduce Greek institutions, with a measure
241
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of self-government. Although his army was composed mainly of
Macedonians, and although most European Greeks submitted to
him unwillingly, he considered himself, at first, as the apostle of
Hellenism. Gradually, however, as his conquests extended, he
adopted the policy of promoting a friendly fusion between Greek
and barbarian.
For this he had various motives. On the one hand, it was obvious
that his armies, which were not very large, could not permanently
hold so vast an empire by force, but must, in the long run, depend
upon conciliation of the conquered populations. On the other
hand, the East was unaccustomed to any form of government
except that of a divine king, a role which Alexander felt himself
well fitted to perform. Whether he believed himself a god, or
only took on the attributes of divinity from motives of policy, is
a question for the psychologist, since the historical evidence is
indecisive. In any case, he clearly enjoyed the adulation which
he received in Egypt as successor of the Pharaohs, and in Persia
as the Great King. His Macedonian captains — the "Companions,"
as they were called — had towards him the attitude of western
nobles to their constitutional sovereign : they refused to prostrate
themselves before him, they gave advice and criticism even at the
risk of their lives, and at a crucial moment they controlled his
actions, when they compelled him to turn homewards from the
Indus instead of marching on to the conquest of the Ganges.
Orientals were more accommodating, provided their religious
prejudices were respected. This offered no difficulty to Alexander;
it was only necessary to identify Ammon or Bel with Zeus, and
to declare himself the son of the god. Psychologists observe that
Alexander hated Philip, and was probably privy to his murder;
he would have liked to believe that his mother Olympias, like
some lady of Greek mythology, had been beloved of a god.
Alexander's career was so miraculous that he may well have
thought a miraculous origin the best explanation of his prodigious
success.
The Greeks had a very strong feeling of superiority to the bar*
barians; Aristotle no doubt expresses the general view when he
says that northern races are spirited, southern races civilized, but
the Greeks alone are both spirited and civilized. Plato and Aris-
totle thought it wrong to make slaves of Greeks, but not of bar-
barians. Alexander, who was not quite a Greek, tried to break
242
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
down this attitude of superiority. He himself married two barbarian
princesses, and he compelled his leading Macedonians to marry
Persian women of noble birth. His innumerable Greek cities, one
would suppose, must have contained many more male than female
colonists, and their men must therefore have followed his example
in intermarrying with the women of the locality. The result of
this policy was to bring into the minds of thoughtful men the
conception of mankind as a whole; the old loyalty to the City
State and (in a lesser degree) to the Greek race seemed no longer
adequate. In philosophy, this cosmopolitan point of view begins
with the Stoics, but in practice it begins earlier, with Alexander.
It had the result that the interaction of Greek and barbarian was
reciprocal: the barbarians learnt something of Greek science,
while the Greeks learnt much of barbarian superstition. Greek
civilization, in covering a wider area, became less purely Greek.
Greek civilization was essentially urban. There were, of course,
many Greeks engaged in agriculture, but they contributed little
to what was distinctive in Hellenic culture. From the Milesian
school onwards, the Greeks who were eminent in science and
philosophy and literature were associated with rich commercial
cities, often surrounded by barbarian populations. This type of
civilization was inaugurated, not by the Greeks, but by the Phoe-
nicians; Tyre and Sidon and Carthage depended on slaves for
manual labour at home, and on hired mercenaries in the conduct
of their wars. They did not depend, as modern capital cities do,
upon large rural populations of the same blood and with equal
political rights. The nearest modern analogue is to be seen in the
Far East during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Singapore
and Hong Kong, Shanghai and the other treaty ports of China,
were little European islands, where the white men formed a com-
mercial aristocracy living on coolie labour. In North America,
north of the Mason- Dixon line, since such labour was not available,
white men were compelled to practise agriculture. For this reason,
the hold of the white man on North America is secure, while his
hold on the Far East has already been greatly diminished, and
may easily cease altogether. Much of his type of culture, especially
industrialism, will, however, survive. This analogue will help us
to understand the position of the Greeks in the
Alexander's empire.
The effect of Alexander on the imagination
241
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and lasting. The First Book of the Maccabees, written centuries
after his death, opens with an account of his career:
"And it happened, after that Alexander, son of Philip, the Mace-
donian, who came out of the land of Chettiim, had smitten Darius,
king of the Persians and Medes, that he reigned in his stead, the
first over Greece, and made many wars, and won many strong
holds, and slew the kings of the earth, and went through to the
ends of the earth, and took spoil of many nations, insomuch that
the earth was quiet before him; whereupon he was exalted, and
his heart was lifted up. And he gathered a mighty strong host, and
ruled over countries, and nations, and kings, who became tri-
butaries unto him. And after these things he fell sick, and per-
ceived that he should die. Wherefore he called his servants, such
as were honorable, and had been brought up with him from his
youth, and parted his kingdom among them, while he was yet
alive.1 So Alexander reigned twelve years, and then died/1
He survived as a legendary hero in the Mohammedan religion,
and to this day petty chieftains in the Himalayas claim to be
descended from him.1 No other hilly historical hero has ever
furnished such a perfect opportunity for the mythopoeic faculty.
At Alexander's death, there was an attempt to preserve the
unit}' of his empire. But of his two sons, one was an infant and
the other was not yet born. Each had supporters, but in the
resultant civil war both were thrust aside. In the end, his empire
was divided between the families of three generals, of whom,
roughly speaking, one obtained the European, one the African,
and one the Asiatic parts of Alexander's possessions. The European
part fell ultimately to Antigonus's descendants; Ptolemy, who
obtained Egypt, made Alexandria his capital; Seleucus, who
obtained Asia after many wars, was too busy with campaigns to
have a fixed capital, but in later times Antioch was the chief city
of his dynasty.
Both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids (as the dynasty of Seleu-
cus was called) abandoned Alexander's attempts to produce a
fusion of Greek and barbarian, and established military tyrannies
based, at first, upon their part of the Macedonian army streng-
thened with Greek mercenaries. The Ptolemies held Egypt fairly
1 7%his is not historically true.
* Perhaps this is no longer true, as the sons of thobc who held thia belief
have been educated at Eton.
244
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
securely, but in Asia two centuries of confused dynastic wars were
only ended by the Roman conquest. During these centuries,
Persia was conquered by the Parthians, and the Bactrian Greeks
were increasingly isolated.
In the second century B.C. (after which they rapidly declined)
they had a king, Menander, whose Indian Empire was very
extensive. A couple of dialogues between him and a Buddhist sage
have survived in Pali, and, in part, in a Chinese translation. Dr.
Tarn suggests that the first of these is based on a Greek original;
the second, which ends with Menander abdicating and becoming
a Buddhist saint, is certainly not.
Buddhism, at this time, was a vigorous proselytizing religion.
Asoka (264-228), the saintly Buddhist king, records, in a still extant
inscription, that he sent missionaries to all the Macedonian kings:
"And this is the cliicfcst conquest in His Majesty's opinion — the
conquest by the Law; this also is that effected by His Majesty both
in his own dominions and in all the neighbouring realms as far
as six hundred leagues —even to where the Greek king Antiochus
dwells, and beyond that Antiochus to where dwell the four kings
severally named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas, and Alexander . . ,
and likewise here, in the king's dominions, among the Yonas"1
(i.e. the Greeks of the Punjab). Unfortunately no western account
of these missionaries has survived.
Babylonia was much more profoundly influenced by Hellenism.
As we have seen, the only ancient who followed Aristarchus of
Sarnos in maintaining the Copernican system was Seleucus of
Sdeucia on the Tigris, who flourished about 150 B.C. Tacitus
tells us that in the first century A.D. Seleucia had not "lapsed into
the barbarous usages of the Parthians, but still retained the insti-
tutions of Seleucus,8 its Greek founder. Three hundred citizens,
chosen for their wealth or wisdom, compose as it were a Senate;
the {x>pulace too have their share of power."3 Throughout Meso-
potamia, as further West, Greek became the language of literature
and culture, and remained so until the Mohammedan conquest.
Syria (excluding Judea) became completely Hellenized in the
cities, in so far as language and literature were concerned. But the
rural populations, which were more conservative, retained the
1 Quoted in Be van, Housf of ScletAtvs, Vol. I, p. 29811.
* The king, not die astronomer.
Book VI, chap. 42.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
religions and the languages to which they were accustomed.1 In
Asia Minor, the Greek cities of the coast had, for centuries, had
an influence on their barbarian neighbours. This was intensified
by the Macedonian conquest. The first conflict of Hellenism with
the Jews is related in the Books of the Maccabees. It is a profoundly
interesting story, unlike anything else in the Macedonian Empire.
I shall deal with it at a later stage, when I come to the origin and
growth of Christianity. Elsewhere, Greek influence encountered
no such stubborn opposition.
From the point of view of Hellenistic culture, the most brilliant
success of the third century B.C. was the city of Alexandria. Egypt
was less exposed to war than the European and Asiatic parts of
the Macedonian domain, and Alexandria was in an extraordinarily
favoured position for commerce. The Ptolemies were patrons of
learning, and attracted to their capital many of the best men of
the age. Mathematics became, and remained until the fall of Rome,
mainly Alexandrian. Archimedes, it is true, was a Sicilian, and
belonged to the one part of the world where the Greek City
States (until the moment of his death in 212 B.C.) retained their
independence ; but he too had studied in Alexandria. Eratosthenes
was chief librarian of the famous library of Alexandria. The
mathematicians and men of science connected, more or less closely,
with Alexandria in the third century before Christ were as able
as any of the Greeks of the previous centuries, and did work of
equal importance. But they were not, like their predecessors, men
who took all learning for their province, and propounded universal
philosophies; they were specialists in the modern sense. Euclid,
Aristarchus, Archimedes, and Apollonius, were content to be
mathematicians ; in philosophy they did not aspire to originality.
Specialization characterized the age in all departments, not only
in the world of learning. In the self-governing Greek cities of the
fifth and fourth centuries, a capable man was assumed to be capable
of everything. He would be, as occasion arose, a soldier, a politician,
a lawgiver, or a philosopher. Socrates, though he disliked politics,
could not avoid being mixed up with political disputes. In his
youth he was a soldier, and (in spite of his disclaimer in the
Apology) a student of physical science. Protagoras, when he could
spare time from teaching scepticism to aristocratic youths in search
of the latest thing, was drawing up a code of laws for Thurii.
1 See Cambridge Ancient History* VoL V1J, pp. 194-5.
246
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
Plato dabbled in politics, though unsuccessfully. Xenophon,
when he was neither writing about Socrates nor being a country
gentleman, spent his spare time as a general. Pythagorean mathe-
maticians attempted to acquire the government of cities. Every-
body had to serve on juries and perform various other public
duties. In the third century all this was changed. There continued,
it is true, to be politics in the old City States, but they had become
parochial and unimportant, since Greece was at the mercy of
Macedonian aimies. The serious struggles for power were between
Macedonian soldiers ; they involved no question of principle, but
merely the distribution of territory between rival adventurers. On
administrative and technical matters, these more or less unedu-
cated soldiers employed Greeks as experts; in Egypt, for example,
excellent work was done in irrigation and drainage. There were
soldiers, administrators, physicians, mathematicians, philosophers,
but there was no one who was all these at once.
The age was one in which a man who had money and no desire
for power could enjoy a very pleasant life — always assuming that
no marauding army happened to come his way. Learned men who
found favour with some prince could enjoy a high degree of luxury,
provided they were adroit flatterers and did not mind being the
butt of ignorant royal witticisms. But there was no such thing as
security. A palace revolution might displace the sycophantic
sage's patron; the Galatians might destroy the rich man's villa;
one's city might be sacked as an incident in a dynastic war. In
such circumstances it is no wonder that people took to worshipping
the goddess Fortune, or Luck. There seemed nothing rational in
the ordering of human affairs. Those who obstinately insisted
upon finding rationality somewhere withdrew into themselves,
and decided, like Milton's Satan, that
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
Except for adventurous self-seekers, there was no longer any
incentive to take an interest in public affairs. After the brilliant
episode of Alexander's conquests, the Hellenistic world was
sinking into chaos, for lack of a despot strong enough to achieve
stable supremacy, or a principle powerful enough to produce
social cohesion. Greek intelligence, confronted with new political
problems, showed complete incompetence. The Romans, no
247
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
doubt, were stupid and brutal compared to the Greeks, but at
least they created order. The old disorder of the days of freedom
had been tolerable, because every citizen had a share in it; but
the new Macedonian disorder, imposed upon subjects by incom-
petent rulers, was utterly intolerable — far more so than the subse-
quent subjection to Rome.
There was widespread social discontent and fear of revolution.
The wages of free labour fell, presumably owing to the competition
of eastern slave labour; and meantime the prices of necessaries
rose. One finds Alexander, at the outset of his enterprise, having
time to make treaties designed to keep the poor in their place.
"In the treaties made in 335 between Alexander and the States
of the League of Corinth it was provided that the Council of the
League and Alexander's representative were to see to it that in
no city of the League should there be either confiscation of per-
sonal property, or division of land, or cancellation of debt, or
liberation of slaves for the purpose of revolution."1 The temples,
in the Hellenistic world, were the bankers; they owned the gold
reserve, and controlled credit. In the early third century, the
temple of Apollo at Delos made loans at ten per cent ; formerly,
the rate of interest had been higher.2
Free labourers who found wages insufficient even for bare
necessities must, if young and vigorous, have been able to obtain
employment as mercenaries. The life of a mercenary, no doubt,
was filled with hardships and dangers, but it also had great possi-
bilities. There might be the loot of some rich eastern city ; there
might be a chance of lucrative mutiny. It must have been dangerous
for a commander to attempt to disband his army, and this must
have been one of the reasons why wars were almost continuous.
The old civic spirit more or less survived in the old Greek
cities, but not in the new cities founded by Alexander — not ex-
cepting Alexandria. In earlier times, a new city was always a
colony composed of emigrants from some one older city, and it
remained connected with its parent by a bond of sentiment. This
kind of sentiment had great longevity, as is shown, for example,
by the diplomatic activities of Lampsacus on the Hellespont in
1 "The Social Question in the Third Century," by W W. Tarn, in 7Vi«
Hellenistic Age by various authors. Cambridge, 1923. This essay is exceed*
ingly interesting, and contains many facts nor elsewhere readily accessible.
' Ibid.
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
the year 196 B.C. This city was threatened with subjugation by the
Seleucid King Antiochus III, and decided to appeal to Rome for
protection. An embassy was sent, but it did not go direct to Rome ;
it went first, in spite of the immense distance, to Marseilles, which,
like Lampsacus, was a colony of Phocaea, and was, moreover,
viewed with friendly eyes by the Romans. The citizens of Mar-
seilles, having listened to an oration by the envoy, at once decided
to send a diplomatic mission of their own to Rome to support
their sister city. The Gauls who lived inland from Marseilles
joined in with a letter to their kinsmen of Asia Minor, the
Galatians, recommending Lampsacus to their friendship. Rome,
naturally, was glad of a pretext for meddling in the affairs of Asia
Minor, and by Rome's intervention Lampsacus preserved its
freedom — until it became inconvenient to the Romans.1
In general, the rulers of Asia called themselves "Phil-Hellene,"
and befriended the old Greek cities as far as policy and military
necessity allowed. The cities desired, and (when they could)
claimed as a right, democratic self-government, absence of tribute,
and freedom from a royal garrison. It was worth while to conciliate
them, because they were rich, they could supply mercenaries, and
many of them had important harbours. But if they took the wrong
side in a civil war, they exposed themselves to sheer conquest.
On the whole, the Seleucids, and the other dynasties which
gradually grew up, dealt tolerably with them, but there were
exceptions.
The new cities, though they had a measure of self-government,
had not the same traditions as the older ones. Their citizens were
not of homogeneous origin, but were from all parts of Greece.
They were in the main adventurers like the conquistadors or the
settlers in Johannesburg, not pious pilgrims like the earlier Greek
colonists or the New England pioneers. Consequently no one of
Alexander's cities formed a strong political unit. This was con-
venient from the standpoint of the king's government, but a
weakness from the standpoint of the spread of Hellenism.
The influence of non-Greek religion and superstition in the
Hellenistic world was mainly, but not wholly, bad. This might
not have been the case. Jews, Persians, and Buddhists all had
religions that were very definitely superior to the popular Greek
polytheism, and could even have been studied with profit by the
1 Heyan, House of Seleucut, Vol. II, pp. 45-0.
H9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
best philosophers. Unfortunately it was the Babylonians, or
Chaldeans, who most impressed the imagination of the Greeks.
There was, first of all, their fabulous antiquity ; the priestly records
went back for thousands of years, and professed to go back for
thousands more. Then there was some genuine wisdom: the
Babylonians could more or less predict eclipses long before the
Greeks could. But these were merely causes of receptiveness;
what was received was mainly astrology and magic. "Astrology,"
says Professor Gilbert Murray, "fell upon the Hellenistic mind as
a new disease falls upon some remote island people. The tomb of
Ozymandias, as described by Diodorus, was covered with astro-
logical symbols, and that of Antiochus I, which has been dis-
covered in Commagene, is of the same character. It was natural
for monarchs to believe that the stars watched over them. But
every one was ready to receive the germ."1 It appears that astrology
was first taught to the Greeks in the time of Alexander, by a
Chaldean named Berosus, who taught in Cos, and, according to
Seneca, "interpreted Bel." "This," says Professor Murray, "must
mean that he translated into Greek the 'Eye of Bel,' a treatise in
seventy tablets found in the library of Assur-bani-pal (686-626 B.C.)
but composed for Sargon I in the third millennium B.C." (ibid.,
p. 176).
As we shall see, the majority even of the best philosophers fell
in with the belief in astrology. It involved, since it thought the
future predictable, a belief in necessity or fate, which could be
set against the prevalent belief in fortune. No doubt most men
believed in both, and never noticed the inconsistency.
The general confusion was bound to bring moral decay, even
more than intellectual enfeeblement. Ages of prolonged uncer-
tainty, while they are compatible with the highest degree of saintli-
ness in a few, are inimical to the prosaic every-day virtues of
respectable citizens. There seems no use in thrift, when to-morrow
all your savings may be dissipated ; no advantage in honesty, when
the man towards whom you practise it is pretty sure to swindle
you ; no point in steadfast adherence to a cause, when no cause is
important or has a chance of stable victory ; no argument in favour
of truthfulness, when only supple tergiversation makes the pre-
servation of life and fortune possible. The man whose virtue has
no source except a purely terrestrial prudence will, in such a world,
1 Fit* Stag€* of Gfttk Reti0<m9 pp. 17778
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
become an adventurer if he has the courage, and, if not, will seek
obscurity as a timid time-server.
Menander, who belongs to this age, says:
So many cases I have known
Of men who, though not naturally rogues,
Became so, through misfortune, by constraint.
This sums up the moral character of the third century B.C.,
except for a few exceptional men. Even among these few, fear
took the place of hope ; the purpose of life was rather to escape
misfortune than to achieve any positive good. "Metaphysics sink
into the background, and ethics, now individual, become of the
first importance. Philosophy is no longer the pillar of fire going
before a few intrepid seekers after truth : it is rather an ambulance
following in the wake of the struggle for existence and picking up
the weak and wounded."1
1 C. F. Angus in Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. VII, p. 231. The
above quotation from Menander is taken from the same chapter.
251
Chapter XXVI
CYNICS AND SCEPTICS
E I IHE relation of intellectually eminent men to contemporary
I society has been very different in different ages. In some
JL fortunate epochs they have been on the whole in harmony
with their surroundings — suggesting, no doubt, such reforms as
seemed to them necessary, but fairly confident that their sugges-
tions would be welcomed, and not disliking the world in which
they found themselves even if it remained unreformed. At other
times they have been revolutionary, considering that radical
alterations were called for, but expecting that, partly as a result
of their advocacy, these alterations would be brought about in the
near future. At yet other times they have despaired of the world,
and felt that, though they themselves knew what was needed,
there was no hope of its being brought about. This mood sinks
easily into the deeper despair which regards life on earth as
essentially bad, and hopes for good only in a future life or in
some mystical transfiguration.
In some ages, all these attitudes have been adopted by different
men living at the same time. Consider, for example, the early
nineteenth century. Goethe is comfortable, Bentharn is a reformer,
Shelley is a revolutionary, and Leopardi is a pessimist. But in
most periods there has been a prevailing tone among great writers.
In England they were comfortable under Elizabeth and in the
eighteenth century; in France, they became revolutionary about
1750; in Germany, they have been nationalistic since 1813.
During the period of ecclesiastical domination, from the fifth
century to the fifteenth, there was a certain conflict between what
was theoretically believed and what was actually felt. Theoretically,
the world was a vale of tears, a preparation, amid tribulation, for
the world to come. But in practice the writers of hooks, being
almost all clerics, could not help feeling exhilarated by the power
of the Church; they found opportunity for abundant activity of
a sort that they believed to be useful. They had therefore the
mentality of a governing class, not of men who feel themselves
exiles in an alien world. This is part of the curious dualism that
runs through the Middle Ages, owing to the fact that the Church,
252
CYNICS AND SCEPTICS
chough based on other-worldly beliefs, was the most important
institution in the every-day world.
The psychological preparation for the other-worldliness of
Christianity begins in the Hellenistic period, and is connected
with the eclipse of the City State. Down to Aristotle, Greek philo-
sophers, though they might complain of this or that, were, in
the main, not cosmically despairing, nor did they feel themselves
politically impotent. They might, at times, belong to a beaten
party, but, if so, their defeat was due to the chances of conflict,
not to any inevitable powerlessness of the wise. Even those who,
like Pythagoras, and Plato in certain moods, condemned the world
of appearance and sought escape in mysticism, had practical plans
for turning the governing classes into saints and sages. When
political power passed into the hands of the Macedonians, Greek
philosophers, as was natural, turned aside from politics and
devoted themselves more to the problem of individual virtue or
salvation. They no longer asked: how can men create a good
State? They asked instead: how can men be virtuous in a wicked
world, or happy in a world of suffering? The change, it is true,
is only one of degree ; such questions had been asked before, and
the later Stoics, for a time, again concerned themselves with
politics — the politic^ of Rome, not of Greece. But the change was
none the less real. Except to a limited extent during the Roman
period in Stoicism, the outlook of those who thought and felt
seriously became increasingly subjective and individualistic, until,
at last, Christianity evolved a gospel of individual salvation which
inspired missionary zeal and created the Church. Until that
happened, there was no institution to which the philosopher could
give whole-hearted adherence, and therefore there was no ade-
cjuate outlet for his legitimate love of power. For this reason, the
philosophers of the Hellenistic period are more limited as human
beings than the men who lived while the City State could still
inspire allegiance. They still think, because they cannot help
thinking; but they scarcely hope that their thought will bear fruit
in the world of affairs.
Four schools of philosophy were founded about the time of
Alexander. The two most famous, the Stoics and Epicureans,
will be the subjects of later chapters ; in the present chapter we
shall be concerned with the Cynics and Sceptics.
The first of these schools is derived, through its founder Dio-
253
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
genes, from Amisthenes, a disciple of Socrates, about twenty
years older than Plato. Antisthenes was a remarkable character,
in some ways rather like Tolstoy. Until after the death of Socrates,
he lived in the aristocratic circle of his fellow disciples, and
showed no sign of unorthodoxy. But something — whether the
defeat of Athens, or the death of Socrates, or a distaste for philo-
sophic quibbling — caused him, when no longer young, to despise
the things that he had formerly valued. He would have nothing
but simple goodness. He associated with working men, and
dressed as one of them. He took to open-air preaching, in a style
that the uneducated could understand. All refined philosophy he
held to be worthless; what could be known, could be known by
the plain man. He believed in the "return to nature/1 and carried
this belief very far. There was to be no government, no private
property, no marriage, no established religion. His followers, if
not he himself, condemned slavery. He was not exactly ascetic,
but he despised luxury and all pursuit of artificial pleasures of
the senses. "I had rather be mad than delighted/' he said.1
The fame of Antisthenes was surpassed by that of his disciple
Diogenes, "a young man from Sinope, on the Euxine, whom he
[Antisthenes] did not take to at first sight ; the son of a disreputable
money-changer who had been sent to prison for defacing the
coinage. Antisthenes ordered the lad away, but he paid no attention ;
he beat him with his stick, but he never moved. He wanted
'wisdom/ and saw that Antisthenes had it to give. His aim in
life was to do as his father had done, to 'deface the coinage/ but
on a much larger scale. He would deface all the coinage current
in the world. Every conventional stamp was false. The men
stamped as generals and kings; the things stamped as honour and
wisdom and happiness and riches ; all were base metal with lying
superscription/'*
He decided to live like a dog, and was therefore called a "cynic,"
which means "canine." He rejected all conventions — whether of
religion, of manners, of dress, of housing, of food, or of decency.
One is told that he lived in a tub, but Gilbert Murray assures us
that this is a mistake: it was a large pitcher, of the sort used in
primitive times for burials.8 He lived, like an Indian fakir, by
begging. He proclaimed his brotherhood, not only with the whole
1 Benn, Vol. II, pp. 4, 5: Murray, Five Stagey pp. 113-14.
9 Ibid., p. 117. • Ibid., p. no.
CYNICS AND SCEPTICS
human race, but also with animals. He was a man about whom
stories gathered, even in his lifetime. Everyone knows how
Alexander visited him, and asked if he desired any favour ; "only
to stand out of my light/' he replied.
The teaching of Diogenes was by no means what we now call
"cynical"— quite the contrary. He had an ardent passion for
"virtue," in comparison with which he held worldly goods of no
account. He sought virtue and moral freedom in liberation from
desire: be indifferent to the goods that fortune has to bestow,
and you will be emancipated from fear. In this respect, his doctrine,
as we shall see, was taken up by the Stoics, but they did not follow
him in rejecting the amenities of civilization. He considered that
Prometheus was justly punished for bringing to man the arts that
have produced the complication and artificiality of modern life.
In this he resembled the Taoists and Rousseau and Tolstoy, but
was more consistent than they were.
His doctrine, though he was a contemporary of Aristotle,
belongs in its temper to the Hellenistic age. Aristotle is the last
Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully ; after him, all
have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. The world
is bad ; let us learn to be independent of it. External goods are
precarious ; they are the gift of fortune, not the reward of our own
efforts. Only subjective goods — virtue, or contentment through
resignation — are secure, and these alone, therefore, will be valued
by the wise man. Diogenes personally was a man full of vigour,
but his doctrine, like all those of the Hellenistic age, was one to
appeal to weary men, in whom disappointment had destroyed
natural zest. And it was certainly not a doctrine calculated to
promote art or science or statesmanship, or any useful activity
except one of protest against powerful evil.
It is interesting to observe what the Cynic teaching became
when it was popularized. In the early part of the third century B.C.,
the cynics were the fashion, especially in Alexandria. They
published little sermons pointing out how easy it is to do without
material possessions, how happy one can be on simple food, how
warm one can keep in winter without expensive clothes (which
might be true in Egypt I), how silly it is to feel affection for one's
native country, or to mourn when one's children or friends die.
"Because my son or my wife is dead/* says Teles, who was one
of these popularizing Cynics, "is that any reason for my neglecting
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
myself, who am still alive, and ceasing to look after my property ?"*
At this point, it becomes difficult to feel any sympathy with the
simple life, which has grown altogether too simple. One wonders
who enjoyed these sermons. Was it the rich, who wished to think
the sufferings of the poor imaginary? Or was it the new poor,
who were trying to despise the successful business man ? Or was
it sycophants who persuaded themselves that the charity they
accepted was unimportant? Teles says to a rich man: "You give
liberally and I take valiantly from you, neither grovelling nor
demeaning myself basely nor grumbling."2 A very convenient
doctrine. Popular Cynicism did not teach abstinence from the good
things of this world, but only a certain indifference to them. In
the case of a borrower, this might take the form of minimizing
the obligation to the lender. One can see how the word "cynic"
acquired its everyday meaning.
What was best in the Cynic doctrine passed over into Stoicism,
which was an altogether more complete and rounded philosophy.
Scepticism, as a doctrine of the schools, was first proclaimed
by Pyrrho, who was in Alexander's army, and campaigned with
it as far as India. It seems that this gave him a sufficient taste of
travel, and that he spent the rest of his life in his native city, Elis,
where he died in 275 B.C. There was not much that was new in
his doctrine, beyond a certain systematizing and formalizing of
older doubts. Scepticism with regard to the senses had troubled
Greek philosophers from a very early stage ; the only exceptions
were those who, like Parmenides and Plato, denied the cognitive
value of perception, and made their denial into an opportunity
for an intellectual dogmatism. The Sophists, notably Protagoras
and Gorgias, had been led by the ambiguities and apparent con-
tradictions of sense-perception to a subjectivism not unlike I luine's.
Pyrrho seems (for he very wisely wrote no books) to have added
moral and logical scepticism to scepticism as to the senses. He
is said to have maintained that there could never be any rational
ground for preferring one course of action to another. In practice,
this meant that one conformed to the customs of whatever country
one inhabited. A modem disciple would go to church on Sundays
and perform the correct genuflexions, but without any of the
religious beliefs that are supposed to inspire these actions. Ancient
1 The Hellemstif Age (Cambridge, 1923), p. 84 11.
* Ibid., p. 86.
CYNICS AND SCEPTICS
Sceptics went through the whole pagan ritual, and were even
sometimes priests; their Scepticism assured them that this
behaviour could not be proved wrong, and their common sense
(which survived their philosophy) assured them that it was con-
venient.
Scepticism naturally made an appeal to many unphilosophic
minds. People observed the diversity of schools and the acerbity
of their disputes, and decided that all alike were pretending to
knowledge which was in fact unattainable. Scepticism was a lazy
man's consolation, since it showed the ignorant to be as wise as
the reputed men of learning. To men who, by temperament,
required a gospel, it might seem unsatisfying, but like every
doctrine of the Hellenistic period it recommended itself as an
antidote to worry. Why trouble about the future? It is wholly
uncertain. You may as well enjoy the present; "what's to come
is still unsure/1 For these reasons, Scepticism enjoyed a con-
siderable popular success.
It should be observed that Scepticism as a philosophy is not
merely doubt, but what may be called dogmatic doubt. The man
of science says "I think it is so-and-so, but I am not sure." The
man of intellectual curiosity says "I don't know how it is, but I
hope to find out." The philosophical Sceptic says "nobody knows,
and nobody ever can know/' It is this element of dogmatism that
makes the system vulnerable. Sceptics, of course, deny that they
assert the impossibility of knowledge dogmatically, but their
denials are not very convincing.
Pyrrho's disciple Timon, however, advanced some intellectual
arguments which, from the standpoint of Greek logic, were very
hard to answer. The only logic admitted by the Greeks was de-
ductive, and all deduction had to start, like Euclid, from general
principles regarded as self-evident. Timon denied the possibility
of finding such principles. Everything* therefore, will have to be
proved by means of something else, and all argument will be
either circular or an endless chain hanging from nothing. In either
case nothing can be proved. This argument, as we can see, cut
at the root of the Aristotelian philosophy which dominated the
Middle Ages.
Some forms of Scepticism which, in our own day, arc advocated
by men who arc by no means wholly sceptical, had not occurred
to the Sceptics of antiquity. They did not doubt phenomena, or
//Mlur> <>/
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
question propositions which, in their opinion, only expressed
what we know directly concerning phenomena. Most of Timon's
work is lost, but two surviving fragments will illustrate this point.
One says "The phenomenon is always valid." The other says:
"That honey w sweet I refuse to assert ; that it appears sweet, I
fully grant."1 A modern Sceptic would point out that the pheno-
menon merely occurs, and is not either valid or invalid; what is
valid or invalid must be a statement, and no statement can be so
closely linked to the phenomenon as to be incapable of falsehood.
For the same reason, he would say that the statement "honey
appears sweet" is only highly probable, not absolutely certain.
In some respects, the doctrine of Timon was very similar to
that of Hume. He maintained that something which had never
been observed — atoms, for instance — could not be validly inferred ;
but when two phenomena had been frequently observed together,
one could be inferred fiom the other.
Timon lived at Athens throughout the later years of his long
life, and died there in 235 B.C. With his death, the school of
Pyrrho, as a school, came to an end, but his doctrines, somewhat
modified, were taken up, strange as it may seem, by the Academy,
which represented the Platonic tradition.
The man who effected this surprising philosophic revolution
was Arcesilaus, a contemporary of Timon, who died as an old
man about 240 B.C. What most men have taken from Plato is
belief in a supersensible intellectual world and in the superiority
of the immortal soul to the mortal body. But Plato was many-
sided, and in some respects could be regarded as teaching scep-
ticism. The Platonic Socrates professes to know nothing; we
naturally treat this as irony, but it could be taken seriously.
Many of the dialogues reach no positive conclusion, and aim at
leaving the reader in a state of doubt. Some — the latter half of
the Parmenide*, for instance — might seem to have no purpose
except to show that either side of any question can be maintained
with equal plausibility. The Platonic dialectic could be treated
as an end, rather than a means, and if so treated it lent itself
admirably to the advocacy of Scepticism. This seems to have
been the way in which Arcesilaus interpreted the man whom he
still professed to follow. He had decapitated Plato, but at any rate
the torso that remained was genuine.
1 Quoted by Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 126.
CYNICS AND SCEPTICS
The manner in which Arcesilaus taught would have had much
to commend it, if the young men who learnt from him had been
able to avoid being paralysed by it. He maintained no thesis, but
would refute any thesis set up by a pupil. Sometimes he would
himself advance two contradictory propositions on successive
occasions, showing how to argue convincingly in favour of either.
A pupil sufficiently vigorous to rebel might have learnt dexterity
and the avoidance of fallacies ; in fact, none seem to have learnt
anything except cleverness and indifference to truth. So great
was the influence of Arcesilaus that the Academy remained
sceptical for about two hundred years.
In the middle of this sceptical period, an amusing incident
occurred. Carneades, a worthy successor of Arcesilaus as head of
the Academy, was one of three philosophers sent by Athens on
a diplomatic mission to Rome in the year 156 B.C. He saw no
reason why his ambassadorial dignity should interfere with the
main chance, so he announced a course of lectures in Rome. The
young men, who, at that time, were anxious to ape Greek manners
and acquire Greek culture, flocked to hear him. His first lecture
expounded the views of Aristotle and Plato on justice, and was
thoroughly edifying. His second, however, was concerned in
refuting all that he had said in his first, not with a view to estab-
lishing opposite conclusions, but merely to show that every con-
clusion is unwarranted. Plato's Socrates had argued that to inflict
injustice was a greater evil to the perpetrator than to suffer it.
Carneadcs, in his second lecture, treated this contention with
scorn. Great States, he pointed out, had become great by unjust
aggressions against their weaker neighbours; in Rome, this could
not well be denied. In a shipwreck, you may save your life at the
expense of some one weaker, and you are a fool if you do not.
"Women and children first," he seems to think, is not a maxim
that leads to personal survival. What would you do if you were
flying from a victorious enemy, you had lost your horse, but you
found a wounded comrade on a horse? If you were sensible, you
would drag him off and seize his horse, whatever justice might
ordain. All this not very edifying argumentation is surprising in
a nominal follower of Plato, but it seems to have pleased the
modern-minded Roman youths.
There was one man whom it did not please, and that was the
Cato, who represented the stern, stiff, stupid, and brutal
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
moral code by means of which Rome had defeated Carthage.
From youth to old age, he lived simply, rose early, practised
severe manual labour, ate only coarse food, and never wore a
gown that cost over a hundred pence. Towards the State he was
scrupulously honest, avoiding all bribery and plunder. He exacted
of other Romans all the virtues that he practised himself, and
asserted that to accuse and pursue the wicked was the best thing
an honest man could do. He enforced, as far as he could, the old
Roman severity of manners:
"Cato put out of the Senate also, one Manilius, who was in
great towardness to have been made Consul the next year following,
only because he kissed his wife too lovingly in the day time, and
before his daughter: and reproving him for it, he told him, his
wife never kissed him, but when it thundered."1
When he was in power, he put down luxury and feasting. He
made his wife suckle not only her own children, but also those of
his slaves, in order that, having been nourished by the same milk,
they might love his children. When his slaves were too old to
work, he sold them remorselessly. He insisted that his slaves
should always be either working or sleeping. He encouraged his
slaves to quarrel with each other, for "he could not abide that
they should be friends." When a slave had committed a grave
fault, he would call in his other slaves, and induce them to condemn
the delinquent to death; he would then carry out the sentence
with his own hands in the presence of the survivors.
The contrast between Cato and Carneades was very complete:
the one brutal through a morality that was too strict and too
traditional, the other ignoble through a morality that was too
lax and too much infected with the social dissolution of the
Hellenistic world.
"Marcus Cato, even from the beginning that young men began
to study the Greek tongue, and that it grew in estimation in Rome,
did dislike of it: fearing lest the youth of Rome that were desirous
of learning and eloquence, would utterly give over the honour and
glory of arms. ... So lie openly found fault one day in the
Senate, that the Ambassadors were long there, and had no dis-
patch : considering also they were cunning men, and could easily
persuade what they would. And if there were no other respect,
this only might persuade them to determine some answer for
1 North's Plutarch, Lftto, Marcus Cato.
CYNICS AND SCEPTICS
them, and to send them home again to their schools, to teach
their children of Greece, and to let alone the children of Rome,
that they might learn to obey the laws and the Senate, as they
had done before. Now he spake thus to the Senate, not of any
private ill will or malice he bare to Carneades, as some men
thought: but because he generally hated philosophy."1
The Athenians, in Cato's view, were a lesser breed without the
law; it did not matter if they were degraded by the shallow soph-
istries of intellectuals, but the Roman youth must be kept puri-
tanical, imperialistic, ruthless, and stupid. He failed, however;
later Romans, while retaining many of his vices, adopted those of
Carneades also.
The next head of the Academy, after Carneades (ca. 180 to
ca. no B.C.), was a Carthaginian whose real name was Hasdrubal,
but who, in his dealings with Greeks, preferred to call himself
Clitomachus. Unlike Carneades, who confined himself to lec-
turing, Clitomachus wrote over four hundred books, some of
them in the Phoenician language. His principles appear to have
been the same as those of Carneades. In some respects, they were
useful. These two Sceptics set themselves against the belief in
divination, magic, and astrology, which was becoming more and
more widespread. They also developed a constructive doctrine,
concerning degrees of probability: although we can never be
justified in feeling certainty, some things are more likely to be
true than others. Probability should be our guide in practice, since
it is reasonable to act on the most probable of possible hypo-
theses. This view is one with which most modern philosophers
would agree. Unfortunately, the books setting it forth are lost, and
it is difficult to reconstruct the doctrine from the hints that remain.
After Clitomachus, the Academy ceased to be sceptical, and from
the time of Antiochus (who died in 69 B.C.) its doctrines became,
for centuries, practically indistinguishable from those of the Stoics.
Scepticism, however, did not disappear. It was revived by the
Cretan Aenesidemus, who came from Knossos, where, for aught
we know, there may have been Sceptics two thousand years earlier,
entertaining dissolute courtiers with doubts as to the divinity of
the mistress of animals. The date of Aenesidemus is uncertain.
He threw over the doctrines on probability advocated by Carneades,
and reverted to the earliest forms of Scepticism. 11 is influence was
1 North's Plutarch, Ltvtt, Marcus Cato
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
considerable; he was followed by the satirist Lucian in the second
century A.D., and also, slightly later, by Sextus Empiricus, the
only Sceptic philosopher of antiquity whose works survive. There
is, for example, a short treatise, "Arguments Against Belief in a
God," translated by Edwyn Bevan in his Later Greek Religion,
pp. 52-56, and said by him to be probably taken by Sextus
Empiricus from Carneades, as reported by Clitomachus.
This treatise begins by explaining that, in behaviour, the Sceptics
are orthodox: "We sceptics follow in practice the way of the world,
but without holding any opinion about it. We speak of the Gods
as existing and offer worship to the Gods and say that they exercise
providence, but in saying this we express no belief, and avoid the
rashness of the dogmatize rs."
He then argues that people differ as to the nature of God ; for
instance, some think Him corporeal, some incorporeal. Since we
have no experience of Him, we cannot know His attributes. The
existence of God is not self-evident, and therefore needs proof.
There is a somewhat confused argument to show that no such
proof is possible. He next takes up the problem of evil, and
concludes with the words:
"Those who affirm positively that God exists cannot avoid falling
into an impiety. For if they say that God controls everything,
they make Him the author of evil things; if, on the other hand,
they say that He controls some things only, or that He controls
nothing, they are compelled to make God cither grudging or
impotent, and to do that is quite obviously an impiety/'
Scepticism, while it continued to appeal to some cultivated indi-
viduals until somewhere in the third century A.D., was contrary
to the temper of the age, which was turning more and more to
dogmatic religion and doctrines of salvation. Scepticism had
enough force to make educated men dissatisfied with the State
religions, but it had nothing positive, even in the purely intellectual
sphere, to offer in their place. From the Renaissance onwards,
theological scepticism has been supplemented, in most of its
advocates, by an enthusiastic belief in science, but in antiquity
there was no such supplement to doubt. Without answering the
arguments of the Sceptics, the ancient world turned aside from
them. The Olympians being discredited, the way was left clear
for an invasion of oriental religions, which competed for the
favour of the superstitious until the triumph of Christianity.
262
Chapter XXVII
THE EPICUREANS
p I 1HE two great new schools of the Hellenistic period, the
I Stoics and Epicureans, were contemporaneous in their
JL foundation. Their founders, Zeno and Epicurus, were born
at about the same time, and settled in Athens as heads of their
respective sects within a few years of each other. It is therefore
a matter of taste which to consider first. I shall begin with the
Epicureans, because their doctrines were fixed once for all by
their founder, whereas Stoicism had a long development,
extending as far as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died
in A.D. 1 80.
The main authority for the life of Epicurus is Diogenes Laertius,
who lived in the third century A.D. There are, however, two diffi-
culties: first, Diogenes Laertius is himself ready to accept legends
of little or no historical value; second, part of his Life consists in
reporting the scandalous accusations brought against Epicurus by
the Stoics, and it is not always clear whether he is asserting some-
thing himself or merely mentioning a libel. The scandals invented
by the Stoics are facts about them, to be remembered when their
lofty morality is praised; but they are not facts about Epicurus.
For instance, there was a legend that his mother was a quack
priestess, as to which Diogenes says:
"They (apparently the Stoics) say that he used to go round
from house to house with his mother reading out the purification
prayers, and assisted his father in elementary teaching for a
miserable pittance."
On this Bailey comments:1 "If there is any truth in the story
that he went about with his mother as an acolyte, reciting the
formulae of her incantations, he may well have been inspired in
quite early years with the hatred of superstition, which was after-
wards so prominent a feature in his teaching." This theory is
attractive, but, in view of the extreme unscrupulousness of later
antiquity in inventing a scandal, I do not think it can be accepted
1 The Greek Atomitts and Epicurus, by Cyril Bailey, Oxford, 1928,
p. 221. Mr. Bailey has made a specialty of Epicurus, and his book is
invaluable to the student.
•63
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as having any foundation.1 There is against it the fact that he
had an unusually strong affection for his mother.2
The main facts of the life of Epicurus seem, however, fairly
certain. His father was a poor Athenian colonist in Samos ; Epi-
curus was born in 342-1 B.C., but whether in Samos or in Attica
is not known. In any case, his boyhood was passed in Samos. He
states that he took to the study of philosophy at the age of fourteen.
At the age of eighteen, about the time of Alexander's death, he
went to Athens, apparently to establish his citizenship, but while
he was there the Athenian colonists were turned out of Samos
(322 B.C.). The family of Epicurus became refugees in Asia Minor,
where he rejoined them. At Taos, either at this time, or perhaps
earlier, he was taught philosophy by a certain Nausiphanes,
apparently a follower of Democritus. Although his mature philo-
sophy owes more to Democritus than to any other philosopher,
he never expressed anything but contempt for Nausiphanes,
whom he alluded to as "The Mollusc."
In the year 311 he founded his school, which was first in
Mitylene, then in Lampsacus, and, from 307 onwards, in Athens,
where he died in 270-1 B.C.
After the hard years of his youth, his life in Athens was placid,
and was only troubled by his ill health. He had a house and a
garden (apparently separate from the house), and it was in the
garden that he taught. His three brothers, and some others, had
been members of his school from the first, but in Athens his
community was increased, not only by philosophic disciples, but
by friends and their children, slaves and hetaerae. These last were
made an occasion of scandal by his enemies, but apparently quite
unjustly. He had a very exceptional capacity for purely human
friendship, and wrote pleasant letters to the young children of
members of the community. He did not practise that dignity and
reserve in the expression of the emotions that was expected of
ancient philosophers; his letters are amazingly natural and
unaffected.
The life of the community was very simple, partly on principle,
1 The Stoics were very unjust to Epicurus. Epictctus, for example,
addressing him, says; "This is the life of which you pronounce yourself
worthy: eating, drinking, copulation, evacuation and snoring." Book II,
chap, n, Ditcoune* of Epictctus.
a Gilbert Murray, Five Stages, p. 130
THE EPICUREANS
and partly (no doubt) for lack of money. Their food and drink
was mainly bread and water, which Epicurus found quite satis-
fying. "I am thrilled with pleasure in the body," he says, "when
I live on bread and water, and I spit on luxurious pleasures, not
for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow
them." The community depended financially, at least in part,
on voluntary contributions. "Send me some preserved cheese,"
he writes, "that when I like, I may have a feast." To another
friend: "Send us offerings for the sustenance of our holy body
on behalf of yourself and your children." And again: "The only
contribution I require is that which ordered the disciples to
send me, even if they be among the Hyperboreans. I wish to
receive from each of you two hundred and twenty drachmae1 a
year and no more."
Epicurus suffered all his life from bad health, but learnt to
endure it with great fortitude. It was he, not a Stoic, who first
maintained that a man could be happy on the rack. Two letters
written, one a few days before his death, the other on the day of
his death, show that he had some right to this opinion. The first
says: "Seven days before writing this the stoppage became com-
plete and I suffered pains such as bring men to their last day. If
anything happens to me, do you look after the children of Metro-
dorus for four or five years, but do not spend any more on them
than you now spend on me." The second says: "On this truly
happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this
to you. The diseases in my bladder and stomach are pursuing
their course, lacking nothing of their usual severity: but against
all this is the joy in my heart at the recollection of my conversa-
tions with you. Do you, as I might expect from your devotion
from boyhood to me and to philosophy, take good care of the
children of Metrodorus." Metrodorus, who had been one of his
first disciples, was dead; Epicurus provided for his children in
his will.
Although Epicurus was gentle and kindly towards most people,
a different side of his character appeared in his relations to philo-
sophers, especially those to whom he might be considered in-
debted. "I suppose," he says, "that these grumblers will believe
me to be a disciple of The Mollusc (Nausiphanes) and to have
listened to his teaching in company with a few bibulous youths.
1 About five pounds.
265
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
For indeed the fellow was a bad man and his habits such as
could never lead to wisdom."1 He never acknowledged the extent
of his indebtedness to Democritus, and as for Leucippus, he
asserted that there was no such philosopher — meaning, no doubt,
not that there was no such man, but that the man was not a
philosopher. Diogenes Laertius gives a whole list of abusive
epithets that he is supposed to have applied to the most eminent
of his predecessors. With this lack of generosity towards other
philosophers goes another grave fault, that of dictatorial dog-
matism. His followers had to learn a kind of creed embodying
his doctrines, which they were not allowed to question. To the
end, none of them added or modified anything. When Lucretius,
two hundred years later, turned the philosophy of Epicurus into
poetry, he added, so far as can be judged, nothing theoretical to
the master's teaching. Wherever comparison is possible, Lucretius
is found to agree closely with the original, and it is generally
held that, elsewhere, he may be used to fill in the gaps in our
knowledge caused by the loss of all of Epicurus's three hundred
books. Of his writings, nothing remains except a few letters, some
fragments, and a statement of "Principal Doctrines."
The philosophy of Epicurus, like all those of his age (with the
partial exception of Scepticism), was primarily designed to secure
tranquillity. He considered pleasure to be the good, and adhered,
with remarkable consistency* to all the consequences of this view.
"Pleasure," he said, "is the beginning and end of the blessed life.0
Diogenes Laertius quotes him as saying, in a book on The End of
Life, "I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the
pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of
hearing and sight." Again: "The beginning and the root of all
good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture
must be referred to this." The pleasure of the mind, we are told,
is the contemplation of pleasures of the body. Its only advantage
over bodily pleasures is that we can learn to contemplate pleasure
rather than pain, and thus have more control over mental
than over physical pleasures. "Virtue," unless it means "pru-
dence in the pursuit of pleasure," is an empty name. Justice, for
example, consists in so acting as not to have occasion to fear
other men's resentment — a view which leads to a doctrine
1 The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, by W. J. Gates, p. 47. Whtre
possible, I have availed myself of Mr. Oates's translations.
266
THE EPICUREANS
of the origin of society not unlike the theory of the Social
Contract.
Epicurus disagrees with some of his hedonist predecessors in
distinguishing between active and passive pleasures, or dynamic
and static pleasures. Dynamic pleasures consist in the attainment
of a desired end, the previous desire having been accompanied
by pain. Static pleasures consist in a state of equilibrium, which
results from the existence of the kind of state of affairs that would
be desired if it were absent. I think one may say that the satisfying
of hunger, while it is in progress, is a dynamic pleasure, but the
state of quiescence which supervenes when hunger is completely
satisfied is a static pleasure. Of these two kinds, Epicurus holds it
more prudent to pursue the second, since it is unalloyed, and does
not depend upon the existence of pain as a stimulus to desire.
When the body is in a state of equilibrium, there is no pain; we
should, therefore, aim at equilibrium and the quiet pleasures
rather than at more violent joys. Epicurus, it seems, would wish,
if it were possible, to be always in the state of having eaten
moderately, never in that of voracious desire to eat.
He is thus led, in practice, to regarding absence of pain, rather
than presence of pleasure, as the wise man's goal.1 The stomach
may be at the root of things, but the pains of stomach-ache out-
weigh the pleasures of gluttony; accordingly Epicurus lived on
bread, with a little cheese on feast days. Such desires as those for
wealth and honour are futile, because they make a man restless
when he might be contented. ' 'The greatest good of all is prudence :
it is a more precious thing even than philosophy." Philosophy, as
he understood it, was a practical system designed to secure a
happy life; it required only common sense, not logic or mathe-
matics or any of the elaborate training prescribed by Plato. He
urges his young disciple and friend Pythodes to "flee from every
form of culture." It was a natural consequence of his principles
that he advised abstinence from public life, for in proportion as
a man achieves power he increases the number of those who envy
him and therefore wish to do him injury. Even if he escapes out-
ward misfortune, peace of mind is impossible in such a situation.
The wise man will try to live unnoticed, so as to have no enemies.
Sexual love, as one of the most "dynamic11 of pleasures, naturally
1 (For Epicurus) "Absence of pain is in itself pleasure, indeed in his
ultimate analvsia the truest pleasure.'1 Bailey, op. of., p. 349.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
comes under the ban. "Sexual intercourse," the philosopher
declares, "has never done a man good and he is lucky if it has not
harmed him." He was fond of children (other people's), but for
the gratification of this taste he seems to have relied upon other
people not to follow his advice. He seems, in fact, to have liked
children against his better judgment ; for he considered marriage
and children a distraction from more serious pursuits. Lucretius,
who follows him in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual
intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.
The safest of social pleasures, in the opinion of Epicurus, is
friendship. Epicurus, like Bentham, is a man who considers that
all men, at all times, pursue only their own pleasure, sometimes
wisely, sometimes unwisely; but, again like Bentham, he is con-
stantly seduced by his own kindly and affectionate nature into
admirable behaviour from which, on his own theories, he ought
to have refrained. He obviously liked his friends without regard
to what he got out of them, but he persuaded himself that he was
as selfish as his philosophy held all men to be. According to
Cicero, he held that "friendship cannot be divorced from pleasure,
and for that reason must be cultivated, because without it neither
can we live in safety and without fear, nor even pleasantly."
Occasionally, however, he forgets his theories more or less: "all
friendship is desirable in itself," he says, adding "though it starts
from the need of help."1
Epicurus, though his ethic seemed to others swinish and lacking
in moral exaltation, was very much in earnest. As we have seen,
he speaks of the community in the garden as "our holy body";
he wrote a book On Holiness ; he had all the fervour of a religious
reformer. He must have had a strong emotion of pity for the
sufferings of mankind, and an unshakeable conviction that they
would be greatly lessened if men would adopt his philosophy. It
was a valetudinarian's philosophy, designed to suit a world in
which adventurous happiness had become scarcely possible. Eat
little, for fear of indigestion ; drink little, for fear of next morning ;
eschew politics and love and all violently passionate activities; do
not give hostages to fortune by marrying and having children ; in
your mental life, teach yourself to contemplate pleasures rather
than pains. Physical pain is certainly a great evil, but if severe,
1 On the subject of friendship and Epicurus's amiable inconsistency,
see Bailey, op. cit., pp. 517-20.
268
THE EPICUREANS
it is brief, and if prolonged, it can be endured. by means of mental
discipline and the habit of thinking of happy things in spite of it.
Above all, live so as to avoid fear.
It was through the problem of avoiding fear that Epicurus was
led into theoretical philosophy. He held that two of the greatest
sources of fear were religion and the dread of death, which were
connected, since religion encouraged the view that the dead are
unhappy. He therefore sought a metaphysic which would prove
that the gods do not interfere in human affairs, and that the soul
perishes with the body. Most modern people think of religion as
a consolation, but to Epicurus it was the opposite. Supernatural
interference with the course of nature seemed to him a source of
terror, and immortality fatal to the hope of release from pain.
Accordingly he constructed an elaborate doctrine designed to
cure men of the beliefs that inspire fear.
Epicurus was a materialist, but not a determinist. He followed
Democritus in believing that the world consists of atoms and the
void; but he did not believe, as Democritus did, that the atoms are
at all times completely controlled by natural laws. The conception
of necessity in Greece was, as we have seen, religious in origin,
and perhaps he was right in considering that an attack on religion
would be incomplete if it allowed necessity to survive. His atoms
had weight, and were continually falling; not towards the centre
of the earth, but downwards in some absolute sense. Every now
and then, however, an atom, actuated by something like free will,
would swerve slightly from the direct downward path,1 and so
would come into collision with some other atom. From this point
onwards, the development of vortices, etc., proceeded in much the
same way as in Democritus. The soul is material, and is composed
of particles like those of breath and heat. (Epicurus thought
breath and wind different in substance from air; they were not
merely air in motion.) Soul-atoms are distributed throughout the
body. Sensation is due to thin films thrown off by bodies and
travelling on until they touch soul-atoms. These films may still
exist when the bodies from which they originally proceeded have
been dissolved; this accounts for dreams. At death, the soul is
dispersed, and its atoms, which of course survive, are no longer
capable of sensation, because they are no longer connected with
1 An analogous view is urged in our day by Eddtngton, in his inter-
pretation of the principle of indeterminacy.
369
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the body. It follows, in the words of Epicurus, that "Death is
nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation,
and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."
As for the gods, Epicurus firmly believes in their existence,
since he cannot otherwise account for the widespread existence
of the idea of gods. But he is persuaded that they do not trouble
themselves with the affairs of our human world. They are rational
hedonists, who follow his precepts, and abstain from public life;
government would be an unnecessary labour, to which, in their
life of complete blessedness, they feel no temptation. Of course,
divination and augury and all such practices are purely super-
stitious, and so is the belief in Providence.
There is therefore no ground for the fear that we may incur the
anger of the gods, or that we may suffer in Hades after death.
Though subject to the powers of nature, which can be studied
scientifically, we yet have free will, and are, within limits, the
masters of our fate. We cannot escape death, but death, rightly
understood, is no evil. If we live prudently, according to the
maxims of Epicurus, we shall probably achieve a measure of
freedom from pain. This is a moderate gospel, but to a man
impressed with human misery it sufficed to inspire enthusiasm
Epicurus has no interest in science on its own account ; he values
it solely as providing naturalistic explanations of phenomena which
superstition attributes to the agency of the gods. When there are
several possible naturalistic explanations, he holds that there is no
point in trying to decide between them. The phases of the moon,
for example, have been explained in many different ways; any
one of these, so long as it does not bring in the gods, is as good as
any other, and it would be idle curiosity to attempt to determine
which of them is true. It is no wonder that the Epicureans con-
tributed practically nothing to natural knowledge. They served a
useful purpose by their protest against the increasing devotion of
the later pagans to magic, astrology, and divination ; but they re-
mained, like their founder, dogmatic, limited, and without genuine
interest in anything outside individual happiness. They learnt by
heart the creed of Epicurus, and added nothing to it throughout
the centuries during which the school survived.
The only eminent disciple of Epicurus is the poet Lucretius
(99-55 B.C.), who was a contemporary of Julius Caesar. In the
last days of the Roman Republic, free thought was the fashion,
270
THE EPICUREANS
and the doctrines of Epicurus were popular among educated
people. The Emperor Augustus introduced an archaistic revival
of ancient virtue and ancient religion, which caused the poem of
Lucretius On the Nature of Things to become unpopular, and it
remained so until the Renaissance. Only one manuscript of it
survived die Middle Ages, and that narrowly escaped destruction
by bigots. Hardly any great poet has had to wait so long for
recognition, but in modern times his merits have been almost
universally acknowledged. For example, he and Benjamin Franklin
were Shelley's favourite authors.
His poem sets forth in verse the philosophy of Epicurus. Al-
though the two men have the same doctrine, their temperaments
are very different. Lucretius was passionate, and much more in
need of exhortations to prudence than Epicurus was. He com-
mitted suicide, and appears to have suffered from periodic insanity
— brought on, so some averred, by the pains of love or the un-
intended effects of a love philtre. He feels towards Epicurus as
towards a saviour, and applies language of religious intensity to
the man whom he regards as the destroyer of religion:1
When prostrate upon earth lay human life
Visibly trampled down and foully crushed
Beneath Religion's cruelty, who meanwhile
Out of the regions of the heavens above
Showed forth her face, lowering on mortal men
With horrible aspect, first did a man of Greece
Dare to lift up his mortal eyes against her;
The first was he to stand up and defy her.
Him neither stories of the gods, nor lightnings,
Nor heaven with muttering menaces could quell,
But all the more did they arouse his soul's
Keen valour, till he longed to be the first
To break through the fast-bolted doors of Nature.
Therefore his fervent energy of mind
Prevailed, and he passed onward, voyaging far
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world,
Ranging in mind and spirit far and wide
Throughout the unmeasured universe ; and thence
A conqueror he returns to us, bringing back
Knowledge both of what can and what cannot
Rise into being, teaching us in fine
1 1 quote the translation of Mr. R. C. Trevelyan, Book 1, 60-79.
271
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Upon what principle each thing has its powers
Limited, and its deep-set boundary stone.
Therefore now has Religion been cast down
Beneath men's feet, and trampled on in turn:
Ourselves heaven-high his victory exalts.
The hatred of religion expressed by Epicurus and Lucretius is
not altogether easy to understand, if one accepts the conventional
accounts of the cheerfulness of Greek religion and ritual. Keats 's
Ode on a Grecian Urn, for instance, celebrates a religious ceremony,
but not one which could fill men's minds with dark and gloomy
terrors. I think popular beliefs were very largely not of this cheerful
kind. The worship of the Olympians had less of superstitious
cruelty than the other forms of Greek religion, but even the
Olympian gods had demanded occasional human sacrifice until
the seventh or sixth century B.C., and this practice was recorded
in myth and drama.1 Throughout the barbarian world, human
sacrifice was still recognized in the time of Epicurus; until the
Roman conquest, it was practised in times of crisis, such as the
Punic Wars, by even the most civilized of barbarian populations.
As was shown most convincingly by Jane Harrison, the Greeks
had, in addition to the official cults of Zeus and his family, other
more primitive beliefs associated with more or less barbarous rites.
These were to some extent incorporated in Orphism, which
became the prevalent belief among men of religious temperament.
It is sometimes supposed that Hell was a Christian invention, but
this is a mistake. What Christianity did in this respect was only
to systematize earlier popular beliefs. From the beginning of Plato's
Republic it is clear that the fear of punishment after death was
common in fifth-century Athens, and it is not likely that it grew
less in the interval between Socrates and Epicurus. (I am thinking
not of the educated minority, but of the general population.)
Certainly, also, it was common to attribute plagues, earthquakes,
defeats in war, and such calamities, to divine displeasure or to
failure to respect the omens. I think that Greek literature and art
are probably very misleading as regards popular beliefs. What
should we know of Methodism in the late eighteenth century if
no record of the period survived except its aristocratic books and
paintings? The influence of Methodism, like that of religiosity in
1 Lucretius instances the sacrifice of Iphigcnia as an example of the
harm wrought by religion. Book I, 85-100.
272
THE EPICUREANS
the Hellenistic age, rose from below; it was already powerful in
the time of Boswell and Sir Joshua Reynolds, although from their
allusions to it the strength of its influence is not apparent. We
must not, therefore, judge of popular religion in Greece by the
pictures on "Grecian Urns" or by the works of poets and aristo-
cratic philosophers. Epicurus was not aristocratic, either by birth
or through his associates; perhaps this explains his exceptional
hostility to religion.
It is through the poem of Lucretius that the philosophy of Epi-
curus has chiefly become known to readers since the Renaissance.
What has most impressed them, when they were not professional
philosophers, is the contrast with Christian belief in such matters
as materialism, denial of Providence, and rejection of immortality.
What is especially striking to a modern reader is to have these
views — which, nowadays, are generally regarded as gloomy and
depressing — presented as a gospel of liberation from the burden
of fear. Lucretius is as firmly persuaded as any Christian of the
importance of true belief in matters of religion. After describing
how men seek escape from themselves when they are the victims
of an inner conflict, and vainly seek relief in change of place,
he says:1
Each man flies from his own self;
Yet from that self in fact he has no power
To escape: he clings to it in his own despite,
And loathes it too, because, though he is sick,
He perceives not the cause of his disease.
Which if he could but comprehend aright,
Each would put all things else aside and first
Study to learn the nature of the world,
Since 'tis our state during eternal time,
Not for one hour merely, that is in doubt,
That state wherein mortals will have to pass
The whole time that awaits them after death.
The age of Epicurus was a wean' age, and extinction could
appear as a welcome rest from travail of spirit. The last age of
the Republic, on the contrary, was not, to most Romans, a time
of disillusionment: men of titanic energy were creating out of
chaos a new order, which the Macedonians had failed to do. But
to the Roman aristocrat who stood aside from politics, and cared
1 Book III, 1068-76. I again quote Mr. R. C. Trevelyan's translation.
273
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
nothing for the scramble for power and plunder, the course of
events must have been profoundly discouraging. When to this
was added the affliction of recurrent insanity, it is not to be
wondered at that Lucretius accepted the hope of non-existence
as a deliverance.
But the fear of death is so deeply rooted in instinct that the
gospel of Epicurus could not, at any time, make a wide popular
appeal; it remained always the creed of a cultivated minority.
Even among philosophers, after the time of Augustus, it was, as
a rule, rejected in favour of Stoicism. It survived, it is true, though
with diminishing vigour, for six hundred years after the death of
Epicurus; but as men became increasingly oppressed by the
miseries of our terrestrial existence, they demanded continually
stronger medicine from philosophy or religion. The philosophers
took refuge, with few exceptions, in Neoplatonism ; the uneducated
turned to various Eastern superstitions, and then, in continually
increasing numbers, to Christianity, which, in its early form,
placed all good in the life beyond the grave, thus offering men a
gospel which was the exact opposite of that of Kpicurus. Doc-
trines very similar to his, however, were revived by the French
philosophes at the end of the eighteenth century, and brought to
England by Bentham and his followers; this was done in conscious
opposition to Christianity, which these men regarded as hostilcly
as Epicurus regarded the religions of his day.
Chapter XXVIII
STOICISM
STOICISM, while in origin contemporaneous with Epicurean-
ism, had a longer history and less constancy in doctrine.
The teaching of its founder Zeno, in the early part of the
third century B.C., was by no means identical with that of Marcus
Aurelius in the latter half of the second century A.D. Zeno was a
materialist, whose doctrines were, in the main, a combination of
Cynicism and Heraclitus; but gradually, through an admixture
of Platonism, the Stoics abandoned materialism, until, in the end,
little trace of it remained. Their ethical doctrine, it is true, changed
very little, and was what most of them regarded as of the chief
importance. liven in this respect, however, there is some change
of emphasis. As time goes on, continually less is said about the
other aspects of Stoicism, and continually more exclusive stress
is laid upon ethics and those parts of theology that are most
relevant to ethics. With regard to all the earlier Stoics, we are
hampered by the fact that their works survive only in a few frag-
ments. Seneca, Kpictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, who belong to
the first and second centuries A.D., alone survive in complete
books.
Stoicism is less Greek than any school of philosophy with which
we have been hitherto concerned. The early Stoics were mostly
Syrian, the later ones mostly Roman. Tarn (Hellenistic Civilization,
p. 287) suspects Chaldean influences in Stoicism. Uebenveg justly
observes that, in Hcllenizing the barbarian world, the Greeks
dropped what only suited themselves. Stoicism, unlike the earlier
purely Greek philosophies, is emotionally narrow, and in a certain
sense fanatical ; but it also contains religious elements of which
the world felt the need, and which the Greeks seemed unable to
supply. In particular, it appealed to rulers: "nearly all the suc-
cessors of Alexander — we may say all the principal kings in
existence in the generations following Zeno— professed themselves
Stoics," says Professor Gilbert Murray.
Zeno was a Phoenician, born at Citium, in Cyprus, at some time
during the latter half of the fourth century B.C. It seems probable
that his family were engaged in commerce, and that business
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
interests were what first took him to Athens. When there, however,
he became anxious to study philosophy. The views of the Cynics
were more congenial to him than those of any other school, but
he was something of an eclectic. The followers of Plato accused
him of plagiarizing the Academy. Socrates was the chief saint of
the Stoics throughout their history; his attitude at the time of
his trial, his refusal to escape, his calmness in the face of death,
and his contention that the perpetrator of injustice injures himself
more than his victim, all fined in perfectly with Stoic teaching.
So did his indifference to heat and cold, his plainness in matters
of food and dress, and his complete independence of all bodily
comforts. But the Stoics never took over Plato1* doctrine of ideas,
and most of them rejected his arguments for immortality. Only
the later Stoics followed him in regarding the soul as immaterial ;
the earlier Stoics agreed with Heraclitus in the view that the soul
is composed of material fire. Verbally, this doctrine is also to be
found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, but it seems that in
them the fire is not to be taken literally as one of the four elements
of which physical things are composed.
Zcno had no patience with metaphysical subtleties. Virtue was
what he thought important, and he only valued physics and meta-
physics in so far as they contributed to virtue. He attempted to
combat the metaphysical tendencies of the age by means of
common sense, which, in Greece, meant materialism. Doubts as
to the trustworthiness of the senses annoyed him, and he pushed
the opposite doctrine to extremes.
"Zeno began by asserting the existence of the real world. 'What
do you mean by real ?' asked the Sceptic. 'I mean solid and material.
I mean that this table is solid matter/ 'And God/ asked the
Sceptic, 'and the Soul?' 'Perfectly solid/ said Zeno, 'more solid,
if anything, than the table.' 'And virtue or justice or the Rule of
Three; also solid matter?' 4Of course,' said Zeno, 'quite solid/ "'
It is evident that, at this point, Zeno, like many others, was
hurried by anti-metaphysical zeal into a metaphysic of his own.
The main doctrines to which the school remained constant
throughout are concerned with cosmic determinism and human
freedom. Zeno believed that there is no such thing as chance, and
that the course of nature is rigidly determined by natural laws.
Originally there was only fire; then the other elements — air, water.
1 Gilbert Murray, The Stoic Philosophy (1915), P. as-
276
STOICISM
earth, in that order — gradually emerged. But sooner or later there
will be a cosmic conflagration, and all will again become fire. This,
according to most Stoics, is not a final consummation, like the
end of the world in Christian doctrine, but only the conclusion
of a cycle; the whole process will be repeated endlessly. Every-
thing that happens has happened before, and will happen again,
not once, but countless times.
So far, the doctrine might seem cheerless, and in no respect
more comforting than ordinary materialism such as that of Demo-
critus. But this was only one aspect of it. The course of nature, in
Stoicism as in eighteenth-century theology, was ordained by a
Lawgiver who was also a beneficent Providence. Down to the
smallest detail, the whole was designed to secure certain ends by
natural means. These ends, except in so far as they concern gods
and daemons, are to be found in the life of man. Everything has a
purpose connected with human beings. Some animals are good
to eat, some afford tests of courage; even bed bugs are useful,
since they help us to wake in the morning and not lie in bed too
long. The supreme Power is called sometimes God, sometimes
Zeus. Seneca distinguished this Zeus from the object of popular
belief, who was also real, but subordinate.
God is not separate from the world ; He is the soul of the world,
and each of us contains a part of the Divine Fire. All things are
parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual
life is good when it is in harmony with Nature. In one sense, every
life is in harmony with Nature, since it is such as Nature's laws
have caused it to be ; but in another sense a human life is only in
harmony with Nature when the individual will is directed to ends
which are among those of Nature. Virtue consists in a will which
is in agreement with Nature. The wicked, though perforce they
obey God's law, do so involuntarily; in the simile of Cleanthes,
they are like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go wherever
it goes.
In the life of an individual man, virtue is the sole good; such
things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since
virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's
life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what
of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison,
but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He
may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Other men have power only over externals; virtue, which alone
is truly good, rests entirely with the individual. Therefore every
man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from
mundane desires. It is only through false judgments that such
desires prevail; the sage whose judgments are true is master of
his fate in all that he values, since no outside force can deprive
him of virtue.
There are obvious logical difficulties about this doctrine. II
virtue is really the sole good, a beneficent Providence must be
solely concerned to cause virtue, yet the laws of Nature have
produced abundance of sinners. If virtue is the sole good, there
can be no reason against cruelty and injustice, since, as the Stoics
are never tired of pointing out, cruelty and injustice afford the
sufferer the best opportunities for the exercise of virtue. If the
world is completely deterministic, natural laws will decide whether
I shall be virtuous or not. If I am wicked, Nature compels me to
be wicked, and the freedom which virtue is supposed to give is
not possible for me.
To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a
virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it. We admire a
medical man who risks his life in an epidemic of plague, because
we think illness is an evil, and we hope to diminish its frequency.
But if illness is no evil, the medical man might as well stay com-
fortably at home. To the Stoic, his virtue is an end it itself, not
something that does good. And when we take a longer view, what
is the ultimate outcome? A destruction of the present world by
fire, and then a repetition of the whole process. Could anything
be more devastatingly futile? There may be progress here and
there, for a time, but in the long run there is only recurrence.
When we see something unbearably painful, we hope that in
time such things will cease to happen ; but the Stoic assures us
that what is happening now will happen over and over again.
Providence, which sees the whole, must, one would think, ulti-
mately grow weary through despair.
There goes with this a certain coldness in the Stoic conception
of virtue. Not only bad passions are condemned, but all passions.
The $age does not feel sympathy ; when his wife or hift children
die, he reflects that this event is no obstacle to his own virtue,
and therefore he does not suffer deeply. Friendship, so highly
prized by Epicurus, is all very well, but it must not be carried to
278
STOICISM
the point where your friend's misfortunes can destroy your holy
calm. As for public life, it may be your duty to engage in it, since
it gives opportunities for justice, fortitude, and so on; but you
must not be actuated by a desire to benefit mankind, since the
benefits you can confer — such as peace, or a more adequate supply
of food — are no true benefits, and, in any case, nothing matters
to you except your own virtue. The Stoic is not virtuous in order
to do good, but does good in order to be virtuous. It has not
occurred to him to love his neighbour as himself; love, except in
a superficial sense, is absent from his conception of virtue.
When I say this, I am thinking of love as an emotion, not as a
principle. As a principle, the Stoics preached universal love; this
principle is found in Seneca and his successors, and probably was
taken by them from earlier Stoics. The logic of the school led to
doctrines which were softened by the humanity of its adherents,
who were much better men than they would have been if they
had been consistent. Kant — who resembles them — says that you
must be kind to your brother, not because you are fond of him,
but because the moral law enjoins kindness; I doubt, however,
whether, in private life, he lived down to this precept.
Leaving these generalities, let us come to the history of Stoicism.
Of Zeno,1 only some fragments remain. From these it appears
that he defined God as the fiery mind of the world, that he said
God was a bodily substance, and that the whole universe formed
the substance of God; Tertullian says that, according to Zeno,
God runs through the material world as honey runs through the
honeycomb. According to Diogenes Lacrtius, Zeno held that the
General Law, which is Right Reason, pervading everything, is
the same as Zeus, the Supreme Head of the government of the
universe: God, Mind, Destiny, Zeus, are one thing. Destiny is a
power which moves matter; "Providence" and "Nature" are
other names for it. Zeno does not believe that there should be
temples to the gods: "To build temples there will be no need: for
a temple must not be held a thing of great worth or anything holy.
Nothing can be of great worth or holy which is the work of
builders and mechanics." He seems, like the later Stoics, to have
believed in astrology and divination. Cicero says that he attributed
a divine potency to the stars. Diogenes Laertius says: "All kinds
of divination the Stoics leave valid. There must be divination,
1 For the source* of what follows, sec lie van, l^ter Greek Religion, p. i if.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
they say, if there is such a thing as Providence. They prove the
reality of the art of divination by a number of cases in which
predictions have come true, as Zeno asserts." Chrysippus is
explicit on this subject.
The Stoic doctrine as to virtue does not appear in the surviving
fragments of Zeno, but seems to have been held by him.
Cleanthes of Assos, the immediate successor of Zeno, is chiefly
notable for two things. First: as we have already seen, he held
that Aristarchus of Samos should be prosecuted for impiety
because he made the sun, instead of the earth, the centre of the
universe. The second thing is his Hymn to Zeus, much of which
might have been written by Pope, or any educated Christian in
the century after Newton. Even more Christian is the short
prayer of Cleanthes:
Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, O Destiny.
Lead thou me on.
To whatsoever task thou sendest me,
Lead thou me on.
I follow fearless, or, if in mistrust
I lag and will not, follow still I must.
Chrysippus (280-207 B-C0» wh° succeeded Cleanthcs, was a
voluminous author, and is said to have written seven hundred and
five books. He made Stoicism systematic and pedantic. He held
that only Zeus, the Supreme Fire, is immortal ; the other gods,
including the sun and moon, are born and die. He is said to have
considered that God has no share in the causation of evil, but it
is not clear how he reconciled this with determinism. Elsewhere
he deals with evil after the manner of Hcraclitus, maintaining that
opposites imply one another, and good without evil is logically
impossible: "There can be nothing more inept than the people
who suppose that good could have existed without the existence
of evil. Good and evil being antithetical, both must needs subsist
in opposition. " In support of this doctrine he appeals to Plato,
not to Heraclitus.
Chrysippus maintained that the good man is always happy and
the bad man unhappy, and that the good man's happiness differs
in no way from God's. On the question whether the soul survives
death, there were conflicting opinions. Clcanthes maintained that
all souls survive until the next universal conflagration (when
280
STOICISM
everything is absorbed into God); but Chrysippus maintained
that this is only true of the souls of the wise. He was less exclusively
ethical in his interests than the later Stoics ; in fact, he made logic
fundamental. The hypothetical and disjunctive syllogism, as well
as the word "disjunction," are due to the Stoics; so is the study
of grammar and the invention of "cases" in declension.1 Chry-
sippus, or other Stoics inspired by his work, had an elaborate
theory of knowledge, in the main empirical and based on percep-
tion, though they allowed certain ideas and principles, which
were held to be established by consensus gentium, the agreement
of mankind. But Zeno, as well as the Roman Stoics, regarded all
theoretical studies as subordinate to ethics: he says that philo-
sophy is like an orchard, in which logic is the walls, physics the
trees, and ethics the fruit; or like an egg, in which logic is the
shell, physics the white, and ethics the yolk.2 Chrysippus, it
would seem, allowed more independent value to theoretical
studies. Perhaps his influence accounts for the fact that among the
Stoics there were many men who made advances in mathematics
and other sciences.
Stoicism, after Chrysippus, was considerably modified by two
important men, Panaetius and Posidonius. Panaetius introduced
a considerable element of Platonism, and abandoned materialism.
He was a friend of the younger Scipio, and had an influence on
Cicero, through whom, mainly, Stoicism became known to the
Romans. Posidonius, under whom Cicero studied in Rhodes,
influenced him even more. Posidonius was taught by Panaetius,
who died about 1 10 B.C.
Posidonius (ra, 135-01. 51 B.C.) was a Syrian Greek, and was a
child when the Seleucid empire came to an end. Perhaps it was
his experience of anarchy in Syria that caused him to travel west-
ward, first to Athens, where he imbibed the Stoic philosophy,
and then further afield, to the western parts of the Roman Empire.
44 He saw with his own eyes the sunset in the Atlantic beyond the
verge of the known world, and the African coast over against
Spain, where the trees were full of apes, and the villages of bar-
barous people inland from * Marseilles, where human heads
hanging at the house-doors for trophies were an every-day sight."*
He became a voluminous writer on scientific subjects; indeed,
1 See Berth, Die Stoa, 4th edition, Stuttgart, 1922.
1 Ibid. ' Bcvan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 88.
28l
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
one of the reasons for his travels was a wish to study the tides,
which could not be done in the Mediterranean. He did excellent
work in astronomy; as we saw in Chapter XXIV his estimate of
the distance of the sun was the best in antiquity.1 He was also a
historian of note — he continued Polybius. But it was chiefly as
an eclectic philosopher that he was known: he combined with
Stoicism much of Plato's teaching, which the Academy, in its
sceptical phase, appeared to have forgotten.
This affinity to Plato is shown in his teaching about the soul
and the life after death. Panaetius had said, as most Stoics did,
that the soul perishes with the body. Posidonius, on the contrary,
says that it continues to live in the air, where, in most cases, it
remains unchanged until the next world-conflagration. There is
no hell, but the wicked, after death, are not so fortunate as the
good, for sin makes the vapours of the soul muddy, and prevents
it from rising as far as the good soul rises. The very wicked stay
near the earth and are reincarnated ; the truly virtuous rise to the
stellar sphere and spend their time watching the stars go round.
They can help other souls; this explains (he thinks) the truth of
astrology. Bevan suggests that, by this revival of Orphic notions
and incorporation of Neo-Pythagorean beliefs, Posidonius may
have paved the way for Gnosticism. He adds, very truly, that
what was fatal to such philosophies as his was not Christianity
but the Coperrucan theory.1 Cleanthes was right in regarding
Aristarchus of Samos as a dangerous enemy.
Much more important historically (though not philosophically)
than the earlier Stoics were the three who were connected with
Rome: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius — a minister, a
slave, and an emperor, respectively.
Seneca (ca. 3 B.C. to A.D. 65) was a Spaniard, whose father was
a cultivated man living in Rome. Seneca adopted a political career,
and was being moderately successful when he was banished to
Corsica (A.D. 41) by the Emperor Claudius, because he had
incurred the enmity of the Empress Messalina. Claudius's second
wife Agrippina recalled Seneca from exile in A.D. 48, and appointed
1 He estimated that by sailing westward from Cadiz, India could be
teached after 70,000 stades. "This remark was the ultimate foundation
of Columbia's confidence." Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization, p. 249.
1 The above account of Posidonius is mainly based on Chapter II I of
Edwyn Be van's Stoic t and Sceptic*.
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STOICISM
him tutor to her son, aged eleven. Seneca was less fortunate than
Aristotle in his pupil, who was the Emperor Nero. Although, as a
Stoic, Seneca officially despised riches, he amassed a huge fortune,
amounting, it was said, to three hundred million sesterces (about
three million pounds). Much of this he acquired by lending
money in Britain ; according to Dio, the excessive rates of interest
that he exacted were among the causes of revolt in that country.
The heroic Queen Boadicea, if this is true, was heading a rebellion
against capitalism as represented by the philosophic apostle of
austerity.
Gradually, as Nero's excesses grew more unbridled, Seneca fell
increasingly out of favour. At length he \vas accused, justly or
unjustly, of complicity in a widespread conspiracy to murder
Nero and place a new emperor — some said, Seneca himself —
upon the throne. In view of his former services, he was graciously
permitted to commit suicide (A.D. 65).
His end was edifying. At first, on being informed of the Em-
peror's decision, he set about making a will. When told that there
was no time allowed for such a lengthy business, he turned to his
sorrowing family and said: "Never mind, I leave you what is of
far more value than earthly riches, the example of a virtuous life"
— or words to that effect. lie then opened his veins, and summoned
his secretaries to take down his dying words; according to Tacitus,
his eloquence continued to flow during his last moments. His
nephew Lucan, the poet, suffered a similar death at the same time,
and expired reciting his own verses. Seneca was judged, in future
ages, rather hy his admirable precepts than by his somewhat
dubious practice. Several of the Fathers claimed him as a Christian,
and a supposed correspondence between him and Saint Paul was
accepted as genuine by such men as Saint Jerome.
Epictetus (born about A.D. 60, died about A.D. 100) is a very
different type of man, though closely akin as a philosopher. He
was a Greek, originally a slave of Epaphroditus, a freedman of
Nero and then his minister. He was lame— as a result, it was said
of a cruel punishment in his days of slavery. He lived and taught
at Rome until A.D. 90, when the Emperor Domitian, who had no
use for intellectuals, banished all philosophers. Epictetus there-
upon retired to lS?icopolis in Epirus, where, after some years
spent in writing and teaching, he died.
Marcus Aurrlius (A.D. 121-180) was at the other end of the
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
social scale. He was the adopted son of the good Emperor Anto-
ninus Pius, who was his uncle and his father-in-law, whom he
succeeded in A.D. 161, and whose memory he revered. As Emperor,
he devoted himself to Stoic virtue. He had much need of fortitude,
for his reign was beset by calamities — earthquakes, pestilences,
long and difficult wars, military insurrections. His Meditations,
which are addressed to himself, and apparently not intended for
publication, show that he felt his public duties burdensome, and
that he suffered from a great weariness. His only son Commodus,
who succeeded him, turned out to be one of the worst of the
many bad emperors, but successfully concealed his vicious pro-
pensities so long as his father lived. The philosopher's wife
Faustina was accused, perhaps unjustly, of gross immorality, but
he never suspected her, and after her death took trouble about
her deification. He persecuted the Christians, because they re-
jected the State religion, which he considered politically necessary.
In all his actions he was conscientious, but in most he was un-
successful.He is a pathetic figure: in a list of mundane desires to
be resisted, the one that he finds most seductive is the wish to
retire to a quiet country life. For this, the opportunity never
came. Some of his Meditations are dated from the camp, on
distant campaigns, the hardships of which eventually caused his
death.
It is remarkable that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are com-
pletely at one on all philosophical questions. This suggests that
although social circumstances affect the philosophy of an age,
individual circumstances have less influence than is sometimes
thought upon the philosophy of an individual. Philosophers are
usually men with a certain breadth of mind, who can largely dis-
count the accidents of their private lives; but even they cannot
rise above the larger good or evil of their time. In bad times they
invent consolations ; in good times their interests are more purely
intellectual.
Gibbon, whose detailed history begins with the vices of Corn-
modus, agrees with most eighteenth-century writers in regarding
the period of the Amonines as a golden age. "If a man were called
upon/' be says, "to fix the period in the history of the world,
during which the condition of the human race was most happy
and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Com-
STOICISM
•
modus." It is impossible to agree altogether with this judgment.
The evil of slavery involved immense suffering, and was sapping
the vigour of the ancient world. There were gladiatorial shows
and fights with wild beasts, which were intolerably cruel and
must have debased the populations that enjoyed the spectacle.
Marcus Aurelius, it is true, decreed that gladiators should fight
with blunted swords ; but this reform was short-lived, and he did
nothing about fights with wild beasts. The economic system was
very bad; Italy was going out of cultivation, and the population
of Rome depended upon the free distribution of grain from the
provinces. All initiative was concentrated in the Emperor and his
ministers; throughout the vast extent of the Empire, no one.
except an occasional rebellious general, could do anything but
submit. Men looked to the past for what was best; the future,
they felt, would be at best a weariness, and at worst a horror.
When we compare the tone of Marcus Aurelius with that of
Bacon, or Ixrcke, or Condorcet, we see the difference between a
tired and a hopeful age. In a hopeful age, great present evils can
be endured, because it is thought that they will pass; but in a
tired ape even real poods lose their savour. The Stoic ethic suited
the times of Kpictettis and Marcus Aurelius, because its gospel
was one of endurance rather than hope.
Undoubtedly the ape of the Antonines was much better than
any later ape until the Renaissance, from the point of view of the
general happiness. Rut careful study shows that it was not so
prosperous as its architectural remains would lead one to suppose.
Graeco- Roman civilization had made very little impression on
the agricultural regions; it was practically limited to the cities.
Even in the cities, there was a proletariat which suffered very
great poverty, and there was a large slave class. Rostovtseff sums
up a discussion of social and economic conditions in the cities
as follows:1
"This picture of their social conditions is not so attractive as
the picture of their external appearance. The impression conveyed
by our sources is that the splendour of the cities was created by,
and existed for, a rather small minority of their population ; that
the welfare even of this small minority was based on comparatively
weak foundations; that the large masses of the city population
1 Roftovtacff, The Social and Economic History qf the Roman Empire.
P. 17J>.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
had either a very moderate income or lived in extreme poverty.
In a word, we must not exaggerate the health of the cities: their
external aspect is misleading."
On earth, says Epictetus, we are prisoners, and in an earthly
body. According to Marcus Aurelius, he used to say "Thou art
a little soul bearing about a corpse." Zeus could not make the
body free, but he gave us a portion of his divinity. God is the
father of men, and we are all brothers. We should not say "I am
an Athenian" or "I am a Roman," but "I am a citizen of the
universe." If you were a kinsman of Caesar, you would feel safe;
how much more should you feel safe in being a kinsman of God ?
If we understand that virtue is the only true good, we shall see
that no real evil can befall us.
I must die. But must I die groaning? I must be imprisoned. But
must I whine as well ? I must suffer exile. Can any one then hinder
me from going with a smile, and a good courage, and at peace?
"Tell the secret." I refuse to tell, for this is in my power. "But I
will chain you." What say you, fellow? Chain me? My leg you
will chain — yes, but my will — no, not even Zeus can conquer that.
"I will imprison you." My bit of a body, you mean. "I will behead
you." Why? When did I ever tell you that I was the only man in
the world that could not be beheaded ?
These are the thoughts that those who pursue philosophy
should ponder, these are the lessons they should write down day
by day, in these they should exercise themselves.1
Slaves are the equals of other men, because all alike arc sons
of God.
We must submit to Cod as a good citizen submits to the law.
"The soldier swears to respect no man above Caesar, but we to
respect ourselves first of all."2 "When you appear before the
mighty of the earth, remember that Another looks from above
on what is happening, and that you must please Him rather than
this man."3
Who then is a Stoic ?
Show me a man moulded to the pattern of the judgments that
he utters, in the same way as we call a statue Phidian that is
moulded according to the art of Phidias. Show me one who is
sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy,
1 Quoted from Gates, op. rtf., pp. 225-6,
1 /««/., p. 251. • IUd.9 p. 280.
286
STOICISM
in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the
gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished
Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his
feet on the path. Do me this kindness, do not grudge an old man
like me a sight I never 'saw till now. What! You think you are
going to show me the Zeus of Phidias or his Athena, that work of
ivory and gold? It is a soul I want; let one of you show me the
soul of a man who wishes to be at one with God, and to blame
God or man no longer, to fail in nothing, to feel no misfortune,
to be free from anger, envy, and jealousy — one who (why wrap
up my meaning?) desires to change his manhood for godhead,
and who in this poor body of his has his purpose set upon com-
munion with God. Show him to me. Nay, you cannot.
Epictctus is never weary of showing how we should deal with
what are considered misfortunes, which he does often by means
of homely dialogues.
Like the Christians, he holds that we should love our enemies.
In general, in common with other Stoics, he despises pleasure,
but there is a kind of happiness that is noi to be despised. "Athens
is beautiful. Yes, but happiness is far more beautiful — freedom
from passion and disturbance, the sense that your affairs depend
on no one" (p. 428). Every man is an actor in a play, in which
God has assigned the parts; it is our duty to perform our part
worthily, whatever it may be.
There is great sincerity and simplicity in the writings which
record the teaching of Kpictetus. (They are written down from
notes by his pupil Arrian.) His morality is lofty and unworldly;
in a situation in which a man's main duty is to resist tyrannical
power, it would be difficult to find anything more helpful. In
some respects, for instance in recognizing the brotherhood of
nian and in teaching the equality of slaves, it is superior to any-
thing to be found in Plato or Aristotle or any philosopher whose
thought is inspired by the City State. The actual world, in the
time of Epictctus, was very inferior to the Athens of Pericles;
but the evil in what existed liberated his aspirations, and his
ideal world is a* superior to that of Plato as his actual world is
inferior to the Athens of the fifth century.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius begin by acknowledging
his indebtedness to his grandfather, father, adopted father, various
teachers, and the gods. Some of the obligations he enumerates are
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
curious. He learned (he says) from Diognetus not to listen to
miracle- workers; from Rusticus, not to write poetry; from Sextus,
to practise gravity without affectation; from Alexander the
grammarian, not to correct bad grammar in others, but to use
the right expression shortly afterwards; from Alexander the
Platonist, not to excuse tardiness in answering a letter by the
plea of press of business; from his adopted father, not to fall in
love with boys. He owes it to the gods (he continues) that he was
not brought up too long with his grandfather's concubine, and
did not make proof of his virility too soon ; that his children are
neither stupid nor deformed in body; that his wife is obedient,
affectionate, and simple ; and that when he took to philosophy he
did not waste time on history, syllogism, or astronomy.
What is impersonal in the Meditations agrees closely with
Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius is doubtful about immortality, but
says, as a Christian might: "Since it is possible that thou mayst
depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought
accordingly." Life in harmony with the universe is what is good;
and harmony with the universe is the same thing as obedience
to the will of God.
"Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thec,
O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in
due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons
bring, O Nature: from thec are ail things, in thee are all things,
to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and
wilt not thou say, Dear city of Zeus?"
One sees that Saint Augustine's City of God was in part taken
over from the pagan Emperor.
Marcus Aureiius is persuaded that God gives every man a
special daemon as his guide — a belief which reappears in the
Christian guardian angel. He finds comfort in the thought of the
universe as a closely-knit whole; it is, he says, one living being,
having one substance and one soul. One of his maxims is: "Fre-
quently consider the connection of all things in the universe."
"Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all
eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning
the thread of thy being/' There goes with this, in spite of his
position in the Roman State, the Stoic belief in the human race
as one community : "My city and country, so far as 1 am Antoninus,
it Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world." There is the
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STOICISM
difficulty that one finds in all Stoics, of reconciling determinism
with the freedom of the will. "Men exist for the sake of one
another," he says, when he is thinking of his duty as ruler. "The
wickedness of one man does no harm to another," he says on
the same page, when he is thinking of the doctrine that the virtuous
will alone is good. He never inferred that the goodness of one
man does no good to another, and that he would do no harm to
anybody but himself if he were as bad an Emperor as Nero; and
yet this conclusion seems to follow.
"It is peculiar to man," he says, "to love even those who do
wrong. And this happens if, when they do wrong, it occurs to
thee that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through
ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die;
and above all, that the wrong-doer has done thee no harm, foi
he has not made thy ruling faculty worse than it was before."
And again: "Love mankind, Follow God. . . . And it is
enough to remember that Law rules all."
These passages bring out very clearly the inherent contradictions
in Stoic ethics arid theology. On the one hand, the universe is a
rigidly deterministic single whole, in which all that happens is
the result of previous causes. On the other hand, the individual
will is completely autonomous, and no man can be forced to sin
by outside causes. This is one contradiction and there is a second
closely connected with it. Since the will is autonomous, and the
virtuous will alone is good, one man cannot do either good or
harm to another; therefore benevolence is an illusion. Something
must be said about each of these contradictions.
The contradiction between free will and determinism is one of
those that run through philosophy from early times to our own
day, taking different forms at different times. At present it is the
Stoic form that concerns us.
I think that a Stoic, if we could make him submit to a Socratic
interrogation, would defend his view more or less as follows: The
universe is a single animate Being, having a soul which may also
be called God or Reason. As a whole, this Being is free. God
decided, from the first, that He would act according to fixed
general laws, but He chose such laws as would have the best
results. Sometimes, in particular cases, the results are not wholly
desirable, but this inconvenience is worth enduring, as in human
codes of law, for the sake of the advantage of legislative fixity. A
> tif M'/u«r* /'JMliOoffty 289 K
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
human being is partly fire, partly of lower clay ; in so far as he is
fire (at any rate when it is of the best quality), he is part of God.
When the divine part of a man exercises will virtuously, this will
is part of God's, which is free; therefore in these circumstances
the human will also is free.
This is a good answer up to a point, but it breaks down when
we consider the causes of our volitions. We all know, as a matter
of empirical fact, that dyspepsia, for example, has a bad effect on
a man's virtue, and that, by suitable drugs forcibly administered,
will-power can be destroyed. Take Epictetus's favourite case,
the man unjustly imprisoned by a tyrant, of which there have
been more examples in recent years than at any other period in
human history. Some of these men have acted with Stoic heroism ;
some, rather mysteriously, have not. It has become clear, not
only that sufficient torture will break down almost any man's
fortitude, but also that morphia or cocaine can reduce a man to
docility. The will, in fact, is only independent of the tyrant so
long as the tyrant is unscientific. This is an extreme example;
but the same arguments that exist in favour of determinism in the
inanimate world exist also in the sphere of human volitions in
general. I do not say — I do not think — that these arguments are
conclusive; I say only that they are of equal strength in both cases,
and that there can be no good reason for accepting them in one
region and rejecting them in another. The Stoic, when he is
engaged in urging a tolerant attitude to sinners, will himself urge
that the sinful will is a result of previous causes ; it is only the
virtuous will that seems to him free. This, however, is inconsistent.
Marcus Aurelius explains his own virtue as due to the good
influence of parents, grandparents, and teachers; the good will is
just as much a result of previous causes as the bad will. The
Stoic may say truly that his philosophy is a cause of virtue in
those who adopt it, but it seems that it will not have this desirable
effect unless there is a certain admixture of intellectual error.
The realization that virtue and sin alike are the inevitable result
of previous causes (as the Stoics should have held) is likely to
have a somewhat paralysing effect on moral effort.
I come now to the second contradiction, that the Stoic, while he
preached benevolence, held, in theory, that no man can do either
good or harm to another, since the virtuous will alone is good, and
the virtuous will is independent of outside causes. This contra-
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STOICISM
diction is more patent than the other, and more peculiar to the
Stoics (including certain Christian moralists). The explanation of
their not noticing it is that, like many other people, they had two
systems of ethics, a superfine one for themselves, and an inferior
one for "the lesser breeds without the law." When the Stoic
philosopher is thinking of himself, he holds that happiness and
all other worldly so-called goods are worthless; he even says that
to desire happiness is contrary to nature, meaning that it involves
lack of resignation to the will of God. But as a practical man
administering the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius knows per-
fectly well that this son of thing won't do. It is his duty to see
that the grain-ships from Africa duly reach Rome, that measures
are taken to relieve the sufferings caused by pestilence, and that
barbarian enemies are not allowed to cross the frontier. That is
to say, in dealing with those of his subjects whom he does not
regard as Stoic philosophers, actual or potential, he accepts
ordinary mundane standards of what is good or bad. It is by
applying these standards that he arrives at his duty as an adminis-
trator. What is odd is that this duty, itself, is in the higher sphere
of what the Stoic sage should do, although it is deduced from an
ethic which the Stoic sage regards as fundamentally mistaken.
The only reply that I can imagine to this difficulty is one which
is perhaps logically unassailable, but is not very plausible. It
would, I think, be given by Kant, whose ethical system is very
similar to that of the Stoics. True, he might say, there is nothing
good but the good will, but the will is good when it is directed
to certain ends, that, in themselves, are indifferent. It does not
matter whether Mr. A is happy or unhappy, but I, if I am virtuous,
shall act in a way which I believe will make him happy, because
that is what the moral law enjoins. I cannot make Mr. A virtuous,
because his virtue depends only upon himself; but I can do some-
thing towards making him happy, or rich, or learned, or healthy.
The Stoic ethic may therefore be stated as follows: Certain things
are vulgarly considered goods, but this is a mistake; what is good
is a will directed towards securing these false goods for other people.
This doctrine involves no logical contradiction, but it loses all
plausibility if we genuinely believe that what are commonly con-
sidered goods are worthless, for in that case the virtuous will
might just as well be directed to quite other ends.
There is, in fact, an element of sour grapes in Stoicism. We
291
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
can't be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that,
so long as we are good, it doesn't matter being unhappy. This
doctrine is heroic, and, in a bad world, useful; but it is neither
quite true nor, in a fundamental sense, quite sincere.
Although the main importance of the Stoics was ethical, there
were two respects in which their teaching bore fruit in other fields.
One of these is theory of knowledge ; the other is the doctrine of
natural law and natural rights.
In theory of knowledge, in spite of Plato, they accepted percep-
tion; the deceptiveness of the senses, they held, was really false
judgment, and could be avoided by a little care. A Stoic philo-
sopher, Sphaerus, an immediate disciple of Zcno, was once invited
to dinner by King Ptolemy, who, having heard of this doctrine,
offered him a pomegranate made of wax. The philosopher pro-
ceeded to try to eat it, whereupon the king laughed at him. He
replied that he had felt no certainty of its being a real pomegranate,
but had thought it unlikely that anything inedible would be
supplied at the royal table.1 In this answer he appealed to a Stoic
distinction, between those things which can be known with
certainty on the basis of perception, and those which, on this
basis, are only probable. On the whole, this doctrine was sane and
scientific.
Another doctrine of theirs in theory of knowledge was more
influential, though more questionable. This was their belief in
innate ideas and principles. Greek logic was wholly deductive,
and this raised the question of first premisses. First premisses had
to be, at least in part, general, and no method existed of proving
them. The Stoics held that there are certain principles which are
luminously obvious, and are admitted by all men ; these could be
made, as in Euclid's Elements, the basis of deduction. Innate ideas,
similarly, could be used as the starting-point of definitions. This
point of view was accepted throughout the Middle Ages, and
even by Descartes.
The doctrine of natural right, as it appears in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, is a revival of a Stoic
doctrine, though with important modifications. It was the Stoics
who distinguished jus naturale from jut gentium. Natural law was
derived from first principles of the kind held to underlie all
general knowledge. By nature, the Stoics held, all human beings
1 Diogenet Laertnu, Vol. VII ,177.
292
STOICISM
are equal. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, favours "a polity
in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with
regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and a kingly
government which respects most of all the freedom of the
governed.*' This was an ideal which could not be consistently
realized in the Roman Empire, but it influenced legislation, partic-
ularly in improving the status of women and slaves. Christianity
took over this part of Stoic teaching along with much of the rest.
And when at last, in the seventeenth century, the opportunity
came to combat despotism effectually, the Stoic doctrines of
natural law and natural equality, in their Christian dress, acquired
a practical force which, in antiquity, not even an emperor could
to them.
Chapter XXIX
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION
TO CULTURE
f • IHE Roman Empire affected the history of culture in various
I more or less separate ways.
JL First: there is the direct effect of Rome on Hellenistic
thought. This is not very important or profound.
Second: the effect of Greece and the East on the western half
of the empire. This was profound and lasting, since it included
the Christian religion.
Third: the importance of the long Roman peace in diffusing
culture and in accustoming men to the idea of a single civilization
associated with a single government.
Fourth: the transmission of Hellenistic civilization to the
Mohammedans, and thence ultimately to western Europe.
Before considering these influences of Rome, a very brief
synopsis of the political history will be useful.
Alexander's conquests had left the western Mediterranean un-
touched ; it was dominated, at the beginning of the third century
B.C., by two powerful City States, Carthage and Syracuse. In the
first and second Punic Wars (264-241 and 218-201), Rome con-
quered Syracuse and reduced Carthage to insignificance. During
the second century, Rome conquered the Macedonian monarchies
— Egypt, it is true, lingered on as a vassal state until the death of
Cleopatra (30 B.C.). Spain was conquered as an incident in the
war with Hannibal; France was conquered by Caesar in the
middle of the first century B.C., and England was conquered
about a hundred years later. The frontiers of the Empire, in its
great days, were the Rhine and Danube in Europe, the Euphrates
in Asia, and the desert in North Africa.
Roman imperialism was, perhaps, at its best in North Africa
(important in Christian history as the home of Saint Cyprian and
Saint Augustine), where large areas, uncultivated before and after
Roman times, were rendered fertile and supported populous cities.
The Roman Empire was on the whole stable and peaceful for
over two hundred years, from the accession of Augustus (30 B.C.)
until the disasters of the third century.
294
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
Meanwhile the constitution of the Roman State had undergone
important developments. Originally, Rome was a small City
State, not very unlike those of Greece, especially such as, like
Sparta, did not depend upon foreign commerce. Kings, like those
of Homeric Greece, had been succeeded by an aristocratic republic.
Gradually, while the aristocratic element, embodied in the Senate,
remained powerful, democratic elements were added ; the resulting
compromise was regarded by Panaetius the Stoic (whose views
are reproduced by Polybius and Cicero) as an ideal combination
of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements. But con-
quest upset the precarious balance; it brought immense new
wealth to the senatorial class, and, in a slightly lesser degree, to
the "knights," as the upper middle class were called. Italian
agriculture, which had been in the hands of small farmers growing
grain by their own labour and that of their families, came to be a
matter of huge estates belonging to the Roman aristocracy, where
vines and olives were cultivated by slave labour. The result was
the virtual omnipotence of the Senate, which was used shamelessly
for the enrichment of individuals, without regard for the interests
of the State or the welfare of its subjects.
A democratic movement, inaugurated by the Gracchi in the
latter half of the second century B.C., led to a series of civil wars,
and finally — as so often in Greece — to the establishment of a
4 'tyranny." It is curious to see the repetition, on such a vast scale,
of developments which, in Greece, had been confined to minute
areas. Augustus, the heir and adopted son of Julius Caesar, who
reigned from 30 B.C. to A.D. 14, put an end to civil strife, and (with
few exceptions) to external wars of conquest. For the first time
since the beginnings of Greek civilization, the ancient world
enjoyed peace and security.
Two things had ruined the Greek political system: first, the
claim of each city to absolute sovereignty; second, the bitter and
bloody strife between rich and poor within most cities. After the
conquest of Carthage and the Hellenistic kingdoms, the first of
these causes no longer afflicted the world, since no effective
resistance to Rome was possible. But the second cause remained.
In the civil wars, one general would proclaim himself the champion
of the Senate, the other of the people. Victory went to the one
who offered the highest rewards to the soldiers. The soldiers
wanted not only pay and plunder, but grants of land; therefore
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
each civil war ended in the formally legal expulsion of many
existing landholders, who were nominally tenants of the State, to
make room for the legionaries of the victor. The expenses of the
war, while in progress, were defrayed by executing rich men and
confiscating their property. This system, disastrous as it was,
could not easily be ended ; at last, to every one's surprise, Augustus
was so completely victorious that no competitor remained to
challenge his claim to power.
To the Roman world, the discovery that the period of civil
war was ended came as a surprise, which was a cause of rejoicing
to all except a small senatorial party. To every one else, it was a
profound relief when Rome, under Augustus, at last achieved the
stability and order which Greeks and Macedonians had sought in
vain, and which Rome, before Augustus, had also failed to pro-
duce. In Greece, according to Rostovtseff, republican Rome had
"introduced nothing new, except pauperization, bankruptcy, and
a stoppage of all independent political activity/'1
The reign of Augustus was a period of happiness for the Roman
Empire. The administration of the provinces was at last organized
with some regard to the welfare of the population, and not on a
purely predatory system. Augustus was not only officially deified
after his death, but was spontaneously regarded as a god in various
provincial cities. Poets praised him, the commercial classes found
the universal peace convenient, and even the Senate, which he
treated with all the outward forms of respect, lost no opportunity
of heaping honours and offices on his head.
But although the world was happy, some savour had gone out
of life, since safety had been preferred to adventure. In early times,
every free Greek had had the opportunity of adventure; Philip
and Alexander put an end to this state of affairs, and in the
Hellenistic world only Macedonian dynasts enjoyed anarchic
freedom. The Greek world lost its youth, and became either
cynical or religious. The hope of embodying ideals in earthly
institutions faded, and with it the best men lost their zest. Heaven,
for Socrates, was a place where he could go on arguing; for
philosophers after Alexander, it was something more different
from their existence here below.
In Rome, a similar development came later, and in a less painful
form. Rome was not conquered, as Greece was, but had, on the
1 History of th* Ancient World. Vol. II, p. 255.
2Q6
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
contrary, the stimulus of successful imperialism. Throughout the
period of the civil wars, it was Romans who were responsible for
the disorders. The Greeks had not secured peace and order by
submitting to the Macedonians, whereas both Greeks and Romans
secured both by submitting to Augustus. Augustus was a Roman,
to whom most Romans submitted willingly, not only on account
of his superior power; moreover he took pains to disguise the
military origin of his government, and to base it upon decrees of
the Senate. The adulation expressed by the Senate was, no doubt,
largely insincere, but outside the senatorial class no one felt
humiliated.
The mood of the Romans was like that of zjeune homtne range
in nineteenth-century France, who, after a life of amatory ad-
venture, settles down to a marriage of reason. This mood, though
contented, is not creative. The great poets of the Augustan age
had been formed in more troubled times; Horace fled at Philippi,
and both he and Virgil lost their farms in confiscations for the
benefit of victorious soldiers. Augustus, for the sake of stability,
set to work, somewhat insincerely, to restore ancient piety, and
was therefore necessarily rather hostile to free inquiry. The
Roman world began to become stereotyped, and the process
continued under later emperors.
The immediate successors of Augustus indulged in appalling
cruelties towards Senators and towards possible competitors for
the purple. To some extent, the misgovernment of this period
extended to the provinces; but in the main the administrative
machine created by Augustus continued to function fairly well.
A better period began with the accession of Trajan in A.D, 98,
and continued until the death of Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 180.
During this time, the government of the Empire was as good as
any despotic government can be. The third century, on the con-
trary, was one of appalling disaster. The army realized its power,
made and unmade emperors in return for cash and the promise
of a life without warfare, and ceased, in consequence, to be an
effective fighting force. The barbarians, from north and east,
invaded and plundered Roman territory. The army, preoccupied
with private gain and civil discord, was incompetent in defence.
The whole fiscal system broke down, since there was an immense
diminution of resources and, at the same time, a vast increase of
expenditure in unsuccessful war and in bribery of the army.
297
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Pestilence, in addition to war, greatly diminished the population.
It seemed as if the Empire was about to fall.
This result was averted by two energetic men, Diocletian (A.D.
286-305) and Constantine, whose undisputed reign lasted from
A.D. 312 to 337. By them the Empire was divided into an eastern
and western half, corresponding, approximately, to the division
between the Greek and Latin languages. By Constantine the
capital of the eastern half was established at Byzantium, to which
he gave the new name of Constantinople. Diocletian curbed the
army, for a while, by altering its character ; from his time onwards,
the most effective fighting forces were composed of barbarians,
chiefly German, to whom all the highest commands were open.
This was obviously a dangerous expedient, and early in the fifth
century it bore its natural fruit. The barbarians decided that it
was more profitable to fight for themselves than for a Roman
master. Nevertheless it served its purpose for over a century.
Diocletian's administrative reforms were equally successful for a
time, and equally disastrous in the long run. The Roman system
was to allow local self-government to the towns, and to leave
their officials to collect the taxes, of which only the total amount
due from any one town was fixed by the centra) authorities.
This system had worked well enough in prosperous times, but
now, in the exhausted state of the empire, the revenue demanded
was more than could be borne without excessive hardship. The
municipal authorities were personally responsible for the taxes,
and fled to escape payment. Diocletian compelled well-to-do
citizens to accept municipal office, and made flight illegal. From
similar motives he turned the rural population into serfs, tied to
the soil and forbidden to migrate. This system was kept on by
later emperors.
Constantine's most important innovation was the adoption of
Christianity as the State religion, apparently because a large
proportion of the soldiers were Christian.1 The result of this was
that when, during the fifth century, the Germans destroyed the
Western Empire, its prestige caused them to adopt the Christian
religion, thereby preserving for western Europe so much of
ancient civilization as had been absorbed by the Church.
The development of the territory assigned to the eastern half
of the Empire was different. The Eastern Empire, though con-
1 Sec Rottovtteff, Hittorv of the Ancient World, Vol. II, p. 332.
298
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
tinually diminishing in extent (except for the transient conquests
of Justinian in the sixth century), survived until 1453, when
Constantinople was conquered by the Turks. But most of what
had been Roman provinces in the east, including also Africa and
Spain in the west, became Mohammedan. The Arabs, unlike the
Germans, rejected the religion, but adopted the civilization, of
those whom they had conquered. The Eastern Empire was Greek,
not Latin, in its civilization; accordingly, from the seventh to the
eleventh centuries, it was it and the Arabs who preserved Greek
literature and whatever survived of Greek, as opposed to Latin,
civilization. From the eleventh century onward, at first through
Moorish influences, the west gradually recovered what it had lost
of the Grecian heritage.
I come now to the four ways in which the Roman Empire
affected the history of culture.
I. The direct effect of Rome on Greek thought. This begins in
the second century B.C., with two men, the historian Polybius,
and the Stoic philosopher Panaetius. The natural attitude of the
Greek to the Roman was one of contempt mingled with fear;
the Greek felt himself more civilized, but politically less powerful.
If the Romans were more successful in politics, that only showed
that politics is an ignoble pursuit. The average Greek of the
second century B.C. was pleasure- loving, quick-witted, clever in
business, and unscrupulous in all things. There were, however,
still men of philosophic capacity. Some of these — notably the
sceptics, such as Carneades — had allowed cleverness to destroy
seriousness. Some, like the Epicureans and a section of the Stoics,
had withdrawn wholly into a quiet private life. But a few, with more
insight than had been shown by Aristotle in relation to Alexander,
realized that the greatness of Rome was due to certain merits
which were lacking among the Greeks.
The historian Polybius, born in Arcadia about 200 B.C., was
sent to Rome as a prisoner, and there had the good fortune to
become the friend of the younger Scipio, whom he accompanied
on many of his campaigns. It was uncommon for a Greek to know
Latin, though most educated Romans knew Greek; the circum-
stances of Polybius, however, led him to a thorough familiarity
with Latin, lie wrote, for the benefit of the Greeks, the history of
ihc later Punic Wars, which enabled Rome to conquer the world.
299
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
His admiration of the Roman constitution was becoming out of
date while he wrote, but until his time it had compared very
favourably, in stability and efficiency, with the continually
changing constitutions of most Greek cities. The Romans naturally
read his history with pleasure; whether the Greeks did so is
more doubtful.
Panaetius the Stoic has been already considered in the preceding
chapter. He was a friend of Polybius, and, like him, a protege of
the younger Scipio. While Scipio lived, he was frequently in
Rome, but after Scipio's death in 129 B.C. he stayed in Athens
as head of the Stoic school. Rome still had, what Greece had lost,
the hopefulness connected with the opportunity for political
activity. Accordingly the doctrines of Panaetius were more
political, and less akin to those of the Cynics, than were those of
earlier Stoics. Probably the admiration of Plato felt by cultivated
Romans influenced him in abandoning the dogmatic narrowness
of his Stoic predecessors. In the broader form given to it by him
and by his successor Posidonius, Stoicism strongly appealed to
the more serious among the Romans.
At a later date, Epictetus, though a Greek, lived most of his life
in Rome. Rome supplied him with most of his illustrations ; he is
always exhorting the wise man not to tremble in the presence of
the Emperor. We know the influence of Epictetus on Marcus
Aurelius, but his influence on the Greeks is hard to trace.
Plutarch (ca. A.D. 46-120), in his Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans, traced a parallelism between the most eminent men of
the two countries. He spent a considerable time in Rome, and was
honoured by the Emperors Hadrian and Trajan. In addition to
his Lives, he wrote numerous works on philosophy, religion,
natural history, and morals. His Lives are obviously concerned
to reconcile Greece and Rome in men's thoughts.
On the whole, apart from such exceptional men, Rome acted
as a blight on the Greek-speaking part of the Empire. Thought
and art alike declined. Until the end of the second century A.D.,
life, for the well-to-do, was pleasant and easy-going; there was no
incentive to strenuousness, and little opportunity for great achieve-
ment. The recognized schools of philosophy— the Academy, the
Peripatetics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics — continued to exist
until they were closed by Justinian. None of these, however,
showed any vitality throughout the time after Marcus Aurelius,
joo
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
except the Neoplatonists in the third century A.D., whom we shall
consider in the next chapter; and these men were hardly at all
influenced by Rome. The Latin and Greek halves of the Empire
became more and more divergent; the knowledge of Greek
became rare in the west, and after Constantine Latin, in the east,
survived only in law and in the army.
II. The influence of Greece and the East on Rome. There are here
two very different things to consider: first, the influence of Hellenic
art and literature and philosophy on the most cultivated Romans;
second, the spread of non-Hellenic religions and superstitions
throughout the Western world.
(i) When the Romans first came in contact with Greeks, they
became aware of themselves as comparatively barbarous and ur-
couth. The Greeks were immeasurably their superiors in many
ways: in manufacture and in the technique of agriculture ; in the
kinds of knowledge that are necessary for a good official; in con-
versation and the art of enjoying life; in art and literature and
philosophy. The only tilings in which the Romans were superior
were military tactics and social cohesion. The relation of the
Romans to the Creeks was something like that of the Prussians
to the French in 1814 and 1815; but this latter was temporary,
whereas the other lasted a long time. After the Punic Wars, young
Romans conceived an admiration for the Greeks. They learnt the
Greek language, they copied Greek architecture, they employed
Greek sculptors. The Roman gods were identified with the gods
of Greece. The Trojan origin of the Romans was invented to
make a connection with the Homeric myths. Latin poets adopted
Greek metres, Latin philosophers took over Greek theories. To
the end, Rome was culturally parasitic on Greece. The Romans
invented no art forms, constructed no original system of philo-
sophy, and made no scientific discoveries. They made good roads,
systematic legal codes, and efficient armies; for the rest they
looked to Greece,
The Hellenizing of Rome brought with it a certain softening of
manners, abhorrent to the elder Cato. Until the Punic Wars, the
Romans had been a bucolic people, with the virtues and vices ot
farmers: austere, industrious, brutal, obstinate, and stupid. Their
family life had been stable and solidly built on the patria potestas;
women ;md young people were completely subordinated. All this
301
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
•
changed with the influx of sudden wealth. The small farms dis-
appeared, and were gradually replaced by huge estates on which
slave labour was employed to carry out new scientific kinds of
agriculture. A great class of traders grew up, and a large number
of men enriched by plunder, like the nabobs in eighteenth-century
England. Women, who had been virtuous slaves, became free and
dissolute; divorce became common; the rich ceased to have
children. The Greeks, who had gone through a similar develop-
ment centuries ago, encouraged, by their example, what historians
call the decay of morals. Even in the most dissolute times of the
Empire, the average Roman still thought of Rome as the upholder
of a purer ethical standard against the decadent corruption of
Greece.
The cultural influence ot Greece on the Western Kmpire
diminished rapidly from the third century A.D. onwards, chiefly
because culture in general decayed. For this there were many
causes, but one in particular must be mentioned. In the last times
of the Western Empire, the government was more undisguised!}*
a military tyranny than it had been, and the army usually selected
a successful general as emperor; but the army, even in its highest
ranks, was no longer composed of cultivated Romans, but of semi-
barbarians from the frontier. These rough soldiers had no use for
culture, and regarded the civilized citizens solely as sources of
revenue. Private persons were too impoverished to support much
in the way of education, and the State considered education un-
necessary. Consequently, in the West, only a few men of excep-
tional learning continued to read Greek.
(2) Non-Hellenic religion and superstition, on the contrary,
acquired, as time went on, a firmer and firmer hold on the West.
We have already seen how Alexander's conquests introduced the
Greek world to the beliefs of Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians.
Similarly the Roman conquests made the Western world familiar
with these doctrines, and also with those of Jews and Christians.
I shall consider what concerns the Jews anJ Christians at a later
stage; for the present, I shall confine myself as far as possible to
pagan superstitions.1
In Rome every sect and every prophet was represented, and
sometimes won favour in the highest government circles. Lucian,
who stood for sane scepticism in spite of the credulity of his age.
* See Cumom, Oriental Religion* in Roman Paganism.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
tcfls an amusing story, generally accepted as broadly true, about
a prophet and miracle-worker called Alexander the Paphlagonian.
This man healed the sick and foretold the future, with excursions
into blackmail. His fame reached the ears of Marcus Aurelius,
then fighting the Marcomanni on the Danube. The Emperor
consulted him as to how to win the war, and was told that if he
threw two lions into the Danube a great victory would result. He
followed the advice of the seer, but it was the Marcomanni who
won the great victor)'. In spite of this mishap, Alexander's fame
continued to grow. A prominent Roman of consular rank, Ruti-
lianus, after consulting him on many points, at last sought his
advice as to the choice of a wife. Alexander, like Endymion, had
enjoyed the favours of the moon, and by her had a daughter,
whom the oracle recommended to Rutilianus. "Rutilianus, who
was at the time sixty years old, at once complied with the divine
injunction, and celebrated his marriage by sacrificing whole
hecatombs to his celestial mother-in-law."1
More important than the career of Alexander the Paphlagonian
was the reign of the Krnperor Klagabalus or Heliogabalus (A.D. 218-
22), who was, until his elevation by the choice of the army, a
Syrian priest of the sun. In his slow progress from Syria to Rome,
he was preceded by his portrait, sent as a present to the Senate.
"He was drawn in his sacerdotal robes of silk and gold, after the
loose flowing fashion of the Medes and Phoenicians; his head
was covered with a lofty tiara, his numerous collars and bracelets
were adorned with gems of inestimable value. His eyebrows were
tinged with black, and his cheeks painted with an artificial red
and white. The grave senators confessed with a sigh, that, after
having long experienced the stern tyranny of their own country-
men, Rome was at length humbled beneath the effeminate luxury
of Oriental despotism."1 Supported by a large section in the army,
he proceeded, with fanatical zeal, to introduce in Rome the
religious practices of the East ; his name was that of the sun-god
worshipped at Emesa, where he had been chief priest. His mother,
or grandmother, who was the real ruler, perceived that he had
Kone too far, and deposed him in favour of her nephew Alexander
(222-35), who«e Oriental proclivities were more moderate. The
mixture of creeds that wa$ possible in his day was illustrated in
• Brnn, Tht Check PMlmofhen. Vol. II, p. 226.
• Gibbon, chap. vi.
303
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
his private chapel, in which he placed the statues of Abraham
Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and Christ.
. The religion of Mithras, which was of Persian origin, was a
close competitor of Christianity, especially during the latter half
of the third century A.D. The emperors, who were making desperate
attempts to control the army, felt that religion might give a much
needed stability; but it would have to be one of the new religions,
since it was these that the soldiers favoured. The cult was intro-
duced at Rome, and had much to commend it to the military mind.
Mithras was a sun-god, but not so effeminate as his Syrian col-
league ; he was a god concerned with war, the great war between
good and evil which had been part of the Persian creed since
Zoroaster. Rostovtseff1 reproduces a bas-relief representing his
worship, which was found in a subterranean sanctuary at Heddern-
heim in Germany, and shows that his disciples must have been
numerous among the soldiers, not only in the East, but in the
West also.
Constantine's adoption of Christianity was politically successful,
whereas earlier attempts to introduce a new religion failed; but
the earlier attempts were, from a governmental point of view, very
similar to his. All alike derived their possibility of success from
the misfortunes and weariness of the Roman world. The traditional
religions of Greece and Rome were suited to men interested in the
terrestrial world, and hopeful of happiness on earth. Asia, with a
longer experience of despair, had evolved more successful anti-
dotes in the form of other-worldly hopes; of all these, Christianity
was the most effective in bringing consolation. But Christianity,
by the time it became the State religion, had absorbed much from
Greece, and transmitted this, along with the Judaic element, to
succeeding ages in the West.
III. The unification of government and culture. We owe it first
to Alexander and then to Rome that the achievements of the great
age of Greece were not lost to the world, like those of the Minoan
age. In the fifth century B.C., a Jenghiz Khan, if one had happened
to arise, could have wiped out all that was important in the
Hellenic world; Xerxes, with a little more competence, might
have made Greek civilization very greatly inferior to what it
became after he was repulsed. Consider the period from Aeschylus
1 History of the Ancient World, Vol. II, p. 343.
304
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
to Plato: all that was done in this time was done by a minority
of the population of a few commercial cities. These cities, as the
future showed, had no great capacity for withstanding foreign
conquest, but by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune their
conquerors, Macedonian and Roman, were Philhellenes, and did
not destroy what they conquered, as Xerxes or Carthage would
have done. The fact that we are acquainted with what was done
by the (1 reeks in an and literature and philosophy and science
is due to the stability introduced by Western conquerors who had
the good sense to admire the civilization which they governed
but did their utmost to preserve.
In certain respects, political and ethical, Alexander and the
Romans were the causes of a better philosophy than any that was
professed by Greeks in their days of freedom. The Stoics, as we
have seen, believed in the brotherhood of man, and did not confine
their sympathies to the Greeks. The long dominion of Rome
accustomed men to the idea of a single civilization under a single
government, li'e are aware that there were important parts of the
world which were not subject to Rome — India and China, more
especially. But to the Roman it seemed that outside the Empire there
were only more or less barbarian tribes, who might be conquered
whenever it should be worth while to make the effort. Essentially
and in idea, the empire, in the minds of the Romans, was world-
wide. This conception descended to the Church, which was
"Catholic" in spite of Buddhists, Confucians, and (later) Moham-
medans. tSVruriis judicat orbis terrarum is a maxim taken over by
ihr Church from the later Stoics; it owes its appeal to the apparent
uimcr&ality of the Roman Empire. Throughout the Middle Ages,
after the time of Charlemagne, the Church and the Holy Roman
Kmpirt were world-xude in idea, although everybody knew that
they were not so in fact. The conception of one human family,
one Catholic religion, one universal culture, and one world-wide
State, has haunted men's thoughts ever since its approximate
realization by Rome.
The part played by Rome in enlarging the area of civilization
was of immense importance. Northern Italy, Spain, France, and
parts of western Germany, were civilized as a result of forcible
conquest by the Roman legions. All these regions proved them-
selves just as capable of a high level of culture as Rome itself.
In the last days of the Western Empire, Gaul produced men who
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
were at least the equals of their contemporaries in regions of
older civilization. It was owing to the diffusion of culture by
Rome that the barbarians produced only a temporary eclipse,
not a permanent darkness. It may be argued that the quality of
civilization was never again as good as in the Athens of Pericles;
but in a world of war and destruction, quantity is, in the long
run, almost as important as quality, and quantity was due to
Rome.
IV. The Mohammedans as vehicles of Hellenism. In the seventh
century, the disciples of the Prophet conquered Syria, Egypt, and
North Africa; in the following century, they conquered Spain.
Their victories were easy, and the fighting was slight. Except
possibly during the first few years, they were not fanatical;
Christians and Jews were unmolested so long as they paid the
tribute. Very soon the Arabs acquired the civilization of the
Eastern Empire, but with the hopefulness of a rising polity
instead of the weariness of decline. Their learned men read
Greek authors in translation, and wrote commentaries. Aristotle's
reputation is mainly due to them ; in antiquity, he was not regarded
as on a level with Plato.
It is instructive to consider some of the words that we derive
from Arabic, such as: algebra, alcohol, alchemy, alembic, alkali,
azimuth, zenith. With the exception of "alcohol"— which meant,
not a drink, but a substance used in chemistr —these words
would give a good picture of some of the things we owe to the
Arabs. Algebra had been invented by the Alexandrian Greeks,
but was carried further by the Mohammedans. "Alchemy/
"alembic," "alkali" are words connected with the attempt to
turn base metals into gold, which the Arabs took over from the
Greeks, and in pursuit of which they appealed to Greek philo-
sophy.1 "Azimuth" and "zenith" are astronomical terms, chiefly
useful to the Arabs in connection with astrology.
The etymological method conceals what we owe to the Arabs
as regards knowledge of Greek philosophy, because, when it was
again studied in Europe, the technical term* required were taken
from Greek or Latin. In philosophy, the Arabs were better as
commentators than as original thinkers. Their importance, for us,
1 Sec Alchemy, Child of Greek Philtxaphy, by Arthur John Hopkin*,
Columbia, 1934.
306
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN RELATION TO CULTURE
is that they, and not the Christians, were the immediate inheritors
of those parts of the Greek tradition which only the Eastern
Empire had kept alive. Contact with the Mohammedans, in Spain,
and to a lesser extent in Sicily, made the West aware of Aristotle;
also ot Arabic numerals, algebra, and chemistry. It was this
contact that began the revival of learning in the eleventh century,
leading to the Scholastic philosophy. It was later, from the
thirteenth century onward, that the study of Greek enabled men
to go direct to the works of Plato and Aristotle and other Greek
writers of antiquity. Rut if the Arabs had not preserved the
tradition, the men of the Renaissance might not have suspected
how much was to he gained by the revival of classical learning.
307
Chapter XXX
PLOTINUS
PLOTINUS (A.D. 204-70), the founder of Neoplatonism, is
the last of the great philosophers of antiquity. His life is
almost coextensive with one of the most disastrous periods
in Roman history. Shortly before his birth, the army had become
conscious of its power, and had adopted the practice of choosing
emperors in return for monetary rewards, and assassinating them
afterwards to give occasion for a renewed sale of the empire.
These preoccupations unfitted the soldiers for the defence of the
frontier, and permitted vigorous incursions of Germans from the
north and Persians from the Hast. War and pestilence diminished
the population of the empire by about a third, while increased
taxation and diminished resources caused financial ruin in even
those provinces to which no hostile forces penetrated. The cities,
which had been the bearers of culture, were especially hard hit ;
substantial citizens, in large numbers, fled to escape the tax*
collector. It was not till after the death of Plotinus that order was
re-established and the empire temporarily saved by the vigorous
measures of Diocletian and Constantine.
Of all this there is no mention in the works of Plotinus. He
turned aside from the spectacle of ruin and misery in the actual
world, to contemplate an eternal world ot goodness and beauty.
In this he was in harmony with all the most serious men of his
age. To all of them, Christians and pagans alike, the world of
practical affairs seemed to offer no hope, and only the Other
World seemed worthy of allegiance. To the Christian, the Other
World was the Kingdom of Heaven, to be enjoyed after death;
to the Platonist, it was the eternal world of ideas, the real world
as opposed to that of illusory appearance. Christian theologians
combined these points of view, and embodied much of the philo-
sophy of Plotinus. Dean Inge, in his invaluable book on Plotinus,
rightly emphasizes what Christianity owes to him. "Platonism,"
he says, "is part of the vital structure of Christian theology, with
which no other philosophy, I venture to say. can work without
friction/' There is, he says, an "utter impossibility of excising
Platonism from Christianity without tearing Christianity to
308
PLOTINUS
pieces." He points out that Saint Augustine speaks of Plato's
system as "the most pure and bright in all philosophy/' and of
Plotinus as a man in whom "Plato lived again," and who, if he
had lived a little later, would have "changed a few words and
phrases and become Christian." Saint Thomas Aquinas, according
to Dean Inge, "is nearer to Plotinus than to the real Aristotle."
Plotinus, accordingly, is historically important as an influence
in moulding the Christianity of the Middle Ages and of Catholic
theology. The historian, in speaking of Christianity, has to be
careful to recognize the very great changes that it has undergone,
and the variety of forms that it may assume even at one epoch.
The Christianity of the Synoptic Gospels is almost innocent of
metaphysics. The Christianity of modern America, in this respect,
is like primitive Christianity; Platonism is alien to popular thought
and feeling in the United States, and most American Christians
are much mere concerned with duties here on earth, and with
social progress in the everyday world, than with the transcendental
hopes that consoled men when everything terrestrial inspired
despair. I am not speaking of any change of dogma, but of a
difference of emphasis and interest. A modern Christian, unless
he realizes how great this difference is, will fail to understand the
Christianity of the past. We, since our study is historical, are con-
cerned with the effective beliefs of past centuries, and as to these
it is impossible to disagree with what Dean Inge says on the
influence of Plato and Plotinus.
Plotinus, however, is not only historically important. He repre-
sents, better than any other philosopher, an important type of
theory. A philosophical system may be judged important for
various different kinds of reasons. The first and most obvious is
that we think it may be true. Not many students of philosophy
at the present time would feel this about Plotinus; Dean Inge is,
in this respect, a rare exception. But truth is not the only merit
that a mctaphysic can possess. It may have beauty, and this is
certainly to be found in Plotinus; there are passages that remind
one of the later cantos of Dante's Paradise, and of almost nothing
else in literature. Now and again, his descriptions of the eternal
world of glory
To our high-wrought fantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure concent
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne
To Him that sits thereon.
309
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Again, a philosophy may be important because it expresses well
what men are prone to believe in certain moods or in certain cir-
cumstances. Uncomplicated joy and sorrow is not matter for
philosophy, but rather for the simpler kinds of poetry and music.
Only joy and sorrow accompanied by reflection on the universe
generate metaphysical theories. A man may be a cheerful pessimist
or a melancholy optimist. Perhaps Samuel Butler may serve as
an example of the first; Plotinus is an admirable example of the
second. In an age such as that in which he lived, unhappiness is
immediate and pressing, whereas happiness, if attainable at all,
must be sought by reflection upon things that are remote from the
impressions of sense. Such happiness has in it always an element
of strain ; it is very unlike the simple happiness of a child. And
since it is not derived from the everyday world, but from thought
and imagination, it demands a power of ignoring or despising the
life of the senses. It is, therefore, not those who enjoy instinctive
happiness who invent the kinds of metaphysical optimism that
depend upon belief in the reality of a super-sensible world. Among
the men who have been unhappy in a mundane sense, but reso-
lutely determined to find a higher happiness in the world of
theory, Plotinus holds a very high place.
Nor are his purely intellectual merits by any means to be
despised. He has, in many respects, clarified Plato's teaching; he
has developed, with as much consistency as possible, the type of
theory advocated by him in common with many others. His
arguments against materialism are good, and his whole conception
of the relation of soul and body is clearer than that of Plato or
Aristotle.
Like Spinoza, he has a certain kind of moral purity and loftiness,
which is very impressive. He is always sincere, never shrill or
censorious, invariably concerned to tell the reader, as simply as
he can, what he believes to be important. Whatever one may think
of him as a theoretical philosopher, it is impossible not to love
him as a man.
The life of Plotinus is known, so far as it is known, through the
biography written by his friend and disciple Porphyry, a Semite
whose real name was Malchus. There are, however, miraculous
elements in this account, which maker it difficult to place a complete
reliance upon its more credible portions.
Plotinus considered his spatio-temporal appearance unim~
310
PLOTINU8
portant, and was loath to talk about the accidents of his historical
existence. He stated, however, that he was born in Egypt, and it
is known that as a young man he studied in Alexandria, where
he lived until the age of thirty-nine, and where his teacher was
Ammonius Saccas, often regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism.
He then joined the expedition of the Emperor Gordian III against
the Persians, with the intention, it is said, of studying the religions
of the East. The Emperor was still a youth, and was murdered by
the army, as was at that time the custom. This occurred during
his campaign in Mesopotamia in A.D. 244. Plotinus thereupon
abandoned his oriental projects and settled in Rome, where
he soon began to teach. Among his hearers were many influen-
tial men, and he was favoured by the Emperor Gallienus.1 At
one time he formed a project of founding Plato's Republic in
Campania, and building for the purpose a new city to be called
Platonopolis. The Kmperor, at first, was favourable, but ulti-
mately withdrew his permission. It may seem strange that there
should be room for a new city so near Rome, but probably by that
time the region was malarial, as it is now, but had not been earlier.
He wrote nothing until the age of forty-nine; after that, he wrote
much. His works \u-re edited and arranged by Porphyry, who
was more Pythagorean than Plotinus, and caused the Neoplatonist
school to become more supernaturilist than it would have been
if it had followed Plotinns more faithfully.
The respect of Plotinus for Plato is very great; Plato is usually
alluded to as "He." In general, the "blessed ancients" are treated
with reverence, but this reverence does not extend to the atomists.
The Stoics and Epicureans, being still active, are controverted,
the Stoics only for their materialism, the Epicureans for every
part of their philosophy. Aristotle plays a larger part than appears,
as borrowings from him are often unacknowledged. One feels the
influence of Parmenides at many points.
The Plato of Plotinus is not so full-blooded as the real Plato.
• Concerning Gailienus, Gibbon remarks : "He was a master of several
curieTbttl JL ^-nccs, a ready orator and - e egant poe^i i*dftd
excellent cook, and most contemptible pnnce. When the
iet of the St,te required his presence and attention he
convention with the philosopher Plotmus, wasting hi,
or licentious pleasure., preparing his .motto. , » the
in myU or eliciting a place in the Areopagus of Athens
'chap. x).
3"
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The theory of ideas, the mystical doctrines of the Phaedo and of
Book VI of the Republic, and the discussion of love in the Sym-
posium, make up almost the whole of Plato as he appears in the
Emieads (as the books of Plotinus are called). The political interests,
the search for definitions of separate virtues, the pleasure in
mathematics, the dramatic and affectionate appreciation of indi-
viduals, and above all the playfulness of Plato, are wholly absent
from Plotinus. Plato, as Carlyle said, is "very much at his ease
in Zion"; Plotinus, on the contrary, is always on his best behaviour.
The metaphysics of Plotinus begins with a Holy Trinity: The
One, Spirit and Soul. These three are not equal, like the Persons
of the Christian Trinity; the One is supreme, Spirit conies next,
and Soul last.1
The One is somewhat shadowy. It is sometimes called God,
sometimes the Good ; it transcends Being, which is the first sequent
upon the One. We must not attribute predicates to it, but only
say "It is." (This is reminiscent of Parmenides.) It would be a
mistake to speak of God as "the All," because God transcends
the All. God is present through all things. The One can be present
without any coming: ** while it is nowhere, nowhere is it not."
Although the One is sometimes spoken of as the Good, we arc-
also told that it precedes both the Good and the Beautiful.*
Sometimes, the One appears to resemble Aristotle's God; we arc
told that God has no need of His derivatives, and ignores the
created world. The One is indefinable, and in regard to it there
is more truth in silence than in any words whatever.
We now come to the Second Person, whom Plotinus calls nous.
It is always difficult to find an English word to represent nous.
The standard dictionary translation is "mind," but this does not
have the correct connotations, particularly when the word is used
in a religious philosophy. If we were to say that Plotinus put
mind above soul, we should give a completely wrong impression.
McKenna, the translator of Plotinus, uses "Intellectual-Principle/'
but this is awkward, and does not suggest an object suitable for
religious veneration. Dean Inge uses "Spirit," which is perhaps
1 Origen, who waa a contemporary of Plotinus and had the tame teacher
to philosophy, taught that the Fiitt Pcnon waa auperior to the Second,
and the Second to the Third, agreeing in (hit with Plotinua. But
view wa* aubaequently declared heretical.
1 Ftfth Ermtad, Fifth Tractate, chap. 12.
3'*
PLOTINUS
the best word available. But it leaves out the intellectual element
which was important in all Greek religious philosophy after
Pythagoras. Mathematics, the world of ideas, and all thought
about what is not sensible, have, for Pythagoras, Plato, and
Plotinus, something divine; they constitute the activity of nous,
or at least the nearest approach to its activity that we can conceive.
It was this intellectual element in Plato's religion that led Chris-
tians—notably the author of Saint John's Gospel— to identify
Christ with the Logos. Logos should be translated "reason" in this
connection ; this prevents us from using "reason" as the translation
of nous. I shall follow Dean Inge in using "Spirit," but with the
proviso that nous has an intellectual connotation which is absent
from "Spirit" as usually understood. But often I shall use the
word nous untranslated.
Nous, we are told, is the image of the One; it is engendered
because the One, in its self-quest, has vision; this seeing is nous.
This is a difficult conception. A Being without parts, Plotinus says,
may know itself; in this case, the seer and the seen are one. In
God, who is conceived, as by Plato, on the analogy of the sun, the
light-giver and what is lit are the same. Pursuing the analogy, nous
may be considered as the lit^ht by which the One sees itself. It is
possible for us to know the Divine Mind, which we forget through
self-will. To know the Divine Mind, we must study our own
toul when it is most god-like: we must put aside the body, and
the part of the soul that moulded the body, and "sense with
desires and impulses and every such futility"; what is then left
is an image of the Divine Intellect.
"Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the know-
ledge that they hold some greater thing within them, though they
cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the
utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not
themselves, that moves them: in the same way, it must be, we
stand towards the Supreme when we hold nous pure; we know
the Divine Mind within, that which gives Being and all else of
that order: but we know, too, that other, know that it is none of
these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as Being;
fuller and greater; above reason, mind, and feeling; conferring
these powers, not to be confounded with them."1
Thus when we are "divinely possessed and inspired" we see not
1 Eimtad*. V, 3, 14- McKenna's translation.
3'3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
only nous, but also the One. When we are thus in contact with the
Divine, we cannot reason or express the vision in words ; this comes
later. "At the moment of touch there is no power whatever to make
any affirmation; there is no leisure; reasoning upon the vision is
for afterwards. We may know we have had the vision when the
Soul has suddenly taken light. This light is from the Supreme and
is the Supreme; we may believe in the Presence when, like that
other God on the call of a certain man, He comes bringing light;
the light is the proof of the advent. Thus, the Soul unlit remains
without that vision; lit, it possesses what it sought. And this is
the true end set before the Soul, to take that light, to see the
Supreme by the Supreme and not by the light of any other
principle — to see the Supreme which is also the means to the
vision ; for that which illumines the Soul is that which it is to see
just as it is by the sun's own light that we see the sun.
But how is this to be accomplished ?
Cut away everything/'1
The experience of "ecstasy" (standing outside one's own body)
happened frequently to Plotinus:
Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself;
becoming external to all other things and self-encentred ; behold-
ing a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of com-
munity with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring
identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained
that activity; poised above whatsoever in the Intellectual is less
than the Supreme : yet, there comes the moment of descent from
intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask
myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did
the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which even within the
body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be.1
This brings us to Soul, the third and lowest member of the
Trinity. Soul, though inferior to nous, is the author of all living
things; it made the sun and moon and stars, and the whole visible
world. It is the offspring of the Divine Intellect. It is double:
there is an inner soul, intent on nous, and another, which faces
the external. The latter is associated with a downward movement,
in which the Soul generates its image, which is Nature and the
world of sense. The Stoics had identified Nature with God, but
1 Eimtadt, V, 3, 17. 2 IV, 8, i
3'4
PLOTINU8
Plotinus regards it as the lowest sphere, something emanating
from the Soul when it forgets to look upward towards nous.
This might suggest the Gnostic view that the visible world is evil,
but Plotinus does not take this view. The visible world is beautiful,
and is the abode of blessed spirits; it is only less good than the
intellectual world. In a very interesting controversial discussion
of the Gnostic view, that the cosmos and its Creator are evil, he
admits that some parts of Gnostic doctrine, such as the hatred of
matter, may be due to Plato, but holds that the other parts, which
do not come from Plato, are untrue.
His objections to Gnosticism are of two sorts. On the one hand,
he says that Soul, when it creates the material world, does so from
memory of the divine, and not because it is fallen; the world of
sense, he thinks, is as good as a sensible world can be. He feels
strongly the beauty of things perceived by the senses:
Who that truly perceives the harmony of the Intellectual
Realm could fail, if he has any bent towards music, to answer to
the harmony in sensible sounds? What geometrician or arith-
metician could fail to take pleasure in the symmetries, corre-
spondences and principles of order observed in visible things?
Consider, even, the case of pictures : those seeing by the bodily
sense the productions of the art of painting do not see the one
thing in the one only way ; they are deeply stirred by recognizing
in the objects depicted to the eyes the presentation of what lies
in the idea, and so are called to recollection of the truth — the
very experience out of which Love rises. Now, if the sight of
Beauty excellently reproduced upon a face hurries the mind to
that other Sphere, surely no one seeing the loveliness lavish in
the world of sense — this vast orderliness, the form which the stars
even in their remoteness display, no one could be so dull-witted,
so immoveable, as not to be carried by all this to recollection,
and gripped by reverent awe in the thought of all this, so great,
sprung from that greatness. Not to answer thus could only be to
have neither fathomed this world nor had any vision of that
other (II, 9, 16).
There is another reason for rejecting the Gnostic view. The
Gnostics think that nothing divine is associated with the sun,
moon, and stars; they were created by an evil spirit. Only the soul
of man, among things perceived, has any goodness. But Plotinus
is firmly persuaded that the heavenly bodies are the bodies of
315
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
god-like beings, immeasurably superior to man. According to the
Gnostics, "their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they
declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and the stars
within the heavens have had no communion with the Immortal
Principle, though these are far purer and lovelier than their own
souls" (II, 9, 5). For the view of Plotinus there is authority in
the Timaeus, and it was adopted by some Christian Fathers, for
instance, Origen. It is imaginatively attractive; it expresses
feelings that the heavenly bodies naturally inspire, and makes
man less lonely in the physical universe.
There is in the mysticism of Plotinus nothing morose or hostile
to beauty. But he is the last religious teacher, for many centuries,
of whom this can be said. Beauty, and all the pleasures associated
with it, came to be thought to be of the Devil ; pagans, as well as
Christians, came to glorify ugliness and dirt. Julian the Apostate,
like contemporary orthodox saints, boasted of the populousness
of liis beard. Of all this, there is nothing in Plotinus.
Matter is created by Soul, and has no independent reality.
Every Soul has its hour; when that strikes, it descends, and enters
the body suitable to it. The motive is not reason, but something
more analogous to sexual desire. When the soul leaves the body,
it must enter another body if it has been sinful, for justice requires
that it should be punished. If, in this life, you have murdered
your mother, you will, in the next life, be a woman, and be
murdered by your son (HI, 2, 13). Sin must be punished; but the
punishment happens naturally, through the restless driving of the
sinner's errors.
Do we remember this life after we are dead ? The answer is per-
fectly logical, but not what most modem theologians would say.
Memory is concerned with our life in time, whereas our best and
truest life is in eternity. Therefore, as the soul grows towards
eternal life, it mil remember less and less; friends, children, wife,
will be gradually forgotten; ultimately, we shall know nothing of
the things of this world, but only contemplate the intellectual
realm. There will be no memory of personality, which, in con-
templative vision, is unaware of itself. The soul will become one
with nous, but not to its own destruction : nous and the individual
soul will be simultaneously two and one (IV, 4, 2).
In the Fourth Emend, which is on the Soul, one section, the
Seventh Tractate, is devoted to the discussion of immortality.
116
PLOTINUS
The body, being compound, is clearly not immortal; if, then,
it is part of us, we are not wholly immortal. But what is the relation
of the soul to the body ? Aristotle (who is not mentioned explicitly)
said the soul was the form of the body, but Plotinus rejects this
view, on the ground that the intellectual act would be impossible
if the soul were any form of body. The Stoics think that the soul
is material, but the unity of the soul proves that this is impossible.
Moreover, since matter is passive, it cannot have created itself;
matter could not exist if soul had not created it, and, if soul did
not exist, matter would disappear in a twinkling. The soul is
neither matter nor the form of a material body, but Essence, and
Essence is eternal. This view is implicit in Plato's argument that
the soul is immortal because ideas arc eternal ; but it is only with
Plotinus that it becomes explicit.
How does the soul enter the body from the aloofness of the
intellectual world ? The answer is, through appetite. But appetite,
though sometimes ignoble, may be comparatively noble. At best,
the soul "has the desire of elaborating order on the model of
what it has seen in the Intellectual-Principle (nous).99 That is to
say, soul contemplates the inward realm of essence, and wishes
to produce something, as like it as possible, that can be seen by
looking without instead of looking within — like (we might say) a
composer who first imagines his music, and then wishes to hear it
performed by an orchestra.
But this desire of the soul to create has unfortunate results. So
long as the soul lives in the pure world of essence, it is not separated
from other souls living in the same world ; but as soon as it becomes
joined to a body, it has the task of governing what is lower than
itself, and by this task it becomes separate from other souls, which
have other bodies. Except in a few men at a few moments, the
soul becomes chained to the body. "The body obscures the truth,
but there1 all stands out clear and separate11 (IV, 9, 5).
This doctrine, like Plato's, has difficulty in avoiding the view
that the creation was a mistake. The soul at its best is content
with nous, the world of essence ; if it were always at its best, it
would not create, but only contemplate. It seems that the act of
4 Plotinus habitually uses "There" as a Christian might — as it is used,
for instance, in
The life that knows no ending,
The tearless life is There.
317
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
creation is to be excused on the ground that the created world,
in its main lines, is the best that is logically possible; but this is
a copy of the eternal world, and as such has the beauty that is
possible to a copy. The most definite statement is in the Tractate
on the Gnostics (II, 9, 8):
To ask why the Soul has created the Kosmos, is to ask why there
is a Soul and why a Creator creates. The question, also, implies a
beginning in the eternal and, further, represents creation as the act
of a changeful Being who turns from this to that.
Those that think so must be instructed — if they would but bear
with correction — in the nature of the Supernals, and brought to
desist from that blasphemy of majestic powers which comes so
easily to them, where all should be reverent scruple.
Even in the administration of the Universe there is no ground
for such attack, for it affords manifest proof of the greatness of
the Intellectual Kind.
This All that has emerged into life is no amorphous structure —
like those lesser forms within it which are born night and day out
of the lavishness of its vitality — the Universe is a life organised,
effective, complex, all-comprehensive, displaying an unfathomable
wisdom. How, then, can anyone deny that it is a clear image, beau-
tifully formed, of the Intellectual Divinities ? No doubt it is a copy,
not original ; but that is its very nature ; it cannot be at once symbol
and reality. But to say that it is an inadequate copy is false ; nothing
has been left out which a beautiful representation within the physi-
cal order could include.
Such a reproduction there must necessarily be — though not by
deliberation and contrivance — for the Intellectual could not be the
last of things, but must have a double Act, one within itself, and
one outgoing; there must, then, be something later than the
Divine; for only the thing with which all power ends fails to pass
downwards something of itself.
This is perhaps the best answer to the Gnostics that the prin-
ciples of Plotinus make possible. The problem, in slightly different
language, was inherited by Christian theologians ; they, also, have
found it difficult to account for the creation without allowing the
blasphemous conclusion that, before it, something was lacking
to the Creator. Indeed, their difficulty is greater than that of
Plotinus, for he may say that the nature of Mind made creation
inevitable, whereas, for the Christian, the world resulted from the
untrammelled exercise of God's free will
PLCtlNUS
Plotinus has a very vivid sense of a certain kind of abstract
beauty. In describing the position of Intellect as intermediate
between the One and Soul, he suddenly bursts out into a passage
of rare eloquence:
The Supreme in its progress could never be borne forward upon
some soulless vehicle nor even directly upon the Soul: it will be
heralded by some ineffable beauty: before the Great King in his
progress there comes first the minor train, th£n rank by rank the
greater and more exalted, closer to the King the kinglier; next his
own honoured company until, last among all these grandeurs,
suddenly appears the Supreme Monarch himself, and all — unless
indeed for those who have contented themselves with the spectacle
before his coming and gone away — prostrate themselves and hail
him (V, 5, 3).
There is a Tractate on Intellectual Beauty, which shows the
same kind of feeling (V, 8):
Assuredly all the gods are august and beautiful in a beauty
beyond our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and
especially Intellect operating within them (the divine sun and
stars) to visibility. . . .
To "live at ease" is There; and to these divine beings verity is
mother and nurse, existence and sustenance; all that is not of
process but of authentic being they see, and themselves in all; for
all is transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is
lucid to every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through
light. And each of them contains all within itself, and at the same
time sees all in every other, so that everywhere there is all, and all
is all and each all, and infinite the glory. Each of them is great;
the small is great ; the sun, There, is all the stars ; and every star,
again, is all the stars and sun. While some manner of being is
dominant in each, all are mirrored in every other.
In addition to the imperfection which the world inevitably
possesses because it is a copy, there is, for Plotinus as for the
Christians, the more positive evil that results from sin. Sin is a
consequence of free will, which Plotinus upholds as against the
determinists, and, more particularly, the astrologers. He does not
venture to deny the validity of astrology altogether, but he attempts
to set bounds to it, BO as to make what remains compatible with
free will. He does the same as regards magic; the sage, he says, is
exempt from the power of the magician. Porphyry relates that a
3*9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
rival philosopher tried to put evil spells on Plotinus, but that'
because of his holiness and wisdom, the spells recoiled on the
rival. Porphyry, and all the followers of Plotinus, are much more
superstitious than he is. Superstition, in him, is as slight as was
possible in that age.
Let us now endeavour to sum up the merits and defects of the
doctrine taught by Plotinus, and in the main accepted by Christian
theology so long as, it remained systematic and intellectual.
There is, first and foremost, the construction of what Plotinus
believed to be a secure refuge for ideals and hopes, and one, more-
over, which involved both moral and intellectual effort. In the
third century, and in the centuries after the barbarian invasion,
western civilization came near to total destruction. It was fortunate
that, while theology was almost the sole surviving mental activity,
the system that was accepted was not purely superstitious, but
preserved, though sometimes deeply buried, doctrines which
embodied much of the work of Greek intellect and much of the
moral devotion that is common to the Stoics and the Neoplatonists.
This made possible the rise of the scholastic philosophy, and later,
with the Renaissance, the stimulus derived from the renewed
study of Plato, and thence of the other ancients.
On the other hand, the philosophy of Plotinus has the defect
of encouraging men to look within rather than to look without :
when we look within we see nous, which is divine, while when we
look without we see the imperfections of the sensible world. This
kind of subjectivity was a gradual growth ; it is to be found in the
doctrines of Protagoras, Socrates, and Plato, as well as in the
Stoics and Epicureans. But at first it was only doctrinal, not
temperamental ; for a long time it failed to kill scientific curiosity.
We saw how Posidonius, about 100 B.C., travelled to Spain and
the Atlantic coast of Africa to study the tides. Gradually, however,
subjectivism invaded men's feelings as well as their doctrines.
Science was no longer cultivated, and only virtue was thought
important. Virtue, as conceived by Plato, involved all that was
then possible in the way of mental achievement; but in later
centuries it came to be thought of, increasingly, as involving only
the virtuous wiU, and not a desire to understand the physical
world or improve the world of human institutions. Christianity,
in its ethical doctrines, was not free from this defect, although in
practice belief in the importance of spreading the Christian faith
.120 *
PLOTINUS
gave a practicable object for moral activity, which was no longer
confined to the perfecting of self.
Plotinus is both an end and a beginning — an end as regards the
Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom. To the ancient world,
weary with centuries of disappointment, exhausted by despair,
his doctrine might be acceptable, but could not be stimulating.
To the cruder barbarian world, where superabundant energy
needed to be restrained and regulated rather than stimulated,
what could penetrate in his teaching was beneficial, since the
evil to be combated was not languor but brutality. The work of
transmitting what could survive of his philosophy was performed
by the Christian philosophers of the last age of Rome.
// u/or > o/ W nt cr n l>k tttuoff h > J 2 1
Book Two CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION7
CATHOLIC philosophy, in the sense in which 1 shall use the
term, is that which dominated European thought from
Augustine to the Renaissance. There have been philo-
sophers, before and after this period often centuries, who belonged
to the same general school. Before Augustine there were the early
Fathers, especially Origen; after the Renaissance there are many,
•'ncluding, at the present day, all orthodox Catholic teachers of
philosophy, who adhere to some medieval system, especially that
of Thomas Aquinas. But it is only from Augustine to the Re-
naissance that the greatest philosophers of the age are concerned
in building up or perfecting the Catholic synthesis. In the Christian
centuries before Augustine, Stoics and Neoplatonists outshine the
Fathers in philosophic ability; after the Renaissance, none of the
outstanding philosophers, even among those who were orthodox
Catholics, were concerned to carry on the Scholastic or the
Augustinian tradition.
The period with which we shall be concerned in this book differs
from earlier and later times not only in philosophy, but in many
other ways. The most notable of these is the power of the Church.
The Church brought philosophic beliefs into a closer relation to
social and political circumstances than they have ever had before
or since the medieval period, which we may reckon from about
A.I). 400 to about A.D. 1400. The Church is a social institution
built upon a creed, partly philosophic, partly concerned with
sacred history. It achieved power and wealth by means of its creed.
The lay rulers, who were in frequent conflict with it, were defeated
because the great majority' of the population, including most of
the lay rulers themselves, were profoundly convinced of the truth
of the Catholic faith. There were traditions, Roman and Germanic,
against which the Church had to fight. The Roman tradition was
strongest in Italy, especially among lawyers; the German tradition
was strongest in the feudal aristocracy that arose out of the bar-
barian conquest. But for many centuries neither of these traditions
122
INTRODUCTION
proved strong enough to generate a successful opposition to the
Church ; and this was largely due to the fact that they were not
embodied in any adequate philosophy.
A history of thought, such as that upon which we are engaged,
is unavoidably one-sided in dealing with the Middle Ages. With
very few exceptions, all the men of this period who contributed
to the intellectual life of their time were churchmen. The laity
in the Middle Ages slowly built up a vigorous political and
economic system, but their activities were in a sense blind. There
was in the later Middle Ages an important lay literature, very
different from that of the Church ; in a general history, this litera-
ture would demand more consideration than is called for in a
history of philosophic thought. It is not until we come to Dante
that we find a layman writing with full knowledge of the ecclesi-
astical philosophy of his time. Until the fourteenth century,
ecclesiastics have a virtual monopoly of philosophy, and philo-
sophy, accordingly, is written from the standpoint of the Church.
For this reason, medieval thought cannot be made intelligible
without a fairly extensive account of the growth of ecclesiastical
institutions, and especially of the papacy.
The medieval world, as contrasted with the world of antiquity,
is characterized by various forms of dualism. There is the dualisr
of clergy and laity, the dualism of Latin and Teuton, the duali'
of the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, the c*
ism of the spirit and the flesh. All these are exemplified '
dualism of Pope and Emperor. The dualism of Latin and
an outcome of the barbarian invasion, but the others
sources. The relations of clergy and laity, for the
were to be modelled on the relations of Samuel and
demand for the supremacy of the clergy arose out
of Arian or semi-Arian emperors and kings. The d
kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world i*
New Testament, but was systematized in Saint £ t^c dark
of God. The dualism of the spirit and the flesh ' ctivity was
Plato, and was emphasized by the Neoplatoni?* «me to the
in the teaching of St. Paul; and it domir^nstan
asceticism of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Catholic philosophy is divided into
ages, during which, in Western Europe,
almost non-existent. From the
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
wars of Byzantines and Lombards destroyed most of what re-
mained of the civilization of Italy. The Arabs conquered most of
the territory of the Eastern Empire, established themselves in
Africa and Spain, threatened France, and even, on one occasion,
sacked Rome. The Danes and Normans caused havoc in France
and England, in Sicily and Southern Italy. Life, throughout these
centuries, was precarious and full of hardship. Bad as it was in
reality, gloomy superstitions made it even worse. It was thought
that the great majority even of Christians would go to hell. At
every moment, men felt themselves encompassed by evil spirits,
and exposed to the machinations of sorcerers and witches. No joy
of life was possible, except, in fortunate moments, to those who
retained the thoughtlessness of children. The general misery
heightened the intensity of religious feeling. The life of the good
here below was a pilgrimage to the heavenly city; nothing of value
was possible in the sublunary world except the steadfast virtue
that would lead, in the end, to eternal bliss. The Greeks, in their
great days, had found joy and beauty in the everyday world.
Empedocles, apostrophizing his fellow-citizens, says: " Friends,
that inhabit the great city looking down on the yellow rock of
Acragas, up by the citadel, busy in goodly works, harbour of
honour for the stranger, men unskilled in meanness, all hail." In
later times, until the Renaissance, men had no such simple happi-
ness in the visible world, but turned their hopes to the ur-*>' °J
Acragas is replaced in their love by Jerusalem the Golden. lts t"e
earthly happiness at last returned, the intensity of longin-nten;sts
other world grew gradually less. Men used the same \f*"e
with a less profound sincerity. *°;
In the attempt to make the genesis and significance stian reve'
philosophy intelligible, I have found it necessary to challenged
space to general history than is demanded in connects- °* systems
ancient or modern philosophy. Catholic philoy^^' *n the *on8
the philosophy of an institution, namel— ""stake, but in the
modern philosophy, even when it r-**v;Cess*u*'
concerned with problems, espec*8' which had an air of complete-
which are derived from Christ :J bX a vanety of cause8- Perhaps
Catholic doctrines as to thtV2* thc 8rowth of a rich commercial
Graeco-Ror/*n paganism tl Hewhene. The feudal aristocracy, in
Christian, from the very begi' *tuPld- and barbaric; the common
or, in political terms, to Chur^rch M superior to the nobles in
3*4
INTRODUCTION
The problems raised by this dual loyalty were, for the most
part, worked out in practice before the philosophers supplied the
necessary theory. In this process there were two very distinct
stages: one before the fall of the Western Empire, and one after
it. The practice of a long line of bishops, culminating in St.
Ambrose, supplied the basis for St. Augustine's political philo-
sophy. Then came the barbarian invasion, followed by a long time
of confusion and increasing ignorance. Between Boethius and
St. Anselm, a period of over five centuries, there is only one
eminent philosopher, John the Scot, and he, as an Irishman, had
largely escaped the various processes that were moulding the rest
of the Western world. But this period, in spite of the absence of
philosophers, was not one during which there was no intellectual
development. Chaos raised urgent practical problems, which were
dealt with by means of institutions and modes of thought that
dominated scholastic philosophy, and are, to a great extent, still
important at the present day. These institutions and modes of
thought were not introduced to the world by theorists, but by
practical men in the stress of conflict. The moral reform of the
Church in the eleventh century, which was the immediate prelude
to the scholastic philosophy, was a reaction against the increasing
absorption of the Church into the feudal system. To understand
the scholastics we must understand Hil deb rand, and to understand
1 ^Mebrand we must know something of the evils against which
.. Attended. Nor can we ignore the foundation of the Holy
mediex .**•,. & T- ^ i_
. , Empire and its effect upon European thought.
Su- ! * i^Js*5 reasons, the reader will find in the following pages
this svntfiC . • , , •• - t • • f i - . i •
rf „ * |piastical and political history of which the relevance to
1 he moi f . ., , . , i , . ,. ,
,|ment of philosophic thought may not be immediately
I . I is the more necessary to relate something of this
only rendcf . . . . . J . , . f & ...
Tl h period concerned is obscure, and is unfamiliar to
\ «. . *^*« nt home with both ancient and modern history,
out western huru> . . , , , . ~ , ••
, . . : - ^phers have had as much influence on philo-
when the general level c. , ~» , , .T<1 , ' r ,
i 11 j • ^t. r L %hrose, Charlemagne, and Hiidebrand.
lull during the fourth century, . ' . / , 6 ' , , . .
»u \\r * r • i *u * uninfe these men and their times
the Western Empire and the estab T r
. . f * . rr, ,;v adequate treatment of our
out its former territory. The culm. ^
late Roman civilization depended,
condition of destitute refugees; the
their rural estates. Fresh shocks cor
without any sufficient breathing $rt
125 ]
Part i . — The Fathers
Chapter I
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
OF THE JEWS
^ | -1HE Christian religion, as it was handed over by the late
I Roman Empire to the barbarians, consisted of three ele-
JL ments: first, certain philosophical beliefs, derived mainly
from Plato and the Neoplatonists, but also in part from the Stoics;
second, a conception of morals and history derived from the Jews ;
and third, certain theories, more especially as to salvation, which
were on the whole new in Christianity, though in part traceable
to Orphism, and to kindred cults of the Near East.
The most important Jewish elements in Christianity appear to
me to be the following:
1. A sacred history, beginning with the Creation, leading to a
consummation in the future, and justifying the ways of Q .
man' i . f f , *** the unseen.
2. The existence of a small section of man*e Q^J^ When
specially loves. For Jews, this section was the. of , . for thc
Christians, the elect. uged tf£ Mme* V0rd8> but
3. A new conception of nghteoi
giving, for example, was taken o^ and significance Of Catholic
Judaism. The importance attache^ h nec lo ^.otc more
from Orphism or from onentemanded in ^^n ^th cithcr
practical philanthropy, as a/h Catholjc hilocjphy is essentially
of virtue, seems to have coftution> MIW>V thc Catholic Church;
4. The Law. Chnstiami^jj ;, IS tar from orthodox, is largely
instance the Decalogue, wL^feUy in ethics and political theory
ritual parts. But in practice ^,an views of the moral law and froin
same feelings that the Jew* relations of Church and State. In
the doctrine that correct beliere is no such dual loyalty as the
action, a doctrine which is esnning, has owed to God and Caesar,
origin is the exclusiveness of -h and State.
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OP THE JEWS
5. The Messiah. The Jews believed that the Messiah would
bring them temporal prosperity, and victory over their enemies
here on earth ; moreover, he remained in the future. For Christians,
the Messiah was the historical Jesus, who was also identified with
the Logos of Greek philosophy; and it was not on earth, but in
heaven, that the Messiah was to enable his followers to triumph
over their enemies.
6. The Kingdom of Heaven. Other-worldliness is a conception
which Jews and Christians, in a sense, share with later Platonism,
but it takes, with them, a much more concrete form than with
(I reek philosophers. The Greek doctrine — which is to be found
in much Christian philosophy, but not in popular Christianity —
was that the sensible world, in space and time, is an illusion, and
that, by intellectual and moral discipline, a man can learn to live
in the eternal world, which alone is real. The Jewish and Christian
doctrine, on the other hand, conceived the Other World as not
metaphysically different from this world, but as in the future, when
the virtuous would enjoy everlasting bliss and the wicked would
suffer everlasting torment. This belief embodied revenge psy-
chology, and was intelligible to all and sundry, as the doctrines
of Greek philosophers were not.
'ro understand the origin of these beliefs, we must take account
..-.. . '" facts in Jewish history, to which we will now turn our
Hildebranu
he contended. , ^ of lhe Israciites ^^^ be confirmed from any
Roman Lmpire an>v,,d Testament, and it is impossible to know at
tor these reasons, * - . urelv legendary. David and Solomon
much ecclesiastical and polit ' bablv had a real existence, but
the development .of ph.losophi, w CQme to somethi ^^
evident. It is the more nect ki doms of Israe, and Judah.
history as the period concerned . Q,d Testamem of whom there
many who are at home with both « of Ittac, who u ken
I-ew technical philosophers have had a A^yrf^ finally conquered
sopluc thought as St. Ambrose, Cha;nd remoyed . rf
lo relate what is essential concerning dom of Judah a,one
is therefore indispensable in any ition. The kingdom of Judah
8U 'ec ' ower came to an end with the
.lians and Medes in 606 B.C.
aptured Jerusalem, destroyed
t of the population to Babylon.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The Babylonian kingdom fell in 538 B.C., when Babylon was taken
by Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians. Cyrus, in 537 B.C.,
issued an edict allowing the Jews to return to Palestine. Many of
them did so, under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra; die
Temple was rebuilt, and Jewish orthodoxy began to be crystallized.
In the period of the captivity, and for some time before and
after this period, Jewish religion went through a very important
development. Originally, there appears to have been not very
much difference, from a religious point of view, between the
Israelites and surrounding tribes. Yahweh was, at first, only a
tribal god who favoured the children of Israel, but it was not
denied that there were other gods, and their worship was habitual.
When the first Commandment says "Thou shall have none other
gods but me," it is saying something which was an innovation
in the time immediately preceding the captivity. This is made
evident by various texts in the earlier prophets. It was the
prophets at this time who first taught that the worship of heathen
gods was sin. To win the victory in the constant wars of that time,
they proclaimed, the favour of Yahweh was essential ; and Yahweh
would withdraw his favour if other gods were also honoured.
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, especially, seem to have invented the idea
that all religions except one are false, and that the Lord punishes
idolatry.
Some quotations will illustrate their teachings, and the pre-
valence of the heathen practices against which they protested.
"Seest Thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the
streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers
kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes
to the queen of heaven [Ishtar], and pour out drink offerings unto
other gods, that they may provoke me to anger."1 The Ix>rd is
angry about it. "And they have built the high places of Tophct,
which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons
and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not,
neither came it into my heart."2
There is a very interesting passage in Jeremiah in which he
denounces the Jews in Kgypt for their idolatry. He himself had
lived among them for a time. The prophet tells the Jewish refugees
in Egypt that Yahweh will destroy them all because their wives
have burnt incense to other gods. But they refuse to listen to him,
1 Jeremiah vii, 17-18. * Jbid.t vii, 31.
330
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWS
saying: "We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out
of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and
to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our
fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in
the streets of Jerusalem ; for then had we plenty of victuals, and
were well, and saw no evil." But Jeremiah assures them that
Yahweh noticed these idolatrous practices, and that misfortune
has come because of them. "Behold, I have sworn by my great
name, saith the Lord, that my name shall no more be named in
the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt. . . .
I will watch over them for evil, and not for good; and all the
men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by
the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them."1
Iv/ckiel is equally shocked by the idolatrous practices of the
Jews. The Ix>rd in a vision shows him women at the north gate of
the temple weeping for Tammuz (a Babylonian deity); then He
shows him "greater abominations," five and twenty men at the
door of the temple worshipping the sun. The Lord declares:
"Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare,
neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a
loud voice, yet will I not hear them."2
The idea that all religions but one are wicked, and that the
Lord punishes idolatry, was apparently invented by these prophets.
The prophets, on the whole, were fiercely nationalistic, and looked
forward to the day when the Ix>rd would utterly destroy the
gentiles.
The captivity was taken to justify the denunciations of the
prophets. If Yahweh was all-powerful, and the Jews were his
Chosen People, their sufferings could only be explained by their
wickedness. The psychology is that of paternal correction: the
Jews are to be purified by punishment. Under the influence of this
belief, they developed, in exile, an orthodoxy much more rigid and
much more nationally exclusive than that which had prevailed while
they were independent. The Jews who remained behind and were
not transplanted to Babylon did not undergo this development
to anything like the same extent. When Ezra and Nehemiah came
back to Jerusalem after the captivity, they were shocked to find
that mixed marriages had been common, and they dissolved all
such marriages.3
1 Jeremiah xliv, ii-cnd. ' Kzckiel vii, ii-cnd. * Ezra ix-x, 5.
33'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
in our version of the Apocrypha. The morality taught is very
mundane. Reputation among neighbours is highly prized. Honesty
is the best policy, because it is useful to have Yahweh on your
side. Almsgiving is recommended. The only sign of Greek influence
is in the praise of medicine.
Slaves must not be treated too kindly. "Fodder, a wand, and
burdens, are for the ass: and bread, correction, and work, for a
servant. ... Set him to work, as is fit for him: if he be not
obedient, put on more heavy fetters"(xxiii, 24, 28). At the same
time, remember that you have paid a price for him, and that if
he runs away you will lose your money; this sets a limit to pro-
fitable severity (ibid., 30, 31). Daughters are a great source of
anxiety; apparently in the writer's day they were much addicted to
immorality (xlii, 9-11). He has a low opinion of women: "From
garments cometh a moth, and from women wickedness" (ibid., 13).
It is a mistake to be cheerful with your children ; the right course
is to "bow down their neck from their youth" (vii. 23, 24).
Altogether, like the elder Cato, he represents the morality of
the virtuous business man in a very unattractive li^ht.
This tranquil existence ot comfortable self-righteousness was
rudely interrupted by the Scleucid king Amiochus IV, who was
determined to hellenize all his dominions. In 175 B.C. he estab-
lished a gymnasium in Jerusalem, and taught young men to ucar
Greek hats and practise athletics. In this he was helped by a
hellenizing Jew named Jason, whom he made high priest. The
priestly aristocracy had become lax, and had felt the attraction
of Greek civilization; but they were vehemently opposed by a
party called the "Hasidim" (meaning "Holy"), who were strong
among the rural population.1 When, in 170 B.C., Antiochus
became Involved in war with ligypt, the Jews rebelled. Thereupon
Antiochus took the holy vessels from the Temple, and placed in
it the image of the God. He identified Yahweh with Zeus,
following a practice \\hich had been successful ever)' where else.*
He resolved to extirpate the Jewish religion, and to stop circum-
1 From them, probably, dc \eloped the sect of the Kssenes, whose
doctrines seem to have influenced primitive Christianity. Sec Ocstcrlcy
and Robinson, Ilutury of Israel, Vol. II, p. 323 II. The Pharisee* also
descended from them.
9 Some Alexandrian Jew* did not object to this identification. See
Letter uf Aris teas t 15, 16.
334
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWS
cision and the observance of the laws relating to food. To all this
Jerusalem submitted, but outside Jerusalem the Jews resisted
with the utmost stubbornness.
The history of this period is told in the First Book of Maccabees.
The first chapter tells how Antiochus decreed that all the in-
habitants of his kingdom should be one people, and abandon their
separate laws. All the heathen obeyed, and many of the Israelites,
although the king commanded that they should profane the
sabbath, sacrifice swine's flesh, and leave their children uncir-
cumcised. All who disobeyed were to suffer death. Many, neverthe-
less, resisted. "They put to death certain women, that had caused
their children to be circumcised. And they hanged the infants
about their necks, and rifled their houses, and slew them that had
circumcised them. Howbeit many in Israel were fully resolved
and confirmed in themselves not to eat any unclean thing. Where-
fore they chose rather to die, that they might not be defiled with
meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant: so then
they died."1
It was at this time that the doctrine of immortality came to be
widely believed among the Jews. It had been thought that virtue
would be rewarded here on earth; but persecution, which fell
upon the most virtuous, made it evident that this was not the case.
In order to safeguard divine justice, therefore, it was necessary
to believe in rewards and punishments hereafter. This doctrine
was not universally accepted among the Jews; in the time of
Christ, the Sadducees still rejected it. But by that time they
were a small party, and in later times all Jews believed in immor-
tality.
The revolt against Antiochus was led by Judas Maccabaeus, an
able military commander, who first recaptured Jerusalem (164 B.C.),
and then embarked upon aggression. Sometimes he killed all the
males, sometimes he circumcised them by force. His brother
Jonathan was made high priest, was allowed to occupy Jerusalem
with a garrison, and conquered part of Samaria, acquiring Joppa
and Akra. He negotiated with Rome, and was successful in securing
complete autonomy. His family were high priests until Herod,
and are known as the I lasmonean dynasts.
In enduring and resisting persecution the Jews of this time
showed immense heroism, although in defence of things that do
1 I Maccabees i, 60-3.
335
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The New Testament writers are familiar with it; St. Jude con-
siders it to be actually by Enoch. Early Christian Fathers, for
instance Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, treated it as
canonical, but Jerome and Augustine rejected it. It fell, conse-
quently, into oblivion, and was lost until, early in the nineteenth
century, three manuscripts of it, in Ethiopic, were found in
Abyssinia. Since then, manuscripts of parts of it have been found
in Greek and Latin versions. It appears to have been originally
written partly in Hebrew, partly in Aramaic. Its authors were
members of the Hasidim, and their successors the Pharisees. It
denounces kings and princes, meaning the Hasmonean dynasty
and the Sadducees. It influenced New Testament doctrine,
particularly as regards the Messiah, Sheol (hell), and demonology.
The book consists mainly of "parables," which are more cosmic
than those of the New Testament. There are visions of heaven
and hell, of the Last Judgment, and so on ; one is reminded of the
first two Books of Paradise Lost where the literary quality is good,
and of Blake's Prophetic Books where it is inferior.
There is an expansion of Genesis vi, 2, 4, which is curious and
Promethean. The angels taught men metallurgy, and were punished
for revealing ''eternal secrets." They were also cannibals. The
angels that had sinned became pagan gods, and their women
became sirens ; but at the last, they were punished with everlajtin^
torments.
There are descriptions of heaven and hell which have consider-
able literary merit. The Last Judgipent is performed by "the Son
of Man, who hath righteousness" and who sits on the throne of
His glory. Some of the gentiles, at the last, will repent and be
forgiven; but most gentiles, and all hellenizing Jews, will suffer
eternal damnation, for the righteous will pray for vengeance, and
their prayer will be granted.
There is a section on astronomy, where we learn that the sun
and moon have chariots driven by the wind, that the year consists
of 364 days, that human sin causes the heavenly bodies to depart
from their courses, and that only the virtuous can know astronomy.
Falling stars are falling angels, and are punished by the seven
archangels.
Next comes sacred history. Up to the Maccabees, this pursues
the course known from the Bible in its earlier portions, and from
history in the later parts. Then the author goes on into the future:
338
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWS
the New Jerusalem, the conversion of the remnant of the gentiles,
the resurrection of the righteous, and the Messiah.
There is a great deal about the punishment of sinners and the
reward of the righteous, who never display an attitude of Christian
forgiveness towards sinners. "What will ye do, ye sinners, and
whither will ye flee on that day of judgment, when ye hear the
voice of the prayer of the righteous?" "Sin has not been sent upon
the earth, but man of himself has created it." Sins are recorded
in heaven. "Ye sinners shall be cursed for ever, and ye shall have
no peace." Sinners may be happy all their lives, and even in
dying, but their souls descend into Sheol, where they shall suffer
"darkness and chains and a burning flame." But as for the
righteous, "I and my Son will be united with them for ever."
The last words of the book are: "To the faithful he will give
faithfulness in the habitation of upright paths. And they shall see
those who were born in darkness led into darkness, while the
righteous shall be resplendent. And the sinners shall cry aloud
and see them resplendent, and they indeed will go where days and
seasons are prescribed for them."
Jews, like Christians, thought much about sin, but few of them
thought of themselves as sinners. This was, in the main, a Christian
innovation, introduced by the parable of the Pharisee and the
publican, and taucht as a virtue in Christ's denunciations of the
Scribes and Pharisees. The Christians endeavoured to practise
Christian humility; the Jews, in general, did not.
There are, however, important exceptions among orthodox Jews
just before the lime of Christ. Take, for instance, "The Testaments
ill" the Twelve Patriarchs/1 written between 109 and 107 B.C. by
a Pharisee who admired John Hyrcanus, a high priest of the
Ihusmonean dynasty. This book, in the form in which we have it,
contains Christian interpolations, but these are all concerned with
dogma. When they are excised, the ethical teaching remains closely
similar to that of the ( jnspels. As the Rev. Dr. R. H. Charles says:
"The Sermon on the Mount reflects in several instances the spirit
and even reproduces the very phrases of our text: many passages
in tlir (iospcls exhibit traces of the same, and St. Paul seems to
have used the book as a vade mecuin" (op. «'/., pp. 291-2). We
lind in this hook such preempts as the following:
"Love ye one another from the heart; and if a man sin against
thec, speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold not guile; and
339
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
if he repent and confess, forgive him. But if he deny it, do not
get into a passion with him, lest catching the poison from thee
he take to swearing, and so then sin doubly. . . . And if he be
shameless and persist in wrong-doing, even so forgive him from
the heart, and leave to God the avenging."
Dr. Charles is of opinion that Christ must have been acquainted
with this passage. Again we find :
"Love the Lord and your neighbour."
"Love the Lord through all your life, and one another with a
true heart."
"I love the Lord; likewise also every man with all my heart."
These are to be compared with Matthew xxii, 37-39. There is a
reprobation of all hatred in "The Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs"; for instance:
"Anger is blindness, and docs not suffer one to see the face of
any man with truth."
"Hatred, therefore, is evil; for it constantly matcth with lying."
The author of this book, as might be expected, holds that not only
the Jews, but all the gentiles, will be saved.
Christians have learnt from the Gospels to think ill of Pharisees,
yet the author of this book was a Pharisee, and he taught, as we
have seen, those very ethical maxims which we think of as most
distinctive of Christ's preaching. The explanation, however, is
not difficult. In the first place, he must have been, even in his own
day, an exceptional Pharisee; the more usual doctrine was, no
doubt, that of the Book of Enoch. In the second place, we know
that all movements tend to ossify ; who could infer the principles
of Jefferson from those of the Daughters of the American Revo-
lution? In the third place, we know, as regards the Pharisees in
particular, that their devotion to the Law, as the absolute and
final truth, soon put an end to all fresh and living thought and
feeling among them. As Dr. Charles says:
"When Pharisaism, breaking with the ancient ideals of its party,
committed itself to political interests and movements, and con-
currently therewith surrendered itself more and more wholly to
the study of the letter of the Law, it soon ceased to offer scope for
the development of such a lofty system of ethics as the Testaments
[of the Patriarchs] attest, and so the true successors of the early
Hasids and their teaching quitted Judaism and found their natural
home in the bosom of primitive Christianity."
340
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWS
After a period of rule by the High Priests, Mark Antony made
his friend Herod King of the Jews. Herod was a gay adventurer,
often on the verge of bankruptcy, accustomed to Roman society,
and very far removed from Jewish piety. His wife was of the
family of the high priests, but he was an Idumaean, which alone
would suffice to make him an object of suspicion to the Jews. He
was a skilful time-server, and deserted Antony promptly when it
became evident that Octavius was going to be victorious. However,
he made strenuous attempts to reconcile the Jews to his rule. He
rebuilt the Temple, though in a hellenistic style, with rows of
Corinthian pillars; but he placed over the main gate a large
golden eagle, thereby infringing the second Commandment. When
it was rumoured that he was dying, the Pharisees pulled down the
eagle, but he, in revenge, caused a number of them to be put to
death. He died in 4 B.C., and soon after his death the Romans
abolished the kingship, putting Judea under a procurator. Pontius
Pilate, who became procurator in A.U. 26, was tactless, and was
soon retired.
In A.D. 66, the Jews, led by the party of the Zealots, rebelled
against Rome. They were defeated, and Jerusalem was captured
in A.D. 70. The Temple was destroyed, and few Jews were left in
Judea.
The Jews of the Dispersion had become important centuries
before this time. The Jews had been originally an almost wholly
agricultural people, but they learnt trading from the Babylonians
during the captivity. Many of them remained in Babylon after the
time of lizra and Nehemiah, and among these some were very
rich. After the foundation of Alexandria, great numbers of Jews
settled in that city; they had a special quarter assigned to them,
not as a ghetto, but to keep them from danger of pollution by
contact with gentiles. The Alexandrian Jews became much more
hellenized than those of Judea, and forgot Hebrew. For this reason
it became necessary to translate the Old Testament into Greek;
the result was the Septuagint. The Pentateuch was translated in
the middle of the third century B.C.; the other parts somewhat
later.
Legends arose about the Septuagint, so called because it was
the work of seventy translators. It was said that each of the
seventy translated the whole independently, and that when the
versions were compared they were found to be identical down to
Chapter II
CHRISTIANITY DURING THE FIRST FOUR
CENTURIES
CHRISTIANITY, at first, was preached by Jews to Jews, as
a reformed Judaism. St. James, and to a lesser extent St.
Peter, wished it to remain no more than this, and they
might have prevailed but for St. Paul, who was determined to
admit gentiles without demanding circumcision or submission to
the Mosaic Law. The contention between the two factions is
related in the Acts of the Apostles, from a Pauline point of view.
The communities of Christians that St. Paul established in many
places, were, no doubt, composed partly of converts from among
the Jews, partly of gentiles seeking a new religion. The certainties
of Judaism made it attractive in that age of dissolving faiths, but
circumcision was an obstacle to the conversion of men. The ritual
laws in regard to food were also inconvenient. These two obstacles,
even if there had been no others, would have made it almost im-
possible for the Hebrew religion to become universal. Christianity,
owing to St. Paul, retained what was attractive in the doctrines of
the Jews, without the features that gentiles found hardest to
assimilate.
The view that the Jews were the Chosen People remained, how-
ever, obnoxious to Greek pride. This view was radically rejected
by the Gnostics. They, or at least some of them, held that the
sensible world had been created by an inferior deity named
laldabaoth, the rebellious son of Sophia (heavenly wisdom). He,
they said, is the Yahweh of the Old Testament, while the serpent,
so far from being wicked, was engaged in warning Eve against
his deceptions. For a long time, the supreme deity allowed lalda-
baoth free play; at last lie sent His Son to inhabit temporarily
the body of the man Jesus, and to liberate the world from the false
teaching of Moses. Those who held this view, or something like
it, combined it, as a rule, with a Platonic philosophy; Plotinus,
as we saw, found some difficulty in refuting it. Gnosticism afforded
a half-way house between philosophic paganism and Christianity,
for, while it honoured Christ, it thought ill of the Jews. The
same was true, later, of Manichaeism, through which St. Augustine
344
CHRISTIANITY DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES
came to the Catholic Faith. Manichseism combined Christian and
Zoroastrian elements, teaching that evil is a positive principle,
embodied in matter, while the good principle is embodied in
spirit. It condemned meat-eating, and all sex, even in marriage.
Such intermediate doctrines helped much in the gradual con-
version of cultivated men of Greek speech; but the New Testa-
ment warns true believers against them: "O Timothy, keep that
which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain
babblings, and oppositions of science [Gnosis] falsely so called:
which some professing have erred concerning the faith."1
Gnostics and Manichaeans continued to flourish until the govern-
ment became Christian. After that time they were led to conceal
their beliefs, but they still had a subterranean influence. One of the
doctrines of a certain sect of Gnostics was adopted by Mohammed.
They taught that Jesus was a mere man, and that the Son of God
descended upon him at the baptism, and abandoned him at the
time of the Passion. In support of this view they appealed to
the text: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"2 —
a text which, it must be confessed, Christians have always found
difficult. The Gnostics considered it unworthy of the Son of God
to be born, to be an infant, and, above all, to die on the cross;
they said that these things had befallen the man Jesus, but not
the divine Son of God. Mohammed, who recognized Jesus as a
prophet, though not as divine, had a strong class feeling that
prophets ought not to come to a bad end. He therefore adopted
the view of the Docetics (a Gnostic sect), according to which it
was a mere phantom that hung upon the cross, upon which,
impotently and ignorantly, Jews and Romans wreaked their
ineffectual vengeance. In this way, something of Gnosticism
passed over into the orthodox doctrine of Islam.
The attitude of Christians to contemporary Jews early became
hostile. The received view was that God had spoken to the patri-
archs and prophets, who were holy men, and had foretold the
coming of Christ; but when Christ came, the Jews failed to
recognize Him, and were thenceforth to be accounted wicked.
Moreover Christ had abrogated the Mosaic Law, substituting the
two commandments to love God and our neighbour; this, also,
the Jews perversely failed to recognize. As soon as the State
became Christian, anti-Semitism, in its medieval form, began,
1 I Timothy vi, ao, ai. ' Mark xxv, 34.
345
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
nominally as a manifestation of Christian zeal. How far the
economic motives, by which it was inflamed in later times, operated
in the Christian Empire, it seems impossible to ascertain.
In proportion as Christianity became hellenized, it became theo-
logical. Jewish theology was always simple. Yahweh developed
from a tribal deity into the sole omnipotent God who created
heaven and earth ; divine justice, when it was seen not to confer
earthly prosperity upon the virtuous, was transferred to heaven,
which entailed belief in immortality. But throughout its evolution
the Jewish creed involved nothing complicated and metaphysical ;
it had no mysteries, and every Jew could understand it.
This Jewish simplicity, on the whole, still characterizes the
synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), but has already
disappeared in St. John, where Christ is identified with the
Platonic-Stoic Logos. It is less Christ the Man than Christ 'the
theological figure that interests the fourth evangelist. This is still
more true of the Fathers; you mil find, in their writings, many
more allusions to St. John than to the other three gospels put
together. The Pauline epistles also contain much theology, espe-
cially as regards salvation; at the same time they show a con-
siderable acquaintance with Greek culture — a quotation from
Menander, an allusion to Epimenides the Cretan who said that
all Cretans are liars, and so on. Nevertheless St. Paul1 says:
"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit."
The synthesis of Greek philosophy and Hebrew scriptures
remained more or less haphazard and fragmentary until the time
of Origen (A.D. 185-254). Origen, like Philo, lived in Alexandria,
which, owing to commerce and the university, was, from its
foundation to its fall, the chief centre of learned syncretism. Like
his contemporary Plotinus, he was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas,
whom many regard as the founder of Neoplatonisrn. His doctrines,
as set forth in his work De Principtis, have much affinity to those
of Plotinus — more, in fact, than is compatible with orthodoxy.
There is, Origen says, nothing wholly incorporeal except God —
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The stars are living rational beings,
to whom God has given souls that were already in existence. The
sun, he thinks, can sin. The souls of men, as Plato taught, come
to them at birth from elsewhere, having existed ever since the
1 Or rather the author of an Epistle attributed to St. Paul — Coiosaians ii,8.
346
CHRISTIANITY DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES
Creation. Nous and soul are distinguished more or less as in
Plotinus. When Nous falls away, it becomes soul; soul, when
virtuous, becomes Nous. Ultimately all spirits will become wholly
submissive to Christ, and will then be bodiless. Even the devil
will be saved at the last.
Origen, in spite of being recognized as one of the Fathers, was,
in later times, condemned as having maintained four heresies:
1 . The pre-existence of souls, as taught by Plato.
2. That the human nature of Christ, and not only His divine
nature, existed before the Incarnation.
3. That, at the resurrection, our bodies will be transformed
into absolutely ethereal bodies.
4. That all men, and even devils, shall be saved at the last.
St. Jerome, who had expressed a somewhat unguarded admira-
tion of Origen for his work in establishing the text of the Old
Testament, found it prudent, subsequently, to expend much time
and vehemence in repudiating his theological errors.
Origen 's aberrations were not only theological; in his youth he
was guilty of an irreparable error through a too literal interpreta-
tion of the text: "There be eunuchs, which have made themselves
eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake."1 This method of
escaping the temptations of the flesh, which Origen rashly adopted,
had been condemned by the Church; moreover it made him
ineligible for holy orders, although some ecclesiastics seem to have
thought otherwise, thereby giving rise to unedifying controversies.
Origen *s longest work is a book entitled Against Celsus. Celsus
was the author of a book (now lost) against Christianity, and
Origen set to work to answer him point by point. Celsus begins
by objecting to Christians because they belong to illegal associa-
tions; this Origen does not deny, but claims to be a virtue, like
tyrannicide. He then comes to what is no doubt the real basis for
the dislike of Christianity: Christianity, says Celsus, comes from
the Jews, who are barbarians; and only Greeks can extract sense
out of the teachings of barbarians. Origen replies that anyone
coming from Greek philosophy to the Gospels would conclude
that they arc true, and supply a demonstration satisfying to the
Greek intellect. But, further, "The Gospel has a demonstration
of its own, more divine than any established by Grecian dialectics.
And this diviner method is called by the apostle the 'manifestation
1 Matthew xix, 12.
347
WBSTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of the Spirit and of power'; of 'the Spirit/ on account of the
prophecies, which are sufficient to produce faith in any one who
reads them, especially in those things which relate to Christ; and
of 'power/ because of the signs and wonders which we must
believe to have been performed, both on many other grounds, and
on this, that traces of them are still preserved among those who
regulate their lives by the precepts of the Gospel."1
This passage is interesting, as showing already the twofold argu-
ment for belief which is characteristic of Christian philosophy.
On the one hand, pure reason, rightly exercised, suffices to establish
the essentials of the Christian faith, more especially God, im-
mortality, and free will. But on the other hand the Scriptures
prove not only these bare essentials, but much more; and the
divine inspiration of the Scriptures is proved by the fact that the
prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah, by the miracles,
and by the beneficent effects of belief on the lives of the faithful.
Some of these arguments are now considered out of date, but the
last of them was still employed by William James. All of them,
until the Renaissance, were accepted by even1 Christian philo-
sopher.
Some of Origen's arguments are curious. He says that magicians
invoke the "God of Abraham/' often without knowing who Ik-
is; but apparently this invocation is specially potent. Names are
essential in magic; it is not indifferent whether Coil is called by
His Jewish, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, or Brahman name.
Magic formulae lose their efficacy- when translated. (>nc is led to
suppose that the magicians of the time used formulae from all
known religions, but if Origen is right, those derived from Hebrew
sources were the most effective. The argument is the more curious
as he points out that Moses forbade sorcery.2
Christians, we are told, should not take part in the government
of the State, but only of the "divine nation, " i.e., the Church.3
This doctrine, of course, was somewhat modified after the time
of Constantine, but something of it survived. It is implicit in St.
Augustine's City of God. It led churchmen, at the time of the
fall of the Western Empire, to look on passively at secular disasters,
while they exercised their very great talents in Church discipline,
1 Origen, Contra Celsum, Book I, chap. ti.
1 Ibid., Book I, chap. xxvi.
., Book VIII, chap. bcxv
348
CHRISTIANITY DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES
theological controversy, and the spread of monasticism. Some
trace of it still exists: most people regard politics as "worldly"
and unworthy of any really holy man.
Church government developed slowly during the first three
centuries, and rapidly after the conversion of Constantino. Bishops
were popularly elected; gradually they acquired considerable
power over Christians in their own dioceses, but before Con-
stant ine there was hardly any form of central government over
the whole Church. The power of bishops in great cities was
enhanced by the practice of almsgiving: the offerings of the
faithful were administered by the bishop, who could give or with-
hold charity to the poor. There came thus to be a mob of the
destitute, ready to do the bishop's will. When the State became
Christian, the bishops were given judicial and administrative
functions. There came also to be a central government, at least
in matters of doctrine. Constantine was annoyed by the quarrel
between Catholics and Arians; having thrown in his lot with the
Christians he wanted them to be a united part)'. For the purpose
of healing dissensions, he caused the convening of the oecumenical
Council of Nicara, which drew up the Xicene Creed,1 and, so
far as the Arian controversy was concerned, determined for all
lime the standard of orthodoxy. Other later controversies were
similarly decided by oecummical councils, until the division
between Kast and West and the Kastern refusal to admit the
authority of the POJX* made them impossible.
The i'ope, though officially the most important individual in
ihc Church, had no authority over the Church as a whole until a
much later period. The gradual growth of the papal power is a
very interesting subject, which I shall deal with in later chapters.
The growth of Christianity before Constantine, as well as the
motives of his conversion, has been variously explained by various
authors. Gibbon* assigns live causes:
"I. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the
intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the
Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit
which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from em-
bracing the law of Moses.
"II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional
1 Not exactly in its present form, which was decided upon in 362.
1 The Decline and Full <>/ the Ruman Empire, chap. xv.
349
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that im-
portant truth.
"III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church.
"IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians.
"V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which
gradually formed an independent and increasing State in the
heart of the Roman empire."
Broadly speaking, this analysis may be accepted, but with some
comments. The first cause — the inflexibility and intolerance
derived from the Jews — may be wholly accepted. We have seen
in our own day the advantages of intolerance in propaganda. The
Christians, for the most part, believed that they alone would go
to heaven, and that the most awful punishments would, in the
next world, fall upon the heathen. The other religions which
competed for favour during the third century had not this threa-
tening character. The worshippers of the Great Mother, for
example, while they had a ceremony — the Taurobolium — which
was analogous to baptism, did not teach that those who omitted
it would go to hell. It may be remarked, incidentally, that the
Taurobolium was expensive: a bull had to be killed, and its blood
allowed to trickle over the convert. A rite of this sort is aristocratic,
and cannot be the basis of a religion which is to embrace the
great bulk of the population, rich and poor, free and slave. In
such respects, Christianity had an advantage over all its rivals.
As regards the doctrine of a future life, in the West it was first
taught by the Orphics and thence adopted by Greek philosophers.
The Hebrew prophets, some of them, taught the resurrection of
the body, but it seems to have been from the Greeks that the Jews
learnt to believe in the resurrection of the spirit.1 The doctrine of
immortality, in Greece, had a popular form in Orphism and a
learned form in Platonism. The latter, being based upon difficult
arguments, could not become widely popular; the Orphic form,
however, probably had a great influence on the general opinions
of later antiquity, not only among pagans, but also among Jews
and Christians. Elements of mystery religions, both Orphic and
Asiatic, enter largely into Christian theology; in all of them, the
central myth is that of the dying god who rises again.2 i think,
1 See Oesterley and Robinson, I i threw Religion.
1 See Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity
35°
CHRISTIANITY DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES
therefore, that the doctrine of immortality must have had less
to do with the spread of Christianity than Gibbon thought.
Miracles certainly played a very large part in Christian propa-
ganda. But miracles, in later antiquity, were very common, and
were not the prerogative of any one religion. It is not altogether
easy to see why, in this competition, the Christian miracles came
to be more widely believed than those of other sects. I think
Gibbon omits one very important matter, namely the possession
of a Sacred Book. The miracles to which Christians appealed had
begun in a remote antiquity, among a nation which the ancients
felt to be mysterious; there was a consistent history, from the
Creation onwards, according to which Providence had always
worked wonders, first for the Jews, then for the Christians. To a
modern historical student it is obvious that the early history of
the Israelites is in the main legendary, but not so to the ancients.
They believed in the Homeric account of the siege of Troy, in
Romulus and Remus, and so on; why, asks Origen, should you
accept these traditions and reject those of the Jews? To this
argument there was no logical answer. It was therefore natural
to accept Old Testament miracles, and, when they had been
admitted, those of more recent date became credible, especially
in view of the Christian interpretation of the prophets.
The morals of the Christians, before Constantine, were un-
doubtedly very superior to those of average pagans. The Christians
were persecuted at times, and were almost always at a disadvantage
in competition with pagans. They believed firmly that virtue
would be rewarded in heaven and sin punished in hell. Their sexual
ethics had a strictness that was rare in antiquity. Pliny, whose
official duty it was to persecute them, testifies to their high moral
character. After the conversion of Constantine,therewere, of course,
time-servers among Christians; but prominent ecclesiastics, with
some exceptions, continued to be men of inflexible moral principles.
I think Gibbon is right in attributing great importance to this
high moral level as one of the causes of the spread of Christianity.
Gibbon puts last "the union and discipline of the Christian
republic." I think that, from a political point of view, this was the
most important of his five causes. In the modern world, we are
accustomed to political organization; every politician has to reckon
with the Catholic vote, but it is balanced by the vote of other or-
ganized groups. A Catholic candidate for the American Presidency
35'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
is at a disadvantage, because of Protestant prejudice. But, if there
were no such thing as Protestant prejudice, a Catholic candidate
would stand a better chance than any other. This seems to have
been Constantino's calculation. The support of the Christians, as
a single organized bloc, was to be obtained by favouring them.
Whatever dislike of the Christians existed was unorganized and
politically ineffective. Probably Rostovtseff is right in holding
that a large part of the army was Christian, and that this was
what most influenced Constantino. However that may be, the
Christians, while still a minority, had a kind of organization which
was then new, though now common, and which gave them all
the political influence of a pressure group to which no other
pressure groups are opposed. This was the natural consequence
of their virtual monopoly of zeal, and their zeal was an inheritance
from the Jews.
Unfortunately, as soon as the Christians acquired political
power, they turned their zeal against each other. There had been
heresies, not a few, before Constantine, but the orthodox had
had no means of punishing them. When the State became Chris-
tian, great prizes, in the shape of power and wealth, became open
to ecclesiastics; there were disputed elections, and theological
quarrels were also quarrels for worldly advantages. Constantine
himself preserved a certain degree of neutrality in the disputes of
theologians, but after his death (337) his successors (except for
Julian the Apostate) were, in a greater or less degree, favourable
to the Arians, until the accession of Theodosius in 379.
The hero of this period is Athanasius (ca. 297-373), who was
throughout his long life the most intrepid champion of Nicene
orthodoxy.
The period from Constantine to the Council of Chalceclon (451)
is peculiar owing to the political importance of theology. Two
questions successively agitated the Christian world: first, the
nature of the Trinity, and then the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Only the first of these was to the fore in the time of Athanasius.
Anus, a cultivated Alexandrian priest, maintained that the Son
is not the equal of the Father, but created by Him. At an earlier
period, this view might not have aroused much antagonism, but
in the fourth century most theologians rejected it. The view which
finally prevailed was that the Father and the Son were equal, and
of the same substance; they were, however, distinct Persons. The
352
CHRISTIANITY DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES
view that they were not distinct, but only different aspects of one
Being, was the Sabellian heresy, called after its founder Sabellius.
Orthodoxy thus had to tread a narrow line: those who unduly
emphasized the distinctness of the Father and the Son were in
danger of Arianism, and those who unduly emphasized their
oneness were in danger of Sabellianism.
The doctrines of Arius were condemned by the Council of
Nicaea (325) by an overwhelming majority. But various modifica-
tions were suggested by various theologians, and favoured by
Emperors. Athanasius, who was Bishop of Alexandria from 328
till his death, was constantly in exile because of his zeal for Nicene
orthodoxy. He had immense popularity in Egypt, which, through-
out the controversy, followed him unwaveringly. It is curious that,
in the course of theological controversy, national (or at least
regional) feeling, which had seemed extinct since the Roman
conquest, revived. Constantinople and Asia inclined to Arianism;
Egypt was fanatically Athanasian; the West steadfastly adhered
to the decrees of the Council of Nicaea. After the Arian controversy
was ended, new controversies, of a more or less kindred sort,
arose, in which Egypt became heretical in one direction and Syria
in another. These heresies, which were persecuted by the orthodox,
impaired the unity of the Eastern Empire, and facilitated the
Mohammedan conquest. The separatist movements, in themselves,
are not surprising, but it is curious that they should have been
associated with vefy subtle and abstruse theological questions.
The Emperors, from 335 to 378, favoured more or less Arian
opinions as far as they dared, except for Julian the Apostate
(361-363), who, as a pagan, was neutral as regards the internal
disputes of the Christians. At last, in 379, the Emperor Theodosius
gave his full support to the Catholics, and their victory throughout
the Empire was complete. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St.
Augustine, whom we shall consider in the next chapter, lived most
of their lives during this period of Catholic triumph. It was
succeeded, however, in the West, by another Arian domination,
that of the Goths and Vandals, who, between them, conquered
most of the Western Empire. Their power lasted for about a
century, at the end of which it was destroyed by Justinian, the
Lombards, and the Franks, of whom Justinian and the Franks,
and ultimately the Lombards also, were orthodox. Thus at last
the Catholic faith achieved definitive success.
353 M
Chapter III
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
FOUR men are called the Doctors of the Western Church:
St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and Pope Gregory
the Great. Of these the first three were contemporaries,
while the fourth belonged to a later date. I shall, in this chapter,
give some account of the life and times of the first three, reserving
for a later chapter an account of the doctrines of St. Augustine,
who is, for us, the most important of the three.
Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine all flourished during the brief
period between the victory of the Catholic Church in the Roman
Empire and the barbarian invasion. All three were young during
the reign of Julian the Apostate ; Jerome lived ten years after the
sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric ; Augustine lived till the
irruption of the Vandals into Africa, and died while they were
besieging Hippo, of which he was bishop. Immediately after their
time, the masters of Italy, Spain, and Africa were not only bar-
barians, but Arian heretics. Civilization declined for centuries,
and it was not until nearly a thousand years later that Christendom
again produced men who were their equals in learning and culture.
Throughout the dark ages and the medieval period, their authority
was revered; they, more than any other men, fixed the mould
into which the Church was shaped. Speaking broadly, St. Ambrose
determined the ecclesiastical conception of the relation of Church
and State; St. Jerome gave the Western Church its Latin Bible
and a great part of the impetus to monasticism ; while St. Augustine
fixed the theology of the Church until the Reformation, and, later,
a great part of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. Few men have
surpassed these three in influence on the course of history. The
independence of the Church in relation to the secular State, as
successfully maintained by St. Ambrose, was a new and revolu-
tionary doctrine, which prevailed until the Reformation; when
Hobbes combated it in the seventeenth century, it was against
St. Ambrose that he chiefly argued. St. Augustine was in the fore-
front of theological controversy during the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, Protestants and Jansenists being for him, and
orthodox Catholics against him.
354
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
The capital of the Western Empire, at the end of the fourth
century, was Milan, of which Ambrose was bishop. His duties
brought him constantly into relations with the emperors, to whom
he spoke habitually as an equal, sometimes as a superior. His
dealings with the imperial court illustrate a general contrast
characteristic of the times: while the State was feeble, incompetent,
governed by unprincipled self-seekers, and totally without any*
policy beyond that of momentary expedients, the Church was
vigorous, able, guided by men prepared to sacrifice everything
personal in its interests, and with a policy so far-sighted that
it brought victory for the next thousand years. It is true that
these merits were offset by fanaticism and superstition, but
without these no reforming movement could, at that time, have
succeeded.
St. Ambrose had every opportunity to seek success in the service
of the State. His father, also named Ambrose, was a high official
—prefect of the Gauls. The Saint was born, probably, at Treves,
a frontier garrison town, where the Roman legions were stationed
to keep the Germans at bay. At the age of thirteen he was taken
to Rome, where he had a good education, including a thorough
grounding in Greek. When he grew up he took to the law, in
which he was very successful; and at the age of thirty he was
made governor of Liguria and ^Emilia. Nevertheless, four years
later he turned his back on secular government, and by popular
acclaim became bishop of Milan, in opposition to an Arian candi-
date. He gave all his worldly goods to the poor, and devoted the
whole of the rest of his life to the service of the Church, sometimes
at great personal risk. This choice was certainly not dictated by
worldly motives, but, if it had been, it would have been wise. In
the State, even if he had become Emperor, he could at that time
have found no such scope for his administrative statesmanship as
he found in the discharge of his episcopal duties.
During the first nine years of Ambrose's episcopate, the
Emperor of the West was Gratian, who was Catholic, virtuous,
and careless. He was so devoted to the chase that he neglected
the government, and in the end was assassinated. He was suc-
ceeded, throughout most of the Western Empire, by a usurper
named Maximus; but in Italy the succession passed to Gratian 's
younger brother Valentinian II, who was still a boy. At first, the
imperial power was exercised by his mother, Justina, widow of
355
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the Emperor Valentinian I; but as she was an Arian, conflicts
between her and St. Ambrose were inevitable.
All the three Saints with whom we are concerned in this chapter
wrote innumerable letters, of which many are preserved ; the con-
sequence is that we know more about them than about any of
the pagan philosophers, and more than about all but a few of the
• ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages. St. Augustine wrote letters to
all and sundry, mostly on doctrine or Church discipline; St.
Jerome's letters are mainly addressed to ladies, giving advice on
how to preserve virginity ; but St. Ambrose's most important and
interesting letters are to Emperors, telling them in what respects
they have fallen short of their duty, or, on occasion, congratulating
them on having performed it.
The first public question with which Ambrose had to deal was
that of the altar and statue of Victory in Rome. Paganism lingered
longer among the senatorial families of the capital than it did
elsewhere; the official religion was in the hands of an aristocratic
priesthood, and was bound up with the imperial pride of the
conquerors of the world. The statue of Victor}' in the Senate
House had been removed by Constantius, the son of Constantine,
and restored by Julian the Apostate. The Emperor Gratian again
removed the statue, whereupon a deputation of the Senate, headed
by Symmachus, prefect of the City, asked for its renewed
restoration.
Symmachus, who also played a part in the life of Augustine,
was a distinguished member of a distinguished family — rich,
aristocratic, cultivated, and pagan. He was banished from Rome
by Gratian in 382 for his protest against the removal of the statue
of Victory, but not for long, as he was prefect of the City in 384.
He was the grandfather of the Symmachus who was the father-in-
law of Boethius, and who was prominent in the reign of Theodoric.
The Christian senators objected, and by the help of Ambrose
and the Pope (Damasus) their view was made to prevail with the
Emperor. After the death of Gratian, Symmachus and the pagan
senators petitioned the new Emperor, Valentinian II, in A.o. 384.
In rebuttal of this renewed attempt, Ambrose wrote to the
Emperor, setting forth the thesis that, as all Romans owed military
service to their sovereign, so he (the Emperor) owed service to
Almighty God.1 "Let no one," he says, "take advantage of your
1 This thesis seems to anticipate the outlook of feudalism.
356
THREE DOCTORS OP THE CHURCH
youth ; if he be a heathen who demands this, it is not right that
he should bind your mind with the bonds of his own superstition;
but by his zeal he ought to teach and admonish you how to be
zealous for the true faith, since he defends vain things with all
the passion of truth." To be compelled to swear at the altar of an
idol, he says, is, to a Christian, persecution. "If it were a civil
cause the right of reply would be reserved for the opposing party;
it is a religious cause, and I the bishop make a claim. . . . Certainly
if anything else is decreed, we bishops cannot constantly suffer it
and take no notice; you indeed may come to the Church, but will
find either no priest there, or one who will resist you."1
The next epistle points out that the endowments of the Church
serve purposes never served by the wealth of heathen temples. "The
possessions of the Church are the maintenance of the poor. Let
them count up how many captives the temples have ransomed,
what food they have contributed for the poor, to what exiles they
have supplied the means of living.** This was a telling argument,
and one which was quite justified by Christian practice.
St. Ambrose won his point, but a subsequent usurper, Eugenius,
who favoured the heathen, restored the altar and statue. It was
only after the defeat of Eugenius by Theodosius in 394 that the
question was finally decided in favour of the Christians.
The bishop was, at first, on very friendly terms with the imperial
court, and was employed on a diplomatic mission to the usurper
Maximus, who, it was feared, might invade Italy. Out before long
a grave matter of controversy arose. The Empress Justina, as an
Arian, requested that one church in Milan might be ceded to the
Arians, but Ambrose refused. The people sided with him, and
thronged the basilica in great crowds. Gothic soldiers, who were
Arians, were sent to take possession, but fraternized with the
people. "The Counts and Tribunes,'1 he says in a spirited letter
to his sister,3 "came and urged me to cause the basilica to be
quickly surrendered, saying that the Emperor was exercising his
rights since everything was under his power. I answered that if
he asked of me what was mine, that is, my land, my money, or
whatever of this kind was my own, I would not refuse it, although
all that I have belonged to the poor, but that those things which
are God's are not subject to the imperial power. 'If my patrimony
is required, enter upon it ; if my body, I will go at once. Do you
1 Epistle xvii. « Ibid. xx.
357
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
wish to cast me into chains, or to give me to death ? It will be a
pleasure to me. I will not defend myself with throngs of people,
nor will I cling to the altars and entreat for my life, but will more
gladly be slain myself for the altars.' I was indeed struck with
horror when I learnt that armed men had been sent to take posses-
sion of the basilica, lest while the people were defending the
basilica, there might be some slaughter which would tend to the
injury of the whole city. I prayed that I might not survive the
destruction of so great a city, or it might be of the whole of Italy."
These fears were not exaggerated, as the Gothic soldiery were
liable to break out into savagery, as they did twenty-five years
later in the sack of Rome.
Ambrose's strength lay in the support of the people. He was
accused of inciting them, but replied that "it was in my power
not to excite them, but in God's hands to quiet them." None of
the Arians, he says, dared to go forth, as there was not one Arian
among the citizens. He was formally commanded to surrender the
basilica, and the soldiers were ordered to use violence if necessary.
But in the end they refused to use violence, and the Emperor was
compelled to give way. A great battle had been won in the contest
for ecclesiastical independence; Ambrose had demonstrated that
there were matters in which the State must yield to the Church,
and had thereby established a new principle which retains its
importance to the present day.
His next conflict was with the Emperor Theodosius. A syna-
gogue had been burnt, and the Count of the East reported that
this had been done at the instigation of die local bishop. The
Emperor ordered that the actual incendiaries should be punished,
and that the guilty bishop should rebuild the synagogue. St.
Ambrose neither admits nor denies the bishop's complicity, but
is indignant that the Emperor should seem to side with Jews
against Christians. Suppose the bishop refuses to obey? He will
then have to become a martyr if he persists, or an apostate if he
gives way. Suppose the Count decides to rebuild the synagogue
himself at the expense of the Christians? In that case the Emperor
will have an apostate Count, and Christian money will be taken
to support unbelief. "Shall, then, a place be made for the unbelief
of the Jews out of the spoils of the Church, and shall the patrimony,
which by the favour of Christ has been gained for Christians, be
transferred to the treasuries of unbelievers?" He continues: "But
358
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
perhaps the cause of discipline moves you, O Emperor. Which,
then, is of greater importance, the show of discipline or the cause
of religion ? It is needful that judgment should yield to religion.
Have you not heard, O Emperor, how, when Julian commanded
that the Temple of Jerusalem should be restored, those who were
clearing the rubbish were consumed by fire?"
It is clear that, in the Saint's opinion, the destruction of syna-
gogues should not be punished in any way. This is an example of
the manner in which, as soon as it acquired power, the Church
began to stimulate anti-Semitism.
The next conflict between Emperor and Saint was more honour-
able to the latter. In A.D. 390, when Theodosius was in Milan, a
mob in Thessalonica murdered the captain of the garrison. Theo-
dosius, on receiving the news, was seized with ungovernable fury,
and ordered an abominable revenge. When the people were
assembled in the circus, the soldiers fell upon them, and massacred
at least seven thousand of them in an indiscriminate slaughter.
Hereupon Ambrose, who had endeavoured in advance to restrain
the Emperor, but in vain, wrote him a letter full of splendid
courage, on a purely moral issue, involving, for once, no question
of theology or the power of the Church:
"There was that done in the city of the Thessalonians of which
no similar record exists, which I was not able to prevent happening;
which, indeed, I had before said would be most atrocious when
I so often petitioned against it."
David repeatedly sinned, and confessed his sin with penitence.1
Will Theodosius do likewise? Ambrose decides that "I dare not
offer the sacrifice if you intend to be present. Is that which is not
allowed after shedding the blood of one innocent person, allowed
after shedding the blood of many? I do not think so."
The Emperor repented, and, divested of the purple, did public
penance in the cathedral of Milan. From that time until his death
in 395, he had no friction with Ambrose.
Ambrose, while he was eminent as a statesman, was, in other
respects, merely typical of his age. He wrote, like other ecclesi-
astical authors, a treatise in praise of virginity, and another
* This allusion to the Books of Samuel begins a line of biblical argu-
ment against kings which persisted throughout the Middle Ages, and
even in the conflict of the Puritans with the Stuarts. It appears for instance
in Milton. -
359
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
deprecating the remarriage of widows. When he had decided on
the site for his new cathedral, two skeletons (revealed in a vision,
it was said) were conveniently discovered on the spot, were found
to work miracles, and were declared by him to be those of two
martyrs. Other miracles are related in his letters, with all the
credulity characteristic of his times. He was inferior to Jerome
as a scholar, and to Augustine as a philosopher. But as a statesman,
who skilfully and courageously consolidated the power of the
Church, he stands out as a man of the first rank.
Jerome is chiefly notable as the translator who produced the
Vulgate, which remains to this day the official Catholic version of
the Bible. Until his day the Western Church relied, as regards
the Old Testament, chiefly on translations from the Septuagint,
which, in important ways, differed from the Hebrew original.
Christians, as we have seen, were given to maintaining that the
Jews, since the rise of Christianity, had falsified the Hebrew text
where it seemed to predict the Messiah. This was a view which
sound scholarship showed to be untenable, and which Jerome
firmly rejected. He accepted the help of rabbis, given secretly for
fear of the Jews. In defending himself against Christian criticism
he said: "Let him who would challenge aught in this translation
ask the Jews." Because of his acceptance of the Hebrew text in
the form which the Jews regarded as correct, his version had, at
first, a largely hostile reception; but it won its way, partly because
St. Augustine on the whole supported it. It was a great achieve-
ment, involving considerable textual criticism.
Jerome was born in 345 — five years after Ambrose — not far from
Aquileia, at a town called Stridon, which was destroyed by the
Goths in 377. His family were well-to-do, but not rich. In 363 he
went to Rome, where he studied rhetoric and sinned. After travel-
ling in Gaul, he settled in Aquileia, and become an ascetic. The
next five years he spent as a hermit in the Syrian wilderness. "His
life while in the desert was one of rigorous penance, of tears and
groans alternating with spiritual ecstasy, and of temptations from
haunting memories of Roman life ; he lived in a cell or cavern ; he
earned his daily bread, and was clad in sackcloth."1 After this
period, he travelled to Constantinople, and lived in Rome for three
years, where he became the friend and adviser of Pope Damasus,
with whose encouragement he undertook his translation of the Bible.
1 Selict Library of Nutmt and Post-Nicent Father* t Vol. VI, p. 17.
360
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
St. Jerome was a man of many quarrels. He quarrelled with St.
Augustine about the somewhat questionable behaviour of St. Peter
as related by St. Paul in Galatians ii ; he broke with his friend Ru-
finus over Origen ; and he was so vehement against Pelagius that
his monastery was attacked by a Pelagian mob. After the death of
Damasus, he seems to have quarrelled with the new Pope; he had,
while in Rome, become acquainted with various ladies who were
both aristocratic and pious, some of whom he persuaded to adopt
the ascetic life. The new Pope, in common with many other people
in Rome, disliked this. For this reason among others, Jerome left
Rome for Bethlehem, where he remained from 386 till his death
in 420.
Among his distinguished female converts, two were especially
notable: the widow Paula and her daughter Eustochium. Both these
ladies accompanied him on his circuitous journey to Bethlehem.
They were of the highest nobility, and one cannot but feel a flavour
of snobbery in the Saint's attitude to them. When Paula died and
was buried at Bethlehem, Jerome composed an epitaph for her
tomb :
Within this tomb a child of Scipio lies,
A daughter of the far-famed Pauline house,
A scion of the Gracchi, of the stock
Of Agamemnon's self, illustrious:
Here rests the lady Paula, well-beloved
Of both her parents, with Eustochium
For daughter ; she the first of Roman dames
Who hardship chose and Bethlehem for Christ.1
Some of Jerome's letters to Eustochium are curious. He gives
her advice on the preservation of virginity, very detailed and frank;
he explains the exact anatomical meaning of certain euphemisms
in the Old Testament ; and he employs a kind of erode mysticism
in praising the joys of conventual life. A nun is the Bride of
Christ ; this marriage is celebrated in the Song of Solomon. In a
long letter written at the time when she took the vows, he gives
a remarkable message to her mother: "Are you angry with her
because she chooses to be a king's [Christ's] wife and not a sol-
dier's? She has conferred on you a high privilege; you are now
the mother-in-law of God."8
1 Select Library of A'*f«f«r und Fo$t-Ktcene Fathers, Vol. VI, p, 212.
• ibid., p. 30.
361
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
To Eustochium herself, in the same letter (xxii), he says:
"Ever let the privacy of your chamber guard you ; ever let the
Bridegroom sport with you within. Do you pray ? You speak to the
Bridegroom. Do you read ? He speaks to you. When sleep over-
takes you He will come behind and put His hand through the hole
of the door, and your heart shall be moved for Him; and you will
awake and rise up and say: "I am sick of love.' Then He will reply:
'A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a
fountain sealed/ "
In the same letter he relates how, after cutting himself off from
relations and friends, uand — harder still — from the dainty food
to which I had been accustomed," he still could not bear to be
parted from his library, and took it with him to the desert. "And
so, miserable man that I was, I would fast only that I might after-
wards read Cicero." After days and nights of remorse, he would
fall again, and read Plautus. After such indulgence, the style of
the prophets seemed "rude and repellent." At last, during a fever,
he dreamed that, at the Last Judgment, Christ asked him who
he was, and he replied that he was a Christian. The answer came:
"Thou liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ."
Thereupon he was ordered to be scourged. At length Jerome, in
his dream, cried out: "Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books,
or if ever again I read such, I have denied Thee." This, he adds,
"was no sleep or idle dream."1
After this, for some years, his letters contain few classical quota-
tions. But after a certain time he lapses again into verses from
Virgil, Horace, and even Ovid. They seem, however, to be from
memory, particularly as some of them are repeated over and over
again.
Jerome's letters express the feelings produced by the fall of the
Roman Empire more vividly than any others known to me. In
396 he writes:2
"I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time. For
twenty years and more the blood of Romans has been shed daily
between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace,
Macedonia, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the
• * This hostility to pagan literature persisted in the Church until the
eleventh century, except in Ireland, where the Olympian gods had never
been worshipped, and were therefore not feared by the Church.
1 Utter be.
, ' 362
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
Pannonias — each and all of these have been sacked and pillaged
and plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quad! and Alans, Huns
and Vandals and Marchmen. . . . The Roman world is falling: yet
we hold up our heads instead of bowing them. What courage,
think you, have the Corinthians now, or the Athenians or the
Lacedaemonians or the Arcadians, or any of the Greeks over whom
the barbarians bear sway ? I have mentioned only a few cities, but
these once the capitals of no mean States "
He goes on to relate the ravages of the Huns in the East, and
ends with the reflection : "To treat such themes as they deserve,
Thucydides and Sallust would be as good as dumb."
Seventeen years* later, three years after the sack of Rome, he
writes:1
"The world sinks into ruin: yes! but shameful to say our sins
still live and flourish. The renowned city, the capital of the Roman
Kmpire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire ; and there is no
part of the earth where Romans are not in exile. Churches once
held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes ; and yet we have
our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as though we were
going to die to-morrow; yet we build as though we were going
to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our ceilings
also and the capitals of our pillars ; yet Christ dies before our doors
naked and hungry in the person of His poor."
This passage occurs incidentally in a letter to a friend who has
decided to devote his daughter to perpetual virginity, and most
of it is concerned \\ith the rules to be observed in the education
of girls so dedicated. It is strange that, with all Jerome's deep
feeling about the fall of the ancient world, he thinks the preser-
vation of virginity more important than victory over the Huns and
Vandals and Goths. Never once do his thoughts turn to any
possible measure of practical statesmanship; never once does he
point out the evils of the fiscal system, or of reliance on an army
composed of barbarians. The same is true of Ambrose and of
Augustine ; Ambrose, it is true, was a statesman, but only on behalf
of the Church. It is no wonder that the Empire fell into ruin when
all the best and most vigorous minds of the age were so compl
remote from secular concerns. On the other hand, if
inevitable, the Christian outlook was admirably fitted^
fortitude, and to enable them to preserve their
1 Letter cxxviii.
363
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
when earthly hopes seemed vain. The expression of this point of
view, in The City of God, was the supreme merit of St. Augustine.
Of St. Augustine I shall speak, in this chapter, only as a man ;
as a theologian and philosopher, I shall consider him in the next
chapter.
He was born in 354, nine years after Jerome, and fourteen years
after Ambrose; he was a native of Africa, where he passed much
the greater part of his life. His mother was a Christian, but his
father was not. After a period as a Manicluean, he became a
Catholic, and was baptized by Ambrose in Milan. He became
bishop of Hippo, not far from Carthage, about the year 396. There
he remained until his death in 430.
Of his early life we know much more than in the case of most
ecclesiastics, because he has told of it in his Confessions. This book
has had famous imitators, particularly Rousseau and Tolstoy, but
I do not think it had any comparable predecessors. St. Augustine
is in some ways similar to Tolstoy, to whom, however, he is
superior in intellect. He was a passionate man, in youth very far
from a pattern of virtue, but driven by an inner impulse to search
for truth and righteousness. Like Tolstoy, he was obsessed, in his
later years, by a sense of sin, which made his life stern and his
philosophy inhuman. He combated heresies vigorously, but some
of his views, when repeated by Jansenius in the seventeenth cen-
tury, were pronounced heretical. Until the Protestants took up
his opinions, however, the Catholic Church had never impugned
their orthodox)*.
One of the first incidents of his life related in the Confessions
occurred in his boyhood, and did not, in itself, greatly distinguish
him from other boys. It appears that, with some companions of
his own age, he despoiled a neighbour's pear tree, although he was
not hungry, and his parents had better pears at home. He con-
tinued throughout his life to consider this an act of almost in-
credible wickedness. It would not have been so bad if he had been
hungry, or had had no other means of getting pears; but, as it was,
the act was one of pure mischief, inspired by the love of wicked-
ness for its own sake. It is this that makes it so unspeakably
black. He beseeches God to forgive him:
"Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, which Thou hadst
pity upon in the bottom of the abyss. Now, behold, let my heart
tell Thee, what it sought there, that I should be gratuitously
364
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
wicked, having no temptation to that evil deed, but the evil deed
itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved mine
own fault, not that for the sake of which I committed the fault,
but my fault itself I loved. Foul soul, falling from the firmament
to expulsion from Thy presence; not seeking aught through the
shame, but the shame itself I"1
Me goes on like this for seven chapters, and all about some pears
plucked from a tree in a boyish prank. To a modern mind, this
seems morbid;2 but in his own age it seemed right and a mark
of holiness. The sense of sin, which was very strong in his day,
came to the Jews as a way of reconciling self-importance with
outward defeat. Yahweh was omnipotent, and Yahweh was specially
interested in the Jews; why, then, did they not prosper? Because
they were wicked : they were idolaters, they married gentiles, they
failed to observe the Law. God's purposes were centred on the
Jews, but, since righteousness is the greatest of goods, and is
achieved through tribulation, they must first be chastised, and
must recognize their chastisement as a mark of God's paternal love.
Christians put the Church in place of the Chosen People, but
except in one respect this made little difference to the psychology
of sin. The Church, like the Jews, suffered tribulation; the Church
was troubled by heresies; individual Christians fell into apostasy
under the stress of persecution. There was, however, one impor-
tant development, already made, to a great extent, by the Jews,
and that was the substitution of individual for communal sin.
Originally, it was the Jewish nation that sinned, and that was
collectively punished; but later sin became more personal, thus
losing its political character. When the Church was substituted
for the Jewish nation, this change became essential, since the
Church, as a spiritual entity, could not sin, but the individual
sinner could cease to be in communion with the Church. Sin, as
we said just now, is connected with self-importance. Originally
the importance was that of the Jewish nation, but subsequently
it was that of the individual — not of the Church, because the
Church never sinned. It thus came about that Christian theology
had two parts, one concerned with the Church, and one with the
individual soul. In later times, the first of these was most em-
s, Book II, chap. iv.
1 I must except Mahatma Gnndhi, whoso autobiography contains
passages closely similar to the above.
365
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
phasized by Catholics, and the second by Protestants, but in St.
Augustine both exist equally, without his having any sense of
disharmony. Those who are saved are those whom God has pre-
destined to salvation ; this is a direct relation of the soul to God.
But no one will be saved unless he has been baptized, and thereby
become a member of the Church; this makes the Church an
intermediary between the soul and God.
Sin is what is essential to the direct relation, since it explains
how a beneficent Deity can cause men to suffer, and how, in spite
of this, individual souls can be what is of most importance in the
created world. It is therefore not surprising that the theology
upon which the Reformation relied should be due to a man whose
sense of sin was abnormal.
So much for the pears. Let us now see what the Confessions have
to say on some other subjects.
Augustine relates how he learnt Latin, painlessly, at his mother's
knee, but hated Greek, which they tried to teach him at school,
because he was "urged vehemently with cruel threats and punish-
ments." To the end of his life, his knowledge of Greek remained
slight. One might have supposed that he would go on, from this
contrast, to draw a moral in favour of gentle methods in education.
What he says, however, is:
"It is quite clear, then, that a free curiosity has more power to
make us learn these things than a terrifying obligation. Only this
obligation restrains the waverings of that freedom by Thy laws,
O my God, Thy laws, from the master's rod to the martyr's trials,
for Thy laws have the effect of mingling for us certain wholesome
bitters, which recall us to Thee away from that pernicious blithe-
someness, by means of which we depart from Thee."
The schoolmaster's blows, though they failed to make him know
Greek, cured him of being perniciously blithesome, and were, on
this ground, a desirable part of education. For those who make sin
the most important of all human concerns, this view is logical. He
goes on to point out that he sinned, not only as a school-boy, when
he told lies and stole food, but even earlier; indeed he devotes a
whole chapter (Book I, chap, vii) to proving that even infants at the
breast are full of sin — gluttony, jealousy, and other horrible vices.
When he reached adolescence, the lusts of the flesh overcame
him. "Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of
Thy house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
madness of lust which hath licence through man's viciousness,
though forbidden by Thy laws, took the rule over me, and I
resigned myself wholly to it?"1
His father took no pains to prevent this evil, but confined him-
self to giving help in Augustine's studies. His mother, St. Monica,
on the contrary, exhorted him to chastity, but in vain. And even
she did not, at that time, suggest marriage, "lest my prospects
might be embarrassed by the clog of a wife."
At the age of sixteen he went to Carthage, "where there seethed
all around me a cauldron of lawless loves. I loved not yet, yet I
loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for
wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and
I hated safety. ... To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to
me; but more, when I obtained to* enjoy the person I loved. I
defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of con-
cupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lust-
fulness."2 These words describe his relation to a mistress whom
he loved faithfully for many years,3 and by whom he had a son,
whom he also loved, and to whom, after his conversion, he gave
much care in religious education.
The time came when he and his mother thought he ought to
begin to think of marrying. He became engaged to a girl of whom
she approved, and it was held necessary that he should break with
his mistress. "My mistress," he says, "being torn from my side
as a hindrance to my marriage, my heart which clave unto her was
torn and wounded and bleeding. And she returned to Africa
[Augustine was at this time in Milan], vowing unto Thee never
to know any other man, leaving with me my son by her."4 As,
however, the marriage could not take place for two years, owing
to the girl's youth, he took meanwhile another mistress, less official
and less acknowledged. His conscience increasingly troubled him,
and he used to pray: "Give me chastity and continence, only not
yet."6 At last, before the time had come for his marriage, religion
won a complete victory, and he dedicated the rest of his life to
celibacy.
To return to an earlier time: in his nineteenth year, having
achieved proficiency in rhetoric, he was recalled to philosophy by
1 Confusions, Book II, chap. ii. * Ibid,, Book III, chap. i.
8 Ibid., Book IV, chap. ii. ' Ibid., Book VI, chap. xv.
' Ibid., Book VIII, chap. vii.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Cicero, He tried reading the Bible, but found it lacking in
Ciceronian dignity. It was at this time that he became a Mwiichaean,
which grieved his mother. By profession he was a teacher of
rhetoric. He was addicted to astrology, to which, in later life, he
was averse, because it teaches that "the inevitable cause of thy
sin is in the sky."1 He read philosophy, so far as it could be read
in Latin; he mentions particularly Aristotle's Ten Categories >
which, he says, he understood without the help of a teacher. "And
what did it profit me, that I, the vilest slave of evil passions, read
by myself all the books of so-called 'liberal' arts, and understood
whatever I could read? . . . For I had my back to the light, and
my face to the things enlightened ; whence my face . . . itself was
not enlightened."8 At this time he believed that God was a vast
and bright body, and he himself a part of that body. One could
wish that he had told in detail the tenets of the Manichaeans,
instead of merely saying they were erroneous.
It is interesting that St. Augustine's first reasons for rejecting
the doctrines of Manichanis were scientific. He remembered— so
he tells us8 — what he had learned of astronomy from the writings
of the best astronomers, "and I compared them with the sayings
of Manichaeus, who in his crazy folly has written much and
copiously upon these subjects; but none of his reasoning of the
solstices, nor equinoxes, nor eclipses, nor whatever of this kind
I had learned in books of secular philosophy, was satisfactory to
me. But I was commanded to believe; and yet it corresponded
not with the reasonings obtained by calculations, and by my own
observations, but was quite contrary." He is careful to point out
that scientific mistakes are not in themselves a sign of errors as
to the faith, but only become so when delivered with an air of
authority as known through divine inspiration. One wonders what
he would have thought if he had lived in the time of Galileo.
In the hope of resolving his doubts, a Manich&an bishop named
Faustus, reputed the most learned member of the sect, met him
and reasoned with him. But "I found him first utterly ignorant
of liberal sciences, save grammar, and that but in an ordinary
way. But because he had read some of Tully's Orations, a very
few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few
volumes of his own sect, as were written in I<atin and in logical
1 Cottfesricns, Book IV, chap. iii.
1 IMd.t Book IV, chap. xvi. * /«*, Book V, chap, iii
368
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
order, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain
eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive, because
under the control of his good sense, and with a certain natural
grace."1
He found Faustus quite unable to solve his astronomical diffi-
culties. The books of the Manichecans, he tells us, "are full of
lengthy fables, of the heaven, and stars, sun, and moon," which
do not agree with what has been discovered by astronomers; but
when he questioned Faustus on these matters, Faustus frankly
confessed his ignorance. "Even for this I liked him the better.
For the modesty of a candid mind is even more attractive than
the knowledge of those things which I desired ; and such I found
him, in all the more difficult and subtle questions."2
This sentiment is surprisingly liberal; one would not have ex-
pected it in that age. Nor is it quite in harmony with St. Augus-
tine's later attitude towards heretics.
At this time he decided to go to Rome, not, he says, because
there the income of a teacher was higher than at Carthage, but
because he had heard that classes were more orderly. At Carthage,
the disorders perpetrated by students were such that teaching was
almost impossible; but at Rome, while there was less disorder,
students fraudulently evaded payment.
In Rome, he still associated with the Manichaeans, but with less
conviction of their tightness. He began to think that the Academics
were right in holding that men ought to doubt everything.3 He
still, however, agreed with the Manichseans in thinking "that it
is not we ourselves that sin, but that some other nature (what, I
know not) sins in us," and he believed Evil to be some kind of
substance. This makes it clear that, before as after his conversion,
the question of sin pre-occupied him.
After about a year in Rome, he was sent to Milan by the Prefect
Symmachus, in response to a request from that city for a teacher
of rhetoric. At Milan he became acquainted with Ambrose, "known
to the whole world as among the best of men." He came to love
Ambrose for his kindness, and to prefer the Catholic doctrine to
that of the Manichseans; hut for a while he was held back by the
scepticism he had learnt from the Academics, "to which philoso-
phers notwithstanding, because they were without the saving name
1 Confessions, Bcx>k V, chap. vi.
d., Book II, chap. vii. 8 /«</., Book V, chap. x.
369
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of Christ, I utterly refused to commit the care of my sick
soul."1
In Milan he was joined by his mother, who had a powerful
influence in hastening the last steps to his conversion. She was a
very earnest Catholic, and he writes of her always in a tone of
reverence. She was the more important to him at this time, because
Ambrose was too busy to converse with him privately.
There is a very interesting chapter9 in which he compares the
Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine. The Lord, he says,
at this time provided him with "certain books of the Platonists,
translated from Greek into Latin. And therein I read, not indeed
in these words, but to the same purpose, enforced by many and
diverse reasons, that 'In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God: the same was in
the beginning with God ; all things were made by Him, and without
Him was nothing made: that which was made by Him is life, and
the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in the darkness,
and the darkness comprehended it not. And that the soul of man,
though it 'bears witness to the light,' yet itself 'is not that light,'
but God, the Word of God, 'is that true light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world.1 And that 'He was in the world,
and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.9
But that 'He came unto His own, and His own received Him not;
but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become
the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name': this I
read not there." He also did not read there that "the Word was
made flesh, and dwelt among us" ; nor that "He humbled Himself,
and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross";
nor that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow."
Broadly speaking, he found in the Platonists the metaphysical
doctrine of the Logos, but not the doctrine of the Incarnation and
the consequent doctrine of human salvation. Something not
unlike these doctrines existed in Orphism and the other mystery
religions; but of this St. Augustine appears to have been ignorant.
In any case, none of these were connected with a comparatively
recent historical event, as Christianity was.
As against the Manichaeans, who were dualists, Augustine came
to believe that evil originates not from some substance, but from
pcrvcrseness of will.
1 Confetti™. Book V. chap. tiv. • Ibid.. Book VII, chap. is.
370
THREE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
He found especial comfort in the writings of St. Paul.1
At length, after passionate inward struggles, he was converted
(386) ; he gave up his professorship, his mistress, and his bride, and,
after a brief period of meditation in retirement, was baptized by
St. Ambrose. His mother rejoiced, but died not long afterwards.
In 388 he returned to Africa, where he remained for the rest of his
life, fully occupied with his episcopal duties and with controversial
writings against various heresies, Donatist, Manichaean, and
Pelagian.
1 Confessions, Book VII, chap. xxi.
37*
Chapter IV
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND
THEOLOGY
ST. AUGUSTINE was a very voluminous writer, mainly on
theological subjects. Some of his controversial writing was
topical, and lost interest through its very success ; but some
of it, especially what is concerned with the Pelagians, remained
practically influential down to modern times. I do not propose to
treat his works exhaustively, but only to discuss what seems to me
important, either intrinsically or historically. I shall consider:
First: his pure philosophy, particularly his theory of time;
Second: his philosophy of history, as developed in The City
ofGod\
Third: his theory of salvation, as propounded ajrainst the
Pelagians.
1. PURE PHILOSOPHY
St. Augustine, at most times, docs not occupy himself with pure
philosophy, but when he does he shows very great ability'. He is
the first of a long line whose purely speculative views are influenced
by the necessity of agreeing with Scripture. This cannot be said of
earlier Christian philosophers, e.g., Origen ; in Origen, Christianity
and Platonism lie side by side, and do not interpenetrate. In St.
Augustine, on the other hand, original thinking in pure philosophy
is stimulated by the fact that Platonism, in certain respects, is not
in harmony with Genesis.
The best purely philosophical work in St. Augustine's writings
is the eleventh book of the Confessions. Popular editions of the
Confessions end with Book X, on the ground that what follows is
uninteresting; it is uninteresting because it is good philosophy,
not biography. Book XI is concerned with the problem: Creation
having occurred as the first chapter of Genesis asserts, and as
Augustine maintains against the Manicha-ans, it should have
occurred as soon as possible. So he imagines an objector arguing.
The first point to realize, if his answer is to be understood, is that
37*
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament,
was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks
of creation, he imagines a primitive matter to which God gives
form ; and the same is true of Aristotle. Their God is an artificer or
architect, rather than a Creator. Substance is thought of as eternal
and uncreated ; only form is due to the will of God. As against
this view, St. Augustine maintains, as every orthodox Christian
must, that the world was created not from any certain matter,
but from nothing. God created substance, not only order and
arrangement.
The Greek view, that creation out of nothing is impossible, has
recurred at intervals in Christian times, and has led to pantheism.
Pantheism holds that God and the world are not distinct, and that
everything in the world is part of God. This view is developed most
fully in Spinoza, but is one to which almost all mystics arc attracted.
It has thus happened, throughout the Christian centuries, that
mystics have had difficulty in remaining orthodox, since they find
it hard to believe that the world is outside God. Augustine, how-
ever, feels no difficulty on this point; Genesis is explicit, and that
is enough for him. His view on this matter is essential to his theory
of time.
Why was the world not created sooner? Because there was no
"sooner." Time was created when the world was created. God is
eternal, in the sense of being timeless; in God there is no before
and after, but only an eternal present. God's eternity is exempt from
the relation of time; all time is present to Him at once. He did not
precede His own creation of time, for that would imply that He was
in time, whereas He stands eternally outside the stream of time.
This leads St. Augustine to a very admirable relativistic theory
of time.
"What, then, is time ?" lie asks. "If no one asks of me, I know; if
I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not." Various difficulties
perplex him. Neither past nor future, he says, but only the present,
really li; the present is only a moment, and time can only be
measured while it is passing. Nevertheless, there really is time past
and future. We seem here to be led into contradictions. The only
way Augustine can find to avoid these contradictions is to say that
past and future can only be thought of as present: "past" must
be identified with memory, and "future" with expectation,
memory and expectation being both present facts. There are, he
373
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
says, three times: "a present of things past, a present of things
present, and a present of things future." "The present of things
past is memory; the present of things present is sight; and the
present of things future is expectation."1 To say that there are
three times, past, present, and future, is a loose way of speaking.
He realizes that he has not really solved all difficulties by this
theory. "My soul yearns to know this most entangled enigma," he
says, and he prays to God to enlighten him, assuring Him that
his interest in the problem does not arise from vain curiosity. "I
confess to Thee, O Lord, that I am as yet ignorant what time is."
But the gist of the solution he suggests is that time is subjective:
time is in the human mind, which expects, considers, and remem-
bers.2 It follows that there can be no time without a created being,9
and that to speak of time before the Creation is meaningless.
I do not myself agree with this theory, in so far as it makes time
something mental. But it is clearly a very able theory, deserving
to be seriously considered. I should go further, and say that it is
a great advance on anything to be found on the subject in Greek
philosophy. It contains a better and clearer statement than Kant's
of the subjective theory of time — a theory which, since Kant, has
been widely accepted among philosophers.
The theory that time is only an aspect of our thoughts is one of
the most extreme forms of that subjectivism which, as we have
seen, gradually increased in antiquity from the time of Protagoras
and Socrates onwards. Its emotional aspect is obsession with sin,
which came later than its intellectual aspects. St. Augustine
exhibits both kinds of subjectivism. Subjectivism led him to
anticipate not only Kant's theory of time, but Descartes' cogito.
In his Soliloquia he says: "You, who wish to know, do you know
you are? I know it. Whence are you? I know not. Do you feel
yourself single or multiple? I know not. Do you feel yourself
moved? I know not. Do you know that you think? I do." This
contains not only Descartes' cogito, but his reply to Ga&sendi's
ambulo ergo sum. As a philosopher, therefore, Augustine deserves
a high placl.
II. THE CITY OF GOD
When, tn 410, Rome was sacked by the Goths, the pagans, not
unnaturally, attributed the disaster to the abandonment of the
1 Confessions, Book XI, chap. xx.
1 Ibid., chap, xxvtit. * ibid., chap. xxx.
374
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
ancient gods. So long as Jupiter was worshipped, they said, Rome
remained powerful; now that the Emperors have turned away
from him, he no longer protects his Romans. This pagan argument
called for an answer. The City of God, written gradually between
412 and 427, was St. Augustine's answer; but it took, as it pro-
ceeded, a far wider flight, and developed a complete Christian
scheme of history, past, present, and future. It was an immensely
influential book throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the
struggles of the Church with secular princes.
Like some other very great books, it composes itself, in the
memory of those who have read it, into something better than at
first appears on re-reading. It contains a great deal that hardly
anyone at the present day can accept, and its central thesis is some-
what obscured by excrescences belonging to his age. But the broad
conception of a contrast between the City of this world and the
City of God has remained an inspiration to many, and even now
can be restated in non-theological terms.
To omit detail in an account of the book, and concentrate on the
central idea, would give an unduly favourable view; on the other
hand, to concentrate on the detail would be to omit what is best
and most important. I shall endeavour to avoid both errors by first
giving some account of the detail and then passing on to the
general idea as it appeared in historical development.
The book begins with considerations arising out of the sack of
Rome, and designed to show that even worse things happened in
pre-Christian times. Among the pagans who attribute the disaster
to Christianity, there are many, the Saint says, who, during the
sack, sought sanctuary in the churches, which the Goths, because
they were Christians, respected. In the sack of Troy, on the
contrary, Juno's temple afforded no protection, nor did the gods
preserve the city from destruction. The Romans never spared
temples in conquered cities; in this respect, the sack of Rome
was milder than most, and the mitigation was a result of
Christianity.
Christians who suffered the sack have no right to complain, for
several reasons. Some wicked Goths may have prospered at their
expense, but they will suffer hereafter: if all sin were punished on
earth, there would be no need of the Last Judgment. What Chris-
tians endured would, if they were virtuous, turn to their edification,
for saints, in the loss of things temporal, lose nothing of any value,
375
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
It does not matter if their bodies lie unburied, because ravenous
beasts cannot interfere with the resurrection of the body.
Next comes the question of pious virgins who were raped during
the sack. There were apparently some who held that these ladies,
by no fault of their own, had lost the crown of virginity. This view
the Saint very sensibly opposes. "Tush, another's lust cannot
pollute thee." Chastity is a virtue of the mind, and is not lost by
rape, but is lost by the intention of sin, even if unperformed. It
is suggested that God permitted rapes because the victims had
been too proud of their continence. It is wicked to commit suicide
in order to avoid being raped ; this leads to a long discussion of
Lucretia, who ought not to have killed herself, because suicide is
always a sin.
There is one proviso to the exculpation of virtuous women who
are raped: they must not enjoy it. If they do, they are sinful.
He comes next to the wickedness of the heathen gods. For
example: "Your stage-plays, those spectacles of uncleanness,
those licentious vanities, were not first brought up at Rome by
the corruptions of men, but by the direct command of your
gods/'1 It would be better to worship a virtuous man, such as
Scipio, than these immoral gods. But as for the sack of Rome, it
need not trouble Christians, who have a sanctuary in the "pilgrim
city of God."
In this world, the two cities — the earthly and the heavenly — are
commingled ; but hereafter the predestinate and the reprobate will
be separated. In this life, we cannot know who, even among our
seeming enemies, are to be found ultimately among the elect.
The most difficult part of the work, we are told, will consist in
the refutation of the philosophers, with the best of whom Chris-
tians are to a large extent in agreement — for instance as to immor-
tality and the creation of the world by God.2
The philosophers did not throw over the worship of the heathen
gods, and their moral instructions were weak because the gods
were wicked. It is not suggested that the gods are mere fables;
they are held by St. Augustine to exist, but to be devils. They
liked to have filthy stories told of them, because they wanted to
injure men. Jupiter's deeds count more, with most pagans, than
Plato's doctrines or Cato's opinions. "Plato, who would not allow
poets to dwell in a well-governed city, showed that his sole worth
1 The City of God, I, 31. • lbid.t I, 35-
376
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
was better than those gods, that desire to be honoured with stage-
plays."1
Rome was always wicked, from the rape of the Sabine women
onwards. Many chapters are devoted to the sinfulness of Roman
imperialism. Nor is it true that Rome did not suffer before the
State became Christian; from the Gauls and the civil wars it
suffered as much as from the Goths, and more.
Astrology is not only wicked, but false ; this may be proved from
the different fortunes of twins, who have the same horoscope.9
The Stoic conception of Fate (which was connected with astrology)
is mistaken, since angels and men have free will. It is true that
God has foreknowledge of our sins, but we do not sin because of
His foreknowledge. It is a mistake to suppose that virtue brings
unhappiness, even in this world: Christian emperors, if virtuous,
have been happy even if not fortunate, and Constantine and
Theodosius were fortunate as well; again, the Jewish kingdom
lasted as long as the Jews adhered to the truth of religion.
There is a very sympathetic account of Plato, whom he places
above all other philosophers. All others are to give place to him:
"Let Thales depart with his water, Anaximenes with the air, the
Stoics with their fire, Epicurus with his atoms."8 All these were
materialists ; Plato was not. Plato saw that God is not any bodily
thing, but that all things have their being from God, and from
something immutable. He was right, also, in saying that perception
is not the source of truth. Platonists are the best in logic and
ethics, and nearest to Christianity. "It is said that Plotinus, that
lived but lately, understood Plato the best of any.1' As for Aristotle,
he was Plato's inferior, but far above the rest. Both, however, said
that all gods are good, and to be worshipped.
As against the Stoics, who condemned all passion, St. Augustine
holds that the passions of Christians may be causes of virtue;
anger, or pity, is not to be condemned per s* , but we must inquire
into its cause.
Platonists are right about God, wrong about gods. They are also
wrong in not acknowledging the Incarnation.
There is a long discussion of angels and demons, which is con-
1 Tfie City of God, II, 14.
1 This argument is not original : it is derived from the academic sceptic
Carncades. Cf. Curnont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 166.
* The City of God, VIII, 5.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
nected with the Neoplatonists. Angels may be good or bad, but
demons are always bad. To angels, knowledge of temporal things
(though they have it) is vile. St. Augustine holds with Plato that
the sensible world is inferior to the eternal.
Book XI begins the account of the nature of the City of God.
The City of God is the society of the elect. Knowledge of God is
obtained only through Christ. There are things that can be dis-
covered by reason (as in the philosophers), but for all further
religious knowledge we must rely on the Scriptures. We ought
not to seek to understand time and space before the world was
made: there was no time before the Creation, and there is no
place where the world is not.
Everything blessed is eternal, but not everything eternal is
blessed — e.g. hell and Satan. God foreknew the sins of devils, but
also their use in improving the universe as a whole, which is
analogous to antithesis in rhetoric.
Origen errs in thinking that souls were given bodies as a punish-
ment. If this were so, bad souls would have bad bodies; but devils,
even the worst of them, have airy bodies, which are better
than ours.
The reason the world was created in six days is that six is a
perfect number (i.e. equal to the sum of its factors).
There are good and bad angels, but even the bad angels do not
have an essence which is contrary to God. God's enemies are not
so by nature, but by mil. The vicious will has no efficient cause,
but only a deficient one ; it is not an effect, but a defect.
The world is less than six thousand years old. History is not
cyclic, as some philosophers suppose: "Christ died once for our
sins."1
If our first parents had not sinned, they would not have died,
but, because they sinned, all their posterity die. Eating the apple
brought not only natural death, but eternal death, i.e. damnation.
Porphyry is wrong in refusing bodies to saints in heaven. They
will have better bodies than Adam's before the fall; their bodies
will be spiritual, but not spirits, and will not have weight. Men
will have male bodies, and women female bodies, and those who
have died in infancy will rise again with adult bodies.
Adam's sin would have brought all mankind to eternal death
(i.e. damnation), but that God's grace has freed many from it.
vi: I TheMtkmiant iv.
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ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
Sin came from the soul, not from the flesh. Platonists and
Manichseans both err in ascribing sin to the nature of the flesh,
though Platonists are not so bad as Manichaeans. The punishment
of all mankind for Adam's sin was just ; for, as a result of this
sin, man, that might have been spiritual in body, became carnal
in mind.1
This leads to a long and minute discussion of sexual lust, to
which we are subject as part of our punishment for Adam's sin.
This discussion is very important as revealing the psychology of
asceticism; we must therefore go into it, although the Saint
confesses that the theme is immodest. The theory advanced is as
follows.
It must be admitted that sexual intercourse in marriage is not
sinful, provided the intention is to beget offspring. Yet even in
marriage a virtuous man will wish that he could manage without
lust. Even in marriage, as the desire for privacy shows, people are
ashamed of sexual intercourse, because "this lawful act of nature
is (from our first parents) accompanied with our penal shame."
The cynics thought that one should be without shame, and
Diogenes would have none of it, wishing to be in all things like
a dog; yet even he, after one attempt, abandoned, in practice,
this extreme of shamelessness. What is shameful about lust is its
independence of the will. Adam and Eve, before the fall, could
have had sexual intercourse without lust, though in fact they did
not. Handicraftsmen, in the pursuit of their trade, move their
hands without lust; similarly Adam, if only he had kept away
from the apple-tree, could have performed the business of sex
without the emotions that it now demands. The sexual members,
like the rest of the body, would have obeyed the will. The need
of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but
for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure. Omitting
some physiological details which the translator has very properly
left in the decent obscurity of the original Latin, the above is
St. Augustine's theory as regards sex.
It is evident from the above that what makes the ascetic dislike
sex is its independence of the will. Virtue, it is held, demands a
complete control of the will over the body, but such control does
not suffice to make the sexual act possible. The sexual act, there-
fore, seems inconsistent with a perfectly virtuous life.
1 ThtCityofGod,\\\, 15.
379
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Ever since the Fall, the world has been divided into two cities,
of which one shall reign eternally with God, the other shall be in
eternal torment with Satan. Cain belongs to the city of the Devil,
Abel to the City of God. Abel, by grace, and in virtue of pre-
destination, was a pilgrim on earth and a citizen of heaven. The
patriarchs belonged to the City of God. Discussion of the death
of Methuselah brings St. Augustine to the vexed question of the
comparison of the Septuagint with the Vulgate. The data, as given
in the Septuagint, lead to the conclusion that Methuselah survived
the flood by fourteen years, which is impossible, since he was not
in the Ark. The Vulgate, following the Hebrew manuscripts, gives
data from which it follows that he died in the year of the flood. On
this point, St. Augustine holds that St. Jerome and the Hebrew
manuscripts must be right. Some people maintained that the Jews
had deliberately falsified the Hebrew manuscripts, out of malice
towards the Christians; this hypothesis is rejected. On the other
hand, the Septuagint must have been divinely inspired. The only
conclusion is that Ptolemy's copyists made mistakes in transcribing
the Septuagint. Speaking of the translations of the Old Testament,
he says: "The Church has received that of the Seventy, as if there
were no other, as many of the Greek Christians, using this wholly,
know not whether there be or no. Our Latin translation is from
this also. Although one Jerome, a learned priest, and a great
linguist, has translated the same Scriptures from the Hebrew into
Latin. But although the Jews affirm his learned labour to be all
truth, and avouch the Seventy to have oftentimes erred, yet the
Churches of Christ hold no one man to be preferred before so
many, especially being selected by the high priest, for this work.*'
He accepts the story of the miraculous agreement of the seventy
independent translations, and considers this a proof that the
Septuagint is divinely inspired. The Hebrew, however, is equally
inspired. This conclusion leaves undecided the question as to the
authority of Jerome's translation. Perhaps he might have been
more decidedly on Jerome's side if the two Saints had not had a
quarrel about St. Peter's time-serving propensities.1
He gives a synchronism of sacred and profane history. We learn
that £neas came to Italy when Abdon3 was judge in Israel, and
1 Galatians ii, 11-14.
1 Of Abclon we know only that he had forty nons and thirty nephews,
and that all these seventy rode donkeys (Judge* xii, 14).
380
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
that the last persecution will be under Antichrist, but its date is
unknown.
After an admirable chapter against judicial torture, St. Augustine
proceeds to combat the new Academicians, who hold all things
to be doubtful. "The Church of Christ detests these doubts as
madness, having a most certain knowledge of the things it appre-
hends." We should believe in the truth of the Scriptures. He goes
on to explain that there is no true virtue apart from true religion.
Pagan virtue is " prostituted with the influence of obscene and
filthy devils." What would be virtues in a Christian are vices in a
pagan. "Those things which she [the soul] seems to account
virtues, and thereby to sway her affections, if they be not all
referred unto God, are indeed vices rather than virtues." They
that are not of this society (the Church) shall suffer eternal misery.
"In our conflicts here on earth, either the pain is victor, and so
death expels the sense of it, or nature conquers, and expels the
pain. But there, pain shall afflict eternally, and nature shall suffer
eternally, both enduring to the continuance of the inflicted punish-
ment."
There are two resurrections, that of the soul at death, and that
of the body at the Last Judgment. After a discussion of various
difficulties concerning the millennium, and the subsequent doings
of Gog and Magog, he comes to a text in II Thessalonians
(ii, 11,12): "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should
believe a lie, that they nil might be damned who believed not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Some people might
think it unjust that the Omnipotent should first deceive them,
and then punish them for being deceived; but to St. Augustine
this seems quite in order. "Being condemned, they are seduced,
and, being seduced, condemned. But their seducement is by the
secret judgment of God, justly secret, and secretly just; even His
that hath judged continually, ever since the world began." St.
Augustine holds that God divided mankind into the elect and the
reprobate, not because of their merits or demerits, but arbitrarily.
All alike deserve damnation, and therefore the reprobate have no
ground of complaint. From the above passage of St. Paul, it
appears that they are wicked because they are reprobate, not repro-
bate because they are wicked.
After the resurrection of the body, the bodies of the damned
will burn eternally without being consumed. In this there is
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
nothing strange; it happens to the salamander and Mount Etna.
Devils, though incorporeal, can be burnt by corporeal fire. Hell's
torments are not purifying, and will not be lessened by the inter-
cessions of saints. Origen erred in thinking hell not eternal.
Heretics, and sinful Catholics, will be damned.
The book ends with a description of the Saints' vision of God
in heaven, and of the eternal felicity of die City of God.
From the above summary, the importance of the work may not
be clear. What was influential was the separation of Church and
State, with the clear implication that the State could only be part
of the City of God by being submissive towards the Church in all
religious matters. This has been the doctrine of the Church ever
since. All through the Middle Ages, during the gradual rise of
the papal power, and throughout the conflict between Pope and
Emperor, St. Augustine supplied the Western Church with the
theoretical justification of its policy. The Jewish State, in the
legendary time of the Judges, and in the historical period after
the return from the Babylonian captivity, had been a theocracy;
the Christian State should imitate it in this respect. The weakness
of the emperors, and of most Western medieval monarchs, enabled
the Church, to a great extent, to realize the ideal of the City of
God. In the East, where the emperor was strong, this development
never took place, and the Church remained much more subject
to the State than it became in the West.
The Reformation, which revived St. Augustine's doctrine of
salvation, threw over his theocratic teaching, and became Eras-
tian,1 largely owing to the practical exigencies of the fight with
Catholicism. But Protestant Erastianism was half-hearted, and the
most religious among Protestants were still influenced by St.
Augustine. Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, and Quakers took
over a part of his doctrine, but laid less stress on the Church. He
held to predestination, and also to the need of baptism for salva-
tion; these two doctrines do not harmonize well, and the extreme
Protestants threw over the latter. But their eschatology remained
Augustinian.
The City of God contains little that is fundamentally original.
The eschatology is Jewish in origin, and came into Christianity
mainly through the Book of Revelation. The doctrine of prc-
* Erasttanism is the doctrine that the Church should be subject to the
State.
382
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
destination and election is Pauline, though St. Augustine gave it
a much fuller and more logical development than is to be found
in the Epistles. The distinction between sacred and profane history
is quite clearly set forth in the Old Testament. What St. Augustine
did was to bring these elements together, and to relate them to
the history of his own time, in such a way that the fall of the
Western Empire, and the subsequent period of confusion, could
be assimilated by Christians without any unduly severe trial of
their faith.
The Jewish pattern of history, past and future, is such as to
make a powerful appeal to the oppressed and unfortunate at all
times. St. Augustine adapted this pattern to Christianity, Marx
to Socialism. To understand Marx psychologically, one should
use the following dictionary :
Yahweh = Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah = Marx
The Elect = The Proletariat
The Church = The Communist Party
The Second Coming = The Revolution
Hell = Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium = The Communist Commonwealth
*
The terms on the left give the emotional content of the terms
on the right, and it is this emotional content, familiar to those who
have had a Christian or a Jewish upbringing, that makes Marx's
eschatology credible. A similar dictionary could be made for the
Nazis, but their conceptions are more purely Old Testament and
less Christian than those of Marx, and their Messiah is more
analogous to the Maccabees than to Christ.
III. THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY
Much of the most influential part of St. Augustine's theology
was concerned in combating the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius was a
Welshman, whose real name was Morgan, which means "man of
the sea," as "Pelagius" does in Greek. He was a cultivated and
agreeable ecclesiastic, less fanatical than many of his contem-
poraries. He believed in free will, questioned the doctrine of
original sin, and thought that, when men act virtuously, it is by
383
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
reason of their own moral effort. If they act rightly, and are
orthodox, they go to heaven as a reward of their virtues.
These views, though they may now seem commonplace, caused,
at the time, a great commotion, and were, largely through St.
Augustine's efforts, declared heretical. They had, however, a
considerable temporary success. Augustine had to write to the
patriarch of Jerusalem to warn him against the wily heresiarch,
who had persuaded many Eastern theologians to adopt his views.
Even after his condemnation, other people, called semi-Pelagians,
advocated weakened forms of his doctrines. It was a long time
before the purer teaching of the Saint was completely victorious,
especially in France, where the final condemnation of the semi-
Pelagian heresy took place at the Council of Orange in 529.
St. Augustine taught that Adam, before the Fall, had had free
will, and could have abstained from sin. But as he and Eve ate the
apple, corruption entered into them, and descended to all their
posterity, none of whom can, of their own power, abstain from
sin. Only God's grace enables men to be virtuous. Since we all
inherit Adam's sin, we all deserve eternal damnation. All who die
unbaptized, even infants, mil go to hell and suffer unending
torment. We have no reason to complain of this, since we are all
wicked. (In the Confessions, the Saint enumerates the crimes of
which he was guilty in the cradle.) But by God's free grace certain
people, among those who have been baptized, are chosen to go
to heaven ; these are the elect. They do not go to heaven because
they are good; we are all totally depraved, except in so far as
God's grace, which is only bestowed on the elect, enables us to
be otherwise. No reason can be given why some are saved and the
rest damned; this is due to God's unmotived choice. Damnation
proves God's justice; salvation, His mercy. Both equally display
His goodness.
The arguments in favour of this ferocious doctrine — which was
revived by Calvin, and has since then not been held by the Catholic
Church — are to be found in the writings of St. Paul, particularly
the Epistle to the Romans. These are treated by Augustine as a
lawyer treats the law: the interpretation is able, and the texts are
made to yield their utmost meaning. One is persuaded, at the end,
not that St. Paul believed what Augustine deduces, but that,
taking certain texts in isolation, they do imply just what he says
they do. It may seem odd that the damnation of unbaptized infants
384
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
should not have been thought shocking, but should have been
attributed to a good God. The conviction of sin, however, so
dominated him that he really believed new-born children to be
limbs of Satan. A great deal of what is most ferocious in the
medieval Church is traceable to his gloomy sense of universal
guilt.
There is only one intellectual difficulty that really troubles St.
Augustine. This is not that it seems a pity to have created Man,
since the immense majority of the human race are predestined to
eternal torment. What troubles him is that, if original sin is
inherited from Adam, as St. Paul teaches, the soul, as well as the
body, must be propagated by the parents, for sin is of the soul,
not the body. He sees difficulties in this doctrine, but says that,
since Scripture is silent, it cannot be necessary to salvation to
arrive at a just view on the matter. He therefore leaves it undecided.
It is strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before
the dark ages were concerned, not with saving civilization or
expelling the barbarians or reforming the abuses of the adminis-
tration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damna-
tion of unbaptized infants. Seeing that these were the preoccupa-
tions that the Church handed on to the converted barbarians, it
is no wonder that the succeeding age surpassed almost all other
fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition.
History of W*tt*r» Pkihsof>ky 385 N
Chapter V
THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES
^ • IHE fifth century was that of the barbarian invasion and
I the fall of the Western Empire. After the death of
JL Augustine in 430, there was little philosophy; it was a
century of destructive action, which, however, largely determined
the lines upon which Europe was to be developed. It was in this
century that the English invaded Britain, causing it to become
England; it was also in this century that the Prankish invasion
turned Gaul into France, and that the Vandals invaded Spain,
giving their name to Andalusia. St. Patrick, during the middle
years of the century, converted the Irish to Christianity. Through-
out the Western World, rough Germanic kingdoms succeeded the
centralized bureaucracy of the Empire. The imperial post ceased,
the great roads fell into decay, war put an end to large-scale
commerce, and life again became local both politically and
economically. Centralized authority was preserved only in the
Church, and there with much difficulty.
Of the Germanic tribes that invaded the Empire in the fifth
century, the most important were the Goths. They were pushed
westwards by the Huns, who attacked them from the East. At
first they tried to conquer the Eastern Empire, but were defeated ;
then they turned upon Italy. Since Diocletian, they had been
employed as Roman mercenaries ; this had taught them more of
the art of war than barbarians would otherwise have known.
Alaric, king of the Goths, sacked Rome in 410, but died the same
year. Odovaker, king of the Ostrogoths, put an end to the Western
Empire in 476, and reigned until 493, when he was treacherously
murdered by another Ostrogoth, Theodoric, who was king of
Italy until 526. Of him I shall have more to say shortly. He was
important both in history and legend; in the Niebelungenlicd he
appears as "Dietrich von Bern" (**Bern" being Verona).
Meanwhile the Vandals established themselves in Africa, the
Visigoths in the south of France, and the Franks in the north.
In the middle of the Germanic invasion came the inroads of the
Huns under Attila, The Huns were of Mongol race, and yet they
were often allied with the Goths. At the crucial moment, however,
386
THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES
when they invaded Gaul in 451, they had quarrelled with the
Goths; the Goths and Romans together defeated them in that
year at Chalons. Attila then turned against Italy, and thought of
marching on Rome, but Pope Leo dissuaded him, pointing out
that Alaric had died after sacking Rome. His forbearance, how-
ever, did him no service, for he died in the following year. After
his death the power of the Huns collapsed.
During this period of confusion the Church was troubled by a
complicated controversy on the Incarnation. The protagonists in
the debates were two ecclesiastics, Cyril and Nestorius, of whom,
more or less by accident, the former was proclaimed a saint and
the latter a heretic. St. Cyril was patriarch of Alexandria from
about 412 till his death in 444; Nestorius was patriarch of Con-
stantinople. The question at issue was the relation of Christ's
divinity to His humanity. Were there two Persons, one human
and one divine ? This was the view held by Nestorius. If not, was
there only one nature, or were there two natures in one person,
a human nature and a divine nature ? These questions roused, in
the fifth century, an almost incredible degree of passion and fury.
"A secret and incurable discord was cherished between those who
were most apprehensive of confounding, and those who were most
fearful of separating, the divinity and the humanity of Christ."1
St. Cyril, the advocate of unity, was a man of fanatical zeal. He
used his position as patriarch to incite pogroms against the very large
Jewish colony in Alexandria. His chief claim to fame is the lynching
of Hypatia, a distinguished lady who, in an age of bigotry, adhered
to the Neoplatonic philosophy and devoted her talents to mathe-
matics. She was "torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged
to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter
the Reader and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh
was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells and her
quivering limbs were delivered to the flames. The just progress
of inquiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable gifts."2
After this, Alexandria was no longer troubled by philosophers.
St. Cyril was pained to learn that Constantinople was being led
astray by the teaching of its patriarch Nestorius, who maintained
that there were two Persons in Christ, one human and one divine.
On this ground Nestorius objected to the new practice of calling
the Virgin "Mother of God"; she was, he said, only the mother
1 Gibbon, op. cit.t chap, xlvii, * Ibid.
387
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of the human Person, while the divine Person, who was God, had
no mother. On this question the Church was divided: roughly
speaking, bishops east of Suez favoured Nestorius, while those
west of Suez favoured St. Cyril. A council was summoned to
meet at Ephesus in 431 to decide the question. The Western
bishops arrived firsthand proceeded to lock the doors against late-
comers and decide in hot haste for St. Cyril, who presided. "This
episcopal tumult, at the distance of thirteen centuries, assumes
the venerable aspect of the third oecumenical Council."1
As a result of this council, Nestorius was condemned as a heretic.
He did not recant, but was the founder of the Nestorian sect,
which had a large following in Syria and throughout the East.
Some centuries later, Nestorianism was so strong in China that
it seemed to have a chance of becoming the established religion.
Nestorians were found in India by the Spanish and Portuguese
missionaries in the sixteenth century. The persecution of Nes-
torianism by the Catholic government of Constantinople caused
disaffection which helped the Mohammedans in their conquest
of Syria.
The tongue of Nestorius, which by its eloquence had seduced
so many, was eaten by worms — so at least we are assured.
Ephesus had learnt to substitute the Virgin for Artemis, but had
still the same intemperate zeal for its goddess as in the time of St.
Paul. It was said that the Virgin was buried there. In 449, after the
death of St. Cyril, a synod at Ephesus tried to carry the triumph
further, and thereby fell into the heresy opposite to that of Nes-
torius; this is called the Monophysite heresy, and maintains that
Christ has only one nature. If St. Cyril had still been alive, he
would certainly have supported this view, and have become
heretical. The Emperor supported the synod, but the Pope repu-
diated it. At last Pope Leo—the same Pope who turned Attila
from attacking Rome — in the year of the battle of Chalons secured
the summoning of an oecumenical council at Chalcedon in 451,
which condemned the Monophysites and finally decided the ortho-
dox doctrine of the Incarnation. The Council of Ephesus had
decided that there is only one Person of Christ, but the Council of
Chalcedon decided that He exists in two natures, one human and
one divine. The influence of the Pope was paramount in securing
this decision.
1 Gibbon, op. *&, chip xlvii.
388
THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES
The Monophysites, like the Nestorians, refused to submit.
Egypt, almost to a man, adopted their heresy, which spread up the
Nile and as far as Abyssinia. The heresy of the Abyssinians was
given by Mussolini as one of his reasons for conquering them. The
heresy of Egypt, like the opposite heresy of Syria, facilitated the
Arab conquest.
During the sixth century, there were four men of great im-
portance in the history of culture: Boethius, Justinian, Benedict,
and Gregory the Great. They will be my chief concern in the
remainder of this chapter and in the next.
The Gothic conquest of Italy did not put an end to Roman
civilization. Under Theodoric, king of Italy and of the Goths, the
civil administration of Italy was entirely Roman; Italy enjoyed
peace and religious toleration (till near the end); the king was
both wise and vigorous. He appointed consuls, preserved Roman
law, and kept up the Senate: when in Rome, his first visit was to
the Senate House.
Though an Arian, Theodoric was on good terms with the
Church until his last years. In 523, the Emperor Justin proscribed
Arianism, and this annoyed Theodoric. He had reason for fear,
since Italy was Catholic and was led by theological sympathy to
side with the Emperor. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that
there was a plot involving men in his own government. This led
him to imprison and execute his minister, the senator Boethius,
whose Consolations of Philosophy was written while he was in
prison.
Boethius is a singular figure. Throughout the Middle Ages he
was read and admired, regarded always as a devout Christian,
and treated almost as if he had been one of the Fathers. Yet his
Consolations of Philosophy, written in 524 while he was awaiting
execution, is purely Platonic; it does not prove that he was not
a Christian, but it does show that pagan philosophy had a much
stronger hold on him than Christian theology. Some theological
works, especially one on the Trinity, which are attributed to him,
are by many authorities considered to be spurious; but it was
probably owing to them that the Middle Ages were able to regard
him as orthodox, and to imbibe from him much Platonism which
would otherwise have been viewed with suspicion.
The work is an alternation of verse and prose: Boethius, in his
own person, speaks in prose, while Philosophy answers in verse.
389
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
There is a certain resemblance to Dante, who was no doubt
influenced by him in the Vita Nuova.
The Consolations, which Gibbon rightly calls a "golden volume,"
begins by the statement that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are the
true philosophers; Stoics, Epicureans, and the rest are usurpers
whom the profane multitude mistook for the friends of philosophy.
Boethius says he obeyed the Pythagorean command to "follow
God" (not the Christian command). Happiness, which is the same
thing as blessedness, is the good, not pleasure. Friendship is a
"most sacred thing." There is much morality that agrees closely
with Stoic doctrine, and is in fact largely taken from Seneca.
There is a summary, in verse, of the beginning of the Timaeus.
This is followed by a great deal of purely Platonic metaphysics.
Imperfection, we are told, is a lack, implying the existence of a
perfect pattern. He adopted the privative theory of evil. He then
passes on to a pantheism which should have shocked Christians, but
for some reason did not. Blessedness and God, he says, are both the
chiefest good, and are therefore identical. "Men are made happy
by the obtaining of divinity." "They who obtain divinity become
gods. Wherefore every one that is happy is a god, but by nature
there is only one God, but there may be many by participation.0
"The sum, origin, and cause of all that is sought after is rightly
thought to be goodness." "The substance of God consisteth in
nothing else but in goodness." Can God do evil? No. Therefore
evil is nothing, since God can do everything. Virtuous men are
always powerful, and bad men always weak; for both desire the
good, but only the virtuous get it. The wicked are more unfor-
tunate if they escape punishment than if they suffer it. "In wise
men there is no place for hatred."
The tone of the book is more like that of Plato than that of
Plotinus. There is no trace of the superstition or morbidness of
the age, no obsession with sin, no excessive straining after the
unattainable. There is perfect philosophic calm — so much that,
if the book had been written in prosperity, it might almost have
been called smug. Written when it was, in prison under sentence
of death, it is as admirable as the last moments of the Platonic
Socrates.
One does not find a similar outlook until after Newton. I will
quote in extenso one poem from the book, which, in its philosophy,
is not unlike Pope's Essay an Man.
39°
THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES
If Thou wouldst sec
God's laws with purest mind,
Thy sight on heaven fixed must be,
Whose settled course the stars in peace doth bind.
The sun's bright fire
Stops not his sister's team.
Nor doth the northern bear desire
Within the ocean's wave to hide her beam.
Though she behold
The other stars there crouching,
Yet she incessantly is rolled
About high heaven, the ocean never touching.
The evening light
With certain course doth show
The coming of the shady night,
And Lucifer before the day doth go.
This mutual love
Courses eternal makes,
And from the starry spheres above
All cause of war and dangerous discord takes.
This sweet consent
In equal bands doth tie
The nature of each element
So that the moist things yield unto the dry.
The piercing cold
With flames doth friendship heap
The trembling fire the highest place doth hold,
And the gross earth sinks down into the deep.
The flowery year
Breathes odours in the spring,
The scorching summer corn doth bear,
The autumn fruit from laden trees doth faring.
The falling rain
Doth winter's moisture i»ive.
These rules thus nourish and maintain
All creatures which we see on earth to live.
And when they die,
These bring them to their end,
While their Creator sits on high,
Whose hand the reins of the whole world doth bend.
He as their king
Rules them with lordly might.
From Him they rise, flourish, and spring,
He as their law and judge decides their right.
39'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Those things whose course
Most swiftly glides away
His might doth often backward force,
And suddenly their wandering motion stay.
Unless his strength
Their violence should bound,
And them which else would run at length,
Should bring within the compass of a round,
That firm decree
Which now doth all adorn
Would soon destroyed and broken be,
Things being far from their beginning borne.
This powerful love
Is common unto all,
Which for desire of good do move
Back to the springs from whence they first did fall.
No worldly thing
Can a continuance have
Unless love back again it bring
Unto the cause which first the essence gave.
Boethius was, until the end, a friend of Theodoric. His father
was consul, he was consul, and so were his two sons. His father-
in-law Symmachus (probably grandson of the one who had a
controversy with Ambrose about the statue of Victory) was an
important man in the court of the Gothic king. Theodoric em-
ployed Boethius to reform the coinage, and to astonish less
sophisticated barbarian kings with such devices as sun-dials and
water-docks. It may be that his freedom from superstition was
not so exceptional in Roman aristocratic families as elsewhere;
but its combination with great learning and zeal for the public
good was unique in that age. During the two centuries before his
time and the ten centuries after it, I cannot think of any European
man of learning so free from superstition and fanaticism. Nor are
his merits merely negative; his survey is lofty, disinterested, and
sublime. He would have been remarkable in any age; in the age
in which he lived, he is utterly amazing.
The medieval reputation of Boethius was .partly due to his
being regarded as a martyr to Arian persecution — a view which
began two or three hundred years after his death. In Pa via, he
was regarded as a saint , but in fact he was not canonized. Though
Cyril was a saint, Boethius was not.
393
THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES
Two years after the execution of Boethius, Theodoric died. In
the next year, Justinian became Emperor. He reigned until 565,
and in this long time managed to do much harm and some good.
He is of course chiefly famous for his Digest, but I shall not venture
on this topic, which is one for the lawyers. He was a man of deep
piety, which he signalized, two years after his accession, by closing
the schools of philosophy in Athens, where paganism still reigned.
The dispossessed philosophers betook themselves to Persia, where
the king received them kindly. But they were shocked — more so,
says Gibbon, than became philosophers— by the Persian practices
of polygamy and incest, so they returned home again, and faded
into obscurity. Three years after this exploit (532), Justinian
embarked upon another, more worthy of praise — the building of
St. Sophia. I have never seen St. Sophia, but I have seen the
beautiful contemporary mosaics at Ravenna, including portraits
of Justinian and his empress Theodora. Both were very pious,
though Theodora was a lady of easy virtue whom he had picked
up in the circus. What is even worse, she was inclined to be a
Monophysite.
But enough of scandal. The Emperor himself, I am happy to
say, was of impeccable orthodoxy, even in the matter of the
"Three Chapters." This was a vexatious controversy. The Council
of Chalcedon had pronounced orthodox three Fathers suspected
of Nestorianism ; Theodora, along with many others, accepted all
the other decrees of the council, but not this one. The Western
Church stood by everything decided by the Council, and the
empress was driven to persecute the Pope. Justinian adored her,
and after her death in 548, she became to him what the dead
Prince Consort was to Queen Victoria. So in the end he lapsed
into heresy, that of Aphthartodocctism. A contemporary historian
(Evagrius) writes: "Having since the end of his life received the
wages of his misdeeds, he has gone to seek the justice which was
his due before the judgment-seat of hell."
Justinian aspired to reconquer as much as possible of the
Western Empire. In 535 he invaded Italy, and at first had quick
success against the Goths. The Catholic population welcomed
him, and he came as representing Rome against the barbarians.
But the Goths rallied, and the war lasted eighteen years, during
which Rome, and Italy generally, suffered far more than in the
barbarian invasion.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Rome was five times captured, thrice by Byzantines, twice by
Goths, and sank to a small town. The same sort of thing happened
in Africa, which Justinian also more or less reconquered. At first
his armies were welcomed; then it was found that Byzantine
administration was corrupt end Byzantine taxes were ruinous.
In the end, many people wished the Goths and Vandals back.
The Church, however, until his last years, was steadily on the
side of the Emperor, because of his orthodoxy. He did not attempt
the reconquest of Gaul, partly because of distance, but partly also
because the Franks were orthodox.
In 568, three years after Justinian's death, Italy was invaded
by a new and very fierce German tribe, the Lombards. Wars
between them and the Byzantines continued intermittently for
two hundred years, until nearly the time of Charlemagne. The
Byzantines held gradually less and less of Italy; in the South,
they had also to face the Saracens. Rome remained nominally
subject to them, and the popes treated the Kastern emperors with
deference. But in most parts of Italy the emperors, after the
coming of the Lombards, had very little authority or even none
at all. It was this period that ruined Italian civilization. It was
refugees from the Lombards who founded Venice, not, as tradition
avers, fugitives from Attila.
394
Chapter VI
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
-TTN the general decay of civilization that came about during the
I incessant wars of the sixth and succeeding centuries, it was
JL above all the Church that preserved whatever survived of the
culture of ancient Rome. The Church performed this work very
imperfectly, because fanaticism and superstition prevailed among
even the greatest ecclesiastics of thp time, and secular learning
was thought wicked. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical institutions
created a solid framework, within which, in later times, a revival
of learning and civilized arts became possible.
In the period with which we are concerned, three of the activities
of the Church call for special notice: first, the monastic movement;
second, the influence of the papacy, especially under Gregory the
Great; third, the conversion of the heathen barbarians by means
of missions. I will say something about each of these in succession.
The monastic movement began simultaneously in Egypt and
Syria about the beginning of the fourth century. It had two forms,
that of solitary hermits, and that of monasteries. St. Anthony, the
first of the hermits, was born in Egypt about 250, and withdrew
from the world about 270. For fifteen years he lived alone in a
hut near his home; then, for twenty years, in remote solitude in
the desert. But his fame spread, and multitudes longed to hear
him preach. Accordingly, about 305, he came forth to teach, and
to encourage the hermit's life. He practised extreme austerities,
reducing food, drink, and sleep to the minimum required to
support life. The devil constantly assailed him with lustful visions,
but he manfully withstood the malign diligence of Satan. By the
end of his life, the Thebaid1 was full of hermits who had been
inspired by his example and his precepts.
A few years later — about 315 or 320— another Egyptian, Pacho-
mius, founded the first monastery. Here the monks had a common
life, without private property, with communal meals and com-
munal religious observances. It was in this form, rather than in
that of St. Anthony, that monasticism conquered the Christian
world. In the monasteries derived from Pachomius, the monks
1 The desert near Egyptian Thebes.
395
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
did much work, chiefly agricultural, instead of spending the whole
of their time in resisting the temptations of the flesh.
At about the same time, monasticism sprang up in Syria and
Mesopotamia. Here asceticism was carried to even greater lengths
than in Egypt. St. Simeon Stylites and the other pillar hermits
were Syrian. It was from the East that monasticism came to Greek-
speaking countries, chiefly owing to St. Basil (about 360). His
monasteries were less ascetic; they had orphanages, and schools
for boys (not only for such as intended to become monks).
At first, monasticism was a spontaneous movement, quite out-
side Church organization. It was St. Athanasius who reconciled
ecclesiastics to it. Partly as a result of his influence, it came to be
the rule that monks should be priests. It was he also, while he
was in Rome in 339, who introduced the movement into the West.
St. Jerome did much to promote it, and St. Augustine introduced
it into Africa. St. Martin of Tours inaugurated monasteries in
Gaul, St. Patrick in Ireland. The monastery of lona was founded
by St. Columba in 566. In early days, before monks had been
fined into the ecclesiastical organization, they had been a source
of disorder. To begin with, there was no way of discriminating
between genuine ascetics and men who, being destitute, found
monastic establishments comparatively luxurious. Then again
there was the difficulty that the monks gave a turbulent support
to their favourite bishop, causing synods (and almost causing
Councils) to fall into heresy. The synod (not the Council) of
Ephesus, which decided for the Monophysites, was under a
monkish reign of terror. But for the resistance of the Pope, the
victory of the Monophysites might have been permanent. In
later times, such disorders no longer occurred.
There seem to have been nuns before there were monks — as
early as the middle of the third century.
Cleanliness was viewed with abhorrence. Lice were called
"pearls of God," and were a mark of saintliness. Saints, male and
female, would boast that water had never touched their feet except
when they had to cross rivers. In later centuries, monks served
many useful purposes: they were skilled agriculturists, and some
of them kept alive or revived learning. But in the beginning,
especially in the eremitic section, there was none of this. Most
monks did no work, never read anything except what religion
prescribed, and conceived virtue in an entirely negative manner,
396
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
as abstention from sin, especially the sins of the flesh. St. Jerome,
it is true, took his library with him into the desert, but he came to
think that this had been a sin.
In Western monasticism, the most important name is that of
St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine Order. He was born
about 480, near Spoleto, of a noble Umbrian family; at the age
of twenty, he fled from the luxuries and pleasures of Rome to
the solitude of a cave, where he lived for three years. After this
period, his life was less solitary, and about the year 520 he founded
the famous monastery of Monte Cassino, for which he drew up
the "Benedictine rule." This was adapted to Western climates,
and demanded less austerity than had been common among
Egyptian and Syrian monks. There had been an unedifying com-
petition in ascetic extravagance, the most extreme practitioner
being considered the most holy. To this St. Benedict put an end,
decreeing that austerities going beyond the rule could only be
practised by permission of the abbot. The abbot was given great
power ; he was elected for life, and had (within the Rule and the
limits of orthodoxy) an almost despotic control over his monks,
who were no longer allowed, as previously, to leave their monastery
for another if they felt so inclined. In later times, Benedictines
have been remarkable for learning, but at first all their reading
was devotional.
Organizations have a life of their own, independent of the
intentions of their founders. Of this fact, the most striking example
is the Catholic Church, which would astonish Jesus, and even
Paul. The Benedictine Order is a lesser example. The monks take
a vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity. As to this, Gibbon
remarks: "I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession
of a Benedictine abbot: 'My vow of poverty has given me an
hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised
me to the rank of a sovereign prince.' I forget the consequences
of his vow of chastity."1 The departures of the Order from the
founder's intentions were, however, by no means all regrettable.
This is true, in particular, of learning. The library of Monte
Cassino was famous, and in various ways the world is much
indebted to the scholarly tastes of later Benedictines.
St. Benedict lived at Monte Cassino from its foundation until
his death in 543. The monastery was sacked by the Lombards,
1 Op. cit.t xxxvii, note 57.
397
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
shortly before Gregory the Great, himself a Benedictine, became
Pope. The monks fled to Rome; but when the fury of the
Lombards had abated, they returned to Monte Cassino.
From the dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, written in 593,
we learn much about St. Benedict. He was "brought up at Rome
in the study of humanity. But forasmuch as he saw many by the
reason of such learning to fall to dissolute and lewd life, he drew
back his foot, which he had as it were now set forth into the world,
lest, entering too far in acquaintance therewith, he likewise might
have fallen into that dangerous and godless gulf: wherefore, giving
over his book, and forsaking his father's house and wealth, with
a resolute mind only to serve God, he sought for some place,
where he might attain to the desire of his holy purpose: and in
this sort he departed, instructed with learned ignorance, and
furnished with unlearned wisdom."
He immediately acquired the power to work miracles. The first
of these was the mending of a broken sieve by means of prayer.
The townsmen hung the sieve over the church door, and it "con-
tinued there many years after, even to these very troubles of the
Lombards." Abandoning the sieve, he went to his cave, unknown
to all but one friend, who secretly supplied him with food let
down by a rope, to which a bell was tied to let the saint know
when his dinner had come. But Satan threw a stone at the rope,
breaking both it and the bell. Nevertheless, the enemy of mankind
was foiled in his hope of disrupting the Saint's food-supply.
When Benedict had been as long in the cave as God's purposes
required, our Lord appeared on Easter Sunday to a certain priest,
revealed the hermit's whereabouts, and bade him share his Easter
feast with the Saint. About the same time certain shepherds
found him. "At the first, when they espied him through the bushes,
and saw his apparel made of skins, they verily thought that it
had been some beast: but after they were acquainted with the
r \ju*nt of God, many of them were by his means convened from
jfce ot'-^tly life to grace, piety, and devotion."
, flesh- naner hermits, Benedict suffered from the temptations oi
»a, tb* lpttA certain woman there was which some time he had
toemory of which the wicked spirit put into his mind,
*kc *** memory of her did so mightily inflame with concupis-
mi of God's servant, which did so increase that, almost
ith pleasure, he was of mind to have forsaken the
398
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
wilderness. But suddenly, assisted with God's grace, he came to
himself; and seeing many thick briers and nettle bushes to grow
hard by, off he cast his apparel, and threw himself into the midst
of them, and there wallowed so long that, when he rose up, all
his flesh was pitifully torn: and so by the wounds of his body,
he cured the wounds of his soul."
His fame being spread abroad, the monks of a certain monastery,
whose abbot had lately died, besought him to accept the succession.
He did so, and insisted upon observance of strict virtue, so that
the monks, in a rage, decided to poison him with a glass of poisoned
wine. He, however, made the sign of the cross over the glass,
whereupon it broke in pieces. So he returned to the wilderness.
The miracle of the sieve was not the only practically useful one
performed by St. Benedict. One day, a virtuous Goth was using a
bill-hook to clear away briers, when the head of it flew off the
handle and fell into deep water. The Saint, being informed, held
the handle in the water, whereupon the iron head rose up and
joined itself again to the handle.
A neighbouring priest, envious of the holy man's reputation, sent
him a poisoned loaf. But Benedict miraculously knew it was
poisoned. He had the habit of giving bread to a certain crow, and
when the crow came on the day in question, the Saint said to it:
"In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, take up that loaf, and
leave it in some such place where no man may find it." The crow
obeyed, and on its return was given its usual dinner. The wicked
priest, seeing he could not kill Benedict's body, decided to kill
his soul, and sent seven naked young women into the monastery.
The Saint feared lest some of the younger monks might be moved
to sin, and therefore departed himself, that the priest might no
longer have a motive for such acts. But the priest was killed by
the ceiling of his room's falling on him. A monk pursued Benedict
with the news, rejoicing, and bidding him return. Benedict
mourned over the death of the sinner, and imposed a penance
on the monk for rejoicing.
Gregory does not only relate miracles, but deigns, now and
then, to tell facts in the career of St. Benedict. After founding
twelve monasteries, he finally came to Monte Cassino, where
there was a "chapel" to Apollo, still used by the country people
for heathen worship. "Even to that very time, the mad multitude
of infidels did offer most wicked sacrifice/* Benedict destroyed
399
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the altar, substituted a church, and converted the neighbouring
pagans. Satan was annoyed:
"The old enemy of mankind, not taking this in good part, did
not now privily or in a dream, but in open sight present himself
to the eyes of that holy father, and with great outcries complained
that he had offered him violence. The noise which he made, the
monks did hear, but himself they could not see; but, as the
venerable father told them, he appeared visibly unto him most fell
and cruel, and as though, with his fiery mouth and flaming eyes,
he would have torn him in pieces: what the devil said unto him,
all the monks did hear; for first he would call him by his name,
and because the man of God vouchsafed him not any answer,
then would he fall a reviling and railing at him : for when he cried
out, calling him "Blessed Bennet,' and yet found that he gave him
no answer, straightways he would turn his tune and say: 'Cursed
Bennet, and not blessed: what hast thou to do with me? and why
dost thou thus persecute me?' " Here the story ends; one gathers
that Satan gave up in despair.
I have quoted at some length from these dialogues, because they
have a threefold importance. First, they are the principal source
for our knowledge of the life of St. Benedict, whose Rule became
the model for all Western monasteries except those of Ireland or
founded by Irishmen. Secondly, they give a vivid picture of the
mental atmosphere among the most civilized people living at the
end of the sixth century. Thirdly, they are written by Pope
Gregory the Great, fourth and last of the Doctors of the Western
Church, and politically one of the most eminent of the popes.
To him we must now turn our attention.
The Venerable W. H. Hutton, Archdeacon of Northampton,1
claims that Gregory was the greatest man of the sixth century;
the only rival claimants, hc^ays, would be Justinian and St. Bene-
dict. All three, certainly, had a profound effect on future ages:
Justinian by his Laws (not by his conquests, which were ephe-
meral); Benedict by his monastic order; and Gregory by the
increase of papal power which he brought about. In the dialogues
that I have been quoting he appears childish and credulous, but
as a statesman he is astute, masterful, and very well aware of
what can be achieved in the complex and changing world in
which he has to operate. The contrast is surprising; but the
1 Cambridge Medieval History t II, chap. viii.
400
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
most effective men of action are often intellectually second-
rate.
Gregory the Great, the first Pope of that name, was born in
Rome, about 540, of a rich and noble family. It seems his grand-
father had been Pope after he became a widower. He himself, as a
young man, had a palace and immense wealth. He had what was
considered a good education, though it did not include a know-
ledge of Greek, which he never acquired, although he lived for
six years in Constantinople. In 573 he was prefect of the City of
Rome. But religion claimed him: he resigned his office, gave his
wealth to the founding of monasteries and to charity, and turned
his own palace into a house for monks, himself becoming a Bene-
dictine. He devoted himself to meditation, and to austerities
which permanently injured his health. But Pope Pelagius II had
become aware of his political abilities, and sent him as his envoy
to Constantinople, to which, since Justinian's time, Rome was
nominally subject. Gregory lived in Constantinople from 579 to
585, representing papal interests at the Emperor's court, and papal
theology in discussions with Eastern ecclesiastics, who were always
more prone to heresy than those of the West. The patriarch of
Constantinople, at this time, held the erroneous opinion that our
resurrection bodies will be impalpable, but Gregory saved the
Emperor from falling into this departure from the true faith. He
was unable, however, to persuade the Emperor to undertake a
campaign against the Lombards, which was the principal object
of his mission.
The five years 585-90 Gregory spent as head of his monastery.
Then the Pope died, and Gregory succeeded him. The times were
difficult, but by their very confusion offered great opportunities
to an able statesman. The Lombards were ravaging Italy; Spain
and Africa were in a state of anarchy due to the weakness of the
Byzantines and the decadence of Visigoths and the depredations
of Moors. In France there were wars between North and South.
Britain, which had been Christian under the Romans, had re-
verted to paganism since the Saxon invasion. There were still
remnants of Arianism, and the heresy of the Three Chapters was
by no means extinct. The turbulent times infected even bishops,
many of whom led far from exemplary lives. Simony was rife,
and remained a crying evil until the latter half of the eleventh
century.
401
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
All these sources of trouble Gregory combated with energy and
sagacity. Before his pontificate, the bishop of Rome, though
acknowledged to be the greatest man in the hierarchy, was not
regarded as having any jurisdiction outside his own diocese. St.
Ambrose, for example, who was on the best of terms with the
Pope of his day, obviously never regarded himself as in any degree
subject to his authority. Gregory, owing partly to his personal
qualities and partly to the prevailing anarchy, was able to assert
successfully an authority which was admitted by ecclesiastics
throughout the West, and even, to a lesser degree, in the East.
He exerted this authority chiefly by means of letters to bishops
and secular rulers in all parts of the Roman world, but also in
other ways. His Book of Pastoral Rule, containing advice to bishops,
had a great influence throughout the earlier Middle Ages. It was
intended as a guide to the duties of bishops, and was accepted as
such. He wrote it in the first instance for the bishop of Ravenna,
and sent it also to the bishop of Seville. Under Charlemagne, it
was given to bishops at consecration. Alfred the Great translated
it into Anglo-Saxon. In the East it was circulated in Greek. It
gives sound, if not surprising, advice to bishops, such as not to
neglect business. It tells them also that rulers should not be
criticized, but should be kept alive to the danger of hell-fire if
they fail to follow the advice of the Church.
Gregory's letters are extraordinarily interesting:, not only as
showing his character, but as giving a picture of his age. His tone,
except to the Emperor and the ladies of the Byzantine court, is
that of a head master — sometimes commending, often reproving,
never showing the faintest hesitation as to his right to give orders.
Let us take as a sample his letters during one year (599). The
first is a letter to the bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, who, though
old, was bad. It says, in part: "It has been told me that on the
Lord's day, before celebrating the solemnities of mass, thou
wentest forth to plough up the crop of the bearer of these presents.
. . . Also, after the solemnities of mass thou didst not fear to root
up the landmarks of that possession. . . . Seeing that we still
spare thy grey hairs, bethink thee at length, old man, and restrain
thyself from such levity of .behaviour, and perversity of deeds/'
He writes at the same time to the secular authorities of Sardinia
on the same subject. The bishop in question next has to be re-
proved because he makes a charge for conducting funerals; and
402
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
then again because, with his sanction, a converted Jew placed the
Cross and an image of the Virgin in a synagogue. Moreover, he
and other Sardinian bishops have been known to travel without
permission of their metropolitan; this must cease. Then follows
a very severe letter to the proconsul of Dalmatia, saying, among
other things: "We see not of what sort your satisfaction is either
to God or men"; and again: "With regard to your seeking to be
in favour with us, it is fitting that with your whole heart and soul,
and with tears, as becomes you, you should satisfy your Redeemer
for such things as these." I am ignorant as to what the wretch
had done.
Next comes a letter to CaUinicus, exarch of Italy, congratulating
him on a victory over the Slavs, and telling him how to act towards
the heretics of I stria, who erred as to the Three Chapters. He
writes also on this subject to the bishop of Ravenna. Once, by way
of exception, we find a letter to the bishop of Syracuse, in which
Gregory defends himself instead of finding fault with others. The
question at issue is a weighty one, namely whether "Alleluia"
should be said at a certain point in the mass. Gregory's usage, he
says, is not adopted from subservience to the Byzantines, as the
bishop of Syracuse suggests, but is derived from St. James via
the blessed Jerome. Those who thought he was being unduly
subservient to Greek usage were therefore in error. (A similar
question was one of the causes of the schism of the Old Believers
in Russia.)
There are a number of letters to barbarian sovereigns, male and
female. Brunichild, queen of the Franks, wanted the pallium con-
ferred on a certain French bishop, and Gregory was willing to
grant her request ; but unfortunately the emissary she sent was a
schismatic. To Agilulph king of the Lombards he writes con-
gratulating him on having made peace. "For, if unhappily peace
had not been made, what else could have ensued but, with sin
and danger on ix>th sides, the shedding of the blood of miserable
peasants whose lalxmr profits both?" At the same time he writes
to Agilulph's wife, Queen Theodelinda, telling her to influence
her husband to persist in good courses. 1 le writes again to Bruni-
child to find fault with two things IA her kingdom: that laymen
are promoted at once to be bishops, without a probationary time
as ordinary priests; and that Jews are allowed to have Christian
slaves. To Theodoric and Theodebert, kings of the Franks, he
403
WBSTBRN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
writes saying that, owing to the exemplary piety of the Franks,
he would like to utter only pleasant things, but he cannot refrain
from pointing out the prevalence of simony in their kingdom.
He writes again about a wrong done to the Bishop of Turin.
One letter to a barbarian sovereign is wholly complimentary; it is
to Richard, king of the Visigoths, who had been an Arian, but
became a Catholic in 587. For this the Pope rewards him by
sending him "a small key from the most sacred body of the blessed
apostle Peter to convey his blessing, containing iron from his chains,
that what had bound his neck for martyrdom may loose yours
from all sins." I hope His Majesty was pleased with this present.
The Bishop of Antioch is instructed as to the heretical synod of
Ephesus, and informed that "it has come to our ears that in the
Churches of the East no one attains to a sacred order except by
giving of bribes" — a matter which the bishop is to rectify where-
ever it is in his power to do so. The Bishop of Marseilles is
reproached for breaking certain images which were being adored :
it is true that adoration of images is wrong, but images, neverthe-
less, are useful and should be treated with respect. Two bishops
of Gaul are reproached because a lady who had become a nun
was afterwards forced to marry. "If this be so, ... you shall
have the office of hirelings, and not the merit of shepherds."
The above are a few of the letters of a single year. It is no wonder
that he found no time for contemplation, as he laments in one of
the letters of this year (cxxi).
Gregory was no friend to secular learning. To Desiderius
Bishop of Vienne in France, he writes:
"It came to our ears, what we cannot mention without shame,
that thy Fraternity is [i.e. thou art] in the habit of expounding
gUpunar to certain persons. This thing we took so much amiss,
and so strongly disapproved it, that we changed what had been
said before into groaning and sadness, since the praises of Christ
cannot find room in one mouth with the praises of Jupiter .... In
proportion as it is execrable for such a thing to be related of a
priest, it ought to be ascertained by strict and veracious evidence
whether or not it be so."
This hostility to pagan learning survived in the Church for at
least four centuries, till the time of Gerbert (Sylvester II). It was
only from the eleventh century onward that the Church became
friendly to learning.
404
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
Gregory's attitude to the emperor is much more deferential than
his attitude to barbarian kings. Writing to a correspondent in
Constantinople he says: "What pleases the most pious emperor,
whatever he commands to be done, is in his power. As he deter-
mines, so let him provide. Only let him not cause us to be mixed
up in the deposition [of an orthodox bishop]. Still, what he does,
if it is canonical, we will follow. But, if it is not canonical, we will
bear it, so far as we can without sin of our own." When the
Emperor Maurice was dethroned by a mutiny, of which the leader
was an obscure centurion named Phocas, this upstart acquired
the throne, and proceeded to massacre the five sons of Maurice
in their father's presence, after which he put to death the aged
Emperor himself. Phocas was of course crowned by the patriarch
of Constantinople, \vho had no alternative but death. What is
more surprising is that Gregory, from the comparatively safe
distance of Rome, wrote letters of fulsome adulation to the usurper
and his wife. "There is this difference/' he writes, "between the
kings of the nations and the emperors of the republic, that the
kings of the nations are lords of slaves, but the emperors of the
republic lords of freemen. . . . May Almighty God in every
thought and deed keep the heart of your Piety [i.e. you] in the
hand of His grace; and whatsoever things should be done justly,
whatsoever things with clemency, may the Holy Spirit who dwells
in your breast direct." And to the wife of Phocas, the Empress
Leontia, he writes: "What tongue may suffice to speak, what mind
to think, what great thanks we owe to Almighty God for the
serenity of your empire, in that such hard burdens of long duration
have been removed from our necks, and the gentle yoke of im-
perial supremacy has returned." One might suppose Maurice to
have been a monster; in fact, he was a good old man. Apologists
excuse Gregory on the pica that he did not know what atrocities
had been committed by Phocas ; but he certainly knew the custo-
mary behaviour of Byzantine usurpers, and he did not wait to
ascertain whether Phocas was an exception.
The conversion of the heathen was an important part of the
increasing influence of the Church. The Goths had been convened
before the end of the fourth century by Ulphilas, or Ulfila — un-
fortunately to Arianism, which was also the creed of the Vandals.
After the death of Theodoric, however, the Goths became gradually
Catholic: the king of the Visigoths, as we have seen, adopted
405
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the orthodox faith in the time of Gregory. The Franks were
Catholic from the time of Clovis. The Irish were converted before
the fall of the Western Empire by St. Patrick, a Somersetshire
country gentleman1 who lived among them from 432 till his death
in 461. The Irish in turn did much to evangelize Scotland and
the North of England. In this work the greatest missionary was
St. Columba; another was St. Columban, who wrote long letters
to Gregory on the date of Easter and other important questions.
The conversion of England, apart from Northumbria, was Gre-
gory's special care. Every one knows how, before he was Pope, he
saw two fair-haired blue-eyed boys in the slave market in Rome,
and on being told they were Angles replied, "No, angels/* When
he became Pope he sent St. Augustine to Kent to convert the
Angles. There are many letters in his correspondence to St.
Augustine, to Edilbext, king of the Angeli, and to others, about
the mission. Gregory decrees that heathen temples in England are
not to be destroyed, but the idols are to be destroyed and the
temples then consecrated as churches. St. Augustine puts a
number of queries to the Pope, such as whether cousins may
marry, whether spouses who have had intercourse the previous
night may come to church (yes, if they have washed, says Gregory),
and so on. The mission, as we know, prospered, and that is why
we are all Christians at this day.
The period we have been considering is peculiar in the fact that,
though its great men are inferior to those of many other epochs,
their influence on future ages has been greater. Roman law,
monasticism, and the papacy owe their long and profound in-
fluence very largely to Justinian, Benedict, and Gregory. The
men of the sixth century, though less civilized than their pre-
decessors, were much more civilized than the men of the next
four centuries, and they succeeded in framing institutions that
ultimately tamed the barbarians. It is noteworthy that, of the
above three men, two were aristocratic natives of Rome, and the
third was Roman Emperor. Gregory is in a very real sense the
last of the Romans. His tone of command, while justified by his
office, has its instinctive basis in Roman aristocratic pride. After
him, for many ages, the city of Rome ceased to produce great
men. But in its downfall it succeeded in fettering the souls of its
conquerors: the reverence which they felt for the Chair of Peter
1 So at least Bury says in hit Life of the Stint.
406
ST. BENEDICT AND GREGORY THE GREAT
was an outcome of the awe which they felt for the throne of the
Caesars.
In the East, the course of history was different. Mohammed
was born when Gregory was about thirty years old.
407
Part 2. — The Schoolmen
Chapter VII
THE PAPACY IN THE DARK AGES
DURING the four centuries from Gregory the Great to Syl-
vester II, the papacy underwent astonishing vicissitudes. Ii
was subject, at times, to the Greek Emperor, at other times
to the Western Emperor, and at yet other times to the local Roman
aristocracy; nevertheless, vigorous popes in the eighth and ninth
centuries, seizing propitious moments, built up the tradition of
papal power. The period from A.D. 600 to 1000 is of vital impor-
tance for the understanding of the medieval Church and its relation
to the State.
The popes achieved independence of the Greek emperors, not
so much by their own efforts, as by the arms of the Lombards, to
whom, however, they felt no gratitude whatever. The Greek Church
remained always, in a great measure, subservient to the Emperor,
who considered himself competent to decide on matters of faith,
as well as to appoint and depose bishops, even patriarchs. The
monks strove for independence of the Emperor, and for that reason
sided, at times, with the Pope. But the patriarchs of Constantinople,
though willing to submit to the Emperor, refused to regard them-
selves as in any degree subject to papal authority. At times, when
the Emperor needed the Pope's help against barbarians in Italy,
he was more friendly to the Pope than the patriarch of Constanti-
nople was. The main cause of the ultimate separation of the
Eastern and the Western Churches was the refusal of the former
to submit to papal jurisdiction.
After the defeat of the Byzantines by the Lombards, the popes
had reason to fear that they also would be conquered by these
vigorous barbarians. They saved themselves by an alliance with
the Franks, who, under Charlemagne, conquered Italy and Ger-
many. This alliance produced the Holy Roman Empire, which
had a constitution that assumed harmony between Pope and
Emperor. The power of the Carolingian dynasty, however, decayed
408
THE PAPACY IN THE DARK AGES
rapidly. At first, the Pope reaped the advantage of this decay, and
in the latter half of the ninth century Nicholas I raised the papal
power to hitherto unexampled heights. The general anarchy, how-
ever, led to the practical independence of the Roman aristocracy,
which, in the tenth century, controlled the papacy, with disastrous
results. The way in which, by a great movement of reform, the
papacy, and the Church generally, was saved from subordination
to the feudal aristocracy, will be the subject of a later chapter.
In the seventh century, Rome was still subject to the military
power of the emperors, and popes had to obey or suffer. Some, e.g.
Honorius, obeyed, even to the point of heresy; others, e.g. Martin
I, resisted, and were imprisoned by the Emperor. From 685 to
752, most of the popes were Syrians or Greeks. Gradually, how-
ever, as the Lombards acquired more and more of Italy, Byzantine
power declined. The Emperor Leo the Isaurian, in 726, issued his
iconoclast decree, which was regarded as heretical, not only
throughout the West, but by a large party in the East. This the
popes resisted vigorously and successfully; at last, in 787, under
the Empress Irene (at first as regent), the East abandoned the
iconoclast heresy. Meanwhile, however, events in the West had
put an end forever to the control of Byzantium over the papacy.
In about the year 751, the Lombards captured Ravenna, the
capital of Byzantine Italy. This event, while it exposed the popes
to great danger from the Lombards, freed them from all depen-
dence on the Greek emperors. The popes had preferred the Greeks
to the Lombards for several reasons. First, the authority of the
emperors was legitimate, whereas barbarian kings, unless recog-
nized by the emperors, were regarded as usurpers. Second, the
Greeks were civilized. Third, the Lombards were nationalists,
whereas the Church retained Roman internationalism. Fourth, the
Lombards had been Arians, and some odium still clung to them
after their conversion.
The Lombards, under King Liutprand, attempted to conquer
Rome in 739, and were hotly opposed by Pope Gregory III, who
turned to the Franks for aid The Merovingian kings, the descen-
dants of Clovis, had lost all real power in the Prankish kingdom,
which was governed by the "Mayors of the Palace." At this time
the Mayor of the Palace was an exceptionally vigorous and able
man, Charles Mattel, like William the Conqueror a bastard. In
732 he had won the decisive battle of Tours against the Moors
409
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
thereby saving Fiance for Christendom. This should have won
him the gratitude of the Church, but financial necessity led him
to seize some Church lands, which much diminished ecclesiastical
appreciation of his merits. However, he and Gregory III both died
in 741, and his successor Pepin was wholly satisfactory to the
Church. Pope Stephen III, in 754, to escape the Lombards
crossed the Alps and visited Pepin, when a bargain was struck
which proved highly advantageous to both parties. The Pope
needed military protection, but Pepin needed something that only
the Pope could bestow: the legitimization of his title as king in
place of the last of the Merovingians. In return for this, Pepin
bestowed on the Pope Ravenna and all the territory of the former
Exarchate in Italy. Since it could not be expected that Constanti-
nople would recognize such a gift, this involved* political severance
from the Eastern Empire.
If the popes had remained subject to the Greek emperors, the
development of the Catholic Church would have been very
different. In the Eastern Church, the patriarch of Constantinople
never acquired either that independence of secular authority or
that superiority to other ecclesiastics that was achieved by the
Pope. Originally all bishops were considered equal, and to a
considerable extent this view persisted in the East. Moreover,
there were other Eastern patriarchs, at Alexandria, Antioch, and
Jerusalem, whereas the Pope was the only patriarch in the West.
(This fact, however, lost its importance after the Mohammedan
conquest.) In the West, but not in the East, the laity were mostly
illiterate for many centuries, and this gave the Church an advantage
in the West which it did not possess in the East. The prestige of
Rome surpassed that of any Eastern city, for it combined the
imperial tradition with legends of the martyrdom of Peter and
Paul, and of Peter as first Pope. The Emperor's prestige might
have sufficed to cope with that of the Pope, but no Western
monarch's could. The Holy Roman emperors were often destitute
of real power; moreover they only became emperors when the
Pope crowned them. For all these reasons, the emancipation of
the Pope from Byzantine domination was essential both to the
independence of the Chuith in relation to secular monarchs, and
to the ultimate establishment of the papal monarchy in the
government of the Western Church.
Certain documents of great importance, the 4< Donation of
THE PAPACY IN THE DARK AGES
Constantine" and the False Decretals, belong to this period. The
False Decretals need not concern us, but something must be
said of the Donation of Constantine. In order to give an air of
antique legality to Pepin's gift, churchmen forged a document,
purporting to be a decree issued by the Emperor Constantine,
by which, when he founded the New Rome, he bestowed upon
the Pope the old Rome and all its Western territories. This bequest,
which was the basis of the Pope's temporal power, was accepted
as genuine by the whole of the subsequent Middle Ages. It was
first rejected as a forgery, in the time of the Renaissance, by
Lorenzo Valla in 1439. He had written a book "on the elegancies
of the Latin language," which, naturally, were absent in a pro-
duction of the eighth century. Oddly enough, after he had pub-
lished his book against the Donation of Constantine, as well as a
treatise in praise of Epicurus, he was made apostolic secretary by
Pope Nicholas V, who cared more for latinity than for the Church.
Nicholas V did not, however, propose to give up the States of the
Church, though the Pope's title to them had been based upon the
supposed Donation.
The contents of this remarkable document are summarized by
C. Delislc Burns as follows:1
After a summary of the Nicene creed, the fall of Adam, and the
birth of Christ, Constantine says he was suffering from leprosy,
that doctors were useless, and that he therefore approached "the
priests of the Capitol." They proposed that he should slaughter
several infants and be washed in their blood, but owing to their
mothers' tears he restored them. That night Peter and Paul
appeared to him and said that Pope Sylvester was hiding in a cave
on Soracte, and would cure him. He went to Soracte, where the
"universal Pope*' told him Peter and Paul were apostles, not gods,
showed him portraits which he recognized from his vision, and
admitted it before all his "satraps." Pope Sylvester thereupon
assigned him a period of penance in a hair shirt ; then he baptized
him, when he saw a hand from heaven touching him. He was
cured of leprosy, and gave up worshipping idols. Then "with all
his satraps, the Senate, his nobles and the whole Roman people
he thought it good to grant supreme power to the See of Peter/'
and superiority over Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Con-
stantinople. He then built a church in his palace of the Lateran.
On the Pope he conferred his crown, tiara, and imperial garments.
1 I am quoting t still unpublished book, Th* Firti Europe.
4"
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
He placed a tiara on the Pope's head and held the reins of his
horse. He left to "Silvester and his successors Rome and all the
provinces, districts and cities of Italy and the West to be subject
to the Roman Church forever"; he then moved East "because,
where the princedom of bishops and the head of the Christian
religion has been established by the heavenly Emperor it is not
just that an earthly Emperor should have power."
The Lombards did not tamely submit to Pepin and the Pope,
but in repeated wars with the Franks they were worsted. At last,
in 774, Pepin's son Charlemagne marched into Italy, completely
defeated the Lombards, had himself recognized as their king,
and then occupied Rome, where he confirmed Pepin's donation.
The Popes of his day, Hadrian and Leo HI, found it to their
advantage to further his schemes in every way. He conquered
most of Germany, converted the Saxons by vigorous persecution,
and finally, in his own person, revived the Western Empire, being
crowned Emperor by the Pope in Rome on Christmas Day,
A.D. 800.
The foundation of the Holy Roman Empire marks an epoch in
medieval theory, though much less in medieval practice. The
Middle Ages were peculiarly addicted to legal fictions, and until
this time the fiction had persisted that the Western provinces of
the former Roman Empire were still subject, de jure, to the
Emperor in Constantinople, who was regarded as the sole source
of legal authority. Charlemagne, an adept in legal fictions, main-
tained that the throne of the Empire was vacant, because the
reigning Eastern sovereign Irene (who called herself emperor, not
empress) was a usurper, since no woman could be emperor.
Charles derived his claim to legitimacy from the Pope. There was
thus, from the first, a curious interdependence of pope and
emperor. No one could be emperor unless crowned by the Pope
in Rome; on the other hand, for some centuries, every strong
emperor claimed the right to appoint or depose popes. The
medieval theory of legitimate power depended upon both emperor
and pope; their mutual dependence was galling to both, but for
centuries inescapable. There was constant friction, with advantage
now to one side, now to the other. At last, in the thirteenth century,
the conflict became irreconcilable. The Pope was victorious, but
lost moral authority shortly afterwards. The Pope and the Holy
Roman Emperor both survived, the Pope to the present day, the
THE PAPACY IN THE DARK AGES
Emperor to the time of Napoleon. But the elaborate medieval
theory that had been built up concerning their respective powers
ceased to be effective during the fifteenth century. The unity of
Christendom, which it maintained, was destroyed by the power
of the French, Spanish, and English monarchies in the secular
sphere, and by the Reformation in the sphere of religion.
The character of Charles the Great and his entourage is thus
summed up by Dr. Gerhard Seeliger:1
Vigorous life was developed at Charles's court. We see there
magnificence and genius, but immorality also. For Charles was
not particular about the people he drew round him. He himself
was no model, and he suffered the greatest licence in those whom
he liked and found useful. As "Holy Emperor" he was addressed,
though his life exhibited little holiness. He is so addressed by
Alcuin, who also praises the Emperor's beautiful daughter Rotrud
as distinguished for her virtues in spite of her having borne a son
to Count Rodenc of Maine, though not his wife. Charles would not
be separated from his daughters, he would not allow their
marriage, and he was therefore obliged to accept the consequences.
The other daughter, Bertha, also had two sons by the pious Abbot
Angilbert of St. Riquier. In fact the court of Charles was a centre
of very loose life.
Charlemagne was a vigorous barbarian, politically in alliance
with the Church, but not unduly burdened with personal piety
He could not read or write, but he inaugurated a literary renais-
sance. He was dissolute in his life, and unduly fond of his daughters,
but he did all in his power to promote holy living among his
subjects. He, like his father Pepin, made skilful use of the zeal of
missionaries to promote his influence in Germany, but he saw to
it that Popes obeyed his orders. They did this the more willingly,
because Rome had become a barbarous city, in which the person
of the Pope was not safe without external protection, and papal
elections had degenerated into disorderly faction fights. In 799,
local enemies seized the Pope, imprisoned him, and threatened to
blind him. During Charles's lifetime, it seemed as if a new order
would be inaugurated; but after his death little survived except
a theory.
The gains of the Church, and more particularly of the papacy,
were wort solid than those of the Western Empire. England had
1 In Cambridge Medieval History, II, 663.
4*3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
been converted by a monastic mission under the orders of Gregory
the Great, and remained much more subject to Rome than were
the countries with bishops accustomed to local autonomy. The
conversion of Germany was largely the work of St. Boniface
(680-754), an English missionary, who was a friend of Charles
Martel and Pepin, and completely faithful to the Pope. Boniface
founded many monasteries in Germany ; his friend St. Gall founded
the Swiss monastery which bears his name. According to some
authorities, Boniface anointed Pepin as king with a ritual taken
from the First Book of Kings.
St. Boniface was a native of Devonshire, educated at Exeter and
Winchester. He went to Frisia in 716, but soon had to return. In
717 he went to Rome, and in 719 Pope Gregory II sent him to
Germany to convert the Germans and to combat the influence of
the Irish missionaries (who, it will be remembered, erred as to
the date of Easter and the shape of the tonsure). After considerable
successes, he returned to Rome in 722, where he was made bishop
by Gregory II, to whom he took an oath of obedience. The Pope
gave him a letter to Charles Martel, and charged him to suppress
heresy in addition to converting the heathen. In 732 he became
archbishop; in 738 he visited Rome a third time. In 741 Pope
Zacharias made him legate, and charged him to reform the
Prankish Church. He founded the abbey of Fulda, to which he
gave a rule stricter than the Benedictine. Then he had a con-
troversy with an Irish bishop of Salzburg, named Virgil, who
maintained that there are other worlds than ours, but was, never-
theless, canonized. In 754, after returning to Frisia, Boniface and
his companions were massacred by the heathen. It was owing to
him that German Christianity was papal, not Irish.
English monasteries, particularly those of Yorkshire, were of
great importance at this time. Such civilization as had existed in
Roman Britain had disappeared, and the new civilization intro-
duced by Christian missionaries centred entirely round the
Benedictine abbeys, which owed everything directly to Rome.
The Venerable Bede was a monk at Jarrow. His pupil Ecgbert,
first archbishop of York, founded a cathedral school, where Alcuin
was educated.
Alcuin is an important figure in the culture of the time. He went
to Rome in 780, and in the course of his journey met Charlemagne
at Parma. The Emperor employed him to teach Latin to the Franks
4*4
THE PAPACY IN THE DARK AGES
and to educate the royal family. He spent a considerable part of
his life at the court of Charlemagne, engaged in teaching and in
founding schools. At the end of his life he was abbot of St. Martin's
at Tours. He wrote a number of books, including a verse history
of the church at York. The emperor, though uneducated, had a
considerable belief in the value of culture, and for a brief period
diminished the darkness of the dark ages. But his work in this
direction was ephemeral. The culture of Yorkshire was for a time
destroyed by the Danes, that of France was damaged by the
Normans. The Saracens raided Southern Italy, conquered Sicily,
and in 846 even attacked Rome. On the whole, the tenth century
was, in Western Christendom, about the darkest epoch; for the
ninth is redeemed by the English ecclesiastics and by the as-
tonishing figure of Johannes Scotus, as to whom I shall have
more to say presently.
The decay of Carolingian power after the death of Charlemagne
and the division of his empire redounded, at first, to the advantage
of the papacy. Pope Nicholas I (858-67) raised papal power to a
far greater height than it had ever attained before. He quarrelled
with the Emperors of the East and the West, with King Charles
the Bald of France and King Lothar II of Lorraine, and with the
episcopate of nearly every Christian country; but in almost all
his quarrels he was successful. The clergy in many regions had
become dependent on the local princes, and he set to work to
remedy this state of affairs. His two greatest controversies con-
cerned the divorce of Lothar II and the uncanonical deposition
of Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople. The power of the Church,
throughout the Middle Ages, had a great deal to do with royal
divorces. Kings were men of headstrong passions, who felt that
the indissolubility of marriage was a doctrine for subjects only.
The Church, however, could alone solemnize a marriage, and if
the Church declared a marriage invalid, a disputed succession and
a dynastic war were very likely to result. The Church, therefore,
was in a very strong position in opposing royal divorces and
irregular marriages. In England, it lost this position under Henry
VIII, but recovered it under Edward VIII.
When Lothar II demanded a divorce; the clergy of his kingdom
agreed. Pope Nicholas, however, deposed the bishops who had
acquiesced, and totally refused to admit the King's plea for divorce.
Lothar's brother, the Emperor Louis II, thereupon inarched on
415
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Rome with the intention of overawing the Pope; but superstitious
terrors prevailed, and he retired. In the end, the Pope's will
prevailed.
The business of the Patriarch Ignatius was interesting, as
showing that the Pope could still assert himself in the East.
Ignatius, who was obnoxious to the Regent Bardas, was deposed,
and Photius, hitherto a layman, was elevated to his place. The
Byzantine government asked the Pope to sanction this proceeding.
He sent two legates to inquire into the matter; when they arrived
in Constantinople, they were terrorized, and gave their assent.
For some time, the facts were concealed from the Pope, but when
he came to know them, he took a high line. He summoned a council
in Rome to consider the question ; he deposed one of the legates
from his bishopric, and also the archbishop of Syracuse, who had
consecrated Photius ; he anathematized Photius, deposed all whom
he had ordained, and restored all who had been deposed for
opposing him. The Emperor Michael III was furious, and wrote
the Pope an angry letter, but the Pope replied: "The day of king-
priests and emperor-pontiffs is past, Christianity has separated
the two functions, and Christian emperors have need of the Pope
in view of the life eternal, whereas popes have no need of emperors
except as regards temporal things." Photius and the Emperor
retorted by summoning a council, which excommunicated the
Pope and declared the Roman Church heretical. Soon after this,
however, Michael III was murdered, and his successor Basil
restored Ignatius, explicitly recognizing papal jurisdiction in the
matter. This triumph happened just after the death of Nicholas,
and was attributable almost entirely to the accidents of palace
revolutions. After the death of Ignatius, Photius again became
patriarch, and the split between the Eastern and the Western
Churches was widened. Thus it cannot be said that Nicholas's
policy in this matter was victorious in the long run.
Nicholas had almost more difficulty in imposing his will
upon the episcopate than upon kings. Archbishops had come to
consider themselves very great men, and they were reluctant to
submit tamely to an ecclesiastical monarch. He maintained, how-
ever, that bishops owe their existence to the Pope, and while he
lived he succeeded, on the whole, in making this view prevail.
There was, throughout these centuries, great doubt as to how
bishops should be appointed. Originally they were elected by the
THE PAPACY IN THB DARK AGES
acclamation of the faithful in their cathedral city; then, frequently,
by a synod of neighbouring bishops ; then, sometimes by the King,
and sometimes by the Pope. Bishops could be deposed for grave
causes, but it was not clear whether they should be tried by the
Pope or by a provincial synod. All these uncertainties made the
powers of an office dependent upon the energy and astuteness of
its holders. Nicholas stretched papal power to the utmost limits
of which it was then capable; under his successors, it sank again
to a very low ebb.
During the tenth century, the papacy was completely under the
control of the local Roman aristocracy. There was, as yet, no fixed
rule as to the election of Popes ; sometimes they owed their ele-
vation to popular acclaim, sometimes to emperors or kings, and
sometimes, as in the tenth century, to the holders of local urban
power in Rome. Rome was, at this time, not a civilized city, as it
had still been in the time of Gregory the Great. At times there
were faction fights; at other times some rich family acquired
control by a combination of violence and corruption. The disorder
and weakness of Western Europe was so great at this period that
Christendom might have seemed in danger of complete destruction.
The Emperor and the King of France were powerless to curb the
anarchy produced in their realms by feudal potentates who were
nominally their vassals. The Hungarians made raids on Northern
Italy. The Normans raided the French coast, until, in 911, they
were given Normandy and in return became Christians. But the
greatest danger in Italy and Southern France came from the
Saracens, who could not be converted, and had no reverence for
the Church. They completed the conquest of Sicily about the
end of the ninth century; they were established on the River
Garigliano, near Naples; they destroyed Monte Cassino and other
great monasteries; they had a settlement on the coast of Provence,
whence they raided Italy and the Alpine valleys, interrupting
traffic between Rome and the North.
The conquest of Italy by the Saracens was prevented by the
Eastern Empire, which overcame the Saracens of the Garigliano
in 9x5. But it was not strong enough to govern Rome, as it had
done after Justinian's conquest, and the papacy became, for about
a hundred years, a perquisite of the Roman aristocracy or of the
counts of Tusculum. The most powerful Romans, at the beginning
of the tenth century, were the "Senator" Theophylact and his
Hillary of Wttto* 1'kOoiopk*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
daughter Marozia, in whose family the papacy nearly became
hereditary. Marozia had several husbands in succession, and an
unknown number of lovers. One of the latter she elevated to the
papacy, under the title of Sergius II (904-11). His and her son
was Pope John XI (931-36); her grandson was John XII
(955-64), who became Pope at the age of sixteen and "completed
the debasement of the papacy by his debauched life and the orgies
of which the Lateran palace soon became the scene."1 Marozia
is presumably the basis for the legend of a female "Pope Joan."
The popes of this period naturally lost whatever influence their
predecessors had retained in the East. They lost also the power,
which Nicholas I had successfully exercised, over bishops north
of the Alps. Provincial councils asserted their complete inde-
pendence of the Pope, but they failed to maintain independence
of sovereigns and feudal lords. Bishops, more and more, became
assimilated to lay feudal magnates. "The Church itself thus
appears as the victim of the same anarchy in which lay society is
weltering; all evil appetites range unchecked, and, more than ever,
such of the clergy as still retain some concern for religion and
for the salvation of the souls committed to their charge mourn
over the universal decadence and direct the eyes of the faithful
towards the spectre of the end of the world and of the I-ast
Judgment."2
It is a mistake, however, to suppose that a special dread of the
end of the world in the year 1000 prevailed at this time, as used
to be thought. Christians, from St. Paul onward, believed the
end of the world to be at hand, but they went on with their
ordinary business none the less.
The year 1000 may be conveniently taken as marking the end
of the lowest depth to which the civilization of Western Europe
sank. From this point the upward movement began which con-
tinued till 1914. In the beginning, progress was mainly due to
monastic reform. Outside the monastic orders, the clergy had
become, for the most part, violent, immoral, and worldly; they
were corrupted by the wealth and power that they owed to the
benefactions of the pious. The same thing happened, over and
over again, even to the monastic orders; but reformers, with new
zeal, revived their moral force as often as it had decayed.
Another reason which makes the year 1000 a turning-point is
1 Cambridge Medieval History, HI, 455. ' Ibid
418
THE PAPACY IN THE DARK AGES
the cessation, at about this time, of conquest by both Moham-
medans and northern barbarians, so far at least as Western Europe
is concerned. Goths, Lombards, Hungarians, and Normans came
in successive waves; each horde in turn was christianized, but
each in turn weakened the civilized tradition. The Western Empire
broke up into many barbarian kingdoms ; the kings lost authority
over their vassals; there was universal anarchy, with perpetual
violence both on a large and on a small scale. At last all the races
of vigorous northern conquerors had been converted to Chris-
tianity, and had acquired settled habitations. The Normans, who
were the last comers, proved peculiarly capable of civilization.
They reconquered Sicily from the Saracens, and made Italy safe
from the Mohammedans. They brought England back into the
Roman world, from which the Danes had largely excluded it.
Once settled in Normandy, they allowed France to revive, and
helped materially in the process.
Our use of the phrase "the Dark Ages" to cover the period from
600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe.
In China, this period includes the time of the Tang dynasty, the
greatest age of Chinese poetry, and in many other ways a most
remarkable epoch. From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization
of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time
was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary. No one could
have guessed that Western Europe would later become dominant,
both in power and in culture. To us, it seems that West-European
civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view. Most of the
cultural content of our civilization comes to us from the Eastern
Mediterranean, from Greeks and Jews. As for power: Western
Europe was dominant from the Punic Wars to the fall of Rome —
say, roughly, during the six centuries from 200 B.C. to A.O. 400.
After that time, no State in Western Europe could compare in
power with China, Japan, or the Caliphate.
Our superiority since the Renaissance is due partly to science
and scientific technique, partly to political institutions slowly built
up during the Middle Ages. There is no reason, in the nature of
things, why this superiority should continue. In the present war,
great military strength has been shown by Russia, China, and
Japan. All these combine Western technique with Eastern ideology
—Byzantine, Confucian, or Shinto. India, if liberated, will con-
tribute another Oriental element. It seems not unlikely that,
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
during the next few centuries, civilization, if it survives, will have
greater diversity than it has had since the Renaissance. There is
an imperialism of culture which is harder to overcome than the
imperialism of power. Long after the Western Empire fell — indeed
until the Reformation — all European culture retained a tincture
of Roman imperialism. It now has, for us, a West-European
imperialistic flavour. I think that, if we are to feel at home in the
world after the present war, we shall have to admit Asia to equality
in our thoughts, not only politically, but culturally. What changes
this will bring about, I do not know, but I am convinced that they
will be profound and of the greatest importance.
420
]
J\
Chapter VIII
JOHN THE SCOT
JOHN THE SCOT, or Johannes Scotus, to which is sometimes
added Eriugena or Erigena,1 is the most astonishing person of
the ninth century ; he would have been less surprising if he had
lived in the fifth or the fifteenth century. He was an Irishman, a
Neoplatonist, an accomplished Greek scholar, a Pelagian, a pan-
theist. He spent much of his life under the patronage of Charles
the Bald, king of France, and though he was certainly far from
orthodox, yet, so far as we know, he escaped persecution. He set
reason above faith, and cared nothing for the authority of eccle-
siastics; yet his arbitrament was invoked to settle their controversies,
To understand the occurrence of such a man, we must turn our
attention first to Irish culture in the centuries following St. Patrick.
Apart from the extremely painful fact that St. Patrick was an
Englishman, there are two other scarcely less painful circum-
stances: first, that there were Christians in Ireland before he went
there; second, that, whatever he may have done for Irish Chris-
tianity, it was not to him that Irish culture was due. At the time
of the invasion of Gaul (says a Gaulish author), first by Attila,
then by the Goths, Vandals, and Alaric, "all the learned men on
their side the sea fled, and in the countries beyond sea, namely
Ireland, and wherever else they betook themselves, brought to
the inhabitants of those regions an enormous advance in learning."2
If any of these men sought refuge in England, the Angles and
Saxons and Jutes must have mopped them up ; but those who went
to Ireland succeeded, in combination with the missionaries, in
transplanting a great deal of the knowledge and civilization that
was disappearing from the Continent. There is good reason to
believe that, throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries,
a knowledge of Greek, as well as a considerable familiarity with
Latin classics, survived among the Irish.3 Greek was known in
1 This addition it redundant; it would make his name "Iriah John
from Ireland.*1 In the ninth century "Scotuft" means "Irishman."
1 Cambridge Medieval History*, III, 501.
* This question is discussed carefully in the Cambridge Medieval
History, III, chap, xix, and the conclusion is in favour of Irish knowledge
of Greek.
431
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
England from the time of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury
(669-90)9 who was himself a Greek, educated at Athens ; it may
also have become known, in the North, through Irish missionaries.
"During the latter part of the seventh century/' says Montague
James, "it was in Ireland that the thirst for knowledge was keenest,
and the work of teaching was most actively carried on. There the
Latin language (and in a less degree the Greek) was studied from
a scholar's point of view. ... It was when, impelled in the first
instance by missionary zeal, and later by troubled conditions at
home, they passed over in large numbers to the Continent, that
they became instrumental in rescuing fragments of the literature
which they had already learnt to value."1 Heiric of Auxerre,
about 876, describes this influx of Irish scholars: "Ireland,
despising the dangers of the sea, is migrating almost en masse
with her crowd of philosophers to our, shores, and all the most
learned doom themselves to voluntary exile to attend the bidding
of Solomon the wise"— i.e. King Charles the Bald.2
The lives of learned men have at many times been perforce
nomadic. At the beginning of Greek philosophy, many of the
philosophers were refugees from the Persians; at the end of it,
in the time of Justinian, they became refugees to the Persians. In
the fifth century, as we have just seen, men of learning fled from
Gaul to the Western Isles to escape the Germans; in the ninth
century-, they fled back from England and Ireland to escape the
Scandinavians. In our own day, German philosophers have to fly
even further West to escape their compatriots. I wonder whether
it will be equally long before a return flight takes place.
Too little is known of the Irish in the days when they were
preserving for Europe the tradition of classical culture. This
learning was connected with monasteries, and was full of piety,
as their penitentials show; but it does not seem to have been much
concerned with theological niceties. Being monastic rather than
episcopal, it had not the administrative outlook that characterized
Continental ecclesiastics from Gregory the Great onwards. And
being in the main cut off from effective contact with Rome, it still
regarded the Pope as he was regarded in the time of St. Ambrose,
not as he came to be regarded later. Peiagius, though probably a
Briton, is thought by some to have been an Irishman. It is likely
that his heresy survived in Ireland, where authority could not
1 Lor. €»$., pp. 507-8. • Loc. «'!., p. 524.
422
JOHN THE SCOT
stamp it out, as it did, with difficulty, in Gaul. These circumstances
do something to account for the extraordinary freedom and fresh-
ness of John the Scot's speculations.
The beginning and the end of John the Scot's life are unknown ;
we know only the middle period, during which he was employed
by the king of France. He is supposed to have been born about
800, and to have died about 877, but both dates are guesswork.
He was in France during the papacy of Pope Nicholas I, and we
meet again, in his life, the characters who appear in connection
with that Pope, such as Charles the Bald and the Emperor Michael
and the Pope himself.
John was invited to France by Charles the Bald about the year
843, and was by him placed at the head of the court school. A
dispute as to predestination and free will had arisen between
Gottschalk, a monk, and the important ecclesiastic Hincmar, Arch-
bishop of Rheims. The monk was predestinarian, the archbishop
libertarian. John supported the archbishop in a treatise On Divine
Predestination, but his support went too far for prudence. The
subject was a thorny one; Augustine had dealt with it in his
writings against Pclagius, but it was dangerous to agree with
Augustine and still more dangerous to disagree with him explicitly.
John supported free will, and this might have passed uncensored ;
but what roused indignation was the purely philosophic character
of his argument. Not that he professed to controvert anything
accepted in theology, but that he maintained the equal, or even
superior, authority of a philosophy independent of revelation. He
contended that reason and revelation are both sources of truth,
and therefore cannot conflict; but if they ever seem to conflict,
reason is to be preferred. True religion, he said, is true philosophy;
but, conversely, true philosophy is true religion. His work was
condemned by two councils, in 855 and 859; the first of these
described it as "Scots porridge."
He escaped punishment, however, owing to the support of the
king, with whom he seems to have been on familiar terms. If
William of Malmesbury is to be believed, the king, when John
was dining with him, asked: "What separates a Scot from a sot?"
and John replied, "Only the dinner table." The king died in 877,
and after this date nothing is known as to John. Some think that
he also died in that year. There are legends that he was invited to
England by Alfred the Great, that he became abbot of Malmesbury
423
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
or Athelncy, and was murdered by the monks. This misfortune,
however, seems to have befallen some other John.
John's next work was a translation from the Greek of the
pseudo-Bionysius. This was a work which had great fame in the
early Middle Ages. When St. Paul preached in Athens, "certain
men clave unto him, and believed : among the which was Dionysius
the Areopagite" (Acts xvii. 34). Nothing more is now known
about this man, but in the Middle Ages a great deal more was
known. He had travelled to France, and founded the abbey of
St. Denis; so at least it was said by Hilduin, who was abbot just
before John's arrival in France. Moreover, he was the reputed
author of an important work reconciling Neoplatonism with
Christianity. The date of this work is unknown ; it was certainly
before 500 and after Plotinus. It was widely known and admired
in the East, but in the West it was not generally known until the
Greek Emperor Michael, in 827, sent a copy to Louis the Pious,
who gave it to the above-mentioned Abbot Hilduin. He, believing
it to have been written by St. Paul's disciple, the reputed founder
of his abbey, would have liked to know what its contents were ;
but nobody could translate the Greek until John appeared. He
accomplished the translation, which he must have done with
pleasure, as his own opinions were in close accord with those of
the pseudo-Dionysius, who, from that time onward, had a great
influence on Catholic philosophy in the West.
John's translation was sent to Pope Nicholas in 860. The Pope
was offended because his permission had not been sought before
the work was published, and he ordered Charles to send John to
Rome — an order which was ignored. But as to the substance, and
more especially the scholarship shown in the translation, he had
no fault to find. His librarian Anastasius, an excellent Grecian, to
whom he submitted it for an opinion, was astonished that a man
from a remote and barbarous country could have possessed such
a profound knowledge of Greek.
John's greatest work was called (in Greek) On the Division o]
Nature. This book was what, in scholastic times, would have been
termed "realist"; that is to say, it maintained, with Plato, that
universal* are anterior to particulars. He includes in "Nature" not
only what is, but also what is not. The whole of Nature is divided
into four classes: (i) what creates and is not created, (2) what
creates and is created, (3) what is created but does not create,
4*4
JOHN THB SCOT
(4) what neither creates nor is created. The first, obviously, is
God. The second is the (Platonic) ideas, which subsist in God.
The third is things in space and time. The fourth, surprisingly, is
again God, not as Creator, but as the End and Purpose of all things.
Everything that emanates from God strives to return to Him;
thus the end of all such things is the same as their beginning. The
bridge between the One and the many is the Logos.
In the realm of not-being he includes various things, for example,
physical objects, which do not belong to the intelligible world,
and sin, since it means loss of the divine pattern. That which
creates and is not created alone has essential subsistence ; it is the
essence of all things. God is the beginning, middle, and end of
things. God's essence is unknowable to men, and even to angels.
Even to Himself He is, in a sense, unknowable: "God does not
know himself, what He is, because He is not a what\ in a certain
respect He is incomprehensible to Himself and to every intellect."1
In the being of things God's being can be seen; in their order,
His wisdom; in their movement, His life. His being is the Father,
His wisdom the Son, His life the Holy Ghost. But Dionysius is
right in saying that no name can be ttuly asserted of God. There
is an affirmative theology, in which He is said to be truth, goodness,
essence, etc., but such affirmations are only symbolically true, for
all such predicates have an opposite, but God has no opposite.
The class of things that both create and are created embraces
the whole of the prime causes, or prototypes, or Platonic ideas.
The total ot these prime causes is die Logos. The world of ideas
is eternal, and yet created. Under the influence of the Holy Ghost,
these prime causes give rise to the world of particular things, the
materiality of which U illusory. When it is said that God created
things out of "nothing," this "nothing" is to be understood as
God Himself, in the sense in which He transcends all knowledge.
Creation is an eternal process: the substance of all finite things
is God. The creature is not a being distinct from God. The
creature subsists in God, and God manifests Himself in the
creature in an ineffable manner. "The Holy Trinity loves Itself
in us and in Itself ;a It sees and moves Itself."
1 Cf. Bradley on the inadequacy of all cognition. He holds that no
truth is quite true, but the Ix>st available truth is not intellectually
corrigible.
9 Cf. Spinox*.
4*5
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Sin has its source in freedom: it arose because man turned
towards himself instead of towards God. Evil does not have its
ground in God, for in God there is no idea of evil. Evil is not-
being and has no ground, for if it had a ground it would be
necessary. Evil is a privation of good.
The Logos is the principle that brings the many back to the
One, and man back to God; it is thus the Saviour of the world.
By union with God, the part of man that effects union becomes
divine.
John disagrees with the Aristotelians in refusing substantiality
to particular things. He calls Plato the summit of philosophers.
But the first three of his kinds of being are derived indirectly from
Aristotle's moving-not-moved, moving-and- moved, moved-but-
not-moving. The fourth kind of being in John's system, that which
neither creates nor is created, is derived from the doctrine of
Dionysius, that all things return into God.
The unorthodoxy of John the Scot is evident from the above
summary. His pantheism, which refuses substantial reality to
creatures, is contrary to Christian doctrine. His interpretation of
the creation out of "nothing* is not such as any prudent theologian
could accept. His Trinity, which closely resembles that of Plotinus,
fails to preserve the equality of the Three Persons, although he
tries to safeguard himself on this point. His independence of mind
is shown by these heresies, and is astonishing in the ninth century.
His Neoplatonic outlook may perhaps have been common in
Ireland, as it was among the Greek Fathers of the fourth and fifth
centuries. It may be that, if we knew more about Irish Christianity
from the fifth to the ninth century, we should find him less sur-
prising. On the other hand, it may be that most of what is heretical
in him is to be attributed to the influence of the pseu do- Dionysius,
who, because of his supposed connection with St. Paul, was
mistakenly believed to be orthodox.
His view of creation as timeless is, of course, also heretical and
compels him to say that the account in Genesis is allegorical.
Paradise and the fall are not to be taken literally. Like all pantheists,
he has difficulties about sin. He holds that man was originally
without sin, and when hfe was without sin he was without dis-
tinction of sex. This, of course, contradicts the statement "male
and female created he them." According to John, it was only as
the result of sin that human beings were divided into male and
JOHN THB SCOT
female. Woman embodies man's sensuous and fallen nature. In
the end, distinction of sex will again disappear, and we shall have
a purely spiritual body.1 Sin consists in misdirected will, in falsely
supposing something good which is not so. Its punishment is
natural ; it consists in discovering the vanity of sinful desires. But
punishment is not eternal. Like Origen, John holds that even the
devils will be saved at last, though later than other people.
John's translation of the pseudo-Dionysius had a great influence
on medieval thought, but his magnum opus on the division of
Nature had very little. It was repeatedly condemned as heretical,
and at last, in 1225, Pope Honorius III ordered all copies of it
to be burnt. Fortunately this order was not efficiently carried out.
1 Contrast St. Augustine.
4*7
Chapter IX
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE
ELEVENTH CENTURY
FOR the first time since the fall of the Western Empire, Europe,
during the eleventh century, made rapid progress not sub-
sequently lost. There had been progress of a sort during the
Carolingian renaissance, but it proved to be not solid. In the
eleventh century, the improvement was lasting and many-sided.
It began with monastic reform; it then extended to the papacy
and Church government ; towards the end of the century it pro-
duced the first scholastic philosophers. The Saracens were expelled
from Sicily by the Normans; the Hungarians, having become
Christians, ceased to be marauders ; the conquests of the Normans
in France and England saved those countries from further Scandi-
navian incursions. Architecture, which had been barbaric except
where Byzantine influence prevailed, attained sudden sublimity.
The level of education rose enormously among the clergy, and
considerably in the lay aristocracy.
The reform movement, in its earlier stages, was, in the minds of
its promoters, actuated exclusively by moral motives. The clergy,
both regular and secular, had fallen into bad ways, and earnest
men set to work to make them live more in accordance with their
principles. But behind this purely moral motive there was another,
at first perhaps unconscious, but gradually becoming more and
more open. This motive was to complete the separation between
clergy and laity, and, in so doing, to increase the power of the
former. It was therefore natural that the victory of reform in the
Church should lead straight on to a violent conflict between
Emperor and Pope.
Priests had formed a separate and powerful caste in Egypt,
Babylonia, and Persia, but not in Greece or Rome. In the primitive
Christian Church, the distinction between clergy and laity arose
gradually; when we read of "bishops" in the New Testament, the
word does not mean what it has come to mean to us. The separa-
tion of the clergy from the rest of the population had two aspects,
one doctrinal, the other political; the political aspect depended
upon the doctrinal. The clergy possessed certain miraculous
4*8
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
powers, especially in connection with the sacraments— except
baptism, which could be performed by laymen. Without the help
of the clergy, marriage, absolution, and extreme unction were
impossible. Even more important, in the Middle Ages, was tran-
substantiation: only a priest could perform the miracle of the
mass. It was not until the eleventh century, in 1079, that the
doctrine of transubstantiation became an article of faith, though
it had been generally believed for a long time.
Owing to their miraculous powers, priests could determine
whether a man should spend eternity in heaven or in hell. If he
died while excommunicate, he went to hell ; if he died after a priest
had performed all the proper ceremonies, he would ultimately go
to heaven provided he had duly repented and confessed. Before
going to heaven, however, he would have to spend some time —
perhaps a very long time — suffering the pains of purgatory.
Priests could shorten this time by saying masses for his soul,
which they were willing to do for a suitable money payment.
All this, it must be understood, was genuinely and firmly be-
lieved both by priests and by laity; it was not merely a creed
officially professed. Over and over again, die miraculous powers
of the clergy gave them the victory over powerful princes at the
head of their armies. This power, however, was limited in two
ways: by reckless outbreaks of passion on the part of furious lay-
men, and by divisions among the clergy. The inhabitants of Rome,
until the time of Gregory MI, showed little respect for the person
of the Pope. They would kidnap him, imprison him, poison him,
or fight against him, whenever their turbulent factional strife
tempted them to such action. How is this compatible with their
beliefs? Partly, no doubt, the explanation lies in mere lack of self-
control; partly, however, in the thought that one could repent on
one's deathbed. Another reason, which operated less in Rome than
elsewhere, was that kings could bend to their will the bishops in
their kingdoms, and thus secure enough priestly magic to save
themselves from damnation. Church discipline and a unified
ecclesiastical government were therefore essential to the power
of the clergy. These ends were secured during the eleventh century,
as part and parcel of a moral reformation of the clergy.
The power of die clergy as a whole could only be secured by
very considerable sacrifices on the part of individual ecclesiastics.
The two great evils against which all clerical reformers directed
4*9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
their energies were simony and concubinage. Something must be
said about each of these.
Owing to the benefactions of the pious, the Church had become
rich. Many bishops had huge estates, and even parish priests had,
as a rule, what for those times was a comfortable living. The
appointment of bishops was usually, in practice, in the hands of
the king, but sometimes in those of some subordinate feudal noble.
It was customary for the king to sell bishoprics; this, in fact,
provided a substantial pan of his income. The bishop, in turn,
sold such ecclesiastical preferment as was in his power. There
was no secret about this. Gerbert (Sylvester II) represented
bishops as saying: "I gave gold and I received the episcopate;
but yet I do not fear to receive it back if I behave as I should. I
ordain a priest and I receive gold ; I make a deacon and I receive
a heap of silver. Behold the gold which I gave I have once more
unlessened in my purse.1'1 Peter Damian in Milan, in 1059,
found that every cleric in the city, from the archbishop downwards,
had been guilty of simony. And this state of affairs was in no way
exceptional.
Simony, of course, was a sin, but that was not the only objection
to it. It caused ecclesiastical preferment to go by wealth, not merit ;
it confirmed lay authority in the appointment of bishops, and
episcopal subservience to secular rulers; and it tended to make the
episcopate part of the feudal system. Moreover, when a man had
purchased preferment, he was naturally anxious to recoup himself,
so that worldly rather than spiritual concerns were likely to pre-
occupy him. For these reasons, the campaign against simony was
a necessary part of the ecclesiastical struggle for power.
Very similar considerations applied to clerical celibacy. The
reformers of the eleventh century often spoke of "concubinage''
when it would have been more accurate to speak of "marriage."
Monks, of course, were precluded from marriage by their vow
of chastity, but there had been no clear prohibition of marriage
for the secular clergy. In the Eastern Church, to this day, parish
priests are allowed to be married. In the West, in the eleventh
century, most parish priests were married. Bishops, for their
part, appealed to St. Paul's pronouncement: "A bishop then must
be blameless, the husband of one wife."1 There was not the same
1 Cambridge Medieval History* V, chap. to.
' I Timothy iii. 2.
430
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
clear moral issue as in the matter of simony, but in the insistence
on clerical celibacy there were political motives very similar to
those in the campaign against simony.1
When priests were married, they naturally tried to pass on
Church property to their sons. They could do this legally if their
sons became priests ; therefore one of the first steps of the reform
party, when it acquired power, was to forbid the ordination of
priests' sons.8 But in the confusion of the times there was still
danger that, if priests had sons, they would find means of illegally
alienating parts of the Church lands. In addition to this economic
consideration, there was also the fact that, if a priest was a family
man like his neighbours, he seemed to them less removed from
themselves. There was, from at least the fifth century onwards,
an intense admiration for celibacy, and if the clergy were to com-
mand the reverence on which their power depended, it was highly
advantageous that they should be obviously separated from other
men by abstinence from marriage. The reformers themselves, no
doubt, sincerely believed that the married state, though not
actually sinful, is lower than the state of celibacy, and is only
conceded to the weakness of the flesh. St. Paul says "If they
cannot contain, let them marry"3; but a really holy man ought to
he able to "contain." Therefore clerical celibacy is essential to
the moral authority of the Church.
After these general preliminaries, let us come to the actual
history of the reform movement in the eleventh-century Church.
The beginning goes back to the foundation of the abbey of
Cluny in 910 by William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine. This
abbey was, from the first, independent of all external authority
except that of the Pope; moreover, its abbot was given authority
over other monasteries that owed their origin to it. Most monas-
teries, at this time, were rich and lax; Cluny, though avoiding
extreme asceticism, was careful to preserve decency and decorum.
The second abbot, Odo, went to Italy, and was given control of
several Roman monasteries. He was not always successful:
"Farfa, divided by a schism between two rival abbots who had
murdered their* predecessor, resisted the introduction of Cluniac
•
1 Sec Henry C. Lea, The History of Sacerdotal Celibacy.
1 In 1046, it was decreed that a clerk'i «on cannot be a bishop. Later,
it was decreed he could not be in holy orders.
9 I Corinthians vti. 9.
43 »
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
monks by Odo and got rid by poison of the abbot whom Alberic
installed by armed force."1 (Alberic was the ruler of Rome who
had invited Odo.) In the twelfth century Cluny's reforming zeal
grew* cold. St. Bernard objected to its fine architecture; like all
the most earnest men of his time, he considered splendid
ecclesiastical edifices a sign of sinful pride. *
During the eleventh century, various other orders were founded
by reformers. Romuald,an ascetic hermit, founded the Camaldolese
Order in 1012; Peter Damian, of whom we shall speak shortly,
was a follower of his. The Carthusians, who never ceased to be
austere, were founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084. In 1098 the
Cistercian Order was founded, and in 1113 it was joined by St.
Bernard. It adhered strictly to the Benedictine Rule. It forbade
stained-glass windows. For labour, it employed convent, or lay
brethren. These men took the vows, but were forbidden to learn
reading and writing; they were employed mainly in agriculture,
but also in other work, such as architecture. Fountains Abbey, in
Yorkshire, is Cistercian — a remarkable work for men who thought
all beauty of the Devil.
As will be seen from the case of Farfa, which was by no means
unique, monastic reformers required great courage and energy.
Where they succeeded, they were supported by the secular
authorities. It was these men and their followers who made
possible the reformation, first of the papacy and then of the Church
as a whole.
The reform of the papacy, however, was, at first, mainly the
work of the Emperor. The last dynastic Pope was Benedict IX,
elected in 1032, and said to have been only twelve years old at
the time. He was the son of Alberic of Tusculum, whom we hav%
already met in connection with Abbot Odo. As he grew older, he
grew more and more debauched, and shocked even the Romans.
At last his wickedness reached such a pitch that he decided to
resign the papacy in order to marry. He sold it to his godfather,
who became Gregory VI. This man, though he acquired the papacy
stmoniacally, was a reformer; he was a friend of Hildebrand
(Gregory VII). The manner of his acquiring the papacy, however,
was too scandalous to be passed over. The young Emperor
Henry III (1039-56) was a pious reformer, who had abandoned
simony at great cost to his revenue, while retaining the right to
* Cambridge Medieval History, V, 66a.
43*
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
appoint bishops. He came to Italy in 1046, at the age of twenty-
two, and deposed Gregory VI on the charge of simony.
Henry III retained throughout his reign the power of making
and unmaking popes, which, however, he exercised wisely Ih the
interests of reform. After getting rid of Gregory VI, he appointed
a German bishop, Suidger of Bamberg; the Romans resigned the
election rights which they had claimed and often exercised, almost
always badly. The new Pope died next year, and the Emperor's
next nominee also died almost immediately — of poison, it was
said. Henry III then chose a relation of his own, Bruno of Tout,
who became Leo IX (1049-54). He was an earnest reformer,
who travelled much and held many councils; he wished to fight
the Normans in Southern Italy, but in this he was unsuccessful.
Hildebrand was his friend, and might almost be called his pupil.
At his death the Emperor appointed one more Pope, Gebhard of
Eichstadt, who became Victor II, in 1055. But the Emperor died
the next year, and the Pope the year after. From this point on-
wards, the relations of Emperor and Pope became less friendly.
The Pope, having acquired moral authority by the help of Henry
III, claimed first independence of the Emperor, and then super-
iority to him. Thus began the great conflict which lasted two
hundred years and ended in the defeat of the Emperor. In the
long run, therefore, Henry Ill's policy of reforming the papacy
was perhaps short-sighted.
The next Emperor, Henry IV, reigned for fifty years (1056-
1106). At first he was a minor, and the regency 'was exercised by
his mother the Empress Agnes. Stephen IX was Pope for one year,
and at his death the cardinals chose one Pope while the Romans,
reasserting the rights they had surrendered, chose another. The
Empress sided with the cardinals, whose nominee took the name
of Nicholas II. Although his reign only lasted three years, it was
important. He made peace with the Normans, thereby making the
papacy less dependent on the Emperor. In his time the manner
in which popes were to be elected was determined by a decree,
according to which the choice was to be made first by die cardinal
bishops, then by the other cardinals, and last by the clergy and
people of Rome, whose participation, one gathers, was to be
purely formal. In effect, the cardinal bishops were to select the
Pope. The election was to take place in Rome if possible, but
might take place elsewhere if circumstances made election in
433
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Rome difficult or undesirable. No part in the election was allotted
to the Emperor. This decree, which was accepted only after a
struggle, was an essential step in the emancipation of the papacy
from lay control.
Nicholas II secured a decree that, for the future, ordinations
by men guilty of simony were not to be valid. The decree was
not made retroactive, because to do so would have invalidated the
great majority of ordinations of existing priests.
During the pontificate of Nicholas II an interesting struggle
began in Milan. The Archbishop, following the Ambrosian tradi-
tion, claimed a certain independence of the Pope. He and his
clergy were in alliance with the aristocracy, and were strongly
opposed to reform. The mercantile and lower classes, on the other
hand, wished the clergy to be pious; there were riots in support
of clerical celibacy, and a powerful reform movement, called
"Patarine," against the archbishop and his supporters. In 1059
the Pope, in support of reform, sent to Milan as his legate the
eminent St. Peter Damian. Damian was the author of a treatise
On Divine Omnipotence, which maintained that God can do things
contrary to the law of contradiction, and can undo the past.
(This view was rejected by St. Thomas, arid has, since his time,
been unorthodox.) He opposed dialectic, and spoke of philosophy
as the handmaid of theology. He was, as we have seen, a follower
of the hermit Romuald, and engaged with great reluctance in the
conduct of affairs. His holiness, however, was such an asset to
the papacy that very strong persuasion was brought to bear on
him to help in the reform campaign, and he yielded to the Pope's
representations. At Milan in 1050 he made a speech against simony
to the assembled clerics. At first they were so enraged that his
life was in danger, but at last his eloquence won them over, and
with tears they one and all confessed themselves guilt}-. Moreover,
they promised obedience to Rome. Under the next Pope, there
was a dispute with the Emperor about the see of Milan, in which,
with the help of the Patarines, the Pope was ultimately victorious.
At the death of Nicholas II in 1961 , Henry IV being now of age,
there was a dispute between him and the cardinals as to the suc-
cession to the papacy. The* Emperor had not accepted the election
decree, and was not prepared to forgo his rights in the election of
the Pope. The dispute lasted for three years, but in the end the
cardinals' choice prevailed, without a definite trial of strength
434
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
between Emperor and curia. What turned the scale was the
obvious merit of the cardinals' Pope, who was a man combining
virtue with experience, and a former pupil of Lanfranc (afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury). The death of this Pope, Alexander II,
in 1073, was followed by the election of Hildebrand (Gregory VII).
Gregory VII (1073-85) is one of the most eminent of the
Popes. He had long been prominent, and had great influence on
papal policy. It was owing to him that Pope Alexander II blessed
William the Conqueror's English enterprise; he favoured the
Normans both in Italy and in the North. He had been a prot£g£
of Gregory VI, who bought the papacy in order to combat simony;
after the deposition of this Pope, Hildebrand passed two years in
exile. Most of the rest of his life was spent in Rome. He was not
a learned man, but was inspired largely by St. Augustine, whose
doctrines he learnt at second-hand from his hero Gregory the
Great. After he became Pope, he believed himself the mouthpiece
of St. Peter. This gave him a degree of self-confidence which,
on a mundane calculation, was not justified. He admitted that
the Emperor's authority was also of divine origin: at first, he
compared Pope and Emperor to two eyes; later, when quarrelling
with the Emperor, to the sun and moon — the Pope, of course,
being the sun. The Pope must be supreme in morals, and must
therefore have the right to depose the Emperor if the Emperor
was immoral. And nothing could be more immoral than resisting
the Pope. All this he genuinely and profoundly believed.
Gregory VII did more than any previous Pope to enforce
clerical celibacy. In Germany the clergy objected, and on this
ground as well as others were inclined to side with the Emperor.
The laity, however, everywhere preferred their priests celibate.
Gregory stirred up riots of the laity against married priests and
their wives, in which both often suffered brutal ill-treatment. He
called on the laity not to attend mass when celebrated by a recal-
citrant priest. He decreed that the sacraments of married clergy
were invalid, and that such clergy must not enter churches. All
this roused clerical opposition and lay support; even in Rome,
where Popes had usually gone in danger of their lives, he was
popular with the people.
In Gregory's time began the great dispute concerning "inves-
titures." When a bishop was consecrated, he was invested with a
ring and staff as symbols of his office. These had been given by
435
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Emperor or king (according to the locality), as the bishop's feudal
overlord. Gregory insisted that they should be given by the Pope.
The dispute was part of the work of detaching the ecclesiastical
from the feudal hierarchy. It lasted a long time, but in the end
the papacy was completely victorious.
The quarrel which led to Canossa began over the archbishopric
of Milan. In 1075 the Emperor, with the concurrence of the
suffragans, appointed an archbishop; the Pope considered this
an infringement of his prerogative, and threatened the Emperor
with excommunication and deposition. The Emperor retaliated
by summoning a council of bishops at Worms, where the bishops
renounced their allegiance to the Pope. They wrote him a letter
accusing him of adultery and perjury, and (worse than cither)
ill-treatment of bishops. The Emperor also wrote him a letter,
claiming to be above all earthly judgment. The Emperor and his
bishops pronounced Gregory deposed ; Gregory excommunicated
the Emperor and his bishops, and pronounced t/iem deposed.
Thus the stage was set.
In the first act, victory went to the Pope. The Saxons, who had
before rebelled against Henry IV and then made peace with him,
rebelled again ; the German bishops made their peace with Gre-
gory. The world at large was shocked by the Emperor's treatment
of the Pope. Accordingly in the following year (1077) Henry
decided to seek absolution from the Pope. In the depth of winter,
with his wife and infant son and a few attendants, he crossed the
Mont Cenis pass, and presented himself as a suppliant before the
castle of Canossa, where the Pope was. For three days the Pope
kept him waiting, bare-foot and in penitential garb. At last he was
admitted. Having expressed penitence and sworn, in future, to
follow the Pope's directions in dealing with his German opponents,
be was pardoned and received back into communion.
The Pope's victory, however, was illusory. 1 le had been caught
out by the rules of his own theology, one of which enjoined abso-
lution for penitents. Strange to say, he was taken in by Henry,
and supposed his repentance sincere. He soon discovered his
mistake. He could no longer support Henry's German enemies,
who felt that he had betrayed them. From this moment, tilings
began to go against him.
Henry's German enemies elected a rival Emperor, named
Rudolf. The Pope, at first, while maintaining that it was for him
436
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
to decide between Henry and Rudolf, refused to come to a decision.
At last, in 1080, having experienced the insincerity of Henry's
repentance, he pronounced for Rudolf. By this time, however,
Henry had got the better of most of his opponents in Germany.
He had an antipope elected by his clerical supporters, and with
him, in 1084, he entered Rome. His antipope duly crowned him,
but both had to retreat quickly before the Normans, who advanced
to the relief of Gregory. The Normans brutally sacked Rome, and
took Gregory away with them. He remained virtually their
prisoner until his death the next year.
Thus his policies appeared to have ended in disaster. But in
fact they were pursued, with more moderation, by his successors.
A compromise favourable to the papacy was patched up for the
moment, but the conflict was essentially irreconcilable. Its later
stages will be dealt with in subsequent chapters.
It remains to say something of the intellectual re\ival in the
eleventh century. The tenth century was destitute of philosophers,
except for Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II, 999-1003), and even he
was more a mathematician than a philosopher. But as the eleventh
century advanced, men of real philosophical eminence began to
appear. Of these, the most important were Anselm and Roscelin,
but some others deserve mention. All were monks connected
with the reform movement.
Peter Damian, the oldest of them, has already been mentioned.
Bcrengar of Tours (d. 1088) is interesting as being something of
a rationalist. He maintained that reason is superior to authority,
in support of which view he appealed to John the Scot, who was
therefore posthumously condemned. Berengar denied transub-
sta filiation, and was twice compelled to recant. His heresies were
combated by Lanfranc in his book DC corpore ct sanguine Domini.
Lanfranc was born at Pavia, studied law at Bologna, and became
a first-rate dialectician. But he abandoned dialectic for theology,
and entered the monastery of Bcc, in Normandy, where he con-
ducted a school. William the Conqueror made him Archbishop
of Canterbury in 1070.
St. Anselm was, like Lanfranc, an Italian, a monk at Bee, and
.Vrchbiahop of Canterbury (1093-1109), in which capacity he
followed the principles of Gregory VII and quarrelled with the
king. He is chiefly known to fame as the inventor of the "onto-
logicaJ argument'1 for the existence of God. As he put it, the
437
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
argument is as follows: We define "God" as the greatest possible
object of thought. Now if an object of thought does not exist,
another, exactly like it, which does exist, is greater. Therefore the
greatest of all objects of thought must exist, since, otherwise,
another, still greater, would be possible. Therefore God exists.
This argument has never been accepted by theologians. It was
adversely criticized at the time; then it was forgotten till the latter
half of the thirteenth century. Thomas Aquinas rejected it, and
among theologians his authority has prevailed ever since. But
among philosophers it has had a better fate. Descartes revived
it in a somewhat amended form ; Leibniz thought that it could be
made valid by the addition of a supplement to prove that God is
possible. Kant considered that he had demolished it once for all.
Nevertheless, in some sense, it underlies the system of Hegel and
his followers, and reappears in Bradley 's principle: "What may
be and must be, is."
Clearly an argument with such a distinguished history is to be
treated with respect, whether valid or not. The real question is:
Is there anything we can think of which, by the mere fact that
we can think of it, is shown to exist outside our thought ? Every
philosopher would like to say yes, because a philosopher's job
is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than
observing. If yes is the right answer, there is a bridge from pure
thought to things; if not, not. In this generalized form, Plato uses
a kind of ontological argument to prove the objective reality of
ideas. But no one before Anselm had stated the argument in its
naked logical purity. In gaining purity, it loses plausibility; but
this also is to Anselm's credit.
For the rest, Anselm's philosophy is mainly derived from St.
Augustine, from whom it acquires many Platonic elements. He
believes in Platonic ideas, from which he derives another proof
of the existence of God. By Neoplatonic arguments he professes
to prove not only God, but the Trinity. (It will be remembered
that Plotinus has a Trinity, though not one that a Christian can
accept as orthodox.) Anselm considers reason subordinate to faith.
"I believe in order to understand," he says; following Augustine,
he holds that without belief it is impossible to understand. God,
he says, is not just, but justice. It will be remembered that John
the Scot says similar things. The common origin is in Plato.
St Anaelm, like his predecessors in Christian philosophy, is in
438
ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian tradition. For this reason,
he has not the distinctive characteristics of the philosophy which
is called "scholastic," which culminated in Thomas Aquinas.
This kind of philosophy may be reckoned as beginning with
Roscelin, who was Anselm's contemporary, being seventeen years
younger than Anselm. Roscelin marks a new beginning, and will
be considered in a later chapter.
When it is said that medieval philosophy, until the thirteenth
century, was mainly Platonic, it must be remembered that Plato,
except for a fragment of the Timaeus, was known only at second
or third hand. John the Scot, for example, could not have held
the views which he did hold but for Plato, but most of what is
Platonic in him comes from the pseudo-Dionysius. The date of
this author is uncertain, but it seems probable that he was a
disciple of Proclus the Neoplatonist. It is probable, also, that
John the Scot had never heard of Proclus or read a line of Plotinus.
Apart from the pseudo-Dionysius, the other source of Platonism
in the Middle Ages was Boethius. This Platonism was in many
ways different from that which a modern student derives from
Plato's own writings. It omitted almost everything that had no
obvious bearing on religion, and in religious philosophy it enlarged
and emphasized certain aspects at the expense of others. This
change in the conception of Plato had already been effected by
Plotinus. The knowledge of Aristotle was also fragmentary, but
in an opposite direction: all that was known of him until the
twelfth century was Hoethius's translation of the Categories and
/)c Emendation?. Thus Aristotle was conceived as a mere dialec-
tician, and Plato as only a religious philosopher and the author
of the theory of ideas During the course of the later Middle Ages,
both these partial conceptions were gradually emended, especially
the conception of Aristotle. But the process, as regards Plato,
was not completed until the Renaissance.
439
Chapter X
MOHAMMEDAN CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
attacks upon the Eastern Empire, Africa, and Spain,
differed from those of Northern barbarians on the West in
two respects: first, the Eastern Empire survived till 1453,
nearly a thousand years longer than the Western ; second, the main
attacks upon the Eastern Empire were made by Mohammedans,
who did not become Christians after conquest, but developed an
important civilization of their own.
The Hegira,1 with which the Mohammedan era begins, took
place in A.D. 622; Mohammed died ten years later. Immediately
after his death the Arab conquests began, and they proceeded with
extraordinary rapidity. In the East, Syria was invaded in 634,
and completely subdued within two years. In 637 Persia was
invaded; in 650 its conquest was completed. India was invaded
in 664; Constantinople was besieged in 669 (and again in 716-17).
The westward movement was not quite so sudden. Egypt was
conquered by 642, Carthage not till 697. Spain, except for a small
corner in the north-west, was acquired in 711-12. Westward
expansion (except in Sicily and Southern Italy) was brought to a
standstill by the defeat of the Mohammedans at the battle of
'Fours in 732, just one hundred years after the death of the
Prophet. (The Ottoman Turks, who finally conquered Con-
stantinople, belong to a later period than that with which we are
now concerned.)
Various circumstances facilitated this expansion. Persia and the
Eastern Empire were exhausted by their long wars. The Syrians,
who were largely Nestorian, suffered persecution at the hands of
the Catholics, whereas Mohammedans tolerated all sects of
Christians in return for the payment of tribute. Similarly in
Egypt the Monophysites, who were the hulk of the population,
welcomed the invaders. In Africa, the Arabs allied themselves
with the Berbers, whom the Romans had never thoroughly sub-
dued. Arabs and Berbery together invaded Spain, where they
were helped by the Jews, whom the Visigoths had severely
persecuted.
1 The Hegira wan Mohammed'* Hight from Mecca to Medina.
440
MOHAMMEDAN CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
The religion of the Prophet was a simple monotheism, uncom-
plicated by the elaborate theology of the Trinity and the Incarna-
tion. The Prophet made no claim to be divine, nor did his followers
make such a claim on his behalf. He revived the Jewish prohibition
of graven images, and forbade the use of wine. It was the duty of
the faithful to conquer as much of the world as possible for Islam,
but there was to be no persecution of Christians, Jews, or Zoro-
astrians — the "people of the Book," as the Koran calls them, i.e.
those who followed the teaching of a Scripture.
Arabia was largely desert, and was growing less and less capable
of supporting its population. The first conquests of the Arabs
began as mere raids for plunder, and only turned into permanent
occupation after experience had shown the weakness of the enemy.
Suddenly, in the course of some twenty years, men accustomed to
all the hardships of a meagre existence on the fringe of the desert
found themselves masters of some of the richest regions of the
world, able to enjoy every luxury and to acquire all the refinements
of an ancient civilization. They withstood the temptations of this
transformation better than most of the Northern barbarians had
done. As they had acquired their empire without much severe
fighting, there had been little destruction, and the civil adminis-
tration was kept on almost unchanged. Both in Persia and in the
Byzantine Kmpirc, the civil government had been highly organized.
The Arab tribesmen, at first, understood nothing of its compli-
cations, and perforce accepted the services of the trained men
whom they found in charge. These men, for the most part, showed
no reluctance to serve under their new masters. Indeed, the change
made their work easier, since taxation was lightened very con-
siderably. The populations, moreover, in order to escape the
tribute, very largely abandoned Christianity for Islam.
The Arab Empire was an absolute monarchy, under the caliph,
who was the successor of the Prophet, and inherited much of his
holiness. The caliphate was nominally elective, but soon became
hereditary, The first dynasty, that of the Umayyads, who lasted
till 750, was founded by men whose acceptance of Mohammed
was purely political, and it remained always opposed to the more
fanatical among the faithful. The Arabs; although they conquered
a great part of the world in the name of a new religion, were not
a very religious race; the motive of their conquests was plunder
and wealth rather than religion. It was only in virtue of their lack
44'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of fanaticism that a handful of warriors were able to govern,
without much difficulty, vast populations of higher civilization
and alien religion.
The Persians, on the contrary, have been, from the earliest times,
deeply religious and highly speculative. After their conversion,
they made out of Islam something much more interesting, more
religious, and more philosophical, than had been imagined by the
Prophet and his kinsmen. Ever since the death of Mohammed's
son-in-law All in 661, Mohammedans have been divided into two
sects, the Sunni and the Shiah. The former is the larger; the latter
follows Ali, and considers the Umayyad dynasty to have been
usurpers. The Persians have lonj; belonged to the Shiah sect.
Largely by Persian influence, the Umayyads were at last over-
thrown, and succeeded by the Abbasids, who represented Persian
interests. The change was marked by the removal of the capita]
from Damascus to Baghdad.
The Abbasids were, politically, more in favour of the fanatics
than the Umayyads had been. They did not, however, acquire the
whole of the empire. One member of the Umayyad family escaped
the general massacre, fled to Spain, and was there acknowledged
as the legitimate ruler. From that time on, Spain was independent
of the rest of the Mohammedan world.
Under the early Abbasids the caliphate attained its greatest
splendour. The best known of them is Hanm-al-Rashid (d. 809)
who was a contemporary of Charlemagne and the Empress Irene,
and is known to every one in legendary form through the Arabian
Nights. His court was a brilliant centre of luxury', poetry, and
learning; his revenue was enormous; his empire stretched from
the Straits of Gibraltar to the Indus. His will was absolute; he
was habitually accompanied by the executioner, who performed
his office at a nod from the caliph. This splendour, however, was
short-lived. His successor made the mistake of composing his
army mainly of Turks, who were insubordinate, and soon reduced
the caliph to a cipher, to be blinded or murdered whenever the
soldiery grew tired of him. Nevertheless, the caliphate lingered
on; the last caliph of the Abbasid dynasty was put to death by
the Mongols in 1256, along with 800,000 of the inhabitants of
Baghdad.
The political and social system of the Arabs had defects similar
to those of the Roman Empire, together with some others. Abso-
44*
MOHAMMEDAN CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
lute monarchy combined with polygamy led, as it usually does, to
dynastic wars whenever a ruler died, ending with the victory of
one of the ruler's sons and the death of all the rest. There were
immense numbers of slaves, largely as a result of successful wars;
at times there were dangerous servile insurrections. Commerce
was greatly developed, the more so as the caliphate occupied a
central position between East and West. "Not only did the pos-
session of enormous wealth create a demand for costly articles,
such as silks from China, and furs from Northern Europe, but
trade was promoted by certain special conditions, such as the vast
extent of the Muslim Empire, the spread of Arabic as a world-
language, and the exalted status assigned to the merchant in the
Muslim system of ethics; it was remembered that the Prophet
himself had been a merchant and had commended trading during
the pilgrimage to Mecca."1 This commerce, like military cohesion,
depended on the great roads which the Arabs inherited from the
Romans and Persians, and which they, unlike the Northern con-
querors, did not allow to fall into disrepair. Gradually, however,
the empire broke up into fractions— Spain, Persia, North Africa,
and Egypt successively split off and acquired complete or almost
complete independence.
One of the best features of the Arab economy was agriculture,
particularly the skilful use of irrigation, which they learnt from
living where water is scarce. To this day Spanish agriculture
profits by Arab irrigation works.
'ITie distinctive culture of the Muslim world, though it began
in Syria, soon came to flourish most in the Eastern and Western
extremities, Persia and Spain. The Syrians, at the time of the con-
quest, were admirers of Aristotle, whom Nestorians preferred to
Plato, the philosopher favoured by Catholics. The Arabs first
acquired their knowledge of Greek philosophy from the Syrians,
and thus, from the beginning, they thought Aristotle more im-
portant than Plato. Nevertheless, their Aristotle wore a Neo-
platonic dress. Kindi (d. ca. 873), the first to write philosophy in
Arabic, and the only philosopher of note who was himself an Arab,
translated parts of the Enneads of Plotinus, and published his
translation under the title The Theology of Aristotle. This intro-
duced great confusion into Arabic ideas of Aristotle, from which
it took centuries to recover.
> Cambridge Medieval History, IV, 286.
443
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Meanwhile, in Persia, Muslims came in contact with India. It
was from Sanskrit writings that they acquired, during the eighth
century, their first knowledge of astronomy. About 830, Muham-
mad ibn Musa al-Khwarazmi, a translator of mathematical and
astronomical books from the Sanskrit, published a book which
was translated into Latin in the twelfth century, under the title
Algoritm de numero Indorwn. It was from this book that the West
first learnt of what we call "Arabic" numerals, which ought to
be called "Indian." The same author wrote a book on algebra
which was used in the West as a text-book until the sixteenth
century.
Persian civilization remained both intellectually and artistically
admirable, though it was seriously damaged by the invasion of
the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Omar Khayyam, the only
man known to me who was both a poet and a mathematician,
reformed the calendar in 1079. His best friend, oddly enough,
was the founder of the sect of the Assassins, the "Old Man of the
.Mountain," of legendary fame. The Persians were great poets:
Firdousi (ca. 941), author of the Shalmama, is said by those who
have read him to be comparable to Homer. They were also remark-
able as mystics, which other Mohammedans were not. The Sufi
sect, which still exists, allowed itself great latitude in the mystical
and allegorical interpretation of orthodox dogma ; it was more or
less Ncoplatonic.
The Nestorians, through whom, at first, Greek influences came
into the Muslim world, were by no means purely Greek in their
outlook. Their school at Edessa had been closed by the Kmperor
Zeno in 481 ; its learned men thereupon migrated to Persia, where
they continued their work, but not without suffering Persian
influences. The Nestorians valued Aristotle only for his logic, and
it was above all his logic that the Arabic philosophers thought
important at first. Later, however, they studied also his Mela-
physict and his De Anima. Arabic philosophers, in general, are
encyclopedic: they are interested in alchemy, astrology, astronomy,
and zoology, as much as in what we should call philosophy. They
were looked upon with suspicion by the populace, which was
fanatical and bigoted; tKey owed their safety (when they were
safe) to the protection of comparatively free-thinking princes.
Two Mohammedan philosophers, one of Persia, one of Spain,
demand special notice; they are Avicenna and Averroes. Of these
MOHAMMEDAN CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
the former is the more famous among Mohammedans, the latter
among Christians.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980*1037) spent his life in the sort of places
that one used to think only exist in poetry. He was born in the
province of Bokhara ; at the age of twenty-four he went to Khiva
— "lone Khiva in the waste" — then to Khorassan — "the lone
Chorasmian shore." For a while he taught medicine and philosophy
at Ispahan; then he settled at Teheran. He was even more famous
in medicine than in philosophy, though he added little to Galen.
From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, he was used in
Europe as a guide to medicine. He was not a saintly character, in
fact he had a passion for wine and women. He was suspect to the
orthodox, but was befriended by princes on account of his medical
skill. At times he got into trouble owing to the hostility of Turkish
mercenaries; sometimes he was in hiding, sometimes in prison.
He was the author of an encyclopedia, almost unknown to the
Hast because of the hostility of theologians, but influential in the
West through I^atin translations. His psychology has an empirical
tendency.
His philosophy is nearer to Aristotle, and less Neoplatonic, than
that of his Muslim predecessors. Like the Christian scholastics
later, he is occupied with the problem of universals. Plato said
they were anterior to things. Aristotle has two views, one when
he is thinking, the other when he is combating Plato. This makes
him ideal material for the commentator.
Avicenna invented a formula, which was repeated by Averroes
and Albertus Magnus: "Thought brings about the generality in
forms." From this it might be supposed that he did not believe
in universals apart from thought. This, however, would be an
unduly simple view. Genera— that is, universals— are, he says, at
once before things, in things, and after things. He explains this
as follows. They are before things in God's understanding. (God
decides, for instance, to create cats. This requires that He should
have the idea "cat," which is thus, in this respect, anterior to
particular cats.) Genera are in things in natural objects. (When
cats have been created, felinity is in each of them.) Genera arc
after things in our thought. (When we have seen many cats, we
notice their likeness to each other, and arrive at the general idea
"cat.") This view is obviously intended to reconcile different
theories.
445
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126-98) lived at the opposite end ot
the Muslim world from Avicenna. He was born at Cordova, where
his father and grandfather had been cadis; he himself was a cadi,
first in Seville, then in Cordova. He studied, first, theology and
jurisprudence, then medicine, mathematics, and philosophy. He
was recommended to the "Caliph" Abu Yaqub Yusuf as a man
capable of making an analysis of the works of Aristotle. (It seems,
however, that he did not know Greek.) This ruler took him into
favour; in 1184 he made him his physician, but unfortunately
the patient died two years later. His successor, Yaqub Al-Mansur,
for eleven years continued his father's patronage; then, alarmed
by the opposition of the orthodox to the philosopher, he deprived
him of his position, and exiled him, first to a small place near
Cordova, and then to Morocco. He was accused of cultivating the
philosophy of the ancients at the expense of the true faith. Al-
Mansur published an edict to the effect that God had decreed
hell-fire for those who thought that truth could be found by the
unaided reason. All the books that could be found on logic and
metaphysics were given to the flames.1
Shortly after this time the Moorish territory in Spain was
greatly diminished by Christian conquests. Muslim philosophy in
Spain ended with Averroes; and in the rest of the Mohammedan
world a rigid orthodoxy put an end to speculation.
Ueberweg, rather amusingly, undertakes to defend Averroes
against the charge of unorthodox}' — a matter, one would say, for
Muslims to decide. Ucberwcg points out that, according to the
mystics, every text of the Koran had 7 or 70 or 700 layers of inter-
pretation, the literal meaning being only for the ignorant vulgar.
It would seem to follow that a philosopher's teaching could not
possibly conflict with the Koran; for among 700 interpretations
there would surely be at least one that would fit what the philo-
sopher had to say. In the Mohammedan world, however, the
ignorant seem to have objected to all learning that went beyond a
knowledge of the Holy Book ; it was dangerous, even if no specific
heresy could be demonstrated. The view of the mystics, that the
populace should take the Koran literally but wise people need
not do so, was hardly likely to win wide popular acceptance.
Averroes was concerned to improve the Arabic interpretation
1 It it «ud that Averroes w*s taken back into favour shortly before hit
dttittt*
446
MOHAMMEDAN CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
of Aristotle, which had been unduly influenced by Neoplatonisrn.
He gave to Aristotle the sort of reverence that is given to the
founder of a religion— much more than was given even by Avi-
cenna. He holds that the existence of God can be proved by reason
independently of revelation, a view also held by Thomas Aquinas.
As regards immortality, he seems to have adhered closely to
Aristotle, maintaining that the soul is not immortal, but intellect
(nous) is. This, however, does not secure personal immortality,
since intellect is one and the same when manifested in different
persons. This view, naturally, was combated by Christian
philosophers.
Averroes, like most of the later Mohammedan philosophers,
though a believer, xvas not rigidly orthodox. There was a sect of
completely orthodox theologians, who objected to all philosophy
as deleterious to the faith. One of these, named Algazel, wrote a
hook called Destruction of tlie Philosopliers, pointing out that, since
all necessary truth is in the Koran, there is no need of speculation
independent of revelation. Averroes replied by a book called
Destruction of the Destruction. The religious dogmas that Algazel
specially upheld against the philosophers were the creation of the
\\orld in time out of nothing, the reality of the divine attributes,
and the resurrection of the body. Averroes regards religion as
containing philosophic truth in allegorical form. This applies in
particular to creation, which he, in his philosophic capacity,
interprets in an Aristotelian fashion.
Averroes is more important in Christian than in Mohammedan
philosophy. In the latter he was a dead end; in the former, a
beginning. He was translated into I>atin early in the thirteenth
century by Michael Scott; as his works belong to the latter half
of the twelfth century, this is surprising. His influence in Europe
was very great, not only on the scholastics, but also on a large
body of unprofessional free-thinkers, who denied immortality
and were called Averroists. Among professional philosophers, his
admirers were at first especially among the Franciscans and at
the University of Paris. But this is a topic which will be dealt
with in a later chapter.
Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men
like Aviccnna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking
generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from
Aristotle and the Neoplatonbts in logic and metaphysics, from
447
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics
and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also
an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed
some originality in mathematics and in chemistry — in the latter
case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Moham-
medan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and
in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent
speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must
not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern
European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Moham-
medans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy
required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization —
education, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West
when it emerged from barbarism — the Mohammedans chiefly in
the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In
each case the stimulus produced new thought better than any
produced by the transmitters — in the one case scholasticism, in
the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).
Between the Spanish Moors and the Christians, the Jews formed
a useful link. There were many Jews in Spain, who remained when
the country was reconquered by the Christians. Since they knew
Arabic, and perforce acquired the language of the Christians, they
were able to supply translations. Another means of transfusion
arose through Mohammedan persecution of Aristotelians in the
thirteenth century, which led Moorish philosophers to take refuge
with Jews, especially in Provence.
The Spanish Jews produced one philosopher of importance,
Maimonides. He was born in Cordova in 1135, but went to Cairo
at the age of thirty, and stayed there for the rest of his life, lie
wrote in Arabic, but was immediately translated into Hebrew. A
few decades after his death, he was translated into Latin, probably
at the request of the Emperor Frederick II. He wrote a book
called Guide to Wander en, addressed to philosophers who have
lost their faith. Its purpose is to reconcile Aristotle with Jewish
theology. Aristotle is the authority on the sublunary world, reve-
lation on the heavenly. But philosophy and revelation come to-
gether in the knowledge of God. The pursuit of truth is a religious
duty. Astrology is rejected. The Pentateuch is not always to be
taken literally; when the literal sense conflicts with reason, we
must seek an allegorical interpretation. As against Aristotle, he
44*
MOHAMMEDAN CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
maintains that God created not only form, but matter, out of
nothing. He gives a summary of the Timaeus (which he knew in
Arabic), preferring it on some points to Aristotle. The essence of
God is unknowable, being above all predicated perfections. The
Jews considered htm heretical, and went so far as to invoke the
Christian ecclesiastical authorities against him. Some think that
he influenced Spinoza, but this is very questionable.
F1
•
Chapter XI
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
IOUR aspects of the twelfth century are specially interesting
to us:
(1) The continued conflict of empire and papacy;
(2) The rise of the Lombard cities;
(3) The Crusades; and
(4) The growth of scholasticism.
All these four continued into the following century. The
Crusades gradually came to an inglorious end ; but, as regards the
other three movements, the thirteenth century marks the cul-
mination of what, in the twelfth, is in a transitional stage. In the
thirteenth century, the Pope definitely triumphed over the
Emperor, the Lombard cities acquired secure independence and
scholasticism reached its highest point. All this, however, was an
outcome of what the twelfth century had prepared.
Not only the first of these four movements, but the other three
also, are intimately bound up with the increase of papal and
ecclesiastical power. The Pope was in alliance with the Lombard
cities against the Emperor; Pope Urban II inaugurated the first
Crusade, and subsequent popes were the main promoters of the
later ones; the scholastic philosophers were all clerics, and Church
councils took care to keep them within the bounds of orthodoxy,
or discipline them if they strayed. Undoubtedly, their sense of
the political triumph of the Church, in which they felt themselves
participants, stimulated their intellectual initiative.
One of the curious things about the Middle Ages is that they
were original and creative without knowing it. All parties justified
their policies by antiquarian and archaistic arguments. The
Emperor appealed, in Germany, to the feudal principles of the
time of Charlemagne; in Italy, to Roman law and the power of
ancient Emperors. The Lombard cities went still further back, to
the institutions of repubKcan Rome. The papal party based its
claims partly on the forged Donation of Constantine, partly on
the relations of Saul and Samuel as told in the Old Testament.
The scholastics appealed either to the Scriptures or at first to
450
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
Plato and then to Aristotle; when they were original, they tried
to conceal the fact. The Crusades were an endeavour to restore
the state of affairs that had existed before the rise of Islam.
We must not be deceived by this literary archaism. Only in the
case of the Emperor did it correspond with the facts. Feudalism
was in decay, especially in Italy; the Roman Empire was a mere
memory. Accordingly, the Emperor was defeated. The cities of
North Italy, while, in their later development, they showed much
similarity to the cities of ancient Greece, repeated the pattern,
not from imitation, but from similarity of circumstances: that of
small, rich, highly civilized republican commercial communities
surrounded by monarchies at a lower level of culture. The scho-
lastics, however they might revere Aristotle, showed more ori-
ginality than any of the Arabs — more, indeed, than any one since
Plotinus, or at any rate since Augustine. In politics as in thought,
there was the same distinguished originality.
CONFLICT OF EMPIRE AND PAPACY
From the time of Gregory VII to the middle of the thirteenth
century, European history centres round the struggle for power
between the Church and the lay monarchs — primarily the Em-
peror, but also, on occasion, the kings of France and England.
Gregory's pontificate had ended in apparent disaster, but his
policies were resumed, though with more moderation, by Urban II
(1088-99), who repeated the decrees against lay investiture,
and desired episcopal elections to be made freely by clergy and
people. (The share of the people was, no doubt, to be purely
formal.) In practice, however, he did not quarrel with lay appoint-
ments if they were good.
At first, Urban was safe only in Norman territory. But in 1093
Henry IV's son Conrad rebelled against his father, and, in alliance
with the Pope, conquered North Italy, where the Lombard
League, an alliance of cities with Milan at its head, favoured the
Pope. In 1094, Urban made a triumphal procession through
North Italy and France. He triumphed over Philip, King of
France, who desired a divorce, and was therefore excommunicated
by the Pope, but submitted. At the Council of Clermont, in 1095,
Urban proclaimed the first Crusade, which produced a wave of
religious enthusiasm leading to increase of papal power— also to
45'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
atrocious pogroms of Jews. The last year of Urban's life he spent
in safety in Rome, where popes were seldom safe.
The next Pope, Paschal II, like Urban, came from Cluny. He
continued the struggle on investitures, and was successful in
France and England. But after the death of Henry IV in 1 106, the
next Emperor, Henry V, got the better of the Pope, who was an
unworldly man and allowed his saintliness to outweigh his political
sense. The Pope proposed that the Emperor should renounce
investitures, but in return bishops and abbots should renounce
temporal possessions. The Emperor professed to agree ; but when
the suggested compromise was made public, the ecclesiastics
rebelled furiously against the Pope. The Emperor, who was in
Rome, took the opportunity to seize the Pope, who yielded to
threats, gave way on investitures, and crowned Henry V. Eleven
years later, however, by the Concordat of Worms in 1122, Pope
Calixtus II compelled Henry V to give way on investitures,
and to surrender control over episcopal elections in Burgundy
and Italy.
So far, the net result of the struggle was that the Pope, who had
been subject to Henry III, had become the equal of the Emperor.
At the same time, he had become more completely sovereign in
the Church, which he governed by means of legates. This increase
of papal power had diminished the relative importance of bishops.
Papal elections were now free from lay control, and ecclesiastics
generally were more virtuous than they had been before the
reform movement.
RISE OF THE LOMBARD CITIKS
The next stage was connected with the Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa (1152-90), an able and energetic man, who would
have succeeded in any enterprise in which success was possible.
He was a man of education, who read Latin with pleasure, though
he spoke it with difficult)'. His classical learning was considerable,
and he was an admirer of Roman law. He thought of himself as
the heir of the Roman Emperors, and hoped to acquire their
power. But as a German he was unpopular in Italy. The Lombard
cities, while willing to acknowledge his formal overlordship,
objected when he interfered in their affairs — except those which
feared Milan, against which city some of them invoked his pro*
45*
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
tection. The Patarine movement in Milan continued, and was
associated with a more or less democratic tendency; most, but by
no means all, of the North Italian cities sympathized with Milan,
and made common cause against the Emperor.
Hadrian IV, a vigorous Englishman who had been a missionary
in Norway, became Pope two years after the accession of Bar-
barossa, and was, at first, on good terms with him. They were
reconciled by a common enmity. The city of Rome claimed inde-
pendence from both alike, and, as a help in the struggle, had
invited a saintly heretic, Arnold of Brescia.1 His heresy was very
grave: he maintained that "clerks who have estates, bishops who
hold fiefs, monks who possess property, cannot be saved." He
held this view because he thought that the clergy ought to devote
themselves entirely to spiritual matters. No one questioned his
sincere austerity, although he was accounted wicked on account
of his heresy. St. Bernard, who vehemently opposed him, said,
"He neither eats nor drinks, but only, like the Devil, hungers and
thirsts for the blood of souls." Hadrian's predecessor in the
papacy had written to Barbarossa to complain that Arnold sup-
ported the popular faction, which wished to elect one hundred
senators and two consuls, and to have an Emperor of their own.
Frederick, who was setting out for Italy, was naturally scandalized.
The Roman demand for communal liberty, which was encouraged
by Arnold, led to a riot in which a cardinal was killed. The newly-
elected Pope Hadrian thereupon placed Rome under an interdict.
It was Holy Week, and superstition got the better of the Romans;
they submitted, and promised to banish Arnold. He hid, but was
captured by the Emperor's troops. He was burnt, and his ashes
were thrown into the Tiber, for fear of their being preserved as
holy relics. After a delay caused by Frederick's unwillingness to
hold the Pope's bridle and stirrup while he dismounted, the Pope
crowned the Kmpcror in 1 155 amid the resistance of the populace,
which was quelled with great slaughter.
The honest man being disposed of, the practical politicians
were free to resume their quarrel.
The Pope, having made peace with the Normans, ventured in
1 1 57 to break with the Emperor. For twenty years there was almost
continuous war between the Emperor on the one side, and the
Pope with the Lombard cities on the other. The Normans mostly
1 He was mid to he a pupil of Abtiard, but thin is doubtful.
453
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
supported the Pope. The bulk of the fighting against the Emperor
was done by the Lombard League, which spoke of "liberty" and
was inspired by intense popular feeling. The Emperor besieged
various cities, and in 1162 even captured Milan, which he razed
to the ground, compelling its citizens to live elsewhere. But five
years later the League rebuilt Milan and the former inhabitants
returned. In this same year, the Emperor, duly provided with an
antipope,1 marched on Rome with a great army. The Pope fled,
and his cause seemed desperate, but pestilence destroyed Fred-
crick's army, and he returned to Germany a solitary fugitive.
Although not only Sicily, but the Greek Emperor, now sided
with the Lombard League, Barbarossa made another attempt,
ending in his defeat at the battle of Legnano in 1176. After this
he was compelled to make peace, leaving to the cities all the sub-
stance of liberty. In the conflict between Empire and papacy^
however, the terms of peace gave neither party complete victory.
Barbarossa 's end was seemly. In 1189 he went on the third
Crusade, and in the following year he died.
The rise of free cities is what proved of most ultimate importance
in this long strife. The power of the Emperor was associated with
the decaying feudal system; the power of the Pope, though still
growing, was largely dependent upon the world's need of him as
an antagonist to the Emperor, and therefore decayed when the
Empire ceased to be a menace; but the power of the cities was
new, a result of economic progress, and a source of new political
forms. Although this does not appear in the twelfth century, the
Italian cities, before long, developed a non-clerical culture which
reached the very highest levels in literature, in art, and in science.
All this was rendered possible by their successful resistance to
Barbarossa.
All the great cities of Northern Italy lived by trade, and in the
twelfth century the more settled conditions made traders more
prosperous than before. The maritime cities, Venice, Genoa, and
Pisa, never had to fight for their liberty, and were therefore less
hostile to the Emperor than the cities at the foot of the Alps,
1 There was an antipope 'throughout most of this time. At the death of
Hadrian IV, the two claimants, Alexander III and Victor IV, had • tug-
of-war for the papal mantle. Victor IV (who was the antipope), having
failed to snatch the mantle, obtained from hia partisans a substitute
which he bad had prepared, but in bis haste be put it on inside-out.
454
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
which were important to him as the gateways to Italy. It is for
this reason that Milan is the most interesting and important of
Italian cities at this time.
Until the time of Henry III, the Milanese had usually been
content to follow their archbishop. But the Patarine movement,
mentioned in an earlier chapter, changed this: the archbishop
sided with the nobility, while a powerful popular movement
opposed him and them. Some beginnings of democracy resulted,
and a constitution arose under which the rulers of the city were
elected by the citizens. In various northern cities, but especially
in Bologna, there was a learned class of lay lawyers, well versed
in Roman law; moreover the rich laity, from the twelfth century
onwards, were much better educated than the feudal nobility
north of the Alps. Although they sided with the Pope against the
Emperor, the rich commercial cities were not ecclesiastical in their
outlook. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many of them
adopted heresies of a Puritan sort, like the merchants of England
and Holland after the Reformation. Later, they tended to be free-
thinkers, paying lip-service to the Church, but destitute of all
real piety. Dante is the last of the old type, Boccaccio the first of
the new.
THE CRUSADES
The Crusades need not concern us as wars, but they have a
certain importance in relation to culture. It was natural for the
papacy to take the lead in the initiating of a Crusade, since the
object was (at least ostensibly) religious ; thus the power of the
popes was increased by the war propaganda and by the religious
zeal that was excited. Another important effect was the massacre
of large numbers of Jews; those who were not massacred were
often despoiled of their property and forcibly baptized. There
were large-scale murders of Jews in Germany at the time of the
first Crusade, and in England, at the time of the third Crusade,
on the accession of Richard Cceur de Lion. York, where the first
Christian Emperor had begun his reign, was the scene of one of
the most appalling mass-atrocities again* Jews. The Jews, before
the Crusades, had almost a monopoly of the trade in Eastern
goods throughout Europe; after the Crusades, as a result of the
persecution of Jews, this trade was largely in Christian hands.
455
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Another and very different effect of the Crusades was to stimulate
literary intercourse with Constantinople. During the twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries, many translations from Greek into
Latin were made as a result of this intercourse. There had always
been much trade with Constantinople, especially by Venetians;
but Italian traders did not trouble themselves with Greek classics,
any more than English or American traders in Shanghai troubled
themselves with the classics of China. (European knowledge of
Chinese classics was derived mainly from missionaries.)
THE GROWTH OF SCHOLASTICISM
Scholasticism, in its narrower sense, begins early in the twelfth
century. As a philosophic school, it has certain definite charac-
teristics. First, it is confined within the limits of what appears to
the writer to be orthodoxy; if his views are condemned by a
council, he is usually willing to retract. This is not to be attributed
entirely to cowardice, it is analogous to the submission of a judge
to the decision of a Court of Appeal. Second, within the limits of
orthodoxy, Aristotle, who gradually became mure fully known
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is increasingly
accepted as the supreme authority ; Plato no longer holds the first
place. Third, there is a great belief in "dialectic" and in syllogistic
reasoning; the general temper of the scholastics is minute and
disputatious rather than mystical. Fourth, the question of uni-
versals is brought to the fore by the discovery that Aristotle and
Plato do not agree about it; it would be a mistake to suppose,
however, that universals are the main concern of the philosophers
of this period.
The twelfth century, in this as in other matters, prepares the
way for the thirteenth, to which the greatest names belong. The
earlier men have, however, the interest of pioneers. There is a
new intellectual confidence, and, in spite of the respect for Aris-
totle, a free and vigorous exercise of reason wherever dogma has
not made speculation too dangerous. The defects of the scholastic
method are those that inevitably result from laying stress on
"dialectic." These defects are: indifference to facts and science,
belief in reasoning in matters which only observation can decide,
and an undue emphasis on verbal distinctions and subtleties.
These defects we had occasion to mention in connection with
456
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
Plato, but in the scholastics they exist in a much more extreme
form.
The first philosopher who can be regarded as strictly a scholastic
is Roscelin. Not very much is known about him. He was born at
Compi&gne about 1050, and taught at Loches, in Brittany, where
AWlard was his pupil. He was accused of heresy at a council at
Rheims in 1092, and recanted for fear of being stoned to death by
ecclesiastics with a taste for lynching. He fled to England, but
there he was rash enough to attack St. Anselm. This time he fled
to Rome, where he was reconciled to the Church. He disappears
from history about 1120; the date of his death is purely con-
jectural.
Nothing remains of Roscelin's writings except a letter to Abelard
on the Trinity. In this letter he belittles Abelard and makes merry
over his castration. Ueberweg, who seldom displays emotion, is
led to observe that he can't have been a very nice man. Apart
from this letter, Roscelin's views are chiefly known through the
controversial writings of Anselm and Abelard. According to
Anselm, he said that universals are mere flatus vocts, "breath of
the voice." If this is to be taken literally, it means that a universal
is a physical occurrence, that, namely, which takes place when we
pronounce a word. It is hardly to be supposed, however, that
Roscelin maintained anything so foolish. Anselm says that,
according to Roscelin, man is not a unity, but only a common
name; this view Anselm, like a good Platonist, attributes to
Roscelin's only conceding reality to what is sensible. He seems
to have held, generally, that a whole which has parts has no
reality of its own, but is a mere word; the reality is in the parts.
This view should have led him, and perhaps did lead him, to an
extreme atomism. In any case, it led him into trouble about the
Trinity. He considered that the Three Persons are three distinct
substances, and that only usage stands in the way of our saying
that there are Three Gods. The alternative, which he does not
accept, is, according to him, to say that not only the Son, but the
Father and the Holy Ghost, were incarnate. All this speculation,
in so far as it was heretical, he recanted at Rheims in 1092. It is
impossible to know exactly what he thought about universals,
l>ut at any rate it is plain that he was some sort of nominalist.
His pupil Abelard (or Abailard) was much abler and much more
distinguished. He was born near Nantes in 1079, was a pupil of
457
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
William of Champeaux (a realist) in Paris, and then a teacher in
the Paris cathedral school, where he combated William's views
and compelled him to modify them. After a period devoted to the
study of theology under Anselm of Laon (not the archbishop),
he returned to Paris in 1113, and acquired extraordinary popu-
larity as a teacher. It was at this time that he became the lover of
Helolse, niece of Canon Fulbert. The canon had him castrated,
and he and Hlloise had to retire from the world, he into a
monastery at St. Denis, she into a nunnery at Argenteuil. Their
famous correspondence is said, by a learned German named
Schmeidler, to have been entirely composed by Abllard as a
literary fiction. I am not competent to judge as to the correctness
of this theory, but nothing in Abllard's character makes it im-
possible. He was always vain, disputatious, and contemptuous;
after his misfortune he was also angry and humiliated. Heloise's
letters are much more devoted than his, and one can imagine him
composing them as a balm to his wounded pride.
Even in his retirement, he still had great success as a teacher;
the young liked his cleverness, his dialectical skill, and his irre-
verence towards their older teachers. Older men felt the correlative
dislike of him, and in 1121 he was condemned at Soissons for an
unorthodox book on the Trinity. Having made due submission,
he became abbot of St. Gildas in Brittany, where he found the
monks savage boors. After four miserable years in this exile, he
returned to comparative civilization. His further history is obscure,
except that he continued to teach with great success, according
to the testimony of John of Salisbury. In 1141, at the instance of
St. Bernard, he was again condemned, this time at Sens. He
retired to Cluny, and died the next year.
Abelard's most famous book, composed in 1121-22, is Sic et
Aoif, "Yes and No." Here he gives dialectical arguments for and
against a great variety of theses, often without attempting to arrive
at a conclusion; clearly he likes the disputation itself, and con-
siders it useful as sharpening the wits. The book had a con-
siderable effect in waking people from their dogmatic slumbers.
Abllard's view, that (apart from Scripture) dialectic is the sole
road to truth, while no empiricist can accept it, had, at the time,
a valuable effect as a solvent of prejudices and an encouragement
to the fearless use of the intellect. Nothing outside the Scriptures,
he said, is infallible; even Apostles and Fathers may err*
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
His valuation of logic was, from a modern point of view,
excessive. He considered it pre-eminently the Christian science,
and made play with its derivation from "Logos." "In the be-
ginning was the Logos/' says St. John's Gospel, and this, he
thought, proves the dignity of Logic.
His chief importance is in logic and theory of knowledge. His
philosophy is a critical analysis, largely linguistic. As for universals,
i.e. what can be predicated of many different things, he holds
that we do not predicate a thing, but a word. In this sense he is a
nominalist. But as against Roscelin he points out that a "flatus
vocis" is a thing ; it is not the word as a physical occurrence that
we predicate, but the word as meaning. Here he appeals to Aristotle.
Things, he says, resemble each other, and these resemblances give
rise to universals. But the point of resemblance between two
similar things is not itself a thing; this is the mistake of realism.
He says some things that are even more hostile to realism, for
example, that general concepts arc not based in the nature of
things, but are confused images of many things. Nevertheless he
does not wholly refuse a place to Platonic ideas : they exist in the
divine mind as patterns for creation; they are, in fact, God's
concepts.
All this, whether right or wrong, is certainly very able. The
most modern discussions of the problem of universals have not
got much further.
St. Bernard, whose saintliness did not suffice to make hint
intelligent,1 failed to understand Abelard, and brought unjust
accusations against him. He asserted that Abelard treats the
Trinity like an Arian, grace like a Pelagian, and the Person of
Christ like a Nestorian; that he proves himself a heathen in
sweating to prove Plato a Christian; and further, that he destroys
the merit of the Christian faith by maintaining that God can be
completely understood by human reason. In fact, Abelard never
maintained this last, and always left a large province to faith,
although, like St. Anselm, he thought that the Trinity could be
rationally demonstrated without the help of revelation. It is true
that, at one time, he identified the Holy Ghost with the Platonic
Soul of the World, but he abandoned this view as soon as its
heretical character was pointed out to him. Probably it was more
1 M'Il>e greatness of St. Bernard lay not in the qualities of his intellect,
but of his chir*ctcT.tt—Encyclopadia Britannica.
459
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
his combativeness than his doctrines that caused him to be
accused of heresy, for his habit of criticizing pundits made him
violently unpopular with all influential persons.
Most of the learned men of the time were less devoted to dia-
lectic than AWlard was. There was, especially in the School of
Chartres, a humanistic movement, which admired antiquity, and
followed Plato and Boethius. There was a renewed interest in
mathematics: Adelard of Bath went to Spain early in the twelfth
century, and in consequence translated Euclid.
As opposed to the dry scholastic method, there was a strong
mystical movement, of which St. Bernard was the leader. His
father was a knight who died in the first Crusade. He himself
was a Cistercian monk, and in 1115 became abbot of the newly-
founded abbey of Clairvaux. He was very influential in eccle-
siastical politics — turning the scales against antipopes, combating
heresy in Northern Italy and Southern France, bringing the
weight of orthodoxy to bear on adventurous philosophers, and
preaching the second Crusade. In attacking philosophers he was
usually successful ; but after the collapse of his Crusade he failed
to secure the conviction of Gilbert de la Porrec, who agreed with
Boethius more than seemed right to the saintly heresy-hunter.
Although a politician and a bigot, he was a man of genuinely
religious temperament, and his Latin hymns have great beauty.1
Among those influenced by him, mysticism became increasingly
dominant, till it passed into something like heresy in Joachim of
Flora (d. 1202). The influence of this man, however, belongs to
a later time. St. Bernard and his followers sought religious truth,
not in reasoning, but in subjective experience and contemplation.
Abdard and Bernard are perhaps equally one-sided.
Bernard, as a religious mystic, deplored the absorption of the
papacy in worldly concerns, and disliked the temporal power.
Although he preached the Crusade, he did not seem to understand
that a war requires organization, and cannot be conducted by
' religious enthusiasm alone. He complains that "the law of Justinian,
not the law of the Lord" absorbs men's attention. He is shocked
when the Pope defends his domain by military force. The function
of the Pope 19 spiritual/ and he should not attempt actual govern -
','t
1 Medieval jbatin hymns, rhymed and accentual, give expression,
aometime^i£}>$mc, sometunet gentle and pathetic, to the beat aide of
fueling of the times.
460
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
ment. This point of view, however, is combined with unbounded
reverence for the Pope, whom he calls "prince of bishops, heir
of the apostles, of the primacy of Abel, the governance of Noah,
the patriarchate of Abraham, the order of Melchizedek, the
dignity of Aaron, the authority of Moses, in judgeship Samuel, in
power Peter, in unction Christ." The net result of St. Bernard's
activities was, of course, a great increase of the power of the Pope
in secular affairs.
John of Salisbury, though not an important thinker, is valuable
for our knowledge of his times, of which he wrote a gossipy
account. He was secretary to three Archbishops of Canterbury,
one of whom was Becket; he was a friend of Hadrian IV; at the
end of his life he was bishop of Chartres, where he died in 1180.
In matters outside the faith, he was a man of sceptical temper; he
called himself an Academic (in the sense in which St. Augustine
uses this term). His respect for kings was limited: "an illiterate
king is a crowned ass." He revered St. Bernard, but was well aware
that his attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle must be a failure.
He admired Abelard, but laughed at his theory of universals, and
at Roscclin's equally. He thought logic a pood introduction to
learning, but in itself bloodless and sterile. Aristotle, he says, can
be improved on, even in logic; respect for ancient authors should
not hamper the critical exercise of reason. Plato U still to him the
"prince of all philosophers." He knows personally most of the
learned men of his time, and takes a friendly part in scholastic
debates. On revisiting one school of philosophy after thirty years,
he smiles to find them still discussing the same problems. The
atmosphere of the society that he frequents is very like that of
Oxford Common Rooms thirty years ago. Towards the end of his
life, the cathedral schools gave place to universities, and univer-
sities, at least in England, have had a remarkable continuity from
that day to this.
During the twelfth century, translators gradually increased the
number of Greek books available to Western students. Then;
three main sources of such translations: Constantinoplg^^
and Toledo. Of these Toledo was the most impoj
translations coming from there were often from
direct from the Greek. In the second quarter of thej
Archbishop Raymond of Toledo instituted a collef
whose work was very fruitful. In 1 128, James of '
461
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Aristotle's Analytics, Topics, and Sophistici Elenchi\ the Posterior
Analytics were found difficult by Western philosophers. Henry
Aristippus of Catania (d. 1162) translated the Phaedo and Meno,
but his translations had no immediate effect. Partial as was the
knowledge of Greek philosophy in the twelfth century, learned
men were aware that much of it remained to be discovered by the
West, and a certain eagerness arose to acquire a fuller knowledge
of antiquity. The yoke of orthodoxy was not so severe as is some-
times supposed; a man could always write his book, and then, if
necessary, withdraw its heretical portions after full public dis-
cussion. Most of the philosophers of the time were French, and
France was important to the Church as a make-weight against the
Empire. Whatever theological heresies might occur among them,
learned clerics were almost all politically orthodox ; this made the
peculiar wickedness of Arnold of Brescia, who was an exception
to the rule. The whole of early scholasticism may be viewed,
politically, as an offshoot of the Church's struggle for power.
Chapter XII
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
IN the thirteenth century the Middle Ages reached a culmina-
tion. The synthesis which had been gradually built up since
the fall of Rome became as complete as it was capable of being.
The fourteenth century brought a dissolution of institutions and
philosophies; the fifteenth brought the beginning of those that
we still regard as modern. The great men of the thirteenth century
were very great: Innocent III, St. Francis, Frederick II, and
Thomas Aquinas are, in their different ways, supreme representa-
tives of their respective types. There were also great achievements
not so definitely associated with great names: the Gothic cathedrals
of France, the romantic literature of Charlemagne, Arthur,
and the Niebelungcn, the beginnings of constitutional govern-
ment in Magna Carta and the House of Commons. The matter
that concerns us most directly is the scholastic philosophy,
especially as set forth by Aquinas; but I shall leave this for
the next chapter, and attempt, first, to give an outline of the
events that did most to form the mental atmosphere of the
age.
The central figure at the beginning of the century is Pope
Innocent HI (i 198-1216), a shrewd politician, a man of infinite
vigour, a firm believer in the most extreme claims of the papacy,
but not endowed with Christian humility. At his consecration, he
preached from the text: "See, 1 have this day set thee over the
nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant. " He called
himself "king of kings, lord of lords, a priest for ever and ever
according to the order of Melchizcdek." In enforcing this view
of himself, he took advantage of every favourable circumstance.
In Sicily, which had been conquered by the Emperor Henry VI
(d. 1197)9 who had married Constance, heiress of the Norman
kings, the new king was Frederick, only three years old at the
time of Innocent's accession. The kingdom was turbulent, and
Constance needed the Pope's help. She made him guardian of the
infant Frederick, and secured his recognition of her son's rights in
Sicily by acknowledging papal superiority. Portugal and Aragoo
463
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
made similar acknowledgments. In England, King John, after
vehement resistance, was compelled to yield his kingdom to
Innocent and receive it back as a papal fief.
To some degree, the Venetians got the better of him in the
matter of the fourth Crusade. The soldiers of the Cross were to
embark at Venice, but there were difficulties in procuring enough
ships. No one had enough except the Venetians, and they main-
tained (for purely commercial reasons) that it would be much
better to conquer Constantinople than Jerusalem — in any case,
it would be a useful stepping-stone, and the Eastern Empire had
never been very friendly to Crusaders. It was found necessary to
give way to Venice; Constantinople was captured, and a Latin
Emperor established. At first Innocent was annoyed; but he
reflected that it might now be possible to re- unite the Eastern
and Western Churches. (This hope proved vain.) Except in this
instance, I do not know of anybody who ever in any degree got
the better of Innocent III. He ordered the great Crusade against
the Albigenses, which rooted out heresy, happiness, prosperity,
and culture from southern France. He deposed Raymond, Count
of Toulouse, for lukewarmness about the Crusade, and secured
most of the region of the Albigenses for its leader, Simon de
Montfort, father of the father of Parliament. He quarrelled with
the Emperor Otto, and called upon the Germans to depose him.
They did so, and at his suggestion elected Frederick II, now just
of age, in his stead. But for his support of Frederick he exacted
a terrific price in promises — which, however, Frederick was deter-
mined to break as soon as possible.
Innocent III was the first great Pope in whom there was no
element of sanctity. The reform of the Church made ihe hierarchy
feel secure as to its moral prestige, and therefore convinced that
it need no longer trouble to be holy. The power motive, from his
time on, more and more exclusively dominated the papacy, and
produced opposition from some religious men even in his day.
He codified the canon law so as to increase the power of the Curia ;
Walther von der Vogelweide called this code "the blackest book
that hell ever gave/1 Although the papacy still had resounding
victories to win, the manner of its subsequent decline might
already have been foreseen.
Frederick II, who had been the ward of Innocent III, went to
Germany in 1212, and by the Pope's help wag elected to replace
464
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Otto. Innocent did not live to see what a formidable antagonist
he had raised up against the papacy.
Frederick — one of the most remarkable rulers known to history
— had passed his childhood and youth in difficult and adverse
circumstances. His father Henry VI (son of Barbarossa) had
defeated the Normans of Sicily, and married Constance, heiress
to the kingdom. He established a German garrison, which was
hated by the Sicilians; but he died in 1197, when Frederick was
two years old. Constance thereupon turned against the Germans,
and tried to govern without them by the help of the Pope. The
Germans were resentful, and Otto tried to conquer Sicily; this
was the cause of his quarrel with the Pope. Palermo, where
Frederick passed his childhood, was subject to other troubles.
There were Muslim revolts; the Pisans and Genoese fought each
other and everyone else for possession of the island ; the important
people in Sicily were constantly changing sides, according as one
party or the other offered the higher price for treachery. Culturally,
however, Sicily had great advantages. Muslim, Byzantine, Italian,
and German civilization met and mingled there as nowhere else.
Greek and Arabic were still living languages in Sicily. Frederick
learnt to speak six languages fluently, and in all six he was witty.
He was at home in Arabian philosophy, and had friendly relations
with Mohammedans, which scandalized pious Christians. He was
a Hohenstaufen, and in Germany could count as a German. But
in culture and sentiment he was Italian, with a tincture of Byzan*
tine and Arab. His contemporaries gazed upon him with astonish-
ment gradually turning into horror; they called him "wonder of
the world and marvellous innovator." While still alive, he was
the subject of myths. He was said to be the author of a book
l)e Tribus Impostoribus — the three impostors were Moses, Christ,
and Mohammed. This book, which never existed, was attributed,
successively, to many enemies of the Church, the last of whom
was Spinoza.
The words "Guelf" and "Ghibclline" began to be used at the
time of Frederick's contest with the Emperor Otto. They are cor-
ruptions of "Welf" and "Waiblingen," the family names of the
two contestants. (Otto's nephew was an ancestor of the British
royal family.)
Innocent III died in 1216; Otto, whom Frederick had defeated,
died in 1218. The new Pope, Honorius III, was at first on good
465
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
terms with Frederick, but difficulties soon arose. First, Frederick
refused to go on crusade; then he had trouble with the Lombard
cities, which in 1226 contracted an offensive and defensive alliance
for twenty-five years. They hated the Germans; one of their poets
wrote fiery verses against them. "Love not the folk of Germany;
far, far from you be these mad dogs." This seems to have expressed
the general feeling in Lombardy. Frederick wanted to remain in
Italy to deal with the cities, but in 1227 Honorius died, and was
succeeded by Gregory IX, a fiery ascetic who loved St. Francis
and was beloved by him. (He canonized St. Francis two years
after his death.) Gregory thought nothing else so important as the
Crusade, and excommunicated Frederick for not undertaking it.
Frederick, who had married the daughter and heiress of the King
of Jerusalem, was willing enough to go when he could, and called
himself King of Jerusalem. In 1228, while still excommunicate,
he went; this made Gregory even more angry than his previously
not going, for how could the crusading host be led by a man
whom the Pope had banned ? Arrived in Palestine, Frederick made
friends with the Mohammedans, explained to them that the Chris-
tians attached importance to Jerusalem although it was of little
strategic value, and succeeded in inducing them peaceably to
restore the city to him. This made the Pope still more furious —
one should fight the infidel, not negotiate with him. However,
Frederick was duly crowned in Jerusalem, and no one could deny
that he had been successful. Peace between Pope and Emperor
was restored in 1230.
During the few years of peace that followed, the Emperor
devoted himself to the affairs of the kingdom of Sicily. By the
help of his prime minister, Pietro della Vigna, he promulgated a
new legal code, derived from Roman law, and showing a high
level of civilization in his southern dominion ; the code was at
once translated into Greek, for the benefit of the Greek-speaking
inhabitants. He founded an important university at Naples. He
minted gold coins, called "augustals," the first gold coins in the
West for many centuries. He established freer trade, and abolished
all internal customs. He even summoned elected representatives
of the cities to his council, which, however, had only consultative
powers.
This period of peace ended when Frederick again came into
conflict with the Lombard League in 1237; the Pope threw in
466
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
his lot with them, and again excommunicated the Emperor. From
this time until Frederick's death in 1250, the war was practically
continuous, growing, on both sides, gradually more bitter, cruel,
and treacherous. There were great fluctuations of fortune, and
the issue was still undecided when the Emperor died. But those
who attempted to be his successors had not his power, and were
gradually defeated, leaving Italy divided and the Pope victorious.
Deaths of popes made little difference in the struggle ; each new
Pope took up his predecessor's policy practically unchanged.
Gregory IX died in 1241 ; in 1243 Innocent IV, a bitter enemy of
Frederick, was elected. Louis IX, in spite of his impeccable
orthodoxy, tried to moderate the fury of Gregory and Innocent IV,
but in vain. Innocent, especially, rejected all overtures from the
Emperor, and used all manner of unscrupulous expedients against
him. He pronounced him deposed, declared a crusade against him,
and excommunicated all who supported him. The friars preached
against him, the Muslims rose, there were plots among his promi-
nent nominal supporters. All this made Frederick increasingly
cruel; plotters were ferociously punished, and prisoners were
deprived of the right eye and the right hand.
At one time during this titanic struggle, Frederick thought of
founding a new religion, in which he was to be the Messiah, and
his minister Pictro della Vigna was to take the place of St. Peter.1
He did not get so far as to make this project public, but wrote
about it to della Vigna. Suddenly, however, he became convinced,
rightly or wrongly, that Pietro was plotting against him; he
blinded him, and exhibited him publicly in a cage; Pietro, how-
ever, avoided further suffering by suicide.
Frederick, in spite of his abilities, could not have succeeded,
because the antipapal forces that existed in his time were pious
and democratic, whereas his aim was something like a restoration
of the pagan Roman Empire. In culture he was enlightened, but
politically he was retrograde. His court was oriental; he had a
harem with eunuchs. But it was in this court that Italian poetry
began; he himself had some merit as a poet. In his conflict with
the papacy, he published controversial statements as to the dangers
of ecclesiastical absolutism, which wogld have been applauded in
the sixteenth century, but fell flat in his own day. The heretics,
who should have been his allies, appeared to him simply rebels,
1 Sec the life of Frederick II, by Hermann Kantorowicx.
467
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and to please the Pope he persecuted them. The free cities, but
for the Emperor, might have opposed the Pope; but so long as
Frederick demanded their submission they welcomed the Pope
as an ally. Thus, although he was free from the superstitions of
his age, and in culture far above other contemporary rulers, his
position as Emperor compelled him to oppose all that was politi-
cally liberal. He failed inevitably, but of all the failures in history
he remains one of the most interesting.
The heretics, against whom Innocent III crusaded, and whom
all rulers (including Frederick) persecuted, deserve study, both in
themselves and as giving a glimpse of popular feeling, of which,
otherwise, hardly a hint appears in the writings of the tune.
The most interesting, and also the largest, of the heretical sects
were the Cathari, who, in the South of France, are better known
as Albigenses. Their doctrines came from Asia by way of the
Balkans; they were widely held in Northern Italy, and in the
South of France they were held by the great majority, including
nobles, who liked the excuse to seize Church lands. The cause of
this wide diffusion of heresy was partly disappointment at the
failure of the Crusades, but mainly moral disgust at the wealth
and wickedness of the clergy. There was a widespread feclinp,
analogous to later puritanism, in favour of personal holiness; this
was associated with a cult of poverty. The Church was rich and
largely worldly; very many priests were grossly immoral. The
friars brought accusations against the older orders and the parish
priests, asserting abuse of the confessional for purposes of reduc-
tion; and the enemies of the friars retoited the accusation. There
can be no doubt that such charges were largely justified. The more
the Church claimed supremacy on religious grounds, the more
plain people were shocked by the contrast between profession and
performance. The same motives which ultimately led to the
Reformation were operative in the thirteenth century. The main
difference was that secular rulers were not ready to throw in their
lot with the heretics; and this was largely because no existing
philosophy could reconcile heresy with the claims of kings to
dominion.
The tenets of the Cathari cannot be known with certainty, as
we are entirely dependent on the testimony of their enemies.
Moreover ecclesiastics, being well versed in the history of heresy,
tended to apply some familiar label, and to attribute to existing
468
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
sects all the tenets of former ones, often on the basis of some not
very close resemblance. Nevertheless, there is a good deal that is
almost beyond question. It seems that the Cathari were dualists
and that, like the Gnostics, they considered the Old Testament
Jehovah a wicked demiurge, the true God being only revealed in
the New Testament. They regarded matter as essentially evil, and
believed that for the virtuous there is no resurrection of the body.
The wicked, however, will suffer transmigration into the bodies
of animals. On this ground they were vegetarians, abstaining even
from eggs, cheese, and milk. They ate fish, however, because they
believed that fishes are not sexually generated. All sex was abhor-
rent to them; marriage, some said, is even worse than adultery,
because it is continuous and complacent. On the other hand, they
saw no objection to suicide. They accepted the New Testament
more literally than did the orthodox; they abstained from oaths,
and turned the other cheek. The persecutors record a case of a
man accused of heresy, who defended himself by saying that he
ate meat, lied, swore, and was a good Catholic.
The stricter precepts of the sect were only to be observed by
certain exceptionally holy people called the " perfected"; the others
might cat meat and even marry.
It is interesting to trace the genealogy of these doctrines. They
came to Italy and France, by way of the Crusaders, from a sect
called the Bogomiles in Bulgaria; in 1167, when the Cathari held
a council near Toulouse, Bulgarian delegates attended. The Bogo-
miles, in turn, were the result of a fusion of Manichaeans and
Paulicians. The Paulicians were an Armenian sect who rejected
infant baptism, purgatory, the invocation of saints, and the
Trinity; they spread gradually into Thrace, and thence into
Bulgaria. The Paulicians were followers of Marcion (ca. A.D. 150),
who considered himself to be following St. Paul in rejecting the
Jewish elements in Christianity, and who had some affinity with
the Gnostics without being one of them.
The only other popular heresy that I shall consider is that of the
Waldenses. These were the followers of Peter Waldo, an enthusiast
who, in 1170, started a "crusade" for observance o the law of
Christ. He gave all his goods to the poor, and founded a society
called the "Poor Men of Lyons," who practised poverty and a
strictly virtuous life. At first they had papal approval, but they
inveighed somewhat too forcibly against the immorality of the
469
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
clergy, and were condemned by the Council of Verona in 1184.
Thereupon they decided that every good man is competent to
preach and expound the Scriptures; they appointed their own
ministers, and dispensed with the services of die Catholic priest-
hood. They spread to Lombardy, and to Bohemia, where they
paved the way for the Hussites. In the Albigensian persecution,
which affected them also, many fled to Piedmont; it was their
persecution in Piedmont in Milton's time that occasioned his
sonnet "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints.'1 They survive
to this day in remote Alpine valleys and in the United States.
All this heresy alarmed the Church, and vigorous measures were
taken to suppress it. Innocent III considered that heretics deserved
death, being guilty of treason to Christ. He called upon the king
of France to embark upon a crusade against the Albigenscs, which
was done in 1209. It was conducted with incredible ferocity;
after the taking of Carcassonne, especially, there was an appalling
massacre. The ferreting out of heresy had been the business of
the bishops, but it became too onerous to be performed by men
who had other duties, and in 1233 Gregory IX founded the
Inquisition, to take over this part of the work of the episcopate.
After 1254, those accused by the Inquisition were not allowed
counsel. If condemned, their property was confiscated — in France,
to the crown. When an accused person was found guilty, he was
handed over to the secular arm with a prayer that his life might
be spared; but if the secular authorities failed to burn him, they
were liable to be themselves brought before the Inquisition. It
dealt not only with heresy in the ordinary sense, but with sorcery
and witchcraft. In Spain, it was chiefly directed against crypto-
Jews. Its work was performed mainly by Dominicans and Fran-
ciscans. It never penetrated to Scandinavia or England, but the
English were quite ready to make use of it against Joan of Arc.
On the whole, it was very successful; at the outset, it completely
stamped out the Albigensian heresy.
The Church, in the early thirteenth century, was in danger of a
revolt scarcely less formidable than that of the sixteenth. From
this it was saved, very largely, by the rise of the mendicant orders;
St. Francis and St. Dominic did much more for orthodoxy than
was done by even the most vigorous popes.
St. Francis of Assist (1181 or 1182-1226) was one of the moat
lovable men known to history* He was of a well-to-do family, and
A70
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
in his youth was not averse from ordinary gaieties. But one day,
as he was riding by a leper, a sudden impulse of pity led him to
dismount and kiss the man. Soon afterwards, he decided to forgo
all worldly goods, and devote his life to preaching and good works.
His father, a respectable business man, was furious, but could
not deter him. He soon gathered a band of followers, all vowed to
complete poverty. At first, the Church viewed the movement with
some suspicion; it seemed too like the "Poor Men of Lyons/9
The first missionaries whom St. Francis sent to distant places
were taken for heretics, because they practised poverty instead of
(like the monks) only taking a vow which no one regarded as
serious. But Innocent III was shrewd enough to see the value of
the movement, if it could be kept within the bounds of orthodoxy,
and in 1209 or 1210 he gave recognition to the new order.
Gregory IX, who was a personal friend of St. Francis, continued
to favour him, while imposing certain rules which were irksome
to the Saint's enthusiastic and anarchic impulses. Francis wished
to interpret the vow of poverty in the strictest possible way; he
objected to houses or churches for his followers. They were to
beg their bread, and to have no lodging but what chance hospitality
provided. In 1219, he travelled to the East and preached before
the Sultan, who received him courteously but remained a Moham-
medan. On his return, he found that the Franciscans had built
themselves a house; he was deeply pained, but the Pope induced
or compelled him to give way. After his death, Gregory canonized
him but softened his rule in the article of poverty.
In the matter of saintliness, Francis has had equals; what makes
htm unique among saints is his spontaneous happiness, his uni-
versal love, and his gifts as a poet. His goodness appears always
devoid of effort, as though it had no dross to overcome. He loved
all living things, not only as a Christian or a benevolent man, but
as a poet. His hymn to the sun, written shortly before his death,
might almost have been written by Ikhnaton the sun-worshipper,
but not quite— Christianity informs it, though not very obviously.
He felt a duty to lepers, for their sake, not for his; unlike most
Christian saints, he was more interested in the happiness of others
titan in his own salvation. He never 'showed any feeling of supe-
riority, even lo the humblest or most wicked. Thomas of Celano
said of him that he was more than a saint among saints; among
sinners he was one of themselves.
47'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
If Satan existed, the future of the order founded by St. Francis
would afford him the most exquisite gratification. The saint's
immediate successor as head of the order, Brother Elias, wallowed
in luxury, and allowed a complete abandonment of poverty. The
chief work of the Franciscans in the years immediately following
the death of their founder was as recruiting sergeants in the bitter
and bloody wars of Guelfs and Ghibellines. The Inquisition,
founded seven years after his death, was, in several countries,
chiefly conducted by Franciscans. A small minority, called the
Spirituals, remained true to his teaching; many of these were burnt
by the Inquisition for heresy. These men held that Christ and the
Apostles owned no property, not even the clothes they wore; this
opinion was condemned as heretical in 1323 by John XXII. The
net result of St. Francis's life was to create yet one more wealthy
and corrupt order, to strengthen the hierarchy, and to facilitate
the persecution of all who excelled in moral earnestness or freedom
of thought. In view of his own aims and character, it is impossible
to imagine any more bitterly ironical outcome.
St. Dominic (1170-1221) is much less interesting than St.
Francis. He was a Castilian, and had, like Loyola, a fanatical
devotion to orthodoxy. His main purpose was to combat heresy,
and he adopted poverty as a means to this end. He was present
throughout the Albigensian war, though he is said to have deplored
some of its more extreme atrocities. The Dominican Order was
founded in 1215 by Innocent III, and won quick success. The
only human trait known to me in St. Dominic is his confession
to Jordan of Saxony that he liked talking to young women better
than to old ones. In 1242, the Order solemnly decreed that this
passage should be deleted from Jordan's life of the founder.
The Dominicans were even more active than the Franciscans
in the work of the Inquisition. They performed, however, a valu-
able service to mankind by their devotion to learning. This was
no part of St. Dominic's intention ; he had decreed that his friars
were "not to learn secular sciences or liberal arts except by dis-
pensation/' This rule was abrogated in 1259, after which date
everything was done to make a studious life easy for Dominicans.
Manual labour was no part of their duties, and the hours of
devotion were shortened to give them more time for study. They
devoted themselves to reconciling Aristotle and Christ; Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, both Dominican*, accomplished
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
this task as well as it is capable of being accomplished. The
authority of Thomas Aquinas was so overwhelming that subse-
quent Dominicans did not achieve much in philosophy; though
Francis, even more » than Dominic, had disliked learning, the
greatest names in the immediately following period are Franciscan:
Roger Bacon, Duns Scot us, and William of Occam were all
Franciscans. What the friars accomplished for philosophy will be
the subject of the following chapters.
473
Chapter XIII
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
^-T^HOMAS AQUINAS (b. 1225 or 1226, d. 1274) is regarded
I as the greatest of scholastic philosophers. In all Catholic
JL educational institutions that teach philosophy his system
has to be taught as the only right one; this has been the rule
since a rescript of 1879 by Leo XIII. St. Thomas, therefore, is
not only of historical interest, but is a living influence, like Plato,
Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel— more, in fact, than the latter two.
In most respects, he follows Aristotle so closely that the Stagyrite
has, among Catholics, almost the authority of one of the Fathers ;
to criticize him in matters of pure philosophy has come to be
thought almost impious.1 This was not always the case. In the
time of Aquinas, the battle for Aristotle, as against Plato, still had
to be fought The influence of Aquinas secured the victory until
the Renaissance; then Plato, who became better known than in
the Middle Ages, again acquired supremacy in the opinion of
most philosophers. In the seventeenth century, it was possible to
be orthodox and a Cartesian; Malebranche, though a priest, was
never censured. But in our day such freedoms are a thing of the
past; Catholic ecclesiastics must accept St. Thomas if they
concern themselves with philosophy.
St. Thomas was the son of the Count of Aquino, whose castle,
in the kingdom of Naples, was close to Monte Cassino, where the
education of the "angelic doctor" began. He was for six years at
Frederick H's university of Naples; then he became a Dominican
and went to Cologne, to study under Albertus Magnus, who was
the leading Aristotelian among the philosophers of the time.
After a period in Cologne and Paris, he returned to Italy in 1259,
where he spent the rest of his life except for the three years 1269-
72. During these three years he was in Paris, where the Dominicans,
on account of their Aristotelianism, were in trouble with the
university authorities, and were suspected of heretical sympathy
with the Averroists, who toad a powerful party in the university.
The Averroists held, on the basis of their interpretation of Ari*-
1 When I did to in a broadcast, very many protest* from Catholics
resulted.
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
totle, that the soul, in so far as it is individual, is not immortal;
immortality belongs only to the intellect, which is impersonal,
and identical in different intellectual beings. When it was forcibly
brought to their notice that this doctrine is contrary to the
Catholic faith, they took reftige in the subterfuge of "double
truth": one sort, based on reason, in philosophy, and another,
based on revelation, in theology. All this brought Aristotle into
bad odour, and St. Thomas, in Paris, was concerned to undo the
harm done by too close adherence to Arabian doctrines. In this
he was singularly successful.
Aquinas, unlike his predecessors, had a really competent know-
ledge of Aristotle. His friend William of Moerbeke provided him
with translations from the Greek, and he himself wrote com-
mentaries. Until his time, men's notions of Aristotle had been
obscured by Neoplatonic accretions. He, however, followed the
genuine Aristotle, and disliked Platonism, even as it appears in
St. Augustine. He succeeded in persuading the Church that Aris-
totle's system was to be preferred to Plato's as the basis of
Christian philosophy, and that Mohammedans and Christian
Averroists had misinterpreted Aristotle. For my part, I should
say that the De Anima leads much more naturally to the view of
Averroes than to that of Aquinas; however, the Church, since
St. Thomas, has thought otherwise. I should say, further, that
Aristotle's views on most questions of logic and philosophy were
not final, and have since been proved to be largely erroneous;
this opinion, also, is not allowed to be professed by any Catholic
philosopher or teacher of philosophy.
St. Thomas's most important work, the Summa contra Gentiles,
was written during the years 1259-64. It is concerned to establish
the truth of the Christian religion by arguments addressed to a
reader supposed to be not already a Christian; one gathers that
the imaginary reader is usually thought of as a man versed in the
philosophy of the Arabs, He wrote another book, Summa Theo-
bgiae, of almost equal importance, but of somewhat less interest
to us because less designed to use arguments not assuming in
advance the truth of Christianity.
What follows is an abstract of the Summa contra Gentile*.
Let us first consider what is meant by "wisdom." A man may
be wise in some particular pursuit, such as making houses; this
implies that he knows the means to some particular end. But all
475
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
particular ends are subordinate to the end of the universe, and
wisdom per se is concerned with the end of the universe. Now the
end of the universe is the good of the intellect, i.e. truth. The
pursuit of wisdom in this sense is the most perfect, sublime,
profitable, and delightful of pursuits. All this is proved by appeal
to the authority of the "The Philosopher," i.e. Aristotle.
My purpose (he says) is to declare the truth which the Catholic
Faith professes. But here I must have recourse to natural reason,
since the gentiles do not accept the authority of Scripture. Natural
reason, however, is deficient in the things of God; it can prove
some parts of the faith, but not others. It can prove the existence
of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the Trinity, the
Incarnation, or the Last Judgment. Whatever is demonstrable is,
so far as it goes, in accordance with the Christian faith, and nothing
in revelation is contrary to reason. But it is important to separate
the parts of the faith which can be proved by reason from those
which cannot. Accordingly, of the four books into which the
Summa is divided, the first three make no appeal to revelation,
except to show that it is in accordance with conclusions reached
by reason; only in the fourth book are matters treated which
cannot be known apart from revelation.
The first step is to prove the existence of God. Some think this
unnecessary, since the existence of God (they say) is self-evident.
If we knew God's essence, this would be true, since (as is proved
later) in God, essence and existence are one. But we do not know
His essence, except very imperfectly. Wise men know more of His
essence than do the ignorant, and angels know more than either;
but no creature knows enough of it to be able to deduce God's
existence from His essence. On this ground, the ontological
argument is rejected.
It is important to remcmlxrr that religious truths which can be
proved can also be known by faith. The proofs are difficult, and
can only be understood by the learned ; but faith is necessary also
to the ignorant, to the young, and to those who, from practical
preoccupations, have not the leisure to learn philosophy. For them,
revelation suffices.
Some say that God is only knowable by faith. They argue that,
if the principles of demonstration became known to us through
experience derived from the senses, as is said in the Posterior
Analytic*, whatever transcends sense cannot be proved. This,
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
however, is false; and even if it were true, God could be known
from His sensible effects.
The existence of God is proved, as in Aristotle, by the argument
of the unmoved mover.1 There are things which are only moved,
and other things which both move and are moved. Whatever is
moved is moved by something, and, since an endless regress is
impossible, we must arrive somewhere at something which
moves other things without being moved. This unmoved mover
is God. It might be objected that this argument involves the
eternity of movement, which Catholics reject. This would be an
error: it is valid on the hypothesis of the eternity of movement,
but is only strengthened by the opposite hypothesis, which
involves a beginning, and therefore a First Cause.
In the Summa Theologian, five proofs of God's existence are
given. First, the argument of the unmoved mover, as above.
Second, the argument of the First Cause, which again depends
upon the impossibility of an infinite regress. Third, that there
must be an ultimate source of all necessity; this is much the same
as the second argument. Fourth, thai we find various perfections
in the world, and that these must have their source in something
completely perfect. Fifth, that we find even lifeless things serving
a purf*o$e, which must be that of some being outside them, since
only living things can have an internal purpose.
To return to the Summa contra Gentiles, having proved the
existence of God, we can now say many things about Him, but
these are all, in a sense, negative; God's nature is only known to
us through what it is not. God is eternal, since He is unmoved;
He is unchanging, since He contains no passive potentiality.
David of Dinant (a materialistic pantheist of the early thirteenth
century) "raved" that God is the same as primary matter; this
is absurd, since primary matter is pure passivity, and God is pure
activity. In God, there is no composition, therefore He is not a
body, because bodies have parts.
God is His own essence, since otherwise He would not be
simple, but would be compounded of essence and existence, (This
point is important.) In God, essence and existence are identical.
There are no accidents in God. He ca'nnot be specified by any
substantial difference; He is not in any genus; He cannot be defined.
But He lack* not the excellence of any genus. Things are in some
1 But in Aristotle the argument leads to 4? or 55 Gods.
477
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
ways like God, in others not. It is more fitting to say that things
are like God than that God is like things.
God is good, and is His own goodness; He is the good of every
good. He is intelligent, and His act of intelligence is His essence.
He understands by His essence, and understands Himself per-
fectly. (John the Scot, it will be remembered, thought otherwise.)
Although there is no composition in the divine intellect, God
understands many things. This might seem a difficulty, but the
things that He understands have no distinct being in Him. Nor
do they exist per se, as Plato thought, because forms of natural
things cannot exist or be understood apart from matter. Never-
theless, God must understand forms before creating. The solution
of this difficulty is as follows: "The concept of the divine intellect,
according as He understands Himself, which concept is His
Word, is the likeness not only of God Himself understood, but
also of all the things of which the divine essence is the likeness.
Accordingly many things can be understood by God, by one
intelligible species which is the divine essence, and by one under-
stood intention which is the divine Word."1 Ever}' form, so far
as it is something positive, is a perfection. God's intellect includes
in His essence what is proper to each thing, by understanding
where it is like Him and where unlike ; for instance life, not know-
ledge, is the essence of a plant, and knowledge, not intellect, is
the essence of an animal. Thus a plant is like God in being alive,
but unlike in not having knowledge; an animal is like God in
having knowledge, but unlike in not having intellect. It is always
by a negation that a creature differs from God.
God understands all things at the same instant. His knowledge
is not a habit, and is not discursive or argumentative. God is
truth. (This is to be understood literally.)
We come now to a question which had already troubled both
Plato and Aristotle. Can God know particular things, or does He
only know universal and general truths? A Christian, since he
believes in Providence, must hold that God knows particular
things; nevertheless, there are weighty arguments against this
view. St. Thomas enumerates seven such arguments, and then
proceeds to refute them. The seven arguments are as follows:
i. Singularity being signate matter, nothing immaterial can
know it.
1 Summa centra GentiUt, Book I, chap. liii.
478
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
2. Singulars do not always exist, and cannot be known when
they do not exist; therefore they cannot be known by an un-
changing being.
3. Singulars are contingent, not necessary; therefore there can
be no certain knowledge of them except when they exist.
4. Some singulars are due to volitions, which can only be
known to the person willing.
5. Singulars are infinite in number, and the infinite as such is
unknown.
6. Singulars are too petty for God's attention.
7. In some singulars there is evil, but God cannot know evil.
Aquinas replies that God knows singulars as their cause; that
He knows things that do not yet exist, just as an artificer does
when he is making something; that He knows future contingents,
because He sees each thing in time as if present, He Himself being
not in time; that He knows our minds and secret wills, and that
He knows an infinity of things, although we cannot do so. He
knows trivial things, because nothing is wholly trivial, and every-
thing has some nobility; otherwise God would know only Himself.
Moreover the order of the universe is very noble, and this cannot
be known without knowing even the trivial parts. Finally, God
knows evil things, because knowing anything good involves
knowing the opposite evil.
In God there is Will; His Will is His essence, and its principal
object is the divine essence. In willing Himself, God wills other
things also, for God is the end of all things. He wills even things
that are not yet. He wills His own being and goodness, but other
things, though He wills them, He does not will necessarily. There
is free will in God ; a reason can be assigned for His volition, but
not a cause, lit cannot will things impossible in themselves; for
example, He cannot make a contradiction true. The Saint's
example of something beyond even divine power is not an alto-
gether happy one; he says that God could not make a man be
an ass.
In God are delight and joy and love; God hates nothing, and
possesses the contemplative and active virtues. He is happy, and
is His own happiness.
We come now (in Book II) to the consideration of creatures.
This is useful for refuting errors against God. God created the
world out of nothing, contrary to the opinions of the ancients.
479
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The subject of the things that God cannot do is resumed. He
cannot be a body, or change Himself; He cannot fail; He cannot
be weary, or forget, or repent, or be angry or sad ; He cannot make
a man have no soul, or make the sum of the angles of a triangle
be not two right angles. He cannot undo the past, commit sins,
make another God, or make Himself not exist.
Book II is mainly occupied with the soul in man. All intellectual
substances are immaterial and incorruptible; angels have no bodies,
but in men the soul is united to a body. It is the form of the body,
as in Aristotle. There are not three souls in man, but only one.
The whole soul is present entire in every part of the body. The
souls of animals, unlike those of men, are not immortal. The
intellect is part of each man's soul; there is not, as Avcrroes
maintained, only one intellect, in which various men participate.
The soul is not transmitted with the semen, but is created afresh
with each man. There is, it is true, a difficulty: when a man is
born out of wedlock, this seems to make God an accomplice in
adultery. This objection, however, is only specious. (There is a
grave objection, which troubled St. Augustine, and that is as to
the transmission of original sin. It is the soul that sins, and if the
soul is not transmitted, but created afresh, how can it inherit the
sin of Adam? This is not discussed.)
In connection with the intellect, the problem of universal* is
discussed. St. Thomas's position is that of Aristotle. Uuiversals
do not subsist outside the soul, but the intellect, in understanding
universal, understands things that are outside the soul.
The Third Book is largely concerned with ethical questions.
Evil is unintentional, not an essence, and has an accidental cause
which is good. All things tend to be like God who is the end of
all things. Human happiness does not consist in carnal pleasures,
honour, glory, wealth, worldly power, or goods of the body, and
is not seated in the senses. Man's ultimate happiness does not
consist in acts of moral virtue, because these arc means; it consists
in the contemplation of God. But the knowledge of God possessed
by the majority does not suffice; nor the knowledge of Him
obtained by demonstration ; nor even the knowledge obtained by
faith. In this life, we cannot see God in His essence, or have
ultimate happiness; but hereafter we shall see Him face to face.
(Not literally, we are warned, because God has no face.) This
will happen, not by our natural power, but by the divine light;
480
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
and even then, we shall not see all of Him. By this vision we
become partakers of eternal life, i.e. of life outside time.
Divine Providence does not exclude evil, contingency, free will,
chance or luck. Evil comes through second causes, as in the case
of a good artist with bad tools.
Angels are not all equals; there is an order amdng them. Each
angel is the sole specimen of his species, for, since angels have
no bodies, they can only be distinct through specific differences,
not through position in space.
Astrology is to be rejected, for the usual reasons. In answer to
the question "Is there such a thing as fate?" Aquinas replies that
we might give the name "fate" to the order impressed by Provi-
dence, but it is wiser not to do so, as "fate" is a pagan word.
This leads to an argument that prayer is useful although Provi-
dence is unchangeable. (1 have failed to follow this argument.)
(Jod sometimes works miracles, but no one else can. Magic,
however, is possible with the help of demons; this is not properly
miraculous, and is not by the help of the stars.
Divine lore directs us to love God; also, in a lesser degree, our
neighbour. It forbids fornication, because the father should stay
with the mother while the children are being reared. It forbids
birth control, as being against nature; it does not, however, on
this account forbid life-long celibacy. Matrimony should be indis-
soluble, because the father is needed in the education of the
children, both as more rational than the mother, and as having
more physical strength when punishment is required. Not all
carnal inteicourse is sinful, since it is natural; but to think the
married state as good as continence is to fall into the heresy of
Jovinian. There must be strict monogamy; polygyny is unfair to
women, and polyandry* makes paternity uncertain. Incest is to
be forbidden because it would complicate family life. Against
brother-sister incest there is a very curious argument: that if the
love of husband and wife were combined with that of brother
and sister, mutual attraction would be so strong as to cause unduly
frequent intercourse.
All these arguments on sexual ethics, it is to be observed, appeal
to purely rational considerations, not fc> divine commands and
prohibitions. Here, as throughout the first three books, Aquinas
is glad, at the end of a piece of reasoning, to quote texts showing
that reason has led him to a conclusion in harmony with the
'/lifer* ,1 Wfturtt /•«./ .j,»/»At ^Sl Q
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Scriptures, but he does not appeal to authority until his result
has been reached.
There is a most lively and interesting discussion of voluntary
poverty, which, as one might expect, arrives ultimately at a con-
clusion in harmony with the principles of the mendicant Orders,
but states the objections with a force and realism which shows
them to be such as he had actually heard urged by the secular
clergy.
He then passes on to sin, predestination, and election, on which
his view is broadly that of Augustine. By mortal sin a man fort cits
his last end to all eternity, and therefore eternal punishment is his
due. No man can be freed from sin except by grace, and yet the
sinner is to be blamed if he is not converted. Man needs grace
to persevere in good, but no one can merit divine assistance. God
is not the cause of sinning, but some He leaves in sin, while others
He delivers from it. As regards predestination, St. Thomas seems
to hold, with St. Augustine, that no reason can be given why
some are elected and go to heaven, while others are left reprobate
and go to hell. He holds also that no man can enter heaven unless
he has been baptized. This is not one of the truths that can be
proved by the unaided reason; it is revealed in John iii. 5.*
The fourth book is concerned with the Trinity, the Incarnation,
the supremacy of the Pope, the sacraments, and the resurrection
of the body. In the main, it is addressed to theologians rattier than
philosophers, and I shall therefore deal with it briefly.
There are three ways of knowing God: by reason, by revelation,
and by intuition of things previously known only by revelation.
Of the third way, however, he says almost nothing. A writer
inclined to mysticism would have said more of it than of either
of the others, but Aquinas 's temperament is ratiocinative rather
than mystical.
The Greek Church is blamed for denying the double procession
of the Holy Ghost and the supremacy of the Pope. We are warned
that, although Christ was conceived of the Holy Ghost, we must
not suppose that He was the son of the Holy Ghost according to
the flesh.
The sacraments are valid even when dispensed by wicked
ministers. This was an important point in Church doctrine. Very
1 "Jeaus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thcc, except a man he
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.**
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
many priests lived in mortal sin, and pious people feared that such
priests could not administer the sacraments. This was awkward;
no one could know if he was really married, or if he had received
valid absolution. It led to heresy and schism, since the puritanically
minded sought to establish a separate priesthood of more im-
peccable virtue. The Church, in consequence, was obliged to
assert with great emphasis that sin in a priest did not incapacitate
him for the performance of his functions.
One of the last questions discussed is the resurrection of the
body. Here, as elsewhere, Aquinas states very fairly the arguments
that have been brought against the orthodox position. One of these,
at first sight, offers great difficulties. What is to happen, asks the
Saint, to a man who never, throughout his life, ate anything but
human flesh, and whose parents did likewise? It would seem
unfair to his victims that they should be deprived of their bodies
at the last day as a consequence of his greed ; yet, if not, what will
be left to make up his body ? I am happy to say that this difficulty,
which might at first sight seem insuperable, is triumphantly met.
The identity of the body, St. Thomas points out, is not dependent
on the persistence of the same material particles; during life, by
the processes of eating and digesting, the matter composing the
body undergoes perpetual change. The cannibal may, therefore,
receive the same body at the resurrection, even if it is not com-
posed of the same matter as was in his body when he died. With
this comforting thought we may end our abstract of the Summa
contra Geutiles.
In its general outlines, the philosophy of Aquinas agrees with
that of Aristotle, and will be accepted or rejected by a reader in
the measure in which he accepts or rejects the philosophy of the
Statryritc. The originality of Aquinas is shown in his adaptation
of Aristotle to Christian dogma, with a minimum of alteration.
In his day he was considered a bold innovator; even after his
death many of his doctrines were condemned by the universities
of Paris and Oxford. He was even more remarkable for syste-
matizing than for originality. Even if every one of his doctrines
were mistaken, the Summa would remain an imposing intellectual
edifice. When he wishes to refute some doctrine, he states it first,
often with great force, and almost always with an attempt at
fairness. The sharpness and clarity with which he distinguishes
arguments derived from reason and arguments derived from
483
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
revelation are admirable. He knows Aristotle well, and under-
stands him thoroughly, which cannot be said of any earlier
Catholic philosopher.
These merits, however, seem scarcely sufficient to justify his
immense reputation. The appeal to reason is, in a sense, insincere,
since the conclusion to be reached is fixed in advance. Take, for
example, the indissolubility of marriage. This is advocated on the
ground that the father is useful in the education of the children,
(a) because he is more rational than the mother, (b) because,
being stronger, he is better able to inflict physical punishment.
A modern educator might retort (a) that there is no reason to
suppose men in general more rational than women, (b) that the
sort of punishment that requires great physical strength is not
desirable in education. He might go on to point out that fathers,
in the modern world, have scarcely any part in education. But
no follower of St. Thomas would, on that account, cease to
believe in lifelong monogamy, because the real grounds of belief
are not those which are alleged.
Or take again the arguments professing to prove the existence
of God. All of these, except the one from teleology in lifeless things,
depend upon the supposed impossibility of a series having no
first term. Every mathematician knows that there is no such im-
possibility; the series of negative integers ending with minus one
is an instance to the contrary. But here again no Catholic is likely
to abandon belief in God even if he becomes convinced that St.
Thomas's arguments are bad ; he will invent other arguments, or
take refuge in revelation.
The contentions that God's essence and existence are one and
the same, that God is His own goodness, His own power, and so
on, suggest a confusion, found in Plato, but supposed to have
been avoided by Aristotle, between the manner of being of parti-
culars and the manner of being of universal. God's essence is,
one must suppose, of the nature of universals, while His existence
is not. It is difficult to state this difficulty satisfactorily, since it
occurs within a logic that can no longer be accepted. But it points
clearly to some kind of syntactical confusion, without which much
of the argumentation abodt God would lose its plausibility.
There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas, tie does
not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the
argument may lead. lie is not engaged in an inquiry, the result
484
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to
philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the
Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for
some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need
only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a
conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.
I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level
with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.
485
Chapter XIV
FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
FRANCISCANS, on the whole, were less impeccably orthodox
than Dominicans. Between the two orders there was keen
rivalry, and the Franciscans were not inclined to accept the
authority of St. Thomas. The three most important of Franciscan
philosophers were Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of
Occam. St. Bonaventura and Matthew of Aquasparta also call
for notice.
Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-01. 1294) was not greatly admired in his
own day, but in modern times has been praised far beyond his
deserts. He was not so much a philosopher, in the narrow sense,
as a man of universal learning with a passion for mathematics and
science. Science, in his day, was mixed up with alchemy, and
thought to be mixed up with black magic; Bacon was constantly
getting into trouble through being suspected of heresy and magic.
In 1257, St. Bonaventura, the General of the Franciscan order,
placed him under surveillance in Paris, and forbade him to publish.
Nevertheless, while this prohibition was still in force, the papa!
legate in England, Guy de Foulques, commanded him, contrary
orders notwithstanding, to write out his philosophy for the benefit
of the Pope. He therefore produced in a very short time three
books, Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium. These seem
to have produced a good impression, and in 1268 he was allowed
to return to Oxford, from which he had been removed to a sort
of imprisonment in Paris. However, nothing could teach him
caution. He made a practice of contemptuous criticism of all the
most learned of his contemporaries; in particular, he maintained
that the translators from Greek and Arabic were grossly incom-
petent. In 1271, he wrote a book called Compendium Studii
Pkihsophiae, in which he attacked clerical ignorance. This did
nothing to add to his popularity among his colleagues, and in
1278 his books were condemned by the General of the Order,
and he was put in prison for fourteen years. In 1292 he was
liberated, but died not long afterwards.
He was encyclopaedic in his learning, but not systematic. Unlike
most philosophers of the time, he valued experiment highly, and
48*
FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
illustrated its importance by the theory of the rainbow. He wrote
well on geography ; Columbus read this part of his work, and was
influenced by it. He was a good mathematician; he quotes the
sixth and ninth books of Euclid. He treated of perspective, follow-
ing Arabic sources. Logic he thought a useless study; alchemy,
on the other hand, he valued enough to write on it.
To give an idea of his scope and method, I will summarize
some parts of the Opus Majus.
There are, he says, four causes of ignorance: First, the example
of frail and unsuited authority. (The work being written for the
Pope, he is careful to say that this does not include the Church.)
Second, the influence of custom. Third, the opinion of the un-
learned crowd. (This, one gathers, includes all his contemporaries
except himself.) Fourth, the concealment of one's ignorance in a
display of apparent wisdom. From these four plagues, of which
the fourth is the worst, spring all human evils.
In supporting an opinion, it is a mistake to argue from the
wisdom of our ancestors, or from custom, or from common belief.
In support of his view he quotes Seneca, Cicero, Avicenna,
Averroes, Adelard of Bath, St. Jerome, and St. Chrysostom.
These authorities, he seems to think, suffice to prove that one
should not respect authority.
His respect for Aristotle is great, but not unbounded. *4Only
Aristotle, together with his followers, has been called philosopher
in the judgment of all wise men." Like almost all his contem-
poraries, he uses the designation, "The Philosopher,11 when he
speaks of Aristotle, but even the Stagyrite, we are told, did not
come to the limit of human wisdom. After him, Avicenna was
"the prince and leader of philosophy," though he did not fully
understand the rainbow, because he did not recognize its final
cause, which, according to Genesis, is the dissipation of aqueous
vapour. (Nevertheless, when Bacon comes to treat of the rainbow,
he quotes Avicenna with great admiration.) Every now and then
he says something that has a flavour of orthodoxy, such as that
the only perfect wisdom is in the Scriptures, as explained by
canon law and philosophy. But he sounds more sincere when he
says that there is no objection to getting knowledge from the
heathen; in addition to Avicenna and Averroes, he quotes Al-
farabi1 very often, and Albumazar1 and others from time to time.
Follower of Kindi: d. 950. ' Astronomer, 805-885.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Albumazar is quoted to prove that mathematics was known before
the Flood and by Noah and his sons ; this, I suppose, is a sample
of what we may learn from infidels. Bacon praises mathematics
as the sole (unrevealed) source of certitude, and as needed for
astronomy and astrology.
Bacon follows Averroes in holding that the active intellect is a
substance separated from the soul in essence. He quotes various
eminent divines, among them Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, as
also supporting this opinion, which is contrary to that of St.
Thomas. Apparently contrary passages in Aristotle, he says, are
due to mistranslation. He does not quote Plato at first hand, but
at second hand through Cicero, or at third hand through the
Arabs on Porphyry. Not that he has much respect for Porphyry,
whose doctrine on universals he calls "childish."
In modern times Bacon has been praised because he valued
experiment, as a source of knowledge, more than argument.
Certainly his interests and his way of dealing with subjects are
very different from those of the typical scholastics. His encyclo-
paedic tendencies are like those of the Arabic writers, who evi-
dently influenced him more profoundly than they did most other
Christian philosophers. They, like him, were interested in science,
and believed in magic and astrology, whereas Christians thought
magic wicked and astrology a delusion. He is astonishing because
he differs so widely from other medieval Christian philosophers,
but he had little influence in his own time, and was not, to my
mind, so scientific as is sometimes thought. English writers used
to say that he invented gunpowder, but this, of course, is untrue.
St. Bonaventura (1221-1274), who, as General of the Franciscan
order, forbade Bacon to publish, was a man of a totally different
kind. He belonged to the tradition of St. Anselm, whose onto-
logical argument he upheld. He saw in the new Aristotelianism a
fundamental opposition to Christianity. He believed in Platonic
ideas, which, however, only God knows perfectly. In his writings
Augustine is quoted constantly, but one finds no quotations from
Arabs, and few from pagan antiquity.
Matthew of Aquasparta (ca. 1235-1302) was a follower of Bona-
ventura, but less untouched by the new philosophy. He was a
Franciscan, and became a cardinal ; he opposed St. Thomas from
an Augustinian point of view. But to him Aristotle has become
"The Philosopher*'; he is quoted constantly. Avicenna is fre-
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FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
quently mentioned ; St. Anselm is quoted with respect, as is the
pseudo-Dionysius ; but the chief authority is St. Augustine. We
must, he says, find a middle way between Plato and Aristotle.
Plato's ideas are "utterly erroneous"; they establish wisdom, but
not knowledge. On the other hand, Aristotle is also wrong; he
establishes knowledge, but not wisdom. Our knowledge — so it is
concluded — is caused by both lower and higher things, by external
objects and ideal reasons.
Duns Scotus (ca. 1270-1308) carried on the Franciscan con-
troversy with Aquinas. He was born in Scotland or Ulster, became
a Franciscan at Oxford, and spent his later years at Paris. Against
St. Thomas, he defended the Immaculate Conception, and in this
the University of Paris, and ultimately the whole Catholic Church,
agreed with him. He is Augustinian, but in a less extreme form
than Bonaventura, or even Matthew of Aquasparta; his differences
from St. Thomas, like theirs, come of a larger admixture of
Platonism (via Augustine) in his philosophy.
He discusses, for example, the question "Whether any sure and
pure truth can be known naturally by the understanding of the
wayfarer without the special illumination of the uncreated light?"
And he argues that it cannot. He supports this view, in his opening
argument, solely by quotations from St. Augustine; the only diffi-
culty he finds is Romans i. 20: "The invisible things of God,
understood by means of those things that have been made, are
clearly comprehended from the creation of the world."
Duns Scut us was a moderate realist. He believed in free will
and had leanings towards Pelagianism. He held that being is no
different from essence. He was mainly interested in evidence, i.e.
the kinds of things that can be known without proof. Of these there
ire three kinds: (i) principles known by themselves, (2) things
known by experience, (3) our own actions. But without divine
. Humiliation we can know nothing.
Most Franciscans followed Duns Scotus rather than Aquinas.
Duns Scotus held that, since there is no difference between
being and essence, thc"principle of individuation" — i.e. that which
makes one thing not identical with another — must be form, not
matter. The "principle of individuation" was one of the important
problems of the scholastic philosophy. In various forms, it has
remained a problem to the present day. Without reference to any
particular author, we may perhaps state the problem as follows.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Among the properties of individual things, some are essential,
others accidental ; the accidental properties of a thing are those it
can lose without losing its identity — such as wearing a hat, if you
are a man. The question now arises: given two individual things
belonging to the same species, do they always differ in essence, or
is it possible for the essence to be exactly the same in both?
St. Thomas holds the latter view as regards material substances,
the former as regards those that are immaterial. Duns Scotus
holds that there are always differences of essence between two
different individual things. The view of St. Thomas depends
upon the theory that pure matter consists of undifferentiated parts,
which are distinguished solely by difference of position in space.
Thus a person, consisting of mind and body, may differ physically
from another person solely by the spatial position of his body.
(This might happen with identical twins, theoretically.) Duns
Scotus, on the other hand, holds that if things are distinct, they
must be distinguished by some qualitative difference. This view,
clearly, is nearer to Platonism than is that of St. Thomas.
Various stages have to be traversed before we can state this
problem in modern terms. The first step, which was taken by
Leibniz, was to get rid of the distinction between essential and
accidental properties, which, like many that the scholastics took
over from Aristotle, turns out to be unreal as soon as we attempt
to state it carefully. We thus have, instead of "essence," "all the
propositions that are true of the thing in question/1 (In general,
however, spatial and temporal position would still be excluded.)
Leibniz contends that it is impossible for two things to be exactly
alike in this sense; this is his principle of the "identity of indis-
cernibles." This principle was criticized by physicists, who main-
tained that two particles of matter might differ solely as regards
position in space and time — a view which has been rendered
more difficult by relativity, which reduces space and time to
relations.
A further step is required in modernizing the problem, and that
is, to get rid of the conception of "substance." When this is done,
a "thing" has to be a bundle of qualities, since there is no longer
any kernel of pure "thinghood." It would seem to follow that, if
"substance0 is rejected, we must take a view more akin to that
of Scotus than to that of Aquinas. This, however, involves much
difficulty in connection with space and time. I have treated the
490
FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
question as I sec it, under the heading "Proper Names/' in my
Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.
William of Occam is, after St. Thomas, the most important
schoolman. The circumstances of his life are very imperfectly
known. He was born probably between 1290 and 1300; he died
on April loth, but whether in 1349 or 1350 is uncertain. (The
Black Death was raging in 1349, so that this is perhaps the more
probable year.) Most people say he was born at Ockham in Surrey,
but Delisle Burns prefers Ockham in Yorkshire. He was at Oxford,
and then at Paris, where he was first the pupil and afterwards
the rival of Duns Scotus. He was involved in the quarrel of the
Franciscan order with Pope John XXII on the subject of poverty.
The Pope had persecuted the Spirituals, with the support of
Michael of Cesena, General of the Order. But there had been an
arrangement by which property left to the friars was given by
them to the Pope, who allowed them the benefit of it without the
sin of ownership. This was ended by John XXII, who said they
should accept outright ownership. At this a majority of the Order,
headed by Michael of Cesena, rebelled. Occam, who had been
summoned to Avignon by the Pope to answer charges of heresy
as to transubstantiation, sided with Michael of Cesena, as did
another important man, Marsiglio of Padua. All three were ex-
communicated in 1328, but escaped from Avignon, and took
refuge with the Emperor Louis. Louis was one of the two
claimants to the Empire; he was the one favoured by Germany,
but the other was favoured by the Pope. The Pope excommuni-
cated Louis, who appealed against him to a General Council. The
Pope himself was accused of heresy.
It is said that Occam, on meeting the Emperor, said: "Do you
defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen."
At any rate, he and Marsiglio of Padua settled in Munich, under
the protection of the Emperor, and there wrote political treatises
of considerable importance. What happened to Occam after the
Emperor's death in 1338 is uncertain. Some say he was reconciled
to the Church, but this seems to be false.
The Empire was no longer what it had been in the Hohenstaufen
era; and the papacy, though its pretensions had grown continually
greater, did not command the same reverence as formerly. Clement
V had moved it to Avignon at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, and the Pope had become a political subordinate of the
49'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
King of France. The Empire had sunk even more; it could no
longer claim even the most shadowy kind of universal dominion,
because of the strength of France and England; on the other hand,
the Pope, by subservience to the King of France, also weakened
his claim to universality in temporal matters. Thus the conflict
between Pope and Emperor was really a conflict between France
and Germany. England, under Edward HI, was at war with
France, and therefore in alliance with Germany; this caused
England, also, to be anti-papal. The Pope's enemies demanded a
General Council — the only ecclesiastical authority which could
be regarded as superior to the Pope.
The character of the opposition to the Pope changed at this
time. Instead of being merely in favour of the Emperor, it acquired
a democratic tone, particularly in matters of Church government.
This gave it a new strength, which ultimately led to the Re-
formation.
Dante (1265-1321), though as a poet he was a great innovator,
was, as a thinker, somewhat behind the times. His book De
Monarcfua is somewhat Ghibelline in outlook, and would have
been more timely a hundred years earlier. He regards Emperor
and Pope as independent, and both divinely appointed. In the
Divine Comedy, his Satan has three mouths, in which he eternally
chews Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, who are all three
equally traitors, the first against Christ, the other two against
Caesar. Dante's thought is interesting, not only in itself, hut as
that of a layman; but it was not influential, and was hopelessly
out of date.
Marsiglio of Padua (1270-1342), on the contrary, inaugurated
the new form of opposition to the Pope, in which the Emperor
has mainly a role of decorative dignity. He was a close friend of
William of Occam, whose political opinions he influenced. Poli-
tically, he is more important than Occam. He holds that the
legislator is the majority of the people, and that the majority has
the right to punish princes. He applies popular sovereignty also
to the Church, and he includes the laity. There are to be local
councils of the people, including the laity, who are to elect repre-
sentatives to General Councils. The General Council alone should
have power to excommunicate, and to give authoritative inter-
pretations of Scripture. Thus all believers will have a voice in
deciding doctrine. The Church is to have no secular authority;
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FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
there is to be no excommunication without civil concurrence ; and
the Pope is to have no special powers.
Occam did not go quite so far as Marsiglio, but he worked out
a completely democratic method of electing the General Council.
The conciliar movement came to a head in the early fifteenth
century, when it was needed to heal the Great Schism. But having
accomplished this task, it subsided. Its standpoint, as may be seen
already in Marsiglio, was different from that afterwards adopted,
in theory, by the Protestants. The Protestants claimed the right
of private judgment, and were not willing to submit to a General
Council. They held that religious belief is not a matter to be
decided by any governmental machinery. Marsiglio, on the con-
trary, still aims at preserving the unity of the Catholic faith, but
wishes this to be done by democratic means, not by the papal
absolutism. In practice, most Protestants, when they acquired
the government, merely substituted the King for the Pope, and
thus secured neither liberty of private judgment nor a democratic
method of deciding doctrinal questions. But in their opposition
to the Pope they found support in the doctrines of the conciliar
movement. Of all the schoolmen, Occam was the one whom
Luther preferred. It must be said that a considerable section of
Protestants held to the doctrine of private judgment even where
the State was Protestant. This was the chief point of difference
between Independents and Presbyterians in the English Civil
War.
Occam's political works1 are written in the style of philosophic
disputations, with arguments for and against various theses, some-
times not reaching any conclusion. We are accustomed to a more
forthright kind of political propaganda, but in his day the form
he chose was probably effective.
A few samples will illustrate his method and outlook.
There is a long treatise called "Eight Questions Concerning the
Power of the Pope." The first question is whether one man can
rightfully be supreme both in Church and State. The second: Is
secular authority derived immediately from God or not? Tliird:
Has the Pope the right to grant secular jurisdiction to the Emperor
and other princes? Fourth: Does election by the electors give full
powers to the German king? Fifth and sixth: What rights does
1 See Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Politica, Manchester University
1940.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the Church acquire through the right of bishops to anoint kings?
Seventh: Is a coronation ceremony valid if performed by the
wrong archbishop? Eighth: Does election by the electors give
the German king the title of Emperor? All these were, at the time,
burning questions of practical politics.
Another treatise is on the question whether a prince can obtain
the goods of the Church without the Pope's permission. This is
concerned to justify Edward III in taxing the clergy for his war
with France. It will be remembered that Edward was an ally of
the Emperor.
Then comes a "Consultation on a matrimonial cause/1 on the
question whether the Emperor was justified in marrying his
cousin.
It will be seen that Occam did his best to deserve the protection
of the Emperor's sword.
It is time now to turn to Occam's purely philosophical doctrines.
On this subject there is a very good book, Ttif Logic of \\illiam
of Occam, by Ernest E. Moody. Much of what I shall have to say
is based on this book, which takes a somewhat unusual view, but,
I think, a correct one. There is a tendency in writers on history
of philosophy to interpret men in the light of their successors, but
this is generally a mistake. Occam has been regarded as bringing
about the breakdown of scholasticism, as a precursor of Descartes
or Kant or whoever might be the particular commentator's
favourite among modern philosophers. According to Moody, with
whom I agree, all this is a mistake. Occam, he holds, was mainly
concerned to restore a pure Aristotle, freed from both Augustinian
and Arabic influences. This had also been, to a considerable extent,
the aim of St. Thomas; but the Franciscans, as we have seen,
had continued to follow St. Augustine much more closely than
he did. The interpretation of Occam by modern historians,
according to Moody, has been vitiated by the desire to find a
gradual transition from scholastic to modern philosophy ; this has
caused people to read modern doctrines into him, when in fact
he is only interpreting Aristotle.
Occam is best known for a maxim which is not to be found in
his works, but has acquiied the name of "Occam's razor." This
maxim says: "Endues are not to be multiplied without necessity."
Although he did not say this, he said something which has much
the same effect, namely: "It is vain to do with more what can be
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FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
done with fewer." That is to say, if everything in some science can
be interpreted without assuming this or that hypothetical entity,
there is no ground for assuming it. I have myself found this a
most fruitful principle in logical analysis.
In logic, though apparently not in metaphysics, Occam was a
nominalist ; the nominalists of the fifteenth century1 looked upon
him as the founder of their school. He thought that Aristotle had
been misinterpreted by the Scotists, and that this misinterpreta-
tion was due partly to the influence of Augustine, partly to
Avicenna, but partly to an earlier cause, Porphyry's treatise on
Aristotle's Categories. Porphyry in this treatise raised three
questions: (i) Are genera and species substances? (2) Are they
corporeal or incorporeal? (3) If the latter, are they in sensible
things or separated from them? He raised these questions as
relevant to Aristotle's Categories, and thus led the Middle Ages
to interpret the Organon too metaphysically. Aquinas had at-
tempted to undo this error, but it had been reintroduced by Duns
Scot us. The result had been that logic and theory of knowledge
had become dependent on metaphysics and theology. Occam set
to work to separate them again.
For Occam, logic is an instrument for the philosophy of nature,
which can be independent of metaphysics. Logic is the analysis
of discursive science; science is about things, but logic is not.
Things are individual, but among terms there are u reversals;
logic treats of universais, while science uses them without dis-
cussing them. Logic is concerned with terms or concepts, not as
psychical states, but as having meaning. "Man is a species" is
not a proposition of logic, because it requires a knowledge of man.
Logic deals with things fabricated by the mind within itself, which
cannot exist except through the existence of reason. A concept is
a natural sign, a word is a conventional sign. We must distinguish
when we are speaking of the word as a thing, and when we are
using it as having meaning, otherwise we may fall into fallacies
such as: "Man is a species, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates
is a species."
Terms which point at things are called "terms of first intention1' ;
terms which point at terms are called "terms of second intention."
The terms in science arc of first intention; in logic, of second.
Metaphysical terms are peculiar in that they signify both things
1 !•:.«., Swinrahead. Heytesbury, Gcrson, and d'Ailly
495
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
signified by words of first intention and things signified by words
of second intention. There are exactly six metaphysical terms:
being, thing, something, one, true, good.1 These terms have the
peculiarity that they can all be predicated of each other. But logic
can be pursued independently of them.
Understanding is of things, not of forms produced by the mind ;
these are not what is understood, but that by which things are
understood. Universais, in logic, are only terms or concepts pre-
dicable of many other terms or concepts. Universal, genus, species
are terms of second intention, and therefore cannot mean tilings.
But since one and being are convertible, if a universal existed, it
would be one, and an individual thing. A universal is merely a
sign of many things. As to this, Occam agrees with Aquinas, as
against Averroes, Avicenna, and the Augustinians. Both hold that
there are only individual things, individual minds, and acts of
understanding. Both Aquinas and Occam, it is true, admit (he
universale ante rem, but only to explain creation ; it had to be in
the mind of God before He could create. But this belongs to
theology, not to the explanation of human knowledge, which is
only concerned with the universale post rent. In explaining human
knowledge, Occam never allows universals to be things. Socrates
is similar to Plato, he says, but not in virtue of a third thing called
similarity. Similarity is a term of second intention, and is in the
mind. (All this is good.)
Propositions about future contingents, according to Occam, are
not yet either true or false. He makes no attempt to reconcile this
view with divine omniscience. Here, as elsewhere, he keeps logic-
free from metaphysics and theology.
Some samples of Occam's discussions may be useful.
He asks: "Whether that which is known by the understanding
first according to a primacy of generation is the individual."
Against: The universal is the first and proper object of the
understanding.
For: The object ot sense and the object of understanding are
the same, but the individual is the first object of sense.
Accordingly, the meaning of the question must be stated,
(Presumably, because both arguments seem strong.)
He continues: "The thing outside the soul which is not a sign
1 I do not here pause to criticize the use to which Occam puu these
term*.
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FRANCISCAN SCHOOLMEN
is understood first by such knowledge (i.e. by knowledge which is
individual), therefore the individual is known first, since every-
thing outside the soul is individual."
He goes on to say that abstract knowledge a ways presupposes
knowledge which is "intuitive" (i.e. of perception), and this is
caused by individual things.
He then enumerates four doubts which may arise, and proceeds
to resolve them.
He concludes with an affirmative answer to his original question,
but adds that "the universal is the first object by primacy of
adequation, not by the primacy of generation."
The question involved is whether, or how far, perception is the
source of knowledge. It will be remembered that Plato, in the
Theaetetus, rejects the definition of knowledge as perception.
Occam, pretty certainly, did not know the Theaetelus, but if he
had he would have disagreed with it.
To the question "whether the sensitive soul and the intellective
soul are really distinct in man/* he answers that they are, though
this is hard to prove. One of his arguments is that we may with
our appetites desire something which with our understanding we
reject; therefore appetite and understanding belong to different
subjects. Another argument is that sensations are subjectively in
the sensitive soul, but not subjectively in the intellective soul.
Again: the sensitive soul is extended and material, while the
intellective soul is neither. Four objections are considered, all
theological,1 but they are answered. The view taken by Occam
on this question is not, perhaps, what might be expected. How-
ever, he agrees with St. Thomas and disagrees with Averroes in
thinking that each man's intellect is his own, not something
impersonal.
Ky insisting on the possibility of studying logic and human
knowledge without reference to metaphysics and theology,
Occam's work encouraged scientific research. The Augustinians,
he said, erred in fii.st supposing things unintelligible and men un-
intelligent, and then adding a light from Infinity by which know-
ledge became possible He agreed in this with Aquinas, but
•
1 For instance; Betxvccn Good Friday and Faster, Christ's soul
descended into hell, whereas His body remained in the tomb of Joseph of
Arimmhca. If the sensitive soul is distinct from the intellective soul, diJ
Christ's sensitive soul spend this time in hell or in the tomb?
497
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
differed in emphasis, for Aquinas was primarily a theologian, and
Occam was, so far as logic is concerned, primarily a secular
philosopher.
His attitude gave confidence to students of particular problems,
for instance, his immediate follower Nicholas of Oresme (d. 1382),
who investigated planetary theory. This man was, to a certain
extent, a precursor of Copernicus; he set forth both the geocentric
and the heliocentric theories, and said that each would explain all
the facts known in his day, so that there was no way of deciding
between them.
After William of Occam there are no more great scholastics. The
next time for great philosophers began in the late Renaissance.
498
Chapter XV
THE ECLIPSE OF THE PAPACY
* | IHE thirteenth century had brought to completion a great
I synthesis, philosophical, theological, political, and social,
JL which had been slowly built up by the combination of
many elements. The first element was pure Greek philosophy,
especially the philosophies of Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato, and
Aristotle. Then came, as a result of Alexander's conquests, a great
influx of oriental beliefs.1 These, taking advantage of Orphism
and the Mysteries, transformed the outlook of the Greek-speaking
world, and ultimately of the Latin-speaking world also. The
dying and resurrected god, the sacramental eating of what pur-
ported to be the flesh of the god, the second birth into a new life
through some ceremony analogous to baptism, came to be part
of the theology of large sections of the pagan Roman world. With
these was associated an ethic of liberation from bondage to the
flesh, which was, at least theoretically, ascetic. From Syria, Egypt,
Babylonia, and Persia came the institution of a priesthood sepa-
rated from the lay population, possessed of more or less magical
powers, and able to exert considerable political influence. Im-
pressive rituals, largely connected with belief in a life after death,
came from the same sources. From Persia, in particular, came a
dualism which regarded the world as the battleground of two
great hosts, one, which was good, led by Ahura Mazda, the other,
which was evil, led by Ahriman. Black magic was the kind that
was worked by the help of Ahriman and his followers in the world
of spirits. Satan is a development of Ahriman.
This influx of barbarian ideas and practices was synthesized
with certain Hellenic elements in the Neoplatonic philosophy. In
Orphism, Pythagorean ism, and some pans of Plato, the Greeks
had developed points of view which were easy to combine with
tliose of the Orient, perhaps because they had been borrowed
from the East at a much earlier time. With Plotinus and Porphyry
the development of pagan philosophy Aids.
The thought of these men, however, though deeply religious,
was not capable, without much transformation, of inspiring a
1 Sec Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism.
499
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
victorious popular religion. Their philosophy was difficult, and
could not be generally understood ; their way of salvation was too
intellectual for the masses. Their conservatism led them to uphold
the traditional religion of Greece, which, however, they had to
interpret allegorically in order to soften its immoral elements
and to reconcile it with their philosophical monotheism. The
Greek religion had fallen into decay, being unable to compete
with Eastern rituals and theologies. The oracles had become silent,
and the priesthood had never formed a powerful distinct caste.
The attempt to revive Greek religion had therefore an archaistic
character which gave it a certain feebleness and pedantry, espe-
cially noticeable in the Emperor Julian. Already in the third
century, it could have been foreseen that some Asiatic religion
would conquer the Roman world, though at that time there were
still several competitors which all seemed to have a chance of
victory.
Christianity combined elements of strength from various sources.
From the Jews it accepted a Sacred Book and the doctrine that all
religions but one are false and evil ; but it avoided the racial ex-
clusiveness of the Jews and the inconveniences of die Mosaic law.
Later Judaism had already learnt to believe in the life after death,
but the Christians gave a new definiteness to heaven and hell,
and to the ways of reaching the one and escaping the other.
Easter combined the Jewish Passover with pagan celebrations of
the resurrected God. Persian dualism was absorbed, but with <i
firmer assurance of the ultimate omnipotence of the #>od principle,
and with the addition that the pagan gods were followers of Satan.
At first the Christians were not the equals of their adversaries in
philosophy or in ritual, but gradually these deficiencies were
made good. At first, philosophy was more advanced among the
semi-Christian Gnostics than among the orthodox ; but from the
time of Origen onwards, the Christians developed an adequate
philosophy by modification of Neoplatonibin. Ritual among the
early Christians is a somewhat obscure subject, but at any rate
by the time of St. Ambrose it had become extremely impressive.
The power and the separateneas of the priesthood were taken
from the East, but were gradually strengthened by methods of
government, in the Church, which owed much to the practice of
the Roman Empire. The Old Testament, the utybtcry religions,
Greek philosophy, and Roman methods of administration were
THE ECLIPSE OF THE PAPACY
all blended in the Catholic Church, and combined to give it a
strength which no earlier social organization had equalled.
The Western Church, like ancient Rome, developed, though
more slowly, from a republic into a monarchy. We have seen the
stages in the growth of papal power, from Gregory the Great
through Nicholas I, Gregory VII, and Innocent III, to the final
defeat of the Hohenstaufen in the wars of Guelfs and Ghibellines.
At the same time Christian philosophy, which had hitherto been
Augustinian and therefore largely Platonic, was enriched by new
elements due to contact with Constantinople and the Moham-
medans. Aristotle, during the thirteenth century, came to be
known fairly completely in the West, and, by the influence of
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, was established in the
minds of the learned as the supreme authority after Scripture and
the Church. Down to the present day, he has retained this position
among Catholic philosophers. I cannot but think that the sub-
stitution of Aristotle for Plato and St. Augustine was a mistake
from the Christian point of view. Plato's temperament was more
religious than Aristotle's, and Christian theology had been, from
almost the first, adapted to Platonism. Plato had taught that
knowledge is not perception, but a kind of reminiscent vision;
Aristotle was much more of an empiricist. St. Thomas, little
though he intended it, prepared the way for the return from
Platonic dreaming to scientific observation.
Outward events had more to do than philosophy with the dis-
integration of the Catholic synthesis which began in the fourteenth
century. The Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Latins in
1204, and remained in their hands till 1261. During this time the
religion of its government was Catholic, not Greek; but after 1261
Constantinople was lost to the Pope and never recovered, in spite
of nominal union at Ferrara in 1438. The defeat of the Western
Empire in its conflict with the papacy proved useless to the
Church, owing to the rise of national monarchies in France and
England; throughout most of the fourteenth century the Pope
was, politically, a tool in the hands of the king of France. More
important than these causes was the rise of a rich commercial
class and the increase of knowledge *in the laity. Both of these
began in Italy, and remained more advanced in that country than
in other parts of the West until the middle of the sixteenth century.
North Italian cities were much richer, in the fourteenth century
501
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
than any of the cities of the North ; and learned laymen, especially
in law and medicine, were becoming increasingly numerous.
The cities had a spirit of independence which, now that the
Emperor was no longer a menace, was apt to turn against the
Pope. But the same movements, though to a lesser degree, existed
elsewhere. Flanders prospered ; so did the Hanse towns. In Eng-
land the wool trade was a source of wealth. The age was one in
which tendencies which may be broadly called democratic were
very strong, and nationalistic tendencies were even stronger. The
papacy, which had become very worldly, appeared largely as a
taxing agency, drawing to itself vast revenues which most countries
wished to retain at home. The popes no longer had or deserved
the moral authority which had given them power. St. Francis
had been able to work in harmony with Innocent III and Gre-
gory IX, but the most earnest men of the fourteenth century
were driven into conflict with the papacy.
At the beginning of the century, however, these causes of
decline in the papacy were not yet apparent. Boniface VIII, in
the Bull Unam Sane tarn, made more extreme claims than had ever
been made by any previous Pope. He instituted, in 1300, the year
of Jubilee, when plenary indulgence is granted to all Catholics
who visit Rome and perform certain ceremonies while there. This
brought immense sums of money to the coffers of the Curia and
the pockets of the Roman people. There was to be a Jubilee even'
hundredth year, but the profits were so great that the period
was shortened to fifty years, and then to twenty-five, at which it
remains to the present day. The first Jubilee, that of 1300, showed
the Pope at the summit of his success, and may be conveniently
regarded as the date from which the decline began.
Boniface VIII was an Italian, born at Anagni. He had been
besieged in the Tower of Ix>ndon when in England, on behalf of
the Pope, to support Henry III against the rebellious barons, but
he was rescued in 1267 by the King's son, afterwards Edward I.
There was already in his day a powerful French party in the
Church, and his election was opposed by the French cardinals.
He came into violent conflict with the French king Philip IV, on
the question whether the King had the right to tax the French
clergy, Boniface was addicted to nepotism and avarice ; he there-
fore wished to retain control over as many sources of revenue as
possible. He waa accused of heresy, probably with justice; it
502
THE FCLIPSB OP THE PAPACY
seems that he was an Averroist and did not believe in immortality.
His quarrel with the king of France became so bitter that the
king sent a force to arrest him, with a view to his being deposed
by a General Council. He was caught at Anagni, but escaped to
Rome, where he died. After this, for a long time, no pope ventured
to oppose the king of France.
After a very brief intermediate reign, the cardinals in 1305
elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of
Clement V. He was a Gascon, and consistently represented the
French party in the Church. Throughout his pontificate he never
went to Italy. He was crowned in Lyons, and in 1309 he settled
in Avignon, where the popes remained for about seventy years.
Clement V signalized his alliance with the king of France by
their joint action against the Templars. Both needed money, the
Pope because he was addicted to favouritism and nepotism, Philip
for the English war, the Flemish revolt, and the costs of an
increasingly energetic government. After he had plundered the
bankers of Lombard)', and persecuted the Jews to the limit of
41 what the traffic would bear,1* it occurred to him that the Templars,
in addition to being bankers, had immense landed estates in
France, which, with the Pope's help, he might acquire. It was
therefore arranged that the Church should discover that the
Templars had fallen into heresy, and that king and pope should
share the spoils. On a given day in 1307, all the leading Templars
in France were arrested; a list of leading questions, previously
drawn up, was put to them all; under torture, they confessed
that they had done homage to Satan and committed various other
abominations; at last, in 1313, the Pope suppressed the order,
and all its property was confiscated. The best account of this
proceeding is in Henry C. Lea's History of the Inquisition, where,
after full investigation, the conclusion is reached that the charges
against the Templars were wholly without foundation.
In the case of the Templars, the financial interests of pope and
king coincided. But on most occasions in most parts of Christen-
dom, they conflicted. In the time of Boniface VIII, Philip IV
had secured the support of the Estates (even the Estate of the
Church) in his disputes with the Pope as to taxation. When the
popes became politically subservient to France, the sovereigns
hostile to the French king were necessarily hostile to the Pope.
This led to the protection of William of Occam and Marsiglio of
S°3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Padua by the Emperor; at a slightly later date, it led to the
protection of Wycliffe by John of Gaunt.
Bishops, in general, were by this time completely in subjection
to the Pope; in an increasing proportion, they were actually
appointed by him. The monastic Orders and the Dominicans
were equally obedient, but the Franciscans still had a certain
spirit of independence. This led to their conflict with John XXII,
which we have already considered in connection with William
of Occam. During this conflict, Marsiglio persuaded the Emperor
to march on Rome, where the imperial crown was conferred on
him by the populace, and a Franciscan antipope was elected
after the populace had declared John XXII deposed. However,
nothing came of all this beyond a general diminution of respect
for the papacy.
The revolt against papal domination took different forms in
different places. Sometimes it was associated with monarchical
nationalism, sometimes with a Puritan horror of the corruption
and worldliness of the papal court. In Rome itself, the revolt was
associated with an archaistic democracy. Under Clement VI
(1342-52) Rome, for a time, sought to free itself from the absentee
Pope under the leadership of a remarkable man, Cola di Rienzi.
Rome suffered not only from the rule of the popes, but also from
the local aristocracy, which continued the turbulence that had
degraded the papacy in the tenth century. Indeed it was partly
to escape from the lawless Roman nobles that the popes had fled
to Avignon. At first Ricnzi, who was the son of a tavern-keeper,
rebelled only against the nobles, and in this he had the support
of the Pope. lie roused so much popular enthusiasm that the
nobles fled (1347). Petrarch, who admired him and wrote an
ode to him, urged him to continue his great and noble work. lie
took the title of tribune, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the
Roman people over the Empire. He seems to have conceived this
sovereignty democratically, for he called representatives from the
Italian cities to a sort of parliament. Success, however, gave him
delusions of grandeur. At this time, as at many others, there
were rival claimants to the Kmpire. Rienzi summoned both of
them, and the Electors, to come before him to have the issue
decided. This naturally turned both imperial candidates against
him, and also the Pope, who considered that it was for him to
pronounce judgment in such matters. Rienzi was captured by the
5<>4
THE ECLIPSE OF THE PAPACY
Pope (1352), and kept in prison for two years, until Clement VI
died. Then he was released, and returned to Rome, where he
acquired power again for a few months. On this second occasion,
however, his popularity was brief, and in the end he was murdered
by the mob. Byron, as well as Petrarch, wrote a poem in his
praise.
It became evident that, if the papacy was to remain effectively
the head of the whole Catholic Church, it must free itself from
dependence on France by returning to Rome. Moreover, the
Anglo-French war, in which France was suffering severe defeats,
made France unsafe. Urban V therefore went to Rome in 1367;
but Italian politics were too complicated for him, and he returned
to Avignon shortly before his death. The next Pope, Gregory XI,
was more resolute. Hostility to the French curia had made many
Italian towns, especially Florence, bitterly anti-papal, but by
returning to Rome and opposing the French cardinals Gregory
did everything in his power to save the situation. Hosvever, at his
death the French and Roman parties in the College of Cardinals
proved irreconcilable. In accordance with the wishes of the Roman
party, an Italian, Dartolomco Prignano, was elected, and took the
name of I'rban VI. Hut a number of Cardinals declared his
election uncanonical, and proceeded to elect Robert of Geneva,
who belonged to the French party. Me took the name of Clement
VII, and lived in Avignon.
Thus began the Great Schism, which lasted for some forty
years. France, of course, recognized the Avignon Pope, and the
enemies of France recognized the Roman Pope. Scotland was the
enemy of Kngland, and Kngland of France; therefore Scotland
recognized the Avignon Pope. Each pope chose cardinals from
among his own partisans, and when either died his cardinals
quickly elected another. Thus there was no way of healing the
schism except by bringing to bear some power superior to both
popes. It was clear that one of them must be legitimate, therefore
a power superior to a legitimate pope had to be found. The only
solution lay in a General Council. The University of Paris, led
by Gerson, developed a new theory, giving powers of initiative
to a Council. The lay sovereigns, to wHbm the schism was incon-
venient, lent their support. At last, in 1409, a Council was sum-
moned, and met at Pisa. It failed, however, in a ridiculous manner.
It declared both popes deposed for heresy and schism, and
505
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
elected a third, who promptly died; but his cardinals elected as
his successor an ex-pirate named Baldassare Cossa, who took the
name of John XXIII. Thus the net result was that there were
three popes instead of two, the conciliar pope being a notorious
ruffian. At this stage, the situation seemed more hopeless than
ever.
But the supporters of the conciliar movement did not give in.
In 14141 a new Council was summoned at Constance, and pro-
ceeded to vigorous action. It first decreed that popes cannot dis-
solve councils, and must submit to them in certain respects; it
also decided that future popes must summon a General Council
every seven years. It deposed John XXIII, and induced the
Roman Pope to resign. The Avignon Pope refused to resign, and
after his death the king of Aragon caused a successor to be
elected. But France, at this time at the mercy of England, refused
to recognize him, and his party dwindled into insignificance and
finally ceased to exist. Thus at last there was no opposition to the
Pope chosen by the Council, who was elected in 1417, and took
the name of Martin V.
These proceedings were creditable, but the treatment of Huss,
the Bohemian disciple of Wycliffe, was not. He was brought to
Constance with the promise of a safe conduct, but when he ^ot
there he was condemned and suffered death at the stake. Wycliffe
was safely dead, but the Council ordered his bones to be dug
up and burnt. The supporters of the conciliar movement were
anxious to free themselves from all suspicion of unorthodoxy.
The Council of Constance had healed the schism, but it had
hoped to do much more, and to substitute a constitutional
monarchy for the papal absolutism. Martin V had made many
promises before his election; some he kept, some he broke. Me
had assented to the decree that a council should be summoned
every seven years, and to this decree he remained obedient. The
Council of Constance having been dissolved in 1417,3 new Council
which proved of no importance, was summoned in 1424; then
in 1431, another was convoked to meet at Basel. Martin V died
just at this moment, and his successor Eugenius IV was, through-
out his pontificate, in bitter conflict with the reformers who
controlled the Council. lie dissolved the Council, but it refused
to consider itself dissolved; in 1433 he gave way for a time, but
in 1437 he dissolved it again. Nevertheless it remained in session
506
THE ECLIPSE OF THE PAPACY
till 1448, by which time it was obvious to all that the Pope had won
a complete triumph. In 1439 the Council had alienated sympathy
by declaring the Pope deposed and electing an antipope (the last
in history), who, however, resigned almost immediately. In the
same year Eugenius IV won prestige by holding a Council of his
own at Ferrara, where the Greek Church, in desperate fear of
the Turks, made a nominal submission to Rome. The papacy thus
emerged politically triumphant, but with very greatly diminished
power of inspiring moral reverence.
Wycliffe (ca. 1320-84) illustrates, by his life and doctrine, the
diminished authority of the papacy in the fourteenth century.
Unlike the earlier schoolmen, he was a secular priest, not a monk
or friar. He had a great reputation in Oxford, where he became a
doctor of theology in 1372. For a short time he was Master of
Balliol. He was the last of the important Oxford scholastics. As a
philosopher, he was not progressive; he was a realist, and a
Platonist rather than an Aristotelian. He held that God's decrees
are not arbitrary , as some maintained ; the actual world is not one
among possible worlds, but is the only possible world, since God
is bound to choose what is best. All this is not what makes him
interesting, nor does it seem to have been what most interested
him, for he retired from Oxford to the life of a country clergyman.
During the last ten years of his life he was the parish priest of
Lutterworth, by crovvn appointment. He continued, however, to
lecture at Oxford.
Wycliffe is remarkable for the extreme slowness of his develop-
ment. In 1372, when his age was fifty or more, he was still ortho-
dox; it was only after this date, apparently, that he became
heretical. He seems to have been driven into heresy entirely by
the strength of his moral feelings— his sympathy with the poor,
and his horror of rich worldly ecclesiastics. At first his attack on
the papacy was only political and moral, not doctrinal; it was only
gradually that he was driven into wider revolt.
Wycliffe's departure from orthodoxy began in 1376 with a
course of lectures at Oxford "On Civil Dominion." He advanced
the theory that righteousness alone gives the title to dominion
and property; that unrighteous clergy hive no such title; and that
the decision as to whether an ecclesiastic should retain his pro-
perty or not ought to be taken by the civil power. He taught,
further, that property is the result of sin; Christ and the Apostles
S<>7
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
had no property, and the clergy ought to have none. These
doctrines offended all clerics except the friars. The English
government, however, favoured them, for the Pope drew a huge
tribute from England, and the doctrine that money should not be
sent out of England to the Pope was a convenient one. This was
especially the case while the Pope was subservient to France, and
England was at war with France. John of Gaunt, who held power
during the minority of Richard II, befriended Wycliffe as long
as possible. Gregory XI, on the other hand, condemned eighteen
theses in Wycliffe *s lectures, saying that they were derived from
IVIarsiglio of Padua. Wycliffe was summoned to appear for trial
before a tribunal of bishops, but the Queen and the mob protected
him, while the University of Oxford refused to admit the Pope's
jurisdiction over its teachers. (Even in those days, English uni-
versities believed in academic freedom.)
Meanwhile Wycliffe continued, during 1378 and 1379, to write
learned treatises, maintaining that the king is God's vicar, and
that bishops are subject to him. When the preat schism came, he
went further than before, branding the Pope as Antichrist, and
saying that acceptance of the Donation of Constantinc had made
all subsequent popes apostates. He translated the Vulgate into
English, and established "poor priests," who were secular. (By
this action he at last annoyed the friars.) He employed the "poor
priests" as itinerant preachers, whose mission was especially to
the poor. At last, in attacking sacerdotal power, he was led to
deny transubstantiation, which he called a deceit and a blasphe-
mous folly. At this point, John of Gaunt ordered him to be
silent.
The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, made matters
more difficult for Wycliffe. There is no evidence that he actively
encouraged it, but, unlike Luther in similar circumstances, he
refrained from condemning it. John Ball, the Socialist unfrocked
priest who was one of the leaders, admired Wycliffe, which was
embarrassing. But as he had been excommunicated in 1366, when
Wycliffe was still orthodox, he must have arrived independently
at his opinions. Wycliffe's communistic opinions, though no
doubt the "poor priests" disseminated them, were, by him, only
stated in Latin, so that at first hand they were inaccessible to
peasants.
It is surprising that Wycliffe did not suffer more than he did
508
THE ECLIPSE OF THE PAPACY
for his opinions and his democratic activities. The University of
Oxford defended him against the bishops as long as possible.
When the House of Lords condemned his itinerant preachers, the
House of Commons refused to concur. No doubt trouble would
have accumulated if he had lived longer, but when he died in
1384 he had not yet been formally condemned. He was buried
at Lutterworth, where he died, and his bones were left in
peace until the Council of Constance had them dug up and
burnt.
His followers in England, the Lollards, were severely perse-
cuted and practically stamped out. But owing to the fact that
Richard II's wife was a Bohemian, his doctrines became known
in Bohemia, where Huss was his disciple; and in Bohemia, in
spite of persecution, they survived until the Reformation. In
England, although driven underground, the revolt against the
papacy remained in men's thoughts, and prepared the soil for
Protestantism.
During the fifteenth century, various other causes were added
to the decline of the papacy to produce a very rapid change, both
political and cultural, Gunpowder strengthened central govern-
ments at the expense <•! the feudal nobility. In France and England,
Louis XI and Edward IV allied themselves with the rich middle
class, who helped tl.cm to quell aristocratic anarchy. Italy, until
the last years of the century, was fairly free from Northern armies,
ami advanced rapidly both in wealth and culture. The new culture
was essentially paijan, admiring Greece and Rome, and despising
the Middle Ages. Architecture and literary style were adapted to
ancient models. When Constantinople, the last survival of anti-
quity, was captured by the Turks, Greek refugees in Italy were
welcomed by humanists. Yasco da Gama and Columbus enlarged
the world, and Copernicus enlarged the heavens. The Donation
of Constantine was rejected as a fable, and overwhelmed with
scholarly derision. Hy the help of the Byzantines, Plato came to
he known, not only in Neoplatonic and Augustinian versions, but
at first hand. This sublunar)' sphere appeared no longer as a vale
of tears, a place of painful pilgrimage to another world, but as
atfcirding opportunity for pagan deligllts, for fame and beauty
and adventure. The long centuries of asceticism were forgotten
in a riot of art and poetry ami pleasure. Even in Italy, it is true,
the Middle Ages did riot die without a struggle; Savonarola and
509
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Leonardo were born in the same year. But in the main the old
terrors had ceased to be terrifying, and the new liberty of the
spirit was found intoxicating. The intoxication could not last,
but for the moment it shut out fear. In this moment of joyful
liberation the modern world was born.
510
Book Three MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Part i. — From the Renaissance to Hume
Chapter I
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
f • ^HE period of history which is commonly called "modern"
I has a mental outlook which differs from that of the medie-
A. val period in many ways. Of these, two are the most impor-
tant: the diminishing authority of the Church, and the increasing
authority of science. With these two, others are connected. The
culture of modern times is more lay than clerical. States increas-
ingly replace the Church as the governmental authority that con-
trols culture. The government of nations is, at first, mainly in the
hands of kings; then, as in ancient Greece, the kings are gradually
replaced by democracies or tyrants. The power of the national
State, and the functions that it performs, grow steadily throughout
the whole period (apart from some minor fluctuations) ; but at most
times the State has less influence on the opinions of philosophers
than the Church had in the Middle Ages. The feudal aristocracy,
which, north of the Alps, had been able, till the fifteenth century,
to hold its own against central governments, loses first its political
and then its economic importance. It is replaced by the king in
alliance with rich merchants; these two share power in different
proportions in different countries. There is a tendency for the rich
merchants to become absorbed into the aristocracy. From the time
of the American and French Revolutions onwards, democracy,
in the modern sense, becomes an important political force.
Socialism, as opposed to democracy based on private property,
first acquires governmental power in 1917. This form of govern-
ment, however, if it spreads, must obvi6usly bring with it a new
form of culture ; the culture with which we shall be concerned is
in the main 'liberal/' that is to say, of the kind most naturally
Associated with commerce. To this there are important exceptions,
5"
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
especially in Germany; Fichte and Hegel, to take two examples,
have an outlook which is totally unconnected with commerce. But
such exceptions are not typical of their age.
The rejection of ecclesiastical authority, which is the negative
characteristic of the modern age, begins earlier than the positive
characteristic, which is the acceptance of scientific authority. In the
Italian renaissance, science played a very small part ; the opposition
to the Church, in men's thoughts, was connected with antiquity,
and looked still to the past, but to a more distant past than that of
the early Church and the Middle Ages. The first serious irruption
of science was the publication of the Copernican theory in 1543;
but this theory did not become influential until it was taken up and
improved by Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth century. Then
began the long fight between science and dogma, in which tradi-
tionalists fought a losing battle against new knowledge.
The authority of science, which is recognized by most philoso-
phers of the modem epoch, is a very different thing from the
authority of the Church, since it is intellectual, not governmental.
No penalties fall upon those who reject it ; no prudential arguments
influence those who accept it. It prevails solely by its intrinsic
appeal to reason. It is, moreover, a piecemeal and partial authority ;
it does not, like the body of Catholic dogma, lay down a complete
system, covering human morality, human hopes, and the past and
future history of the universe. It pronounces only on whatever, at
the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is
a small island in an ocean of nescience. There is yet another
difference from ecclesiastical authority, which declares its pro-
nouncements to be absolutely certain and eternally unalterable:
the pronouncements of science are made tentatively, on a basis
of probability, and are regarded as liable to modification. This
produces a temper of mind very different from that of the medieval
dogmatist.
So far, I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an
attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an
attempt to change the world, has been important from the first,
and has continually increased in importance, until it han almost
ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts. The practical
importance of science was first recognized in connection with war;
Galileo and Leonardo obtained government employment by their
claim to improve artillery and the art of fortification. From their
512
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
time onwards, the part of the men of science in war has steadily
grown greater. Their pan in developing machine production, and
accustoming the population to the use, first of steam, then of
electricity, came later, and did not begin to have important political
effects until near the end of the nineteenth century. The triumph
of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there
has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus
making science more and more a technique, and less and less a
doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this
point of view to the philosophers is very recent.
Emancipation from the authority of the Church led to the growth
of individualism, even to the point of anarchy. Discipline, intel-
lectual, moral, and political, was associated in the minds of the
men of the Renaissance with the scholastic philosophy and eccle-
siastical government. The Aristotelian logic of the Schoolmen was
narrow, but afforded a training in a certain kind of accuracy.
When this school of logic became unfashionable, it was not, at
first, succeeded by something better, but only by an eclectic imita-
tion of ancient models. Until the seventeenth century, there was
nothing of importance in philosophy. The moral and political
anarchy of fifteenth-century Italy was appalling, and gave rise to
the doctrines of Machiavelli. At the same time, the freedom from
mental shackles led to an astonishing display of genius in art and
literature. But such a society is unstable. The Reformation and
the Counter- Reformat ton, combined with the subjection of Italy
to Spain, put an end to both the good and the bad of the Italian
Renaissance. When the movement spread north of the Alps, it had
not the same anarchic character.
Modern philosophy, however, has retained, for the most part,
an individualistic and subjective tendency. This is very marked in
Descartes, who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his
own existence, and accepts clearness and distinctness (both sub-
jective) as criteria of truth. It is not prominent in Spinoza, but
reappears in Leibniz's windowless monads. Locke, whose tern-
perament is thoroughly objective, is forced reluctantly into the
subjective doctrine that knowledge is of the agreement or disagree-
ment of ideas — a view so repulsive to him that he escapes from
it by violent inconsistencies. Berkeley, after abolishing matter, is
only saved from complete subjectivism by a use of God which
most subsequent philosophers have regarded as illegitimate. In
513 R •
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Hume, the empiricist philosophy culminated in a scepticism which
none could refute and none could accept. Kant and Fichte were
subjective in temperament as well as in doctrine; Hegel saved
himself by means of the influence of Spinoza. Rousseau and the
romantic movement extended subjectivity from theory of know-
ledge to ethics and politics, and ended, logically, in complete
anarchism such as that of Bakunin. This extreme of subjectivism
is a form of madness.
Meanwhile science as technique was building up in practical
men a quite different outlook from any that was to be found among
theoretical philosophers. Technique conferred a sense of power:
man is now much less at the mercy of his environment than he was
in former times. But the power conferred by technique is social,
not individual; an average individual wrecked on a desert island
could have achieved more in the seventeenth century than he could
now. Scientific technique requires the co-operation of a large
number of individuals organized under a single direction. Its ten-
dency, therefore, is against anarchism and even individualism,
since it demands a well-knit social structure. Unlike religion, it
is ethically neutral: it assures men that they can perform wonders
but does not tell them what wonders to perform. In this way it
is incomplete. In practice, the purposes to which scientific skill
will be devoted depend largely on chance. The men at the head
of the vast organizations which it necessitates can, within limits,
turn it this way or that as they please. The power impulse thus
has a scope which it never had before. The philosophies that have
been inspired by scientific technique are power philosophies, and
tend to regard everything non-human as mere raw material. Ends
are no longer considered; only the skilfulness of the process is
valued This also is a form of madness. It is, in our day, the most
dangerous form, and the one against which a sane philosophy
should provide an antidote.
The ancient world found an end to anarchy in the Roman
Empire, but the Roman Empire was a brute fact, not an idea. The
Catholic world sought an end to anarchy in the Church, which was
an idea, but was never adequately embodied in fact. Neither the
ancient nor the medieval Solution was satisfactory— the one because
it could not be idealized, the other because it could not be
actualized. The modern world, at present, seems to be moving
towards a solution like that of antiquity: a social order imposed
5'4
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
by force, representing the will of the powerful rather than the
hopes of common men. The problem of a durable and satisfactory
social order can only be solved by combining the solidity of the
Roman Empire with the idealism of St. Augustine's City of God.
To achieve this a new philosophy will be needed.
5*5
Chapter II
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
f I «HE modern as opposed to the medieval outlook began in
I Italy with the movement called the Renaissance. At first,
JL only a few individuals, notably Petrarch, had this outlook,
but during the fifteenth century it spread to the great majority of
cultivated Italians, both lay and clerical. In some respects, Italians
of the Renaissance — with the exception of Leonardo and a few
others — had not the respect for science which has characterized
most important innovators since the seventeenth century; with
this lack is associated their very partial emancipation from super-
stition, especially in the form of astrology. Many of them had still
the reverence for authority that medieval philosophers had had,
but they substituted the authority of the ancients for that of the
Church. This was, of course, a step towards emancipation, since
the ancients disagreed with each other, and individual judgment
was required to decide which of them to follow. But very few
Italians of the fifteenth century would have dared to hold an
opinion for which no authority could be found either in antiquity
or in the teaching of the Church.
To understand the Renaissance, it is necessary first to review
briefly the political condition of Italy. After the death of Frederick
II in 1250, Italy was, in the main, free from foreign interference
until the French king Charles VIII invaded the country in 1494.
There were in Italy five important States: Milan, Venice, Florence,
the Papal Domain, and Naples; in addition to these there were a
number of small principalities, which varied in their alliance with
or subjection to some one of the larger States. Until 1378, Genoa
rivalled Venice in commerce and naval power, but after that year
Genoa became subject to Milanese suzerainty.
Milan, which led the resistance to feudalism in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, fell, after the final defeat of the Hohenstaufen,
under the dominion of the Visconti, an able family whose power
was plutocratic, not feudal. They ruled for 170 years, from 1277
to 1447 ; then, after three years of restored republican government,
a new family, that of the Sforza, connected with the Visconti,
acquired the government, and took the title of Dukes of Milan.
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
From 1494 to 1535, Milan was a battle-ground between the French
and the Spaniards; the Sforza allied themselves sometimes with
one side, sometimes with the other. During this period they were
sometimes in exile, sometimes in nominal control. Finally, in 1535,
Milan was annexed by the Emperor Charles V.
The Republic of Venice stands somewhat outside Italian politics,
especially in the earlier centuries of its greatness. It had never been
conquered by the barbarians, and at first regarded itself as subject
to the Eastern emperors. This tradition, combined with the fact
that its trade was with the East, gave it an independence of Rome,
which still persisted down to the time of the Council of Trent
(1545), of which the Venetian Paolo Sarpi wrote a very anti-papal
history. We have seen how, at the time of the fourth Crusade,
Venice insisted upon the conquest of Constantinople. This im-
proved Venetian trade, which, conversely, suffered by the Turkish
conquest of Constantinople in 1453. For various reasons, partly
connected with food supply, the Venetians found it necessary,
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to acquire consider-
able territory on the mainland of Italy; this roused enmities, and
led finally, in 1509, to the formation of the League of Cambrai,
a combination of powerful States by which Venice was defeated.
It might have been possible to recover from this misfortune, but
not from Vasco da G a ma's discovery of the Cape route to India
(1497-8). This, added to the power of the Turks, ruined Venice,
which, however, lingered on until deprived of independence by
Napoleon.
The constitution of Venice, which had originally been demo-
cratic, became gradually less so, and was, after 1297, a close
oligarchy. The basis of political power was the Great Council,
membership of which, after that date, was hereditary, and was
confined to the leading families. Executive power belonged to the
Council of Ten, which was elected by the Great Council. The
Doge, the ceremonial head of the State, was elected for life; his
nominal powers were very restricted, but in practice his influence
was usually decisive. Venetian diplomacy was considered exceed-
ingly astute, and the reports of Venetian ambassadors were
remarkably penetrating. Since Ranke, historians have used them
as among the best sources for knowledge of the events with which
they deal.
Florence was the most civilized city in the world, and the chief
5'7
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
source of the Renaissance. Almost all the great names in literature,
and the earlier as well as some of the later of the great names in
art, are connected with Florence ; but for the present we are con-
cerned with politics rather than culture. In the thirteenth century,
there were three conflicting classes in Florence: the nobles, the
rich merchants, and the small men. The nobles, in the main, were
Ghibelline, the other two classes Guelf. The Ghibellines were
finally defeated in 1266, and during the fourteenth century the
party of the small men got the better of the rich merchants. The
conflict, however, led not to a stable democracy, but to the gradual
growth of what the Greeks would have called a "tyranny." The
Medici family, who ultimately became the rulers of Florence,
began as political bosses on the democratic side. Cosimo dei Medici
(1389-1464), the first of the family to achieve clear pre-eminence,
still had no official position; his power depended upon skill in
manipulating elections. He was astute, conciliatory when possible,
ruthless when necessary. He was succeeded, after a short interval,
by his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent, who held power from
1469 till his death in 1492. Both these men owed their position
to their wealth, which they had acquired mainly in commerce, but
also in mining and other industries. They understood how to make
Florence rich, as well as themselves, and under them the city
prospered.
Lorenzo's son Pietro lacked his father's merits, and was expelled
in 1494. Then followed the four years of Savonarola's influence,
when a kind of Puritan revival turned men against gaiety and
luxury, away from free-thought and towards the piety supposed
to have characterized a simpler age. In the end, however, mainly
for political reasons, Savonarola's enemies triumphed, he was
executed and his body was burnt (1498). The Republic, demo-
cratic in intention but plutocratic in fact, survived till 1512, when
the Medici were restored. A son of Lorenzo, who had become a
cardinal at the age of fourteen, was elected Pope in 1513, and took
the title of Leo X. The Medici family, under the title of Grand
Dukes of Tuscany, governed Florence until 1737; but Florence
meanwhile, like the rest of Italy, had become poor and unim-
portant.
The temporal power of the Pope, which owed its origin to
Pepin and the forged Donation of Constantinc, increased greatly
during the Renaissance; but the methods employed by the popes
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
to this end robbed the papacy of spiritual authority. The conciliar
movement, which came to grief in the conflict between the Council
of Basel and Pope Eugenius IV (1431-47), represented the most
earnest elements in the Church; what was perhaps even more
important, it represented ecclesiastical opinion north of the Alps.
The victory of the popes was the victory of Italy, and (in a lesser
degree) of Spain. Italian civilization, in the latter half of the
fifteenth century, was totally unlike that of northern countries,
which remained medieval. The Italians were in earnest about
culture, but not about morals and religion ; even in the minds of
ecclesiastics, elegant latinity would cover a multitude of sins.
Nicholas V (1447-55), the first humanist Pope, gave papal offices
to scholars whose learning he respected, regardless of other con-
siderations; Lorenzo Valla, an Epicurean, and the man who proved
the Donation of Constantine to be a forgery, who ridiculed the
style of the Vulgate and accused St. Augustine of heresy, was made
apostolic secretary. This policy of encouraging humanism rather
than piety or orthodoxy continued until the sack of Rome in
Encouragement of humanism, though it shocked the earnest
North, might, from our point of view, be reckoned a virtue; but
the warlike policy and immoral life of some of the popes could
not be defended from any point of view except that of naked power
politics. Alexander VI (1492-1503) devoted his life as Pope to the
aggrandizement of himself and his family. He had two sons, the
Duke of Gandia and Caesar Borgia, of whom he greatly preferred
the former. The duke, however, was murdered, probably by his
brother; the Pope's dynastic ambitions therefore had to be con-
centrated on Caesar. Together they conquered the Romagna and
Ancona, which were intended to form a principality for Caesar;
but when the Pope died Caesar was very ill, and therefore could
not act promptly. Their conquests consequently reverted to the
patrimony of St. Peter. The wickedness of these two men soon
became legendary, and it is difficult to disentangle truth from
falsehood as regards the innumerable murders of which they are
accused. There can be no doubt, however, that they carried the
arts of perfidy further than they had 'ever been carried before.
Julius II (1503-13), who succeeded Alexander VI, was not remark-
able for piety, but gave less occasion for scandal than his pre-
decessor. He continued the process of enlarging the papal domain ;
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as a soldier he had merit, but not as the Head of the Christian
Church. The Reformation, which began under his successor Leo X
(1513-21), was the natural outcome of the pagan policy of the
Renaissance popes.
The southern extremity of Italy was occupied by the Kingdom
of Naples, with which, at most times, Sicily was united. Naples and
Sicily had been the especial personal kingdom of the Emperor
Frederick II; he had introduced an absolute monarchy on the
Mohammedan model, enlightened but despotic, and allowing no
power to the feudal nobility. After his death in 1250, Naples and
Sicily went to his natural son Manfred, who, however, inherited
the implacable hostility of the Church, and was ousted by the
French in 1266. The French made themselves unpopular, and
were massacred in the "Sicilian Vespers" (1282), after which the
kingdom belonged to Peter III of Aragon and his heirs. After
various complications, leading to the temporary separation of
Naples and Sicily, they were reunited in 1443 under Alphonso
the Magnanimous, a distinguished patron of letters. From 1495
onwards, three French kings tried to conquer Naples, but in the
end the kingdom was acquired by Ferdinand of Aragon (1502).
Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, kings of France, all had
claims (not very good in law) on Milan and Naples; all invaded
Italy with temporary success, but all were ultimately defeated by
the Spaniards. The victory of Spain and the Counter- Reformation
put an end to the Italian Renaissance. Pope Clement VII being
an obstacle to the Counter- Reformation, and, as a Medici, a friend
of France, Charles V, in 1527, caused Rome to be sacked by a
largely Protestant army. .After this, the popes became religious,
and the Italian Renaissance was at an end.
The game of power politics in Italy was unbelievably complex.
The minor princes, mostly self-made tyrants, allied themselves
now with one of the larger States, now with another; if they
played the game unwisely, they were exterminated. There were
constant wars, but until the coming of the French in 1494 they
were almost bloodless: the soldiers were mercenaries, who were
anxious to minimize their vocational risks. These purely Italian
wars did not interfere much with trade, or prevent the country
from increasing in wealth. There was much statecraft, but no
wiae statesmanship; when the French came, the country found
ittelf practically defenceless. French troops shocked the Italians
520
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
by actually killing people in battle. The wars between French and
Spaniards which ensued were serious wars, bringing suffering and
impoverishment. But the Italian States went on intriguing against
each other, invoking the aid of France or Spain in their internal
quarrels, without any feeling for national unity. In the end, all
were ruined. It must be said that Italy would inevitably have lost
its importance, owing to the discovery of America and the Cape
route to the East; but the collapse could have been less catas-
trophic, and less destructive of the quality of Italian civilization.
The Renaissance was not a period of great achievement in
philosophy, but it did certain things which were essential pre-
liminaries to the greatness of the seventeenth century. In the first
place, it broke down the rigid scholastic system, which had become
an intellectual strait jacket. It revived the study of Plato, and
thereby demanded at least so much independent thought as was
required for choosing between him and Aristotle. In regard to
both, it promoted a genuine and first-hand knowledge, free from
the glosses of Xeoplatonists and Arabic commentators. More
important still, it encouraged the habit of regarding intellectual
activity as a delightful social adventure, not a cloistered meditation
aiming at the preservation of a predetermined orthodoxy.
The substitution of Plato for the scholastic Aristotle was has-
tened by contact with Byzantine scholarship. Already at the Coun-
cil of Ferrara (1438), which nominally reunited the Eastern and
Western Churches, there was a debate in which the Byzantines
maintained the superiority of Plato to Aristotle. Gemistus Pletho,
an ardent Greek Platonist of doubtful orthodoxy, did much to
promote Platonism in Italy ; so did Bessarion, a Greek who became
a cardinal. Cosirno and Lorenzo dei Medici were both addicted
to Plato; Cosimo founded and Lorenzo continued the Florentine
Academy, which was largely devoted to the study of Plato. Cosimo
died listening to one of Plato's dialogues. The humanists of the
time, however, were too busy acquiring knowledge of antiquity to
be able to produce anything original in philosophy.
The Renaissance was not a popular movement; it was a move-
ment of a small number of scholars and artists, encouraged by
liberal patrons, especially the Medici artd the humanist popes. But
for these patrons, it might have had very much less success.
Petrarch and Boccaccio, in the fourteenth century, belong men-
tally to the Renaissance, but owing to the different political con-
521
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
ditions of their time their immediate influence was less than that
of the fifteenth-century humanists.
The attitude of Renaissance scholars to the Church is difficult
to characterize simply. Some were avowed free-thinkers, though
even these usually received extreme unction, making peace with
the Church when they felt death approaching. Most of them were
impressed by the wickedness of contemporary popes, but were
nevertheless glad to be employed by them. Guicciardini the his-
torian wrote in 1529:
"No man is more disgusted than I am with the ambition, the
avarice, and the profligacy of the priests, not only because each
of these vices is hateful in itself, but because each and all of them
are most unbecoming in those who declare themselves to be men
in special relations with God, and also because they are vices so
opposed to one another, that they can only co-exist in very sin-
gular natures. Nevertheless, my position at the Court of several
popes forced me to desire their greatness, for the sake of my own
interest. But, had it not been for this, I should have loved Martin
Luther as myself, not in order to free myself from the laws which
Christianity, as generally understood and explained, lays upon us,
but in order to see this swarm of scoundrels put back into their
proper place, so that they may be forced to live either without
vices or without power."1
This is delightfully frank, and shows clearly why the humanists
could not inaugurate a reformation. Moreover, most of them saw
no half-way house between orthodoxy and free-thought; such a
position as Luther's was impossible for them, because they no
longer had the medieval feeling for the subtleties of theology.
Masuccio, after describing the wickedness of monks and nuns and
friars, says; "The best punishment for them would be for God
to abolish purgatory; they would then receive no more alms, and
would be forced to go back to their spades."2 But it does not
occur to him, as to Luther, to deny purgatory, while retaining
most of the Catholic faith.
The wealth of Rome depended only in small part upon the
revenues obtained from the papal dominions; in the main, it was
a tribute, drawn from the whole Catholic world, by means of a
theological system which maintained that the popes held the keys
1 Quoted from Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, part iv, chap. ii.
• Ibid.
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
of heaven. An Italian who effectively questioned this system risked
the impoverishment of Italy, and the loss of the position in the
Western world. Consequently Italian unorthodoxy, in the Renais-
sance, was purely intellectual, and did not lead to schism, or to
any attempt to create a popular movement away from the Church.
The only exception, and that a very partial one, was Savonarola,
who belonged mentally to the Middle Ages.
Most of the humanists retained such superstitious beliefs as had
found support in antiquity. Magic and witchcraft might be wicked,
but were not thought impossible. Innocent VIII, in 1484, issued
a bull against witchcraft, which led to an appalling persecution
of witches in Germany and elsewhere. Astrology was prized
especially by freethinkers; it acquired a vogue which it had not
had since ancient times. The first effect of emancipation from the
Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their
minds to every sort of antique nonsense.
Morally, the first effect of emancipation w$s equally disastrous.
The old moral rules ceased to be respected ; most of the rulers of
States had acquired their position by treachery, and retained it
by ruthless cruelty. When cardinals were invited to dine at the
coronation of a pope, they brought their own wine and their own
cup-bearer, for fear of poison.1 Except Savonarola, hardly any
Italian of the period risked anything for a public object. The evils
of papal corruption were obvious, but nothing was done about
them. The desirability of Italian unity was evident, but the rulers
were incapable of combination. The danger of foreign domination
was imminent, yet every Italian ruler was prepared to invoke the
aid of any foreign power, even the Turk, in any dispute with any
other Italian ruler. I cannot think of any crime, except the des-
truction of ancient manuscripts, of which the men of the Renais-
sance were not frequently guilty.
Outside the sphere of morals, the Renaissance had great merits.
In architecture, painting, and poetry, it has remained renowned.
It produced very great men, such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and
Machiavelli. It liberated educated men from the narrowness of
medieval culture, and, even while still a slave to the worship of
antiquity, it made scholars aware that *a variety of opinions had
been held by reputable authorities on almost every subject. By
reviving the knowledge of the Greek world, it created a mental
1 Burckhardt, op. cit.t part vi, chap. i.
523
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
atmosphere in which it was again possible to rival Hellenic achieve-
ments, and in which individual genius could flourish with a free-
dom unknown since the time of Alexander. The political conditions
of the Renaissance favoured individual development, but were
unstable; the instability and the individualism were closely con-
nected, as in ancient Greece. A stable social system is necessary,
but every stable system hitherto devised has hampered the deve-
lopment of exceptional artistic or intellectual merit. How much
murder and anarchy are we prepared to endure for the sake of
great achievements such as those of the Renaissance ? In the past,
a great deal; in our own time, much less. No solution of this
problem has hitherto been found, although increase of social
organization is making it continually more important.
5*4
Chapter III
MACHIAVELLI
E • IHE Renaissance, though it produced no important theo-
I retical philosopher, produced one man of supreme
JL eminence in political philosophy: Niccol6 Machiavelli. It
is the custom to be shocked by him, and he certainly is sometimes
shocking. But many other men would be equally so if they were
equally free from humbug. His political philosophy is scientific
and empirical, based upon his own experience of affairs, concerned
to set forth the means to assigned ends, regardless of the question
whether the ends are to be considered good or bad. When, on
occasion, he allows himself to mention the ends that he desires,
they are such as we can all applaud. Much of the conventional
obloquy that attaches to his name is due to the indignation of
hypocrites who hate the frank avowal of evil-doing. There remains,
it is true, a good deal that genuinely demands criticism, but in this
he is an expression of his age. Such intellectual honesty about
political dishonesty would have been hardly possible at any other
time or in any other country, except perhaps in Greece among
men who owed their theoretical education to the sophists and their
practical training to the wars of petty states which, in classical
Greece as in Renaissance Italy, were the political accompaniment
of individual genius.
Machiavelli (1467-1527) was a Florentine, whose father, a law-
yer, was neither rich nor poor. When he was in his twenties,
Savonarola dominated Florence; his miserable end evidently made
a great impression on Machiavelli, for he remarks that "all armed
prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed," proceeding
to give Savonarola as an instance of the latter class. On the other
side he mentions Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus. It is
typical of the Renaissance that Christ is not mentioned.
Immediately after Savonarola's execution, Machiavelli obtained
a minor post in the Florentine government (1498). He remained
in its service, at times on important diplomatic missions, until
the restoration of the Medici in 1512 ; tLen, having always opposed
them, he was arrested, but acquitted, and allowed to live in retire-
ment in the country near Florence. He became an author for want
525
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
oi other occupation. His most famous work, The Prince^ was
written in 1513, and dedicated to Lorenzo the Second, since he
hoped (vainly, as it proved) to win the favour of the Medici,
Its tone is perhaps partly due to this practical purpose ; his longer
work, the Discourses^ which he was writing at the same time, is
markedly more republican and more liberal. He says at the begin-
ning of The Prince that he will not speak of republics in this book,
since he has dealt with them elsewhere. Those who do not read
also the Discourses are likely to get a very one-sided view of his
doctrine.
Having failed to conciliate the Medici, Machiavelli was com-
pelled to go on writing. He lived in retirement until the year of
his death, which was that of the sack of Rome by the troops of
Charles V. This year may be reckoned also that in which the
Italian Renaissance died.
The Prince is concerned to discover, from history and from con-
temporary events, how principalities are won, how they are held,
and how they are lost. Fifteenth-century Italy afforded a multitude
of examples, both great and small. Few rulers were legitimate;
even the popes, in many cases, secured election by corrupt means.
The rules for achieving success were not quite the same as they
became when times grew more settled, for no one was shocked by
cruelties and treacheries which would have disqualified a man in
the eighteenth or the nineteenth century. Perhaps our age, again,
can better appreciate Machiavelli, for some of the most notable
successes of our time have been achieved by methods as base as
any employed in Renaissance Italy. He would have applauded,
as an artistic connoisseur in statecraft, Hitler's Reichstag fire, his
purge of the party in 1934, and his breach of faith after Munich.
Caesar Borgia, son of Alexander VI, comes in for high praise.
His problem was a difficult one: first, by the death of his brother,
to become the sole beneficiary of his father's dynastic ambition ;
second, to conquer by force of arms, in the name of the Pope,
territories which should, after Alexander's death, belong to him-
self and not to the Papal States; third, to manipulate the College
of Cardinals so that the next Pope should be his friend. He pursued
this difficult end with great skill; from his practice, Machiavellt
says, a new prince should derive precepts. Caesar failed, it is true,
but only "by the extraordinary malignity of fortune." It happened
that, when his father died, he also was dangerously ill; by the
526
MACH1AVELLI
time he recovered, his enemies had organized their forces, and his
bitterest opponent had been elected Pope. On the day of this
election, Caesar told Machiavelli that he had provided for every-
thing, "except that he had never thought that at his father's death
he would be dying himself."
Machiavelli, who was intimately acquainted with his villainies,
sums up thus: "Reviewing thus all the actions of the duke [Caesar],
I find nothing to blame, on the contrary, I feel bound, as I have
done, to hold him as an example to be imitated by all who by
fortune and with the arms of others have risen to power."
There is an interesting chapter "Of Ecclesiastical Principalities,"
which, in view of what is said in the Discourses, evidently conceals
part of Machiavelli 's thought. The reason for concealment was,
no doubt, that The Prince was designed to please the Medici, and
that, when it was written, a Medici had just become Pope (Leo X).
In regard to ecclesiastical principalities, he says in The Prince, the
only difficulty is to acquire them, for, when acquired, they are
defended by ancient religious customs, which keep their princes
in power no matter how they behave. Their princes do not need
armies (so he says), because "they are upheld by higher causes
which the human mind cannot attain to." They are "exalted and
maintained by God," and "it would be the work of a presumptuous
and foolish man to discuss them." Nevertheless, he continues, it
is permissible to inquire by what means Alexander VI so greatly
increased the temporal power of the Pope.
The discussion of the papal powers in the Discourses is longer
and more sincere. Here he begins by placing eminent men in an
ethical hierarchy. The best, he says, are the founders of religions;
then come the founders of monarchies or republics; then literary
men. These are good, but destroyers of religions, subverters of
republics or kingdoms, and enemies of virtue or of letters, are
bad. Those who establish tyrannies are wicked, including Julius
Caesar ; on the other hand, Brutus was good. (The contrast between
this view and Dante's shows the effect of classical literature.) Me
holds that religion should have a prominent place in the State, not
on the ground of its truth, but as a social cement: the Romans
were right to pretend to believe in auguries, and to punish those
who disregarded them. His criticisms of the Church in his day
are two: that by its evil conduct it has undermined religious belief,
and that the temporal power of the popes, with the policy that it
5*7
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
inspires, prevents the unification of Italy. These criticisms are
expressed with great vigour. "The nearer people are to the Church
of Rome, which is the head of our religion, the less religious are
they. . . . Her ruin and chastisement is near at hand. . . . We Italians
owe to the Church of Rome and to her priests our having become
irreligious and bad; but we owe her a still greater debt, and one
that will be the cause of our ruin, namely that the Church has
kept and still keeps our country divided."1
In view of such passages, it must be supposed that Machiavelli's
admiration of Caesar Borgia was only for his skill, not for his pur-
poses. Admiration of skill, and of the actions that lead to fame, was
very great at the time of the Renaissance. This kind of feeling has,
of course, always existed ; many of Napoleon's enemies enthusiasti-
cally admired him as a military strategist. But in the Italy of
Machiavelli's time the quasi-artistic admiration of dexterity was
much greater than in earlier or later centuries. It would be a
mistake to try to reconcile it with the arger political aims which
Machiavelli considered important; the two things, love of skill
and patriotic desire for Italian unity, existed side by side in his
mind, and were not in any degree synthesized. Thus he can praise
Caesar Borgia for his cleverness, and blame him for keeping Italy
disrupted. The perfect character, one must suppose, would be, in
his opinion, a man as clever and unscrupulous as Caesar Borgia
where means are concerned, but aiming at a different end. The
Prince ends with an eloquent appeal to the Medici to liberate Italy
from the "barbarians" (i.e. the French and Spaniards), whose
domination "stinks." He would not expect such a work to be
undertaken from unselfish motives, but from love of power, and
still more of fame.
The Prince is very explicit in repudiating received morality where
the conduct of rulers is concerned. A ruler will perish if he is
always good ; he must be as cunning as a fox and as fierce as a lion.
There is a chapter (XVIII) entitled: "In What Way Princes Must
Keep Faith." We learn that they should keep faith when it pays
to do so, but not otherwise. A prince must on occasion be faithless
"But it is necessary to be able to disguise this character well, and
to be a great feigner and dissembler; and men are so simple and
so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will
always find those who allow themselves to be deceived. I will men-
* This remained true until 1870.
5*8
MACHIAVELLI
tion only one modern instance. Alexander VI did nothing else but
deceive men, he thought of nothing else, and found the occasion
for it; no man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed
things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less; how*
ever, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he knew well this
aspect of things. It is not necessary therefore for a prince to have
all the above-named qualities [the conventional virtues], but it is
very necessary to seem to have them." .
He goes on to say that, above all, a prince should seem to be
religious.
The tone of the Discourses, which are nominally a commentary
on Livy, is very different. There are whole chapters which seem
almost as if they had been written by Montesquieu ; most of the
book could have been read with approval by an eighteenth-century
liberal. The doctrine of checks and balances is set forth explicitly.
Princes, nobles, and people should all have a part in the Con-
stitution; "then these three powers will keep each other recipro-
cally in check." The constitution of Sparta, as established by
Lycurgus, was the best, because it embodied the most perfect
balance ; that of Solon was too democratic, and therefore led to the
tyranny of Peisistratus. The Roman republican constitution was
good, owing to the conflict of Senate and people.
The word "liberty" is used throughout as denoting something
precious, though what it denotes is not very clear. This, of course,
comes from antiquity, and was passed on to the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Tuscany has preserved its liberties, because
it contains no castles or gentlemen. ("Gentlemen" is of course a
mistranslation, but a pleasing one.) It seems to be recognized that
political liberty requires a certain kind of personal virtue in the
citizens. In Germany alone, we are told, probity and religion are
still common, and therefore in Germany there are many republics.
In genera], the people are wiser and more constant than princes,
although Livy and most other writers maintain the opposite. It is
not without good reason that it is said, "the voice of the people
is the voice of God."
It is interesting to observe how the political thought of the
Greeks and Romans, in their republican days, acquired an actuality
in the fifteenth century which it had not had in Greece since
Alexander or in Rome since Augustus. The Neoplatonists, the
Arabs, and the Schoolmen took a passionate interest in the meta-
5*9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
physics of Plato and Aristotle, but none at all in their political
writings, because the political systems of the age of City States
had completely disappeared. The growth of City States in Italy
synchronized with the revival of learning, and made it possible
for humanists to profit by the political theories of republican
Greeks and Romans. The love of "liberty," and the theory of
checks and balances, came to the Renaissance from antiquity, and
to modern times largely from the Renaissance, though also directly
from antiquity. This aspect of Machiavelli is at least as important
as the more famous "immoral" doctrines of The Prince.
It is to be noted that Machiavelli never bases any political
argument on Christian or biblical grounds. Medieval writers had
a conception of "legitimate" power, which was that of the Pope
and the Emperor, or derived from them. Northern writers, even
so late as Locke, argue as to what happened in the Garden of Eden,
and think that they can thence derive proofs that certain kinds of
power are "legitimate." In Machiavelli there is no such conception.
Power is for those who have the skill to seize it in a free com-
petition. His preference for popular government is not derived
from any idea of "rights," but from the observation that popular
governments are less cruel, unscrupulous, and inconstant than
tyrannies.
Let us try to make a synthesis (which Machiavelli himself did
not make) of the "moral" and "immoral" parts of his doctrine.
In what follows, I am expressing not my own opinions, but
opinions which are explicitly or implicitly his.
There are certain political goods, of which three are specially
important: national independence, security, and a well-ordered
constitution. The best constitution is one which apportions legal
rights among prince, nobles, and people in proportion to their real
power, for under such a constitution successful revolutions are
difficult and therefore stability is possible; but for considerations
of stability, it would be wise to give more power to the people.
So far as regards ends.
But there is also, in politics, the question of means. It is futile
to pursue a political purpose by methods that are bound to fail ;
if the end is held good, <we must choose means adequate to its
achievement. The question of means can be treated in a purely
scientific manner, without regard to the goodness or badness of the
ends. "Success" means the achievement of your purpose, whatever
530
MACH1AVELL1
it may be. If there is a science of success, it can be studied just as
well in the successes of the wicked as in those of the good — indeed
better, since the examples of successful sinners are more numerous
than those of successful saints. But the science, once established,
will be just as useful to the saint as to the sinner. For the saint, if
he concerns himself with politics, must wish, just as the sinner
does, to achieve success.
The question is ultimately one of power. To achieve a political
end, power, of one kind or another, is necessary. This plain fact
is concealed by slogans, such as "right will prevail'* or ''the triumph
of evil is short-lived." If the side that you think right prevails, that
is because it has superior power. It is true that power, often,
depends upon opinion, and opinion upon propaganda; it is true,
also, that it is an advantage in propaganda to seem more virtuous
than your adversary, and that one way of seeming virtuous is to
be virtuous. For this reason, it may sometimes happen that victory
goes to the side which has the most of what the general public
considers to be virtue. We must concede to Machiavelli that this
was an important element in the growing power of the Church
during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, as well as in
the success of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. But there
are important limitations. In the first place, those who have seized
power can, by controlling propaganda, cause their party to appear
virtuous; no one, for example, could mention the sins of Alexander
VI in a New York or Boston public school. In the second place,
there are chaotic periods during which obvious knavery frequently
succeeds; the period of Machiavelli was one of them. In such
times, there tends to be a rapidly growing cynicism, which makes
men forgive anything provided it pays. Even in such times, as
Machiavelli himself says, it is desirable to present an appearance
of virtue before the ignorant public.
This question can be carried a step further. Machiavelli is of
opinion that civilized men are almost certain to be unscrupulous
egoists. If a man wished nowadays to establish a republic, he
says, he would find it easier with mountaineers than with the men
of a large city, since the latter would be already corrupted.1 If a
man is an unscrupulous egoist, his wisest line of conduct will
1 It is curious to find this anticipation of Rousseau. It would be amus-
ing, and not wholly false, to interpret Machiavelli as a disappointed
romantic.
S31
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
depend upon the population with which he has to operate. The
Renaissance Church shocked everybody, but it was only north
of the Alps that it shocked people enough to produce the Refor-
mation. At the time when Luther began his revolt, the revenue of
the papacy was probably larger than it would have been if Alexan-
der VI and Julius II had been more virtuous, and if this is true,
it is so because of the cynicism of Renaissance Italy. It follows that
politicians will behave better when they depend upon a virtuous
population than when they depend upon one which is indifferent
to moral considerations; they will also behave better in a com-
munity in which their crimes, if any, can be made widely known,
than in one in which there is a strict censorship under their control.
A certain amount can, of course, always be achieved by hypocrisy,
but the amount can be much diminished by suitable institutions.
Machiavelli's political thinking, like that of most of the ancients,
is in one respect somewhat shallow. He is occupied with great law-
givers, such as Lycurgus and Solon, who are supposed to create
a community all in one piece, with little regard to what has gone
before. The conception of a community as an organic growth,
which the statesmen can only affect to a limited extent, is in the
main modern, and has been greatly strengthened by the theory
of evolution. This conception is not to be found in Machiavelli
any more than in Plato.
It might, however, be maintained that the evolutionary view of
society, though true in the past, is no longer applicable, but must,
for the present and the future, be replaced by a much more
mechanistic view. In Russia and Germany new societies have been
created, in much the same way as the mythical Lycurgus was
supposed to have created the Spartan polity. The ancient lawgiver
was a benevolent myth ; the modern lawgiver is a terrifying reality.
The world has become more like that of Machiavelli than it was,
and the modern man who hopes to refute his philosophy must
think more deeply than seemed necessary in the nineteenth century.
532
Chapter IV
ERASMUS AND MORE
IN northern countries the Renaissance began later than in Italy,
and soon became entangled with the Reformation. But there
was a brief period, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
during which the new learning was being vigorously disseminated
in France, England, and Germany, without having become in-
volved in theological controversy. This northern Renaissance was
in many ways very different from that of Italy. It was not anarchic
or amoral; on the contrary, it was associated with piety and public
virtue. It was much interested in applying standards of scholarship
to the Bible, and in obtaining a more accurate text than that of the
Vulgate. It was less brilliant and more solid than its Italian pro-
genitor, less concerned with personal display of learning, and more
anxious to spread learning as widely as possible.
Two men, Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, will serve as exem-
plars of the northern Renaissance. They were close friends, and
had much in common. Both were learned, though More less so
than Erasmus ; both despised the scholastic philosophy ; both aimed
at ecclesiastical reform from within, but deplored the Protestant
schism when it came; both were witty, humorous, and highly
skilled writers. Before Luther's revolt, they were leaders of thought,
but after it the world was too violent, on both sides, for men of
their type. More suffered martyrdom, and Erasmus sank into
ineffectiveness.
Neither Erasmus nor More was a philosopher in the strict sense
of the word. My reason for speaking of them is that they illustrate
the temper of a pre-revolutionary age, when there is a widespread
demand for moderate reform, and timid men have not yet been
frightened into reaction by extremists. They exemplify also the
dislike of everything systematic in theology or philosophy which
characterized the reactions against scholasticism.
Erasmus (1466-1536) was born at Rotterdam.1 He was illegiti-
mate, and invented a romantically untrae account of the circum-
stances of his birth. In fact, his father was a priest, a man of
1 As regards the life of Erasmus, I have mainly followed the excellent
biography by Iluizinga.
533
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
some learning, with a knowledge of Greek. His parents died before
he was grown up, and his guardians (apparently because they had
embezzled his money) cajoled him into becoming a monk at the
monastery of Steyr, a step which he regretted all the rest of his life.
One of his guardians was a schoolmaster, but knew less Latin than
Erasmus already knew as a schoolboy; in reply to a Latin epistle
from the boy, the schoolmaster wrote: "If you should write again
so elegantly, please to add a commentary."
In 1493, he became secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, who was
Chancellor of the Order of the Golden Fleece. This gave him the
opportunity to leave the monastery and travel, though not to Italy,
as he had hoped. His knowledge of Greek was as yet very slight,
but he was a highly accomplished Latinist ; he particularly admired
Lorenzo Valla, on account of his book on the elegancies of the
Latin language. He considered latinity quite compatible with true
devotion, and instanced Augustine and Jerome — forgetting, appa-
rently, the dream in which Our Lord denounced the latter for
reading Cicero.
He was for a time at the University of Paris, but found nothing
there that was of profit to himself. The university had had its great
days, from the beginning of scholasticism to Gerson and the con-
ciliar movement, but now the old disputes had become arid.
Thomists and Scotists, who jointly were called the Ancients, dis-
puted against Occamists, who were called the Terminists, or
Moderns. At last, in 1482, they were reconciled, and made common
cause against the humanists, who were making headway in Paris
outside university circles. Erasmus hated the scholastics, whom he
regarded as superannuated and antiquated. He mentioned in a
letter that, as he wanted to obtain the doctor's degree, he tried
to say nothing either graceful or witty. He did not really like any
philosophy, not even Plato and Aristotle, though they, being
ancients, had to be spoken of with respect.
In 1499 he made his first visit to England, where he liked the
fashion of kissing girls. In England he made friends with Colet and
More, who encouraged him to undertake serious work rather than
literary trifles. Colet lectured on the Bible without knowing Greek;
Erasmus, feeling that he would like to do work on the Bible, con-
sidered that a knowledge of Greek was essential. After leaving
England at the beginning of 1500, he set to work to learn Greek,
though he was too poor to afford a teacher ; by the autumn of 1502,
534
ERASMUS AND MORE
he was proficient, and when in 1506 he went to Italy, he found
that the Italians had nothing to teach him. He determined to edit
St. Jerome, and to bring out a Greek Testament with a new Latin
translation; both were achieved in 1516. The discovery of inac-
curacies in the Vulgate was subsequently of use to the Protestants
in controversy. He tried to learn Hebrew, but gave it up.
The only book by Erasmus that is still read is The Praise of Folly.
The conception of this book came to him in 1509, while he was
crossing the Alps on the way from Italy to England. He wrote it
quickly in London, at the house of Sir Thomas More, to whom it
is dedicated, with a playful suggestion of appropriateness since
"moros" means "fool." The book is spoken by Folly in her own
person ; she sings her own praises with great gusto, and her text
is enlivened still further with illustrations by Holbein. She covers
all pans of human life, and all classes and professions. But for her,
the human race would die out, for who can marry without folly?
She counsels, as an antidote to wisdom, "taking a wife, a creature
so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might
mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humour of men."
Who can be happy without flattery or without self-love? Yet such
happiness is folly. The happiest men are those who are nearest the
brutes and divest themselves of reason. The best happiness is that
which is based on delusion, since it costs least: it is easier to
imagine oneself a king than to make oneself a king in reality.
Erasmus proceeds to make fun of national pride and of professional
conceit : almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously
conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit.
There are passages where the satire gives way to invective, and
Folly utters the serious opinions of Erasmus ; these are concerned
with ecclesiastical abuses. Pardons and indulgences, by which
priests "compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory";
the worship of saints, even of the Virgin, "whose blind devotees
think it manners to place the mother before the Son"; the disputes
of theologians as to the Trinity and the Incarnation ; the doctrine
of transubstantiation ; the scholastic sects; popes, cardinals, and
bishops — all are fiercely ridiculed. Particularly fierce is the attack
on the monastic orders: they are "brainsick fools," who have very
little religion in them, yet are "highly in love with themselves, and
fond admirers of their own happiness/' They behave as if all
religion consisted in minute punctilio: "The precise number of
535
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
knots to the tying on of their sandals; what distinct colours their
respective habits, and what stuff made of; how broad and long
their girdles," and so on. "It will be pretty to hear their pleas
before the great tribunal : one will brag how he mortified his carnal
appetite by feeding only upon fish: another will urge that he spent
most of his time on earth in the divine exercise of singing psalms:
. . . another, that in threescore years he never so much as touched
a piece of money, except he fingered it through a thick pair of
gloves." But Christ will interrupt: "Woe unto you, scribes and
pharisees, ... I left you but one precept, of loving one another,
which I do not hear any one plead that he has faithfully dis-
charged.9' Yet on earth these men are feared, for they know many
secrets from the confessional, and often blab them when they are
drunk.
Popes are not spared. They should imitate their Master by
humility and poverty. "Their only weapons ought to be those of
the Spirit ; and of these indeed they are mightily liberal, as of their
interdicts, their suspensions, their denunciations, their aggrava-
tions, their greater and lesser excommunications, and their roaring
bulls, that fight whomever they are thundered against ; and these
most holy fathers never issue them out more frequently than
against those who, at the instigation of the devil, and not having
the fear of God before their eyes, do feloniously and maliciously
attempt to lessen and impair St. Peter's patrimony."
It might be supposed, from such passages, that Erasmus would
have welcomed the Reformation, but it proved otherwise.
The book ends with the serious suggestion that true religion is
a form of Folly. There are, throughout, two kinds of Folly, one
praised ironically, the other seriously; the kind praised seriously
is that which is displayed in Christian simplicity. This praise is
of a piece with Erasmus's dislike of scholastic philosophy and of
learned doctors whose Latin was unclassical. But it has also a
deeper aspect. It is the first appearance in literature, so far as I
know, of the view set forth in Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar, accord-
ing to which true religion comes from the heart, not the head, and
all elaborate theology is superfluous. This point of view has become
increasingly common, anti is now pretty generally accepted among
Protestants. It is, essentially, a rejection of Hellenic intellectualism
by the sentimentalism of the North.
Erasmus, on his second visit to England, remained for five years
536
ERASMUS AND MORE
(1509-14), partly in London, partly at Cambridge. He had a con-
siderable influence in stimulating English humanism. The educa-
tion at English public schools remained, until recently, almost
exactly what he would have wished: a thorough grounding in
Greek and Latin, involving not only translation, but verse and
prose composition. Science, although intellectually dominant since
the seventeenth century, was thought unworthy the attention of
a gentleman or a divine; Plato should be studied, but not the
subjects which Plato thought worth studying. All this is in line
with the influence of Erasmus.
The men of the Renaissance had an immense curiosity; "these
minds," says Huizinga, "never had their desired share of striking
incidents, curious details, rarities and anomalies." But at first they
sought these things, not in the world, but in old books. Erasmus
was interested in the world, but could not digest it in the raw: it
had to be dished up in Latin or Greek before he could assimilate
it. Travellers' tales were discounted, but any marvel in Pliny was
believed. Gradually, however, curiosity became transferred from
books to the real world ; men became interested in the savages and
strange animals that were actually discovered, rather than in those
described by classical authors. Caliban comes from Montaigne,
and Montaigne's cannibals come from travellers. "The anthropo-
phagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" had
been seen by Othello, not derived from antiquity.
And so the curiosity of the Renaissance, from having been
literary, gradually became scientific. Such a cataract of new facts
overwhelmed men that they could, at first, only be swept along
with the current. The old systems were evidently wrong; Aris-
totle's physics and Ptolemy's astronomy and Galen's medicine
could not be stretched to include the discoveries that had been
made. Montaigne and Shakespeare are content with confusion:
discovery is delightful, and system is its enemy. It was not till the
seventeenth century that the system-building faculty caught up
with the new knowledge of matters of fact. All this, however, has
taken us far from Erasmus, to whom Columbus was less interesting
than the Argonauts.
Erasmus was incurably and unashamedly literary. He wrote a
book, Enchiridion militis christiani, giving advice to illiterate sol-
diers: they were to read the Bible, but also Plato, Ambrose,
Jerome, and Augustine. He made a vast collection of Latin pro-
537
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
verbs, to which, in later editions, he added many in Greek; his
original purpose was to enable people to write Latin idiomatically.
He wrote an immensely successful book of Colloquies, to teach
people how to talk in Latin about every-day matters, such as a
game of bowls. This was, perhaps, more useful than it seems now.
Latin was the only international language, and students at the
University of Paris came from all over Western Europe. It may
have often happened that Latin was the only language in which
two students could converse.
After the Reformation, Erasmus lived first in Louvain, which
maintained perfect Catholic orthodoxy, then in Basel, which
became Protestant. Each side tried to enlist him, but for a long
time in vain. He had, as we have seen, expressed himself strongly
about ecclesiastical abuses and the wickedness of popes; in 1518,
the very year of Luther's revolt, he published a satire, called Julius
exclusus, describing the failure of Julius II to get to heaven. But
Luther's violence repelled him, and he hated war. At last he came
down on the Catholic side. In 1524 he wrote a work defending
free will, which Luther, following and exaggerating Augustine,
rejected. Luther replied savagely, and Erasmus was driven further
into reaction. From this time until his death, he became increasingly
unimportant. He had always been timid, and the times were no
longer suited to timid people. For honest men, the only honourable
alternatives were martyrdom or victory. His friend Sir Thomas
More was compelled to choose martyrdom, and Erasmus com-
mented: "Would More had never meddled with that dangerous
business, and left the theological cause to the theologians.1'
Erasmus lived too long, into an age of new virtues and new
vices — heroism and intolerance — neither of which he could
acquire.
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was, as a man, much more ad-
mirable than Erasmus, but much less important as an influence.
He was a humanist, but also a man of profound piety. At Oxford,
he set to work to learn Greek, which was then unusual, and was
thought to show a sympathy with Italian infidels. The authorities
and his father objected, and he was removed from the university.
Thereupon he was attracted to the Carthusians, practised extreme
austerities, and contemplated joining the order. He was deterred
from doing so, apparently by the influence of Erasmus, whom he
first met at this time. His father was a lawyer, and he decided to
538
ERASMUS AND MORE
follow his father's profession. In 1504 he was a Member of Parlia-
ment, and led the opposition to Henry VH's demand for new
taxes. In this he was successful, but the king was furious; he sent
More's father to the Tower, releasing him, however, on payment
of £100. On the king's death in 1509, More returned to the practice
of the law, and won the favour of Henry VIII. He was knighted
in 1514, and employed on various embassies. The king kept in-
viting him to court, but More would not come; at last the king
came uninvited to dine with him at his house in Chelsea. More
had no illusions as to Henry VIII; when complimented on the
king's favourable disposition, he replied: "If my head should win
him a castle in France it should not fail to go."
When Wolsey fell, the king appointed More chancellor in his
stead. Contrary to the usual practice, he refused all gifts from
litigants. He soon fell into disfavour, because the king was deter-
mined to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne
Bo ley n, and More was unalterably opposed to the divorce. He
therefore resigned in 1532. His incorruptibility when in office is
shown by the fact that after his resignation he had only £100 a
year. In spite of his opinions, the king invited him to his wedding
with Anne Boleyn, but More refused the invitation. In 1534, the
king got Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy, declaring him,
not the Pope, the head of the Church of England. Under this act
an Oath of Supremacy was exacted, which More refused to take;
this was only misprision of treason, which did not involve the
death penalty. It was proved, however, by very dubious testimony,
that he had said Parliament could not make Henry head of the
Church; on this evidence he was convicted of high treason, and
beheaded. His property was given to Princess Elizabeth, who kept
it to the day of her death.
More is remembered almost solely on account of his Utopia
(1518). Utopia is an island in the southern hemisphere, where
everything is done in the best possible way. It has been visited
accidentally by a sailor named Raphael Hythloday, who spent five
years there, and only returned to Europe to make its wise institu-
tions known.
In Utopia, as in Plato's Republic, all things are held in common,
for the public good cannot flourish where there is private property,
and without communism there can be no equality. More, in the
dialogue, objects that communism would make men idle, and
539
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
destroy respect for magistrates; to this Raphael replies that no
one would say this who had lived in Utopia.
There are in Utopia fifty-four towns, all on the same plan, except
that one is the capital. All the streets are twenty feet broad, and
all the private houses are exactly alike, with one door onto the
street and one onto the garden. There are no locks on the doors,
and everyone may enter any house. The roofs are flat. Every
tenth year people change houses — apparently to prevent any feeling
of ownership. In the country, there are farms, each containing
not fewer than forty persons, including two bondmen ; each farm
is under the rule of a master and mistress, who are old and wise.
The chickens are not hatched by hens, but in incubators (which
did not exist in More's time). All are dressed alike, except that
there is a difference between the dress of men and women, and
of married and unmarried. The fashions never change, and no
difference is made between summer and winter clothing. At work,
leather or skins are worn ; a suit will last seven years. When they
stop work, they throw a woollen cloak over their working clothes.
All these cloaks are alike, and are the natural colour of wool. Each
family makes its own clothes.
Everybody — men and women alike — works six hours a day, three
before dinner and three after. All go to bed at eight, and sleep eight
hours. In the early morning there are lectures, to which multitudes
go, although they are not compulsory. After supper an hour is
devoted to play. Six hours* work is enough, because there are no
idlers and there is no useless work; with us, it is said, women,
priests, rich people, servants, and beggars, mostly do nothing
useful, and owing to the existence of the rich much labour is spent
in producing unnecessary luxuries; all this is avoided in Utopia.
Sometimes it is found that there is a surplus, and the magistrates
proclaim a shorter working day for a time.
Some men are elected to become men of learning, and are
exempted from other work while they are found satisfactory. All
who are concerned with government are chosen from the learned.
The government is a representative democracy, with a system of
indirect election; at the head is a prince who is elected for life,
but can be deposed for tyranny.
Family life is patriarchal; married sons live in their father's
house, and are governed by him, unless he is in his dotage. If any
family grows too large, the surplus children are moved into another
ERASMUS AND MORE
family. If a town grows too large, some of the inhabitants are
moved into another town. If all the towns are too large, a new
town is built on waste land. Nothing is said as to what is to be
done when all the waste land is used up. All killing of beasts for food
is done by bondmen, lest free citizens should learn cruelty. There
are hospitals for the sick, which are so excellent that people who
are ill prefer them. Eating at home is permitted, but most people
eat in common halls. Here the "vile service" is done by bondmen,
but the cooking is done by women and the waiting by the older
children. Men sit at one bench, women at another; nursing
mothers, with children under five, are in a separate parlour. All
women nurse their own children. Children over five, if too young
to be waiters, "stand by with marvellous silence," while their
elders eat ; they have no separate dinner, but must be content with
such scraps as are given them from the table.
As for marriage, both men and women are sharply punished if
not virgin when they marry ; and fhe householder of any house in
which misconduct has occurred is liable to incur infamy for care-
lessness. Before marriage, bride and groom see each other naked ;
no one would buy a horse without first taking off the saddle and
bridle, and similar considerations should apply in marriage. There
is divorce for adultery or "intolerable waywardness" of either
party, but the guilty party cannot remarry. Sometimes divorce
is granted solely because both parties desire it. Breakers of wedlock
are punished by bondage.
There is foreign trade, chiefly for the purpose of getting iron,
of which there is none in the island. Trade is used also for purposes
connected with war. The Utopians think nothing of martial glory,
though all learn how to fight, women as well as men. They resort
to war for three purposes: to defend their own territory when
invaded ; to deliver the territory of an ally from invaders ; and to
free an oppressed nation from tyranny. But whenever they can,
they get mercenaries to fight their wars for them. They aim at
getting other nations into their debt, and letting them work off
the debt by supplying mercenaries. For war purposes also they
find a store of gold and silver useful, since they can use it to pay
foreign mercenaries. For themselves, they have no money, and
they teach contempt for gold by using it for chamberpots and the
chains of bondmen. Pearls and diamonds are used as ornaments
for infants, but never for adults. When they are at war, they offer
54'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
large rewards to anyone who will kill the prince of the enemy
country, and still larger rewards to anyone who will bring him
alive, or to himself if he yields himself up. They pity the common
people among their enemies, "knowing that they be driven and
enforced to war against their wills by the furious madness of their
princes and heads." Women fight as well as men, but no one is
compelled to fight. "Engines for war they devise and invent won-
drous wittily. " It will be seen that their attitude to war is more
sensible than heroic, though they display great courage when
necessary.
As for ethics, we are told that they are too much inclined to
think that felicity consists in pleasure. This view, however, has no
bad consequences, because they think that in the next life the good
are rewarded and the wicked punished. They are not ascetic, and
consider fasting silly. There are many religions among them, all
of which are tolerated. Almost all believe in God and immortality;
the few who do not are not accounted citizens, and have no part
in political life, but are otherwise unmolested. Some holy men
eschew meat and matrimony; they are thought holy, but not
wise. Women can be priests, if they are old and widowed. The
priests are few; they have honour, but no power.
Bondmen are people condemned for heinous offences, or
foreigners who have been condemned to death in their own coun-
tries, but whom the Utopians have agreed to take as bondmen.
In the case of a painful incurable disease, the patient is advised
to commit suicide, but is carefully tended if he refuses to
do so.
Raphael Hythloday relates that he preached Christianity to the
Utopians, and that many were converted when they learnt that
Christ was opposed to private property. The importance of com-
munism is constantly stressed ; almost at the end we are told that
in all other nations "I can perceive nothing but a certain con-
spiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the
name and title of the common wealth."
More's Utopia was in many ways astonishingly liberal. I am not
thinking so much of the preaching of communism, which was in
the tradition of many religious movements. I am thinking rather
of what is said about war, about religion and religious toleration,
against the wanton killing of animals (there is a most eloquent
passage against hunting), and in favour of a mild criminal law.
542
ERASMUS AND MORF
(The book opens with an argument against the death penalty for
theft.) It must be admitted, however, that life in More's Utopia,
as in most others, would be intolerably dull. Diversity is essential
to happiness, and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect
of all planned social systems, actual as well as imaginary.
543
Chapter V
THE REFORMATION AND COUNTER-
REFORMATION
Y • 1HE Reformation and Counter-Reformation, alike, repre-
I sent the rebellion of less civilized nations against the
JL intellectual domination of Italy. In the case of the Refor-
mation, the revolt was also political and theological: the authority
of the Pope was rejected, and the tribute which he had obtained
from the power of the keys ceased to be paid. In the case of the
Counter- Reformation, there was only revolt against the intel-
lectual and moral freedom of Renaissance Italy; the power of the
Pope was not diminished, but enhanced, while at the same time
it was made clear that his authority was incompatible with the
easy-going laxity of the Borgias and Medici. Roughly speaking,
the Reformation was German, the Counter- Reformation Spanish;
the wars of religion were at the same time wars between Spain
and its enemies, coinciding in date with the period when Spanish
power was at its height.
The attitude of public opinion in northern nations towards
Renaissance Italy is illustrated in the English saying of that time:
An Englishman Italianate
Is a devil incarnate.
It will be observed how many of the villains in Shakespeare are
Italians. lago is perhaps the most prominent instance, but an even
more illustrative one is lachimo in Cymbeline, who leads astray the
virtuous Briton travelling in Italy, and comes to England to prac-
tise his wicked wiles upon unsuspecting natives. Moral indignation
against Italians had much to do with the Reformation. Unfor-
tunately it involved also intellectual repudiation of what Italy had
done for civilization.
The three great men of the Reformation and Counter- Reforma-
tion are Luther, Calvin, and Loyola. All three, intellectually, are
medieval in philosophy, fcs compared either to the Italians who
immediately preceded them, or to such men as Erasmus and More.
Philosophically, the century following the beginning of the Refor-
mation is a barren one. Luther and Calvin reverted to St. Augus-
544
THE REFORMATION AND COUNTER- REFORMATION
tine, retaining, however, only that part of his teaching which deals
with the relation of the soul to God, not the part which is con*
earned with the Church. Their theology was such as to diminish
the power of the Church. They abolished purgatory, from which
the souls of the dead could be delivered by masses. They rejected
the doctrine of Indulgences, upon which a large part of the papal
revenue depended. By the doctrine of predestination, the fate of
the soul after death was made wholly independent of the actions
of priests. These innovations, while they helped in the struggle
with the Pope, prevented the Protestant Churches from becoming
as powerful in Protestant countries as the Catholic Church was in
Catholic countries. Protestant divines were (at least at first) just
as bigoted as Catholic theologians, but they had less power, and
were therefore less able to do harm.
Almost from the very beginning, there was a division among
Protestants as to the power of the State in religious matters. Luther
was willing, wherever the prince was Protestant, to recognize him
as head of the Church in his own country. In England, Henry VIII
and Elizabeth vigorously asserted their claims in this respect, and
so did the Protestant princes of Germany, Scandinavia, and (after
the revolt from Spain) Holland. This accelerated the already exist-
ing tendency to increase in the power of kings.
But those Protestants who took seriously the individualistic
aspects of the Reformation were as unwilling to submit to the king
as to the Pope. The Anabaptists in Germany were suppressed, but
their doctrine spread to Holland and England. The conflict
between Cromwell and the Long Parliament had many aspects;
in its theological aspect, it was in part a conflict between those
who rejected and those who accepted the view that the State
should decide in religious matters. Gradually weariness resulting
from the wars of religion led to the growth of belief in religious
toleration, which was one of the sources of the movement which
developed inlo eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberalism.
Protestant success, at first amazingly rapid, was checked mainly
as a resultant of Loyola's creation of the Jesuit order. Loyola had
been a soldier, and his order was founded on military models;
there must be unquestioning obedience to the General, and every
Jesuit was to consider himself engaged in warfare against heresy.
As early as the Council of Trent, the Jesuits began to be influen-
tial. They were disciplined, able, completely devoted to the cause
tffcfcry of fffffeni /'*ifc**Ay 545 9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and skilful propagandists. Their theology was the opposite of that
of the Protestants; they rejected those elements of St. Augustine's
teaching which the Protestants emphasized. They believed in free
will, and opposed predestination. Salvation was not by faith alone,
but by both faith and works. The Jesuits acquired prestige by their
missionary zeal, especially in the Far East. They became popular
as confessors, because (if Pascal is to be believed) they were more
lenient, except towards heresy, than other ecclesiastics. They con-
centrated on education, and thus acquired a firm hold on the minds
of the young. Whenever theology did not interfere, the education
they gave was the best obtainable; we shall see that they taught
Descartes more mathematics than he would have learnt elsewhere.
Politically, they were a single united disciplined body, shrinking
from no dangers and no exertions; they urged Catholic princes to
practise relentless persecution, and, following in the wake of con-
quering Spanish armies, re-established the terror of the Inquisition,
even in Italy, which had had nearly a century of free-thought.
The results of the Reformation and Counter- Reformat ion, in the
intellectual sphere, were at first wholly bad, but ultimately bene-
ficial. The Thirty Years' War persuaded everybody that neither
Protestants nor Catholics could be completely victorious ; it became
necessary to abandon the medieval hope of doctrinal unity, and
this increased men's freedom to think for themselves, even about
fundamentals. The diversity of creeds in different countries made
it possible to escape persecution by living abroad. Disgust with
theological warfare turned the attention of able men increasingly
to secular learning, especially mathematics and science. These are
among the reasons for the fact that, while the sixteenth century,
after the rise of Luther, is philosophically barren, the seventeenth
contains the greatest names and makes the most notable advance
since Greek times. This advance began in science, with which I
shall deal in my next chapter.
546
Chapter VI
THE RISE OF SCIENCE
A MOST everything that distinguishes the modern world from
earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved
its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
The Italian Renaissance, though not medieval, is not modern; it
is more akin to the best age of Greece. The sixteenth century, with
its absorption in theology, is more medieval than the world of
Machiavelli. The modern world, so far as mental outlook is con-
cerned, begins in the seventeenth century. No Italian of the
Renaissance would have been unintelligible to Plato or Aristotle;
Luther would have horrified Thomas Aquinas, but would not have
been difficult for him to understand. With the seventeenth century
it is different: Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Occam, could not
have made head or tail of Newton.
The new conceptions that science introduced profoundly in-
fluenced modern philosophy. Descartes, who was in a sense the
founder of modern philosophy, was himself one of the creators of
seventeenth-century science. Something must be said about the
methods and results of astronomy and physics before the mental
atmosphere of the time in which modern philosophy began can
be understood.
Four great men — Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton —
arc pre-eminent in the creation of science. Of these, Copernicus
belongs to the sixteenth century, but in his own time he had little
influence.
Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Polish ecclesiastic, of unimpeach-
able orthodoxy. In his youth he travelled in Italy, and absorbed
something of the atmosphere of the Renaissance. In 1500 he had
a lectureship or professorship of mathematics in Rome, but in 1503
he returned to his native land, where he was a canon of Frauen-
burg. Much of his time seems to have been spent in combating the
Germans and reforming the currency, but his leisure was devoted
to astronomy. He came early to believe tHat the sun is at the centre
of the universe, and that the earth has a twofold motion: a diurnal
rotation, and an annual revolution about the sun. Fear of eccle-
siastical censure led him to delay publication of his views though
547
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
he allowed them to become known. His chief work, De Revolu-
tionibus Orbium Ccekstium, was published in the year of his death
(1543), with a preface by his friend Osiander saying that the helio-
centric theory was only put forward as a hypothesis. It is uncertain
how far Copernicus sanctioned this statement, but the question is
not very important, as he himself made similar statements ii. the
body of the book.1 The book is dedicated to the Pope, and escaped
official Catholic condemnation until the time of Galileo. The
Church in the lifetime of Copernicus was more liberal than it
became after the Council of Trent, the Jesuits, and the revived
Inquisition had done their work.
The atmosphere of Copernicus's work is not modern ; it might
rather be described as Pythagorean. He takes it as axiomatic that
all celestial motions must be circular and uniform, and like the
Greeks he allows himself to be influenced by aesthetic motives.
There are still epicycles in his system, though their centres are at
the sun, or, rather, near the sun. The fact that the sun is not
exactly in the centre marred the simplicity of his theory. Though
he had heard of the Pythagorean doctrines, he does not seem to
have known of Aristarchus's heliocentrictheory,but thcreis nothing
in his speculations that could not have occurred to a Greek as-
tronomer. What was important in his work was the dethronement
of the earth from its geometrical pre-eminence. In the long run,
this made it difficult to give to man the cosmic importance assigned
to him in the Christian theology, but such consequences of his
theory would not have been accepted by Copernicus, whose ortho-
doxy was sincere, and who protested against the view that his
theory contradicted the Bible.
There were genuine difficulties in the Copernican theory. The
greatest of these was the absence of stellar parallax. If the earth at
any one point of its orbit is 186,000,000 miles from the point at
which it will be in six months, this ought to cause a shift in the
apparent positions of the stars, just as a ship at sea which is due
north from one point of the coast will not be due north from
another. No parallax was observed, and Copernicus rightly inferred
that the fixed stars must be very much more remote than the
sun. It was not till the nineteenth century that the technique of
measurement became sufficiently precise for stellar parallax to
1 See Tltree Copernican Treatises, translated by Edward Rosen,
Chicago, 1939.
548
THE RI6E OF SCIENCE
be observed, and then only in the case of a few of the nearest
stars.
Another difficulty arose as regards falling bodies. If the earth
is continually rotating from west to east, a body dropped from a
height ought not to fall to a point vertically below its starting-point,
but to a point somewhat further west, since the earth will have
slipped away a certain distance during the time of the fall. To this
difficulty the answer was found by Galileo's law of inertia, but in
the time of Copernicus no answer was forthcoming.
There is an interesting book by E. A. Burtt, called The Meta-
physical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), which sets
forth with much force the many unwarrantable assumptions made
by the men who founded modern science. He points out quite
truly that there were in the time of Copernicus no known facts
which compelled the adoption of his system, and several which
militated against it. "Contemporary empiricists, had they lived
in the sixteenth century, would have been the first to scoff out of
court the new philosophy of the universe." The general purpose
of the hook is to discredit modern science by suggesting that its
discoveries were lucky accidents springing by chance from super-
stitions as gross as those of the Middle Ages. I think this shows
a misconception of the scientific attitude: it is not what the man
of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he
believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based
on evidence, not on authority or intuition. Copernicus was right
to call his theory a hypothesis; his opponents were wrong in
thinking new hypotheses undesirable.
The men \\ho founded modern science had two merits which
are not necessarily found together: immense patience in observa-
tion, and great boldness in framing hypotheses. The second of
these merits had belonged to the earliest Greek philosophers; the
first existed, to a considerable degree, in the later astronomers of
antiquity. But no one arnonir the ancients, except perhaps Aris-
tarchus, possessed both merits, and no one in the Middle Ages
possessed either. Copernicus, like his great successors, possessed
both. He knew all that could be known, with the instruments
existing in his day, about the apparent motions of the heavenly
bodies on the celestial sphere, and he perceived that the diurnal
rotation of the earth was a more economical hypothesis than the
revolution of all the celestial spheres According to modern views,
549
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
which regard all motion as relative, simplicity is the only gain
resulting from his hypothesis, but this was not his view or that
of his contemporaries. As regards the earth's annual revolution,
there was again a simplification, but not so notable a one as in the
case of the diurnal rotation. Copernicus still needed epicycles,
though fewer than were needed in the Ptolemaic system. It was
not until Kepler discovered his laws that the new theory acquired
its full simplicity.
Apart from the revolutionary effect on cosmic imagination, the
great merits of the new astronomy were two: first, the recognition
that what had been believed since ancient times might be false;
second, that the test of scientific truth is patient collection of facts,
combined with bold guessing as to laws binding the facts together.
Neither merit is so fully developed in Copernicus as in his suc-
cessors, but both are already present in a hiph degree in his work.
Some of the men to whom Copernicus communicated his theory
were German Lutherans, but when Luther came to know of it, he
was profoundly shocked. "People give ear," he said, "to an upstart
astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the
heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes
to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems
is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire
science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua
commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." Calvin,
similarly, demolished Copernicus with the text: "The world also
is stablished, that it cannot be moved" (Psa. xciii. i), and ex-
claimed: "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus
above that of the Holy Spirit?" Protestant clergy were at least
an bigoted as Catholic ecclesiastics; nevertheless there soon carne
to be much more liberty' of speculation in Protestant than in
Catholic countries, because in Protestant countries the clergy had
less power. The important aspect of Protestantism was schism,
not heresy, for schism led to national Churches, and national
Churches were not strong enough to control the lay government.
This was wholly a gain, for the Churches, everywhere, opposed as
long as they could practically every innovation that made for an
increase of happiness or knowledge here cm earth.
Copernicus was not in a position to give any conclusive evidence
in favour of his hypothesis, and for a long time astronomers re-
jected it. The next astronomer of importance wa§ Tycho Brahe
550
THE RISE OF SCIENCE
(1546-1601), who adopted an intermediate position: he held that
the sun and moon go round the earth, but the planets go round
the sun. As regards theory he was not very original. He gave,
however, two good reasons against Aristotle's view that everything
above the moon is unchanging. One of these was the appearance
of a new star in 1572, which was found to have no daily parallax,
and must therefore be more distant than the moon. The other
reason was derived from observation of comets, which were also
found to be distant. The reader will remember Aristotle's doctrine
that chance and decay are confined to the sublunary sphere; this,
like everything else that Aristotle said on scientific subjects, proved
an obstacle to progress.
The importance of Tycho Brahe was not as a theorist, but as an
observer, first under the patronage of the king of Denmark, then
under the Krnperor Rudolf II. He made a star catalogue, and noted
the positions of the planets throughout many years. Towards the
end of his life Kepler, then a young man, became hi? assistant.
To Kepler his observations were invaluable.
Kepler (1571-1 630) is one of the most notable examples of what
can be achieved by patience without much in the way of genius. He
was the first important astronomer after Copernicus to adopt the
heliocentric theory, but Tycho lirahc's data showed that it could
not be quite right in the form given to it by Copernicus. He was
influenced by Pythagoreanism, and more or less fancifully inclined
to sun- worship, though a good Protestant. These motives no doubt
gave him a bias in favour of the heliocentric hypothesis. His
Pythagoreanisni also inclined him to follow Plato's Timaeus in
supposing that cosmic significance must attach to the five regular
solids. He used them to suggest hypotheses to his mind; at last,
by good luck, one of these worked.
Kepler's great achievement was the discovery of his three laws
of planetary motion. Two of these he published in 1609, and the
third in i6u>. His first law states: The planets describe elliptic
orbits, of which the sun occupies one focus. His second law states:
The line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal
timc«. His third law states: The square ^of the period of revolution
of a planet is proportional to the cube of its average distance from
the sun.
Something must be said in explanation of the importance of
these laws.
55'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The first two laws, in Kepler's time, could only be proved in the
case of Mars; as regards the other planets, the observations were
compatible with them, but not such as to establish them definitely.
It was not long, however, before decisive confirmation was found.
The discovery of the first law, that the planets move in ellipses,
required a greater effort of emancipation from tradition than a
modern man can easily realize. The one thing upon which all
astronomers, without exception, had been agreed, was that all
celestial motions are circular, or compounded of circular motions.
Where circles were found inadequate to explain planetary motions,
epicycles were used. An epicycle is the curve traced by a point on
a circle which rolls on another circle. For example: take a big
wheel and fasten it flat on the ground ; take a smaller wheel (also
flat on the ground) which has a nail through it, and roll the smaller
wheel round the big wheel, with the point of the nail touching the
ground. Then the mark of the nail in the ground will trace out an
epicycle. The orbit of the moon, in relation to the sun, is roughly
of this kind: approximately, the earth describes a circle round the
sun, and the moon meanwhile describes a circle round the earth.
But this is only an approximation. As observation grew more exact,
it was found that no system of epicycles would exactly fit the facts.
Kepler's hypothesis, he found, was far more closely in accord with
the recorded positions of Mars than was that of Ptolemy, or even
that of Copernicus.
The substitution of ellipses for circles involved the abandon-
ment of the aesthetic bias which had governed astronomy ever since
Pythagoras. The circle was a perfect figure, and the celestial orbs
were perfect bodies — originally gods, and even in Plato and Aris-
totle closely related to gods. It seemed obvious that a perfect body
must move in a perfect figure. Moreover, since the heavenly bodies
move freely, without being pushed or pulled, their motion must
be "natural." Now it was easy to suppose that there is something
"natural" about a circle, but not about an ellipse. Thus many
deep-seated prejudices had to be discarded before Kepler's first
law could be accepted. No ancient, not even Aristarchus of Samos,
had anticipated such an hypothesis.
The second law deals vC'ith the varying velocity of the planet at
different points of its orbit. If S is the sun, and P|f P2, P,, P4, P§
are successive positions of the planet at equal intervals of time -
say st intervals of a month —then Kepler's law state* that the
55*
THE RISE OF SCIENCE
areas PjSP,, P2SP3, P?SP4, P4SPB arc all equal. The planet therefore
moves fastest when it is nearest to the sun, and slowest when it
is farthest from it. This, again, was shocking; a planet ought to be
too stately to hurry at one time and dawdle at another.
The third law was important because it compared the movements
of different planets, whereas the first two laws dealt with the several
planets singly. The third law says: If r is the average distance of
a planet from the sun, and T is the length of its year, then v9
divided by Ta is the same for all the different planets. This law
afforded the proof (as far as the solar system is concerned) of
Newton's law of the inverse square for gravitation. But of this we
shall speak later.
Galileo (1564-1642) is the greatest of the founders of modern
science, with the possible exception of Newton. He was born on
about the day on which Michelangelo died, and he died in ihe
year in which Newton was l>orn. I commend these facts to those
(if any) who still believe in metempsychosis. He is important as an
astronomer, but perhaps even more as the founder of dynamics.
Galileo iirst discovered the importance of acceleration in dyna-
mics. "Acceleration** means change of velocity, whether in mag-
nitude or direction; thus a body moving uniformly in a circle has
at all times an acceleration towards the centre of the circle. In the
language that had been customary before his time, we might say
that he treated uniform motion in a straight line as alone "natural,"
whether on earth or in the hca\ens. It had been thought "natural"
for heavenly bodies to move in circles, and for terrestrial bodies
to move in straight lines: but moving terrestrial bodies, it was
thought, would gradually cease to move if they were Jet alone,
(jaliieo held, as against this view, that every body, if left alone,
will continue to move in a straight line with uniform velocity; any
change, either in the rapidity or the direction of motion, requires
to be explained as due to the action of some "force." This principle
was enunciated by Newton as the "first law of motion." It is also
called the law of inertia. 1 shall return to its purport later, but first
something must be said as to the detail of Galileo's discoveries.
Galileo was the first to establish the law of falling bodies. This
law, given the concept of "acceleration," is of the utmost sim-
plicity. It says that, when a body is falling freely, its acceleration
is constant, except in so far as the resistance of the air may inter-
fere; further, the acceleration is the same for all bodies, heavy or
553
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
light, great or small. The complete proof of this law was not
possible until the air pump had been invented, which was about
1654. After this, it was possible to observe bodies falling in what
was practically a vacuum, and it was found that feathers fell as
fast as lead. What Galileo proved was that there is no measurable
difference between large and small lumps of the same substance.
Until his time it had been supposed that a large lump of lead
would fall much quicker than a small one, but Galileo proved by
experiment that this is not the case. Measurement, in his day, was
not such an accurate business as it has since become; nevertheless
he arrived at the true law of falling bodies. If a body is falling
freely in a vacuum, its velocity increases at a constant rate. At the
end of the first second, its velocity will be 32 feet per second; at
the end of another second, 64 feet per second; at the end of the
third, 96 feet per second ; and so on. The acceleration, i.e. the rate
at which the velocity increases, is always the same; in each second,
the increase of velocity is (approximately) 32 feet per scconJ.
Galileo also studied projectiles, a subject of importance to his
employer, the duke of Tuscany. It had been thought that a pro-
jectile fired horizontally will move horizontally for a while, and
then suddenly begin to fall vertically. Galileo showed that, apart
from the resistance of the air, the horizontal velocity would remain
constant, in accordance with the law of inertia, but a vertical
velocity would be added, which would grow according to the law
of falling bodies. To find out how the projectile will move during
some short time, say a second, after it has been in flight for some
time, we proceed as follows: First, if it were not falling, it would
cover a certain horizontal distance, equal to that which it covered
in the first second of its fiight. Second, if it were not moving
horizontally, but merely falling, it would fail vertically with a
velocity proportional to the time since the flight began. In fact,
its change of place is what it would be if it first moved horizontally
for a second with the initial velocity, and then fell vertically for
a second with a velocity proportional to the time during which it
has been in flight. A simple calculation shows that its consequent
course is a parabola, and this is confirmed by observation except
in so far as the resistance" of the air interferes.
The above gives a simple instance of a principle which proved
immensely fruitful in dynamics, the principle that, when several
forces act simultaneously, the effect is is if each acted in turn. This
554
THE RISE OF SCIENCE
is pan of a more general principle called the parallelogram law.
Suppose, for example, that you are on the deck of a moving ship,
and you walk across the deck. While you are walking the ship
has moved on, so that, in relation to the water, you have moved
both forward and across the direction of the ship's motion. If you
want to know where you will have got to in relation to the water,
you may suppose that first you stood still while the ship moved,
and then, for an equal time, the ship stood still while you walked
across it. The same principle applies to forces. This makes it
possible to work out the total effect of a number of forces, and
makes it feasible to analyse physical phenomena, discovering the
separate laws of the several forces to which moving bodies are
subject. It was Galileo who introduced this immensely fruitful
method.
In what I have been saying, I have tried to speak, as nearly as
possible, in the language of the seventeenth century. Modern lan-
guage is different in important respects, but to explain what the
seventeenth century achieved it is desirable to adopt its modes of
expression for the time being.
The law of inertia explained a puzzle which, before Galileo, the
Copcrnican system had been unable to explain. As observed above,
if you drop a stone from the top of a tower, it will fall at the foot
of the tower, not somewhat to the west of it ; yet, if the earth is
rotating, it ought to have slipped away a certain distance during
the fall of the stone. The reason this does not happen is that the
stone retains the velocity of rotation which, before being dropped,
it shared with everything else on the earth's surface. In fact, if the
tower were high enough, there would be the opposite effect to that
expected by the opponents of Copernicus. The top of the tower,
being further from the centre of the earth than the bottom, is
moving faster, and therefore the stone should fall slightly to the
east of the foot of die tower. This effect, however, would be too
slight to be measurable.
Galileo ardently adopted the heliocentric system; he corre-
sponded with Kepler, and accepted his discoveries. Having heard
that a Dutchman had lately invented a telescope, Galileo made one
himself, and very quickly discovered a number of important things.
He found that the Milky Way consists of a multitude of separate
stars. He observed the phases of Venus, which Copernicus knew
to be implied by his theory, but which the naked eye was unable
555
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
to perceive. He discovered the satellites of Jupiter, which, in
honour of his employer, he called "sidera medicea." It was found
that these satellites obey Kepler's laws. There was, however, a
difficulty. There had always been seven heavenly bodies, the five
planets and the sun and moon ; now seven is a sacred number. Is
not the Sabbath the seventh day? Were there not the seven-
branched candlesticks and the seven churches of Asia ? What, then,
could be more appropriate than that there should be seven heavenly
bodies? But if we have to add Jupiter's four moons, that makes
eleven — a number which has no mystic properties. On this ground
the traditionalists denounced the telescope, refused to look through
it, and maintained that it revealed only delusions. Galileo wrote
to Kepler wishing they could have a good laugh together at the
stupidity of "the mob"; the rest of his letter nukes it plain that
"the mob" consisted of the professors of philosophy, who tried to
conjure away Jupiter's moons, using "logic-chopping arguments
as though they were magical incantations/'
Galileo, as everyone knows, was condemned by the Inquisition,
first privately in 1616, and then publicly in 1633, on which latter
occasion he recanted, and promised never again to maintain that
the earth rotates or revolves. The Inquisition was successful in
putting an end to science in Italy, which did not revive there for
centuries. But it failed to prevent men of science from adopting
the heliocentric theory, and did considerable damage to the Church
by its stupidity. Fortunately there were Protestant countries, where
the clergy, however anxious to do harm to science, were unable
to gain control of the State.
Newton (1642-1727) achieved the final and complete triumph
for which Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had prepared the way.
Starting from his three laws of motion— of which the first two arc
due to Galileo — he proved that Kepler's three laws are equivalent
to the proposition that every planet, at every moment, has an
acceleration towards the sun which varies inversely as the square
of the distance from the sun. He showed dial accelerations towards
the earth and the sun, following the same formula, explain the
moon's motion, and that the acceleration of falling bodies on the
earth's surface is again related to tiiat of the moou according to
the inverse square law* He defined "force" as the cause of change
of motion, i.e. of acceleration, lie was thu* able to enunciate hi*
tow of universal gravitation: "Every body attracts every other with
556
THE RISE OP SCIENCE
a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."
From this formula he was able to deduce everything in planetary
theory: the motions of the planets and their satellites, the orbits
of comets, the tides. It appeared later that even the minute depar-
tures from elliptical orbits on the part of the planets were deducible
from Newton's law. The triumph was so complete that Newton
was in danger of becoming another Aristotle, and imposing an
insuperable barrier to progress. In England, it was not till a century
after his death that men freed themselves from his authority
sufficiently to do important original work in the subjects of which
he had treated.
The seventeenth century was remarkable, not only in astronomy
and dynamics, but in many other ways connected with science.
Take first the question of scientific instruments.1 The compound
microscope was invented just before the seventeenth century, about
1590. The telescope was invented in 1608, by a Dutchman named
Lippershey, though it was Galileo who first made serious use of it
for scientific purposes. Galileo also invented the thermometer — at
least, this seems most probable. His pupil Torricelli invented the
barometer. Gucricke (1602-86) invented the air pump. Clocks,
though not new, were greatly improved in the seventeenth century,
largely by the work of Galileo. Owing to these inventions, scientific
observation became immensely more exact and more extensive
than it had been at any former time.
Next, there was important work in other sciences than astronomy
and dynamics. Gilbert (i 540-1603) published his great book on the
magnet in 1600. Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the circulation
of the blood, and published his discovery in 1628. Leeuwenhoek
( 1632-1 723) discovered spermatozoa, though another man, Stephen
Hiimm, had discovered them, apparently, a few months earlier;
Leeuwenhoek also discovered protozoa or unicellular organisms,
and even bacteria. Robert Boyle (1627-91) was, as children were
taught when I was young, "the father of chemistry and son of the
Karl of Cork'1; he is now chiefly remembered on account of
"Boyle '• Law," that in a given quantity of gas at a given tern-
perature, pressure is inversely proportional to volume.
1 On thi* subject, ire the chapter "Scientific Instruments" in A
Hittory of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the Sixteenth and
S*v*nU*nih Ctnturiei, by A. Wolf.
557
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
1 have hitherto said nothing of the advances in pure mathe-
matics, but these were very great indeed, and were indispensable
to much of the work in the physical sciences. Napier published
his invention of logarithms in 1614. Co-ordinate geometry resulted
from the work of several seventeenth-century mathematicians,
among whom the greatest contribution was made by Descartes.
The differential and integral calculus was invented independently
by Newton and Leibniz; it is the instrument for almost all higher
mathematics. These are only the most outstanding achievements
in pure mathematics; there were innumerable others of great
importance:.
The result of the scientific work we have been considering was
that the outlook of educated men was completely transformed. At
the beginning of the century, Sir Thomas Browne took part in
trials for witchcraft; at the end, such a thing would have been
impossible. In Shakespeare's time, cornets were still portents; after
the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687, it was known that
he and Halley had calculated the orbits of certain comets, and that
they were as obedient as the planets to the law of gravitation. The
reign of law had established its hold on men's imaginations, making
such things as magic and sorcery incredible. In 1700 the mental
outlook of educated men was completely modern; in ifoo, except
among a very few, it was still largely medieval.
In the remainder of this chapter I sliall try to state briefly the
philosophical beliefs which appeared to follow from seventeenth-
century science, and some of the respects in which modern science
differs from that of Newton.
The first thing to note is the removal of almost all traces ot
animism from the laws of physics. The Greeks, though they did
not say so explicitly, evidently considered the power of movement
a sign of life. To common-sense observation it seems that animals
move themselves, while dead matter only moves when impelled
by an external force. The soul of an animal, in Aristotle, has various
functions, and one of them is to move the animal's body. The sun
and planets, in Greek thinking, are apt to be gods, or at least
regulated and moved by gods. Anaxagoras thought otherwise, but
was impious. Democritus* thought otherwise, but was neglected,
except by the Epicureans, in favour of Plato and Aristotle. Aris-
totle's forty-seven or fifty-five unmoved movers are divine spirits,
and are the ultimate source of all the motion in the heavens. Left
THE RISE OF SCIENCE
co itself, any inanimate body would soon become motionless; thus
the operation of soul on matter has to be continuous if motion is
not to cease.
All this was changed by the first law of motion. Lifeless matter,
once set moving, will continue to move for ever unless stopped
by some external cause. Moreover the external causes of change
of motion turned out to be themselves material, whenever they
could be definitely ascertained. The solar system, at any rate, was
kept going by its own momentum and its own laws; no outside
interference was needed. There might still seem to be need of
God to set the mechanism working; the planets, according to
New-ton, were originally hurled by the hand of God. But when
1 le had done this, and decreed the law of gravitation, everything
went on by itself without further need of divine intervention.
When Laplace suggested that the same forces which are now
operative might have caused the planets to grow out of the sun,
God's share in the course of nature was pushed still further back.
I It might remain as Creator, but even that was doubtful, since it
was not clear that the world had a beginning in time. Although
most of the men of science were models of piety, the outlook
suggested by their work was disturbing to orthodoxy, and the
theologians were quite justified in feeling uneasy.
Another thing that resulted from science was a profound change
in the conception of man's place in the universe. In the medieval
world, the earth was the centre of the heavens, and everything had
a purpose concerned with man. In the Newtonian world, the earth
was a minor planet of a not specially distinguished star; astrono-
mical distances were so vast that the earth, in comparison, was
a mere pin-point. It seemed unlikely that this immense apparatus
was all designed for the good of. certain small creatures on this
pin-point. Moreover purpose, which had since Aristotle formed
an intimate part of the conception of science, was now thrust out
of scientific procedure. Anyone might still believe that the heavens
exist to declare the glory of God, but no one could let this belief
intervene in an astronomical calculation. The world might have
a purpose, but purposes could no longer enter into scientific
explanations. »
'l*he Copernican theory should have been humbling to human
pride, but in fact the contrary effect was produced, for the triumphs
of science revived human pride. The dying ancient world had been
559
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
obsessed with a sense of sin, and had bequeathed this as an oppres-
sion to the Middle Ages. To be humble before God was both right
and prudent, for God would punish pride. Pestilences, floods,
earthquakes, Turks, Tartars, and comets perplexed the gloomy
centuries, and it was felt that only greater and greater humility
would avert these real or threatened calamities. But it became
impossible to remain humble when men were achieving such
triumphs :
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night.
God said "Let Newton be," and all was light.
And as for damnation, surely the Creator of so vast a universe had
something better to think about than sending men to hell for
minute theological errors. Judas Iscariot might be damned, but
not Newton, though he were an Arian.
There were of course many other reasons for self-satisfaction.
The Tartars had been confined to Asia, and the Turks were ceasing
to be a menace. Comets had been humbled by H alley, and as for
earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so in-
teresting that men of science could hardly regret them. Western
Europeans were growing rapidly richer, and were becoming lords
of all the world: they had conquered North and South America,
they were powerful in Africa and India, respected in China and
feared in Japan. When to all this were added the triumphs of
science, it is no wonder that the men of the seventeenth century
felt themselves to be fine fellows, not the miserable sinners that
they still proclaimed themselves on Sundays.
There are some respects in which the concepts of modern
theoretical physics differ from those of the Newtonian system. To
begin with, the conception of "force," which is prominent in the
seventeenth century, has been found to be superfluous. 4t Force/1
in Newton, is the cause of change of motion, whether in magnitude
or direction. The notion of cause is regarded as important, and
force is conceived imaginatively as the sort of thing that we expe-
rience when we push or pull. For this reason it was considered
an objection to gravitation that it acted at a distance, and Newton
himself conceded that thqre must be some medium by which it
was transmitted. Gradually it was found that all the equations
could be written down without bringing in forces. What was ob-
servable was a certain relation between acceleration and configura-
560
THE RISE OF SCIENCE
tion; to say that this relation was brought about by the inter-
mediacy of "force" was to add nothing to our knowledge. Obser-
vation shows that planets have at all times an acceleration towards
the sun, which varies inversely as the square of their distance from
it. To say that this is due to the "force" of gravitation is merely
verbal, like saying that opium makes people sleep because it has
a dormitive virtue. The modern physicist, therefore, merely states
formulae which determine accelerations, and avoids the word
"force" altogether. "Force" was the faint ghost of the vitalist
view as to the causes of motions, and gradually the ghost has been
exorcized.
Until the coming of quantum mechanics, nothing happened to
modify in any degree what is the essential purport of the first two
laws of motion, namely this: that the laws of dynamics are to be
stated in terms of accelerations. In this respect, Copernicus and
Kepler are still to be classed with the ancients; they sought laws
stating the shapes of the orbits of the heavenly bodies. Newton
made it clear that laws stated in this form could never be more
than approximate. The planets do not move in exact ellipses,
because of the perturbations caused by the attractions of other
planets. Nor is the orbit of a planet ever exactly repeated, for the
same reason. But the law of gravitation, which dealt with accele-
rations, was very simple, and was thought to be quite exact until
two hundred years after Newton's time. When it was amended by
Kinstein, it still remained a law dealing with accelerations.
It is true that the conservation of energy is a law dealing with
velocities, not accelerations. But in calculations which use this law
it is still accelerations that have to be employed.
As for the changes introduced by quantum mechanics, they are
very profound, but still, to some degree, a matter of controversy
and uncertainty.
There is one change from the Newtonian philosophy which must
he mentioned now, and that is the abandonment of absolute space
and time. The 'reader will remember a mention of this question
in connection with Dcmocritus. Newton believed in a space com-
posed of points, and a time composed of instants, which had an
existence independent of the bodies and«events that occupied them.
As regards space, he had an empirical argument to support his
view, namely that physical phenomena enable us to distinguish
absolute rotation. If the water in a bucket is rotated, it climbs up
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the sides and is depressed in the centre; but if the bucket is
rotated while the water is not, there is no such effect. Since his
day, the experiment of Foucault's pendulum has been devised,
giving what has been considered a demonstration of the earth's
rotation. Even on the most modern views, the question of absolute
rotation presents difficulties. If all motion is relative, the difference
between the hypothesis that the earth rotates and the hypothesis
that the heavens revolve is purely verbal; it is no more than the
difference between "John is the father of James" and "James is
the son of John." But if the heavens revolve, the stars move faster
than light, which is considered impossible. It cannot be said that
the modern answers to this difficulty are completely satisfying, but
they are sufficiently satisfying to cause almost all physicists to
accept the view that motion and space are purely relative. This,
combined with the amalgamation of space and time into space-
time, has considerably altered our view of the universe from that
which resulted from the work of Galileo and Newton. But of this,
as of quantum theory, I \viil sny no more at this time.
562
Chapter VII
FRANCIS BACON
FRANCIS RATON (1561-1626), although his philosophy is in
many ways unsatisfactory, has permanent importance as the
founder of modern inductive method and the pioneer in the
attempt at logical systematization of scientific procedure.
He was a son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal, and his aunt was the wife of Sir William Cecil, afterwards
Lord Burghley ; he thus grew up in the atmosphere of State affairs.
He entered Parliament at the age of twenty-three, and became
adviser to Essex. None the less, when Essex fell from favour he
helped in his prosecution. For this he has been severely blamed :
Lytton Strachey. for example, in his Elisabeth and Essex, represents
Bacon as a monster of treachery and ingratitude. This is quite
unjust. He worked with Essex while Essex was loyal, but aban-
doned him when continued loyalty to him would have been
treasonable; in this there was nothing that even the most rigid
moralist of the age could condemn.
In spite of his abandonment of Essex, he was never completely
in favour during the lifetime of Queen Elizabeth. With James's
accession, however, his prospects improved. In 1617 he acquired
his father's office of Keeper of the Great Seal, and in 1618 he
became Lord Chancellor. But after he had held this great position
for only two years, he was prosecuted for accepting bribes from
litigants. He admitted the truth of the accusation, pleading only
that present* never influenced his decision. As to that, anyone may
form his own opinion, since there can be no evidence as to the
decisions that Bacon would have come to in other circumstances.
He was condemned to a fine of £40,000, to imprisonment in the
Tower during the king's pleasure, to perpetual banishment from
Court and inability to hold office. This sentence was only very
partially executed: He was not forced to pay the fine, and he was
kept in the Tower for only four days. But he was compelled to
abandon public lite, and to spend the* remainder of his days to
writing important books.
The ethics of the legal profession, in those days, were somewhat
lax. Almost every judge accepted presents, usually from both sides.
563
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Nowadays we think it atrocious for a judge to take bribes, but even
more atrocious, after taking them, to decide against the givers of
them. In thpse days, presents were a matter of course, and a judge
showed his "virtue" by not being influenced by them. Bacon was
condemned as an incident in a party squabble, not because he was
exceptionally guilty. He was not a man of outstanding moral
eminence, like his forerunner Sir Thomas More, but he was also
not exceptionally wicked. Morally, he was an average man, no
better and no worse than the bulk of his contemporaries.
After five years spent in retirement, he died of a chill caught
while experimenting on refrigeration by stuffing a chicken full of
snow.
Bacon's most important book, The Advancement of Learning > is
in many ways remarkably modern. He is commonly regarded as
the originator of the saying "Knowledge is power/' and though
he may have had predecessors who said the same thing, he said
t it with new emphasis. The whole basis of his philosophy was
1 practical: to give mankind mastery over the forces of nature by
j means of scientific discoveries and inventions. He held that philo-
1 sophy should be kept separate from theology* not intimately
blended with it as in scholasticism. He accepted orthodox religion ;
he was not the man to quarrel with the government on such a
matter. But while he thought that reason could show the existence
of God, he regarded everything else in theology as known only
by revelation. Indeed he held that the triumph of faith is greatest
when to the unaided reason a dogma appears most absurd. Philo-
sophy, however, sl)pjuld_depend only upon reason. He was thus
an advocate of the doctrine of "double truth/' that of reason and
that of revelation. This doctrine had been preached by certain
Averroists in the thirteenth century, but had been condemned by
the Church. The "triumph of faith*' was, for the orthodox, a
dangerous device. Bayle, in the late seventeenth century, made
ironical use of it, setting forth at great length all that reason could
say against some orthodox belief, and then concluding "so much
the greater is the triumph of faith in nevertheless believing."
How far Bacon's orthodoxy was sincere it is impossible to
know.
Bacon was the first of the long line of scientifically minded
philosophers who have emphasized the importance of induction
as opposed to deduction. Like most of his successors, he tried to
564
FRANCIS BACON
find some better kind of induction than what is called "induction
by simple enumeration." Induction by simple enumeration may
be illustrated by a parable. There was once upon a time a census
officer who had to record the names of all householders in a certain
Welsh village. The first that he questioned was called William
Williams; so were the second, third, fourth. ... At last he said
to himself: "This is tedious; evidently they are all called William
Williams. I shall put them down so and take a holiday." But he
was wrong; there was just one whose name was John Jones. This
shows that we may go astray if we trust too implicitly to induction
by simple enumeration.
Bacon believed that he had a method by which induction could
be made something better than this. He wished, for example, to
discover the nature of heat, wliich he supposed (rightly) to consist
of rapid irregular motions of the small parts of bodies. His method
was to make lists of hot bodies, lists of cold bodies, and lists of
bodies of varying degrees of heat. He hoped that these lists would
show some characteristic always present in hot bodies and absent
in cold bodies, and present in varying degrees in bodies of different
degrees of heat. By this method he expected to arrive at general
laws, having, in the first instance, the lowest degree of generality.
From a number of such laws he hoped to reach laws of the second
degree of generality, and so on. A suggested law should be tested
by being applied in new circumstances; if it worked in these
circumstances it was to that extent confirmed. Some instances are
specially valuable because they enable us to decide between two
theories, each possible as far as previous observations are con-
cerned; such instances are called "prerogative" instances.
Bacon not only despised the syllogism, but undervalued mathe-
matics, presumably as insufficiently experimental. He was viru-
lently hostile to Aristotle, but thought very highly of Democritus.
Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies
a divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological
explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena; everything,
he held, should be explained as following necessarily from efficient
causes.
He valued his method as showing how to arrange the observa-
tional data upon which science must be based. We ought, he says,
to be neither like spiders, which spin things out of their own
inside*, nor like ants, which merely collect, but like bees, which
565
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
both collect and arrange. This is somewhat unfair to the ants, but
it illustrates Bacon's meaning.
One of the most famous parts of Bacon's philosophy is his
enumeration of what he calls "idols," by which he means bad
habits of mind that cause people to fall into error. Of these he
enumerates five kinds. "Idols of the tribe" are those that are
inherent in human nature; he mentions in particular the habit of
expecting more order in natural phenomena than is actually to be
found. "Idols of the cave" are personal prejudices, characteristic
of the particular investigator. *4Idols of the market-place" are those
that have to do with the tyranny of words and the difficulty of
escaping from their influence over our minds. "Idols of the theatre"
are those that have to do with received systems of thoucht; of
these, naturally, Aristotle and the scholastics afforded him the most
noteworthy instances. Lastly there are "idols of the schools/'
which consist in thinking that some blind rule (such as the
syllogism) can take the place of judgment in investigation.
Although science was what interested Bacon, and although his
general outlook was scientific, he missed most of what was being
done in science in his day. He rejected the Copcrnican theory,
which was excusable so far as Copernicus himself was concerned,
since he did not advance any very solid arguments. But Bacon
ought to have been convinced by Kepler, whose New Astronomy
appeared in 1609. Bacon appears not to have known of the work
of Vesalius, the pioneer of modern anatomy, though he admired
Gilbert, whose work on magnetism brilliantly illustrated inductive
method. Surprisingly, heseemed unconscious of the work of I larvcy,
although Harvey was his medical attendant. It is true that Harvey
did not publish his discover}' of the circulation of the blood until
after Bacon's death, but one would have supposed that Bacon
would have been aware of his researches. Harvey had no very high
opinion of him, saying "he writes philosophy like a Ix>rd Chan-
cellor." No doubt Bacon could have done better if he had been
less concerned with worldly success.
Bacon's inductive method is faulty through insufficient emphasis
on hypothesis. He hoped that mere orderly arrangement of data
would make the right hypothesis obvious, but this is seldom the
case. As a rule, the framing of hypotheses is the most difficult part
of scientific work, and the part where great ability is indispensable.
So far, no method has been found which would make it possible
566
FRANCIS BACON
to invent hypotheses by rule. Usually some hypothesis is a neces-
sary preliminary to the collection of facts, since the selection of
facts demands some way of determining relevance. Without some-
thing of this kind, the mere multiplicity of facts is baffling.
The part played by deduction in science is greater than Bacon
supposed. Often, when a hypothesis has to be tested, there is a
long deductive journey from the hypothesis to some consequence
that can be tested by observation. Usually the deduction is mathe-
matical, and in this respect Bacon underestimated the importance
of mathematics in scientific investigation.
The problem of induction by simple enumeration remains un-
solved to this day. Bacon was quite right in rejecting simple
enumeration \vhere the details of scientific investigation are con-
cerned, for in dealing with details we may assume general laws
on the basis of which, so long as they are taken as valid, more or
less cogent methods can be built up. John Stuart Mill framed four
canons of inductive method, which can be usefully employed so
long as the law of causality is assumed ; but this law itself, he had
to confess, is to !>e accepted solely on the basi.- of induction by
simple enumeration. The thiny that is achieved by the theoretical
organization of science is the collection of all subordinate induc-
tions into a few that are very comprehensive- -perhaps only one.
Such comprehensive inductions are confirmed by so many in-
stances that it is thought legitimate to accept, as regards them, an
induction by simple enumeration. This situation i? profoundly
unsatisfactory, but neither Bacon nor any of his successors have
found a wav out of it.
567
Chapter VIII
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
HOBBES (1588-1679) is a philosopher whom it is difficult to
classify. He was an empiricist, like Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume, but unlike them, he was an admirer of mathe-
matical method, not only in pure mathematics, but in its appli-
cations. His general outlook was inspired by Galileo rather than
Bacon. From Descartes to Kant, Continental philosophy derived
much of its conception of the nature of human knowledge from
mathematics, but it regarded mathematics as known independently
of experience. It was thus led, like Platonism, to minimize the part
played by perception, and over-emphasize the part played by pure
thought. English empiricism, on the other hand, was little in-
fluenced by mathematics, and tended to have a wrong conception
of scientific method. Hobbes had neither of these defects. It is
not until our own day that we find any other philosophers who
were empiricists and yet laid due stress on mathematics. In this
respect, Hobbes 's merit is great. He has, however, grave defects,
which make it impossible to place him quite in the first rank, lie
is impatient of subtleties, and too much inclined to cut the
Gordian knot. His solutions of problems are logical, but are
attained by omitting awkward facts. He is vigorous, but crude;
he wields the battle-axe better than the rapier. Nevertheless, his
theory of the State deserves to be carefully considered, the more
so as it is more modern than any previous theory, even that of
Machiavelli.
Hobbes 's father was a vicar, who was ill-tempered and un-
educated ; he lost his job by quarrelling with a neighbouring vicar
at the church door. After this, Hobbes was brought up by an
uncle. He acquired a good knowledge of the classics, and translated
The Medea of Euripides into Latin iambics at the age of fourteen.
(In later life, he boasted, justifiably, that though he abstained from
quoting classical poets and orators, this was not from lack of
familiarity with their works.) At fifteen, he went to Oxford, where
they taught him scholastic logic and the philosophy of Aristotle.
These were his bugbears in later life, and he maintained that he
had profited little by his years at the university; indeed univcr-
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
sities in general are constantly criticized in his writings. In the
year 1610, when he was twenty-two years old, he became tutor to
Lord Hardwick (afterwards second Earl of Devonshire), with
whom he made the grand tour. It was at this time that he began
to know the work oif Galileo and Kepler, which profoundly in-
fluenced him. His pupil became his patron, and remained so
until he died in 1628. Through him, Hobbes met Ben Jonson and
Bacon and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and many other important
men. After the death of the Earl of Devonshire, who left a young
son, Hobbes lived for a time in Paris, where he began the study of
Euclid; then he became tutor to his former pupil's son. With him
he travelled to Italy, where he visited Galileo in 1636. In 1637
he came back to England.
The political opinions expressed in the Leviathan, which were
Royalist in the extreme, had been held by Hobbes for a long time.
When the Parliament of 1628 drew up the Petition of Right, he
published a translation of Thucydides, with the expressed inten-
tion of showing the evils of democracy. When the Long Parlia-
ment met in 1640, and Laud and Strafford were sent to the Tower,
Hobbes was terrified and fled to France. His book, De Give,
written in 1641, though not published till 1647, sets forth essen-
tially the same theory as that of the leviathan. It was not the
actual occurrence of the Civil War that caused his opinions,
but the prospect of it; naturally, however, his convictions were
strengthened when his fears were realized.
In Paris he was welcomed by many of the leading mathe-
maticians and men of science. lie was one of those who saw
Descartes* Meditation* before they were published, and wrote
objections to them, which were printed by Descartes with his
replies. He also soon had a large company of English Royalist
refugees with whom to associate. For a time, from 1646 to 1648,
he taught mathematics to the future Charles II. When, however,
in 1651, he published the leviathan, it pleased no one. Its
rationalism offended most of the refugees, and its bitter attacks
on the Catholic Church offended the French Government.
Hobbes therefore fled secretly to London, where he made sub-
mission to Cromwell, and abstained from all political activity.
He was not idle, however, either at this time or at any other
during his long life. He had a controversy with Bishop Bramhall
on free will ; he was himself a rigid dcterrninist. Over-estimating
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
his own capacities as a geometer, he imagined that he had dis-
covered how to square the circle; on this subject he very foolishly
embarked on a controversy with Wallis, the professor of geometry
at Oxford. Naturally the professor succeeded in making him
look silly.
At the Restoration, Hobbes was taken up by the less earnest of
the king's friends, and by the king himself, who not only had
Hobbes's portrait on his walls, but awarded him a pension of
£100 a year — which, however, His Majesty forgot to pay. The
Lord Chancellor Clarendon was shocked by the favour shown to
a man suspected of atheism, and so was Parliament. After the
Plague and the Great Fire, when people's superstitious fears were
aroused, the House of Commons appointed a committee to inquire
into atheistical writings, specially mentioning those of Ilobhcs.
From this time onwards, he could not obtain leave in England to
print anything on controversial subjects. Even his history of the
Long Parliament, which he called Belieruoth, thowh it set u>rth
the most orthodox doctrine, had to he printed ahr ad do(>Sj. The
collected edition of his works in 1688 appeared in Amsterdam. In
his eld age, his reputation abroad was n.uch greater than in
England. To occupy his leisure, he v. rote, at eighty-four, an
autobiography in Latin verse, and published, at eighty-seven, a
translation of Homer. I cannot disc-over that he wrote any large
books after the age of eighty-seven.
We wiM m \\ consider the doctrines of the l^ei'iathan, upon
which the fame of Hobbes mainly rests.
He prochnas, at the very beginning of the book, his thorough-
going materialism. Life, he says, is nothing but a motion ol" the
limbs, and therefore automata have an artificial life. The common-
wealth, which he calls Leviathan, is a creation of art, ai.d is in
fact an artificial man. This is intended as more than an ana* >uy,
and is worked out in some detail. The sovereignty is an artificial
soul. The pacts and covenants by which "Leviathan" is first
created take the place of God's fiat when He said "Let I's make
man."
The first part deals with man as an individual, and with such
general philosophy as Hobbes deem* necessary. Sensations arc
caused by the pressure of objects; colours, sounds, etc., are not
in the objects. The qualities in objects that correspond to our
sensations are motions. The first law of motion u* stated, and is
HOBBFS'S LEVIATHAN
immediately applied to psychology: imagination is a decaying
sense, both being motions. Imagination when asleep is dreaming;
the religions of the gentiles came of not distinguishing dreams
from waking life. (The rash reader may apply the same argument
to the Christian religion, but Hobbes is much too cautious to do
so himself.1) Belief that dreams are prophetic is a delusion; sa
is the belief in witchcraft and in ghosts.
The succession of our thoughts is not arbitrary, but governed
by laws — sometimes those of association, sometimes those
depending upon a purpose in our thinking. (This is important as
an application of determinism to psychology.)
Hobbes, as might be expected, is an out-and-out nominalist.
There is, he says, nothing universal but names, and without words
we could not conceive any general ideas. Without language, there
would be no truth or falsehood, for "true" and "false" are
attributes of speech.
He considers geometry the one genuine science so far created.
Reasoning is of the nature of reckoning, and should start from
definitions. But it is necessary to avoid self-contradictory notions
in definitions, which is not usually done in philosophy. *4 Incor-
poreal substance," for instance, is nonsense. When it is objected
that God is an incorporeal substance, Hobbes has two answers:
first, that God is not an object of philosophy; second, that many
philosophers have thought God corporeal. All error in general
propositions, he says, conies from absurdity (i.e. self-contradic-
tion); he gives as examples of absurdity the idea of free will, and
of cheese having the accidents of bread. (We know that, according
to the Catholic faith, the accidents of bread can inhere in a sub-
stance that is not bread.)
In this pannage Hobbes shows an old-fashioned rationalism.
Kepler had arrived at a general proposition: "Planets go round
the sun in ellipses"; but other \icws, such as those of Ptolemy,
are not logically absurd. Hobbes has not appreciated the use of
induction for arriving at general laws, in spite of his admiration
for Kepler and Galileo.
As against Plato, Hobbes holds that reason is not innate, but is
developed by industry.
He conies next to a consideration of the passions. "Endeavour"
1 Klnewhcrc he saya that the heathen gods were croitted by human
Jem-, but that our God i» tht First Mover.
57"
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
may be defined as a small beginning of motion ; if towards some-
thing, it is desire, and if away from something it is aversion. Love
is the same as desire, and hate is the same as aversion. We call
a thing "good" when it is an object of desire, and "bad" when it
is an object of aversion. (It will be observed that these definitions
give no objectivity to "good1* and "bad"; if men differ in their
desires, there is no theoretical method of adjusting their differ-
ences.) There are definitions of various passions, mostly based on
a competitive view of life; for instance, laughter is sudden glory.
Fear of invisible power, if publicly allowed, is religion ; if not
allowed, superstition. Thus the decision as to what is religion and
what superstition rests with the legislator. Felicity involves con-
tinual progress; it consists in prospering, not in having prospered ;
there is no such thing as a static happiness — excepting, of course,
the joys of heaven, which surpass our comprehension.
Will is nothing but the last appetite or aversion remaining in
deli be radon. That is to say, will is not something different from
desire and aversion, but merely the strongest in a case of conflict.
This is connected, obviously, with Hobbes's denial of free will.
Unlike most defenders of despotic government, Hobbes holds
that all men are naturally equal. In a state of nature, before there
is any government, every man desires to preserve his own liberty,
but to acquire dominion over others; both these desires are
dictated by the impulse to self-preservation. From their conflict
arises a war of all against all, which makes life "nasty, brutish,
and short." In a state of nature, there is no property, no justice
or injustice; there is only war, and "force and fraud are, in war,
the two cardinal virtues."
The second part tells how men escape from these evils by com-
bining into communities each subject to a central authority. This
is represented as happening by means of a social contract. It is
supposed that a number of people come together and agree to
choose a sovereign, or a sovereign body, which shall exercise
authority over them and put an end to the universal war. I do not
think this "covenant" (as Hobbes usually calls it) is thought of as
a definite historical event ; it is certainly irrelevant to the argument
to think of it as such. It is an explanatory myth, used to explain
why men submit, and should submit, to the limitations on personal
freedom entailed in submission to authority. The purpose of the
restraint men put upon themselves, says Hobbes, is aelf~prc*er-
572
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
vation from the universal war resulting from our love of liberty
for ourselves and of dominion over others.
Hobbes considers the question why men cannot co-operate like
ants and bees. Bees in the same hive, he says, do not compete; they
have no desire for honour; and they do not use reason to criticize
the government. Their agreement is natural, but that of men can
only be artificial, by covenant. The covenant must confer power
on one man or one assembly, since otherwise it cannot be enforced.
"Covenants, without the sword, are but words." (President
Wilson unfortunately forgot this.) The covenant is not, as after-
wards in Jxxrkc and Rousseau, between the citizens and the ruling
power; it is a covenant made by the citizens with each other to
obey such ruling power as the majority shall choose. When they
have chosen, their political power is at an end. The minority is as
much bound as the majority, since the covenant was to obey the
government chosen by the majority. When the government has
been chosen, the citizens lose all rights except such as the govern-
ment may find it expedient to grant. There is no right of rebellion,
because the ruler is not bound by any contract, whereas the
subjects are.
A multitude so united is called a commonwealth. This
"Leviathan** is a mortal God.
Hobbes prefers monarchy, but all his abstract arguments are
equally applicable to all forms of government in which there is
one supreme authority not limited by the legal rights of other
bodies. He could tolerate Parliament alone, but not a system in
which governmental power is shared between King and Parlia-
ment. This is the exact antithesis to the views of Locke and
Montesquieu. The Knglish Civil War occurred, says Hobbes,
because power was divided between King, Lords, and Commons.
The supreme power, whether a man or an assembly, is called
the Sovereign. The powers of the sovereign, in Hobbes's system,
are unlimited. He has the right of censorship over all expression
of opinion. It is assumed that his main interest is the preservation
of internal peace, and that therefore he will not use the power of
censorship to suppress truth, for a doctrine repugnant to peace
cannot be true (A singularly pragmatisf view!) The laws of pro-
perty are to be entirely subject to the sovereign; for in a state of
nature there is no property, and therefore property is created by
government, which may control its creation as it pleases.
573
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
It is admitted that the sovereign may be despotic, but even the
worst despotism is better than anarchy. Moreover, in many points
the interests of the sovereign are identical with those of his subjects.
He is richer if they are richer, safer if they are law-abiding, and
so on. Rebellion is wrong, both because it usually fails, and because,
if it succeeds, it sets a bad example, and teaches others to rebel.
The Aristotelian distinction between tyranny and monarchy is
rejected; a "tyranny," according to Hobbes, is merely a monarchy
that the speaker happens to dislike.
Various reasons are given for preferring government by a
monarch to government by an assembly. It is admitted that the
monarch will usually follow his private interest when it conflicts
with that of the public, but so will an assembly. A monarch may
have favourites, but so may even* member of an assembly;
therefore the total number of favourites is likely to be fewer
under a monarchy. A monarch can hear advice from anybody
secretly; an assembly can only hear advice from its own members,
and that publicly. In an assembly, the chance absence of some
may cause a different party to obtain the majority, and thus
produce a change of policy. Moreover, if the assembly is divided
against itself, the result may be civil war. For all these reasons,
Hobbes concludes, a monarchy is best.
Throughout the Leviathan, Hobbes never considers the possible
effect of periodical elections in curbing the tendency of assemblies
to sacrifice the public interest to the private interest of their
members. He seems, in fact, to be thinking, not of democratically
elected Parliaments, but of bodies like the Grand Council in
Venice or the House of Lords in England. He conceives demo-
cracy, in the manner of antiquity, as involving the direct partici-
pation of every citizen in legislation and administration; at least,
this seems to be his view.
The part of the people, in Hnhhes's system, ends completely
with the first choice of a sovereign. The succession is to be deter-
mined by the sovereign, as was the practice in the Roman Kmpire
when mutinies did not interfere. It is admitted that the sovereign
will usually choose one of his own children, or a near relative if
he has no children, but it is held that no law ought to prevent him
from choosing otherwise.
There is a chapter on the liberty of subjects, which begins with
an admirably precise definition : Liberty is the absence of external
574
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
impediments to motion. In this sense, liberty is consistent with
necessity; for instance, water necessarily flows down hill when
there are no impediments to its motion, and when, therefore,
according to the definition, it is free. A man is free to do what he
wills, but necessitated to do what God wills. All our volitions have
causes, and are in this sense necessary. As for the liberty of
subjects, they are free where the laws do not interfere ; this is no
limitation of sovereignty, since the laws could interfere if the
sovereign so decided. Subjects have no rights as against the
sovereign, except what the sovereign voluntarily concedes. When
David caused Uriah to be killed, he did no injury to Uriah, because
Uriah was his subject; but he did an injury to God, because he
was God's subject and was disobeying God's law.
The ancient authors, with their praises of liberty, have led men,
according to Hobbes, to favour tumults and seditions. He main-
tains that, when they are rightly interpreted, the liberty they
praised was that of sovereigns, i.e. liberty from foreign domina-
tion. Internal resistance to sovereigns he condemns even when it
might seem most justified. For example, he holds that St. Ambrose
had no right to excommunicate the Emperor Theodosius after
the massacre of Thessalonica. And he vehemently censures Pope
Zachary for having helped to depose the last of the Merovingians
in favour of I'cpin.
He admits, however, one limitation on the duty of submission
to sovereigns. The right of self-preservation he regards as absolute,
and subjects have the right of self-defence, even against monarchs.
This is logical, since he has made self-preservation the motive for
instituting government. On this ground he holds (though with
limitations) that a man has a right to refuse to fight when called
upon by the government to do so. This is a right which no modern
government concedes. A curious result of his egoistic ethic is
that resistance to the sovereign is only justified in w^-defence;
resistance in defence of another is always culpable.
There is one other quite logical exception: a man has no duty
to a sovereign who has not the power to protect him. This justified
Hobbes 's submission to Cromwell while Charles II was in exile.
There must, of course, be no such bodies as political parties or
what we should now call trade unions. All teachers are to be
ministers of the sovereign, and are to teach only what the sovereign
thinks useful. The rights of property are only valid as against
575
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
other subjects, not as against the sovereign. The sovereign has the
right to regulate foreign trade. He is not subject to the civil law.
His right to punish comes to him, not from any concept of justice,
but because he retains the liberty that all men had in the state of
nature, when no man could be blamed for inflicting injury on
another.
There is an interesting list of the reasons (other than foreign
conquest) for the dissolution of commonwealths. These are : giving
too little power to the sovereign; allowing private judgment in
subjects; the theory that everything that is against conscience is
sin; the belief in inspiration; the doctrine that the sovereign is
subject to civil laws; the recognition of absolute private property;
division of the sovereign power; imitation of the Greeks and
Romans; separation of temporal and spiritual powers; refusing
the power of taxation to the sovereign ; the popularity of potent
subjects; and the liberty of disputing with the sovereign. Of all
these, there were abundant instances in the then recent history
of England and France.
There should not, Hobbes thinks, be much difficulty in teaching
people to believe in the rights of the sovereign, for have they not
been taught to believe in Christianity, and even in transubstantia-
tion, which is contrary to reason? There should be days set apart
for learning the duty of submission. The instruction of the people
depends upon right teaching in the universities, which must
therefore be carefully supervised. There must be uniformity of
worship, the religion being that ordained by the sovereign.
Part II ends with the hope that some sovereign will read the
book and make himself absolute— a less chimerical hope than
Plato's, that some king would turn philosopher. Monarchs are
assured that the book is easy reading and quite interesting.
Part III, "Of a Christian Commonwealth," explains that there
is no universal Church, because the Church must depend upon
the civil government. In each country, the king must he head of
the Church; the Pope's overlordship and infallibility cannot be
admitted. It argues, as might be expected, that a Christian who
is a subject of a non-Christian sovereign should yield outwardly,
for was not Naaman suffered to bow himself in the house of
Rimmon?
Part IV, "Of the Kingdom of Darkness,'* is mainly concerned
with criticism of the Church of Rome, which Hobbes hates
57''
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
because it puts the spiritual power above the temporal. The rest
of this part is an attack on "vain philosophy," by which Aristotle
is usually meant.
Let us now try to decide what we are to think of the Leviathan.
The question is not easy, because the good and the bad in it are
so closely intermingled.
In politics, there are two different questions, one as to the best
form of the State, the other as to its powers. The best form of
State, according to Hobbes, is monarchy, but this is not the
important part of his doctrine. The important part is his con-
tention that the powers of the State should be absolute. This
doctrine, or something like it, had grown up in Western Europe
during the Renaissance and the Reformation. First, the feudal
nobility were cowed by Louis XI, Edward IV, Ferdinand and
Isabella, and their successors. Then the Reformation, in Pro-
testant countries, enabled the lay government to get the better
of the Church. Henry VIII wielded a power such as no earlier
English king had enjoyed. But in France the Reformation, at first,
had the opposite effect; between the Guises and the Huguenots,
the kings were nearly powerless. Henry IV and Richelieu, not
long before Hobbes wrote, had laid the foundations of the absolute
monarchy which lasted in France till the Revolution. In Spain,
Charles V had got the better of the Cortes, and Philip II was
absolute except in relation to the Church. In England, however,
the Puritans had undone the work of Henry VIII; their work
suggested to I lobbcs that anarchy must result from resistance to
the sovereign.
liven' community is faced with two dangers, anarchy and
despotism. The Puritans, especially the Independents, were most
impressed by the danger of despotism. Ilobbes, on the contrary,
having experienced the conflict of rival fanaticisms, was obsessed
hy the fear of anarchy. The liberal philosophers who arose after
the Restoration, and acquired control after 1688, realized both
dangers; they disliked both Strafford and the Anabaptists. This
led Locke to the doctrine of division of powers, and of checks
and balances. In England there was a real division of powers so
long as the King had influence; then Parliament became supreme,
and ultimately the Cabinet. In America, there are still checks and
balances in so far as Congress and the Supreme Court can resist
the Administration. In (Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan, the
/.»»/<*y v/Hf.iffH /'Ai/oto/i-Jy 577 *^
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
government has had even more power than Hobbes thought desir-
able. On the whole, therefore, as regards the powers of the State,
the world has gone as Hobbes wished, after a long liberal period
during which, at least apparently, it was moving in the opposite
direction. In spite of the outcome of the present war, it
seems evident that the functions of the State must continue to
increase, and that resistance to it must grow more and more
difficult.
The reason that Hobbes gives for supporting the State, namely
that it is the only alternative to anarchy, is in the main a valid one.
A State may, however, be so bad that temporary anarchy seems
preferable to its continuance, as in France in 1789 and in Russia
in 1917. Moreover, the tendency of every government towards
tyranny cannot be kept in check unless governments have some
fear of rebellion. Governments would be worse than they are if
Hobbes 's submissive attitude were universally adopted by sub-
jects. This is true in the political sphere, where governments will
try, if they can, to make themselves personally irremovable ; it is
true in the economic sphere, where they will try to enrich them-
selves and their friends at the public expense; it is true in the
intellectual sphere, where they will suppress every new discovery
or doctrine that seems to menace their power. These are reasons
for not thinking only of the risk of anarchy, but also of the danger
of injustice and ossification that is bound up with omnipotence
in government.
The merits of Hobbes appear most clearly when he is contrasted
with earlier political theorists. He is completely free from super-
stition ; he does not argue from what happened to Adam and Eve
at the time of the Fall. He is clear and logical; his ethics, right or
wrong, is completely intelligible, and does not involve the use
of any dubious concepts. Apart from Machiavelli, who is much
more limited, he is the first really modern writer on political
theory. Where he is wrong, he is wrong from over-simplification,
not because the basis of his thought is unreal and fantastic. For
this reason, he is still worth refuting.
Without criticizing Hobbes's metaphysics or ethics, there are
two points to make against him. The first is that he always con-
siders the national interest as a whole, and assumes, tacitly, that
the major interests of all citizens are the same. He does not realize
the importance of the clash between different classes, which Marx
578
HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
makes the chief cause of social change. This is connected with the
assumption that the interests of a monarch are roughly identical
with those of his subjects. In time of war there is a unification of
interests, especially if the war is fierce; but in time of peace the
clash may be very great between the interests of one class and
those of another. It is not by any means always true that, in such
a situation, the best way to avert anarchy is to preach the absolute
power of the sovereign. Some concession in the way of sharing
power may be the only way to prevent civil war. This should have
been obvious to I lobbes from the recent history of England.
Another point in which Hobbes's doctrine is unduly limited is
in regard to the relations between different States. There is not
a word in Leviathan to suggest any relation between them except
war and conquest, with occasional interludes. This follows, on
his principles, from the absence of an international government,
for the relations of States are still in a state of nature, which is
that of a war of all against all. So long as there is international
anarchy, it is by no means clear that increase of efficiency in the
separate States is in the interest of mankind, since it increases
the ferocity and destructiveness of war. Every argument that he
adduces in favour of government, in so far as it is valid at all, is
valid in favour of international government. So long as national
States exist and fight each other, only inefficiency can preserve
the human race. To improve the fighting quality of separate
States without having any means of preventing war is the road
to universal destruction.
579
Chapter IX
DESCARTES
K^N£ DESCARTES (1596-1650) is usually considered the
founder of modern philosophy, and, I think, rightly. He
is the first man of high philosophic capacity whose outlook
is profoundly affected by the new physics and astronomy. While
it is true that he retains much of scholasticism, he does not accept
foundations laid by predecessors, but endeavours to construct a
complete philosophic edifice de novo. This had not happened since
Aristotle, and is a sign of the new self-confidence that resulted
from the progress of science. There is a freshness about his work
that is not to be found in any eminent previous philosopher since
Plato. All the intermediate philosophers were teachers, with the
professional superiority belonging to that avocation. Descartes
writes, not as a teacher, but as a discoverer and explorer, anxious
to communicate what he has found. His style is easy and un-
pedantic, addressed to intelligent men of the world rather than
to pupils. It is, moreover, an extraordinarily excellent style. It is
very fortunate for modern philosophy that the pioneer had such
admirable literary sense. His successors, both on the Continent
and in England, until Kant, retain his unprofessional character,
and several of them retain something of his stylistic merit.
Descartes *s father was a councillor of the Parlemcnt of Brittany
and possessed a moderate amount of landed property. When
Descartes inherited, at his father's death, he sold his estates, and
invested the money, obtaining an income of six or seven thousand
francs a year. He was educated, from 1604 to 1612, at the Jesuit
college of La Ffcche, which seems to have given him a much
better grounding in modern mathematics than he could have
got at most universities at that time. In 1612 he went to Paris,
where he found social life boring, and retired to a secluded retreat
in the Faubourg St. Germain, in which he worked at geometry.
Friends nosed htm out, however, so, to secure more complete
quiet, he enlisted in the Dutch army (1617). As Holland was at
peace at the time, he seems to have enjoyed two years of undis-
turbed meditation. However, the coming of the Thirty Years'
War led him to enlist in the Bavarian army (1619). It was in
DESCARTES
Bavaria, during the winter 1619-20, that he had the experience
he describes in the Discours de la Mtthode. The weather being
cold, he got into a stove1 in the morning, and stayed there all
day meditating; by his own account, his philosophy was half
finished when he came out, but this need not be accepted too
literally. Socrates used to meditate all day in the snow, but
Descartes's mind only worked when he was warm.
In 1621 he gave up fighting; after a visit to Italy, he settled in
Paris in 1625. But again friends would call on him before he was
up (he seldom got up before midday), so in 1628 he joined the
army which was besieging La Rochelle, the Huguenot stronghold.
When this episode was finished, he decided to live in Holland,
probably to escape the risk of persecution. He was a timid man,
a practising Catholic, but he shared Galileo's heresies. Some
think that he heard of the first (secret) condemnation of Galileo,
which had taken place in 1616. However that may be, he decided
not to publish a great book, Le Monde -, upon which he had been
engaged. His reason was that it maintained two heretical doctrines:
the earth's rotation and the infinity of the universe. (This book
was never published in its entirety, but fragments of it were
published after his death.)
lie lived in Holland for twenty years (1629-49), except for a
few brief visits to France and one to England, all on business. It
is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Holland in the
seventeenth century, as the one country where there was freedom
of speculation. Hbbbes had to have his books printed there;
Ix)cke took refuge there during the five worst years of reaction
in England before 1688; Bayle (of the Dictionary) found it
necessary to live there; and Spinoza would hardly have been
allowed to do his work in any other country.
I said that Descartes was a timid man, but perhaps it would be
kinder to say that he wished to be left in peace so as to do his work
undisturbed. He always courted ecclesiastics, especially Jesuits —
not only while he was in their power, but after his emigration to
Holland. His psychology is obscure, but I incline to think that
he was a sincere Catholic, and wished to persuade the Church —
in its own interests as well as in his — to be less hostile to modern
1 Descartes says it was a stove (po£le)t but most commentators think
this impossible. Those who know old-fashioned Bavarian houses, how*
ever, anftiire me jhat it is entirely credible
58'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
science than it showed itself in the case of Galileo. There
are those who think that his orthodoxy was merely politic,
but though this is a possible view I do not think it the most
probable.
Even in Holland he was subject to vexatious attacks, not by the
Roman Church, but by Protestant bigots. It was said that his
views led to atheism, and he would have been prosecuted but for
the intervention of the French ambassador and the Prince of
Orange. This attack having failed, another, less direct, was made
a few years later by the authorities of the University of Leyden,
which forbade all mention of him, whether favourable or un-
favourable. Again the Prince of Orange intervened, and told the
university not to be silly. This illustrates the pain to Protestant
countries from the subordination of the Church to the State, and
from the comparative weakness of Churches that were not
international.
Unfortunately, through Chanut, the French ambassador at
Stockholm, Descartes got into correspondence with Queen
Christina of Sweden, a passionate and learned lady who thought
that, as a sovereign, she had a right to waste the time of great
men. He sent her a treatise on love, a subject which until then he
had somewhat neglected. Me also sent her a work on the passions
of the soul, which he had originally composed for Princess
Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector Palatine. These writings led
her to request his presence at her court; he at last agreed, and she
sent a warship to fetch him (September, 1649). It turned out that
she wanted daily lessons from him, but could not spare the time
except at five in the morning. This unaccustomed early rising,
in the cold of a Scandinavian winter, was not the best thing for
a delicate man. Moreover, Chanut became dangerously ill, and
Descartes looked after him. The ambassador recovered, but
Descartes fell ill and died in February, 1650.
Descartes never married, but he had a natural daughter who
died at the age of five; this was, he said, the greatest sorrow of his
life. He always was well dressed, and wore a sword. He was not
industrious; he worked short hours, and read little. When he went
to Holland he took few books with him, but among them were
the Bible and Thomas Aquinan. His work secrns to have been
done with great concentration during short periods ; but perhaps,
to keep up the appearance of a gentlemanly amateur, he may have
58*
DESCARTES
pretended to work less than in fact he did, for otherwise his
achievements seem scarcely credible.
Descartes was a philosopher, a mathematician, and a man of
science. In philosophy and mathematics, his work was of supreme
importance; in science, though creditable, it was not so good as
that of some of his contemporaries.
His great contribution to geometry was the invention of co-
ordinate geometry, though not quite in its final form. He used the
analytic method, which supposes a problem solved, and examines
the consequences of the supposition; and he applied algebra to
geometry. In both of these he had had predecessors — as regards
the former, even among the ancients. What was original in him
was the use of co-ordinates, i.e. the determination of the position
of a point in a plane by its distance from two fixed lines. He
did not himself discover all the power of this method, but he did
enough to make further progress easy. This was by no means his
sole contribution to mathematics, but it was his most important.
The book in which he set forth most of his scientific theories
was Principia Phifasophiae, published in 1644. There were, how-
ever, some other books of importance: Essais philosopluques (1637)
deals with optics as well as geometry, and one of his books is
called I)e la formation du foetus. He welcomed Harvey's discovery
of the circulation of the blood, and was always hoping (though
in vain) to make some discovery of importance in medicine. He
regarded the bodies of men and animals as machines; animals he
regarded as automata, governed entirely by the laws of physics,
and devoid of feeling or consciousness. Men arc different: they
have a soul, which resides in the pineal gland. There the soul
comes in contact with the "vital spirits,11 and through this contact
there is interaction between soul and body. The total quantity of
motion in the universe is constant, and therefore the soul cannot
affect it ; but it can alter the direction of motion of the vital spirits,
and hence, indirectly, of other parts of the body.
This part of his theory was abandoned by his school — first by
his Dutch disciple Geulincx, and later by Malebranche and
Spinoza. The physicists discovered the conservation of momentum,
according to which the total quantity of motion in the world in
any given direction is constant. This showed that the sort of action
of mind on matter that Descartes imagined is impossible. Assum-
ing— as was very generally assumed in the Cartesian school — that
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
all physical action is of the nature of impact, dynamical laws
suffice to determine the motions of matter, and there is no room
for any influence of mind. But this raises a difficulty. My arm
moves when I will that it shall move, but my will is a mental
phenomenon and the motion of my arm a physical phenomenon.
Why then, if mind and matter cannot interact, does my body
behave as if my mind controlled it ? To this Geulincx invented
an answer, known as the theory of the "two clocks." Suppose you
have two clocks which both keep perfect time: whenever one
points to the hour, the other will strike, so that if you saw one
and heard the other, you would think the one caused the other
to strike. So it is with mind and body. tach is wound up by God
to keep time with the other, so that, on occasion of my volition,
purely physical laws cause my arm to move, although my will
has not really acted on my body.
There were of course difficulties in this theory. In the first
place, it was very odd; in the second place, since the physical
series was rigidly determined by natural laws, the mental series,
which ran parallel to it, must be equally deterministic. If the
theory was valid, there should be a sort of possible dictionary, in
which each cerebral occurrence would be translated into the
corresponding mental occurrence. An ideal calculator could
calculate the cerebral occurrence by the laws of dynamics, and
infer the concomitant mental occurrence by means of the "dic-
tionary." Even without the "dictionary," the calculator could
infer words and actions, since these are bodily movements. This
view would be difficult to reconcile with Christian ethics and the
punishment of sin.
These consequences, however, were not at once apparent.
The theory appeared to have two merits. The first was that it
made the soul, in a sense, wholly independent of the body, since
it was never acted on by the body. The second was that it allowed
the general principle: "one substance cannot act on another/'
There were two substances, mind and matter, and they were so
dissimilar that an interaction seemed inconceivable. Geulincx *s
theory explained the appearance of interaction while denying it?
In mechanics, Descartes accepts the first law of motion, accord-
ing to which a body left to itself will move with constant velocity
in a straight line. But there is no action at a distance, as later in
584
DESCARTES
Newton's theory of gravitation. There is no such thing as a vacuum,
and there are no atoms; yet all interaction is of the nature of
impact. If we knew enough, we should be able to reduce chemistry
and biology to mechanics; the process by which a seed develops
into an animal or a plant is purely mechanical. There is no need
of Aristotle's three souls ; only one of them, the rational soul, exists,
and that only in man.
With due caution to avoid theological censure, Descartes
develops a cosmogony not unlike those of some pre-Platonic
philosophers. We know, he says, that the world was created as
in Genesis, but it is interesting to see how it might have grown
naturally. lie works out a theory of the formation of vortices:
round the sun there is an immense vortex in the plenum, which
carries the planets round with it. The theory is ingenious, but
cannot explain why planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular. It
was generally accepted in France, where it was only gradually
ousted by the Newtonian theory. Cotes, the editor of the first
English edition of Newton's Principia, argues eloquently that the
vortex theory leads to atheism, while Newton's requires God to
set the planets in motion in a direction not towards the sun. On
this ground, he thinks, Newton is to be preferred.
I come now to Descartes 's two most important books, so far as
pure philosophy is concerned. These are the Discourse on Method
(1637) and the Meditations (1642). They largely overlap, and it is
not necessary to keep them apart.
In these books Descartes begins by explaining the method of
"Cartesian doubt," as it has come to be called. In order to have
a firm basis for his philosophy, he resolves to make himself doubt
even-thing that he can manage to doubt. As he foresees that the
process may take some time, he resolves, in the meanwhile, to
regulate his conduct by commonly received rules; this will leave
his mind unhampered by the possible consequences of his doubts
in relation to practice.
He begins with scepticism in regard to the senses. Can I doubt,
he says, that I am sitting here by the fire in a dressing-gown?
Yes, for sometimes I have dreamt that ^ was hej;
I was naked in bed. (Pyjamas, and even night
been invented.) Moreover madmen sometimr
so it is possible that I may be in like case.
Dreams, however, like painters, present
585
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
things, at least as regards their elements. (You may dream of a
winged horse, but only because you have seen horses and wings.)
Therefore corporeal nature in general, involving such matters as
extension, magnitude, and number, is less easy to question than
beliefs about particular things. Arithmetic and geometry, which
are not concerned with particular things, are therefore more
certain than physics and astronomy; they are true even of dream
objects, which do not differ from real ones as regards number
and extension. Even in regard to arithmetic and geometry, how-
ever, doubt is possible. It may be that God causes me to make
mistakes whenever I try to count the sides of a square or add 2 to 3.
Perhaps it is wrong, even in imagination, to attribute such unkind-
ness to God, but there might be an evil demon, no less cunning
and deceitful than powerful, employing all his industry in mis-
leading me. If there be such a demon, it may he that all the things
Tsee are only illusions of which he makes use as traps for my
credulity.
There remains, however, something that I cannot doubt: no
demon, however cunning, could deceive me if I did not exist. I
may have no body: this might be an illusion. But thought is
different. "While I wanted to think everything false, it must
necessarily be that I who thought was something; and remarking
that this truth, / think, therefore I am, was so solid and so certain
that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were
incapable of upsetting it, I judged that I could receive it without
scruple as the first principle of the philosophy that I sought. M|
This passage is the kernel of Descartes *s theory of knowledge,
and contains what is most important in his philosophy. Most
philosophers since Descartes have attached importance to the
theory of knowledge, and their doing so is largely due to him. 411
think, therefore I am" makes mind more certain than matter,
and my mind (for me) more certain than the minds of others.
There is thus, in all philosophy derived from Descartes, a ten-
dency to subjectivism, and to regarding matter as something only
knowable, if at all, by inference from what is known of mind.
These two tendencies ?xist both in Continental idealism and in
British empiricism — in the former triumphantly, in the latter
1 The above argument, "I think, therefore 1 am*' (cofftlo ergo nun), is
known as Descartes '§ cogitot and the process by which it i* reached is
called "Cartesian doubt,"
DESCARTES
regretfully. There has been, in quite recent times, an attempt to
escape from this subjectivism by the philosophy known as instru-
mentalism, but of this I will not speak at present. With this
exception, modern philosophy has very largely accepted the for-
mulation of its problems from Descartes, while not accepting his
solutions.
The reader will remember that St. Augustine advanced an
argument closely similar to the cogito. He did not, however, give
prominence to it, and the problem which it is intended to solve
occupied only a small part of his thoughts. Descartes 's originality,
therefore, should be admitted, though it consists less in inventing
the argument than in perceiving its importance.
Having now secured a firm foundation, Descartes sets to work
to rebuild the edifice of knowledge. The I that has been proved
to exist has been inferred from the fact that I think, therefore I
exist while I think, and only then. If I ceased to think, there
would be no evidence of my existence. I am a thing that thinks,
a substance of which the whole nature or essence consists in
thinking, and which needs no place or material thing for its
existence. The soul, therefore, is wholly distinct from the body
and easier to know than the body; it would be what it is even if
there were no body.
Descartes next asks himself: why is the cogito so evident? He
concludes that it is only because it is clear and distinct. He there-
fore adopts as a general rule the principle: All things that we con-
ceive very clearly and rerv distinctly are true. He admits, however,
that there is sometimes difficulty in knowing which these things
are.
"Thinking" is used by Descartes in a very wide sense. A thing
that thinks, he says, is one that doubts, understands, conceives,
aftirms, denies, wills, imagines, and feels — for feeling, as it occurs
in dreams, is a form of thinking. Since thought is the essence of
mind, the mind must always think, even during deep sleep.
Descartes now resumes the question of our knowledge of bodies.
I le takes as an example a piece of wax from the honeycomb.
Certain things are apparent to the senses: it tastes of honey, it
smells of (lowers, it has a certain sensibfe colour, size and shape,
it is hard and cold, and if struck it emits a sound. But if you put
it near the fire, these qualities change, although the wax persists,
therefore what appeared to the senses was nor the wax itself.
587
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The wax itself is constituted by extension, flexibility, and motion,
which are understood by the mind, not by the imagination. The
thing that is the wax cannot itself be sensible, since it is equally
involved in all the appearances of the wax to the various senses.
The perception of the wax "is not a vision or touch or imagination,
but an inspection of the imnd." I do not sec the wax, any more
than I see men in the street when I see hats and coats. "I under-
stand by the sole power of judgment, which resides in my mind,
what I thought I saw with my eyes." Knowledge by the senses is
confused, and shared with animals; but now I have stripped the
wax of its clothes, and mentally perceive it naked. From my
sensibly seeing the wax, my own existence follows with certainty,
but not that of the wax. Knowledge of external things must be
by the mind, not by the senses.
This leads to a consideration of different kinds of ideas. The
commonest of errors, Descartes says, is to think that my ideas are
like outside things. (The word "idea" includes sense-perceptions,
as used by Descartes.) Ideas seem to be of three sorts: (i) those
that are innate, (2) those that are foreign and come from without,
(3) those that are invented by me. The second kind of ideas, we
naturally suppose, are like outside objects. We suppose this,
partly because nature teaches us to think so, partly because such
ideas come independently of the will (i.e. through sensation), and
it therefore seems reasonable to suppose that a foreign thing
imprints its likeness on me. But are these good reasons? When 1
speak of being "taught by nature" in this connection, I only
mean that I have a certain inclination to believe it, not that I see
it by a natural light. What is seen by a natural light cannot be
denied, but a mere inclination may be towards what is false. And
as for ideas of sense being involuntary, that is no argument, for
dreams are involuntary although they come from within. The
reasons for supposing that ideas of sense come from without are
therefore inconclusive.
Moreover there are sometimes two different ideas of the same
external object, e.g., the sun as it appears to the senses and the
sun in which the astronomers believe. These cannot both be like
the sun, and reason shows that the one which comes directly
from experience must be the less like it of the two.
But these considerations have not disposed of the sceptical
arguments which threw doubt on the existence of the external
DESCARTES
world. This can only be done by first proving the existence of God.
Descartes's proofs of the existence of God are not very original ;
in the main they come from scholastic philosophy. They were
better stated by Leibniz, and I will omit consideration of them
until we come to him.
When God's existence has been proved, the rest proceeds easily.
Since God is good, He will not act like the deceitful demon whom
Descartes has imagined as a ground for doubt. Now God has
given me such a strong inclination to believe in bodies that He
would be deceitful if there were none ; therefore bodies exist. He
must, moreover, have given me the faculty of correcting errors.
I use this faculty when I employ the principle that what is clear
and distinct is true. This enables me to know mathematics, and
physics also, if 1 remember that I must know the truth about
bodies by the mind alone, not by mind and body jointly.
The constructive part of Descartes's theory of knowledge is
much less interesting than the earlier destructive part. It uses all
sorts of scholastic maxims, such as that an effect can never have
more perfection than its cause, which have somehow escaped the
initial critical scrutiny. No reason is given for accepting these
maxims, although they are certainly less self-evident than one's
own existence, which is proved with a flourish of trumpets. Plato,
St. Augustine, and St. Thomas contain most of what is affirmative
in the Meditations.
The method of critical doubt, though Descartes himself applied
it only half-heartedly, was of great philosophic importance. It is
clear, as a matter of logic, that it can only yield positive results if
scepticism is to stop somewhere. If there is to be both logical and
empirical knowledge, there must be two kinds of stopping points:
indubitable facts, and indubitable principles of inference. Des-
cartes 's indubitable facts arc his own thoughts— using "thought"
in the widest possible sense. 44I think" is his ultimate premiss.
Here the word "I11 is really illegitimate; he ought to state his
ultimate premiss in the form "there are thoughts." The word "I"
is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum.
When he goes on to say "I am a thing which thinks/' he is already
using uncritically the apparatus of categories handed down by
scholasticism. He nowhere proves that thoughts need a thinker,
nor is there reason to believe this except in a grammatical sense.
The decision, however, to regard thoughts rather than external
5«9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
objects as the prime empirical certainties was very important,
and had a profound effect on all subsequent philosophy.
In two other respects the philosophy of Descartes was important.
First: it brought to completion, or very nearly to completion, the
dualism of mind and matter which began with Plato and was
developed, largely for religious reasons, by Christian philosophy.
Ignoring the curious transactions in the pineal gland, which were
dropped by the followers of Descartes, the Cartesian system
presents two parallel but independent worlds, that of mind and
that of matter, each of which can be studied without reference to
the other. That the mind does not move the body was a new idea,
due explicitly to Geulincx but implicitly to Descartes. It had the
advantage of making it possible to say that the body does not
move the mind. There is a considerable discussion in the Medi-
tations as to why the mind feels "sorrow" when the body is
thirsty. The correct Cartesian answer was that the body and the
mind were like two clocks, and that when one indicated "thirst"
the other indicated "sorrow." From the religious point of view,
however, there was a grave drawback to this theory; and this
brings me to the second characteristic of Cartesianism that I
alluded to above.
In the whole theory of the material world, Cartesianism was
rigidly deterministic. Living organisms, just as much as dead
matter, were governed by the laws of physics; there was no longer
need, as in the Aristotelian philosophy, of an entelechy or soul to
explain the growth of organisms and the movements of animals.
Descartes himself allowed one small exception: a human soul
could, by volition, alter the direction though not the quantity of
the motion of the vital spirits. This, however, was contrary to the
spirit of the system, and turned out to be contrary to the laws of
mechanics; it was therefore dropped. The consequence was that
all the movements of matter were determined by physical laws,
and, owing to parallelism, mental events must be equally deter-
minate. Consequently Cartesians had difficulty about free will.
And for those who paid more attention to Descartes *s science than
to his theory of knowledge, it was not difficult to extend the theory
that animals are automate: why not say the same of men, and
simplify the system by making it a consistent materialism ? This
step was actually taken in the eighteenth century.
There is in Descartes an unresolved dualism between what he
59*
DESCARTES
learnt from contemporary science and the scholasticism that he
had been taught at La Fltche. This led him into inconsistencies,
but it also made him more rich in fruitful ideas than any com-
pletely logical philosopher could have been. Consistency might
have made him merely the founder of a new scholasticism, whereas
inconsistency made him the source of two important but divergent
schools of philosophy.
59'
Chapter X
SPINOZA
SPINOZA (1634-77) is the noblest and most lovable of the
great philosophers, Intellectually, some others have sur-
passed him, but ethically he is supreme. As a natural conse-
quence, he was considered, during his lifetime and for a century
after his death, a man of appalling wickedness. Fie was born a
Jew, but the Jews excommunicated him. Christians abhorred him
equally; although his whole philosophy is dominated by the idea
of God, the orthodox accused him of atheism. Leibniz, who owed
much to him, concealed his debt, and carefully abstained from
saying a word in his praise; he even went so far as to lie about
the extent of his personal acquaintance with the heretic Jew.
The life of Spinoza was very simple. His family had come to
Holland from Spain, or perhaps Portugal, to escape the Inquisi-
tion. He himself was educated in Jewish learning, but found it
impossible to remain orthodox. He was offered 1000 florins a year
to conceal his doubts; when he refused, an attempt was made to
assassinate him; when this failed, he was cursed with all the
curses in Deuteronomy and with the curse that Elisha pro-
nounced on the children who, in consequence, were torn to pieces
by the she-bears. But no she-bears attacked Spinoza. He lived
quietly, first at Amsterdam and then at the Hague, making his
living by polishing lenses. His wants were few and simple, and
he showed throughout his life a rare indifference to money. The
few who knew him loved him, even if they disapproved of his
principles. The Dutch Government, with its usual liberalism,
tolerated his opinions on theological matters, though at one time
he was in bad odour politically because he sided with the De Witts
against the House of Orange. At the early age of forty-three he
died of phthisis.
His chief work, the Ethics, was published posthumously. Before
considering it, a few words must be said about two of his other
books, the Tractatus Theolbgico-Politicu* and the Tractatus Politicu*.
The former is a curious combination of biblical criticism and
political theory; the latter deals with political theory only. In
biblical criticism Spinoza partially anticipates modern view*,
592
SPINOZA
particularly in assigning much later dates to various books of the
Old Testament than those assigned by tradition. He endeavours
throughout to show that the Scriptures can be interpreted so as
to be compatible with a liberal theology.
Spinoza's political theory is, in the main, derived from Hobbes,
in spite of the enormous temperamental difference between the
two men. He holds that in a state of nature there is no right or
wrong, for wrong consists in disobeying the law. He holds that
the sovereign can do no wrong, and agrees with Hobbes that the
Church should be entirely subordinate to the State. He is opposed
to all rebellion, even against a bad government, and instances the
troubles in England as a proof of the harm that comes of forcible
resistance to authority. But he disagrees with Hobbes in thinking
democracy the "most natural" form of government. He disagrees
also in holding that subjects should not sacrifice all their rights
to the sovereign. In particular, he holds freedom of opinion
important. I do not quite know how he reconciles this with the
opinion that religious questions should be decided by the State.
I think when he says this he means that they should be decided
by the State rather than the Church; in Holland the State was
much more tolerant than the Church.
Spinoza's Ethics deals with three distinct matters. It begins with
metaphysics; it then goes on to the psychology of the passions
and the will ; and finally it sets forth an ethic based on the pre-
ceding metaphysics and psychology. The metaphysic is a modi-
fication of Descartes, the psychology is reminiscent of Hobbes,
hut the ethic is original, and is what is of most value in the book.
The relation of Spinoza to Descartes is in some ways not unlike
the relation of Plotinus to Plato. Descartes was a many-sided man,
full of intellectual curiosity, but not much burdened with moral
earnestness. Although he invented "proofs0 intended to support
orthodox beliefs, he could have been used by sceptics as Carneades
used Plato. Spinoza, although he was not without scientific
interests, and even wrote a treatise on the rainbow, was in the
main concerned with religion and virtue. He accepted from
Descartes and his contemporaries a materialistic and deterministic
physics, and sought, within this fraifiework, to find room for
reverence and a life devoted to the Good. His attempt was mag-
nificent, and rouses admiration even in those who do not think it
successful
593
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The metaphysical system of Spinoza is of the type inaugurated
by Parmenides. There is only one substance, "God or Nature";
nothing finite is self-subsistent. Descartes admitted three sub-
stances, God and mind and matter; it is true that, even for him,
God was, in a sense, more substantial than mind and matter,
since He had created them, and could, if He chose, annihilate
them. But except in relation to God's omnipotence, mind and
matter were two independent substances, defined, respectively,
by the attributes of thought and extension. Spinoza would have
none of this. For him, thought and extension were both attributes
of God. God has also an infinite number of other attributes,
since He must be in every respect infinite; but these others are
unknown to us. Individual souls and separate pieces of matter
are, for Spinoza, adjectival ; they are not things, but merely aspects
of the divine Being. There can be no such personal immortality
as Christians believe in, but only that impersonal sort that consists
in becoming more and more one with God. Finite things are
defined by their boundaries, physical or logical, that is to say, by
what they are not: "all determination is negation/' There can be
only one Being who is wholly positive, and He must be absolutely
infinite. Hence Spinoza is led to a complete and undiluted
pantheism.
Everything, according to Spinoza, is ruled by an absolute logical
necessity. There is no such thing as free will in the mental sphere
or chance in the physical world. Everything that happens is a
manifestation of God's inscrutable nature, and it is logically
impossible that events should be other than they are. This leads
to difficulties in regard to sin, which critics were not slow to
point out. One of them, observing that, according to Spinoza,
everything is decreed by God and is therefore good, asks indig-
nantly: Was it good that Nero should kill his mother? Was it
good that Adam ate the apple? Spinoza answers that what was
positive in these acts was good, and only what was negative was
bad; but negation exists only from the point of view of finite
creatures. In God, who alone is completely real, there is no
negation, and therefore the evil in what to us seem sins does not
exist when they are viewed as parts of the whole. This doctrine,
thought in one form or another, it has been held by most mystics,
cannot, obviously, be reconciled with the orthodox doctrine of
jtn and damnation It is bound up with Spinoza's complete
594
SPINOZA
rejection of free will. Although not at all polemical, Spinoza was
too honest to conceal his opinions, however shocking to contem-
poraries; the abhorrence of his teaching is therefore not
surprising.
The Ethic* is set forth in the style of Euclid, with definitions,
axioms, and theorems; everything after the axioms is supposed to
be rigorously demonstrated by deductive argument. This makes
him difficult reading. A modern student, who cannot suppose
that there are rigorous "proofs** of such things as he professes
to establish, is bound to grow impatient with the detail of the
demonstrations, which is, in fact, not worth masterin . It is
enough to read the enunciations of the propositions, and to study
the scholia, which contain much of what is best in the Ethics.
But it would show a lack of understanding to blame Spinoza for
his geometrical method. It was of the essence of his system,
ethically as well as metaphysically, to maintain that everything
could be demonstrated, and it was therefore essential to produce
demonstrations. We cannot accept his method, but that is because
we cannot accept his metaphysic. We cannot believe that the
interconnections of the parts of the universe are logical, because
we hold that scientific laws are to be discovered by observation,
not by reasoning alone. But for Spinoza the geometrical method
was necessary, and was bound up with the most essential parts of
his doctrine.
I come now to Spinoza *s theory of the emotions. This comes
after a metaphysical discussion of the nature and origin of the
mind, which leads up to the astonishing proposition that "the
human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and
infinite essence of God." But the passions, which are discussed
in the Third Book of the Ethics, distract us and obscure our
intellectual vision of the whole. "Everything," we are told, "in
so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persevere in its own being/9
Hence arise love and hate and strife. The psychology of Book 111
is entirely egoistic. "He who conceives that the object of his hate
is destroyed will feel pleasure." "If we conceive that anyone takes
delight in something, which only one person can possess, we
shall endeavour to bring it about, thai the man in question shall
not gain possession thereof/' But even in this Book there are
moments when Spinoza abandons the appearance of mathe-
matically demonstrated cynicism, as when he says: "Hatred is
595
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be
destroyed by love." Self-preservation is the fundamental motive
of the passions, according to Spinoza; but self-preservation alters
its character when we realize that what is real and positive in
us is what unites us to the whole, and not what preserves the
appearance of separateness.
The last two books of the Ethics, entitled respectively "Ot
human bondage, or the strength of the emotions" and "Of the
power of the understanding, or of human freedom," are the most
interesting. We are in bondage in proportion as what happens to
us is determined by outside causes, and we are free in proportion
as we are self-determined. Spinoza, like Socrates and Plato,
believes that all wrong action is due to intellectual error: the
man who adequately understands his own circumstances will act
wisely, and will even be happy in the face of what to another
would be misfortune. He makes no appeal to unselfishness; he
holds that self-seeking, in some sense, and more particularly self-
preservation, govern all human behaviour. "No virtue can be con-
ceived as prior to this endeavour to preserve one's own being/'
But his conception of what a wise man will choose as the goal of
his self-seeking is different from that of the ordinary egoist: "The
mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's
highest virtue is to know God." Emotions are called "passions"
when they spring from inadequate ideas; passions in different
men may conflict, but men who live in obedience to reason will
agree together. Pleasure in itself is good, but hope and fear are
bad, and so are humility and repentance: "he who repents of an
action is doubly wretched or infirm." Spinoza regards time as
unreal, and therefore all emotions which have to do essentially
with an event as future or as past are contrary to reason. "In so
far as the mind conceives a thing under the dictate of reason,
it is affected equally, whether the idea be of a thing present, past,
or future/9
This is a hard saying, but it is of the essence of Spinoza's
system, and we shall do well to dwell upon it for a moment. In
popular estimation, "all's well that ends well"; if the universe is
gradually improving, we think better of it than if it is gradually
deteriorating, even if the sum of good and evil be the same in the
two cases. We are more concerned about a disaster in our own
tune than in the time of Jeaghiz Khan. According to Spinoza
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SPINOZA
this is irrational. Whatever happens is part of the eternal timeless
world as God sees it; to Him, the date is irrelevant. The wise
man, so far as human finitude allows, endeavours to see the
world as God sees it, sub specie aternitatis, under the aspect of
eternity. But, you may retort, we are surely right in being more
concerned about future misfortunes, which may possibly be
averted, than about past calamities about which we can do nothing/
To this argument Spinoza's determinism supplies the answer.
Only ignorance makes us think that we can alter the future; what
will be will be, and the future is as unalterably fixed as the past.
That is why hope and fear are condemned: both depend upon
viewing the future as uncertain, and therefore spring from lack of
wisdom.
When we acquire, in so far as we can, a vision of the world which
is analogous to God's, we see everything as pan of the whole,
and as necessary to the goodness of the whole. Therefore "the
knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge.'* God has no
knowledge of evil, because there is no evil to be known; the
appearance of evil only arises through regarding parts of the
universe as if they were self- subsis tent.
Spinoza's outlook is intended to liberate men from the tyranny
of fear. "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his
wisdom is a meditation not of death, but of life." Spinoza lived up
to this precept very completely. On the last day of his life he was
entirely calm, not exalted, like Socrates in the Phaedo, but con-
versing, as he would on any other day, about matters of interest
to his interlocutor. Unlike some other philosophers, he not
only believed his own doctrines, but practised them; I do not
know of any occasion, in spite of great provocation, in which he
was betrayed into the kind of heat or anger that his ethic con-
demned: In controversy he was courteous and reasonable, never
denouncing, but doing his utmost to persuade.
In so far as what happens to us springs from ourselves, it is
good ; o*Iy what comes from without is bad for us. "As all things
whereof a man is the efficient cause are necessarily good, no evil
can befall a man except through external causes." Obviously,
therefore, nothing bad can happen to the universe as a whole,
since it is not subject to external causes. "We are a part of uni-
versal nature, and we follow her order. If we have a dear and dis-
tinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will
assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence
will endeavour to persist/9 In so far as a man is an unwilling part
of a larger whole, he is in bondage; but in so far as, through the
understanding, he has grasped the sole reality of the whole, he is
free. The implications of this doctrine are developed in the last
Bookofthe&ta*.
Spinoza does not, like the Stoics, object to all emotions; he
objects only to those that are "passions," i.e. those in which we
appear to ourselves to be passive in the power of outside forces.
"An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as
we form a clear and distinct idea of it." Understanding that all
things are necessary helps the mind to acquire power over the
emotions. "He who clearly and distinctly understands himself
and his emotions, loves God, and so much the more as he more
understands himself and his emotions.** This proposition intro-
duces us to the "intellectual love of God/' in which wisdom
consists. The intellectual love of God is a union of thought and
emotion : it consists, I think one may say, in true thought combined
with joy in the apprehension of truth. Ail joy in true thought is
part of the intellectual love of God, for it contains nothing negative,
and is therefore truly part of the whole, not only apparently, as
are fragmentary things so separated in thought as to appear bad.
I said a moment ago that the intellectual love of God involves
joy, but perhaps this was a mistake, for Spinoza says that God is
not affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain, and also says
that "the intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the
infinite love wherewith God loves himself." I think, nevertheless,
that there is something in "intellectual Imt" which is not mere
intellect; perhaps the joy involved is considered as something
superior to pleasure.
"Love towards God," we are told, "must hold the chief place
in the mind." I have omitted Spinoza's demonstrations, but in so
doing I have given an incomplete picture of his thought. As the
proof of the above proposition is short, I will quote it in full;
the reader can then in imagination supply proofs to other propo-
sitions. The proof of the above proposition is as follows :
"For this love is associated with all the modifications of the body
(V, 14) and is fostered by them all (V, 1 5) ; therefore ( V 1 1 ) it must
hold the chief place in the mind. Q.E.D '
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SPINOZA
Of the propositions referred to in the above proof, V, 14 states:
"The mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or
images of things may be referred to the idea of God"; V, 15,
quoted above, states: "He who clearly and distinctly understands
himself and his emotions loves God, and so much the more in
proportion as he understands himself and his emotions"; V, n
states: "In proportion as a mental image is referred to more
objects, so is it more frequent, or more often vivid, and occupies
the mind more/'
The "proof" quoted above might be expressed as follows:
Every increase in the understanding of what happens to us con-
sists in referring events to the idea of God, since, in truth, every-
thing is part of God. This understanding of everything as part
of God is love of God, When all objects are referred to God, the
idea of God mil fully occupy the mind.
Thus the statement that "love of God must hold the chief place
in the mind" is not a primarily moral exhortation, but an account
of what must inevitably happen as we acquire understanding.
We are told that no one can hate God, but, on the other hand,
"he who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him
in return/' Goethe, who admired Spinoza without even beginning
to understand him, thought this proposition an instance of self-
abnegation. It is nothing of the sort, but a logical consequence
of Spinoza's metaphysic. He does not say that a man ought not to
want Cod to love him; he says that a man who loves God cannot
want God to love him. This is made plain by the proof, which
says: "For, if a man should so endeavour, he would desire (V,
17, Corol.) that God, whom he loves, should not be God, and
consequently he would desire to feel pain (III, 19), which is
absurd (III, 28)." V, 17 is the proposition already referred to,
which says that God has no passions or pleasures or pains; the
corollary referred to above deduces that God loves and hates no
one. Here again what is involved is not an ethical precept, but
a logical necessity: a man who loved God and wished God to
love htm would be wishing to feel pain, "which is absurd."
The statement that God can love no one should not be con*
stderrd to contradict the statement that God loves Himself with
an infinite intellectual love. He may love Himself, since that is
possible without false belief; and in any case intellectual love is
a very special kind of love.
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
At this point Spinoza tells us that he has now given us "all the
remedies against the emotions." The great reme4 is clear and
distinct ideas as to the nature of the emotions and their relation
to external causes. There is a further advantage in love of God
as compared to love of human beings: "Spiritual unhealthiness
and misfortunes can generally be traced to excessive love of
something which is subject to many variations." But clear and
distinct knowledge "begets a love towards a thing immutable
and eternal/9 and such love has not the turbulent and disquieting
character of love for an object which is transient and changeable.
Although personal survival after death is an illusion, there is
nevertheless something in the human mind that is eternal. The
mind can only imagine or remember while the body endures,
but there is in God an idea which expresses the essence of this or
that human body under the form of eternity, and this idea is the
eternal part of the mind. The intellectual love of God, when
experienced by an individual, is contained in this eternal part
of the mind.
Blessedness, which consists of love towards God, is not the
reward of virtue, but virtue itself; ue do not rejoice in it because
we control our lusts, but we control our lusts because we rejoice
in it.
The Ethics ends with these words:
"The wise man, in so far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely
at all disturbed in spirit, but being conscious of himself, and ol
God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to
be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. If the way
which I have pointed out as leading to this result seems exceedingly
hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard,
since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation
were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found,
that it should be by almost all men neglected ? But all excellent
things are as difficult as they are rare."
In forming a critical estimate of Spinoza's importance as a
philosopher, it is necessary to distinguish his ethics from his
metaphysics, and to consider how much of the former can survive
the rejection of the latter. '
Spinoza's metaphysic is the best example of what may be
called "logical monism" — the doctrine, namely, that the world
as a whole is a single substance, none of whose parts are logically
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SPINOZA
capable of existing alone. The ultimate basis for this view is the
belief that every proposition has a single subject and a single
predicate, which leads us to the conclusion that relations and
plurality must be illusory. Spinoza thought that the nature of the
world and of human life could be logically deduced from self-
evident axioms; we ought to be as resigned to events as to the fact
that 2 and 2 are 4, since they are equally the outcome of logical
necessity. The whole of this metaphysic is impossible to accept;
it is incompatible with modern logic and with scientific method.
Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning;
when we successfully infer the future, we do so by means of
principles which are not logically necessary, but are suggested by
empirical data. And the concept of substance, upon which Spinoza
relies, is one which neither science nor philosophy can nowadays
accept.
But when we come to Spinoza's ethics, we feel — or at least 1
feel — that something, though not everything, can be accepted
even when the metaphysical foundation has been rejected. Broadly
speaking, Spinoza is concerned to show how it is possible to live
nobly even when we recognize the limits of human power. He
himself, by his doctrine of necessity, makes these limits narrower
than they are; but when they indubitably exist, Spinoza's maxims
are probably the best possible. Take, for instance, death:
nothing that a man can do will make him immortal, and it is
therefore futile to spend time in fears and lamentations over the
fact that we must die. To be obsessed by the fear of death is a
kind of slavery; Spinoza is right in saying that "the free man
thinks of nothing less than of death." But even in this case, it is
only death in general that should be so treated; death of any
particular disease should, if possible, be averted by submitting to
medical care. What should, even in this case, be avoided, is a
certain kind of anxiety or terror; the necessary measures should be
taken calmly, and our thoughts should, as far as possible, be then
directed to other matters. The same considerations apply to all
other purely personal misfortunes.
But how about misfortunes to people whom you love? Let us
think of some of the things that are lik'ely to happen in our time
to inhabitants of Europe or China. Suppose you are a Jew, and
your family has been massacred. Suppose you are an underground
worker against the Nazis, and your wife has been shot because
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
you could not be caught. Suppose your husband, for some purely
imaginary crime, has been sent to forced labour in the Arctic,
and has died of cruelty and starvation. Suppose your daughter
has been raped and then killed by enemy soldiers. Ought you,
in these circumstances, to preserve a philosophic calm ?
If you follow Christ's teaching, you will say "Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do." I have known Quakers
who could have said this sincerely and profoundly, and whom I
admired because they could. But before giving admiration one
must be very sure that the misfortune is felt as deeply as it should
be. One cannot accept the attitude of some among the Stoics,
who said, "What does it matter to me if my family suffer? I can
still be virtuous." The Christian principle, "Love your enemies,"
is good, but the Stoic principle, "Be indifferent to your friends," is
bad. And the Christian principle does not inculcate calm, but an
ardent love even towards the worst of men. There is nothing to be
said against it except that it is too difficult for most of us to practise
sincerely.
The primitive reaction to such disasters is revenge. When
Macduff learns that his wife and children have been killed by
Macbeth, he resolves to kill the tyrant himself. This reaction is
still admired by most people, when the injury is great, and such as
to arouse moral horror in disinterested people. Nor can it be
wholly condemned, for it is one of the forces generating punish-
ment, and punishment is sometimes necessary. Moreover, from
the point of view of mental health, the impulse to revenge is likely
to be so strong that, if it is allowed no outlet, a man's whole
outlook on life may become distorted and more or less insane.
This is not true universally, but it is true in a large percentage of
cases. But on the other side it must be said that revenge is a very
dangerous motive. In so far as society admits it, it allows a man
to be the judge in his own case, which is exactly what the law tries
to prevent. Moreover it is usually an excessive motive; it seeks to
inflict more punishment than is desirable. Torture, for example,
should not be punished by torture, but the man maddened by
lust for vengeance will think a painless death too good for the
object of his hate. Moreover — and it is here that Spinoza is in the
right— a life dominated by a single passion is a narrow life, in-
compatible with every kind of wisdom. Revenge as such is there-
fore not the best reaction to injury.
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SPINO2A
Spinoza would say what the Christian says, and also* something
more. For him, all sin is due to ignorance; he would "forgive
them, for they know not what they do." But he would have you
avoid the limited purview from which, in his opinion, sin springs,
and would urge you, even under the greatest misfortunes, to
avoid being shut up in the world of your sorrow; he would have
you understand it by seeing it in relation to its causes and as a
part of the whole order of nature. As we saw, he believes that
hatred can be overcome by love: "Hatred is increased by being
reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love;
and love is thereupon greater, than if hatred had not preceded it."
I wish I could believe this, but I cannot, except in exceptional
cases where the person hating is completely in the power of the
person who refuses to hate in return. In such cases, surprise at
being not punished may have a reforming effect. But so long as the
wicked have power, it is not much use assuring them that you do
not hate them, since they will attribute your words to the wrong
motive. And you cannot deprive them of power by non-resistance.
The problem for Spinoza is easier than it is for one who has
no belief in the ultimate goodness of the universe. Spinoza thinks
that, if you see your misfortunes as they are in reality, as part of
the concatenation of causes stretching from the beginning of
time to the end, you will see that they are only misfortunes to
you, not to the universe, to which they are merely passing dis-
cords heightening an ultimate harmony. I cannot accept this;
I think that particular events are what they are, and do not become
different by absorption into a whole. Each act of cruelty is eternally
a part of the universe; nothing that happens later can make that
act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole
of which it is a part.
Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something
that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind,
Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate
about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There
are even times when it is comforting Jo reflect that human life,
with all that it contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal
pan of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice
to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help
towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair.
Chapter XI
LEIBNIZ
CBNIZ (1646-1716) was one of the supreme intellects of all
time, but as a human being he was not admirable. He had,
it is true, the virtues that one would wish to find men-
tioned in a testimonial to a prospective employee: he was in-
dustrious, frugal, temperate, and financially honest. But he was
wholly destitute of those higher philosophic virtues that are so
notable in Spinoza. His best thought was not such as would win
him popularity, and he left his records of it unpublished in his
desk. What he published was designed to win the approbation
of princes and princesses. The consequence is that there are two
systems of philosophy which may be regarded as representing
Leibniz: one, which he proclaimed, was optimistic, orthodox,
fantastic, and shallow; the other, which has been slowly unearthed
from his manuscripts by fairly recent editors, was profound,
coherent, largely Spinozistic, and amazingly logical. It was the
popular Leibniz who invented the doctrine that this is the best
of all possible worlds (to which F. H. Bradley added the sardonic
comment "and everything in it is a necessary evil*'); it was this
Leibniz whom Voltaire caricatured as Doctor Pangloss. It would
be unhistorical to ignore this Leibniz, but the other is of far
greater philosophical importance.
Leibniz was born two years before the end of the Thirty Years'
War, at Leipzig* where his father was professor of moral philo-
sophy. At the university he studied law, and in 1666 he obtained
a Doctor's degree at Altdorf, where he was offered a professorship,
which he refused, saying he had "very different things in view.'*
In 1667 he entered the service of the archbishop of Mainz, who,
like other West German princes, was oppressed by fear of Louis
XIV. With the approval of the archbishop, Leibniz tried to
persuade the French king to invade Egypt rather than Germany,
but was met with a polite reminder that since the time of St.
Louis the holy war against the infidel had gone out of fashion.
His project remained unknown to the public until it was dis-
covered by Napoleon when he occupied Hanover in 1803, four
yean after his own abortive Egyptian expedition. In 1672, in
LEIBNIZ
connection with this scheme, Leibniz went to Paris; where he
spent the greater part of the next four years. His contacts in
Paris were of great importance for his intellectual development,
for Paris at that time led the world both in philosophy and in
mathematics. It was there, in 1675-6, that he invented the infini-
tesimal calculus, in ignorance of Newton's previous but unpub-
lished work on the same subject. Leibniz's work was first published
in 1684, Newton's in 1687. The consequent dispute as to priority
was unfortunate, and discreditable to aU parties.
Leibniz was somewhat mean about money. When any young
lady at the court of Hanover married, he used to give her what
he called a "wedding present/9 consisting of useful maxims,
ending up with the advice not to give up washing now that she
had secured a husband. History does not record whether the
brides were grateful.
In Germany, Leibniz had been taught a neo-scholastic Aris-
totelian philosophy, of which he retained something throughout
his later life. But in Paris he came to know Cartesianism and the
materialism of Gassendi, both of which influenced him; at this
time, he said, he abandoned the "trivial schools,'* meaning
scholasticism. In Paris he came to know Malebranche and Arnauld
the Jansenist. The last important influence on his philosophy was
that of Spinoza, whom he visited in 1676. He spent a month in
frequent discussions with him, and secured pan of the Ethics
in manuscript. In later years he joined in decrying Spinoza, and
minimized his contacts with him, saying he had met him once,
and Spinoza had told some good anecdotes about politics.
His connection with the House of Hanover, in whose service he
remained for the rest of his life, began in 1673. From 1680 onwards
he was their librarian at Wolfenbiittel, and was officially employed
in writing the history of Brunswick. He had reached the year
1009 when he died. The work was not published till 1843. Some
of his time was spent on a project for the reunion of the Churches,
but this proved abortive. He travelled to Italy to obtain evidence
that the Dukes of Brunswick were connected with the Este family.
But in spite of these services he was left behind at Hanover when
George I became king of England, the chief reason being that his
quarrel with Newton had made England unfriendly to him. How-
ever, the Princess of Wales, as he told all his correspondents, sided
with him against Newton. In spite of her favour, he died neglected.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Leibniz's popular philosophy may be found in the Monadology
and the Principles of Nature and of Grace, one of which (it is
uncertain which) he wrote for Prince Eugene of Savoy, Marl-
borough's colleague. The basis of his theological optimism is
set forth in the Theodictc, which he wrote for Queen Charlotte
of Prussia. I shall begin with the philosophy set forth in these
writings, and then proceed to his more solid work which he left
unpublished.
Like Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz based his philosophy on the
notion of substance, but he differed radically from them as regards
the relation of mind and matter, and as regards the number of
substances. Descartes allowed three substances, God and mind
and matter; Spinoza admitted God alone. For Descartes, extension
is the essence of matter; for Spinoza, both extension and thought
are attributes of God. Leibniz held that extension cannot be an
attribute of a substance. His reason was that extension involves
plurality, and can therefore only belong to an aggregate of sub-
stances; each single substance must be u next ended. He believed,
consequently, in an infinite number of substances, which he
called "monads." Each of these would have some of the properties
of a physical point, but only when viewed abstractly ; in fact, each
monad is a soul. This follows naturally from the rejection of
extension as an attribute of substance; the only remaining possible
essential attribute seemed to be thought. Thus Leibniz was led
to deny the reality of matter, and to substitute an infinite family
of souls.
The doctrine that substances cannot interact, which had been
developed by Descartes9 followers, was retained by Leibniz, and
led to curious consequences. No two monads, he held, can ever
have any causal relation to each other ; when it seems as if they had,
appearances are deceptive. Monads, as he expressed it, are
"windowless." This led to two difficulties: one in dynamics,
where bodies seem to affect each other, especially in impact;
the other in relation to perception, which seems to be an effect
of the perceived object upon the percipient. We will ignore the
dynamical difficulty for the present, and consider only the question
of perception. Leibniz held that every monad mirrors the universe,
not because the universe affects it, but because God has given it
a nature which spontaneously produces this result. There is a
"pre-established harmony0 between the changes in one monad
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LBIBNIZ
and those in another, which produces the semblance of inter-
action. This is obviously an extension of the two clocks, which
strike at the same moment because each keeps perfect time.
Leibniz has an infinite number of clocks, all arranged by the
Creator to strike at the same instant, not because they affect
each other, but because each is a perfectly accurate mechanism.
To those who thought the pre-established harmony odd, Leibniz
pointed out what admirable evidence it afforded of the existence
of God.
Monads form a hierarchy, in which some are superior to others
in the clearness and distinctness with which they mirror the
universe. In all there is some degree of confusion in perception,
but the amount of confusion varies according to the dignity of
the monad concerned. A human body is entirely composed of
monads, each of which is a soul, and each of which is immortal,
but there is one dominant monad which is what is called the soul
of the man of whose body it forms pan. This monad is dominant,
not only in the sense of having clearer perceptions than the others,
but also in another sense. The changes in a human body (in
ordinary circumstances) happen for the sake of the dominant
monad: when my arm moves, the purpose served by the move-
ment is in the dominant monad, i.e. my mind, not in the monads
that compose my arm. This is the truth of what appears to common
sense as the control of my will over my arm.
Space, as it appears to the senses, and as it is assumed in physics,
is not real, but it has a real counterpart, namely the arrangement
of the monads in a three-dimensional order according to the
point of view from which they mirror the world. Each monad sees
the world in a certain perspective peculiar to itself; in this sense
we can speak, somewhat loosely, of the monad as having a spatial
position.
Allowing ourselves this way of speaking, we can say that there is
no such thing as a vacuum; every possible point of view is filled
by one actual monad, and by only one. No two monads are
exactly alike; this is Leibniz's principle of the "identity of tn-
discernibles."
In contrasting himself with Spinoza, Kcibniz made much of the
free will allowed in his system. He had a "principle of sufficient
reason,*' according to which nothing happens without a reason;
but when we are concerned with free agents, the reasons for their
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
actions "incline without necessitating.91 What a human being does
always has a motive, but the sufficient reason of his action has no
logical necessity. So, at least, Leibniz says when he is writing
popularly, but, as we shall see, he had another doctrine which he
kept to himself after finding that Arnauld thought it shocking.
God's actions have the same kind of freedom. He always acts
for the best, but He is not under any logical compulsion to do so.
Leibniz agrees with Thomas Aquinas that God cannot act con-
trary to the laws of logic, but He can decree whatever is logically
possible, and this leaves Him a great latitude of choice.
Leibniz brought into their final form the metaphysical proofs of
God's existence. These had a long history; they begin with Aris-
totle, or even with Plato; they are formalized by the scholastics,
and one of them, the ontological argument, was invented by
St. Anselm. This argument, though rejected by St. Thomas,
was revived by Descartes. Leibniz, whose logical skill was supreme,
stated the arguments better than they had ever been stated before.
That is my reason for examining them in connection with
him.
Before examining the arguments in detail, it is as well to realize
that modern theologians no longer rely upon them. Medieval
theology is derivative from the Greek intellect. The God of the
Old Testament is a God of power, the God of the New Testament
is also a God of love ; but the God of the theologians, from Aristotle
to Calvin, is one whose appeal is intellectual : His existence solves
certain puzzles which otherwise would create argumentative diffi-
culties in the understanding of the universe. This Deity who appears
at the end of a piece of reasoning, like the proof of a proposition
in geometry, did not satisfy Rousseau, who reverted to a conception
of God more akin to that of the Gospels. In the main, modem
theologians, especially such as are Protestant, have followed
Rousseau in this respect. The philosophers have been more
conservative; in Hegel, Lotze, and Bradley arguments of the
metaphysical sort persist, in spite of the fact that Kant professed
to have demolished such arguments once for all.
Leibniz's arguments for the existence of God are four in
number; they are (i) the ontological argument, (2) the cosmo-
iogical argument, (3) the argument from eternal truths, (4) the
argument from the pre-established harmony, which may be
generalized into the argument from design, or the physico-
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LEIBNIZ
theological argument, as Kant calls it. We will consider these
arguments successively.
The ontological argument depends upon the distinction between
existence and essence. Any ordinary person or thing, it is held, on
the one hand exists, and on the other hand has certain qualities,
which make up his or its "essence." Hamlet, though he does not
exist, has a certain essence; he is melancholy, undecided, witty,
etc. When we describe a person, the question whether he is real
or imaginary remains open, however minute our description may
be. This is expressed in scholastic language by saying that, in
the case of any finite substance, its essence does not imply its
existence. But in the case of God, defined as the most perfect
Being, St. Anselm, followed by Descartes, maintains that essence
does imply existence, on the ground that a Being who possesses
all other perfections is better if He exists than if He does not,
from which it follows that if He does not He is not the best
possible Being.
Leibni2 neither wholly accepts nor wholly rejects this argument ;
it needs to be supplemented, so he says, by a proof that God, so
defined, is possible. He wrote out a proof that die idea of God is
possible, which he showed to Spinoza when he saw him at the
Hague. This proof defines God as the most perfect Being, i.e.
as the subject of all perfections, and a perfection is defined as a
"simple quality which is positive and absolute, and expresses
without any limits whatever it does express." Leibniz easily
proves that no two perfections, as above defined, can be incom-
patible. He concludes: "There is, therefore, or there can be
conceived, a subject of all perfections, or most perfect Being.
Whence it follows also that He exists, for existence is among the
number of the perfections.*'
Kant countered this argument by maintaining that "existence"
is not a predicate. Another kind of refutation results from my
theory of descriptions. The argument does not, to a modern mind,
seem very convincing, but it is easier to feel convinced that it
must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy
lies.
The cosmological argument is morl plausible than the onto-
logical argument. It is a form of the First-Cause argument, which
is itself derived from Aristotle's argument of the unmoved mover.
The First-Cause argument is simple. It points out that everything
If fetor? »/ Wat** /*AtfuMp*y 609 U
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
finite has a cause, which in turn had a cause, and so on. This
series of previous causes cannot, it is maintained, be infinite, and
the first term in the series must itself be uncaused, since otherwise
it would not be the first term. There is therefore an uncaused
cause of everything, and this is obviously God.
In Leibniz the argument takes a somewhat different form. He
argues that every particular thing in the world is "contingent,"
that is to say, it would be logically possible for it not to exist;
and this is true, not only of each particular thing, but of the whole
universe. Even if we suppose the universe to have always existed,
there is nothing within the universe to show why it exists. But
everything has to have a sufficient reason, according to Leibniz's
philosophy; therefore the universe as a whole must have a suffi-
cient reason, which must be outside the universe. This sufficient
reason is God.
This argument is better than the straightforward First-Cause
argument, and cannot be so easily refuted. The First-Cause
argument rests on the assumption that every series must have a
first term, which is false ; for example, the series of proper fractions
has no first term. But Leibniz's argument does not depend upon
the view that the universe must have had a beginning in time.
The argument is valid so long as we grant Leibniz's principle of
sufficient reason, but if this principle is denied it collapses. What
exactly Leibniz meant by the principle of sufficient reason is a
controversial question. Couturat maintains that it means that
every true proposition is "analytic/1 i.e. such that its contra-
dictory is self-contradictory. But this interpretation (which has
support in writings that Leibniz did not publish) belongs, if true,
to the esoteric doctrine. In his published works he maintains that
there is a difference between necessary and contingent propositions,
that only the former follow from the laws of logic, and that all
propositions asserting existence are contingent, with the sole
exception of the existence of God. Though God exists necessarily,
He was not compelled by logic to create the world ; on the contrary,
this was a free choice, motivated, but not necessitated, by His
goodness.
It is dear that Kant is ri|ht in saying that this argument depends
upon the ontological argument. If the existence of the world can
only be accounted for by the existence of a necessary Being, then
there must be a Being whose essence involves existence, for
610
LEIBNIZ
that is what is meant by a necessary Being. But if it is possible
that there should be a Being whose essence involves existence
then reason alone, without experience, can define such a Being
whose existence will follow from the ontological argument; for
everything that has to do only with essence can be known inde-
pendently of experience — such at least is Leibniz's view. The
apparent greater plausibility of the cosmological as opposed to the
ontological argument is therefore deceptive.
The argument from the eternal truths is a little difficult to state
precisely. Roughly, the argument is this: Such a statement as
"it is raining" is sometimes true and sometimes false, but "two
and two are four'9 is always true. AH statements that have only to
do with essence, not with existence, are either always true or
never true. Those that are always true are called "eternal truths."
The gist of the argument is that truths are pan of the contents of
minds, and that an eternal truth must be part of the content of an
eternal mind. There is already an argument not unlike this in
Plato, where he deduces immortality from the eternity of the ideas.
But in Leibniz the argument is more developed. He holds that the
ultimate reason for contingent truths must be found in necessary
truths. The argument here is as in the cosmological argument:
there must be a reason for the whole contingent world, and this
reason cannot itself be contingent, but must be sought among
eternal truths. But a reason for what exists must itself exist;
therefore eternal truths must, in some sense, exist, and they can
only exist as thoughts in the mind of God. This argument is
really only another form of the cosmological argument. It is,
however, open to the further objection that a truth can hardly be
said to "exist" in a mind which apprehends it.
The argument from the pre-established harmony, as Leibniz
states it, is only valid for those who accept his windowless monads
which all mirror the universe. The argument is that, since all the
clocks keep time with each other without any causal interaction,
there must have been a single outside Cause that regulated all
of them. The difficulty, of course, is the one that besets the whole
monadology: if the monads never interact, how does any one of
them know that there are any others? What seems like mirroring
the universe may be merely a dream. In fact, if Leibniz is right,
it ii merely a dream, but he has ascertained somehow that all the
monads have similar dreams at the same time. This, of course,
6it
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
is fantastic, and would ntver have seemed credible but for the
previous history of Cartesianism.
Leibniz's argument, however, can be freed from dependence on
his peculiar metaphysic, and transformed into what is called the
argument from design. This argument contends that, on a survey
of the known world, we find things which cannot plausibly be
explained as the product of blind natural forces, but are much
more reasonably to be regarded as evidences of a beneficent
purpose.
This argument has no formal logical defect; its premisses are
empirical, and its conclusion professes to be reached in accordance
with the usual canons of empirical inference. The question whether
it is to be accepted or not turns, therefore, not on general meta-
physical questions, but on comparatively detailed considerations.
There is one important difference between this argument and the
others, namely, that the God whom (if valid) it demonstrates
need not have all the usual metaphysical attributes. He need not
be omnipotent or omniscient; He may be only vastly wiser and
more powerful than we are. The evils in the world may be due to
His limited power. Some modern theologians have made use of
these possibilities in forming their conception of God. But such
speculations are remote from the philosophy of Leibniz, to which
we must now return.
One of the most characteristic features of that philosophy is the
doctrine of many possible worlds. A world is "possible" if it does
not contradict the laws of logic. There are an infinite number of
possible worlds, all of which God contemplated before creating
the actual world. Being good, God decided to create the best of
the possible worlds, and He considered that one to be the best
which had the greatest excess of good over evil He could have
created a world containing no evil, but it would not have been so
good as the actual world. That is because some great goods are
logically bound up with certain evils. To take a trivial illustration,
a drink of cold water when you are very thirsty on a hot day may
give you such great pleasure that you think the previous thirst,
though painful, was worth enduring, because without it the
subsequent enjoyment could not have been so great. For theology,
it is not such illustrations that are important, but the connection
of sin with free will. Free will is a great good, but it was logically
imoosftible for God to bestow free will and at the same time
LEIBNIZ
decree that there should be no sin. God therefore decided to make
man free, although he foresaw that Adam would eat the apple,
and although sin inevitably brought punishment. The world
that resulted, although it contains evil, has a greater surplus of
good over evil than any other possible world; it is therefore the
best of all possible worlds, and the evil that it contains affords no
argument against the goodness of God.
This argument apparently satisfied the Queen of Prussia. Her
serfs continued to suffer the evil, while she continued to enjoy the
good, and it was comforting to be assured by a great philosopher
that this was just and right.
Leibniz's solution of the problem of evil, like most of his other
popular doctrines, is logically possible, but not very convincing. A
Manicharan might retort that this is the worst of all possible worlds,
in which the good things that exist serve only to heighten the evils.
The world, he might say, was created by a wicked demiurge, who
allowed free will, which is good, in order to make sure of sin, which
is bad, and of which the evil outweighs the good of free will. The
demiurge, he might continue, created some virtuous men, in order
that they might be punished by the wicked ; for the punishment of
the virtuous is so great an evil that it makes the world worse than if
no good men existed. I am not advocating this opinion, which I
consider fantastic; I am only saying that it is no more fantastic
than Leibniz's theory. People wish to think the universe good,
and will be lenient to bad arguments proving that it is so, while
bad arguments proving that it is bad are closely scanned. In fact,
of course, the world is partly good and partly bad, and no "prob-
lem of evil" arises unless this obvious fact is denied.
I come now to Leibniz's esoteric philosophy, in which we find
reasons for much that seems arbitrary or fantastic in his popular
expositions, as well as an interpretation of his doctrines which, if
it had become generally known, would have made them much less
acceptable. It is a remarkable fact that he so imposed upon sub-
sequent students of philosophy that most of the editors who
published selections from the immense mass of his manuscripts
preferred what supported the received interpretation of his
system, and rejected as unimportant Asays which prove him to
have been a far more profound thinker than he wished to be
thought. Most of the texts upon which we must rely for an
understanding of his esoteric doctrine were first published in
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
1901 or 1903, in two works by Louis Couturat. One of these was
even headed by Leibniz with the remark: "Here I have made
enormous progress." But in spite of this, no editor thought it
worth printing until Leibniz had been dead for nearly two cen-
turies. It is true that his letters to Arnauld, which contain a part
of his more profound philosophy, were published in the nineteenth
century; but I was the first to notice their importance. Amauld's
reception of these letters was discouraging. He writes: "I find
in these thoughts so many things which alarm me, and which
almost aU men, if I am not mistaken, will find so shocking, that
I do not see of what use a writing can be, which apparently
all the world will reject." This hostile opinion no doubt led Leib-
niz, thenceforth, to adopt a policy of secrecy as to his real thoughts
on philosophical subjects.
The conception of substance, which is fundamental in the
philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, is derived from
the logical category of subject and predicate. Some words can be
either subjects or predicates; e.g., I can say "the sky is blue'*
and "blue is a colour." Other words — of which proper names are
the most obvious instances— can never occur as predicates, but
only as subjects, or as one of the terms of a relation. Such words
are held to designate substances. Substances, in addition to this
logical characteristic, persist through time, unless destroyed by
God's omnipotence (which, one gathers, never happens). Every
true proposition is either general, like "all men are mortal,'*
in which case it states that one predicate implies another, or
particular, like "Socrates is mortal/' in which case the predicate
is contained in the subject, and the quality denoted by the predi-
cate is part of the notion of the substance denoted by the subject.
Whatever happens to Socrates can be asserted in a sentence in
which "Socrates" is the subject and the words describing the
happening in question are the predicate. All these predicates put
together make up the "notion" of Socrates. All belong to
him necessarily, in this sense, that a substance of which they
could not be truly asserted would not be Socrates, but some
one else.
Leibniz was a firm believer n the importance of logic, not only
in its own sphere, but as the basts of metaphysics. He did work on
mathematical logic which would have been enormously important
if he had published it; he would, in that case, have been the
614
LEIBNIZ
founder of mathematical logic, which would have become known
a century and a half sooner than it did in fact. He abstained from
publishing, because he kept on finding evidence that Aristotle's
doctrine of the syllogism was wrong on some points; respect for
Aristotle made it impossible for him to believe this, so he mis-
takenly supposed that the errors must be his own. Nevertheless
he cherished throughout his life the hope of discovering a kind of
generalized mathematics, which he called Characteristica Uni-
ver satis, by means of which thinking could be replaced by calcu-
lation. "If we had it," he says, "we should be able to reason in
metaphysics and morals in much the same way as in geometry
and analysis." "If controversies were to arise, there would be no
more need of disputation between two philosophers than between
two accountants. For it would suffice to take their pencils in their
hands, to sit down to their slates, and to say to each other (with
a friend as witness, if they liked): Let us calculate."
Leibniz based his philosophy upon two logical premisses, the
law of contradiction and the law of sufficient reason. Both depend
upon the notion of an "analytic" proposition, which is one in
which the predicate is contained in the subject — for instance, "all
white men are men." The law of contradiction states that all
analytic propositions are true. The law of sufficient reason (in the
esoteric system only) states that all true propositions are analytic.
This applies even to what we should regard as empirical state-
ments about matters of fact. If I make a journey, the notion of
me must from all eternity have included the notion of this journey,
which is a predicate of me. "We may say that the nature of an
individual substance, or complete being, is to have a notion so
completed that it suffices to comprehend, and to render deducible
from it, all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is
attributed. Thus the quality of king, which belongs to Alexander
the Great, abstracting from the subject, is not sufficiently deter-
mined for an individual, and does not involve other qualities of
the same subject, nor all that the notion of this prince contains,
whereas God, seeing the individual notion or hecceityof Alexander,
sees in it at the same time the foundation and the reason of all the
predicates which can be truly attributed to him, as e:g. whether
he would conquer Darius and Poms, even to knowing a priori
(and not by experience) whether he died a natural death or by
poison, which we can only know by history."
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
One of the most definite statements of the basis of his meta-
physic occurs in a letter to Arnauld:
"In consulting the notion which I have of every true proposition,
I find that every predicate, necessary or contingent, past, present,
or future, is comprised in the notion of the subject, and I ask
no more. . . . The proposition in question is of great importance,
and deserves to be well established, for it follows that every soul
is as a world apart, independent of everything else except
God; that it is not only immortal and so to speak impassible,
but that it keeps in its substance traces of all that happens
to it."
He goes on to explain that substances do not act on each other,
but agree through all mirroring the universe, each from its own
point of view. There can be no interaction, because all that happens
to each subject is part of its own notion, and eternally determined
if that substance exists.
This system is evidently just as deterministic as that of Spinoza.
Arnauld expresses his horror of the statement (which Leibniz had
made): "That the individual notion of each person involves once
for all everything that will ever happen to him." Such a view is
evidently incompatible with the Christian doctrine of sin and
free will. Finding it ill received by Arnauld, Leibniz carefully
refrained from making it public.
For human beings, it is true, there is a difference between
truths known by logic and truths known by experience. This
difference arises in two ways. In the first place, although every-
thing that happens to Adam follows from his notion, if he exists,
we can only ascertain his existence by experience. In the second
place, the notion of any individual substance is infinitely complex,
and the analysis required to deduce his predicates is only possible
for God. These differences, however, are only due to our ignorance
and intellectual limitation; for God, they do not exist. God
apprehends the notion of Adam in all its infinite complexity,
and can therefore see all true propositions about Adam as analytic.
God can also ascertain a priori whether Adam exists. For God
knows His own goodness, from which it follows that He will
create the best possible world ; and He also knows whether or not
Adam forms part of this world. There is therefore no real escape
from determinism through our ignorance.
There is, however, a further point, which is very curious. At
616
LEIBNIZ
most times, Leibniz repnesents the Creation as a free act of God,
requiring the exercise of His will. According to this doctrine, the
determination of what actually exists is not effected by observation,
but must proceed by way of God's goodness. Apart from God's
goodness, which leads Him to create the best possible world,
there is no a priori reason why one thing should exist rather than
another.
But sometimes, in papers not shown to any human being,
there is a quite different theory as to why some things exist and
others, equally possible, do not. According to this view, everything
that does not exist struggles to exist, but not all possibles can
exist, because they are not all "compossible." It may be possible
that A should exist, and also possible that B should exist, but not
possible that both A and B should exist; in that case, A and B
are not "compossible/' Two or more things are only "compossible"
when it is possible for all of them to exist. Leibniz seems to have
imagined a sort of war in the Limbo inhabited by essences all
trying to exist ; in this war, groups of compossibles combine, and
the largest group of compossibles wins, like the largest pressure
group in a political contest. Leibniz even uses this conception as
a way of defining existence. He says: "The existent may be defined
as that which is compatible with more things than is anything
incompatible with itself." That is to say, if A is incompatible
with B, while A is compatible with C and D and £, but B is only
compatible with F and G, then A, but not B, exists by definition.
"The existent," he says, "is the being which is compatible with
the most things."
In this account, there is no mention of God, and apparently no
act of creation. Nor is there need of anything but pure logic for
determining what exists. The question whether A and B are
compossible is, for Leibniz, a logical question, namely: Does the
existence of both A and B involve a contradiction ? It follows that,
in theory, logic can decide the question what group of compossibles
is the largest, and this group consequently will exist.
Perhaps, however, Leibniz did not really mean that the above
was a definition of existence. If it was jnerely a criterion, it can
be reconciled with his popular views by means of what he calls
"metaphysical perfection. " Metaphysical perfection, as he uses
the term, seems to mean quantity of existence. It is, he says,
"nothing but the magnitude of positive reality strictly understood."
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WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
He always argues that God created as much as possible; this is
one of his reasons for rejecting a vacuum. There is a general
belief (which I have never understood) that it is better to exist
than' not to exist; on this ground children are exhorted to be
grateful to their parents. Leibniz evidently held this view, and
thought it part of God's goodness to create as full a universe as
possible. It would follow that the actual world would consist of
the largest group of compossibles. It would still be true that logic
alone, given a sufficiently able logician, could decide whether a
given possible substance would exist or not.
Leibniz, in his private thinking, is the best example of a philo-
sopher who uses logic as a key to metaphysics. This type of philo-
sophy begins with Parmenides, and is carried further in Plato's
use of the theory of ideas toprove various extra-logical propositions.
Spinoza belongs to the same type, and so does Hegel. But none
of these is so clear-cut as Leibniz in drawing inferences from
syntax to the real world. This kind of argumentation has fallen
into disrepute owing to the growth of empiricism. Whether any
valid inferences are possible from language to non-linguistic facts
is a question as to which I do not care to dogmatize; but certainly
the inferences found in Leibniz and other a priori philosophers
are not valid, since all are due to a defective logic. The subject-
predicate logic, which all such philosophers in the past assumed,
either ignores relations altogether, or produces fallacious argu-
ments to prove that relations are unreal. Leibniz is guilty of a
special inconsistency in combining the subject-predicate logic
with pluralism, for the proposition "there are many monads" is
not of the subject-predicate form. To be consistent, a philosopher
who believes all propositions to be of this form should be a
monist, like Spinoza. Leibniz rejected monism largely owing to
his interest in dynamics, and to his argument that extension
involves repetition, and therefore cannot be an attribute of a
single substance.
Leibniz is a dull writer, and his effect on German philosophy
was to make it pedantic and arid. His disciple Wolf, who dominated
the German universities iintil the publication of Kant's Critique
of Pure Reason, left out whatever was most interesting in Leibniz,
and produced a dry professorial way of thinking. Outside Ger-
many, Leibniz's philosophy had little influence; his contemporary,
Locke, governed British philosophy, while in France Descartes
618
LEIBNIZ
continued to reign until he was overthrown by Voltaire, who
made English empiricism fashionable.
Nevertheless, Leibniz remains a great man, and his greatness
is more apparent now than it was at any earlier time. Apart from
his eminence as a mathematician and as the inventor of the
infinitesimal calculus, he was a pioneer in mathematical logic, of
which he perceived the importance when no one else did so. And
his philosophical hypotheses, though fantastic, are very clear,
and capable of precise expression. Even his monads can still be
useful as suggesting possible ways of viewing perception, though
they cannot be regarded as windowless. What I, for my part,
think best in his theory of monads is his two kinds of space, one
subjective, in the perceptions of each monad, and one objective,
consisting of the assemblage of points of view of the various
monads. This, I believe, is still useful in relating perception to
physics.
619
Chapter XII
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERALISM
E • IHE rise of liberalism, in politics and philosophy, provides
I material for the study of a very general and very important
JL question, namely: What has been the influence of political
and social circumstances upon the thoughts of eminent and ori-
ginal thinkers, and, conversely, what has been the influence of
these men upon subsequent political and social develop-
ments?
Two opposite errors, both common, are to be guarded against.
On the one hand, men who are more familiar with books than with
affairs are apt to over-estimate the influence of philosophers. When
they see some political party proclaiming itself inspired by So-
and-So's teaching,they think its actions are attributable to So-and-
So, whereas, not infrequently, the philosopher is only acclaimed
because he recommends what the party would have done in any
case. Writers of books, until recently, almost all exaggerated the
effects of their predecessors in the same trade. But conversely, a
new error has arisen by reaction against the old one, and this new
error consists in regarding theorists as almost passive products of
their circumstances, and as having hardly any influence at all
upon the course of events. Ideas, according to this view, are the
froth on the surface of deep currents, which are determined by
material and technical causes: social changes are no more caused
by thought than the flow of a river is caused by the bubbles that
reveal its direction to an onlooker. For my part, I believe that the
truth lies between these two extremes. Between ideas and practical
life, as everywhere else, there is reciprocal interaction; to ask
which is cause and which effect is as futile as the problem of the
hen and the egg. I shall not waste time upon a discussion of this
question in the abstract, but shall consider historically one im-
portant case of the general question, namely the development of
liberalism and its off-shoots from the end of the seventeenth
century to the present day!
Early liberalism was a product of England and Holland, and
had certain well-marked characteristics. It stood for religious
toleration; it was Protestant, but of a latitudinarian rather than
620
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERALISM
of a fanatical kind; it regarded the wars of religion as silly. It
valued commerce and industry, and favoured the rising middle
class rather than the monarchy and the aristocracy ; it had immense
respect for the rights of property, especially when accumulated
by the labours of the individual possessor. The hereditary prin-
ciple, though not rejected, was restricted in scope more than it
had previously been ; in particular, the divine right of kings was
rejected in favour of the view that every community has a right,
at any rate initially, to choose its own form of government.
Implicitly, the tendency of early liberalism was towards demo-
cracy tempered by the rights of property. There was a belief—
not at first wholly explicit — that all men are born equal, and that
their subsequent inequality is a product of circumstances. This
led to a great emphasis upon the importance of education a?
opposed to congenital characteristics. There was a certain bias
against government, because governments almost everywhere
were in the hands of kings or aristocracies, who seldom either
understood or respected the needs of merchants, but this bias
was held in check by the hope that the necessary understanding
and respect would be won before long.
Early liberalism was optimistic, energetic, and philosophic,
because it represented growing forces which appeared likely to
become victorious without great difficulty, and to bring by their
victory great benefits to mankind. It was opposed to everything
medieval, both in philosophy and in politics, because medieval
theories had been used to sanction the powers of Church and king,
to justify persecution, and to obstruct the rise of science; but it
was opposed equally to the then modern fanaticisms of Calvinists
and Anabaptists. It wanted an end to political and theological
strife, in order to liberate energies for the exciting enterprises of
commerce and science, such as the East India Company and the
Bank of England, the theory of gravitation and the discovery of
the circulation of the blood. Throughout the Western world
bigotry was giving place to enlightenment, the fear of Spanish
power was ending, all classes were increasing in prosperity, and
the highest hopes appeared to be warranted by the most sober
judgment. For a hundred years, nothing occurred to dim these
hopes; then, at last, they themselves generated the French Revo-
lution, which led directly to Napoleon and thence to the Holy
A liance. After these events, liberalism had to acquire its second
6ai
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
wind before the renewed optimism oi the nineteenth century
became possible.
Before embarking upon any detail, it will be well to consider
the general pattern of the liberal movements from the seventeenth
to the nineteenth century. This pattern is at first simple, but
grows gradually more and more complex. The distinctive character
of the whole movement is, in a certain wide sense, individualism;
but this is a vague term until further defined. The philosophers
of Greece, down to and including Aristotle, were not individualists
in the sense in which I wish to use the term. They thought of a
man as essentially a member of a community; Plato's Republic,
for example, is concerned to define the good community, not the
good individual. With the loss of political liberty from the time
of Alexander onwards, individualism developed, and was repre-
sented by the Cynics and Stoics. According to the Stoic philo-
sophy, a man could live a good life in no matter what social cir-
cumstances. This was also the view of Christianity, especially
before it acquired control of the State. But in the Middle Ages,
while mystics kept alive the original individualistic trends in
Christian ethics, the outlook of most men, including the majority
of philosophers, was dominated by a firm synthesis of dogma,
law, and custom, which caused men's theoretical beliefs and
practical morality to be controlled by a social institution, namely
the Catholic Church: what was true and what was good was to
be ascertained, not by solitary thought, but by the collective
wisdom of Councils.
The first important breach in this system was made by Pro-
testantism, which asserted that General Councils may err. To
determine the truth thus became no longer a social but an indi-
vidual enterprise. Since different individuals reached different
conclusions, the result was strife, and theological decisions were
sought, no longer in assemblies of bishops, but on the battle-field.
Since neither party was able to extirpate the other, it became
evident, in the end, that a method must be found of reconciling
intellectual and ethical individualism with ordered social life.
This was one of the main problems which early liberalism
attempted to solve, v
Meanwhile individualism had penetrated into philosophy.
Descartes9 fundamental certainty, "I think, therefore I am," made
the basis of knowledge different for each person, since for each
622
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERALISM
the starting-point was his own existence, not that of other indi-
viduals or of the community. His emphasis upon the reliability
of clear and distinct ideas tended in the same direction, since it is
by introspection that we think we discover whether our ideas are
clear and distinct. Most philosophy since Descartes has had this
intellectually individualistic aspect in a greater or less degree.
There are, however, various forms of this general position,
which have, in practice, very different consequences. The outlook
of the typical scientific discoverer has perhaps the smallest dose
of individualism. When he arrives at a new theory, he does so
solely because it seems right to him; he does not bow to authority,
for, if he did, he would continue to accept the theories of his
predecessors. At the same time, his appeal is to generally received
canons of truth, and he hopes to persuade other men, not by his
authority, but by arguments which are convincing to them as
individuals. In science, any clash between the individual and
society is in essence transitory, since men of science, broadly
speaking, all accept the same intellectual standards, and therefore
debate and investigation usually produce agreement in the end.
This, however, is a modern development; in the time of Galileo,
the authority of Aristotle and the Church was still considered at
least as cogent as the evidence of the senses. This shows how the
element of individualism in scientific method, though not pro-
minent, is nevertheless essential.
Early liberalism was individualistic in intellectual matters, and
also in economics, but was not emotionally or ethically self-
assertive. This form of liberalism dominated the English eighteenth
century, the founders of the American Constitution, and the
French encyclopaedists. During the French Revolution, it was
represented by the more moderate parties, including the Girondins,
but with their extermination it disappeared for a generation from
French politics. In England, after the Napoleonic wars, it again
became influential with the rise of the Benthamites and the
Manchester School. Its greatest success has been in America,
where, unhampered by feudalism and a State Church, it has
been dominant from 1776 to the present day, or at any rate to 1933.
A new movement, which has gradually developed into the anti-
thesis of liberalism, begins with Rousseau, and acquires strength
from the romantic movement and the principle of nationality.
In this movement, individualism is extended from the intellectual
623
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
sphere to that of the passions, and the anarchic aspects of indivi-
dualism are made explicit. The cult of the hero, as developed by
Carlyle and Nietzsche, is typical of this philosophy. Various
elements were combined in it. There was dislike of early indus-
trialism, hatred of the ugliness that it produced, and revulsion
against its cruelties. There was a nostalgia for the Middle Ages,
which were idealized owing to hatred of the modern world.
There was an attempt to combine championship of the fading
privileges of Church and aristocracy with defence of wage-earners
against the tyranny of manufacturers. There was vehement
assertion of the right of rebellion in the name of nationalism, and
of the splendour of war in defence of "liberty." Byron was the
poet of this movement; Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche were its
philosophers.
But since we cannot all have the career of heroic leaders, and
cannot all make our individual will prevail, this philosophy, like
all other forms of anarchism, inevitably leads, when adopted, to
the despotic government of the most successful "hero." And when
his tyranny is established, be will suppress in others the self-
assertive ethic by which he has risen to power. This whole theory
of life, therefore, is self-refuting, in the sense that its adoption
in practice leads to the realization of something utterly different:
a dictatorial State in which the individual is severely repressed.
There is yet another philosophy which, in the main, is an off-
shoot of liberalism, namely that of Marx. I shall consider him at a
later stage, but for the moment he is merely to be borne in mind.
The first comprehensive statement of the liberal philosophy is
to be found in Locke, the most influential though by no means
the most profound of modern philosophers. In England, his views
were so completely in harmony with those of most intelligent
men that it is difficult to trace their influence except in theoretical
philosophy; in France, on the other hand, where they led to an
opposition to the existing regime in practice and to the prevailing
Canesianism in theory, they clearly had a considerable effect in
shaping the course of events. This is an example of a general
principle: a philosophy developed in a politically and economically
advanced country, which* is, in its birthplace, little more than a
clarification and systematization of prevalent opinion, may
become elsewhere a source of revolutionary ardour, and ultimately
of actual revolution. It is mainly through theorists that the
624
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERALISM
maxims regulating the policy of advanced countries become
known to less advanced countries. In the advanced countries,
practice inspires theory; in the others, theory inspires practice.
This difference is one of the reasons why transplanted ideas are
seldom so successful as they were in their native soil.
Before considering the philosophy of Locke, let us review some
of the circumstances in seventeenth-century England that were
influential in forming his opinions.
The conflict between King and Parliament in the Civil War
gave Englishmen, once for all, a love of compromise and modera-
tion, and a fear of pushing any theory to its logical conclusion,
which has dominated them down to the present time. The prin-
ciples for which the Long Parliament contended had, at first, the
support of a large majority. They wished to abolish the king's
right to grant trade monopolies, and to make him acknowledge
the exclusive right of Parliament to impose taxes. They desired
liberty within the Church of England for opinions and practices
which were persecuted by Archbishop Laud. They held that
Parliament should meet at stated intervals, and should not be
convoked only on rare occasions when the king found its colla-
boration indispensable. They objected to arbitrary arrest and to
the subservience of the judges to the royal wishes. But many,
while prepared to agitate for these ends, were not prepared to
levy war against the king, which appeared to them an act of
treason and impiety. As soon as actual war broke out, the division
of forces became more nearly equal.
The political development from the outbreak of the Civil War
to the establishment of Cromwell as Lord Protector followed the
course which lias now become familiar but was then unprecedented.
The Parliamentary party consisted of two factions, the Presby-
terians and the Independents; the Presbyterians desired to
preserve a State Church, but to abolish bishops; the Independents
agreed with them about bishops, but held that each congregation
should be free to choose its own theology, without the interference
of any central ecclesiastical government. The Presbyterians, in
the main, were of a higher social class than the Independents,
and their political opinions were mont moderate. They wished to
come to terms with the king as soon as defeat had made him
conciliatory. Their policy, however, was rendered impossible by
two circumstances: first, the king developed a martyr's qtubborn*
fas
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
i about bishops; second, the defeat of the king proved difficult,
and was only achieved by Cromwell's New Model Army, which
consisted of Independents. Consequently, when the king's
military resistance was broken, he could still not be induced to
make a treaty, and the Presbyterians had lost the preponderance
of armed force in the Parliamentary armies. The defence of
democracy had thrown power into the hands of a minority, and
it used its power with a complete disregard for democracy and
parliamentary government When Charles I had attempted to
arrest the five members, there had been a universal outcry, and
his failure had made him ridiculous. But Cromwell had no such
difficulties. By Pride's Purge, he dismissed about a hundred
Presbyterian members, and obtained for a time a subservient
majority. When, finally, he decided to dismiss Parliament alto-
gether, "not a dog barked" — war had made only military force
seem important, and had produced a contempt for constitutional
forms. For the rest of Cromwell's life, the government of England
was a military tyranny, hated by an increasing majority of the
nation, but impossible to shake off while his partisans alone were
armed.
Charles II, after hiding in oak trees and living as a refugee in
Holland, determined, at the Restoration, that he would not again
set out on his travels. This imposed a certain moderation. He
claimed no power to impose taxes not sanctioned by Parliament.
He assented to the Habeas Corpus Act, which deprived the Crown
of the power of arbitrary arrest. On occasion he could flout the
fiscal power of Parliament by means by subsidies from Louis XIV,
but in the main he was a constitutional monarch. Most of the
limitations of royal power originally desired by the opponents of
Charles I were conceded at the Restoration, and were respected
by Charles II because it had been shown that kings could be
made to suffer at the hands of their subjects.
James II, unlike his brother, was totally destitute of subtlety
and finesse. By his bigoted Catholicism he united against himself
the Anglicans and Nonconformists, in spite of his attempts to
conciliate the latter by granting them toleration in defiance of
Parliament. Foreign policy also played a part The Stuarts, in
order to avoid the taxation required in war-time, which would
have made them dependent upon Parliament, pursued a policy
of subservience, first to Spain and then to France. The growing
626
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERALISM
power of France roused the invariable English hostility to the
leading Continental State, and the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes made Protestant feeling bitterly opposed to Louis XIV.
In the end, almost everybody in England wished to be rid of
James. But almost everybody was equally determined to avoid a
return to the days of the Civil War and Cromwell's dictatorship.
Since there was no constitutional way of getting rid of James,
there must be a revolution, but it must be quickly ended, so as
to give no opportunity for disruptive forces. The rights of Parlia-
ment must be secured once for all. The king must go, but
monarchy must be preserved; it should be, however, not a
monarchy of Divine Right, but one dependent upon legislative
sanction, and so upon Parliament. By a combination of aristocracy
and big business, all this was achieved in a moment, without the
necessity of firing a shot. Compromise and moderation had
succeeded, after every form of intransigeance had been tried and
had failed.
The new king, being Dutch, brought with him the commercial
and theological wisdom for which his country was noted. The
Bank of England was created ; the national debt was made into a
secure investment, no longer liable to repudiation at the caprice
of the monarch. The Act of Toleration, while leaving Catholics
and Nonconformists subject to various disabilities, put an end
to actual persecution. Foreign policy became resolutely anti-
French, and remained so, with brief intermissions, until the
defeat of Napoleon.
027
Chapter XIII
LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704) is the apostle of the Revolution of
1688, the most moderate and the most successful of all revo-
lutions. Its aims were modest, but they were exactly achieved,
no subsequent revolution has hitherto been found necessary
in England. Locke faithfully embodies its spirit, and most of his
works appeared within a few years of 1688. His chief work in
theoretical philosophy, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
was finished in 1687 and published in 1690. His First Letter on
Toleration was originally published in Latin in 1689, in Holland,
to which country Locke had found it prudent to withdraw in
1683. Two further letters on Toleration were published in 1690 and
1692. His two Treatises on Government were licensed for printing
in 1689, and published soon afterwards. His book on Education was
published in 1693. Although his life was long, all his influential
writings are confined to the few years from 1687 to 1693. Suc-
cessful revolutions are stimulating to those who believe in them.
Locke's father was a Puritan, who fought on the side of Parlia-
ment. In the time of Cromwell, when Locke was at Oxford, the
university was still scholastic in its philosophy; Locke disliked
both scholasticism and the fanaticism of the Independents. He
was much influenced by Descartes. He became a physician, and
his patron was Lord Shaftesbury, Dryden's "Achitophel." When
Shaftesbury fell in 1683, Locke fled with him to Holland, and
remained there until the Revolution. After the Revolution, except
for a few years during which he was employed at the Board of
Trade, his life was devoted to literary work and to numerous
controversies arising out of his books.
The years before the Revolution of 1688, when Locke could
not, without grave risk, take any part, theoretical or practical,
in English politics, were spent by him in composing his Essay
Concerning Human Understanding. This is his most important
book, and the one upon which his fame most securely rests; but
his influence on the philosophy of politics was so great and so
lasting that he must be treated as the founder of philosophical
liberalism as much as of empiricism in theory of knowledge.
628
LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Locke is the most fortunate of all philosophers. He completed
his work in theoretical philosophy just at the moment when the
government of his country fell into the hands of men who shared
his political opinions. Both in practice and in theory, the views
which he advocated were held, for many years to come, by the
mo$t vigorous and influential politicians and philosophers. His
political doctrines, with the developments due to Montesquieu,
are embedded in the American Constitution, and are to be seen
at work whenever there is a dispute between President and
Congress. The British Constitution was based upon his doctrines
until about fifty years ago, and so was that which the French
adopted in 1871.
His influence in eighteenth-century France, which was immense,
was primarily due to Voltaire, who as a young man spent some
time in England, and interpreted English ideas to his compatriots
in the Lettres pk*lo$opfttques. The pfclosophes and the moderate
reformers followed him; the extreme revolutionaries followed
Rousseau. His French followers, rightly or wrongly, believed in
an intimate connection between his theory of knowledge and his
politics.
In England this connection is less evident. Of his two most
eminent followers, Berkeley was politically unimportant, and
Hume was a Tory who set forth his reactionary views in his
History of England. But after the time of Kant, when German
idealism began to influence English thought, there came to be
again a connection between philosophy and politics: in the main,
the philosophers who followed the Germans were Conservative,
while the Benthamites, who were Radical, were in the tradition
of Locke. The correlation, however, is not invariable; T. H.
Green, for example, was a Liberal but an idealist.
Not only Locke's valid opinions, but even his errors, were
useful in practice. Take, for example, his doctrine as to primary
and secondary qualities. The primary qualities are defined as
those that are inseparable from body, and are enumerated as
solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. The
secondary qualities are all the rest: colours, sounds, smells, etc.
The primary qualities, he maintainsf are actually in bodies; the
secondary qualities, on the contrary, are only in the percipient.
Without the eye, there would be no colours; without the ear, no
sounds, and so on. For Locke's view as to secondary qualities
629
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
there are good grounds— jaundice, blue spectacles, etc. But
Berkeley pointed out that the sairie arguments apply to primary
qualities. Ever since Berkeley, Locke's dualism on this point has
been philosophically out of date. Nevertheless, it dominated
practical physics until the rise of quantum theory in our own
day. Not only was it assumed, explicitly or tacitly, by physicists,
but it proved fruitful as a source of many very important dis-
coveries. The theory that the physical world consists only of
matter in motion was the basis of the accepted theories of sound,
heat, light, and electricity. Pragmatically, the theory was useful,
however mistaken it may have been theoretically. This is typical
of Locke's doctrines.
Locke's philosophy, as it appears in the Essay, has throughout
certain merits and certain demerits. Both alike were useful: the
demerits are such only from a theoretical standpoint. He is always
sensible, and always willing to sacrifice logic rather than become
paradoxical. He enunciates general principles which, as the reader
can hardly fail to perceive, are capable of leading to strange conse-
quences; but whenever the strange consequences seem about to
appear, Locke blandly refrains from drawing them. To a logician
this is irritating; to a practical man, it is a proof of sound judg-
ment. Since the world is what it is, it is clear that valid reasoning
from sound principles cannot lead to error; but a principle may
be so nearly true as to deserve theoretical respect, and yet may
lead to practical consequences which we feel to be absurd. There
is therefore a justification for common sense in philosophy, but
only as showing that our theoretical principles cannot be quite
correct so long as their consequences are condemned by an appeal
to common sense which we feel to be irresistible. The theorist
may retort that common sense is no more infallible than logic.
But this retort, though made by Berkeley and Hume, would have
been wholly foreign to Locke's intellectual temper.
A characteristic of Locke, which descended from him to the
whole Liberal movement, is lack of dogmatism. Some few cer-
tainties he takes over from his predecessors: our own existence,
the existence of God, and the truth of mathematics. But wherever
his doctrines differ from those of his forerunners, they are to the
effect that truth is hard to ascertain, and that a rational man will
bold his opinions with some measure of doubt. This temper of
mind is obviously connected with religious toleration, with the
630
LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
success of parliamentary democracy, with laissez-faire, and with
the whole system of liberal maxims. Although he is a deeply
religious man, a devout believer in Christianity who accepts
revelation as a source of knowledge, he nevertheless hedges round
professed revelations with rational safeguards. On one occasion
he says : "The bare testimony of revelation is the highest certainty/'
but on another he says: "Revelation must be judged by reason/9
Thus in the end reason remains supreme.
His chapter "Of Enthusiasm" is instructive in this connection.
"Enthusiasm" had not then the same meaning as it has now; it
meant the belief in a personal revelation to a religious leader or
to his followers. It was a characteristic of the sects that had been
defeated at the Restoration. When there is a multiplicity of such
personal revelations, all inconsistent with each other, truth, or
what passes as such, becomes purely personal, and loses its social
character. Love of truth, which Locke considers essential, is a
very different thing from love of some particular doctrine which
is proclaimed as the truth. One unerring mark of love of truth, he
says, is "not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance
than the proofs it is built upon will warrant/' Forwardness to
dictate, he says, shows failure of love of truth. "Enthusiasm
laying by reason, would set up revelation without it; whereby in
effect it takes away both reason and revelation, and substitutes in
the room of it the ungrounded fancies of a man's own brain/'
Men who suffer from melancholy or conceit are likely to have
"persuasions of immediate intercourse with the Deity/' Hence
odd actions and opinions acquire Divine sanction, which flatters
"men's laziness, ignorance, and vanity/' He concludes the chapter
with the maxim already quoted, that "revelation must be judged
of by reason/'
What Locke means by "reason" is to be gathered from his whole
book. There is, it is true, a chapter called "Of Reason," but this is
mainly concerned to prove that reason does not consist of syllo-
gistic reasoning, and is summed up in the sentence: "God has
not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged
creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational." Reason,
as Locke uses the term, consists of t*o parts: first, an inquiry as
to what things we know with certainty; second, an investigation
of propositions which it is wise to accept in practice, although
they have only probability and not certainty in their favour. "The
631
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
grounds of probability," he says, "are two: conformity with our
own experience, or the testimony of others' experience." The
King of Siam, he remarks, ceased to believe what Europeans
told him when they mentioned ice.
In his chapter "Of Degrees of Assent" he says that the degree
of assent we give to any proposition should depend upon the
grounds of probability in its favour. After pointing out that we
must often act upon probabilities that fall short of certainty, he
says that the right use of this consideration "is mutual charity
and forbearance. Since therefore it is unavoidable to the greatest
part of men, if not all, to have several opinions, without certain
and indubitable proofs of their truth ; and it carries too great an
imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly, for men to quit and
renounce their former tenets presently upon the offer of an argu-
ment which they cannot immediately answer and show the
insufficiency of; it would, methinks, become all men to maintain
peace and the common offices of humanity and friendship in the
diversity of opinions, since we cannot reasonably expect that any
one should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion, and
embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority which the
understanding of man acknowledges not. For, however it may
often mistake, it can own no other guide but reason, nor blindly
submit to the will and dictates of another. If he you would bring
over to your sentiments be one that examines before he assents,
you must give him leave at his leisure to go over the account
again, and, recalling what is out of his mind, examine the parti-
culars, to see on which side the advantage lies; and if he will not
think over arguments of weight enough to engage him anew in
so much pains, it is but what we do often ourselves in the like
case; and we should take it amiss if others should prescribe to
us what points we should study: and if he be one who wishes to
take his opinions upon trust, how can we imagine that he should
renounce those tenets which time and custom have so settled in
his mind that he thinks them self-evident, and of an unquestion-
able certainty; or which he takes to be impressions he has
received from God himself, or from men sent by him? How can
we expect, I say, that opinions thus settled should be given up to
the arguments or authority of a stranger or adversary? especially
if there be any suspicion of interest or design, as there never fails
to be where men find themselves ill-treated. We should do well
632
LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
to commiserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavour to remove
it in all the gentle and fair ways of information, and not instantly
treat others ill as obstinate and perverse because they will not
renounce their own and receive our opinions, or at least those
we would force upon them, when it is more than probable that
we are no less obstinate in not embracing some of theirs. For
where is the man that has uncontestable evidence of the truth of
all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can
say, that he has examined to the bottom all his own or other
men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge,
nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action
and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful
to inform ourselves than to restrain others. . . . There is reason
to think, that if men were better instructed themselves, they
would be less imposing on others."1
I have dealt hitherto only with the latest chapters of the Essay,
where Locke is drawing the moral from his earlier theoretical
investigation of the nature and limitations of human knowledge.
It is time now to examine what he has to say on this more purely
philosophical subject.
Locke is, as a rule, contemptuous of metaphysics. A propos of
some speculation of Leibniz's, he writes to a friend: "You and
I have had enough of this kind of fiddling." The conception of
substance, which was dominant in the metaphysics of his time,
he considers vague and not useful, but he does not venture to
reject it wholly. He allows the validity of metaphysical arguments
for the existence of God, but he does not dwell on them, and seems
somewhat uncomfortable about them. Whenever he is expressing
new ideas, and not merely repeating what is traditional, he thinks
in terms of concrete detail rather than of large abstractions. His
philosophy is piecemeal, like scientific work, not statuesque and
all of a piece, like the great Continental systems of the seventeenth
century.
Locke may be regarded as the founder of empiricism, which is
the doctrine that all our knowledge (with the possible exception
of logic and mathematics) is derived from experience. Accordingly
the first book of the Essay is concerned^ arguing, as against Plato,
Descartes, and the scholastics, that there are no innate ideas or
principles. In the second book he sets to work to show, in detail,
1 Ettay Canctrmw Human Undcntandinx, Book IV, chap, xvi, tec. 4.
633
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
how experience gives rise to various kinds of ideas. Having rejected
innate ideas, he says:
"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper,
void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be
furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy
and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost
endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and
knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience: in
that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately
derives itself" (Book II, chap, i, sec. 2).
Our ideas are derived from two sources, (a) sensation, and
(b) perception of the operation of our own mind, which may be
called "internal sense." Since we can only think by means of
ideas, and since all ideas come from experience, it is evident that
none of our knowledge can antedate experience.
Perception, he says, is "the first step and degree towards know-
ledge, and the inlet of all the materials of it." This may seem, to
a modern, almost a truism, since it has become part of educated
common sense, at least in English-speaking countries. But in his
day the mind was supposed to know all sorts of things a priori,
and the complete dependence of knowledge upon perception,
which he proclaimed, was a new and revolutionary doctrine. Plato,
in the Theaetetus, had set to work to refute the identification of
knowledge with perception, and from his time onwards almost
all philosophers, down to and including Descartes and Leibniz,
had taught that much of our most valuable knowledge is not
derived from experience. Locke's thorough-going empiricism was,
therefore a bold innovation.
The third book of the Essay deals with words, and is concerned,
in the main, to show that what metaphysicians present as know-
ledge about the world is purely verbal. Chapter III, "Of General
Terms," takes up an extreme nominalist position on the subject
of universal*. All things that exist are particulars, but we can
frame general ideas, such as "man," that are applicable to many
particulars, and to these general ideas we can give names. Their
generality consists solely in the fact that they are, or may be,
applicable to a variety of particular things; in their own being, as
ideas in our minds, they are just as particular as everything else
that exists.
Chapter VI of Book III, "Of the Names of Substances," is con*
634
LOCKE'S THEORY Of KNOWLEDGE
cerned to refute the scholastic doctrine of essence. Things may
have a real essence, which will consist of their physical constitution,
but this is in the main unknown to us, and is not the "essence"
of which scholastics speak. Essence, as we can know it, is purely
verbal ; it consists merely in the definition of a general term. To
argue, for instance, as to whether the essence of body is only
extension, or is extension plus solidity, is to argue about words:
we may define the word "body" either way, and no harm can
result so long as we adhere to our definition. Distinct species are
not a fact of nature, but of language; they are "distinct complex
ideas with distinct names annexed to them." There are, it is true,
differing things in nature, but the differences proceed by con-
tinuous gradations: "the boundaries of the species, whereby men
sort them, are made by men." He proceeds to give instances of
monstrosities, concerning which it was doubtful whether they were
men or not. This point of view was not generally accepted until
Darwin persuaded men to adopt the theory of evolution by gradual
changes. Only those who have allowed themselves to be afflicted
by the scholastics will realize how much metaphysical lumber it
sweeps away.
Empiricism and idealism alike are faced with a problem to
which, so far, philosophy has found no satisfactory solution. This
is the problem of showing how we have knowledge of other things
than ourself and the operations of our own mind. Locke considers
this problem, but what he says is very obviously unsatisfactory.
In one place1 we are told: "Since the mind, in all its thoughts and
reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas,
which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our
knowledge is only conversant about them." And again: "Know-
ledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two
ideas." From this it would seem to follow immediately that we
cannot know of the existence of other people, or of the physical
world, for these, if they exist, are not merely ideas in my mind.
Each one of us, accordingly, must, so far as knowledge is Con-
cerned, be shut up in himself, and cut off from all contact with
the outer world.
This, however, is a paradox, and ixfcke will have nothing to do
with paradoxes. Accordingly, in another chapter, he sets forth a
different theory, quite inconsistent with the earlier one. We have,
» Op. nl., Book IV, chap. i.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
be tells us, three kinds of knowledge of real existence. Our know-
ledge of our own existence is intuitive, our knowledge of God's
existence is demonstrative, and our knowledge of things present
to sense is sensitive (Book IV, chap. iii).
In the next chapter, he becomes more or less aware of the
inconsistency. He suggests that someone might say: "If knowledge
consists in agreement of ideas, the enthusiast and the sober man
are on a level." He replies: "Not so where ideas agree with things."
He proceeds to argue that all simple ideas must agree with things,
since "the mind, as has been showed, can by no means make to
itself9 any simple ideas, these being ail "the product of things
operating on the mind in a natural way." And as regards complex
ideas of substances, "all our complex ideas of them must be such,
and such only, as are made up of such simple ones as have been
discovered to coexist in nature." Again, we can have no knowledge
except (i) by intuition, (2) by reason, examining the agreement
or disagreement of two ideas, (3) "by sensation, perceiving the
existence of particular things" (Book IV, chap, iii, sec. 2).
In all this, Locke assumes it known that certain mental occur-
rences, which he calls sensations, have causes outside themselves,
and that these causes, at least to some extent and in certain respects,
resemble the sensations which are their effects. But how, con-
sistently with the principles of empiricism, is this to be known ?
We experience the sensations, but not their causes; our experience
will be exactly the same if our sensations arise spontaneously. The
belief that sensations have causes, and still more the belief that
they resemble their causes, is one which, if maintained, must be
maintained on grounds wholly independent of experience. The
view that "knowledge is the perception of the agreement or dis-
agreement of two ideas" is the one that Locke is entitled to, and
his escape from the paradoxes that it entails is effected by means
of an inconsistency so gross that only his resolute adherence to
common sense could have made him blind to it.
This difficulty has troubled empiricism down to the present
day. Hume got rid of it by dropping the assumption that sensations
have external causes, but even he retained this assumption when-
ever he forgot his own principles, which was very often. His
fundamental maxim, "no idea without an antecedent impression,"
which he takes over from Locke, is only plausible so long as we
think of impressions as having outside causes, which the very
636
LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
word "impression" irresistibly suggests. And at the moments
when Hume achieves some degree of consistency he is wildly
paradoxical.
No one has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once
credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and
achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philo-
sophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-
consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-
consistent can very well be wholly false. The most fruitful philo-
sophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but for that very
reason have been partially true. There is no reason to suppose
that a self-consistent system contains more truth than one which,
like Locke's, is obviously more or less wrong.
Locke's ethical doctrines are interesting, partly on their own
account, partly as an anticipation of Bentham. When I speak of
his ethical doctrines, I do not mean his moral disposition as a
practical man, but his general theories as to how men act and how
they should act. Like Bentham, Locke was a man filled with
kindly feeling, who yet held that everybody (including himself)
must always be moved, in action, solely by desire for his own
happiness or pleasure. A few quotations will make this clear.
4 'Things are good or evil only in relation to pleasure or pain.
That we call 'good' which is apt to cause or increase pleasure, or
diminish pain, in us."
"What is it moves desire? I answer, happiness, and that alone."
44 Happiness, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are
capable of."
"The necessity of pursuing true happiness [is] the foundation
of ail liberty.0
"The preference of vice to virtue [is] a manifest wrong judg-
ment."
"The government of our passions [is] the right improvement
of liberty."1
The last of these statements depends, it would seem, uponlhe
doctrine of rewards and punishments in the next world. God has
aid down certain moral rules ; those who follow them go to heaven,
and those who break them risk going to hell. The prudent pleasure-
seeker will therefore be virtuous. With the decay of the belief that
sin leads to hell, it has become more difficult to make a purely
1 The above quotations are from Book II, chap. xx.
637
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
self-regarding argument in favour of a virtuous life. Bentham,
who was a free-thinker, substituted the human lawgiver in place
of God: it was the business of laws and social institutions to make
a harmony between public and private interests, so that each man,
in pursuing his own happiness, should be compelled to minister
to the general happiness. But this is less satisfactory than the
reconciliation of public and private interests effected by means
of heaven and hell, both because lawgivers are not always wise
or virtuous, and because human governments are not omniscient.
Locke has to admit, what is obvious, that men do not always act
in the way which, on a rational calculation, is likely to secure them
a maximum of pleasure. We value present pleasure more than
future pleasure, and pleasure in the near future more than pleasure
in the distant future. It may be said — this is not said by Locke —
that the rate of interest is a quantitative measure of the general
discounting of future pleasures. If the prospect of spending £ i ,000
a year hence were as delightful as the thought of spending it to-day,
I should not need to be paid for postponing my pleasure. Locke
admits that devout believers often commit sins which, by their
own creed, put them in danger of hell. We all know people who
put off going to the dentist longer than they would if they were
engaged in the rational pursuit of pleasure. Thus, even if pleasure
or the avoidance of pain be our motive, it must be added that
pleasures lose their attractiveness and pains their terrors in propor-
tion to their distance in the future.
Since it is only in the long run that, according to Locke, self-
interest and the general interest coincide, it becomes important
that men should be guided, as far as possible, by their long-run
interests. That is to say, men should be prudent. Prudence is the
one virtue which remains to be preached, for every lapse from
virtue is a failure of prudence* Emphasis on prudence is charac-
teristic of liberalism. It is connected with the rise of capitalism,
for the prudent became rich while the imprudent became or
regained poor. It is connected also with certain forms of Protes-
tant piety: virtue with a view to heaven is psychologically very
analogous to saving with a view to investment.
Belief in the harmony between private and public interests is
characteristic of liberalism, and long survived the theological
foundation that it had in Locke.
Locke states that liberty depends upon the necessity of pursuing
638
LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
%
true happiness and upon the government of our passions. This
opinion he derives from his doctrine that private and public in-
terests are identical in the long run, though not necessarily over
short periods. It follows from this doctrine that, given a com-
munity of citizens who are all both pious and prudent, they will
all act, given liberty, in a manner to promote the general good.
There will be no need of human laws to restrain them, since
divine laws will suffice. The hitherto virtuous man who is tempted
to become a highwayman will say to himself: "I might escape
the human magistrate, but I could not escape punishment at the
hands of the Divine Magistrate." He will accordingly renounce
his nefarious schemes, and live as virtuously as if he were sure
of being caught by the police. Legal liberty, therefore, is only
completely possible where both prudence and piety are universal ;
elsewhere, the restraints imposed by the criminal law are indis-
pensable.
Locke states repeatedly that morality is capable of demonstra-
tion, but he does not develop this idea so fully as could be wished.
The most important passage is:
"Morality capable of demonstration. The idea of a Supreme
Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose workman-
ship we are, and on whom we depend ; and the idea of ourselves,
as understanding, rational beings, being such as are clear in us,
would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such
foundations of our duty and rules of action as might place morality
among the sciences capable of demonstration: wherein I doubt
not, but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences,
as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right
and wrong might be made out, to any one that will apply himself
with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does
to the other of these sciences. The relation of other modes may
certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and extension:
and I cannot see why they should not also be capable of demon-
stration, if due methods were thought on to examine or pulfeue
their agreement or disagreement. 'Where there is no property,
there is no injustice,' is a proposition as certain as any demon-
stration in Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to any-
thing, and the idea to which the name 'injustice* is given being the
invasion or violation of that right, it is evident that these ideas
being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I can
639
WB8TBRN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as certainly know this proposition to be true as that a triangle has
three angles equal to two right ones. Again : 'No government allows
absolute liberty9: the idea of government being the establishment
of society upon certain rules or laws, which require conformity
to them; and the idea of absolute liberty being for any one to do
whatever he pleases: I am as capable of being certain of the truth
of this proposition as of any in the mathematics."1
This passage is puzzling because, at first, it seems to make moral
rules dependent upon God's decrees, while in the instances that
are given it is suggested that moral rules are analytic. I suppose
that, in fact, Locke thought some parts of ethics analytic and others
dependent upon God's decrees. Another puzzle is that the in-
stances given do not seem to be ethical propositions at all.
There is another difficulty which one could wish to see con-
sidered. It is generally held by theologians that God's decrees are
not arbitrary, but are inspired by His goodness and wisdom. This
requires that there should be some concept of goodness antecedent
to God's decrees, which has led Him to make just those decrees
rather than any others. What this concept may be, it is impossible
to discover from Locke. What he says is that a prudent man will
act in such and such ways, since otherwise God will punish him;
but he leaves us completely in the dark as to why punishment
should be attached to certain acts rather than to their opposites.
Locke's ethical doctrines are, of course, not defensible. Apart
from the fact that there is something revolting in a system which
regards prudence as the only virtue, there are other, less emotional,
objections to his theories.
In the first place, to say that men only desire pleasure is to pu\
the can before the horse. Whatever I may happen to desire, 1 shall
feel pleasure in obtaining it; but as a rule the pleasure is due to
the desire, not the desire to the pleasure. It is possible, as happens
with masochists, to desire pain ; in that case, there is still pleasure
in the gratification of the desire, but it is mixed with its opposite.
EvtSn in Locke's own doctrine, it is not pleasure as such that is
desired, since a proximate pleasure is more desired than a remote
one. If morality is to be deduced from the psychology of desire,
as Locke and his disciple* attempt to do, there can be no reason
for deprecating the discounting of distant pleasures, or for urging
prudence as a moral duty. His itgument, in a nutshell, is: "We
1 Op. eit,, Book IV, chap, lit, tec. 18.
640
LOCKE'S THEORT OF KNOWLEDGE
only desire pleasure. But, in fact, many men desire, not pleasure
as such, but proximate pleasure. This contradicts our doctrine
that they desire pleasure as such, and is therefore wicked." Almost
all philosophers, in their ethical systems, first lay down a false
doctrine, and then argue that wickedness consists in acting in a
manner that proves it false, which would be impossible if the
doctrine were true. Of this pattern Locke affords an example.
«/ U'*ti<** WtJcnof Ay 64!
Chapter XIV
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
(a) THE HEREDITARY PRINCIPLE
IN the years 1689 and 1690, just after the Revolution of 1688,
Locke wrote his two Treatises on Government, of which the
second especially is very important in the history of political
ideas.
The first of these two treatises is a criticism of the doctrine of
hereditary power. It is a reply to Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha: or
The Natural Power of Kings, which was published in 1680, but
written under Charles I. Sir Robert Filmer, who was a devout
upholder of the divine right of kings, had the misfortune to live till
1653, and must have suffered acutely from the execution of
Charles I and the victory of Cromwell. But Patriarcha was written
before these sad events, though not before the Civil War, so that
it naturally shows awareness of the existence of subversive doc-
trines. Such doctrines, as Filmer points out, were not new in 1640.
In fact, both Protestant and Catholic divines, in their contest with
Catholic and Protestant monarchs respectively, had vigorously
affirmed the right of subjects to resist tyrannical princes, and their
writings supplied Sir Robert with abundant material for controversy.
Sir Robert Filmer was knighted by Charles 1, and his house is
said to have been plundered by the Parliamentarians ten times.
He thinks it not unlikely that Noah sailed up the Mediterranean
and allotted Africa, Asia, and Europe to Ham, Shcm, and Japheth
respectively. He held that, by the English Constitution, the Lords
only give counsel to the king, and the Commons have even less
power; the king, he says, alone makes the laws, which proceed
solely from his will. The king, according to Filmer, is per-
fediy free from all human control, and cannot be bound by the
acts of his predecessors, or even by his own, for ''impossible it
is in nature that a man should give a law unto himself.'1
Filmer, as these opinion! show, belonged to the most extreme
section of the Divine Right party.
Patriarcha begins by combating the "common opinion" that
"mankind is naturally endowed and bora with freedom from all
642
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
subjection, and at liberty to choose what form of government it
please, and the power which any one man hath over others was
first bestowed according to the discretion of the multitude." "This
tenet," he says, "was first hatched in the schools." The truth,
according to him, is quite different; it is, that originally God
bestowed the kingly power upon Adam, from whom it descended
to his heirs, and ultimately reached the various monarchs of modern
times. Kings now, he assures us, "either are, or are to be reputed,
the next heirs to those first progenitors who were at first the natural
parents of the whole people." Our first parent, it seems, did not
adequately appreciate his privilege as universal monarch, for "the
desire of liberty was the first cause of the fall of Adam." The desire
of liberty is a sentiment which Sir Robert Kilmer regards as
impious.
The claims made by Charles I, and by his protagonists on his
behalf, were in excess of what earlier times would have conceded
to kings. Filmer points out that Parsons, the English Jesuit, and
Buchanan, the Scotch Calvinist, who agree in almost nothing else,
both maintain that sovereigns can be deposed by the people for
misgovernment. Parsons, of course, was thinking of the Protestant
Queen Elizabeth, and Buchanan of the Catholic Mary Queen of
Scots. The doctrine of Buchanan was sanctioned by success, but
that of Parsons was disproved by his colleague Campion's execution.
Even before the Reformation, theologians tended to believe in
setting limits to kingly power. This was part of the battle between
the Church and the State which raged throughout Europe during
most of the Middle Ages. In this battle, the State depended upon
armed force, the Church upon cleverness and sanctity. As long as
the Church had both these merits, it won ; when it came to have
cleverness only, it lost. But the things which eminent and holy
men had said against the power of kings remained on record.
Though intended in the interests of the Pope, they could be used
to support the rights of the people to self-government. "The subtle
schoolmen," says Fiiiner, "to be sure to thrust down the^hig
below the Pope, thought it the safest course to advance the people
above the king, so that the papal power might take the place of the
regal." He quotes the theologian Bellafrmine as saying that secular
power is bestowed by men (i.e. not by God), and "is in the people
unless they bestow it on a prince"; thus Bellarmine, according to
Filmer, "makes God the immediate author of a democratic*!
643
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
estate" — which sounds to him as shocking as it would to a modern
plutocrat to say that God is the immediate author of Bolshevism.
Filmer derives political power, not from any contract, nor yet
from any consideration of the public good, but entirely from the
authority of a father over his children. His view is: that the source
of regal authority is subjection of children to parents; that the
patriarchs in Genesis were monarchs; that kings are the heirs of
Adam, or at least are to be regarded as such ; that the natural rights
of a king are the same as those of a father ; and that, by nature, sons
are never free of paternal power, even when the son is adult and
the parent is in his dotage.
This whole theory seems to a modern mind so fantastic that it is
hard to believe it was seriously maintained. We are not accustomed
to deriving political rights from the story of Adam and Eve. We
hold it obvious that parental power should cease completely when
the son or daughter reaches the age of twenty-one, and that before
that it should be very strictly limited both by die State and by the
right of independent initiative which the young have gradually
acquired. We recognize that the mother has rights at least equal
to those of the father. But apart from all these considerations, it
would not occur to any modern man outside Japan to suppose that
political power should be in any way assimilated to that of parents
over children. In Japan, it is true, a theory closely similar to
Filmer's is still held, and must be taught by all professors and
school-teachers. The Mikado can trace his descent from the Sun
Goddess, whose heir he is; other Japanese are also descended from
her, but belong to cadet branches of her family. Therefore the
Mikado is divine, and all resistance to him is impious. This theory
was, in the main, invented in 1868, but is now alleged in Japan
to have been handed down by tradition ever since the creation of
the world.
The attempt to impose a similar theory upon Europe— of which
attempt Filmer's Patriarchs is part— was a failure. Why? The
ao€bptance of such a theory is in no way repugnant to human
nature; for example, it was held, apart from Japan, by the ancient
Egyptians, and by the Mexicans and Peruvians before the Spanish
conquest. At a certain stage of human development it is natural.
Stuart England had passed this stage, but modern Japan has not.
The defeat of theories of divine right, in England, was due to
two main causes. One was the multiplicity of religions; the other
644
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
was the conflict for power between the monarchy, the aristocracy,
and the higher bourgeoisie. As for religion: the king, since the
reign of Henry VIII, was the head of the Church of England, which
was opposed both to Rome and to most of the Protestant sects.
The Church of England boasted of being a compromise: the Pre-
face to the Authorized Version begins "It hath been the wisdom
of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her
public liturgy, to keep the mean between two extremes." On the
whole this compromise suited most people. Queen Mary and King
James II tried to drag the country over to Rome, and the victors
in the Civil War tried to drag it over to Geneva, but these attempts
failed, and after 1688 the power of the Church of England was
unchallenged. Nevertheless, its opponents survived. The Non-
conformists, especially, were vigorous men, and were numerous
among the rich merchants and bankers whose power was con-
tinually increasing.
The theological position of the king was somewhat peculiar, for
he was not only head of the Church of England, but also of the
Church of Scotland. In England, he had to believe in bishops and
reject Calvinism; in Scotland, he had to reject bishops and believe
in Calvinism. The Stuarts had genuine religious convictions, which
made this ambiguous attitude impossible for them, and caused
them even more trouble in Scotland than in England. But after
1688 political convenience led kings to acquiesce in professing two
religions at once. This militated against zeal, and made it difficult
to regard them as divine persons. In any case, neither Catholics
nor Nonconformists could acquiesce in any religious claims on
behalf of the monarchy.
The three parties of king, aristocracy, and rich middle class made
different combinations at different times. Under Edward IV and
Louis XI, king and middle class combined against the aristocracy;
under Louis XIV, king and aristocracy combined against the mid-
dle class; in England in 1688, aristocracy and middle class Com-
bined against the king. When the king had one of the other paraes
on his side, he was strong; when they combined against him, he
was weak.
For these reasons among others, lx>cke had no difficulty in
demolishing Kilmer's arguments. *
So far as reasoning is concerned, Locke has, of course, an easy
task. He points out that, if parental power is what is concerned,
645
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
the mother's power should be equal to the father's. He lays stress
on the injustice of primogeniture, which is unavoidable if inheri-
tance is to be the basis of monarchy. He makes play with the
absurdity of supposing that actual monarchs are, in any real sense,
the heirs of Adam. Adam can have only one heir, but no one knows
who he is. Would Filmer maintain, he asks, that, if the true heir
could be discovered, all existing monarchs should lay their crowns
at his feet ? If Filmer 's basis for monarchy were accepted, all kings,
except at most one, would be usurpers, and would have no right
to demand the obedience of their de facto subjects. Moreover
paternal power, he says, is temporary, and extends not to life or
property.
For such reasons, apart from more fundamental grounds, here-
dity cannot, according to Locke, be accepted as the basis of legiti-
mate political power. Accordingly, in his Second Treatise on
Government he seeks a more defensible basis.
The hereditary principle has almost vanished from politics.
During my lifetime, the emperors of Brazil, China, Russia, Ger-
many, and Austria have disappeared, to be replaced by dictators
who do not aim at the foundation of a hereditary dynasty. Aris-
tocracy has lost its privileges throughout Europe, except in Eng-
land, where they have become little more than a historical form.
All this, in most countries, is very recent, and has much to do with
the rise of dictatorships, since the traditional basis of power has
been swept away, and the habits of mind required for the successful
practice of democracy have not had time to grow up. There is one
great institution that has never had any hereditary element,
namely, the Catholic Church. We may expect the dictatorships,
if they survive, to develop gradually a form of government analo-
gous to that of the Church. This has already happened in the case
of the great corporations in America, which have, or had until Pearl
Harbour, powers almost equal to those of the government.
It »s curious that the rejection of the hereditary principle in
pduttcs has had almost no effect in the economic sphere in demo-
cratic countries. (In totalitarian states, economic power has been
absorbed by political power) We still think it natural that a man
should leave his property to his children; that is to say, we accept
the hereditary prixmple as regards economic power while rejecting
it as regards political poWer. Political dynasties have disappeared,
but economic dynasties survive. I am not at the moment arguing
646
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
either for or against this different treatment of the two forms of
power; I am merely pointing out that it exists, and that most men
are unconscious of it. When you consider how natural it seems
to us that the power over the lives of others resulting from great
wealth should be hereditary, you will understand better how men
like Sir Robert Filmer could take the same view as regards the
power of kings, and how important was the innovation represented
by men who thought as Locke did.
To understand how Filmer's theory could be believed, and how
Locke's contrary theory could seem revolutionary, we have only
to reflect that a kingdom was regarded then as a landed estate is
regarded now. The owner of land has various important legal
rights, the chief of which is the power of choosing who shall be
on the land. Ownership can be transmitted by inheritance and
we feel that the man who has inherited an estate has a just claim
to all the privileges that the law allows him in consequence. Yet
at bottom his position is the same as that of the monarchs whose
claims Sir Robert Filmer defends. There are at the present day
in California a number of huge estates the title to which is derived
from actual or alleged grants by the king of Spain. He was only
in a position to make such grants (a) because Spain accepted views
similar to Filmer's, and (b) because the Spaniards were able to
defeat the Indians in battle. Nevertheless we hold the heirs of
those to whom he made grants to have a just title. Perhaps in future
this will seem as fantastic as Filmer seems now.
B. THE STATE OP NATURE, AND NATURAL LAW
Ixxrke begins his second Treatise on Government by saying that,
having shown the impossibility of deriving the authority of govern-
ment from that of a father, he will now set forth what he conceives
to be the true origin of government.
He begins by supposing what he calls a "state of nature, "Ante-
cedent to all human government. In this state there is a "lav?Sf
nature," but the law of nature consists of divine commands, and
is not imposed by any human legislator. It is not clear how far the
state of nature is, for Locke, a mere'illustrative hypothesis, and
how far he supposes it to have had a historical existence; but I am
afraid that he tended to think of it as a stage that had actually
occurred. Men emerged from the state of nature by means of a
64?
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
social contract which instituted civil government. This also he
regarded as more or less historical. But for the moment it is the
state of nature that concerns us.
What Locke has to say about the state of nature and the law
of nature is, in the main, not original, but a repetition of medieval
scholastic doctrines. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas says:
"Every law framed by man bears the character of a law exactly
to that extent to which it is derived from the law of nature. But if
on any point it is in conflict with the law of nature, it at once ceases
to be a law; it is a mere perversion of law."1
Throughout the Middle Ages, the law of nature was held to
condemn "usury/9 i.e. lending money at interest. Church property
was almost entirely in land, and landowners have always been
borrowers rather than lenders. But when Protestantism arose, its
support — especially the support of Calvinism — came chiefly from
the rich middle class, who were lenders rather than borrowers.
Accordingly first Calvin, then other Protestants, and finally the
Catholic Church, sanctioned "usury." Thus natural law came to
be differently conceived, but no one doubted there being such
a thing.
Many doctrines which survived the belief in natural law owe
their origin to it; for example, laissez-faire and the rights of man.
These doctrines are connected, and both have their origins in
puritanism. Two quotations given by Tawney will illustrate this.
A committee of the House of Commons in 1604 stated:
"All free subjects are born inheritable, as to their land, and also
as to the free exercise of their industry, in those trades whereto
they apply themselves and whereby they are to live."
And in 1656 Joseph Lee writes:
"It is an undeniable maxim that every one by the light of nature
and reason will do that which makes for his greatest advantage
The advancement of private persons will be the advantage of the
pubpc-"
Except for the words "by the light of nature and reason/' this
might have been written in the nineteenth century.
In Locke's theory of government, 1 repeat, there is little that
is original. In this Locke Asembles most of the men who have
won fame for their ideas. As a rule, the man who first thinks of
a new idea is so much ahead of his time that everyone thinks him
1 Quotrd by Tawney in Religion and iht Rut of Capitalism.
64*
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
silly, so that he remains obscure and is soon forgotten. Then,
gradually, the world becomes ready for the idea, and the man who
proclaims it at the fortunate moment gets all the credit. So it was,
for example, with Darwin ; poor Lord Monboddo was a laughing-
stock.
In regard to the state of nature, Locke was less original than
Hobbes, who regarded it as one in which there was war of all
against all, and life was nasty, brutish, and short. But Hobbes was
reputed an atheist. The view of the state of nature and of natural
law which Locke accepted from his predecessors cannot be freed
from its theological basis; where it survives without this, as in
much modern liberalism, it is destitute of clear logical foundation.
The belief in a happy "state of nature" in the remote past
is derived partly from the biblical narrative of the age of the
patriarchs, partly from the classical myth of the golden age. The
general belief in the badness of the remote past only came with
the doctrine of evolution.
The nearest thing to a definition of the state of nature to be found
in Locke is the following:
"Men living together according to reason, without a common
superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly
the state of nature.'*
This is not a description of the life of savages, but of an imagined
community of virtuous anarchists, who need no police or law-courts
because they always obey "reason," which is the same as "natural
law,*' which, in turn, consists of those laws of conduct that are held
to have a divine origin. (For example, "Thou shalt not kill" is part
of natural law, but the rule of the roads is not.)
Some further quotations will make Locke's meaning clearer.
"To understand political power right [he says], and derive it
from its original, we must consider what state men are naturally
in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and
dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within
the bounds of the law of nature ; without asking leave, or dependTSg
upon the will of any other man.
"A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction
is reciprocal, no one having more than toother ; there being nothing
more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank,
promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the
use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another
649
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
without subordination or subjection; unless the lord and master
of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one
above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appoint-
ment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
"But though this [the state of nature] be a state of liberty, yet
it is not a state of licence: though man in that state has an uncon-
trollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has
not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his
possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation
calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it,
which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches
all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health,
liberty, or possessions9'1 (for we are all God's property).2
It presently appears, however, that, where most men are in the
state of nature, there may nevertheless be some men who do not
live according to the law of nature, and that the law of nature
provides, up to a point, what may be done to resist such criminals.
In a state of nature, we are told, every man can defend himself and
what is his. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood
be shed" is part of the law of nature. I may even kill a thief while
he is engaged in stealing my property, and this right survives the
institution of government, although, where there is government,
if the thief gets away I must renounce private vengeance and
resort to the law.
The great objection to the state of nature is that, while it persists,
every man is the judge in his own cause, since he must rely upon
himself for the defence of his rights. For this evil, government is
the remedy, but this is not a natural remedy. The state of nature,
according to Locke, was evaded by a compact to create a govern-
ment. Not any compact ends the state of nature, but only
that of making one body politic. The various governments of
independent States are now in a state of nature towards each
The state of nature, we are told in a passage presumably directed
against Hobbes, is not the same as a state of war, but more nearly
its opposite. After explaining the right to kill a thief, on the ground
1 Cf. the Declaration of Independence.
1 "They are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to latt
during bit, not mother*! pleasure."
650
LOCKE'S POLITJCAL PHILOSOPHY
that the thief may be deemed to be making war upon me, Locke
says:
"And here we have the plain 'difference between the state of
nature and the state of war/ which, however some men have con-
founded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, goodwill, mutual
assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence
and mutual destruction are from one another. "
Perhaps the law of nature must be regarded as having a wider
scope than the state of nature, since the former deals with thieves
and murderers, while in the latter there are no such malefactors.
This, at least, suggests a way out of an apparent inconsistency in
Locke, consisting in his sometimes representing the state of nature
as one where everyone is virtuous, and at other times discussing
what may rightly be done in a state of nature to resist the aggres-
sions of wicked men.
Some parts of Locke's natural law are surprising. For example,
he says that captives in a just war are slaves by the law of nature.
He says also that by nature every man has a right to punish
attacks on himself or his property, even by death. He makes
no qualification, so that if I catch a person engaged in petty
pilfering I have, apparently, by the law of nature, a right to shoot
him.
Property is very prominent in Locke's political philosophy, and
is, according to him, the chief reason for the institution of civil
government:
"The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths,
and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of
their property; to which in the state of nature there are many
things wanting.0
The whole of this theory of the state of nature and natural law
is in one sense clear but in another very puzzling. It is dear what
Locke thought, but it is not clear how he can have thought it.
Locke's ethic, as we saw, is utilitarian, but in his consideration of
44 rights" he does not bring in utilitarian considerations. Son£t*qjgg
of this pervades the whole philosophy of law as taught by lawyers.
Legal rights can be defined: broadly speaking, a man has a legal
right when he can appeal to the taw to safeguard him against
injury. A man has in general a legal right to his property, but if
he has (say) an illicit store of cocaine, he has no legal remedy
against a man who steals it* But the lawgiver has to decide what
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
without subordination or subjection; unless the lord and master
of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one
above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appoint-
ment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
"But though this [the state of nature] be a state of liberty, yet
it is not a state of licence: though man in that state has an uncon-
trollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has
not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his
possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation
calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it,
which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches
all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health,
liberty, or possessions"1 (for we are all God's property).2
It presently appears, however, that, where most men are in the
state of nature, there may nevertheless be some men who do not
live according to the law of nature, and that the law of nature
provides, up to a point, what may be done to resist such criminals.
In a state of nature, we are told, every man can defend himself and
what is his. " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood
be shed" is part of the law of nature. I may even kill a thief while
he is engaged in stealing my property, and this right survives the
institution of government, although, where there is government,
if the thief gets away I must renounce private vengeance and
resort to the law.
The great objection to the state of nature is that, while it persists,
every man is the judge in his own cause, since he must rely upon
himself for the defence of his rights. For this evil, government is
the remedy, but this is not a natural remedy. The state of nature,
according to Locke, was evaded by a compact to create a govern-
ment. Not any compact ends the state of nature, but only
that of making one body politic. The various governments of
independent States are now in a state of nature towards each
The state of nature, we are told in a passage presumably directed
against Hobbes, is not the same as a state of war, but more nearly
its opposite. After explaining the right to kill a thief, on the ground
1 Cf. the Declaration of Independence.
• "They are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last
during his, not another's pleasure."
650
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
that the thief may be deemed to be making war upon me, Locke
says:
"And here we have the plain 'difference between the state of
nature and the state of war/ which, however some men have con-
founded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, goodwill, mutual
assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence
and mutual destruction are from one another."
Perhaps the law of nature must be regarded as having a wider
scope than the state of nature, since the former deals with thieves
and murderers, while in the latter there are no such malefactors.
This, at least, suggests a way out of an apparent inconsistency in
Locke, consisting in his sometimes representing the state of nature
as one where everyone is virtuous, and at other times discussing
what may rightly be done in a state of nature to resist the aggres-
sions of wicked men.
Some parts of Locke's natural law are surprising. For example,
he says that captives in a just war are slaves by the law of nature.
He says also that by nature every man has a right to punish
attacks on himself or his property, even by death. He makes
no qualification, so that if I catch a person engaged in petty
pilfering I have, apparently, by the law of nature, a right to shoot
him.
Property is very prominent in Locke's political philosophy, and
is, according to him, the chief reason for the institution of civil
government :
"The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths,
and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of
their property; to which in the state of nature there are many
things wanting/'
The whole of this theory of the state of nature and natural law
is in one sense clear but in another very puzzling. It is clear what
Locke thought, but it is not clear how he can have thought it.
Locke's ethic, as we saw, is utilitarian, but in his consideration of
"rights" he does not bring in utilitarian considerations. SonJtAJgg
of this pervades the whole philosophy of law as taught by lawyers.
Legal rights can be defined: broadly speaking, a man has a legal
right when he can appeal to the tow to safeguard him against
injury. A man has in general a legal right to his property, but if
he has (say) an illicit store of cocaine, he has no legal remedy
against a man who steals it But the lawgiver has to decide what
651
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
legal rights to create, and falls back naturally on the conception
of "natural" rights, as those which the law should secure.
I am attempting to go as far as is possible towards stating some-
thing like Locke's theory in untheological terms. If it is assumed
that ethics, and the classification of acts as "right" and "wrong/*
is logically prior to actual law, it becomes possible to restate the
theory in terms not involving mythical history. To arrive at the
law of nature, we may put the question in this way: in the absence
of law and government, what classes of acts by A against B justify
B in retaliating against A, and what sort of retaliation is justified
in different cases? It is generally held that no man can be blamed
for defending himself against a murderous assault, even, if neces-
sary, to the extent of killing the assailant. He may equally defend
his wife and children, or, indeed, any member of the general public.
In such cases, the existence of the law against murder becomes
irrelevant, if, as may easily happen, the man assaulted would be
dead before the aid of the police could be invoked; we have,
therefore, to fall back on "natural" right. A man also has a right
to defend his property, though opinions differ as to the amount
of injury he may justly inflict upon a thief.
In the relations between States, as Locke points out, "natural"
law is relevant. In what circumstances is war justified ? So long
as no international government exists, the answer to this question
is purely ethical, not legal; it must be answered in the same way
as it would be for an individual in a state of anarchy.
Legal theory will be based upon the view that the "rights" of
individuals should be protected by the State. That is to say, when
a man suffers the kind of injury which would justify retaliation
according to the principles of natural law, positive law should
enact that the retaliation shall be done by the State. If you see a
man making a murderous assault upon your brother, you have
a right to kill him, if you cannot otherwise save your brother. In
a state of nature—so, at least, Locke holds— if a man has succeeded
iijJpSTing your brother, you have a right to kill him. But where law
exists, you lose this right, which is taken over by the State. And
if you kill in self-defence or in defence of another, you will have
to prove to a law-court that this was the reason for the killing.
We may then identify "natural law" with moral rules in so
fir as they are independent of positive legal enactments. There
must be such rules if there is to be any distinction between
65*
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
good and bad laws. For Locke, the matter is simple, since
moral rules have been laid down by God, and are to be found in
the Bible. When this theological basis is removed, the matter
becomes more difficult. But so long as it is held that there is an
ethical distinction between right actions and wrong ones, we can
say: Natural law decides what actions would be ethically right, and
what wrong, in a community that had no government; and positive
law ought to be, as far as possible, guided and inspired by natural
law.
In its absolute form, the doctrine that an individual has certain
inalienable rights is incompatible with utilitarianism, i.e. with the
doctrine that right acts are those that do most to promote the
general happiness. But in order that a doctrine may be a suitable
basis for law, it is not necessary that it should be true in every
possible case, but only that it should be true in an overwhelming
majority of cases. We can all imagine cases in which murder
would be justifiable, but they are rare, and do not afford an argu-
ment against the illegality of murder. Similarly it may be — I am
not saying that it is— desirable, from a utilitarian point of view,
to reserve to each individual a certain sphere of personal liberty.
If so, the doctrine of the Rights of Man will be a suitable basis
for the appropriate laws, even though these rights be subject to
exceptions. A utilitarian will have to examine the doctrine, con-
sidered as a basis for laws, from the point of view of its practical
effects ; he cannot condemn it ab initio as contrary to his own ethic.
C. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
In the political speculation of the seventeenth century, there
were two main types of theory as to the origin of government. Of
one type we have had an example in Sir Robert Filmer: this type
maintained that God had bestowed power on certain persons, and
that these persons, or their heirs, constituted the legitimate govern-
ment, rebellion against which is not only treason, but itll^v.
This view was sanctioned by sentiments of immemorial antiquity!
in almost all early civilizations, the king is a sacred person. Kings,
naturally, considered it an admirable theory. Aristocracies had
motives for supporting it and motives for opposing it. In its favour
was the fact that it emphasized the hereditary principle, and that
it gave august support to resistance against the upstart merchant
653
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
class. Where the middle class was more feared or hated by the
aristocracy than the king was, these motives prevailed. Where the
contrary was the case, and especially where the aristocracy had
a chance of obtaining supreme power itself, it tended to oppose
the king, and therefore to reject theories of divine right.
The other main type of theory — of which Locke is a fepresen-
tative — maintained that civil government is the result of a contract,
and is an affair purely of this world, not something established by
divine authority. Some writers regarded the social contract as a
historical fact, others as a legal fiction; the important matter, for
all of them, was to find a terrestrial origin for governmental
authority. In fact, they could not think of any alternative to divine
right except the supposed contract. It was felt by all except rebels
that some reason must be found for obeying governments, and
it was not thought sufficient to say that for most people the
authority of government is convenient. Government must, in some
sense, have a right to exact obedience, and the right conferred
by a contract seemed the only alternative to a divine command.
Consequently the doctrine that government was instituted by a
contract was popular with practically all opponents of the divine
right of kings. There is a hint of this theory in 'lliomas Aquinas,
but the first serious development of it is to be found in Grotius.
The contract doctrine was capable of taking forms which justified
tyranny. Hobbes, for example, held that there was a contract
among the citizens to hand over all power to the chosen sovereign,
but the sovereign was not a part)' to the contract, and therefore
necessarily acquired unlimited authority. This theory, at first,
might have justified Cromwell's totalitarian State; after the Res-
toration, it justified Charles II. In Locke's form of the doctrine,
however, the government is a party to the contract, and can be
justly resisted if it fails to fulfil its part of the bargain. Locke's
doctrine is, in essence, more or less democratic, but the democratic
element is limited by the view (implied rather than expressed) that
thjfs' who have no property are not to be reckoned as citizens.
Let us now see just what Locke has to say eft our present topic.
There is first a definition of political power:
"Political power I take to be the right of making laws, with
penalty of death, and consequently aU less penalties for the regu-
lating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of
the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence
654
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for
the public good/'
Government, we are told, is a remedy for the inconveniences
that arise, in the state of nature, from the fact that, in that state,
every man is the judge in his own cause. But where the monarch
is a party to the dispute, this is no remedy, since the monarch is
both judge and plaintiff. These considerations lead to the view
that governments should not be absolute, and that the judiciary
should be independent of the executive. Such arguments had an
important future both in England and in America, but for the
moment we are not concerned with them.
By nature, Locke says, every man has the right to punish attacks
on himself or his property, even by death. There is political society
there, and there only, where men have surrendered this right to
the community or to the law.
Absolute monarchy is not a form of civil government, because
there is no neutral authority to decide disputes between the
monarch and a subject; in fact the monarch, in relation to his
subjects, is still in a state of nature. It is useless to hope that being
a king will make a naturally violent man virtuous.
"He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods
of America would not probably be much better in a throne, where
perhaps learning and religion shall be found out to justify all that
he shall do to his subjects, and the sword presently silence all those
that dare question it."
Absolute monarchy is as if men protected themselves against
pole-cats and foxes, "but are content, nay think it safety, to be
devoured by lions."
Civil society involves the rule of the majority, unless it is agreed
that a greater number shall be required. (As, for example, in the
United States, for a change in the Constitution or the ratification
of a treaty.) This sounds democratic, but it must be remembered
that Locke assumes the exclusion of women and the poor from
the rights of citizenship. ^,
"The beginning of politic society depends upon the conserSef
the individuals to join into and make one society." It is argued —
somewhat half-heartedly— that such consent must, at some time,
have actually taken place, though it is admitted that the origin
of government antedates history everywhere except among the
Jews.
655
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The civil compact which institutes government binds only those
who made it; the son must consent afresh to a compact made by
his father. (It is clear how this follows from Locke's principles,
but it is not very realistic. A young American who, on attaining
the age of twenty-one, announces "I refuse to be bound by the
contract which inaugurated the United States" will find himself
in difficulties.)
The power of the government by contract, we are told, never
extends beyond the common good. A moment ago I quoted a
sentence as to the powers of government, ending "and all this
only for the public good." It seems not to have occurred to Locke
to ask who was to be the judge of the common good. Obviously,
if the government is the judge it will always decide in its own
favour. Presumably Locke would say that the majority of the
citizens is to be the judge. But many questions have to be decided
too quickly for it to be possible jto ascertain the opinion of the
electorate; of these peace and war are perhaps the most important.
The only remedy in such cases is to allow to public opinion or
its representatives some power — such as impeachment — of sub-
sequently punishing executive officers for acts that are found to
have been unpopular. But often this is a very inadequate remedy.
I quoted previously a sentence which I must now quote again:
"The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths,
and putting themselves under government, is the preservation
of their property."
Consistently with this doctrine Locke declares that:
"The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of
his property without his own consent."
Still more surprising is the statement that, although military
commanders have power of life and death over their soldiers, they
have no power of taking money. (It follows that, in any army, it
would be wrong to punish minor breaches of discipline by fines,
but permissible to punish them by bodily injuty, such as flogging,
s the absurd lengths to which Locke is driven by his
ip of property.)
The question of taxation might be supposed to raise difficulties
for Locke, but he perceives npne. The expense of government, he
says, must be borne by the citizens, but with their consent, i.e.
with that of the majority. But why, one asks, should the consent
of the majority suffice? Every man's consent, we were told, is
656
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
necessary to justify the government in taking any part of his
property. I suppose his tacit consent to taxation in accordance
with majority decision is presumed to be involved in his citizen-
ship, which, in turn, is presumed to be voluntary. All this is, of
course, sometimes quite contrary to the facts. Most men have no*
effective liberty of choice as to the State to which they shall
belong, and none have liberty, nowadays, to belong to no State.
Suppose, for example, you are a pacifist, and disapprove of war.
Wherever you live, the government will take some of your pro-
perty for warlike purposes. With what justice can you be com-
pelled to submit to this? I can imagine many answers, but I do
not think any of them are consistent with Locke's principles.
He thrusts in the maxim of majority rule without adequate con-
sideration, and offers no transition to it from his individualistic
premisses, except the mythical social contract.
The social contract, in the sepse required, is mythical even
when, at some former period, there actually was a contract creating
the government in question. The United States is a case in point.
At the time when the Constitution was adopted, men had liberty
of choice. Even then, many voted against it, and were therefore
not parties to the contract. They could, of course, have left the
country, and by remaining were deemed to have become bound
by a contract to which they had not assented. But in practice it
is usually difficult to leave one's country. And in the case of men
born after the adoption of the Constitution their consent is even
more shadowy.
The question of the rights of the individual as against the
government is a very difficult one. It is too readily assumed by
democrats that, when the government represents the majority, it
has a right to coerce the minority. Up to a point, this must be
true, since coercion is of the essence of government. But the
divine right of majorities, if pressed too far, may become almost
as tyrannical as the divine right of kings. Locke says little on this
subject in his Essays on Government, but considers it at some teHgt^
in his Utters on Toleration, where he argues that no believer in
God should be penalized on account of his religious opinj
The theory that government was qpated by
course, pre-cvolutionary. Government, like i
cough, must have grown up gradually, though,
be introduced suddenly into new regions sudflfoAfc South Sea
657
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Islands. Before men had studied anthropology they had no idea
of the psychological mechanisms involved in the beginnings of
government, or of the fantastic reasons which lead men to adopt
institutions and customs that subsequently prove useful. But as a
legal fiction, to justify government, the theory of the social contract
has some measure of truth.
D. PROPERTY
From what has been said hitherto about Locke's views on
property, it might seem as though he were the champion of the
great capitalists against both their social superiors and their social
inferiors, but this would be only a half-truth. One finds in him,
side by side and unreconciled, doctrines which foreshadow those
of developed capitalism and doctrines which adumbrate a more
nearly socialistic outlook. It is easy to misrepresent him by one-
sided quotations, on this topic as on most others.
I will put down, in the order in which they occur, Locke's
principal dicta on the subject of property.
We are told first that every man has private property in the
produce of his own labour— or, at least, should have. In pre-
industrial days this maxim was not so unrealistic as it has since
become. Urban production was mainly by handicraftsmen who
owned their tools and sold their produce. As for agricultural pro-
duction, it was held by the school to which Locke belonged that
peasant proprietorship would be the best system. He states that
a man may own as much land as he can till, but not more. Me
seems blandly unaware that, in all the countries of Europe, the
realization of this programme would be hardly possible without
a bloody revolution. Everywhere the bulk of agricultural land
belonged to aristocrats, who exacted from the farmers either a
fixed proportion of the produce (often a half), or a rent which
could be varied from time to time. The former system prevailed
j^ffance and Italy, the latter in England. Farther East, in Russia
and Prussia, the workers were serfs, who worked for the land*
owner and had virtually no rights. The old system was ended in
France by the Frcpch Revolution, in northern Italy and western
Germany by the conquests of the French revolutionary armies.
Serfdom was abolished in Prussia as a result of defeat by Napoleon,
and in Russia as a result of defeat in the Crimean War. But in
658
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
both countries the aristocrats retained their landed estates. In
East Prussia, this system, though drastically controlled by the
Nazis, survived till the present day; in Russia and what are
now Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, the aristocrats were dis-
possessed by the Russian Revolution. In Hungary and Poland
they survived ; in Eastern Poland they were "liquidated" by the
Soviet Government in 1940. The Soviet Government, however,
has done everything in its power to substitute collective fanning
rather than peasant proprietorship throughout Russia.
In England the development has been more complex. In Locke's
day, the position of the rural labourer was mitigated by the
existence of commons, on which he had important rights, which
enabled him to raise a considerable part of his food himself.
This system was a survival from the Middle Ages, and was
viewed with disapproval by modern-minded men, who pointed
out that from the point of view of production it was wasteful.
Accordingly, there was a movement for enclosure of commons,
which began under Henry VIII and continued under Cromwell,
but did not become strong until about 1750. From that time
onward, for about ninety years, one common after another was
enclosed and handed over to the local landowners. Each enclosure
required an Act of Parliament, and the aristocrats who controlled
both Houses of Parliament ruthlessly used their legislative power
to enrich themselves, while thrusting agricultural labourers down
to the verge of starvation. Gradually, owing to the growth of
industry, the position of agricultural labourers improved, since
otherwise they could not be prevented from migrating to the
towns. At present, as a result of the taxation introduced by Lloyd
George, the aristocrats have been compelled to part with most of
their rural property. But those who also own urban or industrial
property have been able to hang on to their estates. There has
been no sudden revolution, but a gradual transition which is
still in progress. At present, those aristocrats who are still rich
owe their wealth to urban or industrial property.
This long development may be regarded, except in Russia, as
in accordance with Locke's principles. The odd thing is that he
could announce doctrines requiring 90 much revolution before
they could be put into effect, and yet show no sign that he thought
the system existing in his day unjust, or that he was aware of its
being different from the system that be advocated.
659
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The labour theory of value — i.e. the doctrine that the value of
a product depends upon the labour expended upon it — which
some attribute to Karl Marx and others to Ricardo, is to be found
in Locke, and was suggested to him by a line of predecessors
stretching back to Aquinas. As Tawney says, summarizing
scholastic doctrine:
"The essence of the argument was that payment may properly
be demanded by the craftsmen who make the goods, or by the
merchants who transport them, for both labour in their vocation
and serve the common need. The unpardonable sin is that of the
speculator or middleman, who snatches private gain by the
exploitation of public necessities. The true descendant of the
doctrines of Aquinas is the labour theory of value. The last of the
schoolmen was Karl Marx/'
The labour theory of value has two aspects, one ethical, the
other economic. That is to say, it may assert that the value of a
product ought to be proportional to the labour expended on it, or
that in fact the labour regulates the price. The latter doctrine is
only approximately true, as Locke recognizes. Nine tenths of
value, he says, is due to labour; but as to the other tenth he says
nothing. It is labour, he says, that puts the difference of value on
everything. He instances land in America occupied by Indians,
which has almost no value because the Indians do not cultivate
it. He does not seem to realize that land may acquire value as soon
as people are willing to work on it, and before they have actually
done so. If you own a piece of desert land on which somebody
else finds oil, you can sell it for a good price without doing any
work on it. As was natural in his day, he does not think of such
cases, but only of agriculture. Peasant proprietorship, which he
favours, is inapplicable to such things as large-scale mining,
which require expensive apparatus and many workers.
The principle that a man has a right to the produce of his own
labour is useless in an industrial civilization. Suppose you are
gptfrioyed in one operation in the manufacture of Ford cars, how
is anyone to estimate what proportion of the total output is due
to your labour? Or suppose you are employed by a railway com-
pany in the transport of goods, who can decide what share you
shall be deemed to have in the production of the goods? Such
considerations have led those who wish to prevent the exploitation
of labour to abandon the principle of the right to your own produce
660
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
in favour of more socialistic methods of organizing production and
distribution.
The labour theory of value has usually been advocated from
hostility to some class regarded as predatory. The Schoolmen, in
so far as they held it, did so from opposition to usurers, who
were mostly Jews. Ricardo held it in opposition to landowners,
Marx to capitalists. But Locke seems to have held it in a vacuum
without hostility to any class. His only hostility is to monarchs,
but this is unconnected with his views on value.
Some of Locke's opinions are so odd that I cannot see how to
make them sound sensible. He says that a man must not have so
many plums that they are bound to go bad before he and his family
can eat them ; but he may have as much gold and as many diamonds
as he can lawfully get, because gold and diamonds do not go bad.
It does not occur to him that the man who has the plums might
sell them before they go bad.
He makes a great deal of the imperishable character of the
precious metals, which, he says, are the source of money and
inequality of fortune. He seems, in an abstract and academic way,
to regret economic inequality, but he certainly does not think
that it would be wise to take such measures as might prevent it.
No doubt he was impressed, as all the men of his time were, by
the gains to civilization that were due to rich men, chiefly as
patrons of art and letters. The same attitude exists in modern
America, where science and art are largely dependent upon the
benefactions of the very rich. To some extent, civilization is
furthered by social injustice. This fact is the basis of what is
most respectable in conservatism.
E. CHECKS AND BALANCES
The doctrine that the legislative, executive, and judicial func-
tions of government should be kept separate is characteristic of
liberalism; it arose in England in the course of resistance tfrtfce
Stuarts, and is clearly formulated by Locke, at least as regards
the legislature and the executive. The legislative and executive
must be separate, he says, to prevent abuse of power. It must, of
course, be understood that when he speaks of the legislature he
means Parliament, and when he speaks of the executive he means
the king; at least this is what he means emotionally, whatever he
661
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
may logically intend to mean. Accordingly he thinks of
the legislature as virtuous, while the executive is usually
wicked.
The legislative, he says, must be supreme, except that it must
be removable by the community. It is implied that, like the
English House of Commons, the legislative is to be elected from
time to time by popular vote. The condition that the legislative
is to be removable by the people, if taken seriously, condemns the
pan allowed by the British Constitution in Locke's day to King
and Lords as part of the legislative power.
In all well-framed governments, Locke says, the legislative and
executive are separate. The question therefore arises: what is to
be done when they conflict ? If the executive fails to summon the
legislative at the proper times, we are told, the executive is at
war with the people, and may be removed by force. This is
obviously a view suggested by what happened under Charles I.
From 1628 to 1640 he tried to govern without Parliament; this
sort of thing, Locke feels, must be prevented, by civil war if
necessary.
"Force," he says, "is to be opposed to nothing but unjust and
unlawful force." This principle is useless in practice unless there
exists some body with the legal right to pronounce when force is
"unjust and unlawful." Charles I's attempt to collect ship-money
without the consent of Parliament was declared by his opponents
to be "unjust and unlawful," and by him to be just and lawful.
Only the military issue of the Civil War proved that his inter-
pretation of the Constitution was the wrong one. The same thing
happened in the American Civil War. Had States the right to
secede? No one knew, and only the victory of the North decided
the legal question. The belief, which one finds in Ixickc and in
most writers of his time, that any honest man can know what is
just and lawful, is one that does not allow for the strength of party
bias on both sides, or for the difficulty of establishing a tribunal,
u4iAher outwardly or in men's consciences, that shall be capable
of pronouncing authoritatively on vexed questions. In practice,
such questions, if sufficiently important, are decided simply by
power, not by justice and law.
To some degree, though in veiled language, Locke recognizes
this fact In a dispute between legislative and executive, he says
there is, in certain cases, no judge under Heaven. Since Heaven
662
LOCKE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
does not make explicit pronouncements, this means, in effect,
that a decision can only be reached by fighting, since it is assumed
that Heaven will give the victory to the better cause. Some
such view is essential to any doctrine that divides governmental
power. Where such a doctrine is embodied in the Constitu-
tion, the only way to avoid occasional civil war is to practise
compromise and common sense. But compromise and common
sense are habits of mind, and cannot be embodied in a written
constitution.
It is surprising that Locke says nothing about the judiciary,
although this was a burning question in his day. Until the Revo-
lution, judges could at any moment be dismissed by the king;
consequently they condemned his enemies and acquitted his
friends. After the Revolution, they were made irremovable except
by an Address from both Houses of Parliament. It was thought
that this would cause their decisions to be guided by the law; in
fact, in cases involving party spirit, it has merely substituted
the judge's prejudice for the king's. However that may be, wher-
ever the principle of checks and balances prevailed the judiciary
became a third independent branch of government alongside of
the legislative and executive. The most noteworthy example is
the United States' Supreme Court.
The history of the doctrine of checks and balances has been
interesting.
In England, the country of its origin, it was intended to limit
the power of the king, who, until the Revolution, had complete
control of the executive. Gradually, however, the executive became
dependent upon Parliament, since it was impossible for a ministry
to carry on without a majority in the House of Commons. The
executive thus became, in effect, a committee chosen in fact,
though not in form, by Parliament, with the result that legislative
and executive powers became gradually less and less separate.
During the last fifty years or so, a further development took place,
owing to the Prime Minister's power of dissolution and tt the
increasing strictness of party discipline. The majority in Parlia-
ment now decides which party shall be in power, but, having
decided that, it cannot in practice decide anything else. Proposed
legislation is hardly ever enacted unless introduced by govern-
ment. Thus the government is both legislative and executive,
and its power is only limited by the need of occasional general
663
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
elections. This system is, of course, totally contrary to Locke's
principles.
In France, where the doctrine was preached with great force
by Montesquieu, it was held by the more moderate parties in the
French Revolution, but was swept into temporary oblivion by the
victory of the Jacobins. Napoleon naturally had no use for it, but
it was revived at the Restoration, to disappear again with the rise
of Napoleon III. It was again revived in 1871, and led to the
adoption of a constitution in which the President had very little
power and the government could not dissolve the Chambers.
The result was to give great power to the Chamber of Deputies,
both as against the government and as against the electorate.
There was more division of powers than in modern England, but
less than there should be on Locke's principles, since the legis-
lature overshadowed the executive. What the French Constitution
will be after the present war it is impossible to foresee.
The country where Locke's principle of the division of powers
has found its fullest application is the United States, where the
President and Congress are wholly independent of each other,
and the Supreme Court is independent of both. Inadvertently, the
Constitution made the Supreme Court a branch of the legislature,
since nothing is a law if the Supreme Court says it is not. The
fact that its powers are nominally only interpretative in reality
increases those powers, since it makes it difficult to criticize what
are supposed to be purely legal decisions. It says a very great
deal for the political sagacity of Americans that this Constitution
has only once led to armed conflict.
Locke's political philosophy was, on the whole, adequate and
useful until the industrial revolution. Since then, it has been
increasingly unable to tackle the important problems. The power
of property, as embodied in vast corporations, grew beyond any-
thing imagined by Locke. The necessary functions of the State—
for example, in education — increased enormously. Nationalism
bjoufent about an alliance, sometimes an amalgamation, of econo-
mic and political power, making war the principal means of
competition. The single separate citizen has no longer the power
and independence that he had in Locke's speculations. Our age
is one of organization, and its conflicts are between organizations,
not between separate individuals. The state of nature, as Locke
says, still exists as between States. A new international Social
664
LOCKERS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Contract is necessary before we can enjoy the promised benefits
of government. When once an international government has been
created, much of Locke's political philosophy will again become
applicable, though not the part of it that deals with private
property.
66 ^
Chapter XV
LOCKE'S INFLUENCE
FROM the time of Locke down to the present day, there have
been in Europe two main types of philosophy, and one of
these owes both its doctrines and its method to Locke, while
the other was derived first from Descartes and then from Kant.
Kant himself thought that he had made a synthesis of the philo-
sophy derived from Descartes and that derived from Locke ; but
this cannot be admitted, at least from a historical point of view,
for the followers of Kant were in the Cartesian, not the Lockean,
tradition. The heirs of Locke are, first, Berkeley and Hume ; second,
those of the French philosophes who did not belong to the school
of Rousseau; third, Bentham and the philosophical Radicals;
fourth, with important accretions from Continental philosophy,
Marx and his disciples. But Marx's system is eclectic, and any
simple statement about it is almost sure to be false ; I will, therefore,
leave him on one side until I come to consider him in detail.
In Locke's own day, his chief philosophical opponents were the
Cartesians and Leibniz. Quite illogically, the victory of Locke's
philosophy in England and France was largely due to the prestige
of Newton. Descartes' authority as a philosopher was enhanced,
in his own day, by his work in mathematics and natural philo-
sophy. But his doctrine of vortices was definitely inferior to
Newton's law of gravitation as an explanation of the solar system.
The victory of the Newtonian cosmogony diminished men's
respect for Descartes and increased their respect for England.
Both these causes inclined men favourably towards Locke. In
eighteenth-century France, where the intellectuals were in
rebellion against an antiquated, corrupt, and effete despotism,
they regarded England as the home of freedom, and were pre-
disposed in favour of Locke's philosophy by his political doctrines.
In the last times before the Revolution, Locke's influence in
France was reinforced bgr that of Hume, who lived for a time in
France and was personally-acquainted with many of the leading
tavants.
The diief transmitter of English influence to France was
Voltaire.
666
LOCKE'S INFLUENCE
In England, the philosophical followers of Locke until the
French Revolution, took no interest in his political doctrines.
Berkeley was a bishop not much interested in politics; Hume was
a Tory who followed the lead of Bolingbroke. England was
politically quiescent in their time, and a philosopher could be
content to theorize without troubling himself about the state of
the world. The French Revolution changed this, and forced the
best minds into opposition to the status quo. Nevertheless, the
tradition in pare philosophy remained unbroken. Shelley's
Necessity of Atheism, for which he was expelled from Oxford, is
full of Locke's influence.1
Until the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in 1781,
it might have seemed as if the older philosophical tradition of
Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were being definitely overcome
by the newer empirical method. This newer method, however,
had never prevailed in German universities, and after 1792 it was
held responsible for the horrors of the Revolution. Recanting
revolutionaries such as Coleridge found in Kant an intellectual
support for their opposition to French atheism. The Germans, in
their resistance to the French, were glad to have a German
philosophy to uphold them. Even the French, after the fall of
Napoleon, were glad of any weapon against Jacobinism. All these
factors favoured Kant.
Kant, like Darwin, gave rise to a movement which he would
have detested. Kant was a liberal, a democrat, a pacifist, but those
who professed to develop his philosophy were none of these things.
Or, if they still called themselves Liberals, they were Liberals of
a new species. Since Rousseau and Kant, there have been two
schools of liberalism, which may be distinguished as the hard-
headed and the soft-hearted. The hard-headed developed, through
Bent ham, Ricardo, and Marx, by logical stages into Stalin; the
soft-hearted, by other logical stages, through Fichte, Byron,
Carlylc, and Nietzsche, into Hitler. This statement, of course, is
too schcmat c to be quite true, but it may serve as a map*and a
mnemonic. The stages in the evolution of ideas have had almost
the quality of the Hegelian dialectic: doctrines have developed,
by steps that each seem natural, into their opposites. But the
1 Take, e.g., Shelley's dictum; "When a proposition is offered to the
mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which
it is composed."
667
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
developments have not been due solely to the inherent movement
of ideas; they have been governed, throughout, by external cir-
cumstances and the reflection of these circumstances in human
emotions. That this is the case may be made evident by one
outstanding fact: that the ideas of liberalism have undergone no
part of this development in America, where they remain to this
day as in Locke.
Leaving politics on one side, let us examine the differences
between the two schools of philosophy, which may be broadly
distinguished as the Continental and the British respectively.
There is first of all a difference of method. British philosophy is
more detailed and piecemeal than that of the Continent ; when it
allows itself some general principle, it sets to work to prove it
inductively by examining its various applications. Thus Hume,
after announcing that there is no idea without an antecedent im-
pression, immediately proceeds to consider the following objec-
tion: suppose you are seeing two shades of colour which are
similar but not identical, and suppose you have never seen a shade
of colour intermediate between the two, can you, nevertheless,
imagine such a shade? He does not decide the question, and
considers that a decision adverse to his general principle would
not be fatal to him, because his principle is not logical but
empirical. When — to take a contrast — Leibniz wants to establish
his monadology, he argues, roughly, as follows: Whatever is
complex must be composed of simple parts ; what is simple cannot
be extended; therefore everything is composed of parts having
no extension. But what is not extended is not matter. Therefore
the ultimate constituents of things are not material, and, if not
material, then mental. Consequently a table is really a colony of
souls.
The difference of method, here, may be characterized as follows:
In Locke or Hume, a comparatively modest conclusion is drawn
from a broad survey of many facts, whereas in Leibniz a vast
edifice of deduction is pyramided upon a pin-point of logical
principle. In Leibniz, if the principle is completely true and the
deductions are entirely valid, all is well; but the structure is
unstable, and the slightest flaw anywhere brings it down in ruins.
In Locke or Hume, on the contrary, the base of the pyramid is
on the solid ground of observed fact, and the pyramid tapers
upward, not downward; consequently the equilibrium is stable,
668
LOCKE'S INFLUENCE
and a flaw here or there can be rectified without total disaster.
This difference of method survived Kant's attempt to incorporate
something of the empirical philosophy: from Descartes to Hegel
on the one side, and from Locke to John Stuart Mill on the other,
it remains unvarying.
The difference in method is connected with various other
differences. Let us take first metaphysics.
Descartes offered metaphysical proofs of the existence of God,
of which the most important had been invented in the eleventh
century by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. Spinoza had
a pantheistic God, who seemed to the orthodox to be no God at
all; however that may be, Spinoza's arguments were essentially
metaphysical, and are traceable (though he may not have realized
this) to the doctrine that every proposition must have a subject
and a predicate. Leibniz's metaphysics had the same source.
In Locke, the philosophical direction that he inaugurated is
not yet fully developed; he accepts as valid Descartes' arguments
as to the existence of God. Berkeley invented a wholly new argu-
ment; but Hume — in whom the new philosophy comes to com-
pletion— rejected metaphysics entirely, and held that nothing can
be discovered by reasoning on the subjects with which metaphysics
is concerned. This view persisted in the empirical school, while
the opposite view, somewhat modified, persisted in Kant and his
disciples.
In ethics, there is a similar division between the two schools.
Locke, as we saw, believed pleasure to be the good, and this was
the prevalent view among empiricists throughout the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Their opponents, on the contrary,
despised pleasure as ignoble, and had various systems of ethics
which seemed more exalted. Hobbes valued power, and Spinoza,
up to a point, agreed until Hobbes. There are in Spinoza two
unreconciled views on ethics, one that of Hobbes, the other that
the good consists in mystic union with God. Leibniz made no
important contribution to ethics, but Kant made ethics supreme,
and derived his metaphysics from ethical premisses. Kant's ethic
is important, because it is anti-utilitarian, a priori, and what is
called "noble/1 •
Kant says that if you are kind to your brother because you are
fond of him, you have no moral merit: an act only has moral merit
when it is performed because the moral law enjoins it. Although
669
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
pleasure is not the good, it is nevertheless unjust — so Kant
maintains— that the virtuous should suffer. Since this often
happens in this world, there must be another world where they
are rewarded after death, and there must be a God to secure
justice in the life hereafter. He rejects all the old metaphysical
arguments for God and immortality, but considers his new ethical
argument irrefutable.
Kant himself was a man whose outlook on practical affairs was
kindly and humanitarian, but the same cannot be said of most of
those who rejected happiness as the good. The sort of ethic that
is called "noble" is less associated with attempts to improve the
world than is the more mundane view that we should seek to
make men happier. This is not surprising. Contempt for happiness
is easier when the happiness is other people's than when it is our
own. Usually the substitute for happiness is some form of heroism.
This affords unconscious outlets for the impulse to power, and
abundant excuses for cruelty. Or, again, what is valued may be
strong emotion; this was the case with the romantics. This led
to a toleration of such passions as hatred and revenge; Byron's
heroes are typical, and are never persons of exemplary behaviour.
The men who did most to promote human happiness were — as
might have been expected — those who thought happiness im-
portant, not those who despised it in comparison with something
more "sublime." Moreover, a man's ethic usually reflects his
character, and benevolence leads to a desire for the general
happiness. Thus the men who thought happiness the end of life
tended to be the more benevolent, while those who proposed
other ends were often dominated, unconsciously, by cruelty or
love of power.
These ethical differences are associated, usually though not
invariably, with differences in politics. Locke, as we saw, is
tentative in his beliefs, not at all authoritarian, and willing to
leave every question to be decided by free discussion. The result,
both'm his case and in that of his followers, was a belief in reform,
but of a gradual sort. Since their systems of thought were piece-
meal, and the result of separate investigations of many different
questions, their political vi* ws tended naturally to have the same
character. They fought shy of large programmes all cut out of
one block, and preferred to consider each question on its merits.
In politics, as in philosophy, they were tentative and experi-
670
LOCKE'S INFLUENCE
mental. Their opponents, on the other hand, who thought they
could "grasp this sorry scheme of things entire/' were much
more willing to "shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to
the heart's desire." They might do this as revolutionaries, or as
men who wished to increase the authority of the powers that be;
in either case, they did not shrink from violence in pursuit of
vast objectives, and they condemned love of peace as ignoble.
The great political defect of Locke and his disciples, from a
modern point of view, was their worship of property. But those
who criticized them on this account often did so in the interest of
classes that were more harmful than the capitalists, such as
monarchs, aristocrats, and militarists. The aristocratic landowner,
whose income comes to him without effort and in accordance
with immemorial custom, does not think of himself as a money
grubber, and is not so thought of by men who do not look below
the picturesque surface. The business man, on the contrary, is
engaged in the conscious pursuit of wealth, and while his activities
were more or less novel they roused a resentment not felt towards
the gentlemanly exactions of the landowner. That is to say, this
was the case with middle-class writers and those who read them;
it was not the case with the peasants, as appeared in the French
and Russian Revolutions. But peasants are inarticulate.
Most of the opponents of Locke's school had an admiration for
war, as being heroic and involving a contempt for comfort and ease.
Those who adopted a utilitarian ethic, on the contrary, tended to
regard most wars as folly. This, again, at least in the nineteenth
century, brought them into alliance with the capitalists, who
disliked wars because they interfered with trade. The capitalists'
motive was, of course, pure self-interest, but it led to views more
consonant with the general interest than those of militarists and
their literary supporters. The attitude of capitalists to war, it is
true, has fluctuated. England's wars of the eighteenth century,
except the American war, were on the whole profitable, and were
supported by business men ; but throughout the nineteenth century
until its last years, they favoured peace. In modern times, big
business, everywhere, has come into such intimate relations with
the national State that the situation i» greatly changed. But even
now, both in England and in America, big business an the whole
dislikes war.
Enlightened self-interest is, of course, not the loftiest of motives,
671
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
but those who decry it often substitute, by accident or design,
motives which are much worse, such as hatred, envy, and love
of power. On the whole, the school which owed its origin to
Locke, and which preached enlightened self-interest, did more to
increase human happiness, and less to increase human misery,
than was done by the schools which despised it in the name of
heroism and self-sacrifice. I do not forget the horrors of early
industrialism, but these, after all, were mitigated within the
system. And I set against them Russian sertdom, the evils of war
and its aftermath of fear and hatred, and the inevitable obscu-
rantism of those who attempt to preserve ancient systems when
they have lost their vitality.
672
Chapter XVI
BERKELEY
GEORGE BERKELEY (1685-1753) is important in philo-
sophy through his denial of the existence of matter — a
denial which he supported by a number of ingenious argu-
ments. He maintained that material objects only exist through
being perceived. To the objection that, in that case, a tree, for
instance, would cease to exist if no one was looking at it, he
replied that God always perceives everything; if there were no
God, what we take to be material objects would have a jerky life,
suddenly leaping into being when we look at them; but as it is,
owing to God's perceptions, trees and rocks and stones have an
existence as continuous as common sense supposes. This is, in
his opinion, a weighty argument for the existence of God. A
limerick by Ronald Knox, with a reply, sets forth Berkeley's
theory of material objects:
There was a young man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
REPLY
Dear Sir:
Your astonishment's odd:
/ am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully \
GOD.
Berkeley was an Irishman, and became a Fellow of Trinity
College, Dublin, at the age of twenty-two. He was presented at
court by Swift, and Swift's Vanessa left him half her property.
He formed a scheme for a college in the Bermudas, with a view
to which he went to America; but after spending three years
Hut tffy of I*'***** rkUwpky 673 V*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
(1728-31) in Rhode Island, he came home and relinquished the
project. He was the author of the well-known line:
Westward the course of empire takes its way,
on account of which the town of Berkeley in California was called
after him. In 1734 he became Bishop of Cloyne. In later life he
abandoned philosophy for tar-water, to which he attributed mar-
vellous medicinal properties. It was concerning tar-water that he
wrote: "These are the cups that cheer, but do not inebriate" —
a sentiment more familiar as subsequently applied by Cowper
to tea.
All his best work was done while he was still quite young: A
New Theory of Vision in 1709, The Principles of Human Knowledge
in 1710, The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous in 1713. His writings
after the age of twenty-eight were of less importance. He is a
very attractive writer, with a charming style.
His argument against matter is most persuasively set forth in
The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. Of these dialogues I propose
to consider only the first and the very beginning of the second,
since everything that is said after that seems to me of minor im-
portance. In the portion of the work that I shall consider, Berkeley
advances valid arguments in favour of a certain important con-
clusion, though not quite in favour of the conclusion that he
thinks he is proving. He thinks he is proving that all reality is
mental; what he is proving is that we perceive qualities, not
things, and that qualities are relative to the percipient.
I shall begin with an uncritical account of what seems to me
important in the Dialogues; I shall then embark upon criticism;
and finally I shall state the problems concerned as they appear
tome.
The characters in the Dialogues are two: Hylas, who stands for
scientifically educated common sense; and Philonous, who is
Berkeley.
After a few amiable remarks, Hylas says that he has heard
strange reports of the opinions of Philonous, to the effect that he
does not believe in material substance. "Can anything," he
exclaims, "be more fantastical, more repugnant to Common Sense,
or a more manifest piece of Scepticism, than to believe there is
no such thing as matter ?" Philonous replies that he does not
deny the reality of sensible things, i.e. of what is perceived imme-
674
BERKELEY
diately by the senses, but that we do not see the causes of colours
or hear the causes of sounds. Both agree that the senses make
no inferences. Philonous points out that by sight we perceive
only light, colour, and figure; by hearing, only sounds; and so
on. Consequently, apart from sensible qualities there is nothing
sensible, and sensible things are nothing but sensible qualities
or combinations of sensible qualities.
Philonous now sets to work to prove that "the reality of sensible
things consists in being perceived,9' as against the opinion of Hylas,
that "to exist is one thing, and to be perceived is another.'9 That
sense-data are mental is a thesis which Philonous supports by a
detailed examination of the various senses. He begins with heat
and cold. Great heat, he says, is a pain, and must be in a mind.
Therefore heat is mental ; and a similar argument applies to cold.
This is reinforced by the famous argument about the lukewarm
water. When one of your hands is hot and the other cold, you put
both into lukewarm water, which feels cold to one hand and hot
to the other; but the water cannot be at once hot and cold. This
finishes Hylas, who acknowledges that "heat and cold are only
sensations existing in our minds." But he points out hopefully
that other sensible qualities remain.
Philonous next takes up tastes. He points out that a sweet taste
is a pleasure and a bitter taste is a pain, and that pleasure and pain
are mental. The same argument applies to odours, since they are
pleasant or unpleasant.
Hylas makes a vigorous effort to rescue sound, which, he says,
is motion in air, as may be seen from the fact that there are no
sounds in a vacuum. We must, he says, "distinguish between
sound as it is perceived by us, and as it is in itself; or between the
sound which we immediately perceive and that which exists
without us." Philonous points out that what Hylas calls "real"
sound, being a movement, might possibly be seen or felt, but can
certainly not be heard; therefore it is not sound as we know it
in perception. As to this, Hylas now concedes that "souncls too
have no real being without the mind."
They now come to colours, and here Hylas begins confidently:
"Pardon me: the case of colours is yery different. Can anything
be plainer than that we see them on the objects?" Substances
existing without the mind, he maintains, have the colours we see
on them. But Philonous has no difficulty in disposing of this view.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
He begins with the sunset clouds, which are red and golden, and
points out that a cloud, when you are close to it, has no such
colours. He goes on to the difference made by a microscope, and
to the yellowness of everything to a man who has jaundice. And
very small insects, he says, must be able to see much smaller
objects than we can see. Hylas thereupon says that colour is not
in the objects, but in the light ; it is, he says, a thin fluid substance.
Philonous points out, as in the case of sound, that, according to
Hylas, "real" colours are something different from the red and
blue that we see, and that this won't do.
Hereupon Hylas gives way about all secondary qualities, but
continues to say that primary qualities, notably figure and motion,
are inherent in external unthinking substances. To this Philonous
replies that things look big when we are near them and small
when we are far off, and that a movement may seem quick to one
man and slow to another.
At this point Hylas attempts a new departure. He made a
mistake, he says, in not distinguishing the object from the sensation ;
the act of perceiving he admits to be mental, but not what is
perceived; colours, for example, "have a real existence without
the mind, in some unthinking substance." To this Philonous
replies: "That any immediate object of the senses — that is, any
idea or combination of ideas— should exist in an unthinking sub-
stance,or exterior to J// minds, is in itself an evident contradiction."
It will be observed that, at this point, the argument becomes
logical and is no longer empirical. A few pages later, Phiionous
says: "Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea; and can
any idea exist out of the mind ?"
After a metaphysical discussion of substance, Hylas returns to
the discussion of visual sensations, with the argument that he
sees things at a distance. To this Philonous replies that this is
equally true of things seen in dreams, which everyone admits to
be mental; further, that distance is not perceived by sight, but
Judged as the result of experience, and that, to a man born blind
"but now for the first time able to see, visual objects would not
appear distant.
At the beginning of theasecond Dialogue, Hylas urges that
certain traces in the brain are the causes of sensations, but Philo-
nous retorts that "the brain, being a sensible thing, exists only
in the mind."
676
BERKELEY
The remainder of the Dialogues is less interesting, and need
not be considered.
Let us now make a critical analysis of Berkeley's contentions.
Berkeley's argument consists of two parts. On the one hand, he
argues that we do not perceive material things, but only colours,
sounds, etc., and that these are "mental" or "in the mind." His
reasoning is completely cogent as to the first point, but as to the
second it suffers from the absence of any definition of the word
"mental." He relies, in fact, upon the received view that every-
thing must be either material or mental, and that nothing is both.
When he says that we perceive qualities, not "things" or
"material substances," and that there is no reason to suppose
that the different qualities which common sense regards as all
belonging to one "thing" inhere in a substance distinct from each
and all of them, his reasoning may be accepted. But when he goes
on to say that sensible qualities — including primary qualities —
are "mental," the arguments are of very different kinds, and of
very different degrees of validity. There are some attempting to
prove logical necessity, while others are more empirical. Let us
take the former first.
Philonous says: "Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea:
and can any idea exist out of the mind ?" This would require a long
discussion of the word "idea." If it were held that thought and
perception consist of a relation between subject and object, it
would be possible to identify the mind with the subject, and to
maintain that there is nothing "in" the mind, but only objects
"before" it. Berkeley discusses the view that we must distinguish
the act of perceiving from the object perceived, and that the former
is mental while the latter is not. His argument against this view is
obscure, and necessarily so, since, for one who believes in mental
substance, as Berkeley does, there is no valid means of refuting it.
He says: "That any immediate object of the senses should exist
in an unthinking substance, or exterior to all minds, is ip itself
an evident contradiction." There is here a fallacy, analogous to,
the following: "It is impossible for a nephew to exist without an
uncle; now Mr. A is a nephew; therefore it is logically necessary
for Mr. A to have an uncle." It is, *>f course, logically necessary
given that Mr. A is a nephew, but not from anything to be dis-
covered by analysis of Mr. A. So, if something is an object of the
senses, some mind is concerned with it; but it does not follow
67?
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
that the same thing could not have existed without being an
object of the senses.
There is a somewhat analogous fallacy as regards what is con-
ceived Hylas maintains that he can conceive a house which no
one perceives, and which is not in any mind. Philonous retorts
that whatever Hylas conceives is in his mind, so that the supposed
house is, after all, mental. Hylas should have answered: "I do
not mean that I have in mind the image of a house ; when I say
that I can conceive a house which no one perceives, what I really
mean is that I can understand the proposition 'there is a house
which no one perceives,' or, better still, 'there is a house which
no one either perceives or conceives.' " This proposition is com-
posed entirely of intelligible words, and the words are correctly
put together. Whether the proposition is true or false, I do not
know; but I am sure that it cannot be shown to be self-contra-
dictory. Some closely similar propositions can be proved. For
instance: the number of possible multiplications of two integers
is infinite, therefore there are some that have never been thought
of. Berkeley's argument, if valid, would prove that this is
impossible.
The fallacy involved is a very common one. We can, by means
of concepts drawn from experience, construct statements about
classes some or all of whose members are not experienced. Take
some perfectly ordinary concept, say "pebble" ; this is an empirical
concept derived from perception. But it does not follow that all
pebbles are perceived, unless we include the fact of being per-
ceived in our definition of "pebble." Unless we do this, the
concept "unperceived pebble" is logically unobjectionable, in spite
of the fact that it is logically impossible to perceive an instance
of it.
Schematically, the argument is as follows. Berkeley says:
"Sensible objects must be sensible. A is a sensible object. There-
fore A/nust be sensible." But if "must" indicates logical necessity,
,jthe argument is only valid if A must be a sensible object. The
argument does not prove that, from the properties of A other
than its being sensible, it can be deduced that A is sensible. It
does not prove, for example, that colours intrinsically indistin-
guishable from those that we see may not exist unseen. We may
believe on physiological grounds that this does not occur, but
such grounds are empirical; so far as logic is concerned, there is
678
BERKELEY
no reason why there should not be colours where there is no eye
or brain.
I come now to Berkeley's empirical arguments. To begin with,
it is a sign of weakness to combine empirical and logical arguments,
for the latter, if valid, make the former superfluous.1 If I am con-
tending that a square cannot be round, I shall not appeal to the
fact that no Square in any known city is round. But as we have
rejected the logical arguments, it becomes necessary to consider
the empirical arguments on their merits.
The first of the empirical arguments is an odd one: That heat
cannot be in the object, because "the most vehement and intense
degree of heat [is] a very great pain0 and we cannot suppose "any
unperceiving thing capable of pain or pleasure." There is an
ambiguity in the word "pain," of which Berkeley takes advantage.
It may mean the painful quality of a sensation, or it may mean
the sensation that has this quality. We say a broken leg is painful,
without implying that the leg is in the mind ; it might be, similarly,
that heat causes pain, and that this is all we ought to mean when
we say it is a pain. This argument, therefore, is a poor one.
The argument about the hot and cold hands in lukewarm water
strictly speaking, would only prove that what we perceive in that
experiment is not hot and cold, but hotter and colder. There is
nothing to prove that these are subjective.
In regard to tastes, the argument from pleasure and pain is
repeated: Sweetness is a pleasure and bitterness a pain, therefore
both are mental. It is also urged that a thing that tastes sweet
when I am well may taste bitter when I am ill. Very similar argu-
ments are used about odours: since they are pleasant or unpleasant,
"they cannot exist in any but a perceiving substance or mind/'
Berkeley assumes, here and everywhere, that what does not inhere
in matter must inhere in a mental substance, and that nothing
can be both mental and material.
The argument in regard to sound is ad hominem. Hylas ^ys that
sounds are "really91 motions in the air, and Philonous retorts that
motions can be seen or felt, not heard, so that "real" sounds an
inaudible. This is hardly a fair argument, since percepts of motion,
according to Berkeley, are just as subjective as other percepts. The
motions that Hylas requires will have to be unperceived and
1 E.g., " I was not drunk last night. I had only had two glasses : besides,
it is well known that I am a teetotaller/9
679
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
imperceptible. Nevertheless it is valid in so far as it points out
that sound, as heard, cannot be identified with die motions of
air that physics regards as its cause.
Hylas, after abandoning secondary qualities, is not yet ready to
abandon primary qualities, viz. Extension, Figure, Solidity,
Gravity, Motion, and Rest. The argument, naturally, concentrates
on extension and motion. If things have real sizes, says Philonous,
the same thing cannot be of different sizes at the same time, and
yet it looks larger when we are near it than when we are far off.
And if motion is really in the object, how comes it that the same
motion may seem fast to one and slow to another ? Such arguments
must, I think, be allowed to prove the subjectivity of perceived
space. But this subjectivity is physical: it is equally true of a
camera, and therefore does not prove that shape is "mental."
In the second Dialogue Philonous sums up the discussion, so
far as it has gone, in the words: "Besides spirits, all that we know
or conceive are our own ideas." He ought not, of course, to make
an exception for spirits, since it is just as impossible to know
spirit as to know matter. The arguments, in fact, are almost
identical in both cases.
Let us now try to state what positive conclusions we can reach
as a result of the kind of argument inaugurated by Berkeley.
Things as we know them are bundles of sensible qualities: a
table, for example, consists of its visual shape, its hardness, the
noise it emits when rapped, and its smell (if any). These different
qualities have certain contiguities in experience, which lead
common sense to regard them as belonging to one "thing," but
the concept of "thing" or "substance" adds nothing to the
perceived qualities, and is unnecessary. So far we are on firm
ground.
But we must now ask ourselves what we mean by "perceiving."
Philonous maintains that, as regards sensible things, their reality
consistent their being perceived; but he does not tell us what he
means by perception. There is a theory, which he rejects, that
perception is a relation between a subject and a percept. Since he
believed the ego to be a substance, he might well have adopted
this theory; however, he decided against it. For those who reject
the notion of a substantial ego, this theory is impossible. What,
then, is meant by calling something a "percept"? Does it mean
anything more than that the something in question occurs? Can
680
BERKELEY
we turn Berkeley's dictum round, and instead of saying that reality
consists in being perceived, say that being perceived consists in
being real? However this may be, Berkeley holds it logically
possible that there should be unperceived things, since he holds
that some real things, viz. spiritual substances, are unperceived.
And it seems obvious that, when we say that an event is perceived,
we mean something more than that it occurs.
What is this more? One obvious difference between perceived
and unperceived events is that the former, but not the latter, can
be remembered. Is there any other difference?
Recollection is one of a whole genus of effects which are more
or less peculiar to the phenomena that we naturally call "mental."
These effects are connected with habit. A burnt child fears the
fire; a burnt poker does not. The physiologist, however, deals
with habit and kindred matters as a characteristic of nervous
tissue, and has no need to depart from a physicalist interpretation.
In physicalist language, we can say that an occurrence is "per-
ceived" if it has effects of certain kinds; in this sense we might
almost say that a watercourse "perceives" the rain by which it is
deepened, and that a river valley is a "memory" of former down-
pours. Habit and memory, when described in physicalist terms,
are not wholly absent in dead matter; the difference, in this
respect, between living and dead matter, is only one of degree.
In this view, to say that an event is "perceived" is to say that
it has effects of certain kinds, and there is no reason, either logical
or empirical, for supposing that all events have effects of these kinds.
Theory of knowledge suggests a different standpoint. We start,
here, not from finished science, but from whatever knowledge is
the ground for our belief in science. This is what Berkeley is doing.
Here it is not necessary, in advance, to define a "percept." The
method, in outline, is as follows. We collect the propositions that
we feel we know without inference, and we find that most of
these have to do with dated particular events. These events we
define as "percepts." Percepts, therefore, are those events that
we know without inference; or at least, to allow for memory, such
events were at some time percepts. We are then faced with the
question: Can we, from our own percepts, infer any other events?
Here four positions are possible, of which the first three are forms
of idealism.
(i) We may deny totally the validity of all inferences from any
681
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
present percepts and memories to other events. This view must
be taken by anyone who confines inference to deduction. Any
event, and any group of events, is logically capable of standing
alone, and therefore no group of events affords demonstrative proof
of the existence of other events. If, therefore, we confine inference
to deduction, the known world is confined to those events in our
own biography that we perceive— or have perceived, if memory
is admitted.
(2) The second position, which is solipsism as ordinarily under-
stood, allows some inference from my percepts, but only to other
events in my own biography. Take, for example, the view that,
at any moment in waking life, there are sensible objects that we do
not notice. We see many things without saying to ourselves that
we see them; at least, so it seems. Keeping the eyes fixed in an
environment in which we perceive no movement, we can notice
various things in succession, and we feel persuaded that they were
visible before we noticed them; but before we noticed them they
were not data for theory of knowledge. This degree of inference
from what we observe is made unreflectingly by everybody, even
by those who most wish to avoid an undue extension of our
knowledge beyond experience.
(3) The third position — which seems to be held, for instance,
by Eddington — is that it is possible to make inferences to other
events analogous to those in our own experience, and that, there-
fore, we have a right to believe that there are, for instance, colours
seen by other people but not by ourselves, toothaches felt by
other people, pleasures enjoyed and pains endured by other people,
and so on, but that we have no right to infer events experienced
by no one and not forming part of any "mind." This view may
be defended on the ground that all inference to events which
lie outside my observation is by analogy, and that events which no
one experiences are not sufficiently analogous to my data to warrant
analogical inferences.
(4) The fourth position is that of common sense and traditional
physics, according to which there are, in addition to my own
and other people's, also events which no one experi-
ences—for example, the furniture of my bedroom when I am
asleep and it is pitch dark. G. E. Moore once accused idealists of
holding that trains only have wheels while they are in stations,
on the ground that passengers cannot see the wheels while they
682
BERKELEY
remain in the train. Common sense refuses to believe that the
wheels suddenly spring into being whenever you look, but do not
bother to exist when no one is inspecting them. When this point
of view is scientific, it bases the inference to unperceived events on
causal laws.
I do not propose, at present, to decide between these four points
of view. The decision, if possible at all, can only be made by an
elaborate investigation of non-demonstrative inference and the
theory of probability. What I do propose to do is to point out
certain logical errors which have been committed by those who
have discussed these questions.
Berkeley, as we have seen, thinks that there are logical reasons
proving that only minds and mental events can exist. This view,
on other grounds, is also held by Hegel and his followers. I believe
this to be a complete mistake. Such a statement as "there was a
time before life existed on this planet," whether true or false,
cannot be condemned on grounds of logic, any more than "there
are multiplication sums which no one will have ever worked out."
To be observed, or to be a percept, is merely to have effects of
certain kinds, and there is no logical reason why all events should
have effects of these kinds.
There is, however, another kind of argument, which, while it
does not establish idealism as a metaphysic, does, if valid, establish
it as a practical policy. It is said that a proposition which is un-
verifiable has no meaning ; that verification depends upon percepts ;
and that, therefore, a proposition about anything except actual or
possible percepts is meaningless. I think that this view, strictly
interpreted, would confine us to the first of the above four theories,
and would forbid us to speak about anything that we have not
purselves explicitly noticed. If so, it is a view that no one can hold
in practice, which is a defect in a theory that is advocated on
practical grounds. The whole question of verification, and its
connection with knowledge, is difficult and complex^ I will,
therefore, leave it on one side for the present.
The fourth of the above theories, which admits events that r
one perceives, may also be defended by invalid arguments. *•,
may be held that causality is kno\qp a priori, and that causal laws
are impossible unless there are unperceived events. As against
this, it may be urged that causality is not a priori, and that what-
ever regularity can be observed must be in relation to percepts.
683
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Whatever (here is reason to believe in the laws of physics must, it
would seem, be capable of being stated in terms of percepts. The
statement may be odd and complicated; it may lack the charac-
teristic of continuity which, until lately, was expected of a physical
law. But it can hardly be impossible.
I conclude that there is no a priori objection to any one of our
four theories. It is possible, however, to say that all truth is prag-
matic, and that there is no pragmatic difference between the four
theories. If this is true, we can adopt whichever we please, and the
difference between them is only linguistic. I cannot accept this
view; but this, also, is a matter for discussion at a later stage.
It remains to be asked whether any meaning can be attached to
the words "mind" and "matter." Everyone knows that "mind"
is what an idealist thinks there is nothing else but, and "matter"
is what a materialist thinks the same about. The reader knows
also, I hope, that idealists are virtuous and materialists are wicked.
But perhaps there may be more than this to be said.
My own definition of "matter" may seem unsatisfactory; I
should define it as what satisfies the equations of physics. There
may be nothing satisfying these equations; in that case either
physics, or the concept "matter," is a mistake. If we reject sub-
stance, "matter" will have to be a logical construction. Whether it
can be any construction composed of events— which may be partly
inferred — is a difficult question, but by no means an insoluble one.
As for "mind," when substance has been rejected a mind must
be some group or structure of events. The grouping must be
effected by some relation which is characteristic of the sort of
phenomena we wish to call "mental." We may take memory as
typical. We might — though this would be rather unduly simple —
define a "mental" event as one which remembers or is remembered.
Then the "mind" to which a given mental event belongs is the
group of events connected with the given event by memory-
chains, Backwards or forwards.
It will be seen that, according to the above definitions, a mind
*and a piece of matter are, each of them, a group of events. There
is no reason why every event should belong to a group of one
kind or the other, and there ift.no reason why some events should
not belong to both groups; therefore some events may be neither
mental nor material; and other events may be both. As to this,
only detailed empirical considerations can decide.
684
Chapter XVII
HUME
DAVID HUME (1711-76) is one of the most important among
philosophers, because he developed to its logical conclusion
the empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley, and by
making it self-consistent made it incredible. He represents, in a
certain sense, a dead end: in his direction, it is impossible to go
further. To refute him has been, ever since he wrote, a favourite
pastime among metaphysicians. For my part, I find none of their
refutations convincing; nevertheless, I cannot but hope that some-
thing less sceptical than Hume's system may be discoverable.
His chief philosophical work, the Treatise of Human Nature,
was written while he was living in France during the years 1734
to 1737. The first two volumes were published in 1739, the third
in 1740. He was a very young man, not yet in his thirties; he was
not well known, and his conclusions were such as almost all schools
would find unwelcome. He hoped for vehement attacks, which
he would meet with brilliant retorts. Instead, no one noticed the
book; as he says himself, "it fell dead-born from the press."
"But," he adds, "being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine
temper, I very soon recovered from the blow." He devoted himself
to the writing of essays, of which he produced the first volume in
1741. In 1744 he made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a pro-
fessorship at Edinburgh; having failed in this, he became first
tutor to a lunatic and then secretary to a general. Fortified by these
credentials, he ventured again into philosophy. He shortened the
Treatise by leaving out the best parts and most of the reasons for
his conclusions; the result was the Inquiry into Human Under-
standing, for a long time much better known than the Treatise.
It was this book that awakened Kant from his "c|pgmatic
slumbers"; he does not appear to have known the Treatise.
He wrote also Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which he
kept unpublished during his lifetime. By his direction, they were
published posthumously in 1779. His Essay on Miracles, which
became famous, maintains that there can never be adequate
historical evidence for such events.
His History of England, published in 1755 and following years,
685
WBSTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
devoted itself to proving the superiority of Tories to Whigs and
of Scotchmen to Englishmen; he did not consider history worthy
of philosophic detachment. He visited Paris in 1763, and was
made much of by the pUhsophes. Unfortunately, he formed a
friendship with Rousseau, and had a famous quarrel with him.
Hume behaved with admirable forbearance, but Rousseau, who
suffered from persecution mania, insisted upon a violent breach.
Hume has described his own character in a self-obituary, or
"funeral oration," as he calls it: "I was a man of mild dispositions,
of command of temper, of an open, social and cheerful humour,
capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of
great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary
fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding
my frequent disappointments/9 All this is borne out by everything
that is known of him.
Hume's Treatise of Human Nature is divided into three books,
dealing respectively with the understanding, the passions, and
morals. What is important and novel in his doctrines is in die
first book, to which I shall confine myself.
He begins with the distinction between "impressions'1 and
"ideas.** These are two kinds of perceptions, of which impressions
are those that have more force and violence. "By ideas I mean the
faint images of these in thinking and reasoning/' Ideas, at least
when simple, are like impressions, but fainter. "Every simple idea
has a simple impression, which resembles it; and every simple
impression a correspondent idea." "All our simple ideas in their
first appearance are derived from simple impressions, which are
correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent."
Complex ideas, on the other hand, need not resemble impressions.
We can imagine a winged horse without having ever seen one,
but the constituents of this complex idea are all derived from
impressions. The proof that impressions come first is derived
from yperience; for example, a man born blind has no ideas of
colours. Among ideas, those that retain a considerable degree of
the vivacity of the original impressions belong to memory, the
others to ttnag&uxtoon.
There is a section (Book Impart i, sec. vii) "Of Abstract Ideas,"
which opens with a paragraph of emphatic agreement with
Berkeley's doctrine that "all general ideas are nothing but par-
ticular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more
686
HUMS
extensive significance, and makes them recall upon occasion other
individuals, which are similar to them.91 He contends that, when
we have an idea of a man, it has all the particularity that the
impression of a man has. "The mind cannot form any notion of
quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees
of each." "Abstract ideas are in themselves individual, however
they may become general in their representation." This theory,
which is a modern, form of nominalism, has two defects, one
logical, the other psychological. To begin with the logical objec-
tion : "When we have found a resemblance among several objects,"
Hume says, "we apply the same name to all of them." Every
nominalist would agree. But in fact a common name, such as
"cat," is just as unreal as the universal CAT is. The nominalist
solution of the problem of universals thus fails through being
insufficiently drastic in the application of its own principles; it
mistakenly applies these principles only to "things," and not also
to words.
The psychological objection is more serious, at least in con-
nection with Hume. The whole theory of ideas as copies of im-
pressions, as he sets it forth, suffers from ignoring vagueness.
When, for example, I have seen a flower of a certain colour, and
I afterwards call up an image of it, the image is lacking in pre-
cision, in this sense, that there are several closely similar shades
of colour of which it might be an image, or "idea," in Hume's
terminology. It is not true that "the mind cannot form any notion
of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees
of each." Suppose you have seen a man whose height is six feet
one inch. You retain an image of him, but it probably would fit
a man half an inch taller or shorter. Vagueness is different from
generality, but has some of the same characteristics. By not
noticing it, Hume runs into unnecessary difficulties, for instance,
as to the possibility of imagining a shade of colour you have
never seen, which is intermediate between two closely similar
shades that you have seen. If these two are sufficiently^similar,
any image you can form will be equally applicable to both of
them and to the intermediate shade. When Hume says that ideas
are derived from impressions which they exactly represent he
goes beyond what is psychological!/ true.
Hume banished the conception of substance from psychology,
as Berkeley had banished it from physics. There is, he says, no
687
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
impression of self, and therefore no idea of self (Book I, pan iv,
sec. vi). "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I
call myself 9 I always stumble on some particular perception or
other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception,
and never can observe anything but the perception." There may,
he ironically concedes, be some philosophers who can perceive
their selves; "but setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind,
I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are
nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which
succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a
perpetual flux and movement."
This repudiation of the idea of the Self is of great importance.
Let us see exactly what it maintains, and how far it is valid. To
begin with, the Self, if there is such a thing, is never perceived,
and therefore we can have no idea of it. If this argument is to be
accepted, it must be carefully stated. No man perceives his own
brain, yet, in an important sense, he has an "idea" of it. Such
"ideas," which are inferences from perceptions, are not among
the logically basic stock of ideas; they are complex and descriptive
— this must be the case if Hume, is right in his principle that all
simple ideas are derived from impressions, and if this principle
is rejected, we are forced back on "innate" ideas. Using modern
terminology, we may say: Ideas of unperceived things or occur-
rences can always be defined in terms of perceived things or
occurrences, and therefore, by substituting the definition for the
term defined, we can always state what we know empirically with-
out introducing any unperceived things or occurrences. As regards
our present problem, all psychological knowledge can be stated
without introducing the "Self." Further, the "Self," as defined,
can be nothing but a bundle of perceptions, not a new simple
"thing." In this I think that any thoroughgoing empiricist must
agree with Hume.
It ddfcs not follow that there is no simple Self; it only follows
that we cannot know whether there is or not, and that the Self,
except as a 'bundle* of perceptions, cannot enter into any part of
our knowledge. This conclusion is important in metaphysics, as
getting rid of the last surviving use of "substance." It is important
io theology, as abolishing all supposed knowledge of the "soul."
It is important in the analysis of knowledge, since it shows that
688
HUME
the category of subject and object is not fundamental. In this
matter of the ego Hume made an important advance on Berkeley.
The most important part of the whole Treatise is the section
called "Of Knowledge and Probability." Hume does not mean by
"probability" the sort of knowledge contained in the mathematical
theory of probability, such as that the chance of throwing double
sixes with two dice is one thirty-sixth. This knowledge is not itself
probable in any special sense; it has as much certainty as know-
ledge can have. What Hume is concerned with is uncertain know-
ledge, such as is obtained from empirical data by inferences that
are not demonstrative. This includes all our knowledge as to the
future, and as to unobserved portions of the past and present. In
fact, it includes everything except, on the one hand, direct obser-
vation, and, on the other, logic and mathematics. The analysis
of such "probable" knowledge led Hume to certain sceptical
conclusions, which are equally difficult to refute and to accept.
The result was a challenge to philosophers, which, in my opinion,
has still not been adequately met.
Hume begins by distinguishing seven kinds of philosophical
relation: resemblance, identity, relations of time and place, pro-
portion in quantity or number, degrees in any quality, contrariety,
and causation. These, he says, may be divided into two kinds:
those that depend only on the ideas, and those that can be changed
without any change in the ideas. Of the first kind are resemblance,
contrariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity or
number. But spatio-temporal and causal relations are of the
second kind. Only relations of the first kind give certain knowledge ;
our knowledge concerning the others is only probable. Algebra
and arithmetic are the only sciences in which we can carry on a
long chain of reasoning without losing certainty. Geometry is not
so certain as algebra and arithmetic, because we cannot be sure
of the truth of its axioms. It is a mistake to suppose, as many
philosophers do, that the ideas of mathematics "must be com-
prehended by a pure and intellectual view, of which the superior
faculties of the soul are alone capable." The falsehood of this view
is evident, says Hume, as soon as we remember that "all our
ideas are copied from our impressioqp."
The three relations that depend not only on ideas are identity,
spatio-temporal relations, and causation. In the first two, the mind
does not go beyond what is immediately present to the senses,
689
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
(Spatio-temporal relations, Hume holds, can be perceived, and
can form parts of impressions.) Causation alone enables us to
infer some thing or occurrence from some other thing or occur-
rence: " Tis only causation, which produces such a connexion,
as to give us assurance from the existence or action of one object,
that 'twas followed or preceded by any other existence or action."
A difficulty arises from Hume's contention that there is no such
thing as an impression of a causal relation. We can perceive, by
mere observation of A and B, that A is above B, or to the right of
B, but not that A causes B. In the past, the relation of causation
had been more or less assimilated to that of ground and consequent
in logic, but this, Hume rightly perceived, was a mistake.
In the Cartesian philosophy, as in that of the Scholastics, the
connection of cause and effect was supposed to be necessary, as
logical connections are necessary. The first really serious challenge
to this view came from Hume, with whom the modern philo-
sophy of causation begins. He, in common with almost all philo-
sophers down to and including Bergson, supposes the law to
state that there are propositions of the form "A causes B," where
A and B are classes of events; the fact that such laws do not
occur in any well-developed science appears to be unknown to
philosophers. But much of what they have said can be translated
so as to be applicable to causal laws such as do occur; we may,
therefore, ignore this point for the present.
Hume begins by observing that the power by which one object
produces another is not discoverable from the ideas of the two
objects, and that we can therefore only know cause and effect
from experience, not from reasoning or reflection. The statement
"what begins must have a cause," he says, is not one that has
intuitive certainty, like the statements of logic. As he puts it:
"There is no object, which implies the existence of any other if
we consider these objects in themselves, and never look beyond
the ideas which we form of them." Hume argues from this that
it must be experience that gives knowledge of cause and effect,
but that it cannot be merely the experience of the two events A
and B which are in a causal relation to each other. It must be
experience, because the correction is not logical; and it cannot
be merely the experience of the particular events A and B, since
we can discover nothing in A by itself which should lead it to
produce B. The experience required, he says, is that of the con*
690
HUME
slant conjunction of events of the kind A with events of the kind
B. He points out that when, in experience, two objects are con**
stantly conjoined, we do in fact infer one from the other. (When
he says "infer/9 he means that perceiving the one makes us expect
the other; he does not mean a formal or explicit inference.)
"Perhaps, the necessary connection depends on the inference/9
not vice versa. That is to say, the sight of A causes the expectation
of B, and so leads us to believe that there is a necessary connection
between A and B. The inference is not determined by reason,
since that would require us to assume the uniformity of nature,
which itself is not necessary, but only inferred from experience.
Hume is thus led to the view that, when we say "A causes B,"
we mean only that A and B are constantly conjoined in fact, not
that there is some necessary connection between them. "We have
no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects,
which have been always conjoined together. ... We cannot
penetrate into the reason of the conjunction.99
He backs up his theory with a definition of "belief,99 which is,
he maintains, "a lively idea related to or associated with a present
impression.99 Through association, if A and B have been con-
stantly conjoined in past experience, the impression of A produces
that lively idea of B which constitutes belief in B. This explains
why we believe A and B to be connected: the percept of A &
connected with the idea of B, and so we come to think that A is
connected with B, though this opinion is really groundless.
"Objects have no discoverable connexion together; nor is it from
any other principle but custom operating upon the imagination,
that we can draw any inference from the appearance of one to the
experience of another.99 He repeats many times the contention
that what appears to us as necessary connection among objects is
really only connection among the ideas of those objects: the mind
is determined by custom, and " 'tis this impression, or determina-
tion, which affords me the idea of necessity.99 The repetition of
instances, which leads us to the belief that A causes B, gives
nothing new in the object, but in the mind leads to an association
of ideas; thus "necessity is something that exists in the mind,
not in objects.99
Let us now ask ourselves what we are to think of Hume's
doctrine. It has two parts, one objective, the other subjective.
The objective part says: When we judge that A causes B, what
691
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
has in fact happened, so far as A and B are concerned, is that they
have been frequently observed to be conjoined, i.e. A has been
immediately, or very quickly, followed by B; we have no right
to say that A must be followed by B, or will be followed by B
on future occasions. Nor have we any ground for supposing that,
however often A is followed by B, any relation beyond sequence
is .involved. In fact, causation is definable in terms of sequence,
and is not an independent notion.
The subjective part of the doctrine says: The frequently ob-
served conjunction of A and B causes the impression of A to
cause the idea of B. But if we are to define "cause" as is suggested
in the objective part of the doctrine, we must reword the above.
Substituting the definition of "cause," the above becomes:
"It has been frequently observed that the frequently observed
conjunction of two objects A and B has been frequently followed
by occasions on which the impression of A was followed by the
idea of B."
This statement, we may admit, is true, but it has hardly the
scope that Hume attributes to the subjective part of his doctrine.
He contends, over and over again, that the frequent conjunction
of A and B gives no reason for expecting them to be conjoined in
the future, but is merely a cause of this expectation. That is to say:
Experience of frequent conjunction is frequently conjoined with
a habit of association. But, if the objective part of Hume's doctrine
is accepted, the fact that, in the past, associations have been
frequently formed in such circumstances, is no reason for sup-
posing that they will continue, or that new ones will be formed in
similar circumstances. The fact is that, where psychology is con-
cerned, Hume allows himself to believe in causation in a sense
which, in general, he condemns. Let us take an illustration. I see
an appk, and expect that, if I eat it, I shall experience a certain
kind of taste. According to Hume, there is no reason why I
should experience this kind of taste: the law of habit explains the
existence of my expectation, but does not justify it. But the law
of habit is itself a causal law. Therefore if we take Hume seriously
we must say: Although in the past the sight of an apple has been
conjoined with expectation *f a certain kind of taste, there is no
reason why it should continue to be so conjoined: perhaps the
next time I tee an apple I shall expect it to taste like roast beef.
You may, at the moment, think this unlikely; but that is no reason
692
HUME
for expecting that you will think it unlikely five minutes hence.
If Hume's objective doctrine is right, we have no better reason
for expectations in psychology than in the physical world. Hume's
theory might be caricatured as follows: "The proposition 'A
causes B' means 'the impression of A causes the idea of B.' "
As a definition, this is not a happy effort.
We must therefore examine Hume's objective doctrine more
closely. This doctrine has two parts: (i) When we say "A causes
B," all that we have a right to say is that, in past experience, A
and B have frequently appeared together or in rapid succession,
and no instance has been observed of A not followed or accom-
panied by B. (2) However many instances we may have observed
of the conjunction of A and B, that gives no reason for expecting
them to be conjoined on a future occasion, though it is a cause of
this expectation, i.e. it has been frequently observed to be con-
joined with such an expectation. These two parts of the doctrine
may be stated as follows: (i) in causation there is no indefinable
relation except conjunction or succession ; (2) induction by simple
enumeration is not a valid form of argument. Empiricists in
general have accepted the first of these theses and rejected the
second. When I say they have rejected the second, I mean that
they have believed that, given a sqfficiently vast accumulation of
instances of a conjunction, the likelihood of the conjunction being
found in the next instance will exceed a half; or, if they have not
held exactly this, they have maintained some doctrine having
similar consequences.
I do not wish, at the moment, to discuss induction, which is a
large and difficult subject ; for the moment, I am content to observe
that, if the first half of Hume's doctrine is admitted, the rejection
of induction makes all expectation as to the future irrational, even
the expectation that we shall continue to feel expectations. I do
not mean merely that our expectations may be mistaken; that, in
any case, must be admitted. I mean that, taking even our Ijrmest
expectations, such as that the sun will rise to-morrow, there is
not a shadow of a reason for supposing them more likely to be
verified than not. With this proviso, I return to the meaning of
"cause.
Those who disagree with Hume maintain that "cause" is a
specific relation, which entails invariable sequence, but is not
entailed by it. To revert to the clocks of the Cartesians: two
693
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
perfectly accurate chronometers might strike the hours one after
the other invariably, without either being the cause of the other's
striking. In general, those who take this view maintain that we
can sometimes perceive causal relations, though in most cases we
are obliged to infer them, more or less precariously, from constant
conjunction. Let us see what arguments there are for and against
Hume on this point
Hume summarizes his argument as follows:
"I am sensible, that of all the paradoxes, which I have had, or
shall hereafter have occasion to advance in the course of this
treatise, the present one is the most violent, and that 'tis merely
by dint of solid proof and reasoning I can ever hope it will have
admission, and overcome the inveterate prejudices of mankind.
Before we are reconciled to this doctrine, how often must we
repeat to ourselves, that the simple view of any two objects or
actions, however related, can never give us any idea of power, or
of a connexion betwixt them: that this idea arises from a repeti-
tion of their union: that the repetition neither discovers nor
causes anything in the objects, but has an influence only on the
mind, by that customary transition it produces: that this cus-
tomary transition is, therefore, the same with the power and
necessity, which are consequently felt by the soul, and not
perceiv'd externally in bodies?"
Hume is commonly accused of having too atomic a view of per-
ception, but he allows that certain relations can be perceived.
"We ought not," he says, "to receive as reasoning any of the
observations we make concerning identity, and the relations of
time and place; since in none of them the mind can go beyond
what is immediately present to the senses.'9 Causation, he says,
is different in that it takes us beyond the impressions of our senses,
and informs us of unperceived existences. As an argument, this
seems invalid. We believe in many relations of time and place
whicjt we cannot perceive: we think that time extends backwards
and forwards, and space beyond the walls of our room. Hume's
real argument is that, while we sometimes perceive relations of
time and place, we never perceive causal relations, which must
therefore, if admitted, bo inferred from relations that can be
perceived. The controversy is thus reduced to one of empirical
Act: Do we, or do we not, sometimes perceive a relation which
ca* be called causal? Hume says no, his adversaries say yes, and
694
HUME
it is not easy to see how evidence can be produced by either side.
I think perhaps the strongest argument on Hume's side is to
be derived from the character of causal laws in physics. It appears
that simple rules of the form "A causes B" are never to be admitted
in science, except as crude suggestions in early stages. The causal
laws by which such simple rules are replaced in well-developed
sciences are so complex that no one can suppose them given in
perception ; they are all, obviously, elaborate inferences from the
observed course of nature. I am leaving out of account modern
quantum theory, which reinforces the above conclusion. So for
as the physical sciences are concerned, Hume is wholly in the
right ; such propositions as "A causes B" are never to be accepted,
and our inclination to accept them is to be explained by the laws
of habit and association. These laws themselves, in their accurate
form, will be elaborate statements as to nervous tissue — primarily
its physiology, then its chemistry, and ultimately its physics.
The opponent of Hume, however, even if he admits the whole
of what has just been said about the physical sciences, may not
yet admit himself decisively defeated. He may say that in psy-
chology we have cases where a causal relation can be perceived.
The whole conception of cause is probably derived from volition,
and it may be said that we can perceive a relation, between a
volition and the consequent act, which is something more than
invariable sequence. The same might be said of the relation
between a sudden pain and a cry. Such views, however, are ren-
dered very difficult by physiology. Between the will to move my
arm and the consequent movement there is a long chain of causal
intermediaries consisting of processes in the nerves and muscles.
We perceive only the end terms of this process, the volition and
the movement, and if we think we see a direct causal connection
between these we arc mistaken. This argument is not conclusive
on the general question, but it shows that it is rash to suppose
that we perceive causal relations when we think we do. The
balance, therefore, is in favour of Hume's view that there is
nothing in cause except invariable succession. The evidence,
however, is not so conclusive as Hume supposed.
Hume is not content with reducing the evidence of a causal
connection to experience of frequent conjunction; he proceeds to
argue that such experience does not justify the expectation of
similar conjunctions in the future. For example: when (to repeat
695
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
a former illustration) I see an apple, past experience makes me
expect that it will taste like an apple, and not like roast beef; but
there is no rational justification for this expectation. If there were
such a justification, it would have to proceed from the principle
"that those instances, of which we have had no experience, re-
semble those of which we have had experience." This principle
is not logically necessary, since we can at least conceive a change
in the course of nature. It should therefore be a principle of pro-
bability. But all probable arguments assume this principle, and
therefore it cannot itself be proved by any probable argument,
or even rendered probable by any such argument. "The supposi-
tion, that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments
of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit."1 The conclusion
is one of complete scepticism:
"All probable reasoning is nothing but a species of sensation.
'Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and
sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinced of
any principle, 'tis only an idea, which strikes more strongly upon
me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above
another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the
superiority of their influence. Objects have no discoverable con-
nexion together; nor is it from any other principle but custom
operating upon the imagination, that we can draw any inference
from the appearance of one to the existence of another."1
The ultimate outcome of Hume's investigation of what passes
for knowledge is not what we must suppose him to have desired.
The sub-title of his book is: "An attempt to introduce the experi-
mental method of reasoning into moral subjects." It is evident
that he started out with a belief that scientific method yields the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; he ended,
however, with the conviction that belief is never rational, since
we know nothing. After setting forth the arguments for scepticism
(Book I, part iv, sec. i), he goes on, not to refute the arguments,
but to fall back on natural credulity.
"Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has deter-
mined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel ; nor can we any
more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light,
upon account of their customary connexion with a present im-
pression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as
1 Book I, part iii, tec. iv. * Book I, pan tti, arc. viti.
696
HUM!
we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn
our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the
pains to refute this total scepticism, has really disputed without
an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a
faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind,
and rendered unavoidable. My intention then in displaying so
carefully the arguments of that fantastic sect, is only to make the
reader sensible of the truth of my hypothesis, that all our reasonings
concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom;
and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the
cogitative part of our natures. "
"The sceptic," he continues (Book I, part iv, sec. ii), "still con-
tinues to reason and believe, even though he asserts that he cannot
defend his reason by reason ; and by the same rule he must assent
to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho' he cannot
pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity
. . . We may well ask, wliat causes us to believe in the existence of
body? But 'tis vain to ask, whether there be body or not? That is a
point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings."
The above is the beginning of a section "Of scepticism with
regard to the senses." After a long discussion, this section ends
with the following conclusion :
"This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses,
is a malady, which can never be radically cured, but must return
upon us every moment, however we may chase it away, and some-
times may seem entirely free from it. ... Carelessness and
inattention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely
entirely upon them ; and take it for granted, whatever may be the
reader's opinion at this present moment, that an hour hence he
will be persuaded there is both an external and internal world."
There is no reason for studying philosophy — so Hume main-
tains—except that, to certain temperaments, this is an agreeable
way of passing the time. "In all the incidents of life wrought
still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe, that fire warms, or
water refreshes, 'tis only because it costs us too much pains to
think otherwise. Nay, if we are philosophers, it ought only to be
upon sceptical principles, and from gn inclination which we feel
to be employing ourselves after that manner." If he abandoned
speculation, "I feel I should be a loser in point of pleasure; and
this is the origin of my philosophy."
697
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Hume's philosophy, whether true or false, represents the bank-
ruptcy of eighteenth-century reasonableness. He starts out, like
Locke, with the intention of being sensible and empirical, taking
nothing on trust, but seeking whatever instruction is to be obtained
from experience and observation. But having a better intellect
than Locke's, a greater acuteness in analysis, and a smaller capacity
for accepting comfortable inconsistencies, he arrives at the
disastrous conclusion that from experience and observation
nothing is to be learnt. There is no such thing as a rational belief:
"If we believe that fire warms, or water refreshes, 'tis only because
it costs us too much pains to think otherwise." We cannot help
believing, but no belief can be grounded in reason. Nor can one
line of action be more rational than another, since all alike are
based upon irrational convictions. This last conclusion, however,
Hume seems not to have drawn. Even in his most sceptical
chapter, in which he sums up the conclusions of Book I, he says:
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those
in philosophy only ridiculous. " He has no right to say this.
"Dangerous" is a causal word, and a sceptic as to causation
cannot know that anything is "dangerous."
In fact, in the later portions of the Treatise, Hume forgets all
about his fundamental doubts, and writes much as any other
enlightened moralist of his time might have written ; he applies
to his doubts the remedy that he recommends, namely "careless-
ness and inattention." In a sense, his scepticism is insincere,
since he cannot maintain it in practice. It has, however, this
awkward consequence, that it paralyses every effort to prove one
line of action better than another.
It was inevitable that such a self-refutation of rationality should
be followed by a great outburst of irrational faith. The quarrel
between Hume and Rousseau is symbolic: Rousseau was mad
but influential, Hume was sane but had no followers. Subsequent
British empiricists rejected his scepticism without refuting it;
Rousseau and his followers agreed with Hume that no belief is
based on reason, but thought the heart superior to reason, and
allowed it to lead them to convictions very different from those
that Hume retained in practice. German philosophers, from Kant
to Hegel, had not atsimilatrd Hume's arguments. I say this deli-
berately, in spite of the belief which many philosophers share
with Kant, that his Critique of Putt Ruuo* answered Hume. In
698
HUMB
fact, these philosophers— at least Kant and Hegel— represent a
pre-Humian type of rationalism, and can be refuted by Humian
arguments. The philosophers who cannot be refuted in this way
are those who do not pretend to be rational, such as Rousseau,
Schopenhauer,, and Nietzsche. The growth of unreason through-
out the nineteenth century and what has passed of the twentieth
is a natural sequel to Hume's destruction of empiricism.
It is therefore important to discover whether there is any answer
to Hume within the framework of a philosophy that is wholly
or mainly empirical. If not, there is no intellectual difference
between sanity and insanity. The lunatic who believes that he is
a poached egg is to be condemned solely on the ground that he is
in a minority, or rather — since we must not assume democracy —
on the ground that the government does not agree with him.
This is a desperate point of view, and it must be hoped that there
is some way of escaping from it.
Hume's scepticism rests entirely upon his rejection of the prin-
ciple of induction. The principle of induction, as applied to
causation, says that, if A has been found very often accompanied
or followed by B, and no instance is known of A not being accom-
panied or followed by B, then it is probable that on the next
occasion on which A is observed it will be accompanied or followed
by B. If the principle is to be adequate, a sufficient number of
instances must make the probability not far short of certainty. If
this principle, or any other from which it can be deduced, is true,
then the causal inferences which Hume rejects are valid, not
indeed as giving certainty, but as giving a sufficient probability
for practical purposes. If this principle is not true, every attempt
to arrive at general scientific laws from particular observations is
fallacious, and Hume's scepticism is inescapable for an empiricist.
The principle itself cannot, of course, without circularity, be
inferred from observed uniformities, since it is required to justify
any such inference. It must therefore be, or be deduced from,
an independent principle not based upon experience. *fo this
extent, Hume has proved that pure empiricism is not a sufficient
basis for science. But if this one principle is admitted, everything
else can proceed in accordance with tfie theory that all our know-
ledge is based on experience. It must be granted that this is a
serious departure from pure empiricism, and that those who are
not empiricists may ask why, if one departure is allowed, others
699
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
are to be forbidden. These, however, are questions not directly
raised by Hume's arguments. What these arguments prove — and
I do not think the proof can be controverted — is, that induction
is an independent logical principle, incapable of being inferred
either from experience or from other logical principles, and that
without this principle science is impossible.
700
Part 2. — From Rousseau to the Present 'Day
Chapter XVIII
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
FROM the latter part of the eighteenth century to the present
day, art and literature and philosophy, and even politics, have
been influenced, positively or negatively, by a way of feeling
which was characteristic of what, in a large sense, may be called
the romantic movement. Even those who were repelled by this
way of feeling were compelled to take account of it, and in many
cases were more affected by it than they knew. I propose in this
chapter to give a brief description of the romantic outlook, chiefly
in matters not definitely philosophical; for this is the cultural
background of most philosophic thought in the period with which
we are now to be concerned.
The romantic movement was not, in its beginnings, connected
with philosophy, though it came before long to have connections
with it. With politics, through Rousseau, it was connected from
the first. But before we can understand its political and philo-
sophical effects we must consider it in its most essential form,
which is as a revolt against received ethical and aesthetic standards.
The first great figure in the movement is Rousseau, but to some
extent he only expressed already existing tendencies. Cultivated
people in eighteenth-century France greatly admired what they
called la scnsibilitc, which meant a proneness to emotion, and more
particularly to the emotion of sympathy. To be thoroughly satis-
factory, the emotion must be direct and violent and quite unin-
formed by thought. The man of sensibility would be moved to
tears by the sight of a single destitute peasant family, but Vould
be cold to well-thought-out schemes for ameliorating the lot of
peasants as a class. The poor were supposed to possess more
virtue than the rich ; the sage was thought of as a man who retires
from the corruption of courts to enjoy the peaceful pleasures of
an unambitious rural existence. As a passing mood, this attitude
is to be found in poets of almost all periods. The exiled Duke in
701
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
As You Like It expresses it, though he goes back to his dukedom
as soon as he can; only the melancholy Jaques sincerely prefers
the life of the forest Even Pope, the perfect exemplar of all that
the romantic movement rebelled against, says:
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
On his own ground.
The poor, in the imaginations of those who cultivated sensibility,
always had a few paternal acres, and lived on the produce of their
own labour without the need of external commerce. True, they
were always losing the acres in pathetic circumstances, because
the aged father could no longer work, the lovely daughter was
going into a decline, and the wicked mortgagee or the nicked lord
was ready to pounce either on the acres or on the daughter's virtue.
The poor, to the romantics, were never urban and never industrial ;
the proletariat is a nineteenth-century conception, perhaps equally
romanticized, but quite different.
Rousseau appealed to the already existing cult of sensibility,
and gave it a breadth and scope that it might not otherwise have
possessed. He was a democrat, not only in his theories, but in his
tastes. For long periods of his life, he was a poor vagabond,
receiving kindness from people only slightly less destitute than
himself. He repaid this kindness, in action, often with the blackest
ingratitude, but in emotion his response was all that the most
ardent devotee of sensibility could have wished. Having the tastes
of a tramp, he found the restraints of Parisian society irksome.
From him the romantics learnt a contempt for the trammels of
convention — first in dress and manners, in the minuet and the
heroic couplet, then in art and love, and at last over the whole
sphere of traditional morals.
The romantics were not without morals; on the contrary, their
moral judgments were sharp and vehement. But they were based
on quite other principles than those that had seemed good to their
predecessors. The period from 1660 to Rousseau is dominated by
recollections of the wars of religion and the civil wars in France
and England and Germany. Men were very conscious of the
danger of chaos, of the anarchic tendencies of all strong passions,
of the importance of safety and the sacrifices necessary to achieve
702
THF ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
it. Prudence was regarded as the supreme virtue; intellect was
valued as the most effective weapon against subversive fanatics;
polished manners were praised as a barrier against barbarism.
Newton's orderly cosmos, in which the planets unchangingly
revolve about the sun in law-abiding orbits, became an imaginative
symbol of good government Restraint in the expression of
passion was the chief aim of education, and the surest mark of a
gentleman. In the Revolution, pre-romantic French aristocrats
died quietly; Madame Roland and Danton, who were romantics,
died rhetorically.
By the time of Rousseau, many people had grown tired of
safety, and had begun to desire excitement. The French Revolu-
tion and Napoleon gave them their fill of it. When, in 1815, the
political world returned to tranquillity, it was a tranquillity so
dead, so rigid, so hostile to all vigorous life, that only terrified
conservatives could endure it. Consequently there was no such
intellectual acquiescence in the status quo as had characterized
France under the Roi Soleil and England until the French Revo-
lution. Nineteenth-century revolt against the system of the Holy
Alliance took two forms. On the one hand, there was the revolt
of industrialism, both capitalist and proletarian, against monarchy
and aristocracy; this was almost untouched by romanticism, and
reverted, in many respects, to the eighteenth century. This move-
ment is represented by the philosophical radicals, the free-trade
movement, and Marxian socialism. Quite different from this was
the romantic revolt, which was in part reactionary, in part revo-
lutionary. The romantics did not aim at peace and quiet, but at
vigorous and passionate individual life. They had no sympathy
with industrialism because it was ugly, because money-grubbing
seemed to them unworthy of an immortal soul, and because the
growth of modern economic organizations interfered with indi-
vidual liberty. In the post-revolutionary period they were led into
politics, gradually, through nationalism: each nation was^elt to
have a corporate soul, which could not be free so long as the
boundaries of States were different from those of nations. In the
first half of the nineteenth century, nationalism was the most
vigorous of revolutionary principles, §nd most romantics ardently
favoured it.
The romantic movement is characterized, as a whole, by the
substitution of aesthetic for utilitarian standards. The earth-worm
703
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
is useful, but not beautiful; the tiger is beautiful, but not useful.
Darwin (who was not a romantic) praised the earth-worm; Blake
praised the tiger. The morals of the romantics have primarily
aesthetic motives. But in order to characterize the romantics, it
is necessary to take account, not only of the importance of aesthetic
motives, but also of the change of taste which made their sense
of beauty different from that of their predecessors. Of this, their
preference for Gothic architecture is one of the most obvious
examples. Another is their taste in scenery. Dr. Johnson preferred
Fleet Street to any rural landscape, and maintained that a man
who is tired of London must be tired of life. If anything in the
country was admired by Rousseau's predecessors, it was a scene
of fertility, with rich pastures and lowing kine. Rousseau, being
Swiss, naturally admired the Alps. In his disciples* novels and
stories, we find wild torrents, fearful precipices, pathless forests,
thunder-storms, tempests at sea, and generally what is useless,
destructive, and violent. This change seems to be more or less
permanent: almost everybody, nowadays, prefers Niagara and
the Grand Canyon to lush meadows and fields of waving corn.
Tourist hotels afford statistical evidence of taste in scenery.
The temper of the romantics is best studied in fiction. They
liked what was strange: ghosts, ancient decayed castles, the last
melancholy descendants of once-great families, practitioners of
rism and the occult sciences, falling tyrants and levantinc
pirates. Fielding and Smollett wrote of ordinary people in circum-
stances that might well have occurred; so did the realists who
reacted against romanticism. But to the romantics such themes
were too pedestrian; they felt inspired only by what was grand,
remote, and terrifying. Science, of a somewhat dubious sort, could
be utilized if it led to something astonishing; but in the main the
Middle Ages, and what was most medieval in the present, pleased
the romantics best Very often they cut loose from actuality,
either past or present, altogether. The Ancient Marina is typical
in this respect, and Coleridge's Kubla Khan is hardly the historical
monarch of Marco Polo. The geography of the romantics is in-
teresting: from Xanadu to "the lone Chorasmian shore," the places
in which it is interested are remote, Asiatic, or ancient.
The romantic movement, in spite of owing its origin to Rousseau,
was at first mainly German, lite German romantics were young
in the last yean of the eighteenth century, and it was while they
TUB ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
were young that they gave expression to what was most charac-
teristic in their outlook. Those who had not the good fortune to
die young, in the end allowed their individuality to be obscured
in the uniformity of the Catholic Church. (A romantic could
become a Catholic if he had been born a Protestant, but could
hardly be a Catholic otherwise, since it was necessary to combine
Catholicism with revolt.) The German romantics influenced
Coleridge and Shelley, and independently of German influence
the same outlook became common in England during the early
years of the nineteenth century. In France, though in a weakened
form, it flourished after the Restoration, down to Victor Hugo. In
America it is to be seen almost pure in Melville, Thoreau, and
Brook Farm, and, somewhat softened, in Emerson and Hawthorne.
Although romantics tended towards Catholicism, there was some-
thing incradicably Protestant in the individualism of their outlook,
and their permanent successes in moulding customs, opinions, and
institutions were almost wholly confined to Protestant countries.
The beginnings of romanticism in England can be seen in the
writings of the satirists. In Sheridkn's Rivals (1775), the heroine
is determined to marry some poor man for love rather than a rich
man to please her guardian and his parents ; but the rich man whom
they have selected wins her love by wooing her under an assumed
name and pretending to be poor. Jane Austen makes fun of the
romantics in Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility (1797-8).
Northanger Abbey has a heroine who is led astray by Mrs. Rad-
cliffe's ultra-romantic Mysteries of Udolpho, which was published
in 1794. The first good romantic work in England — apart from
Blake, who was a solitary Swedenborgian and hardly part of any
"movement" — was Coltridge'&Anrient Mariner, published in 1799.
In the following year, having unfortunately been supplied with
funds by the Wedgwoods, he went to Gftttingen and became
engulfed in Kant, which did not improve his verse.
After Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey had become reac-
tionaries, hatred of the Revolution and Napoleon put a tenf)x>raiy
brake on English romanticism. But it was soon revived by Byron,
Shelley, and Keats, and in some degree dominated the whole
Victorian epoch.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, written under the inspiration of
conversations with Byron in the romantic scenery of the Alps,
contains what might almost be regarded as an allegorical prophetic
Hutaty of W*Ur* P*ifewl*x 705 X '
WB8TERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
history of the development of romanticism. Frankenstein's monster
is not, as he has become in proverbial parlance, a mere monster:
he is, at first, a gentle being, longing for human affection, but he
is driven to hatred and violence by the horror which his ugliness
inspires in those whose love he attempts to gain. Unseen, he
observes a virtuous family of poor cottagers, and surreptitiously
assists their labours. At length he decides to make himself known
to them:
"The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim
their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and
loved by these amiable creatures; to see their sweet looks directed
towards me with affection, was the utmost limit of my ambition.
I dared not think that they would turn from me with disdain and
honor."
But they did. So he first demanded of his creator the creation of
a female like himself, and, when that was refused, devoted himself
to murdering, one by one, all whom Frankenstein loved. But even
then, when all his murders are accomplished, and while he is
gazing upon the dead bod/ of Frankenstein, the monster's
tentimcnti remain noble:
"That also is my victim! in his murder my crimes are con-
summated; the miserable genius of my being is wound to its
close! Oh, Frankenstein I generous and self-devoted being! What
does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? 1, who irretrievably
destroyed thee by destroying all that thou lovedst. Alas ! he is cold,
he cannot answer me. . . . When 1 run over the frightful catalogue
of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose
thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions
of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the
fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of
God and man had friends and associates in his desolation ; I am
alone."
Robbed of its romantic form, there is nothing unreal in this
psychology, and it is unnecessary to search out pirates or Vandal
kings in order to find parallels* To an English visitor, the ex-Kaiser,
at Doom, lamented that the English no longer loved him. Or. Bun,
in his book on the juvenile delinquent, mentions a boy of seven
who drowned another boy to the Regent's Canal. His reason was
that neither his family nor his contemporaries showed him affec-
tion. Dr. Btut was kind to him, and he became a respectable
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
citizen; but no Dr. Burt undertook the reformation of Franken-
stein's monster.
It is not the psychology of the romantics that is at fault: it is
their standard of values. They admire strong passions, of no matter
what kind, and whatever may be their social consequences.
Romantic love, especially when unfortunate, is strong enough to
win their approval, but most of the strongest passions are des-
tructive— hate and resentment and jealousy, remorse and despair,
outraged pride and the fury of the unjustly oppressed, martial
ardour and contempt for slaves and cowards. Hence the type of
man encouraged by romanticism, especially of the Byronic variety,
is violent and anti-social, an anarchic rebel or a conquering tyrant.
This outlook makes an appeal for which the reasons lie very
deep in human nature and human circumstances. By self-interest
Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to
a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to
reinforce self-interest. But the habit of foregoing present satis-
factions for the sake of future advantages is irksome, and when
passions are roused the prudent restraints of social behaviour
become difficult to endure. Those who, at such times, throw them
off, acquire a new energy and sense of power from the cessation
of inner conflict, and, though they may come to disaster in the
end, enjoy meanwhile a sense of godlike exaltation which, though
known to the great mystics, can never be experienced by a merely
pedestrian virtue. The solitary part of their nature reasserts itself,
but if the intellect survives the reassertion must clothe itself in
myth. The mystic becomes one with God* and in the contem-
plation of the Infinite feels himself absolved from duty to his
neighbour. The anarchic rebel does even better: he feels himself
not one with God, but God. Truth and duty, which represent our
subjection to matter and to our neighbours, exist no longer for the
man who has become God ; for others, truth is what he posits, duty
what he commands. If we could all live solitary and without Jabour,
we could all enjoy this ecstasy of independence; since we cannot,
its delights are only available to madmen and dictators.
Revolt of solitary instincts against social bonds is the key to the
philosophy, the politics, and the segments, not only of what is
commonly called the romantic movement, but of its progeny down
to the present day. Philosophy, under the influence of German
idealism, became solipststic, and self-development was proclaimed
TO?
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as the fundamental principle of ethics. As regards sentiment, there
has to be a distasteful compromise between the search for isolation
and the necessities of passion and economics. D. H. Lawrence's
story, "The Man Who Loved Islands/' has a hero who disdained
such compromise to a gradually increasing extent and at last died
of hunger and cold, but in the enjoyment of complete isolation;
but this degree of consistency has not been achieved by the writers
who praise solitude. The comforts of civilized life are not obtain-
able by a hermit, and a man who wishes to write books or produce
works of an must submit to the ministrations of others if he is to
survive while he does his work. In order to continue to feel solitary*,
he must be able to prevent those who serve him from impinging
upon his ego, which is best accomplished if they are slaves. Pas-
sionate love, however, is a more difficult matter. So long as pas-
sionate lovers are regarded as in revolt against social trammels,
they are admired; but in real life the love-relation itself quickly
becomes a social trammel, and the partner in love comes to be
hated, all the more vehemently if the love is strong enough to
make the bond difficult to break. Hence love comes to be conceived
as a battle, in which each is attempting to destroy the other by
breaking through the protecting walls of his or her ego. This point
of view has become familiar through the writings of Strindberg,
and, still more, of D. H. Lawrence.
Not only passionate love, but every friendly relation to others,
is only possible, to this way of feeling, in so far as the others can
be regarded as a projection of one's own Self. This is feasible if
the others are blood-relations, and the more nearly they are related
the more easily it is possible. Hence an emphasis on race, leading,
as in the case of the Ptolemys, to endogamy. How this affected
Byron, we know; Wagner suggests a similar sentiment in the love
of Siegmund and Sieglinde. Nietzsche, though not scandalously,
preferred his sister to all other women: "How strongly I feel," he
writes^to her, "in all that you say and do, that we belong to the
same stock. You understand more of me than others do, because
we come of *the same parentage. This fits in very well with my
'philosophy.' "
The principle of nationality, of which Byron was a protagonist,
is an extension of the same "philosophy." A nation is assumed to
be a race, descended from common ancestors, and sharing some
kind of "btood-consciousncts/* Mazztni, who constantly found
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
fault with the English for their failure to appreciate Byron, con-
ceived nations as possessed of a mystical individuality, and attri-
buted to them the kind of anarchic greatness that other romantics
sought in heroic men. Liberty, for nations, came to be regarded,
not only by Mazzini, but by comparatively sober statesmen, as
something absolute, which, in practice, made international co-
operation impossible.
Belief in blood and race is naturally associated twith anti-
semitism. At the same time, the romantic outlook, partly because
it is aristocratic, and partly because it prefers passion to calcula-
tion, has a vehement contempt for commerce and finance. It is
thus led to proclaim an opposition to capitalism which is quite
different from that of the socialist who represents the interest of
the proletariat, since it is an opposition based on dislike of
economic preoccupations, and strengthened by the suggestion that
the capitalist world is governed by Jews. This point of view is
expressed by Byron on the rare occasions when he condescends
to notice anything so vulgar as economic power:
Who hold the balance of the world ? Who reign
O'er conquerors, whether royalist or liberal ?
Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain ?
(That make old Europe's journals squeak and gibber all.)
Who keep the world, both Old and New, in pain
Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?
The shade of Buonaparte's noble daring?
Jew Rothschild, and his fellow Christian Baring.
The verse is perhaps not very musical, but the sentiment is
quite of our time, and has been re-echoed by all Byron's followers.
The romantic movement, in its essence, aimed at liberating
human personality from the fetters of social convention and social
morality. In part, these fetters were a mere useless hindrance to
desirable forms of activity, for every ancient community has de-
veloped rules of behaviour for which there is nothing to4>e said
except that they are traditional. But egoistic passions, when once
let loose, are not easily brought again into subjection to the needs
of society. Christianity has succeeded, to some extent, in taming
the Ego, but economic, political, andWntellectual causes stimulated
revolt against the Churches, and the romantic movement brought
the revolt into the sphere of morals. By encouraging a new lawless
Ego it made social co-operation impossible, and left its disciples
709
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
faced with the alternative of anarchy or despotism. Egoism, at first,
made men expect from others a parental tenderness; but when
they discovered, with indignation, that others had their own Ego,
the disappointed desire for tenderness turned to hatred and
violence. Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social life
survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics.
710
Chapter XIX
ROUSSEAU
•
JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-78), though a pkUosophe in
the eighteenth-century French sense, was not what would
^ now be called a "philosopher." Nevertheless he had a
Swerful influence on philosophy, as on literature and taste
and manners and politics. Whatever may be our opinion of his
merits as a thinker, we must recognize his immense importance
as a social force. This importance pame mainly from his appeal
to the heart, and to what, in his day, was called "sensibility." He
is the father of the romantic movement, the initiator of systems of
thought which infer non-human facts from human emotions, and
the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic
dictatorships as opposed to traditional absolute monarchies. Ever
since his time, those who considered themselves reformers have
been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those
who followed Locke. Sometimes they co-operated, and many
individuals saw no incompatibility. But gradually the incompati-
bility has become increasingly evident. At the present time,
Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of
Locke.
Rousseau's biography was related by himself in his Confessions
in great detail, but without any slavish regard for truth. He enjoyed
making himself out a great sinner, and sometimes exaggerated in
this respect ; but there is abundant external evidence that he was
destitute of all the ordinary virtues. This did not trouble him,
because he considered that he always had a warm heart, which,
however, never hindered him from base actions towards his best
friends. I shall relate only so much of his life as is necessary in
order to understand his thought and his influence. ,
He was born in Geneva, and educated as an orthodox Calvinist.
His father, who was poor, combined the professions of watch-
maker and dancing- master ; his mother died when 1
and he was brought up by an aunt^He left
twelve, and was apprenticed to various tradesy
and at the age of sixteen fled from Geneva
mean* of subsistence, he went to a Catholic
711
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
himself as wishing to be converted. The formal conversion took
place at Turin, in an institution for catechumens; the process
lasted nine days. He represents his motives as wholly mercenary:
"1 could not dissemble from myself that the holy deed I was about
to do was at bottom the act of a bandit." But this w»s written after
he had reverted to Protestantism, and there is reason to think that
for some years he was a sincerely believing Catholic. In 1742 he
testified that a house in which he was living in 1730 had been
miraculously saved from a fire by a bishop's prayers.
Having been turned out of the institution at Turin with twenty
francs in his pocket, he became lackey to a lady named Madame
de Vercelli, who died three months later. At her death, he was
found to be in possession of a ribbon which had belonged to her,
which in fact he had stolen. He asserted that it had been given him
by a certain maid, whom he liked ; his assertion was believed, and
she was punished. His excuse is odd: "Never was wickedness
further from me than at this cruel moment; and when I accused
the poor girl, it is contradictory and yet it is true that my affection
for her was the cause of what I did. She was present to my mind,
and I threw the blame from myself on the first object that pre-
sented itself." This is a good example of the way in which, in
Rousseau's ethic, "sensibility" took the place of all the ordinary
virtues.
After this incident, he was befriended by Madame de Warens,
a convert from Protestantism like himself, a charming lady who
enjoyed a pension from the king of Savoy in consideration of her
services to religion. For nine or ten years, most of his time was
spent in her house; he called her "maman" even after she became
his mistress. For a while he shared her with her factotum ; all lived
in the greatest amity, and when the factotum died Rousseau felt
grief, but consoled himself with the thought: "Well, at any rate
I shall get his clothes."
During his early years there were various periods which he spent
as a vagabond, travelling on foot, and picking up a precarious
livelihood as bait he could. During one of these interludes, a friend,
with whom he was travelling, had an epileptic fit in the streets of
Lyons; Rousseau profited by, the crowd which gathered to abandon
his friend in the middle of the fit. On another occasion he became
secretary to a man who represented himself as an archimandrite
on the way to the Holy Sepulchre; on yet another, he had an affair
ROUSSEAU
with a rich lady, by masquerading as a Scotch Jacobite named
Dudding.
However, in 1743, through the help of a great lady, he became
secretary to the French Ambassador to Venice, a sot named
Montaigu, wht> left the work to Rousseau but neglected to pay his
salary. Rousseau did the work well, and the inevitable quarrel was
not his fault. He went to Paris to try to obtain justice; everybody
admitted that he was in the right, but for a long time nothing was
done. The vexations of this delay had something to do with turning
Rousseau against the existing form of government in France,
although, in the end, he received the arrears of salary that were
due to him.
It was at about this time (1745) that he took up with Therese le
Yasseur, who was a servant at his hotel in Paris. He lived with her
for the rest of his life (not to the exclusion of other affairs) ; he had
five children by her, all of whom he took to the Foundling Hos-
pital. No one has ever understood what attracted him to her. She
was ugly and ignorant ; she could neither read nor write (he taught
her to write, but not to read) ; she did not know the names of the
months, and could not add up money. Her mother was grasping
and avaricious ; the two together used Rousseau and all his friends as
sources of income. Rousseau asserts (truly or falsely) that he never
had a spark of love for Therese ; in later years she drank, and ran
after stable-boys. Probably he liked the feeling that he was in-
dubitably superior to her, both financially and intellectually, and
that she was completely dependent upon him. He was always
uncomfortable in the company of the great, and genuinely pre-
ferred simple people; in this respect his democratic feeling was
wholly sincere. Although he never married her, he treated her
almost as a wife, and all the grand ladies who befriended him had
to put up with her.
His first literary success came to him rather late in life. The
Academy of Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on tht ques-
tion: Have the arts and sciences conferred benefits on mankind?
Rousseau maintained the negative, and won the prize (1750). He
contended that science, letters, and the arts are the worst enemies
of morals, and, by creating wants, art the sources of slavery; for
how can chains be imposed on those who go naked, like American
•tvages? As might be expected, he is for Sparta, and against Athens.
He had read Plutarch's Lives at the age of seven, and been much
7'3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
influenced by them ; he admired particularly the life of Lycurgus.
Like the Spartans, he took success in war as the test of merit ;
nevertheless, he admired the "noble savage," whom sophisticated
Europeans could defeat in war. Science and virtue, he held, are
incompatible, and all sciences have an ignoble origin. Astronomy
comes from the superstition of astrology ; eloquence from ambi-
tion ; geometry from avarice ; physics from vain curiosity ; and even
ethics has its source in human pride. Education and the art of
printing are to be deplored ; everything that distinguishes civilized
man from the untutored barbarian is evil.
Having won the prize and achieved sudden fame by this essay,
Rousseau took to living according to its maxims. He adopted the
simple life, and sold his watch, saying that he would no longer
need to know the time.
The ideas of the first essay were elaborated in a second/ a
"Discourse on Inequality" (1754), which, however, failed to win
a prize. He held that "man is naturally good, and only by
institutions is he made bad" — the antithesis of the doctrine of
original sin and salvation through the Church. Like most political
theorists of his age, he spoke of a state of nature, though somewhat
hypotheticaliy, as "a state which exists no longer, perhaps never
existed, probably never will exist, and of which none the less it is
necessary to have just ideas, n order to judge well our present
state." Natural law should be deduced from the state of nature,
but as long as we are ignorant of natural man it is impossible to
determine the law originally prescribed or best suited to him. All
we can know is that the wills of those subject to it must be con-
scious of their submission, and it must come directly from the
voice of nature. He does not object to natural inequality, in respect
of age, health, intelligence, etc., but only to inequality resulting
from privileges authorized by convention.
The origin of civiJ society and of the consequent social inequali-
ties is to be found in private property. "The first man who, having
enclosed a piece of land, bethought himself of saying 'this is mine,'
and found people simple enough to believe htm, was the real
founder of civil society/' He goes on to say that a deplorable
revolution introduced metallurgy and agriculture; grain if the
symbol of our misfortune. Europe is the unhappiest Continent,
because it has the most grain and the most iron. To undo the
£vil, it it only necessary to abandon civilization, for man is natur-
7'4
ROUSSEAU
ally good, and savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all
nature and the friend of all his fellow-creatures (my italics).
Rousseau sent this essay to Voltaire, who replied (1755): "I have
received your new book against the human race, and thank you
for it. Never .was such a cleverness used in the design of making
us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all
fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel
unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in
search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which
I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me;
because war is going on in those regions; and because the example
of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves."
It is not surprising that Rousseau and Voltaire ultimately quar-
relled; the marvel is that they did not quarrel sooner.
In 2754, having become famous, he was remembered by his
native city, and invited to visit it. He accepted, but as only Cal-
vinists could be citizens of Geneva, he had himself reconverted
to his original faith. I ie had already adopted the practice of speaking
of himself as a Genevan puritan and republican, and after his
reconversion he thought of living in Geneva. He dedicated bis
Discourse on Inequality to the City Fathers, but they were not
pleased; they had no wish to be considered only the equals of
ordinary citizens. Their opposition was not the only drawback to
life in Geneva ; there was another, even more grave, and this was
that Voltaire had gone to live there. Voltaire was a writer of plays
and an enthusiast for the theatre, but Geneva, on puritan grounds,
forbade all dramatic representations. When Voltaire tried to get
die ban removed, Rousseau entered the lists on the Puritan side.
Savages never act plays ; Plato disapproves of them ; the Catholic
Church refuses to marry or bury actors ; Bossuet calls the drama
a "school of concupiscence." The opportunity for an attack on
Voltaire was too good to be lost, and Rousseau made himself the
champion of ascetic virtue. ,
This was not the first public disagreement of these two eminent
men* The first was occasioned by the earthquake of Lisbon (1755),
about which Voltaire wrote a poem throwing doubt on the Provi-
dential government of the world. Rousseau was indignant. He
commented: "Voltaire, in seeming always to believe in God, never
really believed in anybody but the devil, since his pretended God
is * maleficent Being who according to him finds all his pleasure
7»5
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
in working mischief. The absurdity of this doctrine is especially
revolting in a man crowned with good things of every sort, and
who from the midst of his own happiness tries to fill his fellow-
creatures with despair, by the cruel and terrible image of the
serious calamities from which he is himself free." H
Rousseau, for his part, saw no occasion to make such a fuss
about the earthquake. It is quite a good thing that a certain number
of people should get killed now and then. Besides, the people of
Lisbon suffered because they lived in houses seven stories high ;
if they had been dispersed in the woods, as people ought to be,
they would have escaped uninjured.
The questions of the theology of earthquakes and of the morality
of stage plays caused a bitter enmity between Voltaire and
Rousseau, in which all the philosopher took sides. Voltaire
treated Rousseau as a mischievous madman; Rousseau spoke of
Voltaire as "that trumpet of impiety, that fine genius, and that
low soul." Fine sentiments, however, must find expression, and
Rousseau wrote to Voltaire (1760): "I hate you, in fact, since you
have so willed it ; but I hate you like a man still worthier to have
loved you, if you had willed it. Of all the sentiments with which
my heart was full towards you, there only remain the admiration
that we cannot refuse to your fine genius, and love for your
writings. If there is nothing in you that I can honour but your
talents, that is no fault of mine."
We come now to the most fruitful period of Rousseau's life. liis
novel La noweUe Heloite appeared in 1760; EmiU and The Social
Contract both in 1762. Emile, which is a treatise on education
according to "natural" principles, might have been considered
harmless by the authorities if it had not contained "The Confession
of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar," which set forth the principles of
natural religion as understood by Rousseau, and was irritating to
both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy. The Social Contract was
even more dangerous, for it advocated democracy and denied the
divine right of kings. The two books, while they greatly increased
hit feme, brought upon him a storm of official condemnation. He
was obliged to fly from France ; Geneva would have none of him ;>
1 The Council of Geneva ordtfrtd the two books to be burnt, and gave
instniction* that Rousseau was to be arrested if he came to Geneva. The
French Government had ordered his wrest: the Sorbonne and the
Pariement of Paris condemned £Wb.
716
ROUSSEAU
Bern refused him asylum. At last Frederick the Great took pity
on him, and allowed him to live at Motiers, near Neuchatel, which
was part of the philosopher-king's dominions. There he lived for
three years; but at the end of that time (1765) the villagers of
Motiers, led by the pastor, accused him of poisoning, and tried
to murder him. He fled to England, where Hume, in 1762, had
proffered his services.
In England, at first, all went well. He had a great social success,
and George HI granted him a pension. He saw Burke almost daily,
but their friendship soon cooled to the point where Burke said:
"He entertained no principle, either to influence his heart, or
guide his understanding, but vanity." Hume was longest faithful,
saying he loved him much, and could live with him all his life in
mutual friendship and esteem. But by this time Rousseau, not
unnaturally, had come to suffer from the persecution mania which
ultimately drove him insane, and he suspected Hume of being the
agent of plots against his life. At moments he would realize the
absurdity of such suspicions, and would embrace Hume, exclaim-
ing "No, no, Hume is no traitor," to which Hume (no doubt much
embarrassed) replied, "Quai, man cher Monsieur!" But in the
end his delusions won the day and he fled. His last years were
spent in Paris in great poverty, and when he died suicide was
suspected.
After the breach, Hume said: "He has only felt during the whole
course of his life, and in this respect his sensibility rises to a pitch
beyond what I have seen any example of; but it still gives him
a more acute feeling of pain than of pleasure. He is like a man who
was stripped not only of his clothes, but of his skin, and turned
out in this situation to combat with the rude and boisterous
elements/'
This is the kindest summary of his character that is in any
degree compatible with truth.
There is much in Rousseau's work which, however important
in other respects, does not concern the history of philosophical
thought. There are only two pans of his thinking that I shall
consider in any detail; these are, first, his theology, and second,
his political theory. ,
in theology he made an innovation which has now been accepted
by the great majority of Protestant theologians. Before him, every
philosopher from Plato onwards, if he believed in God, offered
7*7
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
intellectual arguments in favour of his belief.1 The arguments may
not, to us, seem very convincing, and we may feel that they would
not have seemed cogent to anyone who did not already fed sure
of the truth of the conclusion. But the philosopher who advanced
the arguments certainly believed them to be logically valid, and
such as should cause certainty of God's existence in any unpre-
judiced person of sufficient philosophical capacity. Modern Protes-
tants who urge us to believe in God, for the most pan, despise
the old "proofs," and base their faith upon some aspect of human
nature— emotions of awe or mystery, the sense of right and wrong,
the feeling of aspiration, and so on. This way of defending religious
belief was invented by Rousseau. It has become so familiar that
his originality may easily not be appreciated by a modern reader,
unless he will take the trouble to compare Rousseau with (say)
Descartes or Leibniz.
"Ah, Madame I" Rousseau writes to an aristocratic lady, "some-
times in the privacy of my study, with my hands pressed tight over
my eyes or in the darkness of the night, I am of opinion that there
is no God. But look yonder: the rising of the sun, as it scatters the
mists that cover the earth, and lays bare the wondrous glittering
scene of nature, disperses at the same moment all cloud from my
soul. I find my faith again, and my God, and my belief in Him.
I admire and adore Him, and I prostrate myself in His presence."
On another occasion he says: "I believe in God as strongly as
I believe any other truth, because believing and not believing are
the last things in the world that depend on me." This form of
argument his the drawback of being private ; the fact that Rousseau
cannot help believing something affords no ground for another
person to believe the same thing.
He was very emphatic in his theism. On one occasion he
threatened to leave a dinner party because Saint Lambert (one of
the guests, expressed a doubt as to the existence of God. "A/at,
Momjfur" Rousseau exclaimed angrily, 4> crou en Ditu!"
Robespierre, in all things his faithful disciple, followed him in
this respect also. The "Ffte de 1'Etre Suprtme" would have bad
Rousseau's whole-hearted approval.
"The Confession of Fa^h of a Savoyard Vicar," which is
an interlude in the fourth book of Entile, is the most explicit
1 We mutt except Ptecml. "The heart has its reason*, of which
~ ifDomu** is quite in HOUMCMI'S «tyle.
ROUSSEAU
and formal statement of Rousseau's creed. Although it professes
to be what the voice of nature has proclaimed to a virtuous priest,
who suffers disgrace for the wholly "natural" fault of seducing
an unmarried woman,1 the reader finds with surprise that the voice
of nature, when it begins to speak, is uttering a hotch-pot of
arguments derived from Aristotle, St. Augustine, Descartes, and
so on. It is true that they are robbed of precision and logical form ;
this is supposed to excuse them, and to permit the worthy Vicar
to say that he cares nothing for the wisdom of the philosophers.
The later parts of "The Confession of Faith" are less reminis-
cent of previous thinkers than the earlier parts. After satisfying
himself that there is a God, the Vicar goes on to consider rules of
conduct. "I do not deduce these rules," he says, "from the prin-
ciples of a high philosophy, but I find them in the depths of my
heart, written by Nature in ineffaceable characters." From this he
goes on to develop the view that conscience is in all circumstances
an infallible guide to right action. "Thanks be to Heaven," he
concludes this part of his argument, "we are thus freed from all
this terrifying apparatus of philosophy; we can be men without
being learned; dispensed from wasting our life in the study of
morals, we have at less cost a more assured guide in this immense
labyrinth of human opinions." Our natural feelings, he contends,
lead us to serve the common interest, while our reason urges
selfishness. We have therefore only to follow feeling rather than
reason in order to be virtuous.
Natural religion, as the Vicar calls his doctrine, has no need of
a revelation ; if men had listened to what God says to the heart,
there would have been only one religion in the world. If God has
revealed Himself specially to certain men, this can only be known
by human testimony, which is fallible. Natural religion has the
advantage of being revealed directly to each individual.
There is a curious passage about hell. The Vicar does not know
whether the wicked go to eternal torment, and says, sonewhat
loftily, that the fate of the wicked does not greatly interest him;
but on the whole he inclines to the view that the pains of hell are
not everlasting. However this may be, he is sure that salvation is
not confined to the members of anyone Church.
It was presumably the rejection of revelation and of hell that so
1 "Un prttre en bonne rfcglc ne doit fair* dei enfants qu'aux feraraes
marifea," he ebewhew reports a Savoyard priest a» saying.
719
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
profoundly shocked the French government and the Council of
Geneva.
The rejection of reason in favour of the heart was not, to my
mind, an advance. In fact, no one thought of this device so long
as reason appeared to be on the side of religious bdief. In Rous-
seau's environment, reason, as represented by Voltaire, was op-
posed to religion, therefore away with reason! Moreover reason
was abstruse and difficult; the savage, even when he has dined,
cannot understand the ontological argument, and yet the savage
is the repository of all necessary wisdom. Rousseau's savage — who
was not the savage known to anthropologists — was a good husband
and a kind father; he was destitute of greed, and had a religion of
natural kindliness. He was a convenient person, but if he could
follow the good Vicar's reasons for believing in God he must have
had more philosophy than his innocent naivete would lead one
to expect.
Apart from the fictitious character of Rousseau's "natural man,"
there are two objections to the practice of basing beliefs as to
objective fact upon the emotions of the heart. One is that there is
no reason whatever to suppose that such beliefs will be true; the
other is, that the resulting beliefs will be private, since the heart
says different things to different people. Some savages are per-
suaded by the "natural light" that it is their duty to eat people,
and even Voltaire's savages, who are led by the voice of reason
to hold that one should only eat Jesuits, are not wholly satisfactory.
To Buddhists, the light of nature does not reveal the existence of
God, but does proclaim that it is wrong to eat the flesh of animals.
But even. if the heart said the same thing to all men, that could
afford no evidence for the existence of anything outside our own
emotions. However ardently I, or all mankind, may desire some-
thing, however necessary it may be to human happiness, that is
no ground for supposing this something to exist. There is no law
of nature guaranteeing that mankind should be happy. Everybody
can see that this is true of our life here on earth, but by a curious
twist our very sufferings in this life are made into an argu-
ment for a better life hereafter. We should not employ such
an argument in any other connection. If you had bought ten
dozen eggs from a man, and the first dozen were all rotten,
you would not infer that the remaining nine dozen must be of
surpassing excellence; yet that is the kind of reasoning that
720
ROUSSEAU
"the heart" encourages as a consolation for our sufferings here
below.
For my part, I prefer the ontological argument, the cosmological
argument, and the rest of the old stock-in-trade, to the sentimental
illogicality that has sprung from Rousseau. The old arguments at
least were honest: if valid, they proved their point; if invalid, it
was open to any critic to prove them so. But the new theology of
the heart dispenses with argument; it cannot be refuted, because
it does not profess to prove its points. At bottom, the only reason
offered for its acceptance is that it allows us to indulge in pleasant
dreams. This is an unworthy reason, and if I had to choose
between Thomas Aquinas and Rousseau, I should unhesitatingly
choose the Saint.
Rousseau's political theory is set forth in his Social Contract,
published in 1762. This book is very different in character from
most of his writing; it contains little sentimentality and much dose
intellectual reasoning. Its doctrines, though they pay lip-service
to democracy, tend to the justification of the totalitarian State.
But Geneva and antiquity combined to make him prefer the City
State to large empires such as those of France and England. On
the tide-page he calls himself "citizen of Geneva," and in his
introductory sentences he says: "As I was born a citizen of a free
State, and a member of the Sovereign, I feel that, however feeble
the influence of my voice may have been on public affairs, the right
of voting on them makes it my duty to study them." There are
frequent laudatory references to Sparta, as it appears in Plutarch's
Life of Lycurgus. He says that democracy is best in small States,
aristocracy in middle-sized ones, and monarchy in large ones. But
it is to be understood that, in his opinion, small States are pre-
ferable, in pan because they make democracy more practicable.
When he speaks of democracy, he means, as the Greeks meant,
direct participation of every citizen; representative government
he calls "elective aristocracy." Since the former is no£ possible
in a large State, his praise of democracy always implies praise of
the City State. This love of the City State is, in my opinion, not
sufficiently emphasized in most accounts of Rousseau's political
philosophy. «
Although the book as a whole is much less rhetorical than mosft
of Rousseau's writing, the first chapter opens with a very forceful
piece of rhetoric; "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
721
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains
more of a slave than they are." Liberty is the nominal goal of
Rousseau's thought, but in fact it is equality that he values, and
that he seeks to secure even at the expense of liberty.
His conception of the Social Contract seems, at first, analogous
to Locke's, but soon shows itself more akin to that of Hobbes. In
the development from the state of nature, there comes a time when
individuals can no longer maintain themselves in primitive inde-
pendence; it then becomes necessary to self-preservation that they
should unite to form a society. But how can I pledge my liberty
without harming my interests? "The problem is to find a form
of association which will defend and protect with the whole com-
mon force the person and goods of each associate, and in which
each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone,
and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem
of which the Social Contract provides the solution."
The Contract consists in "the total alienation of each associate,
together with all his rights, to the whole community ; for, in the
first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the
same for all; and this being so, no one has any interest in making
them burdensome to others." The alienation is to be without
reserve: "If individuals retained certain rights, as there would be
no common superior to decide between them and the public, each,
being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the
state of nature would thus continue, and the association would
necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical."
This implies a complete abrogation of liberty and a complete
rejection of the doctrine of the rights of man. It is true that, in a
later chapter, there is some softening of this theory. It is there said
that, although the social contract gives the body politic absolute
power over all its members, nevertheless human beings have
natural rights as men. "The sovereign cannot impose upon its
subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can
it even wish to do so." But the sovereign is the sole judge of what
is useful or useless to the community. It is dear that only a very
feeble obstacle is thus opposed to collective tyranny.
It should be observed that the "sovereign" means, in Rousseau,
not the monarch or the government, but the community in its
collective and legislative capacity.
The Social Contract can be stated in the following words: "Each
7"
ROUSSEAU
of us puts his person and all his power in common under the
supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate
capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible pan of the
whole/1 This act of association creates a moral and collective
body, which is called the "State** when passive, the "Sovereign"
when active, and a 'Tower9* in relation to other bodies like itself.
The conception of the "general will," which appears in the
above wording of the Contract, plays a very important part in
Rousseau's system. I shall have more to say about it shortly.
It is argued that the Sovereign need give no guarantees to its
subjects, for, since it is formed of the individuals who compose it,
it can have no interest contrary to theirs. "The Sovereign, merely
by virtue of what it is, is always what it should be." This doctrine
is misleading to the reader who does not note Rousseau's some-
what peculiar use of terms. The Sovereign is not the government,
which, it is admitted, may be tyrannical; the Sovereign is a more
or less metaphysical entity, not fully embodied in any of the f isible
organs of the State. Its impeccability, therefore, even if admitted,
has not the practical consequences that it might be supposed to
have.
The will of the Sovereign, which is always right, is the "general
will/* Each citizen, qud citizen, shares in the general will, but he
may also, as an individual, have a particular will running counter
to the general will. The Social Contract involves that whoever
refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to do so. "This
means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.**
This conception of being "forced to be free** is very meta-
physical. The general will in the time of Galileo was certainly anti-
Copernican; was Galileo "forced to be free1' when the Inquisition
compelled him to recant? Is even a malefactor "forced to be free'*
when he is put in prison? Think of Byron's Corsair:
O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless and our hearts as fjee.
Would this man be more "free" in a dungeon? The odd thing is
that Byron's noble pirates arc a direct outcome of Rousseau, and
yet, in the above passage, Rousseau forgets his romanticism and
speaks like a sophistical polkcm&n. Hegel, who owed much ty
Rousseau, adopted hi* misuse of the word "freedom,** and defined
it as the right to obey the police, or something not very different.
7*3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Rousseau has not that profound respect for private property
that characterizes Locke and his disciples. "The State, in relation
to its members, is master of all their goods." Nor does he believe
in division of powers, as preached by Locke and Montesquieu.
In this respect, however, as in some others, his later detailed
discussions do not wholly agree with his earlier general principles.
In Book HI, chapter i, he says that the part of the Sovereign is
limited to making laws, and that the executive, or government, is
an intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign
to secure their mutual correspondence. He goes on to say: "If the
Sovereign desires to govern, or the magistrate to give laws, or
if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder takes the place of regularity,
and ... the State falls into despotism or anarchy." In this sentence,
allowing for the difference of vocabulary, he seems to agree with
Montesquieu.
I come now to the doctrine of the general will, which is both
important and obscure. The general mil is not identical with the
will of the majority, or even with the will of all the citizens. It
•seems to be conceived as the will belonging to the body politic
as such. If we take Hobbes's view, that a civil society is a person,
we must suppose it endowed with the attributes of personality,
including will. But then we are faced with the difficulty of deciding
what are the visible manifestations of this will, and here Rousseau
leaves us in the dark. We are told that the general will is always
right and always tends to the public advantage ; but that it does
not follow that the deliberations of the people are equally correct,
for there is often a great deal of difference between the will of
all and the general will. How, then, are we to know what is the
general will? There is, in the same chapter, a son of answer:
"If, when the people, being furnished with adequate informa-
tion, held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication
one with another, the grand total of the small differences would
always give the general will, and the decision would always be
good." *
The conception in Rousseau's mind seems to be this: every
man's political opinion is governed by self-interest, but self-
interest consists of two parts, one of which is peculiar to the indi-
vidual, while the other is common to all the members of the
community. If the citizens have no opportunity of striking log-
rolling bargains with each other, their individual interests, being
ROUSSEAU
divergent, will cancel out, and there will be left a resultant which
will represent their common interest; this resultant is the general
will. Perhaps Rousseau's conception might be illustrated by ter-
restrial gravitation. Every particle in the earth attracts every other
particle in the universe towards itself; the air above us attracts us
upward while the ground beneath us attracts us downward. But
all these "selfish" attractions cancel each other out in so far as
they are divergent, and what remains is a resultant attraction
towards the centre of the earth. This might be fancifully conceived
as the act of the earth considered as a community, and as the
expression of its general will.
To say that the general will is always right is only to say that,
since it represents what is in common among the self-interests of
the various citizens, it must represent the largest collective satis-
faction of self-interest possible to the community. This inter-
pretation of Rousseau's meaning seems to accord with his words
better than any other that I have been able to think of.1
In Rousseau's opinion, what interferes in practice with the
expression of the general will is the existence of subordinate asso-
ciations within the State. Each of these will have its own general
mil, which may conflict with that of the community as a whole.
"It may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as
there are men, but only as many as there are associations." This
leads to an important consequence: "It is therefore essential, if
the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be
no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should
think only his own thoughts: which was indeed the sublime and
unique system established by the great Lycurgus." In a footnote,
Rousseau supports his opinion with the authority of Machiavelli.
Consider what such a system would involve in practice. The
State would have to prohibit churches (except a State Church),
political parties, trade-unions, and all other organizations of men
with similar economic interests. The result is obviously the Cor-
porate or Totalitarian State, in which the individual citizen is
powerless. Rousseau seems to realize that it may be difficult to
1 E.g., "There if often much difference between the will of all and the
general will: the latter considers onlynhe common interest: the former
looks to private interest, and is only a sum of particular wills: but take
away from these tame wills the more and the less which destroy each
other, and the general will remains as the sum of the differences."
7*5
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
prohibit all associations, and adds, as an afterthought, that, if
there must be subordinate associations, then the more there are
the better, in order that they may neutralize each other.
When, in a later pan of the book, he comes to consider govern-
ment, he realizes that the executive is inevitably an association
having an interest and a general will of its own, which may easily
conflict with that of the community. He says that while the govern-
ment of a large State needs to be stronger than that of a small
one, there is also more need of restraining the government by
means of the Sovereign. A member of the government has three
wills: his personal will, the will of the government, and the
general will. These three should form a crescendo, but usually in
fact form a diminuendo. Again: "Everything conspires to take
away from a man who is set in authority over others the sense of
justice and reason."
Thus in spite of the infallibility of the general will, which is
"always constant, unalterable, and pure/' all the old problems of
eluding tyranny remain. What Rousseau has to say on these
problems is either a surreptitious repetition of Montesquieu, or
an insistence on the supremacy of the legislature, which, if demo-
cratic, is identical with what he calls the Sovereign. The broad
general principles with which he starts, and which he presents
as if they solved political problems, disappear when he condescends
to detailed considerations, towards the solution of which they
contribute nothing.
The condemnation of the book by contemporary reactionaries
leads a modern reader to expect to find in it a much more sweeping
revolutionary doctrine than it in fact contains. We may illustrate
this by what is said about democracy. When Rousseau uses this
word, he means, as we have already seen, the direct democracy
of the ancient City State. This, he points out, can never be com-
pletely realized, because the people cannot be always assembled
and always occupied with public affairs. "Were there a people of
gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a
government is not for men.'*
What we call democracy he calls elective aristocracy; this, he
says, is the best of all governments, but it is not suitable to all
Oxmtries. Hie climate must be neither very hot nor very cold ; the
produce must not much exceed what is necessary, for, where it
does, the evil of luxury is inevitable, and it it better that this
7*6
ROUSSEAU
evil should be confined to a monarch and his Court than diffused
throughout the population. In virtue of these limitations, a large
field is left for despotic government. Nevertheless his advocacy of
democracy, in spite of its limitations, was no doubt one of the
things that* made the French Government implacably hostile
to the book; the other, presumably, was the rejection of the
divine right of kings, which is implied in the doctrine of the
Social Contract as the origin of government.
The Social Contract became the Bible of most of the leaders in
the French Revolution, but no doubt, as is the fate of Bibles, it
was not carefully read and was still less understood by many of
its disciples. It reintroduced the habit of metaphysical abstractions
among the theorists of democracy, and by its doctrine of the
general will it made possible the mystic identification of a leader
with his people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane
an apparatus as the ballot-box. Much of its philosophy could be
appropriated by Hegel1 in his defence of the Prussian autocracy.
Its first-fruits in practice were the reign of Robespierre; the
dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) are
in part an outcome of Rousseau's teaching. What further triumphs
the future has to offer to his ghost I do not venture to predict.
1 Hegel selects for special praise the distinction between the general
will and the will of all. He says; "Rousseau would have made a sounder
contribution towards a theory of the State, if he had always kept this
distinction in sight" (/*o£ir, sec. 163).
737
Chapter XX
KANT
A. GERMAN IDEALISM IN GENERAL
PHILOSOPHY in the eighteenth century was dominated by
the British empiricists, of whom Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
may be taken as the representatives. In these men there was a
conflict, of which they themselves appear to have been unaware,
between their temper of mind and the tendency of their theoretical
doctrines. In their temper of mind they were socially minded
citizens, by no means self-assertive, not unduly anxious for power,
and in favour of a tolerant world where, within the limits of the
criminal law, every man could do as he pleased. They were good-
natured, men of the world, urbane and kindly.
But while their temper was social, their theoretical philosophy
led to subjectivism. This was not a new tendency ; it had existed
in late antiquity, most emphatically in St. Augustine; it was
revived in modern times by Descartes 's cogito, and reached a
momentary culmination in Leibniz's windowless monads. Leibniz
believed that everything in his expedience would be unchanged if
the rest of the world were annihilated ; nevertheless he devoted
himself to the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches.
A similar inconsistency appears in Locke; Berkeley, and Hume.
In Locke, the inconsistency is still in the theory. We saw in an
earlier chapter that Locke says, on the one hand: "Since the mind,
in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object
but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is
evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them."
And: "Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or dis-
agreemertf of two ideas." Nevertheless, he maintains that we have
three kinds of knowledge of real existence: intuitive, of our own ;
demonstrative, of God's; and sensitive, of things present to sense.
Simple ideas, he maintains, are "the product of things operating
on the mind in a natural way." How he knows this, he does not
ficplain; it certainly goes beyond "the agreement or disagreement
of two ideas."
Berkeley took an important step towards ending this incon-
728
KANT
sistency. For him, there are only minds and their ideas; the
physical external world is abolished. But he still failed to grasp
all the consequences of the epistemological principles that he
took over from Locke. If he had been completely consistent, he
would have denied knowledge of God and of all minds except his
own. From such denial he was held back by his feelings as a
clergyman and as a social being.
Hume shrank from nothing in pursuit of theoretical consistency,
but felt no impulse to make his practice conform to his theory.
Hume denied the Self, and threw doubt on induction and causa-
tion. He accepted Berkeley's abolition of matter, but not the
substitute that Berkeley offered in the form of God's ideas. It is
true that, like Locke, he admitted no simple idea without an
antecedent impression, and no doubt he imagined an "impression"
as a state of mind directly caused by something external to the
mind. But he could not admit this as a definition of "impression,"
since he questioned the notion of "cause." I doubt whether
either he or his disciples were ever clearly aware of this problem
as to impressions. Obviously, on his view, an "impression"
would have to be defined by some intrinsic character distin-
guishing it from an "idea," since it could not be defined causally.
He could not therefore argue that impressions give knowledge
of things external to ourselves, as had been done by Locke, and,
in a modified form, by Berkeley. He should, therefore, have
believed himself shut up in a sotipsistic world, and ignorant of
everything except his own mental states and their relations.
Hume, by his consistency, showed that empiricism, carried to
its logical conclusion, led to results which few human beings could
bring themselves to accept, and abolished, over the whole field
of science, the distinction between rational belief and credulity.
Locke had foreseen this danger. He puts into the mouth of a
supposed critic the argument: "If knowledge consists in agree-
ment of ideas, the enthusiast and the sober man are on^a level."
Locke, living at a time when men had grown tired of "enthusiasm,"
found no difficulty in persuading men of the validity of his reply
to this criticism. Rousseau, coming at a moment when people
were, in turn, getting tired of reason, revived "enthusiasm," and,
accepting the bankruptcy of reason, allowed the heart to decid?
questions which the head left doubtful. From 1750 to 1794, the
heart spoke louder and louder; at last Thermidor put an end,
7*9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
for a time, to its ferocious pronouncements, so for at least as
France was concerned. Under Napoleon, heart and head were
alike sitenocd,
In Germany, the reaction against Hume's agnosticism took a
form far more profound and subtle than that which Rousseau
had given to it. Kant, Fichtc, and Hegel developed a new kind
of philosophy, intended to safeguard both knowledge and virtue
from the subversive doctrines of the late eighteenth century. In
Kant, and still more in Fichte, the subjectivist tendency that
begins with Descartes was carried to new extremes ; in this respect
there was at first no reaction against Hume. As regards sub-
jectivism, the reaction began with Hegel, who sought, through
his logic, to establish a new way of escape from the individual
into the world.
The whole of German idealism has affinities with the romantic
movement. These are obvious in Fichte, and still more so in
Schelling; they are least so in Hegel.
Kant, the founder of German idealism, is not himself politically
important, though he wrote some interesting essays on political
subjects. Fichte and Hegel, on the other hand, both set forth
political doctrines which had, and still have, a profound influence
upon the course of history. Neither can be understood without a
previous study of Kant, whom we shall consider in this chapter.
There are certain common characteristics of the German
idealists, which can be mentioned before embarking upon
detail.
The critique of knowledge, as a means of reaching philosophical
conclusions, is emphasized by Kant and accepted by his followers.
There is an emphasis upon mind as opposed to matter, which
leads in the end to the assertion that only mind exists. There is
a vehement rejection of utilitarian ethics in favour of systems
which are held to be demonstrated by abstract philosophical
arguments. There is a scholastic tone which is absent in the
earlier French and English philosophers; Kant, Fichte, and
Hegel were university professors, addressing learned audiences,
not gentlemen of leisure addressing amateurs. Although their
effects were in pan revolutionary, they themselves were not
intentionally subversive; Fichte and Hegel were very definitely
concerned in the defence of the State. The lives of all of them
were exemplary and academic; their views on moral questions
730
RANT
were strictly orthodox. They made innovations in theology, but
they did so in the interests of religion.
With these preliminary remarks, let us turn to the study of Kant.
B. OUTLINE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is generally considered the greatest
of modern philosophers. I cannot myself agree with this estimate,
but it would be foolish not to recognize his great importance.
Throughout his whole life, Kant lived in or near Konigsberg,
in East Prussia. His outer life was academic and wholly uneventful,
although he lived through the Seven Years' War (during part of
which the Russians occupied East Prussia), the French Revolu-
tion, and the early part of Napoleon's career. He was educated
in the Wolfian version of Leibniz's philosophy, but wz? led to
abandon it by two influences: Rousseau and Hume. Hume, by
his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his
dogmatic slumbers — so at least he says, but the awakening was
only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enab'ed
him to sleep again. Hume, for Kant, was an adversary to be refuted,
but the influence of Rousseau was more profound. Kant was a
man of such regular habits that people used to set their watches
by him as he passed their doors on his constitutional, but on one
occasion his time-table was disrupted for several days; this was
when he was reading Emile. He said that he had to read Rousseau's
books several times, because, at a first reading, the beauty of the
style prevented him from noticing the matter. Although he had been
brought up as a pietist, he was a Liberal both in politics and in
theology ; he sympathized with the French Revolution until the ;
Reign of Terror, and was a believer in democracy. His philosophy/
as we shall see, allowed an appeal to the heart against the cold
dictates of theoretical reason, which might, with a little exaggera-
tion, be regarded as a pedantic version of the Savoyard Vicar.
His principle that every man is to be regarded as an end in himself
is a form of the doctrine of the Rights of Man ; and his love of
freedom is shown in his saying (about children as well as adults)
that "there can be nothing more 4feadful than that the actions of
a man should be subject to the will of another/' *
Kant's early works are more concerned with science than with
philosophy. After the earthquake of Lisbon he wrote on the theory
73*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of earthquakes; he wrote a treatise on wind, and a short essay
on the question whether the west wind in Europe is moist because
it has crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Physical geography was a
subject in which he took great interest.
The most important of his scientific writings is his General
Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), which antici-
pates Laplace's nebular hypothesis, and sets forth a possible origin
of the solar system. Parts of this work have a remarkable Miltonic
sublimity. It has the merit of inventing what proved a fruitful
hypothesis, but it does not, as Laplace did, advance serious argu-
ments in its favour. In parts it is purely fanciful, for instance in
the doctrine that all planets are inhabited, and that the most
distant planets have the best inhabitants — a view to be praised
for its terrestrial modesty, but not supported by any scientific
grounds.
At a time when he was more troubled by the arguments of
sceptics than he was earlier or later, he wrote a curious work
called Dreams of a Ghost-seer, Illustrated by the Dreams of Meta-
physics (1766). The "ghost-seer*1 is Swedenborg, whose mystical
system had been presented to the world in an enormous work
of which four copies were sold, three to unknown purchasers and
one to Kant. Kant, half seriously and half in jest, suggests that
Swedenborg's system, which he calls "fantastic," is perhaps no
more so than orthodox metaphysics. He is not, however, wholly
contemptuous of Swedenborg. His mystical side, which existed
though it did not much appear in his writings, admired Sweden-
borg, whom he calls "very sublime."
Like everybody else at that time, he wrote a treatise on the
sublime and the beautiful, Night is sublime, day is beautiful; the
sea is sublime, the land is beautiful ; man is sublime, woman is
beautiful ; and so on.
The Encyclopaedia Britanmca remarks that "as he never married,
he kept, the habits of his studious youth to old age." I wonder
whether the author of this article was a bachelor or a married
man.
Kant's most important book is The Critique of Pure Reason
j[fim edition, 1781 ; second edition, 1787). The purpose of this
"work is to prove that, although none of our knowledge can trans-
cend experience, it is, nevertheless, in part a priori and not
inferred inductively from experience. The put of our knowledge
732
KANT
which is a priori embraces, according to him, not only logic, but
much that cannot be inducted in logic or deduced from it. He
separates two distinctions which, in Leibniz, are confounded. On
the one hand there is the distinction between "analytic" and
"synthetic" .propositions; on the other hand, the distinction
between "a priori" and "empirical" propositions. Something
must be said about each of these distinctions.
An "analytic" proposition is one in which the predicate is part
of the subject ; for instance, "a tall man is a man," or "an equilateral
triangle is a triangle." Such propositions follow from the law of
contradiction ; to maintain that a tall man is not a man would be
self-contradictory. A "synthetic" proposition is one that is not
analytic. All the propositions that we know t only through ex-
perience are synthetic. We cannot, by a mere analysis of concepts,
discover such truths as "Tuesday was a wet day" or "Napoleon
was a great general." But Kant, unlike Leibniz and all other
previous philosophers, will not admit the converse, that all
synthetic propositions are only known through experience. This
brings us to the second of the above distinctions.
An "empirical" proposition is one which we cannot know except
by the help of sense-perception, either our own or that of some-
one else whose testimony we accept. The facts of history and geo-
graphy are of this sort ; so are the laws of science, whenever our
knowledge of their truth depends on observational data. An "a
priori" proposition, on the other hand, is one which, though it
may be elicited by experience, is seen, when known, to have a
basis other than experience. A child learning arithmetic may be
helped by experiencing two marbles and two other marbles, and
observing that altogether he is experiencing four marbles. But
when he has grasped the general proposition "two and two are
four" he no longer requires confirmation by instances; the pro-
position has a certainty which induction can never give to a
general law. All the propositions of pure mathematics aje in this
sense a priori.
Hume had proved that the law of causality is not analytic, and
had inferred that we could not be certain of its truth. Kant
accepted the view that it is synthetic, but nevertheless maintained
that it is known a priori. He maintained that arithmetic ancf
geometry are synthetic, but are likewise a priori. He was thus led
to formulate his problem in these terms:
733
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?
The answer to this question, with its consequences, constitutes
the main theme of The Critique of Pur* Reason.
Kant's sotetioa of the problem was one in which he felt great
confidence. He had spent twelve years in looking for it, but took
only a few months to write his whole long book after his theory
had taken shape. In the preface to the first edition be says; "1
venture to aasert that there is not a single metaphysical problem
which has not been solved, or for the solution of which the key
at least has not been supplied/1 In the preface to the second
edition he compares himself to Copernicus, and says that he has
effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy.
According to Kant, the outer world causes only the matter of
sensation, but our own mental apparatus orders this matter in
space and time, and supplies the concepts by means of which
we understand experience. Things in themselves, which are the
causes of our sensations, are unknowable; they are not in space
or time, they are not substances, nor can they be described by
any of those other general concepts which Kant calls "categories/*
Space and time are subjective, they are part of our apparatus of
perception. But just because of this, we can be sure that whatever
we experience will exhibit the characteristic* dealt with by geo-
metry and the science of time. If you always wore blue spectacles,
you could be sure of seeing everything blue (this is not Kant I
illustration). Similarly, since you always wear spatial spectacles in
your mind, you are sure of always seeing everything in space.
Thus geometry is a priori in the sense that it must be true of
everything experienced, but we have no reason to suppose thst
anything analogous is true of things in themselves, which we do
not experience*
Space and time, Kant says, are not concepts; they are forms of
"intuition/* (The German word is "An*chauxnf>; which means
HteraUy^'looking at" or "view." The word "intuition." though
the accepted translation, is not altogether a satisfactory one.) There
are also, however, a priori concepts; these are the twelw "cate-
gories," which Kant derives from the forms of the syllogism- The
twelve categories are divided ipto four sets of three : ( i ) of quantity :
unity, plurality, totality; (2) of quality: reality, negation, limita-
tion; (3) of relation: substaiuxsand-accidem, cause-tnd-effect,
redorocity; (4) of modality: possibility, existence, necessity. These
734
*ANT
are subjective in the same sense in which space and time
that is to say, our mental constitution is such that they are applic-
able to whatever we experience, but there is no reason to suppose
them applicable to things in themselves. As regards cause, however,
there is an inconsistency, for things in themselves are regarded
by Kant as causes of sensations, and free volitions are held by him
to be causes of occurrences in space and time. This inconsistency
is not an accidental oversight; it is an essential part of his system.
A large pan of The Critique of Pure Reason is occupied in show*
ing the fallacies that arise from applying space and time or the
categories to things that are not experienced. When this is done,
so Kant maintains, we find ourselves troubled by "antinomies"—
that is to say, by mutually contradictory propositions each of
which can apparently be proved. Kant gives four such antinomies,
each consisting of thesis and antithesis.
In the first, the thesis says: "The world has a beginning in time,
and is also limited as regards space." The antithesis says: "The
world has no beginning in time, and no limits in space ; it is infinite
as regards both time and space."
The second antinomy proves that every composite substance
both is, and is not, made up of simple parts.
The thesis of the third antinomy maintains that there are two
kinds of causality, one according to the laws of nature, the other
4hat of freedom ; the antithesis maintains that there is only causality
according to the laws of nature.
The fourth antinomy proves that there is, and is not, an
absolutely necessary Being.
This pan of the Critique greatly influenced Hegel, whose
dialectic proceeds wholly by way of antinomies.
In a famous section, Kant sets to work to demolish all the
purely intellectual proofs of the existence of God. He makes it
clear that he has other reasons for believing in God; these he
was to set forth later in The Critique of Practical Reason. But for
the time being his purpose is purely negative.
There are, he says, only three proofs of God's existence by pure
reason; these are th£ ontological proof, the cosmologies! proof,
and the physico-theological proof.
The ontological proof, as he sets It forth, defines God as the en?
reatimmum, the most real being; i.e. the subject of all predicates
that belong to being absolutely. It is contended, by thoae who
735
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
believe the proof valid, that, since "existence" is such a predicate,
this subject must have the predicate "existence/1 i.e. must exist.
Kant objects that existence is not a predicate. A hundred dialers
that I merely imagine may, he says, have all the same predicates
as a hundred real thalers.
The cosmological proof says: If anything exists, then an abso-
lutely necessary Being must exist; now I know that I exist;
therefore an absolutely necessary Being exists, and this must be
the ens realissimum. Kant maintains that the last step in this
argument is the ontological argument over again, and that it is
therefore refuted by what has been already said.
The physico-theological proof is the familiar argument from
design, but in a metaphysical dress. It maintains that the universe
exhibits an order which is evidence of purpose. This argument is
treated by Kant with respect, but he points out that, at best, it
proves only an Architect, not a Creator, and therefore cannot give
an adequate conception of God. He concludes that "the only
theology of reason which is possible is that which is based upon
moral laws or seeks guidance from them."
God, freedom, and immortality, he says, are the three "ideas
of reason." But although pure reason leads us to form these ideas,
it cannot itself prove their reality. The importance of these ideas
is practical, i.e. connected with morals. The purely intellectual
use of reason leads to fallacies ; its only right use is directed u,
moral ends.
The practical use of reason is developed briefly near the end of
The Critique of Pure Reason, and more fully in The Critique of
Practical Reason (1786). The argument is that the moral law
demands justice, i.e. happiness proportional to virtue. Only
Providence can insure this, and has evidently not insured it in
this life. Therefore there is a God and a future life; and there
must be freedom, since otherwise there would be no such thing
as virtue.
Kant's ethical system, as set forth in his Metaphysic of Morals
(1785), has considerable historical importance. This book contains
the "categorical imperative,1' which, at least fcs a phrase, is familiar
outside the circle of professional philosophers. As might be
'expected, Kant will have nothing to do with utilitarianism, or
with any doctrine which gives to morality a purpose outside itself.
He wants, he says, "a completely isolated metaphysic of morals,
736
KANT
which is not mixed with any theology or physics or hyperphysics."
All moral concepts, he continues, have their seat and origin
wholly a priori in the reason. Moral worth exists only when a man
acts from a sense of duty; it is not enough that the act should be
such as duty wight have prescribed. The tradesman who is honest
from self-interest, or the man who is kind from benevolent
impulse, is not virtuous. The essence of morality is to be derived
from the concept of law; for, though everything in nature acts
according to laws, only a rational being has the power of acting
according to the idea of a law, i.e. by Will. The idea of an objective
principle, in so far as it is compelling to the will, is called a
command of the reason, and the formula of the command is
called an imperative.
There are two sorts of imperative: the hypothetical imperative
which says "You must do so-and-so if you wish to achieve such-
and-such an end"; and the categorical imperative, which says that
a certain kind of action is objectively necessary, without regard
to any end. The categorical imperative is synthetic and a
priori. Its character is deduced by Kant from the concept of
Law:
"If I think of a categorical imperative, I know at once what it
contains. For as the imperative contains, besides the Law, only
the necessity of the maxim to be in accordance with this law,
out the Law contains no condition by which it is limited, nothing
remains over but the generality of a law in general, to which the
maxim of the action is to be conformable, and which conforming
alone presents the imperative as necessary. Therefore the cate-
gorical imperative is a single one, and in fact this: Act only
according to a maxim by which you can at the same time mil that it
shall become a general law." Or: "Act as if the maxim of your action
were to becotne through your will a general natural law."
Kant gives as an illustration of the working of the categorical
imperative that it is wrong to borrow money, because jf we all
tried to do so there would be no money left to borrow. One can
in like manner show that theft and murder are condemned by the
categorical imperative. But there are some acts which Kant
would certainly think wrong but which cannot be shown to be
wrong by his principles, for instance suicide; it would be quite^
possible for a melancholic to wish that everybody should commit
suicide. His maxim seems, in fact, to give a necessary but not a
(•/ H t*t<rn /V
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
sufficient criterion of virtue. To get a sufficient criterion, we should
have to abandon Kant's purely formal point of view, and take
some account of the effects of actions. Kant, however, states
emphatically that virtue does not depend upon the intended
result of an action, but only on the principle of wljich it is itself
a result; and if this is conceded, nothing more concrete than
his maxim is possible.
Kant maintains, although his principle does not seem to entail
this consequence, that we ought so to act as to treat every man
as an end in himself. This may be regarded as an abstract form
of the doctrine of the rights of man, and it is open to the same
objections. If taken seriously, it would make it impassible to reach
a decision whenever two people's interests conflict. The diffi-
culties are particularly obvious in political philosophy, which
requires some principle, such as preference for the majority, by
which the interests of some can, when necessary, be sacrificed to
those of others. If there is to be any ethic of government, the end
of government must be one, and the only single end compatible
with justice is the good of the community. It is possible, however,
to interpret Kant's principle as meaning, not that each man is an
absolute end, but that all men should count equally in deter-
mining actions by which many are affected. So interpreted, the
principle may be regarded as giving an ethical basis for democracy.
In this interpretation, it is not open to the above objection.
Kant's vigour and freshness of mind in old age are shown by
his treatise on Perpetual Peace (1795). lathis work he advocates
a federation of free States, bound together by a covenant for-
bidding war. Reason, he says, utterly condemns war, which only
an international government can prevent. The civil constitution
of the component States should, he says, be "republican," but
he defines this word as meaning that the executive and the legis-
lative are separated He does not mean that there should be no
king; in fact, he says that it is easiest to get a perfect government
under ac monarchy. Writing under the impact of the Reign of
Tenor, he is suspicious of democracy; he says that it is of
necessity despotism, since it establishes an executive power.
"The 'whole people/ so-called, who carry their measures are
realty not all, but only a majority: so that here the universal will
is in contradiction with itself and with the principle of freedom*'1
The phrasing shows the influence of Rousseau, but the important
738
KANT
idea of a world federation as the way to secure peace is not derived
from Rousseau.
Since 1933, this treatise has caused Kant to fall into disfavour
in his own country.
•
c. KANT'S THEORY OF SPACE AND TIME
The most important part of The Critique of Pure Reason is the
doctrine of space and time. In this section I propose to make a
critical examination of this doctrine.
To explain Kant's theory of space and time clearly is not easy,
because the theory itself is not clear. It is set forth both in The
Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena; the latter exposi-
tion is the easier, but is less full than that in the Critique. I will
try first to expound the theory, making it as plausible as I can;
only after exposition will I attempt criticism.
Kant holds that the immediate objects of perception are due
partly to external things and partly to our own perceptive appara-
tus. Locke had accustomed the world to the idea that the secondary
qualities — colours, sounds, smells, etc. — are subjective, and do
not belong to the object as it is in itself. Kant, like Berkeley and
Hume, though in not quite the same way, goes further, and makes
the primary qualities also subjective. Kant does not at most times
«pnestion that our sensations have causes, which he calls "things-
in-themselves" or "noumena" What appears to us in perception,
which he calls a "phenomenon/' consists of two parts: that due
to the object, which he calls the "sensation," and that due to our
subjective apparatus, which, he says, causes the manifold to be
ordered in certain relations. This latter part he calls the form of
the phenomenon. This part is not itself sensation, and therefore
not dependent upon the accident of environment; it is always
the same, since we carry it about with us, and it is a priori in the
sense that it is not dependent upon experience. A pure form of
sensibility is called a "pure intuition" (Anschauung); there are
two such forms, namely space and time, one for the outer sense,
one for the inner.
To prove that space and time are a priori forms, Kant has two
classes of arguments, one metaphysfcal, the other epistemologicalv
or, as he calls it, transcendental. The former class of arguments
are taken directly from the nature of space and time, the latter
739
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
indirectly from the possibility of pure mathematics. The argu-
ments about space are given more fully than those about time,
because it is thought that the latter are essentially the same as the
former.
As regards space, the metaphysical arguments are four in
number.
(1) Space is not an empirical concept, abstracted from outer
experiences, for space is presupposed in referring sensations to
something external, and external experience is only possible
through the presentation of space.
(2) Space is a necessary presentation a priori, which underlies
all external perceptions; for we cannot imagine that there should
be no space, although we can imagine that there should be nothing
in space.
(3) Space is not a discursive or general concept of the relations
of things in general, for there is only one space, of which what we
call "spaces" are parts, not instances.
(4) Space is presented as an infinite given magnitude, which
holds within itself all the parts of space; this relation is different
from that of a concept to its instances, and therefore space is not
a concept but an Anschauung.
The transcendental argument concerning space is derived from
geometry. Kant holds that Euclidean geometry is known a priori,
although it is synthetic, i.e. not deducible from logic alone. Get*
metrical proofs, he considers, depend upon the figures; we can
see, for instance, that, given two intersecting straight lines at right
angles to each other, only one straight line at right angles to both
can be drawn through their point of intersection. This knowledge,
he thinks, is not derived from experience. But the only way in
which my intuition can anticipate what will be found in the object
is if it contains only the form of my sensibility, antedating in my
subjectivity all the actual impressions. The objects of sense must
obey geometry, because geometry is concerned with our ways
of perceiving, and therefore we cannot perceive otherwise. This
explains why geometry, though synthetic, is a priori and apodcictic.
The arguments with regard to time are essentially the same,
except that arithmetic replaces geometry with the contention that
counting takes time. »
Let us now examine these arguments one by one.
The first of the metaphysical arguments concerning space says:
740
KANT
"Space is not an empirical concept abstracted from external
experiences. For in order that certain sensations may be referred
to something outside me [i.e. to something in a different position
in space from that in which I find myself], and further in order
that I may b$ able to perceive them as outside and beside each
other, and thus as not merely different, but in different places,
the presentation of space must already give the foundation [zum
Grunde Uegen}" Therefore external experience is only possible
through the presentation of space.
The phrase "outside me [i.e. in a different place from that in
which I find myself]99 is a difficult one. As a thing-in-itself, I am
not anywhere, and nothing is spatially outside me; it is only my
body as a phenomenon that can be meant. Thus all that is really
involved is what comes in the second part of the sentence, namely
that I perceive different objects as in different places. The image
which arises in one's mind is that of a cloak-room attendant who
hangs different coats on different pegs; the pegs must already
exist, but the attendant's subjectivity arranges the coats.
There is here, as throughout Kant's theory of the subjectivity
of space and time, a difficulty which he seems to have never felt.
What induces me to arrange objects of perception as I do rather
than otherwise? Why, for instance, do I always see people's eyes
above their mouths and not below them ? According to Kant, the
<Jes and the mouth exist as things in themselves, and cause my
separate percepts, but nothing in them correspond* to the spatial
arrangement that exists in my perception. Contrast with this the
physical theory of colours. We do not suppose that in matter
there are colours in the sense in which our percepts have colours,
but we do think that different colours correspond to different
wave-lengths. Since waves, however, involve space and time,
there cannot, for Kant, be waves in the causes of our percepts. If,
on the other hand, the space and time of our percepts have
counterparts in the world of matter, as physics assunjes, then
geometry is applicable to these counterparts, and Kant's arguments
fail. Kant holds that the mind orders the raw material of sensation,
but never thinks it necessary to say why it orders it as it does and
not otherwise.
In regard to time this difficulty is even greater, because of the*
intrusion of causality. I perceive the lightning before I perceive
the thunder ; a thing-in-itself A caused my perception of lightning,
74'
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and another thing-in-itself B caused my perception of thunder,
but A was not earlier than B, since time exists only in the relations
of percepts. Why, then, do the two timeless things A and B pro-
duce effects at different times? This must be wholly arbitrary if
Kant is right, and there must be no relation between A and B
corresponding to the fact that the percept caused by A is earlier
than that caused by B.
The second metaphysical argument maintains that it is possible
to imagine nothing in space, but impossible to imagine no space.
It seems to me that no serious argument can be based upon
what we can or cannot imagine ; but I should emphatically deny
that we can imagine space with nothing in it. You can imagine
looking at the sky on a dark cloudy night, but then you yourself
are in space, and you imagine the clouds that you cannot see.
Kant's space, as Vaihinger pointed out, is absolute, like Newton's,
and not merely a system of relations. But I do not see how
absolute empty space can be imagined.
The third metaphysical argument says: "Space is not a dis-
cursive, or, as is said, general concept of the relations of things in
general, but a pure intuition. For, in the first place, we can only
imagine [rich vonUllen] one single space, and if we speak of
'spaces' we mean only parts of one and the same unique space.
And these parts cannot precede the whole as its parts . . . but
can only be thought as in if. It [space] is essentially unique, tflt
manifold in it rests solely on limitations." From this it is concluded
that space is an a priori intuition.
The gist of this argument is the denial of plurality in space
itself. What we call "spaces" are neither instances of a general
concept "a space," nor parts of an aggregate. I do not know
quite what, according to Kant, their logical status is, but in any
case they are logically subsequent to space. To those who take,
as practically all moderns do, a relational view of space, this argu-
ment becomes incapable of being stated, since neither "space"
nor "spaces" can survive as a substantive.
The fourth metaphysical argument is chiefly concerned to prove
that space is an intuition, not a concept. Its premiss is "space is
imagined [or presented, vorgcstellt] as an infinite given magnitude."
1 This is the view of a person* living in a flat country, like that of
Kfinigsberg; I do not see how an inhabitant of an Alpine valley
could adopt it. It i* difficult to see how anything infinite can be
742
RANT
"given." I should have thought it obvious that the pan of space
that is given is that which is peopled by objects of perception, and
that for other parts we have only a feeling of possibility of motion.
And if so vulgar an argument may be intruded, modern astronomers
maintain that space is in fact not infinite, but goes round and
round, like the surface of the globe.
The transcendental (or epistemological) argument, which is
best stated in the Prolegomena, is more definite than the meta-
physical arguments, and is also more definitely refutable. "Geo-
metry/' as we now know, is a name covering two different studies.
On the one hand, there is pure geometry, which deduces conse-
quences from axioms, without inquiring whether the axioms are
"true"; this contains nothing that does not follow from logic,
and is not "synthetic," and has no need of figures such as are
used in geometrical text-books. On the other hand, there is geo-
metry as a branch of physics, as it appears, for example, in the
general theory of relativity ; this is an empirical science, in which
the axioms are inferred from measurements, and are found to
differ from Euclid's. Thus of the two kinds of geometry one is
a priori but not synthetic, while the other is synthetic but not
a priori. This disposes of the transcendental argument.
Let us now try to consider the questions raised by Kant as
regards space in a more general way. If we adopt the view, which
If taken for granted in physics, that our percepts have external
causes which are (in some sense) material, we are led to the con-
clusion that all the actual qualities in percepts are different from
those in their unperceived causes, but that there is a certain
structural similarity between the system of percepts and the
system of their causes. There is, for example, a correlation between
colours (as perceived) and wave-lengths (as inferred by physicists).
Similarly there must be a correlation between space as an ingredient
in percepts and space as an ingredient in the system of unper-
ceived causes of percepts. All this rests upon the maxim "same
cause, same effect," with its obverse, "different effects,*different
causes." Thus, e.g., when a visual percept A appears to the left
of a visual percept B, we shall suppose that there is some corre-
sponding relation between the cause of A and the cause of B.
We have, on this view, two sj&ces, one subjective and on*
objective, one known in experience and the other merely inferred.
But there is no difference in this respect between space and other
743
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
aspects of perception, such as colours and sounds. All alike, in
their subjective forms, are known empirically; all alike, in their
objective forms, are inferred by means of a maxim as to causation.
There is no reason whatever for regarding our knowledge of space
as in any way different from our knowledge of colour and sound
and smell.
With regard to time, the matter is different, since, if we adhere
to the belief in unperceived causes of percepts, the objective time
must be identical with the subjective time. If not, we get into the
difficulties already considered in connection with lightning and
thunder. Or take such a case as the following: You hear a man
speak, you answer him, and he hears you. His speaking, and his
hearing of your reply, are both, so far as you are concerned, in the
unperceived world; and in that world the former precedes the
latter. Moreover his speaking precedes your hearing in the objec-
tive world of physics; your hearing precedes your reply in the
subjective world of percepts; and your reply precedes his hearing
in the objective world of physics. It is clear that the relation
"precedes" must be the same in all these propositions. While,
therefore, there is an important sense in which perceptual space is
subjective, there is no sense in which perceptual time is subjective.
The above arguments assume, as Kant does, that percepts are
caused by "things in themselves," or, as we should say, by events
in the world of physics. This assumption, however, is by no mea&*
logically necessary. If it is abandoned, percepts cease to be in any
important sense "subjective," since there is nothing with which
to contrast them.
The "thing-in-itself" was an awkward element in Kant's philo-
sophy, and was abandoned by his immediate successors, who
accordingly fell into something very like solipsism. Kant's incon-
sistencies were such as to make it inevitable that philosophers who
were influenced by him should develop rapidly either in the em-
pirical or in the absolutist direction; it was, in fact, in the latter
direction that German philosophy moved until after the death of
Hegel.
Kant's immediate successor, Fichtc (1762-1814), abandoned
"things in themselves," and carried subjectivism to a point which
%eems almost to involve a kind of insanity. He holds that the Ego
is the only ultimate reality, and that it exists because it posits
itself; the non-Ego, which has a subordinate reality, also exists
744
KANT
only because the Ego posits it. Fichte is not important as a pure
philosopher, but as the theoretical founder of German nationalism,
by his Addresses to the German Nation (1807-8), which were
intended to rouse the Germans to resistance to Napoleon after the
battle of Jena.* The Ego as a metaphysical concept easily became
confused with the empirical Fichte; since the Ego was German,
it followed that the Germans were superior to all other nations.
"To have character and to be a German," says Fichte, "un-
doubtedly mean the same thing." On this basis he worked out
a whole philosophy of nationalistic totalitarianism, which had
great influence in Germany.
His immediate successor Schelling (1775-1854) was more
amiable, but not less subjective. He was closely associated with
the German romantics; philosophically, though famous in his
day, he is not important. The important development from Kant's
philosophy was that of Hegel.
745
Chapter XXI
CURRENTS OF THOUGHT
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
E • IHE intellectual life of the nineteenth century was more
I complex than that of any previous age. This was due toi
JL several causes. First: the area concerned was larger than
ever before; America and Russia made important contributions,
and Europe became more aware than formerly of Indian philo-
sophies, both ancient and modern. Second: science, which had
been a chief source of novelty since the seventeenth century, made
new conquests, especially in geology, biology, and organic chemis-
try. Third: machine production profoundly altered the social
structure, and gave men a new conception of their powers in
relation to the physical environment. Fourth: a profound revolt,
both philosophical and political, against traditional systems in
thought, in politics, and in economics, gave rise to attacks upon
many beliefs and institutions that had hitherto been regarded as
unassailable. This revolt had two very different forms, one roman-
tic, the other rationalistic. (I am using these words in a liberal
sense.) The romantic revolt passes from Byron, Schopenhauer,
and Nietzsche to Mussolini and Hitler; the rationalistic revolt
begins with the French philosophers of the Revolution, passes on,
somewhat softened, to the philosophical radicals in England,
then acquires a deeper form in Marx and issues in Soviet
Russia.
The intellectual predominance of Germany is a new factor,
beginning with Kant. Leibniz, though a German, wrote almost
always in Latin or French, and was very little influenced by
Germany in his philosophy. German idealism after Kant, as well
as latei German philosophy, was, on the contrary, profoundly
influenced by German history; much of what seems strange in
German philosophical speculation reflects the state of mind of a
vigorous nation deprived, by historical accidents, of its natural
share of power. Germany had owed its international position to
the Holy Roman Empire, but the Emperor had gradually lost
control of his nominal subjects. The last powerful Emperor was
Charles V, and he owed his power to his possessions in Spain and
746
CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
the Low Countries. The Reformation and the Thirty Years' War
destroyed what had been left of German unity, leaving a number
of petty principalities which were at the mercy of France. In the
eighteenth century only one German state, Prussia, had success-
fully resisted .the French; that is why Frederick was called the
Great. But Prussia itself had failed to stand against Napoleon,
being utterly defeated in the battle of Jena. The resurrection of
Prussia under Bismarck appeared as a revival of the heroic past
of Alaric, Charlemagne, and Barbarossa. (To Germans, Charle-
magne is a German, not a Frenchman.) Bismarck showed his sense
of history when he said, "We will not go to Canossa."
Prussia, however, though politically predominant, was culturally
less advanced than much of Western Germany; this explains why
many eminent Germans, including Goethe, did not regret Napo-
leon's success at Jena. Germany, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, presented an extraordinary cultural and economic diver-
sity. In East Prussia serfdom still survived; the rural aristocracy
were largely immersed in bucolic ignorance, and the labourers
were completely without even the rudiments of education. Western
Germany, on the other hand, had been in part subject to Rome
in antiquity; it had been under French influence since the seven-
teenth century; it had been occupied by French revolutionary
armies, and had acquired institutions as liberal as those of France.
38me of the princes were intelligent, patrons of the arts and
sciences, imitating Renaissance princes in their courts; the most
notable example was Weimar, where the Grand Duke was Goethe's
patron. The princes were, naturally, for the most part opposed
to German unity, since it would destroy their independence. They
were therefore anti-patriotic, and so were many of the eminent
men who depended on them, to whom Napoleon appeared the
missionary of a higher culture than that of Germany.
Gradually, during the nineteenth century, the culture of Protes-
tant Germany became increasingly Prussian. Frederick tl$ Great,
as a free-thinker and an admirer of French philosophy, had
struggled to make Berlin a cultural centre; the Berlin Academy
had as its perpetual President an eminent Frenchman, Maupertuis,
who, however, unfortunately became the victim of Voltaire's
deadly ridicule. Frederick's endeavours, like those of the other
enlightened despots of the time, did not include economic or
political reform; all that was really achieved was a claque of
747
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
hired intellectuals. After his death, it was again in Western Ger-
many that most of the men of culture were to be found.
German philosophy was more connected with Prussia than were
German literature and art. Kant was a subject of Frederick the
Great; Fichte and Hegel were professors at Berlin. Kant was little
influenced by Prussia ; indeed he got into trouble with the Prussian
Government for his liberal theology. But both Fichte and Hegel
were philosophic mouthpieces of Prussia, and did much to prepare
the way for the later identification of German patriotism with
admiration for Prussia. Their work in this respect was carried on
by the great German historians, particularly by Mommsen and
Treitschke. Bismarck finally persuaded the German nation to
accept unification under Prussia, and thus gave the victory to the
less internationally minded elements in German culture.
Throughout the whole period after the death of Hegel, most
academic philosophy remained traditional, and therefore not very
important. British empiricist philosophy was dominant in England
until near the end of the century, and in France until a somewhat
earlier time; then, gradually, Kant and Hegel conquered the
universities of France and England, so far as their teachers of
technical philosophy were concerned. The general educated public,
however, was very little affected by this movement, which had
few adherents among men of science. The writers who carried on
the academic tradition — John Stuart Mill on the empiricist side,
Lotze, Sigwart, Bradley, and Bosanquet on the side of German
idealism — were none of them quite in the front rank among
philosophers, that is to say, they were not the equals of the men
whose systems they, on the whole, adopted. Academic philosophy
has often before been out of touch with the most vigorous thought
of the age, for instance, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
when it was still mainly scholastic. Whenever this happens, the
historian of philosophy is less concerned with the professors than
with the unprofessional heretics.
Most of the philosophers of the French Revolution combined
science with beliefs associated with Rousseau. Helvetius and Con-
dorcet may be regarded as typical in their combination of rational-
ism and enthusiasm. |§
Helvetius (1715-71) had the honour of having his book De
ly Esprit (1758) condemned by the Sorbonne and burnt by the
hangman. Bentham read him in 1769 and immediately determined
74*
CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
to devote his life to the principles of legislation, saying: "What
Bacon was to the physical world, Helvetius was to the moral. The
moral world has therefore had its Bacon, but its Newton is still
to come." James Mill took Helvetius as his guide in the education
of his son John Stuart.
Following Locke's doctrine that the mind is a tabula rasa,
Helvetius considered the differences between individuals entirely
due to differences of education : in every individual, his talents and
his virtues are the effect of his instruction. Genius, he maintains,
is often due to chance: if Shakespeare had not been caught poach-
ing, he would have been a wool merchant. His interest in legis-
lation comes from the doctrine that the principal instructors of
adolescence are the forms of government and the consequent
manners and customs. Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they
are made stupid by education.
In ethics, Helvetius was a utilitarian ; he considered pleasure to
be the good. In religion, he was a deist, and vehemently anti-
clerical. In theory of knowledge, he adopted a simplified version
of Locke: "Enlightened by Locke, we know that it is to the sense-
organs we owe our ideas, and consequently our mind." Physical
sensibility, he says, is the sole cause of our actions, our thoughts,
our passions, and our sociability. He strongly disagrees with
Rousseau as to the value of knowledge, which he rates very highly.
His doctrine is optimistic, since only a perfect education is
needed to make men perfect. There is a suggestion that it would
be easy to find a perfect education if the priests were got out of
the way.
Condorcet (1743-94) has opinions similar to those of Helvetius,
but more influenced by Rousseau. The rights of man, he says, are
a'l deduced from this one truth, that he is a sensitive being, capable
of making reasonings and acquiring moral ideas, from which it
follows that men can no longer be divided into rulers and subjects,
liars and dupes. "These principles, for which the generous Sidney
gave his life and to which Locke attached the authority of his
name, were afterwards developed more precisely by Rousseau/'
Locke, he says, first showed the limits of human knowledge. His
"method soon became that of all philosophers, and it is by applying
it to morals, politics, and economics, that they have succeeded
in pursuing in these sciences a road almost as sure as that of the
natural sciences."
74Q
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Condorcet much admires the American Revolution. "Simple
common sense taught the inhabitants of the British Colonies that
Englishmen born on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean had
precisely the same rights as those born on the meridian of Green-
wich." The United States Constitution, he says, is based on natural
rights, and the American Revolution made the rights of man
known to all Europe, from the Neva to the Guadalquivir. The
principles of the French Revolution, however, are "purer, more
precise, deeper than those that guided the Americans." These
words were written while he was in hiding from Robespierre;
shortly afterwards, he was caught and imprisoned. He died in
prison, but the manner of his death is uncertain.
He was a believer in the equality of women. He was also the
inventor of Malthus's theory of population, which, however, had
not for him the gloomy consequences that it had for Malthus,
because he coupled it with the necessity of birth control. Malthus's
father was a disciple of Condorcet, and it was in this way that
Maltbus came to know of the theory.
Condorcet is even more enthusiastic and optimistic than Hel-
vetius. He believes that, through the spread of the principles of
the French Revolution, all the major social ills will soon disappear.
Perhaps he was fortunate in not living beyond 1794.
The doctrines of the French revolutionary philosophers, made
less enthusiastic and much more precise, were brought to England4
by the philosophical radicals, of whom Bentham was the recog-
nized chief. Bentham was, at first, almost exclusively interested
in law; gradually, as he grew older, his interests widened and his
opinions became more subversive. After 1808, he was a republican,
a believer in the equality of women, an enemy of imperialism, and
an uncompromising democrat. Some of these opinions he owed
to James Mill. Both believed in the omnipotence of education.
Bentham *s adoption of the principle of "the greatest happiness of
the greatest number" was no doubt due to democratic feeling, but
it involved opposition to the doctrine of the rights of man, which
be bluntly characterized as "nonsense."
The philosophical radicals differed from men like Helvetius and
Condorcet in many ways. Temperamentally, they were patient
and fond of working out their theories in practical detail. They
attached great importance to economics, which they believed
themselves to have developed as a science. Tendencies to en*
7SO
CURRENTS OP THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
thusiasm, which existed in Bentham and John Stuart Mill, but
not in Malthus or James Mill, were severely held in check by this
"science," and particularly by Malthus's gloomy version of the
theory of population, according to which most wage-earners must
always, except just after a pestilence, earn the smallest amount
that will keep them and their families alive. Another great dif-
ference between the Benthamites and their French predecessors
was that in industrial England there was violent conflict between
employers and wage-earners, which gave rise to trade-
unionism and socialism. In this conflict the Benthamites, broadly
speaking, sided with the employers against the working class. Their
last representative, John Stuart Mill, however, gradually ceased
to give adherence to his father's stern tenets, and became, as he
grew older, less and less hostile to socialism, and less and less
convinced of the eternal truth of classical economics. According
to his autobiography, this softening process was begun by the
reading of the romantic poets.
The Benthamites, though at first revolutionary in a rather mild
way, gradually ceased to be so, partly through success in con-
verting th$ British government to some of their views, partly
through opposition to the growing strength of socialism and trade-
unionism. Men who were in revolt against tradition, as already
mentioned, were of two kinds, rationalistic and romantic, though
^!!f men like Condorcet both elements were combined. The Ben-
thamites were almost wholly rationalistic, and so were the Socialists
who rebelled against them as well as against the existing economic
order. This movement does not acquire a complete philosophy
until we come to Marx, who will be considered in a later chapter.
The romantic form of revolt is very different from the rationalist
form, though both are derived from the French Revolution and
the philosophers who immediately preceded it. The romantic form
is to be seen in Byron in an unphilosophical dress, but in Schopen-
hauer and Nietzsche it has learnt the language of philosophy. It
tends to emphasize the will at the expense of the intellect, to be
impatient of chains of reasoning, and to glorify violence of certain
kinds. In practical politics it is important as an ally of nationalism.
In tendency, if not always in fact, it is definitely hostile to what
is commonly called reason, and tends to be anti-scientific. Some*
of its most extreme forms are to be found among Russian anar-
chists, but in Russia it was the rationalist form of revolt that
751
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
finally prevailed. It was Germany, always more susceptible to
romanticism than any other country, that provided a governmental
outlet for the anti-rational philosophy of naked will.
So far, the philosophies that we have been considering have had
an inspiration which was traditional, literary, or political. But there
were two other sources of philosophical opinion, namely science
and machine production. The second of these began its theoretical
influence with Marx, and has grown gradually more important
ever since. The first has been important since the seventeenth
century, but took new forms during the nineteenth century.
What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century,
Darwin was to the nineteenth. Darwin's theory had two parts. On
the one hand, there was the doctrine of evolution, which main-
tained that the different forms of life had developed gradually
from a common ancestry. This doctrine, which is now generally
accepted, was not new. It had been maintained by Lamarck and
by Darwin's grandfather Erasmus, not to mention Anaximander.
Darwin supplied an immense mass of evidence for the doctrine,
and in the second part of his theory believed himself to have
discovered the cause of evolution. He thus gave to the doctrine
a popularity and a scientific force which it had not previously
possessed, but he by no means originated it.
The second part of Darwin's theory was the struggle for exis-
tence and the survival of the fittest. All animals and plants multiply
faster than nature can provide for them ; therefore in each genera-
tion many perish before the age for reproducing themselves. What
determines which will survive? To some extent, no doubt, sheer
luck, but there is another cause of more importance. Animals and
plants are, as a rule, not exactly like their parents, but differ
slightly by excess or defect in every measurable characteristic. In
a given environment, members of the same species compete for
survival, and those best adapted to the environment have the best
chance. Therefore among chance variations those that are favour-
able wilf preponderate among adults in each generation. Thus
from age to age deer run more swiftly, cats stalk their prey more
silently, and giraffes' necks become longer. Given enough time,
this mechanism, so Darwin contended, could account for the whole
long development from the protozoa to homo tapien*.
This pan of Darwin's theory has been much disputed, and is
regarded by most biologists as subject to many important quali-
75*
CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
fications. That, however, is not what most concerns the historian
of nineteenth-century ideas. From the historical point of view,
what is interesting is Darwin's extension to the whole of life of
the economics that characterized the philosophical radicals. The
motive force, of evolution, according to him, is a kind of biological
economics in a world of free competition. It was Malthus's doctrine
of population, extended to the world of animals and plants, that
suggested to Darwin the struggle for existence and the survival
of the fittest as the source of evolution.
Darwin himself was a liberal, but his theories had consequences
in some degree inimical to traditional liberalism. The doctrine that
all men are born equal, and that the differences between adults are
due wholly to education, was incompatible with his emphasis on
congenital differences between members of the same species. If,
as Lamarck held, and as Darwin himself was willing to concede
up to a point, acquired characteristics were inherited, this oppo-
sition to such views as those of Helvetius could have been some-
what softened; but it has appeared that only congenital charac-
teristics are inherited, apart from certain not very important
exceptions. Thus the congenital differences between men acquire
fundamental importance.
There is a further consequence of the theory of evolution, which
is independent of the particular mechanism suggested by Darwin.
Tff men and animals have a common ancestry, and if men developed
by such slow stages that there were creatures which we should not
know whether to classify as human or not, the question arises: at
what stage in evolution did men, or their semi-human ancestors,
begin to be all equal? Would Pithecanthropus erect us, if he had
been properly educated, have done work as good as Newton's?
Would the Piltdown Man have written Shakespeare's poetry if
there had been anybody to convict him of poaching? A resolute
egalitarian who answers these questions in the affirmative will find
himself forced to regard apes as the equals of human beings. And
why stop with apes? I do not see how he is to resist an*argument
in favour of Votes for Oysters. An adherent of evolution should
maintain that not only the doctrine of the equality of all men, but
also that of the rights of man, must be condemned as unbiological,
since it makes too emphatic a distinction between men and other
animals.
There is, however, another aspect of liberalism which was greatly
753
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
strengthened by the doctrine of evolution, namely the belief in
progress. So long as the state of the world allowed optimism,
evolution was welcomed by liberals, both on this ground and
because it gave new arguments against orthodox theology. Marx
himself, though his doctrines are in some respects pre-Darwinian,
wished to dedicate his book to Darwin.
The prestige of biology caused men whose thinking was in-
fluenced by science to apply biological rather than mechanistic
categories to the world. Everything was supposed to be evolving,
and it was easy to imagine an immanent goal. In spite of Darwin,
many men considered that evolution justified a belief in cosmic
purpose. The conception of organism came to be thought the key
to both scientific and philosophical explanations of natural laws,
and the atomic thinking of the eighteenth century came to be
regarded as out of date. This point of view has at last influenced
even theoretical physics. In politics it leads naturally to emphasis
upon the community as opposed to the individual. This is in
harmony with the growing power of the State ; also with national-
ism, which can appeal to the Darwinian doctrine of survival of
the finest applied, not to individuals, but to nations. But here we
are passing into the region of extra-scientific views suggested to a
large public by scientific doctrines imperfectly understood.
While biology has militated against a mechanistic view of the
world, modern economic technique has had an opposite effecf*
Until about the end of the eighteenth century, scientific technique,
as opposed to scientific doctrines, had no important effect upon
opinion. It was only with the rise of industrialism that technique
began to affect men's thought. And even then, for a long time,
the effect was more or less indirect. Men who produce philoso-
phical theories are, as a rule, brought into very little contact with
machinery. The romantics noticed and hated the ugliness that
industrialism was producing in places hitherto beautiful, and the
vulgarity (as they considered it) of those who had made money
in "trade/' This led them into an opposition to the middle class
which sometimes brought them into something like an alliance
with the champions of the proletariat. Engels praised Carlyle, not
perceiving that what Carlyle desired was not the emancipation of
fage-earners, but their subjection to the kind of masters they had
had in the Middle Ages. The Socialists welcomed industrialism,
but wished to free industrial workers from subjection to the power
754
CURRENTS OP THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
of employers. They were influenced by industrialism in the prob-
lems that they considered, but not much in the ideas that they
employed in the solution of their problems.
The most important effect of machine production on the imagi-
native picture of the world is an immense increase in the sense of
human power. This is only an acceleration of a process which
began before the dawn of history, when men diminished their fear
of wild animals by the invention of weapons and their fear of
starvation by the invention of agriculture. But the acceleration has
been so great as to produce a radically new outlook in those who
wield the powers that modern technique has created. In old days,
mountains and waterfalls were natural phenomena; now, an in-
convenient mountain can be abolished and a convenient waterfall
can be created. In old days, there were deserts and fertile regions;
now, the desert can, if people think it worth while, be made to
blossom like the rose, while fertile regions are turned into deserts
by insufficiently scientific optimists. In old days, peasants lived as
their parents and grandparents had lived, and believed as their
parents and grandparents had believed ; not all the power of the
Church could eradicate pagan ceremonies, which had to be given
a Christian dress by being connected with local saints. Now the
authorities can decree what the children of peasants shall learn in
school, and can transform the mentality of agriculturists in a
generation ; one gathers that this has been achieved in Russia.
There thus arises, among those who direct affairs or are in touch
with those who do so, a new belief in power: first, the power of
man in his conflicts with nature, and then the power of rulers as
against the human beings whose beliefs and aspirations they seek
to control by scientific propaganda, especially education. The result
is a diminution of fixity; no change seems impossible. Nature is
raw material ; so is that part of the human race which does not
effectively participate in government. There are certain old con-
ceptions which represent men's belief in the limits of human power ;
of these the two chief are God and truth. (I do not mean that these
two are logically connected.) Such conceptions tend to melt away;
even if not explicitly negated, they lose importance, and are re-
tained only superficially. This whole outlook is new, and it is
impossible to say how mankind will adapt itself to it. It has alreaUy
produced immense cataclysms, and will no doubt produce others
in the future. To frame a philosophy capable of coping with men
755
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power and also
with the apathy of the powerless is the most pressing task of our
time.
Though many still sincerely believe in human equality and
theoretical democracy, the imagination of modern people is deeply
affected by the pattern of social organization suggested by the
organization of industry in the nineteenth century, which is essen-
tially undemocratic. On the one hand there are the captains of
industry, and on the other the mass of workers. This disruption
of democracy from within is not yet acknowledged by ordinary
citizens in democratic countries, but it has been a preoccupation
of most philosophers from Hegel onwards, and the sharp oppo-
sition which they discovered between the interests of the many
and those of the few has found practical expression in Fascism.
Of the philosophers, Nietzsche was unashamedly on the side of
the few, Marx whole-heartedly on the side of the many. Perhaps
Bentham was the only one of importance who attempted a recon-
ciliation of conflicting interests ; he therefore incurred the hostility
of both parties.
To formulate any satisfactory modern ethic of human relation-
ships, it will be essential to recognize the necessary limitations of
men's power over the non-human environment, and the desirable
limitations of their nower over each other.
Chapter XXII
HEGEL
•
HEGEL (1770-1831) was the culmination of the movement
in German philosophy that started from Kant; although
he often criticized Kant, his system could never have
arisen if Kant's had not existed. His influence, though now
diminishing, has been very great, not only or chiefly in Germany.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the leading academic philo-
sophers, both in America and in Great Britain, were largely
Hegelians. Outside of pure philosophy, many Protestant theolo-
gians adopted his doctrines, and his philosophy of history pro-
foundly affected political theory. Marx, as everyone knows, was
a disciple of Hegel in his youth, and retained in his own finished
system some important Hegelian features. Even if (as I myself
believe) almost all Hegel's doctrines are false, he still retains an
importance which is not merely historical, as the best represen-
tative of a certain kind of philosophy which, in others, is less
coherent and less comprehensive.
His life contained few events of importance. In youth he was
much attracted to mysticism, and his later views may be regarded,
to some extent, as an intellectualizing of what had first appeared
to him as mystic insight. He taught philosophy, first as Privatdozent
at Jena — he mentions that he finished his Phenomenology of Mind
there the day before the battle of Jena — then at Nuremberg, then
as professor at Heidelberg (1816-1818), and finally at Berlin from
1818 to his death. He was in later life a patriotic Prussian, a loyal
servant of the State, who comfortably enjoyed his recognized
philosophical pre-eminence; but in his youth he despised Prussia
and admired Napoleon, to the extent of rejoicing in the French
victory at Jena. •
Hegel's philosophy is very difficult — he is, I should say, tthe
hardest to understand of all the great philosophers. Before entering
on any detail, a general characterization may prove helpful.
From his early interest in mystjcism he retained a belief in the
unreality of separateness ; the world, in his view, was not a col-
lection of hard units, whether atoms or souls, each completely
self-subsistent. The apparent self-subsistence of finite things
757
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
appeared to him to be an illusion; nothing, he held, is ultimately
and completely real except the whole. But he differed from
Parmenides and Spinoza in conceiving the whole, not as a simple
substance, but as a complex system, of the sort that we should call
an organism. The apparently separate things of which the world
seems to be composed are not .simply an illusion ; each has a
greater or lesser degree of reality, and its reality consists in an
aspect of the whole, which is what it is seen to be when viewed
truly. With this view goes naturally a disbelief in the reality of
time and space as such, for these, if taken as completely real,
involve separateness and multiplicity. All this must have come to
him first as mystic "insight1'; its intellectual elaboration, which
is given in his books, must have come later.
Hegel asserts that the real is rational, and the rational is real.
But when he says this he does not mean by "the real" what an
empiricist would mean. He admits, and even urges, that what to
the empiricist appear to be facts are, and must be, irrational ; it is
only after their apparent character has been transformed by viewing
them as aspects of the whole that they are seen to be rational.
Nevertheless, the identification of the real and the rational leads
unavoidably to some of the complacency inseparable from the
belief that "whatever is, is right/1
The whole, in all its complexity, is called by Hegel "the Abso-
lute." The Absolute is spiritual; Spinoza's view, that it has thl
attribute of extension as well as that of thought, is rejected.
Two things distinguish Hegel from other men who liave had a
more or less similar metaphysical outlook. One of these is emphasis
on logic: it is thought by Hegel that the nature of Reality can be
deduced from the sole consideration that it must be not self-
contradictory. The other distinguishing feature (which is closely
connected with the first) is the triadic movement called the
"dialectic.** His most important books are his two /xgja, and
these must be understood if the reasons for his views on other
subjects are to be rightly apprehended.
Logic, as Hegel understands die word, is declared by him to be
the same thing as metaphysics; it is something quite different from
what is commonly called logic. His view is that any ordinary pre-
dicate, if taken as qualifying the whole of Reality, turns out to be
self-contradictory. One might take as a crude example the theory
of Pannenidet, that the One, which alone u real, i* spherical.
758
HEGEL
Nothing can be spherical unless it has a boundary, and it cannot
have a boundary unless there is something (at least empty space)
outside of it. Therefore to suppose the Universe as a whole to be
spherical is self-contradictory. (This argument might be questioned
by bringing* in non-Euclidean geometry, but as an illustration it
will serve.) Or let us take another illustration, still more crude —
far too much so to be used by Hegel. You may say, without
apparent contradiction, that Mr. A is an uncle; but if you were
to say that the Universe is an uncle, you would land yourself in
difficulties. An uncle is a man who has a nephew, and the nephew
is a separate person from the uncle ; therefore an uncle cannot be
the whole of Reality.
This illustration might also be used to illustrate the dialectic,
which consists of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. First we say:
"Reality is an uncle." This is the thesis. But the existence of an
uncle implies that of a nephew. Since nothing really exists except
the Absolute, and we are now committed to the existence of a
nephew, we must conclude: "The Absolute is a nephew." This
is the antithesis. But there is the same objection to this as to the
view that the Absolute is an uncle; therefore we are driven to the
view that the Absolute is the whole composed of uncle and nephew.
This is the synthesis. But this synthesis is still unsatisfactory,
because a man can be an uncle only if he has a brother or sister
who is a parent of the nephew. Hence we are driven to enlarge
our universe to include the brother or sister, with his wife or her
husband. In this sort of way, so it is contended, we can be driven
on, by the mere force of logic, from any suggested predicate of
the Absolute to the final conclusion of the dialectic, which is called
the "Absolute Idea." Throughout the whole process, there is an
underlying assumption that nothing can be really true unless it
is about Reality as a whole.
For this underlying assumption there is a basis in traditional
logic, which assumes that every proposition has a subject and a
predicate. According to this view, every fact consists in something
having some property. It follows that relations cannot be real,
since they involve two things, not one. "Uncle" is a relation, and
a man may become an uncle without knowing it. In that case,
from an empirical point of view, the man is unaffected by becoming
an uncle; he has no quality which he did not have before, if by
"quality" we understand something necessary to describing 1pm
759
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
as he is in himself, apart from his relations to other people and
things. The only way in which the subject-predicate logic can
avoid this difficulty is to say that the truth is not a property of the
uncle alone, or of the nephew alone, but of the whole composed
of uncle-and-nephew. Since everything, except the -Whole, has
relations to outside things, it follows that nothing quite true can
be said about separate things, and that in fact only the Whole is
real. This follows more directly from the fact that "A and B are
two" is not a subject-predicate proposition, and therefore, on the
basis of the traditional logic, there can be no such proposition.
Therefore there are not as many as two things in the world ; there-
fore the Whole, considered as a unity, is alone real.
The above argument is not explicit in Hegel, but is implicit in
his system, as in that of many other metaphysicians.
A few examples of Hegel's dialectic method may serve to make
it more intelligible. He begins the argument of his logic by the
assumption that "the Absolute is Pure Being"; we assume that it
just u, without assigning any qualities to it. But pure being without
any qualities is nothing; therefore we are led to the antithesis:
"The Absolute is Nothing." From this thesis and antithesis we
pass on to the synthesis: the union of Being and Not-Being is
Becoming, and so we say: "The Absolute is Becoming." This also,
of course, won't do, because there has to be something ths"
becomes. In this way our views of Reality develop by the continue
correction of previous errors, all of which arose from undue ab-
straction, by taking something finite or limited as if it could be
the whole. "The limitations of the finite do not come merely from
without; its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and by its
own act it passes into its counterpart,"
The process, according to Hegel, is essential to the understand-
ing of the result. Each later stage of the dialectic contains all the
earlier stages, as it were in solution ; none of them is wholly super-
seded, but€ is given its proper place as a moment in the Whole.
It is therefore impossible to reach the truth except by going through
all the steps of the dialectic.
Knowledge as a whole has its triadic movement. It begins with
sense-perception, in which there is only awareness of the object.
Then, through sceptical criticism of the senses, it becomes purely
subjective. At last, it reaches the stage of self-knowledge, in which
subject and object are no longer distinct. Thus self-consciousness
760
HBGBL
is the highest form of knowledge. This, of course, must be the case
in Hegel's system, for the highest kind of knowledge must be that
possessed by the Absolute, and as the Absolute is the Whole there
is nothing outside itself for it to know.
In the best thinking, according to Hegel, thoughts become fluent
and interfuse. Truth and falsehood are not sharply defined oppo-
sites, as is commonly supposed ; nothing is wholly false, and noth-
ing that we can know is wholly true. "We can know in a way that
is false"; this happens when we attribute absolute truth to some
detached piece of information. Such a question as "Where was
Caesar born?" has a straightforward answer, which is true in a
sense, but not in the philosophical sense. For philosophy, "the
truth is the whole," and nothing partial is quite true.
"Reason," Hegel says, "is the conscious certainty of being all
reality." This does not mean that a separate person is all reality;
in his separateness he is not quite real, but what is real in him is
his participation in Reality as a whole. In proportion as we become
more rational, this participation is increased.
The Absolute Idea, with which the Logic ends, is something like
Aristotle's God. It is thought thinking about itself. Clearly the
Absolute cannot think about anything but itself, since there is
nothing else, except to our partial and erroneous ways of appre-
hending Reality. We are told that Spirit is the only reality, and
tffat its thought is reflected into itself by self-consciousness. The
actual words in which the Absolute Idea is defined are very
obscure. Wallace translates them as follows:
"The Absolute Idea. The idea, as unity of the Subjective and
Objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea — a notion whose object
(Gegcnstand) is the Idea as such, and for which the objective
(Objekt) is Idea — an Object which embraces all characteristics
in its unity."
The original German is even more difficult.1 The essence of the
matter is, however, somewhat less complicated than Hegel makes
it seem. The Absolute Idea is pure thought thinking about pure
thought. This is all that God does throughout the ages— truly a
Professor's God. Hegel goes on to say: "This unity is consequently
the absolute and all truth, the Idea§which thinks itself."
1 The definition in German is; "Zfcr Begriff tier Idee, dem die Idee als
wlche der Gegcnstand, dem das Objekt fif uf." Except in Hegel, Gcgen-
ttand and Objekt are synonyms.
761
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
I come now to a singular feature of Hegel's philosophy, which
distinguishes it from the philosophy of Plato or Plotinus or
Spinoza. Although ultimate reality is timeless, and time is merely
an illusion generated by our inability to see the Whole, yet the
time-process has an intimate relation to the purely logical process
of the dialectic. World history, in fact, has advanced through the
categories, from Pure Being in China (of which Hegel knew
nothing except that it was) to the Absolute Idea, which seems to
have been nearly, if not quite, realized in the Prussian State. I
cannot see any justification, on the basis of his own metaphysic,
for the view that world history repeats the transitions of the
dialectic, yet that is the thesis which he developed in his Philosophy
of History. It was an interesting thesis, giving unity and meaning
to the revolutions of human affairs. Like other historical theories,
it required, if it was to be made plausible, some distortion of
facts and considerable ignorance. Hegel, like Mane and Spengler
after him, possessed both these qualifications. It is odd that a
process which is represented as cosmic should all have taken place
on our planet, and most of it near the Mediterranean. Nor is
there any reason, if reality is timeless, why the later parts of the
process should embody higher categories than the earlier parts—
unless one were to adopt the blasphemous supposition that the
Universe was gradually learning Hegel's philosophy.
The time-process, according to Hegel, is from the less to fflt*
more perfect, both in an ethical and in a logical sense. Indeed
these two senses are, for him, not really distinguishable, for logical
perfection consists in being a closely-knit whole, without ragged
edges, without independent parts, but united, like a human body,
or still more like a reasonable mind, into an organism whose pans
are interdependent and all work together towards a single end ;
and this also constitutes ethical perfection. A few quotations will
illustrate Hegel's theory:
"Ijke ihe soul-conductor Mercury, the Idea is, in truth, the
leader of peoples and of the world; and Spirit, the rational and
necessitated will of that conductor, is and has been the director
of the events of the world's history. To become acquainted with
Spirit in this its office of guidance, is the object of our present
Undertaking.0 *
"The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the con-
templation of history is the simple conception of Reason; that
HEGEL
Reason is the sovereign 6f the world ; that the history of the world,
therefore, presents us with a rational process. This conviction
and intuition is a hypothesis in the domain of history as such. In
that of philosophy it is no hypothesis. It is there proved by
speculative cognition, that Reason— and this term may here suffice
us, without investigating the relation sustained by the universe
to the Divine Being— is Substance, as well as Infinite Power \ its
own infinite material underlying all the natural and spiritual life
which it originates, as also the Infinite Form, that which sets the
material in motion. Reason is the substance of the universe."
'That this 'Idea' or 'Reason' is the True, the Eternal, the abso-
lutely powerful essence; that it reveals itself in the world, and that
in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honour and
glory — is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in
philosophy, and is here regarded as demonstrated."
"The world of intelligence and conscious volition is not
abandoned to chance, but must show itself in the light of the
self-cognizant Idea."
This is "a result which happens to be known to me, because I
have traversed the entire field."
All these quotations are from the introduction to The Philosophy
of History.
Spirit, and the course of its development, is the substantial
' (ftject of the philosophy of history. The nature of Spirit may be
understood by contrasting it with its opposite, namely Matter.
The essence of matter is gravity; the essence of Spirit is Freedom.
Matter is outside itself, whereas Spirit has its centre in itself.
"Spirit is self-contained existence." If this is not clear, the
following definition may be found more illuminating:
"But what is Spirit? It is the one immutably homogeneous
Infinite — pure Identity— which in its second phase separates
itself from itself and makes this second aspect its own polar
opposite, namely as existence for and in Self as contiyted with
the Universal. "
In the historical development of Spirit there have been three
main phases: The Orientals, the Greeks and Romans, and the
Germans. "The history of the world is the discipline of the un-
controlled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal
principle and conferring subjective freedom. The East knew, and
to the present day knows, only that On* is free; the Greek anfd
763
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Roman world, that some are free; the German world knows that
All are free." One might have supposed that democracy would
be the appropriate form of government where all are free, but
not so. Democracy and aristocracy alike belong to the stage where
some are free, despotism to that where one is free, pnd monarchy
to that in which all are free. This is connected with the very odd
sense in which Hegel uses the word "freedom." For him (and
so far we may agree) there is no freedom without law; but he
tends to convert this, and to argue that wherever there is law
there is freedom. Thus "freedom/9 for him, means little more than
the right to obey the law.
As might be expected, he assigns the highest role to the Ger-
mans in the terrestrial development of Spirit. "The German
spirit is the spirit of the new world. Its aim is the realization of
absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of freedom —
that freedom which has its own absolute form itself as its purport/*
This is a very superfine brand of freedom. It does not mean
that you will be able to keep out of a concentration camp. It does
not imply democracy, or a free press,1 or any of the usual Liberal
watchwords, which Hegel rejects with contempt. When Spirit
gives laws to itself, it does so freely. To our mundane vision, it
may seem that the Spirit that gives laws is embodied in the
monarch, and the Spirit to which laws are given is embodied in
his subjects. But from the point of view of the Absolute the dR*
Unction between monarch and subjects, like all other distinctions,
is illusory, and when the monarch imprisons a liberal-minded
subject, that is still Spirit freely determining itself. Hegel praises
Rousseau for distinguishing between the general will and the will
of all. One gathers that the monarch embodies the general will,
whereas a parliamentary majority only embodies the will of all.
A very convenient doctrine.
German history is divided by Hegel into three periods: the
first, up to Charlemagne; the second, from Charlemagne to the
Reformation; the third, from the Reformation onwards. These
three periods are distinguished as the Kingdoms of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, respectively. It seems a little odd
• ' Freedom of the Press, he say*, does not consist in being allowed to
write what one wants: this view is crude and superficial. For instance,
the Pras should not be allowed to muter the Government or the polirr
contemptible.
764
HEGEL
that the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost should have begun with the
bloody and utterly abominable atrocities committed in suppressing
the Peasants' War, but Hegel, naturally, does not mention so
trivial an incident. Instead, he goes off, as might be expected, into
praises of Machiavelli.
Hegel's interpretation of history since the fall of the Roman
Empire is partly the effect, and partly the cause, of the teaching
of world history in German schools. In Italy and France, while
there has been a romantic admiration of the Germans on the part
of a few men such as Tacitus and Machiavelli, they have been
viewed, in general, as the authors of the "barbarian" invasion,
and as enemies of the Church, first under the great Emperors,
and later as the leaders of the Reformation. Until the nineteenth
century the Latin nations looked upon the Germans as their
inferiors in civilization. Protestants in Germany naturally took a
different view. They regarded the late Romans as effete, and
considered the German conquest of the Western Empire an
essential step towards revivification. In relation to the conflict
of Empire and Papacy in the Middle Ages, they took a Ghibelline
view: to this day, German schoolboys are taught a boundless
admiration of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. In the times after
the Reformation, the political weakness and disunity of Germany
was deplored, and the gradual rise of Prussia was welcomed as
.naking Germany strong under Protestant leadership, not under
the Catholic and somewhat feeble leadership of Austria. Hegel, in
philosophizing about history, has in mind such men as Theodoric,
Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Luther, and Frederick the Great. He
is to be interpreted in the light of their exploits, and in the light
of the then recent humiliation of Germany by Napoleon.
So much is Germany glorified that one might expect to find it
the final embodiment of the Absolute Idea, beyond which no
further development would be possible. But this is not Hegel's
view. On the contrary, he says that America is the land of the
future, "where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the
world's history shall reveal itself— perhaps [he adds characteris-
tically] in a contest between North and South America/' He seems
to think that everything important takes the form of war. If it
were suggested to him that the attribution of America to world
history might be the development of a society without extreme
poverty, he would not be interested. On the contrary, he says
765
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
that, as yet, there is no real State in America, because a real State
requires a division of classes into rich and poor.
Nations, in Hegel, play the part that classes play in Marx. The
principle of historical development, he says, is national genius.
In every age, there is some one nation which is changed with the
mission of carrying the world through the stage of the dialectic
that it has reached. In our age, of course, this nation is Germany.
But in addition to nations, we must also take account of world-
historical individuals; these are men in whose aims are embodied
the dialectical transitions that are due to take place in their time.
These men are heroes, and may justifiably contravene ordinary
moral rules. Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon are given as
examples. I doubt whether, in Hegel's opinion, a man could be a
"hero" without being a military conqueror.
Hegel's emphasis on nations, together with his peculiar con-
ception of "freedom," explains his glorification of the State — a
very important aspect of his political philosophy, to which we
must now turn our attention. His philosophy of the State is de-
veloped both in his Philosophy of History and in his Philosophy of
Law. It is in the main compatible with his general metaphysic,
but not necessitated by it; at certain points, however— e.g., as
regards the relations between States — his admiration of the
national State is carried so far as to become inconsistent with
his general preference of wholes to parts. ^
Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are con-
cerned, with the Reformation. In the Roman Empire, the Emperor
was deified, and the State thereby acquired a sacred character;
but the philosophers of the Middle Ages, with few exceptions,
were ecclesiastics, and therefore put the Church above the State*
Luther, finding support in Protestant princes, began the opposite
practice; the Lutheran Church, on the whole, was Erastian. Hobbes,
who was politically a Protestant, developed the doctrine of the
suprpnap of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with
him. Rousseau, as we have seen, thought the State should not
tolerate other political organizations. Hegel was vehemently Pro-
testant, of the Lutheran section ; the Prussian State was an Erastian
absolute monarchy. These reasons would make one expect to find
*thc State highly valued by H^gel, but, even so, he goes to lengths
which are astonishing.
We are told in The Philosophy of History that "the State is the
766
HBGBL
actually existing realized moral life," and that all the spiritual
reality possessed by a human being he possesses only through the
State. "For his spiritual reality consists in this, that his own
essence — Reason — is objectively present to him, that it possesses
objective immediate existence for him. . . . For truth is the
unity of the universal and subjective Will, and the universal is
to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational
arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth."
Again: "The State is the embodiment of rational freedom,
realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form. . . . The
State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human
Will and its Freedom."
The Philosophy of Law, in the section on the State, develops
the same doctrine somewhat more fully. "The State is the reality
of the moral idea — the moral spirit, as the visible substantial will,
evident to itself, which thinks and knows itself, and fulfils what
it knows in so far as it knows it." The State is the rational in and
for itself. If the State existed only for the interests of individuals
(as Liberals contend), an individual might or might not be a
member of the State. It has, however, a quite different relation
to the individual: since it is objective Spirit, the individual only
has objectivity, truth, and morality in so far as he is a member of
the State, whose true content and purpose is union as such. It is
admitted that there may be bad States, but these merely exist,
and have no true reality, whereas a rational State is infinite in itself.
It will be seen that Hegel claims for the State much the same
position as St. Augustine and his Catholic successors claimed for
the Church. There are, however, two respects in which the
Catholic claim is more reasonable than Hegel's. In the first place,
the Church is not a chance geographical association, but a body
united by a common creed, believed by its members to be of
supreme importance; it is thus in its very essence the embodi-
ment of what Hegel calls the "Idea." In the second pl|ce9 jhere
is only one Catholic Church, whereas there are many States.
When each State, in relation to its subjects, is made as absolute
as Hegel makes it, there is difficulty in finding any philosophical
principle by which to regulate the relations between different
States. In fact, at this point Hegfcl abandons his philosophical
talk, falling back on the state of nature and Hobbcs's war of all
against all.
767
WfcSTfifcN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The habit of speaking of "the State/9 as if there were only one,
is misleading so long as there is no world State. Duty being, for
Hegel, solely a relation of the individual to his State, no principle
is left by which to moralize the relations between States. This
Hegel recognizes. In external relations, he says, the State is an
individual, and each State is independent as against the others.
"Since in this independence the being-for-self of real spirit has
its existence, it is the first freedom and highest honour of a people."
He goes on to argue against any sort of League of Nations by
which the independence of separate States might be limited. The
duty of a citizen is entirely confined (so far as the external relations
of his State are concerned) to upholding the substantial indivi-
duality and independence and sovereignty of his own State. It
follows that war is not wholly an evil, or something that we
should seek to abolish. The purpose of the State is not merely
to uphold the life and property of the citizens, and this fact
provides the moral justification of war, which is not to be regarded
as an absolute evil or as accidental, or as having its cause in
something that ought not to be.
Hegel does not mean only that, in some situations, a nation
cannot rightly avofd going to war. He means much more than
this. He is opposed to the creation of institutions — such as a
world government — which would prevent such situations from
arising, because he thinks it a good thing that there should T5e*
wars from time to time. War, he says, is the condition in which
we take seriously the vanity of temporal goods and things. (This
view is to be contrasted with the opposite theory, that all wars
have economic causes.) War has a positive moral value: "War
has the higher significance that through it the moral health of
peoples is preserved in their indifference towards the stabilizing
of finite determinations." Peace is ossification; the Holy Alliance,
and Kant's League for Peace, are mistaken, because a family of
States nr^ds an enemy. Conflicts of States can only be decided
by war; States being towards each other in a state of nature, their
relations are not legal or moral. Their rights have their reality in
their particular wills, and the interest of cadi State is its own
highest law. There is no contrast of morals and politics, because
mates are not subject to ordinary moral laws.
Such is Hegel's doctrine of the State — a doctrine which, if
Accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external
768
HEGEL
aggression that can possibly be imagined. The strength of his
bias appears in the fact that his theory is largely inconsistent with
his own metaphysic, and that the inconsistencies are all such as
tend to the justification of cruelty and international brigandage.
A man may be pardoned if logic compels him regretfully to reach
conclusions which he deplores, but not for departing from logic
in order to be free to advocate crimes. Hegel's logic led him to
believe that there is more reality or excellence (the two for him
are synonyms) in wholes than in their parts, and that a whole
increases in reality and excellence as it becomes more organized.
This justified him in preferring a State to an anarchic collection
of individuals, but it should equally have led him to prefer a
world State to an anarchic collection of States. Within the State,
his general philosophy should have led him to feel more respect
for the individual than he did feel, for the wholes of which
his Logic treats are not like the One of Parmenides, or even
like Spinoza's God: they are wholes in which the individual
does not disappear, but acquires fuller reality through his
harriK>nious relation to a larger organism. A State in which the
individual is ignored is not a small-scale model of the Hegelian
Absolute.
Nor is there any good reason, in Hegel's metaphysic, for the
exclusive emphasis on the State, as opposed to other social
urbanizations. I can see nothing but Protestant bias in his pre-
ference of the State to the Church. Moreover, if it is good that
society should be as organic as possible, as Hegel believes, then
many social organizations are necessary, in addition to the State
and the Church. It should follow from Hegel's principles that
every interest which is not harmful to the community, and which
can be promoted by co-operation, shou d have its appropriate
organization, and thai every such organization should have its
quota of limited independence. It may be objected that ultimate
authority must reside somewhere, and cannot reside elsewhere
than in the State. But even so it may be desirable that thisTiltimate
authority should not be irresistible when it attempts to be
oppressive beyond a point. .
This brings us to a question which is fundamental in judging
Hegel's whole philosophy. Is there more reality, and is there more <
value, in a whole than in its parts? Hegel answers both questions
in the affirmative. The question of reality is metaphysical, the
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
question of value is ethical. They are commonly treated as if
they were scarcely distinguishable, but to my mind it is impor-
tant to keep them apart. Let us begin with the metaphysical
question.
The view of Hegel, and of many other philosophers, is that the
character of any portion of the universe is so profoundly affected
by its relations to the other parts and to the whole, that no true
statement can be made about any part except to assign it its place in
the whole. Since its place in the whole depends upon all the other
parts, a true statement about its place in the whole will at the
same time assign the place of every other part in the whole. Thus
there can be only one true statement ; there is no truth except the
whole truth. And similarly nothing is quite real except the whole,
for any part, when isolated, is changed in character by being
isolated, and therefore no longer appears quite what it truly is.
On the other hand, when a part is viewed in relation to the whole,
as it should be, it is seen to be not self-subsist en t, and to be
incapable of existing except as pan of just that whole which alone
is truly real. This is the metaphysical doctrine.
The ethical doctrine, which maintains that value resides in the
whole rather than in the parts, must be true if the metaphysical
doctrine is true, but need not be false if the metaphysical doctrine
is false. It may, moreover, be true of some wholes and not of
others. It is obviously true, in some sense, of a living body. 'Wle*
eye is worthless when separated from the body; a collection of
disjecta membra, even when complete, has not the value that once
belonged to the body from which they were taken. Hegel conceives
the ethical relation of the citizen to the State as analogous to that
of the eye to the body: in his place the citizen is part of a valuable
whole, but isolated he is as useless as an isolated eye. The analogy,
however, is open to question; from the ethical importance of
some wholes, that of all wholes does not follow.
The above statement of the ethical problem is defective in one
important respect, namely, that it does not take account of the
distinction between ends and means. An eye in a living body is
useful, that is to say, it has value as a means ; but it has no more
intrinsic value than when detached from the body. A thing has
•intrinsic value when it is prufed for its own sake, not as a means
to something eke. We value the eye as a means to seeing. Seeing
may be a means or an end ; it is a means when it shows us food or
HEGEL
enemies, it is an end when it shows us something that we find
beautiful. The State is obviously valuable as a means: it protects
us against thieves and murderers, it provides roads and schools,
and so on. It may, of course, also be bad as a means, for example
by waging an unjust war. The real question we have to ask in
connection with Hegel is not this, but whether the State is good
per se, as an end: do the citizens exist for the sake of the State,
or the State for the sake of the citizens? Hegel holds the former
view; the liberal philosophy that comes from Locke holds the
latter. It is clear that we shall only attribute intrinsic value to the
State if we think of it as having a life of its own, as being in some
sense a person. At this point, Hegel's metaphysic becomes relevant
to the question of value. A person is a complex whole, having a
single life; can there be a super-person, composed of persons as
the body is composed of organs, and having a single life which is
not the sum of the lives of the component persons? If there can
be such a super-person, as Hegel thinks, then the State may be
such a being, and it may be as superior to ourselves as the whole
body is to the eye. But if we think this super-person a mere meta-
physical monstrosity, then we shall say that the intrinsic value of
a community is derived from that of its members, and that the
State is a means, not an end. We are thus brought back from the
ethical to the metaphysical question. The metaphysical question
itself, we shall find, is really a question of logic.
The question at issue is much wider than the truth or falsehood
of Hegel's philosophy; it is die question that divides the friends
of analysis from its enemies. Let us take an illustration. Suppose
I say "John is the father of James." Hegel, and all who believe
in what Marshal Smuts calls "holism," will say: "Before you can
understand this statement, you must know who John and James
are. Now to know who John is, is to know all his characteristics,
for apart from them he would not be distinguishable from any
one else. But all his characteristics involve other people tr things.
He is characterized by his relations to his parents, his wife, and
his children, by whether he is a good or a bad citizen, and by
the country to which he belongs. All these things you must know
before you can be said to know wljom the word 'John* refers to..
Step by step, in your endeavour to say what you mean by the
word ' John,' you will be led to take account of the whole universe,
and your original statement will turn out to be telling you some-/
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
thing about the universe, not about two separate people, John
and James."
Now this is all very well, but it is open to an initial objection.
If the above argument were sound, how could knowledge ever
begin? I know numbers of propositions of the form "A is the
father of B," but I do not know the whole universe. If all know-
ledge were knowledge of the universe as a whole, there would be
no knowledge. This is enough to make us suspect a mistake some-
where.
The fact is that, in order to use the word "John" correctly and
intelligently, I do not need to know all about John, but only enough
to recognize him. No doubt he has relations, near or remote, to
everything in the universe, but he can be spoken of truly without
taking them into account, except such as are the direct subject-
matter of what is being said. He may be the father of Jemima as
well as of James, but it is not necessary for me to know this in
order to know that he is the father of James. If Hegel were right,
we could not state fully what is meant by "John is the father of
James" without mentioning Jemima: we ought to say "John, the
father of Jemima, is the father of James.*' This would still be
inadequate; we should have to go on to mention his parents and
grandparents, and a whole Who's Who. But this lands us in
absurdities. The Hegelian position might be stated as follo^g:4
"The word 'John* means all that is true of John." But as a defini-
tion this is circular, since the word "John0 occurs in the defining
phrase. In fact, if Hegel were right, no word could begin to have
a meaning, since we should need to know already the meanings
of all other words in order to state all the properties of what the
word designates, which, according to the theory, are what the
word means.
To put the matter abstractly: we must distinguish properties
of different kinds. A thing may have a property not involving any
othef thitig; this sort is called a quality. Or it may have a property
involving one other thing; such a property is being married. Or
it may have one involving two other things, such as being a
brother-in-law. If a certain thing has a certain collection of
Dualities, and no other thing Jias just this collection of qualities,
then it can be defined as "the thing having such-and-such
qualities." From its having these qualities, nothing can be deduced
4>y pure logic as to its relational properties. Hegel thought that,
77*
• HEGEL
if enough was known about a thing to distinguish it from all
other things, then all its properties could be inferred by logic.
This was a mistake, and from this mistake arose the whole im-
posing edifice of his system. This illustrates an important truth,
namely, lhat the worse your logic, the more interesting the
consequences to which it gives rise.
773
Chapter XXIII
BYRON
t i <HE nineteenth century, in comparison with the present age,
I appears rational, progressive, and satisfied ; yet the opposite
A qualities of our time were possessed by many of the most
remarkable men during the epoch of liberal optimism. When we
consider men, not as artists or discoverers, not as sympathetic or
antipathetic to our own tastes, but as forces, as causes of change
in the social structure, in judgments of value, or in intellectual
outlook, we find that the course of events in recent times has
necessitated much readjustment in our estimates, making some
men less important than they had seemed, and others more so.
Among those whose importance is greater than it seemed, Byron
deserves a high place. On the Continent, such a view would not
appear surprising, but in the English-speaking world it may be
thought strange. It was on the Continent that Byron was influential,
and it is not in England that his spiritual progeny is to be sought.
To most of us, his verse seems often poor and his sentiment often
tawdry, but abroad his way of feeling and his outlook on life were
transmitted and developed and transmuted until they became *
wide-spread as to be factors in great events.
The aristocratic rebel, of whom Byron was in his day the
exemplar, is a very different type from the leader of a peasant or
proletarian revolt. Those who are hungry have no need of an
elaborate philosophy to stimulate or excuse discontent, and any-
thing of the kind appears to them merely an amusement of the
idle rich. They want what others have, not some intangible and
metaphysical good. Though they may preach Christian love, as
the medieval communist rebels did, their real reasons for doing
BO are very simple: that the lack of it in the rich and powerful
causes the sufferings of the poor, and that the presence of it
among comrades in revolt is thought essential to success. But
experience of the struggle leads to a despair of the power of love,
teaving naked hate as the driving force. A rebel of this type, if,
like Marx, he invents a philosophy, invents one solely designed
to demonstrate the ultimate victory of his party, not one con-
cerned with values. His values remain primitive: the good is
774
BYRON
enough to cat, and the rest is talk. No hungry man is likely to
think otherwise.
The aristocratic rebel, since he has enough to eat, must have
other causes of discontent. I do not include among rebels the
mere leaders of factions temporarily out of power; I include only
men whose philosophy requires some greater change than their
own personal success. It may be that love of power is the under-
ground source of their discontent, but in their conscious thought
there is criticism of the government of the world, which, when it
goes deep enough, takes the form of Titanic cosmic self-assertion
or, in those who retain some superstition, of Satanism. Both are
to be found in Byron. Both, largely through men whom he in-
fluenced, became common in large sections of society which could
hardly be deemed aristocratic. The aristocratic philosophy of
rebellion, growing, developing, and changing as it approached
maturity, has inspired a long series of revolutionary move-
ments, from the Carbonari after the fall of Napoleon to Hitler's
coup in 1933; and at each stage it has inspired a correspond-
ing manner of thought and feeling among intellectuals and
artists.
It is obvious that an aristocrat does not become a rebel unless
his temperament and circumstances are in some way peculiar.
Byron's circumstances were very peculiar. His earliest recollec-
tftns were of his parents* quarrels; his mother was a woman
whom he feared for her cruelty and despised for her vulgarity;
his nurse combined wickedness with the strictest Calvinist
theology ; his lameness filled him with shame, and prevented him
from being one of the herd at school. At ten years old, after living
in poverty, he suddenly found himself a Lord and the owner of
Newstead. His great-uncle the "wicked Lord," from whom he
inherited, had killed a man in a duel thirty-three years ago, and
bc*n ostracized by his neighbours ever since. The Byrons had
been a lawless family, and the Gordons, his mother's^nc^stors,
even more so. After the squalor of a back street in Aberdeen, the
boy naturally rejoiced in his title and his Abbey, and was willing
to take on the character of his ancestors in gratitude for their
lands. And if, in Decent years, their bellicosity had led them into
trouble, he learnt that in former centuries it had brought them
renown. One of his earliest poems/'On Leaving Newstead Abbey/'
relates his emotions at this time, which are of admiration for hi*
775
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
ancestors who fought in the Crusades, at Crecy, and at Marstor
Moor. He ends with the pious resolve:
Like you will he live, or like you will he perish :
When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own.
This is not the mood of a rebel, but it suggests "Childe" Harold,
the modern peer who imitates medieval barons. As an under-
graduate, when for the first time he had an income of his own,
he wrote that he felt as independent as "a German Prince who
coins his own cash, or a Cherokee Chief who coins no cash at all,
but enjoys what is more precious, Liberty. I speak in raptures of
that Goddess because my amiable Mama was so despotic." He
wrote, in later life, much noble verse in praise of freedom, but it
must be understood that the freedom he praised was that of a
German Prince or a Cherokee Chief, not the inferior sort that
might conceivably be enjoyed by ordinary mortals.
In spite of his lineage and his title, his aristocratic relations
fought shy of him, and he was made to feel himself socially not
of their society. His mother was intensely disliked, and he was
looked on with suspicion. He knew that she was vulgar, and
darkly feared a similar defect in himself. Hence arose that peculiar
blend of snobbery and rebellion that characterized him. If he
could not be a gentleman in the modern style, he would be a
bold baron in the style of his crusading ancestors, or perhaps fo
the more ferocious but even more romantic style of the Ghibelline
chiefs, cursed of God and Man as they trampled their way to
splendid downfall. Medieval romances and histories were his
etiquette books. He sinned like the Hohenstaufen, and like the
crusaders he died fighting the Moslem.
His shyness and sense of friendle&sness made him look for
comfort in love-affairs, but as he was unconsciously seeking a
mother rather than a mistress, all disappointed him except Augusta.
Calvinism, which he never shook off — to Shelley, in 1816, he
described himself as "Methodist, Calvinist, Augustinian"— made
him feel that his manner of life was wicked ; but wickedness, he
told himself, was a hereditary curse in his blood, an evil fate to
which he was predestined by the Almighty. If that were indeed
the case, since he must be rertlarkable, he would be remarkable
as a sinner, and would dare transgressions beyond the courage of
the fashionable libertines whom he wished to despise. He loved
776
BYRON
Augusta genuinely because she was of his blood— of the Ishmaelite
race of the Byrons— and also, more simply, because she had an
elder sister's kindly care for his daily welfare. But this was not
all that she had to offer him. Through her simplicity and her
obliging -good-nature, she became the means of providing him
with the most delicious self-congratulatory remorse. He could
feel himself the equal of the greatest sinners— the peer of Manfred,
of Cain, almost of Satan himself. The Calvinist, the aristocrat,
and the rebel were all equally satisfied ; and so was the romantic
lover, whose heart was broken by the loss of the only earthly being
still capable of rousing in it the gentler emotions of pity and love.
Byron, though he felt himself the equal of Satan, never quite
ventured to put himself in the place of God. This next step in the
growth of pride was taken by Nietzsche, who says: "If there were
Gods, how could I endure it to be not God ! Tlierefore there are
no Gods.M Observe the suppressed premiss of this reasoning:
"Whatever humbles my pride is to be judged false." Nietzsche,
like Byron, and even to a greater degree, had a pious upbringing,
but having a better intellect, he found a better escape than
Satanism. He remained, however, very sympathetic to Byron.
He says:
"The tragedy is that we cannot believe the dogmas of religion
^pd metaphysics if we have the strict methods of truth in heart
and head, but on the other hand, we have become through the
development of humanity so tenderly sensitively suffering that
we need the highest kind of means of salvation and consolation:
whence arises the danger that man may bleed to death through
the truth that he recognizes. Byron expresses this in immortal
lines:
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.1'
Sometimes, though rarely, Byron approaches more nearly to
Nietzsche's point of view. But in general Byron's ethical theory,
as opposed to his practice, remains strictly conventional.
The great man, to Nietzsche, is godlike; to Byron, usually, a
Titan at war with himself. Some'times, however, he portrays a
sage not unlike Zarathustra— the Corsair, in his dealings with his
followers,
777
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Still sways their souls with that commanding art
That dazzles, leads, yet chills the vulgar heart.
And this same hero "hated man too much to feel remorse/' A
foot-note assures us that the Corsair is true to human -nature, since
similar traits were exhibited by Gensertc, King of the Vandals,
by Ezzelino the Ghibelline tyrant, and by a certain Louisiana
pirate.
Byron was not obliged to confine himself to the Levant and the
Middle Ages in his search for heroes, since it was not difficult to
invest Napoleon with a romantic mantle. The influence of
Napoleon on the imagination of nineteenth-century Europe was
very profound; he inspired Clausewitz, Stendhal, Heine, the
thought of Fichte and Nietzsche, and the acts of Italian patriots.
His ghost stalks through the age, the only force which is strong
enough to stand up against industrialism and commerce, pouring
scorn on pacifism and shop-keeping. Tolstoy's War and Peace is
an attempt to exorcize the ghost, but a vain one, for the spectre
has never been more powerful than at the present day.
During the Hundred Days, Byron proclaimed his wish for
Napoleon's victory, and when he heard of Waterloo he said, 'Tm
damned sorry for it." Only once, for a moment, did he turn against
his hero: in 1814, when (so he thought) suicide would have been
more seemly than abdication. At this moment, he sought con-
solation in the virtue of Washington, but the return from Elba
made this effort no longer necessary. In France, when Byron died,
"It was remarked in many newspapers that the two greatest men
of the century, Napoleon and Byron, had disappeared almost at
the same time/'1 Carlyle, who, at the time, considered Byron "the
noblest spirit in Europe," and felt as if he had "lost a brother,"
came afterwards to prefer Goethe, but still coupled Byron with
Napoleon :
"for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such Work of
Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For
what is it properly but an altercation with the Devil, before you
begin honestly Fighting him ? Your Byron publishes hi* Sorrows
ff Lard George, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise:
your Bonaparte presents his Sonv&s of Napoleon Opera, in an
ail too-ttupcndous style ; with music of canon-volleys, and murder-
1 Mfturoit, Li/r of Byron,
778
BYRON
shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration;
his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embanded Hosts and
the sound of falling Cities."1
It is true that, three chapters further on, he gives the emphatic
command: "Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe." But Byron was
in his bl&ocf, whereas Goethe remained an aspiration.
To Carlyle, Goethe and Byron were antitheses; to Alfred de
Musset, they were accomplices in the wicked work of instilling
the poison of melancholy into the cheerful Gallic soul. Most young
Frenchmen of that age knew Goethe, it seems, only through The
Sorrows of Werther, and not at all as the Olympian. Musset
blamed Byron for not being consoled by the Adriatic and Countess
Guiccioli— wrongly, for after he knew her he wrote no more
Afanfreds. But Don Juan was as little read in France as Goethe's
more cheerful poetry. In spite of Musset, most French poets,
ever since, have found Byronic unhappiness the best material
for their verses.
To Musset, it was only after Napoleon that Byron and Goethe
were the greatest geniuses of the century. Born in 1810, Musset
was one of the generation whom he describes as "conpts entre deux
batai/tes" in a lyrical description of the glories and disasters of the
Krnpirc. In Germany, feeling about Xapoleon was more divided.
There were those who, like Heine, saw him as the mighty mis-
sionary of liberalism, the destroyer of serfdom, the enemy of
legitimacy, the man who made hereditary princelings tremble;
there were others who saw him as Antichrist, the would-be
destroyer of the noble German nation, the immoralist who had
proved once for all that Teutonic virtue can only be preserved by
unquenchable hatred of France. Bismarck effected a synthesis:
Napoleon remained Antichrist, but an Antichrist to be imitated,
not merely to be abhorred. Nietzsche, who accepted the com-
promise, remarked with ghoulish joy that the classical age of war
is coming, and that we owe this boon, not to the French Revolution,
but to Napoleon. And in this way nationalism, Satahisni, and
hero-worship, the legacy of Byron, became part of the complex
soul of Germany.
Byron is not gentle, but violent like a thunderstorm. What he
saya of Rousseau is applicable *o himself. Rousseau was, he
says
1 Parlor Ht tart us, Book 11, chap. vi.
779
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
He who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence . . .
yet he knew
How to make madness beautiful, and cast
O'er erring deeds and thoughts, a heavenly huQ,
But there is a profound difference between the two men. Rousseau
is pathetic, Byron is fierce ; Rousseau's timidity is obvious, Byron's
is concealed ; Rousseau admires virtue provided it is simple, while
Byron admires sin provided it is elemental. The difference, though
it is only that between two stages in the revolt of unsocial instincts,
is important, and shows the direction in which the movement is
developing.
Byron's romanticism, it must be confessed, was only half
sincere. At times, he would say that Pope's poetry was better than
his own, but this judgment, also, was probably only what he
thought in certain moods. The world insisted on simplifying him,
and omitting the element of pose in his cosmic despair and pro-
fessed contempt for mankind. Like many other prominent men,
he was more important as a myth than as he really was. As a
myth, his importance, especially on the Continent, was enormous.
Chapter XXIV
SCHOPENHAUER
SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860) is in many ways peculiar
among philosophers. He is a pessimist, whereas almost all
the others are in some sense optimists. \Hc is not fully
academic, like Kant and Hegel, nor yet completely outside the
academic tradition. He dislikes Christianity, preferring the religions
of India, both Hinduism and Buddhism. He is a man of wide
culture, quite as much interested in art as in ethics. He is un^
usually free from nationalism, and as much at home with English
and French writers as with those of his own country. His appeal
has always been less to professional philosophers than to artistic
and literary people in search of a philosophy that they could
believe. He began the emphasis on Will which is characteristic of
much nineteenth* and twentieth-century philosophy ; but for him
Will, though metaphysically fundamental, is ethically evil — an
opposition only possible for a pessimist. He acknowledges three
sources of his philosophy, Kant, Plato, and the Upanishads, but
I do not think he owes as much to Plato as he thinks he does.
I lis outlook has a certain temperamental affinity with that of the
IWlcnistic age; it is tired and valetudinarian, valuing peace more
than victor)-, and quietism more than attempts at reform, which
he regards as inevitably futile. f
Both his parents belonged to prominent commercial families in
Danzig, where he was born. His father was a Voltairian, who re-
garded England as the land of liberty and intelligence. In common
with most of the leading citizens of Danzig, he hated the encroach-
ments of Prussia on the independence of the free city, and was
indignant when it was annexed to Prussia in 1793—50 indignant
that he removed to Hamburg, at considerable pecuniary t loss.
Schopenhauer lived there with his father from 1793 to *797; then
he spent two years in Paris, at the end of which his father was
pleased to find that the boy had nearly forgotten German. In 1803
he was put in a boarding-school in England, where he hated the
cant and hypocrisy. Two years liter, to please his father, he*
became a clerk in a commercial house in Hamburg, but he loathed
the prospect of a business career, and longed for a literary and.
781
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
academic life. This was made possible by his father's death, pro-
bably by suicide; his mother was willing that he should abandon
commerce for school and university. It might be supposed that
he would, in consequence, have preferred her to his father, but
the exact opposite happened : he disliked his mother, and retained
an affectionate memory of his father.
Schopenhauer's mother was a lady of literary aspirations, who
settled in Weimar two weeks before the battle of Jena. There she
kept a literary salon, wrote books, and enjoyed friendships with
men of culture. She had little affection for her son, and a keen
eye for his faults. She warned him against bombast and empty
Bathos ; he was annoyed by her philanderings. When he came of
if* he inherited a modest competence ; after this, he and his mother
ajojially found each other more and more intolerable. His low
dip jtf of women is no doubt due, at least in part, to his quarrels
*69op 9 mother.
jnq 'spiy at Hamburg he had come under the influence of the
aajtp soL> especially Tieck, Novalis, and Hoffmann, from whom
UB — [IAS o admire Greece and to think ill of the Hebraic elements
miif joj ianity. Another romantic, Fried rich Schlegel, confirmed
jo Dn&iais admiration of Indian philosophy. In the year in which
of age (1809), he went to the university of G&tingen,
he learnt to admire Kant. Two years later he went to Berlin,
he studied mainly science; he heard Fichte lecture, Kjt
icspised him. He remained inditicrent throughout the excitement
of the war of liberation. In 1819 he became a Prrvaidozent at
Berlin, and had the conceit to put his lectures at the same hour as
Hegel's; having failed to lure away Hegel's hearers, he soon ceased
to lecture. In the end he settled down to the life of an old bachelor
in Frankfurt. He kept a poodle named Anna (the world-soul),
walked two hours every day, smoked a long pipe, read the Ixmdon
Times, and employed correspondents to hunt up evidences of his
fame. He was anti-democratic, and hated the revolution of 1848;
he believed in spiritualism and magic; in his study he had a bust
of Kant and a bronze Buddha. In his manner of life he tried to
imitate Kant except as regard* t,.r!y rising.
His principal work, The World as \\ ill and Idea, was published
'at the end of 1818. He believed it to l>c of great importance, and
went so far as to say that some paragraphs in it had been dictated
by the Holy Ghost. To his great mortification it fell completely
78*
SCHOPENHAUER
flat. In 1844 he persuaded the publisher to bring out a second
edition ; but it was not till some years later that he began to receive
some of the recognition for which he longed.
Schopenhauer's system is an adaptation of Kant's, but one that
emphasizes quite different aspects of the Critique from those
emphasized by Fichte or Hegel. They got rid of the thing-in-
itself, and thus made knowledge metaphysically fundamental.
Schopenhauer retained the thing-in-itself, but identified it with
will. He held that what appears to perception as my body is really
my will. There was more to be said for this v.'ew as a development
of Kant than most Kantians were willing to recognize. Kant had
maintained that a study of the moral law can take us behind
phenomena, and give us knowledge which sense-perception cannot
give; he also maintained that the moral law is essentially concerned
with the will. The difference between a good man and a bad
man is, for Kant, a difference in the world of things-in-themselves,
and is also a difference as to volitions. It follows that, for Kant,
volitions must belong to the real world, not to the world of pheno-
mena. The phenomenon corresponding to a volition is a bodily
movement ; that is why, according to Schopenhauer, the body is
the appearance of which will is the reality.
But the will which is behind phenomena cannot consist of a
number of different volitions. Both time and space, according to
Kant— and in this Schopenhauer agrees with him— belong only
to phenomena; the thing-in-itself is not in space or time. My will,
therefore, in the sense in which it is real, cannot be dated, nor
can it be composed of separate acts of will, because it is space and
time that are the source of plurality— the "principle of individua-
tion," to use the scholastic phrase which Schopenhauer prefers.
My will, therefore, is one and timeless. Nay, more, it is to be
identified with the will of the whole universe; my separateness is
an illusion, resulting from my subjective apparatus of spatio-
temporal perception. What is real is one vast will, appearing in
the whole course of nature, animate and inanimate alike.
So far, we might expect Schopenhauer to identify his cosmic
will with God, and teach a pantheistic doctrine not unlike Spinoza , s,
in which virtue would consist in conformity to the divine will.
But at this point his pessimism leads to a different development.
The cosmic will is wicked; will, altogether, is wicked, or at any
rate is the source of all our endless suffering. Suffering is essential*
783
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
to all life, and is increased by every increase of knowledge. Will
has no fixed end, which if achieved would bring contentment.
Although death must conquer in the end, we pursue our futile
purposes, "as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as
possible, although we know perfectly well that it wrll burst."
There is no such thing as happiness, for an unfulfilled wish causes
pain, and attainment brings only satiety. Instinct urges men to
procreation, which brings into existence a new occasion for
suffering and death; that is why shame is associated with the
sexual act. Suicide is useless; the doctrine of transmigration, even
if not literally true, conveys truth in the form of a myth.
All this is very sad, but there is a way out, and it was discovered
in India.
The best of myths is that of Nirvana (which Schopenhauer
interprets as extinction). This, he agrees, is contrary to Christian
doctrine, but "the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be
displaced by what happened in Galilee." The cause of suffering
is intensity of will; the less we exercise will, the less we shall
suffer. And here knowledge turns out to be useful after all, pro-
vided it is knowledge of a certain sort. The distinction between
one man and another is pan of the phenomenal world, and dis-
appears when the world is seen truly. To the good man, the veil
of Maya (illusion) has become transparent ; he sees that all things
are one, and that the distinction between himself and another is
only apparent. He reaches this insight by love, which is always
sympathy, and has to do with the pain of others. When the
veil of Maya is lifted, a man takes on the suffering of the whole
world. In the good man, knowledge of the whole quiets ail
volition; his mil turns away from life and denies his own
nature. "There arises within him a horror of the nature of
which his own phenomenal existence is an expression, the kernel
and inner nature of that world which is recognized as full of
misery."*
Hence Schopenhauer is led to complete agreement, at least as
regards practice, with ascetic mysticism. Eckhard and Angclus
Stksius are better than the New Testament. There are itome good
jhings in orthodox Christianity » notably the doctrine of original
sin as preached, against "the vulgar Pclagtanism," by St. Augus-
tine and Luther; but the Gospels are sadly deficient in meta-
physics. Buddhism, he says, in the highest religion ; and his ethical
784
SCHOPENHAUER
doctrines are orthodox throughout Asia, except where the "detest-
able doctrine of Islam" prevails.
The good man will practise complete chastity, voluntary poverty,
fasting, and self-torture. In all things he will aim at breaking down
his individual will. But he does not do this, as do the Western
mystics, to achieve harmony with God ; no such positive good is
sought. The good that is sought is wholly and entirely negative:
"We must banish the dark impression of that nothingness which
we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and
which we fear as children fear the dark; we must not even evade
it like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words, such
as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather
do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire aboli-
tion of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing;
but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has
denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and
milky ways — is nothing."
There is a vague suggestion here that the saint sees something
positive which other men do not see, but there is nowhere a hint
as to what this is, and I think the suggestion is only rhetorical.
The world and ail its phenomena, Schopenhauer says, are only the
ohjectification of will. With the surrender of the will,
* " all those phenomena arc also abolished ; that constant strain and
effort without end and without rest at all the grades of objectivity
in which and through which the world consists; the multifarious
forms succeeding each other in gradation ; the whole manifestation
of the will ; and. finally, also the universal forms of this manifesta-
tion, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject
and object; all are abolished. No will: no idea, no world. Before
us there is certainly only nothingness."
We cannot interpret this except as meaning that the saint's
purpose is to come as near as possible to non-existenc^ which, for
some reason never clearly explained, he cannot achieve by suicide.
Why the saint is to be preferred to a man who is always drunk
is not very easy to see; perhaps Schopenhauer thought the sober
moments were bound to be sadly frequent.
Schopenhauer's gospel of resignation is not very consistent and
not very sincere. ,The mystics to whom he appeals believed in
contemplation; in the Beatific Vision the most profound kind pf
7«S
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
knowledge was to be achieved, and this kind of knowledge was the
supreme good. Ever since Parmenides, the delusive knowledge
of appearance was contrasted with another kind of knowledge,
not with something of a wholly different kind. Christianity teaches
that in knowledge of God standeth our eternal life. But Schopen-
hauer will have none of this. He agreed that what commonly passes
for knowledge belongs to the realm of Maya, but when we pierce
the veil, we behold not God, but Satan, the wicked omnipotent
will, perpetually busied in weaving a web of suffering for the
torture of its creatures. Terrified by the Diabolic Vision, the sage
cries "Avaum!" and seeks refuge in non-existence. It is an insult
to the mystics to claim them as believers in this mythology. And
the suggestion that, without achieving complete non-existence,
the sage may yet live a life having some value, is not possible to
reconcile with Schopenhauer's pessimism. So long as the sage
exists, he exists because he retains will, which is evil. He may
diminish the quantity of evil by weakening his will, but he can
never acquire any positive good.
Nor is the doctrine sincere, if we may judge by Schopenhauer's
life. He habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many
trivial love-affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was
exceedingly quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. On one occa-
sion he was annoyed by an elderly seamstress who was talking to
a friend outside the door of his apartment. He threw her down-
stairs, causing her permanent injury. She obtained a court order
compelling him to pay her a certain sum (15 thalcrs) even- quarter
as long as she lived. When at last she died, after twenty years, he
noted in his account-book: "Obit anus, abit onus."1 It is hard to
find in his life evidences of any virtue except kindness to animals,
which he carried to the point of objecting to vivisection in the
interests of science. In all other respects he was completely selfish.
It is difficult to believe that a man who was profoundly convinced
of the jiiti^e of asceticism and resignation would never have made
any attempt to embody his convictions in his practice.
Historically, two things are important about Schopenhauer: his
pessimism, and his doctrine that will is superior to knowledge. His
pessimism made it possible for men to take to philosophy without
having to persuade themselves t&at all evil can be explained away,
and in this way, as an antidote, it was useful. From a scientific
1 "The old woman dies, the burden departs/'
786
SCHOPENHAUER
point of view, optimism and pessimism are alike objectionable:
optimism assumes, or attempts to prove, that the universe exists
to please us, and pessimism that it exists to displease us. Scien-
tifically, there is no evidence that it is concerned with us either
one way or the other. The belief in either pessimism or optimism
is a matter *of temperament, not of reason, but the optimistic
temperament has been much commoner among Western philo-
sophers. A representative of the opposite party is therefore likely
to be useful in bringing forward considerations which would other-
wise be overlooked.
More important than pessimism was the doctrine of the primacy
of the will. It is obvious that this doctrine has no necessary logical
connection with pessimism, and those who held it after Schopen-
hauer frequently found in it a basis for optimism. In one form or
another, the doctrine that will is paramount has been held I y many
modern philosophers, notably Nietzsche, Bergson, James, and
Dcwey. It has, moreover, acquired a vogue outside the circles of
professional philosophers. And in proportion as will has gone up
in the scale, knowledge has gone down. This is, I think, the most
notable change that has come over the temper of philosophy in
our age. It was prepared by Rousseau and Kant, but was first
proclaimed in its purity by Schopenhauer. For this reason, in spite
of inconsistency and a certain shallowness, his philosophy has
considerable importance as a stage in historical development.
7*7
Chapter XXV
NIETZSCHE
NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) regarded himself, rightly, as the
successor of Schopenhauer, to whom, however, he is
superior in many ways, particularly in the consistency
and coherence of his doctrine. Schopenhauer's oriental ethic of
renunciation seems out of harmony with his metaphysic of the
omnipotence of will ; in Nietzsche, the will has ethical as well as
metaphysical primacy. Nietzsche, though a professor, was a literary
rather than an academic philosopher. He invented no new tech-
nical theories in ontology or epistemology ; his importance is
primarily in ethics, and secondarily as an acute historical critic.
I shall confine myself almost entirely to his ethics and his criticism
of religion, since it was this aspect of his writing that made him
influential.
His life was simple. His father was a Protestant pastor, and his
upbringing was very pious. He was brilliant at the university as
a classicist and student of philology, so much so that in 1869,
before he had taken his degree, he was offered a professorship
of philology at Basel, which he accepted. His health was never
good, and after periods of sick leave he was obliged to retire fma%
in 1879. After this, he lived in Switzerland anJ Italy; in
1888 he became insane, and remained so until his death, lie had
a passionate admiration for Wagner, but quarrelled with him,
nominally. over Parsifal, which he thought too Christian and tcx)
full of renunciation. After the quarrel he critio/cd Wagner
savagely, and even went so far as to accuse him of being a Jew.
His general outlook, however, remained very airniUr to that of
Wagner in the Rtng\ Nietzsche's superman is very like Siegfried,
except that he knows Greek. This may seem odd, but that in not
my faftlt. •
Nietzsche was not consciously a romantic; indeed he often
severely criticizes the romantics. Consciously his outlook was
Hellenic, but with the Orphic component omitted. He admired the
pre*Socratics, except Pythagoras. He ha» a close affinity to
Hcraditu*. Aristotle'* magnanimous man IB very like what
Nietzsche calls the "noble man/' but in the main he regards the
788
NIETZSCHE
Greek philosophers from Socrates onwards as inferior to their
predecessors. He cannot forgive Socrates for his humble origin;
he calls him a "roturier," and accuses him of corrupting the noble
Athenian youth with a democratic moral bias. Plato, especially,
is condemned on account of his taste for edification. Nietzsche,
however, Obviously does not quite like condemning him, and sug-
gests, to excuse him, that perhaps he was insincere, and only
preached virtue as a means of keeping the lower classes in order.
He speaks of him on one occasion as "a great Cagliostro." He
likes Democritus and Epicurus, but his affection for the latter
seems somewhat illogical, unless it is interpreted as really an
admiration for Lucretius.
As might be expected, he has a low opinion of Kant, whom he
calls "a moral fanatic a la Rousseau."
In spite of Nietzsche's criticism of the romantics, his rut look
owes much to them; it is that of aristocratic anarchism, like
Byron's, and one is not surprised to find him admiring Byron.
He attempts to combine two sets of values which are not easily
harmonized: on the one hand he likes ruthlessness, war, and
aristocratic pride; on the other hand, he loves philosophy and
literature and the arts, especially music. Historically, these values
coexisted in the Renaissance; Pope Julius II, fighting for Bologna
and employing Michelangelo, might be taken as the sort of man
whom Nietzsche would wish to see in control of governments. It
is natural to compare Nietzsche with Machiavelli, in spite of
important differences between the two men. As for the differences:
Machiavelli was a man of affairs, whose opinions had been formed
by close contact with public business, and were in harmony with
his age; he was not pedantic or systematic, and his philosophy
of politics scarcely forms a coherent whole; Nietzsche, on the
contrary, was a professor, an essentially bookish man, and a philo-
sopher in conscious opposition to what appeared to be the domi-
nant political and ethical trends of his time. The similarities,
however, go deeper. Nietzsche's political philosophy is Analogous
to that of The Prince (not The Discourses), though it is worked
out and applied over a wider field. Both Nietzsche and Machiavelli
have an ethic which aims at power and is deliberately anti-Chris-
tian, though Nietzsche is more frank in this respect. What Caesas
Borgia was to Machiavelli, Napoleon was to Nietzsche: a great
man defeated by petty opponents.
789
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Nietzsche's criticism of religions and philosophies is dominated
entirely by ethical motives. He admires certain qualities which
he believes (perhaps rightly) to be only possible for an aristocratic
minority; the majority, in his opinion, should be only means to
the excellence of the few, and should not be regarded as having
any independent claim to happiness or well-being. Fie alludes
habitually to ordinary human beings as the "bungled and botched/9
and sees no objection to their suffering if it is necessary for the
production of a great man. Thus the whole importance of the
period from 1789 to 1815 is summed up in Napoleon: "The
Revolution made Napoleon possible: that is its justification. We
ought to desire the anarchical collapse of the whole of our civiliza-
tion if such a reward were to be its result. Napoleon made national-
ism possible: that is the latter's excuse." Almost all of the higher
hopes of this century, he says, are due to Napoleon.
He is fond of expressing himself paradoxically and with a view
to shocking conventional readers. He docs this by employing the
words "good" and "evil" with their ordinary connotations, and
then saying that he prefers "evil" to "good." His book, Beyond
Good and Evil, really aims at changing the reader's opinion as to
what is good and what is evil, but professes, except at moments,
to be praising what is "evil" and decrying what is "good." He
says, for instance, that it is a mistake to regard it as a duty to aim
at the victor}' of good and the annihilation of evil ; this vte\» is
English, and typical of "that blockhead, John Stuart Mill," a man
for whom he has a specially virulent contempt. Of him he says:
"I abhor the man's vulgarity when he says 'What is right for
one man* is right for another'; 'Do not to others that which you
would not that they should do unto you.*1 Such principles would
fain establish the whole of human traffic upon mutual irrruri, so
that every action would appear to be a ca&h payment for something
done to us. The hypothesis here u ignoble to the la*t degree: it
is taken for granted that there is some sort of cqunalencc in value
betwfen rlty actions and thine"*
True virtue, as opposed to the conventional son, is not for all,
but should remain the characteristic of an aristocratic minority
It is not profitable or prudent ; it bolate* its potscutor from other
men; it is hostile to ondcr, amkdoe* harm to inferiors. It is necc*-
1 I teem to remember that iomcon* anticipated Mill in thi» dictum.
1 In all quotations from Nietzsche, the italics »nr in the original
790
NIETZSCHE
sary for higher men to make war upon the masses, and resist the
democratic tendencies of the age, for in all directions mediocre
people are joining hands to make themselves masters. "Everything
that pampers, that softens, and that brings the 'people' or 'woman'
to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage — that is to
say, the dominion of 'inferior' men." The seducer was Rousseau,
who made woman interesting; then came Harriet Beecher Stowe
and the slaves; then the Socialists with their championship of
workmen and the poor. All these are to be combated.
Nietzsche's ethic is not one of self-indulgence in any ordinary
sense ; he believes in Spartan discipline and the capacity to endure
as well as inflict pain for important ends. He admires strength of
will above all things. "I test the power of a will" he says, "according
to the amount of resistance it can offer and the amount of pain
and torture it con endure and know how to turn to its own advan-
tage ; I do not point to the evil and pain of existence with the finger
of reproach, but rather entertain the hope that life may one day
become more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been."
He regards compassion as a weakness to be combated. "The object
is to attain that enormous energy of greatness which can model the
man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the
annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which
ca^ yet avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created
thereby, the like of which has never been seen before." He
prophesied with a certain glee an era of great wars; one wonders
whether he would have been happy if he had lived to see the
fulfilment of his prophecy.
He is not, however, a worshipper of the State; far from it. He
is a passionate individualist, a believer in the hero. The misery of
a whole nation, he says, is of less importance than the suffering
of a great individual: "The misfortunes of all these small folk
do not together constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of
mighty men." • ;
Nietzsche is not a nationalist, and shows no excessive admiration
for Germany. He wants an international ruling race, who are to
be the lords' of the earth: "a new vast aristocracy based upon the
most severe self-discipline, in which the will of philosophical men
of power and artUt-tyrants will 6e stamped upon thousands of
years."
He is also not definitely anti-Semitic, though he thinks Germany
79*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
contains as many Jews as it can assimilate, and ought not to permit
any further influx of Jews. He dislikes the New Testament, but
not the Old, of which he speaks in terms of the highest admiration.
In justice to Nietzsche it must be emphasized that many modern
developments which have a certain connection with his genera]
ethical outlook are contrary to his clearly expressed opinions.
Two applications of his ethic deserve notice: first, his contempt
for women ; second, his bitter critique of Christianity.
He is never tired of inveighing against women. In his pseudo-
prophetical book, Thus Spake Zarathiutra, he says that women are
not, as yet, capable of friendship; they are still cats, or birds, or
at best cows. "Man shall be trained for war and woman for the
recreation of the warrior. All else is folly." The recreation of the
warrior is to be of a peculiar sort if one may trust his most em-
phatic aphorism on this subject: **Thou gocst to woman? Do not
forget thy whip."
He is not always quite so fierce, though always equally con-
temptuous. In the Will to Power he says: "We take pleasure in
woman as in a perhaps daintier, more delicate, and more ethereal
kind of creature. What a treat it is to meet creatures who have
only dancing and nonsense and finery in their minds! They have
always been the delight of every tense and profound male soul."
However, even these graces are only to be found in women so l^ng
as they are kept in order by manly men ; as soon as they achieve
any independence they become intolerable. "Woman has so much
cause for shame; in woman there is so much pedantry, super-
ficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, unbridledness,
and indiscretion concealed . . . which has really been best res-
trained and dominated hitherto by the/rar of man." So he says
in Beyond Good and Evil, where he adds that we should think of
women as property, as Orientals do. The whole of his abuse of
women is offered as self-evident truth; it i* not backed up by
evidence /rom history or from his own experience, which, »o far
as women were concerned, was almost confined to his sister.
Nietzsche's objection to Christianity is that it caused acceptance
of what he calls "slave morality." It is curious to observe the
contrast between his arguments and those of the French philosopher
who preceded the Revolution. Yhey argued that Christian dogmas
are untrue; that Christianity teaches submission to what is deemed
*o be the will of God, whereas self- respecting human beings should
792
NIETZSCHE
not bow before any higher Power; and that the Christian Churches
have become the a lies of tyrants, and are helping the enemies of
democracy to deny liberty and continue to grind the faces of the
poor. Nietzsche is not interested in the metaphysical truth of either
Christianity or any other religion ; being convinced that no religion
is really true, he judges all religions entirely by their social effects.
He agrees with the philosophes in objecting to submission to the
supposed will of God, but he would substitute for it the will of
earthly "artist-tyrants." Submission is right, except for these
supermen, but not submission to the Christian God. As for the
Christian Churches* being allies of tyrants and enemies of demo-
cracy, that, he says, is the very reverse of the truth. The French
Revolution and Socialism are, according to him, essentially iden-
tical in spirit with Christianity; to all alike he is opposed, and for
the same reason: that he will not treat all men as equal in any
respect whatever.
Buddhism and Christianity, he says, are both "nihilistic" reli-
gions, in the sense that they deny any ultimate difference of value
between one man and another, but Buddhism is much the less
objectionable of the two. Christianity is degenerative, full of
decaying and excrcmcntal elements ; its driving force is the revolt
of the bungled and botched. This revolt was begun by the Jews,
and brought into Christianity by "holy epileptics" like St. Paul,
wHb had no honesty. "The New Testament is the gospel of a
completely ignoble species of man." Christianity is the most fatal
and seductive lie that ever existed. No man of note has ever
resembled the Christian ideal; consider for instance the heroes
of Plutarch's Lir«. Christianity is to be condemned for denying
the value of "pride, pathos of distance, great responsibility,
exuberant spirits, splendid animalism, the instincts of war and of
conquest, the deification of passion, revenge, anger, voluptuous-
ness, adventure, knowledge." AH these things are good, and all are
said by Christianity to l>c bad— so Nietzsche contends. ^ t
Christianity, he argues, aims at taming the heart in man, but
this is a mistake. A wild beast has a certain splendour, which it
loses when it is tamed. The criminals with whom Dostoevsky
associated were better than he was, because they were more self-
respecting. Nietzsche is nauseated fey repentance and redemption?
which he calls a/ote circulate. It is difficult for us to free ourselves
from this way of thinking about human behaviour: "we are heirs§
793
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
to the conscience- vivisection and self-crucifixion of two thousand
years." There is a very eloquent passage about Pascal, which
deserves quotation, because it shows Nietzsche's objections to
Christianity at their best:
"What is it that we combat in Christianity? Tfcat.it aims at
destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their
moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud
assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble ; that it knows how
to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease,
until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against
themselves — until the strong perish through their excessive self-
contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing,
of which Pascal is the most famous example."
In place of the Christian saint Nietzsche wishes to see what he
calls the "noble" man, by no means as a universal type, but as
a governing aristocrat. The "noble" man will be capable of cruelty,
and, on occasion, of what is vulgarly regarded as crime; he will
recognize duties only to equals. Me will protect artists and poets
and all who happen to be masters of some skill, hut he will do so
as himself a member of a higher order than those who only know
how to do something. From the example of warriors he will learn
to associate death with the interests for which he is fighting; to
sacrifice numbers, and take his cause sufficiently seriously not to
spare men; to practise inexorable discipline; and to allow him&lf
violence and cunning in war. He will recognize the part played
by cruelty in aristocratic excellence: * 'almost even-thing that we
call 'higher culture* is based upon the spiritualizing and inten-
sifying of cruelty'' The "noble*1 man is essentially the incarnate
will to power.
What are we to think of Nietzsche's doctrines? 1 low far are they
true? Are they in any degree useful? I* there in them anything
objective, or are they the mere power-phantasies of an invalid?
It js undeniable that Nietzsche has had a great influence, not
among technical philosophers, but among people of literary and
artistic culture. It must also be conceded that hi* prophecies a* to
the future have, so far, proved more nearly right than those of
liberals or Socialists. // he is a mere symptom of disease, the
disease must be very widespread in the modern world.
Nevertheless there is a great deal in him that must be dismissed
t* merely megalomaniac. Speaking of Spinoza he says: "How much
794
NIETZSCHE
of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a
sickly recluse betray I" Exactly the same may be said of him, with
the less reluctance since he has not hesitated to say it of Spinoza.
It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor;
all the mefc he admires were military. His opinion of women, like
every man's, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them,
which is obviously one of fear. " Forget not thy whip"— but nine
women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he
knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded
vanity with unkind remarks.
He condemns Christian love because he thinks it is an outcome
of fear: I am afraid my neighbour may injure me, and so I assure
him that I love him. If I were stronger and bolder, I should openly
display the contempt for him which of course I feel. It does not
occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel
universal love, obviously because he himself feels almost universal
hatred and fear, which he would fain disguise as lordly indifference.
His "noble" man — who is himself in day-dreams — is a being wholly
devoid of sympathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel, concerned only with
his own power. King Lear, on the verge of madness, says:
I will do such things —
What they are yet I know not — hut they snail be
The terror of the earth.
This is Nietzsche's philosophy in a nutshell.
It never occurred to Nietzsche that the lust for power, with
which he endows his superman, is itself an outcome of fear. Those
who do not fear their neighbours see no necessity to tyrannize over
them. Men who have conquered fear have not the frantic quality
of Nietzsche's "artist-tyrant" Neros, who try to enjoy music and
massacre while their hearts are filled with dread of the inevitable
palace revolution. 1 will not deny that, partly as a result of his
teaching, the real world has become very like his nighfcnart, but
that docs not make it any the less horrible.
It must IK admitted that there is a certain type of Christian
ethic to which Nietzsche's strictures can be justly applied. Pascal
and Dostocvsky— hi* own illustrations— have both something
abject in their virtue. Pascal sacrificed his magnificent mathe-
matical intellect to his God, thereby attributing to Him a barbarity
which was a cosmic enlargement of Pascal's morbid mental tor*
795
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
tures. Dostoevsky would have nothing to do with "proper pride*';
he would sin in order to repent and to enjoy the luxury of con-
fession. I will not argue the question how far such aberrations can
justly be charged against Christianity, but I will admit that I agree
with Nietzsche in thinking Dostoevsky's prostration 'contemptible.
A certain uprightness and pride and even self-assertion of a sort,
I should agree, are elements in the best character ; no virtue which
has its roots in fear is much to be admired.
There are two sorts of saints: the saint by nature, and the saint
from fear. The saint by nature has a spontaneous love of mankind ;
he does good because to do so gives him happiness. The saint from
fear, on the other hand, like the man who only abstains from theft
because of the police, would be wicked if he were not restrained
by the thought of hell-fire or of his neighbours' vengeance.
Nietzsche can only imagine the second son of saint ; he is so full
of fear and hatred that spontaneous love of mankind seems to him
impossible. He has never conceived of the man who, with all the
fearlessness and stubborn pride of the superman, nevertheless does
not inflict pain because he has no wish to do so. Does anyone
suppose that Lincoln acted as he did from fear of hell? Yet to
Nietzsche Lincoln is abject, Napoleon magnificent.
It remains to consider the main ethical problem raised by
Nietzsche, namely: should our ethic he aristocratic, or shoulcfrit,
in some sense, treat all men alike: This is a question which, as I
have just stated it, has no very clear meaning, and obviously, the
first step is to try to make the issue more definite.
We must in the first place try to distinguish an aristocratic ethic
from an aristocratic political theory. A believer in Bemham's prin-
ciple of the greatest happiness of the greatest number has a demo-
cratic ethic, but he may think that the general happiness is best
promoted by an aristocratic form of government. This is not
Nietzsche's position. He holds that the happiness of common
peopfc is fto part of the good pn $t. All that is good or bad in itself
exists only in the superior few; what happen* to the rest i§ of no
account.
The next question is: How are the superior few defined? In
practice, they have usually beer a conquering race or a hereditary
aristocracy —and aristocracies have usually been, at least in theory,
descendants of conquering races. I think Nietzsche would accept
this definition. "No morality is possible without good birth/' he
796
NIETZSCHE
tells us. He says that the noble caste is always at first barbarian,
but that every elevation of Man is due to aristocratic society.
It is not clear whether Nietzsche regards the superiority of the
aristocrat as congenital or as due to education and environment.
If the latter, 'it is difficult to defend the exclusion of others from
advantages for which, ex hypothesi, they are equally qualified. I
shall therefore assume that he regards conquering aristocracies
and their descendants as biologically superior to their subjects,
as men are superior to domestic animals, though in a lesser
degree.
What shall we mean by "biologically superior"? We shall mean,
when interpreting Nietzsche, that individuals of the superior race,
and their descendants, are more likely to be "noble" in Nietzsche's
sense: they will have more strength of will, more courage, more
impulse towards power, less sympathy, less fear, and less gentle-
ness.
We can now state Nietzsche's ethic. I think what follows is a
fair analysis of it:
Victors in war, and their descendants, are usually biologically
superior to the vanquished. It is therefore desirable that they should
hold all the power, and should manage affairs exclusively in their
own interests.
JTicre is here still the word "desirable" to be considered. What
is "desirable" in Nietzsche's philosophy? From the outsider's
point of view, what Nietzsche calls "desirable" is what Nietzsche
desires. With this interpretation, Nietzsche's doctrine might be
stated mure simply and honestly in the one sentence: i'l wish I
had lived in the Athens of Pericles or the Florence of the Medici.
But this is not a philosophy ; it is a biographical fact about a certain
individual. The word "desirable" is not synonymous with desired
by me"; it has some claim, however shadowy, to legislate univer-
sally. A theist may say that what is desirable is what God desires,
but Nietzsche cannot say this. He could say that he kllows what
is good by an ethical intuition, but he will not say this, because
it sounds too Kantian. What he can say, as an expansion of the
word "desirable," is this: "If men will read my works, a certain
percentage of them will come to tfiare my desires as regards th*
organization of society; these men, inspired by the energy and
determination which my philosophy will give them, can preserve
and restore aristocracy, with themselves as aristocrats or (like mef
797
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
sycophants of aristocracy. In this way they will achieve a fuller
life than they can have as servants of the people/'
There is another element in Nietzsche, which is closely akin to
the objection urged by "rugged individualists" against trade-
unions. In a fight of all against all, the victor is likely <o possess
certain qualities which Nietzsche admires, such as courage, re-
sourcefulness, and strength of mil. But if the men who do not
possess these aristocratic qualities (who are the vast majority)
band themselves together, they may win in spite of their individual
inferiority. In this fight of the collective canaille against the aris-
tocrats, Christianity is the ideological front, as the French Revo-
lution was the fighting front. We ought therefore to oppose every
kind of union among the individually feeble, for fear lest their
combined power should outweigh that of the individually strong;
on the other hand, we ought to promote union among the tough
and virile elements of the population. The first step towards the
creation of such a union is the preaching of Nietzsche's philosophy.
It will be seen that it is not easy to preserve the distinction between
ethics and politics.
Suppose we wish- as I certainly do -to find arguments against
Nietzsche's ethics and politics, what arguments can we find ?
There are weighty practical arguments, showing that the attempt
to secure his ends will in fact secure something quite differqpt.
Aristocracies of birth are nowadays discredited; the only prac-
ticable form of aristocracy is an organization like the Fascist or
the Nazi party. Such an organization rouses opposition, and is
likely to be defeated in war ; but if it is not defeated it must, before
long, become nothing but a police State, where the rulers live
in terror of assassination, and the heroes are in concentration
camps. In such a community faith and honour are sapped by
delation, and the would-be aristocracy of supermen degenerates
into a clique of trembling poltroons.
Thiae, However, are arguments for our time; they would not
have held good in past ages, when aristocracy was unquestioned.
The Egyptian government was conducted on Ntetzschcan prin-
ciples for several millennia. The governments of almost all large
States were aristocratic until tlje American and the French Revo-
lutions. We have therefore to ask ourselves whether there is any
good reason for preferring democracy to a form of government
which has had such a long and successful history— or rather, since
798
NIETZSCHE
we are concerned with philosophy, not politics, whether there are
objective grounds for rejecting the ethic by which Nietzsche
supports aristocracy.
The ethical, as opposed to the political, question is one as to
sympathy.JSypipalhy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the
suffering of others, is to some extent natural to human beings;
young children are troubled when they hear other children crying.
But the development of this feeling is very different in different
people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture ; others, like
Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any
living thing is suffering. Most people divide mankind emotionally
into friends and enemies, feeling sympathy for the former, but not
for the latter. An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism
has its emotional basis in universal sympathy; Nietzsche's, in a
complete absence of sympathy. (He frequently preaches against
sympathy, and in this respect one feels that he has no difficulty
in obeying his own precepts.) The question is: If Buddha and
Nietzsche were confronted, could either produce any argument
that ought to appeal to the impartial listener? I am not thinking
of political arguments. We can imagine them appearing before the
Almighty, as in the first chapter of the Book of Job, and offering
advice as to the sort of world He should create. What could
either say ?
Buddha would open the argument by speaking of the lepers,
outcast and miserable; the poor, toiling with aching limbs and
barely kept alive by scanty nourishment; the wounded in battle,
dying in slow agony; the orphans, ill-treated by cruel guardians;
and even the most successful haunted by the thought bf failure
and death. From all this load of sorrow, he would say, a way of
salvation must be found, and salvation can only come through love.
Nietzsche, whom only Omnipotence could restrain from inter-
rupting, would burst out when his turn came: "Good heavens,
man, you must learn to be of tougher fibre. Why go about snivelling
because trivial people suffer? Or, for that matter, because great
men suffer? Trivial people suffer trivially, great men suffer greatly,
and great sufferings are not to be regretted, because they are noble.
Your ideal is a purely negative one, absence of suffering, which
can be completely secured by non-existence. I, on the other hand?
have positive ideals: I admire Alcibiades, and the Emperor
Frederick II, and Napoleon. For the sake of such men, any misery,
799
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
13 worth while. I appeal to You, Lord, as the greatest of creative
artists, do not let Your artistic impulses be curbed by the degene-
rate fear-ridden maunderings of this wretched psychopath."
Buddha, who in the courts of Heaven has learnt all history since
his death, and has mastered science with delight in the knowledge
and sorrow at the use to which men have put it, replies with calm
urbanity: "You are mistaken, Professor Nietzsche, in thinking my
ideal a purely negative one. True, it includes a negative clement,
the absence of suffering; but it has in addition quite as much that
is positive as is to be found in your doctrine. Though I have no
special admiration for Alcibiadcs and Napoleon, I, too, have my
heroes: my successor Jesus, because he told men to love their
enemies; the men who discovered how to master the forces of
nature and secure food with less labour; the medical men who
have shown how to diminish disease; the poets and artists and
musicians who have caught glimpses of the Divine beatitude. Love
and knowledge and delight in beauty are not negations ; they are
enough to fill the lives of the greatest men that have ever lived."
"All the same," Nietzsche replies, "your world would be insipid.
You should study Heraclitus, whose works survive complete in the
celestial library. Your love is compassion, which is elicited by pain ;
your truth, if you are honest, is unpleasant, and only to be known
through suffering; and as to beauty, what is more beautiful than the
tiger, who owes his splendour to his fierceness? No, if the Lord
should decide for your world, I fear we should all die of boredom."
" You might," Buddha replies, "because you love pain, and your
love of life is a sham. But those who really love life would be
happy as 'no one can be happy in the world as it is."
For my part, I agree with Buddha as I have imagined him. But
I do not know how to prove that he is right by any arguments such
as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific question. I dislike
Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he-
erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires
are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die.
But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as
against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not
in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche
despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I
desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings*
but we may hope that it it coming rapidly to an end.
Ron
Chapter XXVI
THE UTILITARIANS1
THROUGHOUT the period from Kant to Nietzsche, pro-
fesional philosophers in Great Britain remained almost
completely unaffected by their German contemporaries,
with the sole exception of Sir William Hamilton, who had little
influence. Coleridge and Carlyle, it is true, were profoundly
affected by Kant, Fichte, and the German Romantics, but they
were not philosophers in the technical sense. Somebody seems
to have once mentioned Kant to James Mill, who, after a cursory
inspection, remarked: "I see well enough what poor Kant would
be at." But this degree of recognition is exceptional; in general,
there is complete silence about the Germans. Bentham and his
school derived their philosophy, in all its main outlines, from
Locke, Hartley, and Helvetius; their importance is not so much
philosophical as political, as the leaders of British radicalism, and
as the men who unintentionally prepared the way for the doctrines
of socialism.
Jeremy Bentham, who was the recognized leader of the "Philo-
sophical Radicals," was not the sort of man one expects to find
at^he head of a movement of this sort. He was born in 1748, but
did not become a Radical till 1808. He was painfully shy, and
could not without great trepidation endure the company of stran-
gers. He wrote voluminously, but never bothered to publish; what
was published under his name had been benevolently 'purloined
by his friends. His main interest was jurisprudence, in which he
recognized Helvetius and Beccaria as his most important pre-
decessors. It was through the theory of law that he became in-
terested in ethics and politics.
He bases his whole philosophy on two principles, the "as^ocia-
tion principle," and the "greatest-happiness principle. The asso-
ciation principle had been emphasized by Hartley in 1749; before
him, though association of ideas was recognized as occurring, it
was regarded, for instance by Locke, only as a source of trivial
errors. Bentham, following Hartley, made it the basic principle
1 For a fuller treatment of this subject, as also of Marx, see Part II of
my Freedom and Organization, 1814-2914. »
//iifriry o/ Wait** PktoMpkv 8O I 20
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
is worth while. I appeal to You, Lord, as the greatest of creative
artists, do not let Your artistic impulses be curbed by the degene-
rate fear-ridden maunderings of this wretched psychopath."
Buddha, who in the courts of Heaven has learnt all history since
his death, and has mastered science with delight in the knowledge
and sorrow at the use to which men have put it, replies with calm
urbanity: "You are mistaken, Professor Nietzsche, in thinking my
ideal a purely negative one. True, it includes a negative element,
the absence of suffering; but it has in addition quite as much that
is positive as is to be found in your doctrine. Though I have no
special admiration for Alcibiades and Napoleon, I, too, have my
heroes : my successor Jesus, because he told men to love their
enemies; the men who discovered how to master the forces of
nature and secure food with less labour; the medical men who
have shown how to diminish disease; the poets and artists and
musicians who have caught glimpses of the Divine beatitude. Love
and knowledge and delight in beauty are not negations ; they are
enough to fill the lives of the greatest men that have ever lived."
"All the same," Nietzsche replies, "your world would be insipid.
You should study Heraclitus, whose works survive complete in the
celestial library. Your love is compassion, which is elicited by pain ;
your truth, if you are honest, is unpleasant, and only to be known
through suffering ; and as to beauty, what is more beautiful than the
tiger, who owes his splendour to his fierceness? No, if the Lcrd
should decide for your world, I fear we should all die of boredom."
"You might," Buddha replies, "because you love pain, and your
love of life is a sham. But those who really love life would be
happy as 'no one can be happy in the world as it is."
For my part, I agree with Buddha as I have imagined him. But
I do not know how to prove that he is right by any arguments such
as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific question. I dislike
Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he
erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires
are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die.
But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as
against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not
in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche
despises universal* love; I feel it the motive power to all that I
desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings,
but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.
800
Chapter XXVI
THE UTILITARIANS1
• •
THROUGHOUT the period from Kant to Nietzsche, pro-
fesional philosophers in Great Britain remained almost
completely unaffected by their German contemporaries,
with the sole exception of Sir William Hamilton, who had little
influence. Coleridge and Carlyle, it is true, were profoundly
affected by Kant, Fichte, and the German Romantics, but they
were not philosophers in the technical sense. Somebody seems
to have once mentioned Kant to James Mill, who, after a cursory
inspection, remarked: "I see well enough what poor Kant would
be at." But this degree of recognition is exceptional; in general,
there is complete silence about the Germans. Bentham and his
school derived their philosophy, in all its main outlines, from
Locke, Hartley, and Hclvetius; their importance is not so much
philosophical as political, as the leaders of British radicalism, and
as the men who unintentionally prepared the way for the doctrines
of socialism.
Jeremy Bentham, who was the recognized leader of the "Philo-
sophical Radicals," was not the sort of man one expects to find
at^he head of a movement of this sort. He was born in 1748, but
did not become a Radical till 1808. He was painfully shy, and
could not without great trepidation endure the company of stran-
gers. He wrote voluminously, but never bothered to publish; what
was published under his name had been benevolently 'purloined
by his friends. His main interest was jurisprudence, in which he
recognized Hclvetius and Beccaria as his most important pre-
decessors. It was through the theory of law that he became in-
terested in ethics and politics.
He bases his whole philosophy on two principles, the "a^ocia-
tion principle," and the " greatest-happiness principle. The asso-
ciation principle had been emphasized by Hartley in 1749; before
him, though association of ideas was recognized as occurring, it
was regarded, for instance by Locke, only as a source of trivial
errors. Bentham, following Hartley, made it the basic principle
1 For a fuller treatment of this subject, as also of Marx, see Pan II of
my Freedom and Organisation, 1814-1914. ,
8O I 2C
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of psychology. He recognizes association of ideas and language,
and also association of ideas and ideas. By means of this principle
he aims at a deterministic account of mental occurrences. In
essence the doctrine is the same as the more modern theory of
the "conditioned reflex," based on Pavlov's experiments.. The only
important difference is that Pavlov's conditioned reflex is physiolo-
gical, whereas the association of ideas was purely mental. Pavlov's
work is therefore capable of a materialistic explanation, such as
is given to it by the behaviourists, whereas the association of ideas
led rather towards a psychology more or less independent of
physiology. There can be no doubt that, scientifically, the principle
of the conditioned reflex is an advance on the older principle.
Pavlov's principle is this: Given a reflex according to which a
stimulus B produces a reaction C, and given that a certain animal
has frequently experienced a stimulus A at the same time as B,
it often happens that in time the stimulus A will produce the
reaction C even when B is absent. To determine the circumstances
under which this happens is a matter of experiment. Clearly, if
we substitute ideas for A, B, and C, Pavlov's principle becomes
that of the association of ideas.
Both principles, indubitably, are valid over a certain field ; the
only controversial question is as to the extent of this field. Bentham
and his followers exaggerated the extent of the field in the case
of Hartley's principle, as certain behaviourists have in the dfee
of Pavlov's principle.
To Bentham, determinism in psychology was important, because
he wished to establish a code of laws — and, more generally, a
social system — which would automatically make men virtuous.
His second principle, that of the greatest happiness, became
necessary at this point in order to define "virtue."
Bentham maintained that what is good is pleasure or happiness
— he used these words as synonyms — and what is bad is pain.
Therefore one state of affairs is better than another if it involves
a greater balance of pleasure over pain, or a smaller balance of
pain over pleasure. Of all possible states of affairs, that one is best
which involves the greatest balance of pleasure over pain.
There is nothing new in this doctrine, which came to be called
"Utilitarianism." It had been advocated by Hutcheson as early as
1725. Bentham attributes it to Priestley, who, however, had no
Special claim to it. It is virtually contained in Locke. Bcntham's
802
THE UTILITARIANS
merit consisted, not in the doctrine, but in his vigorous application
of it to various practical problems.
Bentham held not only that the good is happiness in general, but
also that each individual always pursues what he believes to be his
own happiness. The business of the legislator, therefore, is to
produce harmony between public and private interests. It is to the
interest of the public that I should abstain from theft, but it is
not to my interest except where there is an effective criminal law.
Thus the criminal law is a method of making the interests of
the individual coincide with those of the community; that is its
justification.
Men are to be punished by the criminal law in order to prevent
crime, not because we hate the criminal. It is more important that
the punishment should be certain than that it should be severe. In
his day, in England, many quite minor offences were subject to the
death penalty, with the result that juries often refused to convict
because they thought the penalty excessive. Bentham advocated
abolition of the death penalty for all but the worst offences, and
before he died the criminal law had been mitigated in this respect.
Civil law, he says, should have four aims: subsistence, abun-
dance, security, and equality. It will be observed that he does not
mention liberty. In fact, he cared little for liberty. He admired
th^ benevolent autocrats who preceded the French Revolution —
Catherine the Great and the Emperor Francis. He had a great
contempt for the doctrine of the rights of man. The rights of man,
he said, are plain nonsense; the imprescriptible rights of man,
nonsense on stilts. When the French revolutionaries ipade their
"Declaration des droits de l*homme," Bentham called it "a meta-
physical work — the ne plus ultra of metaphysics." Its articles, he
said, could he divided into three classes: (i) Those that are un-
intelligible, (2) those that are false, (3) those that are both.
Bent ham's ideal, like that of Epicurus, was security, not liberty.
"Wars and storms are best to read of, but peace and»calms are
better to endure."
His gradual evolution towards Radicalism had two sources: on
the one hand, a belief in equality, deduced from the calculus of
pleasures and pains ; on the other hand, an inflexible determination
to submit everything to the arbitrament of reason as he under-
stood it. His love of equality early led him to advocate equal
division of a man's property among his children, and to oppose
803
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
testamentary freedom. In later years it led him to oppose monarchy
and hereditary aristocracy, and to advocate complete democracy,
including votes for women. His refusal to believe without rational
grounds led him to reject religion, including belief in God; it
made him keenly critical of absurdities and anomalies in the law,
however venerable their historical origin. He would not excuse
anything on the ground that it was traditional. From early youth
he was opposed to imperialism, whether that of the British in
America, or that of other nations ; he considered colonies a folly.
It was through the influence of James Mill that Bentham was
induced to take sides in practical politics. James Mill was twenty-
five years younger than Bentham, and an ardent disciple of his
doctrines, but he was also an active Radical. Bentham gave Mill
a house (which had belonged to Milton), and assisted him finan-
cially while he wrote a history of India. When this history was
finished, the East India Company gave James Mill a post, as they
did afterwards to his son until their abolition as a sequel to the
Mutiny. James Mill greatly admired Condorcet and Hclvetius.
Like all Radicals of that period, he believed in the omnipotence of
education. He practised his theories on his son John Stuart Mill,
with results partly good, partly bad. The most important bad
result was that John Stuart could never quite shake off his influence,
even when he perceived that his father's outlook had been narrow.
James Mill, like Bentham, considered pleasure the only good
and pain the only evil. But like Epicurus he valued moderate
pleasure most. He thought intellectual enjoyments the best, and
temperance the chief virtue. "The intense was with him a bye-
word of scornful disapprobation," says his son, who adds that he
objected to the modern stress laid upon feeling, Like the whole
utilitarian school, he was utterly opposed to every form of roman-
ticism. He thought politics could be governed by reason, and
expected men's opinions to be determined by the weight of
evidence.! If opposing sides in a controversy are presented with
equal skill, there is a moral certainty—so he held -that the greater
number will judge right. His outlook was limited by the poverty
of his emotional nature, but within his limitations he had the
pieritt of industry, disinterestedness, and rationality.
His son John Stuart Mill, who was born in 1806, carried on a
somewhat softened form of the Benthamite doctrine to the time
rf his death in 1873.
THE UTILITARIANS
Throughout the middle portion of the nineteenth century, the
influence of the Benthamites on British legislation and policy
was astonishingly great, considering their complete absence of
emotional appeal.
Benthafn advanced various arguments in favour of the view
that the general happiness is the summum bonum. Some of these
arguments were acute criticisms of other ethical theories. In his
treatise on political sophisms he says, in language which seems to
anticipate Marx, that sentimental and ascetic moralities serve the
interests of the governing class, and are the product of an aristo-
cratic regime. Those who teach the morality of sacrifice, he con-
tinues, are not victims of error: they want others to sacrifice to
them. The moral order, he says, results from equilibrium of
interests. Governing corporations pretend that there is already
identity of interests between the governors and the governed, but
reformers make it clear that this identity does not yet exist, and
try to bring it about. He maintains that only the principle of
utility can give a criterion in morals and legislation, and lay the
foundation of a social science. His main positive argument in
favour of his principle is that it is really implied by apparently
different ethical systems. This, however, is only made plausible
by a severe restriction of his survey.
<f here is an obvious lacuna in Bentham's system. If every man
always pursues his own pleasure, how are we to secure that the
legislator shall pursue the pleasure of mankind in general?
Bentham's own instinctive benevolence (which his psychological
theories prevented him from noticing) concealed the* problem
from him. If he had been employed to draw up a code of laws for
some country, he would have framed his proposals in what he
conceived to be the public interest, not so as to further his own
interests or (consciously) the interests of his class. But if he had
recognized this fact, he would have had to modify his psychological
doctrines. He seems to have thought that, by means of cfemocracy
combined with adequate supervision, legislators could be so con-
trolled that they could only further their private interests by
being useful to the general public. There was in his day not much
material for forming a judgment a» to the working of democratic?
institutions, and his optimism was therefore perhaps excusable,
but in our more disillusioned age it seems somewhat naive.
John Stuart Mill, in his Utilitarianism* offers an argument
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
which is so fallacious that it is hard to understand how he can
have thought it valid. He says: Pleasure is the only thing desired;
therefore pleasure is the only thing desirable. He argues that the
only things visible are things seen, the only things audible are
things heard, and similarly the only things desirable are things
desired. He does not notice that a thing is "visible" if it can be
seen, but "desirable" if it ought to be desired. Thus "desirable"
is a word presupposing an ethical theory; we cannot infer what is
desirable from what is desired.
Again: if each man in fact and inevitably pursues his own
pleasure, there is no point in saying he ought to do something
else. Kant urged that "you ought" implies "you can"; conversely,
if you cannot, it is futile to say you ought. // each man must
always pursue his own pleasure, ethics is reduced to prudence:
you may do well to further the interests of others in the hope
that they in turn will further yours. Similarly in politics all co-
operation is a matter of log-rolling. From the premisses of the
utilitarians no other conclusion in validly deducible.
There are two distinct questions involved. First, does each man
pursue his own happiness? Second, is the general happiness the
right end of human action ?
When it is said that each man desires his own happiness, the
statement is capable of two meanings, of which one is a truism
and the other is false. Whatever I may happen to desire, I shall
get some pleasure from achieving my wish; in this sense, what-
ever I desire is a pleasure, and it may be said, though somewhat
loosely, that pleasures are what I desire. This is the sense of the
doctrine which is a truism.
But if what is meant is that, when I desire anything, I desire it
because of the pleasure that it will give me, that is usually untrue.
When I am hungry I desire food, and so long as my hunger
persists food will give me pleasure. But the hunger, which is a
desire, comes first; the pleasure is a consequence of the desire.
I do not deny that there are occasions when there is a direct
desire for pleasure. If you have decided to devote a free evening
to the theatre, you mil choose the theatre that you think will give
you the most pleasure. But the actions thus determined by the
direct desire for pleasure are exceptional and unimportant.
Everybody's main activities are determined by desires which art
anterior to the calculation of pleasures and pains.
806
THE UTILITARIANS
Anything whatever may be an object of desire; a masochist may
desire his own pain. The masochist, no doubt, derives pleasure
from the pain that he has desired, but the pleasure is because of the
desire, not vice versa. A man may desire something that does not
affect him personally except because of his desire — for instance,
the victory of one side in a war in which his country is neutral.
He may desire an increase of general happiness, or a mitigation
of general suffering. Or he may, like Carlyle, desire the exact
opposite. As his desires vary, so do his pleasures.
Ethics is necessary because men's desires conflict. The primary
cause of conflict is egoism: most people are more interested in
their own welfare than in that of other people. But conflicts are
equally possible where there is no element of egoism. One man
may wish everybody to be Catholic, another may wish everybody
to be Calvinist. Such non-egoistic desires are frequently involved
in social conflicts. Ethics has a twofold purpose: first, to find a
criterion by which to distinguish good and bad desires; second,
by means of praise and blame, to promote good desires and
discourage such as are bad.
The ethical part of the utilitarian doctrine, which is logically
independent of the psychological part, says: Those desires and
those actions are good which in fact promote the general happiness.
Ttys need not be the intention of an action, but only its effect. Is
there any valid theoretical argument either for or against this
doctrine? We found ourselves faced with a similar question in
relation to Nietzsche. His ethic differs from that of the utilitarians,
since it holds that only a minority of the human race have ethical
importance — the happiness or unhappiness of the remainder
should be ignored. I do not myself believe that this disagreement
can be dealt with by theoretical arguments such as might be used
in a scientific question. Obviously those who are excluded from
the Nietzschean aristocracy will object, and thus the issue becomes
political rather than theoretical. The utilitarian ethic is democratic
and anti-romantic. Democrats are likely to accept it, but those
who like a more Byronic view of the world can, in my opinion,
be refuted only practically, not by considerations which appeal
only to facts as opposed to desires. ft
The Philosophical Radicals were a transitional school. Their
system gave birth to two others, of more importance than itself,
namely Darwinism and Socialism. Darwinism was an application
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
to the whole of animal and vegetable life of Malthus's theory of
population, which was an integral part of the politics and econo-
mics of the Benthamites — a global free competition, in which
victory went to the animals that most resembled successful
capitalists. Darwin himself was influenced by Mai thus, and was
in general sympathy with the Philosophical Radicals. There was,
however, a great diilerence between the competition admired by
orthodox economists and the struggle for existence which Darwin
proclaimed as the motive force of evolution. "Free competition,"
in orthodox economics, is a very artificial conception, hedged in
by legal restrictions. You may undersell a competitor, but you
must not murder him. You must not use the armed forces of the
State to help you to get the better of foreign manufacturers.
Those who have not the good fortune to possess capital must not
seek to improve their lot by revolution. "Free competition,11 as
understood by the Benthamites, was by no means really free.
Darwinian competition was not of this limited sort ; there were
no rules against hitting below the belt. The framework of law
does not exist among animals, nor is war excluded as a competitive
method. The use of the State to secure victor}' in competition
was against the rules as conceived by the Benthamites, but could
not be excluded from the Darwinian struggle. In fact, though
Darwin himself was a Liberal, and though Nietzsche never rr^n-
tions him except with contempt, Darwin's "Survival of the
Fittest" led, when thoroughly assimilated, to something much
more like Nietzsche's philosophy than like Bentham's. These
developments, however, belong to a later period, since Darwin's
Origin of Species was published in 1859, and its political impli-
cations were not at first perceived.
Socialism, on the contrary, began in the heyday of Benthamism,
and as a direct outcome of orthodox economics. Ricardo, who was
intimately associated with Bentham, Malthus, and James Mill,
taught that the exchange value of a commodity is entirely due to
the labour expended in producing it. He published this theory
in 1817, and eight years later Thomas Hodgskin, an ex-naval
officer, published the first Socialist rejoinder, Labour Defended
Against the Chums of Capital, (le argued that if, as Ricardo taught,
all value is conferred by labour, then all the reward ought to go
to labour; the share at present obtained by the landowner and the
' capitalist must be mere extortion. Meanwhile Robert Owen, after
808
THE UTILITARIANS
much practical experience as a manufacturer, had become con-
vinced of the doctrine which soon came to be called Socialism.
(The first use of the word "Socialist" occurs in 1827, when it is
applied to the followers of 'Owen .) Machinery, he said, was dis-
placing Igbotir, and laisser-faire gave the working classes no
adequate means of combating mechanical power. The method
which he proposed for dealing with the evil was the earliest form
of modern Socialism.
Although Owen was a friend of Bentham, who had invested a
considerable sum of money in Owen's business, the Philosophical
Radicals did not like his new doctrines; in fact, the advent of
Socialism made them less Radical and less philosophical than they
had been. Hodgskin secured a certain following in London, and
James Mill was horrified. He wrote:
14 Their notions of property look ugly; . . . they seem to think
that it should not exist, and that the existence of it is an evil to
them. Rascals, I have no doubt, are at work among them. . . .
The fools, not to see that what they madly desire would be such
a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring upon
them."
This letter, written in 1831, may be taken as the beginning of
the long war between Capitalism and Socialism. In a later letter,
James Mill attributes the doctrine to the "mad nonsense" of
H&dgskin, and adds: "These opinions if they were to spread,
would be the subversion of civilized society; worse than the
overwhelming deluge of Huns and Tartars."
Socialism, in so far as it is only political or economic, does not
come within the purview of a history of philosophy. But in the
hands of Karl Marx Socialism acquired a philosophy. His
philosophy will be considered in the next chapter.
809
Chapter XXVII
KARL MARX
• i
KARL MARX is usually thought of as the man who claimed
to have made Socialism scientific, and who did more than
anyone else to create the powerful movement which, by
attraction and repulsion, has dominated the recent history of
Europe. It does not come within the scope of the present work to
consider his economics, or his politics except in ' certain general
aspects; it is only as a philosopher, and an influence on the philo-
sophy of others, that I propose to deal with him. In this respect
he is difficult to classify. In one aspect, he is an outcome, like
Hodgskin, of the Philosophical Radicals, continuing their rational-
ism and their opposition to the romantics. In another aspect he is a
revivifier of materialism, giving it a new interpretation and a
new connection with human history. In yet another aspect he is
the last of the great system-builders, the successor of Hegel, a
believer, like him, in a rational formula summing up the evolution
of mankind. Emphasis upon any one of these aspects at the
expense of the others gives a false and distorted view of his
philosophy.
The events of his life in part account for this complexity. He
was born in 1818, at Trcves, like St. Ambrose. Treves had been
profoundly influenced by the French during the revolutionary
and Napoleonic era, and was much more cosmopolitan in outlook
than most parts of Germany. His ancestors had been rabbis, but
his parents became Christian when he was a child. He married
a gentile aristocrat, to whom he remained devoted throughout
his life. At the university he was influenced by the still prevalent
Hegelianism, as also by Feuerbach's revolt against Hegel towards
matecalisgi. He tried journalism, but the Rheinischc Zeitung,
which he edited, was suppressed by the authorities for its radical-
ism. After this, in 1843, he went to France to study Socialism.
There he met Engels, who was the manager of a factory in
Manchester. Through him he came to know English labour
conditions and English econoriiics. He thus acquired, before the
revolutions of 1848, an unusually international culture. So far as
^Western Europe was concerned, he showed no national bias.
810
KARL MARX
This cannot be said of Eastern Europe, for he always despised
the Slavs.
He took part in both the French and the German revolutions
of 1848, but the reaction compelled him to seek refuge in England
in 1849. He spent the rest of his life, with a few brief intervals, in
London* trdubled by poverty, illness, and the deaths of children,
but nevertheless indefatigably writing and amassing knowledge.
The stimulus to his work was always the hope of the social
revolution, if not in his lifetime, then in some not very distant
future.
Marx, like Bentham and James Mill, will have nothing to do
with romanticism; it is always his intention to be scientific. His
economics is an outcome of British classical economics, changing
only the motive force. Classical economists, consciously or un-
consciously, aimed at the welfare of the capitalist, as opposed
both to the landowner and to the wage-earner; Marx, on the
contrary, set to work to represent the interest of the wage-earner.
He had in youth — as appears in the Communist Manifesto of
1848 — the fire and passion appropriate to a new revolutionary
movement, as liberalism had had in the time of Milton. But he
was always anxious to appeal to evidence, and never relied upon
any extra-scientific intuition.
He called himself a materialist, but not of the eighteenth-
century sort. His sort, which, under Hegelian influence, he called
"dialectical," differed in an important way from traditional
materialism, and was more akin to what is now called instru-
mcntalism. The older materialism, he said, mistakenly regarded
sensation as passive, and thus attributed activity primarily to the
object. In Marx's view, all sensation or perception is an inter-,
action between subject and object ; the bare object, apart from the
activity of the percipient, is a mere raw material, which is trans-
formed in the process of becoming known. Knowledge in the
old sense of passive contemplation is an unreal abstraction;
the process that really takes place is one of handling \hings.
"The question whether objective truth belongs to human think-
ing is not a question of theory, but a practical question,"
he says. "The truth, i.e. the reality and power, of thought must
be demonstrated in practice. tThe contest as to the realky
or non-reality of a thought which is isolated from practice,
is a purely scholastic question. . . . Philosophers have only
8xi
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to
alter it."1
I think we may interpret Marx as meaning that the process
which philosophers have called the pursuit of knowledge is not,
as has been thought, one in which the object is constant while all
the adaptation is on the part of the knower. On the 'contrary,
both subject and object, both the knower and the thing known,
are in a continual process of mutual adaptation. He calls the
process "dialectical" because it is never fully completed.
It is essential to this theory to deny the reality of "sensation"
as conceived by British empiricists. What happens, when it is
most nearly what they mean by "sensation," would be better
called "noticing," which implies activity. In fact—so Marx would
contend — we only notice things as part of the process of acting
with reference to them, and any theory which leaves out action
is a misleading abstraction.
So far as I know, Marx was the first philosopher who criticized
the notion of "truth" from this activist point of view. In him this
criticism was not much emphasized, and I shall therefore say
no more about it here, leaving the examination of the theory to a
later chapter.
Marx's philosophy of history is a blend of Hegel and British
economics. Like Hegel, he thinks that the world develops accord-
ing to a dialectical formula, but he totally disagrees with Heg«;l
as to the motive force of this development. Hegel believed in a
mystical entity called "Spirit," which causes human history to
develop according to the stages of the dialectic as set forth in
Hegel's Logic. Why Spirit has to go through these stages is not
clear. One is tempted to suppose that Spirit is trying to under-
stand Hegel, and at each stage rashly objectifies what it has been
reading. Marx's dialectic has none of this quality except a certain
inevitableness. For Marx, matter, not spirit, is the driving force.
But it is matter in the peculiar sense that we have been considering,
not tM whtlly dehumanized matter of the atomists. This means
that, for Marx, the driving force is really man's relation to matter,
of which the most important part is his mode of production. In
this way Marx's materialism, in practice, becomes economics.
•The politics, religion, philosophy, and ait of any epoch in human
history arc, according to Marx, an outcome of its methods of pro*
1 Eleven These* on Feverbach, 1845.
8l2
KARL MARX
duction, and, to a lesser extent, of distribution. I think he would
not maintain that this applies to all the niceties of culture, but
only to its broad outlines. The doctrine is called the "materialist
conception of history." This is a very important thesis; in par-
ticular, it,cogcerns the historian of philosophy. I do not myself
accept the thesis as it stands, but I think that it contains very
important elements of truth, and I am aware that it has influenced
my own views of philosophical development as set forth in the
present work. Let us, to begin with, consider the history of
philosophy in relation to Marx's doctrine.
Subjectively, every philosopher appears to himself to be
engaged in the pursuit of something which may be called "truth."
Philosophers may differ as to the definition of "truth," but at any
rate it is something objective, something which, in some sense,
everybody ought to accept. No man would engage in the pursuit
of philosophy if he thought that all philosophy is merely an ex-
pression of irrational bias. But every philosopher will agree that
many other philosophers have been actuated by bias, and have
had extra-rational reasons, of which they were usually unconscious,
for many of their opinions. Marx, like the rest, believes in the
truth of his own doctrines; he does not regard them as nothing
but an expression of the feelings natural to a rebellious middle-
class German Jew in the middle of the nineteenth century. What
cart be said about this conflict between the subjective and objective
views of a philosophy ?
We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to
Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State;
that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that
scholastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church
as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any
rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial
middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are philosophies
appropriate to the modern industrial State. This, I think, is, both
true and important. I think, however, that Marx is wrong in
two respects. First, the social circumstances of which account
must be taken are quite as much political as economic; they have
to do with power, of which wealth is only one form. Second,
social causation largely ceases to* apply as soon as a problem
becomes detailed and technical. The first of these objections I
have set forth to my book Power, and I shall therefore say no,
813
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
more about it. The second more intimately concerns the history
of philosophy, and I will give some examples of its scope.
Take, first, the problem of universals. This problem was first
discussed by Plato, then by Aristotle, by the Schoolmen, by the
British empiricists, and by the most modern logicumsv It would
be absurd to deny that bias has influenced the opinions of philo-
sophers on this question. Plato was influenced by Parmenides
and Orphism; he wanted an eternal world, and could not believe
in the ultimate reality of the temporal flux. Aristotle was more
empirical, and had no dislike of the every-day world. Thorough-
going empiricists in modern times have a bias which is the
opposite of Plato's : they find the thought of a super-sensible world
unpleasant, and are willing to go to great lengths to avoid having
to believe in it. But these opposing kinds of bias are perennial,
and have only a somewhat remote connection with the social
system. It is said that love of the eternal is characteristic of a
leisure class, which lives on the labour of others. I doubt if this
is true. Epictetus and Spinoza were not gentlemen of leisure. It
might be urged, on the contrary, that the conception of heaven
as a place where nothing is done is that of weary toilers who
want nothing but rest. Such argumentation can be carried on
indefinitely, and leads nowhere.
On the other hand, when we come to the detail of the con-
troversy about universals, we find that each side can invent argu-
ments which the other side will admit to be valid. Some of
Aristotle's criticisms of Plato on this question have been almost
universally accepted. In quite recent times, although no decision
has been reached, a new technique has been developed, and many
incidental problems have been solved. It is not irrational to hope
that, before very long, a definite agreement may be reached by
logicians on this question.
Take, as a second example, the ontological argument. This, as
we tave £een, was invented by Anseim, rejected by Thomas
Aquinas, accepted by Descartes, refuted by Kant, and reinstated
by Hegel. I think it may be said quite decisively that, as a result
of analysts of the concept "existence," modern logic has proved
this argument invalid. This is not a matter of temperament or of
the social system; it is a purely technical matter. The refutation
of the argument affords, of course, no ground for supposing its
^conclusion, namely the existence of God, to be untrue; if it did,
814
KARL MARX
we cannot suppose that Thomas Aquinas would have rejected
the argument.
Or take the question of materialism. This is a word which is
capable of many meanings; we have seen that Marx radically
altered its significance. The heated controversies as to its truth
or falsehood have largely depended, for their continued vitality,
upon avoidance of definition. When the term is defined, it will
be found that, according to some possible definitions, materialism
is demonstrably false; according to certain others, it may be true,
though there is no positive reason to think so; while according to
yet other definitions there are some reasons in its favour, though
these reasons are not conclusive. All this, again, depends upon
technical considerations, and has nothing to do with the social
system.
The truth of the matter is really fairly simple. What is conven-
tionally called "philosophy" consists of two very different ele-
ments. On the one hand, there are questions which are scientific
or logical; these are amenable to methods as to which there is
general agreement. On the other hand, there are questions of
passionate interest to large numbers of people, as to which there
is no solid evidence either way. Among the latter are practical
questions as to which it is impossible to remain aloof. When there
is a war, I must support my own country or come into painful
conflict both with friends and with the authorities. At many times
there has been no middle course between supporting and opposing
the official religion. For one reason or another, we all find it
impossible to iftaintain an attitude of sceptical detachment on
many issues as to which pure reason is silent. A "p&losophy,"
in a very usual sense of the word, is an organic whole of such extra-
rational decisions. It is in regard to "philosophy" in this sense
that Marx's contention is largely true. But even in this sense a
philosophy is determined by other social causes as well as by
those that are economic. War, especially, has its share jp historical
causation ; and victory in war docs not always go to the side with
the greatest economic resources.
Marx fitted his philosophy of history into a mould suggested
by Hegelian dialectic, but in fact there was only one triad that
concerned him: feudalism, represented by the landowner;
capitalism, represented by the industrial employer; and Socialism,
represented by the wage-earner. Hegel thought of nations as the
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
vehicles of dialectic movement ; Marx substituted classes. He dis-
claimed always all ethical or humanitarian reasons for preferring
Socialism or taking the side of the wage-earner; he maintained,
not that this side was ethically better, but that it was the side
taken by the dialectic in its wholly deterministic movement. He
might have said that he did not advocate Socialism, but only
prophesied it. This, however, would not have been wholly true.
He undoubtedly believed every dialectical movement to be, in
some impersonal sense, a progress, and he certainly held that
Socialism, once established, would minister to human happiness
more than either feudalism or capitalism have dope. These beliefs,
though they must have controlled his life, remained largely in the
background so far as his writings are concerned. Occasionally,
however, he abandons calm prophecy for vigorous exhortation to
rebellion, and the emotional basis of his ostensibly scientific
prognostications is implicit in all he wrote.
Considered purely as a philosopher, Marx has grave short-
comings. He is too practical, too much wrapped up in the problems
of his time. His purview is confined to this planet, and, within
this planet, to Man. Since Copernicus, it has been evident that
Man has not the cosmic importance which he formerly arrogated
to himself. No man who has failed to assimilate this fact has a
right to call his philosophy scientific.
There goes with this limitation to terrestrial affairs a readineVs
to believe in progress as a universal law. This readiness charac-
terized the nineteenth century, and existed in Marx as much as
in bis contemporaries. It is only because of the belief in the
inevitability of progress that Marx thought it possible to dispense
with ethical considerations. If Socialism was coming, it must be
an improvement. He would have readily admitted that it would
not seem to be an improvement to landowners or capitalists, but
that only showed that they were out of harmony with the dialectic
movement € of the time. Marx professed himself an atheist, but
retained a cosmic optimism which only theism could justify.
Broadly speaking, all the elements in Marx's philosophy which
are derived from Hegel are unscientific, in the sense that there is
no reason whatever to suppose them true.
* Perhaps the philosophic draft that Marx gave to his Socialism
had really not much to do with the basis of his opinions. It is
easy to restate the most important part of what he had to say
816
KARL MARX
without any reference to the dialectic. He was impressed by the
appalling cruelty of the industrial system as it existed in England
a hundred years ago, which he came to know thoroughly through
Engels and the reports of Royal Commissions. He saw that the
system v&s .likely to develop from free competition towards
monopoly, and that its injustice must produce a movement of
revolt in the proletariat. He held that, in a thoroughly indus-
trialized community, the only alternative to private capitalism is
State ownership of land and capital. None of these propositions
are matters for pliilosophy, and I shall therefore not consider
their truth or falsehood. The point is that, if true, they suffice to
establish what is practically important in his system. The Hegelian
trappings might therefore be dropped with advantage.
The history of Marx's reputation has been peculiar. In his own
country his doctrines inspired the programme of the Social Demo-
cratic Party, which grew steadily until, in the general election of
1912, it secured one third of all the votes cast. Immediately after
the first world war, the Social Democratic Party was for a time
in power, and Ebert, the first president of the Weimar Republic,
was a member of it; but by this time the Party had ceased to
adhere to Marxist orthodoxy. Meanwhile, in Russia, fanatical
believers in Marx had acquired the government. In the West,
no large working-class movement has been quite Marxist; the
Ijfitish labour Party, at times, has seemed to move in that direc-
tion, but has nevertheless adhered to an empirical type of
Socialism. Large numbers of intellectuals, however, have been
profoundly influenced by him, both in England and in America.
In Germany all advocacy of his doctrines has bedh forcibly
suppressed, but may be expected to revive when the Nazis are
overthrown.1
Modern Europe and America have thus been divided, politically
and ideologically, into three camps. There are Liberals, who still,
as far as may be, follow Locke or Bentham, but with \arying
degrees of adaptation to the needs of industrial organization. There
are Marxists, who control the Government in Russia, and are
likely to become increasingly influential in various other countries.
These two sections of opinion are philosophically not very widely
separated, both are rationalistic, and both, in intention, drc
scientific and empirical. But from the point of view of practical
1 I am writing in 1943.
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
politics the division is sharp. It appears already in the letter of
James Mill quoted in the preceding chapter, saying "their notions
of property look ugly."
It must, however, be admitted that there are certain respects in
which the rationalism of Marx is subject to limitations.. Although
he holds that his interpretation of the trend of development is
true, and will be borne out by events, he believes that the argu-
ment will only appeal (apart from rare exceptions) to those whose
class interest is in agreement with it. He hopes little from per-
suasion, everything from the class war. He is thus committed in
practice to power politics, and to the doctrine of a master class,
though not of a master race. It is true that, as a result of the social
revolution, the division of classes is expected ultimately to dis-
appear, giving place to complete political and economic harmony.
But this is a distant ideal, like the Second Coming; in the mean-
time, there is war and dictatorship, and insistence upon ideological
orthodoxy.
The third section of modern opinion, represented politically by
Nazis and Fascists, differs philosophically from the other two far
more profoundly than they differ from each other. It is anti-
rational and anti-scientific. Its philosophical progenitors are
Rousseau, Fichte, and Nietzsche. It emphasizes will, especially
will to power; this it believes to be mainly concentrated in certain
races and individuals, who therefore have a right to rule.
Until Rousseau, the philosophical world had a certain unity.
This has disappeared for the time being, but perhaps not for long.
It can be recovered by a rationalistic recon quest of men's minds,
but not in any other way, since claims to mastery can only
breed strife.
Chapter XXVIII
BERGSON
HENRI BERGSON was the leading French philosopher of
the present century. He influenced William James and
Whitehead, and had a considerable effect upon French
thought. Sorel, who was a vehement advocate of syndicalism and
the author of a book called Reflections on Violence, used Bergsonian
irrationalism to justify a revolutionary labour movement having
no definite goal. In the end, however, Sorel abandoned syndicalism
and became a royalist. The main effect of Bergson's philosophy
was conservative, and it harmonized easily with the movement
which culminated in Vichy. But Bergson's irrationalism made a
wide appeal quite unconnected with politics, for instance to
Bernard Shaw, whose Back to Methuselah is pure Bergsonism.
Forgetting politics, it is in its purely philosophical aspect that we
must consider it. I have dealt with it somewhat fully as it exempli-
ties admirably the revolt against reason which, beginning with
Rousseau, has gradually dominated larger and larger areas in the
lifb and thought of the world.1
The classification of philosophies is effected, as a rule, either
by their methods or by their results: "empirical" and "a priori"
is a classification by methods, "realist" and "idealist" is a classi-
fication by results. An attempt to classify Bergson's philosophy
in either of these ways is hardly likely to be successful, since it
cuts across all the recognized divisions.
But there is another way of classifying philosophies, less precise,
but perhaps more helpful to the non-philosophical; in this way,
the principle of division is according to the predominant desire
which has led the philosopher to philosophize. Thus Wfc shall have
philosophies of feeling, inspired by the love of happiness; theoret-
ical philosophies, inspired by the love of knowledge; and practical
philosophies, inspired by the love of action.
Among philosophies of feeling we shall place all those which
1 The remainder of this chapter i* in the main a reprint of an article
published in Tk* Montr* for 1911.
8l9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
we primarily optimistic or pessimistic, all those that offer schemes
of salvation or try to prove that salvation is impossible; to this
class belong most religious philosophies. Among theoretical philo-
sophies we shall place most of the great systems; for though the
desire for knowledge is rare, it has been the sourcp of* most of
what is best in philosophy. Practical philosophies, on the other
hand, will be those which regard action as the supreme good,
considering happiness an effect and knowledge a mere instrument
of successful activity. Philosophies of this type would have been
common among Western Europeans if philosophers had been
average men; as it is, they have been rare until recent times; in
fact their chief representatives are the pragma tists and Bergson.
In the rise of this type of philosophy we may see, as Bergson
himself does, the revolt of the modern man of action against the
authority of Greece, and more particularly of Plato; or we may
connect it, as Dr. Schiller apparently would, with imperialism
and the motor-car. The modern world calls for such a philosophy,
and the success which it has achieved is therefore not surprising.
Bergson 's philosophy, unlike most of the systems of the past, is
dualistic: the world, for him, is divided into two disparate portions,
on the one hand life, on the other matter, or rather that inert
something which the intellect views as matter. The whole universe
is the clash and conflict of two opposite motions : life, which climbs
upward, and matter, which falls downward. Life is one great forte,
one vast vital impulse, given once for all from the beginning of the
world, meeting the resistance of matter, struggling to break a way
through matter, learning gradually to use matter by means of
organization; divided by the obstacles it encounters into diverging
currents, like the wind at a street-corner; partly subdued by
matter through the very adaptations which matter forces upon it ;
yet retaining always its capacity for free activity, struggling always
to find new outlets, seeking always for greater liberty of movement
amid the opposing walk of matter.
Evolution is not primarily explicable by adaptation to environ*
meat; adaptation explains only the turns and twists of evolution,
like the windings of a road approaching a town through hilly
country. But this simile is not quite adequate; there is no town,
06 definite goal, at the end 06 the road along which evolution
travels. Mechanism and teleology suffer from the same defect:
suppose that there is no essential novelty in the world.
824
BERGSON
Mechanism regards the future as implicit in the past, and tele-
ology, since it believes that the end to be achieved can be known in
advance, denies that any essential novelty is contained in the result.
As against both these views, though with more sympathy for
teleology* than fpr mechanism, Bergson maintains that evolution
is truly creative, like the work of an artist. An impulse to action,
an undefined want, exists beforehand, but until the want is satis-
fied it is impossible to know the nature of what will satisfy it. For
example, we may suppose some vague desire in sightless animals
to be able to be aware of objects before they were in contact with
them. This led to efforts which finally resulted in the creation of
eyes. Sight satisfied the desire, but could not have been imagined
beforehand. For this reason, evolution is unpredictable, and deter-
minism cannot refute the advocates of free will.
This broad outline is filled in by an account of the actual devel-
opment of life on the earth. The first division of the current was
into plants and animals; plants aimed at storing up energy in a
reservoir, animals aimed at using energy for sudden and rapid
movements. But among animals, at a later stage, a new bifurcation
appeared: instinct and intellect became more or less separated.
They arc never wholly without each other, but in the main intellect
is the misfortune of man, while instinct is seen at its best in ants,
bees, and Bergson. The division between intellect and instinct is
fundamental in his philosophy, much of which is a kind of Sand-
ford and Meiton, with instinct as the good boy and intellect as the
bad boy.
Instinct at its best is called intuition. uBy intuition" he says, "I
mean instinct that lias become disinterested, self-oonscious,
capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it inde-
finitely.'1 The account of the doings of intellect is not always easy
to follow, but if \ve are to understand Bergson we must do our best.
Intelligence or intellect, "as it leaves the hands of nature, has
for its chief object the inorganic solid"; it can only form a clear
idea of the discontinuous and immobile; its concepts are oiltside
each other like objects in space, and have the same stability. The
intellect separates in space and fixes in time; it is not made to
think evolution, but to represent becoming as a series of states. "The
intellect is characterized by a natuqil inability to understand life"<
geometry and logic, which are its typical products, are strictly
applicable to solid bodies, but elsewhere reasoning must be checked
821
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
by common sense, which, as Bergson truly says, is a very different
thing. Solid bodies, it would seem, are something which mind has
created on purpose to apply intellect to them, much as it has
created chess-boards in order to play chess on them. The genesis
of intellect and the genesis of material bodies, ,we are told, are
correlative; both have been developed by reciprocal adaptation.
"An identical process must have cut out matter and the intellect,
at the same time, from a stuff that contained both/*
This conception of the simultaneous growth of matter and in-
tellect is ingenious, and deserves to be understood. Broadly, I
think, what is meant is this: Intellect is the power of seeing things
as separate one from another, and matter is that which is separated
into distinct things. In reality there are no separate solid things,
only an endless stream of becoming, in which nothing becomes
and there is nothing that this nothing becomes. But becoming may
be a movement up or a movement down : when it is a movement
up it is called life, when it is a movement down it is what, as
misapprehended by the intellect, is called matter. I suppose the
universe is shaped like a cone, with the Absolute at the vertex, for
the movement up brings things together, while the movement
down separates them, or at least seems to do so. In order that the
upward motion of mind may be able to thread its way through
the downward motion of the falling bodies which hail upon it, it
must be able to cut out paths between them; thus as intelligence
was formed, outlines and paths appeared, and the primitive flux
was cut up into separate bodies. The intellect may be compared
to a carver, but it has the peculiarity of imagining that the chicken
always was the separate pieces into which the carving-knife
divides it.
"The intellect," Bergson says, "always behaves as if it were
fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter. It is life looking
outward, putting itself outside itself, adopting the ways of unor-
ganized nature in principle, in order to direct them in fact." If
we n£ay te allowed to add another image to the many by which
Bergson 's philosophy is illustrated, we may say that the universe is
a vast funicular railway, in which Ufe is the train that goes up, and
matter is the train that goes down. The intellect consists in watch-
ing the descending train as it ppsses the ascending train in which
we are. The obviously nobler faculty which concentrates its atten-
tion on our own train is instinct or intuition. It is possible to leap
822
DPRGSON
from one train to the other; this happens when we become the
victims of automatic habit, and is the essence of the comic. Or
we can divide ourselves into parts, one part going up and one
down ; then only the part going down is comic. But intellect is not
itself a <Je8(¥nding motion, it is merely an observation of the
descending motion by the ascending motion.
Intellect, which separates things, is, according to Bergson, a
kind of dream; it is not active, as all our life ought to be, but
purely contemplative. When we dream, he says, our self is scat-
tered, our past is broken into fragments, things which really inter-
penetrate each other are seen as separate solid units: the extra-
spatial degrades itself into spatiality, which is nothing but separate-
ness. Thus all intellect, since it separates, tends to geometry; and
logic, which deals with concepts that lie wholly outside each other,
is really an outcome of geometry, following the direction of
materiality. Both deduction and induction require spatial intuition
behind them; "the movement at the end of which is spatiality
lays down along its course the faculty of induction, as well as that
of deduction, in fact, intellectuality entire." It creates them in
mind, and also the order in things which the intellect finds there.
Thus logic and mathematics do not represent a positive spiritual
effort, but a mere somnambulism, in which the will is suspended,
and the mind is no longer active. Incapacity for mathematics is
therefore a sign of grace —fortunately a very common one.
As intellect is connected with space, so instinct or intuition is
connected with time. It is one of the noteworthy features of Berg-
son's philosophy that, unlike most writers, he regards time and
space as profoundly dissimilar. Space, the characteristic! of matter,
arises from a dissection of the flux which is really illusory, useful,
up to a certain point, in practice, but utterly misleading in theory.
Time, on the contrary, is the essential characteristic of life or
mind. "Wherever anything lives," he says, "there is, open some-
where, a register in which time is being inscribed." But tfye time
here spoken of is not mathematical time, the homogeneous assem-
blage of mutually external instants. Mathematical time, according
to Bergson, is really a form of space; the time which is of the
essence of life is what he calls duration. This conception of duration
is fundamental in his philosophy t it appears already in his earliest
book Tune and Free Will, and it is necessary to understand it if
we art to have any comprehension of his system. It is, however
§•3
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
a very difficult conception. I do not fully understand it myself, and
therefore I cannot hope to explain it with all the lucidity which it
doubtless deserves.
"Pure duration/' we are told, "is the form which our conscious
states assume when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from
separating its present state from its former states." It forms the
past and the present into one organic whole, where there is mutual
penetration, succession without distinction. "Within our ego, there
is succession without mutual externality; outside the ego, in pure
space, there is mutual externality without succession."
"Questions relating to subject and object, to their distinction
and their union, should be put in terms of time rather than of
space.*' In the duration in which we see ourselves acting, there art
dissociated elements; but in the duration in which we act, our
states melt into each other. Pure duration is what is most removed
from externality and least penetrated with externality, a duration
in which the past is big with a present absolutely new. But then
our will is strained to the utmost ; \ve have to gather up the past
which is slipping away, and thrust it whole and undivided into
the present. At such moments we truly possess ourselves, but such
moments are rare. Duration is the very stuff of reality, which is
perpetual becoming, never something made.
It is above all in memory that duration exhibits itself, for in
memory the past survives in the present. Thus the theory *of
memory becomes of great importance in Bergson's philosophy.
Matter and Memory is concerned to show the relation of mind and
matter, of which both are affirmed to be real, by an analysis of
memory, frhich is "ju&t the intersection of mind and matter."
There are, he *ay$, two radically different things, both of which
are commonly called memory ; the distinction between the*c two
i* much emphasized by ikrgson* "The part survive*," he *ay*.
"under two distinct forms: first, in motor mechanUm* *, secondly,
in independent recollection*." For example, a man i* said to
remember* poem if he can repeat it by houn, that t* to say, if he
has acquired a certain habit or mechanism enabling him to repeat
a former action. But he might, at icart theoretically, be able to
repeat the poem without any recollection of the previous occasion*
oh which he ha* read it; thus^here t* no con*cioutne** of part
events involved in thi* sort of memory. The *ecood ton, which
Alone really deserve* to be called memory, t* exhibited in rtcol-
BERGSON
lections of separate occasions when he has read the poem, each
unique and with a date. Here, he thinks, there can be no question
of habit, since each event only occurred once, and had to make its
impression immediately. It is suggested that in some way every-
thing that has happened to us is remembered, but as a rule only
what is useful comes into consciousness. Apparent failures of
memory, it is argued, are not really failures of the mental part of
memory, but of the motor mechanism for bringing memory into
action. This view is supported by a discussion of brain physiology
and the facts of amnesia, from which it is held to result that true
memory is not a function of the brain. The past must be acted by
matter, imagined by mind. Memory is not an emanation of matter;
indeed the contrary would be nearer the truth if we mean matter
as grasped in concrete perception, which always occupies a certain
duration.
44 Memory must be, in principle, a power absolutely independent
of matter. If, then, spirit is a reality, it is here, in the phenomena
of memory, that we may come into touch with it experimentally."
At the opposite end from pure memory Bergson places pure
perception, in regard to which he adopts an ultra-realist position.
"In pure perception," he says, "we are actually placed outside
ourselves, we touch the reality of the object in an immediate
intuition." So completely does he identify perception with its
object that he almost refuses to call it mental at all. "Pure percep-
tion," he says, "which is the lowest degree of mind — mind with-
out memory — is really pan of matter, as we understand matter/'
Pure perception is constituted by dawning action, its actuality lies
in its activity. It is in this way that the brain becomes relevant to
perception, for the brain is not an instrument of action. The
function of the brain is to limit our mental life to what is practically
useful. But for the brain, one gathers, everything would be per-
ceived, but in fact we only perceive what interests us. "The body,
always turned towards action, has for its essential function to limit,
with a view to action, the life of the spirit." It is, in fact, an
instrument of choice.
We must now return to the subject of instinct or intuition, as
opposed to intellect. It was necessary first to give some account
of duration and memory, since tfergson's theories of duration and
memory are presupposed in his account of intuition. In man, as
he how exists, intuition is the fringe or penumbra of intellect:
•825
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
it his been thrust out of the centre by being tow useful in action
than intellect, but it has deeper uses which make it desirable to
bring it back into greater prominence. Bergson wishes to make
intellect "turn inwards on itself, snd awaken the potentialities of
intuition which still slumber within it/' The relation between
instinct and intellect is compared to that between sight and touch.
Intellect, we are told, will not give knowledge of things at a dis-
tance; indeed the function of science is said to be to explain sll
perceptions in terms of touch.
"Instinct alone/' he says, "is knowledge at a distance* It has the
same relation to intelligence that vision has to touch/' We may
observe in passing that, as appears in many passages, Bcrgson u
a strong visualizer, whose thought is always conducted by means
of visual images.
The essential characteristic of intuition is that it Joes not divide
the world into separate things, a* the intellect docs; although
Bergson does not use these words, *e might datcnbt it su syn-
thetic rather than analytic. It apprehends a multiplicity, but a
multiplicity of interpenetrating processes, not of *patul!v c*tcrtul
bodies. There are in truth no thingi " things ami «utr» arc only
views, taken by our mind, of becoming. Thrrc arc no thtn#*, there
are only actions/' This view of the world, which appear* difficult
and unnatural to intellect, is easy and natural to intuition. Mcmojy
affords an instance of what is meant, for in memory the pan live*
on into the present and interpenetrates it. Apart from mmd, the
world would be perpetually dying and being bom ajrain ; the past
would have no reality, and therefore thcrrc would be no past. It i»
memory, with its correlative desire, that makes the past and the
'future real and therefore creates true duration and true time.
Intuition alone can understand this mingling of past and future:
to the intellect they remain external, spatially external as it were,
to one another. Under the guidance of intuition, we perceive that
"form is only a snapshot view of a transition/' and the philosopher
"will see the material world mete back into a single flux/'
Closely connected with the merits of intuition are Bcrgaon's
doctrine of freedom and his praise of action. "In reality/' he says,
"a living being is a centre of action. It represents a certain sum
of contingency entering into the* world, that is to say, a certain
quantity of possible action/' The arguments against free will
depend partly upon assuming that the intensity of psychical states
BERG80N
is a quantity, capable, at least in theory, of numerical measure-
ment; this view Bergson undertakes to refute in the first chapter
of Time and Free Will. Partly the determinist depends, we are
told, upon a confusion between true duration and mathematical
time, whteh 'Bergson regards as really a form of space. Partly,
again, the determinist rests his case upon the unwarranted assump-
tion that, when the state of the brain is given, the state of the
mind is theoretically determined. Bergson is willing to admit that
the converse is true, that is to say, that the state of brain is deter-
minate when the state of mind is given, but he regards the mind
as more differentiated than the brain, and therefore holds that
many different states of mind may correspond to one state of
brain. He concludes that real freedom is possible: "We are free
when our acts spring from our whole personality, when they express
it, when they have that indefinable resemblance to it which one
sometimes finds between the artist and his work."
In the above outline, I have in the main endeavoured merely
to state Bergson 's views, without giving the reasons adduced by
him in favour of their truth. This is easier than it would be with
most philosophers, since as a rule he does not give reasons for his
opinions, but relies on their inherent attractiveness, and on the
charm of an excellent style. Like advertisers, he relies upon
picturesque and varied statement, and on apparent explanation
of many obscure facts. Analogies and similes, especially, form a
very large part of the whole process by which he recommends
his views to the reader. The number of similes for life to be
found in his works exceeds the number in any poet kngwn to me.
Life, he says, is like a shell bursting into fragments which are
again shells. It is like a sheaf. Initially, it was "a tendency to
accumulate in a reservoir, as do especially the green parts of
vegetables.11 But the reservoir is to be filled with boiling water
from which steam is issuing; "jets must be gushing out un-
ceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world. "*\gaift "life
appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from
a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its
circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at one
single point the obstacle has bcent forced, the impulsion has passed
freely." Then there is the great climax in which life is compared
to a cavalry charge. "All organized beings, from the humblest to
the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which wt
WESTERN PHILOSOFHICAt THOUdHt
are, and in ill places ss in til times, do but evidence a single
impulsion, the inverse of the movement of milter, and in itself
indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield to the same
tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man
bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, intpfce and in
time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind
each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every
resistance and to clear many obstacles, perhaps even death/*
But a cool critic, who feels himself a mere spectator, perhaps
an unsympathetic spectator, of the charge in which man is mounted
upon animality, may be inclined to think that calm and cartful
thought is hardly compatible with this form of eaercise. When he
is told that thought i* a mere means of action, the mere impuUc
to avoid obstacles in the field, he may feel that such a view w
becoming in a cavalry officer, hut not in a philosopher, whose
business, after all, is with thought : he may fcrl that in the paatton
and noise of violent motion there is no nx»m for the fainter rou*»c
of reason, no leisure for the diaintcrrstrd contemplation in which
greatness is sought, not by turbulence, but by the grratne*» of
the universe which is mirrored. In that oue, he nuy he tempted
to ask whether there are any reason* fur accepting §uch a re* tic**
view of the world. And if he a&k* this question, he uill find, if
I am not mistaken, that there ui no reason uhatctcr for accrptifg
this view, either in the universe <*r in the urttm&r* of M Bergton.
The two foundations of Bergsun's philosophy, in K> far an it i*
more than an imaginative and j>octic \iew of the ut»rld, arc hi*
doctrines of space and linur. Hi* doctrine of space it required for
his condemnation of the intellect, and if he fail* in hit condemna-
tion of the intellect, the intellect will succeed in it* condemna-
tion of him for between the two it is war to the knife. !ii» doctrine
of time is necessary for his vindication of freedom, for his escape
from what William Jam« called a "block universe," for htf doctrine
of a perpetual flux in which there is nothing that flows, and for his
whole account of tiie relations between mind and matter. It mil be
well, therefore, in criticism, to concentrate on these two doctrines,
if they are true, such minor errors and inconsistencies as no philo-
dbpher escapes would not greatly matter; while if they are false,
82*
BBR080N
nothing remains except an imaginative epic, to be judgfed on
aesthetic rather than on intellectual grounds. I shall begin with
the theory of space, as being the simpler of the two.
Bergaon's theory of space occurs fully and explicitly in his Time
and Free Will, and therefore belongs to the oldest parts of his
philosophy. In his first chapter, he contends that greater and let*
imply space, since he regards the greater as essentially that which
contains the less. He offers no arguments whatever, either good
or bad, in favour of this view; he merely exclaims, as though he
were giving an obvious reductio ad absurdum: "As if one could
still speak of magnitude where there is neither multiplicity nor
space!" The obvious cases to the contrary, such as pleasure and
pain, afford him much difficulty, yet he never doubts or re-
examines the dogma with which he starts.
In his next chapter, he maintains the same thesis as regards
number. "As soon as we wish to picture number to ourselves,"
he says, "and not merely figures or words, we are compelled to
have recourse to an extended image," and "every clear idea of
number implies a visual image in space." These two sentences
suffice to show, as I shall try to prove, that Bergson does not know
what number is, and has himself no clear idea of it. This is shown
also by his definition: "Number may be defined in general as a
collection of units, or speaking more exactly, as the synthesis of
the one and the many."
In discussing these statements, I must ask the reader's patience
for a moment while I call attention to some distinctions which may
at first appear pedantic, but are really vital. There are three entirely
different things which are confused by Bergson in the above state-
ments, namely: (i) number, the general concept applicable to the
various particular numbers; (2) the various particular numbers;
(3) the various collections to which the various particular numbers
are applicable. It is this Lst that is defined by Bergson when he
says that number is a collection of units. The twelve ajjpstle«, the
twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve months, the twelve signs of the
zodiac, are all collections of units, yet no one of them is the
number 12, still less is it number in general, as by the above
definition it ought to be. The number 12, obviously, is something
which all these collections have ifl common, but which they do
not have in common with other collections, such as cricket elevens.
Hence the number 12 is neither a collection of twelve terms, nor '
8*9
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
fallacies and confusions, to support them in their attempt to prove
all mathematics self-contradictory. Thence the Hegelian account
of these matters passed into the current thought of philosophers,
where it has remained long after the mathematicians have removed
all the difficulties upon which the philosophers rely. Apd so long
as the main object of philosophers is to show that nothing can be
learned by patience and detailed thinking, but that we ought rather
to worship the prejudices of the ignorant under the title of "reason"
if we are Hegelians, or of "intuition" if we are Bcrgsonians, so
long philosophers will take care to remain ignorant of what mathe-
maticians have done to remove the errors by which Hegel profited.
Apart from the question of number, which we have already
considered, the chief point at which Bergson touches mathematics
is his rejection of what he calls the "cinematographic" represen-
tation of the world. Mathematics conceives change, even con-
tinuous change, as constituted by a scries of states; Bergson, on
the contrary, contends that no series of states can represent what
is continuous, and that in change a thing is never in any state at
all. The new that change is constituted by a series of changing
states he calls cinematographic; this view, he says, is natural to
the intellect, but is radically vicious. True change can only be
explained by true duration; it involves an interpenetration of past
and present, not a mathematical succession of static states. This
is what is called a "dynamic" instead of a "static'* view of the
world. The question is important, and in spite of its difficulty we
cannot pass it by.
Bergson 's position is illustrated— and what is to be said in
criticism may also be aptly illustrated- by Zcno's argument of
the arrow. Zeno argues that, since the arrow at each moment
simply is where it is, therefore the arrow in its flight is always
at rest. At first sight, this argument may not appear a very powerful
one. Of course, it will be said, the arrow is where it is at one
moment, but at another moment it is somewhere cl*e, and this is
just what constitutes motion. Certain difficulties, it is true, arise
out of the continuity of motion, if we insist upon assuming that
motion is also discontinuous. These difficulties, thus obtained,
have long been pan of the stock-in-trade of philosophers. But if,
ririth the mathematicians, we fcvoid the assumption that motion
is also discontinuous, we shall not fall into the philosopher's
^difficulties. A cinematograph in which there are an infinite number
BERGSON
of pictures, and in which there is never a next picture because an
infinite number come between any two, will perfectly represent
a continuous motion. Wherein, then, lies the force of* Zeno's
argument ?
Zeno belonged to the Eleatic school, whose object was to prove
that there'coilld be no such thing as change. The natural view to
take of the world is that there are things which change; for example,
there is an arrow which is now here, now there. By bisection of
this view, philosophers have developed two paradoxes. The Eleatics
said that there were things but no changes; Heraclitus and Bergson
said there were changes but no things. The Eleatics said there was
an arrow, but no flight; Heraclitus and Bergson said there was a
flight, but no arrow. Each party conducted its argument by refu-
tation of the other party. How ridiculous to say there is no arrow!
say the "static" party. How ridiculous to say there is no flight!
say the "dynamic" party. The unfortunate man who stands in the
middle and maintains that there is both the arrow and its flight
is assumed by the disputants to deny both; he is therefore pierced,
like St. Sebastian, by the arrow from one side and by its flight
from the other. But we have still not discovered wherein lies the
force of Zeno's argument.
Zeno assumes, tacitly, the essence of the Bergsonian theory of
change. That is to say, he assumes that when a thing is in a process
of .continuous change, even if it is only change of position, there
must be in the thing some internal state of change. The thing
must, at each instant, be intrinsically different from what it would
be if it were not changing. He then points out that at each instant
the arrow simply is where it is, just as it would be if it wore at rest.
Hence he concludes that there can be no such thing as a state of
motion, and therefore, adhering to the view that a state of motion
is essential to motion, he infers that there can be no motion and
that the arrow is always at rest.
Zeno's argument, therefore, though it does not touch the mathe-
matical account of change, does, prima facie, refute»a vifew of
change which is not unlike Bergson 's. How, then, does Bergson
meet Zcno's argument ? He meets it by denying that the arrow is
ever anywhere. After stating Zeno's argument, he replies: "Yes,
if we suppose that the arrow can ever be in a point of its course.
Yes, again, if the arrow, which is moving, ever coincides with
a position, which is motionless. But the arrow never is in any
2D
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
point of its course." This reply to Zeno, or a closely similar one
concerning Achilles and the Tortoise, occurs in all his three books.
Bergson's view, plainly, is paradoxical ; whether it is possible, is
a question which demands a discussion of his view of duration.
His only argument in its favour is the statement that the mathe-
matical view of change "implies the absurd proposition that move-
ment is made of immobilizes." But the apparent absurdity of this
view is merely due to the verbal form in which he has stated it,
and vanishes as soon as we realize that motion implies relations.
A friendship, for example, is made out of people who are friends,
but not out of friendships; a genealogy is made out of men, but
not out of genealogies. So a motion is made out of what is moving,
but not out of motions. It expresses the fact that a thing may be
in different places at different times, and that the places may still
be different however near together the times may be. Bergson's
argument against the mathematical view of motion, therefore,
reduces itself, in the last analysis, to a mere play upon words.
And with this conclusion we may pass on to a criticism of his theory
of duration.
Bergson's theory of duration is bound up with his theory of
memory. According to this theory, things remembered survive in
memory, and thus interpenetrate present things : past and present
are not mutually external, but are mingled in the unity of con-
sciousness. Action, he says, is what constitutes being; but mathe-
matical time is a mere passive receptacle, which does nothing and
therefore is nothing. The past, he says, is that which acts no longer,
and the present is that which is acting. But in this statement, as
indeed throughout his account of duration, Bergson is uncon-
sciously assuming the ordinary mathematical time; without this,
his statements are unmeaning. What is meant by saying "the past
is essentially that which acts no longer" (his italics), except that the
past is that of which the action is past? the words "no longer"
are words expressive of the past; to a person who did not have
the ordiiury notion of the past as something outside the present,
these words would have no meaning. Thus his definition is cir-
cular. What he says is, in effect, "the past is that of which the
action is in the past/' As a definition, this cannot be regarded as
4 happy effort. And the same applies to the present. The present,
we are told, is "that which it acting" (his italics). But the word
"is" introduces just that idea of. the present which was to be
'¥
BERGSON
defined. The present is that which is acting as opposed to that
which was acting or will be acting. That is to say, the present is
that whose action is in the present, not in the past or in the future.
Again the definition is circular. An earlier passage on the same
page will ^illustrate the fallacy further. "That which constitutes
our pure perception," he says, "is our dawning action. . . . The
actuality of our perception thus lies in its activity, in the move-
ments which prolong it, and not in its greater intensity: the past is
only idea, the present is ideo- motor/' This passage makes it quite
clear that, when Bergson speaks of the past, he does not mean the
past, but our present memory of the past. The past when it existed
was just as active as the present is now; if Bergson 's account were
correct, the present moment ought to be the only one in the whole
history of the world containing any activity. In earlier times there
were other perceptions, just as active, just as actual in their day,
as our present perceptions; the past, in its day, was by no means
only idea, but was in its intrinsic character just what the present
is now. This real past, however, Bergson simply forgets; what he
speaks of is the present idea of the past. The real past does not
mingle with the present, since it is not part of it; but that is
a very different thing.
The whole of Bergson 's theory of duration and time rests
throughout on the elementary confusion between the present
occurrence of a recollection and the past occurrence which is
recollected. But for the fact that time is so familiar to us, the
vicious circle involved in his attempt to deduce the past as
what is no longer active would be obvious at once. As it is, what
Bergson gives is an account of the difference between perception
and recollection — both present facts — and what he believes
himself to have given is an account of the difference between the
present and the past. As soon as this confusion is realized, his
theory of time is seen to be simply a theory which omits time
altogether.
The confusion between present remembering and th€ past event
remembered, which seems to be at the bottom of Bergson 's theory
of time, is an instance of a more general confusion which, if I am
not mistaken, vitiates a great deal of his thought, and indeed a
great deal of the thought of moat modern philosophers — I mean
the confusion between an act of knowing and that which is known.
In memory, the act of knowing is in the present, whereas what i\
135
WESTERN ruiLoaomrcAt THOUGHT
known is in the past; thus by coofuafaf them the ditdnction
between past and present is blumd.
Throughout A/aftifr «rf AJ«*w»y, this confusion between the act
of knowing and the object known it indispensable. It beitahrincd
in the use of the word "image/* which is explained a; the vm
beginning of the book. He their states that, apart from phiW
phial theories, eir/ytAii^p rfari ire know consist* of ''foi^gw/1
mi/bi indeed constitute the whole uwvcn*. He sayi; '7 cat! aw//^
regate of images, and
ftfemd to the eventual action of one particular image, my body/'
It will be observed that matter and the perception of matter,
according to him, consist of the very same things. The brain, he
aay*» is like the rest of the material universe, and is therefore an
image if the universe is an image.
Since the brain, which nobody sees, is not, in the ordinary sciwr,
an image, we are not surprised at his saying that an image can be
without being perceived; but he explains later on that, as regard*
images, the difference between Mag and being twwwuMly /Xrmt td
is only one of degree. This is perhaps explained by another passage
in which he says: "What can be a non-perceived material object,
an image not imagined, unless it is a kind of unconscious mental
state?" Finally he says: "Thar even' reality ha* a kinship, an
analogy, in short a relation with consciousness this is what we
concede to idealism by the very fact that we term things 'images? "
Nevertheless he attempts to allay our initial doubt by saying that
he is beginning at a point before any of the assumptions of philo-
sophers have been introduced. "We will assume/9 he says, "for
the moment that we know nothing of theories of matter and theories
of spirit, nothing of the discussions as to the reality or ideality of
the external world. Here I am in the presence of images." And in
the new Introduction which he wrote for the English edition he
says: "By 'image* we mean a certain existence which is more than
that which the idealist calls a repretentatian, but less than that
which" the1 realist calls a thing— an existence placed half-way
between the 'thing* and the 'representation/ "
The distinction which Bergson has in mind in the above is not,
I think, the distinction between the imaging as a mental occurrence
a*,d the thing imaged as an object. He is thinking of the distinction
between the thing as it is and thing as it appears. The distinction
Between subject and object, between the mind which thinks and
BERO8ON
remembers and has images on the one hand, and the objects
thought about, remembered, or imaged— this distinction, so. far
as I can see, is wholly absent from his philosophy. Its absence is
his real debt to idealism ; and a very unfortunate debt it is. In the
case of '*im*ges," as we have just seen, it enables him first to speak
of images as neutral between mind and matter, then to assert that
the brain is an image in spite of the fact that it has never been
imaged, then to suggest that matter and the perception of matter
are the same thing, but that a non-perceived image (such as the
brain) is an unconscious mental state; while finally, the use of the
word "image," though involving no metaphysical theories what-
ever, nevertheless implies that every reality has "a kinship, an
analogy, in short a relation" with consciousness.
All these confusions are due to the initial confusion of subjective
and objective. The subject — a thought or an image or a memory —
is a present fact in me; the object may be the law of gravitation
or my friend Jones or the old Campanile of Venice. The subject
is mental and is here and now. Therefore, if subject and object are
one, the object is mental and is here and now: my friend Jones,
though he believes himself to be in South America and to exist
on his own account, is really in my head and exists in virtue of
my thinking about him ; St. Mark's Campanile, in spite of its great
s^e and the feet that it ceased to exist forty years ago, still exists,
and is to be found complete inside me. These statements are no
travesty of Bergson's theories of space and time ; they are merely
an attempt to show what is the actual concrete meaning of those
theories. •
The confusion of subject and object is not peculiar to Bergson*
but is common to many idealists and many materialists. Many
idealists say that the object is really the subject, and many mater-
ialists say that the subject is really the object. They agree in
thinking these two statements very different, while yet holding
that subject and object are not different. In this respect, we may
admit, Bergson has merit, for he is as ready to identify subject
with object as to identify object with subject. As soon as this
identification* is rejected, his whole system collapses: first his
theories of space and time, then Jys belief in real contingency, then
his condemnation of intellect, and finally his account of the rela-
tions of mind and matter. ^
Of course a large pan of Bergson's philosophy, probably the
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
part to which most of its popularity is due, does not depend upon
argument, and cannot be upset by argument. His imaginative
picture of the world, regarded as a poetic effort, is in the main not
capable of either proof or disproof. Shakespeare says life's but
a walking shadow, Shelley says it is like a dome of many-coloured
glass, Bergson says it is a shell which bursts into parts that are again
shells. If you like Bergson 's image better, it is just as legitimate.
The good which Bergson hopes to see realized in the world is
action for the sake of action. All pure contemplation he calls
"dreaming," and condemns by a whole series of uncomplimentary
epithets: static, Platonic, mathematical, logical, intellectual. Those
who desire some prevision of the end which action is to achieve
are told that an end foreseen would be nothing new, because desire,
like memory, is identified with its object. Thus we are condemned ,
in action, to be the blind slaves of instinct : the life-force pushes
us on from behind, restlessly and unceasingly. There is no room
hi this philosophy for the moment of contemplative insight when,
rising above the animal life, we become conscious of the greater
ends that redeem man from the life of the brute*. Thote to whom
activity without purpose teem* a sufficient good will And in Berg-
son's books a pleasing picture of the universe. But those to whom
action, if it is to be of any value, must txr sntpircd by some vision,
by some imaginative foreshadowing of a world low painful, Iqp
unjust, less full of strife than the wurld of our everyday life, thuwr,
in a word, whose action is built on < umrmpbiion, wit) find m thw
philosophy nothing of what they icxri. and will not rqprcf that there
is no reasoa to think it true
Chapter XXIX
WILLIAM JAMES
• •
WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910) was primarily a psychologist,
but was important in philosophy on two accounts: he
invented the doctrine which he called "radical empiri-
cism/9 and he was one of the three protagonists of the theory called
"pragmatism" or "instrumentalism." In later life he was, as he
deserved to be, the recognized leader of American philosophy. He
was led by the study of medicine to the consideration of psycho-
logy; his great book on the subject, published in 1890, had the
highest possible excellence. I shall not, however, deal with it, since
it was a contribution to science rather than to philosophy.
There were two sides to William James's philosophical interests,
one scientific, the other religious. On the scientific side, the study
of medicine had given his thoughts a tendency towards material-
ism, which, however, was held in check by his religious emotions.
His religious feelings were very Protestant, very democratic, and
very full of the warmth of human kindness. He refused altogether
to follow his brother Henry into fastidious snobbishness. "The
prince of darkness," he said, "may be a gentleman, as we are told
he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely
be no gentleman." This is a very characteristic pronouncement.
His warm-heartedness and his delightful humour caused him
to be almost universally beloved. The only man I know of who did
not feel any affection for him was Santayana, whose doctor's thesis
William James had described as "the perfection of rottenness."*
There was between these two men a temperamental opposition
which nothing could have overcome. Santayana also liked religion,
but in a very different way. He liked it aesthetically and historically,
not as a help towards a moral life; as was natura^ he«greatly
preferred Catholicism to Protestantism. He did not intellectually
accept any of the Christian dogmas, but he was content that others
should believe them, and himself appreciated what he regarded
as the Christian myth. To James, such an attitude could not but
appear immoral. He retained frtrni his Puritan ancestry a deep-
seated belief that what is of most importance is good conduct, and
his democratic feeling made him unable to acquiesce in the notion
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of one truth for philosophers and another for the vulgar. The
temperamental opposition between Protestant and Catholic per-
sists among the unorthodox ; Santayana was a Catholic free thinker,
William James a Protestant, however heretical.
James's doctrine of radical empiricism was first published in
1904, in an essay called "Does 'Consciousness9 Exist?" The main
purpose of this essay was to deny that the subject-object relation
is fundamental. It had, until then, been taken for granted by
philosophers that there is a kind of occurrence called "knowing,"
in which one entity, the knower or subject, is aware of another, the
thing known, or the object. The knower was regarded as a mind
or soul; the object known might be a material object, an eternal
essence, another mind, or, in self-consciousness, identical with
the knower. Almost everything in accepted philosophy was bound
up with the dualism of subject and object. The distinction of mind
and matter, the contemplative ideal, and the traditional notion
of "truth," all need to be radically reconsidered if the distinction
of subject and object is not accepted as fundamental.
For my part, I am convinced that James was partly right on this
matter, and would, on this ground alone, deserve a high place
among philosophers. I had thought otherwise until he, and those
who agreed with him, persuaded me of the truth of his doctrine.
But let us proceed to his arguments.
Consciousness, he says, "is the name of a nonentity, and Has
no right to a place among first principles. Those who still cling
to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by
the disappearing 'soul9 upon the air of philosophy." There is, he
continues, f'no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with
'that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts
of them are made." He explains that he is not denying that our
thoughts perform a function which is that of knowing, and that
this function may be called "being conscious." What he is denying
might be pi/t crudely as the view that consciousness is a "thing."
He holds that there is "only one primal stuff or material," out of
which everything in the world is composed. This stuff he calk
"pure experience." Knowing, he says, is a particular sort of rela-
tion between two portions of pure experience. The subject-object
relation is derivative: "expericrtee, I believe, has no such inner
duplicity." A given undivided portion of experience can be in one
tontext a knower, and in another something known.
WILLIAM JAMES
He defines "pure experience" as "the immediate flux of life
which furnishes the material to our later reflection."
It will Be seen that this doctrine abolishes the distinction between
mind and matter, if regarded as a distinction between two different
kinds o&wbat James calls "stuff." Accordingly those who agree
with James in this matter advocate what they call "neutral
monism," according to which the material of which the world is
constructed is neither mind nor matter, but something anterior
to both. James himself did not develop this implication of his
theory; on the contrary, his use of the phrase "pure experience"
points to a perhaps unconscious Berkeleian idealism. The word
1 'experience" is one often used by philosophers, but seldom
defined. Let us consider for a moment what it can mean.
Common sense holds that many things which occur are not
"experienced," for instance, events on the invisible side of the
moon. Berkeley and Hegel, for different reasons, both denied this,
and maintained that what is not experienced is nothing. Their
arguments are now held by most philosophers to be invalid —
rightly, in my opinion. If we are to adhere to the view that the
"stuff" of the world is "experience," we shall find it necessary
to invent elaborate and implausible explanations of what we mean
by such things as the invisible side of the moon. And unless we
are able to infer things not experienced from things experienced,
we shall have difficulty in finding grounds for belief in the existence
of anything except ourselves. James, it is true, denies this, but his
reasons are not very convincing.
What do we mean by "experience"? The best way to find an
answer is to ask : What is the difference between an event which is
not experienced and one which is? Rain seen or felt to be falling is
experienced, but rain falling in the desert where there is no living
thing is not experienced. Thus we arrive at our first point: there
is no experience except where there is life. But experience is not
coextensive with life. Many things happen to me wtych I«do not
notice; these I can hardly be said to experience. Clearly I expe-
rience whatever I remember, but some things which I do not
explicitly remember may have set up habits which still persist.
The burnt child fears the fire, even if he has no recollection of
the occasion on which he was bflrnt. I think we may say that*an
event is "experienced" when it sets up a habit. (Memory is one
kind of habit.) Broadly speaking, habits are only set up in living
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
organisms. A burnt poker does not fear the fire, however often
it is made red-hot. On common-sense grounds, therefore, we shall
say that "experience" is not coextensive with the "stuff" of the
world. I do not myself see any valid reason for departing from
common sense on this point. - ~
Except in this matter of "experience/9 1 find myself in agree-
ment with James's radical empiricism.
It is otherwise with his pragmatism and "will to believe." The
latter, especially, seems to me to be designed to afford a specious
but sophistical defence of certain religious dogmas — a defence,
moreover, which no whole-hearted believer could accept.
The Will to Believe was published in 1896; Pragmatism, a New
Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking was published in 1907. The
doctrine of the latter is an amplification of that of the former.
The Will to Believe argues that we are often compelled, in
practice, to take decisions where no adequate theoretical grounds
for a decision exist, for even to do nothing is still a decision.
Religious matters, James says, come under this head; we have,
he maintains, a right to adopt a believing attitude although "our
merely logical intellect may not have been coerced." This is essen-
tially the attitude of Rousseau's Savoyard vicar, but James's
development is novel.
The moral duty of veracity, we are told, consists of two coequal
precepts: "believe truth," and "shun error." The sceptic wrongly
attends only to the second, and thus fails to believe various truths
which a less cautious man will believe. If believing truth and
avoiding error are of equal importance, I may do well, when
presented with an alternative, to believe one of the possibilities
at will, for then I have an even chance of believing truth, whereas
I have none if I suspend judgment.
The ethic that would result if this doctrine were taken seriously
is a very odd one. Suppose I meet a stranger in the train, and
I ask myself: "Is his name Ebenezcr Wilkes Smith?" If I admit
that I do not know, I am certainly not believing truly about his
name; whereas, if I decide to believe that that is his name, there
is a chance that I may be believing truly. The sceptic, says James,
is afraid of being duped, and through his fear may lose important
truth; "what proof is there," he adds, "that dupery through hope
is so much worse than dupery through fear?" It would seem to
follow that, if I have been hoping for years to meet a man called
842
WILLIAM JAMBS
Ebenezer Wilkes Smith, positive as opposed to negative veracity
should prompt me to believe that this is the name of every stranger
I meet, until I acquire conclusive evidence to the contrary.
"But/9 you will say, "the instance is absurd, for, though you do
not know the stranger's name, you do know that a very small
percentage* of mankind are called Ebenezer Wilkes Smith. You
are therefore not in that state of complete ignorance that is pre-
supposed in your freedom of choice." Now strange to say, James,
throughout his essay, never mentions probability, and yet there
is almost always some discoverable consideration of probability
in regard to any question. Let it be conceded (though no orthodox
believer would concede it) that there is no evidence either for or
against any of the religions of the world. Suppose you are a Chinese
brought into contact with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Chris-
tianity. You are precluded by the laws of logic from supposing that
each of the three is true. Let us suppose that Buddhism and
Christianity each has an even chance, then, given that both cannot
be true, one of them must be, and therefore Confucianism must
be false. If all three are to have equal chances, each must be more
likely to be false than true. In this sort of way James's principle
collapses as soon as we are allowed to bring in considerations of
probability.
It is curious that, in spite of being an eminent psychologist,
lames allowed himself at this point a singular crudity. He spoke
as if the only alternatives were complete belief or complete dis-
belief, ignoring all shades of doubt. Suppose, for instance, I am
looking for a book in my shelves. I think, "It may be in this shelf,"
and I proceed to look ; but I do not think, "It is in this shelf* until
I see it. We habitually act upon hypotheses, but not precisely s$
we act upon what we consider certainties; for when we act upon
an hypothesis we keep our eyes open for fresh evidence.
The precept of veracity, it seems to me, is not such as James
thinks. It is, I should say: "Give to any hypothesis which is worth
your while to consider just that degree of credence which the
evidence warrants." And if the hypothesis is sufficiently important
there is the additional duty of seeking further evidence. This is
plain common sense, and in harmony with the procedure in the
law courts, but it is quite difljprcnt from the procedure recom-
mended by James.
It would be unfair to James to consider his will to believe in
,843
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
isolation; it was a transitional doctrine, leading by a natural
development to pragmatism. Pragmatism, as it appears in James,
is primarily a new definition of "truth." There were two other
protagonists of pragmatism, F. C. S. Schiller and Dr. John Dewey.
I shall consider Dr. Dewey in the next chapter; Schiller was of
less importance than the other two. Between James and Dr. Dewey
there is a difference of emphasis. Dr. Dewey 's outlook is scientific,
and his arguments are largely derived from an examination of
scientific method, but James is concerned primarily with religion
and morals. Roughly speaking, he is prepared to advocate any
doctrine which tends to make people virtuous and happy; if it
does so, it is "true" in the sense in which he uses that word.
The principle of pragmatism, according to James, was first
enunciated by C. S. Peirce, who maintained that, in order to attain
clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need only consider
what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve.
James, in elucidation, says that the function of philosophy is to
find out what difference it makes to you or me if this or that
world-formula is true. In this way theories become instruments,
not answers to enigmas.
Ideas, we are told by James, become true in so far as they help
us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our expe-
rience: "An idea is 'true* so long as to believe it is profitable to our
lives." Truth is one species of good, not a separate category. Trutl.
happens to an idea; it is made true by events. It is correct to say,
with the intellectualists, that a true idea must agree with reality,
but "agreeing" does not mean "copying." "To 'agree' in the
widest sense with a reality can only mean to be guided either
ftraight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such
working touch with it as to handle either it or something con-
nected with it better than if we disagreed." He adds that "the
true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking ... in the
long run and on the whole of course." In other words, "our
obligati&n tc seek truth is pan of our general obligation to do
what pays."
In a chapter on pragmatism and religion he reaps the harvest.
"We cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life
flow from it.'9 "If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in
the widest sense of the word, it is true." "We may well believe,
on the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers
844
WILLIAM JAMES
exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to
our own."
I find great intellectual difficulties in this doctrine. It assumes
that a belief is "true" when its effects are good. If this definition
is to be useful — and if not it is condemned by the pragmatist's
test — we must know (a) what is good, (b) what are the effects of
this or that belief, and we must know these things before we can
know that anything is "true," since it is only after we have decided
that the effects of a belief are good that we have a right to call it
"true." The result is an incredible complication. Suppose you
want to know whether Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492.
You must not, as other people do, look it up in a book. You must
first inquire what are the effects of this belief, and how they differ
from the effects of believing that he sailed in 1491 or 1493. This
is difficult enough, but it is still more difficult to weigh the effects
from an ethical point of view. You may say that obviously 1492
has the best effects, since it gives you higher marks in examina-
tions. But your competitors, who would surpass you if you said
1491 or 1493, may consider your success instead of theirs ethically
regrettable. Apart from examinations, I cannot think of any prac-
tical effects of the belief except in the case of a historian.
But this is not the end of the trouble. You must hold that your
estimate of the consequences of a belief, both ethical and factual,
is true, for if it is false your argument for the truth of your belief
is mistaken. But to say that your belief as to consequences is true
is, according to James, to say that it has good consequences, and
this in turn is only true if it has good consequences, and so on
ad infinitum. Obviously this won't do.
There is another difficulty. Suppose I say there was such a
person as Columbus, everyone will agree that what I say is true.
But why is it true? Because of a certain man of flesh and blood
who lived 450 years ago— in short, because of the causes of my
belief, not because of its effects. With James's definitiqji, it night
happen that "A exists" is true although in fact A does not exist.
I have always found that the hypothesis of Santa Claus "works
satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word"; therefore "Santa
Claus exists" is true, although Santa Claus does not exist. James
says (I repeat): "If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in
the widest sense of the word, it is true." This simply omits as
unimportant the question whether God really is in His heaven;
45
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
if He is a useful hypothesis, that is enough. God the Architect
of the Cosmos is forgotten; all that is remembered is belief in
God, and its effects upon the creatures inhabiting our petty planet.
No wonder the Pope condemned the pragmatic defence of religion.
We come here to a fundamental difference between James's
religious outlook and that of religious people in the past. James
is interested in religion as a human phenomenon, but shows little
interest in the objects which religion contemplates. He wants
people to be happy, and if belief in God makes them happy let
them believe in Him. This, so far, is only benevolence, not philo-
sophy; it becomes philosophy when it is said that if the belief
makes them happy it is "true/* To the man who desires an object
of worship this is unsatisfactory. He is not concerned to say, "If
I believed in God I should be happy"; he is concerned to say, "I
believe in God and therefore I am happy." And when he believes
in God, he believes in Him as he believes in the existence of
Roosevelt or Churchill or Hitler; God, for him, is an actual Being,
not merely a human idea which has good effects. It is this genuine
belief that has the good effects, not James's emasculate substitute.
It is obvious that if I say "Hitler exists" I do not mean "the effects
of believing that Hitler exists are good/" And to the genuine
believer the same is true of God.
James's doctrine is an attempt to build a superstructure of belief
upon a foundation of scepticism, and like all such attempts it is
dependent on fallacies. In his case the fallacies spring from an
attempt to ignore all extra-human facts. Berkeleian idealism com-
bined with scepticism causes him to substitute belief in God for
God, and to pretend that this will do just as well. But this is only
a form of the subjectivistic madness which is characteristic of most
modern philosophy.
Chapter XXX
JOHN DEWEY
• •
JOHN DEWEY, who was born in 1859, is generally admitted
to be the leading living philosopher of America. In this esti-
mate I entirely concur. He has had a profound influence,
only among philosophers, but on students of education,
aesthetics, and political theory. He is a man of the highest character,
liberal in outlook, generous and kind in personal relations, inde-
fatigable in work. With many of his opinions I am in almost com-
plete agreement. Owing to my respect and admiration for him,
as well as to personal experience of his kindness, I should wish
to agree completely, but to my regret I am compelled to dissent
from his most distinctive philosophical doctrine, namely the sub-
stitution of "inquiry" for "truth" as the fundamental concept of
logic and theory of knowledge.
Like William James, DevVey is a New Englander, and carries
on the tradition of New England liberalism, which has been aban-
doned by some of the descendants of the great New Englanders
of a hundred years ago. He has never been what might be called
a 'imerc" philosopher. Education, especially, has been in the fore-
front of his interests, and his influence on American education has
been profound. I, in my lesser way, have tried to have an influence
on education very similar to his. Perhaps he, like me, has not
always been satisfied with the practice of those who pr.ofessed to
follow his teaching, but any new doctrine, in practice, is bound
to be subject to some extravagance and excess. This, however, does
not matter so much as might be thought, because the faults of
what is new are so much more easily seen than those of what is
traditional. *
When Dewey became professor of philosophy at £hidtgo in
1894, pedagogy was included among his subjects. He founded a
progressive school, and wrote much about education. What he
wrote at this time was summed up in his book The School and
Society (1899), which is considered the most influential of all his
writings. He has continued to wnte on education throughout his
life, almost as much as on philosophy.
Other social and political questions have also had a large share
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
of his thought. Like myself, he was much influenced by visits to
Russia and China, negatively in the first case, positively in the
second. He was reluctantly a supporter of the first World War.
He had an important part in the inquiry as to Trotsky's alleged
guilt, and, while he was convinced that the charges were un-
founded, he did not think that the Soviet regime would have been
satisfactory if Trotsky instead of Stalin had been Lenin's successor.
He became persuaded that violent revolution leading to dictator-
ship is not the way to achieve a good society. Although very liberal
in all economic questions, he has never been a Marxist. I heard
him say once that, having emancipated himself with some difficulty
from the traditional orthodox theology, he was not going to shackle
himself with another. In all this his point of view is almost identical
with my own.
From the strictly philosophical point of view, the chief impor-
tance of Dewey's work lies in his criticism of the traditional
notion of "truth," which is embodied in the theory that he calls
"instrumentalism." Truth, as conceived by most professional
philosophers, is static and final, perfect and eternal; in religious
terminology, it may be identified with God's thoughts, and with
those thoughts which, as rational beings, we share with God. The
perfect model of truth is the multiplication table, which is precise
and certain and free from all temporal dross. Since Pythagons,
and still more since Plato, mathematics has been linked with
theology, and has profoundly influenced the theory of knowledge
of most professional philosophers. Dewey's interests are biological
rather than mathematical, and he conceives thought as an evolu-
tionary process. The traditional view would, of course, admit that
men gradually come to know more, but each piece of knowledge,
when achieved, is regarded as something final. Hegel, it is true,
does not regard human knowledge in this way. He conceives
human knowledge as an organic whole, gradually growing in every
part, and nit perfect in any part until the whole is perfect. But
although the Hegelian philosophy influenced Dcwey is his youth,
it still has its Absolute and its eternal world which is more real
than the temporal process. These can have no place in Dewey's
dywght, for which all reality is temporal, and process, though
evolutionary, is not, as for Hegel, the unfolding of an eternal Idea.
So far, I am in agreement with Dewey, Nor is this the end of my
'agreement. Before embarking upon discussion of the points as to
JOHN OEWET
which I differ, I will say a few words as to my own view of "truth."
The first question is: What sort of thing is "true" or "false"?
The simplest answer would be : a sentence. "Columbus crossed the
ocean in 1492" is true; "Columbus crossed the ocean in 1776" is
false. Tkis answer is correct, but incomplete. Sentences are true
or false, as the case may be, because they are "significant/9 and
their significance depends upon the language used. If you were
translating an account of Columbus into Arabic, you would have
to alter "1492" into the corresponding year of the Mohammedan
era. Sentences in different languages may have the same signifi-
cance, and it is the significance, not the words, that determines
whether the sentence is "true" or "false." When you assert a
sentence, you express a "belief," which may be equally well ex-
pressed in a different language. The "belief," whatever it may be,
is what is "true" or "false" or "more or less true." Thus we are
driven to the investigation of "belief."
Now a belief, provided it is sufficiently simple, may exist without
being expressed in words. It would be difficult, without using
words, to believe that the ratio of the circumference of a circle
to the diameter is approximately 3.14159, or that Caesar, when he
decided to cross the Rubicon, sealed the fate of the Roman repub-
lican constitution. But in simple cases unverbalized beliefs are
common. Suppose, for instance, in descending a staircase, you
make a mistake as to when you have got to the bottom: you take
a step suitable for level ground, and come down with a bump. The
result is a violent shock of surprise. You would naturally say, "I
thought I was at the bottom," but in fact you were not thinking
about the stairs, or you would not have made the mistake. Your%
muscles were adjusted in a way suitable to the bottom, when in
fact you were not yet there. It was your body rather than your
mind that made the mistake -*t least that would be a natural way
to express what happened. But in fact the distinction between mind
and body is a dubious one. It will be better to speak of an V organ-
ism," leaving the division of its activities between the mind and
the body undetermined. One can say, then: your organism was
adjusted in a manner which would have been suitable if you had
been at the bottom, but in fact was not suitable. This failure, of
adjustment constituted error, did one may say that you were
entertaining a false belief.
The test of error in the above illustration is ntrprist. I think thiS
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
is true generally of beliefs that can be tested. A false belief is one
which, in suitable circumstances, will cause the person enter-
taining it to experience surprise, while a true belief will not have
this effect. But although surprise is a good criterion when it is
applicable, it does not give the meaning of the words-"tFue" and
"false,91 and is not always applicable. Suppose you are walking
in a thunderstorm, and you say to yourself, "I am not at all likely
to be struck by lightning." The next moment you are struck, but
you experience no surprise, because you are dead. If one day the
sun explodes, as Sir James Jeans seems to expect, we shall all
perish instantly, and therefore not be surprised, but unless we
expect the catastrophe we shall all have been mistaken. Such illus-
trations suggest objectivity in truth and falsehood: what is true
(or false) is a state of the organism, but it is true (or false), in
general, in virtue of occurrences outside the organism. Sometimes
experimental tests are possible to determine truth and falsehood,
but sometimes they are not; when they are not, the alternative
nevertheless remains, and is significant.
I mil not further develop my view of truth and falsehood, but
will proceed to the examination of Dewey's doctrine.
Dewey does not aim at judgments that shall be absolutely "true/9
or condemn their contradictories as absolutely "false." In his
opinion there is a process called "inquiry," which is one form gf
mutual adjustment between an organism and its environment. If
I wished, from my point of view, to go as far as possible towards
agreeing with Dewey, I should begin by an analysis of "meaning"
or "significance." Suppose for example you are at the Zoo, and
you hear a voice through a megaphone saying, "A lion has just
escaped." You will, in that case, act as you would if you saw the
lion — that is to say, you will get away as quickly as possible. The
sentence "a lion has escaped" truant a certain occurrence, in the
sense that it promotes the same behaviour as the occurrence would
if you caw y. Broadly: a sentence S "means" an event E if it
promotes behaviour which E would have promoted. If there has
in fact been no such occurrence, the sentence is false. Just the
tame applies to a belief which is not expressed in words. One may
•ajr : a belief is a state of an organism promoting behaviour such
as a certain occurrence would (footnote if sensibly present; the
occurrence which would promote this behaviour is the "signifi*
6uioe" of the belief. This statement is unduly simplified, but it
850'
JOHN DEWEY
may serve to indicate the theory I am advocating. So far, I do not
think that Dewey and I would disagree very much. But with his
further developments I find myself in very definite disagreement.
Dewey makes inquiry the essence of logic, not truth or know-
ledge. Ije Defines inquiry as follows: "Inquiry is the controlled
or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one
that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations
as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified
whole." He adds that "inquiry is concerned with objective trans-
formations of objective subject-matter." This definition is plainly
inadequate. Take for instance the dealings of a drill-sergeant with
a crowd of recruits, or of a bricklayer with a heap of bricks; these
exactly fulfil Dewey's definition of "inquiry." Since he clearly
would not include them, there must be an element in his notion
of "inquiry" which he has forgotten to mention in his definition.
What this element is, I shall attempt to determine in a moment.
But let us first consider what emerges from the definition as it
stands.
It is clear that "inquiry," as conceived by Dewey, is part of the
general process of attempting to make the world more organic.
"Unified wholes" are to be the outcome of inquiries. Dewey's love
of what is organic is due partly to biology, partly to the lingering
influence of Hegel. Unless on the basis of an unconscious Hegelian
ftictaphysic, I do not see why inquiry should be expected to result
in "unified wholes." If I am given a pack of cards in disorder, and
asked to inquire into their sequence, I shall, if I follow Dewey's
prescription, first arrange them in order, and then say that this
was the order resulting from inquiry. There will be, it is true, an
"objective transformation of objective subject-matter" while I am
arranging the cards, but the definition allows for this. If, at the
end, I am told: "We wanted to know the sequence of the cards
when they were given to you, not after you had re-arranged them,"
I shall, if I am a disciple of Dewey, reply: "Your ideas ^re alto-
gether too static. I am a dynamic person, and \&en I inquire
into any subject-matter I first alter it in such a way as to make the
inquiry easy." The notion that such a procedure is legitimate can
only be justified by a Hegelian distinction of appearance and reality:
the appearance may be confused and fragmentary, but the nftlhy
is always orderly and organic. Therefore when I arrange the cards
I am only revealing their true eternal nature. But this part of the
•851
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
doctrine is never made explicit. The mctaphysic of organism under-
lies Dewey's theories, but I do not know how far he is aware of
this fact.
Let us now try to find the supplement to Dewey's definition
which is required in order to distinguish inquiry from othpr kinds
of organizing activity, such as those of the drill-sergeant and the
bricklayer. Formerly it would have been said that inquiry is dis-
tinguished by its purpose, which is to ascertain some truth. But
for Dewey "truth" is to be defined in terms of "inquiry," not vice
versa; he quotes with approval Peirce's definition : "Truth" is "the
opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who inves-
tigate." This leaves us completely in the dark as to what the
investigators are doing, for we cannot, without circularity, say that
they are endeavouring to ascertain the truth.
I think Dr. Dewey's theory might be stated as follows. The
relations of an organism to its environment are sometimes satis-
factory to the organism, sometimes unsatisfactory. When they are
unsatisfactory, the situation may be improved by mutual adjust-
ment. When the alterations by means of which the situation is
improved are mainly on the side of the organism — they are never
wholly on either side — the process involved is called "inquiry."
For example: during a battle you are mainly concerned to alter
the environment, i.e. the enemy; but during the preceding period
of reconnaissance you are mainly concerned to adapt your own
forces to his dispositions. This earlier period is one of "inquiry."
The difficulty of this theory, to my mind, lies in the severing
of the relation between a belief and the fact or facts which would
commonly be said to "verify" it. Let us continue to consider the
example of a general planning a battle. His reconnaissance planes
report to him certain enemy preparations, and he, in consequence,
makes certain counter-preparations. Common sense would say
that the reports upon which he acts are "true" if, in fact, the
enemy have made the moves which they are said to have made,
and that, in that case, the reports remain true even if the general
subsequently loses the battle. This view is rejected by Dr. Dewey.
He does not divide beliefs into "true" and "false," but he still
has two kinds of beliefs, which we will call "satisfactory" if the
general wins, and "unsatisfactory" if he is defeated. Until the
btttk has taken place, he cannot tell what to think about the
flports of his scouts*
JOHN DEWEY
Generalizing, we may say that Dr. Dewey, like everyone else,
divides beliefs into two classes, of which one is good and the other
bad. He holds, however, that a belief may be good at one time and
bad at another; this happens with imperfect theories which are
better than their predecessors but worse than their successors.
Whether a* belief is good or bad depends upon whether the activities
which it inspires in the organism entertaining the belief have con-
sequences which are satisfactory or unsatisfactory to it. Thus a
belief about some event in the past is to be classified as "good"
or "bad," not according to whether the event really took place,
but according to the future effects of the belief. The results are
curious. Suppose somebody says to me: "Did you have coffee with
your breakfast this morning?" If I am an ordinary person, I shall
try to remember. But if I am a disciple of Dr. Dewey I shall say:
"Wait a while; I must try two experiments before I can tell you."
I shall then first make myself believe that I had coffee, and observe
the consequences, if any; I shall then make myself believe that
I did not have coffee, and again observe the consequences, if any.
I shall then compare the two sets of consequences, to see which
I found the more satisfactory. If there is a balance on one side
I shall decide for that answer. If there is not, I shall have to confess
that I cannot answer the question.
But this is not the end of our troubles. How am I to know the
coifcequences of believing that I had coffee for breakfast? If I say
"the consequences are such-and-such," this in turn will have to
be tested by its consequences before I can know whether what I
have said was a "good" or a "bad" statement. And even if this
difficulty were overcome, how am I to judge which set of con-
sequences is the more satisfactory? One decision as to whether
I had coffee may fill me with contentment, the other with deter-
mination to further the war effort. Each of these may be considered
good, but until I have decided which is better I cannot tell whether
I had coffee for breakfast. Surely this is absurd. ,
Dewey 's divergence from what has hitherto been fegarded as
common sense is due to his refusal to admit "facts" into his meta-
physic, in the sense in which "facts" are stubborn and cannot be
manipulated. In this it may be that common sense is changing,
and that his view will not seem contrary to what common sen*
is becoming.
The main difference between Dr. Dewey and me is that he
853
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
judges a belief by its effects, whereas I judge it by its causes where
a past occurrence is concerned. I consider such a* belief "true/9
or as nearly "true" as we can make it, if it has a certain kind of
relation (sometimes very complicated) to its causes. Dr. Dewey
holds that it has "warranted assertability" — which he substitutes
for "truth" — if it has certain kinds of effects. This* divergence is
connected with a difference of outlook on the world. The past
cannot be affected by what we do, and therefore, if truth is deter-
mined by what has happened, it is independent of present or
future volitions; it represents, in logical form, the limitations on
human power. But if truth, or rather "warranted assertability/'
depends upon the future, then, in so far as it is in our power to
alter the future, it is in our power to alter what should be asserted.
This enlarges the sense of human power and freedom. Did Caesar
cross the Rubicon ? I should regard an affirmative answci as unal-
terably necessitated by a past event. Dr. Dcwcy would decide
whether to say yes or no by an appraisal of future events, and there
is no reason why these future events could not be arranged by
human power so as to make a negative answer the more satis-
factory. If I find the belief that Caesar crossed the Rubicon very
distasteful, I need not sit down in dull despair; I can, if I have
enough skill and power, arrange a social environment in which
die statement that he did not cross the Rubicon will have "war-
ranted assertability." •
Throughout this book, I have sought, where possible, to connect
philosophies with the social environment of the philosophers con-
cerned. It has seemed to me that the belief in human power, and
the unwillingness to admit "stubborn facts/* were connected with
the hopefulness engendered by machine production and the scien-
tific manipulation of our physical environment. This view is shared
by many of Dr. Dewey 's supporters. 'I 'bus George Raymond
Gciger, in a laudatory essay, says that Dr. Dewey 's method "would
meaq a revolution in thought just as middle-class and unspectacu-
lar, but just as stupendous, as the revolution in industry of a
century ago/9 It teemed to me that I was saying the samp thing
when I wrote "Dr. Dewey has an outlook which, where it is
distinctive, is in harmony with the age of industrialism and col-
lective enterprise. It is natural that his strongest appeal should be to
Americans, and also that he should be almost equally appreciated
by the progressive elements to countries like China and Mexico/9
JOHN DEWEY
To my regret and surprise, this statement, which I had sup-
posed completely innocuous, vexed Dr. Dewey, who replied:
"Mr. Russell's confirmed habit of connecting the pragmatic theory
of knowing with obnoxious aspects of American industrialism . . .
is much as if I were to link his philosophy to the interests of the
English landed aristocracy/'
For my part. I am accustomed to having my opinions explained
(especially by Communists) as due to my connection with the
British aristocracy, and I am quite willing to suppose that my
views, like other men's, are influenced by social environment.
But if, in regard to Dr. Dewey, I am mistaken as to the social
influences concerned, I regret the mistake. I find, however, that
I am not alone in having made it. Santayana, for instance, says:
41 In Dewey, as in current science and ethics, there is a pervasive
quasi-Hegelian tendency to dissolve the individual into his social
functions, as well as everything substantial and actual into some-
thing relative and transitional."
Dr. Dewey's world, it seems to me, is one in which human
beings occupy the imagination; the cosmos of astronomy, though
of course acknowledged to exist, is at most times ignored. His
philosophy is a power philosophy, though not, like Nietzsche's,
a philosophy of individual power; it is the power of the community
tfyjt is felt to be valuable. It is this element of social power that
seems to me to make the philosophy of instrumentalism attractive
to those who are more impressed by our new control over natural
forces than by the limitations to which that control is still subject.
The attitude of man towards the non-human environment has
differed profoundly at different times. The Greeks, with their
dread of hubris and their belief in a Necessity or Fate superior
even to Zeus, carefully avoided what would have seemed to them
insolence towards the universe. The Middle Ages carried sub-
mission much further: humility towards God was a Christian's
first duty. Initiative was cramped by this attitude and great
originality was scarcely possible. The Renaissance restored human
pride, but carried it to the point where it led to anarchy and
disaster. Its work was largely undone by the Reformation and the
Counter- reformation. But modern technique, while not altoget^fr
favourable to the lordly individuat of the Renaissance, has revived
the sense of the collective power of human communities. Man,
formerly too humble, begins to think of himself as almost a God.'
$55
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
The Italian pragmatist Papini urges us to substitute the "Imita-
tion of God" for the "Imitation of Christ/'
In all this I feel a grave danger, the danger of what might be
called cosmic impiety. The concept of "truth" as something depen-
dent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the
ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary
element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a
further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness
— the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte,
and to which modern men, whether philosophers or not, are prone.
I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our
time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally,
contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.
Chapter XXXI
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS
• •
IN philosophy ever since the time of Pythagoras there has been
an opposition between the men whose thought was mainly
inspired by mathematics and those who were more influenced
by the empirical sciences. Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, and
Kant belong to what may be called the mathematical party; Demo-
critus, Aristotle, and the modem empiricists from Locke onwards,
belong to the opposite party. In our day a school of philosophy
has arisen which sets to work to eliminate Pythagoreanism from
the principles of mathematics, and to combine empiricism wirh
an interest in the deductive parts of human knowledge. The aims
of this school are less spectacular than those of most philosophers
in the past, but some of its achievements are as solid as those of
the men of science.
The origin of this philosophy is in the achievements of mathe-
maticians who set to work to purge their subject of fallacies and
slipshod reasoning. The great mathematicians of the seventeenth
century were optimistic and anxious for quick results; conse-
quently they left the foundations of analytical geometry and the
infinitesimal calculus insecure. Leibniz believed in actual infini-
tesimals, but although this belief suited his metaphysics it had
no sound basis in mathematics. Weierstrass, soon after the middle
of the nineteenth century, showed how to establish the calculus
without infinitesimals, and thus at last made it logically secure.
Next came Georg Cantor, who developed the theory of continuity
and infinite number. " Continuity " had been, until he defined
it, a vague word, convenient for philosophers like Hegel, who
wished to introduce metaphysical muddles into mathematics.
Cantor gave a precise significance to the word, and showed that
continuity, as he defined it, was the concept needecf by mathe-
maticians and physicists. By this means a great deal of mysticism,
such as that of Bergson, was rendered antiquated.
Cantor also overcame the long-standing logical puzzles about
infinite number. Take the series ofcwhole numbers from i onwards;
how many of them are there? Clearly the number is not finite.
Up to a thousand, there are a thousand numbers; up to a million,-
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
a million. Whatever finite number you mention, there are evidently
more numbers than that, because from i up to the number in
question there are just that number of numbers, and then there
are others that are greater. The number of finite whole numbers
must, therefore, be an infinite number. But now corpes^a curious
fact: The number of even numbers must be the same as the
number of all whole numbers. Consider the two rows:
1. a> 3» 4* S» 6, ....
2, 4, 6, 8, io, 12, ....
There is one entry in the lower row for every one in the top row ;
therefore the number of terms in the two rows must be the same,
although the lower row consists of only half the terms in the top
row. Leibniz, who noticed this, thought it a contradiction, and
concluded that, though there are infinite collections, there are no
infinite numbers. Georg Cantor, on the contrary, boldly denied
that it is a contradiction. He was right; it is only an oddity.
Georg Cantor defined an "infinite" collection as one which has
parts containing as many terms as the whole collection contains.
On this basis he was able to build up a most interesting mathe-
matical theory of infinite numbers, thereby taking into the realm
of exact logic a whole region formerly given over to mysticism
and confusion.
The next man of importance was Fregc, who published his first
work in 1879, and his definition of "number" in 1884; but, in
spite of the epoch-making nature of his discoveries, he remained
wholly without recognition until I drew attention to him in 1903.
It is remarkable that, before Frege, even' definition of number
1 that had been suggested contained elementary logical blunders.
It was customary to identify "number" with "plurality." But an
instance of "number" is a particular number, say 3, and an instance
of 3 is a particular triad. The triad is a plurality, but the class of all
triads-r-which Frege identified with the number 3 — is a plurality
of pluralities, and number in general, of which 3 is an instance,
is a plurality of pluralities of pluralities. The elementary gram-
matical mistake of confounding this with the simple plurality of a
given triad made the whole philosophy of number, before Frege,
a tissue of nonsense in the ftrictj* sense of the term "nonsense."
From Frege's work it followed that arithmetic, and pure mathe-
matics generally, is nothing but * prolongation of deductive logic.
856
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS
This disproved Kant's theory that arithmetical propositions are
"synthetic" and involve a reference to time. The development of
pure matiiematics from logic was set forth in detail in Prindpia
Mathematica, by Whitehead and myself.
It gradually became clear that a great part of philosophy can be
reduced to something that may be called "syntax/' though the
word has to be used in a somewhat wider sense than has hitherto
been customary. Some men, notably Carnap, have advanced the
theory that all philosophical problems are really syntactical, and
that, when etrors in syntax are avoided, a philosophical problem
is thereby either solved or shown to be insoluble. I think, and
Carnap now agrees, that this is an overstatement, but there can
be no doubt that the utility of philosophical syntax in relation
to traditional problems is very great.
I will illustrate its utility by a brief explanation of what is called
the theory of descriptions. By a "description" I mean a phrase
such as "The present President of the United States/' in which
a person or thing is designated, not by name, but by some property
which is supposed or known to be peculiar to him or it. Such
phrases had given a lot of trouble. Suppose I say "The golden
mountain does not exist," and suppose you ask "What is it that
does not exist?" It would seem that, if I say "It is the golden
m<ymtain," I am attributing some sort of existence to it. Obviously
I am not making the same statement as if I said, "The round
square docs not exist." This seemed to imply that the golden
mountain is one thing and the round square is another, although
neither exists. The theory of descriptions was designed to meet
this and other difficulties.
According to this theory, when a statement containing a phrase
of the form "the so-and-so" is rightly analysed, the phrase "the
so-and-so" disappears. For example, take the statement "Scott
was the author of Waver ley." The theory interprets this statement
as saying: • •
"One and only one man wrote Wavcrky, and that man was
Scott." Or, more fully:
"There is an entity c such that the statement '* wrote Waverty
is true if x is c and false otherwise; moreover c is Scott." .
The first part of this, before the word "moreover/' is defined
as meaning: "The author of Waverley exists (or existed or will
exist)." Thus "The golden mountain does not exist" means:
$59
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
"There is no entity c such that '* is golden and mountainous'
is true when * is c, but not otherwise/'
With this definition the puzzle as to what is meant when we say
"The golden mountain does not exist" disappears.
"Existence/* according to this theory, can only be asserted of
descriptions. We can say "The author of Waverley exists/9 but
to say "Scott exists" is bad grammar, or rather bad syntax. This
clean up two millennia of muddlc-headedness about "existence/*
beginning with Plato's TheatMus.
One result of the work we have been considering is to dethrone
mathematics from the lofty place that it has occupied since
Pythagoras and Plato, and to destroy the presumption against
empiricism which has been derived from it. Mathematical know-
ledge, it is true, is not obtained by induction from experience;
our reason for believing that 2 and 2 are 4 is not that we have so
often found, by observation, that one couple and another couple
together make a quartet. In this sense, mathematical knowledge
is still not empirical. But it is also not a priori knowledge about
the world. It is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. "3" means
"2 + i," and "4" means "3 + i." Hence it follows (though the
proof is long) that "4" means the same as "2 + 2." Thus mathe-
matical knowledge ceases to be mysterious. It is all of the same
nature as the "great truth" that there are three feet in a yard,
Physics, as well as pure mathematics, has supplied material for
the philosophy of logical analysis. This has occurred especially
through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
What 19 important to the philosopher in the theory of relativity
is the substitution of space-time for space and time. Common
sense thinks of the physical world as composed of "things" which
persist through a certain period of time and move in space. Philo-
sophy and physics developed the notion of "thing" into that of
"material substance/' and thought of material substance as con-
sisting of prrtsdes, each very small, and each persisting throughout
all time. Einstein substituted events for particles; each event had
to each other a relation called "interval/' which could be analysed
in various ways into a time-element and a space-element. The
cfeotce between these various ways was arbitrary, and no one of
them was theoretically preferable to any other. Given two events
A and B, in different regions, it might happen that stcording to
one convention they were simultaneous, according to another A
ftfo
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS
was earlier than B, and according to yet another B was earlier than
A. No physical facts correspond to these different conventions.
From all this it seems to follow that events, not particles, must
be the "stuff" of physics. What has been thought of as a particle
will hav^to J>e thought of as a series of events. The series of events
that replaces a particle has certain important physical properties,
and therefore demands our attention; but it has no more sub-
stantiality than any other series of events that we might arbitrarily
single out. Thus "matter" is not part of the ultimate material of
the world, but merely a convenient way of collecting events into
bundles.
Quantum theory reinforces this conclusion, but its chief philo-
sophical importance is that it regards physical phenomena as
possibly discontinuous. It suggests that, in an atom (interpreted
as above), a certain state of affairs persists for a certain time, and
then suddenly is replaced by a finitely different state of affairs.
Continuity of motion, which had always been assumed, appears
to have been a mere prejudice. The philosophy appropriate to
quantum theory, however, has not yet been adequately developed.
I suspect that it will demand even more radical departures from
the traditional doctrine of space and time than those demanded
by the theory of relativity.
While physics has been making matter less material, psychology
Idl been making mind less mental. We had occasion in a former
chapter to compare the association of ideas with the conditioned
reflex. The latter, which has replaced the former, is obviously
much more physiological. (This is only one illustration; I do not
wish to exaggerate the scope of the conditioned reflex.) Yhus from
both ends physics and psychology have been approaching each
other, and making more possible the doctrine of "neutral monism"
suggested by William James's criticism of "consciousness." The
distinction of mind and matter came into philosophy from religion,
although, for a long time, it seemed to have valid groiyids. i think
that both mind and matter are merely convenient ways of grouping
events. Some single events, I should admit, belong only to material
groups, but others belong to both kinds of groups, and are there-
fore at once mental and material. This doctrine effects a gr^at
simplification in our picture of thfe structure of the world.
Modern physics and physiology throw a new light upon the
ancient problem of perception. If there is to be anything that can
*6i
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
be called "perception/9 it must be in some degree an effect of the
object perceived, and it must more or less resemble the object if
it is to be a source of knowledge of the object. The first requisite
can only be fulfilled if there are causal chains which are, to a
greater or less extent, independent of the rest of the world,, Accord-
ing to physics, this is the case. Light-waves travel from the sun
to the earth, and in doing so obey their own laws. This is only
roughly true. Einstein has shown that light-rays are affected by
gravitation. When they reach our atmosphere, they suffer refrac-
tion, and some are more scattered than others. When they reach
a human eye, all sorts of things happen which would not happen
elsewhere, ending up with what we call "seeing the sun." But
although the sun of our visual experience is very different from
the sun of the astronomer, it is still a source of knowledge as to
the latter, because "seeing the sun" differs from "seeing the moon"
in ways that are causally connected with the difference between the
astronomer's sun and the astronomer's moon. What we can know
of physical objects in this way, however, is only certain abstract
properties of structure. We can know that the sun is round in a
sense, though not quite the sense in which what we see is round ;
but we have no reason to suppose that it is bright or warm, because
physics can account for its seeming so without supposing that
it is so. Our knowledge of the physical world, therefore, is only
abstract and mathematical. *
Modern analytical empiricism, of which I have been giving an
outline, differs from that of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume by tu
incorporation of mathematics and iu development of a powerful
t logical technique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems,
to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science
rather than of philosophy. It has the advantage, as compared with
the philosophies of the system-builders, of being able to tackle
its problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one stroke
a block theory of the whole universe. Its methods, in this respect,
resemble those of science. I have no doubt that, in so far as
philosophical knowledge is possible, it is by such methods that
it must be sought; I have also no doubt that, by these methods,
many ancient problems are completely soluble.
There remains, however, a vfcst field, traditionally included in
philosophy, where scientific methods are inadequate. This field
'includes ultimate questions of value; science alone, for example,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS
cannot prove that it is bad to enjoy the infliction of cruelty. What-
ever can be known, can be known by means of science; but things
which are legitimately matters of feeling lie outside its province.
Philosophy, throughout its history, has consisted of two parts
inharmoniously blended : on the one hand a theory as to the nature
of the w&rlcl, on the other an ethical or political doctrine as to the
best way of living. The failure to separate these two with sufficient
clarity has been a source of much confused thinking. Philosophers,
from Plato to William James, have allowed their opinions as to
the constitution of the universe to be influenced by the desire for
edification: knowing, as they supposed, what beliefs would make
men virtuous, they have invented arguments, often very sophistical,
to prove that these beliefs are true. For my part I reprobate this
kind of bias, both on moral and on intellectual grounds. Morally,
a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything
except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of
treachery. And when he assumes, in advance of inquiry, that
certain beliefs, whether true or false, are such as to promote good
behaviour, he is so limiting the scope of philosophical speculation
as to make philosophy trivial; the true philosopher is prepared
to examine all preconceptions. When any limits are placed, con-
sciously or unconsciously, upon the pursuit of truth, philosophy
becomes paralysed by fear, and the ground is prepared for a
government censorship punishing those who utter "dangerous
thoughts"— in fact, the philosopher has already placed such a
Censorship over his own investigations.
Intellectually, the effect of mistaken moral considerations upon
philosophy has been to impede progress to an extraordinary extent
I do not myself believe that philosophy can either prove or dis-
prove the truth of religious dogmas, but ever since Plato mos
philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce
"proofs" of immortality and the existence of God. They hav<
found fault with the proofs of their predecessors — St. T^homai
rejected St. Anselm's proofs, and Kant rejected DeJbartes'— bu
they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make theii
proofs seem valid, they have bad to falsify logic, to make mathe-
matics mystical, and to pretend that deep-seated prejudices were
heaven-sent intuitions. » *
All this is rejected by the philosophers who make logical analysis
the main business of philosophy. They confess frankly that the*
J63
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
human intellect is unable to find conclusive answers to many ques-
tions of profound importance to mankind, but they refuse to
believe that there is some "higher" way of knowing, by which we
can discover truths hidden from science and the intellect. For this
renunciation they have been rewarded by the discovery that many
questions, formerly obscured by the fog of metaphysics, can be
answered with precision, and by objective methods which intro-
duce nothing of the philosopher's temperament except the desire
to understand. Take such questions as: What is number? What
are space and time? What is mind, and what is matter? I do not
say that we can here and now give definitive answers to all these
ancient questions, but I do say that a method has been discovered
by which, as in science, we can make successive approximations
to the truth, in which each new stage results from an improvement,
not a rejection, of what has gone before.
In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying
forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing
our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and
as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible
for human beings. To have insisted upon the introduction of this
virtue into philosophy, and to have invented a powerful method
by which it can be rendered fruitful, are the chief merits of the
philosophical school of which I am a member. The habit of careful
veracity acquired in the practice of this philosophical method tan
be extended to the whole sphere of human activity, producing,
wherever it exists, a lessening of fanaticism with an increasing
capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding. In abandoning
a part of ris dogmatic pretensions, philosophy does not cease to
1 suggest and inspire a way of life.
86V
INDEX
Aaron, 461
Abbasid dynasty, 442
Abdera, 84, 97
Abdon, 380
Abel, 380, 461
Abelard, Pierre, 453 «., 457-60, 461
Abraham, 304, 348
Absolute, 758-61, 769, 822, 848
absolute equality, 160, 161
absolute monarchy, 441, 655
absolute space, 89, 91
absolutist development, 744
abstract ideas, 830, 83 1
Abu \>qub Yusuf, 446
Abyssinia, 338, 389
Academicians, Academics, 369, 381,
461
Academy of Athens, 80, 182, 231,
258, 259, 261, 276, 282, 300
acceleration, 553, 554, 556, 500, 561
Achaeans, 25, 26
Achilles and the Tortoise 834
acquired characteristics, 753
Acragas, 72. 75. 3*6
action, 222, 821, 826-8, 834. 838
actuality, 189, 192, 704
^am, 478, 578, 594, 613, 616; and
St. Augustine, 378, 370, 3&T,
kings as heirs of, 643, (144, 646
adaptation, 820
Adcimantus, 137, 144
Adrlhard of Flith, 235, 460, 487
aJjvi'tivcs, 185, 186
Advance **fnt of Learning. The
(Bacon). 564
Ai'Kospourni, 101
/KnciU, 380
Acneaidemus, 261
Aeschylus, 77, 100, 231
aesthetics, 54, 701
Aetius, 238
Africa, 281, 320, 386, 401, 642;
and Arabs, 299, 326, 440; and
St. Augustine 354. 364. 3^7*
371 ; and monasticism, 396; and
Rome, 191, 304
after life, 25, 40-2, 109, 269-70,*
272-4, 280-1, 499, 500. Se* also
immortality
f 865
Against Celsus (Origen), 347, 348 n.
Agatharcus, 231
Agathon, no
Agilulph, 403
Agnes of Poitou, 433
agnosticism, 730
agriculture, 22, 24, 29, 33, 341, 658,
714, 755J Arab, 443; Greek and
Roman, 26, 243, 294, 295, 301 ;
and monasticism, 396, 432
Agrippina, 282
Ahab, 329
Ahriman, 499
Ahura Mazda, 499
Aigisthos, 30
Ailly, Pierre d', 495 n.
air, 46, 47, 62, 63, 73, 74, 229, 230,
269, 276; and Plato, 166-9
| air pump, 554, 557
! Alaric, 387, 421, 747
j Alberic of Tusculurn, 432
Albertus Magnus, St., 445, 472,
j 474. 501
i Albi^enses, 464, 468, 470, 472
j AJbumazar, 487
alchemy, 53, 62, 306, 343, 444. 4*8,
486
Alcibiades, 1 10, 799
Alcuin, 413. 4H-I5
Alexander II, Pope, 435
Alexander III, Pope, 454 n.
Alexander VI, Pope, 519. 526, 527,
529 •
Alexander the grammarian, 288 9
Alexander the Great, 241-4, *53»
333. 615, 766; and Aristotle, 182,
183, 207, 215, 299; cities founded
by, 248, 249; conquests of, 31 ».,
248, 204, 302; effect of, 120, 183,
241-2, 248-9. 296, 304-5, 490,
524 ; and politics,*?29, 622
Alexander the Paphlagoni.m, 303
Alexander the Platonist, 288
Alexander Severus, 303
Alexandria, 233, 244, 248, 255, 31 1 ;
and Christianity, 346, 3^-3.
387, 410, 411; and culture, 80,
240, 246, 306, 346; and Jews,
330, 337. 341 .
2E
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Alfarabi, 487
Alfred the Great, 402, 423
Algazel, 447
algebra, 54, 306, 444. 5^3. 689
Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed, 442
almsgiving, 328, 334, 349
alphabet, 28
Alphonso V, King of Aragon, 506,
520
Amasis II, 48
Ambrose, St., 354"$o, 39*. 575. 810 ;
and St. Augustine, 327, 360, 363,
369, 370, 371 ; and Church and
State, 327, 355. 3*3. 4p2, 4".
434* 5°°i influences philosophy,
3*7
America, 215, 521, 646, 657, 662,
663. 664, 671, 804; and Chris-
tianity, 309; and culture, 04, 95,
705, 746, 817; and Hegel, 757,
765; and liberalism, 623, 668;
and Locke, 577, 655, 656. Set
alto United States
American philosophy, 839, 847, $55
American Revolution, 511, 67 1 ,
75<>. 798
Ammon, 242
Ammonias Saccas, 311, 346
amnesia, 825
Amsterdam, 570, 592
Anabaptists, 382, 545. 577. <»2i
Anacreon, 49
Anagni, 502, 503
analysis, #57-^4
analytical empiricism, 862
analytical geometry. 857
Analytic* (Agstodc), 462
anarchism, 514, 624, 789
Inarchy, 515, 577. 57*>, 579
Anastasius bibtiothtoinus, 424
Anaxagoras, 7#* 81*3, 95, 227; and
other philosophers, 84. K6, 92 ,
107; as scientist, 73, 87, 236, $58
Anaxiirander, 45-6, 63, 134, t(x>,
AnaKunenes, 46, 47, 62, 83, 377
Ancients, 534
Ancona, 519
Andalusia, 386
•ngels, 338. 377* 37*. 4&
Angelus StJesms, 7*4
Angilbert, St., 413
Anifcs, 406, 421 !
Anglicans, 626
Angus, C. F., 251, 350 «.
animal faith, 226
animism, 558
Awchawtng. 734, 739
Anselm, St., 327, 437"9. 457. 45«.
488; and God, 60 8 ,,609, 669, 814,
863
Anselm of Laon, 458
Antalcidas, Peace of, 31 n.
Anthony, St., 395
anthropology, 658
Antichrist, 381/508, 779
Antigonus I, 244
antinomies, 735
Antioch, 244, 404, 410, 411
Amiochus 1, 245, 250
Antiochui III, 249
Antiochuft IV Kpiph.trus, 334, n$,
3?6
Anttochus of A sea Km, 2*>i
Antiphon, 149, 233
antiquity: contrasted uith nicJi-
aeval world, 323; and ob^cn.i-
uun, 552; and Rctiuiwano, 510;
late, and religion, 351; btr, and
subjectivism, 728
anti-Srmitism, 210. 342, 345, 34').
709, 79»~a
Anusthcnrs, 254
antitl)csta, 759
Antoninus PIU&, 2H4 **
Antonius, Marcuji (M,trk Anror»»
34i
ants, 821
AphrcxJitc, 74. 75
A|xxr>pha, 333 4
Apollo, 48, 24 S, 3V<^
Apollcmmt of Aicirtf»Jti.iA ,240, 24'
Apullonius ^f IVr«tt, 238
Apollortiu» of T)an;i, 304
,-l/Wojt» r I'll to), 104-9, in, 1 1 4.
246
Apofttks. I7<», 45^. 47Z. 5<>7
A frrtoFi knottlcdyc, 161, ^15, 683,
733. ««9, H6o
Ac|uifiat, St. Thomas, 56, 47 j, 474*
85, 489, 547* 6o«, M*. *>*4. 7««.
857; and Arittutlr, 309, 474 7-
47^, 4«o( 4*J. 4^*4. 494. 501 i *r*d
t>rsoirtc«f 5^2, 5^9; atul rtlm*,
480-2, af»J 1 rmnt J*c«< > plakita-
phrn, 4**. 4^<*>; and God.
866fl
INDEX
Aquinas, St. Thomas — contd.
434, 438, 447, 476-82, 484, 608,
863; influence of, 322, 324, 439,
473. 483-5 J and labour theory of
value, 660; and Occam, 494, 496;
and ontological argument, 476,
8x4, 815; and truth, 476, 478,
485; and universals, 478, 480,
484, 496
Arab conquests, 326, 389, 440
Arab Empire, 441
Arab mystics, 446
Arab philosophy, 45 «. 465. 474~5,
496-7, 521
Arabia, 441
Arabian Mights, The, 442
Arabic language, 234-5, 343. 443.
46*, 465, 486, 849
Arabic numerals, 307, 444
Arab*, 234, 299, 306, 442-3, 486-8,
529
Arapon, 463, 506, 520
Arcadia, 32, 117, 299, 363
AreesiLms, 258, 259
Archebus, King of Macedon, 207
Archimedes, 227, 233, 237, 240. 246
Architecture, 428, 432, 509, 704
Archy las of Tunis, x 39
Argenteuil, 458
Argonaut*, 537
4rpumentft for God, 608-12, 717-
18, 735-6. See also ontological
Arianisin, 323, 358, 389, 392, 404.
4<>5, 4°9. 459; Cpnstantine and,
349. 35 »; doctrine of, 352-3;
dominates Western Empire, 353,
354
Amtarchus of Samns. 153. 237-9,
245, 246. 2So, 282, 54*, 549. 55«
Ari«ttodemuftf no, 118
Aristophanes, 77. 100, 10*!, 105, 137
Aristotle, 3$, 233, 283, 390, 449;
and Alexander, 1X2-3, 207, 299;
Aristotle— contd.
487; cheerful and optimistic, 39-
40, 191, 202, 205, 253, 255; and
Democritus, 85, 86; and Empe-
docles, 73, 76; ethics of, 195-
206; and God, 189, 190-1, 194,
202, 203, 214, 373. 477, 478, 484,
608; on the Greeks, 209, 214,
242; harm done by, 93; and
Hobbes, 568, 574, 577; and
individualism, 622; influence of,
121, 182, 205-6, 225, 230, 499,
623 ; knowledge of, 307, 343, 439,
462, 499, 501 ; on Leucippus, 84,
88; logic of, 182, 218-25, 445,
513, 6x5; metaphysics of, 182-
94, 204, 218, 221; and modern
philosophy, 534, 557, 580, 608,
631. 719. 76i, 7*8, 814; and
Mohammedans, 443, 444. 445.
447; physics of, 226-30; and
Plato, 80, 125, 182, 184, 199,
202, 205, 210-ix, 218, 242, 306,
307 ; and Platonic theory of ideas,
150, 184, 1 88; and politics, 201-
2, 207-17, 299, 530, 813; and
Renaissance, 218, 521, 537, 547;
and scholastic philosophy, 426,
439, 451, 456, 459. 461, 472, 483-
4, 487, 494. 507, 513; and
science, 93, 182, 580, 857; and
soul, x88, 192-4. 309, 317, 480,
585. 59o; on Sparta, n6, 117,
xi 9-20; and universals, 185-6,
1 88, 478, 814; cited, 183 n.,
200 ft , 202. 208-9, 211-15, 235 ft. ;
quoted, 88, 89, tiQ, 185, 190,
xgx, 192, 193, 194, 196-8, 2*1,
203, 208-9, 212-13, 215, 228
arithmetic, 21 n.t 54, 55, 221, 586,
689, 740, 857-8; and the Greeks,
49 n.t 53, 152, 153, x66, x68, 177,
232, 236, 313
Anus, 352-3
Arnauld, Antoine, 605, 608, 614,
616
Arnold, Matthew, 72
and Anaximandcr, 46, 235 '» and Army, of Rome, 297, 298, 302, 303,
ancient philosophy, 44, 4Q »•. 64, 304, 308, 352, 363
«2, 237, 253. 355. 257. 287, 311;
and Aquinas, 309, 324, 475*9,
480, 4«3. 484; and astronomy
153, 204, 229-30. *35. 55«5 anjj Arnod, Thomas, 114 n.
Averroes, 447; and Francis Arnold of Brescia, 453, 462
Ikcon, 566; and Catholic philo- Arrian, 287
sophy, 218, 368, 377* 461, 472, arrow, Zeno's, 832-4
86?
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Artemis, 23, 25, 30, 388
asceticism, 323, 370, 396, 397. 499.
784, 805; in ancient world, 35,
39. 61. 156, 254
Asdepius, 163
Asia, 165, 246, 249, 353. 468, 5&>.
642, 704; and Alexander. 243-5 J
and culture, 419; religions of, 23,
56, 302, 781
Asia Minor, 43, 246; and Greeks,
26, 31, loo, 119, 120, 241, 246;
and Persia, 31 ft., 78 ; refipons of,
23,24
Asoka, 245
Aspasia, 81, 95
Assassins, 444
association and habit, 692
association of ideas, 802, 861
Assur-bani-pal, 250
Assyrians, 329
astrology, 23, 53, 343. 4-f8, 714;
and Arabs, 306, 444; and St.
Augustine, 369, 377; and Greek
philosophy, 250, 261, 270, 279,
319; in Renaissance, 516, 523;
and scholastic philosophy, 481,
488
astronomy, 53, 66, 338, 369, 4*>8.
586, 714, 860-2; and ancient
philosophy, 44, 73, 152, 166-8,
joo, 204, 229-30, 235-40, 280,
548, 550, 552; and Copernicus,
548, 550, 55* I «id Galileo, 553;
and mathematics, 152-3, 235;
and modem philosophy, 547.
55*-7, 55*. 5&>, 7431 and
Mohammedan*, 444, 448 ; Ptolc-
»maic, 218, 537
<*U, 30
Athanasiun, St., 352, 353, 396
atheism, 81, 107, 57<>, 592, 667,
816
Athens, 136, 139, 158, 287, 422; in
age oftPericle*, 160, 216, 287;
and culture, (28, 40, 79-80, 81,
09, 130, 183, 305 ; democracy in,
94* 103, 108, 135, 212; in fifth
century, 99-101 ; St. Paul in, 424 ;
philosophers in, 81, 83, 84, 182,
183, 258, 263, 264, 300. 393:
Protagoras in, 84, 96. 97; and
religion, 32, 3$, 40; and Rome,
£59, 261 ; and Socrates, 102, 154,
Athens — could.
216; and Sparta, 31 *., 114, 119,
123, 125, 254
Atlantic Ocean, 281, 732
Atlantis, 165
atom(s), 53, 65-6, 85-6, 91, 92, 169,
269; and quantum theory, 86 1
atomic theory, 87-8, oa, 188
atomism, 47, 84-^3, 311, 457, 754.
812
Atrcus, 30
Attica, 41, 78, 79, xoo, 264
Attila, 386-7, 388, 394, 421
Aupiifttinc (of Canterbury), St.,
406
Aupustinr (of Hippo), St., 56, 294,
338, 353, 35&. 364-71, 427 «•,
435. 461, 719, 776; and St.
Ambrose, 360, 364, 369, 371;
and Aquinas, 475, 482, 494; and
Church and State, 324, 348, 363,
382, 767; and City of God, 288,
324, 374-83. 5»5 : and Descarte*,
58?, 5*»9; and Erasmus, 534, 538;
and F ranctscan ph ilotophc rs ;
488, 494; and God, 373, 377;
and St. Jerome, 360, 380; and
lather, 354, 538; and Mani-
cha'ism, 344, 364, 368-9, 370,
37>, 372; and monasticism, 396;
and Occam, 494 ; and original sin,
383-5* 480; and Pelagian con-
troversy, 383-5, 423; and philo-
sophy,'322, 324, 360, 372- «3. -
438, 45 »» 497, 50«, 784; and
Plato, 309, 370, 372, 37<>, 377.
475, 5<>9; arul politics. 327, 363;
and Reformation, 354, 366, 382,
544-5, 546; and Renaissance,
519; and sin, 364-7; and sub-
jectivism, 374. 728 . and theology,
354, 366, 383, 544-5'. »»<* ""^i
373-4
Augustus, 271, 2«>5 7, 341
Austen, Jane, 705
Austria, 646, 765
Avrrroes, 192, 445, 44*-7. 474,
480, 487, 4&K, 4<X>, 497, 564
Avicenna (or Ibn Sinn). 444-5, 447,
487,4*8,4*5.496
Xvijfnon, 325, 491, 5°3, 5<H, 505,
506
**«imst 55, 58, ajj
868 *
INDEX
Babylon, 22, 207, 329-30, 331
Babylonia, 21 »., 22-4, 27, 44, 235,
428, 499; and Greeks, 47, 231,
235, 241, 250, 302
Babylonian captivity, 382
Dacchae (Euripides), 33, 38,
Bacchus,* 3 2-3, 34-8, 61
Bacon, Francis, 285, 563-7, 568,
569, 749
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 563
Bacon, Roger, 473, 4Sf*»8
bacteria, 557
Bactria, 241, 245
Baghdad, 442
Bailey, Cyril, S6n.,S9n.. <;i «., 263,
267 «., 268 n.
Bakunin, M. A., 514
Ball, John, 508
Balliol College, 507
baptism, 328, 350, 366, 384, 385,
429, 482
barbarian invasions, of Rome, 217,
320, 323, 327, 354. 3^3. 3*H>. 394,
765
barbarians, in \\estem Kmpire,
323. 324. 325. 32**. 440
Barb«irossa. .SVe Frederick I
liardas, 416
barometer, 557
Barth, 281 n.
Ousel, 538, 788 Council of, 506,
Basil, St., jgO
Jlasil I, 416
Bavaria, 581
Ha ylc, Pierre. 564, 581
beans, 50, 76
Beatific Viwon, 785
beauty, 308, 309, 314, 3«5. 3 '&,
3»9
Be cc aria. Hot
Becket, Thomas a, St., 4^»
Ixrtroming, 68, 760, 822
Bede, St., 4U
bees, 821
behaviourists, 802
being, 74, 312-3, 489, 496, 760
Bel, 242, 250
l*lief(»), 329, 348. 438, 489, 493,
709, 804, 852, 853, 863; an^
behaviour, 849-53: and Hume,
691 , 697-9 ; in progress, 754 ; a™*
Protestants, 493 » in *ci^nce, 729;
belief(s)— contd.
and truth, 849-53. See also will
to believe
Bellarmine, St. Robert, 643
Bcloch, Karl Julius, 28 n., 40
Benedict, St., 389, 397-400, 406
Benedict IX, Pope, 432
Benedictine Order, 400
Benedictine rule, 397, 400, 414, 432
benevolence, 206, 290
Benn, A. W., quoted, 183, 254, 303
Bcntham, Jeremy, 92, 252, 750,
751, 756, 796, 802-5, 808, 809,
8 1 1 ; and Epicurus, 268, 274; and
God, 638 ; and justice, 205 ; and
liberalism, 623, 667, 817; and
Locke, 629, 637, 666; politics
and economics of, 808
Berbers, 440
Berengar of Tours, 437
Bcrgson, Henri, 819-38; and causa-
tion, 690; and evolution, 820-1;
and intuition, 821, 825-6, 831;
and memory, 824-5, 826, 834-6;
mysticism of, 857 ; and space and
time, 823, 824, 827, 829-35; *"d
will, 787
Berkeleian idealism, 841, 846
Berkeley, George, 673-84, 728,
841 ; and ego, 687, 689; and em-
piricism, 568, 728, 862 ; and God,
669, 673; and Hume, 685, 686;
and Locke, 630, 666, 739; and
politics, 629, 667 ; and subjectiv-
ism, 513, 739 ; and substance, 687
Berlin, 747. 757, 782
Bermudas, 673 *
Bern, 717 »
Bernard, St., 432, 453, 458, 459~6i
Berosus, 250
Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne,
413
Bessarion, 521
Bethlehem, 361 m *
Bevan, Kdwyn, 59 »., 245, 249 ».,
258, 262, 281 n., 282 n.. 333
Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche),
790, 792
Bible, 229, 534, $82, 653; and
Copernicus, 230, 550; and Eras-
mus, 534, 537; and Jewish his-
tory, 332, 338; and St. Jerome,
354, 360. 36i
•869
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
biblical criticism, 592
big business, 671
biology, 192, 228, 746, 754. 831,
851
birth control, 481, 750
bishops, 396, 401, 428, 430, 494,
644 ; and investiture struggle, 433,
436-7; power of, 349, 418, 430;
and papacy, 402-3, 410, 414,
416-17, 433. 45L 452. 504. See
also episcopate
Bismarck, Prince, 747, 748, 779
Black Death, 491
Black Sea, 79
Blake, William, 338, 704, 705
Boadicea, 283
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 455, 521
body, 157, 347, 4*7, 629, 697, 783,
849; and St. Augustine, 378-9,
381; and Bergson, 821-2; and
Cartesians, 583-4. 5&7. 589; and
Plotinus, 314, 317; and Socrates,
15677
Boethius, 234, 324, 356, 389, 39°-2.
460; and mediaeval philosophy,
439
Boghaz-Keui, 26
Bogomiles, 469
Bohemia, 470, 509
Bokhara, 445
Boleyn, Anne, 539
Bolingbroke, Viscount (Henry St.
John), 667
Bologna, 437, 455. 7»9
Bonaparte. See Napoleon I
Bonaventura,, St., 486, 488
Boniface, St., 414
Loniface VIII, Pope, 489, 502-3
Book of Knock, 337-9, 340
Borgia family, 544
Borgia, Caesar, 519. 526-7, 5*8,
789
Bosanquet, Bernard, 748
Botiuet, lacqur* Benigne, 715
Boswell, James, 273
Boyle, Robert, 557
Bradley, F. H., 4*5 *•. 43*. 604,
608,748
Brahe, Tycho, 550 i
Brahms, 785
brain, 825, 827, 836
Bramhall, John. Bishop of Derry,
Brazil, 646
Britain, 283, 386, 401, 414
British philosophy, 618; and
Continental philosophy, 668-
«?2 * o
Bnttany, 457, 458, 5^0 ^
Bromios, 38
bronze, 24, 26
Brook Farm, 705
brotherhood of man, 254, 286, 287,
288, 305
Browne, Sir Thomas, 558
Brunichild, 403
Bruno of Cologne, St., 432
Bruno of Toul. See l>eo IX
Brutus, 492, 527
Buchanan, George, 643
Buddha, 31, 782, 790-800
Buddhism, 241, 245, 249, 720. 781,
785. 793. 799. 843
Bulgaria, 469
bull, 23, 32, 350
bull-fights, 25
Burckhardt, Jakob, 522 n., 523 n.
BurRhlcy, Lord. See Cecil
Buridan's ass, 235
Burke, Edmund, 717
Burnct, John, 52, 102 ; cited, 44 *.,
86 n., 105; quoted, 41, 51, 68 n.,
84-5, 89 w., 102
Bums, C. Delisle. 411-12 *
Burt, Dr., 706
Burn, 1C. A., 549
Bury, J. B., 95. »'4 ".. 117-1*
Butler, Samuel, 310
Byron, George Gordon, lx>rd, 505,
624, 705, 708, 774-80; heroes of,
670, 777; and liberalism. 667,
774; and nationalism, 709, 779;
and Nietzsche, 777, 789; and
romanticism, 708, 746, 780;
quoted, 709, 723. 776, 777, 778
780
Byzantine culture, as transmitter,
44*
Byzantine Empire, 298, 401, 405,
441, 501 ; and Gregory the Grrst.
324, 402; and Ixxnbards, 326,
394, 408, 409; «nd papacy, 4?*-
10, 416. See a/to Eastern Em-
pire
Byzantine scholarship, and Rrnats-
870
INDEX
Caesar, Julius, 294, 295, 492, 527,
849
Cagliari, 402
Cain, 380, 777
calculus, 233, 558, 605, 619, 831,
857 . .
calendar, 444
Caliban, 537
California, 647, 674
Caliphate, 419, 441,442
Calixtus II, Pope, 452
Callicles, 99
Callinicus, exarch of Italy, 403
Calvin, John, 210, 354, 384, 544,
550, 608, 648
Calvinism, 621, 645, 715, 776
Camaldolese Order, 432
Cambrai, League of, 517
Cambyses II, 48
Campania, 311
Campion, Edmund, 643
Canada, 715
canon law, 464
Canossa, 436, 747
Cantor, Gcorg, 857-8
Cape route to India, 517, 521
capital, 209-10, 817
capitalism, 283, 383, 638, 658-9,
671, 709, 809, 811, 8x6, 817
Carbonari, 775
Carcassonne, 470
Carlyle, Thomas, 312, 624, 667,
754. 7/8-9, 80 1, 807
> Camap, 859
Cameades, 259, 260, 261, 262, 299,
377 «., 593
Carolingian renaissance, 414-15,428
Carolingians, 408, 415, 428
Cartesianism, 474, 585. S&6 «., 59°»
624, 690, 693. See alto Descartes
Carthage, 49*-. 72, 140, 207, 243,
367, 369, 440; and Rome, 260,
294, 295
Carthusians, 432, 538
Casstua, 492
categorical imperative, 737-8
CaUgoriet, The (Aristotle), 222,
439. 495
category, -ies, 222-3, 734~5
Cathari, 468-9. See alto Albigense^
cathedral schools, 461
Catherine of Aragon, 539
Catherine II, 803
'87
Catholic Church, 94, 305, 705, 715;
claim to supremacy of, 767 ; and
dictatorships, 642, 646. See also
Church
Catholic faith, in Western Empire,
353, 354* 393. 395
Catholic orthodoxy, 93, 538
Catholic philosophy, 322-510, 628;
and Aquinas, 472-3, 474, 483-4;
and Aristotle, 218, 472, 473, 474;
in eleventh century, 439; and
history, 326-7; and pseudo-
Dionysius, 424; in twelfth cen-
tury, 450-62; in thirteenth cen-
tury, 463-73 ; two periods of, 322
Catholicism, 839-40
Cato the Elder, 259-61, 301, 334,
376
causal laws in physics, 695
causality, causation, 86, 683, 744;
and Hume, 689-96, 729, 731;
and Kant, 741
cause-and-ciTect, 734
cause(s): and belief, 845, 854; and
Aristotle, 191, 205; and Francis
Bacon, 565; and Newton, 560;
and Plato, 167. See also final
cause ; First Cause ; prime causes
cave, Plato's 76, 126, 147, 152
Cebes, 160, 162
Cecrops, 288
celibacy, 156, 481 ; of clergy, 133,
430-1 , 434, 435
Celsus, 347-8
censorship, 863
Chalcedon, Council^of, 352, 388,
393
Chaldeans, 250, 275 *
Chalons, 387, 388
Chamber of Deputies (France), 664
chance, 74. 76, 82, 86, 276
change(s), 64, 65, 70, 74, 7.6, 88;
and Bergson, 833-4; denied by
Eleatics, 833 ; and Henfclitus, 62,
64, 67, 833; mathematical con-
ception of, 832, 833, 834; and
Parmenidea, 67, 70, 71, 126; and
Plato, 126, 165, 180-1. See also
flux
Chanut, 582 '
Charlemagne, 408,414-13, 747; and
culture, 327, 413, 415. &e also
Carolingian renaissance '
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Charles V, Emperor, 5x7, 520, 526,
Charles I of England, 626, 642,
643, 662
Charles II of England, 569, 626,
654
Charles II (the Bald) of France,
415, 421, 422, 423, 424
Charles VIII of France, 516, 520
Charles Mattel, 409, 414
Charles, R. H., 336 n., 337 n., 339-
40
Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, 606,
613
Charmide* (Plato), 1 1 1
Chartres, 460, 461
chastity, 397, 43°. 7$5
checks and balances, 529, 530, 577,
661-5
cheerfulness, 64, 92
chemistry, 53, 62, 65, 87, 306, 448,
557, 695, 746
Childe Harold, 776
China, 22, 243, 305. 443, 560, 646,
762, 848, 854; classics of, 456;
and Greece, 32; Nestorianism m,
388; in 600-1000, 419
Chosen People, 328, 331, 344
Christ, 304, 345. 348. 358, 3<>i -3.
370, 404, 465, 470, 49*» 5^5. 536;
and Aristotle, 472; death of,
154 «., 378; and ethics, 139, 602;
and Jews, 339, 340, 342, 343,
345. 347; nature of, 347, 387-9,
482; and Nazis, 383; and the
Pope, 461; and poverty, 363,
542 ; and sin, 339 ; »oul of, 497 n. ;
as Word or Logos, 56, 313. Ser
alto Jesus; Messiah
Christian dogma(t), 154, 200, 277,
4^2, 839
Christian ethics, in, 197, 199, 200,
*°5» 795
Christian Vnoralstu, 201
Christian philosophy: and belirf,
348; Aristotle accorded supre-
macy in, 218; development of,
500-1; dualism of, 590; Plato*
nic till thirteenth century, 125,
439
Christian Providence, top
Christian republic, within Roman
Empire, 350
Christian theology: absorbs six-
teenth century, 547; and Aqui-
nas, 438, 483-4; and arguments
for God, 608 ; and Francis Bacon,
564; and Boethius, 389; and
creation, 46, 318; develops with
Hellenization, 346; early dis-
putes in, 352; and Emperor, in
sixth century, 393 ; and evil, 170;
and German idealists, 731; of
Gospels, 346 ; has two parts, 365 ;
and heliocentric theory, 550; and
Irish culture, 422; of Jesuits,
546; and John the Scot, 423, 425,
426; and Lan franc, 437; and
mathematics, 56; and mystery
religions, 32, 34, 351; and Oc-
cam, 4Q2ff.\ and papal revenues,
522; and St. Peter Dam tan, 437;
and Plato, 34, 125, 152, 308-9,
501; and Plotinus, 308, 316;
political importance of, after
Constantine, 352-3; and Pro-
testants, 538; and Renaissance,
262, 522; and self, 688; and
science, 559
Christianity, 309, 316, 843; and
Aristotle, 190, 229; growth and
triumph of, 99, 246, 262, 302,
307, 342-3. 344", and Jews, 328-
9, 336, 33**» 342. 343. 38*, 46%,
500; and French Revolution,
792; and immortality, IOQ, 192,
252, 272-4; and individual, self, -
or ego, 253, 320, 622, 709; and
Ireland, 386, 421, 426; and
Mane, 383, 810; and Moham-
medans, 306, 440; and Nietzsche,
788, 792-6, 799; and othrr
religions, 23. 154, 230, 272, 304,
328, 499-500; and 1'lato, 121,
15*. 154, 155. 156, 3<>*-9» 3^0,
328; and Plotinui, 308-9, 317 «,,
319, 320; popular character of,
*97, 35°-*, 799; «nd Roman
Empire, 80. 241, 293, *98, 304,
328, 419; and Schopenhauer,
781-7; and Stoic Um, 280, 282,
283, 284, 287, 288, 291, 293
.Christina, Queen of Sweden, 582
Chrysippui, 280, 281
Church, 141, 397. 605, 725, 755;
aiul Aristotle, 121, 182, 475; and
872*
INDEX
Church — contd.
St. Augustine, 324, 375, 380-1,
3«4, 385, 514. 545. 767; and
Charlemagne, 413; and conflict
of emperor and pope, 492;
before dark ages, 298, 389, 304,
400 ;*n chirk ages, 386, 395, 408,
418; doctors of, 354-71; and
double truth, 564; and Eastern
Church, 464, 501 ; and Eastern
Empire, 382, 4x0, 4x6; and
feudal aristocracy, 322, 409; and
Germans, 765; government of,
349, 428; and Hobbes, 569, 57&,
577; and Immaculate Concep-
tion, 489; and Incarnation, 387-
8; and individual, 253, 365; and
Inquisition, 548, 556; and Mach-
iavclii, 527, 53 x ; and Marx, 383;
in Middle Ages, 305, 322, 326,
4x5, 428, 43». 511, 62X, 643; in
modem period, sxx-X3; and
monasticism, 395; and philo-
sophy, 326, sxx, 8x3; power of,
252, 322, 4i5-»7, 53i; property
of, 2x0, 357. 4J«, 430, 43'. 452,
468, 648; in Renaissance, 332,
5x0, 522, 523, 532; and sacrV
ments, 482; and salvation, 253,
384; and science, 512, 548, 585;
and secular monarchs, 409-' *»
415-16* 577; and Stair, 326, 355,
359, 382,408, 493, 513, 577, 593,
*>43. 725, 7&9J States of die, 129,
41 x; universal, 305; and Vul-
gate, 342. «SVe also bishops;
conciliar movement; councils of
the Church; Doctors of the
Church ; Eastern Church ; Fathers
iif the Church; papacy; Pope;
schism ; Western Church
churches, 42, 709, 7931 national,
55«>, 5**2; Protestant, 545, 7*8
Cicero, 165, 234, 268, 295, 362,
368, 487, 4«8. 534; and Stoics,
239 «., 280
circleU), 23, 233-4, 552, 553, 849
circulation of the blood, 557, 5°«»
5»3, 62 x
circumcision, 332, 335, 330, 337,
344
Cistercian Order, 432
cities, 22, 285, 453, 454* 4&8, 501,
cities — contd.
S3'; Greek, 26, 31, 43, 47, 49,
243» 285-6, 451. See also City
State ; Lombard cities
Citium, 275
citizen, 770, 771
City of God, The (St. Augustine),
^ 288, 323, 348, 372, 374-83, 515
Cxty State(s), 31, 241, 294, 295;
and Aristotle, 183, 207, 216, 813 ;
eclipse of, 241, 248, 253; and
HelJenism, 246, 247; and philo-
sophy, 253, 287, 530, 813; and
Rousseau, 721, 726
civil law, 803
Civil War (American), 662
Civil War (English), 493, 569, 573,
625-6, 627, 642, 645, 662, 702
civil war(s), 663, 702; Roman, 295,
206, 377
civilization, 20-42, 243, 285-6, 305,
419, 448, 661
Clairvaux, 460
Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde),
570
Clarke, Samuel, 90
class bias, 94
class struggle, 43, 578-9, 75'. 816
class war, 818
classes, 766
classification of philosophies, 819-
20
Claudius, 282
Clausewitz, Karl von, 778
Clazomenae, 81
Cleanthcs, 238, 277, 280, 282
Clement V, Pope, 5*3
Clement VI, Pope, 504-5 %
Clement VII, Pope, 520
Clement VII, Antipope, 505
Clement of Alexandria, 338
Cleopatra, 241, 294
clergy* 133* 323, 324. 325. 4*5, 4*8,
429. 430, 43'. 468, 550
Clcrmont, Council of, 451
Clesippus, 96
Clitomachus (or Hasdrubal), 261,
262
clocks, 557; of the Cartesians, 584,
590, 607, 693-4. See also two
clocks
Clouds, The (Aristophanes), 102,
105 H. »
873
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Clovis, 406, 409
Cloyne, 674
Chmy, 431,452,458
cogito, 586-7. 728
cognition, 425 n.
coinage, 27, 121, 254
Coleridge, S. T., 667, 704, 705, 801
Colet, John, 534
collective farming, 659
Colloqities (Erasmus), 538
Cologne, 474
colonies, 26, 139, 249
colours), 175. 176. 177. 180, 668,
675. 676. 74L 743
Columba, St., 406
Columban, St., 406
Columbus, Christopher, 282 it.,
487, 509, 537. 845, 849
comets, 230, 551, 557, 55s. 560
Commagene, 250
commerce, 24, 27, 49, 210-11, 325,
443,512,621
Commodus, 284
common sense, 276, 630, 663, 682,
842, 852, 860; and Aristotle, 184,
185, 1 86, 187, 202, 203
commons, 659
Commons, House of, 463, 509. 642,
662, 663
communism, 131, 211, 508, 539,
54*. 774
Communist Manifesto, 81 1
Communist Tarty, 130, 383, 855
community, 211. 738, 803, 855;
and individual! 33-4. 205, 754
competition, 664, 808, 817
compromise, 603
conception, and perception, 177
conciiiar movement, 492, 505, 519
concubinage, 430
conditioned reflex, 802, 861
Condorcet, 285, 749~5<>, 75 ». 804
Confession of Faith of a Smwyard
Vicar, The (Rousseau), 536, 7 1 6, j
7«7-*o, 73 «
Confeisums (St. Au{ru»tine). 364-71,
372-4, 384
Confessions (Rousseau), 711
Confucius, 31, 305, 419, 843
congenital difference*, 753
Congress, 577, 664
conic sections, 234. 240
conjunction, and causation, 691-4
Conrad, son of Emperor Henry
IV, 451
conscience, 109, 719
consciousness, 840
consensus gentium, 281
consequences, as test of beliefs, 853
consequent, in logic, 690 '
conservation: of energy, 561; of
momentum, 583
conservatism, 66 1
consistency and credibility, 637
Consolation of Philosophy (Boe-
thius), 389-92
Constance, Council of, 506, 509
Constance of Sicily, 463, 465
Constantine the Great, 298, 308,
35 i-*» 356; conversion of, 304,
323. 349. 35 «. 35*- See .also
Donation of Constantine
Constantinople, 298, 360, 410, 412;
and Arianism, 353; and Christ-
ian philosophy, 501 ; conquered
by Turks, 299, 440, 509. 5«7;
and Crusades, 456, 464, 517; and
Greek classics, 461 ; and Gregory
the Great, 401, 405; and Mo-
hammedans, 440 ; and Nestorian-
ism, 387, 388; and papacy, 408,
501 ; patriarchs of, 408, 410, 415,
416
Constantius II, 356
constitution^), 127. 129, 530;
American, 623, 629, 655, 657,
664; British, 629, 642, 662, 663; t
French, 629, 664; of Holy
Roman Empire. 408; Roman,
295; of Sparta, 116-17. 124
constitutional government, 403
contemplation, 52, 53, 104, 203,
204, 317, 838. 840
contempt. 58, 60
Continental philosophy, 568, 586,
668
continuity, 857, H6i
Contra Crltunt. See Auuintt Celsut
contra Jut ion, law of, 615
convention, and romanticism, 702,
709
co-ordinate geometry, 55, 558,
****
Copemican hypothetic 239, 282,
548; in antiquity, 236-8, 245;
and human pride, 550
INDEX
Copernicus, Nikolaus, 230, 498,
509» 512, 547-50, 566, 723; and
Aristarchus of Samoa, 153, 238;
disposes of man's cosmic im-
portance 816; and Galileo, 555,
556; and Kepler, 551, 552; and
Newt«n, 89, 557, 561
Cordova, 343. 446, 448
Corinth, 3 1 ; league of, 248
Cornford, F. M., 40, 50, 51, 60, fti,
165 n.
Corporate State, 725
corporation lawyers, 95
Corsair, Byron's, 777-8
Cortes, 577
Cos, 250
cosmic impiety, 856
cosmic justice, 45, 63, 160
cosmic strife, 46
cosmogony: of Descartes, 585; of
Plato, 125, 165-9
cosmological argument, 608, 609-
11,721,736
cosmology, in ancient philosophy,
74-5, 82, 88, 91
cosmopolitan point of view, 243
Cotes, Roger, 585
councils of the Church, 423, 436,
491,492,493, 506
Counter- Reformation, 513, 520,
544-6, 855
Couturat, Louis, 610, 614
L'owper, William, 674
creation, 30, 165-6, 170, 317-18,
425-7, 616-18; and St. Augus-
tine, 372, 373. 376; and Jews, 46,
152, 328; and theology, 46, 318
creative evolution, 821
Creator, 86, 87, 156
Crecy, 776
credibility and consistency, 637
credulity, 696, 729
Crete, 24-6, 35, 121, 261
Crimean War, 658
criminal law, 803
Critias, 101, 103
critique of knowledge, 730
Critique of Practical Reason, The
(Kant), 735. 736 ^
Cntvjut of Pure Reason, The
(Kant), 618, 667, 698, 732-6?
739-43. 7«3
Cn/o (Plato), 154
Croesus 43
Cromwell, Oliver, 545, 569, 575,
625-8, 642, 654, 659
Croton, 49
Crucifixion, 154
cruelty, 157, 278, 385, 670, 769,
794. 861
Crusades, 343, 450, 451, 455-6.
466, 468; and Albigenses, 464,
468, 470; first, 451, 455, 460;
second, 460; third, 454, 455:
fourth, 464, 517
culture: and Athens, 77-80, 100;
in Carolingian period, 414-15;
in later antiquity, 217; Mo-
hammedan, 440-9; and Roman
Empire, 294-307
Cumont, 302 n.t 377 n., 499 n.
cycle of fire, 277
Cymbeline, 544
Cynics, -ism, in. 253-6, 275, 276,
300, 622
Cyprian, St., 204
Cyril of Alexandria, St., 387-8, 392
Cyrus, 31,43. 330, 525
d'Ailly, 495 n.
daimon, 75, 109, 277, 288
Damascus, 442
Damasus 1 (St.), Pope, 356, 360,
361
Damian, St. Peter, 430, 432, 434,
437
damnation, 338, 37§. 3?i, 3?4. 3^5,
560, 594; of unbaptized infants,
384, 3&5
Danes, 326, 415, 419,
Daniel, 337 •
Dante, 192, 230, 309, 390, 455. 492,
527
Damon, 703
Danube, 294, 3°3
Danzig, 781
Daphnae, 43 »
Darius I, 31, 47, 4?» 77. 244
dark ages, 80, 325-6, 354, 385, 4x8.
448 ; papacy in, 408-20
Darwin, Charles, 635, 649, 667,
704, 752-3. 807-8
Darwin, Erasmus, 752
David, 329. 359. 575
David of Dinant, 477
day, 23
875
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
De Amtna (Aristotle), 192, 444, 475
De Caelo (Aristotle), 153, 235 n.
De Emendation* (Aristotle), 439
De rEsprit (Helvttius), 748
De Monarchic (Dante), 492
De Principiis (Origen), 346
De Tribus Impostoribus, 465
death penalty, 803
Decalogue, 328
Decamnichus, 207
Declaration of Independence, 55,
650 n.
"Declaration des droits de 1'hom-
mc," 803
Decline and Fall of tfte Roman
Empire, see Gibbon
deduction, 823, 857 ; and Aristotle's
logic, 2x9-23 ;and Francis Bacon,
564, 567; in Continental philo-
sophy! 668 ; in geometry, 44. 234 ;
Greek, 21 »., 57-8, 79. 257, 292 ;
in mathematics, 48, 858
Delos, 248
Delphi, 6 1, 1 06
Democedes of Croton, 49
democracy, 135, 217, 540, 569, 593,
764; and Aristotle, 211-12, 213;
Athenian, 79t 94-5. 101. 103,
1 08, 125, 216; and Bentham, 750,
805 ; and churches, 492, 793 ; and
ethics, 738, 706, 807 ; Greek, 27,
72, 92, 213 ; and James, 839 ; and
Kant, 667, 73 1 , 738 ; and liberal-
ism, 621, 631; and Ix>ckc, 654;
in Middle A#es, 325, 467, 493,
502,509, 5 17; modem, 200, 511,
646, 756 ; reasons for, ! 28, 798-9 ;
- in Rome, 295, 296, 504; and
Rousseau, 713. 716, 721, 726-7;
and Sparta, 117/1., 120
Democritus, 84-6, 90, 91-3, 97,
227, 232, 277, 565, 789; and
Am tot k, 182, 229; and Bpi-
curuft, 164, 266, 269 ; and science,
55&. 857; ani space, 90, 561
demon(s), demonology, 338, 377
Descartes, Rene*, 56, 292, 494. $69,
58o-9«. 593. 600. 623, 7»*;
cogtto of, 374, 586-7; and to-
oatinate geometry, 55, 558, 583;
determinism of, 590; and God,
43^. 5*9. 593. 6°*. fcoK* 6°9. 6*9.
• 718, 814, 863; influence of, 568.
Descartes, Rene* — contd.
5*0, 589, 593, 618, 666. 667, 813 ;
and Jesuits, 546, 580, 581 ; and
Locke, 628, 633, 669; method of
(Cartesian doubt), 585, 589; and
science, 547, 583. 5&». 59* ; and
space, 90; and subjectivism, 513,
586, 728, 730; and substance,
594, 606, 614; and theory of
knowledge, 586-8, 589, 634
descriptions, theory of, 859
Dcsiderius, bishop of V'iennc, 404
design, 736
desire, 806-7, 819
Destiny, 29, 279
determinism, 319, 571, 572, 616;
and atomisU, 86; and Ikrgson,
821 , 827 ; and Cartesian ism .JSQO ;
in psychology, 802 ; and Spinoza,
593. 594. 597 ; a»d Stoicism, 276,
280. 289-90
Deutero- Isaiah, 332-3
Devonshire. 2nd Karl of (Xx>rd
Hard wick), 569
Dewey, John. 787, 844, &47 56
I>c Witts, the, 592
Diabolic Vision. 780
dialectic method. 111-13, '4iX. 439.
45^. 45^. 75«-*x>» 702, 815. hid,
.
dhlecUcal
3^3,
,
Diana of the i:phc»tan*, 2\
dictator. -&hip&, 52, 217, 646, 727
Dietrich von licrn (Thi-odum )
3s6
differential ctjuaiiorm, o'
(JuKtuiun I », V; >
51
l)\<> C'a^iiu*. 283
biockuan, 298, 30^, 3X6
Diodoru* Sicului, 49, 250
I)i<H?cneH, 254-5, 37<j
l)ioj?vritfc LacrtiuA, 85, 263, 266,
27*), 292 «,
iJiognetus, 288
I) ton vtm* tlte Areopagitr, 424-7
Dionysius tlie Younger, t \runt of
Syracuse, 126, 144
Dionysodorus, </>
^Dtonytus, 32-41, 50, 62
Dittwn df la Mttlfsde (Descartes),
876
INDEX
Discourse on Inequality (Rousseau),
7I4-I5
Discourses (Epictetus), 264 n.
Discourses (MachiaveIJi), 526, 527-
.9.789
disjunction, 281
Dispersion, >34 1
distance, 90
distribution, 813
divination, 23, 279 •
Divine Comedy (Dante), 492. AW
also Paradiso
Divine Intellect or Mind. 313, 314
divine right: of kings, 621, 627,
642-7. 653-4, 716, 726; of
majorities, 657
division of powers, 724
divorces, 415. 45 «
Docetics, 345
Doctors of the Church, 354-71
dogma(s), -tism, 41 57. 266, 512,
630-1, 863
Dominic, St., 470, 472-3
Dominican Order, 470, 472-3, 474.
486, 504
Dornitian, Emperor, 283. 284
Don Juan ( Uyron j, 779
Donation of Constantino, 410-11.
450, 5°**, 509. 5*9
Donatiftt horesv, 371
Dorian lurmonies, 131
ftonans 25, 20, 114, itS
Dostoevsky, F. M., 703. 795
double truth, 475, s<>4
doubt, 257, 309. 5'S5~6. 5^9
drama, 131
dreainU), 172, 823
drugs, 290
Dryden, John, 628
dualism, 156, 241. 252, 323. 469.
500, 590, 820
Duns Scotus, John, 473. 486, 489-
90, 491.495
duration, 823-4, 826, 832, 834-5
duty, 707. 737-8, 768
dynamic pleasures, 267
dynamics, 553, 557
618
Earty Greek Philosophy (Hurnet),
41,44*., 51 *.. 52 . '
earth, 13, 62 ; and centre of uni-
verse, 229, 235, 280, 559; as
earth— contd.
element, 46, 59, 62, 63, 74, 166,
167, 229, 230, 277; in Greek
astronomy, 47, 153, 165-8, 229,
235-9; motions of, 229, 235-7,
547-50, 556, 562, 585; and
Newton, 55^-7, 55^-9
East, 241, 274, 407 ; and Greece, 41,
72, 307, 342; and Rome, 294,
301, 303-4, 342. See also Eastern
Empire ; Far East
East India Company, 621, 804
Easter, 406, 414, 500
Eastern Church, 349, 384, 402, 404,
410, 416, 430, 464, 521
Eastern Empire, 299, 386, 424, 464,
517; and Arabs, 306, 326, 440;
and Church, 382, 408; fall of,
440; heresies in, 353, 388; and
papacy, 304, 401, 405, 410, 416;
and Rome, 412, 417-18. See also
Byzantine Umpire ; Constanti-
nople
Ebert, Friedrich, 817
Ecclesiasticus, 333-4
F.cgbert, archbishop of York, 414
Kckhard, Johannes, 784
eclipses, 21, 24, 44, 73. 82, 235,
236, 250
economics, 285, 443, 646, 746, 750-
*• 753* 808, &°9» $IO> 8n, 848;
and intellectual goods, 160; and
Ix>cke, 660-1, 664-5; and war,
741
ecstasy, 41. 55. 3"4
Eddington, Sir Arthur, 269 n., 682
Kddy, Mrs., 49 •
Edessa, 444 •
I Edilbcrt, 406
| Edinburgh, 685
education, 94. 3&6» 4*8, 546, 753;
und Aristotle, 213, 216; in
modem times, 217, 621, 664,
714, 716, 749, 750, 755.&H, **47;
and Plato, 126, ft9, 130-1, 133-
4, 144, 152; in Sparta, 115, 119,
122-3
Edward 1, 502
Edward III, 492, 494
Edward JV, 509, 577. 645
Edward VIII, 415
ego, -ism, 680, 688, 710, 745. &>7>
824 •
1877
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
„ pt, iao, 334, 348, 353, 604; and
Alexander, 241, 242, 244* 246,
302 ; and Aristotle, 207, 2 14 ; and
astronomy, 235; civilization of,
21, 22, 24; and Crete, 24-5. 35 J
and. geometry, 44, 54, 231;
government of, 27, 136, 644, 798 ;
Greek philosophers in, 44, 49,
84, 231, 311; and Greek world,
35. 43. 47, 48, 49, m. 231, 246,
247, 302; Jews in, 331; and
Mohammedans, 306, 440; mon-
asticism in, 395-6; Monophy-
sites in, 389, 440 ; priests in, 428,
499; religion of, 22, 23; and
Rome, 241, 294; writing in, 22,
27-8. See also Alexandria
Einstein, Albert, 49, 90. 239, 561,
860,862
Elagabalus. Ste Heliogsbalus
EIea,67
EJeatic school, 833
elect, election, 328, 376, 381, 383,
3^4, 482
electrons, 66
elements, 46. 47. <>2, 74, 76, 82,
1 66, 167, 1 68, 169, 170, 229, 230,
276. See also air; earth; tire;
water
Eleusinian mysteries, 29, 38, 40
Eleusis, 38
Elias, Brother, 472
Eli*, 256
Elisha, 592
elixir of life, 62
Elizabeth, Princess, 582
Elizabeth, Queen, 252, 539. 545>643
t'lipses, 234. 55«. 552, 561
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 705
Emeu, 303
EmiU (Rousseau), 716, 718, 731
Empedocle*, 62, 72-6. 81, 82, 85,
87, 135, 228, 326
Empero^ 356, 388, 389, 502, 530;
conflict of odpc and, 325, 4o£~9»
41$, 416, 428, 432-6, 450, 463-7.
491-2; interdependence of pope
and, 323, 412-13, 492. See aJto
Eastern Empire; Holy Roman
Empire; papacy; pope; Roman
Empire ; Western Empire
empirical knowledge, 53. 157, 161-
« 2. 171,281,733,744,860
8
empiricism, empirical philosophy,
158, 180, 568, 618, 635, 693, 758.
819, 857 ; and Berkeley, 678, 679,
685; and Greeks, 39, 45; and
James, 840-2; and Hume, 685;
and Kant, 667, 740, 741, 744;
and Locke, 628, 633-14; and
logic, 89, 679, 860; British, 586,
698, 728-30, 748, 812, 814;
tnodem, 862; and science,
112-13, 699, 743. 857; social,
817
Enchiridion miVito Christian* (Eras-
mus), 537
encyclopaedists, 623
end and means, 201-2, 526, 530-1,
770-1
endogamy, 708
endurance, 285
Endymion, 303
Engels, Friedrich, 754. #10. 817
England, 130, 252, 274 386, 423,
457, 5°a, 545. 569J aristocracy
in, 79, 646 ; during barbarian in*
vasions, 421-2; checks and bal-
ances in, 661-4; and Church.
4*5. 45* . 545; ci*»* »""££** ">>
751; conversion of, 413-14;
criminal law of, 803; in dark
ages, 326, 414; and Descartei,
581 ; and divine right, 644-5 ; m
eighteenth century, 121. 30!;
and French revolutionary philo-
sopher*, 750; and freedom, 660:
French wars with, 503; gentle
man in, 130; and Inquisition, 470;
Irish miftftjonarieft m. 406; Jew*
'"• 455; landholdtng in. 658-9;
and liberalism, 121, 620, 621-3;
and Mane, 810, 817; Methodism
in, 40, 272; monarchy in. 325,
4t3. 577, 645 ; Normans in. 4*K;
and papacy, 464, 402, 501, 505.
508, 509; political philosophy in,
629; and prudence. 703; public
schools 01, 1141.; rationalistic
revolt in, 746; Reformation m,
4 5; and Renaissance, 533, 544;
and revolution, 628 ; and roman-
ticism, 703 ; and Rome, 294, 4 » 3*
* 14, 419; in seventeenth crntury.
579. S*«. 593. 625. 645, 703:
Victorian age in. 95 ; uniwrsitiet
8l
INDEX
England — contd.
in, 461; and wealth in four-
teenth century, 502
England, Bank of, 621, 627
England, Church of, 539, 625, 645
Enneads (Plotinus), 311-20, 443
em realMmdm, 736
cntekchy, 590
enthusiasm, 34, 37. 184, 729
environment, 820, 852, 854, 855^6
envy, 157
Ephesians, 23, 60
Ephesua, 23, 59, 173. 388, 396, 4<H
Epictetus, 264 «., 276, 277, 282,
283, 284, 285, 286-8, 290, 300
Epicureanism, 192, 241, 253, 263-
74, 275. 299. 300, 3", 320, 390,
55&
Epicurus, 84, 86, 263-74, 278, 411,
789; and utilitarians, 803, 804
epicycles, 552
Enimenidcs, 346
episcopate, 415-17. See aUo bishops
cpistemoloiry. 729, 739, 743. 788.
See also theory of knowledge
equality. 160, 16 1 ; of nun, in
ancient philosophy, 136, 196,
2ii. 213, 293; of man, in modern
philosophy, 205, 572, 621, 722,
753> 75<>. 793. 803; of women,
-conUL
Erasmus, 533-8, 544
Eranianisrn, 382
^KrastuH. 6V/ Ltiber
hratosthcnes, 239. 246
Erigena, Johannes Scotus. See
John the Scot
Erinyes, 63
Krc*. 37
error(s), 849 ; in Aristotle, 184, 220-
i, 223-5; »n Pbtonic theory of
ideas, 148
eschatology, 382-3
Kssaii pMosophiqutt (Descartes),
Essay Contenting Human Under*
standing (Locke), 628, 630 #
Essay on Man (Pope), 390
Rtsay on Mtraclts (Hume), 685
Essays on Government (Locke), 657
Essence, 148, 166, 167, 168, 317.
425, 488, 489. 609, 635; »nd
Aquinas, 476, 477, 47$. 48»;
and Aristotle, 188-9, 191. 192,
223-5
essences, 158, 160, 162
Essenes, 334 n.
Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of,
563
Este family, 605
Esthonia, 659
eternity, 56, 65, 166, 316, 786, 848
ethic(s), 99, 136, 137-8, 326, 756,
805-6, 863 ; and Aquinas, 480-2 ;
aristocratic, 796; and Aristotle,
*53. 195-206, 216; and Bentham,
805; Christian, in, 320; con-
templative ideal in, 53; and
differences between Continental
and Bridsh philosophy, 669-70;
and Epicurus, 268 ; and good of
community, 738; Greek, 52-3,
6 1, 82, 92, in, 320; in Hellen-
istic world, 250; and Helvetjus,
749; and James, 842-3; Jewish,
339-40; and Kant, 291, 736-8;
and Locke, 637-41, 651; and
Marx, 816; and More, 542; and
Nietzsche, 61, 789-9*. 795-7,
799-800; "noble,** 670; and
Plato, 126, 154, 377; romantic,
708; and Rousseau, 71 3 ./f.; and
Schopenhauer, 783-5, 788; and
Socrates, 93, in, 126; and
Spinoza, 592, 593^-; and Stoic-
ism, 275, 281, 289-92; and
utilitarians, 730, 807
Ethics (Spinoza), S92ff-> 605
Etna, 72
Eton, 245 n.
Euclid, 55, 169, 232, 233-4, 246,
257. 269, 460, 487. 595, 639. 740,
743
Eudoxus, 232-3
Eugene, Prince, 606
Eugenius IV, Pope,^o6, 567, 519
Eugenius, usurper in Roman Em-
pire. 357
eunuchs, 347
Euripides, 33, 36, 37, 38, 77, 81
loo, 107, 207, 568
Eustochium, 361-2
Evagrius, 393
Evans, Sir Arthur, 24, 25
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Eve, 344, 379, 384, 578
events, 860, 86 1
evidence, 161, 489
evil, 154, 169, 262, 315, 319, 369,
370, 426, 597 ; and Aquinas, 479.
480, 481 ; and Boethiu*, 390 ; and
Gnosticism, 315; and Leibniz,
612, 613; and Persian dualism,
500; Zproastrian and Mani-
chsean view of, 345
evolution, 649, 752-4 ; and Bergson,
820-1; and Dewey, 848; in
Godhead, 64; in Greek philo-
sophy, 46, 73. 189. 191 ; of ideas,
667 ; and Locke 657 ; and politics,
532
excess, 39
exclusiveness, 331
executive, 655, 661-4, 724, 726
exhaustion, 233
existence, 814, 859; and Aquinas,
476-7, 484; and Kant, 734, 735 '.
and Leibniz, 609. 617; and
Locke, 728; and Plato, 176-7;
and Socrates, 157; struggle for,
75*. 753, 808
experience, 161, 633-4, 678, 698,
600-700, 732. 733. 740, 74', &4«-
2,860
experiment, 158, 488, 853
extension, 594
extinction, 784
"Eye of Bel," 250
Ezekiel, 330, 331
Ezra, 330, 331, 341
Ezzelino da Romano, 778
*
«fact(s), 113, 138, 176,549.601,733,
853, 856
faith and works, 546
falling bodies, 549, 553*4, 55
False Decretals, 411
family, 132-3, 197, 208, 211
Far Ease, 243. 546
Farfa, 43* *
Faaci&m, 75^ 798, 813, 818
fate, JM, 134, 250, 377, «55
.Fathcff God the, 352, 425, 457
Fathers of the Church. 154, 283, {
922, 328^., 346, 426, 474 j
Faustina, 284 1
Fauatua, 368-9 1
3*7 I
feeling, 819, 863
feminism, 33, 37
Ferdinand II, of Spain, 520, 577
Ferrara, Council of, 501, 507,
521
fertility cults, 23, 29, 32
"Fete de 1'Etre Supreme-" 718
feudal aristocracy, 322, 324. 409,
509. 577
feudalism, 324, 327, 35611., 418,
430,436,450.454. 5»4. 816
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas, 812 n.
few, the, 205, 756, 790
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 512, 624,
730, 744-5. 778, 782, 7«3. 856;
influence of, 667, 730. 748, 801,
818; and subjectivism 514. 73O,
744-5
Fielding, Henry, 704
Fifth Monarchy Men, 382
Kilmer, bir Robert, 642-7, 653
filial cause, 86
Firdousi, 444
fire, 47. 82, 88, 91. 167-^, "9, 230,
276, 277, 279 ; as element, 46, 62.
74; and Herecliius, 61-4, 66,
276; and Pythagoras, 236, 237;
scientific conception of, 67
First Cause, 190, 477, 609, 6to
Fine World War. 817, 848
fittest, survival of the, 73. 228, 7|2,
753. 808
fit* Stage! of Gtftk /?r/f£i<m
(Murray), 30 «., 25011., 1S4 it^
264 n.
Flanders, 502, 503
flesh and spirit, 323
Florence. 505, 516, 517, 518, 525,
797
Florentine Academy, 521
Hux, 59. 62, 63-5, 173^4. «&> •*«
ativ change
force, 239, 556-7, 560-1; centri-
fugal, 73 ; Locke on use of, 663
Ford cars, 660
form(s), 489; and Arototk, 185,
187-9, 192, 193. ***, 3*7. 47«;
in Platook theory of idea*, 143
fortune, 247, 250
Foucsuh, J. B L., 562
Foulque*, Guy de, 486
Fountains Abbey, 432
France, 252, 301, 386, 463, 627.
88*
INDEX
France— contd.
701, 730, 779; and Albigenses,
464, 468, 470; and Arabs, 326;
British empiricist philosophy in,
748 ; and Byron, 779 ; and checks
and balances, 664; and Chris-
tianity* 4ib; and Church, 451,
462; feudal disorders in, 417;
and Germany, 747, 765, 779;
and Inquisition, 470; and Itafy,
516, 520, 528; landholding in,
658; and liberalism, 121, 623-4;
and I-ocke, 624, 629, 666; and
Marx, 810, 81 1 ; and monarchy,
325. 4»3. 576, 577; and Nor-
mans, 415, 419, 428; and papacy,
3*5. 492. 501, 502-3, 505, 506,
50$; and Pelagian heresy, 384;
and prudence, 702-3; and Re-
naissance, 520, 533; and roman-
ticism, 705 ; and Home, 294, 305 ;
and Rousseau, 703, 712-13, 716,
720, 721, 727; and Sicily and
Naples, 520; in sixth century,
401; and State, 578; in tenth
century, 417; Visigoths and
Franks in, 386; and wars with
England, 494
Francis I, Emperor, Ho 3
Francis I of France, 520
I'^ancis of A**isi, St., 51, 463, 466,
470-2. 473, 502
Franciscan Order, 447. 470-3, 504
^Franciscan schoolmen, 486-98
rrankewUtn (Mary Shelley), 705-7
Franklin, Benjamin, 55 «., 271
Franks, 353, 386, 394> 403. 404.
406,408, 409, 412
Frederick 1 (Barbaras^), 452, 453.
454. 463. 747, 765
Frederick II, Emperor, 448, 463,
464-8, 516, 520
Frederick II of Prussia, 7*7. 747.
74*, 765
free press, 764
free will, 269, 318, 319, 34$, 54$,
571. 572, 590; and St. Augustine,
J-4; »nd Bcrgson, 821,
freedom, 92 n.t 121, 296, 581, 593,
666, 723, 776, 827, 828; and
Hegel, 723, 763-4, 767, 768; and
Kant, 731, 735, 736; and Stoics,
278, 293
Freedom and Organization (Russell),
801 n.
Frege, 858
French Revolution, 577, 658, 664,
67i, 703, 706, 779, 798,803 ;Con-
clorcet on principles- of, 750; and
democracy, 217, 511 ; and Kant,
731; and liberalism, 621, 623;
and Nietzsche, 790, 793; and
philosophy, 665, 667, 74*. 748-9,
792; and rights of man, 804;
and Rousseau, 727
friendship, 202, 206, 264, 268, 278,
390
Frisia. 414
From Religion to Philosophy (Corn-
ford), 40, 51, 60
From 7Vw/u to Plato (Burnet),
85 n., 102, 105
Fulbert, 458
Fulda, 414
future life, 350, 736
Galatians, 247, 249; Epistle to the,
361, 380/1,
Galen, 445 . 448, 537
Galileo, 112, 226, 547, 549, 553-7,
752 ; and Aristotle, 226, 230; and
Copemican theory, 512; and
Descartes, 581; and Hobbes,
568, 569, 571 ; and Newton, 230;
and projectiles, 2/0, 234; and
religious prejudices, 238, 368*
548, 623, 723 ; and science, 226,
547, 562; and truth, 139; and
war, 5x2
Gall, St., 414
Gallienus, 311
Gama, Vasco da, 509, 517*
Gandhi, 365 n.
Gandia, Duke of, 519
Garden of Eden, 530
Garigliano, 417
gases, 86
827; and Utbni*, 607, 612; and «.... ,v ,
Luther, 538; and scholastics, Cr.issendi, Pierre, 374, 605
»35. 423, 4a6, 489; «nd Spinoza. *} Gaul, 49, '39, 3O5,j|6o; 394, 390,
594 ; and Stoics. 289-90 ' ""
frte voUtions, 735 s
•881
404, 422; invasions of, 386, 387,
421
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Gauls, 249, 377
Geiger, George Raymond, 854
general and particular concepts, 830
general law, 737
general will, 722, 723, 724, 7*5* 764
Generis, 338, 372, 4*6, 487, 5^5. 644
Geneva, 645, 711, 715, 716, 720
721
Genoa, 454. 465, 5*6
Genseric, 778
gentiles, 332, 333, 338, 339, 340,
341, 344
gentleman, 52-3, 130, 216-17, 839
genus, 496
geography, 158, 487, 732
geology, 74
geometry, 689, 714, 743. 857; and
astronomy, 239; and Bergson,
821, 823; and Descartes, 580,
583, 586; and Greeks, 21 «., 44,
54-5. 57-8, 112, 161, 231-5, 315 ;
and Hobbes, 570, 571 ; and
Kant, 733, 734, 74<>. 743; *nd
Leibniz, 615; non-Euclidean,
75 9*. and Pb to, 55, 126, 146, 152, I
*53» 169. See also co-ordinate
geometry ; Euclid
George I, 605
George III, 717
Gcrbert. See Sylvester II, Pope
German philosophy, 202, 618, 667,
698,744-5.746-7,748,757.801;
idealist, 629, 707, 73<>. 746
German invasions, 298, 209, 30$,
355, 3&6, 394. 4*2
Germanic kingdoms, 386
Germany, 1^7, 252, 523, 604 646,
* 776, 810; Anabaptists in, 545;
and Charlemagne, 408, 412,413;
and Church, 322, 54$ ; conflict*
with papacy, 464, 492 ; converted,
414; dictatorship in, 727; feudal
principles in, 450; and Hegel,
746-8? 764. #5, 766 ; and Humr,
730; international position of,
747; intellectual predominance
?f. 746-7; investiture struggle :
' in, 436-7; tnd Italy, 45*. 465; j
Jews in, 455; king of, as em-
ptror, 494; Itndholdtng in, 658; !
MachiavelU on, 529; and Man, f
811, 817; and Midintao), 304; {
* and Napoleon, 747, 778; and 1
882*
•flat
Germany-
nationalism, 745, 747, 748; new
society created in, 532; and
Plutarch, 121 ; power of govern-
ment in, 577 ; and prudence, 702 ;
and Nietzsche, 791 ; and Re-
formation, 544; and Renaissance,
533; and romanticism, 121, 704,
752, 801; and Rome, 305; and
Sicily, 465. See also Holy Roman
Empire ; Prussia
Gerson, Jean de, 495 «•. 5°5. 534
Geulincx, Arnold, 583-4, 590
Ghibellines, 465, 472, 492, 501,
5««. 765,776, 778
Gibbon, Edward, 284, 303 w.,
311 «., 349 a., 351, 388, 390, 393.
397 ».
Gilbert, William, 557. 566
Gilbert de la Porrec, 460
Girondins, 623
gladiators, 285
globe, 166
Gnosticism, 151, 2$2. 315, 316,
3«K. 344. 345. 469, 500
goat, 32
God, 59, 60. 345, 434. 542, 564,
720, 795; and St. Ambrose, 356.
357, 35H;and St, Anselm. 437-8;
and Aquinas, 447, 476 Ho, 482,
484; arguments for and profit
of, 56, 476, 608-12, 633, 669,
813, 863; and Aristotle, 180-92.
104, 202-3, 214, 3«*. 4/6, 47T**
478, 761 ; and St. Augustine. 368,
370, 3*4 ; and Averrtx-*, 447 ; and
Brntham, 638, 804; and Ber-
keley, 513, 669, 673, 729; and
Bucthsuft, 300, 391 ; and Caesar,
326; and l>e§ainr», 584. 586,
589, 606, 669 ; and HOCK! and bud,
138, 792-3; and Kovrmn»ent,
575. 643. 653; ami llrgrl. 761;
and Htraclitut, 60, 63 ; and
James, 839, 845, 846; and Jews,
165, 3»*. 33*. 365. 44«; and
John the Scot, 425-6, 478; and
Kant, 670, 736; and i^ibnu,
606-13, 614, 615, 616-17, 618;
and Locke, 630, 633, 639*40,
728; and man, 754. 776, 79»-3»
855; and myaticft, 373, 707,
785; and Nrwton, 559, 560,
INDEX
God—contd.
585; and Nietzsche, 777,
792-3, 798; of Old and New
Testaments, 469, 608; and Ori-
gen, 346-8 ; and Orphism, 37, 39,
52; and Parmenides, 67, 150;
and permanence, 64; and Plato,
130, 133. «52, 1*5-70, 313, 377,
863 ; and Platonic ideas, 143, 146,
149, 151, 1 52; and Plotinus, 312*
313; and Pythagoras, 51,56; and
Reformation, 545 ; and Rousseau,
717-20; and Sceptics, 262; and
Schopenhauer, 783, 785, 786;
and science, 559-60; and Soc-
rates, too, 107, 108, loo, 155;
and soul, 366, 545 ; and Spinoza,
144.^92, 595-6oo, 606, 769; and
Stoics, 276, 277, 279, 280, 281,
286-00, 314; thoughts of, 55,
848 ; and Voltaire, 715 ; and \Vy-
clirlc, 507. See also Creator;
One ; pantheism ; Trinity
gcxi(s): and Alexander, 242; in
Bacchic ritual, 34; and Empe-
doclcs, 72, 75, 76; and Epicurus,
i6<>, 270 ; and Greeks, 37, 44, 46,
5*>. 61, 97, 227, 236, 319; and
Homer, 29, 130; and Jews, 330-
it 338; and Plato, 130, 133, 165-
?o ; of Home, 301 ; and Socrates,
105, 107, 163, 164; and Stoics,
277, 279. See alto Olympian gods
Goethe, 252, 599. 747. 778
XTbg and Magog, 381
gold, 62, 132, 133, 306
golden age, 74, 75. 284
golden mean, 183, 196, 204, 212
good, -ness, 63, 156, 199, 201, 496,
714, 738, 700; and Aristotle, 195.
200, 201, 203; and cynics, 255;
M*riichjeiun view of, 345; in
Persian dualism, 499; *"<* Plttl0'
126, 138-9, 146, 151-3; and
Plotinus, 308, 312; standards of,
.,5*. 138
Cordian 111, 311
Gorgias, 98, 256
f'Orfjai (Plato), 99
CiospcU, 309, 339, 340, 348, 7*4-
Set alto Synoptic Gospels
Gotha, 360, 363; conversion of,
405 ; invasions of, 389. 4*9. 42' *>
Goths— contcL
and Rome, 353, 375, 377, 386-7,
^39*
Gottingen, 705, 782
Gottschalk, 423
government, 23, 211-12, 302, 349,
653. 738, 764, 805. See also
politics; State
Gracchi, the, 295, 361
grammar, 281
Gratian, 355, 356
gravitation, 230, 239, 585, 621, 666
Great Britain, 757, 801
Great Fire, 570
great man, 777, 789, 799
Great Mother, 23, 25 n.t 36, 350
Great Schism, 325, 493, 505-6, 5<>8
"greatest happiness of the greatest
number," 750, 796, 801, 802
Greece, Greekfs), i2c, 210, 215,
782 ; and Alexander, 242 ff.t 304 ;
and Arabs, 299, 443-4 ; and Asia
Minor, 23, 77, 119, 246; astro-
nomy in, 227, 229, 231-40, 548;
attitudes of, toward the world,
170, 329, 855; and barbarians,
242-3, 275, 363 ; cities of, 47, 72,
78, 79, 121, 241, 243, 246, 247,
249, 295 ; civilization and culture
of, 21-42, 77-8o, 117, 121, 216-
17. 243, 299, 305. 334, 346;
colonists of, 23, 248, 249 ; decline
of, 296; and democracy, 72, 212;
and Egypt, 35, 43. 235; and
ethics, in, 200-1; genius of,
theoretical, 231^.; and Jews,
246, 334, 342, 344;*™* Hellen-
ism, 241, 247, 248, 250, 275 ; and%
logic, 222, 257, 292; and low of
static perfection, 192 ; and mathe-
matics, 54-5* *53J nQt addicted
to moderation, 67; not wholly
serene, 37-9; present-day atti-
tudes toward, 57, 820; and
Persia, 31, 77 J an* physics, 226-
7 ; and politics, 52, 207, 208, 217,
295, 524, 529; religion of, 40-2,
44, 249, 428, 499. 500; and.
Renaissance, 525, 530; revolu-
tions in, 213, 241, 294 ff.\ a/id
science, 87, 153* 239^-, 763;
and slavery, 208-9, 215, 243;
and Sparta, 117-18; three periods,
«83
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Greece, Greek(s)— cotad.
of, 241; tragedy in, 37, 77; *nd
the West, 299, 419; women in,
115-16, 130. See also Hellenic
world ; Hellenism
Greek Atomistt and Epicurus, The
(Bailey), »4 «•, 86 «., 89 «., 91 w.,
263 it., 267 n., 268 n.
Greek Church, 380, 408, 482, 501,
507. See also Eastern Church
Greek Emperor, 408, 409, 454
Greek Fathers, 426
Greek language, 25, 153, 245, 306,
366, 537-8, 788; and Alexander,
1 20 ; and Arabs, 306 ; and biblical
books, 333, 338, 341, 534~5 ; «*<*
Crusades, 456; and Eastern
Empire, 298, 299; and Erasmus,
534-7; «nd Gregory the Great, _ . .
401, 402; in Ireland, 421-2; and I Cfrossctcste, Robert, 488
Jews, 343; and John the Scot, | Grotius, Hugo, 654
Greek philosophy— contd.
after Democrirus, 93. See also
Hellenistic philosophy
Green, T. H., 629
Gregory I (the Great— St.), Pope,
199, 3*4. 354, 3^9, 400-7, 414,
417, 422, 435; ami St Benedict,
398-400; and growth of papal
power, 395, 501 ; period follow-
ing, 408
Gregory H (St.), Pope, 414
Gregory HI (St.), Pope, 410
Gregory VI, Pope, 432-3. 435
Gregory VII (St.), Pope, 429, 432,
435-7, 45L 501 See also Hildc-
brand
Gregory IX, Pope, 466, 467, 470,
47«. 501
Gregory XI, Pope, 505, $o&
421, 424; in Sicily, 465; and
translations, 333, 341. 424* 456,
461, 475, 486, 535; in Western
Empire, 301, 302
Greek Mathematics (Heath t, 54 n.,
85 n., 169 ft., 232 it., 238 n.
Greek Philosophers, The (Benn),
18111., 25411., 3031*.
Greek philosophy, 31; and anim-
ism, 558 ; and Arabs, 306, 447*8 ;
and Aristotle, 182,222,253,813;
in Athens, 393 ; atomism avoids
faults of, 85; and barbarians,
499-500; and change, 88; and
Christianity, 329, 346, 34**; and
Church, 501 ; and creation, 373 ;
and Dionysus worship, 32; and
ethics, 200-1, 204; and future
life, 350; and hypotheses, 549;
and individualism, 622; and
justice, 45» »35, »><; «><* land-
owning, 210; and leisure, 127;
and t mathematics, 55, 211 jff.,
247; and <nediev*J synthcti*,
499; and Nietzsche, 788; ob-
scurantist bias in, 83 ; and Per-
sians, 422; and Plato, 64, 98;
and politics, 253; religions, 34,
56 ; scientific, 14, 74 ; and senses,
256; and Sophists' detachment, <
9$ ;and Sparta, i M;*nd Stoicism.
275; ««J time, 17J~4I vitiated
guardian angel,
guardians, in Plato's Republic, 129,
tj», 132, 134. «47, 15*. 204
Guelfo, 465, 472, 501, 518
Gucrtcke, Otto von, 557
Cfuicciardtnt. FraiccMu. 522
Cjuicci-ili, Countess, 779
Gut*;, house of, 577
gunpowder, 4>>S, 509
Habeas Corpuft Act, 626
habit, 195, 6&o, 692, Hij, 825, 841
ll*<ie», 41, 61, 62
Hadrian I <St.i. Pop*. 412 ^*
lUdrum IV, Pope, 453. 454 a.. 461
Had run, Km per or, 300
Hague, 'i*he, 5*12, Nx>
Halicarruiftcut. 78
Hallcy, Edmund, 55*. *6o
Hamburg, 7#i, 7 Ha
Hamilton, Sir Wiiitum, Hoi
HimJct, 6#-9* ' <X». 6ov
Hamm, Stephen, 557
Hammurabi, 23
handicraft produi lion, 658
Hannibal, 294
Hanover 60 $
Hanse umm. 502
happtnrat, 79. 310, 315, 316, 670.
7 jo, 806-7; Mid Ansiodc, 201,
203*4, 206, 21 a; and Bemhani,
*>S< 750, 79<», 80$ ; and Buethiut.
884.
INDEX
happi ness — contd.
390; and Epicureans, 267, 268;
and James, 846; and Kant, 736;
and Locke, 637-8; and Mnrx,
816; and Schopenhauer, 784;
and Stoics, 277, 284, 287. See
also grctftesf happiness
Hardxvick, Lord. See Devonshire,
Earl of
Harrison, Jane E., 32 «., 40, 272 »
Hartley, David, 801, 802
Harun al Rash id, 234, 442
Harvey, William, 557, 566, 583
Hnsdrubal. See Clitomachus
Hasidim, 334, 33f». 33^, 34°
llasmoncans. .SW Maccalxtj,
hate, 774
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 705
head, 729
heart. 7««. 7*8 «•• 7*9. 7*9, 73 1
Heath, Sir Thomas, 54 «., 85,
171 «., 232, 237, 238
heaven, 30, 64, 329. 33^. 4*9. 500
heavenly bodies, 66, 134, 152, 227,
230, 235/T., 316, 556. 561; and
Aristotle, 190, 229- 30; and Jews,
Hebraic elements in Christianity,
7*2
Hebrew alphabet, 28 it.
Hebrew language, 341, 343, 347,
535; and Bible, 342, 340, 360,
Hebrew Law, 328. Sef <j*'«u l-aw ;
He^el— contd.
815, 816, 817; and mathematics,
832* 857; and Parmenides, 67,
'5c, 758, 769; and Prussia, 748,
75 7 » 765, 766; and relational
propositions, 172, 759-60; and
Rousseau, 723, 727, 764, 766;
and State, 765-9, 771; and
subjectivism, 514, 730
Hcgira, 440
Heidelberg, 757
Heine, Heinrich, 778, 779
Hciric of Auxerrc, 422
heliocentric theory, 548, 551, 556.
Sec also Copcmican hypothesis
Heliogabalus, 303
hell, 39, 282, 326, 378, 382, 429,
482, 719; and Christianity, 272,
500; and Judaism, 338; and
Marx, 383
Hellenic world, 78, 207, 227, 328;
and Alexander, 183; and Asia
Minor, 31; :nd Ionia, 31, 46;
and Jews, 334, 336, 34i; and
Nietzsche, 788-9; and North,
536 ; and the rich, 94 ; and Sparta,
loo, 120; and Rome, 240
Hellenism, Hellenistic world, 241-
51, 275; and Alexander, 120,
242; decline of, 296; freedom
dies in, 296; and Mohammed-
ans, 294, 304-6; and other-
worldliness, 253; and Rome,
294, 295; religiosity in, 272-3;
scepticism of, 257
Hellenistic philosophy, 241, 253,
•55. 263 •
llrloisc, 458 i
helots. 114-15, 118, 123
Heivetius, Claude Adrien, 748, 749,
750, 753. 801, 804
Henry 111, Emperor, 432, 433» 452,
Henry III of England, 502 •
Henry IV, Emperof* 433, 435~7>
i T-"*/**" ,«•»•<**»•»•, ^jw,—--— •/ -- -» 45*
Hi4; and h«tory, 761-7. 812; Henry IV of France, 577
and Hume, 698-9; influence of, Henry V, Emperor, 452
474. 730, 74», 757; «nd Kant, Ifcniy VI, Emperor. 463.405
735. 74$. 757. 7^8, 783; and Henry VII of England, 539 •
knowledge, 760, 848; and logic, 'Henry VIII of England, 4I5> 539,
**•*. 75**. 759-6o, 771-3; and 545.577.^45,659
M*rx, 757, 767. 810, 811, 812, Henry Aristippus, 462 i
98S
Hecatacus of Mtlctus, 60
Heddernheim, 304
Hegel, Cieorg Wtlliclm Fritfdrich,
*>}, 141. 201. 222. 514, 069, 756,
7 57 "7 3 i academic and schoUstu*,
730, 781 ; and Alexander, 183,
766 ; And Berkeley . 683, 84 1 ; and
Uewey, 848, 851, 85 5 ; and
dialectic, 667, 758-60, 702, 815;
and German philosophy, 744*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Heracljdes of Pontus, 237
Hcraclitus, 56-66, 7*, 74. 81, 143.
171-2; and fire, 61, 62, 65; and
flux or change, 50-60, 62-6, 172,
833; and modem physics, 90;
and Nietzsche, 61, 788, 800 ; and
opposites, 60, 62, 67 ; and Plato,
63, 74, 126, 171-4; and Stoics,
276, 280; and strife, 60-3, 135;
and war, 60, 6 1
Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 569
hereditary power or principle, 27,
642-7, 653
heresy, -ies, 352, 393, 437; and
Abelard, 458-9; and Arnold of
Brescia, 453 ; and St. Augustine,
365, 369. 371, 382, 519; and
Roger Bacon, 486; and St.
Bernard, 460; and Dominicans,
474; in East, 401; and St.
Francis, 471; and Frederick II,
467 ; and Great Schism, 505 ; and
Jesuits, 546; and John the Scot,
426, 427 ; and raonasticism, 306 ;
and Origen, 347; and Protest-
antism, 550; Puritan, before
Reformation, 455 ; and Wycliftr,
508. See alto Albtgenses; Cath-
ari; iconoclast heresy; Inquisi-
tion; Motiophysite heresy; Nes-
torianiam; Pelagian heresy; Sa-
beUian heresy; Three Chapters;
Wakknse*
Hermias, 182
Hermits, 395-6
Hermodorus of Kphesu*, 60
hero, -cs, 3*, 624, 766, 779
« Herod the Great, 335, 341
Herodotus, 39, 78, itS
heroism, 671
Hcsiod, 59, 60, 109, 130
Heytrsbury, 495 «•
High Priests, 341
Hildeb/md, 327. Set alto Gregory
VII *
Hilduin, 424
Hinduism, 781
. Himalayas, 244
Hincmar, 423
Hinnom. 330
Hipptrchus, 238, 239 *
Hippttsos of Mctaponuon, 51
t Hippo, 354, 364
Hiram, King of Tyre, 28
history, 21, 158, 733, 786; and St.
Augustine, 375, 383 ; and Catho-
lic philosophy, 326-7 ; and Hegel,
762-7; Jewish, 328, 329, 338
383; and Mane, 812-16
History of the Ancunt World. See
Rostovtscff
History of England (Hume), 629,
685-6
History of Greece (Bury), 95, 1 14 »..
117-18
History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, A
(Lea), 133 «., 431 "•
Hitler, Adolf, 157, 526, 667, 711,
746, 775. 846
Hirtitc tablets, 26
Hobbcs, Thomas, 568-79, 581,
593. 649, 650, 669, 724; and
Church, 354, 576; and social
contract, 572-31 654, 722; and
sovereign, 573~4. 575. 57*>; and
State, 568, 577~9. 766; and war,
57*. 573. 767
Hodgskin, Thomas. Ho 8, 809
lloflmann, August Hcmnch, 782
Hohenstaufcn family, 465, 491,
501, 776
Holbein, Ham (the Younger), 535
Holland, 545. 5**o. 581, 582, 592,
593; freedom and tolerance^ in,
579. 592; liberalism tn, £20;
Reformation in, 455
Holy Alliance, 621, 703, 768
Holy Roman Empire, 305, 31^
408, 4*0-13, 417, 45<>~*. 491.
501 /?., 746, 765
Holy Sepulchre, 712
Homer, 25, 3*1, 59. 60. 77, 109, 351.
444, 570; and Hellenic civiliza-
tion, 28-30, 79, 295 ; and Plato,
130; and religion, 29, 4*
homosexual love, 123
Hong Kong, 243
Hononus i, Pope, 409
iiofionus III, Pope, 427, 465
hope, 285, 854, Set 0/jo cheerful-
ness; optimism
Hormce, 297, 362
Houtf of SeUfuna (Bevan), 24$ **»
249**
Hugo,
, U5. 5
, Victor,
70$
8ft,
INDEX
537
Huguenots, 577, 581
Huizinga, John, 533 n.,
human pride, 855
humanism, 460, 509, 521, 523, 530,
534, 537 .
humamtarianisin, 816
Hume, Datid/258, 629, 630, 668,
669, 685-700, 728, 720-30; and
Berkeley, 685, 686, 687, 689 ; and
causation, 690-6, 698, 699; and*
empiricism, 568, 636-7, 685. 698,
699, 862; influence of, 669, 731 ;
and Ix>cke, 636-7, 668, 685, 698,
739; and perception, 686, 688,
694; and Rousseau, 698, 717;
and subjectivism, 256, 5x3, 739
humility, 324, 339, 5^o, 855. 856
Hundrcyi Days, 778
Hungarians. 417, 419, 428
Hungary, 659
hunger, 774
Huns, 363. 386
HUBS, John. 506, 509
Hussite*, 470
Hutcheson, Francis. 802
Hutton, Ven. W. 11.. cited, 400
hydrogen. 45
Hyk&oH, 22, 24
hymns, 460
HypatU, 3*7
hypotheses, 57* 146, I4S. 153. 261, j
548, 540. 551, 552, 843; and
I-rancis Itacon, 566-7; and
7;rcck*. 44-5. 47, 235; and
James, 844-5; ^d science, 153. |
549. See a/J<> Copcrnican hypo- '.
the*i»; nebular hypothesis
hypothetical imperative, 737 j
Hyrcamtft, John. See Maccab-rus j
i
lachimo, 544
Iw>. 544
laklahaoth, 344
Ibn Uufthd. See Avrrroes
Ibn Sim. See Avicrtina
iconoclast heresy, 409
idealism, 146, 635, 680-4, 819, 836,
837» 841. 846* See u/io German
philosophy
ideal*, and Utopias. 136-7
ideatt): association of, 801-2, H6i ;
and Bergion, 829, 831; and
idea(s)— omfcf.
Berkeley, 676, 729; and Des-
cartes, 588; and Hume, 686-7,
7«9 ; innate, 292, 688 ; and Locke,
634» 729; world of, 158, 308.
See also theory of ideas
identity, 490, 689, 694
ideograms, 22
idolatry, 330-1, 3$5
idols, Francis Bacon's, 566
Ignatius, Patriarch of Constanti-
nople, 415, 416
Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV), 27, 471
Iliad, 28
illiteracy, 4x0
imagination, 57, 687
Immaculate Conception, 489
immortality, 64, 376; and Aristotle,
192-4; and Aquinas. 476; and
Averroes, 447, 475; and Epi-
curus, 269, 274; and Greeks,
350; and Jews, 335, 346; and
Kant, 736; and More, 542; and
Plato, 125, 154-64, 276, 611,
863; and Plotinus, 316; and
Pythagoras, 51, 56; and Socrates,
109; and Spinoza, 594; and
Stoics, 276, 288. See also after-
life ; resurrection ; soul
imperatives, 737
imperialism, 420, 750, 804, 820
impiety, 856
impression(s), 686-7, 690, 729
impulse. 33-4
Incarnation, 152, 347, 352, 370,
377, 387-8* 441, 475* 482, 535
Incas, 136
incest, 393, 481
incommensu rabies, 54
independence, 215, 768
Independents, 493, 577. 625, 626,
628
indeterminacy, 269 n.
India, 245, 282 n., 3g5. 4"J» 5*7,
560, 804; and Alexander, 256;
and Arabs, 4*9, 44<>, 444, 448;
Nestorianism in, 388; religions
of, 42, 241, 781
Indian philosophy, 746. 781, 784,
, Indians, American, 647, 660
I individual(s), -ism, 201, 205, 284,
[ 366, 657, 664, 754; and Hegel,
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
individual(s), -ism — tontcL
7*7 ff:, 855; and Hclveuus, 749;
and liberalism, 622; and Nietz-
sche, 855 ; and Reformation, 545 ;
and Renaissance, 516, 524, 855;
and romanticism, 703, 705 ; and
Rome, 253; and Rousseau, 623,
722; and Totalitarian State, 725
jndividuation, 489-90, 783
induction, 58, 222, 571, 733, 823,
860; and Francis Bacon, 563,
564-7; and Hume, 693, 729; as
independent logical principle,
700; by simple enumeration, 565,
567, 693
indulgences, 535, 545
industrial revolution, 664, 854
industrialism, 52, 217, 621, 624,
660, 672, 703, 754-5. 7/8, 854;
and Marx, 823, 817
inequality, 213, 714
inferences, 179-80, 221, 222
infinite collection or number, 857-8
Inge, W. R., 65, 130, 308-9
injustice, 278
Innocent HI, Pope, 463-5, 468,
470,471,472,501,502
Innocent IV, Pope, 467
Innocent VIII. Pope, 523
inquiry, 847, 850, 851-3
Inquiry' into Human L*ndtntatndtn&
(Hume), 685
Inquiry into .Meaning and Truth
(Russell), 491
Inquisition, 470, 472, 546, 548, 556,
592, 723
insight, J-ft, 15** i
instinct, 82 1, 825-6, 838 '
instrumcrnfcilism, 52, 587, 81 1, 8iu,
848, 855 I
instruments, 557 i
intellect, -ualiarn, 158, 290, 437, [
475. 4*$, 746. 75 1 i »nd Ikrgvon, I
faftSas-i. &**, 831. 837; *nd ;
God, 608; 736; and PUto, 126, j
148; *nd Pkttimis, 312-13, 318; 1
and truth, 845 1
intelligence, 79, 821
interest, 209-10 !
intemationalmn, 579.652.664,709, I
79>- Sft atw world federation * j
intolerance, 350. £W alu> religious "•
toleration j
intoxication, 32, 33, 34, 856
intuition, 53, 482, 636, 728, 734,
739, 74*. 821, 825-6, 831
investiture, 435-6. 45*, 453
lona, 396
Ionia, -ns, 25, 26, 27, 41, 43, 49, 59,
110; and Athensr99; 100; com-
mercial cities of, 43 ; and culture,
47. 77; *nd Homer, 31 ; laws of,
121 ; and Persia, 31, 46, 47, 77,
99; and philosophy, 40, 59. 67,
74, 81, 82, 85
Iphigenia. 30, 272 it.
Ireland, 362 ft., 386, 396, 400, 406,
414. 4*»-*. 4*6
Irene, Empress, 409, 412, 442
iron, 26, 44. 134
irrationals, 232-3, 234
irrigation, 443
Isabella, Queen of Spain, 577
Isaiah, 332-3
I&htar, 23. 330
Islam, 336, 345. 4«0. 44 1. 442. 45 »,
785. 6V r also Mohammedan*
Ispahan, 445
Israel, 329, 380
iMna, 403
Iuly.49, 35^. 3*3. 433> 5»6; Ariam
»n. 354. 355^6; and Attib, 387;
and Charlemagne, 40$, 412;
cnics of, 207, 454, 466, 504,^31 ;
aviiizaiion of, 394; Clunwic
Reform in, 431; cotmncrctdl
ckftn in, 324; and Donancn^ut'
Consuntinc, 412; Knismui in,
535* in fifteenth century, 5<*>
516, 526; and Frederick II.
466-7; and Germany, 452, 765;
and Goth*. 386, 389; inquisi-
tion in, 546; humaniam in, 509;
rue of laity in, 501 ; land-
holding in, 658; Ixmibard* and
Byxantiiiet in. 408-9, m Middle
A«r«, 450, 509; modem outlook
bcjpn* tn. 516; and Nspoktin,
778; Normant in, 419. 43? <
politics in, 324, 5»6^.. 526 7,
and pap^y, 324, 408. 436, 502.
power of gcntrrnmrni in, 57^
pragmatism in, 8<6; Reforaiatum
and Coanicr-Kefomwtion m* re-
bellion agiiiurt, 544; Kenatstaruc
in, $16*24* 5*3^. 547; a^
INDEX
Italy— tontd.
Rome, 285, 295. 322; and
science, 512, 556; in sixth cen-
tury, 393-4. 401 ; under Theo-
doric, 389; in tenth century, 417;
unity 0^23. 528; under Valen-
tinian II, 350. See also northern
Italy; Rome; southern Italy
lacobins, -ism, 664, 667 '
James, St., 344, 4<>3
James I, 563
James II, 626-7, 645
James, Henry, 839
James, M. R., 4«
James, William, 787. 819, 828. 839-
46, 847, 861 , 863 ; and belief, 348,
842-4, 845-6; and truth, 145,
842-6
James of Venice, 461
Janscnists, 354
jansenius, Cornelius, 364
Japan. 134. 4«9. 5*>°, 577. ^44
Jarrow, 414
Jason, Jewish high priest, 334
Jaxartes, 241
Jeans. Sir J. II.. 55. 850
Jehovah. 469
Jena, 745. 747, 757. 782
Jcnghiz Khan, 304, 596
JenftTuah, 330, 331
Jerome, St., 283, 353, 356. 360-4,
403, 487; and Bible, 33^. 34*.
447, 354, 3<*>. 380, 535; and
ErasmuA, 535, 537*. and nvmasti-
"«n, 354. 3<A 307
Jerusalem, 319, 330, 331, 334, 335.
359, 384, 411; ami Crusades,
4'-4, 466; fall of, 337, 34-: the
(ioldcn. 326; patriarch of, 410
Jesuits, 129, 545-6* 548, $$o, 581,
7^0
Jesus, 329. 344, 345* 37O, 3<>7, 4«>o.
482 a.. 800
Jews, Judaism, 344, 358, 60 1 ; and
after-life. 350; and St. Augustine,
377. 380. 382-3 ; *• bankers and
capitalists, 210, 503, 709; and
Christianity, 304, 339> 343. 344
345"6. 347, 340750. 35 »/ 47«>,
500; and civilization of western
Europe, 302. 419; and God, 165,
348; and Greeks, 43-4; *nd
Jews, Judaism— contd.
Gregory the Great, 403; and
Hellenism, 246, 249; and mira-
cles, 351; and Mohammedans,
306, 440; and Nietzsche, 788,
792; and Old Testament, 360,
380; pattern of history of, 383;
persecuted, 336-7, 342, 387, 44L
452, 455; religion of, 249, 328-
43. 349J and sense of sin, 365;
in Spain, 440, 448-9, 470;
and Spinoza, 592; and State,
382; theology of, 346, 448-9;
and usury, 66 1. See also Hebrew
. . .; law; Mosaic Law; Yahweh
Joachim of Flora, 460
Joan of Arc, St., 109, 470
Job, 799
Johannes Scotus. See John the Scot
Johannesburg, 249
John, St., 313, 346, 459, 482
John XI, Pope, 418
John XII, Pope, 418
John XXII, Pope, 472, 491, 504
John XXIII, Pope, 506
John, King of England, 464
John of Gaunt, 504, 508
John of Salisbury, 458, 461
John the Scot (Johannes Scotus
Erigena\ 327, 415. 421-7, 437,
439, 478
Johnson, Samuel, 704
Jonathan, high priest, 335
Jonson, Ben, 569
Joppa, 335
Jordan of Saxony, 472
Joseph of Arimathea, 4^7 n.
Joshua, 550
Jovtnian, 481
Jowett, Benjamin, 105 M., 154 n.
Jubilee, 502
Judah, 329, 330. 33 «
Judaism, see Jews
Judas Iscariot, 492, jfcfo
Jude, St., 338
Judca, 245, 336, 341
Judges, 380 »., 382
judiciary, judicial function, 655,
661-3 - .
Julian, the Apostate, 31$, 35*. 353.
356. 359. 5«5
Julius II. Pope, 519, 532. 53«
Juno, 375
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Jupiter, 375, 376, 404; planet, 556
jus gentium, 292
jus naturalet 292
justice, 205-6* 259, 662-3, 738;
and Aristotle, 196, 202, 213 ; and
Greeks, 45-6; and Heraclitus,
6 1 , 63 ; as interest of the stronger,
99; and Plato, 129, 134-6
Justin I, 389
Justina, 355. 357
Justinian I, 299, 353, 389, 393~4,
418, 422; closes Academy, 80,
300; importance of, 400, 406;
law of, 460
Jutes, 421
Kant, Immanuel, 494, 629, 748;
academic and scholastic, 730,
781; and arithmetic, 740, 859;
and British and Continental
philosophy, 568, 580, 666, 667,
669; and Coleridge, 667, 705,
801; and deductive reasoning,
55; ethics of, 205, 291, 660-70,
736-8, 806; and German philo-
sophy, 6 1 8, 667, 730, 731-2. 746,
757; and God, 438, 608, 609,
610, 735-6, 814, 863; and Hume,
685, 698; influence of, 474* 7JO,
746, 748, 80 1 ; and knowledge,
730, 732, 783; and liberalism,
667, 731, 748; and mathematics,
221, 740, 857; and Nietzsche,
789, 797; and peace, 738, 768;
philosophy of, outlined, 731-9;
and Schopenhauer, 781, 782,
783; an6 space and time, 168,
* 374. 739-44; «nd subjectivism,
514, 730, 734; *nd Stoics, 279.
291 ; and will, 787
Kantorouk/, Hermann, 467 n.
Keats, John, 272, 705
Kent, 406
Keplei, Joh}nnea, 153, 230, 234,
55'-3. 56o, 569, 571 ; and Coper-
nicus, 512, 551; and Galileo,
555; ind Newton, 561; and
science, 547
Khiva, 445
Khoraatan, 445 f
Khwaraxmi, «J», 444
Kindj,aJ-, 443. 487».
1 kinetic theory of gases, 85-6
Kingdom of Heaven, 308, 329
I Kings, 4>4
Klytaimnestra, 30
knights, in Rome, 295
knowledge, 87, 179, 689, 772, 786,
819, 860, 862; and Christian
ethics, 1 1 1 ; arfd Continental
philosophy, 568; and Dewey,
851 ; and Hume, 688; and Kant,
!f 730, 732. 783 5 and Locke, 633-4,
636; and Marx, 812; and Mat-
thew of Aquasparta, 489; of
mystics, 785-6 ; and Occam, 495-
7; and Plato, 125, 142, 143, 151,
171-81 ; and Schopenhauer, 784,
786; and Socrates, 112, i$7ff.\
and Spinoza, 596. See also theory
of knowledge ,
Knossos, 24, 261
Knox, Ronald, 673
Kftnigsberg, 731. 742
Koran, 44».446
labour, 248, 658, 707
Labour Party, 817
labour theory of value, 660- 1, So8
Lacedaemon, 114, 119, 363. See
alto Sparta
Laches (Plato), i j i
Laconia, 114, 115
La Flc4Ae, 580, 591 t
latMUi-fasre, 631, 648, So?
toty, 322, 323, 410,409
Lamarck, 752, 753 *~
Lampsacus, 248, 264
land, 22, 658, 817
landholding, 114, 115, 119, 121
210, 296, 647,658^, 815
Unfranc, 435. 437
language, 68-71, «43. »4#-9, *85.
1 86, 571. See olio grammar;
logical analysis; name*; lyntux;
words
Laplace, 559, 73*
U RocheUe, 581
Last Judgment, 338, 375, 4*8, 476
Latff Grtek Religion (Be van), 262,
279 n.
Latcran, 411, 418
Latin America, 213
Latin Emperor, 464
Latin language, 366, 411, 448, 508,
568, 570, 628, 746; and Burba-
INDEX
Latin language — contd. Leibniz — contd.
rpssa, 451; and Bible, 354; and 668-9; and plenum, 90; and
principle of individuation, 490;
and Spinoza, 592 ; and subjectiv-
ism, 513, 728; and substance, 614
Charlemagne, 414; in Eastern
Empire, 301 ; and Erasmus, 534,
537. 538; and Greeks, 299; and
hymns, 460.; and Ireland, 421 ; Leipzig, 604
and philosophy, 306, 368; and leisure, 127,814
Roman Empire, 298; and trans- Lenin, 848
lations, 165, 235, 342, 380, 445* Leo I (the Great), St., Pope, 387,
448, 456, 535 388
Latin world, and Alexander, 499 Leo III, St., Pope, 412
Latvia, 659 Leo IX, St., Pope, 433
Laud, Archbishop, 569, 601 Leo X, Pope, 518, 520, 527
law(s), legislation, 34, 120, 222, Leo XIII, Pope, 474
652-3, 663; and Aristotle, 213; Leo III (the Isaurian), Emperor,
in Athens, 95, 154-5; and 409
Bentham, 638, 750, 802, 803, Leonardo. See Vinci
805 ?of causality, 567 ; of gravita- Leopardi, 252
tion, 553-4, 556-7, 559-61 ; and Letter of Aristeas, 33411.
Greeks, 135, 139; of Hammu- Lettres phUosophiquef (Voltaire),
rabi, 23; Hebrew, Jewish, or 629
Mosaic, 328, 332, 337, 34<>. 365 ; Leucippus, 84, 85. 86, 88, 89 «., 90,
and Hegel, 764; and Helvetius, 229. 266
749; of inertia, 549, 553, 554; Leuctra, 118
and Kant, 737; of motion, 553, I^evant, 778
556, 559; natural, 86; ol nature, Leviathan (Hobbes), 568^.
99, 650-1; philosophy of, 651;
of planetary motion, 551-2,
556-7; and Protagoras, 96
tawrence, O. H., 708
£o*f (Plato), 232
I>ea. Henry C, 133, 431, 503
League for Peace, Kant's, 768
I.tague of Cambrat, 517
league of Nations, 768
U-ar, 795
learning, 342, 396, 397, 4<>4. 42 1,
422, 472; in Renaissance, $33
IXT, Joseph, quoted, 648
I^reuwenhock, Anton van, 557
legal Actions, 412. 658
Icgul rights, 651-2
legal theory of war, 652
legislative function, legislature,
66i-3. 726, 738
Ix»gnano, 454
Uibniz, 604- IQ, 733 ; and calculus,
55**, 857; and ethics, 669; and
Germany, 746; and God, 438,
Leviticus, 332
Lcyden, University of, 582
liberal culture, 513
liberalism, liberals, 577, 578, 620-1,
649, 817; and Darwin, 753, 754.
808; and Dewey, 847, 848; in
eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, I2i, 545, 774; and Hegel,
764, 767; in Holland, 592; and
Kant, 667, 731, 748;,and Locke,
628 ; and Milton, 81 1 ; and More,
542; and Napoleon, 779; New
England, 847; and Nietzsche,
794; philosophical, 620-7; and
State, 215, 771; in Western
Germany, 747
liberty, 624, 776; and Bentham,
803; and Churches, 793; and
Filmer, 643; and Hobbes, 572,
574-5; and Locke, 637-9, 650;
and Machiavelli, 530; for na-
tions, 709; and Rousseau, 722;
and utilitarianism, 653
5«9, 7i8; and infinite number, .life, 841; and Bergson, 820, 823,
«<8; influence of, 667; «nd 824, 827, 838; elixir of, 62
Kant, 731 ; *nd knowledge, 634; light-waves, 90, 862
•nd Locke, 633, 666; method of,fl limitation, 734
891
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Lincoln, Abraham, 796
Ljppershey, Hans, 557
Lisbon, earthquake of, 715, 731
Lithuania, 659
Liutprand, 409
Lives (Plutarch), 26011., 300, 713,
793
Livy, 529
Lloyd George, 659
Loches, 457
Locke, John, 285, 581, 711, 728,
729, 813; and association of
ideas, 801 ; and Bentham, 802;
and British philosophy, 618; on
checks and balances, 577; and
Condorcet, 749; and Democri*
tus, 92; on division of powers,
724; and empiricism, 685, 856,
862 ; and greatest-happiness prin-
ciple, 802 ; and Helve'tius, 749 :
and Hobbes, 568, 573; and
Hume, 685, 698; influence of,
666-72 ; and liberalism, 624, 817 ;
and mind, 749; political philo-
sophy of, 642-5; and power,
530; and private property, 724;
and social contract, 650, 653-8,
722; and State, 652, 664, 771;
and subjectivism, 513, 739; and
theory of knowledge, 628-41
Locri, 49
logarithms, 558
logic, 257, 633, 77«. 772, 815, 862;
and Abelard, 459; and Al-
Mansur, 446 ; and Aquinas, 484 ;
and Arabs, 446, 447; and Aris-
totle, I821, 187, 218*25, 447. 475.
513; and atomists, 88 n.; and
Roger Bacon, 487; and Bergton,
82 J, 823, 830, 831; deductive,
and mathematics, 858; and Dew-
ey, 847, 851; and dialectic
method, 113; and empiricism,
87* '678, £62; and geometry.
740, 742; and Greek philosophy,
87; and Hegel, 730, 758-60, 769,
773; .and Hume. 688, 689. 690;
and induction, 700; and John
of Salisbury, 461 ; and Kant,
*733; language, 71 ; and Leibniz, 4
614-15; and Locke, 630; and
Marx, 814; and Occam, 494,
495*7; «»d Parmcnide*, 50, 67,
logic— contd.
142; and Plato, 143, 161, 179.
181, 377; and Socrates, 158; and
space, 90; and Spinoza, 594, 599.
618; and Stoics, 281. See also
logical analysis
Logic (Hegel), 758. 761, ^69
logical analysis, 495, 857-64. See
also language
'Logos. 313, 329, 346, 370, 425, 426,
459
Lollards, 509
Lombard cities, 450, 452, 453, 466
Lombard League, 452, 454, 466
Lombards, 353, 394, 397-8, 403.
420; and Byzantines, 326, 40^-9;
and Eastern Empire, 401 ; and
papacy, 408, 412
Ix>mbardy, 470, 503
London, 569, 704. 809, Si i
Long Parliament, 545, 569, 570,
625
Lords, House of, 509, 574, 642, 662
Lorenzo the Magnificent, r<v \K-
dici, Lorenzo dei
Lothar II, King of Lorraine-, 4<5
Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, 6oS. 74*
Louis 1. Emperor, 424
Ixtuis II, Emperor, 415
Louis IV, Emperor, 491
IXHJIS IX of France, 467 •
Louis XI of France. 509, 577. 645
Louts XII of France, 520
Louis XIV of France, 604, 6f/»
627, 645
Lou vain, 538
love, 708, 799, Bop; Christian, 602,
774. 795 i *nd Empedodc*. 74-5.
76; of the eternal, 814 ; and t*od,
345* 59&-6op, 608; and Judaism,
340; of neighbours, 345, 7oS;
and Nietzsche, 795, 800; and
Plato, 312; and Plotinus. 315;
and Stoicism, 279, 287. 289
Low Countries. 747
Loyola, St. Ignatius, 472, 544.
Lucan, 183
Lucsan, 262, 302
Luck, 247
Lucrrtia, 376
Lucretius, 72, 266, 268, 270-3,
*74.7«9
INDEX
Luther, Martin, 493, S**. 532. 544. Manchester, 8xo
765. 784; and St. Augustine, Manchester School, 623
354; and Copernicus, 550; and
Erasmus, 533, 538; and peas-
ants* war, 508; and philosophy,
546; and State, 545. 766
Lutheran Church, 766
Luttcnvorth, 507, 509
Lycurgus, 117, 119, 121-3, 529.
53*. 714. 7*1, 7*5
Lydia, 27, 4.1
Lyons, 503, 712;
469. 471
Lysis (Plato), 1 1 1
Manfred, King of Naples and
Sicily, 520, 777
Manichaeism, 156, 345, 364, 368-9,
370, 371, 372, 379, 469, 613
Manichseus, 368
Manilius, 260
many, the, 60, 74, 88, 756
1 Marathon, 77, 99, 100
Prior Men of,
Macbeth, 602
Maccabtrus, John Hyrcanus, 339
Maccabeus, Judas, 335
Maccabees, 246, 335, 336, 338, 339
Macedonia, -ns( 182, 207, 241-6,
297; and barbarians, 243; and
City State, 215; bring disorder,
241, 248, 273, 296; and Greek
culture, 253, 305 ; and Rome, 294
Machiavclii, Nicco!6, 214, 513, 523,
525-32, 547. 568, 578, 7*5. 765.
788
machine production, 514, 746, 752,
754~5. 809, 854
McKcnna, Stephen, 312
Mawads, 35, 38
maffic, 23, 49, 7*. 169. 250, 261,
270, 319, 348, 4HS; black. 499;
ij» Renaissance, 52^; and science,
55*
Maima Carta. 463
Matfiu Graecin, 67. 77
Magnanimous man, 197-8, 199,
200
Ma«net, 44. 557. 5*6
Maimonidrft, 343, 448-9
majority, 97. 109, 492, 573. $55.
657, 7*4. 73». 764, 790
Malchus. 6V* Porphyry
Makbrmnche, 474, 583, 605
Malthus, Humus Robert, 750, 75 « •
753.8o8
man : brotherhood of, 287, 288, 289.
305 ; and Copernicus, 816; nieas-
Marcion, 469
Marcomanni, 303
Marcus Aucelius, 217, 263, 275,
276, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288,
289, 296, 303
Marduk, 23
Mark Antony . See Antonius, Marcus
Marozia, 418
marriage, 122, I3*~3. *57> '97,
345.431.481,484, 541
Mars, 552
Marseilles, 404
Marsiglio of Padua, 492, 493, 503-
4.508
Marston Moor, 776
Martel, Charier. See Charles Mattel
Martin I (St.). Pope, 409
Martin V, Pope, 506
Martin of Tours, St., 396
Marx, Karl, 75 »» 75*. 756, 801 n.,
809, 810-18; and Bentham, 805,
811; and class struggle, 578-9,
766, 818; and Darwinism, 754;
and De\\ ey , 848 ; eclecticism, 666 ;
and Hegel, 757, 810, 811-12,
815, 816, 817; and history, 383,
762, 812-17; and labour theory
of value, 660, 66 1 ; and liberal-
ism, 624, 667, 817; and revolt,
703, 746, 774J and Plato, 160;
and State, 813, 817
Mary, Queen of England, 645
Mary, Queen of Scots, 643 f
Master of Animals, 24
Mssuccio di Salerno, 522
materialism, 8911., 9*. *&9» 273.
310, 570, 590, 837, 839; and
Marx, 383. 809, 810, 8n. 812,
815; in psychology, 802; and
urcofall things, 97. 17*. 173. »75. i « Stoics» 275. *76. *8i, 311
1 79J place of, muni verse, 55<H>°; I mathematical logic, 614-15, 619
undue emphasis cm, 816. S** \ mathematics, 51, 53; in Athens,
o/«o rights of man I 79. &>, »oo; in AJexandria, 80,
893
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
mathematic
it*
246; and Aquinas, 484; and
Anbt, 448; and Aristotle, 193;
and astronomy, 153, 231, 235-
40; and atoxnists, 88 it.; and
Francis Bacon, 565; and Roger
Bacon, 486, 487, 488; and
Bergson, 823, 830-2; and Con-
tinental philosophy, 568; and
deductive logic, 858; and Des-
cartes, 580, 583, 589; and em-
piricism, 568; and Greeks, 21,
31, 57-8, 231, 235-40, 857, 862;
in Hellenistic age, 241 ; and
Hobbes, 568; and Hume, 689;
and induction, 221; and Kant,
733. 740; and knowledge, 161,
633, 689. 860, 862; and Locke,
630; and logical analysis, 857,
859; in Magna Grecia, 67; and
nous, 313; and philosophy, 246,
858, 862; and Plato, 126, 141,
146, 148, 153, 158, 168-70, 177.
1 81, 192; and Plotinus, 312; and
Pythagoras, 47. 49, 5*. 5*. 53-*.
158. 857; in seventeenth cen-
tury, 546, 558; and Socrates,
158; and Stoics, 281 ; and syllog-
isms, 221-2; and theology, 56,
848; words of, 181
matter, 65, 82, 345, 860, 86 1 ; and
Aristotle, 187-9, io*, iQ3. "9;
defined, 684; and Bergson. 820,
822, 823, 825, 836, 837; and
Berkeley, 673, 674, 679. 7^9; and
Descartes, 90 ; and Dun* Scotut,
490; and Hegel, 763 ; and Hume,
729; and Kant, 73°. 74 »; «r»d
Manr, 812; and Plato, 169; and
Pkninus, 315-17; *nd space, 89*
90; and truth, 707. £** alto
mind and matter
Motto and Memory (Bergson),
824-6, 83*
Matthew of Aquasparta, 486, 488 9
Maupemiis, 747
Maurice, I~mperor, 405
Mauross, Andre, quoted, 778 *.
fyfaximus, Empeior, 355, 357
Maya, 7*4, 7*6 f
Maxztni, Giuseppe, 708
meaning, 850. &* oho words
Mecca, 440 n., 443
mechanical explanations, 82, 86,
87. «6, 754
mechanics, 227, 584-5, 821, 860
Medta (Euripides), 568
Medes, 244, 303, 330
Medici family, 27/518, 520, 521,
5«S. 5«6, 544. 797
Medici, Coaimo dei, 518, 521
f Medici, Giovanni dei. See Leo X,
Pope
Medici, Giulio. See Clement VII,
Pope
Medici, Lorenzo dei, 518, 52 tr 526
Medici, Fictro dei, 518
medicine, 49. 73. 334,445.448, 537,
839
medieval synthesis, 463, 501
Medina, 440 n.
Mrditotiow (Descartes), 569. 585-9
Meditations (Marcus Aurclius), 284,
287-9, 293
Mediterranean, 236, 282, 294, 419,
642
Melctus, 105, 106, 107, 108
N.lelot, 101
| Melville, Herman, 705
s memory, 71, 173, 175, 3»«, 681,
; 684, 841; and Uerg*on, 824-5,
| 826, 835-6, 838
1 Menandcr, 251, 346 •
Menandcr, king of India, 245
Meno (Plato), 112, 161, 46 2
Mercury, 237 *
Merovingians, 409, 575
Mesopotamia, 22. 24, 245, Ji *. 396
; Messalins, Valeria, 282
j Messenia, us
Messiah, 320, 332, 338, 339. 348,
3&o. 383, 467
| metallurgy, 338, 714
mctaU, 24
! metaphysics, 57, 71, **, «»» 3°9»
688; and Arabs, 447, 448; and
Aristotle, 182-94, 205, 218, 222-
4; and Borthiut, 390; and Con-
tinental and Bntttth philosophy.
669; and Fpicurus, 269; ami
Hrgrl. 67, 758. 769. 770; "»
HeUrnistic world, 251 ; and Hem-
clitus, jJ9, 62*4; Jewish, 320:
and Leibniz, 614-15, 6f7! and
Locke, 633 ; and Kant, 739. 74* '
894
INDEX
metaphysics — contd.
3; mistakes in, 53, 220, 222; and
Occam, 495; and Parmenides,
67, 151; and Plato, 143-4, 151,
187, 189, 218; and Plottnus, 312;
and Spinoza, 594-5, 600- 1 ; and
Zeno, 296 •
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 229, 444
Metapontion, 49, 51
Methodism, 40, 272, 776
Methuselah, 380
metre, 161
Metrodorus, 265
Mexico, 22, 644, 854
Michael II, 424
Michael III, 416, 423
Michael of Ccscna, 491
Michchngclo, 523, 552, 789
microscope, 557
Middle Ages, 28, 322, 624, 855;
snd Aristotle, 121, 207, 2 1 8, 230,
257. 439, 494-5 I and St. Augus-
tine, 382; and Bocthius, 389,
392; and Byron, 776, 778; and
Church, 1 2 1, 210, 305, 322, 354,
415. 5«i~«3, 766; and City of
l*od, 375; communist rebels in,
774; despised in fifteenth cen-
tury. 509; die hard. 509; and
Donation of Constantino, 411;
dualism of. 252 ; snd economics,
754; snd Gregory the Great,
402; and individualism, 622;
fnd Italian cities, 207; Jews in,
343 ; and kings, 359 «• i o"d land-
holdtng, 659; snd law of nature,
648; legal fictions in, 412; and
lope, 218, 292; snd Lucretius,
271 ; Mohammedan civilization
in. 343 ; originality and archaism
in, 450-1; and philosophy, 56,
210, 222, 322, 354, 439. S« i. 766;
snd Pluto, 165, 438-9, 474; and
Plutintis, 309; and politics, 207.
419; and pseudo-Dion ynius, 424,
427 ; snd romanticism, 704 ; and
•in, 560; submissive toward nan-
human environment, 855; and
superstition, 549; and Stoics,
292 ; and transufatantiation, 429;
universality of Church and Em-
pire in, 305; unscientific. 549
Middle Ages— contd.
See also Church; Holy Roman
Empire; papacy
middle class, 509, 621, 654, 671,
754, 813
Mikado, 134, 644
Milan, 355, 357, 359, 364, 367,
369, 430; in conflict of Emperor
and Pope, 436, 451 j(f.; Patarine
movement in, 434, 453, 455; in
Renaissance, 516-17, 520
Milesian school, 43-7, 60, 243
Miletus, 43, 45, 47, 4$, 49, 81, 84,
H7
Milhaud, Gaston, 88 n.
Milky Way, 555
Mill, James, 749, 750, 751, 801,
804. 808, 809, 818
Mill, John Stuart, 567. 669, 748,
749.751,790,804,805-6
millennium, 381, 383
Milton, John, 157, 247, 359 n.t 470,
732,804,811
mind, 849, 86 1; and Anaxagoras,
81-3; and Aristotle, 192-4; and
Uergson, 823, 824, 827; and
Locke, 729: and Plato, 167,
1 68, 174, 176; and Plotinus,
312, 318; and Spinoza, 595, 600 ;
and Zeno, 279
mind and matter, 156, 840; and
Bcrgson. 824-6, 828; and Carte-
sians, 584, 588, 590; defined,
684; and James, 841 ; and Kant,
730; and Leilniz, 606; and
i logical analysis, 86 1, 864
! Minoan age or culture, 24-5, 26,
I 27, 304
! miracle(s), 49, 72, 348, 35O, 360,
398-400, 685 ; of the mass, 429
missionaries, 245, 395, 4«3» 4*i,
456. 546
Mistress of Animals, 24, 261
Mithraism, 304 •
Mitylene, 264
Mnesarchos, 48
modality, 734
moderation, 61, 92
Moh;
* 46;
77<
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Mohammedan(s) — cvntd*
299; and algebra, 306; and Aris-
totle, 447* 448, 449, 475; and
chemistry, 62, 448 ; and Christian
philosophy, 447-8; and Church.
305 ; conquests of, 245, 353, 388,
410, 419, 440; and culture, 440-
4; and Frederick II, 465; and
Greek culture, 299, 443, 444;
and Hellenistic civilization, 294,
306-7; and Italy, 419; and Jews,
343, 441, 448; and philosophy,
444-9; and Sicily, 465, 466. See
also Arabs ; Islam
Mommsen, Theodor, 748
tnonadology, monads, 606-7, 611,
619, 668, 728
monasteries, 395, 396, 4 14. 4«, 43 1
monasticism, 349, 354, 39S~9» 406.
4i8,430-i,535
Monboddo, Lord, 649
Monde, Lt (Descartes), 581
money, 160, 200-10
Mongols, 386, 442, 444
Monica, St., 367, 370, 371
monism, 76, 85, 88, 135, 600, 6iS,
841,861
Mnnophysite heresy, 388-9, 393,
396,440
monopoly, 817
monotheism, 336, 441
Mont Cenis, 436
Montaigne, 537
Montaigu, 713
Monte Casstno, 397*8, 309, 4 '7,
474
Montesquieu, Baron de, 529, 573,
629. 664, 724. 7*6
Montfort, Simon de, 464
Moody, Ernest E., 494
moan* 229, 315, 338, 369, 556; and
Greeks, 73, 81, 82, 91. 107, «7,
229. 236, 239, 270, *8o, 314 : and
BrmJle, ssj; and Galileo and
Newton, 556
Moore, G. E., 682
Moors, 299. 343* 4Oi, 409
moral(s), morality, 23, 33, 97, W*
206, 707, 863; and Uentham,
'805; and Christianity, 200, 325,
3^6* 350, 35>; «nd Oennarf
idealists, 730; in Greece, 302 ; in
Hellenistic world, 250-1, 260;
), morality — contd*
and James, 844; Jewish, 334;
and Kant, 736-7, 783; and
Locke, 637 ./f., 653 ; and Machia-
velli, 528, 530; and Milesian
school, 47; and reform in the
eleventh century, 428-, and reli-
gion, 839; in Renaissance, 523;
and Rome, 260, 301-2; and ro-
t, manticism, 702, 709; and Rous-
seau, 712, 719; and States, 768;
and Stoics, 263, 287. See al$o
ethics
More, Sir Thomas, 533, 534, 535,
538-43. 544. 5*4
Morocco, 446
Mosaic Law, 344, 345, 500
Moses, 344. 34®, 349. 4<>i. 4?5, 5*5
Motiers, 717
motion, movement, 46, 75, 82, 88,
227, 228, 558, 861 ; and Aristotle,
100, 228-9; and atomists, 84-6,
88, 89. 92 ; and Descartes, 583-5 ;
and Heraclitus, 173 ». ; and New*
ton, 89, 230, 560, 585; relativity
of, Hp, 229. 239, 550, 562; and
Zcno's argument of the arrow.
HJ3-4
multiplication tablr, K4&
Munich, 491, 526
murder, 652
Murray, Gilbert. 30, 36, 37, 3»~<;.
250, 254. 264. 275. 276
Musacus, 109
music, 53, 131. 132, «4«. 3*5- ?*>*>
MuftAct, Alfred dc, 779
Mussolini, Beniio, 746
Mutiny, Indian. 804
Mycenaean civilization , 25-6
Myrtilos, 30
myvtcrie*, 61. 62, 159, 49*;. *SYr*i/j<>
Pkrustnian mystrric* ; my»trr>
m>ttcry rtliftions, 56, 328. 350,
370, 500
mytttcd), my%tici*m, 56, 60, 65,
373* 444. 459. 4#2, 504. 7<>7
784-6 ; Arab. 446, 448 ; in Diony-
sus worship and Orphttrn, 32-3-
37; in prt-Socratic philosophy,
67; and Hegrl, 757-«; w>d
mathematics, 48, 55. 857; and
Plato, 126, 148, 158. 159. 195;
856
INDEX
mystic(s), mystici*
d.
and Plotinus, 314; and Pytha-
goras, 48, 5*» 59, 148, 236
Naaman, 576
names, 68, 148, 167, 176, 179, 185,
1 86, 22i, 49 x ; and meaning, 68-
70
Nantes, 457; Edict of, 627
Napier, John, 558 f
Naples, 417, 466, 4745 Kingdom
of, 516, 520
Napoleon I (Bonaparte), 413, 528,
604, 627, 664, 667, 775 ; effect of,
136, 621, 703, 705, 730, 778^.;
and German philosophers, 731,
745. 757, 766, 789, 796, 800; and
Germany, 658. 747, 765, 810
Napoleon HI, 664
Napoleonic wars, 623
national independence, 530
national monarchies, 325
National Socialism, 114, See alto
Nazis
nationalism, 501, 504, 624, 664,
703. 754. 779, 790, 791 ; German,
252, 745, 779; Jewish, 332; and
romanticism, 708, 751
natural law(s), 277, 278, 292, 293.
647J0r-. 7*4, 754 land Greeks, 29,
46,86, 134.277
natural man, 720
nature, 227-8, 254, 314* 424* 427;
law of, 647, 650; state of, 647 j/.,
• 655, 664
Nauatphajtes, 264, 265
Nazis, 117, 383, *°«» 659, 798, 817,
818
Near East, 120, 328
Nebuchadrezzar, 44, 329, 342
nebula, 66, 230
nebular hypothesis, 732
necessity, 29, 46, 82, 86, 134, 250,
a*9. 734, 855 ; and Aristotle, 228 ;
and Empedodes, 74. 75. 7*; *°d
Plato, 167, i?o
negation, 734
Nehemiah, 330, 331, 333. 337. 34 1
Neopktonism, 241, 274. 301, 320,
3*7. 499-500, 5*9; and Am-
montua Saccaa, 311, 34*;
Afiba* 443. 444* 445. 447;
Anatoli*. 447, 475. 5»«i
Neoplatonism — contd.
Christianity, 319-21, 328, 378,
421, 426, 438, 499; and Plato,
165, 323, 509, 521 ; founded by
Plotinus, 308 #
Neo-Pythagoreanism, 282, 342
Nero, 283, 289, 594
nervous tissue, 68 1, 695
Nestorianism, 393, 440, 444, 459
Nestorius, 387-8
Neuchatel, 717
New England, 249, 847
New Jerusalem, 339
New Testament, 323, 337, 338,
345, 428, 469, 608, 784, 792, 793
New Theory of Vision, A (Berke-
ley), 674
Newstead Abbey, 775
Newton, Sir Isaac, 390, 557, 666,
703, 749, 752, 7535 *nd astrono-
my, 239; and calculus, 558, 605;
and Euclid, 55; and God, 585;
and gravitation, 230, 556, 560;
and Leibniz, 90, 605; and
motion, 153, 230, 553; and
science, 547, 558^.; and space
and time, 89, 90, 561, 742
Nicsea, Council of, 349, 353
Nicene Creed, 349, 353, 4"
Nicholas I (Saint), Pope, 409, 415-
17, 418, 423, 424, 501
Nicholas II, Pope, 433, 434
Nicholas V, Pope, 411, 519
Nicholas of Oresme, 498
Nitomachxxn Ethics (Aristotle)
183 ft., 195-206, 216
Nicopolis, 283 ,
Nkbelungen, 463 t
Niebelungenlied, 386
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 61,
137, 199. 624, 699, 708, 756, 788-
800; and Byron, 777, 789; and
Christianity, 197, 788, 792^.,
798, 799; and Darwin, to8; and
ethics, 788, 792, f95 #. 808; and
God, 777, 79*-3. 797; «nd
liberalism, 667, 794; «*<* Napo-
leon, 778, 779, 789, 796, 799J
and Nazism, 798, 818; and
power, 795. 855; and romapti-
casm, 746, 75«. 788, 789; and
Sparta, 114, 79i;«ndwillt 787,
788
897
2P
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
and
Nile, aa, 389
Nilsson, Martin P., as n.
Nineveh, 43, 329
Nirvana, 784, 785
Noah, 488,643
noble man, 788, 793. 794, 79S
noble savage, 714
nominalism, 185, 495, 57* » 634, 687
Nonconformists, 626, 645
non-Euclidean geometry, 334
non-resistance, 603
Normandy, 419, 437
Normans, 3*6, 415, 417, 4»9t
433. 435. 437. 463. 465;
papacy, 433, 435. 451, 453
North Africa, 294, 306
North America, 243, 560, 765
Northern Italy, 305, 451, 460
Northumbria, 406
Norway, 453
not-being, 88, 91, 425
nous, 82, 92, 447; and Plotinus,
312-14* 316, 347
NotnelU Ml***. La (Rousseau),
716
Novalis, 782
numberfr), 53. 55. i**» *68, 175,
177-9. 8*9-3 «. 857-8
nuns, 396
Nuremberg, 757
Gates, W. J., cited, 266 «., 286 it.
obedience* 397
object, 676, 810, 824, 836; subject
and, 600, 837, 840
objectivity, 8f o
observation, 53, 58, 87-8, 549, 699
Occam (or Ockham), William of,
4W, 49«-S, 503. 547
Occamssts, 534
Occam's razor, 494
Ockham, 491
OcfBviu% See Augustus
Odo, Saint, 43*?
Odovmker, 386
Odyssey, a8
OeoofMdes of Chios, 236
Gesterfey and Robinson, 33411.,
350 *.
Omomaos, 30
Old Believers, 403
Old Man of the Mountain* 444
Old Testament, 351, 373. ?83t 593.
608, 792; and Christianity, 332-
3. 347. 361, 3«3» 450, 469. 500;
and Jewish history, 329 j(f. ; trans-
lations of, 341-2, 360, 380
oligarchy, desired by Plato, 127
Olympian attitude, 38
Olympian gods, 29, 30. 3*, 39. 42,
47, 51, 262, 272, 362 n.
C'ympias, 242
Olympic Games, 51, 216
Omar Khayyam, 444
On Generation and Corruption
(Aristotle), 85, 88
On the Heaoent (Aristotle), 226,
229-30
On Interpretation (Aristotle), 185 n.
On the Nature of Thing* (Lucre-
tius), 271-3
On the Soul (Aristotle). See De
Anona
One, the, 60, 67, 74. 88, 9«. 3«*t
3i3.3i4.3i9
O'Neill, Eugene, 39
oncological argument, 176, 437-8.
476, 4*8, 608-9, 710, 711, 735.
814-15
opinion, 67-8, I4*~3. «4*. »5«.
165, 168
opposite*, 60, 62-3, 67, 82, 160, 280
optimism, 189, 205, 310, 604, 606,
749, 750, 774, 7»7, 816; of
liberalism, 621, 622, 753*4, 774;
philosophies of, 92, 781. 7*7.
820. See also cheerfulness; hofft
oraclc(s), 61, 75, 106, 108, 109, 500
Orange, Council of, 384
Orsnge, House of, 582, 592
Oreatts, 30
organism, 188, 208, 754. 849 #.
organizabons and individuals. 664
OrfOHOfi, 495
orgyf 4a, $a
Oriental religions, 41, 262, 328, 499
Oriental Retigiow m Raman Pagan-
ism (Cumont), 3oaffM 377 «-.
Oriental view of women, 79*
Orientals, 241, 763
3*2, 346-*, 351, 3*1.4*7;
Augustine, jya, 378. 3«a;
Old Testament, 342; and
philosophy, 316, 477
89*
INDEX
Origin of Species (Darwin), 808
Origin of Tyranny, The (Ure), 27 n.
original gin, 383, 384, 480, 714,
784
Orpheus, 35, 37, 41* 47, 109, 304
Orphism, 35-42, 52, 56, 155, 159,
272, J50. '499; and Christianity,
328, 370; and* philosophy, 47, 50,
52, 56, 08, in, 156, 282, 788;
and Plato, 126, 141, 159, 184, ^14
orthodoxy, 100, 848; Christian,
349, 353, 456, 462, 470, 471, 486,
487, 50°; Jewish, 331, 342; Mo-
hammedan, 447
Osiander, Andreas, 548
Osiris, 22
Ostrogoths, 386
Othello, 537
other world, -Li ness, 51, 126, 141,
253. ?oH, 3*6, 329
Otto IV, Emperor, 464-5
Ottoman Turks, 440
Ovid, 362
Owen, Robert, 808, 809
Oxford University, 461, 483, 486,
4&9, 401, 538, 628, 6*>7 ; Hobbes
at, 5<A; WyciiiFe at, 507, 508,
509
Ozyirandias, 250
s, St., 395
pacifism. 657, 778
Palermo, 461, 465
Palestine, 22, 330, 466
Pan, 32
Panaetius of Rhodes. *Hi, 282, 295*
299, 300
Pangtafts, Doctor, 604
pantheism, 373. 39O, 421, 426, 477,
594. 7*3
papacy, absolutism of, 492, 5°4~5 '»
at Avignon* 491 ; and Crusades,
455 ; »« <*»«* a«rs, 395. 4°o, 408-
20; decline. 409-510; and East-
ern Empire, 4oH~io, 4*6; and
Empire, 45Ojfif., 765; and Eng-
hna, s°#> 5°9» powci; of, 325,
401* 406, 463, 501, 512, 527-8;
reform of. 432-3; revenues of,
522-3; and Roman population,
503; without moral power in*
fourteenth century, $oa, 504.
J*f a/to pope
'899
Papal States, 516, 519, 526
Papini, Giovanni, 856
parabola, 230, 233, 234
Paradise Lost, 338
Paraduo (Dante), 230, 309
Paraguay, 129
parallelogram law, 555
Paris, 161, 183, 486, 489, 491, 569,
605, 686, 713, 781 ; Abllard in,
45^; Aquinas in, 484-5; Roger
Bacon in, 486 ; Descartes in, 580,
581 ; Parlement of, 716 «.; Uni-
versity of, 447, 474-5, 483, 489,
505
Parliament, 464, 539, 5&3. 663;
conflict between king and, 569,
573, 577, 625-6, 627, 662; and
Hobbes, 569, 570, 573, 577; and
Locke, 628, 662-3. See also
Commons ; Long Parliament ;
Lords
Parma, 414
Parmenidcs, 67-71, 82, 87, 89, 112,
256, 499, 786 ; on change, 67, 68,
70-1, 88-9; and Hegel, 67, 758,
769; and logic, 50, 67, 70, 6x8;
and meaning, 68-71 ; monism of,
85, 135 ; and Plato, 67, 126, 141-
3, i?i. 174, 814; and other
philosophers, 50, 71, 75, 7&, 81,
82, 84, 87, 88, 90, 3«, 5945 and
theory of ideas, 149-51
Parmenides (Plato), 112, X49-5*»
184, 258
Parsifal (Wagner), 788
Parsons, Robert, 643
Parthenon, 78 »
Parthians, 245 *
particulars, 149, 15°, l86> "i, 424,
478-9. See also singulars; uni-
versals
Pascal, 546, 718 »., 794. 795
Paschal II, Pope, 452
paasion(s), 34, 3^, 39, ««, 278,
571-2, 595-7; Ad romanticism,
703, 708
Passover, 500
Patahne movement, 434. 453. 455
patria poles tast 301
Patrutrcha (FUmcr), 642-4 4
Patrick, St., 386, 396, 406, 4*1
Paul, St., 154* 160, 283, 323, 344.
346, 361, 3**. 397, 410, 4". 43*
*
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Paul, St— coitfcf.
469, 793 ; and St. Augustine, 371,
381, 383, 385 ; and Dionysius die
Areopagite, 424, 426; and elec-
tion. 381, 383* 384; Epistle« of,
383 ; and Judaism, 337, 339
Paula, St., 361
Paulicians, 469
Pausanias, 119
P*via, 392, 437
Pavlov, I. P., 802
Peace, 294-8
Pearl Harbor, 646
peasants, 658, 660, 671, 755. 774
Peasants* Revolt, 508
Peasants' War, 765
Peiice, Charles Sanders, 844, 852
Peisistratus, 28, 79, 529
IVIagianisfn, 372, 383-5. 4*i» 459,
489.784
Pelagius, 361. 422-3
Pelagius II, Pope, 401
Peloponnesian War, 77, 79, 95. '«>,
103, 125
Peloponnesus, 83, 114, 119
Pdops, House of, 30
Pentateuch, 34L44&
Pepm, 4«*-«3. 5*8, 575
perception, 02, 256, 497, 568, 634,
681, 783. 81 1 ; and Bergson, 825,
836, 837; and Berkeky, 673-6;
and Hume, 686jflT., 604; and
Kant, 739-46; and Leibniz, 606,
607, 619; and physics, 743-4.
861*3; and Plato, 125, 147, 148,
156, 171-81, 377. 5*8; «nd
Stoics, 281: 292
Pericles, 77-8o, 81, 9$, 100, 160,
*«7. *87, 306, 797
peritxci, 115, 11711.
Peripatetics, 300
Persephone, 35
Persia, 31, 48. 7*. 77. 84, 1 18, 207.
«45. 330, 33*. 4*2; and Alex-
ander, 241, &4*. 243. *45. 302;
and Arabs, 442, 443. 444* 44«;
and Athens, 99, 119, 393; cul-
, ture of, 442, 443; dualism of , and
Christianity, 499, 500; and Mile-
t»s, 46, 47; and Moham
da
440, 441, 444! pnc*dy cam n.
418, 499; religions of, 249, 304.
44*; rat Rome, 304, 3'°
Persian wars, 32, 77, 78, 99-ico
Peru, 22, 644
pessimism, 252, 781, 783, 786-7
Petelia tablet, 36
Peter, St., 344. 404. 4io, 4". 467
Peter III, of Aragon, 520
Petition of Right, 569
Petrarch, 504, 505, 516, 521
Pfleiderer, Edmund, 61
P:3aedo (Plato), 109, 112, 154-64,
312, 462, 597
Phaedrus (Plato), 81
Pharaohs, 242
Pharisees, 338. 339, 340, 34 «
Pheidias, 78, 81, 95* 1O°* 287
phenomenon, 739
Philhellencs, 305
Philip II, of Maccdon, 182, 241,
242, 244, 206
Philip II, of Spain, 577
Philip IV (the Fair), 503
Philippi, 297
Philo Judaeu«, 342, 346
Philolaus of Thebes, 236
philosopher^), 3«. 3». 34. 4O, 45.
7». «53. «54, 208, 226, 377.
378; Aristotle on, 203, 205; and
class interests, 210; and indivi-
dual circumstances, 284 ; modern,
and deduction, 222; modern,
and ethics, 201; Plato on, i*y,
I34> n7 ff'. 142; «nd political
and social developments, 620 ff. ;
Pythagoras on, 51, 139; Socrates
on, 107, 158, 162-3; sympathy
toward, 58; and time, 66
philosopher's stone, 62
/hMtoopfof, 274. 629 666, 6X6, 716,
792
Philosophical Radicals, 666, 703.
746, 750~i, 753. »oit 803, 807-8
philosophy, *ies: and Arabs, 306;
and Aristotle, 182, 222, 223; in
Athens, 78-9, 80, too; begun
with Thales, at, 43; classifica-
tion of, 819-20; consists of two
pans,* 863; ttamcmplatjve ideal
in, 53; cosmopolitan point of
view mt 143; and dark ages, 322;
and carry Christianity, 329; hun-
ger and, 774; invented by
Greeks, 21; among Jews and
Mohammedan, in Middle Ages,
900
INDEX
philospohy, -ies— contd.
344; lacked by opposition to
Church in Middle Ages, 323; of
logical analysis, 857-64; and
Marx, 810-1 x ; and mathematics,
48, 55, S^; mind and matter in,
156; dpen*que*tions in, 139; and
Plato, 98-9, 1x3; of power, 5x4;
religious, 37, 47, 5&» and Renais-
sance, 525; and seventeen<fi-
century science, 558^.; and
social circumstances, 284 ; stand-
ard of judgment of, 308-9; and
substance, 71; as way of life,
42,98
Phocaea, 249
Phocas, Emperor, 405
Phoenicians, 26, 27, 28, 243, 261,
3<>3
Photius, Patriarch of Constanti-
nople, 416
physical law, 684
physicalist interpretation, 681
phystco-theological argument, 608,
611-12, 736
physics, 630, 682, 714, 741-2; and
Aristotle, 226-9, 537; causal
laws in. 695; and Descartes,
584. 586, 590; and Greek philo-
sophers. 53, 66, 246, 276, 281,
• 558; and Newton, 558-9; and
perception, 619, 743-4, 861 ; and
philosophy of logical analysis,
860-2; in seventeenth century,
580 ; and substance, 7 1 , 687 ; and
modern science, 90-1, 547, 561-
Physic* (Aristotle), 89, 226-30
physiology, 695, 802, 86 1
Piedmont, 470
Pieiro dells Vigna, 4**, 4*7
Pilate, Pontius, 341
Pillars of Hercules, 165
Piltdown Man, 753
a, 454* 465, 5<>5
nwfau, 753
place, aaa, 689, 694
Plague, 570
planets, 498, 561, 58$, 732 ; ancient
views about, 152-3. 166, 130,
23$-8, 55»; and Kepler, 234f
55*, 557; and Tycho Brahc, 55 «
Plataea, 31, 118, 119
Plato, 37, 104, 242, 258, 305, 537,
715, 8x4, 820; and after-life,
272; and ancient philosophers,
73, 78, 81, 83, 85, 86, 97, 253,
267, 280, 282, 287; and Aquinas,
474, 478, 484; and Arabs, 443,
445 ; and Aristotle, 80, 93, 184-5,
187, x88, 192, 194, 195, 2X0-1 x,
218, 241; and astronomy, 237,
552 ; and Athens, 78, 80, 99 ; and
Boethius, 389, 390; and cave, 76,
145, 147-8; and Christianity,
I2i, 307-8, 323, 329. 346, 499;
cosmogony of, 165-70; and de-
duction, 55-6, 222; and Des-
cartes, 580, 590; and dialectic,
x 12 ; and Doctors of the Church,
309, 370, 372, 376, 377, 378, 379,
438; dualism of, 323, 590; and
Erasmus, 534, 537; ethics of,
195; and existence, 860; and
Gnosticism, 315, 344, 7x7, 863;
and God, 55, 373, 478, 484, 608;
and Heraditus, 63-4, 74; and
immortality, 154-64, 194, 258,
317, 350, 6xx, 863; influence of,
141, 165, 171, 2x8, 24X, 307, 323,
438-9, 499, 529; and justice,
205 ; and Kepler, 551 ; and know-
ledge, x 12, 171-81, 292, 320, 497,
521 , 547, 633 ; knowledge of, 439,
474, 5<>9; and logic, 2x8, 6x8;
and love, xxx, 122; and mathe-
matics, 54-5, 153, 231, 232, 234,
237, 313, 848, 857, 860; and
modern philosophers, 141, 571,
633. 762, 781, 7*9, 814; and
Orphism, 37, 184; and othor-
worldltness, 3x7, 329; and Par-
menides, 67, 141-2; and per-
ception, 171-81, 256, 497, 568;
and Philo, 342; and pleasure,
202; and Plotinus, 3x0-13, 3x7,
593; and pohtics, 114^*25, 199,
247, 253, 530? 576, 622; and
Pythagoras, 50, 56, 83, 141 ; and
religion, 34, 192 ; and Rome, 259,
300 ; and scholastic philosophers,
424. 425, 438-9, 449, 456, 459,
460, 461, 484, 488, 489, 4901496;
and science, 558; and Socrates,
' 78, 82, 102-4, HI, 112, 132, 1^4,
I 258, 259, 484; and Sophists, $6,
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Plato— COrtd.
98-9; and soul, 195, 310, 346;
sources of opinions of, 125-8;
and Sparta, 114, 118, 120; and
Stoics, 275, 276, 280; and sub-
jectivity, 320; and time, 229;
vices in thought of, 93, 98-9 ; and
virtue, in, 199, 320, 596, 863;
and Wyclifle, 507. See also theory
of ideas
Piatonopolis, 311
Pbutus, 362
pleasure and pain, 33, 156-7, 202,
287, 39p, 669, 749, 803-4, 829;
and Aristotle, 202-3; and Ben-
tham, 802, 803-5 ; and Berkeley,
675, 679; *nd Epicurus, 266-8;
and Locke, 638, 640-1, 669; and
utilitarians, 803-6
plenum, 88, 89
Pletho, Gemistus, 521
Pttny, the Elder, 537
Ptotinus, 308-21, 344, 34*. 377,
390, 424, 426, 438, 443, 762;
originality of, 451 ; pagan philo-
sophy ends with, 499 i *nd Plato,
593
pluralism, 85, 152, 618
plurality, 734, 830, 858
Plutarch, 114, 116, 120, 121-4, 238,
260-1, 713, 721, 793
plutocracy, plutocrat, 52, 95* 644
poets, 64-5, 72, 131, 136
pogroms, 343, 387, 452
Poland, 659
politics, 108, 114, 125, 126-7, 138,
247, 593. 62* Jf., 730, 818; Arab.
4*42; and Aristotle, 199. 200. 203,
204, 207-17; and Bentham, 803,
804, 805, 808; and Christianity,
322, 348-9, 351-2. 353, 428, 430-
i; and Darwin, 754, 808; and
Dcwey, *47; «d ethic*. 109.
200, 261, 20^ 807, 863; and
Euclid, 55; ana evolution, 532;
and Greeks, 72* 99. 120-1, 247.
252. 253, 299* 53o; and Locke,
•629, 642-65; and Machiavetti,
5*5-3*. 7«9; «nd MaisigBo of
Padua, 491*3; «*• M«r*. 810,
*l 3, *«5 ; and Middle Ages, 419,
463; modern, 52, 326, 747, 817-
'18; and NietBsche, 7*9, 796,
903
politics — contd.
798; and Occam, 493-4; and
romanticism, 701* 707 » and
Rome, 273. 299, 530; and Rous-
seau, 711, 721-7
Polities (Aristotle), 45, 119, 207-17
Polo, Marco, 704 ' '
Polybius, 282, 295. 299
Polycrates, 48
polygamy, 393, 443
polytheism, 22, 249
poor, 199, 248, 349, 357. 655, 701-
2, 774. 793
Poor Men of Lyons, 469, 471
Pope, Alexander. 280, 390, 560,
702, 780
popc(»), 323. 3^8, 303. 394, 39^,
501 #, S38', ««<* emperor, ,323,
382, 412-13. 428, 432-6, 450,
464 jff., 491 ff. ; and philosophers,
461, 482, 486, 491. 492, 493* 536,
548, 576; power of, 349-50. 493.
522, $32, 544, 643 ; and Reforma-
tion, 544, 545 ; and Renaissance,
518-19. 523; and Roman popu-
lation, 429. 437. S**al*u papacy
; Pope Joan, 418
\ population, theory- of, 751, 753.
! 808
i Porphyry, 221. 222, 310, 320, 37S.
4*8, 495. 499 •
i Portugal, 388, 463, 592
I Porree, Gilbert de la. 460
; Poaidonius, 239, 281-2, 300. 320 0
) Posterior Analytic* (Aristotle), 223.
462, 476
; pm-crty, 92 «., 208, 397, 469-70.
471. 4*2,491.765,785
power, 216, 348, 529. 603. 6oK,
643, 644. 746, 755A 854; and
Kpicurus, 267; and ethics. 137,
661-2; and Locke, 639, 654;
love of, no, 157, 153, 775; and
Machiavelli, 531 ; and modem
Stato, 514. 5«6, 577-8. 754. 855;
and Niettache, 794*. tnd philo-
•ophy, 253, 514, 855-6; in Plato's
Utopia. 135; political, 520, 522.
653-4. 664, 818; social 514.
855-6; and Socmtea, 103; and
* Thnuymschu*, 09
Amr (Ruaaeli). 813
practical philosophies, 819
INDEX
pragmatism, 173. 820, 839, 842;
3, 844 jfr.
(Bntmut),
, .
and truth, 52, 97, 573, 844 jfr.
The
Praise of Folly,
535-6
predestination, 382, 423, 482, 545,
546
predicates, 211, 733
premises, 21 ft., It 19, 292
Presbyterians, 493, 625, 626
pre-Socratics, 2iff.t 64, 92, 126,
165, 788
pressure groups. 352
pride, 560, 777. 856
Pride's Purge, 626
priest(s), priesthood, 41, 483. 499,
500, 507, 508, 545- See also clergy
Priestley, Joseph, 802
primary qualities, 629-30, 676, 677,
680, 739
Primitive Culture in Greece (Rose),
3011.
primogeniture, 646
Prince, The (Machiavelli), 526-30,
789
Prtndpia (Newton), 55, 558, 585
Principia Mathematica (Whitehead
and Russell), 859
principle of individuation, 489-90,
783
Principle* of Human Knowledge,
The (Berkeley). 674
/Vi«*r Analytic*, The (Aristotle),
122, 462
private interests, 638, 803
jfnvate judgment, 493
probability, a6i, 689, 696, 699, 843
process, 65, 66, 848
Prtxlus, 232, 439
progress, 22, 57, 64, 309, 418, 428,
57a, 754, 816
projectiles, 554
Probfomtna to the Study of Greek
Religion (Harrison), 32 w., 40
proletariat, 285, 383, 702, 709, 754.
774, 817
Prometheus, 39, *55» 338
propaganda, 137, 138, 139, *i7»
350. 53L 755
property, 34, 51, 135, 196, 21 1, 507,
511, 621, 803, 809; and Hobbea,
573, 575; and Locke, 639, 651,
654, 656 j(f., 664, 724; and Plato,
>3*» *33 ; and Rousseau, 714, 7*4
I
Prophet, 306, 440, 441, 443. See
also Mohammed
prophets, 330-3, 342, 345, 348, 350
proportion, 233, 234, 689
Protagoras, 84, 94-101, 139, 246,
320, 374; on knowledge and per-
ception, 171, 172, 173, 256; on
roan, 173, 179-80; and subjectiv-
ism, 256
Protagoras (Plato), 78, 97
protestants, -ism, 352, 520, 538,
545, 582, 645, 728, 757, 839-40;
and St. Augustine, 354, 364, 382;
and Erasmus, 533, 538; in Ger-
many, 747-8, 765 ; and God, 608,
717; and individualism, 545,
622; and interest, 210; and
liberalism, 620; and private
judgment, 493; and prudence,
638; and right of subjects to
resist, 642; and romanticism,
705; and Rousseau, 712, 716,
717; and science, 551, 556; and
soul, 366; and State, 582, 766,
769; and Vulgate, 535; and
Wyclifle, 509
protons, 66
protozoa, 557
Provence, 4 1 7, 448
prudence, 33, 267, 271, 638, 640,
703.806
Prussia, 301, 613, 658, 727, 747~8,
757. 762, 765, 766, 781
pseudo-Dionysius, 424, 426, 427,
439,489
psychology, 71, 570, 593, 595, 658,
706-7, 86 1 ; and Bentham, 8oa,
805; and causality, 692-3, 695;
and Hume, 687, 692-3; and
James, 839; and substance, 71,
687
Ptolemaic astronomy, 218, 239, 550
Ptolemies, 246, 333, 708
Ptolemy I (Soter), 292 »
Ptolemy II (Philaflblphus), 380
! Ptolemy, geographer, 239, 537, 55*,
! 571
1 public good, 655, 656
public interests, 638, 802, 805
Punic Wars, 272, 294, *99, 3°ir4i9
Pure Being, 760, 762
purgatory, 429, 5", 535, 545
903
Puritans, -ism, 141, 359"., 455*
504, 5*8, 577, 648
purpose, 74, 7*. 86, 92, 170, 559;
snd Aristotle, 93, 205, 208, 228
pyramids, 22, 161, 214, 231
Pynho, 256-7
Pythagoras, 47, 48-5*, 67, 7*. 75,
76,82, 313, 390; and
, 552; and Heraclitus, 58, 59,
60; influence of, 56, 499; and
mathematics, 67, 232, 848, 857,
860; and mysticism, 37, 59; and
Nietzsche, 788; and Plato, 126,
139. Hi, 148; and soul, 163, 192.
See also Neo-Pythagoreanism;
Pythagoreans)
Pythagoreans, -ism, 49-50, 59, 83,
153, 165, 169, 857; and astron-
omy, 153, 236, 237, 548, 55i;
and mathematics, 158, 169, 232;
and Plato, 226, 165, 166, 181;
and Ptotinus, 311; and politics,
247, 253; and soul, 223
Pythocles, 267
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
, 35, 39, 5i, 62, in, 159 reason, 33, 56, 65, 289, 313, 337,
571, 718 fi., 815; and Aquinas,
476, 482, 484 ; «nd Aristotle, 194,
195, 203; and Averroes, 447,
474*5; *nd Bentham, 804; and
Catholic philosophy, 3*4, 348,
4«3. 437, 438, 456, 459, 46i, 564;
and Hegel, 761, 763, 767. 832;
and Kant, 732, 736; and Locke,
4631* 636, 649; and Plato, 145,
155. '65; and revolt, 75«» 818;
and Rousseau, 720, 729; suffi-
cient, law of, 615
recurrence, 278
reflection, 174, 310
reform, 533, 670, 780; ecclesi-
astical, 409, 428-39, 45*, 464
Reformation, 325, 413, 420, 531,
544-6; and St. Augustine; 354,
366, 382; economic changes in,
210; and Erasmus, 536, 538;
foreshadowed, 455, 468, 470,
49*-3> 508-9; and Germany,
747, 764-5 ; and politic*. 577,
643 ; as reaction to corruption in
Church, 522, 532; and Renais-
sance, 513. 520, 533, 855; and
State, 354, 382, 766
refugees, 31. 44, 72, 325. 422, 569
refutations, 71, 226
regular solids, 169, 170, 234. 55«
Reichstag fire, 526
Reign of Terror, 731, 738
relation-words, 186
relational propositions, 172 •
relativity. See motion; theory of
relativity
religion(s), 23, 33, 56, 64, 138, 316,
342, 499* 536, 7<>7; «nd ancient
philosophy, 40, 61, 67, 75. 83,
92, 98, 269, 271-3. 275; *nd
Aquinas, 474; and Aristotle, 184,
192, 206; of the East, 41, 311;
and Francis Bacon, 564; in
Greek world, 24-5, 29, 32-3. 4O-
2, 47, 80, 241, 250, 275 i of India,
241 ; in Ionia, 47, 67; of Jews,
328-43 ; and John the Scot, 423 ;
and Machiavelli, 527 ; and medi-
eval philosophy, 439; Moham-
medan, 441 ; and Nietzsche, 788,
790; non-Hellenic, in Western
Empire, 302-3, 35°; and Plato,
Quakers, 382, 602
quality, 222, 689, 734. 772-3
quantity, 47, 222, 734
quantum theory, 90, 173 it.,
630, 695, 861
561,
.709
Radcliffe, Mrs., 705
Radicalism, 801
radio-activity, 66
rainbow, 486,593
Ranke, Leopold von, 517
rationalism, 569, 571 , 698, 746, 75 « ,
758, 8 jo, 819; in Greek world,
33. 39* 40, 4^, 50, 55, S^, 59. 83,
84, 247; and science, 61, 729
Ravenna, 393, 402, 403, 409, 4«o
Raymond, Abp. of Toledo, 461
Raymond VI, tfount of Toulouse,
464
realism, 185, 424, 459, 489, 504*
. 819, 825
wdiry, 87, 158, 734, 836, 844, M;
ami Hegel, 758-9, 761, 769-70,
851; and Plato, 126, 141, 147,
148, 156, i«8, 188; and Phtonk
• theory of ideas, 143, «5O, 15*
904*
INDEX
religion(s) — contd.
125, 192, 195; and Plotinus, 311,
499; primitive, 29; and Py-
thagoras, 49-50, 53, 56; and
Socrates, 107-11, 157, 313; wars
of, 544, 545. 621, 702
Religion* and the Rise of Capitalism
(Tawney), 20^), 647 n.
religious toleration, 441, 542, 545,
620, 630
reminiscence, 112, 125, 161, 102,
163. See also memory
Remus, 351
Renaissance, 121, 217, 218, 262,
307, 410-20, 448, 513, 516, 747;
and Catholic philosophy, 322,
348; and Church, 411, 516, 533;
disrupts medieval synthesis, 325 ;
aifd geometry, 235 ; and Greeks,
57; happiness of, 285, 326; and
human pride, 855; and Lucre-
tius, 271, 273; and Nietzsche,
789; in north, 533 ,/f.; and
philosophy, 93, 49$; and Plato,
320, 439, 474; «nd politics, 525 ;
and science, 87, 537
Renaissance in Italy (Burckhardt),
522 «., 523 ii.
Republic (Plato), 99, 120, 125, 120-
53. 165, »95. 272, 311, 539. 622;
influence of, 141; parable of
*cave in, 145, 147-8; theory of
ideas in, 141 ff.
republicanism, republics, 526, 529,
* 531.738,750
Restoration : English, 570, 577, 626,
631, 654; French, 664, 705
resurrection, 332, 339, 347, 35°,
376, 3«t, 401, 469, 482, 483
retaliation, 650, 651, 652
revelation, 41, 5». 4*3, 447, 44**,
47S» 5*4* 631, 719; and Aquinas,
476, 48*. 4«4* 485
Revelation of St. John, 382
wvenge, 324, 329
revival of learning, 307, 397
revolt, 740, 774. 819
revolution(s), 213-14, 383, 658,
848; of 1688, 628. 642, 663; of
1848.782,811
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 273 i
Rhetras, 423, 457
Rhine, 294
•905
Rhode Island, 674
Rjcardo, David, 660, 661, 667, 808
Richard I of England, 455
Richard II of England, 508, 509
Richard, King of the Visigoths,
404,405
Richelieu, cardinal, 577
Rienzi, Cola di, 504-5
rights, 55, 530, 573, 575, 57$, 651,
652, 657, 721-2; of man, 648,
653. 7«, 731, 738, 750. 803
Rimmon, 576
roads, 443
Robespierre, 718, 727, 75<>
Roderic, Count of Maine, 413
Roland, Madame, 703
Roman conquests, 245, 272
Roman Empire, 281, 291, 308, 341,
412, 442, 500, 574, 766 ; ends an-
archy, 514-15; and Christianity,
80, 241, 324, 328, 346, 500; and
culture, 294-307, 389; tall of,
363, 705; and Greek world, 241,
299-307; memory of, in Middle
Ages, 451,452, 4^7
Roman law, 389, 393, 406, 450,
452, 466
Roman republic, 270, 273, 450,
529, 849
Roman roads, 443
Roman tradition, and Church, 322,
395, 409, 4*>
Romans, Epistle to the, 384, 489
romantic movement, romanticism,
514, 670, 701-10, 745. 782, 804,
810; in Germany, 121, 730, 752;
and industrialism, 754-5; and
Man, 810, 811; and Nietzsche,
788, 789; and revolt, 703. 746,
751-2; and Rousseau, 623, 711
Rome, 240, 285, 310, 360-1, 369,
396-8, 414, 457, 547 *, »nd Africa,
440; and St. Ambrose, 355, 356;
and Arnold of Brescia* 45 3; and
Attila, 388; Macked by Bar-
barossa, 452 ; bishop of, 402; and
Byzantines, 394. 4°9', Carneades
in, 259, 260, 261 ; and Charle-
magne, 411; and Christianity,
298, 321 ; civilization of, 285,; un-
der Cola di Rienzi, 504; and
culture, 217, 406; and Donation
of Constantine, 411-12; East
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Rome — contd.
and, 301-4, 417-18; economic
system of , 285 ; Emperor marches
on, 504; and Euclid, 234; fall of,
246, 419, 4.63 ; German emperors
crowned in, 412; and Great
Schism, 505; and Gregory the
Great, 401-2 ; Henry IV in, 437 ;
and Greece, 26, 301-4, 763 ; and
Hellenic world, 240; influence
of, 120, 747; and Irish culture,
422; and Jews, 335. 34*; «nd
Jubilee, 502; in Justinian's wars,
393-4; and Lampsacus, 249; and
Lombards, 409, 450; manners
in, 259; and Milan, 434; and
Monasticism, 396, 430; and
papacy, 408, 409. 4i7» 429*
432 ff., 45»jflr- 5«>i-2, 522; and
politics, 248, 253, 529, 576-7; in
Renaissance, 522, 529-30; ruled
by Counts of Tusculum, 432;
•acked, 326, 354, 358, 363,
375-6, 387, 437, 520. 526;
and Saracens, 415; in seventh
century, 409; State religion of,
284, 298; and Stoicism, 253, 275,
281, 282-93; in tenth century,
417-18; and Venice, 517. See
QUO Roman Empire \ Roman
republic
Romuald, St., 432, 434
Romulus, 351, 525
Rooaeveh, F. D., 711. 846
Roacelin, 437, 439, 457, 459, 461
Rose, H, J., 30, 32 it.
Rosen, Edward. 548 n.
RcftovstefT, M«, 28 »., 43 »., 285-6,
296, 298 «., 304, 352
Rotrud, daughter of Charlemagne,
413
Rotterdam, 533
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 255. 536,
666, 701, 711-^7. 748, 764. 779- J
80, 8 1 8, 842; *.d St. Augustine,
364; and Condorcet, 748, 749;
and excitement, 703 ; and French
Revolution, 748; and God, 608,
'717-18; and Hume, 686, 69*-?,
6, 717 ; and individualism* 623 ;
atiam of, 698; and Kant, j
73i. 738-9; and liberalism, 667;
»and MachiaveUt, 531*., 725;
Rousseau — -cantd.
and Nazism and Fascism, 818;
and Nietzsche, 789, 791; and
noble savage, 714; and politics,
71 1, 721 ff. ; and religion, 7i6jjf. ;
and revolutionaries, 629, 726;
and romanticism, 70*, 703, 704,
711; and sensibility, 702, 710,
712; and social contract, 573,
^16, 721 #; and Sparta, 114,
713, 721; and State, 7*1. 7*3.
724, 725. 726, 766; and sub-
jectivism, 514; and will, 787
Rudolf, Duke of Swabia, 436-7
Rudolf II, Emperor 551
Rufinus, Tyrannius, 361
Rumania, 659
Russell, Demand, 211, 491* &oi «.,
813. 854-5. 859
Russia, 183, 403, 577, 646, 659,
671, 672, 73 i. 746, 848; educa-
tion in, 755; Marxism in, 817;
military strength of, 419; new
society in, 532; rationalist revolt
in, 75 1 ; Rousseau and dictator-
ship in, 727; State in, in 1917,
578. See alto South Ku*»ia;
Soviet Russia; U.S.S.R.
Russian anarchists, 751
Russian Revolution, 659, 671
Rutbcus, Quintus Junius, iHS
Rutilianus, 303 *
Sabbath, 139. 33*. 337
Stbellum heresy, 353 •
Sabellius, 353
Sacrament**), 37. 4», 4*9. 4,1 5 - 4**2,
483
Sacred Book, 351, 500
sacrifice, 29, 32, 272, 332, x>*
Sadductcs, 335, 338
aaim(*), 50, in, 137, 164. n>7, 276,
378, 382, 396, 531, 794. 7V*
St. Denis, 424, 45«
St. Gildas, 458
Saint-Lambert, Marquis tic, 718
SL Sophia, 393
SsJanus, 31, too
Sallust, 363
salvmtiofi, 36, 37. 253, 262, 333,
• 546, 600, 799. 820; and St.
Augustine. 370, 382, 384, 385;
and Christianity, 328, 366; and
906
INDEX
salvation — contd.
St. Paul, 346; and Rousseau,
714, 719
Salzburg, 414
Samarcand, 241
Samaria, 335
Samos, 48-9^245. 264
Samuel, 323, 359 n., 450, 461
Santa Claus, 845
Santayana, George, 226, 839, 840,
855 f
Saracens, 394. 4X5. 417, 419. 4*8
Sardes, 48
Sardinia, 402-3
Sargon 1, 250
Sarmatians, 363
Sarpi, Paolo, 5x7
Saun, 157, 378, 380, 385, 395. 4<x>,
49 J, 500, 786; and Ahriman, 499
Satanism. 775. 777, 779
Satyric drama, no
Saul, 323, 450
savage(s), 33. »33. 7U, 7*5. 72O
Savonarola, Girolamo, 509, 518,
5*3. 5^5
Savoy, 711
Saxons, 401, 412, 421, 436
Scandinavia, 470, 545
Scandinavian invasions, 421, 428
acrpucmm, 97, 246, 593, 732, 760,
K*5. 846; »n Greece and Home,
*77, 93. 9*. 241, 252-3, 256-62,
206, 299, 342; and Hume, 689,
M», 697, 699
Shelling, Phedrich Wilhclm Jo-
seph von, 73<>» 745
Schiller, P. C., 97, 173 n,, 820, 844
schiism, 550. Stf alto Great Schism
Schlcgel, Friedhch, 782
Schmeidkr, 458
ftcholastictsm, 564, 566, 605; and
Arabs. 307, 447-8; and Aristotle,
187, 210, 219, 235, 439", and
Church, 326-7, 813; and Des-
cartes, 580, 589, 591, 690; and
Krnsmus, 533, 534, 536; and free
will, 235 ; and God, 608; growth
of, 428, 439. 447. 45<>~«. 45°-*a;
and Hildcbnind, 327 ; and labour
theory of value, 660; and Locke,
628, 633, 648; and logic, 219.*,
513; at Oxford, 507, 568; and j
Ptatoftism, 438; and realism, i
scholasticism — contd.
424; and Renaissance, 322, 516,
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 699, 746,
science, 41, 53, 62, 79, 137, 139,
547, 690, 704, 854, 862; in
Alexandria, 80, 246; and Aris-
totle, 86, 93, 182, 225, 226, 227;
and St Augustine, 368; and
Babylonia, 23-4; and Francis
Bacon, 563, 564, 565, 566; and
Roger Bacon, 486, 488; and
Bergson, 826, 831; and causa-
tion, 689; and civilization, 34,
419-20; and Descartes, 580, 581,
583, 59o; and Dewey, 844, 854-
5; and economics, 160, 752; and
empiricism, na, 567, 729, 857,
862; and Epicurus,, 270; and
ethics, 204, 807; and flux, 64,
65-6; and geometry, 55, 57-8;
and Greeks. 21, 29, 31, 41, 43,
5 1 , 58, 241 , 243, 320 ; and Hume,
689, 696; and induction, 699;
and instruments, 557 ; and James,
839; and Kant, 731, 73*. 748;
and knowledge, 87, 862; and
liberalism, 621, 817; and Machi-
avelli, 525, 531; and Marx, 810,
811, 816, 818; and mind and
matter, 156; modern, 85, 512,
513; in nineteenth century, 746,
752; and Occam, 495, 497; and
optimism, 787; and philosophy,
512-13, 749, 815, 862; and
Plato, 79, 136, if 8; and pre-
Socratics.43.44-7, 61, 7^-4. 7§,
81, 83, 84#, 92; and purpose,
86, 92; and Pythagoreanism, 51,
72; and Renaissance, 87, 516,
537; and Rousseau, 714; and
scepticism, 257, 259; and schol-
asticism, 456; of seventeenth
century, 512, $57, 547-6*, 746,
752; and Socrates, 105, in, 158,
164; and Spinoza, 593, 601 ; and
Stoics, 281, 282, 292; and
technique, 217, 5*4, 754*, arid
truth, 623, 696, 864. See. also
empiricism
Scipio ("the Elder"), 376
Scipio ("the Younger"), 281, 2091
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
53 T
Scotland, 406, 489, 505, 645;
Chinch of, 645
Scott, Michael, 447
script, 25, 27. Set also writing
Scriptures, 341-2, 348, 372, 380,
385..458, 482, 487, 49*, S°°. 550
Sebastian, St., o33
Second Coining, 383, 8x8
secondary qualities, 629-30, 676,
68o,739
security, 530, 803
Seeliger, Dr. Gerhard, 413
Seleucia, 245
Seleucids, 244* 249* 281, 333
Seleucus, Greek astronomer, 238,
MS
Seleucus I (Nkator), 244. 245
self, 3*1. 688, 708, 729; -assertion,
77$ ; •consciousness, 761 ; -devel-
opment. 707; -government, 208;
-interest, 637-8, 672, 707. 7*4;
•murder, 51; •realization, 710;
•torture, 785
Semele, 35
semi-Pelagian heresy, 384
Semites, 22
Senate (Rome), 260, 295-7, 303,
35». 3j9.4H, 5*9
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 250, 275,
277. *79, »82, 368, 300, 487
Sens, 45^
sensation, 169, 634, 636, 676. 734.
740, 812
•ense(s), 53. 50. 67, 256, 310, 675,
728; -perception, 88, 92. 145.
162, 760; aqd Plato. 93, 126, 142,
,145, 146, 156, 172, 174. t76;
and Socrates, 157. 162; and
Stoics, 276, 202
sensibility, 701, 710, 712
sensible world, 126, 300, 314-16,
3*9. 378
Septuagtnt, 341-**, 360, 3^0
serfdom, 22, 27, 1 14, 298, 658, 672,
747
Setgius II. Pope, 418
Sfertnon on the Mount, 154. 339
serpent, 344
•ma, c$6
Seven Wise Men of Gnsecr, 44
8ran Years' War, 731
Seville, 402, 446
•«, 73. 9*. *68, 345. 35 ». 379, 4*6,
469,481
Sextos Empiricus, 238, 262, 288
Sforza, 516-17
Shaftesbury, ist Earl of, 628
Shahnama (Fiidousi),«444*
Shakespeare, 50*.; 64-5. 196, 537,
544. 55*. 749. 795. 838
Shanghai, 243, 456
Shaw, George Bernard, 819
Shelley, Mary WoUstonecraft, 70$
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 91. *5*. *7L
667, 705. 776, 838
Sheol.338.339
Shendan, R. B., 705
Shiah, 442
Shinto ideology , 419
ship-money, 662
Slam, 632
Sibyl, 6 1
Sicilian Vespers, 520
Sicily: and Emperor Frederick II,
463, 465, 466; and Greeks, 26,
27, 41. 49 «•. 67, 7*. 74* 77. «oo,
139; and Lombard League, 454;
and Mohammedan*. 307, 440;
and Naples, 520; and Normans,
326, 417, 419, 4*8. 463. 464; and
papacy, 463; and Saracens. 41$,
4*9. 4*8
Sidney, Algernon, 749
Sidon, 243
Siegfried, 788
Sigwart, 74*
Stlenu*, 110
atlver, 132, tjj
Simeon Stylitcs, St., 396
Simon de Mention, 464
simony. 401. 4<H, 43O-I, 43*. 433.
434
simple life, 255
««», 339. 3*5-6. 375. 39». 4**. 560.
5&4* 613; and St. Augustine,
364-7. 369. J7», 3«4J «nd
Gfteks. 39. 5°. 75"*. 3*6, 319;
and Jews, 338, 339, 365-6; «**
John the Scot, 4*5-6; of priests,
4*3; and Sptnuta. 504- ^« ***>
onginal sin
Smgaoonj, 143
stngukrt, 478-9
Sinopc, 254
908
INDEX
slave morality, 792
alavery, 34, 43. 5«, 9» w«, 130, 248,
254, 260, 334, 405, 443; and
Aristotle 196, 197, 205, 208-9,
211, 214, 215; slid Epictetus,
286 287; in 0x^606,27,94,217;
in Rome,«85, 293, 295, 302
Slavs. 403, 811*
Smith, Sydney, 211
Smollett, Tobias George, 704
Smuts, J. C., 771 *
social behaviour, 707, 709-10
social causation, 813
social circumstances, social en-
vironment, 284, 322, 621, 815-
16, 854-5
social cohesion, 247
social contract, 267, 572, 648, 650,
6&#. 664
Social Contract, Th* (Rousseau),
716, 721-7
Social Democratic Party, 817
social organiiation(s)v 524, 769
social power, 514, 855
social revolution, 811
social science, 805
•ocial sy*tem(s). 27-8, 52, 200, 442,
5*4» 543. 814
socialism, 511, 658, 661, 709, 754,
808, 810; in England, 508, 751,
, 801, 807, 808-9. 817; and Man,
383, 810, 8t6; and Nietzsche,
791,703, 794
society, 252. 253. 709-10, 848
Socrates, 78, 81, 99. too, 102-13,
144, too, 161, 171-2. 247, ao6;
and Aristophanes, 77, too; and
Boethius. 390; character of, 109-
"• »54jflr-t 5*»i and ethics, 93.
127, 596; and Greek philoso-
pher*. 67, 82, 83, 86, 93. 12$.
126, 253, 176; and justice, 137-$;
and knowledge, i$?~8, 17* i and
mathematics, 232; and Nietz-
sche. 789; prosecution and death
of. Hi, &*, 99, tot, 102, 104-9.
«54» I 55-6, 1*4, *«6, *77, 597;
and soul, no. 156, 157. 158*
I59jf., »7*; and subjectivity,
3*o» 37$; and theory of ideas,
149 •
Soiasons, 4SB
aokr system, 666, 731
solipsism, 682, 729, 744
solitude, 707-8
Solomon, 329, 337
Solon, 78, 79, 139, 5*9, 53*
Song of Solomon, 361
Sophia, 344
Sophist, Tte (Plato), 74, 96
Sophistici EUnchi (Aristotle), 462
Sophists, 78, 84, 88, 93, 94, 96, 98,
99, xoo, 102, 105, 137, 256
Sophocles, 38, 77, 100
Soracte, 4x1
Sorbonne, 716 n., 748
Sorel, Georges, 8x9
soul, 22, 347, 480, 488, 497, 594,
606, 607, 688, 840; and Aristotle,
188, 192 ff., 195, 3X7, 480, 585,
590 ; and St. Augustine, 366, 370,
379, 381, 3^4 ; and Averroes, 447,
475; and body, 22, 41, 5«t *56,
192-4; and Cartesians, 583, 587,
590; in Christian theology, 365-
6; and Epicurus, 269-70; and
Greeks, 35, 37, 41, 46, 61, 86, 91,
92; and Plato, 146, 156, 159^-.
165, 166, 169-70, 276; and
Pkmnus, 312-19; and Pythag-
oras, 50, 51, 163; and Reforma-
tion, 545; and Socrates, 109,
156, 157, 160-3; and Stoics, 276,
280-1. See also immortality;
resurrection ; transmigration
sounds, 174* 178, 675, 679
South America, 560, 765
South Russia, 342
South Sea Islands, 657
Southern France, 4^>
Southern Italy, 326, 415, 4*7, 4.13,
440 ; Greeks in, 26, 27. 41, 47, 49,
50, 59, 67, 73, 77, 139
Southey, Robert, 705
sovereignty, 573-4
Soviet Russia, 659, 746, 848
•pace, 55, »5, 80-90, 151* 49O, 680,
694, 75**, 78>; and Bergson,
822 ff.t 828 #, 837; and Kant,
734, 735, 739-44, 7»3J .and
Leibniz, oo, 607; modern views
on, 90-1, 7435 and Newton, 40,
91, 561, 743 ; and Plato, 168, 170;
and quantum theory, 86x; and
time and principle of individu-
stion, 489^00
909
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
•pace-time, 178, 562
Spain, 48, 49, 139. 281, 294, 320,
401, 460, 592, 626, 647; Arians
in, 354; under Charles V, 577,
746; conquests of, in America,
22, 644; and Counter-Reforma-
tion, 544, 546; feared, 621; and
Inquisition, 470; and Italy, 513,
5«7, 519. Sao, 528; and Jews,
343, 44&-9. 4?o; missionaries of,
388; and Mohammedans, 299,
3<>6, 307, 3^6, 419. 440, 442, 443,
446, 448; and papacy, 518; mon-
archy in, 325, 413; and Rome,
305
Sparta, 27, 28, 31, 77, 99, *95. 79* ;
and Athens, 31 n., 79, 99, ico,
101, 103; influence of, 114-24;
and Machiavelli, 529, 532; and
Plato, 124, 125, 136, 139; and
Rousseau, 714, 721
Spengler, Oswald, 762
spermatozoa, 557
Sphaerus, 292
Spinoza, 56, 310, 465, 592-603.
604, 783, 794, 8i4, 857; «nd
Descartes, 583, 593. 594*. «nd
ethics, 592, 593 #. 669; «nd
God, 144, 191, 4«5 *•• 59*. 594,
595 ff-> 6*9; *nd Hegel, 514,
758, 762, 769; «n Holland, 580,
592; influence of, 667; and
Leibniz, 592, 604, 605, 606, 607,
616; and logic, 594. 599. 600- 1,
618; and Maimomdes, 343. 449 ;
pantheism oft 373, 594; and
State, 593, ^66; and subjectiv*
*sm, 513; and substance, 594,
600*1, 606, 614
spirit, 312, 313, 323, 345. 348; «nd
Hegel, 761, 762, 763. 7<»4, 767,
812
Spirituals, 471, 49i
Spoleto, 307
Stagyra, 182 *
Stalm, 667, 84*
«wi, 45. *J, *35. 3179, 3«6, 34®,
3*9, S4&; *nd Aristarchua, 238;
'and Aristotle, 230; and Hotinus,
3'4, 319
States), «2, 302, 51 1. 579, 664, 754.
770, 808, 817; alternative to
«snardiy, 57§, 579; and St.
State(s)— conld.
Ambrose, 354, 3555 «»<* Aris-
totle, 183, 208-9, 210-if, 214-15 ;
Athenian, 78, 154-5; becomes
Christian, 348, 352; Corporate,
725; dictatorial, 624; and Fas-
cism or Nazism, iff, 798, 813;
and Fichte, 730; 'and Hegel, 730,
706-9, 770, 771; and Hobbes,
,«68, 577 J Jewish, 333, 3** ; Kant
recommends federation of, 738;
and Locke, 652, 664; and Mace-
donians, 253; and Machiavelli,
568 ; and Marxism, 813 ; modern,
127, 200, 511; and Nietzsche,
791 ; and Origen, 348; and Plato,
126, 127, 133, 136, 139, 210; and
Protestants, 493. 545* 5***; re-
ligion, in antiquity, 23, 38, 40,
50, 262, 284; and Routseau,
720/7".; and Socrates, 103, 105,
107, 108, 173; Spartan, 115, 116,
1 1 8 ; universal, 305 ; world, 76$-
9. Set oho Church ; totalitarian •
ism
state of nature, 647 ff.t 664. 714,
722
States of the Church, 1 20, 4 u
stellar parallax, 548
Stendhal, 778
Stephen 111, Pope, 410
Stephen IX, Pope, 433
Steyr. 534
Stockholm, 582
Stau and Epicurean Phdatophtn?
THt (Gates), 266, 286
Stoic Pkdt>toph\ . Th* (Murray),
276
Stoicism, 241, »53, »55. *65. *75-
93. 3*«, 34<», 377. 6oa; and
Academy, 261, 276, 282; and
Boethius, 390; and brotherhood
of man, 286, 287* 30$; and
Christianity, 280, 282. 283, 287,
288, 291, 393< 3*&;c<Mniupoliian,
243, 813; and determinism, 276,
280, 289; and Epicureanism,
363, 264, 374, 275; «nd ethics,
275, 281, 189, 191-1; and
Fathers of the Church, 322 ; and
* God, 277, »W», »»7. ***> W>,
14 ; and individualism, 622 ; and
337; and majority, 199;
910
INDEX
Stoicism — contd.
and materialism, 275, 276, 281 ;
and Philo, 342; and Plato, 275,
276, 280, 282, 287-8, 292; and
Plotinus, 311; and politics, 253,
299; in Rome, 275, 281, 282^.,
209-3*) ; Ad £ocrates, in, 276,
277 ; and soul, 276, 280, 317 ; and
Spinoza, 598; and theology, 289,
320; and virtue, 277-8, 279, 28*)-
Stous and Sceptics (Bevan), 59 n.,
258 n., 282 it.
Stowe, Harriet Beechcr, 791
Strachey, Lytton, 563
Stratford, Earl of, 569, 577
Stridon, 360
strife. 61, 62. 63, 74, 76, 135
Strindberg. August, 708
struggle for existence, 752, 753, 808
Stuarts. 359*., 626, 644, 645, 66 1
subject, 175, 811-12; and object,
689. 837, 840
Subjective Idea, 761
subjectivism, subjectivity, 253, 256,
320, 374, 513-U, 586, 72^-30,
735, 739, 740, 813. 846
substance, oo. 167, 224-5. 614,
634-5, 6Ho, 734. 763, H6o; and
Anstotlc, 185-93. 221, 224; and
JVftcartes, 594. 614; and early
Greek philosophy. 45-** 47. 60,
65. 7 1 . 74, 90 ; and Hume, 687-8 ;
^nnd Lcibms, 606. 614; and
'principle of individuation, 490;
and Sptnosa, 594, 600, 614
success, 530-1
succession, and causality, 692, 695
tutfenng. 7*3, 797-9
sufficient reason, 615
Sufi sect, 444
Miicide, 155. 37*. 4<>9. 737, 7&4. 785
Sutdgrr of Hamberg, 433
Sumenans, 22
Summa contra GV***/*i, 475-83
•S'wwww Tfoofafio*. 475, 477
*un, 24, 66, 230, 239. 280, S$tff<,
561. 862; and Artstftrchus. 153*
237, 138. and Bmhe, 551; and
Copernicus, 547 B*\ •«<* t)w|-
cartrs. 585 ; and St. Francis, 47 1 :
as god, 2127, 303, 331, 539; ««1
Greek philosophers. A 73< 8l^
aun — contd.
83, 91, 280, 282, 312; and
Gnosticism, 315 ; and Heraclides,
237; and Jews, 338; and Kepler,
*53» 55i > and Manichaeism, 369;
and Plotinus, 314, 319; and Py-
thagoreans, 236; and Socrates,
107; worship of, 230
Sun Goddess, 644
Sunni, 442
superman, 788, 795. 796
superstition(s) : in antiquity, 28, 32,
76, 93» 241, 243, 250, 263, 302,
320; in dark ages, 326, 386, 395 ;
in Renaissance, 516, 523; and
science, 76, 549
Supremacy, Act of, 539
Supreme, the, 3x3, 319
Supreme Court (U.S.) 577, 664
surprise, as test of error, 850
survival of the fittest, 73, 228, 752,
753, 808
Sweden, 582
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 705, 732
Swift, Jonathan, 673
Swineshead, 495 it.
Switzerland, 788
Sybaris, 49
syllogism(s), 218^., 225, 281, 565
Sylvester I (St.), Pope, 411-12
Sylvester II (Gerbert), Pope, 404,
4<>8, 430, 437
symbols, and mathematics, 177,
178
Symmachus, court official, 356, 392
Symmachua, statesman, 356, 369,
392
sympathy, 799
Symporium (Plato), 100, no, 312
synagogues, 332
syncretism, 346
syndicalism, 819
Synoptic Gospels, 309, 346
syntax, 176, 178, l|6, 859*
synthesis, 324. 4991 and Hegel, 759
Syracuse. 100, 126. 139, 144» 214,
240, 204, 403
Syria, 22, 24, 27, 120, 241, 245*
281, 303, 3^9, 409,499; neresy
in, 353; rod Mohammedans,
306, 440. 4431 monaaticism
in, 395~7; Nestorianism in, 388 ^
and Stoicism, 275
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
tabula rasa, 749
Tacitus, 245, 283, 765
Tammany, 94
Tammuz, 331
Tang dynasty, 419
Tantalos, 30
Taoists, 255
Taos,a64
Taranto, 139
Taras, 139
Tarn, W. W., 245, 248, 275, 282
Tartars, 560
Tartessus, 48
Taurobolium, 350
Tawney, R. H., 209, 648, 660
taxation, 656
technique, 514, 754. 855
Teheran, 445
teleologies! argument, 484
teleologies! explanations, 87, 126,
565
teleology, i&9. 228. 821
Teles, 255, 256
telescope, 55^. 557
temperance, 804
Templars, 503
Temple of Jerusalem, 330, 331,
332. 335. 341. 359
temples, 375
Ten Commandments, 330, 341
Teraunists, 534
terms, 495-6
Tertullian, 279, 338
Testament* of the Twehe Patriarchs,
339-42
Teutamus, 60
Thales, 21, 43-5, 47, 62, 208, 231,
235, 37?
Theaetetus, 232, 234 !
TheafUtut (Plato), 63, 97, 17 iff., \
497. 634, 860 I
Thebaid, 395
Thebes, 118, 119
theism, f 18, 8tL
tt*oc»cy, 333, 382
Thcodebert, King of the Franks,
4<>3
Theodettnda, wife of King Agi-
TModors, 393
Theodore, archbishop of Canter- P
bury, 422 I
Theodora, King of the Franks, 403 !
Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths,
386, 389, 392-3. 405. 765
Theodoras, 232
Theodosius I, 352, 353, 357. 358,
359. 377. 575
theology, 22, 53, 56, 138, 152, 222;
and Aristotle, 190! arlU Aver-
roists, 475; ana barbarian ele-
ments in Rome, 408; and Hera*
fditus, 61-2; Orphic, 35, 41-2;
and Plato, 133-4; and Plotinus,
308; and Pythagoras, 56; and
Stoicism, 275, 277, 289; and
substance, 71 ; and Xenophancs,
59. See oho Christian theology
Thcophylact, 417
theorem, Pythagorean, 54, 232
theoretical philosophies, 8 19,, 820
theories and pragmatism, 844
theory, 52
theory of descriptions, 859
theory of duration, 834-6
theory of ideas, 125, 141-53, 162,
184-6, 188. 276, 424, 43»-^
theory of knowledge, 699; and
Abelard, 459; and Aristotk, 220,
222 ; and Bergaon, 835 ; and Des-
cartes, 587-8; and Dewey. 848;
errors in, 53, 220-1; and Hel-
vethis, 749; and Hume. 729; and
James ,840- 1 ; and Locke, 628-4* ,
729 ; and ma thematic*, 5 3 , 848 ; in
modern philosophy, 5 13- 14; and
Occam, 494 jET ; and perception,
680-2 ;and Plato, 292 ; and prag-
matists, 855; and Sophist*. 93;
and Stoics, 281, 292. »SYr alto
knowledge
theory of memory, 834-6
theory of population, 750, 751,
808
theory of relativity, 239. 490. 742,
860,861
"There," 317 n.
Thermidor, 729
thermometer, 557
Thermopylae, 118
Theseus, 525
thesis, 759
Theaaalomca, 359, 575
Thmaly, 154
thing(s), 66, 490, 495, 406, 504.
f *a6, 833, 836, 860
INDEX
things-in-themselves, 734, 74", 744.
783
third man, 150, 184
Thirty Tyrants, 101, 103, 108, 125
Thirty Years' War, 546, 580, 747
Thomas, St. See Aquinas
Thomas*of Celqpo, 471
Thomists, 534
Thoreau, Henry David, 705
Thrace, 32, 33, 35, 41, 59, 469 |
Thrasymachus, 99, 137, 138. 139
Three Chapters, heresy of, 393,
401,403
Thucydides, 363, 569
Thurii, 97, 139, 246
Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietz-
sche), 792
Thysstca, 30
thyrsus-bearers, 159
Tieck, Ludwtg, 782
Tigris, 22, 245
Timaeus (Plato), 165-70, 234, 316,
390, 439*449. 55>
time, 694, $«, 827, 834; and
Aristotle, 222, 229; and St.
Augustine. 372, 373-4. 378; and
Bcrgson. 823, 826. 828. 831-4,
835* 837; and Einstein, 90; and
eternity. 55. 65 ; and Hegel. 758,
762 ; and John the Scot, 426 ; and
• Hume. 689, 604; and Kant, 734.
73$. 739-44. 7*3, g59". and
Newton. 562; and Parmenides,
9 65; and Plato, 143, 166-7, 170;
and poet*, 64-5; and principle
of indtviduatton. 489-90; and
quantum theory, 861 ; and Scho-
penhauer, 783; and Spinoza,
596; and theology, 151. See also
space; space time
Tim* and Fw Will (Uergson), 823,
827, 829
Timon, 257-8
Titans. 35
Toledo, 461
Toleration, Act of, 627
Tolstoy, 254* a$S. 3*4* 77*
Topics (Aristotle), 462
Tomcelli, 357
torture, 290, 381
totalitarianism, 115, 646, 654,
7«S, 745
totality, 734
touch, 826
Toulouse, 469
tournaments, 324
Tours, 409
Tower of London, 502, 539, 563,
569
trade, 209, 703
trade unions, 575, 725, 752
traditionalism, 746, 752, 804
tragedy, 37, 77
Trajan, 297, 300
transcendental argument, 739-40,
742
translations, 421-2, 427, 448, 461-
2, 508. See also Greek language;
Latin language ; Vulgate
transmigration of souls, 35, 50, 59,
167, 170, 192, 223, 468, 784
transubstantiation, 420, 437, 491,
508, 535, 576
Treatise of Human Nature (Hume),
Treatises on Government (Locke),
628, 642, 646, 647 ff.
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 748
Trent, Council of, 517, 545, 548
Trevelyan, R. C., cited, 271 it.,
273 «•
Treves, 355. 810
triadic movement, 758, 760
triads, 858
triangles, 54, 168-9, 170
trigonometry, 238
Trinity, 312, 352, 389, 425, 441,
457, 535 ; and Abelard, 458, 459;
and Aquinas, 476, 482; and Plo-
tinus, 312,314,43*
Trinity College, 673
Trojan Women, The (Euripides),
101
Trotsky, Leon, 848
Troy, 30, 161, 351, 375
true, the, 52, 496
truth, 52, 58, 144^259, 4* w-t 755.
TOO, 848-53; and Aquinas, 475.
476, 478* 485; and Copemican
hypothesis, 239; and Dewey,
848-53; and dialectic method,
113; double, 475. 5°4; •**
ethics, 138; and Galileo, 139;
and geometry, 146; and Hegel,
761, 767; and Hobbes, 571 ; and
Hume, 696, 7.13; »nd industrial-
Oil
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
truth — contd.
ism, 52; and James, 842-3, 845-
6; and John the Scot, 423 ; and
Locke, 631 ; and logical analysis,
864; and Marx, 81 1 ; and mathe-
matics, 55, 177; and moral con-
siderations, 98; and Nietzsche,
777; and object-subject relation,
840; and Parmcnides, 67; and
past and future, 854; and per-
ception, 173-5 ; and philosophy,
309, 813, 863; and Plato, 142,
144, 146, 147, 377; and Pro-
tagoras, 97, 173; *n<* science,
550, 606, 733 ; and Socrates, 164;
and words, 70; and Xenophanes,
59
Tully, 368. See also Cicero
Turin, 404, 712
Turks, 299, 445» 5<>7, 5<>9> 5 '7, 5*3. |
560 i
Tusculum, 417. 432 I
Tyler, Wat, 508
tyranny, 27, 72. 79, 211-12. 295,
302 !
Tyre, 243 j
»
Ucberwcg. Friedrich, 275. 446, 457
Ulphihs (Ulfila). 405
Umayyad dynasty, 442
Unam Sanctum, 502
unified wholes, 851
United States, 121, 309, 470, 655, ,
657, 663, 664, 750
unity, 51, 60, 62-3, 221, 413, 734 j
universality, 492
tyuvenals: atkd Aristotle, 184*8, ;
221; and Avicenna, 445; and «
Locke, 634; and Marx, 814; ,
nominalism and, 687 ; and Plato,
125, 148, 149. I77J and Porphy- |
ry, 488; and scholastics, 424*
45*. 4J7. 459, 4*1, 47®. 4*0, 4&4,
496-7 f
univene, 57. 229, 2*8* 289* 5#3»
759, 772, 7*7, 828, 862; and
Brrgson. 820. 822, 838; and
• Copernicus, 546-9 ; in Greek
philosophy. 4o, 75» 92, §34, *68,
174, 229. 237, 318
universities, 461
unmoved mover, 229, 477
Upmiahads, 781 !
Urban II, Pope, 450, 451
Urban V, Pope, 505
Urban VI, Pope, 505
Ure, P. N., 27 n.
Uriah, 575
U.S.S.R., 130
usury* 209-10, 64^. 681 *
utilitarianism, utilitarians, 205, 653,
671, 730, 736, 749, 801-9
Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill),
805-6
Utopia(s), 124, 129-40, 210-11 f
539-43
Utopia (More), 539-43
Vaihinger, 742
Vakntinian 1, Emperor, 356
Valentinian II, Emperor, 355- 356
Valla, Lorenzo, 411, 519, 534
vahie{s), 707, 77<>-i, 774. 86*;
labour theory of, 660
Vandals, 353, 363, 386, 3^, 405.
Vanessa, 673
Vasacur, 'Hiereae kr, 713
Vaughan, Henry. 65, 166 if.
vegetarianism, 469
Venice, 394. 454. 456* 4<»4. 5»6*
5*7, 574. 7*3
Venus, 237, 555
veracity, 842. 843 •
VerctUii, Madame dc, 712
Verona, 386 ; Council of, 470
Waalius, Andnraa, 566 9
Vichy, 819
Victor II. Pope, 433
Victor IV, Antipopr, 454 n
Victory, 356, 392
Vigna. Pirtro deila. See 1'ictro delb
Vigna
Vmci. Ixronardo da, 510. 512, 516.
violence. 671, 707, 75 «
Virgil, 297, 3*2
Virgil, bishop of Sabtburg, 414
Virgin, 23, 333, 387, 3*H* 535
virginity, 356, 359. 361. 363. 376,
385
virtue, 33, 200, 213, 320, 329. 802,
and Anatotle, 195-201, 203, 211.
213, 216; and St. Atiffu»iinr, 379.
380; and Cynics, 255; and
ethical thrones/ 199*200; and
INDEX
virtue— omfcf.
Jews, 328-*, 335; and Kant,
737; and Machiavelli, 531; and
Nietzsche, 790-1 ; and Socrates,
ii i ; and Stoka, in, 199, 277-9,
280, 286, 290-1
Vjacontif 516*
Visigoths, 386, *oi, 404, 405, 440
Vita Nvova9 La (Dante), 390
void, 82, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 220,
269 w
Voltaire, 604, 619, 629, 666, 720,
748; and Rouaaeau, 715, 716
Vulgate, 342, 354, 360, 380, 508,
533. 535
wage-earner, 811, 816
Wagner, Wilhelm Richard, 708,
235, 402;
Waiblingen, 465
Waldenaea, 469
Waldo, Peter, 469
Wallace. William, 761
Wallia, John, 5?o
Walther von der Vogelweide, 464
war, 136, 520^-1, 579, 650, 652, 657,
672, 782; in antiquity, 77, 234,
247, 248; and Aristotle, 203, 209,
214, 215 ; aa competitive method,
664. 808; and economics, 815;
•nd Hegel, 766, 768-9; and
tiefftditua, 60-1 , 63 ; and Hobbes,
57», 573. 5791 «»d Kant, 73*;
and Locke, 671 ; and More, 541-
• 2; and Nietzsche, 779, 789, 79* ,
794* 795. 797; «nd Plato, 131,
«3*. *59; of religion, 544* 546,
622, 702 ; and Rouiaeau, 714; and
Sparta. 115,116. 117, n8, "9
War ami /Vor* (Tolstoy), 77$
Warms, Madame de, 712
Waahington, George, 778
water, 45, 46, 47. 59. 13*. *76; and
Aristotle, 229*30; and Empc-
docfea, 62, 74; and Heraclitua,
61, 63; and Plato, 166-9; and
Thalea, 4*, 43-5. **
Waterloo, 778
wealth. 27. 3°*. 443
Weiemnsaa, Kari Theodor, 234*
Wtlft 465
were-wolves, 32
West, 41, 43, *W5» *35, ^f***i
division of East and, 349; and
Nicene orthodoxy, 353
Western Church, 394, 416, 464,
501 ; Doctors of, 354 jf.
Western Empire, 302, 355, 393,
408, 412, 765; Christianity tri-
umphs in, 353 ; and East, 302-4;
fall of, 325, 327, 353, 383, 3^6.
387, 406, 419, 428, 440
Whitehead. A. N., 819, 859
whole(s), 594, 75«, 76o, 761, 762,
770, 851
widows, 360
will, 200, 227, 320, 572, 594, 786,
787, 818; of all, 724, 725 *-,
727 n., 767; and St. Augustine,
370, 378, 379; to believe, 842-6;
and Kant, 291, 737, 783; and
romanticism, 751, 752; and
Schopenhauer, 780, 782-7; and
Stoicism, 277, 289, 290. See alto
free will; general will
Will to Believe, The (James), 842
Witt to Power, The (Nietzsche), 792
William the Conqueror, 435, 437
William II of Germany, 706
William III of England, 627
VTilliam of Champeaux, 458
William of Malmesbury, 423
William of Moerbeke, 475
William of Occam. See Occam
William the Pious, 431
Wilson, Woodrow, 573
, wine, 37, 44»
I witchcraft, 523, 558 •
j Wolf, A., 557 n.
Wolf, Baron von, 618, 731
Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, 539
women, 33, 131, 157, 4*7, 655, 75°,
782, 804; in Greece, 26, 92, 95.
116, 119, 208; and Nietzsche,
79i , 79*. 795 1 «tB.d Plate? 37, 132,
167, 170, 211 ; HP Rome, 293, 301
Word, 56, 370, 478
words, 113, 174, 176-7. 306, 566,
571, 771-2; and Aristotle, i85-7a
220-1, 223-4; geqfral, 143* *4*-
9; and logic, 220*1, 223-4, 496,
614 ; and logical analysis, 859-60;
and meaning, 68-9, 175-'
i, 77«-»
915
WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Wordsworth, 705
working-class movements, 817
world(s), 46, go, 162, 604, 612-13,
618, 734, 862; end of, 277, 418
World o$ Witt and Idta> The
(Schopenhauer), 782
world-animal, 165-6, 170
world-conflagration, 277, 282
world federation, 739
world government, 768
world State, 768, 769
Worms: Concordat of, 452; Coun-
cil of, 436
writing, 22, 27-8
Wyclifle, John, 504, 506. 507-9
Xenophanes, 31, 58, 59, 60
Xenophon, 102-4, no, 247
Xerxes, 77, 100, 119, 3<>4
Yahweh, 330-1, 334* 344. 346, 365,
383
Yaqub Al-Mansur, 446
Yaqub Yusuf, Abu, 446
Yonas, 245
York, 414, 415. 455
Yorkshire, 414-15
Zacharias or Zachary (St.), Pope,
414*575^ . «
Zagrcus, 36
Zarathustra. Be* Zoroaster
Zealots, 341
ZeUer, Eduard, 84. 85, 98, 188
Zeno, Emperor, 444
Zeno of Citmm, 263, 275-6, 279-
80, 281, 292
Zeno the Ekatic, 84, 112, 149,
$33-4
Zeu». 23, 35, 39, 236, 242, 272, 334;
and fate, 29, 134, 855; and
Socrates, 77, 105 n. ; and Stoics,
277. 279. 280, 286, 287, 288
Zeus Lykaios, 32
xoology, 444
Zorosster or Zanthustra, Zoroas*
trians, 30. 241, 3<H, 345. 44L 777
916'