GREEK PHILOSOPHY.*
MOST English readers, we suppose, have drawn their conceptions of the life and teaching of Socrates from Mr. G. H. Lewes's " History of Philosophy," and from the eloquent chapter of the " History of Greece" in which Mr. Grote discusses with such clearness and originality this interesting subject. So vivid is Mr. Grote's picture, and so strong is the reasoning by which he sustains his conclusions, that we can hardly expect to find any important addition to or modification of his views. It does not surprise us, therefore, that there is nothing in this volume strikingly new. With a few exceptions, Dr. Zeller is in substan- tial agreement with Mr. Grote ; he differs but little from him as to the general character and drift of the Socratic philosophy, or in the view which he takes of the philosopher's condemnation, of the causes which led to it, and of the temper which it indicated in the Athenian people. We have, however, no hesitation in saying that much may be learnt from his work. It is clear, well arranged, and contained within a moderate compass. It is fur- nished with foot-notes, which give the authorities for the writer's conclusions, with neat and useful marginal summaries, and with the convenience of a good index. Everything, indeed, has been done to make it thoroughly useful to the student. At the same time, it has attractions for the general reader. There is no abstruse meta- physical terminology to perplex him. The translator tells us in his preface that he has aimed at giving us the substance of Dr. Zeller'a work, rather than at reproducing his language. The result is that in about 300 pages we have a perfectly intelligible account of the mental condition of the Greek world at the time of Socrates' appearance, of the Socratic teaching itself, and of the schools which drew their inspiration from it.
Dr. Zeller divides his work into three parts. The first is an introduction to the main subject, and is intended to explain the relation of the Socratic teaching and philosophy to the age. It brings before us the successive changes in ethical sentiment of which the tragic poets and the historians were the representatives.
* Socrates and the Socratic Schools. Translated from the German of Dr. Zeller, by 0. L Reichel. London : Longmans. 1968.
The Greek Sceptics, from Pyrrho to Sextut. By Norman Maccoll, B.A., Scholar of Downing College, Cambridge. London and Cambridge : Macmillan and Co. 1869. Thucydides, with his critical temper and his scarcely concealed contempt for the national myths, comes out as the precursor of habits of thought which were gradually forming themselves, and on which the so-called " Sophists " fastened. The best of these teachers tried to substitute knowledge and rational conviction for tradition. In this sense, Socrates, according to Dr. Zeller, as well as according to Mr. Grote, was a Sophist. But to the Sophistic scepticism that denied the possibility of all knowledge he was thoroughly opposed. On certain subjects he was himself a sceptic. Physical science, which we are now apt to think rests on the surest, if not the only sure basis, seemed to him hopelessly un- attainable. But he earnestly believed the knowledge of what concerns man and society to be within the reach of human faculties ; it was the work of his life to lay the foundations of this knowledge, his famous " dialectic " being the instrument which he employed. He did not aspire so much to construct a definite theory or system as to suggest a correct method of ethical science. "His importance," as Dr. Zeller says, "arises not from his new view of things, but from his new view of knowledge." By "knowledge," he meant acquiring conceptions. The world, he remarked, was framed according to definite conceptions. Thus he was led into the argument from design. And thus his philosophy is connected with the Platonic "ideas," and with the modified form in which these reappear in the speculations of Aristotle.
In the second part of his work, Dr. Zeller brings together all the important facts in the life of Socrates, and discusses at length his personal character, and the general drift and tendency of his philosophy. There are, it is well known, many apparent discre- pancies between the accounts which Xenophon and Plato give of their master. Dr. Zeller treats the difficulty very sensibly. Xenophon, as he says, clearly meant in his " Memoraba " to give us a true picture of the opinions and conduct of Socrates ; but he does not enable us to understand his immense historical and philo- sophical importance. Schleiermacher seems to have been right when he said that we are to accept Xenophon's view as substan- tially truthful, but must supplement it by asking, "What must Socrates have been to justify the description given of him in the Platonic dialogues ?" For Socrates was an intellectual as well as a moral reformer. Xenophon pictures for us the popular teacher ; the more subtle Plato brings before us the philosopher who, while convinced that ethics were the supreme subject of human inquiry, held also the dogma that the value of actions depended on their proceeding from correct knowledge, who felt that this knowledge could not come but from philosophical investigation, who, there- fore, had to be the acute dialectician as well as the practical teacher of morality.
Nothing connected with Socrates is better known than the genius or atutthlo on which the charge that he was introducing new deities was founded. He does not appear to have understood by it either what we call conscience,' or even a persuasion of his divine mission. It would indeed have been inconsistent with his whole line of thought to have judged the moral character of actions by any other standard than that which is furnished by pure intelli- gence and deliberation. Making virtue to consist in knowledge, he could not but hold morality to be determinable by intellectual process, rather than to be the subject of special and exceptional warnings. Hence Dr. Zeller thinks that the tIctriu,Oyios VMS not something which took cognizance of the moral quality of actions, but something which dealt with them solely in relation to their results. Like divination (thaYrixi) it enabled Socrates to foresee how far a certain action or line of conduct would conduce to a particular end. It was thus a sort of internal oracle, and it was perfectly natural that Xenophon and Plato should regard it as akin to thavrin21. To Socrates himself it seems to have been a mysterious and unexplained residuum of feelings and impulses which he could describe only as a divine relation. Dr. Zeller treats it as "an inward voice coming from the philosopher's own individual tact, which as a boy he had carefully cultivated," and he quotes with approbation the view of Hegel that it was "the mind of Socrates, but his mind only half conscious of itself."
"The Condemnation of Socrates" is the subject of one of the most interesting chapters in the volume. Here Dr. Zeller is no --bs in perfect accord with Mr. Grote.. Much as he admires the; A- torian's description of the trial, he thinks that there is an exag- geration in the notion that Socrates did not care to be acquitted, and that his speech was addressed to posterity rather than to the actual judges ; that the purpose of his defence, in fact, was to display in the most emphatic manner his personal greatness and the greatness of his mission. l'his view, Dr. Zeller thinks, attributes too much calculation to him, contradicts the state- meat that he utters his defence without preparation, and is scarcely consistent with the simplicity and uprightness of his character. As to the causes of his condemnation, Dr. Zeller generally agrees with Mr. Grote. He points out that it was not brought about by the Sophists, who, indeed, had little political influence, but was mainly due to a wide-spread feeling that his teaching was adverse to morality and religion, a belief strengthened by the political circumstances of the time, a period of violent democratic reaction, consequent on the overthrow of the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants. At the same time, he cannot admit that the circumstances of the case, though they may extenuate the guilt ot the act, actually excuse it,—that it can by any possibility be pardoned to a generation which had accepted so great a change from the traditional belief of their ancestors, which had listened with pleasure to the sceptical poetry of Euripides, and had laughed at the irreverence of Aristophanes ; that it was anything less, in fact, than a "crying political anachronism, one of those unfortu- nate measures by which a policy of reaction is ever sure to expose its incompetence and shortsightedness."
The remaining portion of Dr. Zeller's work has less interest for the ordinary reader than for the student of philosophy. Its subject is the "imperfect followers of Socrates," and it is, in fact, a re'sume of all that is known about the Megarean, Cynic, and Cyrenaic schools. We are shown how these schools worked out one side of the Socratic teaching to the exclusion of every other, and how they put into an intelligible shape the pro- blems with which the Epicureans and Stoics were subsequently occupied. There is a particularly good account of Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaics, one of the most striking per- sonalities among the great Socratic philosophers. Aristippus held, in contradistinction to the Cynics, that prudent enjoyment was a greater art than abstemiousness. It was a characteristic saying of his that riches were like shoes, which when too large could not be used.
The reader will find in Mr. Maccoll's essay on "The Greek Sceptics from Pyrrho to Sextus " a vigorous sketch of one of the philosophies which grew out of the systems of "the imperfect followers of Socrates." The essay is one of the very valuable addi- tions to literature which we owe to the special prizes that have been of late years founded within the Universities, having obtained the "Hare Prize" at Cambridge last year. Dr. Zeller in his concluding chapter points out the connection between the habits of thought of the imperfect Socratics and the decay of Greek political life ; Mr. Maccoll, in his introduction, takes up the sub- ject at this point. He points out that Plato and Aristotle had become obsolete, because the life which they had taken for granted, as it were, in building their philosophies had passed away. In these later days, he says :-
"How could any one imagine man to be a political being, or fancy that individuals were but incidental parts of the whole body of the State ? Who could hope to realize a new scheme of polity, such as Plato, perhaps, had dreamed of achieving, with the help of Dion or Dionysms ? What community would now ask a philosopher to draw up its laws? Laws had come to be given by the Stater and Sarissa If political freedom had perished, still, the Stoics said, the individual might be free, free from responsibility to others, in that he was responsible to himself alone—free from external law, as having a higher law in him- self. If the restless activity and ambition which had been so dear to the Greeks, and to the Athenians especially, were now impossible, Epicurus taught that this fretful energy had embittered life, that it must and ought to be abandoned for the obedience to nature. When turmoil prevailed without, when might seemed right, the Pyrrhonean extolled that pure apathy of the soul which rises far above the jars of life,—which, if it knows no good, yet knows no evil."
Pyrrho and the New Academy are Mr. Maccoll's immediate sub- jects, and he treats them with a power and mastery which enable him to make his hundred pages a very complete and lucid exposition.
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