PHILOSOPHY OF MAURICE'S THE FIRST SIX

CENTURIES.* AMONG the many and various qualities of Frederick Denison Maurice, the most rare and remarkable is a power of seeing the actual life as it once existed in long since defunct systems, and of recognizing the vital truths which lurked in many forms and theories in the main false. This is a faculty which mere reason or intellect could not attain. It requires, with some imagination, an earnest love of truth, and a widespread sympathy with hu- manity, such as the old Roman dramatist described in his " Homo sum." And it is this quality, doubtless, which gives the [late] Professor of Ecclesiastical History at King's College his influence over many minds, especially of the rising generation, and among a class where divines seldom penetrate. To those who look upon the church, not as an institution to improve men in this world and prepare them for another, but as a something to maintain abstract dogmas and mysteries which reason cannbt solve, this earnest love of truth wherever it is found, and the consequent disposition to do justice eveaetaan enemy, is suspicious if not odious. To see life and gooduesi where the whole army of jogtrots and formalists see nothing but dry bones, or nothing at all, is heterodoxy of the worst kind.

This survey of the Philosophy of the first six centuries of the Christian sera, rewritten from an early work published in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, well illustrates the great peculiarity of the writer. On the one hand, the expositor deals with heathen philosophers, from Seneca and Epictetus in the Apos- tolic times, till Boethius arose to connect the Middle-age and Classical world, and Justinian in the sixth century closed the schools of Athens upon the mystic seven ; and on the other hand, with the most eminent Fathers, from Ignatius to Gregory the First. He is therefore continually encountering heathen old Roman virtue were to be seen in them. Seneca was as much offended as opinions which the mass of us not only look upon as false but so mild a man could be by the dangerous sentiment of Aristotle, that anger, dead, or doctrines which Protestants consider as idle or supersti- tdireogsehda baddileaastne,NtissiazodosfertTlionot.b. Iotttoisnbtairtla,thnelosraal,orailloguethbetrto. elixe tious; yet Mr. Maurice continually penetrates below the surface cite) the dTspileaysure of a philos'opher, by objection that the philosopher in Rome to revive the life which the opinions possessed at the time, to who began to act upon that maxim must be displeased all day long." rescue from contempt or indifference the truth which they con- An instance of the critically descriptive account of ancient tamed, and to show (with less continuous success, perhaps) the writings may be taken from the Emperor Julian's Festival of the bearing they had upon the philosophy of the middle ages, and cEosurs. upon modern thought, language, and opinion. If his commenta- " The Cresars of Julian were written during the Saturnalia. He is not ries on the character and productions of the principal men of given to joke he says, but since he wishes to preserve the rites of that sea- action or speculation, whether emperors, philosophers, or thee- son, he will joke, to compose something which shall be profitable without being logians, did nothing more than this, the Philosophy of the First too grave. He fulfils his promise. His humour, though not rich or various, Six Centuries would be curious and interesting. The work, how- ifeaesats!",intnee ever, is further entitled to great praise as a picture of the political or three are rejected as too odious even for the lowest places at such a repast ; changes of the Roman rulers, so far as they were compelled into the others arc encouraged to produce their different merits, that the Gods may a certain course by the opinion of mankind, an essential exhibi- judge between them. Silenus sits by, acting the licensed fool at the divine tion of the character and opinion of the leading philosophers of court, and silfgestingivrouusrtolitiocssaofdlecuissataionnowanintst the prastkivetsgethee the epochs, as well as the temper and doctrines of the Fathers, ! end of the manner in which Pagan and Patristic speculation ! claimed, Silenus always reminding them of some that had escaped their sometimes reacted on each other. In addition to the forceful and ' memory. But the Gods observe that acts may be owing in a great degree to lifelike manner with which this is generally done, and succinct fortune ; the purpose of the actors is far more important. Alexander is notices of the most remarkable works as well as the most remark- . rekue do worked amidhe tshuodurfthtl the mostreCla'llIZOif)rianll things, and tto. wsutcitzit able writers of the period are given, the reader has the whole he answers. Mercury' asks him whether he thinks he succeeded. fiend. Alexander presented to him, not in a series of parts where each is successively believes he did. ' Ah, no I' says Silenus; 4 my daughters, the grapes, con- worked up for effect on the same scale to the same importance, but geared you.' Alexander, being well skilled in Aristotelian logic, replies that as a representation of the actual. In this representation he will his battle was not with inanimate things, but with the race of beasts and probably see that one man, of an unpopular name in our day, pre- men. ' Consummate dialectician ! in which class do you place y:ourself,' in- served Christianity from the lifelessness of Arianism on one side beaten the and the equal coldness of a vague and philosophic mysticism on thinking about myself,' says Alexander. ' *hen you talk of con- the other : and that man was Athanasius. 1 quering yourself, you use an equivocal expression.' 'Capital logic To enter into anything like an account of the different specula- ' again, cries Silenus ; 'but that Indian who wounded you, had not tions or theories that the survey of Mr. Maurice successively un- i he itehoeombtentterfuorfoIsou you?' 'Stop,' cries Dwiiatnbysyuost,i "seeiiilig dtihdatritlegtnudser folds, would require a space almost equal to his own ; for the ex- 1 Upon which Alexan'tler is so abashed that he retires from the contest. position is brief in style, and generally close in ideas, unless Each of the Romans gives an answer different from that of Alexander, now and then where the notions cannot be briefly explained,— but in the same spirit : a slight cross-examination demolished it. No one though this feature is oftenest shown in specimen quotations. An conies off so badly as Constantine. His highest ambition, according to Ju- idea of the book will be best conveyed by some leading extracts. ilanwatoget manithings to himself, then give nantliinaway;

We begin with a celebrated name, whose apparent contradictions Marcus Aurelius was called, he answers that the purpose of his life was to

of conduct and profession, whose questionable life and philosophic imitate the gods. He is asked what that imitation consisted in. He answers, death, may have more conduced to his celebrity than his own 'to want as few things for himself as possible, and to do as much good as Writings. In Seneca, however, our author can see a consistency , possible to the greatest number.' Silenus raises the usual objections ; valid 'which escapes other men.1 ones on the ground of his indulgence of Faustina and Commodes, which "There was much in his education which might have led him to think ' kli_ltiircus. he sophistically takes off. Another, on his little care for his own the enlargement of his fortune and the study of words the main business of emy,,n. affirms to be part of his imitation of the gods.

life. But Seneca became a Stoic. He proposed to himself the acquisition of inward contentment and self-satisfaction as his end ; he looked upon philo- , doing him justice, but because it throws a light upon his scheme of life. sophy, not the courts, as the means to that end. He was, however, n Roman before he was a Stoic. A pedantic contempt for wealth n

formed no tart of his profession: if he could make it minister to his

. main object, e was quite willing to hold it and increase it. It separated him from the vulgar ; it allowed him leisure for self-cultivation. Ile was as little ! ar y.

• Philosophy of the First Six Centuries. By the Reverend Frederick Denison been proved in this very conflict." Maurice, Chaplain to Lincoln's Inn; Professor of Eeeleiiiastical History, King's I College, London. Second edition, revised. Published by Griffin and Co: i The book closes with a sort of defence of Gregory, to which a

anxious to alienate the other part of his patrimony from any notion that bar- renness and dryness of style are necessary or becoming in the seeker of wis- dom. He early found that the forum was not the place in which a subject of the Camars was likely to realize the blessings which he especially desired ; but the gifts which qualified him for the forum might, he thought, be ap- plied advantageously in the closet.

"The contemporaries of Seneca, of course, were quick in detecting what seemed to them the gross contradiction of a Stoic dwelling in some of the finest gardens in Italy and patronized by an Emperor. Later times have been more busy in their complaints of Seneca for his points and antitheses. Neither, we conceive, have been just to him. He worked out the problem which Zeno had set before his disciples, with as much consistency as any of them had ever done. But he worked it out in new circumstances. He tried to show that the material objects in which other men placed their happiness did not necessarily hinder a philosopher from attaining that which specially belongs to himself; that equanimity was possible in the midst of a society liable to hourly changes from the will of a tyrant. His style may be called artificial, but it is the perfectly natural expression of the mind of the man who used it. No other could enable us so well to understand the continual effort which he was making to keep himself steady while all was reeling about him ; the skill with which he availed himself -of all resources for this purpose ; the degree in which he was able to subordinate all other purposes to it. If self-concentration, independence of mere circumstances, independ- ence of other men and their interests, an assertion of the position of the phi- losopher as immeasurably higher than that of the ordinary man, be stoical aims and characteristics, Seneca was in the very strictest sense of the word a Store. He was a Stoic, too, in his reverence for physics. A brilliant essay- ist and historian of our day has alleged him as the most damning proof of the inutility and barrenness of moral studies; his Treatise on Anger being con- trasted with those beneficial investigations of nature which have lid to the construction of various necessary and marketable edict s. Seneca himself might have been quoted in support of this opinion ; though he exalted natural above human studies not on the ground of their utility but their sublimity. He valued even the knowledge which he could acquire of meteors and volca- noes above all theories about Indignation and Consolation. It may seem strange that so prolific a writer on ethics, and one who connected ethics so much with the practice of life, should have taken such a view of the relative worth of these pursuits. But, in truth, Nature furnished him, as well as other Stoics, with their ethical standard. How nearly they might approxi- mate to its fixed order—how far they might cast aside the disturbing forces of impulse and affection was their question. Seneca went farther in finding the answer to it than any of his predecessors. His Treatise on Anger is no mere collection of well-turned sentences; it exhibits an ideal of character which he set before himself habitually, and which it cannot be denied that in a great measure he realized. The miseries and oppressions of the earth did not disturb his peace. The crimes of the palace never led him to dream, as an old Athenian might have dreamt, of Harmodius ; or to pray, as an old Roman might have prayed, for a divine avenger; or to mix, like his kins- man Luean, reverence for Pompey and Cato with adulation of Nero. He MIS not inspired, as Juvenal was in a somewhat later time, by mere indignation, to pour out verses. He did not brood, like Tacitus, over the inevitable fall of his country's glory when its virtue had departed, nor anticipate the possible greatness of the untamed tribes in the forests of Germany, because traces of the First. He is therefore continually encountering heathen old Roman virtue were to be seen in them. Seneca was as much offended as opinions which the mass of us not only look upon as false but so mild a man could be by the dangerous sentiment of Aristotle, that anger, dead, or doctrines which Protestants consider as idle or supersti- tdireogsehda baddileaastne,NtissiazodosfertTlionot.b. Iotttoisnbtairtla,thnelosraal,orailloguethbetrto. elixe tious; yet Mr. Maurice continually penetrates below the surface cite) the dTspileaysure of a philos'opher, by objection that the philosopher in Rome to revive the life which the opinions possessed at the time, to who began to act upon that maxim must be displeased all day long." rescue from contempt or indifference the truth which they con- An instance of the critically descriptive account of ancient tamed, and to show (with less continuous success, perhaps) the writings may be taken from the Emperor Julian's Festival of the bearing they had upon the philosophy of the middle ages, and cEosurs. upon modern thought, language, and opinion. If his commenta- " The Cresars of Julian were written during the Saturnalia. He is not ries on the character and productions of the principal men of given to joke he says, but since he wishes to preserve the rites of that sea- action or speculation, whether emperors, philosophers, or thee- son, he will joke, to compose something which shall be profitable without being logians, did nothing more than this, the Philosophy of the First too grave. He fulfils his promise. His humour, though not rich or various,

pleasant. ZIT

sffearenndt iCiseersraursleosf Lhteroocliduritnir thereon. invited totwao ever, is further entitled to great praise as a picture of the political or three are rejected as too odious even for the lowest places at such a repast ; changes of the Roman rulers, so far as they were compelled into the others arc encouraged to produce their different merits, that the Gods may a certain course by the opinion of mankind, an essential exhibi- judge between them. Silenus sits by, acting the licensed fool at the divine tion of the character and opinion of the leading philosophers of court, and silfgestingivrouusrtolitiocssaofdlecuissataionnowanintst the prastkivetsgethee the epochs, as well as the temper and doctrines of the Fathers, ! may hare its Orwsipiercelptr favour, 111. T..e Alexander is of the• candidates are are.first ;em- end of the manner in which Pagan and Patristic speculation ! claimed, Silenus always reminding them of some that had escaped their sometimes reacted on each other. In addition to the forceful and ' memory. But the Gods observe that acts may be owing in a great degree to lifelike manner with which this is generally done, and succinct fortune ; the purpose of the actors is far more important. Alexander is notices of the most remarkable works as well as the most remark- . rekue do worked amidhe tshuodurfthtl the mostreCla'llIZOif)rianll things, and tto. wsutcitzit able writers of the period are given, the reader has the whole he answers. Mercury' asks him whether he thinks he succeeded. fiend. Alexander presented to him, not in a series of parts where each is successively believes he did. ' Ah, no I' says Silenus; 4 my daughters, the grapes, con- worked up for effect on the same scale to the same importance, but geared you.' Alexander, being well skilled in Aristotelian logic, replies that as a representation of the actual. In this representation he will his battle was not with inanimate things, but with the race of beasts and probably see that one man, of an unpopular name in our day, pre- men. ' Consummate dialectician ! in which class do you place y:ourself,' in- served Christianity from the lifelessness of Arianism on one side beaten the oot ensteionifuearli y 'Are rev yourself, you rfie by yourytohuer ionaannimaanteerthoirni/rt.:f.,1, of were

not

and the equal coldness of a vague and philosophic mysticism on thinking about myself,' says Alexander. ' *hen you talk of con- the other : and that man was Athanasius. 1 quering yourself, you use an equivocal expression.' 'Capital logic To enter into anything like an account of the different specula- ' again, cries Silenus ; 'but that Indian who wounded you, had not tions or theories that the survey of Mr. Maurice successively un- i he itehoeombtentterfuorfoIsou you?' 'Stop,' cries Dwiiatnbysyuost,i "seeiiilig dtihdatritlegtnudser folds, would require a space almost equal to his own ; for the ex- 1 Upon which Alexan'tler is so abashed that he retires from the contest. position is brief in style, and generally close in ideas, unless Each of the Romans gives an answer different from that of Alexander, now and then where the notions cannot be briefly explained,— but in the same spirit : a slight cross-examination demolished it. No one though this feature is oftenest shown in specimen quotations. An conies off so badly as Constantine. His highest ambition, according to Ju- idea of the book will be best conveyed by some leading extracts. ilanwatoget manithings to himself, then give nantliinaway;

ministering tirsttoisownuststletotoso of lis friends. fetwien We begin with a celebrated name, whose apparent contradictions Marcus Aurelius was called, he answers that the purpose of his life was to

of conduct and profession, whose questionable life and philosophic imitate the gods. He is asked what that imitation consisted in. He answers, death, may have more conduced to his celebrity than his own 'to want as few things for himself as possible, and to do as much good as Writings. In Seneca, however, our author can see a consistency , possible to the greatest number.' Silenus raises the usual objections ; valid 'which escapes other men.1 ones on the ground of his indulgence of Faustina and Commodes, which "There was much in his education which might have led him to think ' kli_ltiircus. he sophistically takes off. Another, on his little care for his own . we have given a summary of.Julian's best work, not only for the sake of

inward contentment and self-satisfaction as his end ; he looked upon philo- , doing him justice, but because it throws a light upon his scheme of life.

!tierces was to be his model. He had sought to preserve the Empire by ex- siting philosophy against Christianity ; Julian would make the same wai- meat. He had motives of indignation which Marcus had not. He had seen

Christians tried in a new position, and had reason to know how large a per- lion had disgraced themselves in the trial. Iamblichus and Maximus were

1 eater than an of the Stoics who surrounded Marcus. Besides, they had

remark by hr. Hallam gives rise. This is the last part of Gre- gory, and of the book—the utility of the Romanist use of Latin.

Finally, when we speak of the one language which Gregory, by the forms of devotion which he sanctioned, and by the general character of his missions, did so much to establish as the organ of spiritual communication in the world over which he reigned, we must crave liberty to notice one or two points which Protestant polemics and classical scholars are disposed to forget, but which for our purpose (and, we think, for theirs also) require to be se- riously considered.

"It was the existence of a language which did not belong to the market; which represented higher thoughts and feelings than those with which men were commonly occupied, that made the tribes of modem Europe conscious of their spiritual necessities, and of the powers which there were in their own native tongues to express them. The idea of a school—of instruction and education at all in the higher sense—was inseparable from the existence of such a medium. Moreover, the Latin operated continually as the third power which mediated between two contending tribe languages, and ultimately en- abled to mingle in some higher. The law courts and the palace did not suc- ceed in making the French of the Normans ox-the French of the Plantagenets triumphant over the Saxon of our people. The ecclesiastical Latin was a common object of reverence and fear to both. Ultimately, it helped to bring the strong elements which suited the immature life of our forefathers into an organic English. Its despotism, then, however severe, however mis- chievously protracted, was not really injurious to any people who had native strength to encounter it : their old language received its impression, and grew to be a living one, adapted for the highest moral and intellectual pur- poses, by means of it. But what chiefly concerns us is this : it was the prevalence of this school language, though uncouth, distasteful to the mo- dern man of refinement, hard to manage even by those who wielded it as their ordinary instrument—nay, by reason of these very qualities—which determined the peculiar direction of the philosophy of the Middle Ages. The familiaritity with which we speak our own dialect makes us forget to ask ourselves about its words—to inquire how far they are distinct front the visible things or the invisible realities which we connect with them. They become dang,eeously identified with that which they express at one time, dangerously separated from it at any other. But we do not question them to know how they are related, or how they are separated ; we can scarcely put them at a sufficient distance from us ever fairly to present the puzzle to our- selves. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages had these questions thrust upon them ; they could not evade them. After ages might laugh at their folly for raising such doubts; but they did not raise them. There they were, de- manding resolution. To pass them by would have been ignominious cowardice ; they could have no satisfaction on other points till these were settled. And they had this compensation for the sneers of their descendants : they were contributing in innumerable ways to clear difficulties out of our way ; to snake it unnecessary that we should often travel the ground which they ex- plored; point out the track when circumstances call upon us to revisit it ; to mak it possible that we should enter upon inquiries of which they knew nothing, and yet which they fancied they could settle by their methods. We apprehend that our obligations to them for the clearness and precision which they have been the instruments of giving to discourse—for the hints which they have supplied us respecting the laws of thought—for showing what they could and what they could not do—would be as cheerfully and cordially re- cognized by our learned and honoured countryman Mr. Mill as by the most fanatical reviver of medireval notions and practices."