WITTIER'S LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF iNCIENT PHILOSOPHY. * Han Professor

Archer Butler lived himself to publish the results of his studies in ancient philosophy, it may be safely asserted that a very different work from the one which Professor Thompson of Cambridge has been called on to edit would have been .given to the world. -In the first place' we may well doubt whether he would have chosen the form of lectures, with their necessary dif- fuseness and repetitions, their rhetoric and personal appeals, all -that is useful in exciting and sustaining the attention of an au- dience, but which becomes tiresome .and interruptive to a reader. Then we may be sure that if he had chosen the lecture form, it would not have been the lectures of his earlier years and imma- ture powers that he would have given, but those later lectures .which, when master -of his subject, he delivered without -pre- viously writing. But in 1837, when Professor Butler began to lecture, the aids accessible to students of Greek philosophy in -the _Lectures on the History of Ancient J'hilosophy. By William Archer Butler, ALA.. late Professor of Moral Philosophy in Me University of Dublin. Edited from the Author's MSS. with Notes, by William Hepworth Thompson, MA., Fel- .low of Trinity College and Segikat +Professor of Greek in Me University of Cam- bridge. In-two volumes. Published by Macmillansand Co.,.0ambridge. -English language were very different from those accessible at present. Since that period, the popular treatises of Mr. Lewes and Mr. Maurice have been published in a cheap form ; the ad- mirable articles in the Dictionary of Classical Biography on the Greek philosophers—many of them by such profoundly learned men and acute thinkers as Christian Brandis and Adolf Stahl,— supply the wants of more advanced scholars ; and finally, the histories of Bishop Thirlwall and Mr. Grote present the whole subject in its organic relation to the social, political, and religious life of the Hellenic people. What we might have been grateful for in 1837 has become somewhat superfluous now ; and had Pro- fessor Butler himself determined to publish on Greek philosophy, we may be certain that such considerations would have induced him to publish a work of which the present two volumes can only be regarded as a first rough sketch. It would have been well if these considerations had weighed with the persons responsible for this publication ; and if they had selected such portions of the lectures as competent judges had pronounced adequate not only to the subject as it stood when they were delivered, but as it stands now in England, after the production of the abovementionecl works. The result would have been one volume instead of two, and an account of the philosophers of the Megaxic school and of Plato, instead of six series of lectures, of which four arc of infe- rior interest and execution. No man in England is more compe- tent than Professor Thompson to pronounce upon the value of any contribution to this branch of ancient learning ; and he says- " Of the lectures which follow, the most original are those on Plato and the Platonists, which fill nearly the whole of the second volume. They are, unquestionably, as the author informs us, the result of patient and conscientious examination of the original documents' ; and they may be considered as a perfectly independent contribution to our knowledge of the great master of Grecian wisdom. Of the Dialectic and Physics of P,lato they are the only exposition at once accurate and popular with whichliktro. acquainted ; being more accurate than the French, and incomparably more popular than the German treatises on those departments of the Platonic philosophy. The author's intimate familiarity with the metaphysical writings of the last century, and, especially with the English and Scotch school of psychologists, has enabled Mm to illustrate the subtile speculations of which he treats in a manner calculated to render them more intelligible to the English mind than they can be made by writers trained solely in the technicalities of modem German schools, or by those who disdain the use of illustrations altogether. To the Ethics and Politics of Plato equal justice has not been done, but from notes which have come into my possession I tun inclined to think that this defect was in a great measure supplied in the unwritten lectures on Ethics to which allusion has been made. * • •

"The Megarian doctrines arc explained with especial clearness, and the history of this succession of Sophist-philosophers appears to me to be treated with remarkable ability."

The qualities that distinguish Professor Butler's exposition of the Platonic doctrine are amplitude and exactness of detail, with a praiseworthy abstinence from the common tendenoy to see in Plato's speculations an-almost fully developed modern metaphysic, and something like an anticipation of Christian dogmatic theology. He does not transform Plato by a kind of reversed metempsychosis into Immanuel Kant or St. John ; while he indicates how far, in dealing with problems substantially the same in all ages and. countries, the Greek sage was led to conclusions as to the true ground of knowledge, and the true method of speculation, that have never since failed to dominate a certain class of minds, and have continually reappeared under the forms of expression peon- liar to each age, country, and individual speculator. He thus preserves the historic significance and value of Plato's writings, without being thereby seduced to antedate important crises of thought and to throw confusion into the sequence of philosophical clevelqpment. For the sake of an exposition conducted in this spirit by a man in many respects peculiarly qualified by natural temperament and genius for his task, somewhat too large an in- fusion of the rhetorical Irish element may well be excused, es- pecially as this 'tendency is curiously enough united with a fine subtilty of thought and a very un-Irish precision of conception. These characteristics will be shown better by a single extract -of some length on the Platonic theory of ideas than by attempting to -impart variety to our notice by a number of short extracts. The lecturer has been giving the historical rise of the theory as a re- action from three previous theories of knowledge, technically defined as the empirical, the emphico-logical, and the unitarian or ultra-rational. He thus proceeds to explain Plato's own sub- stitute for these systems.

"That man's soul is made to contain not merely a consistent scheme of it own notions, but a direct apprehension of real and eternal laws beyond it, is not too absurd to be maintained. That these real and eternal laws are things intelligible, and not things sensible, is not very extravagant either.

That these laws impressed upon creation by its Creator, and apprehended by man are something distinct equally from the Creator and from man ; and

that the whole mass of them may he fairly termed the world of things purely intelligible, is surely allowable. Nay, further, that there are qualities in the supreme and ultimate Cause of all, which are manifested in His crea-

tion .and not merely manifested, but, in a manner—after being brought out of his superessential nature into the stage of being below him, but next to him—are then, by the causative act of creation deposited in things, differ-

eneing them one from the other, so that the things participate of them

(nerixoucri)., communicate with them (aoivenwiiai) ; this likewise seems to present no incredible account of the relation of the world to its Author.

That the intelligence of man, excited to reflection by theimpressions of these objects thin (though themselves transitory) participant of a divine quality, should rise to higher conceptions of the perfections thus faintly exhibited. ; and inasmuch as these perfections are unquestionably real existences, and known to be such in the very act of contemplation —that this should be re- garded as a direct intellectual apperception of them, a union of the reason

with the Ideas in that sphere of being which is common to both,—this is certainly no preposterous notion in substance, and by those who deeply study it will perhaps be judged no unwarrantable form of phrase. Finally, that the reason in proportion as it learns to contemplate the perfect and Siernal, claim the wojoyment of such contemplations in a more consummate degree,

and cannot be fully satisfied except in the actual fruition of the perfect it- self,—this seems not to contradict any received principle of psychology or any known law of human nature. Yet these suppositions, taken to r, constitute the famous THEORY OP IDEA8 i and thus stated, may surely ne pro- nounced to form no very appropriate object for the contempt of even the

most accomplished of our modem 'physiologists of mind.' * • * * "plato believed that there is a perfect science of the reality of things, independent of sensible etperience which he considered (as is most true) incapable of bestowing absolute certainty. • In every observation made by the senses, therefore, he considered that the reason might disengage an ele- ment exclusively its own, which until that disengagement had been min- gled and hidden in the complex result. Now that tins was no unwarrant- able train of thought, may perhaps be thus manifested. In the observation of any change whatever, the senses can detect only the terms of the change, that is, the successive phenomena themselves : but it is unq.uestionable that every such change is accompanied with the irresistible conviction of the ab- solute necessity of a cause to effect it, in virtue of a principle above and be- ' yond sense, which pronounces the universal truth that 'every change re- quires a casual energy to produce it.' Were we then to proceed no farther, it is obvious that every sensible mutation brings the reason of man (which is the organ or depository of necessary principles) in contact with a genuine ' Idea ' ; which, if it truly have (as it truly has) an eternal reality inde- pendent of the mind that apprehends it, may be fairly said to belong to a 'world or sphere of ideas ' ; the appropriate object of the inner world of rea- son. But as yet we have gained only one presiding Idea ; let us try if rea- son will not evidence a more varied inheritance as its property in the ideal world : as otherwise Plato has not been its correct interpreter, his theory assigning (to the endless perplexity of the systematizers of Platonism) ideas to everything that can receive a name,—ideas of relations, of colours, of -.., sounds, even of artificial instances of mechanism, no less than of beauty, symmetry, and truth. Any account which does not comprehend this mu- versality must therefore fad to catch the spirit of the Platonic reasoning. Now, as we saw in a former lecture, that the Good is the cardinal point of the philosophy of Plato and by him enthroned in majesty supreme at the summit of the whole universe, you must learn with him to regard the sen- sible world as a development of supreme perfection in an inferior and i trim- ry form. From whatever cause (for this inscrutable difficulty with all l"r philosophers he evades) this manifestation of excellence, acting upon a set that limits and embarrasses it, is in the world of sense necessarily, perfect ; but by a still nobler necessity, it is also as perfect as circuin- stances will admit. If this be granted, it will follow that in every pheno- menon there may be contemplated an instance of absolute perfection in par- tial development ; and as surely as sense cannot be explained without some- thing beyond sense, so surely does there exist in the eternal world a special reason (consistent with the laws of beauty, goodness, and truth) for every separate apparition in the sensible world,—a reason antecedent to the sen- sible manifestation, but embodied in it, and to which, therefore, the sensible manifestation serves to guide the human intelligence. Nor is it a satisfac- tory account of this matter to identify these reasons with the very essence of God, and thus to pronounce that there is no medium between him and the transitory world of sense. The Divine Nature (which only by faint analogy we describe by what we can best conceive of excellefike when we terni it The Good) is as far above the world ofideas as ideas above sense; a . truth which seems manifest from the fact that reason, the apprehender of ideas, can form so indistinct and unsatisfactory a conception of the uncaused, illinutable, and all-containing God. Through ideas, however, we may hope to rise in perpetual progress towards this supreme idea; as from sense the reflective mind struggles into the sphere of idea. "Now we know that there is a faculty in the mind of man which gene- ralizes the facts of sense, or abstracts them, and to the result applies a com- mon name. On the other hand, we have already laid down that there is a faculty altogether distinct and above it, which exists antecedently to all experience, and is the highest element of the rational soul; distinct, for no generalization can pronounce with certainty the universal, necessary, and absolute ; antecedent, for though gradually evoked into activity by the di- nuilus of observation' its dormant properties existed before they awoke. Here, then, are two faculties,—logical abstraction and substantial reason ; th&. one the organ of general conceptions or general names, the other the ' higher apprehender of eternal realities ; the one gradually rising towards the universal, the other descending from above to meet it. Now as the for- mer in proportion to our increase of reflection perpetually swells to nearer and nearer approximation to the latter, general conceptions becoming more and more fitted to represent eternal reasons ; it is natural that Plato should regard them as a kind of idea umbratiles, shadowy assimilations of those everlasting Ideas which form the property of the pure reason when wholly emancipated from sensual confinements; nor are we to wonder that in- numerable critics of Plato, mistaking the true purport of his philosophy of the reason, should have estimated hun by modern standards, and because they found little acknowledgment of any faculty for apprehending the absolute in our ordinary treatises, but abundance concerning the faculty of abstracting and generalizing, should have conceived this alone intended in the realism . of Plato, and thus exulted in detecting in the teacher of ages the prep ..- . terms absurdity, that the conceptions formed by abstraction had themselves as abstractions a distinct external existence. by I can scarcely point to a single one among the slighting and cursory notices of the realism of Plato, contained in the works of the Scottish school, in which this imputed absur- dity is not ascribed to the founder of the ideal philosophy. - - : "-An Mmosite error—even more manifestly contradMted by the writings of Plato----has often been advanced for the purpose of vindicating the philo- sophers reputation from the charge' of suppOsed extravagancies. I allude to the attempt which Plutarch, and others in various ages, have made to de- monstrate that the 'Ideas' of Plato were not meant as distinct realities at all, but simply as models conceived in the mind of God, in the same man- ner as models are imagined in the mind of man. The operation of the Deity is thus conformable to Ideas, in being the shadowing in the world of sense of his own conceptions of order. This carries with it the attraction of simplicity; but it is 'Utterly inconsistent with the assertions of Plato, which everywhere, and in every form, distinguish between the reality of eternal forms and the mere conceptions of a mind. Holding that the ' ideas ' are intimately incorporated in creation, being its very life and substance, Plato could not, without identifying the Deity with his work, regard them as in any sense a portion of the Divine nature itself. These ' forms ' or eternal laws of things are above us, but they are below God ; and though they point to us the character of that Supreme Essence of Essences, they are not to be worshiped as Him. God is not the aggregate of laws, nor are those laws only existent in His Intellect—for then where were 'creation' P—but He is the Cause and Sustainer, and Substance of Laws. The theory which would represent Ideas of Plato as simply divine conceptions of order would al- together misconceive the spirit of his views regarding the connexion of God and the universe. In Plato's view, the true universe was itself ideal,. an of ordered laws accidentally, not essentially, embodied in matter ; and consequently the version of his philosophy which Jam opposing, would imply in strict consistency that, according to Plato, the whole reality of the universe was merely the mental reality of a conception in the Divine Intel- ligence. The error of these representations is irresistibly established by the .

authority of Aristotle; who, through the whole of his detailed examination of the Platonic Theory, never once regards the Ideas as being other than true, and real, and distinct existences.'

A newspaper affords no scope for thorough discussion of ques- tions that have perplexed the minds of men ever since they began systematieally to reflect on their own natures and relations and the origin of the world in which they live. But we must say iii passing, that we cannot understand the depreciatory tone ha- bitually adapted by writers whose theories are of the Platonic east, towards those who regard all the thoughts, opinions, and be- liefs of men, as compounded of and subsequent to experiences, un- less it be the result of that irritation which accompanies the maintenance of a cause felt to be substantially baseless, or at least incapable of demonstration and unable to endure searching analysis. The facts on which both parties rest are the same ; either explanation of these facts leaves them unaltered. If the senses and the organism acted on by the material world can in the last result produce the science, the virtues, the affections, we know to exist in man, why then the senses and the material world and the organism of man are very glorious things, and all that vanishes is a few logical terms and distinctions, whielispecu- latirw men invented in order to explain the obscure by that which is obscurer. If man is a created being, with no power of apprehending the absolute except as a negative limit, a necessary starting-point, there would appear to be enough short of the absolute for him to know, to do, and to he, which should pre- vent him from murmuring with Professor Butler about "facul- ties only formed for earth and earthly phenomena," and about "being prisoners of sense and the facts of sense." The facts of sense are God's revelation and the philosophy of Experience no more denies an Almighty ;611 and an All-wise intelligence in the world than the philosophy of Ideas. It appears to -us to be alto- gether a question of the mode in which created beings arrive at certain of their conceptions, and whether certain hopes and convictions of mankind in reference to a life hereafter are true or false. • So long as we do attain to conceptions of the good, the beautiful, the right, it matters little practically whether we do io by intuition of those ideas, or by loving appreciation and study of the "earthly facts" in which they are embodied. So long as man believes that the Creator of all things is his guardian and cares for him, it matters little whether the communion he an hold with his Maker is through phenomena and reflection on phe- nomena, or through ideas and contemplation of ideas. That the Platonic theory recommends itself to persons of a contemplative and introspective east of mind, and that such persons are often eminent for the purity and loftiness of their lives, is perfectly true ; but the world is perhaps equally indebted for its progress and its happiness to persons of an opposite order ; and it does not become the Maintainers of the one theory to fling reproaches at their opponents on any other ground than that they ignore and suppress facts in support of a preconceived hypothesis. And this reproach, we imagine is not confined to the so-called Sensualiet school. A thorough imagine, from spurious partisanship is one of the many merits we may fairly anticipate from Mr. Grote's pro- mised work on Greek Philosophy.

We must not dismiss Professor Butler's lectures without testify- ing to the admirable editing to which they have been submitted. Professor Thompson has, by furnishing copious references to the original authorities, by supplying throughout ample side-notes WI the matters under discussion, by an index of names, authors and subjects, and by correcting where necessary misstatements Of the lecturer, rendered the work as useful to students as-it could be made in its present form. It is only to be regretted that one so competent to instruct the world on Greek philosophy should prefer to adorn another's work with his accurate and profound learning rather than himself contribute a complete treatise on the subject.