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His vast learning, his singular acuteness, the wide range of his investigations, and the astonishing number and the excellence of his works, will always make him a formidable rival to his more fascinating master. "A student passing from the works of Plato," it has been well said, "to those of Aristotle, is struck first of all with the entire absence of that dramatic form and that dramatic feeling with which he has been familiar. The living human. beings with whom he has conversed have passed away. Protagoras, and Prodicus, and Hippias are no longer lounging upon their couches in the midst of groups of admiring pupils; we have no walks along the walls of the city; no readings beside the Ilissus; no lively symposia, giving occasion to high discourses about love; no Critias recalling the stories he had heard in the days of his youth, before he became a tyrant of ancient and glorious republics; above all, no Socrates forming a centre to these various groups, while yet he stands out clear and distinct in his individual character, showing that the most subtle of dialecticians may be the most thoroughly humorous and humane of men. Some little sorrow for the loss of those clear and beautiful pictures will perhaps be felt by every one; but by far the greater portion of readers will believe, that they have an ample compensation in the precision and philosophical dignity of the treatise, for the richness and variety of the dialogue. To hear solemn disquisitions solemnly treated; to hear opinions calmly discussed without the interruptions of personalities; above all, to have a profound and considerate judge, able and not unwilling to pronounce a positive decision upon the evidence before him; this they think a great advantage, and this and far more than this they expect, not wrongly, to find in Aristotle."*

* Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.
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CHAPTER II.

SUMMARY OF THE SOCRATIC MOVEMENT.

For the sake of historical clearness we may here place a few words respecting the position of the Socratic Movement (as we may call the period from the Sophists down to Aristotle) in the history of Speculation.

What Socrates himself effected we have already seen. He appeared during the reign of utter skepticism. The various tentatives of the early thinkers had all ended in a skepticism, which was turned to dexterous use by the Sophists. Socrates banished this skepticism by the invention of a new Method. He withdrew men from the metaphysical speculations about Nature, which had led them into the inextricable confusion of doubt. He bade them look inward. He created Moral Philosophy. The Cyrenaics and the Cynics attempted to carry out this tendency; but, as they did so in a one-sided manner, their endeavor was only partially successful.

Plato, the youngest and most remarkable of the disciples of Socrates, accepted the Method, but applied it more universally. Nevertheless Ethics formed the most important of his speculations. Physics were only subordinate and illustrative of Ethics. The Truth-the God-like existence-which he forever besought men to contemplate, that they might share it, had always an Ethical object: it was sought by man for his own perfection. How to live in a manner resembling the Gods was the fundamental problem which he set himself to solve. But there was a germ of scientific speculation in his philosophy, and this germ was developed by his pupil, Aristotle.

The difference between Socrates and Aristotle is immense : Plato, however, fills up the interval. In Plato, we see the tran

sition-point of development, both in Method and in Doctrine. Metaphysical speculations are intimately connected with those of Ethics. In Aristotle, Ethics only form one branch of philosophy: Metaphysics and Physics usurp the larger share of his attention. One result of Aristotle's labors was precisely this: he brought Philosophy round again to that condition from which Socrates had wrested it; he opened the world again to speculation.

Was then the advent of Socrates nullified? No. The Socratic Epoch conferred the double benefit on humanity of having first brought to light the importance of Ethical Philosophy, and of having substituted a new and incomparably better Method for that pursued by the early speculators. That Method sufficed for

several centuries.

In Aristotle's systematization of the Socratic Method, and, above all, in his bringing Physics and Metaphysics again into the region of Inquiry, he paved the way for a new epoch,—the epoch of Skepticism; not the unmethodical Skepticism of helpless baffled guessers, like that which preceded Socrates, but the methodical and dogmatic exposure of the vanity of philosophy.

EIGHTH EPOCH.

SECOND CRISIS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE SKEPTICS, EPICUREANS, STOICS, AND THE NEW ACADEMY.

CHAPTER I.

THE SKEPTICS.

§ I. PYRRHO.

In the curious train which accompanied the expedition of Alexander into India, there was a serious, reflective man, who followed him with purely philosophical interest: that man was Pyrrho, the founder of the Skeptical philosophy. Conversing with the Gymnosophists of India, he must have been struck with their devout faith in doctrines so unusual to him; and this spectacle of a race of wise and studious men believing a strange creed, and acting upon their belief, may have led him to reflect on the nature of belief. He had already, by the philosophy of Democritus, been led to question the origin of knowledge: he had learned to doubt; and now this doubt became irresistible.

"On his return to Elis he became remarked for the practical philosophy which he inculcated, and the simplicity of his life. The profound and absolute skepticism with which he regarded all speculative doctrines, had the same effect upon him as upon Socrates it made him insist wholly on moral doctrines. He was resigned and tranquil, accepting life as he found it, and guiding himself by the general precepts of common-sense. Socrates, on the contrary, was uneasy, restless, perpetually ques

tioning himself and others, despising metaphysical speculations, but eager for truth. Pyrrho, dissatisfied with all the attempts of his predecessors to solve the great problems they had set to themselves, declared the problems insoluble. Socrates was also dissatisfied; he too declared that he knew nothing; but his doubt was an active, eager, questioning doubt, used as a stimulus to investigation, not as a final result of all investigation. The doubt of Pyrrho was a reprobation of all philosophy; the doubt of Socrates was the opening through which a new philosophy was to be established. Their lives accorded with their doctrines. Pyrrho, the grand Priest of Elis, lived and died in happiness, peace, and universal esteem.* Socrates lived in perpetual warfare, was always misunderstood, was ridiculed as a sophist, and perished as a blasphemer.

to recover.

The precise doctrines of Pyrrho it is now hopeless to attempt Even in antiquity they were so mixed up with those of his followers, that it was found impossible to separate them. We are forced, therefore, to speak of the skeptical doctrines as they are collected and systematized by that acute and admirable writer, Sextus Empiricus.

The stronghold of Skepticism is impregnable. It is this: There is no Criterium of Truth. After Plato had developed his Ideal Theory, Aristotle crushed it by proving it to be purely subjective. But then the theory of Demonstration, which Aristotle placed in its stead, was not that equally subjective? What was this boasted Logic, but the systematic arrangement of Ideas obtained originally through Sense? According to Aristotle, knowledge could only be a knowledge of phenomena; although he too wished to make out a science of Causes. And what are Phenomena? Phenomena are the Appearances of things. But where exists the Criterium of the truth of these Appearances?

* All the stories about him which pretend to illustrate the effects of his skepticism in real life are too trivial for refutation, being obviously the invention of those who thought Pyrrho ought to have been consistent in absurdity.

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