The Historians' History of the World 04

In a sketch like the present it is impossible to give so much as a summary of the contents of this admirably arranged encyclopædia, which ranked as the richest storehouse of every kind of empiric and speculative science from the beginning of the Christian era down to modern times. The essential points in which his life-work makes an advance on that of Plato are as follows:

Plato never went so far as to reduce his great discoveries and intuitions in every department of science to a complete and connected whole, being averse, on scientific and ethical grounds alike, from the dogmatic definition inseparable from any systematic treatise. This Aristotle did, dividing the whole body of philosophy under three principal heads (theoretical, practical, and poetical) and distinguishing subdivisions (logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics, and so forth) within these divisions by strongly marked lines of demarcation and methods rigorously exact. He is a Platonist in all things and feels himself so to be. Even where he displays most independence, as in the development of syllogisms or in biology, it is impossible to overlook his indebtedness to the bold speculations of the master.

If the whole work of Plato’s life and of his scholars between 388 and 348 had been preserved to us, the ultimate connection between Aristotle and the researches of the Academy would probably be even more evident than it is. Nevertheless there is a marked difference between the speculations of these two great philosophers. Plato wholly dissevered the Universal and Essential in things from the Terrestrial and placed it in a heaven beyond the earth.

Aristotle repudiates this transcendentalism all along the line. The Universal cannot exist without the archetype, the essence must be immanent in it. Hence the individual is the only true Substantive, containing Substance and Matter. This opposition of opinion concerning “Universalia” is, as is well known, the starting-point of mediæval Scholasticism (Nominalism, Realism).

The motion of passive substance towards the active form, i.e., the realisation of the Possible, leads up to the idea of development, of genesis (though not, indeed, in the modern sense) on which Plato’s speculations had made shipwreck, and passes over Plato’s rigid Eleatism to join hands with Heraclitus, the philosopher of change, with whom Aristotle sees the ultimate cause of all motion and all things in the Deity, itself as eternal as the world, which “yearns towards It as the bridegroom towards the bride.” Thus soul, too, is the pattern of the body, hence the purpose of its being. The body is but the instrument (organon) of the soul. Thus Aristotle first coins the name and idea of organic being and draws a sharp distinction between these animate creatures (plants, animals, and man) and inanimate nature. In ethics and politics his speculation treads in the footsteps of Plato, save that, in this province of thought also, he mitigates the uncompromising rigourism of the master by his innate bias towards the historically-established and practically-possible, and turns it to more profitable uses. The ethico-political speculations of both are, however, adapted to the aristocratic class at that time dominant in Greece. Alexander, the pupil of Aristotle, conquered the East during his master’s life-time, but the philosopher’s opinion that the newly acquired continent should be governed by other laws than those of Hellas was not practically feasible. His ethics failed him utterly in face of the new political situation thus created.

III

At this juncture the cosmopolitan Cynicism, which had outgrown the narrow particularism of Hellenism as early as the time of Antisthenes, and the Stoicism which was built upon its foundation later on, proved the form best fitted to the times. Zeno, sprung of Phœnician blood and brought up in Cyprus, that is on semi-Asiatic soil, elaborated this theory of life at Athens, whither he came shortly after the death of Aristotle (about 320). After the dualism that had prevailed from Anaxagoras to Plato and Aristotle, in which God and the World were set over against one another as antagonistic principles, Zeno’s theory harks back to the monistic tendency of the Ionic period. Like that, it is realistic, nay, grossly materialistic, in contrast to the Idealism of Athenian philosophy. The result is a consistent Pantheism in which soul and body represent the analogon to God and the World. Both are of the same essential nature, and only temporarily divided by transitory differentiation of manifestation. Zeno’s morality is rigorous, and aims not at the moderation of the passions (like that of Plato and Aristotle) but at their extirpation. The inexorable law that holds the world and man in bonds from which there is no escape, exacts obedience, and to render it voluntarily is virtue.