CHAPTER XIV.

THE PROPÆDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

"Philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, and it now proved useful for godliness, being in some part a preliminary discipline (propaideia tis ousa) for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration. Perhaps we may say it was given to the Greeks with this special object; for philosophy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Jews, 'a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ.'"--CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.

Philosophy, says Cousin, is the effort of _reflection_--the attempt of the human mind to develop in systematic and logical form that which has dimly revealed itself in the spontaneous thought of ages, and to account to itself in some manner for its native and instinctive beliefs. We may further add, it is the effort of the human mind to attain to truth and certitude on purely rational grounds, uncontrolled by traditional authorities. The sublime era of Greek philosophy was, in fact, an independent effort of human reason to solve the great problems of existence, of knowledge, and of duty. It was an attempt to explain the phenomenal history of the universe, to interpret the fundamental ideas and laws of human reason, to comprehend the utterances of conscience, and to ascertain what Ultimate and Supreme Reality underlies the world of phenomena, of thought, and of moral feeling.[848] And it is this which, for us, constitutes its especial value; that it was, as far as possible, a result of simple reason; or, if at any time Faith asserted its authority, the distinction is clearly marked: If this inquiry was fully, and honestly, and logically conducted, we are entitled to presume that the results attain by this effort of speculative thought must harmonize with the positive utterances of the Divine Logos--the Eternal Reason, whose revelations are embalmed and transmitted to us in the Word of God. If the great truth that man is "the _offspring of God"_ and as such "_the image and glory of God_" which is asserted, alike, by Paul and the poet-philosophers of Tarsus and Mysia, be admitted, then we may expect that the reason of man shall have some correlation with the Divine reason. The mind of man is the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Divine art. It is fashioned after the model which the Divine nature supplies. "Let us make man in _our_ image after _our_ likeness." That image consists in epignôsis--_knowledge;_ dikalosynê--_justice_; and osiotês--_benevolence._ It is not merely the _capacity_ to know, to be just, and to be beneficent; it is _actual_ knowledge, justice, and benevolence. It supposes, first, that the fundamental ideas of the true, the just, and the good, are connate to the human mind; second, that the native determination of the mind is towards the realization of these ideas in every mental state and every form of human activity; third, that there is a constitutional sympathy of reason with the ideas of truth, and righteousness, and goodness, as they dwell in the reason of God. And though man be now fallen, there is still within his heart some vestige of his primal nature. There is still a sense of the divine, a religious aptitude, "a feeling after God," and some longing to return to Him. There are still ideas in the reason, which, in their natural and logical development compel him to recognize a God. There is within his conscience a sense of duty, of obligation, and accountability to a Superior Power--"a law of the mind," thought opposed and antagonized by depraved passions and appetites--"the law in the members." There is yet a natural, constitutional sympathy of reason with the law of God--"it delights in that law," and consents "that it is good," but it is overborne and obstructed by passion. Man, even as unregenerate, "wills to do that which is good," but "how to perform that which is good he finds not," and in the agony of his soul he exclaims, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!"[849]

[Footnote 848: Plato sought also to attain to the Ultimate Reality underlying all æsthetic feeling--the Supreme Beauty as well as the Supreme Good.]

[Footnote 849: Romans, ch. vii.]

The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium of all God's direct communications to our race--the revealer of God, is also "the Father of the spirits of all flesh." That divine inbreathing which first constituted man "a living soul"--that "inspiration of the Almighty which giveth man understanding," and still "teacheth him knowledge," proceeds from the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and seers of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers of the new. That "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, as well as on the mind of Abraham and Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician woman, and, in a higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence, on the mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be wondered at, then, if, in the teaching of Socrates and Plato, we should find a striking _harmony_ of sentiment, and even form of expression, with some parts of the Christian revelation. No short-sighted jealousy ought to impugn the honesty of our judgment, if, in the speculations of Plato, we catch glimpses of a world of ideas not unlike that which Christianity discloses, and hear words not unfamiliar to those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

If, then, there exists some correlation between Divine and human reason, and if the light which illuminates all minds in Christian and in heathen lands is the _same_ "true light," though differing in degrees of brightness, it is most natural and reasonable to expect some connection and some correspondence between the discoveries of philosophy and the revelations of the Sacred Oracles.

Although Christianity is confessedly something which is above reason and nature--something communicated from above, and therefore in the fullest sense supernatural and superhuman, yet it must stand in _relation_ to reason and nature, and to their historic development; otherwise it could not operate on man at all. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can only be moved by forces, and according to laws, as it has properties which correlate it with these forces and laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless it have powers of apprehension and conception which are governed by uniform laws. If man is to be instructed by a verbal revelation, he must, at least, be capacitated for the reception of divine communication--must have a power of forming supersensuous conceptions, and there must be some original community of thought and idea between the mind that teaches and the mind that is taught. A revelation from an invisible God--a being "whom no man has ever seen or ever can see" with the eye of sense--would have no affinity for, and no power to affect and enlighten, a being who had no presentiment of an invisible Power to which he is in some way related. A revealed law promulgated from an unseen and utterly unknown Power would have no constraining authority, if man had no idea of right, no sense of duty, no feeling of obligation to a Supreme Being. If, therefore, religious instruction be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, and of obligation to God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for revelation to act upon. Some relation between the reason which planned the universe, and which has expressed its thoughts in the numerical relations and archetypal forms which are displayed therein, and the reason of man, with its ideas of form and number, proportion and harmony, is necessarily supposed in the statement of Paul that "the invisible things of God from the creation are seen." Nature to us could be no symbol of the Divine Thought, if there were no correlation between the reason of man and the reason of God. All revelation, indeed, supposes some community of nature, some affinities of thought, some correlation of ideas, between the mind communicating spiritual knowledge, and the mind to which the communication is made. In approaching man, it must traverse ground already occupied by man; it must employ phrases already employed, and assume forms of thought already familiar to man. It must address itself to some ideas, sentiments, and feelings already possessed by man. If religion is the great end and destination of man, then the nature of man must be constituted for religion. Now religion, in its inmost nature, is a communion, a fellowship with God. But no creature can be brought into this communion "save one that is constitutionally related to God in terms that admit of correspondence." There must be intelligence offered to his intelligence, sentiment to his sentiment, reason to his reason, thought to his thought. There must be implanted in the human mind some fundamental ideas and determinations grounded upon this fact, that the real end and destination of man is for religion, so that when that higher sphere of life and action is presented to man, by an outward verbal revelation, there shall be a recognized harmony between the inner idea and determination, and the outer revelation. We can not doubt that such a relation between human nature and reason, and Christianity, exists. We see evidences of this in the perpetual strivings of humanity to attain to some fuller and clearer apprehension of that Supreme Power which is consciously near to human thought, and in the historic development of humanity towards those higher forms of thought and existence which demand a revelation in order to their completion. This original capacity, and this historical development, have unquestionably prepared the way for the reception of Christianity.

Christianity, then, must have some connection with the reason of man, and it must also have some relation to the progressive developments of human thought in the ages which preceded the advent of Christ. Christianity did not break suddenly upon the world as a new commencement altogether unconnected with the past, and wanting in all points of sympathy and contact with the then present. It proceeded along lines of thought which had been laid through ages of preparation; it clothed itself in forms of speech which had been moulded by centuries of education, and it appropriated to itself a moral and intellectual culture which had been effected by long periods of severest discipline. It was, in fact, the consummation of the whole moral and religious history of the world.

A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. The divine light, in passing through such a medium, would have been darkened and obscured. The lens through which the heavenly rays are to be transmitted must first be prepared and polished. The intellectual eye itself must be gradually accustomed to the light. Hence it is that all revelation has been _progressive_, commencing, in the infancy of our race, with images and symbols addressed to sense, and advancing, with the education of the race, to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. The first communications to the patriarchs were always accompanied by some external, sensible appearance; they were often made through some preternatural personage in human form. Subsequently, as human thought becomes assimilated to the Divine idea, God uses man as his organ, and communicates divine knowledge as an internal and spiritual gift. The theistic conception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthropomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more spiritual. The education of Hebraic, Mosaic, and prophetic ages had gradually developed a purer theism, and prepared the Jewish mind for that sublime announcement of our Lord's--"God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit." For ages the Jews had worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem, and the inevitable tendency of thought was to localize the divine presence; but the gradual withdrawment from these localities of all visible tokens of Jehovah's presence, prepared the way for the Saviour's explicit declaration that "neither in this mountain of Samaria, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father," to the exclusion of any other spot on earth; the real temple of the living God is now the heart of man. The _Holiness_ of God was an idea too lofty for human thought to grasp at once. The light of God's ineffable purity was too bright and dazzling to burst at once on human eyes. Therefore it was gradually displayed. The election of a chosen seed in Abraham's race to a nearer approach to God than the rest of pagan humanity; the announcement of the Decalogue at Sinai amidst awe-inspiring wonders; the separation of a single tribe to the priestly office, who were dedicated to, and purified in an especial manner for the service of the tabernacle; the sanctification of the High-priest by sacrifice and lustration before he dared to enter "the holiest place"--the presence-chamber of Jehovah: and then the direct and explicit teaching of the prophets--were all advancing steps by which the Jewish mind was lifted up to the clearer apprehension of the holiness of God, the impurity of man, the distance of man from God, and the need of Mediation.

The ideas of _Redemption_ and _Salvation_--of atonement, expiation, pardon, adoption, and regeneration--are unique and _sui-generis_. Before these conceptions could be presented in the fullness and maturity of the Christian system, there was needed the culture and education of the ages of Mosaic ritualism, with its sacrificial system, its rights of purification, its priestly absolution, and its family of God.[850] Redemption itself, as an economy, is a development, and has consequently, a history--a history which had its commencement in the first Eden, and which shall have its consummation in the second Eden of a regenerated world. It was germinally infolded in the first promise, gradually unfolded in successive types and prophecies, more fully developed in the life, and sayings, and sufferings of the Son of God, and its ripened fruit is presented to the eye of faith in the closing scenic representations of the grand Apocalypse of John. "Judaism was not given as a perfect religion. Whatever may have been its superiority over surrounding forms of worship, it was, notwithstanding, a provisional form only. The consciousness that it was a preparatory, and not a definite dispensation, is evident throughout. It points to an end beyond itself, suggests a grander thought than any in itself; its glory precisely consists in its constant looking forward to a glorious future destined to surpass it."[851]

[Footnote 850: Romans, IX 4-6.]

[Footnote 851: Pressensé, "Religions before Christ," p. 202.]

Thus the determinations which, through Redemption, fall to the lot of history, as Nitzsch justly remarks, obey the emancipating law of _gradual progress_.[852] Christianity was preceded by ages of preparation, in which we have a gradual development of religious phrases and ideas, of forms of social life and intellectual culture, and of national and political institutions most favorable to its advent and its promulgation; and "in the fullness of time"--the maturity and fitness of the age--"God sent his own Son into the world."

[Footnote 852: "System of Doctrine," p. 73.]

This work of preparation was not confined alone to Judaism. The divine plan of redemption comprehended all the race; its provisions are made in view of the wants of all the race; and we must therefore believe that the entire history of the race, previous to the coming of the Redeemer, was under a divine supervision, and directed towards the grand centre of our world's history. Greek philosophy and Grecian civilization must therefore have a place in the divine plan of history, and they must stand in an important relation to Christianity. He who "determined the time of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation in order that they may seek the Lord," can not have been unmindful of the Greek nation, and of its grandest age of philosophy. "The Father of the spirits of all flesh" could not be unconcerned in the moral and spiritual welfare of any of his children. He was as deeply interested in the Athenian as in the Hebrew. He is the God of the Gentile as well as the Jew. His tender mercies are over all his works. If the Hebrew race was selected to be the agent of his providence in one special field, and if the Jewish theocracy was one grand instrument of preparatory discipline, it was simply because, through these, God designed to bless all the nations of the earth. And surely no one will presume to say that a civilization and an intellectual culture which was second only to the Hebrew, and, in some of its aspects, even in advance of the Hebrew, was not determined and supervised by Divine Providence, and made subservient to the education and development of the whole race. The grand results of Hebrew civilization were appropriated and assimilated by Christianity, and remain to this day. And no one can deny that the same is true of Greek civilization. Through a kind of historic preparation the heathen world was made ready for Christ, as a soil is prepared to receive the seed, and some precious fruits of knowledge, of truth, and of righteousness, even, were largely matured, which have been reaped, and appropriated, and vitalized by the heaven-descended life of Christianity.

The chief points of excellence in the civilization of the Greeks are strikingly obvious, and may be readily presented. High perfection of the intellect and the imagination displaying itself in the various forms of art, poetry, literature, and philosophy. A wonderful freedom and activity of body and of mind, developed in trade, and colonization, in military achievement, and in subtile dialectics. A striking love of the beautiful, revealing itself in their sculpture and architecture, in the free music of prosaic numbers, and the graceful movement and measure of their poetry. A quickness of perception, a dignity of demeanor, a refinement of taste, a delicacy of moral sense, and a high degree of reverence for the divine in nature and humanity. And, in general, a ripe and all-pervading culture, which has made Athens a synonym for all that is greatest and best in the genius of man; so that literature, in its most flourishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art has looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models.[853] All these enter into the very idea of Greek civilization. We can not resist the conviction that, by a Divine Providence, it was made subservient to the purpose of Redemption; it prepared the way for, and contributed to, the spread of the Gospel.

[Footnote 853: In Lord Brougham's celebrated letter to the father of the historian Macaulay in regard to the education of the latter, we read: "If he would be a great orator, he must go at once to the fountain-head, and be familiar with every one of the great orations of Demosthenes.... I know from experience that nothing is half so successful in these times (bad though they be) as what has been formed on the Greek models. I use poor illustrations in giving my own experience, but I do assure you that both in courts and Parliament, and even to mobs, I have never made so much play (to use a very modern phrase) as when I was almost translating from the Greek. I composed the peroration of my speech for the Queen, in the Lords, after reading and repeating Demosthenes for three or four weeks."]

Its subserviency to this grand purpose is seen in the Greek tendency to trade and colonization. Their mental activity was accompanied by great physical freedom of movement. They displayed an inherent disposition to extensive emigration. "Without aiming at universal conquest, they developed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barbarians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the long valley which extended from the cataracts to the mouth of the Nile. The Hellenic tribes, on the other hand, though they despised the foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at which history enables us to discover them, we see them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of their native seas; and, three or four centuries before the Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies; and lower Italy, when the Roman Republic was just becoming conscious of its strength, had received the name of Greece itself. To all these places they carried their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amusements.... They were gradually taking the place of the Phoenicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers. Their voyages were not so long. But their influence on general civilization was greater and more permanent. The earliest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are due to the Greeks. The later Greek travellers, Pausanias and Strabo, are our best sources of information on the topography of St. Paul's journeys.

"With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander's conquests. He took the meshes of the net of Greek civilization which were lying in disorder on the edge of the Asiatic shore, and spread them over all the countries he traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly brought together. Separate tribes were united under a common government. New cities were built as the centres of political life. New lines of communication were opened as the channels of commercial activity. The new culture penetrated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia, and a Grecian Babylon was built by the conqueror in Egypt, and called by his name.

"The empire of Alexander was divided, but the effects of his campaigns and policy did not cease. The influence of these fresh elements of social life was rather increased by being brought into independent action within the sphere of distinct kingdoms. Our attention is particularly directed to two of the monarchical lines which descended from Alexander's generals--the Ptolemies, or the Greek kings of Egypt, and the Seleucidæ, or the Greek kings of Syria. Their respective capitals, Alexandria and Antioch, became the metropolitan centres of commercial and civilized life in the East."[854] Antioch was for ages the home of science and philosophy. Here the religious opinions of the East and the West were blended and mutually modified. Here it was discovered by the heathen mind that a new religion had appeared, and a new revelation had been given.[855] In Alexandria all nations were invited to exchange their commodities and, with equal freedom, their opinions. The representatives of all religions met here. "Beside the Temple of Jupiter there rose the white marble Temple of Serapis, and close at hand stood the synagogue of the Jews." The Alexandrian library contained all the treasures of ancient culture, and even a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures.

[Footnote 854: Conybeare and Howson, "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. pp. 8-10.]

[Footnote 855: Acts, xi. 26.]

The spread of the Greek _language_ was one of the most important services which the cities of Antioch and Alexandria rendered to Christianity. The Greek tongue is intimately connected with the whole system of Christian doctrine.

This language, which, in symmetry of structure, in flexibility and compass of expression, in exactness and precision, in grace and elegance, exceeds every other language, became the language of theology. Next in importance to the inspiration which communicates the superhuman thought, must be the gradual development of the language in which the thought can clothe itself. That development by which the Greek language became the adequate vehicle of Divine thought, the perfect medium of the mature revelation of truth contained in the Christian Scriptures, must be regarded as the subject of a Divine providence. Christianity waited for that development, and it awaited Christianity. "The Greek tongue became to the Christian more than it had been to the Roman or the Jew. The mother-tongue of Ignatius at Antioch was that in which Philo composed his treatises at Alexandria, and which Cicero spoke at Athens. It is difficult to state in a few words the important relation which Alexandria, more especially, was destined to bear to the whole Christian Church." In that city, the Old Testament was translated into Greek; there the writings of Plato were diligently studied; there Philo, the Platonizing Jew, had sought to blend into one system the teachings of the Old Testament theology and the dialectic speculations of Plato. Numenius learns of Philo, and Plotinus of Numenius, and the ecstasy of Plotinus is the development of Philo's intuitions. A _theological language_ by this means was developed, rich in the phrases of various schools, and suited to convey the spiritual revelation of Christian ideas to all the world. "It was not an accident that the New Testament was written in Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts and worthiest feelings of the intellect and heart, and which is adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations; nor was it an accident that the composition of these books and the promulgation of the Gospels were delayed till the instruction of our Lord, and the writings of his Apostles could be expressed in the dialect [of Athens and] of Alexandria."[856] This must be ascribed to the foreordination of Him who, in the history of nations and of civilizations, "worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will."

[Footnote 856: Conybeare and Howson, "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. p. 10.]

Now it is the doctrine of the best philologists that language is a _growth_. Gradually, and by combined efforts of successive generations, it has been brought to the perfection which we so much admire in the idioms of the Bible, the poetry of Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare, and the prose compositions of Demosthenes, Cicero, Johnson, and Macaulay. The material or root-element of language may have been the product of mental instinct, or perhaps the immediate gift of God by revelation; but the formal element must have been the creation of thought, and the result of rational combination. Language is really the incarnation of thought; consequently the growth of a language, its affluence, comprehension, and fullness must depend on the vigor and activity of thought, and the acquisition of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellectual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is exceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of terms, especially such as are expressive of general notions and abstract ideas. All grammar, all philology, all scientific nomenclature are thus, in fact, _psychological deposits_, which register the progressive advancement of human thought and knowledge in the world of mind, as the geological strata bear testimony to the progressive development of the material world. "Language," says Trench, "is fossil poetry, fossil history," and, we will add, fossil philosophy. Many a single word is a concentrated poem. The record of great social and national revolutions is embalmed in a single term.[857] And the history of an age of philosophic thought is sometimes condensed and deposited in one imperishable word.[858]

[Footnote 857: See Trench "On the Study of Words," p. 20, where the word "frank" is given as an illustration.]

[Footnote 858: For example, the cosmos of the Pythagoreans, the eidê of the Platonists, and the ataraxia of the Stoics.]

If, then, language is the creation of thought, the sensible vesture with which it clothes itself, and becomes, as it were, incarnate--if the perfection and efficiency of language depends on the maturity and clearness of thought, we conclude that the wonderful adequacy and fitness of the Greek language to be the vehicle of the Divine thought, the medium of the most perfect revelation of God to men, can only be explained on the assumption that the ages of philosophic thought which, in Greece, preceded the advent of Christianity, were under the immediate supervision of a providence, and, in some degree, illuminated by the Spirit of God.

Greek philosophy must therefore have fulfilled a propædeutic office for Christianity. "As it had been intrusted to the Hebrews to preserve and transmit the heaven-derived element of the Monotheistic religion, so it was ordained that, among the Greeks, all seeds of human culture should unfold themselves in beautiful harmony, and then Christianity, taking up the opposition between the divine and human, was to unite both in one, and show how it was necessary that both should co-operate to prepare for the appearance of itself and the unfolding of what it contains."[859] During the period of Greek philosophy which preceded the coming of Christ, human reason, unfolding itself from beneath, had aspired after that knowledge of divine things which is from above. It had felt within itself the deep-seated consciousness of God--the sporadic revelation of Him "who is not far from any one of us"--the immanent thought of that Being "in whom we live and move and are," and it had striven by analysis and definition to attain a more distinct and logical apprehension. The heart of man had been stirred with "the feeling after God"--the longing for a clearer sense of the divine, and had struggled to attain, by abstraction or by ecstasy, a more immediate communion with God. Man had been conscious of an imperative obligation to conform to the will of the great Supreme, and he sought to interpret more clearly the utterances of conscience as to what duty was. He had felt the sense of sin and guilt, and had endeavored to appease his conscience by expiatory offerings, and to deliver himself from the power of sin by intellectual culture and moral discipline. And surely no one, at all familiar with the history of that interesting epoch in the development of humanity, will have the hardihood to assert that no steps were taken in the right direction, and no progress made towards the distant goal of human desire and hope. The language, the philosophy, the ideals of moral beauty and excellence, the noble lives and nobler utterances of the men who stand forth in history as the representatives of Greek civilization, all attest that their noble aspiration and effort did not end in ignominious failure and utter defeat. It is true they fell greatly beneath the realization of even their own moral ideals, and they became painfully conscious of their moral weakness, as men do even in Christian times. They learned that, neither by intellectual abstraction, nor by ecstasy of feeling, could they lift themselves to a living, conscious fellowship with God. The sense of guilt was unrelieved by expiations, penances, and prayers. And whilst some cultivated a proud indifference, a Stoical apathy, and others sank down to Epicurean ease and pleasure, there was a noble few who longed and hoped with increasing ardor for a living Redeemer, a personal Mediator, who should "stand between God and man and lay his hand on both." Christ became in some dim consciousness "the Desire of Nations," and the Moral Law became even to the Greek as well as the Jew "a school-master to lead them to Him."

[Footnote 859: Neander's "Church History," vol. i. p. 4.]

The arrival of Paul at Athens, in the close of this brilliant period of Greek philosophy, now assumes an aspect of deeper interest and profounder significance. It was a grand climacteric in the life of humanity--an epoch in the moral and religious history of the world. It marked the consummation of a periodic dispensation, and it opened a new era in that wonderful progression through which an overruling Providence is carrying the human race. As the coming of the Son of God to Judea in the ripeness of events--"the fullness of time"--was the consummation of the Jewish dispensation, and the event for which the Jewish age had been a preparatory discipline, so the coming of a Christian teacher to Athens, in the person of "the Apostle of the Gentiles," was the _terminus ad quem_ towards which all the phases in the past history of philosophic thought had looked, and for which they had prepared. Christianity was brought to Athens--brought into contact with Grecian philosophy at the moment of its exhaustion--at the moment when, after ages of unwearied effort, it had become conscious of its weakness, and its comparative failure, and had abandoned many questions in despair. Greek philosophy had therefore its place in the plan of Divine Providence. It had a mission to the world; that mission was now fulfilled. If it had laid any foundation in the Athenian mind on which the Christian system could plant its higher truths--if it had raised up into the clearer light of consciousness any of those _ideas_ imbedded in the human reason which are germane to Christian truth--if it had revealed more fully the wants and instincts of the human heart, or if it had attained the least knowledge of eternal truth and immutable right, upon this Christianity placed its _imprimatur_. And at those points where human reason had been made conscious of its own inefficiency, and compelled to own its weakness and its failure, Christianity shed an effulgent and convincing light.

Therefore the preparatory office of Greek religion and Greek philosophy is fully recognized by Paul in his address to the Athenians. He begins by saying that the observations he had made enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were indeed, in every respect, "a God-fearing people;"--that the God whom they knew so imperfectly as to designate Him "the Unknown," but whom "they worshipped," was the God he worshipped, and would now more fully declare to them. He assures them that their past history, and their present geographical position, had been the object of Divine foreknowledge and determination. "He hath determined beforehand the times of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation," all with this specific design, that they might "seek after," "feel after," and "find the Lord," who had never been far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were some faint adumbrations of the divine, and he looked for their firmer delineation to the figure of that gracious Master, higher and holier than man, whom he contemplated in his own imagination, and whom he was about to present to them."[860]

[Footnote 860: Merivale's "Conversion of the Roman Empire," p. 78.]

This function of ancient philosophy is distinctly recognized by many of the greatest of the Fathers, as Justin, Clement, Origen, Augustine, and Theodoret. Justin Martyr believed that a ray of the Divine Logos shone on the mind of the heathen, and that the human soul instinctively turned towards God as the plant turns towards the sun. "Every race of men participated in the Word. And they who lived with the Word were Christians, even if they were held to be godless; as, for example, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and those like them."[861] Clement taught that "philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness; and now it proved useful for godliness, being a sort of preliminary discipline for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration.... Perhaps we may say that it was given to the Greeks with this special object, for it brought the Greek nation to Christ as the Law brought the Hebrews."[862] "Philosophy was given as a peculiar testament to the Greeks, as forming the basis of the Christian philosophy."[863] Referring to the words of Paul, Origen says, the truths which philosophers taught were from God, for "God manifested these to them, and all things that have been nobly said."[864] And Augustine, whilst deprecating the extravagant claims made for the great Gentile teachers, allows "that some of them made great discoveries, so far as they received help from heaven; whilst they erred as far as they were hindered by human frailty."[865] They had, as he elsewhere observes, "a distant vision of the truth, and learnt, from the teaching of nature, what prophets learnt from the spirit."[866] In addressing the Greeks, Theodoret says, "Obey your own philosophers; let them be your initiators; for they announced beforehand our doctrines." He held that "in the depths of human nature there are characters inscribed by the hand of God." And that "if the race of Abraham received the divine law, and the gift of prophecy, the God of the universe led other nations to piety by natural revelation, and the spectacle of nature."[867]

[Footnote 861: "First Apology," ch. xlvi.]

[Footnote 862: "Stromata," bk. i. ch. v.]

[Footnote 863: "Stromata," bk. vi. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 864: "Contra Celsum," bk. vi. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 865: "De Civitate Dei," bk. ii. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 866: Sermon lxviii. 3.]

[Footnote 867: See Smith's "Bible Dictionary," article "Philosophy;" Pressensé, "Religions before Christ," p. II; Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 28-40.]

In attempting to account for this partial harmony between Philosophy and Revelation, we find the Patristic writers adopting different theories. They are generally agreed in maintaining some original connection, but they differ as to its immediate source. Some of them maintained that the ancient philosophers derived their purest light from the fountain of Divine Revelation. The doctrines of the Old Testament Scriptures were traditionally diffused throughout the West before the rise of philosophic speculation. If the theistic conceptions of Plato are superior to those of Homer it is accounted for by his (hypothetical) tour of inquiry among the Hebrew nation, as well as his Egyptian investigations. Others maintained that the similarity of views on the character of the Supreme Being and the ultimate destination of humanity which is found in the writings of Plato and the teachings of the Bible is the consequence of _immediate_ inspiration. Origen, Jerome, Eusebius, Clement, do not hesitate to affirm that Christ himself revealed his own high prerogatives to the gifted Grecian. From this hypothesis, however, the facts of the case compel them to make some abatements. In the mid-current of this divine revelation are found many acknowledged errors, which it is impossible to ascribe to the celestial illuminator. Plato, then, was _partially_ inspired, and clouded the heavenly beam with the remaining grossnesses of the natural sense.[868] Whilst a third, and more reasonable, hypothesis was maintained by others. They regarded man as "the offspring and image of the Deity," and maintained there must be a correlation of the human and divine reason, and, consequently, of all discovered truth to God. Therefore they expected to find some traces of connection and correspondence between Divine and human thought, and some kindred ideas in Philosophy and Revelation. "Ideas," says St. Augustine, "are the primordial forms, as it were, the immutable reason of things; they are not created, they are eternal, and always the same: they are contained in the Divine intelligence and without being subject to birth and death, they are _types_ according to which is formed every thing that is born and dies." The copies of these archetypes are seen in nature, and are participated in by the reason of man; and there may therefore be some community of idea between man and God, and some relation between Philosophy and Christianity.

[Footnote 868: Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 41.]

The various attempts which have been made to trace the elevated theism and morality of Socrates and Plato to Jewish sources have signally failed. Justin Martyr and Tertullian claim that the ancient philosophers "borrowed from the Jewish prophets." Pythagoras and Plato are supposed to have travelled in the East in quest of knowledge.[869] The latter is imagined to have had access to an existing Greek version of the Old Testament in Egypt, and a strange oversight in chronology brings him into personal intercourse with the prophet Jeremiah. A sober and enlightened criticism is compelled to pronounce all these statements as mere exaggerations of later times.[870] They are obviously mere suppositions by which over-zealous Christians sought to maintain the supremacy and authority of Scripture. The travels of Pythagoras are altogether mythical, the mere invention of Alexandrian writers, who believed that all wisdom flowed from the East.[871] That Plato visited Egypt at all, rests on the single authority of Strabo, who lived at least four centuries after Plato; there is no trace in his own works of Egyptian research. His pretended travels in Phoenicia, where he gained from the Jews a knowledge of the true God, are more unreliable still. Plato lived in the fourth century before Christ (born B.C. 430), and there is no good evidence of the existence of a Greek version of the Old Testament before that of "the Seventy" (Septuagint), made by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 270. Jeremiah, the prophet of Israel, lived two centuries before Plato; consequently any personal intercourse between the two was simply impossible. Greek philosophy was unquestionably a development of Reason alone.[872]

[Footnote 869: Mr. Watson adopts this hypothesis to account for the theistic opinions of the ancient philosophers of Greece. See "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. pp. 26-34.]

[Footnote 870: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 147.]

[Footnote 871: Max Muller, "Science of Language," p. 94.]

[Footnote 872: See on this subject, Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 147, 148; Encyclopædia Britannica, article "Plato," vol. xvii. p. 787; Smith's "Bible Dictionary," article "Philosophy;" and Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 326.]

Some of the ablest Christian scholars and divines of modern times, as Cudworth, Neander, Trench, Pressensé, Merivale, Schaff, after the most careful and conscientious investigation, have come to this conclusion, that Greek philosophy fulfilled a preparatory mission for Christianity. The general conclusions they reached are forcibly presented in the words of Pressensé:

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Greek philosophy when viewed as a preparation to Christianity. Disinterested pursuit of truth is always a great and noble task. The imperishable want of the human mind to go back to first principles, suffices to prove that this principle is divine. We may abuse speculation; we may turn it into one of the most powerful dissolvents of moral truths; and the defenders of positive creeds, alarmed by the attitude too often assumed by speculation in the presence of religion, have condemned it as mischievous in itself, confounding in their unjust prejudice its use and its abuse. But, for all serious thinkers, philosophy is one of the highest titles of nobility that humanity possesses: and when we consider its mission previous to Christianity, we feel convinced that it had its place in the Divine plan. It was not religion in itself that philosophy, through its noblest representatives, combated, but polytheism. It dethroned the false gods. Adopting what was best in paganism, philosophy employed it as an instrument to destroy paganism, and thus clear the way for definite religion. Above all, it effectually contributed to purify the idea of Divinity, though this purification was but an approximation. If at times it caught glimpses of the highest spiritualism, yet it was unable to protect itself against the return and reaction of Oriental dualism. In spite of this imperfection, which in its way served the cause of Christianity by demonstrating the necessity of revelation, men like Socrates and Plato fulfilled amongst their people a really sublime mission.

They were to the heathen world the great prophets of the human conscience, which woke up at their call. And the awakening of the moral sense was at once the glory and ruin of philosophy; for conscience, once aroused, could only be satisfied by One greater than they, and must necessarily reject all systems which proved themselves insufficient to realize the moral idea they had evoked.

"But to perish thus, and for such a cause, is a high honor to a philosophy. It was this made the philosophy of Greece, like the Hebrew laws, though in an inferior sense, a schoolmaster that led to Jesus Christ, according to the expression of Clement of Alexandria. Viewed in this light, it was a true gift of God, and had, too, the shadow of good things to come, awakening the presentiment and desire of them, though it could not communicate them. Nor can we conceive a better way to prepare for the advent of Him who was to be 'the Desire of Nations' before becoming their Saviour."[873]

[Footnote 873: "Religions before Christ," pp. 101, 102.]

In previous chapters we have endeavored to sketch the history of the development of metaphysical thought, of moral feeling and idea, and of religious sentiment and want, which characterized Grecian civilization. In now offering a brief _résumé_ of the history of that development, with the design of more fully exhibiting the preparatory office it fulfilled for Christianity, we shall assume that the mind of the reader has already been furnished and disciplined by preparatory principles. He can scarce have failed to recognize that this development obeyed a _general law_, however modified by exterior and geographical conditions; the same law, in fact, which governs the development of all individual finite minds, and which law may be formulated thus:--_All finite mind develops itself, first, in instinctive determinations and spontaneous faiths; then in rising doubt, and earnest questioning, and ill-directed inquiry; and, finally, in systematic philosophic thought, and rational belief_. These different stages succeed each other in the individual mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood; secondly, the undirected and unsettled force of youth; and, thirdly, the wisdom of mature age. And these different stages have also succeeded each other in the universal mind of humanity. There has been, 1st. _The era of spontaneous beliefs_--of popular and semi-conscious theism, morality, and religion, 2d. _The transitional age_--the age of doubt, of inquiry, and of ill-directed mental effort, ending in fruitless sophism, or in skepticism. 3d. _The philosophic or conscious age_--the age of reflective consciousness, in which, by the analysis of thought, the first principles of knowledge are attained, the necessary laws of thought are discovered, and man arrives at positive convictions, and rational beliefs. In the history of Grecian civilization, the first is the Homeric age; the second is the pre-Socratic age, ending with the Sophists; and the third is the grand Socratic period. History is thus the development of the fundamental elements of humanity, according to an established law, and under conditions which are ordained and supervised by the providence of God. "The unity of civilization is in the unity of human nature; its varieties, in the variety of the elements of humanity," which elements have been successively developed in the course of history. All that is fundamental in human nature passes into the movement of civilization. "I say all that is fundamental; for it is the excellency of history to take out, and throw away all that is not necessary and essential. That which is individual shines for a day, and is extinguished forever, or stops at biography." Nothing endures, except that which is fundamental and true--that which is vital, and organizes itself, develops itself, and arrives at an historical existence. "Therefore as human nature is the matter and basis of history, history is, so to speak, the judge of human nature, and historical analysis is the counter-proof of psychological analysis."[874]

[Footnote 874: Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 31.] Nature, individual mind, and collective humanity, all obey the law of progressive development; otherwise there could be no history, for history is only of that which has movement and progress. Now, all progress is from the indefinite to the definite, from the inorganic to the organic and vital, from the instinctive to the rational, from a dim, nebulous self-feeling to a high reflective consciousness, from sensuous images to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. This progressive development of nature and humanity has not been a series of creations _de novo_, without any relation, in matter or form, to that which preceded. All of the present was contained in embryonic infoldment in the past, and the past has contributed its results to the present.[875] The present, both in nature, and history, and civilization, is, so to speak, the aggregate and sum-total of the past. As the natural history of the earth may now be read in the successive strata and deposits which form its crust, so the history of humanity may be read in the successive deposits of thought and language, of philosophy and art, which register its gradual progression. As the paleontological remains imbedded in the rocks present a succession of organic types which gradually improve in form and function, from the first sea-weed to the palm-tree, and from the protozoa to the highest vertebrate, so the history of ancient philosophy presents a gradual progress in metaphysical, ethical, and theistic conceptions, from the unreflective consciousness of the Homeric age, to the high reflective consciousness of the Platonic period. And as all the successive forms of life in pre-Adamic ages were a preparation for and a prophecy of the coming of man, so the advancing forms of philosophic thought, during the grand ages of Grecian civilization, were a preparation and a prophecy of the coming of the Son of God.

[Footnote 875: The writer would not be understood as favoring the idea that this development is simply the result of "natural law." The connection between the past and the present is not a material, but a _mental_ connection. It is the bond of Creative Thought and Will giving to organic forces a foreseen direction towards the working out of a grand plan. See Agassiz, "Contributions to Natural History," vol. i. pp. 9, 10; Duke of Argyll, "Reign of Law," ch. v.]

We shall now endeavor to trace this process of gradual preparation for Christianity in the Greek mind--

(i.) _In the field of_ THEISTIC _conceptions_.

(ii.) _In the department of_ ETHICAL _ideas and principles_.

(iii.) _In the region of_ RELIGIOUS _sentiment_.

In the field of theistic conception the propædeutic office of Grecian philosophy is seen--

I. _In the release of the popular mind from Polytheistic notion, and the purifying and spiritualizing of the Theistic idea_.

The idea of a Supreme Power, a living Personality, energizing in nature, and presiding over the affairs of men, is not the product of philosophy. It is the immanent, spontaneous thought of humanity. It has, therefore, existed in all ages, and revealed itself in all minds, even when it has not been presented to the understanding as a definite conception, and expressed by human language in a logical form. It is the thought which instinctively arises in the opening reason of childhood, as the dim and shadowy consciousness of a living mind behind all the movement and change of the universe. Then comes the period of doubt, of anxious questioning, and independent inquiry. The youth seeks to account to himself for this peculiar sentiment. He turns his earnest gaze towards nature, and through this living vesture of the infinite he seeks to catch some glimpses of the living Soul. In some fact appreciable to sense, in some phenomenon he can see, or hear, or touch, he would fain grasp the cause and reason of all that is. But in this field of inquiry and by this method he finds only a "receding God," who falls back as he approaches, and is ever still beyond; and he sinks down in exhaustion and feebleness, the victim of doubt, perhaps despair. Still the sentiment of the Divine remains, a living force, in the centre of his moral being. He turns his scrutinizing gaze within, and by self-reflection seeks for some rational ground for his instinctive faith. There he finds some convictions he can not doubt, some ideas he can not call in question, some thoughts he is compelled to think, some necessary and universal principles which in their natural and logical development ally him to an unseen world, and correlate and bind him fast to an invisible, but real God. The more his mind is disciplined by abstract thought, the clearer do these necessary and universal principles become, and the purer and more spiritual his ideas of God. God is now for him the First Principle of all principles, the First Truth of all truths; the Eternal Reason, the Immutable Righteousness, the Supreme Good. The normal and healthy development of reason, the maturity of thought, conduct to the recognition of the true God.

And so it has been in the universal consciousness of our race as revealed in history. There was first a period of spontaneous and unreflective Theism, in which man felt the consciousness of God, but could not or did not attempt a rational explanation of his instinctive faith. He saw God in clouds and heard Him in the wind. His smile nourished the corn, and cheered the vine. The lightnings were the flashes of his vengeful ire, and the thunder was his angry voice. But the unity of God was feebly grasped, the rays of the Divinity seemed divided and scattered amidst the separate manifestations of power, and wisdom, and goodness, and retribution, which nature presented. Then plastic art, to aid and impress the imagination, created its symbols of these separate powers and principles, chiefly in human form, and gods were multiplied. But all this polytheism still rested on a dim monotheistic background, and all the gods were subordinated to Zeus--"the Father of gods and men." Humanity had still the sense of the dependence of all finite being on one great fountain-head of Intelligence and Power, and all the "generated gods" were the subjects and ministers of that One Supreme. This was the childhood of humanity so vividly represented in Homeric poetry.

Then came a period of incipient reflection, and speculative thought, in which the attention of man is drawn outward to the study of nature, of which he can yet only recognize himself as an integral part. He searches for some archê--some first principle, appreciable to sense, which in its evolution shall furnish an explanation of the problem of existence. He tries the hypothesis of "_water_" then of "_air_" then of "_fire_" as the primal element, which either is itself, or in some way infolds within itself an informing Soul, and out of which, by vital transformation, all things else are produced. But here he failed to find an adequate explanation; his reason was not satisfied. Then he sought his first principle in "_numbers_" as symbols, and, in some sense, as the embodiment of the rational conceptions of order, proportion, and harmony,--God is the original _monas_--unity--One;--or else he sought it in purely abstract "_ideas_" as unity, infinity, identity, and all things are the evolution of an eternal thought, one and identical, which is God. And here again he fails. Then he supposes an unlimited _migma_--a chaotic mixture of elements existing from eternity, which was separated, combined, and organized by the energy of a Supreme Mind, the _nous_ of Anaxagoras. But he holds not firmly to this great principle; "he recurs again to air, and ether, and water, as _causes_ for the ordering of all things."[876] And after repeated attempts and failures, he is disappointed in his inquiry, and falls a prey to doubt and skepticism. This was the early youth of our humanity, the period that opens with Thales and ends with the Sophists.

[Footnote 876: Thus Socrates complains of Anaxagoras. See "Phædo," § 108.]

The problem of existence still waits for and demands a solution. The heart of man, also, still cries out for the living God. The Socratic maxim, "know thyself," introverts the mental gaze, and self-reflection now becomes the method of philosophy. The Platonic analysis of thought reveals elements of knowledge which are not derived from the outer world. There are universal and necessary principles revealed in consciousness which, in their natural and logical development, transcend consciousness, and furnish the cognition of a world of Real Being, beyond the world of sense. There are absolute truths which bridge the chasm between the seen and the unseen, the fleeting and the permanent, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal. There are necessary laws of thought which are also found to be laws of things, and which correlate man to a living, personal, righteous Lord and Lawgiver. From absolute ideas Plato ascends to an _absolute Being_, the author of all finite existence. From absolute truths to an _absolute Reason_, the foundation and essence of all truth. From the principle of immutable right to an _absolutely righteous Being_. From the necessary idea of the good to a being of _absolute Goodness_--that is, to _God_. This is the maturity of humanity, the ripening manhood of our race which was attained in the Socratic age.

The inevitable tendency of this effort of speculative thought, spread over ages, and of the intellectual culture which necessarily resulted, was to undermine the old polytheistic religion, and to purify and elevate the theistic conception. The school of Elea rejected the gross anthropomorphism of the Homeric theology. Xenophanes, the founder of the school, was a believer in

"_ One God_, of all beings divine and human the greatest, Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in ideas."

And he repels with indignation the anthropomorphic representations of the Deity.

"But men foolishly think that gods are born as men are, And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice, and their figure: But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers, Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen, Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned."[877]

Empedocles also wages uncompromising war against all representations of the Deity in human form--

"For neither with head adjusted to limbs, like the human, Nor yet with two branches down from the shoulders outstretching, Neither with feet, nor swift-moving limbs,.... He is, wholly and perfectly, _mind_, ineffable, holy, With rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the world."[878]

[Footnote 877: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 431, 432.]

[Footnote 878: Ibid., vol. i. pp. 495, 496.]

When speaking of the mythology of the older Greeks, Socrates maintains a becoming prudence; he is evidently desirous to avoid every thing which would tend to loosen the popular reverence for divine things.[879] But he was opposed to all anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity. His fundamental position was that the Deity is the Supreme Reason, which is to be honored by men as the source of all existence and the end of all human endeavor. Notwithstanding his recognition of a number of subordinate divinities, he held that the Divine is one, because Reason is one. He taught that the Supreme Being is the immaterial, infinite Governor of all;[880] that the world bears the stamp of his intelligence, and attests it by irrefragable evidence;[881] and that he is the author and vindicator of all moral laws.[882] So that, in reality, he did more to overthrow polytheism than any of his predecessors, and on that account was doomed to death.

[Footnote 879: Xenophon, "Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iii. § 3.]

[Footnote 880: Id., ib., bk. i. ch. iv. §§ 17, 18.]

[Footnote 881: Id., ib., bk. i. ch. i. § 19.]

[Footnote 882: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 63; Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. p. 359.]

It was, however, the matured dialectic of Plato which gave the death-blow to polytheism. "Plato, the poet-philosopher, sacrificed Homer himself to monotheism. We may measure the energy of his conviction by the greatness of the sacrifice. He could not pardon the syren whose songs had fascinated Greece, the fresh brilliant poetry that had inspired its religion. He crowned it with flowers, but banished it, because it had lowered the religious ideal of conscience." He was sensible of the beauty of the Homeric fables, but he was also keenly alive to their religious falsehood, and therefore he excluded the poets from his ideal republic. In the education of youth, he would forbid parents and teachers repeating "the stories which Hesiod and Homer and the other poets told us." And after instancing a number of these stories "which deserve the gravest condemnation," he enjoins that God must be represented as he is in reality. "God," says he, "is, beyond all else, good in reality, and therefore so to be represented;" "he can not do evil, or be the cause of evil;" "he is of simple essence, and can not change, or be the subject of change;" "there is no imperfection in the beauty or goodness of God;" "he is a God of truth, and can not lie;" "he is a being of perfect simplicity and truth in deed and word."[883] The reader can not fail to recognize the close resemblance between the language of Plato and the language of inspiration.

The theistic conception, in Plato, reaches the highest purity and spirituality. God is "_the Supreme Mind_," "incorporeal," "unchangeable," "infinite," "absolutely perfect," "essentially good," "unoriginated and eternal." He is "the Father and Maker of the world," "the efficient Cause of all things," "the Monarch and Ruler of the world," "the Sovereign Mind that orders all things," and "pervades all things." He is "the sole principle of all things," "the beginning of all truth," "the fountain of all law and justice," "the source of all order and beauty;" in short, He is "the beginning, middle, and end of all things."[884]

[Footnote 883: "Republic," bk. ii. §§ 18-21.]

[Footnote 884: See _ante_, ch. xi. pp. 377, 378, where the references to Plato's writings are given.]

Aristotle continued the work of undermining polytheism. He defines God as "the Eternal Reason"--the Supreme Mind. "He is the immovable cause of all movement in the universe, the all-perfect principle. This principle or essence pervades all things. It eternally possesses perfect happiness, and its happiness consists in energy. This primeval mover is immaterial, for its essence is energy--it is pure thought, thought thinking itself--the thought of thought."[885] Polytheism is thus swept away from the higher regions of the intelligence. "For several to command," says he, "is not good, there should be but one chief. A tradition, handed down from the remotest antiguity, and transmitted under the veil of fable, says that all the stars are gods, and that the Divinity embraces the whole of nature. And round this idea other mythical statements have been agglomerated, with a view to influencing the vulgar, and for political and moral expediency; as for instance, they feigned that these gods have human shape, and are like certain of the animals; and other stories of the kind are added on. Now, if any one will separate from all this the first point alone, namely, that they thought the first and deepest grounds of existence to be Divine, he may consider it a divine utterance."[886] The popular polytheism, then, was but a perverted fragment of a deeper and purer "Theology." This passage is a sort of obituary of polytheism. The ancient glory of paganism had passed away. Philosophy had exploded the old theology. Man had learned enough to make him renounce the ancient religion, but not enough to found a new faith that could satisfy both the intellect and the heart. "Wherefore we are not to be surprised that the grand philosophic period should be followed by one of incredulity and moral collapse, inaugurating the long and universal _decadence_ which was, perhaps, as necessary to the work of preparation, as was the period of religious and philosophic development."

[Footnote 885: "Metaphysics," bk. xii.]

[Footnote 886: "Metaphysics," bk. xi. ch. viii. § 19.]

The preparatory office of Greek philosophy in the region of speculative thought is seen--

2. _In the development of the Theistic argument in a logical form._--Every form of the theistic proof which is now employed by writers on natural theology to demonstrate the being of God was apprehended, and logically presented, by one or other of the ancient philosophers, excepting, perhaps, the "moral argument" drawn from the facts of conscience.

(I.) _The_ ÆTIOLOGICAL _proof_, or the argument based upon the principle of causality, which may be presented in the following form:

All genesis or becoming supposes a permanent and uncaused Being, adequate to the production of all phenomena.

The sensible universe is a perpetual genesis, a succession of appearances: it is "always becoming, and never really is."

Therefore, it must have its cause and origin in a permanent and unoriginated Being, adequate to its production.

The major premise of this syllogism is a fundamental principle of reason--a self-evident truth, an axiom of common sense, and as such has been recognized from the very dawn of philosophy. [Greek: Adounaton ginesthai ti ek mêdenos prouparxonios]--_Ex nihilo nihil_--_Nothing which once was not, could ever of itself come into being_. Nothing can be made or produced without an efficient cause, is the oldest maxim of philosophy. It is true that this maxim was abusively employed by Democritus and Epicurus to disprove a Divine creation of any thing out of nothing, yet the great body of ancient philosophers, as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, and Aristotle, regarded it as the announcement of an universal conviction, that nothing can be produced without an efficient cause;--order can not be generated out of chaos, life out of dead matter, consciousness out of unconsciousness, reason out of unreason. A first principle of life, of order, of reason, must have existed anterior to all manifestions of order, of life, of intelligence, in the visible universe. It was clearly in this sense that Cicero understood this great maxim of the ancient philosophers of Greece. With him "_De nihilo nihil fit"_ is equivalent to "_Nihil sine causa_"--nothing exists without a cause. This is unquestionably the form in which that fundamental law of thought is stated by Plato: "Whatever is generated is necessarily generated from a certain cause, for it is wholly impossible that any thing should be generated without a cause."[887] And the efficient cause is defined as "a power whereby that which did not previously exist was afterwards made to be."[888] It is scarcely needful to remark that Aristotle, the scholar of Plato, frequently lays it down as a postulate of reason, "that we admit nothing without a cause."[889] By an irresistible law of thought, "_all phenomena present themselves to us as the expression of power_, and refer us to a causal ground whence they issue."

[Footnote 887: "Timæus," ch. ix.; also "Philebus," § 45.]

[Footnote 888: "Sophist," § 109.]

[Footnote 889: "Post. Analytic," bk. ii. ch. xvi.; "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. i. § 3.]

The major premise of this syllogism is a fact of observation.

To the eye of sense and sensible observation, to scientific induction even in its highest generalizations, the visible universe presents nothing but a history and aggregation of phenomena--a succession of appearances or effects having more or less resemblance. It is a ceaseless flow and change, "a generation and corruption," "a becoming, but never really _is_;" it is never in two successive moments the _same_.[890] All our cognitions of sameness, uniformity, causal connection, permanent Being, real Power, are purely rational conceptions _given in thought_, supplied by the spontaneous intuition of reason as the correlative prefix to the phenomena observed.[891]

[Footnote 890: "Timæus," ch. ix.]

[Footnote 891: Ibid.]

Therefore the ancient philosophers concluded justly, there must be something [Greek: agênnêton]--something which was never generated, something [Greek: autophyês] and [Greek: authypostaton]--self-originated and self-existing, something [Greek: tauton] and [Greek: aiônion]--immutable and eternal, the object of rational apperception--which is the real ground and efficient cause of all that appears.

(2.) The COSMOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon the principle of order, and thus presented:

Order, proportion, harmony, are the product and expression of Mind.

The created universe reveals order, proportion, and harmony.

Therefore, the created universe is the product of Mind.

The fundamental law of thought which underlies this mode of proof was clearly recognized by Pythagoras. All harmony and proportion and symmetry is the result of _unity_ evolving itself in and pervading _multiplicity_. Mind or reason is unity and indivisibility; matter is diverse and multiple. Mind is the determinating principle; matter is indeterminate and indefinite. Confused matter receives form, and proportion, and order, and symmetry, by the action and interpenetration of the spiritual and indivisible element. In presence of facts of order, the human reason instinctively and necessarily affirms the presence and action of Mind.

"Pythagoras had long devoted his intellectual adoration to the lofty idea of Order. To his mind it seemed as the presiding genius of the serene and silent world. He had from his youth dwelt with delight upon the eternal relations of space and number, in which the very idea of proportion seems to find its first and immediate development, until at length it seemed as if the whole secret of the universe was hidden in these mysterious correspondences. The world, in all its departments, moral and material, is a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose; it is a '_cosmos_' (for the word is Pythagorean), the expression of harmony, the manifestation to sense of everlasting order; and the science of _numbers_ is the truest representation of its eternal laws." Therefore, argued Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, as the reason of man can perceive the relations of an eternal order in the proportions of extension and number, the laws of proportion, and symmetry, and harmony must inhere in a Divine reason, an intelligent soul, which moves and animates the universe. The harmonies of the world which address themselves to the human mind must be the product of a Divine mind. The world, in its real structure, must be the image and copy of that divine proportion which the mind of man adores. It is the sensible type of the Divinity, the outward and multiple development of the Eternal Unity, the Eternal One--that is, God.

The same argument is elaborated by Plato in his philosophy of beauty. God is with him the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the perfect ideal of all beauty--of all the order, proportion, harmony, sublimity, and excellence which reigns in the physical, the intellectual, and the moral world. He is the "Eternal Beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from all decay as well as increase--the perfect--the Divine Beauty"[892] which is beheld by the pure mind in the celestial world.

[Footnote 892: "Banquet," § 35.]

(3.) The Teleological proof, or the argument based upon the principle of intentionality or Final Cause, and is presented in the following form:

The choice and adaptation of means to the accomplishment of special ends supposes an intelligent purpose, a Designing Mind.

In the universe we see such choice and adaptation of means to ends.

Therefore, the universe is the product of an intelligent, personal Cause.

This is peculiarly the Socratic proof. He recognized the necessity and the irresistibility of the conviction that the choice and adaptation of means to ends is the effect of Purpose, the expression of Will.[893] There is an obviousness and a directness in this mode of argument which is felt by every human mind. In the "Memorabilia" Xenophon has preserved a conversation of Socrates with Aristodemus in which he develops this proof at great length. In reading the dialogue[894] in which Socrates instances the adaptation of our organization to the external world, and the examples of design in the human frame, we are forcibly reminded of the chapters of Paley, Whewell, and M'Cosh. Well might Aristodemus exclaim: "The more I consider it, the more it is evident to me that man must be the masterpiece of some great Artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favor of Him who has thus formed it." The argument from Final Causes is pursued by Plato in the "Timæus;" and in Aristotle, God is the Final Cause of all things.[895]

[Footnote 893: "Canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this (in the human body) should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and contrivance?"--"Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 894: "Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 895: Aristotle clearly recognizes that an end or final cause implies Intelligence. "The appearance of ends and means is a proof of Design."--"Nat. Ausc.," bk. ii. ch. viii.]

(4.) The Ontological or Ideological proof, or the argument grounded on necessary and absolute ideas, which may be thrown into the following syllogism:

Every attribute or quality implies a subject, and absolute modes necessarily suppose an Absolute Being. Necessary and absolute truths or ideas are revealed in human reason as absolute modes.

Therefore universal, necessary, and absolute ideas are modes of the absolute subject--that is, God, the foundation and source of all truth.

This is the Platonic proof. Plato recognized the principle of substance ([Greek: ousia ypokeimenon]), and therefore he proceeds in the "Timæus" to inquire for the real ground of all existence; and in the "Republic," for the real ground of all truth and certitude.

The universe consists of two parts, permanent existences and transient phenomena--being and genesis; the one eternally constant, the other mutable and subject to change; the former apprehended by the reason, the latter perceived by sense. For each of these there must be a principle, subject, or substratum--a principle or subject-matter, which is the ground or condition of the sensible world, and a principle or substance, which is the ground and reason of the intelligible world or world of ideas. The subject-matter, or ground of the sensible world, is "the receptacle" and "nurse" of forms, an "invisible species and formless receiver (which is not earth, or air, or fire, or water) which receives the immanence of the intelligible."[896] The subject or ground of the intelligible world is that in which ideal forms, or eternal archetypes inhere, and which impresses form upon the transitional element, and fashions the world after its own eternal models. This eternal and immutable substance is God, who created the universe as a copy of the eternal archetypes--the everlasting thoughts which dwell in his infinite mind.

[Footnote 896: "Timæus," ch. xxiv.]

These copies of the eternal archetypes or models are perceived by the reason of man in virtue of its participation in the Ultimate Reason. The reason of man is the organ of truth; by an innate and inalienable right, it grasps unseen and eternal realities. The essence of the soul is akin to that which is real, permanent, and eternal;--_It is the offspring and image of God_; therefore it has a true communion with the realities of things, by virtue of this kindred and homogeneous nature. It can, therefore, ascend from the universal and necessary ideas, which are apprehended by the reason, to the absolute and supreme Idea, which is the attribute and perfection of God. When the human mind has contemplated any object of beauty, any fact of order, proportion, harmony, and excellency, it may rise to the notion of a quality common to all objects of beauty--from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others; from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until, from thought to thought, we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than the perfect, absolute, _Divine Beauty_.[897] When a man has, from the contemplation of instances of virtue, risen to the notion of a quality common to all these instances, this quality becomes the representative of an ineffable something which, in the sphere of immutable reality, answers to the conception in his soul. "At the extreme limits of the intellectual world is the _Idea of the Good_, which is perceived with difficulty, but, in fine, can not be perceived without concluding that it is the source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible world it produces light, and the star whence light directly comes; that in the invisible world it directly produces truth and intelligence."[898] This _absolute Good is God_.

[Footnote 897: "Banquet," § 34.]

[Footnote 898: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. iii.]

The order in which these several methods of proof were developed, will at once present itself to the mind of the reader as the natural order of thought. The first and most obvious aspect which nature presents to the opening mind is that of movement and change--a succession of phenomena suggesting the idea of _power_. Secondly, a closer attention reveals a resemblance of phenomena among themselves, a uniformity of nature--an order, proportion, and harmony pervading the _cosmos_, which suggest an _identity and unity of power and of reason_, pervading and controlling all things. Thirdly, a still closer inspection of nature reveals a wonderful adaptation of means to the fulfillment of special ends, of organs designed to fulfill specific functions, suggesting the idea of _purpose_, _contrivance_, and _choice_, and indicating that the power which moves and determines the universe is a _personal_, _thinking_, and _voluntary_ agent. And fourthly, a profounder study of the nature of thought, an analysis of personal consciousness, reveals that there are necessary principles, ideas, and laws, which universally govern and determine thought to definite and immovable conceptions--as, for example, the principles of causality, of substance, of identity or unity, of order, of intentionality; and that it is only under these laws that we can conceive the universe. By the law of substance we are compelled to regard these ideas, which are not only laws of thought but also of things, as inherent in a subject, or Being, who made all things, and whose ideas are reflected in the reason of man. Thus from universal and necessary ideas we rise to the _absolute Idea_, from immutable principles to a _First Principle of all principles_, a _First Thought_ of all thoughts--that is, to _God_. This is the history of the development of thought in the individual, and in the race--_cause_, _order_, _design_, _idea_, _being_, GOD.