Part 9

Xenophanes of Colophon (flor. c. 540 B.C.) was the first to enter the lists. Driven into exile by civil disturbances at about the age of twenty-five, he lived most of his life in Sicily. He was as much a social and religious reformer and satirist as philosopher. With a frankness which passed beyond the freedom of his age he struck at the popular beliefs with regard to the gods, which taught that the gods were born and had clothes and voices and forms like mortals. He illustrated the folly of the Greeks in making the gods after their own image by reminding them that the Ethiopians made their gods flat-nosed and black, and the Thracians theirs blue-eyed and red-haired, while if cattle and horses and lions had but hands and could draw and mould and fashion like men, then each would draw and fashion the gods in his own image.[155] For the current notions of divinity he held Homer and Hesiod responsible and charged that these poets had attributed to the gods everything that was reckoned as shame and reproach among men—stealing, adultery, and cheating.[156] He likewise opposed the doctrine that the gods had taught men their knowledge, but declared that man had always learned through experience and investigation the better way for himself.[157] Xenophanes went even further than this and used the science of his day to prove that what was regarded as the appearances of the gods was merely meteorological phenomena. In the place of many gods he declared that there was but one, and he not like mortal men either in form or intelligence, but that he was wholly sight, wholly intelligence, wholly hearing—that is to say, god and the universe are identical, and the cosmos is eternal, sentient, and intelligent.[158] There could hardly have been a greater contrast than between this pantheism and the polytheism of the day. It is true that Xenophanes offers no adequate explanation of the way in which phenomena arise; he does not solve the problem of deriving the transient out of that which is permanent and fixed. But nevertheless he crudely anticipated the thought of later philosophers and theologians and began the open struggle with polytheism which was to continue for many centuries.

Another philosopher who deserves our attention here is Heraclitus of Ephesus who flourished in the early fifth century. As he surveyed the world he was impressed with the variety of phenomena that moved before him, with the fact that nothing is stable but that everything is always in process of change. He declared therefore that nothing is permanent but that all things in reality are in a state of flux and flow (πάντα ῥεῖ). The explanation for this constant change he apparently found in the crude science of the day which observed that changes in temperature cause changes of form, some solids becoming liquid and liquids gaseous. This phenomenon he thought was due to fire. Fire he regarded as universal in the cosmos—indeed, as identical with it, and he is reported as saying that this universe, which is the same for all beings, no god or mortal has made, but it has always been and is and ever will be eternal fire, which sometimes grows the brighter and again is quenched. This fire he is willing to call god; it is to him the principle which permeates the universe and causes all change within it. Such being the case, Heraclitus maintains that true knowledge is not concerned with many things but solely with the unity in the world which his teachings set forth. In his scorn for his predecessors he outdoes Xenophanes. Not only Homer and Hesiod, but Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Archilochus, and Hecateus are alike condemned. Homer and Archilochus he declares deserve to be driven from the games and flogged, such folly had they taught.[159] In his assaults on the popular religion Heraclitus did not concern himself so much with mythology as with the rites and ceremonies current in his time. He evidently attacked the representatives of the mystery religions, calling them night walkers, magi, priests of Bacchus, devotees of the wine-vat, and mystery-mongers. In another fragment he ridicules those who pray to the images of the gods, for that is as if one were to pray to a man’s house; and again he declares that if men on ordinary occasions sang songs like the hymns which they raise in honor of Dionysus they would be acting most shamelessly. Man’s duty to his mind is to devote himself wholly to the apprehension of the divine unity in the world, of that wisdom to which alone he would consent to give the name of Zeus.[160]

We have now seen from these two representatives how philosophy regarded traditional polytheism, and taught that the unity of the universe was identical with god. But neither Xenophanes nor Heraclitus offered any satisfactory explanation of the way in which multiplicity could arise out of unity. Still less did they conceive of a personal god. This concept was reserved for Plato or possibly for his great teacher. A slight approach toward an explanation of variety was made, it is true, by Heraclitus, through his “fire” and also through a doctrine which I have not mentioned, namely that “strife,” the action of opposites, is the cause of change. Now another philosopher, Empedocles of Agrigentum, whom we have already met as a mystic, offered an explanation of the cause of phenomena not dissimilar to that of Heraclitus, and yet one that marked an advance. For his elements Empedocles took the four of popular belief—earth, air, fire, water, which he said were combined in various forms by the principles of “friendship” and of “strife”; or, as we should say today in less symbolic language, by affinity and incompatibility. But like Heraclitus Empedocles fails to make clear how or why these principles act at all on his elements. In short before Anaxagoras no thinker conceived of any satisfactory formative or motive principles to explain phenomena; likewise none had arrived at a well defined distinction between a material principle and a formative principle. Anaxagoras solved the problem in a way highly satisfactory for his age and in a manner which unconsciously anticipated many of the principles of modern science. According to him all substances are elementary, existing in seeds or germs, infinite in number, infinitesimal in size. Aristotle and the ancients in general understood him to mean that these seeds or germs are minute particles of the things which we know in the mass, as for example bread or water, or flesh and bones. Some modern scholars think that he meant that the original mass of matter was infinitely divided and that every atom had in it a portion of everything else: the various combinations of these seeds, atoms, we name bread, water, or flesh and bones according to the predominance of these things in the seeds which make up the whole. Yet whether Aristotle and the ancients or the moderns be right is a matter of little moment to us now. Anaxagoras thought that these “seeds,” whatever they were, were set in motion and combined to produce the infinite diversity of the natural objects by Mind (Νοῦς).

Anaxagoras’ great service, then, was his introduction of Mind into philosophy as a formative, a motive principle to provide the cause for change and diversity. It is not to be denied that Anaxagoras conceived his principle to be as material as the elements themselves, and that he did not employ his principle fully, even after he introduced it into the world. Indeed, he did not advance beyond a mechanical concept of the cause of phenomena. But nevertheless he is significant in the history of European thought as the founder of the dualistic system which largely prevailed thereafter. His contemporaries, too, recognized him as an innovator, for we are told that the wits of Athens nicknamed him “Mind.” With the consequences of this new dualism we shall be much concerned hereafter.

Another group of men contributed to the intellectual life of that wonderful fifty years of Athenian history which began with the defeat of the Persians and ended with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. How keen the intellectual life of that time was is shown by the high excellence of the plays to which the masses of the common citizens listened in the theater. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were not enjoyed by the few but by the great body of Athenian citizens, and their plays were known even among the remote Greek colonies. The intellectual spirit of the age was stimulated to inquiry and to scepticism. Herodotus is wholly sceptical, and the agnostic tendency of the time is shown by the entire lack of mythology and superstition displayed by Thucydides. A further stimulus was furnished by the development of a higher education given by professional teachers—the Sophists.

The last half of the fifth century is often called with good reason the “Age of the Sophists.” We must understand clearly just what we mean by this term as applied to the men of this time, for today the word sophist has an unfavorable connotation. The Sophists of the fifth century neither formed a philosophic school nor were they charlatans. The most prominent among them was Protagoras of Abdera whose ability and character is shown by the fact that Pericles selected him to draw up the laws for Thurii in 444-43 B.C. Gorgias of Leontini in Sicily enjoyed such high reputation that in 427 he was sent at the head of an embassy to Athens. These Sophists were simply men devoted to the pursuit of wisdom, frequently professional teachers who undertook to give a general culture, to train their pupils to take part in society and the state. For the old training which had been gained by observation they substituted a formal discipline; they offered instruction in rhetoric, politics, music, in short in all the higher branches, as we should call them. But they had no unity of doctrine. By the close of the fifth century they had fallen somewhat into disrepute and were under suspicion, since in the Athenian state all the youths who could afford to pay the fees which these professional teachers charged belonged to the aristocratic class, which frequently voted against the democracy. The Sophists owed their great influence to the fact that they met an actual need in the small society of Athens which included an unusual number of men with eager alert minds and great intellectual curiosity. Now it should be observed that rhetoric, which formed a considerable part of the new education introduced by these professional teachers since political life was the chief career open to a young Athenian, led to habits of examination, analysis, and definition. We are all familiar with the fact that any attempt to analyze and define customary beliefs and practices is pretty certain to detect inconsistencies unobserved before; to lead, at first at least, to confusion and to doubt as to the validity of the practice or belief under consideration; and that when applied to traditional morality or religion it is likely to loosen the obligations which men have hitherto regarded. For illustrations of this truth we have only to look about us and to see how in this generation, as in the generations of our fathers, long accepted beliefs have crumbled before examination, as for example the institution of slavery, the justice of which few questioned a century and a quarter ago. So it was inevitable that in Athens some of the effects of the sophistic teaching should be destructive. And these effects were exaggerated by the great store which was set on skill in disputation. When moral or religious themes were under discussion, the point at issue was not the value of this or that position, but rather the relative skill of the disputants. We are so familiar with this in academic life, in college debates, for example, that the question of the moral effect does not rise in our minds. But it is little wonder that in the fifth century in Athens the Sophists were charged with making the worse cause the better.

Furthermore the Sophists were sceptical as to the possibility of acquiring absolute knowledge about anything. This scepticism may have been due to a failure on the part of the science of the day which led individuals to turn from nature to man as the object of their inquiry. Protagoras maintained that all knowledge was relative, since the only way in which a man can know anything is through his senses; through them he perceives that an object is hot or cold, round or square, sweet or bitter. He pointed out, also, that the same object will not always appear the same even to the same individual; hence he declared that there is no such thing as absolute truth, but that whatever seems true to you or to me at the moment is the truth for you or for me, and that it is not at all necessary that you and I should hold the same thing to be true at one and the same time. Whatever seems to the individual true is true, according to him. From this came his famous dictum that man, that is the individual, is the measure of all things.[161] It is clear that this doctrine when applied to politics, morals, or religion was upsetting.

So long as men studied nature, they were concerned with discovering the inflexible laws which govern the world. But when they turned their attention from nature to society or government, they realized that human institutions seemed to be the result on the whole of conventions agreed upon and adopted by mankind. The Sophists held in general that the form of the state, the current moral and religious beliefs and social customs had no absolute validity; that they were the results of convention; and that their only warrant was that they worked well in practice, that they were profitable to the individual and to society. This pragmatic view of institutions fell in well with the temper of the last half of the fifth century, both in the period of Athens’ imperial supremacy and in the time of her trial during the Peloponnesian War, when in passion or despair the people disregarded law and, as in the case of the Melians, all that humanity had counted sacred. It was an age when many held that might and right were identical, and for this view the Sophists, even though unwittingly, furnished arguments; for if the test of an institution or act is that it works well when put into practice, success proves validity. The Sophists, too, taught that virtue (ἀρετή) was nothing else than what we call today efficiency. It is not strange that the conservative Athenians came to look on them with suspicion.

With regard to the gods Protagoras was naturally agnostic. He began his “Treatise on the Gods” with the words: “So far as the gods are concerned, I cannot know whether they exist or do not exist; or what their nature is. Many things prevent our knowing. The matter is obscure and life is short.”[162] One may be curious to know what large matter Protagoras found for his discussion when he began with this frank confession of ignorance; but it should be observed that in this confession there is nothing necessarily antagonistic to the popular theology of his day. It only shows what the words plainly declare, that a belief in the gods cannot depend upon knowledge. Another Sophist, Prodicus, maintained that the divinities were nothing but the kindly powers of nature which man had deified;[163] and the “Gentle Critias,” one of the worst of the Thirty Tyrants, and a ready pupil of the earlier Sophists, is said to have set forth in a satyric drama the theory that the gods were the clever invention of someone who wished to scare men out of their desire to do evil.[164] The effect of such scepticism and agnosticism we can easily imagine.

Many things had been wrongly laid at the door of the Sophists, but it is small wonder that the conservative Athenian citizens came to look with distrust and alarm on these new-fangled subversive notions; that they banished Protagoras and burned his books in the market place; or finally that they should have put Socrates to death.

Into this age of intellectual ferment and readjustment, of scepticism and eager inquiry, the age of Anaxagoras and the Sophists, Socrates entered. He was at once the child of his time and the greatest fecundator of men’s minds that Europe had yet known. He was born in 469 B.C. and was forced to drink the hemlock in March, 399, so that he had completed the allotted span of life. The son of a sculptor, we are told that he followed his father’s profession in his youth, but apparently he did not continue this long. Whence he derived the means of livelihood we do not know. He received the regular Athenian education, was interested especially in geometry and astronomy; the works of the philosophers he had read, but professed that he gained little from them. One is tempted to dwell on the picturesque characteristics of this man—his refusal to teach for pay, as did the ordinary teachers, his profession of complete ignorance—his only claim to wisdom, he said himself,—his ugliness of feature, and his beauty of soul, his omnivorous interest in the work of the humble craftsmen, above all on his belief that he had a warning spirit, a daemon, which checked him when his course was wrong. Although in obedience to this inward monitor Socrates refrained from politics, he fulfilled all his civic duties in peace and in war. He conformed to the traditional religion, sacrificing and praying to the traditional gods, although he undoubtedly did not hold that they were the limited and sensual creatures of the popular belief. When he prayed he asked not for gold or silver or power, but for what the gods knew was good for him. At the close of Plato’s Phaedrus he offers this appeal: “Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, grant me beauty of the inward soul, and make the outward and the inward man to be but one.” This was the man who was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens.

Socrates had much in common with the Sophists. Although it is evident that in his earlier years he had been interested in physical science, we know that he turned away from that in the course of time, convinced that man alone was more than man could understand. He rather confined his attention to man himself, and made man and his conduct the center of philosophic inquiry. With the Sophists Socrates held that the cultivation of excellence, of virtue, whatever that might be, was the chief thing. He also identified virtue and knowledge, and like the Sophists was sceptical as to man’s ability to attain absolute knowledge. Practicability was the test he applied to various opinions. If one notion as to the state or society or anything else worked better than another, it was, therefore, in his view the better; and according to him it was by the adoption of such useful opinions that the individual became the wiser man. He held that education does not consist in putting things into people’s heads, but in leading them to discover the truths which they already possess. He therefore employed discussion as to the validity of hypotheses to bring out the latent knowledge in the minds of his young friends. This method of his—dialectic—was not identical with that of the Sophists apparently, but was not unlike theirs. It was, therefore, natural that his own time should have reckoned him as one of the professional class.

How then was he distinguished from these Sophists? Externally, first of all, by the fact that he did not teach for pay, that his purpose was unselfish, his interest being solely the elucidation of truth and so the establishment of virtue. He himself believed that he had a divine commission to serve the Athenians as a missionary. Plato makes him declare in his defence before his judges: “Men of Athens, I should be guilty of a crime indeed if through fear of death or anything else I should desert the post to which I am assigned by the god. For the god ordains ... that I should follow after wisdom and examine myself and others.”[165] He conceived of himself as the physician of the soul, and maintained that his whole business was “to persuade all, both young and old, not to care about the body or riches, but first and foremost about the soul—how to make the soul as good as possible.”[166]

As I have already said, he believed that if men could only know what justice, goodness, and temperance were they would naturally and inevitably be just and good and temperate. Vice he thought was due to a lack of knowledge; therefore he employed his questioning, dialectic, to endeavor to secure clear definitions of these and other virtues, for he was convinced that if only he and his associates could discover what virtue was, they would at once pursue virtue and flee from all wrongdoing. We may smile at the naïveté of this belief, that virtue is something that can be taught, that to be practised it needs only to be seen; but we must remind ourselves that his confidence was based on another belief, which was that virtue is the best and the most profitable for the individual; and that since each man desires the best for himself, if he sees what is right, he will follow that course unswervingly to the end. It may be said with reason that this is a utilitarian view, and so it is; but in Socrates it was combined with a power of will which enabled him to translate his convictions into reality, for it was in obedience to this conviction that the great teacher gave up his life.

Thus far we have seen that in the ferment of the last part of the fifth century in Athens there were two forces which were in a sense opposed to each other, the Sophists with their inevitable scepticism, who taught that all truth was subjective, that justice and goodness were only that which seemed just and good to the individual; opposed to them in reality was Socrates, not only in spirit but also by the doctrine which he endeavored to establish; for his search was always directed at finding the reality, was always aimed at knowledge in opposition to opinion. These objective truths, the universals, which to him were the only real things in the world, he endeavored to obtain by a process of definition which was not wholly adequate; but he turned men away from mere observation, from what seemed to be true, to search for permanent objective reality. How fruitful his teaching was, was shown by many schools, but above all by his greatest pupil, Plato. His followers have lasted to the present day.

The last third of the fifth century was a new era for Greece. The Peloponnesian War broke out in the year 431, and lasted until 404. On the one side was Athens with the empire which she had boldly built and somewhat ruthlessly held; on the other was a large number of allied states of Greece with Sparta at their head. The war ended with the complete humiliation of Athens. She lost her empire, her wealth, and a large part of her population. These disasters gave opportunity and occasion for new forces to come to the front. Early in the war the mercurial Athenians had shown themselves impatient of the leadership which had made Athens great, and they rejected Pericles. They were easily led astray by wild schemes, as when they followed the imperialistic party headed by Alcibiades and sent out the Sicilian expedition in 415, which was to meet irreparable disaster two years later. In time of distress, under the burden of political and economic misfortune, men often turn to reconsider the bases of their beliefs and actions, to test the validity of the doctrines which have hitherto guided them. This was the case at Athens. The old beliefs went by the board; society, government, and religion all became subjects of doubt and of reexamination.