John_Francis_Waller; John_Eadie

“ Whatever is different from thought is not necessarily true for all thought. This position was the stronghold of scepticism, the fortress from which it strove to break down the strength of Platonism, and to strip all philosophy of its assured conviction that it had reached the ultimately real. It was necessary, therefore, to shift the ground of the absolutely true from the thing thought of to the thought itself of the thing. This was what Plotinus did; and it is in this respect that the Alexandrian scheme differs from all the systems which preceded it. ”

“ It meant that our individual judgments and feelings were the standard of the true and false, of the right and wrong; that whatever each man regarded as right was right, and that whatever he regarded as true was true—a doctrine which obviously unsettles the foundations both of truth and of morality, and opens a wide door to every form of ignorance and licentiousness. But the ultimate principle of the fallacies of the sophists was, their assumption that sensation is the essential attribute of man. ”

“ Thought, then, is the unity in all things, the only absolute and assured reality in the universe; because it is a truth, and the only truth which every intellect must entertain, and which no scepticism can invalidate. So reasoned Plotinus. In recommending self-reflection, or the study of thought, as the noblest of all pursuits, Plotinus intended that men should habituate themselves to the contemplation of thought in its universality, that they should see and understand that it is not properly their own. The passions and desires of men are subjective and their own ”

“ It seems at first sight a marvellous piece of foolishness that a philosopher should ascribe to empty unsubstantial number a higher degree of reality than he allows to the bright and solid objects which constitute the universe of matter. The apparent paradox is resolved when we consider the kind of truth which the philosopher is in quest of. He is not searching for truth as it presents itself to intellects constituted in a particular way, furnished, for example, with such senses as ours. ”

“ Philosophers themselves have seldom or never explained the nature of the end which they had in view, even when they were most intently bent on its attainment. Hence they seem to run themselves into absurdities; and hence their readers are bewildered or repelled. But let it be borne in mind that the end which philosophy pursues is the truth as it exists for intellect universal, and not for intellect particular; for intellect unmodified, and not for intellect modified; for intellect whether with senses like ours, or with senses totally different ”

“ The person who merely feels a sensation, and from whose mind every trace of thought is supposed to be banished, cannot travel mentally one hairsbreadth beyond the sensation which engrosses him. However keen the sensation may be, he is tied down rigorously to that single experience, and can take nothing else into account; for sensation cannot take into account anything except itself. And suppose that this person experiences another or twenty other sensations, still so long as he is without ideas he is just where he was when he had only one sensation. ”

“ A paralogism might be involved in the assertion, that the contents of any thought is a truth for all intellect; but no paralogism could be involved in the assertion that thought itself is the truth for all intellect, because thought and intellect are one. Here, to speak the language of modern philosophy, the object thought of and the thinking subject are the same, and that interval between the two does not exist which scepticism represents as an impassable gulf, separating reason from the truth. ”

“ Just as a state cannot exist unless it is sustained by political justice, that is to say, unless the rightful rulers rule, and are aided by the military, and unless the inferior orders obey; so the individual soul does not truly and healthfully exist unless it is the embodiment of private or personal justice, that is to say, unless reason rules the lower appetites, and is aided in its government by the more heroic passions of our nature. In short, just as a state without justice—that is, without the due subjection of the governed to the governing powers—is a state disorganized ”

“ Occupying this ground, and admitting that man is the measure of the universe in so far as he is a thinking, but not in so far as he is a sensational being, Socrates and Plato overruled the conclusions of Protagoras, and laid the foundations on which a sound doctrine both of absolute truth and of absolute morality might be reared. ”

“ But although it may be true that, as practical teachers, the sophists were useful in their generation, and that they have been visited with an indiscriminate vituperation which they do not merit, it is nevertheless certain that their principles were of a false and hurtful tendency, and that they are defensible only on the ground that they represent a crisis through which it was necessary that the human intelligence should pass. The saying of Protagoras, that "man is the measure of the universe," contains the marrow of their philosophy. ”

“ It robs man of reason as his peculiar endowment, and removes the foundations of morality. Hence, if this doctrine has been strongly supported, it has been no less strenuously impugned. And pre-eminent among its earliest opponents stands the philosopher whose opinions are the subject of this sketch. The purport of the Platonic theory is that, in the constitution of knowledge, sensation so far from being the whole is, in truth, a very insignificant part. Ideas, not sensations, are the light of our knowledge, as may perhaps be understood from the following plain illustration. ”

“ This philosophy was in itself peculiarly adapted to their genius, whether in their greatness or in their decline. In the palmy days of the republic it armed them with the fortitude of power; in the tragic gloom and sinking fortunes of the empire it upheld them with the fortitude of despair. It is with the spring-time of Roman stoicism that the name of Panætius is associated. None of his writings have come down to us, but how highly they were esteemed in their day is proved by the fact that Cicero thought it not beneath him to copy his own treatise De Officiis from one of the works of Panætius. ”

“ To explicate completely the difference between thought and sensation would carry us much too far. But this fact is certain, that in thinking a sensation something is present to the mind, which is not present to it when it merely feels the sensation. That something is a Platonic idea. And thus the doctrine which would build up knowledge out of mere sensations is displaced. The signal importance of ideas is the less readily appreciated from its being impossible for us to realize actually the sensational condition as it is when deprived altogether of their light. ”

“ The Platonic doctrine is very different, and much more to the purpose. According to Plato, the first stage of knowledge is, not the apprehension of particulars, but the apprehension of ideas or universals, and the application of these to particulars. This solution, at any rate, meets the problem, because it makes knowledge to originate in ideas, and not ideas to have their origin in knowledge. The Platonic theory may be summed up by saying, that the mind thinks and knows by means of genera and species. These are the laws under which all intelligence must work. ”

“ Plato's moral philosophy will be best understood by being confronted with that of the sophists, against which it was specially directed, just as his theory of ideas was designed to refute their theory of knowledge. If man be nothing but an aggregate of sensations, he can have no other end than sensational enjoyment, and no other principle of action than selfishness. ”

“ Such, accordingly, was the general purport of the sophistical morality, although some of its expounders recoiled from the extreme conclusions to which their principles led. Others, however, were less scrupulous. They explained the origin of justice in this curious fashion. The best condition, they said, in which a man can be placed, is that in which he can injure others with impunity; the worst is that in which he can be injured without the power of defence or retaliation. But men cannot always assure themselves of the best condition, or guard against falling into the worst. ”

“ Paley's ethics were a return to a large extent to the Hobbesian position, according to which all moral obligation is grounded on the command of a superior invested with the power to punish any transgression of his will. The university of Cambridge adopted, and for long continued to use, this work as their text-book of moral philosophy, and perhaps not unwisely; for, questionable as its fundamental propositions are, the good sense of its practical expositions renders it a beneficial study, and neutralizes the unsoundness of its theoretical principles. ”

“ Deficient as it is in all the profounder requirements of an ethical system, it was seen to have its roots in reality, and to be no mere beating of the air. It has a sufficient degree of truth to recommend it to all who are not very solicitous about nice distinctions ”

“ He is seeking for truth as it presents itself to intellect universally— that is, to intellect not provided with human senses. And this being his aim, he conceives that such truth is to be found in the category of number, while it is not to be found in stocks and stones, and chairs and tables—for these are true only to some minds, that is, to minds with human senses ”

“ The whole confusion and misapprehension with which the Pythagorean and Platonic, and many other systems, have at all periods been overlaid, have their origin in an oversight as to the kind of truth which philosophy aims at apprehending. ”

“ This scheme, which resolves all thought and knowledge into sensation, and represents man as essentially a sensational creature, has, in one form or another, found zealous advocates in every period of philosophy, and its plausibility recommends it to the natural sentiments of mankind. ”

“ Music and gymnastics were continually practised. It was thought that constant occupation of any kind was a better check on our evil inclinations than any mere struggling against them. These truths seem now-a-days sufficiently trite; but in those early times it was a great matter to bring men to a common understanding, and to the acknowledgment and observance of certain universal rules. ”

“ According to the Pythagorean philosophy generally, as represented by Aristotle, number is the principle and essence of all things, a position which when properly explained is neither untrue nor unintelligible.— (See Pythagoras.) ”

“ Plato died at Athens in the eighty-second year of his age, 347 b.c.
The philosophy of Plato is usually and conveniently divided into Dialectic (or metaphysics) , Physics, and Ethics. Dialectic is his peculiar contribution to science. In ethics he followed out the principles of Socrates; in physics he borrowed much from the older cosmogonies; but in dialectic he is eminently original, although here too the Socratic influences are discernible. Dialectic is the science of ideas. ”

“ Lively as his sensations may be, no knowledge of them has as yet taken place, no knowledge as yet is possible. But now let this person think his sensation, instead of merely feeling it, and observe what happens. His mind goes beyond the sensation, and takes in something more. He refers the sensation to a class; he brings into connection with it something different from itself. This he does in simply thinking that it is; for Being is no sensation ”

“ Admit that truth and reality are rather to be found in what is true for all minds than in what is true for some minds; and admit further that number is true for all minds, and that material things are not true for all minds (but only for minds with senses) ; and what more is required to prove that truth and reality are rather to be found in number than in material things. ”

“ PROCLUS, the last of the Alexandrian philosophers who were in any way memorable, was born at Constantinople in 412. He studied philosophy, particularly that of Plato and Plotinus, first under Olympiodorus at Alexandria, and afterwards at Athens under Plutarch (not the biographer) and Syrianus. The neoplatonic philosophy had establishments at other places besides Alexandria, although this had been its cradle. ”

“ This career was cut short by an incident which, had Paley been of a fanciful disposition, he might have construed into a supernatural visitation. Early one morning a boon companion, whom he had left at the festive board a few hours before, appeared at his bedside, and solemnly adjured him to alter his course of life. No ghost ever spake to better purpose. "I was so struck," says Paley, "with the visit and the visitor, that I lay in bed great part of the day, and formed my plan. I ordered my bedmaker to prepare my fire every evening, in order that it might be lighted by myself. ”

“ The doctrine is important in the history of speculation as an early expression of that fertile truth which is the basis of all sound philosophy, and which Hegel has done more than any other philosopher to signalize ”

“ Hercules being called upon by two females, the one of whom was clothed with modesty and propriety, and the other adorned with meretricious allurements, to choose between a life of labour and a life of pleasure, makes election in favour of the former, and thus wins for himself immortal glory, although by the sacrifice of all those enjoyments which, in the estimation of meaner men, are alone worth living for. ”

“ This case may further serve to illustrate a subject on which Plato has bestowed a good deal of elaborate treatment—the conversion, namely, of the human soul from ignorance to true knowledge. The ignorant and unconverted soul supposes that its knowledge of colours is due to the impressions which it receives. ”

“ His life, as it has been transmitted to us, is for the most part fabulous. It was first drawn up in the early centuries of the christian era by the Alexandrian philosophers Porphyry and Jamblichus, and was designed to counteract the influence and the pretensions of the new religion, by ascribing to the man whom it depicted powers equally extraordinary with those possessed by the Saviour of mankind. ”