The Legacy of Greece. Various
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characteristic perhaps of which is a renewed interest in Mysticism. It leads also to a strong insistence on the practical aspect of philosophic thought, and to a view of its bearing on what had been regarded as primarily theoretical issues, which is known by the rather unfortunate name of Pragmatism. Now it is just on these points that we have most to learn from the Greeks, and Greek philosophy is therefore of special importance for us at the present time. At its best, it was never divorced from science, while it found a way of reconciling itself both with the interests of the practical life and with mysticism without in any way abating the claims of the intellect. It is solely from these points of view that it is proposed to regard Greek philosophy here. It would be futile to attempt a summary of the whole subject in the space available, and such a summary would have no value. Many things will therefore be passed over in silence which are important in themselves and would have to be fully treated in a complete account. All that can be done now is to indicate the points at which Greek philosophy seems to touch our actual problems. It will be seen that here, as elsewhere, ‘all history is contemporary history’, and that the present can only be understood in the light of the past.
The word ‘philosophy’ is Greek and so is the thing it denotes. Unless we are to use the term in so wide a sense as to empty it of all special meaning, there is no evidence that philosophy has ever come into existence anywhere except under Greek influences. In particular, mystical speculation based on religious experience is not itself philosophy, though it has often influenced philosophy profoundly, and for this reason the pantheism of the Upanishads cannot be called philosophical. It is true that there is an Indian philosophy, and indeed the Hindus are the only ancient people besides the Greeks who ever had one, but Indian science was demonstrably borrowed from Greece after the conquest of Alexander, and there is every reason to believe that those Indian systems which can be regarded as genuinely philosophical are a good deal more recent still. On the other hand, the earliest authenticated instance of a Greek thinker coming under Indian influence is that of Pyrrho (326 BC), and what he brought back from the East was rather the ideal of quietism than any definite philosophical doctrine. The barrier of language was sufficient to prevent any intercourse on important subjects, for neither the Greeks nor the Indians cared to learn any language but their own. Of course philosophy may culminate in theology, and the best Greek philosophy certainly does so, but it begins with science and not with religion.
By philosophy the Greeks meant a serious endeavour to understand the world and man, having for its chief aim the discovery of the right way of life and the conversion of people to it. It would not, however, be true to say that the word had always borne this special sense. At any rate the corresponding verb (φιλοσοφειν) had at first a far wider range. For instance, Herodotus (i. 30) makes Croesus say that Solon had travelled far and wide ‘as a philosopher’ (φιλοσοφεων), and it is clear from the context that this refers to that love of travel for the sake of the ‘wonders’ to be seen in strange lands which was so characteristic of the Ionian Greeks in the fifth century BC That is made quite plain by the phrase ‘for the sake of sightseeing’ (θεωριης ἑινεκεν) with which the word is coupled. Again, when Thucydides (ii. 40) makes Pericles say of his fellow citizens ‘we follow philosophy without loss of manliness’ (φιλοσοφουμεν ανευ μαλακιας), it is certainly not of philosophy in the special sense he is thinking. He is only contrasting the culture of Athens with the somewhat effeminate civilization of the Ionians in Asia Minor. Even in the next century, Isocrates tried to revert to this wider sense of the word, and he regularly uses it of the art of political journalism which he imparted to his pupils.
Tradition ascribes the first use of the term ‘philosophy’ in the more restricted sense indicated above to Pythagoras of Samos, an Ionian who founded a society for its cultivation in southern Italy in the latter half of the sixth century BC It is notoriously difficult to make any positive statements about Pythagoras, seeing that he wrote nothing; but it is safer on general grounds to ascribe the leading ideas of the system to the master rather than to his followers. Moreover, this particular tradition is confirmed by the fact, for which there is sufficient evidence, that the name ‘philosophers’ originally designated the Pythagoreans in a special way. For instance, we know that Zeno of Elea (c. 450 BC) wrote a book ‘Against the Philosophers’, and in his mouth that can only mean ‘Against the Pythagoreans’. Now the Pythagorean use of the term depends on a certain way of regarding man, which there is good reason for ascribing to Pythagoras himself. It has become more or less of a commonplace now, but we must try to seize it in its original freshness if we wish to understand the associations the word ‘philosophy’ came to have for the Greeks. To state it briefly, it is the view that man is something intermediate between God and ‘the other animals’ (ταλλα ζωα). As compared with God, he is ‘mere man’, liable to error and death (both of which are spoken of as specially human, ανθρωπινα); as compared with ‘the other animals’, he is kindly and capable of civilization. The Latin word humanus took over this double meaning, which is somewhat arbitrarily marked in English by the spellings human and humane. Now it is clear that, for a being subject to error and death, wisdom (σοφια) in the full sense is impossible; that is for God alone. On the other hand, man cannot be content, like ‘the other animals’ to remain in ignorance. If he cannot be wise, he can at least be ‘a lover of wisdom’, and it follows that his chief end will be ‘assimilation to God so far as possible’ (ὁμοιωσις τω θεω κατα το δυνατον), as Plato put it in the Theaetetus. The mathematical studies of the Pythagoreans soon brought them face to face with the idea of a constant approximation which never reaches its goal. There is, then, sufficient ground for accepting the tradition which makes Pythagoras the author of this special sense of the word ‘philosophy’ and for connecting it with the division of living creatures into God, men and ‘the other animals’. If the later Pythagoreans went a step further and classified rational animals into gods, men and ‘such as Pythagoras’, that was due to the enthusiasm of discipleship, and is really a further indication of the genuinely Pythagorean character of this whole range of ideas. We may take it, then, that the word ‘philosophy’ had acquired its special sense in southern Italy before the beginning of the fifth century BC
It is even more certain that this sense was well known at Athens, at least in certain circles, not long after the middle of the fifth century. To all appearance, this was the work of Socrates (470–399 B.C.). Whatever view may be taken of the philosophy of Socrates or of its relation to that expounded in Plato’s earlier dialogues (a point which need not be discussed here), it is at least not open to question that he was personally intimate with the leading Pythagoreans who had taken refuge at Thebes and at Phlius in the Peloponnesus when their society came to be regarded as a danger to the state at Croton and elsewhere in southern Italy. That happened about the middle of the fifth century, and Socrates must have made the acquaintance of these men not long after. At that time it would be quite natural for them to visit Athens; but, after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC), all intercourse with them must have ceased. They were resident in enemy states, and Socrates was fighting for his country. With the exception of the brief interval of the Peace of Nicias (421 BC), he can have seen nothing of them for years. Nevertheless it is clear that they did not forget him; for we must accept Plato’s statement in the Phaedo that many of the most distinguished philosophers of the time came to Athens to be with Socrates when he was put to death, and that those of them who could not come were eager to hear a full account of what happened. It is highly significant that, even before this, two young disciples of the Pythagorean Philolaus, Simmias and Cebes, had come from Thebes and attached themselves to Socrates. For that we have the evidence of Xenophon as well as of Plato, and Xenophon’s statement is of real value here; for it was just during these few years that he himself associated with Socrates, though he saw him for the last time a year or two before his trial and death. Whatever other inferences may be drawn from these facts, they are sufficient to prove that Socrates had become acquainted with some of the leading philosophers of the Greek world before he was forty, and to make it highly probable that it was he who introduced the word ‘philosophy’ in its Pythagorean sense to the Athenians.
So much for the word; we have next to ask how there came to be such a thing as philosophy at all. It has been mentioned that Pythagoras was an Ionian, and we