Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/572

 540 PERIPATETICS tions of absolute atoms and infinite space. His own specu lations led him rather to lay stress on the qualitative aspect of the world. The true explanation of things was to be found, according to Strato, in the forces which pro duced their attributes, and he followed Aristotle in de ducing all phenomena from the fundamental attributes or elements of heat and cold. His psychological doctrine explained all the functions of the soul as modes of motion, and denied any separation of the reason from the faculties of sense -perception. He appealed in this connexion to the statement of Aristotle that we are unable to think without a sense-image. The successors of Strato in the headship of the Lyceum were Lyco, Aristo of Ceos, Critolaus (who, with Carneades the Academic and Diogenes the Stoic, undertook in 155 B.C. the famous embassy to Rome, more important in its philosophical than in its political bearings), Diodorus of Tyre, and Erymneus, who brings the philosophic succession down to about the year 100 B.C. Other Peripatetics belonging to this period are Hieronymus of Rhodes, Pry- tanis, and Phormio, the delirus senex who attempted to instruct Hannibal in the art of war. Sotion, Hermippus, and Satyrus were historians rather than philosophers. Heraclides Lembus, Agatharchides, and Antisthenes of Rhodes are names to us and nothing more. The philo sophic unfruitfulness of the school during this whole period is expressly charged against it by Strabo, who explains it by his well-known story of the disappearance of Aristotle s writings after the death of Theophrastus. But it is im possible that this story should be true in the shape in which it is told by Strabo ; and a sufficient explanation of the barrenness of the school may be found in the general circumstances of the time. From the outset the character istic of the Aristotelian philosophy had been its disinter ested scientific character ; but the age was one for which speculation as such had lost its attractiveness. At such a time it was natural, therefore, that the Peripatetic school should suffer more than the others. It had also in practical matters taken up a mediatizing position, so that it lacked the attractions which, in the case of extreme views, enlist supporters -and inspire them with propa gandist zeal. The fact, at all events, is not to be denied that, after Strato, the Peripatetic school has no thinker of any note to show for about 200 years. With Strato, moreover, the scientific activity of the school has an end ; when it received a new infusion of life its activity took another direction. Strato accuses the Peripatetics of this period of devoting themselves to the tricking out of commonplaces. This seems in great measure true of those who still occupied themselves with philosophy ; they culti vated ethics and rhetoric, and were noted for the elegance of their style. But the majority followed the current of the time, and gave themselves up to the historical, philological, and grammatical studies which mark the Alexandrian age. Early in the 1st century B.C. all the philosophic schools began to be invaded by a spirit of eclecticism. This was partly the natural result of the decay of speculative interest and partly due to the unconscious influence of Rome upon the philosophers. The Roman mind measured philosophy, like other things, by the standard of practical utility. As an instrument of education, and especially as the inculcator of moral principles, the Roman welcomed and appreciated philosophy ; but his general point of view was naively put by the proconsul Gellius (about 70 B.C.), who proposed to the representatives of the schools in Athens that they should settle their differences amicably, at the same time offering his personal services as mediator. Though the well-meant proposal was not accepted, this atmosphere of indifference imperceptibly influenced the attitude of the contending schools to one another. Thus Boethus the Stoic deserted the pantheism of his school and assigned the deity, as Aristotle had done, to the highest sphere. He likewise embraced the Peripatetic doctrine of the eternity of the world. A similar approximation to Peri- pateticism is seen in Pansetius. About the same time, Antiochus of Ascalon, founder of the so-called fifth Academy, tried to combine Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, asserting that they differed only in words. Meanwhile the Peripatetic school may be said to have taken a new departure and a new lease of life. The impulse was due to Andronicus of Rhodes, the well-known editor of Aristotle s works, who presided over the Lyceum towards the middle of the 1st century B.C. His critical edition indicated to the later Peripatetics the direction in which they could profitably work, and the school devoted itself henceforth almost exclusively to the writing of commentaries on Aristotle. Boethus of Sidon and Aristo of Alexandria carried on the work of interpretation begun by Andronicus. Boethus appears, like many of his predecessors, to have taken the naturalistic view of Aristotle s doctrines, and even in some respects to have approximated to the Stoic materialism. Staseas, Cratippus, and Nicolaus of Damascus need only be named as belonging to this century. The most interesting Peripatetic work of the period is the treatise De If undo, which has come down to us under Aristotle s name, but which internal evidence obliges us to assign to a date later than the writings of the Stoic Posidonius. The interest of the treatise lies in the evidence it affords within the Peripatetic school of the eclectic tendency which was then in the air. The admixture of Stoic elements is so great that some critics have attributed the work to a Stoic author ; but the writer s Peripateticism seems to be the more fundamental constituent of his doctrine. Our knowledge of the Peripatetic school during the first two centuries of the Christian era is very fragmentary ; but those of its representatives of whom anything is known confined themselves entirely to commenting upon the different treatises of Aristotle. Thus Alexander of vEga), the teacher of Nero, commented on the Categories and the De Cselo. In the 2d century Aspasius and Adrastus wrote numerous commentaries. The latter also treated of the order of the Aristotelian writings in a separate work. Somewhat later, Herminus, Achaicus, and Sosigenes com mented on the logical treatises. Aristocles of Messene, the teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias, was the author of a complete critical history of Greek philosophy. This second phase of the activity of the school closes with the compre hensive labours of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the exegete par excellence, called sometimes the second Aristotle. He became head of the Lyceum during the reign of Septimius Severus, some time between 198 and 211 A.D. Alexander s interpretation proceeds throughout upon the naturalistic lines which have already become familiar to us. Aristotle had maintained that the individual alone is real, and had nevertheless asserted that the universal is the proper object of knowledge. Alexander seeks consistency by holding to the first position alone. The individual is prior to the universal, he says, not only &quot;for us,&quot; but also in itself, and universals are abstractions which have merely a sub jective existence in the intelligence which abstracts them. Even the deity must be brought under the conception of individual substance. Such an interpretation enables us to understand how it was possible, at a later date, for Aristotle to be regarded as the father of Nominalism. Form, Alexander proceeds, is everywhere indivisible from matter. Hence the soul is inseparable from the body whose soul or form it is. Reason or intellect is bound up with the other faculties. It exists primarily in man only as a disposition or capacity vous vAt/cos K.O! &amp;lt;/&amp;gt;i&amp;gt;criKos and