Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/701

685 of belief, Dr. Brede thinks, make two important starting points for the philosophy of the Scottish School.

While Dr. Brede's monograph is a very valuable contribution to the literature on this subject, it does not leave one with the impression that it is a final solution of the question. Want of space prevents suitable reference to many excellent features of the work.

The author is from Christiania, but the original draft of the book is in German. He acknowledges his indebtedness to Heinze, who, in his work entitled Die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen Philosophie, published in 1872, broke the ground in this fertile field. The present work, however, differs from Heinze's in finding, not so much a special doctrine of the Logos in Greek Philosophy, as the development of an idea. The idea of Logos suffered constant change from Heraclitus to Plotinus. The principal chapters of the work are devoted to Heraclitus, to the Stoics, and to Philo, with connecting and supplementary chapters on Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Alexandrian schools. The development of the idea of the Logos is found essentially in Heraclitus, the Stoics, and in Philo and his successors.

The often asserted identity of the Heraclitic fire with the Logos, or the conception of the fire itself as a rational essence to be again identified with the soul, is to be rejected. Neither may we identify the Logos with God. Indeed, it is in Heraclitus viewed from another standpoint, namely, that of the critical ethical philosopher, the 'prophet,' that the Logos doctrine appears. The Logos is a sort of universal intellectual and ethical norm, and as such is usually considered in relation to man. It is neither God nor human spirit, though both partake of it. It stands for reason, law, purpose. It is that which makes the world rational, good, and purposeful. It is the lack of it in man that makes him bestial and stupid. The Logos idea as it appears in the Stoics and in all later schools, is more or less a development and enlargement of the Heraclitic conception. In respect to the Stoics, the author justly calls attention to the fact that we shall best arrive at a true understanding of the Stoic Logos, if we do not attempt to find in Stoicism a unified and consistent system. In Stoicism we are presented, apparently, with a system of pure materialism, requiring the assumption of no spiritual or incorporeal being. But another set of references points to a very different conception, revealing the true deeper character of the system. Now we discover the Logos as a spiritual energy permeating and conditioning the material world. It is conceived first dynamically, as the constructive and controlling force. In the organic world it is the original productive power,—the source of all life. Teleologically, it is the cause of order and beauty. In human society it is the ethical ideal. Are