Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/826

 808 MORAL PHILOSOPHY consciousness. The earliest ethical speculations in Greece appear in the maxims of the gnomic poets. The first attempt to introduce a scien- tific analysis into the details of practical wisdom was that of Pythagoras, whose moral system was linked with a mysterious symbolism- of numbers. Of oriental origin, the Pythagorean discipline has been likened to philosophy on 'a tripod ; it taught by symbols, spoke in tropes, wrote in verses, and, instead of reasoning, ut- tered oracles. Its elementary ideas are those of unity and duality, the finite and the infinite, the right and the oblique, to the former of which corresponds good, and to the latter evil. From unity the harmony of numbers is derived, and the sovereign good is the rhythmical order of nature. When the principle of unity predomi- nates in intelligent beings, there is spiritual har- mony ; and as harmony is not unity, but only an imitation of it, so virtue is not absolute good- ness, but only an imperfect representation of it. God is the absolute unity, and is alone wise, and to imitate him as far as possible is the duty of all imperfect beings, who cannot be wise men, but only philosophers or friends of wisdom. The Pythagoreans distinguished the animal soul, whose seat is the heart, and the rational soul, which abides in the brain, and. gave to the latter the supremacy. They, therefore, laid stress on self-command and temperance as essential to the vision of truth, and tended to ascetic prac- tices, yet maintained that justice and love were inseparable. They were unsurpassed by any school of antiquity in urging the duties of friendship. The Pythagorean aristocracy re- sembled an oriental sacerdotal caste, and the Pythagorean political institutions in southern Italy mark the conflict between the genius of the Orient and that of Greece, between the- ocracy and humanity, the nobility and the people, the servitude of tradition and the lib- erty of thought. Heraclitus repeated Pythag- oras, and Democritus opposed him, founding the sensualist ethical school, and developing the most complete and scientific moral system prior to Socrates, which was, however, only a corollary and result of his atomic physical doctrines. The sovereign good of man, accord- ing to him, is not pleasure but happiness, which consists in constant and tranquil content. To be at once temperate, daring, and confident, and, having never done nor wished anything absurd, to trust in fortune, was the whole purport of his ethical maxims. The age of the sophists succeeded. They, however, neither formed a school, nor their doctrines a system. Gram- marians, rhetoricians, statesmen, metaphysi- cians, and moralists, from all the schools of Greek philosophy, their special influence was in inspiring respect for intellectual attainments and performances, and their best service was in habituating the Greek mind to a free examina- tion of all human knowledge. The weapon which they wielded was a rhetorical eloquence, under the sway of which the mythological di- vinities began to lose their majesty, the ancient traditions which had charmed successive gene- rations ceased to have authority, the institu- tions of state tended toward equality and to- ward a foundation of reason instead of experi- ence, and the enthusiasm of Greek culture was transferred from martial and political accom- plishments to the arts, letters, and oratory. Their method was powerful to destroy rather than build up, yet the common statement that they were intellectual and moral corrupters is elaborately disputed by Mr. Grote. He regards them as the regular exponents of Greek moral- ity, neither above nor below the standard of the age, maintains that Socrates was not their great opponent but their eminent representa- tive, that they were the authorized teachers, the established clergy of the Greek nation, and that Plato was the dissenter, who attacked them not as a sect but as an order of society. Socrates is usually styled the father of moral philosophy ; yet he was rather a sage than a philosopher, and is renowned rather for his wonderful moral consciousness and for his power of exciting the analytical faculties of others than for his positive speculative thought. He affirmed the reality of the distinction be- tween good and evil, that it was founded in nature and not in convention, yet he did not precisely determine wherein it consists. He enjoined the supremacy of duty, yet he gave no objective or subjective definition of virtue. His highest motive was to make reason prevail in human life, public and private, as it prevails in the universe. The elements of his instruc- tion were : a supreme Deity, the principle of order and beauty in nature, and of justice and truth in man ; and a series of human virtues, the principal of which were wisdom or a par- ticipation in the divine intelligence, justice, which is conformity to universal reason, for- titude, which gives courage and strength to endure trouble and resist difficulties, and tem- perance, which subdues the passions and makes us capable of intellectual delights. He was the first to treat distinctly of ethical science, apart from cosmological and metaphysical specula- tions, and laid down the principle of individual and social security and happiness as the end to which all moral precepts have reference. Like the other moral philosophers of antiquity, he confounded ethics and politics, and was a preacher of virtue in the interest of the state. The aim of Socrates was to reform morals, that of his disciple Plato was to explain thought. The latter did not frequent public places to teach the excellence of virtue, but, with a mind whose natural function seemed to be the contemplation of the essence of things, he dis- dained the shadows of earth for the eternal and divine realities of an ideal world, and developed schemes of thought which caused the fathers of the church to recognize him as one of their precursors. His fundamental ethical principle rests upon the antagonism of the visible and the invisible, the divine and the earthly. Man is an exile upon the earth, to which he is united