FORE:So far, we have only considered belief in its relation to the re-distribution of political, social, and national forces. But behind all such forces there is a deeper and more perennial cause of intellectual revolution at work. There is now in the world an organised and ever-growing mass of scientific truths, at least a thousand times greater and a thousand times more diffused than the amount of positive knowledge possessed by mankind in the age of the Antonines. What those truths can do in the future may be inferred from what they have already done in the past. Even the elementary science of Alexandria, though it could not cope with the supernaturalist reaction of the empire, proved strong enough, some centuries later, to check the flood of Mahometan fanaticism, and for a time to lead captivity captive in the very strongholds of militant theological belief. When, long afterwards, Jesuitism and Puritanism between them threatened to reconquer all that the humanism of the Renaissance had won from superstition, when all Europe from end to end was red with the blood or blackened with the death-fires of heretics and witches, science, which had meanwhile been silently laying the foundations of265 a new kingdom, had but to appear before the eyes of men, and they left the powers of darkness to follow where she led. When the follies and excesses of the Revolution provoked another intellectual reaction, her authority reduced it to a mere mimicry and shadow of the terrible revenges by which analogous epochs in the past history of opinion had been signalised. And this was at a time when the materials of reaction existed in abundance, because the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century had left the middle and lower classes untouched. At the present moment, Catholicism has no allies but a dispirited, half-sceptical aristocracy; and any appeal to other quarters would show that her former reserves have irrevocably passed over to the foe. What is more, she has unconsciously been playing the game of rationalism for fifteen centuries. By waging a merciless warfare on every other form of superstition, she has done her best to dry up the sources of religious belief. Those whom she calls heathens and pagans lived in an atmosphere of supernaturalism which rendered them far less apt pupils of philosophy than her own children are to-day. It was harder to renounce what she took away than it will be to renounce what she has left, when the truths of science are seen by all, as they are now seen by a few, to involve the admission that there is no object for our devotion but the welfare of sentient beings like ourselves; that there are no changes in Nature for which natural forces will not account; and that the unity of all existence has, for us, no individualisation beyond the finite and perishable consciousness of man.
FORE:We must also observe that the parallel drawn by Sir A. Grant between the theology of Aristotle and that of John Stuart Mill is singularly unfortunate. It is in the first place incorrect to say that Mill represented God as benevolent but352 not omnipotent. He only suggested the idea as less inconsistent with facts than other forms of theism.250 In the next place, Aristotles God was almost exactly the reverse of this. He possesses infinite power, but no benevolence at all. He has nothing to do with the internal arrangements of the world, either as creator or as providence. He is, in fact, an egoist of the most transcendent kind, who does nothing but think about himself and his own perfections. Nothing could be more characteristic of the unpractical Aristotelian philosophy; nothing more repugnant to the eager English reformer, the pupil of Bentham and of Plato. And, thirdly, Sir A. Grant takes what is not the God of Aristotles system at all, but a mere abstraction, the immanent reason of Nature, the Form which can never quite conquer Matter, and places it on the same line with a God who, however hypothetical, is nothing if not a person distinct from the world; while, as if to bewilder the unfortunate English reader still further, he adds, in the very next sentence, that the great defect in Aristotles conception of God is the denial that God can be a moral Being.251As I passed a Red Cross Hospital, partly spared, I noticed a Flemish doctor, who first looked at me from the door held ajar, and then came nearer; a strapping young fellow with a black beard. After I had made myself known as a Netherlander, he was clearly surprised, and it seemed as though he had a lot to ask or to tell. I expected to hear a torrent of abuse against the Huns, who had destroyed everything, and murdered so many innocent119 people, or a lament about the valuable treasures of the library, which also had not been spared; but no, other thoughts occupied his mind. With a slightly trembling voice he asked:
FORE:CHAPTER XXXIII. SHAPING MACHINES."It is possible," she cried aloud. "Fool not to have thought of it before. What better hiding-place could I have than in the Corner House!"
FORE:"I am a Netherland journalist, and want to ask the commander's permission to go to Lige."It remains for us to glance at the controversy which has long been carried on respecting the true position of the Sophists in Greek life and thought. We have already alluded to the by no means favourable judgment passed on them by some among their contemporaries. Socrates condemned them severely,H but only because they received payment for their lessons; and the sentiment was probably echoed by many who had neither his disinterestedness nor his frugality. To make profit by intellectual work was not unusual in Greece. Pheidias sold his statues; Pindar spent his life writing for money; Simonides and Sophocles were charged with showing too great eagerness in the pursuit of gain.75 But a mans conversation with his friends had always been gratuitous, and the novel idea of charging a high fee for it excited considerable offence. Socrates called it prostitutionthe sale of that which should be the free gift of lovewithout perhaps sufficiently considering that the same privilege had formerly been purchased with a more dishonourable price. He also considered that a freeman was degraded by placing himself at the beck and call of another, although it would appear that the Sophists chose their own time for lecturing, and were certainly not more slaves than a sculptor or poet who had received an order to execute. It was also argued that any one who really succeeded in improving the104 community benefited so much by the result that it was unfair on his part to demand any additional remuneration. Suppose a popular preacher were to come over from New York to England, star about among the principal cities, charging a high price for admission to his sermons, and finally return home in possession of a handsome fortune, we can well imagine that sarcasms at the expense of such profitable piety would not be wanting. This hypothetical case will help us to understand how many an honest Athenian must have felt towards the showy colonial strangers who were making such a lucrative business of teaching moderation and justice. Plato, speaking for his master but not from his masters standpoint, raised an entirely different objection. He saw no reason why the Sophists should not sell their wisdom if they had any wisdom to sell. But this was precisely what he denied. He submitted their pretensions to a searching cross-examination, and, as he considered, convicted them of being worthless pretenders. There was a certain unfairness about this method, for neither his own positive teaching nor that of Socrates could have stood before a similar test, as Aristotle speedily demonstrated in the next generation. He was, in fact, only doing for Protagoras and Gorgias what they had done for early Greek speculation, and what every school habitually does for its predecessors. It had yet to be learned that this dissolving dialectic constitutes the very law of philosophical progress. The discovery was made by Hegel, and it is to him that the Sophists owe their rehabilitation in modern times. His lectures on the History of Philosophy contain much that was afterwards urged by Grote on the same side. Five years before the appearance of Grotes famous sixty-seventh chapter, Lewes had also published a vindication of the Sophists, possibly suggested by Hegels work, which he had certainly consulted when preparing his own History. There is, however, this great difference, that while the two English critics endeavour to minimise the105 sceptical, innovating tendency of the Sophists, it is, contrariwise, brought into exaggerated prominence by the German philosopher. We have just remarked that the final dissolution of Sophisticism was brought about by the separate development given to each of the various tendencies which it temporarily combined. Now, each of our three apologists has taken up one of these tendencies, and treated it as constituting the whole movement under discussion. To Hegel, the Sophists are chiefly subjective idealists. To Lewes, they are rhetoricians like Isocrates. To Grote, they are, what in truth the Sophists of the Roman empire were, teachers representing the standard opinions of their age. Lewes and Grote are both particularly anxious to prove that the original Sophists did not corrupt Greek morality. Thus much has been conceded by contemporary German criticism, and is no more than was observed by Plato long ago. Grote further asserts that the implied corruption of morality is an illusion, and that at the end of the Peloponnesian war the Athenians were no worse than their forefathers who fought at Marathon. His opinion is shared by so accomplished a scholar as Prof. Jowett;76 but here he has the combined authority of Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Plato against him. We have, however, examined this question already, and need not return to it. Whether any of the Sophists themselves can be proved to have taught immoral doctrines is another moot point. Grote defends them all, Polus and Thrasymachus included. Here, also, we have expressed our dissent from the eminent historian, whom we can only suppose to have missed the whole point of Platos argument. Lewes takes different106 ground when he accuses Plato of misrepresenting his opponents. It is true that the Sophists cannot be heard in self-defence, but there is no internal improbability about the charges brought against them. The Greek rhetoricians are not accused of saying anything that has not been said again and again by their modern representatives. Whether the odium of such sentiments should attach itself to the whole class of Sophists is quite another question. Grote denies that they held any doctrine in common. The German critics, on the other hand, insist on treating them as a school with common principles and tendencies. Brandis calls them a number of men, gifted indeed, but not seekers after knowledge for its own sake, who made a trade of giving instruction as a means for the attainment of external and selfish ends, and of substituting mere technical proficiency for real science.77 If our account be the true one, this would apply to Gorgias and the younger rhetoricians alone. One does not precisely see what external or selfish ends were subserved by the physical philosophy which Prodicus and Hippias taught, nor why the comprehensive enquiries of Protagoras into the conditions of civilisation and the limits of human knowledge should be contemptuously flung aside because he made them the basis of an honourable profession. Zeller, in much the same strain, defines a Sophist as one who professes to be a teacher of wisdom, while his object is individual culture (die formelle und praktische Bildung des Subjekts) and not the scientific investigation of truth.78 We do not know whether Grote was content with an explanation which would only have required an unimportant modification of his own statements to agree precisely with them. It ought amply to have satisfied Lewes. For ourselves, we must confess to caring very little whether the Sophists investigated truth for its own sake or as a means to self-culture. We believe, and in the next chapter we hope107 to show, that Socrates, at any rate, did not treat knowledge apart from practice as an end in itself. But the history of philosophy is not concerned with such subtleties as these. Our contention is that the Stoic, Epicurean, and Sceptical schools may be traced back through Antisthenes and Aristippus to Hippias and Protagoras much more directly than to Socrates. If Zeller will grant this, then he can no longer treat Sophisticism as a mere solvent of the old physical philosophy. If he denies it, we can only appeal to his own history, which here, as well as in our discussions of early Greek thought, we have found more useful than any other work on the subject. Our obligations to Grote are of a more general character. We have learned from him to look at the Sophists without prejudice. But we think that he, too, underrates their far-reaching intellectual significance, while his defence of their moral orthodoxy seems, so far as certain members of the class are concerned, inconsistent with any belief in Platos historical fidelity. That the most eminent Sophists did nothing to corrupt Greek morality is now almost universally admitted. If we have succeeded in showing that they did not corrupt but fruitfully develop Greek philosophy, the purpose of this study will have been sufficiently fulfilled.
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