THREE:The scepticism of Aristippus and the Cyrenaics mediated between the views of Protagoras and those of Gorgias, while marking an advance on both. According to this school, we know nothing beyond our own feelings, and it must be left undecided whether they are caused by an external reality or not. Nor can the feelings of one individual justify us in reasoning to the existence of similar feelings in the mind of another individual.221 It might be objected that the arguments advanced in support of the latter assertion are suicidal, for they are derived from the abnormal states of consciousness accompanying particular diseases, or else from the divergences of taste exhibited by different individuals even when in good health,��an apparent admission that we are sufficiently well acquainted with the phenomena in question to institute a comparison between them, which, by hypothesis, is impossible. And this is, in fact, the method by which Mr. Herbert Spencer has endeavoured to upset the whole theory of subjective idealism, as involving at every step an assumption of the very realities that it professes to deny. But the Cyrenaic and the modern idealist have a perfect right to show that the assumptions of their adversaries are self-contradictory; and the readiest way of so doing is to reason from them as if they were true. The real answer to that extreme form of idealism which denies the possibility of making known our feelings to each other is that, our bodies being similarly constructed and responding to similar impressions by similar manifestations,133 I have the same sort of warrant for assuming that your states of consciousness are like mine that I have for assuming you to exist at all. The inference must, of course, be surrounded by proper precautions, such as are seldom used by unscientific reasoners. We must make sure that the structure is the same and that the excitement is the same, or that their differences, if any, are insignificant, before we can attribute the same value to the same manifestations of feeling on the part of different persons; but that this can be done, at least in the case of the elementary sensations, is shown by the easy detection of such anomalies as colour-blindness where they exist.While most educated persons will admit that the Greeks are our masters in science and literature, in politics and art, some even among those who are free from theological prejudices will not be prepared to grant that the principles which claim to guide our conduct are only a wider extension or a more specific application of Greek ethical teaching. Hebraism has been opposed to Hellenism as the educating power whence our love of righteousness is derived, and which alone prevents the foul orgies of a primitive nature-worship from being still celebrated in the midst of our modern civilisation. And many look on old Roman religion as embodying a sense of duty higher than any bequeathed to us by Greece. The Greeks have, indeed, suffered seriously from their own sincerity. Their literature is a perfect image of their life, reflecting every blot and every flaw, unveiled, uncoloured, undisguised. It was, most fortunately, never subjected to the revision of a jealous priesthood, bent on removing every symptom inconsistent with the hypothesis of a domination exercised by themselves through all the past. Nor yet has their history been systematically falsified to prove that they never wrongfully attacked a neighbour, and were invariably obliged to conquer in self-defence. Still, even taking the records as they stand, it is to Greek rather than to Hebrew or Roman annals that we must look for examples of true virtue; and in Greek literature, earlier than in any other, occur precepts like those which are now held to be most distinctively character55istic of Christian ethics. Let us never forget that only by Stoical teaching was the narrow and cruel formalism of ancient Roman law elevated into the ��written reason�� of the imperial jurists; only after receiving successive infiltrations of Greek thought was the ethnic monotheism of Judaea expanded into a cosmopolitan religion. Our popular theologians are ready enough to admit that Hellenism was providentially the means of giving Christianity a world-wide diffusion; they ignore the fact that it gave the new faith not only wings to fly, but also eyes to see and a soul to love. From very early times there was an intuition of humanity in Hellas which only needed dialectical development to become an all-sufficient law of life. Homer sympathises ardently with his own countrymen, but he never vilifies their enemies. He did not, nor did any Greek, invent impure legends to account for the origin of hostile tribes whose kinship could not be disowned; unlike Samuel, he regards the sacrifice of prisoners with unmixed abhorrence. What would he, whose Odysseus will not allow a shout of triumph to be raised over the fallen, have said to Deborah��s exultation at the murder of a suppliant fugitive? Courage was, indeed, with him the highest virtue, and Greek literature abounds in martial spirit-stirring tones, but it is nearly always by the necessities of self-defence that this enthusiasm is invoked; with Pindar and Simonides, with Aeschylus and Sophocles, it is resistance to an invader that we find so proudly commemorated; and the victories which make Greek history so glorious were won in fighting to repel an unjust aggression perpetrated either by the barbarians or by a tyrant state among the Greeks themselves. There was, as will be shown hereafter, an unhappy period when right was either denied, or, what comes to the same thing, identified with might; but this offensive paradox only served to waken true morality into a more vivid self-consciousness, and into the felt need of discovering for itself a stronger foundation than usage and tradition, a loftier56 sanction than mere worldly success could afford. The most universal principle of justice, to treat others as we should wish to be treated ourselves, seems before the Rabbi Hillel��s time to have become almost a common-place of Greek ethics;43 difficulties left unsolved by the Book of Job were raised to a higher level by Greek philosophy; and long before St. Paul, a Plato reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.

THREE:At the same time Lucretius is resolved that no false analogy shall obscure the distinction between life and the conditions of life. It is for attempting, as he supposes, to efface this distinction that he so sharply criticises the earlier Greek thinkers. He scoffs at Heracleitus for imagining that all forms of existence can be deduced from the single element of fire. The idea of evolution and transformation seems, under some of its aspects, utterly alien to our poet. His intimacy with the world of living forms had accustomed him to view Nature as a vast assemblage of fixed types which might be broken up and reconstructed, but which by no possibility could pass into one another. Yet this rigid retention of characteristic differences in form permits a certain play and variety of movement, an individual spontaneity for which no law can be prescribed. The foedera Naturai, as Prof. Sellar aptly observes, are opposed to the foedera fati.206 And109 this is just what might be expected from a philosophy based on the contemplation of life. For, while there is no capriciousness at all about the structure of animals, there is apparently a great deal of capriciousness about their actions. On the other hand, the Stoics, who derived their physics in great part from Heracleitus, came nearer than Lucretius to the standpoint of modern science. With them, as with the most advanced thinkers now, it is the foedera Naturai��the uniformities of co-existence��which are liable to exception and modification, while the foedera fati��the laws of causation��are necessary and absolute.