Page images
PDF
EPUB

relation to the eye, into which it sends its rays, the tree has no existence." All such expressions are still in our own day regarded as Materialism. To Demokritos, however, the atom was a 'thing in itself.' Protagoras dropped the Atomism. He regarded matter as something in itself completely undetermined, involved in eternal flow and change. It is what it appears to the individual.

The most distinctive features of the philosophy of Protagoras are the following propositions underlying his Sensationalism:

1. Man is the measure of all things: of those that are that they are; of those that are not that they are not. 2. Contradictory assertions are equally true.

Of these propositions, the second is the most striking, and is also the one that most forcibly reminds us of the unscrupulous pedantry which is only too often considered as the essence of the Sophistic system. It gains, however, a deeper sense so soon as it is explained from the first principle which contains the core of the Protagorean doctrines. Man is the measure of things, that is, it depends upon our sensations how things appear to us, and this appearance is all that is given us; and so it is not man in his universal and necessary qualities, but each individual in each single moment, that is the measure of things. If it is a question of the universal and necessary qualities, than Protagoras must be regarded wholly as a predecessor of the theoretical philosophy of Kant. Yet Protagoras as to the influence of the subject, as well as to the judgment of the object, kept close to the individual perception, and so far from viewing the man as such,' he cannot even, strictly speaking, make the individual the measure of things, for the individual is mutable; and ii the same temperature appear to the same man at one time cool, at another warm, both impressions are in their own moment equally true, and there is no truth outside this.

We may now easily explain the second principle without contradiction, so soon as we proceed to the closer

determination as demanded by the system of Protagorasin the sense of two different individuals.

It was not the object of Protagoras to maintain the simultaneous truth and falsity of the same assertion in the mouth of the same individual; although, indeed, he teaches that, of every proposition maintained by any one, the opposite may be maintained with equal right, in so far as there may be any one to whom it so appears.

menon.

That in this way of regarding things there is contained a great element of truth cannot but be recognised; for the real fact, the immediately given, is in reality the phenoBut our mind demands something persistent in the flood of phenomena. Sokrates sought the path to this persistent element; Plato, in complete contrast to the Sophists, believed he had found it in the universal, in face of which the particular sank back into unreal seeming. In this controversy, if we view it quite theoretically, the Sophists are right, and Plato's theoretical philosophy can find its higher significance only in the deep-lying suspicion of a hidden truth, and in its relations to the ideal elements of life.

In Ethic the fatal consequences of the standpoint of Protagoras are most obvious. Protagoras, indeed, did not draw these consequences. He explained desire to be the principle of action, but he drew a sharp distinction between the good citizens and noble men who have desires only for what is good and noble, and the bad and vulgar who feel attracted towards evil.36 At the same time, the consequence must have followed from the theoretical conception of this unconditional relativity, that that is right and good for the man which in each case seems to him right and good.

As practical men, and, in fact, teachers of virtue, the Sophists helped themselves by simply adopting the traditional Hellenic morality as a whole for their own. There could be no question of deducing it from a principle: even 36 Frei, Quaest. Prot., p. 99; Zeller, i. 916 foll.

the doctrine that those sentiments are to be favoured which further the prosperity of the state was not raised to an ethical principle, however nearly it may approach it.

So it is intelligible that the most important consequences from this principle of arbitrariness were drawn not only by fanatical opponents like Plato, but occasionally even by venturesome pupils of the Sophists. The famous art of making the worse appear the better cause is defended by Lewes as an art of disputation for practical people, as the art of being one's own advocate: the reverse of the picture is only too obvious.37 The defence is sufficient to show that, on the general ground of average Greek morality, the Sophists might boldly assert their blamelessness; it is not sufficient to refute the view that Sophistic was a dissolving element in Hellenic civilisation.

But if we look closely at the position that desire is the moving principle of action, we easily see that the ground was already prepared by the Sensationalism of Protagoras for the Cyrenaic doctrine of pleasure. The develop

ment of this germ was carried out by the 'Sokratic' Aristippos.

On the hot coasts of Northern Africa lay the Greek commercial colony of Cyrene; here Oriental luxury was combined with the refinement of Hellenic civilisation. Sprung from a wealthy mercantile family of this city, brought up with the sentiments and education of a man of the world, the young Aristippos went to Athens, attracted by the fame of Sokrates. Of handsome form, and gifted with the charm of the most refined demeanour and the most intellectual conversation, Aristippos found his way to every heart. He attached himself to Sokrates, and was regarded as a Sokratic, different as the direction taken by his doctrine was from the essence of the Sokratic theory. His personal inclination to a life of pleasure and display, and the powerful influence of the Sophists, brought about the development of his doctrine that pleasure is the object of

37 Lewes, Hist of Phil., i. 114.

existence. Aristotle calls him a Sophist; yet we may also recognise in him the influence of Sokratic views. Sokrates found the highest happiness in virtue, and taught that virtue is identical with true knowledge. Aristippos taught that self-control and temperance—that is, the genuine Sokratic virtues-alone render us capable of enjoyment, and keep us so; only the wise man can be really happy. Happiness, however, is with him, of course, only pleasure.

He distinguished two forms of sensation: one which results from gentle motion, the other from violent rapid motion; the former is pleasure, the latter pain or absence of pleasure.

Now since sensual pleasure obviously produces a livelier sensation than intellectual pleasure, it was merely a consequence of the inexorable logic of Hellenic speculation when Aristippos inferred from this that physical pleasure is better than intellectual pleasure, physical pain worse than mental. Epikuros tried to escape this by a sophism.

Finally, Aristippos taught expressly that the true aim is not happiness, which is the permanent result of many single sensations of pleasure, but the individual sensual concrete pleasure itself. Happiness is of course good, but it must come spontaneously, and is therefore not the aim.

No Sensationalistic moralist of ancient or modern times has been more logically consistent than Aristippos, and his life constitutes the best commentary on his doctrine.

With Sokrates and his school, Athens had become the centre of philosophic tendencies. Though from this point, then, proceeded the great reaction against Materialism, which in Plato and Aristotle secured the most decided victory, yet even here the intellectual influences of Materialism were sufficiently powerful to challenge such a reaction.

Demokritos, it is true, felt no attraction towards Athens. "I came to Athens," he is reported to have said, "and no man knew me." As a man of reputation then, he had hastened to the then newly flourishing centre of science to

view closely the course of speculation there, and quietly again departed without revealing himself; and it may well be that the great and earnest system of Demokritos worked much less powerfully on the seething tendencies of the time than the less logical but more intelligible features of that Materialism, in the wider sense of the word, which dominates the whole pre-Sokratic period of philosophy. Above all things, however, had Sophistic, in the good and the bad sense of the word, found a favourable soil in Athens. Since the Persian war a change had taken place, under the influence of the new modes of thought, which extended through all grades of society. Under Perikles's powerful direction, the state had reached the consciousness of its destiny. Commerce and the sovereignty of the sea had favoured the development of material interests. A magnificent spirit of enterprise appeared amongst the Athenians. The time at which Protagoras taught almost coincided with the period which saw the elevation of the mighty buildings of the Acropolis.

The stiffness of antiquity disappeared, and art, in its passage to the beautiful, reached that elevation of style which we find in the works of Pheidias. In gold and ivory arose the wonderful statues of Pallas Parthenos, and of the Olympian Zeus; and while beliefs in all classes are beginning to totter, the festival processions of the gods reached the highest pitch of splendour and magnificence. More material and luxurious in every respect than Athens was Korinth; but Korinth was not the city of philosophers. There intellectual apathy and degradation passed into sensuality, to which the traditional forms of worship not merely adapted themselves, but even gave encouragement.

Thus, even in antiquity, the interdependence of theoretical and practical Materialism, as well as the opposition of the two, is unmistakably obvious. If by practical Materialism we understand a dominant inclination to material acquisition and enjoyment, then theoretical Materialism is opposed to it, as is every effort of the spirit towards know

« PreviousContinue »