CHAPTER III. THE REACTION AGAINST MATERIALISM AND SENSATIONALISM: SOKRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE. WHEN we regard from the standpoint of a reaction against Materialism and Sensationalism those products of Hellenic speculation which are usually considered the highest and most perfect, we are in danger of undervaluing these products, and of criticising them with the bitterness ordinarily directed against Materialism. The temptation is indeed strong, for we have here, as soon as we disregard the other aspects of the great crisis, a reaction in the worst sense of the term. It is a reaction in which the lower standpoint is elevated above the higher, after the former had been surmounted consciously and by a genuine intellectual effort -a suppression of the beginnings of a better view by ideas in which the old errors of unphilosophical thought return in a new shape, with new prestige and power, but not without their old pernicious character. Materialism explained natural phenomena by immutable necessary laws: the reaction introduced a reason fashioned after human models haggling with necessity, and so demolished the basis of all natural science by the convenient instrument of arbitrary caprice.38 Materialism conceived adaptations to be the highest 33 This doctrine is set forth repeatedly and at length in the Timaeus of Plato; comp., e.g., the passages p. 48 A, 56 c, and 68 E. Everywhere here two kinds of cause are expressly spoken of-the Divine and rational, that is, the teleological; and the Natural cause: and no suggestion whatever is made as to their coincidence. Reason is higher than necessity, but does not rule unconditionally, but only to a certain extent, and even so far only by persuasion. products of nature, but without, therefore, sacrificing the unity of its principle: the reaction struggled fanatically to retain a teleology which even in its most brilliant forms conceals flat anthropomorphism, and whose radical extermination is the indispensable condition of all scientific progress.39 Materialism gave the preference to mathematical and physical investigations - that is, those departments in which the human mind is first able to secure results of permanent value: the reaction, to begin with, wholly threw over physical inquiries in favour of ethic, and when, under Aristotle, it again took up the neglected study, it thoroughly corrupted it by the reckless introduction of ethical ideas.40 While we have in these points undoubted retrogression, the progress—at least that in which utterance was given to the determined opposition of the great philosophical school of Athens against Materialism and Sensationalismis of a very doubtful nature. We have Sokrates to thank for the phantom of definitions which presuppose an alto 30 The anthropomorphic character of this teleology, as well as the antimaterialistic zeal with which it was inculcated and defended, is seen most clearly from the passage of the Phaedo mentioned further on in the text (pp. 97 C-99 D Steph.), in which Sokrates complains so bitterly of Anaxagoras, who had made no use whatever in his cosmology of the so promising 'reason,' but had explained everything by purely material causes. 40 Of ethical origin is teleology in particular. It is indeed true that even the Platonic teleology is less crudely anthropomorphic than the Sokratic, and in the teleology of Aristotle, again, we find a decided advance; but the ethical character, and the inconsistency with genuine physical inquiry, are common to all the three stages. In Sokrates everything just as it is has been created for human purposes. Plato recognises that things have an end of their own, and so their adaptation is more internal; while in Aristotle the end completely coincides with the notional essence of the thing. But even so we have imported a power of realising themselves into all natural things, which is absolutely inconceivable as a natural phenomenon, and has its only original in the practical consciousness of the forming and fashioning human being. There are, however, many other ethical ideas which Aristotle has carried into the study of nature, with the utmost injury to the progress of inquiry: thus, above all, the order of merit of all things in nature, and, in fact, the abstract relations of 'above' and 'below,' 'right' and 'left,' besides 'natural' and 'violent' motion, and so on. gether imaginary agreement of name and thing, and Plato for the delusive method which rests one hypothesis upon another still more general, until at last the highest certainty is found in what is most abstract. Aristotle we have to thank for the juggle between the potential and the actual, and the fancy of a complete and all-comprehensive system of knowledge. That all these acquisitions of the Athenian school are, even to our own time, continually operative, especially in Germany, admits of no doubt; and therefore over the historical importance of this school we need waste no further word, but may rather ask, Was this historical importance a fortunate or an unfortunate thing? So long as we regard these points in themselves and in their purely theoretical opposition to Materialism, our judgment must be necessarily an unfavourable one, and we may, indeed, go a long way further than this. It is usually said that with Protagoras the earlier Greek philosophy reached its dissolution, and that an entirely new foundation was required, which was afforded by Sokrates and his return to self-knowledge. We shall soon see how far the history of thought justifies this view. Such a view, moreover, can be supported only by the consideration of the whole extent of Greek intellectual life. Philosophy, and especially theoretical philosophy in the strict sense, can scarcely be abolished through the attainment of truth, only to begin again from the beginning with the old errors. This might, indeed, appear to be possible if we consider, for example, the transition from Kant to Fichte; but all such phenomena must be explained from the whole history of thought, since philosophy never holds an isolated position in the intellectual life of any given people. Quite theoretically considered, the relativity of the Sophists was a thoroughly sound advance in the theory of knowledge, and not at all the end of philosophy, but much rather its true beginning. We see this most clearly in ethic; for it was just the Sophists, who apparently undermined every possible basis of morality, who made it their favourite occupation to teach virtue and statesmanship. They substituted in the place of what is good in itself that which is useful to the state. How very close this comes to Kant's ethical axiom: So act that the maxims of your conduct might be the principles of universal legislation. It is, in fact, the step from the particular to the universal which should here in due course have followed, and, abstractly speaking, might have followed, without giving up the acquisitions of relativity and individualism made by the Sophists. In ethic this step has in effect been taken as soon as virtue, after the falling away of all externally-given objective rules, is not simply laid aside, but proceeds to identify itself with the principle of the conservation and progress of a community. This was the course the Sophists took, without, however, being conscious of its fundamental significance; but might not this consciousness in time have developed itself out of their doctrine? In that case, although, of course, the highest point would not have been at once attained, yet henceforward the ground would have been thoroughly firm and secure beneath their feet. Sokrates resolved virtue into knowledge: is this principle, when quite theoretically tested, really higher than the standpoint of the Sophists? What, indeed, the objective notion of the good is, we can as little discover from the whole body of the Platonic dialogues as the nature of the philosopher's stone from the alchemistic writings. If we make the knowledge of virtue a consciousness of the right principles of conduct, then it is easily reconcilable with the foundation upon the common weal in the state. If we take the Sokratic illustration of the intemperate man, who only sins because he is not fully conscious of the painful consequences of his present desire, no Sophist would deny that the man who is so constituted that this consciousness is never lacking is the better constituted, but for him in consequence, quite subjectively and individually seen. considered, the good is the better. He chooses the better not through a knowledge of the notion of the good, but through a psychological condition, differing at the moment of choice from that of the intemperate man. It is true, indeed, that from the consideration of such instances the necessity for the individual also of a general notion of the good embracing the different moments of time may be Such a notion was possessed even by Demokritos. A pupil of Demokritos and Protagoras, who had continued, if I may use the expression, a tangential movement from their philosophy, instead of sweeping round again with Sokrates, might easily have reached the position that man is the measure of things: the individual man in his momentary condition of the individual phenomenon, the average man of a sum of phenomena. Protagoras and Prodikos busied themselves also with the rudiments of grammatical and etymological studies, and we do not know how much is really due to them of what we are now accustomed to assign to Plato and Aristotle. It is sufficient, however, for our purpose, to know that the Sophists had already turned their attention to words and the meaning of words. Now the word, as a rule, stands as a sign for a group of sensations. Might they not in this way have very soon reached a theory of universals in the sense of the medieval Nominalism? In such a theory, of course, the universal would not have been more real and certain than the particular, but, on the contrary, would have been further removed from the object, and more uncertain-in fact, in direct opposition to Plato, the more uncertain as it became more universal. If, finally, the Sophists, among human actions, which, if regarded from a strictly individual standpoint, are all equally good, discriminate between the praiseworthy and the blameworthy, and that according to a rule which is gathered from the universal life in a state, might they not also have reached the idea of discriminating amongst perceptions which in themselves are all equally true, the |